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Fans and the billion-dollar franchises in which they participate have together become powerful agents within popular culture. These franchises have launched avenues for fans to expand and influence the stories that they tell. This book examines those fan-driven narratives as "wilderness texts," in which fans use their platforms to create for themselves while also communicating their visions to the franchises, thus spurring innovation.
The essays in this collection look at how fans intervene in the production of mass media. Scholars analyze the negotiations between fan desires for both novelty and familiarity that franchises must maintain in order to achieve critical and commercial success. Applying varying theoretical approaches to discussions of fan responses to franchises, including Star Wars, Marvel, Godzilla, Firefly, The Terminator, Star Trek, DC, and The Muppets, these essays provide insight into the ever-changing relationships between fandom and transmedia storytelling.
List of contents
Table of ContentsWe Want the Wilderness: A Preface
Donald Quist and Rhonda Knight
An Introduction to Fans and Franchises: Essays on the Changing Landscape of Fandom
Donald Quist and Rhonda Knight with John E. Price
Section One: Fans and Canon
The Pedler-Davis Legacy: Cybermen in the Doctor Who Wilderness
Rhonda Knight
The Wild Canon: Examining the Slash Impact in Roddenberry's Star Trek
Danielle S. Girard
A Hero Divided: The Fractured Narrative Arc of Luke Skywalker in the Star Wars Expanded Universe (1977-2014)
Jonathan Hay
Section Two: Franchises and Fans
"What we make of it": Terminator Salvation and the Neglect of Core Franchise Themes
Camilo Peralta
Whose Godzilla? Rethinking the King of Monsters Through the Films
Joe Yang
Where Auteur Fails: Zack Snyder and the Author-Function
Hannah Taylor
The Scraps of DC: Media Ownership, Film Economics and the Arrowverse
Tim Posada
Reminders of Life's Impermanence: Death, Endings and Closure in Logan and Avengers: Infinity
Mike Hernandez
Section Three: Fan Responses
"Take me out to the black": Firefly, Fanfiction and the (Re)Making of Modern Myths
Jim Casey and Nicola Rene Govocek
You Always Spoof the One You Love: Thirty Years of Professional Take-Offs on The Muppet Show
Jonathan Hartmann
"We, the fans of Star Wars": Negotiating Resistance in an Age of Consumption
Joseph S. Walker
Fans, Franchises and Cultural Production: What The Hobbit and Disney's Star Wars Tell Us About the Internet and Media Entertainment Culture
Zachary Sheldon
About the Contributors
Index
About the author
Rhonda Knight is a professor of English at Coker University in Hartsville, South Carolina, where she currently holds The James Wayne Lemke Endowed Chair in College Service and Leadership.Donald Quist teaches writing at the University of Missouri in Columbia and is on the faculty at the Alma College MFA in Writing Program.
