Episode 134: Ask Fansplaining Anything: Part 8
In Episode 134, “Ask Fansplaining Anything: Part 8,” Elizabeth and Flourish once again open up the mailbag and answer listener questions. Topics covered include sports RPF, the ethics of sporking, adaptations of fan-favorite properties, how to make new friends in fandom, and even more of everyone’s favorite topic: slash discourse.
Show Notes
[00:00:00] As always, our intro music is “Awel” by stefsax, used under a CC BY 3.0 license.
[00:02:10] Our episode with Keidra Chaney was #128, “The K-pop Narratives.”
[00:17:45] Episode 132: “Purity Culture 2020.”
[00:18:38] The gas attack on the furry convention happened in 2014. Vice covered it a year later—it was never solved.
[00:21:03] The Twitter account we’re referring to is @menwritewomen. A classic example:
[00:23:10] Episode 44, “Mary Sue.”
[00:23:56] Our interstitial music is “Thoughtful” from Lee Rosevere’s Music for Podcasts 2, used under a CC BY 3.0 license.
[00:26:26] Special Episode 20, “Succession”; Special Episode 21, “Watchmen.” Pledge to our Patreon to listen to them!
[00:33:24] Episode 133, “Slash: The Discourse.”
[0054:06] If you aren’t familiar with “Angel With a Shotgun”...
Also:
Transcript
Flourish Klink: Hi, Elizabeth!
Elizabeth Minkel: Hi, Flourish!
FK: And welcome to Fansplaining, the podcast by, for, and about fandom!
ELM: This is Episode #134, “Ask Fansplaining Anything: Part 8.”
FK: By this time I feel like we don’t need to explain what this is. It is your letters and comments and so on that we’re answering.
ELM: You literally just said we don’t need to explain it and then you explained it.
FK: Yeah, I did do that, didn’t I.
ELM: No one can see my face, but it’s disbelief. [FK laughs] And that kind of, you know the eye-rolling emoji? You know how big his eyes are?
FK: His eyes are real big.
ELM: That’s how I feel right now.
FK: Wow. All right, well, I do think that we should say thank you to everybody—it’s pretty amazing that we’ve made eight of these.
ELM: I think it’s wild! I mean there’s nine letters that we’re going to respond to here, letters or messages, and when you think about that over the course of, you know—not just these AMAs or AFAs, as we call them [laughs] but you know, we’re regularly answering letters at the top and bottom of episodes and that’s super great! I almost said it’s great for content creation, and then I said it again, like, like I said, you know.
FK: You weren’t—yeah.
ELM: Yeah.
FK: So maybe we’re both the eye-roll emoji at each other, eternally.
ELM: Yes.
FK: OK. All right. Should we get on to our letters?
ELM: Let’s do it!
FK: All right. This first one is from the greatest tumblr name ever, dm-me-your-weltanschauung, who writes: “Hello Elizabeth and Flourish, I was listening to your most recent anniversary episode and thought that Keidra Chaney’s segment sounded kind of familiar. I don’t know anything about corporate fandom, but I have seen people defend a franchise (like Babylon 5 or the MCU) as being a significant achievement as a whole rather than due to a specific character or story. Do you know if there’s a name for this ‘whole over parts’ type of fandom, and does it map onto the affirmational/transformational divide?”
ELM: I think there are a bunch of different things going on in this message, which thank you for this message, dm-me-your-weltanschauung. I think what Keidra’s talking about is how a lot of the modes of music fandom now are what is described as “stan culture,” which is a shorthanding for a bunch of different behaviors. But as Keidra often points out, they are behaviors that stem from other ways that music—various music fandoms have structured themselves and engaged with the things they like for a long time.
FK: Right.
ELM: While I think we’ve seen a huge rise in the last few years of media fans caring a lot about the corporate finances, or perceived corporate finances? They don’t actually know what’s going on inside of all of the franchises owned by Disney. But you know, like, numbers they can see like box office stuff or whatever. I think it’s quite different from a lot of the modes that you see in, say, K-pop or other kinds of music stan culture where—I see language and terminology and framings of fan behavior that I’ve never seen in media fandom, you know. Yesterday I saw, I can’t remember what group it was, but I follow a lot of K-pop people and they were talking about how their streams hadn’t cracked the top five in the global charts for the last week and they really needed to pick up the pace in their streaming, as fans, if they wanted to achieve longevity.
FK: Right.
ELM: And I was just like, “What? What does ‘longevity’ mean here,” right? You know what I mean? And that’s the kind of like—I guess there is an analogue there saying “If we don’t go see Avengers: Endgame five times then they won’t make more Avengers films,” but I don’t actually think that people are making that argument when they’re doing that.
FK: I don’t, yeah, I agree with you. I don’t think that’s exactly what dm-me-your-weltanschauung—
ELM: I’m saying that’s what Keidra’s talking about.
FK: What Keidra was talking about.
ELM: So yeah.
FK: I don’t think that, I don’t think that that kind of thing that Keidra’s talking about is exactly the same as what dm-me-your-weltanschauung is talking about though, because of like, some of the examples that they’re using, the way they’re talking about like—sort of the overall, more like the set-up of the franchise, or the set-up of the story over multiple seasons, or like the way the MCU, you know—never before has anybody taken multiple movies with different superheroes and then joined them all together, right? That’s the kind of significant achievement that I think they’re talking about here.
ELM: I’m not 100% sure. I think that—so, all right. I don’t believe there’s a, first of all, going to the end of the letter: affirmational/transformational divide. I don’t think there’s actually a divide. I think this is more like collections of behaviors.
FK: Right.
ELM: That a person might engage with multiple, like, you know—it’s not even really a spectrum, right?
FK: Right.
ELM: Different ways of engaging, right? And it’s not like a versus situation, which I’m not trying to put too much on dm-me-your-weltanschauung here. I just think people often use that kind of language.
FK: I think it doesn’t map onto that kind of divide if there is such a divide, and I’m not totally convinced about the divide.
ELM: Yeah, I’m rejecting the idea of a divide. But I actually do think there is something in the affirmational elements, in the affirmational engaging, of people saying like, “This is why Star Wars is—” they don’t say that. “This is why Star Trek is better than Star Wars.” Right?
FK: Sure.
ELM: And they’re not necessarily talking about the franchise and the great decisions Paramount’s made or whatever, right? They’re talking about, like, the fundamental like, the themes and the ideas, right? And they’re not saying this particular character or ship is the reason why Star Trek is so great and better, they are taking a whole framing. Or I think with superhero comics, you’ll often—it winds up being the main character is a stand-in for the whole thing, so you’ll say “The themes of Batman are better than,” I don’t know, Spider-Man or something. I can’t, people don’t say that. “The themes of Spider-Man are better than Batman.” But they often wind up talking about Spider-Man and Batman the characters, even though those characters and their worldview and the way people write them kind of define the whole—
FK: Right.
ELM: —franchise, right? You know? But I think those are often thematic arguments, and that’s different from the financial arguments which I think we’ve also seen a huge rise in in the corporate media space. But it’s not really the same to me as the way people talk about various musical artists.
FK: Agreed, agreed. Yeah, I mean, it’s not just different from the financial arguments, it’s also different from the arguments about like sort of the structure of the franchise, right? People saying, well, I don’t know. Star Trek is better than Star Wars because Star Trek never, like, nuked a bunch of books from canon or something like that, you know what I mean?
ELM: Yeah yeah yeah. Sure.
FK: So that was what I was trying to get at with the like, talking about how people talk about the MCU, right? Because I do think that there’s some level where people talk about the structure—not necessarily about the story or the themes, but just the way the franchises have been structured, and say “Oh, well that makes it more pleasurable for me.”
ELM: That all still falls into the general affirmational bucket, right? You know?
FK: Definitely, agreed.
ELM: I mean I think that’s the heart of affirmational fandom, is your feelings about the people who are deeming—you know, your feelings about who you think is the canonizer.
FK: Yeah.
