Here's a roundup of stories about the importance of fandom that might be of interest to fans:

• Singer Alexandra Burke wrote about the importance of her fans, saying she can "fully appreciate the extent that 'fandom' as some people like to call it has really taken over. I am superclose to my fans (probably too close for it to be healthy lol) but I feel like they are this extended family of mine and they do so much for me, and there's no better form of honesty than if these guys don't like something/don't like some of my music - they won't dress it up in cotton wool - they will just tell you damn straight!" What's more, "[t]he last few years I think for me have certainly changed my perception on this whole 'movement', and no doubt that of label's and management who now have whole teams dedicated to ensuring that the fanbase is looked after."
• Dr. Who fans, on the other hand, got a whole book written on their importance. SFX reviewed The Official Doctor Who Fan Club: Volume One and concluded that "[e]ven readers born many years after 1971 will probably experience a stab of nostalgia. You are transported back to more innocent times: before forum flame wars; before fandom had been commodified. This was a time when you could write to the Doctor and know there was a decent chance of getting a letter back; a time when Who fans had to make their own entertainment (one of Keith’s innovations was a 'lending library' of hand-made, one-off novellas of old stories, available to borrow one at a time). You may find yourself wondering if we weren’t better off back then."
• If the discussion at Den of Geek is any indication, the above book will likely sell well. Contemplating what fandom did for Dr. Who, they note that "the market is completely different these days. Before the show came back, Doctor Who merchandise was a relatively small but lucrative area, mainly based round adult collectors. Now it's a huge and broad market, with magazines and toys selling large numbers in supermarkets to kids." They then attempt to quantify Who fandom, speculating "When you consider that Doctor Who Magazine's 2011 circulation was 30,682 these figures are impressive, but for further context we must ask: how many hard-core Doctor Who fans are there?...If you combine the highest figure from fan-sites' Twitter followers or forum members the total is roughly 145,700. This figure does show is that, even adjusting upwards (say, doubling the figure to accommodate variables), the kind of fan who is debating how much of Destiny of the Daleks was written by Terry Nation or Douglas Adams has gone from being the near-totality of fandom to being a minority (the average UK viewing figure for the 2011 series was 7.75 million)."
• Certainly the U.S.'s SyFy network has realized the importance of fannish content to its bottom line. Their recent upfront presentation included various shows targeted at fans. Aside from creating two different shows aimed at collectors, there is a new project on cosplayers, Divas of Dress Up, and the "Untitled Mark Burnett Project...where fans of science fiction/fantasy books and movies compete to create the most flavorful and inspired dishes from the foods featured in the imaginary worlds that they love."

If you are part of Dr. Who fandom or want to share your fandom recipes, why not write about it on Fanlore? Additions are welcome from all fans.

We want your suggestions! If you know of an essay, video, article, event, or link you think we should know about, comment on the most recent Links Roundup — on transformativeworks.org, LJ, or DW — or give @OTW_News a shoutout on Twitter. Links are welcome in all languages!

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Here's a roundup of stories about the changing nature of fandom that might be of interest to fans:

• Writing about the experience of moving from fan to pro, baseball blogger Joey Matschulat echoes the discussions of burnout that also recently made the rounds among television recappers, only this time discussing the revelations of fellow sports bloggers. "I still enjoy writing about this team...but my fandom won't have a snowball's chance in hell of being what it once was until the day I walk away from all of this, and it may never be the same. That's just the way it is...I welcome with open arms the next wave of young, talented, hungry writers that want to try and make a name for themselves in the ever-expanding world of online baseball scouting/sabermetric analysis...but if you're really going to commit for the long haul, be prepared to live with the unintended consequences of your decision."
• Some changes can be generational, as evidenced by the fact that kids can now go to writing camps that include fan fiction on the agenda. But changes in music fandom have been as much technological as they are due to cultural awareness. Nitsuh Abebe posted about how music fandom has gotten rewired in New York Magazine. "There are the rituals, for one thing. The youth of previous decades have fond memories of hand-labeling cassette mixes or scoping out the record shelves of party hosts; youth of today can eventually feel the same about, say, those ecstatic binges of discovery that keep you up all night listening to Korean pop. Physically handling your record collection is like wandering a neighborhood you know by heart, bumping into unexpected friends; diving into the massive catalogue of streaming music is more like being able to teleport to any city on the planet, an experience as daunting as it is freeing."
• More than one technology company has decided to target the fan market, but the real change is in how information flows through fan networks and changes the fannish experience. ESPN blogger and self-proclaimed "NBA junkie" Daniel Nowell tested the effects of social media on his game-watching by staying off Twitter for three weeks. "I’ve heard people talk about the power of Twitter as a community-builder, a way to sit and watch games with friends, but it had never occurred to me that Twitter was making the product of the games themselves more enjoyable. In fact, I’d come to think of tweeting during games as a distraction, and on the nights when I needed to do it for an assignment I treated it warily. But once I was off Twitter, I realized that what it allows members to do is experience the game all day long."
• Tallulah Habib of South Africa's IT Web wrote about what she called "the fandom disconnect" between businesses that find fans the most potent of their marketers, and the entertainment industry, which doles out mixed messages to its audience. "Take, for instance, the approach of copyright holders on YouTube. By all means, they should ask the video site to take down content that is dumped straight 'as-is' onto the free channel. That's piracy, plain and simple. But what of the fan-created content?" Arguing for the importance of fanworks, she notes the changing way that fanworks can affect the marketplace. "A music video taking a song from one artist and clips from a television show by someone else promotes both of them. For free. I personally have whole playlists of songs that I first discovered through these means. I have become interested in TV shows because I saw amazing videos about the characters. People have made money from me not because of cinemas or DVD specials or the radio, but because something I saw on YouTube took my breath away."

