The Silmarillion, Fan Art, and A Typology of Fandom Comments: A Qualitative Analysis of Fan Fiction Comments Posted on Deviantart Platform
Abstract
J.R.R. Tolkien's books are more and more popular in recent years, and there are many fans who created fandom work based on Tolkien's fantasy world. Many users go to some websites to read/watch those works, interact with the works, and then exchange different opinions about those works. This research gives a snapshot of Tolkien's online fandom community by focusing on categorizing the types of users' comments on a fan art image shared in such a community and speculating how these comments will affect other users' reactions. The study analyzed 650 comments to the image and found that four types of comments emerged from the data: praise comments, challenging and discussing the interpretation of the characters created in the picture, discussing the (romantic) relationship between the two characters that the illustrator drew, referencing of original book all reflect different types of people who watch fandom creation.
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