ELM: Right? That’s what’s so interesting to me about modern affirmational fandom, like, I think the Star Wars—the kind of breakdowns—the way that Star Wars is very interesting to me in this regard, I don’t know if you feel the same way, in a way that the MCU never will be, because people talk about that as like, kind of a—a big corporate machine. They don’t, they’re not like “Kevin Feige,” or however you say his name, “says—” I mean, they’d say that, but not in the same way as like, “I hate this decision so Kathleen Kennedy must be the person who decided it.”
FK: Right.
ELM: Or obviously, there’s some secret vision J.J. Abrams had, but it was destroyed—I mean obviously it immediately becomes misogynistic when it’s like, the lady in charge of the corporate structures is the one making the bad decisions and the dude making the film is the auteur. But I really, I find those arguments a very interesting development. But I also don’t think that’s super new, because like you said, the decanonization of the Star Wars novels was what, almost a decade ago now. And that was obviously a shaping force within huge parts of Star Wars fandom then too, right?
FK: Absolutely, and it’s something that people who were in transformational fandom, what we—what some people would say “Oh, you’re in transformational fandom if you’re writing fanfic” or whatever—people had tons of feelings about this!
ELM: Sure.
FK: You know what I mean? And people often—you can be a super, super into your Kirk/Spock shipping, like, the heart of what people often, you know, talk about as the transformational—often when people write about it, “What’s the canonical ship,” right, and people still have those feelings about Star Trek. So yeah. That’s it.
ELM: I, absolutely I had feelings about Harry Potter as a franchise while I was in Harry Potter fandom.
FK: Yeah.
ELM: And the decisions they made. And I think too that like, it’s interesting because not to—we have many more letters to get to, so I don’t want to endlessly talk about this, though I find this topic really interesting. I do think there’s a segment, if you wind up in different corners of fandom, especially ones that are very shipping focused, and especially in places where it often feels like… “Any two guys” is too mean of me to frame this. But say you are reading by trope and you don’t really care about the fandom and you’re like, “Those two! And now those two,” like, “I really like the dynamics between those two!” You’re not super-invested in the fandoms that these, these two are from, and those two are from, you know?
FK: Right.
ELM: It becomes much more about individual characters. And that’s, that’s interesting to me because while I am first and foremost into the ship that I’m into at any given time, I also get very invested in all the characters around them, you know? And sometimes I feel like that’s kind of a weird spot and I don’t see that, I—obviously other people engage that way too, but sometimes I see that less than these kind of two sides of it where you’re like, “I love the X-Men! Just the X-Men!” You know, or you’re like “I only like Cherik. Just the two of them. No one else needs to be there.” And so sometimes I feel like the, the middle is kind of a weird place where you may not actually care that much about the broader franchise, but you do care about the ensemble of, around your ship, you know?
FK: All right, well.
ELM: That’s a great letter. I mean, I feel like maybe we coulda talked about that one for longer, so whatever. Maybe we will!
FK: OK, great. You wanna read the next one?
ELM: OK, sure. So sugarless5, once again commenting on my Old Guard comments, but you know, it’s definitely I think a thing worth talking about. But sugarless5 wrote to us on Tumblr, saying, “Hearing why you think Old Guard will be a fleeting fandom reminds me of the convo you had a while back about what catches on in fandom and why it’s often serialized stories. I think most movie fandoms don’t last that long because there’s only so much a two to three hour movie can present to you to explore as fans. Serialized work gives more character and world development to latch onto and play with. With centuries of life and stories hinted at, interesting characters and sequels, the fandom may have longer legs than you think.”
FK: You know, from your lips to God’s ears, sugarless5. I hope that for you and for the fandom! I think that would be great.
ELM: Yeah, I mean, actually tying it back to what I was just talking about too—I have a lot of Old Guard folks on my dash right now, it is interesting to see. Some of them are very very focused on one particular ship, and some clearly seem to be really invested in all the characters, and I’m not saying one is better than the other.
FK: Right.
ELM: And in fact both can lead to more longevity. You know, in the Inception fandom, right, that fandom was definitely powered by one particular ship, and that was just one movie, and that really endured and created a lot of of fanworks, so…that’s not to say, you know, not everything has to have 16 seasons on the air to be a big, you know what I mean?
FK: Yeah, it’s true. It’s true!
ELM: I think that we were just commenting on—you’ve researched this at length, just about what tends to…
FK: In general trends. So hopefully, I mean, yeah, like I said—for the sake of Old Guard folks, I hope that A, all that stuff does help foster the fandom, and if some of that falls through—I mean, I hope it’s the thing that bucks the trend, right? So.
ELM: Yeah! None of these observations were meant to be like “this is a great development, and I hope everyone leaves in six weeks.” Absolutely not.
FK: Yeah. I completely agree. All right, shall we get on to the next letter?
ELM: Absolutely.
FK: OK. This one is from anonymous. “Hi guys! Hope you’re doing well in this weird, strange and even turbulent year.
“First of all, just wanted to say the podcast is amazing and it’s really helped me during quarantine. I’ve been working from home for five months now, so I’ve been able to catch up on old episodes.” Hooray! Thank you.
ELM: Yeah!
FK: “I’ve been listening completely out of order to a lot of episodes, and I’ve been thinking especially about RPF, celebrity fandom, After, etc. You guys have mentioned a few times that you’d like to do an episode on sports RPF/fandom but I think you haven’t gotten around to it. I’d love to listen to it!
“You’ve talked about what kind of bodies fans tend to privilege and how there’s more RPF fic about sports that are predominantly white (and of course, about white athletes). I’m from South America and years and years ago I dipped my toes in football (soccer) fandom and I was sort of stunned by the popular ships and which players were fan favorites (always related to how much fanfic was written about them). Listening to you guys has made me realize that there definitely was a race/ethnic variable at play. That was just the tip of the iceberg though—there was also a huge difference in how fans from different countries, with different (fan) relationships to the clubs, wrote about football players.
“Anyways, I haven’t really thought about it that much and I have no idea how football fandom works right now, but I’d love to hear what you think of sports RPF, even if it’s basket, hockey or baseball related. Thank you!”
ELM: So, this is a great letter and it is definitely a topic that I would like to do a whole episode on with a sports RPF, you know, expert, ideally a fan of color. And I specifically would like to talk about hockey, because that’s the big one in the sports RPF world, and it’s definitely of the big American sports the whitest sport. But this is a really interesting letter to think about now, I was just thinking about this this morning, listening to Weekend Edition on NPR as I do as I make my tea. You know, just my nice Saturday morning. Sports are back in the United States, anyone who isn’t a sports watcher may not know, but they’ve been doing various kinds of bubbles.
FK: I could tell because the sports bar across the street from my place—well, I guess around the corner—is back, and they’ve created…it’s only outdoor seating in New York right now and they’ve got all of these TVs out right on the street, which I’m kind of impressed by. They take them down every night.
ELM: Is this over on Third Avenue?
FK: Yeah.
ELM: I was immediately like, “There’s sports bars by your house?!” and then I forgot you live literally next to, like, bro central.
FK: I do live literally next to bro central. It is on Third Avenue.
ELM: In my mind I was like “On Broadway?!” and then I was like, “That makes no sense.”
FK: Not there.
ELM: So sports have been going for a little while now, the bubbles, et cetera, et cetera. But so if anyone hasn’t been paying attention to American sports in the last few weeks, it’s been really astounding period, because so like, just very briefly, obviously Colin Kaepernick, talented quarterback, he’s a Black man, he started kneeling during the national anthem years ago now and was blacklisted out of the league, right? And so that’s been this kind of foundational event in terms of Black players protesting about, like, set the stage for these broader protests about how Black players and Black bodies are treated by sports fans and sports, sports league owners and team owners.
And then in the past few weeks, there has been a really extraordinary, I thought, move from across professional sports—you know, after the, there was a police shooting of a Black man named Jacob Blake a few weeks ago in Wisconsin, and a lot of the players in multiple leagues, particularly Black players but other players in solidarity…not boycotted, they striked. Struck? Striked.
FK: Struck.
ELM: Struck?
FK: Struck. They struck. A wildcat strike.
ELM: They’re not boycotting because they are the workers. And just very declarative action, and now particularly the NBA—which I would bet is the highest percentage of Black players.
FK: I think so.
