Writing what’s important to us helps us to build styles, language, and stories of shared meaning. Fandom and subculture spaces provide authors with a meta-genre of sorts in order to explore this shared meaning. By leaning on each other for support, the members can build up a corpus of their own, something that resists commercialization outside of those spaces, and builds a stronger sense of in-group community.
- -Over the last four months, I’ve had the privilege of running two writing workshops and four writing classes within the furry subculture.1 The first workshop took place at an online furry writing conference called Oxfurred Comma hosted by the Furry Writers’ Guild, involving three authors learning about writing critique through the process of critiquing each other’s work through a Twitch stream visible to other attendees of the conference. The second took place at Further Confusion, an in-person convention in San Jose, California, and focused on a more general set of sessions regarding critical reading and critiquing writing.
-My goal with running these workshops and classes was to explore what specific aspects of fandom and subculture writing can be incorporated into writing workshops.
+Over the last four months, I’ve had the privilege of running two writing workshops and four writing classes within the furry subculture. My goal with running these workshops and classes was to explore what specific aspects of fandom and subculture writing can be incorporated into writing workshops.
For the purposes of this project, I’m leaning on two working definitions, one for ‘fandom’ and one for ‘subculture’.
Fandoms are groups of people focused on consuming media from a particular canon and, in this case, producing content related to that canon. This can take the form of art, music, costuming, or fanfiction, with the last being the natural choice for workshopping in a writing context.
Subcultures, on the other hand, are groups of individuals focused on consuming media from no one, single canon, yet sharing an interest related to some aspect of media, culture, or identity. This can be anything from anime to LGBTQIA+ identities to furries. Without a central canon, there is no concept of fanfiction, and yet they can still serve in the role of a meta-genre, informing the style and content of the creations associated with the subculture, regardless of the core genre of the work itself.
Both of these serve an important role in building community in a playful way. Association with fandom and subculture is often seen as frivolous, silly, or in many ways ‘not real’, despite the fact that members may make a very real living off their creations.
Still, it’s that very playfulness that allows a set of styles and tropes to arise within these areas. When the works created aren’t necessarily beholden to popular tastes, fandom and subculture creators have a lot of freedom to explore.
-The creation of this shared language within the context of an in-group such as a fandom or subculture is bound up in two things: conversation and art. Conversation is the sharing of information, emotions, and opinions surrounding the shared sense of identity, but the creation of art strengthens shared identity through the mutual appreciation of the core subject or topic of the fandom or subculture.
+The creation of this shared language within the context of an in-group such as a fandom or subculture is bound up in two things: conversation and art. Conversation is the sharing of information, emotions, and opinions surrounding the shared sense of identity, but the creation of art strengthens shared identity through the mutual appreciation of the core subject or topic of the fandom or subculture.2
In the context of writing in particular, the shared language takes center stage. When using a similar lexicon, grammar and stylistic choices, and word choice, a sense of membership can build, strengthening community bonds.
This is what drew my interest to the idea of teaching in this setting. Not only does it present unique challenges for the educator, but it provides potentially greater rewards for both the students and teacher — especially should they share membership to the fandom or subculture.
-In my case, I chose interacting with the furry subculture. Not only is it a group that I interact with frequently given my own membership, but there are some particularly interesting features that create for a stronger sense of in-group membership. For instance, furry has long provided a safe space for LGBTQIA+ individuals, and as a non-binary trans woman, it has been a particularly important home for me since before I came out both to myself and others.
+In my case, I chose interacting with the furry subculture.1 Not only is it a group that I interact with frequently given my own membership, but there are some particularly interesting features that create for a stronger sense of in-group membership. For instance, furry has long provided a safe space for LGBTQIA+ individuals, and as a non-binary trans woman, it has been a particularly important home for me since before I came out both to myself and others.
Given this relationship between furry identity and queer identities, this provides a poignant example of shared identity and topic selection. One of the most well-known of furry authors, Kyell Gold, writes quite frequently about gay male characters, focusing quite often on the themes of coming out and fitting in. His books have been widely praised within the subculture due to what’s perceived as a common experience.
Beyond this, however, writing within the context of furry has picked up several features and conventions common within the corpus. For example:
With all of this in mind, I scheduled two workshops to run during conventions and adapted a standard workshop template to include discussions and critiques of these features in furry writing.
@@ -74,14 +72,17 @@It’s quite common to refer to furry as a fandom as well. I resist this phrasing more on intellectual than moral grounds, simply because there isn’t a core media that furries are a fandom. When asked, most furries will say that they’re fans of anthropomorphic animals or, more poignantly, themselves. ↩
See https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTRscgS5B/ ↩
+I’m careful to specify ‘is seen as’ due to a common complaint of editors being the overuse of this construct. ↩
+I’m careful to specify ‘is seen as’ due to a common complaint of editors being the overuse of this construct. ↩