University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses

Revenge of the fanboy: convergence culture and the politics of incorporation

(USC Thesis Other)

Revenge of the fanboy: convergence culture and the politics of incorporation

PDF

Download a page range

Download transcript

Copy asset link

Request this asset

Transcript (if available)

Content
REVENGE OF THE FANBOY
CONVERGENCE CULTURE AND THE POLITICS OF INCORPORATION

by

Suzanne Scott

_____________________________________________________________

A Dissertation Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE USC GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
(CRITICAL STUDIES)

May 2011

Copyright 2011 Suzanne Scott
ii
Dedication
For Luke, my favorite fanboy.
iii
Acknowledgements
It is only fitting that a project about fan culture begins by recognizing (and
fangirling) the community of scholars, colleagues, family and friends who inspired
and supported this project from its inception. I credit my undergraduate professors
and teaching assistants in the Cinema Studies department at New York University’s
Tisch School of the Arts with cultivating my love of media studies and facilitating
my return to them. In particular, I would like to thank Matt Fee, for providing a high
pedagogical standard to strive for, and for encouraging me to return to graduate
school. Since arriving in the Critical Studies department at USC’s School of
Cinematic Arts, I have had the pleasure of working with an impressive array of
professors, students, and staff. I must extend special thanks to several of my peers,
Elizabeth Affuso, Patty Ahn, Daniel Chamberlain, Kate Fortmueller, Kristen Fuhs,
Ghia Godfree, Chris Hanson, Julia Himberg, Jorie Lagerwey, Dave Lerner, Taylor
Nygaard, and Jennifer Rosales. Your notes and support were greatly appreciated,
and I am proud to call all of you both my friends and my colleagues.
I owe the deepest debt of gratitude to my dissertation committee, professors
Ellen Seiter, Tara McPherson and Henry Jenkins, for their thoughtful guidance and
unwavering support throughout this process. Working with Henry was a
professional goal I had harbored since first encountering his work as an
undergraduate at NYU, and the experience far exceeded my (perilously high)
expectations. Henry’s scholarship and his generosity as a mentor have had a
profound impact on me and I feel exceedingly lucky to have his ear. Taking Tara’s
iv
graduate seminar, “Consuming Femininities: Shopping, Beauty and Media Culture,”
had a profound impact on me, and her insights into the intersections between gender
and consumer culture inspired and influenced many facets of this dissertation. I
hope to follow the stellar example that she has set for scholars engaging with
technology and popular culture in my future work. Finally, words cannot adequately
express my admiration and appreciation of Ellen Seiter. Ellen’s suggestions were
invaluable, her criticisms constructive, and her advice was always refreshingly
practical. Thank you, Ellen, for not mincing words, for pushing me and for
championing me, and for having faith that I would finish. When or if future students
thank me in their acknowledgements, they will be indirectly thanking you for
providing me with a model of mentorship that I will carry with me throughout my
career.
This project is deeply indebted to my fellow aca-fen, who provided an
endless supply of inspiration and reassurance in developing this project.
Specifically, I would like to acknowledge Kristina Busse, Karen Hellekson, Derek
Johnson, Alexis Lothain, Roberta Pearson, Bob Rehak, Julie Levin Russo, Louisa
Stein, and Catherine Tosenberger. When we extol the virtues of fan community, I
can think of no more illustrative group than this scholarly network. I feel fortunate
to be included in your ranks. I must also extend my appreciation to Lisa Parks,
Karen Tongson, and Bill Whittington, for their impact on my professional
development. Thank you for inviting me to lecture in your courses, recommending
v
me for positions, and serving as my advocates. It is humbling to know that I have
you in my corner.
Without the support of my family, I would not have returned to graduate
school, much less completed this project. My sister, Gretchen, has been a continual
source of encouragement, and is wiser than any younger sibling has the right to be. I
am blessed to have a father who instilled in me at a young age that you must be
passionate about your chosen profession, and who never once questioned my
decision to return to graduate school. And most importantly, I have to thank my
mother for her unwavering support, which ranged from being patient when I was
slow to return phone calls to giving me a place to stay while commuting to lecture at
UCSC. To my friends Michael C. Bolton, David Connelly, Charles DeRosa, Mike
Koresky, and Steve Rowley: you are an invaluable brain trust, and thank you for
helping me get out of my own head now and then.
Finally, this dissertation is dedicated to my husband and best friend, Luke
Pebler. Thank you for reading every draft, sending me relevant links, asking
challenging questions, and keeping me honest. You are the love of my life, and will
always be my favorite fanboy.
vi
Table of Contents
Dedication ii
Acknowledgements iii
List of Figures vii
Abstract viii
Chapter One: Introduction: Revenge of the Fanboy: Convergence Culture 1
and the Incorporation Paradigm
Chapter One Endnotes 66
Chapter Two: TwiHate: Why Twilight Anti-Fandom May Have Ruined 78
More Than Comic-Con
Chapter Two Endnotes 133
Chapter Three: Is Fan Production Frakked? Ancillary Content Models, the 142
Fanboy Auteur, and the Regifting Economy
Chapter Three Endnotes 208
Chapter Four: From Filkers to Wrock Stars: The New Fanactivism and the 221
Gendered Commoditization of Fan Practice
Chapter Four Endnotes 269
Chapter Five: Conclusion: Revenge of the Fanboy - Episode II: The 276
Trouble with Becky
Chapter Five Endnotes 306
Bibliography 311
vii
List of Figures
Figure 2.1. Physical Description of Bella Swan 99
Figure 2.2. Wanted: Stephenie Meyer 100
Figure 2.3. Faces in the Crowd 112
Figure 2.4. Princess Naked 113
Figure 2.5. Dr. Girlfriends 113
Figure 2.6. Sin to Win 116
Figure 2.7. Dr. Girlfriend 118
Figure 4.1. U.K. and U.S. Harry Potter Book Release Dates 228
Figure 4.2. U.S. Harry Potter Book and Film Release Dates 230
Figure 4.3. Wizard Rock Dates 242
viii
Abstract
“Revenge of the Fanboy: Convergence Culture and the Politics of
Incorporation,” examines the demographic, representational, and academic
“revenge” of the fanboy within convergence culture. Specifically, this project
exposes the gendered tensions underpinning the media industry’s “collaborationist”
embrace of fans through a series of test cases. The first addresses Twilight anti-
fandom through a discussion of the Twihate protests at San Diego Comic-Con 2009,
Comic-Con’s shifting industrial significance as a promotional space, and fanboys
privileged positioning within that space. Moving from localized efforts to contain
fangirls at San Diego Comic-Con 2009 to systemic attempts to channel and regulate
fan participation, the second test case examines the television industry’s construction
of digital ancillary content models through an analysis of the SyFy series Battlestar
Galactica (2003-2009). This analysis interrogates how the textual “work” ancillary
content performs replicates fans’ tendency to play in the textual gaps and margins,
how this ancillary content reinscribes textual authority, and how fans’ labor is
ultimately “regifted” back to them as promotional material. The final test case
addresses emergent forms of socially networked fan production that attempt to strike
a balance between fandom’s “feminine” gift economy and the “masculine”
commercial drives of amateur production within convergence culture. Examining
the fan practice of filking, or folk songs written and performed by fans, alongside the
emergence of Harry Potter wizard rock bands, this test case points towards fangirls’
ix
complicity in professionalizing their male counterparts, and questions the viability of
a model of fan production that fuses commerce with charity.
This project ultimately grapples with what I call the “incorporation
paradigm” of contemporary fandom and fan studies. As fan studies’ dominant
discourse of resistance is supplanted by work that revalues industrial incorporation
and celebrates the media industry’s collaborationist turn, this dissertation begins to
survey the politics of participation within media convergence. Through an address
of the structuring tensions that have accompanied the “mainstreaming” of fan
culture, this study exposes broader concerns about the remarginalization of fangirls
and studies of female fan communities within convergence culture, and presents a
break from the critical utopianism that has characterized studies of fans within
convergence culture.

1
Chapter One: Introduction
Revenge of the Fanboy
Convergence Culture and the Incorporation Paradigm
Fans are the most active segment of the media audience, one that
refuses to simply accept what they are given, but rather insists on the
right to become full participants. None of this is new. What has
shifted is the visibility of fan culture.
- Henry Jenkins
1

Fandom is a subculture well on its way to becoming culture, and
while that has many benefits, it also raises the risk of re-marginalizing
the groups that the subculture once represented […] I worry about
women becoming, yet again, a minority voice in a mixed gender
fannish culture in which the makers of Chad Vader get a movie deal
and the makers of the K/S vid Closer flee the internet when their vids
go viral. The media--especially the genre media which has been the
center of so much fannish activity--has typically courted a male
demographic, despite (or perhaps because of) their female-dominated
audiences. And female fans have typically made lemonade from these
lemons; it's no accident that so much "remix" culture happens in the
context of minority communities: women, blacks, and the disabled.
But in the end, my lovingly crafted fanwork is not your marketing
team's "user-generated content."
- Francesca Coppa
2

In the summer and fall of 2007, media scholar Henry Jenkins gathered a
group of academics together on his blog to participate in debates on Gender and Fan
Culture. The stated purpose of these debates was to create a dialogue between male
and female scholars doing work within fan studies, and to “complicate existing
assumptions about how gender impacted fan culture, suggesting some overlap as
well as some differences in cultural preferences, interpretive practices, cultural
activities, and social communities.”
3
Jenkins viewed the debates as an opportunity to

2
acknowledge commonalities and work through perceived differences. As Jenkins
explained, he was “distressed by suggestions that there was a growing disconnect
between the work male and female scholars were doing in this space and concerned
that the roots of fan studies in feminist scholarship and female cultural practice might
get lost.”
4
While the debates were an unqualified success in their ability to create
and continue a dialogue between fan scholars they also frequently (and perhaps
unconsciously) reified the gendered “disconnect” that inspired the project.
The debates should collectively be viewed as a successful intervention,
posing important questions about the dominant discourses within fan studies and
envisioning an expansive and richly textured future for the field. The observations
and generalizations that follow do not fully capture the scope or subtlety of the
debates, nor do they adequately reflect the participants’ ambivalence on many of
these issues. That said, the gendered anxieties surrounding authority, authenticity,
and appropriation that permeated the debates demands further critical consideration.
Whether the debate participants framed this “authority” as the academy, the media
industry, or media producers/authors (often referred to as “The Powers that Be”
within fan communities), the masculinity of this authority was implicit, as was the
presumed femininity of “authentic” fan culture. Anxieties about these supposedly
“masculine” attempts to (mis)appropriate female fan culture, in both an industrial
and scholarly sense, underscored many of the debates. As a result, fanboys’ current
cultural positioning as “elite consumers [who] exert a disproportionate influence on
media culture in part because advertisers and media producers are so eager to hold

3
their attention,”
5
was implicitly extended to male academics studying fans through
the lens of convergence culture.
Jason Mittell summarized these central tensions in the first “Round” of the
debates, acknowledging that:
the technological & industrial shifts that [Jenkins] analyzes in [his 2006 book
Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide] & on this blog are
making fannish activities more mainstream and acceptable, but also more
commodified and privileging fanboy over fangirl practices. Mirroring that
shift, academic interest in fandom has splintered along gendered lines, with
prominent male academics emphasizing fanboy & industrial practices,
leaving many female academics on the margins to study & defend fangirl
practices that have arguably been more important in the history of fandom.
6

Importantly, Mittell frames this as a chain of events, with the gendered rift in fan
studies replicating the industry’s gendered valuation of fans. This dissertation takes
up many of the concerns of the Gender and Fan Culture debates, as outlined by
Mittell, through an analysis of the gendered mainstreaming of fan culture within
media convergence. Through a series of test cases, each chapter is designed to
address the ramifications of the media industry’s current embrace of the fanboy as a
tastemaker, a petty producer, a character archetype, or an auteur, and pose questions
about how fan culture’s gendered visibility might impact fangirls and the future of
fandom.
The problematic essentialism of the terms “fanboy” and fangirl,” both as
fannish identities and gendered approaches to fan studies, was discussed throughout
the debates and routinely dismissed as too simplistic a binary to adequately reflect
the participating scholars’ diverse approaches to studying fan culture. My own view

4
aligns with debate participant Julie Levin Russo, who has argued that the
fanboy/fangirl binary is a necessary taxonomy because we have yet to come up with
any terminology to replace it.
7
I would further this argument that the fanboy/fangirl
taxonomy remains dominant, resonant, and useful precisely because it is stringently
gendered. Because journalists and the media industry are actively constructing and
courting “fanboys” as a market segment, with “fangirls” remaining an invisible (or
worse, actively excluded) part of that “fanboy” demographic, these terms matter.
How fans participate in convergence culture, and whose participation is valued, is
increasingly determined by these labels.
Like Russo, I understand that “mobilizing this idiom in relation to the
heterogeneity of fan activity risks imprecision and oversimplification,” but agree, “it
is irreplaceable as an abbreviation for disparities that we have collectively come to
recognize as infused with gendered inequality.”
8
Concluding her response to the
Gender and Fan Culture debates, Russo eloquently encapsulates the central concern
of this project, namely that the “impulse to ‘move beyond’ this binary could lead us
away from this attention to power and into a more insidiously ‘neutral’ map of our
diverse fannish and academic pursuits.”
9
Rather than “move beyond” the
fanboy/fangirl binary, and the tensions it exposed in the debates, this dissertation
engages with how this binary is produced and performed. Accordingly, this project
chooses to revisit, rather than “move beyond,” many of the central paradigms and
preoccupations of the first wave of fan studies, and the cultural studies texts that

5
influenced them, to garner a better understanding of fans’ positioning within
convergence culture.
Bound together by a mutual apprehension about the growing, gendered
visibility of fans and fan studies, this introduction’s epigraph from Francesca Coppa
and Mittell’s overview of the tensions that inspired the debates immediately calls to
mind Angela McRobbie and Jenny Garber’s seminal 1977 essay “Girls and
Subcultures.”
10
Examining the absence of female subjects from the literature on
subcultures emerging from the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies at
Birmingham University in the 1970s, McRobbie and Garber’s essay seems prescient
when considering how convergence culture’s definition of the “fan” has been coded
in masculine terms. This is not to say that studies of convergence culture openly
privilege, or even expressly identify, male fans over female fans. Nor can we neatly
equate the spike in male scholars engaging with fandom and participatory culture in
the wake of Henry Jenkins’ 2006 book Convergence Culture: Where Old and New
Media Collide with a “masculinization” of fan studies. Jenkins’ work has been, and
continues to be, incredibly influential on the work of female fan scholars, and
Convergence Culture reinvigorated the field for male and female scholars alike.
Still, the perception that convergence studies privileges (or increases the visibility of)
masculine forms of fan production and scholarly accounts of that production, at the
expense of re-marginalizing female fans and the work of female scholars, deserves
further consideration. The fact that many of these contemporary fan studies fail to
acknowledge the influence that fangirls’ textual practices have had on the

6
purportedly “new” modes of participation that convergence culture facilitates has
only exacerbated these tensions.
Through a brief overview of one of the Gender and Fan Culture debates,
between Louisa Stein and Robert Jones (Round Two),
11
we can better understand the
gendered stakes of fan studies’ incorporation into convergence studies, and studies of
new media generally. Stein and Jones’ discussion focused on the comparative
transformativity of two gendered modes of fan production: fan vids and machinima.
Vidding, defined by Francesca Coppa as “a form of grassroots filmmaking in which
clips from television shows and movies are set to music,”
12
has historically been
produced within female fan communities. Within a vid, a song is “used as an
interpretive lens to help the viewer to see the source text differently,” creating a
“visual essay that stages an argument, and thus it is more akin to arts criticism than
to traditional music video.”
13
Notably, vids have been distinguished from similar
modes of fanboy-oriented production, such as fan filmmaking and parodies, in both
form and content. Vidding as a fan practice originated with a projected slideshow
choreographed to music by Star Trek fan Kandy Fong for a fan convention in 1975.
Vidding codified its visual style in the 1980s and 1990s through laborious tape-to-
tape editing facilitated by VCR technology, and has grown exponentially as a
contemporary form of fan production.
14
The recent boom in vidding has been
fostered by an abundance of new technologies that have eased the digital production
(e.g. ripping applications such as Mac the Ripper and Handbrake, editing software

7
such as iMovie and Windows Movie Maker) and distribution (e.g. video sharing
websites like YouTube and imeem) of vids.
Machinima, defined by Paul Marino as “animated filmmaking within a real-
time 3D environment,”
15
is a mode of fan filmmaking that “relies on the
manipulation of video game engines.”
16
Like vidding, the origins of machinima can
be traced back to the 1970s, when the demoscene emerged out of hacker subculture,
but didn’t fully develop until the release of DOOM in 1993 and the growth of
modding culture within video game fandom.
17
“Diary of a Camper,” made in 1996
by a group called The Rangers using the first-person shooter Quake (id Software,
1996), is widely cited as the first machinima. In addition to being the first narrative
example of machinima, “Diary of a Camper” established many aesthetic tropes that
are still used today, most notably the carefully planned choreography of players and
assigning players to “perform” the movement of the camera. Machinima continues
to be considered a “male-dominated form of fandom,”
18
in large part because of the
presumption that women “are more comfortable working with machines rather than
attempting to master them.”
19

The central disconnect within Stein and Jones’ debate revolved around which
form of fan production was more inherently “transformative,” with Jones arguing
that machinima “places more power over the medium in the fan’s hands”
20
by
allowing them to literally transform the source text through their manipulation of the
game engine.
21
Jones’ remarks about the comparative “passivity” of television fans
to gamers, both in terms of their relationship to the medium and their modes of fan

8
production, did not sit well with Stein. Noting that “we can’t simply dismiss the
female authorship that is occurring now because it’s not modding or hacking, nor can
we devalue it because it doesn’t change larger official (commercial) structures,”
22

Stein countered that vidding plays the same fundamental “game” with the text that
machinima does. Just as machinimators choose particular game engines based that
engine’s capabilities, Stein argued that vidders “seek out texts that will give them the
elements to create a fantext of the sort that gives them pleasure.”
23
In most cases,
this “pleasure” is derived from character relationships, or the creation of a character-
driven narrative where one doesn’t overtly/textually exist, through the process of
vidding.
What is notable about this particular debate, and emblematic of the debates as
a whole, is that there is not a clear winner or loser here, neither party is “right” or
“wrong.” Machinima and fan vids are both transformative modes of fan production
that deserve to be studied and celebrated, and the rigidly gendered nature of both
forms should be interrogated and, ideally, diversified. What was problematic was
that much of Jones’ language hierarchically privileged machinima over vidding.
Despite Jones’ stated desire to not “want to say that machinima is better,”
24
many
perceived him as doing just that, generally dismissing vidding as a comparatively
“passive” form of textual engagement. Thus, machinima (and, by extension, its
fanboy creators) becomes “evolutionary,” “interactive” and “unique,” in large part
because the medium it derives from is positioned similarly in new media discourses.
Vidding, because it is tied to television spectatorship, is (comparatively) framed as

9
passive and derivative, and its labor, quite literally women’s work, is devalued. The
introduction to Remote Control: Television, Audiences, and Cultural Power notes
that the “passive” spectator, the “‘other’ people helpless before the television set are
implicitly feminine.”
25
The fact that early studies of female fans were rooted in
television fandoms, thus dually combating the cultural perception of television and
fandom as destructive, is implicitly invoked in Stein’s remarks. What was only
briefly acknowledged in this debate was the role the media industry plays in
constructing this gendered hierarchy of fannish production. Jones noted that game
developers have openly courted machinima production, including tool sets and
professionalizing machinimators through contests and the adoption of their output as
official promotional material,
26
but failed to couch this observation in a broader
recognition of the industry’s gendered valuation of fan labor.
Jones did make a point of acknowledging the growing number of female
gamers and machinima makers, but his remarks were qualified by aligning the
former with the “casual gaming” movement, and the latter with the development of
“user friendly interfaces.”
27
In particular, Jones cited the large number of women
creating machinima in The Sims as a “corollary to the development of user friendly
tool sets shipped with that game, the same way Westinghouse made radio more user
friendly when it needed to capture the housewives as its primary demographic.”
28

Stein countered that, not only do these perceptions obscure the long, technologized
history of female forms of fan production, from zines to vids, but they perpetuate the
perceived academic inequities that inspired the debates. According to Stein, since

10
“fandom has moved online, technological innovation and authorship within the
context of female fan communities continues to expand, and yet its validity as a
subject of study […] still seems to be contested and unpopular,” compared to the
study of video games, which can be more readily understood through “traditionally
masculine values of competition and innovation.”
29
Though this particular debate
didn’t engage with media convergence in depth, these disconnects resonated in many
of the debates, whether the conversation was about the distinctions between fan
fiction and transmedia storytelling,
30
or if the term “fan” has become too elastic
within convergence culture.
31

Like the majority of the debates, Stein and Jones’ exchange wasn’t
contentious, with both of the participants going out of their way to qualify and
contextualize their statements, and attempting to find common critical ground. Still,
they alternately seemed to talk past each other or be speaking two completely
different languages, with Jones failing to acknowledge Stein’s effort to place
machinima in a historical dialogue with older forms of female fan production and
technological prowess, and Stein forced to adopt a defensive stance regarding the
active spectatorship of television audiences and vidding as a transformative form of
fan production. In her concluding remarks, Stein expressed frustration that “we
seem to be trapped in this (gendered) world of dichotomization, where we’re seeking
to differentiate rather than understand the complex gradations that make up media
engagement.”
32
Similar sentiments were expressed by many of the participants

11
during the debates, despite the original criticisms directed at male aca-fans for
hierarchically privileging masculine forms of production.
It is important to acknowledge that the “fangirl” participants sought to favor
female forms of fan production as frequently as their male debate partners.
However, this was often positioned as a protective gesture, or an attempt to reiterate
what was at stake, or what might be lost, as fan studies merges with studies of new
media and convergence culture. For example, immediately preceding Stein’s call for
scholars to break free of the gendered, dichotomized logic that had stalled her debate
with Jones, she remarked that she found herself “wanting to flip on its head [Jones’]
initial framework that suggests that videogame machinima authorship is more active
than media fan authorship.”
33
Stein’s conclusive claim that vidding’s creation and
circulation of fan texts, and the “group play” within the fan community it
encourages, makes it “perhaps (dare I say) more [active] than the mostly-male-
authored machinima texts you’re describing,”
34
indicates that continued
dichotomization might be necessary in order to adequately historicize and celebrate
the role female fan production has played in shaping contemporary participatory
culture.
The Gender and Fan Culture debates made it clear that McRobbie and
Garber’s ultimate concern that “girls sub-cultures may have become invisible
because the very term ‘sub-culture’ has acquired such strong masculine overtones,”
35

is newly resonant when considering the masculine overtones that “convergence
culture” has (perhaps unfairly) acquired. This gendered visibility is cultivated and

12
sustained through a variety of journalistic, industrial, and academic sources. The
overview of fanboys’ recent celebration as a powerful market force that follows
suggests that McRobbie and Garber’s claim that the “popular image of a subculture
as encoded and defined by the media is likely to be one which emphasizes the male
membership, male ‘focal concerns,’ and masculine values,”
36
endures. Chapter
Two’s analysis of Twilight anti-fandom and Twilight protesters at San Diego Comic-
Con 2009 examines some of the repercussions of journalists’ construction of San
Diego Comic-Con, and fandom by extension, as a masculine space, and discusses the
resultant attempts by fanboys to regulate the movement of fangirls within that space.
The popular press’ disproportionate cultural valuation of the fanboy has, in turn,
impacted scholarship on fan culture, with fan scholars frequently “reproducing,
unconsciously in many cases, the dividing lines which structure the general culture's
response to fan culture.”
37
Likewise, as fan scholars increasingly find themselves in
direct conversation with media producers, there is “some risk of taking up the
industry's own atomistic conception of the fan rather than embracing the more
collective vision represented by the concept of fandom.”
38
The fanboy’s visibility is,
in many cases, a byproduct of his complicity with industrially valued (that is to say,
marketable or co-optable) modes of fannish participation. In Chapter Three, I
discuss the television industry’s attempts to create “official” fan enclaves online, and
how the “official” ancillary content offered to fans in these digital spaces could be
perceived as an effort to creatively regulate fan production, locking down

13
interpretive meaning while avoiding the negative press that accompanies legal efforts
to regulate fan activity.
McRobbie and Garber’s conclusion, that the invisibility of girls’ subculture
may be a product of its comparative inaccessibility, also continues to be germane.
McRobbie and Garber’s characterization of girls’ subculture as “so well insulated as
to operate to effectively exclude not only other ‘undesireable’ girls – but also boys,
adults, teachers and researchers,”
39
remains key to an understanding of fangirls’ and
female fan communities’ relative invisibility. Many of the female aca-fen in the
debates acknowledged that fangirls’ apparent “re-marginalization” is self-imposed,
and industrial invisibility is considered desirable by many fangirls. Expanding on
the idea that marginality might be a conscious choice that is self-imposed by fangirls,
and continuing to address concerns about the gendered commercialization of fan
texts, Chapter Four examines fangirls’ complicity in the professionalization of
fanboys through a discussion of Harry Potter wizard rock. Wizard rock is a
contemporary form of filking, fan-created and performed folk music that has
historically been collectively created and consumed at fan conventions. By
examining how this historically gender-neutral fan practice has evolved within
convergence culture, we can begin to see how fangirls perpetuate their own relative
“invisibility” as fan producers.
Many of the Gender and Fan Culture debates’ “fangirl” participants noted
that fanboys have historically been willing to deploy their fan texts as professional
calling cards, whereas fangirls have not sought (or actively avoided) industrial

14
visibility or compensation for their textual labor. Coppa’s distinction between the
fanboy creators of the Chad Vader parody series’ industrial assimilation, and the
fangirl creators of the Kirk/Spock slash vid Closer’s self-imposed isolation that
opened this chapter, offers evocative evidence that this trend has continued. Another
prime example is the outrage that surrounded FanLib, a short-lived fan fiction
archive that sought to monetize fan production in exchange for prizes and proximity
to the participating shows producers, and was overwhelmingly viewed as an attempt
by “(male) venture capitalists to profit financially from (female-generated) fan
fiction.”
40
Accordingly, Chapters Three and Four also question the continued
viability of the gift economy that governs textual exchange in female fan
communities, as fangirls consider monetizing their fan production before the industry
can find a viable mode of exploiting it for profit. Concluding with an examination of
how fan scholars’ have deployed Lewis Hyde’s 1983 study The Gift: Imagination
and the Erotic Life of Property
41
in their analyses of fannish gift economies, Chapter
Three’s emphasis on industrial “regifting” economies interrogates the more covert
forms of industrial appropriation of fan culture alongside overt efforts to regulate and
repurpose fan texts as marketing tools. Chapter Four poses an alternative to the
industrial commercialization of fan production, examining how wizard rockers in
Harry Potter fandom have offset their commercial intake with charitable giving,
building community while evading legal censure.
My own concerns regarding fangirls’ relative “invisibility,” as a
demographic, an archetype, and as a subject of convergence culture scholarship,

15
echoes McRobbie and Garber’s anxieties about the inaccessibility of girls’
subcultures and their corresponding lack of visibility in subculture studies. This
“self-fulfilling prophecy, a vicious circle”
42
that McRobbie and Garber’s identified in
1977 can be extended to contemporary academic responses to the “masculinization”
of fan studies. In their efforts to explain why girls were infrequently subject of
subcultural studies, McRobbie and Garber note that girls are likely to retreat or,
alternately, become collectively aggressive in situations that are “male-defined.”
43
It
could be argued that some female aca-fen and many female fans have adopted a
similar response to the supposedly “male-defined” realm of convergence culture, in
which “both the defensive and aggressive responses are structured in reaction against
a situation where masculine definitions (and thus sexual labeling, etc.) are in
dominance.”
44
With academia still perceived by many as a “boys club,” the anxieties
surrounding the influx of male scholars into fan studies, and the resultant desire to
pull away from or protest these additions to the field, are understandable.
In her essay “The cult of masculinity: from fan-boys to academic bad-boys,”
Jacinda Read describes a moment in the late 1990s when male academics in the U.K.
attempted to “reassert a masculine (sub)culture and politics in the face of the
perceived institutionalization of feminism and its subsequent colonization and
feminization of the margins,”
45
through their adoption and recuperation of the
“fanboy” identity. A similar argument seems to be emerging about studies of
convergence culture. Fan studies, like fan culture, has long been considered a cult of
femininity, where “learning how to engage is part of the initiation, the us versus

16
them, the fan versus the nonfan.”
46
As a result, applying McRobbie and Garber’s
work on gendered subcultural “invisibility” to convergence era fan studies is
somewhat ironic, and requires us to acknowledge the relative invisibility of fanboys
in within the canon of fan studies. Janice A. Radway’s Reading the Romance:
Women, Patriarchy and Popular Literature (1984), Camille Bacon-Smith’s
Enterprising Women: Television Fandom and the Creation of Popular Myth (1991),
Henry Jenkins’ Textual Poachers: Television Fans and Participatory Culture (1992),
and many other seminal fan studies texts since the first wave, have emphasized
female fans, their communities, their interpretive strategies, and their textual
productivity. We can accordingly choose to look at convergence studies’ emphasis
on fanboys’ textual practices as rectifying a gender imbalance, rather than view the
influx of “fanboy” scholars as a hostile takeover of fan studies.
Ambivalence about the perceived “masculinization” of fan studies persists as
scholarly work on fans is absorbed into studies of convergence culture and couched
in broader debates about the shifting power dynamics between media producers and
consumers. Female scholars, or those enmeshed in female fan communities, may be
more likely to vocalize their ambivalence about the industrial and academic embrace
of fanboys and historically “masculine” modes of fan production and participation,
but their concerns speak to broader debates that are occurring within fan
communities. As a portion of this chapter will outline, the growing cultural and
industrial visibility of fandom has resulted in the construction of fanboys as
convergence culture’s most desirable demographic, and greater representational

17
diversity for fanboys in media texts and the popular press. This should generally be
considered a positive thing for fanboys and fangirls alike, as it has led the media
industry to produce and develop of wider array of texts that reward fannish
engagement, and works towards depathologizing fan archetypes. More significantly,
the industry’s growing attempts to mobilize and monetize fan participation has led
them to shift away from their historically prohibitionist responses to fan production,
adopting a more collaborationist approach. Media corporations unquestionably
continue to “imagine participation as something they can start and stop, channel and
reroute, commodify and market,”
47
but they have tempered their efforts to legally
shut down unauthorized forms of fan participation and production.
Announcing the Gender and Fan Culture debates on his blog, Jenkins
acknowledged that some of the gendered conflict amongst aca-fen might simply
“reflect growing pains in the ways fan culture gets studied as more men begin to
write about their own experiences and interests as fans.”
48
Nontheless, Jenkins
cautioned:
We certainly do not want to lose the important insights which feminist
scholarship contributed to our early understanding of fan culture -- and
indeed, the consciousness-raising tradition of feminist scholarship made it
possible for us to write about our own experiences as fans. Yet, if fan studies
is going to remain a viable area of research, we necessarily need to broaden
the range of theoretical and methodological perspectives which get brought to
bear upon it. We need to expand the range of fan cultures we study and the
kinds of fan productivity we talk about.
49

Like Jenkins and the vast majority of the scholars who participated in the fan
debates, I understand the need to look forward to a cultural construction of fans (and,

18
correspondingly, an academic construction of fan studies) that isn’t so rigidly
gendered, or preoccupied with gender as its central critical axis. Representing the
expansive and multifaceted nature of contemporary fandom demands that we move
these conversations beyond gender and venture into the under theorized realms of
race and class. With that said, I also think that failing to retain gender as a critical
axis as fan studies works through these “growing pains” is problematic. Much of the
foundational scholarship on fans and fan communities becomes newly relevant and
revelatory as the visibility of fan culture increases, and the media industry becomes
more invested in their movements and textual production.
Calls to “move beyond” the tensions that have historically defined fan
studies’ have exacerbated anxieties about the sublimation of fan studies into
convergence studies, and the remarginalization of studies of female fans.
Understanding the stakes of the first wave of fan studies is central to understanding
why female academics and fans have generally been less enthusiastic about the
industry’s endorsement of a narrowly defined vision of fan participation.
Accordingly, this dissertation revisits many of the central preoccupations and
seminal texts from the first wave of fan studies in the context of convergence culture,
putting them in conversation with contemporary scholarly work on fan culture.
Analyses of fangirls’ textual production, and the forms of fannish production that
women have historically been drawn to (fanfiction, vidding, etc.), have been and
continue to be central to fan studies. However, this project is ultimately more
concerned with the shifting cultural and industrial conditions that create the

19
parameters of contemporary participatory culture, and how these conditions value
certain participants and modes of participation over others, than surveying specific
fan communities, their practices, and textual production.
First wave fan scholars’ attempts to speak back to pathologized portraits of
fans, and the professionalization debates that circulated in these studies, are not only
more pressing issues within convergence culture, but the two concepts are
increasingly intertwined. While the binaries that fuel these issues
(incorporation/resistance, pathologization/celebration, producer/consumer) have
rightly been dismissed as too simplistic, they also need to be reconsidered as a series
of interlocking tensions that pose ongoing concerns for fans. In particular, we need
to reconsider the incorporation/resistance paradigm that dominated the first wave of
fan studies. By considering the multiple incorporations and resistances that occur
within fandom and studies of fandom, we can begin to understand how these forms
of incorporation or resistance are impacting discussions of the media’s representation
and/or pathologization of fans, and the commercialization of their labor.
Fans are being incorporated into the industry at unprecedented rates, as
creative laborers (creating fan texts that are co-opted as promotional material), as
authors and producers (such as the emergence of the “fanboy auteur,” discussed in
Chapter Three), and as consultants (to better facilitate relationships between
producers and consumers). Resistance also occurs on multiple fronts, from fans
continuing to produce counter-hegemonic readings of media texts, to the more
passive forms of resistance that have accompanied fangirls’ attempts to obscure their

20
practices from the industry’s view. Finally, we must continue to consider fan
studies’ incorporation into studies of convergence culture, and what is motivating
scholarly resistance to that incorporation. As the incorporation/resistance paradigm
gives way to other paradigms that engage with shifting industrial approaches to fan
culture (prohibitionist/collaborationist) and new categorizations of fan texts
(affirmational/transformative), returning to some of the central preoccupations of the
first wave of fan studies illuminates the gendered stakes of contemporary fan culture.

Rethinking the Incorporation/Resistance Paradigm
The introduction to the anthology Fandom: Identities and Communities in a
Mediated World, offers a comprehensive overview of the first three waves of fan
studies.
50
The first wave of fan scholars in the late 1980s and early 1990s took their
inspiration from Michel de Certeau’s The Practice of Everyday Life (1988) to
consider how fans were “making do”
51
with what the media industry was providing.
Applying de Certeau’s discussion of strategies and tactics
52
and poaching
53
to the
power relationship between media producers and consumers, John Fiske’s
Understanding Popular Culture (1989), Camille Bacon-Smith’s Enterprising
Women: Television Fandom and the Creation of Popular Myth (1991), and Henry
Jenkins’ Textual Poachers: Television Fans and Participatory Culture (1992) all
positioned fans as waging a tactical resistance, creating “interpretive communities
that in their subcultural cohesion evaded the preferred and intended meanings of the
‘power bloc’ (Fiske 1989) represented by popular media.”
54
Dubbed the “Fandom is

21
Beautiful” phase,
55
the first wave of fan studies politicized fan production and
framed fans, and female fans in particular, as resistant readers and textual poachers,
presenting fandom as a “vehicle for marginalized subcultural groups […] to pry open
space for their cultural concerns within dominant representations.”
56
As the primary
subjects of the first wave of fan studies, fangirls in particular were presented as
“resistant,” speaking back to the patriarchal and heteronormative values of mass
media texts.
As Matt Hills has argued, framing fans as “resistant” readers was central to
salvaging fans and fandom as a viable subject of academic study, first “removing the
taint of consumption and consumerism,” and then “revaluing fan activities by
stressing that fans are consumers who are also (unofficial) producers.”
57
Hills
interrogates this academically constructed distinction between “fans” and
“consumers,” correctly noting that “seeking to construct a sustainable opposition
between the ‘fan’ and the ‘consumer,’ falsifies the fan’s experience by positioning
fan and consumer as separable cultural entities.”
58
Hills’ pointed reminder that fans
are always already consumers (and avid ones, at that) is important to remember,
especially when discussing the shift from fan subculture to the growing industrial
endorsement of fannish modes of consumption. However, it is equally significant to
remember what drove the first wave of fan studies to distinguish fans from media
consumers.
From its inception, fan studies strove to combat the logic of the Frankfurt
School, “struggling to overcome deterministic notions of the media’s all-pervasive

22
power,”
59
and the prevailing notion that “consumption is feminine and bad,
production is masculine and good.”
60
The first wave of fan studies inverted these
valuations, and has been justly criticized for “going to the other extreme of
celebrating the freedom and autonomy of the viewer,”
61
in its attempts to portray
fans as successfully evading, or resisting, the Culture Industry that concerned
Frankfurt School theorists like Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer.
62
In his 2002
book Fan Cultures, Hills argued that fan studies’ readings of Adorno have
historically been too selective and simplistic,
63
an argument he reiterated in his
contribution to the Gender and Fan Culture debates, stating:
The real problem with articulating 'resistance' and 'Culture Industry'
paradigms, for me, is that we end up with not only very one-dimensional and
thin depictions of cultural heroes and villains, but also that we end up with
equally one-dimensional representations of cultural power, rather than
perceiving 'resistance' as happening internally, within both 'the Industry' and
'fan communities', and even 'in' the academy in a variety of ways.
64

Hills is not alone in his call to complicate the incorporation/resistance paradigm that
has dominated fan studies. Cornel Sandvoss’ Fans (2005) devotes an entire chapter
to working through what he identifies as fan studies’ “dominant discourse of
resistance.”
65
While acknowledging the subversive potential of fandom, particularly
through its textual productivity,
66
Sandvoss ultimately argues that fandom “cannot be
defined through inherent principles of resistance,” as, “neither mass-mediated fan
texts nor fans’ readings of such texts can easily be identified as hegemonic or
subversive.”
67
This divide between “hegemonic” and “subversive” fandom has long
been identified as the Incorporation/Resistance Paradigm. Defined by Nicholas

23
Abercrombie and Brian Longhurst in Audiences: A Sociological Theory of
Performance and Imagination (1998) as “whether audience members are
incorporated into the dominant ideology by their participation in media activity or
whether, to the contrary, they are resistant to that incorporation,”
68
Abercrombie and
Longhust are quick to note that the Incorporation/Resistance Paradigm should be
viewed as a “debate between the two positions and not necessarily by the
endorsement of one of them.”
69
Fan studies has, on the whole, presented a
dichotomously valued and gendered view of incorporation and resistance, endorsing
the latter through a celebration of the textual production of female fans.
Roberta Pearson argues that “Fan studies began as an act of reclamation and
celebration; reclamation from the geeky image constructed by the media, most
famously seen in the Saturday Night Live sketch in which William Shatner urged
fans to ‘get a life,’ and celebration of fannish resistance to capitalist incorporation.”
70

The first wave of fan studies may have overstated fans’ desire to politicize their
textual production and resist industrial incorporation, but this also indicates the
degree to which the cultural construction of the “fan” needed to be recuperated. The
first wave of fan studies was not merely interested in distinguishing fans from other
consumers, or positioning them as ideal consumers, but began as an effort to redeem
the stigmatized depiction of fans within the media and academia. Catalogued in Joli
Jensen’s seminal 1992 essay “Fandom as Pathology: The Consequences of
Characterization,” the fan has historically been characterized as either “an obsessed
loner, suffering from a disease of isolation, or a frenzied crowd member, suffering

24
from a disease of contagion.”
71
Jensen noted that these characterizations point
towards broader cultural concerns about the decline of community and the pervasive
power of the mass media,
72
both issues that the first wave of fan studies countered
with its emphasis on fan communities and resistant reading practices.
Within fan studies, pathologization and politicization tend to work cyclically,
the latter stressed in an attempt to diffuse the former. In this sense, it is easy to see
why some have expressed the anxiety that fan studies will be depoliticized (or fail to
retain its feminist roots) as fans, and fanboys in particular, are depathologized.
Alternately, if we choose to view fans’ politicization within fan studies as a response
to their cultural pathologization, we can begin to understand convergence culture’s
potential reversal of this flow, with fanboys apparently being rewarded for producing
depoliticized fan texts with depathologized representations. Because the
Incorporation/Resistance paradigm is intimately bound up with the construction of
fans as a “socially stigmatized group who fail to conform to dominant, hegemonic
ideals of ‘detached,’ normative”
73
models of consumption, it might initially appear
that this structuring binary of fan studies has no place within convergence era fan
studies. After all, convergence culture has been characterized by fannish
consumption practices and engagement with media texts becoming “normative,” not
just expected but industrially desirable.
Matt Hills’ discussion of consumer culture’s naturalization of “normative”
fandom, or what he terms “new hegemonic fandom,”
74
is especially useful to
consider convergence culture’s alternately progressive and problematic constructions

25
of participatory culture and its “contradictory ‘social logics’ of plurivocal hegemony
wherein opposite views can be assimilated together.”
75
Echoing my own reluctance
to “move beyond” some of the early paradigms of fan studies, Hills argues for a
reconsideration of Gramscian theories of hegemony within fan studies, noting that
“cultural studies’ cultural politics of the 1990s may have been outmanoeuvred [sic.]
by ‘new hegemonic fandom’ rather than achieving victory through the rise of a
counter-hegemonic position.”
76
A similar argument could be posed about the
industrial attempts to “outmaneuver” fannish resistance within convergence culture.
Keeping this “new hegemonic fandom” in mind, I propose that if the early
waves of fan studies have been understood in terms of their dominant discourse of
resistance, convergence era fan studies might be best understood through a dominant
discourse of incorporation. Not only has “incorporation” been reconsidered and
revalued within many studies of convergence culture that celebrate the growing
collaborative relationship between producers and consumers, but the term has taken
on multiple meanings. Thus, Hills’ comment in his debate that resistances occur on
multiple levels within fandom, the industry, and the academy, should also be applied
the multiple modes of incorporation that convergence culture has facilitated. Just as
McRobbie and Garber’s work on the gendered bias of subculture studies would
appear to be replicated in many of the critiques of convergence era fan studies, Dick
Hebdige’s work on subcultural incorporation strategies deserves reconsideration.
Drawing on Stuart Hall’s use of Antonio Gramsci’s theory of hegemony, Hebdige’s

26
work on how subcultures are recuperated and incorporated is germane to a
discussion of fandom’s current movement from the margins to the mainstream.
The two forms of subcultural incorporation outlined by Hebdige in 1979 in
Subculture: The Meaning of Style can be applied to the media industry and popular
press’ current incorporation of fans and fan culture. Drawing on Stuart Hall’s claim
that the media both records subcultural resistance and works to frame it within
dominant discourses, Hebdige argues that it is only “through this continual process
of recuperation that the fractured order is repaired and the subculture
incorporated.”
77
Convergence discourses have reframed this process of recuperation
and repair as a merger, a negotiation between top-down and bottom-up collectives
and their interests. So in the case of fan culture and fan studies in the age of media
convergence, we might consider this “process of production, packaging and
publicity” not as inevitably defusing fandom’s subcultural, subversive power, as
Hebdige might,
78
but rather as establishing a new form of subcultural capital for
fanboys. Through this subcultural capital, “discrimination and power relations are
maintained and reconstituted in fandom,”
79
somewhat ironically through a process of
cultural acknowledgement, mainstreaming, and incorporation.
The first mode of incorporation, what Hebdige labels “the commodity form,”
recuperates and incorporates a subculture by converting subcultural signs into mass –
produced objects, removing them from their “private contexts” so that they might be
“codified, made comprehensible, rendered at once public property and profitable
merchandise.”
80
Hebdige is referring to the literal transition of subcultural style into

27
commodities (such as the safety pin riddled punk style being mass produced and
sold), and we could certainly make a similar case for both the rise of hipster/“geek
chic” style and chain retailer Hot Topic, which enables fans to, quite literally,
purchase and wear their fan identity. More in line with the scope of this project, we
should consider how fannish consumption patterns and fan labor, the texts produced
in fan communities, are being commoditized and incorporated by the media industry.
If incorporation has been framed as a potentially positive thing for fans within
convergence culture, which segments of fan subculture are being made public, and
which are deemed profitable, becomes significant.
It is the removal of fandom from its “private context,” and the relationship
between comprehension and codification, that is increasingly of concern to me. To
reiterate, the concept of “incorporation,” or what I’m calling convergence culture’s
“incorporation paradigm,” can be considered a positive thing for fans, and the
benefits of fandom “going public” can be seen in the shifting ways texts are
produced to stress “engaged” and participatory consumption practices. It is the
conditional and selective nature of these incorporations, and the subsequently limited
codification of fannish “participation,” that is the issue. By incorporating only those
modes of fan participation that they comprehend, those that “make sense” in fiscal
and ideological terms, the media industry risks excluding or openly challenging
those they don’t comprehend. Alternately, they collapse these categories in their
codification of fan culture. Echoing Francesca Coppa’s remark that “in the end, my
lovingly crafted fanwork is not your marketing team's ‘user-generated content,’”
81
it

28
is the slippage between the two forms in the industry’s limited understanding of fan
culture that is problematic.
Hebdige’s second mode of incorporation, “the ideological form,” refers to the
dominant group’s efforts to label and redefine the subculture in question.
82
In this
case, we might identify the “dominant group” as, alternately, the popular press, the
media industry, and the academy. Hebdige identifies two basic ideological strategies
for dealing with a subcultural threat, either transforming the Other into “meaningless
exotica,” a spectacle, or denying the difference of the Other, rending them
“trivialized, naturalized, domesticated.”
83
We can see the former strategy deployed
in the pathologized portraits of fans that inspired the first wave of fan studies, and
that continue to linger despite their incorporation. As discussed briefly in Chapter
Two and at length in the conclusion, this strategy in its contemporary use is
disproportionately deployed against fangirls. When considering the dominant
discourse of incorporation within convergence culture’s discussion of fans, it is the
second strategy that poses greater concerns. Convergence culture’s discourses of
consumer empowerment are valid and important, but they also tend to overshadow
“the subtler mechanisms through which potentially threatening phenomena are
handled and contained.”
84

Even within the first wave of fan studies, anxieties circulated about fans’
textual production being contained or incorporated by the industry and sold back to
them. Convergence-era fan studies has made these concerns newly pressing, and

29
many contemporary studies of fandom actively address the media industry’s
outsourcing of promotional labor to fans as Fiske might have, namely:
as a form of containment – a permitted and controlled gesture of dissent that
acts as a safety valve and thus strengthens the dominant social order by
demonstrating its ability to cope with dissenters or protesters by allowing
them enough freedom to keep them relatively content, but not enough to
threaten the stability of the system against which they are protesting.
85

Writing in 2007, some sixteen years after Fiske, Jenkins summarized these growing
concerns:
There is a school of thought, for example, that links user-generated content
with the downsizing of the creative economy, that sees these forms of
commercially embraced grassroots expression primarily as a means of cutting
costs by off-loading jobs onto consumers who now produce the content
others are consuming and even create the networks through which that
content is circulating. I certainly understand that perspective, especially
when you consider that few of these media companies are passing the savings
from this downsizing back to the consumer in terms of lower prices or fewer
adverts.
86

While Jenkins clearly states that scholars should “avoid celebrating a process that
commodifies fan cultural production and sells it back to us with a considerable
markup,” he also argues that “these same trends can also be understood in terms of
making companies more responsive to their most committed consumers, as
extending the influence that fans exert over the media they love.”
87
These tensions
between producers and consumers within convergence culture are further articulated
and debated through two emergent paradigms, both of which are in conversation
with the “incorporation paradigm”: the prohibitionist/collaborationist paradigm, and
the afffirmational/transformational paradigm.

30
In Convergence Culture, Jenkins optimistically frames the media industry’s
growing responsiveness, and fans’ growing influence, in terms of the industry’s shift
from a prohibitionist to a collaborationist approach to fan culture. The media
industry that “once adopted a scorched-earth policy towards their consumers, seeking
to regulate and criminalize many forms of fan participation that once fell below their
radar,”
88
has adopted a more collaborationist approach in line with convergence
culture’s ethos of cooperation and coexistence (between old and new media, between
companies, and between producers and consumers). Importantly, Jenkins identifies
these collaborationist approaches from the outset as part of a larger industrial
promotional strategy, with fans positioned as “grassroots intermediaries helping to
promote the franchise.”
89
Jenkins recognizes that prohibitionists and
collaborationists are ultimately on the same “side,” with consumers and fans on the
other, “asserting a right to participate in the culture, on their own terms, when and
where they wish,”
90
but he also understandably lauds the media industry’s move
towards more collaborative policies. I have argued elsewhere
91
that the industrial
adoption of a more collaborationist approach to fandom may be the lesser of two
evils, but it deserves further scrutiny. As Chapter Three addresses in more detail,
collaborationist approaches to fan culture and fans’ textual production frequently
replaces the threat of legal censure with more covert forms of creative or ideological
censure. These covert attempts to regulate how fans engage with media texts must
be viewed as just that, attempts, and I do not mean to strip fans of their agency or
frame these modes of consumption as anything but active and participatory. I simply

31
wish to convey that these “collaborations,” selective and conditional as they are,
deserve further consideration.
While many fan scholars have dismissed the incorporation/resistance
paradigm, especially as the industry’s prohibitionist punishment of ideological
“resistance” or copyright violations has given way to collaborationist outreach, a
new paradigm to demarcate between fandom’s own “prohibitionist” and
“collaborationist” views of the industry has emerged organically from within the fan
community. In a June 2009 LiveJournal entry titled “Affirmational Fandom Vs.
Transformational Fandom,” obsession_inc defines what she views to be the two
predominant modes of fan participation. Obsession_inc defines “affirmational”
modes of fan participation as those that reaffirm the source material, attempt to
divine authorial intent, or debate elements of the text while staying firmly within the
established “rules” of the fictional universe.
92
Obsessive_inc also notes that this is
clearly the “most awesome type of fandom for the source creator to hang out with,
because the creator holds the magic trump card of Because I’m The Only One Who
Really Knows, That’s Why, and that is accepted as a legitimate thing.”
93
We
shouldn’t devalue these modes of fan participation, but it is worth noting that fannish
legitimation and industrial incorporation are joined in this model.
Obsessive_inc calls the fans that tend towards this affirmational mode
“sanctioned fans,” and argues, “the majority of fans that trend strongly toward
affirmational fannish activities are male.”
94
In short, affirmational fans are
“sanctioned” by the industry because they are will to enter into a “collaborationist”

32
relationship with the both the text and its producers, one that is ultimately more
monologic that dialogic, and that facilitates the fan’s industrial incorporation as a
promotional agent. Conversely, obsessive_inc frames “transformational” fandom as
“all about laying hands upon the source and twisting it to the fans' own purposes,”
neatly aligning contemporary “transformational” fandom with the resistant
tendencies celebrated in the first wave of fan studies. Julie Levin Russo, who states
that transformational fandom centrally “values fanon over canon, appropriation over
documentation, and multiple interpretations over hierarchical authority, supports this
characterization”
95
and they are accordingly considered to be “non-sanctioned fans”
by the industry.
96
These forms of textual resistance, however mundane, could be
viewed as a form of self-exclusion from the collective of “sanctioned” fans, a
prohibitionist gesture directed back at the industry by those fans whose fannish
production actively eschew textual incorporation or authorial approval.
The “transformative” designation is not an invention of obsessive_inc’s, but a
term that has been widely adopted in fan communities as both a descriptive term and
a legal defense to distance fan texts from a classification as “derivative” works and
protect them under fair use. The Organization for Transformative Works (OTW), a
nonprofit organization created by fans in 2007 to preserve and legally protect
transformative forms of fan production such as fan fiction, fan vids and fan art.
Defining “transformative works” as those that take “something extant and turns it
into something with a new purpose, sensibility, or mode of expression,”
97
the OTW’s
selection of the term, and the widespread embrace of the term within fan

33
communities, is directly related to its protectionist potential. Aligning fans’
transformative works with the legal definition of transformative use, or something
that “adds something new, with a further purpose or different character altering the
[source] with new expression, meaning or message,”
98
offers the OTW a legally
defensible position. The OTW’s “protection” is also gendered, because just as
affirmational fandom has been broadly viewed as dominated by men, transformative
fan texts are viewed as being predominantly produced by women. The OTW
explicitly addresses this gendering in their FAQ, stating that because the OTW “grew
out of a practice of transformative fanwork historically rooted in a primarily female
culture, we also specifically value that history of women's involvement, and the
practices of fandom shaped by women's work.”
99

Affirmational and transformational fandom, like the
prohibitionist/collaborationist and incorporation/resistance paradigms before it, must
be viewed as a continuum when applied to contemporary fan culture, but it reaffirms
the fact that the mainstream “acceptance” of fans is both gendered and conditional.
The fact that “fan audiences are now wooed and championed by cultural industries,”
comes with the weighty caveat, “at least as long as their activities do not divert from
principles of capitalist exchange and recognize industries’ legal ownership of the
object of fandom.”
100
Along similar lines, Kristina Busse worries that this logic
implies that “certain groups of fans can become legit if and only if they follow
certain ideas, don't become too rebellious, too pornographic, don't read the text too
much against the grain.”
101
Busse’s ultimate concern, one that I share, is that this

34
process of “legitimizing fannish activities and artifacts through various modes of
convergence may create a two-tiered fan system of acceptable and non-acceptable
fan productions by dividing the fan activities into those approved/encouraged by the
producers and those that are not, legitimating the former and further ostracizing the
latter.”
102
The Gender and Fan Culture debates exhibited a similarly anxious logic,
framing the work of male convergence scholars as affirmational, and therefore
“sanctioned,” and expressing concerns that female fan scholars might be
marginalized within this industrial “legitimation” of fan studies.
In his afterword to Fandom: Identities and Communities in a Mediated
World, Henry Jenkins notes that the term “fan” has, somewhat paradoxically become
so elastic, so pervasive, that it is in danger of being erased or rendered devoid of
meaning.
103
Considering the ways in which the term “fan” has grown increasingly
interchangeable with the designations of “geek” and “nerd” to symbolize a set of
popular character archetypes and audience segments, certainly supports Jenkins’
point. But rather than considering the possibility, as Jenkins does, that “fandom has
no future,”
104
I would instead argue that its future is currently being determined, and
that who is determining it is of great significance. Journalists, media publicists, and
industry producers are all constructing a narrowly defined, and rigidly gendered,
version of contemporary fandom. Unsurprisingly, this industrial embrace of the
fanboy, as both a power demographic and a character archetype, reinforces
Hollywood’s ongoing allegiance to 16-34 year-old men as their target audience, and

35
works to demographically and representationally recuperate the fanboy into
hegemonic masculinity.

Revenge of the Fanboy: Building a Power Demographic
In September 2005, Time Magazine published an article predicting that “The
Geek Shall Inherit the Earth.”
105
Noting that the “economic hegemony of the geek in
the 1990s, when high tech and the Internet were driving the economy, has somehow
been converted into a cultural hegemony,” the article cited an array of pop culture
evidence that what was once considered “hopelessly geeky--video games, fantasy
novels, science fiction, superheroes--has now, somehow, become cool.”
106
A wave of
articles followed in the same vein and, whether they were classified as “nerds,”
“geeks” or “fanboys” (cultural constructions with discrete etymological origins
whose the terminological borders between have been increasingly muddied by
journalists),
107
by 2007 the fanboy had been solidified as “one of the most powerful
taste-makers in Hollywood.”
108
Entertainment Weekly’s year-end issue proclaimed
that 2007 was “The Year The Geek Was King,”
109
and Time’s prediction came to full
journalistic fruition: “Let there be no doubt: in 2007, from Shia LeBouf in
Transformers to the sellout crowds at San Diego Comic-Con, the geeks inherited the
earth.”
110

Despite all the hype, there was little that was “new” about this new power
demographic of 16-to-34 year-old males. The emergence of the fanboy demographic
has undoubtedly impacted what is produced in Hollywood, from the hyperserialized

36
and densely mythologized television programs like Lost (ABC, 2004-2010) and
Heroes (NBC, 2006-2010), to the onslaught of cinematic adaptations of comic
books
111
and video games.
112
It has also led the industry to not just accept, but
actively promote fannish modes of consumption and (inter)textual engagement. Yet,
the construction of the fanboy as a powerful consumer base also neatly reinforces the
industry’s enduring investment in men 16-to-34 as their primary audience. In a 2008
article for Wired Magazine detailing the commodification of nerd culture and male
geek’s rise to power, Scott Brown came to a similar conclusion: “We’re not
attacking the Death Star. We are the Death Star.”
113

Hollywood’s enduring investment in male audiences was apparent, if
unacknowledged, in these articles. Fangirls were not counted among the geeks
inheriting the earth, with Time likening the industry’s recent “discovery” of the
fanboy as “a prime demographic to be marketed to, the same way it discovered
teenage girls after Titanic.”
114
Time’s 2007 article, tellingly titled “Boys Who Like
Toys,” parenthetically acknowledged “there are some fangirls,”
115
but exclusively
addressed fanboys as a desirable demographic, and discussed the influence of
“fanboy deities” like blogger Harry Knowles and writer/director Kevin Smith.
Though these articles did interrogate the financial viability of the so-called “fanboy
effect,”
116
they failed to acknowledge the fangirls that were central to that
demographic’s box office and ratings success stories. Moreover, this gender
stratification perpetuated the fallacious belief that girls simply aren’t interested in
science fiction, fantasy, and superheroes. When fangirls are invoked as a potential

37
market force, it is almost exclusively through properties such as Twilight and Sex
and the City that exist squarely within the generic “pink ghetto”
117
of romance
melodrama and romantic comedy.
For example, after it was revealed that women comprised 48% of the opening
weekend audience for The Dark Knight (2008), and thus accounted for nearly half of
the film’s record breaking box-office returns ($158.4 million in its first weekend),
the articles that emerged didn’t recognize that fangirls were always already part of
the fanboy demographic. Rather, they framed The Dark Knight’s large female
audience as an anomaly and attempted to deconstruct the film’s appeal for women.
The film’s executive producer, Thomas Tull, cited the “female appeal” and the
acting pedigree of stars Christian Bale and Heath Ledger.
118
Many other journalists
simply wrote off the large female audience as a manifestation of “rubberneck
curiosity” to see Ledger’s posthumous performance as the Joker.
119
The notion that
fangirls had long circulated around Batman as a property was never broached as a
potential explanation for the film’s success.
The industry’s investment in the fanboy demographic has yet to show any
signs of waning, despite the fact that for every story of a film or television show that
has become an immediate smash after winning fanboys’ approval at San Diego
Comic-Con (Iron Man, Heroes), there are an equal number of films and television
series that have been commercial failures (Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World, V), despite
emerging with good buzz. One noteworthy piece of evidence that the industry has
long term plans to keep investing in the fanboy demographic was the Walt Disney

38
Company’s acquisition of Marvel Entertainment Inc. for $4 billion in August 2009.
Openly banking on Spiderman and Iron Man to develop the next generation of
fanboy consumers and counterbalance the success of Disney Princesses and
Fairies,
120
an Adweek analysis noted that, while no one should “expect Hannah
Montana to show up as an Avenger,” Disney’s acquisition of Marvel could result in
more female comic book movie fans, as “Disney is an expert at attracting young
women to titles they may not normally be interested in.”
121
Disney’s forthcoming
Marvel properties may succeed in cultivating (or, at least, counting) the next
generation of comic book fangirls alongside their male counterparts, but if Wonder
Woman’s decade long tenure in development hell
122
is any indication, a greater battle
still looms to bring female comic book characters to the screen. From the
pathologized portraits of fans that the first wave of fan studies was responding to, to
the aspirational superheroes that fans queue up to see, representation plays a key role
in which segments of fan culture become more visible and, theoretically, less
stigmatized.

