LINKS USED IN LECTURES
- “Map of Online Communities”, XKCD #802, http://xkcd.com/802/
- Machinima (WoW) version of Avenue Q’s “The Internet is for Porn”
- Cassie Claire (2002) “The Very Secret Diary of Saruman the White”, http://www.ealasaid.com/misc/vsd/saruman.html
- Cosmopolitan sexting article
- Boston Magazine, “Game of Fear”
- Seanan McGuire, “Bodies of the Women Who Made Me”, https://www.tor.com/2018/04/09/the-bodies-of-the-girls-who-made-me-fanfic-and-the-modern-world/
LECTURE OVERHEAD GLOSSARIES
INTERNET CULTURE
- Katie Argyle and Rob Shields (1996) “Is there a body in the Net?” in Cultures of Internet: Virtual Spaces, Real Histories, Living Bodies, ed. Rob Shields. London: Sage.
- John Agar (2012) “Facebook ‘like’ outs gay Fremont man, costs him job at Library of Congress, lawsuit says”. MLive.com, http://www.mlive.com/news/grand-rapids/index.ssf/2012/08/facebook_like_outs_gay_fremont.html.
- Zack Beauchamp (2012) “Facebook Privacy Policy Outs LGBT Users. ThinkProgress, http://thinkprogress.org/lgbt/2012/10/15/1013701/facebook-privacy-policy-outs-lgbt-users-daughter-told-hell-awaits-you-pervert-by-father/
- Haya Bechar-Israeli, “From < Bonehead > to < cLoNehEAd >: nicknames, play and identity on Internet relay chat.” Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 1(2). http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol1/issue2/bechar.html. You may find other interesting articles in this journal, listed here.
- Rob Beschizza, “Facebook’s vague rulebook helps only the creeps.” BoingBoing, 19 September 2012, http://boingboing.net/2012/09/19/facebooks-vague-rules-only-h.html, accessed 20 March 2013
- John Brownlee, “This Creepy App Isn’t Just Stalking Women Without Their Knowledge, It’s A Wake-Up Call About Facebook Privacy.” Cult of Mac, 30 March 2012, http://www.cultofmac.com/157641/this-creepy-app-isnt-just-stalking-women-without-their-knowledge-its-a-wake-up-call-about-facebook-privacy/, accessed 20 March 2013
- Jacqui Cheng (2010) “More privacy headaches for Facebook: gay users outed to advertisers”, Ars Technica, http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2010/10/more-privacy-headaches-for-facebook-gay-users-outed-to-advertisers/, 201 October 2010
- Brenda Danet, Lucia Rudenberg and Yehudit Rosenbaum-Tamari (1998) “Hmmm … where’s that smoke coming from?: Writing, Play and Performance on Internet Relay Chat” in Network and Netplay: Virtual Groups on the Internet, ed. Sudweeks, McLaughlin and Rafaeli. Menlo Park: AAAI Press.
- Katie Heaney (2013) “Facebook Knew I Was Gay Before My Family Did”. Buzzfeed, http://www.buzzfeed.com/katieheaney/facebook-knew-i-was-gay-before-my-family-did
- Richard C. MacKinnon (1998) “The Social Construction of Rape in Virtual Reality” in Network and Netplay: Virtual Groups on the Internet, ed. Sudweeks, McLaughlin and Rafaeli. Menlo Park: AAAI Press.
- David F. Shaw (1997) “Gay Men and Computer Communication: A Discourse of Sex and Identity in Cyberspace.” In Virtual Culture: Identity and Communication in Cyberspace. Ed. Stephen G. Jones. London: Sage.
- John Simmons (1995) “Sade and Cyberspace” in Resisting the Virtual Life, ed. Brook and Boal. San Francisco: City Lights.
- Alan Sondheim. ed (1996) Being On Line: Net Subjectivity. New York: Lusitania. http://www.alansondheim.org Alan Sondheim’s personal reflections on Net culture and subjectivity. Warning: (a) this is not in a user-friendly web format, it’s a series of files with opaque titles, and (b) it’s poetry. You’ll have to dig for the items where he’s talking particularly about online identity and eroticism, but (c) it’s worth it.
- Catherine Waldby (1998) “Circuits of Desire: Internet Erotics and the Problem of Bodily Location.” Culture & Communication Reading Room, Centre for Research in Culture & Communication, Murdoch University. http://wwwmcc.murdoch.edu.au/ReadingRoom/VID/Circuits3.html.
