Transformative Works and Cultures, No. 28, The Future of Fandom

(September 15, 2018)

Editorial

TWC Editor, TWC, past and future

Theory

Paul Booth, Framing alterity: Reclaiming fandom’s marginality

David Peyron, Fandom names and col ective identities in contemporary popular culture

Bonnie Ruberg, Straight-washing "Undertale": Video games and the limits of LGBTQ representation

Eric Andrew James, Using rhetorical criticism to track Twitch Plays Pokémon fans' attachment to sacrifice

Sarah Elizabeth Lerner, Fan film on the final frontier: Axanar Productions and the limits of fair use in the digital

age

Praxis

Naomi Jacobs, Live streaming as participation: A case study of conflict in the digital and physical spaces of

"Supernatural" conventions

Sky LaRel Anderson, Extraludic narratives: Online communities and video games

Melissa A. Hofmann, Johnlock meta and authorial intent in Sherlock fandom: Affirmational or transformational?

Dorothy Lau, Donnie Yen's star persona in amateur-produced videos on YouTube

Symposium

Casey Fiesler, Owning the servers: A design fiction exploring the transformation of fandom into "our own"

Nicol e Lamerichs, The next wave in participatory culture: Mixing human and nonhuman entities in creative

practices and fandom

Bridget Kies, The ex-fan's place in fan studies

Brianna Dym&Casey Fiesler, Generations, migrations, and the future of fandom's private spaces

Shannon K. Farley, Further future fandom: A conversation with middle school-age fans

Robin S. Rosenberg,&Andrea M. Letamendi, Personality, behavioral, and social heterogeneity within the cosplay

community

Bri Mattia, Rainbow Direction and fan-based citizenship performance

Megan Vaughan, Theater criticism, "Harry Potter and the Cursed Child," and online community

Deborah Krieger, Jewish identity, fan representation, and Yehuda Goldstein in the Potterverse

Cody T. Havard, The impact of the phenomenon of sport rivalry on fans

Review

Melanie E.S. Kohnen, "Old futures: Speculative fiction and queer possibility," by Alexis Lothian

Lorraine M. Dubuisson, "The fanfiction reader: Folk tales for the digital age," by Francesca Coppa

J. Caroline Toy, "Participatory memory: Fandom experiences across time and space," by Liza Potts et al.

Louisa Ellen Stein, Roundtable with Paul Booth, Melissa A. Click, and Suzanne Scott

Transformative Works and Cultures (TWC), ISSN 1941-2258, is an online-only Gold Open Access publication of the nonprofit

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Download date: September 15, 2018. For citation, please refer to the most recent version of articles at TWC.

EDITORIAL

TWC, past and future

TWC Editor

Kristina Busse and Karen Hellekson

[0.1]

Abstract—Editorial for special 10th anniversary issue, "The

Future of Fandom," Transformative Works and Cultures, no. 28

(September 15, 2018).

[0.2]

Keywords—Ethics; Fan studies; Methodology

TWC Editor. "TWC, Past and Future" [editorial]. In "The Future of Fandom," special 10th anniversary issue, Transformative Works and Cultures, no. 28. https://doi.org

/10.3983/twc.2018.1633.

1. Ten years of Transformative Works and Culture

[1.1] This issue marks TWC's ten-year anniversary: after the Organization for

Transformative Works was founded in 2007, we set to create an academic journal with a focus on fan works and fan communities—but, true to our fannish ethos, we wanted it to be Open Access with a Creative Commons copyright, online only, multimedia, and

interdisciplinary. After finding a publishing platform with Open Journal Systems and soliciting an editorial board of international fan studies scholars, our first call for papers came out in early 2008. The first issue was published on September 15, 2008.

[1.2] In the ten years that followed, we've published 28 issues with nearly 400 essays covering diverse fan texts, communities, and activities, from multiple different

methodologies, disciplines, and approaches. These essays have contributed to the

overall scholarship of fan studies; many of the essays have gone on to become

frequently cited standards in the field. In these ten years, we've seen TWC's authors and volunteers finish graduate school, get jobs, write important books, and get tenure. In turn, they have sent their own students our way. In the meantime, fan scholarship has exploded with new books, essay collections, conferences, and fannish and academic

scholarship online. The University of Iowa Press has a dedicated fan studies line

(https://www.uipress.uiowa.edu/search/browse-series/browse-FANCUL.htm). We've

watched as fans and fandom have exhibited the convergence culture we were anticipating in 2007 and 2008; it now dominates fannish interactions and acafannish research.

2. Ethics at the 10-year mark

[2.1] With these changes and expansions has evolved a renewed need for

methodological awareness and ethical guidelines. When we started TWC, we basically extrapolated from ourselves, our online fannish friends, and our acafannish peers: our 2006 coedited volume, Fan Fiction and Fan Communities in the Age of the Internet, was written by, about, and to a degree for our online friends. Our responsibilities to the communities seemed pretty easy and suggested a clear respect for our fan sources. Our Author Guidelines at the time read, "TWC strongly recommends that permission be

obtained from the creator for any fan work or blog post cited in a submitted article." We expanded on these ethical guidelines (Hellekson and Busse 2009; Busse and Hellekson 2012) and continued to encourage authors to follow our own guidelines of protection of fan sources and informed consent as well as the Association of Internet Researchers'

(AoIR) updated notes on "Ethical Decision-Making and Internet Research" (2012).

[2.2] Yet even as we remained committed to this fans-first approach (as we termed it), others began to challenge this methodology; some even outright rejected it (Musiani 2011; Larsen and Zubernis 2013; Jamison 2015). At the same time, more scholars

began to seriously contemplate the ethical issues at stake (Whiteman 2012, 2016;

Freund and Fielding 2013; Davisson and Booth 2016; Jensen 2016; Jones 2016; Kelley 2016; Nielsen 2016). Many, however, returned repeatedly to the conundrum we had

been facing when we first started contemplating these questions: how to remain part of a community and respect its members while simultaneously documenting and analyzing it accurately and honestly. We'd only ever "strongly recommended" that fans be

informed because we knew that methodologies and situations differed, and that not all researchers could or even should obtain permission. In fact, as fannish platforms and expectations of privacy have changed, as fandoms age and their members withdraw or disappear, and as fan studies has finally begun to confront its less pleasant aspects (Proctor and Kies 2018; Spacey 2018; Click 2019; Pande, forthcoming), there are more reasons than ever to not always demand permission from researchers. (For an expanded version of this argument, see Busse 2017.)

3. The future of fan studies

[3.1] If the last ten years of TWC, the last twenty-five years of fan studies, and the last fifty years of media fandom have shown us anything, it is something we already knew: some people will continue to love stars, films, music, TV series, and books to a point where we want to collect them, talk to others about them, join communities

dedicated to them, and create material about and derived from them. Further, there will always be someone who will find this excess affect and its products fascinating and

worthy of study. Joanna Russ (1985) reading fan zines and discussing their utopian and feminist potential, Anne Kustritz (2008) offering a close reading of two popular fan fictions in the first issue of TWC, Francesca Coppa (2017) collecting fan fiction with minimal interpretive framework in a pedagogical anthology—all of them loved the

texts, the communities, and the insights both offered.

[3.2] Anniversaries mark a past event; but they also force us to look to the future.

What will TWC look like in ten years, fan studies in another twenty-five, media fandom in fifty? What platforms and interfaces will we use to share our love and thoughts and works? What fannish texts will be popular, and how will fans express their fascination?

How will fans and producers engage, or will these divisions have become meaningless?

Many responded to our call for papers on this anniversary issue, The Future of Fandom, and we are proud to present one of our biggest issues yet.

4. Theory

[4.1] Paul Booth opens the section with his study of local independent fan stores in

"Framing Alterity: Reclaiming Fandom's Marginality." Especially against the

background of fannish mainstreaming and media convergence, he argues, face-to-face engagement offers an alternative discourse that recalls fan marginality and challenges more dominant fan studies discourses. David Peyron's "Fandom Names and Collective

Identities in Contemporary Popular Culture" also addresses fannish identity by looking at the way groups declare their tastes and beliefs through performative naming. The essay studies in particular the tension between fans and industry generated by and played out through competing naming procedures.

[4.2] Eric Andrew James's "Using Rhetorical Criticism to Track Twitch Plays

Pokémon Fans' Attachment to Sacrifice" and Bonnie Ruberg's "Straight-Washing Undertale" continue the exploration of fan identities, and they do so within the context of video game reception communities. James uses rhetorical criticism to study the

particular interactions within collective gaming controls on Twitch.tv. Focusing on one particular gaming event, he suggests that audiences created interpretations as they needed to explain but also mythologize the collective experiences of their game play.

Ruberg's essay confronts the discourses surrounding the popular game Undertale.

Although hailed as LGBT friendly, many users nevertheless quickly and easily recast the game to make it more traditional and mainstream, thus suggesting that

transformative revisions need not be either progressive or subversive.

[4.3] Sarah Elizabeth Lerner's "Fan Film on the Final Frontier" looks at the 2016

court case Paramount/CBS v. Axanar Productions Inc. and Alec Peters to interrogate questions of transformation, ownership, and fair use as well as fannish ethos, gift giving, and commercial industrial filmmaking. All these essays use focused analyses to make larger statements about fan identities, communities, and their interactions and beliefs, as well as the often complicated interactions between fans and industry.

5. Praxis

[5.1] Many of the Praxis essays continue the preoccupations and themes raised in the Theory section. Where Paul Booth studies face-to-face interaction in fannish

independent stores, Naomi Jacobs explores how the convention industry explores

supplementing face-to-face interaction with digital technologies. "Live Streaming as Participation" studies the simultaneous virtual and embodied con experience, but more importantly it explores how such commercial enterprises affect the fan community, both positively and negatively. Like Eric Andrew James's study of Pokémon and Twitch, Sky LaRell Anderson uses rhetorical analysis to study the role online communities play in the collective interpretation and imagination of video games. "Extraludic Narratives"

focuses on Dark Souls and the way players work with and against the play's mythology to establish their own personal game narratives.

[5.2] Meanwhile, Melissa A. Hofmann looks at intracommunity meta discourses

surrounding the John/Sherlock pairing in "Johnlock Meta and Authorial Intent in

Sherlock fandom." She argues that the close readings in support of a slashy interpretation of the series run counter to the supposed showrunners' intentions, thus raising questions of literary theoretical approaches and the role of authorial intention in TV shows. Finally, Dorothy Lau's "Donnie Yen's Star Persona in Amateur-Produced

Videos on YouTube" offers a close reading of two videos featuring Rogue One actor and Chinese film star Donnie Yen to illustrate how remixes can recreate not just

fictional narratives but also star texts, thus challenging while contributing to

commercial media properties.

6. Symposium

[6.1] The Symposium section in particular received a number of essays exploring this issue's theme. Casey Fiesler opens the section with "Owning the Servers," in which she uses the Archive of Our Own (https://archiveofourown.org/) as a case study to explore the technological and legal affordances of fan-friendly platforms and their futures.

Nicolle Lamerichs also looks at the future of technology and fandom in "The Next

Wave in Participatory Culture." She imagines how new technologies, in particular

nonhuman entities, may affect media corporations as well as fan communities.

[6.2] Whereas these two essays examine the impact of technologies, the ones that

follow address issues of age inside and outside fandom. Bridget Kies's "The Ex-Fan's Place in Fan Studies" looks at the intersections between fan, antifan, and ex-fan and how that affects scholarship. Brianna Dym and Casey Fiesler explore fannish

generations and media platforms in "Generations, Migrations, and the Future of

Fandom's Private Spaces." Drawing from long-term studies, they address the role of public and private spaces, including generational changes. Finally, Shannon K. Farley shifts the discussion to the next generation proper. In "Further Future Fandom," she transcribes and summarizes her conversations with several middle school–age fans to

reveal the concerns and practices of younger fans.

[6.3] Robin S. Rosenberg and Andrea M. Letamendi's "Personality, Behavioral, and

Social Heterogeneity within the Cosplay Community" presents an exploratory study of nearly 1,000 cosplayers that looks at aspects of extraversion. Bri Mattia's "Rainbow Direction and Fan-Based Citizenship Performance" discusses the activism group

Rainbow Direction and its effects on general awareness of LGBT+ One Direction fans.

Harry Potter's final volume is over a decade old, but the fandom continues unabated.

Megan Vaughan's "Theater Criticism, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, and Online Community" compares professional and fannish responses to the play and finds many

similarities. Where Vaughan's critics study Rowling's own transformative expansions of her universe, Deborah Krieger looks at one minor character and the transformative and interpretive extrapolations he affords Jewish fans in particular in "Jewish Identity, Fan Representation, and Yehuda Goldstein in the Potterverse." The final Symposium

contribution moves away from media studies: Cody T. Havard looks at sports rivalry and calls for new avenues of research in "The Impact of the Phenomenon of Sport

Rivalry on Fans."

7. Book reviews

[7.1] The books reviewed in this issue model, thematize, and engage the future in various ways. Alexis Lothian's Old Futures: Speculative Fiction and Queer Possibility, reviewed by Melanie E. S. Kohnen, most clearly engages with futures as she studies fictional and real utopias and their intersections with fans and fandoms. In contrast, both Francesca Coppa's The Fanfiction Reader: Folk Tales for the Digital Age, reviewed by Lorraine M. Duboisson, and Participatory Memory: Fandom Experiences across Time and Space, by Liza Potts, Melissa Beattie, Emily Dallaire, Katie Grimes, and Kelly Turner, and reviewed by J. Caroline Toy, model fan studies engagements for the future.

Coppa's fan fiction anthology not only argues for the value of fan fiction as a subject of analysis and pedagogy but also illustrates how such literary encounters can happen in the classroom without losing the communities who are indispensable in understanding fan texts. Likewise, the collaboration of professors and grad students in exploring various fan sites offers a model for teaching both contents and methods. Toy cites the authors as they suggest that "these students, and others like them, hold the future for work as fan scholars and scholar fans." If, as we've argued throughout this editorial, fan studies is expanding and growing, then a renewed focus on pedagogy is crucial.

[7.2] Rounding out this anniversary issue is a slightly different form of book review.

2018 saw the publication of two substantial fan studies anthologies: Paul Booth's A Companion to Media Fandom and Fan Studies and Melissa Click and Suzanne Scott's The Routledge Companion to Media Fandom. The two collections feature established acafans, but they also introduce a number of newer fan scholars. In fact, Henry Jenkins (2018) uses his blog as a platform to generate a conversation among these scholars to showcase the new directions and ideas they offer to the field. Louisa Ellen Stein turns to the editors in a roundtable, using their particular experiences to discuss the state of fan

studies twenty-five years after its de facto founding and fifty years after the moment we often declare as the birth of original media fandom.

8. Acknowledgments

[8.1] The following people worked on TWC No. 28 in an editorial capacity: Kristina Busse and Karen Hellekson (editors); Cameron Salisbury and Francesca Coppa

(Symposium); and Louisa Ellen Stein and Katie Morrissey (Review).

[8.2] The following people worked on TWC No. 28 in a production capacity:

Christine Mains and Rrain Prior (production editors); Beth Friedman, Mara Greengrass, and Christine Mains (copyeditors); Claire Baker, Sarah New, Rebecca Sentance, and

Gabriel Simm (layout); and Rachel P. Kreiter, Amanda Retartha, Latina Vidolova, and Karalyn Dokurno (proofreaders).

[8.3] TWC thanks the board of the Organization for Transformative Works. OTW

provides financial support and server space to TWC but is not involved in any way in the content of the journal, which is editorially independent.

[8.4] TWC thanks all its board members, whose names appear on TWC's masthead,

as well as the additional peer reviewers who provided service for TWC No. 28: Kevin Ball, Sarah Boyd, Lucy Busker, Edmond Chang, Tanya Cochran, Lauren Collister,

Megan Condis, Katie Gillespie, Ben Judkins, Bridget Kies, Joseph Nguyen, Ashley

Polasek, Mafalda Stasi, Gregory Steirer, Amandelin Valentine, Veerle Van Steenhuyse, Abby Waysdorf, Benjamin Woo, and Kimberly Workman.

9. References

Association of Internet Researchers (AoIR). 2012. "Ethical Decision-Making and

Internet Research 2.0: Recommendations from the AoIR Ethics Working Committee."

http://aoir.org/ethics/.

Busse, Kristina, and Karen Hellekson. 2012. "Identity, Ethics, and Fan Privacy." In Fan Culture: Theory/Practice, edited by Katherine Larsen and Lynn Zubernis, 38–56.

Newcastle-upon-Tyne: Cambridge Scholars.

Busse, Kristina. 2017. "The Ethics of Studying Online Fandoms." In The Routledge Companion to Media Fandom, edited by Melissa A. Click and Suzanne Scott, 9–17.

New York: Routledge.

Click, Melissa, ed. 2019. Anti-Fandom: Dislike and Hate in the Digital Age. New York: NYU Press.

Coppa, Francesca, ed. 2017. The Fanfiction Reader: Folk Tales for the Digital Age. Ann

Arbor: University of Michigan Press.

Davisson, Amber, and Paul Booth, ed. 2016. Controversies in Digital Ethics. London: Bloomsbury Academic.

Freund, Katherine, and Dianna Fielding. 2013. "Research Ethics in Fan Studies."

Participations 10(1): 329–34. http://www.participations.org/Volume%2010/Issue%201

/16%20Freund%20Fielding%2010.1.pdf.

Hellekson, Karen, and Kristina Busse. 2006. Fan Fiction and Fan Communities in the Age of the Internet: New Essays. Jefferson, NC: McFarland.

Hellekson, Karen, and Kristina Busse. 2009. "Fan Privacy and TWC's Editorial

Philosophy." Organization for Transformative Works.

http://www.transformativeworks.org/twac/twc-citation/.

Jamison, Anne. 2015. "Since I and My Class Have Been Cited." Anne Jamison,

February 23, 2015. http://annejamison.tumblr.com/.

Jenkins, Henry 2018. "The State of Fandom Studies." Confessions of an Aca-Fan,

March 5, 2018. http://henryjenkins.org/blog/2018/3/1/the-state-of-fandom-studies-

2018-introduction.

Jensen, Thessa. 2016. "Let's Make It Personal: Ontological Ethics in Fan Studies."

Journal of Fandom Studies 4 (3): 255–73. https://doi.org/10.1386/jfs.4.3.255_1.

Jones, Bethan. 2016. "I Hate Beyoncé and I Don't Care Who Knows It: Towards an

Ethics of Studying Anti-fandom." Journal of Fandom Studies 4 (3): 283–99.

https://doi.org/10.1386/jfs.4.3.283_1.

Kelley, Brittany. 2016. "Toward a Goodwill Ethics of Online Research Methods."

Transformative Works and Cultures, no. 22. https://doi.org/10.3983/twc.2016.0891.

Kustritz, Anne. 2008. "Painful Pleasures: Sacrifice, Consent, and the Resignification of BDSM Symbolism in The Story of O and The Story of Obi. " Transformative Works and Cultures, no. 1. http://dx.doi.org/10.3983/twc.2008.0031.

Larsen, Katherine, and Lynn Zubernis. 2013. Fangasm: Supernatural Fangirls. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press.

Musiani, Francesca. 2011. "Editorial Policies, 'Public Domain,' and Acafandom."

Transformative Works and Cultures, no. 7. https://doi.org/10.3983/twc.2011.0275.

Nielsen, E. J. 2016. "Dear Researcher: Rethinking Engagement with Fan Authors."

Journal of Fandom Studies 4 (3): 233–49. https://doi.org/10.1386/jfs.4.3.233_1.

Pande, Rukmini. Forthcoming. Squee from the Margins: Fandom and Race. Iowa City:

University of Iowa Press.

Proctor, William, and Bridget Kies. 2018. "Editors' Introduction: On Toxic Fan

Practices and the New Culture Wars." Participation 15 (1).

http://www.participations.org/Volume%2015/Issue%201/8.pdf.

Russ, Joanna. 1985. "Pornography by Women, for Women, with Love." In Magic

Mommas, Trembling Sisters, Puritans, and Perverts: Feminist Essays, 79–99.

Trumansburg, NY: Crossing Press.

Spacey, Ashton, ed. 2018. The Darker Side of Slash Fandom: Essays on Power,

Consent and the Body. Jefferson, NC: McFarland.

Whiteman, Natasha. 2012. Undoing Ethics: Rethinking Practice in Online Research.

New York: Springer.

Whiteman, Natasha. 2016. "Unsettling Relations: Disrupting the Ethical Subject in Fan Studies Research." Journal of Fandom Studies 4 (3): 307–23. https://doi.org/10.1386

/jfs.4.3.307_1.

THEORY

Framing alterity: Reclaiming fandom's

marginality

Paul J. Booth

DePaul University, Chicago, Illinois, United States

[0.1]

Abstract—At a moment when fandom is becoming more visible

to mainstream audiences and fan studies interrogates the media

industry's appropriation of fannish behavior, it is important not to neglect

the local and independent aspects of fan activity. In a rhetorical reading

of two independent geek-themed stores, the Who Shop and Alien

Entertainment, I analyze the way they appear to harness, market, and

generate feelings of fan alterity, a deliberate self-othering of the fan. Fan

studies has discussed the mainstreaming of fandom through the lens of

major media corporations and marketing campaigns. However, fan

studies has rarely addressed the impact of independent, local geek stories

on fan experiences. The experience of visiting the stores reinforces a

discourse of fan marginality, (re)establishing a uniqueness to the fan

identity that the discourse of mainstreaming elides and enlivening the

fan experience through historicity and face-to-face activity.

[0.2]

Keywords—Alien Entertainment; Doctor Who; Fan shopping;

Historicity; Identity; Merchandise; Store; Who Shop

Booth, Paul J. 2018. "Framing Alterity: Reclaiming Fandom's Marginality." In "The

Future of Fandom," special 10th anniversary issue, Transformative Works and Cultures, no. 28. https://dx.doi.org/10.3983/twc.2018.1420.

1. Introduction

[1.1] In the east end of London sits the Who Shop, an independent Doctor Who-

themed store that has been serving customers and fans for over thirty years. About forty minutes outside of Chicago, a similar independent store, Alien Entertainment, has been

selling assorted fannish goods since the 1990s. In an issue of Transformative Works and Cultures devoted to the "Future of Fandom," it may seem out of place to present as examples two old-fashioned, independent, mom-and-pop stores, but it is for precisely this reason that I argue these stores represent an important artifact for fan studies'

understandings of the future of fandom. The purpose of this article is to examine some of the specific rhetorical functions of the role of space within an independent fan-focused store, in order to answer two questions: How does the retail space mediate the experience of fans? And how can this understanding of space influence scholars'

interpretations of fandom?

[1.2] Jeffrey Brown's analysis of comic book stores from 1997 notes that the retail store is a "major focal point" of modern fan culture (17). In the intervening two

decades, the rise of internet technology has given the impression that fandom has

moved online. In this article, however, I argue that understanding the future of fandom means not just looking online, but also looking to the past, recalling the rationales, antecedents, and practices of yore. Through a reading of the non-mainstream retail spaces enjoyed by fans today, scholars can more fully appreciate how fan consumers are encouraged to develop a feeling of alterity—a state of difference, or otherness, between the self and the non-self; in this case, the overt difference between the fan-self and the non-fan-self. Feelings of alterity in fan communities like those that shop at the Who Shop or Alien Entertainment are fostered via two discourses within the spaces of the shops: historicity (or the curation of a particular fannish history) and activity (or the presence of face-to-face activities as key to fannishness).

[1.3] This research is based on my own autoethnographic rhetorical analysis of both stores and their face-to-face events. A rhetorical analysis is intended to explore symbolic texts, acts, and/or activities (e.g., fleeting and/or ephemeral objects) to understand how/why symbols affect audiences in a variety of ways (see Foss 2018). It can be a qualitative first step in developing a larger empirical investigation. In this article, the spaces of the stores are the texts under review. For example, I am

deliberately focusing on the rhetoric of the space of the store as a marker of fannish alterity. Benjamin Woo's (2018) Getting a Life: The Social Worlds of Geek Culture highlights how "specialty retail stores serving the geek market are not merely links in a commodity chain between producer and consumer but are themselves social spaces"

(135) and in his analysis of video stores, Daniel Herbert (2014) similarly argued that a store is best understood as a "set of spatial and material practices…interactional spaces

[in which] people interrelate either directly with one another or through material mediation, through the architecture of the store and the commodities within it" (65). But in what ways can we read the space of the store as generative of fannish interaction? I argue that the space of the independent geek-themed shop plays a role in the formation of the fan's sense of self through deliberately affecting notions of alterity (note 1).

[1.4] This article uses two examples of retail spaces that use historicity and activity to construct fan alterity. The tools of fandom may change but the revealing practices underlying what it means to be a fan continue. In London's Who Shop, fannish

historicity is presented through a museum of Doctor Who artifacts, which presents the

store as an authentic representation of fandom and a keeper of fan history, and fannish activity is highlighted through in-person signings with celebrities. At Chicago's Alien Entertainment, fannish alterity is framed through a discourse of historical memory, as well as a focus on fan meet-ups and conventions.

[1.5] Although both stores are rooted in the physical spaces of the cities they are in, this localization of fan alterity isn't antidigital. Both Alien Entertainment and the Who Shop have online spaces, and, as Lincoln Geraghty (2014) notes, it is "in conjunction with their online store spaces, [that] retailers that specialize in the toy and collectible market have a ready-made community to target and a host of product lines they can

advertise and sell" (149). Drawing on Geraghty's (2014) work on cult collecting, I argue that despite the way fans are mainstreamed in the dominant merchandising and media environment, more intimate, on-the-ground visions of fan culture help to create and frame the type of alterity found in traditional fan studies depictions of fan communities, reinforcing the subcultural positioning of fandom for mainstream and fan shoppers. The importance of this analysis lies in the way that independent retail stores—often

overlooked within fan studies research that focuses solely on the text—affect fans' and scholars' discursive shapings of fandom.

2. Generating fannish alterity

[2.1] In many ways, being part of fandom is about finding authentic ways to express membership in that fan community, ways that communicate to other fans one's own

commitment to the text and to the fandom. This authenticity often arrives through how fans set themselves as different from the mainstream—a difference that relies on the notion of taste and marginality. Much fan studies work has revolved around Pierre

Bourdieu's Distinction (1984) and his articulation that social class is inextricably linked to cultural notions of good taste; thus, taste becomes a marker of class. Fan scholarship on social class augments Bourdieu's findings with discussions of how popular taste forms subcultural capital (see Fiske 1992; Hills 2002; Hills 2005; Herbert 2014).

[2.2] Brown's (1997) analysis of comic book fans draws on the work of Bourdieu to note that

[2.3] comic fandom, and the practice of comic-book collecting in

particular, is evidence of the complex and structured way in which avid

participants of popular culture construct a meaningful sense of self. They

create a culture that simultaneously resists the tyranny of high culture and

forms what Fiske calls a "shadow cultural economy" ("Cultural Economy"

30) that mimics bourgeois standards. By looking closely at the complex

system of meanings that constitutes the culture of comics fandom we can see

how the traditionally disempowered act to bolster their social position within

the community of fans. (13–14, 15)

[2.4] Marginality, in fact, becomes a key element in fans' search for authenticity. Fans

may not always be the ones defining their marginality, as Mel Stanfill (2013) shows:

"some aspects of fandom, some ways of being a fan, or indeed some fans remain

marginal" (118). But Matt Hills (2002) also argues that "clearly fans can identify across ethnicity, but often only the basis of a shared authenticity such as a celebratory 'anti-mainstream' stance" (87). Defining oneself to be marginal (re)claims ownership over one's identity and self: it is an act of empowerment. To claim membership in a

subculture means delineating between what is considered "mainstream" and what is

considered subcultural (see Thornton 1995). In other words, the discourse of

authenticity developed by many fan groups is deliberately set in overt opposition to traditional mainstream cultural taste— we are fans because we are not into mainstream tastes.

[2.5] Yet, that empowerment may be subtly shaped by others. As I argue in relation to the Who Shop and Alien Entertainment's deliberate fostering of fan alterity, fans'

marginality can be generated by external agents. Matt Hills (2002), in fact, makes this point in reference to a targeted approach by the mainstream media industries:

[2.6] When approaching the fan audience as a target market, the fan

culture's values of authenticity must be mirrored…At the same time, this

observance of fan "authenticity" masks the extent to which "fan-ownership"

acts as a rhetorical device aimed at promoting the notion that target

marketing merely "reflects" values and distinctions which are already

operative within the cultural worlds of dedicated cult TV fandom. (37)

[2.7] In other words, if authenticity and marginality are already constructed in

opposition to what is considered mainstream, then they are already reliant on those cultural notions for definition. If "authenticity is constructed socially," as Corse and Hartless (2015) note, then that social relation stretches between the subcultural

community and the industry upon which it rests (3).

[2.8] As I demonstrate with a rhetorical reading of Alien Entertainment and the Who Shop, another way of generating membership in marginalization is reflected in the types of stores at which fans choose to shop. Woo (2018) indicates that stores can play a role in shaping fan membership: for example, if goods are hard to find, "more active

interventions may be required" by the stores (147). Ofer Berenstein (2012) notes that

"the special arrangement of the comic book store as an institution" helps to guide the discourse that fans have in the store (74). Moving from comic shop to geek store, this article opens up an understudied aspect of fandom and retail: how the space of the store itself reflects—and generates—a feeling of alterity for fan shoppers.

3. Discourses of alterity within geek stores

[3.1] Both the Who Shop and Alien Entertainment cater directly to fan populations.

The Who Shop is more specialized, as it focuses almost entirely on merchandise related to Doctor Who—including new materials (magazines, books, toys, shirts, etc.) as well

as vintage wares. The Who Shop was established in 1984 and currently runs both a face-to-face business as well as an online (worldwide) retail shop. The owners,

Alexandra Loosely-Saul and her husband Kevan, vend at conventions (including

Gallifrey One, the largest Doctor Who convention, and San Diego Comic Con). The

shop also features a museum of actual props, costumes, artifacts, and behind-the-scenes materials from Doctor Who and its spin-off Torchwood, as well as other cult media like The Fifth Element and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Alien Entertainment is a more generalized geek store, selling Star Trek, Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, Marvel, and DC merchandise, as well as various other cult properties. They are also the home of the website http://www.doctorwhostore.com, one of the largest online retailers of Doctor Who merchandise on the US side of the Atlantic. Thus, Alien Entertainment is both a specialty store of Doctor Who merchandise and a geek generalist store. Of note, the owners of Alien Entertainment, Gene and Karen Smith, also run Chicago

TARDIS, a large Doctor Who convention (see Booth 2013), and they are the US home

of Big Finish, an audio production company specializing in Doctor Who audio dramas.

[3.2] Previous research into the spaces of fan or geek retail have tended to

concentrate on comic book shops rather than more general geek stores (Brown 1997;

Woo 2011; Berenstein 2012), although Woo (2018) also examines hobby game stores.

Matthew Pustz (1999) describes how the "local comic shop" can become a "supportive environment" for comics supporters—although notably the comics readers he discusses are often homogenously white and male (6). To be sure, comic book stores have been sites of fannish interaction for years, and as Berenstein (2012) notes, "comic book aficionados draw a stricter line of difference between themselves and general society.

This could also be the reason that comics aficionados may hold ceremonies at any

place, but would rather doing it at their comfort zones of conventions and stores" (83).

But the differences between the comic shop and the more generally thematic geek

stores are vast. Some comic shops sell additional merchandise like games or cards, but the majority of the wares revolve around comics and comic culture. Comics stores are laid out with comics in mind: like video stores of yore, they "similarly emphasize new releases, which…take up the bulk of the space on the outer walls of the store" (Herbert 2014, 76). Inside the store, different genre conventions take over: "independent stores typically demonstrate a more complicated system of categorization" (Herbert 2014, 76).

Shelves of comics may be filed by superhero, by publisher, by author, by illustrator, by audience, or by genre.

[3.3] Geek stores, on the other hand, have a wide variety of merchandise that doesn't always get organized in the way comics might. Organization, as I describe below, can be by franchise, by type of merchandise, or by media technology. In any case, the

rhetoric of the store space is different from traditional comic stores. Some geek stores like Alien Entertainment have to appeal to a great variety of consumers so they aim for breadth over depth. Alien Entertainment sells merchandise from a wide variety of

franchises, both current and classic. As I describe below, it is scattered throughout the store, organized through media franchise. Other geek stores like the Who Shop

narrowly focus on one particular text but sell a great variety of merchandise. This is organized differently than comic shops as well, as the Who Shop organizes by medium

(books, videos, clothing) rather than chronology.

[3.4] Beyond the lack of focus on geek stores in scholarly literature, the methodology for examining the shops is different. Productive scholarship exists that focus on the fans that shop at these stores (Woo 2018) but relatively little analysis exists on the store itself. In this article I'm using a rhetorical analysis to examine the interpellation of fans that occurs within the shop. In contrast, for example, Berenstein (2012) uses

interpersonal communication practices to analyze the discourse of comic book fans

within shop. Similarly, in two pieces Woo (2011; 2012) examines comic book fans'

spaces for their social rather than rhetorical functions. His 2011 article "The Android's Dungeon" argues that comic book stores have three social functions: first, they are

"locales" that provide "spaces for interaction among participants"; second, they are

"nodes, interlocks, and regions relating contingent communities of practices"; and third, they are "'sanctuaries' from mainstream hierarchies of taste and status" (125). (Scott

[2013] complicates Woo's analysis by noting the different subcultural status of women in comic shops.) A similar article from 2012, "Alpha Nerds," describes how

"distinctions between [fan] in-group and out-group are reproduced in the physical

organization of comic book and game stores"—the layout of the store shapes fans' intrafandom perceptions. Little examined in any of these articles is the layout of the store itself and the way that layout articulates fandom. Woo (2012) argues that he started his research looking at how the space of the store influences fandom (as I do in this article) but "became more interested in the individuals and institutions who work at sustaining these communities" (660); he does not go in depth on the relationship between these cultural intermediaries and the space of the store itself—a relationship I argue is meaningful, important, and underrepresented in scholarship.

[3.5] One notable exception to the dearth of literature on geek stores is Geraghty's (2014) Cult Collectors, which devotes a chapter to Forbidden Planet, a franchised store with centers in multiple European cities and New York. For Geraghty, Forbidden Planet

"accommodate[s] all types of consumers, from casual shopper to fan collector…. The exchange of cult commodities highlight[s] the continued importance of physical

interaction and the centrality of the physical object in the construction of fan subcultural capital" (142). In the following, I also use Geraghty's (2014) discussion of Forbidden Planet as a contrast to these independent stores, which may seem odd—Forbidden

Planet is also a themed geek store. But of Forbidden Planet, Geraghty (2014) notes that it actually

[3.6] caters for both mainstream and niche tastes. It promotes both an

image of the alternative and cult as well as keeping up with the latest fads

and stocking the most popular toy and merchandise brands…and The

London Megastore is not just for science fiction. The floor plan lists dozens

of genres, global media products and blockbuster franchises, organized by

popularity, audience and type. (155)

[3.7] The example of Forbidden Planet emphasizes this tension between fans'

mainstream identities and their simultaneous reliance on alterity. Forbidden Planet has

stores across the UK (and one in the US). It has become a go-to hub of fandom and geek merchandising for fans across the UK, and a mainstream source for cult

merchandise. As such,

[3.8] while cult fandom has entered the mainstream…Forbidden Planet

treads a thin line between both camps: as a physical location it remains a

safe destination for fans to enter and connect with their favourite media texts

but also it performs a role akin to the department store in that it sells

something for every type of fans, whether you are a novice or die-hard

collector. (Geraghty 2014, 154)

[3.9] In other words, Forbidden Planet exemplifies the cultural placement of fandom itself today, straddling the line between cult and mainstream (see Hills 2010);

simultaneously, Forbidden Planet offers "a potential fantasy space for fans but it also inundates them with products and images that characterize it as a space for industrial marketing practices" (Geraghty 2014, 155). In contrast, the Who Shop and Alien

Entertainment remain more solidly cult-focused specialty shops.

[3.10] Geek retail's deliberate marginalization of fans can be magnified by the objects within the store, the geographic location of the store, and the physical layout of the store. Local independent retail stores that specialized in geek-themed goods (items like action figures, both mainstream and collectible; comic books; games; clothing;

accessories; and books, among other things) are often more expensive than their big box counterparts (Target, Walmart, Argos) or online retailers (Amazon), so shopping at the independent store reflects a type of alterity: fans are willing to pay more to be in a space that reflects their ideas about fandom (Woo 2018). And fans do come to these stores. As Benjamin Woo (2012) notes, "all over the city, nerds gather in homes, stores,

community halls and hotel ballrooms; they gather weekly, monthly and annually to

share their interests with others. Taken together, these spaces and events compose a milieu within which participants can access various resources and opportunities to pursue the cultural practices that they are 'into'" (663). The presence and shape of the independent become crucial for fan activity.

[3.11] The geographic placement of the retail space can also play a role in the

assumption of alterity among fans. For example, both Alien Entertainment and the Who Shop are part of major metropolitan areas (Chicago and London, respectively), although both lie significantly outside the city center and are relatively geographically

marginalized. There may be financial reasons for these locations (Woo 2018, 135), since it is often cheaper to own/rent retail space outside the city center. But regardless of the reason, the simple need to travel to the store magnifies the alterity of being outside mainstream taste cultures. Being forced to move from a packed downtown area to a

relatively quiet suburban street corner to get to the stores engages a particular mode of pilgrimage-like travel. Herbert (2014) notes that "video stores' alignment with the geographic flexibility and customization typical of contemporary consumer culture"

helped to make them ubiquitous across the landscape; for more esoteric stores, being outside the metropolis rhetorically reflects a level of social and cultural alterity.

[3.12] Beyond pricing and geography, however, the actual interior space of the shops reflects a greater rhetorical sense of alterity. In the next section, I examine how the notion of historicity guides the construction of Alien Entertainment and the Who Shop, while the section after examines face-to-face activity within the walls of the shops. I should note here that rather than separate out the two shops and analyze them

separately, I'm deliberately pairing them together as a way of abstracting the concepts of historicity and activity—these are not unique to these two shops and reflect on larger subcultural practices in general.

4. The Who Shop, Alien Entertainment, and historicity

[4.1] Both the Who Shop and Alien Entertainment rely on—and in some cases,

manufacture—feelings of fan history to generate a closer connection to the fan

community. By creating and displaying a particular type of fannish history, the two stores generate a form of alterity from the mainstream. They are niche stores that remind visitors that they are niche stores. Each store reflects this in a different style, but both do so in order to create feelings of alterity within fandom.

[4.2] First, historicity is generated in both the Who Shop and Alien Entertainment through the appearance of an "old-fashioned" shopping experience. The history of geek culture is on display at both stores. For example, walking into Alien Entertainment is a bit like walking into the 1990s. Dusty shelves line the walls; it's a little cramped when the store is full; no computers are in sight. Even the merchandise is old (vintage), and stacks of action figures in 1990–2000 packaging line the shelves. The décor eschews modernization. Walking through the front door, shoppers find themselves in the middle of what looks like an organized jumble sale. To the right are the Marvel/DC action figures and books; to the left, the Star Wars section features cases filled with both expensive models and remainders from sales of toys of The Phantom Menace. Moving forward, one spies the Star Trek memorabilia—Kirk steins and Spock clocks meet

Christmas ornaments from the mid-90s. Further ahead, the Doctor Who section (the

largest one in the store) reminds visitors of the history of the show. Bookshelves are lined with the classic 1970s Target novelizations and copies of out-of-print Doctor Who fan films like Downtime. The Who Shop has a similar vibe, with the difference being that its entire collection is focused on Doctor Who. The store features a similarly cramped feeling, with shelves lining the walls and interior of the store, each crammed with clothes, books, toys, models, etc. As quoted by Alexandra Loosely-Saul, one of the owners, "'There's so much of Doctor Who, there are so many layers and facets, that there's something for everyone. And whatever it is, whatever a fan is looking for, we're here'" (quoted in Guerrier 2016, 45). The collection of merchandise stretches back more than thirty years and includes rare and out-of-print items. Of note is a large section of the store with Doctor Who figurines manufactured by Dapol in the 1980s. These older figures are highly collectable, although infamously poorly designed. The history of fan cultures manifests through the store, as these local shops appear unchanged from year to year. Both stores feature layouts that emphasize the history of the fandom through merchandise—decades-old items are on shelves next to brand new ones.

[4.3] In direct contrast, a big box store like Target or even a mainstream geek store like Forbidden Planet both heavily rotate their stock so that only the newer items will appear on shelves. Every visit to Forbidden Planet sees a reorganization of the content: the Doctor Who shelf itself may move (from the newer content at the front of the store when the show is on the air to the back shelves when it is off) and the actual

merchandise will change. Newer action figures replace older ones; only the most recent T-shirts will be presented. Stock refreshes, reflecting a deliberate presentism to the shop.

[4.4] There is nothing in either store that would seem judgmental to a fan—in

contrast, everything in the store is designed to help make fans feel as though they are looking through their own collection rather than a store's. Rare items are placed next to common ones. In Alien Entertainment, for example, rare signed photographs for sale line the walls while scores of remaindered action figures sit immediately beneath them.

In effect, the independent geek stores offer "familiarity and safety; familiarity with the items on display and the people who work there and safety from non-fans and the

homogeneity seen on the typical high street found in every village, town and city in the UK" (Geraghty 2014, 150). There are no large signs describing how much items cost; there are no store directories reminding visitors that they are in a store. Rather, the makeup and design of the store seems to more specifically match the feeling of being in a fellow fan's attic, or shed, or basement collection. The Who Shop, for example, does not group its T-shirt collection into styles; they are all hung on the clothing rack by size but in no particular order. Keen-eyed visitors can spy full boxes not yet shelved, cementing this aesthetic of individualized collections.

[4.5] Alien Entertainment and the Who Shop allow fans to purchase globally but

shop locally; they present fans with a local expression of a local, curated fandom. The history exhibited in the layout and contents of the store reflects an old-fashioned shopping experience that emphasizes local fandom. Fan merchandising blurs the line between the regional, global, and local. The products purchased at the Who Shop or Alien Entertainment may be international in origin, may traverse the continents to reside in store, and may reflect a globalist media environment, but they play an

important role in, and establish a clear connection to, a sense of local fandom within the spaces of the stores. The global is collapsed into the local, and an identification with mainstream fandom (or a popularity of fandom expressed via the mass production of

ancillary products) becomes subsumed by the immediate experience within the store

itself. In other words, it's as if the stores are saying "this is what fandoms in this area have been collecting for decades." In doing so, they serve as reminders to fans that shop there of the specific subcultural experiences of fandom in person—they harness the feelings of being in an old fashioned store that time has seemingly forgotten.

[4.6] One effect of this old-fashioned shopping experience is that both Alien

Entertainment and the Who Shop revive an aesthetic of amateur collecting to emphasize the alterity of fandom. An emphasis on individual curation seems to communicate that the stores are anything but mainstream. A mainstream, big box store or even Forbidden Planet has well-organized shelves of toys, prices clearly marked, with multiple copies

lining the shelves. In contrast, these independent stores often have unique organizational habits, less obvious pricing, and fewer copies (often just one) in the store. At Alien Entertainment, it's not common to find one type of action figure

covering up different action figures on the same shelf. It is closer to a fan's closet or shed than a store. Teresa Forde (2013) links the experience of being a fan to the

experience of browsing and shopping; the "flâneur" who buys items participates in

"memory work" of the experience of being a fan (66). You can find what you want, but you'll have to do some digging. And in doing the digging, the fan who visits the store is participating in the mythos of fandom as an alternative to the mainstream, represented by orderly big box or online shopping.

[4.7] Both stores concretize a particular history of fandom within the store's walls.

The merchandise certainly highlights a type of nostalgia, as fans who shop at the store can be reminded of previous generations' fan interests. The aforementioned sale of vintage merchandise also helps to develop this point—at both stores one can find

merchandise long out of print and generally hard to find, even on the internet. For example, I've purchased at both stores Doctor Who jigsaw puzzles from the 1980s (and neither was missing a piece!). The Who Shop in particular has hundreds of vintage

Doctor Who items, including classic 1980s books and VHS tapes. Alien Entertainment is a newer store, but the focus on history is hugely relevant to the interior design.

Merchandise for older television series like The Twilight Zone, Star Trek (the Original Series), and Buffy the Vampire Slayer, are placed in similar arrangements as the Doctor Who and Sherlock areas. The old mixes with the new. The Who Shop has been around longer and thus has more older merchandise on display, but similarly intertwines the new and the old. For Geraghty (2014), sifting through the toys of the past reveals deep truths about the current status of fans.

[4.8] The experience of entering a shop space that contains items from

[fans'] past is often the catalyst for renewing their passion for the original toy and restarting the collecting process. Stores that cater for fans by using

childhood memories and nostalgia are by no means just for adult fans, they

would go out of business very quickly if they were; instead, they act as sites

for multiple generations of fans, for kids, collectors, and enthusiasts. (149)

[4.9] The reverse here is also true: older merchandise establishes a sense of history within the fandom, but also concretizes that history into a particular reading. Speaking here about conventions rather than stores, Geraghty (2014) notes that "nostalgia plays a big part in the marketing and construction of fan experience even before fans set foot in the hall" (143). What the store chooses to carry or not to carry helps define what the history of that fandom will be.

[4.10] The Who Shop offers another site of historization for its fan visitors. For a three GBP donation (the money is given to charity), visitors to the Shop can open the doors of the TARDIS, hidden in the back corner of the store, and explore a tiny but packed museum of props, costumes, and details from the past fifty-five years of the series. The museum contains a mish-mash of items: A Yeti costume from the 1968

serial "The Web of Fear" stands alongside a poster from the 1977 story "The Talons of Weng-Chiang." Tom Baker's scarf from his final season—or, rather, a version that was made for photoshoots and Madame Tussauds wax museum—is included in the

museum, as well as original Daleks (including the Special Weapons Dalek!) and a

Cyberman. Amazingly, one of the original costumes from the 1964 serial "Marco Polo"

exists and is just sitting out, near the Vincent Van Gogh costume from 2010's "Vincent and the Doctor." Few of these costumes are behind Plexiglas; some of the props are but many are not. The museum gives the impression—quite rightly, I found out after talking to the owner—that each piece was simply collected over a very long time. Some were rescued from the BBC scrap heap; others were purchased over time from various

previous owners. The items have been collected piecemeal over the three decades of the store's existence.

[4.11] The museum is an odd jumble of items, but the space and (non)organization

helps to frame it as authentic. This is not just the collection of a corporation aiming to make money—this is a real fan's collection. Compare this museum to the one at the (now closed) Doctor Who Experience in Cardiff (see Forde 2013; Beattie 2014; Booth 2015; Garner 2016). Completely authorized and run by the BBC, the Experience

featured an interactive exhibit where visitors could play the part of the Doctor's companion and were then ushered into a museum of Doctor Who items, including all

the former Doctors' costumes, some of the new series companions, original TARDIS

consoles, sonic screwdrivers, and other props from the series. It was exciting to view these items at the Experience but it presented a sanitized and authorized experience

—designed by the BBC to offer a particular view of the show, it had the slick veneer of a corporatized experience. Additionally, despite the fact that aspects of the classic series were present (most notably, a replica of the original TARDIS console), the majority of the Experience focused on the new series, which may have alienated long-term or older fans. As I (2015) have previously written, the official Experience tour actually

"lack[ed]…the sense of authenticity that a nonofficial (or fan-created) media tour might engender" because "industry-created fan destinations…serve as incongruous

refocalizations of the affective work of fans, exemplifying and highlighting commercial aspects of the media text" (101). The fan-made, Who Shop museum offers a greater

sense of authenticity because it is not as sleek, professional, or organized. It simply is a collection and creates a feeling of alterity through its disorganization and nonprofessional-seeming display.

5. Face-to-face activity as generative of alterity

[5.1] In addition to the creation of a particular fannish history, both the Who Shop and Alien Entertainment use formal face-to-face interactions in order to develop fannish alterity from the mainstream. One of the ways the stores do this is through special events that promote a particular type of fandom (Woo 2018, 135–137). Geraghty (2014) has noted that "second-hand fandom"—the "display and purchasing of popular culture, both old and new, at stalls and autograph booths"—can have the effect of creating a sense of subcultural fandom within a larger fan community (148). Both the Who Shop

and Alien Entertainment do this through official events and convention appearances, as well as appearances in authorized merchandise that solidifies their connection to the industry and functions as a bridge between the fandom and the media text.

[5.2] The Who Shop's location in London allows it to host guests from the history of Doctor Who, including actors, writers, directors, and other behind-the-scene personnel.

The Who Shop is party to a number of in-store signings and appearances by actors from the series. In the past, series luminaries such as Jon Pertwee and Tom Baker (the Third and Fourth Doctor), John Barrowman (Jack Harness), Elisabeth Sladen (Sarah Jane

Smith) and others have all signed DVDs, books, and photographs at the store. Recently, for example, the store had a signing of a fan-made production of The Daemons of Devil's End, a continuation of a 1971 story called "The Daemons," which featured original actors Damaris Hayman, Katy Manning, David Simeon, and Richard Franklin.

All the actors were present to sign, lending authenticity and legitimacy to the store.

[5.3] Similarly, Chicago's Alien Entertainment has become a hub of in-person fan

activity, also featuring in-store signings and hosting events such as "An Evening with Big Finish" where the executive producers of the Doctor Who audio adventures held a discussion panel at the store. Using the store as this kind of discussion space highlights what Woo (2018) calls the "venues for interaction": sites where fans can connect,

network, and exchange information (132). Alien Entertainment's relationship with Big Finish further highlights their focus on alterity within the fan community. Big Finish produces original Doctor Who audio adventures, a niche output for an already niche media franchise (see Hills 2007). The owners of the store also run an annual

convention, Chicago TARDIS, which features scores of guests each year from the

classic and the new series of Doctor Who (see Booth and Kelly 2013; Porter 2013; Booth and Booth 2014). The store has become a go-to place for Doctor Who fans to

gather and meet each other in between the annual conventions. Given their proximity to the guests, the owners of Alien Entertainment help to craft the fan experience, both in the store and at the convention, and shape the way the fandom participates.

Emphasizing particular panels at the convention helps to solidify what is important to the fandom for the fan audience. For example, at the 2017 convention, the main stage programming featured the traditional interviews with the stars, but also panels like "The Doctor as Teacher," about how Doctor Who has helped teach fans "the concepts of compassion, representation, intersectionality, and problem solving over its 50+ years in existence," and "13th Doctor: A Look Ahead," which discussed "the implications of—

and reactions to—this year's exciting announcement" that Jodie Whittaker would be the first woman to play the Doctor. Putting the panels on the main stage frames the

discussion: these panels are what the con runners feel are the most important/most crucial discussions. Programming in the smaller "Grand Ballroom C" (a grandiose name for a room with forty chairs) includes panels like "Socializing in the Doctor Who

Fandom," dedicated to examining the growth of Doctor Who fan groups, and "Online

with Doctor Who," about the availability of online resources and communities in the fandom. Programming in C is not as emphasized and is less well-attended, becoming

less crucial to the fan experience at Chicago TARDIS. There's nothing wrong with

programming decisions like these, but by making them, these local mom-and-pop geek

shops help to influence the fan community, shape what the fan community talks about, and present how the fan community enacts its opinions.

[5.4] While fandom itself may be becoming a more visible identity, there are still subcultural identities generated and fostered throughout fandom. Similarly, both the Who Shop and Alien Entertainment have authority within the fan communities because of their perceived connections to the originary text. Beyond the historicity of the museum or the activity of convention-running, both stores have been featured in

special-edition comics. The Who Shop appears on a three-cover run of Titan Comics'

Doctor Who comic, drawn by artist Lee Sullivan, where the 10th Doctor, 11th Doctor, and 12th Doctor covers for Christmas 2014 fit together to form an image of the store.

Both the Who Shop and Alien Entertainment feature additional exclusive comic covers with the names of the stores printed on the cover. There is an expression of a shared connection between the store and the media text, solidifying the authority and

authenticity of the stores' brands within the framework of Doctor Who. In effect, the text legitimizes the stores, which in turn legitimizes particular nonmainstream views of fandom.

6. Conclusion

[6.1] Shops like the Who Shop and Alien Entertainment use their authority as

merchants to help shape the fandom, and to reinforce the feelings of alterity within fan subcultural communities through discourses of historicity and activity. Importantly, both discourses are reflective of, and appear to react to, the rise of digital technology; both the Who Shop and Alien Entertainment emphasize the importance of local, in-person events while also developing a web presence. In addition to the in-person

merchandise sales, the museum, the convention, and the signings, both shops use the internet frequently to sell wares around the world. That both stores have maintained a connection to the fan base itself portends a revisitation of traditional ways of

understanding fandom.

[6.2] The implications of this study are important for understanding two aspects of the contemporary fandom. First, how space is related to identity. The actual spaces of the Who Shop and Alien Entertainment—both geographically distant from the center of the major city as well as the interior aesthetics—proclaim a particular alterity from mainstream culture. Further, future empirical research—including archival material, interviews with the store owners/customers, or market research—would be a

worthwhile goal to further develop a body of scholarly knowledge on specific practices of independent geek store owners (for example, clutter can occur when shipments

arrive; e.g., Berenstein 2012; Woo 2012; Herbert 2014).

[6.3] Second, this study is also important from a methodological point of view.

Studies of fandom have often taken the form of analyses of particular fan texts (e.g., fan fiction) or fan activities (e.g., attending conventions). These are highly visible attributes of fandom and help shape common perceptions of the fan. But the everyday interaction

of fans outside of these more formal activities also has a significant effect on how fans perceive themselves. The retail environment as a space of everyday interaction presents an under-examined focus of scholarship. As this rhetorical analysis has shown, these spaces can have an effect on fans, and the next stage of this research would include interviews with fans (see Berenstein 2012) to determine in what ways fans might

themselves identify such effects.

[6.4] So why is this the "future of fandom"? Or rather, we might say a future of fandom? I contend that fandom is focusing more and more on face-to-face interactions, not despite the rise of digital technology, but because of it. Lest I be accused of "rear-view mirrorism," the McLuhanesque (1967) condition where "we march backwards into

the future" (75) by only seeing the future in reference to the past, it's important to note that the actual practices of fans have not stayed static over the past decade, nor will they stay static for the next fifty years. Indeed, to argue otherwise would be ludicrous; the types of technologies that fans use to produce creative work will, in some way, affect the type of work produced (Hills 2013). However, as Peter Kelly and I (2013) have

noted, "many aspects of fan identity have remained relatively unchanged, despite the rapid diffusion of new technology into fans' lives" (57). Fans themselves often stay tethered to the past in what non-fans may consider extreme ways. One of the ways the concept of the past manifests in fandom is through debates about canon—the stated

past-ness of a media text. Canon debates and fanwork reveal a slavish devotion to canonical details that non-fans may have already forgotten about. Authenticity (in this example, represented by reference to canon), as Corse and Hartless (2015) note, is rooted in the fan community. The past is very much present in these fandom

communities—and therefore helps to determine the future. The same, I argue, is true of the spaces that fans inhabit: through references to the fandom's past as well as markers of fans' presents, these retail spaces hearken to a fannish future. Fans and fan-oriented merchants (both the Who Shop owners and the Alien Entertainment shop owners are

themselves fans of Doctor Who and other cult media texts) canonize particular aspects of fandom.

[6.5] Fans are seeking out contact—as they always have—through in-person

meetings and conventions because the community of fans (often fostered and developed through social media) solidifies with personal contact. This isn't to say that digital technology can't enable fandom, but rather that tangible fan content encourages

meaningful interaction. Fans buy merchandise in stores or at conventions even though it's often more expensive than buying online for many reasons: the unique memories engendered by the transactions, the personal interaction, or the feeling of helping an independent store. Simultaneously, the media industries (by which I mean both the

mainstream producers of media content and the stores that sell that content, like Alien Entertainment and the Who Shop) want to encourage more fans to buy more

merchandise, so they find new ways to market and develop fan interests. One way they do this is to assert the importance of fannish alterity—if fans are a unique market, they can uniquely be marketed to.

[6.6] Both stores strive to maintain a balance between the object of media fandom

and the fandom itself. Through a cluttered and seemingly disorganized store, they establish the verisimilitude of a fans' collection. In effect, this car-boot-sale aesthetic asks the shopper to act fannish, to participate with fandom in a particularly commercial, but not corporate, manner. And this helps solidify the alterity that these stores generate, as it is visible participation with a tangible fandom. Alien Entertainment and the Who Shop aren't selling fan-made merchandise. They're not selling 'zines or homemade

clothes. But they are selling the idea of fandom as something outside of mainstream interests. They are selling fans on what it means to be a fan. Although the mainstream media industries might be presenting fans with particular representations of what one type of fandom may be (see Bennett and Booth, eds. 2016), the Who Shop and Alien

Entertainment reinforce the local contexts and subcultural paratexts of Doctor Who fandom, enlivening the fan experience through historicity, activity, and alterity.

7. Acknowledgments

[7.1] My thanks to the anonymous reviewers for the thoughtful comments. Thanks

also to Gene, Karen, and Taylor at Alien Entertainment and Alexandra and Kevan at the Who Shop. My thanks to Katie Booth for the helpful dialogue and editing expertise.

8. Note

1. See Woo (2018) for a contemporary reading of geek as a particular social and cultural identity revolving around marginality.

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THEORY

Fandom names and col ective identities

in contemporary popular culture

David Peyron

Aix-Marseil e University, France

[0.1]

Abstract—Fandom names are one of the first ways for fans as a

group to express their taste. As a category of thought, they allow fans to

bond with the object and with a community. Within this collective,

selecting a name is a performative way to bring the group into existence.

It is also a differentiation tool (from other audiences) from which

attitudes emerge, making it possible to describe these communities as

subcultures. In the digital era, names are the result of collective

mobilizations revealing tensions between fans and industries, leading to

new ways to assert and present oneself on social networks and media.

[0.2]

Keywords—Bronies; Browncoats; Onomastics community;

Potterheads; Reflexivity; Tributes

Peyron, David. 2018. "Fandom Names and Collective Identities in Contemporary

Popular Culture." In "The Future of Fandom," special 10th anniversary issue,

Transformative Works and Cultures, no. 28. http://dx.doi.org/10.3983/twc.2018.1468.

1. Introduction: Toward an onomastics of fan

communities

[1.1] For several decades now, academic literature has addressed the functioning of fan communities; however, little has been documented with regards to the subject of their naming. Today, these names—from Potterheads (Harry Potter) to Tolkiendils (J. R.

R. Tolkien) to Trekkies (Star Trek)—make up an essential part of how fans present

themselves. The aim of this article will therefore be to explore what fandom names say about collective and individual identities, their relationship to cultural industries, and the evolution of these communities in the digital era. This will by no means be an

exhaustive examination of this issue, but it will open some new avenues to broadly consider fandom names as a relevant approach for analyzing the symbolic significance of such a self-categorization.

[1.2] In order to illustrate what is at stake with this phenomenon, let's begin with an example. In June 2011, more than a year before the release of The Hunger Games (2012), the first film adapted from the literary saga of the same title, a group of fans caused a commotion when it came to deciding what they wanted to be called. This

dystopian literary universe, created by American novelist Suzanne Collins, in which young people are randomly selected to battle to the death in immense arenas, was

widely successful even before being adapted for the big screen. Growing expectations and promotion of the film only intensified the enthusiasm. And so, at the beginning of summer 2011, many media outlets began reporting on the yet-to-be-released film and evoked the importance of the phenomenon. That is how the term "Jabberjays" (which in the book refers to a bird used for spying) was coined to refer to Hunger Games fans in an article published June 9, 2011, on E! News's website (note 1). The author of the article is Ted Casablanca who, at the time, was writing an online column dedicated to celebrity gossip titled "The Awful Truth." In the article, he used the term "Jabberjays" to contrast Hunger Games enthusiasts to those of the Twilight saga created by Stephenie Meyer, who had a name already (Twihards).

[1.3] Several fans, on forums, the Wiki of the saga, as well as on Facebook and

Twitter, reacted swiftly and negatively to the moniker. On the saga's official Facebook page, producers decided, after having seen the magnitude of the uproar, to act very quickly; on June 10, they opened a debate regarding the subject (note 2). The post in question received more than 800 comments, which contained an array of proposals

(Mockingjays, Mockingeeks, The Hunger Gamers, Tributes, and so on). At that point, some decided to take matters into their own hands and established a democratic process to choose a name collectively. Administrators of Down With the Capitol, one of the universe's principal fan websites, decided to take a poll, and it was accompanied by text explaining that not only did they not appreciate the given name, but also they were not particularly "keen on the media as having the final say in what our fandom is called"

(HungerGame123 2011). Fans mobilized after the article appeared, and they

participated in the poll. The final results showed a majority (36.8 percent) in favor of the name Tributes (which, in the book, refers to those selected to participate in the games); however, the proposed name Mockingjay (another bird, a symbol of resistance to the powers that be) received a high number of votes as well (23.6 percent). So, a second poll was created to decide the name once and for all, and, in the end, it was a rather decisive victory for Tributes, which was officially adopted at the end of June 2011 and continues to this day to be used by fans the world over.

[1.4] This example is representative of the tensions surrounding the topic of naming fan groups and highlights the vast body of actors involved in the process. It contains all the points that will be addressed in this paper to tackle this central question: what role does naming fandoms play in the social construct and existence of these communities?

[1.5] To delve into this topic, I will examine several examples of fandom names and their uses. These examples come from personal research, notably regarding geek culture in France, composed of a large corpus of ethnographic analysis of fan blogs and forums (Peyron 2013). I will also examine the work of other researchers who have studied

similar collectives. All media types will be investigated and juxtaposed with this transversal issue, since its true reach can only be found using a comparatist approach.

For the purposes of this paper, I have limited the scope to fictional universes (excluding, for example, sports and music) so as not to overextend a spectrum that is already very broad and to possibly overlook not only certain differences between types of fandom that have points in common but also specificities irreducible to comparison. These examples will serve as a foundation for the theoretical analysis of the effect of a group name on how fans of popular media express their feelings of belonging, on their

interactions with cultural industries, and on the ways in which they affirm a lifestyle specific to fan cultures.

2. Naming a community to help bring it into existence

[2.1] To come back to the example of Hunger Games, there is an element that both

the media and the abovementioned fans have in common. In both cases, it is taken for granted that a human collective can be called a Hunger Games fan community. This is not, however, evident in principle, and it does not seem risky to presume that the people who are included in this collective, and/or those who claim to be, can possess,

according to other criteria, very distinct social characteristics. Just loving the saga does not seem sufficient to establish a community and would appear somewhat simplistic for the individuals in question.

[2.2] Here, we encounter a relatively old media studies question involving the use of the notion of public, defined by Gabriel Tarde as "a purely spiritual collectivity, like a dispersion of individuals who are physically separated and whose cohesion is entirely mental" (2014, 7). How could we consider such a fragile and heterogeneous entity as a whole, as a coherent collective? This question is in part answered when, following Tarde and many others, we take into account the reflexivity of any public whose

"existence involves a capacity for self-imagination, through the modes of collective representation, and through the validation of belonging" (Dayan 2000, 433, my

translation). In the same way, for someone to call him- or herself a fan is not an observation but a reflexive assertion that engages the individual in a certain type of relationship with him- or herself and others as a specific public. Therefore, it is mainly a question of clarifying, through fandom names, what a community is when speaking

about a fan community. The thesis posited here, following Daniel Dayan's work, is that it's not a concrete, fixed object clearly identifiable in its physical location but a continual work in progress based on a feeling of belonging, as well as a social

imaginary performed by individuals who are ready to identify themselves as a human collective, sometimes heterogeneous, through the accumulation of self-defining

elements and a renewed balance of power with other collectives.

[2.3] So, we understand that being considered as a group is probably the least problematic issue for fans in the abovementioned controversy. Hunger Games fans

refuse the name the media gave them but do not object to the fact that the media

consider them as a whole. One must assume that even a minimal tie (like a name) to the group is necessary for it to come into existence, precisely because it is easy to consider that this community is not actually a community. By being affirmed, this

(self-)categorization is therefore not seen as alienating for a group of individuals, even if they are very heterogeneous, since, in said group, they are able to find a confirmation of belonging and therefore a recognition and social validation of their identity.

[2.4] We also understand that, as Dayan (2000) states, any form of validation or proof that this community exists is more than welcome. There must be a continual elaboration of strategies attesting to the fandom's reality; by doing so, it becomes effectively more real. In order to do this, the group must recursively reassess itself to become more than the sum of its individual parts, or as Luc Boltanski (2009, 117) puts it, to be its own institution: an entity that attests to and confirms the social reality of things and groups.

According to the author, institutional acts are performative but also fragile, since these entities do not possess a concrete reality and are therefore easily contestable, just like the things they validate. It implies a permanent institutionalization process, and the group's name is to be understood as the intention to fix this process in place. Once the name is decided upon and adopted, it can then be used as a tool of affiliation and recognition for new fans, who strengthen and reinforce the group. It is this entire process—its functioning, its fragilities, its temporality, its impact on both collective and individual identities, seen through an onomastic lens—that is at the heart of the thinking undertaken here.

[2.5] So, I put forward the idea that it is precisely because fans consider themselves a community that they become one: a collective in which belonging is reflexive and

asserted. The importance of a name is proportional to the perceived complexity of a group that possesses liminal contours and weak ties. This entails, first and foremost, bringing to the fore the role of sociability in a fan's attitude.

[2.6] Numerous studies have shown over the past twenty-five years that, contrary to a commonly used pathological approach described by Joli Jensen (1992), being a fan is not the sign of an obsessive passion based on fetishistic and repetitious contact with an object. Quite the opposite, this term refers to a large spectrum of activities that goes well beyond the object's boundaries and must be understood as a social practice. As Henry Jenkins writes, if everything starts with a fan's "activity in making meaning and finding pleasure within commercial texts," they "are motivated not simply to absorb the text but to translate it into other types of cultural and social activity" (1992, 209). In other words, fun always falls within the scope of an interpretive community that the fan community forms. This makes it possible to develop a microcosm, beneficial when the other members of the public or friends and family do not understand the individual's taste or do not share the same level of attachment to the object.

[2.7] To consider oneself as belonging to a fandom also falls within the logic of

authenticity: it is about being accepted and judged as a true fan by a collective of peers whom the fan considers apt to make such a determination and therefore to be

recognized as a true fan through his or her identity. For Christian Le Bart, this

mechanism is cyclic: there is differentiation with nonfans, then undifferentiation with those who are considered peers and, finally, redifferentiation within the collective (2004, 285). Therefore, the feeling of belonging is a fundamental step taken by fans to put this cycle in place. The challenge then becomes one of situating the collective in order to carry out the effort of socialization.

[2.8] The first step to belonging is actually knowing what one belongs to, so as to be able to refer to the entity and build what functionalist sociology calls anticipatory socialization to the reference group, thus creating a more effective affiliation.

Individuals share not only a passion but also the conviction that what they are

passionate about contains strong enough points of interest to produce a common,

transversal bond and consequently a community. So, knowing the name chosen by the

community and attributing it to oneself is a key moment in the recognition and

validation of oneself and of the group as fans. Socially, to have a name is to be.

[2.9] This ontological and performative argument regarding the existence of groups through naming, insisting on the role of the imaginary and reflexivity, is not new. It was aptly formulated by Cornelius Castoriadis when he explained that "every human being defines himself or herself and is defined for others in relation to an 'us.' But this 'us,' this group, this society is first of all a symbol, the insignias of existence that every tribe, every city, every society, has always ascribed to itself. Above all, of course, it is a name" (1987, 87). A name is representative of a group, and it embodies the collective and the image it wishes to portray. As a symbolic communication tool, it brings with it a set of meanings that informs others about the group, starting with the fact that it exists.

For someone to call him- or herself a Potterhead is not only affirming that an important part of this person is defined by a passion for the saga created by J. K. Rowling, but it is also attesting that this name places him or her into a collective that is large and active enough to be named.

[2.10] The individual claiming to be part of it performs an act that, by synecdoche, confirms the rest of the group. The fact that the community has a name means that it is possible to deem that it exists. Obviously, that is not enough, but it appears to be a primary condition from which the rest can flow. The use of a fandom name is driven by a two-pronged movement: first, to feel like an accomplished fan by wearing and touting a name that places a person in a community; and second, to attest to the existence of the community by simply affirming affiliation to it. To say, "I am an X-phile" is like saying

"I am a fan of The X-Files," but also "I am not the only one." It is continuously placing sociability at the heart of affirmation, thus doing away with, in part, the stigmatization associated with the fan's attitude. The logic is circular: the group exists, the proof being that I am part of it and I can call it by its name, and I am a true fan, the proof being that I am part of the group that has a name.

3. Name as differentiation tool

[3.1] The performative mechanism mentioned above is also a notion of exclusion and definition. As Bruno Latour states, "For every group to be defined, a list of anti-groups is set up as well" (2005, 32). Naming makes it possible to distinguish between those who are and those who are not and makes it so that using the name is a way to stabilize the collective's contours, whose fragility must continually be offset by a reflexive effort of elaboration and definition. The aim of this effort is to organize social issues so as to have an identity marker that works for all the group's members but that is also exclusive to the group.

[3.2] For Tributes, it wasn't simply a matter of affirming that the community existed by selecting a name; it was also a matter of defining it beyond what could be said by the media and industries, which are seen as other. Naming the collective and oneself as a community member creates tension between producer and public and makes it possible to define the contours of the collective by defining what it means to be a fan. This is evoked by Philippe Le Guern in his study of a French fan club for the TV series The Prisoner (1967–68) when he states, "Being a member of the fan club is certainly not enough to be considered part of the in-group, one still has to adhere to the fans'

practices and values, to their habitus, through which members form a relatively coherent whole" (2004, 185, my translation). The name is used as a symbol for shared traits and values, and taking on the name is to adhere to them. The necessity of a name can only be concomitant with that of differentiating and defining oneself in the same movement.

[3.3] This is the case, for example, for Bronies, adult fans of the animated series My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic (2010–). Created by Lauren Post, this series depicts the adventures of a unicorn in a fictional universe inhabited by talking equidae. The target audience for the series is clearly young children, and the channels that broadcast the show are a pretty good indication of this (for example, The Hub in the United

States). However, on the internet, and on social media in particular, an impressive number of adults very quickly started claiming to be fans of the show and expressed their specific relationship to it. Claire Burdfield call this emergence "the accidental audience of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic" (2015). As with other fan

communities, Marion Nollet notes that it was the act of giving a name to the fandom that largely contributed to its taking shape: "If the word is the beginning, then by giving it a name, it exists in the eyes of its members" (2012, 8, my translation). This is an important step, since a different audience was originally targeted, and this unexpected appropriation means that there is a collective of viewers who are not visible to

producers.

[3.4] In their discussions, for example, Bronies brought to the fore secondary

characters who were not very popular with the younger viewership. They also

developed a set of rituals and a way of interpreting the series that set them apart from other viewers. This provoked "an underlying tension…with the adult fans, who

expected to have a product which corresponded to their expectations even though they were not being targeted" (Nollet 2012, 56, my translation). As with the Hunger Games, it is out of this tension, as well as the relationship between fans, producers, and the general public, that the name emerged. It is not only a validation tool, but it also brings to the table another way to interpret the object. After having gained enough visibility, this alternative set of viewers was brought to the attention of the show's producers, who in turn started to slip into the series references to cult works from fan and geek cultures (Star Wars, Doctor Who, and so on), allowing those who spot them to feel as though they are seeing something that another public would not be able to catch. This is a good illustration of the three-way relationship based on fans' singularization.

[3.5] Here, the name serves a purpose that was already mentioned, that of separating the wheat from the chaff: to be able to distinguish the true fans, those who rightfully take on the name, from the others. On the internet, in fan forums, or on Facebook pages dedicated to popular objects, there are numerous lists that make it possible to decipher whether one is a true fan. These lists say a good deal about the requirements for being considered a legitimate fan. And the title or the way they begin is almost always built on the same model: "You know you are a [fandom name] when/if…" For example, on a

Harry Potter fan website, we discover, among other things, that "You know you are a potterhead when…your parents don't understand the pain you felt after you finished watching D[eathly] H[allows] part 2" (Zar_far11 2016). This "when" refers to moments in everyday life where the difference with others is perceived, thus highlighting and showing the reflexivity of the fan's attitude. The common name serves as a sort of aid for these moments in which any true fan would recognize him- or herself.

[3.6] That is how we can, according to Benedict Anderson (1983), consider these

human collectives as an imagined community. In his essay on the spread of nationalism, the author underlines the fact that all nations rely on imaginary symbols to forge links to their seldom-experienced origins, which are gradually instituted in the form of a feeling of camaraderie and community, even though no one person can be acquainted

with the entirety of his or her fellow citizens. The feeling of being affiliated with a country, with a nation in the modern sense of the term, therefore relies on constructing a consensus around what that nation is (its history, borders, etc.), and on the sharing of certain sacred texts and values that make a transversal belonging possible.