“We are the death star”: Representation and the case of Fanboys
Accompanying this celebration of the fanboy as a demographic tastemaker,
fanboys have also become the media industry’s new favorite character archetype.
Refashioning the fanboy as a viable romantic protagonist, or an (often reluctant)
action hero or superhero, the fanboy’s recuperation into Hollywood’s hegemonic
demography has been coupled with his representational recuperation into hegemonic

39
masculinity. This contemporary boom in fanboy protagonists, and the
representational diversity they produce, will be discussed in more detail in the
conclusion of this dissertation. Likewise, the comparative scarcity of fangirl
characters in popular media texts, and the significance of fangirl representations will
be addressed. These representations are important, not just in their ability to
reinforce or dismantle pathologized portraits of fans, but as a cultural barometer of
the relative power of fanboys and fangirls within the media industry.
Though it doesn’t nearly fit into the rubric of the refashioned fanboy as
romantic hero or action/superhero, the 2008 film Fanboys presents an interesting
initial test case to examine fanboy representation, and fanboys’ growing
unwillingness to accept or endorse representations that are overtly pejorative. Set in
1998, Fanboys follows four white, male friends in their twenties, bound together by
a mutual love of Star Wars, on a road trip to George Lucas’ Skywalker Ranch to
steal a print of Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace months before its
theatrical release. The film, written by Ernie Cline and directed by Kyle Newman
(both of whom self-identify as Star Wars fanboys), was not a critical or commercial
hit, earning under $700,000 domestically in limited release. Rather, Fanboys’
significance lies in its delayed and disputed journey to the screen.
Shot in 2006, Fanboys’ initial release date of February 2007 was pushed back
to August 2007, and then to January 2008, as The Weinstein Company (who owned
the rights to the film) devised a marketing strategy to broaden the film’s appeal. The
Weinstein Company’s solution came in a series of reshoots in November and

40
December 2007, with Stephen Brill brought in replace Kyle Newman as director.
Fans had been following the project since 1998 when Ain’t It Cool News’ ur-fanboy
blogger Harry Knowles raved about Cline’s unproduced script. In July 2007, a
rough cut of the film was screened at a European Star Wars convention, and had
received standing ovations and glowing reviews from fans in attendance. So when
fans began to hear rumors about Newman being ousted, and drastic changes being
made to the film’s plot, concerns immediately arose that Fanboys wouldn’t
adequately reflect the community the film was representing and marketing itself to.
This perception was confirmed when a series of emails began to circulate
online, reportedly documenting Steven Brill’s alternately condescending and
threatening responses to complaint emails from fans.
123
Brill was quickly dubbed
“Grand Moff Brill-o-Head” by fans,
124
a reference to Grand Moff Tarkin, the
commander of the Death Star in Star Wars - Episode IV: A New Hope (George
Lucas, 1977). Brill was framed as the bullying jock to Newman’s fanboy, and
Newman’s fanboy credentials were repeatedly invoked as a fundamental component
of the film’s appeal. In an interview following the eventual release of the film,
Newman expressed his frustration with his labor of love being in the hands of a
“non-fan,” stating:
[Brill] admitted he hadn't seen Return of the Jedi, Empire Strikes Back so it
was a little bit scary. I'm like, ‘Oh my God, they've got somebody who
doesn't respect this at all, who's casually just dismissing references.’ Then
obviously the online stuff he was writing towards fans, calling them losers
and saying he was going to kill them and hunt them down. It was depressing
because here we are. We made a movie that embraced the fandom and we
were fans and we've gotten this great grassroots awareness online and good

41
support. […] If you're going to go in and recut someone's film even though
you're not even a fan of the subject matter, just because you want a paycheck,
you're not passionate about it, then do that. But don't go opening your mouth
and alienating the core audience of that movie.
125

The creation and use of the “fanboy auteur” as an industrial strategy to engender
fans’ support and, ultimately, manage fan response is discussed at length in Chapter
Three, but presently it is enough to note the role Newman’s self-identification/self-
promotion as a fanboy played in the protests. Fans’ equation of Newman’s fannish
affect with affectionate, rather than pejorative or pathologized, representations of
fans within a film many of them hadn’t yet seen, was central to rallying fans to
protest changes to the film. Newman’s frequent claim that Fanboys was a film
“made by fans for fans,” coupled with the construction of Brill as an anti-fan only
after a paycheck, deployed discourses that framed fans (and Newman, as one of their
own) as underdogs battling the crass commercialism of the media industry.
In Cline’s original draft of the screenplay and Newman’s original cut of the
film, the titular fanboys’ pilgrimage to Skywalker Ranch was motivated by the news
that one member of the group had terminal cancer, and wouldn’t live to see the
release of The Phantom Menace, the long awaited Star Wars prequel. When rumors
began to circulate online that Brill, on orders from The Weinstein Company, was
planning to cut the cancer storyline out of the film and instead planned to frame the
fanboys’ plot to rob Skywalker Ranch as a drunken caper, the response from the Star
Wars fan community was swift and vitriolic. Justly concerned that what was meant
to be a testament to fannish solidarity and community would turn into yet another

42
film that poked fun at them, fans built a “Stop Darth Weinstein” website
126
and
began to organize protests against all of The Weinstein Company’s properties until
Newman was reinstated as director and the cancer subplot was restored. Massive
email campaigns and online petitions were launched, and a viral video depicting
Harvey Weinstein in a Darth Vader costume began to circulate.
Allegorically positioning themselves as the Rebels to the media industry’s
evil Empire, the “Stop Darth Weinstein” protests received extensive coverage from
journalists, who predictably framed the conflict in David and Goliath terms. The
first Weinstein affiliated film to test the effectiveness of the Stop Darth Weinstein
boycott was, coincidentally, the Dimension comic book movie spoof Superhero
Movie (Craig Mazin, 2008). The Weinstein Company released a statement several
days before Superhero Movie’s release assuring fans that Newman’s original cut of
Fanboys would be included on the DVD. Fans countered this “compromise” by
organizing protests outside of movie theaters in New York and Los Angeles during
Superhero Movie’s opening weekend, trying to draw media attention to their cause. I
attended the Stop Darth Weinstein protest in Los Angeles, on March 28, 2008 at the
AMC Century City movie theaters. When I arrived, there was no visible sign of an
organized protest, and the few fans I encountered claimed that they had been
dispersed by additional security hired by the theater chain. Reports varied on what,
if anything, had transpired. One protester quoted in The Hollywood Reporter
claimed that a force of security guards had quickly run off anyone who showed up to

43
picket, while a representative for AMC claimed that only one protester had shown
up.
127

Superhero Movie grossed a disappointing $9.5 million in its opening
weekend. The Stop Darth Weinstein movement counted the film underperforming
industry expectations as a decisive victory, and a sign of their boycott’s strength.
The Weinstein Company claimed that the protests had little, if any, impact on the
film’s performance.
128
A little more than three months after these initial protests, in
July 2008, creative control was returned to Newman and the Stop Darth Weinstein
campaign officially ended. Fanboys was released on January 6, 2009 in only 44
theaters, making a meager $171,500 in its opening weekend.
Even after being reconstituted to include the cancer subplot, the film still
exploited fanboy stereotypes for laughs. Interestingly, many of the social stigmas
attached to fanboys are displaced through the film’s comic depiction of the
longstanding animosity between Star Wars and Star Trek fans. The film makes a
point of distinguishing the titular fanboy protagonists from the Star Trek fanboys
they antagonize and battle at various points in the film. Fanboys creates a clear
hierarchy, wherein the protagonists’ version of “fandom” (marked by wearing Star
Wars t-shirts, driving in a customized Star Wars van, engaging in trivia contests and
textual debates, and dressing in costume only on Halloween or for film premieres) is
celebrated, while “Trekkies” are mocked incessantly for dressing in Star Fleet
uniforms daily, and actively attacked for their perceived inability to distinguish
fantasy from reality. The protagonists take a detour to Riverside, Iowa (the future

44
birthplace of Captain James T. Kirk) for the express purpose of picking a fight with
Trekkies, concluding with them demolishing a statue paying homage to Star Trek II:
The Wrath of Khan (Nicholas Meyer, 1982) with their van.
Ironically, no subsequent protest was launched in response to the
pathologized portraits of Star Trek fanboys in the film, despite the fact that the
fanboys’ primary Trekkie “nemesis” (portrayed by Seth Rogen with unflattering
facial prostheses, buck teeth, and a heavy lisp) is a walking catalog of fan
pathologies. In some sense, the film presents a fitting analogy for the current
“revenge” of the fanboy, which conditionally renders fanboys “cool” only insomuch
as they conform to socially and industrially desirable methods of consumption and
performances of fannish identity. After all, Fanboys is about a fan whose dying
wish, quite literally, is to consume a canonical text, a feat that is accomplished
through an encyclopedic recitation of Star Wars trivia. Compounding this reading is
the fact that Star Wars has historically been framed as a comparatively
mainstream/cool fandom in relation to Star Trek, which has the dubious distinction
of being the source of many fan stigmas in the cultural formulation of the “Trekkie.”
As Newman himself put it, “It's not like these guys in the film are nerds.”
129

Fanboys’ marketing campaign was built around a parody of the poster for
The 40 Year Old Virgin (Judd Apatow, 2005), masking Steve Carell’s face with a
Darth Vader mask. The iconic reference was clearly an attempt to capitalize on The
40 Year Old Virgin’s critical and commercial success, but it also implicitly aligned
Fanboys’ protagonists with longstanding stereotypes about the fanboy’s

45
homosociality, failed masculinity, and sexual inadequacy. Still, Fanboys, like many
of the contemporary representations of fanboys discussed in the conclusion of this
dissertation, ultimately recuperates its protagonists as desirable love interests and
men of action, allowing them to get the girl (dressed as Slave Leia in a gold bikini,
no less) and a screening of The Phantom Menace at Skywalker Ranch for their dying
friend. And, as the title suggests, Fanboys portrays fandom (whether it is celebrated
or mocked) as a masculine sphere, and sexualizes and contains its few minor fangirl
characters.
The Fanboys protests are significant for a number of reasons. First, though
the film was not ultimately a critical or commercial success, and the “force” of fans’
boycott of the Weinstein Company has been debated, fans’ ability to pressure the
Weinstein Company into restoring both Newman as director and the film to its
original plotline is indicative of the growing power fans have within convergence
culture. In particular, the Stop Darth Weinstein movement benefitted from the
contemporary visibility of fanboys, and journalists’ investment in their construction
as a powerful market segment. Second, while fan communities have a long history
of banding together to protest changes to and/or the cancellation of a beloved text,
the source of this organized fan protest is unique. Protestor’s vocal unwillingness to
accept pathologized representations of fanboys might suggest that fans are beginning
to levy the industrial attention that has accompanied their purchasing power into
representational recuperation.

46
Both of the preceding points construct the fanboy as not only aware of his
cultural capital, but actively striving to break the cycle of pathologized
representations that are no longer suited to their cultural status. What is most
striking about the protests, though, is how discourses of disempowerment were
mobilized alongside the fanboy’s current cultural visibility. As the “Us vs. Them”
rhetoric of the Fanboys protests indicate, fans are quick to revert back to their
disempowered position when it suits their interests. Fans will always be
comparatively “disempowered” when placed in conflict with producers and/or the
media industry, but the rise of the fanboy as a Hollywood power player, both as a
producer and a consumer, has made it more difficult to claim a disempowered status.

“Us” vs. Them
It used to be relatively clear which group constituted “us” and “them” in
these discourses of power and resistance between producers and consumers. Within
convergence culture these demarcations have blurred and begun to overlap as the
industry increasingly attempts to understand and partner with “us,” and certain
segments of fandom enter into collaborative relationships with, or become, “them.”
The Gender and Fan Culture debates indicated that many fangirls and female
academics remain protective of the cultural and academic construction of fandom
that belongs to the proverbial “us,” the fangirl subjects of the first wave of fan
studies, and contemporary fans devoted to retaining the non-commercial exchange of
fan texts. Julie Levin Russo notes that convergence-era fan culture has renewed

47
concerns “about the gendered ramifications of a system that too often recognizes
money as the sole benchmark of legitimacy, exalting historically male-dominated
genres that are more easily defensible as ‘original’ or ‘transformative’ rather than
‘derivative’ works, and assuming professionalization as the implied goal of amateur
creativity.”
130
As each of the following chapters indicates, the lines between “us”
and “them” are increasingly being drawn within fan culture. Fanboys are perceived
as enjoying the spoils of convergence culture while fangirls prefer to “sneak in to
rework [the media text], then do their best to disappear into a subcultural commons
out of sight of the powers that be.”
131
As the definition of “fan” has grown
increasingly fluid within convergence culture, the definition of “us” has constricted
and become a defensive stance against industrial encroachment and commercialized
or co-optable forms of fan production.
A 2007 fan vid by lim, fittingly titled “Us,” perfectly encapsulates the
tensions surrounding convergence culture’s slippage between “us” and “them.”
Composed to Regina Spektor’s song of the same title from her 2006 album Mary
Ann Meets the Gravediggers and Other Short Stories, “Us” is an exemplary fan text
on a number of levels. First, “Us” is a prime example of the type of fan production,
and female fan producers, that fan studies has historically celebrated. Second, “Us”
is not just a transformative fan text in the sense that it transforms the meaning of the
source text(s) through the juxtaposition of images and the interpretive lens of the
music, it is also aesthetically transformative. Lim’s “heavy manipulation of the
images, often into near unrecognizability, mirrors the way fans make media their

48
own, into something more appealing to ‘us,’”
132
adding another layer of aesthetic
authorship and commentary. Third, because “Us” can be classified as a multivid (a
vid that draws from multiple media texts and/or fandoms) or a meta vid (a vid that
comments on fandom and fan practices), it actively invites the viewer to decode its
“thesis.” In addition to the straightforward decoding process the vid demands
(identifying which media texts the images are derived from), “Us” positions itself as
a commentary, and invites the viewer to draw deeper connections and interrogate the
significance of lim’s manipulations.
Finally, it is important to note that “Us” has received a good deal of
exposure, both as an installation in “Mediated,” an exhibit at the California Museum
of Photography in 2009, and as the subject of a number of academic analyses. The
vid’s visibility in artistic and academic forums, in addition to its popularity amongst
fans, has canonized “Us” as an important fan work. Further cementing the
significance of “Us,” the vid was selected as one of the representative fan works
presented by the Organization for Transformative Works at a Digital Millenium
Copyright Act (DMCA) hearing in 2009.
133
“Us” was subsequently referenced in the
Register of Copyright's Recommendation to The Librarian of Congress, which led to
a recent exemption for makers of non-profit remix videos and vids.
134
Louisa Stein
has noted that we need to be aware of “auteurist” hierarchies forming with vidding
communities, and be mindful of how those discourses influence which vids
academics select to study and circulate.
135
I am aware that the following analysis

49
contributes to the privileged positioning of “Us,” but it is also a testament to the
richness of lim’s vid.
If the “us” in Spektor’s song are identified as fangirls within the vid, “they”
might alternately be defined as fan scholars and the media industry. The lyrics and
images that open the vid, “They made a statue of us / And it put it on a mountain
top,” set to a series of images of Kirk and Spock from Star Trek, can be allegorically
interpreted as a comment on the first wave of fan studies’ celebration of “resistant”
modes of textual production, those that are still “held up” by female fan scholars and
in danger of being remarginalized within studies of convergence culture (as the song
goes, “our noses have begun to rust”). Likewise, we might consider the following
stanza, “They'll name a city after us / And later say it's all our fault / Then they'll
give us a talking to,” accompanied by images of Neo being interrogated by Agent
Smith in The Matrix, as cautioning fans against industrial visibility and/or
incorporation. The final image lim takes from The Matrix for this passage of the vid
shows Neo being silenced by Smith, his lips fused together. When we consider the
filmic context of this image, and The Matrix’s themes of resistance, we might draw a
parallel between Neo’s ultimate desire to save humanity from being transformed into
“batteries” to power the machines, and lim warning “us” of the Agent Smiths of the
media industry attempting to co-opt fan’s textual labor to power their franchises.
In her astute analysis of lim’s vid, “Living in a Den of Thieves: Fan Video
and Digital Challenges to Ownership,” Alexis Lothian notes that within convergence
culture, “media producers have explicitly sought to solicit fan participation as labor

50
for their profits in the form of user-generated content that helps build their brand.”
136

This re-appropriation “can also be understood as an inversion in the direction of
fannish theft. Rather than fans stealing commodified culture to make works for their
own purposes, capital steals their labor.”
137
As Spektor’s song goes, “And though
our parts are slightly used / New ones are slave labor you can keep.” In addition to
referencing the vid’s “slightly used” clips from media texts, these lyrics are
accompanied by what is arguably the most pointed manipulation in the vid: Batman
gazing up into the night sky, his Bat Signal replaced by lim with a copyright symbol.
Centrally, “Us” juxtaposes lyrics and imagery to celebrate the “contagious”
and communal nature of fan culture. Lim’s vid “thematizes and illustrates how
media fans engage with texts,”
138
and uses Spektor’s lyrics to comment the fan
practice of “rummaging for answers in the pages,” and the “den of thieves” this
rummaging creates. Specifically, the “overwhelming sense of collective and shared
creativity and power (and even potential subversion) in the imagery of the
avalanche” that accompanies the musical climax of Spektor’s song and the vid, has
been read by Kristina Busse as “both metaphor for fandom as a whole but also the
individual fan's affective relation to fandom.”
139
While I agree with Busse’s reading
of fandom as a powerful, and potentially subversive, force, I would pose an alternate
reading of this image. If the vid’s address is directed at “us,” narrowly defined as the
predominantly female vidding community and broadly defined as fandom, the image
of the avalanche rushing towards the spectator takes on ominous connotations. The
image of the avalanche is lyrically and visually tied to the “mountaintop” referenced

51
early in the vid, upon which sits the statue of “us.” Accordingly, we might read the
avalanche as alternately wiping out the idealized constructions of “resistant” fan
culture, or representing the current industrial encroachment into fandom.
We might also read “Us” as a meditation on fan studies incorporation into
studies of convergence culture. “Us” does make an explicit lyrical and visual
connection between the “tourists” who “come and stare at us” and aca-fen such as
Jenkins, who is visually referenced by lim.
140
Kristina Busse has argued that, because
“the tourists staring explicitly include academics,” any attempt to analyze “Us” is
problematic and ultimately “redundant since the vid intellectually and affectively
offers an intense vision of media fans without need for explication, but it also moves
the viewer from ‘us’ to ‘they.’”
141
This may be the case, but I would argue that the
vid’s wary view of “outsiders’ interest”
142
deserves further consideration and
expansion. The “outsiders” or “tourists” in this case are not just academics, but the
industry, the news media, and even other fans. The above analysis indicates that the
lyrics of Spektor’s song can be read as a parable detailing fangirls’ celebration in the
first wave of fan studies, and their current ambivalence regarding convergence
culture’s exposure of fan culture.
The freeze frame that concludes the vid, pulled from the 2006 film adaptation
of Alan Moore’s 1982-1989 comic book V for Vendetta, shows “a young,
bespectacled woman taking off a mask.”
143
Lothian’s analysis of this final image
frames the girl as “a figure for the geeky fannish women who craft their own art with
corporate media’s materials, who are the ‘Us’ the vid addresses and celebrates.”
144

52
Though Lothian doesn’t address the symbolic significance of the mask at length, this
“reveal” can be read in a number of ways that reflect the state of the fangirl within
convergence culture. We might read her obscured face as a representation of the
fangirl as an unacknowledged segment of the current fanboy demographic.
Alternately, we can read the mask as fangirls’ own attempts to render themselves and
their textual practices industrially “invisible.” Her subsequent unmasking could be
interpreted as a coming out party, or a statement that invisibility is no longer an
option for fans within convergence culture. Finally, we must consider the origins of
this image that is positioned to represent contemporary fangirls. In V for Vendetta,
the Guy Fawkes mask is configured as an equalizer and a sign of communal
solidarity and revolt. Lothain’s analysis the final image of “Us,” in light of this
filmic context, is to read the fangirl as a reminder “that if the world is changing, fans
may have a hand in it.”
145
V’s mantra, that “people shouldn’t be afraid of their
governments, governments should be afraid of their people,” might alternately be
adapted to convey that “fans shouldn’t be afraid of the industry, the industry should
be afraid of fans,” or at least respectful of the communal force of fandom.
“Us” acknowledges fandom’s simultaneous incorporation and resistance by
aligning fangirls with “Disneyfied” images of piracy (e.g. Capt. Jack Sparrow from
The Pirates of the Caribbean, Mal from Firefly) and resistance (e.g. V from V for
Vendetta, Neo from The Matrix),
146
while still allowing for a reading of fangirls’
subversive potential. The final image of the fangirl unmasked is striking, in large
part, because all of the preceding images of pirates, thieves and freedom fighters,

53
though symbolically aligned with female fan producers, are all male characters. We
can simply understand this as ongoing evidence of fangirls’ “intellectual
transvestism,” or the identification with male characters that has always been an
integral component of fangirls’ textual production.
147
The vid’s chosen final image
of V being revealed as a geeky girl would appear to support this reading. We might
alternately consider these incorporated icons of “resistance” as exposing the fact that
fans’ positioning as avid consumers will always mitigate resistant tendencies. “Us”
is conscious of fans’ tenuous positioning within convergence culture, “neither
radically disruptive of, nor fully incorporated into, the media industry’s systems of
ownership.”
148
Given their complicity in fueling industrial capital, perhaps a
“Disneyfied” form of textual thievery is all fans can hope to retain, but “Us” makes a
strong case for the continued examination of industrial incorporation and preserving
the resistant roots of fannish labor.

Confessions of an Aca-Fangirl
I was honored to be included in the Gender and Fan Studies debates, and my
“debate”
149
with Bob Rehak,
150
along with reading and participating in the
conversations that emerged out of these exchanges, inspired and informed much of
this project. My (re) consideration and negotiation of my own fannish and scholarly
identity in light of the debates was the other primary motivating factor behind this
work. I have always considered myself as occupying a liminal position between the
archetypal construction of a “fanboy” and a “fangirl” in terms of my own media

54
engagement. Accordingly, I found Will Brooker and Ksenia Prasolova’s distinction
between “gender infiltrators” and “gender traitors” in their debate
151
especially
useful to consider why I remain protective/defensive about fangirls’ comparative
invisibility within convergence and participatory culture, when I myself would not
be considered a true “fangirl” under the most stringent definition of the term. I am
active within fan communities, but more likely to consume fan texts than produce
my own, and I have had limited involvement in slash and vidding communities,
those most overtly aligned with female fan producers and female fan scholars.
Moreover, I have historically been drawn to “fanboy” coded genres (horror and
science fiction) and mediums (comic books) and equally involved in
“masculine”/affirmational modes of participation (collecting merchandise and
canonical data) as the “feminine”/transformational forms. These essentialisms are
problematic at best, and less reflective of fandom itself than the cultural and
academic construction of fandom as a rigidly gendered enterprise. These
demarcations can be useful, but they deserve continued interrogation, in the spirit of
the Gender and Fan Culture debates.
Brooker and Prasolova’s discussion of “gender infiltrators” (fanboys
engaging in “feminine” forms of consumption, community, and creativity, and vice
versa) expressed frustration with the gendered “team” logic of the debates, and the
binary’s potential to replicate and reinforce a gendered scholarly divide that, in the
views of some, never existed. The notion of “gender traitors” within fan studies is a
far stickier topic. Considering the discussion of the Gender and Fan Culture debates

55
that opened this chapter, one might speculate that “gender traitors” from the fanboys’
“team” would be welcome. Thus, in light of the concerns about the erasure of
female fans and studies of female fans within convergence culture, the “gender
traitor” label is far more loaded for female fan scholars. My self-proclaimed
liminality within this team logic, my discomfort with the idea of “taking sides,” and
anxieties about “representing” for one’s team/gender, seemed to be common
amongst participants in the debates, and suggest that these categories are flawed and
yet continue to impact our scholarly output. As the title of this section suggests, I am
pointedly self-identifying as an aca-fangirl here, both to indicate that I am (for better
or for worse) “taking sides,” and aligning my concerns with those who view
convergence culture’s gendered outreach to fandom to be problematic, and biased
towards affirmational modes of fannish participation that obscure fangirls’ textual
practices.
Because my own experiences within fandom have impacted many of the
analyses to follow, it is necessary to briefly contextualize my own fan identity and
preferred modes of textual engagement. My first foray into online fandom
accompanied the debut of the WB television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer in 1997.
I participated in a range of transformative and affirmational fan activities, from
writing fan fiction and IRC (Internet Relay Chat) role-playing, to moderating listserv
discussions and creating and maintaining a well trafficked website. In 2000, I also
became heavily involved in Harry Potter fandom, initially as a fan and later as an
aca-fan after returning to graduate school in 2002. In addition to continuing to create

56
my own fan texts, I began attending and (eventually) organizing Harry Potter
symposiums, bridging my academic and fannish interest in the franchise by helping
to create hybrid conference/convention spaces. In the summer of 2006, my attention
shifted to the rebooted SciFi (now Syfy) television series Battlestar Galactica.
Though I would consider myself an active fan of myriad film franchises (Star Wars,
Evil Dead), television series (Twin Peaks, The Mighty Boosh), and comic books
(Watchmen, Powers, Y: The Last Man), the three aforementioned properties were
formative, in developing my understanding of fan community and culture, and
cultivating my growing ambivalence about convergence culture’s frequent equation
of fan “participation” with intensified patterns of consumption.
In particular, my experiences within Harry Potter fandom and Battlestar
Galactica fandom provoked many of the questions and concerns this dissertation
explores. The differences between these two fandoms, particularly in terms of the
temporal and industrial conditions they created for fans to produce within, reflect the
potentials and pitfalls of the “mainstreaming” of fan culture and modes of textual
engagement. In Chapter Four, I discuss how Harry Potter’s positioning as a literary
fandom, and the resultant release pattern for J.K. Rowling’s novels, created ideal
conditions for fans to develop and disseminate their own texts and, in the case of
wizard rock, cultivate new genres of fan production. Conversely, my experience
within Battlestar Galactica fandom made me acutely aware of the regulatory
temporal conditions that have accompanied the television industry’s adoption of
transmedia storytelling techniques and digital ancillary content models. Chapter

57
Three discusses how these conditions might impact fannish consumption and
production in more detail, but both of these chapters posit that the
prohibitionist/collaborationist and affirmational/transformative paradigms discussed
in this chapter are central to an understanding of convergence-era fan communities
and studies of those communities.
Recently, the scholarly designation of “aca-fan” has begun to be scrutizined.
These concerns are not especially new, as Matt Hills devoted the introductory
chapter of his 2005 book Fan Cultures to working through the contested identities of
“scholar-fans” and “fan-scholars.”
152
However, as Louisa Stein argues, our scholarly
identities as “aca-fen” grow increasingly complicated as studies of convergence
culture places scholars in conversation with media industry professionals.
153
Though
I have pointedly avoided contact with media producers for this dissertation, I am
invested in creating dialogues between fans and academics. After serving as the
Chair of Academic and Exploratory (or, fan creativity oriented) programming for
Phoenix Rising (New Orleans, May 17-21, 2007), a Harry Potter symposium, I
joined Narrate Conferences in an advisory capacity, serving as the Chief Education
Officer since 2008. The participatory, interdisciplinary nature of Narrate’s events
attracts a mix of scholars, librarians, authors, and fans, creating a unique
conference/convention space that is also an overwhelmingly feminine space (in both
a “top-down” and “bottom-up” sense, from the organizers to the vast majority of the
presenters and attendees). After organizing a final Harry Potter symposium in
August 2008, aptly titled Terminus, Narrate has begun a new series of yearly

58
conferences, Sirens, to address women in fantasy literature (Vail, October 2009 and
2010).
In 2009, I was invited to join the online journal Transformative Works and
Cultures as an editor for the journal’s symposium section. Established through the
Organization for Transformative Works, Transformative Works and Cultures is a
Gold Open Access, peer-reviewed international journal that focuses on fan culture
and transformative works. The symposium section features short, topical essays,
many of which are written by fans or those who self-identify as aca-fans. Narrate
Conference and Transformative Works and Cultures both have their roots within
female fan communities, and have actively sought to create meaningful exchanges
and collaborations between fans and academics. Though I am deeply invested in
fostering these dialogues, the chapters that follow occasionally obscure the voices
and rich textual production of fans in order to speculate freely about the potential
impact of fans’ increased visibility within convergence culture.
Each chapter of this dissertation is designed to address a specific set of
ramifications tied to the gendered mainstreaming of fans and fan studies, but they
collectively present larger concerns about the incorporation paradigm and the
regulation of fan culture. These (often subtle or unintentional) forms of regulation,
whether they derive from the popular press, the media industry, or within fandom
itself, are most acutely felt by fangirls. The popular press and the media industry
have alternately rendered fangirls as an invisible segment of the fanboy market, re-
entrenched them in more “appropriate” generic spheres, or repathologized them.

59
Fans, including many fangirls, play a part in perpetuating this gendered demographic
invisibility, generic stereotypes, and pathologized representations. Reflecting on
what has changed for fans between the 1992 release of Textual Poachers and the
2006 release of Convergence Culture, Jenkins states that fans have moved “from the
invisible margins of popular culture and into the center of current thinking about
media production and consumption.”
154
This movement should be celebrated, but it
also needs to be interrogated, both in terms of the “participation gap”
155
Jenkins
identifies, and how gendered forms of participation are (de)valued and rendered
(in)visible as fan culture shifts from the margins to the mainstream.
Building on this introduction, Chapter Two addresses several interlocking
consequences of the popular press’ and the media industry’s embrace of fanboys as a
power demographic, through an analysis of Twilight anti-fandom and San Diego
Comic-Con. Twilight fangirls may be the closest corollary to the aforementioned
fanboy demographic in terms of visibility and financial viability, but they have been
overwhelmingly pathologized and patronized by the popular press, and denigrated
and dismissed by other fans (both male and female). The gendered tensions
surrounding Twilight fangirls and their contested positioning within fandom were
especially evident at San Diego Comic-Con 2009, where a small group of (mostly
male) attendees protested Twilight fangirls’ presence. Circulating around these
protests are several gendered implications about generically “appropriate” spaces for
fanboys and fangirls to inhabit, who feels culturally entitled to demarcate between
“authentic” fan culture and forms that are to mainstream/feminized, and how the

60
popular press has facilitated that sense of entitlement by framing San Diego Comic-
Con as a masculine space, and its male attendees as Hollywood’s most prized focus
group.
Chapter Two also examines Twilight anti-fangirls, and the historical
precedent of shaming within fangirl communities through a discussion of the reviled
fan fiction trope of the “Mary Sue.” By placing emergent discourses surrounding
anti-fandom as a practice/performance within the context of longstanding forms of
self-regulation within female fan communities we can begin to see how the so-called
“gender war” at San Diego Comic-Con 2009, while an isolated incident, exposed
deeper tensions about the growing visibility and “mainstreaming” of fan culture.
Interestingly, the Twilight protests invert many of the prevailing assumptions about
the gendered mainstreaming of fan culture provided in this introduction. While the
critiques of convergence studies that inspired the Gender and Fan debates argued that
fan culture’s new “mainstream” visibility caters to fanboys and male scholars at the
expense of remarginalizing (studies of) “authentic” fangirl subculture, the Twilight
protests reframed the undesirable mainstreaming of “authentic” (read: masculine) fan
culture at San Diego Comic-Con as a product of the influx of female attendees.
Because the cultural construction of the “fangirl” is still being negotiated, and the
term “fangirl” in its contemporary use is defined almost exclusively through Twilight
fandom, Chapter Two argues that the Twilight protests at San Diego Comic-Con
2009 reflect the gendered valuation of fans within that (marketing) space, and expose

61
the popular press’ and fanboys’ attempt to alternately treat fangirls as “uninvited
guests” and regulate fangirls’ movement within that space.
Moving from localized efforts to contain fangirls to broader industrial
attempts to channel fannish participation, Chapter Three examines the television
industry’s push towards ancillary narrative content and “authorized” fan content
through an analysis of the SyFy series Battlestar Galactica and its ancillary content
model (webisodes, podcasts, and so on). These ancillary content models, a form of
transmedia storytelling, are often heralded as prime examples of the media industry’s
new collaborationist approach to fannish participation. Chapter Three examines
three intersecting issues: the temporal constraints these ancillary content models and
place on fans, exertions of textual authority designed to appeal to fans through the
construction of the “fanboy auteur” as a textual interpreter, and the “regifting
economy” that these ancillary content models create within fan communities. By
equating participation with intensified patterns of consumption, this content might
also be viewed as an attempt to creatively (rather than legally) censure fan
production, stressing “correct” interpretations that economically and ideologically
reinforce the franchise. Centrally, Chapter Three interrogates the “collaborationist”
outreach of the industry, how the textual “work” this ancillary content performs co-
opts longstanding fan practices of playing in the textual gaps and margins, and how
fans’ labor is being appropriated and “regifted” back to them.
Chapter Four takes its inspiration from a chapter of Henry Jenkins’ seminal
1992 study Textual Poachers: Television Fans and Participatory that has received

62
comparatively little attention from fan scholars. Addressing the fan practice of
filking, or the creation and performance of fan folk songs at fan conventions, Jenkins
poses filk as an ideal expression of fandom as a form of folk culture.
156
Stressing the
egalitarian nature of filk performances, and citing it as the most gender-neutral form
of fan production,
157
Jenkins concludes the chapter by expressing concerns about the
potential commercialization of filk, and the star system that such commercialization
would create.
158
Revisiting Jenkins’ address of filk’s shaky positioning between folk
and commercial culture, and building on the discussion of fandom’s gift economy in
Chapter Three, Chapter Four suggests that the emergence of “wizard rock” within
Harry Potter fandom marks a new form of quasi-commercialized fan production.
Wizard rock would appear to confirm the assumption that fanboys are more invested
in using their fan production as a springboard towards professional endeavors, as the
bulk of popular bands have been founded by men, but wizard rock also presents a
fascinating test case to examine how fan community and charitable giving can be
mobilized to dissuade legal action against commercialized fan texts.
Through a brief discussion of wizard rock’s role in founding and supporting
the work of the Harry Potter Alliance, a real world “Dumbledore’s Army” that
promotes civic engagement through the Harry Potter fan community, we can
consider wizard rock as presenting a new form of fan production that skillfully
hybridizes “fanboyish” and “fangirlish” models. That said, Chapter Four also
expresses concerns about how wizard rock has gendered filk’s egalitarian roots, and
also addresses fangirls’ complicity in their own re-marginalization. Because the

63
most popular wizard rock “stars” are men, and their fans are predominantly female,
many within the wizard rock fan community have debated to what degree wizard
rock and its fans popularize and professionalize male wizard rockers at the expense
of acknowledging and supporting female wrockers. These anxieties have been
compounded by the fact that wizard rock has departed from filk’s performative
context at fan conventions, and that the most popular (and, accordingly, lucrative)
wizard rock acts tour, sell merchandise, and otherwise function as professional
performers.
The conclusion returns to the issue of representation, raised briefly in the case
study of Fanboys above. Offering an overview of many of the recent films and
television series that have refashioned the fanboy as a romantic hero, or an
action/superhero, the conclusion contends that the representational diversity being
afforded to fanboys has yet to be extended to fangirls, and examines the impact of
this representational imbalance. Examining one particularly rich example of fangirl
representation on television, the recurring character of Becky Rosen on the CW
series Supernatural (2005-present), the conclusion gestures towards several key
areas that deserve continued scrutiny and analysis as fans’ place within convergence
culture is negotiated. Returning to Joli Jensen’s seminal 1992 essay “Fandom as
Pathology: The Consequences of Characterization” and the denigration of Twilight
fangirls discussed in Chapter Two, the conclusion contends that the stigmatized
media representations of fans that inspired the first wave of fan studies should
continue to be one of the core critical matrices of fan studies. Specifically, the

64
depathologization of fanboys and the repathologization of fangirls warrants further
study alongside the gendered “mainstreaming” of fan culture. The conclusion also
returns to the relationship between fans and the fanboy auteur discussed in Chapter
Three, to address how the relative lack of fangirl auteurs might be coloring these
representations, and call for further study of how the relationship between fanboy
auteurs and female fan bases is formed and represented through these fan character
proxies. Finally, the conclusion carries over Chapter Four’s assertion that fangirls
are frequently complicit in their own remarginalization, calling for further analysis of
how fangirls critically engage with these representations, or potentially perpetuate
them.
As the frequent citation of his work indicates, Henry Jenkins’ prolific
scholarly output on fans and participatory culture functions as the critical nexus of
this dissertation, and speaks to the impact and influence of his work on the evolving
field of fan studies. In the conclusion of Convergence Culture, Jenkins frames
himself as a critical utopian, a positioning that echoes fandom’s own structuring
“balance between fascination and frustration.”
159
Jenkins makes a distinction
between critical utopianism, which stresses empowerment, and critical pessimism,
which is founded on the “politics of victimization. One focuses on what we are
doing with media, the other on what media is doing to us.”
160
Accordingly, this
dissertation might be viewed as adopting a position of critical ambivalence, focusing
on what the media is doing to those who do things with media. If Convergence
Culture justifiably focused on what fans have gained from fandom’s shift from the

65
margins to the mainstream, this dissertation begins to catalogue a few of the potential
losses, and calls for further study on the gender imbalance that seems to haunt
convergence culture’s “empowerment” of consumers.

66

Chapter One Endnotes
1
Henry Jenkins, Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide (New
York: New York University Press, 2006), 133.

2
Francesca Coppa, “Gender and Fan Culture (Wrapping Up, Part Four),”
Confessions of an Aca-Fan: The Official Weblog of Henry Jenkins, November 28,
2007, http://henryjenkins.org/2007/11/gender_and_fan_culture_wrappin_2.html.

3
Henry Jenkins, “Gender and Fan Culture (Wrapping Up, Part One),” Confessions of
an Aca-Fan: The Official Weblog of Henry Jenkins, November 21, 2007,
http://henryjenkins.org/2007/11/_bob_rehak_i_enjoyed.html.

4
Jenkins, “Gender and Fan Culture (Wrapping Up, Part One).”

5
Jenkins, Convergence Culture, 23.

6
Jason Mittell, “Gender and Fan Studies (Round One, Part One): Karen Hellekson
and Jason Mittell,” Confessions of an Aca-Fan: The Official Weblog of Henry
Jenkins, May 31, 2007,
http://www.henryjenkins.org/2007/05/gender_and_fan_studies_round_o.html.

7
Julie Levin Russo, “The L Word: Labors of Love,” (paper presented at Console-ing
Passions Conference, Santa Barbara, CA, April 26-24, 2008),
http://community.livejournal.com/fandebate/9600.html.

8
Ibid.

9
Ibid.

10
Angela McRobbie and Jenny Garber “Girls and Subcultures: An Exploration,” in
Resistance through Rituals: Youth subcultures in post-war Britain, eds. Stuart Hall
and Tony Jefferson (New York: Routledge, 1993).

11
Louisa Stein and Robert Jones, “Gender and Fan Studies (Round Two, Part One):
Louisa Stein and Robert Jones,” Confessions of an Aca-Fan: The Official Weblog of
Henry Jenkins, June 6, 2007,
http://www.henryjenkins.org/2007/06/gender_and_fan_studies_round_t.html.

67

12
Francesca Coppa, “Women, Star Trek, and the early development of fannish
vidding” Transformative Works and Cultures Vol. 1 (2008),
http://journal.transformativeworks.org/index.php/twc/article/view/44/64.

13
Ibid.

14
Ibid.

15
Paul Marino, 3D game-based filmmaking: The art of machinima (Scottsdale:
Paraglyph, 2004), 1.

16
Robert Jones, “From Shooting Monsters to Shooting Movies: Machinima and the
Transformative Play of Video Game Fan Culture,” in Fan Fiction and Fan
Communities in the Age of the Internet, eds. Karen Hellekson and Kristina Busse
(Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2006), 262.

17
Ibid., 265-270.

18
Ibid., 263.

19
Graner Ray in Jones, “From Shooting Monsters to Shooting Movies,” 263.

20
Louisa Stein and Robert Jones, “Gender and Fan Studies (Round Two, Part Two):
Louisa Stein and Robert Jones,” Confessions of an Aca-Fan: The Official Weblog of
Henry Jenkins, June 7, 2007,
http://henryjenkins.org/2007/06/gender_and_fan_studies_round_t_1.html.

21
Stein and Jones, “Gender and Fan Studies (Round Two, Part One).”

22
Stein and Jones, “Gender and Fan Studies (Round Two, Part Two).”

23
Ibid.

24
Ibid.

25
Ellen Seiter, Hans Borcher, Gabriele Kreutzner, and Eva-Maria Warth,
“Introduction,” in Remote Control: Television, Audiences, and Cultural Power, eds.
Ellen Seiter, Hans Borcher, Gabriele Kreutzner, and Eva-Maria Warth (New York:
Routledge, 1989), 1.

26
Stein and Jones, “Gender and Fan Studies (Round Two, Part Two).”

68

27
Ibid.

28
Stein and Jones, “Gender and Fan Studies (Round Two, Part One).”

29
Ibid.

30
Geoffrey Long and Catherine Tosenberger, “Gender and Fan Studies (Round Five,
Part One): Geoffrey Long and Catherine Tosenberger,” Confessions of an Aca-Fan:
The Official Weblog of Henry Jenkins, June 28, 2007,
http://www.henryjenkins.org/2007/06/gender_and_fan_studies_round_f_1.html.

31
Kristina Busse and Cornel Sandvoss, “Gender and Fan Studies (Round Seven, Part
One): Kristina Busse and Cornel Sandvoss,” Confessions of an Aca-Fan: The
Official Weblog of Henry Jenkins, June 28, 2007,
http://www.henryjenkins.org/2007/07/h3introduction_kristina_i_have.html.

32
Stein and Jones, “Gender and Fan Studies (Round Two, Part Two).”

33
Ibid.

34
Ibid.

35
McRobbie and Garber “Girls and Subcultures,” 211.

36
Ibid., 212.

37
Henry Jenkins, “When Fan Boys and Fan Girls Meet…,” Confessions of an Aca-
Fan: The Official Weblog of Henry Jenkins, May 17, 2007,
http://www.henryjenkins.org/2007/05/when_fan_boys_and_fan_girls_me.html.

38
Ibid.

39
McRobbie and Garber, “Girls and Subcultures,” 222.

40
Karen Hellekson, “A Fannish Field of Value: Online Fan Gift Culture,” Cinema
Journal 48 (4) Summer 2009, 113-118.

41
Lewis Hyde, The Gift: Imagination and the Erotic Life of Property (New York:
Vintage, 1983).

42
McRobbie and Garber, “Girls and Subcultures,” 212.

69

43
Jenkins, “When Fan Boys and Fan Girls Meet…”

43
McRobbie and Garber, “Girls and Subcultures,” 210.

44
Ibid., 210.

45
Jacinda Read, “The cult of masculinity: from fan-boys to academic bad-boys,” in
Defining cult movies: The cultural politics of oppositional taste, eds. Mark
Jancovich, Antonio Lázaro Reboll, Julian Stringer, and Andy Williams (Manchester:
Manchester University Press, 2003), 61.

46
Hellekson, “A Fannish Field of View,” 113-114.

47
Jenkins, Convergence Culture, 169.

48
Jenkins, “When Fan Boys and Fan Girls Meet…”

49
Ibid.

50
Jonathan Gray, Cornel Sandvoss, and C. Lee Harrington, “Introduction: Why
Study Fans?” in Fandom: Identities and Communities in a Mediated World, eds.
Jonathan Gray, Cornel Sandvoss, and C. Lee Harrington (New York: New York
University Press, 2007), 1-10.

51
Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1988), 29-30.

52
Ibid., 36-37.

53
Ibid., 174.

54
Gray, Sandvoss, and Harrington, “Introduction,” 2.

55
Ibid. 1-4.

56
Henry Jenkins, “Star Trek Rerun, Reread, Rewritten: Fan Writing as Textual
Poaching” in Fans, Bloggers, and Gamers: Exploring Participatory Culture (New
York: New York University Press, 2007), 40.

57
Matt Hills, Fan Cultures (New York: Routledge, 2002), 30.

70

58
Ibid., 29.

59
Seiter et. al., “Introduction,” 6.

60
Ibid., 8.

61
Ibid., 6.

62
See Max Horheimer and Theodor W. Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment (New
York: Continuum, 1969), and Theodor W. Adorno, The Culture Industry: Selected
Essays on Mass Culture (New York: Routledge, 1991).

63
Hills, Fan Cultures, 31-35.

64
Matt Hills, “Gender and Fan Studies (Round Twelve, Part One): Catherine
Driscoll and Matt Hills,” Confessions of an Aca-Fan: The Official Weblog of Henry
Jenkins, August 23, 2007,
http://www.henryjenkins.org/2007/08/gender_and_fan_culture_round_t.html

65
Cornel Sandvoss, Fans (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2005), 11-43.

66
Ibid., 29.

67
Ibid., 42.

68
Nicholas Abercrombie and Brian Longhurst, Audiences: A Sociological Theory of
Performance and Imagination (London: Sage, 1998), 15.

69
Ibid., 15.

70
Roberta Pearson, “Fandom in the Digital Era,” Popular Communication, volume
8, issue 1 (January 2010), 86.

71
Joli Jenson, “Fandom as Pathology: The Consequences of Characterization,” in
The Adoring Audience: Fan Culture and Popular Media, ed. Lisa A. Lewis (New
York: Routledge, 1992), 13.

72
Ibid., 14.

71

73
Matt Hills, “Negative Fan Stereotypes (‘Get a Life!’) and Positive Fan Injunctions
(‘Everyone’s got to be a fan of something!’): Returning to Hegemony Theory in Fan
Studies,” in Spectator 25:1 (Spring 2005), 36.

74
Ibid., 45.

75
See Hills’ “Negative Fan Stereotypes and Positive Fan Injunctions,” for a
discussion Celeste Michelle Condit’s construction of “plurivocal hegemony” in her
essay “Hegemony in a Mass-mediated Society: Concordance About Reproductive
Technologies,” Critical Studies in Mass communication 11:3 (1994), 205-230.

76
Hills, “Negative Fan Stereotypes and Positive Fan Injunctions,” 44.

77
Dick Hebdige, Subculture: The Meaning of Style (New York: Routledge, 1979),
94.

78
Ibid., 95.

79
Sandvoss, Fans, 40.

80
Hebdige, Subculture, 96.

81
Coppa, “Gender and Fan Culture (Wrapping Up, Part Four).”

82
Hebdige, Subculture, 94.

83
Ibid., 97

84
Ibid., 97

85
John Fiske, Understanding Popular Culture (New York: Routledge, 1991), 18.

86
Henry Jenkins, “Afterword: The Future of Fandom” in Fandom: Identities and
Communities in a Mediated World, eds. Jonathan Gray, Cornel Sandvoss, and C. Lee
Harrington (New York: New York University Press, 2007), 362.

87
Ibid., 362.

88
Jenkins, Convergence Culture, 134.

89
Ibid., 134.

72

90
Ibid., 169.

91
Suzanne Scott, “Authorized Resistance: Is Fan Production Frakked?” in Cylons in
America: Critical Studies in Battlestar Galactica, eds. Tiffany Potter and C.W.
Marshall (New York: Continuum, 2008), 210-223.

92
Obsession_inc, “Affirmational fandom vs. Transformational fandom,” June 1,
2009, http://obsession-inc.dreamwidth.org/82589.html.

93
Ibid.

94
Ibid.

95
Julie Levin Russo, “Twansformative? The Future of Fandom on Twitter,” (paper
presented at the Flow Conference, Austin, TX, October 1, 2010), http://j-l-
r.org/node/987.

96
Obsession_inc, “Affirmational fandom vs. Transformational fandom.”

97
“Frequently asked questions,” Transformative Works and Cultures,
http://transformativeworks.org/faq.

98
Ibid.

99
Ibid.

100
Gray, Sandvoss, and Harrington, “Introduction,” 4.

101
Kristina Busse, “Podcasts and the Fan Experience of Disseminated Media
Commentary,” (paper presented at Flow Conference, Austin, TX, October 2006),
http://www.kristinabusse.com/cv/research/flow06.html.

102
Ibid.

103
Jenkins, “Afterword,” 364.

104
Ibid., 364.

105
“The Geek Shall Inherit the Earth,” Time.com, September 25, 2005,
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1109317,00.html.

73

106
Ibid.

107
I use the terms “geek,” “nerd” and “fanboy” in a similarly interchangeable
fashion throughout this project, or collapse these categories into the term “fanboy.”

108
“Movies: Boys Who Like Toys,” Time.com, April 19, 2007,
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1612687,00.html.

109
Adam B. Vary, “The Geek Was King: Transformers, Michael Cera, and Comic-
Con are only some of the reasons why nerds ruled this year,” EW.com, December 21,
2007, http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,20168142,00.html.

110
Ibid.

111
See: 2005’s Batman Begins, Fantastic Four, 2006’s V for Vendetta, X-Men: The
Last Stand, 2007’s 300, 30 Days of Night, Spiderman 3, 2008’s The Dark Knight,
Wanted, Hellboy II: The Golden Army, The Incredible Hulk, Iron Man, The Spirit,
2009’s Watchmen, X-Men Origins: Wolverine, 2010’s Kick-Ass, Jonah Hex, The
Losers, Red, Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World, 2011’s Thor, Green Lantern, Captain
America: The First Avenger, and X-Men: First Class.

112
See: 2005’s Doom, BloodRayne, 2006’s Silent Hill, DOA: Dead or Alive, 2007’s
Hitman, Resident Evil: Extinction, 2008’s Far Cry, May Payne, 2009’s Street
Fighter: The Legend of Chun Li, 2010’s Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time,
Resident Evil: Afterlife.

113
Scott Brown, “Scott Brown Rallies America’s Nerds to Embrace Their Rise to
Power,” Wired.com, April 21, 2008,
http://www.wired.com/techbiz/people/magazine/16-05/pl_brown.

114
“The Geek Shall Inherit the Earth.”

115
“Movies: Boys Who Like Toys.”

116
Ibid.

117
Janice A. Radway, Reading the romance: Women, patriarchy, and popular
literature (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1984), 18.

118
Chris Nashawaty, “The Dark Knight: Batman’s Big Score,” EW.com, July 24,
2008, http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,20214587_2,00.html.

74

119
Ibid.

120
Tom Lowry and Ronald Grover, “Disney’s Marvel Deal and the Pursuit of Boys,”
Businessweek.com, September 10, 2009,
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/09_38/b4147066139865.htm.

121
Steven Zeitchik, “Analysis: Disney-Marvel Deal Brings Changes,” Adweek.com,
September 1, 2009,
http://www.adweek.com/aw/content_display/news/media/e3i76e7bfe15f67e9f1832a
6af63f7c353c.

122
Joel Silver was attached to produce a film adaptation of DC Comics’ Wonder
Woman in 2001. The project went through several screenwriters, and was finally
turned over to writer/director Joss Whedon in 2005. Whedon departed the project in
2007, reportedly frustrated with the studio. As of 2010, Warner Bros. still has the
project listed as “in development.”

123
Hunter Stephenson, “Fanboys Director Steve Brill Threatens to Kick Real
Fanboys’ Asses! Uh oh…,” Slashfilm.com, March 26, 2008,
http://www.slashfilm.com/2008/03/26/fanboys-director-steve-brill-threatens-to-kick-
real-fanboys-asses-uh-oh/.

124
Julian Sancton, “Revenge of the Star Wars Nerds,” Vanityfair.com, February 22,
2008, http://www.vanityfair.com/online/daily/2008/02/revenge-of-the.html.

125
Fred Topel, “Interview, Kyle Newman: Fanboys,” Suicidegirls.com, February 4,
2009, http://suicidegirls.com/interviews/Kyle+Newman:+Fanboys/.

126
http://stopdarthweinstein.chris-marquette.com/.

127
Borys Kit and Gregg Goldstein, “‘Fanboys’ supporters attempt protests,”
Hollywoodreporter.com, March 30, 2008,
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/hr/content_display/film/news/e3ib32aa438464bc
12534332654fb67783c?pn=1.

128
Dave McNary, “Fans protest TWC release: Folks protest against the removal of
subplot,” Variety.com, March 30, 2009,
http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117983181.html?categoryid=13&cs=1.

129
Bonnie Burton, “Kyle Newman: Let’s Hear It For The Fanboys,” starwars.com,
February 3, 2009, http://www.starwars.com/fans/rocks/20090204.html.

75

130
Russo, “The L Word.”

131
Alexis Lothian, “Living in a Den of Thieves: Fan Video and Digital Challenges to
Ownership,” Cinema Journal 48:4 Summer 2009, 136.

132
Kristina Busse, “‘Us’: A mulitvid by Lim,” In Media Res, February 1, 2008,
http://mediacommons.futureofthebook.org/imr/2008/02/01/us-a-multivid-by-lim.

133
“Copyright Office Cites Fan Vids in Recommending New Exemptions,”
Organization for Transformative Works, July 28, 2010,
http://transformativeworks.org/copyright-office-cites-fan-vids-recommending-new-
exemptions.

134
“Press Release: OTW Helps Secure DMCA Exemption for Remix Vidding,”
Organization for Transformative Works, July 26, 2010,
http://transformativeworks.org/projects/vidding-press-release-DMCA-
EXEMPTION.

135
Louisa Stein, “Vidding as Cultural Narrative,” (paper presented at Console-ing
Passions, Santa Barbara, CA, April 25, 2008),
http://community.livejournal.com/fandebate/9600.html.

136
Lothian, “Living in a Den of Thieves,” 135.

137
Ibid., 135.

138
Busse, “‘Us’: A mulitvid by Lim.”

139
Ibid.

140
The fact that an image of Henry Jenkins serves to collectively represent
academics as “tourists” in “Us” by lim should be viewed less as a critique of Jenkins,
and more of a testament to how synonymous Jenkins is with fan studies, from the
release of Textual Poachers in 1992. The image of Jenkins is used as shorthand
precisely because he’s not a “tourist” but because he is a visible “resident” of fan
studies and fan culture.

141
Ibid.

142
Ibid.

76

143
Lothian, “Living in a Den of Thieves,” 131.

144
Ibid., 131.

145
Ibid., 134.

146
Ibid., 135.

147
Henry Jenkins, Fans, Bloggers, and Gamers: Exploring Participatory Culture
(New York: New York University Press, 2006), 44.

148
Lothian, “Living in a Den of Thieves,” 136.

149
I feel obliged to put the term “debate” in quotations, as Bob and I spent the
majority of our “debate” in agreement about the potential pitfalls of the current
“fanification” of the audience.

150
Bob Rehak and Suzanne Scott, “Gender and Fan Culture (Round Fifteen, Part
One),” Confessions of an Aca-Fan: The Official Weblog of Henry Jenkins,
September 14, 2007,
http://henryjenkins.org/2007/09/gender_and_fan_culture_round_f_3.html.

151
Will Brooker and Ksenia Prasolova, “Gender and Fan Studies (Round Four, Part
Two),” Confessions of an Aca-Fan: The Official Weblog of Henry Jenkins, June 22,
2007, http://henryjenkins.org/2007/06/gender_and_fan_studies_round_f.html.

152
Hills, Fan Cultures, 1-23.

153
Louisa Stein, “Activist Acafandom? When Fans, Academics, and Producers
Collide,” (paper presented at Flow Conference, Austin, TX, October 2, 2010).

154
Jenkins, Convergence Culture, 12.

155
Ibid., 23.

156
Henry Jenkins, Textual Poachers: Television Fans and Participatory Culture
(New York: Routledge, 1992), 250-276.

157
Ibid., 256.

158
Ibid., 274-275.

77

159
Jenkins, Convergence Culture, 247.

160
Ibid., 248.

78
Chapter Two: TwiHate
Why Twilight Anti-Fandom May Have Ruined More Than Comic-Con
As a member of a crowd, the fan becomes irrational, and thus easily
influenced. If she is female, the image includes sobbing and
screaming and fainting, and assumes that an uncontrollable erotic
energy is sparked by the chance to see or touch a male idol.
- Joli Jensen
1

While the public confusion over the Twilight Saga’s success is not
altogether surprising, these comments position girls and women as
unexpected and unwelcome media consumers, and deny the long rich
history of the relationship female fans have had with media texts and
personalities. On top of this, the media have belittled the reactions
girls and women have had to the Twilight series and the actors who
play their favorite characters, frequently using Victorian era gendered
words like “fever,” “madness,” “hysteria,” and “obsession” to
describe Twilighters and Twi-hards.
- Melissa Click
2

Every year, in late July, fans converge on San Diego, California for the
annual four-day pop culture celebration known as Comic-Con. The convention
began in 1970 as the Golden State Comic-Con with a mere 300 attendees, but has
ballooned into the marketing event of the year for movies, television series, video
games and comic books. By 2008, San Diego Comic-Con International (henceforth
SDCC) was straining against the facility’s maximum capacity, selling out all 125,000
tickets well in advance for the first time, a trend that continued in 2009 and 2010.
2009 was a historic year for SDCC for several reasons. First and foremost, SDCC
celebrated its 40
th
Anniversary, an occasion met with both palpable nostalgia for
what the event once represented (an intimate forum for comic book fans to gather,
trade, collect, and converse), and giddy excitement for the spoils that have

79
accompanied its assimilation into Hollywood’s marketing machine (in this case, an
early look at 25 minutes of 3-D footage from James Cameron’s Avatar). But despite
(or, arguably, because of) the celebratory tone and event’s populist makeover, 2009
was also the year that Comic-Con was supposedly “ruined.” It wasn’t ruined by the
crowds, or the hefty concession prices, or even the lack of good swag: it was ruined
by fangirls. Specifically, Twilight fangirls.
Twilight fangirls may have ruined SDCC 2009 for the small number of
(mostly male) attendees that decided to protest their presence, but fangirls generally
felt the social brunt of the protesters’ cardboard signs and chants within and beyond
the walls of the San Diego convention center. Melissa Click opens her article,
“‘Rabid,’ ‘obsessed’, and ‘frenzied’: Understanding Twilight Fangirls and the
Gendered Politics of Fandom,” with by remarking that the term “fanboy” has
permeated the cultural lexicon, while “fangirl” remains a contested and routinely
pathologized term.
3
When the “fanboy” was inducted into the Merriam-Webster
New Collegiate Dictionary in 2008, he was simply defined as “a boy who is an
enthusiastic devotee (as of comics or movies).” Lacking any of the pejorative
descriptors that traditionally accompany cultural constructions of the fanboy, this
“official” definition reflects the cultural recuperation and flexibility of the label.
Admittedly, fanboys continue to be infantilized in name and pathologized by the
media, but their growing status as Hollywood tastemakers has granted them a
modicum of mainstream respect that their female counterparts are not yet afforded.

