ABSTRACT
Chapter 5 moves from considering the emotioned elements of fandom more generally to the specific practices and context of one fanwriter, liloweewoah or lilo. Through a combination of textual analysis and multiple interviews with lilo, the chapter investigates the various ways in which emotions, particularly those of love and desire, play an essential role in her fannishness. Lilo’s emotioned literacy reaches across time, relationships, and spaces and places. It links what we might see as her internal world with her embodied experience of her body-in-place(s). After considering in depth how her fan practices intersect with her early rituals of watching WWE with her father and brothers, the chapter focuses on the key role that the Mary Sue has played in lilo’s writing, both individually and with her best fandom friend, babyxbxgurl. The figure of the Mary Sue is key to understanding what we might see as ‘women’s writing’ in online fanfiction, because fanfiction as a practice (and fandom more generally) has always been highly feminised and, as such, denigrated. Ultimately, the chapter concludes that lilo’s fannish experience has been shaped by close family and friend ties and positive affect.
