Safe, Meaningful Spaces: Fanfiction’s Role in the Ratification of
Non-heteronormativity in Interpretive Communities
MA Thesis English Literature and Culture (English Literary Studies) Supervisor: Gaston Franssen
Introduction
The cultural phenomenon of fanfiction has reshaped the possibilities of writing and reading, and much of this is attributed to its community aspect. By providing a platform on which texts can be communally read, rewritten and discussed, fanfiction sites have
unknowingly also provided a safe space for constructive, meaningful discussions about marginalised groups and discourses. Away from the social policing of everyday society, fanfiction writers and readers can explore their sexuality, for instance. Gender and sexuality, are primary themes woven through many fanfiction stories. Homosexual couplings of popular characters are the most common denominator running through these stories, but transgender or even gendered characters frequently make appearances too. In a world where non-heteronormative characters are either almost non-existent, demonised or sexuality-centred (Goltz, 33), fanfiction provides a space in which these characters, and what they represent, can be relatively freely experimented with as well as the norms by which they are judged and valued. As the presence of non-heteronormative characters and discourses become more prevalent in fanfiction communities, it becomes more normative, while the suppression of non-heteronormativity becomes more intolerable for these reader communities. These shared expectations, coupled with the unique reader fellowship that fanfiction platforms offer, result in more stable and steady interpretive communities. This thesis will focus on the way in which fanfiction environments and re-imaginings of popular texts and characters perpetuate the formation of interpretive and discursive communities which actively participate in the meaningful performance of gender and sexuality. The reimaginings in question are manifested in fanfiction stories, forums, and discussion threads.
Contemporarily, fanfiction has a “short but vibrant history” (Gray, Sandvoss, and Harrington, 3) in academia. The term ‘Fanfiction Studies’ has emerged, and it has become a field of studies which the academic community have largely acknowledged as adding value to other fields of study, such as literary studies or adaptation studies. The various theories and investigations into the field have been collected in several key works, such as ‘The Fanfiction Studies Reader’ (Hellekson and Busse, 1), which show how quickly scholars have amassed interest in the field of fanfiction studies. However, this was not always the case.
When one used to hear the term ‘fanfiction’ in scholarly circles, it was often accompanied by a certain disregard, perhaps even a distinct prejudice. The unregulated, anarchistic nature of fanfiction was considered to be an aspect which made it a valueless scholarly pursuit. Many scholars either rejected it outright, or attempted to force it into existing categories in order to delineate it (Schaffner, 614). In reality, fanfiction is an entirely new phenomenon that has grown organically as a result of technology and communications advancements, as well as so-called ‘convergence culture’, a culture in which old and new media collide (Jenkins, 8). Simply stated, fanfiction can be defined as “The practice where fans write stories based on the characters and story worlds of a single source text or ‘canon’ of works” (Jenkins, 371). Some scholars who are invested in the study of fanfiction argue that it began long before the internet era in the form of ‘fanzines’ in the 1930s, grass-roots zines that were created and distributed by fans to other fans (Thomas, 226). However, it remained an underground movement, as meeting fellow fans, collaborating on the zines, and methods of distribution required a lot of time and effort. Although fanfiction as it was then experienced a surge of popularity in the 1960s with the introduction of the popular series Star Trek
(Thomas, 226), it boomed far more explicitly with the introduction of the internet.
There are a variety of scholars across media studies, communication, and literary studies which have delved into the fanfiction phenomenon in a variety of ways.
Some earlier fanfiction enthusiasts in academia dedicated much of their time to justifying fanfiction as an activity of value and of academic interest (Schaffner, 613), while others explored its ostracising as a genre from literary studies in general (LaChev, 83). Admitting to exploring fanfiction as a genre was often met with condescension; it was a process of ‘coming out’ as a fan of popular culture (LaChev, 84).
More recently, academics have ventured further as fanfiction has become more acknowledged as a cultural phenomenon in academic circles, which has been assisted in some cases by certain commercial successes of fanfiction, such as the 50 Shades of
Grey series by E.L James (2011). This particular work first emerged on fanfiction.net as a
fanfiction text of Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight series (2005). The series sparked much discussion around its explicit sexual nature, particularly regarding the notion that it was ‘women’s porn’ or even ‘mommy porn’ (Whitehead, 915). The general public awareness of the series at the time of its publication was very high, resulting from its high visibility on social media and its later adaptation to a movie. Consequently, a public dialogue about fanfiction arose, which in turn piqued academic interest. The concepts of the ‘anti-fan’ and ‘snark-fandom’ were coined, for instance, notions that explore the fan which bemoans the quality of fanfiction, yet reluctantly enjoys fanfiction texts (Harman and Jones, 952). One of the primary oppositions to fanfiction is the explicit borrowing of existing characters and story worlds (Schaffner, 617). Henry Jenkins coined the term ‘textual poaching’, which refers to the fans interpreting the texts as opposed to passively consuming them (23). Fans ‘poach’
characters and story worlds; they simultaneously read the dominant text (the source text as it was intended to be read) and the oppositional text (the text interpreted/recreated), making them active readers and shifting power relationships between the reader and the author (Jenkins, 23). The combination of the relative novelty of fanfiction, it being an increasingly
interesting field for the study of reading and readers, and its groundbreaking approach to texts makes fanfiction an ideal candidate for a thesis investigation.
The Hypothesis
This thesis seeks to prove that fanfiction reimaginings of popular texts perpetuate the formation of stable reading communities which perform and experiment with gender and sexuality, whether explicitly or implicitly. The stability of these interpretive communities is regulated and structured by particular reading protocols and expectations enforced by the community itself, which is highly participatory and present.
A Brief Literature Review of Fanfiction and Performativity
Fanfiction is particularly interesting for gender studies scholars, as it provides a space for users to experiment with sexual and gender possibilities and identities that would result in social marginalisation and policing in other circumstances. These experimentations and performances take place in both the fanfiction texts and the ‘small stories’, which are stories “still in the fringes of narrative research” (Bamberg and Georgakopoulou, 381). Small stories refer to the interactions between users in the forums and other spaces which are not the fanfiction texts themselves. Role play between users in comments sections, for example, show a lot of experimentation with sexuality and gender through the vehicles of the characters. Through this experimentation, individually and communally, discourses around gender become shared amongst the reader group. The following section will outline the method and theoretical approach by which this thesis will investigate its hypothesis. This method will lay the theoretical groundwork for the analysis of a fanfiction text ‘The Student Prince’ by the user FayJay, and several examples of small stories (including reviews and forms) which will prove the hypothesis.
