My Life as an Acafan: So I finally talked to my advisor
When I first started researching fanfiction (back in 2018), I had a very different idea about what I was going to study. The only thing that remained the same was the subject: fanfiction. Everything else? It changed so much.
At first, I had a general idea of what I wanted to research: fanfiction as queer representation and link that to Captain America’s fandom, specifically the Steve/Bucky (aka Stucky) pairing. Around the time I had realized this, I found an English literature professor in my college who was open to be my advisor. Then, I started reading a few introductory texts from fan scholars, mainly people that studied fanfiction, and those readings started shaping my perspective better. That was when I realized I should study the construction of queer romance in fanfiction and how it was portrayed in it, using Stucky stories as reference. That was when my problems with my research really started.
In 2018, I hadn’t accepted yet, but I was mostly out of Captain America fandom. I was kinda holding onto it and I’m still not sure why I did that. Maybe it was because once I promised myself that if I ever had the opportunity to research fanfiction, I’d definitely pick Stucky stories. I have this stupid tendency of trying to stick to every promise I make to myself, even if I’d grown out of it ─ which was exactly what happened to me.
By the time I started researching fic, I was barely participating in Captain America’s fandom and that was Marvel’s fault. First, we had the whole Steve is actually Hydra plot in the comics and I got pissed off beyond reason because of it. And then, shortly after that nightmare of storyline, the movie Civil War was released and it was everything but a Captain America movie. So, I think you can imagine my frustration at that point. I was so mad at Marvel that not even fandom could salvage it. Unfortunately, it took me almost a year and a half to understand this.
When I finally realized the problem was the pairing, I changed to Merlin/Arthur (aka Merthur) from Merlin BBC (2008) TV series. After I got rid of Stucky, I was able to actually work on my research. I researched about Romance Theory, Queer Theory, representation of minorities in movies and TV shows. And, even though I read the most important books in those fields, I got nowhere. The reason it happened was that nobody had a framework that met my needs and that realization was the crucial part for me. I finally understood what I was supposed to do. I needed to create some kind of framework that could define fanfiction, specifically, slash fanfiction. Then, I’d be able to discuss how queer romance is constructed within a fic. That changed my world.
After I understood that, I contacted my former advisor and I explained to him I was going to change fields. My research evolved into something really different and it made more sense to have an advisor from Literary Theory than English Literature. He was very understanding and wished me good luck. Quickly after that, I sent a message to one of the best professors I’ve ever had in my life, who conveniently taught Literary Theory, and he accepted to become my advisor. And last week we finally had our first conversation about my research.
It was very productive. My conversation with him was the solid proof that I’d made the right call. We managed to establish so many things. First, I already know how I will start to build the framework I had in mind, which was the greatest breakthrough of all time to me.
I’m not gonna pretend I wasn’t terrified about the idea of creating a framework from scratch. I had no idea how I would even start before my advisor talked to me. He went over every piece I had written related to my research and he ended up seeing a solution. However, he didn’t directly tell me the solution, he walked me through it until I reached the conclusion myself. He didn’t deliver the answer to me on a silver plate. For the first time since I’ve started my research, I felt actually capable in carrying out the whole thing. It really helped me to build the confidence I was lacking and that was a beautiful development. I finally saw actual progress. So, one important lesson I’ve learned with this whole situation is that an advisor needs to make you feel secure that you will find a way with their guidance, even if they don’t really understand your subject.
Now, you must be asking yourselves: what are you actually going to do then? Well, I’ll build a framework to delineate slash fanfiction that follows the standard of “well-written” stories, published on AO3 between the end of the 2000s and throughout the 2010s. To create this framework, I’ll use excerpts of fanfictions and compare it to a book series written by a former ficwriter that successfully reproduced the fanfiction style, but using original characters. My goal with this research is to offer an academic definition to our famous compliment ‘this (story) is like fanfiction’. It’s a way to show that fanfiction has its own style and it’s actually affecting the literary market. Actually I’m pretty sure someone (I think it was Kristina Busse but could also be Karen Hellekson or even both) pointed out the lack of research focused on the structure of fanfiction. They said the field needed someone who attempted to define said structure in academic terms. So, that’s what I’m gonna do now. This is going to be my lifetime work and honestly? I can’t wait to start it!
[text:] wait you like me ?? for my personality ???
[text:] i have to kill him. idk how to hit on him so he has to die.
[text:] make sure no one has fun w/o me & make sure they all know it’s cause i’m not there.
