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fangirlresearch.bsky.social
Ava Bucy
@fangirlresearch.bsky.social
1.5K followers 1K following 680 posts
Final year fan studies PhD student studying fangirls @ University of Huddersfield, girlhoods, popular music, fan activism, celebrity etc Uni of Leeds and Emerson College alum, from LA now cozying up in the Yorkshire countryside. Queer autistic disabled
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fangirlresearch.bsky.social
Ava Bucy @fangirlresearch.bsky.social · May 23
Things are out so new pinned post!

I’m Ava, I’m a media studies lecturer and final year phd student studying fangirls. I have two publications out — theorising the fangirl & fan discourses of parasocial relationships — and I’m big into qualitative method development!

Links are in the thread 💖👋🏻
A conference poster titled “Adapting Methods for Participant Pleasure: focus groups, tiktok data, and researcher positionality” shared at Methods@Manc 2024. It discusses how centering pleasure can help solve a number of methodological challenges, including participant engagement and researcher or algorithmic bias, as well as aiding in foregrounding ethics, researcher positionality, insider research, and feminist epistemologies. The poster has a light pink background with black text and highlighted blurbs in darker pink. There is a photo of a Harry Styles concert and drawings of fish, two ghosts, and a heart balloon, which are references to songs of Harry’s and exemplify the discussion surrounding participant pleasures and using “fandom coded” imagery in recruitment materials and insider knowledge in designing studies. Finding the fangirlscape: understanding ‘fangirl’ as a gendered transfandom category. Abstract: Despite the field’s growth, a limited portion of audience studies work considers the way ‘fangirl’ categories create their own milieu distinct from ‘fandom’ or ‘girlhood’ individually. This entails the way particular media sites are designed for fangirls, an assumption of who these fans are and their beliefs, and a consideration for how we might best research these communities. This article theorises the ‘fangirl’, drawing on focus groups with pop music fans and TikTok videos sourced from participants to define and complicate the term. Beyond the popular stereotype, ‘fangirl’ functions as a complicated, intense, and expansive identity. I argue that exploring the fangirl as a distinct category allows us to better tackle topics in ‘transfandom’ dynamics, gendered fandom, discourses of age within fandom, and nuances to the negotiation of fan stereotypes. Keywords: Fangirl, Popular music, TikTok, Focus groups, Girlhood studies Participations, journal of audience and reception studies. Volume 21 issue 1 may 2025 “Normalising Fan Parasociality Within Pathologising Traces: Fan Discourses of ‘Good’ and ‘Bad’ Parasocial Behaviours” by Ava Bucy. The text says: ABSTRACT The past decade has seen an influx of academic work on and popular usage of the term ‘parasocial’, but this work largely theorises fans rather than listens to them. This paper corrects that. Drawing on 16 focus groups with fans of Harry Styles, I explore fans' understanding and appropriation of the once-forgotten academic term, parasocial. Fans, here, are quite aware of Styles's star persona and the illusion of their intimacy. They use the concept of parasociality to manage, understand, and police both their own behaviour and that of other fans. The paper argues that the fans actual parasociality and their usage of the term exists as a multisocial, fandom-wide experience, and mimics well-explored concepts in fan studies, including performativity, playful engagement with "easter eggs", the "fangirl as pathology", and boundary policing. Their performance of parasociality positions the concept as a normal part of the fan persona to be explored further academically, and at the same time, their self-conscious and hyper-nuanced use of the term contradicts its very definition. KEY WORDS Parasocial; Multisocial; Harry Styles; Focus Groups; Celebrity The first paragraph of the introduction is also included in the photo
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Reposted by Ava Bucy
fsnnorthamerica.bsky.social
Fan Studies Network North America @fsnnorthamerica.bsky.social · 22d
📣 Calling all #FanStudies scholars & nerds!