80
Because “fangirl” was not given an equivalent entry by Merriam-Webster,
girls appear to be the only fans excluded from this broad definition of fanboys as
“enthusiastic devotees.” As fanboys are recognized and embraced by Merriam-
Webster and the industry alike, we have arrived at a precarious moment in the
cultural codification of the fangirl. Currently defined by the online Urban Dictionary
as “a rabid breed of human female who is obsessed with either a fictional character
or an actor,” the fangirl is not just an “enthusiastic devotee” but conceived as
someone who has “overstepped the line between healthy fandom and indecent
obsession,” and is generally considered “ditzy, annoying and shallow.”
4
The popular
press perpetuates these stereotypes, naturalizing their broad application to all female
fans, and it is this “definition” that was deployed by Twihate protesters at SDCC
2009 and used to justify their actions. In Merriam-Webster’s definition fanboys have
begun to move beyond the pathology that once defined them. The term “fangirl” is
still being negotiated, and slipping dangerously towards the pathologized portraiture
that the first wave of fan studies worked to debunk.
If the localized conflation of “Twi-hard” and “fangirl” at SDCC 2009 was
any indication, the term “fangirl” in its contemporary use is defined almost
exclusively through Twilight fandom. Through an analysis of the Twihate protests
that occurred at SDCC 2009 and other modes of Twilight anti-fandom, this chapter
argues that, beyond “ruining” SDCC 2009, the media’s pathologized presentation of
Twilight fandom has the potential to “ruin” the scholarly construction of fangirls that
has been laboriously built over the past three decades. It is not my intent to assign

81
blame to Twi-hards, Twilighters, or Twimoms (as the most visible Twilight fan
collectives identify themselves), or frame them as “bad” fangirls. I don’t wish to
devalue the object of their fandom, or any of the forms of fan productivity that have
emerged from it. Rather, I hope to expose the burden of representation that
accompanies Twilight fangirls’ unparalleled visibility in contemporary fan culture.
As the prior chapter discussed, fan scholars may perpetually desire to move
beyond the incorporation/resistance paradigm, but fans continue to negotiate their
gendered positioning within this binary. Fanboys have historically been
essentialized as desiring incorporation, being heavily invested in canon and authorial
intent, and more likely to collect (trivia and merchandise) than create. When they do
create it is with the presumed motivation to become a professional and enter the
industry. Fan films and machinima, both of which are created predominantly by
fanboys and have been embraced and adopted by the industry as “official” marketing
materials, are two notable examples. Though not all fangirls are “resistant” in their
reading practices, they have historically been more invested in subtext rather than
text, and more attached to the “fanon” (texts produced by other fans) than the
producer’s construction of the canon. Moreover, the forms of fan productivity that
have been historically dominated by women, such as fanfiction and vidding, actively
avoid monetization and industrial detection. Because fanboys have been embraced
by the industry as producers and consumers, and because these gendered
generalizations persist, an analysis of the “gender war” at SDCC 2009 and gendered

82
modes of Twilight anti-fandom are central to understanding the tensions surrounding
the growing visibility of fan culture.
The massive popularity of the franchise and the visibility of Twilight fangirls
has provoked intense scrutiny from journalists, scholars, and fans, with each group
offering up a characterization of the “fangirl” that best suits their interests, reflect
their politics, or speaks to their own fannish identity. In response, the array of
scholarly essays and blog posts decrying Twilight’s problematic gender politics
5
has
given way to a wave of scholarly work that seeks to complicate these readings and
engage directly with the pleasures the franchise holds for female fans.
6
Echoing
earlier work on female romance fans by Tania Modleski
7
and Janice A. Radway,
8

this shift in scholarship communicates a continued investment, especially within the
female aca-fan community, to speak back to overly simplified or pathologized
readings of female fans of “feminine” genres. Acknowledging the multifaceted and
often contradictory pleasures of the franchise for Twi-hards is a powerful way for
aca-fen to interrogate this repatholigization of fangirls, but it is not my focus here.
My primary interest lies in the pervasive media coverage of Twi-hards, and
the way that different groups of anti-fans are replicating and/or repurposing those
representations. Joli Jensen’s ultimate concern in her seminal 1992 essay “Fandom
as Pathology: The Consequences of Characterization,” was that the “fandom-as-
pathology model implies that there is a thin line between ‘normal’ and excessive
fandom.”
9
As what was once considered “excessive” fandom is normalized, these
hierarchical distinctions have shifted. In a moment when the tastes and preferences

83
of fanboys are being catered to, there is a revival of the sentiment that fandom “is
what ‘they’ do; ‘we’ on the other hand, have tastes and preferences, and select
worthy people, beliefs and activities for our admiration and esteem. Furthermore,
what ‘they’ do is deviant, and therefore dangerous, while what ‘we’ do is normal,
and therefore safe.”
10
What has changed, evidenced by the Twihate protests at
SDCC 2009, is that the demarcations between “proper” and “improper” fannishness,
or “acceptable” or “unacceptable” levels of incorporation and populism, are
increasingly being drawn from within fandom.
In short, the pathologized modes of fandom that Jensen described are being
constructed by the media and fanboys alike as something fangirls do, while fanboys
have tastes and preferences and select worthy, generically appropriate franchises to
support. The male Twihate protesters’ territorial entitlement, condemning Twilight’s
“mainstreaming” of SDCC, was paradoxically made possible by their own
incorporated and privileged status within the industry. These gendered fissures in
the SDCC fan community may be little more than a byproduct of its evolving size
and scope, but it is necessary to acknowledge that the convention space, especially
one as massive and mainstreamed as SDCC, can no longer be roundly celebrated as a
communal space, as SDCC is increasingly defined as much by its disharmonies
(whether they be between Twi-hards and Twihaters, or comic book and manga fans)
as its collective fannish affect.
Though it was an isolated incident, the Twihate protests at SDCC 2009
exposed deeper tensions about the growing diversity of SDCC attendees and its

84
perceived “mainstreaming” as a fan forum. By examining two distinctly gendered
forms of Twilight anti-fandom, fanboy Twihaters at SDCC and the fangirl populated
online community “Twatlight,” we can begin to see how fanboys and fangirls are
grappling with fan culture’s growing visibility in markedly different ways. SDCC is
the epicenter of these debates, as the space that most tangibly represents the
incorporation of the fan (and the fanboy specifically) into the Hollywood marketing
machine, but they have also permeated female fan communities online. Fanboys and
fangirls are grappling with their visibility within convergence culture in complex and
contradictory ways, but they reveal a shared ambivalence about the mainstreaming
and misrepresentation of fan culture. The following analysis of gendered modes of
Twilight anti-fandom illustrates that fangirls and fanboys use markedly different
standards of “authenticity” to police the boundaries of fan culture. Fangirl critiques
are bound up in fannish (specifically fangirlish) jargon, whereas fanboys tend to
couch their critiques in the longstanding and broadly accepted devaluation of
“feminine” genres and consumers. In both cases, Twi-hards are simultaneously
constructed as excessive fans and dismissed for not being “real” fans, reaffirming
that, “though all fans are marginalized, female fans are marginalized not only by
virtue of their fannishness but also by virtue of their gender.”
11

Because it is unquestionably the most visible and financially viable female-
driven fandom in recent memory, the scholarly and fannish investment in framing
Twilight as a “good” or “bad” object, or framing its fanbase as alternately powerful
or pathological, is understandable. It is precisely this combination of cultural

85
visibility and financial viability that makes Twilight fandom equally easy to ridicule
and defend. Melissa Click has convincingly argued that studies of the Twilight
phenomenon and the pleasures of its fandom are central, as “scholars continue to
fight the persistent cultural assumption that male-targeted texts are authentic and
interesting, while female-targeted texts are schlocky and mindless.”
12
Enduring
disdain of “feminine” genres is central to an understanding of (or appreciation of)
Twilight and its fandom, but the gendered stereotypes and language that permeate
public mockery of the phenomenon and its fans move beyond genre critiques.
Because many of the first studies of fans were invested in recuperating “feminine”
genres such as the soap opera
13
and the romance novel,
14
and revaluing and
politicizing the emotional excess of fangirls,
15
any discussion of Twilight fandom
presents a scholarly conundrum. To dismiss Twilight fandom purely on generic
terms as a romance melodrama, or to question the “productivity” of its fannish
displays (notably, the screaming/aural forms of fan production that accompanies
groups of Twi-hards), is to discount foundational research on female fans. On the
other hand, to unilaterally celebrate Twilight or its fans simply because they are
successful generic examples of the popularity of “feminine” texts perpetuates the
cultural invisibility of fangirls that have long circulated around “masculine”
properties and genres (science fiction, horror, fantasy), and establishes a new “pink
ghetto”
16
for contemporary fangirls.
Many would argue that Twilight fandom is simply the feminine counterpart to
the emergent fanboy demographic outlined in the introduction in both its size and

86
(purchasing) power, but it is precisely this gender-stratification that is problematic.
Twilight fandom, by providing the most pervasive understanding and iconography of
the contemporary fangirl, also functions to construct “appropriate” generic spaces for
fangirls to inhabit, and reframes fangirls’ “participation” in overwhelmingly post-
feminist and consumerist terms. While this is unequivocally a product of journalists’
construction and naturalization of a narrowly defined image of the fangirl through
their coverage of Twilight fandom, it is nonetheless the image that many fanboys and
fangirls are attempting to regulate and, ultimately, distance themselves from.
As my own fannish sensibilities and experience at SDCC 2009 have informed
segments of my analysis, it seems pertinent to define my experiences with both
SDCC and the Twilight Saga from the outset. I began attending SDCC in 2007, well
after the event had ballooned into a marketing behemoth, but I have attended many
smaller, fandom-specific conventions over the past decade. While this chapter
reflects my interest in SDCC as an evolving fan space, particularly for female fans,
my yearly pilgrimage since 2007 has been as a fan rather than a researcher.
Accordingly, I am well versed in the rites and rituals of SDCC (camping out in Hall
H, cosplaying, swag scavenging) as a participant. In terms of Twilight, I have read
all of the novels in the Twilight Saga, seen all of the film adaptations, and follow the
gossip and other paratexts that circulate around the franchise with interest. Being
more interested in Twilight fandom than the texts and paratexts that fuel it, my
relationship to the property is the inverse of a “typical” fan. Usually, affect for the
text leads one to seek out a community of like-minded consumers, but in this case it

87
was my interest in Twilight fangirls, and the media’s depiction of them, that led me
to consume the texts in the franchise.
Witnessing these events unfold at SDCC 2009 sparked many of the concerns
this dissertation raises about the state of the contemporary fangirl, as she is either
rendered invisible or defined exclusively through Twilight fandom. I did not actively
participate in the Twihate protests at SDCC 2009, but I did occasionally resent the
mass influx of Twi-hards at the convention. The root of my (comparably mild)
annoyance didn’t align with Twihate protesters complaints, and I found the
misogyny simmering beneath the fan-on-fan protests both surprising and unsettling.
My annoyance stemmed from being perpetually lumped into the most visible, vocal
mass of female fans at the convention, based solely on my gender. This double
standard (fanboys at SDCC were simply fans, fangirls at SDCC were always already
aligned with Twilight, even if they had no interest in the franchise or had been
attending SDCC long before Teams Edward and Jacob arrived), and considering the
media coverage that facilitated it, was the inspiration for this chapter. Before
examining the fanboy-driven Twihate protests and journalists’ construction of SDCC
as a gendered space in more detail, it is necessary to consider how Twilight anti-
fandom differs within female fan communities.

Twatlight, Anti-fangirls and the Spectre of Mary Sue
In his essay “New audiences, new textualities: Anti-fans and non-fans,”
Jonathan Gray argues that “fan research has left the anti-fan and the non-fan, and

88
their texts and textualities, under-researched and insubstantially theorized or
understood.”
17
Gray goes on to define anti-fans as “fans’ Other,”
18
or “those who
strongly dislike a given text or genre, considering it inane, stupid, morally bankrupt
and/or aesthetic drivel.”
19
Though one might presume a binary logic to Gray’s
construction, with fans occupying one pole and anti-fans as their “apparent
opposites,”
20
Gray stresses the correlations between these disparate responses to a
given text. Continuing to define the parameters of anti-fandom in a subsequent
article, “Antifandom and the Moral Text: Television Without Pity and Textual
Dislike,” Gray once again stresses the similarities between fans and anti-fans,
especially in terms of the mutually affective nature of fandom and anti-fandom.
Noting that “dislike is as potentially powerful an emotion and reaction as is like,”
21

Gray concludes that while the apparent pleasure/displeasure dichotomy that defines
fandom and anti-fandom “could be positioned on opposite ends of a spectrum, they
perhaps more accurately exist on a Möbius strip, with many fan and anti-fan
behaviors and performances resembling, if not replicating, each other.”
22
This
replication becomes increasingly more apparent, and more complex, when forms of
anti-fandom extend beyond an expression of dislike for a media property to the
fandom that surrounds it.
Gray’s description of the intimate interplay between fandom and anti-fandom
is evident in two different forms of Twilight anti-fandom. The first, what I’ve been
referring to as “Twihate,” physically manifested in the anti-Twilight/Twi-hard
protests at SDCC 2009, but also has a massive online presence through sites such as

89
twilightsucks.com. The second, Twatlight, is a segment of the Twilight fan
community that revels in the absurdities of both Twilight’s text and fandom. While
both groups could be loosely constructed as anti-fans under Gray’s definition, the
key distinctions between Twihate and Twatlight are rooted in textual familiarity and
gendered tonality. Twats (as members of Twatlight refer to themselves) are fans of
the franchise insomuch as they are consumers of the franchise, buying/reading the
books and viewing the films. Twihaters’ knowledge of the franchise and fans, by
contrast, is predominantly “construct[ed] from paratextual fragments such as news
coverage or word-of mouth,”
23
that tend to trade in sensationalized depictions of
Twi-hards. Thus, we could view Twihaters as representing one version of Gray’s
anti-fan, characterized as an “audiencehood from afar” steeped in a refusal to watch
24

(or refusal to read, in the case of Twilight), and Twatlight representing another type
of anti-fan, one “performed with close knowledge of the text and yet devoid of the
interpretive and diegetic pleasures”
25
we associate with fannish consumption.
Yet this demarcation is still too simplistic to explain the distinct form of anti-
fandom that Twatlight represents. While Twihate and Twatlight share many of the
same complaints about Twilight and Twi-hards, their performances of anti-fandom
are markedly different in tone. Predominantly male Twihaters aggressively express
their disdain for the franchise and its fans through insults and dismissals, echoing
both Gray’s definition of the anti-fan and the media’s frequently pathologizing
coverage. Though they occasionally engage in exclusionary practices and mockery
that verges on “bullying,”
26
Twatlight anti-fandom is predominantly characterized by

90
the “lulz” (or “LOLs”) that the franchise and its fans provide, and is bound together
by humor produced within the anti-fan community in the form of macros and
commentary. Twats thus use their dislike of the Twilight franchise and its fans to
create interpretive pleasures where few existed for them, complicating their
characterization of anti-fans under Gray’s rubric. Of equal significance, Twatlights’
mocking comes from a place of self-reflexive affection, if not for the Twilight
franchise or its fans, then for fandom and fangirls generally.
For these reasons and several others outlined in Madeline LeNore “Flourish”
Klink’s thesis “Laugh Out Loud In Real Life: Women’s Humor and Fan Identity,”
Twatlight does not fit neatly into Gray’s anti-fan/non-fan rubric.
27
Framing
Twatlight as a collective of “lolfans” rather than anti-fans under Grey’s definition,
Klink effectively argues that lolfans such as those who populate Twatlight don’t
simply challenge Gray’s definition of anti-fandom, they challenge the way the
academy constructs fandom.
28
While I choose to view Twats as anti-fans for the
purpose of this argument, Klink’s characterization of the lolfan as “a Gramscian
organic intellectual,”
29
or a term that emerged out of the fan community rather than
the academy, is central to distinguishing Twatlight from Twihate. Emerging
organically from within the fangirl dominated virtual space of LiveJournal,
Twatlight’s anti-fan discourses also emerged from longstanding biases within the
fangirl community. Twatlight can accordingly be constructed as an internalized
critique of Twilight fandom, both in terms of who is levying the criticism (fellow

91
fangirls) and how that criticism is filtered through the social mores and jargon of
female fan communities.
Twatlight emerged out of the LiveJournal community ohnotheydidnt (or
ONTD), after several posts mocking Twilight drew a large number of comments.
Twatlight is rooted in the LiveJournal community ontd_twatlight, but its forms of
anti-fan production, macros in particular, have circulated widely outside the
LiveJournal community. Macros similar to those found on Twatlight have been
created without any direct affiliation with the LiveJournal community, and many
fangirls may consider themselves to be “Twats” without being officially inducted
into the community. Joining the community requires a simple application process,
functioning as a “selection process to keep out trolls and misguided twihards.”
30
In
addition to using the application to deter Twi-hards from applying, “applicants who
do not appear to be active, long-term LiveJournal members are dismissed out of hand
as potentially disruptive to the community.”
31

Two interesting points emerge from this screening process. First, the
application process would appear to be an attempt to protect Twatlight from the same
anti-fannish “disruption” it propagates. The implicit distinction between Twatlight’s
mode of “disruption,” and the attempt to thwart disruption within that community
through an application process, suggests that creating a cohesive community of like-
minded fangirls is of greater importance than identifying and growing as a Twilight
anti-fan space. Second, Twatlight’s reticence to grant entry to those without an
established and consistent LiveJournal presence privileges both older fangirls and

92
those already entrenched in other fan communities. An active presence on
LiveJournal presumes a level of familiarity with fan culture generally, and fangirl
(n)etiquette, protocol, and biases specifically. We could draw a parallel between
fangirls’ sense of “ownership” over LiveJournal as a space and the sense of spatial
“ownership” that fueled fanboys’ Twihate protests at SDCC, but the fact that
Twatlight has gone to such lengths to create a gated virtual community points
towards fangirls’ own anxieties about their (mis)representation and visibility. It
could be argued that Twatlight, as a highly ambivalent mode of anti-fandom, retains
its privacy and remains firmly entrenched within a fangirl-friendly virtual
community to distance itself from the public mockery of Twi-hards.
Clearly stating “we’re here for the lolz,” the Twatlight community clarifies
that they’re “not anti-Twilight, but we're not a serious Twilight community.”
32

Twatlight’s self-imposed liminality is reinforced by the fact that the community is
simultaneously affiliated
33
with one of LiveJournal’s largest Twilight fan
communities, Lion & Lamb,
34
and two of LiveJournal’s largest Twilight anti-fan
sites, Twilight Sucks
35
and I Hate Twilight.
36
This conflicted engagement with the
Twilight Saga and its fan base becomes manifest in the community’s use of sparkles
to adorn the image and texts of their posts. The excessive embrace of sparkles
clearly mocks of one of the Saga’s most feminized and derided additions to vampire
mythology, namely the diamond texture of Edward’s skin in sunlight. Coating
criticism in sparkles could be considered a sardonic, hyperfeminized attempt to
“translate” their critiques for Twi-hards, but more productively can be read as an

93
attempt to create a more complex and contradictory fangirl identity than the one
afforded Twi-hards by the media. The clash of sparkles and sarcasm is echoed in the
rest of the community’s design aesthetic, which frequently features “clashing colors”
and a “cacophony” of overlapping audio files posted by members.
37
Thus, in both
directive and design, Twatlight offers a messy, conflicted mode of anti-fandom, one
that seems less invested in participating in the widespread denigration and dismissal
of Twi-hards than in playing with those stereotypes and putting them in conversation
with the gendered anxieties that have long permeated female fan communities.
Moving beyond Twatlight as an anti-fan community to examine the broader
critiques of Twilight and Twi-hards put forth by female fans, it is necessary to make
a distinction between Gray’s “anti-fan” and the “anti-fangirl” that I’m constructing.
Klink distinguishes Twatlight anti-fans from those described by Gray primarily
through their distinctive use of humor. My own distinction between Gray’s anti-fan
and Twilight anti-fangirls is rooted in the gendered jargon these feminine
performances of anti-fandom deploy. Anti-fangirls, unlike their male counterparts,
tend to root their critiques both in the perceived quality of the text and in the
perceived quality of fans’ textual production. In the case of Twilight, anti-fangirls
have conflated the two, coding their complaints about the franchise and its fans
through the most universally reviled trope in fangirl communities: the Mary Sue.
The term Mary Sue was coined in 1974 by Star Trek fan Paula Smith in a
short fic titled “A Trekkie’s Tale” that appeared in the fanzine The Menagerie. “A
Trekkie’s Tale” satirizes both the female characters on the original Star Trek that

94
were introduced solely as love interests for the male crew of the U.S.S. Enterprise,
and fan fiction by female authors featuring a character that is an idealized projection
of the author’s self. Smith’s tale introduces a character named Mary Sue, the
youngest lieutenant in the history of the fleet, beautiful enough to be chased by
Captain Kirk, intelligent enough to be respected by Mr. Spock, and clever enough to
save the crew from danger (notably, by picking a lock with her hairpin). After
running the ship effortlessly, and receiving “the Nobel Peace Prize, the Vulcan Order
of Gallantry and the Tralfamadorian Order of Good Guyhood”
38
for her services, Lt.
Mary Sue dies a fittingly dramatic and noble death, surrounded by Kirk, Spock,
McCoy, and Scott, “all weeping unashamedly at the loss of her beautiful youth and
youthful beauty, intelligence, capability and all around niceness.”
39

In a section of Enterprising Women: Television Fandom and the Creation of
Popular Myth titled “Re-creating the Adolescent Self: Mary Sue,” Camille Bacon-
Smith claims that “Mary Sue is the most denigrated genre in the entire canon of fan
fiction,”
40
a fact that is as true today as when Bacon-Smith wrote it in 1992. Bacon-
Smith and contemporary aca-fen also share anxieties about the regulatory potential
of the Mary Sue stigma. Paula Smith has clarified that her intent was not to
unilaterally “put down all those stories about aspiring females,”
41
but the impact of
her initial characterization is reflected in Bacon-Smith’s accounts of female authors
actively avoiding (or shamefully admitting to) fabricating a “Sue.”
42
Bacon-Smith’s
concern that “the soubriquet of ‘Mary Sue’ may be a self-imposed sexism”
43
has
persisted along with the stigma, with recent debates wondering if the Mary Sue label

95
is palpable evidence of misogyny in fandom, perpetuated by female fans.
44
To what
degree the threat of being accused of creating a Mary Sue has dissuaded fan authors
from creating original female characters is unclear. What is clear is that specific
modes of projected fantasy and fangirl authorship have historically been celebrated
(e.g. slash), and others condemned (e.g. the Mary Sue). Within this admittedly
simplistic dichotomy, the former is associated with queering, resistant reading, and
patriarchal subversion, and the latter constructed as a celebration of heteronormative
and post-feminist values. What binds slash and Mary Sue stories together is a desire
to speak back to the lack of compelling female characters in popular culture, and the
frequent dissatisfaction of female audiences.
Pat Pflieger’s essay “Too Good to be True: 150 Years of May Sue,”
catalogues Mary Sue characteristics, and their evolution from the 19
th
to 20
th

centuries. Typically, the Mary Sue has a distinctive or descriptive name, is
physically striking (compounded by lengthy descriptions of the unique color of her
hair, eyes, and her signature scent), and frequently has special abilities that reinforce
her innately feminine qualities, such as telepathy or having a heightened empathic
connection with the characters.
45
Summarized neatly by Pflieger:
Mary Sue is often easy to spot because she's impossible to miss. Put simply,
Mary Sue is more: more charming, more belligerent, more understanding,
more beautiful, more graceful, more eccentric, more spiritual, more klutzy.
[…] She is singular; she is impossible to ignore.
46

Beyond the Mary Sue’s “more is more” ethos, the other defining characteristic of the
Mary Sue is the characterization of the author that creates her. Mutually defined by

96
their poor writing and their “singular” heroine, the Mary Sue within these stories is
almost always perceived as a fantasy projection or self-insertion of her creator.
Significantly for an application to Twilight, Pflieger nuances this critique of
the Mary Sue through scholarly work on reading strategies for romance novels.
Surveying romance writers’ claim that readers don’t identify with the romance
novel’s heroine so much as use her as a placeholder, mentally slipping into her
identity in order to focus attention on the hero, Pflieger argues that a similar logic
creates the Mary Sue, as “she holds a place open in the story for the author -- and
presumably for the reader.”
47
A Mary Sue draws criticism when she becomes a
“failed placeholder,” or “her very obtrusiveness keeps readers from slipping into her
place.”
48
The exhaustively described averageness of Twilight’s heroine, Bella Swan
clearly makes her a successful placeholder for readers of Twilight, but Bella’s near
anti-Sue status didn’t spare the Saga from the mockery of fangirls who saw Sue.
Mary Sue has been invoked by countless fangirls outside the Twatlight
community in their efforts to distinguish themselves from Twilight fans, branding
author Stephenie Meyer as a “Suethor,” or a writer of bad fanfiction. According to
Meyer’s official website, chapter 13 (“Confessions”) of Twilight is “essentially a
transcript”
49
of a dream that Meyer had on June 2, 2003. This dream, about an
average girl and the sparkly vampire who loved her, was both the foundation for the
Twilight saga and what fueled Meyer’s writing and quest for publication. The
assessment that the novels are little more than Meyer’s projected romantic fantasies
reinforces fangirls’ primary criticism of the Twilight Saga, namely that it is

97
reminiscent of “bad” fanfiction, or “badfic,” written by a novice fangirl who is
overly reliant on Mary Sues as a character archetype. It is important to note that the
term “badfic,” while it is commonly defined as fan fiction “ that is very badly
written, characterized, structured, or all of the above,”
50
does not negate the
possibility of pleasure for the reader. Like Twatlight’s approach to Twilight, many
fans view badfic as a source of comedy (or “lulz”) and attempt to construct
“deliberately parodic”
51
badfic. This self-reflexive badfic is colloquially known as
“crackfic” (as it is addictive for some fans, and/or a story that causes the reader to
wonder if the writer has smoked the eponymous narcotic).
Within female fan communities, Mary Sue critiques were some of the first to
be levied against Twilight, with Meyer framed as a silly fangirl and her Saga treated
as failed fanfiction. However, Twilight posed an interesting test case for Mary Sue
criticisms. While many fangirls bemoaned Bella’s perfectly adorable flaws, such as
her oft-described klutziness, the character in the Saga that exhibits a near-perfect
score on the Mary Sue Litmus Test
52
is Meyer’s hero, Edward Cullen. Recalling the
Mary Sue characteristics that Pflieger outlines above, Meyer’s lingering descriptions
of Edward’s eyes (alternately golden topaz and obsidian), his bronze hair and marble
physique, and his ability to read minds certainly paints him as an archetypal Mary
Sue. Male Sues, frequently called Gary Stu, are few and far between. Or, perhaps
more to the point, critiques of them surface far less frequently than their female
counterparts, leading many to question whether “the label seems to be used more
indiscriminately on female characters who do not behave in accordance with the

98
dominant culture's images and expectations for females as opposed to males.”
53

Thus it is simultaneously unsurprising and disheartening that the bulk of fangirl
criticism of Twilight’s “Sueish” qualities were redirected from analyses of the series’
primary Sue (or Stu, in this case) and aimed at Meyer herself.
One of the most damning titles to be bestowed on an author (amateur or
professional) is to be named a “Suethor,” or an author who creates Mary Sues and/or
a heroine who is little more than a self-insertion. Lengthy threads on anti-fansite
Twilightsucks.com
54
and various pieces of fan art [Figure 2.1] have pointed out how
Meyer’s physical description of Bella Swan (particularly the more specific
components, such as her wide forehead with widow’s peak, and lips that are too full
for her jawline) bear an uncanny resemblance to the author’s own facial features.
This, coupled with what many anti-fangirls consider to be the limited prose of
Meyer’s novels, has led to Meyer’s branding as a Suethor, and is frequently a
fangirl-approved starting point for aiming more overtly misogynist barbs aimed at
Meyer and the franchise. Anti-fan macros [Figure 2.2] deploy a crueler variant of
Suethor criticism. Constructed as a parody of a “Wanted” poster, the language used
to critique Meyer’s supposed self-insertion and her writing style: “Wanted:
Stephenie Meyer. Charges: For publishing several BS books about a wet dream of
hers while possesing [sic.] the literary writing talents of a newborn cow.” The literal
branding of Meyer as a “crazy bitch fangirl” on her forehead lays bare the “self-
imposed sexism”
55
that underpins the mocking of Mary Sues and Suethors. What is

99
of particular concern is the image’s valuation of “bitch” and “fangirl,” with the latter
being constructed as the more offensive slur.

Figure 2.1. Physical Description of Bella Swan

100
Figure 2.2. Wanted: Stephenie Meyer

Significantly, the construction of Stephenie Meyer as a Suethor is not limited
to fannish critiques, but has bled over into cultural and promotional constructions of
the author. One of the more memorable invocations of Meyer’s Suethor status came

101
from star Robert Pattinson in a television interview accompanying his casting as
Edward:
When I read it I was convinced Stephenie was convinced she was Bella and it
was like it was a book that wasn't supposed to be published. It was like
reading her sexual fantasy, especially when she said it was based on a dream
and it was like, 'Oh I've had this dream about this really sexy guy,' and she
just writes this book about it. Like some things about Edward are so specific,
I was just convinced, like, 'This woman is mad. She's completely mad and
she's in love with her own fictional creation.' And sometimes you would feel
uncomfortable reading this thing.
56

It’s unlikely that Pattinson was familiar with the longstanding derision directed at
Mary Sues and Suethors, but his characterization of Meyer as “mad,” and his
discomfort with the notion that Bella is merely a projection of Meyer’s sexual
fantasies aligns neatly with Sue shaming anti-fangirl practices. For good measure,
Pattinson also invokes the longstanding construction of fans as unable to distinguish
between fantasy and reality, a form of feminized fan pathologization that Mary Sues
perpetuate and exacerbate. This is one of the central reasons the Mary Sue archetype
is so reviled, and Suethors are so quickly exiled from “proper” fangirl circles.
Fangirls’ vocal disdain for Mary Sues and Suethors remains a point of
contention in female fan communities, with a debate in April 2010 reviving concerns
around the self-regulatory nature of “Sue shaming,” and the communal impact of
fangirls passing judgment on other fangirls.
57
Both “sides” have valid points. The
fangirls that claim Sue shaming is tantamount to bullying women who are merely
attempting to create empowered female characters (or empower themselves through
the process of writing), correctly note that thinly veiled misogyny “is the baggage the

102
term ‘Mary Sue’ comes with. This is the context. This is the culture and the
environment and the experience of many, and it cannot be divorced from the term
itself.”
58
Other fangirls respond that, “Actually, it is the Mary Sues who are mostly
the products of a misogynistic mindset,”
59
as Mary-Sues “ascribe to the basest tenets
of the patriarchy (heterosexual marriage is the true way to happiness, women need to
be rescued, men are allowed to be territorial over ‘their’ women as long as they’re
hot, etc.).”
60
Given this conflicted characterization of the Sue as either a tool of
feminist empowerment or an agent of patriarchy, it is easy to see how slippage
occurs between fangirls’ conflicted view of Mary Sues and the ambivalence that
drives anti-fangirls critiques of Twilight.
Ultimately, the paradoxical construction of the Mary Sue or Suethor, at once
progressive and regressive, empowered and contained, are replicated in many anti-
fangirls’ relationship to Twilight and Twi-hards. In theory, fangirls should celebrate
female authors and female fan communities that have garnered a modicum of power
in the phallocentric media industry. Anti-fangirls’ reticence to be affiliated with
Twi-hards indicates that the taste discourses that fueled the Twihate protests at
SDCC 2009 are also perpetuated by fangirls, albeit filtered through fannish rather
than mainstream value systems. In some sense, anti-fangirls treat Twi-hards as
living, breathing Mary Sues, and their relationship to them is equally conflicted.
In their essay “Biting Back: Twilight Anti-Fandom and the Rhetoric of
Superiority,” Jessica Sheffield and Elyse Merlo identify three common rhetorical

103
strategies used by members of online anti-Twilight communities to position
themselves as superior to Twi-hards:
Some individuals mock Twilight, dismissing its fans as vapid and making
little or no effort to engage the source material. Others critique Twilight by
subjecting it to intellectual inquiry, often speaking on behalf of fans they feel
lack critical thinking skills. Finally, some individuals negotiate positions
within and between fandom and anti-fandom, rhetorically distancing
themselves from the more extreme behaviors exhibited by members of both.
61

We can clearly see the popular press and Twihaters adopting the first of these
strategies (mocking), and Twats and other anti-fangirls embodying the third
(negotiating between their identity as fangirls and the cultural construction of Twi-
hards), with both groups meeting in the middle to engage in critiques of both the
franchise and its fans. Where these critiques differ is in the fan culture they emerge
from, and the spaces they’re performed in. As the application process would
indicate, Twats’ critiques take place primarily within the virtual walls of their
LiveJournal community. There mere fact that these critiques are circulating on
LiveJournal, a longstanding enclave for fangirls, reflects the intrafannish nature of
these critiques, a willingness to poke fun at their own “obsessive” fangirl tendencies
and embrace that identity even as they distinguish themselves from (pathologized
portraits of) Twi-hards. In this sense, Twatlight takes Twihate a step further,
articulating their “superior fan status” and allowing them “to participate in both anti-
fan and fan discourses with a sense of superiority over both.”
62

According to Jonathan Gray, it is common for anti-fans to move beyond the
text, “seeking in some ways to police the public and textual spheres,”
63
brought on

104
by the “the sense of responsibility, in sharing one’s reading and, thus, encouraging
an avoidance of the aesthetic text in others too.”
64
Consequently, Gray frames anti-
fandom as “a powerful means of constructing one’s self and personal media fluency
and literacy in relation to the deficient viewing of others.”
65
Both Twihaters and
Twats construct themselves as superior to Twi-hards, to varying degrees, and steep
their critiques in discourses of taste and authenticity. Where they clearly differ, as
the following analysis SDCC 2009 makes clear, is Twihate’s willingness to move
beyond policing the virtual sphere to police the public sphere. That the particular
public sphere in question was once considered a safe haven for all fans makes the
protesters’ sense of responsibility to maintain the purity (read: masculinity) of SDCC
as a space all the more unsettling.
Of particular relevance to the following discussion of the Twihate protests at
SDCC 2009 is Gray’s claim that anti-fans are not “lone, angry individuals,” but, like
fans, members of “interpretive communities,”
66
that are “just as organized as their
fan counterparts.”
67
In the passage of time between his discussion of anti-fans in
2003 and 2005, Gray claims that the increasing organization and presence of anti-
fans “sometimes rival or dwarf their fan counterparts.”
68
This emphasis on
organizational power is especially ironic when we consider that Twihate emerged out
of an initial failure of organization on the part of the protesters, namely their inability
(or unwillingness) to devote more time sitting on line than the average Twi-hard in
order to ensure their place at a panel. While the Twihate protesters at SDCC didn’t
come close to dwarfing Twi-hards in number, the press coverage of their outrage,

105
and the ways in which those conversations dovetailed with the prevailing
construction of fangirls as “unwelcome” (or at the very least, unexpected) guests, in
many ways allowed a small group of fanboys to obscure the real story, namely the
massive influx of female attendees at SDCC.

Comic-Con in Context: On Mainstreaming and Masculinity
In her essay “Girls Allowed? The Marginalization of Female Sports Fans,”
Victoria K. Gosling notes that women’s marginalized status within sports fandom,
and the perpetually debated authenticity of female sports fans that accompanies it,
could be read as “an expression of men’s fears over women invading their
traditionally masculine space; however, it plays an important role in marginalizing
female fans.”
69
Extrapolating Gosling’s discussion of sports fandom to address the
traditionally masculine space of SDCC, we can see similar preoccupations with
“legitimacy” and “authenticity” permeating discussions of female fans (Twi-hards
specifically, and fangirls generally) at SDCC. Visibility is increasingly one of the
central issues fueling debates around the gendered mainstreaming of fan and geek
culture, and the Twihate protests at SDCC 2009 were the most overt manifestation of
these tensions to date. Just as the construction of LiveJournal as a “feminine” space
is key to an understanding of anti-fangirl practices, the construction of comic book
conventions as historically “masculine” spaces are central to the media’s
construction of SDCC as a fanboy-centric venue, and fanboys’ anxieties about the
influx of fangirl “interlopers” at SDCC 2009.

106
Since term “fandom” was coined in the late 1920s and popularized in the
early 1930s by male science fiction and pulp magazine fans, the potential dilution of
the term has been a constant concern. When the term “fandom” began to be applied
to other genres and media forms in the 1930s, conventions followed suit,
diversifying their focus and attendance base, “often to the consternation of more
conservative science fiction fans.”
70
Gerard Jones notes that these science fiction
fans, feeling a degree of ownership over both the term “fandom” and the gatherings
that emerged from them, “spoke, only half-jokingly, of ‘the One True Fandom.’
They were a race apart, and wanted to be.”
71
The way this One True Fandom set
themselves apart from unwelcome intruders, was to frequently invoke the
interlocking matrices of gender and genre, with their anxieties about the
mainstreaming of fandom echoing what Charlotte Brunsdon calls “the historical
connotative femininity of mass culture.”
72
To begin to understand the gendered
significance of the “mainstreaming” of SDCC, how a broader scope of programming
has resulted in more female attendees, and how this has negatively equated female
fans (and the texts they coalesce around) with the con becoming too
mainstream/inclusive, we must to return to prior constructions of the comic book
fandom and the comic book convention space.
Scholarly surveys of comic book fandom routinely reinforce the cultural
presumption that comic book fans are overwhelmingly, if not exclusively, male. In
Jonathan David Tankel and Keith Murphy’s essay “Collecting Comic Book Fans: A
Study of the Fan and Curatorial Consumption,” the authors state that “the most

107
striking and expected demographic characteristic of the comic book collectors
surveyed is that 100% are male.”
73
Modeled on the questionnaire used in Janice A.
Radway’s ethnographic study Reading the Romance: Women, Patriarchy and
Popular Literature, Tankel and Brown’s survey group was small (38 out of 50
questionnaires were returned, some of them incomplete),
74
but the certainty that
accompanies these “expected demographic” results is telling. The authors reinforce
their expectations with industrial and anecdotal evidence that supports the
“overwhelming male dominance”
75
of comic book fandom that “remains true despite
the efforts that all the major publishers put into winning the readership of females,”
76

taking both the certainty of comic books’ male fanbase and fangirls’ disinterest for
granted. Likewise, Jeffrey A. Brown’s essay “Comic Book Fandom and Cultural
Capital,” notes that most surveys “have indicated that 90 percent of comic book fans
are male,”
77
and that age, rather than gender, constitutes the dominant demographic
rift within comic book fandom.
Brown’s survey of society’s historically “paternalistic attitude”
78
towards
comic book fanboys, and cultural attempts to censor and regulate comics that did not
“meet the aesthetic requirements of ‘good taste’”
79
or promoted “deviant” forms of
sexuality,
80
is especially interesting to consider in terms of the taste distinctions that
underpinned the Twihate protests at SDCC 2009, and the critiques levied at Twilight
fangirls. Ironically, fanboys at SDCC 2009 replicated the conditions of their own
cultural mistreatment, displacing these taste critiques onto genres that have also been
historically maligned. If, as Brown argues, most comic book conventions are

108
designed to “appeal to a much wider range of fandom than just the comic book
enthusiast,” and that most fans view these conventions as “an individual’s final point
of entry into the social order of comic culture,”
81
comic book fanboys (and fanboys
generally) have been especially reluctant to welcome women and “feminine” media
texts into their “social order.”
Published in 1999 on the verge of SDCC’s attendee boom, industrial
assimilation and diversification, Matthew J. Pustz’s Comic Book Culture: Fanboys
and True Believers directly engages with the evolving comic book convention space,
and fan conflicts within that space. Writing before SDCC’s absorption into the
Hollywood marketing machine, Pustz frames comic book conventions as
commercialized, but ultimately convivial:
Given the crowds and the amount of money changing hands, comic book
conventions are surprisingly peaceful places, which is not to say that they’re
solely friendly spaces, with comic fans of different sorts all happily enjoying
their hobby.
82

Pustz goes on to define what he perceives to be the two central conflicts among
convention attendees. First, he identifies an emerging generational conflict between
the “more traditional fans,” interested in silver age comics and high-end collectibles,
and the “younger (or less mature) fanboys,” whose interest skew towards “hot titles”
that emphasize sexuality and violence.
83
The second conflict Pustz identifies is an
industrial conflict between the fans/publishers of “mainstream” comics and
fans/publishers of “alternative” comics, a distinction that is bound up in hierarchical
genre debates and distinctions between superhero fodder and underground or

109
independent comics.
84
Notably, gender never enters the conversation as a source of
tension, as Pustz’s construction of a comic book convention attendee is always
already coded as male. Unlike Brown, Tankel and Murphy, Pustz does address
female comic book consumers, but they are cited primarily when Pustz recounts
(frequently failed) attempts by comic book publishers to expand their demographic.
85

Pustz aligns comic book fangirls with “alternative” titles and publishing houses,
86

but focuses the bulk of his research on comic book culture around a presumed
fanboy readership.
The two prevailing conflicts that Pustz identified in 1999 have, if anything,
only grown more heated at SDCC as older generations of attendees lament the
ballooning size and shifting function of the convention space as a marketing platform
for film, television and video games. SDCC’s diversification of programming
content (and the ensuing diversification of the audience, courting fanboys of a
variety of media platforms), has allowed mainstream and underground comic book
fans to establish a common critical ground, complaining that only a small percentage
of the convention programming is comic-specific, and that Hollywood production
companies and video game manufacturers have encroached on comic book retailers’
and artists’ spaces in the exhibition hall. As far back as 1999, Pustz and his fellow
comic book fanboys were expressing concern for the “ghettoization” of creative
spaces like Artists’ Alley, and framing the formation of niche comic book
conventions as evidence of “a growing split — and growing awareness of it — in the

110
comic book market and audience.”
87
By 2009, the primary debate was whether or
not SDCC could still be considered a comic book convention at all.
If we speculate about how each of the warring fanboy “factions” Pustz
identified in 1999 might respond to the influx of 10,000 screaming Twilight fangirls
a decade later, we can be begin to understand how Twi-hards might be easily
constructed as a common enemy, or at least put forth as a symbol of what is currently
“wrong” with SDCC. Certainly, the mainstream popularity of the Twilight film
franchise and its young female fanbase wouldn’t sit well with the older generation of
comic book fans, nor would the film generically sit well with the “mainstream”
fanboy contingent circulating around “acceptable” populist genres. While Twilight
has generic ties to both romance melodrama and horror, its chaste construction of
repressed vampiric sexuality and the violence associated with it wouldn’t appeal to
fanboys interested in titles rich with sexualized violence. This genre bias (easily
read as gender bias) was clearly reflected in many of the signs carried by Twihater
protesters, railing against the presumption that Twilight was a horror text and, thus,
the idea that it had a place within SDCC’s generic rubric of programming. The
slogan “Vampires don’t sparkle, they burn,” a reference to one of Meyers’ more
controversial additions to vampire mythology (namely, that vampires avoid the sun
not because it is fatal, but because their skin sparkles like diamonds in direct
sunlight) adorned numerous protest signs. Though it was not the cause of SDCC’s
“mainstreaming” Twilight was symptomatically and strategically deployed by

111
protesters to make hierarchical distinctions between acceptable and unacceptable
mainstreaming of content at the convention.

Comic-Con and the Myth of “Dr. Girlfriend”
Contrary to the continued depiction of comic book convention attendees as
universally male, fangirls compose a growing, thriving minority at SDCC. Though
SDCC does not release official statistics, many new outlets reported that over 40% of
the attendees at SDCC 2009 were women,
88
a spike in female attendance that was
routinely credited to the influx of Twilight fangirls. Demographically, the space still
caters to men 18-34, reflected both in marketing within the space (most notably, the
omnipresence of “booth babes”), and in the way the popular press markets the event
to prospective attendees. Thus, while the massive growth in attendance over the past
decade has further bridged the gender divide, media coverage of SDCC continues to
frame it as a homogenously masculine space.
On the rare occasions that female SDCC attendees are acknowledged by the
popular press, these representations attempt to articulate why women would attend
an event like SDCC. For example, a sidebar in Entertainment Weekly’s July 25,
2008 article on SDCC attempted to humorously outline the con’s consistent “Faces
in the Crowd.”
89
The sidebar supplied a list of five SDCC attendee stereotypes, with
brief descriptions and unflattering cartoon illustrations [Figure 2.3]. The majority of
these “usual suspects” were characterized/visualized as men, from the “Campers,”
who “arrive at the convention ballrooms each morning, burrow in, and remain in

112
their seats all day as panel after panel parades in front of them,” to the “Family
Man,” an aging fan who hasn’t yet realized that “fandom isn’t genetic.” Female
SDCC attendees, according to the piece, can be divided into “Princess Nakeds”
(defined as a “young woman wearing nothing more than skillfully placed electrical
tape”) and “Dr. Girlfriends” (defined as “friends/lover/wives of the Con faithful who
have no interest in the convention but attend solely to show their support”) [Figures
2.4 and 2.5].

Figure 2.3. Faces in the Crowd

113
Figure 2.4. Princess Naked Figure 2.5. Dr. Girlfriends

Admittedly, each of the “types” of SDCC attendee outlined in the
Entertainment Weekly piece perpetuates crude stereotypes about fans, and mocks
male and female fans equally. What makes these two “fangirl” archetypes especially
problematic is not the fact that they trade in negative stereotypes, but that they offer
no real point of identification for most female SDCC attendees. The “Princess
Nakeds” are constructed as sexualized spectacles rather than fans, offering

114
themselves up for the implied male gaze of SDCC attendees. Many fangirls choose
to cosplay in sexually explicit garb, but the fact that the “Princess Naked” is
constructed as a separate category from the “LARPer” (Live Action Role-Player) in
the article is telling. Even if we assume that the term “Princess Naked” is a reference
to the disproportionate number of “Slave Leias” (the iconic gold bikini that Princess
Leia wears in Star Wars: Episode VI- Return of the Jedi) that tend to populate events
like SDCC, the description divorces the archetype from cosplay and LARPing
traditions and makes it difficult to read this (by definition, sexualized) display as a
form of fan production. Wearing her costume of “strategically placed electrical
tape,” the “Princess Naked” isn’t attempting to embody a specific character, she is
simply offering herself up as a sexualized object for the fanboy gaze.
Thus, the characterization of the Princess Naked doesn’t just reflect the
gender imbalance at SDCC, it is continued evidence of Laura Mulvey’s claim that,
“in a world ordered by sexual imbalance, pleasure in looking has been split between
active/male and passive/female.”
90
In this case, the fanboy’s “determining male gaze
projects its phantasy on to the female figure which is styled accordingly.”
91
The fact
that the Princess Naked, in this definition, has self-styled herself as a fantasy figure
only exacerbates the woman’s traditional role as exhibitionist, as something to be
“simultaneously looked at and displayed, with [her] appearance coded for strong
visual and erotic impact so that they can be said to connote a to-be-looked-at-ness.”
92

In this sense, we can read this description of the “Princess Naked” as more
closely aligned with the “booth babes,” hired by the media industry to distribute

115
swag and pose for pictures, than their costumed male counterparts. Though “booth
babes” are routinely dressed as characters from the properties featured at SDCC, they
are not cosplayers or LARPers, and they are not considered “fans.” Extending
debates around the chauvinism that appeared to fuel the Twihate protests, the
sexualized nature of the booth babe’s promotional position was a hot topic of
conversation amongst bloggers and attendees after SDCC 2009. Specifically, a
SDCC promotional contest for the Electronic Arts video game Dante’s Inferno
sparked controversy. The rules of EA’s “Sin to Win” contest were simple: attendees
were prompted to commit an “act of lust” with “any booth babe,” “prove it” by
submitting a photo to EA’s twitter or facebook pages, and “repeat.” The winner was
promised “dinner and a SINful night with two hot girls, a limo service, paparazzi,
and a chest full of booty.”
93

The flyer promoting the contest featured the “Sin to Win” logo (a skull
bookended by silhouettes of naked women with devil horns posed on all fours) as a
tattoo across the chest of a naked woman [Figure 2.6]. The icons that accompanied
the contest instructions (a male silhouette with “you” written across his t-shirt,
standing next to bikini-clad faceless “booth babes”) left no room for the possibility
of a female contestant. As one blogger on Gaming Angels, a site that promotes
female video game journalism, bluntly noted, “Are there male booth babes? No.

116
Figure 2.6. Sin to Win

117
And if you won could you option to go out with two gorgeous men instead? No.”
94

More troubling was the contest’s lack of specificity, which didn’t define “act of
lust,” or place any limitations on which booth babes were to be on the receiving end
of these “acts,” leaving the door open to unwanted advances. Though EA responded
to the controversy, clarifying that “‘Commit acts of lust’ is simply a tongue-in-cheek
way to say take pictures with costumed reps,” and that, further, they “hope you'll
agree that it was all done in the spirit of the good natured fun of Comic-Con,”
95
it is
precisely the equation of the objectification of women with “the good natured fun of
Comic-Con” that many found unsettling.
The “Dr. Girlfriend” archetype put forth by Entertainment Weekly is, in some
sense, more troubling than the implicit alignment of the “Princess Naked” with the
sexually objectified “booth babe.” “Dr. Girlfriend” [Figure 2.7] is a reference to a
character on the cult Cartoon Network Adult Swim series The Venture Bros. (2003-
present), a satirical homage to Hanna-Barbara’s 1960s animated series Jonny Quest.
Costumed in the retro style of Jacqueline Kennedy, and voiced by the male co-writer
of the show, Doc Hammer, the clash between her hyperfeminine aesthetic and
decidedly masculine aural presence has made Dr. Girlfriend one of the show’s most
popular characters, and a favorite character for fangirls to cosplay at SDCC.
Entertainment Weekly’s description of “Dr. Girlfriends” as unwilling
attendees, tagging along after their boyfriends or husbands (the presumed “real”
attendee), coupled with a caricature of a horrified-looking woman being forced to
carry poster tubes and bags of merchandise, goes beyond simply failing to represent

118
female fans. The characterization of the “Dr. Girlfriend” suggests that no woman
could possibly enjoy an experience at SDCC…unless, of course, she’s a “Princess
Naked” exhibitionist. Both the “Princess Naked” and the “Dr. Girlfriend” archetypes
are rooted in a binary view of female sexuality, the former hypersexualized and the
latter heteronormatively coupled. In both cases, importantly, female attendees are
constructed through and defined by their male cohort’s gaze and companionship.

Figure 2.7. Dr. Girlfriend

119
Responding to the pervasive view that women need to be lured (or dragged,
in the case of “Dr. Girlfriend”) to SDCC, the Los Angeles Times published “The
Girls’ Guide to Comic-Con 2009,”
96
featuring a collection of blurbs from online
journalists. Claiming that SDCC was “not just for nerdy guys anymore,” but rather a
“smorgasbord for female fandemonium,” the article went on to detail 22 lures for
female attendees, based on predictions about SDCC’s yet-to-be-released
programming schedule. Of these 22 supposed draws for female attendees, 15 (68%)
revolved around the promise of “eye candy” in the form of male celebrities, 3 (14%)
focused on historically “feminine” genres such as soap operas and weepies, 3 (14%)
focused on television series or films featuring strong female characters, and there
was 1 (4%) token example of demographic and gender neutral programming (Toy
Story 3). Quoting LATimes.com’s Denise Martin: “Boys, girls, old, young, Pixar
can do no wrong by anyone.”
97

The article was supposedly focused on how SDCC is “doing right” by its
female attendees, but how it defined “doing right” was, at best, bound up in
regressive gender norms and, at worst, perpetuated pathologized portraits of fangirls.
Of the countless male celebrities the article cited as incentives for women to attend
SDCC 2009, the discourses that surrounded Prince of Persia’s Jake Gyllenhaal
(“Women will be rushing the stage, offering to do [his] laundry on those washboard
abs that he acquired for the film”), Benicio Del Toro (promoting his turn as The
Wolfman, a man who “can sympathize with your monthly curse”), and Johnny Depp
(who is described as less mad as Alice In Wonderland’s Hatter than the “mad (crazy)

120
crowd of women seeking a glimpse of him”), were especially condescending, and
failed to acknowledge that fanboys engage in similar star worship at SDCC. In the
rare instances that the article acknowledged a desire for fangirls to see themselves
depicted as strong women by the media industry, this “strength” was defined
exclusively in terms of fashion sense (in the case of the television reboot of The
Witches of Eastwick), and empty celebrations of “girl power” (literally empty, as
Echo on Dollhouse was described as “airheady”).
Annalee Newitz, editor of the popular science fiction blog io9, summed up
the Los Angeles Times’ “terrifyingly awful” Girls’ Guide to Comic-Con 2009
succinctly:
So, basically, the message has been that women don’t go to Comic-Con.
Unless somehow we can trick them into it by dangling hunky actors in front
of them. Because of course, women don’t like movies. Or comics. Or TV.
Or videogames. They just like cute boys.
98

Newitz cited a contest awarding tickets to SDCC 2009 run by the blog IGN.com,
99
a
contest that specified that only men need apply,
100
as just one example of the
pervasive gender bias that circulates around constructions of SDCC’s audience.
Ultimately, Newitz’s critique is leveled against the entertainment industry that has
embraced the fanboy as a powerful consumer force (and, equally, has embraced
SDCC as a space where those transactions of cultural and economic capital are
forged), while it continues to render female consumers and fangirls invisible. It was
into this already unreceptive, if not downright hostile, media coverage of female fans
at SDCC that the first reports of Twilight fangirls “ruining” Comic-Con emerged.

121
Twihate (Or, how a bunch of fangirls “ruined” Comic-Con)
To date, the novels of Twilight Saga have collectively sold more than 100
million copies, and the global box office returns for Summit Entertainment’s film
adaptations have surpassed $1.1 billion dollars.
101
Twilight was also the top DVD
title of 2009, collectively selling 9.2 million units over several different releases and
special editions, a figure that its sequel New Moon was poised to surpass its first
weekend in release.
102
The franchise’s success speaks to the appeal of Meyer’s
novels, but more pointedly exposes the frequently untapped or overlooked
purchasing power of female moviegoers. One needn’t look further than the series of
stunned and confused magazine and newspaper articles that accompanied Twilight’s
$69.7 million opening weekend box office returns in November 2008 to see the first
inklings of the Twihate movement at SDCC 2009.
As Courtney Brannon Donoghue argues in an In Media Res post titled
“‘Twilight is a license to print money’: Selling the Female Film Franchise,” Twilight
provokes anxiety because the franchise is “uncontainable within previous
understandings of the male-oriented blockbuster.”
103
Donoghue notes that, by
extension, “it is not only the fans who are constructed as unruly, but Twilight itself is
an unruly female franchise taking over the industry and the box office.”
104

Accordingly, Twilight’s promotional presence and the Twi-hards that it would attract
were warily perceived from the outset as potential “disturbances” to the male-
oriented space of SDCC, attempts to contain that disturbance emerged, and lines

122
were drawn between acceptable “masculine” mainstream franchises and
unacceptable “feminized” content.
Months before the programming had been finalized for SDCC 2009,
Twihaters were grumbling about the potential impact of a Twilight: New Moon
panel, both on the programming schedule and the population of SDCC. Twilight’s
inaugural SDCC panel in 2008 had been a huge draw, and there was no question that
the panel for New Moon would be placed in the hallowed Hall H. With the capacity
to hold approximately 6,000 attendees, Hall H has become the nexus of SDCC’s
programming, home to the media industry’s most anticipated panels and sneak
previews. With the majority of SDCC’s 125,000 attendees vying for a seat, the lines
for Hall H have been known to form the night before SDDC begins. Because Hall H
isn’t cleared between panels, many attendees “camp out” through multiple panels
they have minimal interest in to assure that they’ll have a confirmed seat for, say, the
Iron Man 2 panel that begins in the late afternoon. This debate over the coveted real
estate in Hall H, and who is entitled to it, is where the “Twilight ruined Comic-Con”
movement begins.
The release of the original programming schedule for SDCC 2009 confirmed
many attendees’ worst fears: the two most anticipated panels, Summit
Entertainment’s New Moon panel and Fox’s Avatar panel, were not only scheduled
back-to-back in Hall H, but the Avatar panel was scheduled to directly precede the
New Moon panel. The outraged response from fans was instantaneous and
voracious, with many attendees (correctly) assuming that Twi-hards would begin

123
lining up the night before to ensure their space at the New Moon panel, effectively
filling Hall H before the Avatar fans could arrive. Newitz asserted that this was
simply a case of Twi-hards being more devoted fans, willing to put in more hours
waiting to see their panel, and chided Avatar fans for their entitled response,
105
but
the complaints continued. SDCC’s programming team capitulated to fan concerns
and rearranged the schedule so that the Avatar panel would follow the Summit
Films/New Moon panel on Thursday, but protests from (overwhelmingly male)
journalists, bloggers, and fans persisted.
/Film blogger Peter Sciretta opened a July 10, 2009 article, rhetorically titled
“Will Twilight Ruin This Year’s Comic-Con,” with the following statement: “I’m
not a Twilight hater […] Unlike others, I don’t feel threatened by books, films, or
insane fandom. Why should I? Twilighters can do their own thing, and it really
doesn’t affect me at all…except for when it does.”
106
When it does, Sciretta argues,
is at SDCC. Based on his past experience of the “clusterfuck” caused by Twilight
fangirls at SDCC 2008, Sciretta recalled, “By the time the ‘normal people’ began to
line up hours before the doors were set to open, thousands of Twilighters were
already in line.”
107
The implied “normal people” are arguably fanboys, who Sciretta
characterizes as the true “movie fanatic,” victims despite their privileged “normal”
status. Sciretta’s article pointed towards an impending repeat of this scenario at
SDCC 2009, complaining not for himself, but for the “4,000-6,000 people that will
likely be shut out of these awesome Hall H presentations in order for Twilighters to
save their seats.”
108

124
The hypocrisy of Sciretta’s concerns was not lost on female bloggers and
fangirls. “Apparently,” Annalee Newitz responded, “people who like the Twilight
movie don’t count as movie fans. Nobody who likes that silly vampire movie, New
Moon, full of sparkly otherworldly creatures, would ever be sophisticated enough to
like the silly space movie Avatar, full of sparkly otherworldly creatures.”
109
Echoing
Melissa Click’s concern about the gendered value placed on texts that appeal to men,
and the corresponding disdain of texts and genres women have historically been
drawn to, the perception that Twilight fangirls “don’t count” permeated the SDCC
Twihate movement and the media’s coverage of it. Framing Twilight fangirls, and
women at SDCC by extension, as “uninvited guests,”
110
challenged longstanding
assumptions that fan conventions are unilaterally welcoming, egalitarian, “safe”
spaces. Thus, the “geek caste system”
111
that the Twihate protests revealed also
exposed the fallacy of Comic-Con as a “judgment-free zone,” a place “where
thousands of white men who love facial hair and Boba Fett in equal measure can get
together and feel as one,” while women are constructed as a “disturbance in the
force.”
112

If the Twihate protests, and the press coverage and debates that surrounded
them, confirmed the prevailing assumption that women were indeed “uninvited
guests” at SDCC (both in the eyes of attendees and the industry), they also sought to
regulate the behavior of fangirls and teach them how to be “good” guests. Many of
the Twihate protesters insisted that there was no gender-bias underpinning their
qualms with Twi-hards and Twilighters, framing their dislike around perceptions

125
about which genres or fannish displays were appropriate for SDCC. The conclusion
one can draw from these comments is that fangirls are welcome at SDCC, provided
that they submit to the regulatory gaze of the panopti(comic)con. Jeremy Bentham’s
design principles might not be replicated within the San Diego Convention Center,
but the major effect of the panopticon identified by Michel Foucault remains intact;
namely, “to induce in the inmate a state of conscious and permanent visibility that
assures the automatic functioning of power.”
113
For many fangirls at SDCC 2009,
even those like myself who didn’t consider themselves fans of Twilight, Foucault’s
remark that “Visibility is a trap,”
114
was palpably experienced.
Before the end of the day on Thursday, July 23 (the first full day of SDCC
2009), hastily scrawled cardboard signs had appeared claiming “Twilight Ruined
Comic-Con.” By Saturday, the “protestors” had multiplied and were ironically
prompting the thousands of attendees standing on line to enter SDCC’s annual
Masquerade to “Scream if you think Twilight ruined Comic-Con.” In an LA Weekly
article titled “Comic-Con’s Twilight Protests: Is There a Gender War Brewing?,” Liz
Ohanesian recounts an exchange with one of the protesters who, when asked if he
thought his characterization of Twi-hards as “screeching girls” was sexist, responded
“But girls have been making fun of fanboys for years.”
115
This, coupled with
another (male) protester’s claim that the Twihate movement was not about gender
bias, because he was “getting an equal amount of high-fives from women,”
116
makes
two things abundantly clear. First, Twi-hards were not considered fans by the
Twihate movement, they were considered simply to be “girls.” Second, the

126
“women” who aligned themselves with the Twihate protests were considered
“proper” fangirls. Infantilization, which has long been a hallmark of the
pathologization of fandom, here takes on a gendered condescension and
containment, as the distinction is made between girls (whose movements should be
monitored and regulated) and women (who have alternately “matured” or “know
their place”).
Building on Doreen Massey’s claim that the “gendering of space and place
both reflects and has effects back on the ways in which gender is constructed and
understood in the societies in which we live,”
117
I would argue that the Twihate
protests at SDCC (and Twihate generally) both reflected and exacerbated the
pathologized portrait of the contemporary fangirl, and the fanboy’s interpellation into
hegemonic masculinity. There is a uroboric quality to the gendered concerns about
the “mainstreaming” of SDCC – the feminized mainstream that the Twilight panels
represented, and that Twihaters were railing against, was fueled by fanboys’
coronation as media industry tastemakers, which is turn was made possible by the
mainstreaming of SDCC. As the Twihate protests articulate, SDCC’s current state as
a commercial geek metropolis has created a new form of fanboy flâneur, a “stroller
in the crowd, observing but not observed.”
118
The cultural visibility and power of
the fanboy at SDCC gives him, in a fittingly superheroic fashion, the power of
invisibility. The fanboy’s presence is taken for granted as the norm and he can move
through the space undetected, his credentials unquestioned. The response to the
Twi-hard presence at SDCC also reconfirms the impossibility of a fangirl flâneuse,

127
“precisely because of the one-way-ness and the directionality of the gaze.”
119
We
can see the lingering erotic charge of the flâneur’s gaze in the aforementioned
Princess Naked paradigm, and the continued effort to obscure the gaze of the
flâneuse in the Dr. Girlfriend fallacy. The visibility of Twi-hard fangirls at SDCC
2009, and the anxiety their visibility provoked in many male attendees, points
towards a break in fannish camaraderie along gender lines, in large part due to the
newly privileged status of the fanboy in popular culture.
Addressing Jonathan Gray’s work on anti-fans, Derek Johnson has called for
a shift away from the “Fandom is Beautiful” discourse of the first wave of fan
studies,
120
arguing that “this initial focus on consensus and unity underplayed the
constitutive centrality of antagonism and power,”
121
in all fan communities. This
chapter’s discussion of different forms of Twilight anti-fandom, however cursory,
aligns with Johnson’s conclusive desire to “engage more directly with constitutive
negotiations of hegemony,”
122
particularly the internal hegemonic forces that are
evolving within fandom. Though Twihate and Twatlight’s critiques are derived from
different social contexts and positions of cultural power, their mutual construction of
Twilight fans as “silly girls” reflects the increased power of certain types of fans at
the expense of others. Twihaters, benefitting from their embrace by the greater
institutional hegemony of Hollywood, could be seen as replicating and performing
the industry’s longstanding disregard for young female audiences in an effort to
maintain their dominance. Twatlight, and the less organized modes of anti-
fangirlism that circulate around the property, are the far more interesting case, as

128
their power is derived in no small part from the counter-hegemonic lineage of
fangirls. Anti-fangirls’ construction of Twi-hards as “silly girls” may be informed
and affectionate, better reflecting the feminist values and standards catalogued in the
first wave of fan studies, but they still trade in the gendered derision they themselves
struggle against.

