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THE CRITICAL FAN TOOLKIT: FANFICTION GENRES, IDEOLOGIES, AND PEDAGOGIES
A dissertation presented
By
Cara Marta Messina
to The Department of English
In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy
In the field of
English
Northeastern University Boston, Massachusetts March 2021
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THE CRITICAL FAN TOOLKIT: FANFICTION GENRES, IDEOLOGIES, AND PEDAGOGIES
A dissertation presented
By
Cara Marta Messina
ABSTRACT OF DISSERTATION
Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in English in the College of Social Sciences and Humanities of Northeastern University March 2021
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Abstract
The Critical Fan Toolkit is an open-access website designed for public audiences and interactive user experiences. In this project, I assert the pedagogical and cultural significance of fanfiction authors’ critical composing practices in resisting dominant ideologies, such as white supremacy and heteronormativity. Over the past few decades, fan studies scholars have moved from celebrating all fan practices to understanding fandoms as heterogenous; I contend critical fans engage with the theoretical and political commitments of the popular culture source text and their own communities. The site of this study, Archive of Our Own (AO3), is a popular fanfiction publishing website. I engage with two data sets: 36,000 fanfictions about Game of Thrones and
The Legend of Korra and qualitatively-coded interviews of six fan authors. To analyze the data, I use rhetorical genre studies (RGS) to trace generic conventions; the politics embedded within these conventions; and how individual writers challenge, reimagine, or conform to these conventions through their fan uptakes. I define “critical uptakes” as when a composer explicitly resists oppressive ideologies in their generic response, whether those ideologies are embedded in the anticipated uptake or in the genre that prompted their uptake. I analyze larger trends across fanfiction metadata, gleaning fans’ political commitments from their tagging practices. In the interviews, each fan demonstrates a meta-awareness of the politics and genres within their community and how their lived experiences drive their uptakes. I triangulate these data to conduct more in-depth analyses of fans’ individual uptakes of the source text, fandom politics, and fan genres. Finally, I define critical fan pedagogies, provide teaching materials, and advocate for the incorporation of critical uptakes in writing classrooms to center writers’ agency in telling their stories and resisting dominant ideologies. Tracing fans’ uptake demystifies the process of writing fanfiction and provides a layout for critical uptakes in all contexts. 4
Dedicated to all fanfiction authors who practice radical love and imagine better worlds for themselves and others.
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Acknowledgements
This project would not be possible without the support, brilliance, and kindness of so many people. I created this project because of you all and, in some cases, for you. Typically, acknowledgements are supposed to be short, but there are so many people who not only made this dissertation possible, but made it possible for me to get through my program.
Of course, I want to begin by thanking my dissertation committee. Mya Poe is the best dissertation chair I could have asked for. When I took a course with her for the first time, I loved how she traced histories so easily and clearly. I hope one day I can achieve a similar expertise. I admire her endlessly for her brilliance, careful eye, and ever-expanding dedication to protecting the graduate students with whom she works. Watching her lead meetings, carve out space for graduate students, and advocate for us has made me feel safe, heard, and loved at every step of this journey. I next want to thank Ellen Cushman, who laid a solid foundation for my first few years at
Northeastern as both my first advisor and through the several courses I took with her. She enthusiastically pushes me to carefully execute and articulate my research methods, all while caring for the communities with whom I work and of which I am a part. I also want to thank Neal
Lerner, whose laid-back attitude and affinity for laughter made me feel welcome at Northeastern immediately. Thank you for continuing to talk to me after we first met at NEWCA, when I fangirled about your chapter conclusions. Finally, I want to thank Laura Nelson, for her commitment to feminist praxis, computational feminism, and interdisciplinarity. I could only create this dissertation because she taught me Python and invited me to help build the Digital
Integration Teaching Initiative. She inspires me to continually carve out feminist computational spaces.
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I also want to thank those who made this project possible — fanfiction authors. There are millions of us that write, publish, read, and discover community through fanfiction. We are complex, persistent, and ever-expanding. Thank you especially to those who shared their stories and perspectives with me for this project. To Aria, Dialux, Gillywulf, Kittya Cullen, Valk, and
Writegirl: you are each brilliant writers, thinkers, and people.
Next, I want to thank all those whose patience and technical brilliance helped me create an entire website, learn XML for qualitative coding, build data visualizations, and think about all the messy steps of publishing digital projects. Thank you especially to Ash Clark for eir endless kindness and willingness to brainstorm with me; William Reed Quinn for answering my persistent coding questions; Avery Blankenship for guiding me with Flask and recommending the best
YouTube tutorials (shout out to Corey Schafer); Julia Flanders for teaching me XML, RelaxNG, and encoding practices as well as helping me articulate the theoretical and practical components of sustainability; SL Avey Nelson, whose gaming dissertation — and sardonic humor — inspired me to move to a digital project; Amanda Visconti for sharing her experience building a digital dissertation; and of course, Sarah Connell who helped set up grant funding, invited me to join create DITI, and demonstrated best practices for teaching digital tools. I’m looking forward to drinks when the pandemic is over! I also want to thank Heather Hardy, the Graduate Program &
Communications Coordinator, who has been instrumental in helping me navigate the details of the program; thank you for being a great coordinator and friend.
I could not have finished this program without the love and kindness from my friends. Just like in a shōnen anime, our kinships inspire me to keep fighting, even at my lowest. First, I want to thank my motherdaughterwives, Abbie DeCamp, Eamon Schlotterback, Alanna Prince, and
Avery Blankenship. My phone is always on the fritz because of all the memes, jokes, and love. 7
Thank you for always teaching and supporting me; I hope I do the same for you. Next I want to thank all the friends I made at Northeastern and in other academic spaces who remind me that academia does not need to be an isolating, lonely place, especially Tieanna Graphenreed, Cherice
Jones, Kyle Wholey, Laura Johnson, Galen Bunting, Genny Barco-Medina, Matthew Hitchcock,
Sarah Payne, Meg Stefanski, Vijeta Saini, Rachel Molko, Les Hutchinson Campos, Vyshali
Manivannan, Kyllikki Rytov, Qianqian Zhang-Wu, Izetta Autumn Mobley, and Mandy Olejnik. I also want to thank Anne Ellen Geller, my Master’s thesis advisor; when I thanked her for being a wonderful mentor after I graduated from St. John’s, she told me to “pay it forward.” I hope I do.
Finally, to all my forever friends, including Diya Vazirani, Natalie Hallak, Dean Kritikos, Caroline
Shaw, SL Avey Nelson, Alyssa-Rae McGinn, Alison Perry, Jack Wells, and Alyssa Alarcón Santo, who designed the CFT’s sick logo: I love you all.
Thank you to my family: my loving, ever-supportive mom, Jeanne Haid; my sometimes brilliant dad, Steve Messina; my sister, Elizabeth Messina, who I still idolize; the entire Haid family, especially Casey, Allie, and Ryan; my billions of other family members, too many to count; and my family-in-law, William and Tricia Reed Quinn, Catherine Myers, and little Sam who loves
Peppa Pig so much.
Finally, to the love of my life, William Reed Quinn. Thank you for answering my coding questions, even while you’re in the middle of an intense game of Overwatch; for cooking me food when I forget to eat; for laughing until we cry watching TikToks in the evenings; and for being the best pup dad to our best pup. And thank you for promising to go where I go; being there when I need you; and loving me with your words, actions, and touch. I could not have done anything without you.
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Table of Contents
The Critical Fan Toolkit: Introduction Materials 13
Homepage 13
About 14
Dissertation Materials 24
Framework 24
Literature Review 32
Fan Studies 32
Rhetorical Genre Studies 45
Research Ethics and Positionality 52
Methods 62
Methods building off research questions 63
Research site: Archive of Our Own 65
Computational data collection methods: AO3 data 72
Qualitative data collection methods: Interview data 75
Computational data analysis methods 77
Member checking 81
Qualitative data analysis: Qualitative Coding 82
Computational Essays 92
Fandom By Numbers: Visualizing Fanfiction Metadata 93
Homepage of Fandom by Numbers 93
Game of Thrones Fandom by Numbers Storyboards 95
The Legend of Korra Fandom by Numbers Storyboards 105
“I’m Going to Tell the Story You Didn’t”: Interviews with Fans 112
Interviews Homepage 112 9
Relationship Between Codes 114
“Fanfiction is Political:” Analysis Across Interviews 117
Explore Themes Across Interviews 134
“Missandei Deserves Better:” Loving Blackness through Critical (Anti)Fan Uptakes and Disruptakes 135
Tracing White Supremacy in Canon Compliant Uptake 138
Resisting White Supremacy through Critical (disr)uptakes: On Loving and Caring For Missandei 144
“The Liberated Voice”: Cases of fans’ critical uptakes 147
Critical Disruptakes in Antifandoms 153
Conclusion: Why Missandei Deserved Better 158
SHIP IS CANON: Tracing Representations of Gender & Sexuality in TLOK Fan Uptakes 159
Why TLOK Fandom? 161
Tracing Ships Across Time (Computational Temporal Analysis) 163
Exploring Representations of Gender and Sexuality in the Corpus 171
Conclusion: TLOK as Critical Fan Uptakes Case Study 183
Teaching Resources 186
Homepage 186
Defining Critical Fan Pedagogy 187
Critical Fan Pedagogy Resources for Instructors 197
Conclusion: Critical Uptakes and “Familiarity with the Borders of the World” 200
References 206
Appendix A. Interview Recruitment and Questions 223
Appendix B. Codebook for Qualitative Coding 229
Appendix C. Glossary of Terms 236
Appendix D. Syllabus for “Critical Fan Research Methods” 243 10
Appendix E. Activity: Compare Fandom Data 252
Appendix F. Assignment: Restorying for Justice 260
Appendix G. Assignment Arc: Critical Fan Research Project 263
Appendix H. Explore the Interviews 266
Uptake 266
Generic forms and rhetorical choices 278
Writer agency 287
Canon commentary 297
Power and identity 301
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Figures and Tables
Figure 1.1 Infographic on Critical Fan Studies 24 Figure 1.2 Infographic on Rhetorical Genre Studies 25 Figure 2.1 Screenshot of Tweet Sharing Results 61 Table 2.1 Description of AO3 Fanfiction Data 73 Figure 2.2 Screenshot of HTML Transcriptions with Codes 91 Figure 3.1 TLOK Fanfiction Additional Tags Network Graphs 94 Figure 3.2 GOT Fanfics Publishing Trends by Year 96 Figure 3.3 GOT Fafics Publishing Trends by Week 96 Figure 3.4 Romantic Categories by GOT Season 98 Figure 3.5 Female/Male Relationship Categories in GOT Fanfics Across Seasons 99 Figure 3.6 No Romantic Relationship Categories in GOT Fanfics Across Seasons 100 Figure 3.7 Male/Male Relationship Categories in GOT Fanfics Across Seasons 101 Figure 3.8 GOT Fanfics Character Trends Across Seasons 102 Figure 3.9 Sansa Stark Character Trends Across the Seasons 103 Figure 3.10 Trends of Characters of Color Tags in GOT Fanfics Across the Season 104 Figure 3.11 TLOK Publishing Trends by Month 106 Figure 3.12 TLOK Seasons 3 and 4 Publishing Spike 107 Figure 3.13 TLOK Fanfics Romantic Categories by Corpus 108 Figure 3.14 Pre-Korrasami Popular Ships 109 Figure 3.15 TLOK Fanfic Character Relationship Comparison 110 Table 4.1 Fan Authors Descriptions and Self-Identifying Information 113 Figure 4.1 Adjacency Matrix of Qualitative Coding 116 Figure 4.2 Correlation Matrix of Qualitative Coding 116 Figure 5.1 Screenshot of Missandei from GOT Before She Is Executed 135 Figure 5.2 Screenshot of Missandei and Grey Worm’s First Kiss from GOT 137 Figure 5.3 Pie chart of Characters of Color Used in GOT AO3 Fanfics 140 Figure 5.4 Top Character Tags Used in “Missandei” Corpus 143 Figure 5.5 Frequency of Character Names in Missandei Corpus Word Count 144 Figure 6.1 Screenshot of Korra and Asami Holding Hands in TLOK Season 4 159 12
Table 6.1 Timeline of Original Cultural Material and Fanfic Corpus 164 Figure 6.2 Trends in User-Chosen “Relationship” Tags 165 Table 6.2 Percentage of Fanfics Published Using “Korra/Mako” Relationship Tag 170 Table 6.3 Percentage of Fanfics Published Using “Korra/Asami” Relationship Tag 170 Table 6.4 TLOK Fanfic Corpora Separate by Published Date 172 Table 6.5 Results from Word Embedding Model Queries across the Three Corpora 176 Table 6.6 Concordance Excerpts from the Three Corpora 180 Figure 7.1 Screenshot of How to Highlight Character and Percentage Data 256 Figure 7.2 Example of Chart with Characters Used in AO3 Star Wars Fanfics 257 Figure 7.3 Example of Chart with Characters Used in AO3 Black Panther Fanfics 257
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The Critical Fan Toolkit: Introduction Materials
The Critical Fan Toolkit is an entirely digital dissertation on a website. This copy is specifically to preserve the textual writing done for the website. However, this writing is all done within the context of an interactive website and therefore is not meant to be read linearly. Visit the website URL below to experience the full effect of this dissertation. Also, Appendix B contains a Glossary of Terms, which is accessible on every page of the website.
Website URL: http://www.criticalfantoolkit.org/
Internet Archive URL:
https://web.archive.org/web/20210422225443/http://www.criticalfantoolkit.org/
Homepage
The Critical Fan Toolkit (CFT) traces, defines, and celebrates critical fan practices.
Critical fans are fans who challenge harmful systems of power — such as racism, misogyny, heteronormativity, homophobia, and ableism — in their everyday fan engagements. These fan engagements include writing/reading fanfiction, posting on social media and discussion forums, creating fanart, and more.
This toolkit is a collection of resources designed for fans, teachers, and researchers who are invested in integrating critical fan practices into their online and in-person fan interactions, their teaching, and research. These resources include:
● Fandom by Numbers: interactive data from the fanfictions published on AO3,
● Interviews: interviews of critical fanfiction authors from TLOK or GOT fandoms,
● Case Studies: longer posts about critical fanfiction practices,
● Teaching Resources: materials for both inside and outside classroom settings.
Choose your path 14
The CFT is a resource for teachers, scholars, and fans alike. These paths are a first step to guide your experience based on how you identify. These identities are not necessarily exclusive, but each choice gives you a path to navigating this toolkit based on what you may be interested in. You may be a scholar, teacher, and fan! Even if you do not directly identify with one of these positions, you may still find some paths relevant.
FANS SCHOLARS TEACHERS
(Each leads to a different webpage)
Accessibility statement
This webpage was built using HTML-5 and accessibility guidelines for screen readers.
Some visualizations are not screen-reader friendly, so I have paired these with descriptions to ensure those using screen readers can still engage with the content. All images include alt-text and all videos include captions. If you come across a bug or something inaccessible, please use the feedback form to let me know!
About
Everyone is a fan of something. Fan communities are everywhere, from online forums, to conventions like Comic-Con, to the parking lot of a baseball game, to a concert hall. Fans have shaped our culture and how texts are consumed; they speak, and production companies and textual creators listen. Fan communities develop and implement particular practices, and often these practices shift depending on the context.
What is the CFT?
The CFT explores fanfiction composing practices — specifically fanfiction written about
The Legend of Korra (TLOK) and Game of Thrones (GOT) — that resist or subvert dominant ideologies, such as white supremacy, racism, misogyny, and ableism. Everyday fan practices can 15 challenge these ideologies to instead celebrate all types of bodies, knowledges, and identities that are ignored, erased, or have violence enacted upon in popular culture. Our practices range from the types of texts we consume and how we choose to respond to these texts. This project specifically examines fanfiction genres — or recurring and contextualized social actions within fandom communities —and how fanfiction authors uptake these and the canon texts’ genres.
I hope that fans, fans who may not consider themselves critical fans or have not thought about the political ramifications of their composing practices, may use this project to think more critically about their practices. How can we continue to reimagine a world that combats harmful systems of power like white supremacy, heteronormativity, and misogyny in our own composing and engagement?
Learning goals of the CFT
1. Critical Fan Practices: Define and trace composing practices, genres, and uptakes that
critical fans implement using various methods, including data analysis, computational
text analysis, and interviews. These composing practices are traced through an analysis of
two fandoms from Archive of Our Own as well as interviews of fanfiction authors. Fans
who implement critical practices challenge the systems of oppression that are represented
in either the source text they take up or the actual fandoms in which they participate.
While you may not be a fan of TLOK or GOT, each of us have our own fan communities
— from fans of a particular cultural material to political fans to sports fans — in which
we’re invested. By defining and tracing critical fan composing practices and uptakes, we
can bring these practices into our own fandoms.
2. Teaching Resources: Provide teaching resources for both outside of and within
traditional learning spaces, such as classrooms. Specifically, the CFT examines critical 16
fan pedagogy. Pedagogy, in its simplest definition, is the theories, methods, and practices
of teaching and learning. Critical fan pedagogy — building off anti-racist, feminist, and
critical pedagogies — centers challenging systems of oppression through learning and
teaching with and through fan practices, including writing and analyzing fanfiction. This
toolkit can also help you develop your own data literacy and research skills. The CFT
offers teaching resources, computational notebooks to practice programming, and
interactive visualizations to be analyzed.
3. Data-Driven Arguments: Demonstrate how to conduct research and make arguments
using data. This project uses a mixture of large corpus (TLOK and GOT fanfiction
published on AO3) and interview data. The quantitative methods demonstrate how to
trace normative and generalized practices across communities, while the qualitative
methods show how individuals interrupt or embrace these patterns. Even though this
toolkit specifically focuses on the composing practices from two fandoms and writers
from each, these methods may be applied across fanfiction and other fan generic forms.
4. Open-Access Research: Advocate for and demonstrate the importance of open-access
research. How can researchers, teachers, and authors make content accessible to the
public and the communities with whom we work? The CFT challenges traditional
barriers of scholarship and academia by making all findings accessible to the public,
especially fans, instead of hiding them behind paywalls.
CFT commitments
The CFT is a dissertation project created by Dr. Cara Marta Messina. This project believes deeply in fanfiction and other everyday fandom practices as methods for resisting, reimagining, and refusing to conform to systems of power. However, this critical fan work is not 17 inherent, but is instead developed and learned. Because of this commitment, the CFT is a public dissertation available to all fans with internet access. This toolkit seeks to explore and provide guidelines for bettering our everyday practices to be more ethical, critical, and justice-centered fans.
My project examines just one instance of fan communal practices on just one platform: fanfiction on Archive of Our Own (AO3). AO3 is a publishing platform created by fans, for fans to publish, read, and engage with fanfiction. There are dozens of genres, thousands of fandoms, and millions of fanfiction works available; at the time I write this in early 2021, there are over seven million fanfictions published on AO3. This project is invested in tracing writing, publishing, and reading fanfiction as a social practice. Specifically, I am interested in examining how fans use fanfiction to be critical of the systems of power embedded in the cultural materials they love as well as the fan communities with which they engage.
I specifically focus on a faction of fan practices: critical fandoms and fans. Critical fans are fans of any cultural material or celebrity who challenge or subvert dominant ideologies through their everyday fan engagements, such as writing/reading fanfiction, posting on forums, and creating fan art. The phrase "critical fans" comes from the works of andré carrington, Paul
Booth, Rukmini Pande, Alexis Lothian, and other fan scholars, as these fan scholars point to how fans can resist forms of oppression.
Why fanfiction?
Fan communities are created around the enjoyment of cultural materials or artifacts — such as a television show, movie, book, or celebrity. Fans are various ages, races, genders, sexualities, socioeconomic statuses, and educational backgrounds. Fans in fan communities discuss the source texts through forums or other forms of communication, produce materials that 18 reimage the original materials such as fan art or fanfiction, cosplay (or “costume play”), and engage in other ways. Fans often identify and position ourselves as outliers of mainstream culture, so we form communities as separate from, but still tied to, the original source text.
One important phenomenon that occurs in fan communities is writing fanfiction. While not all fans write fanfiction, all who write fanfiction participate in fandoms. Fanfiction explores, reimagines, and claims democratic ownership over the source text’s stories, characters, and universes. Storytelling creates and shapes culture and community, and in turn shapes our underlying ideologies and politics. The stories we share and tell, and the stories we hear over and over, are “always connected to power” (Thomas & Stornaiuolo, 2016, p. 313). Stories, without critical intervention, can reinscribe dominant ideologies, such as racism and heteronormativity, and enact violence upon women, queer people, people of color, and people with disabilities.
Fanfiction offers a space for writers—especially those who dominant ideologies enact violence upon—to tell their stories to and perform their identities with other fans.
Reimagining stories has been around as long as stories have. Virgil’s Aeneid (29–19 BC) revolves around the character Aeneas, from Homer’s Iliad. Virgil reimagines Homer’s characters. There are also postcolonial retellings that reimagine canonical tales from different perspectives to tell the stories that are often erased. For instance, Jean Rhys’ Wide Sargasso Sea is a postcolonial retelling of Jane Eyre, examining the patriarchal and racist violence of colonialism in Central America. J.M. Coetzee’s Foe reimagines the story of Robinson Crusoe by
Daniel Defoe. The main character tells Crusoe’s story to Defoe, which he promptly publishes and erases her from the story. Similarly to Rhys’ novel, Coetzee’s novel also examines the violence of colonialism, racism, and patriarchy upon people, as well as how colonialists seize stories to reinscribe colonial power. These instances demonstrate how authors reclaim the power 19 of storytelling, using methods such as postcolonial retellings or counterstorytelling, a method founded in critical race theory.
Fanfiction is a form of reimagining source texts. Not every fanfiction resists dominant ideologies or subverts systems of power, but fanfiction as a community-driven practice provides space for authors to claim power. Fan authors can examine their positionalities as well as larger social and cultural systems through storytelling. There are also different forms and methods for writing, reading, and publishing fanfictions. Before the internet became a household technology, non-professional fanfiction writers — writers who are not paid for their labors — used to publish, write for, and read fan-created zines to share their work. Star Trek fans, for instance, wrote, edited, created, disseminated, and read fanzines about Kirk/Spock slashfic; these fans, most of who were women, explored notions of romance that eliminated gender inequality (Russ,
1985). Today, there are various online spaces where fanfiction writers publish their work, such as Fanfiction.net, Tumblr, Deviant Art, Live Journal, and Archive of Our Own. Whether fanfiction online, in-person, or circulated through snail mail, fanfiction writing communities allow fans to engage in conversations with other fans, provide and receive feedback on writing, and celebrate each other as well as the source materials that we love.
CFT as a scholarly intervention
I build upon the scholarly and public conversations happening in writing and rhetoric studies, fan studies, and in fandoms. Fan studies is an interdisciplinary field that appears in media studies, writing studies, digital humanities, communications, and other fields that examine participatory cultures and cultural texts. Writing studies examines writer-reader relationships, exploring context, rhetoric, agency, action, audience, and positionality— how can writers 20 successfully convey and develop arguments and creative ideas to reach particular audiences in particular times and publics?
In the past 20 years, writing studies scholars have become specifically invested in exploring the role of power and identity in relation to writing and rhetoric. For instance,
Jacqueline Jones Royster examines feminist — specifically Black feminist — rhetorical practices and research methods; Ellen Cushman advocates for decolonial research, especially when working with Indigenous peoples and knowledges; Eric Darnell Pritchard traces Black queer restorative literacies; and Jo Hsu traces Asian American trans literacy developments. I continue this work, by examining fanfiction writers’ practices, how they define their processes, and how their practices relate to systems of power and dominant ideologies. This toolkit thinks through how fans, specifically critical fans, are always-already rhetorically engaged, participating in ever-changing media, public, digital, and social media landscapes while simultaneously resisting normative narratives around gender, sexuality, ability status, and race.
Research questions
The overarching research question in this dissertation is: How and why do fans resist harmful dominant ideologies in their uptakes of fanfiction genres? Based on this question, this dissertation will explore three questions below. To learn more about the methods I use to explore these questions, visit the “Methods” section.
1. How can fans’ tagging practices reveal a resistance to or reinforcement of dominant
ideologies?
2. How do fanfiction authors define their uptakes, including their acceptance, negotiation, and
resistance to the original source text as well as fandom politics? 21
3. How can mixed methods help us reveal the complex and contextual interactions in
fanfiction texts between individual authors’ uptakes and fan genres and politics?
4. How can critical fan pedagogies be made useable and accessible for teachers and fans
alike?
Frameworks
Because of my investment in tracing fanfiction writing and genre practices as critical interventions, I engage in several disciplines. To read more about the frameworks I build off, visit the "Frameworks" section and the "Research Ethics and Positionality" section. I engage with rhetorical genre studies, fan studies, feminist digital humanities (DH).
CFT as a critical uptake
The Critical Fan Toolkit both explores fans’ critical uptake and is a critical uptake, itself.
Uptake definition
Uptakes, first defined by Anne Fredman in 1994, are the appropriate generic responses in particular contexts that have been deemed appropriate based on place, time, frame, and function.
Because genres are molded through recurrence, these uptakes have expectations and constraints that are either followed or challenged to produce results. An example of an uptake is when you get a wedding invitation in the mail and you fill out an RSVP response in return.
Uptakes are not just responses, but rather the expected responses around a particular genre. Online genres, especially fan uptakes, complicate what an “uptake” means as well as who deems what type of generic responses are appropriate to particular genres. While writers of a television show may imagine fans writing Tweets in response to particular moments, do the shows’ writers get to deem which uptakes are appropriate? No — fan communities choose the uptakes that are appropriate in their own spaces. In fan communities, reimagined or direct 22 responses to canonical moments are the appropriate response. And there are usually a series of expectations around these uptakes: critiques of the show, reimagining particular moments from the show, expanding on characters’ backstories, or expressing affective responses.
Critical uptake definition
My research centers around what I call critical uptakes, or when writers resist harmful and exclusive cultural ideologies in their uptake. Because uptakes are driven by the notion of expectation, critical uptakes call into question who gate-keeps uptake expectations as well as how everyday composers can push against these potentially harmful expectations. Critical uptake may challenge the expected uptake because it is ideologically exclusive, or they may uptake the ideology from the genre that prompted them.
CFT as critical uptake
The dissertation as a genre, a PhD candidate’s social action in the context of a grad program, shifts depending on discipline, cultural context, framework, and institution. Across most institutions, dissertations have one thing in common: their form and publication method.
Usually they are longer textual documents — some with charts, images, and tables — that are then stored in a database like ProQuest and printed out for a hardcover copy. And often, because they are stored in databases like ProQuest, they are often inaccessible to people outside of academia or who do not have institutional access to a particular database.
What happens when we envision the dissertation — and more generally, all disciplinary research — as not something to be read only by our committee and maybe one or two other academics perusing ProQuest? What happens when our research centers public engagement, rather than just academic community engagement? 23
Because I am researching fan communities and fan writers, I wanted to create a project that fans can both access and that they may find useful. This project builds upon what a lot of fan activists and authors, such as Stitch’s Fan Service Column in Teen Vogue, have been advocating for: combating white supremacy, heteronormativity, and ableism in fandoms. I hope the data and finding from this project can be used by fan activists, and I also provide methods for them to analyze some data, themselves. I also hope this project can guide fans who want to enact critical fan uptakes in their everyday fan composing practices. I imagine this project, then as a critical uptake, where I still act upon the generic expectations of graduate students, but transform expectations by making this entirely digital and entirely open-access.
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Dissertation Materials
This portion of the CFT describes the meta-work of creating this project. The more expected dissertation writing can be found in this section.
Framework
This project uses an interdisciplinary framework. I examine fanfiction genres and critical fan composing practices through critical fan studies and rhetorical genre studies (RGS) lenses. I also rely on feminist digital humanities (DH) to make decisions around methods, data transformation, and publication choices.
Figure 1.1
Infographic for Critical Fan Studies
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Figure 1.2
Infographic for Rhetorical Genre Studies
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Critical fandoms
As Paulo Freire defines in Pedagogy of the Oppressed, critical consciousness is the exploration of and resistance to systems of power and oppression that permeate social and political norms. The definition of “critical fandom” carries Freire’s ideas to fanfiction and fan genres, particularly when thinking about the exclusive cultural ideologies reinforced and embedded in original cultural materials. Paul Booth (2015) calls for a shift in how academic fans write about fan studies, specifically shifting away from trying to place a neoliberal “value” on critical fan practices and instead acknowledging the work — often unpaid and resistant to neoliberal notions of intellectual property and ownership — already being done in fandoms.
Booth emphasizes that fans are often doing critical work in their everyday practices.
Fandoms are, as Booth argues, “the classroom of the future” in which academics need to listen to the critical work already being done in fandoms and value these frameworks in our research.
Booth’s article demonstrates fan scholars’ investments in amplifying fans’ voices; scholars who analyze fandoms must also listen to the work being done by fans.
andré carrington (2013) also argues that fanfiction is “critical reception,” or how fans challenge hegemonic and harmful mainstream narratives in their practices. Specifically, carrington highlights Black fans writing about Black characters or racebending characters to better represent their own experiences. “Critical reception” prioritizes how fans, especially Black fans, always-already recognize and challenge the misrepresentations or erasures of particular people and stories in mainstream media. Abigail De Kosnik and carrington (2019) continue focusing on fans of color and critical race theory in the special issue “Fans of Color, Fandoms of
Color” in Transformative Works and Cultures, addressing how fandoms and fans of color have 27 been largely ignored by fan scholars, demonstrating how the white supremacy we often critique in media exists in our own discipline.
Alexis Lothian’s definition of “critical fandom” continues carrington’s and Booth’s work by defining how fan practices can be critical (or not): “critical fandoms [are] the ways that members of fan communities use diverse creative techniques to challenge the structures and representations around which their communities are organized” (Lothian 2018, p. 372). Lothian’s definition partially comes from Paul Booth’s (2012) call for academics to both “listen to fandom; and it is our responsibility as fans to promote critical fandom in all our work” (emphasis mine).
Critical fan studies, then, prioritize fan practices that actively challenge white supremacy, gender inequality, heteronormativity, and ableism in the source texts, fandoms, and fan studies.
Defining Ideology
Ideology has a long, complicated history of conflicting definitions. This project defines ideology through the lens of social construction and rhetorical genre studies. Ideology is philosophical and political beliefs that encompass notions of citizenship, identity, and power as well as how these beliefs are enacted, reinscribed, or challenged through policy, culture, and everyday individual subject’s actions. Paré defines ideology as a “a process, a socially organized activity, as the daily practices of a society’s cultural, economic, and political institutions— practices that favor a dominant minority” (p 58). Dominant ideologies are almost always harmful towards marginalized groups of people.
Paré’s definition brings several important aspects of ideology. First, ideology is a
“socially organized” process, implying it is ever-fluctuating, contextualized, recurring, and social. Second, ideology is about power, especially how power is replicated and reified across institutions (cultural, economic, political, and educational). Finally, ideology is about “daily 28 practices,” in that our everyday acts can uphold these ideologies. Dominant ideologies are pervasive on a systemic, community, and individual levels. Examples of dominant ideologies include heteronormativity, white supremacy, and ableism.
Why examine critical fandoms through a Rhetorical Genre Studies lens?
Since the 1980s, fan studies scholars have celebrated the modes of resistance fan writers take up as they produce and read fan texts as well as create publics in which these texts circulate
(Russ, 1985; Lamb & Veith, 1986; Jenkins, 1992). Scholars in writing studies and rhetoric have studied fan communities to explore writing development (Roozen, 2009; Black, 2008 & 2009), fans’ negotiations of their politics and the politics represented in the source texts they love
(Summers, 2010), fanfiction as a remix literacy (Stedman, 2012), and the ways in which fans produce and contribute to reimagining the original cultural materials (Potts, 2015; DeLuca,
2018).
Roozen (2009) examines one writers’ vernacular and discursive shifts in participating both academic and fan literacies. Summers (2010) traces how fans in a Twilight discussion board negotiate their feminist identities while analyzing a text that some read as anti-feminist. DeLuca
(2018) argues for the importance of bringing fan composing practices into the classroom, as they center affect and teach transferable composing skills. Yet, compared to the vast amount of work on cultural impacts of fandoms, pedagogical implications, literacies, and genres of fanfiction and fan communities as well as the intersection with writers’ identities and knowledge-making practices are still understudied.
To research fanfiction means recognizing fanfiction writing practices that are defined by fans’ everyday practices, politics, and interactions. Charles Bazerman (2016) defines writing as
“a social technology designed to communicate among people. It is learned and produced in 29 social circumstances, establishes social relationships, changes the writer’s social presence, creates shared meaning, and accomplishes social action” (p. 11). Bazerman’s emphasis on the social and communal nature of writing applies directly to fan writing practices, as fan writing is defined by fans. Bazerman argues that writing is “socially sponsored and shaped by the sponsor’s agendas” (p. 16); in fan communities, fans are almost always the sponsors. While writing taught in the classroom or published in journals are often more rigid in standards and expectations, fan writing is by fans, for fans, and circulated among fans. The barriers for participating in fandoms are few, and those that do exist are normally enforced by the community, rather than an external institution such as education or corporations.
Rhetorical genre studies (RGS) provides a lens for studying generic performance as part of this social process; genre conventions are created and perpetuated by fan community members’ actions, and there are ideologies embedded within these conventions. Hampton (2015) demonstrates just how fan studies, performance studies, and rhetorical genre studies can work together:
Reading fan practices as categories of performance within the cultural repertoire aligns
our method of analysis with fandom's valuing of embodied knowledge and lived
experience and its ephemerality. Fandom's use of the same characters in repeated
tropes—such as first-time, hurt/comfort, or friends-to-lovers—does, at least in literary
terms, make it easy to discuss fan fiction produced through generic conventions and
formulas.
This moment from Hampton’s piece is important for the CFT because Hampton shows how different tropes — or genre conventions – are performances that are rhetorical, situational, and recurrent. Performance studies and RGS situate action as ideological, rhetorical, and recurrent 30 within particular contexts. As writers perform genres, they are also performing particular aspects of their identities, simultaneously navigating or critiquing dominant, oppressive ideologies while offering a transformative reimagining of systems of power.
I am explicitly interested in thinking about fanfiction as uptake, or the anticipated generic responses to another genre (Freadman, 1994 & 2002; Bawarshi, 200 & 2006; Bastian, 2015;
Dryer, 2016; Messina, 2019). I build off Bastian’s (2015) methodology of individual uptakes.
She argues uptakes are often a “rigid force” and a “habitual and unconscious process.” For instance, replying to a wedding invitation by checking off “Going” on an RSVP card and filling in your name may feel like second nature. Focusing on individual uptake, then, provides methods for RGS scholars “to account for the intentions and designs that people bring to uptake.”
Specifically, by naming and defining uptake, and then examining individuals’ choices while they uptake can reveal how the “habitual nature of uptake” reify dominant ideologies as well as how individuals resist these ideologies in their choices.
I also incorporate Dryer’s (2016) uptake taxonomy; I specifically use “uptake enactments,” or the actual action of the uptake, and “uptake artifacts,” or the material product.
Tracing fans’ uptakes, both uptake enactment — the fans’ process of writing fanfiction — and uptake artifacts — the actual fanfiction — provides a method for better defining:
• fanfiction genre conventions,
• how these conventions are defined by fan communities,
• how individual fans interpret and uptake these conventions,
• the ideologies embedded in these conventions,
• and how these conventions can either be challenged or reinforced through
individual fan composers’ everyday uptakes. 31
Why feminist digital humanities?
Digital Humanities is an interdisciplinary field in which scholars apply humanistic lenses to digital spaces, including social media platforms, information systems, and communication technologies. I am purposefully keeping my definition of DH broad, as DH can even extend past the humanities, helping to inform disciplines in the Social Sciences and Library & Information
Systems (LIS). DH appears in rhetoric and writing studies in several academic spaces, including the peer-reviewed journals Kairos and Computers and Composition and at annual conferences like “Computers and Writing.” I specifically emphasize feminist DH, a sub-field that is committed to feminist praxis — especially anti-racist and queer feminism — interwoven with
DH methods and methodologies (Wernimont, 2015; Bailey, 2015; Bailey et. al, 2016; Losh &
Wernimont, 2018; Lothian, 2018; D’Ignazio & Klein, 2020).
Bringing digital humanities into this dissertation helps me understand several important components, especially since this project is open-access and works with qualitative, quantitatie, and textual data.
● models for digital publishing (Arola, Ball, & Sheppard, 2014; Visconti, 2015; Eyman et. al,
2016)
● computational research methods (Programming Historian; Klein, 2020; Quinn, 2020),
● how knowledge, information, and data is constructed, analyzed, and modeled (Flanders,
2009; Bardzell, 2010; Fiesler, 2016; ; Rawson & Muñoz, 2016; Losh & Wernimont, 2018;
Levesque DeCamp, 2020; D'Ignazio & Klein, 2020; Ahnert et. al, 2020),
● how this knowledge perpetuates or subverts dominant ideologies (Bailey, 2015; Posner,
2016; Losh & Wernimont, 2018; Levesque Decamp, 2020; D'Ignazio & Klein, 2020). 32
With all this in mind, merging fan studies and DH is important because now fan communities are often developed in digital spaces. This project relies on the theoretical and disciplinary groundwork for best ethical research practices, understanding how information systems can reify or subvert dominant ideologies, and methods for analyzing digital data. Visit the “Methods” and the “Research Ethics and Positionality” portions of the CFT to learn how I integrate feminist DH.
Literature Review
This section of the CFT reviews the literature across fan studies and rhetorical genre studies. I provide brief histories of each discipline, demonstrate the specific sub-fields and authors off whom I build, and explicitly create links across these disciplines. While fan studies has its own academic, peer-reviewed journal — Transformative Works and Cultures — scholars typically engage with fandoms and fan practices through their own disciplines. Scholars examine fandom practices through writing, literacy, and rhetoric lenses (Roozen, 2009; Summers, 2010;
Stedman, 2012; Thomas & Stornaiuolo, 2016; Roozen & Erickson, 2017; Messina, 2019); through digital humanities (Lothian, 2018) and information science lenses (Fiesler, Morrison, &
Bruckman, 2016; Price & Robinson, 2017); and through media and cultural studies (Jenkins,
1992 & 2008; carrington, 2013; Wanzo, 2015; Pande, 2018; Florini, 2019; Pianzola, Acerbi, &
Rebora, 2020). There are so many more disciplines, such as psychology and anthropology, that have taken up examining fan practices. However, for the sake of keeping this literature review brief, I focus on fan studies as it applies to writing and rhetorical genre studies (RGS). To learn more about how I include feminist Digital Humanities, visit the “Research Ethics and
Positionality” and “Methods” sections.
Fan Studies 33
Since the 1980s, fan scholars have argued fan communal spaces are both built off of yet separate from popular culture materials, such as television shows or movies (Russ, 1985; Lamb
& Veith, 1986; Jenkins, 1992 & 2008; Summers, 2010; carrington, 2013; Hellekson & Busse,
2014). Fan communities are often built by people from marginalized subject positions, such as women (Russ, 1985; Lamb & Veith, 1986; Coppa 2008), queer people (Jones, 2002; Huntington,
2012), and people of color (carrington, 2013; Wanzo, 2015; Thomas & Storniuolo, 2016; Day &
Christian, 2017; Rukmini, 2018; de Kosnik & carrington, 2019). In fan communities, there are all different forms of composing, communicating and performing such as fanfiction, fan art, fan- made music videos, analyzing source texts, cosplaying, attending conventions, and more. Fan composing practices are also ever-changing, transforming alongside the technologies and platforms used to communicate.
For instance, before the internet became a household technology, fanzines were disseminated at conventions or through snail-mail. These fanzine shared fan art and fanfiction that were authored, edited, circulated, and read by fans (Russ, 29185; Lamb & Veith, 1986;
Jenkins, 1992). After the internet became a household technology, fan communities are formed on discussion boards (Summers, 2010; Potts, 2015), through social media hashtags and networks
(Jung, 2011; Wanzo, 2015; Price & Robinson, 2017 & 2021; Florini, 2019), and on fanfiction publishing websites such as Fanfiction.net and Archive of Our Own (Dalton, 2012; Hampton,
2014; Price & Robinson, 2021; Fathallah, 2020). This history demonstrates how technologies impact fans community’s interactions and how they shape themselves. Fans relied on snail mail and print technologies for fanzines, and now they use internet publishing platforms; some of these platforms, like AO3, are designed and maintained by fans, themselves. Fans use technology affordances to carve out their own spaces. 34
Fan communities and social practices exist across technologies, platforms, and spaces; the types of practices also widely vary based on fandom, technology, and space constraints and affordances. Attempting to capture or define fan community practices is an almost impossible endeavor, which has led to the explosion of fan studies scholarship across the disciplines.
Rukmini Pande describes fandoms as:
Loosely interlinked interpretive communities, mainly comprising women and spanning a
wide range of demographics in terms of age, sexuality, economic status, and national,
cultural, racial, and ethnic backgrounds, formed by popular culture texts...these
communities are marked by a high degree of interactivity and intertextuality among
participants and increasingly with source texts, their authors, and associated celebrities.
Most significantly, their most distinguishing feature is their engagement in transformative
activities, wherein the source texts are reproduced in some way to produce fan works (p
2).
Pande’s definition packs into it several important components of fandoms: diversity in fans’ backgrounds and identities; interactivity and intertextuality; engaging with the “source text;” and the inclusion of “transformative activities.”
Fans adore the works they transform, analyze, critique and reimagine, even if the hegemonic ideals embodied within these source texts mis-represent or completely exclude fans’ identities, which may include fans of color, queer fans, fans of different abilities, and more
(Booth, 2012). For fans, the source text is not a stagnant piece of work, but instead a space to play and explore. In this transformative work, many fans take up the problematic ideologies and silences in these source texts, either critiquing them directly or through their reimaginings and restorying (Thomas & Stornaiuolo, 2016). In this section, I will trace fan studies history, look to 35 scholars who have examined fan literacies and rhetorical practices, and finally move to define critical fandoms (carrington, 2013; Booth, 2015; Lothian, 2018; Pande, 2018).
First wave fan studies
Fan studies appears across disciplines and has been used and developed by scholars from education, feminism, new media, and other disciplines (Jenkins, 1992, 2006; Black, 2008, 2009;
Dym, Brubaker, and Fiesler, 2018; carrington, 2013; Hellekson and Busse, 2006, 2014; Thomas
& Stornaiuolo, 2016). In this section, I will examine fan studies’ history through a feminist and anti-racist lens, focusing on both scholars and important texts that show fandoms as heterogeneous, complicated communities that may reinscribe or subvert dominant ideologies.
Early fan scholars celebrated fanfiction writers’ practices and genre (Russ, 1985; Lamb &
Veith, 1985; Jenkins, 1992). Feminists were analyzing and celebrating fan practices before fan studies became an official academic discipline with a peer-reviewed journals, conferences, and edited collections dedicated to fan cultures. Russ (1985) and Lamb & Veith (1986) — feminist cultural studies scholars — examine slashfic, which refers to Star Trek fanfiction written about
Kirk/Spock’s romantic relationship. Joanna Russ (1985) describes slasfic, particularly sexually explicit fanfiction, as pornography that centralizes women and women’s pleasure; Russ’ perspective, though, seems to come through a heteronormative lens. Lamb & Veith (1986) resist gender norms a bit more explicitly. Their more queer-friendly reading of slashfic challenges gender conformity and masculinity as they argue Kirk/Spock are more androgynous figures. For feminists in the 1980s, fandoms represented a world separate from the patriarchy, a world that resisted phallocentrism and centered women’s pleasure.
Fan studies became canonized in academia thanks to media and culture studies scholar,
Henry Jenkins. In his seminal book, Textual Poachers, Jenkins (1992) bridges media studies, fan 36 studies, and cultural studies. He argues “much of the interest of fans and their texts for cultural studies lies precisely in the ways the ambiguities of popularly produced meanings mirror fault lines within the dominant ideology, as popular readers attempt to build their culture within the gaps and margins of commercially circulating texts” (p. 31). Jenkins specifically points to how fans carve out their own communities within the “margins of commercially circulating texts.”
Fans often resist the commodification of storytelling; they create their cultures without intentions of profiting off or commercializing their fan materials. Since Jenkins book, there has been a rise of the commodification of fandoms — as seen through products like Funko Pop and the wealth of material goods available for fans to purchase — that often make companies, not fan communities, money. Jenkins’ quote is one of the most cited quotes in fan studies. This moment both addresses the reflections of dominant ideologies in popular cultural texts as well as fans writers’ practices in navigating, subverting, and pushing back against these dominant ideologies.
The paradigm Jenkins writes within is the very paradigm he seems to advocate against.
He celebrates fan cultures as separate from academia, yet approaches theorizing about fan cultures through a heavily theoretical lens, replicating the discourse and obtuse knowledge he critiques. Jenkins’ work also does not engage with feminism and anti-racism. In fact, he argues there has been a shift to “include” women in fan cultures, overlooking how women, fans of color, and queer fans have already worked to carve out their own spaces. While Jenkins is a fundamental scholar in fan studies, and books like Textual Poachers and Convergence Culture provide language for analyzing fandoms, I want to move away from centering Jenkins’ work.
Sara Ahmed in Living a Feminist Life emphasizes the importance of citation as a political practice, especially citing women, queer scholars, and scholars of color.
Heterogeneous fandoms 37
These examples show how early fan scholars — or “first wave fan studies” scholars as
Hellekson and Busse refer to them (2014) — originally approached fan practices from an idealized perspective. A paradigm shift occurred in fan studies because of the proliferation of the internet and online culture, fandoms as a space to study performance and queer theory, as well as a recognition of fandoms as spaces for critique (Lancaster, 2001; Hills, 2002; Jones, 2002). Sara
Gwenllian Jones’ (2002) essay on cult television shows demonstrates this paradigm shift. Unlike her predecessors, Jones addresses that cult television shows invite slashfic readings because there are anti-heteronormative logics embedded in these shows. She argues, “Heterosexuality is as much a matter of social practice as it is of sexual practices” (p. 125), pointing to the ideologies depicted in these cult television shows that resist domesticity, monogamy, and any heteronormative plotlines around marriage and romance. This paradigm shift views fandoms not as inherently subversive or resistant, but rather building off what the canonical source text offers.
Of course, there are fandom practices that are subversive, and as fan studies continues to develop, scholars address fandoms as heterogenous and in need of critiquing (Jones, 2002; carrington; Booth, 2015; Wanzo, 2015; Hampton, 2015; Lothian, 2016). Feminist, queer, and anti-racist fans carved out their spaces separate from even dominant fan ideologies, fandoms like in science fiction where White men characters are centralized. Frances Coppa (2008), one of the creators of Archive of Our Own, shows an example of a culture carved out by women in her analysis of “fan vidding” — or the creation of new narratives of a media product using clips, editing, and music. She specifically analyzes the meta-fanvid titled “Pressure,” makeshift auto- documentary created in 1990 about women creating a fanvid using a complicated VHS editing system. “Pressure” centers women’s labor, their pleasure, and their analytical and calculated approach to editing their fanvid. There is an emphasis in the meta-fanvid on their collective, 38 communal, and meticulous editing practices they use to produce the final product, a collective separate from the “inclusion” of women Jenkins argues for in his book.
Examining the divisions and tensions within fandoms demonstrates how fandoms can replicate dominant ideologies. The internet becoming a household technology, too, made visible these divisions even more. For instance, in a Transformative Works and Cultures symposium on racism in fan communities (TWC Editor, 2009), led by Alexis Lothian, fans from multiple racial and ethnic backgrounds share their experience and analysis of racism in fandoms. They discuss
Bingo card memes used to determine whether a fan is upholding white supremacy or not. Deepa
D., a South Asian Indian woman, explains the importance of these circulating Bingo cards in both addressing racism and anti-racist community practices for fans of color:
Bingo cards might be useful for white people, but they are important for people of color
because they say, ‘What you are experiencing is not personal; you're not alone; this is
part of a structure.’ It's important to recognize the parts of the pattern because then it
ceases to be about one person; it ceases to be about one incident that can be forgiven and
becomes part of an institution that cannot be forgiven.
