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annabcarey's review
3.0
When I found this book on the library shelves, I was immediately interested and grabbed it to take along on my holiday. I was hoping for something that would add to my knowledge of online communities (one of my major interests). I do read fan-fiction on occasion and have been known to dabble in writing it, but I’ve never been part of the communities of writers and readers this book promised to investigate, and so I approached it as if I were planning to pop to the next town over and see what was different from my own.
I admit I wasn’t as engaged in this book as I had hoped to be when I picked it up. That said, I would have read this book for Ika Willis’ piece, “Keeping Promises to Queer Children: Making Space (for Mary Sue) at Hogwarts”, if nothing else. The essays on slash and OTP writing were thought-provoking, as well. Where I had a hard time maintaining interest was in the historical and mechanical treatments of the topic, which, to be fair, deviated from the reasons for my interest in the book in the first place.
Members of fanfic communities will appreciate that the authors are academics but also fanfic writers themselves, and that they make a point to avoid acting as if their treatments are purely academic. Essay authors refer to their own works, their OTPs and favorite genres, and discuss their own experiences with the communities they’re writing about.
I admit I wasn’t as engaged in this book as I had hoped to be when I picked it up. That said, I would have read this book for Ika Willis’ piece, “Keeping Promises to Queer Children: Making Space (for Mary Sue) at Hogwarts”, if nothing else. The essays on slash and OTP writing were thought-provoking, as well. Where I had a hard time maintaining interest was in the historical and mechanical treatments of the topic, which, to be fair, deviated from the reasons for my interest in the book in the first place.
Members of fanfic communities will appreciate that the authors are academics but also fanfic writers themselves, and that they make a point to avoid acting as if their treatments are purely academic. Essay authors refer to their own works, their OTPs and favorite genres, and discuss their own experiences with the communities they’re writing about.
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