[3.7] This phenomenon can also be likened to religious communities, which have

long made it possible to bring together individuals of the same affiliation while drawing the boundaries of acceptable norms and heresy. It is possible to draw a parallel with fan cultures since, on the most basic level, what binds fans together is, above all other things, a text or a group of texts. So, the difference with nationalism and religion is to be found in the institutionalization of links. Without the state or religious institution validating the group's boundaries and the canon of sacred texts, the sense of belonging becomes more fragile and must emanate from the group itself, which relies on the texts to carry out a reflexive effort. Using them as a starting point, individuals can band together and form a collective, an imagined community, and give it a name so as to actualize and solidify potential social links around a shared passion. This is similar to

the example of sports fans who, as early as the beginning of the twentieth century, formed fan communities, seeking to have their voices heard, and gave themselves

names (generally that of the team). As stated by Dayan, fans "attempt, by displaying certain signs, to convert a statistical reality into an experiential or a community reality"

(1992, 19, my translation). This reflexive work of conversion really brings the

community into existence, or more precisely, it allows for the sense of belonging to emerge in a context where it is useful to have an influence on the power relationships in order to differentiate oneself, or to present oneself to others in a form of self-typification. The fact that it is "imagined, that it started from anticipation or fiction does not prevent it from transforming into a reality" (Dayan 1987, 182).

[3.8] Fans develop what Dick Hebdige (1979) calls a subcultural style, an expressive and shared form of identity that transforms into a set of integrated and asserted

symbols, effectively bringing the group into existence. Like hippies, punks, geeks, goths, and other movements established through an historic process, for each fan

community to become a subculture, it must have a name to highlight its transversality of tastes and values.

[3.9] It is entirely possible to see this phenomenon among older fandoms, the ones that forged the mechanisms we know today. Fans of the transmedia universe Star Trek, often associated with very pejorative critiques regarding their obsession and lack of social life, rejected the name Trekkies (used mockingly) in the 1970s and took up a different name, Trekkers, which is devoid of this aura of negative representation

(Sconce 2004). This is best summed up in the definition of Trekker found in the

collaborative Urban Dictionary: "Yeah, I'm a Star Trek fan, but I'm not a Trekkie, I'm a Trekker. Why? Because it better reflects what being a fan is about" (Marston 2006).

Name as self-categorization is simultaneously a component of the group's existence and a way for it to reject what it is not, as well as working on gaining recognition.

[3.10] Naming can also be a way to establish differences between fan groups. For

example, being a fan of Middle-earth, the universe created by J. R. R. Tolkien, could take on multiple meanings in a cultural sphere where adaptations from one media type to another are legion. And the name Tolkiendils (made up of a combination of the

author's name and the suffix -dil, meaning "friend" in Elvish) was in use for decades before the appearance of Ringers, a name designating fans of the Lord of the Rings films made by Peter Jackson (Shefrin 2004). This differentiation shows that multiple communities do not necessarily confirm the same reality or the same temporality and objects of appropriation. A name is always indicative of a necessity for each group to organize and create its own boundaries.

[3.11] This leads those who identify with the values attached to the name and who proudly wear it to reject those who do not correspond to such values. As stated at the beginning of this section, establishing a group by using a name is also going to invite the creation of an antigroup and therefore antifans. Since a fandom does not possess any official power (as would be the case, for example, of a fan club that requires

administrative registration), this rejection is above all punctual and symbolic. If the

Hunger Games fans examined in the introduction reacted so harshly to the article that had attributed a name to them, it was also because it had drawn a comparison with

Twilight fans , who are often associated with hysterical behavior, a caricature of teenage femininity (Busse 2013, 73). And even within a fandom, defining exactly what the

name encompasses can be a source of conflict and discussion, leading to what Derek Johnson (2007) calls a "fan-tagonism," particularly pertinent to this theme.

[3.12] This, for example, is the case for Potterheads. Depending on the individual, the elements required to be able to assert this identity are variable and reveal what each one invests in this identity. For some, it involves knowledge and the capacity to mobilize it:

"To be able to call yourself a true Potterhead you must be able to have a conversation about the wonderful wizarding world at any time of the day or week" (Hubbell 2015).

And for others, reacting to this type of statement, it could simply be a question of showing an appreciation for the saga: "I don't believe that we should categorize

ourselves and others like this, because it is basically just making 'true fans' or

'Purebloods' seem like the superior Potterheads…In my opinion, to be a Potterhead…all you have to do is simply enjoy the franchise" (BlameTheNargles 2015). So, what can be seen coming out of these conflicts of definition is a hierarchy linked to the central idea of authenticity: to take on the name is to be a true fan, thereby excluding the fake fan according to criteria that everyone agrees on.

4. An identity chosen for mobilization and self-

presentation online

[4.1] Let's come back to the idea of nation used by Anderson. Here, this reference is not simply useful as a comparison: it is asserting a metaphorical territory or people that fans very often describe as their collective. The term fandom itself, a portmanteau combining fan and domain (or kingdom), perfectly expresses this territorial component within an imagined community. More specific names often express the will of a fan

community to label itself as a population by using a name that is already affixed to groups within the fictional world. This is the second major type of fandom name, the first being a play on the fictional title. Examples of the first and most widely used type of fandom name can be found in groups for series like Glee (2009–15: Gleeks), longtime multimedia fandoms surrounding Sherlock Holmes (Sherlockians), or video games like Minecraft (Markus Persson/Mojang, 2009–: Minecrafters). However, when the title does not easily lend itself to wordplay or a catchy add-on, the second type often comes into the picture (note 3). So, using the example of Hunger Games, the term "Tributes"

designates fans but also categorizes a population within the fictional diegesis.

[4.2] A comparison with an actual nation, however, quickly exposes its limits since, as we've seen, it has to do with a chosen collective identity, adopted and not ascribed. In this sense, fans embody a more general social condition of contemporary societies, a new form of individualism and self-construction that includes first and foremost an emplotment of the path taken, and "in this framework, personal identity becomes the

result of a reflexive project" (Allard 2005, my translation). This tendency that some researchers call second, or reflexive, modernity (Beck 1992) does not push to eliminate classic forms of identity (gender, religion, family, nation), but to make them more flexible and more scrutinized and to add new forms that have a fluidity and an

expressive force of something that stems from a choice. Identity engagement in a fan community addresses a permanent necessity of some proof of self, which includes, for example, developing a skill, an expertise, or a keenness in an area that can then be used in exchanges with people who share in and practice the same passion. Fan cultures

constitute a typical example of "a passage, in our societies, from a prescribed identity to a chosen identity" (Le Bart 2004, 284, my translation). The entire process of adopting a name and the importance of asserting it is to be linked to this passage, and it embodies the reflexive dimension of identity, of which fandoms are but one example.

[4.3] This is all the more true in the era of what Paul Booth calls digital fandom, where these imagined communities become virtual communities, emerging from

interactions (for the most part written) between fans in digital environments that they have adapted to their activities. As he states, "they literally scribe the community into existence" (2010, 130). The rallying cry and birth certificate of this subcultural collective, of a fan community, is to leave digital traces of its existence, starting with its name. This is what happened for fans of Hunger Games but also for fans of My Little Pony and Harry Potter. It is online that all, or nearly all, came about, since it is a space in which everything is held together by individuals who are committed to maintaining a chosen link, revealing the contemporary evolution of questions concerning identity and how to be a fan.

[4.4] If, as Booth states, the internet is a privileged space for these neo-communities, it is mainly because this medium allows for individuals who, despite being relatively isolated in their passion, are able to construct a sense of belonging. More particularly, meeting under the same banner online (on websites, on forums, and via social

networks) and using a transversal tool (a name) give individuals a voice. That is why when a name emerges, it is often connected to a moment where it is felt that some sort of mobilization is necessary. For different reasons, the examples of Bronies and

Tributes are perfect embodiments of this. A name does not emerge at any random

moment or simply because a critical mass of individuals claims to share in the same passion. This critical mass is indeed necessary, but without a triggering element it is not enough to set off a mobilizing reaction. One reason for a name could be to stand out or to create a more balanced relationship with the industry, challenging the asymmetry of the producers' hegemonic position of power.

[4.5] This is the case for Browncoats, fans of the short-lived series Firefly (2002–3) from creator Joss Whedon. In her essay on their mobilization, which came after the series came to a premature end, Tanya R. Cochran notes that the fandom name and its creation are inseparable from the campaign launched on the internet in favor of a

follow-up to the science fiction franchise (2008). Again, in this instance, the name refers to a population within the diegesis; the name Browncoats denotes those on the losing side of an interplanetary civil war. A parallel can clearly be drawn between the

trauma of the defeat present in the characters and the fans' desire to rally against the network so the series would come back in one form or another (note 4). It appears, for example, in the documentary Done the Impossible (2006), which recounts the Browncoats' mobilization. A fan named Chuck explains that "Browncoats, it's not just, you know, a cute name…that's who we are, we're the people who lost and we're the

people who are, you know, brothers in arms." Here, the identification and symbolism of the name play a role in solidifying the bond. It is the struggle and the name Browncoat that, for most fans, established the feeling of being part of a community. Once the group was named and their goals were clearly defined, it was possible to create collective websites and an online petition, set up meetings to buy the DVDs, and show that the community was alive, all of which helped to mediatize the showdown. There is no

doubt that, among all these individuals, there exists a great diversity of social situations.

However, like a nation banding together to confront a humanitarian disaster or a

terrorist attack, the need to be unified is paramount and, to do that, symbolic banners must be used. To be a Firefly fan is to be a Browncoat, but as one fan cited by Cochran states, "A fan can be passive, a Browncoat never is" (2008, 239). There again, the name embodies much more than the community; it also defines their way of being, acting, and their common destiny. Therefore, to assume the name is also to take on the values and attitudes attached to it.

[4.6] The mobilization of the Browncoats, like that of the Tributes, is underpinned by the values of resistance to a totalitarian order attached to the fiction itself. This is also found in the activism of Harry Potter fans, who promote the same values of caring and helping one another present in the saga, and have transformed it into a charity, the Harry Potter Alliance (Bourdaa 2015). From each fan community—according to the

content of the work, the social context involved in the creation of a feeling of

community, and the type of practices necessary for the group's existence—emerges a reflexive effort of being and acting that could potentially bring the collective closer to other enthusiasts but also differentiate them. Regardless if someone is a Tribute, a Browncoat, or a Whovian, he or she is still a fan, but different paths were taken, and consequently different identities were formed according to the variables involved. The first is a case of making sure that the book-to-film transition goes off without a hitch; the second is about keeping an ephemeral work alive by putting up a fight; and the last is about reconciling fans from across multiple generations with a series that has been going since 1963.

[4.7] This can lead us to think about Marxist theory, which evokes the passage of a class in itself (statistical reality) to becoming a class for itself (reflexive movement) by way of a struggle that brings the group together. The context and issues are obviously different, but new forms of identity and digital media uses can typically lay the

groundwork for microagreements and asynchronous mobilizations, giving a voice to

individuals who are otherwise invisible to the industries. The internet allows, at little cost, for the construction of a feeling of belonging that solidifies during a struggle. This turning point constitutes what Luc Boltanski and Laurent Thevenot (1991) call a reality test, a moment where the group's reality emerges because it has been confronted with the necessity of becoming coherent in order to achieve a goal, often linked with

assertions or with a controversy that has been brought into the public arena. In this sense, the emergence and affirmation of a name in moments of crisis (the canceling of a series, media criticism, massification of a niche phenomenon by its being adapted to a different medium) is explained in that it allows for a collective response to a specific issue. The fan community thus becomes a cooperative and interrelated network driven by a common goal, which goes hand in hand with the work of Matt Hills (2017), who, drawing on the theories of Howard Becker, puts forward the idea of "fan world."

[4.8] Fans' identities, reflexive and asserted, are therefore the embodiment of their expressive and participative activities. It does not simply boil down to moments of crisis, because those pass; it is also about being able to affirm who one is in a space where self-presentation is used as an indicator to other participants in the situation of communication. On Facebook and Twitter and in blogs or forums, a fan must always

present him- or herself using a profile or with a short biography, providing a space in which one is identified through the traces that he or she has selected to leave. This (relative) freedom also embodies what has changed in one's relationship to the self and is reflected on the internet.

[4.9] On a personal profile, one can choose not to divulge certain information and put forward other information judged pertinent. This means that "in this exercise,

individuals are confronted with their own identity, and are forced to perceive

themselves exteriorly" (Marcotte 2003, my translation). If it allows people to gather in spaces dedicated to their passion (with the help of the territorial metaphor), it is also possible, in this recursive context, to assume the name individually when going online.

It is all the more advantageous and efficient to write "I am a Whovian" than "I am a fan of Doctor Who." This is important in the era of hashtags, when identity is transformed into a series of easily identifiable keywords (tags) found using a search engine. Many Twitter profiles, which have to respect a strict limit of characters, function on the principle of listing fandom names. Using a profile to cite names, instead of the works themselves, puts forward the idea that it's the individual who is expressing him- or herself, and that the object only serves as a prop in expressing his or her singularity and belonging: it is about the people, their identity, and their social ties, not only about the TV show, the movie, or the video game. Fans have perfectly mastered how they present themselves online, like this fan on a forum about My Little Pony: "I have been a Bro (Pewdiepie) for 3 years, an Echelon for 5 years, a Potterhead since the first book came out, a Whovian for two years, a Disney fan (and cosplayer) since a very young age too"

(Aemilianae 2014). The advantage of names and an online presentation is therefore, as seen here, to simply be able to intersect adherences by bringing out the strong liminality of fandoms, thereby creating a unique configuration that reveals the individual behind the tastes and collective affiliations.

[4.10] Obviously, a name is not the only thing that explains the advent and

massification of any given fandom. It is but one tool among many and, even though it may be increasingly common, by no means is it an imperative one. Several cult works do not have names for their fans, and it should be explained why some have a name and others do not. Why Star Trek and not Star Wars? Why do Hannibal (2013–15) fans

have a name (Fannibals) and those of Supernatural (2005–) do not? As we have seen, it can be assumed that it has to do, in part, with the fact that the name emerges most often during a moment of tension or when there is a need for a passion to be recognized and legitimized. In the first example, Star Trek's success set in slowly before becoming a massive phenomenon, which can create some turbulence within a group, whereas Star

Wars was a huge hit right from the beginning and therefore did not experience any

growing pains. Similarly, Supernatural is still on the air, whereas Hannibal was canceled despite intense mobilization. This may help explain things to a certain extent, but only to a certain extent, and so it would be worth exploring these ideas in the future with a case by case study. Also, a name sometimes exists but does not take (some

people proposed, for example, Warsians or Warriors for Star Wars, names which never really caught on); each fandom should therefore be examined in order to understand how and why this type of failure occurs. Certain individuals can also consider

themselves fans without taking on the fandom name that is widely used. It may be that they do not use it simply because they do not have a lot of contact with other fans, or they may just refuse to use it outright. This does not make them less of a fan, and it would be interesting to look into such a refusal and understand the motivation behind it.

[4.11] The goal here was not to show that a name is imperative for fans to have a sense of belonging; it was simply to show an approach that can reveal a good number of important issues concerning these collectives. It allows us to redefine the notion of fan communities as a collective, based on a common imaginary as well as a determination for self-affirmation, recognition, and subcultural authenticity. As suggested by many authors, if being a fan is not a binary state but a continuum (Bury 2017, 125), then using the fandom name can be seen as one of the steps on this continuum. This study shows us that the name as a category of thought, self-perception, and group perception can play a central role in the reflexive and participative effort of contemporary fandoms.

Moreover, it represents an evolution of how one self-constructs in the era of chosen identities and digital tools, which is drastically changing people's relationships not only with their peers but also with the industry. The elements put forward in this paper lead us to consider the onomastics of fan communities as one efficient way to examine these collectives, paving a way for future research on the dynamics of their emergence and social role.

5. Notes

1. The article is not online anymore.

2. Still available online at https://www.facebook.com/thehungergamesmovie/posts

/234077423275583.

3. For a serious list of examples where these two types appear see http://tvtropes.org

/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/FanCommunityNicknames.

4. It did come back with Serenity, a film released in 2005.

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THEORY

Straightwashing Undertale: Video games

and the limits of LGBTQ representation

Bonnie Ruberg

University of California, Irvine, California, United

States

[0.1]

Abstract—A widely beloved video game, Undertale (Toby Fox,

2015) has proven popular with players, reviewers, and commentators

from across sectors of games culture that often hold conflicting views.

What makes Undertale's broad appeal particularly surprising is its queer

content, which can be found in both the game's representational and

interactive elements. As many have observed, homophobic attitudes

have long characterized reactionary gamer subcultures, which are often

explicitly hostile toward diversity. Yet these subcultures are also among

those most vocal in their appreciation of Undertale. What explains this

seeming contradiction? While it is tempting to interpret this phenomenon

as a sign that gamer culture is becoming more inclusive, a critique of the

discourse surrounding the game's reception reveals that Undertale has in

fact been straight-washed by many writers and fans. This

straightwashing entails both an erasure of the queerness found in

Undertale and a recasting of the game as one that jibes with the interests of heterosexual male gamers, such as innovative design, player mastery,

nostalgia, and humor. At a moment when diversity has become central to

academic and popular discussions of video games, increased LGBTQ

representation is often presented as the ready-made fix to antiqueer

discrimination. Yet the straightwashing of Undertale serves as a

cautionary tale. It suggests that the cultural impact of LGBTQ

representation in video games has its own limitations, and that a game

with queer characters may not only fail to change the mindsets of

straight players; it may itself be stripped of its queer potential by its

reception.

[0.2]

Keywords—Cultural discourse, Games culture, Homophobia,

Limitations of inclusivity, Player reception, Queer erasure, Queerness

Ruberg, Bonnie. 2018. "Straightwashing Undertale: Video Games and the Limits of LGBTQ Representation." In "The Future of Fandom," special 10th anniversary issue,

Transformative Works and Cultures, no. 28. http://dx.doi.org/10.3983/twc.2018.1516.

1. Introduction

[1.1] By some measures, Undertale (Toby Fox, 2015) could be called one of the most beloved video games of all time. In the months following its release, the game proved immensely popular with players, reviewers, and games industry professionals alike. It was voted "Best Game Ever" on the popular website GameFAQs (Frank 2015), beating

out classics from canonical game series like Zelda and Mario. It was, for a period, the highest rated PC game of all time on the review aggregate site Metacritic.com (Dale 2015), and it was nominated for Best Debut, Best Narrative, and the Innovation Award at the 2016 Game Developers Choice Awards. As of December 2017, Undertale had sold more than two and a half million copies on the online distribution platform Steam.

In response to the game's popularity, Kotaku reporter Patricia Hernandez (2015) wrote,

"I've never seen a game this young command so many dedicated fans."

[1.2] Among the factors that make this success story so unexpected is the wide range of players from across varied sectors of games culture who have expressed their

adoration of the game. As Adrienne Shaw has written, the term games culture, which describes the network of players, practices, communities, and discourses that surround video games, is often used in an overly simplistic sense, replicating the misconception that games culture can be understood as synonymous with prototypical and often

stereotypical gamer identity (Shaw 2010). In fact, contemporary video game cultures contain numerous subcultural sectors and divergent perspectives, making it rare for a game to achieve the quality that has been attributed to Undertale: its seemingly universal appeal (Smith 2015). Indeed, Undertale has been embraced by a wide array of players who represent a spectrum of positions within games cultures and the broader sociopolitical landscape of video games—though admittedly, even in the face of its widespread popularity, some naysayers have decried Undertale as a game for "social justice warriors" (Hernandez 2015). At a time when friction between progressive and reactionary corners of gaming have reached new heights, in large part because of the harassment campaign #GamerGate (Wingfield 2014), Undertale seems to have taken on the role of the great equalizer, the game that almost everyone can agree on enjoying.

However, there is another key feature of Undertale that makes its so-called universal appeal more surprising still: its notable inclusion of LGBTQ content and queer themes.

[1.3] As many have observed, homophobia has long been a problem within video

games as a medium, the games industry, and many areas of games culture (see Gaming in Color 2015). Even in more recent years, as large, influential AAA game studios have begun to acknowledge the importance of increasing LGBTQ representation in games

(Makuch 2015), and as queer gaming communities have flourished around events like GaymerX (Hosea-Small 2016), it is common to witness considerable resistance to the inclusion of queer content in games, especially from those sectors of games culture dominated by white, straight, cisgender men and boys, still commonly presumed by

many content producers to be the core audience for video games (Fron et al. 2007).

While games culture itself has often been defined against a notion of the more general, societal mainstream (Shaw 2010), there also exists within games culture a set of

hegemonic ideologies and a perceived gamer default. This is related to what Mia

Consalvo has described as "toxic gamer culture," in which "misogynistic…patriarchal privilege attempt[s] to (re)assert its position" over women and others considered

outsiders (Consalvo 2012). In much the same way that toxic gamer culture has lashed out against women, it has also aimed its attacks at queer people. For instance,

homophobic backlash can be observed in heated player responses to recent

announcements from Blizzard and Riot Games that their titles Overwatch (2016) and League of Legends (2009), respectively, include gay characters (Frank 2016; Crecente 2017). Indeed, the gamer identity itself is fundamentally tied to straightness. As Megan Condis has argued in her work on fan responses to LGBTQ content in BioWare games:

"True gamers and fans are assumed to be straight…or, if they are queer, it is assumed that they will remain in the closet" while participating in gamer community spaces (2015, 199).

[1.4] How, then, has Undertale, with its LGBTQ characters and queer themes as described below, achieved its widespread success, which extends into corners of

gaming that have otherwise proven themselves actively hostile toward diversity? Here, I seek to answer this question by turning a critical eye toward Undertale's reception in these spaces. To understand the ways in which the game has been received, and how

these players have responded to the game's LGBTQ content, I look at the rhetoric that both reflects and perpetuates the terms of the game's reception. I take as my illustrative examples of this discourse a representative selection of game reviews from websites that cater to an imagined gamer readership, as well as forum threads from the Undertale subreddit, since Reddit itself is notorious as a breeding ground for toxicity in games culture (Quinn 2017). Together, these examples gesture toward a larger set of rhetorics and logics through which Undertale has been understood and indeed rendered acceptable to segments of games culture that are often unwelcoming toward queerness.

This analysis also opens the door to a broader critique of LGBTQ representation in video games. Increasing LGBTQ representation is commonly presented as the readymade answer to problems of homophobia and queer marginalization in games. As the

case of Undertale suggests, however, the cultural impact of queer video game content has its own potential limitations. Even a game with queer characters, queer plotlines, and queer approaches to game design can be recast by players resistant to diversity.

[1.5] It is perhaps tempting to view the phenomenon of Undertale's universal appeal with optimism, as some have done (Speight 2015), by interpreting it as evidence of a promising shift away from discriminatory attitudes in games culture. However, as I demonstrate here, a closer look at the rhetoric that characterizes the game's reception within primarily straight, cisgender male player communities tells a very different story.

Far from embracing or even addressing the game's LGBTQ content, this rhetoric seems to almost entirely ignore Undertale's queer elements, while turning an insistent focus on the elements of the game that jibe with dominant straight gamer culture. Given this, I argue, Undertale's popularity does not speak to an increasingly tolerant attitude toward LGBTQ representation but rather an active straightwashing, characterized in large part by queer erasure and a reframing of the game's key aspects. The rhetoric of this

reception attempts to overwrite Undertale's existence as a queer game, disavowing its LGBTQ elements and remaking it as a game that conforms to the values of gamer

masculinity. Such rhetoric accomplishes this shift by foregrounding elements of the game that are culturally coded as straight and male: namely, its challenging gameplay, innovative design, and nostalgic appeal for real gamers. This straight reimagining of Undertale stands in stark contrast to the game's queer interpretations, suggesting that it has earned its universal appeal not because of but rather in spite of its LGBTQ content.

[1.6] At this crucial moment in the history of video games, when the medium seems truly poised to move beyond its long-established status as the territory of straight men and boys (Cross 2016), and when the call for increased LGBTQ inclusivity in games is becomingly increasingly audible across the games industry, games academia, and

games culture (Ruberg and Shaw 2017), Undertale stands as a cautionary tale that speaks to the potential limitations of LGBTQ representation in video games. The push for a greater presence of LGBTQ characters and romances in games is important work that can be highly meaningful for queer players; it also represents a key element of the fight for social justice in the medium. However, as many queer game studies scholars have argued, LGBTQ representation is not the only form that queerness can take in

video games, and LGBTQ representation itself often merits critique. The

straightwashing of Undertale suggests that queer progress in games culture—which is often characterized as the increased presence and improved quality of LGBTQ

characters in games with widespread receptions (Karmali 2014; Parlock 2016)—is in

fact complicated and precarious. Indeed, the straightwashing of Undertale raises many questions that extend beyond this individual game. What is the value of diverse

representation in a video game if that representation can be ignored and overwritten by its players? Even as it represents LGBTQ identities and queer desires, is there

something lacking in the type of queer representation that a game like Undertale offers, which allows it to be straightwashed? Having confronted the potential limitations of LGBTQ representation, what alternative ways can we find for moving forward in the

work of promoting greater queer inclusion and social justice in video games?

2. Undertale as queer video game

[2.1] While much of the rhetoric around Undertale's popular reception has ignored and overwritten its queer elements, as will be demonstrated below, LGBTQ content and queerness more broadly are in fact prominent in the game. These queer elements take many forms, ranging from the representational (e.g., the inclusion of

nonheteronormative characters and romance storylines) to the interactive (e.g., the design of ludic systems that resonate with LGBTQ experiences and queer theory). As

Spencer Ruelos has argued, Undertale "communicates queer values through its diverse narrative representations and game mechanics… In Undertale, the representation of queer genders and sexualities at many times is inseparable from the player choices and mechanics of the game" (Ruelos 2017). In this way, Undertale can be said to embody many of the tenets of a queer video game as described by scholars and designers

contributing to the burgeoning critical paradigm of queer game studies (Ruberg and Shaw 2017). As Colleen Macklin writes in "Finding the Queerness in Games," a game's queer aspects may be found in its characters or storyworlds, but also in what a queer game does and "lets us do," such as by "subverting our expectations of control and agency as players" (Macklin 2017, 250–52). By including queer mechanics as well as queer representational elements, Undertale also embodies what Edmond Chang has called "queergaming," presenting players with a world in which queer identities and desires are common, yet which goes beyond the "superficial [queer] content" included in many AAA games that include LGBTQ representation (Chang 2017, 17). The

queerness of Undertale also extends out from the game into its fan communities. On websites like Tumblr, queer game fandoms work to highlight the queer aspects of the game through the creation of fan lore, fan fiction, and fan art. Together, these factors make Undertale a notably queer game.

[2.2] The first and perhaps most direct way in which queerness manifests in

Undertale is through the game's representational elements. An important example of this LGBTQ representation, the game features a protagonist of nonbinary gender who is referred to using they/them pronouns. Undertale begins when this protagonist, a human child, falls into an underground realm of monsters (figure 1). Over the course of the game, the child progresses through many fights and plot twists to find their way back to the surface. Though the inhabitants of this realm are called monsters, they are rarely monstrous. Instead, they form a charming, motley cast of characters that come in all shapes, species, and quirky personalities. As a society, the monsters are struggling with their own historic conflicts, but individually they are also equally concerned with the everyday trials and tribulations of making friends, wooing love interests, seeming cool, and doing right by others. Along with talking with characters and exploring, the player's primary interactions consist of attack encounters with enemies: standard fare for roleplaying games, but with some important changes. In addition to a traditional fighting system, in which players select from a series of actions, Undertale incorporates a

"bullet hell" minigame feature; players must navigate a small heart around incoming obstacles in the midst of the turn-based fight. Also notable is the list of possible attacks and other options that a player can choose from during battles, which include distinctly nontraditional options like flirt, compliment, and (in the case of certain canine enemies) pet. The game's tone is humorous but also sincere, and its style is simultaneously nostalgic, exuberant, and absurdist.

Figure 1. The player-character, a child of nonbinary gender, begins a journey in the underground world.

[2.3]

Undertale's gender nonbinary protagonist is far from the only queer figure in the game. Many other characters also hold LGBTQ and otherwise nonheteronormative

identities. Indeed, the large number of such characters is one of Undertale's most unique representational elements, especially given that most video games—with the

exception of those emerging out of what has been called the "queer games movement"

(Keogh 2013)—still rarely include multiple LGBTQ characters, contributing to what

Todd Harper has described as the treatment of diverse characters in games as "unicorns"

(Harper 2015). By contrast, Undertale takes place in a world where queerness is common. In an email exchange, the game's creator, Toby Fox, had this to say about the game's queer elements: "I'm really glad the game has…given kids exposure to a story where queerness is normal" (personal communication, April 2017). As an example of

this normalizing of queerness, one of Undertale's most prominent narrative subthreads focuses on the budding romance between Undyne, a fierce lady fish creature, and Dr.

Alphys, a female scientist dinosaur. By making the right choices in combat and

conversation, the player can earn the "best ending," in which Undyne and Dr. Alphys officially become a couple. The character Mettaton is another important queer figure in Undertale. Mettaton begins the game as a boxy, rolling robot gameshow host—but later trades his mechanical form for a human-esque body with feminine curves and a

swooping hair style. In both of his forms, Mettaton is presented as not conforming with dominant binary norms of gender identity and presentation. In the case of Mettaton, Undertale's queer fan communities have been instrumental in surfacing this character's queerness and establishing it as canon—or at least as fanon. Many queer fans have

argued for Mettaton as a transgender character (https://lgbtqgamearchive.com/2017/02

/12/mettaton-in-undertale), and fan art that highlights Mettaton's non-gender-normative appearance is a prominent staple of the Tumblr fandom that surrounds the game.

[2.4] LGBTQ representation in Undertale also extends to its minor characters. The game-world is populated by a large array of briefly encountered nonplayer characters whose gender identities are indeterminate or who express queer romantic interests. In addition, many characters manifest queerness through their nonnormative bodies and alternative modes of desire, both of which are recurring themes in the game. Some of these character designs are playfully bizarre, such as a monster who looks like a wobbly Jell-O creation. Oftentimes, the bodies of these monsters both reflect and disrupt

expectations around gender and sexuality—suggesting an implicit link between

monstrousness and queerness. One example is Aaron, an enemy who is ostensibly part horse and part buff merman (figure 2) and who attacks by flexing his muscles. Such elements are part of the game's humor, but they also represent a genuine fascination with questioning and indeed queering bodies. To the extent that these characters speak to diverse representation, they also push against established categories of diversity, exploring difference through iterations of the body that resist accepted social categories of identity. Similarly, attraction and interpersonal connection take on notably varied forms in Undertale. Flirting, for instance, is often used to complicate standard models of intimate relationality. At one particular moment, the player can choose to telephone Toriel, a parental figure who guides the player through the game's opening sequence, and either flirt, call her "mom," or both. At such times, the game playfully blurs clear-cut distinctions between normative standards of intimacy, such as parent-child

relationality versus relationality between lovers.

Figure 2. Aaron is part horse and part merman, and fights by flexing, a sign of

Undertale's interest in nonnormative bodies.

[2.5] In addition to its inclusion of explicitly LGBTQ characters and themes,

Undertale presents subtler queer representational elements. As Adrienne Shaw has noted, in-game representations of queerness can take many forms, such as a poster for a gay bar hung in the background of an otherwise seemingly straight area. "These things aren't necessarily part of the main text," Shaw points out, "but they're part of the universe that the text creates" (Ruberg 2017, 168). Undertale partially performs the creation of its own universe by integrating coded references that signal the game's engagement with queerness. For example, when the player faces off with Mettaton in his nonrobot form, the battle is dotted with queer-coded markers. Some of the obstacles that the player dodges in the "bullet hell" minigame are high-heeled boots (figure 3) and a spinning disco ball, calling to mind a nightclub scene or a drag performance. Mettaton himself can clearly be seen vogueing—moving his arms and legs into quick, dramatic poses that reference drag balls like those depicted in the documentary Paris Is Burning (1990). Through these touches, the game places itself in dialogue with traditions of camp, drag, and other performances tied to LGBTQ identities.

Figure 3. The player's battle with Mettaton is marked with queer-coded imagery such as high-heeled shoes.

[2.6] At other times, the links between Undertale and queer culture relate to a shared ethos rather than visual references. Even as the game foregrounds fighting, it draws heavily from the language of contemporary consent culture, which has a strong

presence in online queer communities (Femifesto 2016). If the player follows the

skeleton guard Papyrus home for a date, Papyrus confesses, "I'm sorry. I don't like you the way you like me." This moment stands out because, while it is not uncommon to see romance between players and characters in video games, it is far more standard for games to treat these relationships as rewards (a canonical example is Mario's ongoing quest to win his beloved Princess Peach)—or, as Jetta Rae (2015) has noted, as

"conquests." Undertale resists this model, giving its nonplayer characters the right to say "no" and challenging the presumption that a player should have agency over the desires of others. In this way, the game not only includes nonheteronormative characters and stories, but also itself resists the problematic cultural expectations around sexuality and gender that video games often replicate.

[2.7] Lastly, Undertale can be understood as a queer game through its many resonances with queer theory, which are often embodied in the game's interactive and systemic elements. These resonances are multiple and nuanced, and merit more

scholarly exploration than space affords here; the following examples represent some potential pathways for future work. One is the way the game enacts queer world-building and suggests a "utopia organized around principles of nonviolence, intimacy, and communication" that echoes the notion of queer utopia expressed by José Esteban Muñoz (Ruelos 2017). Another example can be found in the game's engagement with

the imagery of glitches. During a boss battle, Flowey, a menacing character and a force of chaos, simulates shattering the screen and claims to have corrupted the player's save file. In these moments, Undertale plays with the queer glitch as that which, as Jack Halberstam has written, "tears down" expectations and creates space for alternative ways of being in games (Halberstam 2017, 197). At times, the interactive elements of Undertale also resist the neoliberal narratives of queer progress that have been critiqued by theorists like Heather Love and Elizabeth Freeman (Love 2007; Freeman 2010).

Among the game's unique features is the fact that it allows players to proceed past enemies without killing them. Yet sparing one's enemies also comes with a price:

pacifist players earn no currency or experience points in their fights, making them

increasingly vulnerable as battles get harder. In this way, the game offers a vision of antiaccumulation that challenges the expectations of the heteronormative, capitalistic society from which the game emerges.

[2.8] As this overview of Undertale's queer representational, thematic, and conceptual elements suggests, the presence of queerness in the game is both notable and pervasive. My goal in offering this overview, which is far from exhaustive, has been to demonstrate the importance of LGBTQ perspectives and queer thinking to Undertale.

This articulation of Undertale as a queer game stands in striking contrast to the writing on the game that has circulated in mainstream gamer spaces, as represented by the

examples below. The contrast between these two rhetorics highlights the notable

absence of discussions of LGBTQ representation in this discourse, underscoring how this discourse has enacted an erasure of queerness and a subsequent straightwashing of the game. While it is possible and even likely that the game's subtler queer elements, such as its references to queer cultures and its resonances with queer theory, may go unnoticed by nonqueer gamers, it is hard to imagine that the game's explicit

representations of LGBTQ subjects and desires could be easily overlooked. Leaving

these elements out of the discussions that have taken place around Undertale in predominantly straight, male sectors of games culture represents more than an

oversight, a blind spot, or even a simple (if worrisome) attempt to pretend the game's queer elements are not there. Rather, it entails an active attempt to reimagine the game itself as straight.

3. The straightwashing of Undertale

[3.1] Given Undertale's many queer elements, it is notable that the discourse that has surrounded the game in otherwise reactionary sectors of games culture, where it has been the subject of numerous game reviews and online community discussions in the

three years since its release, seems to show almost no engagement with—or even

acknowledgement of—the game's LGBTQ representation. Of the 43 reviews of

Undertale listed on Metacritic, the majority of which have been published by websites like IGN, The Escapist, Game Informer, and PC Gamer that cater to an assumed gamer readership, a mere three mention topics of gender or sexuality, and then only in passing, most often to note that the game's protagonist is "gender ambiguous" (Plagge 2017; McDonald 2015; Forman 2015). Yet, as a closer look at the rhetoric of these reviews and community discussions reveals, this discourse has not simply overlooked

Undertale's queer elements. To the contrary, through queer erasure and a subsequent reframing of the game, this rhetoric has actively worked to draw attention away from the game's queerness and rewrite Undertale as heteronormative—effectively

straightwashing the game.

[3.2] Like whitewashing, the process through which social phenomena or works are

stripped of their connection to people of color, straightwashing entails a symbolic wiping away and subsequent painting over of a work's LGBTQ aspects. A

straightwashed work becomes an object of appropriation and colonization by

representatives of the gender and sexual status quo. Edmond Chang has approached the issue of straightwashing video games from the perspective of game development, by

looking at how the designers of games like FrontierVille (Zynga, 2010) and World of Warcraft (Blizzard, 2004), which also have large gamer followings, have "fail[ed] to expand or include queer content," replacing moments of queer possibility with

"ostensibly stable stereotypes and milquetoast representations of normative love, desire, and heteronormative relationships" (Chang 2015). The case of Undertale demonstrates a second way in which a video game can be straightwashed: through its critical and player reception. For examples of the rhetoric that enacts this straightwashing, I analyze the discourse found in a representative sample of game reviews, as well as forum

threads in "true gamer" (to echo Condis's term) spaces. Game reviews are an important site of critique and a valuable window onto games culture more broadly because, as Clara Fernández-Vara has argued, many gamers rely on game reviews as their primary sources for understanding video games (2015); from these reviews, they draw much of their thinking about the medium and its meaning.

[3.3] If the vast majority of reviews of Undertale do not talk about queerness, what do they talk about? A survey of these materials reveals a key set of recurring themes that, though they may not appear at first to relate to gender or sexuality, in fact work to establish Undertale as a heteronormative game. The first example of these themes is a focus on the choices between violence and mercy that Undertale offers. Whereas most video games require players to kill their opponents in order to proceed, Undertale gives players the option to spare their enemies. Indeed, in interviews, game designer Toby Fox has pointed to the idea of creating a RPG in which players can choose not to kill as one of his primary goals in developing the game (Isaac 2015). In Undertale, players'

decisions to kill or spare opponents has real repercussions. Many of the so-called enemies that the protagonist faces are also friends, and their presence or absence can seriously change the game's narrative. Unlike in most video games, where players can wipe their past play-throughs and restart the game, in Undertale, a player's history is never entirely erased from the game's memory. From this basic decision, to kill or to spare, two opposite approaches to playing Undertale have emerged. In the first, which fans call the "pacifist run," players attempt to complete the game without killing any opponents. By contrast, in the "genocide run," players kill all enemies. This is the core of what is referred to as Undertale's morality system.

[3.4]

Undertale's morality system does indeed meaningfully question accepted norms of aggression and success in video games. However, the rhetoric that reviewers have used to describe the ethical choices with which the game presents the player

demonstrates how discussions of Undertale's morality system have also been used to recast the game in ways that align it with heteronormative gamer masculinities. This can be seen, for example, in a review from The Escapist, in which Angelo M.

D'Argenio writes about the player's choice to kill or spare their opponents:

[3.5] Why not just hurt people? This is where the morality system comes

in. You see, the game characterizes random enemy encounters not as

mindless beasts, but as people who have hopes, dreams, and families, just

like you…Yes, it is easier to simply kill your opponents than to reason with them, but that's because the game is making a statement. Violence IS easy!

Hurting people is easy. Caring about people…is what's difficult. (D'Argenio

2015)

[3.6] While this quote seems to emphasize the social "statement" that Undertale makes through its morality system—that violence has consequences, even in video

games—it simultaneously underscores the rhetoric of what is easy (violence) versus what is difficult (caring). Playing as a pacifist is harder than playing as a murderer. As Betsy DiSalvo has observed in her research on constructions of gamer masculinities, performing one's "mastery over the machine," as when playing a video game at the

highest difficulty setting, is an important part of presenting oneself as masculine in gamer spaces (DiSalvo 2016). In addition, how difficult a game is to play and how

skilled a player must be to progress have long been markers in the division between so-called hardcore and casual games, in which some players (typically cisgender men) are seen as real gamers because they supposedly take games more seriously than casual

players (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_v4CIhGcxiY). By emphasizing the

technical challenge of being good in Undertale—that is, simultaneously ethically good and good at the game—reviews such as this one sidestep the progressive and arguably even queer potential of the game's morality system and instead recast it as an

opportunity to perform oneself as a particularly masterful and by extension masculine gamer.

[3.7] This emphasis on Undertale's morality system also contributes to the straightwashing of the game by reframing its ethical choices through a fantasy of

control that replicates existing gendered hierarchies. A review from the website PC

Gamer exemplifies this mode of rhetoric, which promises players the opportunity to profoundly alter the game through their choices. Reviewer Richard Cobbett writes,

"Going for a genocide run, where you murder literally everybody, essentially turns the whole thing into a pitch-black horror game. A peaceful run meanwhile leads to one of the most charming and heartfelt RPGs ever made" (Cobbett 2015). Rhetoric like this presents Undertale as an opportunity for players, under the guise of questioning morality, to enact new levels of agency over a game world. This imagined agency

stands in direct contrast to other, queerer elements of the game, such as the emphasis on consent discussed above, which is founded on the notion that the player cannot and should not in fact have total control over the game world. Ironically, this element of Undertale's mainstream popularity—that it supposedly offers the player considerable control over the game—is actually less accurate than the presence of this repeated theme suggests. The choices that Undertale offers are largely prestructured and preprescribed (Wisp 2015). By incentivizing pacifism, the game steers players toward a specific set of ethics, while allowing them to feel like they are making these difficult but valiant decisions on their own. In such instances, these reviews seem to be

overemphasizing the agency that the game affords players, as if preemptively

responding to an unspoken anxiety about the fragile artifice of heteronormative

masculine power that the game itself inspires.

[3.8] Another prominent theme in these reviews that both sidesteps Undertale's queerness and attempts to establish the game's heteronormativity is praise for its innovative design. For example, in a review for GameSpot, Tyler Hicks writes that

Undertale is "one of the most…innovative RPGs to come in a long time, breaking down tradition for the sake of invention" (Hicks 2015). Though much of the LGBTQ and

queer content discussed above could itself be considered innovative, the writers of these reviewers choose to focus their discussions of Undertale's innovativeness on its formalism and gameplay mechanics. Along with the game's morality system, its

fighting system is commonly lauded for its original combination of turn-based RPG

combat and bullet hell games. This emphasis on formalist innovation suggests a straight interpretation of Undertale in two ways. Firstly, by characterizing the game through the rhetoric of innovation, this discourse positions Undertale and its creator Toby Fox among an imagined pantheon of singular great white men and their innovative game

creations. As Zoya Street has written, understanding video games through narratives of great men often sidelines marginalized voices and strips games of the complexities of their production (Street 2017). Focusing on Undertale's innovative formalist elements also allows reviews to divert attention away from discussions of the game's

representational aspects. In game studies, argue Jennifer Malkowski and TreaAndrea Russworm, "the trend toward code analysis and platform studies [has] inadvertently worked to silence, marginalize, [and] dismiss representational analysis…

Representational analysis becomes the less rigorous, less medium-specific way to

approach video games, compared to a focus on 'hard-core' elements" (Malkowski and

Russworm 2017, 1–2). A parallel type of work can be seen operating in these reviews, which highlight the game's hard-core elements—typically coded as masculine and

supposedly unrelated to issues of identity—as a way to "silence, marginalize, and

dismiss" discussions of its diverse representational elements.

[3.9] Similar to these reviews' focus on innovation is their recurring discussion of Undertale's nostalgic appeal. Innovation and nostalgia may seem opposed; one looks forward to notions of a changing future, while the other reflects backward to the past.

Yet this body of writing on Undertale often directly ties the game's innovative aspects to the fact that it draws from earlier titles, such as Earthbound (Nintendo, 1994). "The same strengths that made Earthbound a timeless classic are the strengths that make Undertale a joy to play in 2015," writes D'Argenio. When it comes to video games, however, nostalgia is inextricable from gender and sexuality. In her work on video game arcades, Carly A. Kocurek has written about gamer nostalgia as gendered, and

specifically about how a nostalgic attitude toward arcades reflects a "longing for an adolescent homosocial space…a particularly male place…tied to notions of socializing boys and 'making men'" (Kocurek 2015). One could extend Kocurek's observations

about the ties between arcade nostalgia and imagined boyhoods by addressing the fact that nostalgia itself is a matter of cultural and socioeconomic privilege that cannot be separated from identity. Despite talk of the game's universal appeal, Undertale's nostalgic appeal is in fact far from universal. Queer players, female players, and players of color frequently have less access to games during their childhoods, meaning that nostalgia itself is unequally distributed and more likely to be experienced by straight, cisgender, male players. The presumption that all players share the same nostalgic affect

when they encounter Undertale overlooks and indeed further marginalizes those whose personal histories do not fit the image of the traditional gamer. Through this emphasis on gamer nostalgia, along with related emphases on challenge and innovation,

Undertale is reframed as a gamer's game. In this way, this discourse straight-washes not just the game's content but its intended audience as well.

[3.10] Humor is another tool that is used in these reviews—as well as in other forms of discourse production taking place in gamer spaces—to straight-wash Undertale.

Often, a focus on humor in this discourse actively works to undermine the game's queer elements. Tyler Hicks, a reviewer for GameSpot.com, writes, "Even within combat,

Undertale layers on the humor. Sometimes you're dodging bullets, but you also need to watch out for frogs…and even the tears of a depressed opponent" (Hicks 2015). Here, the game's humor is described as all-encompassing, a fundamental trait that pervades all elements of the game. Undertale is indeed funny; the game's writing, for example, is full of puns. However, presenting Undertale as fundamentally comic has a particular use in reimagining the game as straight. In reviews like Hicks's, the game's comedic elements are often used to explain its universal appeal. Much of the game's comedy is made up of in-jokes related to video games, which long-time gamers are most likely to understand and find funny. Claiming that these jokes have universal appeal promotes a misguided assumption that all of Undertale's players share this same knowledge.

Additionally, in reactionary sectors of games culture, humor is often used as

justification for ignoring or outright deriding socially engaged interpretations of video games. To say that Undertale "layers on the humor" without considering the meaning of that humor is to take part in (or at least to provide fodder for) the troubling practice of insisting that games should not be interpreted through cultural lenses because they are

"just for fun" (Ruberg 2015). Evan Cooper, writing about the mass audience reception of the television sitcom Will & Grace (1998–2005, 2017–), observed a similar phenomenon. Straight viewers interpreted the show's gay humor, which Cooper

describes as "an essential weapon for outsider groups in dealing with discrimination and oppression," as mere "silliness" and "foolishness"—played for straight laughs at the expense of gay characters (Cooper 2003). As in the case of Will & Grace, Undertale's humor is detached from its queer meaning and transgressive potential by its reception and appropriated as a tool for making the game acceptable to straight players.

[3.11] How this emphasis on Undertale as comic marginalizes LGBTQ perspectives is exemplified in a November 2015 forum thread on the Undertale subreddit. The Undertale subreddit is a forum-based community that has remained active even three years after the game's initial release. There, fans of the game share tips, fan art, and other Undertale-related materials. Unlike more queer and queer-friendly Undertale fan communities, such as on Tumblr, conversations that take place on the Undertale subreddit tend to steer clear of social issues in relation to the game. This is in keeping with the tenor of Reddit more generally, many corners of which are home to subcultures that are openly hostile to diversity, and which has been a key site of organizing for game-related harassment campaigns. The thread in question, titled "Undertale's crazy success proves gamers are ready for feminism, queer romance, and progressive values,"

begins with a link to an opinion piece by the same name published on a website called

Game Skinny. Focusing on the relationship between Undyne and Dr. Alphys, the article states that Undertale "has something for pretty much everybody to identify with—all couched in a narrative with feminist elements, strong LGBT representation, and other progressive values" (Speight 2015). Of the 125 comments left in response to this link, most focus on dismissing the claim that the game's popularity is due in part to its

"progressive" elements. For example, one commentator insists that, while Undyne and Dr. Alphys may be gay, this is not a "main character trait" and therefore LGBTQ

sexuality does not "define them." Another commenter responds with defensive

indignation through the performance of incredulity: "How does this game have anything to do with Feminism?"

[3.12] Across the many Reddit comments that attempt to rebuke and disavow

Undertale's connection to queerness, along with feminism and "other progressive values," humor emerges as a key theme. Writes one early commenter, "People may be

looking [too] deep into this… [It's just] funny if a fish and a dinosaur are girlfriends."

Another person follows by insisting, "Can't we just accept that Undertale is just…a good video game?…I can see that certain traits of certain characters inside Undertale could be used as an example for parody of feminism or other 'progressive values.'" This rhetoric demonstrates how an emphasis on Undertale's comedic quality operates as a tool for straightwashing the game. Humor is used to justify a refusal to look beneath the most surface-level interpretation of a video game ("Undertale is just…a good game").

Looking "too deep into this" is presented as the opposite of accepting that it is

(supposedly) "funny" for the characters of Undyne and Dr. Alphys to date—thereby

placing sexual identity and humor in opposition. A similar logic structures the second comment. This poster attempts to undermine the basic validity of discussing gender and sexuality in relation to Undertale by first rejecting the premise of the discussion and then asserting that, if the game does address feminism, it must only be on the level of parody. By framing the game's engagement with queer identities as parody, this poster repositions Undertale not as a game that embodies "progressive values," as the author of the article with which this thread begins posits, but rather as a game that shares the values of toxic masculine gamer culture, which mocks queerness and feminism (Cross 2016). Together, these comments illustrate how an emphasis on humor becomes a tool for rejecting the game's queer elements and remaking Undertale as heteronormative—

or even misogynistic and homophobic.

4. The limits of LGBTQ representation?

[4.1] The straightwashing of Undertale, as seen through the rhetoric of its reception in reviews and in online gamer spaces, suggests that—despite the game's powerful and pervasive queer elements—there may be significant limitations to the cultural impact of increasing LGBTQ representation in video games. Far from reflecting the

discriminatory perspectives of a small, niche group, the voices that have enacted the straightwashing of Undertale come from those players who are still considered the default, and who are widely represented in games culture. This means that, despite Undertale's many queer elements, the straight interpretation of the game is arguably

dominant in the cultural field that surrounds this immensely popular game. As a cautionary tale, Undertale demonstrates how a game's reception by straight and/or anti-LGBTQ players can problematically resist and obscure its queer representational

elements, as well as its values of inclusivity and tolerance. This suggests that increasing LGBTQ representation is not sufficient to shift cultural attitudes toward queerness and video games, and that larger systematic solutions are necessary to bring change to the medium in truly meaningful and lasting ways.

[4.2] Many efforts toward improving the place of queer subjects in video games and games culture have focused on increasing LGBTQ representation in games with wide-reaching appeal. Such tactics are predicated on the logic that, if gamers see more queer characters in the games they play, they will become more accepting of LGBTQ people.

Undertale is just such a game—immensely popular across broad audiences—yet arguably the very players who most need to hear its message of queer positivity are those who have ignored it and often actively worked, through their discourse

production, to erase it. Unfortunately, the universal appeal of Undertale should not be understood as a sign that reactionary sectors of games culture are becoming more

accepting of those traditionally seen as different, but rather that those sectors are capable of retelling the story of a game and its meaning in order to render it acceptable to a gamer mentality that rejects diversity. In this way, the straightwashing of Undertale points to the precariousness of LGBTQ representation in video games. Even a game as queer as Undertale can be and indeed has been appropriated in the service of the heteronormative gamer status quo.

[4.3] At the same time, the straightwashing of Undertale raises a number of questions that merit ongoing consideration in academic, popular, and industry discussions of diversity and video games. How do we decide by what measure a game's LGBTQ

representation, or its representation of other marginalized identities, has been effective?

While Undertale's queer representational aspects have been straightwashed by significant sectors of the game's reception, its LGBTQ characters and storylines have proven immensely meaningful for many of the game's queer players. It would be a

mistake to perpetuate the neoliberal assumption that the representation of diversity in games only matters to the extent that it makes dominant (i.e., straight) culture better. As Naomi Clark has written about the place of queerness in video games, "Games can be legitimized by yoking them to support the institutions of education, propaganda,

nonprofit organizations, and behavioral psychology—but should they be yoked?…The

queer question must remain: What will we lose in the process as we make additional bids for legitimacy?" (Clark 2017, 12–13). Perhaps the importance of Undertale's queer elements lies not in how the game is received by straight players, but rather in what possible worlds and modes of desire it presents to those who are open to its queerness.

And can it truly be said that Undertale's queerness is precarious if the discourse described here has to work so hard to overwrite that queerness? If the importance of the game's LGBTQ representation and queer themes could be so easily dismissed, would

these reviews and forum posts need to actively and repeatedly perform Undertale's remaking as a straight game?

[4.4] I conclude here with a final question: even despite its pervasive LGBTQ

representations and queer elements, are there inherent limitations to the way that Undertale itself represents queerness that make it susceptible to this type of straightwashing? In Undertale, as Fox himself reports, LGBTQ characters and romances are portrayed as normal. Though these characters do face challenges, they are never discriminated against on the basis of their genders or sexual orientations. On the one hand, the normalization of queerness in Undertale contributes to what Ruelos, as quoted above, describes as the game's vision of a queer utopia. On the other hand, this normalization may be precisely what has allowed nonqueer players to straight-wash the game. Since the game does not address anti-LGBTQ discrimination, or present LGBTQ

characters as disruptive to the game-world's status quo, it risks making queerness benign, harmless, and therefore easier to overlook—or laugh off—for players who

would prefer to see Undertale as a straight game. I mention this final point not to condemn Undertale for its particular approach to representing queerness, but to suggest that, in order to challenge heteronormative ways of thinking about video games, in-game LGBTQ representation may need to do more than simply show players that queer

people exist. This representation may also need to push players to confront difference, power, and oppression as they intersect with LGBTQ lives in ways that cannot be

straightwashed out of the game.

5. References

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THEORY

Using rhetorical criticism to track Twitch

Plays Pokémon fans' attachment to

sacrifice

Eric Andrew James

Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois, United

States

[0.1]

Abstract—This expansion of the existing literature on fan

discourse analyzes rhetorical form as a tool and constraint. By analyzing

the rhetorical forms used to develop the cult neoreligious styles of

Twitch Plays Pokémon fan art, I track the evolution of sacrifice as a

guiding trope that allows the community to narrativize accidents, make

sense of chaos, and respond to the game's overall lack of player agency.

Rhetorical forms are reproduced in fan discourse alongside popular

community art styles, genres, and rules for speaking. Rhetorical forms

are thus both effects of fan discourse and factors in later evolutions for

that discourse. Rhetorical criticism will become increasingly more

important in the study of sense-making practices in collective

participatory media such as Twitch Plays Pokémon.

[0.2]

Keywords—Fan art; Neoreligiosity; Participatory media;

Rhetoric

James, Eric Andrew. 2018. "Using Rhetorical Criticism to Track Twitch Plays Pokémon Fans' Attachment to Sacrifice." In "The Future of Fandom," special 10th anniversary issue, Transformative Works and Cultures, no. 28. http://dx.doi.org/10.3983

/twc.2018.1438.

1. Introduction

[1.1] Over the course of eighteen days in 2014, 55 million internet users visited popular video game streaming site Twitch.tv to view or participate in a gaming

experiment called Twitch Plays Pokémon (TPP). The idea was simple: broadcast an

emulated version of the popular game Pokémon Red Version (1998) played not by a single user but by anyone who logged in to watch. By entering commands into the

game's chat feature, the viewers could control the onscreen character, but with hundreds of thousands of viewers entering commands at once, the experience quickly got out of hand. Though Pokémon Red is, by design, a straightforward story about a ten-year-old monster trainer who defeats eight gym leaders to win a regional competition, members of the TPP community invented interpretive fictions to mythologize their experience's twists and turns—attributing causality to the randomness of their collective actions and reimagining the game's goals—until the simple game became a cosmic tale of anarchy versus democracy featuring an impossible Christ figure, a false prophet, a computer that demands the blood of the innocent, and an inanimate object that turns out to be God incarnate.

[1.2] In this article, I analyze TPP as a unique but illustrative anecdote about

participatory media fandom that demonstrates how rhetoric is connected to the

constitution, adaptation, and continuation of fan discourses. While previous scholarship suggests that fans use rhetorical strategies to argue for and make sense of their

experiences (note 1), I expand these claims by theorizing the structuring relationship between this rhetoric and fan discourse. According to Henry Jenkins, argumentation becomes officially engrained with community knowledge-production practices through a set of community-defined rhetorical procedures (Jenkins 2008, 33–39). The study of these rhetorical procedures provides helpful insight into how a community is thinking about its own development. As Virginia Kuhn argues, studying rhetoric is more than an avenue for determining what kind of speech is persuasive in a fan community. It also allows fan theorists to engage "the specificity of the discourse communities from which they arise" (2012). Taking Kuhn's claim as my point of departure, I argue that because rhetorical forms are dependent on certain styles of reasoning and speaking, they afford and constrain possibilities for the permutation of community-interpretive fictions. These rhetorical forms are not immutable, but their entrenchment in existing community

practices and shared repertoires means they are inextricably interwoven with existing stylistic, affective, mediated, and playful elements of fan discourses. As such, studying rhetorical form can help fan studies understand the factors that lead fans to develop particular collective interpretations of their experiences.

[1.3] In this article, I perform a rhetorical analysis of TPP fan art and subreddit conversation. Choosing from popular examples shared on TPP's subreddit, I focus on a subset of fan art that appropriates the generic conventions of medieval Christian and ancient Egyptian artwork. I have chosen to do so because these two art styles appear frequently in TPP fan art and because they reflect the neoreligious speaking styles common in much of the fan discourse across this subreddit. In particular, I closely analyze three works that received significant attention on the subreddit: Frickerdoodle's Days 1–7 (2014), Aeuma's The Massacre of Bloody Sunday (2014), and Whoaconstrictor's The Origin of Ancient Helixism (2014). I argue that these styles,

which arise after the traumatic loss of a game character, help narrativize the use of two oppositional sacrificial anecdotes—first of Christian martyrdom and later of sacrificial offering—to make sense of in-game loss and nonagential game mechanics. Overall, my goal is to follow the tropological development of sacrifice as a guiding term within the TPP mythology and to center the importance of rhetorical strategies in this

development. This is particularly important for the study of networked game fandoms, such as TPP, because it helps us read across participation, production, and discussion to analyze the frameworks that fans use to explore their experiences.

[1.4] This article is divided into three major parts. I first develop my claim that rhetorical criticism can help us to better understand fan discourse. Second, I introduce the TPP fandom's relationship to its mythology by analyzing their use of the medieval Christian art style. Here, I argue that the community appropriates practices of moral-spatial arrangement popular to medieval Christian altarpieces to set the conditions of possibility for envisioning the story's struggle as a Christian corollary. My emphasis here is less on which characters are good or evil than on the structuring work of

arrangement as a rhetorical form, its allowances and constraints. Third, to demonstrate the importance of rhetorical form, I follow a later transition in the community's

perspective on sacrifice away from the Christian martyrdom narrative and toward a

more brutal position on the necessity of sacrifice to hungry gods. Studying subreddit arguments about later work that uses mock ancient Egyptian art styles, I suggest that this transition is connected with this new style's common rhetorical forms, particularly anthropomorphic mysticism and sequential storytelling. Thereafter, I conclude by

considering possibilities for rhetorical criticism in digital fandoms organized around intensely variable yet collectively experienced fannish objects, such as TPP and other networked games.

2. Rhetoric and fan discourse

[2.1] Aristotle famously defines rhetoric as "the available means of persuasion"

(2007, 35). This definition has been both the bane and boon of rhetorical criticism.

Oftentimes, scholarship operating under this definition focuses heavily on the word persuasion and simplifies the study of rhetoric to the study of persuasive effect. While I do view rhetorical speech as persuasive, symbolic action intended to affect the mindset of its audience, rhetoric has a crucial secondary element that is central to this study.

Enacting constraints and constructing rhetorical appeals require that the speaker adapt her ways of speaking to fit the audience and occasion. As explained by Kenneth Burke,

"you persuade a man only insofar as you can talk his language by speech, gesture…

attitude, idea, identifying your ways with his" (1969, 55). It is Burke's conception of rhetoric that forms the framework for my analysis. When we reframe our speech to

persuade, we accept things about what the audience believes and incorporate those

beliefs into our speeches; doing so structures the ways in which speech happens. Thus, in the study of "the available means of persuasion," my emphasis is on availability. The study of rhetoric is not simply a study of the ways in which we change minds but also a means of understanding action grounded in existing community practices. When

looking at the rhetorical practices of fan art and conversations, I am less interested in whether a speech act successfully persuades community members than I am in how the drive to be persuasive affects how the speech act was made. What does the acceptance of existing forms allow the fan to say? What types of speech does it delimit? How

might styles of speaking affect the possibilities for later speech?

[2.2] As a method, rhetorical criticism focuses closely on speech acts. This refers not only to texts themselves but also to speakers, audiences, their surroundings, and their interrelationships. Similar to literary criticism, rhetorical criticism often centers texts and draws conclusions from the various strategies and devices used by those texts, but in doing so, the critic must always read these strategies through the lens of the speech act. The question is thus never simply "why does this appeal work?" It is instead "why does this appeal fit the purpose of this text?" Or "why does this appeal resonate with this audience?" Or "why did the speaker use this appeal rather than some other?" It is this last question that forms the foundation for my own analysis. I am chiefly interested in how fandoms develop a collective speaking style and how that style informs the

permutation of fan fictions and discourse. To theorize this, I focus most closely on rhetorical forms, recognizable and recurring speech arrangements that structure what is said in particular ways. While I study two genres of TPP artwork, medieval Christian and ancient Egyptian, it is the rhetorical forms commonly invoked in these art styles

—spatial-moral arrangement, sequential storytelling, and anthropomorphic mysticism—

that inform my actual claims about the affordances and constraints of TPP discourse.

[2.3] The analysis of rhetorical form provides a helpful expansion to our

understanding of fan discourse. As Stuart Hall describes them, discourses are "ways of referring to or constructing knowledge about a particular topic of practice: a cluster (or formation) of ideas, images, and practices, which provide ways of talking about forms of knowledge and conduct associated with a particular topic, social activity, or

institutional site in society" (1997, 4). Discourse and rhetoric are inseparable; if discourse is the collection of ways of thinking and speaking about a topic, rhetoric here refers to attempts to participate in this discourse, to use these ways of speaking to get something done, whether that be persuading an audience to act or conveying an

attachment to a fannish object. Thus, to analyze rhetorical form in fan discourses is to study how discursive tendencies and possibilities are mobilized for persuasive effect and how attempts to do so are grounded in existing preconceptions and material

conditions. While this has many benefits for the study of fan discourse, it is particularly helpful for theorizing a determinate (but not causal) explanation for fan discourse development. New forms that resonate with the community's experience of an event

allow new discursive possibilities to flourish, but they also afford and constrain the development of new relationships and fictions because they structure the ways in which fans think and talk about their experiences. Other methods, such as discourse analysis, are helpful for mapping out the multiplicity of fan ideas and can oftentimes help us to make similar statements about how fans respond to meaningful happenings around the fannish object. However, especially when fan discourse becomes multilayered because the community is attempting to establish a new narrative canon, operating with cultish or parodic reflexivity, or attempting to cope with the new mechanics of a networked

game world (all of which apply to TPP), fan studies needs a strategy for reading these experiences into fan texts themselves. This is not to say that rhetorical criticism should replace discourse analysis in these environments, only that it helps us to account for varying degrees of fan situatedness.

[2.4] In this article, I analyze some of the rhetorical forms common to TPP artwork. I track these forms as commonly reproduced appropriations of the same artistic style, which, though not necessarily causally related to one another, are indicative of the permutation of rhetorical form in TPP's discursive space. As Robert Hariman and John Louis Lucaites suggest of image appropriation, "the study of image appropriations is one way to study what people do with images, and particularly as they use them to make a public statement. It gauges reception by observing how it is converted into production" (2017, 301). The same standard goes for the appropriation of rhetorical forms; we see that fans have inspired artistic and rhetorical styles that are repeated. The purposes of these appropriations need not be boiled down to pure persuasive purpose; they need not even be conscious, though I'd venture they usually are. Even when fans are using their artwork to express attachments without investigating them, the fact that such expressions are reflections on previous engagement with the fan community and fannish object means that their engagement is already discursively structured in some way. Again, the goal is not to express causality but to see rhetorical form as indicative of a style of thinking. The arrangement of these works is both a trace and an act.

[2.5] I envision this study as an addendum to scholarship on digital fan-sharing

practices that has adopted Lewis Hyde's "gift economy," in which gift-giving is seen as a vital not-quite-marketplace kind of exchange that both literally establishes and symbolically represents community relationships. As Karen Hellekson describes this process, "writer and reader create a shared dialogue that results in a feedback loop of gift exchange, whereby the gift of artwork or text is repetitively exchanged for the gift of reaction, which is itself exchanged, with the goal of creating and maintaining social solidarity" (2009, 115–16). This active upkeep of community status is also the process by which a communal discourse develops. The gifts and responses "are incorporated

into a multivocal dialogue that creates a metatext, the continual composition of which creates a community" (115). This community ethos is particularly important on digital message boards in which conversation is often structured around the event of gift

exchange and subsequent discussion. Rhetorical criticism provides a means of

connecting the knowledge-making and ethos-building practices of the gift economy

with existing studies of fan literatures and fictions. If online fan artwork is a gift used to build artists' ethos and contribute to fan knowledge, then fans have an investment in producing work that both supports their interpretations of the fannish objects and adheres to existing community attachments. The attempt to do both at once is a

fundamentally rhetorical practice. Turning toward rhetorical criticism of fan fictions thus offers new possibilities for understanding community construction and meaning making. As Jenkins, Ford, and Green have contended about modern participatory

media, "if it doesn't spread, it's dead" (2013, 1); persuasion is yet another element of media spreadability.

3. TPP's neoreligious imaginary

[3.1] Developed by an anonymous Australian programmer and launched February 12,

2014, TPP was pitched as "crowdsourced gaming" (Souppouris 2014). By entering

controller commands in the chat feature that runs along the right side of the game (A, B, Up, Down, Left, Start, etc.), viewers of the game's Twitch.tv stream could control an emulated Pokémon Red Version (1998 for Game Boy) being live-streamed. Rather than each viewer having his/her own game to play, every streamer simultaneously enters

commands into one game. When thousands of people are logged in at once, the avatar moves erratically, and the game progresses monotonously slowly, but most of the active community agreed that this was part of TPP's charm (video 1). Some observers believed that the game could not be beaten, but the players finished in only eighteen days (note 2). While TPP is technically an ongoing event, it is broken up into generations. Each time one game is beaten, a new game is begun. For this project, I analyze work from the first generation, which took place from February 12 to March 1, 2014. This is because while the generations are connected to one another by their recurring fandom and

similar mechanics, the storylines are distinct, and it is this first generation that drew attention from media outlets from Kotaku to Business Insider.

Twitch Plays Pokemon Part 4 Red Part 4

Video 1. Twitch Plays Pokémon game footage from day 3. Here the avatar moves

erratically as hundreds of players enter commands together to try to get past a few small walls.

[3.2] What makes TPP particularly interesting as a case study is the evolution of players' experiences of the game. Because the chat feature moved too quickly for

thorough discussion and because deliberate player actions were muddled down in a sea of input from other players, fans fundamentally remade the story of Pokémon Red based on their modded experiences. For example, in Pokémon Red Version, players receive a

helix fossil which can later be revived to get a pokémon called Omanyte but that otherwise serves no future narrative purpose and cannot be used by the player. Because the object cannot be tossed or used before being revived, it is always in the player's inventory. During battle, TPP's gamers often accidentally opened the items menu and tried to use it, which prompts a text box: "Oak's voice echoed in your head: this isn't the time for that." After doing this past the early giggles, into tedium, and beyond, the TPP

gamers began to refer to this as "consulting the Helix." A religious authority, the Helix became a spiritual guide for the imagined dazed and confused avatar.

[3.3] The practice of assigning significance to TPP's chaos makes TPP a particularly useful object of study because, without the developed narrative that would exist in television or in many other video games, fan community interpretation is absolutely central to the way the game's mythology is imagined and enacted. Similar studies of digital game communities have emphasized the importance of fan sense-making

practices. Colin Milburn, for instance, notes that computer-savvy users of the player-constructable online virtual world Second Life construct a "nanovirtuality" in which they engineer and realize new world possibilities (2008). While these practices are playful, Milburn also notes that they are very seriously intended to construct viable virtual worlds that satisfy player desires to see their experiences and expectations reflected. While not a virtual world or MMO, TPP functions similarly; the chaos of TPP

not only affords the possibility for expansive fan mythmaking, but it is also the starting point for the construction of game canon. Contrary to games such as Second Life, which emphasize player control, TPP's interface is defined by the fundamental lack of direct single-player agency. Further, while players were sometimes able to band together to accomplish collective goals, the chaos of such a practice is resistive to collaborative gameplay as well. The game does not behave. As illustrated by the anecdote about the helix fossil, most of the community-interpretive fictions attempt to cope with this lack of agency. They create meaningful explanations for perceptively mundane game events.

[3.4] To describe the emergence of TPP's interpretive fictions, I will focus on one event I consider the game's defining tale: the release of Abby, the players' first pokémon. Most Pokémon games have the same formula. The avatar is a child given a monster, called a pokémon, by a local professor. This first pokémon, called a starter, is particularly powerful. The gamer is sent out with this starter to capture and train new pokémon so that she can take down eight regional gym leaders and challenge the Elite Four, the strongest trainers in the region. TPP started largely that same way. The players chose Charmander (a fire type) as their starter and named it Abby (note 3). With Abby, they beat the earliest section of the game fairly easily. However, the gamers accidentally released Abby just three days into the game. At this defining moment, the gamers were tasked with moving forward without their most powerful pokémon. The solution came

in the form of Pidgey, a small bird pokémon who until that point had done little for the party but who was now its strongest member. This Pidgey later became extremely

powerful and single-handedly defeated most of the eight gym leaders. It would come to be known as Bird Jesus, the god-sent hero of the story and its representative figure.

[3.5] The religious symbology of characters such as Bird Jesus is not atypical of fan

communities and is in fact frequent in cult fandoms. Combatting essentialist views that fans use religious symbolism as either pure parody or genuine devotion, Matt Hills describes these appropriations as the "neoreligiosity" (2000) of cult fandom. He sees neoreligious speech as a sense-making practice somewhere ambivalently between

parody and genuine devotion, which "seeks to account for its attachments by drawing self-reflexively and intersubjectively on discourses of 'religiosity' and 'devotion'" (2002, 96). While J. Caroline Toy suggests, fairly, that Hills's term is simply another artificial distinction that ignores that religion has always been a hermeneutic category (2017), I find Hills's term serviceable not only for its political intervention against perceptions of cult fandom as detached or radical but also precisely for its abstract ambivalence about the nature of fannish attachment. Neoreligiosity can offer a kind of counter-hermeneutic for religiosity. Both emphasize ritual, community, and stable mythologies, but where study of fan (secular) religion centers devotion, the study of neoreligiosity centers discourse and play. Thus, while we should not take lightly Jennifer Otter Bickerdike's reminder that fan attachments make up much of our most meaningful spiritual

experiences in the twenty-first century (2015), I take seriously Andrew Crome's

suggestion that we should ask how religious symbology supports fan sense-making

goals (2014). Thus, I classify TPP's use of medieval Christian and ancient Egyptian form as neoreligious because the term captures the parodic but involved stylistics of TPP's rhetorical forms. This is clear across the fannish discourse, perhaps illustrated most clearly by the humorous bowing emojis that usually bookend all instances of the fandom's favorite chant: " _༽ PRAISE HELIX ༼ _༽ ."

[3.6] Of particular import to TPP's neoreligious interpretive fictions and to this article is the guiding trope of sacrifice. After the release of Abby, sacrifice becomes a major component of TPP's neoreligious eschatology, beginning as an analogue to Christian martyrdom. Looking at the parable above, Bird Jesus is only loosely analogous to

Christ, as he has no death or resurrection within the story himself. Instead, the Christ story is bifurcated; Bird Jesus stands in as the savior, but it is Abby (and another pokémon nicknamed Jay Leno) who are the story's sacrificial lambs. Yet even in this playful demonstration, the corollary to Christ is significant. In fact, the not-quite-fit of the Christ narrative is a good indicator that some other sense-making need was involved in the decision.

[3.7] While Christian martyrdom is about making sense of sacrifice, it is also an attempt to elide sacrifice, accepting the necessity of the death but rendering it an exceptional outside event. As Georges Bataille argues, "in the idea of the sacrifice upon the Cross the very character of transgression has been altered. That sacrifice is a murder of course, and a blood one…but the sin of crucifixion is disallowed by the priest

celebrating the sacrifice of mass" (1986, 89). While despair and mourning are driving experiences in the Christian metaphor, the Christ anecdote subsumes loss under a

greater narrative of transcendence, emphasizing the particular and always-already-

historical anecdote of Christ, crucifixion, and Judas. As my next section demonstrates, such work first emerges out of an attempt to anoint Bird Jesus as Abby's spiritual successor.

