Fan Studies

The presented paper argues the importance of proper names in fantasy and science fiction in general, but focuses primarily on the highly successful Star Wars franchise. Worldwide popularity of George Lucas' creation resulted in the need for translation of Star Wars materials to other languages. Translators were given a task, among others, of creating a glossary of proper names essential to the overall story, such as Jedi and Sith. This paper is an analysis of translation of these proper names in Star Wars novels released before the year 2000 in German (61), Polish (41) and Russian (19). It presents all variants proposed by the translators before the final one was canonized and comments on their choices and strategies used. The analysis shows that while German and Polish translators usually retained use of previously established versions, Russian translators proved to be less consistent in this matter.

This paper investigates the way in which the perception of fan behavior is directly correlated to the demographic of the fan. The purpose of this paper is to break down the two styles of fandom, curative and creative, and theorize on how and why these fandoms tend to be more male or female using gender and media theory.

Originally written in 2015 as a final cap stone project for Masters Degree in Media Studies for The New School for Public Engagement.

This Master Thesis deals with the phenomena of "fans" and "fandom" in mainstream television. The work is divided into three parts. In the first part, after an introduction about the research process, and the requirements and difficulties of the investigation of a television series, an overview of the phenomenon of fandom from different perspectives is given. Different approaches, both academic and media studies as well as psychopathological, are offered. Some fundamental aspects of television production techniques and their interrelations with the target group, as well as the distinction between audience and fandom, an essential feature of the work shows, will be discussed. The production of fanfiction, being this one of the main bases of research, is discussed in more detail. In the second part of the work deals in more detail with the television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer. The series was chosen due to the broad reception, both in academic circles as well a...

Donald Trump slash fic is a sobering example in the survey of American politics and fan work. From Archive Of Our Own’s “Donald Trump – Fandom” to inclusion as op-eds in the New York Times, these visceral and contemporary works comprise an anti-fandom that uses the rhetoric of fan culture to stake its claims against him. Many of these claims center and transform his heteromasculinity, particularly using humiliation to depower him—as a queer (not-straight) thing (non-man), adopting the more institutional US political practice of using heteronormativity as a measure of patriotism and worthiness of human rights that has become more overt in the post-9/11 era. While depictions of the “tangerine flesh” “misshapen body” do not complete the xenophobic mold of the “monster terrorist fag,” these fic complicate preceding claims of slashing queerness and queering gendered spaces and affirm the view of a reflective relationship of fan work and cultural narratives. From the mainstream to the subcultural level, fan-citizens are creating narratives of resisting Trump while throwing into question the possibilities of fan practices in queering either national sexual politics  or sexual politics among the refuge of fans.

Por meio da compreensão do ativismo de fãs como uma forma de resistência cotidiana cultural, econômica e criativa, o objetivo deste capítulo busca problematizar as relações entre participação, resistência e consumo de fãs do jogo on-line League of Legends (LoL). Enquanto suporte empírico, apresenta-se um mapeamento sobre algumas práticas do ativismo de fãs-jogadores no antigo fórum oficial de LoL no Brasil, a partir de uma triangulação metodológica com destaque para o uso de inspirações etnográficas. Após as reflexões teóricas e as análises, propõe-se uma tipologia das práticas de resistência cotidiana na comunidade de LoL baseada em quatro modos. Os resultados desta abordagem indicam que a diversidade do universo das produções digitais e práticas de parte dos fãs de LoL ressignificam as compreensões sobre resistência e participação, questionando a dualidade existente entre a cidadania e o consumo da cultura pop, agindo como catalizadores que reinterpretam e excedem os limites do fandom.

