Episode 127: A Fan of Fandom
In Episode 127, “A Fan of Fandom,” Elizabeth and Flourish get (too?) meta answering a listener letter about the term “fan of fandom,” which Flourish had previously dismissed as “cute.” They discuss the ways different communities use the terms “fan” and “fandom,” the role of affect in their fannish lives, and whether approaching all media with a fannish lens might lead to more inclusive fan spaces—and more diverse media.
Show Notes
[00:00:00] As always, our intro music is “Awel” by stefsax, used under a CC BY 3.0 license.
[00:01:30] Our last “Ask Fansplaining Anything” episode was #124.
[00:03:22] Episode 65, “Fandom and Capitalism.”
[00:17:45] We argued in Episode 8, “One True Fandom.” Two years later, we recorded Episode 59, “Fandom Histories.”
[00:38:00]
[00:38:26] Apparently Polygon reported on the “shipping oil” term back in November 2019, but it was making the rounds on social media a couple of weeks ago. One of the writers had some things to say about it.
[00:38:01] We talked A/B/O in Special Episode 18, “Tropefest: Omegaverse,” but you can only listen to it if you support us on Patreon!
[00:42:10] One great piece about Black fic writers centering Black women in fic is Bim Adewunmi’s “Why ‘The Walking Dead’ Has Become Fanfiction’s Muse.” The Autostraddle piece about f/f is “Toward an Understanding of Whether Straight Fanfiction Exists: A Study.”
[00:46:51] If you aren’t familiar with Yuletide, it’s an absolute delight!
[00:53:39] One of the ways we know fans’ responses to shipping are extremely varied: our Shipping Survey, which had 17,391 responses. We talked about the results in Episode 99, “The Shipping Answers.” You can see more from that survey on our Projects page.
[00:59:30] We spoke to Amanda Brennan in Episode 6, “The Meme Librarian.” We spoke to Meredith in Episode 2, “GeekyCon & Meredith Levine.”
[01:05:41] Thank you to the 10 million people, both in and out of fandom, who sought comment from us on The New York Times’ “A Feud in Wolf-Kink Erotica Raises A Deep Legal Question.” (For what it’s worth, we think it was perfectly well researched.)
[01:06:28] Flourish recced “Restraint” by DarkEmeralds in the November 2, 2018 “Rec Center.”
[01:09:32] Our outro music is “Time to Think” by Lee Rosevere, used under a CC BY 3.0 license.
Transcript
[Intro music]
Flourish Klink: Hi, Elizabeth!
Elizabeth Minkel: Hi, Flourish.
FK: And welcome to Fansplaining, the podcast by, for, and about fandom!
ELM: This is Episode #127, “A Fan of Fandom.”
FK: Woo hoo!
ELM: All right.
FK: I don’t know. I’m feeling cheerful this morning. It’s a long weekend, it’s a beautiful—it’s not really a beautiful day. I don’t know.
ELM: It is raining heavily.
FK: It’s raining heavily. That’s fine. I like the rain.
ELM: Yeah, I like rain too. So. Don’t worry.
FK: [laughs] OK. So this episode is entitled “A Fan of Fandom” because we are talking about a letter we got on the topic of being a fan of fandom!
ELM: All right, I don’t know if that really explains it but maybe we should just dive right into it and read the letter and then we can talk about it.
FK: OK. Great. Should I read it?
ELM: Yes, please do.
FK: All right. “Hi Elizabeth and Flourish! Fansplaining is such a wonderful podcast and I really appreciate and respect your perspective on fan culture.” Aww.
“But I was a little surprised by the way that you differentiated fannish behavior from fandom itself in your last Ask Me Anything episode. To be clear, I’m not suggesting that you actually are or should be a fan of fandom. But the way you discussed why you don’t identify as a fan of fandom—for example, calling the expression ‘cute,’ contrasting book criticism with culture criticism, distinguishing an interest in fandom from being a fan of a property—came across as somewhat dismissive of the idea that someone might have the same relationship to fandom itself that fans have to books, movies and TV shows.
“I don’t think you necessarily mean to suggest that being a fan of fandom is less valid than being a fan of a TV show or movie, but I was a little disappointed by the false dichotomy that seemed to animate your reasoning. I love Fansplaining because I’m a fan of fandom. While I’m fairly new to transformative fandom, I’ve been an SFF and speculative fiction fan for most of my life. Many of my favorite pro writers have not only spoken openly about writing fanfiction, but have also brought many fic conventions into their professional work. I’m thinking particularly of N. K. Jemisin, Naomi Novik and Tamsyn Muir, among others.
“I had no idea about any of this background, however, until I started seriously reading fanfiction for the first time last year, and fell headfirst into Harry/Draco fandom, even though I honestly can’t stand Harry Potter. But fic transformed something that I personally think is unimaginative and mediocre into a spectacularly creative megatext with unlimited possibilities. As I read more and more fanfiction, I realized two things: one, many of my favorite books, movies and TV shows have tropes and themes that are popular in fanworks; and two, these tropes and themes have been directly imported from fandom into contemporary SFF fiction by fanfiction writers who have turned pro.
“I became obsessed with the history and development of transformative fandom, this collective imagination woven into so many of the books I love. And that’s why I began listening to Fansplaining. Listening to your podcast, especially your discussions about the darker sides of fan culture, has made me think that consciously appreciating fandom as an emergent property distinct from any particular canonical text is an important way to encourage inclusion within fandom.
“I recently listened to your episode on fandom and capitalism, and really appreciated your discussion about how using fanfiction to queer the text could be holding back cultural change by privileging franchises that feature straight, white, cis male characters while largely ignoring works that center the stories of marginalized communities. So many really incredible works featuring queer and trans people, women, and people of color are left out of the conversation, even when they have close parallels to franchises with massive fandoms.
“For example, I find it really interesting that Killing Eve isn’t more popular in fandom, because it has all the right components: the dynamic featuring the dark haired one and the light haired one, an enemies-to-lovers storyline with unbelievable sexual tension and chemistry, brilliant and very memeable writing, and an eccentric psychopath, among many other wonderful qualities. Killing Eve has a lot in common with shows like Good Omens, Sherlock, and Hannibal. It also has a lot in common with Harry/Draco fanfiction, but not Harry Potter. But unlike these works, the main ship is an F/F pairing, one of the leads is a middle-aged woman of color, and at least one of the leads is canonically queer.
“None of the major tropes or themes in fanworks are inherently racialized, and the only one I can think of that’s inherently gendered is mpreg—obviously A/B/O often has gendered dynamics, but F/F A/B/O isn’t unheard of. It just seems unreasonable to ignore something that has so many of the touchstones fandom tends to find compelling, and I think consciously consuming literature and media through the lens of fan culture may encourage those of us in fandom to discover works that we love without privileging and/or marginalizing certain voices.
“Thanks for reading my thoughts; I’d love to hear what you think! Monica.”
ELM: So much!
FK: That’s a wonderful letter and it has like, five things in it.
ELM: Many many layers. Thank you very much Monica. We initially were going to talk about this in a segment, and then we read it again and went “Oh, this is, this is a whole episode right here.” So I, I do wanna talk about all the parts. The biggest thrust of it, where I wanna spend the most time, is this idea about being a fan of fandom and…not necessarily putting an enclosure around what fandom means, but, well…that kind of is what I feel like this is asking us to do! And so I wanna dig into that a little bit, but I don’t want to forget about, I think, the second half of the letter. And I think maybe we’ll come to that as we, as we talk about the first part.
FK: I think so and I think that they’re also related—the first time I read it I didn’t see how, I didn’t understand how Monica sort of brought it back, but I think I figured that out this time.
ELM: [laughs] All right, cool.
FK: So I’m excited to talk about that right, like, yeah! Reading comprehension!
ELM: Yeah.
FK: Sometimes it takes two tries!
ELM: That’s us, that’s us! No, it’s a sign of a good nuanced complicated piece of writing here! So. OK. This was in reference to our last AMA episode. We had a listener write in to ask us how we made the podcast, and we wound up, like, kind of going down a rabbit hole for like 15 minutes. We wound up talking at length about how we both study fandom professionally, so we don’t, you know, don’t have to do a ton of additional research to talk about the things that we’re already talking about in our daily lives, and you said that you were not a fan of fandom. You said that expression was cute.
FK: I did.
ELM: And you understood why people said it but you didn’t feel that way about fandom. So I think we should probably start there, because that was what Monica took objection to.
