{"title":"Using Riveter to map gendered power dynamics in Hades/Persephone fan fiction","authors":"Julia Neugarten","doi":"10.3983/twc.2025.2643","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3983/twc.2025.2643","url":null,"abstract":"I examine the affordances and limitations of Riveter, an NLP-pipeline, for analyzing dynamics of power and agency in fan fiction. Riveter detects entities in a text, links together references to the same entity, parses grammatical relationship between entities, and assigns entities lexicon-based scores reflecting their levels of power and agency. I take the gendered dynamics of the Hades/Persephone relationship from Greek mythology fandom as a case study, using a corpus of fan fiction from Archive of Our Own. I also use Riveter to assign aggregate power and agency scores to all entities referred to with the same gendered pronouns in fan fiction. I evaluate Riveter's performance by manually annotating a single fan fiction text. The tool overlooks some of the implicit ways characters negotiate power and misses many of the ways power and agency are represented, reconfigured, and negotiated. However, because of its ease and transparency of use and its capacity to examine textual relations at a large scale, Riveter is useful for mapping (gendered) character dynamics in fan fiction, especially when combined with more fine-grained methods such as selected close readings.","PeriodicalId":230010,"journal":{"name":"Transformative Works and Cultures","volume":"46 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2025-09-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://journal.transformativeworks.org/index.php/twc/article/download/2643/3329","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147889240","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Irish Shakespeare performance (faraway, so close!)","authors":"Emer McHugh","doi":"10.3983/twc.2024.2585","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3983/twc.2024.2585","url":null,"abstract":"I use Irish Shakespeare performance as a locus to interrogate how we negotiate and maintain cultural proximities and anxieties about what we term real, authentic Shakespeare in performance. Through archival research, I use Druid Theatre Company's early productions of Shakespeare plays—Much Ado About Nothing (1980–81) and As You Like It (1999)—to show how Irish Shakespeare performance occupies a nebulous position between traditionalism and iconoclasm, as well as between a desire to adhere to and to break a specific mold of performance tradition.","PeriodicalId":230010,"journal":{"name":"Transformative Works and Cultures","volume":"43 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-09-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147885751","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The fading of the elves: Techno-volunteerism and the disappearance of Tolkien fan fiction archives","authors":"Dawn Walls-Thumma","doi":"10.3983/twc.2024.2467","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3983/twc.2024.2467","url":null,"abstract":"The online Tolkien fandom has historically supported dozens of fan-run community fan fiction archives, but recent years have seen a sudden loss of most of those remaining. While platform preferences account for some loss, eroding technology and the invisibility of archivists' and developers' work are areas that can be addressed to preserve existing fan cultures.","PeriodicalId":230010,"journal":{"name":"Transformative Works and Cultures","volume":"11 18","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-03-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140244444","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"\"Vidding: A history\" by Francesca Coppa","authors":"Sebastian F. K. Svegaard","doi":"10.3983/twc.2024.2397","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3983/twc.2024.2397","url":null,"abstract":"Francesca Coppa, Vidding: A History. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2022, paperback $29.95 (257 pp) ISBN 978-0-472-03852-7; ePub/pdf/online free (257 pp) ISBN 978-0-472-90259-0.","PeriodicalId":230010,"journal":{"name":"Transformative Works and Cultures","volume":"25 2","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-03-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140242276","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Discord as a fandom platform: Locating a new playground","authors":"Welmoed Fenna Wagenaar","doi":"10.3983/twc.2024.2473","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3983/twc.2024.2473","url":null,"abstract":"The VoIP and instant messaging platform Discord has seen immense user growth over the past few years, including among fans involved with transformative works. Analyzing Discord from a framework of polymedia and play provides new insights into what Discord affords these fans and how they navigate the platform as part of their fan practices. It shows how the platform has been adopted and adapted in ways that facilitate fan play and allow for play moods to be created, strengthened, or maintained. Discord provides a suitable playground for fans, because it allows fans to negotiate closed online spaces where they can play freely, without outside disruption. These spaces can be organized in ways that distinguish between play and nonplay and maintain fannish principles of warning and consent. In addition, Discord provides an extra dimension to the experience of taking part in fan fiction exchanges, creating a compelling, collective mood in servers that people can continually come back to. Positioning this within a broader network of platforms and affordances that fans navigate shows how Discord fulfills particular needs and niches, especially with regard to Not Safe For Work material. More