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Abstract
Fanfiction offers participants a medium in which to re-envision existing texts, create and maintain online communities, engage in societal discourses, and continually refine themselves through the process of writing. This poststructural study seeks to better understand ways adolescents navigate the cultural discourses involved in online fanfiction and to consider the implications of fan writing for educators, researchers, and fans themselves. This study draws upon Bakhtins (1965/1984) notion of Carnival and Foucaults (1985/1988) methodology Care of the Self to examine the motivations and possibilities fanfiction affords adolescent participants. Three rounds of interviews and multiple writing samples with four participants provided much of the data for this project, though notes, personal responses, dreams, and memory were part of the recursive process of data analysis (Lather, 2007; Pillow, 2003). As they craft and publish fanfiction, adolescents engage in discourses of sexuality, violence, and social justice in ways that are censured elsewhere, and as they critique and deploy these complex discourses, they hone their philosophical views and ethical beliefs as well as their writing. In our increasingly rigid educational era of standards and high-stakes tests, the eagerness of these adolescents to engage in inquiry, interpretation, critique, and discussion stands in stark opposition to much of what they experience in school. To that end, the processes and practices of fanfiction hold crucial implications for educators who, like these fans, want to challenge the status quo of reading and writing instruction.