The active defense of fanfiction writing: Sherlock fans’ metatextual response

Abstract

In 2013, Sherlock fans were incensed when journalist Caitlin Moran surprised the show’s actors at a press event by having them read a piece of fanfiction aloud without telling them first what they would be reading. This was clearly done to make fun of fan writing. They took to social media to express their opinions, which included the idea that they were tired of women and minority groups being made fun of for their passionate engagement with cultural products. Themes of queerbaiting, symbolic violence, double standards, and critiques of misogynistic and heteronormative processes were inherent in their conversations about the incident on Tumblr. They characterized the mockery as typical of exclusionary social institutions that characterized them as irrational individuals. This article examines how they responded back with a metatextual commentary to attacks from without, which allowed them to validate their practices to each other.

Keywords

Culture fanfiction feminist critique heteronormativity journalism media Sherlock symbolic violence television Tumblr

In the past, cultural theorists have often looked at entertainment as ‘mass distraction’ (Adorno and Horkheimer, 2001) and ignored its capacity to function as a site of sociopolitical criticism in and of itself. More recently, theorists have not only abandoned this way of thinking about the products themselves, but have explored the concept of the ‘aesthetic public sphere’, where interested cultural consumers have come together to debate meaningful social issues (Jacobs, 2007, 2012; Jones, 2007). Fan culture on the Internet represents such an alternative public. This article extends this concept to include the responses back to journalists who are a part of the more consecrated discursive paratextual sphere around cultural products. They have access, promotion from their own organizations as well as the marketing campaigns surrounding the products, and status in the journalistic sphere. When fans disrupt or criticize this process in metatextual conversation, it can create or exacerbate tension between the consumers and the producers of the products. As fans, producers and journalists interact now more than ever due to the prevalence and presences on social media, these conflicts have become more visible and have functioned as starting points for larger conversations about social inequities. Points of contention tend to crystalize around specific themes, namely transformative works, non-heteronormative sexuality and (usually) women’s freedom of expression. Other examples of cultural consumers expanding the conversation about social issues using the cultural product they engage with as a springboard include video games (McKernan, 2015), political comedy (Jacobs and Michaud Wild, 2013) and song competitions (Wu, 2011).

Because showrunners have often been dismissive of fans seeing their male characters as potentially romantically and/or sexually attracted to one another, we can see why the media has also sometimes adopted this attitude. The driving force behind Sherlock, Steven Moffat, is no exception here; he can certainly be characterized as a ‘fanboy auteur’, a man who sets the tone, creates the ‘world’ of the show and establishes its boundaries. Fans respond back to him, and may disagree, but he is the ultimate authority outside of the fandom (Scott, 2012) and he has repeatedly stated in the press that the main characters are not going to be canonically together in a relationship.¹ There have been works on how the media represents fans (Bennett and Booth, 2016; Driscoll and Gregg, 2011; Hampton, 2015) and many on why fans create these works in the first place (Black, 2008; Chander and Sunder, 2007; Davies, 2005; Somogyi, 2002; Woledge, 2005), but exploring how fans respond back, and why they may be doing so in specific circumstances, is frequently called for in the previous scholarship on fans, culture and the media (Barnes, 2015; Scott, 2012). In addition, electronic media sources and television journalists’ sympathetic responses to the fans is another area where this conversation takes place. Paratextual conversations, like DVD commentaries, interviews and so on, tend to legitimize and center the already-consecrated voices of fanboys and the fanboy auteur himself and function as a response to ‘the fan audience’s assumed desire to accumulate detailed information about a text (Hills, 2012: 33)’. In contrast to paratextual conversations, where fans and fan creators discuss how their ideas and works relate to, cohere with and potentially expand on the canon of a story (Fathallah, 2016), this analysis is about a metatextual conversation, where bloggers write about the public sphere discussions around Sherlock, and expose their misogyny and sexism. These discussions are often, but not exclusively, disincluded from the official publics surrounding a cultural product, and can comprise transformative works, criticism and so on. Media journalists, such as I show Moran to be in this case, can be a part of the process of discursive segregation between the sanctified commentary and the heretical commentary of critical fans (Hills, 2012: 35).

