Bizarre and exciting thing

[birdsofshore]

Somebody at the University of Western Ontario has written an academic paper about young women who read explicit fiction online and they analysed one of my stories as an example. She presented it last year at a conference and the abstract is online and you can read it here if you like:  Reading for Alternatives: The Experiences of Young Women Who Read Sexuality-Themed Fiction Online. But I'd really love to read the whole thing! The paper sounds so interesting and talks about "how narratives of sexuality found in YA Literature have informed the sexual lives of young women readers."

I could read about that for days, but I completely admit the part that I most want to see is this:

"It includes a textual analysis of a piece of Harry Potter slash fanfiction to exemplify key differences and similarities between fanfiction and published YA Literature in regards to content, form, theme, language, and authorship."

And the footnotes reveal that this 'piece of slash' is MY FIC, HUNGRY:  "Hungry, a fanfiction short story written by birdsofshore on AO3. Set in the world of J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter, this canon-divergent short story spins a tale of romance between Harry Potter and his nemesis Draco Malfoy that blossoms into a sex-positive discovery of their mutual sexual attraction to one another. The term “slash” refers to texts that have been queered by depicting homoerotic relationships between characters (Duggan, 2017)."

I'M IN A FOOTNOTE!!! It's very exciting. I threw dignity to the winds and emailed the author, Davin Helkenberg, and asked if she would consider sharing the paper with me, but I didn't hear anything back yet. She may be moving house to get away from the weird stalker person, I dunno. Or possibly snowed in and busy trying to dig her way out. But if anyone knows Davin, please say HIIIIIIIII, and tell her I'm just excited to read what she wrote. It's quite possible she said my fic was crap, hah, which is why she doesn't want me to see it. I don't care, I'm still excited. I'M IN A FOOTNOTE.

Comments

[writcraft]

I love this!!! Also the paper sounds right up my street. Just to echo comments above it wouldn't be typical to contact the author for permission just as you wouldn't contact a published author for permission to cite their work as it falls under the 'fair use' exemptions in most jurisdictions. When I have quoted fanfic in my studies I tend to contact the authors but that's because I'm in a fortunate position of not minding sharing my RL identity with authors and being active in multiple fandoms - like it might be odd to you if I quoted your work and didn't ask but it's more out of respect for our friendship than a research ethics point, I guess. Fandom ethics! I have actually been eager to contact one of the poets I'm looking at for my PhD and have been discouraged to do so, as it adds a different question of ethics to my research (data collection, engaging with actual humans and so on) that isn't required for the work I'm doing. I'm sure that wouldn't be an issue in terms of you contacting them now the paper has been published, but more another reason why they might not have done so.

I really hope you do hear back and please do share the paper with me when you do as I would be interested to read from an academic perspective too.

[birdsofshore]

Oh, I completely get that, and I didn't mind at all that she didn't ask permission. I would love to hear from her, though! I hadn't thought of it adding an extra dimension to the ethics issue while she was researching. And yes I will definitely share if I hear anything!