Episode 180: Happy Anniversary #7
Flourish and Elizabeth mark yet another year of the podcast with their traditional anniversary episode format: inviting the past year’s guests to share their thoughts about what’s changed in fandom, both broadly and personally. Topics discussed include making your own spaces versus giving up on fandoms entirely, bringing fresh perspectives to older source material, and the continued fracturing of both the media landscape and subsequent fannish interests.
Show Notes
[00:00:00] As always, our intro music is “Awel” by stefsax, used under a CC BY 3.0 license.
[00:00:50] All of our past anniversary episodes: #6, #5, #4, #3, #2, and #1!
[00:01:30] Our “Writing Trans Characters” episode from January of this year featured many of the guests in this episode: AlessNox, Flash, Gavin Daphne, (the other) Elizabeth, and an anon respondent. (Plus, of course, Destination Toast!)
[00:02:52] Thai BL series “Cutie Pie” and the episode of “LoveCast the BL Podcast” featuring BamBam, the author of the original novel, and Maya and Ploy, the show’s screenwriters.
[00:9:05]
[00:13:18]
[00:14:20] Elizabeth’s interview with “The Browser” last fall on fic and platform, amongst other topics…
[00:16:58] That’s episode 172, “Safe Spaces.”
[00:18:04] Betts first came on the podcast in 2020, for “The Craft of Writing (Fanfiction).” This past spring she joined us to talk about the launch of the publication she co-founded, OFIC Magazine, in an episode—shockingly—titled “OFIC Magazine.”
[00:19:05] Betts pulled these stats from centreoftheselights’s AO3 data analysis.
[00:25:55] Prior to the “Writing Trans Characters” episode, Destination Toast’s previous Fansplaining appearance was episode 138, “2020 By the Numbers.”
[00:26:56]
[00:31:05] Episode 177: “The Good, the Bad, and the Popular.”
[00:34:08] Obviously there are/were likely many others posted elsewhere, but there are close to three dozen Draco Malfoy/Millicent Bullstrode fics on the AO3. Dreeter through? Sadly only three.
[00:35:14] Our interstitial music throughout is “Vaping in LA” by Lee Rosevere, also used under a CC BY 3.0 license.
[00:44:07] Brent was our guest in November 2021, and you can learn more about FIYAH on their website.
[00:48:31] Poetry professor and X-Men comics fan Stephanie Burt was our guest—on a two-part episode—way back in 2018!
[00:49:15]
[00:58:40] Elizabeth was right: Flourish posted their PotC fic on January 2, 2004. It’s Elizabeth Swann/Norrington, btw, which should surprise absolutely no one.
[01:10:35] In the past few months, Netflix announced its first net subscriber loss in more than a decade, and laid off hundreds of employees. The Warner Bros./HBO Max situation, on the other hand, is moving too quickly to really document here; most recently, they deleted dozens of shows, including many HBO Max originals.
[01:11:24] HBO MAX PLEASE DO NOT CANCEL THE OTHER TWO!!!!!!!
[01:19:42]
[01:22:29] Episode 178, our conversation with journalist Kaitlyn Tiffany.
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 #180, “Happy Anniversary #7.”
FK: Seven years! That’s a lot of years.
ELM: [laughing] You’re looking at the sky right now.
FK: Yeah! I was marveling. I was looking up in wonder.
ELM: OK.
FK: At my ceiling.
ELM: It is a lot of years. Yes.
FK: All right, so as every year, in our anniversary episodes, we ask the guests from the previous year to come and tell us a little bit about what they’ve experienced in fandom over the course of that year.
ELM: Well, OK, specifically, we ask them two questions. One is: Can you talk about any trends that you’ve observed in fandom? How things have changed. And question two is: How have things changed for you in your personal fandom? And we say answer one or both please.
FK: Indeed, OK, so should we just get right into it?
ELM: Yeah! We got—eight of our past guests responded, and so I’m really excited to read their thoughts and play their voices.
FK: Me too. All right, our first letter is from AlessNox.
ELM: So, AlessNox is one of the first of many of the folks from our “Writing Trans Characters” episode. Our one respondent who, um, did not ID as trans or genderqueer, who was talking about writing trans characters from a cis perspective.
FK: All right, shall I read her letter?
ELM: Yes please!
FK: Great! OK.