4. Medieval Christian artwork and rhetorics of visual

arrangement

[4.1] Fan art is uniquely suited to illustrate TPP's neoreligious style because, as Rudolph Arnheim suggests, images "hover somewhere above the realm of 'practical'

things and below the disembodied forces animating these things" (2004, 137). For

neoreligious fandoms, fan art can be what brings the things worshipped and revered into being in the first place. Some of the most popular posts about TPP, particularly in the first week of the event, support the application of Christian eschatology by utilizing medieval Christian art styles. Medieval art styles in particular are often held as culturally emblematic of Christian art writ large, as much modern Christian artwork has maintained the centering of Christ, general proportions of the human body, and stylistic elements such as haloes and highly symbolic objects held by Christian figures popular to these styles (Nagel 2012, 41–45). Yet by using the medieval style in particular, TPP

fans also assert an older temporality on TPP's mythology, giving it the performance of a religion that has the longevity of its Christian corollary. TPP fans adopt pre-existing conceptions that, in ancient Christian artwork, "religion overtopped the common affairs of life as the cathedral dominated the surrounding country" (Baugh 1948, 115),

centering religious devotion as the guiding principle of any social engagement. The reality of medieval life is not so simple, but the rhetorical strands of such a belief are at work in medieval Christian art styles. As Jonathan J. G. Alexander asserts, medieval Christian art was both a form of religious literacy and "an ideological system that served to represent medieval society to itself" (1993, 1). Such artwork staged

contemporary events as religious parables evoked during conversations of social

concern (4–7). As with TPP's response to the chaotic loss of Abby, such turns were often an attempt to paint a broader context for current events by centering the workings of a higher power (30). As Alexander notes, such artwork looked to demonstrate that

"the world represented in religious images is indeed the world of common sense" (36).

[4.2] Much of the current research on medieval Christian artwork emphasizes

ornamental features and figural arrangement of these pieces to determine the relational lessons that artwork was meant to share (Mitchell 2015, 8–10). TPP artwork in this style similarly adopts a common rhetoric of arrangement that visually situates objects in relation to one another, often for the purpose of establishing contrasts and alignments.

For example, Frickerdoodle's Days 1–7 (2014) (figure 1), shared on day nine, appropriates the design of late medieval altarpieces. Notable for the eye-catching abundance of gold in backgrounds and haloes as well as the positioning of various

parables in different frames of the image, the altarpiece form allows Frickerdoodle to make specific suggestions about the overarching space of TPP's mythology by staging story parables in relation to major characters. In this case, the left and right sections of this piece are symmetrically divided into six parables from the TPP universe with Bird Jesus in the center. Another figure, called Flareon, is set below Bird Jesus. In the mythology of TPP, Flareon plays antagonist to Bird Jesus's rise. Somewhere between Judas and Anti-Christ, Flareon is imagined to have plotted to release Abby to take her

place on the team, earning Flareon the name "the false prophet." False idols were often given prominent places in medieval Christian artwork to represent those outside the church (Camille 1989). At the lowest point on the work, Flareon represents hell while Bird Jesus, in the center of the work, stands in for divine purpose. Above Bird Jesus and in further contrast to Flareon, Abby and Jay Leno are portrayed at the top with the six wings of seraphs.

Figure 1. Frickerdoodle, Days 1–7. Posted February 21, 2014.

[4.3] In religious imagery, visual arrangement is often used to distinguish real and sacred space and time (Pollini 2012, 71–73). Frickerdoodle's Days 1–7 similarly separates realms of divine possibility. The four panels on either side are morally and relationally situated within this arrangement. For example, a sad and confused Rattata (called Dig-rat) on the left looks out of its parable toward the guiding image of Bird Jesus, aligning him with both lost player agency and positive moral practices of

devotion. Meanwhile, on the opposite right side, Flareon's banishment is portrayed with

another pokémon (called the keeper) looking downwards toward the False Prophet's cage. By allowing these figures to gaze out of their frames and toward the sacred and profane symbols in the work's center, Frickerdoodle blends literal and sacred time and space to present an imaginary in which scripture is in a current state of alignment, ascribing narratives of causality in retrospect of the traumatic loss of Abby. Days 1–7

essentially serves to commemorate the loss of Abby and to provide an origin story for Flareon. If Abby's release is the tragic mechanism that makes community mythmaking necessary, the emphasis on arrangement—and thus on the need for an opposite,

balancing figure—shifts the rhetorical exigence onto the co-creation of the evil figure which is purportedly responsible. The arrangement of these figures is both a practiced performance of the community's shared experience and a rhetorical attempt to suggest new associations and valances. This artwork may be alien to an audience outside the TPP community, yet both its figures and stylings speak to a common experience for

those in the know.

[4.4] I am not suggesting that medieval Christian style becomes a mandate on TPP

art or that individual artists definitively persuade the community to think one way or another. In practice, fans still have a lot of space to try out new forms and play with new interpretive fictions; however, the frequency with which popular appropriations of this form are shared and become popular indicates the stickiness of visual arrangement as a form of reasoning. For instance, while some artwork proposed a counternarrative that claimed Flareon was misjudged (MangaFox156 2014) or was absolutely

inconsequential (inferno988 2014), such work almost never utilizes the medieval

Christian style. This style has been used to arrange moral binaries, and as such it does not fit their goals. Such artwork was not discussed, upvoted, or replicated nearly as frequently as works that used the medieval Christian style to contrast Bird Jesus and Flareon. Rather than calling either the rhetorical form or the attachment to Flareon as antagonist causal, it is useful here to recognize that the popularity of moral arrangement is imbricated with the trajectory of the fan mythology.

[4.5] The rhetorical nature of this work becomes particularly evident when, in the middle of the event, the fan grammar, popular styles, and rhetorical forms began to change, and with them fan relationship to sacrifice. To demonstrate this change, I take a closer look at fan argumentation taking place on TPP's subreddit and at the ancient Egyptian art style used frequently in the later days of the event.

5. The Egyptian turn

[5.1] Eleven days into the stream, TPP experienced another major catastrophe.

Nearing the end of the game, the players would soon have to face the Elite Four, a series of difficult trainers and the final boss of Pokémon Red Version, but since Bird Jesus was the only party member strong enough to face the Elite Four (out of a team of six), they decided to catch an extremely powerful legendary pokémon called Zapdos.

They managed to capture the creature without accidentally killing it, which is no small feat, but it was sent to the computer system that stores pokémon not currently in the

party, the same system used to release Abby and Jay Leno. The players retrieved

Zapdos from the computer system, but in doing so they accidentally released twelve other pokémon, an event which players began to refer to as Bloody Sunday in reference to the infamous 1972 Bogside Massacre.

[5.2] To make sense of this event, Redditor Aeuma shared a piece called The

Massacre of Bloody Sunday (2014) (figure 2) on day twelve. Done in a mock ancient Egyptian style, the work depicts a man with a computer for a head sacrificially stabbing a pokémon with a spear while Flareon watches from the side. Lined below this are the other eleven pokémon that were released. Behind the skewered pokémon is depicted the dome fossil. An alternative to the helix fossil (players can choose one or the other in Pokémon Red), the dome fossil is associated with Flareon and similarly representative of evil forces in TPP. The work thus uses moral-arrangement-style associations to label the event evil. However, responses to the work were dissatisfied with the black-and-white portrayal of Bloody Sunday. On TPP's subreddit, commentators unpacked,

interpreted, and largely rejected the interpretation presented by Aeuma's piece.

Respondents took Aeuma's work as the impetus to assert a different perspective. The resulting dynamic is what Virginia Kuhn calls a "digital argument," a fannish rhetorical statement "for which evidence is provided, that also retains a dialogic or conversational nature" (2012).

Figure 2. Aeuma, The Massacre of Bloody Sunday, with Dome fossil (above) and edited version without Dome fossil (below). Posted February 24, 2014.

[5.3] The highest-voted comments make it clear that Aeuma is effectively tapping

into a mutual sense of the gravity and affective play around the loss of the twelve pokémon, but they also question the relationship between sacrifice and evil. Agreeing with the artist's portrayal, a few Redditors chose to blame Zapdos for the tragedy,

aligning it with the dome fossil. SteakAndNihilism, for instance, warns the community that it is mistaken to assume Zapdos is a hero figure, mimicking the diction of the King James Bible to perform the neoreligious imaginary: "and lo, do they praise the son of perdition, even seeing the carnage he hath lain upon our brethren" (quoted in Aeuma 2014). However, these comments are outnumbered by attempts to read sacrifice as

sacred and necessary. NeoNugget says that "Zapdos required the sacrifices to join our party" (quoted in Aeuma 2014). Coltand says that Zapdos is "the hope we need in these dark times…He may not be the hero we all want right now, but he's the one we need. I thank Helix for this small mercy" (quoted in Aeuma 2014). This frame of thinking

dominates the board. As the community began to see these sacrifices as a somber but natural phenomenon in the TPP mythology, a few users pressured the artist to change the original work, and later that day, Aeuma released a version of the piece without the dome fossil in the background (Aeuma 2014).

[5.4] In this discussion, both the work and the community's relationship to sacrifice are figuratively transformed (though literally dependent on the work of a receptive artist) by the community discourse as respondents such as NeoNugget and Coltand

argue that these sacrifices are better folded into a narrative of progress. The relationship to Bloody Sunday expressed in this conversation is notably different from the Christ narrative created for the release of Abby. More Old Testament, they canonize Bloody Sunday as a valuable sacrifice. In fact, this conversation is indicative of a greater shift taking place in the event's later stages which is best illustrated by the ancient Egyptian style used in this work.

[5.5] The ancient Egyptian art style became more common after Bloody Sunday,

particularly inspired by multiple works by Aeuma and another artist called

Whoaconstrictor. Art done in this style embraces, rather than mourns, both loss and the game's lack of player agency. For instance, using mock ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics, Whoaconstrictor's The Origin of Ancient Helixism (figure 3), posted soon after the first generation was finished, represents major anecdotes in the series—including the death of Abby and Bloody Sunday—as a tale about a young pharaoh. The pharaoh shields his eyes with one hand throughout this journey, symbolizing both the loss of agency and players' inability to truly understand the events around them. In each section, he is guided by the hand of one of his pokémon: first Abby, then Bird Jesus, and eventually Zapdos. Only at the end of the journey, when the players defeat the Elite Four, does he uncover his eyes. In this final frame, he kneels to worship Lord Helix, the TPP god himself. This figurative blinding foregrounds the importance of anarchy and

randomness to this journey and flattens all moments before Helix's resurrection into ritual. Whoaconstrictor—who produced a line of Egyptian-themed artwork that was so convincing that an Egyptian tourist shopping mall mistakenly featured it prominently on its storefront (Bridgman 2015)—describes his generic choice: "I really like the way Egyptian art tells sequential stories and the way they anthropomorphize animal-like gods" (Whoaconstrictor 2014). These two elements—sequential storytelling and

anthropomorphism—play heavily into the rhetorical transformation that happens in the later days of TPP's imaginary.

Figure 3. Whoaconstrictor, The Origin of Ancient Helixism. Posted on March 13, 2014.

[5.6] Often discussed in comic book and sequential art studies, visual sequential storytelling uses temporal strategies for eliding some details while lingering on others.

While Frickerdoodle's work distinguishes the sacred time/space of figures such as

Flareon and Bird Jesus from the historical time of the surrounding parables,

Whoaconstrictor's work embeds this mysticism into the parables themselves. Even

though The Origins of Ancient Helixism represents parables about both success and failure, these parables are holistically wrapped into the entire sequence of the journey rather than considered individually for some moral valence. As Hayman and Pratt note, sequential artwork often relies on strategies of juxtaposition, demonstrating rhetorical moves by what has changed and what remains the same from frame to frame (2005,

423). For The Origins of Ancient Helixism, the various pokémon that serve as guides for the pharaoh are juxtaposed with one another, demonstrating both the continuity of the journey and the frequent sacrifices along the way. That Bird Jesus carries the pharaoh in the fourth frame both illustrates the violent loss of Abby in the previous parable and, by nature of its transition from one frame to another, immediately moves on. Similarly, the continuous reproduction of the blind pharaoh makes it all the more impactful when, in

that final panel, he does uncover his eyes and completes his journey. This juxtaposition accents the avatar's compounding loss, a loss he cannot fully comprehend with his eyes covered but which, in the final frame, highlights the relationship between sacrifice and eventual success.

[5.7] While studies of ancient Egyptian art indicate that, in actuality, such work

"served the ordered cosmos, which was celebrated on behalf of the gods and which

humanity, as represented by the king, and the gods defended against the forces of

chaos" (Baines 2007, 335), the recurrent emphasis on sacrifice and Whoaconstrictor's portrayal of a blind pharoah demonstrates a very different relationship to this artistic style. Rather, The Origins of Ancient Helixism draws on an orientalist mix of curious mysticism and fear visible in American popular culture films about ancient Egypt (note 4). The mystique of Whoaconstrictor's work simultaneously renders the experience

alien and imparts on it a sense of gravitas. This orientalist perspective has its roots in the American renaissance tradition, in which many writers fascinated by Egyptian

hieroglyphics foregrounded sacrifice (Irwin 1980, 129). There writers began to use ancient Egyptian art styles to think about the literary trope of human sacrifice not as something to be avoided but as a necessary step for powerful "transfiguration,

transubstitution, resurrection, and ascension" (129) which nonetheless implies a

mysticized otherness. Combined with the two-dimensionality of The Origins of Ancient Helixism, Whoaconstrictor's personification of the game's monsters makes the mythology feel more uncanny, alien, difficult to interpret, and literally distanced in history.

[5.8] That TPP fans actually do know what is happening in each parable mobilizes

this mysticism, as the othering strategy for accepting the unknowability of the

experience is accompanied by fan recognition of their own experiences of the game.

Whoaconstrictor's work and other art in the ancient Egyptian style drives players to paradoxically adopt this otherness as their own, to accept themselves as uncanny. Here, the position on sacrifice looks much like Georges Bataille and Jonathan Strauss's

reading of Hegelian sacrifice in which man "revealed and founded human truth by

sacrificing" (1990, 18). Rather than seeing sacrifice as an exception, sacrifice is elevated to sacred necessity in this position, giving it a simultaneous spirituality and superiority.

That this perspective is taken up by the community is evidenced by its later practices of reverence. For instance, while earlier in the game, players would mourn the loss of Abby whenever the computer used to release her appeared on screen, this changed in the later stages of the event. Especially after Bloody Sunday, players began to chant

"the PC demands the blood of the innocent" whenever the dangerous device was near, performing their lack of agency and surrendering to the needs of an external and

supernatural force. Here, chaos and design collide; the sovereign becomes one and

outside. Accepting the loss of agency, players recapture it rhetorically by invoking the irresistible thrall of a god that requires sacrifice for no purpose other than that it demands.

[5.9] Note that not much has actually changed about TPP's canon. Bird Jesus is still good, Flareon still evil. Abby's sacrifice was as essential before as it is now. However,

the turn to Egyptian styles invokes a new temporality and rhetorical form. Turning from arrangement toward procedurality emphasizes the how question of the journey rather than the why question of moral alignment. While the arrangement of medieval Christian artwork sectioned out possibilities for sacred time separate from the journey and

constructed clear moral binaries between good and evil figures, their use of sequential storytelling adopts a more ambivalent narrative of progress. The reverence of medieval Christian rhetorical forms gives way to the intentional and impenetrable otherness of mock Egyptian anthropomorphism.

6. Conclusion: Rhetorical criticism and digital fandom

[6.1] TPP warrants deeper research into rhetoric in fan discourse. Using neoreligious strategies to cope with figurative loss, TPP fans utilized medieval Christian and ancient Egyptian art styles to make sense of their networked game experience. These artistic styles are entangled with specific rhetorical forms, forms that serve as sense-making tools but that, in their continued reproduction in TPP artwork, also set the conditions of possibility for interpretive fictions. I do not wish to make the claim that this process is deterministic. As Matt Hills has argued, much of the development of fan communities and mythologies is driven not by clear syllogism or argumentation but by "affective play" (2002, 14). Once fans establish a resonance with existing understandings and engagements, they often begin to test the boundaries of not only their primary artifacts but existing fan literature as well, applying outside influences and sometimes entirely new approaches. Yet, with these limitations in mind, TPP demonstrates that the study of rhetorical form can still tell us a lot about what kinds of decisions a community is making and how they make them.

[6.2] The study of rhetorical form in fan behaviors takes on new import for artifacts that support collective online play, including experiments in player agency such as TPP

or virtual worlds such as Second Life and Minecraft. Here, collective sensemaking is front and center in the production practices of fans who are exploring and inventing worlds together. This dynamic is not entirely new to digitality. It is not as if discourses were defined by absolute knowability before the internet. Canon is loose. Facts are hazy. Plots have holes. However, artifacts such as TPP are distinctly defined by this sense of unknowability and by the collective desire to explain. As Nick Yee suggests about the player-enacted narratives and ethics in Eve Online, virtual worlds are pliable depending on user perspectives but calcify under the continued existence of user styles of thinking (2014, 63–67). TPP illustrates how such calcification of a style of thinking is interwoven with continuous experience of the object, fan production, and the

rhetorical forms that inform discursive arrangement.

[6.3] In Life on the Screen (1995), Sherry Turkle suggests of sensemaking in virtual worlds, "We are learning to live in virtual worlds. We may find ourselves alone as we navigate virtual oceans, unravel virtual mysteries, and engineer virtual skyscrapers. But increasingly, when we step through the looking glass, other people are there as well"

(1995, 9). Life after the digital is not as radical as Turkle may have first imagined, but

fandoms such as TPP are still navigating virtual oceans together. We need to understand the discourse through which they come to understand these experiences. Fan studies and rhetorical criticism offer tools to help to resolve each other's issues, issues that, for each, ironically tend to emerge most in the study of networked media. Rhetorical

criticism provides the methodological tools for engaging fan dialogue as situated, impactful, and oftentimes persuasive, as creative responses that build on or diverge from discursive structures but that are nonetheless informed by the affordances and constraints of those structures. Meanwhile, fan studies provides rhetorical criticism with a framework it is sorely lacking, particularly in the age of the internet: a perspective on the multivocal space of creative, playful, and meaningful entanglement.

7. Notes

1. Both Suzanne Scott (2008) and Matt Hills (2002, 66–68) have suggested that

fan arguments are a major component of sense-making practices. This is

particularly true in digital environments, in which argumentation is a huge portion of fan interaction (Kuhn 2012). Argumentation plays a vital unifying role in fan

communities around participatory media such as video games (Taylor 2006) and

virtual worlds (Steinkuehler and Duncan 2008), which do not offer the same kind

of unified canon that more linear works might. This is particularly important to this article because TPP is simultaneously a gaming artifact and a digital community.

2. One experimental study of the game's mechanics concluded that after the game

became larger than 46 players, even a group of Pokémon experts was not

guaranteed to win (Chen 2014).

3. In the emulated game they actually named it "ABBBBBBK," but they referred

to it colloquially as Abby, most likely because it was catchier and easier to say.

4. Films such as The Mummy (1999) capitalize on orientalist legends of untold riches, magic curses, and sleeping mummies to build a combined sense of

adventure and horror presented by the remains of ancient Egypt (Bernstein and

Studlar 1997). Since American "Egyptomania," during which Egyptian

iconography was used popularly in American architecture, art, film, literature, and other cultural artifacts, this prevalent mysticism has been a powerful racializing force in film (Shohat 1991).

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Change Us and How They Don't. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

THEORY

Fan film on the final frontier: Axanar

Productions and the limits of fair use in

the digital age

Sarah Elizabeth Lerner

University of California, Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara,

California, United States

[0.1] Abstract—In an analysis of the copyright case Paramount/CBS

v. Axanar Productions Inc. and Alec Peters (2016), which centers on a

high-budget Star Trek fan film, I consider how the case frames digital-

age media fandom's challenges to the law, and concomitantly, how the

case frames the law's challenges to media fandom. Even while legal

action of this kind does not dampen participatory culture on the whole, it

raises questions about the legal definition of a fan and the limits of fair

use doctrine, and it delineates the changing relationships between media

industries and fans. Paramount/CBS v. Axanar Productions reveals the

tension between the gift-giving ethos of fandom and online

crowdfunding as a type of gift; it also reveals the negative industrial and

legal reactions to fan filmmaking and crowdfunding as threats to the way

film has traditionally been constituted. I analyze Axanar's use of

Kickstarter and Indiegogo campaigns, the introduction of

Paramount/CBS's restrictive fan film guidelines, and finally, the rejected

fair use argument proposed by the defense. I take up the rejected fair use

argument by situating it alongside the case history of appropriation art in

order to consider another way to argue for fan films as transformative

works.

[0.2] Keywords—Appropriation art; Copyright law; Crowdfunding;

Fan labor; Transformative works

Lerner, Sarah Elizabeth. 2018. "Fan Film on the Final Frontier: Axanar Productions and

the Limits of Fair Use in the Digital Age." In "The Future of Fandom," special 10th anniversary issue, Transformative Works and Cultures, no. 28. http://dx.doi.org/10.3983

/twc.2018.1429.

1. Introduction

[1.1] Fans produce artistic work on the foundation of what is known in the United States as fair use doctrine, which allows certain kinds of appropriation in service of new artistic or cultural content under the set of regulations copyright law provides.

Determining what counts as fair use can be especially difficult when it intersects with fandom. Just as the courts often struggle to distinguish fair use from copyright

violation, so too, do fans. Casey Fiesler and Amy Bruckman note, in their study of fan creators and their conceptions of copyright law, that due to copyright law's complex nature, fans have a wide range of understanding about copyright law; however,

community norms are strictly regulated (Fiesler and Bruckman 2014). The "gift

economy" "is made up of three elements related to the gift: to give, to receive, and to reciprocate." The transformative nature of fan work bolsters the fan ethos. Both of these fan values have parallels to fair use doctrine: the noncommercial nature of the endeavor and the transformation of copyrighted material are central tenets of declaring a fair use (Hellekson, 114). Even with these core principles, fandom has been in negotiation with the law since the days of analog fan creation (Fiesler and Bruckman, 1024; Coppa

2006). Fiesler and Bruckman write, "This is a problem that has only grown along with technology, and if lawmakers, judges, and legal scholars can have reasonable debates about what may or may not be a fair use, then it is not surprising that ordinary Internet users have trouble drawing these lines as well" (1023). Fair use has ramifications for the future of online practices since case law, as it evolves and sets precedents, is not easy to overturn. It looks back to past cases for established precedents even as it attempts to manage current conditions.

[1.2] The history of copyright and fandom is also difficult terrain because there has never been a fan fiction or fan film case to date. For a brief period during the early to mid-2000s, it seemed possible that the long-standing relationships between media

corporations and fans would prove stable enough to support negotiations of fan practice outside the legal arena. While the history of these relationships had been tumultuous at times, as corporations occasionally served Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) takedown notices to fans, there were also instances of "tolerated use" from corporations that ran the gamut from private understandings between fans and corporations about nonprofit creation to media corporations' co-option of fan work for their own gain (note 1).

[1.3] The introduction of the internet and the subsequent facility that technology provided for fans in production, distribution, and consumption of fan work further imbricated them in concerns about copyright infringement that arose from both fans and media corporations (Schwabach 2011, 13–20). For some fans, like the community of

women vidders who had been producing remix content for nearly thirty years before the

internet, the wider distribution and publication model was anxiety-inducing because it could more easily call negative media industry attention to their work. "Vidders

exercised caution because they thought they could be sued if they did not… So rather than create centralized archives, as fans had for fan fiction, vidders discreetly offered their vids on individual password-protected sites" (Tushnet and Coppa, 131–32). For media corporations, developments in online production, circulation, and distribution have increasingly blurred the lines between fan films and commercial endeavors (note 2). Although distinctions between amateur work and corporate productions have always been cloudy, the ease of production and distribution that accompanied the introduction of the internet altered the stakes in the difference between them (note 3).

[1.4] As legal scholar Rebecca Tushnet recently put it with regard to fandom and the copyright landscape, "The noncommercial fan community has still not given rise to

litigated cases, but the presence of the OTW [Organization for Transformative Works]

and increasing awareness of fair use among fans have enabled them to resist copyright owner threats, and in all the instances of which I am aware, copyright owners have decided not to follow up on informal threats when fans making noncommercial uses

resisted" (2017, 78) (note 4). While this is certainly true, important to Tushnet's statement and to the fan film landscape on fair use is the phrase "noncommercial uses."

The internet challenges what legally counts as noncommercial use, and often the

distinctions between the commercial and the noncommercial are not cut and dried,

especially when online platforms are involved.

[1.5] I look at what happens when a Star Trek fan, Alec Peters, and his film, Prelude to Axanar, enter the legal arena largely due to legal haziness around online practices, and also look at what happens when the legal arena meets the fan. A case that is the first to negotiate the limits of online fan practices is important because it establishes the terms for future digital copyright cases. More broadly, it aims to balance intellectual property rights with free expression. I argue that Paramount Pictures Corp. & CBS

Studios, Inc. v. Axanar Productions, Inc. & Alec Peters (C.D. Cal 2016) reveals the tension between the gift-giving ethos of fandom and online crowdfunding as a type of gift and, alternatively, reveals the negative industrial and legal reactions to fan filmmaking and crowdfunding as threats to the way film has traditionally been

constituted. This case does not threaten participatory culture on the whole, for even while increased constraints on the material fan films may use might arise from

litigation, fan films will not disappear, even if legal threats disproportionately inhibit the creative reach of some fans (note 5). The rich historical lineage of amateur filmmaking in the United States extending back to the 1920s, coupled with longstanding fan

relationships with media corporations and fans' willingness to creatively address legal questions, leads me to believe that fan filmmaking is here to stay (note 6).

[1.6] I consider how the online crowdfunding platforms Kickstarter and Indiegogo

expanded the amount of money involved in the Axanar fan film production, pushing it closer to professional productions, even as the campaigns participated in the gift-giving mentality of fandom. In doing so, I also consider calls from the fan community that the Axanar film is not a real fan film because Peters's ethos was not aligned with the gift

economy, not fully valuing fan ethics around labor and value. Similarly, Paramount and CBS declared that Peters is not a real fan in their attempt to mitigate damage to their relationship with the Star Trek fan community. The media industries then cement their negative view of fan filmmaking by implying that real fans are not involved in fannish behavior that resembles Peters's, only to release a new restrictive set of guidelines for fan filmmakers that ignores fair use. Finally, I analyze the negative legal reaction to fan filmmaking by aligning it with appropriation art, both as a way to think about the traditional definition of authorship adopted by the media industries and the law, and to propose a new way of conceiving a fair use defense for fan films.

2. Axanar Productions, the gift economy, and fan films

online

[2.1] Paramount and CBS opened the case on December 29, 2015, when they filed a

lawsuit against Axanar Productions, Inc., and Alec Peters. Peters created Prelude to Axanar, the twenty-minute trailer Star Trek fan film designed to precede his fan film feature-length movie, Axanar. The twenty-minute Prelude to Axanar features several professional actors who play Starship Enterprise crewmembers. The crewmembers give talking-head interviews as they narrate a Star Trek story that revolves around Garth of Izar, a character "introduced in the Star Trek episode, 'Whom Gods Destroy.'" Axanar

"tells the story of the Four Years War with the Klingon Empire, which the United

Federation of Planets nearly lost" (http://axamonitor.com/doku.php?id=axanar&

s=garth&s=izar).

Prelude to Axanar

Video 1. Axanar, "Prelude to Axanar," YouTube, August 15, 2014.

[2.2] Paramount and CBS claim, as the filing lawsuit details:

[2.3] Star Trek has become a cultural phenomenon that is eagerly

followed by millions of fans throughout the world. Unlike virtually any

other television series or motion picture, the fictional Star Trek races and

characters, their technology, personality traits, and even their makeup, have

been documented and given a historical texture by Plaintiffs that extends far

beyond the action on the screen. Plaintiffs own the copyrights in this

treasured franchise…The Axanar Works [Prelude to Axanar and Axanar]

infringe Plaintiffs' works by using innumerable copyrighted elements of Star

Trek, including its settings, characters, species, and themes…

[2.4] The Axanar Works are intended to be professional quality

productions…On information and belief, Defendants have raised over $1

Million so far to produce these works, including building out a studio and

hiring actors, set designers and costume designers. (Grossman, Zavin, and

Jason 2016, 1–2)

[2.5] After Paramount/CBS filed the lawsuit, Peters attempted to settle outside of court with a Motion to Dismiss, which would void the lawsuit. Judge Klausner, who

was assigned to the case, decided that the claims made by both sides merited further consideration. He set a schedule for the continuation of the legal proceedings, which were to culminate in a twelve-day trial in January 2017, but the parties settled the case after Klausner wrote a partial summary judgment that prohibited Axanar from

introducing a fair use argument (http://axamonitor.com

/doku.php?id=summary_of_the_lawsuit). CBS and Paramount detail the bulk of their

complaints in a photographic chart that outlines each of the alleged copyright

infringements, with original Star Trek photographic screenshots in the right column and Prelude to Axanar screenshots in the left column. If the court had decided that Peters knowingly infringed on Star Trek's copyright, an act known as "vicarious

infringement," each instance on the list would have cost Alec Peters and the other defendants $150,000.00 (http://axamonitor.com/doku.php?id=knowing_infringement).

Figure 1. A visual catalog of infringements from Paramount/CBS's Attorneys in the

lawsuit that contains twenty-eight pages of potential violations.

[2.6] In fleshing out the details of the Axanar case, I consider why this fan film landed in hot water. Here, the broader landscape of digital-age fan filmmaking practices around crowdfunding emerges as a type of gift and, alongside it, the dissenting view from the media industries in relation to fan filmmaking and crowdfunding. High-budget films supported by online platforms, including Kickstarter and Indiegogo campaigns, challenge fan activities that in the past were considered amateur (or nonprofessional) practices that did not involve the exchange of money for profit. Through these

campaigns, fans can put hundreds of thousands of dollars or more to work (note 7).

Even while fans who raise money from crowdfunding sources do not pocket money

from these campaigns, US copyright law defines profit more broadly. Judge Klausner describes the issue this way:

[2.7] Although it is unclear whether Defendants [Axanar, Alec Peters, and

twenty unnamed defendants] stand to earn a profit from the Axanar Works,

realizing a profit is irrelevant to this analysis. The Court can easily infer that by raising $1 million to produce the Axanar Works and disseminating the

Axanar Works on Youtube.com, the allegedly infringing material "acts as a

"draw" for customers" to watch Defendants' films. (Klausner 2016, 5)

[2.8] Klausner, rejecting the initial claims from the defense who argued that the Axanar works are fair use because Peters did not financially benefit, declares instead that profit does not make a difference to the case's outcome. For Klausner, the "draw" of the work exposes the potential for a derivative market. Derivative markets are a factor in determining infringement ( Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music, Inc. , 510, U.S. 569, 579).

Moreover, fan film productions often engage in material creation, including the

construction of film sets, soundstages, and other items that fans then disseminate in association with their fandom. While this materially based practice historically extends to the analog production and circulation of fanzines, it has taken on new functions in the digital age—incentivizing potential donors to participate in crowdfunding campaigns in exchange for fan creations (note 8).

Figure 2. Alec Peters in Prelude to Axanar, playing Fleet Captain Kelvar Garth.

[2.9] While the media industries look down on this type of fundraising as a "draw"

that opens up the potential for a derivative market, fandom understands fan fundraising of all kinds as a gift. Both the money from the crowdfunding campaigns and the

resulting fan creations they support are part of the reciprocal gifting and receiving of the gift economy. Even beyond the commercial and noncommercial distinction that the

media industries are concerned with, fandom makes finer-grained regulations about the power and labor of fan creations. As Mel Stanfill explains, the labor of fandom

"contains the accumulated labor of both the corporate maker and the fan remaker,"

(131) and "fan norms distinguish clearly between copying from those with more power and those with less… Fans need to credit…other fans' work, whereas they feel free to mine the outside world for raw material, as long as the resulting works stay

noncommercial" (136). However, defining the legal borders between the gift economy and the commercial economy is not a simple matter.

3. Axanar and the gift economy

[3.1] The evolving nature of online practices extends funding possibilities into the realm of commercial competition, affords breadth of distribution across media

platforms, and enables higher production values and an ability to pay industry

professionals. While fan practices that are important to Axanar, including financial donations, replica set construction, and the use of professional actors, existed before the internet, the ability to crowdfund staggering amounts of money through online

platforms is a new development, and it made many of Peters's other actions possible.

For copyright lawyer Mary Ellen Tomazic, these are the details that pushed Peters into dangerous territory: First, Peters created Kickstarter and, later, Indiegogo online crowdfunding campaigns for Prelude to Axanar and Axanar that totaled $1.4 million (Tomazic 2016) and used some of the Kickstarter net of $571,044.86 to pay two staff members and himself a salary (http://axamonitor.com/doku.php?id=gofundme). Second, he created perks for donors according to the amount that they donated to the Axanar film campaign. The perks, as Paramount and CBS claim, were also infringing items

(note 9). Third, he used the funds to start Ares (now Industry Studios), which Peters planned to use to film Axanar and to rent to others (note 10). Important to note about fan film studio filmmaking is that several other fans have built studio sets that contained

"standing sets," which stay in the studio and are used only for the fan film. For example, prominent fan filmmaker James Cawley houses his USS Enterprise sets in what was previously a Ticonderoga, New York, dollar store. In Cawley's case, he received a

license from Paramount/CBS for the sets and they are open to the public (Post 2015).

Building and/or using sets, therefore, is not limited to Axanar. However, Peters's interest in renting the studio to other filmmakers indicates his potential interest in profit, and, Peters did not seek a license from Paramount/CBS. Fourth, Peters hired a

professional crew, several of whom had worked on the original Star Trek series (Tomazic 2016).

[3.2] I concentrate now on the Axanar Kickstarter and Indiegogo campaigns, since

they are the impetus behind many of Peters's actions and fuel the

commercial/noncommercial legal issue. The crowdfunding strategies Peters used to

fund Axanar Productions are aligned with methods a host of other Star Trek fan films have used, although Axanar outraised all of them. Jonathan Lane, who writes the

Axanar Fan Film blog, traces the history of Star Trek fan films and the use of

Kickstarter campaigns from the first— Star Trek Excalibur—to the present slew of campaigns. While he is strongly in favor of Axanar because he runs the company

website, he gives the fullest account of Star Trek fan films and funding in relation to Peters that I have located. He also details what Peters learned from the success and failure of earlier campaigns, which is illuminating for the case. Lane writes, "From the earliest days, Star Trek fan films had relied on the kindness of donors—whether it was passing the hat among the volunteers who came to help out on a shoot, getting the

occasional gift card from Lowe's or Home Depot, or begging for donations via PayPal"

(2016a). Kickstarter, then, expanded an ongoing practice.

[3.3] After a series of failed fan film crowdfunding campaigns, the first successful one was Star Trek: Renegades. This campaign bears similarities to Axanar in the use of professional actors and the use of perks for donors at various funding levels. The perks for Renegades' Indiegogo campaign included items such as posters, digital film downloads with special features, access to exclusive web content, DVD and Blu-Ray

versions of the film, commemorative patches, and, autographed ephemera

(https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/star-trek-renegades#/updates/all). Peters's project differs from Renegades in that some of his patches include trademarked images. An Axanar fan highlight of the perks Peters created are the patches bearing Star Trek images renamed with Axanar labels.

Figure 3. Axanar patches for Kickstarter donors as investment incentives.

[3.4] The images on the patches are bound to the question of whether or not Peters impinged on Paramount/CBS's derivative market. Peters himself stated in the Santa Clarita Valley Business Journal in 2015, "More and more content needs to be developed…It's not just broadcast anymore; it's Amazon, Netflix, and Hulu. When

people saw our 20 minute short film we got buzz in the industry—better than anything J. J. Abrams [the director of two Star Trek films] is doing." Peters cites Renegades as one of the campaigns that taught him about crowdfunding.

[3.5] What I did before we launched the Prelude Kickstarter was I spent a

lot of time paying attention to what Star Trek: Renegades had done in their Kickstarter…and then what they had done in their Indiegogo. I went through

and made lists of all their perks and figured out what the best levels for

different perks were. Our first Kickstarter video for Prelude was based off the Renegades video…But that's a basic principle of business: modeling.

(quoted in Lane 2016c)

[3.6] As the funding campaigns progressed, Axanar Productions launched its first

campaign in March 2014 with a goal of $10,000. Lane recalls, "A short 'talking head'

video featured Alec Peters, Director Christian Gossett, and most notably, actor Richard Hatch (plus a few others) talking excitedly about the project and the professionals who were coming on board. There were also eye-catching 3D effects shots done by Tobias Richter scattered throughout the video…they finished at $101,000 from 2,123 donors.

This allowed them to make the 20-minute Prelude to Axanar" (Lane 2016a). All of

these examples are thus well within developing Star Trek fan film crowdfunding

practices.

[3.7] In the next Kickstarter campaign, Axanar set a record for the amount of money raised for a fan film.

[3.8] With less than two days to go before the Kickstarter deadline,

Axanar's total stood at a whopping $400,000. And that would have been

considered staggeringly good, but then something even more amazing and

totally unexpected happened: George Takei posted to his Facebook followers

(all 8.5 million of them!) that they should check out the Axanar Kickstarter

and donate to it if they wanted some real Star Trek…Axanar rocketed

upwards to finish at $638,000 from 8,500 backers…This was a new

Kickstarter record for any independent Star Trek film. (Lane 2016a)

[3.9] That was the last Kickstarter campaign Axanar launched before it switched to Indiegogo, another crowdfunding site that, unlike Kickstarter, allows users to keep the money they raise regardless of whether they reach their final financial goal. For donors, this introduces more risk (Lane 2016a): funds could be raised in the name of a project and never come to fruition due to budget constraints. When Peters switched to

Indiegogo, the platform gave him a boost, "offering them discounts on fees along with a special three-day 'pre-launch' period open only to previous donors…who would be

offered exclusive perks and let Axanar's campaign launch with numbers much higher

than zero" (Lane 2016a). While the Indiegogo campaign failed to take in as much as the original Kickstarter, it took in about $475,000 from 7,400 backers after the initial thirty-day campaign finished (Lane 2016b). Lane also notes that Axanar took advantage of

Indiegogo's "In Demand" tool, "where, if you surpass your goal, you don't have to end your campaign. I know that Axanar took in an additional $100,000 in the six months after their 30-day Indiegogo campaign 'ended'" (Lane 2016c). As Axanar Productions amassed unprecedented sums, it challenged the boundaries between a fan film and an independent, commercial production that could divert consumers away from Star Trek.

[3.10] The tension between crowdfunding viewed as a gift within fandom and as a threat to the media industries is further complicated by calls from some Star Trek fans, many of whom initially supported the Axanar project. These fans say that Peters is not a real fan, since he wasn't invested in the foundational principles of the gift economy and violated the ethical rules of fandom. A parallel example of a violation of fandom's rules that illustrates fans' rejection of Peters is the story of the company FanLib. FanLib, founded in 2007 by three industry men, attempted to sell largely female-produced fan fiction online. Karen Hellekson (2009) provides details about the company's attempt:

"Although outreach included targeting and emailing fanfic writers and encouraging

them to upload fic to the site in exchange for prizes, participation in contests leading to e-publication, and attention from the producers of TV shows like The L Word

(Showtime, 2004–Present) and The Ghost Whisperer (CBS, 2005–Present), FanLib's persistent misreading of the situation alienated fans, as did the draconian terms of service…FanLib broke the rules of the community's engagement by misreading

'community' as 'commodity'" (117–18). The rejection from the community led to the

site's closure in 2008 (118). The company's persistent misreading of "community" for

"commodity" is strikingly similar to how Peters treated his own fan film production—a community of Star Trek fans became financial backers for a commodity (the Axanar

feature film) that Peters never completed, eventually alienating many of the fans who were his financial supporters. For many of these fans, Peters' financial disclosures, which appear redacted in the public court files, are a source of dispute and anger (http://axamonitor.com/doku.php?id=no_refunds&s=nda).

4. Paramount/CBS and restrictive fan film guidelines

[4.1] If it already seemed like the media industries were not fond of new online

developments in fan filmmaking in light of the lawsuit, a few months later, they drove the point further home on the Star Trek website by introducing a set of restrictive guidelines for fan filmmakers (http://www.startrek.com/fan-films). This was clearly a response to issues with the Axanar film and other fan films already online, although they avoided calling out fans by name. The site stated, "The content in the fan

production must be original, not reproductions, recreations or clips from any Star Trek Production…The fan production must be a real 'fan' production, i.e., creators, actors and all other participant must be amateurs, cannot be compensated for their services, and cannot be currently or previously employed on any Star Trek series, films, production of DVDs or with any of CBS or Paramount Pictures' licenses." As for Paramount and

CBS's definition of commercial works as opposed to noncommercial works, some of

their specifications included the following restrictions: (1) fundraising cannot amount to more than $50,000; (2) the film can only be exhibited free of charge; (3) the film cannot be distributed in DVD or Blu-Ray; (4) the film cannot generate revenue for the fan producers through advertising; (5) fans are prohibited from distributing unlicensed perks in connection to their fundraising efforts; and (6) fan productions cannot garner revenue from selling or licensing fan-created props, sets, or costumes.

[4.2] The guidelines are extensive—the industries go as far as to cap the length of fan

films at fifteen minutes and require that the films only contain "family friendly" material that, in a perhaps unintentional nod to the Motion Picture Production Code, "must not include profanity, nudity, obscenity, pornography, depictions of drugs, alcohol, tobacco, or any harmful or illegal activity, or any material that is offensive, fraudulent, defamatory, libelous, disparaging, sexually explicit, threatening, hateful, or any other inappropriate content." The statement would seem to target nearly every kind of popular fan film, not to mention fan fiction, currently produced—from fan remix films and

Kirk/Spock slash videos to the production of replica sets—without regard for fair use.

Henry Jenkins notes, "I can't think of any currently available fan films that would come anywhere near meeting the expectations here and the guidelines would prohibit many forms of practice that would be explicitly protected under current understandings of Federal law regarding parody and transformative use" (quoted in Miller 2016). In other words, the guidelines put forward by Paramount and CBS are not legally binding and have no legal sway. Their purpose is to prevent fans from embarking on large-scale fan film creation out of fear that media industries will prosecute them.

Figure 4. Part of a replica Star Trek set housed in an old dollar store in New York, created for a fan film series called New Voyages. This set was licensed by Paramount/CBS to fan and set creator James Cawley.

[4.3] As Paramount and CBS attempt to regulate fan filmmaking, their methods

conform to ways that media corporations have co-opted fan work for their own use, as Suzanne Scott details in "Repackaging Fan Culture" (Scott 2009). Academics, fans, and acafans, she argues, have rhetorically cordoned off the commercial economy from the gift economy in scholarship and sometimes in fandom, too, as though they are separate.

She indicates that this is not the reality of how economies of fandom function. By overwriting the continuum between the gift and commercial economies, media

corporations can more easily take advantage of fans in subtle ways. One of these ways is through the development of ancillary content that pushes fandom into mainstream spaces by "repackaging" fan work for commercial promotion through regulated terms

that the corporation "regifts" to other fans in sanctioned online spaces (Scott 2009). The repackaging-for-mainstream-content model lurks behind the Star Trek fan film

guidelines. Channeling the fan films into corporate visions of acceptable creation dampers fan film creation, angering fans and undermining fair use, but it also readies the corporation for egregious co-option of labor, so it can usher it into mainstream fan

spaces as it curates its corporate image.

[4.4] The separation between fandom as a subcultural social practice and the

mainstreaming of fan culture wherein "fannish values and reading practices spread

across the entire viewing public" in ways supported by media corporations is

noteworthy (Jenkins 2006). In the mainstreaming of fan practice, media industries use the labor of fandom, whose practices have been altered and molded, in service of

another group of fans, ultimately for corporate gain. While mainstream fans might

become members of fandom, as Jenkins points out, the Star Trek fan film guidelines place fans associated with fandom in the middle of a tug-of-war between corporations and mainstream fans. This tug-of-war parallels the structure of the Axanar case: where Peters might have taken advantage of other fans' donations and engaged in copyright infringement, the corporation prepares to regift and control fan films, using the labor of one fan group to generate support for mainstream fan platforms. As Stanfill concludes about media industries appropriating fan labor, "The same corporations filing takedown requests on fan transformative works are quite willing to appropriate fan labor by monetizing those works, and they often profit from appropriating other artists who never get to count as artists" (137). In this scenario, neither Peters nor Paramount/CBS

seem especially ethical. There is realized and potential exploitation on both sides.

5. Staking the great plains: Enterprising fair use

[5.1] I turn away from Paramount/CBS's reaction to fan filmmaking to analyze the

legal response to Axanar through the case's failed fair use defense. The provisions for fair use are as follows:

[5.2] Notwithstanding the provisions of sections 106 and 106A, the fair

use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or

phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes

such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple

copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of

copyright. In determining whether the use made of a work in any particular

case is a fair use the factors to be considered shall include—

1) the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a

commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;

2) the nature of the copyrighted work;

3) the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the

copyrighted work as a whole; and

4) the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the

copyrighted work.

The fact that a work is unpublished shall not itself bar a finding of fair use if such finding is made upon consideration of all the above factors. (Copyright

Law of the United States § 107)

[5.3] The fair use defense proposed by the Axanar legal team failed because the

terms of fan filmmaking that assign authorship to an appropriated work threatens the legal and media industrial constitution of authorship. Stanfill, describing how copyright law views appropriation in fandom, argues that

[5.4] contemporary US culture and copyright law do not recognize this

[fan creative labor] as additive, let alone as valid or compensable. As Casey

Fiesler notes, the term derivative work 'applies to anything from the slightest

modification to something so transformed that the original is hardly

recognizable.' … Though the four-factor test of fair use in US copyright law

assesses 'the amount and substantiality of the portion used,' this framing

operates from a logic of subtraction…This conceptualization haunts

transformation with the specter of stealing someone else's work rather than

doing one's own. (Stanfill 132)

[5.5] I suggest another way of conceptualizing fair use wherein fan films coalesce with the legal history of artistic appropriation as transformative works (note 11).

Appropriation art, like fan work, faces legal challenges because it stretches the legal definition of an author and, therefore, the concept of an original artwork when it uses other artists' material to generate new art. All art borrows from other art to some degree, since that is the nature of cultural production, but appropriation art, both as a

postmodern movement and a distinctive style, "borrows images from popular culture, advertising, the mass media, other artists and elsewhere, and incorporates them into new works of art. Often, the artist's technical skills are less important than his conceptual ability to place images in different settings and, thereby, change their meaning" (Landes, 1). The courts have yet to catch up with artists and their use of appropriation as a historical practice, and consistently litigate these cases, as lawyer Rachel Butt indicates (1055); yet the impact of bringing fan films into alignment with artistic appropriation is that both practices would be considered as part of a longer lineage of respected art practice, increasing the likelihood that appropriation inherent in fan filmmaking might be considered transformative. Appropriation art and fan

filmmaking pose similar legal questions, and the law tends to negatively frame both; however, appropriation art has a case history that has established appropriation as part of a transformative practice and has gained legal traction over time.

[5.6] Notable early cases involving the uncertain status of appropriation art and authorship extend to lawsuits filed by artists whose work Paramount and Columbia

Pictures appropriated for film posters. Steinberg v. Columbia Pictures (1987) and Leibovitz v. Paramount Pictures (1998) contained fair use decisions that, on the face of it, are at odds with each other regarding the law's view of appropriation. However, they also uncover that media industries are willing to appropriate artists' work, just as fans do with fan work, and that the law does not readily account for the power differences

between individuals and corporations. Judge Stanton, in Steinberg, ruled in favor of the artist, signaling that Columbia Pictures unfairly appropriated Steinberg's art, and Judge Newman, in Leibovitz, ruled in favor of Paramount Pictures, signaling that Paramount's appropriation of Leibovitz's photography was fair use.

[5.7] In Steinberg, artist Saul Steinberg filed a lawsuit against Columbia Pictures for a movie poster that "infringed his copyright for an illustration that appeared on the cover of the New Yorker." The judge "stated that defendants' use of Steinberg's illustration was not a parody and therefore not a fair use because defendants' variation was not aimed at some aspect of Steinberg's illustration" (Butt, 1070). In Leibovitz, photographer Annie Leibovitz filed a suit against Paramount for its Naked Gun 33 1/3: The Final Insult movie poster. "The movie poster depicted a naked and 'pregnant' Leslie Nielsen, which was clearly a spoof of Leibovitz's photograph of Demi Moore that was featured on the cover of Vanity Fair in August 1991. Judge Newman held that Paramount's poster constituted a fair use" because it "commented on the 'self-importance' conveyed by the subject of the Leibovitz photograph" (Butt, 1071). The judicial reasoning in both cases sidesteps the power of the media industries and instead relies on traditional ideas about authorship and originality that allow the media

industries to take a poor view of fan filmmaking today.

Figure 5. Movie poster at issue in Steinberg v. Columbia Pictures (1987) (top left; Steinberg design top right) and Leibovitz v. Paramount Pictures (1998) (bottom left; poster at right).

[5.8] These cases served as early testing grounds for legal authorship in instances of

appropriation, and are connected to Tushnet's invocation of the Stone Soup fable that describes how courts think about authors. According to Tushnet, cultural pastiche, one form of appropriation that is pervasive in fan work, will not stand in court, since the legal definition of authorship adheres to Romantic ideas about the individual or

corporation as a creator and therefore rejects pastiche. Tushnet notes:

[5.9] Contemporary creative works "often resemble the soup in the fable

of 'Stone Soup,' in which a sharp operator convinces a village that he can

make soup out of stones—as long as each of the villagers contributes a little

bit of meat, vegetables, spices, etc. The resulting dish is delicious, and the

stones are a but-for cause of the soup." Copyright law's restricted definition

of authorship is a bit like "say[ing] that the stranger with the stones is the

true owner and proprietor of the soup." (quoted in De Kosnik 2016, 190)

[5.10] The Stone Soup fable, then, articulates why early appropriation art cases like Steinberg and Leibovitz had little legal standing and also partly explains why the Axanar defense, reliant on cultural pastiche and mockumentary as the basis for

transformation, failed. Next, I briefly elaborate on the Axanar defense to outline how the defense's approach to authorship broke with more traditional authorial notions before turning to the evolution of appropriation art in legal cases, which in the future could support a more comprehensive view of transformation.

6. Axanar and the fair use defense

[6.1] The limits of fair use emerge as attorney Erin Ranahan sets up her argument.

The fair use argument, as Ranahan conceives it, positions Peters's Axanar works as transformative works that are part of a history of noncommercial Star Trek fan

filmmaking. She removes distractions, such as Peters's questionable use of

crowdsourced donor funds, from the four conditions of fair use to divert attention from the legal grey area that has yet to define profit in relation to crowdfunding. For Judge Klausner, however, the funding campaigns sway the case in favor of Paramount/CBS,

since the outcome of the campaigns divert attention away from the original series.

[6.2] Ranahan continues her argument regarding transformation as fair use. She

argues that the latest Axanar script contains "50 original characters, an original plot, dialogue, timeline, and story" (1). She asserts that the Axanar works have had

absolutely no measurable effect on the market for Paramount/CBS, suggesting instead that the fan film keeps interest alive (note 12). She indicates that Prelude to Axanar should be understood as a "mockumentary" and that while certain characters, including Kirk and Spock, are copyrighted, Peters's works "do not include those or any other characters to which Plaintiffs own separate copyrights" (3). The defense's misstep here has to do with their definition of mockumentary, which in their argument, is a central feature of Axanar. While their intent was to define Axanar as a film that drew from a range of cultural productions, and at the same time, move the judge toward a

transformative use ruling, the plan backfired because authorship is so categorically slim.

The cultural pastiche argument, as Tushnet suspected, could not hold weight on its own.

[6.3] When the term mockumentary appears in the defense's analysis, it rings false—

the film does not suggest that its spirit was one of parody, nor was it advertised to the public as such. While Prelude to Axanar includes talking-head interviews in a style that is distinct from the original Star Trek series and films so as to comment on the original (Ranahan's definition of the term), mockumentary does not fit. A mockumentary would conceive of Axanar's audience reception as one that is read as "parody, hoax, pastiche, or active critique," which is how film scholar Cynthia Miller conceives of the term (2012, xiv). More important than the question of whether it is or isn't a mockumentary is the problem of the court defining how people interpret media created for a specific audience without the audience's input (note 13). Ranahan points to a commentary ruling wherein a work that has a "completely different purpose" from the original weighs in favor of fair use:

[6.4] The narrative style of Prelude, which has never before been seen in Plaintiffs' Works, is reminiscent of historical documentaries on famous wars

and their impacts on society. This style allowed Defendants to add critical

commentary and analysis in order to highlight a comparison of concepts in

the Star Trek universe to the present-day military industrial complex, thus serving a 'completely different purpose' than the solely entertainment-focused Plaintiffs' Works. (Ranahan, Hughes Leiden, and Oki 2016, 16)

(note 14)

[6.5] Leaving aside scholarly analyses of Star Trek: The Original Series that would take issue with the assertion that it is "solely entertainment-focused" and therefore must not contain critical commentary, her overall point is that Axanar is a cultural pastiche, drawing from many sources. Therefore, she asserts, it does not copy any substantial part of Star Trek (Ranahan, Hughes Leiden, and Oki, 4). While the defense intended to

define Axanar as a film that is more expansive in pastiche than Star Trek alone, the law could not support that definition of authorship.

7. Law, appropriation art, and transformative works

[7.1] I now turn back to appropriation art to track how its case history gained legal standing with regard to fair use, and analyze what fan filmmaking might take from the cases' progression. Notable early examples of artistic appropriation in Western art that art historians recognize as part of the lineage of contemporary appropriation art include Pablo Picasso's and Georges Braque's cubist collages (1912 on) and Marcel Duchamp's readymades (1915 on) (www.tate.org.uk/art/art-terms/a/appropriation).

Figure 6. Picasso's Collage Still Life with Chair Caning (1912) (left) and Marcel Duchamp's Fountain (1917/replica 1964) (right).

[7.2] Early copyright cases involving appropriation art became well-known and

broke new ground with Jeff Koons's artwork in a series of trials (McEneaney, 1530–33).

As lawyers Anthony Gilden and Timothy Green indicate, appropriation art, on the

whole, has found slightly easier standing for fair use as postmodern art has developed status in the art world (Gilden and Green 2013, 88) and this plays out in the Koons cases among others. Koons's appropriated work in Rogers v. Koons used a photograph-turned-postcard of a man and woman holding puppies as the basis for a sculpture,

String of Puppies (1988), in which Koons altered characteristics, like color, of the original artwork. The Second Circuit court rejected a parody defense in a summary

judgment. Later cases that have had a more sympathetic view of Koons's work include Blanch v. Koons (2006), in which Koons used a Gucci advertisement for a painting.

Here, the Second Circuit court found Koons's work to merit fair use protection (Katyal 2014). Even while the courts have not settled on the practical limits of what they consider to be transformative in fair use cases, linking fan practices with artistic appropriation indicates that appropriation is an established art practice that sometimes grants the second artist authorship rights.

[7.3] An Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts amicus curiae reply brief in support of Richard Prince's appropriated photographs from artist Patrick Cariou states that Campbell v. Rose-Acuff Music decided that a work is transformative if it

"'supersedes the objects' of the original creation…or instead adds something new, with a further purpose or different character, altering the first with new expression, meaning or message [and] there are many uses beyond commentary or criticism that deliver new

meaning and expression and provide important 'social benefit[s]' that equal or exceed those provided by parody or direct commentary" ( Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music, Inc., quoted in The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts 2012, 2). Campbell was a landmark case, establishing the transformative use prong of fair use in 1994

(McEneaney, 1530).

Figure 7. Patrick Cariou's photograph (left) and Richard Prince's appropriation art (right).

[7.4] Pinning down a particular meaning or criticism is not necessary to understand the transformative nature of a work, for as the Warhol Foundation argues about Prince's work, "The fact that meaning is difficult to verbalize, label, categorize or explain does not mean Prince's work is not transformative. It simply reflects the fact that the meaning of visual art does not always translate neatly into written words (The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts 2012, 5)." As such, the transformative nature of the Axanar works, or other fan films, does not need to be rigidly defined to be declared transformative. The fans themselves could aid in such a ruling, for they are the best readers of Axanar.

[7.5] Tushnet suggests to the courts as they determine transformative use rulings that they should seek "epistemological humility" and ask the community for whom these

works were made (Tushnet 2013, 20). More than anyone else, the fans can contest and attest to the nature of the films, even if the community itself is divided about the outcome of the case (http://axamonitor.com/doku.php?id=reader_commentary).

[7.6] To make fair use work, courts should assess transformativeness from

multiple perspectives, with attention to what different audiences might see in

a work and in an allegedly transformative remix of that work. There is some

risk that this approach will simply transfer the problem of defining who

counts as a 'reasonable' audience member, but the existence of communities

of practice—whether appropriation artists, vidders, or others—who react to

the new work as having a different meaning than the original could help

establish that such audiences are both reasonable and real. (Tushnet 2013,

29)

[7.7] Assessments by Trekkers, who would not be hard to locate due to Star Trek

fandom's visible online presence, could support a transformative use defense.

8. Trekking the digital frontier

[8.1] As Star Trek fans and filmmakers encounter the legal frontier of copyright law

and embrace the tools that the digital age has provided, the limits of fair use come into focus. Each new copyright case establishes how the courts interpret fair use doctrine, how creative expression can be used to create meaning, and how far copyright

ownership extends. Paramount/CBS v. Axanar intervenes at a crucial juncture in the trajectory of digital age copyright law, pressing the court to negotiate the terms of fair use as they pertain to fan practices, including crowdfunding and appropriation, that the digital age extends and makes possible.

Figure 8. The original Star Trek reflexively meets the American western for a shootout at the OK Corral in 3.1 "Spectre of the Gun" (1968).

[8.2] The case challenges the relationship between fans and media industries, putting pressure on the legal definition of a fan as the case attempts to name certain practices as fan practices and others as non fan practices in ways inauthentic to fans' expressions of love for media creations. It emphasizes that the gift economy of fandom is central to the constitution of a fan. When Peters rejected the values of the gift economy, he was sanctioned within the fan community, losing much of the support he had garnered for his project. The conflict between the gift-giving mentality of fandom and the negative responses to crowdfunding and fan filmmaking from media industries and the law speak to the nature of the uncharted legal territory between commercial and noncommercial endeavors. It also casts light on the conservative definition of authorship for both as participatory culture in the United States develops alongside digital technologies and platforms.

[8.3] The case renegotiates the terms of intellectual property ownership on the digital frontier. After applying the four-prong fair use test, Judge Klausner decided that:

[8.4] The Court thus finds that all four fair use factors weigh in favor of

Plaintiffs. If the jury does not find subjective substantial similarity [to Star

Trek works], Defendants did not infringe and fair use defense is moot. If the

jury finds subjective substantial similarity, the Axanar Works are rightfully considered derivative works of the Star Trek Copyrighted Works. Rejection

of Defendants' fair use defense is consistent with copyright's very purpose

because derivatives are "an important economic incentive to the creation of

originals." (Klausner 2017, 13)

[8.5] He removed Axanar's surest path to winning, which was rocky to start; but most concerning about this partial summary judgment is that short of Axanar arriving at trial, it established legal precedent in the United States for fan films and the use of

copyrighted material that does not look favorably on fan film creation.

[8.6] Given the circumstances, this abrupt finale might turn out to be an optimal outcome for fan films. The caving defense argument for a case that should not be the poster child for fan films leaves room for future fair use defenses that argue differently for transformative use. On the one hand, Klausner's judgment seems like a sharp blow to fan film creations, but it may not turn out to be as stifling as one might think. The logic of the ruling is embedded in a cultural battle between artistic containment and resistance (Hall 2006). Klausner does not reject the idea that fair use could protect fan films. On the other hand, precedents are difficult to reverse. Only the future will tell how this precedent stands in copyright cases to come, but it is unequivocally a case that breaks new ground. Star Trek fans, lovers of a quintessential space western, venture to go boldly where no one has gone before. In doing so, the fans recapitulate a defining tension inherent in the American Western and in American jurisprudence: the tension between property ownership and "free territory," set on the legal stage—once again exploring a new land.

9. Acknowledgments

[9.1] I thank Alenda Chang, Constance Penley, Janet Walker, and Charles Wolfe for their insight and valuable feedback.

10. Notes

1. For more on "tolerated use," see Tomazic (2016). On negotiations between

corporations and fans, see Barton (2014) and Scott (2009).

2. See Roberta Pearson (2010) for an earlier consideration of how the digital age shaped the relationship between producers and consumers. Pearson argues that "the digital revolution has had a profound impact upon fandom, empowering and disempowering,

blurring the lines between producers and consumers, creating symbiotic relationships between powerful corporations and individual fans, and giving rise to new forms of cultural production"; yet she takes a sunnier view of the "symbiotic" relationship (84, 87).

3. Dan Streible notes that there was blurriness between amateur filmmaking and

corporate productions even in the 1920s: "[The Our Gang filmmakers] introduced themselves as being from Hollywood, and there might be some way to justify that

because one of them, the cameraman, probably worked as a stringer for a newsreel

service connected to or distributed by one of the major studios…" (quoted in Young 2008, 11).

4. For writing by legal scholars considering copyright's intersections with fandom and fan film, see also Schuster (2014) and Mariani (2015). For a media studies view on fair use, see Aufderheide and Jaszi (2011).

5. Addressing how the law disproportionately affects some fans more than others in her article on Sherlock Holmes fan rebellion to copyright threats, Betsy Rosenblatt

argues:"One may hypothesize that such [fan] rebellion [toward copyright holders who make claims against fans] is more likely in circumstances under which fans are

particularly affluent or privileged in terms of race, gender, sexuality, or ability; can identify moral or ideological distance between the original creator and the copyright holder; can make claims to moral purity; or may treat the fictional objects of their fandom as real…The fact that some fans are more likely than others to rebel may serve as further evidence that intellectual property laws that make fan creation risky or expensive are likely to have a disparate impact on fan creation, discouraging some but not others" (Rosenblatt 2017).

6. Clive Young (2008) traces the lineage of fan films back to an amateur silent Our Gang (also known as The Little Rascals) film created by two con men who entered the town of Anderson, South Carolina, in 1926 and took advantage of the local cinema's proprietor.

7. While fans paid for fanzines to cover the cost of their creation, fans cannot charge members of the public to see their fan films. Such a practice would cross into the commercial zone under US copyright law. Perhaps payment for fanzines slid under the radar because of the relatively small circulation within a close-knit community. A fan named Jacqueline notes of analog fandom, "Back in the days when we could only get

[fan fiction] in dead tree fandom ["dead tree fandom" being a tongue-in-cheek

nickname for print fandom], you were talking about a $30-per-zine investment" (quoted in De Kosnik 2016).

8. A significant early fan-backed film Kickstarter was the Veronica Mars campaign in 2013, in which fans donated to the site in order to signal their support for a Hollywood film. While the Veronica Mars campaign was not in service of producing a fan film, similar issues arose concerning fan labor in garnering financial support for the proposed film and the media industry's ability to profit from it. See Chin et al. (2014).

9. Both the fact of crowdfunding and salary payment are questionable actions with

regard to fair use (http://axamonitor.com/doku.php?id=gofundme, Peters 2015). The

issue Paramount/CBS had with the patches was that they copied Star Trek symbols.

Paramount/CBS may sue Peters separately for trademark infringement.

10. As of September 2016, Paul Parcellin indicated in the Santa Clarita Valley Signal that the building was not up to code and the studio website did not list ongoing

productions.

11. For a similar argument regarding appropriation and reuse in fandom, see Mel Stanfill's "Spinning Yarn with Borrowed Cotton," in which she "use[s] musical reuse, as in the blues or sampling, as a lens to examine fan transformative reuse, which both shows how reuse functions as intertextuality that layers meaning and illuminates how social inequalities play out with respect to labor, copyright, and authorship" (132).

12. This argument in support of fan work appears in an oft-told story about how fans kept Star Trek alive when there was little new production. "We are all familiar with the myth of Star Trek fandom: how Trekkies first saved the show from cancellation and then kept it alive during the wilderness decade…As with many myths, there is some

truth at its heart, as contemporary newspaper accounts attest" (Pearson 2010, 87).

13. The Facebook group "CBS/Paramount v. Axanar," composed of many fans who

initially supported Axanar, consider the idea of Prelude as a mockumentary to be laughable. For them, Prelude does not read as a mockumentary, a term they understand to indicate that parody or humor is involved in deployment of documentary storytelling mode. Another Facebook group exsts that supports Alec Peters, but the group is not public and it did not seem ethical to include their thoughts.

14. Scholars who have analyzed the original series in terms of the military include, among others, Kelly L. Ross (2013) and Karen Anijar (2000).

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PRAXIS

Live streaming as participation: A case

study of conflict in the digital/physical

spaces of Supernatural conventions

Naomi Jacobs

University of Aberdeen, Aberdeen, Scotland, United

Kingdom

[0.1]

Abstract—Mobile digital technologies allow copresence in

digital and physical spaces, including those surrounding fan conventions.

Fans attending these events may wish to share real-time experiences with

a wider online community who are keen to participate. However, this can

create conflict with other stakeholders. This case study of activities that

took place in 2016 and 2017 during Supernatural (2005–) conventions

run by Creation Entertainment uses ethnographic and survey methods to

examine the effect of technology platforms used for online participation

during these events, including live streaming apps such as Periscope.

Results show that live streaming provides positive benefit both for fans

and the event organizers, and that the liveness of streams can be critical

to community building and can encourage ticket purchase. However,

lessons can be learned regarding transitions and boundaries between

grassroots fan activity and commercial service.

[0.2]

Keywords—Digital culture; Digital public space; Fandom;

Periscope

Jacobs, Naomi. 2018. "Live Streaming as Participation: A Case Study of Conflict in the Digital/Physical Spaces of Supernatural Conventions." In "The Future of Fandom,"

special 10th anniversary issue, Transformative Works and Cultures, no. 28.

https://doi.org/10.3983/twc.2018.1393.

1. Introduction

[1.1] Many considerations of the modern fan experience and participatory culture are intrinsically tied to changes that new media technologies have brought in the last 20

years (Jenkins, Ford, and Green 2013; Booth 2010). With the rise of Web 2.0 and the ubiquity of social media platforms, constant immersion in online social content is a standard part of modern life. For those who live in these digitally enabled worlds, there may be changes in the nature of social interactions (Jacobs and Cooper 2018), with closeness among friends fostered by constant awareness of what they are doing.

Through incremental small updates of seemingly banal content, this "ambient intimacy"

(Reichelt 2007) is constructed. The rise in mobile digital technology means that this closeness can be carried with us wherever we go. When the overlay of digital and

physical spaces is complete, modern fans, and more generally people who regularly use connected digital devices, can constantly coexist in both the physical world the ambient digital world. This includes bringing digital interaction into what might traditionally have been considered off-line fan spaces, such as conventions.

[1.2] Conventions for fans date back long before the digital age; for example, the annual World Science Fiction Convention, Worldcon, has been run almost continually since 1939. These conventions provide opportunities for those sharing particular

interests to meet and make connections. Booth (2016) describes fan conventions as a unique constructed space where fans connect in a particular moment of both space and time. Today, "online meetings that may first take place in a chat room or via a message board are reinforced by fan conventions" (Costello and Moore 2007, 134). Friendships extend to those who have not yet experienced a face-to-face meeting. As the boundaries between digital and real life blur, it does not seem unlikely that there would be a desire to share experiences with those who cannot be physically present but are part of the virtual community. This is of particular interest when considering activities

encompassed within the context of some conventions that are traditionally associated with the notions of liveness and exclusivity.

[1.3] Questions of digital inclusion have been examined in the context of music fans.

Bennett, writing about the shared experience when digital technology is used to connect fans who are physically present at a music concert with those who are remotely

engaged, argues that this practice of "involving the non-present audience" is a way for fans "to contest and reshape the traditional boundaries of the live music experience"

(2012, 553). Sharing is a key part of the fan experience for many fans; however, some disagree that this outside engagement for live events is beneficial, especially given that the value inherent in these unique experiences is dependent on having been there. Those who have this privileged position enjoy elevated status, a value inherent to the limited nature of the experience: "For some audience members the value of the concert may be that it is not available to anyone not present; from their perspective the intensity of performer/audience communication is undermined by its communications to people not present" (Bennett 2012, 554).

[1.4] Those who sell tickets to live events may share this exclusionary view, depending on their business models. Models of fan conventions range from not-for-profit conventions run entirely by volunteers, to large commercial enterprises with professional paid staff. This variation may be linked to the type of celebrity guests whose attendance boosts ticket sales. Fan-run conventions, particularly for literary-focused fandoms, seldom pay fees or honoraria for speakers, instead perhaps covering travel, accommodation, and food for the guests (note 1). Guests at such events are usually writers or artists, many of whom are fans themselves and likely attended these conventions in that capacity earlier in their careers (note 2). Television- and film-focused events often invite actors, who are generally less likely to have been existing members of fan communities and who are often contractually obligated to charge for public appearances. These appearance fees must be covered either by the convention organizers or as a proportion of sales for items such as autographs and photographs with fans. This may encourage a more commercial model overall. Such commercial events

have become an important income stream for many actors (Goldberg 2016). In this

context, tickets to attend events are a high-value commodity rather than an attempt to fund an expression of collective interest.

[1.5] The conflict inherent in these two modes of conventions, between commercial sale to groups of individuals versus shared production and consumption, echoes more general questions over the nature of digital public space (Jacobs and Cooper 2018) and the consequences of convergence culture (Jenkins 2006). What constitutes public

content remains ambiguous, including the copyright status of fans exchanging GIFs and remixed content. Further, although fans may perceive the conventions to be public

spaces, to commercial organizers, they are private, paid shows. The desire fans have to share freely with others conflicts with control of access, and new technologies can emphasize these divides. In order to address these conflicts, fan studies must undertake interdisciplinary work understanding the concerns of multiple stakeholders including fans, media industry professionals, and other commercial organizations (Jenkins, Ford, and Green 2013).

[1.6] In considering the current and future progression of the fan experience,

technologically driven changes in social norms must be addressed. Some of these

behaviors and processes are in flux, thus providing a unique opportunity to direct these interactions toward positive social change and sustainable business models. Here I examine a case study of the evolving policies and practices of a particular form of digital sharing: video recording and live streaming at Creation Entertainment's

Supernatural conventions. The use of technology for sharing at these events has gone through several iterations and levels of conflict as attending fans and event organizers have negotiated their stances. The digital footprint of these events is a new contested space, with different pressures from the community, convention celebrity guests, and Creation Entertainment.

2. Context: Supernatural conventions and online

fandom

[2.1] The television show Supernatural began in 2005 and is still airing, making it one of the longest-running US genre shows. It has a large and active fan base.

Conventions attended by the stars of the show have been held since 2007, and multiday events now take place many times per year. These include a variety of activities,

including question-and-answer panels with actors and often musical events such as

karaoke and Saturday Night Special (SNS) concerts. In 2016, twenty-four conventions were held worldwide, seventeen of them in North America. These North American

events are run exclusively by Creation Entertainment (https://www.creationent.com

/company.htm), a company that has been running commercial comic and science fiction conventions since 1971. Although Creation Entertainment runs conventions for many

properties, the Supernatural events might be considered distinct. Vist (2016) describes the events as a magic circle of playful intimacy between the cast and fans. This unique status is facilitated by two main factors: the events are hosted by members of the cast (usually Robert Benedict and Richard Speight Jr.) (note 3) who develop this shared space, and many fans travel to attend multiple conventions per year, despite prices that are far higher than other Creation Entertainment events (note 4). This price differential may be the result of demand, or it may be because fans are willing to pay increasingly higher prices—in 2017, almost $1,000 for top-price packages (figure 1), with some fans paying over $1,500 for premium front-row seats.

Figure 1. Average prices for Gold tickets to Creation Entertainment events. These

tickets include priority seating, autographs, and exclusive content. Data collected and compiled by Twitter user @TeganJ42; it has been verified and is used with permission.

[2.2] Despite the popularity of these events, the relationship between the fans and the company is not unequivocally positive. Booth has critiqued Creation Entertainment's mercurial approach to conventions: "Creation Entertainment represents the

resistant/complicit state of fandom within the industry" (2016, 24). The events follow a rigid format, heavily centered on interaction with the celebrities rather than fans sharing their own experiences, critical analyses, or transformative readings. Booth notes,

"Creation largely reifies the fan-as-consumer practice of fandom" (2016, 31). This urge to maintain control of both the experience fans have at the events and their interaction with the objects of their fandom and each other is demonstrated through their effort to

control, and later commodify, the practice of sharing experiences beyond the boundaries of the convention itself, explored below. Booth notes, "Creation's remit to focus on celebrities and authorized readings of the media program foregrounds a devotion to the original text at the expense of unauthorized fan activity" (37).