For Deepa D., these Bingo cards capture patterns in racist rhetoric used to dismiss and enact violence upon fans of color. The creation and circulation of these cards demonstrates how this rhetoric is “part of an institution” — or reflects larger white supremacist systems of power — and shows to fans of color that they are “not alone” in their resilience through these systems.
What makes these Bingo cards anti-racist is that they make visible larger racist systems, signal how individuals’ rhetorical and composing practices can reinforce these systems, and disrupt these individual and systemic practices by directly addressing — and mocking — them. In a sense, responding to racism with these Bingo cards became a critical uptake, immediately 39 signaling someone’s racist rhetoric through this circulated, repeated genre and performing the act of resistance by reposting these cards.
Critical fan studies
Critical fan studies began to appear in the early 2010s to better examine how fans perpetuate or challenge racism and heteronormativity within their own communities, becoming critical of both the source texts and fan communities (carrington, 2013; Booth, 2015; Lothian,
2018; Pande, 2018). andré carrington (2013) argues that fandoms, especially Black fandoms, are a site for “critical reception.” Paul Booth (2015) refers to fandoms as “classrooms of the future,” in which fans simultaneously build their communities of practice off and critique hegemonic culture and the texts produced within this culture. Alexis Lothian (2018) builds off Booth’s understanding of fandoms to argue that digital humanities (DH) scholars should take a similar approach to DH as critical fans take to fandom spaces. To demonstrate this, I will examine how recent fan scholarship has centralized racism and anti-racism in both fandoms and fan studies.
Critiquing racism in fandoms and fan studies is difficult, but necessary work; fan studies and fandoms are often coded white and center whiteness (Wanzo, 2015; Rukmini, 2018 & 2021;
Florini, 2019; De Kosnik & carrington, 2019). Rukmini Pande (2021) in an interview argues, “I have come to recognize that the freedom to avoid writing and speaking about race is the worst form of white privilege inside the academy, and we — White scholars — cannot let ourselves off the hook here.” To ignore race, as many White fan studies scholars have done, is itself a form of white privilege. Often, fans of color and fan studies scholars of color carry the burden of addressing racism and asking for better practices, as people of color often have to take on this labor. For instance, Stitch, a popular culture fan author who publishes for Teen Vogue, writes 40 about how they experience and see racism in fandoms and, in turn, becomes a target for harassment.
andré carrington (2013), Rebecca Wanzo (2015), Rukmini Pande (2018), Ebony
Elizabeth Thomas (2019), Abigail De Kosnik and andré carrington (2019), and other scholars of color have dedicated their work to analyzing race and racism in fandoms. I point here to both race and racism, as it is critical to not only talk about racism, but how fandoms reify the construction of race and white supremacy. As Pande (2018) argues, “any discussion of race becomes an exception, an interruption, and a bringer of fandom drama” (p. 12). As Russ (1985),
Lamb & Veith (1986), and Jones (2002) show, gender and sexuality in early fan studies were important identity markers to analyze, while race was overlooked and under-developed. This fault lies with citational politics, gatekeeping and racist practices in academia, and white scholars not thinking critically about their whiteness or race (Pande, 2020).
As carrington (2013) argues, though, fans of color are participating in and part of transformative fandoms, often imbuing their own critiques of white supremacy in hegemonic culture along with bending characters’ race or reconceptualizing race from the source text.
Thomas and Storniuolo (2016) extend carrington’s dedication to fans of color by examining how fans, particularly young Black women, restory the source texts to insert their own lived experiences that are overlooked. They define restorying as, “a process by which people reshape narratives to represent a diversity of perspectives and experiences that are often missing or silenced in mainstream texts, media, and popular discourse” (p. 313). Restorying builds off critical race theories’ counterstorytelling methodology, or “narratives that present alternatives to dominant perspectives” (p. 316). In one of their examples, they how several fans racebent
Hermione from Harry Potter as Black, contrary to Hermione being played by Emma Watson, a 41
White actor. One fan shares that she “thought Hermione was like [her],” when she originally read the books, envisioning and identifying Hermione as a young Black girl, and the pain she experienced when Hermione was cast as White. However, this did not stop her and other fan artists and authors from racebending Hermione, reimagining her as they had originally imagined her, refusing to be erased. The notion of restorying and counterstorytelling is crucial in fandoms, as fans who belong to marginalized groups — especially fans of color and queer fans — resist normative narratives that contribute to their everyday, real oppression.
Antifandom is another fandom practice and space that resist systems of power, especially white supremacy. Antifandoms are created out of hatred or critique, rather than love, of a cultural product (Gray, 2005). Gray argues that, “antifandom can become a powerful means of constructing one’s own self and personal media fluency and literacy in relation to the deficient viewing of others” (p. 852). For antifandoms, moral critiques are what brings fans togethers, where networks are created around the notion of hate-watching or loving-to-hate particular source texts, characters, and even celebrities. Wanzo (2015) builds off Gray’s argument by arguing that antifandoms are “omnipresent” for Black cultural critics, both professional and everyday critics. Black cultural critics often engage with texts that they recognize as problematic, critiquing of both the “aesthetics” and “politics” of the texts. Wanzo also points to antifandom practices as a form of activism for Black fans and cultural critics, creating and building networks around addressing issues — especially whiteness — in cultural production.
Fan studies history, as with most academic histories, demonstrates how scholars’ positionalities can lead to blindness around particular ideas. While fan studies has since transformed to engage with a more heterogeneous understanding of fandoms, recognizing that fandoms are still entangled within the very same systems of oppression as source texts, there is 42 still much more work to be done. White supremacy and heteronormativity are still prevalent in everyday fan practices, leading to violence and erasure. How can fandoms, then, become the truly transformative spaces they were once imagined to be?
Fan writing practices: Fans performing selfhood
For this section, I focus on scholars who have studied fan writing practices as one method to better tackle the question above: how can fan authors help to construct truly transformative, critical, and resistant spaces? Writing, literacy, and rhetoric scholars have examined fan writing and composing practices to develop their literacy practices and develop/perform aspects of their identities (Black, 2008 & 2009; Roozen, 2009; Summers, 2010; Stedman, 2012; Potts, 2015;
Hampton, 2015; Thomas & Stornaiuolo, 2016; Roozen & Erickson, 2017; Thomas, 2019).
Thomas & Stornaiuolo (2016) examine the impacts of storying and restorying, especially for
Black fans and their literacy development. Summers (2010) traces how Twilight fans negotiate their feminist identities in relation to a source text that several label as anti-feminist. Hampton
(2015) analyzes a case of a polyamorous writer who subverts heteronormativity by labeling monogamy as a content warning, thus subverting the normalized notion of monogamy. These scholars offer insight into fan composing processes as methods for exploring their identities, challenging normative narratives, and claiming ownership over their language use.
Several scholars examine fan composing practices through the lens of literacy studies, examining how fans’ literacy practices and developments help them to cultivate a sense of self
(Black, 2008 & 2009; Roozen, 2009; Stedman, 2012; Thomas & Storniuolo, 2016; Roozen &
Erickson, 2017). Literacy scholars examine the sociomaterial reading, writing, and knowledge- making practices that exist and are perpetuated through particular cultural contexts and embedded with particular ideologies (Vee, 2017). Kevin Roozen (2009), Rebecca Black (2008), 43 and Sarah Summers (2010) each use similar case study methods of data collection to examine fans’ literacy practices and how these intersect with their development of selfhood and their ownership over language, technologies, and vernacular.
Kevin Roozen (2009 & 2017) uses a case study method to examine fanfiction authorship through a literacy lens. His case study revolves around Kate, who is both a graduate student and a fanfiction author. Like Black, he points to the networked activities in fandoms as “figur[ing] prominently in the production of self” (p. 140). He interviews Kate and collects texts from both her academic and fandoms spheres to demonstrate how she navigates each sphere as well as how her literacy practices for each interact. Similarly, Rebecca Black (2008 & 2009) researches multilingual writing practices for self-identified non-native English speakers. In her book,
Adolescents and online fan fiction (2008), she follows three case studies of adolescent writers who compose fanfiction to perform aspects of their identities through writing. Specifically, she argues that studying digital composing practices through a new literacy lens allows researchers to:
think about the online proliferation of networked, participatory ‘centers of learning’
(Purves, 1998 as cited by Black, 2008)...[and] it is time to address how such prolific,
networked, and interactive sources of information may influence students’ attitudes
toward and facility with more traditional, structured, and enclosed ‘centers of learning,’
such as books, encyclopedias, classrooms, and even libraries. (p. 7)
In Black’s study, she examines these “networked, participatory ‘centers of learning’” to demonstrate how fan authors, especially multilingual fan authors writing in a more globalized context, are taking ownership over their literacy practices and learning about technologies of reading, writing, and communication in digital spaces. She argues that writing in these 44
“networked participatory ‘centers of learning’” provides adolescent writers with methods for self-directed learning, engaging authentically with technologies, developing their communication skills — especially for multilingual writers, and owning their creativity. Finally, Sarah Summers
(2010) demonstrates how Twilight fans, mostly adolescent girls, on a particular discussion board negotiate their identities as Twilight fans — a text that leaves little room for a feminist reading
— and identities as young feminists learning about the world.
Black, Roozen, and Summers all mention forms of resistance and subversion, but Darlene
Hampton (2015) and Ebony Elizabeth Thomas and Amy Stornaiuolo (2016) explicitly examine subversive fandom composing practices, especially in resisting heteronormativity and white supremacy. Thomas and Stornaiuolo (2016) emphasize how Black adolescent authors resist white supremacy by asserting aspects of their identity into their reimaginings and restorying tactics. While Hampton (2015) uses performance studies rather than literacy studies as a lens — but her focus is composing as performance — her article examines a collaboratively-written roleplaying Harry Potter fanfiction in which the authors assert and perform their selfhood both within the actual fanfiction texts as well as their interactions with other fans in their networks.
Hampton looks at how the authors, for instance, use metadata tags to assert their own identity: for instance, they write “Monogamy warning!” and in a later comment, they identify as polyamorous. They aim to subvert heteronormative notions of sexuality and relationships by labeling monogamy as a content warning.
Most researchers examining fan literacies follow a case study approach, contextualizing their study within a specific boundary, such as a few authors, one discussion board space, or even one fanfiction text. However, each of their case studies shed light onto fan literacy practices where fans navigate networked publics, negotiate their identity, develop their own voices, and 45 assert their selfhood. As Thomas & Stornaiuolo (2016) and Hampton (2015) show, though, there are trends across fandom practices, including different genres, approaches to restorying a text, and modes of interacting with other fans.
As computational methods have become more commonplace in research, there is a growing amount of fan studies research that examines trends across larger corpora. Dym,
Brubaker, and Fiesler (2018) examine how fan authors “author gender” through the use of metadata; they specifically examine the different “Additional Tags” fan authors writer that signal characters are transgender as an active resistant to the binary created by AO3’s “Relationship
Categories,” which only has options for the gender binary, rather than more open options for a gender spectrum. Price & Robinson (2021) also examine metadata trends across different fan platforms, such as AO3 and Tumblr, to examine how fans define and navigate their communities.
While fan scholars have examined fanfiction as a literacy and through the lens of performance studies, there is less attention paid to tracing the conventions of fanfiction and why these conventions may exist. More research into defining fanfiction genres, tracing why these conventions may exist, the ideologies embedded within these conventions, and how individual fans resist or reinscribe these ideologies. I turn to Rhetorical Genre Studies (RGS) to better trace the dynamic actions within fan generic conventions and individuals’ uptakes of these conventions. By merging RGS and fan studies, this project articulates and compares larger trends within two fandoms, examines how each fandom reinforces or challenges dominant ideologies like white supremacy and heteronormativity, and also examines individual critical uptake and the affective connections fans make with the source texts, their communities, and their own writing.
Rhetorical Genre Studies 46
RGS comes from a multidisciplinary merging of several approaches to texts and communication: speech act theory, rhetoric, linguistics, phenomenology, and others. In the
1960s, J. L. Austin centered his work around how speech is an action that may lead to particular results; this theory helped pave the way to speech-act theory. The notion of genres as actions is central in RGS, as I will discuss in a few paragraphs with Carolyn Miller, whose seminal piece catapulted RGS. RGS has often been used in relation to the teaching of writing, metacognitive learning, and pedagogy (Rounsaville, Goldberg, & Bawarshi, 2008; Bastian, 2010; Artemeva &
Fox, 2010 & 2011; Reiff & Bawarshi, 2011; Rounsaville, 2014; Bastian, 2015; Kill, ). However, this project is more invested in examining RGS through a public lens and centering writers’ agency in navigating and uptaking genres (Bawarshi, 2000; Giltrow & Stein, 2009; Reiff &
Bawarshi, 2016; Dryer, 2016).
History of rhetorical genre studies
In the field of rhetoric and writing studies, according to Freedman and Medway (1994), traditional rhetorical concepts – like audience and occasion – began appearing in the 1970s and were incorporated in process-based pedagogy; these concepts, like speech as an action, became central in genre studies, as well. According to Natasha Artemeva’s (2006) history of the RGS, though, the notion of rhetorical situation came out of the failures of the cognitive process-based work in composition theory. Artemeva argues the rhetorical situation – which focuses on context, audience, and exigency (a specific issue, problem, or context that motivates a writer to respond) – fills this gap. In this section, I will trace how Carolyn Miller’s seminal text defining genre as a rhetorical, social action has been taken up.
Before defining genre as rhetorical, I first turn to Mikhail Bakhtin’s (1981, 1986), whose work solidified notions of speech genres and utterances as social. His theories have been used as 47 a basis for RGS, as he focuses on interaction and dialogue. Speech genres are socially embedded, relatively stable actions within particular contexts and between particular people.
While the speech genres are likely to be stable, the agency of a speaker/writer comes from these utterances, which are more individualized and specific to the speaker/writer. One of Bakhtin’s most central contribution is addressivity and the notion that utterances are preceded by other utterances; “[utterances] are aware and mutually reflect one another” (p. 91). These utterances also consist within a chronotype, or a specific space-time. By recognizing the dialogic, communal, and social consciousness’ nature of an utterance, more attention can be paid attention as to how or why particular utterances are chosen in relation to the context of the interaction and the rhetorical situation surrounding that interaction.
As Bahktin’s perspective became centralized in genre studies because of its focus on interaction and social construction, Carolyn Miller’s formative article “Genre As Social Action”
(1984) launched a new sociorhetorical and multidisciplinary approach to genre studies – Miller translated the notion of speech as action to genre as action. Miller’s famous definition of genre – a definition that is still cited in most studies using an RGS framework – is genres are “typified rhetorical actions in recurrent situations.” Instead of viewing genre as a stabilized category in which texts and ideas fit, Miller believes genre is separate from form because it is an action: the action of producing, reproducing, responding, and recurring all based on the social situations in which these actions take place. This view focuses on the phenomenology of genre, or the rhetorical and social situations in which genres are produced and reproduced. Genre also “serve as keys to understanding how to participate in the actions of a community” (p. 39). The exigence and situations can be assessed and particular ideologies about social, cultural, and political contexts can be extracted. 48
Catherine Schryer (1994) explores the connection between community and genre by exploring the ideologies that are represented and constructed in texts by thinking about how people who produce and reproduce particular genres, the social situations that call for these actions, and how genres construct and are reconstructed by communities Schryer’s article extends on Miller’s original definition of genre. Schryer argues that genres are relational and stabilized-for-now. Genres are relational in that interdependently define each other and often there are hierarchical values placed on genres. The notion of stabilized-for-now indicates the norms and expectations in genres extend from a complex past and present of other genres and sites, and because of this, these norms and expectations transform.
By understanding genre as a social action that can be transformed and is shaped by context, there is an emphasis on how community and social networks impact genre expectations and conventions. Fanfiction genres are dynamic, defined by the community, and transformed overtime based on community desires and needs. Importantly, embedded within genres — sometimes insidiously — are ideologies that shape how genre participants approach writing. For instance, slashfic fanfiction genre conventions found in 1980s have shifted because of changes in the community and access to technology. Slashfic in the 1980s mainly depicted romantic relationships between two men, and now it is more commonplace to see slashfic between two women characters and the inclusion of non-binary and transgender identities. The people writing, editing, publishing, and disseminating these fanzines were mainly cis women; now, because of the ease of fanfiction publishing technologies and shifts in cultural understandings of gender, there are people with varieties of gender identities — including trans women, gender non- conforming people, and trans men — that participate in the creation and dissemination of slashfic. Examining why particular conventions are “stabilized for now” provides a lens into 49 understanding genre sponsors and who has power in determining what actions are appropriate.
This is where examining uptake and ideology become central.
Uptake and ideology
In its simplest definition, uptakes are the interdependent relationship between genres; one genre usually prompts another. Uptakes, first defined by Anne Fredman in 1994, are the appropriate generic responses in particular contexts that have been deemed appropriate based on place, time, frame, and function. An example of an uptake is when you get a wedding invitation in the mail and you fill out an RSVP response in return. Because genres are molded through recurrence, these uptakes have expectations and constraints that are either followed or challenged to produce results.
In the collection Genre and the Performance of Publics (2016), several scholars reframe and expand “uptake” to think more deeply about the role of uptake in public genres. I specifically turn to Dylan Dryer (2016), who creates a taxonomy to define specific types of uptakes. In my project, I build off three of his terms: uptake enactments, uptake artifacts, and disruptakes. Uptake enactments are the specific actions an individual or collective takes in response to a genre; uptake artifacts are the actual texts that are produced; disruptakes are the genre prompts that challenge common sense uptakes to either exclude particular responses or to reimagine the notion of common sense. This new taxonomy specifically divides uptakes as actions, reactions, materials, and a normalizing process. What is especially important about the normalizing process, as the next paragraph will show, is the ability to critique and challenge these larger patterns.
Ideology is a bit more difficult of a term to define than uptake, as there are contentious definitions that have been around for hundreds of years. I turn to Anthony Paré, who argues that 50 an ideology is “A process, a socially organized activity, as the daily practices of a society’s cultural, economic, and political institutions—practices that favor a dominant minority.” Paré’s definition highlights several important aspects of ideology. First, ideology is a “socially organized” process, implying it is ever-fluctuating, contextualized, and recurring. Second, ideology is about power, especially how power is replicated and reified across institutions — cultural, economic, political, and educational. Finally, ideology is about “daily practices,” in that our everyday acts reinscribe or resist exclusive and often violent ideologies.
RGS scholars center ideology to better understand how individuals interact with disciplinary and community spaces, how disciplinary and generic norms can reinforce problematic biases and harmful social systems, and how individuals challenge generic and disciplinary norms in their uptakes (Bawarshi, 2000; Coe, Lingard, & Teslenko, 2002; Paré ,
2002; Poe, 2007; Bastian, 2010; Reiff & Bawarshi, 2016).
The Rhetoric and Ideology of Genre (2002) is one of the foundational texts in which genre scholars think more deeply about ideology, identity, and genre. In their introduction to the collection, Coe, Lingard, & Teslenko argue for the importance of genre studies:
Our ability to act together is founded on shared perspectives, attitudes, values, and ways
of doing, on individual identification with community. The members of particular human
communities and cultures are able to act together because they are able to shape discourse
in socially expected and institutionally sanctioned ways (p. 6).
This definition emphasizes the communal aspects of genres, suggesting that genre participation can take a socially democratic approach and be “institutionally sanctioned.” To participate in particular genres means recognizing and sometimes conforming to particular expectations, expectations that can be community or institutionally defined. Institutions and communities are 51 not separate, as institutions can be shaped by communities and vice versa. Often, social expectations are determined by institutions — political, educational, and cultural — that demand individuals to conform and perform in specific ways. Communities — which can exist within, reinscribe, or challenge institutions — also ask individuals to conform and perform in specific ways. Community suggests a more democratic approach to shaping social expectations, while institutions suggest a more top-down approach into shaping expectations.
In thinking about the link between institution and ideology, I turn to Anthony Paré
(2002), Mya Poe (2007), and Rita Applegarth (2017) who explicitly connect institutional expectations with dominant ideology. Anthony Paré’s (2002) contribution to this collection is a solid examination for how uptake is impacted by dominant ideology, in which uptake can force individual participants to conform to particular expectations. He explores the uptake of Inuit social worker women when participating in social work genres and how these generic requirements contrast their cultural values, instead valuing dominant – white, Western, and middle class – ideologies, or the ideologies of the Inuit peoples’ oppressors. In Mya Poe’s (2007) work on writing assessment, she draws a parallel between racial identity and uptake to examine how African American student writers uptake writing prompts and, in turn, how racial bias in writing assessment uptakes the student writers’ work. Rita Applegarth (2014) uses Bazerman’s method of tracing disciplines by exploring the early years of the Anthropology discipline, particularly looking at women and people of color Anthropologists who pushed against anthropological disciplinary conventions. Her study of the rhetorical scarcity in Anthropology shows the role of generic gatekeepers in disciplinary formation. She shines light on the role of positionality in disciplinary formation and how those who pushed against disciplinary and identity norms upheld critical values in their genre participation. 52
Just as genres can reinscribe dominant ideologies, so too can they challenge these ideologies. Bawarshi (2000, 2016a) also extends Freadman’s notion of uptake to think more deeply about the roles of power, privilege, and ideology within generic boundaries and uptakes.
Genre boundaries are put in place for a reason and reflect particular ideologies; analyzing uptake allows RGS scholars to unravel the seams between these genres in order to learn the rules for participating within particular genres, to build and join communities that are constructed in genre ecologies, and/or to problematize these rules by exposing the harmful ideologies woven within genre performance.
In order to trace fans’ uptakes of source texts and genres within their own communities, I build off Bawarshi’s commitment to uptake as a response to power, Dryer’s (2016) extension of uptake definitions, Faith Kurtyka’s (2015) expansion on RGS and embodiment, and Heather
Bastian’s (2015) methodology for tracing individual students’ uptake. In order to draw explicit connections between embodiment and genre performance, Kurtyka (2015) centers emotion. Why do particular actors perform within particular genres or uptake other genres? What are their motivations and attachments to these genres? Bastian uses qualitative methods to provide a methodology for tracing how students navigate and access their discursive resources. She specifically points to the importance of studying individual uptakes. My project builds off these commitments to studying individual uptakes and centering embodiment and performance by specifically examining fan’s individual critical uptakes that are both responses to fan genres and responses to popular culture genres. How do fans actively resist dominant ideologies in their genre performances and uptakes?
Research Ethics and Positionality 53
In her article “Toward a goodwill ethics of online research methods,” Brittany Kelley
(2016) argues that researchers and teacher publicizing fan texts or communities may expose those communities for trolling, doxxing, and other harmful behaviors. She specifically refers to a fanfiction course at UC Berkeley that published its syllabus in the Daily Californian; fan authors’
URLs and information were made public without their consent, and as a consequence, trolls poured into their inboxes and harassed them.
Online fanfiction is accessible by most people with internet access. These fanfictions are not necessarily available for public consumption because they are held within a space dedicated for fans and are rarely looked at by people outside the community. By publishing fanfiction authors’ usernames and stories, researchers and teachers are making people outside the fan community more aware of these fans’ accounts and spaces, therefore potentially opening these spaces up for harassment. Online and digital community research should always center ethics and justice. Because information and data can be easily scraped off the web, I believe researchers should take time to explain the ethics of their research, receive full and enthusiastic consent from research participants, and explicitly share how their research may impact the communities they are researching. Digital research ethics must center the online communities and users first, recognizing that most people do not post on the internet expecting someone to write an article about their work.
In the edited collection Digital Writing Research: Technologies, Methods, and Ethical
Issues, McKee and Devoss (2007) defines digital writing research as research “(a) on computer- generated, computer-based, and/or computer-delivered documents; (b) on computer-based text- production practices (and we deploy text broadly here, to include multimedia artifacts); and/or (c) on the interactions of people who use digital technologies to communicate” (pg 3). Digital literacies and digital writing spaces have shifted how digital participants understand themselves, 54 communities, writing, conversations, and more. What does it mean to be able to access particular information from anywhere with internet access? What does it mean to be able to participate in an online community while remaining anonymous? What is the interdependent nature between writers’ complex digital and non-digital identities?
In this section, I will describe the ethical frameworks that drive my research, who my research and I am accountable towards, and how these commitments impact my research process and product. My research ethics stem from feminist — especially Black feminist — and decolonial research and scholarship. I implement feminist research praxis at every stage of my work, from my citational politics, to my theoretical frameworks, to my interactions with research participants, and finally how I present my work. Because much of my work focuses on critical fans, or fans who often explicitly address harmful ideologies and practices within their own communities, I ensured the fans whose fanfics I analyze and/or who I interview provided full consent before examining their work. I am indebted to the fans who consented to their work appearing in my research, not only because their perspectives help drive my thinking, but because of their dedication and love for fandoms. I have learned so much from them and from all the fans who I have engaged with in my fandom life, ever since I was pre-teen and discovered Yu Yu Hakusho fanfiction on Quizilla.
Digital feminist research praxis
Feminist praxis requires researchers to critically examine their own positionalities, their relationships with people who they research, their research process, and their citational practices when doing this research (Bolles, 2013; Bailey, 2015 & 2018; Ahmed, 2017). I look specifically to Black feminists, whose scholarship often builds upon and makes transparent research ethics and epistemologies. Research ethics are not just about the methods used and the communities studied, 55 but who your research is held accountable to and the types of knowledges that your research both values and perpetuates.
I do not consider my research decolonial as I am not working with Indigenous peoples, cultures, or perspectives. However, decolonial researcher ethics provide an important framework to practice more justice and care-based research. As Leigh Patel (2016) argues in Decolonizing
Educational Research, “research is fundamentally relational project–relational to ways of knowing, who can know, and to place” (p. 48). Patel emphasizes that research constructs knowledge and understanding, which can be used to empower groups but also silence and oppress them. The decolonization of educational research encourages researchers to begin asking questions like “why me?”, “why this?”, and “why here and now?” to address the contextual and localized reasons for pursuing this research, as well as directly acknowledging what is gained and damaged when this research is taken on.
My answer to these questions — why me, why this, why here and now? — is I am a fan. I have been since I was young, who has evolved a ton since I first began engaging in fan communities. My learning has happened both within and outside of fan communities. Originally,
I never thought about the importance of representation or how particular identities and positionalities were represented. I rarely critically thought about how my fantasies may have reified harmful notions of gender, sexuality, and race. Why, for example, did I erase women from all my fanfictions? As I grew up, I began to recognize seemingly innocuous practices as forms of harmful representation. This critical work helped me become the scholar, teacher, and activist I am today, and I believe in continuing this cycle for other fans. I believe we should all be critical fans. 56
In terms of my research process, I look to Moya Bailey, whose work centers and advocates for highlighting feminist praxis. In her article, "#transform(ing)DH Writing and Research: An
Autoethnography of Digital Humanities and Feminist Ethics,” Bailey (2015) describes how she incorporates feminist research ethics in her examination of Black trans women’s online communities. In studying the creation and proliferation of the hashtag #GirlsLikeUs, Bailey reached out to the hashtag’s original creator, had a discussion with her, and also hosted conversations with other Black trans women. She provides a list of potential questions researchers can use to put their feminist values into practice as they research. These questions shape much of my research process as well as thinking through how I would actually present my research. Many of her questions revolve around the researcher viewing research participants as collaborators, not subjects of study. Because of this, I invited all the people I interviewed to look over data with me and share their own analysis. I have also created an entirely digital dissertation (what you are reading now) to ensure that the fans with whom I worked have access to everything I write about them.
Often, dissertations and academic work is hidden behind a paywall, and I believe in making knowledge and research accessible. As I argue throughout my entire dissertation, fans are always- already theorizing about politics and their relationship with popular culture, the source texts, and fandoms. I hope this dissertation contributes to their theorizing and acts as evidence they may use to continue advocating in their own communities. I also hope that other fans, fans who may not consider themselves critical fans or have not thought about the political ramifications of their composing practices, may use this dissertation to think more critically about their practices. How can we continue to reimagine a world that combats harmful systems of power like white supremacy, heteronormativity, and misogyny in our own composing and engagement? 57
Another important aspect of feminist praxis in research is articulating citation politics.
When discussing citation practices and politics, we must also think about the histories and current political ramifications of gatekeeping. Gatekeeping knowledges and resources is one issue Black feminist scholars often point to in academia. First, citations are a form of currency in academia, and who you choose to cite demonstrates your own investments; being cited, too, helps scholars’ ideas to perpetuate across a discipline and can help scholars get jobs and receive promotions
(Bolles, 2013; Ahemd, 2017). Besides the transactional nature of citations, though, feminist citational politics reimagine disciplinary epistemologies, though, or how knowledges form and spread. Lynn Bolles, for example, argues that anthropologists, and thus the anthropology discipline, often erases Black anthropologists work, both damaging Black anthropologists’ careers and erasing Black perspectives and knowledges. Bolles argues for the need for, “transformative practice[s]...in the practice of citation,” to combat white supremacy and gatekeeping.
Citational politics are similar to representation politics in popular culture. Who is represented? Who is erased? How are particular people represented? What can we do better? For me, this is the motivation driving my citational politics as well as the particular television shows and characters I choose to research. For instance, I prioritize Black feminist scholars like bell hooks, Ebony Elizabeth Thomas, and Moya Bailey in my citations, and also focus on characters of color, specifically women characters of color, and canonically LGBTQ+ characters. I see the politics of representation — both in popular culture and fandom — as I see citational politics.
Whose stories and perspectives we expose ourselves to drive how we see and understand the world?
Merging feminist praxis and digital writing research 58
Ethical research may fall anywhere from following Institutional Review Board (IRB) protocol to creating a code of ethics based specifically on the research context. The IRB is an ethics committee housed within institutions, including universities, to ensure researchers follow a series of ethical protocols and do not harm people, particularly vulnerable populations such as people who are currently incarcerated or children. IRB protocol must be followed in any institutional research, but IRB does not always cover the complexities of ethics in digital writing research or in its definitions of vulnerable populations. For example, Banks and Eble (2007) describe IRB’s inability to capture the nuances and complexities of digital writing research because when guidelines were written, the internet was not as prevalent and part of our everyday experience.
They discuss relying on IRB for ethical protocols, but also working with institutional IRB reviewers to create a more specific approach to ethical research. IRB is not the last stop for following a code of ethics, however, especially with digital writing research.
The CCCCs Guidelines for the Ethical Conduct of Research (revised in 2015) has an entire section dedicated to online research. CCCC’s guidelines encourage researchers to think about anonymity (or lack of anonymity), accessibility, and better understanding the public/private binary. Specifically, these guidelines suggest articulating all steps of the research process to participants to confirm they are aware of and comfortable with potential risks. I let participants know that their works were linked in the dissertation and some of their usernames were used, which brings their piece to a potentially more public light. As most fan authors publish on AO3, they are more familiar with how users take up their pieces. Because there is also a ton of content on AO3, some of their work may go unnoticed except by those actively seeking it out because these readers are invested in what the authors are writing. However, by bringing their usernames and stories out from the AO3 space, there is always a risk of an unfamiliar reader who reacts poorly 59 to their work. I informed the authors whose names are mentioned of the risks and ensured that information can be taken down from the CFT if need be.
Besides CCCCs guidelines, the Association of Internet Researchers has created more specific guidelines for people interested in conducting digital research. The AIR has come up with
“key guiding principles” that are critical when thinking about digital research and digital writing research:
1. “The greater the vulnerability of the community / author / participant, the greater the
obligation of the researcher to protect the community / author / participant.”
2. “Because ‘harm’ is defined contextually, ethical principles are more likely to be
understood inductively rather than applied universally.”
3. “Because all digital information at some point involves individual persons,
consideration of principles related to research on human subjects may be necessary
even if it is not immediately apparent how and where persons are involved in the
research data.”
4. “When making ethical decisions, researchers must balance the rights of subjects (as
authors, as research participants, as people) with the social benefits of research and
researchers’ rights to conduct research.”
5. “Ethical issues may arise and need to be addressed during all steps of the research
process, from planning, research conduct, publication, and dissemination.”
6. “Ethical decision-making is a deliberative process, and researchers should consult as
many people and resources as possible in this process,...where applicable, legal
precedent.” 60
These guidelines continue by exploring more specific contexts of digital research in hopes of tackling the ethical issues that may come up throughout digital research. What is most important for me is to better understand the impact digital research may have and weigh the impact of this research. If there is any potential for harm — especially revealing or making public vulnerable communities and ideas — further discussion should be had with community members. With all digital research, there is a person behind the digital content, a person who has made choices and published particular ideas.
For my research, I went through IRB to create consent forms (Appendix A), but also took the extra step to invite participants to review what is available on the CFT to ensure it reflects their views and perspectives accurately and safely. For instance, even if a fan author consented to allowing me to write about their work, I still continue to reach out to them, sending them individual pages where their usernames or aliases appear. The six fan authors who I interviewed each received the “Interviews” link, where I offered them a chance to look over the transcripts, my analysis, and even their self-chosen demographic information. Another example is in the “Case study” section, where I reached out directly to the authors whose work I mentioned. By emailing them, I hope to encourage back-and-forth dialogues and also recognize that some fan authors may not have the time for dialogue. I keep this option open, though, in case they want to make changes in the future to their consent.
Turning back to the community, presenting findings, and allowing for dialogue, is one of the central steps all researchers must take. The best approach is to work with and pay community members. This, of course, can be difficult for smaller projects or graduate students who may not have grant money. If researchers have the resources like grant funding, inviting community 61 members to conduct research with you is even better. For instance, I received a small grant from the NULab at Northeastern University and paid interview participants for their time and labor.
Finally, I also turn to Twitter to share my findings, hoping to get feedback from casual, immersed, and academic fans. For example, I did this with my findings on how GOT fandoms unintentionally reinforce white supremacist systems (Figure 2.1).
Figure 2.1
Screenshot of Tweet
Like most researchers in academia, I try to ensure the safety of all my research participants.
However, researchers and practitioners can wind up enacting harm on participants unintentionally.
Reviewing IRB guidelines is necessary, but just the first step. Who are your research benefactors?
How does your research help the community or people you are researching? Does the community you’re working with want or need that research? And are you the right person to be doing that research? I feel comfortable working with fanfiction data because I have been a member of multiple fan communities for almost two decades.
However, I also recognize my position of power here because I am an academic, a cis
White woman, and getting paid to do research. My perspectives may unintentionally invalidate or 62 enact violence upon fan community practice. The goal for all researchers, not just those committed to feminist praxis, should be to benefit and protect the communities with whom we work, especially historically and politically marginalized communities. I hope by sharing my own process engaging with other feminist researchers like Bailey and Kelley, following and implementing ethical guidelines, and describing the back-and-forth communication with members provides an example for other researchers to follow. Our research practices are political.
Methods
In Cushman, Falconer, and Juzwik’s (2018) editor’s note in their final issue of the Research in the Teaching of English, they advocate for a “pluriversality in methodology” that engages the generalizability of corpus-based research and much more contextualized qualitative research. They argue, “corpus studies offers both a generalizable and particularized perspective on learning. For all they offer, though, they provide fewer insights into the social workings of literacies in terms of power, value, structures, and ideologies” (p. 535). Cushman, Falconer, and Juzwik’s critique informs this study. The methods used in this project draw on both qualitative and computational methods found in digital humanities and writing studies. This mixed methods approach was chosen because they provide complementary perspectives on patterns across a fandom as well as individuals’ choices that either mirror or resist these patterns, which a large dataset analysis alone cannot provide.
By triangulating both the results from a large corpus analysis along with interview data from individual writers in the corpus, I describe fan uptakes and generic conventions. I rely on the interviewed fans’ descriptions of their rhetorical choices and generic actions and larger patterns in the genres based on computational analysis. Finally, I draw comparisons between the computational analysis and the fans authors’ interviews to trace case studies based on particular 63 themes. The larger patterns from the quantitative data demonstrate normative conventions within each fandom, while the qualitative data reveals how individuals either conform to or resist these normative conventions.
To read more about the feminist ethics that drove my research, everything from data collection to publishing about fan authors, see the “Research Ethics and Positionality” portion of this site.
Methods building off research questions
The four research questions that animate this study are answered by analyzing fans’ tagging practices, interviewing fans about their rhetorical choices, and tracing individual and collective genres and uptakes based on this data.
1) How can fans’ tagging practices reveal a resistance to or reinforcement of dominant
ideologies?
To answer this question, I used Natural Language Processing (NLP), word
embedding models, and metadata visualizations based on fanfiction metadata. The data I
collected are uptake artifacts (Dryer, 2016), or the fanfiction texts themselves. I collected
these fanfiction texts and metadata from Archive of Our Own, one of the current largest
fanfiction publishing platforms. I incorporated computational analysis methods to explore
patterns across the fanfiction texts and their metadata. I examined tagging practices;
linguistic patterns that revolve around power, normativity, and identity; and patterns that
mirror or push against the source text.
Documentation about the computational process can be found in the
“Computational Notebooks” portion of the CFT. Results can be found across the CFT, 64
but especially in the “Fandoms by Numbers” section along with the “Critical Fan Case
Studies.”
2) How do fanfiction authors define their uptakes, including their acceptance, negotiation, and
resistance to the original source text and fandom politics?
To answer this question, I conducted six discourse-based interviews of fan authors
who published in the fanfiction corpus, asking them to reflect on particular choices as well
as larger community expectations and the ideologies woven within the expectations. I
chose writers who demonstrated critical fan uptakes in their fanfictions, whether this
approach was in their tagging choices or the linguistic patterns in their texts. I then
qualitatively coded these interviews to capture patterns around the writing process, fans’
understandings of generic conventions and expected uptakes in fandoms, fans’
commentary on the canon text, and fans’ analysis of ideologies within fan communities. I
framed qualitative data analysis around uptake enactment (Dryer, 2016), or the action of
responding to one genre with another expected genre. These expectations are determined
contextually.
In fan communities, there are expected fan uptakes within the community that can
be traced through fanfiction, discussions, and other forms of fan writing. Full description
of this process and the codes can be found in the “Qualitative Coding” section of the CFT.
Interview transcripts and further results can be found in the “Interviews with Critical
Fans” portion of the CFT.
3) How can mixed methods help reveal the complex and contextual interactions in fanfiction texts
between individual authors’ uptakes and fan genres and politics? 65
To answer this question, I triangulated data from the above two questions to trace
case studies from each fandom. I examine larger trends across fandoms using both the
metadata and the actual fanfiction. I also bring in fan authors’ voices to demonstrate how
they interpret these patterns, how these patterns are tied to fanfiction genre conventions,
and how their individual uptakes resist or reinscribe these conventions. For The Legend of
Korra, I trace how fans resist heteronormativity through their critical uptakes even before
the show does. For Game of Thrones, I demonstrate how fans reinscribe the white
supremacy found in the show. I also show how a few fans, including one who I interviewed,
critically uptake one of the few Black characters on the show as a response to this white
supremacy. I also examine how one fan enacts a critical disruptake (Dryer, 2016) to
critique GOT’s and the general racism while also inviting more fanfictions about Black
characters. These pieces can be found in the “Critical Fan Case Studies” section under
“Missandei Deserves Better” and “Ship is Canon!”
4) How can critical fan pedagogies be made useable and accessible for teachers and fans alike?
The answer to this question resides more in the digital publication format of the
dissertation, rather than specific data or analysis. The CFT is built to be an open-access,
accessible, and public project for fans, scholars, and instructors alike. The CFT invites fans
who are interested in implementing critical fan practices into their fandom participations
and instructors who are interested in integrating critical fan pedagogies into their
classrooms. As I built the CFT, I followed User Experience (UX) best practices guidelines,
including accessibility, documentation, search engine optimization (SEO), and
sustainability.
Research site: Archive of Our Own 66
One of the largest and most popular websites to publish fanfiction is Archive of Our Own
(AO3). Since 2009, when the AO3 beta first launched, over seven million works have been published. While there are other fan publishing websites out there such as Wattpad, I focus on
AO3 for several reasons. First, AO3 received a Hugo Award for Best Related Work, meaning every work published on AO3 received this Hugo Award (Romano, 2019). Second, AO3 belongs to the Organization of Transformative Works (OTW), a larger organization dedicated to protecting, preserving, and strengthening fan cultures. OTW has several projects, including
Transformative Works and Cultures — a peer-reviewed open-access journal for fan scholars to share their research — and Fanlore, a large fandom wiki. Third, AO3 is well-known for its information system that was designed by and for fans (Dalton, 2012; Fiesler, Morrison,
Bruckman, 2016).
Fan studies scholars study sites like AO3 for various purposes, including examining the structure of its information system as an example of feminist human-computer interaction
(Fiesler, Morrison, & Buckman, 2016), tracing how fans use tagging practices to shape community (Dym, Brubaker, & Fiesler, 2018; Messina, 2019; Price & Robinson, 2021), and its relationship with academic scholarship through the OTW. In fact, several members on the current OTW board are academics — such as Kristina Busse — who write fan scholarship and are members of fan communities.
The first reason I chose AO3 is the actual design of its information system is one that reflects community values. Fiesler, Morrison, and Buckman (2016) build upon Bardzell’s (2010) concept of “feminist Human-Computer Interaction (HCI)” to demonstrate how AO3 is an example of feminist HCI. By merging feminist praxis and user experience, Bardzell (2010) defines Feminist
HCI as a: 67
Constellation of qualities—all of them appearing together in a critical mass—that I argue
characterizes feminist interaction. The qualities I propose as a starting point are as follows:
pluralism, participation, advocacy, ecology, embodiment, and self-disclosure (p. 1305).
Fiesler, Morrison, and Buckman (2016) use Bardzell’s proposed Feminist HCI qualities to analyze
AO3 as an exemplar Feminist HCI platform. AO3, they argue, is built upon a particular value system, and therefore the literal system itself reifies those values. These values include diversity, inclusivity, agency, and empowerment; the system builds upon these values with similar qualities to those Bezdell proposes in Feminist HCI. AO3 is already committed to feminist values. These values, too, are interwoven across the back-end design and fanfiction authors’ and readers’ approaches to using the platform.
AO3’s tagging system also provides ways to trace and define communities. I trace how fans use tagging and metadata practices to create, shape, and reshape their communities. Gursoy,
Wickett, & Feinberg (2018) refer to AO3 as a “user-generated metadata ecosystem” in which fanfiction authors both self-select tags and validate other fans’ tags. Price and Robinson (2016) provide a framework for analyzing AO3 community practices from an Information Systems perspective, specifically examining the practices fan community members incorporate to
“consume, create, remediate, disseminate, promote, describe, access, and preserve” cultural products (p. 650). They use the Delphi study method to capture fans’ perspectives of online fan community and genre practices. However, they do not engage with the actual metadata from AO3.
Other studies conduct analyses of actual metadata and tagging practices used in AO3 and other online fandom spaces (Dalton, 2012; Dym, Brubaker, & Fiesler, 2018; Gursoy, Wickett, &
Feinberg, 2018; Messina, 2019; Price & Robinson, 2021; Pianzola, Acerbi, and Rebora, 2020).
For instance, Messina (2019) also demonstrates how particular fan communities resist 68 heteronormativity both in their metadata practices and their actual fanfiction texts. Pianzola,
Acerbi, and Rebora (2020) use multiple points of metadata, including Kudos and comments, to examine accumulation —rising amounts— and improvement —better reader engagement— in an
AO3 fandom.
In addition to fan tagging, AO3 has “tag-wranglers,” who are volunteer fans who regulate metadata tags that authors choose for their fanfictions to make sure their fanfics can be discovered. They preserve more unique tags, but regulate more popular tags, such as “Angst,” as well as relationship and character names. For example, in GOT, the character tag “Missandei” may be used. However, because the tagging system for fan authors is free form with suggested tags, fans may misspell or use the wrong character tag, making their fanfic harder to discover.
The tag wrangler’s job, then, is to go through tags and check for differences to then standardize certain tags.
AO3’s design and fans’ metadata practices allow for researchers to trace fans’ community formation and reshaping practices. AO3 users often taken on multiple roles: the reader, the writer, the critic, and the community-builder. AO3 users use metadata practices to both find and carve out community, discover fanfictions that they want to read, and/or reach potential readers using metadata for their fanfictions.
Why The Legend of Korra & Game of Thrones?
Fan studies scholars describe fanfiction as transformative writing practices in which fans carve out their interpretations and reimaginings of the material; usually those writing fanfiction are women, people of color, and queer people (Russ, 1985; Lamb & Veith, 1986; Jenkins, 1992 &
2008; Summers, 2010; carrington, 2013; Potts, 2015; Thomas & Stornaiuolo, 2016). In Textual
Poachers, Jenkins theorizes why fans choose to participate in particular fandoms: 69
Fans have chosen these media products from the total range of available texts precisely
because they seem to hold special potential as vehicle for expressing the fans’ pre-existing
social commitments and cultural interests; there is already some degree of compatibility
between the ideological construction of the text and the ideological commitments of the
fans. (p 30)
Jenkins acknowledges that fans’ “pre-existing social commitments and cultural interests” impacts the source texts fans invest in.
Within AO3, I focus on two fandom communities — The Legend of Korra (TLOK) and
Game of Thrones (GOT). I chose these two fandom communities because of the “ideological construction of the text[s],” are stark contrasts of one another, which provides more breadth and better comparisons when studying fans’ uptakes through computational analysis and interviews.
The cultural ideologies in TLOK challenge white supremacist, heteronormative, misogynist, and ableist tropes, demonstrating how to represent all types of bodies and identities. Meanwhile, GOT has been heavily critiqued for its racism and misogyny, particularly the constant violence done upon women and characters of color (Florini, 2019). What makes GOT a fascinating case study in opposition with TLOK is that GOT has been claimed as revolutionary by breaking generic boundaries in speculative fiction and television shows, but the ideologies embedded in the show
— unlike TLOK — are the complete opposite of revolutionary.
TLOK is a young adult show on Nickelodeon that aired from 2012–2014; TLOK is a sequel to the popular children’s show Avatar: The Last Airbender. What makes this show special is that the creators of the show were already resisting harmful dominant ideologies, such as ableism and white supremacy. TLOK already breaks generic conventions and demonstrates critical genre practices that subvert systems of power and oppression, especially around its representations of 70 diverse races and sexualities. Ravynn Stringfield (2020) in her beautiful piece on the meaning of
Korra’s character for her, writes:
Few people in Korra’s life on screen or in the Avatar fan base extend her the courtesy of
receiving her exactly as she is: flawed and struggling. And that is a direct result of the way
we as a society view powerful women of color, particularly Black women. Korra is not
Black—Water Tribe members are based in part on Intuit cultures—but Black women can
see so much of their struggle in how she moves through the world.
While Korra is not Black like Stringfield herself, Stringfield sees herself in Korra. TLOK was not set on creating a perfect woman of color hero, but rather a “flawed and struggling” hero who must be careful “in how she moves through the world.”
As Ebony Elizabeth Thomas (2019) and so many other cultural and fan studies scholars have argued, mainstream popular culture’s representation of people of color is limited. The
“imagination gap” Thomas (2019) describes — or the ways in which science and speculative fiction often represent the same groups of (White) people — demonstrates creators’ and producers’ lack of imagination in character representation because characters of color or other marginalized characters may be “unlikeable” to the larger public. The public, in this case, is coded as white, cisgender viewers, completely ignoring the viewers of color, queer viewers, viewers from other marginalized groups, and White viewers who are invested in combating white supremacy.
TLOK bridges this imagination gap by having the main character in a cartoon fantasy series be a powerful and vulnerable woman of color — Korra — who in the end is confirmed bisexual when she begins a romantic relationship Asami, another woman. The show already invites fans to challenge dominant ideologies around gender, race, and sexuality: the ‘happy ending’ is not 71 heteronormative, but rather suggestive of an adventure to come, a grand vacation, and a new love that breaks boundaries.