FK: So one of the things—reading Monica’s letter really made me see sort of something I didn’t say in that episode. Which is about my definition of “being a fan,” and of “fandom,” you know? And I think that those are the things that are within—that’s what’s actually being contested. Cause I don’t, I mean, obviously I think that it’s wonderful for people to love fandom and to love fandom as an emergent property. I think that’s amazing, right? But to me, when I think about being a fan—I also don’t say that I’m a fan of knitting, or a fan of quilting, or a fan of, I don’t know, the art world. [laughs] Right?
ELM: Yeah.
FK: Or anything that is sort of—something that is made by a collective of people, do you see what I mean? To me, being a fan of something…OK, yeah, a TV show is made by a lot of people, but there is maybe an author, and it is apart from me, and it is not something that I can jump into and sort of be part of in the same way.
So for me I realize that that’s why I react so strongly to that, is like, I feel like “No no no, that’s different.” To me, having that fannish reaction, there’s by definition a separation between me and my object of fandom. And there’s not a separation between me and the knitting community or me and the fandom community, so it’s strange to me—to me—to say that I’m a fan of that, then. Right? But that’s a very personal definition and not everyone share it, maybe!
ELM: So, yeah! So, like, one step back: object of fandom. That’s a phrase we use a lot.
FK: Yeah.
ELM: Object-oriented fandom. [both laugh] You know, so the object is, you know, whenever I have to explain the podcast to someone—and usually this is what sends, like, their eyes glaze over and they’re like “wut?”—it’s like, no, we don’t talk about the objects of fandom, we talk about fandom.
FK: Right.
ELM: So we’re not talking about Game of Thrones, the plot, or the characters, or you know what I mean. It might come up in the process, but that is not the subject of this podcast. It is about the way that people are fans of Game of Thrones, right. And not—you know. It’s more, whatever, you’re listening to this, you know what we do on this podcast. So. [FK laughs]
But like, that object, that phrase “object of fandom,” I think is really key here, and I have to wonder—I think your examples are good, the knitting world and the art world, but there are actual examples where people do use the word “fandom” or “fan”—you could say like “I’m a fan of knitting,” right, which, whatever.
FK: Yeah, I mean, that’s a, absolutely. That’s a way that you can use the word.
ELM: Yeah. I’m a fan of—well, I was gonna say “seltzer,” but I’m in a seltzer club and I own two t-shirts.
FK: Right.
ELM: And I’ve been to the picnics, so actually now we’re going into different territory here. But you know, I’m a fan of, I don’t know. Cats. You know?
FK: Right.
ELM: I am a fan of cats. Undeniable, love those cats. All cats are valid. But, could you say like, “there’s a cats fandom,” I mean, one could! That being said, when I think of the big examples of this, where people tend to use “I’m a fan of,” people actually do tend to talk about the collective interest as a fandom when you talk about any sport. “I’m a baseball fan.” Even though generally, if you’re a baseball fan—I mean obviously there’s a ton of people who would just watch any baseball game, because they just enjoy watching baseball. But usually you do have a team.
FK: Right.
ELM: But I think the most relevant here, and probably reflects where Monica is coming from based on her background and interests, is that science fiction and fantasy world have used the term “fandom” for decades.
FK: Right.
ELM: To mean their world.
FK: Yes.
ELM: The number of times, especially on the Fansplaining Twitter feed—I don’t know who these people are you’re following, Flourish, it’s very different from my feed—
FK: Yes, it’s true.
ELM: We both consented to a couple hundred people that we should follow initially when we set up the Fansplaining account, and sometimes I just look at that feed and I’m like “Oh my God, this is so different than the people only I follow.”
FK: [laughs] Cause a bunch of my people are from like science fiction fantasy world and you’re like “What just happened?!”
ELM: And so they’re constantly talking about fandom, fandom does this, fandom does that, and I’ll like—I’ll like look a little closer and I’ll be like “Oh, they mean the science fiction and fantasy world, they mean a specific set of conventions, they mean the Hugos and the Nebulas, they mean a body of literature that I have very little contact with or knowledge of.” [FK laughs] When a lot of these people talk about books, they are only talking about science fiction and/or fantasy.
FK: Right.
ELM: And when they talk about writing they’ll say things and I’ll go, [gasps] “There’s other genres that do the thing that you don’t think writing does!” I’m not trying to pin this—everyone does this in their own, with their own blinkers on, right?
FK: [laughs] With your own thing, yes.
ELM: This is what I encounter when I look at our feed and I’m like “Oh, this is so strange!” So it’s a little insight into you, basically.
FK: Which is funny because I’m the one who’s, my reaction to this is like “No! That’s not the kind of fandom I’m talking about,” right?
ELM: I know! But that’s your crew.
FK: Yeah. But I think the other thing within what Monica is saying is, if you think about being a fan of something not so much as the—so when I just talked about, well, when I say I’m a fan of something I mean that I have this relationship to it and the relationship is one of distance, to some degree, right? That’s part of being a fan of something. If I’m too close to it, if I’m part of it I can’t be a fan of it, because to me—to me only—that feels like it’s not the way I use the word, personally.
But if you think of being a fan of something as meaning, like, engaging with it the way that fans engage with things that they love, right? Critically and also lovingly, you know what I mean—then of course you can be a fan of fandom in that way, right? You could be a little bit obsessive about it and you could be both absolutely loving and have it, like, spark love in you, and you could also be somewhat critical in a loving way, right. You could be a fan of almost anything in that respect, in the sense of like, “Well, these are the sort of ways that I interact with it.” You could be a fan of knitting in that respect, right.
The thing is, I don’t think that that’s the way that—I don’t know that that’s the way that everyone uses the word “fan,” you know. In fact I know it’s not.
ELM: Right, yeah.
FK: Which doesn’t make that an invalid definition, it just makes this really really squishy and hard to get into. And I think my reaction to “Oh, it’s cutesy to say I’m a fan of fandom,” I didn’t mean to offend anybody by saying that and I’m sorry that I did, but I think that my reaction is from—if that’s the way you mean it then I totally endorse you saying that. But I think the way people read it is like, “Ooh! Squee! Fandom!” You know? In a very like—in a very trite, cheesy, and not-deep way, you know what I mean? When I see it on like a convention, it’s a panel at a convention with that on it or something like that, I think, “Are people gonna read this the way that we mean it?” And so maybe I should be less critical of that, because—maybe I should assume everyone is reading it in that more nuanced way instead of assuming that people don’t know what this is actually getting into. So mea culpa, I guess.
ELM: I mean, I think people often are reading it that way, but they like that.
FK: [laughs] I know! I don’t like that! I’m sorry, people! [ELM laughs] I don’t like it! I can’t make myself like it! Monica, this is not to you because I think what you said is really nuanced and not like that, and even if it was I would still, you know, have great respect for you, but I just—I don’t like it still!
ELM: Yeah, it’s interesting. There’s like, I have this issue too and there’s like a tonal—there’s an element of it where it’s like kind of, when I go to a convention that’s not necessarily super oriented around my kind of fannish experiences? Like when I don’t feel like there’s a lot of transformative fandom conversation?
FK: Yeah.
ELM: And there’s a panel about, like, shipping, and you read the copy of the panel, and it’s like “We squee over our favorite ships,” and I’ll instantly think like, “This is not going to be for me,” in the same way as you were just describing. And I don’t know what it is about it, and if that was at like a super—you know, I’ve been to cons that are like, super transformative-oriented, and say like, “We’re gonna talk about our favorite ships,” and I know it’s gonna be like a really different conversation, because I know people are gonna be saying the same kinds of things that they say on my dash or whatever, you know what I mean? But I don’t know how to articulate that.
FK: Yeah.
ELM: It’s not to say that it’s not, it’s totally fine. It’s just like, I know it’s not for me.
FK: Right. I mean I also sometimes worry that this is, for me, like, some, I don’t know, internalized misogyny or “I don’t wanna seem like just a squeeing fangirl” or something like that, you know what I mean? I’m sure that that’s part of it somewhere in my emotions about this, and you know, I kinda, I struggle with that. Because on the one hand, I don’t want to reject—I don’t want to reject those emotions. I certainly do not. I absolutely have all of those emotions at all times! [laughing]
ELM: You truly do!
FK: But, you know, I also don’t like it when fandom is reduced to those, you know what I mean? When fandom is reduced to those, whether it’s by someone else who’s using it as an insult or whether it’s by ourselves trying to reclaim it. So I don’t know, it’s very mixed.
ELM: It’s complicated.
FK: We should make some like, Fansplaining like, merchandise, that says, “This is complicated!”
ELM: That, we can come up with some—
FK: Because we say it so often. It’s a terrible idea but we say it so often.