“It feels to me as if the content creators and the fans have gotten closer, especially during the pandemic. There used to be a great divide between those in the entertainment industry and those without, but after the start of the pandemic, when everyone was forced to go home because of lockdowns, we saw many artists unveil the way they work at home. And even as we go back to more traditional ways to film and record music, fans still haven’t completely separated from the intimacy we felt when we were welcomed into their homes and studios.
“I find this especially in small productions and in international fandoms, content creators are listening very closely to fans in a way that wasn’t evident before. Fans are talking directly back to artists on social media. The lines of communication that were opened up during lockdown have not completely shut down.
“For example, I started to follow Thai BL dramas, which are growing at a rapid pace. One show named ‘Cutie Pie’ had their screenwriters and the novel writer on a fan podcast discussing the show. It seemed odd to me that a small fan podcast could have such high level people in the production on it, but they had forged connections with the writer during the pandemic when the production was not so certain, so when it was finished, she returned.
“Have you noticed this in fandoms that you follow?”
That’s from AlessNox.
ELM: Well, thank you very much, AlessNox. Great way to start. Flourish, a question has been asked. Have you noticed?
FK: You know, [sighs] I do think I’ve noticed that there was more communication during the pandemic in some of my fandoms. For instance, like, every person who had ever been on Star Trek [ELM snorts] started doing these, like—
ELM: The table reads stuff? Yeah.
FK: Like—well, no, there was that, but there was also people doing, like, cocktail hour with your favorite Star Trek actor—
ELM: Mm-hmm.
FK: —and it was, like, people would donate to a charity and then, like, they would get on the list and every week—or every—I don’t remember how often it was, like, 20 people would be part of the cocktail party, and they would literally have a cocktail hour. This was what those actors were just doing instead of having Zoom calls with their friends, or in addition to it, because as actors they were, like, desperate for public approval. [ELM laughs] I mean, this is how actors are. Sorry to actors, but, like, they obviously needed to get adulation from the public in some way, and so they started doing this. So, in those respects, I do think that within lockdown there was more interaction—
ELM: [laughing] This is the most cynical framing, I’m sorry—
FK: I’m sorry, I’ve met an actor!
ELM: [laughs] They also, like, they didn’t—
FK: I love you, actors.
ELM: OK, OK, continue. Finish your thought.
FK: All I was gonna say is, I don’t know that I’ve seen it continuing in the way that AlessNox has. But I wouldn’t be surprised to find out that it did.
ELM: Well, yeah, so I definitely—you know, when you saw that writers, or actors from various shows do these, like, Zoom reunions—
FK: Mm-hmm.
ELM: —or table reads or, like, they were reading other things that weren’t episodes of the show that they were on, or whatever, just to hang.
FK: Yeah.
ELM: My observation of that was some additional, less cynical [FK laughs] reasons why they were doing this. One, they were all basically temporarily unemployed, right?
FK: There was also that. That’s true.
ELM: They couldn’t do their jobs at all.
FK: Yeah.
ELM: So they were just waiting. But then the other thing too is, like, for Star Trek actors, how many of those actors are going to cons—you know, small cons, regularly? Or medium-sized cons?
FK: Oh, definitely. Yeah.
ELM: And, you know, that’s not raising money for charity, but they also have to travel there and all that, right? So, I feel like they had this free time—
FK: Mm-hmm.
ELM: It was just, like, a different way of interfacing with fans, and it wasn’t—you know, the barriers were still there to some degree, in the way that the barriers are there when you go and you pay X amount of money, and you get your picture taken with Jensen Ackles, right? You know, like…
FK: Definitely. Or you—I mean, a lot of people got on Cameo over the pandemic.
ELM: Sure.
FK: And, like, that was, you know. Thank you to Sean Astin who did a great Cameo for me and my coworkers once. Um, you know. [both laugh]
ELM: Right, but I feel like some of this is like—I mean, what you’re saying, too, is—I guess to connect it to, like, much larger kind of much more manufactured, polished, fan-creator interaction, when I look at the K-pop industry—
FK: Mm-hmm.
ELM: —or any of the other global music industries. You know, we’ve talked a bit during the pandemic about the somewhat geographic democratization? And maybe even a little bit more monetary democratization—
FK: Mm-hmm.
ELM: —of fandom of K-pop, and why you saw this huge explosion of global K-pop fandom during the pandemic, was because they couldn’t tour, and so everyone was consuming them in the same way, which was, you know—
FK: Yeah.
