Transformative Works and Cultures - TWC (Organization for Transformative Works)
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"Mechademia Vol. 6: User enhanced," edited by Frenchy Lunning
No full textReview of Frenchy Lunning, ed. Mechademia Vol. 6: User enhanced. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2011, paperback, $24.95 (319p) ISBN 978-0-8166-7734-4
Sub*culture: Exploring the dynamics of a networked public
No full textThe sub scene, an online community for creating and distributing subtitle files for pirated movies and TV series, is a culture wherein the knowledge of a number of contributors is pooled. I describe the cultural and social protocols that shape the sub scene, with a focus on the linguistic and social exchange that characterizes this particular networked public. Analysis of the linguistic exchange shows that the sub scene is about networked collaboration, but one under a relatively strict social code. The analysis of the social exchange is structured according to Quentin Jones's definition of a virtual settlement. There is a minimum level of interactivity, as well as a variety of communicators, on the sub scene. It can also be described as a virtual common public place where computer-mediated interaction takes place, both in the form of coordination networks and of expert/user networks. Furthermore, it has a minimum level of sustained membership. The culture of the sub scene simultaneously bears characteristics of socialized and alienated cyberculture, which should not be perceived as a contradiction. The development of Internet culture is always happening within the full complexity of society as a whole, and the interplay between unity and discord must be seen as the basis for the social integration of any group
Revisioning the smiling villain: Imagetexts and intertextual expression in representations of the filmic Loki on Tumblr
No full textLoki fandom actively negotiates this potential conflict between character as text (interpretations of Loki by those with textual authority, such as film writers, directors, and actors, and comic artists and authors) and as primarily image (in the form of visual representations repeated across Tumblr)
Metaphors we read by: People, process, and fan fiction
No full textNew metaphors must be adopted for the writing of fan fiction. Henry Jenkins's metaphor of the textual poacher has achieved tacit acceptance and widespread circulation, suggesting that it has become relatively fixed as a description of fan creative practices among fans as well as in scholarship. Challenges to this model and metaphor are important but have not successfully displaced the prominence of the textual poacher. One promising alternative structure is that of Brownian motion, a scientific concept that both Michel de Certeau and Constance Penley have offered as a metaphor for creativity. Whereas textual poaching offers us a vision of fans as nomads, moving through a place and collecting materials, Brownian motion offers us a vision of fan fiction as world building, a process that remakes the place itself. Metaphors such as Brownian motion do not only offer us a different framework for understanding the creative processes that characterize fan fiction writing; they also remind us to focus on those creative processes themselves, as well as on the fans who engage in them
"Genre, reception, and adaptation in the 'Twilight' series," edited by Anne Morey
No full textReview of Anne Morey, ed. Genre, reception, and adaptation in the "Twilight" series. Farnham, Surrey, UK: Ashgate Publishing, 2012. $99.95 (236p) ISBN 978-1-4094-3661-4
Fannish discourse communities and the construction of gender in "The X-Files"
No full textFandoms can constitute discourse communities, where fans make claims about issues of real-world political importance, such as the relationship between gender, power, and autonomy, and where other fans engage with and evaluate those claims. In fan works and fan analyses of Dana Scully in the television show The X-Files, fans pose claims both in discussion spaces and in the creation of fan fiction, and these fannish evaluations and discussions of these fictions analyze those claims
Reflection on Chinese boys' love fans: An insider's view
No full textThe fandom of BL, as it is known in China, celebrates explicit homoerotic relationships between boys or men—fictional characters taken from mainstream media, real-life celebrities, and male personifications of day-to-day objects and animals, as well as original characters. Mainstream media reports on BL fandom and BL fan girls in China have never been favorable; this subculture and the fans within it are constantly represented in a negative and biased light. But because I am a BL fan girl myself, I can offer an insider's perspective. This essay is a reflection on my personal experiences and observations as a member of BL fandom, and a response to erroneous, stigmatizing claims and moral panic about this community in China
Simulation and database society in Japanese role-playing game fandoms: Reading boys' love dojinshi online
No full textJapanese video games have been characterized as typifying contemporary postmodernity in the form of simulacra, both as a media form and in terms of their extensive localization for international markets, which creates user fantasies of Japaneseness that are not linked to an authentic or original Japan. These simulations are reappropriated by fans to create new content, in this case boys' love dōjinshi, which are in turn disseminated and consumed in an English-speaking online context. Fantasy role-playing video games, which often privilege heteronormativity and binary gender norms in their goals, narratives, and aesthetics, are among the most popular texts reimagined in this way. This study considers the concepts of simulation and database societies through an examination of the ways in which artificial contours of Japaneseness are constructed in the role-playing game series Final Fantasy VII's boys' love dōjinshi fandoms, how far these fan texts develop possibilities for the deconstruction of heteronormativity, and how transnational digitized consumption methods facilitate the intersection of these phenomena
Trans-cult-ural fandom: Desire, technology and the transformation of fan subjectivities in the Japanese female fandom of Hong Kong stars
No full textThis essay examines the ways in which affective desire and new media technologies were mobilized by Japanese female fans of Hong Kong films and stars to produce a fan subjectivity that was at once cult and transcultural. The origins of this fandom, which flourished from around 1985 through the 1990s, lay in structural affinities of the Japanese and Hong Kong entertainment industries of the 1980s, as well as the ways in which popular stars of both places were expected to perform their stardom. In particular, a shared valuing of stars' relatability and approachability translated, for Japanese fans, into a seemingly paradoxical sense of intimacy with the stars of another culture, an intimacy that was fostered and heightened by women's pursuit of Hong Kong media outside the official distribution channels of the Japanese media industry. I examine the knowledges required by women to seek out favorite stars' films on VHS and VCD, as well as the sites of such consumption, which combined in the production of what I tentatively term a trans-cult-ural fan subjectivity that was at once cultish in its intensity and desire for ownership, as well as transcultural in its performance by fans
The super politics of comic book fandom
No full textEditorial for "Appropriating, Interpreting, and Transforming Comic Books," edited by Matthew Costello, special issue, Transformative Works and Cultures, no. 13 (2013)