If you want to share how your experiences in fandom have changed, why not write about it on Fanlore? Additions are welcome from all fans.

We want your suggestions! If you know of an essay, video, article, event, or link you think we should know about, comment on the most recent Links Roundup — on transformativeworks.org, LJ, or DW — or give @OTW_News a shoutout on Twitter. Links are welcome in all languages!

Submitting a link doesn't guarantee that it will be included in a roundup post, and inclusion of a link doesn't mean that it is endorsed by the OTW.

Here's a roundup of stories about gendered aspects of fandom that might be of interest to fans:

• Conversations on various fan sites continue to revolve around creator reluctance to feature female characters in their work. One gamer discusses how "the fact that you have to play as a man puts [his significant other] off just enough that she’d just rather play another game", and notes that "As a white man, I can only really imagine this position of disassociation. There are few games which force you to play as a woman."
• Of course, it isn't just a lack of representation but also the way that women are treated as gamers that affects their enjoyment, something which escapes the attention of many male players. The creator of online comic The Oatmeal discovered this after he received angry responses to a panel he drew about female gamers having advantages simply for being female. "Citing surprise and ignorance about the violence female gamers face, he withdrew his argument," and made a $1,000 donation to the Women Against Abuse Foundation, explaining, "A lot of people are talking of rape threats, sexism, harassment, and a lot of other awful things. I'm a guy and I barely talk into my mic, so I’ll concede that my view of things is probably very skewed." Unfortunately, these problems exist in most fandoms in different forms, as a post by hockey blogger Karen M pointed out. "What I realized is that in the world of hockey fandom women are like [Russian hockey players]. We are a minority group that are battling everyday against the weight of oppressive and offensive stereotypes. A Canadian coasts on a few shifts and he's 'having an off night'. A Russian coasts and he’s 'lazy and not living up to his potential.' In hockey fandom misogynist insults are common and women are dumb puck bunnies until proven otherwise."
• Alyssa Rosenberg at Think Progress suggests that women "even outside the core fan community, will be interested in fantasy and science fiction if work in those genres have anything to say to them." "Snow White and the Huntsman is being explicitly sold not just as a story with two female leads...but as a story about the connection between beauty and power, about competition between women, and about styles of rule and command. From the outside, the women in the movie don't look like women acting like men. They appear to be women acting like women but with the force of armies and heroes available to play out the issues that they're grappling with personally."
• The Mary Sue notes that good stories appeal to all sexes, citing the success of The Legend of Korra, which has a female lead. "Some Nickelodeon executives were worried, says [Korra co-creator Bryan] Konietzko, about backing an animated action show with a female lead character. Conventional TV wisdom has it that girls will watch shows about boys, but boys won’t watch shows about girls," writes NPR's Neda Ulaby. “During test screenings, though, boys said they didn’t care that Korra was a girl. They just said she was awesome."

If you want to share your experiences in the The Legend of Korra or Avatar: The Last Airbender fandoms, or have something to say about misogny in fandom, why not write about them on Fanlore? Additions are welcome from all fans.

We want your suggestions! If you know of an essay, video, article, event, or link you think we should know about, comment on the most recent Links Roundup — on transformativeworks.org, LJ, or DW — or give @OTW_News a shoutout on Twitter. Links are welcome in all languages!

Submitting a link doesn't guarantee that it will be included in a roundup post, and inclusion of a link doesn't mean that it is endorsed by the OTW.