Twilight Glee Ruined Comic-Con: Notes on SDCC 2010
Perhaps in an effort to put the Twihate protests of 2009 behind them or, more
optimistically, capitalize on SDCC 2209’s influx of Twi-hards and incentivize their
return, SDCC 2010 endeavored to acknowledge female attendees through a diverse
array of fangirl-centric programming. In addition to the return of Entertainment
Weekly’s “Girls Who Kick Ass: A New Generation of Heroines” panel, SDCC 2010
programming featured a number of panels on female comic book characters and
creators (“Divas and Golden Lassoes: The LGBT Obsession with Super Heroines,”
“Comic Arts Conference Session #8: Where Are the Action Chicks?,” “The Women
of Marvel”) and female fans (“Geek Girls Exist,” “Her Universe: Shining the
Spotlight on Female Fans”). One panel that indirectly engaged the underlying
gender/genre presumptions that fueled the Twihate protests the year before, “Girls
Gone Genre: Movies, TV, Comics, Web,” was so popular that it was forced to turn
away several hundred fans. These panels, coupled with an influx of high profile
female special guests such as Charlaine Harris (author of the popular Sookie
Stackhouse novels, the inspiration for HBO’s True Blood), Jenette Kahn (former

129
President and Editor-in-Chief of DC Comics), and Moto Hagio (framed by SDCC as
the “mother” of shojo manga), and the growing presence of male “booth babes,”
reflected a dual investment in acknowledging fangirls that had been attending SDCC
long before Twilight’s first appearance, and making first-time fangirls feel welcome.
A few updated Twihate signs proclaiming “Twilight has ruined Comic-Con”

remained, but generally it seemed as though balance had returned to the fannish
Force, with fanboys and fangirls happily cohabitating. Whether this lack of dissent
was due to the fact that Twilight’s presence was limited to an off-site meeting of a
Twilight fan fiction author fangroup at a nearby hotel, and will return if/when
Summit Entertainment brings the cast back to SDCC to promote the two-part film
adaptation of Breaking Dawn in 2011, remains to be seen. Tensions surrounding the
mainstreaming of SDCC were still present and playing out along gendered genre
lines, albeit in less visible and aggressive forms than the Twihate protests of the
previous year.
Once the programming schedule for SDCC 2010 was posted in early July,
and Twilight’s absence was confirmed, several bloggers speculated that “the new
sign thrown around at this year’s convention will be, ‘Glee ruined Comic Con.’”
123

Fueling a fresh wave of articles questioning the mainstreaming of SDCC (one
bluntly titled “‘Glee’ to show at Comic-con – and the nerds are pissed”
124
), Glee
appeared to be marked as the latest text to defile SDCC’s generic roots and fan(boy)
base. The hit Fox television series about musical misfits in a high school glee club
had appeared at SDCC 2009, to strong attendance and no direct interrogation of

130
whether or not the show would be “out of place.” Objections to Glee’s presence at
SDCC 2010 never evolved into organized protests, but the word-of-mouth
complaints levied against the show echoed the Twihate protests of the year before,
namely that as a musical/teen drama Glee didn’t seem to fit into the science fiction-
horror-fantasy rubric of “acceptable” genres for SDCC to promote, and that its
massive popularity and mainstream success diluted SDCC as a venue to launch cult
properties. Musicals may come in a close second behind romance melodramas as far
as historcially “feminized” genres go, but Gleeks (as fans of the show refer to
themselves) were not characterized in the same manner as Twi-hards. Animosity
was certainly directed at the show, but rarely at its fans. Caught in the traffic jam
that the Glee cast signing caused on the final day of SDCC 2010, I overheard several
attendees express generic concerns about SDCC’s embrace of populist programs, but
there were no perceptible attempts to regulate the behavior of Gleeks or actively
make them feel unwelcome. And despite the fact that the vast majority of those who
attended the Glee panel were fangirls, Gleeks were not feminized/demonized in the
same manner as Twi-hards had been the previous year.
In one online poll forecasting what the hot new “protest” at SDCC 2010
would be, “‘Glee’ is here but Peter Jackson Isn’t” received the largest number of
votes (39%). The results of this poll aren’t nearly as revealing as its title: “‘Twilight’
won’t be at comic-con, so what will we be complaining about this year?”
125
The
debates surrounding the growing size and scope of SDCC will undoubtedly continue,
as fanboys and fangirls alike continue to grapple with their comparative visibilities

131
and positions of power in popular culture. Fanboys, instead of assigning blame to an
influx of fangirls and supposedly “feminine” mainstream texts, must address their
own complicity in SDCC’s absorption into Hollywood’s marketing machinery, and
acknowledge that their “empowered” status at SDCC is a byproduct of that
assimilation. Likewise, fangirls need to engage with their moments of cultural
visibility through equally visible displays that speak back to both the media’s
continued pathologization of fangirls and intra-fandom attempts to regulate the taste
levels and movements of fangirls. This inevitably means moving anti-fangirl
critiques beyond the confines of the LiveJournal fangirl community, and into more
public (virtual or real) forums.
Again, Twilight presents a particularly conflicted case study in this regard.
Klink concludes her thesis on Twatlight anti-fandom by posing a number of pointed
questions that deserve ongoing consideration:
Why should a young woman who enjoys Twilight identify herself as a
Twilight fan when she knows that she will be ridiculed for it, that she is
stepping into a role that will brand her as an absolutely feminine, absolutely
silly creature? Why should a young woman who has complex feelings about
Twilight, including affective engagement with it, identify herself as a
Twilight fan when she knows that this label will never accurately represent
her feelings on the topic?
126

If the media’s pervasive coverage of the Twilight phenomenon and Twihate protests
at SDCC 2009 are any indication, self-indentifying as a Twilight fangirl, much less
defending them, is met with an abundance of cultural disincentives. Echoing Click’s
remarks about the complex relationship many Twilight fangirls have with the text,
and concerns that this complexity will never be adequately acknowledged, my own

132
ambivalence regarding the frequent conflation of “fangirl” and “Twi-hard” is born
out of the lack of diversity and complexity in that cultural construction. Ironically,
one needn’t look further than SDCC to see the diversity and complexity of
contemporary fan culture. Perhaps, if future SDCC attendees can divorce the event’s
diversification, both in terms of genre and gender, with the taint of “mainstreaming”
and the loss of “authentic” fan culture at SDCC, they could focus their collective
energies on who/what is truly fueling the event’s mainstreaming and purportedly
“ruining” SDCC.

133

Chapter Two Endnotes
1
Joli Jensen, “Fandom as Pathology: the Consequences of Characterization,” in The
Adoring Audience, ed. Lisa A. Lewis (New York: Routledge, 1992), 15.

2
Melissa Click, “‘Rabid,’ ‘obsessed,’ and ‘frenzied’: Understanding Twilight
Fangirls and the Gendered Politics of Fandom,” Flow, December 18, 2009,
http://flowtv.org/2009/12/rabid-obsessed-and-frenzied-understanding-twilight-
fangirls-and-the-gendered-politics-of-fandom-melissa-click-university-of-missouri/.

3
Ibid.

4
“Definition: Fangirl,” Urbandictionary.com,
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=fangirl.

5
See: Carrie Anne Platt’s “Cullen Family Values: Gender and Sexual Politics in the
Twilight Series,” Katherine Kane’s “A Very Queer Refusal: The Chilling Effect of
the Cullen’s Heteronormatice Embrace,” and Tricia Clasen‘s “Taking a Bite Out of
Love: The Myth of Romantic Love in the Twilight Series,” all in Bitten by Twilight:
Youth Culture, Media, and the Vampire Franchise, eds. Melissa A. Click, Jennifer
Stevens Aubrey, and Elizabeth Behm-Morawitz (New York: Peter Lang Publishing,
2010).

6
See: Melissa A. Click, Jennifer Stevens Aubrey, and Elizabeth Behm-Morawitz,
“Introduction,” in Bitten by Twilight: Youth Culture, Media, and the Vampire
Franchise, eds. Melissa A. Click, Jennifer Stevens Aubrey, and Elizabeth Behm-
Morawitz (New York: Peter Lang Publishing, 2010), 1-13.

7
Tania Modleski, Loving with a Vengeance: Mass-Produced Fantasies for Women
(Hamden, CT: Archon Books, 1982).

8
Janice A. Radway, Reading the romance: Women, patriarchy, and popular
literature (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1984).

9
Joli Jensen, “Fandom as Pathology,” 18.

10
Ibid., 19.

11
Madeline LeNore “Flourish” Klink, Laugh Out Loud In Real Life: Women’s
Humor and Fan Identity (Masters Thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology,
2010), 60.

134

12
Click, “‘Rabid,’ ‘obsessed,’ and ‘frenzied’”.

13
Some examples of redemptive scholarship on soap fans includes: Nancy K.
Byam’s Tune In, Log On: Soaps, Fandom, and Online Community (Sage
Publications, 1999), Jennifer Hayward’s Consuming Pleasures: Active Audiences
and Serial Fiction from Dickens to Soap Opera (Lexington: The University of
Kentucky Press, 1997), and C. Lee Harrington and Denise Bielby’s Soap Fans:
Pursuing Pleasure and Making Meaning in Everyday Life (Philadelphia: Temple
University Press, 1995).

14
See: Radway, Reading the romance.

15
See: Barbara Ehrenreich, Elizabeth Hess and Gloria Jacobs, “Beatlemania: Girls
Just Want to Have Fun,” in The Adoring Audience, ed. Lisa A. Lewis (New York:
Routledge, 1992), 84-106.

16
Radway, Reading the Romance, 18.

17
Jonathan Gray “New Audiences, New Textualities: Anti-Fans and Non-Fans,”
International Journal of Cultural Studies Vol. 6 No. 1 (March 2003), 66.

18
Ibid., 71.

19
Ibid., 70.

20
Jonathan Gray, “Antifandom and the Moral Text: Television Without Pity and
Textual Dislike” American Behavioral Scientist 48.7 (March 2005), 840.

21
Gray, “New Audiences, New Textualities,” 73.

22
Gray, “Antifandom and the Moral Text,” 845.

23
Jessica Sheffield and Elyse Merlo, “Biting Back: Twilight Anti-Fandom and the
Rhetoric of Superiority” in Bitten by Twilight: Youth Culture, Media, and the
Vampire Franchise, eds. Melissa A. Click, Jennifer Stevens Aubrey, and Elizabeth
Behm-Morawitz (New York: Peter Lang Publishing, 2010), 209.

24
Gray, “Antifandom and the Moral Text,” 842.

25
Gray, “Antifandom and the Moral Text,” 842.

135

26
Klink, Laugh Out Loud In Real Life, 20-21.

27
Ibid., 75.

28
Ibid., 23.

29
Ibid., 23.

30
“Livejournal community: Twatlight,” Livejournal.com,
http://community.livejournal.com/ontd_twatlight/.

31
Klink, Laugh Out Loud In Real Life, 13.

32
“Livejournal community: Twatlight.”

33
Klink, Laugh Out Loud In Real Life, 12.

34
“Livejournal community: Lion Lamb,” Livejournal.com,
http://community.livejournal.com/lion_lamb/.

35
“Livejournal community: Twilight Sucks,” Livejournal.com,
http://community.livejournal.com/twilight_sucks.

36
“Livejournal community: I Hate Twilight,” Livejournal.com,
http://community.livejournal.com/i_hate_twilight.

37
Klink, Laugh Out Loud In Real Life, 14.

38
Camille Bacon-Smith, Enterprising Women: Television Fandom and the Creation
of Popular Myth (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1992), 94.

39
Ibid., 94-96.

40
Ibid., 94.

41
Ibid., 96.

42
Ibid., 96-97.

43
Ibid., 97.

136

44
“Controversy: Are some ‘Mary Sues’ just strong women?,” Fanlore.org,
http://fanlore.org/wiki/Mary_Sue#Controversy:_Are_some_.22Mary_Sues.22_just_s
trong_women.3F.

45
Pat Pflieger, “Too Good to be True: 150 Years of Mary Sue,” (paper presented at
the American Culture Association conference, San Diego, CA, March 31, 1999)
http://www.merrycoz.org/papers/MARYSUE.HTM.

46
Ibid.

47
Ibid.

48
Ibid.

49
Stephenie Meyer, “The Story Behind Twilight,” The Official Website of Stephenie
Meyer, http://www.stepheniemeyer.com/twilight.html.

50
“Badfic,” fanlore.org, http://fanlore.org/wiki/Badfic.

51
Kristina Busse and Karen Hellekson, “Introduction: Work in Progress” in Fan
Fiction and Fan Communities in the Age of the Internet, eds. Karen Hellekson and
Kristina Busse (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2006), 11.

52
“The Universal Mary Sue Litmus Test,”
http://www.springhole.net/quizzes/marysue.htm.

53
“Mary Sue,” fanlore.org, http://fanlore.org/wiki/Mary_Sue.

54
“1000 Things We Learned About SMeyer From Reading Her Books,”
twilightsucks.com,
http://twilightsucks.com/forum/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=15101&start=0.

55
Bacon-Smith, Enterprising Women, 97.

56
Brad Brevett, “Pattinson Gets to the Heart of Stephenie Meyer and her ‘Twilight’
Series,” ropesofsilicon.com, November 12, 2008,
http://www.ropeofsilicon.com/article/pattinson-gets-to-the-heart-of-stephenie-meyer-
and-her-twilight-series.

57
Boosette, “Storming the Battlements or: Why the Culture of Mary Sue Shaming is
Bully Culture,” dreamwidth.org, http://boosette.dreamwidth.org/864733.html.

137

58
Ibid.

59
PPC Board, “FAQ For Other People: The Gender Card,”
http://ppc.wikia.com/wiki/FAQ:For_Other_People#THE_GENDER_CARD.

60
Ibid.

61
Sheffield and Merlo, “Biting Back,” 210.

62
Ibid., 219.

63
Gray, “Antifandom and the Moral Text,” 841.

64
Ibid., 848.

65
Ibid., 852.

66
Gray, “New Audiences, New Textualities,” 72.

67
Ibid., 71.

68
Gray, “Antifandom and the Moral Text,” 840-841.

69
Victoria K. Gosling “Girls Allowed? The Marginalization of Female Sports
Fans,” in Fandom: Identities and Communities in a Mediated World, eds. Jonathan
Gray, Cornel Sandvoss, and C. Lee Harrington (New York: New York University
Press, 2007), 260.

70
Bacon-Smith, Enterprising Women, 9.

71
Gerard Jones, Men of Tomorrow: Geeks, Gangsters and the Birth of the Comic
Book (New York: Basic Books, 2004), 32.

72
Charlotte Brunsdon, The Feminist, The Housewife, and the Soap Opera (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2000), 29.

73
Jonathan David Tankel and Keith Murphy, “Collecting Comic Books: A Study of
the Fan and Curatorial Consumption,” in Theorizing Fandom: Fans, Subculture and
Identity, ed. Cheryl Harris and Alison Alexander (Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press,
1998), 60.

138

74
Ibid., 60-62.

75
Ibid., 60.

76
Ibid., 61.

77
Jeffrey A. Brown, “Comic Book Fandom and Cultural Capital” Journal of Popular
Culture 30(4) Spring 1997 p. 16.

78
Ibid., 18.

79
Ibid., 19.

80
Ibid., 20.

81
Ibid., 17.

82
Matthew J. Pustz, Comic Book Culture: Fanboys and True Believers (Jackson:
University Press of Mississippi, 1999), 164.

83
Ibid., 164-165.

84
Ibid., 165.

85
Ibid., 56-57.

86
Ibid., 83-84.

87
Ibid., 165.

88
Vaneta Rogers, “Fangirl Invasion: The War of the Sexes Hits Geekdom,”
Newsarama.com, September 17, 2009, http://www.newsarama.com/film/090917-
fangirl-3-gender-war.html.

89
Marc Bernadin, “Faces in the Crowd,” EW.com, July 18, 2008,
http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,20213117,00.html.

90
Laura Mulvey, “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema” Film Theory and
Criticism (5
th
Edition) 837.

91
Ibid., 837.

139

92
Ibid., 837.

93
Brian Crecente, “EA Provides ‘Girls,” Asks Gamers To Sin To Win,” Kotaku.com,
July 24, 2009, http://kotaku.com/5322216/ea-provides-girls-asks-gamers-to-sin-to-
win.

94
Cherith, “Sexism and the EA/Dante’s Inferno – ‘Sin to Win’ Contest,”
Gamingangels.com, July 24, 2009, http://www.gamingangels.com/2009/07/sexism-
and-the-eadantes-inferno-sin-to-win-contest/.

95
Owen Good, “EA Apoligizes for ‘Sin to Win’ Booth Babe Promo,” Kotaku.com,
July 25, 2009, http://kotaku.com/5322781/ea-apologizes-for-sin-to-win-booth-babe-
promo.

96
“The Girl’s Guide to Comic-Con 2009,” The Los Angeles Times,
http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/la-et-girls-guide-to-comic-con-
pg,0,4051009.photogallery.

97
See: slide twelve in “The Girl’s Guide to Comic-Con 2009.”

98
Annalee Newitz, “Female Fans Prepare to Trample Men at Comic-Con,” io9.com,
July 10, 2009, http://io9.com/5312056/female-fans-prepare-to-trample-men-at-
comic+con.

99
Johanna, “Only Boys Cab Win Trip to Comic Con,” Comicsworthreading.com,
June 10, 2009, http://comicsworthreading.com/2009/06/10/only-boys-can-win-trip-
to-comic-con/.

100
After vocal protests from fangirls, IGN.com offered an apology and established a
separate contest for women who wanted to compete for tickets to SDCC 2009.

101
Dorothy Pomerantz, “Inside the ‘Twilight’ Empire,” Forbes.com, June 28, 2010.
http://www.forbes.com/2010/06/22/twilight-kristen-stewart-robert-pattinson-
business-entertainment-celeb-100-10-twilight_print.html.

102
Nicole Sperling, “‘New Moon’ DVD sales on track to surpass ‘Twilight,’”
ew.com, March 23, 2010, http://hollywoodinsider.ew.com/2010/03/23/new-moon-
dvd-sales/.

140

103
Courtney Brannon Donoghue, “‘Twilight is a license to print money’: Selling the
Female Film Franchise,” In Media Res,
http://mediacommons.futureofthebook.org/imr/2010/06/29/twilight-license-print-
money-selling-female-film-franchise.

104
Ibid.

105
Newitz, “Female Fans Prepare to Trample Men at Comic-Con.”

106
Peter Sciretta, “Will Twilight Ruin This Year’s Comic-Con?” Slashfilm.com, July
10, 2009, http://www.slashfilm.com/2009/07/10/will-twilight-ruin-this-years-comic-
con/.

107
Ibid.

108
Ibid.

109
Newitz, “Female Fans Prepare to Trample Men at Comic-Con.”

110
Arturo R. Garcia, “The Pop Culture Jump-Off: Notes from the 2009 Comic-Con,”
Racialicious.com, August 4, 2009, http://www.racialicious.com/2009/08/04/the-pop-
culture-jump-off-notes-from-the-2009-comic-con/.

111
Kyle Buchanan, “Why Must Twilight-Obsessed Women Ruin Comic-con for
Avatar-Obsessed Men?,” Movieline.com, July 10, 2009,
http://www.movieline.com/2009/07/why-must-twilight-obsessed-women-ruin-
comic-con-for-avatar-obsessed-men.php.

112
Ibid.

113
Michel Foucault, Discipline & Punish: The Birth of the Prison (New York:
Random House, 1995), 201.

114
Ibid., 200.

115
Liz Ohanesian, “Comic-Con’s Twilight Protests: Is There a Gender War
Brewing?,” Laweekly.com, July 28, 2009,
http://blogs.laweekly.com/style_council/comic-con-2009/twilight-protests/.

116
Ibid.

141

117
Doreen Massey, Space, Place, and Gender (Minneapolis, University of
Minnesota Press, 1994), 186.

118
Ibid., 234.

119
Ibid., 234.

120
Jonathan Gray, Cornel Sandvoss, and C. Lee Harrington, “Introduction: Why
Study Fans?,” in Fandom: Identities and Communities in a Mediated World, eds.
Jonathan Gray, Cornel Sandvoss, and C. Lee Harrington (New York: New York
University Press, 2007), 3.

121
Derek Johnson, “Fan-tagonism: Factions, Institutions, and Constitutive
Hegemonies of Fandom,” in Fandom: Identities and Communities in a Mediated
World, eds. Jonathan Gray, Cornel Sandvoss, and C. Lee Harrington (New York:
New York University Press, 2007), 285.

122
Ibid., 299.

123
Maggie, “Countdown to Comic-Con 2010!,” Cinemaniacchronicles.com, June 10,
2010, http://cinemanicchronicles.moviemansguide.com/2010/06/10/countdown-to-
comic-con-2010/.

124
Jennifer Reed, “‘Glee’ to show at Comic-Con – and the nerds are pissed,”
Sdnn.com, June 10, 2010, http://www.sdnn.com/sandiego/2010-06-28/local-county-
news/glee-to-show-at-comic-con-and-the-nerds-are-pissed.

125
Darren Franich, “‘Twilight’ won’t be at Comic-Con, so what will we be
complaining about this year?,” EW.com, July 8, 2010,
http://popwatch.ew.com/2010/07/08/twilight-not-at-comic-con/.

126
Klink, Laugh Out Loud In Real Life, 75.

142
Chapter Three: Is Fan Production Frakked?
Ancillary Content Models, the Fanboy Auteur, and the Regifting Economy
If creators do not ultimately control what we take from their
transmedia stories, this does not prevent them from trying to shape
our interpretations.
- Henry Jenkins
1

But perhaps in a digital era, and under the rubric of new media, we
are witnessing an earnest struggle to create a new variety of aura and
author and to return (at least symbolically) to ‘older’ models of
creation and viewership.
- Jonathan Gray
2

As convergence culture has mainstreamed participatory spectatorship, and
what was once considered “fannish” engagement is normalized and adopted by a
general audience, the media industry has been forced to reassess its relationship with
consumers who seek a dialogic relationship with media texts and producers.
Convergence culture’s dichotomous nature as “both a top-down corporate-driven
process and a bottom-up consumer-driven process,”
3
occupies an increasingly
conflicted position as “media producers are responding to these newly empowered
consumers in contradictory ways, sometimes encouraging change, sometimes
resisting what they see as renegade behavior.”
4
As noted in the introduction, Henry
Jenkins breaks the industry’s response to “fan productivity [going] public”
5
into two
general camps: prohibitionists and collaborationists.
6
Prohibitionists, primarily “old
media” companies such as the film and television industries, initially attempted to
“regulate and criminalize many forms of fan participation that once fell below their
radar,”
7
but have grown visible and voluminous online. This regulatory approach to

143
fan participation and production, typically marked by cease and desist letters on the
grounds of copyright infringement, is on the wane. However, the lingering threat of
legal censure remains one of the central reasons why fans are hesitant to move away
from a strictly non-commercial model of fan production and distribution. As old
media companies, particularly the television industry, have begun to adopt a more
collaborationist approach, they have also begun “experimenting with new
approaches that see fans as important collaborators in the production of content and
as grassroots intermediaries helping to promote the franchise.”
8
At first glance, this
would appear to be a tentative industrial endorsement of fandom, a step towards
acknowledging fannish textual production and its importance to the promotion and
success of the media properties they engage with. The television industry’s move
towards collaborationist practices has been lauded by many convergence scholars,
frequently at the expense of interrogating how this new collaborationist approach to
fandom has traded legal censure for creative censure. To what degree the media
industry’s collaborationist turn is motivated by a desire to colonize and control
fandom (or, at the very least, endorse a version of fandom that can be most
effectively capitalized on), is unclear.
The goal of this chapter is to outline a number of reasons why certain sectors
of fandom are wary of the tactical collaborationist embrace of the media industry,
and point to the potential repercussions of selling a diluted and differently valued
form of fandom to a general audience. Prohibitionist approaches to fandom typically
gets more press,
9
and are more frequently debated and discussed in fannish circles,

144
often at the expense of interrogating collaborationist strategies. My intention here is
not to dismiss collaborationist approaches or unilaterally frame the media industry’s
collaborationist turn as a calculated, covert movement to co-opt fandom for profit.
Rather, this intervention in the prevailing celebratory response to the industry’s
evolving collaborationist stance strives to address what forms of fan production are
being valued, which sections of fandom are being courted as proper “fans,” and how
these issues are gendered by the industry, scholars, and fans alike. The central
concern regarding the emergence of these “official” or “authorized” online fannish
spaces, concisely outlined by aca-fan Kristina Busse, is that “certain groups of fans
can become legit if and only if they follow certain ideas, don’t become too
rebellious, too pornographic, don’t read too much against the grain.”
10
In short,
grassroots fandom’s collaboration with the industry is equated with “legitimacy,” but
this legitimacy can be gained only if grassroots fandom agrees to play by the media
industry’s rules.
The “certain groups of fans” Busse is referring to, those too “pornographic,”
those who “read too much against the grain,” are likely the writers and readers of
slash fiction, the creators and consumers of slash art and vids. Historically
celebrated in the first wave of fan studies in the early 1990s for their subversive
readings of heteronormative media texts, slash as a genre of fan production has been
dominated by female authors and readers. Consequently, while Busse’s concerns
might be directed towards slash fans specifically, they’re addressed generally at
female fans, their reading practices, and their gradual exclusion as “legitimate fans”

145
in the industry’s emerging collaborationist model. This ultimately exclusionary
gesture of inclusivity results in what Roberta Pearson identifies as one of the central
paradoxes of convergence culture, “that the very digital media that have been hailed
as blurring lines between producers and consumers and creating a more participatory
culture instead reinforce cultural hierarchies.”
11
Though television’s new
collaborationist approach endorses fannish, participatory approaches to consumption
generally, it does so through a hierarchical fragmentation of existing fan
communities and fan practices in an attempt to construct an authorized, “official”
fandom. It is useful to return to the distinction between affirmational and
transformative modes of fannish engagement outlined in the introduction. The
media industry’s creation of “official” fan enclaves unsurprisingly privileges
affirmational modes of consumption, promotion, and singular (frequently hegemonic
or heterosexist) textual interpretations that neatly align with an intended/authorial
reading of the text. Transformational texts or fans’ transformative works have little
place in this model, and when they are solicited it is through a tightly regulated
framework of contest rules and terms of use.
The majority of this chapter focuses on the temporal, ideological, and
creative strictures of ancillary content models, the economic and creative lynchpin of
the television industry’s collaborative outreach to grassroots fandom. This
discussion of ancillary content models, the significance of the fanboy auteurs who
oversee them, and their potential impact on fandom, is directed through a critical
look at the Sci-Fi (now SyFy) Channel’s cult hit Battlestar Galactica (2004-2009)
12

146
and an analysis of how the television industry is adapting fandom’s gift economy for
its own promotional and economic gain. This test case implicitly interrogates who,
precisely, the media industry is reaching out to, who is reaching back, who is
rejecting this collaborationist outreach, and what this means for the future of online
fandom. In particular, this chapter expresses concerns about the general audience that
is being indoctrinated with a very discrete definition of what it is to be a “fan” by the
media industry. Even the most “collaborationist” properties and producers continue
to exhibit the prohibitionist tendency to “imagine participation as something they
can start and stop, channel and reroute, commodify and market,”
13
and consequently
it is vital to interrogate what this collaborationist model is costing both existing fan
communities and those entering fandom for the first time through these industrially
designed and sanctioned fan spaces.

Transformative Works, Transmedia Storytelling & Ancillary Content Models:
Differences Defined
Decades before scholars were touting the creative and narrative potential of
the internet, fans were crafting cross-media narratives through the production and
(limited) distribution of fan fiction, fan art and fan vids. Already proficient in
narrative world building and collaborative authoriship, fans were not only early
adopters of new media technology, but they adeptly exploited the distributive power
of the internet in their construction of unofficial, transmedia extensions of pop
culture texts. Likewise, commercial or synergistic endeavors in narrative

147
intertextuality through the creation of “merchandise to surround a successful media
element is nothing new – the works of Charles Dickens spawned Pickwick Cigars
and even taxis – and the creation of spin-off content from a popular story is a long-
familiar practice.”
14
Scholars working on both these “official” and “unofficial”
instances of cross-media narrative world building have introduced an array of jargon
to address this form of narrative manifest destiny, but I would like to focus on three:
transformative works, transmedia stories, and ancillary content models.
Fans and fan studies scholars have increasingly rallied around the word
“transformative” to describe fans’ creative output and textual expansion. In an effort
to debunk the perception that fan works are inherently derivative, and celebrate their
creative and narrative contributions to the source text, defining fan production as
“transformative” serves a dual purpose. This dual purpose is outlined by the
Organization for Transformative Works (OTW), a non-profit organization formed in
2007 by fans to actively “work toward a future in which all fannish works are
recognized as legal and transformative and accepted as legitimate creative
activity.”
15
Following this interconnected emphasis on originality and legality, the
OTW offers the following definition of what makes a work “transformative”:
Transformative works are creative works about characters or settings created
by fans of the original work, rather than by the original creators.
Transformative works include but are not limited to fanfiction, real person
fiction, fan vids, and graphics. A transformative use is one that, in the words
of the U.S. Supreme Court, ''adds something new, with a further purpose or
different character, altering the [source] with new expression, meaning, or
message.'' A story from Voldemort's perspective is transformative, so is a
story about a pop star that illustrates something about current attitudes toward
celebrity or sexuality.
16

148
Importantly, this definition of what makes a fan text “transformative” is grounded in
creative contribution or commentary rather than overt parody, which has historically
demarcated the forms of fannish production that are legally protected by fair use.
17

While it strategically makes sense for the OTW to expand its definition in order to
legally cover a wider array of fan production, it is important to note that “parody” is
generally considered to be a more popular genre amongst male fan producers. This
move away from parody and towards transformativity as a legal benchmark for fan
production, and the definition’s closing nod to stories containing sexual content,
would appear to be addressing female fans and concerned with protecting “feminine”
modes of fan production. Because creative contribution to the source text is central
to the legal protection and artistic recognition that fans seek, “transformative work”
has also been embraced by aca-fen with a vested interested in preserving fans’ rights
to write (or rewrite) within the margins of a source text through their own textual
production.
For those examining commercial endeavors to spread content across several
media platforms, there is no academic consensus on a singular piece of jargon that
adequately describes all models of cross-media textual production. As buzzwords
like “synergy” and “intertextuality” have given way to discussions of the “media
mix,”
18
“paratext,”
19
and “screen bleed,”
20
Henry Jenkins’ term “transmedia
storytelling” has been the most readily embraced by the industry. Broadly defined
by Jenkins as a narrative that “unfolds across multiple media platforms, with each
new text making a distinct and valuable contribution to the whole,”
21
transmedia

149
storytelling has been rapidly adopted as a content model and cross-promotional
device for media properties with fannish appeal, simultaneously framed as a
commercial boon for producers and a creative boon for fans. Jenkins has since
refined his definition of transmedia storytelling slightly, as “a process where integral
elements of a fiction get dispersed systematically across multiple delivery channels
for the purpose of creating a unified and coordinated entertainment experience,” with
“no one single source or ur-text where one can turn to gain all of the information
needed to comprehend the [fictional] universe.”
22
It is through an overview of
Jenkins’ description of transmedia storytelling and Geoffrey Long’s elaboration on
Jenkins’ work that I arrive at my own entry into this already overcrowded field of
convergence-era terminology: ancillary content models.
Using The Matrix franchise (which augmented the film trilogy with a series
of animated short films, comic books, video games, and an MMORPG) as his
primary test case, Jenkins acknowledges the commercial impetus of the recent drive
towards transmedia storytelling, but ultimately stresses the creative potential they
provide both artists and fans. Invoking Pierre Lévy’s definition of texts that function
as cultural attractors, creating a circuit of expression where the activity of creators
and interpreters mutually sustains each other,
23
Jenkins extends Levy’s terminology
to claim that transmedia texts are both cultural attractors and “cultural activator[s],
setting into motion their decipherment, speculation and elaboration.”
24
This desire to
decipher, speculate, and expand has always been affiliated with fans’ textual play
and production, filling in narrative gaps and exploring textual excesses through the

150
creation of fan fiction, fan art, fan vids and role-playing games (RPGs).
Consequently, one could argue that a text doesn’t need to be conceptualized as a
transmedia story to function as a cultural activator, as fans have been deciphering
and (unofficially) unfolding narratives across multiple media platforms for
generations. And, as Long makes clear in his discussion of Charles Dickens’ serial
fiction, transmedia storytelling is not a digital phenomenon or solely a product of
media convergence: there are an abundance of “Netless” examples of commercial
transmedia franchises, ranging from the prominent and prolific (e.g. Star Wars
25
) to
the potentially problematic (e.g. The Bible
26
).
What distinguishes contemporary commercial transmedia narratives from
their synergistic predecessors is their implicit promise to decentralize authorship and
promote collaboration, between creators in different mediums, as well as between
creators and fans. While Jenkins’ invocation of Lévy emphasizes the decentralized
or collaborative model of authorship these systems foster,
27
but with the qualification
that “the most successful transmedia franchises have emerged when a single creator
or creative unit maintains control,”
28
complicating a reading of these systems as
democratizing creative ownership. Borrowing a turn of phrase from Roberta
Pearson, this is “the Jekyll and Hyde of transmedia storytelling.”
29
For all of the rich
encyclopedic and elaborative narrative potential that transmedia stories offer creators
and fans, the consumptive demands and creative strictures they place on fans have
received little scholarly attention. This has resulted in a conflict between those who
claim that transmedia storytelling systems offer fans sophisticated webs of content to

151
explore and enhance, and those that see these webs as precisely that: a mode of
confining and regulating fannish analysis and textual production.
Ancillary content models differ from Jenkins’ transmedia storytelling model
in five meaningful ways. First, they are medium specific in regards to their source
text: ancillary content models are a phenomenon closely linked to the resurgence of
densely mythological, hyper-serialized television series from 2004 to the present
(e.g. Battlestar Galactica, Heroes, Lost, Supernatural). Second, the content of
ancillary content models is ostensibly free. Typically housed on the television
series’ network owned and operated website, ancillary content comes in the form of
webisodes, webcomics, weekly episodic podcasts by the show’s creative team,
blogs/vlogs, alternate reality games (ARGs), wikis, and a range of other output
aimed at fans. While fans don’t directly purchase these textual expansions and
supplementations, as they would components of a transmedia story, this ancillary
content is overrun with advertisements in the form of banner ads and embedded
commercials. The third distinction is that ancillary content models offer textual
material designed to supplement and reinforce the “primary” text/television series.
Unlike transmedia stories, which can be accessed and enjoyed compartmentally,
30

with any extension of the transmedia story functioning as a potential narrative entry
point, ancillary content models demand an existing, comprehensive knowledge of the
television series, and implicitly assume that linear viewing patterns will privilege the
source text/television series. Hence, the hierarchy between “primary” and
“ancillary” content.

152
Coupled with this emphasis on a “primary” text is the fourth distinction
between transmedia stories and ancillary content models. Geoffrey Long, building
on Jenkins’ work, identifies foresight as one of the key distinctions between
contemporary transmedia stories and their cross-media predecessors, with “each
component […] designed as canonical from the outset.”
31
If foresight is a hallmark
of transmedia stories, ancillary content models are characterized primarily by
hindsight, encouraging audiences and fans to repeatedly consume the return to the
primary text under the auspices of revealing new layers of meaning. This can come
in the form of streaming and/or archiving episodes of the television series online,
episodic podcasts that address the pre-production process, vlogs that discuss
costuming or music decisions, blogs that answer fans’ questions about plot points
from last week’s episode, and so on. Though Long makes an important distinction
between “hard/a priori” transmedia stories (those designed as a transmedia story
from the outset), “soft/a posteriori” transmedia stories (a transmedia story created
after an initial text becomes successful), and “chewy” transmedia stories (those that
combine “hard” and “soft” techniques),
32
Long’s definition of what constitutes a
transmedia story ultimately relies on canonicity, an emphasis that is shared by
ancillary content models. That is to say, whether they are “hard,” “soft,” or
“chewy,” each component of a transmedia story is canonized, or recognized by
creators and consumers alike as an official facet of a larger narrative universe.
Though ancillary content models do occasionally add new canonical narrative
content (webisodes being the most prevalent example), they primarily function to

153
reinforce and clarify the canon of the primary text, in this case a serialized television
program. Stressing that the intent of ancillary content is to reveal new layers of
meaning rather than uncover new layers of meaning, clearly articulates the shift in
agency that occurs when ancillary content immediately elucidates canonical
ambiguities rather than allowing fans the time and space to explore textual
potentialities themselves.
Finally, and perhaps most importantly, ancillary content models occasionally
move beyond transmedia storytelling’s model of offering fans raw narrative material
to inspire their productions by overtly soliciting the textual production of fans. This
would appear to be a form of collaborative outreach, encouraging fans’ narrative
input as well as offering fans a distribution platform for their creative output.
However, these forms of “authorized” fan production, frequently solicited through
contests with lengthy terms and conditions demarcating what fans are allowed to
produce and who will ultimately own their work, need to be viewed more critically.
Mark Andrejevic has expressed concerns about the growing industrial reliance on
audience labor by interrogating the continued use of Jenkins’ once-empowering
description of fans as “textual poachers,”
33
noting that, “the ‘poachers’ are helping to
work the field for its owners,”
34
with more and more frequency within convergence
culture. Drawing on Michel de Certeau’s description of readers as textual travelers,
moving “across lands belonging to someone else, like nomads poaching their way
across fields they did not write, despoiling the wealth of Egypt to enjoy it
themselves,”
35
Jenkins’ was the one of the first to celebrate fans’ ability to

154
simultaneously poach and enrich the “fields” of various media properties. Fans’
propensity for “despoiling” was, in turn, central to establishing the fandom-as-
resistance paradigm that dominated the first wave of fan studies in the late 1980s and
early 1990s.
Consequently, it is noteworthy that Jenkins abandoned de Certeau’s
“poaching” metaphor in his discussion of fans’ engagement with transmedia stories,
instead choosing to describe them as “information hunters and gatherers, taking
pleasure in tracking down character backgrounds and plot points and making
connections between different texts within the same franchise.”
36
This
terminological break, describing fans as “hunter and gatherers” rather than
“poachers,” signifies a necessary shift away from an analog conception of fans as
operating “from a position of cultural marginality and social weakness,”
37
as they no
longer “lack direct access to the means of commercial cultural production and have
only the most limited resources with which to influence entertainment industry’s
decisions.”
38
While the shift from the margins to the mainstream may empower
audiences and fans, this shift in terminology ultimately benefits the industry
attempting to deal with participatory culture en masse. By framing the proposed
pleasure for fans, in both transmedia stories and ancillary content models, as
collection rather than co-optation, and by stressing connections between texts rather
than the connections forged within fan communities, the industry is encouraging
audiences and fans to work their fields, rather than despoiling them and moving on to
cultivate their own land.

155
It is easy to view any or all of these five defining characteristics of ancillary
content models as a response to the failing commercial model of television in the
post-network era. As Cynthia B. Meyers notes, the dual technological drives
towards time shifting (accompanying the rise in DVR use and online streaming) and
placeshifting (viewing television on mobile devices such as laptops, iPods, and cell
phones) have both constructed a new mobile audience and necessitated equally
mobile content.
39
We can assume that fannish rhythms of reception
40
ensure that a
new installment of a serial text will be consumed on (or shortly after) its original
airdate or release date. Accordingly, positioning a television series within a web of
ancillary content that has direct bearing on the unfolding serial narrative offers
audiences incentives to eradicate time shifting, and uses placeshifting to the
industry’s advantage by encouraging fans to consume an episode multiple times on
multiple platforms, thus maximizing ratings and downloads. Moreover, this
ancillary content, located on the series’ official website or linked through an official
website, offers alternative revenue streams for the network, simultaneously
promoting the show and making strides towards upgrading television’s failing
commercial model.
The creative constraints an ancillary content model places on fans comes in a
series of interrelated forms: First, there is the temporal control of intensified
consumption that ancillary content models encourage. For example, a fan of Heroes
in any given week could have consumed a television episode, print comic books
41
or
webcomics,
42
re-watched episodes online alongside commentary with the creators

156
and cast, explored a choose-your-own adventure style branching narrative steeped in
the show’s mythology,
43
read a tie-in novel,
44
pored over or contributed to the
official Heroes wiki,
45
explored websites for the fictional Pinehearst Company
46
or
Primatech Paper
47
(among others), created a character to be potentially featured in
webisodes, and so on. Thus, while a narrative nugget of information dispatched in
any of these forms could prove inspirational for fans, the creative window of
opportunity for them to play within the ever-evolving narrative has shrunken
considerably. Fans who wish to explore the narrative gaps in the canon through the
creation of their own fan texts increasingly find them either already filled in by the
show’s creators or difficult to develop before another piece of ancillary content
overwrites or negates it.
We can read this shrinking window of time for fans to textually engage with
an unfolding canonical narrative as an exacerbated form of what Matt Hills’ calls
“just-in-time fandom.”
48
Placing Hills’ claim that “practices of fandom have become
increasingly enmeshed within the rhythms and temporalities of broadcasting,”
49
in a
convergence context, I share Hills’ anxiety that a simplistic reading of this trend as
“a techno-evolution towards fuller ‘interactivity’ neglects the extent to which this
eradication of the [analog fanzine] ‘time lag’ works ever more insistently to
discipline and regulate the opportunities for temporally-licensed ‘feedback,’ and the
very horizons of the fan experience.”
50
Ancillary content models strive to eradicate
these time lags altogether, formulating a new “just-in-time fandom” that encourages
an increased rate of consumption and canonical mastery, rather than fannish

157
speculation and textual production. As a result, we could see ancillary content
models as a more covert form of cease and desist letters, creatively and temporally
(rather than legally) discouraging fans from certain interpretations of or elaborations
on the text.

Who’s Steering the Mothership?: Transmediation and the Fanboy Auteur
Momentarily putting aside their aforementioned differences, transmedia
stories and ancillary content models are bound together by two significant
commonalities. First, they both strive to mediate the consumer/fan’s entertainment
experience. While Jenkins views transmedia stories as facilitating a “unified and
coordinated entertainment experience,”
51
I would contend that the what drives this
emphasis on canonized “authenticity” is a desire to mediate fan production, or at the
very least minimize contentious fan response. Deeply embedded within transmedia
storytelling and ancillary content’s creative potential is a presumed consumption and
comprehension of each narrative extension, a fannish mastery of an ever-expanding
canon. In order for fans to get the complete entertainment “experience,” they must
spend the bulk of their time consuming and (re)constructing the metanarrative the
creators are carefully spreading across various media platforms. Thus, it is the time
and labor that goes into fans’ mediation the ancillary content, and how those content
flows in turn mediate fan consumption and production, that is the central concern of
this chapter.

158
To be clear, we cannot presume that fans will exhaustively consume every
piece of ancillary content presented to them. To do so would mark an unfortunate
return to the construction of fans as mindless, obsessive consumers that fan studies
has worked tirelessly for decades to rehabilitate. Nor can we claim that ancillary
content models have a pervasive impact on those already entrenched in organically
constructed fan communities, who tend to approach this content with ambivalence or
ignore it completely in favor of consuming texts produced by other fans. As a result,
what may be at stake is not our current conception of fandom (vast, organically-
formed online communities and niche subcommunities that are bonded by their
mutual affect for a pop culture text, and solidified by the production and non-profit
exchange of their own transformative works inspired by that text), but rather the
future conception of “fandom” and who is most influential in shaping it. The “more
is more” ethos of the media corporations and conglomerates pushing transmedia
storytelling techniques and developing ancillary content models is perhaps more
concerned with indoctrinating the next generation of fans than wooing those
currently entrenched in existing fan communities. It is the industrial outreach to new
fans, coupled with fandom’s retreat to solidify its boarders against an encroaching
industrial presence, which makes ancillary content models a rich site of inquiry.
Millennial consumers making the leap from casual viewer to fan may be
adept at navigating various media flows and accustomed to the type of “community”
that Web 2.0 social networking fosters, but they are also more likely to mistake this
form of “mediated interactivity”
52
for fan participation. Mark Andrejevic’s

159
discussion of fan-feedback Web sites, much like the official message boards around
which ancillary content models are constructed, reiterates the concern that, “As the
digital enclosure makes it easier to capture and capitalize on consumer labor, […]
this labor, productive as it might be for those in a position to exploit it, is portrayed
as a means of overcoming the forms of alienation associated with both mass
production and mass consumption.”
53
In other words, rather than being rewarded
with the community and creative support that has long been the hallmark of fandom,
the primary allure of transmedia entertainment experiences like ancillary content
models is “at least a partial entry into an inner circle of producers and writers,”
54

through “official” (read: closely monitored and regulated) channels. This logic
dictates that the “next best thing to having power […] is identifying with those who
do, rather than naively imagining that power might be redistributed or realigned,”
55

that allows fans to counter-intuitively “take a more active role in staging the scene of
[their] passive submission.”
56

There is something paradoxical about transmedia storytelling, beginning with
dual emphasis on dispersal and unification in Jenkins’ definition. Transmedia stories
are defined by their ability to expand: they expand and enrich a fictional universe,
they expand across media platforms, and they empower an expansive fan base by
promoting collective intelligence
57
as a consumption strategy. However, transmedia
storytelling is a product of industrial consolidation and conglomeration, with the
flow of content across platforms mirroring the “economic logic of a horizontally
integrated entertainment industry.”
58
Transmedia stories also produce a consolidated

160
canon of “official” texts that can discourage or discredit unauthorized expansion or
speculation by fans, equating their participation with their continuous consumption
of texts that narratively and financially supplement a franchise. This leads directly to
the second commonality between transmedia stories and ancillary content models:
the narrative expansion that both of these models perpetuate is coupled with a
constriction of textual authority. In the effort to create a “unified and coordinated
entertainment experience,”
59
a unification of interpretive meaning is frequently a
byproduct. This unifier of meaning, tasked with keeping the fictional world that is
being built in order, is frequently a fanboy auteur.
This concurrent expansion and consolidation, and the balance of artistry and
industry that characterizes transmedia storytelling and ancillary content models, is
most evident in their problematic positioning of the author. Transmedia stories
fragment the author figure, as artists in different mediums collaboratively create the
transmedia text. But, in order to assure audiences that someone is overseeing this
narrative expansion and binding those texts together, the author must ultimately be
restored and his significance reaffirmed. In short, the media industry’s effort to
create unified and coordinated entertainment experiences has required the
construction of a unified author figure to serve as a creative and textual coordinator.
There are practical and promotional factors motivating this consolidation, but
concerns arise when a unified author figure results in an attempt to unify and manage
the audience’s interpretations of the text.

161
Despite their potential to demystify and democratize authorship and establish
a closer relationship between producers and consumers, transmedia stories and
ancillary content models ultimately reinforce the boundaries between “official” and
“unauthorized” forms of narrative expansion though the construction of a single
author/textual authority figure. The result, in many cases, is a renewed emphasis on
authorial intent, and a regressive return to a formulation of fans as “the more-or-less
passive recipient[s] of authorial meaning,” in which any interpretation that deviates
from the text is “viewed negatively, as a failure to successfully understand what the
author was trying to say.”
60
Because who is designated to speak on behalf of the text
is of equal importance as what they say, the industry’s growing reliance on the
“fanboy auteur” as an authorial archetype deserves further consideration.
The liminality of the fanboy auteur, simultaneously one of “us” and one of
“them,” is his greatest asset as transmedia navigator and interpretive intermediary
between text and audience. The consolidation of creative control may be necessary
to ensure aesthetic consistency and narrative continuity
61
between the “primary” text
and ancillary content, but it also needs to be viewed as an industrial strategy, as does
the liminality of the fanboy auteur. A textual authority figure that appeals to fans is
better positioned to engender fans’ trust, and thus channel fan interpretation and
participation in ways that best suit the industry’s financial and ideological interests.
Transmedia storytelling did not create the fanboy auteur’s potentially regulatory
model of authorship, but it has exacerbated it by framing the word of the fanboy
auteur as an essential extension of the story, and a valuable resource for fans

162
attempting to navigate the ancillary content. Though these authorial extensions are
not fictional contributions to the story world being built, they perform similar
narrative work (filling in gaps and resolving ambiguities), and reinforce the fanboy
auteur as the sole textual navigator and interpreter.
The impulse to reduce “the range of potential transmedia tongues, even as,
paradoxically, we seek to grow larger and more complex fictional worlds,”
62
is
primarily a result of the industry’s embrace of transmedia storytelling as a business
model, but the importance of a unified authorial “tongue” was present in Henry
Jenkins’ foundational work on transmedia storytelling. In “Searching for the
Origami Unicorn: The Matrix and Transmedia Storytelling,” Jenkins emphasized
transmedia storytelling’s potential to promote co-creation and collaborative
authorship, but also acknowledged “the most successful transmedia franchises have
emerged when a single creator or creative unit maintains control.”
63
Using The
Matrix’s Wachowski brothers as his authorial test case, Jenkins stressed that the
brothers “personally wrote and directed content for the game, drafted scenarios for
some of the animated shorts, and co-wrote a few of the comics,”
64
in addition to
praising their collaboration with artists in other mediums.
65

Jenkins has acknowledged that The Matrix is a unique transmedia test case,
and not a universally successful one. Few contemporary ancillary content models
benefit from the same degree of creative involvement that the Wachowski brothers
had with The Matrix’s transmedia extensions. Many adopt the “license or
subcontract and hope for the best”
66
mentality that the Wachowskis, and Jenkins,

163
rejected. In some cases, such as the critical and commercial smash Heroes
Evolutions (a digital hub of transmedia content for the NBC series Heroes that
included webcomics, alternate reality games, and interactive stories), collaborating
with companies that specialize in creating ancillary content can be mutually
beneficial. Yet, few fans are likely to know Mark Warshaw’s name, or consider him
to be Heroes’ “author,” despite the fact that he produced the content for Heroes
Evolutions. It is unrealistic to assume that Heroes creator Tim Kring personally
developed and signed off on every facet of all of Heroes Evolution’s ancillary
content. It’s more likely that Warshaw collaborated with both Kring and Heroes’
writing team to develop meaningful connections between the television series and its
textual extensions. Nonetheless, in interviews/commentaries and in the minds of
most fans, Kring is the face and voice of the transmedia franchise, and given full
credit for its success or failure.
67

As this example indicates, transmedia storytelling and ancillary content’s
consolidation of authorial control may be symbolic, but the image of the author it
crafts is tangible and powerful. The Wachowskis’ publicized involvement with each
of The Matrix’s transmedia extensions (video games, animated series, etc.)
canonized those texts as integral parts of the story, increasing their value for fans.
The industry is understandably invested in making audiences consider all the
components of their transmedia story to be required reading/viewing/playing, but the
value associated with an authorial stamp of approval is equally a product of fans’
investment in the author. When an author is involved in (or publically approves)

164
ancillary content, it creates a greater emotional investment for audiences—what we
might call “affective value.” The creation of affective value for audiences will,
theoretically, lead them to invest financially in those extensions, raising the
transmedia story’s commercial value.
The author’s power to demarcate “primary” and “secondary” texts, inducting
some transmedia extensions and ancillary content into the “canon” and excluding
others, creates “‘tiers’ of canon [that] leads directly to tiers of perceived narrative
value”
68
for fans. Though Jenkins’ work on transmedia storytelling emphasized that
each narrative extension should be equally accessible,
69
the industry has always been
centrally concerned with creating tiers of canon, and corresponding tiers of narrative
and financial value. The “mothership” has emerged as an industrial buzzword to
indicate the primary text that ancillary content is built around. It is a fitting, and
appropriately geeky, metaphor: just as an alien mothership is characterized as a large
spacecraft from which smaller ships are launched, the mothership views its narrative
extensions as secondary texts, ancillary content. The function of these secondary
texts, both narratively and economically, is to bring audiences back to the
mothership. Tasked with steering the mothership, the fanboy auteur functions in a
similar manner, instructing audiences on how to best navigate this web of secondary
texts while fortifying the mothership as the primary text.
Television, with its serialized mothership, has most enthusiastically embraced
ancillary content models and actively positioned the fanboy auteur as a textual
navigator and interpreter. Like transmedia stories, authorship in serial television is

165
collaborative (with its large writing staffs and rotating group of directors) and
symbolically consolidated through the series’ most consistent creative presence,
typically the creator, producer or showrunner. And, just as transmedia storytelling
isn’t an entirely new concept,
70
the fanboy auteur isn’t an entirely new authorial
archetype. Through a brief overview of earlier scholarly work on fanboy auteurs, we
can begin to place contemporary fanboy auteurs on a continuum of authorial control
and consider how ancillary content increases the fanboy auteur’s interpretive power.
Transmedia storytelling and ancillary content have, if anything, magnified the
functions of the author outlined in Henry Jenkins’ discussion of Gene Roddenberry
in his essay “‘Infinite diversity in infinite combinations: Genre and authorship in
Star Trek.” Revisiting the three basic functions of the author myth outlined in
Michel Foucault’s 1979 essay “What is an Author?,” Jenkins argued that
Roddenberry’s authorial presence served to classify the relationships between texts,
explain textual events (or neutralize discrepancies), and to demarcate a text’s value
through his authorship or approval.
71
Within transmedia storytelling, these are not
just the primary functions of the fanboy auteur, they are vital to the creative and
commercial success of the transmedia story. The complexity of a transmedia story’s
textual network has made audiences increasingly reliant on the fanboy auteur to
clarify the relationship between texts. The fanboy auteur’s explanation of textual
events, often through ancillary content, is now considered integral to a
comprehensive understanding of the story. And, as previously noted, his authorship
or approval of ancillary content increases its affective and commercial value.

166
Transmedia storytelling has intensified the author’s function from
Roddenberry’s era, and encourages the fanboy auteur to exercise those functions in a
more regulatory fashion as they use ancillary content to help audiences navigate the
transmedia text. The fanboy auteur’s ability to survey and control his audience has
increased exponentially with fandom’s move online and new media’s ability to place
producers and consumer in close, conversational proximity. Analyzing Babylon 5
creator J. Michael Straczynski’s participation in/regulation of an online fan message
board from 1995 to 1996, Alan Wexelblat’s “An Auteur in the Age of the Internet:
JMS, Babylon 5, and the Net,” offers a prescient test case of a fanboy auteur’s
digitally enabled efforts to channel fan response. Straczynski considered himself a
“navigator” rather than an “auteur,”
72
but Wexelblat effectively argued that he
positioned himself as one by “not only pointing towards the horizon; [but] claiming
to have made the horizon exist.”
73
As a result, any authorial endorsement of fans’
textual production or interpretations “would be tantamount to suggesting that not
only are alternative interpretations of the main text possible, but that the direction
and tone of the text could be determined by someone else, or that sources other than
the officially sanctioned one could produce desirable material.”
74
The narrative
complexity of transmedia stories, and the daunting task of making its narrative
extensions and ancillary content to cohere and communicate, has perhaps
necessitated an equally rigid view of authorship and, in many cases, an equally wary
view of unsanctioned interjections by fans.