ELM: —a better, a better—I like how you immediately, all I said was “We should—” and then you were like “No, that’s not a good idea,” immediately walked it back. I didn’t even have time—
FK: I already knew it wasn’t a good idea! It’s not a good idea, it’s just the thing that we say most often. So we need to say something better, is possibly the answer.
ELM: Do you think it’s true that we say “it’s complicated” the most often? I actually notice when I’m editing that I say—
FK: “It’s fraught.”
ELM: I say “fraught,” definitely, obviously. But I also say “y’know, it’s interesting” a lot. A lot.
FK: It’s complicated? Question mark. Fraught? Question mark. Interesting? Question mark.
ELM: This is not like unique rhetoric to this podcast. Those are three normal words that people use a lot.
FK: It’s true.
ELM: So I, you know. But you can try to make that happen. Go ahead. I’m not participating in this.
FK: [laughing] All right, let’s get back on topic.
ELM: Yes. Fans of fandom. So a long time ago, in the very first months of our collaboration, we had a famously—because we talked about it multiple times afterwards, that’s why it’s famous—
FK: [laughs] We made it famous.
ELM: Yeah, we made it famous. Fight, in our first solo episode. It was the first one where we didn’t have a guest. It was called “One True Fandom.” We attempted to define “fandom,” put some boundaries around it, say “this is what fandom is and what it isn’t,” and it didn’t go well. And, uh… [FK laughs] That’s an understatement. We also have talked about this—
FK: There were tears.
ELM: There were a lot of tears. We talked about this somewhat, also at one point—probably maybe 18 months after that? Remember when we did that “Fandom Histories” episode where we talked about the sort of like—
FK: Yeah yeah yeah.
ELM: —narratives, and whether you can trace this as some sort of, trace a single narrative to create a single thing that is fandom.
FK: Which, spoiler alert, we kind of threw out that idea.
ELM: No. Right. Then we talk about this obviously a lot. But like, in passing. But it was, I think those are the two episodes where we kind of dug into this. It’s interesting though thinking about to the content of that conversation—cast your mind back five years now—to that episode, you know, we were still talking about object-oriented fandom that whole time. It was just about the behaviors that you do around it.
FK: Right. The lines we were drawing in the sand were sort of around where, when do you become a member of fandom, or when do you—
ELM: What counts.
FK: Right, what counts. Which is why there were tears, because no one likes being told either that they are being excluded or that they’re being exclusionary, and we had to have a big fight about it. And I think that ultimately over the course of the past five years, we’ve both, our positions have both moved a little bit.
ELM: My position hasn’t moved.
FK: [laughs] My position’s moved a little bit. A little bit!
ELM: The takeaway is that I was right and you were wrong and now you know that you were wrong—[FK laughs]—and you have changed your mind.
FK: I am going to murder you because I don’t think that that’s entirely true because you have said that your position has moved on this a little bit at various times. But anyway, anyway! We’re gonna move on because we don’t wanna have another crying fight!
ELM: How has my position moved? I genuinely can’t think of how! I, like—so we were defining it on two axes. We wound up making like a little matrix.
FK: Yeah.
ELM: It was how participatory versus how solitary you were…
FK: Right.
ELM: Sorry. How communal versus how solitary you were, and then the other axis was how much stock you put in canon all the way over to how much stock you put in fanon, which was kind of shorthanding for like—I mean, just fandom in general, not like specific headcanons or whatever, or like, “fanon” was a little fuzzy there I think.
FK: Right. If I recall correctly, and maybe the reason that I think that you’ve changed your position on this is because I don’t remember what your position was, so, my memory of this was that when we initially started you were saying that a person who had no contact with other fans but was very passionate and solitary was a part of fandom, despite having no contact with other fans at all.
ELM: Yes.
FK: And I said that person is definitely a fan, but I defined “fandom” as being people interacting with each other, even if it is only as much knowing that someone else has done something in this space. Like, reading someone else’s fanfic and never, and never encountering it or, whatever.
ELM: Well you’re making me wish I reviewed the transcript, because I wouldn’t say if someone, like…
FK: I think, that’s my current opinion.
ELM: Say you like were raised alone in a cabin and then someone, like, sent you the DVDs of The X-Files and you watched them and then you, what? Like, you know, there’s no way you would say you were in the fandom of The X-Files because you wouldn’t know that existed, you just know that you liked it, right? That would never be my argument, like—
FK: OK, well then maybe I misremembered the argument.
ELM: No!
FK: I had remembered you as saying, as taking a very extreme like, everybody’s part of this even if they have no idea of fandom as a social thing, and I was like—at the time I was taking a much stronger argument saying “You have to interact, you have to engage, you have to be like talking,” which I have backed off from, let me be clear.
ELM: Yeah, that’s good.
FK: Which I don’t defend anymore, I think that, you know. But I still think that there has to be an interaction because fandom is a social thing. So there has to be some sort of knowledge or engagement.
ELM: I think you have to know about the existence of other fans…well here’s the thing though, right? Like, the paradox question—paradoxical question here is always like: was I in the Sweet Valley High fandom—?
FK: Right, right, right.
ELM: —when I didn’t have the internet and I just had a lot of Sweet Valley High books.
FK: Right.
ELM: And I wrote my George Fowler corporate board fanfiction.
FK: Yes.
ELM: Was I in the fandom of that? No. Because I didn’t know that existed.
FK: Right.
ELM: Was I writing fanfiction? Yes.
FK: Absolutely, of course, yeah.
ELM: Right. To me, even like, I don’t know, I like to say Buffy was my first fandom, but like, I don’t remember having any self-defining thoughts around the—you know the idea that Buffy had a fandom. I understood there were other fans, but the first time that I truly understood fandom as a collective thing and saw people reference the word fandom was with Harry Potter, and that was after I had already been doing fannish things for my whole conscious life.
FK: Right.
ELM: But that was after spending at least a year or two, like, on Buffy websites made by people who definitely considered themselves in the Buffy fandom, because they were probably like, older than me and understood what that was—
FK: Right. That’s really fascinating, yeah. I’m really fascinated by that, thinking of yourself as being part of a collective of people.
ELM: I don’t remember ever reading that word! And I mean, I don’t remember very much from when I was 14 so who the hell knows, you know, but it’s like…and I mean, like, obviously I didn’t even understand, even though I wrote fanfiction, I didn’t even understand contextually when I saw someone else’s fanfiction. I was like “What’s this? A prediction? Spoilers?” You know?
FK: Totally.
ELM: So that’s really interesting, but what I would now say—I say all the time that Buffy was my first fandom, my first real fandom, my first internet fandom, my first real fandom, et cetera. But when you actually get right down to it—
FK: Right. At the same time, it’s not like I—I don’t think that we should take away that from people when they are looking back on it. I don’t know, it’s hard to say. Because looking back on it in retrospect is one thing, right, cause that’s also to do with…this is hard.
ELM: It’s a little bit of a Schrödinger’s fandom, like—
FK: Yeah.
ELM: If we’re talking about this now, there’s no way to talk about this in the now. Because if you’re discussing it, then you’re aware, and at this point also we’re talking about the late ’90s versus 2020. Like, I almost said ’19 but I forgot we were in this terrible year. You know, it’s so permeated the popular culture now that I think it would be—
FK: Right.
ELM: I can’t imagine someone stumbling upon a, I was gonna say like a—what do they make websites about now. But they don’t! People make social media accounts. So like, you know, stumbling upon some kind of fan account for something and not understanding that it was a part of a fandom thing.
FK: I can imagine that pretty easily, but it probably wouldn’t be someone of our age.
ELM: Oh no no no, I mean like a younger person, say like you hear BTS on the radio and you’re like “I really like them”—
FK: Right.
ELM: You know what I mean? And then you like, search them and you’re quickly gonna tell that it’s like, many other people like them—
FK: Totally.
ELM: —and they are organizing themselves in groups. You’re gonna…
FK: Yeah yeah yeah, completely.
ELM: You know? Which is like, I think that it’s hard for people who are even a little bit younger than us to really understand what the internet in the first, you know—
FK: Was like. [laughs]
ELM: I, you know, this is like kind of a wanky thing to talk about to be like “You will never understand, youngsters!” At the age of like 35. But like, it’s true! It was quite different.
FK: Yeah.
ELM: In the mid-to-late ’90s.
FK: Yes.
ELM: And it was a very, um, segmented? Is maybe the word I want to use?
FK: Yeah.
ELM: Right? It was very closed and it was interesting cause you’d find things through hyperlinks in kind of, not even rabbit holes but like, in kind of chains, right?
FK: Right.