ELM: And it was still pretty heavily mediated.
FK: Mm-hmm.
ELM: But it was more accessible, and I think that there’s a way that that feels more intimate, even if it’s not intimate at all, right?
FK: Mm-hmm. Definitely.
ELM: You know, because it’s like—
FK: Oh, yeah.
ELM: —you know, you’re like, “I’m here in my house, looking at them on the screen. We’re all doing this together.” As opposed to, “I’m going to Los Angeles. I’m paying X amount of money, you know. Seeing them in a giant stadium.” Or whatever.
FK: And I mean, sometimes you are literally seeing them in their house, right?
ELM: [laughs] Yeah yeah yeah.
FK: One of the things that’s appealing about the Cameos is when you realize that this actor is literally sitting in his backyard with a bottle of wine, [ELM laughs] just drinking and plowing through ’em, you know? And you’re like, “Yeah. You’re working in the afternoon, and that’s what your backyard looks like and now I know.” [laughs] You know?
ELM: I think that’s actually a really good point. Because I’m thinking, like, even, you know, my fandom right now, which is a giant franchise and these A-list actors, or whatever. I don’t know. Now I’ve seen parts of James McAvoy’s house, because he just had nothing to do. Right? [laughs] You know what I mean?
FK: Exactly! And he’s an actor, so he needs someone to pay attention to him. [laughs]
ELM: [laughing] As discussed last time, he really needs someone to pay attention to him at all times. So, like, you know. And obviously, there was a lot of discourse in the beginning about—I think it’s interesting to see a lot of celebrities who I think thrived in the normal Before Times—
FK: Mm-hmm.
ELM: —ways of, you know—
FK: Yeah.
ELM: —traveling around, posting glamorous things on Instagram, or whatever—
FK: Yup. All the sudden, they’re up shit creek without a paddle.
ELM: Face-planted. Yeah. [both laugh] Right. Whereas people who could kind of adjust a little and be like, “Yeah, I’m just gonna get on this Zoom with some other famous people, and we’re just gonna be, like, in random rooms. Cool.”
FK: Yeah yeah, you know, like—yeah. Why not? Like, definitely.
ELM: So, yeah, I guess AlessNox’s commentary is interesting, because I don’t doubt in these specific examples, or—I don’t know very much about Thai media—that there is, like, a lowering of the barrier between fan and creator. But I don’t know if I would say that on a whole, I think we’re describing ways that it felt different—
FK: Mm-hmm.
ELM: —and yeah, like, I guess there is something a little bit—I mean, maybe not. I was gonna say, is there something more intimate about, like, going to a Zoom cocktail party with your favorite actor, as opposed to paying for a photo-op with your favorite actor at a con. Maybe six of one, half a dozen of the other.
FK: Yeah, I don’t know. I mean, there’s different—it’s a different kind of intimacy, right? Like, in one case you get a hug, and in another case, you get to feel like you’re doing a social activity with this actor that’s exactly the same as the social activity you do with your friends, right?
ELM: Yeah. Yeah yeah yeah, that’s totally true.
FK: So there’s also that, right?
ELM: Yeah.
FK: But, you know, whatever. But you’re also not getting a hug, right?
ELM: Right.
FK: Like, I want a hug! So anyway.
ELM: From Jensen Ackles?
FK: No. [ELM snorts] Not from Jensen Ackles… No.
ELM: Do you—who would you want a hug from?
FK: Uh, Kate Mulgrew.
ELM: OK.
FK: A person who did these cocktail parties, and I never went to one of them.
ELM: Oh, Flourish. Missed opportunity.
FK: Missed opportunity. Anyway! Yeah, no, I agree with you, though. Like, I believe that these things are happening. I haven’t seen—by “these things,” I mean fans getting closer—actual, like, access to creators and having them on podcasts and so forth, later. I totally believe that’s happening. I haven’t seen it so much in my fandoms, but, like, I also think this might not always be something that you see because it’s probably happening more in cases like a Thai drama, or in something where the show is a little bit smaller, or the fandom is a little bit smaller, you know.
ELM: Well, you know, now you’re making me think—and I know we need to move on to our other ones too, but, like—on podcasts, you can—some podcasts, even ones made by fans, certainly can have all the actors of the show on. You know? Like…
FK: Definitely.
