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This afternoon I voted Miss Jessel from Jack Clayton's The Innocents (1961) one of my favorite ghosts on film, a tall order but a true one. A masterstroke of sound design and suggestion, she's not spectral, she's uncanny: as real as the reflection she casts on the sunlit shiver of the lake, as motionless in the heat as the bulrushes she stands so far out among, she could be walking on water, though we will learn she drowned herself in it instead. Her slight, dark-haired figure in long shot gives no impression of a threat, nor even any particular emotion such as hunger or melancholy that would make her apparition easier to read. Her incongruity becomes its own eeriness, the noonday drabness of her presence more frightening than its disappearance between one look and the next, which is after all only characteristic of her kind, though part of the film's chill is that really it has no such rules by which a haunting may be mapped and governed, only the inexplicable facts of things that should not be. Once we have heard that she grieved sleeplessly for her rough, flaunting lover until she died of him, the governess played like a doorway of possession by Deborah Kerr can hear her sobbing, a desolate, gulping, wretchedly echoing sound that when finally traced to the schoolroom has nothing to do with the still-faced, dry-eyed imprint of Miss Jessel at her desk and yet when the governess rushes to the empty chair and touches the slate left by her own earlier lesson, it is wet with tears. Without a parapsychological conversation in sight, it gives the effect of a ghost that has stained through time in all its layers, desynched to perpetuity. The parallel sightings of Peter Wyngarde's Peter Quint with his cock-strut and his bestial snarl of a smile, always smeared through sun-mist, night-glass, steam-sweat until he can cast his unfiltered shadow from a crumbling ring of statues at last have their own rude potency, as malignantly charged as one of the more explicitly libidinous legends of Hell House, but it is his ruined lover who looks as though you could never scrape her off the air, so soaked into this patch of reality that trying to part her from the grounds of Bly would be about as efficacious as trying to exorcise an ice age. Their voices whisper like tape loops on the candlelit stairs. The children are watching. The children are watching. The children are watching. Like the uncredited radiophonics of Daphne Oram that accompany her first, summer-humming manifestation, Miss Jessel or whatever has been left of her belongs to the weirdness of time just really starting to flower in British film and TV, more Nigel Kneale than Henry James or even Truman Capote and yet she fits as exactly into the sensibilities of the Victorian Gothic as she would into the bright horror of that lakeside to this day. She was one of three images left on film by the artist and director Clytie Jessop and I doubt you could get her off the print, either. This excellence brought to you by my watching backers at Patreon.Current Music: The Poppies in the Field, "The Teardrop Explodes"
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A selection of Dozois' best, from the first half of his half century career.
Geodesic Dreams: The Best Short Fiction of Gardner Dozois by Gardner Dozois
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Posted by therealmorticia https://www.transformativeworks.org/the-otw-is-recruiting-for-twc-committee-copyeditors-tag-wranglers-and-fanlore-chair-track-volunteers/ https://www.transformativeworks.org/?p=268361 Do you have experience copyediting or proofreading academic journals? Would you like to wrangle AO3 tags? Can you read and translate from Chinese to English? Can you read and translate from Italian to English? Do you have experience in managing or leading people?
We’re excited to announce the opening of applications for:
- TWC Committee Copyeditor – closing 24 September 2025 at 23:59 UTC
- Tag Wrangling Volunteer – closing 24 September 2025 at 23:59 UTC or after 125 applications
- Tag Wrangling Volunteer (Chinese) – closing 24 September 2025 at 23:59 UTC or after 45 applications
- Tag Wrangling Volunteer (Italian) – closing 24 September 2025 at 23:59 UTC or after 30 applications
- Fanlore Chair Track Volunteer – closing 24 September 2025 at 23:59 UTC or after 40 applications
We have included more information on each role below. Open roles and applications will always be available at the volunteering page. If you don’t see a role that fits with your skills and interests now, keep an eye on the listings. We plan to put up new applications every few weeks, and we will also publicize new roles as they become available.
All applications generate a confirmation page and an auto-reply to your e-mail address. We encourage you to read the confirmation page and to whitelist our email address in your e-mail client. If you do not receive the auto-reply within 24 hours, please check your spam filters and then contact us.
