Fandom Culture Quotes

“We don’t understand, Fereshteh. Help us understand.’‘You ... can’t.’They can’t understand. Some things are impossible to explain.”
― Alice Oseman, I Was Born for This

“The multimodality and multivocality of Tumblr blur the lines between feminist and fannish communities on the site, producing a cultural formation in which feminist, or ‘social justice’, politics are increasingly, although not exclusively, central to the operation of media fandom on Tumblr ... This is central to the formation of what I call ‘feminist fandom’, and Tumblr has subsequently secured a reputation for its users’ in-depth analysis of representational politics and social issues ... It is here, then, that we can situate media fandom on Tumblr at the juncture between popular feminism, popular culture, and digital culture ... Throughout this book, I use the term ‘feminist fandom’ to describe the messy entanglement of fannish and feminist identities, discourses, and practices.”
― Briony Hannell, Feminist Fandom: Media Fandom, Digital Feminisms, and Tumblr

“Throughout [this] book, I have drawn upon the insights and experiences of over three-hundred feminist fans to explicate how fannish and feminist modes of cultural consumption, production, and critique are increasingly converging, opening up informal, ordinary, and everyday spaces for young people, in particular although not exclusively, to engage with feminism. In doing so, I have emphasized that media fandom does not exist in a vacuum but is constituted by the same social, cultural, and political forces that have come to shape fourth-wave feminisms. In turn, the experiences documented throughout Feminist Fandom
speak to the ways in which broader shifts within feminist practice, theory, and activism over the past decade have shaped and informed the social and cultural practices of feminist fandom.”
― Briony Hannell, Feminist Fandom: Media Fandom, Digital Feminisms, and Tumblr

“[Emma, a fanfiction writer] says she feels like she has more in common, now, with that twelve-year-old girl [that she was] than with the professor she has seemed to become. "It is just sheerly for fun," Emma says of fandom. "It is grace freely given. It is joy shared without consideration of compensation or payback." To her, it's the opposite of work; it's play. [...] Fandom is about reclaiming that play space for "productive selfishness," she says, and "the assignment of your time according to whatever the fuck you feel like, instead of what would be most efficient, or most advantageous to others. It's as important to me as eating healthy or getting exercise.”
― Tabitha Carvan, This Is Not a Book About Benedict Cumberbatch: The Joy of Loving Something--Anything--Like Your Life Depends On It