I think the basic thing that people recognize within any fandom is fan art. And as I said back in my "Great Otaku Gathering" entry I love fan art as sometimes the fans are the only ones who can do something like it. There really is no limit to what a fan can come up with and sometimes it can get a tad out of hand such as I mentioned within the Yaoi entry. But fan art can be almost anything;
A sculpture-
An arrangement of a song-
Music Videos aka AMVs-
And sometimes people can ban together and create their very own art book-
Fan art is such a wonderful creative outlet and I am more than happy to say that I contribute to it as well as support others in it. (I commissioned the statue that is pictured and purchased the art book) But another side to fan art is fan fiction and as you all know I willingly admit to writing Gundam Wing fan fiction.
My time in writing those stories were some of the best times I have ever had as it helped me grow as a writer. The basics of fan fiction is a wonderful way to start out as all you need to come up with is a plot for set characters. In my experience with it the "warning" I fell in love with (other than Yaoi of course) was AU (Alternate Universe); this allowed a lot more than the norm for the characters as they are now able to be set in any place. For those unfamiliar with Gundam it's a Space Opera/Mecha series, so placing the characters within a fantasy setting is quite the leap. This here is probably my favorite fic I ever wrote for GW as it not only displays the leap into the fantasy genre, but also the growth in my writing as I made original characters to co-star along side the preset ones, so I hope you all enjoy;
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Epilogue
Author Notes
If your wondering about the "warnings", they were merely guidelines to the story so if there was something that you might not like within the story's content you'd know ahead of time. And that actually brings me to a small rant (not really a rant, but can't think of a better word lol); and that's some of the warnings in of themselves. In particular OOC (Out of Character). Why does that one bother me? Well it's a hard call to say what is out of character; in my opinion if the plot calls for the character to act a certain way than they will. It might be against their norm, but no one really stays the same way every day. Also a warning that is rather uncommon I find, but should be labeled, is Shota. What is Shota? Well it usually refers to a Shounen-ai/Yaoi pairing that involves a younger boy. In the case of Gundam Wing you don't see this warning too often as the pairings are usually of the 5 main pilots and they are all the same age. However you will see this warning a lot in the case of something like Kuroshitsuji in where the author pairs Ciel and Sebastian together. (Which I will admit, that pairing has become a guilty pleasure of mine)
So those are the two basic things you see or hear about a fan doing their part so to speak. But their are other things of course; one of which I hold very dear and that's Fan Subs.
Fan Subs are possibly my most favorite thing a fan does as without them I wouldn't have seen some of my favorite series to this day. Quite honestly the subbing some of these groups is incredible as they are very accurate and will even place translator notes for some of the more complex dialog. But by far, this is probably my most favorite thing connected to Fan Subbing;
Yep, the Tokusatsu/Super Sentai. I used to watch Power Rangers all the time back in the day (even started watching it through again on NetFlix recently with my brother) and now that I have been able to see some of the Japanese versions with the thanks to these subs, you can easily see the differences. The stories are completely different and I find the Japanese versions to have much more depth and substance to them, especially the Kamen Rider series. I don't really know why I shied away from it at the start, probably remembering how bad our Masked Rider was. But my brother and boyfriend had me sit down and watch Kamen Rider W with them and I was pretty much hooked thanks to that opening (the one linked above).
But it's not just series that can be subbed, some fans just take the time out to translate songs out;
(possibly my favorite song in Kuroshitsuji)
And lastly the other medium that fans take part in is Fan Dubbing. I am gonna use some songs as examples, but there are plenty of fan dubs of anime or even the Tokusatsu series out there. Anyone who is a fan of Sailor Moon and wants to see an English version of Sailor Stars should check out http://www.starsfandub.com/ They only have up through episode 6, but the quality of their work is flawless.
As I said though, Imma use songs for this as I am a big fan of a lot of Japanese openings and endings to series. After listening to them and reading their translations I often wonder how they would sound sung in English. Of course a direct translation would sound off when sung as it may not keep with the beat, so changing some of the lyrics up to have roughly the same meaning works well. These are some of my favorites that I found on Youtube;
Hope everyone had a good time exploring a fan's work. See you again. ^^/
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