This thesis will begin by problematizing a stance which values authorial intent over reader interpretation and reinterpretation. The establishment of a non-static textual meaning (those of each reader individually) is necessary to proceed with exploring sexual and gender performativity in fanfiction, which relies on the changeability of the text. The works of Judith Butler and Micheal Ross will be instrumental in understanding gender and sexuality
performance. With the understanding that fanfiction writers perform gender and sexuality and create constructive dialogues about the related issues, the impact on the readers’ and writers’ expectations will then be addressed. Affirming and reaffirming attitudes towards a fluid gender and sexuality collectively create a strong community influence over the reader to abide by the related expectations. As these discourse communities share understandings and reading protocols, it naturally facilitates a space in which a shared ideology can be formed and
maintained. Fanfiction sites provide a safe space in which any kind of expression or
experimentation can be explored. There occurs a collective expansion of social consciousness by virtue of exposure to marginalised groups or individuals. By examining Stanley Fish’s ‘Interpretive communities’ alongside fanfiction communities, this thesis will investigate how they become equated, facilitated by the aspects of fanfiction sites. The shared reading
strategies and expectations of fanfiction communities, which act as community stabilizers, will be shown with case studies taken from fanfiction sites. The types, titles, purposes, and user interactions on various fanfiction forums will show how users in specific fanfiction communities form ties to other readers of the same community and shared their expectations with the group. One such case study is a close reading of a fanfiction text from the well-known fanfiction site Archive of our own. Archive of our own is an appropriate platform to retrieve fanfiction texts from because it is one of the most popular fanfiction platforms, and its moderators have strict rules regarding user activity. This means that ‘Archive of our own’ users are primarily focused on fanfiction without distraction from other activities. These strict
rules ensure that all encounters on the site are forms of fanfiction productions or commentary. In analysing this text, the primary focus will be in tracing how readers position their
characters in relation to gender and sexuality norms and how they navigate or undermine such norms. The selected fanfiction text is called The Student Prince by the user FayJay, and is named after the 1954 musical of the same name. It is a slash fiction, meaning it includes a homosexual coupling.
The Student Prince tells the tale of Merlin, a wizard who is attending Saint Andrews
University. He falls in love with Arthur, the Prince of Wales who is also attending the university. ‘The Student Prince’ will be closely read and analysed because it effectively illustrates how fanfiction texts interact with other texts, both popular and from fanfiction sites, and aid in the sharing of language in communities of readers. These communities become aware of the problematic nature of binary categories of gender and sexualities because of the way in which fanfiction texts normalise non-heteronormativity. Various themes will be identified throughout The Student Prince and examples will be included to illustrate these themes. The themes include instances of gender swap, the normalisation of
non-heteronormativity, the identification and discussion of LGBTQ issues, and ‘queer-ability’.
A Brief Theoretical Background
The internet has helped facilitate a shift in power between traditional authors and readers. The shift of canonical texts from a physical book to online texts and writing platforms has compounded the non-fixity and fluidity of texts. The extension or active
interpretation of the text by the reader is not a new idea; even before the internet era, theorists have explored the fact that the meaning and supposed value of a text has the potential to change drastically over both time and with different subjective perspectives. This is a result of
the evolving ‘horizon of expectations’ of the reader, a term coined by Hans Robert Jauss in the 1960s as a means of questioning the traditionally upheld German literary canon (Selden et al, 50). Seeking to demonstrate that questioning the canon in the first place was a legitimate and valuable pursuit, Jauss argued that failing to look at the canonical works critically was to uphold outdated notions that were no longer relevant to that age. He drew a comparison with Newton’s physics which “no longer seemed adequate in the early twentieth century” (Selden et al, 50). The term ‘horizon of expectations’ refers to the criteria used by the reader within a certain time period to assess and evaluate a text. For Stanley Fish, this translates to the
situation of the reader, which he frequently refers to in his work Is there a text in this class?
(1980). The horizon of expectations is constructed by the current knowledge and range of experiences of the reader at that specific point in time. This presents a range of issues which are problematic for the fixity of meaning in a text. While the text remains fixed, the horizon of expectations of the reader will change as they gain new knowledge and experiences, shedding new light on the text. In terms of fixed content, the text does not change as the reader does. However, evaluated through the lens of the evolving horizon of expectations, the meaning of the text changes, even to a point in which the original intentions of the author become totally void.
In the modern internet era, this is magnified and manifested in fanfiction. The reader projects their own desires, dreams, and hopes onto the text in hundreds of different ways, completely obliterating the fixity of textual meaning. The reader finds themselves “free to enter the text from any direction, there is no correct route” (Selden et al, 150). On fanfiction sites, alternative readings or reworkings of the texts by readers are affirmed and validated by the community. Furthermore, these alternative reading need not translate into the same medium (for instance, a book), but are often reworked into a totally different medium. A popular television series, for instance, can be reworked into written texts or role play threads
on fanfiction sites. In order to alter texts across mediums, a new literacy of the reader is required.
A Shift in Power: Multiliteracies and More
Contemporary readers are experiencing and learning new literacies that are associated with the age of technology and communication and which switch between different types of media and mediums. This is often called ‘Multiliteracies’, a term referring to two specific elements of new literacy; namely the vast diversity of communication channels and media, and “the increasing salience of cultural and linguistic diversity” (Cope and Kalantzis, 5). The rise of non-static media facilitates readers’ abilities to cater to their own desires, as opposed to merely selecting from what is available to them. There are four major areas of impact
concerning millennials’ use of the internet (Erstad, 56). Firstly, a participatory culture, a concept borrowed from Henry Jenkins (2006) to describe a culture of sharing and being involved in multiple communities (which are unconstrained by distance, space, or time) simultaneously. Secondly, access to information; this is a major aspect of the growth of social consciousness because users can learn more about people with different ideologies,
affiliations, etc with less difficulty. Users can also understand people unlike themselves more, and therefore become more open to them. Thirdly, communication possibilities have grown exponentially; information can be communicated instantly, from multiple devices, at any time, and from any location in the world that has internet access. The final major area of impact identified by Erstad, and the one that is the most significant for this investigation, is content production. This is made possible by a combination of the first three areas of impact.
With the world’s knowledge at their fingertips, millennials (which make up a significantly large part of fanfiction audiences) have the ability to seek out any information on any topic they desire. Furthermore, people who are typically shunned and marginalised in everyday situations, whose voice is overridden by the masses around them, are able to express
themselves safely online. The vast choice that the internet provides means that people can be more selective in their internet activity, creating the tendency of people to be drawn to certain sites and platforms. Fanfiction sites, for instance, may attract regular users due to the
opportunities they offer of free expression of gender and sexuality without fear of physical harm. As Becca Schaffner states in her work In Defence of Fanfiction, “What makes fanfiction valuable and powerful is what it becomes: a large community of readers unconstrained by time, distance, age, or talent” (Schaffner, 614).
Fanfiction writers actively shape existing literature to suit their interests, as well as to create discourse around marginalised issues. Projecting these interests and discursive
dialogues onto popular texts and characters enhances the effect of these discourses by means of contrast to the initial authorial meaning of the text and characters. For instance, a well-known heterosexual couple from a popular text that is transformed into a homosexual couple by a fanfiction writer highlights the homosexuality of the fan-made couple by means of inevitable comparison, and thereby creates a dialogue about what it means to be homosexual in a homophobic world. Of course, these dialogues necessarily occur within groups of readers, which has an effect on the reading strategies of the individual reader.
