This article examines LGBTQ fans’ on-going frustration with the appropriation of queer narratives, or ‘queer-coding’, in contemporary depictions of werewolves in popular media and fans’ attempts to reclaim the werewolf as an explicitly queer figure through the medium of same-sex fanfiction. Focusing on two of the most popular fandoms featuring lycanthropic characters, J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series and MTV’s Teen Wolf, this article explores both fan reactions to canonical developments within these texts and statements from the texts’ author(s) pertaining to queerness, as well as pieces of slash fiction from both fandoms featuring werewolves. In hopes of better articulating and unveiling fans’ frustrated desire not only for better queer representation in fantasy texts, but also for more complex re-articulations of queer monstrosity, this article will interrogate the interplay between fan and author and look at the cultural work lycanthropic slash fiction performs.

Read Becoming The Monster: Queer Monstrosity and the Reclamation of the Werewolf in Slash Fandom