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Fangasm: Supernatural Fangirls (2013)

by Katherine Larsen(Favorite Author)

4.05 of 5 Votes: 2

ISBN

160938198X (ISBN13: 9781609381981)

languge

English

genre

Memoir & Autobiography

publisher

University Of Iowa Press

review 1: I have the same problem with this book as I did their more academic version "Fandom at the Crossroads." The authors seem to keep their focus on the more extreme fandom obsessions and fail at showing that they are not ashamed. Like other commenters, I can't help but feel they are trying to convince themselves rather than others that their actions are not shameful.Besides, what about the fans who just watch the show? Like my friend who got me hooked into Supernatural? What about fans like me who just watch the show and read fanfiction and applaud awesome fanart? Neither of us give more than a passing damn about meeting Jared and Jensen. Surely there are other fans who should have been represented in this book about fans.As for the fanfiction I read and archive, I think only ... moreone is heterosexual. There are a few with no pairings, but the vast majority are Wincest or Destiel. Dean in a same-sex relationship pretty much does it for me. There's also a dozen J2 fics. No shame here.
review 2: I've been very interested in fandoms for a long time, and writing about them often straddles this weird line of too academic or not academic enough. In this instance, I think I was expecting some things that, presumably, show up in their academic book. This was a book about fandom from the experience of two specific women (and written in a weird plural first person/third person hybrid). This was a tale of them meeting and talking to everyone on Supernatural they could, and hey good for them. But to what end? To ask about slash fanfiction? And to lead with this question? I'm not saying be ashamed of it. Heck, I've been reading fanfiction since Harry Potter message boards, but it's kind of an offensive first question. I'm not sure it achieved its goal of really providing an inside look at fandom as something to celebrate.For one, the inside look angle seemed to be specific to conventions, a very specific experience. While it was mentioned that Supernatural is an interesting beast in that its fandom started when the internet was established, this wasn't really explored beyond some passing mentions to livejournal, and focus on (wincest) slash, without really providing all that much context. While there were references to specific fan meet-ups at conventions or specific fans who did something really popular in the fandom, the pulse of the fandom itself was harder to find. Pertaining the community and joy of fandom, I felt like the book more focused on the negatives: internal and external shame, inter-fandom fighting, the weird fandom hierarchy that I somehow managed to not realize was a thing even with more than a decade of being on the outskirts of fandom (although I do have a signed copy of Mugglenet.com's first book. So, maybe I do get it.). And maybe this ties back to not really feeling like I had the bigger fandom picture. And maybe some of that, and its analysis, is in the more academic version of the book. less

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