Queer Fanfiction: An Instrument in the Construction of Queer Identities| Suhasini Sathyanarayan
Suggested Citation: Sathyanarayan, S. (2021, July 15). Queer Fanfiction: An Instrument in the Construction of Queer Identities. Queer Academia. URL.
Introduction
Almost everyone
self-identifies as a fan in some sense, writes Mark Duffett in his 2013 book, Understanding Fandom: An Introduction to the Study of Media
Fan Culture (p.
23). He traces the word “fan” back to the term “fanatic,” that is formally
defined as a “person filled with excessive and single-minded zeal, especially
for an extreme religious or political cause” (Oxford Languages). But the term,
in its present colloquial understanding, has been scraped off of most of the
negative connotations of “fanatic” over the years, though the degree to which
is largely dependent on the perception of the particular community by the
larger population, and thus differs from community to community. The word was
first seen in use in the last decades of the seventeenth century, before
becoming rooted in the United States where it was primarily ascribed to the
loyal and devoted admirers of film and music (Duffett, 2013). This
audience, these fans, of a particular person, team,
fictional series, etc. regarded collectively as a community or subculture is
what makes up a fandom as we know it (Oxford Languages). However, the
entity that they congregate around has now expanded to include literature,
anime, sports, and celebrity media, and the like.
Fandoms have always existed as fame and celebrity are
enduring concepts, but the form they take is dependent on the circumstances of
the time. Jenkins in Textual Poachers:
Television Fans and Participatory Culture
(1992) argues that they “originate in response to specific
historical conditions” (p. 11). Hence, when talking about fandoms of the
twentieth and twenty-first century—in the magnitude, reach, and scope they have
expanded to— they are better understood as dynamic phenomena associated with
the surge in electronic media, and in particular, the Internet. To understand
how a fandom is constituted, it is important to highlight its primary feature:
that they are made up of participants defined by their willingness in the
formation and dissemination of textual interpretations (Jenkins, 1992). Jenkins
describes these cultures as participatory cultures, wherein the consumption of
media results in the production of it. This production generates works in
numerous forms—namely, fanfiction, fanart, metatextual analysis, cosplay, and
fan videos—and consequently, allows participatory cultures to evolve into an
interactive community where those who are a part of it can share not only the
content they produce, but also their thoughts and feelings revolving around the
original text, resulting in fan practices and characteristics that are unique
to their membership in the community.
Through common knowledge and learned experience, it is
understood that being a fan shapes
identity and contributes to intellectual, personal, and social development.
Jenkins elucidates how individuals enter into fandoms
to seek solace from distinct sense of separation they feel from sociocultural
conditions imposed upon them, thus moving towards communities that are
“receptive to their cultural productions” in search of somewhere ‘within which they may feel a sense of “belonging’” (p.41). With the accessibility of the Internet,
individuals have the resources to fulfill these needs at a much faster rate,
particularly in their formative years, which has thus contributed to the
recognition of fandoms as a youth phenomenon
(Duffet, 1992). Isolated, ignored,
or simply scorned for who they are, it is unsurprising that queer youth find
respite and support in the largely safe space of a fandom or sub-communities
within a fandom where they can create fan work that authentically expresses
their identities, find others who have the same interests, and create
meaningful connections with them. The fanfiction community is one such
sub-community that occupies a significant position in fandoms wherein
individuals, both in the production and consumption of fanfiction, can safely
explore and learn more about themselves and their identities, and construct meaning
through the transformative lens.
The following sections of this paper will provide accounts of a history of queer fanfiction, its current configuration, and an analysis of how the form and the spaces that contain it has helped facilitate the discovery and acceptance of queer identities.
A Brief History of Queer
Fanfiction and an Analysis of Present Demographic Information
A central property that has propelled the development and
popularisation of modern fanfiction—and also affiliated with other fan work
such as fanart and fan videos—is the concept of “ships”. Rooted in the word
“relationship,” a “ship” refers to “a romantic relationship between two or more
characters” (Bothe, 2014, p. 5). It is important to clarify that these
characters do not have to be in a relationship for them to be shipped together.
