The question of queerness in fandom is as old as fandom studies itself. It can be said that The queerness of podfic exists in the text itself, because the stories are about queer characters and relationships, and in the reader’s
Boundaries of fannishness in yaoi fanzines
When theorizing fanworks as a genre of its own, it is always interesting to look at works that are not transformative in their nature but they are related to fandom in some way. That’s why I was excited to find
Signal Boost: A Survey About the Tag Exclude Function
Our last drive is over, Election is upon us soon, k-pop groups are making their comebacks left and right, Star Wars released a truly marvel worthy material (pun intended) and it is time for another survey. Sarah Bieletzki is working
The Man with Qualities
Twitter user kawí brought the idea of featureless protagonist in video games. There is a reason I didn’t make that connection before and that reason is a presupposition. Video games, to state the obvious, brings the question of games into
Imagination Gaps: Magic and Language in SFF
I’ve been thinking a lot about magic this week. As an SFF writer (both in fandom and outside of it), almost all of my work involves building fantastical worlds and magical systems that are both realistic and believable. Systems in
Where is the author in reader insert?
These past weeks, reading about RPF, I danced around the question of the fan fictionalizing the very fan narratives that they live in. Yet so far I haven’t touched on a genre that appears to be more popular in RPF
Meet the Volunteer: Shyamala
Hello, hello! I (she/her/hers) am Shyamala—feel free to rhyme that with Pamela—and I am the latest Fanhackers recruit. Armed with a B.A. from the Global South, an M.A. in English Lit and an M.F.A. in Creative Writing, I’ve been writing
The fiction of stars and fans as real people
(The question at the centre of RPF is) “what if?” This question is the question asked by each one of these Hiddleston fans arguing that he should be left some space. What if a man performed six nights a week
The porn in slash and slash in porn
I have brought you a paper before that talked about how derivative practices appear in the work of porn studios. We can also observe porn fragments used in fanworks. By their very nature, slash manips also make clear the oft-overlooked
Real Person Without the Fiction: Idol Success As Fannish Activity
In their work, describing the data manipulation tactics of fan leaders of Chinese idols’ fan clubs, Wu Xueyin describes two kinds of fandoms. Two categories of fan identities account for a large proportion of fans in Chinese fandom: only stan/solo