ELM: You’d be like “Oh, this, and this, and this—” but it was really hard because there was very little ability to search a collective corpus that like, you’d be able to see something more holistic. People would catalog sites, you know, like, “These are the best Buffy sites. 20 sites that I’ve found,” but someone had to do that human work of cataloging—
FK: Right.
ELM: —for you to even get a sense of the scope.
FK: Yeah, I think that that’s partially one of the—I think that that’s one of the things that makes this whole conversation complicated is that some of the definitions that might have applied to people in the ’90s, right, don’t apply now. Right? If you’re talking about knowledge and engagement with fan culture of a certain type, then by that, like—I’m a BTS fan. Do you know what I mean? If that’s what you require, that you have talked about BTS with somebody and have engaged with their fan culture a little bit and like talked about a controversy, then I guess I’m part of it. I’m not at all. I have no emotional connection to BTS whatsoever, right? Like, that’s not a thing, right? So that’s not—that’s no longer a good, I mean, if it ever was, that’s no longer a good bar to set because in the past, even knowing about that involved, like, required effort. Now it doesn’t require any kind of engagement or deeper feeling to know about that, right?
ELM: Yeah, I mean, I think one of the most frustrating things that’s happened in culture and entertainment journalism in the last five years is the lazy, lazy, lazy—
FK: Yes.
ELM: —conflation of audiences with fans.
FK: Yep!
ELM: And saying “Get ready, Marvel fans!” And it’s like, OK, I don’t know what we mean here. Or “Look at these Marvel fans, they spent so much money at the box office.” And I’m like—
FK: Yep.
ELM: “All right!” But also, there’s a huge spectrum, range and space for ways for people to actually be Marvel fans within the box office audience of the last Avengers movie, right? If you go to Target and buy an Iron Man t-shirt and go see the Avengers movie, the only thing that I would want from you to acknowledge that you are an MCU fan is for you to say, “I’m a fan of this.” Right?
FK: Right.
ELM: But it’s so easy! Like, it’s literally right there in Target for you to pick up, you know what I mean? It’s like, the barrier to entry to even the lightest quote-unquote “proof,” right?
FK: Right.
ELM: If you need to set some kind of bar, which I actually don’t, because you could also—you wanna say you’re in the MCU fandom and, I mean like, I don’t know why you would ever say that if you haven’t seen the movies. Obviously you’ve probably spent some money on this. And obviously you don’t have to spend money at all. You’ve spent some time on this, right? Like, you’ve watched the movie? If you wanna say you’re a fan of those movies or you’re in the fandom for this property, I am totally in favor of that. But it’s so easy to do, like, one extra thing right now. And like, 20 years ago it was actually kinda hard to do one extra thing, you know?
FK: Kinda hard, yeah. Well, the other thing that I would say about this is this also has—one of the reasons we were having this fight, which was to do with the question of individual identity, right, and gatekeeping, as opposed to like the kind of work that I do in my day job in terms of studying and interacting with, like, from a corporate perspective, right? Cause if you’re talking about individual identity, I absolutely don’t want to—I don’t want to gatekeep anybody and say “you can’t be a fan, you’re not a good enough fan,” you know what I mean, that’s stupid. That’s foolish. What do you gain by doing that, right?
But if you’re looking at it from a, well, OK, how do we think about an audience, right? Then you do maybe need to think about “OK, well, whose behavior can we observe,” right, “Who’s talking and engaging and doing things that we can see?” And then “OK, can we assume that there are people who are doing things that we can’t see, who are engaging in some way and who have deep feelings but who we can’t observe because they’re not talking,” and then there’s like, “Oh, well there’s a bunch of people who have bought a ticket and have seen the movie or whatever,” and that’s different, right, those are different purposes and the word “fan” gets used in different ways. And it is a bugaboo of mine that constantly in my work I have to keep going “No, actually, everyone in your audience is not a fan! Everyone who follows you on Twitter is not a fan!” Well, they’re sort of fans—maybe they are a fan, maybe they’d say they’re a fan—but they’re not a fan that I mean a fan, they’re not going to be, you know, like, shaping the narrative, I don’t know.
ELM: But for your work, like, for your work though you inherently have to discount—not discount, but like, when you’re telling your clients—I’m sorry, this is pure speculation, I am not saying anything about your actual work—but like, when you’re telling your clients what fans are, who their fans are, what they’re doing, you are inherently going to have to place less value or even almost no value on a huge subsection of what you and I personally consider the deepest fandom, right? Like, you know.
My favorite example obviously, I brought it up at our Comic-Con panel too, and no one picked up from this, which I was kind of annoyed about, obviously, because like—I mean obviously I was meant to be the one talking about, like, anti-capitalist or side-stepping capitalist fandom there, and that was slightly afield of the people who are mostly engaging in the capitalist cycles of fandom.
FK: Right.
ELM: But I brought up the Inception fandom. I don’t know what’s going on on my feed right now but a whole bunch of people I know in the last few days have been talking about how they’ve been reading Inception fic. Have you had this too?
FK: Because Chris—it’s because Christopher Nolan has a new movie coming out—
ELM: Oh that’s why!
FK: —with Robert Pattinson, Tenet.
ELM: Oh I totally knew why, but I just blocked it out! But it immediately moved on from that and people just started talking about Inception fic. And I was like…
FK: Of course! Because, and the latest thing is like, can we make Tenet and Inception both be in the same universe somehow?
ELM: So…and this actually kind of undercuts my point, which was that Christopher Nolan’s not gonna make like Inception 2, so people continuing to be involved in the Inception fandom and potentially writing new works like 10 years later is of no value. But actually it kind of inadvertently pre-built a fanbase for him of people who would wanna go see the—
FK: For Tenet, yeah.
ELM: A similar-looking movie that he’s making. You know. So like, maybe that’s, maybe there is no example of this. You know, like, I could say like “I’m writing fanfiction about a finalized version, iteration of a franchise, so I’m not gonna create any—me continuing to engage with the actors’ portrayals of the characters who will never play them again is not actually creating any value for Fox-owned-by-Disney,” but actually, you know, I am still abstractly interested in the broader franchise. When they make more movies I probably will go see them, you know what I mean?
FK: Right.
ELM: So like, I talk a lot of talk about how like, oh, I’m just doin’ my own thing in my 2011 fandom, but you know…so it’s actually kind of hard to capture those nuances. But on a whole, a lot of the most robust fan activity, beyond kind of having that trickle-down effect of like, yeah, all the people writing Captain America fic are gonna see the next Captain America movie—they don’t actually generate a massive amount of revenue and don’t necessarily generate the kind of focused conversation that the actual rightsholders might want around their property, because it’s so focused on what the fandom is doing internally.
FK: Well I would say that there’s, there’s some challenges to that assumption. Like, for instance, the conversation around The Last Jedi, right? The Star Wars whole, the entire Star Wars fandom experience illustrates that there are people who are very much in this transformative fandom space who absolutely have opinions that–and by the way, I’m not saying only them, but I’m just saying that is a big chunk of the conversation—that have opinions that totally shape press conversation.
ELM: Sure, sure.
FK: About this, right? So it’s, I mean, I’m not saying that “Oh, fandom’s the tail that wags the dog in every case,” but sometimes fandom is the tail that wags the dog.
ELM: Yeah.
FK: And particular kinds of fandom. So I do agree with you, however, that there’s a lot of people who don’t speak about their fandom in ways that are measurable very much—
ELM: Right, right.
FK: And so to get to them the only thing that you can do is—if you really wanna research within that, you can’t do really a survey that’s gonna get them, you have to sort of do interviews with people and you have to find them in weird ways and it’s not really possible, usually, cause if you’re quite isolated, you’re never gonna have someone who’s like “Oh yeah, my friend who doesn’t post but reads a lot.” [ELM laughs] You know what I mean? That’s not gonna—so yeah, it’s just the nature. And by the way, this is not limited to corporate research, right? No one can get to that very easily because of the separated nature of that, by definition.
ELM: OK. Side note, first of all, I just wanna say: there’s someone I follow on Tumblr and they’ve changed their name at least once since I began following them, I do not know who they are, I do not know why I originally followed them. I like their posts so I’m not gonna unfollow them. I don’t know if they follow me back. I don’t know who, this is a mystery person. But! They have freakin’ code names for every ship and every fandom that they’re in, and they have like a really formalized tagging system. So they’ll say like “ship name,” and then there’ll be a couple of words. And it’s not—the reason I know that it’s not one that anyone else uses is because they actually reblogged a Cherik thing a few months ago and it was like “fandom name something something” and “ship name something something,” and I was like, “What?!” Like…
FK: They’ve taken my comments about how you can search the internet to heart!!
