“It’s the best of times and the worst of times to be a fan.”
Fandom
Posted inEditor's Pick
The Weird and Wonderful Daniel Radcliffe
“For some actors, an iconic role can be a prison. Then there’s Daniel Radcliffe.”
Posted inEditor's Pick
The Powerful, Unlikely Force Shaping Modern TV
Eighteen years after Lost premiered, we’re living in a golden age of fan-theory TV. But where once that dynamic rankled showrunners and writers, Shirley Li writes, it’s now more of a symbiotic détente. That understanding, he said, seems to have led the relationship between writers and fans to “a more mutually beneficial place,” in which […]
Posted inEditor's Pick
Neil Gaiman Knows What Happens When You Dream
Ahead of the Netflix adaption of his seminal comic book Sandman, Neil Gaiman gamely sits down for a longform Q&A. The results are as probing and patient and polymathic as you’d expect. I would love to think that we are living in a world in which the story of progress, as in the original “Star Trek” […]
Posted inReading List
Archives of Our Own: A Reading List on Fandom & Community
Fandom gets at our most human urges: to share the things we love with others, to seek community among like-minded peers, especially at a time when we are all still too far apart.
Posted inEditor's Pick
Passion Plan
“Despite any collateral damage, Nintendo and their peers will keep squeezing maximum profit from the biggest, most proselytized audiences they can assemble for however long they can. In practice, this is what ‘convergence culture’ looks like. Playing games that cite other games that can be frictionlessly purchased on devices you can take everywhere, and then […]
Posted inEssays & Criticism, Feature, Nonfiction, Story
What I Did for (Strange) Love
As a teen, Laura Bond went all out to meet Depeche Mode — and to hang onto her best friend.
Posted inNonfiction
Infatuation
Deena ElGenaidi considers the ways in which adoring Maroon 5 singer Adam Levine from afar in her teens and early 20s provided a safe outlet for expressing desire.
Posted inEditor's Pick
The Great Star Wars Heist
In 2017, the theft of a rare toy, a Boba “Rocket” Fett prototype that was never released for sale, rocked the Star Wars collecting community.
Posted inBooks, Nonfiction, Profiles & Interviews, Story, Writing
Hanif Abdurraqib on Loving A Tribe Called Quest
“I wasn’t interested in writing the definitive book on A Tribe Called Quest. I was trying to write the definitive book on a single arc of fandom.”