Transformative Works and Cultures - TWC (Organization for Transformative Works)
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"Boys love media in Thailand: Celebrity, fans, and transnational Asian queer popular culture," by Thomas Baudinette
No full textThomas Baudinette, Boys Love Media in Thailand: Celebrity, Fans, and Transnational Asian Queer Popular Culture. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2024, hardback, 28.76, ISBN: 9781350330658
Surviving Armageddon (aka COVID-19) through "Good Omens: Lockdown" fan fiction
No full textIn May 2020, Neil Gaiman and some of the team behind Good Omens (2019–2025) created a YouTube video titled "Good Omens: Lockdown" ("Lockdown"). In this video, the demon Crowley (David Tennant) and the angel Aziraphale (Michael Sheen) have a phone conversation discussing the pandemic and the importance of following the current UK health guidance. "Lockdown" inspired a large amount of fan fiction. I chose a sample of sixteen of the most popular stories in order to examine how fans transformed aspects of the video in ways that may give insight into and comment on potential fissures in the messaging. The analysis revealed that many fan writers actively resisted the normative, prescriptive health messaging of "Lockdown" and instead worked to make the messaging personal and inclusive of complex situational intersections, such as queer identity and mental health struggles
Real enough: Power and politics in real person fiction
No full textIn the age of artificial intelligence, deepfakes, cheap fakes, and similar developments that make the distinction between reality and simulation more difficult to identify, real person fiction (RPF)—narratives that treat celebrities as characters and subsequently depict them in various imagined circumstances—provides an essential inroad to understanding how and why audiences (niche fans and mainstream consumers alike) both create and consume fantasies about public figures. These works reflect the deeply complex and contradictory relationships that audiences have not just with the subjects of RPF but with the broader political implications and power dynamics that fantasies around these subjects illuminate
An unlikely documentary: Interview with Brannon Carty
No full textInterview with the director of An Unlikely Fandom: The Impact of Thomas the Tank Engine, Brannon Carty. This fan documentary examines the adult fandom of the television show Thomas & Friends
Disordered eating, disordered reading: Wintergirls and the fannish practices of pro-ana
No full textSince the emergence of pro-anorexia (pro-ana) online communities in the early 2000s, the role of written materials in these communities has received substantial attention, with some scholars theorizing that pro-ana readers consume texts in a distinctly disordered way. I interrogate that theory by examining the fannish practices of pro-ana communities on Tumblr and X (formerly Twitter). The 2009 young adult novel Wintergirls serves as a case study for how pro-ana readers negotiate between their own disorders and authors' anti-anorexia/pro-recovery intentions. Despite the highly controversial nature of their content, pro-ana reading practices mirror many of those found in modern transformative fan communities. Further, the communal nature of these practices serves to not only reinforce individual pro-ana readings but also turn originally anti-anorexia/pro-recovery texts into signifiers of a pro-anorexia sensibility. Analyzing these practices within a fan studies context allows for a more nuanced and detailed discussion of how pro-ana readers transform and deploy texts to perform their eating disorders online
"Who's afraid of little old me?": A Swiftie theory of monstrous femininity
No full textAn analysis of what fans' responses to Taylor Swift's latest album The Tortured Poets Department can tell us about how young people define, conceptualize, and operationalize monstrous femininity
The implicated supporter: Complicity and resistance in contemporary football fandom
No full textOver the last three decades, the commodification of football has progressed beyond a pathological threshold, complicating and compromising relations between fans and their clubs in a myriad of ways. Michael Rothberg's concept of the implicated subject is a useful resource for conceptualizing the changing shapes of fandom under the pressures exerted by the sport's ongoing commodification. A selection of examples illustrate the manifold, diverse ways in which fans are implicated in developments ranging from profiteering to sportswashing
"What a bust": Character selection and the possibilities of failure in hockey RPF
No full textIncreasingly popular since the upload of the first story on the Archive of Our Own (AO3), hockey real person fiction (RPF) plays with traditional media coverage of athletes' personal lives. We investigate fans' reading of former National Hockey League (NHL) player Nolan Patrick to better understand how he became such a prominent protagonist of slash fan fiction. We argue that RPF reimagines traditional media narratives to portray new configurations that escape heteronormative constraints and subvert their function. In this context, slash fans' selection and rewriting of this character appears to reveal fans' commitment to cripping the hockey narrative and to finding transformative queer potential in sporting failure
Controversy, social media, and Formula One: Examining #VoidLap58
No full textThe sport of Formula One racing is classically characterized by speed, glamor, and ever-present controversy. In recent times, the conclusion of the 2021 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix likely stands as the most prominent controversy in the twenty-first-century guise of the sport. Decisions made by then–race director Michael Masi led to a wave of outrage and disbelief among fans, sparking the emergence of the #VoidLap58 hashtag. To understand the complexity of fan dynamics within online Formula One communities, I examine the interplay between fan participation, the spread of conspiracy theories, and the polarization of the fandom, highlighting the role that fans play in crafting narratives
Teaching with fandom: Promoting student subject engagement and critical reflection through fan fiction writing
No full textIn a "Fairy Tales Through Pop Culture" literature course, I introduced the practice of internet fan fiction to engage students more fully in the course content. While this sort of creative writing project allows students to understand the transformative storytelling process, it is also a site of reflection and critique. As part of the process to help students understand the specific ways fairy tales can be adapted and what we can learn about the societies from which they originate, personal adaptation of fairy tales was an essential part of the course. Using a multiliteracies pedagogical approach, I present the strategies used to encourage student engagement, subject knowledge, and critical reflection on the subject matter, as well as student opinions and impressions of the project. While the use of this type of creative project can promote student engagement in courses, the methodology also promotes deep subject knowledge and critical reflection of the course materials covered