They may have incompatible sexual or romantic orientations, may already be in
separate relationships, or, perhaps, even be from different fandoms. There are
no prerequisites that characters have to meet, hence, making the act of
“shipping,” entirely the fans’ prerogative. For that purpose, shipping can be
characterised entirely as the promotion of a ship within a fandom or fandoms as
a result of the fans’ emotional
investment in it. The history of queer fanfiction,
thus, begins this way. With a need to explore
different sexualities and relationships outside the confines of its
heteronormative context, the rise of queer fanfiction was first reflected in
the 1970s Star Trek series fandom
with the appearance of “slash fanfiction” of Kirk and Spock. Slash fanfiction
refers to a fanfiction about or involving a
same-sex relationship between two characters who are depicted as heterosexual
in the source material (Mixer, 2018). But what is fanfiction? A broad term with
many qualifications, it typically includes any written work that is derivative or
transformative of an existing work, typically produced non-commercially (Brill,
2015). Brill further demonstrates how both the writers and readers “arrange
themselves into groups based on mutual interests, and create self-perpetuating
works to a set of ideas, pairings or even genres” (p. 6).
Slash fanfiction is such a
sub-genre, a mutual interest that allows individuals to gather around. Jenkins’
understanding of the origin and development of fanfiction is accurate to the
time period of when his book of essays was published, and much of it still
holds up to this day. The idea of slash fanfiction as a medium to challenge
patriarchal standards of masculinity, its role in redefining male heroism, its
ability to translate the deep meaningful bonds between two same-sex characters
into a respectful and liberating sexual relationship, still remains true to
this day. Similarly, its criticism of slash fanfiction as pornography and
serves to fetishize of homosexuality in its attempts to mould to female desires
is also relevant. Yet, it does not accurately reflect the realities of the
present. As Brill explains in her 2015 dissertation, while slash fanfiction is
still sustained by female writers and readers, it has evolved and expanded to
contain the sexual and gender identities present in the general vocabulary
today. Both the contents of the fan work and its audiences reflect this range.
Furthermore, it also cannot take into account the queer representation that is
available in the zeitgeist. With more queer stories entering mainstream
culture, fans do not simply configure
heterosexual men into relationships with each other. They have the space to
explore queer characters and they relationships they’re in without inventing
either identity or interest. However, it is important to note that slash
fiction still occupies a significant position in the fanfiction community. The
queer representation available has not influenced the ubiquity of slash
pairings, fanfiction, or in the wide variety of works that are written and
consumed.
One can observe this by taking a
cursory glance at the content available on Archive of Our Own (AO3), one of the
few websites dedicated to support the existence of fanfiction (the other being
Fanfiction.net that was launched in 1998). A fan-run website and a subsidiary
of The Organization of Transformative Works (OTW), a non-profit organisation,
AO3 entered the fandom scene in 2009. Quickly rising to popularity, as of 2020,
AO3 has over 2.5 million registered users and almost 6 million works
distributed over 37,600 fandoms, making it the most common fanfiction website
used by fandom communities (AO3 Statistics). Dominated by queer pairings, there
are over 4.5 million queer fanfiction works on AO3, allowing it to be an
especially queer-friendly space. Since 2013, a Tumblr user, centurmlumina, has undertaken the
project to track ship statistics across fandoms, documenting this very
observable upward trend in the omnipresence of queer fanfiction, with only five
heterosexual pairings ever making into the Top 20 list, and without much consistency
in their appearance (Fanlore, 2020). But it is also true that the list is
overwhelmingly pinned with male slash pairings, with only a handful of pairings
portraying explicitly queer relationship on-screen. Moreover, there is only a
sparse number of female pairings which have made it into the list—and only in
2016 and 2017, a phenomenon that is directly in relation to the emerging
portrayal and subsequent disappearance of female queer experiences on
mainstream media.
Quite evidently, this further lends
proof to Jenkins’ implications on female writers and male slash fanfiction, but
it would also be grievous to erase the small niches that writers and readers
have carved for themselves in AO3 wherein individuals read and write their
fictional—and real individuals—with varying identities that covers the expanse
of the sexuality and gender spectrum. After all, if you want to read a long,
detailed exploration of Harry Potter coming out as trans and falling in love
with a non-binary Draco Malfoy, there is no place like AO3 that will cater to
your very specific needs.
There is only one specific issue
that one encounters when trying to gather statistics on AO3. The data is
incredibly old, with the only census ever conducted dating back to 2013 by the
same Tumblr user, centurmlumina, who
recorded that 54% of AO3 users identified as a sexual, gender, or romantic
minority. We can hypothesize that over the years with the increase in
registered users—AO3 registered only 247, 000 users in 2013 (AO3 Statistics)—
in conjunction with an increase in awareness of queer identities and the effort
undertaken to visiblise these identities, the numbers might have increased,
therefore establishing AO3 as a community populated by queer individuals
producing, disseminating, and consuming queer fanfiction.
