#fanstudies

Hi, I’m Francesca Coppa. I was one of the founders of the OTW, and I’ve been a volunteer with the org in some capacity or other ever since.  I’m also a professor–currently Chair of the Department of English Literatures & Writing at Muhlenberg College, cross-appointed in Film Studies. My areas of expertise include dramatic literature, transmedia storytelling, performance studies, and–yes, fan studies.  I’m the author of The Fanfiction Reader: Folk Tales in the Digital Age (U. Michigan 2017) and Vidding: A History (U. Michigan 2022)--the latter of these is free to read on the open source Fulcrum Platform.  Which reminds me: I am also an open culture and fair use advocate, and I work closely with OTW Legal to write briefs and otherwise advocate for laws that preserve fandom’s fair use and transformative rights.

I’ve always said that fandom doesn’t need academia to explain it to itself: fandom has a robust tradition of meta posting and brilliant thinky thoughts. Fandom has also invented a whole critical vocabulary to describe fandom works, cultures, and practices (think of all the words and expressions we use: affirmative vs. transformative fandom, BNF, squee, fanon, dead dove do not eat, squick, drabble, Brit-pick, omegaverse: the whole glossary in Fanlore!) But many fans are scholars of one kind or another, and many scholars are also fans.  I like occupying the between space–I was a fan first, and remain a fan first!–and so I recently joined Fanhackers to have an in-between space to talk and think about fandom with others who are interested in meta and fan studies scholarship.  

Tati Lopatiuk é uma publicitária e escritora que, em Setembro de 2018, realizou uma oficina de Fanfics na FLIMO - Festival Literário Mauro de Oliveira na Escola Estadual Prof. Mauro de Oliveira em São Paulo, onde conseguiu, através desse evento, abrir espaço para as fanfics na escola pública.

Assim como a Tati, nós do NEPF temos como premissa levar a fanfic para todos os lugares, e as escolas são os locais onde mais devemos incentivar a leitura e o manuseio da nossa imaginação. Por isso, convidamos a Tati para responder algumas perguntas sobre a oficina e sobre qual a importância da fanfic para o desenvolvimento de futuros escritores.

English version here!

I'm a master's student in the Interdisciplinary Postgraduate Program in Cinema at UFS (Brazil). I am researching Earpers and how the experiences within the fandom help the construction of the subjectivity of LGBTQIAP+ people. 

Could you help me by answering and sharing this form?

Here is the link to the form in PT-BR:

https://forms.gle/5fun9g9JenVFDXBf7 

And here is the link to the form in English:

I have to prepare for an exam of sorts and I need to know in what ways did fandom (any fandom), their actions and fan works influence mainstream culture and what kind of potential culture forming significance they can have.

I mostly need stuff like the direct impact fanworks had on culture (the only thing I can think about is ao3 and Dr who fanfiction going canon) and the moments when fans influenced a piece of media (like sherlock being brought back from the dead, cas staying for the rest of the seasons) but also stuff like fans funding veronica mars movie.

Also I know we created the term Mary Sue, is there any other term we created that went into popular use?

I'm doing my own research and I know some stuff (because I've been definitely too long in this business) but I'd appreciate some ideas! I'll be grateful for each and every answer

abo anon (2/3) It’s no coincidence that all the stereotypes created around omegas are similar to stereotypes (current or antiquated) about women, and stereotypes about alphas match those of men. That being said, I do recognize that some abo fics use these stereotypes to turn tropes on their heads and explore the hypocrisy of those stereotypes in real life but it’s still just never sat quite right with me.

abo anon (3/3) Also, of course I respect people’s rights to write about whatever they want as long as it’s not like racist/sexist/xenophobic etc but I just won’t be reading it haha. I’m not sure if I’m making a ton of sense but I think you get my general idea. Do you have any personal preferences or strong opinions on the matter?

Hey! Okay, so, first I want to precede this by saying that this is very much My Opinion and I do not expect everyone to share that opinion.

I’m not particularly fond of ABO in general for many of the reasons that you list. A big part of the reason I enjoy fic is that (at least from the majority of the authors I follow) it complicates or just completely throws out a lot of the gendered tropes that are present in mass-produced, traditionally published fiction. ABO stories often put those tropes right back into a work, often in even more problematic ways, which is a bummer, for me.

That being said, I’ve really enjoyed several ABO fics (and, similarly, dom/sub fics) that were written by authors who used the trope as a tool of subversion. As I said in my response to the Cain Debacle (which you can find in full here): Fandom, at least some of the time, uses these tropes to challenge social and romantic assumptions about identity and gender and investigate biological determinism rather than reinforce or further exaggerate gender binaries. When writers do that, I am absolutely a fan of ABO.

Just as a side note, because I don’t want anyone to feel like I’m shaming them: even when writers don’t do something progressive with a trope, there’s nothing wrong with enjoying potentially (or definitely) problematic content, as long as you are thinking critically about it/your reactions to it. And there’s often no correlation between the romantic or erotic content people enjoy reading and their actual real-life interests. I find BDSM super interesting to read about (for a lot of the same power dynamic reasons that I find some ABO fic interesting) but I also have no desire to ever try it myself. 

Hi everyone! Thanks to everyone who took the previously posted survey. To answer some popular questions:

1) I will definitely share the results and publications that come out of this

2) Obviously, the "fandom" list is nowhere near all of them. I ended up using scraped Tumblr data to find the top 30 most talked-about fandoms from the last 2 years, used those, and put an "other" category.

Hi! I am completing a project for my society and culture class about the relationship between gender, fandom and the media. Although I am focusing on the female experience with fandom I would appreciate responses from any person of any age or gender. All responses are anonymous and highly appreciated!!