"What a bust": Character selection and the possibilities of failure in hockey RPF

Increasingly popular since the upload of the first story on the Archive of Our Own (AO3), hockey real person fiction (RPF) plays with traditional media coverage of athletes' personal lives. We investigate fans' reading of former National Hockey League (NHL) player Nolan Patrick to better understand how he became such a prominent protagonist of slash fan fiction. We argue that RPF reimagines traditional media narratives to portray new configurations that escape heteronormative constraints and subvert their function. In this context, slash fans' selection and rewriting of this character appears to reveal fans' commitment to cripping the hockey narrative and to finding transformative queer potential in sporting failure

Surviving Armageddon (aka COVID-19) through "Good Omens: Lockdown" fan fiction

In May 2020, Neil Gaiman and some of the team behind Good Omens (2019–2025) created a YouTube video titled "Good Omens: Lockdown" ("Lockdown"). In this video, the demon Crowley (David Tennant) and the angel Aziraphale (Michael Sheen) have a phone conversation discussing the pandemic and the importance of following the current UK health guidance. "Lockdown" inspired a large amount of fan fiction. I chose a sample of sixteen of the most popular stories in order to examine how fans transformed aspects of the video in ways that may give insight into and comment on potential fissures in the messaging. The analysis revealed that many fan writers actively resisted the normative, prescriptive health messaging of "Lockdown" and instead worked to make the messaging personal and inclusive of complex situational intersections, such as queer identity and mental health struggles

"Remember, love knows no boundaries and comes in many forms": The conceptualization of queerness within AI-generated fan works

Using the fandoms of Harry Potter, Supernatural (2005–2020), and Our Flag Means Death (2022–2023), we interrogate the sociotechnical system that underpins generative AI and potential biases toward queerness embedded in them. Given its historical ties to addressing cultural inequities, especially around queerness, fan fiction offers a critical space to examine the sociotechnical underpinnings of generative AI in producing fiction and as an extension of naming and making visible embodied identities. Through an exploration of how ChatGPT fabricates queer fan fiction, we identify not only the typologies of visible queerness imagined as possible within generative AI but equally what essentialist and normative ideologies remain rooted within technologies

Institutionally appointed fan-athletes: The hegemonic performativity, commodification, and consumption of scholastic dance teams

Dance team practices, often situated in sports settings, blur the boundaries between affirmational and transformational fandoms through their performative registers. In scholastic settings, dance teams cheer and perform at sports games, compete in athletic association and/or corporate dance competitions, and attend other events on behalf of their schools. Aiming to perform support for their schools authentically, dance team members act as institutionally appointed fan-athletes. In this role, they are often commodified by their institutions and consumed by its wider fan body while adhering to idealized aesthetic and interpersonal expectations. Choreographically, dance team routines tend to appropriate Black popular dances while warping them to fit aesthetic ideals that valorize whiteness. Studying dance teams through critical ethnographic and dance studies methodologies then highlights how normative modes of performative appropriation can be used primarily to reinforce White supremacist and cis heteropatriarchal social structures even through purported modes of female empowerment

Everyone watches women's sports

The media and commerce brand Togethxr launched an incredibly successful T-shirt in 2023 that read, "Everyone watches women's sports." While women's sports fans seemed moved and excited by the commercial item, the shirt's slogan actually demonstrates a paradox of visibility within women's sports and women's sports fandom

Polyphemus ❤️ Acis: The conduit in Ovid's Metamorphoses

This contribution applies a motif from fan fiction, the conduit, to the love triangle of Polyphemus, Acis, and Galatea in the Ancient Roman poet Ovid's Metamorphoses (ca. 8 CE). Reading this passage of Ovid through the lens of the conduit helps explain the role of the female narrator Galatea and Ovid's addition to the story of Acis, provides a fitting modern interpretive tool for this ancient story, and enacts a reparative reading of the text

Character.AI and the quest for immersion in fan fiction practices

The digital age has transformed methods of fan engagement, enabling increasingly immersive, interactive, and personalized exchanges with media that blur the boundaries between fiction and reality. The evolution from self-insert fan fiction to generative AI (artificial intelligence)–driven websites and digital applications like Character.AI represents a shift toward a desire for real-time interaction with fictional characters and fan objects, offering new dimensions of emotive and transformative engagement. While self-insert fan fiction has long served as a medium for fans to explore alternative narratives and representations within the worlds of beloved fan objects, Character.AI allows users to converse with AI-generated character chatbots from their preferred fan objects, deepening emotional engagement and opportunities for individualized interaction by the fan-as-author and fan-as-character. I raise questions regarding ethical engagement with generative AI chatbots and the potential for harmful repercussions as a result of their usage, as well as examine the evolution of these transformative fan practices and their intended result of emotional resonance and ontological security within contemporary fandoms

Fanception on ice!!!: Cycles of choreographic adaptation and fandom in figure skating:

I examine the cyclical nature of love and fandom when Yuri!!! On Ice's figure skating routines are (re)performed in fictional and real competitions, which creates a sense of haunting palimpsest as embodied practice is translated from medium to medium. I highlight how adapting repertoire and donning cosplay can be a means for athletes and fans to produce profoundly generative and explicitly citational performances of embodied and passionate love for both form and fandom

Intergenerational dynamics of children's music fandom: An enculturation perspective

Music fandom forms an important part of everyday life for an increasing number of children. However, prior research has mostly ignored child audiences. Based on interviews of Finnish fans aged seven to eleven years old, I discuss the intergenerational dimensions of children's music fandom, approaching them from the perspective of fan enculturation. Children's fan activities, as well as their chances for developing more autonomous fan cultural agency, are often dependent on parents' economic and material facilitation. Moreover, music fandom may evolve into an intergenerational family practice shared by both the child(ren) and the parent(s). In this case, the child-parent relationship becomes a forum for direct fan-to-fan interaction and sharing of subcultural capital. Fan enculturation should also be understood as a multidirectional phenomenon, as children may contribute to the emergence and cultivation of their parents' fandoms

Fandom and the early years of the Gilbert and Sullivan Society (1924–45)

London's Gilbert and Sullivan Society (founded 1924 and documented in the Gilbert and Sullivan Journal) is a remarkable example of a collection of fan practices flourishing in the decades leading up to World War II. Despite many differences between Gilbert and Sullivan fandom and many subsequent movements, much that would become familiar in more recent fandom, is already manifest even in the society's earliest years, including costume fandom, fan fiction, text analysis, member quizzes and competitions, critical and adoring reviews of new productions, and star meet-and-greets, all shared by an ever-growing community of enthusiasts seeking reenchantment