Fannish communities feel a sense of ownership over their media, but this feeling does not make them powerful in a sense. Like the poachers of old, fans operate from a position of cultural marginality and social weakness. Like other popular
Pick me up for syndication!
Media fandoms are one of the most representative cases of fandom studies. When looking at television programming, the discourse does not question whether television is a social genre, but in what way it is. Perhaps media fandoms were so visible
The social life of bookmark tags
Paratext (on the Internet) has historically been used, not only for folksonomy, but for social functions, too. This is true for websites that have a broader range of social media-like features, such as comments, likes and private messages and for
The friends we made along the way
Discussing who the characters are and what canon is, is one of fandom’s most familiar activities. Fan reading, however, is a social process through which individual interpretations are shaped and reinforced through ongoing discussions with other readers. Such discussions expand
The Classics of Fan Studies: Henry Jenkins – Textual Poachers
“Fan fiction is a way of the culture repairing the damage done in a system where contemporary myths are owned by corporations instead of owned by the folk.” Today we’re continuing our exploration of the classics of fan studies with
Aca fan discourse, fandom academic discourse
Fan criticism is the institutionalization of feminime reading practices just as the dominant mode of academic criticism is the institutionalization of masculine learning practices. JENKINS, HENRY (1992). TEXTUAL POACHER, ROUTLEDGE, 118. If Jenkins already saw fandom as a type of
How the visual image of the star can contribute to the actor/character resonance?
Earlier, in this post, we have talked about Jenkins’ idea of how fans, in the process of slashing, might read the body of characters (especially in media fandoms). We also talked about in this post I quoted Cathy Yue Wang
RPF as reading the body (of text)
The process of slashing a text is described by Jenkins as reading the body for clues of a relationship. Here and in other such moments, characters retrace the steps of the fan viewers who have searched the performers’ bodies for
RPF, once more
Over the last week, we received many responses to the question how RPF can operate without a canon text, the majority of them among the lines of much the same way non-RPF fandoms do: by constantly negotiating fanon interpretations. It
A network of early zine making communities
Fanzine publishing remains highly receptive to new participants. As Constance Penley (1991) notes, fanzine editors are torn between competing impulses toward “professionalism” (the development of high technical standards and the showcasing of remarkable accomplishments) and “acceptance” (openness and accessibility for