What can happen when authors of fanfiction have their works seen by the writers and actors that have inspired them? They can be met with indifference, ambivalence, acceptance or rejection. A particular instance of a negative reaction occurred in 2013, when journalist Caitlin Moran ‘ambushed’ the BBC’s Sherlock actors Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman at a press event and had them read aloud erotic fanfiction without telling them what they would be reading beforehand. Moran is a UK columnist for The Times and a writer who has written a book called How to Be a Woman from a young, contemporary feminist perspective. She is well known for tweeting her love of Sherlock actor Benedict Cumberbatch. Because of these factors, she was selected to be a lively host for this Q&A session. Cumberbatch and Freeman have expressed their dislike of ‘shipping’ their two characters, defined as putting them into a romantic (and frequently explicit) relationship in fiction and art, calling it ‘weird’.² Fans may consider it unethical when others put their work in a context where it will be mocked or used to make actors feel uncomfortable. After this occurred, fans of the Sherlock/John relationship, known as ‘Johnlock’, criticized the journalist and did not place blame on the actors, who appeared to have been taken by surprise. The author of the work was a relatively well-known writer and Tumblr blogger who goes by the name mildredandbobbin. This particular pairing has been extremely popular with writers; as of this writing there are over 40,000 works on archiveofourown.org that feature the relationship, from every rating from ‘teen and up’ to ‘explicit’.

This article explores the narratives that emerged on the social media site Tumblr, and other entertainment blogs, where individuals had quite a lot to say about it. Bloggers and entertainment journalists engaged in a critical, metatextual conversation with each other that blamed deeply embedded institutionalized sexism and homophobia for this problematic incident. Reactions were almost universally negative, and critical of Moran for not knowing the extent of how badly she had crossed a line. As a feminist writer, many wrote of the incongruity of Moran’s inability to understand why holding fanfiction, often a women’s and queer space of production, up to ridicule was hypocritical. Writing about this episode, Bennett et al. (2017) stated that ‘As fan and acafans’ discussions about “Morangate”, as the incident became known, took shape across blogs, Livelournals, Tumblrs and Twitter posts, it became evident that this was a conversation – a debate – that was timely and overdue’ (p. 108). This case study demonstrates how two factors in the cultural space of fandom meet and cause a situation that puts the very consumers of the products at odds with those who create and promote it. The first is the preexisting bias against queer interpretations of cultural products on the part of some of their creators, and the second is the involvement of media intermediaries (like journalists and bloggers) who sometimes look to create a spectacle out of fan culture itself.

Show and book writers sometimes attempted to put a stop to fanworks on the basis of violation of copyright or because of the works’ homoerotic themes. In one instance, the producer of Robin of Sherwood gave his blessing to straight pairings, and expressly forbid ones with gay themes (below). Some actors and showrunners have been positive about fanfiction and fanart. Orlando Jones, formerly of the Fox program Sleepy Hollow embraced them early on in the show’s run, encouraging fans to send them to him.³ He has gone on to promote the genre, and lectured at the Transforming Hollywood: The Future of Television Conference at UCLA organized by Henry Jenkins in 2014. Showrunner of the 2013–2015 NBC network television show Hannibal, Bryan Fuller, and the production company, DeLaurentiis Co., tweeted fanart many times during the show’s run (and after), and star of the show, actor Mads Mikkelsen, has said he ‘enjoyed…tremendously’ reading the fans’ erotic fiction (De Semlyen, 2015). The CW network program Supernatural acknowledges fanfiction and art, although actor Misha Collins is most accepting and encouraging (Strange pictures of Misha Collins, 2012). Supernatural is famous for ‘breaking the fourth wall’ and did several episodes that have recognized its fandom, while at the same time poking fun at it. This treatment is either regarded as acceptance or mocking, depending upon how certain fans have interpreted it.

The Internet and social media have brought more visibility to fanfiction and art. There have been opportunities for decades for communication between producers and fans as fandom developed as a discursive and interactive space (at conventions, by fan publications, on the message boards of the early Internet, etc.), where creators were made aware of transformative works based on their artistic products. A contemporary actor or show producer would be unlikely to be ignorant of them now, partially because they have been around for so long, and partially because of their heightened visibility in the information age. Journalists have begun to write about it more as well. Some have lauded it as a furtherance of participatory and convergence culture, following Jenkins (2008), while others have characterized it as a source of cheap laughs, the bastion of lonely women and geeks who need to get a life.⁴ Even the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) lifestyle and culture magazine Out referred to the practice as ‘still pretty shameful’ (Dommu, 2018). As Fathallah (2015) writes, ‘Rather than attending to what young fans make of and from the text, they have attempted to impose range of narrowly political meanings onto it, or otherwise condemn it for lacking them’ (p. 1322). There has been a great deal of scholarship about fanfiction and art in terms of its appeal to women, queer representation and empowerment (Lothian et al., 2007; Reid, 2009). Writers have often characterized it as taking back control of the narrative in an age of corporate control of cultural products (Black, 2008; Jenkins, 1992; Stein and Busse, 2009; Woledge, 2005). As Kustritz (2003) writes:

