The practice of fanfic writing itself is an analysis of the media that the fanfic is based on and allows young people to explore themes that are often unaddressed in popular media (including the media that fans love) and to
Racebent Harry and Ronan fan work offers queer-of-color revisions of the characters, centering around queer romances for both boys—Harry with school rival Draco Malfoy, and Ronan with his in-series boyfriend Adam Parrish. By depicting two characters of color at the
Textual poacher reread, part 2
The fans’ response typically involves not simply facination or adoration but also frustration and antagonism, and it is the combination of the two responses which motivates their active engagement with the media. Because popular narratives often fail to satisfy, fans
Transformative fandom and media fandom
I am rereading Henry Jenkin’s Textual Poacher (after all, going back to one’s roots is not an unusual habit around this time of the year) and I stumbled upon this statement: There are, of course, many different type of fans
Femslash recs
Did you know you can even find recs in scholarship? Well, maybe not exactly, but they do mention examples of the practices they are talking about and when that practice is “dealing with race in a way the source material
Racial dynamics of online femslash fandoms
For further reading about femslash (and especially for an intersectional reading about it), I highly recommend Rukmini Pande’s and Swati Moitra’s work. We seek to locate the ways in which such queer fans grapple with critiques of misogyny and homophobia
Bisexual erasure in queer sci-fi “utopias”
After this canonical expression of Lexa’s homosexuality, fans began to ask Rothenberg to confirm Lexa’s sexual orientation, even though such labels are not permitted in canon. Why were fans so insistent on a label? With so little representation in the
On femslash’s representation in scholarship about fandom
“Somewhere in the ever flowing tide of social media, a fan of femslash (female-female couples) tweeted about feeling ignored and erased by the field of fan studies. Fans have had a complicated, ambivalent, often conflicted relationship to the academic study
The most wonderful time of the year
Or at least one of the biggest annual fannish events, Yuletide. For those unfamiliar, Anna Wilson describes it as follows in her paper: “Yuletide, an annual fan fiction gift exchange that has been running since 2003, is a festival for
Romance and fan fiction
The distinction between romance and fan fiction is a headache for literary theorists and fans/romance writers alike. Of course, we all know they are different, but it’s sometimes hard to define how. Especially if we are forced to take commercialization