ELM: This is something that I think we’ve been seeing for at least a decade, right? So…
FK: Mm-hmm. That’s very true.
ELM: So there is that as well. Yeah, I do think that we saw something very unique when all of the actors [laughs] had free time. And all the musicians, you know, like—
FK: Yup.
ELM: —so many musicians were doing, like, concerts from their living room, or whatever.
FK: Oh, yeah. Mm-hmm.
ELM: And now we’re not gonna see that because they do have to work—
FK: Yeah. In normal work ways.
ELM: —and they’re able to go do that at their regular jobs now.
FK: Yeah.
ELM: So, they’re not just around.
FK: Yeah. Bored, in their house.
ELM: Yes.
FK: Great! OK, shall we move on to the next letter?
ELM: Yeah! Let’s do it.
FK: This one is from Flash.
ELM: So, Flash is also one of the participants in our “Writing Trans Characters” episode. Just for a little refresher, he’s a queer trans guy and talked about, like, incorporating trans headcanons into fic, writing, remember, about Power Rangers and Man from U.N.C.L.E., is this ringing a bell?
FK: Yeah! [laughs] All right, will you read his letter?
ELM: I will do it. All right, Flash writes:
“Hi Flourish and Elizabeth,
“This isn’t necessarily an observation limited to this year so much as something I've felt/seen over the course of a few years. I’ve found the current platforms most utilized for fandom engagement (Twitter, Tumblr, Discord) create a sort of disconnected feeling to fandom communities. I think a lot of this has to do with the nature of these platforms—Twitter and Discord in particular can be fast moving and can make discussion difficult. Tumblr, while it does allow for longer-form conversations in a way the others don’t, is complicated by how reblogs work and further complicated by the way tagging works (as both organization for personal blogs and a discovery tool for the whole site). Again, this isn't so much a “new” observation from this year as a trend I’ve seen in fandom for a few years now.
“For a while I was feeling very disconnected from fandom. I think a lot of it has to do with my answer to question one and the way fandom and fandom interaction has shifted and changed over the years. But recently two things have gotten me back to feeling fannish:
“First, I am getting married and our wedding is themed based on the fandom that brought the two of us together. While that’s meant I’ve done less of the fanworks I may usually do, we've been planning one big fanwork for over a year and it’s about to come to fruition!
“The second is I’ve gotten more into writing and participating in meta. One of the big things I’ve been trying to do is do weekly discussion & analysis posts of one of the Dreamwidth comms I’m a moderator on (the Eerie, Indiana comm specifically). I’ve also started working on a meta series on what I see in fandom and how it's changed in the many years I’ve been fandom-ing. A lot of this, particularly my personal meta collection, ties into my thoughts from my answer to question one, as well as that disconnected feeling I’ve had for a while.
“Thank you so much for reaching out to me and happy Fansplaining-aversary! Flash.”
FK: Oh, congratulations on your wedding, Flash!
ELM: Yes! Oh, man, framing it as one big fanwork is delightful.
FK: Oh, man. And—and, also, I think it’s really cool that Flash is like, “I felt disconnected and so now I look for things that I want to do.” [laughs]
ELM: Yeah.
FK: And that one of those things was meta. I think that’s really cool, you know? I guess we’ve talked a lot on this podcast, and I think that we’ve heard other people talking about it. People who experienced prior waves of fandom being like, “Well, it just isn’t the same, you know. I don’t have this experience, that experience.” And I think it’s cool that Flash is like, yeah. He moderates a Dreamwidth community like it’s, you know, 2008?
ELM: [laughing] For Eerie, Indiana. Yeah.
FK: Yeah, you know what I mean? It’s like, he’s doing his thing, and of course it’s not exactly the same, you know? You can never step in the same river twice. But I think it’s cool that he’s like, “Yeah, these are the things that weren’t working for me about these platforms, and so, I have returned to a platform that I actually like.” You know? [laughs]
ELM: Yeah, yeah. It’s very much the, like, if you don’t—what’s—is there an expression? Like, if you don’t like it, make your own, or whatever. You know what I’m trying to say, right? Build—
FK: Yeah, yeah! Don’t like, don’t read. [laughs]
ELM: No, that’s not what I’m trying to say. I was gonna say, “If you build it, they will come.” But that’s not what I mean. But, like, if you, you know—if you—[FK laughs] I feel like there’s a lot of complaining about how the current spaces are bad, right?