While TLOK is a demonstration of creators pushing against exclusive cultural ideologies,
GOT — an HBO series which aired from 2011–2019 — seems to thrive in racist and misogynistic portrayals of women and characters of color. The show is based on George R. R. Martin’s Game of Thrones series, which has yet to publish its final books. The series finale aired on May 19, 2019, wrapping up the long, bloody, and violent story with more violence and blood. Currently, a
Change.org petition for a season 8 rewrite has over 1.5 million signatures. Of course, season 8 will not be rewritten — but this is exactly why fanfiction exists. GOT depicts people of color as nomadic savages, a White woman as their savior, women being often raped or losing control over their bodies, queer folks being punished for existing, and other harmful stereotypes that perpetuate dominant ideologies.
There are some parts of GOT, like most shows, that challenge harmful ideologies. For instance, Sansa — one of the main White women leads — has an incredible character arc from being obsessed with the idea of marrying a prince to leading an entire nation without a partner. In the early season, Sansa recites stories about young princes saving damsels in distress. She performs within the expectations of her gender role, learning how to craft and other feminine hobbies in hopes of marrying a prince. Her hopes resonate with young girls across America and beyond who are taught our value is always placed in men and romance. Yet, her desires lead to violence, as she almost marries a prince who murders her father and abuses her. She realizes her dreams do not align with reality, and she grows to become independent and powerful. Her feminist arc resonates with me and other feminist-minded viewers, as also shown in the staggering number of Sansa- centered fanfictions published on AO3. 72
While Sansa’s arc may be read as feminist, the show still reifies white supremacy, demonstrating that feminism and antiracism are not inherently interlocked. Missandei and Grey
Worm are some of the few consistent characters of color on the show. They start a romance, but tragically — and unsurprisingly — Missandei is killed off in the last season, preventing Missandei and Grey Worm from having the same happy-ish ending that so many White characters are granted.
As Ebony Elizabeth Thomas (2018) argues, “We [Black people] always die in other people's fantasies. (Other people seem to fantasize about Black death. Endlessly. Often needlessly.).”
Missandei’s death mainly feels like a plot device to further one of the White main characters’ character arch. None of the time in the show is dedicated to Grey Worm’s grief after losing the love of his life; instead the show creators chose to show his grief by having him murder (White) characters during a war scene, feeding into dangerous narrative that (White) people should fear people of color. The choice to kill Missandei is one that not only broke viewers’ hearts, but reminded viewers that Black characters are expendable, especially in epic (White) fantasies; fanfiction writers show, though, that Missandei and other characters (people) of color are not expendable. As Thomas (2019) says, “Missandei, like us, lives in the wake.”
By examining both TLOK and GOT, patterns across each fandom reveal fans’ political and ideological commitments as well as how these commitments seep into or inform fans’ uptakes.
Comparing fandoms from very different source texts provides a method for better understanding how fans construct their communities, critique or reinscribe dominant ideologies, and how individual fans critically uptake both fan genres and the source text genres.
Computational data collection methods: AO3 data
Textual data and the metadata data were collected from Archive of Our Own using a third party web scraping Python script created by Jingyi Li and @ssterman. I collected the data with the 73 permission of Transformative Works and Cultures. Each fanfiction has its textual data, which is the actual story published, and metadata about the fanfiction. Metadata are data about data, or in this case the information about each fanfiction. The visualizations in the “Fandom by Numbers” section, for example, are mainly using the metadata from TLOK and GOT fandoms.
Table 2.1 describes the data collected using this web-scraper and is broken into three columns: the name of the data, how this data was created, and the description of these data. The data creator is either an automatically-assigned data, such as the publication date or the number of comments on a fanfic, or the fan author, which is data written or selected by the fan author. I have also included the column “data type” that explains what the data looks like and if the data is standardized or not.
Table 2.1 Descriptions of Archive of Our Own Fanfiction Data
Data Name Data Creator Data Type Description
Publication date Automatic Date, The date that the fanfiction was standardized. published. There is also a “last updated” date, but I do not use this column for this project.
Relationship Fan author List of words, Six categories of relationship types categories standardized. based on gender. Fan authors can only select out of these six categories: female/female, female/male, male/male, gen (no pairings), other, or multiple.
Relationships Fan author List of words, Fan authors choose which characters community- appear in relationships together and 74
standardized by what types of relationships. sometimes Romantic pairings have a slash (/) unique. between characters’ names, while platonic pairings have an ampersand (&) between characters’ names. Fan authors are given the option to choose from popular relationships that other fan authors use, or they can create their own.
Characters Fan author List of words, Fan authors choose which characters community- appear in their fanfic. Fan authors standardized by are given the option to choose from sometimes popular characters’ names or they unique. can write their own in. This choice allows for fan authors to either follow the controlled vocabulary determined by the community or choose to step outside of community norms.
Additional Tags Fan author List of words, Fan authors choose their own tags to community- signal more information about their standardized by fanfic. There are tags that are often sometimes used across AO3, such as “angst” or unique. “fluff;” and there are tags often used in particular fandoms, such as “korrasami freeform” or “ R Plus L Equals J.” Fans can also write their own unique additional tags.
Body Fan author Text, unique. The entire body of fanfiction text. 75
For the approximately 30,000 fanfics I collected for this project, each contains all of this data. Some fanfic authors choose not to include certain metadata, but for the most part, all the fanfics in this corpus have this metadata and the actual fanfic texts. The data is not perfect, as there are some data (relationships, characters, and additional tags) that are not perfectly standardized. For example, fanfiction authors may have tagged Korra and Asami’s relationship as “Korra/Asami,” “Korra/Asami Sato,” or “Korrasami.” For the most part, AO3’s tag wranglers adjust deviations to standardize the metadata. I also attempted to standardize some of the deviant data and combined the results. I preserved novel tags, as often fans will use “Additional Tags” in particular to directly address their audience or potentially critique something in the fandom.
Qualitative data collection methods: Interview data
As Kurtyka (2015) argues, centering emotion is crucial when analyzing individuals’ genre performances and uptakes because the genres that “stick” and the genres we want to participate in are often tied to our emotional responses and positionalities. Fandoms are spaces that are carved out based on affective responses to a source text. Whether someone loves or hates a source text, their affective response drives them to a particular fandom. Affective responses and performing this affective response is tied to an individual’s positionality and aspects of their identity, as well.
Importantly, I wanted to incorporate fans’ voices and provide a space for them to share their perspectives, motivations, process, and analysis of the canon and fandom. I chose specific fanfiction authors from either the GOT or TLOK fandom based on their tagging practices and the ideological values replicated in their works. Their perspectives of both their own writing process as well as larger community genre conventions provides an important lens into the three different cases. The TLOK fan authors speak to the second and third cases, while the GOT fan authors 76 speak to the first and third cases. Without their important voices, this project would have overlooked the enactors of fan genres and uptakes: the fans!
For the interview recruitment process, I wanted to have an equal number of fan authors from both TLOK and GOT. In order to find potential interview participants, I analyzed the larger
TLOK and GOT fanfiction corpora I collected to narrow down my options. Specifically, I chose pieces that reflected commitments to anti-racism, disability representation, and representations of queer sexualities/genders.
For GOT, I searched for GOT fanfiction that used tags such as “Missandei deserves better,”
“pov character of color,” “genderfluid character,” and “alternate universe - race changes.” For
TLOK, I chose TLOK fan authors who wrote stories about Korrasami and found texts that explicitly mentioned gender oppression or trans characters. (More information can be found in the
“Ship is Canon!” case study.)
I reached out to TLOK and GOT fan authors by leaving a comment on their AO3 stories, as this is the only way to currently communicate on AO3. I invited them to fill out a consent form to have their fanfiction used in my dissertation and asked if they were interested in a further interview (See “Appendix A” for the interview recruitment form). I used a purposive sampling approach to select the fan authors to interview based on their different gender, sexuality, and racial/ethnic backgrounds as well as the fanfiction texts they wrote. I was particularly interested in how fans saw themselves in either the canon text, the fandom community, or the fanfiction they wrote.
Once fan authors agreed to be interviewed, I forwarded them interview questions so they could prepare their answers for our video conference. These interview questions (See “Appendix
A” for the interview question template) were separated into three sections: 77
1) History: The fan authors’ self-identification and relationship with fanfiction,
2) Discourse-based interview questions: The fan authors describe their process writing the
TLOK/GOT fanfic,
3) Corpus analysis: The fan authors’ interpretation of larger patterns within the fan
community based on preliminary corpus analysis results.
In the discourse-based interview portion of the interview, I designed questions based on discourse-based interview (DBI) methods, in which interview participants talk through their writing choices (Lancaster, 2016). I provided fan authors with a set of more general questions to talk through their writing process, and then pointed to specific moments in their texts and asked them to reflect on those moments. For the corpus analysis portion of the interview, I built the questions based on Lancaster’s (2016) DBI approach in which he incorporates large corpus analysis within the interviews, asking writers to reflect on their own choices in comparison with larger trends in a corpus of similar writing. For each author, I created tables and visualizations of trends across the fandom they wrote within and asked them to reflect on these patterns. For instance, I showed Aria results from a word embedding model and asked her to talk through her interpretation of these results.
Each interview took about one hour and I audio-recorded the interview to then have it transcribed. Each interview participant received a gift card and I paid for a transcription service, funded by the NULab Seedling Grant. I then qualitatively coded the interviews, which you can read more about the process in “Qualitative Coding and Codebook,” based on my theoretical framework and patterns I observed during the interviews and in my listening after the interviews.
Computational data analysis methods 78
To examine the AO3 data, I used computational text analysis methods (Natural Language
Processing and word embedding models), data visualizations, and network analysis. I use computational text analysis methods on the actual fanfiction texts; I use network analysis and visualizations on the corpora metadata. To get a full understand of the methods I use, I invite you to look at the “Computational Essays,” which break down my data transformation process and document each step I took to transform, analyze, and visualize data.
Computational text analysis
I use the term “computational analysis” instead of “distant reading,” a one common term for analyzing a large corpus of humanistic data. Distant reading, as Lauren Klein (2018) argues is a term coined both by well-known sexual assailant Franco Moretti and structurally continues to erase gender and race from analysis. Klein argues distant reading can be reclaimed by researchers to actively center race and gender; she points to the need for using more diverse corpora as well as better models. I use the term “computational analysis” not only to avoid the messy history of distant reading, but also recognize that there is nothing distant about this analysis. Even though the I trace larger trends and patterns across the corpora, my understanding of and relationship to this corpus are far from distant—they are intimate. Examining larger patterns across a corpus still requires contextual knowledge about said corpus.
Computational analysis is also broad enough of a term to invite all different types of analysis, mixing metadata and data together for analysis. I specifically pair Natural Language
Processing, including machine learning methods like word embedding models. I turn to Klein
(2020), Quinn (2020), and Nelson (Forthcoming) who use similar methods to break down the close/distant reading binaries. For each author, they are invested in transcending notions of scale, instead using their findings to inform other methods of analysis. Nelson (Forthcoming) argues 79 that machine learning can allow for more intersectional research. She creates word embedding models with race and gender variables encoded; along with these models, she enacts “a complementary close reading” to “place…the word vectors back into their full discursive context to provide both qualitative validity and depth to the analysis” (p. 11). Quinn (2020) also uses topic modeling, moving back and forth between the model findings to demonstrate how these findings also manifest on the textual level. Klein (2020) also uses topic modeling and statistical analysis to “surface” the hidden labor in publishing. Each scholar moves between the results from their models to the texts to better situate how different writers’ positionalities impact the discursive space of the corpora with which they work.
I specifically use Natural Language Processing (NLP). NLP merges linguistics and computer and data science to trace linguistic patterns across a corpus. NLP is particularly popular in cultural analytics and writing analytics, both disciplines which trace linguist patterns within particular cultural and community contexts (Aull, 2017; Klein, 2020; Quinn, 2020; Soni,
Klein, & Einstein, 2021; Nelson, Forthcoming). NLP is one of the most well-used forms of analyzing textual data and offers several different approaches for analysis, such as basic word and nGram counts to parts-of-speech analysis to more advanced machine learning techniques like word embedding models.
Because I approach this project with a variety of data—from the data collected on AO3 to fan author interviews to individual fanfiction texts—I incorporate a variety of methods. I use nGrams to measure which characters are more frequently used, comparing the results to the
“Character” Tags. I also use concordances to reveal the context within which fanfiction authors use particular words. Finally, I use word embedding models to trace changes across time to 80 unveil how fans’ linguistic practices mirror or resist dominant ideologies, especially around representations of race, gender, and sexuality.
Data visualizations
Data visualizations are an important aspect of this project. As Engebretsen and Kennedy
(2020) define data visualizations as “discursive resources used in the dissemination of statistical information and often numerical data” as well as “abstractions and reductions of the world, the result of human choices, social conventions, and technological processes and affordances, relating to generating, filtering, analysing, selecting, visualizing, and presenting data” (p. 22).
Data visualizations are models designed to select, visualize, and present data. More importantly, too, data visualizations are forms of storytelling and composing that can be “make data accessible to publics” (p. 20). One of the goals of the CFT is to make findings and analysis accessible to all different audiences, including fans. To include visualizations, especially interactive visualizations, then invites different types of readers to learn and explore.
The “Fandoms by Numbers” storyboards are a series of visualizations paired with an analysis of The Legend of Korra and Game of Thrones fanfiction metadata. I used Python to transform the data, which you can read more about in the “Computational Essays.” These essays include explanations for why I chose particular metadata as well as explorations of the data transformations and findings. Then, I fed that transformed data into Tableau to create the interactive visualizations for both TLOK and GOT.
One of the affordances of working with fanfiction about television is tracing changes across time within the corpora and comparing these changes to both the source text and other times within the corpora. For instance, one visualization traces character tags used in GOT across all 8 seasons, showing which characters stayed consistently popular and which characters fell out 81 of favor. This temporal analysis shows how trends change across time, especially how these trends are impacted by the source text as new material from each season is released.
Along with visualizations—mainly bar graphs and line graphs—about metadata, I also include a network analysis graph of “Additional Tags” in TLOK. Network analysis “makes it possible, with relative ease and speed, to measure the relationships between many entities in multiple ways, allowing a rich, multidimensional reading of complex systems never possible before” (Ahnert et. al, 2020, p. 5). This network analysis visualization of the Additional Tags show the sub-communities fans create by citing the generic forms they are working within and providing information about the content that appears in their fanfictions to reach their audience.
Member checking
For both datasets, I used forms of member checking to validate the analysis and findings.
In order to enact member checking, I invited feedback from the fanfiction authors I interviewed, fanfiction authors whose work I mentioned, and my own experience.
For the AO3 large datasets, member checking came in two ways: first, with my own experience as a fanfiction author and reader, and second with the fans’ who I interviewed interpretations of the data. Because I have been involved in fanfiction communities since I was a pre-teenager, I could tell which general trends and patterns reflected my own experience in the fandom. For instance, in the network graph in the “Fandoms by Numbers” homepage, the results not only reflected my experience in TLOK fandom on AO3, but larger AO3 trends, such as
“Angst” and “Fluff” being centered. During the interviews, I also invited fans to analyze some of the findings from the data. Most just agreed that the data reflected their own experiences in the fandom. Some pointed out surprising findings, but then explained how they had seen those patterns. To read about each of the fan author interviewee’s interpretations of the data, visit the 82
“Interviews with Fans” section and read their individual interview transcripts; the discussions about data are usually towards the bottom of each transcript.
To member-check the findings and analysis of the interviews, I invited every fanfiction author who was mentioned in the CFT — whether I interviewed them or mentioned their work
— to look over their transcripts, my qualitative coding, and my analysis. I sent a series of emails, inviting them to look at different aspects of the CFT. Some interviewees did, while others did not. One person even caught a mistake in one of the case studies, pointing out I used the word
“Meereen” when I meant “Essos” in a GOT reference. For every update with the project, I email the fanfiction authors and invite their thoughts. In future iterations of this project, I hope to include inter-rater reliability for qualitative coding.
Finally, I offer a “User Experience” feedback survey that invites feedback from CFT users. Even though I am not technically studying UX, one of the goals of the toolkit is to provide an open-access, easy-to-navigate experience. This means I want to receive any feedback from everyday users, whether they are fans, were mentioned in the CFT, or are scholars.
Qualitative data analysis: Qualitative Coding
Qualitative coding is a method used in the humanities and social science to analyze textual data, such as interviews. Researchers create a set of codes, which are themes and patterns that appear across their textual data; these codes usually reflect the particular heuristics, frameworks, and theories with which researchers are working. Using these codes — or schema
— researchers mark up the textual data and count how often particular themes appear across, make comparisons between, and analyze the textual data. Each researcher who chooses to incorporate qualitative coding may design their schema creation, coding process, and validation methods differently depending on their discipline, the theoretical framework they use, and their 83 overall goals. Because I aim to be transparent with my research methods as well as provide a guide for any researchers hoping to develop their own research toolboxes, I will describe my qualitative coding process and why I chose to use XML.
What is qualitative coding?
In the above paragraph, I describe the overall process of qualitative coding, from data collection to analyzing the researchers’ codes. However, envisioning the qualitative coding process through just text alone can be difficult, so I will provide an example using a portion of the interviews from one of the fanfiction writers, specifically Kittya Cullen’s interview.
In order to qualitatively code, textual data is needed to actually build and apply your schema. Kittya Cullen’s original interview transcription is the textual data that I will use for this example. To provide some context, during the interview, I asked her to describe a choice she made in her fanfic in which she linked Asami’s trauma to her relationship with Korra. Kittya says:
I think I was both going for an understanding of how Asami herself is effected by this
really terrible thing we see happen to Korra. Because at that point, everyone has seen
someone who they think is all-powerful and infallible, invulnerable to an extent, be ... I
don't want to say broken, but be injured in a really drastic way and them not being able to
do anything much to help with her recovery in concrete ways.
In just a few short sentences, Kittya Cullen unravels a complex choice, and I wanted to capture the importance of this moment. However, this short paragraph is just a small percentage of the entire interview, and merely underlining or highlighting the quote would erase the complexities in Kittya’s words. 84
In its most basic sense, qualitative coding is a form or highlighting or underlining.
However, instead of merely underlining text, I “annotated” text that captures a particular pattern or theme. The schema I created, which I describe below, incorporates language and theories form critical fan practices and rhetorical genre studies; visit the framework section of the CFT to read more. Using this schema, I began to mark up specific moments in Kittya Cullen’s interview that captured particular critical fan practices or RGS theories. If you are familiar with HTML, you may recognize the pointy-bracket structure. My codes are the bolded words between the pointy brackets, and the text being encoded are between the beginning and end tags .
I think I was both going for an understanding of
how Asami herself is effected by this really terrible thing we see happen to
Korra. Because at that point, everyone has
seen someone who they think is all-powerful and infallible, invulnerable to an extent, be
... I don't want to say broken, but be injured in a really drastic way and them not being
able to do anything much to help with her recovery in concrete ways.
With this document encoded, now the sentence “I think I was both going for an understanding of how Asami herself is effected by this really terrible thing we see happen to Korra” is labeled as
“writing agency: reflection,” which is one of the codes used to mark up these interviews. I use the “writing agency: reflection” code to indicate when writers reflect about a specific choice they made while writing. I then use “canon: relation” to encode the last section of this excerpt.
“Canon: relation” highlights when interviewees discuss how they identify with or relate to the canonical text. I continue this process throughout all the interviews based on the schema I created. 85
I conducted further analysis across the different interview, comparing and contrasting different interviewees’ perspectives. For example, I analyze all the times interviewees reflected on specific writing choices. What were the choices they made? Why might they have made these choices? What do these choices suggest about writing fanfiction and critical fan genre practices?
I frame my arguments and answers to these questions by pulling information from the structured, qualitatively-coded interview documents. These results can be found in the “Interviews” portion of the CFT.
Why qualitative coding?
Qualitative coding, according to Johnny Saldaña (2015), is a heuristic, which basically means how knowledge is created, modeled, shaped, and circulated. Understanding qualitative coding as a heuristic emphasizes that the creation of schemas, the choices made when marking up the textual data, and the methods for analyzing the marked-up texts are all framed through the particular theoretical lens and discipline in which the researcher works. As I molded and created my schema to mark up the interviews with, I made deliberate decisions about thematic patterns I wanted to highlight in these interviews based on both the critical fans and rhetoric genre studies fields, which I will describe later in the “Schema Creation” section. The process of qualitative coding — from data collection, to schema creation, to coding the document, to analyzing the codes — models and makes transparent researchers’ understandings of data, and therefore unravels and reveals their knowledge.
Qualitative coding models both researchers’ knowledge and models the modeling process. In her description of “humanities computing,” Julia Flanders (2009) argues, “it is rather about modeling that knowledge and even in some cases about modeling the modeling process. It is an inquiry into how we know things and how we present them to ourselves for study, realized 86 through a variety of tools which make the consequences of that inquiry palpable.” Flanders is focusing more on data modeling as found in the digital humanities, not qualitative coding. Data modeling in the digital humanities may include marking up archival documents to make them digitally readable — not just readable on computer screens, but readable by the computer — by using forms of XML.
Abbie Levesque DeCamp (2020) explicitly connects the process Flanders describes to qualitative coding, arguing it mirrors the types of data modeling described in the digital humanities: “The process of encoding forces an incredibly close reading - one must read and process all parts of a document, thinking deeply about each portion, sometimes down to the word, to accurately tag a document. That is, building in itself is a knowledge-making process.”
Building schemas, using and creating qualitative coding tools, and coding textual documents are knowledge-making processes, processes that simultaneously construct and expound knowledge.
As Flanders argues, this process “require[s] hat one distance oneself from one’s own representational strategies and turn them about in one’s hands like a complex and alien bauble.”
The process of qualitative coding, then, makes transparent “representational strategies,” forcing researchers to explicitly define their theoretical frameworks and how these frameworks are reflected within and by the data. In order to build my schema, I both had to explicitly choose the frameworks and disciplinary discourse I worked within as well as choose how I would qualitatively code the interviews.
XML: From mark-up to publishing
One of the most popular software for qualitative coding is NVivo. NVivo allows researchers to create codes, mark-up multimodal files with these codes, take notes, and visualize results. However, I wanted to take a step further with my interviews — I wanted to publish the 87 transcripts along with the qualitative codes. NVivo, unfortunately, does not have an easy output to translate encoded documents. XML, however, can both help researchers analyze and publish their data.
XML is a grammar for publishing large-scale digital data to then be transformed and/or analyzed. XML is not a software, unlike NVivo. XML is a set of grammatical rules that allow users to create their own language and vocabulary within these rules. Levesque DeCamp (2020) has an excellent explanation of XML and the steps of XML, which I will paraphrase here. XML is a tree-structured data format, unlike a comma separate variable data, which is read into spreadsheets. Above, I showed an excerpt from my qualitative coding and mentioned the
“pointy-bracket structure” being similar to HTML. In case you are not as familiar with HTML, each HTML document has a beginning and end tag, and a bunch of layered tags, or “elements,” in between. Here is a very simplified sample of HTML:
Text goes here
HTML and XML have similar overall formats, except HTML already has an established language and can transform data. If I use the
element, HTML knows that everything between the first and end tag is a paragraph. When I open an HTML file on my browser, the
“Text goes here” is transformed into a paragraph. XML, however, does not transform documents and merely marks them up. XML has the same structure with elements and textual data in between tags. It also has attribute and attribute values, which help to provide further information 88 and differentiate data. In the example in my introduction paragraph, I use this tag: . The element is the code, while “writing-agency” is the attribute and “reflection” is the attribute value. Because XML is just a structure without a set vocabulary, researchers have to create their own XML schemas, choose their elements and attributes/attribute values, in order to markup documents and then transform them.
I used RelaxNG to create my own XML schema and then validate the transcribed interviews that I marked up. If I either did not properly follow XML’s grammar or used an incorrect word as an element, Oxygen (an XML editor) let me know immediately. Validation is
XML’s version of spell check. After I finished transcribing, though, I needed to actually be able to transform and do something with the XML document, as HTML does. In fact, I wanted to transform my XML document into HTML so that I could publish my transcriptions and my codes. I used XSL Transformations (XSLT), which can transform an XML document into another XML document, an HTML document, or another output. With XSLT, I could both analyze the qualitatively coded interviews and publish the interviews.
While NVivo is a useful qualitative coding and analyzing software, especially counting how many codes appeared and with what other codes, XML provides a sustainable aspect that
NVivo does not. XML files can be stored and opened on pretty much every computer. Plus, because the XML documents can be transformed into HTML documents, I can actually publish the transcriptions along with the codes, although the codes are now changed into HTML classes.
XML will not work for every researcher interested in qualitatively coding; there are also a ton of XML uses that lie outside of qualitative research. For example, the Text Encoding
Initiative (TEI) is an XML schema specifically for publishing digital editions of texts. However, because of both my need for a tool that analyzes and publishes, XML was an easy choice. 89
Schema creation and process
Before I began with the qualitative coding process, I interviewed the fanfiction writers. I went into the interview with a set of questions and general expectations for how interviewees may answer these questions. Before I began the qualitative coding process, I was already thinking through the theoretical framework in which I was working. I wanted interviewees to share their writing practices and genre choices; the interview questions also encouraged them to think through the complicated relationship among their identities, their positionalities, the cultural texts they loved, and the fandom communities in which they participate. I also chose the interview subjects based on the fanfics they wrote and if their fanfics and tagging choices reflected critical fan practices. Because I use rhetorical genre studies and critical fan studies as theoretical frameworks, I was interested in themes around genre, uptake, ideology, power, and identity representation. Someone from a literacy perspective or a media studies scholar may use a different approach. My theoretical frameworks determine how I structure my interview questions, coding schema, and my analysis.
Rhetorical genre studies and fan studies shape the vocabulary of my XML schema so I could mark up patterns that tie back to my overall research. I listened to the interviews multiple times, created a codebook, and reassessed the schema until I settled with a final version. A codebook is the documentation for a schema which describes when particular codes will be used and why; I provide my “Codebook” in Appendix B, as well as in the actual RelaxNG schema to remind myself as I code. Even as I continued qualitative coding, I revised the schema when it did not fit. For example, I originally had a “canon analysis” attribute value, which I wound up using for almost every interview participants’ answers; the overwhelming amount led to an unuseful output for my analysis and did not align with my research goals. Another example is when I 90 finished coding and realized I needed to give each “code” element an individual identification number to make the HTML transformation easier.
Many of the attributes I chose reflect specific vocabulary terms found in RGS or fan studies, as well as terms that resonate with some of my findings. For example, one attribute is
“uptakes” while the values are “critical uptakes,” “implicit-explicit-uptakes,” and more. Uptake is an RGS term, while the values are based on terms I create to define different fan uptakes.
When I was coding, I realized the “uptake” attribute missed a value that captured other types of fan uptakes, which I named the “fan-practices-uptake.” The creation and process of the schema demonstrates how schemas are not stable and, as the eXtensible in XML suggests, are easy to revise. All qualitative coding research requires researchers to continue reimagining their structure as they become more intimate with their data and discover new patterns that emerge.
Besides the meta-elements marking up information about the interview, like who is speaking, the elements to mark up the interviewers’ words are only “code” or “power-identity.” I kept the element code general and created multiple attributes to allow for a specific line to have many attributes. Each attribute, too, can have multiple values. Here is an example from Aria’s transcribed interview:
I don't want to
be like, "Ah, but I'm writing the version of this character that's a woman." I hate that. I
know that that's permissible with the meta text but I don't want to be part of that.
Within the “code” element are two attributes: fan-community and rgs-genre, and each of the attributes have values.
The “power-identity” element is nested within the “code” element, which means it can only be used within the “code” element. I wanted to emphasize in my schema how systems of 91 power and positionality are entangled in writing practices. Here is another example from Aria in which the “power-identity” element is used multiple times within the parent “code” element. I underlined the “code” element, which has multiple attributes and attribute values, and bolded the
“power-identity” elements, which are used three times to capture themes around cultural difference, class, and LGBTQ+ identities.
uptake="critical-uptake"> relatively politically progressive father. He's an abuser, but he's also a very, very politically progressive man. describe="class">He's a radical, he tries to overthrow his government, make the world a more equitable and fair place. It's self-interested, he's a bourgeois radical, but I wouldn't have said that at the time.
When I use XSLT to transform this into an HTML document for purposes of both publishing and preserving Aria’s interview and the codes I marked up, the transformation looks like Figure 2.2.
Figure 2.2
Screenshot of HTML Transcription with Codes
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This is a screenshot from Aria’s interview. The entire bolded section is what appears between the two tags, while the underlined portions are the lines that appear between the
Readers can determine if they want to simply read the transcriptions or see how I qualitatively coded the transcriptions.
Computational Essays
Computational essays are available both on the CFT website
(http://www.criticalfantoolkit.org/about_dissertation/computational_essays) and will be uploaded as supporting HTML documents.
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Fandom By Numbers: Visualizing Fanfiction Metadata
This section of the CFT is all interactive visualizations. All the text here is available and paired explicitly within the visualizations. Visit this webpage for the full interactive experience: http://www.criticalfantoolkit.org/fandom_by_numbers/.
Homepage of Fandom by Numbers
The Legend of Korra and Game of Thrones online fanfiction communities on Archive of
Our Own are vastly different. The visualizations in this section offer glimpses into the different stories and ideologies embedded in the larger patterns across the published fanfics. Each visualization models particular metadata, or information input by each fanfic writer when they publish their texts on Archive of Our Own. The visualizations themselves are not screen reader friendly, so each visualization has a detailed description paired along with it for screen readers.
TLOK fanfiction "Additional Tags" network graph
This network graph (Figure 3.1) visualizes the most frequent TLOK fanfiction
"Additional Tags" that are paired together. If an additional tag appears with another tag more than 15 times, both are mapped on the graph with lines (edges) drawn between them, depicting that they were used together. This network and the clusters visualized demonstrate how fan authors create and establish community and community practices using additional tags.
There are additional tags that are connected frequently to other tags, demonstrating their centrality in the network. These tags, including "fluff" and "angst," are the most frequently used and appear at the center of the main cluster. They connect to each other as well as other tags.
There is also the "Alternate Universe - Modern Setting," which also appears frequently with other tags. Specifically, this tag branches off and is often connected to similar "Alternate
Universe" tags, including "College/University," "No Bending," and "High school." 94
Figure 3.1
TLOK Fanfiction Additional Tags Network Graph
There are also clusters of additional tags that appear together more frequently than other tags. For instance, the triangle cluster on the left side of the graph shows that 'multiverse',
'crossover', and 'multiple crossovers' are used together often. Each tag has its own purpose, as crossover suggests one or more crossovers, while multiple crossovers mean there are definitely more than one crossover. Fan authors may use tags together as potential readers may search multiple types of tags.
There is also a branch off "smut" (which is the fan term for explicit sex) that leads to additional tags with specific sexual acts. "Oral sex" is centered within these tags, suggesting that in these different sexual scenes, usually between Korrasami since they are the most-used ship, center around oral pleasure. What makes this so important is that women's sexual pleasure is often overlooked in popular culture; oral sex, specifically between two women characters, focuses specifically on women's pleasure. 95
Want to learn more?
This project provides several different ways to approach this section, including providing step-by-step documentation on how to engage with and transform AO3 data. To learn more, read these sections:
● Methods for Collection, Analysis and Visualizing: Read the methods section of the
CFT for a full understanding of the methods used for this dissertation, including my
choices for creating these visualizations.
● The Coding Process with Computational Essays: These computational essays provide
all the codes used to transform and visualize data as well as basic documentation to
help guide other people interested in working with similar datasets.
Game of Thrones Fandom by Numbers Storyboards
These interaction visualizations are all available in the “Game of Thrones Fandom by
Numbers Storyboards” section of the CFT: http://www.criticalfantoolkit.org/fandom_by_numbers/got.
Below are a series of data visualizations created using Tableau Workbooks. You can make each visualization full screen by clicking the "Full screen" button on the bottom right corner for each. If you are using a screen reader, these workbooks may not be screen reader friendly. However, I have included a description before each visualization to describe the data trends so you can interact with the data and findings.
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Publishing trends by year
Figure 3.2
Game of Thrones Fanfiction Publishing Trends by Year
Figure 3.3
Game of Thrones Fanfiction Publishing Trends by Week
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Figure 3.2 shows the publishing trend of Game of Thrones (GOT) fanfiction published on
Archive of Our Own across the years. The first GOT fanfics were published in 2006. No more data was collected after October 2019. The Figure 3.3 shows how many fics were published on specific weeks.
There were a few fics published before the show aired because the show is based off the
GOT fantasy novel series written by George R.R. Martin, so there was content to work with. As the publishing trends show, there was a steady increase of publishing after the first season aired
(2011), which makes sense because there is more textual content to work with and the show was actually being aired, thus reaching a larger audience than the novels did. There is a bit of a drop in the publishing rate increase during 2018, as there was no season that aired during this time.
While fans were still writing and publishing fanfic, there was less new content to work with.
Romantic categories by season
On Archive of Our Own, fan authors choose the types of romantic relationships that will appear in their text based on characters' genders. This metadata helps with discoverability, as readers can more easily discover stories with relationship categories they want to read or avoid.
These romantic relation categories are:
• F/M: Female/Male
• Gen: No Romantic Relationships
• M/M: Male/Male
• F/F: Female/Female
• Multi: Multiple types of relationships
• Other: Relationships that do not fit in these labels 98
Figure 3.4 shows season trends across each romantic category, clearly indicating F/M is the most popular across all 7 years, while Gen and M/M are also more popular.
Figure 3.4
Romantic Categories by GOT season
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Figure 3.5
Female/Male Relationship Categories in GOT Across Seasons
f/m is "Female/Male," or a heterosexual relationship. GOT fanfiction writers heavily favor F/M relationships over every other type of relationships, demonstrating the heteronormative values in the community. GOT has mostly straight characters, so this trend in the fanfiction community is not necessarily a surprise. Most of the GOT queer characters were killed off in brutal ways, and there is almost no lesbian representation on the show. The GOT universe is fairly heteronormative.
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Figure 3.6
Gen (No Romance) Relationship Categories in GOT Fanfiction Across Seasons
"Gen" is the second most popular relationship category across the 8 seasons. "Gen" signifies there will be no romantic relationships in the fic, implying writers are focusing on developing other types of stories that are not romantic. This is a surprising pattern, as most fan communities center around ships.
GOT itself does not necessarily value romance; there is much more of a focus on politics and war, rather than romance. However, this narrative focus has not stopped fans in the past. One example is from one of the most popular ships and fandoms researched in fan studies: Star Trek and Kirk/Spock (Russ, 1985; Jones, 2002). Even though Star Trek does not focus on romance, 101 many of the fans value romance read into potential romantic subtexts. This trend in GOT, then, breaks fanfiction conventions.
Figure 3.7
Male/Male Relationship Categories in GOT Fanfiction Across Seasons
The third most popular relationship category is M/M, or male/male. Surprisingly, this pattern does not resonate with larger fandoms. Between Kirk/Spock, Sherlock/John Watson, and
Harry/Malfoy, some of the most popular ships are M/M. Early fan scholars, such as Joanna Russ
(1985), argued the focus on M/M was originally because of the lack of well-developed women characters in mainstream cultural materials. However, the focus on M/M relationships can erase women entirely from stories or fetishizes gay men, as seen in genres like Yaoi or Boy Love.
There are a few gay characters in GOT, including Sir Loras, have a form of queer- specific violence enacted upon them (like Sir Loras receiving a form of conversion therapy). The 102 fewer M/M ships may be because there are more interesting canonically straight characters to pair together, such as Brienne/Jaime.
Fanfiction character trends across seasons
Figure 3.8 is an interactive visualization of the top 60 characters used in the GOT AO3 fanfics. On the website, this visualization can be scrolled through and the user can enter in specific character names in whom the user is interested.
Figure 3.8
GOT Fanfiction Character Trends Across Seasons
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Across most of the seasons, as Figure 3.9 shows, Sansa Stark is the top character chosen in the AO3 fanfics across all 8 seasons, suggesting she is one of the most beloved characters in the fandom. Sansa's story begins with her wanting nothing more than to marry a prince and live happily ever after. Her identity is heavily invested in pleasing men, particular her potential suitor. As she grows and survives several acts of violence, she emerges with a new perspective on her identity, her role in the world, and who she wants to be.
Figure 3.9
Sansa Stark Character Trends Across the Seasons
As the high use of her tag demonstrates, many fanfic writers relate to Sansa. Sansa's story arc mirrors many cis women's experiences growing up: at young ages, particular gender 104 expectations are placed upon us around marriage and how we identify ourselves. These pressures extend and change based on our genders, sexualities, cultural context, and positionalities. But in general, her arc is one many women can relate with. She breaks free from these expectations, although she unfortunately had to survive so much violence to do so. This demonstrates how fanfiction authors identify with more feminist characters, representing strong women who learn to push against the gender role constraints that enact violence upon them.
Figure 3.10
Trends of Characters of Color Tags in GOT Fanfiction Across the Season
GOT is not known for its progressive racial politics. In fact, the lack of characters of color and focus on White characters suggest the show is replicating white supremacy. The speculative fiction genre has received criticism for its white supremacy in both academic and popular communities, and GOT is not excused from this. In a famous scene, for instance, 105
Daenerys (played by Emilia Clarke, who is White) is carried across a sea of brown bodies and hands; she perfectly fits the “White Savior” narrative.
While this dissertation is invested in combating white supremacy, this visualization demonstrates how white supremacy is interlaced in the GOT fandom, as well. In Figure 3.10, I use the results from “Sansa” to compare how often characters played by people of color appear, including Oberyn Martell, Missandei, and Khal Drogo. A majority of the fanfics published do not include characters of color.
Missandei and Grey Worm are some of the only characters played by actors of color who consistently appear on the show. Missandei, played by Nathalie Emmanuel, was enslaved at a young age and together with Daenerys, freed herself and other enslaved people across Slaver’s
Bay. Her hope is to free all those who are enslaved across the world. While she appears frequently in the show, she is used much less in fanfiction. On the most used character list, she is
33rd. Grey Worm, played by Jacob Anderson, is the commander of the Unsullied army, an army of people who were enslaved to fight. Missandei and Grey Worm fall in love and have consistently one of the healthiest relationships depicted in the show. Grey Worm was conditioned by the Unsullied to not show love and affection, yet together with Missandei, he unlearns this conditioning. While GOT has a huge cast, Missandei’s and Grey Worm's stories and lives matter. To read more about how fans practice anti-racist through their love for
Missandei, read the “Missandei Deserves Better” case study.
The Legend of Korra Fandom by Numbers Storyboards
The full interactive visualizations for “The Legend of Korra Fandom by Numbers
Storyboards” are available at: http://www.criticalfantoolkit.org/fandom_by_numbers/TLOK. 106
Figure 3.11 shows the publishing trends of TLOK fanfiction published on AO3 across the years, from the first published fic in 2011 to approximately July 2015, several months after the series finale aired.
Figure 3.11
The Legend of Korra Fanfiction Publishing Trends by Month
Publishing activity in TLOK fluctuates often. The first spike of publishing activity is around June 2012, when TLOK first aired. Fans actually had content to work with then, which explains the uptick in publishing rates. The next spike in fan engagement is around February
2013. TLOK was originally supposed to be one season, which explains why there is no continuity in the narratives across all four season.
However, season 2 did not air until late 2013, so the spike in February 2013 may be because the show was announced to come back, again stirring excitement within the fan 107 community. When season 2 actually aired in late 2013, fans engagement barely rose; this may be because season 2 was widely unpopular in TLOK fandom.
Figure 3.12
TLOK Seasons 3 and 4 Publishing Spike
As Figure 3.12 shows Seasons 3 and 4, which brought another larger spike of fan engagement. Season 3 aired June 2014, while season 4 aired October 2014 and finished in
December 2014. What makes seasons 3 and 4 so special was the writers' choices to develop
Korra and Asami's relationship and lead to a romance. Towards the end of season 3, Korra survives a battle and is left traumatized both physically and emotionally. While helping Korra get ready for a celebration, Asami puts her hand on Korra's and says "I want you to know that 108
I’m here for you, if you ever want to talk, or - anything." Fans began to read into this interaction, seeing a new possible romance budding between Korra and Asami.
Season 4 — which aired from October to December 2013–continued a similar trajectory, dropping hints that Korra and Asami may see each other as more than friends. Fans picked up on this subtext, and the amount of fanfictions published spiked. Finally, at the end of Season 4 in
December 2014, Korra and Asami's romance seemed to be confirmed canon. January 2015 brought the highest spike of fan engagements when almost 400 new fanfictions were written.
Relationship and romantic categories
Relationship categories show the general gender pairings represented in the fic, as depicted in Figure 3.13. The three corpora are pre-Korrasami (before Korra/Asami even seemed to be a possibility in canon), sub-Korrasami (when Korra/Asami seemed to be a possibility), and post-Korrasami (when Korra/Asami was confirmed canon).
Figure 3.13
TLOK Fanfiction Romantic Categories by Corpus.
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During the Pre-Korrasami seasons of the show— or seasons one, two, and arguably three
— depict only heterosexual relationships, so F/M (female/male) is the most popular relationship category pre-Korrasami fanfictions. However, as the seasons continue, especially around season three, Korra and Mako's relationship falls apart, while Korra's relationship with Asami grows stronger. There is a huge uptick in F/F (female/female) relationship categories after Korra and
Asami's relationship is confirmed canon, demonstrating the power this moment had over fans.
Figure 3.14 shows. the top 5 ships in the Pre-Korrasami corpus. Korra and Mako are the most popular ship; they are the main couple in the show, after all, so there are parallels between the show and the fandom.
Figure 3.14
Pre-Korrasami Popular Ships
There are a few important arguments to be made from this visualization. First, canonical relationships — and therefore representation in cultural materials — do impact fan communities and how fans engage with texts. In the first few seasons, Korra/Mako may have been popular 110 because they were the lead couple on the show, but the act of them being the lead couple of the show may have also invited mainly a heterosexual fan audience to engage with the show.
Second, even though Korra/Mako is the most popular ship, Korra/Asami fanfics were still being published. Even if a fandom replicates heteronormative narratives, there are still fans who challenge this exclusion. Not every fandom's shipping patterns directly mirror the show's canonical relationship; in fact, some of the most popular ships in certain cultural text are
LGBTQ+ relationships that are not canon (such as the most used ship in My Hero Academia being two male characters who are not canonically in a relationship). The growing interest of
Korra/Asami, even before there are any subtextual hints at their relationship, demonstrate the resilience of fans invested in LGBTQ+ narratives. Even when the Mako/Korra ship reigns over the canonical text and the fandom, the Korra/Asami ship sails on.
Figure 3.15
TLOK Fanfic Character Relationship Comparison between Korra/Asami and Korra/Mako
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The last visualization (Figure 3.15) looks at Korra/Asami's ship (Korrasami). Korrasami jumps in popularity in both the "subtextual-Korrasami" and "post-Korrasami" corpora. Not only that, but the rate of fanfics published also had a huge jump because of this fan investment in
Korrasami. There are almost 1,000 more Korrasami fanfics published in the post-Korrasami fanfics than Mako/Korra fanfics published in the pre-Korrasami corpus (300), as displayed here.
This jump both in fanfic publication numbers and the number of Korrasami fanfics published demonstrates the importance of queer representation in cultural texts, especially in fandoms. To have a bisexual relationship represented between two women in a children's cartoon in America had not been done before, and the excitement around this reveal resonated across the entire fandom. And this data spike captures that excitement. 112
“I’m Going to Tell the Story You Didn’t”: Interviews with Fans
The interviews portion of the dissertation provides interactive options for readers to engage with the fan authors’ voices. While this document is static, the interview webpage on the dissertation is much more interactive (http://www.criticalfantoolkit.org/interviews) to invite both public and academic readers to engage with fan authors’ voices and perspectives.
Interviews Homepage
During her interview, Aria argues that fanfiction authors often approach writing fanfiction, specifically fanfiction that explores queer subtext, as “I’m going to tell the story you didn’t,” demonstrating fans’ active defiance of creators’ intentions as they claim ownership over the canon. She and the five other fanfic authors — three who wrote The Legend of Korra and three who wrote Game of Thrones fanfics — share their experiences writing these fics, their perspectives on the fan community, and the ways in which they think about race, gender, sexuality, and/or culture in their fan engagement.
This interactive portion allows you to explore different angles of the fan authors' interviews. You can read each fan author's interview transcript, learn more about the fan author, read their fanfic that I interviewed them about, explore themes that occur across the interviews, learn about the qualitative coding process. The transcribed interviews and demographic information have been published with each writers’ explicit consent through Northeastern
University's IRB (19-11-05).
Interview Process and Analysis
● Search across the interviews based on themes (Appendix H),
● Read the interview analysis,
● Explore an interactive matrix of coding correlations, 113
● Learn about the qualitative coding process.
Learn About Each Fan
The six authors each provide unique experiences with writing, fandom engagement, and analyzing the canonical text. They each provided self-identified information about their age, gender, race, sexuality, and pronouns, which they agreed to have published on the site.
Each interview has been qualitatively coded. The bolded font in each interviewee’s answer are the coded texts. On the interview transcripts, you can click the bolded words to see how they were coded. Underlined text is also coded, but the code is specific to mentions of power and identity. To see the full interview transcripts for each author, visit http://www.criticalfantoolkit.org/interviews. I have also included a link for each transcription under each author’s name in Table 4.1.
Table 4.1
Fan Authors Descriptions and Self-Identifying Information
TLOK Fan Authors GOT Fan Authors
Kittya Cullen (she/her/hers) Writegirl (she/her/hers) http://www.criticalfantoolkit.org/interviews/kittya http://www.criticalfantoolkit.org/interviews/Writegirl Shares how fanfiction connected her to her home Shares how she wanted to emphasize characters' and culture, the complexities of navigating agency in her writing, her criticisms and excitement allocishet media and fanfic communities as a about both the show and books, and how she queer person, and how she values and resists conducted research to better understand characters' gender normativity. psychology. ● Fanfic Title: "Marching Ants" ● Fanfic Title: "OtherWhen: Game of ● Age range: between 18-25 Thrones" ● Gender: cis woman ● Age range: between 26-39 ● Race and Ethnicity: Black, Guyanese ● Gender: woman ● Sexuality: Pan Aro-Ace ● Pronouns: she/her ● Race and Ethnicity: mixed race, American ● Sexuality: demisexual Gillywulf (she/her/hers) Dialux (she/her/hers) 114 http://www.criticalfantoolkit.org/interviews/Gilly http://www.criticalfantoolkit.org/interviews/dialux wulf Shares why she decided to racebend characters and Shares how she sustained writing 400 vignettes potential challenges around this genre, how she based on audience prompts, how she navigated connected her culture and cultures near her, and certain prompts and fanfic trends that made her how she incorporated supplementary materials to uncomfortable, and why she values fluff in her connect readers to the story. writing. • Fanfic Title: "and we can see the future and ● Fanfic Title: "No Matter The Universe" the dreams it's made of" ● Age range: N/A • Age range: ● Gender: cis-woman • Gender: ● Race and Ethnicity: White, • Race and Ethnicity: Jewish/American/Eastern European • Sexuality: ● Sexuality: lesbian Aria (she/her/hers) Valk (they/them/their) http://www.criticalfantoolkit.org/interviews/aria http://www.criticalfantoolkit.org/interviews/valk Shares how she wrote her fic as she was learning Shares why they imagine characters' resisting about political, class, and queer theory; how these gender normativity, their perspective on the theories are embedded in her text and in fandoms heteronormative trends in the fandom, and how they more generally; and why she focused on Korra's explored wish fulfillment through their fic. trauma, disability, and her connection with Asami. • Fanfic Title: "painting works of art ● Fanfic Title: "Through Pain and • Age range: between 26-39 Oppression" • Gender: non-binary ● Age range: • Pronouns: they/them ● Gender: • Race and Ethnicity: White, Canadian ● Race and Ethnicity: • Sexuality: bisexual ● Sexuality: Relationship Between Codes
These two visualizations represent an adjacency matrix (Figure 4.1) and a correlation matrix (Figure 4.2) across the different qualitative codes used to mark up the interviews. These interactive visualizations show the relationship between the different codes used. The codebook is provided in Appendix B. To explore these visualizations, visit http://www.criticalfantoolkit.org/interviews/vizualization. 115
The adjacency matrix and correlation matrix reveal similar results. The adjacency matrix shows a raw count of how often particular codes appear together (Figure 4.1), while the correlation matrix shows how likely two codes are to appear together (Figure 4.2). In both Figure
4.1 and 4.2, there are strong relationships between identity markers and fan practices. For instance, several identity markers also overlap with how fans respond to the canon. The
LGBTQ+ code appears frequently with the identity-bending generic forms and how fans relate to the canon. The feminism code appears frequently with fans complimenting the canon. The cultural difference tag appears frequently when fans express how they relate to the canon.
