[Auto-generated transcript. Edits may have been applied for clarity.] Okay, ladies and gentlemen, I think we'll make a start. Thank you very much for coming to this third day. As you. As you may recall, the structure that we tried to do was is the past, present and future. And today, I suppose, falls into the future. But the future is already here, as we will hear from many of the speakers.
So what we're going to hear are things which are changing, are moving fantasy forward currently, but probably will change the direction of fantasy. So it gives me great pleasure to start off, and I'm going to introduce Megan Laban, who's a PhD student at the University of Lincoln. And Megan is studying how fanfiction is queering Arthurian literature, and literature tells us so. In his 1947 essay on fairy Stories,
J.R.R. Tolkien considers the significance of fairy stories for adult audiences and defines his understanding of fantasy. I want to focus on one phrase I found particularly exciting as I prepared this talk arresting strangeness. Talking rights. Fantasy, of course, starts out with an advantage arresting strangeness. The term strangeness here evokes queerness, not necessarily limited to issues of gender and sexuality, but also encapsulating the normal, the non-normative. It's anonymous.
For a long time, both queerness and strangeness indicate a deviation from what is expected or conventional, and thus carry the potential to resist dominant cultural narratives. An encounter with the queer or strange may awaken or answer an existing curiosity or desire, and as talking continues, many people dislike being arrested. They dislike any meddling with the primary world.
The strangeness of what Tolkien calls fairy stories is something which not only transgresses between worlds, but has the potential to intervene in the primary world. Fairy stories for Tolkien, a literary works which must contain four qualities fantasy, recovery, escape, and consolation.
They are derivative works based on old myths, added to the cauldron of story, and shared and share an ever and ever evolving pool of narrative elements, which is always expanding and which allows for the constant reconfiguring of traditional ideas. Fan texts, at least those forming my sample, meet the criteria that Tolkien establishes.
I focus today on their ability to meddle, to intervene, because through their arresting strangeness, they become sites of what talking terms, recovery and renewal, a regaining of a clear view in the rest of my presentation. I draw on the work of some scholars and queer theorists to build on Tolkien's exploration of fairy stories, in order to demonstrate the transgressive potential of both fantasy and fan fiction.
I argue that fan text, particularly works of fiction, queer traditional concepts of gender and sexuality via an arresting strangeness that is, by foregrounding the non-normative via a process of familiarisation which arouses and sometimes satisfies desires. The term fanfiction describes self-published stories based on existing media that fans produce and circulate before the internet. Fanfiction was usually created and disseminated in the form of self-published fan made zines.
Through the 1970s and 80s. These hard copy items were often exchanged through the mail or in person at fan conventions. In the early 1990s, fandom began to transition into online spaces. This move affected how fanfiction was both distributed and interacted with. The internet offered increased availability with online tools and hosting services, aiding accessibility, authoring, and sharing. Now, fanfiction is largely published and hosting sites like Archive of Our Own fanfiction and Wattpad.
Fanfiction is increasingly described as transformative literature, recognising that it does not just reinterpret or expand on, but significantly reimagines its source material, offering new perspectives or narratives that challenge or redefine the source text produced and shared without interference oversight from traditional publishing houses,
studios, or distribution networks. Fan texts are uniquely positioned to amplify marginalised voices, experience and narratives, and to critique both the source text and society at large. It is, however, important to remember that fan texts do not provide a politically stable or consistently coherent response to their source text, or to our current social and political situation. The type of fan fiction most prevalent in my research is slash fiction.
Slash fiction is a subcategory of fan fiction that focuses on queerly identified romantic and or sexual relationships. Named after the convention of using a forward slash um between character names to indicate such a relationship. Slash, which fan scholars such as Henry Jenkins and Joanna Rust note has radical, liberatory, and transgressive potential. Typically refers to pairings between two men with slash stories, usually based on perceived homoerotic subtext in the source text.