ELM: And this is so funny! And I was trying to parse the way they had named the ship and I was like, this is obviously just a series of inside jokes for them and they choose formal names for ships and fandoms. But like they will reblog something and I will look at the actors and I’ll be like “I don’t know who the fuck those people are,” and then like, I will never—like, no one can ever know—
FK: You’ll never figure it out.
ELM: No one will ever know what this is. And this is someone who tags! You have so many people on Tumblr who don’t bother tagging at all, you know.
FK: Oh, for sure.
ELM: Or they have their own like, jokesy tags. “Jokesy.” [laughs]
FK: Yeah, absolutely.
ELM: Jokey? You know.
FK: There are many limitations and challenges in this space! [laughs]
ELM: Right, right. But what I was gonna say—that was an aside about this mystery person whom I love but who baffles me—is like, yeah, corporate, it’s not just corporate research, it’s not just entertainment industry research. But that being said, all right. Within like us doing personal research or academics doing research, obviously they can get, they can dig a little bit deeper into spaces that seem a little bit more opaque often because they are coming from fandom. But that being said, I don’t think that—like, why would a corporation want, like—
FK: Yeah, why does it matter?
ELM: It’s also like, there’s a limit to like, yeah, you can try to understand the full depth beneath the tip of the iceberg for the popular person on Tumblr who’s talking in ways that seem relatively opaque to someone who’s not in fandom but works on that property, and to see how big their reach is and to see how many people they convince to watch Voltron—I don’t know. I was trying to think of an example. [laughs] Good Omens, I have no idea. Sure. But like, there’s only so much time in the day and isn’t it more useful to measure the things that like, most humans can understand and read, which is like people using the word “Good Omens” in their tweet so you can say like, “this show I like, Good Omens, it’s about this.” That’s much easier to measure but it’s also like, isn’t that the kind of—the thing that’s more accessible is the thing that’s more likely to spawn more…maybe not. Maybe the stuff that’s really deep in it is actually the stuff that pulls more fans in, but you know what I mean?
FK: It’s sort of, it’s sort of both.
ELM: Yeah?
FK: It is sort of both. It’s—part of it is, yes: the stuff that’s really accessible is the stuff that goes far. But then the stuff that’s happening underneath is often the stuff that—I don’t know, think about with Teen Wolf, right? “Sterek was promised,” right? No one—at that time—
ELM: Think about it.
FK: Right, no one knew what Sterek was, but if someone had actually had a clue about what was going on there who was not their social media person, right—I don’t know if you guys remember this, Sterek was—as I think everyone here knows—a major ship in Teen Wolf, not a canonical ship, and they kept teasing it really hard, not in the show itself but in their social media presence. And really hard. Like so hard that people felt like it was a promise that had been made to them. In reality, no such promise had been made and no such ship was forthcoming.
But the thing is that that seemed like something where like “Oh, the social media person’s doing good, they’re getting numbers on Tumblr, they’re doing fine and it will never bubble up,” but it actually did bubble up. It had a big problem for them, because then later on this became an issue of like, the fact that they kept killing off women and people of color, and also like the gay characters, and also like—I mean they had gay characters of color on that show, but they weren’t the ones that people wanted. [laughs] You know? And it just ballooned and it started getting covered in the entertainment press, it started getting covered in ways that I think people who were not necessarily engaged with that sort of particular shipping moment saw. And it had an impact. So I mean, to some degree it’s like, “OK, like, how do you keep an eye on that so you don’t make a big gaffe like that,” you know what I mean? So you can maybe turn the ship, like, don’t do that!
ELM: We’re talking about 2013 versus 2020s, literally night and day here, like—
FK: I know it’s night and day, but…
ELM: You saw the—you wanna talk about shipping oil?
FK: Oh no I don’t. Oh no. Too much, too much.
ELM: Yeah, I don’t actually wanna talk about this. A little too far afield. But if anyone missed it, it was an interview with the people making The Dragon Prince animated show saying that they were constant—they said that they constantly scrutinized their writing choices, making the forthcoming season, presumably after watching the utter meltdowns in places like the Voltron fandom, the Steven Universe fandom.
FK: Yeah.
ELM: A number of other animated fandoms.
FK: Yeah.
ELM: And they said they needed to make sure that no, like, scene or interactions between characters had too much “shipping oil.” Meaning—
FK: To fan the flames? I don’t know.
ELM: I know we just did this Omegaverse episode… [FK laughs] So…the jokes write themselves. But…
FK: I was trying to take it in a much more clean way. This is a clean podcast according to iTunes.
ELM: Uh, I’m saying clean things. I, I’m just talking about shipping oil. [FK laughing] It was a really, really grim set of quotes, but it was also like, it felt inevitable based on the interactions we’ve seen between frankly—I mean, speaking about animated, certain animated show fandoms in particular and the creators of those shows, at this point I kinda can’t blame them, you know? For being super paranoid that they’re setting up any kind of place for extreme harassment and for people to accuse you of locking people in a basement for makin’ a freakin’ cartoon.
FK: OK, well, let’s bring it back to Monica’s comment, though,.
ELM: Let’s circle back to Monica! Circlin’ back!
FK: Because I actually do think, I think there is a way to circle back, which is we’ve been talking about all of this stuff, and I’m trying to think about…so maybe is it, like, is there a fandom for fandom? Is then the question that I have, right. I think that saying that there’s ways in which the term “fan of fandom” makes sense, yeah? I’m on board. But I sort of wonder, is there a fandom of fandom? How does that work? And also is this even useful—at a certain point do we need to blow up these terms, “fan” and “fandom,” and start talking in some other way.
ELM: Right. This statement doesn’t make sense to me beyond the way that you would use “fandom” as a way to talk about SFF, broader SFF communities. And when we talk about fandom it’s analogous, and one thing that we I think try really hard to do is constantly say like—when we’re just shorthanding to fandom, we try to articulate what we mean by that or try to put a little more descriptive boundary on it to say, “transformative media fandom” or whatever. But I don’t, I don’t love that we do that and I hate that we have to shorthand it. There’s so many examples when you kind of stumble into, when you’re researching fannish worlds that are completely disconnected from yours that actually are doing a lot of the same things you’re doing. When you come across fully-written fic on DeviantArt, for example.
FK: Yeah! Totally.
ELM: Full chaptered fic. And I’m like, “Whoa, who are these people?” Right? I’m in a fandom that was very active about 10 years ago so if you actually wind up digging in the archives you see, like, people are all over the place. It’s not just, it seems like the same kind of fans, right, but they’re actually on like four different platforms, right? It’s not all AO3.
FK: Totally.
ELM: Or even within like, you know, I’ve read some articles over the years where it’s interesting whenever we talk about, like, the AO3 space and that kind of fandom’s privileging of white male ships, and then I’ve read multiple articles from women, from black women in fandom and they’ll be talking about fanfiction and everything they talk about is a het ship featuring a black woman.
FK: Yeah, yep.
ELM: And I’m like—or like the famous, the one that we love talking about, or I love talking about anyway, that Autostraddle article, “Why is all fanfiction about F/F?” And it was like…
FK: About F/F! And we’re like, “…is it?”
ELM: And so you know, like, obviously there are absolute numbers here, but you know, we so often are comparing within spaces or looking at the same kinds of properties across spaces, and that’s never gonna capture the full scope of like, het black female ships or the, the, obviously there are, you know. There are numbers here. But like, there’s all-encompassing spaces for different fans, right? And so…
FK: Well there’s also things, yeah, and things that feel really, the fact that there’s a total number of fics does not necessarily translate to how deeply you are into it or how many of your friends are into it, you know what I mean? It is absolutely possible. I think that’s something we lose track of, right, is that fandom—when I say “we” I mean “anyone who lived through the late ’90s” loses track of the fact that in the late ’90s you had these tiny spaces compared to today, and they still felt completely all-encompassing, right? And I think that’s really interesting, because…
ELM: You’re never gonna look at all those, at all the content on all those 20 Buffy websites. That’s so much content!
FK: Right?!
ELM: You know?
FK: And yet it felt huge and, so then why is it surprising that people’s tiny little corner feels like the whole world, right?
ELM: Right, or maybe it’s not that tiny, also. But like if you are spending all your time on the AO3, or if you’re spending all your time on fanfiction.net, you know, like, and you say “all fanfiction is like this,” it’s like, “my friend, it is not.” That is just what is self-perpetuatingly popular in this space where you are. And there’s a reason why it is self-perpetuating.
FK: How does this connect back to Monica?
ELM: OK. So I brought this up because I was saying, I hate saying “fandom is X,” or like, when I—shorthanding fandom.
FK: Right.