There are also higher relationships show between resisting and reinscribing dominant ideologies and fandom politics. For instance, heteronormativity appears frequently with fandom politics and antiracism appears frequently when fans describe their critical uptakes. This demonstrates the correlation between fanfiction authors’ positionalities with their fandom practices. The code for creating these visualizations using the XML-encoded interview transcripts is available in the XML Parser Computational Essay.
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Figure 4.1
Adjacency Matrix of Qualitative Coding
Figure 4.2
Correlation Matrix of Qualitative Coding
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“Fanfiction is Political:” Analysis Across Interviews
To write fanfiction is to engage in political action (carrington, 2013; Booth, 2015;
Lothian, 2018). All writing is political, embedded in particular ideologies and values about how we interpret the world, society, others, and ourselves. Texts do things for us. A rhetorical view of genre asks us to consider the potential of texts to be shaped as much as they shape us. As fan
Kittya Cullen describes writing first in fanboard discussions and writing satirical reviews, she says she moves from “passive consumption to active consumption” of texts, not merely watching, but partaking in the textual production of fan communities, and more largely, shaping how fans interpret and respond to the source. All six fan authors demonstrate how they are
“active” consumers of source texts, popular culture, and fandom communities.
In her interview, Aria asserts the role of politics in writing fanfiction and participating in fandoms. Aria says, “People write political theory when they write fanfic, like a lot of fanfic is political theory, a lot of fanfiction is political.” For Aria, engaging with particular storylines is a method for engaging in different types of politics. Aria describes her experience writing
“Through pain and oppression” as part of her political transition, moving towards more radical politics. At the time, she was reading about the Stonewall riots and running a queer resource center at her college; she was learning about herself and the world, how the systems of America were constructed, and who was harmed or benefited from these systems. For her, reading about
Stonewall and watching The Legend of Korra inspired this fic; she wanted to entangle real
“radical politics” into a fictional world, exploring what revolution means both on a larger social scale as well as an individual scale as Korra begins to understand her own sexuality. Aria states that writing her fanfiction allowed her to explore her own political values, values that both resist and reimagine dominant ideologies. 118
While Aria states her political motivations explicitly, she believes politics are everywhere in fanfiction and fandom; the politics of each interview participant are fairly clear, too, as they describe their particular choices and their fandom journeys. For Valk, writing their fanfiction was a way to explore their gender identity and challenge the heteronormative narratives entangled in Game of Thrones (GOT) romantic fics between Jamie and Brienne. For Kittya, engaging in fandoms and writing fanfiction has been about connecting her to her birthplace as well as exploring her sexual and gender identity. For Dialux, her racebent fic is meant to celebrate her own cultural and ethnic identity while also carefully navigating the potentially harmful racebending genre. For Gillywulf, she engages with writing prompts in ways that mirror her own values, refusing to participate in particular storylines that celebrate harmful power dynamics, including slavefics and teacher-student fics. And finally, for WriteGirl, she weaves feminist and antiracist thinking and storylines as she imagines what she argues as poor writing choices in GOT. Each interviewee indirectly or directly states their political ideologies. Some of these are embedded in the “Additional Tags” they use in their fics’ metadata, some are explicitly stated in their Author’s Note, some are obvious throughout their texts, or some are part of their motivation for writing their fics.
For the analysis in this section, I will analyze the correlation between the codes — or the themes I highlight from each interview using a qualitative coding method — demonstrating how different codes intersect to better trace fans’ politics and perspectives. Correlation coefficients — which are available in the “Qualitative Coding Visualizations: Correlation Matrix” (Figure 4.2)
— takes into account the entire number of codes, how many times the individual codes appear, and how often the codes appear together and creates a correlation coefficient based on that.
Correlation coefficients show how likely codes are to appear together. The closer the number is 119 to 0, the less likely there is a strong correlation that these codes will appear or not appear together. Because the sample size is smaller, the correlations that are either above 0.1 or below -
0.1 are of interest to me, as this indicates these codes are more likely to appear together in this group of interviews than other codes.
The codes with a higher positive correlation, or above .01, suggest that these codes are more likely to appear together in this corpus than other codes. Some of these codes appear much less frequently than other codes, but have high correlations because they are more likely to appear together. Below, I go into more detail about the relationships between these codes and what they reveal about fan authors’ understanding of their work and fan communal practices as well as how these are political. What makes using these different codes important is to demonstrate the interdependent networks between the source text, the canon of the source text, how fans interpret the canon, how fans build community through their interpretations, how these interpretations are political, and how individual fans then uptake these interpretations in the fan genres in which they participate.
The canon
The fan authors all tie their generic and rhetorical choices back to the canon, or the source text. Because fan communities are extensions of the canon of which members are fans, the canon is central. Fans’ interpretations of the canon appear in their uptakes, and also demonstrate the dominant ideologies that they are often pushing against.
The canon critique code has a semi-high correlation with the racism (0.11) and sexism
(0.14) codes as fans were critiquing how the canon reinscribed sexism or racism. Both Kittya
Cullen—who identifies as Black—and Writegirl—who identifies as mixed race—point to the racism perpetuated in the source texts they love. For instance, Kittya Cullen argues that the 120
Supergirl “uses [the] Black character.” Even the use of the word “the” demonstrates how few
Black characters there are in the show. Writegirl also critiques how the GOT writers decide to kill of Missandei, one of the only Black characters on the show. As for sexism, both Writegirl and Valk, who write GOT fanfics, point to the sexism embedded in the show. Writegirl critiques how a scene from GOT in which Sansa, a young woman, is cornered by Sandor Clegane, who is someone she trusts; Writegirl says it feels “a little stalker-y.” Valk points to a different scene between Jaime Lannister and Brienne of Tarth: “Jaime and Brienne kissed each other and Jaime was suddenly taller than her.” Brienne is known to be taller than Jaime and most of the characters on the show, yet she is suddenly shorter when they kiss, reinscribing the notion that women must be feminine in order to be desired — really, that they must be smaller and more petite than men.
Fan authors also celebrate when the canon seems to represent more feminist and queer forms of storytelling. The codes “feminism” and “canon compliment” have the highest correlation coefficient at 0.32, appearing 9 times together in the interviews. Dialux and Valk both celebrate feminist moments in GOT, moments that inspire their fanfics. Dialux, for instance, believes that GOT depicts “sexual liberation for women,” referring to how several women characters have ownership over their sexuality and partners, including not wanting any at all. She points to Sansa, who is the most popular character in the GOT AO3 fandom, as a powerful feminist figure: “in the end [Sansa] got power, and the ability to make sure that nobody hurt her.” Similarly, Valk points to Jaime’s “affinity for femininity,” from the canon and how this affinity inspired them to reimagine Jaime as gender questioning. 121
The pattern of fans celebrating queer and feminist representation is also seen from TLOK fans. In a follow-up email Kittya Cullen sent to me — which I am sharing with her permission
— she writes:
Korra, and that universe will always have a soft spot for me; as a gender-nonconforming
AFAB person who saw herself validated in Korra's body, and her complete confidence in
it, despite its lack of "softness"; as someone who dealt with her own mental health issues
(and yes, used Asami to explore one aspect of it); as a bi/pan aro-ace-spec person who
delighted in seeing fanfiction recognise friendship as both a journey unto itself, and a
foundation for other possibilities. I wanted to write something that would honour my love
for these characters
Kittya was drawn to Korra because she “saw herself validated in Korra’s body,” as she is a
“gender-non conforming AFAB (assigned-female-at-birth) person.” Korra has darker skin, large muscles, a deeper voice, and openly expresses her emotions. In the show, itself, there are moments where characters point to how her gender performance and actions resist conformity, such as when her ex boyfriend’s grandma says “You are very muscular for a girl.” During the actual interview, Kittya backs up this statement when she says, “With gender roles in particular, I think it's fascinating that within the Avatar universe, we got to see all these really powerful girl and women characters who were, for the most part, respected, at least in later years.” This moment is tagged with both the canon compliment and feminism codes. For Kittya, the canon reflects the type of queer and feminist representation that resonates with her own lived experiences.
Gillywulf also affirms the importance of queer representation in TLOK. When talking about TLOK’s final scene, when Korra and Asami walk hand-in-hand into the Spirit Portal, 122
Gillywulf describes her reaction: “But it was incredible. I couldn't believe it. I was like, ‘This is happening, right?’ Yeah. I was like, ‘Jesus.’” While there has been some queer representation on television shows, such as Queer as Folk, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and The L Word, a lot of these shows were targeted at more adult or mature audiences. Meanwhile, TLOK — a children’s show — took a step towards reimagining what content is labeled as mature. Queerness and bisexuality is not a mature concept, and TLOK makes this statement. After Korra and Asami become canon, several children’s television shows follow suit, such as Steven Universe and She-
Ra and the Princesses of Power. Gillywullf’s reaction demonstrates why representing lived experiences — especially those that are often ignored or suppressed — is so important.
For all six of these authors, feminist — and queer — representations of gender performance, challenging toxic masculinity by embracing femininity, and representing strong women and queer characters each draw them to the canon. Fans notice how the canon resists or reinscribes dominant ideologies; they not only notice, but also take steps to then celebrate forms of resistance or reimagine these ideologies.
Fan politics
The dominant ideologies reinscribed or resisted in the canon source materials may also appear in fandoms, themselves. This section takes time to analyze how fans describe politics within their fandoms, and how these politics may also reinscribe or resist dominant ideologies.
Fan politics and fan practices uptake
The fan politics code and the fan practices uptake code both relate to meta understandings of how fanfiction genres and discourse communities are shaped; according to the adjacency matrix, these codes are used 22 times together and have a correlation of 0.22. This high correlation demonstrates how fan uptakes — the common practices that are found when 123 engaging in fanfiction communities — are political and reveal the politics and values of fandoms, just as ideologies are embedded within uptakes across different contexts. For fan politics codes, authors discuss how both external politics and ideologies resonate in fanfiction writing as well as some of the politics of writing, reading, and publishing fanfiction. For fan practices uptakes, the authors refer to uptakes only really found in fan communities, especially fan communities where writing fanfiction is the main source of interaction.
These two codes appear together often because fan authors demonstrate a meta- awareness of how their communities function. For instance, Aria points to the notion of “fanon,” which is specific fan vernacular of ideas that are so often circulated in fandoms, through fanfiction or other ways, that they are almost considered canon. The creation of specific vernacular that is agreed upon and used often by the community demonstrates the values and politics of that community. To have a word — fanon — that is used when a fandom overall agrees with a particular idea about the canon that is not actually canon demonstrates how fans resist capitalistic notions of ownership and intellectual property.
Tagging practices when publishing fandoms, such as using Additional Tags, also reveal the political values of fandoms and an almost habitual action to reach audiences or find fanfiction to read on AO3. Dialux, for instance, points to using a Jodhaa Akbar tag so her fanfic could be discovered by Jodhaa Akbar fans, not just GOT fans. For Dialux, she not only commits to fans of the film, but shows how she cares about her own culture. Jodhaa Akbar is an internationally acclaimed film; it is also an Indian film, so a lot of the fans may either be Indian themselves or have an appreciate for Indian history and cultures. Dialux reaches beyond the
GOT Western and potentially White-dominated fandom to find community that embraces another aspect of her fan identity as a Desi fan. 124
Fan authors’ meta-awareness of fan politics and fan uptakes suggest that they take this awareness into their own fan uptakes. Analyzing fan-specific uptakes — like shared vernacular and tagging practices — reveals political values embedded within fandoms, including how tagging can be used to create community or reach potential audiences or how fanon resists notions of ownership.
Queer Politics in Fandoms
The prominence of feminism (32 codes) and LGBTQ+ (53) codes as well as the high correlation coefficient between these and other codes demonstrate how fandoms are often carved out by queer people to examine and reimagine heteronormative systems. Queer politics run deep in fan communities, as Lamb & Veith (1986) and Russ (1985) demonstrate in their first-wave fan studies articles.
The high correlation coefficient between LGBTQ+ and identity-bending (0.26), for instance, demonstrates how fan authors restory characters’ identities to explore their own lived experiences and share this. This high correlation may come because Valk’s entire fanfiction identity-bends Jaime Lannister’s gender identity. In GOT, Jaime is portrayed as a cis-man, and
Valk reimagines Jaime as exploring his gender identity and performance. In their fic, Jaime buys and tries on makeup, and when his roommate Brienne accidentally walks in, she winds up teaching him makeup tips in an intimate scene. Valk touches on how this fanfiction resonates with their own lived experience; for them, the fanfic is a “self-fulfilling fantasy” when coming out to their friends did not go well.
Gillywulf also mentions that fanfiction was important for her to explore the possibility of coming out. In fact, she cites the Korrasami fandom as one of the spaces that helped her come out: “I'm meeting a community where this is accepted and this is encouraged even." So, I had 125 decided to come out.” The choice to come out is the first step; the next is the action of coming out, an action that can reoccur over and over again across different spaces and communities.
However, she was specifically preparing to come out to her parents. Her fanfiction of 400 one- shots, she wrote different scenes of Korra and Asami coming out to their parents or interacting with their parents as she prepared to come out to her own family. As she describes building up towards coming out and writing her fanfictions, she explains that her one-shots “these became sort of two parallels of, "It could be this, or it could be that.” Fanfiction and storytelling are crucial for queer authors to tell their stories outside of heteronormative, oppressive spaces.
Fandoms, of course, are not totally separate from heteronormativity, but queer politics are celebrated and evoked much more often in fandoms than outside of them. Fan politics (110 codes) and LGBTQ+ (53) has a bit of a lower correlation (0.09) because there are so many of both codes. However, I want to mention the ties between these codes is important to capture a better understanding of fans as queer spaces. For instance, before Asami and Korra’s romance became canon in TLOK, fans were already reimagining their relationship as romantic; the data in the “Fandom by Numbers” section shows this. When Gillywulf and I were talking about these results she says: “I and a lot of the people in the fandom seem to agree for some reason, so I'm just going to go there and enjoy that while I'm doing it.” For fans, the canon is just a jumping off point, especially since queer representation is severely lacking in mainstream culture. Kittya also brings in the importance of queer fan politics, especially for fans who may not feel safe exploring their gender and sexuality in certain spaces. Kittya mentions how she originally was worried about publishing her fanfiction that mentions Korra and Asami’s romance as she knew people “outside the slashfic community” may read her piece. Fan politics center queer romance, 126 carving out space for queer-identifying folks who often need welcoming, non-normative spaces to express themselves.
In terms of how queer politics appear in specific genres, I look to the “fluff” genre, which both Aria and Gillywulf celebrate. Both Aria and Gillywulf believe “fluff” is one of the most popular genres, especially when depicting queer romances by queer writers, because often stories about queer romances are about “our destruction as a moral point, or the echoes of authority,” as
Aria argues. As Aria argues about the romanticization of “destruction” of queer people,
Gillywulf also creates fluffy fanfics because “things are just not good a lot of the time…so I really like reading things that are just soft and maybe things aren't so terrible.” When Aria and I were discussing why “fluff” is one of the most popular tags in TLOK fandom, she argues, “If women who love women retell stories of women who love women, they're going to tell a lot of stories that are about being happy, at least in my opinion.” This moment reveals important aspects of both the fluff genre and the importance of queer folks telling stories about their lived experiences.
Fandoms, especially for these fan authors, can be spaces to tell queer and feminist stories, either continuing from the canon or subverting the canon entirely. These spaces are important for fans to perform their identities in safe, brave communities where they are each embraced for who they are.
Heteronormativity in Fandoms
A well-versed understanding of queer politics also leads fans, especially queer fans, to recognize how heteronormative ideologies may plague fandoms. Heteronormativity and fan politics have one of the highest correlations at 0.29, demonstrating that several of these authors address heteronormativity in fandoms. For instance, while Aria and I discussed the “relationship” 127 tags in TLOK, she says, “I'm really interested in the fact that Korra and Mako becomes more common after Korrasami happened.” She is talking about the uptick in Mako/Korra relationship tags after the show’s finale. While Mako/Korra was a popular relationship within the fandom, this uptick demonstrates how certain fans became more invested in them after Korra and
Asami’s relationship is confirmed, almost as reactionary to this queer representation.
Metadata results from “Fandom by Numbers” suggest heteronormativity is more prevalent in GOT and TLOK. While Mako/Korra’s higher numbers suggest TLOK is not completely separate from heteronormative ideologies, heteronormativity seems to dominate
GOT. When Dialux and I discussed the significantly higher number of straight “Relationship
Categories” in GOT than in TLOK, Dialux says, “But I think that they make sense, to a certain extent, because there definitely are a lot more heterosexual relationships within this fandom than
I've seen in a lot of other fandoms. And I think that's probably because we don't have one main character and one side character that's like the sidekick to the main character, both of them being male. You don't have that here.” When she says, “we don’t have one main character and one side character…both of them being male,” she refers specifically to the notion of slashfic as an uptake of relationships between two close men characters in a canon text. Russ (1985) argues that women write slashfic because they want to reimagine heteronormative spaces, while Jones
(2002) suggests that slashfic is actually a subtextual reading of these types of relationships depicted in canon. In a sense, if the canon subtext already resists heteronormativity by encouraging readings of a romantic relationship between men, then fans are more likely to uptake that subtext to make it explicit. For GOT, though, as Dialux says “we don’t have that here.” The show does not invite queer readings, and fans’ uptakes of the show may reinscribe this heteronormative ideology. 128
When I spoke with Valk about their interpretation of the higher amount of straight couples, they look specifically at Jaime and Brienne. While Valk ships Jaime and Brienne, they see their relationship as more queer than is often depicted in other fanfictions. Valk explains how they see heteronormativity seeping into Jaime/Brienne fanfics: “There's a lot of, again, fanfic already out there of them being intimate, but it was all very incredibly heteronormative. Just their gender roles and Brienne being vulnerable and weak and all that stuff again.” Even though Valk interprets their relationship as potentially queer, or at least non-normative in terms of how they resist gender conformity, they argue a lot of fans just uphold heteronormative gender roles.
Brienne—who in the canon refuses to conform to the gender roles prescribed to her—is depicted in fanfiction as “being vulnerable and weak,” as if she was just waiting for a man to make her feel like she could conform.
Fan authors demonstrate an acute awareness for how queer politics and heteronormative ideologies play out in fan genres. Hunting (2012) examines how heteronormativity is pervasive in fandoms, even fandoms of a queer canon. As TLOK fans’ commitments to Mako/Korra and
GOT fans’ commitments to reimagining Brienne as more feminine, fandoms are not inherently queer.
Racism in fandoms
These fan authors all demonstrate critical understandings of how dominant ideologies like white supremacy and heteronormativity are imbued in mainstream culture and fandoms.
However, not every fan author approaches fandoms and source texts from the same perspective, or at the same levels of critical understanding. Fandoms may accidentally reinscribe, instead of resist, dominant ideologies through larger generic conventions. The codes racism and fan politics have a correlation coefficient of 0.09; this is not a high correlation but may be because there is a 129 large number of fan politics codes (110) and much fewer racism codes (16). Even when I invite fan authors to reflect on white supremacy in fandoms, critiquing racism in fandoms still is not prevalent, as shown with the very few codes.
There were several authors who brush on racism in fan politics, such as Aria and
Gillywulf. Gillywulf mentions that slavefics make her feel uncomfortable, and Aria sees the
“character of color” tags being used less over time in TLOK fandoms as potentially a
“gentrification” of the fandom. Dialux, who identifies as Desi, and Writegirl both also talk about racism fandoms. Dialux, for instance, critiques the racebending genre, even though she herself participates in it. Racebending, according to Dialux, “can be, very racist if not done in a very respectful manner.” For Dialux, her racebending fanfiction reimagines the GOT universe as historic India and she reimagines all the characters as Desi. Even though she herself is Desi and she is writing about her culture’s history, she is still wary of reinscribing stereotypes and merging traditions from different ethnicities. Because she recognizes that racebending may reinscribe racist ideas, instead of challenge them, she pairs her fanfic with an annotated list explaining some of the specific details she includes.
Writegirl also points to the racism in fandoms, specifically about how even when
Missandei is in a fanfic, she is “absent from things.” Missandei’s representation in fanfics, according to Writegirl, is more “window dressing” where she is there to affirm Daenerys, rather than have any agency. Writegirl’s fanfiction about Missandei is partially a response to the injustice of her character’s death in GOT as well as her erasure in the GOT fandom. These critiques are more about general patterns in fan communities, such as critiques of white supremacy are often targeted at institutions, rather than individual people. However, as fan 130 authors, it is up to us to enact critical uptakes when we write fanfiction, recognizing how our writing can challenge, rather than reinscribe, white supremacy.
Critical uptakes
The critical uptake code has higher correlations with a few codes, including antiracism, canon critique, and motivations. Critical uptakes are the habits of response in which the actor, in this case the fan authors, are critiquing the dominant ideologies embedded in either the original genre or in common uptakes of that genre. The critical uptake code having high correlation with several codes demonstrates how these fan authors are carefully thinking through the ideologies embedded in both fanfiction genres and the canonical genres.
The antiracism and critical uptake codes have a higher correlation (0.26) because several fan authors critique racism in either the fandom or within the canonical text at several points; their critiques, then, appear in their fanfiction uptakes. For instance, Gillywulf critiques the common use of the slave fanfiction genre, citing she “did not want to contribute to it” when someone prompted her to write a slavefic. Gillywulf’s 400-chapter-long fanfiction is a series of one-shots of her responding to prompts from TLOK fans asking her to write about specific ideas or within specific genres. She mentioned she was prompted a few times to write a slave fanfic, which made her uncomfortable. In her uptake of the prompt, she explicitly challenges a typical generic conventions slavefics, specifically that the enslaved person and the person who enslaved them usually wind up in a romantic relationship. Gillywulf in her critical uptake of the prompt removes that possibility entirely.
The critical uptake code also has a higher correlation with canon critique (0.15); when fans are critical of the canon about which they write fanfiction, their fanfictions will reflect that criticism. For instance, Aria critiques how PTSD is portrayed in TLOK and carries that criticism 131 into her fanfiction. She argues that the canon represents PTSD as “something you recover from,” but points out this is not always the case. Through her critique of the canon, then, her critical uptake involves reimagining how the canon represents trauma, specifically, “through the context of being something you come to live with, and come to integrate, and come to find becomes a part of you life.” Similarly, Writegirl expresses her frustration with the GOT canon, especially the execution of Missandei, one of the only Black women who appears consistently in the show.
Her frustration led her to the creation of her fanfiction chapter about Missandei choosing to sacrifice her life to stop the war, dying “on her own terms,” as Writegirl argues, instead of “in chains, basically in a pissing contest between two White women”—referring specifically to
Queen Cersei and Daenerys Targaryen. Aria and Writegirl’s critiques of show come from critiquing how the generic conventions embedded within the show—a hero needing to recover from her trauma in order to continue being a hero and a Black woman’s life being used for White characters to gain or maintain power—reflect harmful dominant ideologies. Their criticisms lead to their uptakes subverting these generic conventions often found in fantasy narrative arcs.
Critical uptake has a higher correlation with authors’ motivations (0.13) for either writing their entire fanfic or specific choices they made when writing. Fan authors share their motivations for their critical uptakes, what drives them to uptake the canon or fan genres. Aria, for instance, argues “There's a study I think that says that when you get into rational arguments about things you don't convince them, but if you tell stories you can. And I think that I'm in that place, arguing about politics in the fiction space of the internet.” Aria shares how to part of her motivation to tell stories to persuade people who may not agree with her, specifically to invite them to understand why radical, queer, anti-racist politics are important. Instead of arguing with them, though, she turns to storytelling. 132
Several other fan authors also tie their motivations to critically uptake fan genres or the canon by pointing to how the canon inspires them. Part of Writegirl’s motivation is her critique of Sansa’s character development. She points out there “was a glimpse of a darker Sansa, a more politically savvy Sansa, a more adult Sansa. And then, for whatever reason, they backed off of it.
And then the next thing we see her, she's just kind of sitting there asking questions, looking dull.
And that was a little irritating to me.” She refers to a specific moment halfway through the show.
Writegirl interprets the writers’ choices as writing Sansa as more passive, muting the power she was slowly gaining before. This “was a little irritating” to Writegirl, and this irritation became her motivation to critically uptake how the writers fail Sansa and reinscribe oppressive gender roles.
As Writegirl’s critique of the canon motivates her to enact a critical uptake, Kittya is motivated by her love for the canon. When sharing why she was motivated to write about Asami, she expresses that she wants to explore Asami’s character further, especially because Asami is not as often explored by fans. What makes her approach a critique is that she points out how
Asami, like certain characters, are often overlooked: “where the audience may usually dismiss them or not consider them worthy of further exploration. So I like to see for myself how their worth is existing within these relationships, what it means for them and what it can mean for the audience and so forth.” Kittya wants to examine and celebrate “their worth,” even if other audience members — such as fans — “may not consider them worth of further exploration.”
While Asami is popular in TLOK fandom community, much of her story is tied to Korra’s story.
Finally, critical uptakes have a higher correlation with fan politics (0.12), demonstrating that political values embedded in fan authors’ community practices align with their critical perspectives. Several authors talk about their community practices more generally, describing 133 community values at large. For instance, when Aria describes why fans’ queer readings and interpretations are important, she says” People they were like, ‘Oh yeah, I want to tell this story,
I want to finish this story.’ And there's a degree to which it a queer reading, there's this political tendency to look at fiction and say, I am going to tell the story you didn't.”’ She first begins with a more general definition of fandoms: “I want to finish this story.” Fans approach writing fanfiction with this goal, specifically within the “subtext,” as Aria argues. Fans recognize the subtext and want to make it explicit in their uptake. Aria also points to fans’ “queer readings,” in which the subtext allows for queer interpretations. She specifically refers to this as a “political tendency” in that queer readings — even if the fan author is not explicitly citing politics — is political. Finally, Aria ends by says, “I am going to tell the story you didn’t,” the “I” referring to the fan authors queering the canon. This moment of defiance demonstrates how Aria and other fans invested in or dabbling in queer politics commit to challenging the original writers, calling out the stories they overlooked, intentionally or not. Gillywulf backs up what Aria says when she says, “And a lot of the purpose of fandom is to sort of explore beyond what we're just given.”
Gillywulf’s phrase “explore beyond” and Aria’s statement of defiance demonstrates how fans’ approach their fanfiction writing — their uptakes of the canon and fan genres — with the notion of “exploring beyond” the canon.
As fan authors participate in fan genres, they are enacting critical uptakes. They play with fanfiction generic conventions, resisting the dominant ideologies either within these conventions or in the genre conventions in the canonical show. Their critiques of the show and fandom can motivate them to then enact a critical uptake by composing fanfiction. Fans’ critical uptakes — their commitment to “tell[ing] the story [the canon] didn’t” — comes from their investments in queer, feminist, anti-racist, and other critical politics. 134
Explore Themes Across Interviews
This portion is meant to be interactive, inviting users to click on different codes/themes and read both an analysis as well as the actual quotes from the fan authors. To better explore this section, visit http://www.criticalfantoolkit.org/interviews/search. I have also put all the text in the
Appendix H to preserve the text.
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“Missandei Deserves Better:” Loving Blackness through Critical (Anti)Fan Uptakes
and Disruptakes
"To face these wounds, to heal them, progressive black people and our allies in struggle must be
willing to grant the effort to critically intervene and transform the world of image making
authority of place in our political movements of liberation and self-determination"
- bell hooks, Black Looks: Race and Representation
Content Warning: White supremacy, descriptions of death, expletives
In the final season of Game of Thrones, Missandei is brutally executed in front of her loved ones. Queen Cersei, the main antagonist of the show, captures Missandei to demonstrate her power to Daenerys, Missandei’s close friend, as they fight over the throne. Missandei is forced to stand on the wall surrounding Kings Landing — a stage for her death — with her hands bound in chains (Figure 5.1). Her loved ones, including her romantic partner Grey Worm, watch as Cersei gives the signal that prompts Missandei’s death.
Figure 5.1
Screenshot of Missandei from Game of Thrones
Image description: A screenshot from Game of Thrones, Season 8 (2019). It depicts Missandei before her execution. She is looking down towards the camera, which is angled up to show her and the sky. Her hands are bound in chains.
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GOT’s writers are known for their brazen choices in killing characters, beloved or hated.
Missandei’s death is just one of many that the audience witnesses. Throughout most of the show, every characters’ demise affirms there are happy endings in the GOT universe. Yet, in the final season, the writers offer happy — or as happy as can be — endings for several characters, including Arya, Sansa, and Jon. Sure, they survive extreme violence and live with trauma, but they each get what they want. Missandei’s death, in this context, hurts. She did not get her happy ending with Grey Worm. They could have sailed to Naath, her homeland together. Her death, then, resonates differently than most other characters, a type of violence that feels all too real in the face of colonialism and white supremacist systems of power. Missandei, portrayed by
Nathalie Emmanuel, is one of the only Black women in the show. She survives slavery and dedicates her life to liberating others alongside Dany and Grey Worm. She breaks her metaphorical — and literal — chains. Yet, as Writegirl points out, “she dies in chains, basically in a pissing contest between two White women.” Her liberation arc, her happy ending, is stifled the moment chains are placed back on her wrist.
Even before her death, Missandei often lingers in the background with barely any time spent towards developing her character. As Ebony Elizabeth Thomas (2019) argues: “Although
Missandei is free, her story remains tied to Daenerys.” Thomas’ argument resonates with
Writegirl’s observations on how the fandom represents Missandei. Writegirl expands upon
Thomas’ argument, claiming that when Missandei is included in fics, she is often there to just affirm Dany; Missandi is “window dressing. She's there, she doesn't speak, or she speaks, it's one or two sentences in the entire fic.” While the trends from both the show and the fandom overlook
Missandei, the glimpses of Missandei’s story apart from Dany are some of the most beautiful moments on the show. For example, in season 5, Missandei tends to Grey Worm’s wounds after 137 a battle and they share their first kiss (Figure 5.2). He confesses he loves her, even after he survived years of torture conditioning him and other Unsullied that he could never love anyone.
“I am ashamed because...I am afraid...I fear I never again see Missandei from the Island of
Naath.”
Figure 5.2
Screenshot of Missandei and Grey Worm’s first kiss from Game of Thrones
Image description: A screenshot of Game of Thrones, series 5 (2014). Grey Worm is wounded and lying in bed. Missandei leans over to kiss him for the first time. In order to trace fans’ critical uptakes and critical disruptakes, I build upon Thomas’ blog post to examine how fans critique Missandei’s death and the erasure of Black women in the show and fandom. Specifically, I use approximately 29,000 GOT fanfictions published on
Archive of Our Own (AO3), a popular fanfiction publishing website. Fans flock to AO3 to compose, read, and engage with fanfictions of their favorite movies, television shows, books, and characters. Every work published on AO3 can incorporate metadata for discoverability purposes, such as using the Additional Tag “Missandei deserves better”. I examine how fans critically uptake Missandei’s death, especially in the context of a fandom and show dominated by whiteness, such as through the use of Additional Tags like “Missandei deserves better” and how 138 fans reimagine justice for Missandei. Rebecca Wanzo (2015) argues, “Black fandom can thus be both counter to white hegemony and normative in its adherence to ideological projects that treat black people as representative of US culture instead of outliers.” For Wanzo and other scholars studying anti-racism and Black cultures, the work of Black fans and allies is not just to combat white supremacy, but to make explicit the interchangeability of blackness; popular culture; and dominant ideologies, politics, and histories.
I begin this piece by demonstrating the white supremacist ideologies embedded in GOT, and in the next section examine how the GOT fandom on AO3 reinscribes them. The crux of this piece shows how several fans challenge this white supremacy through their composing practices, critical uptakes, and critical disruptakes. Critical fans and critical uptakes are necessary to intervene when fandoms and popular culture texts uphold white supremacy in order to celebrate
“loving blackness” (hooks, 1992) as an act of resistance, survival, and resilience. I also examine antifandoms, or fan communities that revolve around critiquing or disliking a media text; often antifandoms are simultaneously critiquing a show’s reification of white supremacy or other harmful ideologies, while also enjoying other aspects of the show. I look at one instance of a critical disruptake as an antifandom practices, in which a Black fan author disrupts the seemingly normal fanfiction genre approach in order to critique both GOT and the fandom.
Tracing White Supremacy in Canon Compliant Uptake
GOT valorizes whiteness, both overtly and insidiously. As Sarah Florini (2019) points out, GOT is a “show coded as white, featuring all white leads.” The only few characters of color, like Missandei, meet violent ends and/or are portrayed as savages. The Dothraki, a nomadic tribe east of Westeros, are feared across the continents, and their culture revolves around violence and bloodshed. Grey Worm is part of the Unsullied, an army of child soldiers who are conditioned to 139 feel no compassion or love so they are more effective in battle. The writing in the show wrestles with the idea of Westeros’ racist assumptions towards the people of Essos, the land across the sea. For example, when Grey Worm and Missandei are in Winterfell, people stare at them unprompted because of their appearance, marking their difference. Yet, even when the show attempts to critique this racism, it reinscribes this racism by affirming the people of Westeros’ fears. Dany and her army of the Unsullied and Dothraki destroy King’s Landing, substantiating the racist fears woven across Westeros. And Missandei’s murder for a White woman’s political gain, the lack of writer’s attention to her character, and the disruption of Missandei and Grey
Worm’s happy ending reifies this white supremacy.
White supremacist ideologies are replicated in the majority of the GOT fandom, especially on AO3. Fandoms are entangled in the same systems of power as popular culture; cultural hegemony permeates across media, from mainstream to fan-made media. Only four percent of the 29,897 GOT fanfics published on AO3 incorporate characters of color. This data is based on the GOT AO3 data collected for this dissertation from the first GOT fanfic published up until October 2019. Figure 5.3 shows a pie chart of all the fanfics with character tags, as not every fanfic author uses character tags. I separated the fanfics with character tags by whether a character of color was incorporated or not. To do this, I created a list of all the characters in GOT played by actors of color who are not fantastical creatures. If a fanfic character tag incorporated one of these characters, it was labeled as “Fics with Character of Color Tagged.” This low percentage demonstrates how fans commit to main, well-developed characters, which the GOT writers never granted Misasndei. GOT writers fail to provide characters of color the same spotlight and invest space to their development. The lack of development and screentime may contribute to lesser fan investment. 140
Figure 5.3
Pie chart of Characters of Color Used in Game of Thrones AO3 Fanfics
The erasure of characters of color in the GOT fandom reinscribes white supremacist systems, whether they intend to or not. This erasure is also a form of canon compliant uptakes in which fans take up canonical details and ideologies from the show as they write their fanfiction (Messina, 2019). Canon complaint uptakes, based on the AO3 additional tag “canon compliant” are when fans follow what is canon in their transformative fanwork. In this way, canon compliant uptakes mirror canonical events and generic conventions from the original texts they love. The term “canon compliant” is a well-used Additional Tag on AO3 that fan authors use to signal to their audience that they are following the canon and thus appreciate the canon. 141 canon compliant uptakes do not inherently have particular ideologies, such as white supremacy, embedded within them.
I first want to briefly define uptakes and why uptake is an important framework. Uptakes as defined in rhetorical genre studies are the anticipated generic responses to specific genres; these uptakes are deemed appropriate responses in particular contexts that have been deemed appropriate based on place, time, frame, and function. There are often particular anticipated conventions within these responses, conventions determined by context, community, and ideologies (Freadman, 1994 & 2002). Writing fanfiction is a form of uptake enactment, or the action of taking up and responding to one genre with another (Dryer, 2016). Uptake can also demonstrate the roles of power, privilege, and ideology within generic boundaries and conventions (Bawarshi, 2000 & 2016) — why are particular uptakes anticipated in particular contexts? How do these uptakes resist or replicate particular ideologies?
Canon compliant uptakes, then, typically mirror the ideologies embedded in the original text because they follow the canon. So, GOT canon compliant uptake artifacts — such as the
AO3 fanfics published — are bound in the same systems of white supremacy as the show. What makes examining uptake so important is it emphasizes the agency of the person doing the uptake
— in this case, the fan author. Fan authors have the abilities to resist and speak back to harmful ideologies. And they also have the ability to replicate those ideologies.
To point back to Thomas’ argument about Black characters’ stories being tied to White characters, how do fans uptake this relationship? To again quote Writegirl, GOT fanfictions often depict Missandei as “window dressing.” This, of course, is Writegirl’s observation, although the small percentage of GOT fanfics that include characters of color affirms her point.
However, when Missandei’s character tag is used, how integral is she to the fanfic? First, out of 142 the 29,897 fanfics, only 1,108 (3.4%) use Missandei as a character tag, as opposed to other
White GOT side characters who appear more frequently across the fanfics: Gendry at 12.2%,
Lyanna Mormon at 5.3%, Tormund at 5%, and Podrick at 5.6%.
Merely pointing out how often Missandei’s character tag is used across the entire GOT corpus does not emphasize just how much Missandei is erased from fanfics. I created a small corpus of these 1,108 fanfics that use Missandei in the character tags to get a better sense of how she may appear in these fanfics. I used the Python function “string contains” which pulls any fanfics that use the word “Missandei” in the character tags, which includes different uses of
Missandi from “Missandei (ASoIaF)” and “Missandei.” To learn more about the computational process, read the “Missandei Deserved Better” Computational Notebook. Figure 5.4 shows the results of the most popular characters and relationship tags in the Missandei corpus. Because the character tags are not all normalized, “Missandei (ASoIaF)” is used 744 times while “Missandei” is used 68 times. Daenerys’ character tag is used 682, followed closely by Tyrion, Sansa, then
Arya. Grey Worm, Missandei’s partner, does not even make the top five, suggesting that their relationship may not be a focus even in the Missandei corpus; Grey Worm appears 396 times, or in only 35.7% of the fanfics published in the Missandei corpus. This suggests that there may be less of a focus on Missandei and Grey Worm’s relationship in these fanfics, as the most used tags are Dany and Tyrion. Again, Writegirl’s theory of Missandei being “Window dressing” comes to mind.
143
Figure 5.4
Top Character Tags Used in “Missandei” Corpus
Beyond metadata, then, is how often her name actually appears in the fanfics and compared to other popular characters who are tagged in this corpus. The use of names may be misleading, as some authors may write in first person or use alternate ways of pointing to a character. Still, as the results show, Missandei’s name appears far less frequently than many of the White characters mentioned, suggesting she is not nearly as central to the fanfic as these other characters. Figure 5.5 shows the word count of how often the names “Missandei” and other characters appear in the Missandei corpus. Even in her own corpus, Missandei’s name (or Missy) is used less frequently than Daenerys (or Dany), Sansa, and Arya, who are all popular White characters. Fanfic authors who incorporate Missandei mirror how GOT writers incorporate her
— she is, as Writegirl argues, “window dressing” who rarely gets her own story. I even searched how frequently “Naath,” Missandei’s homeland, is used (the answer is 0.0005%) versus
Westeros (0.005%), suggesting again that her background is not a key component of these stories. 144
Figure 5.5
Frequency of Character Names in Missandei Corpus Word Count
(n= 194,504,308)
Fans’ cannon complicit uptakes of the GOT show and A Song of Ice and Fire demonstrate how representations of systems of power, like white supremacy, are replicated in fan genres. Fans’ choices about which characters they value, which characters they ship, and how they reimagine particular characters reveal their values about whose stories they believe deserve to be centered. Unfortunately, these values often overlook characters of color, particularly Black characters like Missandei. The violence enacted upon her in GOT’s final season is reinscribed as she is forgotten or paraded as “window dressing.” White supremacy is simultaneously insidious and overt, and often difficult to untangle. Yet, there are fans whose uptakes challenge white supremacy, and there will always be fans who resist harmful ideologies in their uptakes.
Resisting White Supremacy through Critical (disr)uptakes: On Loving and Caring For
Missandei 145
Fandoms are not homogenous, and there are individual fans and communities of fans who challenge white supremacy. Not only through the explicit critiques of white supremacy, but also through, as bell hooks (1992) argues, “loving blackness.” hooks argues “In white supremacist context, ‘loving blackness’ is rarely a political stance that is reflected in everyday life” (p. 10).
To love blackness is to value Black joy, romance, diasporic cultures, and people. The way
Missandei is taken up in the GOT fandom reflects the infrequency of loving blackness. But there are fans who love Missandei, who cherish her relationship with Grey Worm, and who, through their uptakes, represent what loving and protecting Black women can look like in a culture of white supremacy. This section examines these fans’ — and antifans’ — critical uptakes and critical disruptakes of Missandei’s death.
In The Dark Fantastic (2019), Ebony Elizabeth Thomas argues that the way Black women characters are written in popular culture follow the narrative arc of the Dark Other, or a cycle of generic conventions. Thomas demonstrates how these conventions are embedded in so much pop culture media and are due to an “imagination gap” in pop culture and literary representation. One step in this narrative cycle is “haunting,” which occurs after the “violence” cycle — the haunting is how the violence Black women characters survive or die from resonates throughout the texts. She looks, for example, at Rue from The Hunger Games, a young Black girl who dies in the main characters’ arms; her death and the main character’s compassion spark a revolution. Missandei’s death also leads to Dany making a choice — committing genocide against the entire King’s Landing people. Her final words — “Dracarys”, or Dragonfire in
Valyrian — haunt the last few episodes of GOT as Dany, Grey Worm, and their armies destroy
King’s Landing, murder its people, and suffer the consequences. 146
Critical uptakes of Missandei’s character and execution, though, align with Thomas’ call for “critical counterstorytelling for a digital age” (p. 10), in which emancipation is the final step in this Dark Other narrative arc. The Black characters Thomas centers her book around such as
Rue from The Hunger Games and Gwen from Merlin, are rarely offered this emancipation. It is up to fans and critical counterstorytellers to reimagine their emancipation through the use of critical uptakes. How, then, are critical fans already imagining and taking up Missandei’s emancipation?
One digital space to examine “loving blackness” is the #DemThrones hashtag is used across Twitter, Instagram, and other platforms. Black fans and fans who are allies/accomplices used #DemThrones while the show was airing in order to live Tweet their reactions to their show as well as find like-minded fans. Florini (2019) describes #DemThrones fans as “able to shift their contributions to a parallel timeline, separating themselves from the fans using the official hashtags while still allowing them to utilize Twitter for synchronous coviewing.” Black fans often carve out spaces separate from fandoms that are either predominantly White or replicate white supremacy, whether through the implementation of hashtags or creation of other media, like podcasting. AO3 does not always offer the same counterspace that other digital platforms offer, as the data demonstrates how fans may uphold — even accidentally — white supremacy.
However, there are fan authors who perform critical upakes on AO3, challenging the white supremacy laced in both GOT and the GOT AO3 fandom.
Critical uptakes are when writers “resist harmful and exclusive cultural ideologies in their uptake” (Messina, 2019). In this instance, critical fans are those who enact critical uptakes, analyzing how the generic conventions from the original show or fanfictions valorize particular, exclusionary ideologies. Through this analysis, fans recognize the systems of power at work in 147 these generic conventions and challenge them in their own fanfiction. Specifically, fans’ critical uptakes of Missandei demonstrate not only their care and love for her, but the recognition that she “deserves better.” On AO3, only a few fanfictions use the additional tag “Missandei
Deserves Better (ASoIaF)” or a similar tag, signaling fans’ mourning of Missandei as well as the recognition that she was subjected, like many Black characters are, to an unjust violence and death.
“The Liberated Voice”: Cases of fans’ critical uptakes
Writegirl, whose full interview can be found in the “Interviews” portion of the CFT, provides one version of Missandei’s arc. Her fanfiction, “OtherWhen: Game of Thrones” is a collection of short vignettes reimagining particular moments in the show. Chapter 10, titled “In
Which Missandei Takes Control of Her Fate,” reimagines Missanndei’s death, where she refuses to be used as a political pawn. Writegirl cites her motivation for critically taking up Missandei’s death as frustration towards the writers — not only that she believes Missandei’s final words were out of character, but that the writers undermine Missandei’s liberation arc by choosing to have her “die in chains.” While the frustration Writegirl felt was the exigence of her piece, she also argues that not enough fanfics focus on Missandei, and she wanted to provide space for that.
She says, “Kind of like, who is Missandei? If you take away slavery, and her being Daenerys' friend, who is this person? What is the one thing that would be important to her?” Writegirl’s point that Missandei is often written alongside Dany mirrors’ Thomas’ analysis of the show in that Missandei’s story is “always tied to Dany’s.” In Writegirl’s fanfic, Missandei does reflect on her relationship with Dany, but also about her liberation and desire to see others liberated. She also tries to remember her home before she was enslaved, always tying her story back to the sands of Naath, her birthplace. 148
In Writegirl’s piece, Missandei’s arc still concludes with her death, although Misandei chooses how she dies and takes Cersei with her. It is not Missandei’s death, though, that demonstrates Writegirl’s critical uptake, but the moment before — Missandei’s choice to speak back to Cersei. They are not words to Dany, Grey Worm, or the army standing before the wall —
Missandei speaks directly to Queen Cersei, who has imprisoned her. She says, “You would have fit in well with the masters in Astapor.” The “masters” here refer to the people who enslaved
Missandei and others. When I asked Writegirl about this moment and why she chose to have
Missandei speak to Cersei, Writegirl explains, “She's really seeing Cersei for the creature Cersei is, beyond just being kind of a high-born woman in Westeros. She's seeing the monster that's inside Cersei.” While Cersei is well-known in the fandom to be evil, her status as Queen demonstrates how she is able to manipulate those around her to gain her position of ultimate power. She may not be a beloved Queen, but she is the Queen nonetheless. Missandei, however, refuses to acknowledge Cersei’s power and chooses to talk back.
This moment resonates with bell hooks’ theorizing in Talking Back: Thinking Feminist,
Thinking Black on the oppressed using speech to combat their oppression:
"Moving from silence into speech is for the oppressed, the colonized, the exploited, and
those who stand and struggle side by side a gesture of defiance that heals, that makes new
life and new growth possible. It is that act of speech, of “talking back,” that is no mere
gesture of empty words, that is the expression of our movement from object to subject—
the liberated voice." (p. 9)
The choice to have Missandei “talk back” to Cersei here — to carve out her own space and speak truth to power — demonstrates how Writegirl is thinking through both characters’ positionalities and another form of liberation. One of the goals for Missandei, Writegirl argues, is to help 149 liberate all those who are enslaved. By choosing to speak back to Cersei, comparing her to a
“master,” Missandei recognizes a different form of oppression, not as overt as slavery, but still oppressive nonetheless. Cersei will do anything to maintain power, and in this drive, enact violence upon those around her and the people she is ruling. She, as those in positions of great power often do, forces armies to go into battle to protect her crown and her position. She reigns as a totalitarian dictator, determining who is allowed to live and die. Missandei sees this and speaks up in a “gesture of defiance” (hooks, p. 9). While Missandei still dies, she uses her
“liberated voice” to stop Cersei from continuing to enact systemic violence upon others. She also does not call for Dragonfire, so her final words do not haunt King’s Landing, then, leading to the destruction of an entire city.
While Writegirl is the only fan author who was interviewed for this dissertation, there are other fan authors who have critically taken up Missandei’s story and narratives about race, liberation, and Black love. I pulled three fanfics — two published in the corpus I collected and one published more recently (October 2020) — that demonstrate Thomas’ critical counterstorytelling by reimagining Missandei and Grey Worm’s fates. These fanfic authors center Missandei’s well-being as well as her and Grey Worm’s love for each other.