The
Impact of Fanfiction on the Development of Identities
Each piece of this historic and
demographic context is essential to understand the place of fanfiction—and its
writers and readers—within a fandom. The above section has attempted to
efficiently expound that the fanfiction community—dominated by queer
identities—occupies a dominant place in fandom spaces and has a significant
impact on the lives of fans who choose to participate in it. It is
well-established in academic research and individual practices that fanfiction
is a medium for persons involved to explore their fantasies, desires, and
predilections—sexual or not. In her dissertation, Garner asserts that these
individuals are in search of narrative pleasure (2016). Hence, they primarily
seek out works that can provide them with emotional and/or sexual catharsis.
Writing helps test the bounds, and
as Mixer (2018) in her dissertation, maintains, to understand their sexual
identity in a way they may not be hospitable to do so in their environments.
She argues that the fanfiction community is a sort of “playing field” where
writers and readers can reconfigure sex, rearrange relationships, explore
different dynamics without fear of consequence and easily slip in and out of
genders and sexualities to learn more about their preferences and wants. This
can be noticed in the sort of fictional situations writers create and the
sexual fantasies they project onto characters which include but are not limited
to writing about BDSM fantasies, depicting taboo sexual acts and relationships,
transforming characters into fantastical or supernatural creatures and
portraying relationships between then, exploring the dynamics of genderbending
characters, investigating sex between transgender characters, and the like. The
freedom of sexual expression and the lack of judgement that fanfiction provides
is unlike any other medium, simply for the sheer breadth of range it covers and
volume of works it offers, and is, in short, liberating. Mixer does not
discount the parallels fanfiction has to pornography, but argues that much of
the harmful aspects of the material are nullified in fanfiction since it allows
for a more emotionally intimate study of sex and relationships as well as more
queer representation. Therefore, fanfiction is immensely valuable for queer
individuals, especially so for adolescents. It is representational, validating,
educational, and aids in making huge strides in normalising different
sexualities and relationships that are not always accepted or respected in
society. Hence, it plays a significant role in sexual development as, Mixer
concludes, “more marginalized sexualities and genders can discover ways to be
themselves in all regards, but particularly in sexual scripts that they may not
have access to in any other aspect of their lives” (p. 30).
When analysing how fanfiction helps
in identity formation, it becomes clear that fanfiction is, simply, a mode for
self-expression. Interpretation of a text might be collective, but it is never
uniform. It is subject to an individual’s experience, emotions, and
personality. Thus, what one takes away from a text rarely ever completely
overlaps with someone else’s reading of it. Constructing personal meaning, Waggoner
(2012) reasons, is essential for fanfiction because the original work may or
may not have a place to situate it. As long as the fandom lives, this
interpretation and reinterpretation occurs constantly, evolving with either
additions to the original text, the development of the individuals themselves,
or with the expansion and growth of the community. This search for meaning is,
hence, inextricably linked with the search and structuring of personal
identity. One can even argue that fans and fanfiction writers find identity by
developing meaning. This meaning that they search for is invariably a
reflection of themselves. In trying to understand it through a queer
perspective, one can, thus, notice why a queer-populated fanfiction
community—such as AO3, for instance—would queer the canon world, introducing
queer characters, relationships, and themes. They want it to be more
representative of themselves and how they look at the world. Floegel (2020)
helps augments this perspective by providing a salient addition, arguing that
fanfiction is also a way to challenge cis- and heteronormative trends
normalised in mainstream culture, and thereby contributing in creating a more
richly diverse, representative landscape. Fanfiction offers a wealth of
possibilities of identities, acting as an instrument of awareness and
discovery. It draws upon what is there, but is not known, renegotiating
original texts on the writers’ and readers’ terms. Therefore, with fans
asserting themselves vicariously, fanfiction slowly becomes a vehicle to help
strengthen their identities, become confident in its nature, and claim them in
a more unreceptive context.
