FAN-FICTIONS AND THE ACT OF EVERYDAY: QUEERING SOCIAL MEDIA SPACES

The queer desire to find a home in people and places is a life long journey for many. It is also an everyday process. With the changing times, public spheres have changed and social media spaces have come to the forefront to create a dynamic and ever-changing mass mediated platform. Social media’s ability to provide individual and collective space is a part of the larger discourse regarding sexuality. People who are unable to articulate their sexuality or make sense of it because of their heteronormative upbringing are provided with numerous examples and lived experiences that can help with their sense of self. Hegemonic and normative understanding of the world could be challenged through such spaces. When mass media adheres to norms of invisibility, I argue, fan-fictions helps to subvert non-normative sexualities. Queer fan-fictions and its creators are gradually changing the way queer people are represented in the media. Such ‘fics’ never become part of the canon or the parent text, and are often written according to the reader’s likings. The unexplored territories within canonical or popular texts are given nurturing space in fan-fictions. In such an age, fan- fictions become sites for free and democratic representations of queer people and their lives. Though they are not without flaws, in the absence of any other media platform, fan-fictions prove to be the only space which depicts queer people as they are. This paper, therefore, aims to analyse the role of social media in the everyday life of queer women in India through fan fictions, with focus on L Manovich’s “Practice of Everyday Life.” It also explores the queer desire to find shelter in virtual communities through discourse analysis and how fan fictions, in many ways, offer a feeling of belonging among queer women as it prompts them to write their own stories.

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