…the act of writing is itself a profession in which only a select group of people are allowed to publish, and these are again chosen by a cultural elite as artists or by publishing corporations…Fan fiction may be interpreted as a direct response to these problematic circumstances. (p. 373)

Sometimes when individuals do not see themselves represented in popular culture, whether that is because of their racial or gender identity, sexual orientation, class, body type and so on, they as writers engage in ‘retelling a canonical story to better represent oneself’ (Chander and Sunder, 2007: 598). Furthermore, commercial romantic and friendship narratives are overwhelmingly heteronormative (Davies, 2005; Lothian et al., 2007) and/or place women in the submissive role (Somogyi, 2002). Because of the fact that one of the hallmarks of this practice is reinterpreting what is given to fans by producers, ‘fanfiction reflects both emotional engagement with and resistance to the source material (Barnes, 2015: 70)’. Stories are reworked to include marginalized and underrepresented groups, as well as narrative preferences that expand the limited scope of what is commercially available (Davies, 2005). Fanfiction writers do this in a way that is increasingly recognized as having gone beyond ‘passive reception’ and moving into the ‘political realm, once “the political” is sufficiently understood’ (Fathallah, 2015: 1310). This particular realm is one of ‘interpreting and constructing identities, constructing and critiquing power relations between individuals, social structures, and institutions’ (Fathallah, 2015: 1322). If individuals are using cultural narratives to construct and expand on their identities (Black, 2008; Brennan, 2014), when those attempts are criticized from without, they respond as if they have been attacked, even if their work was not the one that was held up as an example. As such, it is a political act of speaking truth to power, as the ‘power’ in this relationship is multi-layered: the producers who reject LGBT + interpretations, the journalists who side with them by mocking those who insist upon those interpretations and, in turn, the institutionalization of heteronormativity in society itself.

Sometimes, the negative reception of fanworks comes from within fan communities themselves (Brennan, 2014), as in cases where fans objected to creators being shown works as perhaps calling too much attention to the practice or potentially putting creators in situations where they may be made to feel uncomfortable. Even so, they have always been, and remain, relatively autonomous extensions of the cultural public sphere (Jacobs, 2012). Although writers like J.K. Rowling have not rejected particularly queer fanworks out of hand, at times when writers and actors discovered them, they had negative reactions that pushed them further underground, though they certainly did not stop them from being created. The creator of the ITV show Robin of Sherwood, Richard Carpenter, asked that fans not write anything about the characters being in anything other than a purely heterosexual relationship.⁵ A massive divide occurred among fans of the BBC show Blake’s 7 when one of the actors became aware of homoerotic fanworks, and demanded fans stop writing them (Jenkins, 1992: 201). The writer Anne Rice objected to use of her characters in fanfiction, and works involving her characters (and some other authors’) were removed from fanfiction.net. Yet despite these objections and roadblocks, fanworks continued to grow in popularity in the later years of the 20th century and into the 21st.

In 2009, the Archive of Our Own (AO3) came online, and fanfiction began to move there. Run by the non-profit Organization for Transformative Works, in 2015, it passed 2 million fanworks in the archive. Tumblr, a social media site which started in 2007, became a repository for art and writing. These sites do not censor by rating, and only a little bit by content (Tumblr, for example, does not allow ‘glorification of self-harm’). Fanworks began to grow more prevalent than ever, attracting more attention from outside media, which has frequently been negative attention (Hampton, 2015). Ironically, the heart of ‘convergence culture is that participation has become something media industries must engage with since consumers are already using existing technologies to break up and reformulate media texts for reasons of their own’ (Driscoll and Gregg, 2011: 574). But this engagement is often one of mockery. Little has been written about what happens when the labor of fans’ love comes full circle, and comes back to the people it is based upon. Prior to the past few years, it would have been difficult to research this phenomenon, other than through interviews. Because of the fact that many people use both AO3 and Tumblr, and fan news spreads quickly through that social media site, it is possible to use Tumblr as a historical archive that catalogs the reactions of fans and those involved. Barnes (2015) called for further ‘empirical research that focuses specifically on marginalized groups may inform our understanding of fanfiction as an act of resistance’ (p. 80) – this article demonstrates that writing it is not the only part of that process, but also engaging with and pushing back against media intermediaries who would cast fan culture in a negative light.