ELM: Maybe the NFL a close second? You know. Asking for really substantive action from the owners of these teams. All this is to say, I was listening to the sports segment on public radio this morning, and they were talking about some national polling that was done in the last week, and they said it was some ridiculous percentage of Americans said they didn’t want to watch—sports ratings are way down in the last few weeks. And they said they didn’t want to watch it because it sounded too political.
FK: Wow.
ELM: So I immediately started thinking about—sports are so fraught, right? We could talk about this for 19,000 episodes, right. Just about the way bodies are used, certain kinds of bodies are used by fans. And so I was thinking about these, this fan reaction, right? And saying like, “I don’t wanna hear them talk about that, I just want them to play for my entertainment,” kind of thing. And to have it be so blatant, to the point where now we’re seeing actual—they’ve talked about this for years, “Fans are gonna start turning away,” and so the players are ratcheting up their—you know, substantive demands and action.
FK: Right.
ELM: And this is the response they’re getting. And it’s grim, you know?
FK: I know!
ELM: Anyway, so I definitely think that’s not disconnected from sports RPF.
FK: Yeah, I don’t think it is either. I think that we need to, we need to figure out the right way to approach this and to actually have a really—maybe multiple episodes about it, and I think that we want to still. So we’re gonna do it!
ELM: Cool. Fraught topic. Can’t wait to tackle that. Tackle!
FK: Fraught topic!
ELM: Like football.
FK: Tackle like in football. Good job. OK. Read me the next one.
ELM: All right. Well, how do you think you say this? D-z-a-m-i-e?
FK: Dzamie.
ELM: “Dzamie,” you’re certain. You sounded so certain.
FK: I think it’s like “Jamie” but the dz sometimes sort of sounds like a J sometimes?
ELM: All right. Dzamie writes, “I’'ve been meaning to send this for the past week. Re: purity culture episode, my own pro-ship position is influenced a lot by being in furry fandom, where a lot of people not in the fandom see furry art and go ‘Oh, you must want to have sex with actual, real-life animals, you sick freaks.’ So when I see similar reasoning applied to other Problematic™ stuff, it reminds me of how nonsensical the anti-furry argument is. Anyway, thanks for the show, it’s always a treat to listen to!”
FK: Seriously. Yeah, it’s—I find—
ELM: Seriously, it’s a treat? Is that what you mean?
FK: No, I mean seriously about the anti-furry stuff. Because for a long time it seemed like furries are the last—they’re not the last acceptable punching bag, there are so many acceptable punching bags in so many contexts. But people would just straight up be awful to furries, and like, really awful. I don’t know.
ELM: I’ve never understood this element of it. Yeah. There was that furry convention maybe five or six years ago where they were—not poisoned.
FK: It was gas.
ELM: Gas?
FK: They were literally gassed! And the news responded to it, like, laughing about the fact they were furries!
ELM: People in costumes. It just, it doesn’t make any sense to me. Whatever. I’m sure we’re not breaking any news here to any furries. But like, it’s also like, if you—[laughs] I mean, furries, furries, it’s interesting to me because sometimes, some furry spaces it seems like everyone’s really into like, very cartoonish animals, in which case—I mean, whatever. That’s too, there are too many levels to go into. I’m like “that’s different because,” but then I was like, “No, people ship cartoon characters all the time, and they talk about how problematic cartoon relationships are,” and those obviously don’t look like humans, they look like cartoon characters. So yeah, obviously we agree with this statement that I think it is a really good example. But also, everyone should leave furries alone, is the moral of the story.
FK: Agreed. All right. Next one?
ELM: Yeah. I think this is one more and then we’ll take a break?
FK: Sounds right. OK. This one’s, this one we’re gonna get some teeth into though. Anonymous writes, “Hi Elizabeth and Flourish! I love your podcast. I was wondering if you guys have any thoughts about the ethics of ‘sporking,’ aka MST3King, fanfic.” That’s Mystery Science Theater 3000-ing, if you are not familiar with the term.
“While I feel like a large proportion of fanfic is written with love and I don’t want to disrespect young or learning writers, poorly written fanfiction can be truly hilarious (or deeply aggravating) and it’s hard for me to resist making fun of it at times. How do you feel about the practice of publicly sporking other fans’ work?”
ELM: Uh, bad.
FK: Yeah, I do—I get the impulse, I have had the impulse at times in my life, I don’t think it’s a great impulse, I think that you should resist the impulse even though it’s hard.
ELM: I definitely have made fun of things I’ve read in fanfic with my friends.
FK: But not in public.
ELM: I’ve abstractly commented on things that I find goofy or frustrating in fic. You know, like, now that I’m in an American source material fandom, and many stories are set in New York City, I’ve read some truly stupid things. [FK laughs] And the thing with a lot of it is, if I was this person’s editor, I would just say “You should remove these four words that just were like, this giant goofy clownish thing that took me,” you know, that would never happen here or whatever, right?
And so that’s, that’s part of it, it’s because like—I’m not that person’s editor. They’re not making any money. I have no problem at all with that, though I find it a little tiring, that Twitter account that’s like, men write about women? You seen that?
FK: Yeah.
ELM: Where it’s like—some of these men, it’s like what the fuck!
FK: It is clownish. I mean truly just clown emojis all the way down.
ELM: It’s like—
FK: How many ways can you describe breasts badly.
ELM: The best ones are the ones where they’re trying to do a woman’s POV, what it’s like, how she feels about her tits? And it’s like, maybe just run this by one of your lady friends. Be like “Have you ever thought this about those? No?”
FK: “Have you ever boobily boobed through a door? No? Well great.”
ELM: [laughs] So I have literally, I have no problem with that. At a certain point I’m like, I can’t engage with this anymore because like—it’s too depressing that this stuff gets published. But like, that stuff gets published! You know? And it’s also like—it feels fine cause like, I have boobs and these men don’t and so I can be like, “Leave mine alone,” you know?
FK: But I think it’s different, it is different when you have people who really are doing stuff for love. And I think there’s also something specific, like, “sporking” as a term to me—and anonymous, please if you don’t mean it this way, please, you know, understand that I’m just reading what you said, but—“sporking” to me feels like it’s sort of a, historically been more like an organized and— “Hey, boys, we’re gonna come and tear this thing down,” you know? Similarly with Mystery Science Theater 3000 sort of responses, right?
ELM: Right so—
FK: That’s taking apart a fic, like, an individual fic, like very very methodically and in lots of ways, as opposed to sort of a single—it just feels more in-depth. So I think that’s, I think that’s too far. I think you gotta pull back, even if it’s really funny and you wanna joke about it.
ELM: Yeah. Do it privately.
FK: Yeah.
ELM: I didn’t know the term “sporking” until someone else asked us about it a few months ago. This is not something I ever encountered, which makes sense, because it’s not something that appeals to me in any way.
FK: Yeah, it’s also something that I think was much more prevalent in like, het fandom spaces.
ELM: Interesting.
FK: Because there was a lot more sporking of Mary Sues, and there’s a lot more Mary Sues in het fandom, I think.
ELM: Yeah.
FK: Not that there aren’t in slash fandom too, right, there’s obviously the classic—I mean—
ELM: No, but—
FK: Don’t even get me started with this question of what a Mary Sue is or whether it’s a good term. But in the parlance of the time, you know what I mean.
ELM: Yeah. That gets into like—we’ve already discussed Mary Sues at length, but that gets into one of the things I hate about commentary around them, that it’s like inherently mockable, right?
FK: Yep, yep.
ELM: [sighs] I don’t know. I don’t know.
FK: I don’t know either. But yes, OK, anonymous: we do appreciate you, I think that I should say that it is brave to ask about any ethical quandary in any situation, I think it is a big thing to actually ask about that, because someone might say, you know, “Do this thing,” or tell you you’re unethical or whatever. I don’t think you’re unethical, I think that it’s totally normal to want to make fun of something, but you know, your duty to—your duty to other fans is to hold it back.
ELM: Yeah, I think that’s a great answer. That’s how I feel too.
FK: All right, cool. OK. In that case, I think we should take a quick break.
ELM: All right, let’s do it!
[Interstitial music]
FK: All right, we’re back, and I believe that Elizabeth Minkel has some words for you about Patreon.