[2.3] While conventions play an important role in the world of Supernatural fandom, digital social media fan interaction is also important. Supernatural is one of the most talked-about US television shows on digital social platforms. Rebak (2016) tracks

mentions of Supernatural across 80 million websites from August through October 2016 as part of a study of large entertainment fandoms, finding online interaction on platforms including Tumblr, Instagram, and Facebook. Twitter, however, was the most active platform, with 73,976 public users mentioning Supernatural during this period.

Rebak (2016) hypothesizes that Twitter is a favored platform because of the practice of live tweeting episodes of the show as they are broadcast, as well as frequent fan

engagement by the cast: "Twitter is not only the social media home of Supernatural's most beloved celebrities…[but] it's also where fans go to livetweet every new episode.

In fact, the Supernatural fandom was the earliest to start livetweeting like this on a large scale."

[2.4] The strong online community evident in these digital spaces is reinforced by a coherent overarching message that the fans support each other and function as a

Supernatural family, as well as the willingness of cast and crew members to engage with fans on various platforms. Here I examine interrelations between the online

fandom space (considered by some as a public space) and the private space of

conventions. I examine the changing technologies used to bring experience from one sphere to the other, as well as the reactions by various stakeholders.

3. Methodology and ethics

[3.1] My case study uses a mixed-methods approach. I performed initial

observational research as part of a community of interest on Twitter that overlapped with community members attending Supernatural conventions. I carried out

ethnographic research over a period of approximately eighteen months, from January 2016 to June 2017, including conversations with fans, review of social media data

under specific hashtags, and observation of ad hoc commentary and discussion. This included convention content posted online by fans and Creation Entertainment; no

conventions were attended in person. Twitter was selected as the main platform for study because this is the primary venue for discussion of conventions by repeat

attendees and those sharing content, which may be due to its centrality for real-time fan interaction (note 5). To supplement this ethnographic research, an anonymous online survey was conducted targeted to fans who have an interest in Supernatural

conventions, though not excluding those who have never attended an event in person.

This study received approval from the University of Aberdeen ethical review board.

[3.2] Individual tweets quoted have been obfuscated to ensure anonymity while

preserving the original meaning and intent. This was achieved in one of two ways: transposition of two existing words or phrases in a joint clause, or replacement of a single word by a synonym. Although the tweets are available in the public domain, I decided to anonymize the tweets because fans posting content may not have been aware that their tweets would be used in this context, and therefore conditions of informed consent to identification were not satisfied. It is also important to note that this phenomenological study necessarily represents a particular view of the events that have occurred, filtered through a subsection of attendees and their responses. It should not be taken as representative of the wider Supernatural fan base or the customer base of Creation Entertainment events.

4. Chronology of digital sharing of the convention

experience

[4.1] The following is an account of changes in online coverage of Creation

Entertainment Supernatural conventions from 2007 to 2017. These events generate much online interaction and discussion among fans, which has taken different forms as technology has evolved. In the earliest years of the conventions, this consisted primarily of footage posted to YouTube. Around 2009, however, Twitter emerged as a key

platform for the fandom, with the practice of using Twitter for real-time live-tweeting episode commentary carrying over to the conventions. This heavy use of Twitter has persisted; for example, during the three-week period surrounding the February 2016

Nashville convention, approximately 30,000 tweets used the official hashtag,

#SPNNash (note 6).

[4.2] Until mid-2015, text-based commentary on Twitter was the major way for those who were not present to quickly get an idea of what was taking place in real time. Fans attending the event tweeted, but remote fans discussed updates and interacted with those in attendance. The practice of live tweeting what was being said by stars at panel sessions was common; those recording the event in this way indicated this in advance so those interested could follow their tweets. This Twitter commentary was

supplemented by multiple postings of full video footage of the panels. This generally comprised five or six videos per panel, posted to YouTube a few hours after the event.

Rapid access to these was valued in part because the text-based commentary was

perceived as ambiguous because of its lack of tone markers and its abbreviated content.

[4.3] In March 2015, an app called Periscope launched after being acquired by

Twitter, reportedly in response to a rival live streaming app called Meerkat (Bohn 2015). Meerkat and Periscope both quickly grew in popularity because these formats were able to leverage existing social networking by integrating directly with the Twitter platform (Tang, Venolia, and Inkpen 2016). By late 2015, Supernatural fans (in particular those with interest in conventions) had also begun to use Periscope. Each convention would attract two or three dedicated Periscope users who would live stream the activities. Links to the best-quality streams would quickly be circulated; these

streams acted as a hub for fans within the connected online community, who could also use the platform to provide shared commentary and direct feedback to the person taking the video. This use of Periscope proved extremely popular, especially for music-based activities. Video and audio footage, seen directly in real time, felt part of a more intrinsic communal experience, and it also eliminated some of the issues of

misinterpretation and bias seen in text-based relaying of information. Depending on the nature of the content (e.g., the popularity of the actor on stage), viewership varied, but streams would generally attract at least fifty viewers, and up to several thousand for the most popular. For example, at an October 2016 event in Atlanta, a Periscope stream of stars Jared Padalecki and Jensen Ackles had 2.4K viewers, one of Misha Collins had 1.1K viewers, and 240 viewers followed Julian Richings, who guest starred in several episodes. Fans spoke out about how a positive energy came from the experience of

seeing live content from the event. Concordant with this, the volume of live tweeting diminished because this was no longer seen as a necessary component of recording and transmitting the event:

[4.4] What nobody intended or anticipated was the sense of community

that came from using Periscope, because you could share with other people

watching. (personal communication, July 2017)

[4.5] The conventions since their beginning had always nominally had a policy of

forbidding video and photography during the panel sessions, with signage to that effect posted outside the event rooms at the venue. However, despite this, there was an

unspoken understanding between the organizers and fans that this would not be

enforced, and many videos were posted online with no repercussions. This implicit

permission, in contrast with the explicit forbidding of posting, was reinforced by hosts of events, who offered advice on the best way to capture footage. The following is a representative quote by Speight from the opening introductory session of a convention, which quotes and then subverts the official rules by referring to online posting of content as free advertising, as seen in video 1.

"Don't Videotape the Convention"

Video 1. blurino24, "Don't Videotape the Convention," YouTube, January 18, 2015.

Richard Speight Jr.'s opening remarks at Salute to Supernatural, San Francisco, CA, January 16–18, 2015.

[4.6] However, in November 2016, Creation Entertainment began to enforce the ban

specifically on live streaming, with volunteer staff on site asking fans to stop

broadcasting and threatening to eject those who persisted. Fans believed that this was in response to the rising use of Periscope. Reactions on Twitter were vehement that this had strong negative effect on the community:

[4.7] Instead of the normal excited cacophony of ppl chatting about

@CreationEnt conventions, my timeline is largely silent and/or bitter.

(Twitter, November 2016)

[4.8] Much discussion surrounded the effect that this would have on the wider

community:

[4.9] Let us mourn, our feelings are valid. It's more than content or a

concert, it's a lost sense of connection. (Twitter, November 2016)

[4.10] Many echoed Speight's comments that access to the events (specifically the music performances of the SNS) contributed to positive marketing for the conventions themselves:

[4.11] Sense of togetherness and family created by SNS periscopes is why

so many people are inspired to save up & go to your cons @CreationEnt.

You dumbs. (Twitter, November 2016)

[4.12] Discussion followed over the next few months, with fans attempting to contact the company and confirm exactly what the policies were. Some fans publicly shared

email responses that suggested that capturing content for personal use was allowed but that sharing full video was not permitted. This correspondence cited reasons such as rights issues and contracts with the talent. The email also referred to jokes made by Speight, suggesting that they did not constitute permission.

[4.13] In December 2016, an announcement was made by the charity Random Acts

(founded by one of the stars of Supernatural) that they would be collaborating with Creation Entertainment to broadcast one of the SNS concerts, to be held on January 21, 2017, as a joint fund-raiser for a specific campaign (Schmitz 2016). To do this, a commercial live streaming platform called StageIt was used, which allows people to buy tickets providing access to the stream. StageIt provides the facility to give tips (i.e., extra monetary donations), which were used in this case for additional fund-raising.

This event was extremely successful, ultimately raising almost $65,000, and it received much positive feedback from fans, who noted that it allowed participation in the event in a way that was lacking since Periscope was banned.

[4.14] At the end of January, after the charity broadcast, Creation Entertainment confirmed at an event that live streaming by fans would be permitted, but only for the karaoke segment. On February 3, Creation Entertainment announced that it would be

hosting its own live streaming service of the SNS concert taking place on February 25, with paid access through purchase of a ticket on the StageIt platform at a cost of $15 to $20.

[4.15] On March 30, 2017, the official Creation Entertainment Twitter feed posted a screen capture of their policy with the caption, "Hey everyone, here is our official policy regarding video recording, photography, and live streaming" (figure 2).

Responses to this tweet were positive, with several thanking the company for clarifying their position; however, this official guidance was not immediately available on the company's website, at least not prominently. Therefore, it is questionable whether this clarity would be available for those who did not see the announcement via Twitter or other social media platforms.

Figure 2. Notice posted on Creation Entertainment Twitter feed, March 20, 2017.

[4.16] After the apparent success of the first StageIt broadcasts, Creation

Entertainment has continued to provide this service. Starting with the Seattle

convention, April 7 to 9, 2017, and at selected conventions that followed, the use of the platform extended beyond the SNS musical event to panel sessions containing

interviews with actors, at a price of $5 to $20 per forty-five-minute event. Although uptake has been good and this new technology implementation could be seen as a

positive move for the company, fans expressed mixed reactions.

5. Fan attitudes to video sharing: Survey results

[5.1] The survey on convention attendance and use of technology was initially

distributed on April 19, 2017, and responses were gathered for the next ten days. The survey link was initially circulated via Twitter, as the dominant platform for this fandom. During this period, 262 responses were collected from members of the

community with an interest in conventions. The survey development was in progress

before Creation Entertainment had announced that it would be providing its own

authorized live streams at conventions, although some questions were amended just

before the survey went live to reflect this situation. Responses to the free-text survey questions were not compulsory; responses are reported below as percentages of those who gave an answer to each particular question.

[5.2] Responses included those who had and had not attended the events in person, with 57 percent of the respondents (149/262) indicating that they had attended at least one event, including 9 percent (24/262) who had attended five or more events (figure 3).

Figure 3. Convention attendance rates.

[5.3] Asked if they thought it was good that video from the events was made

available online, almost all respondents agreed. Of 233 respondents who answered this question, none gave a negative response and only seven expressed ambivalence, with two specifically noting a difference in how they felt about fan-made videos as opposed to those that were made professionally and charged for. A common response was that it allowed others to join the experience who could not otherwise attend:

[5.4] Fans that cannot afford going to the con can also be a part of it.

[5.5] Another common theme was that it encouraged attendance:

[5.6] ABSOLUTELY YES! The only reason I am saving for a con is

because I saw video of it. Before SEEING it online, I had zero interest.

[5.7] Asked "If applicable, what made you first want to attend a Supernatural convention?" 34 percent of respondents (89/262) indicated that experience of this

content was a factor. This was the second most common reason cited, after wanting to meet the actors from the show. Sixteen percent of respondents (41/253) cited YouTube when asked how they first learned of the existence of conventions.

[5.8] A common theme seen throughout the responses was that videos provided free

advertising for Creation Entertainment. Asked specifically how video footage being made available online affected intention to attend, responses overwhelmingly indicated that it did not have a negative effect: only 2 percent (5/224) indicated that it would make them less likely to want to attend, and 77 percent (172/224) said that it would increase their desire to attend. However, some did again comment that they felt more positively about the freely provided fan videos than the paid StageIt.

[5.9] Comments generally reinforced that while videos were appreciated, they did not substitute for attendance in person:

[5.10] I appreciate when the streams are made available live. You can

pretend you're there.

[5.11] Being there in person is the ultimate experience.

[5.12] Inclusion of a wider audience was also a common theme when asked whether

fans thought videos added or detracted to the convention experience (figure 4), a

question to which over half of respondents (113/220) gave a positive response:

[5.13] It opens the window for those not there.

Figure 4. Effects of live video on experience.

[5.14] Interestingly, of the small group (7 percent, 16/220) who said it would detract,

four suggested that the negative effect would be for those taking the video; the mediation of experience through the camera would mean that they were less able to

participate fully:

[5.15] I think for the fan taking the video, it may give them a layer of

distance. (I found that tweeting during panels distracted me from being fully

present).

[5.16] I believe in living in the moment, so the experience should be

special to you.

[5.17] Two fans commented that because of this negative personal effect, while they had no objection to other people filming in this way, they would not do it themselves.

However, one fan highlighted the positive effect of sharing with the online community in real time:

[5.18] My fandom community is online. If I'm streaming live video, and

I'm getting their responses in comment form, it intensifies my experience of

being there.

[5.19] Fourteen fans mentioned the possibility of restricting or blocking the view of other fans present, with several suggesting that whether filming is a good thing depends on if they are causing an obstruction. Several people noted that their experience had been negatively affected by those around them filming. This may be seen as an

argument in favor of professionally provided footage that is preplanned and filmed from a fixed point that does not obstruct anyone's view. Another option suggested by

respondents was a specific area of the auditorium set aside for those who wish to film, so as not to disturb others.

[5.20] Asked if they considered there had been changes in online presence over the past year and whether this had affected experience, many respondents suggested that restrictions on video had greatly reduced the amount of both footage and interaction online:

[5.21] Ever since they cracked down on the No Live Streaming, the online

presence/atmosphere (especially on twitter) has been quiet and there has

been less online excitement. During cons where there are not many people

live-tweeting/posting it feels like there is not a con happening at all.

[5.22] Asked if they were more likely to watch live or prerecorded content from

conventions, the majority (56 percent, 127/228) said that they would usually not watch live. However, over half of these (75/127) said that this was due to timing conflicts, being in the wrong time zone, or being busy with other commitments such as work.

Some also cited quality concerns, indicating that low-resolution video or technical issues of live streams would lead them to choose better-quality videos uploaded later.

This issue of quality also led to praise of professional videos:

[5.23] like it more when the organizer films and uploads it than fans

filming with bad quality.

[5.24] Despite these major drawbacks to live video, 33 percent (76/228) still

responded that they are more likely to watch the videos live. Many comments suggested that live viewing was a communal experience:

[5.25] I would like to watch them live, because it would almost feel like I

was there, experiencing the same thing so many other people are

experiencing.

[5.26] I want to experience it as it's happening, otherwise I hear all the

highlights on twitter and am less motivated to go watch later. Watching live

as a group is what's fun.

[5.27] Value in the experience was also a factor in how people responded when asked to choose between a high-quality live video and in-person attendance with a poor view.

Fifty-nine percent (137/232) said that they would prefer being there in person, using words such as "energy" and "atmosphere." Many expressed the idea that "nothing

compares" to being there, and mentioned that being in the space has other advantages, such as meeting other fans and being able to enjoy other aspects of the convention.

However, 34 percent (80/232) still said that they would prefer a high-quality live video, with the main factor given being cost: they would not be able to participate in the live experience because of the expense involved. Although the live experience has

irreplaceable features such as interpersonal connection and immersion, video allows continuous participation when physical attendance would be impractical, thus

permitting fans to maintain a link to the event and the community. Value is indicated in both aspects.

[5.28] Another survey question asked participants how much they thought would be a reasonable price to pay for live streaming of content from the conventions. While a sizable proportion of 20 percent (39/192) responded that they thought videos should be free or they would not be willing to pay for them, most fans were able to put a proposed cost on paying for video content. Over half suggested an acceptable price would be $5

to $10, often indicating a range (figure 5).

Figure 5. Frequency of prices provided in answer to the question, "How much, in your

opinion, do you think is a reasonable amount to pay for live video of a panel?" If a range was given, this graph includes the highest figure in that range.

[5.29] Several respondents noted that an acceptable price might vary depending on the length, quality, or content of the stream—for example, a forty-five-minute panel versus a two-hour music show. Some noted the high price of ticket attendance and said that streams should be cheap because of this, or that proceeds should go to charity:

[5.30] No more than $10.00 and part of that should be charity. The panels

are expensive enough live to cover costs. Selling live feed is greedy.

[5.31] As well as providing information on prices, some respondents indicated that they might consider alternative business models. Some suggested a flat fee should allow access to a range of videos, a model reminiscent of streaming services such as Netflix.

One respondent noted that a similar model was used at Dragon Con in Atlanta in 2016.

Others suggested donation or "pay what you can" models, while others queried whether the video would only be available to watch once live or also after the fact, noting that this should affect the price.

[5.32] Although not directly asked whether they thought Creation Entertainment's

recent actions had negatively affected the company's reputation, when asked about the relationship between the organization and the fans, 45 percent (44/97) portrayed the relationship as a negative one. Responses included words such as "hostile,"

"adversarial," "exploitative," and "predatory," and one described them as "vampires." A popular term for the relationship was "strained," which was used by seven respondents.

[5.33] The fandom has built a great community that Creation is taking

advantage of. The fans used periscope to spread their joy. Creation is trying

to make even more money on it and killing the joy in the process.

[5.34] Creation Ent with all their policies and restrictions has become like

an evil we have to deal with.

[5.35] Only 29 percent (28/97) described the relationship in positive terms, and many of these responses still referred to the mercenary tendencies of the company.

6. Discussion

[6.1] It is a common assumption that illicit distribution of video footage from live events negatively affects those who have paid for a ticket by reducing the value of their experience, particularly visible when commercial organizations restrict this practice.

However, the results of this study show that for this particular community of

Supernatural fans, it is overwhelmingly the case that fans agree that sharing content with others online is of positive benefit and encourages ticket purchase. Not only did fans consider there was value in having access to convention footage but they also

thought that access to content from the events increased inclusion and reinforced people's desire to attend them in person. This view was held even by those who attend in person, who in some cases think that it enhances the experience. Evidence suggests online footage boosts interest in the events by raising awareness and increasing fear of missing out in those who have already attended and who want to recreate the

experience.

[6.2] Liveness and participation are important; given the option, fans prioritize the experience of being there over others. But realistically, it is not possible for all fans to attend all events, and the community as a whole favors the widening of experience to provide an alternative via technology. This can provide similar feelings of engagement, especially if it is still possible to participate live through experiences that are shared temporally, if not physically. Reason and Lindeloff (2016) note that this investment in temporal specificity is important to create a link between the audience and the

performers, and among members of the audience. Evidence from my survey responses

suggests that the latter is critical for forming a healthy community:

[6.3] Knowing it's live adds an element of unpredictability—nobody

knows what's about to be said, not even those who are there. It's exciting.

Enables interaction via social media about what's happening that second.

[6.4] Live videos provide more opportunity for fan interaction which to

me is an integral part of this fandom.

[6.5] At the start of the period covered by this case study, it seemed likely that there was a clear opportunity for technology to offer mutual benefit to fans and convention organizers. The fans, while using citizen-sourced methods to appropriate content via theoretically banned practices, were creating value for peers (who wanted to see the video and gained community cohesion through shared experience) and for the

commercial provider (by boosting interest in paying for attendance). While there would have been some benefit to simply maintaining the status quo of nonenforcement of a ban on filming, it is not unreasonable to assume that the company saw an opportunity for further revenue by bringing the provision of live streaming in house and charging for access. The comments from survey participants who had concerns about video

quality and accessibility suggest that this is a plausible business model, as does the fact that the majority of respondents indicated that a $5 to $10 fee for access to video would be acceptable. Fans do not appear to be averse to the idea of paying for higher-quality video content; indeed, access to video content encourages ticket purchase for on-site attendance.

[6.6] Successful models exist for extension of a previously privileged in-person live experience to the digital space. For example, the National Theatre in the United

Kingdom has brought live theatre to global audiences via live streaming to cinema

screens. This extremely successful program has been found not only to allow the

National Theatre to reach new audiences that would not otherwise be able to attend but also to boost theatre audience numbers (Bakhshi and Whitby 2014). The liveness of the

screenings is a critical factor to retaining the nature of the experience. The performances are only broadcast either live or shortly afterward to retain the temporal nature of the experience (Nesta 2011).

[6.7] An alternative business model is demonstrated by musician Amanda Palmer,

who has previously used Periscope and has encouraged its use in fans to stream her shows. In 2017, with financial support of Patreon backers who undertake a subscription-based model of funding, she made high-quality live streams of several concerts

available free online for her fans:

[6.8] this is also part of the serious inspiring beauty of the patreon. back in

the day, if you wanted to film a tour for posterity/youtube (and really film it

WELL), you were just going to have to come up with $10–$20k magically,

knowing you would never actually make a profit from the content. it's so

hard to monetize recorded live content nowadays—even DVDs barely made

money, and with youtube, forget it.

and yet.

now i can film amazing shit for posterity and share it with y'all and NOT

LOSE MONEY. AND GIVE EVERYBODY ON THE ROAD EXTRA

MONEY. it's just…astounding. (Palmer 2017)

[6.9] Despite these extant models demonstrating that commercialization is possible, the manner in which progression from transgressive appropriation to authorized

technological inclusion was managed by Creation Entertainment has led to conflict.

Negative effect is seen both to the strength of the community (which experienced a loss of cohesion during the Periscope ban that has not yet recovered) and to Creation

Entertainment itself. Comments in the survey reflect continuing frustration and

dissatisfaction with Creation Entertainment as a company and their policies with regard live streaming, and responses to the launch of StageIt were cautious. Rather than

introducing streaming as an additional premium service, or even enforcing the ban on fan-produced content in conjunction with the introduction of a formal service, there was a lack of clear communication and a gap in provision during which fans were being

denied access to an existing resource with no commercial alternative. Discussion online in the months after these events has suggested that damage to the community of regular convention attendees occurred during this period, with reduced levels of engagement, enthusiasm, and sense of community compared to at the height of Periscope use.

Although this may be affected by other unrelated factors within the community, the Periscope ban appears to be an important turning point. Although it seems unlikely that Creation Entertainment intended this outcome, they clearly did not fully appreciate the community ecosystem and the role that streaming technology played within it. Such

complex relationships are a rich area for fan studies research to examine, and the outcomes of such study can provide benefit for commercial organizations who face

similar future challenges. Additionally, articulations of value may help fans negotiate such contested spaces.

[6.10] Another critical difference between the service provided by Creation

Entertainment using StageIt and the crowdsourced grassroots community version using Periscope is the nature of the interaction it allowed between physical and virtual audiences. This difference was highlighted by fans in their survey responses:

[6.11] The videos are lonely unless you can comment & interact with

other viewers, like you can on Periscope.

[6.12] I loved the live Periscopes, the viewers comment & that makes it

seem as if you're really attending. Watching by yourself is meh. Fun but I'll

watch on my own time.

[6.13] As Webb et al. explain, "The goal of distributed performance is to join

performers and audiences in a shared sensory experience through bi-directional

connections" (2016, 1). While broadcast media have value themselves, there is a

marked difference between a one-way channel of communication and the shared

experience enabled by live streaming technologies. This difference comes down to

embodiment and feedback, as well as the simulated ability to interact with what is happening remotely:

[6.14] The defining quality of the live at this point is feedback—we accept

any situation in which we receive a signal in response to one we have sent

out as a live interaction. We have, as Baudrillard suggests, moved decisively

from a cultural order characterized by "relations" among things to the digital

order characterised by "connections" between things. (Auslander 2006, 197)

[6.15] As illustrated in figure 6, the two models of streaming in practice at Creation Entertainment Supernatural conventions are distinct in the modes of engagement that fans, both present and remote, can have with each other and the content. With

Periscope, the fans responsible for streaming are co-located in the online and off-line spaces, acting as a bridge between both experiences. Those connected within the online community would share the same Periscope experience and be able to communicate

with peers and the present fan responsible for the stream in real time. By contrast, StageIt does not allow fans present in the physical space to communicate directly with those watching remotely or vice versa.

Figure 6. Comparison of streaming models.

[6.16] Although the StageIt platform does allow engagement in the form of a

concurrent chat room managed by Creation Entertainment, this is not a direct line to fans sharing the live experience; instead, it is a communication method among those watching. Via StageIt, Creation Entertainment acts as a mediator between the online and off-line spaces; Periscope, however, brings these into a cohesive whole. The fan-initiated model prioritizes sharing, whereas the company's model is a more traditional broadcast system. This model is not without value, but conflict has arisen from moving from Periscope to StageIt, resulting in fans being denied the sharing experience that had become commonplace and that had performed the key function of maintaining

community cohesion.

7. Conclusions

[7.1] The findings here echo those from previous work examining the positive effects of live streaming on live audience attendance. As online and off-line spaces blur and compress, the difference between participating remotely and in person is less concrete.

Distinctions remain, but both modes interact and contribute to the wider fan experience.

Digital tools provide new avenues for fandom engagement and community building,

and there are avenues for commercial revenue generation by these platforms that do not negate the fan experience. However, there are complex interactions between the

technology, the online community, and the off-line experience. These must be carefully and cautiously managed to avoid alienating the community or losing key features that are the basis of the success.

[7.2] Future use of these technologies both by fans and commercial producers should not disregard potential opportunities for increased profitability and fan positivity, but they should take care during monetization. The power dynamics inherent in the

encouragement or prohibition of such services are critical, and the nature of sharing versus broadcasting must be considered. A successful model must be inclusive; this is particularly important if existing fan practices through appropriation of technology will be affected by the introduction of commercial alternatives. Fans are not averse to paid models if value, mutual respect, and engagement are built into the approach.

[7.3] Questions still remain over the nature of such private footage when it is released online, as well as aspects of ownership and reuse. Future exploration of the nature of digital public spaces must address these ownership questions, as well as who benefits and who is affected by previously transient, restricted experiences being recorded and shared in a permanent record. As fan communities become more embedded in the

rapidly evolving hybrid physical/digital world, the future of sharing technology

necessarily affects the future of fandom.

8. Notes

1. Examples of conventions that operate on this basis include the Worldcon, the British National Science Fiction Convention, and the International Discworld Convention.

2. Terry Pratchett (2013) has spoken of how convention culture fosters professional authors: "When I was 13, I went to my first science fiction convention…Most science fiction writers were once fans. There's a habit they have, not of paying back, but of paying forward; I know of no other branch of literature where the established 'names' so keenly encourage wannabe writers to become their competitors. I came back from that event determined to be a writer. After all, I'd shaken hands with Arthur C. Clarke, so now it was just a matter of hard work."

3. Benedict and Speight play minor supporting roles on the show; for many years,

neither appeared on screen. Despite this, the fan appeal of their characters and the actors' charisma on display at conventions mean they remain firmly in the fan

consciousness, perhaps contributing to returning roles in seasons 11 and 13,

respectively.

4. Comparative prices for 2018 top price packages at Creation conventions in Chicago: Vampire Diaries, $599 ($975 front row), Once Upon a Time $569 ($929 front row), Supernatural $989 ($1570 front row) (source: Creation website, September 2017).

5. Although some fans also use Facebook for real-time discussion of conventions, the selective nature of content on the platform (which may be in closed groups for

individual events, or which may be displayed preferentially as a result of algorithmic timelines) means discussion is less cohesive.

6. Around 18,000 tweets use an older form of the convention hashtag system that

emerged organically from fan interaction (#nashcon), though many tweets use both

hashtags.

9. References

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Audience Activity and Online Television Fandom." Television and New Media 8 (2): 124–43. https://doi.org/10.1177/1527476406299112.

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8:30PM BST)." Amanda Palmer (blog), June 13, 2017. http://blog.amandapalmer.net

/eee-tonight-webcast-live-london-tonight-830pm-bst.

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/10.1145/2818048.2819974.

PRAXIS

Extraludic narratives: Online

communities and video games

Sky LaRell Anderson

Denison University, Granvil e, Ohio, United States

[0.1]

Abstract—The role of online community is central to the process

of understanding game narratives. Given a tension in game narrative

theory, a solution to that tension is the stories that players tell of their

own game-play experiences. This analysis of the rhetorical dimension of

telling game-play stories as part of a communal experience seeks to

illuminate the intersections of game narrative, community, and rhetoric.

The rhetorical dimensions of players' personal game narratives and

online community building coalesce as a phenomenon unique to how

video games influence community construction through the sharing of

personal game-play experiences. Using symbolic convergence theory, I

examine the personal game-play experiences found on an online

community for the game Dark Souls (From Software, 2011), revealing

how extraludic narratives function rhetorically to solve the tension

between player agency and game narrative.

[0.2]

Keywords— Dark Souls; Fantasy theme analysis; Narrative;

Online community; Reddit; Symbolic convergence theory

Anderson, Sky LaRell. 2018. "Extraludic Narratives: Online Communities and Video

Games." In "The Future of Fandom," special 10th anniversary issue, Transformative Works and Cultures, no. 28. https://dx.doi.org/10.3983/twc.2018.1255.

1. Introduction

[1.1] Since the inception of game studies as an interdisciplinary field, researchers have attempted to theorize the nature of narrative in video games (Koenitz et al. 2013), specifically examining how games tell stories. As Koenitz (2014) argues, legacy media

narrative theories cannot explain how interactivity changes how storytelling functions in digital media. These studies speak to narrative theories born from literature and new media studies while also forging ahead by describing how games tell stories differently than, say, books, films, or television. For instance, games researchers in the mid-2000s established foundational conversations about game narrative's relationship to simulation (Frasca 2003; Aarseth 2004), how games entail both narrative and nonnarrative

experiences (Juul 2005), how game stories exemplify queer narrative theory (Chess

2016), and how game narrative might need to be renamed in the face of its different methods of storytelling (Murray 2004). The field of game studies must develop its own theories to explain the phenomena, both rhetorical and otherwise, taking place in

games, game play, and player interactions (Anderson 2014). Among these and other

conversations regarding video game stories exists a tension between interactivity, which grants agency to players to alter in-game narratives, and the narrative as constructed by the game designers (note 1). The tension can best be summarized in the question: Can a game tell a story if players may influence/interact with it? To engage with this tension, this study explores the narratives that emerge from games yet still exist outside of them entirely, which is something more in line with the theories of transmedia storytelling or of paratexts, both media theories wherein narratives exist across several media forms (note 2).

[1.2] Without examining the tensions among narrative, interactivity, and community, game scholars ignore the rhetorics emerging from the everyday experience of game

play. This study responds to the need to holistically investigate narrative and

community as they exist in the actual experiences of players and by doing so exposes the necessary relationship between two often disparate concepts in game studies. Within the vast array of theories surrounding video game narrative, less attention is given to the role of players' personal stories of playing games and what functions those personal game-play experiences fulfill as players collectively retell them. The purpose of this study is to investigate the rhetorical dimension of telling game-play stories as part of a communal experience in order to illuminate the intersections of game narrative,

community, and rhetoric. Players' personal game narratives and online community

building coalesce as a phenomenon unique to how video games influence community

construction. Specifically, players' personal game-play experiences act to solve the tension between the agency of the storyteller—the game—and the agency of the

interactant—the player—by inviting players to act as both storyteller and interactant at the same time within the online community space. Using symbolic convergence theory as a method, the study targets the fantasy themes that emerge from the personal gameplay experiences of the online community for the game Dark Souls (From Software, 2011).

[1.3] This study reveals how the game narratives told outside of games, what I call extraludic narratives, function rhetorically to demarcate communal experiences. In other words, the study focuses on how the fantasy themes of video game players lead to a shared external game-play narrative understanding as mediated through an online

community. After briefly describing the theoretical conversations already taking place regarding online communities and how they operate, I discuss some methodological

considerations before delving into a description of my findings. The article follows a report-analyze structure in the final two sections, with section 4 dedicated to reporting findings with little analysis or concern for other literature. The findings include brief descriptions of four fantasy themes discovered in the study, namely tales of defeat, tales of victory, tales of admiration, and tales of community. Section 5 then proposes

extraludic narrative as a term to describe the phenomenon described in section 4, how it acts as an intervention into game narrative theory, and how it interacts with the salient literature on the subject. I explain how these fantasy themes constitute extraludic narratives, and I describe how this type of narrative solves the theoretical tension between game narrative and interactivity. As part of that discussion, I delve further into the literature outlining that tension in order to fully explicate my theoretical

intervention: that extraludic narrative gives agency to players as both interactants and storytellers.

2. Online communities and Dark Souls

[2.1] Research on online communities arose from the study of computer-mediated

communication as a distinct form of interpersonal and organizational communication.

Hiltz and Turoff began this turn in online research with their 1978 book The Network Nation, which was subsequently reprinted in 1993. Since then, researchers have adapted a variety of methodologies and examined an increasing number of case studies in order to further understand the nature of online communities. For instance, Gurak's (1997) fundamental book Persuasion and Privacy in Cyberspace introduced a rhetorical approach to studying online protests and the communities those protests both created and represented. Gurak highlights how the shared values and communal spaces of

physical communities translate to online contexts wherein shared values might be

hidden behind anonymous users and where communal spaces are virtual instead of

physical. She also showcases the speed, availability, and accessibility of online

communication and how those variables trouble traditional notions of community

inasmuch as they compare to other mediated communities. In a sense, online

communication facilitates the creation of communities more so than any other medium: call-in radio shows or letters to the editor in newspapers cannot match the sheer

numbers and speed of online communication. The internet's characteristics change how communities begin, transform, and operate, and this phenomenon suggests that a study of an online communal space, such as the Dark Souls online community, requires novel approaches to understanding community-building communication.

[2.2] Given the numbers and varied makeup of online communities, case studies have become the norm when examining the subject. Smith and Kollock's (1999) edited book on online communities tackles a wide range of cases, including Usenet discussions, online economies, online protests, and conflicts on MUDs (multiuser dungeons). Each study focuses on how the characteristics of online communication influence how

communities function differently than a group that operates in a physical location. One specific direction researchers have taken to study the internet's unique influence on communities is that of fandom and audiences, as demonstrated by Baym's (2000) book

Tune In, Log On. Targeting the online community for fans of soap opera television programs, Baym investigates the structures of fandom in terms of how they create

communities in an environment where anonymity, speed of use, geographical

accessibility, and large quantities of content combine to influence every area of fandom.

[2.3] Online communities born from games and players are not uncommon, and the

nature of games invites participative cultures, given the interactive nature of game play: players may discuss topics that breach both fandom and content creation, such as game strategies and personal experiences playing games. Work on massively multiplayer

online games seems to be the most natural entry point to studying the online

communities for games inasmuch as the online community exists within the game itself as well as on internet forums. For instance, Taylor (2006), Pulos (2013), and Pearce and Boellstorff (2011) all study massively multiplayer online games as a means of

discussing online communities. The study of off-line games through the lens of online community offers novel insights into the relationship between games and players, such as Adams's (2016) exploration of the Super Smash Bros. (Masahiro Sakurai, 1999) online community. This article explores these possible insights through a study of Dark Souls given that the game exists both online and off-line, thus exposing it to a variety of communication opportunities in an online forum.

[2.4] The primary intervention of this study, however, comes amid the theoretical tension between games as storytellers and players as interactants. Among these

conversations, agency to tell a story oscillates between the storyteller—in this instance, a game—and the interactive participants—namely, the players. The more agency that

interactants possess, the less agency the storyteller has to construct the narrative. It is here that online communities and the stories they tell as fans and game players combine to solve this tension. By targeting an online game community and identifying the types of stories they tell about their game play, I aim to tease out how sharing personal stories of game play functions rhetorically to create a shared game-play experience within the community.

[2.5] The Dark Souls online community exemplifies features like many other online fan communities found on internet forums—text posting, storytelling, images, jokes, news, and events—and these features make the Dark Souls community a practical site of analysis for discovering the intersections of community, communication, and

narrative. But to understand the community, one must have a working knowledge of the game around which the community is built. As a Japanese-made, Western-fantasy roleplaying game, Dark Souls is one of the more eclectic games to break into popular gaming culture. A spiritual successor to the only somewhat successful 2009 game

Demon's Souls(From Software), Dark Souls sprang onto the market in 2011 on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 game consoles with a successful word-of-mouth campaign

lauding its entertaining difficulty and deeply ambiguous lore. It was later ported to the PC gaming market in 2012. For a game with supposedly only niche appeal, it sold

remarkably well, with sales totaling over 2.3 million copies worldwide (Phillips 2013), and its influence on gaming culture is just as astounding as its success. The game draws heavily on Western European fantasy and lore, including knights, swords, dragons,

ancient castles, and magic. The game's protagonist is a character of the player's creation who has been cursed as an undead warrior, and death often comes easily as the player explores the open world. Repeatedly dying while attempting to defeat difficult enemies is the game's defining mechanic, and the story only emerges through bits and pieces of dialogue and item descriptions.

[2.6] The story of Dark Souls is indefinite and the world's lore is similarly obfuscated in item descriptions, in-game architecture, and cryptic interactions with nonplayable characters. The motif of ambiguity continues in the game's multiplayer system. Dark Souls is a single-player game with online, multiplayer components such as cooperative play, player-versus-player fighting, and a hint system. Unlike other games wherein accessible voice or text chat systems facilitate communication between players, Dark Souls limits player-to-player communication to two methods: players may post hints to each other using prewritten phrases that appear on the ground (figure 1), and characters may gesture to each other—pointing, bowing, and so on—when playing in the same

world.

Figure 1. A character in Dark Souls stands over a glowing orange symbol with the instruction "A: Read message." Orange-and-black etchings denote a message left by

another player by utilizing prewritten phrases such as "Be wary" and "Chest ahead."

Screenshot, August 1, 2018.

[2.7] Given the ambiguous narrative and limited in-game communication between

players—a fundamental model for the game's allure, as argued by Vella (2015)—it is no wonder that an online community arose to allow players to discuss lore, share their interpretations of the game's story, ask for help, and post their own tales of traversing the game's unforgiving landscape. Users have long turned to online forums as a place to share their personal stories (Høybye, Johansen, and Tjørnhøj-Thomsen 2005; Nimrod

2010), and this community presents an opportunity to study a game's player-to-player communication outside the game itself as constituted in an online space. Dark Souls communities exist on various places online, including YouTube.com, DeviantArt.com, Twitch.tv, and other websites. But one site links the others together in a somewhat comprehensive fan forum: https://www.reddit.com/r/darksouls. Reddit acts as a gateway to other internet content while including an increasing emphasis on its own

communities (Singer et al. 2014). Reddit is a link aggregator website, but it also includes what are called subreddits that focus discussions and link sharing around

particular topics. Community members create and maintain these forums, and the subreddit for Dark Souls is where over 141,000 community members gather to write, discuss, and share anything and everything regarding Dark Souls. Other specific subreddits exist for the game's sequels, Dark Souls II (2014) and Dark Souls III (2016), and so the community of r/darksouls maintains a strong emphasis on the original game.

Even six years after its initial release, the game attracts a passionate following of players who continue to build the community. This particular site was chosen for the study given the ability to easily share text posts along with a rich comment system, which allows for conversations and storytelling. R/darksouls is where online

communities, communication, and community building rhetoric combine around

discussions of game-play stories.

3. Methodological considerations

[3.1] Symbolic convergence theory (SCT) guides the study's methods because of its emphasis on the creation of social realities through the sharing of stories. SCT is "a general theory of rhetoric in which groups create and share fantasies about the group

[…] and thereby build a shared identity" (Duffy 2003, 293). In other words, group

members create a social reality through the rhetoric of storytelling, the social reality being a "shared understanding of the group and what it means to be a member" (293).

Bormann (1972) crafted SCT when he discovered the tendency of group members to

"dramatize their experiences through the sharing of stories" (Simmons 2014, 120–21).

These stories are what Bormann calls fantasy themes, and when these narratives

resonate with the group, members tend to repeat and add to them. Bormann (1981)

labeled the process of expanding fantasy themes among the group as a fantasy chain forming a rhetorical vision. Put simply, the stories shared by group members that

dramatize their personal experiences are fantasy themes, and rhetorical visions form out of these stories when they resonate with group members to the point of expanding and maintaining them. SCT is particularly useful for studying online groups because of how fantasy themes often exist "in a setting removed in space and time from the here-and-now transactions of the group" (Bormann 1972, 397), and several researchers have

proven as much with their investigations into online communication using SCT as a

method.

[3.2] In terms of applying SCT as a method of analysis, Bormann (1977) remarks that the main concern lies with finding repetition of themes inasmuch as "repetition is evidence of symbolic convergence" (6). This study concerns itself with the Dark Souls online community as found on r/darksouls, and though such themes might crop up in

the form of images, memes, jokes, videos, or other forms of online content, for the sake of making this study manageable in the face of thousands upon thousands of possible data points, I limited my data collection to the text-based stories shared by group members. SCT's focus is on the rhetoric of communities and storytelling, wherein

rhetoric is the meaning produced through discourse (note 3), and as such r/darksouls best fits the utility of the method. To select which posts to analyze for this study, I used a search algorithm to find and sort text posts—meaning the search function allowed the

ability to search for just text posts without a need to give a keyword or phrase for which to search. I selected any post that told a story, operationalized as an instance wherein a user explained a personal game-play experience, and I then read the collected posts to find repetition of themes. As a final note, the methodological approach of this study does not necessitate attributing direct quotes from posts to their original authors, and all of the quoted material is easily discovered online through search engines.

4. Fantasy themes

[4.1] Given the number and variety of text posts on r/darksouls, it was surprising to find a high level of coherence among the themes discovered. Four specific themes

emerged from the posts, and these themes structured almost every text post in one form or another. Some posts exhibited all four themes, while others, especially the shorter posts of only a sentence or two, exhibited only one. The forum posts in this section are exemplary of the posts examined. The following are descriptions of the themes, and I briefly discuss each in order to clarify how these themes act as stories about stories.

Application for how these stories function as extraludic narratives follows in the final section.

[4.2] I call the first theme "tales of defeat, struggle, and learning." A central feature of Dark Souls is the frequent deaths that occur, always accompanied by large, ominous words appearing on a dark background: "YOU DIED." Progressing through a

particularly challenging area or defeating a difficult enemy might take several dozen deaths in order to learn how to overcome the challenge. For instance, imposing and game-halting enemies called bosses often require players to fight them many times, die, restart at the last checkpoint, and start again in order to learn how the boss moves, which actions might precede an attack, and which strategies work better against the boss than others. With this game mechanic in place, the stories told on r/darksouls describe players' experiences of facing frequent defeat and struggling to learn how to progress in the game.

[4.3] For example, one player wrote about an attempt to pass by large archers who shoot arrows at the player's character while ascending a precarious precipice, stating

"12 attempts later, loosing [ sic] 35k souls and all of my soft humanity, I get by those God forsaken archers." However, before the player could reach the next checkpoint, he died by accidentally starting a fight with another character. Another poster wrote of one particular difficult boss fight: "Then the majority of my day was spent fighting them. I died so many times with either Super Smough or Super Ornstein with like 1/5 health.

I've never been so pissed off at a game." In these players' personal stories of defeat, they emphasized how difficult or unforgiving the game is. One poster wrote, "Awestruck, I kept invading…and kept getting backstabbed. 2 seconds into the fight. Every time. If I survived the first one then I got backstabbed again." The same poster later wrote,

"Words cannot express my disappointment." Yet another poster described an experience facing challenging enemies: "The royal sentinels then proceeded to turn my guy into shishkebab [ sic]. Human-ed up again proceeded to kill the royal sentinels only to fail

and be squished by a shield and stabbed. That was the time I decided to put down the game for a while and went to sleep." The stories targeted the difficulty of defeat within the context of players' own experiences, as if the defeat were personal. In their stories, players were the ones being defeated, not their characters.

[4.4] However, stories about challenging parts of the game also tended to include instances where players learned how to improve, meaning that players related their stories as moments of personal growth. After dying repeatedly in one boss fight, one player related: "But something strange happened. I was actually whittling away at their HP this time. 'It's just a fluke, I'm not actually going to kill them this run, just keep on dodging and staying at full health,' I said to myself. So I did." Another poster told of learning to defeat the final boss of the game: "I had tried a good 15 times to beat him. I have pyromancy skills and I should have won much quicker, but I kept panicking. So tonight, genuinely half cut on some red wine I was able to actually relax. I kept rolling, kept burning the bugger." The fantasy theme of defeat and learning reaffirms how

players, as a part of community involvement, tell stories about their game-play stories, always within the context of their own lived experience. These stories are not stories of fictional characters: the players themselves are the ones struggling and learning.

[4.5] I title the second theme "tales of victory." Tales of victory tended to appear in stories about Dark Souls' bosses, but some reference difficult areas of the game with more common enemies as well. Every time players check in at a checkpoint, all of the common enemies reappear regardless of whether they were defeated previously or not.

That means that every time the player's character dies and every time the player finds a new checkpoint, the player must fight through the same enemies over and over.

However, once defeated, bosses do not reappear, and their defeat brings several

rewards: the bright, golden words "VICTORY ACHIEVED" and a large amount of the

game's currency, which allows players to strengthen their character. Given the large number of times players tend to fail during boss fights, it is not surprising to see stories on r/darksouls that relate their experiences with victory.

[4.6] After a long fight with a difficult boss, one player described the experience:

"Then I saw an unfamiliar animation. He started glowing white! Oh shit he has that PBAoE thing that the royal guards had too?! I had my guy wear his shield and pressed L1 hoping that I'd make the block in time…'VICTORY ACHIEVED.'" A myriad of

other posts include short but expressive statements that accompany their longer stories of struggle: "I finally beat dark souls." "I'm glad I was able to finally finish this game."

"The big brute falls and I feel great!" "Finally, this evening, I beat the final boss." "I was able to kill Ornstein and finally I killed Super Smough." Other stories express the personal satisfaction that players feel when they overcome a particularly difficult challenge, such as one player who wrote, "The demon fell to our blade and we rejoiced to no end. It was the most satisfying moment I've had in a Souls game for a long time."

As evident through these and other posts, players often used r/darksouls to not only express frustration but also to gather as a community to share personal victories. Their stories always emphasize their personal narratives and the deeply affective experience of overcoming a great challenge, albeit a virtual one.

[4.7] The third theme is "tales of admiration and appreciation." Being a fan-based community, it is expected to see participants on r/darksouls express admiration for a game that they enjoy so much that they spend time with an online community dedicated to it. While it is not required on Reddit, users may subscribe to particular subreddits in order to regularly see their content. Every subscriber to r/darksouls had to purposefully click the subscribe button, and with over 100,000 subscribers, r/darksouls has a vibrant community given the game's release five years ago. However, a subscription is not

required to participate on the subreddit fully, meaning that users can post and comment on the subreddit without having to subscribe to it first. This feature implies that there are probably even more fans of the game who participate on r/darksouls than the initial subscriber number of 141,000 would suggest. Perhaps the subreddit continues to attract users because of the game's way of creating personal stories out of the game play, and further glimpses at that personal engagement with the game emerge from users' praise for the game.

[4.8] Admiration for the game includes praise for its atmosphere, level design,

combat, and other game features, but users' appreciation tends to stem from their

personal stories when playing the game. One user wrote, "I never knew how much I

would grow to love it. It was one of the best experiences I've ever had with a video game…The game always had me wondering what the hell was going to happen next."

Another user described the experience of finding the game engaging from the very start of the game-play story: "I want to say that I have now put 47 hours into this game. I knew I was hooked when I was facing the bell gargoyles and my sunbro and some

amazing random helped me take them down. Couldn't get enough." Users express how

their personal journey with the game has changed their outlook on gaming itself, such as when another user posted, "I am totally spoiled by Dark Souls now. I play other games and find them poorly designed or just plain to [ sic] easy. Damn you dark souls."

Yet another example of a user describing how Dark Souls has changed his or her perception of gaming comes in a post that states: "I loved loved loved this game. I am 34 and I remember some seriously tough games (fuck you Battletoads), but this

experience reminds me why I love games so much…Thanks for everything ds [ Dark

Souls]!" One user even described how the experience of playing Dark Souls helped with depression:

[4.9] I've found Dark Souls to be one of the most therapeutic games that

I've ever played. Yeah. The atmosphere of it is bleak and getting wrecked by

a boss or an area over and over again can be really demoralizing but you

keep going and you keep getting wrecked…until you figure out how not to

get wrecked. The moment where you figure out how not to get wrecked and

then manage to take the knowledge to emerge victorious is so amazingly

uplifting.

[4.10] Throughout the majority of the posts in which users praise the game, the praise arises from users' personal stories of engaging with the game. Users tell of when they faced a challenging enemy, found a beautiful area, or discovered another piece of

cryptic lore, and these experiences lead users to offer their admiration and appreciation

for the game as a method of creating and maintaining the online community.

[4.11] I title the final theme "tales of community." Users described the Dark Souls community itself, whether found on r/darksouls or when playing the optional

cooperative or competitive mode of the game in which other players online may interact with each other, albeit without any form of online chat. Foremost, users on r/darksouls see the online community as a vital part of their personal game-play experience, and this fact arises in their personal game-play stories.

[4.12] Though this theme is not nearly as voluminous as the other themes in terms of pure word count, it tended to appear often while users were describing their experiences as a justification for their storytelling behavior. For instance, one user briefly mentioned the felt need to communicate with the rest of the Dark Souls community: "I have really enjoyed this lurking on this sub so thought I would post my experience going through Anor Londo and the many mistakes I made (SL60)." Similarly, another user wrote "I

just had to tell someone and I figured this sub would understand." Other posters would follow a similar structure, referencing the community on r/darksouls as a caveat at the end of their posts to justify sharing their personal experiences: "I just wanted to share it with this awesome community" or "Anyway, wanted to share my little story with you

all." When not addressing the specific r/darksouls community, users wrote about the Dark Souls community as a whole, with phrasing such as, "It just shows how awesome a fanbase this game has." Other posts showed appreciation for the larger Dark Souls community by thanking specific players whom users encountered while playing the

game online.

[4.13] For example, one user thanked an anonymous player for helping by saying,

"Mo0nE, you're awesome man," and another user wrote, regarding the many other

players encountered in the game online, "and that people on the internet can actually be genuinely nice, without knowing how much they improved my play through." While

rarer, some users dedicated a significant space in their posts to describe their

appreciation for the community as a whole:

[4.14] There are a TON of people who choose to ignore the "meta," and

thank god for them. I've seen them in the Forest, at the Township, in Anor

Londo (crazy stuff happening in Anor Londo), at the Kiln, in the Archives.

Just the other day we had an honest to goodness fight club going, in the

Forest of all places. Great fights, great people.

[4.15] These posts indicate how the members and players in the Dark Souls

community form an integral part of the personal stories of r/darksouls users. Either the participation of other users and players justifies their purpose for posting by being an active audience or the other community members actively engage in users' personal

game-play experiences.

5. Extraludic narratives and the tension of game

storytelling agency

[5.1] The empirical evidence presented in the previous section, if summarized, is that players tell stories about their own game-play experiences, and the specific game-play stories on r/darksouls revolve around four fantasy themes: defeat, victory, admiration, and community. The specific details of the types of themes are significantly less

important than the fact that the more motivating game narratives take place in players'

own lived experiences. In order to connect existing literature to the phenomenon

described in the previous section, I detail in this final section how extraludic narratives intervene into the nature of game narrative theory. Before such an intervention can take place, a further explanation of the term extraludic narrative is needed.

[5.2] The fantasy themes in r/darksouls point to their narrative origins, but, unlike other communities, the stories are about stories. For this reason, I propose the term extraludic narrative to theorize the nature of game narratives as they exist outside of gaming fiction. Note that extraludic narrative is not fan fiction; extraludic narrative consists of the storytelling that takes place about game-play stories, and it exists as a unique phenomenon to games inasmuch as gamers play out their own stories in a way

unlike any other media form. In this study, players shared their personal stories as they emerged from their game play of Dark Souls, and these stories about game stories provided the fantasy themes that form the community of r/darksouls. Unlike transmedia storytelling, the phenomenon of telling a story across various media platforms,

extraludic narrative specifically describes game narratives experienced by players in their personal lives. It is a theoretical construction to describe game narrative outside of the diegetic world of the games being played.

[5.3] Perhaps a corollary example of a similar media theory might best explain the relationship between extraludic narrative and more traditional notions of game

narrative. During the time when media scholars began serious examinations of

television, many used the media analysis framework established in film studies wherein the subject of investigation stemmed from theories of framing, camera, audiovisual story, plot, auteur theory, and other concepts that describe cinema. Given the similarities between television programming and films, scholars used film theory as a basis for theorizing about television. However, Williams (1974) suggested that the dual functions of time and story operate differently for television than for movies, proposing the term flow to describe how televisions are turned on and left on to operate in the background of everyday life. Television programs flowed into commercials, which flowed into other programs, and therefore by targeting the contextual nature of television—as existing as a part of a home environment—Williams directed scholarly attention toward a more

salient characteristic of television divorced from the theories established by film scholars. It should be noted that film scholars accomplished something similar when establishing theory distinct from literature studies, and with the advent and popularity of any novel media form, writers must grapple with creating language that more

appropriately describes the nature of that medium.

[5.4] Similarly, extraludic narrative directs the conversation about game narratives, which has hitherto operated as a means of talking about game characters, plots, and interactivity, toward the more pertinent aspect of games' stories: the personal stories by players about their game-play experiences. The term stems from the Latin word ludus, meaning play/game, and the prefix extra-, meaning outside or beyond. However, it specifically focuses on players' stories about in-game narrative experiences, such as a character's actions or encounters in the game. For example, extraludic narrative includes times when players talk about their actions controlling characters in an online

multiplayer shooting game, but it does not describe the various other things players might have done during that time, like eating dinner. Extraludic narrative is extra or beyond only so much as these stories are beyond the limits of the narrative on the screen and instead exist within the lived experiences of players interacting with digital stories. While traditional notions of game narrative emphasize the stories of fictional characters in a game world, extraludic narrative showcases the lived narrative

experience of players as they engage with the game world.

[5.5] It is here that my intervention in the form of extraludic narratives—as described from the evidence found on r/darksouls—connects to the most salient literature on the nature of video game narrative theory. One of the primary benefits of extraludic

narrative as a theoretical construct is that it accounts for the problem of player agency, given the interactive nature of the medium. The tension between interactivity and

narrative has often been debated by scholars since the recent cultural relevance of games. Koenitz (2014) best summarizes this tension as one of agency, "namely about the role of the author [of the narrative] and the fixed state of content and the structure as the audience takes on an active role and the narratives become more malleable" (91).

How can narrative exist if the audience—in this case, players—can shape it? Cameron (1995) vehemently opposes the notion that narrative and interactivity are compatible, and he argues that narrative is fundamentally opposed to interactivity. He claims that narrative is situated in the past, it is linear, and it is presented from a single, implied narrator, and interactivity contradicts each of these points; interactivity takes place in the present, it can take any number of directions to several different conclusions, and it is cocreated by the reader/player/user and the program/game/book. According to this argument, there is no such thing as an interactive narrative, just a poorly executed narrative. Crawford (2003) takes a slightly more forgiving stance, calling the narrative form of interactivity—video games—juvenile at the current moment (current meaning

2003), but he suggests that games also may mature into a truly interactive storytelling medium. And even further on the spectrum, Spierling (2005) offers an unabashed

defense of interactive narrative, even though she never cites Cameron's article.

Spierling claims that game engines, computer AI, and other digital processes create agency, for the computer and user, and that agency may exist in an interactive, narrative world. There is a balance between linearity and the complexity required to offer an interactive narrative experience, and there are four levels of user involvement in an interactive story (note 4).

[5.6] The primary tension between interactivity and narrative is player agency: how can one experience a narrative given the freedom to do whatever one wants? The

storyteller must maintain dominant agency in order to control the narrative, while the agency of interactants sabotages the storyteller's ability to construct a narrative. Some games provide a great amount of player freedom while others are nothing more than

visual novellas, and the more agency granted to players, the more diminished the

apparent presence of the narrative becomes. Extraludic narrative helps solve this tension by positing that the agency inherent in gaming interactivity is fundamental to players'

stories. Extraludic narrative places the agency of both the storyteller and the interactant in players: players are storytellers and interactive participants. Players make choices when playing games, and a series of these choices provides a basis for players to

construct and share their own stories about their personal game-play experiences.

Without the agency of interactivity, players' stories would simply be a retelling of the diegetic timeline of the game. The more interactive liberty that players have when playing a game, the more involved their extraludic narratives become. Perhaps one

reason why extraludic narratives appear so frequently on r/darksouls is that the game operates on a high level of player agency, and, based on the interactivity, players feel personally involved with the game. This phenomenon is not unique to r/darksouls, and I can confidently predict that they appear with a similar frequency in any game

community based around a game with a certain level of interactive agency. Any game that offers players what they interpret as meaningful choices with discernable

consequences invites extraludic narratives, from multiplayer shooters—perhaps the

genre with the most interactive agency—to casual puzzle games on mobile devices.

[5.7] All four fantasy themes—tales of defeat, tales of victory, tales of admiration, and tales of community—exist as extraludic narratives inasmuch as they demonstrate the phenomenon of players telling stories about their game-play experiences, including how those game-play experiences interact with the gaming community at large.

Extraludic narrative, as it emerged through the fantasy themes found on r/darksouls, functions rhetorically to form and maintain the community by "dramatiz[ing] their

experiences through the sharing of stories" (Simmons 2014, 120–21) in order to create a

"shared understanding of the group and what it means to be a member" (Duffy 2003,

293). Extraludic narrative works hand in hand with SCT when discussing how online

game communities create a shared reality, and fantasy themes may exist as extraludic narratives when they describe stories told by players about their game-play experiences.

[5.8] While not the central purpose of this study, the findings suggest that SCT and fantasy theme analysis are particularly relevant for investigating online communities. In particular, game studies scholars have much to gain from SCT inasmuch as the

personal/narrative elements of game play tend to leak into gaming communities, and therefore SCT is particularly suited for studying game communities. As one tool to identify fantasy themes, games researchers should look for extraludic narratives

inasmuch as the act of telling of game-play experiences as stories—in the format of an online community—inherently contributes to what it means to belong to that

community. The shared stories bind community members together through relevant

experiences, meaning that players can see their personal experiences in the stories of other community members. When one member describes a tale of struggle followed by

victory, readers may see how their extraludic narratives coalesce into the greater whole

of the gaming community. And these moments of identification gather players around the same unifying activity: telling stories.

6. Notes

1. See the final section of this article for a summary of this tension between interactivity and narrative.

2. For an excellent summary and reflection on the concept of transmedia storytelling, see Scolari (2009). Genette (1997) and Gray (2010) offer the concept of paratexts as a means of describing the media artifacts that surround a text, such as book covers or movie trailers.

3. The definition of rhetoric is not a cut-and-dried issue: discussion regarding how to define the term rhetoric continues today as a central function of the field of rhetorical studies. For a discussion of the different types of definitions of rhetoric, with mine being a stipulative definition, see Campbell and Huxman (2008, 101).

4. Spierling lists (1) a feeling of presence in the scenario, (2) inputting commands that are recognized but that do not affect the end of the story, (3) user choices affecting the outcome of a scene, and (4) user choices affecting the outcome of the entire story (2005, 9).

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PRAXIS

Johnlock meta and authorial intent in Sherlock fandom: Affirmational or

transformational?

Melissa A. Hofmann

Rider University, Lawrencevil e, New Jersey, United States

[0.1]

Abstract—I explore the educational and legitimizing functions of Johnlock meta—the interpretation of a romantic relationship between Sherlock Holmes and John Watson—in the BBC Sherlock (2010–) fandom. As a disputed queer reading of an open text, Johnlock meta has provided new, enriched, and repeated textual evidence for Sherlock and John's relationship, reinforcing it in the face of doubt caused by others' denials of Sherlock's queerness. Meta has thus served as a form of social activism by both attempting to establish the queer reading as the preferred (but secret) reading intended by the showrunners and by resisting the showrunners' extratextual heteronormative platonic stance on Sherlock and John's relationship. This contradiction of authorial intent/nonintent highlights the tension in the Johnlock (and academic) interpretative communities of where meaning lies between the author, the text, and the reader. Johnlock meta also challenges the binaries of the affirmational/transformational fan—those who are bounded by the text versus those who transform it. Queer interpretations of Sherlock have become particularly important in the wake of Sherlock series 4 (January 2017), as such interpretations have been used as evidence both for and against accusations that the show has queerbaited its audience.

[0.2]

Keywords—Fan activism; Fan-producer relations; Interpretive communities; Queerbaiting; Queer readings; Reception; Shipping; Textual analysis; Tumblr; Twitter

Hofmann, Melissa A. 2018. "Johnlock Meta and Authorial Intent in Sherlock Fandom: Affirmational or Transformational?" In "The Future of Fandom," special 10th anniversary issue, Transformative Works and Cultures, no. 28. http://dx.doi.org/10.3983/twc.2018.1465.

1. Introduction

[1.1] Sherlock Holmes has long inspired queer (note 1) readings and speculation as to the true nature of the friendship between Holmes and Dr. John Watson (Jarvis 2010; Mueller 2015; Redmond 2014; Redmond 1984; Robb 2004). The BBC's Sherlock (2010–) is no exception, and it especially lends itself to—arguably even encourages—such a reading, with its purposefully polysemous dialogue, normalization of gayness, lead actors' intense chemistry, and clever intertextuality, cinematography, and scoring. As prolific as the academic interest has been in the queerness of Sherlock, more so has been the fannish interest. Where academics are happy exploring the ambiguity of sexuality and relationships in Sherlock (Agane 2015; Botts 2016; Coppa 2012; Fathallah 2015; Graham and Garlen 2012; Greer 2014; Jencson 2016; Lavigne 2012; Mueller 2015; Valentine 2016; Waltonen 2015), fans are motivated to define them more explicitly; for example, the most popular interpretations see Sherlock as gay and John as bisexual, although readings explore a range of possibilities, from asexual and transgender identities for Sherlock to a heterosexual but homoromantic identity for John (note 2). Fans have shipped Sherlock and John—that is, made them an explicit romantic couple

—since the first episode aired in 2010, mining the source text (what fans call canon) and creating vast outputs of fan fiction, fan art, fan vids, plot theories, and textual analysis in favor of the pairing known as Johnlock (note 3).

[1.2] The latter two, with the inclusion of fan vids that explore characterization, are generally called "meta." While the term meta has different concurrent meanings in fandom (https://fanlore.org/wiki/Meta), the usage here is a synonym for fan analysis, specifically analysis involving close readings of texts and the speculation and theories stemming from these interpretations (Newitz 2014). Academic studies of fans critically reading media, are, of course, nothing new.

Interpretation is so fundamental as to be inseparable from other fan practices. Henry Jenkins defines fandom as "perhaps first and foremost, an institution of theory and criticism" whose attentive close readings put "academics to shame" (1992, 86). What fans now call "meta," scholars have previously called "talk," "discussion,"

"interpretation," "readings," and "analysis." For example, in her analysis of soap opera "talk" on the message board rec.arts.tv.soaps, Nancy Baym (2000) presumes all untagged posts to be interpretative by default, because users otherwise tagged their posts by function, which Baym groups, by contrast, as either social (tagged as

"delurkings" or "tangents") or informative (tagged as "updates," "spoilers," "sightings," or "trivia") (note 4). Yet textual analysis as a transformative work often seems overshadowed by the creative work of fandom. While Louisa Stein and Kristina Busse list textual analysis among the fan texts that are the building blocks of interpretive communities, "theory and criticism" are signaled to be an unexpected genre: "fan texts, including fiction, art, music video, and even theory and criticism, create and contribute to the formation of interpretive communities" (2009, 197, emphasis added). Indeed, while their article summary mentions "analyses"

as one of the fan texts created as a consequence of restrictions imposed by the interplay of source text, community culture, and technology, only creative fan texts (fan fic, fan art, and fan vids) are explored (192).

[1.3] What I would argue is new—or at least more prominent—is fans' awareness of meta as a distinct, named genre, with conventions both similar to academic textual analysis (the need to provide evidence and sources, in-group language, and stylistic rhetoric and norms) and different (informal language, heavily multimedia-based posts, high interactivity and communality, and postpublication peer review). Authors on Tumblr consciously tag their posts as "meta" (as opposed to the untagged interpretative posts on rec.art.tv.soaps), differentiating these posts from others tagged as "headcanon," "speculation," or "crack"; and fans submit their analyses to blogs devoted to meta, such as The Fan Meta Reader (https://thefanmetareader.org/). Meta's self-conscious visibility and fans' deliberate participation in critical dialogues with not only other fans but also with industry professionals warrants a closer look at the meta practices of specific fandoms.

Further, I believe meta merits more attention for its creative and imaginative aspects, and deserves to be examined along with its fan fic and fan art kin for its subversive and transformative potential. BBC Sherlock meta is fruitful ground for exploration of this kind because the seeming disconnect between textual evidence for a Sherlock and John romance and stated authorial intent has produced a large body of analyses that both employ and reject authorial intent in the attempt to make meaning. What happens when the insight and creativity of the narratives generated by fans' meta outshines the actual canon in fans' eyes, and how is this engagement different than with fan fiction? When does meta go from being primarily analytic to creative, and how much is this influenced by professed showrunner (non)intent? The fact that fans want Johnlock meta to be seen as analytic, not creative, work—while either dismissing authorial intent in favor of the text itself or upholding it as harmonious with the text—is another example of Judith May Fathallah's "legitimization paradox," by which "legitimization and reevaluation of the Other—be it racial, sexual, or gendered—is enabled and enacted through the cultural capital of the White male" and "fan's writing is legitimated by the TV-auteur…

Derivative writing that changes popular culture is legitimated and empowered— because and so far as the author says so" (2017, 9–10). While Fathallah applies this concept to fan fiction, she asks what other fan texts might "negotiate their reference to an authorized predecessor, and the points where, through deconstruction of that concept, they might compromise the paradox" (14). Johnlock meta, with its queer readings in spite of and/or because of the white male showrunners, exemplifies the tensions in this paradox and may challenge it to the degree to which meta is viewed as either challenging or affirming the author and source text.

[1.4] This paper theorizes the function of Johnlock meta in the Sherlock fandom, primarily written and distributed on the multimedia social blogging site Tumblr

and secondarily used as evidence on Twitter for fans demanding both respect from media producers and positive LGBTQ+ representation in the media. As a disputed queer reading (note 5) of an open serial text, Johnlock meta's educational and legitimizing functions have provided new, enriched, and repeated textual evidence for the interpretation, reinforcing it in the face of doubt caused by others' denials of Sherlock's queer subtext and text. In advocating for a romantic reading of Sherlock and John's relationship, meta has served as a form of social activism, by both attempting to establish the queer reading as the preferred—but secret

—reading (known as The Johnlock Conspiracy, or TJLC) intended by the creators and showrunners Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss and by resisting their extratextual heteronormative platonic stance on Sherlock and John's relationship. This contradiction of authorial intent/nonintent highlights the enduring tension in the Johnlock—and, indeed, in many other—interpretative communities, including academic disciplines, of where meaning lies between the author, the text, and the reader. This question is particularly pertinent to the production and reception of queerness, which Alexander Doty argues spans all three categories: He positions

"queerness inside texts and production" and considers "queer reading practices as existing alongside straight ones," not as "alternative" (1993; 2000, 8). Michaela D.

E. Meyer (2012) advocates that media scholars should "embrace nuances between text, audience, and production [author]…if we are to truly understand television's place as a communicative discourse in our increasingly globalized society" (265). This case study hopes to contribute to this endeavor in exploring the interplay and complexity of the entities of author/production, text, and reader in the Sherlock Johnlock fandom and beyond, especially given the international popularity of the show, the vocality of its most loyal fans, and the increasing demand for diverse representation in all media.

[1.5] Fans' appeals to the evidence of the text and its paratexts in favor of Johnlock, in contrast to the writer-producers' denials, has led them to create copious amounts of multimedia textual analysis and for some to use these analyses to support their claim that the show has queerbaited its audience; that is, teased its viewers with a same-sex relationship it never intended to actualize (Anselmo 2018, Brennan 2016; Collier 2015; Fathallah 2015; Mueller 2015; Ng 2017; Nordin 2015). Charges of queerbaiting serve both to grant interpretive authority to fans and to hold the authors accountable for an explanation of intent. Not all Johnlockers agree with the accusation of queerbaiting, however. Some appreciate the continued ambiguity and queerness of the show, which may or may not have ended with series 4, which aired in January 2017, but whose final montage effectively functions as a narrative coda for the series. These fans believe such accusations are premature, since there is talk of a fifth series, and/or believe that the show is queer in that it challenges traditional expectations of romance, relationships, identity politics—and even narrative—serving as a metacommentary on Sherlock Holmes adaptations. A subset of fans continue to believe that the creators still intend for canon Johnlock to occur, that series 4 is fake or deliberately bad and thus should not be read on a surface level, and that new content is forthcoming. Others disagree with the direct "fan-tagonistic" approach (Johnson 2007), accusing any of the show's vocal critics of "fan entitlement," "hate," or harassment of the creators whose creative autonomy should be respected, and of sowing discord within the fandom itself (Romano 2016). So, depending on the fan and the meta, the author is either dead, vilified, or deified—or sometimes, paradoxically, a combination of these.

[1.6] While many Johnlock fans would love to be declared the winners in this perceived interpretive game with—or war against—Moffat and Gatiss (and other fans), there is more at stake here than merely being right or wrong. Beyond the coveted prize of explicit and positive LGBTQ+ representation and the desire for a satisfying narrative are the spoils of legitimacy, of the acknowledgment—both by the showrunners and the general audience—of the possibility of being right, of presenting a valid reading. Armed with meta, Johnlock fans dispute caricatures of themselves as delusional fetishists co-opting gay relationships for their own desires or as ideologically driven social justice warriors demanding media representation, oppose extratextual authorial erasure of what is queer in the text, and contest the relegation of queer readings to fan fiction and fan spaces, vying for a share of authority in the arena of participatory interpretation.

2. The seductive appeal of analyzing Sherlock

[2.1] To begin, it is worth a look at why Sherlock invites such detailed and passionate analysis. First, Sherlock's long hiatuses between series (two to three years) and its short seasons (three episodes of ninety minutes each and one special episode) inspire deep and repeated analysis of a small amount of content. Repeated viewings release viewers from the grip of the plot and allow them to focus on the metatext of backstory and characterization (Jones 2002). With blank spaces within and between episodes, cliffhangers between seasons, and transtexts such as Sherlock's website and John's blog, the show exhibits a prominent feature of cult texts that Matt Hills terms hyperdiegesis: "the creation of a vast and detailed narrative space, only a fraction of which is ever directly seen or encountered within the text, but which nevertheless appears to operate according to the principles of internal logic and extension" (2002, 137). The desire to explore this narrative space and to preserve narrative continuity not only fuels the writing of fan fiction but meta as well. With its unanswered questions, offscreen happenings, seeming plot holes and time line inconsistencies, and deliberate ambiguity of character motivation, Sherlock is a prime example of a "drillable text" that "encourages a mode of forensic fandom that invites the viewer to dig deeper, probing beneath the surface to understand the complexity of a story and its telling" (Mittel 2013, ¶ 3; Mittel 2009).

[2.2] Second, the perception of quality from the show's BBC provenance (Evans 2012) and knowledge of the creators' other projects, such as Doctor Who (1963–89, 1996, 2005–) (Collier 2015), have helped to elevate the showrunners Moffat and Gatiss (whom fans dub "Mofftiss") to auteurs, which reinforces the notion that the show is worthy of analysis. While this conferring of auteurism is slippery for meaning making in television, given the variety of creative and production personnel involved with a show, it serves the purpose of giving fans a cohesive entity to either rally for or against when they argue for what is present in the text (Steiner 2015; Gray 2013). Lesley Goodman (2015) argues that "being a fan often means attributing disappointments to the failure of the creator, rather than accepting an incoherent or unsatisfying fictional universe" (671); similarly, R. M. Milner asserts that the fan's primary loyalty is to the text itself, not the organization that creates it (2009). In the case of Sherlock, this auteurism is especially fraught when the work of the creative team, whether it is the actors Benedict Cumberbatch (Sherlock) and Martin Freeman (John) (acting choices), the set designer Arwel Wyn Jones (suggestive or coded props), the composers Michael Price and David Arnold (musical themes), costume designer Sarah Arthur, or the various directors and directors of photography being brought to bear through meta against the stated intent of Moffat and Gatiss (note 6). For example, when in September 2017 supposed drafts of episodes were leaked online, fans pored over the draft of "The Sign of Three," written by Stephen Thompson, in an attempt to discern the extent, intent, and evolution of the gay jokes and subtext in the episode as compared to the final version, credited to Thompson, Moffat, and Gatiss. In Johnlock meta, all of the creative team fulfilling Foucault's "author-function" are opposed to "the organizing figure of an authorial personality," that of the "white male showrunner as the sole creative genius" promoted by the industry (Fathallah 2016, 461), at the same time that Moffat and Gatiss are lionized.