Data and methods

In an analysis of posts on Tumblr from 15 December 2013 to 1 week after the Sherlock/Moran incident, I looked at the kind of things that people spoke about. The sampling frame yielded a total of 36 substantive posts. I only included the initial post, not any responses (called ‘reblogs’) it may have gotten, as these are often just people reposting the original point to demonstrate their agreement with it. Bloggers discussed the incident for months afterwards; I limited the responses to the first week, because after that point they became repetitive of points that they made earlier. I left all spellings and capitalizations intact from the sources. I coded them inductively, and identified five primary ways in which the bloggers narrated the incident in an attempt to describe what they believed was really going on, which was in opposition to the way the media figures were representing their actions and creative lives. This method represents ‘a Geertzian “thick description” of the codes, narratives and symbols that create the textured webs of social meaning’ (Alexander and Smith, 2005: 13) in the conversation about the Moran incident. Also following Alexander and Smith (2005), this analysis centers the discussions about culture in such a way as to not only describe who is in the conversation, but to explain why they are making the points they are making. In addition, I identified eight articles that appeared in entertainment and Internet culture blogs and online newspapers which spoke about the Moran press event incident. These pieces encapsulated and reiterated what the bloggers discussed. Thus, it is evident that, for those most invested in defending fan practices, the concerns were shared ones.

Although the subjects of analysis in this article are text posts, they are conversational, interactive and accessible, and as such are performative in the social media public sphere. ‘Performance theory reminds us that action is not merely practical and rule following; much more than calculative, it is also symbolic and, equally, action is public as well as social’. Performance provides actors and audience with “an occasion in which actors and audience can reflect upon and define themselves’” (Eyerman, 2004: 29). A close narrative analysis of the posts and coding along thematic lines yielded five major topics of conversation. First, the incident reflected the double standards that society has when it comes to ‘official’ adaptations produced by corporate-owned media and those created by individuals who are doing it out of pure aesthetic enjoyment, and not expecting to involve profit in the practice. Somehow, for this reason, society delegitimizes the activity, and people who engage in it are constantly forced to defend fan practices. Second, writers were critical of the media that often ridiculed fans, while at the same time, depending upon fans’ existence for continued ratings. Third, bloggers discussed the fear that they felt should their work be held up to similar ridicule, and the repercussions that had for freedom of expression, particularly that of women. Fourth, bloggers called Moran out for advocating a very narrow definition of feminist practices that left out any person that was not cisgender, straight or regarded as socially competent, or not ‘geeky’. Finally, there was a larger discussion of how society permits men to be vocal and often absurd in their actions revolving around what they enjoy, while women were characterized as ‘crazy’. This amounted to symbolic violence (Bourdieu and Wacquant, 1992). The way that the Tumblr writers spoke back is a narrative of grievance, but it is an empowering stance that demonstrated they would not watch from the sidelines as their identity was maligned. ‘Individual and collective identities are “framed” through narratives, just as the narratives are themselves pre-coded structures’ (Eyerman, 2004: 28). What emerges in the commentary here is a narratively structured experience that the writers had in common.

Analysis

A foremost issue that Tumblr bloggers had with this incident was the application of double standards when it came to the show Sherlock and what the fans were doing with it, saying sarcastically it was ‘not in any way based on the works of a Victorian writer…as long as what you’re doing is derivative of writings in the public domain, you have the ethical high-ground and the freedom to make fun of people…’ (unruhigwandern, 2013). The writer of the piece of fanfiction in question expressed her feelings that the reading was done with almost an intention to humiliate and embarrass her and the actors: ‘Thank you for humiliating me, taking my writing out of context without permission, belittling it and using it to embarrass actors who I deeply admire’ (Meadows, 2013). One writer demanded that people outside the fandom ‘stop making fun of fanfiction just because it doesn’t have a fancy name like ADAPTATION’ (sherrinford221b, 2013). Echoing this sentiment that the writers of these stories are particularly seen as ‘fair game’ for making fun of, even though they are doing essentially the same thing as the show is doing (making a new version out of an old story) the Guardian recognized the reason why so many writers stay anonymous or wish to hide when they are ‘outed’: ‘…fan fiction writers are seen as gently mockable; slash writers even more’ (Barnett, 2013). The Techgeek.com blog complained that it is wrong to think of fanfiction as only ‘poorly-written pornography’, and said that it ‘isn’t just about the smut. It can be about anything – from new adventures with the characters, romantic tales between two characters, or even placing them in a brand new setting…’ (Huynh, 2013). Because of the illegitimacy that haunts fan practices, this active belittling led to emotional pain and fear of being exposed and mocked, as happened in the Moran incident: ‘I spent the better part of today torn between terror at my fanfic hobby, which doesn’t blend well with the real-life me, being discovered and shame over writing it…when it just occurred to me how ridiculous I am being’ (unruhigwandern, 2013). Even when bloggers here recognized that there was this double standard, the damage was done:

