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Anne Kustritz’s Identity, Community, and Sexuality in Slash Fan Fiction
Anne Kustritz’s new book, Identity, Community, and Sexuality in Slash Fan Fiction: Pocket Publics has just been released by Routledge (2024). You might know Kustritz, a scholar of fan cultures and transmedia storytelling, from her early essay “Slashing the Romance Narrative,” in the Journal of American Culture (2003) or maybe from some of her more recent work on transmedia and serial storytelling. But this new book is an exciting addition to the fan studies canon, and Fanhackers readers might be particularly interested, because the book “explores slash fan fiction communities during the pivotal years of the late 1990s and the early 2000s as the practice transitioned from print to digital circulation,”--which is the era that a lot of the fans involved in the creation of the OTW came from. As I noted in my book blurb, “While there has been an explosion of fan studies scholarship in the last two decades, we haven't had an ethnography of fan fiction communities since the early 1990s. Kustritz's Pocket Publics rectifies that, documenting the generation of slash fans who built much of fandom's infrastructure and many of its community spaces, both on and off the internet. This generation has had an outsized impact on contemporary fan cultures, and Kustritz shows how these fans created an alternative and subcultural public sphere: a world of their own.”
Kustritz doesn’t just analyze and contextualize fandom, she also describes her own experiences as a participant-observer, and these might resonate with a lot of fans (especially Fanhackers-reading fans!) Early on in the book, Kustritz describes her how her own early interest in fandom blurred between the personal and the academic:
Because I began studying slash only a year after discovering fandom on-line, my interest has always been an intricate tangle of pleasure in the texts themselves, connection to brilliantly creative women, and fascination with intersections between fan activities and academic theory. I may now disclaim my academic identity as an interdisciplinary scholar with concentrations in media anthropology and cultural studies and begin to pinpoint my fan identity as a bifictional multifandom media fan; however, I only gradually became aware of and personally invested in these categories as I grew into them. This section defines the scope of the online observation period that preceded the active interview phase of this research. In so doing it also examines the messy interconnections between my academic and fannish interests and identities. Trying to pick apart what portion of my choices derived from fannish pleasure and which from academic interest helps to identify the basic internal tensions and categories that slash fan fiction communities relied upon to define themselves, the pressures exerted upon these systems by the digital migration, and complications in academic translation of fannish social structures.
Later in the book, Kustritz discusses how fans have organized and advocated for themselves as a public; in particular, there’s a fascinating chapter about the ways in which fandom has adopted and transformed the figure of the pirate to forge new ways of thinking about copyright and authorship. If the OTW was formed to argue that making fanworks is a legitimate activity, the figure of the pirate signifies a protest against the law and a refusal to be shamed by it:
[F]ans also use the figure of the pirate to make arguments that validate some fan activities and consign others to illegitimacy. At the urging of several friends involved with slash, I attended my first non-slash focused science fiction and fantasy convention in the summer of 2004. The program schedule announced a Sunday morning panel discussion provocatively titled “Avast, Matey: The Ethics of Pirating Movies, Music, and Software” with the subheading “Computers today can distribute [more] intellectual property than ever before--not always legally. Is it ever okay to copy, download, and/or distribute media? Sorry, ladies, none of us will be dressed as Captain Jack Sparrow.” The panel’s subheading, which obliquely warned away both lusty women and pirates, led a small contingent of slash fans to shake off Saturday night’s convention revelries unreasonably early and implement a plan of their own for Sunday’s panel. As many fan conventions encourage costumes, known as “cosplay,” one of my friends and research participants happened to have been dressed as Captain Jack Sparrow of Pirates of the Caribbean that weekend, so I entered the piracy panel with Captain Jack and a motley crew of slashers, some of them intent upon commandeering the discussion.
The clash that followed exemplifies a structural fault line between various types of fan communities regarding their shared norms and beliefs about copyright law, the relationship between fans and producers, and appropriate fan behavior.
If you want to find out how this clash played out–well, you’ll just have to read the book. 😀
–Francesca Coppa, Fanhackers volunteer
#fanhackers#author:francescacoppa#anne kustritz#early digital fandom#slash#piracy#fannish culture clashes
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FINALLY someone who didn't 100% love BES. I did enjoy some of it but I lean on the "disliked it on the whole" side and it's been so weird seeing everyone praise it to high heavens. I take it that you enjoyed it more than I did (I did not like a lot of the 3D visuals, unfortunately, so the visuals don't really redeem it for me), but I'd love to see some balanced takes from you anyway <3
anon, you're in good company! honestly i've been baffled by the blandly, one-note positive reception to this (30% of my grief has to do with BES's base story, and 70% has to do with uncritical fannish responses), because... to be uncharitable... I have some big problems with its construction. feel free to come off anon and kvetch in my DMs if you want, I'll probably share your sentiments. sorry for how long i've taken to answer this!
to be fair the show does some things right and I think its achievements/innovations in art style and animation are to be lauded; I'm not going to speak over that when I'm not an expert on animation or media theory, but it's a bad sign when praise about any media amounts to "well, it looks pretty" or hinges so heavily on its aesthetics. to be extremely clear this doesn't fully apply to BES, because it does have deft character work, compelling characters, and some impressive cinematic instantiation/inhabitation with its attention to setting and detail -- i was pleasantly surprised by the inclusion of deets like yaki-ire etc etc. -- but even on its purported selling points of japanese historicity and nuanced narratives about race, sexuality, gender, revenge, etc. I think it fails. it has glaring blindspots.
tldr: BES suffers from some (white) american/french narratorial sensibilities that kneecap the full potential of its story
or: BES pinged as an insufferably american and/or ahistorical rendition of its japanese building-blocks to me in some ways
it's probably just a case of misaimed audiences, and This Show Not Being For Me, but I've been baffled by:
how seamlessly some scenes around sex work and brothels and eroticism in this show slide in with orientalist tropes about japan being the Weird Sex and Kinky country despite the japanese-american creator at its helm, who's also spoken out against tropes like that -- until a buddy gave some context that those undertones seem to have been inspired by bande dessinées (french comics) with not-unsimilar tropes that may have been transplanted carelessly into BES by the studio
and this is what I mean by 'american/french' sensibilities -- I don't mean american/french in the most skin-deep representational sense, as in the studio that made it is an american-french one or whatever, as 'representation' is too often conceived on tumblr to be limited to, but on the deeper epistemological level of its worldview, frameworks of sexuality/race, and the cultural terrain it's working off or conversing with. BES includes storylines/arcs/even mawkish dialogue far more reminiscent of those in american cartoons. which is not an issue except of one of taste, but fannish responses holding it up as a groundbreaking commentary on race are orbiting a different universe imo
more egregiously it sustains overtones of that american favourite about the grand, Super Existential! Super Inevitable! and intrinsic clash of Cultures and Civilisations with a big C (a highly discredited idea in critical academic circles now, thankfully, no thanks to samuel p. huntington)
I almost wish the show had maintained a greater separation from IRL analogues or just invented a fresh fantasy universe because why set it in edo-era japan if you're not going to engage with the sociocultural norms, or narratorial traditions of that era
see: literary genres around jitsuroku (revenge narratives), how revenge would have been treated as a tool of sociocultural legitimisation then, the apparent forgettance of the entire history of nanban trade and the fact that japan as a geographical entity was not technically ethnically homogeneous, or only homogeneous from a hegemonic pov, given the existence of the ainu, the kingdom of ryukyu, and northern communities of hokkaido although tbf japan's borders probably didn't include them
i was hoping for an internal critique of or just more nuance about the 'japan = ethnically homogenous' narrative in the show and was more disappointed as it went on -- imo it's a narrative often most stridently parroted by the japanese government for nation-building interests and by others to avoid interrogations of the actual complexity of striations, divisions, etc in japan e.g. with burakumin (lower-'caste'* peoples)
* note: caste is an imperfect and not fully accurate descriptor
a significant part of my ire is reserved for the handling of 'whiteness' in this show although it's mostly hand-wringing over the complexity of intended audiences in this show, which might not be fair to blame on the creators; yes, whiteness is foreign and Other and bad, but what about the material and historical precursors that gave rise to that Otherness in the first place, where are they?; and look! whiteness is demonised; but the cartoon's being released in the USA and europe. it's certainly true that japan is institutionally hostile to foreigners and xenophobic, kudos for depicting the politics of that, but BES's american audiences mean i'm ambivalent about its in-universe premise that what is in fact an oft-fetishised trait in mixed race children (blue eyes) is bad (and the show's aesthetics don't support it; mizu's eyes are portrayed in the most beautiful way possible even though she's diagetically meant to be hideous and monstrous)
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Ok. Where should I start with the 40K novels?