[2.3] This status of auteur is further complicated by fans' perception of the BBC's progressive agenda toward LGBTQ+ representation, fueled by fan discovery and analysis in 2014 of the 2010 BBC report, "Portrayal of Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual People on the BBC" and its 2012 update (note 7). Sherlock was subsequently interpreted in light of this report, with some Johnlock fans believing that Moffat and Gatiss are beacons of change for queer representation to be lauded and supported, even if their actions of denial and fan ridicule are problematic. As Judith Fathallah notes, "Fans ascribe authority to figures whom they perceive as sharing their cultural politics" (2016, 476), while Stephen Donovan, Danuta Fjellestad, and Rolf Lundén raise the question of whether "in the era of identity politics…who the author is matters as much as (or perhaps more than) what the author writes" (2008, 14), with the author here being the showrunners and the BBC.

The appeal of fan analysis in this context has been to uphold this hopeful vision of LGBTQ+ representation seemingly portended by various extratextual elements, such as Moffat's writing for Doctor Who (which is also simultaneously criticized for its portrayal of gender and sexuality), Gatiss's status as an openly gay man and advocate for LGBTQ+ rights, and BBC Worldwide's LinkedIn slogan of "Be part of making history: an unmissable experience" that featured an image of Sherlock.

This notion of revolutionary media is a sentiment later echoed by actress Amanda Abbington's comments from San Diego Comic Con 2016 about series 4: "If we pull this off, it will make television history…It's kind of groundbreaking. They've done something again, these guys [Moffat and Gatiss], that's never been done before" (Tygiel 2016). Thus, in addition to the show itself, "the real world production of Sherlock [has been turned] into a text to be analyzed" (Collier 2015).

[2.4] Third, as a modern setting of Sherlock Holmes with creators who acknowledge referencing both Arthur Conan Doyle (ACD) canon and a variety of Holmes adaptations, the show is rife with intertextuality to be scrutinized in a way that escapes the staid Sherlockian tradition of privileging ACD canon, and allows younger fans to imagine Sherlock Holmes more freely (Polasek 2017; Polasek 2012). Moffat and Gatiss delight in their fanboy knowledge and transform their source texts in ways to showcase their creativity and originality while still claiming fidelity to ACD canon (Hills 2012b). Their claim of updating Holmes because

"everybody's been getting [it] wrong, and we think we can get it right" prompts fans to ponder what exactly they are "correcting" in others' adaptations (Harris 2010): could it be the nature of the Holmes/Watson relationship? Fourth, and related to the last point, even though the showrunners characterize Sherlock as a "show about a detective" and not necessarily a "detective show" (Mellor 2014; King 2015), its content (such as the mystery of how Sherlock survived the fall from the roof of Bart's, which so preoccupied the fandom for two years that the writers parodied its theories in 3.01 "The Empty Hearse") and its transtexts (such as the Sherlock:

The Network app game, which allows the player to solve a case with Sherlock), posit the viewer as a decoder of clues just like Sherlock, in a further example of Mittel's (2009, 2013) concept of "forensic fandom." As Matt Hills (2012b) astutely points out, Sherlock 1.3 "The Great Game" reinforces, via its plot, that there is indeed meaning to be found in media texts. The information needed to help solve the mystery is unconsciously gleaned from a variety of media sources, so that

"every bit of apparent mediated background is actually the plot's foreground…The impression that's fostered is one of a media culture permeated with clues and vital knowledge" (31–32). Further, the "obsessed" fans in "The Empty Hearse" (TEH) are ultimately correct (Sherlock is alive) or provide a vital clue in the case (the train enthusiast who rewatches the footage on a loop realizes the train carriage is missing), again positioning the dedicated fan as a detective.

[2.5] Thus, Sherlock, by its content, format, and structure encourages close reading; and fan interpretation, "like academic criticism…involves the presumption of significance for any detail that can be perceived" (Allington 2007, 55). These details range from props seen on screen for a split second to wardrobe discontinuities to changes to the set. Are these in-jokes, continuity mistakes, clues, or red herrings? It is impossible to tell, and thus nothing is discounted (note 8). Possible clues even extend beyond the vast Sherlock Holmes universe itself to related media franchises, such as Doctor Who. CB Harvey (2012) illustrates how Sherlock and Doctor Who have long referenced each other not only through cultural allusions but also by shared production facilities and personnel: Moffat as showrunner and writer, Gatiss as writer and actor, and Joseph Lidster as author of transmedia tie-ins. Fans have noticed shared dialog between Sherlock and the Doctor, similar scenes, and mirrored characters—such as Vastra and Jenny, the married lesbian alien/human version of Holmes and Watson—reading one show onto the other in support for authorial intent for Johnlock.

[2.6] Fifth, and for many the most intriguing, is the show's focus on the relationship between Sherlock and John. Besides a tradition of queer readings of ACD

canon and other Holmes adaptations, Sherlock possesses a "semiotic excess" that exemplifies, if not exceeds, the polysemy inherent in the televisual medium and necessary for television's wide appeal, employing all the main textual devices of polysemy in relation to Sherlock and John: irony, metaphor, jokes, contradiction, and excess (Fiske 1987; Fiske 1989). This excess, seen in the sustained deliberate ambiguity of Sherlock's sexuality, the assumption of gayness in the show's universe, the chemistry between the lead actors Cumberbatch and Freeman, and the sheer amount of queer subtext embodied in the dialogue, cinematography, scoring, and mise-en-scène, seems to tip the scale for many toward a queer dominant reading and away from the polyvalent (Condit 1989) platonic reading that comes from the commonly shared denotation that Sherlock and John love each other. The connotation of homosexuality "recruits[s] every signifier in the text…and excites the desire for proof" that will never be given textually (Miller 1991, 129): thus, the drive to analyze. The appeal of the show is indeed, as Moffat and Gatiss repeatedly state, not in the mystery of the episode (detective show) but in the interaction of the characters and the relationship between Sherlock and John (show about a detective), a distinction in genre that shapes the interpretation of the show by "influencing which meanings of a program are preferred by, or proffered to, which audiences" (Fiske 1987, 114). For example, after Mary Morstan/Watson was introduced in Series 3 and fans worried about the dynamic of their favorite dyad changing, Johnlock fans were both comforted and emboldened by Moffat's response to a question about minor characters' roles that assured them that "It's not a

'gang' show, it's the 'Sherlock and John' show. It's about developing their characters and their relationship, and the characters drawn into their orbit" (note 9).

[2.7] Thus, Sherlock possesses many of the characteristics of a cult television show that Sara Gwenllian Jones (2002) identifies: its "serial and segmented forms, its familiar formulae,…its metatextuality, its ubiquitous intertextuality and intratextuality, its extension across a variety of other media; its modes of self-reflexivity and constant play of interruption and excess" (84). Jones characterizes cult television as inherently queer in that the fantastic adventure of it must necessarily distance itself from mundane, normalizing heterosexuality. In this view, the practice of slash, the romantic pairing of same-sex characters, is not a resistant interpretive process but an interactive, immersive one that "renders explicit" cult TVs nonheterosexuality (90). Therefore, it is not surprising that Johnlock meta, in communally articulating evidence for the interpretation from the text, argues for the authors' intentionality of the reading, even if it requires decoding and explicating. The concept of meta in the Johnlock community has even taken on the connotation of revealing what is queer, as opposed to providing evidence for more obvious heteronormative interpretations, as seen in this Twitter exchange referencing meta written to support a romantic relationship between Sherlock and Molly Hooper (a pairing known as Sherlolly):

[2.8] @lidd_rose: When hetshippers try to write meta. Oh honey.

@BugCatcherinVF: heta

@MantleSkull: But…everything is already assumed straight. Whyfor this.

@BugCatcherinVF: So that you can assume straight even explicitly gay stuff. (November 16, 2017)

[2.9] Here, meta that posits a heterosexual relationship for Sherlock is seen to be not only redundant and unnecessary—given that heterosexuality is mainstream Western culture's default reading and hence needs no revelation—but also, paradoxically, to be a deliberate misreading of the queer text. The patronizing tone ("Oh honey") implies that the "hetshipper" is lacking in the "discursive or 'decoding' strategies available" to the queer decoders of Sherlock (Morley 1980, 173). Thus, these fans are aware that the dominant discourse of heteronormativity privileges certain readings of the text and recognize that different readers bring different knowledge and experience to the text, but they also claim that the text itself contains "explicitly gay stuff" that, contradictorily, needs to made explicit by meta.

There is a tension here between the subtextual and subcultural properties of queerness "not obvious to heterocentrist straights" and what Doty argues is media texts'

inherent queerness, part and parcel of "mainstream" culture that is accessible to everyone (1993, xiii; 2000). To these fans, Sherlolly meta seems, in Doty's words,

"like desperate attempts to deny the queerness that is so clearly a part of mass culture," or in this particular case, Sherlock (1993, xii).

[2.10] This interaction of socially situated reader and text becomes even more complicated when we add in the question of authorial intent and certain Johnlockers' assertions that the queer reading is the preferred, but secret, reading of the text meant to be brought to light by analysis. Part of the appeal of analyzing Sherlock is belonging to the special group willing and able to tease out and articulate the nondominant meanings, whether or not one believes oneself the intended audience sanctioned by showrunners Moffat and Gatiss. John Fiske asserts that there is pleasure in the process of meaning making that surpasses that of the meaning made, a pleasure that results from "the production of meanings of the world and of self that are felt to serve the interests of the reader rather than those of the dominant" (1987, 19) and that only exists "in recognition that opposing semiotic forces are at work in the text" (1989, 71). In resisting heteronormative narratives for Sherlock and John and illuminating the same-sex romance suggested by the text, the largely young, female, queer, and neurodivergent composition of the Johnlock community (Anselmo 2018) is simultaneously asserting its power of (sub)cultural creation and semiotic decoding and declaring the legitimacy of its subordinate identities and interpretive strategies. For those Johnlock fans who believe their interpretation aligns with that of Moffat and Gatiss despite the creators'

public repudiation of a romantic reading, the pleasure comes from claiming producerly authority, as many posts on TJLCer's blogs can attest to, with their exclamations of delight in authoring meta that solves the mystery of the show's intent and reveals the writers' consummate cleverness. As Diana W. Anselmo notes, these "girl fans" (note 10)

[2.11] muscle their way into a male-dominated canonical narrative, concurrently acting as unofficial decoders of the show's subtext and as official coauthors of dominant fan theories[,]…shifting their typical positioning as clueless mass consumers to knowing co-conspirators[,]…insert[ing]

themselves into the inner sanctum of media production, a guarded elite traditionally inhabited by male executives, creative directors, actors, and screenwriters, the institutional structure largely behind Sherlock. (101, 105)

[2.12] The show itself even acknowledges the existence of these fans both explicitly, with the representation of fan theories and fan behaviors in "The Empty Hearse," and implicitly, with the secret cabal of wronged women in "The Abominable Bride" (2016), which some fans interpret as a nod to TJLC. ("We don't defeat them. We must certainly lose to them," Mycroft Holmes says; Mary Watson refers to "the heart of the conspiracy.") Whether the writers meant these examples lovingly or mockingly, fans see themselves as not just written into the text but an active part of it: an author, not as in creating original content or influencing the narrative, but as in illuminating the text for those who, in ACD Holmes's oft-quoted words, "see but…do not observe."

[2.13] This producerly authority and pleasure—held in tension with meta's dual goals of revealing showrunner intent and creative fan (co)authoring to save the integrity of the text from the showrunners, is collectively generated and amplified in significant ways through the writing and distribution of meta on the microblogging site Tumblr, whose structure enables easy reblogging of others' multimedia content and the ability to view the likes, comments, and reblogs of

everyone who has nonlinearly interacted with the post. Johnlock meta is also the mechanism by which fans deal with their consternation with Sherlock canon and rage at the showrunners' dismissal of their queer readings. Before proceeding with a model of Johnlock meta that illustrates the tensions between author, text, and reader, followed by a deconstruction of a particular fan tweet accusing the showrunners of queerbaiting that perfectly illustrates the complex and contradictory relationship between Mofftiss, Johnlock fans, and the show, I will set the context more fully with a brief history of Johnlock meta.

3. A model of Johnlock meta

[3.1] After series 3 aired in January 2014, meta took on a new prominence in the Sherlock fandom, when many fans, citing copious textual and extratextual evidence, became convinced that Johnlock would become a canonical pairing—that is, explicit and official in the source text. Thus TJLC was born (see also Anselmo 2018; Christensen and Jensen 2018; Collier 2015; Paskin 2018). This was in contrast to the long-standing view, held by many since the show's inception, that the show was queerbaiting to attract and keep viewers. For example, the following mocking exchange between Ian Hallard, the actor-husband of Sherlock writer-actor Mark Gatiss, and actress Amanda Abbington, who plays John's wife Mary, was tweeted during the filming of 3.2 "The Sign of Three":

[3.2]

Ian Hallard: OK, I get that some people like to fantasize about Sherlock & John as a couple but no one seriously thinks it will happen do they!?

Amanda Abbington: I do think it's funny how worked up people get about it…Why can't it just be friendship then? Isn't that more interesting to watch?

(@IanHallard, @chimpsinsocks April 22, 2013)

[3.3] This conversation caused many (but not all) Johnlockers distress (note 11), especially since they knew that the episode would feature John and Mary's wedding and because the incredulity came from a gay person himself, married to one of the showrunners. However, once this episode aired, fans saw just how heavily laden with homoerotic and romantic subtext between Sherlock and John it—and the entirety of series 3—was, subsequently writing hundreds of metas about it, which makes Hallard and Abbington's words sound, to Johnlockers, not only cruel but disingenuous. The discrepancy between creator commentary such as this—repeated in paratexts such as interviews, Q&A panels, and DVD commentary tracks—and the show's actual content, has led some fans to conclude that the creators are lying to protect the plot of their slow-burn romance and to get heteronormative buy-in from a resisting audience. Hence the conspiracy component of TJLC, a term coined by Tumblr users graceebooks and joolabee in early January 2014 that quickly gained widespread currency.

[3.4] Backlash to the idea of canon Johnlock, not just from the creators but from other fans, spurred meticulous and lengthy close readings of the show and its paratexts, while also providing historical and intertextual context. Besides trying to convince others, Johnlock fans write for each other, reveling in what David Allington calls an "erotics of the barely perceptible" (2007, 58), uncovering and sharing layers of meaning and new details found through rewatching or making screencaps, animated gifs, or fan vids, reinforcing community through shared knowledge. Johnlock meta-ists' social activism of normalizing a gay interpretation even recruited new converts to queer readings of Sherlock and positively changed some fans' negative worldviews toward LGBTQ+ people and relationships. While Johnlock fans have varied in their degree of (non)identification with TJLC—either because of the divisive and reductive essentialist discourse and evangelistic speculation practiced by several of its vocal proponents that worked to suppress dissent over the diversity of queerness, and/or because of a lack of faith in Mofftiss and knowledge of industry conventions and restraints that might limit an explicit gay relationship—the belief in, or at least the desire for, Johnlock as narrative endgame has driven the majority of meta written by the fandom (note 12). TJLC meta has been advocating for and reaffirming the endgame point of view, which argues that the show's culmination in Johnlock is the only way in which the plot and character arcs make any narrative sense. Thus, close reading turned into a vocal predictive stance of where the show was going and, for some, where it needed to go, with such fans claiming not only authorial insight but prerogative: the text demands Johnlock. In the wake of Series 4, which aired in January 2017 and in which Sherlock and John are not shown to be in an explicit romantic relationship, Johnlockers of all persuasions—even those who have resisted a homonormative reading—have been trying to reconcile through meta their previous readings of the text with new canon. For those less invested in the endgame arguments, meta serves to illuminate all the queer parts of the text that lead to a romantic or gay reading, or as meta-ist tendergingergirl explains, her motivation has been "what else did they put in there?" (April 25, 2018).

[3.5] . I propose that Johnlock meta functions in four non–mutually exclusive ways: revelation, elucidation, validation, and speculation. Revelatory meta exposes some hidden meaning or theme; elucidative meta clarifies or expands upon an already existing interpretation; validating meta reinforces another's reading with additional evidence or legitimizes the lens; and speculative meta makes narrative predictions. Meta takes as evidence various textual elements, such as characterization, cinematography, dialogue, mise-en-scène, music, narrative arcs, plot developments, acting choices, intertextuality, and script directives. As I will discuss further below, Johnlock meta also attempts to preserve the coherence of the fictional universe by attempting to reconcile the source text and its paratexts by either killing off or deifying the author, thereby providing fans with ontological and epistemological security in their reading of the show (figure 1). I consider meta broadly, including under the definition not only more traditional long-form text and/or multimedia analyses (text plus images/video/audio) but also shorter meme-like posts, from witty paraphrased snippets of dialogue that translate the connotations of the scene into denotation to photo sets and GIF sets (grouped still or animated screenshots, often with brief captions, with quotes from the text and its intertexts or paratexts). While these latter types of posts are usually not tagged as

"meta" by their creators, they function as such, providing revelation, elucidation, and validation, even when fully multimediated with no explanatory text. Photo and GIF sets are visual shorthand, conveying richly layered meaning at a glance, immediately revealing dominant themes and parallel scenes, at least for those familiar enough with the canon and its referents to recognize and place them. For the initiated, a picture is indeed worth a thousand words. (While fan videos can be similar to photo and GIF sets in this respect, the added level of creativity of many fan vids makes a discussion of them outside the scope of this current essay, as do certain photo and GIF sets) (note 13).

Figure 1. A model of Johnlock meta, showing its functions of revelation, elucidation, validation, and speculation, while maintaining the coherence of the show's fictional universe by either killing off or deifying the author and appealing to the source text and paratexts to provide ontological and epistemological security. The overlapping circles of the Venn diagram illustrate the nonexclusivity and multiple functions a particular meta may serve, where the center components of characterization, cinematography, dialogue, mise-en-scène, music, narrative arcs, plot developments, acting choices, intertextuality, and script directives are variable. The placement of ontological security in the lower left quadrant suggests a stronger affinity with speculative and validating meta, while epistemological security in the lower right quadrant shows how it is especially influenced by elucidating and validating meta.

[3.6] For example, a popular photo set that circulated after the broadcast of 4.1 "The Six Thatchers" argues for its gay subtext by comparing certain scenes to those in Billy Wilder's The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes (1970), Moffat and Gatiss's favorite movie and an inspiration for their adaptation (figure 2). Gatiss describes Holmes in the film as being in "desperately unspoken" love with Watson (Morgan 2010), a statement Johnlock fans have long latched on to in support of their reading of Sherlock as gay—if not in the hope that Gatiss might make that love "desperately spoken" in the BBC version. The scene from The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes, where Holmes pretends that Watson and he are a couple when being propositioned by Rogozhin to father Madame Petrova's baby and where

"glass of tea" is being used as a euphemism for being gay, is compared to two separate scenes in "The Six Thatchers" (TST). The photo set comprising figure 2

clearly shows the parallel.

Figure 2. Screenshot of photo set meta comparing scenes from The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes to Sherlock 4.1 "The Six Thatchers."

[3.7] This post by 7437locked, uploaded on January 20, 2017, almost three weeks after TST aired on January 1, was most certainly not the first to pick up on the connection between the two texts, but for fans who had not come across any previous meta linking these scenes, this would be a revelatory post. For those who had either made the connection themselves or previously read about it in another fan's meta, this post would serve as reinforcement of that reading. The creator's exclamatory comment "FUCKING END ME WHAT IS THIS SHIT" speaks to both the delight and exasperation of the Johnlock fan in encountering the blatant subtext on display here juxtaposed with Moffat and Gatiss's repeated denials of gayness, claims of their taking gay jokes too far, and fans reading into what is not there. This fan-made photo set, with its consciously chosen images for comparison, relevant quoted captions, and performative author commentary, is a valuable form of meta-ing, one that distills the essence of more traditionally text-based meta posts and complements them. Quickly comprehensible with key evidence and visually appealing to reblog, photo and GIF sets particularly serve to reveal and pique interest in new interpretations that can be explored in more detail in written meta and to validate (and delight in) an already existing and communally shared reading (note 14).

[3.8] Another important function of Johnlock meta is to sustain the integrity of the fictional universe—the logic of the storyworld that exists beyond a single episode. Cornel Sandvoss (2007) notes that fans have rigid expectations and wish to normalize the text and fix its meanings. Thus, the preponderance of meta takes a formalist and structuralist approach to the text, analyzing and theorizing character growth, plot consistency, and a satisfying, progressive narrative arc. For example, meta writer wellthengameover, going off of the fact that Moffat and Gatiss stated they had planned for five series of Sherlock, has written meta that fits the Johnlock and other character arcs and plot theories into a five-act structure. Fic author and meta writer marsdaydream posits that Johnlock-as-endgame theories exploded after series 3 aired in an attempt to reconcile Sherlock's childish, immature behavior with good storytelling: the interpretation that Sherlock is in love with John reads much better than him being an undeveloped manchild (Morimoto 2018). Meta writers have also reconciled the shift in episode structure and tone between series 2 (more case-based) and series 3 (primarily focused on relationships)—a change that put many fans off—as necessary for the relationship arc between Sherlock and John, with Mary being the romantic obstacle to be overcome. This argument has been extratextually augmented with creator statements that the relationship between Sherlock and John is indeed a "love story" (note 15).

[3.9] Leslie Goodman argues that fan desire for narrative coherence privileges the fictional universe "at the expense of the integrity of the creator(s) and the text itself": fans "chastise" the disappointing failure of an author by fixing the text through fan fiction (2015, 669). In contrast to fan fiction, however, Johnlock meta works to preserve the text by explaining how all the episodes' events relate, what they mean, and how they signify and, in the case of TJLC, redeem the authors, who are elevated to author-god status and are believed to have a progressive, divine intent: eventual explicit Johnlock. As Henry Jenkins explains, even resistant readers are reading inside the ideological framework of the show, and as "consummate negotiating readers, fan critics work to repair gaps or contradictions in the program ideology, to make it cohere into a whole that satisfies their needs for continuity and emotional realism" (2006, 111). An example of this kind of reconciliation would be meta that attempts to reconcile John's initial "it's all fine" attitude toward whatever Sherlock's sexuality is with his repeated and agitated

"I'm not gay" assertions in later episodes, despite his earlier laissez-faire attitude and his intense dynamic with Sherlock.

[3.10] Like some fans' need for the assurance spoilers give, meta also provides ontological security, "the psychical attainment of basic trust in self-continuity and environmental continuity" that reduces anxiety (Hills 2012a, 113). Hence one of the appeals of speculative meta: for example, the plot developments and scenarios by which canon Johnlock could occur. While narrative consistency and coherence are necessary for ontological security, so are the ways fans identify with and relate to the text (Hills 2012a; Williams 2016) and to the producers (Morimoto 2018). For Johnlock fans, who are highly emotionally invested in the coupledom of Sherlock and John and who have incorporated their interpretation into their self-narrative and relationship to the show, denials by other fans and the creators threaten their sense of self. This might be expressed in the thought, "I am a fan of Sherlock because of Johnlock. What if there is no Johnlock?" Meta helps assuage this existential angst by providing evidence from the text against these denials and for when the text itself is perceived as failing to deliver, as in the case with the ending of series 4, where many Johnlockers experienced emotions ranging from mild disappointment to "'loveshock'…"the emotional trauma of falling out of love"

(Williams 2016, 27). Morimoto notes that in the case of Sherlock "what may be at stake…is not (only) a desire for a canonical same-sex relationship, but confirmation that what fans see on screen, is, in fact, there" (2018, 267). David Allington further proffers that "what slash fans seek in their discussions…might be a grounding for slash consumption practices in the objective attributes of what is consumed" (2007, 49).

[3.11] Meta, rife with examples from the text, is the vehicle toward this objectivity, but fans' ontological security requires validation beyond the level of the text to that of the producers, who have consistently withheld such validation. While Moffat and Gatiss encourage fans to "have a great time extrapolating" Johnlock in fan fiction and on websites—that is, separate from the canon of the show—they deny it in their narrative: "There's nothing there" (Parker 2016). What fans object to, and what meta refutes, is the idea that Johnlock is a "meta-text"—"a tertiary, fan-made construction—a projection of the text's potential future, based on specific fan desires and interests" instead of being actual text or subtext (Johnson 2007, 286; Jenkins 1992). In other words, meta asserts that fans are not imagining a romantic relationship between Sherlock and John because they merely want to see it; they see it because it exists in the text. Or to put in another way, fans want to be seen as affirmational fans, bounded by and exploring the text as given by the author, instead of transformational, seen as manipulating the text to their own ends (Polasek 2012; obsession_inc 2009). In this way, meta wants to be seen ultimately as analytic, not creative, work, divining and championing textual, if not authorial, meaning. While meta writers' explanations and speculation for Johnlock might creatively differ, they are all anchored in the text, which they offer as ultimate evidence. Thus, the rhetorical move of TJLCers to make Johnlock an officially endorsed conspiracy is another method to control fan's ontological insecurity, as it gives the authors refuting their own text a logic and a purpose. Showrunner statements hold a hypnotic power and are of great interest to the meta community in the interpretation of Sherlock, even if the text is the primary vehicle of analysis—so much so that skulls-and-tea has for years curated and maintained on their Tumblr the Sherlock Creator Quotes Collection, which has archived pertinent intent- and characterization-related Sherlock cast and crew extratextual commentary on the show, gleaned from interviews, DVD commentaries, and panels. This has been an indispensable source to meta-ists for both discovering and fact-checking the provenance and context of attributed quotes as fans read the text with or against the creators.

[3.12] Relatedly, I further offer that meta also provides epistemological security by clearly outlining how it is queer readers know what they know and reassuring that how they interpret is valid, that queer readings are valid. The act of continually justifying an interpretation to a community that already shares the interpretation, what Allington calls "justificatory discourse," such as what happens on Tumblr when users reblog the same content over and over, performs group identity and promotes solidarity, as fans "periodically argu[e] away one another's doubts" (2007, 49–50). By both providing evidence for a Johnlock reading and modeling the process of interpretation—as revelatory, elucidating, and validating meta especially do—meta helps lessen the feeling that the writers are gaslighting viewers with their statements of "what you are seeing is not there" and provides Johnlockers with resources to counter resistance to the concept of Johnlock outside of the Tumblr community, such as on official and unofficial Sherlock forums and groups on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, and Reddit.

[3.13] I argue after Jonathan Gray (2010) that TJLC/Johnlock meta is a prominent paratext that has become an intrinsic part of the text itself. Acting much as spoilers do (Gray 2010), meta's function as unofficial paratext has kept the show alive for its most dedicated fans when it is off-air, which for Sherlock has been all but three weeks per two- or three-year period. Johnlock fans' meta is "queer cryptography," a form of unpaid and denigrated labor that is essential not only to their enjoyment, empowerment, and ontological security, but also to the show's profitability in a competitive market (Anselmo 2018). Further, it is almost impossible for newer fans to not come across a queer or TJLC reading of the show, whether they choose to ignore, deny, or agree with the interpretation. One fan, Rebekah, even started a YouTube video series called TJLC Explained, which over the course of the eleven months preceding series 4 compiled a variety of the previous two years'

worth of TJLC meta into forty-eight easily accessible and digestible topical videos. As of January 31, 2018, over a year since series 4 aired, this channel still had 17,233 subscribers, with some of the videos having around 50,000 views each. Fan disappointment with no Johnlock was even parodied on the Hulu series Difficult People (2015–17) (note 16). Gray argues that with the "considerable power to amplify, reduce, erase, or add meaning, much of the textuality that exists in the world is paratext-driven" (2010, 46). Fan texts as such "open…up new paths of understanding" and "challenge the primacy of the show" itself as the locus of meaning because they "invite increased attention to a given plot, character, or mode of viewing" that might differ from industry-created paratexts (Gray 2010, 146–47). In the case of Sherlock, whose official paratexts send contradictory messages—for example, promo images and BBC social media accounts that are suggestive of Johnlock (figures 3 and 4) versus showrunner statements of denial—TJLC meta, as a unifying theory, seeks to reconcile them with the show itself (note 17).

Figure 3. Tumblr photo set meta featuring series 2 and 3 promo pics by abitnotgood. (January 20, 2017).

Figure 4. Tweet from @BBC3 during a rebroadcast of Sherlock 3.3 "His Last Vow" that comments on the opening scene. (December 18, 2015).

[3.14] The influence of TJLC/Johnlock meta has led fans to more directly interface with or influence the official paratexts that surround the show. For example, the showrunners and actors have had to repeatedly field questions about Sherlock and John's relationship by journalists in live and print interviews and by fans at panels and screenings. Despite showrunner denials of Johnlock—or any kind of love story—as late as summer and winter of 2016 (figure 5), promotion of Sherlock series 4 was highly self-conscious of it—with a BBC iPlayer tweet and trailer playing on the idea of Sherlock confessing his love (figures 6 and 7)—fueling disgruntled fans' vocal accusations on social media of queerbaiting, or worse, mocking fans, regardless of the actual input or influence either Moffat or Gatiss had with these publicity materials. An official video from January 11, 2017, on the Sherlock YouTube channel, where the host shares fan reactions to 4.2 "The Lying Detective" from social media (#SherlockReacts), even has the host pronouncing that the episode "really was dedicated to the greatest love story never told," a statement that both emboldened and then disheartened fans (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TLNT04MN1Ok). Assuredly the creators' awareness of Johnlock predictions and certain fan disappointment informed Gatiss's joking in the press that they had originally called one of the series 4 episodes "Backlash" (Fleming 2017). The creative team's continual engagement with Johnlock, whether by design or out of necessity, demonstrates the power of an interpretation fully rooted in the text; one, I argue, that is stronger than a similar argument explored through fan fiction, which creators can more easily sequester as mere fiction not worthy of serious discussion. Depending on one's point of view as to authorial intent, Moffat and Gatiss's refusal to discuss fan meta is either part of the conspiracy to protect plot points for series 5 or is an attempt to hold on to their exclusive rights as author. Either way, by dismissing evidence as jokes and insights as imaginings, the showrunners' denials have the effect of limiting or negatively shaping Johnlock meta's paratextual power.

Figure 5. Mark Gatiss's denial of Johnlock intent from the PBS-sponsored Q&A on Tumblr, December 15, 2016.

Figure 6. BBCiPlayer tweet, January 2, 2017, promoting series 4 and featuring the series 4 trailer.

Figure 7. Screenshot from the series 4 trailer, annotated with Sherlock's dialogue of "I love you" and tagging John with question marks, created for a preview article by Rachel Paige (https://hellogiggles.com/reviews-coverage/tv-shows/sherlock-love-trailer/).

[3.15] Even over a year after series 4 aired, the Johnlock paratext continues to exert its pull. Johnlock theories and the post–series 4 fan outcry of queerbaiting have captured the entertainment media's attention, but only to the continued detriment of fans, as articles and interviews appearing in March and April 2018 seem designed to stir up controversy by pitting creators against fans as an effective strategy for hits in the clickbait wars. This provocative but shallow coverage that never engages in questions of the text serves to further delegitimize a Johnlock reading and blame Johnlock shippers for the poor reception of series 4 and the uncertainty of a series 5. When asked about fan backlash to series 4 and fans expectations of a Sherlock and John romance, Freeman responded that Cumberbatch and himself have "literally never, never played a moment like lovers" (McLean 2018) and "never played anything as a couple, and that's just true…We play two friends who love each other. That's pretty different" (Horowitz 2018, 45:51). He states that fan pressures for the story to go a certain way are not fun, with "the…

absolute insistence that Sherlock and John are a couple, should be a couple, have always been a couple" being the problem (Horowitz 2018, 45:35). While Johnlock fans might quibble with the semantics—Johnlock-as-endgame theories do not claim that Sherlock and John are currently a couple—the wording is less important than the strong message that these fans are wrong, and the pronouncement shuts down any exploration of why certain fans receive the show as they do, although

Freeman gestures toward the obsessive close reader by contrasting fans to casual viewers who do not similarly engage. Moreover, a hard line is drawn between fan interpretations and the stated will of the creator. One interviewer, Josh Horowitz, comments that fans "almost create their own narratives," an idea which is fine with Freeman as long as the division is clear between fans "running with their own ball" in fan fiction and the authors writing their own show. A coupled Sherlock and John as found in fan fiction "doesn't happen to be the show we're making," Freeman pronounces (Horowitz 2018), even if in previous interviews he has been politely receptive to fan shipping—at least in fan art—claiming to participate in the activity himself, as he does during an interview on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert (December 10, 2016): "I've done some of them [explicit fan art]…I painted some of them." No mention is ever made of meta as a counterargument.

Freeman not only clearly asserts authorial intent in his denials of canon Johnlock but also authorial control of the meaning, as he never once engages with the reasons that fans ship Sherlock and John, reasons that exist for the viewers in the text of the show itself.

[3.16] The problem with these interviews with creators is that questions of fan analysis, why fans believe as they do, are never broached, even though these interpretations are the basis for the compelling interview question. The intent of the author is assumed to be the last word on meaning and is never considered in relation to the text existing in its own right, open to reception. In addressing Johnlock, the discussion of interpretation is centered on fan fiction and creating one's own universe, not on analytic meta that would provide evidence for—and thus the legitimacy of—a romantic interpretation. Fans are automatically the lesser party—and the problem—in this scenario. In contrast, when asked his opinion on the matter of fan disappointment, Cumberbatch was more judicial in his response, stating that it is the storytellers' responsibility to manage fan disappointment and that "there are more people responsible [the creative team] than the people receiving what you're working on [the fans]," an answer that at least gives fans a bit of respect and discernment (Fullerton 2018).

[3.17] The foregrounding of fan fiction and the lack of engagement with meta champions the authorial monopoly on interpretation, disempowers fans by relegating their labor to a separate creative sphere, and pits fans against each other—many fellow Sherlock fans follow the lead of the creators and unilaterally lambast TJLCers for their "cult-like" groupthink and "crazy demands," without seriously considering how the text may support their claims or acknowledging the range of fan beliefs. The media's implicit mocking of (predominantly female and queer) fans by never taking up their analytic cause reinforces not only the ways women are treated in media culture but also "the power relationships between the mass media and consumers" (Bennet, Chin, and Jones 2016, 115), which are then mirrored in factions of fandom. In the wake of Freeman's comments, Johnlock fans have reasserted the primacy of the text to refute his claims, as they do after every such pronouncement by The Powers That Be: "the show's the thing!" garkgatiss wrote in an antipress post (March 16, 2018), with the phrase again echoed by watsonshoneybee on a new post after Horowitz's podcast interview of Freeman (April 23, 2018). Validating meta abounded in the form of photo and GIF sets either preexisting or created for the purpose (figure 8), and even memes, such as this one by 221b-carefulwhatyouwishfor: "We never played a moment like lovers. / Yet our gazes were filled with longing. / Two 7-word stories" (March 16, 2018), a post that not only highlights Cumberbatch and Freeman's acting choices but evokes the fundamental decoding of "looks" as representing homoerotic desire (Woledge 2005). Yet even with such textual assertions—and the validating function of meta fully deployed—reassurance was fleeting, with a creator's words wielding the power to undermine one's interpretive confidence. Mrskolesouniverse acknowledged this feeling by tagging a post linking to the Freeman interview with "#I know that the only thing you should believe is the show itself #but I can't stop feeling [like a] stupid and delusional idiot after such interviews #why the fuck does it hurt so much" (April 24, 2018). The tension between the author, the text, and the viewer remains taut, especially with the Johnlock fan's assumption that if something is in the text, the creator intentionally put it there; or, conversely, with the creator's assertion that if something was not their intent, that element therefore is not in the text.

Figure 8. Screenshot of GIF set of six GIFs of Sherlock and/or John looking at or referencing the other, created by yorkiepug (May 1, 2018). The post is prefaced with "'We can act'/—Martin Freeman/'We never played anything as a couple'/—also Martin Freeman, same interview" and ends with a quip of incredulity in meme form, "Sure Jan." In her tags, yorkiepug mentions feeling gaslit.

4. Meta and the debate over queerbaiting

[4.1] In the wake of series 4, meta continues to assert the queer content of Sherlock, but to opposite ends, depending on how fans view the reliability and finality of the narrative and the intent of Moffat and Gatiss. Meta either provides support for fan accusations of queerbaiting, refuting Johnlock denials by extratextual authorial statements and new canon with evidence from new and old text, or it offers a strong rebuttal to those accusations by outlining how the text—and thus the showrunners—set up a Johnlock resolution for a possible series 5. Meta both aggravates and assuages the uncertain limbo with Sherlock. For the queerbaiting contingency, the amount of queer text and subtext in support of their claim both angers and legitimizes them; for the enduring TJLCers, the evidence in favor of their reading underscores not only their confidence in themselves but in the authors.

[4.2] The accusations of queerbaiting that had largely died (or been tamped) down with the advent of TJLC ignited again immediately after the airing of 4.3 "The Final Problem" (TFP), the last episode of series 4. Fans who were hoping for explicit canon Johnlock, such as a love declaration or a kiss, were frustrated by the continued use of ambiguity and subtext, as well as the foregrounding of heterosexuality, such as dead Mary Watson triangulating and then narrating Sherlock and John's relationship, while pronouncing "if I'm gone, I know what you could become"; Sherlock's pronouncing "I love you" not to John but to Molly, who has been in unrequited love with him; and callbacks to the lesbian Irene Adler, with whom John thinks Sherlock should pursue a relationship. While technically the ending is left open to interpretation and thus does not foreclose Johnlock, especially as there is the possibility of a fifth series, viewers perceive a shift in tone and a sense of finality of character arcs that suggest the evolution of Sherlock and John's relationship is done. These fans have cried queerbaiting for reasons of narrative disappointment as well as for lack of positive and explicit LGBTQ+ representation, complaining also about the queer-coded villains.

[4.3] Yet for many it is less the content of the show itself that has angered fans and more the official rhetoric of the showrunners denying the potential gayness or queerness of their own content, coupled with their adversarial and reductive view of Johnlock fans, that has certain Johnlockers crying queerbaiting. While some TJLCers may still discount Mofftiss's fan dismissals as part of a long con, others cannot accept their rude treatment of fans; even if canon Johnlock is in the future, the ends would never justify the means. For example, when fans took a quote about representation and gay characters that Moffat made regarding Doctor Who out of context and excitedly pronounced this as evidence for Johnlock, Moffat impatiently responded that fans were "taking a serious subject and trivializing it beyond endurance" (Parker 2016), basically equating fan desire for an explicitly gay Sherlock with slash fetishization, or the accusation that all Johnlockers want is to see two attractive men kissing. In this statement, Moffat not only dismisses the importance of LGBTQ+ representation for these fans, but also effectively ignores the difference between fans creatively shipping any characters in a text for fun and fans analytically shipping what the text suggests. When a young fan asked about the future for Sherlock and John after the BFI preairdate screening of TFP on January 12, 2017, attendees reported that Moffat dismissively told the fan to "go read the books," even though their adaptation itself departs from ACD canon. At the same event, Gatiss's curious phrasing of how he envisions a new series starting with "a knock at the door and Sherlock saying to John, 'Do you want to come out and play?'" (Tartaglione 2017; Dowell 2017) seemed to some fans to imply that at the end of TFP John is not living with Sherlock in 221B, a point that the show itself is open about, thus dashing Johnlockers' joy in the text's suggestion of cohabitation and its implications.

[4.4] In writing about the culture clash between "female, slash-centered interpretive culture and masculinist production culture" that characterizes the relationship between Johnlock fans and Moffat and Gatiss, Lori Morimoto states that "invalidation and even rejection by the official legitimate creators…can be intensely destabilizing, leaving fans with little recourse but to re-establish ontological equilibrium through the means at their disposal" (2018, 266–67). The recourse of choice for some Johnlockers/TJLCers has been to call out Mofftiss on their denials of same-sex love by tweeting rebuttals of evidence from the show, culled from meta, and by sending formal complaints of queerbaiting to the BBC. Fans organized under the name "Operation Norbury" (#Norbury), a clever Sherlock Holmes reference that tells the creators that they have become too arrogant (note 18). The BBC's heavy-handed response to these complaints, which Operation Norbury's recipients circulated through Tumblr and Twitter, incensed fans further: "Through four series and thirteen episodes, Sherlock and John have never shown any romantic or sexual interest in each other. Furthermore, whenever the creators of 'Sherlock' have been asked by fans if the relationship might develop in that direction, they have always made it clear that it would not." While fans do not dispute the latter statement of creator denials, they were outraged by the utter interpretative hubris of the former and rejected it, responding with counterevidence from the show with renewed fervor. Many fans felt as did @cupidford, who tweeted "You can't say you expect more from your viewers, and then disrespect and toss aside deep analysis from a majority queer audience #Norbury" (February 26, 2017). Many tweets that were part of the Twitter #BBCQueerbait campaign, such as those tweeted by Operation Norbury (@OpNorbury), posed presumably rhetorical questions such as, "Why did Irene (who is very good at reading people/knowing what they like) insist that John & Sherlock are a couple?" (June 16, 2017) and "Why didn't John respond after Irene states 'Well, I am [gay]. Look at us both'" (June 17, 2017), questions extensively elaborated on in fan meta. As meta writer mild-lunacy points out, as suggestive as such queer moments individually are, it is the cumulative effect of these moments in the text, either as funny or serious moments, that makes Mofftiss's joke explanations specious and where one feels the weight of authorial or narrative intent.

[4.5] These tweets and the evidence collected in meta pit the text against the showrunners' stated nonintent. Since the notion of queerbaiting hinges on authorial intent, what fans presume the producers' meanings and intentions to be (Nordin 2015) and what their actual intent is lies at the heart of the Sherlock queerbaiting debate. Those who take Moffat and Gatiss at their word that their show is not gay conclude that the showrunners have exploited queer coding and reception for their gain (queerbaiting), or the fans uphold the text as being implicitly queer (not queerbaiting); those that think they are lying advocate that the text is forthcomingly gay (not queerbaiting). There are heated opinions on both sides, both backed by textual analysis but differing about the legitimacy of author statements. Responding to fans who have asked TJLCers to be sensitive to those who feel hurt by Moffat and Gatiss, TJLC meta writer Amy (garkgatiss) responds, "Your feeling queerbaited is absolutely not ever going to ethically or morally compel me to stop telling you that you aren't being queerbaited" (April 27, 2018). Her certainty comes from her interpretation of the text.

[4.6] Either canon Johnlock will happen or it will not—what some TJLCers have binarized as the show being "gay or trash"—an essentializing reduction that privileges an explicit same-sex romance, one seemingly promised by the narrative, over the problematizing of binaries such as gay/straight, friendship/romance, and sex/love in which the show could also arguably be engaging. That is, fans accusing Sherlock of queerbaiting prefer explicit queer representation—Sherlock and John in an acknowledged gay relationship—over academic notions of queering (Sherlock and John in a romantic platonic, nonhomonormative, or undefined relationship) because in a heteronormative context everyone is assumed straight until proven otherwise and queer readings are seen as alternative (Nordin 2015; Doty 2000). If a same-sex relationship is not explicit, it effectively does not exist. Yet not all Johnlock meta argues for this explicitness, even if it presents evidence for a Sherlock and John romance. Those who use meta to oppose the queerbaiting charge point to nonessentializing queer moments of the text; for example, using the portrayal of Sherlock's positive relationship with Mary as suggestive of polyamory. However, what disgruntles fans in this case is not only the absence of a stated authorial agenda of binary-breaking, inclusive queerness but a reinforcement of and retrenchment in heteronormativity, in apparent conflict with the text.

[4.7] Further, queerbaiting also hinges on context—what Eve Ng (2017) calls "queer contextuality"—what fans can expect textually, intertextually, politically, and economically in matters of feasible canonical same-sex relationships. Many fans insist that in the 2010s, a gay romance need not be restricted to the subtext, rejecting the notion of play, creativity, and binary disruption—including that of producer/fan—that actualizing subtext in fan works (as opposed to in canon) allows in favor of much-needed and much-desired LGBTQ+ representation in the media (Brennan 2016). While subtext spawns engagement with the text in fan spaces or with the franchise, it cannot provide mainstream media visibility; hence, certain Johnlock fans' anger at the BBC in light of its commissioned LGB report and their need to speak back. Fans are not looking for creativity; they are looking for the validity and visibility that they feel the narrative has promised and for which they have evidence. For analytically inclined fans, the suggestion that fans go off into their separate fan spaces and create for themselves what the story fails to provide is infuriating and insulting. Johnlock meta writers view themselves as knowledge workers in service of the text (Milner 2009), not fantasizing fangirls.

[4.8] Emma Nordin (2015) offers producerly acknowledgement of fans' queer readings as an alternative, but not ideal, solution to queerbaiting, one that cannot ultimately represent LGBTQ+ identities but that can at least give viewers more interpretive legitimacy and social power. However, as of series 4, Sherlock fans do

not even have this compromise available to them. While Gatiss has admitted to flirting with homoeroticism in Sherlock (Rouse 2010), both Moffat and Gatiss repudiate evidence of a Sherlock and John romance as jokes taken too far (but which they still continue to make through the series) and as fans reading into what is not there, claiming that in-text denials, such as Sherlock and John "needing two bedrooms" or John's declarations of "I'm not gay" settle the issue and outweigh any of the other myriad of textual instances and/or a greater whole. While critics might levy the fetishization charge at Johnlockers, Johnlockers fire back that queerbaiting exploits queer coding and receptivity at the expense of queer viewers, who remain hidden at worst or liminal at best in the shadow of the subtext.

Further, Johnlockers reject Mofftiss's characterization of fan demands for queer representation as being issue-driven box ticking and thus necessarily artificial to the narrative. Instead, fans underscore that Gatiss's oft-repeated desire for characters' "incidental" gayness (Rouse 2010) is not only not antithetical to the developing relationship of Sherlock and John but also in support of the unlabeled slow-burn romance. In other words, fans' meta argues that actualization of Sherlock and John's romance is in line with the narrative that Moffat and Gatiss have constructed. It is good storytelling, not derailing identity politics.

[4.9] I would now like to deconstruct a rather rhetorically sophisticated tweet in the #Norbury campaign by @paddington2020 (February 5, 2017) that highlights the complex relationship between author, reader, and text in the encoding and decoding of Sherlock and the argument for Johnlock (figure 9). It constructs a hypothetical conversation between the complaining fans and Mofftiss, where in the still frame from the episode "The Abominable Bride" (TAB) used, Mofftiss are figured as the scolding John Watson and the viewers as the perceptive maid questioning his authority.

Figure 9. Tweet by @paddington2020 (February 5, 2017) referencing "The Abominable Bride" and encapsulating Johnlock fans' complicated relationship with showrunners Moffat and Gatiss and their text.

[4.10] This tweet not only uses the showrunners' words against them (the first line is a mashup of their responses to people who complain the show is too complicated to follow), but also the scene from the "The Abominable Bride" that is quoted as Mofftiss's dismissal of the very critical thinking they demand of their viewers is a scene steeped in subtext and intertextuality that suggests Johnlock romance. Most fans would have discovered the suggestive reference to and twist on the original ACD Holmes story through a Tumblr post, such as the following, which consists of an anonymous observation posted to Mazarin221b's blog and serves as revelatory meta:

[4.11] In The Problem of Thor Bridge (which I was re-reading for its canon train carriage knee-grope and gun-handling scene), the cook couldn't boil an egg properly because she was reading a "love romance." In TAB the maid couldn't boil an egg properly because she was reading a story about Holmes and Watson. I don't think I have to connect the dots for anyone, do I? (Tumblr, January 6, 2016)

[4.12] This scene is rife with other subtext as well—the maid who is effectively deducing the sorry state of the Watson marriage physically resembles Sherlock, for example—subtext explained in detail in various metas such as that by deducingbbcsherlock (Tumblr deactivated). The metas outlining the romantic tropes in the series are numerous, such as the one referenced here by ifyouhaveenoughnerve, which indeed lists 157 romantic tropes applied to Sherlock and John. But Mofftiss have shown that they do not want to seriously engage with fan interpretations—"Nobody asked you to be observant"—dismissing fans' Johnlock interpretations while simultaneously seeding their content with innuendo, hints, and references for those who can read them. Sharon Marie Ross (2008) prompts, "We should be exploring the ways in which online discussions of television shows may be prompting viewers—and writers and executives—to see the value of offering and attending to competing perspectives on issues ranging from identity and experience, to politics, to authenticity, to power, to how best to develop a character or plot."

Johnlock fans have been vigorously, often contentiously, debating these issues among themselves through meta, taking the stand against charges that their claims are only ideologically driven (Romano 2016). But it appears that the showrunners see little to no value in "attending to competing perspectives" delineated in Johnlock meta, instead making blanket statements about fans "trivializing" issues and quarantining fans to fantasize in their own space. Some fans feel that Moffat and Gatiss purposefully wrote series 4 to stymie or defy the trajectory of the narrative—and thus analysis—as a power move for discursive dominance over fans in the cultural field (Johnson 2007; Williams 2010).

5. (Non)sense? Meta in a post-series 4 world

[5.1] Laurie Cubbinson writes this about fan fiction: "When the canon narrative heads in a direction that fans resist, fanfiction can be a method whereby fans come to accept that direction, or conversely, continue to resist it" (2012, 147). This characterization applies to meta as well, and it is particularly apt for describing post-series 4 Johnlock meta. Series 4 defied many fans' plot predictions and character readings, and the narrative structure and cinematographic choices have led fans to question the reliability of the narrative. With the series' concluding episode TFP, which challenged the suspension of disbelief for casual viewers and fans alike, many meta writers have been at a loss with how to proceed. While some Johnlock fans have been busy writing meta that struggles to make coherent sense of the totality of the Sherlock narrative, others despair over the futility of textual analysis in the first place, feeling that the showrunners have disregarded narrative expectations and "good writing" in favor of their own acknowledged "insane wish fulfillment" (Schnelbach and Lough 2016). Also, Mofftiss have admitted that what fans think of as clues are actually mistakes due to time and budget constraints, although these statements appear to be contradicted—or at least obfuscated—by Sherlock's creative team on Twitter and are cast in doubt by Mofftiss's reputation for lying (note 19). As marsdaydream laments in a Tumblr post called "Defying analysis: Sherlock S3–4":

[5.2] One of the things I'm struggling with, after S4, is whether or not it's actually worthwhile to approach the show analytically anymore…The problem lies in creating a show that deceptively behaves as if viewers should take it very seriously, when really the show doesn't seem to want that at all…Just because a character shows deep emotion on screen, doesn't mean that emotion always makes sense in a greater context. In S3 and S4…viewers picked up on plenty of these character-based inconsistencies and questions, and now we're all struggling to explain them. When really, the answer might be one big Occam's Razor: These things don't make sense, because they weren't written to make sense. Clear the screen, wipe the page, it was all a bit of fun. Deep analysis need not apply. (February 22, 2017)

[5.3] Thus do we re-encounter the tension of author, text, and reader. Has the show been worth analyzing if the creators never intended the rich meaning fans find there? Did Mofftiss accidently write the love story that Johnlockers see? If Johnlock was never endgame, then it can perhaps be argued that it is at least an example of what Matt Hills (2002, 137) calls a "Grand Non-narrative," a mystery beyond the central plot resolution; in the case of Sherlock, some meta has conceded the latter to be that of Sherlock's evolution of great to good man. If "an endlessly deferred narrative," Johnlock as will-they-or-won't-they may "never officially be answered or closed down, remaining open to multiple fan productions, speculations, and recreations" (137). In that case, the authorial denials are puzzling but infuriating to fans, especially given the continued ambiguity and subtext in TFP that invites possibility. Why do the showrunners disavow this level of queerness inherent in the text? As meta has and continues to extensively catalog all the queer moments of the show, the question for some has shifted to not how the show is queer or could be read romantically but why the showrunners and creative team have coded it this way. Tendergingergirl echoes John's exasperation in TEH to Sherlock's faking his death when she writes "I don't want to know how you did it. I study the show. I know how. I WANT TO KNOW WHY" (April 25, 2018).

[5.4] While denials should be cause for elevating the text over the author, the showrunners' simultaneous praise and dismissal of fans' critical readings leads to fan desires for official validation. Producerly acknowledgment of the subtext would be empowering because "under the ideology of the auteur, it amounts to the implication that the nonslashing majority (in this case, non-Johnlockers) have actually misread the text. The notion of 'subtext' can thus be used to give a minority reading greater legitimacy than that subscribed to by the majority: the subtextual meaning then becomes the real meaning" (Allington 2007; 49). Johnlockers want others to see their queer reading as "the most easily activated meaning" in the polysemic text (Nordin 46), or as fans might phrase it, "Would someone please give me a heterosexual explanation for this?" Yet Mofftiss offers meta writers no such legitimacy, and subtext is not self-evident. As madgirlspoem states in her disappointment in series 4, "I don't want [to] have to write/read 20 posts on subtext to be able to validate a reading of queer romance. I want it to be in PLAIN

VIEW, to be TEXT, literal, formalized, spoken, made clear as day, for everybody to see, the same way hetero romance is, every day, all the time!!" (Tumblr deleted). Meta is doing the emotional work of legitimizing the show's queer reading—what Anselmo (2018) calls "queer rehabilitative labor"—which never quite replaces official authorial validation via the text. Meta has thus lost its appeal for many.

[5.5] While some established and renowned meta writers have either left the fandom or have chosen to abandon writing meta for reading or writing fan fic, others continue, and new voices join. Some unsatisfied Johnlockers still favor metaphorical and nonliteral readings of series 4, where questions of point of view, narrator unreliability, and Brechtian poetics come into play: maybe it's not supposed to make sense; maybe viewers are supposed to find TFP absurd and suspect. Thus does TJLC still have its adherents, such as Amy, who has published a series of Sherlock meta beyond Tumblr at Medium.com, elaborating her theories on series 4 in particular and Sherlock in general that uphold the integrity of both the text and the showrunners, while positioning those who continue to believe in Johnlock-as-endgame as perceptive and worthy readers and the intended audience who can read the evidence. She clarifies on her Tumblr, where she fields questions about her interpretation, "if you're complimenting my faith in the writers, you still don't get it. tjlc doesn't run on faith, it runs on cold, hard evidence" (@garkgatiss, February 7, 2018) (note 20). Again, the evidence is in the text, not in what any of the creative team say. Even those who never did or no longer believe in Mofftiss find the great variety of series 4 meta indispensable for understanding, unpacking, reconciling, or even appreciating series 4. Convincing as some of these readings are for them, the appeal of such a long con, however clever or revolutionary for reshaping audience expectations, is permanently undermined by the way Moffat and Gatiss have treated their believing fans.

[5.6] Some, like fic and meta writer Ivyblossom, take the text of Sherlock series 4 at face value, making sense of what is there in the narrative despite authorial denials, black-and-white fan discourse, or additional canon, such as TFP. Mild-lunacy, who characterizes the new interpretative polarization in regards to the (in)coherence of the text and whether Johnlock is implicit rather than ambiguous as "The Great Divergence," writes on Tumblr:

[5.7] On some level I don't care what Mofftiss say: after a certain point, the text is the text, and if it makes sense then I have to say that's good enough (especially since they both say they lie…). That said, I keep coming back to what Moffat once said about BBC Sherlock being a "love story" but not a

"sex scene."…I don't think it's all or nothing, and you either have explicit canon Johnlock, or all the stuff about romance and the homoerotic subtext in the show is meant to be just a meaningless joke. The romance is implicit, but the only rational, textually based conclusion is that it is indeed between John and Sherlock. Nothing else makes sense now any more than it did before TFP. In other words, I don't think TFP somehow destroyed Johnlock (nor could it). (January 28, 2017)

[5.8] Other meta writers see themselves as transforming the text into something better than it is through their meta, as fan fic does, while still believing that ample evidence exists for their interpretation. Responding to an anonymous comment mocking TJLC beliefs, inevitably-johnlocked replies:

[5.9]

I don't discount the fact that the fandom itself is possibly way more fucking clever and brilliant than Mofftiss ever could be… But seriously, there's more evidence that it [Johnlock] was initially going to happen. So please step off people who just want to have a good time. Literally, all we are are fanfic writers writing different versions of fanfic, and having a blast sharing our fanfic ideas. (March 31, 2017)

[5.10] The equation here of fanfic and meta is not unsurprising, given their similar functions in making sense of, exploring, and preserving the fictional universe of a show—and in making a case for Johnlock (Smith 2016). In the absence of textual or extratextual confirmation, it is impossible for the fan to fully claim affirmational status, no matter how much evidence one amasses. The variety of individual interpretations collapsed under the heading of Johnlock meta or even under specific subtheories highlights the imaginative and transformational aspect, even if it is not so much twisting the story to suit one's needs but honoring what is perceived to be in the text, creating coherence and significance where perhaps there was none intended. Interpretation is ultimately a creative act, as it "is not the act of construing but the act of construction" (Fish 1980, 327). However, the power differential between producer and fan means that fan creations are not equal. Meta works to offset this power imbalance with claims to objectivity, coherence, and significance and with its force of community. Yet as much as fans desire Mofftiss to

"please be that clever" in the seeming breadth, depth, and complexity of the connections, arcs, and plots they see as present in the text, the flipside is for the showrunners to "please steal our ideas" if their narrative does not live up to fan theories and interpretations.

6. Conclusion

[6.1] The case of Sherlock Johnlock fandom reiterates the question Jenkins (2006) posed about Twin Peaks (1990–91) fans and David Lynch: what if fans found out the text was meaningless or that all meaning came from their interpretive community and not the author? This is an especially pertinent question, given that a

photo set of Lynch asserting the primacy of the text has been making the rounds on Tumblr among Johnlock fans in the wake of Freeman's March/April 2018

comments (note 21). Further, a July 9, 2018, Tumblr Q&A, which Moffat and Gatiss conducted as 221b-investigates to promote their Sherlock-themed London escape room experience "The Game Is Now," reiterated for many Johnlockers that Mofftiss—with their "patronizing, supercilious and teasing" nonanswers (we-love-the-beekeeper, July 9, 2018)—still do not wish to meaningfully engage them. Several fans submitted questions already knowing full well they would not be answered but with the intent to hold the writers accountable for their narrative, while others were disappointed in the lack of serious answers. Worse yet, Moffat and Gatiss appeared to disdain analysis—or recognize its potential for narrative disappointment. In response to a question meant to echo Sherlock's words in "TST,"

alwaysanoriginal asks, "Any words of advice for those who like to pull on the 'loose threads' of the world?" Mofftiss responds, "You'll ruin your jumper."

[6.2] The apparent lack of respect and acknowledgment from Moffat and Gatiss toward their analytically inclined and queer fans, combined with the overwhelming enrichment that meta has brought to their experience of Sherlock, has led many Johnlockers to embrace the fact that yes, the fans themselves are indeed the source of meaning, proclaiming that the fandom is really the show, that the characters belong to the fans, and that fans write it better, thus "obliterat[ing]

the power of male authorial intent" that has failed them (Anselmo 2018, 108). Fans tell each other that it does not matter what Mofftiss (or the actors) say they have done; the evidence is in the text, the interpretation is in the reader. Others insist that the game is not over and to still trust in the showrunners and in fans' own perceptive abilities when presented with the evidence before them. Yet it feels so important to some fans who feel gaslit and queerbaited by series 4 that Gatiss appears to be acknowledging if not serious Johnlock intent then intentional ambiguity when finally in an April 2017 interview with Radio Times—after a long spell of arch denials of possibility—he offhandedly quips, in punny reference to the freeze-frame of a running Sherlock and John in midstride that ends series 4, that "we don't know whether they made that last step" (Jones 2017). Or is this just another gay joke that leaves no one but Moffat and Gatiss laughing?

7. Acknowledgments

[7.1] I wish to thank Heather Dalal for her encouragement to pursue this research, Laurel Harris for her enthusiastic reading of each iteration and helpful comments, and Diana W. Anselmo for her expert suggestions and time.

8. Notes

1. I use "queer" here broadly, encompassing the definitions of possessing LGBTQ+ identities, being nonheteronormative, and resisting essentialism of sex, sexuality, and gender.

2. While it is hard to quantify this assertion through counting meta, as there is no easy way of gathering statistics by meta on Tumblr, especially because of diverse tagging practices, I speak from my experience as a participant-observer in the Johnlock Tumblr fandom. However, looking at fan fiction written about Sherlock and John as a couple on Archive of Our Own (https://archiveofourown.org/) (tagged relationship: Sherlock Holmes/John Watson, with the slash a romantic pairing, and fandom: "Sherlock (TV)") can give us an idea. Operating on the assumption that anything besides the common interpretation is tagged to allow readers to find what they specifically desire to read (or avoid), I have searched for some common additional tags in the "freeform" field. This can only present a partial picture of content, since tagging is up to the individual author and often does not reflect all content. Of the 52,259 "Sherlock (TV)" Sherlock Holmes/John Watson fics publicly available or locked to users of Archive of Our Own as of January 31, 2018, 599 are tagged with some form of asexuality (search term: asexual*), 270

explore polyamory (search term: polyamor*), 232 involve a platonic relationship (search term: platonic), 169 have the metatag "trans" (under which related terms are subsumed), and 468 contain bisexuality (search term: bisexual*), with "bisexual John" fics at 318 (explicitly tagged this, even though bisexual John is the assumption. There are only 18 tagged "gay John."). In contrast, there are 182 fics tagged with heterosexuality (search term: heterosex*). For perspective, "Sherlock (TV)" currently has a total of 104,050 works on Archive of Our Own, which means that half of the fan fiction written is Sherlock/John. As for heterosexual ships, there are only 7,219 works that are tagged Sherlock Holmes/Molly Hooper, and 1,165 tagged Irene Adler/Sherlock Holmes.

3. The shipping of Sherlock and John was never only restricted to fandom. Besides media headlines about the possible gayness of the new series Sherlock back in 2010, the homoeroticism of the text has long been acknowledged in other media. For example, the presenter at the ITV Crime Thriller Awards 2010 mentions "the seething sexual tension between the leads" and asks "Will they ever get it on? Just kiss him." The NRK's (Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation) Sherlock parodies

"Oklahomo" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vPLsFTOpCRU), "Mind Phallus" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4aMU4g2B_Wo), and "Missing Shoulder"

(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cv0oCQrQCZ4) present Sherlock and John as unequivocally gay, and Martin Freeman's SNL appearance on December 13, 2014, features a sketch "Holiday Gig" (https://www.nbc.com/saturday-night-live/video/holiday-gig/2834511), in which a male and female couple clearly resembling Sherlock and John are sitting at a table with a candle, which recalls a scene in 1.01 "A Study in Pink," where John declares he is not Sherlock's date. Fans read the more esoteric subtext in this skit as also being indicative of Johnlock.

4. Fanlore's entry for "meta" (https://fanlore.org/wiki/Meta) confirms the mundaneness of interpretation, as well as the different usage of the term on different and older platforms: "Unlike LiveJournal-based fandoms, on mailing lists the term is metadiscussion, not meta, and it almost never means "discussing the source/characters/fanworks"—those things are simply everyday discussions. Metadiscussion means 'discussing the discussion,' or shifting away from the topic at hand to talk about how the topic is being discussed."

5. "Queer" in terms of Johnlock meta is more a synonym of "having an LGBTQ+ identity" and "nonheteronormative" than used in the sense of queer theory's antiessentializing of sexual and gender identity. Johnlock fans are overwhelmingly more interested in clear LGBTQ+ representation in media than in more theoretical deconstructions of binaries or "other non-normative modes of being and relating" (Ng 2017, ¶ 9.8). Johnlockers tend to use "gay" when referring to the show and argue that the show codes Sherlock as gay and John as bisexual, and they lean toward homonormativity, privileging traditional notions of romance and monogamy.

6. The case of Arwel Wyn Jones is charged. The only person associated with the show who has regularly and positively engaged with fans on Twitter, he has long posted funny and mysterious behind-the-scenes photos. Beginning in March 2016, he began to occasionally tweet elephants, which Johnlockers believed referred to

"the elephant in the room" (i.e., Johnlock), referenced first in Sherlock 3.2 "The Sign of Three" and also on John's blog, and since incorporated into various set elements (an elephant figurine falls from a shelf in "The Abominable Bride," and the there-and-then-not glass in Eurus's cell is called "Elephant Glass" in TFP). His playful demeanor, even to comments laden with innuendo, made him feel like a production ally and a coconspirator. Fans even created a hashtag in appreciation:

#arwelephants. However, when upset fans tweeted their feelings of betrayal after viewing TFP (even before it officially aired), Jones apologized for inadvertently leading fans on, saying it was "for a bit of fun & I like elephants…If some people have associated this with some conspiracy theory, it was truly not my intention"

(@arwelwjones, January 14, 2017). This apology only denies TJLC, not the symbolism of the elephant itself. Any explicit reference to Johnlock is deliberately avoided. Jones's careful and detailed work in meaning making on set still leaves fans with questions of authorial/production intent.

7. Tumblr user skulls-and-tea discovered the reports in June 2014 (http://skulls-and-tea.tumblr.com/post/88265935816/bbcrrmasterpost), and prolific TJLC meta writer Loudest Subtext in Television wrote about how they related to Sherlock in her meta, "Softly, Softly: The BBC's 2009 LGB Research Commission and The Johnlock Conspiracy."

8. Fans have written much insightful meta based on props. One of the most popular connects the secret of John's middle name Hamish to his hidden bisexuality by analyzing a poster from "The Abominable Bride" (only seen from a distance on screen but which was clearly visible during filming where fans gathered to watch, an event known as #setlock) and the image of John as Da Vinci's Vitruvian Man from "The Sign of Three." The poster's first heading "Heimish" is linked to Hamish, while its second heading "The Ideal Man" is linked to the Vitruvian Man, and in other meta, to Oscar Wilde's play The Ideal Husband (1899), with the resultant Johnlock reading being that Sherlock sees John as his ideal man/husband (http://heimishtheidealhusband.tumblr.com/post/110750716513/heimish-is-so-important-heimish-is-the-whole-damn). Another example is the world of meta spawned by the fact that Mycroft is wearing two different (but very similar) ties in the same airplane/tarmac scenes between "His Last Vow" and "The Abominable Bride." Fans have read this as a clue that the later scene takes place in Sherlock's mind

palace and not for real, but Gatiss has stated this discrepancy was a mistake, not a clue. Fans similarly question the reliability of the narrative by detailing set differences in the Watsons' flat between series 3 and 4. Another ongoing source of speculation concerns a prop seen only in a behind-the-scenes promo for series 4

that originally played in cinemas after a special encore screening of "The Abominable Bride," shortly before series 4 aired. On a table is an obscured yellow sticky note that partially reads "John's alibi???" Meta writers have used this as a jumping off point for crafting what is known as "Unreliable Narrator" or "John's Alibi"

theory for the events of "The Six Thatchers" or for all of series 4. The fact that the clip is not canon does not seem to bother meta writers, who see themselves as playing a game with Mofftiss.

9. Fans report that Moffat said this at a panel at the first official Sherlocked Convention, on April 26, 2015.

10. Anselmo deliberately inverts "fangirls" to "counteract the distorted universalization of 'fangirls' as teenage media consumers defined by pathological puerility, undiscerning lust, and aspired heteronormativity" (2018, 89). Thus she is acknowledging the range of queer identities and ages of the Johnlock community. "Girl fans" also works to showcase the alterity of gender vis-à-vis the largely male world of production.

11. Some Johnlockers never want Johnlock to become canon because that would take the fun out of the show and of writing fic, and so were not bothered by Hallard and Abbington's stance, while others criticized the rudeness to fans and the shutting down of possibilities. This conversation has continued to cause anger, as fans return to it as further evidence that Sherlock has engaged in queerbaiting. On January 22, 2017, @jfallons retorted to Abbington's "Why can't it just be friendship then? Isn't that more interesting to watch?" with "not when they're queer-baiting." Abbington failed to address the issue, responding with, "Jesus I tweeted that three years ago."

12. Because of the toxic fan practices of a few, to many Johnlockers "TJLC" has become "that dreaded acronym," even to those that believed (or still do) in endgame Johnlock. In an attempt to restore fandom harmony and acknowledge the pain inflicted on those harassed by certain TJLCers, some fans advocated replacing "TJLC" with "JLEG" (Johnlock as endgame) in 2016, but it never caught on, and stirred up more controversy. TJLCers are also blamed for irresponsibly getting people's hopes up with their posturing of certainty for canon Johnlock in series 4: some fans reported attending to the mental health crises of other fans when this did not happen.

13. Fan vids are acts of interpretation as well, and often explore characterization and parallel scenes and themes through editing, just as photo and GIF sets do with still shots (Stein 2016). However, the usual addition of a soundtrack unrelated to the canon text through which the analysis is framed (often a love song) makes this a more creative endeavor than I have room to examine here. Johnlock fans would argue that hardly any creative editing is needed to make their point for Johnlock in their videos: the content is all in the source text without any manipulation needed. Similarly, fans make photo and GIF sets that use quotes from other texts, such as Richard Siken's gay love poetry, to interpret the shots chosen and argue for a romantic relationship. While for Johnlock fans Siken's poetry has become a strongly associated intertext for Sherlock, it is not one yet identified as indicated by the show itself, a nuance that makes this kind of meta more creative than analytic.

14. Other popular examples of photo and GIF sets used to demonstrate intertextuality include those made by Tumblr user incurablylazydevil that show how scenes from the series evoke or parallel Casablanca (1942), The Bodyguard (1992), and The Princess Bride (1987), all known for their love stories. Additionally, fans know that The Princess Bride (1973) is Moffat's favorite novel.

15. For example, Martin Freeman is quoted as saying Sherlock is "the gayest story in the history of television" and "We wll certainly saw it as a love story" (Walker 2011). Moffat stated that Sherlock is " certainly a love story—it's just not a sex scene," with Gatiss adding, "They love each other. But not in a sexual way,"

conceding that the "ambiguity is what's interesting, and not the solution" (January 6, 2011, Clapham Picturehouse screening) (http://skulls-and-tea.tumblr.com

/post/102064014226/moffat-the-thing-about-sherlock-holmes-is-youve). Interestingly, all of these statements were made in 2011, between series 1 and series 2, early in the show's time line. Johnlock fans note how Moffat and Gatiss's comments separate love and sex in a way that is never specified for opposite-sex couples, and object to both the separation of love and sex and the assumption that what Johnlockers want to see with explicit Johnlock is sex.

16. In Difficult People (2015–17) 3.09 "Sweet Tea," which aired September 19, 2017, an angry male PBS viewer calls to complain, " Sherlock this, Sherlock that. I didn't pledge $3 to watch Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman not kiss!" Even though this joke reinforces the stereotype that Johnlockers only want to see the two attractive actors get together, it also turns it on its head by having the caller be male and not a young, female fan. While this joke may simply reflect the deprecating gay comedic sensibilities of series writer and actor Billy Eichner and the sense that TFP could be a series finale, the expectation of a kiss in series 4 was born out of TJLC meta.

17. BBC Three's Twitter account would live-tweet during rebroadcasts of Sherlock episodes with memes and suggestive comments, responding in kind to Johnlock innuendo that fans tweeted in reply. BBC Three even created a Tumblr blog, where it actively engaged with Johnlock fans, going so far as to create special fan art for the "The Abominable Bride" where Sherlock and John had "heart eyes" that were each other's faces in miniature. Fans took this as encouragement for Johnlock, only later discovering that the intern who ran the social media accounts was a Johnlock fan who did not have official knowledge of the show or sanction of the showrunners.

18. In the ACD story "The Adventure of the Yellow Face," Holmes, after coming up with the wrong solution to a case, asks Watson to whisper "Norbury" in his ear as a check for when he gets overconfident, Norbury being the location of the pivotal action. In "The Six Thatchers," Sherlock asks Mrs. Hudson to say the same, but in this case Norbury is the character who winds up shooting and killing Mary because of Sherlock's hubris.

19. When fans tweeted to production designer Arwel Wyn Jones (@arwelwjones) and director of TAB Douglas Mackinnon (@drmuig) about inconsistencies in the plane scenes between "His Last Vow" and TAB, Mackinnon responded "do you really think we'd do anything unintentional?" (February 15, 2016). The playful conversation between @jp30567 and the director frames possible "mistakes" as "clues" instead, in direct contrast to Mofftiss. @jp30567 notes, "Anyway, I'm a bit surprised that you got so many details wrong." @drmuig responds, "depends if you think the plane in TAB was in Sherlocks imagination or not." @jp30567 goes on to state that Gatiss was apparently unaware of these intentional things, that "nobody told him." Of course, nothing in this conversation is conclusive, and may all be an attempt to save face, but it teases about issues of interpretation and intentionality.

20. Amy's metas to date can be found at https://medium.com/@toxicsemicolon. They include "Poetry or Truth? Interpreting BBC Sherlock S1–4," "Poetry or Truth?

Part II: Brecht and The Great Game," and "BBC Sherlock: A Drama in Five Acts." On July 14, 2017, she tweeted Mark Gatiss "so @Markgatiss how'd i do so far?"

As expected, he did not respond.