ELM: So it’s something that I feel like I wanna really reiterate. But if we are shorthanding to a specific, broad, people say “I’m in fandom” and they mean something specific—it’s so hard though! You know, like, when I think about Monica’s examples, I understand exactly what she’s talking about, right? Those writers—frankly a lot of them were in Harry Potter fandom because Harry Potter fandom was massive.
FK: Absolutely were.
ELM: Harry Potter fic fandom, not necessarily like, the webmaster of MuggleNet, you know. Like, they are very different corners of even what was a relatively large space, right?
FK: Mm-hmm.
ELM: So yes, I understand these as underpinnings. I also don’t think it’s as, uh, chicken-to-egg? Egg-to-chicken? It is chicken-and-egg, right? A lot of those people who were writing fic in the ’90s, in the 2000s, were also deeply involved in their reading lives in the SFF world.
FK: Absolutely. There was a huge number. I mean that’s where I got into the SFF world. I was in Harry Potter fandom and that showed me the SFF world.
ELM: Right, and that’s, obviously pre-internet too, that’s absolutely true, you know? And like, the nature of fic was different in the ’70s and the ’80s, but it was sitting side-by-side or within like—it came out of, out of like the biggest modern media fandoms—except for like maybe Man From U.N.C.L.E., which is not a science fiction show, but like, beyond Star Trek there were some other ones too that were really foundational, and it’s not like—you know, that brings us back to the fandom histories thing.
I try to explain to people that like, I go to Comic-Con, and now I have to eat my words now that I’m in the freakin’ X-Men fandom, kinda ruined everything for me, but I used to be able to say things like “It’s not about certain kinds of media. I’m in this show, a fandom for this show about pirates, and people are writing like detailed 18th century, like, pastiche, whatever, and that is not Kirk/Spock, whatever you think fandom is, and I’m gonna like any science fiction that comes your way,” or whatever, and then of course I joined the X-Men fandom and I completely ruined that narrative as a person, but that’s OK. You know what I mean?
But that being said, when I approach Black Sails and the fanfiction world, I’m bringing all of the fanfiction I’ve read before that, which was also engaging with science fiction and fantasy pro writing for decades in a back-and-forth conversation. You know what I mean? So it’s like, it’s kind of hard now. Or you think about Yuletide.
FK: Right.
ELM: And it’s like, these are things that you’d never think anyone would write fic about, but people are bringing the broader world of fic fandom—
FK: Right, they bring that with them.
ELM: Right, right, exactly.
FK: And I think that’s what Monica’s saying about Killing Eve, which I think is true and great—I also think it’s challenging because that also then, one of the things about Yuletide is, you know, you say all of these things that you could write fic for, then you request something that you really wish someone would write fic for. And so when it comes to offering and, and asking, not necessarily everybody has the same affective experience of all of the things in there, right? So like often—at least when I do Yuletide, I will offer anything that I think I could produce a good fic for.
ELM: Yeah.
FK: And I will ask for the, for the desire of my heart. And so sometimes I get someone, I get something that like, actually the desire of my heart is not necessarily to write fic for this, but I’m going to enjoy doing it as a gift to somebody, right?
ELM: Yeah.
FK: And that’s great, and I support people doing things this way. I think it’s tough because if you say, like, “Well, if we think of all the ways that fandom functions and the way that fans engage with things, why don’t we turn this to Killing Eve, why don’t we turn this to any of these other things,” and this is the sad part, this is the affective question, right? Because you can turn all of this stuff towards Killing Eve, but if people don’t have that affect towards it then is that going to be fandom in the same way? I would say “no,” and that’s—let me say, I don’t think that is necessarily just or fair, and I think it is definitely a sign that there’s a lot of internalized racism and everybody—I’m not trying to make apologies for this. But I think that there is, you know, an element of how can you—is it the same thing. You know?
ELM: Right. I mean, that is a theme that underpins all of the conversations that we have talking about the biases of this part of fandom, and I think it’s a disconnect that we hit again and again, because it’s like, “Well why don’t you just write fic about these people, why don’t you just engage with them.” And when you have to go to the next step which is “why don’t you like them.”
FK: Right.
ELM: That’s the part that’s super fucking fraught, because it’s like, then it’s like “Well, why don’t you connect with this character? Why can’t you connect with this female character?” And then it’s like, the answer is some combination of, of like individual and collective misogyny—you know? Obviously this is true for characters of color and for female characters and et cetera et cetera, you know. So it’s about your individual and collective biases shaping this kind of gut reaction, and like, there’s also an element too of the communal fueling your individual interest, right? You know?
Even in a more, a less fraught way, part of the reason why I drifted away from Black Sails despite truly truly loving it, why I didn’t want to spend more time creating or consuming fanworks for it, is cause there wasn’t that much, you know? There wasn’t enough for me and I just was like “Oh, one thing,” it might be different now because it has obviously grown more and more popular as the years go by, but like, it does make a difference to me, you know? Like, I need at least kind of a baseline of like, a certain, you know. I need to be able to not truly be scraping the bottom of the barrel of things I dislike or don’t think are well-written at all times for me to stay there, you know?
But it’s interesting because I do think that we have a lot of people talking across each other because I know so many people who approach fic in that very Yuletidey way, or like, love Yuletide and it’s not about the kind of all-consuming “I’m obsessed with this thing and I just want to read all this thing,” it’s like “I like that, and this is a really enjoyable story.”
FK: Right.
ELM: Or “I like this, I could totally write some fic for it.” And to me that’s like, that’s so alien, to write a fic for something that I don’t care about. I’ve tried to do it as an exercise and I just couldn’t, you know? It’s just too hard, for me personally. So I just feel like I can’t be the only person who has that close connection between affect and the act, you know what I mean?
FK: Right, right.
ELM: But people talk across each other on this all the time, you know? So it’s like, it’s a really thorny thing to unpack and I think the letter really gets, kind of skirts across that in the sense of like, yes, this is a body of work that connects directly to contemporary science fiction and fantasy. Yes, the authors who were amateur fic writers 15 years ago are now shaping that space with the things that they were shaping the fic world with communally 15 years ago. And yes, I’m certain that all the writers she named and presumably most people writing books now care deeply about their characters.
FK: Yeah.
ELM: But that’s not the same thing as being in the Harry Potter fandom.
FK: Yeah.
ELM: And like Monica said, there’s plenty of people in the Harry Potter fandom who feel the same way about Harry Potter as Monica, and frankly I’ve now come to that place too. [FK laughs] That being said, I don’t actually wanna engage with the fic anymore because it kinda ruins it for me, right? And maybe that’s the difference. Monica’s the kind of fan who—not to pin it all on Monica. Hey Monica. [both laugh] You’ve heard your name many times so far! But you’re right here and it’s really easy to use you as the example, but like, Monica doesn’t like Harry Potter and loves Harry Potter fic, and while I have said literally 1,000 times, including long before I became a public commentator on the fandom world, “Harry Potter’s not that great but the fanfiction’s so good”—there was always something deep down within me that loved Harry Potter. I think it’s garbage, but like, [sighs] it made me feel a feeling. And it still did! We both had the same reaction when we walked into the, the Universal Studios, like…
FK: Yes.
ELM: Y’know? Even with all my ambivalence now, thinking about that moment still makes me feel some kind of pleasure.
FK: I feel, yes. I feel, unfortunately at this point for me it is the echo of a feeling. [ELM laughs] It’s no longer the feeling itself.
ELM: Are you saying it’s our madeleine?
FK: Yes, it is exactly like that. It really is!
ELM: Watch out, watch out, I’m gonna write a book about this. About the feeling of going to Universal Studios in 2015.
FK: [laughing] Remembrances of Things Past…
ELM: It’s fine! So it’s interesting, let’s not, let’s not talk about Monica anymore. Let’s talk about “Sally,” our friend Sally who feels the same way as Monica. I just feel bad that it’s like, continually coming back to her. You know, I doubt that—someone who really loves Harry Potter fic and really loves SFF would say “I have affect, what are you talking about, how can you say I don’t have affect,” right? And like, yes! But, maybe it’s a, like, a—maybe it’s like a, I draw distinctions between things I am in the fandom of that I fall for, and things that I like a lot.
FK: Yeah.
ELM: I mean a couple times over the years I’ve, I’ve tried to make the latter into the former, and you can’t. I can’t force it, right? That being said, every single survey we’ve done, every conversation we’ve had with people, with listeners talking to us, we know that fans are different and people are different and lots and lots of fans are very different from us, in terms of the way they feel emotionally about the things that they consider themselves fans of.
FK: I mean and we are different from each other too, y’know?