I tried one like 15 years ago and it was bad, no memory of which. Generic space marine stuff. I like the setting and many games, though much of the fandom can be exhausting.
I trust your tastes!
Hmm. There are unfortunately rather more bad or mediocre ones than good, but let’s see. Hopefully your trust will not be misplaced!
Possibly my favourite is The Infinite and the Divine, by Robert Rath. It’s a tale of two Necrons, mad historian and archaeologist Trazyn the Infinite and his rival, oracle and time-wizard Orikan the Diviner, as they squabble over an artifact that could change the destiny of their people. A tale of petty scheming and Tom & Jerry nonsense that stretches for thousands of years. I’m currently reading Rath’s Siege of Cadia, and while it isn’t quite as good, more grand battles and the like, it’s still a good read so far.
Also about the Necrons is Severed by Nate Crowley, a lovely little novella about a Necron general who thinks he’s still flesh and blood, and his long-suffering assistant. The same author also has a few books out, called The Twice Dead King, and I’ve tried the first one. Found it slow going and got distracted, but maybe I wasn’t in the mood at the time. I’ve heard good things about it from others.
There’s the Cain series, which is considered a classic. It’s framed as the private memoirs of celebrated Imperial hero Ciaphas Cain, with asides from an Inquisitor he had a close relationship with. The joke is that, to hear Cain tell it, his reputation is a lie: He’s an utter coward who somehow manages to come out smelling of roses every time, is rewarded by being sent into ever nastier wars and situations, and ends up having to act like his false heroic persona in order to lever his reputation to survive.
It’s a slightly more comedic take on the setting than most, with an undercurrent of unreliable narration: It’s suggested that while Cain isn’t the square-jawed hero propaganda says he is, he’s a lot more heroic than he gives himself credit for, and the extend to which he’s really a coward as opposed to a brave man riddled with self loathing and imposter syndrome is left up in the air. Been a while but the ones I read tended to be fun, if slightly formulaic after a while.
I remember enjoying the old Sisters of Battle books by James Swallow, but I haven’t read them in many years so I’m not sure if they hold up. Same with the Eisenhorn series; both are due a reread and I’ll get back to you on whether they’re worth it.
Blades of Damocles is bolter porn but it’s relatively fun bolter porn, and watching the culture clash of the Imperium and the Tau is nice.
I originally got into 40k novels via William King’s stuff; his Ragnar stories are the usual Space Marine fare (star Viking flavour) but he’s more skilled with it than most. He also wrote the most iconic books for Warhammer Fantasy: The original run of Gotrek and Felix, about a dwarf who wishes to atone for an unnamed sin via dying in battle and the human poet who drunkenly agreed to write his death saga, and to his horror now finds himself dragged to the ends of the earth as Gotrek seeks a worthy death. According to fannish lore, their books were the most profitable part of the WHF IP when Games Workshop nuked that setting (a decision they appear to be rolling back).
And speaking of Fantasy, I personally liked the story Drachenfels, which begins in media res as a party of adventurers battles a dark lord…then cuts to years later as their leader, now a powerful politician, reunites his old party members. By putting on a play of their victory over the dark lord. In the dark lord’s castle. On the eve of his defeat. Which of course cannot possibly go wrong. No siree.
I’ll also throw in a couple of fanfics if you’re into that: Breaker of Chains and its two sequels (third instalment not finished) feature the Primarch Angron, in canon a servant of the Chaos god Khorne and leader of the berserk World Eater space marines. In canon Angron landed on the planet Nuceria as a child and led a slave rebellion against its masters only for the Emperor to snatch him away at the last moment to serve him, resulting in his comrades dying and Angron’s mind breaking, leading him to Chaos. In this story his Legion finds him first, his rebellion wins and he enters the wider galaxy relatively more well adjusted.
Relatively.
Whereas Suffer Not is the tale of an Inquisitor doing her best to actually make the galaxy a better place. Shockingly. Completed, has a sequel, got some negative fan attention because of its take on the setting but I rather liked it.
(Both of the above make the unusual choice of using second person, because they were interactive works: Readers would vote on the character’s next action, and the author would weave the result into the next update.)
I’m sure there’s a lot more stuff I’m missing, but that should be a good start.
#warhammer#warhammer 40000#warhammer 40k#warhammer fantasy#if someone who has slogged through all the#Horus Heresy#books would like to chime in with which ones are worth anything that would be great#I’d like to know myself
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"the internet has become accesible [...] instead of only certain privileged people" are you saying dumb and ignorant people (often poor or barely hanging there enough to have internet access) are the ones ruining your precious spaces, be them fandom or not? / "monetization of fandom" Ignoring ffnet and wattpad, what about the people who takes fanart/fanfic commissions? Are all the same "capitalistic ghouls" taking advantage of the oh so sacred hobby of fandom? Not everyone is a creator
--
That's quite a chip you've got there, nonnie.
In the 90s, you needed a lot of privilege to be online. That level of privilege makes you less likely to have trouble making rent. Thus some of these issues were fundamentally less likely to come up. (And offline fandom always required certain resources/geographical locations/etc. to access also.)
On the whole, I think fandom (and the internet!) being more accessible now is a good thing. It does, however, mean there are going to be more culture clashes: between new-to-fandom people and fandom Olds, between Olds of different fandom traditions, between people with very different offline lives, etc. I don't place any particular moral judgment on the existence of clashes. It's just a natural and inevitable outcome of more types of people rubbing elbows.
Yes, there is a double standard with regards to fic and art. People have explained its nature and why it exists ad nauseam. I'm not going to rehash them all here for such a disingenuous ask. Fanlore covers it amply.
My take from the legal side (I am not a lawyer and this is not legal advice) is that all of it is on thin ice. Fan art regularly gets the axe despite people thinking it's safe.
My take from a social side is that none of it is necessarily bad full stop, but a space with creators and audience is fundamentally different from one of peers in a gift economy. The former is monetized youtubers. The latter is AO3.
There are plenty of fan artists and fan art fans who dislike what the commercial factor has done to art spaces, and there are plenty of fic-focused fans who are jealous of the profit-focused art spaces.
I choose to use my labor to build more of the not-for-money spaces. A lot of different people built AO3, and when they did so, they too chose to put their efforts towards a space that was not into monetizing. It's fine to not like that style of fandom... It is not fine to disrespect all that labor by posting your patreon on AO3.
Build the space that reflects your values. Go to spaces that do the same. Yes, obviously, that means multiple spaces reflecting multiple understandings of what fandom is.
Too often, I see people upset that I'm prioritizing this anti-profit model as though I'm taking away something they had an equal right to. But, in fact, I'm talking about me using my labor how I see fit and taking my friends with me.
I'm not quite sure where you're going with "not everyone is a creator". Not everyone draws or writes well, but in the "fannish gift economy" understanding of fandom, things like posting good fic recs are one of the gifts a fan can bring to the community. Anyone who wishes to put in a little effort can participate.
It's possible to have a real life that precludes putting in a little effort, and that's very sad, but I'm talking about community building here, not consumption. I wish 100% lurkers joy in their lurking, but by definition, they're not part of my community because they do not interact. They do not have social ties. This isn't a judgment but a neutral description of fact.
I subscribe to a subculture model of fandom that focuses on the social ties between members as opposed to a model that focuses on concrete products produced by fandom. This difference in approach is behind a lot of the really intense failures to communicate among people analyzing fandom.
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Maybe it’s time for the Furry Irregulars
Recently I posted a deadpan joke on Twitter:
A secret plot to make furries think, eh, maybe the Dorsai Irregulars weren't so bad after all
— Arilin Thorferra (@gc_arilin) July 4, 2022
This was in response to the reports of police aggressively clearing out the convention space at Anthrocon and, in general, having a disquietingly obvious presence throughout the con.
hey @anthrocon im sure attendees would leave your con space with prompting from con staff??? Why do we need to have police corralling us with their hands on their guns??? definitely did not appreciate it in the slightest.
— Kilo/June 🌻 @ Anthrocon!! (@PrismPaws) July 3, 2022
This is not ok. Cops do not belong in many places, but especially not furry events.@anthrocon you need to do better. You're immensely lucky no one got seriously hurt by the police this weekend (that I know of anyway).