FK: Mm-hmm.
ELM: And one thing that I admire about fandom is some folks in fandom can then articulate what they would like instead, which I think is pretty unusual for internet users.
FK: Oh, yeah!
ELM: Right? They’re like, “This is a hellsite.” Like, insert whatever site. And then you’re like, “What would you like to see in a site?”
FK: Yeah. And they’re like, “I don’t know. Not this!”
ELM: “What features would you—Like, what do you want to do?” Right?
FK: Yeah.
ELM: And you know, this is something that—I mean, do you remember I did that interview, uh, about platform—to some degree it was about platform—for “The Browser” last year? Do you remember that piece that I did? Wow, you didn’t read it. That’s cool. The look on your face suggests you just blew me off. [laughs]
FK: [laughs] Uh, unfortunately, people on this podcast listening cannot see the face I just made. But trust me, it was a big face. [laughs]
ELM: It was a big face. Um, well, I did this interview last year, and I talked a little bit about this, and saying that, like, fans are—you know, they’re not the only ones, but they are somewhat unique in the sense of, like—you know, the way social media is marketed to you is kind of telling you what the platform is for, right?
FK: Right.
ELM: And you, like—I mean, this is more of an articulation than I think I did in that piece, [FK laughs] but, like, the new social media platforms—like, take, for example—I mean, whatever, this is no shade against it, right? It is what it is. But, take, BeReal, right?
FK: Right.
ELM: That is a concept, and they would like you to participate in that concept, right? You can’t—
FK: And that is a concept that you’re gonna do. There’s no deviation.
ELM: Right.
FK: I mean, there might be. But, like, they’re not…yeah.
ELM: The only way I could see to make that fannish is, like, if you turn it into some sort of role-playing thing, right? And you were like, “What would my character—” I don’t know. Even that, I don’t think there’s much of a way to use that platform for fandom.
FK: Mm-hmm.
ELM: But if anyone doesn’t know this, this is the one where it’s like, they kind of hit you with an alert saying, like, “Take a picture right now.”
FK: At, like, a random time. And you can take it later, but people can see, and that’s, like, discouraged.
ELM: Right, so, and it’s very popular among Gen Z, and it’s been one of the most downloaded social media apps, if not the most, in the last couple of weeks, maybe months?
FK: Yeah, months, I think.
ELM: So, like, it’s interesting, but it’s a very clear one-to-one, like, “This is what this is, and you do it.”
FK: Now do it! Yeah.
ELM: Um, which is the basis of a lot of modern social media. Whereas fans kind of have things that they want to do.
FK: Mm-hmm.
ELM: And, you know, that’s why, for its faults, the AO3 feels like it was made by fans who had specific things that they were like, “What would we want?” And then they made it, you know?
FK: Right. And those things may or may not be what fans want now, or what every fan wants.
ELM: All fans wanted then, or what all fans want now. Yeah. Of course not.
FK: But they definitely were a group of people whom it represents what they wanted. [laughs]
ELM: Right. Exactly.
FK: Unlike Tumblr, which, like, no one asked for that.
ELM: Wow.
FK: I mean, not saying fans don’t love it and embrace it, but, like, you know. It’s like, all right…[laughs]
ELM: Yeah. I mean, Tumblr did have an intent, right? But people had to kind of make it work for fandom, right? You know?
FK: Yeah yeah yeah. Yeah. And it’s like, you know, grown together over time, but…
ELM: Yeah. So I think that is, you know, I mean—I think back to our episode a few months ago about the, like, ex-anti—
FK: Mm-hmm.
ELM: —saying, “What do I do?” And part of what we came to was saying, “What do you like about fandom?” Right? [both laugh] Like, you know—
FK: Go do that!
ELM: Go do those things! Right? Because I think—
FK: Yeah. Totally.
ELM: You know, we spend—I think a lot of fans, not just people in those spaces, but in our own, spend a lot of time complaining. And it’s like, “Well, what exactly do you want? And is there a way you can make it?” I feel like I have exactly what I want in my fandom spaces right now.
FK: Mm-hmm.
ELM: You know, because I have a few people to talk to privately and in-depth about the things.
FK: Mm-hmm.
ELM: I have a platform to post.
FK: Yup.
ELM: And I have a platform to look at their faces when I want to. And that’s what I want.