In Lady_R’s “The Girl Who Got Away”, Lady_R still incorporates the moment
Missandei stands on the wall before her loved ones, but reimagines only her ear being cut off in order to still have a catalyst for the burning of King’s Landing. Missandei survives and escapes, watching the destruction Dany brings upon the city and losing faith in her once friend. She finds
Grey Worm and tends to him as they exchange promises of love. The story progresses by focusing on exchanges — their choices, their actions, and their emotions — between Missandei,
Grey Worm, and Marselen, Missandei’s brother. There is a conflict between Grey Worm and 150
Marselen early in the piece, as Grey Worm continues to slaughter soldiers after they surrender.
Grey Worm’s choice to continue this slaughter is partially due to his conditioning to follow commands — commands specifically coming from Dany — as well as his anger that Missandei is missing. Before he is reunited with Missandei, though, Marselen convinces Grey Worm to help survivors instead of slaughtering, thus defying Dany and resisting his own conditioning. He chooses then to help keep everyone safe by calling his soldiers to:
“-Find the survivors!-. Grey Worm’s throat itches as he screams the new command, but
he repeats it once more, and twice again in the Valyrian tongue. -Find them. Keep them
safe! This is not who we are! This won't be who we are!-.”
His refusal to continue slaughtering, following Dany’s lead, demonstrates the strength of his identity separated from Dany, especially when he says, “This is not who we are! This won’t be who we are!”
Just as Grey Worm defies Dany, so does Missandei. Lady_R actively critiques the
“window dressing” convention in fanfics that Writegirl points out, in which Missandei appears in fanfics merely to affirm Dany. In Lady_R’s piece, though, Missandei, upon seeing the destruction Dany reigns upon King’s Landing, realizes Dany is not the person she thought.
Missandei defies Dany, both in thought and action. Missandei helps survivors find shelter away from Dany and her dragon, commands the Dothraki from Dany’s army to do the same, and realizes that Dany has never cared about liberating others when Missandei thinks, “So much for the Breaker of Chains.” Lady_R highlights Missandei’s agency, separate from Dany, even emphasizing the philosophies which Missandei lives by: “But the way of the Naathi is to grow what we can from burned terrain.” Missandei is a survivor; she survived being enslaved, she 151 survived Queen Cersei and Dany’s dragon, and she will continue to endure, as generations of her ancestors taught her on Naath.
Finally, Missandei and Grey Worm reunite, demonstrating Lady_R’s commitment to representing Missandei’s joy and emancipation, as Thomas calls for. In the last scene of the fanfic, Missandei asks Grey Worm if he is afraid of Dany, and he says, “I had one fear, remember that. A fear that I left behind.” This quote calls back to the scene from Season 5 of
GOT s when Missandei and Grey Worm first kiss. Lady_R’s call back demonstrates the importance of representing romance and joy for Black characters in popular culture texts.
Lady_R’s focus on Missandei and Grey Worm’s arcs, their choices to defy Dany, and their final reunion signifies how fanfic authors can challenge white supremacy and other systems of power in their uptakes.
While I focused on Lady_R’s actual fanfiction text, I also want to bring to attention the ways fan authors use Author’s Notes, or the brief author’s explanations at the beginning and end of fanfic chapters. In her piece, “The Fire It Ignites,” supergirrl chooses for Dany to die rather than Missandei, imagining how Missandei may navigate her new leadership role. The piece centers Missandei’s interactions with other characters and the different cultures from Meereen, the land to the East of Westeros. In supergirrl’s first Author’s Note in chapter one, she critically takes up the show and uses the Author’s Note as a place to directly address what she perceives as problematics in the show; she simultaneously critiques the show’s ideologies while also affirming that these issues motivated her to write. For example, she points out that the Dothraki culture is all but erased in later seasons of the show. She writes, “My love for [Missandei] and
Daenerys, as well as my interest in other things that the show bungled/left out (Dothraki culture, the existence of Dothraki women, women having relationships with each other not based on spite 152 and possessing complex internal lives, etc) inspired me to write this fic.” The Dothraki in GOT are a nomadic culture that Dany leads; in the show, their cultural practices are often portrayed as barbaric and violent, and the people of Westeros are afraid of the Dothraki. The show plays into the notion of nomadic tribes, particularly non- White nomadic tribes, as being savage, continuing to reinforce a white supremacist ideology that both led to and stems from colonialism. While the show at first provided more sympathy and time dedicated towards the Dothraki, the final few seasons only showed them during battles when they were either being slaughtered or doing the slaughtering. supergirrl emphasizes this in her Author’s Note and proceeds in the actual fanfiction text to better explore the Dothraki people, especially Dothraki women. Her Author’s
Note here acts as a bridge between her criticism of and her reimagintion of the show.
For supergirrl, as a critical fan, she is invested in centering the cultures and characters that the show overlooks, especially those that are coded as non- White. Her Author’s Note also demonstrates how she is writing within a particular political discourse specifically found in scholarship on slavery. She writes, “I have also chosen to use the word 'slave' in dialogue, as that what is used in canon, but in Missandei's thoughts she uses the more appropriate 'enslaved person/people.'” supergirrl points to the difference in using the adjective “enslaved” to describe a person versus the noun “slave.” This acknowledgement of adopting careful language to talk about slavery points to the suggestions and arguments made by P. Gabrielle Foreman and collaborators in “Writing about Slavery/Teaching About Slavery: This Might Help.” Foreman writes that using the adjective “disaggregates the condition of being enslaved with the status of
‘being’ a slave. People weren’t slaves; they were enslaved.” Whether or not supergirrl is aware specifically of Foreman’s work, she is aware of the discourse around slavery, specifically the discourse that challenges “ assumptions embedded in language that have been passed down and 153 normalized” (Foreman). supergirrl’s acknowledgement demonstrates her own critical awareness of the power language wields, especially when storytelling and counterstorytelling. Her Author’s
Note demonstrates how fans may critically uptake the shows and popular culture materials they love. Critical uptakes can be performed in both meta genres, such as the Author’s Note, as well as in the actual fanfictions themselves. supergirrl subverts the show’s and the fandom’s white supremacy by reimagining Missandei’s story and importance, the representation of the Dothraki people and culture, and the use of language in reinscribing or challenging systems of power and oppression.
Critical Disruptakes in Antifandoms
Black fans, fans of color, and allies often need to carve out their own spaces apart from mainstream fandom spaces, like AO3, or reimagine how discourse and connection operate within these platforms to create community. Using platforms’ different affordances for community- formation, such as Additional Tags on AO3 or hashtags like #DemThrones on Twitter, is one method in carving out these spaces. The community-making mechanism of carving out space and resisting white-dominated hegemonic media is where critical fans and antifandoms and disruptakes thrive. Antifan practices are similar to fan practices, except the antifan actions that lead to the creation and perpetuation of these communities are critical acts, rather than celebratory. Within antifandoms, both critical uptakes and disruptakes (Dryer, 2016) are often the anticipated responding actions to both the original cultural material and fan communities.
This section will focus on one antifans’ disruptake posted on AO3, specifically a disruptake in response to the GOT fan community.
Jonathan Gray (2005) argues antifandoms are part of the taxonomy of fandoms; antifans are those who express their distaste for a particular piece of media, character, or genre while 154 simultaneously building community and performing their distaste. Gray (2003) frames antifandoms as criticisms, either moral criticisms or criticisms about a texts’ failures. Wanzo
(2015) builds upon Gray’s antifandom, tracing a lineage of Black antifandoms as critical spaces for merging how critical reception and fandoms may be understood: “Black Twitter participants can be highly creative; their responses continue a century of media critiques offered by the black public — criticisms archived in the responses of African American politicians and political organizations, in the black press, and by African American writers and entertainers.” Wanzo’s analysis of Black antifandoms demonstrates how antifans critically uptake both fandoms and white-dominated popular culture texts. Antifans’ critical uptakes often explicate how popular culture fails Black countercultures, people, and representations, signaling to Ebony Elizabeth
Thomas’ “imagination gap” in mainstream media. Florini (2015) in her analysis of
#DemThrones points to antifandoms as a necessary perspective for understanding Black fans’ responses and reactions to GOT; while the show is “coded white” and reconstructs white supremacist ideologies, Black fans and fans of color simultaneously enjoy and critique the show, as they often must in white-dominated hegemonic culture.
Both critical uptakes and disruptakes appear in antifandoms, necessary uptakes to both critique and disrupt how popular culture reifies and perpetuates white supremacy. Dylan Dryer defines disruptakes as “uptake affordances that deliberately create inefficiencies, misfires, and occasions for second-guessing that could thwart automaticity-based uptake enactments” (p. 70).
Dryer’s taxonomy of uptakes — uptake enactments and affordances — point to how uptakes can work; uptake affordances are the opportunities composers use that “precede and shape” their uptake enactments, while uptake enactments, are the actual actions taken to respond to a genre.
Uptake affordances are like writing prompts or questions in a survey, in which composers then 155 respond to through their enactments. Disruptakes, in a sense, are the actions the uptake affordance composers take to force other composers to second-guess or rethink their uptakes, uptakes that may seem second-nature. For example, a teacher may pass out a test in class that asks students to not fill out the test until they finish reading all the questions. The last question, then, is for students to hand in a blank test with just their name at the top in order to pass. This disruptake asks students to rethink how they “take tests,” in that they do not write any responses to any of the questions that normally prompt a written response. Distruptakes and critical uptakes are not one in the same; a disruptake can be critical, and a critical uptake may disrupt, but they are not interchangeable. By forcing other composers to second-guess these seemingly natural responses, the disrupter can use this opportunity to make explicit the tacit ideologies underpinning an uptake and genre, which I call a critical disruptake.
One fans’ AO3 post, “Fuck this shit” by Chewing_Gum” perfectly captures how an uptake may be both critical and disruptive; specifically, Chewing_Gum’s piece demonstrates how Black antifans may use critical disruptake to ensure their criticisms, specifically their criticisms of racism and white supremacy, are heard. Fanfiction may be both an uptake affordance — prompting a response— and an uptake enactment — the response. Some fanfiction composers expect readers to comment on their pieces and invite commentary through their
Author’s Notes and recognition of the readers’ responses. Chewing_Gum’s fanfiction is a critical disruptake affordance and enactment, both responding to the GOT fan community and inviting others to respond to her. Her entire “fanfiction” is less than 100 words long and is not actually a fanfiction; she uses the space that would normally be for fictional story-telling to write a post calling out the fan community for ignoring Missandei’s death and Grey Worm’s trauma and demands better. 156
Almost all posts on AO3 are expected to be fanfiction and stories. The platform is designed to be used by fanfiction writers and prompts composers to write fiction. Before publishing a story, posters choose a title, write a summary of their fic, and choose tags to make their piece discoverable. Chewing_Gum includes all these features — a title, tags, a summary, and her story. Except she does not use the features the platform prompts in a way that others traditionally use these features. For example, her title is “Fuck this shit,” an evocative exclamation with an expletive (fuck) that may intrigue readers to click on, or stay away from, her fanfic. Her summary, too, does not “summarize” the story she tells. It simply says “Fuck 8x04,” referring to GOT season 8, episode 4. Her use of expletives were what originally drew me to her post. The actual body of text, too, is not a story. There is no plot, no reimagination of characters, and no fictional world. She uses this space to critique both the GOT show and the GOT fandom.
Her first paragraph says: “Soooooooo D&D wants to kill off the only black women who’s had a story line this whole series so what, Daenerys can finally have an excuse to go Mad Queen on us????!!!!!” She specifically critiques the show and the show’s writers — D&D, or David and
Dan, is a common phrase used in the GOT fandom — for killing off Missandei, citing her as the
“only black women who’s had a story line.” Chewing_Gum’s frustration here is palpable because she uses AO3 in an unconventional way, writes expletives clearly in her title and summary, and uses the space traditionally meant for fiction writing for media criticism. Her fanfiction also demonstrates how she may feel alienated or unwelcome in the GOT fandom, as fan content is often not created with audiences like her in mind.
What makes this fanfic a critical disruptake is she both uses a platform that is traditionally for writing fiction in order to speak directly to the fan community and addresses the lack of “black love” in the fandom, critiquing how fans value White characters and not Black 157 characters. Her critical disruptake forces readers to pause, not only because her AO3 post is not a fanfiction, but because she explicitly addresses her audience and critiques the lack of Black representation in the GOT fan community. She writes:
Further more, y’all really need to start writing more Grey Worm/Missandei stories
because honestly the ones we have now are not the best but they’re a’ight I guess. I just
need more black love in this fandom. And I know I’m gonna have a bitch in comments
talking about “Well then you should write the stories yourself ” nah hoe, if I could write
them trust and believe they would be up right now.
Her criticism of the lack of Grey Worm/Missandei stories points directly to the lack of Black representation and “black love” in the GOT fandom. She prompts readers — making this an uptake affordance — to rethink how they view Missandei, Grey Worm, and the fan community by encouraging them to write fanfiction that celebrates Black characters, cultures, and people.
She also anticipates potential responses, saying “I’m gonna have a bitch in the comments...” demonstrating that she believes her post will invite controversy and debate; this also, though, points to the dominance of whiteness in the fandom, one seen in the “Tracing White Supremacy in GOT Fanfiction” section.
There is no negativity towards her fanfiction in the comments, and her readers seem to celebrate and agree with her critical disruptake. Her fan practice, her critical disruptake invites reader response, reimagines how AO3 may be used, and demonstrates why Missandei deserved better. There are only 11 comments in response to her story, including mine and her responses.
Most comments echo her anger and frustration, one commentor writing “PREACH” and two mentioning their own Missandei/Grey Worm stories. Those who engage with her do so because they already have similar perspectives. The rest of the fans ignore her call. 158
Conclusion: Why Missandei Deserved Better
Missandei deserved better because Black, people of color, and ally fans are exhausted from seeing their people die in mainstream media, historically, and in current events.
Chewing_Gum’s post and Writegirl’s reflection on Missandei’s death demonstrate the affective responses of fans and antifans of color when fandoms reinscribe the white supremacist ideologies in a show. Lady_R and supergirrl’s fanfictions reimagine the representations of white supremacy in GOT to instead protect and value Black characters, cultures, and stories. Critical uptakes, including critical disruptakes, in fandoms are necessary to intervene in racist composing practices both in the original material and the fan community at large. To kill or write off characters of color — specifically Black women like Missandei — can be a violent, political action. And the path towards resistance and healing is carving space to “love blackness” in popular culture, fandoms, and antifandoms alike.
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SHIP IS CANON: Tracing Representations of Gender & Sexuality in TLOK Fan
Uptakes
Full article published and available in the Journal of Writing Analytics: "Tracing Fan Uptakes:
Tagging, Language, and Ideological Practices in The Legend of Korra Fanfictions" (Messina,
2019)
On December 19, 2014, fans gathered on forums and discussion boards, eagerly waiting for the series finale of The Legend of Korra. One hope reverberated across posts: would there be confirmation that Korra and Asami’s relationship is a romantic one? Fans waited in anticipation, hoping their relationship would become canon. As fans watched the finale, they live posted,
Tweeted, and commented about the exciting moments in the show and the pressing question was finally answered in the last two minutes of the show. Korra and Asami decide to take a vacation together to the Spirit World and walk hand-in-hand through the Spirit Portal (Figure 6.1). The
Korrasami ship set sail and many fans couldn’t be happier.
Figure 6.1
Screenshot of Korra and Asami Holding Hands in TLOK Season 4
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This study will trace fans’ uptakes of TLOK, tracing both uptakes that replicate heteronormativity as well as critical uptakes that resist heteronormativity and carve out queer spaces. Fan uptakes—the action of reimagining an already-created cultural material through writing—demonstrate the ways in which fan writers read subtext, challenge normalized narratives in their work, expand identity and story representation, and develop audience awareness and their own voices. Freadman (1994; 2002) defines uptakes as anticipated generic responses to a genre; expectations are constructed by context, form, and time. Bawarshi (2016) extends Freadman’s argument to argue that uptakes can reveal the boundaries of genre conventions — which types of uptakes are expected and why. Anticipated responses usually reflect dominant ideology, but fan uptakes resist completely flip the original definition of uptakes. Who defines anticipated responses in fan communities? The fan! Examining fan uptakes demonstrates how fans shape and articulate expectations within their own discourse communities and genres. The uptake artifacts—the fanfictions—represent fans’ uptakes of the original cultural materials, provide a glimpse into the what ifs? fans ask themselves when they watch shows and movies or read books, and reveal the ways in which fans resist or reinforce the ideologies perpetuated in the original cultural materials.
In this piece, I define several types of fan uptakes: canon compliant uptakes, implicit- explicit uptakes, and canon resistant uptakes. I trace these uptakes through linguistic and tagging patterns that appear in the analysis of the data. The data collected for this case study are 3,759 fanfictions published on AO3 in 2011–January 2015 as well as interview from three fan authors who published in this corpus: Kittya, Aria, and Gillywulf. In order to define and trace fan uptakes, particularly TLOK fan uptakes, I implement computational temporal analysis. I define computational temporal analysis as a method of tracing changes across time in a database, 161 looking specifically at changes in metadata patterns and language patterns as well as in the ideologies embedded in these patterns. The corpus contains TLOK fanfiction data collected from
AO3, both the fanfic metadata and the actual texts. This analysis demonstrates how TLOK fans were already resisting heteronormative representations from the show through their uptakes, specifically heteronormative sexualities and gender norms.
Why TLOK Fandom?
TLOK, the original cultural material, already breaks generic conventions and demonstrates critical ideologies that subvert systems of power and oppression, especially around its representations of diverse races and sexualities. Since this case study explores fan uptakes, particularly fans’ critical uptakes, I chose a show that is already justice-centered in its ideologies because the fan community—those who choose to watch and engage with the original cultural material—may be more critically conscious than viewers of television shows that demonstrate more exclusive ideologies, like Game of Thrones.
As Ebony Elizabeth Thomas (2019) and so many other cultural and fan studies scholars have argued, representation for people of color in mainstream cultural materials is limited. The
“imagination gap” Thomas (2019) describes—or the ways in which science and speculative fiction often represent the same groups of people—demonstrates creators’ and producers’ lack of imagination in character representation because characters of color or other marginalized characters may be “unlikeable” to the larger public; the public, in this case, is coded as White, cisgender viewers, completely ignoring the viewers of color or viewers from other marginalized groups. TLOK already bridges this gap by having the main character in a cartoon fantasy series be a powerful and vulnerable woman of color—Korra. Ravynn Stringfield (2020) attests to the importance of Korra’s character when she writes, “Korra felt like more of a mirror in which I 162 could see myself than any of the characters.” Korra resonates with Stringfield, not just because they are both women of color, but because they have similar personalities and lived experiences.
Stringfield argues, “And I, seeing Korra’s exposed weaknesses, finally had the words to explain what had happened to me.”
Another important aspect of Korra’s (and Asami’s) identity is that she is bisexual. After the series finale of TLOK aired, some fans speculated whether Korrasami was actually canon. In response to this, Bryan Konietzko, one of the creators, created a Tumblr post titled “Korrasami is canon.” In it, he writes:
But this particular decision [to pair Korra and Asami together] wasn’t only done for us.
We did it for all our queer friends, family, and colleagues. It is long overdue that our
media (including children’s media) stops treating non-heterosexual people as nonexistent,
or as something merely to be mocked. I’m only sorry it took us so long to have this kind
of representation in one of our stories.
Konietzko cites how these choices are “for all our queer friends, family, and colleagues,” and specifically points out how children’s media often erases queer folks by not including their stories at all. Aria, Gillywulf, and Kittya Cullen — each author who self-identifies as queer — all express how much the finale confirming Korrasami meant to them. Aria says, “I love this, I love feeling represented.” Gillywulf similarly says, “canonically queer characters…now get me really excited and make me want to” dive into their stories further. At the time of the interview,
Kittya was around her family and could not explicitly talk about her sexuality and gender, but in a follow up email which she gave me permission to share, she writes that she was “delighted in seeing fanfiction recognise friendship as both a journey unto itself, and a foundation for other possibilities.” The show invites fans to challenge particular exclusive ideologies around gender, 163 race, and sexuality: the ‘happy ending’ in the show challenges heteronormativity, suggesting an adventure to come, a grand vacation, and a new love that breaks boundaries
Tracing Ships Across Time (Computational Temporal Analysis)
The importance of Korrasami being confirmed canon is a larger popular culture win for queer representation. However, queer representation is often front-and-center in fandoms, with fans reimagining same-gendered characters as romantic partners (Russ, 1985; Lamb & Veith,
1986; Jones, 2002; Hampton, 2015). This first section will trace the interdependent, cyclic uptake enactments from the TLOK creators and fans. The creators acknowledge an awareness of fans’ desires for queer representation, while fans restory the content imagined by TLOK creators.
Specifically, this section traces how fanfiction “Relationship” patterns changed across time, mirroring or challenging the canon TLOK material.
To begin exploring how fanfiction authors take up the original cultural material, the first place to begin is by pairing publishing dates in the corpus with dates in which important events on the TLOK were first aired. Table 6.1 shows a written timeline that highlights specific trends from the corpus with events from TLOK advertising or episode airs; Figure 6.2 is a visual representation of the amount of fanfictions published across months and years as well as the amount of Korra/Asami Sato and Korra/Mako relationship tags used per month. The date represents the date of the trend or event; the middle column represents when important moments from the show aired; the third column represents data collected from the corpus of TLOK fanfictions published on AO3 that pair two points of metadata: “publishing date” and
“relationship.” I used the publishing date to count how many fanfictions were published in each month along with the most popular relationship tags used and cross-referenced this with the events from the original cultural materials. 164
Table 6.1
Timeline of Original Cultural Material and Fanfiction Corpus
Date Original Cultural Material Fanfiction Corpus
05/2011 Nickelodeon advertises for TLOK, sequel to The first TLOK fanfiction is Avatar: The Last Airbender. published on AO3.
04/2012 The first episode of TLOK airs on 84 TLOK fanfictions are Nickelodeon. published this month.
05–06/2012 The episode “The Spirit of Competition” airs The first large spike of TLOK in which Korra first kisses Mako, a male fanfictions published on AO3. character ● May: 120 fanfictions published ● June: 197 fanfictions published
08–10/2014 The season three finale, “Venom of the Red The second large spike of TLOK Lotus” airs with hints of Korra and Asami’s fanfictions published on AO3: budding romance. ● August: 81 published ● September: 125 published ● October: 225 published
12/2014– The series finale, “The Last Stand” airs on The third large spike of TLOK 01/2015 December 14; Korra and Asami’s romance fanfictions published on AO3: is confirmed canon. ● November: 165 published ● December: 359 published ● January: 400 published
By examining the uptake artifacts from the corpus, this timeline demonstrates several aspects of fan uptake enactments, or the actions fans take to participate in fanfiction genres and react to the original cultural material: canon compliant, implicit-explicit, and canon resistant uptake enactments. These type of fan uptakes relate directly to the ways in which the fans reimagine the original cultural materials: some choose to explore what is already canon (canon- compliant), some choose to make explicit the arguable subtext in the original cultural material
(implicit-explicit), and some choose to resist the canon entirely (canon resistant). 165
In order to examine these fan uptakes, I will examine the “relationship” tags were used for each month, specifically looking at “Korra/Asami Sato” and “Korra/Mako” (see Figure 6.2).
Relationship tags on AO3 are used by writers to signal to their potential audiences which characters will be involved romantically by using the forward slash between character names.
Figure 6.2
Trends in User-Chosen “Relationship” Tags
First, and most unsurprising, trends in the publishing dates and relationship tags reflect events in the show. When fans watch Korra and Mako kiss in an episode aired on May 2012, the excitement about the new relationship inspires fanfiction writers and begin publishing their own imagined romances between Korra and Mako, as shown in the Korra and Mako being one of the highest picked relationship tags in May and June 2012. In my interview with Kittya Cullen, I asked her why she thought Korra and Mako were a bit more popular at first. She says: 166
It just comes back to how the world is constructed externally. So just even the idea of
imagining inside of what was placed before us, it takes a special kind of familiarity with
the boarders of the world to imagine a world that is different from what is presented to
you. At the time, I don't know, it was just that Korra and Mako were what was the norm.
And so I think it made sense for some people to only be able to see that happening.
Mako and Korra are “the norm” for multiple reasons: first, they were canon at the time, and second, they are a heterosexual couple. While Kittya does not explicitly point to their sexuality, she implies it through her linguistic choices. She first argues fandoms are not separate from how
“the world is constructed externally,” implying that there are larger systems and ideologies at play. She argues that envisioning a relationship outside of Korra/Mako — or Korra/Bolin and
Korra/Tahno, which are two other popular ships at the time — means imagining outside of heteronormative spheres. Then, she uses the phrase “a special kind of familiarity with the borders of the world,” pointing to how people who are familiar with these borders, familiar with how the world is constructed externally, are probably those whose lived experiences are hurt by these
“borders.” For Kittya, it “made sense for some people” to be invested in shipping Korra with men because it is “the norm.”
In December 2014 Korra and Asami, a beloved ship—relationship—in TLOK fandom, is confirmed official on the show; fans’ enthusiasm can be traced in a large spike of fan fictions published from 165 in November to 359 in December). This uptake enactment, which I will call the canon compliant uptake, is fanfiction or fan genre created celebrating and following an event in the original source material. “canon compliant” is a frequently used AO3 “additional tag”; the canon compliant works are fanfictions or fan art that follow the canon. 167
The next form of uptake that this timeline demonstrates is implicit-explicit uptake enactments, in which fans analyze the subtext of the show and make the subtext explicit in their fanfictions. This implicit-explicit uptake will come as no surprise to both fans and fanfiction scholars; fanfiction often builds off canonical moments in the show, exploring the potential stories hidden between the lines, such as the Kirk/Spock slashfic written and disseminated in the late 1970s and beyond (Russ, 1985/2014) or reimaging the story from a side characters’ perspective. As Jones (2002/2014) points out, the cult television genre “implicity ‘resists’ the conventions of heterosexuality; the slash fiction stories written by some of its fans render explicit this implicit function” (p. 128). Jones’ reading of cult television shows, or shows with a cult-like dedicated fandom following, are already subversive in their takes on culture and ideology; although I would argue this, of course, depends on the consumers’ analysis of the text as there is no Truth that exists within a text. Jones’ argument signals to the potential of an underlying narrative in the original cultural texts that resists heteronormative, white supremacist ideologies
– the problem, is though, that these readings are usually buried in subtext and can be ignored by other fans.
Gillywulf builds on this idea of subtext, specifically queer subtext, in TLOK. Before
Korrasami was made canon in season 4, moments in season 3 leave room for queer subtextual interpretation. While Gillywulf was watching season 3, she was also writing her fanfiction — a series of 400 one-shots about Korrasami. She describes why Korrasami was an important ship for her even before they became canon: “Just seeing the way her relationship sort of evolved with Asami over time, especially once you get into the third season, was like, ‘Okay, I'm into this. Whether or not they're going for it, I see it.’” For Gillywulf, she was reading the queer subtext in season 3, and recognized that a lot of other fans were, as well. Even if Korrasami was 168 not confirmed canon in season 4, the subtext is there; this is why implicit-explicit uptakes are necessary.
Tracing fan uptakes using computational temporal analysis shows that fans typically react to moments of tension or potential romance by making this romance explicit, and TLOK is no different. As the second spike of TLOK fanfictions published on AO3 in August, September, and
October 2014 demonstrates, fans’ often take up the potential stories and make them explicit. In the episode “Venom of the Red Lotus” (aired online at the end of August 2014), Korra must fight
Zaheer, an anarchist with a strong connection to the Spirit World; she defeats Zaheer, but is traumatized physically and mentally in the process. The final few minutes of the episode show wheelchair-bound Korra seemingly disconnected from the celebrations occurring around her as she suffers with the traumas she endured. Asami is right by Korra’s side for every scene, helping her get ready, pushing her where she needs to go, and standing besides her during the final few minutes of the episode as a ceremony takes place. While Asami helps Korra get ready, she kneels besides Korra and takes her hand to tell her, “I want you to know that I’m here for you. If you ever want to talk or [pause] anything.” When I asked Gillywulf about this and other moments between Korra and Asami in the season 3 finale, she says, “That's a little gayer than it maybe should be…So, a lot of people took that and decided to go with it.”
And “go with it” fans did, as demonstrated in the sudden rise of published TLOK fanfictions and the Korra/Asami Sato relationship tag, jumping from 19 in August to 54 in
October 2014. In fact, around October 2014, the count of the “Total published” texts match almost identically with the count of the “Korra/Asami” relationship tags; the amount of
Korra/Asami fanfiction published from October 2014 and beyond heavily impacts the amount of total published fanfictions because the relationship is so popular in the fandom. This 169 demonstrates fans’ implicit-explicit uptakes enactments, exploring what is unsaid and hidden in the subtext to celebrate diverse stories, specifically diverse queer stories.
The third fan uptake enactment the data shows is canon resistant uptakes, or when fans actively resist both the implicit and explicit canonical choices made in the original cultural material. One of the more surprising moments for me during this research—and a result that I honestly should have seen coming—is Korra and Mako are not the most popular relationship tag chosen during the month Korra and Mako’s romantic relationship was built up and finally begins with a kiss. The most popular relationship tag chosen in May 2012 is Korra and Tahno (at 29, as opposed to Korra/Mako at 27), who is a competitor she faces during a sports event in the first season. Korra/Bolin ships—Bolin is Mako’s brother—also come up quite frequently and, even though Korra and Bolin tried dating at the beginning of the series, their relationship became platonic after Korra and Mako became a couple. Another insistence of canon resistance uptakes demonstrated through relationship tags is the common pairing of Korra and Kuvira, another woman character; Kuvira is the main villain is Season 4 and is often paired with Korra in fanfiction published later in the series and past the series. Canon resistant uptakes and implicit- explicit uptakes may overlap varying on the fans’ or the researchers’ reading of the original cultural material. For example, some fans may argue there was implicit sexual tension between
Korra and Tahno, which is not my own reading of Korra and Tahno’s relationship.
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Table 6.2
Percentage of Fanfictions Published Using “Korra/Mako” Relationship Tag
Date Total Fanfictions Texts that use “Korra/Mako” Tag Percentage Published
2012-04 84 29 34.52%
2012-05 120 27 22.5%
2012-06 197 21 10.66%
Total 401 77 19.2% Examining different forms of uptake through relationship tags demonstrates the different types of fan uptakes, but also provides a glimpse into the exigency of fan uptakes. As Table 6.2 shows, while Korra and Mako was originally one of the more popular ships, the percentage of
Korra/Asami relationship tags to the count of fanfiction texts published around the first season
(April–June 2012) was only 19.51%. As Table 6.3 shows, when TLOK subtext hints at Korra and Asami’s potential romantic relationship (August–November 2019), the “Korra/Asami Sato” relationship tag is used in 44.08% of the fanfictions published.
Table 6.3
Percentage of Fanfictions Published Using “Korra/Asami Sato” Relationship Tag
Date Total Fanfictions Published Texts that use “Korra/Asami” Tag Percentage
2014-08 81 19 23.46%
2014-09 125 54 43.2%
2014-10 225 117 52%
Total 431 190 44.08%
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The difference between the “Korra/Mako” published texts when their relationship was canon as opposed to the percentage of “Korra/Asami” published texts when subtextual hints of their relationship appeared demonstrates a collective desire for a canonical queer relationship in the TLOK fandom. As Thomas and Stornaiuolo’s (2016) argue for young writers of color who restory texts, “we applaud young people’s resilient efforts to author themselves in order to be heard, seen, and noticed — to assert that their lives matter — by bending the world around them” (p. 333). For fanfiction writers who both enacted implicit-explicit uptakes as well as canonical complicit uptakes around Korra and Asami’s relationship, they assert queer lives matter and queer characters (people) are protagonists.
Exploring Representations of Gender and Sexuality in the Corpus
In order to work with the actual fanfiction texts, I split the published fanfictions up into three separate corpora by published month (see Table 6.4): the first corpus is a collection of all the fanfictions published before August 2014, when season 3 was airing and the show hinted at
Korra and Asami’s potential romance; the second corpus is a collection of all the fanfictions published from August 2014–November 2014, before the series finale confirmed Korra and
Asami’s romantic relationship was canon; the third corpus is a collection of all the fanfictions published from December 2014–March 2015, when and after the series finale confirmed Korra and Asami’s romance. Similar to the results from the “published dates” and “relationship tags,” these three corpora reflect when important moments in the show aired, especially around Korra’s relationship with Asami. This section will examine the different language patterns in the three corpora, how these language patterns reflect fan writers’ uptakes of the original show, and the ideologies embedded within these uptakes, especially around representations of gender and sexuality. 172
Table 6.4
Fanfiction Corpora Separate by Published Date
Corpus Name Corpus Description Corpus Word Count
Pre-Korrasami TLOK fanfictions published between February 4,148,808 2011 and July 2014
Subtext- TLOK fanfictions published between August 2014 1,506,803 Korrasami and November 2014
Post-Korrasami TLOK fanfictions published between December 6,156,530 2014 and March 2015
Once the three corpora were created, I ran different forms of corpus preparation to prepare each for computational text analysis. I lowered all the capital letters, removed basic stopwords, removed all punctuation (including punctuation specific to the corpora such as “``” and “—”), and stemmed all the words using NLTK’s Porter Stemmer. Stemming transforms words like “masculine,” “bisexual,” and “breathlessly,” to “masculin,” “bisexu,” and
“breathlessli” in order to combine the similar words with different suffixes; for example,
“bisexual” and “bisexuality” are now both labeled “bisexu.”
In order to better trace the contexts in which particular words are used, I created three separate word embedding models of the corpora with Python’s gensim library. Word embedding models, or Word2Vec, measure and compare the relationships of a word’s context and finds the cosine similarity of other words in that corpus that appear in similar contexts. Schmidt (2015) advocates for analyzing texts with word embedding models because they “offer something slightly more abstract, but equally compelling: a spatial analogy to relationships between words.
WEMs (to make up for this post a blanket abbreviation for the two major methods) take an entire corpus, and try to encode the various relations between word into a spatial analogue.” A classic 173 example might be that “queen” is closely related to “king” in that each word is used in similar contexts. Depending on the corpus, however, the results will vary. The results will also vary based on the parameters provided during the creation of the model. In the word embedding models I created, I chose to include words that appear in at least 10 times across each corpus.
This means if a word is not included in the word embedding model, it appears less than 10 times in that specific corpus. By creating a word embedding model for each corpus, I compare the ways in which particular terms are used across the three corpora based on the words that are most likely to appear in similar contexts.
The best example to begin with are the three separate results for the words that are most similar to “Asami” across all three corpora. In the pre-Korrasami corpus, some of the words most similar to “Asami” are “cheerlead” (cheerleader, cosine 0.66); “quarterback” (0.65); “heiress”
(0.62); and “girlfriend” (0.52). In the subtext-Korrasami corpus, some of the words most similar to “Asami” are “engin” (engine or engineer, 0.75); “korra” (0.74); “softli” (softly, 0.62); and
“mumbl” (0.56). In fanfiction, common nicknames are given to characters—especially when writing romantic scenes between characters of the same gender—because relying on pronouns to describe interactions can make for confusing prose. These nicknames often appear across many fanfiction texts, as fanfiction authors seem to be borrowing each others’ nicknames.1 For example, "the heiress,” “the engineer,” or “the inventor” may be used as a nickname for Asami, as shown in the results; other popular examples may include describing characters based on their physical features, such as “the taller one” or “the raven-haired woman.”
1 Tracing the use of these nicknames across particular fandoms may be a fascinating intertextual study demonstrating how fan writers shape their own communities and writing practices through this form of intertextuality. 174
Between just the pre-Korrasami corpus and the subtext-Korrasami corpus, there are already significant differences in the words that are most commonly related to Asami. In the pre-
Korrasami corpus, there is more of a focus on classic highschool romance tales–the cheerleader and the quarterback pop up as the most similar words to Asami. Canonically, there is no football, quarterbacks, or explicit cheerleaders in TLOK show, so the appearance of these words implies
Asami often appears in alternate universe fanfictions2 where she is the cheerleader interacting with a quarterback. In the subtext-Korrasami corpus, the word “engine” is most similar to Asami, which aligns canonically with the show; Asami is an inventor a, so fanfictions where she appears may be using the word engineer to describe her or engineer might appear in similar situations as the word “Asami.” The word “mumbl” and “softli” appears, demonstrating interactions between
Asami and other characters or Asami’s own actions. These adverbs and verbs demonstrate in the subtext-Korrasami corpus, writers may write her as more active, rather than just describing her through the roles she takes on. Finally, in the post-Korrasami corpus, the words most similar to
“Asami” are ““Korra” (0.86), “girlfriend” (0.67); “heiress” (0.58); “babe” (0.54); and “mmm”
(0.51). At first glance, there are similar results between the pre- and post-Korrasami corpora, such as “Asami” being related to words like “girlfriend” and “heiress.” The post-Korrasami corpus results, however, suggest Asami’s role has shifted–words most related to her name revolve around activity, particularly romantic activity: “mmm,” “softli,” “shyli,” and “blush,” suggest romantic actions, and as the temporal analysis above suggests, these activities probably involve her interactions with Korra in these fanfictions. This basic analysis demonstrates the
2 Alternate universe fanfictions are fanfictions that exist in universities outside the canonical universe. As the Asami/Cheerleader example demonstrates, some popular alternate universes are imagining characters in fantastical worlds in more ordinary and realistic high school situations. 175 ways in which word embedding model results shift based on the corpus and how these results may insights for each corpus.3
Table 6.5 shows the results across all three corpora for different words. I queried these words in each word embedding model and in the table, I highlight some of the top results along with their cosine similarity. I chose to query words that mark either gender and sexuality and, as the results show, the representations of gender and sexuality differ widely across the corpora. I specifically decided to query identity-based words such as “masculine,” “feminine,” “bisexual,” and “gender”; different gendered actions and roles such as “marry,” “pregnant,” and “girlfriend;” and representations of Asami using the term “heiress” which is a nickname provided to her by fanfiction writers.
3 I also want to point out the importance of knowing your corpus. Because I am familiar with TLOK fandom, I am more likely able to discern potentially strange relationships between words. 176
Table 6.5
Results from Word Embedding Model Queries across the Three Corpora
Word Query Pre-Korrasami Results Subtext-Korrasami Post-Korrasami Results Results heiress gorgeou*, 0.63 breathlessli*, 0.77 omega, 0.69 asami, 0.62 flush, 0.74 alpha, 0.66 girl, 0.59 arch, 0.73 inventor, 0.65 quarterback, 0.57 a-asami, 0.72 squirm, 0.62 feminin* eleg*, 0.78 brunett*, 0.91 allur*, 0.73 accentu*, 0.76 creami*, 0.88 contrast, 0.73 complement, 0.75 repeatedli*, 0.86 eleg*, 0.71 facial, 0.74 vagina, 0.85 masculin*, 0.70 masculin* undeni*, 0.71 porn, 0.92 epitom*, 0.70 mixtur*, 0.71 inexperienc*, 0.91 feminin*, 0.70 throat*', 0.69 pervert, 0.91 qualiti*, 0.70 enchant'*, 0.68 envi*, 0.91 gender, 0.69 gender inspir*, 0.77 reput*, 0.93 biolog*, 0.74 interpret, 0.75 wage, 0.93 common, 0.73 writer, 0.74 specul*, 0.92 stereotyp*, 0.73 genr*, 0.74 inventor, 0.92 renown, 0.72 bisexual N/A N/A lesbian, 0.74 fangirl, 0.68 gay, 0.68 heterosexu*, 0.67 marri* wed*, 0.70 proud, 0.78 marriag*, 0.73 wife, 0.70 marriag*, 0.77 wed*, 0.65 pregnant, 0.69 daughter, 0.77 propos*, 0.63 sixteen, 0.68 husband, 0.76 wife, 0.60 pregnant marri*, 0.69 husband, 0.89 birth, 0.64 babi', 0.63 wife, 0.86 husband, 0.63 fourteen-year-old, 0.61 daughter, 0.74 sire, 0.61 wife, 0.60 warmli*, 0.73 wife, 0.60 girlfriend boyfriend, 0.84 cute, 0.8325 korra, 0.6986 date, 0.78 chuckl*, 0.83 asami, 0.67 jealou*, 0.75 date, 0.82 dork, 0.63 cute, 0.66 wink, 0.81 ador*, 0.63 177
Table 6.5 results suggest there are shifts in ideological underpinnings through the relationships between words. Continuing the Asami example from above, the word “heiress” is in the pre-Korrasami model follows traditional gender roles for women: words like gorgeous, quarterback, and girl appear. In the subtext- and post-Korrasami models, however, “heiress” is used in words that relate explicitly to sexuality and sexual relationships: “arch” refers to someone’s back and body arching during a passionate act; “a-asami” refers to intimate speech; and “alpha” and “omega” are labels used across fandoms to refer to the sexual and romantic dynamic between two characters of the same gender. The transformation for how fans represent
Asami across the three corpora also demonstrates a shift in ideologies. In earlier fan uptakes of the show, Asami is represented through more traditional gender roles and notions of femininity.
She is represented as beautiful, wealthy, and distant from the main story. The subtext-Korrasami model implicit-explicit uptake demonstrates a dramatic shift in representations of Asami, recognizing Asami not just as a distant feminine figure, but an intimate part of the story, especially Korra’s story, where their romance is made explicit.
The next group of word queries are words that signify identity markers: “feminine,”
“masculine,” “gender,” and “bisexual.” The word “feminine” across the three corpora reflects traditional descriptors of femininity: elegance, creamy, brunette, and alluring. However, femininity in the subtext-Korrasami corpus uses more explicit vocabulary, implying feminine is often used in intimate scenes; femininity in the post-Korrasami model seems to be used in
“contrast” to “masculine,” potentially implying a feminine/masculine divide between Korra and
Asami. The “masculine” query in the post-Korrasami model reinforces this idea: masculinity and femininity is often paired together. Meanwhile, “masculine” in the pre-Korrasami corpus seems 178 to be more of a descriptor, although the word “mixture” implies less rigidity in gender performance. Finally, the query results for “gender” and “bisexual” in the post-Korrasami yield the most interesting results: both results suggest writers’ critical awareness of identity markers.
“Biolog*” (biology/biological) paired with “gender” suggests and awareness of gender theory, particularly around gender labels; although, the concordance tool results for “biolog*” show biological is mostly used to refer to parentage and biology is used to refer to the school subject.
“Bisexual*” (bisexual, bisexuality) does not even appear in the first two models, which means the word was used less than 10 times in those corpora, meanwhile the appears in the post-
Korrasami model with other markers of sexuality.
The final word queries relate to gendered actions and labels: “marri,” “pregnant,” and
“girlfriend.” The words most similar to marri* and pregnant across the three models still suggest forms of heteronormative roles: wife, husband, propose; there are some surprises in these results, including “fourteen-year-old” in the pre-Korrasami model and “sire”–the male breeding position, but also sometimes used in fanfiction and fantastical genres to refer to a mystical forms of parentage–in the post-Korrasami model. “Girlfriend” across the three models provide a more explicit trajectory from traditional representations of girlfriends in the pre-Korrasami corpus to the queer, intimate representations in the post-Korrasami corpus. In the pre-Korrasami corpus, the word most related to “girlfriend” is “boyfriend,” and other terms like “jealous” and “cute” appear. In the post-Korrasami corpus, however, “girlfriend” has a less patronizing portrayal: obviously “korra” and “asami” are most related, but the word “adore” and “dork” are also closely related, two words which portray intimacy and playfulness.
While word embedding models provide overall patterns in contextual relationships between words, diving into the text is a necessary step to better understand how these models 179 may reflect or not reflect specific moments in the text. Using a concordance Python function created by Geoffrey Rockwell, I queried several words from the word embedding model to examine how these words are used in specific contexts (see Table 6.6). Quinn (2020) refers to this method as “folding back,” in which researchers use computational models to then investigate specific moments in the original corpus. Table 6.6 shows some chosen excerpts from the concordance results. These results are not necessarily representative of each corpus, yet I want to include them to demonstrate the necessity of going back to the text after performing computational text analysis.
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Table 6.6
Concordance Excerpts from the Three Corpora
Word Quote Corpus Fan Author gender "You and your gender roles can bite me" Pre- Lapin Korrasami
“were lingering stories of past gender Post- Katya_D_R_Rarewyne inequality in the Water Tribes” Korrasami girlfriend “‘This is Asami; my girlfriend,’ Korra Pre- Nightworldlove introduced Asami” Korrasami
"Guys meet my amazing, beautiful Sub- korrasamishipper girlfriend Asami!" Korra announced Korrasami loudly
"She's beautiful , feminine and she has Pre- FitzgeraldWappingers feminine Mako" Korrasami
“just the right mix of masculine and Post- avesnongrata feminine.” Korrasami gay “I will not tolerate a son of mine being Pre- Aewin gay.” Korrasami
“Because Korra could not be gay. She Sub- autumnmycat just simply could never marry a woman” Korrasami
“police really liked to harass butch Post- Aria women at gay bars, especially those of us Korrasami who used underwear as one of our items” lesbian “How?! There isn't a lesbian version of Sub- Dandybear Grindr. Is there?” Korrasami bi/bisexual “''I'm bi, er, bisexual'' Korra announced, Sub- Gillywulf her voice just as shaky” Korrasami
All fanfiction authors have provided me with consent to use excerpts from their fanfics and their usernames or real names in this article.
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As Table 6.6 demonstrates, the findings in the word embedding model do not fully capture the nuances of each corpus. For example, in the word embedding models, the word
“bisexual” does not appear in the first and second model, but the words “bisexual” and “bi” are used in the pre- and subtext-Korrasami corpora in ways that suggest writers are thinking deeply about representations of sexuality, particularly around the fluidity of sexuality as well as the
“coming out” narrative. For instance, Gillywulf, who I interviewed, has a moment in the subtextual-Korrasami corpus that revolves around Korra’s coming out moment. When I prompted Gillywulf about this, she explains that while she was writing her fanfiction, she was making plans to come out to her parents. She used her fanfiction as a place to explore different possibilities, preparing herself for a moment that can be traumatic and painful: “So, I had decided to come out, and these became sort of two parallels of, ‘It could be this, or it could be that.’” Her implicit-explicit uptake becomes a vehicle for her also exploring the possibilities of a very real moment she was building up towards, and she was able to do this exploration in a — as she describes it — encouraging community.
In the pre-Korrasami corpus, Nightworldlove’s text demonstrates canon-resistant uptakes as they writing about Korra and Asami’s romance in late 2012. Table 6 shows, especially in the
“lesbian” and “gay” results, the anxieties around coming out and merely existing as a queer person. For example, autumnmycat’s fanfiction takes places in TLOK universe, yet autmnmycat maintains realistic anxieties around embracing one’s non-normative identity: “Because Korra could not be gay. She just simply could never marry a woman.” As Yoder, Breitfeller, and Rosé
(2019) argue in their sentiment analysis of fanfiction published about the most popular fandoms in AO3, the negative sentiment analysis around queer identity markers like “trans,” “gay,” and 182
“queer,” more reflects genre conventions in fanfiction, rather than actual negative sentiment towards queer identities.
One of the most popular fanfiction tags on AO3 is “Angst,” and angst paired with representations of queer identities may manifest through anxieties around a lack of acceptance, isolation, and violence. For example, in the “lesbian” search, Aria in their universe discusses the violent policing of butch lesbian women, which the author also points to as a historical reality.
Aria, who I also interviewed, describes why she decided to integrate the policing of queer bodies and gender performances in her uptake. At the time she was writing this fanfiction, she was also reading about Stonewall and running a queer resource center; her everyday realities and the politics she was engaging with explicitly play out in her piece. Even if these are fictional reimaginings of a fictional universe, the anxieties are very real: people who are queer are constantly threatened by damaging rhetoric and slurs, homophobic individuals and groups, and systems of oppression that encourage violence towards people who are queer. She also describes, though, how this piece was not just about “homophobia, although this was a story about homophobia, not just homophobia, but this was a story about queerness and politics. And because this was the thing that was radicalizing me.” For Aria, even though she was writing about homophobia, she was really inscribing, solidifying, and exploring her radicalization.