[text:] hey just wondering but are u fucking kidding me
[text:] am i dramatic yes is it justified also yes
[text:] words can’t describe how cute you are. numbers can tho. 3/10
[text:] that’s a terrible idea.
[text:] you’re a terrible idea.
[text:] what, pray tell, the fuck
[text:] sorry my battery’s on 96% i gtg
[text:] do you have anything else to tell me? bc well your horoscope said that you’re keeping secrets so like idk i don’t wanna call you a liar but the stars don’t lie idk
[text:] the only fetish i’m into is attention
[text:] dogs are better than boys & that’s just a fact idc what u think
[text:] we’re talking about me now. so can you please not. thanks. anyway back to me.
[text:] hmm, good point, but have you ever considered: eat my ass????
[text:] i need a gf who will go ufo hunting with me
[text:] when donkey asks shrek what his name is, shrek pauses before he says shrek, & i’m convinced he came up with it on the spot.
[text:] are you going to be a bitch your whole life?
[text:] we had sex but it wasn’t that great bc i had banana bread in my car & i couldn’t stop thinking about it lmao. he was tryna be sexy & asked ‘so what do you want’ & i was like my fuckin banana bread lmao
[text:] wym ‘fucker’ isn’t a term of endearment
[text:] i swear if i see your typing bubble before i finish i’m gonna have a fit
[text:] fuck you i do wtf i want
[text:] i know i’m a horrible roommate/part of why u can’t trust men but it’s 5 am so shut the fuck up
[text:] hey just wanted 2 let u know i’m beautiful. thank you & good night.
My Life as an Acafan: Bringing This Project Back To Life!
Hello, people!
You might have thought this project was dead, but it’s not! I’m bringing this back to life like a good necromancer ahahaha I’ll use this project to give an update about my researches and how the whole ‘bringing Fan Studies’ to Brazil is going. And man, a lot went down since my last update!
First, the last article I wrote I talked about the research for my Master’s degree: to create a framework to define slash fiction during the 2010s. This plan is still up, but it’s pushed back for now. I couldn’t go through the entrance exam thanks to my mental health issues.
I’m not sure if I explained this, but I already have a bachelor’s degree in History (also a teaching license, but we don’t talk about it), so in my country I can apply to any type of Master’s degree - so that’s why I was applying to a Master’s degree last year. However, you might also remember I am getting a second degree: double major in English and Portuguese. Yes, I was going to apply to a Master’s degree in Literary Theory while being an university student (it’s allowed in my country because I need just to have a bachelor’s degree to get in a Master program). Yes, I am a crazy person.
Anyways, as my mental health didn’t allow me to go through my crazy plan, I decided to let this plan to 2022 and focus in finishing university. That’s when my dear advisor, without warning me, applied me to the undergrad thesis class (well, it’s not really a class because we don’t have classes, it just means I’m finally working in my undergrad thesis and I’ll have to present it in 3 semesters). Spoilers: when he did that, I had no idea what I was going to do for my undergrad thesis because I was pretty much focused on my Master’s project and I lowkey freaked out when I opened my schedule and there was this discipline I hadn’t applied for. As my Master’s thing was put on the back burner, I was like: okay, I’ll do it because there’s nothing else for me. Even if I had no idea what I was going to do. Keep in mind that all of this happened between November and December last year.
Fast forward to January, I haven’t talked to my advisor since November and I was dedicating my time to the first round of exams because my college finally came back in the online mode. So, I was watching my English Narrative classes and my professor started explaining things related to the rise of the novel and about the perspective of the public related to it and that was when something clicked inside my brain and offered me a solution to my undergrad thesis problem. Or lack of if, in this case.
The idea is basically to write about fanfiction and its characteristics based on Tumblr posts written between 2014 and 2020, compare with my own experiences and then with academic studies related to fanfiction - basically it’s a weird autoethnography about fanfiction in the late 2010s.
In a matter of 2 weeks, I managed to put the project together and present to my advisor as my undergrad thesis and he approved! Now, I’m already working on it and I already wrote two pages of it - which is a great progression if you think about all my past failures regarding my fic researches. So, I’m finally going somewhere. Next time, I’ll bring more updates related to my research ♥
Right now, I’m reading the key works of fan studies. I’m reading and selecting works that will bring the type of debates I want to have in my classroom. It’s an exercise any competent teacher does - no matter how long they’ve been teaching. I’m not well versed yet on most things related to fan studies because I’ve started studying it kinda recently, but I’m slowly reading most of things any fan scholars should read and I’ve a couple things to say. Most aimed to non-fan academics.