167
Most contemporary fanboy auteurs are creators or producers of hyper-
serialized, mythologized television series that present a natural narrative fit for
ancillary content. Joss Whedon (Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, Firefly,
Dollhouse), Ronald D. Moore (Battlestar Galactica), Eric Kripke (Supernatural),
Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse (Lost), Russell T. Davies (Doctor Who), and Tim
Kring (Heroes) are all strong examples. Creators have long been referred to as “The
Powers That Be” within fan communities, but this reverence is tempered by a sense
of kinship and familiarity. Within fan communities, Joss Whedon is simply “Joss,”
Ronald D. Moore is “RDM,” and Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse are fused into
“Darlton.” Fanboy auteurs are also made relatable through their fan credentials,
which are narratived and (self) promoted as an integral part of their appeal as a
transmedia interpreter. Some anecdotally frame their professionalization as a
product of their fan identity. For example, Battlestar Galactica’s (re)creator Ronald
D. Moore recounts in interviews that he received his first writing job on Star Trek:
The Next Generation after slipping a spec script to one of Gene Roddenberry’s
assistants while touring the set as a fan.
75
In the case of Russell T. Davies, a direct
line is frequently drawn between his self-identification as a Doctor Who fanboy and
his successful reimagining of the series in 2005.
76

Others frame their liminality as an author/fan as augmenting their ability to
understand what fans want, thus making them more equipped to cater to fans. For
example, when Joss Whedon says that he evaluates comic book films “not just as a
comic-book geek, but as a storyteller,” or celebrates the fact that “we're out of the

168
time when it was a bunch of old men in suits […] now the guys in those jobs grew up
reading those comic books,”
77
he clearly distances himself (and other fanboy
auteurs) from those “suits” through the conflation of his identity as fan/geek and
auteur/storyteller. Even if they do not actively self-identify as fanboys, the fanboy
auteur frequently equates his close proximity to the fans with an understanding of
their textual desires and practices. This can come in many forms: self-reflexive
episodes that depict the show’s fan base (the Supernatural episodes “The Monster at
the End of This Book” [S4.E18] and “The Real Ghostbusters” [S5.E09], discussed at
length in the conclusion of this dissertation),

admissions that they avidly read fans’
posts on message boards (Cuse and Lindelof), or, occasionally, open apologies for
losing fans’ faith (as Kring was forced to during season two of Heroes).
In all of these cases, the liminality of the fanboy auteur is presented as his
greatest strength, a “form of reification, in which […] he is ‘one of us,’ – a fan of his
own creation, and yet he is somehow special.”
78
Borrowing a term from Jonathan
Gray, we could frame the fanboy auteur as an “undead author,”
79
or an author who
understands that metaphorically “killing himself” is an ideal way to engender fannish
solidarity, and “fashion himself as ‘just one of the fans,’ when he is decidedly
privileged in the relationship.”
80
Fanboy auteurs exert this privilege through the
ancillary content model’s promise of a more dialogic relationship between producers
and consumers. These one-sided “conversations” come in a variety of forms, from
podcasts to blog/vlog entries to message board posts, in which the fanboy auteur’s
voice is privileged and his interpretations are posed as the “correct” reading of

169
textual events. Extrapolating Gerard Genette’s theory of paratexts,
81
Jonathan Gray
argues:
“When creators try to exert control, the paratexts of interviews, podcasts,
DVD bonus materials, and making-of specials are their preferred means of
speaking – their textual body and corporeal form – as they will try to use
paratexts to assert authority and to maintain the role of the author. But rather
than serve as gospel, as soon as a show has begun, television authors’ words
[…] must compete with all manner of paratexts, including audience-created
paratexts.”
82

In the case of ancillary content models, Gray’s argument can be taken one step
further. These authorial paratexts are increasingly treated as vital transmedia
extensions, both by audiences (who comb them for information to augment or
decode the narrative) and by the industry (by posing them as essential navigational
tools).
Increasingly with transmedia stories and ancillary content models, audiences
don’t just “know the clues are there because the auteur has told them so,”
83
but the
fanboy auteur’s primary role is to interpret those clues, establishing “proper
interpretations,” by attempting to “hide or overpower other interpretations.”
84

Transmedia stories engage audiences through their exploration, and doing the textual
“homework”
85
is part of the fun for fans. As the fanboy auteur has become another
text to be read by audiences who wish to get the full transmedia experience, the
fanboy auteur is faced with a conflict. If he speaks too frequently or adds too much
textual information, he risks alienating the audience by helping them “cheat” on their
textual homework. If he remains relatively silent, as Cuse and Lindelof attempted to
do with regard to Lost, fans will likely invest in his words even more, and analyze

170
them more rigorously for potential clues to help them grasp the transmedia story in
its entirety.
He may be infantilized in title, but the fanboy auteur’s paternalistic control
over the transmedia text and ancillary content can make him a polarizing figure for
fans. When fans invest in a transmedia story, they tend to respond to these forms of
“digitally enabled and enhanced authorial interpretation”
86
in one of two ways.
Some adopt a “too much is never enough” view, and “revel in producer-supplied
ancillary content.”
87
Other fans view these authorial assertions as resolving the
ambiguities that make participation in transmedia stories pleasurable, arguing that
interpretive power should belong to the audience.
88
Interpretive tensions between
authors and audiences pre-date television’s adoption of ancillary content models, but
they have been compounded by the complexity of these narratives, and fans’
increased dependence on the author to navigate them efficiently. Fanboy auteurs
often position their paratextual explanations and interpretations as an opportunity for
fans to “see how the sausage is made.”
89
Fans, in turn, make a clear distinction
between wanting to know how the sausage is made and being told that there’s only
one correct way to consume and enjoy that sausage, and only one chef who knows
the correct recipe.
90
Many female fans, in particular, do not respond kindly to what
they perceive to be the fanboy auteur’s paternalistic attempts to block speculation
and unauthorized textual expansion.
91
This may simply reflect a longstanding
paradox within fan culture, wherein “the more authority fans [ascribe] to the author,

171
the more suspicious they [become] of that authority,”
92
but it is compounded by the
lack of fangirl auteurs and the feminization of the text, or “mothership.”
In some cases, fans will actively interrogate the fanboy auteur’s control over
the narrative through their own textual production. One particularly illustrative
example is jarrow’s Battlestar Galactica fan vid “Tandemonium”
93
set to a remix of
“Momma Sed” by Puscifer. Fan vids edit video clips from a media text to a song,
using the music “as an interpretive lens to help the viewer to see the source text
differently.”
94
Francesca Coppa has characterized vids as “a visual essay that stages
an argument, and thus it is more akin to arts criticism than to traditional music
video.”
95
“Tandemonium” takes the refrain “and they have a plan” from Battlestar
Galactica’s opening credit sequence,
96
and playfully reworks it to critique Moore’s
“plan” for the series, and his exertions of authorial control. The vid opens with a
quote from Moore about how he always has to have the “last word” on what the
show “is or isn’t,”
97
followed by a series of shots of the show’s “bible” intercut with
Moore working at his computer. The vid then transitions into a series of shots from
the television series, occasionally overlaid with quotes from Moore that frame his
“plan” for the transmedia story as alternately exacting (“We’re doing the show just
the way I want it”) and arbitrary (“I had no particular ending in mind”).
A turning point in “Tandemonium” notably occurs after the lyrics “I’ve got
something to tell you,” presumably directed at Moore. As the music intensifies, so
does the vid’s critique of Moore’s mishandling of the text. The lyrical implication
that fans should “take it like a man,” coupled with images of (predominantly female)

172
characters being brutalized and violently dispatched, could be read as a critique of
Moore’s aggressive exertion of textual authority, implying that fans that don’t
comply with Moore’s views will be symbolically dispatched or dismissed.
98
The
vid’s conclusive claim that “they don’t have a plan,” and “they never did have a
plan” exposes authorial foresight as concurrently desired as illusory, while the
concept of the fanboy auteur having “the last word” is openly contested by the
vidder.
“Tandemonium” is admittedly a highly specific and poetic example of how
fans are working through their ambivalent view of the fanboy auteur’s transmediated
authority. Still, through this example we can begin to see how ancillary content
models intensify negotiations of authorship and textual ownership. In a conversation
I had with the artist after viewing “Tandemonium,” jarrow drew a parallel between
creating a successful fan vid and creating a successful (trans)media text, stating “You
tell the story you're telling, but you leave enough open for viewer interpretation and
exploration.” While researching the vid, jarrow did read interviews and listen to
Moore’s podcasts, but noted that as a fan he doesn’t “like to see the math,” choosing
to consume authorial materials only after he has “processed the whole show.” In
jarrow’s own words, “the more they tell us, the less room we have to imagine and
build the world for ourselves.” Yet, despite the vid’s critical tone, jarrow’s
investment in Battlestar Galactica’s plan, and Moore as its planner, is evident. In a
post that accompanied “Tandemonium,” jarrow openly acknowledged that
researching and composing the vid had partially renewed his respect for Moore.
99

173
Geoffrey Long has argued that stories, and transmedia stories in particular,
are a “subtle pas de deux between storyteller and audience.”
100
At the risk of
overextending Long’s metaphor, it is expected that transmedia stories and ancillary
content will “lead” fans in this narrative pas de deux across media platforms. But
fanboy auteurs must remember to treat their audience as their partner and, if they
aren’t willing to let them lead, they should be careful not to tread too frequently on
their interpretations. The collaborative authorship model that transmedia stories and
ancillary content encourage could “result in a demystification of the creative process,
[and] a growing recognition of the communal dimensions of expression.”
101

However, if we fail to interrogate transmedia story’s construction of the author, or
complacently accept that “the very existence and everydayness of collaborative
creation might necessitate the (artificial?) celebration of the creative sole genius, the
visionary auteur, the named AUTHORity,”
102
we fail to exploit transmedia
storytelling’s potential and place limits on the power of participatory culture.
At the heart of the fanboy auteur’s conflicted appeal is fans’ investment in
feeling like someone is steering the mothership thoughtfully plotting its course
across media platforms, coupled with fans’ desire to question the plotted course and
create their own textual detours. We can choose to cynically view the fanboy auteur
as an industrial strategy to channel or censor audience interpretation, or
optimistically embrace his potential to complicate the producer/consumer binary and
create a meaningful dialogue between fans and the transmedia text. In either case,
how the fanboy auteur’s liminality is produced, exploited, and received, deserves

174
further scholarly analysis before we can fully embrace transmedia storytelling’s
potential to create collaborative relationships not just between artists, but also
between auteurs and audiences. Through a closer examination of Battlestar
Galactica’s ancillary content model, and Moore’s positioning within that model, we
can begin to understand how these narrative systems might actually hinder, rather
than facilitate, fannish engagement and participation.

Authorized Resistance: A Case Study of Battlestar Galactica’s Ancillary Content
Model
Conceived as a re-imagining of ABC’s 1978 cult series Battlestar
Galactica,
103
The SciFi Channel launched Creator and Executive Producer Ronald
D. Moore’s vision as a three-hour miniseries in 2003 to critical and commercial
acclaim. Many of Moore’s revisions, most notably the gender swap of the original
series’ most popular character, Starbuck,
104
were vastly unpopular with the original
series’ predominantly male fan base, but they were strategically successful in
attracting female fans to the show and diversifying SciFi’s niche network identity.
The bulk of the series’ online ancillary content, however, appeared to be aimed at
television’s (and science fiction’s) demographic of choice: men 18-35 years old.
Placing an emphasis on the show’s production process, Moore and producer David
Eick (star of BSG behind-the-scenes video blogs) became the visible guardians of the
series and gatekeepers of information.

175
Given that Ron Moore (or “RDM,” as he’s referred to in fannish circles) was
one of the first visible proponents of fan-centric new media content, Battlestar
Galactica is an ideal property to interrogate what types of fan production flourish or
flounder alongside ancillary content models. From webisodes to podcasts,
downloadable deleted scenes to creator blogs and vlogs, BSG aimed an unparalleled
wealth of fan-oriented content at its audience and, whether one chooses to view this
as a dialogic departure from the producer/consumer binary or merely a digital
marketing ploy, it is an extremely successful integrated media model, and was
quickly adopted by other television series with active fan bases. While we can
firmly root the BSG creative team and its corporate overseers in the
“collaborationist” camp, due in large part to Moore’s history with fan franchises like
Star Trek
105
and his intimate knowledge of how fandom functions, we must make a
distinction between the prohibitionist attempt to “shut down unauthorized
participation”
106
by fans and BSG’s unique collaborationist approach, namely one
that produces content like fans, for fans.
There are a number of ways to read BSG’s collaborationist stance. It may be
that the production of fan-oriented ancillary web content validated fan practice and
“authorized” fan production, to a degree. More critically, the ancillary content
targeted at the BSG fan community could be viewed as ultimately reinscribing
textual “authority” to the show’s creators. In either case, BSG encouraged fans to
consume authorial/authorized content that frequently performs the textual work and
play we associate with fan narratives: exploring alternate narrative trajectories,

176
extrapolating minor character’s backstories, and so on. These authorized
supplements arguably came at the expense of letting fans explore those narrative
gaps and fissures through their own textual production. And this begged the
question: Is BSG fan production frakked?
Admittedly, there’s an abundance of textually rich BSG fanfiction, fanart, and
fanvids that provided a resounding “No” in response. BSG is widely recognized as
having an engaged, diverse and creative fan community,
107
and I’m not suggesting
that ancillary content has the power or potential to shut down fan production
altogether. It does, however, hierarchically value different forms of fannish
participation, generally encourage fannish consumption over fannish production, and
reinforce the textual authority of creators. As BSG was one of the first television
series to embrace the continuous dissemination of ancillary new media content in
addition to dabbling in transmedia storytelling techniques (most notably Dynamite
Entertainment’s array of BSG comic books), it serves as a critical locus through
which broader questions about the shifting nature of fan production can be broached.
As DIY (do-it-yourself) fan production comes under temporal and creative threat by
DIY (download-it-yourself) content from series’ creators, certain types of fan texts
will be more impacted than others. Specifically, those fan texts that aim to actively
engage with canonical narrative
108
must contend with both BSG’s (fittingly)
militaristic narrative structure, the mounting rigors of “just-in-time fandom,” and the
unprecedented influx of fan-oriented content for consumption.

177
Though the multifaceted definition of fan “productivity” outlined in John
Fiske’s 1992 essay “The Cultural Economy of Fandom,” should be reconsidered in a
digital context, the following analysis employs a purposefully narrow definition of
the types of fan “production” impacted by ancillary content models. Thus, “fan
production,” within the parameters of this test case is loosely defined as fan-
produced narratives that aim to engage directly with the unfolding canonical
narrative. Importantly, this sort of fan production has historically been the least
threatening to producers and the least censured by prohibitionists. Ancillary content
also dismisses the interpretive credibility of those fans that choose to read against the
canon (e.g. slashers and femmeslashers, who would argue they’re exposing the
homoerotic subtext always already embedded in the text), either by repetitively
confirming that such readings are incorrect, or generally pushing queer content to the
margins of the ancillary content model. The authorized/authorial nature of the
content being provided to fans by Moore and his creative colleagues, though surely
distributed with good intentions, potentially discourages (or perpetually overwrites
and invalidates) fans’ textual productivity. This potential discouragement of textual
productivity is coupled with an encouragement of certain forms of enunciative
productivity, defined by Fiske as “fan talk”
109
that “can occur only within immediate
social relationships…and the popular cultural capital it generates is thus limited to a
restricted circulation, a very localized economy.”
110
We clearly must amend Fiske’s
description of the “restricted” circulation of analog fan talk to incorporate the online
forum/message board, and accordingly consider how enunciative productivity by

178
fans is increasingly serving a widespread economic/promotional function for BSG,
SciFi and conglomerate parent company NBC Universal.
Through a brief examination of BSG’s narrative structure and a closer
analysis of how ancillary content (“The Resistance” and “The Face of the Enemy”
webisode series, Moore’s episodic podcasts, and the Battlestar Galactica Video
Maker Toolkit) and transmedia extensions (Dynamite Entertainment’s various BSG
comic book series) function within that structure to dissuade or promote fan
productivity, the ultimate aim of this test case is not to imply that fan production is
frakked, or that BSG’s creative and corporate overlords are wielding fan-oriented
content to purely promotional, nefarious ends. Whether this continuous consumption
model and the content being consumed dissuades fans from producing their own
texts is something that cannot be quantitatively measured, nor would it be a case one
could make having spent any amount of time consuming BSG fan texts. A far more
viable criticism to launch against this influx of fan-oriented content, and one that is
retained as a analytic constant for each of the examples to follow, is that this stream
of content has the potential to become an authorial, canonically-validated alternative
to the consumption of fan narratives that do similar textual work, thereby making
texts that seek to engage with the BSG canon exponentially more difficult to produce
and less likely to be consumed.

179
Lay Down Your (Temporal) Burdens: Narrative Constraints
From BSG’s inaugural episode, “33” (1.01), time was constructed as an
oppressive and potentially destructive force second only to the omnipresent Cylon
threat, and was a motif that recurred throughout the series. As dwindling food (“The
Passage” 3.10), water (“Water” 1.02, “Bastille Day” 1.03), or fuel reserves (“The
Hand of God” 1.10) were posed as races against time, all couched in the larger race
towards Earth, one could argue that BSG’s rigorous pacing played a clear-cut
narrative purpose by masterfully building tension. However, such a strict
narratological control over time, with relatively few temporal ellipses within
episodes, between episodes, or even between seasons, posed a series of creative
problems for fan-producers looking to engage directly with the BSG canon. As fan-
produced texts are commonly theorized as striving to “resolve gaps, to explore
excess details and underdeveloped potentials,”
111
BSG posed an inflexible canonic
source despite its seriality, mythology, and active fan community.
The most notable exception to BSG’s taut temporality was the expansive
narrative gap embedded in the Season Two finale (“Lay Down Your Burdens, Part
2” 2.20). Abruptly jumping from the inauguration of Gaius Baltar as President of the
Twelve Colonies to “one year later,” this gap represented an expansive playground
for fan production. Innumerable narrative tidbits begged for further exploration by
fans over the long hiatus between Seasons Two and Three: When and under what
conditions did Starbuck and Anders get married? How did Gaeta come to serve as
President Baltar’s aide? What in the name of the Gods could have prompted Adama

180
to grow a mustache? Though I have yet to come across a fan text that adequately
answers that last question, there were countless fan texts that reveled in the
opportunity to write the unwritten year on New Caprica before Season Three
commenced. While the earthbound, occupied nature of New Caprica closed off the
possibility for certain narrative trajectories (e.g. Starbuck having access to a Viper
would be implausible), it opened up the possibility to explore not only the missing
year of narrative time, but the few plotlines that the canon had left conspicuously
unresolved (e.g. the fleet’s revelation that D’Anna is a Cylon).
The trouble with BSG’s ancillary content model is that it eroded the temporal
gaps that occured within the show’s narrative diegesis, and it increasingly did so
during the hiatus between seasons when more elaborate fan texts are likely to
flourish. Not only did the webisode series “The Resistance” begin actively and
authoritatively filling in the aforementioned narrative gap a month prior to the
Season Three premiere, but three writers room podcasts were released in the gap
between seasons Two and Three. Thus, BSG’s first substantive narrative ellipsis was
met with a calculated launch of ancillary content online, a trend that would continue
to be ratcheted up for the remainder of the series. In addition to more writers room
podcasts over the year-long hiatus between Seasons Three and Four (which spanned
from March 25, 2007 to April 4, 2008), the Battlestar Pegasus TV movie, Razor, was
pitched as an “extended” or “extra” episode. Airing on November 24, 2007 and
released on DVD the following day, Moore assured fans that the two-hour event
offered “the opportunity to set up something for the fourth season that had not been

181
told to the audiences and that the characters themselves hadn’t realized,”
112
with the
ultimate aim of “[giving] the fans something to see and [keeping] the show alive.”
113

The frequently strict equation of fan participation with fan consumption aside, Razor
was notable for a number of other reasons.
Narratively, Razor featured four intertwining stories that temporally spanned
from the first Cylon war (preceding the events depicted in BSG’s first season by
approximately 40 years) to a series of events that occurred in the middle of Season
Two. Revisiting key events from the first two seasons of BSG
114
through the point-
of-view of a new character, Kendra Shaw, Razor also attempted to give audiences
some psychological insight into William Adama (who we see as a young soldier in
the first Cylon war) and Helena Cain, commanding officer of the Pegasus, who was
featured in a Season Two narrative arc (“Pegasus,” “Resurrection Ship parts I and
II”). While Moore suggested that Razor had great narrative bearing on the (then)
upcoming fourth and final season of the series, Razor equally encouraged viewers to
return to the series’ second season. One of Razor’s more shocking revelations,
Cain’s lesbian relationship with (and eventual torture of) a model six Cylon named
Gina, has direct expositional bearing on many events in season two. As Razor
indicates, ancillary content is equally preoccupied with returning to and eradicating
narrative ambiguities, putting ambiguous content “in the ground,” as it is with
“keeping the show alive.”
Returning to Matt Hills’ description of “just-in-time fandom,” his concern
was ultimately that fandom’s move online and the subsequent “eradication of the

182
[analog fanzine] ‘time-lag’ works ever more insistently to discipline and regulate the
opportunities for temporally-licensed ‘feedback,’ and the very horizons of the fan
experience.”
115
We can extrapolate the definition of “feedback” to include textual
production by fans, which can function in a similarly dialogic fashion by reflecting
pleasures taken in/frustrations with the source text. Consequently, television’s
“time-lags” between weekly serial installments, in the months between seasons, or
within the show’s diegesis, are creatively prized by fan authors wishing to textually
explore and elaborate on the canon. The widespread inter-fandom jargon of one’s
fanfiction being “Jossed,”
116
or for elements of a still-incomplete fanfic to be negated
or rendered implausible by the development of the canon text, speaks to the creative
stakes in authoring fan texts that strive for fidelity.
In the case of BSG, fan producers striving to remain “faithful” to the
television series’ episodic content also had to navigate and contend with the various
streams of content deriving from BSG’s producers, much of which pointed towards
resolutions or provided a multitude of alternate narrative trajectories only to justify
why they were ultimately discarded. While it’s doubtful we’ll be hearing fans
lamenting that they’ve been “Moored” anytime soon, the conditions under which fan
authors can write within the (ever-expanding and perpetually reinforced) canon are
far from ideal. No longer is being “Jossed” by the televisual text the lone concern
for participants in contemporary just-in-time fandom: being “Moored” by an
abundance of “authorized” ancillary content is also a threat. For fan producers who
attempted to forge collaborative relationships with the ever-expanding BSG canon,

183
there was a continuously dwindling amount of time for their narratives to be
consumed and embraced by other fans before being supplanted by authorized
content.
Ironically, the “death” of a show like BSG can often breathe new life into fan-
authored texts, as audiences turn from “official” to “unofficial” narratives. Given
that being “Jossed” is conceptually reliant on an open canonical source text, one
could assume that the conclusion to Season Four of BSG eradicated this creative
roadblock for fan authors once and for all. However, with the November 2009 BSG
television movie The Plan, the 2010 debut of the SyFy prequel series Caprica,
117
a
forthcoming prequel series titled Blood & Chrome, and a Battlestar Galactica
feature film rumored to be in pre-production at Universal,
118
it would appear that
BSG as a property is far from dead. Ultimately, while fan production is reliant on the
regular consumption of a source text, it is the frequency of consumption through the
multiplication of supplemental texts that stands to impact the types of creative works
fans are encouraged to produce as other properties adopt BSG’s model.

Collaborators (and other “dirty” words): BSG Webisodes
Released as a ten-part serial on Scifi.com in the month prior to BSG’s Season
Three premiere, the webisode series “Battlestar Galactica: The Resistance”
narratively picks up 67 days after the occupation of New Caprica that concluded the
show’s prior season. The narrative and marketing objectives of the webisodes were
clear: in addition to promoting the Season Three premiere, the webisodes laid the

184
narrative groundwork for its first story arc, detailing the early stages of the Cylon
resistance movement formed by Tigh and Tyrol. Focusing on a pair of minor
characters from the BSG universe, former Viper-jock Duck and former Galactica
deckhand Jammer, each of the two- to four-minute episodes detailed their personal
motivations to join and betray the resistance, respectively. The content of the
webisode series (e.g. the murder of Duck’s wife Nora, Jammer’s recruitment to join
the New Caprica Police) directly informed a number of key narrative developments
in Season Three, most prominently Duck’s decision to carry out a suicide bombing
in “Occupation,” (3.01) the death order carried out in part by Jammer in “Precipice”
(3.02) and “Exodus, Part 1,” (3.03) and Jammer’s execution in “Collaborators”
(3.05). Because the webisode series was conceived after filming for Season Three
had commenced, it ironically mirrored the process of fan production and narrative
(re)construction, beginning by identifying elusive or ambiguous facets of the canon
text (Duck’s mention of Nora before the suicide bombing, Jammer helping Cally
escape execution) and providing context retroactively. However, since the
webisodes aired prior to the Season Three premiere, they functioned to answer fans’
questions before they were given the opportunity to ask, settling debates before they
were allowed to grow lively.
Offering a “motivational” speech about the need to recruit new members for
the resistance movement in the webisodes’ debut, perhaps Tigh puts it best: “Talk to
[Duck], make him understand that we need him. Throw in some poetic crap about
the struggle for liberty against the Cylon oppressors, whatever it takes.” Tigh’s

185
innate comprehension of how frequently that “poetic crap” is used to delineate
between “us” (good) and “them” (bad), echoes much of the early scholarship on
active audiences and fan cultures.
119
As discussed at length by Hills,
120
there is a
scholarly tendency to immediately equate fan practice with (good) “resistant”
consumption, and extol fan activity that overtly flouts its textual or ideological
“resistance.” Accordingly, the fan texts that frequently garner the most scholarly and
popular attention are slash fiction/art/vids. The idealized “resistant” fan, juxtaposed
with the mindless “consumer,” is a dialectic that Hills’ justly critiques, as it “falsifies
the fan experience by positioning fan and consumer as separable cultural entities.”
121

As patently “resistant” fan productivity
122
is under less direct threat from a media
model like BSG’s that encourages consumption of materials that reinforce the canon,
it is perhaps more interesting to explore how the webisodes themselves deployed the
dominant discourse of resistance so often ascribed to fan production.
Reframing fandom’s longstanding “collision” with producers over their
creative content in corporate terms, industry-wide debates were sparked about the
primary function of webisode content. Equating Ron Moore with Star Wars’ Rebel
Alliance struggling against NBC Universal’s totalitarian Empire, an October 2006
Newsweek article cheekily paid homage to George Lucas’ notoriously firm
ownership rights over fan produced texts.
123
Central to the conflict, NBC Universal
claimed the webisodes as promotional materials, and thus refused to pay residuals to
the creative team involved in their production.
124
As Moore clearly conceived of
them as key narrative texts aligned with the television series (or, collectively, a full

186
“episode” in their own right), the press coverage of his “resistance” towards the
network and its parent company further served to frame Moore as a producer for the
people.
Fan texts that actively avoid resistant relationships with the BSG canon,
adopting a “collaborationist” approach, are ironically those that come under the most
threat from the “collaborationist” media model that Jenkins’ describes, we must
assign the term multiple meanings. Much like BSG’s conflicted use of the term
“collaborator,” and the series’ interrogation of what constitutes “collaboration”
(“Collaborators” 3.05), collaborative fan texts (often academically marginalized
when equating valuable fan production with resistance) prove an ideal site to gauge
the central conflicts of convergence culture. While slash or AU (Alternate Universe)
fan texts are typically the nexus of prohibitionist contempt or legal censure,
“collaborationist” fan production forces us to confront the limitations of industrial
“collaboration” with fan culture.
BSG’s second webisode series, “The Face of the Enemy,” was set in the days
following the discovery of Earth in the Season Four episode “Revelations” (4.10).
Released between December 12, 2008 and January 12, 2009, the promotional goals
of this webisode series echoed the first: namely, to hold fans’ attention between
seasons (in this case, the six month break between season 4.0 and 4.5), and to build
anticipation for the final season’s premiere. Narratively, the second webisode series
also did similar work as its predecessor, filling in narrative gaps from the previous
season and deepening character development. Importantly, like Razor, “The Face of

187
the Enemy” used ancillary content to queer one of the show’s central characters. The
first webisode featured a fleeting kiss between Felix Gaeta and Louis Hoshi, alluding
to a romantic relationship. The fact that there was no prior evidence of Gaeta’s
bisexuality or his relationship with Hoshi on the television series, and (a few
knowing glances aside) no subsequent acknowledgement of their relationship for the
remainder of the series, is telling. Ancillary content models present a less
commercially charged space to explore homoerotic storylines, and frequently push
queer readings or queer characters to the periphery of the narrative. This allows for a
concurrent acknowledgment of the homoerotic subtext that inspires slash fiction and
a ghettoization of such readings, isolating them from the primary commercial text the
fandom revolves around. Another recent example of this trend would be Buffy’s
lesbian experimentation in issue #12 of the Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season 8 comic
book series.
125

Final Cut: BSG’s Video Maker Toolkit
When considering the BSG webisodes’ “collaboration” with the televisual
canon, one has to be mindful of the creative restrictions that accompany this form of
narrative expansion, and to what extent fans’ “collaboration” is hindered as a
result.
126
One example is the Battlestar Galactica Video Maker Toolkit, which
launched in 2007. In exchange for offering vidders and fan filmmakers raw material
from the television series in the form of audio and video files, fans would turn over
the rights to their finished video to SciFi and attach a promotional tag for the show to

188
the end of their clip. Thus, fans traded ownership over their finished product in
exchange for heightened visibility and an aura of professional validation.
Importantly, the raw material offered to fans in this “toolkit” was primarily
comprised of clips of gun battles, Centurion robots, and ships careening through
space, fodder that would prove most inspirational to action or science fiction
narratives, unquestionably targeting male fan filmmakers over vidders. As
previously addressed in the introduction, vidding is a fan practice dominated by
women, relies on popular music and footage of characters to create relationship-
centric music videos. The fact that there was no footage of characters from the show
made available to fans, and that Video Maker Toolkit rules strictly forbade use of
copyrighted material outside of that offered on the site, severely limited the types of
fantexts that could be produced.
Analyzing the implications of the Video Maker Toolkit in her essay “User-
Penetrated Content: Fan Video in the Age of Convergence,” Julie Levin Russo
argues that “Marketing campaigns that solicit user-generated content offer an
instructive contrast to the horizontal creativity of vidders.”
127
Rather than
celebrating bottom-up fannish textual production, this “user-generated advertising
typically features a top-down arrangement that attempts, through its interface and
conditions, to contain excessive fan productivity within proprietary commercial
spaces.”
128
Of the hundred submissions that were uploaded to the SciFi website,
Russo focuses her analysis around “Toaster Lover,” which was promoted by
Scifi.com as an exemplary type of video that fans could/should create using the

189
Video Maker Toolkit. As Russo notes, “Toaster Lover,” as a parodic “fake trailer”
(in this case, of the 2005 film Brokeback Mountain, applied to a forbidden love
between a human and a cylon centurian), is also an excellent example of the sorts of
fan videos fanboys tend to create.
129

Echoing my own concerns about how ancillary content, such as the webisode
series “The Face of the Enemy,” might strategically push queerness to the margins of
the text, Russo makes a clear distinction between the gay subtext of a Brokeback
Mountain parody such as “Toaster Lover,” and the slash vids produced within female
fan communities. Noting that “Brokeback parodies often embody a homophobic
response to homoerotic outbreaks,” Russo views “Toaster Lover” as a prime
example of how “queer politics intertwine with anticapitalist politics because the
question of what interpretations can be visible is yoked to the question of what
interpretations can be profitable.”
130
Accordingly, even when the industry does
invite fans to produce transformative works with their media texts, as in the case of
the Video Maker Toolkit, the raw materials and terms and conditions are structured
to produce not just affirmational, but heteronormative texts. These modes of
ideological regulation are, as Russo notes, intimately bound up with the industry’s
desire to profit from these forms of fan-created ancillary content.
Russo ultimately positions “Toaster Lover,” the story of a “romance between
the monstrous automaton and the scrappy softy who find true love as war between
their kind is waged around them,” as a fitting allegory for the media industry’s
“optimistic fantasy of a warm relationship between media producers and

190
consumers.”
131
Russo ambivalently concludes with an acknowledgment that “it
remains to be seen whether the constraints of sponsored initiatives such as Video
Maker, with their intrinsic compromises and contradictions, can adequately channel
fandom’s procreative potential into one big happy capitalist family.”
132
Below, I
discuss the divergent economies of fannish and industrial production, but what is
significant here is the attempt to channel fans’ engagement in ways that don’t
ideologically threaten the primary text. In the case of the Video Maker Toolkit, this
was done through terms and conditions, and the types of audio and video clips that
were offered to fans, but the Battlestar Galactica ancillary content model also
wielded its fanboy auteur as a mode of channeling fans’ responses to the text.

Act(s) of Contrition?: RDM’s Episodic Podcasts
Frequently labeled as a podcasting “pioneer,” Moore described his weekly
episode commentaries as giving fans an opportunity to “see how the sausage is
made.” Quick to deny their content as a mere “PR thing,” Moore’s podcasts allowed
him to, in his own words, “put the show to bed.”
133
This creative “tucking in”
included elaborating on discarded potential plot lines, justifying narrative choices,
and generally allowing fans an unparalleled peek into BSG’s creative process.
Though Moore received flack from professionals and fans alike for the podcasts’
amateur aesthetic (with their frequent aural interruptions by household pets, garbage
trucks, and the chatty but occasionally insightful contributions of “Mrs. Ron”), it is
precisely this combination of intimacy and authority that made the podcasts

191
fascinating texts in their own right. Given that Moore himself has stated that he
doesn’t listen to podcasts as part of his own consumption process and is “surprised”
to find that anyone listens to them,
134
it only seems fitting to focus on what dialogues
the podcasts open/close for fans before speculating on what impact the podcasts had
on fan productivity.
The thread for fans to discuss Ron Moore’s weekly podcasts in the Television
Without Pity forums was aptly titled “Chain-Smoking & Apologies,”
135
reflecting
both Moore’s habit of lighting up during his podcasts and his propensity towards
honest reflection on various episodes’ strengths and weaknesses. The dialogue
between fans that the podcasts promoted (encouraging close analysis of the text, and
closer analysis of Moore’s response to the text) clearly falls under Fiske’s
enunciative form of fan productivity. The debates sparked by the podcasts
frequently touch upon their dichotomous nature, with Moore alternately constructed
as fanboy conversationalist and omnipotent author-god, and the information relayed
framed as deepening or limiting one’s analysis of a particular episode. While fan
sentiment ranged from the grateful acknowledgement that “at the end of the day, it’s
just fabulous that we get them at all” (Bourgeois Nerd, post #98), to assertions that
the podcasts “validated the nature of being a fan and participating on message
boards” (wisteria, post #14), Moore’s “military view of leadership” was a frequent
topic of conversation. Though some fans admired Moore’s view that, “ultimately,
the failings of his subordinates or his mission (the show) are HIS responsibility”

192
(Post # 98), others derided the frequency with which Moore’s “leadership” was
equated with a single, “proper” reading of the text.
Making a distinction between wanting to know how the sausage is made and
being told there’s only one way to make a sausage (and that Moore is the one man to
make it), poster stillshimpy found herself/himself “questioning the sausage aspect”
after “just flat out disagreeing” with one of Moore’s commentaries (Post #212).
Others, like Ankai, felt more strongly: “When [Moore] says ‘you’re not thinking
about that’ and ‘the audience feels,’ I don’t feel so much invited [into Moore’s way
of seeing things] as shoved around….like this is not just what he presented, but how
we’re meant to see it” (Post #112). While these complaints were rare, they laid bare
the tenuous positioning of the podcast commentaries for fans. In the case of a
controversial episode such as “Maelstrom” (3.17), Moore’s commentary on
Starbuck’s apparent “death” sparked fan outrage. There were those who felt that
Moore’s (understandably) cagey commentary was nothing more than Moore’s
attempt to “mindfrak” loyal viewers/listeners, further confirming the desire for
authorial “answers” as the podcasts’ primary allure. Likewise, there were a large
number of fans, appalled by Moore’s nonchalant re-telling of the writers’ flippant
decision to kill Starbuck, who lost their faith in his “sausage-making” abilities.
Though these anxieties were ultimately assuaged by the podcast for “Crossroads,
Part 2” (3.20), explaining Starbuck’s resurrection and the need for subterfuge in the
prior podcast, the fact remains that fans’ consumption of the podcasts are intimately

193
bound up with an acceptance of Moore’s word as law and the occasional desire to
flout that law.
Because they opened up dialogue between fans not limited to the textual
content of the show, but to the creative process that generates it, Moore’s podcasts
were surely a boon to enunciative modes of fan productivity such as online forums.
The degree to which Moore’s commentary put other forms of fan productivity “to
bed” along with each episode is still up for debate. Many fans, like BSG podcast
enthusiast stillshimpy, enjoyed Moore’s discussions of “various pieces of cut
story…[and] why it is he thought they were not necessary, or failed to work,”
because it helped “sort of reshape an episode in my mind, or change a view on it
when I understand where it might have gone, but didn’t and why” (Post #47), and fan
authors may have indulged in similar “reshaping” through the textual production of
new narratives inspired by Moore’s comments. However, as the podcasts strove to
provide a sense of creative closure (for Moore and fans alike), they also proved
narratively inflexible, thus making “reshaping” by fans more difficult. As Bob Rehak
has noted, Moore’s podcasts frame him as “not just an author-god, but a fan-god […]
RDM collapses the functions of author and interpreter into a single beast, and in so
doing gets the final word on what a character was ‘really’ thinking, or what ‘really’
happened after that cutaway.”
136
Similar to the case of George Lucas definitively
stating that Boba Fett was a man after female fans took the character in as a potential
feminist touchstone in Star Wars’ overwhelmingly masculine universe,
137
Moore’s

194
podcasts were guilty of “preempting important lines of fan speculation,” despite their
potential to “sustain new fantasies.”
138

The Son Also Rises (From the Dead): BSG Comic Books
In addition to this plethora of digital ancillary content, BSG also embraced
transmedia storytelling techniques through three comic book series from Dynamite
Entertainment: “Battlestar Galactica” (featuring a story arc that purportedly occurred
in the middle of Season Two of the television series), the “Zarek” series (exploring
the trajectory of Tom Zarek from childhood to his imprisonment on the Astral
Queen), and “Battlestar Galactica: Season Zero” (set approximately two years before
the 2003 television miniseries). All of these comics functioned to fill in the margins
and expand the middle of the BSG canon. Though this certainly points towards a
“more collaborative model of authorship”
139
between the writers of the comic books
and television series, it is still unclear to what extent this model might undermine or
buoy collaboration between source text(s) and fan texts. While the “Zarek” series
and “Battlestar Galactica: Season Zero” presented narrative events that predated the
television series, providing retroactive insight into characters’ backgrounds and
motivations for their behavior on the television series (much like “The Resistance”
and “The Face of the Enemy” webisodes), the “Battlestar Galactica” comic books
pose a more intriguing case for fan consumers and producers alike.
Preceded by an authorial note that “the events of this comic book series take
place…after the return from Kobol in episode 207 and before the arrival of Pegasus

195
in episode 211,”
140
the “Battlestar Galactica” comics featured a story arc replete with
narrative bombshells, provided that one chose to accept the comic narrative into its
pre-ordained place in the BSG canon. The comics’ central mystery revolved around
the “Returners,” a medivac ship teeming with dead loved ones (most prominently
Zak Adama, son to Bill, brother to Apollo and fiancée to Starbuck), and their
connection to a prophecy contained in the sacred scrolls. Over the course of the
twelve issue arc, the reader was presented with a number of plot details that had a
profound impact on a re-reading of Season Two and/or the BSG universe as a whole:
the psychological ramifications of the first partial Cylon download (Issue #5), the
return of a fleet of antebellum-model Cylons who retain their loyalty to the Twelve
Colonies (Issue #4), a viral infection that incapacitates 75% of the fleet (Issue #2),
and ultimately the discovery that the Cylons made countless prototypes to the current
twelve Cylon “skinjob” models (Issue #9). Writer Greg Pak’s insistence that the
comics fit “right into the continuity of the show,”
141
is perplexing, but would seem to
encourage a more flexible construction of the BSG canon than Moore’s podcasts (or
the ancillary content model writ large) would suggest.
A recent interview with “Zarek” and “Season Zero” writer Brandon Jerwa
also stressed continuity and canon as the comics’ ultimate aim to “give the fans
more.”
142
Confirming Pak’s statement that “every aspect of the comic universe is run
directly through Ron Moore’s office,” and that the writers of the comics are
“presented with a pretty extensive list of points from the office,”
143
requesting
revisions, we can view the comics’ use of Moore’s authorial signature in a number of

196
ways. Despite their collaborative approach to authorship, transmedia franchises are
indeed most successful when “a single creator or creative unit maintains control.”
144

Accordingly, we might view this publicized approval process as a measure taken to
ensure cohesion between the franchise’s various properties. However, because
consistency between the television series and comic series is something that is
pointedly stressed by all involved, we need to consider what function the comic
series served - for the producers and fans of the show alike - and to what degree they
potentially impacted on fan productivity.
The “Zarek” and “Season Zero” series posed a straightforward case of the
comics literally inking in the blank narrative margins of the television series’ canon.
The “Battlestar Galactica” series is paradoxically more and less “canonical” than the
other BSG comics: though it supposedly occurred within the diegesis of the
television series, there is no evidence to (retroactively) validate its occurrence.
Considering that the comic employed a wide variety of “fannish” narrative tropes
(reviving characters thought dead, emphasizing simmering love triangles and
interpersonal conflicts, etc.), it is perhaps the best example of “authorized” BSG
content to examine as an inspirational source for fan productivity. Its potential,
importantly, has less to do with the comic’s content than its claim to a place within
the televisual narrative. If we’re to believe Pak (and by extension, Moore), that such
an unconventional plot can nest between episodes, the narrative possibilities for fan
authors looking for a place to write within the canon are virtually limitless.
Moreover, the comic’s “collaboration” with BSG’s Season Two narrative

197
retroactively had the potential to inspire fans to look backwards as well as forwards,
a wise move given Season One’s relative lack of ancillary content.

Unfinished Business: Final Thoughts on BSG’s Ancillary Content Model
Quoted at length in a 2005 Newsday article framing fanfiction as “modern
folklore,” Moore was put forth as a champion of fans’ right to write: “I always loved
it when writers went into strange nooks and crannies and turned the universe upside
down in ways that we couldn’t. ‘Wouldn’t it be great if Kirk and Spock were
lovers?’ We can’t do that, but it’s great that somebody can.”
145
While his
acknowledgement and encouragement of fan production should certainly be lauded,
Moore’s characterization of slash fanfic as a canonically impracticable form of
textual play is striking for several reasons. Not only does Moore emphasize fans’
narrative contributions as being those that clearly divert from canonical narrative, but
by authorizing fan production in the “strange” narrative fissures, those that take
narrative to places that the canon textually or ideologically “can’t” go, Moore
ultimately only acknowledges overtly resistant fan texts. Certainly, the production
and theorization of slash has been central to both our cultural conception of what fan
production is and why it’s commonly conceived as a “resistant” practice, and it has
been a key factor in placing media makers in prohibitionist or collaborationist camps.
The above analysis of the conditions under which BSG fans were producing texts,
however cursory, reaffirms that “collaboration” is the term we must critically engage
with when approaching fan production in the age of convergence. Moreover, it

198
points towards an increased need to engage critically with those fan texts that seek to
enter into a collaborative partnership with the unfolding narrative. While
prohibitionists still embody the most visible and hostile opponents of fan production,
we must meet the shift towards collaborationist models such as BSG’s with a healthy
dose of skepticism and pay close attention to its evolving impact on how formerly
collaborative or canonical fan production is being increasingly forced into resistant
practice.

The Regifting Economy of Ancillary Content Models
Fandom, and to some degree the Internet at large, has always functioned as a
gift economy. Lewis Hyde, in his 1983 study The Gift: Imagination and the Erotic
Life of Property, distinguishes gift economies from commodity culture in their
ability to establish a relationship between the person giving the gift and the person
receiving,
146
creating a communal bond founded on a sense of obligation and
reciprocity.
147
While it’s easy to critique transmedia storytelling on purely economic
terms, ancillary content models exist somewhere in between commodity culture and
a gift economy. Taking on the guise of a gift economy by offering fans free content,
these systems strive to build relationships with fans and integrate themselves into
“official” fan communities while simultaneously establishing a series of tolls and
fees. Whether they come in the form of advertising (banner ads, embedded
commercials), or only allowing fans to participate and produce within a strict set of
legal and ideological parameters, I would argue that ancillary content models operate

199
as a regifting economy. Their liminal placement between the commercial culture of
transmedia stories and fandom’s gift economy leaves fan-oriented ancillary content
endeavoring to regift fan culture and fan narratives back to fandom, with
promotional strings attached.
Studies of fan culture and convergence culture have been returning with
increasing frequency to Lewis Hyde’s 1983 anthropological study The Gift:
Imagination and the Erotic Life of Property in an attempt to explain the gift
economy’s central role in the construction and maintenance of online communities.
In particular, recent work on online gift economies has addressed the growing
inability to engage with gift economies and commodity culture as disparate systems,
as commodity culture begins selectively appropriating the gift economy’s ethos for
its own economic gain. As “Web 2.0 companies speak about creating communities
around their products and services, rather than recognizing that they are more often
courting existing communities with their own histories, agendas, hierarchies,
traditions, and practices,”
148
media fandom is rapidly being constructed as a fertile
battleground. The oft-cited harbinger of the impending battle between the industry
and fan communities is FanLib, a short-lived fan fiction archive that sought to
monetize fan production in exchange for prizes and proximity to the participating
shows producers. FanLib’s fatal flaw, according to Karen Hellekson, was
“misreading ‘community’ as ‘commodity,’” in its attempt to commercialize
fandom’s gift economy, and was overwhelmingly viewed as an attempt by “(male)
venture capitalists to profit financially from (female-generated) fan fiction.”
149

200
Consequently, there are a number of important reasons why fandom (and
those who study it) continues to construct gift and commercial models as discrete
economic spheres. Hellekson, for one, constructs the anticommercial nature of
fandom’s gift economy as a form of legal and social protection. Correctly noting
that, “at the heart of this anticommercial requirement of fan works is fans’ fear that
they will be sued by producers of content for copyright violation,”
150
Hellekson goes
on to argue that fandom’s gift economy also functions as a form of exclusion, a way
for fan communities to “preserve their own autonomy while simultaneously
solidifying the group.”
151
Likewise, there is both a legal and social imperative to
view fandom as transforming the objects of commodity culture into gifts, a
transformative process “where value gets transformed into worth, where what has a
price becomes priceless, where economic investment gives way to sentimental
investment.”
152
For those scholars who view the commercialization of fandom’s gift
economy as inevitable, the possibility of fans monetizing their own modes of
production is posed as a form of preemptive “protection.” Justly concerned that fan
fiction authors might be “waiting too long to decide to profit from their innovative
art form, and allowing an interloper to package the genre in its first commercially
viable format,”
153
Abigail De Kosnik argues that the “rewards of participating in a
commercial market […] might be just as attractive as the rewards of participating in
a community’s gift culture.”
154
Here, commercialization is about retaining the
community affiliated with fandom’s gift economy, and “gifting” insiders, rather than
outsiders, the right to profit from fan labor.

201
Richard Barbrook, reflecting on his 1998 essay “The Hi-Tech Gift Economy”
in 2005, acknowledges that constructing commodity culture and gift economies in
binary terms is problematic. Framing the online economy as a fundamentally
“mixed economy,” Barbrook argues that “money-commodity and gift relations are
not just in conflict with each other, but also co-exist in symbiosis,” even as each
economic model “threaten[s] to supplant the other.”
155
Far from existing on opposite
poles, commodity economies and gift economies are always already enmeshed, and
there is perhaps no better example of this than fandom itself. Directionality in terms
of how these disparate economic forms “mix” is of fundamental importance. Fan
studies have always celebrated the move from consumption to production, the
repurposing of texts that circulate within commercial economy into fan-produced
texts that circulate as gifts within fan communities. Given this context, it’s easy to
see why FanLib’s efforts to supplant fandom’s gift economy with a commercialized
model of fan production were vocally denounced by fans and scholars alike, and
ultimately led to the site’s closure in 2008.
While De Kosnik asserts that “the existence of commercial markets for goods
does not typically eliminate parallel gift economies,”
156
and that the
commercialization of fan practice might actually be empowering for female fan
authors, it is precisely this parallelism that is disconcerting when applied to an
ancillary content model’s appropriation of fandom’s gift economy model, and the
underlying goal of appropriating fandom itself for purely promotional purposes. The
“regifting economy” that is emerging, I argue, is carefully cultivating a parallel fan

202
space alongside grassroots formations of fandom. Precariously attempting to balance
the communal ideals of fandom’s gift economy with their commercial interests, the
regifting economy of ancillary content models can be viewed as attempting to regift
a narrowly defined and contained version of “fandom” to a general audience. As
Hyde stressed that “there are many gifts that must be refused”
157
based on the
motives behind their presentation, the discussion of the “regifting economy” that
follows is meant to synthesize the negative social connotations tied to the practice of
“regifting” and offer a brief analysis of why female fans would refuse ancillary
content models’ “gift” of planned communities.

Regifting: The Seinfeldian roots of a social taboo
Most locate the popular origin of the term “regifting” and its negative cultural
connotations in a 1995 episode of Seinfeld titled “The Label Maker.” Elaine coins
the term when she realizes that the titular gift, which she had given to a friend, has
been “recycled” and given to Jerry. Jerry, trying to diffuse the situation, suggests
that it might simply be an “homage” to Elaine’s original gift. Later in the episode,
after the “regifting” is confirmed, Jerry and George have a conversation about gift
etiquette as Jerry contemplates trying to take back a pair of tickets he had offered to
the offending “regifter”:
Jerry: I can't call Tim Whatley and ask for the tickets back.
George: You just gave them to him two days ago, he's gotta give you a
grace period.
Jerry: Are you even vaguely familiar with the concept of giving? There's
no grace period.

203
George: Well, didn't he regift the label maker?
Jerry: Possibly.
George: Well, if he can regift, why can't you degift?

George’s fundamental disregard for the unwritten rules of etiquette that surround
gifting, reinforced by Jerry’s pointed remark that George isn’t “even vaguely
familiar with the concept of giving,” situates George firmly within the logic of
commercial culture, from his invocation of the “grace period” we associate with the
purchase and return of commodities, to his moral relativism on the subject of
re/degifting. Conversely, we might frame Jerry as a spokesman for the “moral
economy” of gift exchanges. Adopting the term from social historian E.P.
Thompson and examining its applicability to the exchange of digital media, Jenkins
states that the moral economy is “governed by an implicit set of understandings
about what is ‘right’ or ‘legitimate’ for each player to do.”
158
Evidenced by the
term’s ongoing cultural use, the social stigmas attached to regifting are rooted in the
act’s inherent subterfuge, breaking the rules of the moral economy by masking
something old as something new, something unwanted as desirable. If “the cardinal
difference between gift and commodity exchange [is] that a gift establishes a feeling-
bond between two people,”
159
then “we cannot really become bound to those who
give us false gifts.”
160
Regifting literally presents a “false gift,” in large part because
no thought has been given to the construction or purchase of a gift that is meaningful
or specific to the recipient, and consequently is less likely to forge a bond between
the gifter and the giftee.

204
The social taboo of “degifting,” does not originate in this episode, but rather
is a politically correct reworking of the term “Indian Giver.” Broadly defined as one
who is “so uncivilized as to ask us to return a gift he has given,”
161
Hyde opens his
analysis of gift economies and their function with a historical overview of the term’s
misuse, arguing that Native Americans “understood a cardinal property of the gift:
whatever we have been given is supposed to be given away again, not kept.”
162

Framing the derogatory evolution of the “Indian Giver” as capitalism’s inability to
comprehend “such a limited sense of private property,” Hyde introduces the term
“white man keeper” to define members of commodity culture whose “instinct is to
remove property from circulation.”
163
This construction of “white man keepers” as
agents of capitalism with no understanding of the (frequently feminized) gift
economy or its functioning continues to be evoked in anxieties surrounding the
masculine/corporate exploitation of female fan communities and their texts.
FanLib’s male board of directors, who didn’t attempt to understand or reach out to
the female fan community whose labor they were attempting to profit from, is a
textbook example.
164
These characterizations are compounded by the fact that male
fans and “masculine” fan practices (game modding, fan filmmaking) have
historically sought professional status or financial compensation for their creative
works
165
more frequently than their female fan counterparts.

205
White man keepers: Ancillary content models and the regifting economy
Positioned precariously between official/commercial transmedia storytelling
systems and the unofficial/gifted exchange of texts within fandom, ancillary content
models downplay their commercial infrastructure by adopting the guise of a gift
economy, vocally claiming that their goal is simply to give fans “more” (more “free”
content, more access to the show’s creative team, and so on). The rhetoric of gifting
that underpins ancillary content models, and the accompanying drive to create a
community founded on this “gifted” content, is arguably more concerned with
creating alternate revenue streams for the failing commercial model of television
than it is with fostering a fan community or endorsing fan practices. Grappling with
the growing problem of timeshifting, ancillary content models create a “digital
enclosure”
166
within which they can carefully cultivate and monitor an alternate,
“official” fan community whose participatory value is measured by its consumption
of advertisement-laced ancillary content.
Regifting a version of participatory fan culture to a general audience
unfamiliar with fandom’s gift economy, these planned communities attempt to
repackage fan culture, masking something old as something new, something
unwanted (or unwieldy) as something desirable (or controllable/profitable). It could
be argued that fandom similarly polices its boundaries and subjects through
unwritten codes of conduct, but its motivations for doing so are ultimately about
protecting, rather than controlling, the ideological diversity of fan responses to the
text. As Hellekson notes, “learning how to engage [with fandom and its gift

206
economy] is part of the initiation, the us versus them, the fan versus the nonfan.”
167

The “them,” in this case, is both the creators of ancillary content models and their
intended audience. That Hellekson frames fandom’s gift economy, and learning to
play by its unwritten communal rules, as an “initiation,” a potential form of
exclusion, is especially telling. While fandom responds to its own mainstreaming
within convergence culture by fortifying its borders and rites of initiation, ancillary
content models are opening their doors to casual viewers unfamiliar with what
fandom has historically valued and how it functions. Whether or not ancillary
content models are being strategically deployed to monitor and control fandom, they
are serving as a potential gateway to fandom for mainstream audiences, and they
offer a warped version fandom’s gift economy that equates consumption and
canonical mastery with community.
When ancillary content models do actively attempt to replicate the reciprocity
of fandom’s gift economy by encouraging fans to submit their creative fan works
(typically through contests for fan film/vids, or galleries for uploaded fan art), the
legal and creative strictures they place on fans circumvents their efforts. As the
above discussion of Battlestar Galactica’s Videomaker Toolkit would suggest,
ancillary content models offer few incentives for fans already enmeshed in grassroots
creative fan communities to contribute, and there is consequently less opportunity for
participants to be exposed to and initiated into those fan communities. More
frequently than not, fannish participation is restricted to enunciative forms of fan

207
production,
168
such as posting to message boards or collaborative construction of a
show’s wiki.
Given the long, gendered history of fan communities and their relationship
with producers, and the frequent alignment of gift economies with “feminine” forms
of social exchange, it’s difficult not to construct those overseeing these ancillary
content models as convergence culture’s “white man keepers,” in a very literal sense.
Similar to Hyde’s “white man keepers,” these contemporary counterparts are
characterized by a desire to restrict the gift’s movement and find some way to
capitalize on it.
169
Despite its glib, pop culture origins, the Seinfeld episode does
pointedly illustrate the golden rule of regifting, namely that you can never regift to
the original giver or any of the giver’s acquaintances. Perhaps one of the central
reasons why fans continue to cast a wary eye at these planned communities and their
construction of a “legitimate” fandom is because they recognize the gift being given
mass audiences as their own.

208

Chapter Three Endnotes
1
Henry Jenkins, Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide (New
York: New York University Press, 2006), 123.

2
Jonathan Gray, Show Sold Separately: Promos, Spoilers, and Other Media
Paratexts (New York: New York University Press, 2010), 104.

3
Jenkins, Convergence Culture, 18.

4
Ibid., 19.

5
Ibid., 134.

6
Ibid., 134.

7
Ibid., 134.

8
Ibid., 134.

9
Jenkins, Convergence Culture, 134.

10
Kristina Busse, “Podcasts and the Fan Experience of Disseminated Media
Commentary,” (paper presented at Flow Congerence, Austin, TX, October 2006),
http://www.kristinabusse.com/cv/research/flow06.html.

11
Roberta Pearson, “Participation or Totalization: Fans and Transmedia
Storytelling,” (paper presented at the DigiCult: Television and the Public Sphere
conference, Paris, France, October 23, 2008).

12
Other television series that have adopted a similar ancillary content models include
Lost (ABC, 2004-2010), Heroes (NBC, 2006-2010), Ghost Whisperer (CBS, 2005-
2010), and Supernatural (CW 2005-present).

13
Jenkins, Convergence Culture, 169.

14
Geoffrey A. Long, Transmedia Storytelling: Business, Aesthetics, and Production
at the Jim Henson Company (Masters Thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology,
2007), 14.

209

15
“Frequently Asked Questions,” Organization for Transformative Works,
http://transformativeworks.org/faq.

16
“Definition: Transformative,” Organization for Transformative Works,
http://transformativeworks.org/glossary/13#lettert.

17
For a transformative overview of fair use and copyright law that uses copyrighted
footage from Disney films as its source material, see Eric Fayden’s “A Fair(y) Use
Tale,” presented by the Media Education Foundation at
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CJn_jC4FNDo.

18
Mizuko Ito, “Intertextual Enterprises: Writing Alternative Places and Meanings in
the Media Mixed Networks of Yugioh,”
http://www.itofisher.com/mito/archives/ito.intertextual.pdf.

19
Gray, Show Sold Separately. See also: Gerard Genette, Paratexts: Thresholds of
Interpretation (Cambridge: Cambirdge University Press, 1997).

20
Matt Hanson, The End of Celluloid: Film Futures in the Digital Age (RotoVision,
2003), 47.

21
Jenkins, Convergence Culture, 95-96.

22
Henry Jenkins, “Transmedia Storytelling 101,” Confessions of an Aca-Fan: The
Official Weblog of Henry Jenkins, March 22, 2007,
http://www.henryjenkins.org/2007/03/transmedia_storytelling_101.html.

23
Jenkins, Convergence Culture, 95.

24
Ibid., 95.

25
Long, Transmedia Storytelling, 29.

26
Ibid., 24-25.

27
Jenkins, Convergence Culture, 96.

28
Ibid., 106.

29
Roberta Pearson, “Participation or Totalization: Fans and Transmedia
Storytelling.”

210

30
For example, one needn’t have seen the original Star Wars film trilogy to enjoy
playing the Star Wars: The Force Unleashed video game or reading Star Wars:
Legacy comic books, though engaging with all facets of the transmedia story would
certainly enrich one’s textual experience and understanding.

31
Long, Transmedia Storytelling, 40.

32
Ibid., 20-21.

33
Henry Jenkins, Textual Poachers: Television Fans and Participatory Culture
(New York: Routledge, 1992), 24-27.

34
Marc Andrejevic, iSpy: Surveillance and Power in the Interactive Era (Lawrence:
University of Kansas Press, 2007), 158.

35
Michel De Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1984), 174.

36
Henry Jenkins, “Transmedia Storytelling,” Technology Review, January 15, 2003,
http://www.technologyreview.com/Biotech/13052/.

37
Jenkins, Textual Poachers, 26.

38
Ibid., 26.

39
Cynthia B. Meyers, “From Sponsorship to Spots: Advertising and the
Development of Electronic Media,” in Media Industries: History, Theory, and
Method, eds. Jennifer Holt and Alisa Perren (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009), 77-
78.

40
Using Tania Modleski’s turn of phrase from her 1983 essay “The Rhythms of
Reception: Daytime Television and Women’s Work,” a construction of fans’
rhythms of reception inverts the presumptions about the daytime
audience/housewife’s mode of distracted viewership.

41
Wildstorm Comics, an imprint of DC Comics, has published two volumes of
Heroes comics.

42
“Heroes: Graphic Novels,” http://www.nbc.com/Heroes/novels/.

43
“Heroes: Sprint Interactive Story,” http://www.nbc.com/Heroes/iStory/.

211

44
Aury Wallington, Heroes: Saving Charlie: A Novel (New York: Del Rey, 2008).

45
“Heroes Wiki: Main Page,” http://heroeswiki.com/Main_Page.

46
The site http://www.pinehearstcompany.com was rumored to be a future ARG.
The site has since been taken down.

47
“Primatech Paper Company,” http://www.primatechpaper.com/.

48
Matt Hills, Fan Cultures (New York: Routledge, 2002), 178-179.

49
Ibid., 178.

50
Ibid., 179.

51
Jenkins, “Transmedia Storytelling 101.”

52
Andrejevic, iSpy, 138.

53
Ibid., 145.

54
Ibid., 145.

55
Ibid., 155.

56
Ibid., 156.

57
Henry Jenkins uses Pierre Lévy’s term “collective intelligence” to discuss how
convergence culture generally, and transmedia stories specifically, transform
consumption into a collective and participatory process in which audiences “become
hunters and gatherers moving back across the various narratives trying to stitch
together a coherent picture from the dispersed information” (“Transmedia
Storytelling 101”).

58
Jenkins, Convergence Culture, 96.

59
Jenkins, “Transmedia Storytelling 101.”

60
Jenkins, Textual Poachers, 25.

212

61
In April 2010, the Producer’s Guild of America (PGA) officially added
“transmedia producer” to their Code of Credits, defined as “the person(s) responsible
for a significant portion of a project’s long-term planning, development, production,
and/or maintenance of narrative continuity across multiple platforms, and creation of
original storylines for new platforms.” The primary role of the transmedia producer,
according to the PGA, is to “create and implement interactive endeavors to unite the
audience of the property with the canonical narrative” (“Credit Guidelines for New
Media,” 2010).