Fantijdschriften gewijd aan het werk en leven van één specifieke literaire auteur blijken een paradoxaal karakter te hebben. Aan de ene kant presenteren de redacteuren en medewerkers zich nadrukkelijk als fans, aan de andere kant distantiëren ze zich van stereotypisch fangedrag. In dit artikel wordt deze dubbelzinnigheid nader onderzocht. We analyseren daartoe drie literaire fantijdschriften: Ronflonflon, het fanzine rondom Wim T. Schippers, het Hermans-magazine, gewijd aan Willem Frederik Hermans, en Büchmania Magazine, waarin Boudewijn Büch centraal staat. We laten zien dat de tijdschriften hybride praktijken faciliteren: deze bladen blijken onderdeel te zijn van een culturele economie waarin populair-culturele conventies concurreren met de tradities van de officiële, gesanctioneerde (‘hoge’) cultuur. Eerst bespreken we vier kenmerken van deze tijdschriften: hobbyisme, lezersparticipatie, genre- en mediadiversiteit, en toe-eigening. Vervolgens laten we zien hoe de literaire fans verschillende distinctielogica’s gebruiken om de kloof tussen populaire cultuur en het officiële literaire circuit te overbruggen.

Audiences for blockbuster event-film sequels and adaptations often formulate highly developed expectations, motivations, understandings and opinions well before the films are released. A range of intertextual and paratextual influences inform these audience prefigurations, and are believed to frame subsequent audience engagement and response. In our study of prefigurative engagements with Peter Jackson's 2012 film, The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, we used Q methodology to identify five distinct subjective orientations within the film's global audience. As this paper illustrates, each group privileges a different set of extratextual referents - notably J.R.R. Tolkien's original novels, Peter Jackson's The Lord of The Rings film trilogy, highly localised political debates relating to the film's production, and the previous associations of the film's various stars. These interpretive frames, we suggest, competed for ascendancy within public and private discour...

Пользователи (фанаты) и медиа – два полюса, которые не могут существовать друг без друга. Читатель фанатских текстов не просто участвует в интерпретации продукта массовой культуры, он продолжает эту цепочку сотворений и создает новые смыслы. В условиях реальности фандома хорошо видно, что сетевой гипертекст является самоорганизующимся культурным пространством с мобильным авторством. Но фандомный автор – в первую очередь читатель, и оценивать его творчество следует на уровне прочтения оригинального произведения. С целью измерения авторского присутствия в фанатском тексте разработана уникальная шкала оценки текста по его формальным признакам (на примере однородного блока фантекстов, созданных в рамках сообщества поттероманов). На шкале Автор — Интерпретатор в результате проведенного контент-анализа предлагается расположить любой фантекст, в зависимости от большего или меньшего присутствия в нем создателя протослова. Данная работа, таким образом, не только способствует более глубокому пониманию фандомов и их места в системе новых медиа, но также предлагает уникальный способ оценки фанатских текстов по степени их приближенности к оригинальному автору.

This thesis investigates the links between community-driven practices of writing around and on a shared subject of devotion in the medieval and modern ages.

I argue that both fanfiction and vernacular hagiography speak to a community need for fulfilment, understanding, and shared devotion which may be distasteful to those parties who believe they "own" the material on which this devotion centres.

Relating vernacular hagiographies in medieval French to modern fan-created narratives, I show that these genres complicate our understandings of authorship, credit, originality, and community.

While anthropomorphizing nonhuman animals has been shown to increase identification with them and, by extension, concern for their wellbeing, little research has directly tested whether identifying with nonhuman animals is similarly associated with concern for their wellbeing. We tested hypotheses related to this premise across three cross-sectional studies. In study 1 (n = 224), we tested the hypothesis that therians—a group of people who self-identify with nonhuman animals, show greater concern for nonhuman animal rights than non-therian furries—people with a fan-like interest in media featuring anthropomorphized animal characters. In study 2 (n = 206), we further tested this hypothesis using implicit and explicit measures of identification with nonhuman animals to predict behavioral intentions to support nonhuman animal rights. In study 3 (n = 182), we tested the generalizability of our findings in a sample of undergraduate students. Taken together, the studies show that explicit, but not implicit, identification with nonhuman animals predicts greater support for their rights. The implications of these findings for research on anthropomorphism and animal rights activism are discussed, as well as the limitations of these findings and possible avenues for future research.

representation of knowledge to representation of an action. Because of the technological advancements, social media users do not depend on time and space and can operate in an open and free way. In the social media sphere people are expected to add, change and interact with the contributions of others, who are involved into the process of information exchange56.Social media users are enabled to personalize and shape their information environment internally and externally. It means that all fans can specify and modify all the information they will to share (external personalization) and compose own social media profile according to individual needs or interesting, then the social media profile reminds some type of personal newsroom57. To take an action or not, people need some motivational factors that force them to contribute the information. The expectancy theory explains that in general someone’s decision depends on needs for obtain the reward58. F.C. Lunenburg stated that a perso...