ELM: Yeah! Like you, you don’t have that casual vs. active shipping distinction and I have it incredibly strongly, you know? I’m happy to say I ship people in a jokey way and there’s all sorts of ships that I think are shippy that I don’t ship, also, right? I understand, I watched Captain America: Winter Soldier and I was like “that’s the ship,” you know?
FK: [laughs] That was the ship.
ELM: I was like “obviously.” And sorry to say it, when I watched Star Wars I already knew that people were really into Finnpoe before I saw it, but when I saw Kylo Ren and General Hux I was like “people are gonna ship that.” It was immediately evident that that was gonna be a ship to me when I saw them have like three lines of dialogue, and you could tell.
FK: That was correct.
ELM: There’s a dynamic and I can spot it. So I understand those ships, meanwhile I can say, like, I ship Ben and Leslie on Parks & Rec, you haven’t seen Parks & Rec but it’s a super great ship, I was rooting for them to get together, was happy when they got together—spoiler—statute of limitations is up—but I would never, like, think about them for more than five seconds—like, I liked it while I was watching it.
FK: Right.
ELM: While I was actively watching their faces I was like “Aww!” You know? But it wasn’t like, whereas like, ships? I think about them in my free time. It’s terrible.
FK: [laughs] Yeah.
ELM: And every ship I’ve had I’ve written fanfiction about and so that’s the distinction. And I, you know, like, it’s…I’ve tried, I can’t really write fic about ships I don’t ship, cause I’m like “I don’t know, why do they like each other?” You know?
FK: I know, I do know about that problem.
ELM: You intellectually know, but you don’t know on a deeper level cause we are different.
FK: Probably not, not at the same level you know it, yeah.
ELM: No no no, because you’re actually able to write and read fanworks at a much more casual level. You’re freakin’ reading Sherlock omegaverse, you don’t—
FK: That’s true.
ELM: You don’t ship that ship, do you?
FK: No, I would not…well…yeah, I have, I have various, I have a complex relationship with the various kinds of Sherlocks and Watsons over various interpretations of it. But no, I would not call it, like, a ship of mine.
ELM: But you don’t dislike it.
FK: Not at all. And in fact, I mean, I read a lot of Sherlocks being into a lot of different Watsons over the course of many different variations of this fandom.
ELM: We’re talking about a specific iteration here.
FK: Certainly, for Sherlock BBC it’s not a ship of mine, particularly, no.
ELM: Yeah. Right. But you still are reading hundreds of thousands of words about this ship.
FK: That’s true. I did do that. And I enjoyed them!
ELM: So you and I are different.
FK: We are different.
ELM: So it’s just, I would be happy to use the descriptor for myself, “fan of fandom,” in the way that I think that Monica means. But I agree with you, I probably wouldn’t. But like, I wouldn’t be super angry if you said that about me, you know? But I think your point about like, then is there a fandom fandom, is the crux of it for me. Because there’s not.
FK: I don’t know that there’s not, but if there was I know that I’m not part of it and I don’t particularly feel like I want to be.
ELM: But I just don’t even understand what that means, because there’s some sort of opt-in element when you’re in the fandom of something, you say “I’m in the Teen Wolf fandom,” it means something because you’ve chosen to say—that’s what it means. It doesn’t, behavior-wise it doesn’t mean anything beyond “I opened my mouth,” or “opened my fingers,” or “thought in my mind, articulated the thought, somewhere, ‘I consider myself in this fandom.’” So yes. I could think of, OK, about a half a dozen people I know who probably if you said to them—and they’re people who study fandom and are interested in fannish history who would happily say “I’m in the fandom fandom.”
FK: Yep.
ELM: And you obviously will find hundreds, thousands of people in your journey around the fannish discourse space saying “I’m just really interested in like, meta-commentary about fandom, I’m really interested in fandom history, I’m really interested in learning about fandom, I love fandom.”
FK: Mm-hmm.
ELM: But that’s very different than saying “All people who are kind of in this space are in the fandom fandom.” Because the vast majority of people would not define it that way, I would say. If you were to ask them if they would define it that way maybe they’d say “sure, whatever,” but that’s so different than thousands of people collectively deciding that they are going to be in the fandom around a property, because there’s something clearly defined there. And obviously that means wildly different things once you’re in it.
FK: Which, right, to be fair, I don’t think that Monica was saying that there were thousands of people who would—
ELM: No no no, I don’t think she was either, we’re just—
FK: This is not—you’re just, you’re just riffin’, OK.
ELM: I’m following it, following the thread here, of what you said, if we’re saying there is a fan of fandom, is there a fandom fandom.
FK: Right.
ELM: I’m just gonna say the word “fan” over and over again. It’s fine.
FK: [laughs] We’re just gonna say the word until it loses all—you know, when you like, sometimes really think about the syllables of a word and it loses all meaning?
ELM: I do know. I do know.
FK: [very slowly] Fa-a-ann-d-omm.
ELM: This is the Fansplaining podcast. Uh.
FK: We’ve, [laughs] I wonder how many times in my life have I said the word “fan”?
ELM: Do you think you’ve said it—
FK: And can I get a penny for each of them?
ELM: —more than your own name, do you think?
FK: Oh, I’m certain I’ve said the word “fan” more than my own name, are you kidding? I don’t talk about myself all that much using my own name.
ELM: I don’t know.
FK: If I do, I say “me.”
ELM: I’ve made like probably 40 calls to various doctor and insurance offices over the past—
FK: “Hello, this is Elizabeth!”
ELM: No, it’s like “can you confirm your last name,” you know, they make you say the thing, you know”
FK: Yep, I do know.
ELM: They make you say your own birthday. Yes. I’ve said my name many times in the last week, which has been thrilling. Yeah, not even in the slightest suggesting that Monica is saying this at all, but I just think to follow it through—yeah, I don’t know. We are defining fandom around objects, and by “object” I mean…what do I mean? Now I’m thinking back to just before the “One True Fandom” episode, when we had Amanda Brennan on, and she was talking about the candle fandom.
FK: We have, I think that we have gotten all the way to words have no meaning phase.
ELM: What does it all mean?
FK: Yeah, I think that if you talk about the candle fandom, then…I mean that gets us into, it’s not just Amanda who talked about this, right? When we had Meredith on, she was talking about like, makeup hauls and things like this in this context. And would I call that a fandom? I don’t know. I certainly think there’s a community about it, and people obsess, right. Sneakerheads, are they a fandom?
ELM: Right.
FK: I mean I think that there’s an argument to be made that that kind of behavior maybe should get counted in that broad study of fannish engagement, fannish affect, you know what I mean?
ELM: I mean I think it sometimes is because I think also in the studying space, it is either happening on the corporate side, where it is interested in the consumer element—so obviously, you know, the sneakerheads and the makeup haul people are more valuable than the transformative fandom is for corporations, you know what I mean? You put out Star Wars makeup, you’re probably generating more revenue from the makeup fandom than you are from the Star Wars transformative fandom, you know?
FK: Yeah, yeah.
ELM: Which is cynical but true! And also I think on the academic side, because fan studies is so, um, is more of a, like, is often a—while it is a defined field, it’s an interdisciplinary one, and it also often lives within other formalized departments, and so then I think you often have that overlap with either people studying consumer patterns or people studying audiences or, you know what I mean? Things that, things that aren’t necessarily capital-F Fan.
So like, I understand various industries’ impulses then to say like “Well, if you’re saying—fans are around media properties, then it’s this kind of media property these people like,” you know? I understand why they do that, because it’s so hard to say like, “Well, when are people gonna do these behaviors around this thing and not this thing,” and it’s a lot easier to say like, “Well, they like vampires so they’re gonna like this vampire thing,” you know? I guess it all just depends on who is actually doing the studying and who’s doing the defining.
FK: Yeah.
ELM: And I think for—I think to bring this back around to the letter, in a final wrapping-up way, I, one thing that remains really fuzzy to me is this idea of if we’re gonna put boundaries…not boundaries necessarily, but definitional constraints around fandom and whether you can be a fan of it or not, then that necessarily fosters inclusivity. Because I understand what Monica’s saying, but I think after all this and every, like, rabbit hole facet we talked about in this conversation, I’m not sure that I agree that it does.
And part of that is because I still see even people doing the same behaviors in fandom in different spaces as a very fragmented thing, and I think that while that is often a point of conflict, it is also very good. Like, I think it is really really great that there are, you know, these black women journalists I’m reading only know a fanfiction world that centers black women, you know? That’s awesome. And while I wish that AO3, the AO3 space would change, and it didn’t have to be people completely siloed off, I also don’t know if, like, having one overarching tent and defining it necessarily would be good for the various corners that are, you know, flourishing, doing the thing that they’re doing, you know?
