Defending One’s Multidimensional Identity Through Fan Fiction

This thesis explores how fan fiction can be utilized to defend and express one’s multidimensional identity. Fan fiction can be considered a form of participatory expression and identity formation in the contemporary digital age. While dominant narratives are at the centre of mainstream media, fan communities have come to use fan fiction as a way to subvert the dominant canon, to question authorship, and to assert agency over narratives, often leading to the representation in fan fiction of typically marginalized identities in mainstream media. This thesis draws from literary theory, platform analysis, and fan-produced texts to illustrate that fan fiction is both a creative and a critical practice. It argues that fan works have a transformative potential to challenge exclusion by reimagining characters, relationships, and narrative structures to be more inclusive. Practices such as racebending, fix-it fics, and genderbending are clear examples of this and offer more inclusive representations of marginalized identities than their source materials.