- Play and Performance in Computer-Mediated Communication, special issue of Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 1(2). http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol1/issue2/index.html
Sex-blogging
Particularly interesting posts:
- leticia mckenzie: On the cusp of adulthood in America
Wednesday, January 07, 2004, , http://www.leticiamckenzie.blogspot.com/2004/01/i-wrote-this-last-night-when-i-couldnt.html, 7 January 2004. - Girl with a One Track Mind
“Outed”, http://girlwithaonetrackmind.blogspot.com/2006/08/outed.html, Sunday August 6 2006.
“Response”, http://girlwithaonetrackmind.blogspot.com/2006/08/response.html, Friday August 11 2006.
“Outcome”, http://girlwithaonetrackmind.blogspot.com/2006/08/outcome.html, Tuesday August 15 2006
“By day she worked on Harry Potter. But by night …” The Sunday Times, August 6, 2006 http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article601445.ece The Times article outing the Girl’s true identity.
“I don’t write to titillate. I censor like crazy to make my blogs less erotic”. The Guardian, Friday 11 August 2006. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2006/aug/11/gender.booksonhealthInterview with the Girl herself, following the revelation of her identity.
“Named: The Belle de Jour of the Net”, http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article438397.ece, The Sunday Times, March 27 2005.
“Internet ‘call-girl author’ unmasked”, The Times, March 18 2004 - Monmouth: Smut With Words
“Out In Africa”, http://monmouth.blogspot.com/2005/04/out-in-africa.html, 7 April 2005
“Beginners’ guide to the rent-boy diaries”, http://monmouth.blogspot.com/2005/03/beginnerss-guide-to-rentboy-diaries.html, Thursday, March 24, 2005
“The Joy of Cash”, http://monmouth.blogspot.com/2004/12/joy-of-cash.html, Tuesday, December 07, 2004
Sex-blogs generally
NB If you want to read for more background in the personal blogs, I suggest you go back to the beginning of the archive and read forward as several of them change character dramatically over time.
- Girl with a One Track Mind http://girlwithaonetrackmind.blogspot.com/: frank and unashamed confessions of a woman who enjoys a lot of sex.
- Letitia McKenzie: On the cusp of adulthood in America.http://leticiamckenzie.blogspot.com/. A seventeen-year-old schoolgirl talking about fantasy and masturbation.
- Pansexual Sodomite: A Genetic Male Pansexual Polyfetishist in Durham, NC : Richard Evans Lee. a href=”http://www.pansexualsodomite.org/. Interesting in its analytic approach to gay sexuality, fantasy, etc.
- Bitchy Jones: the dominatrix cursed with a soul. http://bitchyjones.wordpress.com/. A reflective blog about life as a self-confessed sadist; strong feminist slant.
- Belle de Jour, http://belledejour-uk.blogspot.com. High-class London call-girl blogs her experiences with clients, earns six-figure book deal.
- Monmouth: the Rent Boy Diaries. http://monmouth.blogspot.com/.
- Pussy Talk: DirtyTalkin’Girl. http://nicebluejournal.livejournal.com/. Interested equally in sex and writing; contrasts sex with the persona’s husband to sex with her lover.
FAN FICTION
Critical works
- Daniel Allington (2007) “How come most people don’t see it?: Slashing The Lord of the Rings.” Social Semiotics17 (1), March 2007. Available through the library online journals.
- Kristina Busse (2006) “I’m Jealous of the Fake Me: Postmodern Subjectivity and Identity Construction in Boy Band Fiction.” Su Holmes and Sean Redmond, eds. Framing celebrity: new directions in celebrity culture. London, New York: Routledge.
- Henry Jenkins (1992) ” ‘Welcome to Bisexuality, Captain Kirk’: Slash and the Fan-Writing Community”, In Textual Poachers: Television Fans and Participatory Culture. New York: Routledge. (in SL photocopy cabinets)
- Henry Jenkins, “The Poachers and the Stormtroopers,” Talk presented at the University of Michigan, Spring 1998, http://legalminds.lp.findlaw.com/list/rre/msg00012.html Paper on the cultural and sociological implications of fan fiction, by a professor of media/communications at MIT. I recommend this!
-
Joanna Russ “Pornography By Women For Women, With Love,” Magic Mommas, Trembling Sisters, Puritans & Perverts. Trumansburg, NY: Crossing P., 1985 (pdf is on Vula)
Online introductions and articles
- FictionAlley, “FanFiction Primer”. http://www.fictionalley.org/primer/. I recommend the Common Abbreviations list for the confused, and their very good description of a Mary Sue and of the slash phenomenon in the particular Harry Potter context.