21. The photo set, posted on June 16, 2014 by knedli, consists of a series of nine screenshots from the documentary Great Directors (2009) by Angela Ismailos, with Lynch's words transcribed: "As soon as you finish a film, people want you to talk about it. [Blank picture with Lynch wincing.] And it's, um, it's the film that's the talking. The film is the thing. So you go see the film. That's the thing. It's a whole thing and it's there. And that is it." As of May 4, 2018, this post has been liked or reblogged 47,771 times.

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PRAXIS

Donnie Yen's star persona in amateur-

produced videos on YouTube

Dorothy Lau

Hong Kong Baptist University, Hong Kong

[0.1]

Abstract—Amateur-produced, web-based videos have become

an emergent locus of emulating, multiplying, and reinventing the appeal

of martial arts stars, which was once a product of professionals of

industrial mechanism. The constellation of user-generated practices on

platforms such as YouTube, Twitter, Wikipedia, and Facebook that

depend on amateur content has become a vital force driving popular

construction that blurs the line between the professional and the amateur.

Celebrated transnational Chinese actor Donnie Yen, who has gained

huge fame thanks to his work in martial arts hits, was cast in the Star

Wars feature Rogue One (2016). An analysis of two videos on YouTube

that (re)narrativize Yen's persona in Rogue One shows how video makers

working outside the film industry open up new aspects of articulating

and understanding the star. Amateur video producers unsettle Yen's

status, which is principally anchored on his martial authenticity and

acrobatic skills, by either mixing the active body with other generic

components like sci-fi or virtualizing the warrior figure in other media

contexts, such as video games and virtual reality. The outcome is a

composite, multidirectional intertext that engenders novel dimensions of

a star text, negotiating and refashioning the martial arts personality.

Digital creative texts have discursive power that changes and challenges

the industrial structure of cultural production in a volatile media

environment.

[0.2]

Keywords—Chineseness; Cocreative; Fan engagement;

Professional; Star Wars; Stardom

Lau, Dorothy. 2018. "Donnie Yen's Star Persona in Amateur-Produced Videos on

YouTube." In "The Future of Fandom," special 10th anniversary issue, Transformative

Works and Cultures, no. 28. http://dx.doi.org/10.3983/twc.2018.1329.

1. Amateur videos as emergent locus of star

construction and fan engagement

[1.1] The last few decades have witnessed the emergence of the participatory web

culture that has facilitated the "ever-expanding terrain of the amateur" (Zimmermann 2013). From blogs to tweets, from photography to commentary, user-generated

materials on Web 2.0 sites such as YouTube, Twitter, Wikipedia, and Facebook

epitomize the grassroots force of cultural production, which was once dominated by mainstream media texts. Furthermore, since the mid-2000s, the maturation of

broadband infrastructure and open-source image-making software has mobilized the

escalating professionalization of amateur visual production. Cinephiles can easily search, cull, copy, and share movie clips, trailers, making-of footage, and celebrity interviews obtained from television, DVDs, and websites. On top of borrowing texts directly, they also edit images and mix them with other materials just as professional video makers do. Such practices collapse the dividing line between the professional and the amateur (Burgess 2013, 53), meaning the two groups (as Marjorie Garber posits)

"are always in each other's pocket" (2001, 5). Robert Stebbins (1992), moreover,

identifies and defines the distinctive features and market values of amateur productions, explaining why industries are progressively motivated to undertake them. These efforts validate the trend that popular texts no longer stay in the cultural terrain as they used to, unfolding the clash of various modes of creativity driven by mainstream industrial initiative and alternative business initiative.

[1.2] YouTube is one of the most amateur-friendly websites exemplifying alternatives to large-scale productions in subcultural fields. It is an open platform, which enables users without explicit cultural, institutional, and generic affiliations to engage, making possible the amateur expressions that many content creators seek to exploit. It invites us to see ourselves as potential bona fide media producers or even celebrities-in-waiting, in Jean Burgess's words (2013, 53). The site's ongoing formalization and legitimation in its operation further suggests a tendency to pursue a relatively profitable and stabilized cultural space (ibid), which may be inhabited by both trained and untrained

practitioners. It is also exemplary of the disruptive influence of novel networks of content production and distribution on current media business models (Burgess and

Green 2009, 89). "Symptomatic to a changing media environment" (90), YouTube

encompasses diverse groups of participants. The three groups of participants on

YouTube that Jean Burgess and Joshua Green (92–93) identify include traditional media companies, web TV companies, and ordinary users, or individual, amateur participants who are not representatives of mainstream media. Here I will focus much of my

attention on the cultural activity that happens within the second group, which is

considered neither completely corporatized nor completely independent but most

actively and reflexively engaged in YouTube's cocreative culture (91). Put another way, it dwells in the mediated space that registers myriad interrelated occurrences of

participation.

[1.3] This essay aims to examine the cocreative relationships of the star phenomenon and the respective fan engagement on YouTube. Fan videos and mashups are a

burgeoning genre of texts associated with film stars that elevate the significance of amateur-driven endeavors operating outside the conventional industrial logic. In the past, star discourses were chiefly shaped by professional institutions. Practitioners such as filmmakers, marketers, journalists, and reviewers played a key role in engendering materials of stars as a "shared, but never equal, venture" (Austin 2003, 25). While journalistic discourses and studio propaganda manipulated and monopolized the

publicity, amateur media channels proffer "a new context in which movie stars could peddle their 'monopoly personalities.'" (Pomerance 2012, 3) With the arrival of new media technology, cultural industries relate to their audiences in complex and

contradictory ways unimaginable a decade ago. Through poaching, tagging, and

annotating filmic and advertising materials about stars, users reformulate

communication patterns and networks that vigorously constitute and frame stardom.

The new breed of "pro-sumer" (Toffler 1980) and "prod-user" (Bruns 2005, 23, 315–16) are now seen as major drivers of persona publicity and management, emulating the

appeal not necessarily confined by the cinematic world. Such emancipative power of audiences in the participatory mediascape valorizes an alternative modality of star making.

2. Reimagining Chinese stars in the cocreative media

terrain

[2.1] Scholars have explored stars of Chinese cinema at the convergence of celluloid and digital means that captures the changing mode of star construction. Recent decades have seen the growing visibility and mobility of Chinese star texts in the setting of global media. The transnationalization of martial arts cinema and the films of fifth-generation directors in mainland China provide broad exposure for a cluster of Chinese celebrities outside China, bridging their names with global audiences. Studies have framed Jackie Chan, Jet Li, Michelle Yeoh, Chow Yun-fat, Zhang Ziyi, and Maggie

Cheung, the most celebrated ones, in sundry contexts like Chinese cinema (Farquhar and Zhang 2010), East Asian cinema (Leung and Willis 2014), and transnational

cinema (Meeuf and Raphael 2013), and have explored them in terms of star agency,

cultural nationalism, masculinity, and femininity as well as production and

consumption. While these icons are famous for their compelling, exotic images, the Chineseness they signify is commodified and refashioned in global capitalism. The

advent of new media and DIY cultures creates new conditions that reshape the Chinese celebrities, putting them under heightened public scrutiny and in a new frontier of cultural imagination. Public images are reworked; private lives, alongside screen

personae, are exposed, discussed, and contested. The revelations of the "hidden truths"

of idols hold more appeal for fans than the institutionalized star image. As the Chinese star phenomenon plays out in global-digital fan networks, it generates new inquiries

that demand serious exploration. Pioneering essays written by Julian Stringer (2003) and Sabrina Yu (2010) inquire into the star construction and audience reception of Jet Li on the internet. Stringer (2003) probes how the ambivalence of Asian American

devotees has shaped Li's image: while some audiences relish Li's "perfect" Chineseness as embodied in his Hollywood roles, others highlight his own limitations as an ethnic actor. Sabrina Yu (2012) examines the construction of Li's star presence through his publicity at the official Jet Li website. By investigating the contradictory onscreen-offscreen personae, Yu extrapolates the equally central roles the star and fans play in the star-making process. Expanding the previous effort, I have analyzed Jackie Chan and Jet Li in the social media platforms of Flickr and Facebook (Lau 2010, 2016). In both studies, I have argued for the cosmopolitical, rather than ethnic, celebrity-philanthropist presence engineered on the user-oriented sites that have become part of the industrial machinery of persona management. While this body of literature predominantly adopts the approaches of Asian American studies (Stringer 2003), transnational studies (Yu 2012), and cultural studies (Lau 2010, 2016) to examine the racial, ethnic, and gender representations of Chinese stars, this essay will integrate media studies and star studies by focusing on the possible crossover between professionalism and amateurism. This essay will intervene in the existing critical discourse of Chinese stardom against the backdrop of global media flows.

[2.2] Research has proven that YouTube, the epitome of different structures of fame-making apparatuses, is instrumental in expanding the circulation of star texts in

cyberspace. Intellectuals have positioned YouTube as the venue of engendering public memories of dead personalities ranging from Hollywood icon Marilyn Monroe (Elali

and Vázquez 2015) to Mexican divas María Félix and Dolores del Río (Thornton 2010).

While some intellectuals concentrate on celebrities in the West, others write about non-Western figures such as Chinese kung fu megastar Bruce Lee (Lau 2016) and Taiwanese singer Teresa Tang (Liew 2013), explaining how the digitalized clips from private

collections, later turned into YouTube uploads, become part of the fan-based memorial culture. In addition to the shared memories of fallen stars, researchers have also dealt with the shared taste of the artist-like figures alive. Wikanda Promkhuntong's (2016) account has illuminated the fan reception of Hong Kong filmmaker Wong Kar-wai as a star-auteur. In the East Asian auteur phenomenon, Promkhuntong argues the importance of individual YouTube users who are not affiliated with institutions in exhibiting their tastes through fan-made videos, a vehicle of reputation-making for Wong. These critical works provide insight into how YouTube generates and garners sensitivity within and outside the industrial mechanism but the insights still remain scarce.

[2.3] In response to such scarcity, this essay will investigate the star image of Donnie Yen on YouTube as a partly amateur, partly professional cocreative outcome. Why

Donnie Yen? Yen is "one of the most popular and prolific action star choreographers"

(Funnell 2013, 119), whose appeal is established and mobilized on screen and is

consumed by audiences all over the globe. As the careers of Hong Kong action stars Jackie Chan and Jet Li, two pioneering border-crossers to Hollywood, wane with age, cinephiles and studios call for a new star to replace them. Donnie Yen has ascended to fill the gap. Yen's recent Hollywood appearances are his revived participation in the

"Dream Factory" since the early 2000s when he worked as the choreographer and a supporting actor in Highlander: Endgame (2000) and Blade II (2002). In the meantime, his most noteworthy appearance is probably in Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), a recent sensation in the Hollywood-style blockbuster arena. Capitalizing on the actor's reputation as a martial arts expert, Rogue One cast Yen as Chirrut Îmwe, a blind benevolent monk who is purportedly the warrior of paramount fighting dexterity in the galaxy. Certain media described the character as someone "important" who "will get some action" (Truitt 2016) whereas Yen simply and ambitiously described him as "the best fighter" (Lee 2016), a description that makes audiences anticipate the star's superb acrobatic skill. Attention also rested on Yen's winning of the role over peers who were better known in the US; for example, Jet Li, Tony Leung, Stephen Chow, Chang Chen, Daniel Wu, and Leehom Wang. Yen became the first Hong Kong action star to perform

in a Star Wars narrative (Baxter 2015). Yen's success proved he is one of the most celebrated and bankable performers in Hong Kong martial arts cinema, gaining

currency in the cross-border market.

[2.4] Literature has acknowledged the vigorous, expanding Star Wars fanbase, even prior to the rise of social media (Wetmore 2005, Brooker 2009). Star Wars is a

compelling title in the sci-fi genre that successfully attracted a cult following around the world. Films in this franchise have also become eminent cultural texts on which various forms of amateurish practices anchor. The eighth film in the franchise, Rogue One is the first stand-alone motion picture from the legendary series that is set prior to the events of the 1977 episode (Lee 2016). It features an international cast, including Diego Luna (Mexican) as Cassian Andor, Riz Ahmed (British-Pakistani) as Bodhi Rook, as well as Wen Jiang (Chinese) as Baze Malbus, on top of Yen, vindicating Star Wars' enduring ambition to access the global market and earn a far-reaching fanbase. While I have been aware of the ongoing critical interest in the Star Wars fandom, it is not the purpose of this paper to explore this dimension in-depth. Rather, this discussion centers on the mutating star construction of the Chinese performers who appeared in the iconic series, as a response to the phenomenal transnationalization of Chinese cinema and Chinese film stars. Different from the existing studies of Star Wars that treat its fan community as a cultural phenomenon (Silvio and Vinci 2017), this essay concentrates on exploring fan-driven creative venture as part of the star phenomenon, arresting the trend of Asianization in Hollywood (Hunt 2010).

[2.5] In this context, some questions arise regarding the YouTube-based star texts of Donnie Yen. What is the cultural imagination of Yen's new personification, as exuded by YouTube videos? To what extent does Yen's amateur-orchestrated image parallel to, differ from, or overlay with the earlier roles, produced by the institutionalized

filmmaking system? How do users respond to this image? In order to address these

questions, this essay will hypothesize a cocreative star image that shows the industrial origin of the footage, but is reworked in vernacular and original forms. With this in mind, I conducted research beginning with the keyword-search "Donnie Yen, Star

Wars" on YouTube on June 25, 2017. I identified two videos among the top search

results that were not mere copy-and-paste entries of movie clips and trailers but

demonstrated degrees of originality. The videos were "Donnie Yen in Rogue One |

Generation Tech" and "Exclusive: Star Wars Rogue One—Donnie Yen VS 10

Stormtroopers." By examining the content and the running commentary of the clips,

this essay will postulate an intertextual, hybridized image that problematizes and complicates the Chineseness embodied by Yen. I argue that on one hand, the amateur video makers capitalize on Yen's established martial arts appeal but on the other, they parody and trivialize such appeal. Yet such ambivalent appeal is no less capable of evoking users' anticipation and memory of Yen's screen roles. By so doing, this analysis will show how amateur videos emulate, multiply, and contend with the star discourse produced by institutional practices. In this light, it not only acknowledges the agency of the grassroots in the star making but also unravels the polemical relations between the alternative content and the mainstream media content at the crossroads of cinematic and digital cultures.

Jet Li vs Donnie Yen Lightsaber Duel | Generation Tech

Video 1. Martial Arts Heroes' "'Lightsaber' Battle," "Jet Li vs Donnie Yen Lightsaber Duel | Generation Tech."

[2.6] Amateur-produced videos show the famed personality not restricted by rigid

generic and cultural boundaries but appearing immensely flexible and multiple. The first video, titled "Jet Li vs Donnie Yen Lightsaber Duel | Generation Tech," examines Yen's expanded image on YouTube as a new visual hybrid of disparate symbolic components.

The posting date is December 29, 2015, the time before the launch of Rogue One, yet after the advertising image of Yen had been publicized, as part of the caption insinuates:

"We're not sure exactly what his role will be but he appears on a promotional photo as what appears to be a blind monk." The opening of the entry shows a stand-out fight scene in the Chinese martial arts epic Hero (2000) between Nameless (Jet Li) and Long Sky (Donnie Yen), two accomplished spearmen-assassins. Rather than the fast-paced

and explosive stunts that usually characterize Yen's screen action, the filmmaker, Zhang Yimou, portrays the choreography as poetic and rhythmic, with movement elicited in a balanced manner. Cinephiles of martial arts cinema did not miss the fact that both Li

and Yen are genuine martial artists who are acclaimed for their superb dexterity, drawing on their background of wushu training. Certain audiences described the fight between the two megastars as "the most grounded" (Anonymous, n.d.a). Instead of

merely copying, the video maker recreates the scene by putting the iconic lightsabers from Star Wars into the duel. In this fashion, the video maker combines symbols of the sci-fi hit Rogue One and Hero, which both incorporate Yen as a member of the main cast. Hero is the first global blockbuster produced in mainland China that has riveted audiences both inside and outside China and has set a model for the transnational mode of production (Rawnsley and Rawnsley 2010, 1, 4; Khoo 2010, 123). The movie also

includes a number of other highly marketable performers, such as Tony Leung, Maggie Cheung, and Zhang Ziyi. Based on Yen's performance in Hero, the producer of this fanvid imagines how his kinetically robust image might appear in Rogue One. Thus, the maker turns the Chinese heroes into semi-Jedi knights, which has made the Chineseness oblique and equivocal.

[2.7] Yen's martial arts appeal is further obscured by the association of his Jedi knight role with the Miraluka, characters in the multiplayer online role-playing game, Star Wars: The Old Republic (2011). With a human-like appearance, Miraluka are a near-human species whose racial or ethnic origin remains unclear. As the diegesis unfolds, the Miraluka adopt the traditions and teachings of the Jedi Order and can fight skillfully with lightsabers due to trust in the Force (Anonymous, n.d.b). In the video, Churrit, Yen's blind character, is paralleled to the Miraluka, who lack eyes and perceive the surrounding with force-inflicted sensitivity rather than regular vision. By juxtaposing him with a virtual personality in game, Yen's hero persona seems closer to a kind of

"mobile identity," as Mary Flanagan has designated the new category of "digital stars,"

(Flanagan 1999, 77) than the "'real'…action actor' (Funnell 2013, 119). The video

narrative proves the capacity of Yen's character to engender a comparative discourse with other fictional constructions, enlivening the Star Wars mythos in the convergence of cinematic and digital cultures.

[2.8] Moreover, the video producer, consciously or not, omits the proximity between Churrit and the Japanese blind swordsman character, Zatoichi. Zatoichi was a

progenitor text of the martial arts films, or wu xia pian, in the 1960s and 1970s in Hong Kong cinema, which drew overt references to the Japanese samurai film (Marchetti

2014, 2). Zatoichi Meets The One-Armed Swordsman (1971), a Shaw Brothers

swordplay film, is one example. The absence of consideration of the character-based parallel, which is in fact willingly recalled by cinephiles and knowledgeable viewers, downplays the orientation of Yen's persona in the martial arts cinematic tradition. In addition, the video displays a portrait of a Miraluka female that likely makes Yen's screen masculinity wooly and fluid. Underlining the separation of the image and the body (Flanagan 1999, 82), the video narrative shapes the disembodiment of the hero, contrasting to his well-known presence grounded in his physical prowess and martial authenticity.

[2.9] Nonetheless, the obscurity of Yen's Chinese image can still motivate fan

engagement. The clip attracts an inventory of comments evaluating Yen's former

characters and expectations of his new role in Rogue One from individual users. The video title—"Donnie Yen in Rogue One | Generation Tech"—includes the name of the

uploader, Generation Tech, signifying "the place to be for video content covering the latest and greatest technologies," as indicated in the Facebook Page hyperlinked with the YouTube entry (Generation Tech, @generationtechofficial). Alongside the 67,471

views, the entry has 88 comments and one of the most recurring themes points to the

"mashup" part, as expressed by phrases such as "looked…cool," "great work," and

"great video." Equally noticeable, the other category of comments refers to the

anticipation of Yen's Rogue One personification. For example, in January 2017, a user named Joy Comilang writes, "I hope he is a Jedi…a vanished one…" User Thomas

Muller 7-1 writes, "imagine donnie yen wielding a lightsaber." Some feedback,

furthermore, recognizes that Yen's status derives from his martial artistry and his acting skill. For instance, in January 2016 right after the posting of the video, an array of comments demonstrates informed fan interactions:

[2.10]

Mima kake: It would be a waste if they did not use Donnie Yen's

martial arts skills. Or it is a challenge for him to do some different acting.

We will see in about a year. ;).

Generation Tech (in January 2016): Yea can't wait, it's about time Donnie

Yen becomes more mainstream outside of the Asian market

PTigris7 (in January 2017): +Mima Kake If you have seen bodyguards and

Assasins, Ip Man 3 or…perhaps All Well Ends well 2012, you will see that

Donnie's acting is really superb, outside of his martial arts skill.

Mima kake (in January 2017): Cool, I shall check them out. Thanks.

Kaptionist (in January 2017): +Mima Kake I did hear that Ip Man 3 was

his last movie that displays any sort of kung fu…

Mima kake (in January 2017): Well, I definitely will check some more

movies with him before I see Rogue one. ;)

[2.11] The interplay among users, elicited over time, echoes the affective responses invoked by the desire of film moments in the era prior to the popularization of digital media. It arouses the cinephilic pleasure that Paul Willimen (1994) has conceptualized in terms of "the moment of revelation," or "a moment of excess" (1994, 236–37). The moment either operates out of a rigid framework or allows viewers to realize the

"illusion" that "what is being seen is in excess of what is being shown" (237). Akin to the discourse of the cinephile, this amateur video encapsulates the momentary

encounter between web users and Yen's films. The producer "selects a fragment" (237), reworking it in resourceful ways like "an aspect of cinema that is not strictly

programmable in terms of aesthetic strategies" (237). Though the clip may not be

exactly "revelatory" in Willimen's tropes, it can reduce the viewing pleasure in

individual cinephiles and when shared among different cinephiles. It recalls personal and collective memories about a range of Yen's previous characters in martial arts films

such as Ip Man 3 (2015) and Bodyguards and Assassins (2009), as well as in comedies like All's Well, Ends Well (2012). It also acknowledges the users as productive viewing subjects, facilitating copious social encounters, exchanges, and identification. What is worth noting here is that the video maker, moreover, participates in the commentary-conversation. As the uploader and the commenter, Generation Tech assumes the double roles of generating the intertextual star image, complicating the relationship between producers and consumers and between uploaders and viewers in the digital participatory culture.

[2.12] Moreover, the video narrative given by a host functions an "extended brand narrative" (Bowrey 2013, 88), a characteristic of the phenomenon of media

amateurization, shaping the viewers' understanding of Donnie Yen. As Kathy Bowrey

points out, the proliferating amateur media allows a "greater personal identification with brands" (89) and this clip reveals the predilection of self-branding and amateur agency through the presence of a host. As the approximately three-minute clip indicates, what follows the Hero's battle scene is an articulate, elucidatory speech of the screen persona of Yen, instead of Jet Li, addressing the cast in Rogue One. Similar to a video essay, the exposition is given by a presenter named Allen Xie who engineers his online presence in a number of amateur-based platforms such as YouTube and Facebook via means like establishing his own pages. Positioning himself as more an aficionado than an industrial practitioner, Xie describes his fondness for traveling and making videos as he

introduces himself on Facebook. Framed in a medium shot in this video, the presenter demonstrates his digital-cultural capital by speaking in fluent English addressing the Anglophone online community. He assumes the introductory and expounding positions, eloquently guiding the audience to consider and observe the Chinese Star Wars warrior.

Although it is uncertain if the host, Xie, or the uploader, Generation Tech, is the author of the video, both of them reside in a parallel position, embodying a mode of authority marked by the privilege of enunciation and commentary. In this fashion, the video

maker or uploader (invisible) and the presenter (visible) show mastery over and

judgment of Yen's personalities traversed in Hero and Rogue One, providing a star narrative that operates adjacent to, if not out of, the industrial cinematic undertaking.

Exclusive: Star Wars Rogue One - Donnie Yen VS 10 Stormtroopers

Video 2. A martial arts fighter or a family man? "Exclusive: Star Wars Rogue One—

Donnie Yen VS 10 Stormtroopers."

[2.13] Similar to the first video, the second one takes advantage of Donnie Yen's recognized martial arts persona, although it lessens the impact by combining it with the star's personal life. Uploaded on YouTube on November 30, 2016, prior to the theatrical release of Rogue One, the entry, done in the form of celebrity interview, includes Yen's own accounts of the film shooting and his character. The uploader is named Geek

Culture, which is an online network of devotees of popular media and culture such as video games, sci-fi, toys, and gadgets related to fandoms as famous as Transformers, Star Wars, and Star Trek. As Geek Culture's official website indicates, it hired the production team of tech360.tv, a Singapore-based online tech TV channel associated with YouTube, to produce this clip. Intertextuality is immediately revealed via the title of the clip—"Exclusive: Star Wars Rogue One—Donnie Yen VS 10 Stormtroopers"

—foregrounding the prospective overlaps between Rogue One and Ip Man, two movies from entirely distinct film industries and genres. The title hints at one of the most memorable scenes in Ip Man, the fight between the Wing Chun master and ten karatekas, referring to Japanese-Chinese antagonism. Ip Man seeks revenge for the

death of a fellow Foshan master by engaging the karatekas in a bout. Situated in war-torn China, the Ip Man personality serves as a site of confrontation and resistance, embodying the gallantry and justice demanded under the threat of Japanese invasion.

Underscoring the dynamism of the hero's body, the director, Wilson Yip, adopted quick editing and moving frames to maximize the action's vividness. By including this

specific scene, the video reminds the viewer of the similarities between the Jedi knight and the Wing Chun master in terms of physical potency and fighting spectacle.

[2.14] Yen's martial arts appeal becomes lessened as it is juxtaposed with the actor's domestic life. Like tabloid media that are more interested in celebrities' offscreen lives, the video includes a mix of publicly available materials that blurs the distinction

between private self and public existence. Personae as diverging as a raging nationalist fighter and a tender family man appear in one single text. Consider Yen's account, in the interview, of his decision to act in Rogue One, which is dominated by the will of his children. Yen confesses, "That time I didn't really want to leave my home and my

children have a lot to do with it because I asked them: 'would you like to see your father in Star Wars.' And of course the answer was 'Yes!'" The reason Yen originally planned to refuse the invitation to shoot Rogue One sounds unusual for a professional actor. It comes from Yen's narration of the family celebration of Halloween in 2016, which also reinforces his image as a responsive spouse and parent, elaborating the details such as how he dressed his son as Chirrut Îmwe and his daughter a Stormtrooper, as his wife suggested. Regarded as part of the real life trivia, these behind-the-scenes stories hint at an incongruence with Yen's statement about feeling proud of a chance to play the Jedi role in a Star Wars story at the beginning of the video. As Yen has once said in another interview, "Of course I'm feeling a sense of achievement…For a Hong Kong actor, and a Chinese actor, to be able to play such a significant role that is consistent with the spirit of the series—with the Force—it's a very precious opportunity" (Lee 2016). By

combining the movie footage from Rogue One with the personal stories, the video producer frames the star persona as a mediated package of the actor's onscreen and offscreen lives, representing the ambivalence of being both home-oriented and career-oriented.

[2.15] The incongruent yet desirable persona supposedly affects Yen's reputation

established on movie screens, but that is not necessarily the case, as corroborated by the user commentary. A majority of comments render positively the parallel between the Ip Man and Rogue One characters. For example, in December 2017, a user named Ee Kwang posted a comment.

[2.16] Ip Man vs 10 Japanese karate fighters (Empire of Japan)

Chirrut Imwe vs 10 Stormtroopers (Galactic Empire)

Donnie Yen must have really hate Empire a lot.

[2.17] This user juxtaposes the two films, probing how Yen fights in the different

"Empires." Around the similar time, the comment of a user named wildfireplane reads,

"All hail Jedi Master Ip man!" A similar opinion provided by user BigboiJon reads,

"Ten storm troopers just like 10 black belts in ip man." Since the video responses still show Yen's devotees overwhelmingly responding to the performer's screen appeal,

acknowledgement of the intertextual personification is not truncated by the

inconsistency between Yen's fighter persona and family man image.

[2.18] Whereas audiences hail Yen's martial prowess on screen, they also show

curiosity about his extra-filmic appeal. Some users give feedback on the offscreen existence, which is unrelated to the performer's screen appeal. For instance, in February 2017, user jdsi 232 responds to Yen's note about his daughter's costume, saying "my daughter was a stormtrooper. LOL. I would dress up as a stormtrooper too." Yen's

English-speaking ability also draws the attention of certain audiences. User PoLo writes in February 2017, "Donnie yen English's on point," followed by an icon of hand making an "OK" sign. Similarly, user kemparo posted a comment around the same time, "Who

is his English coach? his english and accent is very good. sound like he's been living in america since young. Jackie chan and jet li need to get in touch with his english coach."

This remark attracts another user KL Chan to reply, "Donnie Yen moved to the US at 11." The video does not evoke any single category of fans' reimagination of the star.

Instead, it allows a range of public identification wtih Yen's personae lying within and outside the diegetic world.

[2.19] The visibility of Yen's family life in this video entry legitimizes the use of offscreen existence in the construction of a Chinese public personality. Yen has been high-profile for his roles as an adoring husband and responsible father, as gossip columns and social media utterances illustrate. He does not mind exposing his affection for his wife, frequently posting photographs of birthday dinners, vacations, and

Valentine's celebrations on Weibo. Entertainment reporters are also enthusiastic to invite Yen to provide tips for a happy marriage, as if the hero is exemplary of the key to a successful family. The highlight of his domestic existence makes Yen seem more akin to Hollywood actors such as Brat Pitt (White 2014, 95), Johnny Depp (Pomerance

2005, 9), and Tom Cruise (O'Donnell 2015, 32) than to his Chinese counterparts like Jet Li. As a renowned martial arts actor, Li's stardom is so dominated by his screen persona that Leon Hunt once argued that Li does not exist outside his screen roles (2003, 141).

The actor's private life appears to be inaccessible, or, "even a little mysterious" (Yu 2012, 174) for his viewers. Sabrina Yu (2012) points out that there has been news about Li's marriage to the former beauty pageant champion, Nina Li, and even Li himself has exposed some anecdotes on his website by depicting himself as a traditional, reliable

"family man" (175). The media exposure of his private presence is, however, limited.

Yen strategizes his persona management, otherwise, by providing explicit expressions of adoration and such expressiveness progressively generates intimate discussion about his marriage from the public, cementing his image as a trustworthy, affectionate sexual partner. In this light, the video producer extends the strategy by reasserting that the ostensibly contrasting onscreen and offscreen lives can feasibly and intimately work in an amateur-generated text. As Richard Dyer (1979) suggests, tensions and

contradictions between screen performance and private life always exist. Judith Mayne, likewise, postulates that the precise personae of stars emerge with "constant

reinvention, the dissolution of contraries, the embrace of wildly opposing terms" (1993, 138). This entry recodifies Yen's official personality by pairing Yen's actorly presence with his domestic presence, testifying to how the dual presences can function to support and sustain the publicity. As a consequence, the instance complicates the spectacle of the Chinese star presence, which was once pregnant with macho fortitude and

hyperkinetic vigor, yet can actually be displayed with intense emotionality and pathos of vulnerability.

3. Conclusion, limitations, and further research

[3.1] This essay has identified a cutting-edge occurrence in the participatory new media circuitry electrified by the proliferation of amateur media by seeking the

intersection between fanfare and the capitalistic logic epitomized by Hollywood.

Through the example of Donnie Yen and his Rogue One personification, this essay has shown how the cocreative persona produced by web-based small-to-medium enterprises extends from, overlays with, or digresses from the traditional media content. The videos reposition Yen's image in a web of intertextuality between the sci-fi and martial arts genres as well as onscreen and offscreen personae, giving rise to a hybridized presence.

In the case of video 1, the video maker shapes Yen's appeal as a transcultural and transgeneric mélange. He or she pastes the iconic lightsabers in the Star Wars series into a fight scene in Hero, parodying Yen's martial arts presence and eventually obscuring his Chinese image. Video 2 desubstantiates Yen's martial arts appeal with the tabloid-like focus on his private existence. The interview chronicles a number of Yen's family anecdotes regarding his participation in Rogue One, trivializing his screen personae. In both cases, the extra-institutional texts venture on the recognized martial arts persona of Yen but concomitantly, challenge and unsettle it. The ambivalent image, nonetheless, readily evokes prevalent fan engagement and public responses that may seem unrelated or contrasting to his screen personalities. Suffice it to say, Yen's appeal in amateur-driven videos is a telling example of how the mutating Chinese star phenomenon

resides in the global digital milieu, in which various interests, initiatives, and modes of creativity converge and interact.

[3.2] While this essay, due to the limited scope, analyzes one specific vocal segment of the Star Wars fanbase, some recent calls revealing the power of fans to build as much as to devastate certain types of stardom are worth extra critical effort. Disney's purchase of Lucasfilms in 2012 (Karntz et al. 2012) brought forth the concern of fan loyalty (Norman 2012). Furthermore, in the wake of the latest installments like Star Wars: The Last Jedi (2017) and Solo: A Star Wars Story (2018), the changing Star Wars fandom becomes manifest while the legacy of the popular series seems to perpetuate. Consider the months-long online harassment of Kelly Marie Tran for her character Rose in Star Wars: The Last Jedi, which a Forbes article describes as one of the most controversial films in years (Chamary 2018). The incident foregrounds issues of performance, look, and Asian ethnicity (Chuba 2018). Equally intriguing is the love-and-hate fan responses toward Daisy Ridley's vocal opinions about gun violence in social media that reportedly caused her to quit Instagram (Bryant 2016). The cluster of controversies inspires a comparative analysis of the fan-led construction of a persona (Yen-Churrit) and the destruction of another (either Kelly-Rose or Ridley-Rey), orchestrating a prospective addition to the accounts pertinent to gender, ethnicity, and technology. All these observations illuminate the growing and changing Star Wars fandom, which can be

considered avenues of further research.

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SYMPOSIUM

Owning the servers: A design fiction

exploring the transformation of fandom

into "our own"

Casey Fiesler

University of Colorado, Boulder, Colorado, United

States

[0.1]

Abstract—This essay serves as a speculative design fiction that

traces the history of fan creation platforms from the past to the present

and finally to a possible future. Using the history and success of the

Archive of Our Own (https://archiveofourown.org/) as a focal point, I

consider the importance of owning the servers as a way for fan

communities to create and preserve culture and reassert values.

Examining one possible legal and technological future with an air of

optimism allows us to consider what fannish communities can do now to

maintain a path of our own.

[0.2]

Keywords—AO3; Archive of Our Own; Fair use; Fan history;

Fan works; Ownership; Platform

Fiesler, Casey. 2018. "Owning the Servers: A Design Fiction Exploring the

Transformation of Fandom into 'Our Own.'" In "The Future of Fandom," special 10th

anniversary issue, Transformative Works and Cultures, no. 28. http://dx.doi.org/10.3983

/twc.2018.1453.

1. Introduction

[1.1] What if? This simple question is at the heart of imagining possible futures.

Media fandom was born out of speculative fiction, like the "what ifs" of Star Trek, but fan fiction itself is also all about speculation. In drawing this parallel, Francesca Coppa

notes that fan fiction often speculates about character over world (Coppa 2017). Rather than asking "what if the world were different?" fans ask "what if the character were different?"

[1.2] Design fiction, by contrast, speculates about technology. It is a conflation of design, science fact, and science fiction that allows us to consider possible futures (Sterling 2005). What if we weren't constrained by current technology or current

societal structures? Technologists use design fiction to think through consequences and implementation, and even as a way to think through the ethics and impact of radical technological intervention (Lindley 2015). This kind of speculation allows us to

imagine both the aspirational and the cautionary (Russell and Yarosh 2018).

[1.3] In the essay that follows, I consider the aspirational and go about this

backwards—describing our current trajectory as a way of imagining a possible future and what might get us there. Following descriptions of fandom's past and present,

section 4 is entirely speculation, driven by this question: How has fandom's relationship with technology, with policy, and with each other gotten us to where we are now, and what could the future hold?

2. Past

[2.1] In the earliest days of fandom, we owned the servers. Of course, the "servers"

then were just smiles and words, pen and paper, staples and stamps. We were intimate and secretive—and also small. Fan works passed hand to hand, and there were no

unintended audiences, no critical outside eyes. We controlled channels of distribution; we controlled which ears heard our stories. We wrote for an "insider audience" (Bacon-Smith 1992) with an entirely different value and culture than the traditional writing market; it was our own thing.

[2.2] It is hard to say when the first fan work may have appeared on a server outside our control. The early days of the internet brought us Usenet and email-based mailing lists as popular modes of communication and dissemination. The internet altered the very substance of fandom; fan artifacts were no longer physical, and geographical

boundaries no longer existed (Busse and Hellekson 2006). Without these barriers,

participation in fan creation communities grew by leaps and bounds. It also meant that posting a story online required relinquishing some control; you weren't giving it to a person at a fan convention, you were giving it to the world at large, to anyone who could connect to a Usenet server. And suddenly, for the first time, the platform

mattered.

[2.3] The problem with platforms is that they have their own agenda. When deciding on policies, for example, a platform (or, rather, its stakeholders) has its own concerns

—about leeway, liability, profit, and public perception (Gillespie 2010)—and these concerns are probably not the same as those of its users. But once fan creators moved past staples and stamps, platforms were a necessity. We co-opt technologies, bending

them to fannish uses (Busse and Hellekson 2006), moving across platforms the same way we move across texts. And though this journey can fragment us, there is still an underlying community, regardless of the technology that helps bring it together.

[2.4] Arguably, a creative work only becomes a fan work when it is "produced within and for a community of fans" (Coppa 2017). Fan fiction is what it is because of its community. Furthermore, this community has been around for a long time—long

enough that its values and norms (around, for example, inclusivity and control) are far more entrenched than those that could be reflected in any single platform (Fiesler, Morrison, and Bruckman 2016). And when our values are at odds with those of our co-opted platforms, we feel unwelcome there.

[2.5] Therefore, as fandom moved across these spaces, when our content was

removed without warning (Brennan 2014) or our labor commercially exploited

(Hellekson 2009) or our creativity stifled (Fiesler 2017), the inevitable question was: Would our community values shift to meet those of these pre-fabricated houses, or

would we build our own home?

3. Present

[3.1] Value clashes and exploitations seeded a rallying cry that brought much of

fandom together in a common goal: "Owning the servers!" (Lothian 2012). This thirst for independence drove an initiative for fans to create a new platform where we would not only own the servers, but have control over the values that design and policy

reflected—an archive of our own.

[3.2] Within the ten years after its launch in 2008, Archive of Our Own (AO3) grew to over a million users and even more millions of fan works. Size and growth was one metric of success, but the other was the deft way that the community's existing values were baked into the design of the site; AO3 is a platform that has the same agenda as its users, because unlike most platforms, those users are the ones who built it (Fiesler, Morrison, and Bruckman 2016).

[3.3] If I had written an essay in 2006 about "the future of fandom," I might have imagined a possible future that looked very much like AO3—except I would have

considered it far out of reach. The idea that a community of people could come together to create among themselves both the infrastructure and the code for an entirely new platform is remarkable—but it is even more remarkable that this was a community of mostly women, who are traditionally underrepresented in computer science and even

more so in open-source development (Nafus 2012). Another success of AO3 is that they didn't just build a platform; they also built a batch of fan-coders because, as the founders realized at the time: "we're going to have to grow our own" (Fiesler et al.

2017).

[3.4] Fast-forward ten years, and we still owned the servers. Fan communities also

still cut across many different platforms, both for interaction and for archiving, but there also seemed to be a shift in attitudes. Perhaps bolstered by a growing willingness to identify as a fan, by more mainstream acceptance of fandom and even fan creation, there seemed to be more of a sense of we belong here, even on co-opted platforms. It appeared to not just be about the platform we built, but that sense of shared purpose and identity that helped us come into our own.

4. Future

[4.1] The transformative nature of fan works has long been haunted by the specter of copyright law (Stanfill 2015). Protections such as fair use in the United States, that provide exceptions for remixes, parodies, and other types of transformative works, were well argued and even assumed, but never ironclad. However, in the decades that

followed the creation of AO3, as technology evolved and all manner of read-write

culture (Lessig 2008) became the rule rather than the exception, even the law eventually began to keep pace. More importantly, so did industry norms.

[4.2] A landmark copyright case hit the US Supreme Court in 2012, codifying the

concept of "market good" as part of a fair use analysis—finding that not only might certain type of reuse not harm the market of the original, but that the ways in which they could actually improve or invigorate a market should be taken into consideration.

In cases that followed, this concept, alongside transformativeness and

noncommerciality, strongly suggested if not solidified the legality of transformative works through a string of relevant cases. Though to this day fan works have never been directly challenged, domain-adjacent situations of content reuse have allowed the legal advocates of fan creation, who have had an increasingly loud voice in policymaking (Tushnet 2014), to craft increasingly unambiguous arguments, should the time come.

[4.3] After all, has Sherlock Holmes been harmed, or made less valuable, by the

many interpretations of him over the years—or have those interpretations contributed even more to his success (Coppa 2017)? As media consumption metrics have improved

(despite the obvious privacy threat these metrics brought with them), the positive connection between fandom and the economics of the media industry became an

empirical truth.

[4.4] Though a friendlier legal and cultural regime has improved the standing of fan works generally, it is the ongoing sense of shared ownership that has arguably most significantly contributed to the growth and stability of fan creation communities. All of the traditional media of fan works—fan fiction, fan art, fan vids—are as active as ever, despite the constant introduction of new media forms.

[4.5] Keeping up with new media forms has also proven an unsurprising challenge,

given that "owning the servers" requires resource intensiveness and expertise. The small, shifting group of dedicated volunteers that maintain and improve AO3 have

faced challenges with workload and expertise bottlenecks (Fiesler et al. 2017).

However, the concept of training fans to be developers rather than turning to outsiders helps maintain our sense of ownership.

[4.6] Fan creation communities have long been recognized as important spaces for

informal learning—from literacy skills through fan fiction critique (Black 2009) to technical skills through video editing or website coding (Fiesler et al. 2017). More organized efforts of fan coders and fan educators over many years have resulted in a steady pipeline of fans learning new computational skills. The goal wasn't merely more developers for AO3, but also more developers who could do whatever they wanted,

some of whom would eventually go on to build more platforms.

[4.7] Our first significant test followed the explosion of popularity for augmented reality (AR) platforms, including the integration of AR into everyday media. As fans dipped their toes into creating AR fan works—Chewbacca sitting in the driver's seat next to you in your car, tours of filming locations peppered with digital recreations of scenes—there was some resistance. Because media properties were enamored with

creating their own platforms, how we could use them was sewn up in restrictive platform policies. This wasn't the first time that platforms had placed restrictions on fan creativity (e.g., Marvel's banning creative content on both "alternative lifestyles" and

"killer bees" (Fiesler 2017)), but by then we knew what to do: we had to own even more of the servers.

[4.8] Thanks to the growing number of both technologists and philanthropists that consider fandom their home, we have platforms for not only traditional media and AR, but also gaming, roleplaying, and there are even steps towards immersive virtual reality.

There are challenges, of course, including maintaining the gift culture of fandom

(Hellekson 2009) in the face of economic realities, but we've had decades to entrench this value system.

[4.9] Who can say where technological or cultural evolution will bring fan creation communities next? But it does seem clear that, in all the best ways, we'll continue to do it on our own.

5. Conclusion

[5.1] In this essay, I considered the aspirational rather than the cautionary, in envisioning a possible future for fandom—but rooted in the journey that we have

already taken. What I hope this thought exercise emphasizes is that fandom is not

helpless to external forces—to platforms, industries, or even policies. Though of course the realization of the optimistic legal and cultural changes I described here would make our work much easier, part of the story as well is that we can help drive them. The success of AO3 already suggests that we can do the impossible. And though we might only have influence and not control over the law or the media industry, there are some things that we can think about, like organizing around technical education for interested fans.

[5.2] As Henry Jenkins said many years ago, "Fan fiction is a way of the culture repairing the damage done in a system where contemporary myths are owned by

corporations instead of owned by the folk" (Harmon 1997). We may not own the myths, but owning the servers is also a form of damage repair, where we've reasserted the values of our community. The future of fandom is particularly bright because of how far we've come, the path we've taken to get here, and the amazing things we've built along the way.

6. References

Bacon-Smith, Camille. 1992. Enterprising Women: Television Fandom and the Creation of Popular Myth. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press.

Black, Rebecca W. 2009. "English-Language Learners, Fan Communities, and 21st-

Century Skills." Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy 52 (8): 688–97.

https://doi.org/10.1598/JAAL.52.8.4.

Brennan, Joseph. 2014. "'Fandom Is Full of Pearl Clutching Old Ladies': Nonnies in the Online Slash Closet." International Journal of Cultural Studies 17 (4): 363–80.

https://doi.org/10.1177/1367877913496200.

Busse, Kristina, and Karen Hellekson. 2006. "Introduction: Work in Progress." In Fan Fiction and Fan Communities in the Age of the Internet, edited by Kristina Busse and Karen Hellekson, 5–15. Jefferson, NC: McFarland.

Coppa, Francesca. 2017. The Fanfiction Reader: Folk Tales for the Digital Age. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press.

Fiesler, Casey. 2017. "Bring on the Queer Killer Bees: How Marvel Completely Misses the Value of Fanfiction." Medium, December 29, 2017. https://medium.com/@cfiesler

/bring-on-the-queer-killer-bees-how-marvel-completely-misses-the-value-of-fanfiction-287ac31dce52

Fiesler, Casey, Shannon Morrison, and Amy S. Bruckman. 2016. "An Archive of Their

Own: A Case Study of Feminist HCI and Values in Design." Proceedings of the ACM

Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI) 2574–85.

Fiesler, Casey et al. 2017. "Growing Their Own: Legitimate Peripheral Participation for Computational Learning in an Online Fandom Community." Proceedings of the ACM

Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing (CSCW)

1375–86.

Gillespie, Tarleton. 2010. "The Politics of 'Platforms.'" New Media and Society 12 (3): 347–64. https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444809342738.

Harmon, Amy. 1997. "In TV's Dull Summer Days, Plots Take Wing on the Net." New

York Times, August 18, 1997. http://www.nytimes.com/1997/08/18/business/in-tv-s-dull-summer-days-plots-take-wing-on-the-net.html

Hellekson, Karen. 2009. "A Fannish Field of Value: Online Fan Gift Culture." Cinema Journal 48 (4): 113–18. https://doi.org/10.1353/cj.0.0140.

Lessig, Lawrence. 2008. Remix: Making Art and Commerce Thrive in the Hybrid Economy. New York: Penguin Group.

Lindley, Joseph. 2015. "Operationalising Design Fiction for Ethical Computing." ACM

SIGCAS Computers and Society 45 (3): 79–83. https://doi.org/10.1145

/2874239.2874251.

Lothian, Alexis. 2012. "Archival Anarchies: Online Fandom, Subcultural Conservation, and the Transformative Work of Digital Ephemera." International Journal of Cultural Studies 16 (6): 541–56. https://doi.org/10.1177/1367877912459132.

Nafus, Dawn. 2012. "'Patches Don't Have Gender': What Is Not Open in Open Source

Software." New Media and Society 14 (4): 669–83. https://doi.org/10.1177

/1461444811422887.

Russell, Dan and Svetlana Yarosh. 2018. "Can We Look to Science Fiction for

Innovation in HCI?" Interactions 25 (2): 36–40. https://doi.org/10.1145/3178552.

Stanfill, M. 2015. Spinning Yarn with Borrowed Cotton: Lessons for Fandom from

Sampling. Cinema Journal 54 (3): 131–37. https://doi.org/10.1353/cj.2015.0021.

Sterling, Bruce. 2005. Shaping Things. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Tushnet, Rebecca. 2014. "'I'm a Lawyer, Not an Ethnographer, Jim': Textual Poachers and Fair Use." Journal of Fandom Studies 2 (1): 21–30. https://doi.org/10.1386

/jfs.2.1.21_1.

SYMPOSIUM

The next wave in participatory culture:

Mixing human and nonhuman entities in

creative practices and fandom

Nicol e Lamerichs

Creative Business, HU University of Applied Sciences,

Utrecht, The Netherlands

[0.1]

Abstract—Disruptive technologies such as artificial intelligence,

robotics, and big data will radically change the interactions and media

that fans rely on in their communities. The membership of fandom will

also change by the participation of nonhuman entities such as chatbots.

New interfaces and technologies will soon create a more data-driven

fandom, which I predict will lead to participatory culture being shared

with nonhuman entities and to a celebration of creative products created

by nonhuman entities.

[0.2]

Keywords—Artificial intelligence; Characters; Chatbots; Future

thinking; Holograms

Lamerichs, Nicolle. 2018. "The Next Wave in Participatory Culture: Mixing Human

and Nonhuman Entities in Creative Practices and Fandom." In "The Future of Fandom,"

special 10th anniversary issue, Transformative Works and Cultures, no. 28.

http://dx.doi.org/10.3983/twc.2018.1501.

1. Introduction: A future scenario of Pleakwood Pines

[1.1] Imagine that fandom in the future is not a space where we celebrate stories after we consume them. Rather, it is a prefandom. Through careful data analysis, we already know that we will like a certain show, because it fits our profile. Both the show's creators and its potential fans know that we will instantly love Pleakwood Pines

because it was a perfect match with our media consumption pattern.

[1.2]

Pleakwood Pines starts not as a story but as an experience. This next generation of Twin Peaks (1990–91, 2017–) follows the citizens of a remote town, but it is more than a text. It is a tailor-made, highly personalized, and never-ending live stream.

Endowed with artificial intelligence (AI), the characters of the show appear in our living room as holograms. The cast is open to our input. In fact, we share long conversations.

The characters' AI is not completely perfect, but they learn and develop, just like us.

Each of us experiences the text differently. What the characters tell me might not be what they tell you. Based on dialogues with us, they may trust us more or less.

[1.3] My favorite character is Laura, who is vaguely inspired by Laura Palmer, but more mysterious and mature. Laura is a famous character who not only appears in film and television, but also writes stories herself. That's right—she writes her own fiction, set in the universe of Pleakwood Pines, in which she adds to her own history. Remix culture is essential in the Pleakwood Pines franchise. While characters create their own stories, users do too. The characters learn from this, and they adopt fan creations as part of their language and history.

[1.4] The lore of Pleakwood Pines is vast, most of it written by the characters and fans. The designers curate the AIs from time to time, but the characters themselves created the village in which this murder mystery/soap opera is set. The AI-driven

characters share a canon, and certain key events are televised for the world to see.

However, the franchise is highly personalized. When I talk to Laura outside of televised events, I get different conversations than you do. Some of us make a habit of "casting"

(live streaming) these intimate conversations to get more clues about the canon and its murder mystery.

[1.5] We fans call ourselves Pinies, which refers to the titular pines but also to a sense of pining. We long for more content; we obsess over it. This show is our life. We

appreciate the text's fluidity and the fact that we feel that no one truly owns it—it is a database rather than a story. We constantly remix it. We do not feel like followers but like owners of this product. The cast itself is part of our fandom and has befriended us.

Still, some fans do not enjoy remixing and participating this actively in the story. They enter the experience more as spectators, and their favorites and views are monetized.

[1.6] You and I met in this fandom, and we have a deep connection. I tell you what Laura said to me, and you cast your moments with her. We follow the data like

breadcrumbs as we try to unravel this mystery together. Perhaps one day we will solve it.

2. Approach

[2.1] Fandom is changing rapidly. Our age can be characterized as a media-driven

fandom, revolving around copyrighted texts owned by big players in the creative

industries, but this age will be disrupted when the inevitable shift to the user occurs.

These possible futures, as well as the Pleakwood Pines scenario I opened with, are the outcome of forecasting. By watching trends and thinking about the future based on

current trends, it's possible to predict that fans and audiences will be the most important nodes in the business of creating content. They will be the investors, curators, and creators of stories, but also of large data sets. This new age of data-driven fandom will be fueled by algorithms and self-learning machines that expand our knowledge,

creativity, and taste.

[2.2] Futurists such as Alvin Toffler (1970, 1980), who predicted the global village and trends related to the information age, and Wired author Kevin Kelly (n.d.; 2016), who examines current trends and what drives them in order to create plausible scenarios about the future, provide a model for thinking about the future that business and

academia are now increasingly turning to. The Institute for the Future

(http://www.iftf.org/home/) publishes studies that combine trend watching and

forecasting for health care, education, and employment; staff member and game

designer Jane McGonigal (2017) makes the point that by imagining the future, we can make it happen.

[2.3] Forecasting helps us see possible futures and, more importantly, evaluate them and take action. The future cone model may be used to portray alternative futures

(Hancock and Bezold 1994) (figure 1). The cone is based on a taxonomy of futures by Henchey (1978) that outlines four categories of futures that ought to be kept in mind when future casting: possible, plausible, probable, and preferable. By envisioning if something is likely to happen and if we want it to happen, we can think critically about the future.

Figure 1. Future cone by Joseph Voros (https://thevoroscope.com/2017/02/24/the-

futures-cone-use-and-history/). Used with permission.

[2.4] This model makes it possible to analyze current trends in predictions about the future, and by using it, I predict two essential aspects of fandom of the future, each of which is signposted in the Pleakwood Pines scenario: we will share participatory culture with nonhuman entities; we will celebrate creative products created by

nonhuman entities.

3. Sharing with nonhuman entities and tools

[3.1] Although of course fandom has a long history, new interactive tools made it easier to form digital communities around these subcultures. Social media made the audience an active participant in media reception and creation rather than a passive consumer. This digital fandom is shaped by online communities and social media

(Booth 2010). Participation is the norm today. Fans and users have combined

production and consumption practices, celebrated as "prosumers" (Toffler 1980).

Indeed, fandom is a pivotal example of a participatory culture with "relatively low barriers to artistic expression and civic engagement" (Jenkins 2009, 5). Key values in such a culture are providing informal mentorship, creating and sharing content, and feeling connected.

[3.2] A participatory culture like fandom is social and creative. Thanks to new

technologies, a new form of participation will emerge that involves nonhumans as

important actors—a shift that has already begun. Entertainer Hatsune Miku, a fan-

driven hologram and interface, deploys character, interface, and technology. All the music she sings is fan created, crowd sourced, and remixed (Le 2014). Performances such as operas are curated by a wide range of creators (video 1). As the world's first virtual idol, Hatsune Miku's success depends on openness, a revised idea of ownership, and co-creation. These elements pave the way for an open, crowd-sourced,

collaborative future.

The End - Vocaloid Opera [OPENING] [Hatsune Miku]

Video 1. Opening of Vocaloid opera "The End" in Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris (2013).

[3.3] Humans are growing increasingly connected to nonhuman devices: AIs,

chatbots, and personal assistants such as Siri or Alexa provide new interfaces, with the latter relying on voice rather than text. Amazon's Alexa, inspired by Star Trek's

computer (Green 2017) and first used in the smart speakers Echo and Echo Dot, plays your favorite music, audiobooks, or podcasts; forecasts the weather; and syncs with our other devices. Alexa assists users in their daily habits. To activate Alexa, we simply speak her name, thus addressing her personally—and blurring the line between human and nonhuman. Relatedly, in Japan, tech company Vinclu has developed Azuma Hikari, a small hologram in Gatebox, a smart device that also functions as a personal assistant.

The device comprises a clear projection tube that shows the computer-animated AI

character. Vinclu is planning multiple avatars and personalities for the Gatebox, which is a portal to these other dimensions (Gallagher 2016). As Alexa and Azuma Hikari

indicate, our spaces are no longer run exclusively by humans anymore, and this trend will only escalate. Technology allows the characters we know and love to become

increasingly real—first a voice through a speaker, then a computer-animated image—

and soon they will communicate with us in fan spaces.

[3.4] From personal assistants, it is only a small step to affective relationships.

Azuma Hikari is also presented as a possible object of love: users can marry her by submitting a registration form on the official website, a union categorized as a

tokoukyoku marriage. The mobile dating game Love and Producer (Elex, 2017), which provides virtual companions, is a big hit in China: "Since its launch in December 2017, the game has been downloaded 7 million times, with females representing 90 percent of the downloads" (Feng 2018). Players date fictional boyfriends in an ongoing story.

Players can have a happy, romantic ending with their character of choice; they can experience a simulation of love. An ongoing trend in the future will be fandoms

surrounding these heavily personified interfaces. The fandom and the user base cannot be separated from the designers and the character itself, who speaks to its users and can even officially become their partner. Fandom will change when characters become so real that we can marry them, admire them as holograms, and make them our waifu (Bayle 2017). In the imagined future—in our fandom of Pleakwood Pines—we can have romantic relationships with characters as well, and they will respond accordingly.

They are still simulations, but we care about them deeply and on a personal level. We want to believe that their love is real.

[3.5] Another way in which we can already become more intimately connected to

characters is through chatbots. This technology is already used for marketing and media purposes to automate customer services. Some companies have already realized that

there is more potential here. What if fictional characters could talk to us? Marvel experimented with this by creating Spider-Man and Star Lord chatbots. Although

narrow in their responses, they pave the way for the future. To try them, go to "m.me"

to address Spider-Man on Facebook Messenger, or send a Twitter direct message to

@Marvel or @Spiderman. Recently a team of researchers from the University of Leeds created a system capable of learning to generate talking avatars of characters appearing in TV shows, which could make these fictional characters "virtually immortal"

(Charles, Magee, and Hogg 2016). Their work on a chatbot based on Joey from Friends (NBC, 1994–2004) was especially well received. Microsoft Research also launched a

self-learning Twitter bot, Tay, in 2016 (@TayandYou), although it became controversial because by analyzing Twitter messages, the bot learned to behave like a troll, posting

rude messages. This was partly because trolls had attacked the bot and thereby trained it to behave like this.

[3.6] These bots are just the beginning of an increasingly complex participatory

culture. Subcultures will eventually be filled with different interactions with and by technologies. This shift is hugely important—and happening right now. Participatory culture started from the bottom up, with producers separated from consumers, and

relied on peer-to-peer relationships, but based on current technologies and how

companies continue to expand into participatory virtual ventures, this will change. Sock puppets, trolls, and algorithms will shape our fandoms—indeed, they have already

begun to do so. Events like the Trump and Clinton US presidential campaigns in 2016

made us aware of how easy it is to spread fake news and persuasive messages based on emotion instead of facts. Sock puppets' fake accounts allow them to post strategically, thereby involving others in their cause (Lamerichs et al., forthcoming). Bots and

algorithms can be used to spread (mis)information even faster and further because they can be trained to automate this process. Microsoft's Tay showed us how easily trolls can manipulate a bot to send out hate speech; AIs can and will spread corrupt data because humans teach them to do so. We must develop strategies to cope with this, perhaps by putting systems in place to regulate user behavior, including ethical guidelines and technological gatekeeping.

4. Celebrating new automated forms of creativity

[4.1] AIs, chatbots, and bots today are highly curated and not yet very smart or

creative—but they soon will be. They will get more creative in the future, creating fiction and media that are also likely to gain followers. These bots may earn fandoms of their own. We are seeing a rise of fandoms around nonhuman creativity already. For instance, the deep learning algorithm Aiva became the first recognized nonhuman

composer in 2016, acknowledged by SACEM, an authors' rights society. On YouTube,

Aiva's music is truly celebrated. As YouTube user Ben Powell states in a comment to video 2: "This is terrifying for HUMAN composers…"

Aiva - 1hour music collection

Video 2. "Aiva—1Hour Movie Collection," posted by Aiva (Artificial Intelligence

Virtual Artist) (August 15, 2017).

[4.2] In 2016, IBM's computer system, Watson, used machine learning to analyze a

database of film footage and create a film trailer: "Using machine learning, Watson modeled the scenes visually and emotionally, then analyzed hundreds of other movie trailers for other films in the same genre, in order to learn relevant lessons to create the trailer. Watson didn't have final cut on the trailer, however, and functioned more for organizing scenes and moments that would then be analyzed and polished by a final

editor" (Haine 2016). The result was an AI-created trailer for the film Morgan (2016), a film that fittingly has AI as its main theme.

[4.3] Writing is another area where nonhumans perform remarkably well; some have

already gained fandoms of their own. For example, using a database of Harry Potter books, Botnik Studios (2017) generated a predictive text for a new volume in the series.

It immediately went viral. The short chapter "The Handsome One" is both eerie ("a

great black ceiling, which was full of blood") and absurd ("Ron's Ron shirt was just as bad as Ron himself"). Although the story is not well written, fans appreciate the

awkward language, which lends it an edgy style and out-of-the-box dark humor. No

human could have come up with this. The chapter reads like an extreme piece of fan fiction; already it is a cult favorite in line with other badly written Harry Potter pastiches, such as the infamous fan fiction My Immortal (2006–7). Tumblr celebrated the bot story; fans posted beautiful and witty art under the hashtag #beefwomen on Twitter.

[4.4] The emergence of media created by AI will feed into fandom and change

creative business as we know it. In Pleakwood Pines, for example, the characters add to their own backstory, becoming the coauthors of their history and biography. Soon

creative business and fandom will be among the first social spaces with human and

nonhuman participants. Diversity in fandom will not gesture toward nationality, gender, or age but rather will be related to the differences between humans and nonhumans. As a result of these technological changes, fandom will celebrate not fixed stories but rather characters and technologies created by mass media and human authors. The very technologies that have empowered us will soon start self-creating, thus changing what it means to produce art, stories, and characters.

5. Conclusion

[5.1] Fandom started as a form of appropriation and poaching (Jenkins 1992). Fans took properties of the media industry and remixed them. We are comfortable in our fan spaces; our space is less contested, and we are no longer engaging in copyright wars with Fox or J. K. Rowling (Jenkins 2006). But we need to be wary. Our spaces will

soon be colonized by platforms that pretend to act in our best interest, begging us to buy their goodies and like their content. As fans, we will have to come to terms with the fact that participatory culture will not only comprise like-minded individuals but also humans, nonhumans, businesses, data, and interfaces. Fan practices will change as a result.

[5.2] The Pleakwood Pines scenario highlights what will affect fans when humans and nonhumans co-create large story worlds and exist together in one fandom. These different agents will influence relationships and intimacy in participatory cultures. No machine can mimic the DNA of fandom, which is fueled by genuine affect that

machines and algorithms cannot feel. We may fall in love with fictional characters, but they do not (yet) love us in return.

[5.3] Affect is central in fandom, and as we know, it does not always go both ways.

We may love a text, character, or celebrity, but the relationship is usually one-

directional (or parasocial). The cast of Pleakwood Pines may interact with us, but they will never care about us. However, we will care about them; our whole fan experience will be shaped by them. We will write stories with them and learn from them. Still, they can never truly empathize with us. Fandom is about affect, care, and love. Can we love a text or a machine, regardless of reciprocity?

6. References

Bayle, Alfred. 2017. "Marriage to Anime 'Waifu' Recognized by Japanese Company

with Perk of Monthly Financial Support." Lifestyle Inquirer, November 23, 2017.

http://lifestyle.inquirer.net/279716/marriage-to-anime-waifu-recognized-by-japanese-company-offers-monthly-financial-support/.

Booth, Paul. 2010. Digital Fandom. New York: Peter Lang.

Botnik Studios. 2017. "The Handsome One." Chapter 13 of Harry Potter and the

Portrait of What Looked Like a Large Pile of Ash. http://botnik.org/content/harrypotter.html.

Charles, James, Derek Magee, and David Hogg. 2016. "Virtual Immortality:

Reanimating Characters from TV Shows." In Computer Vision: European Conference on Computer Vision 2016 Workshops, edited by G. Hua and H. Jégou, 879–87. Cham: Springer.

Feng, Jiayun. 2018. " Love and Producer, the Chinese Mobile Game that has Millions of Women Hooked." Supchina, January 16, 2018. http://supchina.com/2018/01/16/love-and-producer-the-chinese-mobile-game-that-has-hooked-millions-of-women/.

Gallagher, Sean. 2016. "The Holographic Anime 'Robot' That Will Keep House for

Lonely Salarymen." Ars Technica, December 18, 2016. https://arstechnica.com

/information-technology/2016/12/the-anime-girlfriend-experience-gateboxs-ai-

powered-holographic-home-robot/.

Green, Penelope. 2017. "Alexa, Where Have You Been All My Life?" New York Times, July 11, 2017. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/11/style/alexa-amazon-echo.html.

Haine, Charles. 2016. "How IBM's Watson Used AI to Edit the Trailer for Upcoming

AI Thriller Morgan. " No Film School, October 13, 2016. https://nofilmschool.com

/2016/10/ibm-watson-edits-morgan-trailer.

Hancock, Trevor, and Clement Bezold. 1994. "Possible Futures, Preferable Futures."

Healthcare Forum Journal 37 (2): 23–29.

Henchey, Norman. 1978. "Making Sense of Futures Studies." Alternatives 7 (2): 24–28.

Jenkins, Henry. 1992. Textual Poachers: Television Fans and Participatory Culture.

New York: Routledge.

Jenkins, Henry, with Ravi Purushotma, Margaret Weigel, Katie Clinton, and Alice J.

Robison. 2009. Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21st Century. Chicago: MacArthur Foundation. https://mitpress.mit.edu/books

/confronting-challenges-participatory-culture.

Kelly, Kevin. n.d. "1,000 True Fans." Revised from original 2008 essay. Technicum.

http://kk.org/thetechnium/1000-true-fans/.

Kelly, Kevin. 2016. The Inevitable: Understanding the 12 Technological Forces That Will Shape Our Future. New York: Random House.

Lamerichs, Nicolle, Anna Lange-Böhmer, Mari Carmen Puerta Melguizo, Dennis

Nguyen, and Radmilla Radojevic. Forthcoming. "Elite Male Bodies: The Circulation of Alt-Right Memes, and Framing of Politicians on Social Media." In "Toxic Fan

Practices," edited by Bridget Kies and William Proctor, special issue, Participations.

Le, Linh K. 2014. "Examining the Rise of Hatsune Miku: The First International Virtual Idol." UCI Undergraduate Research Journal. http://www.urop.uci.edu/journal

/journal13/01_le.pdf.

McGonigal, Jane. 2017. "The Future of the Imagination." Aspen Ideas To Go Podcast, June 7, 2017. https://www.aspeninstitute.org/podcasts/future-of-imagination/.

Toffler, Alvin. 1970. Future Shock. New York: Random House.

Toffler, Alvin. 1980. The Third Wave. New York: Bantam Books.

SYMPOSIUM

The ex-fan's place in fan studies

Bridget Kies

Col ege of Wooster, Ohio, United States

[0.1]

Abstract—In an examination of how fans end their relationships

with the objects of their fandom and related fan communities, I use my

own experiences with the television series Supernatural (WB/CW,

2005–) to demonstrate how breaking up with a fandom is emotionally

and technologically complicated. Becoming an ex-fan is different from

antifandom and is worthy of greater investigation in fan studies.

[0.2]

Keywords—Affect; Endings; Supernatural

Kies, Bridget. 2018. "The Ex-Fan's Place in Fan Studies." In "The Future of Fandom,"

special 10th anniversary issue, Transformative Works and Cultures, no. 28.

http://dx.doi.org/10.3983/twc.2018.1402.

1. Introduction

[1.1] At the Textual Echoes Symposium hosted by Umeå University in Sweden in

2010, Berit Äström (2010a) presented a paper on male pregnancy stories about the

television series Supernatural (WB/CW, 2005–). I found Åström's paper so intriguing that I watched five seasons of Supernatural in a span of two weeks and schooled myself on other existing research (Tosenberger 2008; Åström 2010b). Supernatural had arrived in my life at an opportune moment. Soon we were in a glorious honeymoon phase,

during which I binge-watched the show on DVD and created a fan identity on Gmail,

LiveJournal, Delicious, Twitter, and Tumblr. I became part of several fan communities, read and wrote fan fiction, and participated in group watching parties.

[1.2] Through changes in showrunner and new narrative threads I wasn't interested in, I desperately tried to keep my relationship with Supernatural alive. I felt like an outcast in my fan communities, though I had initially joined in order to combat feeling like an outcast in my real life. Active fans often find their passion for a particular object waxing and waning, and it is not uncommon to move to a different fandom. Likewise,

fans often leave one community within a particular fandom for another, or they determine to end their relationship with the canon at a specific point that allows them to continue participating in fan activities. Among the Supernatural fans I knew, some opted not to participate in reading or writing fic set after the departure of series creator Eric Kripke as showrunner. I just wanted my life back after three years of a relationship that had run its course. As I came to discover, my breakup with Supernatural and its fandom was an emotionally and technologically complex process. My personal example serves as a springboard for examining a largely unexplored aspect of fan culture:

becoming an ex-fan.

[1.3] From the earliest ethnographies, such as those of Bacon-Smith (1992) and

Jenkins (1992) for Star Trek (1966–69) fans, the field of fan studies has celebrated fandom as a safe space, a way for misfits to find community together and for secret passions to be brought into the open. This "fandom is beautiful" phase was a

"purposeful political intervention that sided with the tactics of fan audiences in their evasion of dominant ideologies, and that set out to rigorously defend fan communities against their ridicule in the mass media and by non-fans" (Gray, Harrington, and

Sandvoss 2007, 2).

[1.4] As the discipline has evolved, scholarship has broadened to emphasize the

practices and experiences of a range of fans. There have been additional attempts to define fans more inclusively in terms of race, gender, and social class. Most scholarship, however, continues to presume that participation in fandom is a largely positive

experience. Lynn Zubernis's (2017) edited collection features stories from fans and actors of Supernatural describing the impact that the series and its fandom has had on them, including leading to sobriety, suicide awareness, and crowd-funded charity. In keeping with the theme of the book, a portion of the proceeds benefits Random Acts, a charitable organization begun by Supernatural actor Misha Collins to which fans regularly donate and volunteer.

[1.5] Other scholarship has sought to avoid the utopian approach by examining social and cultural hierarchies within fan communities. For Gray, Harrington, and Sandvoss (2007), the significance of this move within the discipline was in findings that

"highlighted the replication of social and cultural hierarchies within fan cultures- and subcultures, as the choice of fan objects and practices of fan consumption are structured through our habitus as a reflection and further manifestation of our social, cultural, and economic capital" (6). Practices like shaming and bullying have also been brought into the light (Zubernis and Larsen 2012, 116–42). Fan activists have even launched

dedicated social media accounts to police bullying from outside and inside fan

communities (such as @AntiFanbullying on Twitter, which was deleted in 2015). The

dark side of fan cultures is becoming a more discussed and studied aspect of fandom, though usually described as aberrant and the worst of fan practices (note 1). However, these moves only reiterate the desire and sometimes expectation that fans feel to police, revamp, and reshape fandom into a beautiful and positive space.

[1.6] In order to break up with Supernatural, I simply quit watching the series and

deleted it from my DVR. Breaking up with the Supernatural fandom was far more complicated. I had to undertake a thoughtful approach to dismantling my fan identity.

Becoming an ex-fan raises questions about the ethics and meaningfulness of shutting down a fan page or pulling fic. Did I want my Supernatural fan identity to continue to exist, with the possibility that my fics would continue to circulate and be read? A complete rupture from a digital identity soon proved to be impossible, so I opted to leave my LiveJournal page up as a kind of fond memory for what had been.

2. "Tumblr is a line too far!": Platform migration woes

[2.1] During my three active years as a Supernatural fan, my fan communities were in a period of platform transition. Actor Misha Collins joined Twitter in 2009, inspiring many, myself included, to join. LiveJournal was a major hub of fan activity, but soon friends migrated to Dreamwidth and then Tumblr. I was frustrated at losing a

community I had just found, and I was unexcited about creating new social media

accounts when I had only recently created so many. I recall shouting in frustration one day, "Tumblr is a line too far!" As a LiveJournal holdout, I remained most active on a site that was rapidly losing activity. Many groups and users deleted profiles, posts, and pages, so a returning visitor might be faced with an image of LiveJournal's goat, Frank, a digital parallel to an animal eating valuable paperwork (figure 1). Frank's appearance on deleted pages, as well as pages that had not been updated in years, created a digital ghost town, contrasting with one that was once bursting with activity but that now lay dormant and decayed. In the ethnography of players of the online game Uru: Ages Beyond Myst (Cyan Worlds, 2003), Celia Pearce and Artemesia describe the sense of

"shock and catharsis" the players experienced when the platform that hosted their game was shut down (2009, 86). Rebecca Williams similarly notes how the dormancy of a fan object or community may "necessitate a period of identity transformation for the fan"

(2015, 29). As a solitary fan clinging to dying communities, I felt increasingly isolated and outcast—feelings that participation in fan communities is (according to most

research in our field) supposed to combat.

Figure 1. When LiveJournal users attempt to navigate to a page that no longer exists, they are greeted by the image of Frank, here crying over a broken link.

[2.2] In the cases of two of the Supernatural communities on LiveJournal, group moderators decided to lock communities so that new posts could not be created, but they did not delete existing material. This strategy is useful for researchers, as it means that the activities of the community's past remain available. For some fans, however,

this may serve as an emotional reminder of experiences they may wish to forget.

Although a particular member within the group may have moved on to creating new fan works or have ceased fan production altogether, their impact and previous work are still accessible, thus creating a schism between identities. This can be remedied through the creation of a new user account, although savvy web geeks can determine the connection between the two.

[2.3] The 2014 leak of various celebrity photos retrieved from Apple's cloud storage (known as the Fappening) was a scaled-up version of something many internet users

fear: the exposure of their private selves online (Massanari 2015). Deleting fan works, blog posts, or even an entire account is an imperfect way of negating the past. Even if the entire story or website on which it appeared is gone, it is likely that other websites still point to it, the title and author are included on a list somewhere, and the Wayback Machine can still find it. Copies may still exist off-line too. One real-person fic writer in the Supernatural community was hired by an entertainment blog (note 2). Faced with having to interview the very people she once wrote erotic real-person fic about, she deleted her fan accounts. When someone asked about one of her fics in a story-finder community, other fans were respectful of her wishes not to have the story circulating.