I have to admit that I was initially weirded out by the fact that the person who wrote the Sherlock fic in question took so much pride in her fan fiction…I still have this knee-jerk reaction to the word ‘fan fiction’, which is this: fan fiction is inferior to published fiction…Fan fiction is nothing new; it’s ancient. Take a look at some of the most famous stories in Western civilisation: Greek myths, the Arthurian myths or Robin Hood stories. These stories have constantly been retold, with multiple versions and new characters being added. If that isn’t fan fiction, I don’t know what is. (de-profundis-url, 2013)

These writers had tremendous insight into the self, looking at their fear and reflecting that it was not rationally valid, but still acknowledging its existence.

The media was another subject that bloggers mentioned, in both positive and negative ways. Speaking of Moran, this writer compared her poorly to Orlando Jones, ‘who has gleefully broken down the so-called fourth wall, with a lot of love and respect towards fans…’. They continued, recognizing that ‘the Internet is a public venue and yes, putting up your work in such a place will invite criticism… [but that] doesn’t mean we stop treating fanfiction writers as human beings who deserve, yet again, common courtesy and respect’. They went on to say that the incident represented a ‘Cheap Controversy’ (darthstitch, 2013a) of the type that the media is responsible for stirring up. There has been an ongoing incidence of journalists and talk show hosts, including Graham Norton, having their guests read fanfiction about their characters, and intentionally trying to force a reaction (Meadows, 2013; Romano, 2013). ‘Fanfiction (and fanart) often gets a bad reputation from the public – and that’s largely due to how it has been publicized in the media’ (Huynh, 2013). One Tumblr writer lamented this practice:

…what do producers get out of making their guests have to defend a work that makes them explicitly uncomfortable, or insult and laugh at it at the risk of disengaging their fans?…the entire fandom is…reduced to a stereotype of asocial virginal nerds…What is the point in that? Cheap laughs?…It’s a lazy, stupid way to laugh at someone’s discomfort. (ballpointpencil, 2013)

Instead of asking genuine questions that would require research and thought, it is easier to pull out a denigrated piece of fanfiction writing and try to get the actor in on the joke. This is despite the fact that the narrative content of Sherlock itself frequently skirts the line of making something more out of the characters’ relationship, usually from the perspective of outside observer characters who mistake Sherlock and John for a couple. One writer in The New Statesman pointed out that the story excerpt read aloud ‘can hardly have been sillier than the endless nudge-nudge implications about Sherlock and Watson’ that happened on the show (Penny, 2014). Sometimes the actors have been visibly uncomfortable in these situations, and said negative things, which caused fans to feel invalidated; at other times, the actors played along or praised the works, but being made the object of that joke elicited a number of negative emotions.

Freedom of expression, mostly that of women, was in jeopardy because of the scrutiny of the media, which would hold their work up for ridicule: ‘Moran’s behaviour, however unintentional, perpetuates the shaming of female fans and female fan practices’ (Jones, 2014). Some people simply could not face that possibility: ‘I couldn’t imagine the embarrassment if it had been mine they found. Really, Moran finding mildredandbobbin’s [fanfiction entitled] Tea was frightening. This makes me want to take all of my work down’ (rudybooty, 2013). Writers also went through a process of examining their own work and criticizing it, knowing there was a potential for it to be compared negatively with ‘real’ writing. One writer talked about the difficulties of writing in English when it was not their first language, saying it was ‘another opportunity to make a complete fool of yourself. I am absolutely sure there are phrases, sentences paragraphs in my fics a professional writer – such as Caitlin Moran – would consider clumsy’ (connyhascontrol, 2013). Inherent in Moran’s display of this particular work of fanfiction was critique. She was holding the work up as an example of something trite and worthy of derision. Although such judgments are continually made in the aesthetic public sphere (Alexander and Jacobs, 1998), bloggers rejected the critique not necessarily out of the relative merits of the work itself, but rather because of the power imbalance between the criticizers and the criticized.