Sharing Language and Reading Protocols
The safety of spaces online such as fanfiction sites combined with the ability to communicate easily and instantly has caused a significant increase in general social awareness. The younger generations in particular have a “social conscious that no other generation has known” (Martinez and Alonso, 89). Fanfiction is one of the spaces online where the growth of social consciousness is made explicit. This is not only caused by the visibility and self-expression of marginalised groups, but also by several other aspects that are specific to fanfiction. For instance, language sharing as a part of the discourse community helps to shape identities and create group awareness of marginalised groups. Sharing language
creates consensus amongst a community about how to refer to these marginalised groups constructively,
‘Slash’ Fiction: Normalizing the Deviant
The fanfiction ‘slash’ genre is particularly interesting because it is a genre containing non-heteronormative fictions which have emerged completely from within the context of fanfiction discourse communities. ‘Slash’ fiction refers exclusively to homosexual characters coupled together (Newton, 243). The term ‘slash’ refers to the literal slash sign (/) that is placed between the names of two characters to represent a coupling (Newton, 243). Contrary to popular belief, slash and femslash fiction are not ‘women’s pornography’ nor an explicit, all-encompassing reference to pornography at all. To refer to slash fiction as pornography is, according to Esther Newton, “heteronormative at best, heterosexist at worst, and entirely inaccurate in any event” (248). She acknowledges that sexual interactions are abundant in the larger plethora of slash fiction, but also notes that many slash stories contain no sexual interactions at all, which nullifies the argument that it is pornographic in its entirety.
Furthermore, even when a slash story contains explicit sexual content, it exists as part of the larger story, not as the sole purpose of the plot. As Newton notes,
If one accepts Stoltenberg’s (1989) definition of pornographic coupling as being without past, without future and existing in an emotionally alienated present, then sex within the context of (slash) is non-pornographic on all counts (248).
The lack of explicit sexual interactions and expression in many slash stories illustrates to readers that non-heteronormative characters are not explicitly sexual and sexualised beings; it normalises and humanises them. The placement of non-heteronormative characters and couples in non-sexualised everyday settings divorces the non-heteronormative characters from the sexualisation and eroticism associated with them from popular media (Goltz, 33). In this
manner, they become more relatable to heteronormative readers. In fact, the normalising of these characters causes the reader to relate with them to such a degree that the reader may identify and recognise qualities of the queer character in him or herself, shedding light on the gender spectrum and the reader’s place in it. This is made explicit by slash fiction due its capacity to be comparable with its source text. The non-heteronormative characters are compared with the traditionally masculine or feminine heteronormative characters of the source text and, consequently, the ‘queerability’ of these characters are revealed. When referring to the slash transformation of Star trek characters, for instance, Newton notes the following:
By deconstructing a dominant narrative so consistently and thoroughly queered over such a long period, one might discern something in the characters themselves that is universal, universally queer, and/or universally queer-able, and this universal element exists outside the bounds of the dominant narrative (249).
What Newton illustrates with this statement is the humanisation of queer characters through the deconstruction of the mainstream, popular narrative through fanfiction. The initial humanisation of these characters may be a shock or feel unusual (indeed, because audiences are not used to relatable non-heteronormative characters), but through the ‘consistent and thorough’ queering of characters, their humanisation is normalised on platforms such as fanfiction.net. Most importantly, the queering of characters forces readers to acknowledge that there was always something ‘universally queer-able’ in the traditionally overly masculine or overly feminine characters of the source text, upsetting the notion of definitive binaries in regards to gender. The reader’s subconscious realisation of this forces themselves to, in turn, acknowledge that there is something ‘universally queer-able’ in themselves too.
Butler argues that the figures of ‘male’ and ‘female’ are political and social, maintained in their psychology through rigorous social policing that has been and is historically affirmed and reaffirmed over and over again. In a powerful evaluation of the formulation of the identity, Butler states the following:
The performative is not merely an act used by a pre-given subject, but is one of the powerful and insidious ways in which subjects are called into social being,
inaugurated into sociality by a variety of diffuse and powerful interpellations. In this sense the social performative is a crucial part not only of subject formation, but of the ongoing political contestation and reformulation of the subject as well. In this sense, the performative is not only a ritual practice: it is one of the influential rituals by which subjects are formed and reformulated (125).
What Butler most importantly points out is that the masculine or feminine condition does not pre-exist the masculine or feminine subject. The sex of one’s body is purely physical and does not inevitably lay the foundations for a binary existence as a male or female at birth. Repeated reactions of violence and disgust toward non-heteronormative people causes them to gain a ‘force of authority’ (Butler, 51), and thereby cause non-heteronormativity to become unacceptable to the extent of hegemony. According to Butler, social agency depends on following these socially indoctrinated feminine or masculine (depending on biological sex) rituals, for without these rituals, one is not considered a social agent at all. She argues that we are afforded a ‘social and discursive existence’ by obeying socially policed gender ‘rules’. It is the social construction of one’s social existence as (as a ‘man’ or as a ‘woman’) which allows one to “exercise any agency at all” (Butler, 51).
Butler, and other following scholars, attempt to reverse, or at the least challenge these indoctrinated opinions by illustrating the learned and performative realities of gender. In popular media, queerness tends to be a plot definer as opposed to a mere condition of the
character. As Rachel Carroll states regarding transgender characters, and which is also
applicable to homosexuality, there is the “tendency to ‘read’ the transgendered subject simply as a textual signifier of a queer text” (243). This indicates that the presence of an ambiguously gendered person is traditionally a signifier of a queer text, and thereby not a ‘normal’ text; it is a text of ‘special conditions’. The implication is that it must be evaluated and read with ‘special lenses’ and not simply read as one would read any other text. In other words, it is ostracised from normativity. The repetition of non-heteronormative characters in fanfiction reverses this process. By comparing these non-heteronormative characters with those from the source text, the interpretive reader is able to critically engage with them. Collectively, these readers form interpretive communities and create amongst themselves constructive dialogues and discourses about gender, facilitated by online spaces such as fanfiction sites. The internet allows for an anonymity and a possibility to inhabit a so-called ‘surrogate body’ (Ross, 342) in which the user can perform and ‘do’ gender and sexuality in whatever way they wish. While Judith Butler’s work focuses on gender performativity, Micheal W. Ross’ work focuses on the performance of sexuality, which is facilitated by the internet.
Sexual Performativity on Online Spaces
With the introduction of the internet, Ross argues that sexuality is “in a state of flux” (342). The internet facilitates spaces in which users can masquerade as members of the opposite sex or experiment with their sexualities freely without fear of consequence. The absence of a physical setting and physical bodies in sexual encounters that occur on the internet has created new possibilities for sexual expression (Ross, 342). For instance, these settings remove the threat of rape, or other non-consensual sexual activities, and altogether removes the reproductive purposes of sexuality. Sexual expression on the internet is,
therefore, purely a fulfilment of mutual desire, which includes the desire to experiment with one’s sexuality. The removal of physical bodies also lends an element of democratization to
sexual expression and experimentation. Offline, potential sexual partners would take into consideration the physical attributes of the other person in a kind of primal, evolutionary selection process to assess whether they want to engage in sexual relations with that person (Ross, 343). This somewhat discriminatory approach is irrelevant online due to anonymity and identity performativity; users can engage more freely with their sexuality online no matter their physical attractiveness or physical disabilities. Ross believes the extent to which the internet can change sexual expression is so distinct that he calls it “an ultimate removal from social sexuality” (343).
