Transformative Works and Cultures - TWC (Organization for Transformative Works)
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852 research outputs found
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Fitting "Glee" in your mailbox
No full textA Glee fan's personal fannish odyssey from the Archive of Our Own, LiveJournal, and Tumblr to the creation of physical objects
Why they won't save us: Political dispositions in the conflicts of superheroes
No full textComic book superheroes tend to be conservative and their opponents progressive. Here I explore the reasons for heroic conservatism, review recent disruptions to the trend, and consider what superhuman politics can tell us about our own transhuman and science fictional conditions
Cosplaying the media mix: Examining Japan's media environment, its static forms, and its influence on cosplay
No full textCosplay—costume role-play—has dramatically increased in popularity over the past 20 years in conjunction with the cultural institution of anime, comic book, manga, science fiction, and other related fandom conventions. Cosplay was prominently established in Japan before gaining attention in North America. In this article I analyze the significance of those Japanese origins in relation to the experience of a unique media environment. The aesthetics and practices of cosplay in Japan are fundamentally informed by a specific ontological characteristic of Japanese anime, manga, and ancillary forms: the static image. Of essential importance to these consumption practices—both materially and conceptually—is the phenomenon of the anime database: an archive of static images that is continually accessed for the purposes of understanding, consuming, and creating new media. Through a detailed discussion of Hiroki Azuma's conception of the moe database, Thomas Lamarre's discussion of the cel bank as a material requisite of the database, and Marc Steinberg's assessment of the media mix, I extend the phenomenological affects of this media environment and its static images to the act of cosplay posing—an act that aspires to create a mimetic and collective connection between cosplayers and particular media images. This exploratory platform will permit me to develop specific conceptions of Japan's complex media environment and its transformations of material forms into ephemeral consumption practices
Redefining genderswap fan fiction: A "Sherlock" case study
No full textUsing BBC Sherlock (2010–) fan fiction as case study, this article looks at how fans use and understand such concepts as biological sex and gender in genderswap fan fiction, arguing that the label often minimizes the importance of the physical body in determining gender identity. The label genderswap, most often used to describe stories where characters have become differently sexed, reflects and reinforces common cultural misunderstandings about differences between sex and gender. By teasing out definitions of genderswap, sex, gender, cisgender, and transgender, the article analyzes what genderswap includes and excludes from discussions of gender and identity within contemporary fan fiction, ultimately arguing for a broader conceptual understanding that grounds the genre within contemporary transgender theory
"Popular music fandom," edited by Mark Duffett
No full textReview of Mark Duffett. Popular music fandom: Identities, roles, and practices. London: Routledge, 2014. $125.00 (234p) ISBN 978-0-415-50639-7
"Anime's media mix: Franchising toys and characters in Japan," by Marc Steinberg
No full textReview of Marc Steinberg. Anime's media mix: Franchising toys and characters in Japan. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2012. Paperback 75.00 (304p) ISBN 978-0-8166-7549-4
Performances of innocence and deviance in Disney cosplaying
No full textDisney cosplayers are uniquely positioned in relationship to the characters they perform because of Disney's reliance on innocence as a narrative trope and character element. Their cosplaying transmutes normative innocence via performative fan practice
A pragmatics of things: Materiality and constraint in fan practices
No full textAlthough, as qualitative consumer research and material culture studies have demonstrated, objects can be rich sources of meaning and stability, they also entail basic limitations on human action. Interviews conducted as part of a study of one city's nerd-culture scene permitted analysis of the constraints that materiality imposes on fan activity. Fans must have access to certain physical objects in order to realize their practices, and collecting, storing, and purging these objects in domestic spaces constitutes a pragmatics that sets limits and exerts pressures on participants
Fifty shades of exploitation: Fan labor and "Fifty Shades of Grey"
No full textThis exploration of the debates that have taken place in fandom over the ethics of pulling fan fiction and publishing it as original work draws on the notion of the fannish gift economy, which postulates that gifts such as fan fiction and fan art have value in the fannish community because they are designed to create and cement its social structure. Tension exists between fans who subscribe to the notion of a fannish gift economy and those who exploit fandom by using it to sell their pulled-to-publish works. An examination of E. L. James's 2012 Fifty Shades trilogy (comprising the books Fifty Shades of Grey, Fifty Shades Darker, and Fifty Shades Freed), which began as Twilight fan fiction, in addition to Twilight fan art sold through sites such as Redbubble and Etsy, demonstrates a tension between the two modes of fan expression: sale of artworks appears to be an acceptable practice in fandom, but the commercial sale of fan fic, even when marketed as original fiction, is widely contested
Fan edits and the legacy of "The Phantom Edit"
No full textA fan edit can generally be defined as an alternative version of a film or television text created by a fan. It offers a different viewing experience, much as a song remix offers a different listening experience. The contemporary wave of fan edits has emerged during the remix zeitgeist of digital media and at a time when digital video editing technology has become more affordable and popular. The increasing number of alternative versions of films and the works of revisionist Hollywood filmmakers such as George Lucas have contributed to a greater public understanding of cinema as a fluid medium instead of one that exists in a fixed form. The Phantom Edit (2000), a seminal fan edit based on Lucas's Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace (1999), inspired new ranks of fan editors. However, critics have misunderstood fan edits as merely the work of disgruntled fans. In order to provide a critical and historical basis for studies in fan editing as a creative practice, I examine previous interpretations of fan edits in the context of relevant contemporary works, and I use an annotated chronology of The Phantom Edit to trace its influence on subsequent fan editing communities and uncover their relationship with intellectual property disputes