We are officially entering our Registration Era for our 2025 FSNNA virtual conference "Reputation: Influence, Power, & Capital"‼️

Registration 🔗 www.tickettailor.com/events/fanstudiesnetworknorthamerica1/1758163
Promotional flier for the FSNNA annual conference. The title for this year is "Reputation: Influence, Power, Capital." At the bottom of the flier the dates of the conference are listed as October 23-26 2025.
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fangirlresearch.bsky.social
Ava Bucy @fangirlresearch.bsky.social · 10h
University printer made for a slightly misaligned zine but I’ll never pass up an opportunity to procrastinate work via unnecessary crafts and physical media 🥰 Thanks @fsnnorthamerica.bsky.social 🥰
(catch me there on Thursday, assuming I actually stop procrastinating)
Ava holding a small zine of the Fan Studies Network North America Conference programme, which is tan with black imagery and lettering that says Reputation: Influence, Power, and Capital October 23-26 2025. Ava has red nails and silver rings on, and in the background is her computer and desk Ava holding a small zine of the Fan Studies Network North America Conference programme, open to a page in the middle with the Thursday 23 October conference schedule. Ava’s paper title “Fangirls’ TikToks and Fangirls on TikTok: Methods, Platforms, and Analysis” is listed under section B2 Methods, Pedagogy and Disciplinary Directions. There’s also section B1 Gender and Representation and C1 Queering Fandom. Ava has red nails and silver rings on, and in the background is her computer and desk
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fangirlresearch.bsky.social
Ava Bucy @fangirlresearch.bsky.social · 1d
In one of my modules I ask students what their fav celebrities are and not one of the 23 students said Taylor Swift… something is shifting
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Ava Bucy @fangirlresearch.bsky.social · 2d
I basically begged my students this year, a whole spiel on the first day about rewarding effort not just the outcome and the skills they miss out on and why AI is bad and etc…. Got some good nods of agreement and understanding, but we’ll see come Dec/Jan I guess
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Roxane Gay @roxanegay.bsky.social · 2d
Students using AI is definitely the thing that is going to break me. Not even failing grades work as a deterrent.
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Ava Bucy @fangirlresearch.bsky.social · 2d
I think I’d like to be a creepy horror film child for Halloween so once I get tired of socialising I can just dead stare at people and it’s part of the costume
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Ava Bucy @fangirlresearch.bsky.social · 2d
The Shining is unsurprisingly great so far but I keep getting distracted by Jack Nicholson and Shelley Duvall’s faces and by the comparative plague that is same-facification
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Ava Bucy @fangirlresearch.bsky.social · 6d
Halloween is also kind of terrible lol i know horror and fear is contextual and modern films keep upping the ante, but I expected the older ones to at least feel a little spooky.