This book examines television drama in the age of streaming—a time when television has been reshaped for national and international consumption via both linear ‘flow’ and on-demand user modes. It builds on an in-depth study of the Norwegian public service broadcaster (NRK) and some of its game-changing drama productions (Lilyhammer, SKAM, blank). The book portrays the formative first decade of television streaming (2010-2019), how new streaming services and incumbent television providers intersect and act in a new drama landscape, and how streaming impacts existing television production cultures, publishing models and industry-audience relations. The analysis draws on insight gained through more than a hundred interviews with television experts and fans, hundreds of hours of observations, and unique access to industry conferences, meetings, working documents, and ratings. The book combines perspectives from production studies, media industry studies, and fan studies to inform its analysis.

“Brilliantly combining production studies with fan studies, Television Drama in the Age of Streaming is state-of-the-art scholarship. Vilde Schanke Sundet has interviewed an array of industry insiders, expertly analysing executives’ strate-gies, digital flagship productions, and new paradoxes of audience making. Streaming may have shifted contemporary TV drama into a “world champion-ship” of globalised brands, but Sundet reminds us of the need to focus on national and cultural contexts. There’s so much great content in this book, I binged it in one sitting. And now you can too.” Matt Hills, Professor, University of Huddersfield, UK

“This excellent book engagingly explores why the television industries are chang-ing in the age of streaming and how to think of the implications from a specific national and cultural perspective as well as from an international and transna-tional point of view. The book is an important contribution to media industry and television studies (or should one now say streaming studies?).” Eva Novrup Redvall, Associate Professor, University of Copenhagen, Denmark

“This book is an innovative attempt to look at streaming from the perspective of Norway, a small country with its own distinctive culture and a huge appetite for the transnational drama that forms the backbone of contemporary streaming. It is very well researched, and offers in-depth analyses of the transnational strategies and digital production cultures that public service broadcaster NRK has developed to appeal to demanding audiences. It constitutes a great resource for scholars and professionals trying to understand transformative changes in screen cultures.” Jeanette Steemers, Professor of Culture, Media & Creative Industries, King’s College, UK

“Television Drama in the Age of Streaming is a well-timed and germane book, dealing as it does with the latest phase of globalization, media convergence, and digitalisation, and how global streaming services are offering new opportunities for producing as well as distributing and consuming drama. What is particularly impactful about the book is how it focuses on NRK, the Norwegian public service broadcaster, seemingly at the margins of the global television industry; but in how this book realigns our thinking about how television content is being commissioned and made, but also ‘published’ across multiple platforms makes for indispensable read. This book is welcome, necessary and an important addition to any bookshelf for those studying transnational TV business, production and distribution trends.” Janet McCabe, Reader in Television and Film Studies, Birkbeck, University of London, UK

Talking politics online is not exclusively reserved for those spaces dedicated to politics, particularly the everyday political talk crucial to the public sphere. However, past net-based public sphere research has focused mostly on political spaces thereby neglecting an array of other genres. The aim of this article is to move beyond politically oriented communicative spaces by investigating political talk within the British reality TV discussion forum Wife Swap. The purpose is to see whether a forum dedicated to reality TV provides the communicative space, content, and style for politics that extends the public sphere. The central question is whether it fulfils the requirements of rationality and ‘decent’ deliberation. Moreover, the analysis moved beyond a formal notion by investigating how expressives influence the more traditional elements of deliberation. The findings revealed that Wife Swap participants engaged in political talk that was often deliberative. Moreover, it was a space where the use of expressives played a key role in enhancing such talk.

