A weekly list of new/recent fan studies research that’s just been added to the Fan Studies Bibliography. Works are divided into things that are open access (=immediately readable for anyone) and not open access (=behind a paywall or not yet
Whereas women artists are more likely to extract beloved characters out of their favourite manga, and develop love stories around them, often as beautiful gay boy couplings wholly unrelated to the originals. This approach, called yaoi -yamanashi “no climax,” ochinachi
[QUOTE] From Iron Man in Chinese boys’ love fandom: A story untold | John Wei | Transformative Works and Cultures
Founded in 2003, Jinjiang Wenxue Cheng (the Jinjiang City of Literature, hereafter Jinjiang) (http://www.jjwxc.net/) proclaims itself to be the largest female cyberlit platform in the world, with 93 percent of its over 7 million registered members being women (JJWXC n.d.;
[QUOTE] From Salil K. Mehra, Copyright and Comics in Japan: Does Law Explain Why All the Cartoons My Kid Watches Are Japanese Imports? p54-55
Perhaps most notably, by offering works that arguably “push the envelope” more than the works of the formal manga industry, dōjinshi may produce examples of innovation that create new opportunities for the entire industry. Indeed, mainstream manga publishing companies have
[QUOTE] From Akiko Hori, On the response (or lack thereof) of Japanese fans to criticism that yaoi is antigay discrimination
In the middle of the 1980s, fannish dōjinshi based on the manga Captain Tsubasa exploded in popularity, and yaoi dōjinshi circles proliferated accordingly. This caused dōjinshi conventions to grow as well, to the point that commercial manga magazines could no
[QUOTE] From Keiko Nishimura, Where program and fantasy meet: Female fans conversing with character bots in Japan
On the official help site of Twitter in Japan, there is a section titled “Parody, Commentary, and Fan Accounts Policy” (Twitter n.d.). Twitter permits users to have parody accounts as long as they are clearly marked as such. Twitter users
[QUOTE] From Midori Suzuki, The possibilities of research on “fujoshi” in Japan
In the new millennium, the word fujoshi has traveled beyond fannish circles and has come into general use in Japanese popular media, reflecting the fact that fujoshi are no longer necessarily an underground phenomenon. (…) I will first trace the
[META] Transnational Fan Studies
The most recent issue of Transformative Works and Cultures is a special issue focused on a topic that would have been unthinkable even a few years ago, namely, Transnational Boys Love Fan Studies. Editors Nagaike Kazumi and Suganuma Katsuhiko have
[META] 32 fic writers arrested in China in 2011, and we missed it
Reading Reflection on Chinese boys’ love fans: An insider’s view by Erika Junhui Yi in the latest issue of TWC, I was struck not just by how extreme reactions to BL can get, but also how little info sometimes gets
[META] New TWC issue on boys’ love fandom is live
Transformative Works and Cultures has published its twelfth issue, entirely devoted to boys’ love fandom around the globe (full press release). There are some excellent articles on Hetalia, the politics of BL in Germany, character bots on Twitter, BL in