ELM: Could you make it sound less like…
FK: No.
ELM: …I’m gonna talk about Jesus now?
FK: No. I can’t do it.
ELM: I think you should work on that. Work, I was gonna say work-life boundary, but this is also your work, so like, work-work boundary.
FK: [laughs] All right, go on.
ELM: Patreon.com/fansplaining is our Patreon. [laughs]
FK: There might be a reason I usually do this part, Elizabeth. Keep trying!
ELM: The look on your face! So, fansplaining is wholly—not wholly, because we did have that one ad! But 99% funded by listeners and readers and fans of the podcast and we do it on Patreon, because well, it’s the best option for now. Sorry, I have feelings about Patreon! Now that I’m talking about it!
FK: Oh my God, Elizabeth. [ELM laughs] Just tell them about—OK. Our Patreon has a bunch of—
ELM: NO! ME! ME! It’s my turn! [to her cat, who presumably she frightened by yelling] Sorry Orlando. All right, we have many levels of rewards. If you have any money, a dollar, $10, $1000—we don’t actually have a reward for $1000, but if you give us $1000, we’re gonna give you something extremely special. It can be your choice actually. We haven’t said that before but I think we should make that clear. It’s an option.
FK: That’s a big, big blank check, Elizabeth Minkel. I’m not sure I’m willing to commit to completely, totally someone’s choice.
ELM: All right. Within reason. I mean, we get some editorial say over it. But like, you can lead that discussion.
FK: Great.
ELM: So on Patreon there are these levels and there are different rewards for each level. Our most popular one is $3 a month and you get access to all of our special episodes, and there is an extraordinary amount of content coming out right now—maybe too much!—because we are watching three television shows in the lead-up to the Emmys, three highly-nominated shows: Succession, Watchmen and Schitt’s Creek. And the first two have come out, so those are available to listen to. And Schitt’s Creek will be out the weekend of the Emmys, next weekend! $5 a month, you get a special fan-shaped pin. Real cute!
FK: It’s cute.
ELM: And $10 a month, you get some tiny zines! And there’s a tiny zine coming your way soon. It’s a collaboration with our favorite artist, Maia Kobabe.
FK: All right, so…
ELM: I said the Patreon things. So that’s patreon.com/fansplaining, if you have any cash. Of course, if you do not, that is totally fine, understandable, we are in the middle of an unprecedented pandemic-oriented recession. I don’t know if you knew, Flourish.
FK: That has, it has—that information has crossed my desk.
ELM: As I make my tea and listen to Weekend Edition, they let me know. [laughs] About the supply chains. So if you don’t have any cash, absolutely understand. Basically, either engaging with us by sending us messages or letters like these, fansplaining at gmail dot com, leaving a voicemail, 1-401-526-FANS, giving us your thoughts, suggestions, et cetera, et cetera. Or, by sharing the podcast! Which is either on the podcatcher of your choice subscribing, sharing with your friends, sharing the transcript, et cetera. All extremely helpful for us.
FK: All right.
ELM: I’m done, and I made it really serious at the end. I hope you’re happy.
FK: I am, in fact, happy. Shall we get on to the next letter?
ELM: Yeah, I guess so.
FK: OK. [clears throat] Sionisjaune—sorry, I totally destroyed that—writes: “Hi guys! I just got into Fansplaining, and have been listening non-stop for days.” Aww! “I took a long break from my original fandom, and have been mostly reading fic (Star Wars, unfortunately)” —I think “sw” means “Star Wars.”
ELM: Yeah, I think so too.
FK: “—and not interacting. Now that I’m back in my OG fandom (DC comics), I’ve found my dash is dry. Do you have any tips for breaking back into fandom (whether on Tumblr or a new platform), gaining mutuals and learning about new authors and artists? I’d really like to enjoy my home fandom again. Thanks!”
ELM: Well, I think it depends on the fandom at this point, where you should be doing that.
FK: Definitely.
ELM: So the hard thing with Tumblr is, while I think Tumblr—Tumblr is really bouncin’ back. I’ve seen more activity than I have in years. But I, I don’t think every single fandom is gonna be super active there. So that might be one issue. Not necessarily for this specific example, but like, for a general question of “how do I make my dash better.”
FK: Yeah!
ELM: There is a chance that most of the action is happening elsewhere.
FK: Yeah! Absolutely. I think that that’s true. And professionally, I’ve seen that, that there are some fandoms that are super super active on Tumblr and others that are just not. And I think that’s definitely the first order of business, right, you’ve gotta sort of figure out where that action is happening.
ELM: So let’s say that this fandom is still active on Tumblr.
FK: You have to give this advice, because I really don’t hang out on Tumblr that much right now.
ELM: Flourish hasn’t made friends in years!
FK: Yeah, I’m just friendless.
ELM: [laughs] No, you have the old ones, but you don’t have new ones. You’re not here to make friends!
FK: Flourish I’m-not-here-to-make-friends Klink. OK. What are, what’s your advice on making friends, Elizabeth?
ELM: Well, I think it’s hard if you are not creating any content. So the way that I made friends in Sherlock fandom—well I kinda cheated in Sherlock fandom, cause I was using my real name and I wrote a few articles about being in Sherlock fandom, and so a lot of people I think read those and liked them, but it was my real name attached. And that’s a bit different I think than using a pseud and writing a meta. It just gave me a, I don’t know. Maybe it kind of balances out, because it also seems weirder if you’re writing an article in a professional publication about being in fandom.
But I definitely found I was writing a fair amount of meta and also reblogging other people’s meta, and expanding on it, not in a reply guy kind of way, but you know.
FK: Yeah, adding a—adding, it’s a normal thing to do.
ELM: Yeah, commenting on it, and then they would respond—we would follow each other. I remember too, and this definitely I feel like is cheating, because it was my real name and I’m a journalist, but I wrote a post—once someone asked me what my favorite fic writers were, and I like, tagged them, and then they like, all followed me. And I don’t think that would be a normal thing if I was just some rando, but because I was coming at it as this fandom journalist, which you know, was exciting, because I really liked their fic.
FK: But that’s also partially just the point of, you were in fact making something in the fandom. Admittedly with a larger platform than a lot of folks. But I think that it is hard to make friends unless you’re like, bringing something.
ELM: Right. And so then I created a really, a fresh pseud to write my X-Men fic, so I thought about this a lot within the last year, and definitely the biggest way I’ve found was to write fic and then have people, I mean, I was writing like a long chaptered fic, so there were a lot of comments. And so I would get into conversations with people in the comments and then, you know, they would follow me and we would talk on Tumblr. But it’s not a huge fandom on Tumblr either, so that was really one of the only routes that I could see.
But definitely I see people trying a lot of different things, where they’ll say like, “I’m looking for new mutuals! Do you like this? I want friends!” And like, if that appeals to you? It clearly appeals to other people, because people do this, right? So if that’s kind of a thing that you enjoy, I would even suggest looking for posts like that and engaging with those people. But if that’s not your scene, then you know. Maybe not a route you wanna go.
FK: All right, well, I think that that is good advice, some of which I might wanna take.
ELM: Why, are you getting into a new fandom?
FK: No, but I’ve been feeling a little bit like I’m not as connected with specific people in some of my fandoms as I would like to be. I chat with some folks about Trek on Twitter, but I’m not—I just don’t feel like I’m as connected as I’d like to be. So maybe I should do some of those things and then see what happens.
ELM: It’s really hard cause I feel like after spending a very long time as a lurker—not that I was looking to make friends, cause otherwise I wouldn’t have been lurking—but it’s hard for me to say like, “Well, you need to create stuff,” because that’s a lot of pressure and only a small fraction of people will be able to create stuff for whatever reason. But it does seem to me that people who like, build up friendships and communities there are often—they’re creating something. It doesn’t necessarily have to be a fic, but like, becoming a really good reccer.
FK: Yeah, or—yeah.
ELM: I know definitely a bunch of people in Harry Potter fandom who are well-known for their recs, and people will be asking them for their opinions on things like that. Like, and that’s probably something you could do if you enjoy writing recs pretty easily, because you’re already reading the fic, so…
FK: Totally.
