Transformative Works and Cultures - TWC (Organization for Transformative Works)
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852 research outputs found
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How Teen Wolf’s transmasculine fans use online fandom to build community and representation
No full textWhen media are unable or unwilling to provide accurate trans representation, trans fans use online fan communities to create their own representation and invent entire worlds that transgressively diverge from the source. The transmasculine fans of Teen Wolf are exemplary of this phenomenon, revealing that the foundational work within the show offers a rich (though unsanctioned) basis for trans connection through lycanthropy, transformation, and queer masculinity. This article looks at the possibilities for projecting trans experiences onto fictionalized bodies in a way that is celebratory, euphoric, and reparative
The White Knight: Batman as esoteric hero for the dissident right
No full textThis paper examines how white-nationalist and identitarian fan communities read The Dark Knight film series as a coded attack on liberal values by the secretly sympathetic writer-director Christopher Nolan. In a classic esoteric reading, white nationalists posit super villains like Ra's al Ghul and Bane as giving voice to the true message of the trilogy, namely, that liberal countries have become decadent and must be destroyed so as to give rise to archeofuturistic ethnostates. We examine the white nationalists' criticisms of traditional media critics on both the left and the right in a way that helps differentiate esoteric hermeneutics from more conventional professional critical readings. We highlight the peculiar capacity of pronoiac, fan-based esotericism to resignify and circulate pop-cultural memes for radical, right-wing ends and to do so in ways that avoid the strategies of cultural censors
Reimagining queer Asias: Performativity, censorship and queer kinship in the fandoms of Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation and The Untamed
No full textOnline queer fan spaces around dangai (Chinese television drama adaptations of danmei, or Chinese novels centering homosexual content) have emerged as places of debate and dialogue as well as a counterpublic to the hegemony of Western media representations of same-sex relationships. I analyze queer fan spaces and responses to the danmei Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation and its dangai adaptation The Untamed to showcase how queer Asia has emerged as a radical reimagining of generalizations made in favor of a single global queer voice. I explore how the novel and the drama subvert heterogendered stereotypes and highlight both the dynamic nature of political censorship and the subversive power of queer Asian communities. Placing queer kinship in online fan spaces at the forefront, I present a radical rereading of existing stereotypes associated with danmei and dangai, offering alternate possibilities to the terms "queer" and "Asian.
Cultural porters and banyun in Chinese fandoms on Bilibili
No full textBanyun is the grassroots transnational media flow of foreign media content on Chinese platforms, particularly Bilibili. In this case study, we explore the role of the practitioners of banyun, the "cultural porters," in relation to other fans and the original creators of the "transported" videos. We propose to understand banyun in Chinese online fandoms as a practice of partial storytelling through free digital labor, which shapes interpretative frameworks shared among fans and facilitates engagement with the fan object. We find that porters can transform their identities from fans to influencers with great fluidity, but they are also confined by negotiations of collaborative roles and boundaries of power with the original creators
Crossing swords and cutting sleeves: The cross-cultural impact of Chinese fandom fan fiction on Asian American youths
No full textChinese dramas such as The Untamed and other popular media productions have opened further discussions about China’s cultural impact outside its national borders. With the increasing visibility of Chinese pop culture on the international market, more and more Chinese Americans have entered into a variety of cultural and national exchanges through their interactions with Chinese media and its subsequent fan productions, such as English-language fan fiction inspired by non-English productions
Pregnant Teen Wolf: The border wars of mpreg fics
No full textDespite its reputation as a controversial fan fiction trope, mpreg (short for male pregnancy) provides new opportunities for narratives centered around reproduction and family-making, especially queer family-making. This phenomenon is perhaps best seen in the fan fiction for the MTV series Teen Wolf, which aired from 2011 to 2017. Within these works, mpreg expands whom male pregnancy is able to represent. As these new opportunities for representation increase, however, diverse audiences have responded by stressing their own stakes in the representational claims afforded through the trope. Mapping these tensions onto a framework of cultural border wars, a concept coined by Jack Halberstam nearly twenty-five years ago, not only sheds new light on the continued conflicts that arise from divergent feminist, queer, and trans readings as they shift onto new media platforms but also offers a means of working with (and not against) these tensions
Producers, prosumers, and the expansion of the Chinese IP engine
No full textThe export of Chinese cultural products has been enabled by voluntary acts of translation and dissemination, showcasing prosumerism where consumers influence media production and co-opt production functions held by cultural industries. In this paper, I delve into the industry reception of such prosumer activity and its effects on the transnational diffusion of Chinese cultural products
"Supersex: Sexuality, Fantasy, and the superhero," edited by Anna F. Peppard
No full textAnna F. Peppard, editor. Supersex: Sexuality, Fantasy, and the Superhero. Austin: University of Texas Press. 2020, hardcover, $60.00 (374pp) ISBN 9781477321607
From Cinderella to i-woman: Web novels, fandom, and feminist politics in China
No full texti-Woman is a new genre of female-oriented web novel that emerged in China after 2020. By intentionally reversing the Cinderella story pattern of the classic romance, the i-woman genre and its feminist fans challenge patriarchal discourse and explore a new feminist way of writing. More than just a fandom of a popular literature form, i-woman is also a feminist mobilization strategy in contemporary Chinese online feminist activism. A textual analysis of i-woman novels and a digital ethnography of its communities suggests that by incorporating separatist feminist ideologies into novels and trying to build solidarity in fandom communities, digital feminists are conducting feminist activism in the form of fantagonism. Building an ideal feminist solidarity is performed as an exclusion of certain types of novel genres and their readers. Operating feminism through fandom opens new online spaces for feminist activists while affecting and restricting its operation. This developing fandom form shows potential for fandom culture to turn into political participation and offers insights into how to operate digital feminism in contemporary China