FK: Yeah, yeah! I think that is, I think that’s a more complicated question when we come down to like, “Well, what do we cover in this podcast?” You know what I mean? And we’ve never really formally and completely defined that, for a good reason, I think, which is to say we’re gonna go where we find things interesting, right? I think that’s perfectly fine, but it needs to be made clear that that’s not a—you know, that’s not like a universalizing statement, you know what I mean? That’s not saying “actually, everything’s fandom!” and it’s also not saying “this particular thing only is fandom,” right? It’s almost a rejection of those kinds of statements, because I think that when you get to those kinds of statements, they become gatekeepy. They become useless. They become lumping people in who don’t want to be lumped in. It’s better to define for a purpose what your terms are, in my opinion.
ELM: Right, right. I think that’s why we keep coming back to “well, depends on who’s studying it and why.” You know. Because for all of the “Oh, you, Flourish, in your job, should be looking at X, Y, and Z, because that’s a part of fandom too,” like, you shouldn’t. I don’t ever actually mean that if I say it. [FK laughs] And I’m far too cynical and biz-aware. Yeah, put that on my business card. “Biz-aware.”
FK: Biz-aware!
ELM: To, to know, like, I would never say that, because why would you do that? And like, time is—time is finite, people are paying you to do a job with goals. Business.
FK: Well, one thing is true: time is finite and we’re just about out of it for this episode.
ELM: Business!
FK: So I think that we should talk a little bit about our Patreon, which—
ELM: [sputters] That’s it? Like, you just say like “we’re done” and then like, you just, you just saying immediately moving on?
FK: Yeah, exactly!
ELM: I, do you get to make that executive decision, you just cut it off?!
FK: I just made it! I just made it!
ELM: You don’t want to come up with some sort of galaxy-brain level connecting statement that wraps it all up? Are you not capable of doing that?
FK: Do you have this? I’m not capable of doing it.
ELM: I thought you were gonna do it. I thought maybe you could do it? At the end?
FK: If I had one I’d give it to you. I don’t have a galaxy—I mean my galaxy brain was just “let’s define our terms specifically!” [laughs] That’s the best I could do, Elizabeth!
ELM: [laughing] That is not the galaxy brain meme!
FK: I’m on, I’m on, I’m not on galaxy—I’m on like maybe the second brain level. Just leave me be. Let my poor little brain just be itself, not fully exploded yet.
ELM: All right, fine! Fine, whatever. End it! End it all. See if I care!
FK: All right, we are going to talk about our Patreon then.
ELM: I’m a fan of our Patreon.
FK: [laughs] Patreon.com/fansplaining, it’s how we make this podcast—
ELM: I am! You know, not as much as I’m a fan of cats, but I am!
FK: In a twist of fate, our most recent special episode, there for $3-a-month-and-up Patrons, is about the omegaverse, and the omegaverse is on everyone’s mind right now because of that New York Times article a couple days ago—by the time this is airing it’ll be a couple days ago.
ELM: Twist of fate!
FK: So it’s a great, a great reason for you to maybe chuck a couple bucks a month our way so you can listen to our scintillating thoughts on A/B/O!
ELM: What actually, forget about the dummy who tried to trademark “omegaverse” or whatever—that’s what the article’s about, and what a fool she is. But actually, what we didn’t realize when we recorded is that it is the 10-year anniversary of the omegaverse!
FK: So it is!
ELM: I believe it was May 2010 in the J2 kinkmeme.
FK: J2 kinkmeme, classic location. Not Wincest! J2.
ELM: J2.
FK: Different. Vive le difference.
ELM: As Flourish one wrote in a J2 rec in my newsletter, you want their faces to kiss but you don’t want to do incest?
FK: Yep! You want their faces to kiss, but you don’t wanna do incest. That’s the J2 slogan.
ELM: It was a, it was a Regency AU.
FK: Yes it was!
ELM: So you just stick Jared Padalecki in a…
FK: Just stick him, stick him in a cravat!
ELM: Cravat! And that’s it. There’s nothing more complicated than that. I go on and on—
FK: I want their faces to kiss.
ELM: —about the source material, the complicated intertextuality, and you’re like “I want Jared Padalecki smushing his face against…Dean Winchester’s real name,” I’ve already forgotten it.
FK: Jensen Ackles! That’s why it’s J2! [laughing] Oh my God. Anyway. There’s lots of other things on our Patreon also for our various levels of patron rewards, things like some pins, getting your name read in the credits, Tiny Zines—we’re gonna be working towards getting some of those things out as the world opens up, but not yet because we both live in New York City.
ELM: FYI—we live in New York City and just because where you live may be opening up…
FK: We are not.
ELM: We are not allowed to go to the beach.
FK: It’s very closed here still. Yeah, I know, you’re crying for the beach so much.
ELM: It’s just dumb, Flourish!
FK: Other things you can do if you don’t—if you don’t—[laughing]
ELM: It’s just stupid! People are just gonna try to go to other beaches!
FK: —have the desire or ability to support us on Patreon, you can still support us in other ways by subscribing to us on iTunes, leaving us reviews, telling your friends about us, and also by sending your thoughts in to fansplaining at gmail dot com, or giving us a call at 1-401-526-FANS, or tweeting at us? Or leaving us a Facebook message or an ask or whatever? You know, there’s lots of ways to contact us and you probably can figure them out. We love getting listener—
ELM: Please don’t leave us a Facebook message.
FK: Yeah, don’t do that.
ELM: That’s not a, that’s not a great, don’t do that.
FK: We love getting communication from our listeners obviously, as you can see, this entire episode came out of that.
ELM: Yeah, you too could have an entire episode directed at you just because we need someone to talk to.
FK: Yeah, I think that’s great. It’s a great gift.
ELM: Sorry Monica, I appreciate, I hope you don’t mind listening to this entire episode and hearing your name over and over again, I do feel bad about it—
FK: I think it’s fine.
ELM: It’s also weird to me, I had a coworker I worked with for like 10 years, most, one of my coworkers I worked most closely with, named Monica, so this actually was pretty confusing for me.
FK: You’ve just been envisioning that you were speaking to her?
ELM: Yeah, I mean, to be fair, that Monica isn’t a fan of—isn’t in fandom as far as I know, so this would have been a very different conversation if it had been to that Monica. Because it would’ve been like, it would have been a little more…
FK: Yeah, all right.
ELM: But that Monica’s great, she does great work. Shout-out to all Monicas.
FK: All right, that might signal that it’s time for us to be done, Elizabeth.
ELM: Monica…Lewinsky…
FK: Elizabeth?
ELM: I can’t think of any others. I just know these three.
FK: [laughing] I’m gonna talk to you later, OK?
ELM: OK bye!
FK: Bye.
[Outro music]
FK& ELM: Thank you everybody who has pledged to support our podcast, and especially Alaine Sepulveda, Amanda, Amy Yourd, Anne Jamison, Bluella, Boxish, Bradlea Raga-Barone, Carl with a C, Carrie Clarady, Chelsee Bergen, Christopher Dwyer, Citizen D, CJ Hoke, Claire Rousseau, cordsycords, Desiree Longoria, Diana Williams, Dr. Mary C. Crowell, Earlgreytea68, Elizabeth Moss, Elasmo, elledubs42, Fabrisse, Felar, Froggy, Georgie Carroll, Goodwin, Graham Goss, Gwen O’Brien, Heidi Tandy, Heart of the sunrise, Helena, Ignifer, Jackie C., Javier Grillo-Marxuach, Jennifer Brady, Jennifer Doherty, Jennifer Lackey, Jennifer McKernan, Josh Stenger, Jules Chatelain, Julianna, JungleJelly, Katherine Lynn, Kitty McGarry, Kirsteen, Kristen P., Lizzy Johnstone, Lori Morimoto, Lucy in Bookland, Mareinna, Maria Temming, Mariah Mercer, MathClassWarfare, Matilda Filch, Matt Hills, Meghan McCusker, Menlo Steve, Meredith Rose, Michael Andersen, Milarca, Molly Kernan, Nary Rising, Naomi Jacobs, Necropantz, Nia H, Nozlee, Paracelsus Caspari, Quietnight, Rachel Bernatowicz, Sam Markham, Sara, Secret Fandom Stories, Sekrit, Simini, StHoltzmann, Tara Stuart, Veritasera, Vita Orlando, and in honor of: A.D. Walter Skinner, fandom data analysis, One Direction, BTS, Francis Crawford of Lymond and Sevigny, and Yuri Katsuki, and Captain James McGraw Flint Hamilton.
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