Resources for Fans
If you've been to all the conventions and joined all the fan clubs, there's no need to stop there. The Web has plenty of resources to help you take your fandom to the next level.
One way to do this is to read and/or write fan fiction. Fan fiction expands the situations and characters from films and novels, primarily those in the genres of sci-fi and fantasy. Sometimes fan fiction will have the characters doing something they would never normally do in the series, functioning as parody. In other instances, fan fiction attempts to be faithful to the creator's original vision, focusing on the future or past adventures of characters in the franchise.
Fan fiction exists for nearly all major sci-fi and fantasy franchises. For Harry Potter fan fiction, go to HarryPotterFanFiction.com, which holds over 65,000 Potter stories. The administrators of the site prefer that readers leave reviews for every story they read, so that writers can get feedback and improve their work.
Twilight fans can submit stories and art to the Twilight Archives, which welcomes fiction from both novice and experienced writers. All other fan fiction needs can probably be met at FanFiction.net, the largest fan fiction site on the Web, where you can read and submit fiction for the Da Vinci Code, Sweet Valley High, and everything in between.
From fantasy novels, we turn next to fantasy football, basketball, and baseball. Many sports fans join fantasy leagues at the beginning of the season, draft players to create a fantasy team, and win or lose based on those players' statistics in games throughout the season. Yahoo! Sports Baseball, Yahoo! Sports Basketball, and Yahoo! Sports Football can get you and your friends set up with a league. Just make sure you sign up before the start of the season.
Finally, understanding the psychology of fandom can help you be a better fan. An article in CantonRep.com (an online newspaper for Canton, Ohio), written just before LeBron James made "The Decision" to switch to Miami, talks about why sports loom so large in the lives of many fans. A psychologist at the University of Akron claims that sports are a way for people to vicariously experience the success of others. Another psychologist claims that the triviality of sports in comparison to global issues actually make them more appealing, since what is at stake is important but not a life-or-death matter.
Perhaps this is what science fiction fans get out of their favorite series as well: a chance to live vicariously in a more exciting universe, until they set the book down and return to their ordinary lives. These two types of fans have a lot more in common than they might think.