— 👑 Mama Sapphy @ Anthrocon (@Sapphykinz) July 4, 2022
Even though not every furry self-identifies as LGBTQ+, furry is a highly queer space, and cops and queer spaces don't exactly have a history of harmonious co-existence. While this didn't turn into the fiasco that it could have, it wasn't a good look for either Pittsburgh or Anthrocon.
As I'm occasionally guilty of, my deadpan tweet probably went too deadpan. If you didn't have the context of both the cops at Anthrocon and their old relationship with a fan-run security group called the Dorsai Irregulars, it wouldn't make much sense. If you knew about the DIs but not last night's AC news, it might seem more of a defense of the DIs than it was.
But I think there's something to the concept of the DIs that's worth thinking about for furry. So, first, what the hell are the Dorsai Irregulars? Here's how they describe themselves on their history page:
At the 1973 World Science Fiction Convention (WorldCon) in Toronto, the only security force was hired security guards. There was friction between the guards and the fans. The guards did not understand the fannish milieu. One miscreant fan stole one of noted illustrator Kelly Freas's paintings from the Art Show. The story goes that he showed the rental guard at the door a receipt for a piece of much lower value. The guard didn't know any better and let him through. However it happened, it left a lot of people upset and worried about what was happening in the science fiction fan community.
Fandom was changing. There were large influxes of new fans brought in by Star Trek and other media interests. Conventions were getting bigger. They were no longer the small, clubby get-togethers of the ’50s and ’60s. Although there were loud outcries that "Fans don't steal from fans," the fact of the matter was that things had changed.
Robert Asprin realized the need for a corps of experienced fans who could provide security, crowd control, guest escort and other services to conventions. With knowledge of the norms and customs of fandom, they could, in theory, provide these services without the hostility and conflict caused by a clash of cultures between the mundane world and the fannish.
And so the Dorsai Irregulars were born. (The name "Dorsai" comes from a science fiction novel series by Gordon R. Dickson.)
So, I have two takeaways from this.
First, I believe Asprin's insight was smart! Members of a fandom/subculture who know that group's norms and customs are going to do a better job providing services for that group than rent-a-cops (or real cops).
Second, the fannish culture the Dorsai Irregulars came from is…not much like furry.
The chances are a fair number of you reading this don't know who Robert Asprin was, don't know who Kelly Freas was, and/or don't know who Gordon R. Dickson was. There's no reason you should. The "changing fandom" that brought about the Dorsai Irregulars was the science fiction fandom of fifty years ago. Furry didn't organize as a fandom or subculture or whatever you want to categorize it as until the late 1980s.
There's been friction between furries and Dorsai for years; the responses I got to my tweet talking about them were all negative. And, of course, the whole "maybe they weren't so bad after all" part of the attempted joke lies in acknowledging that a fair number of furries thought the Dorsai were bad.
I can't help but think that the reasons for that lie, ironically, in Bob Asprin's insight that a group's norms and customs should be known and respected. While there are some furries in the Dorsai, institutionally the group isn't furry. It's old guard science fiction fandom. Like fandom of that era, it's mostly white, straight, and cis. And, it is worth noting what the Dorsai are named after: a mercenary warrior class from a series whose theme is, as The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction puts it, "humanity's ultimate expansion through the Galaxy as an inherently ethical species." One could argue I shouldn't read anything into their namesake stemming from Heinlein-esque manifest destiny military sci-fi, but Heinlein himself was, in fact, a Dorsai Irregular. So I'm gonna read at least a little into that.
Having said all that, my intuition is that the Dorsai have been a net good for furry cons despite the issues, and I don't fault Anthrocon or other furry cons for using them. A security team that comes out of an adjacent fandom and has some overlap and understanding with the group they're ostensibly policing will do a better job than one that doesn't. Anthrocon 2022 was the first in nearly twenty years that had no Dorsai coupled with a police presence---and the first I can recall in which the con had to put out two official apologies about security issues. Maybe that's a coincidence, but, well, maybe it isn't.
But my intuition is also that it may be time for us to look at con safety and security through the same lens that Bob Asprin used nearly five decades ago. If we do, I think we'll find we don't want the Dorsai. We want a furry version of them.
"What's that mean, Arilin? Can't cons handle security without having some kind of separate cross-convention group? Do we even want anything called 'security' at all?" I don't know exactly what it means! But this goes back to what I think the Dorsai got right. Cons need to handle issues ranging from simple crowd management to ejecting harassers, and building up institutional knowledge about best practices specifically for furry spaces strikes me as worthwhile. Maybe that leads to a group similar to the Dorsai Irregulars, but that looks a lot more, well, furry. Maybe it doesn't lead to a group at all, but to a best practices handbook, gathered from many conventions and made freely available to all interested parties, so they can set up their own safety services teams.
I'm not privy to conversations among convention executive staff, so I have no way of knowing if this idea has come up before, if it's still being discussed, or if it's long ago been considered and rejected. But if it hasn't been, it might be time to start---or time to restart it with fresh eyes. Bringing in outsiders was the wrong solution for sci-fi cons in the 1970s; for a subculture like ours, it's demonstrably even worse.
The Dorsai Irregulars succeeded by being uniquely fannish. Can't we make something better for us by making it uniquely furry?
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What fandoms have you been a part of (both currently and in the past)? How do you feel like fandoms have changed?
Hi, nonny!
I've been in more fandoms than I can count, honestly. Looking back, the ADHD is super obvious. I hyperfixate on a piece of media for a while and then suddenly lose all interest in it. So there have been a lot of those that have cycled through. There are a few that I routinely come back to, usually when I'm between my more brief hyperfixations.
The ones I tend to come back to every few years are Star Wars, Narnia, the MCU, Harry Potter, Supernatural, Dragon Age, and Merlin. And there's probably a couple others I'm forgetting.
I'm the kind of person who's been very into things my whole life. I do not enjoy things casually--I get very invested and have to learn absolutely everything about my new obsession and then infodump to everyone I know. (Do you see the ADHD yet?) The piece of media that introduced me to fandom was a French cartoon called Code Lyoko. That was my shit in elementary/middle school. One day, when I was like 10, I googled it. And the first link after the official website was for a site called lyokofreak.net, which sadly is no longer around. This is what it looked like around the time I first found it. There were links off to the side called things like "ships" and "fanfiction," and I just started clicking through all of them and stumbling further and further down the proverbial rabbit hole.
From there, I found fanfiction.net which brought me to other fandoms and fansites, and then it was just like game over. I'd found my thing.
That was around 2005, so I've been kicking around in fandom for about 16 years now. And a lot has definitely changed. I think there was a pretty big shift in fan culture around the time that Glee and Twitter were on the rise. Twitter was one of the first places where fandom stuff was not just public but on a very public platform. Glee also referenced some fan culture stuff (like shipping). Between the two of them, fandom started becoming more mainstream. We saw another shift around the time of Dashcon (Sarah Z (@dingdongyouarewrong) did a great video on that) where fan activities started to be considered more "cringey" and we went from being unironically enthusiastic about things to feeling like we needed to inject some level of irony into our fannish behaviors to avoid embarrassment.
Sites like Twitter (and other social media platforms) also broke down some barriers between fan and creator. Sometimes, this is a good thing, like when fans have an easy avenue to reach out to a small creator they love to gush about their work. And sometimes.... it's a garbage fire. I think we've all heard enough horror stories about celebrities and creators being bullied off of social media by asshole fans to know what I'm talking about here.
There are also some generational differences within fandom. As always, I'm in a weird position on the cusp of two generations. I'm young enough to be considered part of one fandom generation, but I've been in fandom longer than most of them since I found it so young. I could write a whole book on the shifts in fandom culture, but suffice to say, younger fans are much more likely to be openly vocal about things like fanfiction and shipping and whatnot even when talking to creators than older fans are. A lot of older fans still carry that fear of being literally sued over writing fanfiction (thanks, A*ne R*ce). Now, we see younger fans getting mad at AO3 and the OTW for not following the purity culture trend while older fans tend to be utterly confused by this behavior as, like, literally, that's why we have AO3??? Because of all the purging and rules and bullshit we went through on other platforms?? And it's often these same younger fans who get confused about the existence of disclaimers that older fans still habitually include in their fics as an ingrained form of self-defense. There's a general lack of understanding, and it often feels like a huge culture clash. Because these younger fans didn't experience fandom and the internet the same way that older fans did. The internet and social media changed fandom to a completely unknown degree. I'm definitely not an expert on this, since I'm still fairly young and also have only been in fandom since 2005, but one of my goals is to do a lot of in-depth interviews with "fandom elders" and really get a sense of how fandom has changed from their perspective. That'll be a book I write (or co-write) one day.