If you have questions regarding volunteering for the OTW, check out our Volunteering FAQ.
TWC Committee Copyeditor
Transformative Works and Cultures (TWC) is an international peer-reviewed Diamond Open Access online publication about fan-related topics that seeks to promote dialogue between the academic community and fan communities. Copyeditors professionally copyedit submissions for TWC according to Chicago Manual of Style (CMOS) 18, Merriam-Webster online, and the TWC style guide. Editorial standards are those of a university press.
The copyeditor’s main responsibility will be to carefully copyedit word-processed manuscripts to correct errors of grammar, usage, style; normalize presentation of information; check the literature; and ensure consistency of usage of, e.g., presentation, capitalization, italic, and numbers.
Applicants are required to pass a brief copyediting test that will be drawn from live copy (a not yet published article that is currently in production). All returned tests will be assessed and the applicant provided with feedback.
Applications are due 24 September 2025
Apply for TWC Committee Copyeditor at the volunteering page! If you have further questions, please contact us.
Tag Wrangling Volunteer
The Tag Wranglers are responsible for helping to connect and sort the tags on AO3! Wranglers follow internal guidelines to choose the tags that appear in the filters and auto-complete, which link related works together. This makes it easier to browse and search on the archive.
If you’re an experienced AO3 user who likes organizing, working in teams, or having excuses to fact-check your favorite fandoms, you might enjoy tag wrangling! To join us, click through to the job description and fill in our application form. There will also be a short questionnaire that will help us assess whether you have the skills and attributes that will lead to your success in this role.
Please note: you must be 18+ in order to apply for this role. For this role, we’re currently looking for wranglers for specific fandoms only, which will change each recruitment round. Please see the application for which fandoms are in need.
Wranglers need to be fluent in English but we welcome applicants who are also fluent in other languages, especially Bahasa Indonesia (Indonesian), Čeština (Czech), Español (Spanish), isiZulu (Zulu), Polski (Polish), Português brasileiro (Brazilian Portuguese), Suomi (Finnish), Tiếng Việt (Vietnamese), Türkçe (Turkish), Українська (Ukrainian), ไทย (Thai), Русский (Russian), беларуская (Belarusian) and 한국어 (Korean) — but help with other languages would be much appreciated!
Applications are due 24 September 2025 or after 125 applications
Apply for Tag Wrangling Volunteer at the volunteering page! If you have further questions, please contact us.
Tag Wrangling Volunteer (Chinese)
The Tag Wranglers are responsible for helping to connect and sort the tags on AO3! Wranglers follow internal guidelines to choose the tags that appear in the filters and auto-complete, which link related works together. This makes it easier to browse and search on the archive.
If you’re an experienced AO3 user who likes organizing, working in teams, or having excuses to fact-check your favorite fandoms, you might enjoy Tag Wrangling! To join us, click through to the job description and fill in our application form. There will also be a short questionnaire that will help us assess whether you have the skills and attributes that will lead to your success in this role.
Please note: you must be 18+ in order to apply for this role. For this role we’re currently looking for applicants who are fluent in both English and Chinese.We welcome all Chinese dialects! The work will involve both regular Tag Wrangling work and translating tags from Chinese into English.
Applications are due 24 September 2025 or after 45 applications
Apply for Tag Wrangling Volunteer (Chinese) at the volunteering page! If you have further questions, please contact us.
Tag Wrangling Volunteer (Italian)
The Tag Wranglers are responsible for helping to connect and sort the tags on AO3! Wranglers follow internal guidelines to choose the tags that appear in the filters and auto-complete, which link related works together. This makes it easier to browse and search on the archive.
If you’re an experienced AO3 user who likes organizing, working in teams, or having excuses to fact-check your favorite fandoms, you might enjoy Tag Wrangling! To join us, click through to the job description and fill in our application form. There will also be a short questionnaire that will help us assess whether you have the skills and attributes that will lead to your success in this role.
Please note: you must be 18+ in order to apply for this role. For this role we’re currently looking for applicants who are fluent in both English and Italian. The work will involve both regular Tag Wrangling work and translating tags from Italian into English.
