Transformative Works and Cultures - TWC (Organization for Transformative Works)
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Irish Shakespeare performance (faraway, so close!)
No full textI use Irish Shakespeare performance as a locus to interrogate how we negotiate and maintain cultural proximities and anxieties about what we term real, authentic Shakespeare in performance. Through archival research, I use Druid Theatre Company's early productions of Shakespeare plays—Much Ado About Nothing (1980–81) and As You Like It (1999)—to show how Irish Shakespeare performance occupies a nebulous position between traditionalism and iconoclasm, as well as between a desire to adhere to and to break a specific mold of performance tradition
The (anti)fan is Black: Consumption, resistance, and Black K-pop fan vigil labor
No full textThe continuous international rise of K-pop demands that current discourse on the industry consider its artistic model and the labor of its fans. Much of this fan work occurs on digital platforms such as Twitter, TikTok, and YouTube, allowing fans from different geographic locations the space for collaboration and transnational fandom community building. However, just as these platforms are spaces for community formation, users can also engage in discriminatory practices. These practices leave some fans, specifically Black fans, to face the realities of segregated communities off-line and in digital fandom spaces. I examine how Black K-pop fans attempt the im/possible performance of fan identity while already racially positioned as outsiders. Of particular interest is how Black K-pop fans experience fandom while being interpellated to the position of the antifan. Through an analysis of Black fan creations across social media platforms, I position "vigil labor," a wakefulness to the industry, and fandom as what aids Black fans in constructing their fan identity within and against the object of their fandom (the pop group) and the fandom itself
Using the Murdoch Mysteries fandom to examine the types of content fans share online
No full textFor many fans, much (if not all) of their fan behavior is displayed online, across a number of social media platforms through which they can interact and engage with each other and with the subjects of their fandom. This includes not only fan works such as fan fiction and fan art but also behaviors consistent with simply existing as a fan in an online space. The fandom of Murdoch Mysteries (2008–), a Canadian murder mystery TV show, demonstrates how a single fandom can manifest in multiple different ways across different platforms. Fans appear to make specific decisions about how they are willing to engage with their fandom and where
Developing a working taxonomy for pan-fandom information behavior comparison
No full textFan fiction writers regularly work to find the best ways to describe their fan fiction so that it will be seen by all the readers it might interest. Prior work studying the use of tags as metadata, which allows users to sort and filter fan fiction, demonstrates the value of their inclusion in studies of fan writing, fan labor, and fan information practices. By developing a method to study the organization of fan archives, such as a taxonomy of fan tags that can be applied to the works of any fandom, we will be able to gain understanding of the ways fan writers think of describing their works through comparisons of writer/archivist practices across distinct fandoms. From a library and information science perspective, findings that are common across fandoms could reveal ways to design reader-focused features for catalogs and book discovery systems that will allow users to search for fiction more effectively and find literature that interests them in their local libraries. One fan tag taxonomy has already been developed and has been used to study the works tagged "Romy" among fan fiction works in the Marvel Comic Universe. Here, that taxonomy is applied to a different fandom to test its validity for pan-fandom use, and the addition of a tag subtype to denote family relationships is recommended
Virtual idols: A new cultural industry and fan structure
No full textAs a result of the segregation caused by the pandemic, virtual idols have developed as a new entertainment model in China. This emergence has constructed a new subculture of fan groups
#web-weaving: Parallel posts, commonplace books, and networked technologies of the self on Tumblr
No full textThe literary meme format of "parallel posts" or "web weaving" on microblogging website Tumblr emerged from intersecting fandom and bookish communities in the late 2010s, rising with the fandom-cum-subculture Dark Academia. Parallel posts are an acute symptom of a digital literary culture defined by excess of content, filtered through Tumblr's aesthetic norms as a hub of transformative fandom. Parallel posts both represent and reject the norms of bookishness on other platforms, granting insight into the conflicting impulses of media engagement in the digital age, caught between consumption and rumination. Parallel posts are a resurgence of the commonplace book or quote-collection journal; both forms are technologies of the self, practices of self-transformation and self-expression. At a moment in which the relationship between literature and digital media is in flux, parallel posts and Dark Academia demonstrate the spread of literature into a wholly transtextual, transmedial frame, grounded in both personal expression and in fandom
Audience performance and sports fandom rhetorics during 2020 presidential election debate watch parties
No full textPeople who participated in the 2020 US presidential election debates by organizing or attending debate watch parties provide a case study of audience performance and fandom. While political fandom has been thoroughly documented as a phenomenon, I continue the conversation by showing what localized audience practices look like vis-à-vis physical and virtual debate watch parties. An ethnographic narrative excavation of debate watch parties, compiled from participant observations, field notes, and interviews, reveals three roles that audiences performed as they participated in these 2020 events—Marketeers, Public Seekers, and Activists—as well as how the rhetorics of sports fandom can contribute to the affective environment of an election. These audiences demonstrate the concept of creative narrative appropriation, particularly in the blending of electoral with sports spectatorship. By framing debate watch parties within narratives of sports fandom, these audiences help us better understand how debate watch parties facilitate political engagement in electoral politics
Why costume fandom’s distinctions from cosplay matter: Costuming’s craft, histories, and motivations
No full textCostume fandom is defined by intense affect for costumes and for the creative processes and material practices of designing, crafting, and displaying them. I differentiate costume fandom (emphasizing craft) from cosplay (emphasizing identity). I also highlight costume fandom's discourse about itself during the underexplored 1939–1984 period, including its numerous innovations. Autoethnography supplements discourse analysis on why fans historically and currently participate in costume fandom. Costume fandom discourse recognizes multiple overlapping motivations, including practicality, creativity, aesthetics, gaining or improving craft skills, identification, and other costume fans' creations or praise, as well as more problematic factors
Public versus private aca-fan identities and platforms: An academic dialogue
No full textThis conversation between Yvonne Gonzales and Celeste Oon examines the difference between two contrasting fan experiences and identities. Through an exploratory academic dialogue, the authors aim to start a discussion on the ways in which our online selves and our IRL selves interact to create unique identities as both fans and scholars across, between, and within social platforms
One-above-all: Stratifying communication within Marvel fandom:
No full textAn individual's membership in a fandom can constitute an important aspect of their identity. Accordingly, intrafandom conflicts can create division, prompting members to build hierarchies. Previous work examined intrafandom conflicts and what symbolic resources and fan capital (e.g., knowledge) are used to reinforce these hierarchies. However, little work has thoroughly assessed how communication facilitates stratification by linking symbolic currency to social strata. Expanding Weber's (1947) work on social stratification, we examine Marvel fandom to understand how symbolic resources gain power and how resources are invoked via stratifying communications. Through interviews with Marvel fans, we uncovered six intrafandom communication stratification strategies and found that external resources, including finances and gender, play an influential role in stratification