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I feel like there’s this new “woke” consumerism... where basically if you’re not totally pro-corporate then you’re a hater, because Corporations Are Our Friends Now or something. In some ways it feels like consumer culture just made itself bigger and harder to escape. There’s already this weird assumption that the main contribution you’re expected to make to American society, is to spend money, and if you’re not spending money on stuff then you’re not contributing anything. Somehow we’ve managed to make compulsory spending ~woke~ with just a couple of small shifts of branding. (And note how being “frugal” is considered a more positive stereotype when it’s someone who’s of white Protestant origins, but a negative one for virtually anyone else. As if choosing not to spend your money is a bad thing. So that folds into more of the “you can’t opt out” problem.) If you aren’t renting your piece of mass consumer culture on a regular basis then you’re ~NoT SuPpOrting ArtIstS~ or you are not supportive of the diversity represented in consumer mass media - as if counterculture or underground or independent diverse material doesn’t exist, or something, and as if mass media representation is always the most progressive representation, and as if any previous political work (a lot more edgy in its day) has ceased to exist. And know what? The people who bang the compulsory consumerism drum the loudest at this point in time, call themselves leftist (but in the 80s they were right wing, and of course these leftists don’t represent the whole of leftist thought). And also, there are some clashing frames. YES I know that poor people sometimes have nice things, for various reasons, and no, I’m not critical of that, having been a poor person with nice things at various point in my early life. (Los Angeles is no joke when it comes to garage sales and thrifting.) But isn’t the consumer media shit just a little bit Bread And Circuses or at least “let them eat cake?” I have to ask myself about a lot of this compulsory consumerism (often in the realm of intangibles... entertainment, etc)... because I went to school before No Child Left Behind and before arts programs and skills programs practically ceased to exist... 1) are we relying on consumer media to replace schooling and more importantly, parenting? 2) are we relying on it to be the primary transmitter of secular culture? (Lots of people seem to think we will have no cultural content AT ALL without mass consumer media.) 3) Are we replacing a lot of activities that didn’t used to be fannish, with mass consumer fandom? (Think about all of the things which used to be done at school which aren’t now - shop classes, arts, and even folk dancing. Think about all of the hobbies and crafts where fandom is the main secular point of access.) And finally, 4) is corporate fandom increasingly the primary thing that’s being centered, that isn’t marked as a specific religious or ethnic identity?
We’ve created this culture where a family or group of friends sitting around a table at the same time, playing a game, is Privileged, or singing songs, is Privileged, and reading anything that isn’t 9th grade reading level or below, is Privileged, and making stuff, is Privileged, and practically anything you can do besides support a massive sweatshop, is Privileged. We’ve somehow created a world where even having friends to do things with, or working less than 60 hours a week, IS PRIVILEGED. And we need to talk about that. We need to talk about what corporate mass media is replacing and what cultural and social voids we’re trying to fill.
But it requires deeper thought than just saying, “okay, you have to do this thing or it means you kick puppies, hate fun, and don’t want impoverished children to have any meaning or enjoyment in their lives.” And also we REALLY need to think about what our viewpoints toward globalism and a global hegemonic culture really are, in light of all of this.
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dear creator: femslashex 2k20 edition
Hi, Hello, Hey. First of all–thank you! This is my standard you offered to write one of my fandoms, so thank you for being awesome opening spiel, full of generals likes and dislikes, I’m sure you know the drill. I’ll make sure the fandom specific stuff is up by the time assignments go out. (That said, if you already have an idea about how you want to write about the fandom/pairing we match on—wow, I’m jealous! tell me your secrets!—just skip over the fandom stuff and go forth with your bad self.)
Things I like include, but are in no way limited to: fun with POV, fun with linear vs. non-linear storytelling, fun with tone, fun with writing. I really dig character studies, stories that really get into what makes a character tick (and something porny that can get at that is wonderful too), and I like relationships that are hard and prickly and worth fighting for. I like happy endings that don’t feel tacked on or forced. I like doubt, and hope, and theology; I like actors, and directors, and I like the random deity. I like fairy tales. I like (love) romance tropes. Forced to share a bed, marriages of convenience, fake dating, friends-to-lovers, idiots-to-lovers, enemies-to-lovers: it’s all like unto catnip. I like interesting turns of phrase, I like the perfect line, I like any story written just for me. If you have any questions about my taste (or lack thereof), feel free to ask @summervillen who probably knows my fannish tastes better than I do.
DNWs: noncon, necrophilia, pedophilia, incest, animal harm or death, child harm or death, pregnancy fic, A/B/O. Things that I would prefer you not include—especially gratuitously; there are obviously ways to engage with problematic actions/thoughts/etc. in fiction, but there’s such a fine line there—are as follows: non-character driven racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, anti-semitism, etc. etc. etc. I’d prefer no high school AUs. I also have a pretty big embarrassment squick. And while I'm mostly interested in these characters in the worlds in which we meet them, if you really have an AU (non high school division) you want to write I'm there. Just, you know, grounded in the characters and their relationships and all that fun stuff. That's basically it.
Babylon 5 Delenn/Susan Ivanova I just ship them post-canon so hard. Later in life chances at love are sort of a thing of mine, and add to that two of my favorite characters ever, well, it’s like this pairing is made for me. That said, if you can find a way to write them during canon (maybe John doesn’t return from Z'ha'dum, maybe Delenn and John just never get together at all, maybe you can think of something I can’t) I’d love that too. Delenn/Shaal Mayan I’d love a story about them that’s really Minbari–that understands that neither of them is human. Something set when they were young and just figuring themselves out (and first love is rarely forever but it feels like it must be) or something set when Mayan visits Babylon 5 in season one or, heck, something set after the series ends. (I have a thing for writing on skin, so if you can find a way to fit that in more power to you.)
Last Tango in Halifax Gillian Greenwood/Caroline McKenzie-Dawson Oh gosh I have so many feelings about Gillian and Caroline and their relationship. How it’s grown, changed, and now they’re at a point where they see each other all the time and talk about basically everything and it’s all so beautiful. And, I mean, come on, they both have the best chemistry with the other; it’s just a fact. So what if they get drunk and kiss (or shag or something in between)? Or just deal with things like adults (I’m sure you could convince me that’s possible)? (She wasn’t part of the tagset, but I also liked what little we saw of Olga, both how she interacted with Caroline and how she befriended Gillian when they both showed up late to the play, so if you want to go the threesome route–whether it’s a V or a triad or whatever confusing mess of emotions you prefer–I’m there.) (P.S. I haven’t seen the most recent season, but I’m spoiled and have seen all the gifs and screencaps so include or don’t as you see fit.)
Lucifer Linda Martin/Mazikeen
Their relationship on the show is a thing of delight and wonder, so basically I want that but also MORE. Maze fighting people to protect Linda! Linda, well, trying to fight people but mostly realizing that Maze loves it and is good at it so. Maze panicking again about Linda eventually dying, but also MORE SO because now they’ve been fucking and also having weird candlelight dinners and um is this romantic this might be. (Whether Amenadiel is involved (romantically with either or both, as an active parent but no longer romantically, etc.) or off doing something else stage left and never mentioned is up to you, but please no bashing, killing off somehow, etc.) Feel free to include hijinks with the rest of the gang, but I’d prefer no focus on any police work.
The Old Guard (Movie) Andy/Quynh
Note: I haven’t read the comics, so this is strictly a movie request (I know they’re separate fandoms and listed thusly, but I just wanted to be clear). I’d love anything about them, in all honesty. Something in the past: a first time (they kissed, they said “I love you,” they refused to say “I love you,” they had sex, etc.), a fifth time, a mission gone wrong. Or something in the present/future: angst and fractured trust and fighting on opposite sides until they’re suddenly not. All too mortal Andy. Immortal Quynh. The options are basically endless. I also love everyone on the team, so feel free to include them however you see fit.
Star Trek: Classic Timeline
First of all, I don’t know book canon, so include it, don’t include, whatever floats your proverbial boat. Second of all, I am more than happy with “this character lives” stories here. Obviously. Third of all, please no bashing of any other characters (even that one).