Applications are due 24 September 2025 or after 30 applications
Apply for Tag Wrangling Volunteer (Italian) at the volunteering page! If you have further questions, please contact us.
Fanlore Chair Track Volunteer
Do you have experience in managing or leading people? Are you an organizational wizard? Do you have an interest in preserving fannish history or experience in wiki editing? The Fanlore committee is looking for new Chair Track Volunteers to join our team!
Fanlore is the committee responsible for maintaining and promoting the Fanlore wiki. We promote Fanlore on social media, run Fanlore editing challenges, support Fanlore editors, write the wiki’s policy and help pages, and respond to emails from editors and readers. The Chair Track Volunteer position is for people who have the time and dedication to learn all about our operations so that they can be considered for the role of committee Chair.
We’re looking for someone who has experience in wiki editing and an understanding of social media, who is comfortable with personnel management and training new recruits, and who is experienced in leadership or management whether in a business or nonprofit environment. Candidates also need strong time management skills and the ability to work on and track multiple tasks at a time. If that’s you, please apply!
For your application to be considered, you will be required to complete a short task within one week of submitting your application.
Applications are due 24 September 2025 or after 40 applications.
Apply for Fanlore Chair Track Volunteer at the volunteering page! If you have further questions, please contact us. https://www.transformativeworks.org/the-otw-is-recruiting-for-twc-committee-copyeditors-tag-wranglers-and-fanlore-chair-track-volunteers/ https://www.transformativeworks.org/?p=268361
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The Central Plaza Mansion tower offers palatial 900 square foot apartments for a mere ¥35,000,000. It is a deal too good for the Kano family to turn down... although they should have.
The Graveyard Apartment by Mariko Koike
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I just had my first opportunity to shower in four nights, even without washing my hair, so I just had the same opportunity to free-associate in the shower.
I have no explanation for why I was singing the blessedly abridged setting of Kipling's "The Ladies" (1896) that I learned from the singing of John Clements in Ships with Wings (1941) except that it's been in my head ever since it displaced Cordelia's Dad's "Delia" (1992).
As a person who does think all the time about the Roman Empire, I am incapable of not associating Rosemary Sutcliff's "The Girl I Kissed at Clusium" (1954) with Sydney Carter's "Take Me Back to Byker" (1963)—as performed by Donald Swann, the only way I have ever heard it—even though Sutcliff was obviously drawing on Kipling's "On the Great Wall" (1906) with her long march and songs that run in and out of fashion with the Legions and the common ancestor of all of them anyway is almost certainly "The Girl I Left Behind Me" (17th-whatever).
Somehow I remain less over the fact that Donald Swann was the first person to record Carter's "Lord of the Dance" (1964) than the fact that he did a song cycle of Middle-Earth (1967) and an opera of Perelandra (1964).
Oh, shoot, Swann would have made a great Campion. You register the horn-rims and immediately tune out the face behind them.
Ignoring the appealingly transitive properties of Wimsey, Edward Petherbridge and Harriet Walter, I am not going to rewatch the episode of Granada Holmes starring Clive Francis, I am going to lie down before someone wakes me.Current Music: Donald Swann, "Say Who You Are"
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When I heard tonight about Robert Redford, I did not think first of the immortal freeze-frame of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969) or the righteous paranoia of All the President's Men (1976) or even the perfectly anachronistic jazz of The Sting (1973) where I almost certainly first saw him, effortlessly beautiful even before he shines up from street-level short cons to the spectacular wire of the title grift. I thought of The Hot Rock (1972), a freewheelingly dumb-assed caper film of which I am deeply fond in no small part because of Redford. Specifically, his casting makes it look at first like the inevitable Hollywood misrepresentation of its 1970 Donald E. Westlake source novel, a cool jazz glow-up of the canonically, lankily nondescript Dortmunder whose heists always look completely reasonable on paper and in practice like a Rube Goldberg machine whose springs just sprang off. Only as the setbacks of the plot mount past aggravation into absurdity approaching Dada, of which the attempt to sneak into a precinct house via helicopter must rate highly even before the crew land on the wrong roof and the siege-minded lieutenant mistakes their break-in for the revolution, does the audience realize that this