Edukacyjne i wychowawcze aspekty uczestnictwa w społec~nościach fanów (fandomach) Celem pracy jest wykazanie edukacyjnych i wychowawczych aspektów uczestnictwa fanów w różnorodnych fandomach. Mianem fandomów określa się społeczności fanów różnych zjawisk z krf(gu kultwy popularnej. Są one według autora środowiskiem edukacyjnym, w którym w dużym natężeniu obserwować możemy edukację nieformalną Związane jest to między innymi z tym, że fani często tworzą w Internecie społeczności wirtualne, które wykorzystujązbiorową inteligencję swoich członków. Pozwala ona na podnoszenie poziomu wiedzy fanów. Podnoszą oni również poziom swoich umiejętności twórczych poprzez, tzw.fanart, czyli twórczość opartą o popkulturowe źródła. Na fanów bardzo często wychowawczy wpływ wywierają treści uwielbianych tekstów. Są one dla nich doskonałym poradnikiem, wychowującym, pokazującym i uczącym jak żyć. Autor wskazuje i omawia te i inne wychowawcze oraz edukacyjne aspekty uczestnictwa w społecznościach fanów.

O conceito de fã vem sendo revisitado pela academia há décadas. Transita, de um lado, por imagens estigmatizadas – marcadas por estereótipos – e, por outro, por apreciações mais produtivas, nas quais os fãs são considerados como consumidores ativos. Ou seja, sob essa perspectiva os fãs estão interagindo com os produtos de diversas formas. Devido à rede mundial de computadores, as atuações dos fãs estão ganhando visibilidade e, consequentemente, trazendo preocupações e novos questionamentos para a indústria cultural. Sabe-se que a relação entre a indústria cultural e os fãs sempre foi complexa, composta por interesses e determinada por ações enérgicas e proibitivas das empresas. Porém, a partir da atual conjuntura, na qual os fãs não aceitam passivamente posições impostas pelas empresas, propõe-se que as relações estão sendo reavaliadas e, logo, sendo modificadas. Acredita-se que as relações estão caminhando para ações colaborativas. A partir dessas reflexões, esta pesquisa percorre os conceitos – especialmente, os de fã e indústria cultural – e relata as mudanças e interesses embutidos nas relações. Como forma de embasar as ideias aqui propostas, investiga-se a relação dos fãs sites de maior visibilidade na comunidade de fãs da Saga Crepúsculo – Foforks, Twilight Brasil, Twilight Moms e Twilighters – e as empresas envolvidas com produtos da Saga no Brasil – Intrínseca, Paris Filmes e Telecine.

El objetivo de esta ponencia es abordar la práctica del cosplay como un doble proceso de interacción simbólica y social, a partir del cual, no sólo se reelaboran imaginarios de otras latitudes, sino se construyen paisajes transculturales y translocales. Para ello se hará un análisis del cosplay, partiendo en primera instancia, de su concepción como práctica de fans; es decir, un proceso de interpretación, apropiación y reelaboración de un texto a partir de las experiencias de vida y estéticas del aficionado; en segunda instancia como puesta en escena y su inserción en la dinámica sociocultural glocal de las comunidades de fans de anime y manga en México. De esta manera, siguiendo la propuesta de Anett (2014), se concebirán las comunidades de afición dispersas en el globo, como escenarios constituyentes de lo que Appadurai llama “paisajes culturales”; es decir, “formas irregulares de flujos de globalización plasmados en lugares físicos e imaginarios, significados a través de la experiencia personal de quienes los recorren”.

Multimedia has changed the way audience interact with narrative. Apart from the obvious differences in availability and distribution, the internet as a source for entertainment has changed the way fans engage with existing stories; they can enter the narrative, interact with the characters and, occasionally, influence the plot. This can be seen especially in classic narratives updated to a modern context and rewritten specifically for an internet format and an online fandom. The Lizzie Bennet Diaries (The LBD -http://www.youtube.com/user/LizzieBennet) is a web series on YouTube created by Bernie Su and Hank Green in April 2012. It is a modern adaptation of Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen. While Austen's source text has a following online in fanfiction forums such as pemberley.com, the new interactive nature of the webseries allows for greater engagement and emotional involvement because the fans are active participants in the story. Fans have direct contact with the characters, as well as a minor role in the narrative itself, by engaging with them via Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr and YouTube. The LBD has created an online presence for each character, allowing the minor characters to explain their motives and flesh out subplots such as Charlotte's partnership with Mr Collins and Lydia's elopement. As an adaptation, The LBD is an extension and modernisation of original source material which the fandom has access to, creating a layer of dramatic irony and engagement as fans see modernised versions of characters making the same mistakes as their Regency counterparts, and fans are taking an active role in the story by attempting to warn these characters. As the LBD is the first narrative of its kind, the negotiation between fans and producers over issues of ownership is still under construction, and will need further examination as these narratives become more common.

