scholarly journals Whodology: Encountering Doctor Who fan fiction through the portals of play studies and ludology

2011 ◽  
Vol 8 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charles William Hoge
Keyword(s):  
Fan Fiction ◽  
Compelling Evidence ◽  
Doctor Who ◽  
Television Series

The fan fiction that is inspired by the textual world of both the original and new series of Doctor Who seems to provide a paratextual world of its own that produces a fascinatingly multidirectional relationship with the narratives that inspire it. Specifically, an interrogation of the intersections of these two worlds yields compelling evidence that the textual world of the new incarnation of the television series is aware of the concerns that tend to be generated by the writers of fan fiction and has adapted its own world to accommodate, or at least acknowledge, many of those concerns. If the writing of Doctor Who fan fiction can be productively read as play and as a creative, ludic engagement, how might the heuristic of ludology be employed as a means to encounter these texts and the playful relationship they create with the textual world from which their content is inspired?

scholarly journals When the Author Owns the World

2014 ◽  
Vol 1 (4) ◽  
pp. 959-978
Author(s):  
Steven D. Jamar ◽  
Christen B’anca Glenn
Keyword(s):  
Pop Culture ◽  
Fan Fiction ◽  
Television Series ◽  
The World ◽  
Original Works

Fan fiction is amateur writing that imaginatively reinvents a work in pop culture while maintaining the identifiable aspects of the preexisting work. Fans of various books, films, and television series write their own versions of the stories and post them online in fan fiction communities. Fan fiction as practiced today is a way for fans to creatively express themselves and become integrated into the story and world they love. The stories range from highly derivative works, where relatively few plot points are changed, to entirely new plot lines using the same world and characters of the original, underlying work. Some provide backstories about existing characters, and some are more in the nature of sequels. Some are quite original works more in the nature of “inspired by” than “derived from.”

Discovering new dimensions: Affect and the heroic in Doctor Who

2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 119-130 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maria-Xenia Hardt
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Affective Response ◽  
Doctor Who ◽  
Television Series ◽  
Space Agency ◽  
Social Media Platforms ◽  
Affective Experiences ◽  
Heroic Action ◽  
Dimensions Of Space

The British television series Doctor Who often depicts the discovery of new dimensions that provoke both affective experiences and heroic moments. Every discovery of a new dimension in Doctor Who is overwhelming, sudden and transformative, a moment of wonder and inspiration. This article considers three episodes, featuring discoveries of a new dimension of space (‘The Rings of Akhaten’ 2013), agency (‘Dark Water’ 2014) and imagination (‘Vincent and the Doctor’ 2010), which all combine affect and the heroic, albeit in different ways. Acknowledging the difficulty of grasping moments of affecting and being affected due to their dynamic and pre-reflexive nature, the article uses close readings of selected scenes to narrow down the descriptive gap as far as possible. The case study of ‘Dark Water’ also includes an analysis of the episode’s reception in reviews and on social media platforms to highlight the actual affective response of the audience. The episodes’ narratives of discovering new dimensions of space, agency and imagination, medialized through specific audio-visual means, closely intertwine affective experiences with heroic moments: affective experiences can trigger heroic action, a heroic claim of agency can have an affective dimension and the ability to affect and be affected can in itself be heroized.

Consciousness-Raising in a Child Abuse Flame War over Fan Fiction

2012 ◽  
Vol 144 (1) ◽  
pp. 19-26
Author(s):  
Rebecca Walker
Keyword(s):  
Child Abuse ◽  
Fan Fiction ◽  
Television Series ◽  
Consciousness Raising ◽  
Personal Stories ◽  
L Word

A flame war over depictions of child abuse in a fan fiction competition based on The L Word television series (Showtime, 2004–09) provided an opportunity for feminists and others to deliberate over the issue of child abuse. Various tactics were used, including storytelling and the narration of intimate and personal stories of abuse, as well as more confrontational and personally derisive tactics. The flame war revealed taken-for-granted assumptions in a forum based on a lesbian-centred series.

scholarly journals "Let's get those Winchesters pregnant": Male pregnancy in Supernatural fan fiction

2010 ◽  
Vol 4 ◽  
Author(s):  
Berit Åström
Keyword(s):  
Gender Identity ◽  
Family Life ◽  
Social Practices ◽  
Fan Fiction ◽  
Television Series ◽  
Same Sex ◽  
Social Conventions ◽  
Male Pregnancy ◽  
Gender And Genre

This article investigates mpreg slash fiction—same-sex relationships featuring male pregnancy—based on the television series Supernatural, looking at issues of gender and genre. It has been argued that slash writing is a highly subversive and resisting activity, appropriating someone else's characters and rewriting the romance script to suit different tastes than those prescribed by patriarchy. Yet fan fic texts are very diverse and it is difficult, if not impossible, to draw any general conclusions from them. The theme of male pregnancy has the potential to produce narratives that challenge our notions of gender, identity, sexual and social practices, as well as parenthood. Although the fan fiction I have analyzed all deals with these notions in various ways, the focus lies elsewhere. The authors of the texts focus more on exploring Sam and Dean as fathers and homemakers, on writing about family life, with all its traditional trappings. When the authors bring pregnancy into the equation, they draw on narrative and social conventions that follow this experience, resulting in conventional stories set in a very unconventional universe.

scholarly journals The Web planet: How the changing Internet divided Doctor Who fan fiction writers