Dortmunder has the face of a screen idol and the flop sweat of a shlimazl, a man whose charisma is not an asset when it makes people think he knows what he's doing. "I've got no choice," he says doggedly of the eponymous diamond which he did at least once successfully steal, whence all their troubles began. "I'm not superstitious and I don't believe in jinxes, but that stone's jinxed me and it won't let go. I've been damn near bitten, shot at, peed on, and robbed, and worse is going to happen before it's done. So I'm taking my stand. I'm going all the way. Either I get it, or it gets me." When he acquires an incipient ulcer at the top of the second act, who's surprised? He glumly chews antacids as one of his meticulously premeditated schemes trips over its own shoelaces yet again. It may be the only time Redford played so far against his stardom, but he makes such a gorgeous loser with that tousle of coin-gold hair and an ever more disbelieving look in the matinée blue of his eyes, the Zeppo of his quartet of thieves who only looks like the normal one and no slouch in a stack of character actors from Moses Gunn and Zero Mostel through Lee Wallace and even a bit-part Christopher Guest, not to mention George Segal by whom he is characteristically almost run into a chain-link fence, trying to collect him from his latest stint upstate in a hot car with too many accessories. "Not that you're not the best, but a layman might wonder why you're all the time in jail." Harry Bellaver figured in so many noirs of the '40's and '50's, why should he not have retired to run a dive bar on Amsterdam Avenue patronized by exactly the kind of never-the-luck lowlifes he might once have played? The photography by Ed Brown goes on the list of great snapshots of New York, the screenplay by William Goldman is motor-mouthed quotable, the score by Quincy Jones never sounds cooler than when the characters it accompanies are failing their wisdom checks at land speed. Watching it as part of a Peter Yates crime trilogy between Bullitt (1968) and The Friends of Eddie Coyle (1973) may induce whiplash. It may not be major Redford, but it is beloved Redford of mine, and worthwhile weirdness to watch in his memory. This stand brought to you by my jinxed backers at Patreon.Current Music: Antler Joe and the Accidents, "Words"
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Ah yes, one of the three or four times a year I remember I have a Dreamwidth.
Hello creator, and thank you for creating for me! I will enjoy whatever you make, I promise; if I have more ideas for one fandom than another, it has nothing to do with how much I love them. I only pick fandoms I will be thrilled with. :D
Overall I have asked for treats, not tricks, but tricks are fine for extra gifts. I will do my best to add some art prompts to this letter as well; I am bad at talking about and requesting art but I enjoy it, I promise. Alternate universes and canon divergences are fun; I like backstory, future fic and canon-set fic. Any rating is fine. You can get an idea of what I like from my other letters, but don't feel obligated to research me, heh.
Under the cut: Nimona, Scum Villain, The Untamed, Weiss Kreuz
( Read more... )
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The Young People review Michael Swanwick's debut Nebula finalist stories.
The Feast of Saint Janis & Ginungagap by Michael Swanwick
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If not friend, why friend-shaped?
Spread Me by Sarah Gailey
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100 lair entries in two succinct pages apiece, from Aboleth's Sunken Lair to Wyvern's Nest.
Bundle of Holding: Dread Laironomicon
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Posted by Lute https://www.transformativeworks.org/updates-to-no-fandom-additional-tags-september-2025/ https://www.transformativeworks.org/?p=268037 AO3 Tag Wranglers continue to test processes for wrangling canonical additional tags (tags that appear in the auto-complete) which don’t belong to any particular fandom (also known as “No Fandom” tags). This post will provide an overview of some of these upcoming changes.
In this round of updates, we continued a method which streamlines creation of new canonical tags, prioritizing more straightforward updates which would have less discussion compared to renaming current canonical tags or creating new canonical tags which touch on more complex topics. This method also reviews new tags on a regular basis, so check back on AO3 News for periodic “No Fandom” tag announcements.
None of these updates change the tags users have added to works. If a user-created tag is considered to have the same meaning as a new canonical, it will be made a synonym of one of these newly created canonical tags, and works with that user-created tag will appear when the canonical tag is selected.
In short, these changes only affect which tags appear in AO3’s auto-complete and filters. You can and should continue to tag your works however you prefer.
