In this chapter, I explore the concept of paratext as it occurs on and around fanfiction, and its ensuing impact upon perceived meaning. Maria Lindgren Leavenworth, in her article “The Paratext of Fan Fiction,” (Leavenworth, 2015) builds upon the work of the French literary theorist Gérard Genette to explore the way that paratextual content includes both the elements immediately adjacent to/surrounding fanfiction – things like comments, tags, author notes
27 (commonly shortened to A/N or A/Ns) – as well as fan-contributed content, like popular fanart or podfics, comments posted directly on the AO3 stories, and critical feedback in blogs. Genette believed that paratextual elements could inform the reading of the texts themselves, since readers often first encounter and read the paratext prior to tackling the texts themselves.
Wendymarlowe’s story “Dear John” was, in the author’s words, “a bit of an
experiment,” written as a hybrid epistolary series of sixty-four chapters that included everything from text message exchanges to emails to instant messages between characters, all updated in
“real time” and taking place between November of 2014 and February of 2015. The story quickly gained a massive following – to date, “Dear John” has over 6500 comments and is among the top ten most-commented-upon stories on AO3 – and has generated hundreds of fan- created blog postings on Tumblr. Immediately following the publication of “Dear John,”
Wendymarlowe published a series of companion stories, each incorporating a more traditional third-person narrative structure to “fill in” gaps in the epistolary about the encounters between Watson and Sherlock at the culmination of “Dear John” (2015). These subsequent stories also met with a tremendous amount of fan participation, with nearly 700 comments posted on one story alone (which only consisted of three chapters, a fraction as many as in the original work) and several Tumblr postings and fan creations. Wendymarlowe’s story is notable here because of how fervent fans were in pleading with the author – via comments as well as blog posts
contesting what they saw as undertones of dub-con and non-con in an otherwise consensual love story. Emblematic of these concerns are the words of Cupid, who in a February 9, 2015 posting to her blog (in between one update to Wendymarlowe’s sequel and another) discusses the experience of simultaneously feeling like they are entitled to have and voice and opinion on the texts while still acknowledging that the author has “the final say.”
28 This chapter explores the relationship between the original fanfiction and its epi- and paratextual complements, as well as the way those components shaped and inspired further transformations of the text (via the “fixit” and subsequent fan creations inspired by
Wendymarlowe’s original text). Here, I identify both the importance and frequency of fan engagement with fan-created texts, up to and including fans having a sense of agency in determining how authors craft their stories; while “Dear John” and “The Apology” are perhaps some of the most prominent recent examples of this, the phenomenon of fan critique and engagement is an altogether frequent one.
Chapter 2: Genderbending in The Hobbit
As discussed above, the concept of “genderswapping” and “genderbending” are hardly new to literature – gender play and transformation have a long history in science fiction and other genres, as well as that early treatment of Sherlock by Rex Stout. This chapter will draw on scholarship on gender, trans identities and experiences, and queer theory, as well as the limited work already available on “genderswap” fanfiction to examine the way genderswap has emerged within the Hobbit fandom. Within this community, authors regularly pen alternate telling of Tolkien’s story featuring characters whose genders and sexes diverge from those portrayed in the source material. Thus, Bilbo is often presented as “Bilba” or “Billa” (or sometimes even just
“Bilbo”), a cisgender, heterosexual hobbit who encounters her love interest in the character of Thorin Oakenshield. Interestingly, genderswap fanfiction in this genre overwhelmingly leans toward changing the sex of one character – Bilbo – and very rarely of his/her love interest, Thorin. For this reason, I will be exploring multiple texts from within the genre, including one each where Bilbo and Thorin have been “swapped.”
29 Discussions of “genderswap” necessarily must include attention to the presence – or absence – of trans experience and narratives. Commonly within genderswapped or genderbent fanfictions, characters will simply wake up one morning in a body sexed differently from that they had grown up in and identified with; much to his chagrin, Captain Kirk may learn that that strange fruit consumed on an alien planet actually causes one to “swap” sexes, while the titular character in Indiana Jones might be roused one morning to find the religious relic he’d obtained had the unexpected magical side effect of changing his sex. Within the Hobbit fandom,
however, characters are overwhelmingly cisgender, never experiencing the dysphoric sensations common in other genres where, through magic, technology, or fate, characters “wake up” or are transformed into other (usually binary) sexes. In genderswap fanfiction in The Hobbit,
characters overwhelmingly fit into one of two categories: they are either born identified as one of two binary genders, never experiencing any incongruousness between their embodiment and their gendered subjectivity; or they are actual transgender characters, who may – or may not – have undertaken various degrees of gender transition prior to or during the story portrayed in the text. While other genres do have transgender characters, I have yet to find any other fandom where the presence of “genderswap” is also marked by the relative absence of the “magical transformation” plot device; while these are present, they seem to be by far in the minority.
For this reason, I focus in this chapter on some of the Hobbit fan stories that feature or explicitly acknowledge transgender characters; here, I’ve analyzed one story for each major character (Bilbo and Thorin), as well as the paratext and epitext surrounding these stories. My interests are twofold: first, I have attempted to highlight the ways in which genderswap
fanfiction often ends up reinforcing normative gender roles and erasing trans identity, as well as how its parallel, trans fanfiction, encourages acceptance of and legitimizes those with
30 transgender life experiences and identities. Second, through comments and commentary
collected through both blog postings and comments, I have highlighted the impact that participation in this sub-genre can have, encouraging new understandings of gender and sex.
Chapter 3: Male Reproduction and Omegaverses in Sherlock and The Hobbit