Focusing on the Holistic View of my Research…and taking note of Anti-Stakeholders

Taking in the Holistic View means the role of my research in the wider fields/settings that it sits in. For example, my role is different in different settings. I’m a student at school, an artist and designer at work, a daughter at home, an Asian person in a multinational background.

So here is a list of anti-stakeholders of my project and reasons of why they might object my view.

Conservative Media Critics:
Some people in media circles, especially those with more traditional or conservative views, might not be thrilled with fanfiction. Why? Because it often dives into themes that challenge societal norms, like LGBTQ+ relationships or exploring “villains” as more complex characters. For them, this might clash with their idea of what stories should look like, and they might think fanfiction shakes things up in ways they’re not comfortable with.

Commercial Competitors:
Professional writers or creators making a living with original works might feel like fanfiction is unfair competition. After all, fanfic builds on worlds and characters that are already popular, skipping the hard work of creating something from scratch. And since most fanfic is free, it could pull attention away from paid, original stories, which they might see as a big downside.

Traditional Authors and Publishers:
Some authors and publishers see fanfiction as stepping into their creative territory. They might think it dilutes their original work or takes away from its value. For them, fanfiction can feel like borrowing (or stealing) their hard work and turning it into something they don’t have control over. They might also look down on fanfic as less creative or meaningful than writing something totally original.

Intellectual Property Lawyers and Rights Holders:
For lawyers and companies that own the rights to books, movies, or shows, fanfiction can seem like a legal minefield. It uses characters, plots, or settings without permission, which technically breaches copyright laws. If there’s money involved, even indirectly, it gets even messier—because those companies want to protect their profits and keep control of their creations.

Sketching an Idea about the Stories in the Middle

I reflected back on the conversation I had with Steve Penfold(comic artist I met in Comic Con) about the Stories in the Middle. In his theory, fanfiction had a spectrum with sexual and pornographic plots used as fan service at one spectrum, and the original fiction(really splendid ones like Harry Potter and the Lord of the Rings) on the right, which had characters that were strictly censored by copyright laws. Both ends have a strong and fixed group of audiences, but we are missing the stories in the middle. The stories that people have told and retold throughout history and slowly became what we call mythology.(I mean that is how mythology is created and formed).

After gaining feedback from the Newspaper intervention, I drew the conclusion that slash-fic can have deep character depth as any original work.

So, in this intervention, I aim to create a propaganda that brands fanfiction as telling alternate stories of the characters we love, rather than simply using original characters for sex.

This intervention has steps:

Step 1: Collect the stories in the middle from slash readers and slash writers;

Step 2: Measuring the stories: (Not quite sure measuring will make sense…)Brand the stories with character archetypes instead of tops and bottoms;

Step 3: Showcase the stories (in newspaper form?) and show it to literature professors, and media industries.

Reflections based on the Unit 4 Checklist

RQ: How can I change the negative perceptions around slash fiction and its communities?

Those Negative Perceptions:

-That it’s written by women for women…No it’s not.

-That it’s fetishizing gay relationships. Most people can separate fact from fiction.

-That it is unoriginal and infringes copyright. It is a legit form of participatory culture.

-How did you arrive at your question, and your research methodology/ies?

By doing interventions and interviews. Using the methodology narrative inquiry and evaluating on my own experience of reading and writing slash using the methodology autoethnography.

-Can you define your research methodologies, and their relationship to your question?

Narrative inquiry, autoethnography, archival research.

-Are you sufficiently aware of the context and existing state of understanding of your question within your field of inquiry?

I have a holistic view of it, but I need to investigate on how the….

-Have you given form to your question through the creation of suitable interventions and their subsequent iterations?

….Yes?

-Who has given professional feedback?

Leah Holmes, Henry Jenkins, Neil Gibson, Steve Penfold. The London LGBTQ centre.

-What other types of feedback have you received?

Critics. Original writers. People within the slash fandom.

-Have you incorporated the feedback you have received into the iterated model/s of your questions and interventions?

Not yet…doing that now.

-Have you researched in an ethical way?

Yes. No recordings of either visual or audio were recorded if the participant was uncomfortable with it.

-What has changed, as a result of your research?

My focal point. I agree a little bit with one of the critics where they said we should focus more on the stories in the middle.

-What next?

Archiving the stories in the middle and giving it a brand.

A PROJECT CHECKLIST
TO USE AS WE APPROACH THE END OF UNIT FOUR
and head for the outside world

  1. Have I understood and deconstructed my own brief/question ? Yeah…
  2. Do I understand the context /place of my work? Both as a “local” and as a “tourist”?Yeah, “local” as in autoethnographically, “tourist” as in holistically, as a researcher and connecting with researchers within the Transcultural Fandom.
  3. Have I gained an understanding of the people in my stakeholder group? Their mindset, how they think and how they behave? Yes. But will need more EVIDENCE on that…
  4. Have I identified opportunities for observation and field research? Have I recorded data / taken measurements / taken photos / sketched / observed / looked and felt? Yes, definitely. I have done action and primary research online and offline.
  5. Have I engaged my user group or stakeholders in my project? Not quite ENGAGED……need to do that better. Currently still questioning my stakeholders rather than involving and engaging them. Idea: ChatGPT version of generating slash-fics that resonates a deeper building of the characters.
  6. Have I incorporated desktop or secondary research? Yes…very challenging for me to juggle the logic of several key thinkers of the field.
  7. Have sketching and brainstorming ideas and interventions helped me understand and answer my question? Not doing that enough,need to brainstorm a bit more.
  8. Have I incorporated ‘principles’ into my work? Yes. No recordings of either visual or audio were recorded if the participant was uncomfortable with it.
  9. Can I visualize and share my ideas? Currently having a very hard time doing that tbh…
  10. Can I present my ideas and share my new knowledge?Currently having a very hard time doing that tbh…
  11. Has prototyping informed my design process? Yeah, and iterating the prototypes.
  12. Has testing informed the creative process (with users, allies and gatekeepers)?
  13. Has feedback informed my creative process? Have I taken feedback onboard and developed my ideas…?
  14. Have I built on my own cycle of iterative development?
  15. Can I sell my idea?
    Can I talk about it to professionals?