The narrative structure of some source materials resist heteronormative frameworks of time and sociality, inviting queer interventions which make explicit the implicitly queer aspects they contain. For example, media source texts frequently leave certain milestones deferred and unfulfilled, potentially due in part to an episodic format or the need for undisturbed exoticism and adventure.
Traditional cis heteronormative milestones like marriage, children, and familial responsibilities may be largely absent from or deferred within fantasy texts like Lord of the rings or the BBC's Merlin. This frequently results in short lived heterosexual relations, which lack the depth and intensity of the existing male bonds.
As a consequence, the bonds the characters share with their same gender companions, for example, Frodo and Sam or Merlin and Arthur become the most important and complex relationships for the characters, relationships which provide ample material for fans and a heavy with queer potential.
In her examination of slash pairings, Sarah Gwenllian Jones challenges the extent to which these texts can be seen as transgressive, arguing that this making explicit what is implicit is only an extension of the canon. But it is critical to remember that no explicit queer representation exists in the method of Lord of the rings.
Queer people are denied a place in their reality. Merlin and Lord of the rings slash fiction engage in a radical transformation of their source texts by explicitly depicting various same gender characters as lovers, foregrounding the non-normative by offering queer representation what I previously was not. Fan texts as forms of fairy story function as a tool of de familiarisation.
Transgressive and their potential to destabilise our understanding of social concepts, which we have ceased to look at in San Sook. But the term fit, which is the most popular fan text sorted by kudos on archive of our own under the category Lord of the rings or Media types.
Um, the relationship of Frodo Baggins slash Sam Gandhi slash Rosie Cotton opens a traditional institution of the family up to reimagining, particularly around issues of paternity in the traditionally heavily gendered division of reproductive labour.
My research demonstrates something similar happening in Merlin fanfiction in Next to You, which the rule by looking at my love, my land is described by people both within and beyond Camelot, as is the Queen, a title which functions to break gender away from biological sex but doesn't quite dissolve the binary construction of gender.
Merlin conforms to a traditionally feminine set of characteristics engaging and under enumerated under enumerated domestic labour, which is not alleviated but obfuscated by his eventual marriage to Arthur. There are, however, texts like Glowing Grey by Hello Earthlings and Author intended by platonic underscore bona, which depict characters as more androgynous and which worked to familiarise and naturalise.
This is set to normative behaviours and systems mapped onto them, opening them up to contemplation and critique. With the term arresting talk. It indicates something which is desirable. Attractive as opposed to repulsive. Strangeness here reminds me of what utopian queer theorist host Esteban Menas wrote about queerness, that it should be about a desire for another way of being, a desire that resist mandates to accept that which is not enough.
It is critical to recognise that fan texts allow fans to satisfy some of their desires. Consider the existence of Fix It Fix, a type of fanfiction which aims to resolve or alter to fix part of a source text, such as a storyline or element of character development to provide a more satisfying outcome. Tolkien uses the term constellation to describe an emotional satisfaction within fairy stories, which again fan fiction forms a part.
He uses constellation to refer to an imaginative satisfaction of ancient desires, but also joy of a happy ending, the sudden, joyous turn. Merlin's antics frequently rewrite the moment. Merlin reveals his magic to Arthur the moment he comes out as a sorcerer to his friend. In the show, this moment is not given much time, with Arthur passing away in the same episode.
The Merlin fan text I have encountered so far frequently work towards delivering a more satisfying resolution to what is the central conflict of the show, demonstrating mostly unseen character development for Arthur and a positive outcome for Merlin and those Camelot has been a pressing.
This is in opposition to, and therefore directly critiques the ending of the show, where the political project of Albion, which promised a society free from the criminalisation of magic, fails, and in which Merlin frequently works against those seeking liberation. The failure to attain their dreams and desires in the source text is significant, especially because the fantasy inspired which, closer to their achievement, refusing I can't see refusing, um, to accept that which is not enough.
Um and then winds through this um. Cultural theorist Marc Fisher sees desire under neoliberal capitalism as something which has been exploited, repressed, regulated and represented back to us. He argues that to reclaim a real political agency, there must be an effort to use desire to look beyond what has been prescribed to us. Fan texts and works of fantasy form part of that effort. Fairy stories. But Tolkien were not primarily concerned with possibility, but with desirability.