ELM: Yeah.
FK: All right, well, shall we go on to the next?
ELM: Next one’s long.
FK: All right. Shall I read us the next one?
ELM: Yeah, do it!
FK: OK. All right. This one’s from Verity. “Hello Flourish and Elizabeth. Firstly I want to thank you for creating the podcast, which I discovered just before lockdown. I can’t overstate what a pleasure Fansplaining has been for me over the last few months. I’ve recently come back to fandom after a eight year personal hiatus and the podcast has completely transformed and expanded my perspective on it. So thanks for being your intelligent, thoughtful and nuanced selves!” Now I am going to just go and cry for a little bit because of how nice that is.
ELM: It’s very nice!
FK: OK. Cry break over. Back to the letter. “I was so excited about the ‘Slash’ episode that I started listening to it the very moment I saw the email from Patreon, even though I was technically ‘at work’ at the time…”
ELM: Good.
FK: “The question of why I like slash is one that has bothered me since my return to fandom this year. I have very conflicted feelings about it, and I find the notion that internalised misogyny might play a role particularly troubling.
“I am a white cis lesbian, I’d describe my politics as radically left wing, and when reading published material I actively seek out books by women; I actively seek out works by authors who are POC; books that feature women and POC as main characters. I haven’t read a published book by or about a white cis man for years.
“And yet, when it comes to fanfiction, all I read, and all I have ever read since I discovered the existence of slash when I was thirteen years old, is M/M pairings where both participants happen to be white. Just like when I was thirteen, I feel like it's a bit of a dirty secret that I can’t share with any of my friends in real life, but for quite a different reason.
“If I’m being kind to myself, I would say my primary reason for being into slash now is that I’m chasing a nostalgic feeling, seeking comfort in the world I escaped to when I was a teenager. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that I’ve returned to fandom in the midst of a global pandemic.
“Looking back I do think slash really allowed me explore my gender identity and sexuality. As I said, I’m cis, but when I was in my teens, my version of womanhood seemed vastly inadequate in comparison to my classmates who seemed to me to perform normative femininity with such grace and ease! I can’t say for sure that some internalised misogyny didn’t play a part in my finding it much easier to relate to male characters in fanfiction; I was a mess of confusion, being not only envious of and slightly attracted to the feminine girls in my class, but also looking down on them.
“I think slash fanfiction also helped me come to terms with my own sexuality in a roundabout way as well, by letting me put a great deal of thought into homosexual attraction and relationships while not being too close for comfort to my own burgeoning feelings towards girls.
“So, slash was definitely a ‘safe space’ to explore myself. I think if the character of slash was truly subversive or radical, it wouldn’t have been able to fulfill this function for me. But perhaps it would have been better for me to be reading something truly queer, even if that would have been frightening and alienating at first?
“Anyway, at the end of all that rambling I do have a question, which is for Elizabeth in particular. I’d love to hear you talk a bit about why you think you enjoy slash, and how you reconcile your enjoyment of slash with its often problematic nature (that is, if you do think it is often problematic!). Thanks again for all your hard work on the podcast, Verity.”
ELM: OK, first of all Verity—not the Verity we had on the podcast, I need to clarify.
FK: Different Verity.
ELM: Seemingly another great Verity.
FK: Probably another great Verity.
ELM: Yeah.
FK: Small, small sample so far, but good sample.
ELM: Because this is a great letter and it’s extremely thoughtful and I really appreciate it. And, you know, it kind of underscores a whole bunch of things that I wish we had had more time to talk about and I really regret that we didn’t have more space to talk about a lot of these things. In that episode we were already super long, and it could’ve been 50 times longer, though I’m kinda glad it wasn’t that long cause that sounds like not a pleasant 50 hours of our life.
FK: A lot of discourse.
ELM: Too much discourse. OK. So where should we start?
FK: I don’t know. I mean, there’s just so much in here. There’s just so much in here, Elizabeth!
ELM: Yes, there is so much in here. So the internalized misogyny thing I think is the biggest thing that I wish we had had more time to talk about.
FK: Mm-hmm, cause that always comes up, whenever people talk about slash, inevitably, just as—similar to the other, the other side of that, right, is people saying “Well, it’s not that I have internalized misogyny, it’s just that male characters are written so much better.”
ELM: Right.
FK: The sort of internal—I mean, these are stand-ins for a variety of sort of internal and external reasons people give for being into slash.
ELM: Yeah, and so like, I think that you see a lot of people then bringing up kind of super background guys and being like “Really? Those two are written better?” Which I think is a fair point, but I also think it sometimes misses the broader cultural context in which we’re reading and writing, which is like: it’s undeniable that in the vast history of Western literature, men are written more complexly, much more media is created by men, and men are given a lot more space to have depth and maybe a movie would have more than one man! So you could see different kinds of men! As opposed to just the woman. You know?
FK: Yeah.
ELM: Especially when I’m thinking about a lot of the popular, you know, very pop-culturey media that a lot of fandom engages with. You know, and so I think there is a strong element of cultural priming that is something that people have to unlearn. And you can obviously make the same argument about race, and it’s one of the most interesting themes of post-colonial literature, is colonized or previously-colonized people talking about how they had to decolonize their own, you know, about themselves, because they were raised in a context in which their own perspectives were so devalued and they were made to think that they, you know, their minds had been flipped by colonization, saying “this is bonkers and this is me reclaiming my own space in the world and my own stories.”
FK: Right. So I mean, then, is—but then is the response to that, you know, decolonize your mind, stop reading and writing slash even if you love it, because that is just, you know, the highly-cis-male-centric world that we live in, you know, imprinting itself on you? And so therefore, you know, slash is problematic and you shouldn’t do it.
ELM: Yeah, [sighs] it’s so hard because I feel like there are always so many generalizations in this conversation, and…
FK: [laughs] There really are.
ELM: I don’t know. It’s really hard!
FK: Yeah, to be clear, that was a provocation, I don’t actually think people need to stop reading and writing slash fic, right. That is furthest—maybe not furthest from what I believe, but it’s certainly not what I believe. But I think it is, it’s rough, because like, obviously I also don’t think that—sometimes people, like, in the list of things that they, reasons why they like slash, right, they only pick the things that are about, like, “Well, this is transformative and it’s queering the text and it’s like this radical act” and so on, and nowhere in the list is like, internalized misogyny. Nowhere in the list is anything that might, like, actually make them be self-critical or self-reflective, right? And that can be quite frustrating.
ELM: Right. I think that’s what our entire last episode was about. [both laugh] I don’t know if we need to rehash that, you know.
FK: Yeah, totally.
ELM: It is, it is frustrating that historically—I mean, obviously some people have been critical, but I think there are a lot of like, truths about, you know, commonly-accepted truths about this practice that I think were not true at all, or they weren’t interrogated anyway.
FK: And then there’s also the attitude of like, you know, sometimes people will say things like “Men are more, better-written and therefore I had no choice but to care about the men.” And in fact actually there are lots of responses to that, even if we agree, like, broadly-speaking men are better written, different people have—you know, some people respond to that by investing more in the men, some people respond to that by being “No, fuck you, I’m gonna go write a bunch of women,” I’m sure there’s other responses to that that don’t involve a binary gender… [laughs] You know.
ELM: Nope! Just those two.
FK: Just those two, only those two options. End of story. Anyway, so you know, it’s not like there’s some prescriptive thing about our culture that forces people to interact in this way or that way.
ELM: Right. Exactly. I think that, OK. I have a couple different thoughts. I’m trying to figure out which one to say first. OK. So I’m thinking about this also side-by-side with the big brouhaha going on around professional male/male publishing and whether any woman should be allowed to write it, whether a straight woman should be allowed to write it, et cetera, whether you should force people who are not out to be out in order to write it…it’s been a real big messy topic going on over mostly on my Twitter feed.
But I think that one huge difference that I think gets collapsed a little by people when they’re talking about professional male/male publishing is the like, choice of why did you choose to write about this, these characters. Why did you choose this? If you are a woman or if you are a non-binary or gender non-conforming person, why did you choose to write about two cis boys or two cis men? And that’s a question that is different, I think, for pro male/male writers than it is for fanfiction, because you didn’t necessarily just watch the movie and go like, “how about that guy, how about that guy, some guys,” you know? You probably—maybe you did. But you probably were picking out characters you felt compelled by, right?
