Hello! I am Dorottya, part of the rogue crew of academics that is the Fanhackers. My first fandom experience was on the Hungarian fan fiction site, Merengő (named after the Pensieve) in the 2000s, so on the one hand, I’ve been around since the 2000s.
On the other hand, I have no memory of the fandom of the 2000s as many of my colleagues at the OTW would know it. My first fandom was Harry Potter. Since then, I’ve been really enjoying transformative works relating to Star Wars, Star Trek, Jane Austen’s works, Studio Ghibli movies, and His Dark Materials. My favourite tropes concern arranged marriage, worldbuilding, philosophical discussions (that sounds pretentious, but I just love it so much when either the narrator or one of the character starts nerding out) and college AUs (even though I am still in college and I find nothing inherently trope-worthy in it, when I live the finals, seminars and the lack of sleep). I’ve always found fandom a delightfully postmodern experience.
I have a literature and linguistics major and anthropology minor BA, and I’m currently doing my masters in literary theory at ELTE. My BA thesis was about how fandom creates its own register (which, if you’ve already finished your BA, you will find an incredibly foolish question to answer with a BA thesis). I do agree with BA!Dorottya that pre-internet fandom and post-internet fandom created its register entirely differently, and I do think that this can partly explain how we got the interpretative communities that we have, but I don’t aim to describe this in less than 60 pages. My next challenge probably will be along the lines of the implied reader (which would also help to herd my topic back into the territory of literary theory). (The Implied reader is a neat concept, which you can start to learn more about here and here.)
If you want to nerd out together about any of the above topics, say hi on Twitter.
I’m really looking forward to nerding out about fandom studies with all of you. Live long and may the Force be with you!