Lover Revamped: Sexualities and Romance in the Black Dagger Brotherhood and Slash Fan Fiction‪.‬

Frequently involving not only literary texts but a host of extra-textual elements such as home pages, organisations, special interests magazines, fan communities and so on, contemporary popular fiction involves readers in activities which emphasise creativity rather than passive consumption. Writers of internet-published fan fiction, or fanfic, are unusually active readers, who in various ways engage with a source text, within the fandom referred to as canon. More or less critical, fanfic illustrates either compliance with or resistance to norms and structures of the canon, often focusing on perceived gaps which provide spaces for developments. In the case of slash fan fiction, erotic and/or romantic stories focusing on male-male couples who are not paired in the canon, it is predominantly heterosexuality and heteronormative structures which are questioned and resisted, resulting in plot developments centring on homoerotic encounters. Focus in this article is on how elements from J. R. Ward's novels Lover Revealed and Lover Unbound (both published in 2007) are renegotiated or maintained in three slash-fics: Theladyvampirenightshade's "One Treasured Memory," Velvet-red3's "Skin to Skin" and Saiuri-loves-Alucard's "Forever Lovers." The protagonists in Ward's canon are (mainly) vampires, creatures traditionally associated with breaking the norms of society and often linked to forbidden or deviant sexual desires. Although the vampire may be superficially gendered, its position outside humanity makes categorisations less applicable and it is often seen as occupying a position which slides between the poles of masculinity and femininity. The difficulty with categorisation makes possible more fluid readings of the literary trope. Ward's fiction, however, does not easily lend itself to fluid or alternative readings, but closely follows romantic formulaic structures, depicting heterosexual relationships which at first go awry but which are by the end resolved. Ward's vampires represent supernatural power, sexual prowess and, paradoxically, protection of humans, but their vampirism is not used to illustrate a potentially subversive position, on the contrary, the novels represent a worldview characterised by at times ambiguous but in the end staunchly heterosexual relationships.