Fanfic Forensics

'Fanfic Forensics' is Nele Noppe's Ph.D project at the Japanese Studies department of the Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium. The aim of the project is to conduct a semiotic comparison of narrative and visual elements occurring in Japanese and English-language fanwork derived from the same original work ('Harry Potter'). I focus on fanwork dealing with Severus Snape, because this character appears to inspire the most diverse and interesting textual and visual fan interpretations. Most posts here are mirrored from my main project website.

Moar kittehs!

During the following month I will translate two manga ('One Piece' 13 and '20th Century Boys' 15) and an academic article, mastermind a week of various cultural and academic activities involving a couple of hundred people from six different countries (including two dozen university professors) causing mayhem in about five different locations at the same time, finish pics for Snapely Holidays and Snarry Holidays whose designs are getting more complicated by the day, finish two abstracts, prepare a junior class on Japanese culture every week, make an appearance at a con, and select the final fanfic samples for my research from thousands of candidates. One or two instances of relaxed social interaction with friends are also scheduled. Judging from the strange bobbles growing on the inside of my elbows and knees, I should probably squeeze in "defeat bubonic plague" sometime this week. I wonder if it's a good thing when the to-do list is so absurd that it just makes you laugh and laugh and laugh and want to read PhD Comics instead of worry.

In other news, the number of new undergrads starting Japanese Studies at my university has gone up by forty percent since last year. Forty percent. It's very nice to know we're popular and the new group seems to contain a lot of interesting people, but crazy increase in student numbers + no increase whatsoever in staff numbers = frayed tempers. Hats off to the Japanese language teachers who are bravely coping with the worst of the extra workload.

Notes: Untitled, based on eeyore9990's hilarious Snarry Games entry Bite Me!. Go read that story now.
Rating: PG
Warnings: none
Disclaimer: Not my characters or story.

Harry grasped the edge of the table so hard his knuckles turned white. He was sure Snape wasn't aware of how his words sounded, but God, it was like porn poured into his ears.

( Taking a wild guess, I'd say he's aware of it )

All right. I'd been meaning to do a write-up of all the ethics questions relevant to my research project for quite a while, but the Surveyfail trainwreck suddenly makes the need for a write-up feel a lot more pressing. Fortunately, others have written quite extensively on how to study fandom while not being offensive and using a sound methodology. See, to name just a couple, theorynut, Kristina Busse's post on research ethics, and of course the AOIR guide. I try to follow these good examples, and the rest of this text explains how, in long and excruciating detail. I'll be tacking a link to this at the top of my main research site and its LiveJournal and InsaneJournal mirrors.

( Did I mention this is really, really long? )

PG, Snarry. Based on this giggle-worthy drabble by alisanne . Not mine, etc etc.

( Strip gobstones under cut )

Originally published at Academic FFF. You can comment here or there.

I'm still working through the batch of over a hundred new Snape-as-a-main-character Harry Potter dojinshi I bought in July, but once more, it seems all of them are yaoi. Now, I didn't do this on purpose. Really. I specifically went looking for het HP dojinshi with Snape in them in Toranoana and other shops that cater to a male clientele, because I know there are het HP dojinshi out there. I've seen them on the net. They weren't in the shops. Not anymore, the friendly sales clerks said. The female-oriented shops still had shelves and shelves of HP dojinshi, the vast majority of them yaoi.

( Read more... )

Originally published at Academic FFF. You can comment here or there.

In 2015, after Charles Xavier confesses to having used his powers to attack all mutants and then all other humans, Peter Parker writes an op-ed in the New York Times on the mutant "problem".

( Read more... )

The Snarry Games have started posting, which is productivity-impairing yet so many kinds of awesome. And look, I made a drawble for the Opening Games free-for-all -'Graveyard Book' Snarry :)

Reading notes on Slightly Out of Character: Shonen Epics, Doujinshi and Japanese Concepts of Masculinity by Megan Harrell.
( Read more... )

“We completely understand the public’s concern about futuristic robots feeding on the human population, but that is not our mission", or so says a company that's developing biomass-eating robots with funding from the Pentagon.

The data sets that (will) contain all info extracted from dojinshi and fanfic samples are now publicly available; updates made to them will show up at once. These sets will be the basis for a comparison of Japanese and English-language fanworks later on. Links are in the right-hand menu on the main site.