- Shoshanna Green, Cynthia Jenkins and Henry Jenkins, ed. and intro, “‘Normal Female Interest in Men Bonking’: Selections from The Terra Nostra Underground and Strange Bedfellows”. hhttp://web.mit.edu/21fms/People/henry3/bonking.html
- Lev Grossman, “The Boy Who Lived Forever”, Time, July 2011. http://www.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,2081784,00.html
- Amy Harmon (1997) “In Dull TV Days, Favorites Take Wing Online”, New York Times, August 18 1997. http://www.nytimes.com/1997/08/18/business/in-tv-s-dull-summer-days-plots-take-wing-on-the-net.html
- Henry Jenkins, “Everybody Loves Harry”, post to his blog Confessions of an Aca-Fan, http://www.henryjenkins.org/2007/05/everybody_loves_harry.html. This discussion of a recent Harry Potter conference gives useful background to the fandom.
- Henry Jenkins and Joan Marie Verba, “Star Trek, Darkover, Thunderbirds, and Fan Fiction: An Interview With Joan Marie Verba (Part One)”, on Henry Jenkins’s media culture blog, http://henryjenkins.org/2010/05/_httpwwwjoanmarieverbacom_your.html . Interesting discussion on the pre-Internet origins of fandom.
- Jonathan Lethem, “The Ecstacy of Influence: A Plagiarism”, Harper’s Magazine, February 2007. http://harpers.org/archive/2007/02/0081387. A reflection on literary borrowing.
- Merlin Missy, “Dr. Merlin’s Guide to Fan Fiction”, Firefox News, 13 September 2007. http://firefox.org/news/articles/650/1/Dr-Merlin039s-Guide-to-Fanfiction/Page1.html. Aimed at fanfic writers, but informative and entertaining.
- Patrick Nielsen Hayden, “Fanfic: Force of Nature.” Extremely interesting discussion of the legal and aesthetic implications of fanfic, on Patrick and Teresa Neilsen Hayden’s Making Light blog. http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/007464.html.
- Pat Pflieger, “Too Good To Be True: 150 years of Mary Sue,” paper presented at the American Culture Association conference, March 31, 1999, San Diego, CA. http://www.merrycoz.org/papers/MARYSUE.HTM.
- Joseph Palmer, “Fanime 2004 Resources”. http://www.josephpalmer.com/fanime/.
- Catherine Tosenberger, “The epic love story of Sam and Dean”: Supernatural, queer readings, and the romance of incestuous fan fiction.” Transformative Works and Cultures Vol. 1, 2008, http://journal.transformativeworks.org/index.php/twc/article/view/30/36.
Fan fiction links
There is a lotof fanfic out there, and I really don’t mind which kind you choose to read – don’t feel obliged to stick to the examples I give. I suggest you try AO3 first; if nothing there interests you, try a Google search for fanfic + text of your choice (book, film, TV series, comic are the common ones, but you can, believe it or not, find World Wrestling Federation fanfic…). Be prepared to do a lot of skim reading to find the less agonising writers, not all of them are necessarily actually acquainted with the English language.
- Tie, “Looking for Avengers fan fiction”, Fuck yeah, Horrible Fanart!, http://fuckyeahhorriblefanart.tumblr.com/post/23436693471/looking-for-avengers-fan-fiction-to-give-to-you, accessed 20 March 2013
- gottabekiddinme, “People Not Me”, Archive of Our Own, 16 November 2011, http://archiveofourown.org/works/564845, accessed 20 March 2013
- — “”The Man In The Workshop (When Danni met Tony)”, 16 November 2011, Archive of Our Own, http://archiveofourown.org/works/594135, accessed 20 March 2013
- celli, “When I Think (Oh, it Terrifies Me), Archive of Our Own, 3 April 2012, http://archiveofourown.org/works/396808, accessed 20 March 2013
- kellifer_fic, “I stole the keys to this guy”, Archive of Our Own, 30 November 2011, http://archiveofourown.org/works/285840, accessed 20 March 2013
- Scribblinlenore, “Holy Ground”, http://scribblinlenore.wordpress.com/home/supernatural/holy-ground/, accessed 23 April 2012
- astolat, “Bad Blood”, at http://intimations.org/fanfic/supernatural/Bad%20Blood.html, is another Supernatural Sam/Dean fic along similar lines to “Holy Ground”.