And so when people say like, “Oh, well, I’m using these characters to explore my gender identity and sexuality, these two male characters,” in fandom, people immediately will be like “well why don’t you do that with people who are more like you,” because very rarely is this a cis man who is doing the, you know, the fanfiction writer or reader. It’s like “but I like these characters, you know, and so I’m projecting my own thoughts, explorations, experiences onto these characters.” It’s not onto two completely blank bodies—
FK: Right.
ELM: —out in the world, right? It’s specifically about these characters. And I think that’s a hard part of the conversation that doesn’t translate back over into the professional space, because those are original characters that are spun up out of nothing. Right? And so like, I have no interest in digging into that side of it, cause we’re not—that’s a whole other can of worms, right. And I actually don’t, I don’t know as many of those perspectives in terms of why those people who are not cis men are choosing to write those stories, but in fandom that element I think is an important part of it. And so then you can talk about like, well, what are you drawn to? Is there bias in that, absolutely.
FK: For you yourself I guess—is it more because you’re, you know, would you say more that it’s not so much that you love slash as that you love the particular characters that you’ve, like, that you’ve grabbed onto?
ELM: Oh yeah. I mean, I think that I’m an extremely—I mean, maybe I’m just channeling myself. I’m always channeling myself when I talk, really. Just digging deep down within me. Because I’ve had a, you know, my six ships in twenty years, as I always like to say—I’m sure that everyone knows this detail and don’t want to hear it again—but like, it’s not a lot of characters. Right? And some of the ships too, it definitely was specifically more about one character. But the other half of the ship made sense. I definitely think that was my—my longest-running ship was Remus/Sirius, and it’s because I was first and foremost drawn to Sirius and related to him on a lot of levels, and Remus is the obvious other half of that ship, right?
FK: Yeah, totally, totally. There’s no other option there, I don’t think. I’m sorry to people who ship Sirius with other people, but like, it seems very clearly that’s—that’s what it’s gonna be.
ELM: I do like, like, I remember reading—I enjoyed fucked-up stories where he, that involved Lily and James and—
FK: Sure.
ELM: —some sort of configuration of that, but mostly like in a cruel way, you know, or in a bitter way, like, he’s in love with his straight best friend or whatever, that kind of thing.
FK: Yeah, totally.
ELM: But yeah, the obvious one, right? And before that my first big fandom was Buffy and I literally only cared about one character, right. There was no ship, so like, definitely—and that was a middle-aged man. As you know, I love the middle-aged men. As you know!
FK: I do, I do know that.
ELM: So yeah, I certainly think that—you know, that being said, you’ve only read some of my fic, but like, I definitely write about all sorts of characters within the ensemble. Just coming back to that earlier answer. I always have a ship, but I am always really invested in the people around them and if it makes sense for the story, like, shifting the POV. But often it doesn’t make sense to be juggling like, that many different ones, right? But it is true that it often defaults to the POV of one or both of the members of that ship, and so then I’m writing from this like, cis male perspective.
And so you know, is that a rejection of myself? Not a cis man? You’re makin’ a face like “Is it? Is it?”
FK: Is it? [laughs] I don’t know the answer. Only you can answer this question, Elizabeth Minkel.
ELM: Yeah! It’s not something that like, keeps me up at night! I don’t know. Like, when we have these conversations obviously I think about it and I wanna be self-critical, and I definitely am critical of the things that I’ve been drawn to and like—you know, I think I think of it, the true confession is I definitely think about it more acutely when it comes to race, since I’ve been significantly more enlightened starting this podcast about exactly how these dynamics are playing out, about like, why I can really like something like Black Panther but not find any of it particularly shippy, and then like, trying to interrogate that—and then like trying not to be too hard on myself because I could watch most Marvel movies and find literally nothing shippy in any way whatsoever.
FK: Right, totally.
ELM: But when it comes to the gender stuff, I—you know, it’s something that I, this is not going to be—I’m sorry to disappoint you but this is not going to be the moment where I talk frankly and at length about my gender and sexuality, which I’m sure listeners of the podcast will have noticed that I do not discuss. And maybe it’s important to say that explicitly, because it’s not something that I think would be particularly—it’s not a casual conversation and I don’t think that, you know, I certainly think that all of those experiences that I’ve had around these things definitely influence my writing in the same way that every experience I’ve had influences my writing. But I’m not looking, I don’t use fic as a way to like, exorcise that, if that makes sense?
FK: Mm-hmm.
ELM: You know, which I think a lot of people do, right?
FK: Yeah.
ELM: But I will say that the reason I bring up race here is because I think that one of the reasons I’ve latched onto that as like, “I should be more critical, all these white guy ships! White guy ships!” Is because I’m a white person and I feel fucking guilty about it, you know? [laughing]
FK: Yeah, yeah, totally!
ELM: “I’m so bad with my fucking white guys!” I don’t feel that guilty that they’re all men. I think part of that has to do with what frankly is a, is my extremely fraught history with gender. But you know, like, it’s not—it’s not complicated for me to say I’m a white person.
FK: Right.
ELM: I think if any other Italian-Americans are having trouble saying those words out loud, let me know and I’ll walk you through it, like, it’s not that hard! [FK laughing] You can have a history of oppression and also be a white person! Cool. This is a good way to segue into our big race and fandom episode, coming up next.
FK: Oh my God it is.
ELM: [laughs] But, and obviously I know for some people race is more complex and they might be, they might have a mixed background and—
FK: Absolutely.
ELM: —they’re not sure how they should best identify, or they’re in a group that is like, fuzzy in terms of how they racially play. But for me, it’s not complicated, because I am a white person and that is the dominant, unmarginalized group of people in this country.
FK: Yeah.
ELM: But for gender and sexuality, I think that I am not the only one for whom this is a very fraught topic. And there are some echoes of the, of the pro conversation in the sense of like, the pro male/male discourse right now is that people should have to be very explicit about their gender and sexuality to be allowed to write about queer characters at all. And I was really heartened to see the extraordinary amount of backlash those statements received over the last week on my feed, saying “there are a million reasons why you wouldn’t want to talk about this publicly.” And like, perhaps you talk about it privately or in your personal life, but you don’t want to put it in your bio, right? Or like, on your book jacket. Also, is every book that you’re writing an autobiography, and if not, like—you know?
Like, absolutely it shouldn’t just be a bunch of straight people writing books about gay characters and no gay authors ever get to write those, right, that’s absurd. So I think that conversation has some parallels to me with fandom in the sense of like, I think for a lot of—I’m gonna say AFAB people here because I do mean that! For people who were assigned female at birth, who are in transformative fandom, however they ID now in terms of gender and whatever their sexuality is, I think that I have found that it tends to be very muddled, especially for people who are maybe a little older than the hardcore labeling generation.
FK: Right.
ELM: Which, you know, now those boundaries are fuzzy because people of all ages are starting to like, check out those labels and saying “Oh, that works for me, I’m gonna do it,” right. But there’s definitely a cohort for whom that was a foundational part of coming online, right?
FK: Yeah, that was not foundational for—yeah. For me, that was not like, the thing.
ELM: No. It wasn’t like, yeah, sign up for Tumblr and then put your specific labels for these five categories across your bio or whatever. But I have found that a lot of people have very fuzzy feelings and experiences on that, right? So just letting it sit and saying “it’s complicated.” My feelings about women and about living in the world in the body that I have are not things that I think anyone gets to interrogate but me.
FK: Totally.
ELM: So yeah, I just feel like…I don’t know. There can be, I understand the frustration of people who argue this and say like, “Why don’t you like the characters I like as much as—why won’t you give these characters another look?” I absolutely understand that frustration. But the presumption that those characters as they’re presented on-screen would have anything in common with your experiences just because you maybe have the same body parts or maybe are seen in the same way in the world, I think it is really hard. And I absolutely don’t fault anyone for not wanting to get too close to themselves by projecting that onto a female character.
FK: Totally.
ELM: Does that make sense?
