I want a redo my week 2 post, as I feel like my direction has changed somewhat considerably since I started. I want to have a closer look at Pokemon fan generated content. While I have enjoyed playing TPP, I feel like it’s a bit of a novel concept. Sure, the gamely might describe utopian democracy, I’m not so interested in political phenomena or collaborative gameplay. I have found myself more and more browsing the inter-webs, particularly Tumblr looking at fan art, fiction and Pokemon fan theories than watching TPP progress rather tediously. While this change may make me appear fickle or that I’m uncommitted, I’d like to think that this change has been more of a process of self discovery, in that it’s shown me what I’m really interested in!
Like most of my pioneering online experiences, I first stumbled upon Tumblr.com alone in that family study at the recommendation of some school friends. One of the boys at school had written his Tumblr URL down in the corner of one of my exercise books. I remember copying the link into the address bar and scrolling through his blog and thinking Holy crap this is so cool! There wasn’t much actual writing, more just content that had been ‘reblogged’ from elsewhere, which I remember thinking was weird, as my previous experiences of blogging were written articles.The art and content that users create (that I have found thus far) ranges in form from GIFs, comics, fan art, shared YouTube videos, photos and the occasional textual post.
A few years on and Tumblr has become part of my daily routine. The kinds of humour and cultural mash-ups that appear on my dashboard not only illicit nostalgia, laughter and cynicism for popular culture, but also as a scholar, invite me to ask questions of my own political and cultural views of the world. How does this relate to Pokemon? Let me just share some of the awesome Tumblr user generated art:
The curation and generation of Pokemon fan content is unbelievable, as people from around the globe share their ideas and draw on the best content from other sites show different aspects of the Pokemon universe, both real and imagined. While Tumblr.com was created in the U.S, there are any users from all over the globe. As much as l love Pokemon, I haven’t ever been too involved in the fan culture that accompanies the anime series or the games, so I’m keen to explore more, and delve deeper into understand the who, how and why of Pokemon fan cultures as I did when I first found Tumblr.
Links to some Pokefan Tumblogs!
http://pokemon-personalities.tumblr.com
Digital Asia 
Unlike you, I have never been interested in Pokemon but I do love Tumblr, and this is what sparked my interest in your post. Personally, I have not experienced Pokemon fandom on Tumblr, but I had a look at your links and I realised thats because I was never looking! There is tonnes and tonnes of Pokemon related content on Tumblr. Which made me think that this is the beauty of a platform like Tumblr. It is entirely user generated content, and allows people to seek out what they know and love and follow or involve themselves in the fandom and I think thats awesome. It makes me interested to see the history of ‘fandoms’. Do you think that the nature of fandoms would have drastically changed with the advent of sharing sites just as Facebook, Tumblr, YouTube, Instagram and Reddit?
LikeLike
I think a lot of people (including myself) could recount a similar story to yours of how they discovered Tumblr. The fact that you can find so much content on the site that is relative to DIGC330 proves how much content that is on there.
Tumblr is great as it is a blog not focused on written articles. Fan art goes above and beyond it can take on a whole new life, separate from its original text.
LikeLike
First of all, such a clever title, that gave me a good giggle. Tumblr is the kind of place that is riddled with user-created fan art and fan fic, so it is definitely a good decision as a digital artefact, especially considering the popularity of Pokemon worldwide. It would be interesting to see how the fan art has changed as new generations of Pokemon are released, and whether it changes with each generation or if there is an emphasis on the “original” Pokemon series. Best of luck!
LikeLike