“The flexible transmedia seriality of fan works becomes obvious in those which have “escaped” fan culture to become mainstream successes. Mainstream audiences often attempt to retroactively build a baseline to make sense of fan works’ narrative and aesthetic experimentation; yet,
Platforms and Fan Experiences
This week, I’ve been thinking a lot about platforms and the way in which they influence fan experiences. As a consistent lurker, I have been on Tumblr for more than a decade, and more recently on Twitter for the past
Fan Labor and the Promise of Representation
“While it might seem self-evident that online patterns are repeated in offline spaces, it is vital to note that these exclusions occur within spaces already marked by the language of representation and inclusion. That is, queer fans of color are
Fanfiction and Assemblage
“A commercially published novel is multiply produced—editors, agents, designers, marketers, literary sources, and market demands, all have their parts to play—but it comes to readers as a discrete book‐shaped entity with a single authored name. It is Carry On by
An Intimate Sound–Podfic and Confluence
This week, I’ve been thinking a lot about podfic, i.e.., audio versions of fanfic, read out aloud. Podfic, as an audio-based medium, sits at the confluence of disability accessibility, performance, and of course, simply being a new form of narrative
The Gifts of Art Objects and Creative Labor in Fandom
While art objects may be the gifts most publicly recognized or validated by fellow fans, and while these gifts are indeed a crucial part of fandom’s gift economy, we can better appreciate the scope of fandom’s gift economy if we
Omegaverse and Racialization
While the omegaverse opens up possibilities of playing with gender and sexuality in new and interesting ways, the stories overwhelmingly focus on pairings between two white men, effectively foreclosing their progressive potential and recentering whiteness. Further, omegaverse stories often exist
Meet the Volunteer: Shyamala
Hello there! I, (she/her/hers), am Shyamala—feel free to rhyme that with Pamela—and I’ve been posting with Fanhackers for a few months now. I’ve an M.A. in English Lit and an M.F.A. in Creative Writing, and I’ve been writing fanfic since
Naatu Naatu–Not My Oscar Win
Much before Naatu Naatu won the Oscars for Best Song, Screen Junkies made an honest trailer for RRR. It was the first time I’d seen an Indian film—a non-Bollywood, South-Indian film at that—take up western media attention, at least on
Theorization of the Racialized Fan
”…I posit that the unexamined yet assumed whiteness of media fan spaces has allowed for successive theorizations about their workings to have now solidified into accepted histories. This positioning now forces any consideration of racial dynamics within those spaces to