Transformative Works and Cultures - TWC (Organization for Transformative Works)
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Reimagining queer female histories through fandom
No full textCarol (2015), a film directed by Todd Haynes that is set in the 1950s, has quickly become a cult classic among queer audiences and has garnered industry prestige. By accepting the vision of queer female pasts that they have been presented with, fans of Carol use fandom to further shape this history, ensuring that at its core are ideas and practices that center queer connection, sensuality, and visibility. By using this vision of the past, fans not only create a community in the present but also, through this collective reconstruction, connect with lesbian history
Working with fannish intermediaries
No full textFannish intermediaries occupy a unique position between individual fans and industry stakeholders, since they have affective ties to the fan object as well as commercial interests in the ways that individual fans interact with that fan object and related content. These differences raise new questions regarding the ethics of fan studies work conducted in collaboration with such fannish intermediaries, as demonstrated by the reach and results of the 2021 Anime Con Survey
Historicizing the fan archive of Talia al Ghul
No full textThis personal essay reflects on an online fan archive for DC Comics character Talia al Ghul that was abandoned, after which time dramatic shifts in the fandom occurred, thereby situating the archive as an artifact of the recent historical past as a record of the character's history as well as the fandom's history
Fandom.com and fan-made histories
No full textFans painstakingly document canonical texts on informational wiki-based websites such as Fandom.com, creating a widely accessible resource for fictional universes that fans can reference. Analysis of these strategies as they build sites indicates that they act as historians as they document aspects of their fandom's canon
The fan-historian
No full textThe compound term fan-historian may be used to describe fans who engage in a wide range of memory, archival, and other past-focused fan work, which helps make sense of the past and makes it usable for their communities. Fan-historians may thus be described in an inclusive way that recognizes the common practices that exist between the work of fans and historians; both take curatorial and transformative approaches to knowledge. This formulation also emphasizes the fact that fans are participants in historical work, not merely its subjects. Fan-historians thus work as both fans and historians to produce fan-historical work. This labor is centrally important to fan communities and vital in light of the established links between history and power
Historical poaching within celebrity fandom practices
No full textCelebrity fans often critically read and make use of certain histories as part of their fandom practices. In their practices, fans of Chinese musical actors Ayanga and Yunlong provide two typical cases demonstrating both how fans poach a particular historical figure that, in turn, broadens their understandings of a celebrity and how fans poach history with the aim of supporting their fandom beliefs and communities. These fans mainly focus on using particular historical concepts to reinforce their interpretations and fantasies of their celebrities as well as their community practices while paying less attention to general historical reinterpretations, accuracies, and perspectives
Public reception of young K-pop fans in Vietnam, 2011–19
No full text"Water buffalo youth," "mixed-race," and "out of control" are notable mainstream terms publicly used to refer to Korean popular music (hereafter "K-pop") fans in Vietnam. In a de-Westernization of fandom studies via a Vietnamese case study of the complicated relationship between nationalistic discourses and transcultural fandom, a cultural frame surrounding mainstream online news representations and public reception of young K-pop fans may be constructed, specifically the dominant shift in the mainstream narrative about Vietnamese K-pop fans between 2011 and 2019 in relation to politicized notions of shame and pride. These findings reveal and complicate various cultural, political, and ideological subjectivities of contemporary Vietnam that are similar to China's ambiguous reception of the Korean Wave. Studying a global and transcultural phenomenon like K-pop in different national contexts remains relevant and important
Representing reggaeton through fans' online community archives
No full textCommunities of fans are collaboratively approaching the task of preserving the materials, memories, and histories of reggaeton, a popular music genre. Two online spaces, the Hasta 'Bajo project and the Reggaeton Con La Gata platform, provide examples of community archives founded by fan-scholars. These initiatives invite participation, recognition, and celebration of reggaeton, in turn constructing and revising histories of the genre, in response to institutional and dominant discourses. This intervention, which speaks broadly to ideas on fan initiatives, frames the convergence between archivism and activism within these spaces as oriented toward the pursuit of cultural justice
Furry fandom, aesthetics, and the potential in new objects of fannish interest
No full textFurry fandom has received little critical scholarly attention to date even though furries have populated the same spaces as other fandoms since the 1970s and engage in the same practices, including cosplay, fan art, and fan fiction. Yet furries deserve further study, particularly in light of the fandom's unique uniting feature: the object of fannish interest is an aesthetic. By deploying an aesthetic of anthropomorphic animals as text, furries broaden the notion of what an object of fandom can be and shed light on the sorts of transformative potential engagement that objects can have for fans. This argument, situated via a history of furry fandom in the 1970s, draws on fan-made sources, including today's furry art, to demonstrate how furry aesthetic manifests in real situations—and how furry aesthetic has the potential to broaden beyond studies of fans to queer and animal studies
How Adventure Time fans understand the 'true' producer: A close analysis of two encyclopedic fan texts
No full textAdventure Time fan encyclopedists cataloged the show's final eighty-three episodes on Wikipedia and the Adventure Time Wiki in different ways: the former favored a division handed down by Cartoon Network, whereas the latter favored a division in line with what the show's production crew had intended. Conflicts like this occur when editors disagree about who is the official producer of a text, a perception that is usually grounded in the epistemology of the fan archive. In considering this divide, the essay aims to build upon Ludi Price's 2017 model of fan information behavior by showing that the category of producer is more complex than many might initially assume