"What a bust": Character selection and the possibilities of failure in hockey RPF

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.3983/twc.2025.2647

Keywords:

Crip theory, Queer theory, Slash fan fiction, Sport fandom

Abstract

Increasingly popular since the upload of the first story on the Archive of Our Own (AO3), hockey real person fiction (RPF) plays with traditional media coverage of athletes' personal lives. We investigate fans' reading of former National Hockey League (NHL) player Nolan Patrick to better understand how he became such a prominent protagonist of slash fan fiction. We argue that RPF reimagines traditional media narratives to portray new configurations that escape heteronormative constraints and subvert their function. In this context, slash fans' selection and rewriting of this character appears to reveal fans' commitment to cripping the hockey narrative and to finding transformative queer potential in sporting failure.

Author Biographies

Júlia Zen Dariva, Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina

Master's student at the Post-Graduate Program of English: Linguistics and Literary Studies at the Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina. 

Natália Brauns Cazelgrandi Ferreira, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro

Master's student in the Post-Graduate Program of Literary Science (PPGCL/UFRJ).

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Published

2025-03-14

Issue

Vol. 45 (2025): Sports Fandoms

Section

Article

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Copyright (c) 2025 Júlia Zen Dariva, Natália Brauns Cazelgrandi Ferreira

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