Transformative Works and Cultures - TWC (Organization for Transformative Works)
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Reflecting on Japan-Korea relations through the Korean wave: Fan desires, nationalist fears, and transcultural fandom
No full textThe reception of K-pop in Japan must be contextualized within the postcolonial relationship between Japan and Korea. Studying fan discourse and discourse about fans reveals that the Korean Wave (that is, fandom around Korean popular culture) has produced various desires and fears among the Japanese public, suggesting that persistent Korea-phobia among conservatives stymies K-pop's soft-power potential. A longitudinal study of K-pop fans in Japan and an ethnographic investigation of Tokyo's Koreatown, Shin-Ōkubo, indicate that these fans' activities reflect the current state of Japan-Korea relations. Consuming K-pop instills attraction among fans, but this must be weighed against the potential dismissal of Korean Wave fandom by conservatives as being too feminized. This case study shows the usefulness of transcultural approaches to analyses of fans
My coming out as an A-ha fan
No full textMany adult women who fancy a pop star are ashamed of their feelings, instinctively knowing the only acceptable fandom after adolescence is that of the (male) expert, untainted by desire. This might result in suppressing a crush on a band for years or even decades, thereby neglecting a valuable resource in difficult times. This personal account tells of coming to terms with being a fan of the '80s band A-ha at the age of forty-four. [Translation of 2019 German-language article "Mein Coming-out als Fan," Taz, November 12, 2019
Alternative pedagogies at Fan Studies Network North America 2020
No full textOverview of Multimedia section in TWC No. 35, "Fan Studies Pedagogies" (March 2021)
An archive of whose own? White feminism and racial justice in fan fiction’s digital infrastructure
No full textIn summer 2020, when the language of racial reckoning entered US and transnational public spheres following the murder of George Floyd, the contradictions of fandom's long-standing claims to progressive politics became sharply visible. An open letter with specific demands asking the fan fiction platform Archive of Our Own (AO3) to address the issue of racist content in the archive circulated widely. After offering a brief history of critiques of fannish racism, we turn to the specifics of AO3, the political commitments embedded in its systems, and how attention to racial justice could transform them. Drawing on fan fiction genres, we offer three potential models for thinking through these possibilities: a fix-it that would extend AO3's existing metadata structures; a canon divergence that would alter the makeup of the content on AO3; and an alternative universe that draws from abolitionist organizing to imagine the broadest structural changes of all
"Popular culture and the civic imagination: Case studies of creative social change," edited by Henry Jenkins, Gabriel Peters-Lazaro, and Sangita Shresthova
No full textReview of Henry Jenkins, Gabriel Peters-Lazaro, and Sangita Shresthova, editors, Popular culture and the civic imagination: Case studies of creative social change. New York: New York University Press, 2020; paperback, 99 (400p), ISBN 9781479847204
Including new media adaptations and fan fiction writing in the college literature classroom
No full textFan artworks may be used to engage college students in their literature courses. One such course is described herein, focused on reading, watching, and analyzing children's and young adult literature and their new media adaptations, including fan fiction, fan vids, and fan art. Rather than only requiring academic writing assignments, students were also assigned the task of writing their own piece of fan fiction in response to a course text
Women's fan writing and transformative works in eleventh-century Japan
No full textThis exploration of the literary cultures of eleventh-century Japan analyzes the ways in which the writing and reading practices of the period resemble those of modern transformative fan communities. Studying the defining fictional text of this era, The Tale of Genji by Murasaki Shikibu (ca. 1021), within the framework of fan studies demonstrates how existing so-called canonical material was transformed into a vehicle for female-centric reimaginings of dominant narratives. The circumstances of the work's authorship and its initial reception are examined via the author's own diary and The Sarashina Diary (ca. 1059), a memoir written by an early reader of the Genji, providing insight into both individual fan identity and the extensive female-led fan communities of the period
Tumblr’s Xkit Guy, social media modding, and code as resistance
No full textThe platformalization of the internet means that fan communities must make homes in spaces that they do not own. Tumblr has lately been the chosen home for many online fandoms because of its affordances for anonymity and lack of censorship. However, the profit motives of Tumblr's owners, especially after Yahoo purchased the site in 2013, are frequently at odds with the affordances that nourish fan communities. Fans on Tumblr are aware of their precarious position, where a few keystrokes by a developer could endanger an affordance that their communities depend on. An examination of the relationship between Tumblr users and Tumblr staff provides a case study of how fan communities push back against platform owners. The Tumblr Xkit Extension, a fan-made browser extension maintained by the volunteer labor of the Xkit Guy, is used to illustrate that the Tumblr community acts as a fandom of a social media site. This lets us understand the Xkit Browser extension as a resistant fan work written in the medium of code. Like video game modding, social media modding is a transformative work that permits fans to oppose the platform's code as law—but one that could also constitute a form of exploited labor
Victorian penny press plagiarisms as transmedia storytelling
No full textThe Victorian period saw the proliferation of penny press plagiarisms—that is, transformations of middle-class narratives, typically for a lower-class audience. Authors of these often anonymous transformations performed labor by expanding existing narratives in ways that resonate with today's understanding of fan fiction and transmedia storyworlds. Penny press plagiarisms illustrate the methodological challenges of studying the historical reception of literary and popular culture events that might be characterized as fannish, as the constitutive elements that describe a fan must be traced backward in the absence of living communities and with ephemeral evidence of engagement with popular culture texts. Application of insights from media and periodical studies shows that the penny press contributes to the long history of fandom. The Victorian period's literary markets, social class politics, and copyright paradigms defamiliarize these concepts in the field of studies of fans and fandoms, revealing how a history of Victorian fandom is also a history of for-profit transmedia storytelling
Fan leaders' control on Xiao Zhan's Chinese fan community
No full textFans of Chinese media celebrity Xiao Zhan provide a case study of the existence of a highly centralized, well-trained fan community in Chinese media fandom, in which a majority of the fans are controlled and exploited by a faction of fan leaders. Fans have strong, exclusive feelings regarding their idol. Fan leaders make use of these feelings in order to organize the fans to routinize a wide range of data-manuipulation activities to ensure the success of their idols, and in so doing, these fans' actions exhibit conformity rather than autonomy. By controlling the dissemination of information within the community, fan leaders cultivate individual fans to ensure that they engage in a series of activities that support their idols