Feedback from the two proposals from the Fandom Group

I wasn’t successful in submitting the proposal. However, I had fun learning about it through the lense of a western world.

About Defining the Change I want to see:

I have emailed experts(who has emailed back)who were interested in my project, however I hesitated to email back, because they were no longer my stakeholders anymore because I hadn’t defined clearly the change I want to see. But I could include them as members of the audience as well as people who were intrigued in telling stories.

Intervention 2: Presenting a Slash-Fic Stereotype at London Comic Con, and inside the CSM campus

Pre-Intervention(10.22)

After a conversation about my project with my fellow cohorts last Wednesday, I noticed that slash-fic is quite a niche subject and only the people within this subculture knew what it was. My classmates were seldomly in this circle and the first thing I had to do was to explain to them what slash fic was. That brought to mind the stereotypes of slash-fic.

Intervention Stage 1: Inside London Comic Con(10.26)

To find out people’s negative perceptions about slash fanfiction in general, I decided to conduct an intervention at London Comic Con.

According to my research and the first intervention conducted in Edinburgh Fringe, the general public(even would automatically link the word “fanfiction” to “sex” and “porn”.

I decided to show this stereotype exactly to people who were interested. I eventually decided to spotlight a common stereotype of fanfiction: slash-fic, a genre centered on same-sex romantic relationships. Slash-fic represents a significant category in fan publishing and is arguably one of fandom’s most unique contributions to popular literature. I chose to focus on slash-fic because it exemplifies fanfiction’s creativity and boundary-pushing nature while also serving as a focal point for stereotypes and misunderstandings.

I used a medium which I wasn’t really familiar with before, which was the form of newspapers. Historically, newspapers have been a platform for publishing original fictional works, such as pulp fantasy( which to me is surprisingly similar to fanfiction by content). By using the newspaper format ironically, I showcased slash-fic through a medium that has traditionally avoided fanfiction, challenging perceptions of what constitutes “valid” storytelling.

The point of this newspaper is to generate conversation by immediately providing the worst stereotype of fanfiction to an open-minded crowd. London Comic Con is a relatively open-minded place for really peculiar, even weird, activities to take place, so I blended straight into the crowd. I created the newspaper below, printed out 25 pages and took them to London Comic Con.

REFLECTION: I handed out those newspapers to random strangers. Most people started laughing at the content of the newspaper as soon as they saw it(to which I felt a bit exposed and vulnerable because before this project, reading and writing fanfiction was a relatively solitary and online experience for me). A few even asked to take pictures.

Surprisingly, several artists, who were selling their own works at the convention(there were writers, comic artists, visual artists, curators of comics, and cosplayers), expressed a concern for the fact that fanfiction exists. I asked everybody who actively participated whether I could record their reactions to the newspaper, and I got 6 audios out of about 20 participants.

Steve Penfold

Comic Artist.

INSIGHT: After the convo with Steve, I realized that the stereotype surrounding fanfiction hinders our ability to fully enjoy the storytelling process. At its core, fanfiction is about retelling beloved stories. While the sexualization of these narratives has boosted their popularity, it has also overshadowed the deeper emotional connections and fundamental reasons why people resonate with these characters in the first place.

Neil Gibson

Comic Writer.

Mick/Jack of All Trades

Marketing by day, Knight by night.

Stephanie Cotela

Children’s Book Author.

Vic Deluka

Comic Artist.

Vic’s Colleague

Comic artist and app manager.

Intervention Stage 2: inside CSM Campus (11.5)

Abani:

Lin:

Mingwei

Neelabh

Lu

Jim

EVALUATION: Fans demonstrate a clear ability to distinguish the fictional narratives they consume from the realities of their everyday lives, showcasing their nuanced understanding of fantasy as a creative outlet rather than a reflection of reality.

The stark differences in reactions between fans and non-fans emphasize the need to foster dialogue and understanding to bridge the gap between these groups.

Autoethnographic Research: Reflecting on My Personal Journey within the Fandom

Neil Gaiman supporting fan-fiction but NOT reading it. Because if he read a canon idea of his own work, he wouldn’t be able to write(publish) the idea himself even though he had the same thought.

GO2 was, according to a group of fans, less interesting than some of the fan-fics that had been written earlier. What Neil and John Finnemore wrote in GO2 had a LOT in common with some of the fanfics with more in-depth research.

My Graduation Hat from my BA Last Year

I recalled that I had painted my BA graduation cap the colors of Good Omens, and had proudly showed it to one of the twitter accounts that played the character Aziraphale in the original novel/show.

Comic Con in Beijing on August,2023

This was a comic con I went to in Beijing on August, 2023.

I was in the Good Omens Fandom Group in Beijing and we had several online platforms, and I, as a fan, also participated in several face-to-face activities like comic-cons in Beijing.