62
Marc Ruppel, “(Still) Waiting for the Transmedia Godot,” In Media Res, July 28,
2010, http://mediacommons.futureofthebook.org/imr/2010/07/27/still-waiting-
transmedia-godot.

63
Jenkins, Convergence Culture, 106.

64
Ibid., 111.

65
Ibid., 109-110.

66
Ibid., 111.

67
Austin Karr, “‘Heroes’ Creator Tim Kring on His New TV Series, Transmedia, the
Future of Television,” fastcompany.com, July 30, 2010,
http://www.fastcompany.com/1676076/heroes-creator-tim-kring-on-his-new-tv-
series-transmedia-and-the-future-of-television.

68
Long, Transmedia Storytelling, 35.

69
Jenkins, “Transmedia Storytelling 101.”

70
Jenkins, Convergence Culture, 119.

71
Henry Jenkins, “‘Infinite diversity in infinite combinations’: Genre and authorship
in Star Trek,” in Science Fiction Audiences: Watching Doctor Who and Star Trek,
eds. John Tulloch and Henry Jenkins (New York: Routledge, 1995), 188-191.

72
J. Michael Straczynski in Alan Wexelblat, “An Auteur in the Age of the Internet:
JMS, Babylon 5, and the Net,” in Hop on Pop: The Politics and Pleasures of
Popular Culture, eds. Henry Jenkins, Tara McPherson, and Jane Shattuc (Durham:
Duke University Press, 2002), 209.

213

73
Wexelblat, “An Auteur in the Age of the Internet,” 216.

74
Ibid., 215.

75
Ken P., “An Interview with Ron Moore,” IGN.com, December 4, 2003,
http://movies.ign.com/articles/444/444306p1.html.

76
Christopher Bahn, “Interview: Russell T. Davies,” The AV Club, July 27, 2009,
http://www.avclub.com/articles/russell-t-davies,30869/.

77
Joss Whedon in Tasha Robinson, “Interview: Joss Whedon,” The AV Club, August
8, 2007, http://www.avclub.com/articles/joss-whedon,14136/.

78
Wexelblat, “An Auteur in the Age of the Internet,” 225.

79
Gray, Show Sold Separately, 113.

80
Ibid., 112.

81
Gerard Genette, Paratexts: Thresholds of Interpretation (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1997).

82
Gray, Show Sold Separately, 110.

83
Wexelblat, “An Auteur in the Age of the Internet,” 215.

84
Gray, Show Sold Separately, 89.

85
Jenkins, Convergence Culture, 94.

86
Roberta Pearson, “Fandom in the Digital Era,” Popular Communication, volume
8, issue 1, January 2010, 86.

87
Ibid., 86.

88
Ibid., 85-86.

89
Ronald D. Moore in Jason Lee Miller, “Ron Moore on Podcasting and Battlestar
Galactica,” webpronews.com, October 5, 2006,
http://www.webpronews.com/insiderreports/2006/10/05/ron-moore-on-podcasting-
and-battlestar-galactica.

214

90
Suzanne Scott, “Authorized Resistance: Is Fan Production Frakked?,” in Cylons in
America: Critical Studies in Battlestar Galactica, eds. Tiffany Potter and C.W.
Marshall (New York: Continuum, 2008), 218-219.

91
See: Kristina Busse, “Podcasts and the fan experience of disseminated media
commentary,” (paper presented at Flow Conference, Austin, TX, October 2006)
http://www.kristinabusse.com/cv/research/flow06.html, and Roberta Pearson,
“Fandom in the Digital Era,” Popular Communication, volume 8, issue 1 (January
2010), 84-95.

92
Henry Jenkins, “‘Do You Enjoy Making the Rest of Us Feel Stupid?’:
alt.tv.twinpeaks, the Trickster Author, and Viewer Mastery,” in Full of Secrets:
Critical Approaches to Twin Peaks, ed. David Lavery (Detroit: Wayne State
University Press, 1995), 66.

93
Jarrow, “New Vid: Tandemonium,” livejournal.com, August 8, 2010,
http://jarrow.livejournal.com/1127844.html.

94
Francesca Coppa, “Women, Star Trek, and the early development of fannish
vidding,” Transformative Works and Cultures, volume 1 (2008),
http://journal.transformativeworks.org/index.php/twc/article/view/44/64.

95
Ibid.

96
Each episode of reimagined Battlestar Galactica opens with the following title
cards: "The Cylons were created by man. They evolved. They rebelled. There are
many copies. And they have a plan." These title cards function as exposition, but
they also frame the central mystery of the series. The Cylons’ “plan” was further
explored in the 2009 television movie Battlestar Galactica: The Plan.

97
P., “An Interview with Ron Moore.”

98
Several comments in response to jarrow’s “Tandemonium” recognized the
symbolic collapse of character and audience within the vid, reinforcing my personal
reading of the vid as a critique of Moore’s dismissal of fans whose readings do not
reinforce his authorial intent.

99
Jarrow, “New Vid: Tandemonium.”

100
Long, Transmedia Storytelling, 56.

215

101
Jenkins, Convergence Culture, 179.

102
Kristina Busse, “Collaborative Authorship, Fandom and New Media,” ephemeral
traces, November 21, 2007, http://kbusse.wordpress.com/2007/11/21/collaborative-
authorship-fandom-and-new-media/.

103
Created by Glen A. Larson, the original Battlestar Galactica ran for only one
season in 1978. It was resurrected as Galactica 80, a spin-off that ran for only half a
season in 1980.

104
For a more detailed account of the fan backlash, and actor Dirk Benedict’s (the
original Starbuck) equally enraged response to Moore’s casting of Katee Sackhoff,
see Carla Kungl, “‘Long Live Stardoe!’: Can A Female Starbuck Survive?” in
Cylons in America: Critical Studies in Battlestar Galactica (New York: Continuum,
2008), 198-209.

105
As the anecdote goes, Ron Moore (a self-proclaimed Star Trek fan) received his
first writing job on Star Trek: The Next Generation after slipping a spec script to one
of Gene Roddenberry’s assistants while touring the set (P., “An Interview with Ron
Moore”).

106
Jenkins, Convergence Culture, 169.

107
Along with all the conventional “genres” of fan production (genfic, alternate
universe [AU], crossovers, slash, etc.), BSG fandom also features a thriving
femmeslash (or femslash) community. Inspired by the show’s strong female
characters (Starbuck, Roslin, Boomer, Six, et al.), femmeslash focuses on the
(typically homoerotic) relationships between female characters and, like slash, is
written primarily by women.

108
I’m thinking of “Gen” fanfiction or EU (extended universe) narratives in
particular, as opposed to slash fanfiction or overtly AU (alternate universe)
endeavors, which typically have more tenuous connections to canonical narrative.

109
Fiske “The Cultural Economy of Fandom,” 38.

110
Ibid., 39.

111
Jenkins, Textual Poachers, 278.

216

112
Rob Owen, “Executive Producer Ron Moore Discusses Thrilling ‘Galactica’
Cliffhanger,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, March 26 2007, http://www.post-
gazette.com/pg/07085/770732-352.stm.

113
Miller, “Ron Moore on Podcasting and Battlestar Galactica.”

114
These events are primarily directed through the story of the Battleship Pegasus
between the time of the fall of the Twelve Colonies and the moment that Pegasus re-
joins Galactica and the fleet.

115
Hills, Fan Cultures, 179.

116
“Jossed” derives from Buffy the Vampire Slayer creator Joss Whedon.

117
The two-hour pilot for the series Caprica was released as a DVD in April 2009,
and the series began airing on Syfy on Jenuary 22, 2010.

118
Cinematic fanboy auteur Bryan Singer was rumored to be attached to the project.

119
See Cornel Sandvoss’ Fans, chapter 2 (“The Dominant Discourse of Resistance:
Fandom and Power”) for a more detailed account of this tendency, in particular
Sandvoss’ discussion of Fiske’s Understanding Popular Culture (1989).

120
Hills, Fan Cultures, 27-45.

121
Ibid., 29.

122
In Using the Force: Creativity, Community and Star Wars Fans (New York:
Continuum, 2002), Will Brooker contends that slash and genfic play “exactly the
same game with the primary texts,” (133), consequently reading all fan texts as both
“resistant” and “collaborative” to varying degrees. While this is a valid claim,
Lucas’ prohibitionist stance towards any and all types of fan production (133) differs
greatly from Moore’s collaborationist stance. Thus, though slash and gen might play
the same fundamental narrative “game,” it is still central to examine who is
enforcing the rules and how. The case of BSG poses a structural reinforcement of
how fans are allowed to “play,” rather than framing Moore as a “referee.”

123
Jenny Hontz, “Websiodes: A Battle Against the Empire,” Newsweek, October 23,
2006.

124
Ibid.

217

125
Notably, both of these shows have featured homosexual characters. In the case of
Buffy, it’s her precarious feminine/feminist positioning that makes her queering
especially controversial. In the case of Battlestar Galactica, lesbianism is framed as
heterosexist fantasy (Gaius’ ménage a trois with Six and D’Anna), or devolving into
violence/abuse (as with another transmedia example, from the TV movie Razor,
which explores the relationship between Admiral Cain and Gina).

126
Instances when fan production is overtly encouraged, such as Sci Fi’s creation
and promotion of their “BSG Videomaker Toolkit”
(www.scifi.com/battlestar/videomaker/), retain a conflicted “collaborationist” stance,
as the resultant fan texts are required to attach a promotional clip to their creation,
turn over all rights to Sci Fi, and are ultimately used to promote the show
(www.scifi.com/battlestar/videomaker/terms/).

127
Julie Levin Russo, “User-Penetrated Content: Fan Video in the Age of
Convergence,” Cinema Journal 48 (4) Summer 2009, 127.

128
Ibid., 127.

129
Ibid., 128.

130
Ibid., 129.

131
Ibid., 130.

132
Ibid., 130.

133
Ronald D. Moore in Miller, “Ron Moore on Podcasting and Battlestar Galactica.”

134
Ronald. D. Moore in Chris Dahlen, “A.V. Club Interviews: Ronald D. Moore,”
The A.V. Club, April 17, 2007, http://www.avclub.com/articles/ronald-d-
moore,14086/.

135
All of the subsequent quotes were taken, with permission, from the Television
Without Pity forum titled “Chain-smoking & Apologies: Podcasts,”
http://forums.televisionwithoutpity.com/index.php?showtopic=3149128.

136
Bob Rehak and Suzanne Scott, 2007. “Gender and Fan Culture: Round Fifteen,
Part Two,” Confessions of an Aca-Fan: The Official Weblog of Henry Jenkins,
September 17, 2007,
http://henryjenkins.org/2007/09/gender_and_fan_culture_round_f_4.html.

218

137
Brooker, Using the Force, 202-204.

138
Jenkins, Convergence Culture, 115.

139
Ibid., 96.

140
This note is amended in issue #2 of the comic book to position the events of the
comic taking place between “the return from Kobol and the arrival of the Pegasus,”
due perhaps in part because the Battleship Pegasus arrives in episode 210, not, as
stated in the first issue, 211 (“Resurrection Ship, pt. 1”).

141
Robert Taylor, “Reflections: Talking ‘Battlestar Galacica with Greg Pak,”
Reflections Volume 2:17, May 28, 2006,
http://www.comicbookresources.com/?page=article&id=7166.

142
William McCarty, “Brandon Jerwa on New Battlestar Galactica: Season Zero.”
Newsarama.com, May 22, 2007,
http://forum.newsarama.com/showthread.php?t=113605.

143
Ibid.

144
Jenkins, Convergence Culture, 106.

145
Diane Werts, “Fanfiction Booms as Modern Folklore,” Newsday.com, April 29
2005, http://whedon.info/article.php3?id_article=9409.

146
Lewis Hyde, The Gift: Imagination and the Erotic Life of Property (New York:
Vintage, 1983) xx.

147
Ibid., 86.

148
Henry Jenkins, et al., “If it doesn't spread, it's dead (part three): The gift economy
and commodity culture,” Confessions of an Aca-Fan: The Official Weblog of Henry
Jenkins, February 16, 2009,
http://henryjenkins.org/2009/02/if_it_doesnt_spread_its_dead_p_2.html.

149
Karen Hellekson, “A Fannish Field of Value: Online Fan Gift Culture,” Cinema
Journal 48 (4) Summer 2009, 117.

150
Ibid., 114.

219

151
Ibid., 117.

152
Henry Jenkins, et al., “If it doesn't spread, it's dead (part four): Thinking through
the gift economy,” Confessions of an Aca-Fan: The Official Weblog of Henry
Jenkins, February 18, 2009,
http://henryjenkins.org/2009/02/if_it_doesnt_spread_its_dead_p_3.html.

153
Abigail De Kosnik, “Should Fan Fiction Be Free?,” Cinema Journal 48 (4)
Summer 2009, 120.

154
Ibid., 123.

155
Richard Barbrook, “The hi-tech gift economy,” First Monday 3 (12), December 7
2005,
http://firstmonday.org/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/631/552.

156
De Kosnik, “Should Fan Fiction Be Free?,” 123.

157
Hyde, The Gift, 70.

158
Henry Jenkins, et al., “If it doesn't spread, it's dead (part three).”

159
Hyde, The Gift, 57.

160
Ibid., 70.

161
Ibid., 3.

162
Ibid., 4.

163
Ibid., 4.

164
Henry Jenkins, “Transforming fan culture into user-generated content: The case
of FanLib.” Confessions of an Aca-Fan: The Official Weblog of Henry Jenkins, May
22, 2007, http://www.henryjenkins.org/2007/05/transforming_fan_culture_into.html.

165
De Kosnik, “Should Fan Fiction Be Free?,” 120-121.

166
Andrejevic, iSpy, 2-3.

167
Hellekson, “A Fannish Field of Value,” 114.

220

168
Fiske, “The Cultural Economy of Fandom,” 38.

169
Hyde, The Gift, 4.

221
Chapter Four: From Filkers to Wrock Stars
The New Fanactivism and the Gendered Commoditization of Fan Practice
About a year ago I played my first rock show
I was feeling kinda nervous about how it would go
And so I talked to my rock star friend, Draco.
And he said, "Hey man, don’t fret.
Cause wizard rock fans are the sweetest bunch of fans,
And most of them are girls and you’re basically a man.
So get out there killer and rock it like you can,"
And so that’s what I did.
It soon became clear that rocking wasn’t enough
If you’re gonna score with groupies then you gotta be a hunk.
You can’t get by with overwhelming talent alone
And man, that’s all I got. Man, that’s all I got.
- The Whomping Willows, “Wizard Rock Heart Throb” lyrics

Chapter Three discussed the ongoing investment in protecting fandom’s gift
economy, and the media industry’s collaborationist attempts to channel and profit
from fannish modes of consumption and production. This chapter examines the
other side of this issue, addressing what happens when fans choose to commercialize
their own textual production while still striving to cultivate community. Just as
many fans (and fangirls in particular) view the gift economy as a form of legal and
communal protectionism, there are legal and communal barriers in place that
discourage fans from commoditizing their own labor. Though it has historical ties to
the fan practice of filking -- the creation and performance of folk songs inspired by
science fiction media properties at fan conventions -- wizard rock (or wrock) is a
unique genre of fan production that emerged out the Harry Potter fan community in
2002 and continues to thrive. Wizard rock bands compose and perform music

222
inspired by J.K. Rowling’s fictional universe, typically from the perspective of a
particular character, and frequently in costume. Wizard rock poses an intriguing
case study to consider how fan production is shifting within convergence culture in
large part because it has managed to evade both legal censure (despite the fact wrock
is a commoditized mode of fan production) and communal criticism (despite the
disproportionate professionalization and popularization of male wrockers). This can
be largely credited to wizard rock’s savvy fusion of commercial intake and charitable
giving when constructing its identity as a fan practice, seamlessly wedding these
contradictory impulses through a community of wizard rock fans. Thus, despite the
fact that wizard rock broke with fandom’s structuring gift economy though the sale
of music, concert tickets, and merchandise, it has since developed what we might
call a “giving economy.” Wizard rock has tempered critiques of its
commercialization of fandom’s gift economy by spearheading literacy campaigns,
playing free shows at public libraries, and getting involved in a variety of social
justice movements. It remains unclear just how much wizard rock bands gain, and
how much they ultimately give back through these charitable endeavors, but this
balance has simultaneously helped to keep wizard rock free of legal interference and
allowed wrockers to position themselves as integral members of the Harry Potter fan
community.
The most visible and successful wrock band is Harry and the Potters.
Formed in 2002 by brothers Paul and Joe DeGeorge, Harry and the Potters are
widely considered to be the first wizard rock band, and the founders of wizard rock

223
as both a genre of fan production and a “movement.” When members of the fan
community refer to wizard rock as a movement, they are typically referencing wizard
rock’s ties to the Harry Potter Alliance. The Harry Potter Alliance was co-founded
in 2005 by Andrew Slack and Harry and the Potters’ Joe and Paul DeGeorge.
Drawing allegorical comparisons between the fictional forces of evil in Rowling’s
novels and the “Dark Arts” of the real world, the Harry Potter Alliance has evolved
into a massive philanthropic organization that uses social media to promote social
justice within the Harry Potter fan community. Just as the Harry Potter Alliance is
“creating the blueprint for a new kind of civic engagement that combines pop
culture, social change, and new media,”
1
wizard rock must be viewed as a new kind
of fan production. Wizard rock is a prime example of how new media and social
networking sites have impacted the production, distribution, and consumption of fan
texts. More importantly, wizard rock presents a blueprint for a future of fan
production that fuses the commercialization of fan labor with participatory
philanthropy.
This chapter positions wizard rock as endeavoring, though not fully
achieving, to create a mode of fan production that fulfills the implicit promises of
convergence culture. Wizard rock has artfully managed to evade top-down
prohibitionist control and cultivate bottom-up fan networks through social media
sites like Myspace, Facebook and Twitter, creating one of the most influential
sectors of Harry Potter fandom. Accordingly, wizard rock is an excellent example
of how emergent forms of fan production within convergence culture might fuse

224
grassroots analog fan practices with a Web 2.0 business model. Where the utopian
potential of wizard rock’s “blueprint” begins to break down is within the gendered
hierarchy of wizard rock’s star system. The Wizrocklopedia, a site created in
September 2006 to celebrate and promote wizard rock, currently lists over 756 wrock
bands.
2
Of those 756 wrock bands, around ten have achieved widespread notoriety
and function as viable rock bands by consistently touring, playing “headlining”
concerts, and selling merchandise. Beginning with the success of Harry and the
Potters, the most visible, popular, and lucrative wizard rock bands have been
founded by white men in their twenties, and their fans are overwhelmingly female.
Wizard rock as a form of fan production is impressively diverse, both in terms of
musical genres and the demographics of its performers, but wizard rock “stars” and
the female fans that structurally create and reify their privileged status presents a
binary that undercuts wizard rock’s egalitarian potential, and troubles its ties to
filking as a fan practice.
As a form of fan production, filking has received comparatively little
scholarly attention considering its place of prominence in Henry Jenkins’ Textual
Poachers: Television Fans and Participatory Culture. In a chapter devoted to filk
titled “‘Strangers No More, We Sing’: Filk Music, Folk Culture, and the Fan
Community,” Jenkins focused on filking practices and performances at fan
conventions in the 1980s. Positioning filk as a prescient embodiment of convergence
culture’s competing influences of folk and commercial culture, Jenkins’ concluded
his survey of the filk community with some ambivalence about its potential

225
commercialization in the early 1990s and beyond. The Gender and Fan Culture
debates made it clear that Jenkins’ concerns about how monetizing filk would impact
its folk ethos (and fandom’s general emphasis on community and camaraderie, by
extension) have not gone away, and have been extended to all forms of fan
production. In some sense, the analysis of wizard rock’s tenuous positioning as
filk’s progeny that follows picks up where Jenkins’ chapter in Textual Poachers left
off, considering how wizard rock might confirm or dispel his anxieties about the
future of filk specifically, and folk fan culture broadly.
Interestingly, scholarly work on filk presents a structuring absence within fan
studies. The dearth of scholarship on filking as a fan practice, particularly after the
shift from analog to digital fan studies, might simply be a result of fan scholars
moving away from field studies of fan conventions (the home of the filksing) and
towards the virtual “fields” of message boards and LiveJournal communities. I
would suggest another potential reason that filk has remained underexplored as a
mode of fan production. Unlike fan fiction or vidding, or machinima or blueprinting,
forms of fan production that are rigidly gendered, Jenkins states that men and women
play "equally prominent roles within filk.”
3
Though filking poses a tantalizing
(gender) neutral zone in which fanboys and fangirls happily co-exist, and aca-
fanboys and aca-fangirls might be granted equal access, the lack of work on filk
seems to suggest that we as aca-fen are unwilling to abandon our gendered enclaves
for the promise of fannish equality. Ironically, the fact that filk is a fan practice in

226
which men and women are equally visible may have played a role in its own
invisibility as an object of study.
Within wizard rock, it could be argued that fangirls are perpetuating their
own invisibility, rather than being rendered invisible by academia (as in the
Introduction’s discussion of fan studies within convergence culture), the popular
press (as with journalists’ narrow construction of female comic-con attendees in
Chapter Two), or the media industry (as in Chapter Three’s interrogation of the
gender-biased video and audio files in Battlestar Galactica’s Video Maker Toolkit).
This dissertation has repeatedly returned to the assumption that fanboys view their
(predominantly affirmational and industrially sanctioned) textual production as a
means to professional ends, and that fangirls actively avoid professionalizing their
own fan production or don’t support those who choose to “go pro.” By one
prominent wizard rocker’s estimation, the audience for most wizard rock concerts is
85-90% female,
4
a statistic supported by my own observations of wrock audiences
between 2003 and 2010. Thus, in addition to discussing how wizard rock has
troubled filk’s gender-neutral status, this chapter also addresses the gendered divide
between male wrock stars and female wrock fans, and interrogates fangirls’
complicity in the professionalization of fanboys.

Wizard Rock in Context: Temporal and Legal Conditions for Creativity
Before we can discuss whether or not wizard rock has retained filk’s first
wave values, engage with its gendered star system, or consider how future models of

227
fan production might fuse profit and philanthropy in a similarly strategic fashion, it’s
necessary to acknowledge the temporal and legal conditions that allowed Harry
Potter wizard rock to emerge and flourish. The trajectory of wizard rock as a fan
practice runs parallel to the growth of the Harry Potter phenomenon and fandom in
the United States. Rowling’s first book in the series, Harry Potter and the
Philosopher’s Stone, was published by Bloomsbury in the United Kingdom in June
1997. The book was picked up by Scholastic for American publication, re-titled
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, and released in September 1998. This
staggered release continued for the next two novels in the series, Harry Potter and
the Chamber of Secrets (July 1998 in the UK, June 1999 in the US) and Harry Potter
and the Prisoner of Azkaban (July 1999 in the UK, September 1999 in the US).
Each subsequent book in the series was released simultaneously in the UK by
Bloomsbury and the US by Scholastic, beginning with Harry Potter and the Goblet
of Fire (July 2000), and continuing with Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
(June 2003), Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (July 2005), and Harry Potter
and the Deathly Hallows (July 2007) [Figure 4.1].
The origins of the Harry Potter “phenomenon” in the US roughly coincide
with the release of Goblet of Fire in 2000, when the first midnight book release
parties were held across the country and the Harry Potter fandom became a visible
and pervasive object of fascination within the popular press. The books had been
cultivating a robust online fan community since 1998, and in 1999 fans began to

228
Figure 4.1. U.K. and U.S. Harry Potter Book Release Dates

coalesce around Mugglenet, a website created by then 12 year-old Emerson Spartz.
Mugglenet was, and continues to be, an all-purpose website for fans, where they can
read the latest news about the franchise, exchange fan fiction or other creative works,
and discuss the franchise. In 2000, three Harry Potter websites were created that
remain central hubs of fan activity: The Leaky Cauldron (which remains the primary
site for news related to all facets of the franchise and fandom), the Harry Potter
Lexicon (created by Steve Vander Ark as an encyclopedic reference guide for
Rowling’s fictional universe), and HPforGrownups (a Yahoo! Group for adult fans

229
to discuss the series). A year later, in 2001, FictionAlley was created, and quickly
became a vast archive for Harry Potter fan fiction. Though these sites are
noteworthy for their enduring prominence, they in no way paint a comprehensive
picture of online Harry Potter fandom. Given the property’s legacy as the first true
instance of mainstream online fan culture, it would be virtually impossible to present
a comprehensive survey of the Harry Potter fan community. Rather, it is useful to
conceptualize Harry Potter fandom as a network of subcommunities, of which
wizard rock is only one.
Wizard rock originated and grew alongside Harry Potter fandom after the
release of Goblet of Fire in 2000, which notably contained Rowling’s first mention
of wizard rock bands.
5
Each subsequent novel in Rowling’s series took, on average,
over two years to complete. The release pattern of Warner Bros.’ film adaptations
[Figure 4.2], beginning with Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone in 2001, brought
a new influx of fans and sustained interest in the franchise between literary
installments, but fan production was most actively facilitated by the temporal ellipses
between Rowling’s canonical literary installments. The sheer abundance and the
richness of fan production within the Harry Potter fan community was certainly a
product of its size, but equal credit must be given to the optimal conditions that fans
were creating within. Returning to Chapter Three’s discussion of “just-in-time
fandom”
6
with regard to ancillary content models, and their potential to impede fan
production, the inverse argument could be made with Harry Potter fandom. Instead
of a perpetually shrinking window of time for fans to textually engage with an

230
unfolding canonical narrative, as was the case with Chapter Three’s discussion of
Battlestar Galactica and most contemporary television fandoms, Harry Potter
offered an expansive window of time between literary installments for fans to create
sophisticated fan texts and develop new forms of fan production like wizard rock.

Figure 4.2. U.S. Harry Potter Book and Film Release Dates

One particularly impressive example of the fan works that emerged out of
this release pattern is the fanfiction novel “After the End,”
7
by Arabella and Zsenya.
Written and uploaded one chapter at a time to the popular fan fiction archive The
Sugar Quill between the release of Goblet of Fire in 2000 and Order of the Phoenix

231
in 2003, “After the End” is forty-five chapters long and took over two years to
collaboratively write. Positioning itself as an epilogue, or eighth “book” in the
series, well before Rowling had completed books five through seven, “After the
End” is noteworthy for several reasons. Beyond its impressive size and literary
quality, both of which can be attributed in part to the amount of the time the authors
were given to polish their text, “After the End” also had two years to draw readers in
and cultivate its own devoted fan following. Thus, instead of temporally disciplining
and regulating fans’ textual “feedback,”
8
as with the ancillary content models
discussed in Chapter Three, the temporal gap between the release of Goblet of Fire
and Order of the Phoenix not only allowed Arabella and Zsenya to get feedback on
their own work from other fans, but for fans to create their own textual “feedback” to
“After the End” in the form of fan art and shorter fan fiction stories.
As texts like “After the End” looked forward, attempting to accurately or
artfully predict what would become of Rowling’s characters in the future, wizard
rock as a phenomenon was driven by nostalgia, and a desire amongst fans to
reminisce about their favorite moments from Rowling’s series as they awaited each
novel’s arrival. Wizard rock’s play with perspective frequently encourages fans to
reconsider canonical moments from a different character’s point-of-view, resulting in
a more expansive and comprehensive understanding of the fictional wizarding world
of Rowling’s novels. One example is the subgenre of “Evil Wizard Rock,” in which
bands like Draco and the Malfoys and The Parselmouths comically take on
Rowling’s fictional universe from the point-of-view of school bullies and mean girls.

232
Songs like Draco and the Malfoy’s “My Dad is Rich and Your Dad is Dead” and
“Your Family is Poor,” or the Parselmouths’ “Kicking House Elves” and “Let’s Get
Hagrid Fired,” wink at the ironically subordinated and maligned position of the
upper class in Rowling’s novels, and how Harry’s perspective colors the reader’s
view of these characters.
Temporally, the Harry Potter franchise may have created ideal conditions for
fan creativity to flourish, but fans still faced legal challenges. Both the introduction
and Chapter Three have indicated that corporations are fostering a more
collaborationist relationship with fans, but when Warner Bros. took control of the
rights to Harry Potter in 1999, the collaborationist ethos of convergence culture had
yet to take hold within the media industry. However, unlike fan figureheads such as
George Lucas, who frequently positions himself as an authorial Emperor attempting
to stamp out Rebel interpretations of his franchise,
9
Rowling personally adopted a
collaborationist approach in the early days of Harry Potter fandom, perceived by fans
as not only condoning but encouraging fan production. Warner Bros., a subsidiary
of Time Warner, adopted a prohibitionist approach once they obtained the rights to
the franchise in 1999, in line with the industry’s widely prohibitionist view of
fandom at the time.
Rebecca Tushnet, in her essay “Copyright Law, Fan Practices, and the Rights
of the Author,” notes that “fans tend to see their legal status as similar to their social
status: marginal and, at best, tolerated rather than accepted as a legitimate part of the
universe of creators.”
10
As this dissertation argues, convergence culture has to some

233
degree “legitimized” and mainstreamed fans and their textual production, and thus it
stands to reason that some collectives of fans are beginning to see their legal status
differently. The visibility of fans within convergence culture, and the “fanification”
of consumers, can be viewed as concurrently hindering and helping the tenuous legal
status of fan texts. Though the cultural “‘Napsterization’ of intellectual property,”
and the “normalization of creating and disseminating unauthorized derivative
works”
11
within convergence culture has helped facilitate the industrial shift away
from legal prohibitionism, Tushnet argues that this visibility remains a palpable
source of anxiety for fans. In short, “the fact that these creations are no longer
mimeographed and circulated among a circle of friends who already knew each other
can create a greater sense of exposure, and a certain fear that the powers that be
might crack down if the fans aren’t careful.”
12
Here, once again, we see a nostalgic
nod to both analog fandom and the first wave of fan studies, but we get to the heart
of the anxieties about the gendered visibility of fan culture. While fanboys have
historically been the ones to seek professional status and financially capitalize on
their fan identities and textual production, fangirls practices seem to the ones under
constant threat of “exposure,” and subsequent “crackdown,” in Tushnet’s definition.
This assumption is reflected in free culture and copyleft advocacy groups like
the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), that have begun championing fan fiction
and vidding as transformative works that deserve legal protection. The EFF was
founded in 1990 as a nonprofit organization dedicated to legally defending
consumers digital rights, freedom of speech and privacy. Chillingeffects.org, a

234
website developed at Harvard University’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society
and supported by the EFF and a collective of prominent law programs, has a
thorough FAQ about fanfic
13
that offers information about copyright law to fan
producers and legal advice and support for those served with cease and desist letters.
A similar case could be made for the EFF’s successful petitioning
14
of the Library of
Congress for an exemption to the Digital Millenium Copyright Act. This petition
(submitted by the EFF on December 2, 2008 and supported by the Organization for
Transformative Works) and the subsequent exemption confirmed in July 2010, has
secured vidders and other remix artists to legally extract clips from DVDs, provided
that what they create falls into the category of fair use. It is unclear whether this
concerted effort to protect fangirls’ preferred forms of textual production speaks to
fangirls’ textual production genuinely being under greater threat, or fangirls simply
being more conscious of the regulation that could accompany fandom’s growing
visibility. In all of these cases, the gift economy is stressed as integral to the
continued legal protection of fan production.
Harry and the Potters were the first wizard rock band to sell CDs and
merchandise through a personal website, and were contacted by Warner Bros. in
2005. Tales of cease and desist letters sent by corporate legal teams are all too
common within fandom, particularly for those fans who attempt to monetize their fan
production. In another version of this story, the letter sent to Harry and the Potters
by Warner Bros. could have been the end of wizard rock, or pushed wizard rock back
towards the non-commercial realm of filking. But, for reasons that are still unclear,

235
the letter from Warner Bros. sought to open a dialogue with the band rather than shut
them down on the grounds of copyright infringement.
The Leaky Cauldron’s Melissa Anelli, in her book Harry, A History: The
True Story of a Boy Wizard, His Fans, and Life Inside the Harry Potter
Phenomenon, recounts the negotiation between Warner Bros. representative Marc
Brandon and the members of Harry and the Potters. The band responded to Warner
Bros.’ initial letter with a letter of their own, crafted by a lawyer friend and citing
court cases that set a precedent to protect their band under fair use as parody.
Warner Bros. responded by reaching out to the DeGeorge brothers via phone. Anelli
recounts:
After a few rounds of negotiation, [Brandon] told Paul that they could
continue to sell their music online, but anything else was verboten except at
live shows, about which WB would simply not concern themselves unless
they caught the brothers in the act. Take everything but the CDs off the
Internet, and ‘we’ll never talk to you again.’ Despite the thrill they had at the
prospect of a real fight against the ‘man,’ that was a trade the Potters were
happy to make. By the end of the conversation, they were exchanging
pleasantries.
15

Considering this gentlemen’s agreement, it is easy to see why wizard rock bands are
notoriously tight-lipped about their profit margins, and why merchandise sales have
become central to the performance space. Wrock bands claim that merchandise is
necessary to fund their touring and survive as full time wrock musicians, but since
the truce between Warner Bros. and Harry and the Potters in 2005, the most popular
wrock bands also earn money through ticket sales, and are frequently comped

236
airfare, hotel suites, and are offered booking fees and per diem to appear at
conferences and conventions.
Somewhat problematically framing Joe and Paul DeGeorge as fanboy Davids
to Warner Bros. corporate Goliath, Anelli speculated that Warner Bros.’ willingness
to negotiate with the band was due in part to the fact that Warner Bros. “was a man
to whom it had already been stuck, with PotterWar, and didn’t seem too keen on
replicating the experience.”
16
In a chapter of Convergence Culture titled “Why
Heather Can Write: Media Literacy and the Harry Potter Wars,” Henry Jenkins
poses the PotterWars as a perfect example of the tensions between top-down
corporate convergence and bottom-up grassroots/fannish convergence.
17
Jenkins
framed the PotterWar as a struggle to reconceptualize literacy as the ability to both
consume and produce media, with one’s right to participate in popular culture at
stake.
18
Heather Lawver, a teenager who created an online version of the wizarding
newspaper The Daily Prophet to encourage children around the world to hone their
writing skills via their contributions, served as Jenkins’ primary test case. Lawver
co-founded the organization Defense Against the Dark Arts in 2001 to support
fellow teens who had been threatened with legal action by Warner Bros.
19
Faced
with mounting negative publicity for clamping down on teens running websites that
were more interested in growing community than profits, the studio backed down
and publically apologized,
20
and the PotterWar ended in a wary truce.
Anelli may be correct in her assumption that Warner Bros., unwilling to jump
into another PotterWar or public relations quagmire, was uncharacteristically lenient

237
in their legal bargaining with wizard rock. The verbal agreement between Warner
Bros. and the DeGeorge brothers in no way protects the future of wrock (or
likeminded efforts to profit, however marginally, from fan production), but it does
put wizard rock in a more cozy relationship with Harry Potter’s copyright enforcers
than most fan creators are afforded. This relationship, and wizard rock’s protected
status as a transformative form of fan production, was further solidified in the legal
battle between Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. and J.K. Rowling, and RDR Books,
who attempted to publish the contents of Steve Vander Ark’s Harry Potter Lexicon
website as an encyclopedic reference book in 2007.
The Harry Potter Lexicon, as previously mentioned, was one of the largest
and most popular fan sites, and its creator Steve Vander Ark was a beloved and
respected member of the fan community. Dubbed “Lexicongate” within Harry
Potter fandom, Vander Ark’s attempt to publish a version of his website, and the
court case that ensued, was watched closely by fans who were concerned about the
ramifications on other forms of fan production. There was outrage on both sides,
with some fans concerned that the lawsuit was Rowling’s first blow in an effort to
clamp down on fan production, and the majority blaming Vander Ark for so
flagrantly breaking with fandom’s gift economy. Centrally, the case revolved around
Vander Ark’s attempt to publish his online reference guide, despite having prior
knowledge that Rowling had future plans to develop her own official Harry Potter
encyclopedia.

238
After Rowling’s representatives at the Christopher Little Agency heard about
RDR’s plan to publish the Lexicon in the summer of 2007, several written requests
sent to RDR Books urging them not to publish went unanswered. In September
2007, a cease and desist letter was sent to RDR Books from Warner Bros. and
Rowling. RDR countersued in response, claiming that information from the Lexicon
had been used without permission to bolster the DVD extras of the Harry Potter film
adaptations. On October 31, 2007, Rowling and Warner Bros. filed suit against RDR
Books, the trial was held April 14-17, 2008, and the court ruled in Rowling’s and
Warner Bros.’ favor in September 2008.
We might consider the Lexicon trial as a cautionary tale that identifies the
fine line between “affirmational” and “infringing” forms of fan production. More
significantly, the trial made a point of acknowledging Warner Bros.
“encouragement” of transformative modes of fan production. Dale Cendali, the
lawyer representing Warner Bros., distinguished the Lexicon as a fan text that “takes
too much and does too little,” from other modes of transformative fan production,
arguing that:
Far from being overly restricted, the evidence will show plaintiffs have given
wide latitude to all sorts of activities about Harry Potter. There is fan fiction,
there is fan art, there is Harry Potter wizard rock bands. There is a virtually
unfettered Internet that has become a giant Harry Potter book club. All this
activity goes on and is not just tolerated, it is encouraged. Warner Bros. even
provides kits for fans to be able to use images on their Web sites.
21

The fact that wizard rock was specifically cited here could be considered a further
(and far more official) “sanctioning” of wrock beyond the DeGeorge brothers’

239
gentlemen’s agreement with Warner Bros. What is notable about wizard rock being
presented alongside fanfiction and fan art is that while the latter two forms of fan
production overwhelmingly circulate as gifts between fans, wizard rock from its
inception has been a quasi-commercialized practice. Though Ms. Cendali and
Warner Bros. didn’t distinguish between what we might consider “analog” forms of
fan production such as fan fiction and fan art and emergent digital forms such as
wizard rock, it is necessary to distinguish wrock from its analog predecessor, filk.

From Filk to Wrock
The term “filk” dates back to 1955,
22
when Lee Jacobs made a typographical
error while writing “The Influence of Science Fiction on American Folk Music” for
the Spectator Amateur Press Society, transforming “folk” into “filk.”
23
In his
chapter on filking in Textual Poachers, Jenkins notes that:
filk takes many forms: lyrics are published in fan songbooks or as one
element among many in fanzines; filk clubs hold monthly meetings; filk
conventions are held several times a year; [and] filk is circulated on tapes,
either informally (through barter) or more commercially (through several
semi-professional filk tape distributors).
24

Jenkins’ study emphasized filk’s “primary context as texts designed to be sung
collectively and informally by fans gathered at science-fiction conventions,”
25
and
celebrated the filksing as one of the most textually and demographically diverse and
open forms of fan production. Jenkins’ description of the filksing as an environment
where there is “no formal separation between performance space and spectator

240
space"
26
would suggest it as a utopian alternative to strictly gendered definitions of
fan production and an idyllic display of fan community and co-creation.
Like the social awareness endemic to folk music, “what filk suggests is that
commercial culture, which often seems so omnipotent in its ability to construct the
fantasy life of its mass audience, is shadowed by a residue of folk culture whose
forms and traditions, however marginalized, persist as potential forms of resistant
cultural activity.”
27
Despite Jenkins’ optimistic reading of filk’s potential to resist
both commercialization and the gender stratifications that continue to demarcate
“masculine” and “feminine” forms of fan production within convergence culture, he
concluded his analysis with some ambivalence concerning the push towards
professionalization occurring in the filk community in the early 1990s.
In an effort to expose filk to a wider audience, semiprofessional recording
labels in the early 1990s attempted to create filk “stars” through studio-grade
recording conditions and wider distribution,
28
typically charging between $8 and $12
for a sixty minute audio tape.
29
This emergent star system concerned Jenkins, who
noted that filk, despite being “founded on ideals of musical democracy, an
acceptance of various competencies, has become more hierarchical due to the push
towards professional standards of technical perfection.”
30
The hierarchies that
accompanied filk’s professionalization was not limited to the filkers themselves, who
were classified as potential filk stars or common filksingers, but also impacted filk
fans, who were revalued as consumers first, and (potential) participants second.

241
Jenkins’ conclusive statement on the uncertain future of filk is prescient when
we begin to consider wizard rock as filking for the MySpace Music era: “The future
of filk will, thus, like its history, be a complex one, torn between its roots in folk
cultural traditions and its ties to commercial cultural materials, originating within the
fan community and yet sold back to that community as a commodity.”
31
Filk has
endured, but it goes widely unacknowledged as a precursory form of fan production
by wizard rockers and wizard rock fans. This could simply be a generational
disconnect, as many members of the Harry Potter fan community were not engaged
in prior science fiction fandoms and are consequently unaware of the history and
jargon attached to various forms of fan production. Though the connection between
filk and wrock is rarely addressed, a brief historical overview of wizard rock [Figure
4.3] exposes it as a digital embodiment of filk’s potential and its continued shift
towards professionalization and hierarchization.
In the tradition of filk, my first encounter with wizard rock was at a fan
convention. In July 2003 I attended Nimbus, the first international Harry Potter
symposium. Attracting approximately 600 scholars and fans of J.K. Rowling’s
novels and Warner Bros.’ film adaptations, Nimbus was designed to function as both
an academic conference and a fan convention. During the day, scholarly papers,
panels, and keynotes were presented to an audience composed of academics,
librarians, and fans dressed Hogwarts school uniforms and wizard robes. In the
evening, attendees gathered to watch the film adaptations, participate in fan art or fan
fiction workshops, or duel with wands in the hotel corridors. One of these evening

242
events featured a performance by the Switchblade Kittens, a female pop-punk band.
The Switchblade Kittens performed that evening as “The Weird Sisters,” a reference
to a wizarding world rock band mentioned in J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter and the
Goblet of Fire (2000), and played an original Harry Potter-themed song, “Ode to
Harry.” Written from the perspective of Ginny Weasley, “Ode to Harry” had been
performed sporadically since 2000, but for most Harry Potter fans, myself included,
this was the first time anyone had heard wizard rock.

Figure 4.3. Wizard Rock Dates

243
The Switchblade Kittens’ “Ode to Harry” is considered the first wizard rock
song, but Harry and the Potters are recognized as the first wizard rock band.
Founded in 2002, Harry and the Potters continue to serve as most fans’ gateway into
the wizard rock community, and the band also codified many of the defining tropes
of wizard rock. Joe and Paul DeGeorge both perform as “Harry” (with older brother
Paul embodying Harry in his 7
th
year at Hogwarts, and Joe playing Harry: year 4),
writing songs from Harry’s point of view, and dressing in Hogwarts school uniforms
in the Gryffindor house colors. The most successful wizard rock bands have
followed this formula, picking a character from Rowling’s fictional universe,
aesthetically embodying them onstage, and writing songs from their point of view
(or, more broadly, that replicate the worldview of their Hogwarts’ house, or their
status in the wizarding world). As the number of wizard rock bands has grown, the
number of canonical characters for bands to embody has dwindled. In some cases,
this has led to inventive play with the Rowling’s canon, such as The Whomping
Willows singing songs from the perspective of Hogwarts' animated tree, but in most
cases this has resulted in bands being formed around characters or curios that
Rowling only mentions in passing.
Harry and the Potters released their self-titled debut album in 2003, followed
by Voldemort Can’t Stop the Rock in 2004. Select songs from both of these albums
could be downloaded for free on the band’s MySpace page, and the albums were also
available for purchase through the band’s official website. These two albums
established the lyrical and musical tone that most fans associate with wizard rock’s

244
“aesthetic.”
32
Though wizard rock bands now represent an impressive range of
musical genres and levels of professional polish, Harry and the Potters’ musical style
was defined by short songs (many under two minutes in length), pointedly
amateurish musicality, and lyrical content that ricocheted between the epic and the
banal. Songs such as “Wizard Chess” and “The Human Hosepipe” (comically)
address the mundane nature of Harry’s day-to-day life, while songs such as “Save
Ginny Weasley” engage with Harry’s hero journey. We might also identify a third
category of songs, those that broadly function to convey the band’s “platform.”
Songs like “These Days Are Dark,” “Voldemort Can’t Stop the Rock,” “The
Weapon,” and “This Book is So Awesome,” all articulate wizard rock’s dominant
discourses of community, literacy, and social justice.
Between 2004 and 2005, the first wave of wizard rock bands emerged, and
have remained the primary “wrock stars” of the wizard rock community due to their
status as “founders” of the movement and their prolonged exposure. This first wave
of wizard rock bands included solo acts The Whomping Willows (Matt
Maggiacomo) and The Remus Lupins (Alex Carpenter), girl groups The Moaning
Myrtles (Lauren Fairweather and Nina Jankowicz) and The Parselmouths (Kristina
Horner and Brittany Vahlberg
33
), and the “Evil Wizard Rock” foils to Harry and the
Potters, Draco and the Malfoys (Bradley Mehlenbacher and Brian Ross). Since
2005, hundreds of wizard rock bands have formed, representing every conceivable
Harry Potter reference, musical genre, and level of professional polish. The wizard
rock community’s continuous encouragement of fellow fans to pick up an instrument

245
and form a band echoes the filk circle’s egalitarian, “anyone can participate” ethos,
but a number of barriers prevent a reading of wrock in equally utopian terms, or
framing it as a form of Web 2.0-enabled filking.
First, the founding members of Harry and the Potters have openly admitted in
interviews that they were not especially active in the online Harry Potter fan
community before forming their band. Many of the most popular wizard rock bands
have similar narratives, relaying their lack of success launching their careers as
professional musicians prior to taking up the identity of “wizard rocker.” Thus,
while those who form wizard rock bands are unquestionably fans of the Harry Potter
series and have become prominent members of the fan community, we must
immediately make a distinction between filk and wizard rock. Filk emerged
organically from preexisting fan communities, while many the most prominent
wizard rockers were exposed to the fandom and enmeshed themselves in the fan
community only after they formed their bands. The fact that many of the first (and
subsequently, the most successful) wizard rock bands were longtime friends of Harry
and the Potter’s Paul and Joe DeGeorge, compounds this issue and the perception
that wrock stardom is a “boy’s club” composed of the DeGeorge’s male musician
friends.
34

The digital distribution and private consumption of these early wrock songs
would also initially appear to break with the filking tradition of public, communal
performance. However, Harry and the Potters (and wizard rock as a form of fan
production) took off as a direct result of Harry and the Potters touring heavily in

246
2004 and 2005. MySpace, which peaked in useage around the same time that wizard
rock emerged, must be credited for the current widespread popularity and visibility
of wizard rock, but it is important to acknowledge the role that touring has played in
the spread of wrock, and the disproportionate visibility/popularity/commercial
success of certain wizard rock bands. Both of these distinctions return us to the
gendered professionalism anxieties that connect and permeate first wave and
convergence-era fandom and fan studies.
35

Within the wizard rock community, the disproportionate popularity of male
wizard rockers is usually credited to their ability to tour and their subsequent
“visibility,”
36
but rarely is that “ability” to tour interrogated. Additionally, Matt
Maggiacomo of the Whomping Willows notes:
experience is a big factor that is often overlooked. All of wizard rock’s most
prominent bands (including ones that didn’t form in 2005, like Oliver Boyd
and the Remembralls, Ministry of Magic, Gred and Forge, Swish and Flick,
Justin Finch-Fletchley, etc.) have had extensive past experience with music.
They know how to record and release records, and they know how to book
shows and promote their music.
37

Notably, of the wrock bands cited by Maggiacomo, only one, Swish and Flick,
contains a female wrocker. Maggiacomo, arguing against any latent sexism within
the wizard rock community, frequently frames the “choice” to tour in sacrificial
terms, discussing what male rockers “gave up” (home, jobs, school, family, etc.).
38

What goes unspoken in these discussions of the choice/ability to tour and prior
(quasi-professional) experience with the production, distribution, and promotion of

247
music is the role that gender socialization might plays in determining who is
encouraged to cultivate these capabilities and make these choices.
Keeping these debates around touring, professionalism, and experience in
mind, I’d like to turn to an essay that focuses its analysis around the same question
this section poses: “Is Wizard Rock filk?”
39
Melissa L. Tatum’s “Identity and
Authenticity in the Filk Community” interrogates this question, one that has been
circulating in filking communities, through issues of form, content, and community.
Arguing that content and community are the two defining components of filk, Tatum
also outlines the three dominant filk song structures: parodies that couple original
lyrics with a recognizable/copyrighted song, songs based on characters from a
particular narrative universe, and original lyrics and music that typically fall under
the generic umbrella of science fiction and fantasy.
40
Parodies exist in wizard rock,
41

the vast majority of wrock songs are written/sung through a particular character,
feature original music and lyrics, and many generically resonate with filk’s ties to
fantasy. Tatum acknowledges that content is what binds wizard rock together, with
most bands addressing some facet of the Harry Potter canon or fanon in their music.
However, echoing Jenkins’ characterization, Tatum stresses filk’s diversity, both in
terms of its participants and its subject matter, and the fandom-specific nature of
wizard rock inevitably limits its content.
Viewing the primary break between filk and wrock on the communal level,
Tatum argues that wizard rock’s failure to acknowledge filk as its predecessor, and
its unwillingness to form ties with the existing filkers, divorces wrock from both the

248
practice of filking and the community that surrounds it.
42
Tatum admits that this lack
of recognition may simply be a byproduct of the simultaneous growth and
fragmentation of fandom, that wrockers may be completely unaware of filking as its
fannish forerunner, but it nonetheless poses a formidable barrier to opening up
productive conversations between the two communities. Tatum’s primary concern is
that this mutual distancing (filkers have not enthusiastically embraced wizard rockers
either) has impeded growth and change for filking, and breeded fragmentation and
isolation for filk as a form of fan production.
43
As Tatum notes, “to label wizard
rock ‘filk’ would be to force a label on wizard rock that it has not chosen, and each
community should have the right to define for itself what its identity will be and who
counts as a member of the group.”
44
Analyzing how wizard rock has defined itself,
and identifying the inherent contradictions in that definition, we can begin to
understand why wizard rock is an ideal site to interrogate the tensions that circulate
around the commodification of fan/folk culture.
Communal performance is still present to a degree in contemporary wizard
rock (primarily through singing along to popular songs), but it is primarily consumed
as one would commercial music. This is what fundamentally troubles a reading of
wizard rock as contemporary filk, as it is purchased and consumed privately and
mimics a conventional performer/audience dialectic rather than a collective creative
enterprise when performed. Tatum reiterates this distinction between filk and wrock,
noting that it is the form/format of wizard rock that most significantly divorces it
from the filking tradition.

249
I agree with Tatum’s remark that “the difference between performing for an
audience and participating in a music community is an important one,” and her
subsequent claim that “wizard rock is not filk because it promotes performance to a
particular crowd rather than building a community of performers who perform for
each other.”
45
The majority of wrock performances resemble a conventional concert
space, rather than the convention spaces that Tatum describes:
Filk appears in three basic spaces at conventions: filk rooms, filk concerts,
and filk panels. Filk rooms are the classic space and are traditionally arranged
so that filkers sit in a circle, taking turns performing. The method of taking
turns can vary, with the two basic forms being bardic and chaos. In a bardic
circle, the rotation proceeds around the circle in order, with each person
either performing a single song, requesting another member of the circle
perform a particular song, or passing the turn. In a chaos circle, turns proceed
in random order, often with the idea that each song should be in some way
connected (for example, by tune, theme, composer) to the song that was just
performed.
46

Tatum notes that conventions frequently include concerts by popular filkers, but
emphasizes the filk circle as the defining model for filk as a form of fan
performance. Wizard rock performances may occasionally occur at intimate house
parties and in hotel rooms at fan conventions, but the bulk of wrock performances
bear little to no resemblance to the filk circles Tatum describes.
First, wizard rock concerts clearly demarcate between performer and
audience, typically creating a designated performance space in the form of a stage,
and an organized line-up of performers. As with most mainstream concerts, lesser
known bands open for “headlining” wizard rock bands, creating a clearly defined
hierarchy of performers. Second, fans may request particular songs as one would at

250
a conventional concert (e.g. screaming particular song titles), but for the most part
each wizard rock band adheres to a predetermined set list. Thus, there is little direct
impact that the audience can have on the performance, and a corresponding loss of
filk’s spontaneity and dialogic song selection. Finally, and most significantly, the
performance space also routinely functions as a retail space, with wizard rock bands
setting up tables alongside the stage to sell a variety of merchandise (CDs, t-shirts,
bags, stickers, etc.).
Wizard rock performances occur in a range of venues, from informal and
impromptu performances at fan conventions, to headlining performances at famous
rock venues. Comparing three wizard rock concerts, through my impressions as an
attendee, we can better understand wizard rock’s primary divergence from filk’s
mode of performance. The three venues discussed below (a public library, a rock
club, and a fan convention) are the most typical spatial contexts in which fans will be
exposed to wizard rock. While many smaller scale informal “concerts” occur,
frequently at house parties or private events set up by wrock fans, the following
comparison clearly distinguishes wrock’s performance context from filk’s. The
performances under discussion are a Harry and the Potters free concert outside of the
downtown branch of the Los Angeles Public Library on June 26, 2007, a headlining
performance by The Remus Lupins at the Troubador in Los Angeles on June 19,
2007, and the Wrock Chicago event at Terminus: A Harry Potter Symposium on
August 8, 2008.

251
Harry and the Potters’ free concert at the downtown L.A. Public Library is a
prime example of wizard rock’s performative roots, and its positioning as a
community-building and philanthropic enterprise. This particular concert was part of
a summer library concert tour by the band, surrounding the release of Rowling’s
final novel in the series, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Though not tied to
an official literacy program, like the prior summer’s “Reading and Wrocking” tour
which traded band merchandise for finished book reports brought to concerts, the
library tour reaffirmed the band’s continued commitment to promoting reading and
invoked filk’s folk ethos. The band played outdoors on the lawn to a crowd of
several hundred fans, evenly divided between families with children and groups of
friends in their teens and twenties, the vast majority dressed in “muggle” attire.
While a “stage” had been erected, it featured only portable speakers and a platform
that raised the band only a foot above their audience. The locale and the patter
between songs stressed the communal power of books and love, the audience was
frequently encouraged to sing along, and the band’s merchandise was limited to a
small folding table on a corner of the lawn doing brisk trade throughout the
performance.
By contrast, The Remus Lupins’ show at the Troubador, a legendary rock
venue in Los Angeles, more closely resembled a professional rock concert in all
respects. In addition to the $25 cover, and a discrete merchandising space that
overtly tied the performance to the release of The Remus Lupins’ new album, the
venue was populated by around 100 fans in their twenties (a handful dressed in

252
Hogwarts robes) drinking beers, bobbing their heads to the beat, and singing along
on the choruses to the band’s most popular songs. The Troubador, while a relatively
intimate venue (500 person capacity), is nonetheless a conventional concert space
with a raised stage, lighting effects, and a professional sound system. While The
Remus Lupins’ songs conveyed many of the same positive, communal messages as
those played at the Harry and the Potters library concert, the tone of the event was
markedly different. There were more screams of approval and applause after songs
than participatory singalongs, and the clear spatial demarcation between performer
and audience created a sense of professional distance rather than fannish community.
Like filk, wizard rock’s success is primarily a product of fan conventions,
which could be seen as bridging the gap between the two prior performance spaces
described. In addition to the Switchblade Kittens’ performance of “Ode to Harry” at
Nimbus 2003, early convention performances by Harry and the Potters at The
Witching Hour (Salem, October 2005), and Draco and the Malfoys at Lumos (Vegas,
July 2006) were integral to building their fan bases and popularizing wrock as a form
of fan production. These conference/convention performances have proven so
popular that the wizard rock community has begun staging their own events.
Wrockstock,
47
an annual fan-run weekend music festival held in Potosi, Missouri,
was founded in 2006. Featuring approximately fifteen wizard rock bands, passes to
Wrockstock range from $25 (for child passes) to $100 (for adult passes), plus a
confirmed reservation at Trout Lodge, the resort that hosts the event. Wrockstock
has charitable ties to the HP Alliance, and a good portion of the event’s online

253
FAQ
48
is devoted to explaining the expense of the event, and stressing that all of the
proceeds (beyond the recouped cost for running the event) are donated to charity.
Wrock the Boat, a series of wrock cruises, staged concert events in 2008 and 2009,
under a similar model.
The conference-affiliated wizard rock concert I’ve chosen to examine is
Wrock Chicago, a one-day event that featured over thirty wizard rock bands,
performing on three stages. Wrock Chicago was the kickoff event to Terminus, a
Harry Potter symposium, and tickets were priced at $20 for conference attendees (on
top of a $120 registration fee, and travel and lodging expenses), and $30 for those
who just wished to attend Wrock Chicago. This event was unique on a number of
levels, in addition to being one of the largest wrock concerts ever staged. First, a
competition
49
was held for aspiring wizard rock bands for a space in the lineup. The
eventual winner, Tonks & the Aurors, was chosen by the conference organizing
team, which consisted almost exclusively of women. Tonks & the Aurors, founded
in 2007 and fronted by Steph Anderson, has since become one of the most successful
female-fronted wrock bands. This can be credited to Anderson’s undeniable talent as
a performer, but it must also be credited to the exposure she received from events
like Wrock Chicago as a featured headlining performer, and her endorsement by
prominent wizard rockers, like The Whomping Willow’s Matt Maggiacomo. We
can choose to view the contest as an attempt by the community to promote new
bands and diversify the male wrocker-centric scene, or we can view the contest as
fundamentally opposing wizard rock’s claim to communal equality. In either case,

254
the politics behind selecting a female fronted band, and the impact such a selection
had on the success of that band, should not be discounted.
Second, the event was structured like a conventional music festival. Lesser
known bands played one of two “stages” throughout the day, set up in hotel
conference rooms, and the chosen “headliners” performed in the evening on the
“main stage.” In this case, the main stage was the hotel’s main ballroom, the only
space that could accommodate all of Wrock Chicago’s attendees, which numbered
around 1,000. Tonks & and the Aurors, because they won the contest, were included
amongst these headliners, which included one other female fronted band (The
Switchblade Kittens, selected due to their historical creation of the first wizard rock
song), and four of the most popular male wrock bands: Harry and the Potters, Draco
and the Malfoys, The Remus Lupins, and The Whomping Willows. The second tier
of wrock bands, that played opposite each other on two stages throughout the day,
featured an even split of male and female performers, better reflecting the
demographics the wizard rock band community at large. During the day, a separate
ballroom in the hotel was designated as a merchandise space, with many of the
smaller bands opting to sell CDs and t-shirts. The evening “headliners” show
featured an integrated retail space, with a wider array of products (e.g. multiple t-
shirt designs, multiple albums on both CD and vinyl, etc.). What was especially
notable about the audience at Wrock Chicago was the disproportionate number of
teenage girls that attended the event, but not the affiliated conference.

255
Though these three examples present a range of venues, audience
demographics, and performance styles, they’re bound together by a number of
commonalities. First and foremost, all of these wrock performances break from the
“circular” nature of filk performances, and the purity of those venues as communal
performance spaces. Even the Harry and the Potters free library concert, with its
minimal spatial separation between artist and audience, was still that, a concert.
Audiences were encouraged to chime in on the chorus, or show their support by
purchasing merchandise, but beyond this there was limited space for participation
and a clear demarcation between the producers of wizard rock and its consumers. A
second commonality between these three concerts, and wizard rock concerts
generally, was the gendered nature of the performer/audience binary. These
disparities, which are more pronounced at events that expose the gendered
hierarchies within the wizard rock community, like Wrock Chicago’s “headliners”
concert, have raised questions about sexism within the wizard rock community.

