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Geek Anthropology of Loki's Army
Geek Anthropology of Loki's Army lets you discover a mischievous character, the actor who plays him, and a great fandom. Loki, his Army and his charm hide more that meets the eye. Start a journey of discovering who Loki is, who Hiddlestoners are, which Hiddleswords they use, and how their creativity booms through Cosplay, fanfic, fan art and more!
365 pages, Kindle Edition
First published August 5, 2015
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
October 15, 2019
Interesting Premise on Fan Behavior and the Army of Loki/Tom Hiddleston fans.
I rated this as three stars because the author has one foot in the world of academic fan theory and the other foot in her own Fandom of Loki/Hiddleston. She doesn't quite pull off a complete stance as doing a case study of the fans and their object of Fandom. This has the potential to be a good case study, but it's not there yet.
The book has a curious split in writing quality. The first half, coverage of fan theory and information about Loki and Hiddleston, is often "word salad." The author acknowledges English is not her first language and linguistic and cultural influences also impinge on her writing. A big tip: Do not rely on grammerly to solve writing problems. The AI aids to writing just aren't very good yet. You need an actual human, experienced editor.. I'm willing to overlook writing problems provided the content is reasonably clear. Here's the word salad problem: way too much restatement. You do not do a clear explanation of the fan concepts. In the last 15 years, fans and their tties to an object of Fandom has been a hot theory and research area. Before you revise this, and you should, make an outline of your existing material,. This will help you find the repetitive Ness. Dig into the body of research, but look at the textbooks being used in teaching this topic. University presses publish them, I think Sage is one.
Since you want to explain Hiddleston's career pre-Loki, you need to include a little on his experience with The Hallow Crown. He's exceptionally well educated and a classically trained actor. You can see the presence of Prince Hal, and later Henry V, in his interpretation of Loki. Your characterization of Hiddleston will be much stronger and this "Tomki" construct will be better, deeper..
The second half of the book is more clearly written, but it's much more a book of lists. Some of it even looks like my lecture notes from when I taught the "fans" course. As an academic, I would like to see you doing something with those lists of raw data. Actually use them and connect clearly to your taxonomies of fans and fan behavior. A fan study of Loki/Tom Hiddleston would be snapped up by lots of profs who teach a fan course. You could realize some profit if you self publish.
My husband and I spent ten years doing a series of fan studies on NASCAR from the Bootleg Era beginnings to the huge growth oof events and coverage in the 1990s. We were not NASCAR fans, although we are motorsports fans and have raced. You've got a really good discussion of the participant - observer process. Many of these courses have students do a detailed fan study as a course project. Please don't include so much of your own Fandom in this. It's not good academics and it distracts from data analysis. You can put your self-analysis in an appendix, which would actually be a pretty cool thing to do - - objectively, analyze yourself as a fan using your data set and your taxonomies of fans and objects of Fandom. That too, might make a great assignment.
I'm not suggesting that fans don't buy this. Some of them will find it interesting.
I really encourage you to make something out of this.
Dr. Karyn Charles Rybacki
Emeritus Professor
Entertainment and Sports Promotion
I rated this as three stars because the author has one foot in the world of academic fan theory and the other foot in her own Fandom of Loki/Hiddleston. She doesn't quite pull off a complete stance as doing a case study of the fans and their object of Fandom. This has the potential to be a good case study, but it's not there yet.
The book has a curious split in writing quality. The first half, coverage of fan theory and information about Loki and Hiddleston, is often "word salad." The author acknowledges English is not her first language and linguistic and cultural influences also impinge on her writing. A big tip: Do not rely on grammerly to solve writing problems. The AI aids to writing just aren't very good yet. You need an actual human, experienced editor.. I'm willing to overlook writing problems provided the content is reasonably clear. Here's the word salad problem: way too much restatement. You do not do a clear explanation of the fan concepts. In the last 15 years, fans and their tties to an object of Fandom has been a hot theory and research area. Before you revise this, and you should, make an outline of your existing material,. This will help you find the repetitive Ness. Dig into the body of research, but look at the textbooks being used in teaching this topic. University presses publish them, I think Sage is one.
Since you want to explain Hiddleston's career pre-Loki, you need to include a little on his experience with The Hallow Crown. He's exceptionally well educated and a classically trained actor. You can see the presence of Prince Hal, and later Henry V, in his interpretation of Loki. Your characterization of Hiddleston will be much stronger and this "Tomki" construct will be better, deeper..
The second half of the book is more clearly written, but it's much more a book of lists. Some of it even looks like my lecture notes from when I taught the "fans" course. As an academic, I would like to see you doing something with those lists of raw data. Actually use them and connect clearly to your taxonomies of fans and fan behavior. A fan study of Loki/Tom Hiddleston would be snapped up by lots of profs who teach a fan course. You could realize some profit if you self publish.
My husband and I spent ten years doing a series of fan studies on NASCAR from the Bootleg Era beginnings to the huge growth oof events and coverage in the 1990s. We were not NASCAR fans, although we are motorsports fans and have raced. You've got a really good discussion of the participant - observer process. Many of these courses have students do a detailed fan study as a course project. Please don't include so much of your own Fandom in this. It's not good academics and it distracts from data analysis. You can put your self-analysis in an appendix, which would actually be a pretty cool thing to do - - objectively, analyze yourself as a fan using your data set and your taxonomies of fans and objects of Fandom. That too, might make a great assignment.
I'm not suggesting that fans don't buy this. Some of them will find it interesting.
I really encourage you to make something out of this.
Dr. Karyn Charles Rybacki
Emeritus Professor
Entertainment and Sports Promotion
Displaying 1 of 1 review