Fanfiction is a communal activity that is altruistic in nature. In her dissertation, Garner expresses how the act of sharing fanfiction “can be seen not only as an exposure of oneself but also as a gift to the greater fandom,” and that “such works are given to the community from a person or team in order to please or improve the community as a whole” (p. 64). Every writer is seen as closing gaps in the original text, fixing a problem in said work, or expanding it to new territory, thus making every contribution important and valuable, building a community where individuals can seek out what they prefer, leave praise, feedback, or criticism, and develop deep personal connections simply through the act of sharing while being completely anonymous. Garner, in fact, argues that this anonymity is fundamental to the intimate bonds that are fostered as it allows individuals to participate and experiment with themselves and with others in a space that asks nothing of them. These anonymous relationships provide individuals with empathy and companionship that might not be available to them in the real world. Plainly stated, it helps them find an alternative community that is much better suited for their emotional and psychological needs. For queer individuals, the impact of easy availability and accessibility to communities such as these is incalculable.
Conclusion
Fanfiction refutes the idea that the author is the supreme authority of any work that they produce; it is a central tenet of fandom and fan work. By embracing this and the autonomy consumers possess, fanfiction allows writers and readers to create and consume works that reflect their ideas and make space for what they wish in the original work. Anything can be what the fans want it to be; anything that contradicts that interpretation can simply be transformed to what is more suitable to the fans. It is a leisure activity, a pleasurable hobby, a form of escapism for most people, but its ease and informality coexists with its subversive ability in opposition to mainstream landscape, representative capacity, and expressive qualities. These facets help build both the fans’ personal and social identities, promote sexual development, and find membership in a safe, well-meaning community that encourages their welfare and provides a sense of belonging. Media and literature have made leaps and bounds in introducing more positive and diverse representation into our cultural framework, but fanfiction will remain a permanent fixture in fandom spaces. Its enduring nature lies in its dynamic and transformative calibre that allows writers and readers to reimagine, reinvent, and reorient worlds as they see fit in a way that can neither be channelled nor replicated in other avenues of creation.
References
Admin. (2020, May 5). AO3 Statistics 2020: A Look Behind the
Scenes. Archive of Our Own. https://archiveofourown.org/admin_posts/15931.
Brill, R. (2015, May 1).
Exploring collective storytelling,
sexuality, and diversification in slash fanfiction. Cardinal Scholar Home. https://cardinalscholar.bsu.edu/handle/123456789/199724.
centrumlumina. (2013,
October 5). AO3 Census: Masterpost [web log]. https://centrumlumina.tumblr.com/post/63208278796/ao3-census-masterpost.
centrumlumina. (2020). AO3 Ship Stats. Fanlore. https://fanlore.org/wiki/AO3_Ship_Stats.
Duffett, M. (2013). Understanding fandom: an introduction to the
study of media fan culture. Bloomsbury Academic.
Floegel, D. (2020, April
6). "Write the story you want to
read": world-queering through slash fanfiction creation. Journal of
Documentation. https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/JD-11-2019-0217/full/html.
Garner, A. (2016, May). THE EROTICS OF FANFICTION: QUEERING FANS,
WORKS, AND COMMUNITIES IN MODERN INTERNET FANDOM. Bowling Green State
University. https://etd.ohiolink.edu/apexprod/rws_etd/send_file/send?accession=bgsu1460129118&disposition=inline.
Jenkins, H. (1992). Textual poachers: television fans and
participatory culture. Routledge.
Mixer, L. M. (2018,
May). And then they boned: an analysis of
fanfiction and its influence on sexual development. Digital Commons @
Humboldt State University. https://digitalcommons.humboldt.edu/etd/131/.
Oxford University Press.
(2021, June). Fanatic. OED Online. https://www.google.com/search?q=fanatic&rlz=1C1CHBF_enIN915IN915&oq=fanatic&aqs=chrome.0.69i59j0i20i263i433j46i67j0i67i433l2j0i67l2j69i60.2587j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8.
Oxford University Press. (2021,
June). Fanatic. OED Online.
https://cutt.ly/Lm4FZ5Z
Waggoner, E. B. (2012, December). Television and Fanfiction Online: Finding Identity, Meaning, and Community. ProQuest. https://www.proquest.com/openview/37dcd64fd15b7186a1567c757c034868/1?pq-origsite=gscholar&cbl=18750.
Written by: Suhasini Sathyanarayan
Reviewed by: Smriti Gupta, Aashi Singh
About the Author: Suhasini is a college student currently studying in St. Joseph's, Bangalore, pursuing her B.A in English, Journalism, and Psychology. When she's not studying or working, she likes to write about TV, film, and literature.
Comments
Post a Comment