Transformative Works and Cultures - TWC (Organization for Transformative Works)
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Using pop culture authentically
No full textFan activism continues to broaden in use as an organizing method, but care must be given to ensure campaigns are authentic and not pandering. Understanding of source material, mapping of fan communities and major players, and structuring of narrative can help to achieve a more effective, authentic fan activism campaign
Discourses of Hindi film fandom and the confluence of the popular, the public, and the political
No full textIndian fandom reconstituted as a more participatory culture with the emergence of online cyber communities in the late 1990s to early 2000s, a move accompanied by shifts in the Indian mediascape. With increasing synergy among film, television, and digital media, Bollywood stars were consequently remade as transmedia celebrities. Bollywood stars use digital media such as Twitter and Instagram for promotion and publicity, but such use has created a new type of Bollywood fan: the internet troll. As film personalities now actively engage with social media, incessantly tweeting and sharing pictures, the line has blurred between the reel and the real, the public and the private. Fans having perceived access to the private, off-screen personas of their film idols has further complicated both discourses of contemporary Bollywood stardom and fandom. Stars' and fan's engagement and interaction on social media reveals the so-called disrespectful troll to be not merely a more active participant but a fundamental reworking of the relationship between star and fan, which had been founded primarily on admiration and veneration. This reworking has provided a space for political mobilization in the Indian (online) public space offered by digital platforms and social networking sites
"Straight Korean female fans and their gay fantasies," by Jungmin Kwon
No full textReview of Jungmin Kwon. Straight Korean female fans and their gay fantasies. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2019, paperback, 65 ISBN 9781609386221
The fandomization of political figures
No full textThis article examines the application of traditional fandom characteristics to political and historical figures using two case studies: the Notorious R. B. G. fandom surrounding Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and an urbanist meme community on Facebook that pays homage to mid-twentieth-century journalist and activist Jane Jacobs. These case studies illustrate how these two figures are turned into icons. Such fandomization can inspire enhanced civic education, strong political coalitions, and activism if the icons are viewed with nuance and paired with concrete action and study
Martyrs, athletes, and transmedia storytelling in late antiquity
No full textFan fiction in antiquity suffers from a lack of certainty regarding what is canon: is what is now considered fan fiction really fan fiction, or is it another contemporary version of the canon? The concept of fan fiction thus ought to be combined with the idea of transmedia storytelling, building on snowball-effect stories. This approach is used in an analysis of how the saints in late antiquity became a characteristic of Christianity. This era used fan fiction–like texts describing saints' life stories; shrines and dedicated basilicas, which allowed distinct communities to gather and celebrate; pilgrimages, which combined adventure and biographical identification with the beloved saint; and pictures, relics, and pilgrim tokens. The Christian world in late antiquity has characteristics reminiscent of the universes created by transmedia storytelling, the aim of which is complete immersion in content
Affective racial politics in "How to Get Away with Murder" fan fiction
No full textThis article analyzes fan fiction about Oliver Hampton and Connor Walsh (Coliver), an interracial queer couple in the TV series How to Get Away with Murder (2014–). An analysis of the two most popular fics in this pairing on Archive of Our Own, "It's Called Dating" by grimcognito (2015) and "deCode" by tuanpark (2014), indicate that there is a shift away from gift or sharing economies of fandom to a market-like economy of prompt revision in order to produce and circulate texts meant to provide happiness to fans
Black (anti)fandom's intersectional politicization of "The Walking Dead" as a transmedia franchise
No full textDespite axiomatic industry and academic discourses of The Walking Dead's (2010–) status as quality TV—linked to its graphic visuals and compelling story lines—strong counterclaims question the text's (mis)representations of race and its propensity for systematically killing off Black male characters. An analysis of African Americans' responses to marginalized Black male characters politicizes the racial milieu of the series against the backdrop of wider racial relationships in the United States. Moreover, The Walking Dead is a successful transmedia franchise, and thus racial discourse shifts and changes, depending on which transmedia texts are being consumed. Thus, Black antifan rhetoric aimed at the spin-off series Fear the Walking Dead (2015–) centers on the zombification of Black men, a metaphor of the mistreatment and othering of young Black men by US police. Comparatively, The Walking Dead video game (TellTale Games, 2012) offers character development for its Black male lead character that fans praise against wider cultural representations in relation to both the franchise's hyperdiegesis and to video games in general. Therefore, Black audiences may read The Walking Dead as both racially reductive and radical. In doing so, aspects of self-identity, such as race, can inform (anti)fan positions through intersectional politics
Introducing Sport Rivalry Man, protector of positive fan behavior
No full textMeet Sport Rivalry Man, a character created to help sport fans learn about the rivalry phenomenon and to illustrate appropriate treatment of rival fans
Narrative extraction, #BlackPantherSoLit, and signifyin': "Black Panther" fandom and transformative social practices
No full textThis article examines the history, creative labor, and social practices around the #BlackPantherSoLIT hashtag on Twitter. Two years before the Black Panther movie event, the hashtag created a fandom of Blackness itself. Once the film was released, Black audiences experienced freedom from fan labor practices typically used when consuming content without significant Black representation
The making of Ḥanina ben Dosa: Fan fiction in the Babylonian Talmud
No full textThe Babylonian Talmud provides a series of stories about a certain Ḥanina ben Dosa, the last of the so-called men of deed according to the Mishna. This Ḥanina ben Dosa appears only sparsely in the earlier Palestinian rabbinic works. It seems therefore that the later, more elaborate, and more numerous stories about this character in the Babylonian Talmud represent a case of fan fiction. Using the distinction between canon and fanon, as is common in fan fiction communities, I reconstruct the conventions applied by the canon (Mishna and Tosefta) to the character Ḥanina ben Dosa, as well as the expanded conventions accepted by the fannish community (or interpretive community) represented by the Babylonian Talmud. The fanon used in a story cycle will be tested against an isolated Ḥanina ben Dosa story in a different Talmudic tractate as well as against an extra-Talmudic story. The applied conventions with regard to Ḥanina ben Dosa as adopted in an historiola of an incantation on an Aramaic amulet bowl from Mesopotamia will eventually appear to be the same as those of the Talmud