If they awaken desire, satisfying it while often wetting it unbearably, they succeeded, understanding that desires are suppressed under capitalism, and that fairy stories and fan fiction allow for the exploration and satisfaction of these desires, allows us to recognise the mistakes of resistance. This transgressive potential is born from their arresting strangeness. So to conclude, there is a transgressive potential in both fantasy and fan text to the desires they both satisfy and sharpen.
Escaping into a secondary world. Returning, recovered with a renewed awareness of an ability to scrutinise concepts like gender and sexuality, and perhaps even with consolidated desires, perhaps shifts the queer horizon a little more into focus. Hi. Thank you for the talk. Um, I was wondering if relates to, like, what you said at the end about desiring the present capitalism and fan fiction as a way to,
like, access desire that is otherwise suppressed. How, then, do you feel about this kind of new trend in publishing, where fan fiction is risk and traditionally publish and therefore, like is a product of capitalism? Oh my God. Um, um, I mean. I suppose. I mean, obviously like any kind of fairy stories, I was sort of saying is like, has that potential for you to escape into a secondary world and then come back again?
So I suppose they still retain that element of what I was talking about, of like moving between worlds and bringing ideas there and back again. Um, I, I haven't read that many Arthurian, um, Ya novels. I don't know which ones are sort of ex fan fiction. Um, so I couldn't comment on whether they still contain sort of any kind of explicit radicals, you know, um, resisting cultural dominant narratives, kind of edge. Um, that's a really good question. I'm sorry, I can't answer any better than that.
I that was very interesting, especially what you said about fanfiction being transformative. I was wondering how, um, I guess alternate universes and that sort of thing fit into your framework of, um, um, fanfiction is sort of sorry, my voice is about, um, kind of being a place of exploration because you said sort of it kind of critiques the source material, but obviously in an alternate universe, you're actually moving away from that. So, yeah, I was wondering what you thought about that.
Basically. Um, I think this it still rings true. Um, if you're still taking these characters and putting them in like a coffee shop, you you're then adding in and in a way even more from the modern society. You know, the society in which you say for like Merlin and it was produced in, um, but it allows you then to think about, say, the relationship between a bartender and a customer.
You know, these kind of things get added to it. Um, so it kind of still plays into that sort of cauldron of story, um, that Tolkien expresses. And, and one thing that I find, I can't remember the scholar that says it, but they use the term all context to describe fanfiction, um, by which they mean it behaves like I think Derrida describes an archive and that it wants to grow, it wants to expand, it wants to, um, bring things under its umbrella.
And I think that's one of the wonderful things it made me think of this cauldron of story aspect of and especially for the author in tradition, as we've heard over the last few days, it just wants to include everything it can. So when these characters and narratives and conflicts move into different alternative universes, it just brings to the fore aspects that again, when maybe implicit in the source text, but then sort of more able to be analysed and considered in a new setting.
Um, a really quick one from online is just, um, can you, um, do you have recommendations for further reading on there? So some of the, um, text that you've talked about, can you let us know so we can go and read some of these things? That's a good point. I should have put a bibliography slide of, um, if you want to do some, uh, queer theory reading. I referenced, um, Jose Esteban. Mina's, um, uh, queer. Oh, my God, what's it called? Adrenaline. Something about queer horizons.
He's a utopian queer theory, so I recommend him if you'd like to start into fan studies. Henry Jenkins textual approaches is the one to start with. I referenced Sarah Gwendolyn Jones. Um, Joanna Russ, um, I recommend I'm going back to sort of the 80s and 90s, but like lamb and V, there are so many, um, like fan studies people at the fanfic fan Fiction Studies reader is a really helpful sort of entry text. Um, if you'd like to dive into some short excerpts from the big, Big boys.
Um, yeah. Okay. Okay, I think we will. Thank you very much, Megan.