Research in consumer culture focuses on the role of fans in creating social spaces or fandoms in contrast with larger society where new cultural meanings and values are socially negotiated. Drawing on media and cultural studies, this article describes fandoms as a process rooted in the larger phenomenon of fanaticism and its interaction with the current society. The article posits the study of fanaticism as a fruitful lens for a deeper understanding of the role of consumption and brands in today’s consumer societies.

Regendering, where fan creators change the gender of an existing character as part of the adaptation, offers a deconstruction of gender via the simultaneous examination of the engendering of the original character, and the manifestation of gender performance in the regendered cipher. It also highlights and then occupies the absence of non-male, non-white characters; an absence being identified by researchers and fans as endemic to mainstream media. A close examination of several works (e.g. Joan Watson and Jamie Moriarty in Elementary, and a selection of characters in non-commercial fanworks) and paratexts, and the fannish engagement with those texts, reveals the methods and the reasoning behind the act as a sort of feminist praxis. It is also a manifestation of subversion and dissatisfaction - theorised by Jenkins and Sandvoss - with Butler-influenced understandings of gender performance and oppositional heterosexuality.

"Azriona's story "The Heart in Him" quoted in the title is an example of Omegaverse slash fan fiction, where characters develop supplementary gender identities at puberty. We can have male or female alphas, and male or female omegas. Male omegas can become pregnant and bear babies. This is an example of how slash complicates gender and sexual identities beyond habitual categories. We could see slash, then, as a liberatory mechanisms for questioning gender and sexual politics (Cicioni 1998; Jenkins 1992; Woledge 2006). However, a more pessimistic way of reading Omegaverse slash would be to suggest that it simply re-assigns strict gender and sexual roles, producing a form of highly essentialised normativity. We can even question the categorisation of Omegaverse fiction as slash because of its homophobic overtones. We could already find forms of covert homophobia in slash. The "we are not gay, we just love each other" trope allows male characters to have sexual relations with other men while distancing themselves from being gay. Moreover, the genre of slash at large has been accused of misogyny in its reimagining a world almost without women. In this paper, I examine examples of sexism, biological determinism and heteronormativity from Omegaverse fan fiction, and consider them in relation to prevalent neoliberal homonormative discourses.

Amongst fans and the academics who study them, it is generally accepted (perhaps even a truth universally acknowledged) that a good portion of what we consider canonical literature – including Shakespeare – also fits the broadest definition of fanfiction, in that it is clearly written in response to or adapting a specific source text. Although it is difficult to reconcile any category that comfortably includes both Shakespeare’s plays and E.L. James’ Fifty Shades of Grey – 89% of which had already appeared on the Internet as a piece of Twilight fanfiction titled “Master of the Universe” – some have argued that this juxtaposition is the very point of fandom. Transformative fiction (also known as fanfiction, fanfic, or, most commonly among those who write and read it, fic) offers an alternative form of both close-reading and contextual criticism when applied to premodern writers, just as it does for contemporary media properties. This article, therefore, combines traditional criticism with two different pieces of Shakespeare-based fanfiction in order to illustrate the potential and versatility of this type of textual engagement. Both pieces fall under the category of AU (alternate universe) discussed earlier, but follow two very different trajectories.

We, the women of the RSM, in an effort to form a really loose confederation of passionately uncommitted rational anarchists, accept no rules and no limits. We have no boundaries. We do not explain ourselves. We do not accept American Express . . . We reserve the right to slash anyone, anywhere, at anytime.