Ross proposes that to experiment with one’s sexuality online does not mean to inherently possesses multiple sexualities offline. The internet is a means to “experiment without actually being” and the “reflexivity of sexuality can be lived on the internet” (Ross, 343). In this view, sexuality is not a fixed entity, but one which can morph, evolve, and change at the whim of the bearer. While sexualities in this case can be rather fleeting, it does bear a certain resemblance to Butler’s notion of gender performativity, but flipped entirely on its head. Whereas Butler’s performativity is socially enforced, Ross’ performativity is beyond social enforcement and normativity. Butler’s performativity follows rigid rituals to keep individuals constrained to one of two binary categories of sex and sexual orientation, while Ross’ sexual performativity online tells the story of users defying boundaries, even if only temporarily. The key difference between the dictatorial performativity of Butler and the unregulated sexual performativity of Ross is, of course, the environments of performativity. Ross proposes that the internet allows an individual to ‘take the first steps toward becoming a homosexual’ (348) because it is free from the risks that would accommodate such
experimentation in physical environments, including entanglement, physical threat to one’s body, embarrassment, stigma, exposure, violence, commitment, or abuse. In other words, it is a safe environment to ‘test out’ even the possibility of one’s homosexuality, without having to
necessarily be engaged in homosexual encounters. ‘Lurking’ (Ross, 348) is a means of gazing at sexual encounters without actually being involved in them. Ross compares the ‘lurking’ of a curious user to a user gazing through a one-way window into a gay bar (348). In this manner, the user can learn the culture, language, attitudes, and norms of homosexuality without actually partaking in any of the encounters. Offline, such an opportunity would rarely be possible. For if a person curious about homosexuality (without desiring to be a homosexual himself) would to go to a gay bar, he would risk exposing himself as a homosexual (or so it would be perceived), and would still not gain the insights that online ‘lurking’ provides. Online spaces such as fanfiction, therefore, provide safe spaces not only for people to express their ‘deviant’ sexualities, but also for heteronormative people to become more acquainted with non-heteronormative people.
Adopting various sexualities (temporary or not) on online spaces is made easy by its constant availability, twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. The availability of sexual partners is also a significant aspect; the global nature of the internet provides what Ross describes as a ‘marketplace’ of potential sexual partners (344). For any sexual curiosity one has, no matter how obscure, the internet will provide a means of finding a willing partner to satisfy it (virtually or otherwise). Once again, the social risk is removed because one can simply turn off the computer if the situation becomes in any way uncomfortable or non-consensual. Furthermore, the participants have time to carefully construct responses as opposed to the immediate responses that a physical, face-to-face environment would require. Most significantly, this can all be done anonymously. As Rosso suggests, “the power may reside in the individual's ability to change form, age, gender, position, or sexual orientation” (343). In this manner, all users have an equal amount of power because all are in complete control of their sexual encounters online. Continuing in this vein of thinking, it is interesting to consider the concept of the ‘script’ in sexuality.
Ross briefly discusses Gagnon and Simon’s notion of scripting in sexuality, in which social agents enact sexual scripted behaviour and notes that it is “an apt analogy for internet sexual interactions, because what is occurring on the computer screen is the mutual
construction of a script, in which the playwrights are also the actors” (Ross, 344). There is a clear link here with fanfiction because, by writing slash fiction for example, authors are experimenting with or expressing their own sexualities. Through the vehicles of the
characters, the readers are doing the same; they are gazing through the one-way window into the gay bar. By doing so, they gain more insights into the non-heteronormative and take steps towards homosexual experimentation themselves. Online spaces such as fanfiction sites provide the opportunity for readers to become queered, even if temporarily. Fanfiction sites facilitate gender and sexual performativity through discussion threads, commentary, texts, and role play. Fanfiction readers are self-organised into groups which share interests and reading strategies, such as slash fiction. The formation of these groups can be explained by Stanley Fish’s theory of interpretive communities.
Interpretive Readers and Communities
Stanley Fish elevates the reader from a position of passivity to a position of power. His initial works on the reader and interpretive communities received both harsh criticism and praise from his fellow literary studies scholars. Although the literary critic and scholar
Jonathan Culler (1972) critically engages with Stanley Fish’s work, for instance, he nevertheless praises him and his theoretical notions in the following striking way:
(Fish) presents a theory without creating an elaborate theoretical apparatus or a special meta-language; it stresses the right of the reader against the claims of the professional critic; it presents reading as an active and creative process rather than a state of passive receptivity…it offers a hermeneutic method, a strategy for producing
new interpretations, which nevertheless remains faithful to, or explicitly predicated upon, the actual experience of reading (26).
Stanley Fish does not pretend to introduce a revolutionary method of making meaning which changes the act of reading itself. Fish portrays traditional notions of meaning making (in which the author defines meaning) as an imprisonment of the text, underlining his extreme averseness to such traditional ideas. Fish is not only useful when looking at the individual reader’s experience of the text, both in an attached and detached manner, but also when looking at the individual reader in the context of the community. His notion of ‘interpretive communities’ is particularly interesting when considering fanfiction communities. Interpretive communities are groups of readers that share reading norms and protocols (Fish, 340). They rely on a set of community assumptions and reading strategies. In fanfiction, reading
strategies and protocols support non-heteronormativity, meaning resistant and deviant interpretations of source texts are the norm in fanfiction communities. Norms, however, can only be labelled as such if the community in question acknowledges them as norms and is in agreement. The theory of Stanley Fish is fundamental in understanding the formation of these communities and the related norms. In the section below, Fish’s theory will be explored more thoroughly.
Stanley Fish: The reader and Interpretive Communities
Stanley Fish presents both the illumination and contentions of his theoretical standpoint on the text, reader, and formulation of meaning by recalling the question of a university student to her professor; “Is there a text in this class?” (Fish, 306). The reply to this seemingly straight-forward inquiry from the professor in question, a man whom Fish merely refers to as ‘my colleague’, is “Yes, it’s The Norton Anthology of Literature” (306). At this stage of the conversation, the hearer or reader would expect some form of acknowledgement or satisfied response from the student which indicates that this transfer of meaning has
occurred and that she has received and understood it. Instead, the expectations of the reader, shaped by their lived and read experience, are flouted by the student’s response, “No, no. I mean in this class do we believe in poems and things, or is it just us?” (Fish, 305). With this response, the student is questioning the authority that texts, in the purely formal sense, will have in this class. Her goal is to discover whether this class will be informed by a
contemporary reader-orientated approach, or whether it will be take the perspective of the more traditional structuralist, formalist notions.
