Transformative Works and Cultures - TWC (Organization for Transformative Works)
Not a member yet
852 research outputs found
Sort by
The expression of sehnsucht in the Japanese city pop revival fandom through visual media on Reddit and YouTube
No full textJapanese city pop music, which emerged in the late 1970s through the late 1980s, saw a resurgence in interest in the late 2010s as an online revival fandom formed across multiple platforms. This emergent fandom has prompted scholars to ask why this fandom emerged and how this audience relates to music disconnected in time and place from themselves. Various forms of qualified nostalgia have been suggested to describe different modes of engagement with media of the past, although these terms are both semantically awkward and do not capture the case of engagement with media removed from the personal or generational past. However, sehnsucht, an alternative model of evaluating the past against the present, is better suited to describing the mode of connection between fans, music, and the past. A thematic analysis of visual media in a case study of conversations on the r/citypop subreddit and on YouTube reveals that city pop fans seem to cluster many of the themes of sehnsucht in their relationship to a musical genre from an idealized past removed from the austere present
"Darkness never prevails": Doctor Who Covid-19 videos as keystones for pandemic engagement
No full textAn analysis of three Doctor Who Covid-19 videos featuring Jodie Whittaker and a discussion of how fans may have used these videos as optimistic keystones for pandemic engagement
Censorship on Japanese anime imported into mainland China
No full textJapanese anime experiences a bumpy road on mainland China's online platforms, with constant removals and edits. This has led audiences to express dissatisfaction and scholars to call on the government to develop a systematic censorship system. However, the need for improved censorship measures is not limited to the government. At least three types of subjects are involved in the censorship process of Japanese anime on online platforms. Taking Bilibili, a Chinese video platform, as a case study, we classify censorship on Japanese anime into government censorship, public censorship, and self-censorship. As the case study shows, these three types of censorship demonstrate dynamic relationships of opposition, coordination, and unity, instead of a unilateral act of government pressure, and there is no simple antagonistic relationship between the subjects. We propose advice for each subject, expecting to alleviate the current conflicts and establish more reasonable interactions between the three parties for introducing and censoring Japanese anime
The onus is not on us: Race and fan studies ten years after "African American acafandom and other strangers"
No full textRebecca Wanzo's landmark 2015 essay "African American Acafandom and Other Strangers" called for taking Black audiences, fandom, and critique seriously. In this roundtable interview, five Black scholars consider the impact of Wanzo's piece on their own research and centering Blackness in the field as a whole
Putting the "Black" in fan studies
No full textEditorial for "Centering Blackness in Fan Studies," edited by Alfred L. Martin Jr. and Matt Griffin, special issue, Transformative Works and Cultures, no. 44 (December 15, 2024)
To love and to labor: The Black female fan experience
No full textIn order to be classified as a fan, one must go beyond simply watching and become a participatory viewer, taking the text and engaging with it beyond the existing material, resulting in a form of labor. I discuss the additional labor Black female fans must perform when negotiating with their fan objects in the wake of the intersection of racial and gender marginalization
The design of printed fan fiction
No full textFan binding is a design process through which physical, printed copies of fan fiction works are created. These include both unique hand-bound objects for the designer's own affective, aesthetic pleasure and copyedit and design work mimicking traditional publishing norms but for underground distribution. Fan binding suggests durability and preservation, and printed objects can be transformative works in themselves: designed, typeset, and perhaps featuring artwork, maps, or other specifically created front/back matter and illustrations. There are many design decisions involved in curating fan works in a physical form and choices that fans must make. Readers of born-digital works find themselves craving the tangible, haptic properties of books, as well as the so-called realness that a printed book represents. This phenomenon is examined here through a case study of fan binding practice surrounding the fan fiction work Down to Agincourt, which includes survey and interviews of Down to Agincourt fans and investigates fan binding conventions and preferences, in order to learn how and why fans discursively practice this highly affective art form. Results show that complex interacting factors and affordances of both print and digital texts influence fan responses and desires
Trolling Shakespeare: Bad objects and the antifan discourses of Roland Emmerich's Anonymous
No full textRoland Emmerich's film Anonymous does more than simply advance an alternative theory of the authorship of Shakespeare's plays—it actively seeks to raise the ire of Shakespeareans by depicting a buffoonish, illiterate, and greedy Shakespeare who is wholly incapable of writing the plays. And it worked: in protest of the film's release, Stratford-upon-Avon shrouded statues of Shakespeare and street signs bearing his name. This response is, perhaps, curious; in his film, Emmerich makes little effort toward rhetorical nuance or speculative accuracy based on evidentiary gaps. Instead, he prefers to launch a broadside of sensational but easily countered claims. I contend that Anonymous mobilizes various antifan discourses, primarily by trolling Shakespeare and Shakespeareans wherein eliciting anger and tail-chasing—rather than debate—is the goal. Equally important, however, is the film's disdain for fandom in general, as Elizabethan fans are depicted as overly emotional and easily manipulated by cultural producers and real artists. The result is a film that trolls those who hatewatch it, offering a mutually supportive experience wherein two oppositional forms of antifandom ultimately—and paradoxically—offer pleasure to each other
To fan or antifan, that is the question
No full textWe introduce the complicated relationship between Shakespeare, performance studies, and fan studies before focusing on antifandom. In conjunction with evolving perspectives on antifan activities in recent years, we identify two broad, sometimes overlapping, categories of Shakespeare antifandom: (1) external antifandom or trolling that challenges the quality of his work or the perception of its cultural and intellectual value; and (2) internal antifandom or gatekeeping couched as a defense of Shakespeare against perceived threats posed by other Shakespeareans. In the process, we historicize Shakespeare antifandom activities and perspectives from Robert Greene to the present in order to answer the question, What does Shakespeare antifandom look like, and what are productive, rather than reductive, ways to engage with it? Over the course of this discussion, we offer the theoretical framework for the collection as a whole before explaining the organizational logic of the volume and overviewing the individual chapters
Building the spear: A demonstration in faking and remaking real feelings for an imaginary work
No full textAn exploration of the use of emotional responses and creative resonances in communal multimedia storytelling, using Twine to create an interactive text-based adventure game.