This paper examines the ways in which television imagines the relationship between creators and audiences in the contemporary media landscape. This is developed through an examination of the inaugural seasons of three American television dramas that debuted between October 2016 and March 2017: Netflix’s The OA and 13 Reasons Why and HBO’s Westworld; all three series featured the character of a storyteller who was killed within the narrative, in what was presented as an act of collaboration between the storyteller and their audience. We will question whether new participatory modes of media engagement truly engender ‘the birth of the viewer’ through a symbolic ‘killing’ of the creator, or merely serve to reaffirm the authority of the creator, reimagining the author-function as a powerful marketing brand.

In this article, we propose an understanding of parasocial relationships, in which fans build an affective relationship with characters and television programmes, as fandom's emotional interior. Rather than being structured by fan productivity and community, parasocial relationships exist in a private, intimate space as fans develop deep emotional bonds with characters. When a series concludes, fans must therefore reconcile the dissolution of these relationships in a personal way, a process called the parasocial break-up. However, the current media landscape fosters the sense that the fan object is never truly 'over', which tempers the negative emotions of the parasocial break-up. Interviews with fans of The Office revealed that this process is paradoxical, as fans assert both the devastation of loss and the agency of denying that loss.

One of the first full-length academic projects on the television series Smallville, this collection of new essays explains why the WB/CW series is important to understanding contemporary popular culture. The essays are presented in four sections covering broad categories: Clark’s metamorphosis to Superman and the influence of his parents and the home; the role of the series’ noteworthy female characters; the series’ representations of the Other, explorations of identity, and the ways in which characters speak to Clark’s own struggles; and audience reception of the series and its position within the Superman narrative universe.

Introdução A disseminação da informática trouxe uma nova perspectiva para o fenômeno dos fãs, uma vez que a troca de informações e materiais se tornou uma realidade praticamente instantânea. Com tais circunstâncias, materiais antes inacessíveis em função de condições de mercado passaram a ser compartilhados com maior facilidade. Dentre estes materiais, destacam-se as revistas escaneadas (ou scans, como são chamadas), havendo inúmeros blogs dedicados ao compartilhamento gratuito de revistas dos mais diversos gêneros e/ou personagens. Tal compartilhamento pode ser visto como um fato sociocultural dos mais interessantes, uma vez que há, da parte dos que dele participam, um sentimento de participação comunitária, constituindo uma verdadeira sociedade alternativa. O foco do presente trabalho serão os scans e outros materiais compartilhados por fãs, tendo como estudo de caso os aficionados pelo personagem de histórias em quadrinhos O Fantasma (The Phantom), cujos fãs criaram diversos sites, blogs e grupos em redes sociais. 1-O compartilhamento de quadrinhos entre fãs na Internet É inegável que as histórias em quadrinhos representam importante manifestação cultural na sociedade, tendo seu grande desenvolvimento ao longo do século XX. Não entrarei aqui na história deste gênero, preferindo ater-me à sua recente disseminação nos meios digitais. Chamados de scans, os quadrinhos digitais tiveram sua história assim resumida pelo administrador do blog "Submundo HQ", o qual se identifica apenas como LEO: Há uns 10 anos atrás.... os "scans" geravam discussões intermináveis entre editores, moderadores e leitores sempre q o tema era mencionado nos fóruns dos quais eu participava (...). De um lado, os defensores dos scans pregavam q os arquivos digitais eram a solução pro péssimo trabalho de seleção de histórias (revistas com mixes horríveis q direcionam o leitor a comprar um gibi pra ler e aproveitar apenas 25% disso), sem falar na imensidão de HQs interessantes q as editoras ignoram e de séries q talvez jamais vejamos publicadas no Brasil (especialmente o material 1 Texto originalmente escrito para a disciplina "Arte e Antropologia", na graduação em História da Arte da Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro (2014).