But many of us, myself included, had already saved versions in our personal archives off-line.

[2.4] As Matthew Fuller (2005) explains, our digital activities leave flecks of identity that ensure a record of our presence remains on servers. This is true for fan works even after they have been deleted by their creators; it is also true for the act of reading those same fan works. Despite our best efforts, we are never fully private online, and

everything leaves some trace of activity. For Viktor Mayer-Schonberg (2009), these realities are something all internet users must acclimate themselves to while continuing to advocate for mandated expiration dates for digital information. Until this solution is adopted, fans like the fic writer turned entertainment blogger may find our best efforts to fully divorce ourselves from our fan activities unsuccessful.

3. Antifans, nonfans, and ex-fans

[3.1] Although fan studies tends to look at the activities of flourishing communities and the experiences of engaged fans, there is also value in considering the role of ex-fan. Being an ex-fan is different from being an antifan, which connotes a level of hatred and knowledge so passionate that it bespeaks a deeper love. Chancery Stone's (2007) top definition on the Urban Dictionary describes an antifan as one "who purports to be a fan but who is actually engaged in dissing down, covertly or overtly, the object of a fandom, often for hidden agendas of their own." Similarly, Jonathan Gray argues that many antifans are "performing a love for something else" when they critique a

particular text or its fan community (quoted in Jenkins 2010). Kristina Busse makes the related claim that by focusing on extreme affect, fan studies scholars can observe the relative similarity between loving and hating fan objects (2018, 218). Gray (2003) also advocates studying nonfans who may watch a media text without producing their own

works surrounding it or joining online communities. But being passionately hateful or casually interested is a different experience from passionately loving something and then walking away from it.

[3.2] Being an ex-fan indicates that there was once passion for the source text.

Changes to a television series cast or producer or a cancellation may strengthen or lessen fan relationships with the object and prompt fans to shift to a new fandom. While this may be a more common experience, I am not the only person who walked away

from all fan-related social media accounts and fan practices. Perhaps the expression about first loves being the greatest rings true. I didn't want to transfer the fervor I once had for Supernatural onto a new object. I did not hate Supernatural or its fans. As Kristina Busse notes, the real ending to a fan experience may not be the series'

conclusion but the moment a fan stops caring (2018, 218). At that moment, I became an ex-fan, a relationship marked with nostalgia for what was but apathy about what is to come.

4. Conclusion

[4.1] Breaking up with a fandom is a prolonged process, charged with emotion and

complicated by the digital technologies used by fan communities. In seeking to preserve fan practices as part of our cultural legacy, we ensure that no one can fully divorce their fan identity. Nonetheless, it is possible to become an ex-fan, which involves a

simultaneous sensation of nostalgia for the passion that once existed and apathy toward the future. Breaking up with a fandom is an underexplored area within fan studies. As we continue to pursue new understandings of the future of fandom, it seems fitting to expand our understanding of its conclusion as well.

5. Acknowledgment

[5.1] A version of this paper was presented at the Fan Studies Network Conference, Norwich, UK, June 27–28, 2015.

6. Notes

1. William Proctor and I coedited a themed section on "Toxic Fan Practices" for

Participations 15 (1), published in 2018. The section indicates the growing body of scholarship related to the nonutopian aspects of fandom.

2. In keeping with the fan's wishes, I am not disclosing their name here.

7. References

Åström, Berit. 2010a. "It Takes a Real Man to Have a Baby." Paper presented at the Textual Echoes Symposium, Umeå, Sweden, February 11–13, 2010.

Åström, Berit. 2010b. "'Let's Get Those Winchesters Pregnant': Male Pregnancy in

Supernatural Fan Fiction." Transformative Works and Cultures, no. 4. https://doi.org

/10.3983/twc.2010.0135.

Bacon-Smith, Camille. 1992. Enterprising Women: Television Fandom and the

Creation of Popular Myth. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

Busse, Kristina. 2018. "Afterword: Fannish Affect and Its Aftermath." In Everybody Hurts, edited by Rebecca Williams, 209–18. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press.

Fuller, Matthew. 2005. Media Ecologies. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Gray, Jonathan. 2003. "New Audiences, New Textualities." International Journal of Cultural Studies 6 (1): 64–81. https://doi.org/10.1177/1367877903006001004.

Gray, Jonathan, Cornel Sandvoss, and C. Lee Harrington, eds. 2007. Fandom: Identities and Communities in a Mediated World. New York: NYU Press.

Jenkins, Henry. 1992. Textual Poachers. New York: Routledge.

Jenkins, Henry. 2010. "On Anti-fans and Paratexts: An Interview with Jonathan Gray (Part One)." Confessions of an Aca-Fan, March 4, 2010. http://henryjenkins.org

/blog/2010/03/on_anti-fans_and_paratexts_an.html.

Massanari, Adrienne. 2015. "#Gamergate and the Fappening: How Reddit's Algorithm,

Governance, and Culture Support Toxic Technoculture." New Media and Society 19 (3): 329–46. https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444815608807.

Mayer-Schonberg, Viktor. 2009. Deleting: The Virtue of Forgetting in the Digital Age.

Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Pearce, Celia, and Artemesia. 2009. Communities of Play. Cambridge: MIT Press.

Stone, Chancery. 2007. "Definition for 'Anti-fan.'" Urban Dictionary, February 24, 2007. https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=anti-fan.

Tosenberger, Catherine. 2008. "'The Epic Love story of Sam and Dean': Supernatural, Queer Readings, and the Romance of Incestuous Fan Fiction." Transformative Works and Cultures, no. 1. https://doi.org/10.3983/twc.2008.030.

Williams, Rebecca. 2015. Post-object Fandom: Television, Identity and Self-Narrative.

London: Bloomsbury.

Zubernis, Lynn. 2017. Family Don't End with Blood: Cast and Fans on How

Supernatural Has Changed Their Lives. Dallas, TX: BenBella.

Zubernis, Lynn, and Katherine Larsen. 2012. Fandom at the Crossroads. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.

SYMPOSIUM

Generations, migrations, and the future

of fandom's private spaces

Brianna Dym

Casey Fiesler

University of Colorado, Boulder, Colorado, United

States

[0.1]

Abstract—An exploration of old versus young fandom indicates

that this divide is fueled by shifting norms encouraged by migration

across online platforms, with changes that focus on conflicting norms

around the publicness of fandom. Although fandom has become more

public facing, fans are also more broadly participating in activism,

forming communities for political action and media criticism, causing

long-standing fans to worry that these changes could lead to a collapse

between private and public spaces. However, what makes fandom

important remains intact: fandom is and will continue to be a home for

those pushed to the margins of media.

[0.2]

Keywords—Activism; Fandom; Privacy; Social norms;

Technology

Dym, Brianna, and Casey Fiesler. 2018. "Generations, Migrations, and the Future of Fandom's Private Spaces." In "The Future of Fandom," special 10th anniversary issue, Transformative Works and Cultures, no. 28. http://dx.doi.org/10.3983/twc.2018.1583.

1. Wandering into the unknown

[1.1] Fandom is an ever-evolving community of nomads, migrating across platforms

and constantly attracting new members across generations. With fandom stretching

back further than the internet, it is a small marvel that the community has traversed

online platforms together while maintaining core values that still persist in the community's ever-evolving spaces (Fiesler, Morrison, and Bruckman 2016). However,

while the community has persisted, it is also not immune to change.

[1.2] Over the course of several research studies concerning the relationship of

fandom to online platforms, we have heard from many long-standing community

members about how fandom and its participants have changed over the years, especially in regards to generational differences. Sometimes these differences reflect shifting norms—for example, related to the increasing publicness of fandom. Migration across online platforms also leads to changing interaction styles and expectations among fans as a result of different technological affordances such as more or less granular privacy settings. Younger fans have also embraced involvement in advocacy and activism both within fandom and more broadly. These descriptions of how fandom is changing

contribute to a theme we observed; there is a creeping sense among fans that private and public spaces online might be collapsing into one another.

[1.3] Online fandom is a space that is at once both very personal and separate from all things personal, as people bring with them to fandom the parts that might not be welcome in their daily lives while also leaving behind connections to their real

identities. Meanwhile, public platforms, an overall more mainstream interest in fandom, and increased public engagement serves to peel away the layers between fandom and

the rest of the world. Our research suggests that these changes are seen in part as reflecting generational differences, with young fandom being more comfortable with new interaction styles and norms. In this essay, we explore the reasons and

consequences for these changes, and we ultimately argue that fandom is functioning and will continue to function as it always has: as a safe space for people normally pushed to the margins of popular culture if they want to be themselves.

2. Changing scenery

[2.1] Tongue-in-cheek complaints like "Kids these days, get off my e-lawn!" are

meant in jest, but they speak to legitimate concerns about how fandom might change, particularly coupled with the increasing visibility of fandom and the blending of

fandom into mainstream culture. The traditionally private nature of fandom is rooted in long-standing issues such as social stigma or anxiety over copyright law (Busse and Hellekson 2012), and even the spreading popularity of geek culture brings with it the danger of segregating remaining outsiders that might not fit easily into this more mainstream mode (Busse 2015).

[2.2] However, norms around direct interactions between fans and media properties or celebrities are increasingly eroding the line between public and private spaces online (Lacasa, Méndez, and de-la-Fuente 2016; McNutt 2018), and even the design of

platforms themselves is influencing the relationship between fans and industry (Stanfill 2015). This shift is something that newer fans may be accustomed to, while older fans may experience tension with existing secrecy norms. Similarly, normative shifts toward

commodification of free culture for other types of user-generated content (e.g., using Ko-fi or Patreon) leak into fandom spaces as well (Murdock 2017) but may directly

conflict with long-standing values of gift culture, or further erode the distinction between public and private spaces by requiring real identities for transactional purposes.

These lands are unexplored for many people in fandom, but they may be the standard and the starting point of fandom for newcomers.

[2.3] As privacy attitudes generally have shifted away from individual and more

toward networked privacy (Markwick and boyd 2014), users on public platforms such

as Tumblr increasingly rely on obscurity to maintain their privacy (Cho 2017). This obscurity is enforced through the kinds of norms that fans have relayed to us in

interviews: always use a pseudonym, do not connect your fandom spaces with real-

name spaces like Facebook, and ask permission before sharing fan content beyond

fandom. Because fan communities rely on these kinds of norms to maintain traditional values around secrecy, perceptions that younger fans are more open about their personal lives cause some anxiety about what this might mean for the future of these private spaces.

3. Fording a technology divide

[3.1] Generational differences are often characterized by changes in technology—for example, digital natives are defined as those who grew up immersed in information and communication technology (Bennett, Maton, and Kervin 2008). Similarly, generations of fans have grown up in different fandom spaces, including those who came of age in fandom before the internet, those who became active during the LiveJournal era, and those who first discovered fan works on Archive of Our Own or Tumblr (Schwedel

2018). Accordingly, because platforms have a heavy influence on behavioral norms—

reflecting, reinforcing, and also shaping them (Fiesler, Morrison, and Bruckman 2016; Stanfill 2015)—how fans first experienced fandom might influence what behavior they think is appropriate.

[3.2] For example, LiveJournal's granular privacy settings allowed users to control the visibility of each post, filtering content to be private, for friends or certain groups, or available publicly. LiveJournal also allowed users to create communities that filtered both content and members into smaller spaces. In contrast, Tumblr does not allow for users to control privacy at the level of individual posts; nor does it allow grouping into private communities. Therefore, fans might form different set of norms around privacy and personal information depending on which platform they most called home. Older

fans who came of age on LiveJournal sometimes find Tumblr's lack of private spaces unsettling, allowing fandom activities to be broadcast across the whole internet, as opposed to previous sites, which felt more intimate.

[3.3] According to a recent Pew report, teenagers are most active on YouTube,

Snapchat, and Instagram (Anderson and Jiang 2018), reflecting larger trends around younger social media users moving toward more one-to-one and/or visual

communication. Those who might be more vulnerable, such as queer youth, also feel safer on platforms like Tumblr than they do on Facebook (Cho 2017). Despite

Facebook having more privacy controls, it has an inherent publicness because of

connections to a real identity; Tumblr, in contrast, may be public in the sense of technological affordances, but it is pseudonymous and has a very different community.

[3.4] These complexities around affordances of different platforms play out in ways that look more like social engineering—for example, choosing a platform on the basis of who is there rather than how much privacy control one has, or using multiple

platforms for different purposes. In our research, younger fans typically cited multiple spaces for fandom participation. They still need spaces with more control, meaning that apps like Discord and Slack become important fandom spaces for private activities like group discussions and personal conversations. Meanwhile, fans continue to use Tumblr for more public activities like sharing art and fan fiction, or organizing advocacy across fan communities. Discord channels do not signal a retreat from open platforms; rather, they reflect a strategy for dealing with this lack of privacy control elsewhere.

[3.5] Moreover, beyond the mainstreaming of fandom, there is an increase in more

purposeful public fan engagement. These outward-facing platforms give fans more

tools to advocate for themselves and to participate in impactful activism. While social media already has a history of being a crucial resource for political action (Eltantawy and Wiest 2011), fandom has only recently started using social media explicitly for catching attention beyond fandom for the purposes of advocacy.

4. Making space through activism

[4.1] Though political participation and interest among young people was declining by the end of the 1990s, this trend reversed itself in correlation with the rise of social media and other forms of online participation (Bakker and deVreese 2011). Fandom is increasingly becoming a site for political activism, with members of fandom turning fan spaces into political discussion groups as well as taking action on key topics. Groups like the Harry Potter Alliance focus their efforts on effecting political change by connecting political topics to themes from the Harry Potter novels. Henry Jenkins notes that a "striking feature of post-millennial politics is the ways in which pop culture references are shaping political rhetoric and movement practices" (2015, 208), or in other words, fandom participation might encourage activism (Neville 2018).

[4.2] Fan activism can involve large, outward-facing efforts that target major political change through encouraging voting, writing to politicians, or volunteering at nonprofits; or it can focus internally on critical media issues such as diversity. This flavor of fan activism benefits from public platforms like Tumblr and Twitter, and with Tumblr's focus on social justice, fans are able to impact media with their activism efforts more than ever before.

[4.3] One illustrative example was the fan reaction to the death of the character Lexa

on the television show The 100 (2014–). With Lexa occupying space as a major lesbian character on a mainstream television show, her death (which eerily matched Tara's

death scene on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, 1996–2003) sparked outrage among LGBTQ

fans, who rallied under the Lexa Deserved Better hashtag and later moved to form the LGBT Fans Deserve Better movement, an effort targeted at critiquing popular media's use of the "Bury Your Gays" trope to kill off LGBTQ characters for an emotional

reaction from the audience (Ng 2017).

[4.4] In response, fans worked together to donate queer-friendly books to struggling fans who found the episode upsetting, purchased billboards that critiqued the show's decision, and raised over $140,000 for the Trevor Project (Misailidou 2017). The LGBT

Fans Deserve Better movement pushed on to be involved in multiple protests and

critical discussions; it even helped organize Clexacon, a now annual and well-attended convention specifically for LGBTQ fandom with an emphasis on queer women. So why

would something like this not have happened over twenty years ago? What makes

fandom the right space for this kind of action and protest on a global scale?

[4.5] It is precisely the public-facing nature of social media platforms like Tumblr and Twitter that made LGBT Fans Deserve Better possible. The open nature of these

platforms allows for broader reach and connection with different fandom groups across the world. While this open design can lead to uncomfortable clashes, it also serves the important purpose of providing a place for public protest (McNutt 2018). Fandom will always have an insular component to its underlying values, evidenced by fans utilizing apps like Discord and Slack to create small-group spaces—but online public spaces also allow fans to be more empowered than ever. This change means that overall, fandom is more present in the public than it has been, but the newer members of fandom have

helped put this visibility to good use.

5. Remembering where we have been

[5.1] The new opportunities afforded by a more public-facing fandom are not without their own struggles and concerns. Privacy is still an important part of fannish identity, and the challenges that sites like Tumblr and Twitter create have prompted fans to build smaller, more insular communities on separate apps like Discord and Slack. As

reflected by the nuanced privacy strategies often used by young people (Cho 2017;

Markwick and boyd 2014), fans are able to control who is and is not involved in these spaces, sometimes restricting access to an invitation-only policy or requiring a

screening survey before someone is admitted. Private and public spaces have not

necessarily collapsed into one another, as older members of fandom may fear. Instead, the rooms for conversation have just been reorganized. However, the public side of fandom is still there, and fandom is using it to give voice to its marginalized members.

[5.2] Fandom has always been a highly resilient community, with its ability to adapt evidenced by initiatives like Archive of Our Own and Fanlore to preserve fan values and history (Fiesler, Morrison, and Bruckman 2016). Fandom will continue to change in

ways we cannot yet anticipate, but these changes reflect the diversity and evolution of fandom rather than drawing divides. Just as the idea of digital natives has been critiqued as a distinction without a difference (Bakker and deVreese 2011), the concept of young and old fandom may not matter at all. No matter where we wander, fandom will

continue to be home for those who need it.

6. References

Anderson, Monica, and Jingjing Jiang. 2018. "Teens, Social Media, and Technology,

2018." http://www.pewinternet.org/2018/05/31/teens-social-media-technology-2018/.

Bakker, Tom P., and Claes H. deVreese. 2011. "Good News for the Future? Young

People, Internet Use, and Political Participation." Communication Research 38 (4): 451–70. https://doi.org/10.1177%2F0093650210381738.

Bennett, Sue, Karl Maton, and Lisa Kervin. 2008. "The 'Digital Natives' Debate: A

Critical Review of the Evidence." British Journal of Educational Technology 39 (5): 775–86. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8535.2007.00793.x.

Busse, Kristina. 2015. "Fan Labor and Feminism: Capitalizing on the Fannish Labor of Love." Cinema Journal 54 (3): 110–15. https://doi.org/10.1353/cj.2015.0034.

Busse, Kristina, and Karen Hellekson. 2012. "Identity, Ethics, and Fan Privacy." In Fan Culture: Theory/Practice, edited by Katherine Larsen and Lynn Zubernis, 38–56.

Newcastle-upon-Tyne: Cambridge Scholars.

Cho, Alexander. 2017. "Default Publicness: Queer Youth of Color, Social Media, and Being Outed by the Machine." New Media and Society 20:3183–200. https://doi.org

/10.1177%2F1461444817744784.

Eltantawy, Nahed, and Julie B. Wiest. 2011. "Social Media in the Egyptian Revolution: Reconsidering Resource Mobilization Theory." International Journal of

Communication 5:1207–24. http://ijoc.org/index.php/ijoc/article/view/1242.

Fiesler, Casey, Shannon Morrison, and Amy S. Bruckman. 2016. "An Archive of Their

Own: A Case Study of Feminist HCI and Values in Design." In Proceedings of the 2016

CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 2574–85. New York:

Association for Computing Machinery. http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/2858036.2858409.

Lacasa, Pilar, Laura Méndez, and Julian de-la-Fuente. 2016. "Fandom, Music and

Personal Relationships through Media: How Teenagers Use Social Networks." Journal of the International Association for the Study of Popular Music 6:44–67.

http://www.iaspmjournal.net/index.php/IASPM_Journal/article/view/769.

Markwick, Alice E., and danah boyd. 2014. "Networked Privacy: How Teenagers

Negotiate Context in Social Media." New Media and Society 16 (7): 1051–67.

https://doi.org/10.1177%2F1461444814543995.

McNutt, Myles. 2018. " The 100 and the Social Contract of Social TV." In "Social TV

Fandom and the Media Industries," edited by Myles McNutt, special issue,

Transformative Works and Cultures, no. 26. https://doi.org/10.3983.twc.2018.1297.

Misailidou, Eftychia. 2017. "Social Media Fandom: The Construction of Identity in the Cases of The 100 and Once Upon a Time Tumblr Communities." Paper presented at the Wireless Telecommunications Symposium (WTS), April 26–28, 2017. https://doi.org

/10.1109/WTS.2017.7943539.

Murdock, Chelsea. 2017. "Making Fanfic: The (Academic) Tensions of Fan Fiction as

Self-Publication." Community Literacy Journal 12 (1): 48–61. https://doi.org/10.1353

/clj.2017.0025.

Neville, Lucy. 2018. "'The Tent's Big Enough for Everyone': Online Slash Fiction as a Site for Activism and Change." Gender, Place, and Culture 25 (3): 384–98.

https://doi.org/10.1080/0966369X.2017.1420633.

Ng, Eve. 2017. "Between Text, Paratext, and Context: Queerbaiting and the

Contemporary Media Landscape." In "Queer Female Fandom," edited by Julie Levin

Russo and Eve Ng, special issue, Transformative Works and Cultures, no. 24.

https://doi.org/10.3983/twc.2017.917.

Schwedel, Heather. 2018. "Why Did Fans Flee LiveJournal, and Where Will They Go

after Tumblr?" Slate, March 29, 2018. https://slate.com/technology/2018/03/why-did-fans-leave-livejournal-and-where-will-they-go-after-tumblr.html.

Stanfill, Mel. 2015. "The Interface as Discourse: The Production of Norms through Web Design." New Media and Society 17 (7): 1059–74. https://doi.org

/10.1177%2F1461444814520873.

SYMPOSIUM

Further future fandom: A conversation

with middle school-age fans

Shannon K. Farley

[0.1]

Abstract—This conversation among the author and four middle

school-age fans concerns their online practices as well as some

observations and analysis.

[0.2]

Keywords—Amino; Instagram; Interview; Tumblr; Young fans

Farley, Shannon K. 2018. "Further Future Fandom: A Conversation with Middle

School-Age Fans." In "The Future of Fandom," special 10th anniversary issue,

Transformative Works and Cultures, no. 28. https://dx.doi.org/10.3983/twc.2018.1514.

1. Introduction

[1.1] I took on writing this Symposium piece because when fan-scholars talk about young fans, they generally focus on university-age fans because most fan-scholars are university professors, and as such, this is the age group with which they are most familiar. I say "they" because although I consider myself a fan-scholar, I have been teaching in a school for grades 6 to 12 for the past two years, and I work exclusively with teenagers. Before I earned my PhD I taught high school, and I do so now because of my unwillingness to move to chase a tenure-track job or to commit to a life of

adjuncthood. I also have a thirteen-year-old fan child of my own.

[1.2] This piece is the result of informal conversation with four of the younger fans of my acquaintance, specifically thirteen- to fifteen-year-olds who are engaging in fannish practices. I have not seen much discussion about this age group of fans. However, this is not meant to be a scientific survey of this age group's fannish practices. I spoke to a handful of kids in a specific context: the small, artsy charter school in western

Massachusetts where I teach. These were also self-selecting kids who were likely to already know me because of my role as a member of the special education department, or because they were friends of my kid, who also attends the school. This is therefore not meant to be a generalization of the fannish practices of this age group as much as it

is meant to be an example of some of the trends that can be seen in their practices.

[1.3] The first thing I was interested to hear about was where online these kids are finding their communities. I asked them what their current major fandoms are, and

where they participated in that fandom. The bulk of what was interesting to me came as a result of this first question. What follows is an edited transcript of our conversation. I have referred to the kids as A, B, C, and D according to the order in which they first spoke (note 1). I have indicated my comments with my initials, SKF.

2. Interview

[2.1]

A: I feel like the major fandom that I am into right now? Is furry, right now.

[2.2]

SKF: Okay, just furry. As a fandom?

[2.3]

A: Yeah. As a fandom. There are, like, different, you know, separations besides

furry. There's an app that I use called Amino that lets me join other fandoms like that.

Like, Cuphead and Undertale.

[2.4]

SKF: Okay, so tell me more about Amino. How does that app work?

[2.5]

A: Basically it's an app that…there's a bunch of different categories for you to

join,…different "aminos" basically, different communities that different people start.

You can make your own, and…

[2.6]

SKF: So it's a social media app?

[2.7]

A: Yeah, generally.

[2.8]

SKF: So is it completely fandom based? Like, everything on Amino is fandom?

Or are there different categories of different things you can be into? Fandom, or not?

[2.9]

A: Yeah, there's things like art, and writing, and other hobbies you might be

into. Skateboarding, or you know. Stuff like that.

[2.10]

SKF: And is it a way you can talk to other people?

[2.11]

A: Yeah, you can talk to other people, share your art, share your music, and

talk to other people.

[2.12]

SKF: So how is it different than something like Instagram?

[2.13]

A: Well, on Instagram, there's not really a way to directly talk to bunches of

people at the same time. So this one works kind of like, how do I say…Do you know

about Discord?

[2.14]

SKF: Yeah, I do.

[2.15]

A: Okay, so it kinda works like Discord…And then you've got group chats you

can join into. There's, like, hundreds upon hundreds of them.

[2.16]

SKF: Okay, cool. So…mostly furry, and mostly on Amino.

[2.17]

B: [ shows me her laptop screen, which is full of Gravity Falls] I don't think I need to say anything?

[2.18]

SKF: Okay, but like, for the purposes of my recording…so that we can have

the actual words…B is a big Gravity Falls fan.

[2.19]

B: And Star vs. the Forces of Evil.

[2.20]

SKF: And how do you participate in that particular fandom? Do you use

something like Amino?

[2.21]

B: I have a Google Plus account.

[2.22]

SKF: Google Plus is a place where people are talking?

[2.23]

B: Yeah. Uh-huh. And the cool thing is that it's actually connected to a

drawing app, so that when I do fan art it's immediately uploaded to Google Plus.

[2.24]

SKF: So Google Plus has a good connection to other apps.

[2.25]

B: Yeah, and it's also linked with my Gmail account, so I can get notifications

when other people comment on my stuff.

[2.26]

SKF: So you use Google Plus because it is easy to upload your pictures that

way, as opposed to other apps?

[2.27]

B: Yeah. And I can also upload videos, which I am also…I really like making

AMVs [anime music videos]. Someone will tell me what song they're really into right now, and I'll put an AMV together.

[2.28]

SKF: Do you post your videos to YouTube as well, or just to Google Plus?

[2.29]

B: Just to Google Plus, because there I get more fast answers…

[2.30]

SKF: Like feedback?

[2.31]

B: Yeah. As opposed to YouTube where sometimes it takes people years and

years to find the video.

[2.32]

SKF: Is that because you already have an established community on Google

Plus that's already into Gravity Falls, that's already looking for your videos?

[2.33]

B: I have more than one, and I have some that are just getting started.

[2.34]

SKF: I haven't been on Google Plus in years, because it was just like, when

they started it, it was supposed to just be a replacement for Facebook [ chuckling response from teens] and people tried it for a while, but then like, no one was really there so most of the people that I knew just fell away from it. But it sounds like it still has some vibrant communities. Is it just like a created circle, like a Gravity Falls circle that everybody is in, or…?

[2.35]

B: Well, you can make your community around whatever you want. And what

I really like about it is that it's really really secure. Like, usually people, if you're in the Gravity Falls community, you can only talk about things that are related to Gravity Falls or else you'll get kicked out of there. Or you can only talk about things that are related to Star vs. the Forces of Evil or you'll get kicked out of there.

[2.36]

SKF: If you wanted to have a conversation about personal things, you'd have

those conversations elsewhere?

[2.37]

B: Yeah, you'd link it with your Gmail account, and if you want to, you can

have a little chat box where you can talk to the same people, but about different things.

And you can still have, like, an unrelated thing, like a meme or whatever, but it has to be related to Star somehow. You can't just, like, have a picture of a mountain. [ laughter breaks out]

[2.38]

B: It'd get flagged, like, uh, spam.

[2.39]

SKF: What if you posted something really loosely related, like, "There are

mountains on Gravity Falls. " Do you get called out?

[2.40]

B: Yeah, that's spam. [ laughing] But I really like how they keep it controlled.

Like, they don't let people just come in there and start screwing stuff up.

[2.41]

C: Okay, so. I'm on Instagram, Tumblr, and Twitter, honestly. Um, I found my

friend K 'cause of the Dan and Phil [YouTubers] live show that we're going to July 21, like there's an account on Instagram that was posting all the tour dates, and then you could comment on your tour date, and then they'd add you to a group chat of that tour date so you could meet people, blah blah blah. And I found this girl K, and it was only us talking in the group chat for like two weeks and then I responded to one of her

[Instagram] stories and then we just talked for, like, forever. And now, like, we have each other. I convinced her to finally get Tumblr again.

[2.42]

SKF: Okay, so. You have made, like…

[2.43]

C: I have a lot of internet friends.

[2.44]

SKF: …a particular friend because of this fandom because of the live show

that's happening for these particular two YouTube stars had its own…

[2.45]

C: Yeah, like, I found other people too. But K and I have really hit it off, and

now, there's a café right down the street [from the venue] where we're going to have a meetup.

[2.46]

SKF: So far we're talking about fandoms, and we're talking about platforms.

The platforms I've heard about so far are Amino, Google Plus, Instagram, Twitter, and Tumblr.

[2.47]

C: Wattpad, if I…dare to go on there ever. [ room giggles]

[2.48]

A: I go there.

[2.49] SKF, to C: You used to. Last year was all about Wattpad.

[2.50]

C: Oof. 'Cause I was all about [Minecraft Diaries YouTuber] Aphmau. I regret

all of it.

[2.51]

SKF: Don't! [ softly] It's part of your history.

[2.52]

C: [ laughing] Yeah, but it's also, like, ugh. Also bands. Fall Out Boy.

[2.53]

SKF: Let me give D a chance to answer this question too. [ to D] So. Big

fandoms?

[2.54]

D: Oh, there are so many.

[2.55]

SKF: Give me your big one right now.

[2.56]

D: I have four big ones. But my biggest one is probably DC. Not the DC

Cinematic Universe, but DC in general.

[2.57]

SKF: Like, the comics?

[2.58]

D: Comics and Cinematic Universe.

[2.59]

SKF: So both together, got it.

[2.60]

D: Yeah.

[2.61]

SKF: And where do you participate in the DC fandom?

[2.62]

D: Mostly Amino…Because I find it's a really great place. The people there

are really supportive. You can upload your art, you can upload your fan fiction. You can role-play — if you have OCs [original characters], or if you want to role-play as canon characters. That's the main reason I joined Amino was to role-play, because I have so many OCs.

[2.63]

C: I did a lot of role-play on Tumblr last year.

[2.64]

SKF: So this is my question—because I'm not actually hearing a whole lot of

Tumblr love—

[2.65]

D: I used to be on Tumblr, but…

[2.66]

A: I've never been on Tumblr.

[2.67]

C: Oh, don't. Oof. It'll suck you in.

[2.68]

B: I'll go there if there is, like, a link to it from Google Plus.

[2.69]

SKF: One of the things I'm wondering is, because, my generation has a

problem with Tumblr—

[2.70]

C: [ scoffing] Tumblr in general is problematic. [ background laughter]

[2.71]

SKF: Right. So, my fandom platform, in my day, the big one was LiveJournal,

and then Dreamwidth. It's a journal-based site, where everyone has their own blog, like in Tumblr. But unlike Tumblr, you can have filters [and] access lists; you can lock things for people; and unlike Tumblr, there are actual conversations that happen in comments, that stay in one place.

[2.72]

D: Yeah, that's kind of the reason I left Tumblr. I did like it for a while, but it got too hard to navigate through it, so I just left.

[2.73]

C: Honestly, I only really use Tumblr when…maybe like twice a week. I don't

have much of a following on there, unlike Instagram or Twitter. Like, I use it for…

posting or finding fan art.

[2.74]

SKF: The other thing that Tumblr isn't great at, which I'm wondering about,

because B, you said one of the things you liked about Google Plus was how private it was, and how protected, and how everyone was nice…I'm wondering, because one of

the things we as fan-scholars are concerned about with Tumblr, when we see the trends, is that it feels like fandom in general has gone from a very protected, "don't show the normals what we're up to" kind of culture to "everybody knows about fan art and fan fiction, everybody can find it, it's all out there in public." It seems to me that your generation might be going back to wanting to be more private again, based on what

you're telling me?

[2.75]

B: Not so much that, but that you don't want some random person coming in

and throwing everything off. Like, you're having this nice role-play and someone just shows up and posts a picture of a cat playing piano. [ kids laugh and agree]

[2.76]

C: And when you have fan accounts and then you post things…I mean, fan

culture is just, like, finding posts and then reposting it on your account so that you can have more followers.

[2.77]

SKF: That's the other concern, right? That on Tumblr it's really easy to steal

other people's stuff.

[2.78]

C: Yeah.

[2.79]

A: That's true.

[2.80]

C: That's why you watermark. Honestly. In the middle, so that they can't crop

it out.

[2.81]

SKF: But sometimes they'll still steal it, with your watermark, and not care.

Right?

[2.82]

B: That's why you write on the bottom of your post, "Not my art."

3. Conclusion

[3.1] What this initial conversation indicates to me is that the younger teens are simultaneously less afraid of being public but more interested in having communities focused on only the fandom topic. Other online practices I observe my kid and their friends engaging in bear this out. They will have multiple Instagram accounts with different focuses. The main album will contain only the most planned-out, aesthetically pleasing shots, while the random captures of daily life will either go into Instagram stories or else into Snapchat (which Instagram Stories is generally trying to replicate on a platform level). Separating one's online self into several narrowed personae is fairly common, it appears.

[3.2] Amino is a platform that I had no knowledge of before talking to these students.

It has a read-only website (https://aminoapps.com/). Like Snapchat or Instagram, its full functionality is available only on the app. It's existed for a few years as a loose confederation of interest-specific separate apps, but it more recently created a central hub where one can access the different aminos. Louise Matsakis (2018) describes

Amino as a "mobile-first platform aimed at teens…organized similarly to Reddit

—which also doesn't require real names—but has the emotional, nerdy attitude of

Tumblr." Matsakis's bigger point, and the one that is also most interesting to me in light of the conversation with my students, is that Amino allows for true anonymity. There is no "log in with Facebook" button, and users can create different identities for different aminos. It resembles the fannish attitude toward privacy used at Dreamwidth or the Archive of Our Own, but in an updated mobile-forward platform created specifically for teens.

[3.3] The other major takeaway from these conversations is the extent to which

young teens' experience of the internet is entirely app based. I have been observing this shift for years, and it's not a big surprise, but the effects of it on the thirteen- to fifteen-year-olds I interviewed are profound. I spent some time describing the Archive of Our

Own to them and showing them the site, to their great interest. They were particularly impressed by the ease of narrowing searches for fandoms and pairings. However, once they learned it didn't have an app, it was clear this was a deal breaker. The kids of this generation use the web for school and apps for fun. The split is psychological and normative, and it will not be bridged by simply educating the young fans on the

existence of websites. If the AO3 is going to sustain its user base, it is going to need to develop an app.

[3.4] Again, this conversation is not meant to stand in for all fans of middle school age, but their communities teem with kids of the same age with the same interests and norms. It is safe to say that both the interest in narrowing down the focus of

communities and of living one's online fannish life in apps are generation-wide trends, and we need to be mindful of this as we continue to look at the future of fandom.

4. Note

1. In addition to anonymizing the students, I asked for explicit permission from the school and had them return signed permission slips that informed their parents of the general project and that noted that a published article would result. The major

challenges in doing this kind of work with minors are permission and protection of privacy.

5. Reference

Matsakis, Louise. 2018. "Amino Apps Makes the Case for Anonymity Online." Wired,

February 13, 2018. https://www.wired.com/story/amino-apps-anonymity/.

!

Personality, behavioral, and social heterogeneity within the cosplay community

SYMPOSIUM

Personality, behavioral, and social

heterogeneity within the cosplay

community

Robin S. Rosenberg

University of California, San Francisco, California,

United States

Andrea M. Letamendi

University of California, Los Angeles, California,

United States

[0.1] Abstract—In an exploratory study that surveyed 929

demographically diverse self-identified adult cosplayers about

extraversion and behavioral and social aspects of cosplay, respondents

completed a thirty-four-item self-report questionnaire regarding

demographic information, cosplay behavior, and the ten extraversion

items from the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire-Revised Short Form

(EPQR-S). Cosplayers are within a normative range of extraversion;

respondents who are relatively more introverted differ in some of their

cosplay behaviors and experiences from those who are more extraverted.

[0.2] Keywords—Extraversion; Identity; Involvement with media

characters

Rosenberg, Robin S., and Andrea M. Letamendi. 2018. "Personality, Behavioral, and

Social Heterogeneity within the Cosplay Community." In "The Future of Fandom,"

special 10th anniversary issue, Transformative Works and Cultures, no. 28.

SYMPOSIUM

Rainbow Direction and fan-based

citizenship performance

Bri Mattia

DePaul University, Chicago, Illinois, United States

[0.1]

Abstract—The success of the activist group Rainbow Direction,

created by fans of the UK boy band One Direction, helped change the

dominant ideology of One Direction's concerts and chip away at the

long-held assertions of who fangirls are. Social media can be used to

enact social change, combating the erasure of LGBT+ fans from the

fangirl narrative.

[0.2]

Keywords—Boy band; Fan studies; LGBT+; One Direction

Mattia, Bri. 2018. "Rainbow Direction and Fan-Based Citizenship Performance." In

"The Future of Fandom," special 10th anniversary issue, Transformative Works and Cultures, no. 28. http://dx.doi.org/10.3983/twc.2018.1414.

1. Introduction

[1.1] For many fans, the sight of Harry Styles running around the stage at various stops on One Direction's 2015 tour with a rainbow flag draped over his shoulders wasn't just a sign of solidarity—it was like a victory lap. Two years after its founding, Rainbow Direction, a project started by LGBT+ fans of the ubiquitous UK boy band,

achieved a new level of visibility when the band members themselves started

acknowledging their efforts. Rainbow Direction used social media to organize a global effort to end intrafandom bullying, create a safe and welcoming space, and gain

visibility for young women marginalized by the denigrating social construction of a fangirl. In doing so, it created a model for fan-based citizenship performance in the age of social media, and changed not just the dominant ideology of One Direction's concerts but also the perception of a fangirl.

2. LGBT+ fangirl erasure

[2.1] Fan-based citizenship performances, such as fan-created activist groups like Rainbow Direction, "grow out of fan experiences with popular culture" (Hinck 2015, 7). For Rainbow Direction, it was not just the experience of One Direction's music but years of exclusion that LGBT+ fans felt from the boy band narrative that culminated in its founding. The assertion held by many, ever since there were boys in bands to fangirl over, is that fangirls are young women who are hysterical (a loaded misogynistic

descriptor), and too wrapped up in their obsession to care about anything that is deemed to have actual importance. "In its derogatory sense, fangirl pathologises the fan, their passion(s), and the performativity of their fannishness" (Dare-Edwards 2015). Mockery of fangirls for activities like screaming, crying, camping out for hours or sometimes days in order to see the object of their passion—the most visible and visceral ways in which boy band fangirls perform—becomes equated with sexual hysteria, not genuine

interest. This presumption began with Beatlemania: perhaps not the first, but the most memorable example of fangirling, and one frequently evoked when large groups of

young women convene over something or someone they love. "For the girls who

participated in Beatlemania sex was an obvious part of the excitement…It was

rebellious (especially for the very young fans) to lay claim to sexual feelings. It was even more rebellious to lay claim to the active, desiring of sexual attraction"

(Ehrenreich, Hess, and Jacobs 1992, 90). Prior to women's sexual liberation in the late 1960s and 1970s, Beatlemania "was a way to express sexual yearnings that would

normally be pressed into the service of popularity or simply repressed" (Ehrenreich, Hess, and Jacobs 1992, 97).

[2.2] While attraction to the members of boy bands remains a facet of many fangirls'

experiences, this blanket assumption disregards the reality that not all fangirls are heterosexual: "The assumed demographic of the typical pop fan is heteronormative,

ageist and off-base…by automatically equating boyband fans with young girls falling in love with their favourites, there's a misogynistic tendency to make pop appreciation seem like an immature, gendered practice which erases legions of LGBTQ+ fans in the process" (Roach 2017). In 1964, the height of Beatlemania helped to push back on the repression of young women's sexual autonomy; and in 2014, in the midst of One

Direction's meteoric rise, Rainbow Direction pushed back on the repression of young women who did not identify as heterosexual.

[2.3] The erasure of LGBT+ fans is not simply a result of how mainstream media

defines fangirls, but also a result of how record labels market male pop artists and bands. One Direction is no different. One example of One Direction's marketing

strategy is its first concert tour. The tour shows featured a series of video vignettes that were meant to give the boys time for costume changes but, more importantly, would

make the audience feel as if they were dating the band. The final video that played before the show's encore asked the audience if they would like to go on a romantic dinner date with One Direction, assuming that that would be every fan's ultimate dream.

It of course was not, and the final video was both alienating to LGBT+ fans and mocked

by the fan base as a whole.

3. Rainbow Direction's founding and mission

statement

[3.1] Because LGBT+ fans of the band did not see themselves in the dominant One

Direction narrative, they sought refuge in fan fiction, "one of the few outlets that an increasingly frustrated queer audience has to engage with material that refuses to engage with them" (Binstock 2016). However, following a Twitter exchange in April

2013 between band member Louis Tomlinson and Thomas Parker (member of the now

defunct boy band The Wanted) in which Parker mentioned rumors he had heard that

Tomlinson was gay and used the hashtag "#itgetsbetter" in a sarcastic manner, even the safe space of fan fiction was threatened for LGBT+ fans. Debate over Parker's tweet caused heated debate and intense bullying within the fandom. Some fans began

accusing LGBT+ fan fiction writers of being the source of rumors about Tomlinson's sexuality, due to Larry Stylinson (the name given to the pairing of Harry Styles and Louis Tomlinson, the fandom's most popular ship) slash fan fiction written by them.

This inciting incident inspired three fans to create Rainbow Direction.

[3.2] Rainbow Direction's initial purpose was "to help educate people that gay rumors aren't something to defend themselves against (especially in a mean fashion), because being gay isn't shameful" (Marusic 2015). After receiving input from hundreds of other LGBT+ fans on Tumblr, Rainbow Direction created its mission statement, gained

visibility, and added fostering a safe space for fans at concerts to its list of goals, alongside combating homophobic bullying within the fandom. "We want to speak out to show support, and stand up proudly to make ourselves known. Because we aren't just one in a million! We want to show who we are and how much support there is for the LGBTQIA+ members of our community, all around the globe"

(http://takemehomefromnarnia.tumblr.com/post/97918944291/the-ultimate-rainbow-

direction-masterpost).

[3.3] Rainbow Direction's mission statement is what Hinck would identify as an

ethical framework, "a worldview or a frame of understanding based on an ethic that is theoretical and all encompassing" (8). The actions that Rainbow Direction took to gain visibility and acceptance of LGBT+ fans is the group's ethical modality or "way of meeting an ethical obligation" (Hinck 2015, 8). An ethical framework is ideology, and an ethical modality is the way in which that ideology is expressed and enacted. Starting with One Direction's Where We Are (WWA) Tour, which began in August 2014,

Rainbow Direction organized a peaceful protest at every concert. Led by team captains assigned for each city the band visited, the group created signs, printed paper rainbow hearts, and brought rainbow flags to be held up when One Direction sang the song

"Strong" (figure 1).

Figure 1.Team captains displaying printed paper rainbow hearts and rainbow flags to hold up when One Direction sings "Strong."

[3.4] Following its success with the WWA Tour, Rainbow Direction continued and

increased its efforts for the band's On the Road Again (OTRA) Tour in 2015—this time making a modification to its demonstration that would prove even more successful than its initial idea. In her article, Hinck addresses the barriers of entry to fandom: "Being a fan often requires some minimum degree of leisure time and money to access popular culture artifacts and participate in fan communities" (Hinck 2015, 15). Besides the obvious barrier of affording a ticket to a One Direction concert in order to participate in Rainbow Direction's biggest effort, there was one other significant obstacle. Many fans who wanted to participate in Rainbow Direction had come out to the fandom

community, but not to their families. Reasons ranged from them just not feeling ready to come out publicly yet to the unfortunate reality that if they did come out they would no longer be safe in their own homes. Bringing a rainbow flag or sign to a concert wasn't an option for these fans, so Rainbow Direction came up with a new idea. For the band's OTRA tour, team captains assigned a different color of the rainbow to each

section of the venue. Fans saved an image of the color their section was assigned onto their phones, and would hold their phones up when the band sang "Little Things,"

creating a rainbow wave of light around the venue (video 1). Thousands more fans

participated in this action than any of Rainbow Direction's previous efforts, and it ultimately was what got them noticed, not only by mainstream media outlets but also the band.

Video 1. YouTube video "One Direction Little Things OTRA tour 0301 Rainbow Project," showing the audience holding up their phones to flash colored light during One Direction's performance of "Little Things."

4. Rainbow Direction's success in defining the

dominant ideology

[4.1] Amber Davisson discusses how through efforts of fandom, "new meanings

emerge from old cultural artifacts. However, this does not mean that old meanings slip away" (Davisson 2016, ¶ 4.2). Hinck also discusses the creation of meaning in fandom, writing that "Fan communities develop a set of dominant interpretations for their text…

fan communities like any community are not monolithic…not all…fans will subscribe

to those dominant interpretations" (Hinck 2015, 13). Rainbow Direction was not an

afterthought, nor did it deal with an older cultural text, or attempt to change anyone's interpretations of the text of the songs themselves. The group attempted to change the dominant ideology of a One Direction concert in real time, and it succeeded. Despite the fact that not all of One Direction's fans agreed with or subscribed to Rainbow Direction's stated ideology (in fact, in terms of physical presence at concerts and online presence, Rainbow Direction has always been in the minority), because of the group's efforts, it was solidified as dominant whether those fans agreed or not.

[4.2] Rainbow Direction was not easy to ignore. Not only did its ideology become

dominant, but the band itself, in response to Rainbow Direction's efforts, began

attaching the same meaning to their concerts. The band owes a great deal of its success to fans and their use of social media: "One Direction was the first boy band to be fully realized as an online phenomenon. Using the massive power of the internet,

Directioners have been able to bring themselves closer to the band and each other, and

the result is a community that understands its importance" (Lancaster 2016). So as LGBT+ fans began demanding visibility, the band noticed and gave them exactly that.

It started small, with members of the band picking up and putting on rainbow bracelets that had been thrown on the stage, and acknowledging the rainbow signs in the crowd.

Styles would frequently end the greeting he gave at the beginning of every concert by asking the question, "Are you ready for a good equal time at the One Direction show?"

At the show in Boston on September 12, 2015, he declared: "Here at One Direction we like to celebrate love. In all forms. Love is love" (video 2). Rainbow Direction's message was now being spread by a member of the band itself.

Video 2. YouTube video "Harry Styles—Love is love speech—OTRA 9/12/15

—Boston, MA (First Row)," showing close-up of performer Harry Styles on stage

acknowledging "all forms" of love.

[4.3] For its run of six sold-out shows at London's O2 Arena, the band modified its lighting design. In response to the fans creating a sea of rainbow light during "Little Things," the band returned the gesture by lighting up the stage in rainbow colors during its performance of the song "Girl Almighty." There could no longer be any argument as to what the dominant ideology of a One Direction show was; the band agreed with

Rainbow Direction. Whether or not this choice had been made simply to appease the

most vocal segment of its fan base, Rainbow Direction's voice had been heard. Getting the band's attention also secured the group media attention, which helped dispel long-held heteronormative assumptions about boy band fangirls.

5. Conclusion

[5.1] Rainbow Direction has inspired other music fandoms, like those of Taylor

Swift, Ed Sheeran, and One Direction's sister band Little Mix, to start rainbow groups

of their own. Kat Lewis, one of Rainbow Direction's cofounders, gave the following quote to MTV News in 2015: "Try and make a change where you are…If you're in a

fandom online that's somewhere you can start to change the world" (Marusic 2015).

Even with the band on hiatus, Rainbow Direction is continuing its work, now

organizing actions for each of the One Direction band members' solo tours, and

continuing to set an example for how social media can be used to enact social change.

6. References

Binstock, Rae. 2016. "Why Do Queer People Write Fan Fiction? To See Themselves in

Mainstream Culture." Slate, May 30, 2016. http://www.slate.com/blogs/outward

/2016/05

/30/queer_people_write_fan_fiction_to_see_themselves_in_mainstream_culture.html.

Dare-Edwards, Helena. 2015. "Negotiating a Fangirl Identity: Producers in a Fan Space, Fangirl Hierarchies, and Inter-/Intra-fandom." Conference presentation at the Fan

Studies Network Symposium, Norwich, UK, June 2015.

Davisson, Amber. 2016. "Mashing Up, Remixing, and Contesting the Popular Memory

of Hillary Clinton." Transformative Works and Cultures, no. 22. http://dx.doi.org

/10.3983/twc.2016.0965.

Ehrenreich, Barbara, Elizabeth Hess, and Gloria Jacobs. 1992. "Beatlemania: Girls Just Want to Have Fun." In The Adoring Audience: Fan Culture and Popular Media, edited by Lisa A. Lewis, 84–106. New York: Routledge.

Hinck, Ashley. 2015 "Ethical Frameworks and Ethical Modalities: Theorizing

Communication and Citizenship in a Fluid World." Communication Theory 26 (1): 1–20. https://doi.org/10.1111/comt.12062.

Lancaster, Brodie. 2016. "Rainbow Connection: Finding Home Within One Direction's

Queer Fan Base." MTV News, June 30, 2016. http://www.mtv.com/news/2213053

/rainbow-direction-lgbt-one-direction-fans/.

Marusic, Kristina. 2015. "Meet Rainbow Direction: The Fans Fighting to End LGBT

Bullying in the One Direction Fandom," MTV News, July 20, 2015.

Roach, Emily. 2017. "From Boyband to Beyond: Why Do Conversations about Pop

Music Still Bash the Fangirl?" Mary Sue, April 12, 2017. https://www.themarysue.com

/boyband-to-beyond-pop-music/.

SYMPOSIUM

Theater criticism, Harry Potter and the

Cursed Child, and online community

Megan Vaughan

Royal Hol oway University of London, London, United

Kingdom

[0.1]

Abstract—After summarizing initial research into the UK's

theater blogging communities, I present some early observations about

amateur theater critics writing from within and outside fandom. From

my multiple perspectives as Tumblr user, blogger, theater fan, and

academic, I consider the way those who respond to Harry Potter and the

Cursed Child (2016) on Tumblr display similar behaviors to those who

maintain general theater review blogs, with both groups appearing to

organize and distinguish themselves according to strict codes of ethics,

ways of working, and markers of taste.

[0.2]

Keywords—Blogging; Fans; Fan studies; Tumblr

Vaughan, Megan. 2018. "Theater Criticism, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, and Online Community." In "The Future of Fandom," special 10th anniversary issue,

Transformative Works and Cultures, no. 28. http://dx.doi.org/10.3983/twc.2018.1273.

1. Introduction

[1.1] On July 13, 2017, less than a month before my writing this, Tumblr user

aberorca posted a photo of a drawing they had done of Harry and Albus Potter, except with cacti where their usual wizard bodies would have been. The inspiration for the sketch had come from another Tumblr user, torestoreamends, whose #Prickly Cactus

Child tag emerged after a 17,000-word recap of the two Harry Potter and the Cursed Child (2016) shows performed on June 24. Having revisited the show about three weeks after the second cast had taken up their roles, torestoreamends used the tag to reflect on

the performance of the new Albus (Theo Ancient) compared to the performance of the first actor in the role (Sam Clemmett). Ancient was considered standoffish, a less open and forthcoming Albus than his predecessor—hence the "prickly" characterization.

[1.2] The image of Cactus Harry and Cactus Albus was done with pen on lined paper, very clearly a rough sketch, but shared with a caption explaining that it had also been passed to another Tumblr user, the-eighth-story, in the hope that they would "do a polished version of it" and "post in a reblog."

[1.3] None of these fan behaviors, nor their inspirations or goals, will be new or unusual for fan scholars who are well versed in the kind of participatory culture that drives and is driven by online fan communities. Discovering this post as a new PhD

researcher, however, investigating outsider theater criticism and the people who

produce it, I must admit to sitting back in my chair, looking off into the middle distance, and, for a brief moment at least, experiencing some significant feels. This was fan art not of the canonical source material but of another fan's show recap. You don't get that in the broadsheets, or even on the blogs.

2. Tumblr as community, Tumblr as content

management system

[2.1] At this stage in my research I can only really speak of hunches, but one of the strongest hunches I have about traditional theater criticism is that it only really becomes discursive when there are disagreements to air. Even before we all moved online, very few people took the time to write into newspapers to register their wholehearted

agreement with a critic's verdict on a show. And since the internet has facilitated a community of theater critics working outside of mainstream publications, on blogs and volunteer-run magazine sites, the posts that frame their criticism as a response to earlier reviews generally do so in order to right a perceived wrong.

[2.2] To find this example of a creative response to a detail in a long-form piece of fan theater criticism felt like a significant moment: praise and generosity displayed from one user to another, something I find regularly in fan communities but rarely in other critical cultures. It confirmed something I'd known since I started following the Cursed Child responses on Tumblr, back when the show opened in June 2016: that this relatively small group of young theater fans, visiting and documenting their favorite performance over and over and over again, were making for themselves the absolute

best, most wonderful part of our theater discourse, if not of the entire internet. This wasn't a disgruntled spectator taking to their keyboard to set the record straight regarding a show; it was a fan celebrating the criticism of another using their own skill and creativity.

[2.3] I have my own history with Tumblr, starting in 2009 when I shifted my old

Blogger content over to the platform. At the time it was fairly new and seemed fairly

cool, founded by the kind of hipster nerds I imagined would be my peers, were I to live in Brooklyn rather than rainy northern England. I had been a music blogger on

MySpace and was still mourning its recent demise, so I filled my Tumblr dash with all the cool Brooklyn start-up guys who would recommend Pitchfork indie bands in

between digital scans from their latest medium-format photography shoots. Gradually, though, I left my dash behind; as I got more and more into theater, my Tumblr simply became a place to log in and post quickly about shows. It became my content

management system; as soon as I pressed Publish, I'd copy the link and take it straight over to my social network of choice, Twitter. And although I became aware that it was there, I never really found, nor sought, the kind of collaborative and conversational Tumblr community I have since seen in action on the Cursed Child tags.

3. It's just like a bad fan fic

[3.1] I found it fascinating to read Louisa Stein's Millennial Fandom (2015) recently, in which she considers Tumblr's reblogging culture via an old post from the Harry

Potter fandom: "Reblog if you are a wizard or a witch." The proliferation of this post (1.4 million reblogs as of May 2013) is taken by some users to signify the total

domination of the fandom on Tumblr, even as some of its rebloggers explain that they will "always reblog" every time they encounter the post. There's something inherently joyful about this quest to secure the fandom's visibility, as expressed by the celebratory animated GIFs that were added to the post as its numbers stacked up, but there is also something a bit fighty about those sentiments too. Of course, I do not naively believe that fandoms are some kind of utopia in which everyone just drinks in one another's joy and enthusiasm all day long. "This fandom, Tumblr, is ours," one of the tags

accompanying the reblogged post, could be seen as distastefully proprietorial, even if its tongue is firmly in its cheek.

[3.2] This potential for confrontation seems to have come to fruition with The Cursed Child, which, in its script form at least, has created a rift in the Harry Potter fandom.

Citing its multiple authors (note 1) or bad fan fic plot, many existing Potterheads have refused to acknowledge it as part of the canon. Some who read the script but were not familiar with the conventions of playwriting complained that it felt "rushed and sloppy"

(hi-i-love-you-bitch2017, in a Tumbr post dated July 10) or only created "a watered-down version" (Badz2016, in a Tumblr post dated August 1) of the Potterverse, with angry user comments on the book's Amazon page inspiring numerous online articles

mocking young fans. The publishers were even moved to include, in a later edition of the play's text, a special dialogue between writer Jack Thorne and director John Tiffany (2017), discussing the peculiarities of reading stage directions rather than prosaic description.

[3.3] While bad feeling toward the play still regularly appears on Tumblr and shows little sign of disappearing completely, it has arguably galvanized those who had seen the show. From very early in its run, fans would emerge from the Palace Theatre

auditorium, log into Tumblr, and fervently defend the live experience and the team

behind the show. Here's one Tumblr user, in a post dated August 8, with just one example of many:

[3.4] Look, I get it. If all you've done is read the script, you aren't

witnessing that magic. On paper some of that story even reads as silly but

when you're watching it? Oh how it all makes sense, and you are as absorbed

in that world as you were when you read the series the first time. So I get it, I

do. But…you're hating something because you've not got the complete

version before you yet. But when you do, and if I know JK Rowling

eventually she'll find a way that you can, oh how you'll be there again, in the

Wizarding World. (zombieonavespa2016)

4. Cultural capital and cultural tribalism

[4.1] There are similarities here with what I'm finding from my research into the UK's theater blogging community, meaning those who self-identify as theater bloggers and who consider theater criticism to be one of their primary contributions to online

discourse. This particular community lives on Twitter, not Tumblr, although we might host our blogs there (or on Blogger, WordPress, Medium, and the like). I say "we"

because this is my practice too: going to see shows, thinking about them, then sharing my thoughts for an online community of like-minded enthusiasts and theater industry workers. This group of bloggers cannot really be considered as one community; while we are mutually supportive, reading and sharing one another's work, and entering into conversation about it on Twitter, we are also divided by lines of taste, style, and the social and regional groups that mean some bloggers have greater access to shows, and some friendships develop IRL while others don't.

[4.2] Regular theater attendance—whether by fans or bloggers—is a privilege and

one that can lead to significant disparity in the (sub)cultural capital of groups that might emerge around a certain show or venue or theater scene. Those who can afford to buy many tickets and who live within easy traveling distance can demonstrate their fandom and/or develop their critical thinking in ways inaccessible to those for whom the theater is too expensive or too far away. In the Harry Potter fandom, we have seen this

distinction clearly, with fans who read the published text without seeing the show reporting a very different experience of the work to those who had seen it live.

Likewise, those who have only been able to see the show once are effectively excluded from the small group of hard-core fans who have enough income and flexibility to take advantage of the last-minute day ticket queue and the weekly Friday Forty ticket draw.

It is through repeat engagement that these fans develop their critical engagement with the show, and it is through their Tumblr show recaps that those unable to attend—or unable to attend so often—glimpse the real detail of the production. It is certainly true that theater's inaccessibility has exacerbated a somewhat problematic fan hierarchy.

[4.3] Questions of access and payment have been central to the blogosphere too, as some professionalizing critics have attempted to belittle amateur practices and

demonstrate that they critique theater more ethically than do others (Trueman 2011).

Questions of expertise and quality of critical engagement have been raised; for

example, theater blogger Andrew Haydon notes in a post dated February 14, 2011, that we should recognize the "qualitative difference between marketing yourself as a

person…and marketing yourself as an opinion on theater," describing those who post only about theater in more recognizably reviewlike formats. Many bloggers strive to distinguish themselves from others, even as they appear to share practices in common, and few who receive free tickets and invites to press night performances openly

acknowledge these privileges.

[4.4] I recognize a lot from Stacy Wolf's (2011) writing about the fans who populated Wicked forums from 2004 to 2006. Wolf notes that while most fan interactions were as supportive as they were creative and educational, lines were drawn when some fans

signaled their own cultural capital by opposing those who they perceived to be (in Wolf's words) "fake" or "wrong" or "inappropriately boastful" (232). Professing to be better informed about a favored show than you really were was a crime worthy of

exposure and ridicule on the fan forums, even as names and identities were obscured, not dissimilar to the way theater bloggers perform their own cultural capital by setting themselves apart from others. I began my research on Tumblr looking for evidence of criticism within theater fandoms, but I now find myself equally interested in locating the fan behavior within the UK's theater blogosphere. The tribalism of the two groups seems to have a lot in common.

[4.5] I use Tumblr differently now to how I did when I was using it as my regular blogging platform. My original theater blog has moved again, to a Medium publication, but I continue to lurk on the Cursed Child tags, reblogging all the show reports and thoughts I find in readiness for the next phase of my PhD project

(https://cursedchildtheatre.tumblr.com/). Right now I'm watching the-eighth-story

particularly closely; they could post that polished version of Cactus Albus any day now.

5. Note

1. J. K. Rowling worked as script advisor to writer Jack Thorne, while the show's

director, John Tiffany, is also credited for his input.

6. References

Stein, Louisa Ellen. 2015. Millennial Fandom: Television Audiences in the Transmedia Age. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press.

Tiffany, John, and Jack Thorne. 2017. "A Conversation about Reading Scripts." In

Harry Potter and the Cursed Child—Parts One and Two: The Official Playscript of the Original West End Production, by J. K. Rowling, John Tiffany, and Jack Thorne, ix–

xiii. London: Sphere.

Trueman, Matt. 2011. "Theatre Bloggers Must Leave Previews Alone." Guardian, February 10, 2011. https://www.theguardian.com/stage/theatreblog/2011/feb

/10/bloggers-review-previews-theatre.

Wolf, Stacy. 2011. Changed for Good: A Feminist History of the Broadway Musical.

New York: Oxford University Press.

SYMPOSIUM

Jewish identity, fan representation, and

Yehuda Goldstein in the Potterverse

Deborah Krieger

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States

[0.1]

Abstract—The Harry Potter fan fiction "Goldstein," by Laazov, a

long-running fic begun in November 2014 that remains uncompleted,

centers on Anthony "Yehuda" Goldstein, a marginal character confirmed

as Jewish by J. K. Rowling. This fan fic has led many Jewish fans to

embrace him as the sole example of Jewish representation in the

Potterverse. This analysis of "Goldstein" traces fan efforts regarding

representation of marginalized identities and how these efforts have

made it into the mainstream.

[0.2] Keywords—Fan activity; Harry Potter; Jewish media; Orthodox

Judaism

Krieger, Deborah. 2018. "Jewish Identity, Fan Representation, and Yehuda Goldstein in the Potterverse." In "The Future of Fandom," special 10th anniversary issue,

Transformative Works and Cultures, no. 28. http://dx.doi.org/10.3983/twc.2018.1312.

1. Introduction

[1.1]

Nathan Abrams, in The New Jew in Film, summarizes the shifting portrayals of Jews in popular culture, including this pertinent discussion of the post–World War II trends:

[1.2] The post-war period was characterised as a golden age in American

Jewish history…Jews became more acculturated, assimilated and upwardly

mobile…yet, paradoxically…Jews were not necessarily any more visible

onscreen, because melting-pot monoculturalism still dominated in the

immediate post-war decades. Rather than being hidden entirely, however,

Jews were idealised, "de-Judainised" (that is turned into Gentiles) and "de-Semitised"—"the elimination of specifically Jewish characteristics from

Jewish roles"—and played by non-Jews (Erens 1984, 136). (Abrams 2012,

4–5)

[1.3]

While Abrams (2012) then goes on to cite mainstream depictions of Jews that

are more explicit, including the films of Woody Allen and the television show Seinfeld (1989–98), when it comes to popular genre texts (and/or their subsequent adaptations to the big and small screens), it is a different story altogether. When it comes to science fiction and fantasy, Jewish characters are few and far between. Further, they are often cast with Gentile actors, their Jewish identities toned down or ignored entirely.

[1.4]

Witness, for example, the Marvel Cinematic Universe (based largely on comics

created by Jewish writers and artists), which has erased the Jewish identities of

characters like Pietro and Wanda Maximoff, and, in the case of Wanda, cast the role with non-Jewish actress Elizabeth Olsen.

[1.5]

In response to the paucity of accurate and empowering Jewish representation in

popular culture, Jewish fans have used online fannish spaces such as Tumblr,

FanFiction.net, and the Archive of Our Own to assert claims to these works of media, allowing them to combine these works with their own faith and culture to make new

meaning of the source material. Here I discuss the fan fiction "Goldstein" by Laazov, which recasts a minor Potterverse character, Anthony Goldstein, as the Orthodox

Jewish protagonist of his own adventures at Hogwarts.

2. Yehuda Goldstein goes to Hogwarts

[2.1]

Omer Bartov discusses the four roles that the Jew has played in popular

entertainment: "either perpetrator or victim, hero or anti-hero" (2005, x). The

perpetrator stereotype was popular in Nazi propaganda, found in films such as The Eternal Jew (1940) and The Golem: How He Came into the World (1920); in response to the Holocaust, the victim role became prominent, as seen in films like Sophie's Choice (1982) and Schindler's List (1993). The heroic Jew features within the context of establishment of the state of Israel, as seen in films like Exodus (1960), while the antihero likewise functions as a reaction to the state of Israel and growing support for the Palestinian cause, as seen in films like Hamsin (1982) and Beyond the Walls (1984).

[2.2]

In Great Britain, however, there is divergence from the American model of how

Jews have been portrayed in media. As Abrams notes, "It seems that Jews have been

written out of the histories of film and television in the United Kingdom and its

constituent nations" (2016, 4). He cites the lack of scholarship and focus on the larger context of Jewish representation in British media culture, arguing that Jews in Britain are irrevocably tied to the memory of the Holocaust, making Jews a "minority group that [the British contemporary audience] does not, in general, understand" (4).

[2.3]

It has become clear that the Potterverse is not ending anytime soon, with the

announcement of Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them prequel franchise and subsequent release of the first film in late 2016. Through it all, Rowling has maintained an active authorial presence on Twitter, continually engaging with fans of the series and releasing tidbits of extradiegetic information to enrich the Potterverse. On December 16, 2014, a fan asked J. K. Rowling on Twitter, "My wife said there are no Jews at Hogwarts. I'm a Jew so I assume she said it to be the only magical 1 in the family.

Thoughts?" (Roffman 2014). Rowling (2014a) replied simply, "Anthony Goldstein,

Ravenclaw, Jewish wizard." She added a day later: "OK, let me clarify that! Anthony isn't the first Jewish student, nor is he the only one. I just have reasons for knowing most about him!" (Rowling 2014b).

[2.4]

While Anthony Goldstein is such a marginal character that he is not even

portrayed in the Harry Potter films, according to the Harry Potter Wiki

(http://harrypotter.wikia.com/wiki/Anthony_Goldstein), he is in Harry's year, was a Ravenclaw prefect, is a half-blood, and was a member of the Dumbledore's Army

resistance group Harry forms in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (2007). He has several lines of dialogue in Phoenix, mostly related to Dumbledore's Army planning, and appears in the Phoenix video game adaptation.

[2.5]

Anthony Goldstein has become a popular character among Jewish Harry Potter

fans, despite—or because of—his lack of definition in the source text. As Marjorie Ingall (2015) notes, Anthony is the subject of several fan fics by Jewish authors, including "Hogwarts: A History (of Culinary Diversity)" by jood, published in the

LiveJournal community megillahfic (March 21, 2008).

[2.6]

By far the most prominent Jewish Anthony Goldstein fan fiction is "Goldstein."

The fic centers on the struggles of the extremely observant Anthony (who goes by his Hebrew name, Yehuda) as he adjusts to life at Hogwarts. As of January 2018, it has fifteen chapters and nearly seventy thousand words.

[2.7]

Yehuda is visited by Professor McGonagall, who informs him of his Hogwarts

acceptance, only for Yehuda and his family to initially reject the notion of witchcraft and eventually decide to consult with their rabbi. In a quintessentially Jewish debate sequence, Rabbi Zeller concludes, over Yehuda's father's protestations, that Yehuda has a duty to learn to control his magical gifts at Hogwarts in order to make sure he doesn't accidentally harm others:

[2.8]

When the rabbi finally spoke, his voice was very, very steady. "The

question is whether he will definitely become a danger to others, and whether that danger will be pikuach nefesh—life-threatening," he translated, glancing at McGonagall.

"Certainly you can't violate a mitzvah for a maybe!" his father said,

outraged.

"Let me ask you…," the rabbi said. "Is it muttar [permitted] to be vaccinated for a life-threatening disease on Shabbos? It depends, right? You aren't

actually being cured of a life-threatening disease; you're merely preventing a potentially fatal situation from ever developing at all. It's just a maybe…But when there is an actual epidemic, and the chances of contracting something

life-threatening are much greater, you are not only permitted but required to be vaccinated as soon as possible—even if that means violating Shabbos…If

someone is ill as a result of magic, he permits the use of a non-Jewish

sorcerer—the need for healing overrides tamim tihyeh [the rule commanding

Jews to "seek one's needs" only through God]. According to the esteemed

headmistress, if Yehuda does not learn to control magic, he can potentially

put himself or others in great makom sakanah [a dangerous place]. In which case he must learn to control it, and control it well" (note 1).

[2.9]

Once Yehuda arrives at Hogwarts, all of the issues that one might expect

regarding an Orthodox Jew in the Potterverse arise, are discussed, and are dealt with.

He learns that he can keep kosher merely by making the necessary arrangements with the kitchen house elves; receives permission to leave the school to observe holidays like Sukkot and Purim (which involves missing many lessons); and, most importantly,

learns to interact with his Gentile classmates, one of whom is actively hostile. Terry Boot, a pious Christian, becomes a thorn in Yehuda's side by continually trying to get Yehuda to come to church with him and questioning the number of holidays he

celebrates. Through it all, he keeps up correspondence with his rabbi, who helps him puzzle out the complicated intersections between his new lives: after all, is it frum to open owl post on Shabbat? Is eating a bezoar to save one's life kosher?

[2.10]

A particularly poignant moment, however, comes in chapter 9, when Yehuda

becomes a silent, unwitting ally of Terry's. During a history of magic class, Professor Binns uses his lesson on King Arthur and Morgan le Fay to denigrate religion and

religious people in general:

[2.11] "With wizardry its prime target, religion engendered

narrowmindedness and intolerance of anything its followers could not

understand."

[Yehuda] had to say something…

He swallowed hard, feeling sick. He was a coward, the biggest coward, he

had to say some thing—[…]

"That's not true."…

Terry Boot sat straight in his seat, his eyes narrowed…"It could be that some

religious people used their beliefs as an excuse to do nasty things, but I don't

think it's fair to say that faith is only for dull people who make up stories to

feel good. Are we even going to learn what religion says, or are we just

going to make fun of it?"…

"I believe I am the one teaching this class, Mr. Bugle!" Binns said acidly…"I

teach facts, not fairytales and legends. There is nothing to be gained from inventing myths to explain the inexplicable, and nothing to learn from

people who do so. This subject is History of Magic, and it is based in

nothing but fact. If you don't like it, you can leave."

There was a terrible silence.

And Terry slammed his History of Magic shut and walked out of the room…

The eyes of Ravenclaw House seared into his back, his yarmulke, expectant,

waiting. They wanted him to stand. They wanted him to put his Yiddishkeit

on display for everyone to see… Dear Rabbi Zeller, Yehuda thought

miserably, is it good or bad to make a fuss over being Jewish?

[2.12]

Interestingly enough, "Goldstein" was first published in November 2014,

predating Rowling's tweet by several weeks. In an interview I conducted with Laazov, she noted that

[2.13]

no Jew was surprised by Rowling's reveal, though it was a bit

irritating to have my thunder stolen…It all began…with a text sent to my

sister: "I'm so tempted to write a fanfic where Anthony is only his legal

name, he's really called Moishy [ sic] at home, and he would rather be in

yeshiva but the wizarding world won't allow him to be educated anywhere

other than Hogwarts." (Laazov, personal communication, June 14, 2017)

[2.14] Rather than considering herself an active member of Potter fandom, Laazov

traces her urge to write to "[being] frustrated by inaccurate portrayals of Orthodox Jews in pop culture" (Laazov, personal communication, June 14, 2017) and to a desire to reframe the Potterverse through the lens of her own Orthodox Jewish background. It seems, on the basis of the reaction of Jewish fans to "Goldstein," that this work was exactly what some Potterheads were waiting for. According to Laazov, "The Jewish fan response has been overwhelmingly positive in a way that I didn't anticipate—I posted the story on a whim, never realizing there was such a base to tap into. For many people, I've 'completed [their] childhood.'"

[2.15]

When it comes to the contentious relationship between Yehuda and Terry

Boot, Laazov explains her larger goal:

[2.16]

While I was plotting this story, Pew Research Center published a

study whose data alleged that Orthodox Jews are more similar to evangelical

Protestants than to Reform Jews. I'm an Orthodox Jew, and that makes

perfect sense to me. Against the backdrop of secular materialism, we might

find our best friends to be those who understand what it means to live life in

uncompromised accordance with anachronistic beliefs—even if those beliefs

aren't shared. The devout, even if they disagree theologically, understand

each other…Terry and Yehuda might be the products of an unfriendly

history, but at Hogwarts, they are natural allies. They just don't know it yet.

(Laazov, personal communication, June 14, 2017) (note 2)

[2.17]

Because "Goldstein" is still a work in progress, the development of Terry and

Yehuda's friendship remains to be seen. However, given that Tina and Queenie

Goldstein of Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them have been confirmed to be related to Anthony, albeit distantly (Rowling 2015), it also remains to be seen whether the Potterverse will at last allow some Jewish characters into the fold.

3. Conclusion

[3.1]

As internet-based fandoms continue to grow and change, there is still plenty of

research and analysis to be done about the power of these fan spaces and how they

allow fans of underrepresented groups to claim works of popular culture and make them relevant to their own lives, as well as deepening and expanding upon the source

material. My analysis here aims to fill in a piece of the picture of how Jewish fans fit into this kind of frame.

