Chapter 26 Further Reading

Foundational Fan Studies Scholarship

Busse, Kristina. "My Life Is a WIP on My LJ: Slashing the Slasher and the Reality of Celebrity Bodies." In Fan Fiction Studies Reader, edited by Karen Hellekson and Kristina Busse. University of Iowa Press, 2006. One of the foundational academic treatments of RPF, examining the relationship between celebrity bodies, fan desire, and the ethics of slash fiction about real performers. Busse's analysis of the ways celebrity personas are constructed as objects of fan desire is essential reading for understanding the persona/person distinction.

Hellekson, Karen and Kristina Busse, eds. The Fan Fiction Studies Reader. University of Iowa Press, 2006. The standard anthology for fan fiction scholarship. Multiple chapters address the ethics and aesthetics of various forms of fan creativity, including RPF. The introduction provides an excellent overview of the field's engagement with questions of appropriation, transformation, and ethical responsibility.

De Kosnik, Abigail. Rogue Archives: Digital Cultural Memory and Media Fandom. MIT Press, 2016. De Kosnik's analysis of fan fiction archives as sites of cultural memory is essential for understanding why the scale and permanence of RPF on AO3 matters differently than it did in the zine era. Chapter 4 addresses the archival dimensions of celebrity RPF.

Ethics and Celebrity Studies

Turner, Graeme. Understanding Celebrity. 2nd ed. Sage Publications, 2014. A standard text in celebrity studies that provides the framework for understanding how celebrity personas are manufactured, distributed, and consumed. Turner's analysis of the construction of celebrity identity is essential for evaluating the persona/person distinction.

Marshall, P. David. Celebrity and Power: Fame in Contemporary Culture. 2nd ed. University of Minnesota Press, 2014. Marshall's examination of how celebrity operates as a cultural form illuminates why celebrity personas become cultural texts available for fan engagement. His analysis of the relationship between celebrity, media, and fan consumption is directly relevant to the RPF debate.

Marwick, Alice. Status Update: Celebrity, Publicity, and Branding in the Social Media Age. Yale University Press, 2013. Marwick's analysis of how social media transforms celebrity practices is essential context for understanding how the "micro-celebrity" phenomenon and the collapse of public/private boundaries online affect the ethics of RPF. Her concept of "context collapse" is relevant to the disclosure norm's effectiveness.

K-Pop Fandom and the Idol Industry

Oh, Ingyu. "The Globalization of K-Pop: Korea's Place in the Global Music Industry." Korea Observer 44, no. 3 (2013): 389–409. An analysis of K-pop's global expansion that provides essential background for understanding how the idol industry's commercial model relates to the fan practices that RPF emerges from.

Choi, Jungbong and Roald Maliangkay, eds. K-Pop — The International Rise of the Korean Music Industry. Routledge, 2014. A collection of essays on K-pop's industrial and cultural dimensions. The chapters on fan labor, parasocial intimacy, and the idol "dating ban" are particularly relevant to RPF ethics in the K-pop context.

Kim, Gooyong. "From a Subculture to a Global Trend: The Social-Cultural Meaning of the Korean Wave." Korean Studies 39 (2015): 1–20. Situates the Hallyu wave in the context of Korean cultural export strategy, providing background for understanding why the idol industry's management of fan relationships — including shipping — is a deliberate strategy.

Queer Fan Studies

Lothian, Alexis. Old Futures: Speculative Fiction and Queer Possibility. New York University Press, 2018. Lothian's analysis of speculative fan creativity and queer possibility is directly relevant to the queer survival argument for same-sex slash RPF. Chapter 5 addresses the relationship between queer fan creativity and the media environments that suppress queer representation.

Bury, Rhiannon. Cyberspaces of Their Own: Female Fandoms Online. Peter Lang, 2005. An early study of online women's fan communities that documents the slash fiction tradition's role in creating spaces for queer imaginative life. Provides historical context for understanding why same-sex fan fiction has been, for many fans, a survival practice rather than merely a creative choice.

Willis, Ika. "Keeping Promises to Queer Children: Making Space (for Mary Sue) at Hogwarts." In Fan Fiction Studies Reader. Willis's analysis of fan fiction as queer survival strategy is frequently cited in discussions of the queer political dimensions of fan creative practices. Particularly relevant to section 26.7's analysis of same-sex RPF and queer politics.

Tushnet, Rebecca. "Legal Fictions: Copyright, Fan Fiction, and a New Common Law." Loyola of Los Angeles Entertainment Law Review 17 (1997): 651–686. The foundational legal analysis of fan fiction and copyright, which also addresses some of the right-of-publicity questions raised by RPF. Though dated, this article remains essential reading for understanding the legal landscape around fan creativity.

Gosselin, Abigail. "Protecting the Author? Fan Fiction, the Right of Publicity, and Moral Rights." Hofstra Law Review 40, no. 3 (2012): 801–838. Examines the right-of-publicity implications of fan fiction about real people, providing a legal complement to the ethical analysis in this chapter.

On Celebrity Grief and Parasocial Loss (Bridging to Chapter 27)

Sherrill, Martin. "Grief in the Age of Celebrity." Time, 2016. A journalistic analysis of how celebrity grief functions in contemporary media culture, useful as accessible reading alongside the scholarly sources.

Stever, Gayle S. "Fan Behavior and Lifespan Development Theory: Explaining Para-Social and Social Attachment to Celebrities." Journal of Adult Development 18, no. 1 (2011): 1–7. Stever's life-span approach to parasocial relationships provides context for understanding how different kinds of parasocial loss (celebrity death, retirement, end of series) affect fans differently across life stages. Bridges the material of Chapter 26 to Chapter 27.

Further Exploration

AO3 Tag Wrangling Wiki (Organization for Transformative Works). The OTW's public documentation of its tagging policies for RPF provides insight into how a fan institution has attempted to manage the ethical complexity of hosting both FPF and RPF. Available at the OTW's website.

Fan Studies Network (fanstudies.org). The professional organization for fan studies scholars provides access to conference papers, working papers, and bibliographies that represent current research, including recent work on RPF ethics in the K-pop context.