New Canonicals
The following concepts have been made new canonical tags:
In Conclusion
While all these new tags have already been made canonical, we are still working on implementing changes and connecting relevant tags, so it’ll be some time before these updates are complete. We thank you in advance for your patience!
While we won’t be announcing every change we make to No Fandom canonical tags, you can expect similar updates in the future on the tags we believe will most affect users. If you’re interested in the changes we’ll be making, you can continue to check AO3 News or follow us on Bluesky @wranglers.archiveofourown.org or Tumblr @ao3org for future announcements.
You can also read previous updates on “No Fandom” tags as well as other wrangling updates, linked below:
Got Questions?
For more information about AO3’s tag system, check out our Tags FAQ.
In addition to providing technical help, AO3 Support also handles requests related to how tags are sorted and connected. If you have questions about specific tags, which were first used over a month ago and are unrelated to any of the new canonical tags listed above, please contact Support instead of leaving a comment on this post.
Lastly, as mentioned above, we’re still working on connecting relevant user-created tags to these new canonicals. If you have questions about specific tags which should be connected to these new canonicals, please refrain from contacting Support about them until at least two months from now. https://www.transformativeworks.org/updates-to-no-fandom-additional-tags-september-2025/ https://www.transformativeworks.org/?p=268037
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2014: Creationism is banned in British schools, the first same sex marriages in the UK are conducted, and Canadian Mark Carney helps the UK navigate challenging times. What ever happened to Carney, anyway?
Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 72 Which 2014 Clarke Award Finalists Have You Read?
View AnswersAncillary Justice by Ann Leckie
69 (95.8%) God's War by Kameron Hurley
25 (34.7%) Nexus by Ramez Naam
10 (13.9%) The Adjacent by Christopher Priest
5 (6.9%) The Disestablishment of Paradise by Phillip Mann
1 (1.4%) The Machine by James Smythe
3 (4.2%)
Bold for have read, italic for intend to read, underline for never heard of it.
Which 2014 Clarke Award Finalists Have You Read?
Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie
God's War by Kameron Hurley
Nexus by Ramez Naam
The Adjacent by Christopher Priest
The Disestablishment of Paradise by Phillip Mann
The Machine by James Smythe
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For anyone who may be Dark Souls-curious, here is a very long video essay of which I've only watched part (because I'm trying to limit spoilers) and of which I mainly want to rec part -- the first 30 mins or so, where the essayist discusses something that the mythology about the game’s supposed uber-difficulty tends to obscure, namely the gorgeous, generous array of different tools and options that it gives you for engaging with its difficulties, and how it tries to teach you to use them:
I think this is some of the stuff that prompted me to declaim “Dark Souls loves me and wants me to be happy.”
The game is difficult, it is intended to be difficult (and I still don't know if, for me, it will at some point be insuperably difficult), and progressing and learning through difficulty and failure is the core gameplay loop. As mentioned, it took me a total of seven hours to beat the most recent boss, the Capra Demon. I am currently camped out in the Depths, where I intermittently fall through holes and get cursed by basilisks. I recently got invaded for the first time, by a player who watched as I ran directly under a slime and got enveloped, facepalmed*, and then waited politely while I extricated myself before murdering me**.
And yet my major feeling at this particular moment is of being spoiled (in the pampered sense, not the knowledge sense): I have too many good weapons to try (my beloved halberd, now upgraded to +7, a Balder Side Sword -- a rare and coveted drop -- and a Black Knight Sword)! I'm having to actively try not to over-level! I have so many upgrade materials! I have the world's largest stockpile of charcoal pine resin (purchased on my endless boss runs back to the Capra Demon, so I'd spend any souls I was carrying and not distract myself with losing or trying to retrieve them) so I can make my weapons burst into flame any time I want! I have opened the latest incredibly-convenient shortcut! There's a handy new merchant just before the next boss! I am holding an armful of presents and Dark Souls keeps trying to pile more on top!