FK: That makes perfect sense.
ELM: I feel—this is a fraught topic.
FK: It’s a fraught topic.
ELM: It sounds like Verity and I have had some similar experiences. I really appreciate this letter from her and being really, really open and I really like this letter because it’s self-critical but it’s also not like, self-flagellating. And I feel like that’s a really sweet spot that this discourse needs in terms of people thinking about, you know, the things that they maybe are doing unthinkingly and—
FK: Agree.
ELM: —how they fit into the world. [laughs]
FK: Totally.
ELM: It’s a hard line to walk I think, so.
FK: All right, read me the next one though because this is less fraught.
ELM: All right! I think I can handle this one. “I’m not sure if this is too broad of a topic but I was wondering if you two had any opinions on the way music gets circulated and adopted by fandom in playlists and MVs. For example the song ‘Angel With A Shotgun’ is exceedingly popular with so many fandoms that, in my mind at least, it becomes part of fanon. To me ‘Angel With A Shotgun’ will always be a Supernatural/Castiel song, but it may hold fannish meaning to other fandoms. Either way I’m not sure if I ever would have heard this song if it weren't for fandom. Songs that become popular with fandom mixes seem to form their own kind of subgenre. I find that they’re usually alternative sounding and have a focus on narrative and emotions. Do you think fandom at large has its own subgenre or taste in music? If so, why do you think fans gravitate to these types of songs?”
FK: Well I gotta tell you, I have only ever heard the song ‘Angel With A Shotgun’ in the context of Supernatural and Castiel and I definitely would never have heard of it if not for Supernatural.
ELM: Wait wait, can I one-up you? I had never heard of it until this letter.
FK: Great.
ELM: And I googled it. That being said—I do think there’s a little bit, and this isn’t a dig at Supernatural, but sometimes Supernatural fandom, being the largest for so long, there tends to be a little bit of a…I think it does skew a sense of how popular things are pan-fandom, because more people in Supernatural like them.
FK: Right.
ELM: Than like, in all the other fandoms combined. So it’s true that tons of fans probably love this song.
FK: And maybe it, maybe it gets carried over too.
ELM: Yeah yeah, totally.
FK: There’s also like, worlds of fandom that I don’t like—I have never interacted with My Hero Academia. I literally just picked something out of the blue. You know, there’s tons of worlds of fandom that I have never interacted with and have no idea so maybe, maybe it is also a thing in My Hero Academia and I would have no idea. So I don’t want to dis on that. But I do want to mention that it’s not exactly universal with everyone in fandom, right?
But that said, I do think that—I think that this person is saying something that’s true, I think that there’s a lot of fan mixes that are alternative and have a focus on narratives and emotions because a lot of times they’re about, you know, particular character relationships, so there tends to be songs that are about relationships and about that. That’s not to say that there’s not other stuff, right? Like, I mean, Nicki Minaj’s “Starships” is to me a fandom song forever, right, and that is not narrative or particularly focused on any emotion other than loving to dance.
ELM: What about “Tik Tok”?
FK: Yeah! Also a fandom song in my opinion.
ELM: Definitely a fandom song.
FK: Wake up in the morning, feeling like P. Diddy.
ELM: It’s the only way I’ll ever enjoy Star Trek: The Original Series is by that video. [FK laughs] What I do think is, you see this with certain poetry as well. Often I find that it tends to be a little bit generic in terms of the emotions, but it’s like “you and me,” and it’s like, OK! Like, that’s the ship, right? It’s those two! And it’ll be really funny cause I’ll like, see someone being like, “This is such a whatever song,” and it’s like my ship, and then I’ll look at it and I’ll be like “This has nothing to do with them!” But I totally understand when you’re like, deep in your feelings and you’re like “those two!” And you like, hear a song that’s about like, maybe a line really strikes you as something about the way you think they interact, and you’re like “This is a song that’s really about them,” I’ve definitely had that experience and it’s something that I try not to be too—I’m being a little bit flippant right now, but I try to be a little more generous with myself when I’m like “This song is so them!!” Because it feels slightly cheesy, because if I were to show it to literally anyone else, like…
FK: Yeah, no.
ELM: But my hard line here though, you know this, right? So I had this problem in Black Sails fandom. Absolutely refuse to engage with anything in Black Sails, if you tell me this is a very them song for any of the relationships in Black Sails, and it was written after the year—I will give you a little leeway!—like 1735…
FK: This is a personal problem.
ELM: Then I’m like “Get out. Move outta here.” There’s so much good, like, late Baroque music that you could be saying…
FK: Elizabeth.
ELM: This is my—OK but this kind of connects to the fandom tourism thing…
FK: This is totally fine, it is a fine position to hold, I’m also laughing about it.
ELM: Well, I think that sometimes this gets a little muddled. I have real thoughts about this because people will be like “This is a really them song”—not Black Sails, but like any ship—and I’ll be like, “Do you mean like that they would love it, or it reminds you of them?” And so I tend to like, I tend to really enjoy the former.
FK: But think that most people mean the latter,
ELM: So like right now as I’m writing X-Men fic set in the ’60s, I have all these like, at one point I listened to a playlist that was like every number one song in 1962. There was so much garbage. Really reminded me that throughout history a lot of pop music—
FK: Most music is bad?
ELM: —is like disposable garbage and it was fine! Like, and it’s not new. That’s something that also existed 50 years ago, which is great. I really like that. That’s 60 years ago now. And then when I was in Black Sails I would just like listen to a lot of Purcell [purr-cell], apparently, is how I’m supposed to say it, but I say Purcell [per-sill]. So. And I like to think of like, Thomas Hamilton sitting in a concert like, listening to this like, viola da gamba or whatever. And that just brings me joy!
FK: I can’t believe that it is actually “purr-cell,” because you said “per-sill” so many times that I thought this was another thing that I had been saying wrong [Elizabeth laughs] and I never mentioned it, and now I feel really vindicated. OK carry on.
ELM: No no, here’s the thing, some—I was talking about this with some people who live in the U.K., specifically like Gav and Natasha—you all know Gav, but Natasha is one of our Black Sails friends, and Persil—P-E-R-S-I-L—is like the—
FK: Yeah, it’s like—
ELM: It’s like the Dawn of, it’s like the dishwashing liquid, right? You say “per-sil,” but you say it with a British accent so you wouldn’t say that hard R. And so they were like, “You say Purcell and you sound like the dish soap or whatever,” and I was like “Ahh! That’s what I always heard! I played the cello since I was nine, I don’t know!” And so [laughs] now, now I feel like I don’t know, I don’t want any British person to think I’m talking about dish soap!
FK: Great.
ELM: When I’m talking about Baroque music!
FK: OK, I think we should get on to the next question Elizabeth. [both laughing] We’ve gone far afield. In fact, this next one is the last one.
ELM: I’m ready. Do you want me to read this one because you read the big long guy? A long boy?
FK: OK, go for it.
ELM: OK. Also anonymous, this was two messages submitted to our website which you can do as well, fansplaining.com, but don’t leave us any message that requires a response if you don’t leave contact information. We haven’t said that in awhile, so I think we should say it.
FK: Read the, read the message. We are responding to this one.
ELM: Anonymous says, “Hi Elizabeth and Flourish. I’ve been especially enjoying your pod during quarantine.”
I love that that’s a—side note. I love that that’s a theme in many of these. It’s exciting! I’m glad so many people—
FK: I’m really glad that we’re making people’s quarantines better.
ELM: Yeah. Because quarantine’s so bad! It’s nice to have something to listen to. [laughs] That sounded very self-congratulatory. I was gonna be like “something great to listen to.” OK.
“Thank you for continuing to make and share it with all of us. I was discussing this issue with a friend and would love to know your thoughts on it. For a long time it seemed that when novels got adapted into movies, there were no expectations on Hollywood’s end about honoring the source material or respecting the fans. Especially when a story was YA—e.g. Percy Jackson infamously getting butchered in its movie adaptation, The Mortal Instruments, Eragon.