By questioning the authority of texts such ‘poems and things’, a reference to a static text from which it is assumed that a certain universal meaning can be garnered, this student reveals herself to be knowledgeable in those particular schools of thought which are
orientated toward the reader and her response. She is, as Fish’s colleague (a source of much criticism toward reader-orientated thinking) may have thought, ‘one of Fish’s victims’ (313). Fish is opposed to formalist readings which argue for the singular stability and centrality of the text. Such readings reject the reader as the central means of making meaning because the variations of subjective reader responses can be so vast that the text loses its ability to yield any form of conclusive meaning. According to these arguments, the text is the common denominator and thereby has authority over the individual responses of readers. Fish counters this argument by pointing out the deception of the physicality (in a manner of speaking) of the words on the page. He states, “The objectivity of the text is an illusion and, moreover, a dangerous illusion, because it is so physically convincing” (Fish, 43). He points out that words such as ‘content’, as in the ‘content of a book’, are also deceptive. Such words give the impression that the book truly contains objective things, and that these things are unchanging and tangible. The static figures of the letters printed with hard, black ink on the page form words and, thereby, meanings which one cannot imagine will ever change. Of course, the physical appearance of these words will not shift, unless vandalised in some way. However,
the meanings that are attached to these words are informed by any number of things; temporality, education, socio-economic status, nationality, age, or popular culture. Stanley Fish summarizes these endless varieties which may inform a response to a text as the reader’s ‘situation’. He makes no claim that texts lack constraints; it is rather that these texts are constrained by the situation of the reader, rather than the language in these texts (as formalists would argue) (292). The derivation of meaning from a text is only possible because the reader is making sense of it using his or her horizons of expectations. The word ‘making’ is purposefully emphasised by Fish because he claims the reader ‘makes’ the meaning of the text as she reads, because reading is not a process of passive reception, but an experience (Fish, 29). The reader understands it because, before she encounters the text, she is informed about what it means to read in the first place. This has most likely stemmed from an education informed predominantly by a western body of literature, a specific national and cultural identity, and a certain socio-economic status. All of this equips her adequately to derive a meaning from the text, one that is both entirely subjective and shared by any number of other readers. The subjective nature of the reader’s response is informed by the experiences of the reader, and these cannot be divorced from the reader when forming understandings of texts or other phenomena.
Fish demonstrates this point by recalling the story of Pat Kelly, a United States
baseball player whose conversion to Christianity altered his perception of events in a dramatic manner (Fish, 270). It had previously been possible to interview Kelly on his athletic career and achievements as one would interview any other athlete. Of course, it was possible after his conversion as well, but not in the manner which would have been considered normal by sport reporters. The reason for this was that every home run that Kelly hit was no longer perceived by him as a show of his athletic skill and power, or even as an event of luck. His home runs were now, as The Sun reporter Michael Janofsky put it, “part of his religious
existence” (270). The reporter was frustrated that he could no longer discuss ‘strictly baseball’ with Kelly, as the two of them no longer perceived the world from similar sets of experiences. Fish dwells on this example to show how reading, in both life situations and texts, is the “result of an interpretive act performed at so deep a level that it is indistinguishable from consciousness itself” (Fish, 272).
Reading is betrayed by its serene appearance (imagine a young man gazing
thoughtfully for a long period at a page in a book); it appears to be a singular act when in fact it is a succession of interpretive acts. Fish describes reading as a process of ‘doing’ and ‘undoing’; whatever the reader has achieved in terms of conclusion in one sentence may easily be undone in the next as he reads in a constant state of measuring the text against his expectations. These are his reading strategies, his tools to make sense of the text before him. They are not, however, ‘his’ entirely, for they “proceed not from him but from the interpretive community of which he is a member; they are, in effect, community property” (Fish, 14).
A reader’s membership in an interpretive community is defined by the same set of experiences and situations (in the sense of Fish’s understanding of situation as the means to make sense of texts) that inform his subjective, individual responses to texts. Critics might here argue that one cannot argue for the authority of a single reader’s response while simultaneously placing him in a community of readers. For if one is to take seriously the notion that each reader’s situation forms a subjective and valid response, then it could be argued that there are as many readers as interpretations. With such vast possibilities of textual meaning, the value of a single reader’s response is once again questioned and potentially “tantamount to giving up the possibility of saying anything that would be of general interest” (Fish, 4). However, Fish defends against this claim by positioning readers in ‘a level of experience which all readers share’ (4). For while a reader maintains his own experiences and situation, it is not the case that he is isolated from cultural, national, and social practices
(communities). While he subjectively experiences texts, his fellow community members may very likely experience these texts in the same or similar manner because they share similar situations and, thereby, reading strategies.
Membership in interpretive communities is unfixed, and readers can be a part of multiple communities. As a horizon of expectations expands, fed by new experiences and new knowledge, so too do the possibilities of interpretive community membership. Fish stresses that interpretive strategies do not come naturally to a reader nor are they universal; they are learned (Fish, 172). As a reader becomes involved in the discursive practices of a specific interpretive community, she will naturally adopt the reading strategies of that community and will be unable to cast them off even when reading texts which have little to do with the predominant discourses in that specific group of readers. This explains why, for instance, homosexual encounters are not an overt topic of discussion in slash fiction communities, as it would be in most other reader communities. If homsexual encounters are discussed or noted, the ‘homo’part of the word is dropped and it simply becomes a ‘sexual encounter’. Slash fiction communities are entirely desensitized to homosexual and transsexual encounters; they appear so often and so naturalised that these readers have adopted this naturalization and come to expect it when they read, as a heterosexual romance reader would expect a heterosexual encounter at some stage in the novel. Furthermore, reading strategies in interpretive communities can evolve. Fish argues that reading strategies may be ‘dropped from favour’ (172) for example, and that the community shifts accordingly. As a result, texts are not only interpreted with an entirely new set of reading strategies, but “are being written differently” (Fish, 172). Though it is not clear whether Fish was aware that fanfiction even existed while he penned his theories, this particular point seems strikingly suited for the study of fanfiction writing and communities. Another notable point is Fish’s description of how interpretive community members recognise each other. When applied to fanfiction
communities, communities of readers who share the same reverence for a particular text and who share reading strategies, the naturalization of atypical, unconventional interpretive acts (whether reading or writing) becomes clear:
The only ‘proof’ of (interpretive community) membership is fellowship, the nod of recognition from someone in the same community, someone who says to you what neither of us could ever prove to a third party: ‘we know’. I say it to you now,
knowing full well that you will agree with me (that is, understand) only if you already agree with me. (Fish, 173).
Those in an interpretive community share an understanding of a text and its discourses and thereby rarely dispute on the fundamental principles of the text. This is most clear in slash communities where sexuality is fluid an unoppressed. If a member of one of these
communities did happen to challenge the sexual fluidity in both the texts and readers of his community (perhaps exposed to a more conservative agenda), he would immediately be cast out by his fellow members and thereby lose the ‘nod of recognition’. Even without the acknowledgement of his old members, he would be disqualified by the alien quality of his interpretation of sexuality, which inevitably places him in a new interpretive community which shares his understanding.