Beverly Crusher/Laris
So I came out of Picard with an undying devotion to Laris and a burning curiosity about what the heck Bev is up to these days. So tell me more about both of them. Is there’s a longstanding affair, often at a distance? Did they start out prickly and reserved, wary? How are Jean-Luc and Zhaban involved? (I am happy with whatever you decide on the Jean-Luc and Zhaban front, other than gratuitous death or bashing of either. Feel free to have them off having their own adventures and don’t mention them if you prefer not to involve them.) Is Beverly’s French as terrible as Jean-Luc’s?
Kimara Cretak/Kira Nerys
Feel free to have Kimara escape/live/etc. I’d especially love something that recognizes that neither of them is human; play around with what we know of their cultures, about how those cultures might clash or unexpectedly mesh, how that can affect a relationship both positively and negatively. I’m always interested in Nerys’s faith and religious beliefs, and how that interacts with Romulan culture would be very much something I enjoy.
K'Ehlyer/Deanna Troi
K’Ehlyer deserved better, and who is better than Deanna? I posit no one. This is another pairing where I’d love something about the fact that they’re not fully human and the implications thereof. (Feel free to include Alexander or not, as you choose. Ditto Thaddeus and Kestra. I’d prefer they not be a focal point though.) Whether you set it during TNG or Picard or in between, I’ll be equally happy (or an alternate version of reality works too! those are just the time references I can think of right now!). (Please note that I very much also ship Deanna and Will, so please, please, please don’t bash him or kill him off for no reason or have Deanna cheating on him or whatever. I’d much rather you don’t mention him at all if you don’t want him in the fic.)
The Untamed Jiang Yanli/Wen Qing
Is part of this my desire to have two of my favorite characters pushed together? Yes. Is it also part of my desire to have them actually live? Absolutely. (Which is to say: I’d love a “Jiang Yanli and Wen Qing live” AU here. Or at least live longer than they make it in canon?) I’d also be fine with modern AUs here, but I’d prefer cultivation be in there somewhere even if it’s set in the present (or the 1980s or basically any time period). Maybe there’s a political partnership of convenience situation! Maybe something shifts in canon and Jiang Yanli helps the Qishan Wens out and things happen and trust grows and they fall in love! Maybe they have a secret fling! Honestly, it’s all good.
#femslashex#femslash exchange#dear author letter#there will be more later#once i manage to write up the fandom specific parts#long post#(or it will be or it is idk)#the old guard#the untamed#lucifer#last tango in oh noooo#last tango in halifax#star trek: the next generation#star trek: picard#star trek: ds9#stars trek#babylon 5
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fansplaining 101
We’ve gotten A LOT of new followers on Tumblr and Twitter over the past week because of our SHIPPING SURVEY. (If you haven’t taken it yet, please do!) And maybe you’re just here for those sweet, sweet shipping stats, but maybe you are interested in checking out the rest of our work! We are well aware that with more than 100 episodes, articles, and analysis of our previous surveys, it is *a lot*, so we wanted to put together a little “where to start” post.
So! We’re @elizabethminkel & @flourish, and we have been creating the “Fansplaining” podcast for nearly four years (!!), since we met on a panel at San Diego Comic-Con in 2015. Elizabeth is a fan culture journalist, Flourish works on fandom-related stuff in the entertainment industry, and we’ve both been in fandom—especially fanfic/transformative fandom—for more than two decades.
(Image by the increeeedibly talented @redgoldsparks)
Everything is over at Fansplaining.com; each episode has audio, show notes, and a full transcript—you can find the entire back catalogue here. Our articles—on subjects like Mary Sues, works in progress, corporate-driven fandom, the etymology of fannish words, and the patriarchal affordances granted to the creators of sanctioned add-on works that people still manage to (pejoratively) label ‘fanfiction’ :-))—are found here.
You can certainly start listening from the beginning, but if you want some jumping-off points:
1) THE DISCOURSE TRILOGY™
Last fall we did a trio of episodes on some ~fraught topics~ in the broader fandom sphere:
1a) Purity Culture
Perhaps the messiest of all discourse topics, we try to untangle anti culture, conversations around shipping and morality, and the way it intersects with—or clashes with—stan culture.
1b) Age and Fandom
We look at a lot of different aspects of age and ageism in fandom, from what’s deemed acceptable fannishness past a certain age, what isn’t, and the way those ideas are gendered.
1c) The Money Question
One of our very favorite topics!! On the monetization of fanfiction in particular, from the explicit anti-monetization policies on AO3 to Wattpad’s experimental models connecting fic writers to the pro publishing space.
2) Kenyatta Cheese
One of the founders of Know Your Meme, @kenyatta currently runs Everybody at Once, the company behind the social media accounts for Doctor Who, Orphan Black, and more. HIGHLY recommended for anyone interested in fan/creator interaction, particularly the moment when he politely drags Marxist frameworks in fan labor discussions.
3) Shipping and Activism
Is shipping activism? No—but it’s complicated. Dr. Rukmini Pande and Dr. Lori Morimoto (@tea-and-liminality), both fan studies scholars, come on to discuss the thorny intersections between representation, activism, and shipping, especially around conversations about race and queerness.
4) Stephanie Burt
Stephanie is a poet, Harvard professor, and longtime X-fan, and every time we asked her a question, she said, “Well...I have a two-part answer,” which meant we soon found ourselves with a two-part episode. We especially recommend her discussion of taste cultures and situating your criticism in part one.
5) User-Generated Content
Fandom is full of people creating things for free. The media and entertainment industries benefit from that labor—but does that mean fans are at fault for creating and sharing their work? What is exploitative—and what is just fans having fun?
6) Fangirling Through Time
An early favorite (in more ways than one): fan studies scholar Evan Hayles Gledhill discussed their research on Victorian sentiment albums—a sort of proto-Tumblr—and other types of gendered fannish expression from the period.
7) Race and Fandom
Probably our biggest episode(s) to date! In this two-parter we hear from ten fans of color about race and racism in fandom. Featuring: Dr. Rukmini Pande, @clio-jlh, @harlequinn823, Shadowkeeper, @ninemoons42, @stitchomancy, Jeffrey Lyles, @rozf, Traci-Anne Canada, and @zvilikestv.
8) Javier Grillo-Marxuach
@okbjgm has been a television writer, producer, and showrunner for decades (from Lost to The Middleman to The 100) and has been on both sides of the fan/creator divide. (He also liked being on the podcast so much that he was our first special episode guest! We discussed his Downton Abbey & Indiana Jones crossover fic :-))
9) The Truth About Toxic Fandom
There have been no shortage of hand-wringing articles in recent years about “toxic fandom.” We try to unpack myth from reality—is any of this new? And is any of it unique to fandom?
10) A Fangirl Goes to Hollywood
We’ve had many fantastic guests talk about navigating the fan-to-pro transition, but @brittalundin, a writer on Riverdale and the author of the fandom YA novel Ship It (which she discussed on a later episode) is an excellent place to start.