2009 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leora Hadas
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
Web 2.0 ◽  
Participatory Culture ◽  
Fan Fiction ◽  
Doctor Who ◽  
Lord Of The Rings ◽  
Depth Analysis ◽  
Fiction Writers ◽  
Communal Space ◽  
The Web

This paper analyzes the debate that arose in online Doctor Who fandom surrounding the switch to moderated submissions for "A Teaspoon and an Open Mind," the fandom's main fan fiction archive. As has been the case with many classic texts of science fiction and fantasy, from The Lord of the Rings on, the new adaptation of the cult series Doctor Who was the cause of much tension and conflict within the fandom. It has opened up the franchise to a vast new audience unschooled in the fandom's ways or the ways of fandom at large, and the change in archive policy served as an arena where many of these tensions came to a head. An in-depth analysis of this debate leads to the argument that the cultural logics of fandom and of participatory culture might be more separate than they initially appear. Some fans wholly embrace the ideals of Web 2.0 and argue for the archive as a nonhierarchical, communal space where all content is equal regardless of what standards it might not meet. Yet while their rhetoric resembles the ideas of academia about the potential of fandom as an educational space, other, more veteran fans reject academia, instead using the discourse of private enterprise and property rights, more commonly associated with the producers of texts than with their fans and poachers, to argue for the rights of site moderators to regulate content.

scholarly journals Classical monsters in new Doctor Who fan fiction

2016 ◽  
Vol 21 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amanda Potter
Keyword(s):  
Romantic Relationships ◽  
Fan Fiction ◽  
Doctor Who ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
Greek Myth ◽  
Classical Myths

Although a number of classic Doctor Who episodes featured story lines and characters drawn from Greek myth, no new Who episodes based on Greek myth appeared until seasons 5 and 6, in 2010 and 2011. These episodes featured Pandora's box, the Minotaur, and a Siren. They all use the mythical monster or artifact outside of its ancient Greek context, and I argue that the mythical monsters were additions to earlier story ideas. I compare this with the treatment of the myths of the Minotaur and the Sirens in five stories posted to FanFiction.net between 2008 and 2013. These stories all engage with classical myths, and the longest, "Lure of the Sirens," even engages with different versions of the myth of the Sirens. In this article I discuss how the writers use the classical myths within their stories, and how the myths fit in with the primary aims of the writers, for example in developing romantic relationships between characters.

scholarly journals "Kinda like the folklore of its day": Supernatural, fairy tales, and ostension

2010 ◽  
Vol 4 ◽  
Author(s):  
Catherine Tosenberger
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Fairy Tales ◽  
Fan Fiction ◽  
Television Series ◽  
Folk Narrative ◽  
Folk Narratives

This essay considers the use of folklore in the television series Supernatural: the show does not simply retell folk narratives, but performs them both diegetically and metatextually in a process known as ostension. In the process of performance, main characters Sam and Dean often research and analyze the stories themselves, and perform portions of the folk narrative in order to bring about a resolution. This essay focuses upon episode 3.05 "Bedtime Stories," which does not simply depict the folk narrative genre of fairy tales, but also directly engages with the discourse surrounding fairy tales in popular culture; in particular, the episode reproduces widespread understandings of fairy tales as a gendered genre. The essay concludes with a discussion of fan fiction that uses fairy tales, seeing it as a transformative response to Supernatural's own transformation of folk narratives.

scholarly journals Doctor Who, Ma’am: YouTube Reactions to the 2017 Reveal of the New Doctor

2019 ◽  
pp. 152747641989304 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sophie Eeken ◽  
Joke Hermes
Keyword(s):  
Online Discussion ◽  
Doctor Who ◽  
Television Series ◽  
Popular Films ◽  
Gender Categories

In 2017, BBC released a video revealing that Jodie Whittaker would be the actor to play the thirteenth Doctor in the 2018 season of Doctor Who (1963–), the popular BBC television series. The “reveal” that a woman had been cast in the role of the Doctor prompted an overwhelming backlash and fierce online discussion. The same period saw a number of popular films and series cast women as leads. The intense discussion that the reveal generated indicates that televisual representations of gender continue to matter greatly to viewers. The question is how? Fan comments posted below the reveal video on YouTube suggest that viewing publics are less engaged in a controversy over feminism than bewildered by gender categories becoming unstable. Notably, once the series aired, discussion about the Doctor’s gender died down. Seeing the Doctor addressed as “Ma’am,” it turned out, was not what upset viewers.

scholarly journals "The epic love story of Sam and Dean": Supernatural, queer readings, and the romance of incestuous fan fiction

2008 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
Author(s):  
Catherine Tosenberger
Keyword(s):  
Fan Fiction ◽  
Television Series ◽  
Love Story ◽  
Slash Fan Fiction

This article examines incestuous slash fan fiction produced for the CW television series Supernatural. I argue that "Wincest" fan fiction is best understood not as perverse, oppositional resistance to a heterosexual, nonincestuous show, but an expression of readings that are suggested and supported by the text itself. I examine the literary, cultural, and folkloric discourses of incest and queerness invoked by the series, paying special attention to Romanticism, the Gothic, and horror as underliers to those discourses, and how those genres inform both the series and the fan fiction. I discuss a number of Wincest stories in detail, focusing upon how these stories build upon thematic elements within the series. In conclusion, I argue that the most resistive aspect of Wincest fan fiction is that it gives the main characters a lasting happiness that the series eternally defers.

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