Even though the word embedding models suggest fan writers’ uptakes become more critical as the show moved forward, some fan writers seem to always-already be concerned around representations of sexuality and non-traditional genders and gender roles. As Lapin writes in an excerpt from the Pre-Korrasami corpus: “You and your gender roles can bite me.”
The goal is for researchers to discern the type of rhetorical choices fans make in their uptake of original texts, and how these uptakes reflect ideologies that are critical of systems of oppression 183 and want to represent diverse identities, particularly queer identities, in ways that reflect the real anxieties, joys, and all the nuances between.
Conclusion: TLOK as Critical Fan Uptakes Case Study
Fan studies scholars are becoming more invested in critical fandom practices (Booth,
2015; Lothian, 2018; De Kosnik and carrington, 2019). The final form of uptake I will define are fans’ critical uptake enactments. These uptakes may include implicit-explicit, canon resistant, or canon compliant uptake practices, but critical upakes specifically deal with resisting exclusive and oppressive ideologies by embracing justice-centered practices in writers’ choices. The above analyses demonstrate several ways in which fans take up the justice-centered ideologies in the text, particularly around the representation of queer identities through Korra and Asami’s relationship.
While there are multiple ways fans incorporate critical practices as they take up texts, this research note is particularly interested in fans’ critical uptake enactments around the representation of identities. Critical uptakes reflect Thomas and Stornaiuolo’s definition of
“restorying,” which are uptake enactments that “reshap[e] narratives to better reflect a diversity of perspectives and experiences” (p. 314). Fan scholars trace critical fandoms by examining fans practices that suggest fans are thinking critically about gender, sexuality, race, neurodiversity, and diverse abilities, even when the original cultural material does not reflect critical forms of representation (Summers, 2010; carrington, 2013; Lothian, 2018; Dym et al., 2018; Pande, 2018;
De Kosnik & carrington, 2019).
Critical uptakes can be traced through the characters fans choose to write about, the relationships fans choose, and how fans choose to portray particular characters, such as through race-bending, gender-bending, or perspective-bending (Thomas & Stornaiuolo, 2016). For the 184 metadata analysis as shown in Figure 4.2 and Table 4.1, critical uptakes are represented through fans’ relationship tag choices. Because so much of fanfiction revolves around romance, particular ideologies may be parsed by examining relationship tag choices. Figure 1 shows there are several fan who imagined Korra/Asami’s potential–even before there were any implicit or subtextual hints of their relationship–pushing against the original heteronormative romantic arc in the first season of the show. In May and June 2012, towards the end of season 1 when Korra and Mako’s relationship is canon on the original cultural material, the Korra/Asami relationship tag is used 3 times in May and 5 times in June. In January 2013, before season 2 was released, there is a spike in Korra/Asami tags–the month count jumps from 1 to 22 times used, demonstrating a new interest in the fan community between Korra and Asami as a potential relationship.
As for the computational text analysis section, the word embedding models and the concordance results for the three corpora demonstrate the ways in which fans’ ideologies shifted as the show continued to air. The implicit-explicit uptakes in the “subtext-Korrasami” corpus demonstrate how fans take up the subtext to explore queer identities, especially Korra and
Asami’s identities. The representations of gender and sexuality, particularly around labels like
“lesbian,” “gay,” and “bisexual,” demonstrate an awareness of navigating a society in which systems in place attempt to do violence upon these identities; these representations also reflect, however, the joys of finding love, being accepted, and having the freedom to claim and establish one’s identity.
Fanfiction can be a form of escapism, ownership, and subverting exclusive cultural and societal narratives. When fans critically take up the original cultural materials, they play in the
“gaps and margins,” (Jenkins, 1992/2014, p. 372), “restorying” texts to push against 185 exclusionary or violent narratives against marginalized groups (Thomas & Stornaiuolo, 2016).
Fanfiction is not just about who and what are missing in popular culture but carving out space for their stories.
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Teaching Resources
Homepage
Much of this dissertation has defined critical fan practices and uptakes, examining overall trends in two fandoms as well as speaking with fans who incorporate critical fan practices in their work. For instructors working with students every day, how can we bring these themes and ideas into traditional classroom? What is critical fan pedagogy? What may some assignments or a syllabus look like? How can we assess writers’ critical fan practices in the classroom? What challenges may we run into?
While critical fan pedagogy’s theoretical and content framework focuses on critical fan practices, writers can also use this pedagogy to learn data literacies and research using fandom communities they either belong to or are invested in. The approach on methods in this pedagogy can be applied in traditional classroom settings or by fans invested in critical practices.
This portion of the toolkit has two sections, and depending on your intentions and positionality, you can choose to navigate which appeals to you:
• Defining Critical Fan Pedagogy: This section introduces critical fan pedagogy, which can
be incorporated in both traditional classroom settings or as a “self-pedagogy” (Pritchard,
2018) Specifically, this section will look at fan and pedagogy scholars who discuss forms
of fan and critical pedagogy to merge the different approaches.
• CFP Resources For Instructors: This section shares a list of teaching materials, from a
critical fan syllabus, to assignments, to hands-on activities, that can be incorporated in the
classroom or beyond. Because these resources are published, you are welcome to use
them (with citations, of course) and scale them as needed based on classroom context.
Critical fan pedagogy definition 187
Critical fan pedagogy cultivates and strengthens critical awareness through fans' participation in fan genres and communities. This participation is a form of praxis, or the embodiment of theory in practice; praxis is central to fan communities, as there are fan politics and theories that shape community building and participation. Through these critical social actions, fans can actively resist dominant ideologies that appear across mainstream cultural materials as well as the very communities in which they participate. In other words, we look to fan practices to define critical fan pedagogy; we look to the work they are always-already creating to better understand how these practices are, in fact, pedagogical.
Pedagogy, in its simplest definition, are the methods and theory that drive teaching and learning. Every teacher has their own pedagogy, some which are explicit and some which are implicit. While pedagogy is mainly discussed in the context of a classroom, teaching and learning does not need to stop there. To read more about critical fan pedagogy, see the "Defining
Critical Fan Pedagogy" section.
Defining Critical Fan Pedagogy
Critical fan pedagogy centers cultivating and strengthening critical awareness by engaging in fan genres and communities. Through critical social actions, fans can actively resist oppressive and dominant ideologies that appear across mainstream cultural materials as well as the very communities in which they participate. In other words, we look to fan practices to define critical fan pedagogy; we look to the work they are always-already creating to better understand how these practices are, in fact, pedagogical.
As Eric Darnell Prtichard (2018) mentions in his book Fashioning Lives: Black Queers and the Politics of Literacy, self pedagogy is an essential method for people — particularly marginalized folks — to learn how to navigate social and political systems, especially when 188 those systems are not designed for them or designed to hurt them. Pritchard specifically points to
"restorative literacies," or literacy development practices that help liberate people, especially
Black queer people, from heteronormativity and white supremacy. He introduces self-pedagogy as an essential area for himself, and more generally Black queer folks, who navigate and learn to survive in heteronormative, homophobic, and racist institutions. For the folks Pritchard interviewed and in his analysis of archival materials, forms of self-pedagogy are crucial to navigating everyday life, community and identity formation, becoming political and social activists, and understanding the self in relation to a larger culture and society.
Fandoms demonstrate a form of self-pedagogy, or as Paul Booth (2015) argues, fandoms are the “classroom of the future.” Fandoms are spaces where fans analyze different media and creatively reimagine or transform aspects of that media. Specifically, Booth refers to fans’ critical thinking practices around hegemonic cultures. Hegemonic cultures refers to the normalized narratives — tropes, people and stories who are represented, and how these representations reflect ideas around gender, race, sexuality, and other aspects of identity and positionality — that permeate cultural materials, specifically mainstream cultural materials.
Analyzing hegemonic cultures relies on an understanding of what is mainstream as well as why it may be mainstream. While mainstream trends often change, there are underlying historical, political, and ideological patterns that emerge.
One glaring ideological thread is the role of white supremacy. In most cultural media, white supremacy is the norm: main characters or heroes are usually White, while sidekicks, supportive friend, and even villain roles are portrayed as people of color. By recognizing the hegemonic ideologies that dominate mainstream cultures, fans resist these ideologies in their own fan composing practices. However, this effort needs to be conscious and decisive. For those 189 who know Game of Thrones well, the white supremacy and glorification of White, Western cultures is glaring; simply looking at who lives, who dies, who the heroes are, and who barely gets screen time demonstrates these racial and ethnic values. White supremacy, however, does not begin or end in the context of the show. The show was created in a larger cultural context, a culture that celebrates whiteness. As the Game of Thrones data analysis results demonstrate, white supremacy in the GOT fandom, or the focus on White characters, mirrors the white supremacy in the show. While fandoms can be the classroom of the future, as Booth argues, fan scholars and fans must acknowledge the ways in which systems of oppression are replicated and entangled in fan communities. How, then, can critical fan pedagogy teach fans and writers to resist these dominant and often violent ideologies, when these ideologies may be present in their own communities and even their own work?
Turning to fan scholars who heavily center critical race theory and racial literacies demonstrates the ways in which fans resist white supremacy as well as other systems of oppression. Ebony Elizabeth Thomas and Amy Stornaiuolo (2016) construct a taxonomy for
“restorying,” which they define as “reshaping narratives to better reflect a diversity of perspectives and experiences...an act of asserting the importance of one’s experience in a world that tries to silence subaltern voices” (p. 314). They provide six methods of restorying: transforming time, place, perspective, mode, metanarrative, and character identity. For many fan scholars, identity-bending is one of the most heralded forms of critical fan practices. andré carrington (2012) argues that fan composing practices can be critical forms of reception. He specifically looks at racebending, when a fan transforms the race of a character — usually a
White character, as a form of criticism. 190
Forms of identity-bending and restorying are not enough, though. Consider a classroom, where there are a diversity of perspectives and positionalities. Does a White student racebending a White character demonstrate the same critical prowess as a Black student racebending a White character? When are forms of identity bending empowering, and when can they potentially falter and reify problematic representations of people of color?
In critical fan pedagogy, representation itself is not enough. Critical fans expose themselves to fan theorizing and fan activism, understanding how their own representations can either subvert or reify dominant ideologies. Critical fans often are doing this theorizing already, both by reading academic theory and engaging with other critical fans on Twitter, Tumblr, and other fan platforms centered around discussion. Critical fans, as fandoms, thrive in communities that center justice, antiracism, feminism, and queerness. This next section will discuss pillars of critical pedagogy and how these pillars may be applied to critical fan pedagogy.
The “critical” in critical fan pedagogy
I turn to critical pedagogy to show how critical fan pedagogies may develop. I also argue for the theorizing and praxis needed for fans interested in developing their critical practices as well as instructors interested in incorporating critical fan pedagogies. Critical pedagogy stems from Paulo Freire’s term conscientização, or critical consciousness. Brazil’s political landscape radially transformed in the 1960s under the Fifth Brazilian Republic; Freire, a political exile, was teaching adult learners about literacy, heavily focusing on developing their critical consciousness. The goal of conscientização is to empower those who are oppressed to liberate themselves from the constraints imposed by the oppressors; Freire refers to this as prescription:
“Every prescription represents the imposition of one individual’s choice upon another,
transforming the consciousness of the person prescribed to into one that conforms with 191
the prescriber's consciousness. Thus, the behavior of the oppressed is a prescribed
behavior, following as it does the guidelines of the oppressor” (p. 46).
One of his main methods helping learners develop their critical consciousness was to implement a dialogic, horizontal pedagogy, rather than a top-down education. He did not want to teach learners how to do something, but rather demonstrate how theorizing can transform perspectives and potentially break prescribed behavior. Freire’s radical pedagogy is one that permeates through disciplines like rhetoric, composition, communication, education, and literacy studies.
bell hooks (1994) extends — and critiques — Freire’s work, addressing both the phallocentrism of his language and perspective, while also valuing the power of his work. She acknowledges a connection between the people Freire taught and many Americans, specifically
Black Americans. For hooks, Freire not only theorized, but embodied his theories through praxis, or the interdependent relationship between theory and practice. hooks’ Black feminist pedagogy centers theory as a liberatory practice. For hooks, theorizing is not enough; feminist theory, she argues, can be impenetrable or represent only one particular point of view in order to “fit in” with academic elitism and intellectualism. The value of theory, especially for Black women who are often critiqued by elitist cultures, is the liberatory practice of which theory can pave the path.
In her pedagogy, hooks prioritizes community development, love, hope, and representation. She hopes to develop critical consciousness, focusing specifically on Black feminist praxis and Black women.
Freire and hooks’ pedagogies value several actions: dialogue, love, community-building, and representation. The goal embedded with all these approaches is to develop critical consciousness, whether that criticism is of larger tyrannical government (Freire) or the more 192 insidious racism and misogyny that enacts violence upon marginalized folks (hooks). However, each of these actions can be directly translated to critical fan practices.
1. Dialogue
2. Love in Action
3. Community-Building
4. Representation
Dialogue
Every fan is familiar with the role of dialogue in fandoms, and I do not mean dialogue between two characters. Dialogue may be everything from Twitter conversations, to reposting something on Tumblr, to conversations in a hall at a convention, to discussions between friends.
Dialogue centralizes a back-and-forth exchange of ideas and how this exchange builds extensive fandom knowledge and analysis. Discussions, as pointed out by several of the fans interviewed for this dissertation, often analyze the source text. Forms of analysis will differ depending on the community the fan is a part of. For example, Kittya Cullen shares the tensions in the Supergirl fandom around Kara and Lena’s potential romance; Kittya says she and other like-minded, critical fans recognize their potential budding, queer relationship, while other fans argue that this is a glaring misinterpretation. While these dialogues can be difficult to have, especially when anger and frustration is involved, they need to happen. Dialoguing, of course, is not enough; a critical dialogue requires listening and understanding another point of view, especially when that point of view is talking about violence they have faced. The question then becomes how can critical fans dialogue?
Love in action 193
What does love in action look like? As a student once asked me, “who the heck would spend so much time writing 100,000 words based on a cartoon?” First, I would and have — well,
80,000 words. Second, it was a fair question. Taking the time to write 100,000 words is not easy, especially if there is no financial compensation. So why do fanfiction writers do it? How can they do it? This, I argue, is love in action. hooks’ focus on love prioritizes feminist praxis, specifically an ethics of care, into her pedagogy; she teaches, writes, and leads with compassion, and hopes her students and readers do the same. As hooks (2003) argues, “Love will always move us away from domination in all its forms” (p. 137).
One of the running theories in fan studies is the importance of love in fandoms. Joanna
Russ’ 1985 essay, one of the earliest fan studies essays, emphasizes the acts of love taken in fanfiction and fan zine composition. These labors of love, often uncompensated, drive fan communities and motivate fans to compose. Fans not only love the characters and stories from the source text, but love the different genres in fandoms. Fanfiction is not necessarily about the cultural materials, but the actual practices of writing fanfiction and connecting with others. In several of the interviews, critical fans gushed over their love for the cultural material, how they related to the stories, and also the ways in which they connected with their friends through their mutual love. It is through the action of love that critical fans may also be able to bridge anger and resentment, such as the tensions mentioned above in the Supergirl fandom. Love in action is one of the most difficult pillars of critical fan pedagogy, though, as it requires patience, forgiveness, and listening, even when the other party may be purposefully uncritical.
Community-building
Attempting to define fan communities is an almost impossible job. The notion of community, itself, is already difficult to define, especially in writing studies. In their piece on 194 intervening in how writing and literacy studies defines community, DeCamp and Cushman
(2020) advocate for the notion of “intersectional community thinking,” which “can focus instead on ideas like intra-group difference and power dynamics, the roles of individuals in community formation, and the experiences of the multiply marginalized within communities that do not share their multiple marginalization” (p. 93). The notion of intersectional community thinking applies to fandoms in that fandoms are all about “intra-group difference,” especially since there are members that belong to multiple communities and these communities constantly cross over.
I turn back to bell hooks to better understand how the classroom as a community extends and overlaps with the intersectional community practices within fandoms. Throughout her career, hooks (1994, 2003) advocates that teachers need time away from the classroom, where the pressures of assessments, assignments, and grading can transform classrooms into more hostile spaces, top-down spaces. hooks (1994) advocates for dialogues in the classroom “to cross boundaries, the barriers that may or may not be erected by race, gender, class, professional standing, and a host of other differences” (p. 131). The notion of teachers crossing boundaries resonates with how fans cross boundaries, moving from space to space, transforming their own communities and writing practices. She, too, talks about why dialogue is necessary to cross boundaries that are specifically “erected by” different positionalities and identities, all which link to notions of power, pointing back to DeCamp and Cushman’s (2020) definition of intersectional community thinking.
Fandoms constantly wrestle with the notion of power, whether this is critical fans critiquing their own fandom communities or fandoms critiquing capitalistic notions of ownership. Paul Booth’s (2015) advocacy for fan researchers and teachers learning from fan communities, as critical thinking is often heralded in these spaces. He points to how fans 195 negotiate between loving a flawed canon while also building their own communities outside of this canon for themselves and others.
To teach fan studies and integrate critical fan pedagogies, then, is to not only teach fan studies scholars and methods for understanding fan communities, but to foster a communal space in which students see themselves as fans, as intersectional thinkers within a critical community.
In fandoms, there are few explicit hierarchies that exist, expect potentially those hierarchies from moderators to casual users or fans who make a living off their fandom practices.
Fandoms, however, are not separate from more insidious hierarchies and dominant ideologies.
Fandoms can reify white supremacy and other forms of racism — hierarchies that specifically hurt fans of color. Fans who attempt to critique these ideologies are often ignored or receive criticism, themselves, from other fans; fandoms are constantly changing, though, and fans — especially fans of color — often carve out their own spaces. Understanding fan communities as interlinked with systems of power, but also potential spaces for reimagining these systems of power demonstrates a pedagogical intervention in how we talk about writing, reading, and popular culture in the classroom.
Critical Uptake and Representation in Fandoms
As bell hooks and other Black feminists demonstrate in their own work, decentering whiteness and centering the margins is in itself a form of resistance (hooks, 1992; hooks 1994; hooks 2003; Thomas & Stornaiuolo, 2016; Thomas, 2019). Representation is more than just about inclusivity, but a radical reimagining of whose stories are valued. Thomas (2019) argues that the “imagination gap” in mainstream media hurts young Black students. She argues that media representation of Black and other non-White stories is limited, unlike the countless White 196 stories and lived experiences that are represented. This representation, she argues, hurts Black children and young adults as they grow up and imagine the types of lives they may lead.
Representation is not the answer to combating white supremacy, but it is an important step. Whose stories are represented and how? How can teachers reimagine their curricula to not only represent more lived experiences, but de-center whiteness? How can our assignments, readings, assessment practices, in-class activities, and policies de-center whiteness and carve out space for different heuristics and knowledges? Critical fandoms are already spaces where this is happening, where fans can explore critical and radical politics, reimagine whose stories matter, and resist dominant ideologies. It is through the action of critical uptakes that fans re-imagine and restructure systems of power, resisting dominant ideologies through their everyday practices.
How can teachers embrace this mode of resistance, demonstrating to students that critical uptakes, specifically critical fan uptakes, can happen everywhere?
Summarizing critical fan pedagogy
Critical fan pedagogy can be multiple types of pedagogy in one. It may be tracing, celebrating, and learning from critical fans; it may be using data to support critical fans’ critiques of mainstream popular culture texts or their own communities; it may be incorporating critical fan intersectional community thinking into the classroom; and it may be having students participate in critical fan uptakes, both defining fan uptakes and trying themselves. In implementing critical fan pedagogies into my own classroom, what I have learned in just how many people identify as fans and have explicitly participated in fan genres, whether writing fanfiction or other forms. Most students, too, are already incorporating critical uptakes in their writing practices if they are engaging in fan communities. Just as Paul Booth argues (2015), so many fandoms are already critical classrooms. So how can we continue to build classrooms to 197 mirror and learn from them? And when do we need to, as hooks (1994) advocates, step outside our own classrooms to reimagine our pedagogy?
Critical Fan Pedagogy Resources for Instructors
About these materials
This list of teaching materials has been created for the purposes of being used across classrooms and grades. Most of these assignments and activities were used in First Year Writing classrooms, and the syllabus was created with the intention of one day teaching a course on critical fans. Each teaching material addresses potential concerns and issues, especially around digital ethics, that may arise (Table 7.1). Provides an explanation of all the teaching materials and which appendix to find them in.
Why critical fan pedagogy?
Integrating critical fan pedagogy in traditional classroom spaces is one way to engage students' critical thinking skills, demonstrating how what they consume everyday impacts their perspective on the world. Critical fan pedagogies can also be a vehicle for getting students to engage with research methods in online spaces that they may be more familiar with. Finally, critical fan pedagogy centers composers’ activism and agency, showing students that resisting systems of power is something anyone can do and, as Thomas and Stornaiuolo say, "they engage in new forms of becoming." How do your assignments, policies, classroom activities, and readings allow students to explore spaces to “engage in new forms of becoming?”
Context of materials
While these materials were initially created to be used in college and university classrooms, they may be adapted to different contexts. The syllabus is designed for an upper- level undergraduate research methods course in writing studies and rhetoric. Aspects of the 198 syllabus, however, may be redesigned depending on the discipline or student level. The syllabus has different modules and labs that may be appropriated for other spaces, too. The assignments and activities provided are also fairly flexible and easy to remake for different contexts.
I do want to reiterate the importance of critical fan pedagogy in K-12 settings, especially when working with children. I am not a K-12 educator, so I cannot say exactly what critical fan pedagogy may look like in K-12 classrooms, so instead will look to other experts. As Ebony
Elizabeth Thomas and Amy Stornaiuolo (2016) point out, fan literacies and pedagogies are integral for K-12 teaching. They argue:
We submit that attending to young people’s digital practices, especially their imaginative
play with new tools and audiences as they restory themselves, can help push schools and
educators to imagine new possibilities. These possibilities extend beyond textuality, and
the struggle over whose stories are told and circulated, to the positions that educators take
up in relation to authors and narratives. When youth are invited to push back, to
reimagine, and to restory the world from their own perspectives, they engage in new
forms of becoming. (p. 332)
In her book The Dark Fantastic, Thomas (2019) reiterates the importance representation plays in childhood development. She specifically points to the "imagination gap" in hegemonic cultures, in which particular groups of people— usually Black and Indigenous people of color (BIPOC)— are represented in only a handful of ways. This imagination gap reifies to young BIPOC children that there are limitations for what they can do. For Thomas, representation is critical for addressing this imagination gap and resisting the systems that may attempt to silence or hinder
BIPOC children. Critical fan pedagogy is one method to have students think through hegemonic representations, but also actively resist the imagination gaps themselves. 199
Table 7.1
Teaching Materials and Descriptions
Type of Material Name Description Syllabus Critical Fan Research This syllabus is an introduction to fan Methods (Appendix D) studies and critical fan studies. In this course, students will learn how fans are always-already resisting systems of oppression. They will first learn the basic history of fan studies, and then use this disciplinary space to engage with empirical research methods (case studies, data analytics, computational text analysis, etc.). This course may be repurposed across multiple fields: Fan Studies, New Media, Rhetoric, Composition, Digital Humanities, Sociology, and Communication. Long-Term Critical Fan Research Based on the assignment provided in the Assignment Project (Appendix G) above syllabus, this assignment asks students to step into the role of researchers and conduct their own research of critical fan genres and practices Assignment Restorying for Justice Based on Thomas and (Appendix F) Stornaiuolo’s article “Restorying the Self: Bending Towards Textual Justice.” this assignment asks students to write a fanfiction that restories a cultural material towards textual justice. Activity Comparing Fandom Data Using fandom data provided on Archive (Appendix E) of Our Own, compare and contrast two fandoms in terms of the most popular characters, the most popular relationships, and the politics entangled in these representations. Teaches students both how to read AO3 data as well as an introduction to how to use a spreadsheet editor, like Excel, to visualize data. This hands-on activity can be used in a classroom or workshop setting, be assigned as homework, or done on your own!
200
Conclusion:
Critical Uptakes and “Familiarity with the Borders of the World”
Just as fandoms are everywhere, so, too, are critical fans. Anyone can be a critical fan.
Fan community writing processes are ever-changing, often prompted by politics that circulate within and across communities as well as the politics that individual fans bring to their communities. Because fandoms are community-defined and community-driven, fans have an epistemological understanding for how their communities operate and, often, how they want to transform their communities. Fans’ critical uptakes of both the source text and specific fan genres are a place where this transformation happens. These critical uptakes include implementing and practicing content moderation guidelines in fan spaces; tweeting about source texts with particular hashtags to reach particular parts of the fandom (such as #DemThrones with
Black GOT fans); responding to another fan on a discussion board to critique their explicit misogyny; and of course, writing fanfiction that critiques and reimagines dominant ideologies and how these ideologies are interwoven within systems of power.
As the “Fandoms by Numbers” portion shows, dominant ideologies are interwoven within fandom practices. Notions of which characters are more interesting or which characters are more desirable align with race, gender, and ability. Fandoms also uptake politics within the source text as they write fanfiction, valuing the characters which the source text also values. We see this with both GOT and TLOK in that the patterns across both fandoms often replicate the ideologies embedded within each text. TLOK, through its valuing of queer love, inspires fans to engage more with stories about queer politics and love. GOT, through its valuing of whiteness, leads to fans valuing White characters over characters of color. No fandom is perfect in its 201 politics, just as no fan is perfect in their politics. What matters are our everyday interactions and intra-actions within fandoms.
Because fandoms are a collection of fans with diverse investments, backgrounds, and politics, it is important to center individual fans’ interpretations of their own communities and their descriptions of their uptakes. The fan authors who I interviewed are not perfect in their politics, as no fan is perfect in their politics. However, they each demonstrate a meta-awareness of community expectations and politics that impact their own fan practices. For instance, when fans examined the “Fandoms by Numbers” results, each provide explanations for results and share their own experience in the fandom that relate to those results. More importantly, they each express a desire to do better, to be a better writer, to be a better ally, or to be a better activist. The fanfictions they wrote, the ones I interviewed them about, are just instances of steps in their journey as lifetime learners and thinkers. There will always be another show, another fandom, another fanfiction. And each individual fan has the power to inspire other fans.
Fandoms are not separate from systems of power, like white supremacy and heteronormativity. However, because fandom communities are also more democratic spaces, fans constantly dialogue with each other and transform their own communities. There is a circulation of information, ideas, conventions, joy, and interpretations that is almost impossible to trace. Fans constantly move between communal spaces, crossing from YouTube comments to
AO3 comments. Fan generic conventions and politics are constantly transforming because of this heightened circulation. What makes using uptake an importance lens for fanfiction is that there are community-defined expectations for how fans respond to particular genres, from the source texts to fan genres. These expectations, however, change based on the physical or digital space, the source text, and the tags used. To attempt to perfectly define these genres does a disservice to 202 the fan genres. Tracing fans’ uptake — from the genres that prompted them, to their uptake enactments, to examining the final uptake artifacts — demystifies the process of writing fanfiction and provides a layout for critical uptakes in all contexts.
The first step of a critical uptakes is to recognize and critique dominant ideologies that are interwoven in every aspect of our lives, from the systems of power that drive our institutions to the individual actions we and others take. Fans often critique the source texts they love, pointing out whose stories are ignored and why. They also often critique writers, producers, production companies, and even actors, pointing out where they fail. For fans whose lived experiences are marginalized by systems of power—women, queer people, people of color, disabled people — these critiques are even more important. As Kittya Cullen says, “it takes a special kind of familiarity with the borders of the world to imagine a world that is different from what is presented to you.” Developing a “familiarity with the borders” — the systems of power that feel impossible to challenge and the dominant ideologies that can poison every interaction and space — is the first step in enacting a critical uptake. The second step, then, is to recognize how these dominant ideologies are embedded within discourse communities and genres. Fans demonstrate meta-awareness of their communities; they can each define genres, community expectations, and fan politics as well as how these intersect with “the borders” of the external world.
The third step is recognizing the genres that prompt uptakes are much more complicated than a linear causality. In some cases, like in classrooms, uptake is easier to trace as student’s uptake the assignments given by teachers. Even then, the design of assignments are impacted by teachers’ own lived experiences, institutional factors, the texts being assigned and read, and the 203 teachers’ communities and expectations. The same messiness of genres that prompt uptakes is found in fan uptakes.
Fandoms can be found across different physical and digital spaces; there are different genres in each space that may prompt responses somewhere else. The genre may be the source text, itself, but there are other genres that prompt fan uptakes, such as community writing prompts, discussion board posts, fan art, or even reading another person’s fanfiction that you fall in love with. To explicitly lock down the genre that prompts a fanfiction uptake is almost impossible, unless there is a specific writing prompt the fan author is working from, as in the case of Dialux’s and Gillywulf’s fanfictions. However, to understand uptake as a response to a multitude of genres, from multiple communities, all with multiple politics and values allows for a much more complex set of expectations and conventions that each writer works within. This, then, provides writers space to develop, reimagine, and resist dominant ideologies.
I also want to turn back to how spaces can invite critical uptakes and genres. Archive of
Our Own, the platform itself, invites certain critical uptakes, but not necessarily others. For instance, the platforms’ extensive metadata and discoverability encourages fan authors and readers to push beyond the borders of their imaginations. The comment features also invite readers to engage with authors. Yet, the platform has still not fully answered issues around racism in fanfictions and reporting mechanisms for coming across explicit and implicit racism.
How can AO3 build new infrastructure within the platform to challenge racism and white supremacy, which especially hurts fans of color? AO3 is not a perfect fan utopia, especially not for fans of color and fans living in non-Western countries and cultures. The overlooking of their experiences perpetuates a violence that the platform can and should rectify. 204
The final step is the critical uptake enactment, itself, or the actual act of composing. As
Aria says, fans — especially fans invested in queer readings and politics — are “going to tell the story” that was not told. The act of telling these stories — as restorying, counterstorytelling, postcolonial retellings, queering, however you choose to define this process — is the critical uptake. Turning back to the example of the teacher’s assignment, each student responds to the writing prompt based on their own lived experiences, the things happening to them in their lives at that moment, their different interpretations of the text, and even their feelings towards the professor and the classroom. Some students may be “familiar…with the borders of the world,” as Kittya would say, where they recognize what or who may be missing in the assignment’s expectations. Inviting critical uptakes not only invites students to critique the “borders of the world,” but also invites students to challenge the institutional expectations, of whose voices, knowledges, and stories matter. The action of a critical uptake can be scary. Pressing the
“submit” button can be even more terrifying, whether you’re a student reimagining the research article genre or a fanfiction author critiquing your own fandom.
What happens when we make room for these critical uptakes in our classes and in all communities in which we participate? Many of us, even those within more rigid institutions where critique is not welcome, can enact critical uptakes. However, it is also important to recognize when enacting critical uptakes may be harmful for particular people. Here, I think specifically about the Inuit social workers who Anthony Paré writes about; these Inuit women must follow a strict set of conventions in their uptakes or they could lose their jobs. I also turn back to Chewing_Gum, whose critical disruptake I analyze in the “Missandei Deserves Better,” case study. Her critical disruptake demands better from the GOT writers and the fandom, yet only a few people respond. These responses are all positive, but the lack of engagement 205 demonstrates fans’ aversions to talking about white supremacy and racism, especially on AO3.
Platforms like Tumblr and Twitter often invite more back-and-forth dialogue, but AO3 users often come to AO3 in search of a fictitious utopia. In those moments when fans enact critical disruptakes, when they point out how a platform and fandom is reinscribing white supremacy, we must listen and respond lovingly.
Who gets to enact critical uptakes and where? Specifically, who has the power and privilege to enact critical uptakes? For instance, will a Black woman scholar be penalized for enacting a critical uptake, while her White woman colleague may not receive the same kind of punishment? In fan communities, how do Black and White fans’ experiences of critiquing fandom racism differ? What can every fan invested in resisting systems of power do to invite critical uptakes in general, invite critical uptakes of the fandom, and practice care for fans — especially fans of color — who are already doing this work?
I want to invite all those invested in transforming institutions and systems of power to think through how they enact and prompt change, especially those in positions of power. In what ways do the expectations around our composing practices reinscribe dominant ideologies? How can those in positions of power — administrators, teachers, supervisors, investigators — prompt and invite critical uptakes? How can we foster communities where next generations not only critique these dominant ideologies, but transform systems of power? How can we continue to mirror and learn from the critical fans — those who write thousands upon thousands of words for no pay, those who transform how digital platforms work, and those who sometimes receive blowback from their own communities — to both inspire and enact critical uptakes in our everyday practices?
206
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Appendix A.
Interview Recruitment and Questions
Recruitment Message to post on Archive of Our Own Story
Hi [Archive of Our Own username]:
I know this is a bit of an atypical comment.
I am a researcher at Northeastern University who studies fanfiction and fan genres. I am reaching out to you because I am interested in analyzing the fanfiction you published titled “title” as part of my digital dissertation project, the Critical Fan Toolkit.
About the project: For this project, I am exploring the ways fan writers embrace social justice and explore issues around identity representation in their work. I will be including some excerpts from a few fanfics, and a quote from yours is one I would like to include: (insert excerpt from person’s fanfiction).
About the researcher: My name is Cara Marta Messina; I am a PhD Candidate at Northeastern University in the English Department. Feel free to Google me! For my dissertation, I am researching fanfiction and fanfiction writers, particularly the ways in which identities are represented in fanfiction.
I am a former fanfiction writer myself. My Archive of Our Own username is AttackOnMonday; my more active account is on Fanfiction.net, but I would like to keep a lot of my stories published there private. I still actively participate in fan communities, particularly reading Hunger Games fics and going on fan subreddits (such as r/GameOfThrones and r/TheLastAirbender). Please feel free to look up my credentials through the Northeastern University English Department’s website, my AO3 account, my personal website (http://www.caramartamessina.com), or the dissertation project website (link).
Why me? As I already mentioned, I am interested in using an excerpt from your fic in my dissertation. My project specifically focuses on Game of Thrones and The Legend of Korra fanfiction published on AO3.
What do you need to do? I would like to obtain permission from all fanfiction authors before publishing any of their language; your username will receive all credit. You can provide permission by filling out this permission survey form: (link to survey).
Where will the texts be published? 224
There are a few places your texts may show up. It will most likely appear on my dissertation’s website (link), The Critical Fan Toolkit, or in any articles, books, or conference papers published about this project. This may mean the title, your AO3 username, and/or short excerpts of your fanfiction may be used.
Do I need to provide permission? In order for me to use any excerpts from your work, I want your consent first! It is completely up to you if you would like your work to be potentially analyzed and to have excerpts published. If you do not provide permission, I will not use any excerpts.
What do I get if I give permission? There are no rewards for providing permission to allow me to analyze your work and potentially publish a few excerpts. All credit for your work will be given to your AO3 username.
What should I do if I have questions about the project? If you have any questions about this study, feel free to contact Cara Marta Messina at [email protected].
If you would like to give the project permission to use your work to be analyzed, excerpted, and potentially have parts published, please fill out this online consent form: link.
Thank you for your time, and I hope you keep writing!
Best, Cara Marta Messina PhD Candidate, Northeastern University
Permission Survey to Provide Consent for Incorporating Fanfiction
Please read this consent form carefully. You will be able to provide or deny permission for your fanfiction text to be used individually in this study.
This research is part of Cara Marta Messina’s dissertation project exploring fans’ choices when they write and publish fanfiction, specifically their choices regarding issues of identity representation.
Why you? You published The Legend of Korra or Game of Thrones fanfiction on Archive of Our Own, and I would like to get your permission to use an excerpt from your fic.
Are there any risks? The main risk of being interviewed and participating in this study is that your Archive of Our Own published content may get some publicity it would not otherwise have. While unlikely, your story may receive more attention and potentially be commented on by trolls. If you experience any type of unwanted attention, please let me 225 know as soon as possible and use Archive of Our Own’s Abuse Report (https://archiveofourown.org/abuse_reports/new) to file a complaint. What happens if I want to withdraw? Your writing is owned by you! If at any point you would like excerpts from your writing to be removed from the Critical Fan Toolkit or to not be analyzed or published before they are published, you have the right to revoke consent.
Who should I contact if I have any questions? If you have any questions about this study, please contact Cara Marta Messina; you can either call or text me at 718-316-1892 or email me at [email protected]. You can also contact Mya Poe, Principal Investigator, at [email protected] or 617-373-3966
What is your AO3 username? ______
What alias would you like to be referred to in the analysis and publication of this project? ______
What are your pronouns (she/her; they/them; he/his; etc): ______
Please inform me when excerpts from my fanfiction are used or published: _____ Yes, inform me If yes: Please provide your email address ______No, do not inform me
Consent to having your fanfiction used By clicking on the “yes” button below you are indicating whether or not you consent to your fanfiction text to be analyzed and potentially be excerpted for this study. Please print out a copy of this consent form for your records. _____ Yes, I give you permission to use my fanfiction work _____ No, I do not give you permission to use my fanfiction work
Interested in being interviewed? The second portion of this project will be interviewing select fan authors. These interviews will be approximately 30 minutes and they will be audio-recorded, analyzed, and published on the Critical Fan Toolkit. Are you interested in being interviewed? ____ No ____ Yes 226
If Yes, please fill out the below information: Email______Are you 18 or older? ___ Yes ___ No Are you currently incarcerated ___ Yes ___ No Do you have any cognitive disabilities? ___ Yes ___ No
Recruitment Email for Potential Interview Participants
Hi [name]:
Thank you again for providing consent to have an excerpt from your fanfiction potentially analyzed and published for my dissertation project.
I am reaching out to you because you selected that you were interested in being interviewed. I would like to invite you to participate in a 30 minute Skype interview about writing and publishing fanfiction. You must be 18 years or older and not currently incarcerated to be interviewed.
About the project: For this project, I am exploring the ways fan writers embrace social justice and explore issues around identity representation in their work. Specifically, I am hoping to interview several writers and ask them about their choices when writing and publishing fanfiction. I am interested in interviewing you. As I mentioned above, I’m particularly interested in interviewing you because you wrote “title of fanfic.”
About the researcher: My name is Cara Marta Messina; I am a PhD Candidate at Northeastern University in the English Department. For my dissertation, I am researching fanfiction and fanfiction writers, particularly the ways in which identities are represented in fanfiction.
I am a former fanfiction writer myself. My Archive of Our Own username is AttackOnMonday; my more active account is on Fanfiction.net, but I would like to keep a lot of my stories published there private. I still actively participate in fan communities, particularly reading Hunger Games and going on fan subreddits (such as r/GameOfThrones and r/TheLastAirbender). Please feel free to look up my credentials through the Northeastern University English Department’s website, my AO3 account, my personal website (http://www.caramartamessina.com), or the dissertation project website, titled The Critical Fan Toolkit (link).
What do you get: (only include if receive funding) If you choose to be interviewed, you will receive a $25 gift card from Amazon that will be sent to your email.
What do you need to do: If you are interested in being interviewed, you will need to fill out this consent form (link below). In this consent form, you will provide your email address, which I will then use 227
to individually contact you and set up a telephone interview. The interview will take about 30 minutes and will be audio recorded.
What will become of the interview? I will be interviewing several fanfiction writers for my dissertation project. I will be transcribing and analyzing these interviews. I will also be publishing both the audio recordings and the transcripts of the interviews on my dissertation website: link. All identifying information will be excluded from the published version of these interviews.
What should I do if I have questions about participating? If you have any questions about this study, feel free to contact Cara Marta Messina at [email protected] or 718-316-1892. This study was approved by the Northeastern University Institutional Review Board (19-11-05).
Your participation will be greatly appreciated. The interviews will be taking place from August 1, 2019 to August 1, 2020.If you would like to be interviewed, please click the link to access the consent form.
Thank you for your time and I hope you keep writing! Best, Cara Marta Messina PhD Candidate, Northeastern University
Interview Questions
These semi-structured interview questions will be conducted and audio-recorded via Skype by Cara Marta Messina. These questions are based on a discourse-based interview method; there is room for follow-up questions. Interview questions (with room for follow-up questions) will be broken into three sections.
Self ● Can you tell me a little bit about yourself as a fanfiction writer? ● When and how did you start writing fanfiction? ● Which fandoms did you start with? ● How did you participation in fan communities change over the years? ● What fandoms do you currently participate in? Why? ● What texts have you produced recently?
The Participant’s Game of Thrones/The Legend of Korra Fanfiction ● For the text I have asked you to talk about, can you describe your motivation behind the writing of this fanfic? ● What do you believe are some strengths of this fanfic? ● What are some challenges you faced when writing this text? ● What was some of the feedback you received from this text? What was your reaction to this feedback? 228
● Why did you decide to use particular tags? ● Why did you decide to focus on these particular characters? ● Can you describe some of your specific choices from this text? [point to specific moments in the text] ● What did you learn from writing this fanfic?
The Participants’ Perspective of Computational Text Analysis Results ● For this project, I am doing some large text analysis looking at X fandom in AO3. How do you think these results contrast to or work with your text? ● Show results of linguistic patterns in the fanfiction texts ● Show results of tagging practices ● Show results from temporal analysis ● In terms of what you know about the X fan community, well-represented in these results? ● What is missing in these results?
229
Appendix B.
Codebook for Qualitative Coding
The RelaxNG schema and the XSLT transformations are available on my GitHub page. Each code is an attribute, while the children codes are attribute values. I have also provided a definition for each code and how it is meant to be used. I use this codebook directly in the
“Explore Themes Across Interviews” definitions, so the codebook can either be accessed here or there.
Important: An overall interesting quote to highlight an important moment.
Fan Politics: When fan authors mention fan community politics, including particular practices, theories, ideas, or tensions. These may not directly relate to politics, but may reveal underlying ideologies in fan communities.
Uptake: These codes demonstrate different fanfic uptakes and define basic conventions of these genres based on the fan authors’ responses. Uptakes are the ways in which a writer responds to one genre by engaging in another genre, following particular conventions or expectations for how to engage with the second genre. In terms of fan uptakes, these may be fanfics or fan art that respond to the original source material but follow genre expectations in the fan community.
● Critical Uptake: Demonstration of a critical uptake. A critical uptake occurs “when
writers...resist harmful and exclusive cultural ideologies in their uptake” (Messina, 2019).
These ideologies may be embedded in the canonical show or even fan genre conventions.
This may be an uptake of the canonical text, an uptake of a fan genre convention, or an
uptake of a prompt.
● Canon compliant: When fan authors discuss a canon compliant uptake, which is when a
fan celebrates and follows a particular event or character in the original source material 230
(Messina, 2019). This may include writing a canonical relationship or continuing a
canonical plot point.
● Canon Resistant: When fan authors discuss a canon resistant uptake, which is when a
fan actively “resists both the implicit and explicit canonical choices made in the original
cultural material” (Messina, 2019). This may include writing about a non-canonical
relationship, identity bending, or reimagining an alternative plot point.
● Implicit-Explicit: When fan authors discuss an implicit-explicit uptake, which is when a
fan “analyzes the subtext of the show and makes the subtext explicit in their fanfictions”
(Messina, 2019). This may include writing from another characters’ perspective or
exploring a romantic relationship that may be inferred.
● Fan Practices: When fan authors discuss a fan practice uptake, which is when a fan takes
up fan genre practices in the fan community, such as engaging with fan genre
conventions or implementing specific tagging practices.
Genre: These codes examine different fanfic generic forms and define basic conventions of these generic forms based on the fan authors’ responses. Because Rhetorical Genre Studies defines genre as social actions that are recurring and re-acted in particular communities, then engaging in a genre means taking into account the conventions of that genre, choosing to resist or follow these conventions, the ideologies embedded within those conventions, who has say over these conventions, and how generic engagement helps community formation. These codes include angst, fluff, fix-it fics, and more.
● Angst: The fan author describes the "Angst" genre. Angst generic forms capture feelings
of depression, anxiety, hurt/comfort, and other general forms of angst. 231
● Fluff: The fan author describes the “Fluff” genre. Fluff captures a happy, feel-good story,
referred to as fluff because of the warm-and-fuzzy affect the writer attempts to capture. It
almost always centers around romance and everyday moments of joy or cuteness.
● Vignette: Vignettes are intentionally shorter fanfics, such as 100 words to 1000 words,
that capture an entire story in a small word count; 100 word fics are referred to as
“drabbles.” Vignettes are more of a medium rather than a generic form — as they rely on
a limited amount of written text to tell a story — so they may be multiple generic forms
and conventions appearing across different vignettes.
● Fix-it: The fan author describes the “fix-it” genre. Fix-it is usually a canon-resistant
uptake and "fixes" something that happened in the canon, like a particular writing choice.
These fics usually come out of disappointment from the canonical narrative arc.
● Author’s Note: The fan author describes the “Author’s Note” genre. Authors’ notes
appear at the beginning or end of fanfic chapters. The purpose of these notes are to
provide content warnings, reflect on particular choices made in the fanfic, or speak back
to readers or specific comments. For this code, I am also choosing to include
supplemental, explanatory material written along with fanfics that may not just appear at
the beginning or end of a fic.
● Identity-Bending: The fan author describes the “Identity-bending” genre. Identity-
bending is when the fic writer transforms an aspect of a character's identity, such as their
sexuality/race/gender, in their fic.
● Modern Setting: The fan author describes the “Modern Setting” genre. Modern settings,
a subgenre of alternate universes, are when fans reimagine characters from their 232
canonical universe into the fans’ modern-day universe, such as high school, college, or a
coffee shop.
● Other: Mentions another type of fan genre, including roleplaying, fanart, etc.
Writing Agency: This set of codes examine fan authors’ agency in their genre practices, writing choices, and uptakes. These codes include writing practices such as drafting, audience awareness, motivation, research, and more.
● Reflection: When fan authors reflect on a particular writing process or piece of their
writing. This may be the subject explaining specific choices they made that are not about
their audience or motivation for writing.
● Motivation: When fan authors mention their motivation for writing their fanfic or
another piece. This may be their own motivation, but also their assumed motivations in
the fan community.
● Audience: When fan authors demonstrate an awareness of their audience and explain
how they were thinking about their audience.
● Research: When fan authors discuss forms of research they conducted while they were
writing, including fan community research, reading about a theory, learning about
language or history, and more.
● Drafting: When fan authors discuss the act of drafting, or early stages in the writing
process such as brainstorming, outlining, etc.
● Revising: When fan authors discuss the act of revising, or later stages in the writing
process.
● Reception: When fan authors directly mention reader feedback and how their writing
was received. 233
Canon Commentary: These codes examine how fan authors’ respond to or analyze the canonical material — TLOK or GOT. These codes include complimenting, relating to, or critiquing the canon.
● Canon Compliment: When fan authors compliment the canonical material, including its
writing, ideologies, identity representation, and more.
● Canon Relation: When fan authors describe how they relate to the canonical material or
moments they relate to.
● Canon Critique: When fan authors critique the canonical text, including critiquing the
writing, ideologies, identity representation (or lack thereof), and more.
Power and Identity: When fan authors mention aspects identities and positionalities that tie into systems of power and/or directly mention these systems of power, whether describing them or challenging them.
● LGBTQ+: When fan authors mention LGBTQ+ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender) or
any queer representation in fan communities, fanfiction, and the canonical materials.
● Homophobia/Transphobia: When fan authors mention of homophobia or transphobia,
either homophobic/transphobic statements or references to homophobia/transphobia, in
fan communities, fanfiction, and the canonical materials. Homophobia refers to
discriminating against gay people (bi, lesbian, gay, pansexual), while transphobia refers
to discriminating against transgender or gender-nonconforming folks.
● Heteronormativity: When fan authors mention heteronormativity, either
heteronormative statements or references to heteronormativity in fan communities,
fanfiction, and the canonical materials. Heteronormativity refers to the notion of 234
heterosexuality and hetero-gender roles as the assumed norm, and how this assumption is
embedded in everyday conversations, politics, and social interactions.
● Cultural Difference: When fan authors mention cultural differences and how these
differences play out in fan communities, fanfiction, and the canonical materials. Cultural
difference may be tied to racism/antiracism, language, cultural practices, religions, and
more.
● Anti-racism: When fan authors mention resisting, challenging, or critiquing racism in
fan communities, fanfiction, and the canonical materials. Antiracism refers specifically to
deliberate actions. These actions may include forms of critical representations of diverse
races and ethnicities, challenging racial inequality both ideologically and systemically,
and more.