“Although bad adaptations are still a thing today, the practice of totally butchering a story to the point where it’s barely recognizable is less common. Somewhere along the way, on Hollywood’s end, they did start considering these things. (I am sure this had to do with movies performing better in the box office when fans actually feel respected. Imagine that!) So my question is, at what point along the way do you think this shift happened? And, do you think any specific adaptation disaster helped spark this change?”
Continuing, the second message: “As a tie-in to that question, what role do you think the rise of fan culture has played in this? Like, do you think the reason for this shift is partly because fan feedback is better able to reach them on social media than it used to be? So it makes it harder to get away with butchering a very popular franchise?” Flourish, this is literally about your job!
FK: It is literally about my job. So I will first say that I don’t think that anybody ever came in with the goal of butchering something or taking out the good parts or any of that. And I actually think that’s important to say, because I hear from a lot of people like, “They just destroyed everything good! They just shat on it!” No, when people have made major changes like that, including the very ill-considered ones, it’s always because there’s an idea about the market and who is going to watch this and how they’re going to receive it, and in the format specifically of a movie.
So a lot of times there is stuff in books that just does not translate very well to a film. Right? And there has to be a change because the way that films work and the way that books work are different ways, right. So I think historically people were more aggressive about this, yes, because there wasn’t social media and there wasn’t the same kind of coverage of every property ahead of time, right? Now there’s an expectation that not only is there going to be social media, there’s going to be Comic-Con. People who are not into, I don’t know, Batman will be at Comic-Con for something else and they’ll see the Batman thing and then they’ll go and read up on Batman ahead of time, I think there’s just like a more…
ELM: That was a weird example.
FK: Yeah, that is a weird example.
ELM: [laughs] They have to read up on Batman.
FK: Read up on Batman!!
ELM: Who is that guy?!
FK: But you get what I’m saying though, right?
ELM: What a cool outfit!
FK: Who is he?
ELM: I’m interested in that! [both laughing]
FK: Ahh! But no, you know what I mean. So there’s an idea that people are going to be able to more, yes, it’s not just that they can hear the fans more but also that fans have much more of an impact on like, the media, right? So for instance like, when fans complain on Twitter, people in the geek media space pick up on those complaints and publish them and those go all the way up, right? Those stories get picked up and carried on and that really shapes the narrative around a franchise. Which historically it didn’t always do, right? Before there were all of these outlets that covered this, the geek stuff, and then that—the “geek stuff,” I mean, this is how people talk about it, I’m not trying to be dismissive. And before that sort of chain of press started happening, you know, you would—you would just be a random person and you’d be like “I wanna go see a movie. Was it made from a book? I don’t care. Did the movie look good?” So that, that motivates different kinds of choices in the adaptation.
So yeah, I think that more or less this is right. I do, I just wanna push back a little bit on the idea that it’s like, not caring. Cause I think that people did care about those adaptations, I think that they just didn’t care in the same way as fans care, do you see what I’m saying?
ELM: Yeah, and it also just makes me think of like—I think there’s an expectation from some people in fandom and some people outside of fandom that fans are very very interested in extremely faithful adaptations.
FK: Right.
ELM: And I think having just watched Watchmen and talked about it with you, one thing I find very interesting about Watchmen is they, you know, in a way it’s kind of a big fuck-you to that idea in the sense of like, if you make something that’s super good, then [laughs] who cares if there’s some die-hard fans out there who are like, “this isn’t exactly like,” you know. If it feels—if it feels like characters are doing things that are the opposite of what you thought they would do, characters you already know, then that’s one thing. But it just sort of, one thing I really admire about Watchmen is I feel like they obviously had this kind of prestige backing of being on HBO, and it’s Damon Lindelof, who I think made up for the anger people had over Lost with The Leftovers and so he had these like, “can deliver on prestige” points, right.
FK: Right.
ELM: That would be my assessment of him and his position as a showrunner.
FK: Yes, yes.
ELM: But then I just appreciate that with that, that force, he just kinda barrelled on through and was like, “We’re making this thing.”
FK: Right.
ELM: I’m sure there were some diehard Watchmen fans out there who were like “This isn’t exactly like what I expected! It was quite different!” But it didn’t matter, because you had millions of people being like, “Wow, incredible. You did a great job.”
FK: Totally.
ELM: And so when it feels like—that certain corner of fandom, that sort of “I need everything to be exactly as it,” like, I think that’s a bad stereotype but it is based in reality, and I think The Rise of Skywalker was a great example of feeling like the opposite of Damon Lindelof. Like caring too much about what that sort of fan thinks, right? So it’s like, I don’t know. Is this ringing true with your assessment of different approaches that Hollywood has in terms of…?
FK: Yeah, definitely. And I think that there’s, there’s always—I mean the statement that I…it’s a balance, right? Because there is one thing that people say which is very true, I think, which is: who cares what the fans are complaining about now, anyway, if it’s good they’ll love it,.
ELM: Yeah, that’s the argument I’m making about how they approached the Watchmen.
FK: It’s purely that, right? And I think that that’s true. I think that there’s also the challenge that if you—and I mean I think that, I genuinely think that’s true. But I also think that there’s the aspect of, sometimes you might find a different audience, right, than the fandom that built the thing, which isn’t always—I mean, that creates a challenge, because you may have found a different audience and have made something great for that different audience, but then maybe there’s a marketing issue there. Because if the fandom that you’re creating it for is not the people who…
ELM: Yeah, sustained interest. They’ll buy a ticket, but like…are they gonna actually be the ones who are gonna put in the money and the time?
FK: And, and beforehand too, like then, how do you—you know, do you misrepresent the thing that you’ve made as being like, relevant to the fandom that it ostensibly is for? Or do you market it purely to the people who you think you’ve actually made the thing for. So it’s complicated, and again, I think that when Hollywood has historically been shitty to fans, it has not been because of…mostly not been because of like, disdain for or like, wanting to screw fans somehow. Like, that’s not…I’m sure that there’s been some people who have those feelings, but I don’t think that’s mostly it. I think it’s just benign neglect, because fans have not always been viewed as the thing that is the engine that makes a franchise run. Right?
ELM: Also don’t you think a little bit of what’s being conflated here is, although I think this is a good comment, is that sometimes movies are just bad and also are like…
FK: Sometimes movies are just bad.
ELM: [laughing] And like, amongst their badness may be like, disappointing fans by not actually delivering on a good adaptation, but like, sometimes they’re just incompetently made or like, made by—whatever! I was gonna say “made by competent people poorly” but that’s incompetently made on the whole. They’re all good at their jobs, but like…
FK: Nobody sets out to make a crap movie, right? Like, things happen and sometimes the production is crap.
ELM: Have you not gotten to Moira—
FK: I have.
ELM: Moira’s movie yet?
FK: I have gotten to Moira’s, I’ve gotten there.
ELM: So sometimes people do set out to make a bad movie.
FK: I would say rather that sometimes people set out to make a movie that is low budget, and that’s different than a bad movie. I don’t think anybody comes in and is like “This is gonna be bad.” I think they say “We have these limitations and I’m gonna make it as well as I can within the limitation.”
ELM: Yeah.
FK: Genuinely! Like, I mean, there’s some reasons why some of these movies…
ELM: That was not the attitude of that director. We’re talking about—
FK: It was not. That’s because it’s a comedy—
ELM: We’re talking about Schitt’s Creek, by the way.
FK: Schitt’s Creek is a comedy. Schitt’s Creek is—that was a comedy. Not exactly the same as real life.
ELM: [laughing] All right, well, thank you anonymous for these messages!
FK: Yes! It was well, well-observed and glad that we had a chance to talk about it.
ELM: All right and that’s the last one!
FK: Another great letterbox episode complete.
ELM: Had to editorialize.
FK: Letterbox, mailbag, I just like saying those words.
ELM: That was not the editorializing part! It’s when you said it was “great.”
FK: I know! But I mean I need an excuse to say the words so then I had to editorialize. I could’ve just said “another letterbox episode finished.”
ELM: “What a letterbox episode, yeah, done.” [laughing] “Checked complete!”
FK: OK. Elizabeth, it has been a delight answering these letters with you.
ELM: Yeah, ditto.
FK: All right. I will talk to you later.
ELM: All right, bye Flourish!
FK: Bye Elizabeth.
[Outro music, thanks and credits]