greymongoose
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Infiltration and Disruption in Fanfiction about World Wrestling Entertainment by saturatedsinset
Fandoms: World Wrestling Entertainment, Professional Wrestling
23 May 2025
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Summary
I ask in what ways the practice and consumption of professional wrestling fanfiction infiltrates the cultural spaces of sport(s entertainment), masculinity, and heteronormativity. Drawing on Mazer’s argument that “the play of dominance and submission on the stage is manifestly homoerotic,” I argue that although the canonical space of wrestling is often subtextually queer, its disavowal of queerness despite this is precisely what is so attractive to fic writers, who exercise their infiltrative power by drawing this subtext into text (116). Finally, I examine the ways in which fic is infiltrated in turn, focusing on the deployment of class markers, the construction of normative worlds, and I return to the play of levels of fictionality in wrestling and its fic. I conclude by outlining how my exploration of disruptive infiltration in Shield fic has productively developed the concepts of disruption and infiltration.
Bookmarked by greymongoose
23 May 2025