I definitely wish I knew more about non-western ways of doing fandom. At some point I read a person's theory of collective vs. transformative fandom - for some people (traditionally western men), fandom takes the form of collection, memorizing facts and having every piece of merch and so on. Whereas for other people (traditionally western women), it takes the form of things like fanfic and art, taking the source and doing other things with it. That has always stuck with me as something that feels accurate to my experiences with other fans.

But then again, cosplay kind of messes with that divide and it seems like its own grouping. Which I have to admit I have struggled to understand in the past. So maybe we just need a bigger perspective of fandom as a whole, like, a Venn diagram.