- Anya’s “Naked Quidditch”, http://www.fanfiction.net/s/3689325/1/The_Original_Naked_Quidditch_Match – notable for its pairing of issues of sexuality with an imagined Wizarding World equivalent of e-mail.
- lotrfan2888, “Sherlock: Something There (Beauty and the Beast), fanvid, http://youtu.be/4j3y7UFT8Cg
- The Sherlock Fan Orchestra, “Pursuit”, fan soundtrack production, http://youtu.be/MTFm2pweWRA
- zombiesatemyhamster, “Little Lion Man | Iron Man & Captain America” fanvid. a href=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3u-jGnIQwgo
- http://archiveofourown.org/ One of the best fanfic resources I’ve found, with much higher quality than fanfiction.net, housing a fairly intense fandom community rather than the frequently casual writers of other sites. The best way to find good fics: click on “fandoms” in the top bar on the front page, find the text you’re interested in, click on that, and in the right-hand box under “Sort and Filter” click on the drop-down menu to sort by Kudos. This gives you a descending order of up-votes, and thus gives you pages of the fics judged best by the readers – it’ll shunt most fics with terrible grammar and writing very far down the list, which is merciful for skim reading. You can also choose a particular relationship by clicking on tags, and sort within that. NB the front page tells you how to sign up for the site, but you don’t need to do so in order to read the fics.
- http://www.fanfiction.net/ Fanfiction site: arranged by category. Pretty much anything you can think of, this is a huge site. Did you know people wrote A-Team fanfic…? A lot of this is terrible, you’ll have to do some browsing.
- http://www.fictionalley.orgHarry Potter fanfic. Schnoogle is novel-length, Astronomy Tower is romance, Riddiklus is comedy, Dark Arts is angsty. Generally higher quality than Fanfiction.net.
- http://fan.theonering.net/writing/index.htmlLord of the Rings fanfic – rather a lot of parody, you’ll have to dig for the serious stuff. You’ll find actor fanfic here, whereas fanfiction.net and the dedicated sites tend to ban it.
- http://scribblinlenore.wordpress.com/Scribblinlenore’s fanfic, various fandoms, generally well written.
- http://ajhall.shoesforindustry.net/lopiverse/A.J. Hall’s Lopiverse, which is AU Potterfic, notable for a beautifully-rationalised Draco/Neville relationship.
Just for fun
- Rob Bricken, “TR Special: The 10 Most Face-Meltingly Awful Fan Fictions”. Topless Robot, 15 January 2010. http://www.toplessrobot.com/2010/01/tr_special_the_10_most_face-meltingly_awful_fan_fi.php. Please look on this as a cautionary tale. Apart from being hilarious in a dreadful sort of way, it’ll make your eyes bleed.
- http://davidkawena.deviantart.com/gallery/89102David Kawena’s Disney heroes as underwear models. This is fan art, the visual equivalent of fan fiction, and many of its re-interpretations work along similar lines.
- http://www.brunching.com/features/geekhierarchy.htmlThe Brunching Shuttlecocks’s Geek Hierarchy. Have a look at the extreme two right-hand columns. Furries. Good lord…
- http://www.squidge.org/~peja/lordsofthering/ListOfLoTRFanficClichesAndMarySuedoms.htm: Gil Shalos’ BIIIIG List Of LOTR Fanfic Cliches And Mary Sue-Doms. This is very funny.
- http://www.vulture.com/2013/04/mark-ruffalo-science-bros-avengers-robert-downey-jr.html Mark Ruffalo discovers Bruce/Tony fanfic – amusing meta-commentary. “I endorse it 100 percent. You know what it is? It’s open-source creativity.” And Tumblr goes wild.
COMPUTER GAMES
- David Golumbia, “Games Without Play”, New Literary History, Volume 40, Number 1, Winter 2009, 179-204
- Jamie M. Poster, “Looking and Acting in Computer Games: Cinematic “Play” and New Media Interactivity”. Quarterly Review of Film and Video 24, 2007, 325-339.
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XysJjXMzM4c. Kumail Nanjani talks about Heavy Rain: amusing talk fragment which highlights the way in which games have grown up with their audience.
- “Of Mice and Men”, about competitive videogaming, The Economist‘s 1843 Magazine, https://www.1843magazine.com/features/of-mice-and-men
MUDs, MOOs and MMORPGs
- Brady Haran (2003)“Fantasy games ‘not for geeks’”, BBC News, http://newsvote.bbc.co.uk/mpapps/pagetools/print/news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/nottinghamshire/2939175.stm
- MUD-Connect’s FAQ list, http://www.mudconnect.com/mudfaq/mudfaq-p1.html– a good basic introduction to MUDs and MUDding.