To return once again to the question of the student to her professor “Is there a text in this class?”, it becomes clear after exploring Stanley Fish’s theory of interpretive communities that the question contains the possibility of many meanings. The student’s question was a product of wit designed to throw her professor off balance with the unexpected response to his answer, “Yes, it’s The Norton Anthology of Literature”, with “No, no. I mean do we believe in poetry and things, or is it just us?”. This interaction effectively demonstrates the different reading strategies which readers employ in order to make sense of a text, guided only by their horizons of expectations and, thereby, their membership in various interpretive communities.
The professor, “..not hesitating between two (or more) possible meanings of the utterance” (Fish, 306), despite there being cause for it, expected the word ‘text’ to simply carry the traditional meaning of a book used to refer to while teaching and learning. The student held the meaning of ‘text’ as an inquiry into the professor’s theoretical position in relation to texts. Given their shared membership of an interpretive community which is informed by
literariness and scholarship (given their positions as a student and professor in a department of literature), one can assume that they both understand language and how it functions and that, indeed, there can occasionally be misunderstandings where words could be misconstrued due to a multiplicity of meanings. In their shared community, for instance, the word ‘text’ could either be a line of text or a book, limiting the possibility of misunderstanding and thereby the possibility of disagreement. However, as soon as the student introduced a third possible meaning, one which was not shared by her professor, it became evident that they were in entirely different interpretive communities. Though the student sought a certain solidarity and communion with her professor, a ‘nod of recognition’, she received none.
Fanfiction Communities and the Reader
In the context of fanfiction communities, fanfiction writers form interpretive and discursive communities with norms that are particularly linked with text and narrative (Olin-Scheller, 49). Through the repetition of exposure to heteronormativity,
non-heteronormativity becomes the norm. Through means of positive feedback from other writers on one’s work, particularly cases in which non-heteronormative characters and scenes are included, the writer is reassured that the content of his or her work is acceptable. In popular media, gender stereotypes are often reinforced through repetition of stereotypical archetypes; for instance, the man as the brave, strong (male) hero who emits very little emotion and who rescues the damsel in distress, or indeed the woman who is very often the helpless, emotional, beautiful damsel in distress (Myers, 193). In fanfiction, these stereotypes are challenged and,
within fanfiction communities, completely changed. These new texts and characters which are, in essence, anti-stereotypes, are then imitated by other fanfiction writers, whether in texts, discussion threads, or role play, and subsequently normalised. The readers approve of the anti-stereotypes, creating positive reinforcement and progressing toward an even more non-heteronormative community. The next section of this thesis will employ examples from fanfiction sites to demonstrate how these online environments perpetuate stable interpretive communities which are unconstrained by binaries of gender and sexuality.
Fanfiction’s stabilising effect on interpretive communities
Fish argues that the stability of interpretive communities is ‘always temporary’ (Fish 171). While one can hardly find fault with this, given the ever-shifting conditions of the reader, it can be argued that fanfiction provides the right environment for a greater degree of stability in interpretive communities. The primary reason for this is the presence of fellow members of the interpretive community in these online spaces.
On fanfiction.net, the reader is presented with a range of text types to choose from: anime/Manga, books, cartoons, comics, games, misc, movies, play/musicals, and TV shows. Once a specific category has been selected (for instance, ‘book’), the reader is redirected to a new screen in which the titles of their chosen category are shown (for instance, J.K.
Rowling’s ‘Harry Potter’). Once a title has been chosen by the reader, they are again
redirected to a new screen where they can choose from a range of forums, each designed with a specific topic in mind and with a set of rules and regulations. Within these forums, there are often even more niched topics to choose from. The number of steps taken to arrive at a particular forum more than once requires to at least some degree a preconceived route. The chances of arriving at a specific forum more than once randomly would be very slim. One can assume, therefore, that the majority of participants in this community are ‘regulars’, whether it be of the specific fan community (for instance Harry Potter fans), or of the niched topic
within that community. This is also made explicit by the familiarity with which the
participants interact with one another. These readers share similar horizons of expectations and reading strategies as a result of their membership in these communities. Their interpretive acts are shaped by their consistent exposure to the expectations and collectively enforced regulations.
For example, on fanfiction.net there is a forum called ‘The Quidditch League
Fanfiction Competition’ in the ‘Books: Harry Potter’ section. Quidditch is the fictional game invented by J.K Rowling in the Harry Potter series in which players ride around on
broomsticks and attempt to throw the game ball through one of three hoops to score a point. One of the forum topics within this forum is ‘Rules and Regulations (updated for season 4)’. The reader viewing these rules and regulations will realise that their purpose is twofold. The first is to present the rules of Quidditch, as suggested by the forum’s title. It includes rules such as “In this Quidditch, there are 8 positions and 13 teams….The positions are: Captain, Keeper, Seeker, 3 Chasers, 2 Beaters” (MissWitchx, Fanfiction.net). The second purpose of the forum is to lay down the rules of writing in this forum. It outlines the various threads for the forum, such as the ‘Change room’ threads. In these particular threads it is the
responsibility of the team captain (the game of Quidditch has two teams which compete against each other, each with their own captain) to create it, for “it is a captain's responsibility to organise their team in the way they wish it to be run” (MissWitchx, Fanfiction.net).
Another aspect of the ‘Change room’ forum is the following: “There is no rule that says you cannot pop into another team's change room, however, please respect their privacy if they do not wish for you to be there.” (MissWitchx, Fanfiction.net).
In order for a participant in this forum to break this regulation, they must be present in the opposing teams’ change room without their consent. For this to happen, the participant must create his presence in this forbidden area by actively writing it into existence. As writing
is a very conscious process of carefully choosing words (and having the time to do so), in addition to the conscious act of joining the forum by finding and selecting the appropriate link, his presence would not be mistaken for an accident, as it might have been in the ‘real world’, where he may simply have stumbled into the wrong change room. To defy this regulation would be a very conscious and calculated move, and an open defiance against the expectations of this specific interpretive community.
While the change room regulations are pertaining to how one must act as a role player, there are additional rules which are strictly for practical restrictions of writing, such as word count limits (900-3000 words per entry in the case of this forum). These more tangible rules are less constraining than the reading strategies of this interpretive community because of the nature of fanfiction. An interaction in an everyday setting with a fellow reader would present a far different scenario. First one would have to inquire about the fields of literary interest and perhaps (in a more scholarly setting) one’s theoretical standpoint on the reader, perhaps asking the now-famous question in literary studies, “Is there a text in this class” (Fish, 306). After some discussion, the two readers would likely find that they are in disagreement with one another concerning at least one aspect of a particular text or theory. The discussion might end with the two readers parting and resolutely clasping their initial opinions even tighter to their bosoms, or perhaps parting with a greater understanding of the opposing opinion. Either way it is unlikely, given their different situations which inform their interpretive acts, that they will arrive at a perfect, shared understanding and in complete agreement.
