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Queer Fan Practices Online: Digital Fan Production as a Negotiation of LGBT Representation in Pretty Little Liars William Patrick Bingham Thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy University of East Anglia School of Art, Media and American Studies September 2016 © This copy of the thesis has been supplied on condition that anyone who consults it is understood to recognise that its copyright rests with the author and that use of any information derived there from must be in accordance with current UK Copyright Law. In addition, any quotation or extract must include full attribution. ABSTRACT: Fan Studies aims to de-pathologise fans, their communities and their fannish practices (Jenkins 1992). In doing so, Fan Studies privileges fan voices by interrogating their quotidian on- and offline fan practices (Brooker 2002; Hills 2002), demonstrating the emotional connection these fans have to texts. Much of this fannish engagement revolves around the creation and consumption of slash fiction (Bacon-Smith 1992; Hellekson & Busse 2006), a fan practice occurring in fan fiction communities that has been identified as a ‘queer female space’ (Lothian et al 2007, 103). This work predominantly explores why women create these fan texts with little consideration given to the fan’s source text. In spite of this, little attention has been given to LGBT+ fandom and how self-identifying LGBT+ fans negotiate mediated representations of LGBT+ identity, especially when considering the increasing level of LGBT+ media representations on television and particularly on Teen TV programmes. Therefore, this thesis addresses the ways in which fans negotiate non-normative identities represented in the teen mystery TV series Pretty Little Liars (2010-) by investigating ‘queer’ modes of fan production, namely ‘fan talk’, (fem)slash fiction, digital (fem)slash and fan theory-making created by PLL fans. PLL hosts a range of diverse LGBT+ representations and includes a large number of LGB producers and creative talent. This investigation occurs by employing a reader-guided textual analysis (Ytre-Arne 2011), a method that centralises fan meaning-making by analysing the fan’s source text through these fan interpretations. I argue that reader-guided textual analysis (Ytre-Arne 2011) allows us to better understand how fans negotiate LGBT+ representation, how fans accept or reject these LGBT+ representations and the characters’ relationships. The implications lie not just in Fan Studies methodologies and fan production, but also for Queer Theory’s ‘evaluative paradigm’ (Davis and Needham 2009) or how Queer Theorist assess representations as either positive or negative. Table of Contents List of Illustrations ................................................................................................................................... i Acknowledgements ................................................................................................................................ ii Chapter 1: Introduction .......................................................................................................................... 1 Background ......................................................................................................................................... 2 Argument and Research Questions ................................................................................................... 5 Terms and Definitions ........................................................................................................................ 9 ‘Queer’ ............................................................................................................................................. 9 Heteronormativity ......................................................................................................................... 10 ‘Fan-Scholar’/’Scholar-Fan’ ........................................................................................................... 11 ‘Big Name Fan’ .............................................................................................................................. 12 Terms in Action ............................................................................................................................. 13 Chapter Breakdown ......................................................................................................................... 13 Chapter 2: Literature Review ............................................................................................................... 16 Defining Fan(dom)s .......................................................................................................................... 20 Queering the Queer ......................................................................................................................... 24 Overt Representation .................................................................................................................... 27 The ‘H’ Word: Homonormativity ................................................................................................... 32 Teen TV Is Totally a Thing! ............................................................................................................... 36 Teen TV, Sexuality and Gender ..................................................................................................... 37 Fanfiction and (Fem)Slash as Queer Fan Production ...................................................................... 39 Defining Fanfiction and (Fem)slash ............................................................................................... 39 Approaches to (Fem)Slash ............................................................................................................. 41 Digital Fan Spaces as Queer Spaces ................................................................................................. 44 Chapter 3: Methodology ...................................................................................................................... 46 Ethnography and Netnography’s Hold on Fan Studies ................................................................... 46 ‘Desperately Seeking Methodology’: Crying out for a Fan Studies Methodology ......................... 49 Reader-Guided Textual Analysis .................................................................................................... 51 Methods ............................................................................................................................................ 53 Data Collection .............................................................................................................................. 54 Social Media Data Collection ........................................................................................................ 55 Fanfiction Data Collection: FF.net, AO3 and Nifty.org .................................................................. 59 Secondary Monitoring Stage ......................................................................................................... 61 Data Collection and Coding ........................................................................................................... 61 Data Analysis ................................................................................................................................. 64 Ethics in an Online Context .............................................................................................................. 65 Conclusion ........................................................................................................................................ 67 Chapter 4: Fan-Scholars, ‘A’ and Emison: PLL Fans’ Critical Engagements ........................................ 68 To Be a ‘Fan-Scholar’ or to Be a ‘Scholar-Fan’ ................................................................................. 71 Teen Mystery .................................................................................................................................... 74 Teen TV Conventions ..................................................................................................................... 76 Mystery Conventions and the Queer Connections ........................................................................ 79 Genre, Fan Engagement and Textual Productivity .......................................................................... 84 Queer Trappings and Kidnappings ................................................................................................... 88 Conclusion ........................................................................................................................................ 94 Chapter 5: Slashing the (Fem)slash: Fan Production, Consumption and Narrative Interpretation .. 96 Doing Reader-Guided .................................................................................................................. 101 ‘I, umm…Oh, god, a Chevy’: Gay Male Authored Slash Fiction .................................................... 101 Narrative Trends ......................................................................................................................... 105 Queer Desires .............................................................................................................................. 110 ‘It’s Considered Gen…It’s a Pairing That’s Actually Canon’: Re-evaluating Slash ........................ 111 Alternative Universe (AU