The data sets are being compiled using Zoho Creator, a spiffy online database application that's easy to use and tweak for non-experts. It also has a good mobile interface, allowing ridiculously easy data input while on the go. ( Read more... )

Via @tinkerbill on Twitter: an organization in Wisconsin is trying to remove a book about a gay teenager from a library and literally burn it, on the grounds that it is "explicitly vulgar, racial [sic] and anti-Christian". Impressive. These concerned citizens clearly have a great deal of experience at speaking out against the racialiminosity that still pervades our culture.

Elsewhere, Avalon's Willow describes how total ignorance about other cultures causes people to completely miss instances of whitewashing and other forms of racism.( Read more... )

'Lunch and other obscenities' is a delightful Star Trek reboot fic that focuses on how roommates Uhura and Gaila learn to cope with their rather substantial cultural differences. Gaila's portrayal feels incredibly sympathetic and real. She's outgoing, confident, and looks forward to living in a society that's entirely new to her. Soon, the realities of dealing with a set of vastly different customs get to her, and she becomes terribly lonely until she and Uhura figure out how to respect each other.

( Read more... )

Two years after signing up and then losing interest after a day or so, I finally found a use for Twitter -recording all the small, maybe-insignificant, not-thought-through-in-the-slightest research ideas that come dropping out of the sky every day but are way to insignificant to blog about. I can never seem to blog about anything unless I have a lot of free time and manage to convince myself that I can say something intelligent and relevant about the topic at hand, circumstances that seem to coincide relatively rarely. Anyone interested in hearing five to ten random thoughts of dubious relevancy about Harry Potter dojinshi per day is very welcome to follow me here.

I also did a partial overhaul of the main website. ( Read more... )

Originally published at Academic FFF. You can comment here or there.

Cross-posted from the Let's Manga blog. Online store J-List is offering English and French translations of dojinshi by Linda Project (link definitely not safe for work), a circle famous for erotic works featuring, among others, characters from Bleach and Street Fighter.

( Read more... )

Originally published at Academic FFF. You can comment here or there.

Late last year I came across a call for papers on fan culture from the most excellent anime and manga research journal Mechademia. It was a bit early in the project for paper writing, but I couldn't resist and wrote up my current theoretical framework and preliminary results on Harry Potter dojinshi and fanfic anyway.

( Read more... )

Had two interesting discussions today, one extremely vexing exchange about depictions of women in the media and another far more constructive talk about race (on the ways in which white Japanese Studies researchers may be influenced by their white privilege while studying the Japanese people). Since I'm busy getting a much-needed education about both feminism and racism right now, I ended up revisiting Audre Lorde's "The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House" speech. It's still mind-blowing and I still can't believe I managed to spend so many years in so-called 'higher education' without ever being introduced to anything even remotely like it. The part that speaks to me the most today:

Women of today are still being called upon to stretch across the gap of male ignorance, and to educate men as to our existence and our needs. This is an old and primary tool of all oppressors to keep the oppressed occupied with the master’s concerns.

Yes. This. This.

Drawn for rakina and previously posted in snarry_swap.

Title: One for the birds, two for the wolves
Pairing: Snarry
Rating: PG-13 for a tiny bit of gore
Warning(s): blood, but not Harry's or Snape's
A/N: Illustration for the opening scene of Rakina's "Into the Green". The moment -the very incoherent and drawn-out moment, in this piece- when the flying you-know-what gets its talons into you-know-who, causing lots of flying blood and shocking our heroes. Picture makes no sense whatsoever if you haven't read the story. Go! Read!
( Large image behind the cut )

Couldn't concentrate on work and ended up reading stuff on fandom_wank all day long. Now now, FW is very educational as well as amusing. Maybe I'd spend less time chewing on my own toes if I wondered "How would this look on FW?" every time I was gearing up to say/do something that might be vaguely significant.

I've spent a lot of time following the racefail debate and realizing how totally clueless I am on pretty much every topic it touches upon. I'm going to go do my homework and not mention this again until I know what I'm talking about. Check it out if you haven't heard of it. rydra_wong has tons of relevant links. Combing through Ithiliana's posts throughout the last few weeks may be a good starting point too -her thoughts on the debate are pretty helpful for understanding what's going on.

And I finally got around to changing my icon; the old one contained an image from a dojinshi, and I kept telling myself I was going to try and contact whoever drew it but never actually did. Bad stupid lazy bad. The crappy new icon's barely legible, but at least ethically created. A big thank you to Anne Rice for her inspiring words of wisdom.