generally, this study provides a framework for understanding the reciprocal and dynamic relationships between users, affordances, rules, and structures in contemporary platform society.","PeriodicalId":230010,"journal":{"name":"Transformative Works and Cultures","volume":"6 3","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-03-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140243477","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Public versus private aca-fan identities and platforms: An academic dialogue","authors":"Yvonne Gonzales, Celeste Oon","doi":"10.3983/twc.2024.2565","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3983/twc.2024.2565","url":null,"abstract":"This conversation between Yvonne Gonzales and Celeste Oon examines the difference between two contrasting fan experiences and identities. Through an exploratory academic dialogue, the authors aim to start a discussion on the ways in which our online selves and our IRL selves interact to create unique identities as both fans and scholars across, between, and within social platforms.","PeriodicalId":230010,"journal":{"name":"Transformative Works and Cultures","volume":"18 12","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-03-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140244495","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"\"One day longer, one day stronger\": Online platforms, fan support and the 2023 WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes","authors":"Sabrina Mittermeier","doi":"10.3983/twc.2024.2609","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3983/twc.2024.2609","url":null,"abstract":"The 2023 WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes were widely supported by fans at fan events like conventions and on online platforms. I discuss how this opened up larger questions about the relevance of fan labor for the industry and blurred lines between creators and fans, and why scholars of fan studies (and beyond) are directly impacted by the strikes' outcome.","PeriodicalId":230010,"journal":{"name":"Transformative Works and Cultures","volume":"81 7","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-03-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140241402","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Using the Murdoch Mysteries fandom to examine the types of content fans share online","authors":"Sarah Binnie","doi":"10.3983/twc.2024.2399","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3983/twc.2024.2399","url":null,"abstract":"For many fans, much (if not all) of their fan behavior is displayed online, across a number of social media platforms through which they can interact and engage with each other and with the subjects of their fandom. This includes not only fan works such as fan fiction and fan art but also behaviors consistent with simply existing as a fan in an online space. The fandom of Murdoch Mysteries (2008–), a Canadian murder mystery TV show, demonstrates how a single fandom can manifest in multiple different ways across different platforms. Fans appear to make specific decisions about how they are willing to engage with their fandom and where.","PeriodicalId":230010,"journal":{"name":"Transformative Works and Cultures","volume":"77 9","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-03-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140241733","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"\"It's not your tumblr\": Commentary-style tagging practices in fandom communities","authors":"Kimberly Kennedy","doi":"10.3983/twc.2024.2475","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3983/twc.2024.2475","url":null,"abstract":"Tagging practices on online platforms prioritize descriptive elements that contribute to information discovery. As a secondary tagging practice, commentary tags expand the functionality of online tagging to incorporate creative and expressive elements that initially seem to contribute little to information discovery systems. These tags have gained popularity, particularly within online fan communities and their preferred platforms, such as the social media blogging site Tumblr. Although popularized on Tumblr, commentary-style tags have become a recognizable fandom practice across platforms that host fan communities, including the fan work repository platform Archive of Our Own. Examining fan use of commentary tags provides insight into how such tagging practices could broaden information discovery to incorporate elements of creator expression and deepen user engagement with information resources.","PeriodicalId":230010,"journal":{"name":"Transformative Works and Cultures","volume":"10 12","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-03-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140242080","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Fandom image-making and the fan gaze in transnational K-pop fan cam culture","authors":"Muxin Zhang","doi":"10.3983/twc.2024.2463","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3983/twc.2024.2463","url":null,"abstract":"During the 2020 Black Lives Matter movement, K-pop Twitter community used fan cams as a tool to hijack racist Twitter hashtags and sought to reinvent the image of K-pop fans as progressive racism fighters. Situating the phenomenon within the fan cam's history of commercialization in South Korea reveals a transnational link between K-pop fan communities in South Korea and North America and shows how it can be related to discussions on transcultural fandom.","PeriodicalId":230010,"journal":{"name":"Transformative Works and Cultures","volume":"19 5","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-03-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140242716","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}