If any non-fan academic is reading this, I think you should be aware that it is glaringly evident that you have never set a foot on fandom more than necessary and don't understand the core of fandom. You all try, you all make some good points and, somehow, you’re always off the mark. You do not get it.
As a black bisexual woman, I’m going to do an analogy to make it easier to understand. The feeling I have when I read a non-fan academic talking about fandom and fans is almost the same feeling I get when I read a white person or straight/cis person trying to explain racism and homophobia/transphobia. You do not get it and you will never get it because you didn’t go through it and, probably, won’t ever go through it. It’s not your standpoint - and take this standpoint I’m saying here as the same one from standpoint theory. It feels off place and like missing several points about fandom.
Another thing is that non-fan academics come off, not sure if it’s intentional, as people that believe their analysis are impartial or mostly impartial because they are not fans. I’m gonna say this as a historian: there’s no such thing as impartiality. Everyone has a bias, especially if you ‘re studying something. If you commit to do research, and one that ends up being your lifetime work, it’s indisputable you have a bias and it shows. My God, you’ve no idea how much it does show, even if you think you don’t. I can read between the lines and understand most of you think we are akin to cultists - which shows you do not understand fandom at all. The least thing fandom has, as collective, is a behavior of venerating or excessively admiring anything at all. Fandom is a bunch of ruthless critics that even if they swear they love something, they’ll absolutely tear it down at any time and any place without hesitation if they feel like they are entitled to. Nothing is sacred and nothing is safe from criticism or fandom’s cruelty. If you do not know or understand this very basic notion, you truly have no idea what you’re studying or talking about.
Also, I think the terms fan and fandom are used carelessly by some non-fan academics (I’m so close to calling them local academics, just so I have a label to identify them ahahaha). Everyone that has an intense enthusiasm for a particular work is a fan for them and, kinda automatically, are part of fandom. I don’t agree with that notion at all. Those fans are not part of fandom. Fandom is a collective, they are people coming together and interacting and forming relationships. It’s a social thing and I say this as a fandom fan since 2005. Listen, I’ve always been a fan in the sense of getting obsessed with several media works. I mean, by the time I was 10, I knew how to recite every single line and sing every song of The Lion King, The Little Mermaid and Mulan. Does that mean I was part of Disney fandom? Hell no. I just became a fandom fan in 2005 when I became part of the community and started consuming fanworks. Non-fan academics need to start listening to fans, because we set ourselves apart from those people. It’s so disrespectful to us to take our terms and apply them in a way that they are not supposed to be used, especially to explain experiences that are not related to us.
But maybe the problem stems from the name of the field itself. Maybe if it was called Fandom Studies, we would not have this kind of controversy in relation to the use of terms like fan and fandom. After all, Fan Studies implies all kinds of fans and not only the ones that are part of an organized collective. Maybe the solution is to have two fields: Fandom Studies, to deal with the social experience and the individuals that carry out fan practices (like Jenkins pointed out that, when people identify themselves as fans, they are not focused in just one particular work, but rather a range of works and apply sets of practices on them) and Fan Studies, to deal with individual and isolated experiences of being enthusiastic (read having emotional attachment) over mass media works. Like enthusiastic people, they might identify themselves as fans because fan is a common word nowadays, but they do not use the term fandom because, most of time, they don’t even know the word or what it means. So, how can you reduce fandom to any experience of emotional attachment to any kind of media? I mean, if fandom fans so many times differentiate their investment to a particular work by saying ‘I watch this, but I’m not part of the fandom’ i.e. consume/create fan practices in this media; how dare you to take our term and apply to people that don’t even know what it means just because they’re emotionally attached to a piece of mass media work?
If someone does not partake in fan practices (aka content created by fans in an organized community), they’re not part of a fandom. And, when I say partake, I mean consume and/or create, not just one of them. This is fandom 101. This is a problem that I see with non-fan academics, they do not respect what we establish in our community.
Someone who watches a series or movie regularly or just really loves them is not a member of said fandom. It’s not that simple. And, if you think that it’s not like that, I dare you to do just one thing: go to a movie premiere of a big franchise like Marvel and, without proper context, start asking people who seems invested (aka wearing shirts or looking really excited to be there) things like ‘So what is your favorite fandom discourse/meta about this franchise you’re about to watch?’ and then you come back to me and tell me how many people actually knew what fandom is and what meta/discourse means in that context. I’ll bet good money not even half of the people who are wearing t-shirts of said franchise will understand what you’re talking about.