#fandom#fansplaining#please note these are not ~our favorite guests~#because ALL OF OUR GUESTS ARE OUR FAVORITES
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Feelings about fannish platforms: Discord edition
https://superborb.dreamwidth.org/489961.html
I briefly discussed some of this on twitter previously, but wanted to more long-form discuss, which of course means moving to DW!! Anyway, these are somewhat scattered thoughts, but putting it together + talking with people about it always clarifies my thoughts. I like a lot of things about Discord! I wrote previously that it fannishly descended from the instant messaging programs of yore, and has similar dynamics as places with large group chats to mingle and meet friends and small ones to settle friendships. When it goes well, those are indeed both niches that I personally find essential to a ~balanced social media diet~. The difference is as fandom increasingly moves to Discord-only, its weakness as a primary fannish platform becomes more obvious to me. There's two main problems IMO: 1) no way to call out important / top level discussion aka curation; 2) difficulty in propagating social norms and thus community feeling. There is also the 3) "difficulty in FINDING a server" problem, but I think that is far less structural. 1: Beyond the obvious difficulty in backreading a busy server, it's really hard to point out a specific message as important without resorting to dedicated 'low traffic' channels or such. Partially, this is a me-problem, as I am completionist... But I also think this means Discord requires an alternate host to serve as repository for longer or more polished thoughts. OR a server with a very strict and different culture than I've usually observed. I wonder if that would be possible with a long slowmode? (For non-Discord users, slowmode means a user must wait a mod-defined amount of time before sending another message, though edits are allowed on previous messages.) In contentious debate, having a slowmode set really helped cool tempers and force a more reasoned argument, but I've never seen it used to force longer thoughts. Also, "curate your feed" became so central on tumblr, and caused problems on twitter, with its inferior curation tools, that I wondered how Discord-based fandom would deal with it. On Discord, there are even fewer tools to curate other than leaving a group, because everything is intrinsically shaped like a conversation and even blocking people, it's ...shaped like a conversation you're just ignoring one person in? 2: Within a server, you're essentially all in one room with EVERYONE AT THE SAME TIME. And this might work if the group can establish shared social mores, but that's non-trivial to do. One way that LJ had shared norms propagate is through lurking before having to participate; you can still do that, but it's much less interesting to lurk a conversation than polished (or not) public posts. Sure, messaging is probably a native way to communicate for a lot of people in their 20s and 30s, but the norms of that messaging are wildly different (and have changed over time! I was reading an AIM log from LJ days and wow do I message differently now!) This seems minor, until you have a disagreement and those norms suddenly clash over how you're supposed to resolve a conflict in the first place! One norm I've encountered often is the 'doubling down on shared opinions to distinguish in and out group', which I fundamentally disagree with. However, if you're trying to resolve a conflict and one party is used to seeing conflict as an in vs out group disagreement (and therefore looking for a common opinion) and the other is offended by viewing the world that way, this is not a path to success. Of course, I think the problem of 'how to disagree and still be in community' is at the heart of being a community in the first place, and not a Discord-specific problem. On the less outright conflict front though, every community has people you like or dislike to varying degrees, and I've discovered that in a Discord server, when you're sharing a space that can't be easily filtered, perceived norms-violations irritate me way more than in any other platform or real life situation I've ever encountered. I don't know if other people feel that way, but I've had enough discussions around it that I think it's relatively common, and more common on Discord than elsewhere. It's the lack of ability to socially get away, perhaps, combined with Discord being a difficult place to transmit those norms? 3: It is unfortunately a really opaque barrier to finding servers; getting access to comms, even if it required an essay, or figuring out a crufty forum feels different than 'make friends and become cool enough to get an invite'. This problem becomes more difficult to solve when fandom is less active on other platforms, decreasing the ways you can make friends! Even worse, you can't easily lurk to learn the social norms beforehand. However, fandom is just bigger now too, which means there are many more public Discords available, from which to splinter off. In some ways, it's a return to requiring active involvement in order to get access, instead of being able to passively consume from the firehose of public twitter/tumblr. It's harder to go track a specific person you think is cool back to their fannish home, but easier to find someone to chat with at all hours of the day. (And lead to friendships and new servers spawned. Ideally.) I don't know! I don't think Discord is even a good primary fannish platform, but it does seem to be where people are moving, for better or worse. At least I find it more amenable than tumblr, which means I might not disappear until the next migration?
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This is a stunningly good and extensive compilation of fannish meta on the subject of ageism in fandom. We thought we'd chime in with a bit of scholarship around fandom and age. "Access to fanfiction in the post–Star Trek, pre-Internet era was rather limited. Since most fanfiction was distributed through self-published newsletters and zines—and one could usually only acquire such things in the context of attending conventions—the fanfiction reading audience was limited mostly to adults, who were far more likely to possess the necessary mobility and financial resources. (The fanfiction writing audience, however, was in theory considerably larger, with fans lacking access to more formal methods of fannish distribution penning what Fanlore calls “drawerfic,” stories intended only for the eyes of the writer or a small group of friends.) Since those with access to circulating fanfiction were primarily adults, there was no perceived need to consider young people as a distinct potential audience. Moreover, much (though not all) fanfiction featured erotic content—material that, as Eric L. Tribunella remarks, “epitomize[s] what it means to say a text is ‘for adults’”." - Tosenberger, C. (2014). Mature poets steal: Children’s literature and the unpublishability of fanfiction. Children’s Literature Association Quarterly, 39(1), 4–27. https://doi.org/10.1353/chq.2014.0010 Shaming older fans, saying they should grow out of their passions, is of course nothing new. Have a look at Camile Bacon-Smith's analysis of Mary Sue (and why we hate her) to see that people outside fandom, especially those who've sought to control women (and queer people of all genders), have been using this argument for decades. All that's new is that this argument has now been taken up by people within the fannish community. Some of this can probably be traced to the culture clash between older and younger fans when younger fans finally got access to fannish communities through the internet. More from Tosenberger: "However, the mainstreaming of Internet technology in the late 1990s radically altered the fannish landscape, not only in terms of the day-to-day functioning of fandom, but of its demographics as well. Media fans tended, as a group, to be “early adopters of digital technologies” (Jenkins, Fans 138) and had begun migrating onto the Net in the mid- ’80s, but while this new medium was faster, the actual participatory fannish community didn’t change much until access to this technology became widespread—fortuitously concomitant with the runaway success of the Potter series. Suddenly, the ability not just to read, but to write and distribute transformational fanworks was available to anyone with an Internet connection. And that “anyone” included children and teenagers, who were often more Net-savvy than their parents. (...) And not only were Potter fans younger, they were also less experienced in traditional fandom cultural norms. As Harry Potter became the primary “threshold fandom” of the Internet era, there was a great deal of friction in the early years between older media fans, whose behavior codes and expectations were formed in the time of zines, and newer so-called “feral” fans, who had never experienced the mentoring and initiation into fandom that was practically a requirement in the pre-Internet era." And if you're interested in older fans' actual lived experiences of fandom, here's a great paper by Line Nybro Petersen (2017): "'The Florals': Female Fans over 50 in the Sherlock Fandom." In "Sherlock Holmes Fandom, Sherlockiana, and the Great Game," edited by Betsy Rosenblatt and Roberta Pearson, special issue, Transformative Works and Cultures, no. 23. From Petersen: "Fandom is closely tied to being passionate, being enthusiastic, being excited. It is a space for feeling better and happier. I am interested in how these fans negotiate the passion that they experience through their devotion to the Sherlock series in relation to their perceptions about age. Being a fan of Sherlock wittingly or unwillingly becomes both a feminist and anti-agist endeavor because insisting on being passionate about a TV series and its actors as a 50-year-old is sometimes met with skepticism and wonder. One fan in particular is very clear about her feminist standpoint with regards to her own fan practice and the way in which passionate women are often regarded in a societal context: "Ageism is the cause, but also the idea that being fanatically obsessed with a subject equals being a loser is also in the mix. I have asked male friends over the age of 50 if they get the same treatment in their fandoms (football, Marvel, Doctor Who) and they report that they don't"."
#fan studies#age#fan fiction#fanfiction#age in fandom#ageism#ageism in fandom#misogyny in fandom#fannish history#older fans#quote#link
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It’s here!
Believe it or no, but I’ve finally found the time to draw up this post and share the results of the research project with everyone here!
Quick remark before I delve into the content of my thesis. As always when doing qualitative research (which is what I did), you end up with a lot of data. Like - a lot. This inevitably meant that I had to make choices with regard to what to focus on and what to actually put in my thesis (which was only a master’s thesis, after all). Despite this, I tried my best to do justice to the experiences and accounts of the people who participated in this study. I hope I succeeded.
So, just to remind you all. As you can read elsewhere on this blog, this research project focussed on the ways in which fans use Tumblr to inhabit and explore the fictional worlds they encounter in different media. It may sound a bit odd, but I was particularly interested in the offline component of this interaction; in a society where we constantly engage with realities beyond our day-to-day lives (the reality of books, films, games, social media, etc.), what do these realities come to mean to us? How do we make sense of them, what messages do we take from them, and what role does this play in our daily lives? Or: how do fictional, virtual and everyday reality interrelate in the context of fandom?
I found that Tumblr’s virtual world might best be explained as a ‘liminoid sphere’, a space betwixt and between the structures of normal life, which gives fans a freedom from social expectations and everyday obligations, and a freedom to play with elements from both real life and their favourite story worlds. This becomes visible in a variety of fan practices or fan works (fics, fan art, graphics, and so on). Fictional story worlds and the virtual environment of Tumblr can therefore fulfil an important fuction that fiction has often been praised for: it offers playgrounds where we can explore what our own world is like, could be like, or should be like. Transformative (fan)work can show perspectives that the official, canon material doesn’t; it may for example transform the storyline to explore another outcome or change an ideological point of view, or it may change white, heterosexual, cisgender characters into a more diverse cast, with different ethnic backgrounds, sexualities and genders. This holds potential for actual change.
