About The Pasture

The pasture is a blog dedicated to engaging thoughtfully with fan works (such as fanfiction, fanart, and music) as valuable creative and cultural practices. By doing so, I hope to challenge the common assumption that fanworks are inherently less valuable or meaningful than other forms of art and media.

Like many others, I became a part of fandom as a child and continued to be so into adulthood. It became a significant souce of community and belonging amongst peers, both online and off. Simultaniously, I was ashamed of my interest in something most of my peers saw as cringe. However, with time and age, I've come to recognize that this idea of “cringe” is not an objective descriptor but rather a tool so often used to police behavior and taste. It is almost always directed at people who are already marginalized, such as women, young people, POC, neurodivergent people, and the queer community, all of which are huge demographics in fandom.

With this blog I want to question how value is assigned to art, by whom, why. Where canon media tends to reflect dominant norms, fanworks typucally imagine alternatives that center the marginalized. Such practices require ongoing interpretation, analysis, and creative labor, even if they are rarely recognized as such. Traditional definitions of good art prioritize originality, individual authorship, and market value, where fanworks instead rely on shared authorship, transformation, repetition, and writing back to existing narratives. It is only because traditional spaces created the “rules” for good art and media that they continue to be perceived as superior. As such, this blog exists to take fanworks seriously, by analyzing fanfiction and fanart as literature, art, and cultural practice. The Pasture aims to be a space where the meaning, labor, and value that already exist within these communities is recognized and shared.