● Racism: When fan authors mention racism or racist statements in fan communities,
fanfiction, and the canonical materials. Racism here specifically refers to power
differentials between different races and how race is a culturally constructed way of
identifying, marking, and reading bodies. Forms of racism include white supremacy, the
erasure of diverse races/ethnicities, discriminatory behaviors towards a particular race
(specifically people of color), and assuming whiteness as the norm.
● Sexism: When fan authors mention sexism or sexist statements in fan communities,
fanfiction, and the canonical materials. Forms of sexism include patriarchal views of
gender roles, power dynamics among genders, discrimination against women, and more.
● Feminism: When fan authors mention resisting, challenging, or critiquing sexism in fan
communities, fanfiction, and the canonical materials. Feminism refers to anti-sexist 235
representations of genders, challenging gender inequality both ideologically and
systemically, and more.
● Class: When fan authors mention representations and understandings of socioeconomic
class in fan communities, fanfiction, and the canonical materials. This includes mentions
of classism, class imbalances, and forms of economic structures.
● Disability: When fan authors mention representations and understandings of disability —
physical, emotional, or mental — in fan communities, fanfiction, and the canonical
materials.
● Ableism: When fan authors mention ableism, either ableist statements or references to
ableism, in fan communities, fanfiction, and the canonical materials. Abelism includes
discrimination against people with disabilities, the erasure of people with disabilities,
assuming able-bodied and neurotypical as the norm, etc.
● Other: When fan authors mention other forms of identity representations or systems of
power, including around religion, age, and location.
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Appendix C.
Glossary of Terms
Theoretical Terms
Anti-racism: The definition of anti-racism this project works with the everyday practices we incorporate to challenge racism in our networks and communities as well as institutions such as educational, political, cultural, and social. Anti-racist work from bell hooks, Audre Lorde, Angela Davis, and Sara Ahmed draw explicit connections between institutional racism and our everyday actions that either uphold or resist this racism. I use anti-racism as a framework to better understand how fans critique racism in both the source texts and their own fan communities. As the “feminism” definition shows, too, anti-racism and feminism are intertwined.
Feminism: The definition of feminism this project works with is the everyday practices we incorporate to challenge systems of oppression in our networks and communities as well as institutions, such as educational, political, cultural, and social. I specifically build off feminists of color and Black feminists such as bell hooks, Audre Lorde, and Sara Ahmed, each who call for definitions of feminism to specifically include anti-capitalism, anti-racism, and queer politics (see the “queer” definition for why I use queer). Feminism is about liberation and the everyday practices we can incorporate to practice liberation, especially as larger institutions constraint, enact violence upon, and oppress women, queer folks, and people of color — especially women/non-cismen people of color. This project also recognizes how markers of identity are politically, socially, and culturally constructed, but still important to discuss as these markers are used to enact violence upon particular groups of people. Sara Ahmed defines living a feminist life as, “asking ethical questions about how to live better in an unjust and unequal world (in a not-feminist and antifeminist world); how to create relationships with others that are more equal; how to find ways to support those who are not supported or are less supported by social systems; how to keep coming up against histories that have been concrete, histories that have become as solid as walls" (p. 1). What is crucial about Ahmed's definition, here, is that feminism is action, action that recognizes how our everyday lived experiences are shaped by our communities and larger institutions, such as social systems and education.
Heteronormativity: Heteronormativity, a term coined by Michael Warner in 1991, is the social theory that heterosexuality and gender as biological sex are conditioned as normal, while a sexual or gender identity that outside of these norms are conditioned as abnormal. Warner argues the systemic normalization of heterosexuality is a “site of violence.” Heteronormativity points to the systemic, compulsory nature of heterosexuality and cisgender identity; heteronormativity is perpetuated through political, social, and familial systems in order to continue family lineages 237 and uphold “family values.” Critics of heteronormativity point to queer politics, or the resistance of normative sexual and gender identities, as necessary for disrupting these social and conditioned systems that enact violence upon queer people and women. Heteronormativity also requires upholding and normalizing binary gender roles, notions of masculinity and femininity, in gender identity and presentation. This binary replicate hierarchical systems of power in which one gender is dominant over another; misogyny, homophobia, and transphobia is a requirement to uphold heteronormativity. However, as Judith Butler (1990) argues, “gender is not always constituted coherently or consistently in different historical contexts,” meaning that gender presentation and performance are not “natural” as biological sex argues; instead, gender is performative, a series of acts and aesthetic presentations that are socially, politically, and culturally constructed. Butler’s notion of gender as performative invites for fluctuating gender and sexual presentations, acts, and identities.
Ideology: Ideology has a long, complicated history of conflicting definitions. This project defines ideology through the lens of social construction and rhetorical genre studies. Ideology is philosophical and political beliefs that encompass notions of citizenship, identity, and power as well as how these beliefs are enacted, reinscribed, or challenged through policy, culture, and everyday individual subject’s actions. Paré defines ideology as a “a process, a socially organized activity, as the daily practices of a society’s cultural, economic, and political institutions— practices that favor a dominant minority” (p 58). Paré’s definition brings several important aspects of ideology. First, ideology is a “social organized” process, implying it is ever-fluctuating, contextualized, and recurring. Second, ideology is about power, especially how power is replicated and reified across institutions (cultural, economic, political, and educational). Finally, ideology is about “daily practices,” in that our everyday acts reinscribe or resist these dominant ideologies. In the context of other glossary terms in this dissertation, heteronormativity and white supremacy are both ideologies that require constant maintenance through individual and social actions.
Pedagogy: Pedagogy are the methods and philosophies that drive how we teach and learn. In this dissertation, I refer to “critical pedagogy” which stems from Paulo Freire’s approach to teaching and learning that centers learners critically learning and articulating how social, political, and cultural systems impact how we see the world. For instance, language is a system that drives our understanding of the world, but language also acts as a system of power and oppression. Freire emphasizes student-centered learning in which learners develop their own critical thinking skills, rather than learning from a top-down approach. bell hooks builds upon Freire’s critical pedagogy to center anti-racism and feminism into teaching and learning. For this project, I build upon bell hooks’ commitment to anti-racist and feminist pedagogy within the context of fandoms as “classrooms of the future” (Booth, 2015) as well as recognizing how we can integrate these methods of learning in our classroom.
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Queer (politics and identity marker): This project uses the word “queer” as both a political and social/identity marker. The culturally popular phrase, LGBTQIA+ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex, asexual, plus), demonstrates an ever-expanding understanding of non-heteronormative gender and sexual positionalities and practices. I use the term queer, though, as ”queer” encompasses a wide range of identity categories and terms, while simultaneously critiquing how identity markers are used to categorize people and enact violence upon certain categories. Queer theorists have reclaimed the term “queer” as the word itself resists a permanent definition. Michael Warner argues the term queer “has the effect of pointing out a wide field of normalization, rather than simple intolerance, as the site of violence.” Queerness resists normativity, and even resists a permanent definition.
Restorying/Counterstorytelling: Counterstorytelling is a method used in critical race theory that presents stories and narratives that oppose dominant ideologies and narratives, as these ideologies uphold white supremacy and erase knowledges, stories, and perspectives from particular ethnic and racial groups. Restorying, a framework further explored by Ebony Elizabeth Thomas and Amy Stornaiuolo (2016), applies counterstorytelling to fandom practices in which composers — especially adolescent Black writers — transform a source text’s representational politics to include their own lived experiences and/or marginalized lived experiences.
Systems of power/oppression: The phrase “systems of power/oppression” refers explicitly to political, social, educational, and cultural systems that maintain power for particular groups of people. Systems of power are often racist, classist, sexist, ableist, and heteronormative, enacting violence upon people who are prescribed into particular identity categories. For instance, educational institutions teach specific histories that may erase other histories, including how Indigenous people are depicted within a larger United States curriculum. Often, Indigenous cultures and tribes are studied and the genocides that occurred may be discussed, but are often overlooked. What is also overlooked are the fact that many tribes are still here today; their land has been and still is seized by colonialism and they often receive, especially on reservations, little to no social support.
White supremacy: The political, cultural, and social systems that both define whiteness and mark whiteness as universal and normalized. The normalization of whiteness then others non- white racial and ethnic people, creating a hierarchy in which whiteness is superior, thus both enacting and normalizing systemic violence against non-white races. White supremacy both led to and is reinscribed by colonialism, which is the seizing of land, power, and culture from Indigenous people. White supremacy is upheld through political, social and cultural institutions, such as policing, mass incarceration, media representation, and education.
Rhetorical Genre Studies Terms 239
Critical uptake: I define critical uptakes as uptakes in which the composer/author/writer explicitly resists exclusive and oppressive ideologies in their generic responses. Critical uptakes may be critiquing the ideologies embedded within the original genre and/or the ideologies embedded within the anticipated uptake. For instance, if a writing assignment calls for students to analyze a text through a potentially ableist lens, a critical uptake may be a student writing a piece about why the assignment is ableist instead of actually performing the expected assignment. In fandoms, a critical uptake may be a fanfiction that critiques racism in a fantasy television show, such as Game of Thrones, by focusing on the lived experiences and positionalities of characters of color who are overlooked in the source text.
Disruptake: Disruptakes are the actions the original genre composers take to force other composers to second-guess or rethink their uptakes, uptakes that may seem second-nature, as defined by Dylan Dryer (2016). For example, a teacher may pass out a test in class that asks students to not fill out the test until they finish reading all the questions. The last question, then, is for students to hand in a blank test with just their name at the top in order to pass. This disruptake asks students to rethink how they “take tests,” in that they do not write any responses to any of the questions that normally prompt a written response.
Genre: Genre, as defined by Carolyn Miller in 1984, are social actions that are rhetorical, recurring, and contextual. Instead of viewing genres as boxes within which we fit texts into, this view of genres provides a more fluid understanding of genre conventions, especially in disciplinary or institutional contexts. There are also particular ideologies embedded within genres. RGS is similar to performance studies, which builds out of feminism and gender studies; like gender, genre is viewed as a series of actions that are expected and ideological, but individuals may challenge these actions or reimagine these actions.
Rhetorical Genre Studies: A field in writing and rhetoric that understands genre as a social action and performance within particular contexts and institutions. RGS is often used in educational settings, such as writing courses, to not only help students participate within particular genres, but understanding the ideologies that drive certain genre conventions. RGS is also used to analyze texts as generic, or actions and performances within particular contexts and ideologies.
Uptake: The anticipated genre response to another genre, as deemed appropriate by context. Uptake demonstrates the interdependent relationship between genres, in one genre may anticipate another generic response, while the generic response often follows a set of conventions that seem like common sense. For instance, if I send out a wedding invitation with an RSVP card, I imagine the individual’s response will be filling out the RSVP card. 240
As uptake has developed in RGS, scholars like Anis Bawarshi, Dylan Dryer, and Heather Bastian trace anticipated uptakes and individual’s uptakes to reveal how dominant ideologies impact our actions and responses. Within the context of fandoms, the term uptake has a different connotation as appropriate responses to particular genres are defined within and reinscribed through the actual communities. Uptake may be a particular fanfiction genre in response to a source text or a fanfiction in response to community discourse; uptake may also be the comments on a fanfiction.
Uptake affordance: The genre that prompts an uptake and has a particular anticipated response, as defined by Dylan Dryer (2016). The uptake affordance is usually created by a person who has stake in the potential uptake as well as a set of expectations around how their text will be taken up. An example of an uptake affordance is a writing assignment designed in a First Year Writing course; the instructor usually has a particular set of expectations in designing this assignment and expects students to fulfill these expectations.
Uptake artifact: The actual artifact to be studied, as defined by Dylan Dryer (2016). In this project, the fanfictions within the corpora are the uptake artifacts.
Uptake enactment: The actual act of responding to a genre with another genre, as defined by Dylan Dryer (2015). In this project, I turn to interviews with fan authors to better understand their choices during their uptake enactment to better understand which re-actions are deemed appropriate or anticipated and why, as well as the ways in which these re-actions reinscribe or challenge dominant ideologies.
Fandom Terms
Antifandom: Communities and networks that are built and revolve around critiquing or disliking a source text or cultural icon. Antifandoms often revolve around notions of morality and critiquing texts due to their own moral standings or positionality. Antifandoms are particularly important, as Rebecca Wanzo (2015) argues, for Black fans who build their communities and networks through their critiques of white supremacy upheld in a popular culture text.
Canon: The source text upon which fandoms build. “Canon” as a noun can refer to the actual source text itself, or “canon” as a descriptor to what is deemed true within the source text. For instance, in the Game of Thrones canon, it is canon that Jon Snow and Daenerys Targaryen form a romantic relationship in season 8; canon refers both to this fact about the source text as well as the source text itself.
Critical fans & fandoms: Fans who critique systems of power — such as heteronormativity, racism, ableism, and misogyny — in the canon text, in their communities, and in larger social and cultural climates. Every fan can be a critical fan; what matters are the practices they 241 implement to reimagine or resist these systems. Critical fans may have an array of identities that they use to mark themselves, such as feminists, anti-racists, activists, and revolutionaries. Alexis Lothian’s definition of “critical fandom” builds off andré carrington’s work by defining how fan practices can be critical (or not): “critical fandoms [are] the ways that members of fan communities use diverse creative techniques to challenge the structures and representations around which their communities are organized” (Lothian 2018, p. 372). Lothian’s definition partially comes from Paul Booth’s (2012) call for academics to both “listen to fandom; and it is our responsibility as fans to promote critical fandom in all our work” (emphasis mine). Critical fandoms and critical fan studies, then, prioritize fan practices that actively challenge white supremacy, gender inequality, heteronormativity, and ableism in the source texts, fandoms, and fan studies.
Fandom: Communities and networks that are built and revolve around loving a source text or cultural icon. There are several types of fandoms, such as curative or transformative fandoms. Curative fandoms are built around knowing everything about the source text, such as a subreddit dedicated to analyzing a television show. Meanwhile, there are transformative fandoms, where the goal is to reimagine the source text in some way. This includes forms such as fan art, fanfiction, and fan vids. These fandoms are not always separate, as transformative fandom practices often require knowledge about and analysis of the source material.
Fanfiction: Fiction written by a fan of a cultural material — such as a television show or movie — or icon — such as a celebrity or athlete. Fanfiction is usually written text published on a website, disseminated through zines, or even kept private. Usually, fanfiction is shared within a community or across communities of other fans who engage with it through reading, commenting, beta-ing (revising), collaborating, translating, and other forms of engagement. There are a bunch of fanfiction genres, including angst, fluff, hurt/comfort, and smut, all of which contain particular conventions, ideologies, and even sub-genres.
Ship: Ship, short for relationship, describes when a fan imagines two or more characters in a romantic relationship. Ship may be a noun or a verb (I ship/shipping). For instance, “I ship Korra/Asami” or “Korra/Asami is my favorite ship.”
Slashfic: Slashfic refers to pairing two characters, usually of the same gender, together through fandom activities. Slashfic comes from the literal forward slash (/) used between two characters' names, as originally found in Kirk/Spock fandoms. Ever since fan studies began appearing in the 1980s, slashfic has been a constant phenomenon of study in media/cultural studies, psychology, sociology, gender studies, and more. For instance, some scholars are interested why fans, especially lesbian and straight women, often ship two male characters? Why are fans less likely to ship two women characters together?
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Research Terms
Corpus/corpora: A collection of texts to be used for research purposes. A corpus is the singular collection of texts, while corpora refers to multiple collections. The corpus used in the CFT are both The Legend of Korra and the Game of Thrones fanfictions published on Archive of Our Own.
Computational text analysis: Analyzing trends across a corpus to get a more distant view of overall patterns in a collection of texts. There are different types of methods for analysis, including word counts, collocation, concordances, topic modeling, and word embedding model.
Data: Information organized in a particular way. Data can be qualitative (descriptive, usually textual) or quantitative (numerical). How the word “data” is used may also shift depending on the discipline. In the humanities, data is usually qualitative with some quantitative data. For the CFT, the data are the individual fanfictions published on Archive of Our Own and the interview transcripts.
Metadata: Data about data. Metadata is usually found in information about an individual text in an entire corpus. For example, if a book is considered data for your research, the metadata would be the bibliographic information about said book (the author, publication year, editorial press, etc.). For the CFT, the metadata are the information that describes each fanfiction, such as the publication date or the characters used in the fanfiction.
Qualitative coding: Qualitative coding is a method for analyzing thematic patterns across qualitative data and marking up these patterns in order to count them. For the CFT, I used qualitative coding methods to mark up patterns across the interviews from the six fan authors.
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Appendix D.
Syllabus for “Critical Fan Research Methods”
Rationale The purpose of this course is to introduce methodologies and methods for researching online fan communities. While the theoretical framework and content of study in this course is focused on fandoms and critical fan practices, these methodologies and methods transfer to other areas and subjects of study, specifically digital spaces.
Theoretical Framework of Course Fan studies has history dating back to the 1980 and 1990s, when scholars in media studies and beyond began examining fanfiction and fan practices. During that time, fan scholars (Joanna Russ, Patricia Frazer Lamb, Diana Vieth, Henry Jenkins, etc.) heralded fan communities as spaces of resistance, where fans—particularly marginalized folks—challenged the status quo reified in popular culture media. For most fan scholars, gender and sexuality was a central focus. The genealogy of fan studies is made transparent through Hellekson and Busse’s The Fan Fiction Studies Reader as well as numerous articles published in Transformative Works and Cultures, an open-source peer reviewed journal for fans + academics.
As fan studies has expanded over the years, though, it became clear that a critical intervention was needed, particularly around the representations (or lack thereof) of people and characters of color. In a recent Transformative Works and Cultures special issue, this huge gap is addressed, and it seems the field as a whole is moving to acknowledge issues around race is central to fan studies.
Fan studies’ politics reflect larger politics in fan communities and dominant cultural narratives, more broadly. In fact, fanfiction and fan works have become so popular that they are slowly becoming a part of dominant cultural narratives. While still usually in the margins, fan politics are fairly explicit when analyzing which fandoms, ships, and characters are most popular. White supremacy, the fetishization of queer men, and the marginal appearances of lesbian relationships are reflected in larger fan community patterns. Course Goals Setting up critical fan studies as our theoretical lens, we will then dive into research methods for examining critical fans’ composing practices. The goal of this course will be for you to come out with a strong grip on critical fans composing practices and an understanding of different research methods, forms of data collection and analyses, and presenting on research findings.
In this course, students will learn: ● the history and current discourse in fan studies 244
● different methods for doing fan studies research, including case studies, ethnographies, computational text analysis, and data analytics ● diverse technologies for data collection, storage, and analysis ● why centering critical fan practices is critical in both fan and writing studies
Grading Participation (10%)
We will be learning and practicing research methods in every class. Almost every week, we will have a reading or two that demonstrates a form of fan studies research and a lab, which we will dive more into the actual methods and practice them. Participation may look different, from being in the class, to participating in discussions, to participating in labs. On the first day, we will discuss different modes of participation and come up with a list together.
Lab Notes (10%) At the end of each lab, you will be asked to write a reflection about the lab and submit it for our next class. These reflections will give you an opportunity to think through the methods and tools we learned, as well as how you might apply them in your research project or beyond. There are 7 labs in total, so each lab note will be worth 1.5% of your total grade (except the first will be 1%).
Assignments (80% overall) ● Assignment 1: Your Fan Journey (Literacy Narrative) - 15% ● Assignment 2: Critical Fan Research Proposal - 20% ● Assignment 3: Critical Fan Project Update - 20% ● Assignment 4: Final Research Project - 25% ○ Presentation - 10% ○ Paper - 15%
Assignments The assignments in this course begin at thinking through your own life and relationship to fandoms to help situate ourselves within different fan communities. Fan communities range from the traditional fans of cultural materials (television shows, books, movies, and games), to political fandoms, to sports fandoms, and beyond. By analyzing your own experience and fan journey, the assignments will then ask you to build a research project on critical practices in online fandoms. These online fandoms may be based on the communities to which you belong or another online fandom you are invested in.
Assignment 1: Your Fan Journey, Literacy Narrative For this assignment, you will be writing a literacy narrative based on your experience in fandoms and fan communities. Everyone is a fan of something, even if these fandoms do not look like the 245 traditional fandoms around popular culture that we talk about here. For example, you may follow celebrities or influencers on social media, participate in sports fan practices, or be a fan of particular hobbies or crafts. What have you been a fan of throughout your life? What has your participation looked like?
Assignment 2: Critical Fan Research Proposal Based on some of the forms of research we have learned so far as well as upcoming methods, write a proposal about the type of fandom research you hope to conduct for your third assignment. Specifically, how do the fan practices/communities/texts/genres you are researching reinforce or resist hegemonic cultures? ● What research question do you want to answer? ● Which scholars do you plan on engaging with? ● What theories (either fan studies or other theories) will you incorporate and how? ● Which research methods will you use to answer your questions? You can use multiple methods as well. For example, you may want to collect some large data as well as do a rhetorical analysis on one or two specific texts. ● What type of data will you collect? How will you collect this data? How will you analyze your data, using your theories to drive your analysis?
If you are interested in conducting a qualitative/quantitative mixed methods study, we will be learning some tips for data collection as well as how this data does or does not represent community norms. You can explore larger patterns in the community, which you may find in the analytics or through forms of data scraping or large data collection. How do these patterns reify or resist hegemonic cultures? Then, you will use more qualitative-based research methods, such as conducting a survey or interview, to examine particular textual choices made by critical fans that may conform or resist these patterns in the larger community. We will learn ways to collect data from Archive of Our Own and Twitter (using TAGs). We will also discuss ethical forms of data collection and analysis. Since we may be outsiders going into communities, we must take extra care when interacting with or speaking with different fans.
Assignment 3: Critical Fan Research Progress Update Because research is a long and often difficult process, your third assignment will provide you with an opportunity to update me with what you have done so far. This way, you can be sure to start your data collection and potentially do some preliminary analysis. This genre is a bit strange, as updates and progress genres are not usually what we see when we read research articles. For this update, though, I want you to: ● Describe what you have done so far. What data have you collected? How have you collected it? ● Point to some specific data: What are some interesting pieces of data you have already collected? 246
● Share preliminary results: What are some interesting findings that are already popping up? This is your chance to begin coming up with larger themes that your final paper will tackle ● Reflect on the process so far: What are some challenges you are facing? ● Technologies: What technologies have you decided to incorporate? If it is not something we have learned yet, what have you been using in the meantime?
Final Assignment: Critical Fan Research Project Based on your proposal, you will conduct your own research! Because it may take time to do some data collection, this will be your final assignment. Your final assignment will be both a presentation that you will present in the last week of class as well as a written paper due during finals week.
Course Structure
Fan Studies History (Weeks 1-3) This section of the course will analyze the history of fan studies as well as our own fan studies history. By examining the trajectory of fan studies—the foundational principles of the field as well as who was originally excluded—you will understand why investing particularly in critical fans is important. This trajectory will also provide a space for us to talk about our own fan community practices and what we may do in the future to develop our critical consciousnesses. ● First wave of fan studies. ● How the internet transformed fan studies and fan composing practices ● Current fan studies scholarship
Research Ethics (Week 4) This section will explore research ethics, both institutionally-defined research ethics from the Institutional Review Board (IRB) as well as recommended ethical guidelines to follow when doing digital research.
Methodologies (Weeks 5-7) A methodology is the overall theoretical and practical approach towards doing research. There are a ton of different methodologies across the disciplines, but we will specifically focus on community ethnographies and case studies. Each of these methodologies have particular purposes and focuses. Critical fan ethnography focuses on tracing community practices and may move across platforms, types of fan genres, and even fandoms. A Critical Fan case study, however, focuses more on individual writers to flesh out particular practices. We will look at examples from both methodologies. Some of the methods for data collection and analysis look similar, but the findings and discussion of the data will look different. ● Critical Fan Ethnography (methodology) 247
○ Defining ethnography ○ Collecting data ○ Analyzing data ○ Forms of validation/verification ○ Presenting on findings ● Critical Fan Case Study (methodology) ○ Defining case study research ○ Collecting data ○ Analyzing data ○ Forms of validation/verification ○ Presenting on findings
Methods of Data Collection and Analysis (7-10) After discussing methodologies more broadly, we will then dive into particular methods that we can implement. Methods usually include the process of data collection and analysis. We will discuss different types of data, how to collect that data, how to analyze that data, and finally which data types are appropriate for which methodologies. We will also look at particular tools that are useful for each method used. • Surveys ○ Recruitment process ○ Tools: Survey creation tools, spreadsheet editors (Excel or Google Sheets) ○ Analyzing: Excel or Google Sheets for creating visualizations and using functions • Interviews ○ Recruitment process ○ Tools: Recording devices, transcription services/tools, NVivo ○ Analyzing: NVivo for qualitative coding • Archival Materials (Data created not for the purposes of the study, but instead materials you collect and analyze) ○ Collection methods: TAGs for Twitter, FandomStats.Org, hand-selecting a corpus ○ Analyzing: ■ Rhetorical analysis (traditional method of close-reading texts for rhetorical moves and choices) ■ Computational Text Analysis (web-based text analysis tools like Voyant and Lexos) ■ Data Analytics (spreadsheet editors)
Writing Lab (Week 11) This last week before presentations are due will focus on providing you with time to develop your projects and ask questions based on the different methodologies and methods we learned.
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Calendar Week Theme Readings/Activities
Week 1 Introduction Syllabus & Participation Guidelines Activity
Defining Fan Studies “Introduction” from The Fan Fiction Studies Reader by Karen Hellekson and Kristina Busse
“Textual Poachers” by Henry Jenkins excerpt
Week 2 First Wave Fan Studies “Romantic myth, transcendence, and Star Trek zines” by Patricia Frazer Lamb and Diana Vieth
“Pornography by Women for Women, With Love” by Joanna Russ
How the Internet Transformed Fan Fiction and Fan Communities in the Age of Fandoms the Internet: New Essays Edited by Karen Hellekson and Kristina Busse (selections)
Assignment 1 First Draft Due
Week 3 Current Fan Studies Discourse “Fandom: The classroom of the future” by Paul Booth
“African American acafandom and other strangers: New genealogies of fan studies” by Rebecca Wanzo Assignment 1 Final Draft Due
Week 4 Research Ethics “Toward a goodwill ethics of online research methods” by Brittany Kelley
Introducing IRB (Institutional Review Board) Policies and Process
Research Ethics “The Ethics of Digital Writing Research: A Rhetorical Approach” by Heidi Mckee & James Porter
Introducing Assignment 2 249
Week 5 Methodology: Critical Fan Enclaving and cultural resonance in Black Game of Ethnography Thrones fandom by Sarah Florini
Critical Fan Ethnography Lab “Restorying the Self: Bending Toward Textual Justice” by Ebony Elizabeth Thomas and Amy Stornaiuolo
LAB: Community Ethnography Write observation notes about particular practices in film Paris is Burning. Discuss ethical possibilities and how our positionalities may impact our interpretation of the film.
Week 6 Methodology: Critical Fan “A Lengthy Trajectory of Interplays: Interweaving Case Study English Studies and Fan Fiction” by Kevin Roozen
Data Collection Lab “Twilight is so anti-feminist that I want to cry:” Twilight fans finding and defining feminism on the World Wide Web” by Sarah Summers
LAB: Data Collection In what ways can we collect data? - Textual artifacts - TAGS (Twitter Archiving Google Sheets) and other forms of data collection - Corpus Building - Quantitative Data - FandomStats.Org - Recruiting subjects - Interviews & Surveys
Assignment 2 First Draft Due
Week 7 Method: Surveys “Outside oneself in "World of Warcraft": Gamers' perception of the racial self-other” by Thomas D. Rowland and Amanda Barton
Survey Lab LAB: Survey Design and Collection 250
Using Google Forms, create group surveys to pass around to your colleagues. Then, analyze your results by close reading and using visualizations
Assignment 2 Final Draft Due
Week 8 Method: Interviews “When normal and deviant identities collide: Methodological considerations of the pregnant acafan” by Mary Ingram-Waters
Homework: You will create short interviews to interview your peers. Then, you will interview one peer and use an audio-recorder. Transcribe this interview and bring it to class.
Interviews Lab LAB: NVivo for Qualitative Analysis You will learn how to use NVivo for qualitative coding, specifically the interview you transcribed for homework.
Week 9 Method: Data Analytics “theyre all trans sharon”: Authoring Gender in Video Game Fan Fiction by Brianna Dym, Jed Brubaker, Casey Fiesler
Data Analytics Lab Destination: Toast! On fandom stats and how they collect and analyze their statistics
LAB: Analyze AO3 Fandom Using Toast’s Approach and FandomStats.Org Using Google Sheets or Excel, we will do the activity “Compare Fandom Data (Appendix E).”
Week 10 Computational Text Analysis “Tracing Fan Uptakes: Tagging, Language, and Ideological Practices in The Legend of Korra Fanfictions” by Cara Marta Messina
Assignment 3 First Draft Due
Computational Text Analysis LAB: Computational Text Analysis Lab 251
Using Voyant and Lexos, we will practice computational text analysis methods, including word frequencies, collocation, and more.
Week 11 Writing Lab This last week will focus on going back through the methodologies and methods we learned this semester; you will also have time to work on your final projects in class.
Assignment 3 Final Draft Due
Writing Lab This last week will focus on going back through the methodologies and methods we learned this semester; you will also have time to work on your final projects in class.
Week 12 Final Assignment Final Assignment Presentations Presentations
Final Assignment Final Assignment Presentations Presentations Final Assignment Due on (date)
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Appendix E.
Activity: Compare Fandom Data
Using fandom data provided on Archive of Our Own, compare and contrast two fandoms in terms of the most popular characters, the most popular relationships, and the politics entangled in these representations. Below, I created a video that shows a step-by-step guide for this process.
Activity Goals:
● Learn how to read and interpret AO3 metadata,
● Introduce how to use a spreadsheet editor, like Excel, to collect and visualize data,
● Practice analyzing quantitative data through a critical lens.
Introduction
This activity builds upon Fandom Stats and Destination Toast. Fandom Stats visualizes and shows the statistics of a particular fandom, such as how many works are published, the ratings used, and the most popular categories. Similarly, Destination Toast performs descriptive statistics on particular fandoms and writes brief analyses. Fandom Stats is interactive, while
Destination Toast is a blog site. These two sites for statistics demonstrate, first, basic understandings of AO3 metadata practices, and second, how descriptive statistics can be used to better understand fandoms and fan politics.
For this activity, you will follow along with Destination Toast’s post “How do I find/gather data about the ships in my fandom on AO3?” Destination Toast uses AO3’s “Sort and filter” function in each fandom to map out the most popular relationship categories.
Example 253
Let’s say I am interested in the representation and inclusion of Black characters in fandoms. I may choose two popular movies where at least one main character is Black: Star
Wars (Sequel Trilogy) and Black Panther. I followed Destination Toast’s guide for using the
“Sort and filter” function on the right side and collected the raw counts of the top 10 character information.
Data description
On October 15th, 2020, I collected the data in this spreadsheet, which can be used to practice quantitative analysis and visualizations with Excel or a similar spreadsheet editor. If you do not have access to Excel, other spreadsheet editors like Google Sheets use similar functions. I have made it into a CSV (comma-separated value) file, which can be opened up on any spreadsheet editor. A CSV file is a data file that does not contain hidden formatting, unlike an
Excel file. There are four columns: the name of the fandom, the character’s name, and the raw count of the top 10 characters used in this fandom. I also included an extra row for each fandom to include the total number of fandoms. This way, you can also calculate percentages.
Here are some discussion questions to move use as you practice calculating percentages and creating charts:
● Who are the most popular characters for each fandom?
● Which character is, percentage-wise, the most popular character used in their fandom?
Who is the tenth most popular character used in their fandom and why?
● Which characters are you surprised to find on this list of top ten characters? Why?
● How may you assess racial politics in the two fandoms?
Fandom-specific questions: 254
● Why may Kylo Ren/Ben Solo appear so often? How does this impact the data collection
and analysis?
● Why do you think Armitage Hux so popular? Why do you think Finn, Leia, Luke, and
Rose are less popular?
● Why do you think certain Avengers characters appear in the Black Panther fandom?
● Why might Nakia be less popular in the Black Panther fandom?
Calculating percentages
When making arguments based on which characters are used in fanfics more often, a stronger argument comes if you incorporate percentages, not raw numbers. Currently, the CSV file only has raw numbers. Percentages, though, shows you how often a particular character appears in relation to the amount of fanfics published in that fandom. For instance, Star Wars has a lot more fanfics published than Black Panther, so looking at percentages to compare the two fandoms is much more effective.
To calculate percentages, open the .CSV file in Excel. Create a new column for percentages by writing “Percentages,” in cell D1. As I mentioned, I included the total number of fanfics published for each fandom (row 2 and row 13). You will use these numbers to calculate the percentage of how often particular characters appear. The equation for calculating percentage looks like: (Part/Whole) x 100. In order to calculate this in Excel, you can create your own function! To signify to Excel you are creating a function, go to a blank cell and type the equal sign (=). Then, you can put in your calculations.
Because Excel is a spreadsheet editor and can calculate a mass amount of numbers automatically, you can input just the cell ID instead of a number for your calculation. So, if you 255 want to calculate the percentage that Rey appears in the Star Wars Trilogy, you would write in cell D3 (Rey’s empty percentage cell):
= (C3/C2)*100 (then press “Return” or “Enter” on your keyboard)
What you are doing here is telling Excel to divide the total Star Wars fics published (C2 =
62784) by the number of fics Rey appears (C3 = 32231) and multiply that result by 100, which is how you calculate percentage. The C3 and C2 indicate the cells with which you’re pulling data from. This way, if you update information, your calculation updates along with it. You can then do this for each character! I am including a video of these instructions in the video below.
[[Video available on CFT]]
Creating charts
Excel is great for creating charts. Sometimes creating charts are literally just as easy as highlighting data and clicking “Recommend Charts.” One important piece of information to know, though, is that the placement of data is important for chart creation. To easily create a chart using the “Recommended Charts,” follow these steps:
● Copy all the data from Column B (“Character”)
● Right click Column D (“Percentage”) and choose “Insert Copies Cells”
● Highlight the information you want to graph. Let’s start with the Star Wars Trilogy.
Highlight the Star Wars character names and percentages (D & E) from row 3, where
Rey’s data is, to row 12, where Rose’s data is. This way, you highlight both the
“Character” and the “Percentage” (Figure 7.1)
● Go to “Insert” on your toolbar
● Click “Recommended Charts” and choose which you prefer. The bar graph is always an
easy, but effective choice! 256
Figure 7.1
Screenshot of How to Highlight Character and Percentage Data
Now you should have a chart that looks like Figure 3. I changed the title by double-clicking the title and adding my own descriptive title. You can do the same thing for the Black Panther data, too (Figure 7.2 & 7.3)!
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Figure 7.2
Example of Chart with Characters Used in AO3 Star Wars Fanfiction
Figure 7.3
Example of Chart with Characters Used in AO3 Black Panther Fanfiction
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You Try!
Now that you have the basics down of working with spreadsheet data and have a model for how to create data, it is your turn to make data based on two fandoms! Before choosing your fandoms, think about what critical lens you may want to apply such as feminist, anti-racist, queer, or disability representation. These lenses, of course, can overlap! I am also including a video (below) with a step-by-step guide for finding the correct AO3 metadata, building your data, and creating charts.
Choose your fandom!
Once you choose a lens you want to analyze two fandoms through, choose your two fandoms.
These fandoms may be from canons that are similar or canons that are very different. Answer this question:
1. Why did I choose these two fandoms? How does it relate to your critical lens?
Choose your metadata!
Once you choose your fandoms, choose the top metadata you want to analyze. You can go by character, relationship, or additional tags. And, as Destination Toast shows, you can even nuance your choices further! For example, maybe you are interested in which characters are used most for “F/F” Relationship categories in a fandom and which characters are used most for “M/M” relationships in the same fandom. Once you have made this choice, answer this question:
1. Why did you choose to analyze the particular metadata you chose? How does it relate to
your critical lens?
Create Your .CSV!
Open a new Excel or spreadsheet editor and create a dataframe similar to the one we worked with. Create three columns: fandom name, character/metadata information, and raw count. To do 259 this, you can copy each character’s name — or whatever metadata you use — and also copy the raw counts. Make sure to save this file. Then, calculate your percentage and create at least one chart for each fandom. Think about these discussion questions using the other two questions you answered:
1. Describe the context around these results.
2. How are the fandom metadata practices similar or different in these two fandoms?
3. Describe these two fandoms through your critical lens.
Video on Activity https://youtu.be/WOlioDr1ptI
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Appendix F.
Assignment: Restorying for Justice
Required reading: “Restorying the Self: Bending Towards Textual Justice” by Ebony
Elizabeth Thomas and Amy Stornaiuolo
Concepts to discuss:
● Defining of counterstorytelling, justice, & restorying.
● Different forms of textual bending (identity, universe, etc..).
● Understanding stereotyping and 1) why it happens, and 2) how to challenge
stereotypes.
Choose A Canon Text
Choose a piece of written text (speech, short story, newspaper article, novel, song, movie/TV script, etc) and restory this text in some way. Remember Thomas and Stornaioulo’s restory taxonomy wheel to find inspiration for different ways to restory a piece. Think about how this text would change if it were in another context, existed during a different period of time, and/or occurred in an alternative outcome. For example, how might Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s famous “I Have a Dream” speech sound if he were alive today? How would The Hunger Games look if Rue, not Katniss, won the first Hunger Games and led to revolution? How might
Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale novel be written if it were from the perspective of a wealthy man in power in this dystopian society?
Questions for Brainstorming
For this assignment, think about how cultural texts reflect societal values and ideologies.
Here are some general ideas:
Understanding Positionality in the Original Text 261
● Whose stories are being told in the original piece?
● How do these stories either fit within or push against mainstream ideologies about race,
gender, sexuality, mental health, trauma, disability status, socioeconomic class, etc?
● How might you “restory” the original piece to capture lived experiences of different
positionalities and identities?
For example, if you restory a text that centers around a cisgender, White male protagonist living in our current world, how might the story look different if the hero was a queer Black woman? I recommend understanding your own lived experiences and positionalities, as well, and thinking through how your experiences may or may not be reflected in popular culture.
Expansion
● If you are thinking about expanding on a particular moment, such as digging into a
characters’ backstory or following a characters’ story that is cut off, how might this
expansion develop a new understanding of the original story?
● Why might the original story have overlooked or underdeveloped the character or idea
you are interested in exploring?
● How might their perspective represent underrepresented or untold stories from the
original story?
If you are exploring a character who experiences trauma and maybe the original story does not explore that trauma, how might your restory and explore said trauma? What can your story reveal about trauma that the original story did not?
Bending
● If you are thinking about transforming a particular moment, characters’ identity, setting,
etc., how will this transformation reveal the gaps in the original text? 262
● In what ways can you bend identities, settings, and universes to examine counterstories or
stories often overlooked in popular culture?
For example, you may think about how gender is portrayed in the original story; how does the text construct gender identity? How might you transform this construction? How might you push against normative representations of gender?
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Appendix G.
Assignment Arc: Critical Fan Research Project
Assignments for Courses on Research Methods, New Media, Fan Studies, and Data Literacies
About
This semester-long project, which has three arcs, asks students to step into the role of researchers and conduct their own research of critical fan genres and practices. They will develop qualitative and quantitative methods and a better understanding for online research ethics. While this project is a three-assignment arc, students may also want to write journal entries along the way to keep track of their progress and describe what they have done/found so far.
Assignment 1: Critical Fan Research Proposal
Based on some of the forms of research we have learned so far as well as upcoming methods, write a proposal about the type of fandom research you hope to conduct for your third assignment. Specifically, how do the fan practices/communities/texts/genres you are researching reinforce or resist hegemonic cultures?
● What research question do you want to answer?
● Which scholars do you plan on engaging with?
● What theories (either fan studies or other theories) will you incorporate and how?
● What research ethics will you commit to for your project?
● Which research methods will you use to answer your questions? You can use multiple
methods.
● What type of data will you collect? Why did you choose this data? How will you collect
this data? How will you analyze your data, using your theories to drive your analysis? 264
If you are interested in conducting a qualitative/quantitative mixed methods study, we will be learning some tips for data collection as well as how this data does or does not represent community norms. You can explore larger patterns in the community, which you may find in the analytics or through forms of data scraping or large data collection. How do these patterns reify or resist hegemonic cultures? Then, you will use more qualitative-based research methods, such as conducting a survey or interview, to examine particular textual choices made by critical fans that may conform or resist these patterns in the larger community. We will learn ways to collect data from Archive of Our Own and Twitter (using TAGs). We will also discuss ethical forms of data collection and analysis. Since we may be outsiders going into communities, we must take extra care when interacting with or speaking with different fans.
Assignment 2: Critical Fan Research Progress Update
Because research is a long and often difficult process, your third assignment will provide you with an opportunity to update me with what you have done so far. This way, you can be sure to start your data collection and potentially do some preliminary analysis. This genre is a bit strange, as updates and progress genres are not usually what we see when we read research articles. For this update, though, I want you to:
● Describe what you have done so far. What data have you collected? How have you
collected it?
● Point to some specific data: What are some interesting pieces of data you have already
collected?
● Share preliminary results: What are some interesting findings that are already popping
up? This is your chance to begin coming up with larger themes that your final paper will
tackle. 265
● Reflect on the process so far: What are some challenges you are facing?
● Technologies: What technologies have you decided to incorporate? If it is not something
we have learned yet, what have you been using in the meantime?
Final Assignment: Critical Fan Research Presentation and Paper
Based on your proposal, you will conduct your own research! Because it will take time to do ethical data collection, this will be your final assignment. Your final assignment will be both a presentation that you will present in the last week of class as well as a shorter written paper/textual artifact.
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Appendix H.
Explore the Interviews
Explore the different themes that emerge across the six interviews with the fan authors.
These themes were used to qualitatively code the interviews. Important abbreviations — The
Legend of Korra (TLOK), Game of Thrones (GOT), Archive of Our Own (AO3) — will be used. Each of these themes provides:
● a definition and explanation how these themes were coded in the interview,
● the number of times each theme appeared across the interviews,
● a brief analysis and summary of how these themes emerged during the interviews,
● actual quotes that were coded with these themes.
Important Quotes
Definition: Quotes from the fan author that are particularly important or interesting.
Number of Codes: 64
Fan Community Politics
Definition: When fan authors mention fan community politics, including particular practices, theories, ideas, or tensions. These may not directly relate to politics, but may reveal underlying ideologies in fan communities.
Number of Codes: 113
Uptake
Definition: These codes demonstrate different fanfic uptakes and define basic conventions of these genres based on the fan authors’ responses. Uptakes are the ways in which a writer responds to one genre by engaging in another genre, following particular conventions or expectations for how to engage with the second genre. In terms of fan uptakes, these may be 267 fanfics or fan art that respond to the original source material but follow genre expectations in the fan community. These codes include critical uptakes, canon-complicit uptakes, canon-resistant uptakes, and more.
Number of Codes: 142
Analysis: Select different uptake categories for specific analyses.
Critical uptake
Definition: When fan authors discuss critical uptakes. Uptakes are the ways in which a writer responds to one genre by engaging in another genre, following particular conventions or expectations for how to engage with the second genre. A critical uptake occurs “when writers...resist harmful and exclusive cultural ideologies in their uptake” (Messina, 2019). These ideologies may be embedded in the canonical show or even fan genre conventions.
Number of Codes: 39
Analysis: Each of the authors reflects on critically uptaking a genre, each citing motivations along with their choices in their fanfics. For Kittya Cullen, Aria, Gillywulf, and
Writegirl, they challenge how particular characters or groups of people are represented in either the original text or fanfic genre conventions. To write fanfic is not only to engage with the texts, characters, and universes, but to recognize genre conventions from the original texts and either mirror or challenge them.
Fantasy television shows or movies, like GOT, often replicate misogynistic and/or racist conventions in the texts. In GOT, Writegirl argues the writers removed both Sansa’s and
Missandei’s agency. Writegirl’s fic is a critical uptake of fantasy genre conventions in which women characters — particularly women characters of color — are subjected to constant violence. Writegirl explicitly states that she “wanted [Sansa] to have a little bit more agency” and 268 she wanted to give Missandei “some of her dignity back.” Kittya Cullen, too, explains that her early writing was satirical as a way to critique the original texts. The satire genre often mimics generic conventions with an intent to both humor an audience as well as address specific political ideologies. Satire, when produced with a critical eye, is almost always a critical uptake because of its familiarity and resistance to particular generic conventions.
While Gillywulf and Valk do not discuss combating specific harmful conventions from the original texts, both address conventions they notice in the large fandom community and fanfic genres. Gillywulf provides a specific example of critical uptake: her TLOK fanfic was a series of short vignettes — 400 vignettes in total — based on prompts offered by other fans. She specifically addresses two prompts: one that asks her to write about a teacher/student relationship and one that asks her to write a slavefic. Both genres are popular in fandoms. The teacher/student relationship imagines a sexual and intimate relationship between a teacher and student, while slavefics imagine a sexual and intimate relationship between a person enslaved and the person who enslaved them. Both genres fetishize the harmful power dynamics.
The critical uptake, here, is seamless and easy to trace. First, there is the general genres of slavefics and teacher/student relationships; then, there is the prompt genre in which one fan requests another fan to produce something; finally, there’s Gillywulf’s actual fic. She knows the conventions well, but instead of accepting the prompt, her fics actively resist these conventions because she “didn't want to contribute to it.” Instead of writing a conventional slavefic between
Korra and Asami, Gillywulf imagines that Korra is enslaved by Asami’s father and Asami straight up refuses to accept her father’s “gift.” Instead, Asami promises to free Korra. There is no mention of a sexual relationship. For the teacher/student relationship fic, Gillywulf imagines
Asami — the teacher — actively refusing Korra’s—the students’ — sexual advancements. In 269 many teacher/student fics, the student usually initiates the relationship, almost attempting to placate the uncomfortable power dynamics; even if the teacher is hesitant at first, they wind up accepting the students’ advances. Several prompts after kept asking Gillywulf to expand on this story, and she complied, reimaging Korra as a recent college graduate, rather than Asami’s current student.
Valk also discusses fan genre conventions that trouble them, specifically the “incredily heteronormative” conventions in GOT fanfics. Valk points out how the romance genre — specifically romance fics depicting Jaime’s and Brienne’s relationship — usually celebrates traditional gender roles. Valk says, “Just their gender roles and Brienne being vulnerable and weak and all that stuff again.” One of the reasons Valk chose to write their fanfic, which reimagines Jaime (canonically cis male) as exploring his gender identity, to challenge these heteronormative conventions, or as Valk said “so I wrote my own instead.”
Finally, while many of the critical uptakes involve the authors challenging a particular convention they find troubling, both Kittya Cullen and Aria discuss the importance of fiction and fandoms to reshape readers’ perspectives and engage them politically. Aria says, “there's a study
I think that says that when you get into rational arguments about things you don't convince them, but if you tell stories you can.” Aria’s fiction centers storytelling for the purpose of reaching and convincing others. Her uptake of original texts and fanfic genres are explicitly to engage others’ critical thinking. Kittya Cullen expresses a similar reason for writing and reading fiction, explaining that one of her goals is “how can [she] better represent experiences of people in the world?” Aria and Kittya explicitly state these motivations that drive their critical writing and uptakes, but these motivations to reshape the world and readers’ perspectives linger through every author’s responses. 270
Canon compliant uptake
Definition: When a fan celebrates and follows a particular event or character in the original source material (Messina, 2019). The term “canon compliant” comes from a popular
“Additional Tag” used on AO3 when authors share that their fanfic follow canon. All fanfiction is canon compliant in that it follows from a source material. However, fan communities can vary in the degree to which they allow writers within the community to deviate from the origin source, i.e., the canon. Canon compliant uptakes may include writing a canonical relationship or continuing a canonical plot point. In other words, writers extend an existing story, rather than revising or changing the original character relationships or plots.
