Fandom denotes a sub culture of fans characterized by a communally devoted and empathetic interest in a specific piece of media or human interest and participation in "fannish" activities such as the creation of fanart, fanfiction, and cosplay. Dictionary.com traces the first use of the word back to 1903, when originally it referred to a collective of sports enthusiasts.[1]
Welcome to Hell fandom
Interest in Welcome to Hell mainly concentrates on the Tumblr social networking platform, the host of its official production blog, which boasts 2,636 followers as of October 2013.[2] Created May 7, 2013, Facebook's official Welcome to Hell page enjoys 5,416 "Likes" as of 31 December, 2015 and the occasional update, but unlike the Tumblr blog is less interactive.[3] Fans utilize fan blogs (such as play-by-post role-play blogs and general interest collections, like fyeahwelcometohell) and Tumblr's dynamic tagging system to share fannish activities ("fanac") such as fanfiction, cosplay photography, fanart, online text-based roleplay, fan videos ("fanvids", also "vidding"), crafts, headcanons, tutorials, fan games, and meta discussion. Archive of Our Own hosts a collection of Welcome to Hell fic, the first posted by Stariceling on 1 July, 2013. As of 31 December, 2015, 169 fics are archived there,[4] in contrast to the estimated number of 300 found on Tumblr, as archived by fyeahwelcometohell.
Fans of Welcome to Hell are often referred to as Spookyholes.
Shipping
Sockathan prom art by Erica Wester.
Shipping is the act of supporting or wishing for the development of a romantic or sexual relationship between two or more characters. It is a major component of fandom, especially Tumblr-style fandom. Singularly ship, collectively ships. Shipnames consist of contractions, phrases, and names connected with a forward-slash ('/'), the latter of which results in another word for shipping, "slash". Slash generally connotes homosexual and/or sexually explicit material. (See Shipping on Fanlore.)
Sockathan
Sockathan is a contraction of Sock Sowachowski and Jonathan Combs's first names, and denotes a fan's interest in their potential romantic or sexual relationship. It might also be referred to as "Jock", another contraction, or any version of "Sock/Jonathan". It is widely accepted fanon, and even entertained by Welcome to Hell's creator in good fun, but remains out of canon. A good portion of fanac revolves around this ship, nearly half of the fic archived on AO3 tagged as "sockathan" or a synonym[4] and thirty-three out of fifty-one archived fics on the Tumblr masterlist are marked as "sockathan".[5]
Lilathan, Jonlil
Lilathan, or occasionally Jonlil or variations of "Jonathan/Lil", is the shipname for Jonathan Combs and Magill Nancy (Lil). It is implied to lie vaguely within canon, but since Lil's character has yet to appear in the source material their relationship currently lies completely within Word of God.[6]
Proveles
Proveles is a combination of Mephistopheles and Providence's names, and could also be represented as "Providence/Mephistopheles". As with the case of Lilathan, since Providence is not yet released her relationship with Mephistopheles is Word of God.[7]
External links
References
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| Definitions |
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| Canon • Fandom • Fannish • Fanon • Meta • Spooky hole • Word of God |