Hello! I’m Ravenna Rodgers, and I would like to introduce you all to a new column I will be writing, Fandom 101. Here, I will teach you all about anything and everything having to do with fandom, including things such as fan fiction, fan games, fan art, and many other things.
First and foremost, I want to talk about the general history of fandom and how it came to be. According to Casey Seagriff of “That Fangirl Life,” in 1885, the word “fan” was coined in reference to “baseball die-hards.” Now, the word is often used to describe people who like a particular piece of media, and participate in discourse and discussion surrounding the things that they are interested in. The first “real” fandom came to be with Sherlock Holmes fans, who supposedly wrote some of the first pieces of fan fiction in the late 1890s. They even exhibited dramatic fandom behavior, like holding a funeral for Sherlock after he had supposedly died in the novel.
As the 20th century rolled around, fandom continued to grow, even to the point of fans being able to hold in-person events and conventions where they could come together and meet fellow fans. In the 1930s, the science-fiction community took over, resulting in The World Science Fiction Convention being held every year since 1939. However, the creation of fan fiction and fan works really became popular in the 1960s with the release of the TV show Star Trek, becoming something resembling modern-day fandom.
Nowadays, fans and fandom culture are different in many ways to how they used to be. They are continuously changing and adapting to the world around them. Especially with the introduction of the internet and the speed of the communication that people have with one another, fandom has become much more popular, both within mainstream media and the general public.
I have been a part of fandom and fandom spaces for as long as I can remember. It always brought me great comfort interacting with other fans of the things I liked and finding people with the same interests and opinions as me. I’ve also learned many things about myself and the world around me through interacting with other fans. Overall, fandom and fandom spaces have had a major positive effect on me and my development.
So now, I want to pass the torch on to anyone who may be reading this, whether you are as heavily involved in fandom as I am or are just a curious reader peeking in. I hope to teach things about fans and fandom culture that may come as a surprise to you, or show just how impactful fandom is on pop culture as a whole and all the other things surrounding it.
In my next column, I hope to go more in depth into fan works, (i.e, fan fiction, fan art) and how they keep fandoms alive in the long run. I will also be including a fun fact at the end of each of my columns!
Fandom Fun Fact I: The first-ever fan fiction website was Fanfiction.net, a nonprofit website launched in 1998!
If you have any questions or suggestions for things I should talk about, or want to share your own fandom-related stories, feel free to email me at [email protected] with any inquiries you may have!