Fansite

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Synonyms: Fan page
See also: fanlisting, character shrine, Geocities, Angelfire
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A fansite or fan website is a website that is created and run by one or more fans. Fansites started to appear in the early-to-mid 1990s. Especially in the early days of the web, such a site might actually consist of a single webpage used to declare the site owner's fannish interests, though these are often expanded over time into personal archives of fan fiction and meta. However, other fans (or groups of fans) create larger sites aimed primarily at benefiting a fandom generally. Such sites may archive fan fiction or art by multiple creators; contain information on the original source material; provide resources for other fans to use in writing fan fiction or creating their own fansites; and/or provide links to TPTB, fan clubs, and vendors of merchandise.

Types of Fansite

Names have evolved to describe different types of fansites. It should be noted that there is often some overlap in meaning; and more than one term might apply to any particular site. Also, some of these terms—though having fannish application—are not exclusively used by fandom.

Types of fansite include:

  • Archives: sites that collect some particular type of material created by fans that might otherwise prove ephemeral (especially fan fiction, but also fan art, posts to mailing lists, screen captures, smaller websites)
  • Character shrines: sites created to glorify particular characters (or, by extension, actors or pairings)
    • Hate Sites: the opposite of a Character Shrine, Hate Sites were pages dedicated to Character Bashing.
  • Faction sites: in Forever Knight fandom, sites created by members of a faction to archive their participation in a particular subgroup within the main fandom.
  • Fanlistings: literally, lists of fans
  • Hubs: sites created to provide a central location for information about a particular fandom and its fans, especially info on other fansites and chat rooms, official websites and fan clubs, and sources of merchandise.
  • Info(rmation) sites or FAQ sites (Frequently Asked Questions): sites created to provide information about a fandom and/or its object of adoration, usually with more focus on canon than a hub would have
  • Lodging Houses: sites in the Newsies fandom created to host character profiles and fanfiction about listed original characters; often roleplay-adjacent
  • Personal sites: sites created by an individual, typically including both fan-related material (such as an archive of the owner's fanworks and meta) and more personal data (such as the fan's resumé or photographs of family and pets).
  • Resource sites: sites created to provide a resource within the fandom for other fans to use (e.g. when writing fiction or creating webpages), including information about canon, screen captures and scanned pictures, and ancillary background information (such as timelines, maps, history, lists of starships)
  • Tribute sites: often part of a personal site, created by a fan to express his/her own interest in one or more fandoms, characters, or pairings
  • War sites: in Forever Knight fandom, created to archive one of the Forever Knight Wars; or created by a faction to document its participation (often including permission slips and character info on the fans taking part).
  • Wiki: a site which users collaboratively edit (such as Fanlore), often used to create a fannish encyclopedia

Cease and Desists and purging of fan sites

By the mid-1990s, as technology and Internet access improved, more fan sites began appearing leading property owners as 20th Century Fox or Viacom to launch a legal campaign against the use of images and sound files from its properties.

See also

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