Be that as it may, I also found that it’s not quite that simple. For when we look beyond what happens online - when we pay attention to for example the devices that people use to enter Tumblr and examine the everyday contexts from which people visit Tumblr - it turns out that fans not only bring different realities together, they also deliberately keep them apart. I tried to understand this process by means of the concept of ‘dynamic framing’, arguing that fans use this technique to switch between different perspectives on what Tumblr, fandom and fiction are about. On the one hand, there are moments when fan practices are experienced as earnest, tactical performances intended to affect the real, outside world in some way, fictional worlds and characters representing real life equivalents. On the other, when the situation calls for it, it may also be that it simply works better for fans to set Tumblr and fan practice aside as something silly or distractive that is best not taken too seriously, fiction then being no more than ‘just fiction’. These perspectives can exist next to each other, people sliding from one into the other depending on the context they are in. But they are perhaps most visible when they clash, when people with opposite perspectives bump heads with each other (aka, in moments of drama or discourse).
There’s much to say about the latter, but in my thesis, I primarily emphasised that these findings mean that scholars should take everyday contexts into account when they study online culture, as they are part of what shapes how people make sense of and experience the things they encounter online. I believe this also means that our interactions with fiction through fandom are not automatically the powerful, potentially world-changing engagements that some have argued it to be.
Personally, I find the ambiguous nature of a platform like Tumblr, and the different ways in which fannish and fictional realities can be framed and thus be experienced, a fascinating phenomenon that I hope I’ll be able to further examine in future research. If you find this interesting as well, and want to know more about this study’s outcomes, please feel free to message me and ask away. :) I also really don’t mind to share the complete thesis with you, so if you want to receive it in order to read it or simply look it over, please do ask!
One last thing I’d like to say, then. I would like to once again thank everyone who participated in this research project. Thank you for letting me be your Tumblr follower for a while, for answering my questions, for welcoming me into your homes, and for sharing your thoughts and feelings so openly. I’m truly grateful - without you, this project simply would not have been possible!
#researchingfandom#results#YES THE ACTUAL RESULTS#although it took me a lot longer than expected i enjoyed this project immensely#thanks again to everyone who helped me out!#it means the world to me!
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Meme: Legolas/Gimli for a ship, and/or Elrond for a character ❤️❤️❤️
I already did elrond here, but thank u very much! _o
when or if I started shipping it: I always loved their friendship but it didn’t really click in a fannish shipping manner until I started doing fannish stuff with LOTR generally – for a long time despite loving LOTR and re-reading it every year, I had not the faintest inclination to do anything fandom-related with it. but after I did, I shipped them from my very next re-read :)
my thoughts: GOD. THEY ARE. OTP TO END ALL OTPs…..i love everything. i love the progression of their relationship. i love every single interaction they have. i love how MUCH they interact. i love the greek-chorus-y role their interactions play in the larger plot. i love how their relationship kind of winds through LOTR like a river of gold, something unfailingly joyous and deep and bright and flourishing and funny, parallel to and brushing shoulders with all the other complicated plot threads, and not ignoring them or diminishing them, but kind of sucking sustenance from them to make their own subplot even sweeter and richer. i love their fucking cave/forest double dates. i love their endinnnnggggg.
What makes me happy about them: THEY LITERALLY SAIL OFF INTO THE SUNSET TOGETHER FOR SPACE PARADISE WHILE WINGING IT.
What makes me sad about them: Legolas is immortal and Gimli is very very much not :(
things done in fanfic that annoys me: movie characterizations that are nonetheless tagged in the LOTR book category, or characterizations that purport to be book characterizations but are so tainted by movie characterizations and/or pop-cultural impressions of “how dwarves/elves ‘are’” that they bear not the faintest resemblance to the actual characters. sludge-projection etc. Gimli thinking of himself as an inferior ugly lil dwarf not Worthy of Legolas. Cliched (and see above for movie/pop-culture-tainted) plots about srs bsns proud rigid elf learning that uncouth rude rough dwarf is Better Than Him. Stupid demonization or snide treatment of various other characters (especially but not limited to Thranduil).
things I look for in fanfic: srs bsns proud dwarf learning that uncouth rude featherbrained elf is sorta cute, actually. culture clash/exchange/worldbuilding. Deep Passion. lots of dialogue. …..cliched mutual pining /)_o
My kinks: HAAAAAIIIIIRRRRRRR. body hair and lack thereof. both of them being either Kinky and Weird or pleasantly unconcerned with hotness from their own povs because each one falls well outside the other’s cultural beauty standards. height and body type differences. previous sexual experiences differences. and…….EMBARRASSINGLY ENOUGH……goofy LACE-as-natural-biologically-rooted-instinct stuff (which i actually don’t care for much in other pairings).
Who I’d be comfortable them ending up with, if not each other: NO ONE.
My happily ever after for them: They get a good span of time in Valinor and Legolas recovers from Gimli‘s death in a deep-rooted sincere constructive way and they meet again at the end of the world in the Dagor Dagorath where they resume their bodycount competition.
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Finn, Rey, Romance, and Conflict
The criticism that Finnrey as a ship is just cute and fluffy with no tension is so comical to me because… did these people watch Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015 dir. J.J. Abrams)? The movie where Finn’s and Rey’s respective traumas clashed head on (”Come with me.”/”Don’t go.”), tearing apart two people who deeply care about each other? The movie where Finn bared his deepest truth to Rey, and Rey had a traumatic flashback from the distress of Finn leaving? Where he overcame his greatest fear to be there for her, which in turn helped her overcome her abandonment issues to seek her destiny?
You know, that movie?
What’s more, the reveals about the starting point of The Last Jedi indicate that Finn and Rey’s conflict from TFA is far from resolved. He still wants to get away from the fighting, this time with her, and she still has a reason to stay. Their argument back at Takodana was rudely interrupted in the previous movie, not properly ended. They went into crisis mode and reaffirmed their caring for each other before they were again rudely interrupted by Finn’s coma and galactic war. Ever since Takodana their story is basically an ongoing couple argument that they haven’t been able to end because inconsiderate masked villains and intrusive superweapons keep getting in the way.
One conflict Finn and Rey do not have is over mistreating each other and other people. That’s another misunderstanding of this ship, I believe, that meaningful conflict in a romantic relationship can only come from the parties treating each other badly or hurting others. That’s not true at all, though: Good people can still disagree in loving, thoughtful ways. Imagine that, a love story that does not depend on mistreatment as a sign of love or an obstacle to overcome; a love story that’s actually about love.
The crux of Finn and Rey’s ongoing conflict is that they’re each still trying to figure themselves out. Finn was raised to have absolute certainty and conviction which he abandoned. He is now left without a reason to fight, and wants space to find himself far away. Rey grew up unmoored, with no purpose other than survival and reunion. She is now seeking certainty, and her visions and dreams tell her she will find her place with Luke Skywalker. They’re each striving to grow into themselves after their difficult upbringings, and they see their paths in opposite directions.
The above would not even be a problem if Finn and Rey did not love each other so deeply. Young people, including people who dated, grow apart all the time and go their separate ways. It’s a part of life. But Finn and Rey want to be together despite their diverging paths, so much that that all Finn wanted to do was run away with Rey, so much that all Rey wanted was for Finn to stay with her.
This is the source of the conflict and suspense between Finn and Rey, that their love draws them together while their journeys pull them apart. This push and pull, wax and wane, rise and fall are at the center of their tension and shape the emotional landscape of the sequel trilogy. (Aficionados of Korean pop culture may also be familiar with the term milttang, the back-and-forth courting ritual that lends spice to romance.)
Finn and Rey are almost unbearably cute together, yes. They could have nothing but fluffy cuddly hours until the heat death of the universe and it would still not be enough. I’m not here to tell anyone what they should like about the ship or to police anyone’s fannishness.
I do, however, have a problem with dismissing the canon relationship of Finn and Rey as cute and fluffy and nothing more, and therefore dissatisfying as a central romance. They are cute, yes, thanks for admitting that, and they also have this incredible dynamic that was set up in TFA and is central to both their characters. It would be simple bad writing to set up such a meaty conflict and then ignore it as something just “cute” and “fluffy” that can be safely discarded.
There is nothing safe about Finn and Rey’s relationship, though. They both have so much riding on their love, forged in the warmth of companionship and the fires of adversity. It doesn’t matter how you define its nature; calling it a friendship or familial love does not make it any less central or important, and calling it a cliche romance with no depth does it a serious disservice.
Done right, Finn and Rey’s reunion will be an epic moment and a major milestone in their journeys, taken separately yet together. Theirs is the story of love between two heroes who have their own journeys without either being only the love interest for the other, which is both challenging and rewarding from a story standpoint. Will they grow apart or grow together? I eagerly await the answer.