Many bloggers linked the incident directly to Moran’s prior attitudes about certain women, people of color, and other stigmatized minority groups. They categorized her as phobic on many levels, and criticized her feminism for being non-intersectional. Often this is termed ‘White Feminism’ which excludes racial minorities, but also the impoverished, transwomen and queer experiences: ‘Moran is known for being a non intersectional feminist…from using trans phobic slurs…to…knocking women who decide to wear [religious] headwear…’ (ugh-brat, 2013). Moran’s feminism was exclusionary: ‘geeks probably fit into it about as well as people of color and trans* folks do… the freedoms she’s fighting for are only those of a small clique, and the rest of us don’t count’ (textualdeviance, 2013). Entertainment and Internet culture online newspaper The Daily Dot agreed, and summed it up, saying that Moran was ‘a polarizing figure within the feminist community whose greatest hits include calling people “retards”, using the slur “tranny” and famously declaring she “literally couldn’t give a shit” about the lack of minority representation on the TV show Girls’ (Romano, 2013).

Further evidence of this attitude was seen when Moran agreed with a person who joked on Twitter that the people waiting in line for the event for a long time were ‘virgins’.⁶ This comment was mentioned several times as being ideologically connected to her actions as the press event:

Making fun of fangirls for being too emotional while giving sports fans a free pass is misogyny. Using the same glass-wearing, inhaler-wielding, plain-looking stereotypes of nineties sitcoms on fangirls while geeks are hailed as the new hipsters is misogyny. And passing off erotic fanfiction or fanart as immature and grotesque in a society that still struggles to accept female self-stimulation as normal and natural, as opposed to male masturbatory practices, is misogyny. (fireplum, 2013)

Besides Tumblr, newspapers, and entertainment and Internet blogs, this incident received press in The Berkeley Beacon, an independent student-run online paper out of Emerson College. In an editorial about the incident, a writer explained:

There is also a strong double standard between boys who consider themselves ‘fans’ of anything, and fangirls. Men (and boys) interested in anything from cars to sports, even to sexual partners, have their excitement not only respected but encouraged…Have you ever seen a superfan guy at a sporting event? They’re uncontrollable, volatile, emotional, upset, and downright crazy—every word used to describe a fangirl waiting for an autograph or a new album to drop. The difference is that one person has their behavior glorified by much of the media and popular culture, while the other experiences widespread ridicule and demeaning backlash. (Roman, 2015)

Bloggers drew a direct line to the current incident with an overall culture of attacks on women and girls for being too invested in the emotional aspects of the products they consumed, while similarly interested men and boys were given a free pass to behave however they liked. Women in fandom are historically more ‘transformational’ than ‘affirmational’ and as such are less aligned with the media creator’s vision (Jenkins, 2012); the ‘powers-that-be’ in media (those who have created it, written it, established the canon, etc.) are unlikely to criticize men’s practices, as they see them on their side. The Daily Dot article on the incident concurred, stating that it was ironic that someone like Moran, who has written about feminism, would invade ‘the predominantly female spaces of fandom, where women regularly debate privilege, embrace transgender and genderqueer characters, and genderflip and “racebend”’ so that the shows could be ‘at least on some level, be more representative, diverse, and empowering for women and minorities’ (Romano, 2013).

In line with these claims about a limited kind of feminism, the most strident discussions surrounding this incident occurred around the idea that Moran’s comments were denigrating and hypocritical. In an academic context, this amounts to symbolic violence. Defined as ‘the violence which is exercised upon a social agent with his or her complicity’ (Bourdieu and Wacquant, 1992: 167). Moran is doing violence to women, for joining in the mocking of other women. There is a link here between other types of political discussion that is spurred by reflection on a cultural product’s themes (McKernan, 2015), but the Tumblr conversations go further, because they include paratextual conversations here as well. Fanfiction writers as ‘the Other’ was mentioned in the New Statesman because they ‘often come from a different demographic’ and that conflicts arose not because of any copyright or fair use issues, but because the shows ‘are being reinterpreted by the wrong sorts of fans - women, people of colour, queer kids…’ (Penny, 2014). Tumblr bloggers saw Moran’s comments as promulgating the idea that simplistic narratives about love and sex were all the readers of them were capable of understanding; this judgment was seen as inherent in the way Moran ridiculed the fanfiction, an idea they vehemently rejected:

