I would never have considered fanfic being used to spread hate; it just wouldn’t have occurred to me.
I realized that it wouldn't have occurred to me either, until it started to happen, despite having done fan studies research for several years now focusing on fanworks, and centering the theory that fanworks allow fans to center their own experiences and perceptions in cultural texts that, in many cases, exclude or marginalize them. I've taken issue with how much many fan studies scholars tend to emphasize that motive when I think, for most fans, they would define their interest and love for a source text and a desire to spend more time in that world/with those characters (rather than subverting it/them) as reasons for making fanworks. But I think there was definitely a moment in fan studies scholarship (and fandom more generally) that could be characterized as "yay fandom!" and striving to prove the value of fandom and fanworks. Part of that seems to me to have been centering fans using fanworks for progressive purposes: normalizing relationships beyond cis-het; centering the perspectives of queer characters, characters of color, and women; representing the experiences of characters with disabilities (to name just three). However, it seems just as easy to leverage fanworks to express and represent hate: the opposite side of the same coin. I wonder if anyone has done research on this ...
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rosecarmine
(no subject)
Date: 2023-06-09 03:24 pm (UTC)I realized that it wouldn't have occurred to me either, until it started to happen, despite having done fan studies research for several years now focusing on fanworks, and centering the theory that fanworks allow fans to center their own experiences and perceptions in cultural texts that, in many cases, exclude or marginalize them. I've taken issue with how much many fan studies scholars tend to emphasize that motive when I think, for most fans, they would define their interest and love for a source text and a desire to spend more time in that world/with those characters (rather than subverting it/them) as reasons for making fanworks. But I think there was definitely a moment in fan studies scholarship (and fandom more generally) that could be characterized as "yay fandom!" and striving to prove the value of fandom and fanworks. Part of that seems to me to have been centering fans using fanworks for progressive purposes: normalizing relationships beyond cis-het; centering the perspectives of queer characters, characters of color, and women; representing the experiences of characters with disabilities (to name just three). However, it seems just as easy to leverage fanworks to express and represent hate: the opposite side of the same coin. I wonder if anyone has done research on this ...