{*I went off immediately afterwards to Google "dark souls how to facepalm”, but it looks like you have to join the Forest Hunter covenant to learn that emote and I have other plans. Still tempted, though.}
{**I had expected to loathe being invaded — and had initially planned to play offline mainly to avoid that, but did not for reasons which need to be a different post — but in the event, it was brief, non-inconveniencing, and actually pretty funny.}
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So, yesterday, the wheelchair ramp on the Rt 8 bus I was on developed a bug. Or the system that detects if it is deployed did. The ramp retracted correctly but the bus thought it had not, and would not move.
Ha ha! I pick my routes to maximize alternatives in case of break-downs. I just disembarked and talked over to the LRT. Which, I discovered, was having a minor service delay.
My contingency plans can handle two delays, but not three. Good for me there were just the two. It did mean I was only a little early for work.
On the way home, just after I disembarked from the LRT, an SUV cut the LRT off so the SUV could reach the parking lot ten seconds earlier. If the train had not stopped, I'd have had to stick around, both as a witness and because the accident would blocked the sidewalk between me and the stop I needed to get to.
Less than five minutes after the LRT near-miss, three SUVs tried to turn into the same lane at the same time. I don't think they hit each other but there was a short discussion between the drivers before they all left. I'd have had to stick around for that as well, because it would have blocked the route my bus uses.
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Bureau of Sabotage agent Jorj X. McKie is assigned a legal and ethical trap: a planet of victims, who, whether rescued or left to their impending doom, present a danger to the ConSentiency.
The Dosadi Experiment (ConSentiency, volume 2) by Frank Herbert
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I had not thought there were any meteor showers of consequence this month, but it seems that the swift pale streak between the telephone wires southwest of Cassiopeia belonged to the September Epsilon Perseids, so named despite their radiant in β Persei, the demon-star of Algol. I can hope it was not wildfire drift that accounted for the candle-tint of the half-moon, which was doing its autumnal trick of hanging like a lantern in the not yet leafless trees. The last of this summer's monarchs flew just before sunset, the twenty-second of her name.Current Music: Suzanne Vega, "Left of Center"
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Posted by therealmorticia https://www.transformativeworks.org/otw-guest-post-fandoms-in-the-classroom/ https://www.transformativeworks.org/?p=267984 Every month the OTW hosts guest posts on our OTW News accounts to provide an outside perspective on the OTW or aspects of fandom. These posts express each individual’s personal views and do not necessarily reflect the views of the OTW or constitute OTW policy.
Karis Jones, PhD (she/her) is an educator, literacy consultant, public humanities scholar, and community activist, as well as Assistant Professor of Secondary English Language Arts at Baylor University. She has published widely, including in the journal of Transformative Works and Culture, and won several scholarly awards from the American Educational Research Association.
Scott Storm, PhD (he/him) is an Assistant Professor of Literacy in the School of Education at the University at Albany, State University of New York. Scott is a former high school teacher with 15 years of experience designing, founding, and sustaining urban public schools; his work has appeared in Journal of Literacy Research, Literacy Research: Theory, Method, and Practice, Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, and English Teaching Practice & Critique, among others.
Today, Dr. Karis Jones and Dr. Scott Storm, authors of the book Fandoms in the Classroom: A Social Justice Approach to Transforming Literacy Learning—join us to talk about how bringing fandom into the classroom can turn student passion into real learning.
How did you first find out about fandom and fanworks?
As fans of fantasy and science fiction genres ourselves, we have long been interested in fandoms and fan cultures. Even as teens, we wrote our own creative fanworks inspired by the stories that we loved. Once we became teachers, we noticed that our students had incredible passionate intensities around the fandoms that they loved. Moreover, they were participants in fan cultures, reading memes, analyzing discourse, and writing fanfiction. As English language arts teachers, we noticed that students were not only excited about participating in fandoms, but also that these were spaces of rich literacy learning. For example, students posting their original writing online often revised their stories based on feedback from the community in order to strengthen the writing and deepen connections. Reflecting on how important fandoms had been to us and in seeing how important fandoms were to our students, we knew that we had to think about how to make school a place that could support these passionate student interests for literacy learning.
Your book highlights how bringing fandoms into the classroom can shift the focus toward student experiences and interests. How does this approach support a more student-centered form of pedagogy, and what kinds of transformations have you seen as a result?