Liking something simple or even crude doesn’t mean we can’t also appreciate complex and more intelligent things…And if you don’t understand that passion, understand this: if you’re the in the media laughing at the ~crazy fans… well the fans are very likely partly responsible for paying your bills. So show some respect at least for that and shut up until you’ve figured out something more productive to say about fandoms. (cantwaitanotheryear, 2013)

Although the writer of the fanfiction in question was an adult woman, the fact that she did not have the fame, position or notoriety placed her, in this writer’s mind, in a position of subordination, where she was treated like a child:

The concept of the fangirl is fraught with sexism. It trivializes a safe haven for young girls who feel displaced and in need of community. According to Merriam-Webster Dictionary, a fangirl is ‘a girl or woman who is an extremely or overly enthusiastic fan of someone or something’. That’s better than Urban Dictionary’s ‘a rabid breed of human female’, but it gets the same message across: These girls are crazy. (Roman, 2015)

Moran’s words about feminism from her book were employed by Tumblr bloggers to demonstrate the hypocrisy of her actions:

Any action a woman engages in from a spirit of joy, and within a similarly safe and joyous environment, falls within the city-walls of feminism. A girl has a right to dance how she wants, when her favourite record comes on. – Caitlin Moran, How to Be a Woman

So, Caitlin, did you *actually* mean that when you wrote it, or were you just bullshitting? Or does fandom and fanfic not count as an action ‘a woman engages in from a spirit of joy’ in a ‘safe and joyous environment’ because it’s something you personally don’t like and therefore it deserves to be dragged from its safe and joyous place and mocked in public? (argyle4eva, 2013)

This ridicule was what Moran was engaged in, and this was what the bloggers were fighting back against. Finally, the fact that the incident was meant to be funny, but was using a community that is often mocked for ‘cheap laughs’ was seen as a humorous misfire: ‘Caitlin Moran: It was so much better in my head’ (darthstitch, 2013b).

Discussion

Bloggers were pushing back and sticking up for themselves against a person who had a much bigger platform than they did. A feminism that is not inclusive and tries to align itself with a dominant ideology that marginalizes certain women’s voices is not feminism, but hegemony. Their language invoked both emotionality and rationality. The combination of the two is a hallmark of the postmodern era, where appeals to purely rational arguments as well as emotion are equally valid (Susen, 2015). Tumblr writers expressed their feelings on the same level of importance as they used facts to explain why those feelings had validity, especially when they compared Moran’s past statements with her current ones, pointing out the hypocrisy. At the same time, they demonstrated an ability to step outside of their own reactive emotional processes long enough to be able to link this small microcosm to larger social issues. In effect, they were ‘doing’ sociology – employing a sociological imagination – finding patterns between their personal experiences and the experiences of their Internet peers (Mills, 2000). Bloggers narrated the Moran incident as the kind of thing they could point to as indicative of larger social problems that they saw in their everyday lives, a process that occurs in other arenas of the aesthetic public sphere. There are two types of symbolic violence that bloggers called attention to in their posts: the first was criticism of individuals and their way of being fans, and the second was the heteronormativity of commercial cultural products. The bloggers, and article writers quoted here, were making normative demands that the symbolic violence stop.

Mockery is one kind of symbolic violence; Moran was aligning herself with the dominant ideology that people, especially women, who are ‘too’ invested in a fictional narrative, are socially inept and lonely. The websites where writers post fanfiction, and the Internet forums where writers and their readers discuss the works, are relatively autonomous spaces (Jacobs, 2012). They are sometimes run by non-profit foundations (as in the case of AO3) and sometimes owned by businesses (as in the case of Tumblr being owned by Yahoo and then by Oath Inc.), but they are not subject to tight corporate or government oversight on a day-to-day basis. They function as an electronic public sphere, and are largely regulated by the users themselves in formal and informal ways. Both of these sites in particular have rules against abusive speech and promotion of self-harm, but there are almost no content restrictions. Over time, these sites that were once only visited by people who were invested in them in and of themselves have been invaded by outsiders. There is irony at work here: the more visible the spaces become, the more they are accessible to all kinds of people who could potentially benefit from them, while at the same time, they become potential targets for outsiders who are looking for something to mock. Bennett et al. (2017) have written about the need for outside groups to respect fan creators and adhere to an ‘ethical framework’ (p. 112) in dealing with or using the works of the relatively ‘powerless’ (p. 109) category of fans (at least in relation to the power of journalists and producers), if they are going to use them to increase viewership or gain readers. The response from the invested users quoted in this article has been to come together to reassure each other that their form of expression is valid, as well as drawing on past instances where subordinated categories of people, particularly women, the gender non-conforming or queer have been accused of triviality or excessive emotionality.

