Abstract
Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997-2003) and True Blood (2008-14) are arguably two of the most popular vampire television series. Given the many similarities between them this is, perhaps, not surprising: both focus on a female character who falls in love with a vampire; both draw on the notion of the Byronic hero; and both feature a blonde bad boy who quickly became a fan favourite. Indeed, an August 2016 search on Fanfiction.net for stories featuring Spike yields 10,476 hits, while Eric appears in 2,923 works (Angel features in 6153 and Bill in 708). Henry Jenkins suggests that fanfiction is born from a combination of both fascination and frustration: if fans were not fascinated with a series they would not continue the storyworld, but if they were not frustrated with aspects of it they would find nothing to write about. In this article I argue that fascination with a text occurs across multiple storyworlds and that the crossover text is one way in which fans make this fascination transparent. I further argue that while much work on slash fiction exists, it has primarily focused on pairings from within the same narrative: Harry/Draco; Sherlock/John; Mulder/Krycek and analysing slash featuring characters from across storyworlds offers us a fruitful understanding of fans’ intertextual knowledge and the way in which this knowledge is applied in fanworks.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 275-291 |
| Number of pages | 17 |
| Journal | Horror Studies |
| Volume | 8 |
| Issue number | 2 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 1 Oct 2017 |
Bibliographical note
Publisher Copyright:© 2017 Intellect Ltd Article.
Keywords
- Buffy the vampire slayer
- Fan fiction
- Gender
- Intertextuality
- Slash
- True blood
- World building