Many English teachers create lectures focused on the teacher’s interpretations of often-read canonical literature. This puts the thrust of intellectual work on teachers. However, it is students who need to be doing the learning and who should therefore do much more of the daily intellectual work of the classroom. We use students’ interests in fandoms in order to center student expertise. Students come with much knowledge about how the texts that they love were created and about some of the different ways to interpret those texts. We have students lead inquiry-based discussions with their peers to dig even deeper into these texts. Then they build off these discussions by reading extensively, writing analytic papers, and presenting their work to the local community. As students engage with fandoms they love, we note when they are using literary elements to create deeper interpretations. For example, sometimes a student will trace the metaphors or characterization in a fandom but might not use those exact words to do so. During student-led class discussions, we sit in the circle with students and chime in when they are using an analytic tool and that literary scholars have given a special name like metaphor, hyperbole, archetypes, or tropes. In this way, over a few weeks, we build a large set of analytic tools that students use to make sense of texts. Thus, throughout all the discussion, reading, and writing that students are doing in our classes, students are learning deeply because it is the students who are doing the crux of the intellectual work.
One of the intriguing ideas in your book is the reframing of academic disciplines as fandoms. How might this way of thinking open up new possibilities for teaching across different disciplines?
In Chapter 6 “Imagining Academic Disciplines as Fandoms,” we give examples of ways that teachers can put their academic disciplines in conversation with media fandoms. This helps students navigate across disciplinary practices, which may at first feel distant or strange, by comparing them with media fandom practices, which may feel more familiar. Guiding youth to compare communities and think through ways to improve or remix their practices can be a productive pathway for making sense of the academic disciplines. For example, teachers can take up a participatory fandom lens to help youth understand disciplinary conversations happening on social media (e.g. the controversy around Charlotte the Stingray’s pregnancy in March 2024), or schools can take up fandom formats like conventions to help youth dialogue around current disciplinary topics (e.g. a school academic history conference including symposium panels moderated by historians at local universities).
Integrating fandom into the classroom sounds exciting—but we know it’s not always straightforward. From your perspective, what are some of the challenges educators face when trying to incorporate fandom-based practices in their teaching?
As educators who have been teaching with fandoms for a long time, we absolutely understand the challenges. In Chapter 8 “Tackling Barriers to Fandom-Based Teaching,” we walk readers through a series of questions that educators have asked us about this kind of work. We give strategies for advocating with one’s administration, even in light of standardized curricula. We talk about ways that educators can bring fandom media into classroom spaces even if they are not familiar with those fandoms themselves. We consider how to balance issues of mature content with issues of censorship. We guide readers through issues of student resistance to publishing their work in fandom communities. We talk readers through suggestions of ways to engage youth with local conventions — or ways to create your own!
How did you hear about the OTW and what do you see its role as?
We are obsessed with OTW! This may not be surprising, but we first encountered OTW as fanfiction readers. We love how this platform is built for fans by fans, and have a special appreciation of how it is organized in a bottom-up way that lifts up fan-created genres (e.g. Magnifico & Jones, 2025). Additionally, Karis is a big fan of Naomi Novik’s writing. At a local author talk, she learned more about Novik’s role in the platform’s founding. This led her to explore current academic work on fandoms in the JTWC. Later, Karis went on to publish her own work in the JTWC. We hope that new trajectories of media and fandom studies continue to remain in close conversation with the field of education, engaging in interdisciplinary conversation and research, because we believe this strengthens our understanding of fandoms and their implications across fields.
What fandom things have inspired you the most?
We have been most inspired by fan acts that move the world toward justice. We are excited by fandoms that bring attention to issues of representation and work to make sure that all kinds of people are represented in creative and fanworks. We love fandoms that think about how to make communities more inclusive and are drawn to fan communities that focus on opening doors for everyone to participate instead of being gatekeepers who want to limit fandoms to only the most diehard fans or exclude groups of people from participating. What inspires us most is when fandoms can be spaces that bring people together in order to follow their passions, and perhaps even change the world.
We encourage suggestions from fans for future guest posts, so contact us if you have someone in mind! Or if you’d like, you can check out earlier guest posts. https://www.transformativeworks.org/otw-guest-post-fandoms-in-the-classroom/ https://www.transformativeworks.org/?p=267984
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