Fanfiction communities, on the other hand, expect the reader to arrive (in the
‘entering’ sense of the word) in complete agreement with their fellow members and to share the same interest. A conversation between two readers in an everyday setting would allow differences of opinion and would be constrained by the situation of each reader. In fanfiction communities, the situations of the readers are constrained by the associated rules and
regulations of the forum, making disagreement unacceptable (there are a few instances of the phrases ‘…will not be accepted…’ and ‘will not be tolerated’ in the Quidditch rules and regulations). In this way, members are conditioned to act in more or less a uniform manner in these reader groups. The threat of expulsion acts as a policer of interpretive acts (in this case, writing), and the tangible presence of fellow writers all acting under the same expectations serves to solidify the shared understandings and expectations.
A primary difference between the interpretive communities of Stanley Fish and the interpretive communities of fanfiction is the awareness of fellow members. When a reader reads a book, for instance, he is not consciously aware that his understanding of the text is shared by others, and that this shared understanding places him in a specific community of readers. In fanfiction, however, the text is collectively written, read, and guided by shared understandings and reading strategies. The fellow interpretive community members of a reader are far more tangible than they would be if he were simply reading a book alone because they are present. During role play, the readers are the characters and the text is written in real time before the eyes of the reader. Furthermore, the reader himself participates in the unfolding of the storyline as he contributes to the forum or forums. Guided by their shared understandings, reading strategies, and in-depth knowledge of the text at hand (and spin-offs of the text), readers of an interpretive community in fanfiction view this
communally created text as natural and undeniable. While no reader knows what to truly expect when entering into a multi-authored text (fanfiction roleplay forums), they are subconsciously assured that whatever will happen will be constrained by the reading
strategies of that community. In a slash fiction community, for instance, it is highly unlikely that the introduction of a transsexual coupling will result in a transphobic response from one of the forum members. The specific route one must navigate to arrive in this forum, in
addition to the exclusionary nature of interpretive communities (if one is by design not a part of them), would make this scenario highly unlikely.
The text is a direct product of the community, elevating Stanley Fish’s definition of reading strategies as ‘community property’ (Fish, 14) to new heights. As active contributors to the text (both in the interpretive and actualized sense), the writers/readers (the line is blurred) are in essence elements of the text themselves. So while the readers are “constructed
objects…furnish(ed)…with categories of understanding” (Fish, 332), they are also constructive insofar as literally creating the text.
Another aspect of fanfiction communities which heightens the sense of community is the opportunity to build relationships online. While these readers would be in the same interpretive community without fanfiction (as a result of their shared interest), the stability of this communion would be far more fragile without the constant affirmation and community support that fanfiction sites offer. On fanfiction.net, for example, readers must create user profiles. Regardless of the fictionality that many of these users choose to adopt for these profiles, the sense of community and familiarity amongst the regulars is very real. A different forum in the Harry Potter category can effectively demonstrate the relationships which are built on these forums amongst the community members.
In the forum ‘Role play chat’ (WildforWeasley, Fanfiction.net), a general role play forum (no specific topic), the members idly chat about their availability for role play participation. User ‘Dragonberrypie’ comments that she will not be available at all on Saturdays for role play from that day forth, to which User ‘WildforWeasley’ replies ‘That’s fine Pie!’ (WildforWeasley, Fanfiction.net). Snippets of conversation such as this position the forum as a virtual meeting space, a space in which regulars get together and get to know each other well enough to even employ nicknames (‘Pie’ being short for ‘Dragonberrypie’). This aspect of ‘getting to know one another’ is emphasised further if you visit a user’s profile. A
user’s profile page, whether they are writers or readers (both are which are very often interchangeable in fanfiction), looks very much like a social media user’s profile. There is a photo, a short description, the amount of stories that has been written by the user in question for which fandom, and any other titbits of information that a user chooses to add (such as hobbies, personal background, favourite novels, and tastes in music). The user can choose to add as much or as little information as they want. Furthermore, this profile page need not necessarily represent the reader as their real personality. Nonetheless, this profile and the person represented on it provides the opportunity for users to become familiar with one another. There appears to be a real desire for fanfiction readers to get to know each other, manifested in forums such as the forum ‘Me: "I'm Wendy." Group: "Hiii, Wendy!" -- The Get to Know You Game’ (Wendy Brune, Fanfiction.net). Although the thread owner, Wendy Brune, urges users in the thread description to “Never ever reveal personal information about yourself like addresses or phone numbers”, the thread does require the users to reveal their likes, dislikes, interests, and other facts about themselves. The way the ‘game’ works is that one user answers a question posed, and then asks another, which a different user has to answer. The users seem very engaged in it, often asking follow-up questions. This particular forum is 49 pages long, and spans the length of 1441 posts. Another thread, ‘The fluffy topic of fluffy! Love!’ takes fanfiction relationship building even further. The owner of this forum states the following: “We needed somewhere to make random declarations of how much we love each other, and this forum...why not make a topic for it?” (Over-rehearsed,
Fanfiction.net). Despite these readers most likely having never even met each other, they are making ‘declarations of love’ for one another. The forum he is referring to is his fanfiction community and thereby his interpretive community. Based on his ties to his community, it becomes less likely that this reader will break away from it.
In specific fanfiction interpretive communities, or ‘fandoms’, the availability and tangible presence of the fellow community members shape the way a reader reads, but also writes. The reading strategies adopted from the community, through exposure to the texts, is translated into writing strategies which are shaped by reader responses to the text. These responses, unlike the case of reader responses to traditional texts, are immediately available to the reader or writer in the form of forums and reviews linked directly with the text. Stanley Fish makes a distinction between the initial experience of the text (the ‘actual’ reader
response) and the retrospective response of the reader after he has had some time to think more about the text. The retrospective response is the one that is shared with other readers. It is “not his immediate or basic response to a work but on his response (as dictated by his theoretical persuasion) to that response” (Fish, 6). The reader therefore subconsciously adjusts his initial response to the text according to his reader expectations and situation.
A group of readers randomly selected to read a text and then discuss it would find that they disagreed on certain elements of it, a result of their differing retrospective responses as shaped by their membership in specific communities. In a fanfiction forum, the members of that specific community are expected to share reader responses and abide by the expectations of that community. However, reading is, in the end, an entirely subjective experience and the placement of readers in interpretive communities is a result of their shared understandings, expectations, and interests, but not exact reading experiences. Consequently there can be disagreements in interpretive communities, but not of the fundamental aspects of what make those disagreeing readers members of that specific community. In fanfiction’s interpretive communities, on the other hand, the intensity of the community (shaped by factors such as relationship-building between ‘regulars’, and users enacting the text through role play) creates a certain pressure to abide by the expectations of the community. Exposed to reader reviews, requests, and suggestions from several ‘beta’ readers, defined by fanfiction.net as “A person
who reads a work of fiction with a critical eye, with the aim of improving grammar, spelling, characterization, and general style of a story prior to its release” (Beta readers,
Fanfiction.net), the writer feels obliged to write with these expectations in mind. The pressure of this obligation is demonstrated effectively by a fanfiction.net forum under the ‘Writer Anonymous’ category titled ‘Writing: Removing expectations’ (IFLT, Fanfiction.net).