But also I have no interest in actually being scared so this is a win I’m having a great time
fangirlresearch.bsky.social
Ava Bucy @fangirlresearch.bsky.social · 8d
Teaching a module on fantasy, horror, and cult film this year, so actually watching some horror films for the first time, and man Saw is really bad lol. And like, bad in a fun way yes, but not at all in the way I expected
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Ava Bucy @fangirlresearch.bsky.social · 6d
First week of teaching done, relatively smooth, students seem great, office cute, feeling less terrified
A tan corner desk set up. The wall has some posters and postcards hung up, there are trinkets, a calendar, a coffee cup, and keys on the desk, along with two off monitors, a laptop, a box tv and dvd player. On the ground is a red leather backpack and a red chair half off-screen The opposite view of the office, four large tan bookcases that are around half filled with books, CDs, magazines, journal issues, and trinkets. In the corner of the room is a coat rack.
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Ava Bucy @fangirlresearch.bsky.social · 8d
Ooh definitely will be looking this up
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Ava Bucy @fangirlresearch.bsky.social · 8d
Also, getting 30 minutes in and realising Lawrence is Westley from the Princess Bride was crazy
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Ava Bucy @fangirlresearch.bsky.social · 8d
Teaching a module on fantasy, horror, and cult film this year, so actually watching some horror films for the first time, and man Saw is really bad lol. And like, bad in a fun way yes, but not at all in the way I expected
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fangirlresearch.bsky.social
Ava Bucy @fangirlresearch.bsky.social · 10d
They’ve been pretty lovely so not much opportunity blackmail, unfortunately, but I think they might be growing weary of resisting my antics so there’s still hope
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Ava Bucy @fangirlresearch.bsky.social · 10d
Do we think my supervisors will let me keep a 3000 word pseudo-chapter called “The fangirls neoliberal tilt: or, A/N One Shot AU where theses are 200k words”?
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Ava Bucy @fangirlresearch.bsky.social · 12d
I want yall to know that making this made me have to stifle a cry laugh in a silent computer lab and I’m still fighting a giggle
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Ava Bucy @fangirlresearch.bsky.social · 12d
There are two wolves inside me
The heads of a black and a white wolf staring at each other in front of a moon. On one side is an inserted illustration of Icarus falling from the sun, on the other is a photo of the “I can’t help myself” robot
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Ava Bucy @fangirlresearch.bsky.social · 12d
Well…… I did that….. there’s still literature to add…… I now have approximately 75k words of analysis chapters….. which is…. too many…… and months ago I already had to take out like,,, 25k words that weren’t working in the overall diss narrative but that I can use elsewhere…..
fangirlresearch.bsky.social
Ava Bucy @fangirlresearch.bsky.social · 15d
My adhd would apparently rather die than write the very last bit of analysis even though I know exactly what the plan is and it’s been the plan since the very start of analysis writing and even though it is in theory my fav type of analysis and it won’t take me that long to do…
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Ava Bucy @fangirlresearch.bsky.social · 12d
Also on the “make fun of fat people” Reality TV genre omg
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Ava Bucy @fangirlresearch.bsky.social · 12d
I’ve found a way to hate on street interviewers in my PhD I’m absolutely thrilled
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Ava Bucy @fangirlresearch.bsky.social · 12d
I’ve found a way to hate on street interviewers in my PhD I’m absolutely thrilled
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Ava Bucy @fangirlresearch.bsky.social · 13d
This was meant to be me announcing that I’m now officially a Practitioner of Media Studies at Uni of Hudd ☺️
(at least for the next nine months 🙃)
fangirlresearch.bsky.social
Ava Bucy @fangirlresearch.bsky.social · 13d
If you give a girl an office she will try to make it cute (even if it has the ghosts of permanent staff past lingering in the walls)
Two tan bookcases, half-filled with media studies books, cd cases, old print journals and student work, and Fan Studies Network swag
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Ava Bucy @fangirlresearch.bsky.social · 13d
@fanstudies.bsky.social idk which of the former Huddersfield folks left them behind, or if there’s any need for them now, but I’ve come into possession of 3 boxes each of FSN fans and pens if anyone wants some
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Ava Bucy @fangirlresearch.bsky.social · 13d
If you give a girl an office she will try to make it cute (even if it has the ghosts of permanent staff past lingering in the walls)
Two tan bookcases, half-filled with media studies books, cd cases, old print journals and student work, and Fan Studies Network swag
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Ava Bucy @fangirlresearch.bsky.social · 15d
In theory yes, in practice they all kind of build off of and link to each other sequentially, but maybe still yes with some meddling. In the meantime I’m just gonna hope some large chunks make themselves visible to me as comparatively unnecessary lol
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Ava Bucy @fangirlresearch.bsky.social · 15d
Its exciting but it is also like 15k words over its originally planned length…. Which is problematic given that I have another, separate 25k word doc with three already “completed” chapters that I’m going to have to wrangle
😬🙃😬😬🙃😬
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Ava Bucy @fangirlresearch.bsky.social · 15d
Hahahhahaaa I finally started writing that final analysis and it’s so long already and I’m only half done the document is almost 45k words long oohhhhhhhh my supervisor is gonna want to kill me lol
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Ava Bucy @fangirlresearch.bsky.social · 15d
I’ve read like 6 articles and written 1000 words of engaging with the literature and still not done the actual analysis oh my godddddddddd (and this is me ON adhd meds why is “struggles to complete tasks” my forever final boss)
fangirlresearch.bsky.social
Ava Bucy @fangirlresearch.bsky.social · 15d
My adhd would apparently rather die than write the very last bit of analysis even though I know exactly what the plan is and it’s been the plan since the very start of analysis writing and even though it is in theory my fav type of analysis and it won’t take me that long to do…
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fangirlresearch.bsky.social
Ava Bucy @fangirlresearch.bsky.social · 15d
I’ve read like 6 articles and written 1000 words of engaging with the literature and still not done the actual analysis oh my godddddddddd (and this is me ON adhd meds why is “struggles to complete tasks” my forever final boss)
fangirlresearch.bsky.social
Ava Bucy @fangirlresearch.bsky.social · 15d
My adhd would apparently rather die than write the very last bit of analysis even though I know exactly what the plan is and it’s been the plan since the very start of analysis writing and even though it is in theory my fav type of analysis and it won’t take me that long to do…
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