"Reading Too Much into It": Affective Excess, Extrapolative Reading, and Queer Temporalities in MCU Fanfiction

abstract: This article engages José Esteban Muñoz's concept of queer utopian temporality through the heuristic of fanfiction. Beginning with a discussion of accusations of "excessive reading" as a normalizing disciplinary tactic of media viewership, I problematize representations of LGBT+ experience in mainstream television and cinema through Muñoz's figuration of "straight time." I then turn to close readings of several fannish texts created in conversation with the 2014 Marvel Cinematic Universe film Captain America: The Winter Soldier (Anthony Russo and Joe Russo) to demonstrate fanfiction's utility in imagining queer utopian temporalities through the practice of "reading too much into" extant narrative media texts.