Wizard Rock Heart Throb: Gender and the Professionalization Debate
The term “Big Name Fan” (or BNF) emerged in 1950,
50
and continues to be
defined loosely as a fan with a large following of fellow fans. Because the term BNF
may be used pejoratively, “BNF’s are usually far too modest to claim such status
themselves, allowing others to categorize them.”
51
The BNF is perhaps the most
visible evidence that the subcommunities that make up the larger fan community are
further “striated by internal hierarchies.”
52
As a result, BNFs are a constant source

256
of debate in fan communities, in large part because they expose the longstanding
fallacy that all fans are created equal, and that fan communities are free of social
stratification. As Kristina Busse argues, the “very nature of Big Name Fan as
something to be aspired to (or derided), the repeated discussions on how to become
‘someone’ in fandom, all suggest that online persona is indeed an important aspect of
many fans’ identity and affects their self-worth in a supposedly separate ‘real life’ as
well.”
53
I have briefly touched upon several BNFs within the Harry Potter fan
community (The Leaky Cauldron’s Melissa Anelli, The Harry Potter Lexicon’s
Steve Vander Ark, etc.), but extending this term to male wrock stars takes on
different connotations, particularly when framing (or denying) wizard rock’s place
within filk culture.
Stressing the fact that men and women play "equally prominent roles within
filk,”
54
Jenkins extended his democratic construction of filk’s form of performance
to the performers themselves. Abandoning the "open and fluid"
55
filking model
Jenkins described, the reinscribed boundaries between performer and audience
within wizard rock have been similarly reinforced along gender lines. While there
are notable exceptions, and the hundreds of wizard rock bands currently formed
reflect an impressive gender balance reminiscent of Jenkins’ characterization of filk,
there a fundamental shift that occurs when the BNF surrounded by “worshiping
fangirls”
56
is male rather than female.
Matt Maggiacomo, the sole member of the wrock band The Whomping
Willows, lyrically nods to wizard rock’s gender imbalance in his aptly titled wrock

257
song “Wizard Rock Heart Throb,” off his 2007 album Welcome to the House of
Awesome. The song’s lyrics, which serve as the preface to this chapter, may be in
jest but they also reveal the gender imbalance between “wrock stars” and their
audience. Lyrically, “Wizard Rock Heart Throb” continues with a self-depricating
comparison of Maggiacomo’s "cuteness" to his fellow male wrock stars. While the
song aims for a satiric tone, many within the wizard rock community would argue
that it exposes a fundamental truth: being "basically a man" is seemingly enough to
garner a solid fan base in a fan community populated largely by women. The fact
that Maggiacomo himself is one of these “wizard rock heart throbs” and a “star of
the show,” due in no small part to the massive popularity of the song, is a delicious
bit of irony.
Just as Jenkins’ expressed concern that commercializing filk might force it to
become "more hierarchical due to the push towards professional standards," thereby
creating a "star system"
57
that could undermine filk’s unique egalitarianism, I worry
about the gendered hierarchy of wrock performers, and how wizard rock’s dominant
discourses of “love” and “community” might be stifling conversations about how
these hierarchies are formed and perpetuated. Wizard rock has always embraced the
filk ethos that anyone can play, regardless of age, gender, or musical aptitude, and
the community’s male “wrock stars” are some of the most vocal in promoting this
message. That said, all wrock bands are not considered equal, and there is a
defensive reticence within the wizard rock community to discuss why some are more
visibile and popular than others. Because there’s little discernable difference in

258
terms of musical quality and content between popular male wrockers and many of
their female counterparts, the complicity of female wrock fans (myself included)
must be acknowledged in perpetuating this imbalance. Wizard rock fangirls, unlike
the Twihards addressed in Chapter Two, have avoided the pathologized association
with Beatlemania.
58
While we can’t pejoratively align wizard rock fangirls with
Beatles fangirls, we also can’t positively frame them in empowering terms as being
the real “show.”
59
It’s important to acknowledge the central role that fangirls have
played in the wizard rock phenomenon, as conference and concert organizers, as the
founders and staff of news sites like the Wizrocklopedia, and as consumers and
concertgoers. That said, we cannot, as Maggiacomo has suggested, neatly equate
these predominantly supportive and consumptive roles with women having a
“greater control of the community’s past, present, and future than men do.”
60

Matt Maggiacomo of The Whomping Willows, a self-proclaimed
“mouthpiece of the anti-corporate movement in wizard rock”
61
has been the most
vocal in championing wizard rock’s equality and DIY values, primarily in the form
of blog posts to his band’s MySpace page. These posts routinely attempt to diffuse
or dispel notions that there is a hierarchy of performers within wizard rock, and tout
wizard rock’s resistance to various forms of incorporation. Citing the number of
times wizard rockers have turned down record deals
62
and sacrificed profits for more
intimate shows to connect with fans,
63
Maggiacomo takes particular issue with the
notion that there of “tiers” of performers within the wizard rock community.
Addressing the widely circulated “HP Fandom Rating System,” which singled out

259
various BNFs and wizard rockers in terms of their visibility and influence,
Maggiacomo retorted that the “notion of rating a fan's importance is something that
couldn't possibly be created by a person who truly understands the Harry Potter
series and the value J.K. Rowling places on friendship, love, acceptance, and
understanding of human emotion and experience.”
64
The notion that even discussing
hierarchies of power within fandom is to somehow “miss the point” (or, worse,
discredits those who expose these tiers as “real” members of the fan community) is a
common rebuttal amongst wizard rock stars when issues of gender inequities are
raised.
Maggiacomo’s discomfort with his own status as a “Wizard Rock Heart
Throb” permeates the majority of his blog posts. He admits that “there's a part of me
that gets a rise out of signing CDs and t-shirts and taking pictures with fans of my
music,” but that ultimately “this feeling is outweighed by my belief that being in a
prominent wizard rock band should not place me on some higher level than any other
Harry Potter fan.”
65
He states:
There's a weird dynamic within this fandom, where fans of Harry Potter have
become fans of other fans; indeed, there are people who are greater fans of
podcasts and wizard rock bands than they are of the Harry Potter series itself.
At the same time that this dynamic is something that makes the Harry Potter
fandom unique and special, it also creates divisions within the fandom, and
these divisions are potentially contentious. I suppose the one thing that we all
need to keep in mind is that we are all fans of the same series of books, and
we all play an important role in this fandom. While some people may be
more closely connected to J.K. Rowling and her work than others, we are all
essential components of the same community of people.
66

260
Maggiacomo undoubtedly strives to practice what he preaches, but he also speaks
from a position of power within both the wizard rock community and Harry Potter
fandom. The fact that those who are most vocally dismissive of the notion of
gendered “tiers” within wizard rock are those positioned within the highest echelon
67

is problematic.
In a debate with Maggiacomo
68
on the presence of sexism within the wizard
rock community, Grace of the band Snidget speculates about “a wizard rock scene
where all the gender ratios were swapped: a predominantly male fanbase and male
event organizers,” and if “male bands would be less visible because of that, or if they
would still dominate the scene.”
69
To this question, the majority of the wizard rock
fan community would likely reply with a resounding “No.” The reasoning ranges
from practical (male characters are more prominent in Rowling’s fictional universe,
and thus their points-of-view become richer fodder for male wrock bands
70
) to
patronizing (fangirls’ inability to resist “that dreamy-boy-band thing”
71
), but most
place the blame squarely on wizard rock fangirls for creating and perpetuating any
inequities within the community. In many instances, refocusing the debate on
women within the wizard rock community is used to debunk any claims of sexism.
As Lauren Fairweather, one of the few female wizard rock stars argues, “why would
a predominantly female (not to mention accepting, warm, genuine, etc) community
be sexist towards their own sex?”
72
It’s unclear to what degree self-sexism fuels the
dominance of male wizard rockers, but equally disconcerting is the frequency with
which the language of first wave fandom is used to shut down conversations about

261
gender inequities within wizard rock. Within these discussions, wizard rock fangirls
are simultaneously framed as the most “empowered” members of the community,
and the source of female wrockers comparative disempowerment. Notably, in both
of these cases, wrock fangirls’ communal power is framed almost entirely in
consumptive terms.
In recent years, female wizard rockers have made more of an organized effort
to promote female wizard rock bands and cultivate a “community of women
supporting other women in their creative endeavors through wizard rock.”
73
One
such effort was the “Witch Rock” concert series, organized by Stacy Pisani (of the
band Swish and Flick) and Tina Olson (DJ Luna Lovegood) in the spring of 2009.
Despite deploying the language of second wave feminism, this emerging
“sisterhood” of female wrockers frame their efforts primarily as an attempt to prove
that they can perform and promote just as ably as male wrock stars. The “gender
barrier” in wizard rock is sublimated, or openly discredited, in the majority of these
conversations,
74
despite the fact that events like the Witch Rock series would not
exist if there wasn’t a palpable and gendered power imbalance within the
community.
Male wrock stars don’t engage in the sort of overtly exclusionary or hostile
practices documented in Chapter Two’s discussion of male Twilight protesters. If
anything, male wrock stars take the inverse approach, insisting on the community’s
comprehensive and irrefutable equality and framing anyone who refuses to accept
this claim as failing to be a “real” fan of Harry Potter or wizard rock. While this

262
kind of idealism is admirable, it also counterintuitively functions to overshadow and
deflect criticisms, and further stifles the voices of those wrockers who have not
attained “star” status. As we embark on a discussion of how wizard rock has taken
up filk’s folk ethos of through its formation of the Harry Potter Alliance, we must
acknowledge the irony that a “movement” that is centrally concerned with exposing
and rectifying human rights issues is so reluctant to acknowledge and attempt to
rectify the divides that plague its supposedly cohesive “community.”

From Fanatics to Fanactivists: What it means to “Wrock Against Voldemedia”
Wizard rock’s status as a transformative mode of fan production, coupled
with its “gentleman’s agreement” with Warner Bros., has thus far shielded wrockers
from legal action despite their merchandise sales and their use of trademarked Harry
Potter iconography, character names, et. al. Still, it is somewhat surprising that
wizard rock, particularly given its visibility (not just in terms of its growing iTunes
presence, but its repeated appearance in publications like Entertainment Weekly and
on MTV), would remain immune to any intensified scrutiny or legal action from
Warner Bros. One possible explanation for wizard rockers’ continued protected
status is that they have levied their own fan base to create a model of participatory
philanthropy. Beginning with Harry and the Potters’ library tour in 2003, the wizard
rock community has actively promoted literacy, continuing to offer free concerts in
local libraries. The Remus Lupins’ band motto, “Fight Evil, Read Books,” has been
broadly adopted by the wrock community as a rally cry, and has resulted in more

263
organized literacy efforts such as a 2006 summer reading campaign, where children
attending Harry and the Potters’ shows could exchange a book report for a
toothbrush with the band’s logo. Wizard rock is frequently described as a
“movement” by its fans, but it wasn’t until 2005 that wizard rock’s ideals of love and
literacy were formed into a more cohesive and communal form of social activism.
At their annual Yule Ball concert in December 2005, Harry and the Potters
announced that they were partnering with Andrew Slack to form the Harry Potter
Alliance, using wizarding allegories to prompt political action within Harry Potter
fan communities. The timing of this announcement, coming shortly after striking a
bargain with Warner Bros., might seem conspicuous, but regardless of what
motivated its formation, the reach and impact of the HP Alliance has been
impressive. Inspired in part by J.K. Rowling’s oft-publicized ties to Amnesty
International, the HP Alliance’s first major campaign mobilized the wizard rock
community to protest the genocide in Darfur by drawing parallels to Voldemort’s
“cleansing” rhetoric to rid the wizarding world of muggles and mudbloods (or, those
who aren’t of “pure” wizarding descent). In 2008, the HP Alliance registered over
900 first time voters through their “Wizard Rock the Vote” initiative, a campaign
they returned to for the 2010 election cycle. Finally, building on wizard rock’s early
literacy campaigns, the HP Alliance has donated over 55,000 books worldwide to
date.
Wizard rock bands have remained an integral part of the organization, and
routinely use their concerts as a platform to spread the HP Alliance’s message and

264
raise funds. Additionally, wizard rocks bands have released three compilation
albums to benefit the HP Alliance and its causes. “Rocking Out Against
Voldemedia,” was released for free digital download in December 2007, featuring
songs that critiqued media consolidation. Gred and Forge’s entry to this
complication, titled “Save the Quibbler,” is emblematic of the way fictional
analogues are deployed in these songs (and wizard rock generally). Urging listeners
to “Save the Quibbler from the Ministry’s reach,” Gred and Forge’s song celebrates
independent news outlets such as The Quibbler that, despite its occasionally
questionable content, does not spread misinformation like the wizarding world
equivalent of a mass/mainstream news outlet, The Daily Prophet, which is censored
and controlled by the goverment/Ministry of Magic. Two more compilation albums
featuring similarly allegorical commentary, Wizards and Muggles Rock for Social
Justice Vol. I and II, were released in July 2007 and June 2008. Both of these
albums’ benefitted the HP Alliance, with some of the proceeds from Wizards and
Muggles Rock for Social Justice Volume II going to Marriage Equality Rhode Island
Fittingly, a cartoon depicting the happy union of the recently outed Dumbledore and
Grindewald graced the album’s cover.
In July 2010, the HP Alliance mobilized the wizard rock fan community once
more to vote for the organization in the Chase Community Giving Challenge, and
encourage their friends to do the same through social networking platforms such as
Facebook and Twitter. Geek icons such as Felicia Day (Dr. Horrible’s Singalong
Blog, The Guild) and Nathan Fillion (Firefly) helped spread the word via Twitter.

265
The contest, sponsored by Chase Bank, named the HP Alliance as their winning
charity after an outpouring of support and 38,689 votes, and awarded the
organization $250,000. Without taking anything away from the HP Alliance or what
they’ve accomplished, this recent victory in the Chase Community Giving Challenge
is in some sense is the perfect analogy for the fraught space that wizard rock
occupies. While we cannot (nor should we) equate wizard rock’s attempt to fuse
monetized and charitable fan productivity with corporate giving strategies, they may
serve similar discursive functions. Responses to these attempts to direct attention
away from economic profit and towards charitable giving can be celebratory or
cynical, but the “giving economy” of wizard rock is just one example of the
contested and conflicted middle ground being forged between institutions and fan
cultures.
In a chapter of Convergence Culture titled “Photoshop for Democracy,”
Henry Jenkins notes that institutions are increasingly adopting and co-opting the
grassroots model of fan culture for their own purposes
75
and, in turn, fans are
increasingly mobilizing online fan networks for political action. Described on their
website as “Dumbledore’s Army for the real world,”
76
the HP Alliance echoes
Jenkins’ vision of participatory democracy in their mission statement, framing their
mode of fanactivism as “the blueprint for a new kind of civic engagement that
combines pop culture, social change, and new media that amplifies each voice
hundreds of thousands of times.”
77
The HP Alliance has successfully mobilized and
amplified the voices of Harry Potter fans, and wizard rock has been central to the

266
blueprint they’ve created. That blueprint deserves to be celebrated, and replicated,
but the blueprint also needs to be examined for internal inconsistencies. HP Alliance
founder Andrew Slack, addressing the group’s efforts to speak back to media
consolidation, states:
Most people don't know much about media consolidation, but when you
begin looking at how minorities are not represented fairly in the media, ethnic
and racial minorities make up about a third of the US population, and they
own I believe less than 3% of commercial TV. Women and minorities make
up about 66% of this country, and yet are on television news about 12% of
the time. What we see on TV, what we are shown visually, what is defined as
"normal" in our culture are white men.
78

Reading this, it’s difficult not to see a fundamental disconnect in the HP Alliance’s
value system and wizard rock’s consolidated star system of predominantly white
men. As Slack himself notes, this is ultimately about a diverse population not being
sufficiently represented, the hegemonic nature of those representations, and how a
population’s cultural presentation might reflect and reinforce structural societal
inequities. Saying that “there is no inherent sexism in the structure of the wizard
rock community,” and that if “sexism exists, it’s perpetuated by specific individuals
who do not represent the values of the larger community,”
79
pointedly avoids
engaging with these broader structural issues and doesn’t acknowledge how wizard
rock’s public face does not represent the impressive diversity of its performers or
community.

267
Conclusion: Voldemort Can’t Stop the Wrock, But Can Wrock Stop
Voldemort?
Regardless of which side wizard rockers and wizard rock fans take in the
ongoing debates around gender inequality in the wrock star system, all seem to agree
that wizard rock is, comparatively, a “major improvement” over the mainstream
music industry. It is easy to agree on this point, but it also plays into much of the
post-identity rhetoric that plagues these discussions and, ultimately, diffuses their
significance. Problematically, many of these conversations mine the buzzwords of
the first wave of fan studies, which was intimately bound up in identity politics,
framing the wizard rock community as a utopian space distanced from the “real
world” even as it works to solve “real world” problems. In particular, “community”
is often deployed in a censorial fashion, as some of the above examples make clear.
What is most striking about the “vast improvement” logic is how neatly it aligns with
convergence culture discourses within contemporary fan studies. While convergence
culture’s collaborationist tendencies are indeed a vast improvement over prior
prohibitionist models, much of this dissertation has argued that these readings
obscure ongoing structural inequities and imbalances of power. Likewise, though
wizard rock represents a vast improvement over the mainstream music industry, this
chapter has argued that it also replicates the music industry in many respects.
Wizard rockers are right when they sing “Voldemort Can’t Stop The Rock.” The
movement has successfully trumped both legal and social sanctions, and its ties to
the HP Alliance have encouraged wrockers to turn their stages into platforms to

268
address human rights issues. But, if the reticence to discuss the gendered inequities
within its own community is any indication, wrock won’t entirely stop Voldemort
until it has the courage, like Harry, to speak its name aloud.

269

Chapter Four Endnotes
1
“About Us,” The Harry Potter Alliance, http://www.thehpalliance.org/about-us/.

2
“Band Listings,” The Wizrocklopedia, September 8, 2010,
http://wizrocklopedia.com/bands/band-listings/.

3
Henry Jenkins, Textual Poachers: Television Fans and Participatory Culture (New
York: Routledge, 1992), 253.

4
Matt Maggiacomo and Grace Kendall, “He Said/She Said: The (Non?)Existence of
Sexism in Wizard Rock,” The Wizrocklopedia, September 2, 2009,
http://wizrocklopedia.com/2009/09/02/he-saidshe-said-the-nonexistence-of-sexism-
in-wizard-rock/.

5
J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (New York: Scholastic, 2000),
419.

6
Matt Hills, Fan Cultures (New York: Routledge, 2002), 178-179.

7
Arabella and Zsenya, “After the End,” The Sugar Quill,
http://www.sugarquill.net/read.php?chapno=1&storyid=619.

8
Hills, Fan Cultures, 179.

9
Will Brooker, Using the Force: Creativity, Community, and Star Wars Fans (New
York: Continuum, 2002), 88.

10
Rebecca Tushnet, “Copyright Law, Fan Practices, and the Rights of the Author,”
in Fandom: Identities and Communities in a Mediated World, eds. Jonathan Gray,
Cornel Sandvoss, and C. Lee Harrington (New York: New York University Press,
2007), 60.

11
Tushnet, “Copyright Law, Fan Practices, and the Rights of the Author,” 64.

12
Ibid., 63.

13
“Frequently Asked Questions (And Answers) About Fan Fiction,”
chillingeffects.org, http://www.chillingeffects.org/fanfic/faq.cgi.

270

14
“Comment of the Electronic Frontier Foundation,” The Organization for
Transformative Works, http://transformativeworks.org/projects/eff-comment.

15
Melissa Anelli, Harry, A History: The True Story of a Boy Wizard, His Fans, and
Life Inside the Harry Potter Phenomenon (New York: Pocket Books, 2008) 122-123.

16
Ibid., 122.

17
Henry Jenkins, Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide (New
York: New York University Press, 2006), 169.

18
Ibid., 170-171.

19
For an overview of the Potter Wars, see Jenkins, Convergence Culture, 169-205.

20
Jenkins, Convergence Culture, 187.

21
Dale M. Cendali, “Opening Statement, Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. and J.K.
Rowling v. RDR Books,” April 14, 2008,
http://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/system/files/Trial%20Transcript%20Day%201.txt.

22
Francesca Coppa, “A Brief History of Media Fandom,” in Fan Fiction and Fan
Communities in the Age of the Internet, eds. Karen Hellekson and Kristina Busse
(Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2006), 43.

23
Jane Mailander, “Filking 101: The Folk Music of Science Fiction,” filk.com, 2007,
http://www.filk.com/filk101.htm.

24
Jenkins, Textual Poachers, 253.

25
Ibid., 253.

26
Ibid., 256.

27
Ibid., 270.

28
Ibid., 274-275.

271

29
Karen Ann Yost, “In A Fine Filk,” Strange New Worlds: Focus on Fandom, Issue
8 (April/May 1993),
http://web.archive.org/web/20031229210651/strangenewworlds.com/issues/fandom-
08.html.

30
Jenkins, Textual Poachers, 275.

31
Ibid., 276.

32
Both musically and lyrically, the charm of Harry and the Potters’ songs are rooted
in their simplicity, which is perhaps one of the reasons why the band members
function so well as aspirational figures within for wizard rock fans-turned-wrockers.
Instruments may not always be played particularly well, but they’re played with
enthusiastic abandon. The lyrics might not be especially nuanced, but they’re easy to
pick up and sing along at a concert.

33
Dinah Russell, “The Parselmouths: Evolution of a Rock Band,” The
Wizrocklopedia, June 16, 2009, http://wizrocklopedia.com/2009/06/16/the-
parselmouths-evolution-of-a-wrock-band/.

34
Wrock Snob, “Extended Thoughts: Women in Rock, Part 1 – In Defense of Men,”
The Wrock Snob, May 19, 2010,
http://wrocksnob.wordpress.com/2010/05/19/extended-thoughts-women-in-wrock-
part-1-in-defense-of-men/.

35
For a useful overview on the continuing debate between “amateurism” and
“professionalism” within fandom, see Kristina Busse, “amateurs ‘r us,” ephemeral
traces, May 5, 2007, http://kbusse.wordpress.com/2007/05/05/amateurs-r-us/.

36
Maggiacomo and Kendall, “He Said/She Said.”

37
Ibid.

38
Ibid.

39
Melissa L. Tatum, “Identity and authenticity in the filk community”
Transformative Works and Cultures, Vol. 3 (2009),
http://journal.transformativeworks.org/index.php/twc/article/view/139/102.

40
Ibid.

272

41
One noteworthy example of parody wrock songs is Draco and the Malfoy’s “99
Death Eaters,” set to the popular 1980s pop song “99 Luftballons” by Nena.

42
Tatum, “Identity and authenticity in the filk community.”

43
Ibid.

44
Ibid.

45
Ibid.

46
Ibid.

47
For more information on Wrockstock, see: http://www.wrockstock.com/.

48
“FAQ,” Wrockstock, June 24, 2010,
http://www.wrockstock.com/forum/index.php?topic=103.0.

49
“Twenty-Fifth Band Competition Rules,” livejournal.com,
http://community.livejournal.com/terminus2008/22617.html#cutid1.

50
Coppa, “A Brief History of Media Fandom,” 43.

51
Kristina Busse and Karen Hellekson, “Introduction,” in Fan Fiction and Fan
Communities in the Age of the Internet, eds. Karen Hellekson and Kristina Busse
(Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2006), 11.

52
Catherine Driscoll, “One True Pairing: The Romance of Pornography and the
Pornography of Romance,” in Fan Fiction and Fan Communities in the Age of the
Internet, eds. Karen Hellekson and Kristina Busse (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2006),
93.

53
Kristina Busse, “My Life Is a WIP on My LJ: Slashing the Slasher and the Reality
of Celebrity and Internet Performance” in Fan Fiction and Fan Communities in the
Age of the Internet, eds. Karen Hellekson and Kristina Busse (Jefferson, NC:
McFarland, 2006), 222.

54
Jenkins, Textual Poachers, 253.

55
Ibid., 258.

273

56
Busse and Hellekson, “Introduction,” 11.

57
Jenkins, Textual Poachers, 275.

58
Barbara Ehrenreich, Elizabeth Hess, and Gloria Jacobs, “Beatlemania: Girls Just
Want to Have Fun,” in The Adoring Audience: Fan Culture and Popular Media, ed.
Lisa A. Lewis (New York: Routledge, 1992), 84-106.

59
Ibid., 104.

60
Maggiacomo and Kendall, “He Said/She Said.”

61
Matt Maggiacomo, “Weekly Blog #24 – Wizard Rock is Out of Control,” June 7,
2007,
http://blogs.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.ListAll&friendId=35315863&
page=18#ixzz0tyDlGSxy.

62
Matt Maggiacomo, “Rant #3,592: Velour Records And Why They Suck,”
MySpace, June 4, 2007,
http://blogs.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.ListAll&friendId=35315863&
page=20#ixzz0tyEJuvDi.

63
Matt Maggiacomo, “Homeward Bound,” MySpace, March 26, 2008,
http://www.myspace.com/thewhompingwillows/blog?page=11#ixzz0tyCI1YUJ.

64
Matt Maggiacomo, “HP Fandom Rating System? Really?!” August 1, 2008,
http://blogs.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.ListAll&friendId=35315863&
page=3#ixzz0ty9khpeT.

65
Ibid.

66
Ibid.

67
In a recent debate about sexism within the wizard rock community on the blog
Wrock Snob, Lauren of the Moaning Myrtles and Brittany of the Parselmouths, the
two most popular female wrock bands, weighed in on the topic. Both women had
nothing but praise for the support they had been given by male wrockers, and Lauren
claimed that the “people who think there is sexism in wizard rock actually create
sexism in wizard rock.”

274

68
It should be noted that, had he participated in the Gender and Fan Culture debates,
Maggiacomo would have likely placed himself firmly in the "fangirl" camp, lovingly
constructing his wrock songs as Francesca Coppa does her fantexts, vocally touting
the DIY ethos of the wrock community and contesting any capitalist agenda.
Furthering his ties to filking and first wave fandom, Maggiacomo is one of the only
wizard rockers to dabble in songs that slash Rowling’s characters (e.g. “In Which
Draco and Harry Secretly Want To Make Out” off his 2007 album Welcome to the
House of Awesome). Maggiacomo has also recently addressed his desire to break
with the wizard rock “star system,” writing in a post to his band’s myspace blog:
“There was a time when using wizard rock as a means of expressing my political and
social views was a priority, and that's how Welcome to the House of Awesome came
to be. […] I’m really getting excited about returning to canon and removing myself
from the equation completely. Because, frankly, I've spent too much time talking
about myself. There are people for whom wizard rock is an opportunity to shine in
the public spotlight -- and that's totally fine, and I spent some time there myself. But
at this moment I'm feeling like a retreat is in order. […] I'd like to strip away
everything that's extraneous and really focus on the music and on playing good
shows.” (July 30, 2009 “The Future of the Whomping Willows”)

69
Maggiacomo and Kendall, “He Said/She Said.”

70
Arodhwen in Wrock Snob, “Extended Thoughts,” May 19, 2020.

71
Brad Ausrotas in Wrock Snob, “Extended Thoughts,” May 19, 2020.

72
Lauren Myrtle in Wrock Snob, “Extended Thoughts,” May 19, 2020.

73
Maggie Hanna, “A Sisterhood of Wrock,” Wizrocklopedia, February 20, 2009,
http://wizrocklopedia.com/2009/02/20/a-sisterhood-of-wrock/.

74
Ibid.

75
Jenkins, Convergence Culture, 208.

76
“About Us.”

77
Ibid.

275

78
Andrew Slack, “How Dumbledore’s Army is Changing Our World: An Interview
with the HP Alliance’s Andrew Slack (Part Two),” Confessions of an Aca-Fan: The
Official Weblog of Henry Jenkins, July 27, 2009,
http://www.henryjenkins.org/2009/07/how_dumbledores_army_is_transf_1.html.

79
Maggiacomo and Kendall, “He Said/She Said.”

276
Chapter Five: Conclusion
Revenge of the Fanboy - Episode II
The Trouble with Becky
Many [Supernatural] fans found it telling that in the episode where
fans get to be heroes, it is only the male fans who do so—in utter
defiance of the fact that the majority of fans who attend Supernatural
conventions are women. Becky, the Wincest-writing fangirl, is still
presented as deviant and excessive—and, unlike the male fans, Becky
is never allowed to be heroic. She is rewarded not with humanization
and valorization of her fannishness, but instead with Chuck's sexual
attentions. Her access to heroism is confined to sex with a heroic man.
The message of [the episode "The Real Ghostbusters"] appears to be:
fanboys, keep on keeping on—you are dorky but lovable. Female
fans, you are creepy, but you might be willing to fuck us real writers,
so you aren't totally unacceptable.
- Catherine Tosenberger
1

It is safe to say that nerds, geeks, and fanboys, as a demographic amalgam,
have had their revenge, and that this “revenge” is having a subtle, yet pervasive,
impact on how fan participation is framed within convergence culture. I’m not
suggesting that fanboys have fully shed the social stigmas that plagued them long
before (and well after) William Shatner publically told them to “Get a Life.”
However, the media industry and the popular press’ recent revaluation of fanboys
has afforded them a greater degree of power and visibility within convergence
culture. We can see the gendered ramifications of the fanboy’s demographic
“revenge” in their dismissal of Twilight fangirls at San Diego Comic-Con 2009,
chronicled in Chapter Two. It is evidenced in the industry’s embrace of fanboys’
affirmational modes of fannish engagement, detailed in Chapter Three. And we can

277
see these inequities embodied in the disproportionate popularity of male wizard rock
“heart throbs” discussed in Chapter Four. In each of these cases, fangirls play a role
in their own marginalization, either by actively attempting to render their fan texts
“invisible” to the industry, or playing a role in buoying their male cohort’s status.
The introduction of this dissertation briefly discussed how journalists’
construction of fanboys as Hollywood’s new power demographic has been
accompanied by a recuperation of the fanboy as a popular character archetype. This
conclusion surveys contemporary representations of both fanboys and fangirls, and
suggests these these representation reflect how the media industry is valuing fanboys
and fangirls differently. As we examine these representations, further consideration
of Lori Kendall’s claim that male nerds, or fanboys in this case, have been
“rehabilitated and partially incorporated into hegemonic masculinity”
2
is necessary
on multiple critical fronts. Building on the introduction of this dissertation, the
fanboy’s representational recuperation into hegemonic masculinity aligns with (or
helps to justify and support) his industrial (re)incorporation into Hollywood’s
demographic hegemony of 16-to-34 year-old men.
Alongside the erasure of fangirls from journalists’ construction of the fanboy
demographic, this project has addressed the gendered vision of “fandom” that the
industry is actively courting or condoning. Chapter Two’s discussion of the Twihate
protests at San Diego Comic-Con 2009, engaging with the dichotomous visibilities
of fanboy SDCC attendees and Twilight fangirls, and begins to grapple with how
Twilight’s visibility has provoked attempts to dismiss or disenfranchise female fans.

278
Battlestar Galactica’s ancillary content model, analyzed in Chapter Three, also
provokes questions about fans’ gendered (in)visibility within convergence culture.
While many scholars and fans have responded to the television industry’s adoption
of transmedia storytelling techniques and ancillary content models with enthusiasm,
the fact that industry is “collaborating” only with certain fans and a limited range of
fan practices remains widely unacknowledged. The affirmational forms of fannish
engagement that the industry is endorsing, and how these conditions might further
alienate fangirls and obscure their textual output, deserve continued scrutiny as we
celebrate the industry’s (conditional) “collaborationist” turn. In both of these cases,
it should be reiterated that “invisibility” is a choice made by many female fans,
rather than something that has been imposed on them or that they are powerless to
speak back to. For example, though Chapter Four focused on the limited number of
female wizard rock stars, the less “visible” roles that women play in the wizard rock
community (organizing conferences and concerts, running websites, and as
participants in the wizard rock “movement”) should be central to further study of the
phenomenon.
The test cases presented in this dissertation do no adequately reflect the rich
textual and demographic diversity of contemporary fan culture, or accurately convey
fans’ or producers’ ambivalence about these issues. Without question, a large
number of the fanboys at San Diego Comic Con 2009 frowned on some of their
cohort’s attempt to regulate Twi-hards’ presence and dismiss them as fans. Fanboy
auteur Ronald D. Moore’s exertions of textual authority and the rigors of ancillary

279
content consumption failed to deter a large segment of Battlestar Galactica’s fan
base from producing their own texts, many of which pointedly contradicted the
series’ transmediated “canon.” And wizard rock’s development of a model of fan
production that successfully bridges commercialization and charitable contribution
has impressively evaded industrial control, and encouraged many fans who don’t
consider themselves “producers” to pick up an instrument and form a wrock band.
Centrally, each of the test cases contained in the previous chapters points towards
potential repercussions of the gendered “fanification” of the audience
3
that scholars
and fans alike should continue to monitor.
Accordingly, this conclusion focuses on two interconnected issues and
gestures towards a facet of convergence culture’s gendered embrace of fandom that
deserves further consideration. Through an address of the representation of fanboys
and the (mis)representation of fangirls, and a brief reconsideration of the role of the
fanboy auteur, this chapter returns to one of the central concerns of the Gender and
Fan Culture debates. As we grapple with the growing intimacy between creators and
audiences, and the industry and the academy, we need to consider what is motivating
this industrial outreach. Without question, there is much to be gained from these
industrial interactions for scholars and fans alike, and greater access and
transparency deserves to be celebrated, but it also needs to be considered strategic.
The analysis that follows revolves in part around the CW television series
Supernatural (2005-present), and its fanboy auteur, Eric Kripke. Supernatural is an
ideal test case to begin working through some of these representational issues, not

280
only because the show has developed a number of character proxies to represent the
show’s (actual and desired) fan base, but because these self-reflexive episodes tell us
a great deal about Kripke’s conflicted positioning within Supernatural’s
predominantly female fan community. Supernatural has become an especially
popular topic amongst female aca-fen, and much of this scholarship confirms that the
preoccupations of first wave of fan studies are not being rendered obsolete by
convergence culture, but being put in meaningful conversation with it. Fans’
production of Wincest (fan fiction, art or vids that revolve around an incestuous,
homoerotic pairing between the show’s protagonists, the Winchester brothers) has
been the central focus of these studies, and frequently speaks to broader questions
about the intersection of gender and genre. At first, we might write this off this
fascination with Wincest as simply returning to (or attempting to raise the stakes of)
first wave fan studies and its celebrations of slash as a mode of textual and
ideological resistance. This may be partially true, and Supernatural fandom
embodies many of the central qualities that the first wave of fan studies celebrated,
but female aca-fen are collectively painting a far more interesting and nuanced of
Wincest and Supernatural fandom.
Rather than viewing Wincest as a resistant reading strategy, many argue that
the “relationship” between brothers moves beyond latent subtext and is formally
embedded in the show’s structure and content. In some sense, we might consider
this a new addition to the “incorporation paradigm,” in which slash pairings and
reading strategies are (potentially and partially) incorporated into the text. These

281
arguments not only trouble a reading of Wincest as “resistant,” but open up the
possibility that producers are catering to fangirls’ reading strategies and facilitating
their textual production, thereby stripping the act of “slashing” of its subversive
connotations. Fangirls and aca-fangirls have also levied criticisms against
Supernatural’s representation of its female fan base and, more generally, its
propensity for sexualized violence against its female characters. These critiques are
conveyed through fan vids, blog/message board posts, and scholarly analyses, and
they collectively gesture towards a growing unwillingness to rework these regressive
representations, and an active effort to speak back to them. All of these studies
acknowledge that Supernatural fandom is a notoriously discordant and contentious
“community,” forcing us to complicate conceptions of fandom as a unified and
cohesive space. From concerns about misogynistic discourses circulating within
Supernatural fan communities, to debates around whether being “visible” as a fan
community is desirable or destructive, this emerging scholarship revels in the
heterogeneous and conflicted nature of contemporary fan culture, and convergence
culture’s exacerbation of many of those conflicts, while still retaining many of the
central discourses of the first wave.
The above examples prove that there is little that is “hegemonic,” or even
cohesive, about contemporary fandom or the work currently being done within fan
studies. Still, concerns linger about fans and fandom being hegemonically conceived
or represented, either by the popular press, the industry, academics, or fans
themselves, and must be addressed alongside the gendered power imbalances they

282
perpetuate. This conclusion suggest that turning our attention to how fans are
represented within convergence culture might give us more insight into their shifting
cultural capital. Matt Hills, expressing concerns about the emergence of a “new
hegemonic fandom,” states:
Media and TV fandom operate as cultural category-constructing objects,
defining the limits to ‘correct’ – or hegemonic – media consumption both
positively where ‘everyone has to be a fan of something,’ and negatively,
where ‘everyone knows’ fans are obsessive. The contradictory co-existence
of such discourses suggests that academic narratives of negative fan
stereotyping being superseded by normalized or ‘mainstreamed’ fan identities
may be somewhat premature or overly optimistic.
4

For a variety of economic reasons, convergence culture has forced the industry to
embrace fandom more publically than it has in the past. Not only is everyone a fan
of something within convergence culture, everyone is encouraged to consume in a
participatory fashion, even if that participation is limited and monitored. This
dissertation has engaged with what I view to be contemporary fan studies’ overly
optimistic view of how convergence culture, and the industry’s collaborationist turn,
has empowered fans. Specifically, I would argue that Hills’ categories of
pathologized and normative, or “hegemonic,” fandom not only continue to exist in a
state of contradictory co-existence,but are increasingly inscribed along gender lines.
For Hills, these conflicting discourses are rooted and reflected in fan
representations. According to Hill, rather than considering “‘mainstreamed’ fandom
being normalized in place of prior pathologisations [sic.], this scenario indicates that
fan identities may be becoming contradictorily normative at the same time as
remaining pathologised [sic.].”
5
This may be the case, but this process of

283
normalization and pathologization is distinctly gendered. According to Kristina
Busse, these representations routinely deny both “the strong affect among male fan
cultures as well as the critical responses that pervade much of the female fan
responses.”
6
Considering that both Hills and Busse both take on the longstanding
“Get a Life” attack of fans
7
in the titles of their respective works, and the degree to
which the first wave of fan studies spoke back to pathologized representations of
fans, its seems fitting to conclude with a discussion of the continued significance of
these representations as fan culture is “mainstreamed.”

Sidekick No More: Refashioning the Fanboy as Romantic and Action (Super)
Hero
Beginning in 2005, when journalists initiated their construction of fanboys as
Hollywood’s new power demographic, the fanboy was also adopted as the media
industry’s new favorite character archetype. Reconfiguring the fanboy as a “geek
chic” hero, the industry’s “rebranding cool onto a traditionally nerdy persona”
8
was
seen across media platforms. Though many of the old pathologies persisted in the
fanboy’s elevation from sidekick to protagonist, the spike in fanboy representation
and the range of fannish identities it has afforded indicates a broader attempt to
recuperate the fanboy into hegemonic masculinity. In order to accomplish this, the
fanboy has been refashioned as a romantic hero or an (often reluctant) action hero or
superhero. In her essay “Nerd Nation: Images of Nerds in US Popular Culture,” Lori
Kendall notes that the representations of nerds (and geeks and fanboys by extension,

284
as the terms are increasingly used interchangeably) can be viewed as simultaneously
challenging and reinforcing hegemonic masculinity. Kendall argues that this is made
possible by the nerd’s liminality, as the “nerd stereotype includes aspects of both
hypermasculinity (intellect, rejection of sartorial display, lack of ‘feminine’ social
and relational skills) and feminization (lack of sports ability, small body size, lack of
sexual relationships with women).”
9
Likewise, “the nerd’s connection with
technology, particularly computers, gives him a liminal status,”
10
and Kendall argues
that since the early 1980s the nerd has been “rehabilitated and partially incorporated
into hegemonic masculinity”
11
as computer usage has grown as an integral
component of our daily work and play.
Likewise, the “early adopters” represented in Jenkins’ Convergence Culture
are “disproportionately white, male, middle class, and college educated,” those who
have “the greatest access to new media technologies and have mastered the skills
needed to fully participate in these new knowledge cultures.”
12
In this sense, the
fanboy’s representational recuperation into hegemonic masculinity aligns with his
industrial (re)incorporation into Hollywood’s hegemonic demographic of 16-to-34
year-old men, as fanboys “exert a disproportionate influence on media culture in part
because advertisers and media producers are so eager to hold their attention.”
13

Significantly, the female fans that adapted analog fandom to the Internet, and were
some of the first to embrace emergent technologies, are excluded from this
characterization of “early adopters.” Moreover, it is important to acknowledge that
this hegemonic demography and masculinity is always already white, reinforcing the

285
need for fan studies to expand its critical axis beyond gender to explore the under-
theorized axes of race and class.
Media producers have moved beyond attempting to hold fanboys’ attention,
and have begun to actively court their attention with an influx of fanboy characters
that generically exploit the fanboy archetype’s emotional and physical liminality. In
the case of the fanboy romantic hero, the narrative reconciles his “feminine” and
“masculine” traits, or constructs his liminality as an integral part of his romantic
appeal. These narratives frame the fanboy’s affective relationship with geeky media
properties as an intrinsic part of his charm, as in the case of breakout character Seth
Cohen (Adam Brody) on the Fox television series The O.C. (2003-2007).
Alternately, these narratives function as romantic coming of age stories
14
in which
the fanboy’s willingness to abandon the objects of his youth/fandom is rewarded
with heterosexual coupling. The 40 Year Old Virgin (2005) is the most overt
example of this archetype, in which the titular virgin Andy meets a woman who runs
a business selling items on EBay and sells all of his vintage action figures to win her
heart, but a similar case could be made for the majority of properties affiliated with
Judd Apatow (2007’s Knocked Up and Superbad, and 2008’s Forgetting Sarah
Marshall). The reformulation of the fanboy as a romantic hero often indulges in
pejorative depictions of fanboys even as he is presented as a desirable romantic
partner. In all of these cases, his fannish affect is aligned with an affectionate
disposition and intense devotion (both to the objects of his fandom and the object of

286
his affection), even as it is presented as an obstacle to heteronormative coupling that
must be overcome.
This tendency is exacerbated in sitcom representations of the fanboy, which
historically and generically trade in cultural stereotypes. CBS’ massively popular
sitcom The Big Bang Theory (2007-present) poses an especially interesting case
study to consider fanboy representation. Focused on four male friends and their
attractive blonde neighbor, Penny (Kaley Cuoco), The Big Bang Theory features a
(perhaps unintentional) dual address that bifurcates the audience into those who
laugh at the shows’ nerd collective, and those conversant enough in geeky jargon and
fannish references to laugh with them. The four male protagonists (experimental
physicist Leonard [Johnny Galecki], theoretical physicist Sheldon [Jim Parsons],
aerospace engineer Howard [Simon Helberg], and astrophysicist Raj [Kunal
Nayyar]) are all presented as unabashed fanboys, and jokes and plotlines routinely
revolve around the group’s collective affect for comic books, video games, science
fiction and fantasy film and television properties. The show’s approach to casting
guest stars is equally rooted in geek culture, with The Sarah Connor Chronicles’
Summer Glau, Star Trek: The Next Generation’s Wil Wheaton, Marvel Comics’ icon
Stan Lee, Battlestar Galactica’s Katee Sackhoff, and astrophysicist and Nobel
laureate George Smoot, all appearing as themselves. Accordingly, these guest
“stars” serve an atypical function, rewarding those conversant in nerd/geek/fan
culture and, potentially alienating, rather than drawing in, those in the mass audience
who aren’t “in” on the reference or joke.

287
The protagonists of The Big Bang Theory also represent a spectrum of
archetypal fanboy sexuality. Leonard is the romantic who desires (and, notably,
achieves) a relationship with Penny, Raj is paralyzed by the opposite sex and can
only speak to women when he is drunk, Howard perpetually labors and fails to
“score” with ladies, and Sheldon is the anal retentive asexual who finds relationships
an intellectual distraction. Without question, each of these four archetypes
perpetuate negative stereotypes about fanboys’ social and sexual incapacities, but
this is perhaps more of a product of sitcom tropes than a concerted effort to
undermine contemporary celebrations of the fanboy. The fact that The Big Bang
Theory frames all of these characters as likeable protagonists, elevates them from
foils to viable love interests, and generally offers a greater range of representations,
somewhat offsets the fact that these representations are steeped in stereotype.
The Big Bang Theory is generally more invested in the friends’ homosocial
bond than their romantic entanglements, but the show makes a concerted and
continued effort to identify all of the characters as straight men actively interested in
heterosexual coupling. After audiences called Sheldon’s sexuality into question, as
the only member of the group not seen actively pursuing or bedding women, the
show’s creators quickly wrote him a love interest,
15
reaffirming that “obsessive
fandom is acceptable as long as it avoids the unacceptable types of perpetually single
misfit and homosexual.”
16
This trend in reformulating nerds, geeks, and fanboys as
viable love interests retains many of their pejorative descriptors, but ultimately offers
the fanboy a space within hegemonic masculinity, or adapts hegemonic masculinity

288
to conform to the fanboy’s liminal sexuality. If, as Kendall argues, “male
heterosexual identity, in addition to involving heterosexual prowess, also involves
the repudiation of homosexuality,”
17
the unabashed heterosexuality of the The Big
Bang Theory’s fanboys, and the borderline heterosexism of Judd Apatow’s
geek/fanboy protagonists, means that “Nerdism is brought into the hegemonic fold
through compensatory logic: although not athletic, nerds’ very lack in this area of
masculine prowess leads to expertise in another.”
18
In the case of The Big Bang
Theory, this prowess is emotional rather than erotic, with fannish affect and
enthusiasm mapped onto desireable qualities in a partner, such as affection and
devotion.
Heather Hendershot has argued that The Big Bang Theory’s latent misogyny,
the fact that the show views women “strictly as sex objects,” routinely undercuts its
representational potential and eradicates all points of identification for female
viewers.
19
Astutely noting that The Big Bang Theory must be understood as a mass
show framed as a niche show, and not the reverse, Hendershot frames the show’s
effort to “have its cake and eat it too,” as persistently short-changing fangirl viewers
or pointedly ignoring them.
20
Questioning why CBS “pretended to target a geek
demographic, when it was really looking for lads all along,” Hendershot exposes
who this recent wave of “nerd-friendly” programming is really targeting, but fails to
fully explore how interchangeable these “geek” and “lad” demographics have
become. More important, Hendershot’s analysis raises the question of who is being
excluded from this “geek demographic.” Penny, the primary “sex object” within

289
Hendershot’s critique, is constantly perplexed by the fannish references the show
spouts, and might provide a point of identification for a mass audience more inclined
to laugh at, rather than with, the male characters discussions of fannish minutiae. I
would agree with Hendershot that The Big Bang Theory’s representational
framework leaves little room for female viewers, much less fangirls, to situate
themselves.
Reframing the fanboy as an action hero or superhero plays with the fanboy’s
liminal positioning between man and machine, or self-reflexively deploys his fannish
knowledge as his primary strength. The title character on NBC’s Chuck (2007-
present), a brilliant but underachieving member of the Buy More Nerd Herd
(modeled on chain retailer Best Buy’s Geek Squad), is recruited to work alongside
government agents after an entire supercomputer’s worth of military secrets is
downloaded into his brain. The technological implausibility of this premise aside,
the result is a tidy allegory between Chuck’s (Zachary Levi) affinity for technology
(we learn he nearly completed a degree in electrical engineering at Stanford
University; plots hinge on Chuck’s techno-savvy more frequently than they do his
downloaded ability to call up information, etc.) and Chuck’s transformation into a
human computer. Chuck’s eventual ability to “download” martial arts skills and
other hypermasculine capabilities is even foreshadowed by his favored fan
properties, as Chuck routinely uses a Tron (1982) poster in his bedroom and his
collection of Ex Machina comic books to hide information he has collected. Echoing
Chuck’s evolution from a geek into a technologically enhanced superspy, Tron’s

290
protagonist Flynn is digitized and forced to fight for survival in a virtual world using
his understanding of the system’s programming, and Brian K. Vaughn’s comic book
series Ex Machina (2004-2010) centers around a civil engineer who develops the
ability to communicate with and control technology, transforming him into a
superhero and, eventually, the Mayor of New York City.
Another example is the title character of the 2010 film Scott Pilgrim Vs. the
World, based on the graphic novel series by Bryan Lee O’Malley. Scott Pilgrim
(Michael Cera) implicitly gains his ability to K.O. enemies from a comprehensive
understanding of video games. Scott Pilgrim’s Nintendo nostalgia (his band Sex
Bob-Omb is named after the explosive enemies from Super Mario Bros. 2, his
subconscious is scored with the theme from The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past,
etc.) not only permeates the film’s aesthetic, but functions to justify Scott’s innate
fighting prowess and the narrative logic of the film. Structured as a series of
increasingly complex boss battles, the film frames Scott as Nintendo’s most iconic
hero, Jumpman/Mario, perpetually in pursuit of Ramona’s Pauline/Princess Peach.
Though addressed more explicitly in O’Malley’s comic than in the film adaptation,
Scott Pilgrim also offers a subtle critique of memory, through Scott fannish
reworking of his personal narrative to make his lived “text” more appealing to him.
This fannish approach to memory (poaching what we like, discarding what we
don’t), is embodied in “Nega Scott,” a reference to the video game trope of a “dark”
version of a character that must be defeated (e.g. “Dark” Link in the Legend of Zelda
series, Nega Eggman from Sonic Rush within the Sonic the Hedgehog series). The

291
comic shows Scott fighting and defeating his “Nega” self in the final volume
(Volume 6: Scott Pilgrim’s Finest Hour, 2010) in order to complete his fanboy
coming-of age story and acknowledge his frequently anti-heroic actions. In the film,
Scott and Nega Scott choose not to fight, and instead make plans to go to brunch
together, perhaps indicating the film’s desire to retain Scott’s uncomplicated “hero”
status.
In addition to their recuperation as action heroes, fanboys have also been
characterized as a new brand of self-reflexive superhero, whose powers are derived
from (or are aided by) their fan identity. Hiro Nakamura (Masi Oka), the breakout
character of NBC’s Heroes (2006-2010) is a prime example. Hiro is introduced as
an otaku, obsessed with Star Trek and superhero comics, and his power to bend time
and space seems at first to be a product of his own fannish desire to live up to his
name. Hiro’s hero journey is, fittingly, prognosticated by a series of comic books
within the context of the show. Thus, Hiro’s ability to “save the cheerleader/world”
was presented as intimately bound up with his fannish capacity to follow the clues
these comic books provided, a motif that ran through the series. To be a superhero
(or “Super-Hiro,” as a skeptical friend mockingly remarks), Hiro must first and
foremost be a fanboy, following a fictionalized version of his own actions before he
can take them.
A similar case could be made for the 2010 film Kick-Ass, based on Mark
Millar’s comic book series, in which comic book fanboy Dave Lizewski decides to
reinvent himself as the “superhero” Kick-Ass, despite his lack of physical strength or

292
powers. Kick-Ass (Aaron Johnson) is a product of convergence culture, popularized
and recognized as a “superhero” after a viral video of him fending off a gang
becomes a sensation on YouTube, and he begins cultivating his online fan presence
through MySpace. Unlike Hiro, Dave’s identity as a comic book fanboy may inspire
his hero’s journey, but it doesn’t neatly equip him to become a superhero himself.
Both the comic book and film incarnations of Kick-Ass linger on Dave’s obsessive,
masochistic, and failed attempts at “heroism” that routinely land him in the hospital,
lending a gory realism that differentiates Kick-Ass from other fanboy-turned-hero
narratives. In some sense, we might frame Dave as a cautionary tale, a contemporary
fanboy who has too readily bought into the fanboy’s recuperated heroic
representation in the media.
Just as fangirls have been obscured as a segment of the “fanboy”
demographic, representations of fangirls within popular media texts have been
comparatively scarce. Sherrie A. Inness notes in the introduction to Geek Chic:
Smart Women in Popular Culture that regardless of “how much the status of the nerd
has changed in recent decades, being a nerd is a social identity that shuts out many
girls.”
21
This statement can be extended to the current fixation on fanboys as a
popular character archetype. When the media does depict female geeks, nerds, or
fangirls, these representations broadly fall into one of three camps. First, they
sexualize the female geek/nerd/fan. This tactic is most evident within reality
television (such as the upcoming Nerd Girls series, which is currently casting women
who are “willing to embody a vision of both ‘pink heels’ and ‘pocket protectors’”
22
)

293
and entertainment news programming (Attack of the Show’s Olivia Munn on G4).
Articles on notable female geeks/nerds/fans, such as Tina Fey’s pin-up photos for the
January 2009 issue of Vanity Fair, or Munn’s pictorials in sexy superhero
costuming, also tend to fall into this category.
The second representational category recuperates the female geek/nerd/fan
into hegemonic femininity. These characterizations of fangirls make a point of
emphasizing that “she, or any other woman, must not stray too far from traditional
female roles based on romance and nurturance.”
23
Liz Lemon, the protagonist of 30
Rock (NBC, 2006-present), and the elevation of her creator/portrayer Tina Fey to a
geek chic icon, is an ideal example of this tendency. Liz Lemon is perhaps the most
nuanced representation of contemporary fangirls currently circulating. She
simultaneously indulges in her fannish obsessions and knowingly reworks
pathologized presentations of fans to her advantage. One recurring joke on 30 Rock
is that Liz routinely dresses up in her Princess Leia costume and plays the part of the
deluded fangirl in order to get out of jury duty. That said, Liz Lemon is primarily
depicted as alternately playing and desiring a maternal role, caring for the spoiled
“children”/stars of the television show-within-the-show she produces, and obsessing
about her failure to couple and procreate. Accordingly, much of the press
surrounding Fey narrativizes her ability to “have it all,” both as the
producer/writer/star of a celebrated television series, and as a contented wife and
mother.

294
Finally, these depictions often attempt to repathologize the fangirl. We can
see this tendency pervasively and persistently display in the media’s coverage of
Twilight fangirls, but this repathologization occurs in fictional representations as
well. Before delving into the most notable of these repathologized fangirl
representations, Becky Rosen (Emily Perkins) on the CW television series
Supernatural (2005-present), it is important to note that fangirl representations,
because they are so comparatively rare, carry a burden of representation. As a result,
they tend to be scrutinized more thoroughly than their representational fanboy
counterparts. Many of the above examples indicate that contemporary
representations of fanboys may never be entirely free from pathologized attributes or
social stigmas. However, I agree with Busse’s statement that, though “fan boys are
clearly caricatured, their portrayals nevertheless tend to be done more tongue-in-
cheek and lovingly than the respective fan girl characterizations.”
24
Through a closer
examination of one of these fangirl characterizations, we can begin to see both the
distinctions between fanboy and fangirl representations in media texts, and fans
differing responses to those representations.

The Trouble With Becky: Fangirl Representation and Repatathologization
Supernatural presents a compelling case study to consider how fangirls
continue to be (mis)represented, and what role the relationship between author and
audience plays in this potential repathologization. At first glance, Supernatural
“appears to be a testosterone-charged romp about two excessively good-looking

295
brothers who, armed with phallic weaponry, roam the country in a '67 Chevy Impala
hunting monsters from American folklore.”
25
For the devoted and predominantly
female fanbase the series rapidly developed after premiering on The WB (now The
CW) in 2005, Supernatural was centrally about the bond between two brothers.
Many fans framed this “brotherly love” as more than platonic, and the slash subgenre
of “Wincest” (stories than chronicle a homoerotic, incestuous relationship between
the Winchester brothers) quickly became the dominant mode of fan production
within the Supernatural fan community. In her essay “‘The epic love story of Sam
and Dean’: Supernatural, queer readings, and the romance of incestuous fan fiction,”
Catherine Tosenberger argues against a reading of Wincest that simply reiterates first
wave fan scholars’ understanding of slash fiction. Instead of considering Wincest “a
perverse ‘resistance’ to the show's presumed nonincestuous heteronormativity,”
26

Tosenberger effectively argues that Wincest is simply, in Sara Gwellian Jones’
words, “an actualization of latent textual elements.”
27
According to Tosenberger,
rather than “shying away from its queer, incestuous implications,
Supernatural frequently calls attention to its own homoerotic energy,”
28
most
frequently through characters within the show mistaking Sam (Jared Padalecki) and
Dean (Jensen Ackles) for a couple.
As these frequent jokes about Sam and Dean’s “relationship” indicate,
Supernatural creator Eric Kripke has been keenly aware of fans’ production of
Wincest since the show’s first season, and fans have viewed Kripke as alternately
condoning and attempting to censor readings of the brothers’ potentially incestuous

296
relationship. As Tosenberger’s article details, the structure and plot of the show
facilitates such homoerotic readings by cutting off virtually “all avenues for
exogamous marriage for Sam and Dean,”
29
but the network and Kripke jointly
sought to resolve that by adding a pair of female love interests for the Winchester
brothers in Season Three. The response from fangirls was overwhelmingly critical,
with many viewing the addition of these female characters as an attempt to regulate
fans’ reading of Sam and Dean’s relationship and dissuade or discredit Wincestual
reading strategies.
If the introduction of female love interests for Sam and Dean in Season Three
indirectly acknowledged Supernatural’s female fan base and attempted to thwart
their preferred mode of textual production in canon, Seasons Four and Five made
their awareness of the show’s female fanbase explicit. “The Monster at the End of
this Book” (4.18), a meta episode in which Sam and Dean discover a series of novels
detailing their adventures, made overt references to the novel/television series’ fan
base and Wincest. In “The Monster at the End of this Book,” not only do Sam and
Dean symbolically confront Supernatural’s female fan base, they meet their
“creator,” Carver Edlund (Rob Benedict). This pen name for the real creator, Chuck
Shirley, is an amalgam of two of the television series’ writers (Jeremy Carver and
Ben Edlund), but most fans viewed the character as a fictional avatar for creator Eric
Kripke. As Laura E. Felschow has argued:
this self-reflexive exercise jokingly positions Eric Kripke as an all-knowing,
all-powerful god and we, the fans, as his followers. While this is a
relationship referred to in jest, underneath the joke lies a kernel of truth, even

297
more so later on when Chuck is revealed to be a prophet whose ‘Winchester
Gospel’ has earned him protection from the archangels.
30

While this literal collapse of “author” and “god” deserves further scrutiny,
particularly as a commentary on the state of the fanboy auteur discussed in Chapter
Three, what was more disconcerting to Supernatural fangirls was the episode’s
“shout-out” to their textual predilections.
Fangirls’ response to “The Monster at the End of This Book” was mixed,
31

and exposed deeper anxieties about the spotlight that Supernatural had shone on
fangirls and Wincest. While Sam and Dean were defining slash fiction and openly
discussing Wincest on television (with Dean proclaiming it “sick” and quickly
closing Sam’s laptop), fangirls were online, anxiously discussing the implications of
this moment of textual visibility. Lisa Schmidt has argued that while “the majority
of fans interpreted being seen as being known and therefore loved, the general trend
of these negative comments is that fans were not so much being loved as being
exposed in some way; in the case of the Wincest shout-out, this reaction frequently
takes the form of a perception of being ‘outed.’”
32
While Schmidt poses this
“intimacy” as, on the whole, desirable to fans, many felt that the episode exposed the
“tenuous power cult fans actually possess and how the show's creators can both
misrepresent and disempower them just as easily as they can do the opposite.”
33

This authorial attempt to misrepresent and disempower Supernatural’s female
fanbase was confirmed with the introduction of fangirl character Becky Rosen in the

298
Season Five premiere, “Sympathy for the Devil,” (5.01) and cemented in Becky’s
follow-up episode “The Real Ghostbusters” (5.09).
The first time the audience sees Becky, she is sitting at her computer, giddily
writing (and reading aloud) her Wincest fanfic. Each new detail we acquire paints a
very specific picture of Supernatural’s self-proclaimed “Number one fan” – Becky
runs a website, MoreThanBrothers.net, she is a “Sam girl,” and her fan
alias/username is “SamLicker81.” Melissa Gray, chronicling fan responses to
Becky, rightly notes that she “represents an extreme in fandom […] Fans know that
there are Beckys out there, but that the Beckys are greatly outnumbered by fans who
understand the concepts of personal space and discretion. […] She may represent a
way of [The Powers That Be] getting a little of their own back.”
34
Even if we view
Becky as a site for the writers to “get back” at their female fanbase, she also
represents the organizational role that fangirls have long played in fan communities
(organizing and luring Sam and Dean to a Supernatural convention in “The Real
Ghostbusters”) and the fangirls’ subversive power. While Becky’s disruptions and
manipulations are treated as a nuisance by the characters (and perhaps the show’s
writers, by proxy), and though she is not allowed to be conventionally heroic, her
unapologetic fannishness should be acknowledged. The problem with these episodes
is that Becky is the only fangirl that is representationally acknowledged. When we
first see the crowd that has attended the Supernatural convention that Becky has
organized, the audience is overwhelmingly male.