Another kind of symbolic violence is inherent in the show itself, in the form of ‘queerbaiting’, the trope of two male characters having a close friendship that can be read as romantic, but never crosses that line. Many shows on network television in particular have been accused of this, and some viewers are increasingly criticizing commercial narratives for being heteronormative:

…both Cumberbatch and creator Steven Moffat have gone on record as saying that the idea of John and Sherlock having a romantic relationship on the show is more or less absurd. Their protests come despite the fact that in the show itself, the idea of their being a couple is a recurring theme that gets brought up jokingly at various points and seriously at several others. This contradiction has led many fans to accuse the show of ‘queerbaiting’, using the popularity of the ship on the show to draw in viewers while treating queer identity as a joke and refusing to acknowledge queer relationships as a valid possibility for the characters. (Romano, 2013)

Fanfiction is often used as an attempt to counteract ‘treating queer identity as a joke’. So when writers or readers of it perceived an attack on that attempt to ‘fix’ or diversify the kinds of narratives that are out there, those involved in the project saw it as a kind of call to arms. Bloggers here were not necessarily speaking back to the gatekeepers, fanboy auteurs or elite cultural agents, who may not see their discussions, or dismiss them if they do (such as Moran often would do on Twitter). What they were doing was actively defending practices to other readers who may have been discouraged from continuing to participate; this is evident in the comments where the bloggers discussed their fears of continuing to post fanfiction in a climate where outsiders may make fun of it. The mockery seemed to have only strengthened their resolve. Perhaps there is a generational effect; archives like fanlore.org contain stories of past instances of such difficulties, and contemporary fans can look to those older struggles as pitfalls to avoid. Indeed, the concept of ‘queerbaiting’ itself came about not just as a problem with current media, but as a recurring pattern that can be observed over time.

Studies that look at audience reception usually do not take into account this constant need for the spaces that individuals open up to be continually defended. Scholarship on media representation of fans needs to be expanded to include the subsequent parts of the conversation that is taking place in the aesthetic public sphere. Fanfiction is all about audiences responding back and reinterpreting the messages they receive. The cultural industries and mainstream media then answer back; looking at how fans react to that is the next empirical step in researching engaged audiences’ uses of culture. Examining ‘fanfiction as an act of resistance’ (Barnes, 2015, p. 80) must include this part of the extended conversation. As Scott (2012) wrote, ‘We need to consider how transmedia stories make strategic use of the fanboy auteur’s voice, acknowledge fans’ investment in that voice, and consider how and why fans speak back’ (p. 44). In this particular case, they are not just having a paratextual conversation, but a metatextual one that points out how media can reinforce gendered expectations and negative stereotypes about women fans. This type of conversation centers and prioritizes fan conversation about the social implications of the work and is not just a response to the ‘author–God’. In paratextual discussions, fans face the problem that:

…even as they set up their own in opposition to the proclamations of an author–God, they are frequently implicated in the paradox of justification by reference to what is already established and culturally legitimate. This does not make them power-less or ineffective, but renders their transformative power reformist rather than radical. (Fathallah, 2016: 86)

In contrast, metatextual conversation is radical, as it exposes the underlying sexism and homophobia not just of the themes of the work, but also in the public sphere conversations that revolve around them; it also galvanizes the fan community to reject their normalization. Fans not only use the cultural products to discuss matters of common concern (Jacobs, 2007, 2012; McKernan, 2015), but they also incorporate – and push back against – derogatory paratextual conversations, and thus metatextual speech becomes a site of resistance. Further research could also analyze the opposite case – when the reception has been positive, what effect does that have on fans? Do they feel a sense of connectedness or solidarity? As interest in fanworks from within and outside of fan communities continues to grow, this line of enquiry is becoming more necessary to understand the flows of cultural reception, interpretation and communication.

Footnotes

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.

Notes

Biographical note

Nickie Michaud Wild is a visiting assistant professor/Instructor of Sociology at Mount Holyoke College. Her publications include analyses of the rise of political humor in the post-9/11 era, and the interaction of political humor with the journalistic public sphere. She is a Faculty Fellow at the Yale Center for Cultural Sociology. Her research interests include media, conspiracy theories, popular culture, politics, and moral panics.

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