Sometimes reading new scholarship coincides perfectly with the discussion I read here, on the blog. You have read discussion about fan perspectives on queer representation and on the fanfic lens and another take on the latter (or in other words, how to be gay).
Frederik Dhaenens writes research about gay representation on television. Their work dicusses both queer stories and queer readings which is what brought these previous posts to my mind. In queer readings, the audience was examined.
(The) regular television viewers seemed to be aware of the strategies of queer deconstruction.
Dhaenens, Frederik. “Reading Gays on the Small Screen.” Javnost – The Public 19, no. 4 (2012): 57–72. https://doi.org/10.1080/13183222.2012.11009096.
However, these texts only briefly touched on queer readings that were of not explicitly queer stories.
Another example (of the distinction between the focus group with the heterosexual and the homosexual participants) is the way many gay participants stressed the necessity of identification with gay characters or at least the fun of assuming a character being gay.
Dhaenens, Frederik. “Reading Gays on the Small Screen.” Javnost – The Public 19, no. 4 (2012): 57–72. https://doi.org/10.1080/13183222.2012.11009096.
Audiences are adept at reading into the text but there are also more and more queer stories. However, an analysis of queer reading practices could look at these interpretations less as separate ones as they can co-exist. After all, many of us might have experienced reading everyone else around the canonically queer couple as also queer, haven’t we?