299
In some sense, we can view “The Real Ghostbusters” as an industrial fantasy,
projecting a more affirmational (and lucrative) male fanbase for the show. Though
the fanboy characters in the episode are unquestionably fans, they are importantly
presented as the type of fans the media industry sanctions and values. The imagined
male Supernatural fanbase presented in the episode engages with the text through
trivia, gleefully reciting favorite lines of dialogue back to the creator, and asking
nitpicky questions about the canon. The LARPing (Live Action Role Playing) that
ensnares the two main fanboy characters, Demian (Devin Ratray) and Barnes (Ernie
Grunwald), in Sam and Dean’s investigation of a real haunting that occurs during the
fan convention, is certainly more participatory, but Demian and Barnes are shown to
submissively help Sam and Dean on with their exorcism rather than undermining
them or diverting/rewriting them. Many fans enjoyed the fact that Demian and
Barnes (who cosplay Sam and Dean throughout the episode), were revealed at the
end of the episode to be a happy couple, but for some this positive portrayal of
homosexual coupling was undone by Becky offering herself to Chuck.
Becky, as the primary organizer of the fictional Supernatural fan convention
within the show, willingly offers up her labor, and is compensated with a romance
with Chuck, the proxy for the show’s writing staff and Kripke in particular. Playing
once again on the sexualized, pathologized excesses of the fangirl, “Becky's ‘reward’
of sex with Chuck starts to look like a masturbatory fantasy about the fandom as a
horde of horny, available women who just love the work of the male creator and the
mostly male writing team.”
35
This may seem overly critical, but it speaks to the

300
burden of representation that accompanies Becky, particularly in this episode in
which she (once again) is the lone representation of Supernatural fangirls on screen.
The Wincest writing fangirls who (theoretically) populate Becky’s website
apparently don’t attend fan conventions.
Felschow cautions against a neat equation between misrepresentation and
disempowerment for fangirls, justly pointing out that Becky is the only Supernatural
fangirl that the creators have complete control over.
36
Accordingly, some choose to
view Becky as a potential site of empowerment, despite the fact that “her depiction
buys into many of the female mad-fan stereotypes”
37
and many Supernatural fangirls
felt the pathologizing sting of that representation. Judith May Fathallah’s “Becky is
my hero: The power of laughter and disruption in Supernatual” argues that, though
Becky is barred from participating in the masculine “hero’s quest” narrative within
“The Real Ghostbusters,” she can be viewed as enacting Mikhail Bakhtin’s theory of
resistant laughter by “refusing to take seriously the official, dominant storyline,
inviting those not privileged in mainstream society to appropriate the narrative for
their pleasure.”
38
In Fathallah’s view, “Becky is available as a hero […] if we
change our definition of a hero from one who is driven by a quest-narrative of
achievement and suffering to one who writes and lives her own, radically comic,
stories.”
39
Becky does create her own narratives, both as a writer of Wincest and as
a persistent motivator of the plot within Supernatural’s diegesis, and thus is “the
heroine of her own, happily anarchic narrative, which operates according to a
different narrative logic, or no narrative logic at all.”
40
Fathallah makes a compelling

301
case for Becky’s disruptive presence to be read and appropriated by fangirls as a
form of resistance against the series’ masculinist narratives, but just as Fathallah
cautions that fans must be socially positioned to “share the joke,” it might be argued
that the creator must be socially positioned within the fan community to make the
joke. For a fanboy auteur like Kripke, whose property has an overwhelmingly
female fanbase, this positioning is likely to be tenuous at best.
On some level, all roads return to the producer/consumer relationship that has
always been at the center of fan studies. Felschow, considering these self-reflexive
episodes, observes that, “For Supernatural's staff, the figure of the cult fan is both a
boon and a burden, simultaneously assuring their power and threatening it.”
41

Schmidt points to industrial shifts that might fuel this ambivalence, noting that
producers of such a show, producers “in a post-television landscape where audiences
are increasingly fragmented, must be keenly aware that they need each and every
viewer to survive; perhaps, despite their gratitude, they cannot help but resent this
dependency.”
42
Becky may expose the Wincest fan community that circulates
around Supernatural, but she can’t be viewed as endorsing it, and she is certainly not
an aspirational figure for fangirls. Ultimately, Becky must “be seen as a reminder
to Supernatural fandom, delivered with a smile, of who exactly is in charge.”
43

Considering the Fangirl Auteur
Creator Eric Kripke originally planned a five-season arc for Supernatural,
and he opted not to return to helm the series in its sixth season, which premiered on

302
the CW on September 24, 2010. For season six, Kripke turned over the creative
reins as showrunner to Executive Producers Sera Gamble (one of the series’ primary
writers) and Robert Singer (one of the series’ primary directors). Gamble’s presence
is significant, not just as a female showrunner, but because of her vocal
understanding that Supernatural “has never really been about God and the Devil, or
angels and demons, it’s a show about Sam and Dean.”
44
To wit, the quote that serves
as the title of Tosenberger’s article surveying “the epic love story of Sam and Dean,”
is derived from an interview with Gamble.
45
Gamble’s apparent understanding of
Supernatural’s primary draw for fangirls, coupled with her promise that the sixth
season will present “a more intimate story,”
46
is especially intriguing when Gamble’s
literary background in erotic short fiction is considered. Gamble’s stories have been
anthologized in the 2006 and 2007 editions of Best American Erotica
47
and, while
Sam and Dean’s “epic love” will likely remain latent subtext rather than text under
Gamble’s creative control, her own textual production bodes well for Wincest fans.
In particular, Gamble’s view that explicit or erotic content is a product of character,
and that her primary interest is how sex might illuminate something about a
character,
48
echoes many slashers views of their textual production.
It will be interesting to see how Supernatural’s female fan base responds to
Gamble’s presence and Kripke’s absence, and if the show’s representation of its fans
(and the depiction of Becky in particular) will shift under Gamble’s creative control.
In his essay “Fan-tagonism: Factions, Institutions, and Conservative Hegemonies of
Fandom,” Derek Johnson details the gendered ramifications of attempting to replace

303
a beloved fanboy auteur with a fangirl. When Executive Producer Marti Noxon took
over Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s sixth season from Joss Whedon in 2001, she
challenged “the hyperdiegetic security of auteurism.”
49
Thus, despite the fact that
she had been a consistent creative presence on the show for years, fans sought to
“delegitimize Noxon’s productive authority and privileged relationship to the text.”
50

Fans’ vilification of Noxon was revealing on a number of levels. First, it clearly
reflected fans’ broad investment in a single auteur. Noxon’s presence was posed as
endangering both the narrative and authorial continuity of the show
51
and, thus, its
quality. Second, it reflected fans’ investment in Whedon specifically. Though it was
unclear to what degree gender played a role in fans’ reluctance to accept Noxon, she
was nonetheless considered a “pretender to the throne”
52
that Whedon would always
symbolically occupy.
It is too simple to suggest that the industrial and journalistic privileging of
fanboys outlined in this dissertation, or the representational inequities between
fanboys and fangirls detailed above, could be resolved by an influx of fangirl
auteurs. Of the “fangirl auteurs” that are frequently cited in rebuttals to these points,
few of them are creators.
53
Most of them are prominent members of writing staffs
who have garnered fan recognition, like Gamble and Noxon, and are mentored and
subsequently promoted by fanboy auteurs. While we can’t dismiss the creative
impact of these women, or disregard fans’ attachment to them, fans’ reticence to
accept Noxon suggests that the mantle of “fangirl auteur” might be difficult to
assign. Allegorically, Sera Gamble’s character proxy in “The Monster at the End of

304
this Book” reinforces this idea. When Sam and Dean seek out the author of the
Supernatural novels documenting their exploits, they encounter Sera Siege (Keegan
Connor Tracy), whose surname references another female member of the writing
staff, Julie Siege. Sera is revealed to be the publisher, and the boys are eventually
redirected to the “true” author, Carver Edlund.
54
Not only does this narrative
trajectory appear to favor the male members of the Supernatural writing staff and
their contributions but, as many fans have noted, Sera is presented as a Supernatural
fangirl, first and foremost. Her job is to protect “her boys,”
55
not play an active role
in shaping their story. Still, the growing prominence of female showrunners like
Gamble is encouraging, and the relationship that fans have with these fangirl auteurs
deserves further study, particularly as the intimacy between producers and
consumers is cultivated via Twitter, podcasts, and message boards.

The Debates Continue: Towards a Conclusion
By way of a conclusion I would like to return briefly to the Gender and Fan
Culture debates that appeared on Henry Jenkins blog, “Confessions of An Aca-Fan,”
and the structuring tension of this dissertation. In his exchange with Cynthia Walker,
Derek Kompare posed the central question of the debates with regard to the future of
fandom and fan studies. Regarding industrial encroachment into fan communities
and the co-optation of fan labor, Kompare stated:
A big question going forward is this: do we (as fans, or acafans) want to
crash the gates? Do we want to affect [sic.] change in the way media is
conceived, produced, and distributed? Do we want our cultures and

305
perspectives to be represented in the source texts themselves? Or would we
rather keep them to ourselves, build our own communities, and keep them
exclusive? Setting aside the issue of fear of the copyright police for a second,
do we still want to maintain boundaries between fandom and the
mainstream?
56

I would argue that an understanding and interrogation of these boundaries between
the mainstream and the margins, historically central to fan studies, is increasingly
vital to any study of contemporary fan culture. This dissertation has, at various
junctures, addressed how these boundaries are maintained, policed, negotiated, and
theorized, and how these boundaries are increasingly drawn along gender lines. As
fan studies converges with other disciplines, we would do well to keep Kompare’s
call to “keep picking at all of these categories, ‘men,’ ‘women,’ ‘fans,’ and
‘producers,’” keeping gender as a critical axis as we expand the field to consider
other marginalized groups.

306

Chapter Five Endnotes
1
Catherine Tosenberger, “Love! Valor! Supernatural!” Transformative Works and
Cultures Vol. 4 (2010),
http://journal.transformativeworks.org/index.php/twc/article/view/212/167.

2
Lori Kendall, “Nerd nation: Images of nerds in US popular culture,” International
Journal of Cultural Studies 2(2) 1999, 261.

3
Bob Rehak, “Gender and Fan Culture (Round Fifteen, Part One),” Confessions of
an Aca-Fan: The Official Weblog of Henry Jenkins, September 14, 2007,
http://henryjenkins.org/2007/09/gender_and_fan_culture_round_f_3.html.

4
Matt Hills, “Negative Fan Stereotypes (‘Get a Life!’) and Positive Fan Injunctions
(‘Everyone’s got to be a fan of something!’): Returning to Hegemony Theory in Fan
Studies,” in Spectator 25:1 (Spring 2005), 40.

5
Ibid., 45.

6
Kristina Busse, “Get a Life: In-Text Representations and Gendered Fan Behavior”
(paper presented at Flow Conference, Austin, TX, October 2, 2010),
http://www.kristinabusse.com/cv/research/flow10.html.

7
In addition to Hills and Busse’s articles, see Henry Jenkins, Textual Poachers:
Television Fans and Participatory Culture (New York: Routledge, 1992), 9-12, and
Francesca Coppa, “Writing Bodies in Space: Media Fan Fiction as Theatrical
Performance,” in Fan Fiction and Fan Communities in the Age of the Internet, eds.
Karen Hellekson and Kristina Busse (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2006), 227.

8
Christine Quail, “Hip To Be Square: Nerds in Media Culture,” Flow, February 7,
2009, http://flowtv.org/?p=2383.

9
Kendall, “Nerd Nation,” 264.

10
Ibid., 263.

11
Ibid., 261.

12
Henry Jenkins, Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide (New
York: New York University Press, 2006), 23.

307

13
Ibid., 23.

14
We might consider Junot Díaz’s novel The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao,
winner of the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, as another example of this trend
towards fanboys as romantic protagonists. Focused on the title character’s desire,
and ultimate failure, to conform to the standards of hegemonic masculinity, the
narrative nonetheless positions the fanboy as a sympathetic, if somewhat tragic,
romantic hero, and demands the reader be conversant in an abundance of cult media
references.

15
Sheldon’s “love interest,” Amy Farrah Fowler (played by Mayim Bialik), was
introduced in The Big Bang Theory’s season three finale (“The Lunar Excitation”)
and will be a recurring character for season four.

16
Will Brooker, Using the Force: Creativity, Community, and Star Wars Fans (New
York: Continuum, 2002), 3.

17
Kendall, “Nerd Nation,” 269.

18
Ibid., 269.

19
Heather Hendershot, “On Stan Lee, Leonard Nimoy, and Coitus…Or, The Fleeting
Pleasures of Televisual Nerdom,” Antenna: Responses to Media and Culture, July
30, 2010, http://blog.commarts.wisc.edu/2010/07/30/on-stan-lee-leonard-nimoy-and-
coitus-or-the-fleeting-pleasures-of-televisual-nerdom/.

20
Ibid.

21
Sherrie A. Inness, “Introduction: Who Remembers Sabrina? Intelligence, Gender
and the Media” in Geek Chic: Smart Women in Popular Culture, ed. Sherrie A.
Inness (New York: Palgrave Macmillon, 2007) 4.

22
Jessica Coen, “Casting Call for ‘Nerd Girls’ And/Or Reality-TV Stars,”
Jezebel.com, June 2, 2020, http://jezebel.com/5553636/casting-call-for-nerd-girls-
who-also-want-to-be-reality+tv-stars.

23
Inness, “Introduction,” 6.

24
Busse, “Get a Life.”

308

25
Catherine Tosenberger “‘The epic love story of Sam and Dean’: Supernatural,
queer readings, and the romance of incestuous fan fiction,” Transformative Works
and Cultures Vol. 1 (2008),
http://journal.transformativeworks.org/index.php/twc/article/view/30/36.

26
Ibid.

27
Sara Gwenllian Jones, “The sex lives of cult television characters,” Screen 43 (1)
2002, 88.

28
Tosenberger, “The epic love story of Sam and Dean.”

29
Ibid.

30
Laura E. Felschow, "‘Hey, check it out, there's actually fans’: (Dis)empowerment
and (mis)representation of cult fandom in Supernatural,” Transformative Works and
Cultures Vol. 4 (2010),
http://journal.transformativeworks.org/index.php/twc/article/view/134/142.

31
For further information on fans’ response to the Supernatural episode “The
Monster at the End of This Book,” see Deepa Sivarajan’s “Tlön, fandom, and source
text: The effect of fan works on the narrative of Supernatural,” Lisa Schmidt’s
“Monstrous Melodrama: Expanding the scope of melodramatic identification to
interpret negative fan responses to Supernatural,” and Melissa Gray’s “From canon
to fanon and back again: The epic journey of Supernatural and its fans,” all in
Transformative Works and Cultures Vol. 4 (2010).

32
Lisa Schmidt, “Monstrous melodrama: Expanding the scope of melodramatic
identification to interpret negative fan responses to Supernatural,” Transformative
Works and Cultures Vol. 4 (2010),
http://journal.transformativeworks.org/index.php/twc/article/view/152/155.

33
Felschow, “Hey, check it out, there’s actually fans.”

34
Melissa Gray, “From canon to fanon and back again: The epic journey of
Supernatural and its fans,” Transformative Works and Cultures Vol. 4 (2010),
http://journal.transformativeworks.org/index.php/twc/article/view/146/149.

35
Tosenberger, “Love! Valor! Supernatural!”

36
Ibid.

309

37
Judith May Fathallah, “Becky is my hero: The power of laughter and disruption in
Supernatual,” Transformative Works and Cultures Vol. 5 (2010),
http://journal.transformativeworks.org/index.php/twc/article/view/220/173.

38
Ibid.

39
Ibid.

40
Ibid.

41
Felschow, “Hey, check it out, there’s actually fans.”

42
Schmidt, “Monstrous melodrama.”

43
Felschow, “Hey, check it out, there’s actually fans.”

44
“Supernatural Bosses Talk Sixth Season,” SFX, June 28, 2010,
http://www.sfx.co.uk/2010/06/28/supernatural-bosses-talk-season-six/.

45
See Mary Borsellino, "Less campy": Supernatural's attempted reassertion of a pre-
Buffy status quo,” in Some of us really do watch for the plot: A collection of
"Supernatural" essays, ed. Jules Wilkinson and Andie Masino (San Mateo, CA:
CafePress, 2007).

46
“Supernatural Bosses Talk Sixth Season.”

47
See Sera Gamble’s “The Clay Man,” Best American Erotica 2006, ed. Susie
Bright (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2006), 182-193, and “Blue Star,” Best
American Erotica 2007, ed. Susie Bright (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2007), 75-
86.

48
Mary Borsellino, “Super women: Supernatural's executive story editor Sera
Gamble,” Sequential Tart, December 1, 2006,
http://www.sequentialtart.com/article.php?id=345.

49
Derek Johnson, “Fan-tagonism: Factions, Institutions, and Constitutive
Hegemonies of Fandom,” in Fandom: Identities and Communities in a Mediated
World, eds. Jonathan Gray, Cornel Sandvoss, and C. Lee Harrington (New York:
New York University Press, 2007), 292.

50
Ibid., 292.

310

51
Ibid., 293.

52
Ibid., 292.

53
A few examples would be Amy Sherman-Palladino (Gilmore Girls), and Shonda
Rhimes (Grey’s Anatomy, Private Practice).

54
Carver Edlund (Chuck Shirley’s pen name) is a portmanteau of Jeremy Carver and
Ben Edlund, two of Supernatural’s writers, but has been widely read as a proxy for
series creator Eric Kripke.

55
Supernatural fans frequently refer to Sam and Dean as their “boys.”

56
Derek Kompare and Cynthia Walker, “Gender and Fan Culture (Round Nine, Part
Two): Derek Kompare and Cynthia Walker,” Confessions of an Aca-Fan: The
Official Weblog of Henry Jenkins, August 2, 2007.

311
Bibliography
Nicholas Abercrombie and Brian Longhurst, Audiences: A Sociological Theory of
Performance and Imagination (London: Sage, 1998).

Theodor W. Adorno, The Culture Industry: Selected Essays on Mass Culture (New
York: Routledge, 1991).

Marc Andrejevic, iSpy: Surveillance and Power in the Interactive Era (Lawrence:
University of Kansas Press, 2007).

Melissa Anelli, Harry, A History: The True Story of a Boy Wizard, His Fans, and
Life Inside the Harry Potter Phenomenon (New York: Pocket Books, 2008).

Arabella and Zsenya, “After the End,” The Sugar Quill,
http://www.sugarquill.net/read.php?chapno=1&storyid=619.

Camille Bacon-Smith, Enterprising Women: Television Fandom and the Creation of
Popular Myth (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1992).

Christopher Bahn, “Interview: Russell T. Davies,” The AV Club, July 27, 2009,
http://www.avclub.com/articles/russell-t-davies,30869/.

Richard Barbrook, “The hi-tech gift economy,” First Monday 3 (12), December 7
2005,
http://firstmonday.org/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/631/5
52.

Marc Bernadin, “Faces in the Crowd,” EW.com, July 18, 2008,
http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,20213117,00.html.

Boosette, “Storming the Battlements or: Why the Culture of Mary Sue Shaming is
Bully Culture,” dreamwidth.org,
http://boosette.dreamwidth.org/864733.html.

Mary Borsellino, “Super women: Supernatural's executive story editor Sera
Gamble,” Sequential Tart, December 1, 2006,
http://www.sequentialtart.com/article.php?id=345.

Mary Borsellino, “Less campy: Supernatural's attempted reassertion of a pre-Buffy
status quo,” in Some of us really do watch for the plot: A collection of
“Supernatural” essays, ed. Jules Wilkinson and Andie Masino (San Mateo,
CA: CafePress, 2007).

312
Brad Brevett, “Pattinson Gets to the Heart of Stephenie Meyer and her ‘Twilight’
Series,” ropesofsilicon.com, November 12, 2008,
http://www.ropeofsilicon.com/article/pattinson-gets-to-the-heart-of-
stephenie-meyer-and-her-twilight-series.

Will Brooker, Using the Force: Creativity, Community and Star Wars Fans (New
York: Continuum, 2002).

Will Brooker and Ksenia Prasolova, “Gender and Fan Studies (Round Four, Part
Two),” Confessions of an Aca-Fan: The Official Weblog of Henry Jenkins,
June 22, 2007,
http://henryjenkins.org/2007/06/gender_and_fan_studies_round_f.html.

Jeffrey A. Brown, “Comic Book Fandom and Cultural Capital” Journal of Popular
Culture 30(4) Spring 1997 p. 16.

Scott Brown, “Scott Brown Rallies America’s Nerds to Embrace Their Rise to
Power,” Wired.com, April 21, 2008,
http://www.wired.com/techbiz/people/magazine/16-05/pl_brown.

Charlotte Brunsdon, The Feminist, The Housewife, and the Soap Opera (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2000).

Kyle Buchanan, “Why Must Twilight-Obsessed Women Ruin Comic-con for
Avatar-Obsessed Men?,” Movieline.com, July 10, 2009,
http://www.movieline.com/2009/07/why-must-twilight-obsessed-women-
ruin-comic-con-for-avatar-obsessed-men.php.

Bonnie Burton, “Kyle Newman: Let’s Hear It For The Fanboys,” starwars.com,
February 3, 2009, http://www.starwars.com/fans/rocks/20090204.html.

Kristina Busse, “My Life Is a WIP on My LJ: Slashing the Slasher and the Reality of
Celebrity and Internet Performance” in Fan Fiction and Fan Communities in
the Age of the Internet, eds. Karen Hellekson and Kristina Busse (Jefferson,
NC: McFarland, 2006).

Kristina Busse, “Podcasts and the Fan Experience of Disseminated Media
Commentary,” (paper presented at Flow Conference, Austin, TX, October
2006), http://www.kristinabusse.com/cv/research/flow06.html.

Kristina Busse, “amateurs ‘r us,” ephemeral traces, May 5, 2007,
http://kbusse.wordpress.com/2007/05/05/amateurs-r-us/.

313
Kristina Busse, “Collaborative Authorship, Fandom and New Media,” ephemeral
traces, November 21, 2007,
http://kbusse.wordpress.com/2007/11/21/collaborative-authorship-fandom-
and-new-media/.

Kristina Busse, “‘Us’: A mulitvid by Lim,” In Media Res, February 1, 2008,
http://mediacommons.futureofthebook.org/imr/2008/02/01/us-a-multivid-by-
lim.

Kristina Busse, “Get a Life: In-Text Representations and Gendered Fan Behavior”
(paper presented at Flow Conference, Austin, TX, October 2, 2010),
http://www.kristinabusse.com/cv/research/flow10.html.

Kristina Busse and Karen Hellekson, “Introduction: Work in Progress” in Fan
Fiction and Fan Communities in the Age of the Internet, eds. Karen
Hellekson and Kristina Busse (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2006).

Kristina Busse and Cornel Sandvoss, “Gender and Fan Studies (Round Seven, Part
One): Kristina Busse and Cornel Sandvoss,” Confessions of an Aca-Fan: The
Official Weblog of Henry Jenkins, June 28, 2007,
http://www.henryjenkins.org/2007/07/h3introduction_kristina_i_have.html.

Nancy K. Byam, Tune In, Log On: Soaps, Fandom, and Online Community (Sage
Publications, 1999).

Dale M. Cendali, “Opening Statement, Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. and J.K.
Rowling v. RDR Books,” April 14, 2008,
http://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/system/files/Trial%20Transcript%20Day%201.t
xt.

Cherith, “Sexism and the EA/Dante’s Inferno – ‘Sin to Win’ Contest,”
Gamingangels.com, July 24, 2009,
http://www.gamingangels.com/2009/07/sexism-and-the-eadantes-inferno-sin-
to-win-contest/.

chillingeffects.org, “Frequently Asked Questions (And Answers) About Fan
Fiction,” chillingeffects.org, http://www.chillingeffects.org/fanfic/faq.cgi.

Tricia Clasen, “Taking a Bite Out of Love: The Myth of Romantic Love in the
Twilight Series,” in Bitten by Twilight: Youth Culture, Media, and the
Vampire Franchise, eds. Melissa A. Click, Jennifer Stevens Aubrey, and
Elizabeth Behm-Morawitz (New York: Peter Lang Publishing, 2010).

314
Melissa Click, “‘Rabid,’ ‘obsessed,’ and ‘frenzied’: Understanding Twilight Fangirls
and the Gendered Politics of Fandom,” Flow, December 18, 2009,
http://flowtv.org/2009/12/rabid-obsessed-and-frenzied-understanding-
twilight-fangirls-and-the-gendered-politics-of-fandom-melissa-click-
university-of-missouri/.

Melissa A. Click, Jennifer Stevens Aubrey, and Elizabeth Behm-Morawitz,
“Introduction,” in Bitten by Twilight: Youth Culture, Media, and the Vampire
Franchise, eds. Melissa A. Click, Jennifer Stevens Aubrey, and Elizabeth
Behm-Morawitz (New York: Peter Lang Publishing, 2010).

Jessica Coen, “Casting Call for ‘Nerd Girls’ And/Or Reality-TV Stars,” Jezebel.com,
June 2, 2020, http://jezebel.com/5553636/casting-call-for-nerd-girls-who-
also-want-to-be-reality+tv-stars.

Celeste Michelle Condit, “Hegemony in a Mass-mediated Society: Concordance
About Reproductive Technologies,” Critical Studies in Mass Communication
11:3 (1994), 205-230.

Francesca Coppa, “A Brief History of Media Fandom,” in Fan Fiction and Fan
Communities in the Age of the Internet, eds. Karen Hellekson and Kristina
Busse (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2006).

Francesca Coppa, “Writing Bodies in Space: Media Fan Fiction as Theatrical
Performance,” in Fan Fiction and Fan Communities in the Age of the
Internet, eds. Karen Hellekson and Kristina Busse (Jefferson, NC:
McFarland, 2006).

Francesca Coppa, “Gender and Fan Culture (Wrapping Up, Part Four),” Confessions
of an Aca-Fan: The Official Weblog of Henry Jenkins, November 28, 2007,
http://henryjenkins.org/2007/11/gender_and_fan_culture_wrappin_2.html.

Francesca Coppa, “Women, Star Trek, and the early development of fannish
vidding” Transformative Works and Cultures Vol. 1 (2008),
http://journal.transformativeworks.org/index.php/twc/article/view/44/64.

Brian Crecente, “EA Provides ‘Girls,” Asks Gamers To Sin To Win,” Kotaku.com,
July 24, 2009, http://kotaku.com/5322216/ea-provides-girls-asks-gamers-to-
sin-to-win.

Chris Dahlen, “A.V. Club Interviews: Ronald D. Moore,” The A.V. Club, April 17,
2007, http://www.avclub.com/articles/ronald-d-moore,14086/.

315
Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1988).

Abigail De Kosnik, “Should Fan Fiction Be Free?,” Cinema Journal 48 (4) Summer
2009, 120.

Courtney Brannon Donoghue, “‘Twilight is a license to print money’: Selling the
Female Film Franchise,” In Media Res,
http://mediacommons.futureofthebook.org/imr/2010/06/29/twilight-license-
print-money-selling-female-film-franchise.

Catherine Driscoll, “One True Pairing: The Romance of Pornography and the
Pornography of Romance,” in Fan Fiction and Fan Communities in the Age
of the Internet, eds. Karen Hellekson and Kristina Busse (Jefferson, NC:
McFarland, 2006).

Barbara Ehrenreich, Elizabeth Hess and Gloria Jacobs, “Beatlemania: Girls Just
Want to Have Fun,” in The Adoring Audience, ed. Lisa A. Lewis (New York:
Routledge, 1992).

Fanlore.org, “Controversy: Are some ‘Mary Sues’ just strong women?,”
Fanlore.org,
http://fanlore.org/wiki/Mary_Sue#Controversy:_Are_some_.22Mary_Sues.22
_just_strong_women.3F.

Fanlore.org, “Badfic,” fanlore.org, http://fanlore.org/wiki/Badfic.

Fanlore.org, “Mary Sue,” fanlore.org, http://fanlore.org/wiki/Mary_Sue.

Judith May Fathallah, “Becky is my hero: The power of laughter and disruption in
Supernatual,” Transformative Works and Cultures Vol. 5 (2010),
http://journal.transformativeworks.org/index.php/twc/article/view/220/173.

Laura E. Felschow, "‘Hey, check it out, there's actually fans’: (Dis)empowerment
and (mis)representation of cult fandom in Supernatural,” Transformative
Works and Cultures Vol. 4 (2010),
http://journal.transformativeworks.org/index.php/twc/article/view/134/142.

John Fiske, Understanding Popular Culture (New York: Routledge, 1991).

Michel Foucault, Discipline & Punish: The Birth of the Prison (New York: Random
House, 1995).

316
Darren Franich, “‘Twilight’ won’t be at Comic-Con, so what will we be complaining
about this year?,” EW.com, July 8, 2010,
http://popwatch.ew.com/2010/07/08/twilight-not-at-comic-con/.

Sera Gamble, “The Clay Man,” in Best American Erotica 2006, ed. Susie Bright
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 2006).

Sera Gamble, “Blue Star,” in Best American Erotica 2007, ed. Susie Bright (New
York: Simon & Schuster, 2007).

Arturo R. Garcia, “The Pop Culture Jump-Off: Notes from the 2009 Comic-Con,”
Racialicious.com, August 4, 2009,
http://www.racialicious.com/2009/08/04/the-pop-culture-jump-off-notes-
from-the-2009-comic-con/.

Gerard Genette, Paratexts: Thresholds of Interpretation (Cambridge: Cambirdge
University Press, 1997).

Owen Good, “EA Apoligizes for ‘Sin to Win’ Booth Babe Promo,” Kotaku.com,
July 25, 2009, http://kotaku.com/5322781/ea-apologizes-for-sin-to-win-
booth-babe-promo.

Victoria K. Gosling “Girls Allowed? The Marginalization of Female Sports Fans,”
in Fandom: Identities and Communities in a Mediated World, eds. Jonathan
Gray, Cornel Sandvoss, and C. Lee Harrington (New York: New York
University Press, 2007).

Jonathan Gray “New Audiences, New Textualities: Anti-Fans and Non-Fans,”
International Journal of Cultural Studies Vol. 6 No. 1 (March 2003), 66.

Jonathan Gray, “Antifandom and the Moral Text: Television Without Pity and
Textual Dislike” American Behavioral Scientist 48.7 (March 2005), 840.

Jonathan Gray, Show Sold Separately: Promos, Spoilers, and Other Media Paratexts
(New York: New York University Press, 2010).

Jonathan Gray, Cornel Sandvoss, and C. Lee Harrington, “Introduction: Why Study
Fans?” in Fandom: Identities and Communities in a Mediated World, eds.
Jonathan Gray, Cornel Sandvoss, and C. Lee Harrington (New York: New
York University Press, 2007).

317
Melissa Gray, “From canon to fanon and back again: The epic journey of
Supernatural and its fans,” in Transformative Works and Cultures Vol. 4
(2010),
http://journal.transformativeworks.org/index.php/twc/article/view/152/155.

Maggie Hanna, “A Sisterhood of Wrock,” Wizrocklopedia, February 20, 2009,
http://wizrocklopedia.com/2009/02/20/a-sisterhood-of-wrock/.

Matt Hanson, The End of Celluloid: Film Futures in the Digital Age (RotoVision,
2003).

C. Lee Harrington and Denise Bielby, Soap Fans: Pursuing Pleasure and Making
Meaning in Everyday Life (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1995).

The Harry Potter Alliance, “About Us,” The Harry Potter Alliance,
http://www.thehpalliance.org/about-us/.

Jennifer Hayward, Consuming Pleasures: Active Audiences and Serial Fiction from
Dickens to Soap Opera (Lexington: The University of Kentucky Press,
1997).

Dick Hebdige, Subculture: The Meaning of Style (New York: Routledge, 1979).

Karen Hellekson, “A Fannish Field of Value: Online Fan Gift Culture,” Cinema
Journal 48 (4) Summer 2009, 113-118.

Heather Hendershot, “On Stan Lee, Leonard Nimoy, and Coitus…Or, The Fleeting
Pleasures of Televisual Nerdom,” Antenna: Responses to Media and Culture,
July 30, 2010, http://blog.commarts.wisc.edu/2010/07/30/on-stan-lee-
leonard-nimoy-and-coitus-or-the-fleeting-pleasures-of-televisual-nerdom/.

Matt Hills, Fan Cultures (New York: Routledge, 2002).

Matt Hills, “Negative Fan Stereotypes (‘Get a Life!’) and Positive Fan Injunctions
(‘Everyone’s got to be a fan of something!’): Returning to Hegemony Theory
in Fan Studies,” in Spectator 25:1 (Spring 2005), 36.

Matt Hills, “Gender and Fan Studies (Round Twelve, Part One): Catherine Driscoll
and Matt Hills,” Confessions of an Aca-Fan: The Official Weblog of Henry
Jenkins, August 23, 2007,
http://www.henryjenkins.org/2007/08/gender_and_fan_culture_round_t.html.

318
Jenny Hontz, “Websiodes: A Battle Against the Empire,” Newsweek, October 23,
2006.

Max Horheimer and Theodor W. Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment (New York:
Continuum, 1969).

Lewis Hyde, The Gift: Imagination and the Erotic Life of Property (New York:
Vintage, 1983).

Sherrie A. Inness, “Introduction: Who Remembers Sabrina? Intelligence, Gender and
the Media” in Geek Chic: Smart Women in Popular Culture, ed. Sherrie A.
Inness (New York: Palgrave Macmillon, 2007).

Mizuko Ito, “Intertextual Enterprises: Writing Alternative Places and Meanings in
the Media Mixed Networks of Yugioh,”
http://www.itofisher.com/mito/archives/ito.intertextual.pdf.

Jarrow, “New Vid: Tandemonium,” livejournal.com, August 8, 2010,
http://jarrow.livejournal.com/1127844.html.

Henry Jenkins, Textual Poachers: Television Fans and Participatory Culture (New
York: Routledge, 1992).

Henry Jenkins, “‘Infinite diversity in infinite combinations’: Genre and authorship in
Star Trek,” in Science Fiction Audiences: Watching Doctor Who and Star
Trek, eds. John Tulloch and Henry Jenkins (New York: Routledge, 1995).

Henry Jenkins, “‘Do You Enjoy Making the Rest of Us Feel Stupid?’:
alt.tv.twinpeaks, the Trickster Author, and Viewer Mastery,” in Full of
Secrets: Critical Approaches to Twin Peaks, ed. David Lavery (Detroit:
Wayne State University Press, 1995).

Henry Jenkins, “Transmedia Storytelling,” Technology Review, January 15, 2003,
http://www.technologyreview.com/Biotech/13052/.

Henry Jenkins, Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide (New
York: New York University Press, 2006).

Henry Jenkins, Fans, Bloggers, and Gamers: Exploring Participatory Culture (New
York: New York University Press, 2006).

319
Henry Jenkins, “Star Trek Rerun, Reread, Rewritten: Fan Writing as Textual
Poaching” in Fans, Bloggers, and Gamers: Exploring Participatory Culture
(New York: New York University Press, 2007).

Henry Jenkins, “Afterword: The Future of Fandom” in Fandom: Identities and
Communities in a Mediated World, eds. Jonathan Gray, Cornel Sandvoss, and
C. Lee Harrington (New York: New York University Press, 2007).

Henry Jenkins, “Transmedia Storytelling 101,” Confessions of an Aca-Fan: The
Official Weblog of Henry Jenkins, March 22, 2007,
http://www.henryjenkins.org/2007/03/transmedia_storytelling_101.html.

Henry Jenkins, “When Fan Boys and Fan Girls Meet...,” Confessions of an Aca-Fan:
The Official Weblog of Henry Jenkins, May 17, 2007,
http://www.henryjenkins.org/2007/05/when_fan_boys_and_fan_girls_me.ht
ml.

Henry Jenkins, “Transforming fan culture into user-generated content: The case of
FanLib,” Confessions of an Aca-Fan: The Official Weblog of Henry Jenkins,
May 22, 2007,
http://www.henryjenkins.org/2007/05/transforming_fan_culture_into.html.

Henry Jenkins, “Gender and Fan Culture (Wrapping Up, Part One),” Confessions of
an Aca-Fan: The Official Weblog of Henry Jenkins, November 21, 2007,
http://henryjenkins.org/2007/11/_bob_rehak_i_enjoyed.html.

Henry Jenkins, et al., “If it doesn't spread, it's dead (part three): The gift economy
and commodity culture,” Confessions of an Aca-Fan: The Official Weblog of
Henry Jenkins, February 16, 2009,
http://henryjenkins.org/2009/02/if_it_doesnt_spread_its_dead_p_2.html.

Joli Jenson, “Fandom as Pathology: The Consequences of Characterization,” in The
Adoring Audience: Fan Culture and Popular Media, ed. Lisa A. Lewis (New
York: Routledge, 1992).

Johanna, “Only Boys Cab Win Trip to Comic Con,” Comicsworthreading.com, June
10, 2009, http://comicsworthreading.com/2009/06/10/only-boys-can-win-
trip-to-comic-con/.

Derek Johnson, “Fan-tagonism: Factions, Institutions, and Constitutive Hegemonies
of Fandom,” in Fandom: Identities and Communities in a Mediated World,
eds. Jonathan Gray, Cornel Sandvoss, and C. Lee Harrington (New York:
New York University Press, 2007).

320
Gerard Jones, Men of Tomorrow: Geeks, Gangsters and the Birth of the Comic Book
(New York: Basic Books, 2004).

Robert Jones, “From Shooting Monsters to Shooting Movies: Machinima and the
Transformative Play of Video Game Fan Culture,” in Fan Fiction and Fan
Communities in the Age of the Internet, eds. Karen Hellekson and Kristina
Busse (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2006).

Sara Gwenllian Jones, “The sex lives of cult television characters,” Screen 43 (1)
2002, 88.

Katherine Kane, “A Very Queer Refusal: The Chilling Effect of the Cullen’s
Heteronormatice Embrace,” in Bitten by Twilight: Youth Culture, Media, and
the Vampire Franchise, eds. Melissa A. Click, Jennifer Stevens Aubrey, and
Elizabeth Behm-Morawitz (New York: Peter Lang Publishing, 2010).

Austin Karr, “‘Heroes’ Creator Tim Kring on His New TV Series, Transmedia, the
Future of Television,” fastcompany.com, July 30, 2010,
http://www.fastcompany.com/1676076/heroes-creator-tim-kring-on-his-new-
tv-series-transmedia-and-the-future-of-television.

Lori Kendall, “Nerd nation: Images of nerds in US popular culture,” International
Journal of Cultural Studies 2(2) 1999, 261.

Borys Kit and Gregg Goldstein, “‘Fanboys’ supporters attempt protests,”
Hollywoodreporter.com, March 30, 2008,
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/hr/content_display/film/news/e3ib32aa43
8464bc12534332654fb67783c?pn=1.

Madeline LeNore “Flourish” Klink, “Laugh Out Loud In Real Life: Women’s
Humor and Fan Identity” (Masters Thesis, Massachusetts Institute of
Technology, 2010).

Derek Kompare and Cynthia Walker, “Gender and Fan Culture (Round Nine, Part
Two): Derek Kompare and Cynthia Walker,” Confessions of an Aca-Fan:
The Official Weblog of Henry Jenkins, August 2, 2007.

Carla Kungl, “‘Long Live Stardoe!’: Can A Female Starbuck Survive?” in Cylons in
America: Critical Studies in Battlestar Galactica (New York: Continuum,
2008).

321
Julie Levin Russo, “The L Word: Labors of Love,” (paper presented at Console-ing
Passions Conference, Santa Barbara, CA, April 26-24, 2008),
http://community.livejournal.com/fandebate/9600.html.

Julie Levin Russo, “User-Penetrated Content: Fan Video in the Age of
Convergence,” Cinema Journal 48 (4) Summer 2009, 127.

Julie Levin Russo, “Twansformative? The Future of Fandom on Twitter,” (paper
presented at the Flow Conference, Austin, TX, October 1, 2010), http://j-l-
r.org/node/987.

Geoffrey A. Long, “Transmedia Storytelling: Business, Aesthetics, and Production at
the Jim Henson Company” (Masters Thesis, Massachusetts Institute of
Technology, 2007).

Geoffrey Long and Catherine Tosenberger, “Gender and Fan Studies (Round Five,
Part One): Geoffrey Long and Catherine Tosenberger,” Confessions of an
Aca-Fan: The Official Weblog of Henry Jenkins, June 28, 2007,
http://www.henryjenkins.org/2007/06/gender_and_fan_studies_round_f_1.ht
ml.

Los Angeles Times, “The Girl’s Guide to Comic-Con 2009,” The Los Angeles Times,
http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/la-et-girls-guide-to-comic-con-
pg,0,4051009.photogallery.

Alexis Lothian, “Living in a Den of Thieves: Fan Video and Digital Challenges to
Ownership,” Cinema Journal 48:4 Summer 2009, 136.

Tom Lowry and Ronald Grover, “Disney’s Marvel Deal and the Pursuit of Boys,”
Businessweek.com, September 10, 2009,
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/09_38/b4147066139865.ht
m.

Matt Maggiacomo, “Rant #3,592: Velour Records And Why They Suck,” MySpace,
June 4, 2007,
http://blogs.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.ListAll&friendId=3531
5863&page=20#ixzz0tyEJuvDi.

Matt Maggiacomo, “Weekly Blog #24 – Wizard Rock is Out of Control,” MySpace,
June 7, 2007,
http://blogs.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.ListAll&friendId=3531
5863&page=18#ixzz0tyDlGSxy.

322
Matt Maggiacomo, “Homeward Bound,” MySpace, March 26, 2008,
http://www.myspace.com/thewhompingwillows/blog?page=11#ixzz0tyCI1Y
UJ.

Matt Maggiacomo, “HP Fandom Rating System? Really?!” MySpace, August 1,
2008,
http://blogs.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.ListAll&friendId=3531
5863&page=3#ixzz0ty9khpeT.

Matt Maggiacomo and Grace Kendall, “He Said/She Said: The (Non?)Existence of
Sexism in Wizard Rock,” The Wizrocklopedia, September 2, 2009,
http://wizrocklopedia.com/2009/09/02/he-saidshe-said-the-nonexistence-of-
sexism-in-wizard-rock/.

Maggie, “Countdown to Comic-Con 2010!,” Cinemaniacchronicles.com, June 10,
2010,
http://cinemanicchronicles.moviemansguide.com/2010/06/10/countdown-to-
comic-con-2010/.

Jane Mailander, “Filking 101: The Folk Music of Science Fiction,” filk.com, 2007,
http://www.filk.com/filk101.htm.

Paul Marino, 3D game-based filmmaking: The art of machinima (Scottsdale:
Paraglyph, 2004).

Doreen Massey, Space, Place, and Gender (Minneapolis, University of Minnesota
Press, 1994).

William McCarty, “Brandon Jerwa on New Battlestar Galactica: Season Zero.”
Newsarama.com, May 22, 2007,
http://forum.newsarama.com/showthread.php?t=113605.

Dave McNary, “Fans protest TWC release: Folks protest against the removal of
subplot,” Variety.com, March 30, 2009,
http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117983181.html?categoryid=13&cs=1.

Angela McRobbie and Jenny Garber “Girls and Subcultures: An Exploration,” in
Resistance through Rituals: Youth subcultures in post-war Britain, eds. Stuart
Hall and Tony Jefferson (New York: Routledge, 1993).

Stephenie Meyer, “The Story Behind Twilight,” The Official Website of Stephenie
Meyer, http://www.stepheniemeyer.com/twilight.html.

323
Cynthia B. Meyers, “From Sponsorship to Spots: Advertising and the Development
of Electronic Media,” in Media Industries: History, Theory, and Method, eds.
Jennifer Holt and Alisa Perren (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009).

Jason Lee Miller, “Ron Moore on Podcasting and Battlestar Galactica,”
webpronews.com, October 5, 2006,
http://www.webpronews.com/insiderreports/2006/10/05/ron-moore-on-
podcasting-and-battlestar-galactica.

Jason Mittell, “Gender and Fan Studies (Round One, Part One): Karen Hellekson
and Jason Mittell,” Confessions of an Aca-Fan: The Official Weblog of Henry
Jenkins, May 31, 2007,
http://www.henryjenkins.org/2007/05/gender_and_fan_studies_round_o.html

Tania Modleski, Loving with a Vengeance: Mass-Produced Fantasies for Women
(Hamden, CT: Archon Books, 1982).

Laura Mulvey, “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” Film Theory and Criticism
(5th Edition) 837.

Chris Nashawaty, “The Dark Knight: Batman’s Big Score,” EW.com, July 24, 2008,
http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,20214587_2,00.html.

Annalee Newitz, “Female Fans Prepare to Trample Men at Comic-Con,” io9.com,
July 10, 2009, http://io9.com/5312056/female-fans-prepare-to-trample-men-
at-comic+con.

Obsession_inc, “Affirmational fandom vs. Transformational fandom,”
Obsession_inc, June 1, 2009, http://obsession-
inc.dreamwidth.org/82589.html.

Liz Ohanesian, “Comic-Con’s Twilight Protests: Is There a Gender War Brewing?,”
Laweekly.com, July 28, 2009,
http://blogs.laweekly.com/style_council/comic-con-2009/twilight-protests/.

Organization for Transformative Works, “Press Release: OTW Helps Secure DMCA
Exemption for Remix Vidding,” Organization for Transformative Works,
July 26, 2010, http://transformativeworks.org/projects/vidding-press-release-
DMCA-EXEMPTION.

324
Organization for Transformative Works, “Copyright Office Cites Fan Vids in
Recommending New Exemptions,” Organization for Transformative Works,
July 28, 2010, http://transformativeworks.org/copyright-office-cites-fan-vids-
recommending-new-exemptions.

Rob Owen, “Executive Producer Ron Moore Discusses Thrilling ‘Galactica’
Cliffhanger,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, March 26 2007, http://www.post-
gazette.com/pg/07085/770732-352.stm.

Ken P., “An Interview with Ron Moore,” IGN.com, December 4, 2003,
http://movies.ign.com/articles/444/444306p1.html.

Roberta Pearson, “Participation or Totalization: Fans and Transmedia Storytelling,”
(paper presented at the DigiCult: Television and the Public Sphere
conference, Paris, France, October 23, 2008).

Roberta Pearson, “Fandom in the Digital Era,” Popular Communication, volume 8,
issue 1 (January 2010), 86.

Pat Pflieger, “Too Good to be True: 150 Years of Mary Sue,” (paper presented at the
American Culture Association conference, San Diego, CA, March 31, 1999)
http://www.merrycoz.org/papers/MARYSUE.HTM.

Carrie Anne Platt, “Cullen Family Values: Gender and Sexual Politics in the
Twilight Series,” in Bitten by Twilight: Youth Culture, Media, and the
Vampire Franchise, eds. Melissa A. Click, Jennifer Stevens Aubrey, and
Elizabeth Behm-Morawitz (New York: Peter Lang Publishing, 2010).

Dorothy Pomerantz, “Inside the ‘Twilight’ Empire,” Forbes.com, June 28, 2010.
http://www.forbes.com/2010/06/22/twilight-kristen-stewart-robert-pattinson-
business-entertainment-celeb-100-10-twilight_print.html.

Matthew J. Pustz, Comic Book Culture: Fanboys and True Believers (Jackson:
University Press of Mississippi, 1999).

Christine Quail, “Hip To Be Square: Nerds in Media Culture,” Flow, February 7,
2009, http://flowtv.org/?p=2383.

Janice A. Radway, Reading the romance: Women, patriarchy, and popular literature
(Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1984).

325
Jacinda Read, “The cult of masculinity: from fan-boys to academic bad-boys,” in
Defining cult movies: The cultural politics of oppositional taste, eds. Mark
Jancovich, Antonio Lázaro Reboll, Julian Stringer, and Andy Williams
(Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2003).

Jennifer Reed, “‘Glee’ to show at Comic-Con – and the nerds are pissed,” Sdnn.com,
June 10, 2010, http://www.sdnn.com/sandiego/2010-06-28/local-county-
news/glee-to-show-at-comic-con-and-the-nerds-are-pissed.

Bob Rehak and Suzanne Scott, “Gender and Fan Culture (Round Fifteen, Part One),”
Confessions of an Aca-Fan: The Official Weblog of Henry Jenkins,
September 14, 2007,
http://henryjenkins.org/2007/09/gender_and_fan_culture_round_f_3.html.

Tasha Robinson, “Interview: Joss Whedon,” The AV Club, August 8, 2007,
http://www.avclub.com/articles/joss-whedon,14136/.

Vaneta Rogers, “Fangirl Invasion: The War of the Sexes Hits Geekdom,”
Newsarama.com, September 17, 2009,
http://www.newsarama.com/film/090917-fangirl-3-gender-war.html.

J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (New York: Scholastic, 2000).

Marc Ruppel, “(Still) Waiting for the Transmedia Godot,” In Media Res, July 28,
2010, http://mediacommons.futureofthebook.org/imr/2010/07/27/still-
waiting-transmedia-godot.

Dinah Russell, “The Parselmouths: Evolution of a Rock Band,” The Wizrocklopedia,
June 16, 2009, http://wizrocklopedia.com/2009/06/16/the-parselmouths-
evolution-of-a-wrock-band/.

Julian Sancton, “Revenge of the Star Wars Nerds,” Vanityfair.com, February 22,
2008, http://www.vanityfair.com/online/daily/2008/02/revenge-of-the.html.

Cornel Sandvoss, Fans (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2005).

Lisa Schmidt, “Monstrous Melodrama: Expanding the scope of melodramatic
identification to interpret negative fan responses to Supernatural,” in
Transformative Works and Cultures Vol. 4 (2010),
http://journal.transformativeworks.org/index.php/twc/article/view/152/155.

326
Peter Sciretta, “Will Twilight Ruin This Year’s Comic-Con?” Slashfilm.com, July
10, 2009, http://www.slashfilm.com/2009/07/10/will-twilight-ruin-this-years-
comic-con/.

Suzanne Scott, “Authorized Resistance: Is Fan Production Frakked?” in Cylons in
America: Critical Studies in Battlestar Galactica, eds. Tiffany Potter and
C.W. Marshall (New York: Continuum, 2008).

Ellen Seiter, Hans Borcher, Gabriele Kreutzner, and Eva-Maria Warth,
“Introduction,” in Remote Control: Television, Audiences, and Cultural
Power, eds. Ellen Seiter, Hans Borcher, Gabriele Kreutzner, and Eva-Maria
Warth (New York: Routledge, 1989).

SFX, “Supernatural Bosses Talk Sixth Season,” SFX, June 28, 2010,
http://www.sfx.co.uk/2010/06/28/supernatural-bosses-talk-season-six/.

Jessica Sheffield and Elyse Merlo, “Biting Back: Twilight Anti-Fandom and the
Rhetoric of Superiority” in Bitten by Twilight: Youth Culture, Media, and the
Vampire Franchise, eds. Melissa A. Click, Jennifer Stevens Aubrey, and
Elizabeth Behm-Morawitz (New York: Peter Lang Publishing, 2010).

Deepa Sivarajan, “Tlön, fandom, and source text: The effect of fan works on the
narrative of Supernatural,” in Transformative Works and Cultures Vol. 4
(2010),
http://journal.transformativeworks.org/index.php/twc/article/view/152/155.

Andrew Slack, “How Dumbledore’s Army is Changing Our World: An Interview
with the HP Alliance’s Andrew Slack (Part Two),” Confessions of an Aca-
Fan: The Official Weblog of Henry Jenkins, July 27, 2009,
http://www.henryjenkins.org/2009/07/how_dumbledores_army_is_transf_1.h
tml.

Nicole Sperling, “‘New Moon’ DVD sales on track to surpass ‘Twilight,’” ew.com,
March 23, 2010, http://hollywoodinsider.ew.com/2010/03/23/new-moon-dvd-
sales/.

Louisa Stein, “Vidding as Cultural Narrative,” (paper presented at Console-ing
Passions, Santa Barbara, CA, April 25, 2008),
http://community.livejournal.com/fandebate/9600.html.

Louisa Stein, “Activist Acafandom? When Fans, Academics, and Producers
Collide,” (paper presented at Flow Conference, Austin, TX, October 2,
2010).

327
Louisa Stein and Robert Jones, “Gender and Fan Studies (Round Two, Part One):
Louisa Stein and Robert Jones,” Confessions of an Aca-Fan: The Official
Weblog of Henry Jenkins, June 6, 2007,
http://www.henryjenkins.org/2007/06/gender_and_fan_studies_round_t.html.

Louisa Stein and Robert Jones, “Gender and Fan Studies (Round Two, Part Two):
Louisa Stein and Robert Jones,” Confessions of an Aca-Fan: The Official
Weblog of Henry Jenkins, June 7, 2007,
http://henryjenkins.org/2007/06/gender_and_fan_studies_round_t_1.html.

Hunter Stephenson, “Fanboys Director Steve Brill Threatens to Kick Real Fanboys’
Asses! Uh oh…,” Slashfilm.com, March 26, 2008,
http://www.slashfilm.com/2008/03/26/fanboys-director-steve-brill-threatens-
to-kick-real-fanboys-asses-uh-oh/.

Jonathan David Tankel and Keith Murphy, “Collecting Comic Books: A Study of the
Fan and Curatorial Consumption,” in Theorizing Fandom: Fans, Subculture
and Identity, ed. Cheryl Harris and Alison Alexander (Cresskill, NJ:
Hampton Press, 1998).

Melissa L. Tatum, “Identity and authenticity in the filk community,” Transformative
Works and Cultures, Vol. 3 (2009),
http://journal.transformativeworks.org/index.php/twc/article/view/139/102.

Robert Taylor, “Reflections: Talking ‘Battlestar Galacica with Greg Pak,”
Reflections Volume 2:17, May 28, 2006,
http://www.comicbookresources.com/?page=article&id=7166.

Television Without Pity, “Chain-smoking & Apologies: Podcasts,” Television
Without Pity,
http://forums.televisionwithoutpity.com/index.php?showtopic=3149128.

Time Magazine, “The Geek Shall Inherit the Earth,” Time.com, September 25, 2005,
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1109317,00.html.

Time Magazine, “Movies: Boys Who Like Toys,” Time.com, April 19, 2007,
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1612687,00.html.

Fred Topel, “Interview, Kyle Newman: Fanboys,” Suicidegirls.com, February 4,
2009, http://suicidegirls.com/interviews/Kyle+Newman:+Fanboys/.

328
Catherine Tosenberger “‘The epic love story of Sam and Dean’: Supernatural, queer
readings, and the romance of incestuous fan fiction,” Transformative Works
and Cultures Vol. 1 (2008),
http://journal.transformativeworks.org/index.php/twc/article/view/30/36.

Catherine Tosenberger, “Love! Valor! Supernatural!” Transformative Works and
Cultures Vol. 4 (2010),
http://journal.transformativeworks.org/index.php/twc/article/view/212/167.

Rebecca Tushnet, “Copyright Law, Fan Practices, and the Rights of the Author,” in
Fandom: Identities and Communities in a Mediated World, eds. Jonathan
Gray, Cornel Sandvoss, and C. Lee Harrington (New York: New York
University Press, 2007).

Twilightsucks.com, “1000 Things We Learned About SMeyer From Reading Her
Books,” twilightsucks.com,
http://twilightsucks.com/forum/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=15101&start=
0.

Adam B. Vary, “The Geek Was King: Transformers, Michael Cera, and Comic-Con
are only some of the reasons why nerds ruled this year,” EW.com, December
21, 2007, http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,20168142,00.html.

Aury Wallington, Heroes: Saving Charlie: A Novel (New York: Del Rey, 2008).

Diane Werts, “Fanfiction Booms as Modern Folklore,” Newsday.com, April 29 2005,
http://whedon.info/article.php3?id_article=9409.

Alan Wexelblat, “An Auteur in the Age of the Internet: JMS, Babylon 5, and the
Net,” in Hop on Pop: The Politics and Pleasures of Popular Culture, eds.
Henry Jenkins, Tara McPherson, and Jane Shattuc (Durham: Duke University
Press, 2002).

The Wizrocklopedia, “Band Listings,” The Wizrocklopedia, September 8, 2010,
http://wizrocklopedia.com/bands/band-listings/.

Wrock Snob, “Extended Thoughts: Women in Rock, Part 1 – In Defense of Men,”
The Wrock Snob, May 19, 2010,
http://wrocksnob.wordpress.com/2010/05/19/extended-thoughts-women-in-
wrock-part-1-in-defense-of-men/.

329
Karen Ann Yost, “In A Fine Filk,” Strange New Worlds: Focus on Fandom, Issue 8
(April/May 1993),
http://web.archive.org/web/20031229210651/strangenewworlds.com/issues/f
andom-08.html.

Steven Zeitchik, “Analysis: Disney-Marvel Deal Brings Changes,” Adweek.com,
September 1, 2009,
http://www.adweek.com/aw/content_display/news/media/e3i76e7bfe15f67e9
f1832a6af63f7c353c.

Abstract (if available)

Linked assets

University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses

Conceptually similar

PDF

Comic books incorporated: industrial strategy and the legitimation of lowbrow media

PDF

The virtual big sister: television and technology in girls' media

PDF

More lives to live?: archiving and repurposing the daytime soap opera

PDF

Screens on the move: media convergence and mobile culture in Korea

PDF

Whose quality is it? Transnational TV flows and power in the global TV market

PDF

Hollywood vault: the business of film libraries, 1915-1960

PDF

Labors of love: Black women, cultural production, and the romance genre

PDF

Animated subjects: globalization, media, and East Asian cultural imaginaries

PDF

Performance unleashed: multispecies stardom and companion animal media

PDF

Channeling Shirley MacLaine: stardom, travel, politics, and beyond

PDF

Emergent media technologies and the production of new urban spaces

PDF

GM TV: sports television and the managerial turn

PDF

Video camera technology in the digital age: Industry standards and the culture of videography

PDF

Shadows of stardom: Latina actresses in the 1930's Hollywood produced Spanish language films

PDF

"Shaken out of the ruts of ordinary perception": vision, culture and technology in the psychedelic sixties

PDF

I can't afford the luxury of just being an actress: the politicized work of African American actresses on television

PDF

¡Que naco! Border cinema and Mexican migrant audiences

PDF

Framing the fight: post-9/11 warfare and the logistics of representation

PDF

Well-being domesticities: mediating 21st-century femininity through physical, mental, and emotional lifestyles

PDF

Viral selves: Cellphones, selfies and the self-fashioning subject in contemporary India

Asset Metadata

Creator Scott, Suzanne (author)

Core Title Revenge of the fanboy: convergence culture and the politics of incorporation

School School of Cinematic Arts

Degree Doctor of Philosophy

Degree Program Cinema-Television (Critical Studies)

Publication Date 01/21/2011

Defense Date 10/22/2010

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag convergence culture,Cultural studies,fan studies,fandom,incorporation,OAI-PMH Harvest,television

Language English

Contributor Electronically uploaded by the author (provenance)

Advisor Seiter, Ellen (committee chair), Jenkins, Henry (committee member), McPherson, Tara (committee member)

Creator Email sulscott@ucsc.edu,suzannelynscott@gmail.com

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-m3619

Unique identifier UC190227

Identifier etd-Scott-4277 (filename),usctheses-m40 (legacy collection record id),usctheses-c127-439159 (legacy record id),usctheses-m3619 (legacy record id)

Legacy Identifier etd-Scott-4277.pdf

Dmrecord 439159

Document Type Dissertation

Rights Scott, Suzanne

Type texts

Source University of Southern California (contributing entity), University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses (collection)

Repository Name Libraries, University of Southern California

Repository Location Los Angeles, California

Repository Email cisadmin@lib.usc.edu