Number of Codes: 31
Analysis: Canon compliant uptakes emerge when fans love something in the original text and want to replicate or build upon it in their uptake. Both Aria and Gillywulf use the word
“excited” to express the affective relationship between the fan writer, the canonical material, and the fanfic the writer produces.
In TLOK, when Asami and Korra’s budding romance — and therefore their bisexuality
— is confirmed canon in the last minute of the show, the fandom erupted with excitement and produced numerous fanfics using the “canon compliant” tag (more about this can be found in
“Fandoms by Numbers”). Aria, while reviewing some of the larger tagging trends, pointed out the large increase of “canon compliant” and “canon queer relationship” tags the series finale aired. Tagging practices, such as “canon compliant,” are a method for fan writers to signal to potential readers the different genre conventions and/or content that their piece contains.
Although canon compliant material was found in both fandoms analyzed, the GOT fanfic authors focused more on capturing particular dynamics — cultural and relationship — and 271 characters in their canon compliant uptakes. While Dialux’s, Valk’s, and Writegirl’s pieces do not fall under the “canon compliant” genre — Dialux and Valk are alternate universes and
Writegirl is canon divergent, fix-it fics — they make particular choices in their writing that mirror the canonical text. By pulling particular conventions from the original fantasy genre, these writers demonstrate how conventions span across different genres. For example, Dialux believes the regional and cultural tensions in GOT between the North and King’s Landing are similar to those between the Rajput and a Mughal in 16th century India, as depicted in the historical film
Jodhaa Akbar. Her piece revolves around these regional, cultural, and religious tensions; she takes up conventions of how to represent cultural difference from two different genres and uses them in a third genre — her racebent, alternate universe fic.
Valk and Writegirl also bring in particular canon compliant choices into their non- canonical fics. Valk centers the tense canonical relationship between Jaime and his father in the original text, and brings that tension into their fic. And even though Writegirl’s fix-it fics reimagine the canon, she wants to make sure her readers can “they can really see [her fic] sliding into canon.” For her, this means also retaining characters’ voices and perspectives to ensure they are not OOC, or “out of character.”
While choosing to mirror particular characters, relationships, and dynamics in a fic is not necessarily a genre in of itself, there are clear expectations in fandoms that fanfics will mirror the canon in character voice and action, unless explicitly stated otherwise. Fanfic writers’ choice to follow canonical details and dynamics is part of fanfic genre expectations, and therefore a form of canon compliant uptake.
Canon resistant uptake 272
Definition: When fan authors discuss a canon resistant uptake, which is when a fan actively “resists both the implicit and explicit canonical choices made in the original cultural material” (Messina, 2019). This may include writing about a non-canonical relationship, identity bending, or reimagining an alternative plot point.
Number of Codes: 19
Analysis: The canon resistant uptakes demonstrated in the interviews often begin with the writers’ affective responses to a particular moment, choice, or character from the original show.
These affective responses may be negative or positive depending on the author’s interpretation of the show, choices made in the show, and the author’s positionality.
Several authors cite they were unhappy with certain choices from the canon that drove them to take their fics in a canon divergent direction. Aria expressed discomfort with the representation of PTSD and trauma in TLOK; she argues the show does not necessarily reflect the reality of living with trauma. In TLOK, Korra recovers from her physical wounds and seems to be able to move past her PTSD, yet Aria points out that many people who experience PTSD have to learn to live with it instead of recovering from it. Writegirl was unhappy with the direction the GOT show writers chose, specifically inconsistencies and plot holes; she specifically uses the phrase “irksome.” She talks about her choice to reimagine Sansa’s storyline, claiming Sansa “suffered a little bit of character assassination.”
Of course, even with their unhappiness, Aria, Writegirl, and the other authors love the source material, as they most likely would not be writing fanfiction for it otherwise. There are other authors, such as Gillywulf, who love specific details or characters in the show that they wanted to capture in their canon resistant uptakes. Gillywulf, for example, began to write romantic Korra/Asami (Korrasami) fanfiction before their romance became part of the official 273 show. Choosing to pair a couple together that is not paired on the original show is a form of canon resistant uptake. Gillywulf talks specifically about wlw (women loving women) ships in fandoms and how fans often imagine characters as developing or having intimate relationships.
She says, “ships are meant to be fun, they're not always meant to be canon.” Gillywulf’s original choice to write Korrasami fanfiction came because she liked the idea of Korra and Asami as a couple.
Valk also expresses a love for Jaime and Brienne’s characters in GOT. Jaime/Brienne are the most popular ship in GOT according to GOT fandom by numbers data analysis, and they do have a romance on the show. Yet, Valk chooses to view Brienne and Jaime differently than many
GOT fanfic writers. They reimagine Jaime, who is canonically male, as wanting to explore his gender through the use of makeup and other forms of aesthetic expression. Brienne, Jaime’s roommate in the fanfic, helps Jaime put on his makeup and supports him in his gender exploration and expression. While Valk’s entire piece is canon resistant, they particularly hone in on why they reimagine Brienne as a supportive, stable friend to Jaime; Valk reimagines Brienne as “more comfortable in her skin” than she is in GOT, potentially due to a lack of social forces pushing her to conform to particular gender roles. Valk’s choices in reimagining both Brienne and Jaime’s characters are not only canon resistant, but also resist larger trends in the
Brienne/Jaime shipping fandom.
These different examples — the canon resistant uptakes inspired by unhappiness or excitement from an original text’s direction — reveal how canon resistant uptakes are forms of love letters to the original show, but love letters that are written from different positionalities and ways of viewing the world than the original show.
Implicit-explicit uptake 274
Definition: When fan authors discuss an implicit-explicit uptake, which is when a fan
“analyzes the subtext of the show and makes the subtext explicit in their fanfictions” (Messina,
2019). This may include writing from another characters’ perspective or exploring a romantic relationship that may be inferred.
Number of Codes: 25
Analysis: Fan author’s implicit-explicit uptakes are often motivated by them wanting to explore a particular dynamic, character, or plotline in further detail while also making assumptions based on information provided by the text — also known as interpreting the subtext.
Writegirl, Valk, and Kittya each expressed curiosity about a particular character, wanting to explore that character further. Writegirl, for example, wonders what “life would have been like for [Missandei],” and uses this as motivation for her fanfic. This is an implicit-explicit uptake because Writegirl uses all her knowledge of both the show and the novels in order to make assumptions about Missandei’s backstory. Valk writes in the alternate universe genre, which is typically a canon resistant uptake.
However, similar to Writegirl, Valk still wants to explore Jaime’s character based on their knowledge of the show, but in another universe that is not GOT. They point specifically to the “residual toxic masculinity” of Jaime’s character, both in the show and in their fanfic.
Finally, Kittya decides to write about Asami because “I like to see how the characters are responding to what's happening to them rather than having the plot happen to them, and with
Asami there was just so much room to do that.” This again points to an implicit-explicit uptake of a character in that Kittya follows the plot arc of the show and stays as true to the show as possible, while still exploring a character who Kittya believes received little attention on the show. For each of these implicit-explicit uptakes, the authors reveal both their intimate 275 knowledge of the text as well as their ability to more deeply analyze particular characters based on details from the show.
Often implicit-explicit uptakes occur when a fanfic author is interested in learning more about a character, implicit-explicit uptakes also occur when an author makes assumptions about the original text’s universe or relationships between two characters based on details. Aria describes several choices she made in her fanfic based on assumptions from the show, such as how different cultures in TLOK understood gender and sexuality, a character probably not knowing how to cook, and another character being a “bourgeoisie radical.” Aria’s analysis of the different cultures in TLOK demonstrates both her knowledge of the show as well as an understanding of cultural difference.
In reflecting on often used implicit-explicit uptakes in fandoms, several authors point to popular relationship pairings in fanfics as representative of fans reading the subtext of the original text. Valk, for example, wonders why there are not more Sansa/Margaery fics as their potential romance is “literally right here,” referring to the subtext of the show. Dialux also points to a potential romance between Jon and Sansa based on the trailer for GOT’s season six, when fans began speculating about Jon and Sansa’s relationship. Similarly, Gillywulf addresses the
Korra/Asami fics written before the show confirmed their relationship was canonical.
Specifically, Gillywulf points to a moment between Korra and Asami in the third season after
Korra was injured. She says, “Asami looked the most scared out of everybody, and her reaction to her offer to stay with Korra through her recovery, and help any way she can was sort of,
‘That's a little gayer than it maybe should be,’ that sort of look. So, a lot of people took that and decided to go with it.” Gillywulf points to fans’ abilities to analyze the subtext and draw 276 particular assumptions, then write fanfics about these assumptions. Based on simply Asami’s facial expression, Gillywulf and others performed implicit-explicit uptakes.
Fan practices uptake
Definition: When fan authors discuss a fan practice uptake, which is when a fan takes up fan genre practices in the fan community, such as engaging with fan genre conventions or implementing specific tagging practices.
Number of Codes: 30
Analysis: When sharing fan practice uptakes, the fan author's point to larger conventions in fan communities that often occur across fandoms, such as similar practices in both GOT and
TLOK fandoms. Of course, these conventions still engage with the original text, but these uptakes are specific to fan communities. Reading each fan authors’ transcripts show shared discourse, such as words like “fanon,” “shipping,” and “AU.” There is a specific, shared discourse when discussing and participating in generic conventions, tagging practices, and other fandom activities.
First, each author reflects on particular fanfic generic forms that are mainly found in fan communities and known by members across these communities. Dialux’s fanfic is a great example. She wrote her fic based on a request from another fan. The fan wanted “historical AU, alternate universe, especially a middle aged one, with angst and a happy ending.” This stream of suggestions, which Dialux was able to accommodate, demonstrates shared discourse and an understanding of common fanfic generic conventions. Aria also points to the difference between fanfic generic conventions and “literary” genres; she says she used to label her pieces as angst or fluff, but recently began seeing her genre participation as separate from these fanfic genre conventions. Participating in and being able to recognize these generic forms demonstrates a 277 shared fan practice; while fans engage and define these practices, they are enacting fan practice uptakes.
Another form of fan practice uptakes are methods for discoverability and authors attempting to reach their audience, such as using hashtags or keywords depending on the platform. Since this project specifically looks at Archive of Our Own (AO3), the fan authors all discuss tagging practices on AO3. There are different author-selected categories for tagging, from the characters that appear in the author’s fanfic to additional tags the author can choose.
Each of these tags can be used to search (include or exclude) while readers try to find their ideal fanfics. Tagging is a form of fan practices uptake in that authors need to know specific discourse and use this discourse to reach their audience. Kittya, for example, talks about how she did not understand tagging practices when she wrote her fanfic; she says, “ I wasn't quite sure what tags to use because I was still learning.” However, there is not one proper way to tag a fanfic. While there is a shared discourse, fans can also practice tagging in individual ways. As Gillywulf points out, some authors choose to write full sentences in the Additional Tags, rather than merely choosing a few key words that mirror fans’ shared discourse. While Gillywulf does not like to write sentence-long tags, this example demonstrates that there are particular expectations that fans often break or challenge in their uptake of fan practices.
Understanding tagging as an uptake is important because the author is not only trying to originally reach their ideal audience, but their fanfic must follow through on the tag’s promise. If an author chooses the tag “Alternate Universe,” then their fic typically engages with AU generic conventions. Writegirl also signals how important tagging practices are, especially in the GOT fandom. She says some readers respond to the tags authors use and argue that they used incorrect tags; correcting authors’ tagging choices is another fan practices uptake. So not only are there 278 expectations for particular discourse to be used when tagging, but the actual text must take up the tags’ promises and, if the text does not, readers may critique and potentially ostracize the author from the fandom.
Another form of fan practice uptakes are fan-specific activities that occur in fan spaces.
Dialux points to this in her motivation for writing fics. She participates in several fan community activities, such as the “Yuletide assignment” and the “Jonsa Exchange” (Jonsa is Jon/Sansa romantic fanfics). These activities vary based on the fandom, platform, and generic form. Often, though, they are large prompts that invite fans to create art, from illustrations or fanfics. The
“Jonsa Exchange,” for example, pairs authors together and they request different types of fics; as
I mentioned previously, Dialux wrote her fic for this exchange based on another fan’s prompt.
To participate in these activities is a form of fan practice uptakes, as fans are literally taking up the assignments and creating another generic form in response.
Another example of fan-specific uptakes are fan translations, as Kittya discusses. Fans translate particular texts, such as a show or novel for other fans to make the text accessible. Kitya used fan translations after she moved to North America and wanted to continue watching Hindi shows; she could not speak Hindi fluently, so she relied on these fan translations. Finally, fans often inspire each other through their art, and other fans will specifically take up their art.
Gillywulf provides several examples of this. One fan artist drew several pictures based on
Gillywulf’s fanfic; Gillywulf’s last chapter in her fanfic is inspired by another fan artists’ painting; and Gillywulf specifically mirrors writing practices one of her favorite fanfic authors utilizes in their fanfics. The creativity flourishing in fan communities demonstrates how fans take up fan generic conventions, inspiring and forming bonds with each other.
Generic forms and rhetorical choices 279
Definition: These codes examine different fanfic generic forms and rhetorical choices as well as define conventions of these generic forms based on the fan authors’ responses. Because
Rhetorical Genre Studies defines genre as social actions that are recurring and re-acted in particular communities, then engaging in a genre means taking into account the conventions of that genre, choosing to resist or follow these conventions, the ideologies embedded within those conventions, who has say over these conventions, and how generic engagement helps community formation. These codes include angst, fluff, fix-it fics, and more.
Number of Codes: 78
Analysis: Select different genres for specific analyses.
Angst
Definition: Angst generic forms capture feelings of depression, anxiety, hurt/comfort, and other general forms of angst.
Number of Codes: 7
Analysis: Similar to the fluff generic form, angst is one of the more popular tags and recognizable genres by fans, as Aria suggests when she calls it a “basic tag.” Aria, Dialux, and
Writegirl each share their experience and understanding of the angst generic form. Writing an angst genre usually means attempting to capture feelings of pain and sadness. Aria labels angst, along with fluff and romance, as popular fanfiction generic forms that other fans will recognize; she calls them “basic tags,” referring to the Additional Tags metadata authors can self-select on the fanfics they publish on AO3. Dialux also confirms this when she says, “You do see a lot of angst though.” Dialux continues to help define angst as a genre, explaining that angst as the opposite of comedy, which suggests authors who write in the angst genre rarely think about 280 making their audience laugh. Finally, Writegirl hints at a potentially other important convention in the angst generic form: that there is always a form of relief, of healing, within the text.
Fluff
Definition: Fluff captures a happy, feel-good story, referred to as fluff because of the warm-and-fuzzy affect the writer attempts to capture. It almost always centers around romance and everyday moments of joy or cuteness.
Number of Codes: 9
Analysis: Similar to the angst generic form, fluff is one of the more popular tags and recognizable genres by fans, as Aria suggests when she calls it a “basic tag.” Participating in the fluff genre means attempting to capture happiness in a text. describes fluff as a way for lesbian fanfic authors, especially, to speak back to a larger culture that often writers lesbian romances as tragedies. For Aria, she sees fluff as a popular tag in TLOK, specifically, because “women who love women...want to tell stories that have happy endings.”
Gillywulf has a similar perspective, as her string of Korra/Asami vignette fanfics mostly fall within fluff genre conventions. Gillywulf explains her reasoning, “You look out your window and things are just not good a lot of the time, so I really like reading things that are just soft and maybe things aren't so terrible for them where they are.” Interestingly, while Aria and
Gillywulf both wrote Korra/Asami fanfics and self-identified as lesbians, Writegirl — who identifies as demisexual — discusses being “incapable” of writing straight fluff. For her fanfics, most which do not revolve around romance, she wants to capture and include pain.
Vignette
Definition: Vignettes are intentionally shorter fanfics, such as 100 words to 1000 words, that capture an entire story in a small word count; 100 word fics are referred to as “drabbles.” 281
Vignettes are more of a medium rather than a generic form — as they rely on a limited amount of written text to tell a story — so they may be multiple generic forms and conventions appearing across different vignettes.
Number of Codes: 10
Analysis: Only Gillywulf and Writegirl incorporated the medium of vignettes or drabbles in their fanfics. Gillywulf wrote a series of short vignettes based on prompts provided to her by her readers. Part of Gillywulf’s reasoning for choosing this medium was because she did not want to write a longer-length fic. She also, however, points out the challenge of writing vignettes because an author has “to make somebody care about things that are happening in much fewer words.” Another challenge of writing a series of vignettes, too, is that she did not want to make her fics repetitive, so she had to find creative methods for describing similar situations.
Specifically, she reflects on writing about Korra and Asami meeting for the first time — she aimed to make each meeting special, to make what each character notices about each other unique, and to capture particular moods.
Writegirl, similarly, writes a series of vignettes, each its own chapter, reimagining particular moments from GOT. However, unlike Gillywulf, she plans to use some of these vignettes into a much longer fanfic. Specifically, she has written almost 200 pages — not linearly — of this longer fanfic. She chose to write and post these vignettes, though, as she argues she published on AO3 “one moment that I think is pivotal.” Similarly to Gillywulf, she points to another challenge in writing vignettes: there is no time for character development, so she wanted to ensure her characters were not OOC — out of character — by conducting a lot of research on GOT.
Fix-It 282
Definition: Fix-it is usually a canon-resistant uptake and “fixes" something that happened in the canon, like a particular writing choice. These fics usually come out of disappointment from the canonical narrative arc.
Number of Codes: 4
Analysis: Fix-it fics are often created when the canon text did not go in the direction the fan author anticipated. The only fan author who explicitly labeled their fic as a “fix-it” fic is
Writegirl. She uses the “fix-it” and “what if” additional tags to signal to her audience that her fanfic will be canon resistant. She points to two main reasons for writing fix-it fics: her unhappiness with some of the writing in the GOT show, and her desire to explore “what if” in context with the butterfly effect — or when one small change ripples across and drastically changes that timeline. Specifically, she points to the lack of agency the GOT show writers provided to Sansa, and she wants to “give her a little more agency.” Writegirl views the GOT show writing as inconsistent, and therefore she decides to reimagine particular moments that she believes the show’s writers could improve.
Author’s note
Definition: Authors’ notes appear at the beginning or end of fanfic chapters. The purposes of these notes are to provide content warnings, reflect on particular choices made in the fanfic, identify authors’ positionalities that relate to their fanfic, or speak back to readers or specific comments. For this code, I am also choosing to include supplemental, explanatory material written along with fanfics that may not just appear at the beginning or end of a fic.
Number of Codes: 7
Analysis: Only Aria and Dialux discuss including author’s notes or supplemental materials to be paired with their work. Aria discusses her author’s note as a space for content 283 warning and self-reflection. Specifically, she uses content warnings, such as the mention of suicide, to practice care for her audience, as her writing may be triggering for some. She also uses the author’s note to reflect on her own mental health at the time and how writing this piece impacted her.
Dialux does not discuss the traditional fanfic understanding of author’s notes — the notes above or below specific chapters — but instead shared the creation of supplemental materials to be read alongside her fanfic. Because her fanfic, which merges GOT with the Indian historical film Jodhaa Akbar, uses several cultural references to Rajput, Mughal, and other Indian ethnicities, Dialux links to a list of notes and explanations that she created (posted on her
Tumblr) after publishing her fanfic. She cites her motivation not as a guide for readers, but rather
“because I wanted to be sure why and where I was getting these ideas from.” Her fanfic both discusses cultural differences in historic India as well as merges some cultural practices, so she decided to trace her choices and make explicit which cultures and traditions she pulled ideas from. She expresses surprise, though, when I mention I read her fanfic along with the supplemental materials to better understand her choices; she did not imagine anyone actually reading the supplemental list. Author’s notes are not only a fan authors’ way of engaging and reaching out to readers, but also a way for them to reflect on their own decisions and make explicit their writing process.
Identity-bending
Definition: Identity-bending is when the fic writer transforms an aspect of a character's identity, such as their sexuality/race/gender, in their fic. Identity-bending is not necessarily a generic form, but rather a rhetorical choice made.
Number of Codes: 10 284
Analysis: Identity bending in fanfiction may take many shapes, as there are multiple modes of identity. The main fan authors who implement identity-bending genres in their work are Dialux and Valk. Both authors share their motivation to engage with identity-bending conventions as wanting to represent themselves in the texts they love. Both authors also happen to be writing in the GOT universe, which is coded as White/European and heteronormative.
Valk directly mentions part of their motivation in identity-bending was to “be able to relate” to their fic; they wrote this fic as a “self-fulfilling fantasy” after they struggled with their own gender expression and identity. In their fanfic, they reimagine Jaime exploring his gender expression in a modern setting. While their quote about desiring to relate to their fic is mainly in reference to the modern setting, Valk also suggests it is Jaime’s gender exploration that they focus on, as this is the main plot of their piece. What makes this choice an identity-bending generic form is bending Jaime’s gender. In the original text, Jaime seems to be portrayed as a cis male, while Valk reimagines him as not cis, potentially non-binary or genderqueer, in the early stages of “questioning his gender.”
Another area of Valk’s choice for identity-bending is in reference to Brienne’s gender expression and identity. While Valk’s version of Brienne only hints at a queer gender identity,
Valk writes Brienne as much more comfortable with her gender because she does not face ridicule for refusing to conform to gender expectations. For Valk, representing queer gender identities and the early stages of questioning was a method for them to fantasize and reimagine a safe space that they were not offered as they questioned their own gender.
Dialux also identity-bends in her fanfic, but focuses on race and culture, rather than gender. She identity-bends the GOT characters and universe, reimagining them as Desi and living in historic India. She explains that there are parallels between the GOT universe and 285 historic India, including cultural and regional differences in the North and South. Part of her motivation to make the characters Desi and reimagine a “Desi Westeros” is because “I chose to make it Desi because I am Desi.” She represents herself, her family, and her culture in her choices, celebrating her culture’s history and traditions.
Dialux does, though, point to potential dangers when practicing identity-bending:
“Because, obviously, race bending is, and can be, very racist if not done in a very respectful manner.” Race-bending is important for authors of color who often do not see their experiences and stories represented in popular culture. However, race-bending if not done carefully can also reinforce stereotypes and hurt the very communities and peoples the fics are representing. Dialux explains that, even though she is Desi, she was careful in her writing. She cites the potential to race-bend carelessly as a reason she was hesitant to originally publish the fanfic. Identity bending is a crucial genre in fanfics, but must be done with care towards the identities being represented, even if you are bending identities to represent your own.
Modern setting
Definition: Modern settings, a subgenre of alternate universes, are when fans reimagine characters from their canonical universe into the fans’ modern-day universe, such as high school, college, or a coffee shop.
Number of Codes: 12
Analysis: While Valk is the only fan author who engaged with modern settings in their fanfic, both they and Writegirl discuss the modern setting generic form. Writegirl has written and read several modern setting fanfics across fandoms, like Xena: Warrior Princess, X-Men, GOT, and Star Wars. This demonstrates the shared discourse and genres across fandoms; modern setting, one of the more popular tags on AO3, is a generic form with which many fans engage. 286
While Writegirl merely expresses that she and other fans enjoy modern settings, Valk provides a bit more insight as to why the modern setting generic form is appealing. Specifically,
Valk cites wanting to see themselves in their fanfic and wanting to make the fic more relatable to their own experience. Valk also argues that most GOT modern setting fics are “incredibly heteronormative” and take place in high schools or similar locations; Valk decides to challenge this convention in modern setting genres by writing a queer, potentially platonic story about
Jaime exploring his gender expression in both a makeup store and his own apartment. By participating in modern setting genres, fans can more accurately represent their own lived experiences. These experiences, as Valk’s critique suggests, are entangled in systems of power, such as heteronormativity. Fanfic authors can challenge these systems of power by participating in fan genres, but reimagining particular conventions to resist exclusionary ideologies.
Other genres
Definition: Other fan generic forms not mentioned, including roleplay; satire; Alpha,
Beta, Omega (ABO, also known as Omegaverse); and crack. There are also other fan mediums mentioned, such as self-inserts, fanart, and one shots.
Number of Codes: 22
Analysis: Each fan author mentions different common fandom generic forms that they either incorporated in their fanfic, in other fanfics, or read. Each one of these generic forms or mediums have rich histories, conventions, and ideologies. This brief analysis, though, will just provide a basic definition and glimpse into them.
Aria argues there are distinct fanfic and literary genres, although she does not go into further detail. She also mentions ABO, or alpha beta omega, which writers imagine characters in different power dynamics based on supernatural reasons; ABO is also known as the omegaverse. 287
Dialux mentions crack -- or intentionally absurd fanfics -- and historical AUs, or historical alternate universes that incorporate history in some way. Gillywulf incorporates several genres in her fanfic collection of drabbles/vignettes and other fan mediums, such as fan art. Kittya Cullen mentions learning to be critical of the source materials through meta-analysis and satire. Valk brings up two other fan mediums: self-inserts and onesshots. Self-inserts are when authors either insert themself as a character in their fanfic or use second person so readers can envision themselves in the fanfic. One-shots are usually one-chapter fanfics in which the story begins and ends within that chapter.
Writer agency
Definition: This set of codes examine fan authors’ agency in their genre practices, writing choices, and uptakes. These codes include writing practices such as drafting, audience awareness, motivation, research, and more.
Number of Codes: 207
Analysis: Select different stages in the writing process for specific analyses.
Reflection
Definition: When fan authors reflect a particular writing choice, process, or moment in their writing. This may be the fan explaining specific choices they made that are not about their audience or motivation for writing.
Number of Codes: 65
Analysis: The interview moments coded as “Reflection” generally point to the author reflecting on a particular moment from their story. Reading through their quotes provides a sense of motivation behind writing choices as well as the particular thought process in capturing particular emotions or experiences. or choice they made. Pairing these quotes while reading their 288 fics also creates an entire new experience, heightening our understanding of both the fanfic and the author. Their reflections demonstrate how personal and political writing fanfics can be.
Each author’s quotes provide rich reflections of their choices; I will point to some of the quotes that demonstrate the interwoven nature of politics and personal experiences when writing fanfiction. Aria shares how she was learning about the Stonewall Riots at the time, which heavily impacted the direction of her piece. In the last chapter written of her piece, she shows police surveillance and violence targeting the LGBTQ+ community as the police harass community members hanging out at a bar in a metropolitan TLOK location. Aria pulls directly from history, adding in details such as folks needing to wear a particular number of clothing items that represent their culturally-prescribed gender.
Kittya Cullen explains why she chose the metaphor of ants crawling across Asami’s skin to convey anxiety. She comes “from an area where you commonly come into contact with animals,” which means she is familiar with the sensation of ants crawling across her skin. By merging both her experiences with literal ants crawling on her skin and her experience with anxiety, Kittya creates a compelling, tangible metaphor.
In Dialux’s fanfic, she focuses on Sansa practicing Hinduism to demonstrate the isolation
Sansa is experiencing. Sansa, in Dialux’s fanfic, has an arranged marriage where she must move far away from her home and culture; there are no Hindu people in her new home or region, so she is the only person who practices. While Sansa, much like Jodhaa from the film Jodhaa
Akbar, becomes more comfortable with her new home, she continues to practice Hinduism and stays true to her faith. Sansa’s refusal to assimilate demonstrates her power and agency.
Similarly, Writegirl also demonstrates the power and agency of characters who are in subjugated positions. Writegirl reimagines the scene when Missandei is murdered, imagining 289 how Missandei — a Black woman — would speak back to Cersei — a White queen who is intending to kill Missandei. In Writegirl’s reimagining, Missandei “[is] really seeing Cersei for the creature Cersei is, beyond just being kind of a high-born woman in Westeros.” Missandei also compares Cersei to enslavers from Missandei’s homeland. Writegirl’s comparison between
Cersei — a White woman in power — to an enslaver also hints at a deeper, political perspective of overt and tacit oppression. Enslavers enact overt oppression, enslaving people from particular cultural backgrounds; meanwhile, Cersei uses a freed woman who escaped slavery as a political pawn for her own gain.
Valk shares backstory information from their fanfic, when Jaime’s father catches Jaime trying on his mother’s shoes, that Valk does not include in the fanfic. Valk imagines Jaime’s experience learning gender roles and expectations — an experience many share — as well as how this learning hurt him. Valk’s reveal about Jaime’s backstory reveals how authors use experiences to help shape and understand characters’ psychologies. These experiences, like
Kittya and the ants, may be based on their own individual experiences or, like Aria and the
Stonewall Riots, contextual experiences that they may relate to. Even the smallest choice made both in the final product of the fanfic as well as the process of brainstorming, imagining, and drafting the fanfic are interwoven with personal experiences, emotion, motivation, and politics.
Motivation
Definition: When fan authors mention their motivation for writing their fanfic or another piece. This may be their own motivation, but also their assumed motivations in the fan community.
Number of Codes: 61 290
Analysis: Common patterns appear across the fan authors’ different motivations for writing their fanfics. First, several fan authors suggest that external circumstances, separate from the original text, influenced their decision to write. For example, Dialux wrote a Harry Potter fanfic after her disappointment in the 2020 Democratic primaries. She reimagines Percy Weasley as running on a platform of large systemic change — similar to Bernie Sanders’ platform — and winning, explaining that she needed “some sort of catharsis” as Bernie’s chances of being nominated began to decrease. Aria also discusses how she wrote her fanfic at a time when she was reading about Stonewall, learning about trauma and disability, and being radicalized. Her motivation to write her fanfic was partially a result of her exploring her new political turn and embracing her radicalization.
Another motivation several fan authors point to is their desire to explore particular aspects of their identity and/or think through forms of representation that link to their own identities and positionalities. Valk shares how they were questioning their own gender identity
— exploring whether they are non-binary — while they wrote their fanfic about Jaime questioning his gender. For Valk, fanfics are a “safe” method for identity exploration. Kittya is also interested in exploring characters outside of positions of power, specifically citing because she is a Black woman. Finally, Dialux cites her motivation for writing a Fleabag fanfic as entangled with reflecting on her own journey growing up and changing her perspective about what she wanted for her life.
Affective motivation is often intertwined and is the exigency for the fan authors’ different uptakes. They express love for characters, plot points, or the universes of the original texts; they also express frustration or dislike for plot points or character development. Both Aria and Kittya, for example, conduct canon compliant uptakes because they love Asami and Korra. Aria 291 expresses love for Korra, Asami, and how their relationship is depicted in TLOK. Kittya focuses much more on Asami, viewing Asami as an underused character and wanting to learn more about her.
On the other hand, fan authors also conduct canon resistant uptakes when they are unhappy with a particular choice made in the original text. Writegirl chooses to write about both
Sansa and Missandei due to her frustration with the original text writers’ choices. She believes
Sansa suffers a “character assassination” and expresses frustration over Missandei’s death, especially how much her death scene moved away from who her character is in earlier seasons and the novels. Valk also expresses frustration with the heteronormativity embedded in both
GOT and the fandom. They reimagine Jaime and Brienne’s characters in ways that challenge how fans often depict their relationship.
Finally, Aria provides a moment of reflection not only about her motivation for writing fanfic, but why storytelling can be crucial. She says, “There's a study I think that says that when you get into rational arguments about things you don't convince them, but if you tell stories you can.” Writing fanfics for Aria and for many of these fan authors is not only about loving these original texts and fan communities, but building a platform to reach and affectively impact their audiences so they may see the world through different perspectives and reshape their politics.
Audience
Definition: When fan authors demonstrate an awareness of their audience and explain how they were thinking about their audience.
Number of Codes: 34
Analysis: Audience awareness when participating in fanfic genres is important not only so authors can actually reach their audience, but because they are often writing for themselves. 292
When reflecting on who their ideal audiences are, Dialux, Gillywulf, and Valk each believe that their audience is — first and foremost — themselves. Dialux asks herself, “Well, what would I want to read?” Gillywulf says, “my audience should be myself.” Finally, Valk less explicitly says they want to “make [their fanfic] more relatable to me, but also to other people who might be reading this and wondering the same thing.”
While imagined audiences for fanfic authors may begin at their own interests, they often publish so that others may also read their work. In order to reach their other ideal audiences, fan authors use specific tagging practices. AO3 provides fanfic authors with a multitude of options for self-reported tags, such as which characters are included, the relationships included, and
“Additional Tags,” which are all the authors’ choices. These Additional Tags are particularly important, as authors make clear what fanfic genre they are participating in and include additional information. Writegirl mentions how important Additional Tags are, especially in the
GOT fandom, as fans use these tags to discover and read their ideal fanfics. Using proper tagging practices and discourse will allow for authors to reach those readers. Dialux provides an example, too, of crossing over fandoms to reach potential readers who may not be actively looking for her piece. Since her fanfic is a GOT and Jodhaa Akbar crossover, she explains how she incorporated specific tags to reach a Hindu audience or an audience invested in Hindu culture and history. Finally, AO3 author-reported metadata can also be a place to provide specific trigger warnings. Aria mentions how she incorporated content warnings to avoid triggering her audience. This practice demonstrates a particular care for potential readers, putting their mental health first.
Several of the fan authors also share potential tensions or fears in thinking about and reaching their audiences. Dialux expresses how she was worried about sharing her racebending 293 fanfic because she wanted to be respectful to bother her own culture and regionally similar cultures. Specifically, she was worried, “Because I was also combining both South Indian and
North Indian tropes, to a certain extent.” This fear came because she wanted to respect and celebrate her culture, but also knew about other racebent fanfics that had stereotyped particular races. The audience reaction to these fanfics demonstrates how harmful these racebent fics can be in that they may reinforce, rather than subvert, racist stereotypes or caricatures.
Gillywulf also expresses discomfort in engaging with a particular genre, although she actively avoided participating in particular conventions of fanfic genres. Unlike racebending, other fanfic generic forms, such as slavefics, are almost always harmful. Gillywulf decided to set boundaries with prompts that requested particularly harmful generic forms by either refusing to participate or actively avoiding harmful conventions. For example, one person asked her to write a slavefic, but instead of writing a slavefic that romanticized the master/slave dynamic, Gillywulf removed all romance and focused on the need to actively speak out against racism and slavery.
Finally, Kittya’s own discomfort was less about harmful generic conventions or potentially triggering her audience. Her discomfort came from the fact that different circles in her personal life read her fanfics and she was not explicitly out yet to particular circles. In her fanfic, she hints at Asami and Korra’s romance in only one sentence as a way to both protect herself, but also signal to the slashfic community. Kittya says if she were to rewrite her piece, she would bring Korra and Asami’s romance to the forefront, but at the time, she had to navigate these two very different audiences — the community she was not yet out to and the slash community with whom she belonged.
Research 294
Definition: When fan authors discuss forms of research they conducted while they were writing, including fan community research, reading about a theory, learning about language or history, and more.
Number of Codes: 14
Analysis: Several fan authors share their research process, either how research they were doing at the time impacted their fanfics or how they researched for their fanfics. Dialux discusses doing research to better depict historical Indian culture and traditions. She is already familiar with some of these traditions, as they are part of her culture; she continues to research, though, as her fanfic focuses on history and she wanted to integrate some historical accuracy.
Writegirl, Aria, Gillywulf, and Valk all discuss researching experiences that are not their own to more accurately represent these experiences. For example, Valk includes information about Jaime’s prosthetic hand, but since they do not have a prosthetic, they did a bit of research on the experience of using and taking care of one. Gillywulf also includes a story about Korra both a trans woman and a trans man in her vignette fanfics; Gillywulf is a cis woman, though, so she “drew knowledge” from trans communities on the internet. Writegirl also did some research on the psychology of people who survive slavery and abuse to better understand both Missandei and Sansa’s perspectives. The integration of research allows fans to more accurately depict an experience they may not be personally familiar with as well as represent that experience as respectfully and accurately as possible.
Drafting
Definition: When fan authors discuss the act of drafting, or early stages in the writing process such as brainstorming, outlining, etc.
Number of Codes: 10 295
Analysis: Dialux, Valk, and Writegirl each share different drafting processes as they composed their fanfics or other pieces of writing. They each discuss a link between the drafting process and imagining the story before actually writing it down; there is a transfer of their thought process in imagining their fanfics to actually getting that fic written. Dialux shares how she conjures her fanfic plots and characters before putting them down on paper, and combs through these different ideas as she’s writing to make sure they are all implemented. This method demonstrates self-reflection as she drafts, explicitly thinking how what she writes captures what she imagined.
Valk similarly shares how they imagined this story before writing. They mention they
“had all these ideas and notes about what was also going on in the universe and what not” that they then wanted to translate into the actual fic. Specifically, they cite a fear of not being able to
“put on paper” the fic they imagined. In order to actually write their fic, they challenged themself by writing the entire fanfic in one sitting at a coffee shop. When I ask what they learned from this fic, they joke, “never write an entire fanfic in Starbucks.”
Finally, Writegirl also shares how she imagines an entire universe and plot lines with almost 200 pages of this reimagined GOT written. Similar to Valk, she also has notes and ideas written down, sometimes writing extensive scenes. The fanfics she chose to publish, though, are pivotal moments from these 200 pages of her long fanfic. She also expresses a desire to transfer her ideas onto the page, saying “I'm just going to take [the ideas] out and put you here [in the published fanfic], and then leave you alone.”
Revising
Definition: When fan authors discuss the act of revising, or later stages in the writing process. 296
Number of Codes: 5
Analysis: Only two fan authors explicitly reflect on the revising process. Aria mentions how she shared her fanfic with a confidant to ensure she was representing trauma in a respectful, accurate manner. In fanfics, this is often referred to as beta-reading (or beta-ing), when a fan creator — either a fanfic author, comic artist, or other fan mediums — asks someone to look over their writing before they post it. Beta-reading can be anything from spelling and grammatical checks to providing larger feedback about the ideas and plotlines. Writegirl also explicitly mentions revising her piece, choosing to rewrite a scene that felt “superfluous.”
Reception
Definition: When fan authors directly mention reader feedback and how their writing was received.
Number of Codes: 23
Analysis: Fan authors each share experiences with positive and negative reception from their readers. Most of the fan authors receive supportive reception on their fanfic, from comments to other fans uptaking their work. Dialux expresses she was originally nervous to publish her fanfic, as racebending fanfics run the risk of reinscribing racist tropes if fan authors are not careful. Yet, she explains that she received nothing but positive feedback, and she hasn’t
“gotten a single negative feedback on that fanfic to date.”
Similarly, Writegirl shares positive reception she received on both her fanfic and other fanfics she published. Specifically, she points to one of the first reviews she ever received. Her reader “said they could taste the road dust from my writing.” Finally, Gillywulf also shares mainly positive feedback she received. Because her fanfic vignettes are direct uptakes of prompts 297 her readers requested for her to write, most of her reception was fairly positive. For some of her vignettes, readers requested to see more of particular stories.
As for negative reviews, Writegirl and Valk share specific negative comments they received. On Valk’s fanfic, which revolves around queer sexualities and genders, a reader began with a positive comment and then ended with the question “why in God's (capital G) name, did you make Jaime like this?” Valk points specifically to the “capital G” to demonstrate that the person reading the comment may be religious — Christian — which may explain why they critiqued Valk’s reimagining of Jaime’s gender. For Writegirl, she once had someone comment,
“‘Fuck you, bastard’” on one of her fanfics. Writegirl cites this person as a troll and laughs off the comment.
Canon commentary
Definition: These codes examine how fan authors respond to or analyze the canonical material — TLOK or GOT. These codes include complimenting, relating to, or critiquing the canon.
Number of Codes: 80
Analysis: Select different forms of canon reactions for specific analyses.
Canon compliment
Definition: When fan authors compliment the canonical material, including its writing, ideologies, identity representation, and more.
Number of Codes: 29
Analysis: All six of the fan authors share characters, moments, or identity representation that made them fall in love with and feel connected to the shows. These compliments are not 298 necessarily about what the show did technically well, but how each fan developed an emotional investment with the show.
For fans of both TLOK and GOT, each author expresses excitement for different forms of representation that resist normative notions of gender and sexuality. For example, the final episode of TLOK, when Korra/Asami’s romantic relationship—and thus bisexuality— is confirmed canon, resonates with Aria and Gillywulf. Gillywulf describes elation, saying, “But it was incredible. I couldn't believe it. I was like, ‘This is happening, right?’ Yeah. I was like, ‘Jesus.’” Gillywulf’s excitement in this final episode appears across her and the other TLOK fans’ interviews. In both
TLOK and GOT, authors point to the canon resisting gender norms as another reason they love the shows. Several authors describe how different characters oppose gender stereotypes. For instance, from the GOT authors, Dialux cites she was originally drawn to the show because she heard it portrayed “strong women.”
Valk interprets Jaime and Brienne as characters who do not conform to gender norms, saying Jaime has an “affinity for feminity.” Valk also points to this non-conformity as one of the reasons they ship them: “That was part of the appeal was that Jaime had this big, beautiful wife that was taller than him and he's like, "Look at my beautiful wife. Isn't she huge..and wonderful?”
Valk specifically points to Brienne’s size in comparison to Jaime’s as one of the reasons Valk loves their characters. As for TLOK, Kittya argues that pretty much every woman from both TLOK and Avatar: The Last Airbender is well-developed and strong. Korra particularly, as Kittya describes, “is not the conventional or gender-conforming version of femininity that we're accustomed to.” Korra is muscular, physically powerful, can be sarcastic, and has a firey temper.
Yet, the show's writers allow her to be vulnerable and make mistakes. 299
The fan authors’ love and compliments for the canon is often tied to characters, specifically how each author interprets characters’ representations as resisting normativity.
Canon relation
Definition: When fan authors describes how they relate or do not relate to texts.
Number of Codes: 18
Analysis: As both the canon compliment and the canon critique quotes show, fan authors’ relation to canon materials is usually tied to how their lived experiences are or are not represented in a text. Aria explicitly says, “Oh, I love this, I love feeling represented,” as part of her motivation for writing a TLOK fanfic, specifically in reference to Korra and Asami’s confirmed relationship and bisexuality. Gillywulf builds off Aria’s point, citing the TLOK fan community and writing fanfic as a way to explore different coming out situations. She says “so, I had decided to come out, and these became sort of two parallels of, ‘It could be this, or it could be that.’” Through her 400- chapter-long fanfiction and other ways of interacting with TLOK fandom, she prepared herself to come out, hoping her story would be one of acceptance.
As Gillywulf and Aria describe relating to the queer representation in TLOK, Dialux and
Kittya point to how representations of their cultures drew them into specific texts. Dialux and
Kittya both talk about texts different from GOT and TLOK, but they still brought up their cultural contexts. Dialux decided to write a fanfic about GOT characters in the Jodhaa Akbar universe, a film about historical India. She mentions she was drawn to the film because, “it was a Desi film,” and she is Desi, but also she wanted to explore the cultural and religious tensions that the film explores, similar tensions explored in GOT. Kittya, when telling her fan story, shares how she grew up in Guyana, where she engaged with Indian cultural content. When she moved to the US, she found herself relying on online fandoms to translate Indian television shows. As she continued 300 to read and engage with texts, she found herself drawn to texts “where people were actually talking about foods that I would eat or where people were living in communities like mine, where people spoke that way that I spoke, et cetera.” She also, though, points to realizing an absence of representation in US culture, which she describes as “insidious.”
The moments when fans describe relating correlate with a lack of normalized representation of their culture, sexuality, and other aspects of their identity. When aspects of fans’ lived experiences and identities are often mis- or not represented in popular culture, fans develop deeper connections with texts that do represent them.
Canon critique
Definition: When fan authors critique the canonical text, including critiquing the writing, ideologies, identity representation (or lack thereof), and more.
Number of Codes: 34
Analysis: The fan authors’ critiques of the canon often point at the actual writing and character arcs portrayed on the show, demonstrating that each author has their own individual interpretations of the show. Some of their interpretations of the show revolve around the
“believability” of characters’ experience; fan authors speak to either their own lived experiences or the lived experiences of people within their communities. Other authors point out that the television show writers’ choices reinscribe harmful dominant ideologies with their writing choices.
This critique resonates with the inability for some writers to capture particular lived experiences.
Writegirl and Valk, for example, both critique the GOT’s writers’ choices in season 8. Valk argues that Jaime and Brienne’s love scene contradicts previous aesthetics of their relationship.
Specifically, they point to how Brienne is depicted as smaller than Jaime when they kiss, even though Brienne is the taller character. Valk notices that the writers’ and directors’ choices to make 301
Brienne smaller than Jaime reinscribes a heteronormative notion of gender roles — Brienne, as the woman, must be smaller than Jaime, the man. Writegirl also critiques the GOT’s writers’ treatment of Missandei, arguing that their choice for Missandei to “die in chains, basically in a pissing contest between two White women” erases her liberatory narrative arc that her character followed from earlier seasons.
TLOK fanfiction authors also critique the writers’ choices. Aria points to how Korra survives through a traumatic injury and battle, which leads her to developed post-traumatic stress disorder. In the show, Korra lives with PTSD for quite some time, but then slowly recovers from it. Aria expresses that she wished the show better represented how people living with PTSD may not recover and must “come to live with,” rather than portraying it as something that can be fixed.
Kittya Cullen has a similar critique that the show brushes past mental health; she points to a moment in season 1 that she interprets as Korra contemplating dying from suicide. Korra’s contemplation quickly ends as the show ends. Kittya wishes that the writers let Korra “dwell in the true feeling of that moment” instead of immediately resolving this storyline. Both Kittya and
Aria’s critiques points to how the canon misrepresented the lived experiences of people living with disabilities, especially PTSD.
Power and identity
LGBTQ+
Definition: LGBTA+ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, asexual) or any queer representation in fan communities, fanfiction, and the canonical materials.
Number of Codes: 53
Homophobia and transphobia 302
Definition: Homophobic or transphobic statements. Also, references to homophobia/transphobia in fan communities, fanfiction, and the canonical materials. Homophobia refers to discriminating against gay people (bi, lesbian, gay, pansexual), while transphobia refers to discriminating against transgender or gender-nonconforming folks.
Number of Codes: 17
Heteronormativity
Definition: Heteronormative statements or references to heteronormativity in fan communities, fanfiction, and the canonical materials. Heteronormativity refers to the notion of heterosexuality and hetero-gender roles as the assumed norm, and how this assumption is embedded in everyday conversations, politics, and social interactions.
Number of Codes: 30
Cultural difference
Definition: How cultural differences play out in fan communities, fanfiction, and the canonical materials. Cultural difference may be tied to racism/antiracism, language, cultural practices, religions, and more.
Number of Codes: 33
Anti-racism
Definition: Resisting, challenging, or critiquing racism in fan communities, fanfiction, and the canonical materials. Antiracism refers specifically to deliberate actions. These actions may include forms of critical representations of diverse races and ethnicities, challenging racial inequality both ideologically and systemically, and more.
Number of Codes: 14
Racism 303
Definition: Power differentials between different races and how race is a culturally constructed way of identifying, marking, and reading bodies. Forms of racism include white supremacy, the erasure of diverse races/ethnicities, discriminatory behaviors towards a particular race (specifically people of color), and assuming whiteness as the norm.
Number of Codes: 16
Sexism
Definition: Sexism or sexist statements in fan communities, fanfiction, and the canonical materials. Forms of sexism include patriarchal views of gender roles, power dynamics between genders, discrimination against women, and more.
Number of Codes: 13
Feminism
Definition: Resisting, challenging, or critiquing sexism in fan communities, fanfiction, and the canonical materials. Feminism refers to anti-sexist representations of genders, challenging gender inequality both ideologically and systemically, and more.
Number of Codes: 32
Class
Definition: When fan authors mention representations and understandings of socioeconomic class in fan communities, fanfiction, and the canonical materials. This includes mentions of classism, class imbalances, and forms of economic structures.
Number of Codes: 6
Disability
Definition: When fan authors mention representations and understandings of disability — physical, emotional, or mental — in fan communities, fanfiction, and the canonical materials. 304
Number of Codes: 22
Ableism
Definition: When fan authors mention ableism, either ableist statements or references to ableism, in fan communities, fanfiction, and the canonical materials. Ableism includes discrimination against people with disabilities, the erasure of people with disabilities, assuming able-bodied and neurotypical as the norm, etc.
Number of Codes: 4
Other
Definition: When fan authors mention other forms of identity representations or systems of power, including around religion, age, and location.
Number of Codes: 38