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MMORPG, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EverQuest and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_of_Warcraft. The Wikipedia entries on MMORPGs, Everquest and World of Warcraft. On this sort of topic Wikipedia is about fan expertise, so be aware of the voice and positioning in the articles.
- http://www.mmorpg.com/blogs/staffblog/052009/6090_Girls-in-MMOs“Girls in MMOs”: a collection of comments from female gamers in World of Warcraft and others. Interesting points made about demographics and stereotyping. Contains sarcasm.
- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=urNyg1ftMIU “Do You Wanna Date My Avatar?” Music video by Felicia Day and The Guild, directly addressing the notion of online relationships and the discrepancy between real-world and avatar identities. Insanely catchy, will colonise your brain for days.
Women and sexuality in computer games
- Anita Sarkeesian’s “Tropes vs. Women in Video Games” videos, tackling the Damsel in Distress trope but also dealing with the sexualisation of the motif and the idea of women as a narrative object. Part 1 and Part 2.
- http://www.newstatesman.com/culture/2013/05/anita-sarkeesians-new-video-explores-dark-and-edgy-abuse-women-gets-pulled-youtube New Statesman article describing the hyper-defensive response of some male gamers to Sarkeesian’s analysis.
Bioware RPGs
- Tom Bissel, “Mass Effects”, in Extra Lives: Why Videogames Matter, New York: Pantheon, 2010.
- Tom Bissel, “Voicebox 360”, New Yorker, https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2011/08/15/voicebox-360 – voice acting for Bioware.
- “Mass Effect Romance”, http://www.squidoo.com/mass-effect-romance, Squidoolens. This is interesting because it’s a fan creation and its viewpoint is that of a player – and rather characteristic of a specific kind of player response to video game romance. Also note the kind of visual iconage produced here.
- “Romance”, Dragon Age Wiki, http://dragonage.wikia.com/wiki/Romance. Links to specific articles on romance in Dragon Age I and Dragon Age II. Fan-written.
- “Romance”, Mass Effect Wiki, http://masseffect.wikia.com/wiki/Romance. A good overview of the romance options in the series, with links to more detail for each of the characters. Again, a fan document.
- “Sex and nudity in video games”, Wikipedia article, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_and_nudity_in_video_games. As always with Wikipedia, be aware that this is a fan voice, not a dispassionate critic.
- “Bioware and virginity obsession through the years?”, http://masseffect.answers.wikia.com/wiki/Bioware_and_virginity_obssession_through_the_years. Fan discussion about a particular thread in Mass Effect/Dragon Age character romances: the different commenters give rather interesting insights into how gamers think about their in-game relationships.
- Robert Purchese, “How BioWare wrote gay Mass Effect 3 romances”, Euro-Gamer article, 8 May 2012. http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2012-05-08-how-bioware-wrote-gay-mass-effect-3-romances. Article on the writers’ process for constructing the gay romances in the third installment of the game; interesting insights into marketing and cultural pressures.
- Ben Reeves, “Drawing Mass Effect 2: The Creation of Thane”, GameInformer, 9 February 2010, http://www.gameinformer.com/b/features/archive/2010/02/09/drawing-mass-effect-the-creation-of-thane.aspx
- J.F. Sargent, “5 Prejudices That Video Games Can’t Seem to Get Over”, Cracked.com, http://www.cracked.com/article_19922_5-prejudices-that-video-games-cant-seem-to-get-over.html. Fan-perspective commentary on elements of sexism, racism and homophobia in computer games. Flippant and often profane, but makes some excellent points in a general survey of game trends.
- Seth Scheisel, “Author Faults a Game, and Gamers Flame Back”, New York Times, 26 January 2008. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/26/arts/television/26mass.html.
- Patrick Weekes, “Same-Sex Relationships in Mass Effect 3,” Bioware blog, 7 May 2012. http://blog.bioware.com/2012/05/07/same-sex-relationships-in-mass-effect-3/
Game clips on YouTube
- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K5pf-61zv0s&feature=related Mass Effect 2: Asari pole-dancers in the club Afterlife.
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oYwIuBh80zI Mass Effect 3: Liara/male Shepard
- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ST72NHedgeA Dragon Age 2: Fenris/female Hawke.
- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0aaYjcadKt0 Mass Effect 3: Cortez/male Shepard.