Earlier this year I was a guest on the excellent fandom-centric podcast, Fansplaining, when I was invited to talk to Elizabeth and Flourish about LGBTQ+ young adult fiction. As my conversations often do, we turned to works produced in fandom communities. During that conversation, I expressed thoughts on the unfettered nature of fanfiction and in my typically predominantly fandom-positive Utopian idealism, offered my perspectives on the importance of keeping fandom a free space – something I have talked about previously in my post On Selling and Silencing Fanfiction.
 
A brief diversion into the ‘commodity of kudos’ has been niggling at me since that discussion, and as my academic research leads me to explore in more depth the impact of capitalism on virtual communities, I have been forced to evaluate and interrogate some of the earlier ideas around fandom I espoused in that podcast. Specifically, I have been giving a lot of thought to the notion of fanfiction as a 'free' enterprise.

I've posted some thoughts about my experiences as a fanfiction writer. It's a fairly broad introductory post, probably more of interest to those yet to be converted as opposed to those already deep in fandom. In any event, I hope to produce a series of additional posts on fandom over the course of the coming months and I hope this will be a useful primer to my own interest and investment in fandom.

The full post can be found HERE

The term ‘queerbaiting’ has gained traction in fan-led discourse in recent times.  Creators are challenged on social media platforms about ‘baiting’ their queer fans by creating same-sex relationships with all the hallmarks of something romantic or sexual and yet never allowing that relationship to become canon.  Queerbaiting is not a good thing.  It’s a fairly gross way to encourage LGBTQ+ fannish investment in a franchise by dangling the carrot of queer possibility, without offering any meaningful representation.  It’s often coupled with jokes at the expense of the queer community, with everyone from creators, actors and actresses and the characters themselves expressing astonishment that fans could read a relationship heavy with queer subtext as anything other than platonic.  It reinforces heteronormative, heterosexist ideology.  It sees accusations of delusion and “silly girl” syndrome levelled at largely female-gendered fan communities and it’s enormously frustrating for fans living in a world of progressive LGBTQ+ discourse, where the queer should no longer need to be coded and confined to the gaps between the stories.

Read more about my thoughts on queerbaiting in my post Queerbaiting, Male Intimacy and Slash Shipping which can be found HERE

You can find my post on my experience at 'Leviosa' HERE

Leviosa was a dedicated Harry Potter convention run by fans for fans in 2016. The convention was held at The Green Ranch Valley Hotel in Las Vegas, and it was completely wizard.