Eric Harris i Dylan Klebold są odpowiedzialni za jedną z największych masowych strzelanin szkolnych w USA, znanej jako masakra w Columbine High School. Wydarzenie to zaowocowało ogólnokrajową paniką moralną skupioną wokół reprezentacji przemocy w grach komputerowych, muzyce i filmie. Nastoletni mordercy współcześnie posiadają rzeszę aktywnych internetowych fanek, a sam fandom określa siebie jako Columbiners. Fandom ten jest osobliwą podgrupą True Crime Community, czyli większej społeczności zainteresowanej kryminologią i psychologią przestępców. Adoracja masowych i seryjnych morderców, szczególnie przez kobiety, nie jest nowym fenomenem. Zjawisko to starano się tłumaczyć parafilią oraz wyjaśnieniami ewolucyjnymi, jednak fanki sprawców masakry w Columbine High School zdają się wymykać tym uzasadnieniom. W niniejszym artykule pokazano na przykładzie fandomu Columbiners, że fascynacja mordercami może objawiać się nie tylko w formie ich seksualizacji, ale także poprzez empatyzowanie i u...

Nominated for a 2016 Will Eisner Comic Industry Award in the Best Academic/Scholarly Work category, Boys Love Manga and Beyond looks at a range of literary, artistic and other cultural products that celebrate the beauty of adolescent boys and young men. In Japan, depiction of the "beautiful boy" has long been a romantic and sexualized trope for both sexes and commands a high degree of cultural visibility today across a range of genres from pop music to animation.

In recent decades, "Boys Love" (or simply BL) has emerged as a mainstream genre in manga, anime, and games for girls and young women. This genre was first developed in Japan in the early 1970s by a group of female artists who went on to establish themselves as major figures in Japan's manga industry. By the late 1970s many amateur women fans were getting involved in the BL phenomenon by creating and self-publishing homoerotic parodies of established male manga characters and popular media figures. The popularity of these fan-made products, sold and circulated at huge conventions, has led to an increase in the number of commercial titles available. Today, a wide range of products produced both by professionals and amateurs are brought together under the general rubric of "boys love," and are rapidly gaining an audience throughout Asia and globally.

This collection provides the first comprehensive overview in English of the BL phenomenon in Japan, its history and various subgenres and introduces translations of some key Japanese scholarship not otherwise available. Some chapters detail the historical and cultural contexts that helped BL emerge as a significant part of girls' culture in Japan. Others offer important case studies of BL production, consumption, and circulation and explain why BL has become a controversial topic in contemporary Japan.

We examined the prevalence rates of mental and neurodevelopmental illness among members of three different fandoms: anime, My Little Pony (brony), and furry. In total, nearly 2,600 fans across these groups self-reported whether or not they had ever been diagnosed with a psychological and/or neurodevelopmental illness. Data revealed that anime fans, bronies, and furries all show higher rates of diagnoses on the autism spectrum than rates observed in studies of the general population. Rates of mood and anxiety disorders were lower than that of the general population. Rates of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder were lower in anime and brony fandoms, but were not different from the general population for furry fans. Taken together, the results provide an exploratory look at mental health issues in fan communities and suggest both commonalities across fan groups and idiosyncrasies within particular fandoms.

This research explores and identifies the current configuration of
the political economy of Mexican cosplay fandom by examining the use of Patreon, a membership platform that helps creators to earn a regular income for their content, in this cultural field. First, from a post structural approach of political economy of communication and culture, it is described cosplay fandom as a field of cultural production and consumption. It is emphasized how the employment of digital technologies has transformed these socioeconomic relations, identifying points of articulation and stress between the two main logics that shape fan exchanges: the economy of gift and cultural and communicative capitalism. Second, from a media ecology approach, it is examined the social and historical contexts of emergence and development of Mexican friki fandom, and the generation of cosplay cultural markets as well. Third, by a digital ethnography, it is analyzed how Mexican cosplayers use Patreon to monetize their creative activity. This ethnographic analysis includes an identification of: 1) the sociotechnical and socioeconomic conditions that outline this platform; and 2) its general use within Mexican cosplay scene. Also, in a more detailed way, this research follows three Patreon programs runed by different Mexican cosplayers, identifying and analyzing the main tactics of symbolic and economic capitalization that are employed by these users. The later aims to deduce the social effects of the use of platforms in cosplay media ecology, including personal relationships between cosplayers and their public in diverse scenarios of digital and fase-to-face interaction that are connected to Patreon.
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