#finnrey#finnreyfridays#rebelfinn#rey#anti reylo#meta#star wars#the force awakens#the last jedi#first of all
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hello speranza! i started out in marvel fandom but recently fell into due south fandom, and have been gleefully surprised at how many of my favorite authors were also in the due south fandom. however, i had no idea this fandom had so many brilliant writers, and my impression is that the show hadn't made that big of a dent in u.s. culture in general (outside of the fannish world). since you were pretty involved, i was just very curious to hear more about why due south got so big in fandom?
Hi, Anon - you know, I’m not sure I can explain it; Due South was just really fannish catnip in so many ways: the culture clash, Fraser as clam, the magical realism. The show used to run on TNT in the afternoons just after it was cancelled, where I know a lot of people saw it, but like many fannish shows it didn’t make that big a dent outside of fandom, though I think its a show that a lot of people saw and liked a lot. But in fandom it was really pretty huge, and its still going - the Due South archive is scheduled for an import into the Archive of our Own and people still discover it and read and write and vid etc. It’s really a forever fandom I think!
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Light Novels: Introduction and Secret Worlds
Light novels have been a frequent topic in pulp fantasy, combining the evolution of the pulp magazine with Japanese pop culture to various degrees of success. In the 1970s, Japanese publishers combined pulp magazines with anime-inspired illustrations aimed at teens and young adults. Since then, the market for these short, pulpy and fannish novels (about 50,000 words or so, like the hero pulp novels), has exploded in Japan and abroad, with recent English publisher J-Novel Club releasing over 200 translated volumes in two years.
Success has changed light novels from their pulp origins. Rather than an episodic series like the Shadow or Doc Savage, the average light novel has returned to dime novel serialization, with many light novels amassing a dozen volumes of story and more. And, to fill the demand, publishers have been offering contracts to newer writers and web novel writers. So the polish expected of the pulps has started to rub away. But enthusiasm, novelty, and an editor’s not-so-gentle prodding have carried many a light novel writer to success despite the deficiencies of technique. Currently, just as in American Young adult, the medium has been following their readers as they grow older. But the heart still remains–mystery, action, and a heavier leavening of the spicy than even Martin Goodman would consider wise.
Like in any medium that has been around for longer than a fortnight, writers have chased various trends. Currently, isekai portal fantasy and harem romance have been the rage, influencing Russian litRPG and the recent glut of American harem fantasies, to the point that many readers are searching for their next novelty fix. Prior to that, the fad of the day included, at various times, “devil” stories, sword and sorcery, space opera, magical battle academies, and high school secret histories.
Over the next few weekends, I’ll take a closer look at these admittedly broad categories and make recommendations in each, based on what is currently available, starting with my personal favorite category, the secret worlds.
Like Alice chasing the White Rabbit, protagonists in the once popular secret world setting follow a bit of strangeness in an otherwise mundane life, discovering instead vast conspiracies and earthshaking revelations that upend the main character’s understanding of what the world is and how the world works. For the shadows of everyday life are full of alien infiltrators, secret societies, living urban legends, ghosts, and other mysteries, each with a hand on the tiller of the world and each trying desperately not to be noticed. Swept up in that madness, suddenly a mundane life becomes something far grander and the world never seems quite so small–or safe–ever again.
These “secret world” fantasies are primary world fantasies, taking place on Earth in the present at the time written, and always offering a peek behind the curtain at Fortean secrets most people are unaware of. Popularized in light novel form by Boogiepop and Others, these secret world novels are a common setting for horror, as well as the main outlet for a pop science fiction junkie for the better part of a decade.
The height of the secret world books came to an end with the popularization of the term chunibyo (“Eighth Grader Syndrome” or middle-school delusions). Many of the stories of secret aliens, superheroes, and living legends found in secret world matched the delusions of grandeur common to a certain phase in a young teen’s life, and realism and ironic detachment settled into the genre. Instead of being swept up by grand and hidden secrets, the main characters instead turn to rescue friends from their delusions. And if the delusions turned out to be real secret worlds, the characters view everything through a genre-savvy and often snark-filled lens. The point becomes to move past these delusions and accept life as it is, instead of thirsting for wonders unseen.
Those looking for wonder–or a place to revel in the fantastic unmocked by their peers–soon turned to settings beyond the constraints of the current day, to the video game-inspired settings of isekai portal fantasy.
The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya – Nagaru Tanigawa
Kyon is ready to start high school after putting aside childish things such as belief in UFOs and superheroes. Then, on the first day of class, he is introduced to Haruhi Suzumiya, a strange girl who has no interest in anything except the weird. Haruhi is unwilling to speak to anyone other than aliens, time-travelers, and psychics. But, after a chance conversation convinces Haruhi that Kyon shares her interest, he gets swept into Haruhi’s strange club. A club full of aliens, time-travelers, and ESPers all trying to keep their identities a secret. For Haruhi also has a strange power to influence reality, and it’s best for all that she never knows about it.
Admittedly, Haruhi puts the manic into manic pixie girl, but the real charm of the series is watching Kyon play the only sane man among his co-conspirators as they deal with time-traveling hijinks, dimensional shifts, homicidal aliens, and even rival clubs behind Haruhi’s back. Over time, Haruhi adjusts to normal high school life, while Kyon warms up to the weirdness that surrounds Haruhi at all times. Kyon narrates the various mishaps in a deadpan that never lets up, no matter what pocket dimension, past era, or alternate timeline he finds himself in. Unfortunately, the complexities of simultaneous alternate dimension and time travel became too much for Tanigawa to navigate, so it is doubtful if the series will ever be finished past the tenth volume.
Bakemonogatari, by NISIO ISIN
After a particularly monstrous Spring Break, Koyomi Araragi’s eyes are open to the various curses, monsters, and aberrations that cling to the people around him. When he catches a reclusive girl in his class after she floats down a staircase, he discovers that she is cursed with weightlessness. Freeing her from this curse only ensnares Koyomi in a strange web of living urban legends and monster tales.
I have reviewed Bakemonogatari both at my own blog and for Castalia House’s, and find the series a complex mix of reward and frustration. NISIO ISIN brings two important elements not found in many light novels; a literate playfulness with the Japanese language carried into the English translation and a deep love of mystery literature. Keen-eyed readers will see nods to American and Japanese mystery traditions, including a story structure familiar to fans of Doc Savage. Not only does Bakemonogatari play with language, but it is also rich in symbolism as well. The literate approach adds depth and gravity to the living ghost stories. Unfortunately, Bakemonogatari gets a little too taken with its own cleverness at times, and the less said about its pandering to some of the least tasteful trends of late 2000s Japanese pop culture, the better. But if a reader can overlook what for a light novel are minor foibles, the monster tales of Bakemonogatari are among the best in the medium.
Invaders of the Rokujouma, by Takehaya
Koutarou thinks he’s found the perfect place to stay while his father is away. The apartment is close to school, and most importantly, the rent is dirt cheap. However, he soon finds out why, as a ghostly girl, two aliens, an honest-to-the-Moon magical girl, and an underworld princess crash through the door. Each invader wants Koutarou’s apartment for their own purposes, but Koutarou is not willing to give up his room without a fight.
Let’s get the obvious out of the way, as Invaders has sandpaper rough prose guaranteed to grate on the nerves of anyone with the slightest desire for style. However, what the series may lack in grace, it makes up with a surprising amount of heart. Instead of appealing to the young professionals who enjoy most light novels, Invaders is aimed at a junior high audience who might yearn for a little science fiction-flavored excitement. Freed from the demands of acting cool, the characters are given the chance to revel in the moment, whether it be the classic high school culture festival or ship vs. ship combat between rival space princesses. Uncluttered by the typical demands of fanservice, Invaders instead has room for a slow burn through an ambitious plot through time and space, with the invaders of Koutarou’s apartment at the center. Also slowly burning is a rather sweet romantic rivalry as the invaders switch from invading an apartment to invading Koutarou’s heart.
Honorable mentions include Full Metal Panic!, by Shoji Gatoh, an alternate history where the Cold War never ended in the 1980s and schoolgirl engineering geniuses are protected by mecha pilot mercenaries without social graces, and A Certain Magic Index, by Kazuma Kamachi, where an unlucky young man gets thrust into an X-Men-style clash between Science and Magic when he meets a young nun.
Light Novels: Introduction and Secret Worlds published first on https://sixchexus.weebly.com/
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