[3.2]

Other popular race-bending head canons, such as Indian Harry Potter and Black

Hermione, have arguably become normalized for many fic writers and fan artists on

social media, and the casting of black actress Noma Dumezweni as Hermione Granger

in Harry Potter and the Cursed Child in 2016 (Kelly 2016), while most likely not based on fan theories, demonstrates that these interpretations are becoming increasingly widespread and valid. Indeed, as Tumblr user bengaliprincess (2014) writes of

Dumezweni's casting, "Literally everything about hermione as a character is made

better if she's black. Made fun of for hair? Ppl can't pronounce her name and don't care enough to try? Casual, overt, and institutionalized racism? Rage over house elves? Fight me."

[3.3]

Even if the Black Hermione head canon didn't directly lead to Dumezweni's

casting, it's undoubtedly clear that fan efforts regarding representation of marginalized identities have made it into the mainstream and have begun to effect tangible change in media. When white British actor Ed Skrein was cast as Asian American character Major Ben Daimio in the Hellboy reboot scheduled for 2018 release, an outpouring of comments and discussion on social media, from fans both Asian American and not

(Khoo 2017), protesting the whitewashing of the character actually led to Skrein

stepping away from the project (Ramos 2017). The role was recast with Korean

American actor Daniel Dae Kim in September (Kit 2017), leading to a much more

positive fan response (Mumford 2017). In a Twitter statement to fans, Skrein (2017) indicated that he had heard and understood their concerns: "It is clear that representing this character in a culturally accurate way holds significance for people, and that to neglect this responsibility would continue a worrying tendency to obscure ethnic

minority stories and voices in the Arts."

[3.4]

It seems, then, that when it comes to advocating for representation in media,

changes in the Hollywood mind-set—and in turn changes in what we all see on our

screens—will be spurred by fan movements.

4. Notes

1. "Is it muttar [permitted]": gloss via Shalom (2017); "tamim tihyeh [the rule

commanding Jews to "seek one's needs" only through God]: gloss via Sacks (2003);

"makom sakanah [a dangerous place]: gloss via Josephs (2014).

2. For the study that Laazov cites regarding Orthodox Jews, see Pew Research Forum (2013); see also Guttman (2015).

5. References

Abrams, Nathan. 2012. The New Jew in Film: Exploring Jewishness and Judaism in Contemporary Cinema. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.

Abrams, Nathan. 2016. Introduction to Hidden in Plain Sight: Jews and Jewishness in British Film, Television, and Popular Culture, edited by Nathan Abrams, 3–28. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press.

Bartov, Omer. 2005. The "Jew" in Cinema: From "The Golem" to "Don't Touch My Holocaust." Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

bengaliprincess. 2014. "Literally everything about hermione as a character is made better if she's black…" Tumblr, January 6, 2014. http://bengaliprincess.tumblr.com

/post/107332883322 .

Erens, Patricia. 1984. The Jew in American Cinema. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Guttman, Nathan. 2015. "Pew Study Finds Orthodox Similar to Evangelical Christians—Not Other Jews." Jewish Daily Forward, August 26, 2015.

Ingall, Marjorie. 2015. "Jewish Fanfiction Creates an Alternate Literary Universe." Tablet, February 19, 2015. http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-life-and-religion/188991/jewish-fanfiction.

Josephs, Alison. 2014. "Why My Husband and I Moved to Israel in the Middle of a War."

Jew in the City, July 10, 2014. http://jewinthecity.com/2014/07/why-my-husband-and-i-moved-to-israel-during-a-war/.

Kelly, Joshua. 2016. "Casting of a Black Actress in New Harry Potter Play Causes

Controversy Among 'Idiots.'" PRI, June 7, 2016. https://www.pri.org/stories/2016-06-07

/new-harry-potter-play-causes-excitement-and-controversy.

Khoo, Isabelle. 2017. " Hellboy Producer's Comments Prove Why Whitewashing Is Such an Issue." Huffington Post Canada, August 25, 2017. http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2017/08

/25/hellboy-producer-whitewashing_a_23185522/.

Kit, Borys. 2017. "Daniel Dae Kim Applauds Ed Skrein for Bowing Out of Hellboy amid Whitewashing Outcry (Exclusive)." Hollywood Reporter, September 13, 2017.

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/heat-vision/daniel-dae-kim-applauds-ed-skrein-bowing-hellboy-whitewashing-outcry-1038647.

Laazov. 2014–. "Goldstein." Fan fiction. FanFiction.net, November 24, 2014.

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/10847788/1/Goldstein.

Mumford, Gwilym. 2017. "Daniel Dae Kim Applauds Ed Skrein for Quitting 'Whitewashed'

Hellboy Role." Guardian, September 14, 2017. https://www.theguardian.com/film/2017

/sep/14/daniel-dae-kim-replaces-ed-skrein-hellboy-whitewashing.

Pew Research Forum. 2013. "A Portrait of Jewish Americans." Pew Research Center,

October 1, 2013. http://www.pewforum.org/2013/10/01/jewish-american-beliefs-attitudes-culture-survey/.

Ramos, Dino-Ray. 2017. "Ed Skrein Leaves Hellboy Reboot after Whitewashing Backlash; Lionsgate and Millennium Respond." Deadline, August 28, 2017. https://deadline.com

/2017/08/ed-skrein-hellboy-whitewashing-backlash-lionsgate-millennium-1202157461/.

Roffman, Ben (@benroffman). 2017. "@jk_rowling my wife said there are no Jews at

Hogwarts. I'm a Jew so I assume she said it to be the only magical 1 in the family.

Thoughts?" Twitter, December 16, 2014, 11:02 a.m. https://twitter.com/benroffman/status

/544930591507226625.

Rowling, J. K. (@jk_rowling). 2014a. ".@benjaminroffman Anthony Goldstein, Ravenclaw, Jewish wizard." Twitter, December 16, 2014, 12:06 p.m. https://twitter.com/jk_rowling

/status/544946669448867841.

Rowling, J. K. (@jk_rowling). 2014b. "OK, let me clarify that! Anthony isn't the first Jewish student, nor is he the only one. I just have reasons for knowing most about him!" Twitter, December 17, 2014, 1:33 a.m. https://twitter.com/jk_rowling/status/545149848170016768.

Rowling, J. K. (@jk_rowling). 2015. "Yes (but distant)." Twitter, August 14, 2015, 10:55

a.m. https://twitter.com/jk_rowling/status/632611629843263488.

Shalom. 2011. Response to "Different expressions for 'permitted' in the gemoro and elsewhere." Mi Yodeya, July 5, 2011, 2:04 p.m. https://judaism.stackexchange.com/questions

/8672/different-expressions-for-permitted-in-the-gemoro-and-elsewhere.

Skrein, Ed (@edskrein). 2017. "Last week it was announced that I would be playing Major Ben Daimio in the upcoming Hellboy reboot…" Twitter, August 28, 2017, 12:02 p.m.

https://twitter.com/edskrein/status/902244967296491520.

SYMPOSIUM

The impact of the phenomenon of sport

rivalry on fans

Cody T. Havard

University of Memphis, Memphis, Tennessee, United

States

[0.1]

Abstract—This study of the current knowledge and research

being conducted about the phenomenon of sport rivalry introduces new

avenues of research in an effort to encourage researchers outside of sport

fandom to investigate it, thus providing insight from a perspective

outside the field.

[0.2]

Keywords—Fandom; In-group bias; Sport fans

Havard, Cody T. 2018. "The Impact of the Phenomenon of Sport Rivalry on Fans." In

"The Future of Fandom," special 10th anniversary issue, Transformative Works and Cultures, no. 28. https://doi.org/10.3983/twc.2018.1607.

1. Introduction

[1.1] The study of rivalry in sport is an area receiving more attention in the sport management, business, politics, and psychology literatures (note 1). Research

conducted on the phenomenon is important for a myriad of reasons and publics. First, furthering understanding about what causes rivalry and the outcomes of rivalry is

important to researchers investigating group and individual behavior. Important findings and implications for future research will help craft the understanding of behavior, both inside and outside of the sport arena. Rivalry research is also very important to

practitioners as understanding the phenomenon can help prepare for contests involving rival teams and groups. My goals here are to introduce the readership of Transformative Works and Cultures to research being conducted on sport rivalry and its impact on sport fandom, and to encourage research on the phenomenon outside of the sport

management field.

2. What is rivalry in sport?

[2.1] An attempt to understand the phenomenon begins with social identity theory

(Tajfel 1974), which asserts that sports fans, much like fans in other arenas, seek membership in groups that will positively reflect on their self and public image. For example, people who believe they have a strong work ethic, or people who want to

believe and have others believe that they have a strong work ethic, will follow a sport team associated with these qualities. For examle, the Pittsburgh Steelers are commonly perceived as a blue-collar team with a strong work ethic. People may also follow a sports team on the basis of family ties or location (Wann et al. 2001). When joining a group, fans can begin to take on the characteristics of the team they follow, thereby accepting the collective identity of the team or group of supporters (Crocker and

Luhtanen 1990).

[2.2] Rivalry in sport has been defined as "a fluctuating adversarial relationship existing between two teams, players, or groups of fans, gaining significance through on-field competition, on-field or off-field incidences, proximity, demographic makeup, and/or historical occurrences" (Havard et al. 2013, 51). Tyler and Cobbs (2015) define a rival group as "a highly salient out-group that poses an acute threat to the identity of the in-group or to in-group members' ability to make positive comparisons between their group and the out-group" (230). Research has identified characteristics such as history, proximity, closeness of competition, and perceived similarities and differences as important antecedents that lead to people and teams experiencing rivalry toward another group. Within sport, rivalry can offer positive benefits such as the feeling of uniqueness and excitement for upcoming contests. Rivalry can also encourage people to consume the sport product, whether involving a favorite and rival team or a rival team against a third neutral team (note 2).

[2.3] To properly gauge fan perceptions of rival teams, the Sport Rivalry Fan

Perception Scale (SRFPS) was developed and validated (Havard et al. 2013). The

SRFPS measures perceptions of rival teams and groups by asking fans to report (1) their willingness to support the rival team play against another team (i.e., not the favorite team), (2) their perceptions of the prestige, either academic or city/region, of the rival team, (3) their evaluation of rival fan behavior, and (4) their sense of satisfaction experienced when their favorite team beats the rival in direct competition. The SRFPS

has been providen to measure fan perceptions at the collegiate (Havard, Reams, and Gray 2013) and professional (Havard and Hutchinson 2017; Wann et al. 2016) levels, as well as in international sport settings (Havard, Wann, and Ryan 2018). The twelve-item scale has also been used as a control variable to test fan behavior (Nichols, Cobbs, and Raska 2016).

3. What influences rivalry?

[3.1] Several characteristics and variables influence rivalry and the way people feel toward out-groups. For example, sport fans can identify multiple teams as rivals (Wann et al. 2016) and can vary in their perceptions of those teams (Havard and Reams 2018; Tyler and Cobbs 2017). In college athletics, the conference realignment from 2010 to 2013 influenced how fans felt toward their rival teams. For example, before conference realignment, fans of teams that were changing athletic conferences were more negative and more likely to consider committing anonymous acts of aggression against the

current rival (i.e., in the same conference) than against the anticipated rival (Havard, Wann, and Ryan 2013). Follow-up research found that after the teams had competed in their new conferences for four seasons, fans reported greater negativity toward their current rival for out-of-competition characteristics such as academic prestige and fan behavior; however, they were less likely to support the former rival against another team, experienced greater sense of satisfaction from beating the former rival, and reported a higher likelihood of considering anonymous acts of aggression against the former rival (Havard, Wann, and Ryan 2017). So in that way, fans were trying to move forward and direct their hostility toward the new rival but still reported stronger negative feelings toward the former rival when it came to in-competition settings. These findings support the importance of history and historical competition as characteristics of rivalry (Kilduff, Elfenbein, and Staw 2010; Tyler and Cobbs 2015).

[3.2] Several recent experiments have shown variables that influence rivalry, such as messaging surrounding rival games (Berendt and Uhrich 2018) and exposure to titles and logos meant to promote a rivalry game (Havard, Wann, and Grieve 2018). Berendt and Uhrich (2018) found that acknowledging rather than downplaying a rivalry caused decreased animosity among rival fans. Havard, Wann, and Grieve (2018) exposed fans to either a neutral (e.g., using the word rivalry) or a negative (e.g., using the word hate) title and logo, and found that people exposed to the negative title rated the rival fan behavior more poorly; those exposed to the neutral title were less likely to support their rival against another team. These findings are important for practitioners because acknowledging a rivalry can actually lead to decreased animosity (Berendt and Uhrich 2018), and using a negative word like hate in a promotional message may increase animosity or negativity toward a rival but may decrease actual feelings of rivalry (Havard et al. 2018). Therefore, it behooves practitioners to acknowledge rivalries and use neutral rather than negative words when promoting competitions.

4. Rivalry and fan behavior

[4.1] The presence of a rival can elicit several outcomes from participants and fans.

For example, college students reported feeling a closer bond to classmates leading up to a rivalry game (Smith and Schwartz 2003), and rivalry can lead participants to increase their preparation and enhance their performance (Kilduff 2014) while also encouraging unethical behavior as a way to favorably compare to the opponent (Kilduff et al. 2016).

Rivalry also influences the way in which fans consume the sport product (Havard,

Eddy, and Ryan 2017), and it can cause attendees to pay higher price premiums to

attend a game (Sanford and Scott 2016). Watching a game between rival teams also

affects the physiological reactions of fans. For example, Hillman et al. (2004) found that fans' physical reactions were different when their favorite team was successful than when their rival team was successful. Fans also react differently to sponsors of favorite and rival teams. Fans of NASCAR displayed strong loyalty toward the brands that

sponsor their favorite driver and strong dislike of rival driver sponsors (Dalakas and Levin 2005). Additionally, fans reported being wary of companies that sponsor both favorite and rival sport teams (Davies, Veloutsou, and Costa 2006).

[4.2] Heider (1958) asserts that people celebrate the failure of others as a way to compare favorably to the individual or out-group, and the disposition of mirth theory (Zillmann and Cantor 1976) indicates that people rejoice when someone they like (i.e., a favorite team) is successful and someone they dislike (i.e., a rival team) is

unsuccessful. Schadenfreude has been visible in sport fans' reactions to a rival team's failures. In particular, fans of major league baseball (Cikara, Botvinick, and Fiske 2011) and European football (Leach et al. 2003) have displayed schadenfreude when a rival loses to a third, neutral team (i.e., not the favorite team). Dalakas and Melancon (2012) developed a scale to measure fan likelihood to experience schadenfreude toward rival teams.

[4.3] Glory Out of Reflected Failure (GORFing), or a fan celebrating a rival team's loss to another team, is similar to schadenfreude, with a few differences (Havard 2014).

Where someone can experience schadenfreude against a disliked individual (e.g.,

classmate, workmate) or group (e.g., sports team, activist group), the individual or group of focus does not have to be a rival. In other words, a person could experience schadenfreude if a classmate with a better grade fails at something, or a sports fan could rejoice when the New York Yankees lose a game, without identifying either as a rival.

In order for the response to be identified as GORFing, the individual or team has to be considered a rival (Havard, Wann, and Ryan 2018). Using our example, it is

schadenfreude if someone does not view the successful classmate or the New York

Yankees as a rival; however, it is GORFing if the individual believes that the classmate is a rival or is a fan of the Boston Red Sox (longtime rival to the Yankees).

Additionally, people have to believe the rival's failure reflects positively on themselves and on their favorite team in order to activate GORFing. Recently a scale was

developed to measure GORFing (Havard and Hutchinson 2017), which is statistically

unique from the schadenfreude scale (Dalakas and Melancon 2012; Havard, Wann, and

Ryan 2018).

[4.4] Rivalry can also increase animosity between fans and teams. The previously

discussed impact of a negative title to promote a rivalry causing fans to evaluate rival fan behavior poorly is an example (Havard, Wann, and Grieve 2018). Further, rivalry can cause fans to rate rival fan behavior poorly (Wann and Grieve 2005) and player performance negatively (Wann et al. 2006); it can also influence whether someone will help others in emergency situations (Levine et al. 2005) (note 3). Fans who have a high level of identification with their favorite team also reported being significantly more likely to consider committing acts of anonymous aggression toward rival players,

coaches, and fans than those with lower levels of favorite team identification (Wann et

al. 1999; Wann and Waddill 2013).

[4.5] Because rivalry can increase feelings of animosity, it is important that

researchers, particularly practitioners, are aware of and plan for such incidents.

Unfortunately, stories of rival fans getting into arguments or physical confrontations have become all too common. Look no further than the case of Brian Stow to see how rivalry can cause fans to behave in negative ways. Referring to the findings on fan willingness to consider anonymous aggression, roughly 1 to 2 percent of fans have

consistently reported they would definitely be willing to consider committing the most heinous acts of aggression, such as physically harming or murdering rival players, coaches, or fans, if they would not get into trouble (note 4). If we accept the

conservative estimate of 1 percent of fans, that means that about 100 fans in a venue that seats 10,000, or 1,000 fans in a stadium with a capacity of 100,000 (i.e., some college football stadiums) have reported that they would definitely be willing to

consider either physically harming or murdering a star player, coach, or fan of the rival team. This statistic should be alarming to practitioners and should encourage taking action to help control these negative behaviors.

[4.6] What can be done about rivalry and negative fan behavior? First, organizations and practitioners have to better understand their role in cultivating a welcoming and safe fan environment. Beyond the moral obligation that an organization has to provide safe entertainment for their customers, significant legal and financial burdens can come from deviant fan behavior. Therefore, organizations should show caution when

promoting opposing or rival teams. For the vast majority of people in attendance, seeing a skit where the favorite team's mascot throws confetti or sprays Silly String on

someone dressed in an opposing team's shirt is silly and maybe fun, but it is definitely not something they would consider doing. However, to 1 to 2 percent of fans in

attendance, those skits may validate their feelings and potential behaviors toward an opposing or rival team.

5. Where to go from here

[5.1] As stated earlier, the study of rivalry in sport is beginning to receive more attention (note 5), but it still needs investigation and perspectives from researchers in and out of the sport management, psychology, political, and business fields. For

example, the sport management literature is lacking observational investigation into the phenomenon. Future avenues of research related to rivalry could also include more

research on perceived differences between groups of individuals or supporters of brands outside of sport. For example, does the rivalry between Disney and Universal extend to consumers and fans of each brand (Gennawey 2014), or does the race to one-up the

other benefit everyone? Do fans of Marvel Comics pay money to watch movies

produced in the DC Comics universe, and vice versa? How do fans of different

television shows or written stories relate to each other? There have been examinations of some of these questions, and some are definitely ongoing, but using the concept of rivalry and the knowledge obtained in the sport literature may help extend our

understanding of the phenomenon. Additional perspectives from outside the sport management field will also obviously help to shape understanding of rivalry and fan behavior, as well as help sport investigators and practitioners move forward in research and planning within the field. There is still much to learn about rivalry, both in and out of the sport setting, and we hope this essay can serve as a catalyst to further

understanding of and encouraging more research into this important phenomenon.

6. Notes

1. The study of rivalry in sport is an area receiving more attention in the sport

management (Havard 2014; Tyler and Cobbs 2017), business (Kilduff et al. 2016),

politics (Miller and Conover 2015), and psychology (Cikara, Botvinick, and Fiske

2011; Wann et al. 2016) literatures.

2. Research has identified characteristics such as history, proximity, closeness of competition, and perceived similarities and differences as important antecedents that lead to people and teams experiencing rivalry toward another group (Havard 2014;

Havard et al. 2013; Kilduff, Elfenbein, and Staw 2010; Tyler and Cobbs 2015). Within sport, rivalry can offer positive benefits such as the feeling of uniqueness (Berendt and Uhrich 2016; Crocker and Luhtenen 1990) and excitement for upcoming contests

(Kimball and Cooper 1992). Rivalry can also encourage people to consume the sport

product, whether involving a favorite and rival team (Havard, Eddy, and Ryan 2016) or a rival team against a third neutral team (Mahony and Moorman 1999).

3. Fans were more likely to help someone who had fallen from a bicycle if the person was wearing a shirt of the favorite team rather than the rival team.

4. In a series of studies on fan behavior and deviance, 1 to 2 percent of fans have consistently indicated that they definitely would consider either physically harming or murdering a participant or fan of the rival team (Havard, Wann, and Ryan 2013, 2017; Wann et al. 1999; Wann and Waddill 2013).

5. Sport Marketing Quarterly, a well-respected journal in the sport management field, ran in December 2017 a special issue on the marketing implications of rivalry in sport.

7. References

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Berendt, Johannes, and Sebastian Uhrich. 2018. "Marketing, Get Ready to Rumble:

How Rivalry Promotes Distinctiveness for Brands and Consumers." Journal of Business Research 88:161–72.

Cikara, Mina, Mathew M. Botninick, and Susan T. Fiske. 2011. "Us versus Them: Social Identity Shaped Neural Responses to Intergroup Competition and Harm."

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Crocker, Jennifer, and Riia Luhtanen. 1990. "Collective Self-Esteem and Ingroup Bias."

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Sponsorships May Elicit Negative Consumer Attitudes." Advances in Consumer

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(IWIN)." Journal of Services Marketing 26 (1): 51–59. https://doi.org/10.1108

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Rivalry Affects Sport Fans." Sport Management Review 17:243–53. https://doi.org

/10.1016/j.smr.2013.09.002.

Havard, Cody T., Terry W. Eddy, and Timothy D. Ryan. 2016. "Examining the Impact

of Team Identification and Gender on Rival Perceptions and Behavior of Intercollegiate Athletics Fans." Journal of Applied Sport Management 8 (2): 33–49. http://dx.doi.org

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2013. "Development and Validation of the Sport Rivalry Fan Perception Scale

(SRFPS)." Journal of Sport Behavior 36 (1): 45–65. https://doi.org/10.1037

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Havard, Cody T., and Michael Hutchinson. 2017. "Investigating Rivalry in Professional Sport." International Journal of Sport Management 18:422–40.

Havard, Cody T., and Lamar Reams. 2018. "Examining Differences among Primary and

Secondary Rivals: Are Fan Perceptions, Behavioral, and Consumption Intentions

Influenced by Degree of Rivalry?" Journal of Applied Marketing Theory 8 (1): 28–38.

Havard, Cody T., Lamar Reams, and Dianna P. Gray. 2013. "Perceptions of Highly

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REVIEW

Old futures: Speculative fiction and queer

possibility, by Alexis Lothian

Melanie E. S. Kohnen

Lewis & Clark Col ege, Portland, Oregon, United

States

[0.1]

Keywords—Feminism, LGBTQ, Reproduction, Science fiction,

Temporality

Kohnen, Melanie E. S. 2018. Old Futures: Speculative Fiction and Queer Possibility, by Alexis Lothian [book review]. In "The Future of Fandom," special 10th anniversary issue, Transformative Works and Cultures, no. 28. http://dx.doi.org/10.3983

/twc.2018.1601.

Review of Alexis Lothian, Old futures: Speculative fiction and queer possibility. New York: NYU Press, 2018.

Paperback $30 (352p). ISBN 9781479825851.

[1] Old Futures maps a century of speculative fiction and media that imagine futures by transforming the confining social norms of their present. These queer "old futures"

have much to say about our own time, as we continue to imagine queer futures yet often cannot think beyond the constraints of our present condition. In an expansive and

rigorous analysis of early twentieth-century white British women's fiction, Afrofuturist writing, independent sci-fi films, and remix fandom, Alexis Lothian demonstrates that those on the margins of society—communities often told they have no place in an

imagined straight white future—have persistently written themselves into a future. Yet in these nonnormative visions of the future, traces of empire building, eugenics,

heternormativity, and classism linger. Lothian's insistence that many speculative texts contain both liberating queer images and unsettling normative messages is one of the strongest aspects of Old Futures, a result of careful close readings that unfold across chapters. Another strong aspect of the book is the inclusion of fandom as a community that creates speculative queer futures. Indeed, Lothian's discussion of her own fannish identity and the ways in which "critical fandom" has been crucial to the development of

the book are among the most compelling sections of Old Futures.

[2] Lothian's book has three parts that address speculative texts drawn from across the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. In part 1, "A History of No Future: Feminism, Eugenics, and Reproductive Imaginaries," Lothian examines works by

middle-class yet marginalized white female British writers, including Katharine

Burdekin, Elizabeth Burgoyne Corbett, Susan Ertz, and Charlotte Haldane, whose

works offer feminist ideas that cannot be separated from imperial and eugenic fantasies.

In part 2, "A Now that Can Breed Futures: Queerness and Pleasure in Black Science

Fiction," Lothian turns to Afrofuturist narratives by W. E. B. Du Bois, Octavia Butler, Jewelle Gomez, and Samuel R. Delany that situate sexual and other pleasures at the center of their world building. Part 3, "It's the Future, but It Looks like the Present: Queer Speculations on Media Time," begins with an analysis of two independent films, Jubilee (dir. Derek Jarman, 1978) and Born in Flames (dir. Lizzie Borden, 1983), that challenge the conventional notion of sci-fi as a genre filled with action-driven space battles. In the chapter "How to Remix the Future," Lothian analyzes fandom in general and vidding in particular as critical transformative practice that constructs queer visions out of TV's normatively gendered and raced images of the future. Featured vids include

"Walking on the Ground," "Unnatural Selection," "Us," How Much Is That Geisha in

the Window," the works of the Cylon Vidding Machine collective, and some of

Lothian's own vids. Brief interludes (or wormholes) between parts of the book

thematically connect past to present. The first ties century-old preoccupations with reproduction and race to Children of Men (dir. Alfonso Cuarón, 2006) and the second brings Afrofuturism into conversation with Sense8 (2015–18) and Lothian's fandom journey. With the exception of a few well-known texts, most case studies are

"oppositional and marginal works that tend to appear as footnotes at most in genre histories and taxonomies" (3). Lothian sought to build "an archive of [her] own" that highlights "speculative creativity produced in the margins" (23). Her struggle of

wanting to hold on to the queer potential of this archive while also having to

acknowledge its sometimes painful limitations is palpable throughout the book.

[3] While most of the book is of greatest interest to scholars invested in speculative fiction and/or queer temporalities, the latter half of the book, including "Try This at Home: Networked Public Sexual Fantasy" and "How to Remix the Future," open up a

new perspective on fandom as a part of the history of imagining speculative futures.

Lothian highlights fan engagement with television, a medium historically considered lowbrow, domestic, and addressing female audiences. The emphasis on TV in the

chapter addressing the speculative fiction of the early twenty-first century represents a defiant decision to focus on an "old" medium rather than cutting-edge technologies and practices. Lothian explores fandom's long history of responding to and rewriting

televisual futures to make them less heteronormative, less white, and less imperialist, and/or to show how objects of fannish affection are complicit in perpetuating

exclusionary narratives. For example, Lothian argues that the vid "How Much Is That Geisha in the Window," which shows the orientalist underpinnings of the TV program Firefly (2002–3), offers "a reading lesson in global race and gender politics for science fiction TV fans," especially for white fans who may have an easier time looking past

Firefly's troubling reproduction of orientalist American fantasies (234). Lothian considers these kinds of fannish interventions "critical fandom," which question and analyze normative structures in popular media and in fandom.

[4] Lothian's weaving together of literary analysis, queer theory, and fan studies demonstrates how one can include fandom as an object of analysis in a place where

some may neither expect nor want to encounter it. Lothian is careful to invite in those scholars who may be unfamiliar with fandom through close readings of several vids that include numerous screenshots. She also insists that understanding fandom is no easy task and that unpacking fannish practices like vidding requires as much attention to detail and immersion in an aesthetic tradition as the other media she considers. Lothian emphasizes that we can understand "vidding as a way to remix the future," resulting in

"works of speculative critique that repurpose gendered and racialized temporalities of reproduction and colonization" (218–19).

[5] Lothian's history of queer futures is also an intervention in how contemporary queer theory has approached temporality. She asserts that all queer scholarship and activism is speculative fiction of sorts; she asks, "How could attempts to envisage possibilities outside heteronormative structures not involve a certain futurity?" (5).

More specifically, she challenges Lee Edelman's arguments in No Future: Queer Theory and the Death Drive (2004), which have had significant impact on the theorization of queer temporality. Lothian offers a most welcome interrogation and broadening of

Edelman's concept of reproductive futurism—that is, the idea that visions of the future are frequently entwined with heteronormative reproduction that excludes queer people by default. Through her analysis of speculative fiction, Lothian demonstrates that gender, race, nation, and empire are crucial inflections of reproductive futurism.

Consequently, we need to think of reproductive futurisms that are attuned to who is imagining reproduction in the future to what ends in order to discover "the deviances within what appears normative, as well as the normativities within what is, ostensibly, utterly queer" (10).

[6] In a book that is filled with unexpected yet crucial connections, Lothian's

commentary on vidding as scholarly method stands out. It is through vidding that

Lothian developed some of the book's most compelling arguments and sections. For

example, she created vids for Children of Men, Born in Flames, and the Battlestar Galactica reboot (2004–9) to think through these texts in a way that writing cannot; she explains that vidding gave her "a sense that I could move queerly through time into archives to touch them" (248). Moreover, she shares the following: "I have often wished to use the juxtapositional logic of a vid, rather than the explanatory and linear flow of textual argument, to demonstrate how imaginary futures…both consolidate and

undermine the ways power structures are embedded in temporal narratives" (252). This is a significant stance to take in a book not situated in fan studies, whose readers in literary queer studies may have never heard of vidding before picking up Lothian's book. This insertion of fandom and fannish practices where some may imagine it does not belong makes me appreciate Lothian's insistence on including both. After all, the insistence to insert yourself where you do not belong is at the core of queer speculative

fiction.

[7] Lothian clearly states that her book foregrounds voices from the margins that are not often heard in the most popular visions of the future, but a few mainstream media texts with wide reach, such as Battlestar Galactica and Children of Men, also appear in Old Futures. It would be easy to dismiss both texts as troubling examples of reproductive futurism, but Lothian approaches them with more care, highlighting the ambiguous messages contained in these texts. Regarding Children of Men, Lothian observes that it can be read as a heteronormative tale of reproductive futurism in which humanity's fate depends on Kee, a black woman who does not have much agency over

her life or body. But Lothian pushes beyond this insight to find the cracks in a

seemingly straightforward narrative. By bringing background figures and images into the foreground—a technique that vidders also use—Lothian finds "futures unforeseen and unforeseeable, which we could access through viewing, reading, or inhabiting the film in a different way… those created by people who are Kee's ancestors and heirs according to different systems of reproduction" (95–96). Lothian's willingness to

embrace the ambiguities in mainstream texts makes me wish to hear what she would

say about Arrival (dir. Denis Villeneuve, 2016), a film preoccupied with temporality and reproduction, or Black Panther (dir. Ryan Coogler, 2018), often described as Afrofuturist blockbuster. Much like Lothian has looked to the past to understand our present, it is up to someone else to take her book, now the past, and apply it to our unfolding present.

REVIEW

The fanfiction reader: Folk tales for the

digital age, by Francesca Coppa

Lorraine M. Dubuisson

Middle Georgia State University, Macon, Georgia,

United States

[0.1] Keyword—Fan community

Dubuisson, Lorraine M. 2018. The Fanfiction Reader: Folk Tales for the Digital Age, by Francesca Coppa [book review]. In "The Future of Fandom," special 10th

anniversary issue, Transformative Works and Cultures, no. 28. http://dx.doi.org/10.3983

/twc.2018.1322.

Francesca Coppa. The fanfiction reader: Folk tales for the digital age. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2017. Hardcover, $75.00 (304p) ISBN 978-0-472-07348-1; paper $29.95 (304p) ISBN

978-0-472-05348-3; e-book $29.95.

[1]

The Fanfiction Reader: Folk Tales for the Digital Age, edited by Francesca Coppa, is primarily intended to be used as a textbook in the college classroom although it would also be relevant to any reader who is interested in an overview of a certain subset of fan fiction. The Fanfiction Reader focuses on Western media fandom and contains stories from popular fandoms, such as Harry Potter, with which potential

readers—everyone from the college student to the casual reader browsing shelves at a bookstore—can be expected to have some degree of familiarity. Coppa begins the book with a preface and introduction that provide some historical context for fandom as a whole; she follows this introductory material with thirteen chapters of fan fiction, most chapters concentrating on a single story in a single fandom, with two chapters

containing multiple stories from a fandom and one chapter containing a crossover story in which characters from two different fandoms appear. The beginning of each chapter consists of a brief history of the particular fandom being discussed, contextualizing information about tropes and other storytelling choices made in the fan fiction selection, a summary of significant plot points from the source on which the fan fiction is based

(the canon), and suggestions for further reading about the fandom and issues raised by the fan fiction. All genres of fan fiction—gen, femslash, slash, and het—are represented in The Fanfiction Reader although femslash is only illustrated by a single story. Most of the stories included in the reader were written between 2009 and 2017, with one story written in 1998 and a small cluster of stories written in the early 2000s. While most of the fan fiction in The Fanfiction Reader is told in a traditional, prose narrative format, Coppa includes two short fan comics in the chapter on Supernatural (2005–). The book is scholarly, but Coppa writes in a conversational tone and uses humor that should appeal to a wide audience.

[2] Coppa is frank in the introduction about the challenges of constructing a fan fiction reader, many of which influence whether that reader can be successfully used in the college classroom. Such a reader cannot be comprehensive because that history is too vast and diverse; it cannot function as an in-depth history of fandom at large or even of the history of the fan fiction being produced in the fandoms included. It cannot cover the breadth of fan fiction currently available on the internet, either in terms of the multitude of fandoms for which fan fiction exists or of the tropes those stories employ.

The Fanfiction Reader offers a cross section of fan fiction, a snapshot of the output of one corner of fandom only. Another challenge is length. Fan fiction runs the gamut in length from 100 words or less to novels hundreds of thousands of words long. Choosing works that are short story length allows the anthology to include a variety of stories in a variety of fandoms; this choice also makes the reader more useful in the college

classroom, as it provides a range of topics for discussion. Coppa chooses not to include works that are sexually explicit or that contain kinky elements. While sexually explicit material is certainly not off-limits for college syllabi, its inclusion can be problematic for some students, particularly since high school students sometimes enroll in college classes; omitting that content completely sidesteps any potential issues. Finally, Coppa acknowledges that readers may struggle to understand the stories included if they don't have a thorough grasp of the canon on which the stories are based. Coppa provides a fair amount of framework to help readers who may not be familiar with the plot points of the TV show or movie treated in the fan fiction, but it may not be enough framework.

For example, a reader who hasn't watched all seven seasons of Buffy the Vampire Slayer may not understand exactly why Buffy is so weary and ready to relinquish control in

"next," the fan fiction featured in the chapter of the reader titled "The Slayer's Tale."

Most college classes are constrained for time and don't allow for viewing of entire seasons or series runs of TV shows; for that reason, the chapters of The Fanfiction Reader that concentrate on fan fiction written for movies that can easily be consumed during the course of a semester probably provide the most fruitful reading experience for the intended audience.

[3] The content of The Fanfiction Reader covers a great deal of ground: the anthology includes a story of female friendship set in the universe of Star Trek Reboot; a James Bond story that puts an older, female mentor in a sexual relationship with a younger, male mentee; a Doctor Who time travel story; a story that tells readers what happens next after the canon of Buffy the Vampire Slayer has ended; a comic set in the world of Supernatural in which the race of the protagonists has been changed; and a

story that reimagines a minor Harry Potter character as trans. The Fanfiction Reader also contains stories that attempt to fix what some fans perceive as problems with canon, such as the epilogue to the Harry Potter series and stories that take place in alternate universes where one or more facts of canon are fundamentally changed.

[4] Coppa defines a meta fan fiction as "a story of fandom itself; the story of our stories" (248–49), and several of the stories in the collection fit that description. The chapter titled "The FBI Agent's Tale" focuses on the story "The Sad Ballad of Mary Sue's Blues," a meta story that explores the nature of writing as well as questions of just who is writing fan fiction and why. This story presents a complicated and not altogether flattering portrait of the fan fiction writer. Another meta story, "The Vacation," is also an example of real-person fiction, a controversial category of fan fiction in which fans write stories about the imagined romantic relationships and adventures of celebrities and other people who actually exist in the real world. "The Vacation" functions as meta commentary on the challenges inherent to the way fans construct narratives of the lives of celebrities out of paparazzi photographs of their shopping trips and sound bites carefully culled from interviews. As Lance Bass, the pop star protagonist of "The

Vacation," begins to wonder, does a real person even exist under the facade of persona constructed for public consumption?

[5] A third meta story, "The Story of Finn," encapsulates one of the central themes running through the reader—the idea that fan fiction is not created in a vacuum but rather as part of a communal experience in which the stories fans write are not just in conversation with canon but also with the stories their fellow fans are writing. In "The Story of Finn," a group of stormtroopers participates in the subversive act of

storytelling; they tell funny stories, heart-wrenching stories, and stories that make their superiors look foolish. Stories are so important to the group that the stormtroopers are characterized by the kinds of stories they most often choose to tell. "The Story of Finn"

ultimately suggests that stories are powerful and can lead to revolution. Most

significantly, the stormtroopers in this story learn to tell stories from each other, and they learn to look for story material in their experiences that will appeal to their audience. The reader is subtitled Folktales for the Digital Age, and perhaps its most important feature is the way that the introduction and construction of the chapters make explicit what "The Story of Finn" implies. Coppa writes that the "organization of the book as a modern Canterbury Tales" (4) is intended to showcase the communal nature of fandom. Each of the chapters is titled as an homage to the Canterbury Tales, and Coppa points out multiple times throughout the reader that certain stories were written in response to other stories or that the storytelling conventions in a story began with one writer and then traveled by osmosis to other writers. While fandom is not a monolith—

not one umbrella but a strange architecture composed rather of many corners and nooks and crannies that sometimes differ more than they resemble one another—being a fan, and particularly being a fan fiction writer, is generally a communal experience that is collaborative and social. The Fanfiction Reader makes clear that most fan fiction is connected to other fan fiction in significant ways.

[6]

The Fanfiction Reader: Folk Tales for the Digital Age by Francesca Coppa is a

welcome addition to the body of work written about fandom and fan fiction as it primarily relies on the fan fiction itself to demonstrate vital characteristics of fan writing. College professors will find this volume easy to teach, and college students will find the stories included accessible, as will other readers interested in the subject matter.

However, The Fanfiction Reader leaves open a myriad of avenues for subsequent publications of a similar nature to explore: more sexually explicit fan fiction, fan fiction from anime and book fandoms, interactive fan fiction, and fan fiction containing tropes not featured in the reader are all prospective areas of further examination.

[7] All profits from the sale of The Fanfiction Reader will benefit the Organization for Transformative Works.

REVIEW

Participatory memory: Fandom experiences

across time and space, by Liza Potts,

Melissa Beattie, Emily Dal aire, Katie

Grimes, and Kel y Turner

J. Caroline Toy

Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio, United States

[0.1]

Keyword—Fan pilgrimage; Harry Potter; Media tourism;

Memory studies; Participatory culture; Princess Diana; Torchwood

Toy, J. Caroline. 2018. Participatory Memory: Fandom Experiences across Time and Space, by Liza Potts, Melissa Beattie, Emily Dallaire, Katie Grimes, and Kelly Turner

[book review]. In "The Future of Fandom," special 10th anniversary issue,

Transformative Works and Cultures, no. 28. http://dx.doi.org/10.3983/twc.2018.1595.

Review of Liza Potts, Melissa Beattie, Emily Dal aire, Katie Grimes, and Kel y Turner, Participatory memory: Fandom experiences across time and space. Intermezzo, 2018. Online at http://participatorymemory.org

/book/index. e-book $0.00 (ISBN 978-0-9864333-6-8).

[1] This uniquely ambitious digital work blends pedagogical tool, multimedia

resource, and an analysis of fan memorials and tourism sites, all while remaining

accessible to a diverse audience. Potts and Beattie, scholars of fandom who locate themselves primarily in academia, join here with three of Potts's recent undergraduate student fieldworkers, to synthesize data from long-term research projects and study-abroad courses conducted in 2014 and 2016. Beattie's long-standing interest in and past work on Ianto's Shrine, dedicated to the Torchwood character Ianto Jones, and Potts's expertise in digital composition and social media are evident, as are the passions and experience-based learning of coauthors and former student fieldworkers Dallaire,

Grimes, and Turner, particularly regarding Harry Potter. The result is an engaging interdisciplinary work investigating the nature of participatory memory spaces

dedicated to texts, celebrities, and fan communities that should be of interest to both (as they put it) fan-scholars and scholar-fans.

[2]

Participatory Memory is especially distinctive in that it is a free, open-access work specifically designed for interactive online publishing. Its three main chapters (on the memorial to Princess Diana in Paris, Harry Potter sites Platform 9¾ and The

Elephant House, and Torchwood landmark Ianto's Shrine) incorporate videos, photography, and audio clips to help immerse readers in the experience of being there.

The authors make careful use of the Scalar platform to annotate their images,

highlighting particular details that support the text. The platform also permits detailed crediting of photographers and recordists, thus acknowledging the work of the

undergraduate study-abroad groups. User experience is self directed: though structured with chapters and subsections like a typical book, the table of contents page also includes a visualizer that allows users to navigate directly to media and skip easily from topic to topic, blazing their own path through the text. Although descriptive text for images would be an important accessibility addition, the authors otherwise take

advantage of the available technological affordances to create an absorbing reading experience.

[3] We can best understand the project's impact by approaching it thematically,

examining the work's dual contributions to fan tourism and pilgrimage research and fan studies pedagogy. While a longer, print (or solely text-oriented) book would likely produce more in-depth analysis of the specific sites explored, this experience-centered, accessible analysis focuses on topics likely to provoke conversation among students, PhD-trained academics, fan-scholars, scholar-fans, and those in between. The authors consequently embrace their investments as fans, a venture that might also be

interrogated in more detail in another type of work (as discussed below), but that suits their pedagogical purposes and highlights the often challenging intersections of fan scholarship and being a fan.

[4] Potts, Beattie, Dallaire, Grimes, and Turner define fans' activities, and particularly their written messages, at the sites covered in this book as "participatory memory," "the ways in which people memorialize, celebrate, and reflect across physical and digital spaces" (Introducing Participatory Memory) (note 1). Drawing on theoretical paradigms from writing studies, memory studies, and fan studies (an unusual and yet well suited combination), they argue that these sites are constituted by "community-making

activities that create microworlds in which fans engage" (Exploring Participatory

Memory). This focus on the creation of microworlds through writing and memorializing practices differs productively from approaches situated in tourism and pilgrimage

studies. Stepping away from these broad established categories—which would need to be addressed in a longer work—allows this shorter text to immerse readers in the details of the specific places profiled. The theoretical paradigm thus suits (and is suited by) both the visually and aurally rich nature of the multimedia publication and the

pedagogical goals of fieldwork that stress participant-observation, reflection, and archaeological examination of spaces and memorial materials. It enables the authors to investigate the connections between written expressions, agency, location, and curation

at sites shaped by varying levels of commercial, government, and fan control, while maintaining the focus on experience.

[5] This paradigm is applied to different sites in different ways, primarily focusing on the placement, content, and erasure of written messages and material objects left by fans. At the Paris memorial marking the site of Princess Diana's death, the authors consider claims of ownership and conflicts in culture-making between Diana's followers and local authorities who want to keep the memorial clean of graffiti and mementoes. In the case of Harry Potter sites at The Elephant House café (where J. K. Rowling wrote some of the Potter novels and fan graffiti decorates the restrooms) and the more

commercially driven Platform 9¾, they explore fans' sense of realness and authenticity.

Consciously examining what it means to put on and take off one's fan goggles,

fieldworkers reflect on the differences between their personal experiences of "fan driven" sites, where visits are primarily shaped by fan-generated practices, and "fan pushed" sites, where fieldworkers feel that certain types of experiences are pushed on fans, and where boundaries and activities are circumscribed by property owners.

Beattie's past archaeological cataloging of shrine objects (in "A Most Peculiar

Memorial" [2014]) meets the experiences of fans new to Torchwood at Ianto's Shrine.

Proximity to an unfamiliar fandom gives student fieldworkers critical distance to see the complex relationships of fans, passersby who mock the Shrine, and property owners

who endorse it. Each case study produces valuable insights regarding sites that have been thoroughly investigated and others that have not. Often these insights concern the specific ways in which objects and messages at the sites—or their removal—convey

negotiations of ownership and authority that always subtly influence visitors'

experiences, even if they are not overtly announced by commercial sponsorship.

[6] As a reader invested in both Participatory Memory's subject matter and the pedagogical possibilities of collaborative fieldwork with undergraduates (note 2), I locate the book's main purpose—and its most notable contribution—in its closing lines:

"at the end of this book, the authors…firmly believe these students, and others like them, hold the future for work as fan scholars and scholar fans" (Navigating the Futures of Participation). While the work should indeed be read as a study of culture-making at fans' spaces of memory, it should equally be seen as an exploration of fan studies as pedagogy. The project is clearly geared toward teaching research skills and ethics, with students discussing stance in participant-observation, what it means to manage

insider/outsider status, and how to work ethically in fan spaces. It is a model—an implied syllabus—for teachers at the university and even secondary levels who want to implement a large-scale experiential project to teach a variety of skills like writing, video and audio production, digital composition, critical analysis, thick description, and interviewing. Such potentials of teaching through fandom have been discussed by Paul Booth in a chapter of Fan Culture: Theory/Practice (2012) and in Katherine Anderson Howell's new anthology Fandom as Classroom Practice (2018), but rarely described elsewhere.

[7] Indeed, the project does an admirable job of highlighting and stimulating the contributions of investigators who represent a range of scholarly positions. The authors

identify themselves as a mixed group of scholar-fans, who study fandom from inside the academy while also identifying as fans, and fan-scholars, fans who produce

knowledge about fandom from an insider perspective (see Matt Hills's Fan Culture

[2002] on these categories). While Participatory Memory runs the risk of

overemphasizing the position of student fieldworkers as fan-scholars rather than trainee scholar-fans, it includes comments from those students reflecting on the experience of shifting between these identities that illuminates the complexities of scholarship and self in fan studies. In addition to such comments (typically credited to specific authors), the work of emerging self-identified fan-scholars and established scholar-fans is

blended cohesively. While at times it would be helpful to know which author is

primarily responsible for a given subsection, the evident high level of investment of the undergraduate authors generated by coauthorship is pedagogically invaluable.

[8] The authors' attention to their intended audiences is also noteworthy. Considering academics, nonacademic fans, and curious onlookers, they employ a writing style that is generally accessible to all readers who have some knowledge of the fandoms in

question, the theoretical paradigms, or both. (The exception is the review of theory in the first chapter—although this section also includes a helpful glossary of key

concepts.) By maintaining a consistent structure and incorporating a variety of media and voices as well as moderated commenting, the work invites engagement from these audiences and remains easy to follow. The authors also think expansively about who constitutes the audience for a research project like this: not merely those who consume the final project but also people who were (perhaps unwittingly) observers of the

research in the fieldwork phase or who accessed the study-abroad courses' social media presence. Project audience and research ethics are rightly seen as closely intertwined.

[9] A project that seeks to bridge so many intellectual paradigms, audiences, and authors raises questions about what exactly those bridges connect or pass over. As previously stated, the authors of Participatory Memory have made conscious and justifiable choices about the perspectives they include and the types of analyses they present, which may be atypical for an academic book, but aim instead to inspire

conversations between scholar-fans, students, and fan-scholars. However, this approach does raise some critical questions that the authors do not address. As discussed below, the work's ambiguous positioning runs the risk of valorizing certain types of fan

experiences (creative and direct) over others (commercial or programmed). Its analyses also do not engage with disputes within the fandoms profiled about texts, authorship, and what spaces of memory mean, though these are often evident in graffiti and objects at such spaces.

[10] One case where these absences are evident is the discussion of the photo op

attraction at Platform 9¾, in which the authors write that "the conflict between fan experience and fan consumerism for the students was very apparent" and "the space felt

'fan-pushed'…forced and fake because it was so detached from the fan space"

(Moments of Memory for Harry Potter). By implicitly critiquing commercialism (in

contrast to the positively portrayed graffiti at The Elephant House), highlighting a perceived distinction for fans between the real and the fake, and focusing on written

messages over other types of engagement, the authors ascribe greater value to individualistic and creative forms of participation. This is not to say that their conclusions are incorrect (Larsen [2015] has documented similar responses to Platform 9¾) or that the authors are unaware of the weight they give their own experiences; they carefully own rather than generalize their perspectives and acknowledge the tricky balance between their own experiences as fans and the critical distance demanded by academic study. Nonetheless, further consideration of counter-perspectives, such as fans who value the officialness of commercial attractions, would enhance the analysis and balance the writers' understandable emphasis on their participant-observer experiences.

[11] Certain theoretical issues and terminology choices are also subject to question.

One of the opening questions—"how do fans respond to spaces that are sacred to their fandoms?"—begs consideration of what is meant by the word sacred (by fan-scholars and scholar-fans) and how sites acquire that status. The concern with real versus fake spaces deserves more attention, taking into account work in tourism studies that asserts many tourists seek out experiences they know are constructed rather than the

opportunity to get to a backstage local reality. A research project like this is in fact particularly well positioned to explore how fans' experiences with perceived

authenticity (or lack thereof) might complicate such scholarly arguments.

[12] Such caveats aside, Participatory Memory is an excellent example of how a long-form work can approach multiple audiences, integrate pedagogy and analytic

content, and make use of exciting new affordances of digital publishing. As an

illustration of how fan studies pedagogy can encourage critical thinking and generate deep student investment in their own learning, it is an invaluable resource for any teacher looking to bring fandom into course design. The book's collection of case

studies and its unusual theoretical approach should also inspire further work. Some of the sites that have been investigated less in other studies are worthy of in-depth looks, particularly considering the power dynamics to which the book calls our attention. The theoretical paradigms of participatory memory will prove an insightful approach to the mediations, rhetoric, and activities of organized tours regarding other diegetic

landmarks, even those unmarked by memorial messages. Overall, this is an innovative and stimulating contribution to literature on fan pilgrimage, tourism, and teaching fandom that is well worth reading.

Notes

1. Due to its digital format, the book is not paginated. This and other citations refer to sections of the work.

2. Full disclosure: I am involved in an unrelated digital humanities project utilizing undergraduate fieldworkers and digital publishing that is cosponsored by Potts's

institution, Michigan State, and has relied on similar resources and digital humanities support personnel (not including the authors) at MSU.

ROUNDTABLE

Roundtable with Paul Booth, Melissa A.

Click, and Suzanne Scott

Louisa Ellen Stein

Middlebury Col ege, Middlebury, Vermont, United

States

[0.1]

Abstract—Roundtable with Paul Booth, Melissa A. Click, and

Suzanne Scott.

[0.2]

Keywords—Edited collections; Fan studies

Stein, Louisa Ellen. 2018. "Roundtable with Paul Booth, Melissa A. Click, and Suzanne Scott." In "The Future of Fandom," special 10th anniversary issue, Transformative Works and Cultures, no. 28. http://dx.doi.org/10.3983/twc.2018.1592.

Melissa A. Click and Suzanne Scott, eds. 2018. The Routledge Companion to Media Fandom. New York: Routledge.

Paul Booth, ed. 2018. A Companion to Media Fandom and Fan Studies. New York: Wiley-Blackwell.

1. What inspired you to take on the undoubtedly fairly

daunting task of editing a large-scale fan studies

col ection?

[1.1]

Suzanne Scott: Honestly, one of the primary lures for me was the opportunity to collaborate with Melissa (and that experience exceeded all my expectations). We had both been approached by Routledge individually, and I think we immediately realized that a handbook of this size and scope wasn't a one-person job. In particular, I think Melissa and I approach the topic of media fandom from slightly different perspectives,

while still having compatible investments in how identity shapes fan engagement, and I think the collection benefitted immensely from that balance. I tend to conceptualize fandom from a much more classical (and thus, potentially more narrowly defined) fan studies perspective, while I think Melissa's work spans audience and fan studies in incredibly generative ways. So, in a sense, I think as a team we productively embodied many of the ongoing debates within the field as it has expanded exponentially over the past decade in terms of how we delimit fan and audience studies (or if these remain distinct categories). Many of the chapters in this collection, probably Rhiannon Bury's most explicitly, grapple with the slippages between these two fields, as well as fan studies' intersection with an array of other disciplines. We were mindful in our

conversations as we developed our dream list of contributors to have the table of

contents actively reflect how interdisciplinary and global the field has become

(especially as there have been so many other amazing anthologies, such as The Fan Fiction Studies Reader [2014], that have beautifully covered specific fan practices).

[1.2] The other primary inspiration was totally selfish—having contributed to many anthologies over the years and having taught an array of courses on fandom and

participatory culture over the years, I wanted to design my dream anthology to teach fan studies with, and I am still a bit in awe of the fact that everyone we asked to contribute said yes! So, seeing my undergrad transmedia students this semester respond so

enthusiastically to Melanie Kohnen's chapter on fan-produced transmedia and affect was a moment in which all of the organizational and editorial labor really personally paid off for me. I can't wait to teach the entire collection, and I think I speak for both of us when I say that we hope others also find it productive on that front.

[1.3]

Paul Booth: Putting the collection together became a way for me, in a weird way, to reexamine my own relationship to fan studies, and to rethink my experiences with the field. I envy the collaborative relationship that Melissa and Suzanne had (when I edited the Seeing Fans collection with Lucy Bennett, we had good discussions about the topics we wanted to see represented). When Wiley approached me about this

project, I didn't really know what to expect or how much direction I was going to get.

So when putting this Wiley Companion together I knew I needed to keep a much more fluid idea about what fan studies was and how it was depicted than what I previously had. Like Suzanne mentions above, I had a more narrowly focused view of fan studies, but I wanted to explore the aspects of fan studies that I hadn't considered before.

Editing the book gave me a great excuse to get in touch with authors I'd been wanting to work with for a long time! And it also gave me the chance to hear from and meet newer scholars that are doing really exciting work about racebending, about fan activism, and about the prehistories of media fandom. In many ways, I wanted to edit the book so that I could learn more about the field, and in my own scholarship it came at a good time: after about a decade studying fans, I realized I needed this sort of book to revitalize my own research. And if I needed it, then I figured other people might as well.

[1.4] Like Suzanne, I selfishly really wanted a book with chapters that I could teach in my fan studies classes, and I had great success with using Nicolle Lamerich's chapter on fan fashion, Miranda Ruth Larsen's chapter on otaku, and Jessica Seymour's chapter

on racebending in Harry Potter fan communities with my students. (I've also used chapters from the Routledge Companion in class, and can't be more ecstatic about the students' responses to the variety of topics covered in Melissa and Suzanne's book as well.) Some of the chapter topics for the Wiley Companion book grew out of conversations I had with my students in the fan studies classroom. For instance, my students for many years have been curious about Japanese fandom and otaku, which

matches their interest in manga and anime (and now Pokémon Go). This prompted me to find chapters that explore the connections between Western fandom and otaku for the collection. Ultimately, one of the most inspiring things about putting together a

collection of this scope is seeing how varied and expansive the field is, and yet despite the thirty-four chapters in my Wiley book, how much more we could have included if there had been space.

[1.5]

Melissa A. Click: Suzanne and Paul have so clearly articulated reasons for

taking on a big project like a collection that there's little left to say except that I agree with all that's been said. It was an enormous pleasure working with Suzanne and talking through our hopes and dreams for the collection. It was also great to have someone to feel responsible to—it really kept me on track. Commiserating when the workload was heavy was also a great benefit. While our research interests differ, we were surprisingly like-minded about our approach to the project and what impact we'd like the collection to have on the field. I'm glad to hear that Paul and Suzanne have enjoyed teaching from our collections. I look forward to using both in the classroom.

2. I'm struck by the fact that both col ections came to

fruition at essential y the same time. Do you think

there's a reason for that, or am I trying to read the

tea leaves too much? Are we at a particularly field-

defining moment, or a moment of key transition? If so,

what do you think defines this moment and/or current

transformations in the field?

[2.1]

PB: I'm of two minds about this question. Part of me wants to say that we are definitely having a field-defining moment: fandom is more visible than ever before. And as we've pointed out at other times in this conversation, there seems to be a paradigm shift in the study of fans as well. Two Companion collections; fan-focused book series at a number of scholarly (and nonscholarly) presses; organizations like the Fan Studies Network in the UK, Australasia, and now North America, as well as the Fan and

Audience Studies SIG at SCMS; currently multiple journals focused on fandom and

audience research exclusively: It's like fan studies reached a sort of catalyst moment in academic and popular cultures and was suddenly everywhere. Part of this visibility

comes from the fact that fans themselves are more visible on sites like Tumblr, through fan fic-to-published novels like E. L. James's Fifty Shades of Grey (2012), and because of the rise in popularity of fannish events like Comic-Con, the MCU, etc.

[2.2] But at the same time, I still feel the invisible weight of academia pressing down on the legitimacy of fan studies scholarship. My colleagues in television studies aren't defending, for example, the importance of studying Netflix, but I still—even after all this time—have to explain why fans are even an important topic to discuss in academic settings. I get grant proposals returned with big question marks and "so what?" written on them. Articles are turned down from journals because studying fans still seems

frivolous. To explain why fans are an important audience to people outside of my fields of media studies and cultural studies, I find myself having to move beyond discussions of participatory culture, creativity, digital acumen, or social activism and approaching more acceptable ways of measuring value: fans are important contributors to the

economy! They help bring back shows like Timeless (2016–18) or Brooklyn 99

(2013–)! They get hired by the industry! So yes, we have reached a moment where

more and more fan scholarship is coming out, and fandom is seen as a greater presence within the media environment, but I feel somewhat concerned that all this attention to fan studies is primarily industry-facing.

[2.3] This is why I'm heartened by so much scholarship on the visibility of fandom today—and Suzanne, why I'm really looking forward to your book coming out (as I'm

sure you are as well). One of the things I noticed about both collections was a renewed emphasis on the relationship between fans and the media industries from a variety of perspectives. So perhaps what defines this particular moment—why these books are

both coming out at about the same time—is the prominence of fan studies as a

discourse among a number of players: the industry recognizing the power of fans (but trying to mold fandom into a particular shape), fans themselves redefining their own relationship to mainstream culture, and fan studies academics bringing fandom into conversation with other fields (and of course the Venn diagram overlap of all three of these roles).

[2.4]

MAC: My snarky answer is that fan studies has enough visibility and

legitimacy to make two academic presses feel they could make some money by adding

a volume on fan studies to their well-established series. But, of course, even my snarky answer suggests that the field is more visible and well respected than it has been previously (this goes for fans in the general culture, too). It seems like, in addition to the catalyst moment Paul mentions above, academic presses are more likely to publish fan studies monographs, and thus the field's legitimacy grows. In this ferment, I think edited volumes are great tools for generating conversations about what counts in a field, kickstarting new trends, and exploring best practices in research. With the growth in scholarship in the field, it does seem that we need some focus and direction, and I think dedicated conferences (and Special Interest Groups), journals, and book series are great places to forge our way. My hope is that scholars and fans alike will find our collections useful places for thinking through fan studies, too.

3. What logics dictated your curation and organization

of your col ections—what topics they covered, what

disciplines they included, how they were structured,

etc.?

[3.1]

MAC: When Suzanne and I were conceptualizing the collection, we thought for some time about neglected or stalled areas of the field and also new ways for

conceptualizing what we do. We settled on six sections: "Methods and Ethics";

"Technologies and Practices"; "Identities"; "Race and Transcultural Fandom";

"Industry"; and "Futures of Fan Studies". Identities, industry, and technologies and practices represent the consistencies in the field—these are keywords you could expect to hear at any fan studies conference panel or find in nearly any fan studies publication.

So in these sections we pushed ourselves to curate topics that often are overlooked and understudied. We also really wanted to put scholars and industry professionals into dialogue with each other, so each section contains a conversation designed to tap into what's on the minds of scholars and professionals grappling with issues raised in the scholarship in the chapters that surround it. The method and ethics section was

important to both of us, having taught fan studies and struggled to find readings to help those new to the field understand what approaches are available to them. Fan studies that put race and transcultural fandom at their center are often called for but

infrequently published. And while ideally we would have liked to have two distinct sections on these topics, we did want to make them stand out (and thus hopefully more visible) from the section that covered identities generally. Futures made good sense as our last category and here we tried to invite fan studies scholars to set an agenda. It was so exciting to make a wish list of topics we wanted to include in the book and to read the submissions as they evolved. We're hoping that the scholarship in each of the

sections—whether expected or not—is useful in the classroom and engaging, sparking new traditions in fan studies.

[3.2]

PB: As I was putting the Wiley Companion together, I had a similar thought process as Melissa mentions. I wanted to include a selection of pieces by established fan scholars that commented on the state of the field at the moment, but also include chapters by fresher scholars that opened up the field in new directions. I included five sections: "Histories, Genealogies, Methodologies" (which explores some definitional work in fan studies, revisitations of canonical fan studies work from the early days of the field, and reconceptions of where we might place the history of fans); "Fan

Practices" (which explores fans' material creative works); "Fandom and Cultural

Studies" (which, like Melissa mentioned above, deliberately focuses on race and

transcultural fandom, along with other underexplored areas of fan research, including aging fandom); "Digital Fandom" (which focuses on fan practices in the digital realm); and "The Future of Fan Studies" (which, in an inverse of the "Histories" section, posits what fan studies may be missing and ways that fan studies can be reinterpreted for the future). I describe the organization in the introduction as a sort of mirror image, as the

first and last sections examine new ways of exploring where fan studies came from and where fan studies is headed, while the second and fourth sections examine how fan

practices have shifted or not because of the rise of digital technology. I was also concerned with ethics, and included a chapter in the "Histories" section, although I tried to encourage authors to explore ethical issues in each of their chapters.

[3.3] I find it interesting how much of the book became guided by what my authors were concerned about; in many ways, this matched the vision I had for the way the

book would unfold, but in other ways it was surprising. My remit for the Companion from Wiley was to involve both established scholars and fresh voices; chapters were supposed to be quite long at 10,000 words each. Originally I wanted to introduce each of the sections as Melissa and Suzanne did, but as I kept adding more and more

chapters to the book (Wiley was very patient as I explained, no we need a chapter on racebending!) I simply ran out of word count. I tried to actively involve the authors of the chapters in the process; this is as much their book as it is mine. Wiley, however, definitely wanted more of a reference book, which didn't quite jibe with my vision for the book as a more political document that looked towards the future. To try to facilitate more interaction between the chapters, I gave the authors access to each others' essays and encouraged them to read/comment on them. I shared the vision of the book with

them, and where I was thinking of putting their chapter, so they would be able to work their chapter into the general schema of the book. Different authors have different approaches to writing chapters, so I didn't want to dictate too much what I wanted each chapter to say.

[3.4] I think Wiley, the authors, and I worked out a compromise where chapters were often both past-facing and future-facing, and the mirror structure illustrates that. I attempted to balance "this is traditional fan studies" with "these are the lapses, lacunae in the field"; for instance, some essays explore what would happen if we traced fan studies to letters in English literary magazines or baseball, high culture and theater, or pornography. I was surprised that fewer chapters than expected focused specifically on gender. I didn't put a specific call out for chapters on fandom and gender (and many chapters touch on gender issues), so perhaps I shouldn't be surprised that many didn't come in. But gender and fandom emerged as a thoroughfare throughout the book,

including chapters on fan gatekeeping (and GamerGate in particular), aging female

fans, and gendered fan practices. Like Melissa mentioned above, I was particularly interested in developing chapters on transcultural fandom and race issues in fandom.

The field has been ignoring or eliding race for far too long.

[3.5] One of the exciting things about editing a massive book like this is the

creativity in how chapters go together. Making a decision about whether a particular chapter belongs in the "Genealogies" or the "Futures" sections can reshape how readers approach the material. There were some material considerations; one doesn't want an overloaded section that has far more chapters than any other section. Some scholars that contributed wanted to be in a particular section more than others, and I wanted to balance the gender and background of the authors in each section as well. It's a good thing I like to do jigsaw puzzles.

4. Along the way—or now, at the other end of the

process—did you gain new insights into the state of

the field of fan studies and/or where fan studies is

headed?

[4.1]

SS: Some of my favorite chapters in the collection are the culminating

conversations between scholars and/or between professionals, in large part because they often actively grapple with where the field has been and the myriad directions it might head in. Hearing television writers and fan engagement consultants and journalists who cover fan culture discuss the evolution of industry/fan relations from an array of insider perspectives was totally fascinating. Based on all of our comments above, I think we all approached these collections as an opportunity to push the field in new directions, featuring emergent lines of inquiry or filling what we perceived to be gaps or areas that have been underdeveloped. While many of the directions fan studies is headed in

(considerations of tourism, transcultural fandom, race, merchandise and fashion,

amongst others) are present here, what's interesting to me is how many of the chapters in the book also ended up reflecting a need to revisit old insights and lines of inquiry as we have these eternal "state of the field" conversations. So, I loved seeing Henry Jenkins go back to Stuart Hall's concept of "negotiated reading" to discuss racebending, or seeing the scholars in our conversation about the evolution of music fandom studies consider how analog practices and models still inform contemporary digital music fan culture. Considering how much of contemporary fan culture orbits around rebooted or reimagined franchises and story worlds, I really appreciated that so many of our

contributors worked to reboot older theories and core concepts that helped shape the field, making them newly relevant. While I don't think it's productive to be overly nostalgic in our conceptions of the field, I personally believe it's important to be mindful of the past even as we look to the future.

[4.2]

PB: I was really excited by the breadth of topics that the contributors wrote about. In my opinion, one of the core strengths of fan studies (and something that Tisha Turk wrote about in her chapter of the Wiley Companion) is the deliberate

multidisciplinary nature of fan studies. It's not just that fan studies pulls (poaches?) from multiple disciplines, but that each discipline contributes a unique element to the field. In that respect, I was heartened by chapters that expanded the remit of fan studies into new directions. Alexandra Edwards wrote about how an alternate lineage of fan studies traces not letters in science fiction magazines, but letters in literary magazines that were published even earlier. What does it say about fandom to trace this much more feminine route? Daniel Cavicchi analyzed links between late nineteenth century

baseball fandom and fan studies, and the remarkable connections between the two. Matt Hills explored fandom of high culture texts like theater and literature; Francesca Coppa used Hamilton as a way to talk about fandom and drag. To play off what Suzanne wrote, it's not that any of these are completely reinventing the fan studies wheel, but rather bringing different disciplines into play within fan studies; to me, this is the most

exciting and vibrant part of the field.

[4.3]

MAC: I agree with Suzanne and Paul wholeheartedly. Putting together

collections like these gives you an incredible opportunity to sift through a field and figure out where you'd like to see it go. Like Suzanne, getting back to questions that truly bind the field (multidisciplinary as I agree it is)—our core interests—really excited me. In our collection, I love the chapters on historical methods for fan studies (we have so much old territory to explore!) and the conversation on music fandom (it's so

invigorating to see three scholars I really admire engage this aspect of the field). I also really like the chapters that push boundaries. The chapters on race in our book really energize me. These scholars' work demonstrates (not that I needed to be convinced—I didn't) that the field's weakness with race is a major detriment to fan studies scholarship.

We really need to do better and I'm hoping these chapters will help scholarship develop in this important area.

5. Any advice for folks looking to embark on edited

fan studies col ections, large or smal ?

[5.1]

PB: Become very familiar with Excel! In all seriousness, having now edited

smaller collections with much more specific themes, as well as longer collections with a more general remit, having good organizational skills is crucial. Keep lists of scholars and topics for different chapters to make sure there isn't doubling up of information.

Label everything. Additionally, I made extensive use of calendar apps to keep myself on track with editing and contacting the authors; I try to send updates as often as I can.

My trick, and I'm now pulling the curtain back on this, is to tell people the deadline is actually a month earlier than it actually is: this way there is plenty of time for people who send chapters in late! And tell the publisher a deadline that is much further in the future than you intend to turn in the document. I learned that one from Scotty on Star Trek.

[5.2] But along with that, editing the Wiley collection showed me that flexibility is equally crucial. About a third of the scholars I approached to write chapters couldn't do it for one reason or another. Some of the chapters will always come in late—there's no accounting for illness, or promotion, or family issues, or any number of things that might prevent someone from getting a chapter in on time. I had to rethink the

organization of the book a number of times as scholars came and went. Some people

had to drop out at the last minute, and rather than excise the topic they were writing about, I had to find someone else to write something. It's hard to ask someone to write 10,000 words on a topic in just a few months! I did my homework on what expertise

people in the field had, and I kept a document with about 100 people listed to reach out to for various topics. So in that respect, being up to date with what's happening in the field is just as important as well. If I know that someone is writing about Tumblr for this venue, or has just published about fan conventions in a different book, then I know they have already done some research and may be able to contribute an overview of the topic

for this sort of research tome.

[5.3] All that being said, I think the most important thing I learned about editing this sort of collection is that I had a lot more to learn about the field than I thought I did. We often get caught up in our own minute areas of research and lose sight of some of the issues in other areas. It was a huge amount of work, but also a huge amount of fun , to be able to just research what's happening in the field. Fan studies has exploded in the past decade, and there is a lot of great work out there in harder-to-find places. As I read drafts of chapters coming in, I realized I needed to deepen my knowledge of

contemporary fan studies. This helped the book, and it also helped my own research. In many respects, editing a collection like this is like researching a dissertation on the state of fan studies in 2018 (or, in reality, 2016). In that respect, having read Melissa and Suzanne's book and editing my book, I'm incredibly excited about where the field is headed. There is exciting new scholarship on gatekeeping in fandom, antagonism in

fandom, transcultural fandom, race and fandom, ludic fandom, and a million other

topics that haven't even been explored yet.

[5.4] I can't wait to see the Companion volumes of 2038.

[5.5]

SS: I appreciate Paul pulling back the curtain on the old deadline trick, as it's one we used as well, but I think most contributors will assume that you've built in some wiggle room with the timeline. (I feel like there's a Wizard of Oz "pay no attention to the deadline behind the curtain" joke to make here.) In addition to seconding all the organizational advice Paul offered above, I would advise that editors should be prepared for the timeline to change. We were juggling nearly sixty authors, all with busy

schedules. On the whole, everyone was fantastic and stuck to the schedule, but

inevitably things got delayed. Some chapters took more and others less revision than others, some contributors had unexpected issues arise and needed extensions, I

overestimated how many chapters I could edit in a weekend, the first pass at the index came back a mess—and so on.

[5.6] If you are editing with one or multiple collaborators, I would also strongly recommend establishing regularly scheduled times to check in over Skype. Some of

these meetings will inevitably be more substantive than others, but even taking five minutes to walk through what you're working on, discuss upcoming deadlines, and

troubleshoot issues was incredibly helpful. Likewise, while we took a "divide and

conquer" editorial approach, It was really generative to have someone to bounce ideas off, particularly when giving feedback to the contributors.

[5.7] But that's all the boring logistical stuff. My primary advice to those considering developing their own fan studies collection is to do it, particularly if it's more specialized. For example, I am excited to know that Rukmini Pande has an anthology on race and fandom in the pipeline right now, and that we will finally be getting an entire anthology focused on Tumblr from Alexander Cho, Allison McCracken, Indira

Neill Hoch, and Louisa Ellen Stein. Also, I was chatting with a couple of other fan scholars on Twitter who are all interested in intersections of food and fandom, and a

collection developed out of that exchange. In other words, building generalist collections like the ones we're discussing here inevitably becomes an exercise in

curation, as you're trying to balance canonical topics and themes in the field with emergent or underdeveloped lines of inquiry. I believe every chapter in our book could be a topically rich foundation for an anthology of its own, but did we comprehensively cover the field of media fan studies? No, of course not. One of the best things about working in a field that's both (comparatively) young and undergoing rapid growth is that there's so much that hasn't yet been explored.

[5.8]

MAC: As I hope we've shown here, there are many benefits to editing a

collection of essays, and (depending on your position and goals) you shouldn't expect that an edited collection will improve your chances at tenure or get you a job. But without reinventing the wheel that Jonathan Gray (2011) already described, there are lots of great reasons to take on an edited volume, with networking and visibility being primary. Working with Suzanne was a dream (I miss our regular hangouts, Suzanne!)

and collaborating on a project like this is ideal. I think accountability to another person keeps you on track. I've also enjoyed working on my own—let me give a shout out to the forthcoming collection on antifandom that I've been working on. Use an edited

collection as an opportunity to work with someone whose work you admire, and reach out to folks you might not know otherwise and get connected. And set an agenda for yourself and the field. I can't wait to read collections that come after ours!

6. References

Cho, Alexander, Allison McCracken, Indira Hoch Neil, and Louisa Ellen Stein, eds.

Forthcoming. A Tumblr Book. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press.

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Document Outline

- Transformative Works and Cultures, No. 28, The Future of Fandom (September 15, 2018)

Table of Contents

Transformative Works and Cultures, No. 28, The Future of Fandom (September 15, 2018)