The creator of the thread, User IFLT, poses the question “What are ways to…write without feeling pressured or forced to overthink the littlest situation or idea because you aren't sure if it's up to par (with expectations)?” (IFLT, Fanfiction.net). As this is in the general writing category, unaffiliated with a specific fandom, it’s participants are from varying interpretive communities. What they share in common is their participation in fanfiction and their desire to shake off the aforementioned expectations. The posts in this thread reveal the pressure felt by fanfiction writers to abide by their community’s expectations. For instance, User Enkida states the following:
I stop reading reviews / listening to what people say and concentrate on working on my story without any input. For at least a few chapters…just pretending that ‘fandom’ simply doesn't exist helps me out a lot.” (IFLT, Fanfiction.net)
While she attempts to cast off the expectations of her community’s readers, it is only for ‘a few chapters’. In addition, she has to consciously try to remove herself from the community in order to write with a greater degree of freedom. The word ‘input’ is very telling; despite the fact that this user is the author, she speaks as if the readers have an instrumental role in what she writes. It reveals an interpretive community which truly shapes what it reads, even when the text is written by an individual author. This phenomenon functions to further stabilise the interpretive community, as the community dictates the texts written for it from a shared, un-opposed understanding.
User Draconicsecrets115 states: “I have a decent following on my current story, and I always worry my next chapter will somehow disappoint” (IFLT, Fanfiction.net). While User Endika was conscious of her readers’ expectations, she appears to try not be bound by them. This is revealed by her refusal to read reader reviews. User Draconicsecrets115, however, appears more fearful of ‘disappoint(ing)’ the readers. He mentions the fact that he has ‘a decent following’ just before stating this fear, indicating that this fear of disappointing is fuelled by the reactions of his readers to each chapter. This is understandable when looking at his profile and reading the reviews. Although they are mostly positive, there are still
suggestions woven into the compliments. For instance, User Qatzol comments on User Draconicsecrets115’s story ‘That world that will cease to be’ (Reviews for That World will
cease to be, Fanfiction.net) the following: “Keep up the good work! Just a thought- couldn't
Miraak 'make' a new dragonborn shortly after Dagon's attack?”. Despite not being a part of this fandom, and thereby not fully understanding what this user is suggesting, the reader of this comment can still recognise it as a suggestion and as an expressed desire of a certain direction that this commenter wishes the text to take. In isolation, it can merely be shrugged off by the author. However, its presence in the midst of many other reader reviews, many of which contain these suggestions coupled with encouragement, causes to act as a brick in the wall of an unshakeable collection of expectations placed upon the author.
Another aspect of some fanfiction sites which further serves to stabilise the reader communities they host is exclusiveness. For instance, the fanfiction site Archive of our own operates on an ‘invite only’ system. A fanfiction reader can only be invited by an Archive of our own user, or they must join the ‘Invite queue’, which currently stands at 3223 people (Request an invitation, Archive of our own). Though the site explains that the invite system ensures that “the Archive can grow in a controlled manner” (F.A.Q: Invitations, Archive of our own) it also means that, once invited in, the reader may feel hesitant to leave due to the
sense of exclusiveness and the difficulty of joining in the first place. Though you may be able to visit the site, you cannot create an account or reader profile without an invite. On
fanfiction.net, there is a specific forum for people who are seeking invites for Archive of our own titled ‘An Archive of our own – INVITES CURRENTLY AVAILABLE’ (Wendy Brune, Fanfiction.net). Even the name ‘Archive of our own’ suggests a certain exclusiveness. Relationship-building, pressure to abide by the expectations of the community, and the exclusiveness (by niched interests or by design) of fanfiction communities makes them more stable and less ‘temporary’ than Fish’s idea of interpretive communities. This stability can also function as another form of security for readers who wish to explore their gender and sexuality. The reason is that readers can feel secure in both their anonymity and familiarity with fellow readers. While online, they can adopt different personas, as Micheal W. Ross argued, and therefore have power (343). In their anonymity, they are free to express
themselves in any way they please without fear of consequence. At the same time, they build relationships and become familiar with their fellow community members. The past
interactions with these users, coupled simply with their shared membership, understandings, and expectations, will ensure the reader that, whatever he may choose to do, the community will agree with his actions. This will always be the case so long as the actions in question are within the community’s reading expectations, and those expectations are unconstrained by gender and sex binaries.
Establishing gender and sexuality exploration in the ‘Small stories’ User Pikachomomma imagines J.K Rowling’s famous character Harry Potter as a woman in the story ‘Bewitched’ (Fanfiction.net). The very first chapter already has many reviews. In the reviews section of the first chapter, not a single reviewer objects to Harry’s sex change. The reviews are only encouraging, and not a single reviewer comments on his new gender. In fanfiction, gender fluidity is so naturalised that such a seemingly dramatic
change in a character is apparently barely worth noting. The communal encouragement of writing such stories reaffirms the open attitude to exploration of sexuality, either through characters or as characters (in role play, for instance). The closest that the reviews for the first chapter of ‘Bewitched’ comes to acknowledging Harry’s sex change is User NicoleR85’s description of the pairing of Harry and Charlie as ‘interesting’ (Reviews of Bewitched, Fanfiction.net), a description worth noting only because the word ‘interesting’ can express either genuine interest or traces of doubt in a polite disposition. What is noteworthy about the chapter itself is that Harry retains the name of her male original. Despite being referred to once as ‘Harriet’ in the beginning of the chapter, this is soon abandoned for ‘Harry’, a traditionally male name. It appears that the readers and writers of this community struggle to divorce the character from the name ‘Harry’ far more than divorcing him from his original sex. Even the brief description of the story begins with ‘Female Harry Potter’. Thus ‘Harriet’ Harry is still the Harry Potter which is known and loved by a generation of readers, but now simply female. The ease and apathy with which readers accept this change in a story which is not even specifically placed in a slash fiction category shows the naturalization of the fluidity of gender and sexuality on fanfiction platforms.
The forum ‘Fem! Characters’ owned by User TheBlackSeaReaper is a forum created for sharing fanfiction stories which contain characters which are “original male characters that were born or turned into female characters or are changed into a girl and then changed back into a boy or are cross dressing” (Fanfiction.net). One of the stories in this forum is from user o0Black-Sand0o’s. The text is titled ‘All started with a smell’ (Fanfiction.net) and tells the story of a transsexual boy whose feminine smell betrays the sex he was born with (a
woman’s). The narrator of this story (a male) experiences desire for this transsexual character, one that is praised and doted on by the story’s audience. Based on the 2283 reviews of this story (Reviews of All started with a smell, Fanfiction.net), it is obvious that that the responses