So, being part of fandom means being engaged in particular social practices. That’s how, among ourselves, we differentiate us from the people that just love very much certain mass media works. It’s different. Non-fan academics need to remember they are studying living and breathing subjects who are incredibly analytical, so I think maybe it’s time to take a step back, rethink your attitude and respect the norms dictated by the community you research. I mean, I’ve been part of fandom for 15 years and I haven’t ever seen one single fan defend the idea that people who just love intensely some work of fiction and do nothing more than buy a t-shirt cause it looks cool are part of fandom.
My Life as an Acafan: an autoethnography but not really
When I started this text, I thought of the different ways I could do it. I even wrote three paragraphs talking about how the pandemic affected my life and how I had to find ways to deal with the losses I went through during the quarantine (the loss of my plans, of my steady income, of my emotional stability, of the balance between my depression and anxiety). However, I couldn’t evoke the feelings I wanted to. So, I decided to start talking about how everything started.
Last year, I started going to Clube Coréia (Korea Club), which is the study group to learn korean at the university (UFRJ) I attend, and that’s how I met @sunshvness (Gyu). We started speaking to each other because she saw a fanart on my phone case that featured our favorite Thai actors, so it was fairly easy for us to become friends.
I don’t really remember how I ended up mentioning my research project, but I know we eventually talked about my love for fanfiction. I told her I’ve decided to study my passion during my undergrad, with plans to expand and deepen my research in a master’s and doctorate programs. She confessed her desire of studying fandom too and, being the good fangirl I am, I offered my support. Because that’s what we always want! We want people studying what we study, especially if they are already part of the fan culture. I sent her my “small” library of fan studies on the chance that she really wanted to invest in research. A few months later, she took my invitation because she had the idea of creating an extension course about LGBT representativity in fanfic (quick explanation: in our university it’s possible for undergrad students to manage an extension course as part of their professional training under the supervision of a professor). I was pretty excited with the project, but I ended up forgetting about it thanks to the end of semester distress followed by our really lengthy Summer vacations.
At the end of February, my work spouse Marcelo (don’t forget this name, he’ll be mentioned several times as this project progresses) let me know there was a new extension course that seemed to be made for me! So, he sent me the poster of the course ‘Representativity LGBTQ+: dialogues between mainstream production versus fanfiction’ and what surprise! It dawned on me it was the project Gyu had mentioned to me the previous year. Obviously, I enrolled in the course and I was extremely excited to finally be part of something that really enthralls me. And then COVID-19 happened, the university stopped… So you get what happened. Or, in this case, didn’t happen.
Well, due to my excitement about the course, Gyu and I started texting each other and talking a lot more. That’s when she invited me to give a lecture about fanfiction in her course. Not only did I accept, but also I got really into the idea of teaching about fanfiction, its history and relevance to our culture. I confess that I started lowkey daydreaming about my future, about having my own course that I could teach not only fanfics, but other fan practices and explore even more the field of fan studies. And that’s when I had my eureka moment.
Why would I leave this idea to the future, when I could do it now? So, I quickly outlined the kind of course I wanted to teach and presented the idea to Gyu , inviting her to become my partner in this crazy venture and she said yes. And that’s why I’m writing this text now.
Before I go further, let me explain one thing: we are from Brazil and we don’t have anything consolidated about Fan Studies here, so we would be the first in our country to do something like that - at least that we are aware of. In Brazilian academic world, we do have a few researches about fandom, but nothing related to Fan Studies as a field. Just to everyone understand the situation of studying fandom in my country: we have around five books in Portuguese directly related to it. What we want to do is to bring Fan Studies to Brazil as a consolidated field and make it accessible to people that don’t speak English - but to make it happen we need people interested in it, so the course would help us with that.
My Life as an Acafan is going to be a kind of diary to register the process of creating the course and, at the same time, a place to write down my feelings and thoughts related to the work I’m doing. The plan is to keep a register from the planning to the conclusion of the course (which means it will include my thoughts regarding the course once I’ve taught it), so there isn’t a real deadline to finish this project. My proposal here is to develop something close to an autoethnography where I’ll write about the progression of my role as an academic fangirl, even if I don’t have any intention of doing a serious study based on this particular experience. I don’t know if this will be actual useful in the future, but this is the kind of meaningful register I want to keep for future me. I want to be able, when I’m older, to look at my past and see how much I evolved and matured since I’ve started my lifetime research. And, if you are still confused about the title of the text, the term acafan is the combination of the expression academic fan - which is how researchers who are also part of fan culture call themselves.
So, keep an eye here because in a few days I’ll be back with some thoughts related to fandom, especially related to academic research from a fangirl point of view. This text here is much more an introduction of what I’m going to do during this project and the reason it exists.