FK: Delightful. All right—
ELM: Yeah.
FK: —thank you so much, Flash, this was a great message, and again we’re super stoked for your fannish wedding.
ELM: Yes, congratulations again.
FK: All right, the next letter is from Betts!
ELM: Betts! Betts, uh, as you may remember, was a repeat guest this year. She is one of the founding editors of OFIC Magazine, which is a literary magazine of original fiction, coming from the spirit or from fan writers and the spirit of fandom. Right? You think that’s a fair way to describe it?
FK: Yeah. I think so. I think that’s right.
ELM: And she came on initially a couple of years ago to talk about, like, the craft of writing fanfiction and how she approaches it from a perspective as a writing teacher. So I was delighted to have her back on, and I’m glad she was able to contribute here.
FK: All right, shall I read it?
ELM: Please do!
FK: “I’ve noticed fandom continues to move steadily onto Discord servers and I think we can start to see the results of that in this year's ship stats, where there's a smaller range in fic numbers than there used to be. In 2017’s stats, the #1 ship had nearly 14K new fics written that year, while #100 had a little over 1K. In this year’s stats, the #1 ship had 9.4K new fics while #100 had 1.7K. The range for 2017 was 12.8K. But the range for 2022 was only 7.6K. While it’s been a long time since I’ve done any proper statistical analysis, that seems like a pretty significant shift to me, although it’s difficult to make any firm assertions without going well past the top 100 ships.
“Just a few years ago we had what a lot of people called juggernaut ships and now it seems like the more people hunker down into their own servers with their friends, the more widespread fandom interests become. I’ve also noticed that most of my mutuals are multi-fandom now, and that the fan writers I follow tend to write for a handful of different ships in different fandoms at a time rather than dedicating their attention to one fan space. I certainly don’t think any of this is a bad thing. I for one appreciate that people seem to be following their vibes.
“As for my fandom interaction personally, not much has changed. For six months I had a terrible bout of writer's block that’s only recently abated, and I’m very grateful to be writing again. This year I’ve written mostly for small or nonexistent fandoms and rare pairs, plus Star Wars and Stranger Things. I’ve read all over the place. The biggest fandom thing I did this year was starting OFIC Mag, which continues to be more successful than I could have anticipated. I’m editing issue #3 right now and I can’t wait to release it in October. It’s such a fun issue. So even though I didn’t write much and I haven’t been very active in any specific fandom, I’m glad for all the great work I’ve read and edited this year.”
And that’s from Betts.
ELM: I was not anticipating Betts to bring the fandom stats, when Destination Toast—spoiler—is also a participant. But, [FK laughs] I love it. I love it.
FK: Yeah! You know, I mean, I think that this is a pretty good illustration of why range is a useful tool, right? Because if you were just like, “Oh, yeah, whatever, the #1 ship had this many, and then the #1 ship had less,” I don’t know what that means. Right? But this is interesting!
ELM: Yeah. It is interesting. It really—it’s actually—Destination Toast, you’re listening, I kind of would love to know past that top 100—
FK: Mmm.
ELM: I would love to know more of that spread.
FK: Mm-hmm.
ELM: Because I could absolutely see this being true, and, you know, there’s a number of things going on. I think that definitely in some of the surveys we’ve conducted, in some of the more qualitative or anecdotal things we’ve observed, you have a lot of people who, beyond being multi-fannish, are interested in fandom for the sake of it, you know? And are interested in it in the overall aesthetics of it, and the vibes of it. You know what I mean?
FK: Mm-hmm.
ELM: And so they’re like, yeah, you know, the people who are reading any coffee shop AU that’s good. You know what I mean?
FK: Oh, yeah. Yeah yeah yeah.
ELM: That kind of thing, right?
FK: Totally.
ELM: You know, or like, whatever. The people who are reading any hurt/comfort. I don’t know why I had to go right for the coffee shop AU, because it’s not as popular as people make it out to be. You know, like—
FK: Yeah, no, I get what you’re saying, though. Yeah.
ELM: Right? That kind of thing, or, you know, I think we also see this kind of…I don’t know. I think of, like, an avalanche collecting characters, you know?
FK: Mm-hmm.
ELM: Like a big snowball rolling down a mountain. Like, people, even if they are newer to fandom, are collecting more and more and more fandoms and characters. And one thing I think is interesting in my fandom, which is more than a decade old, is I saw a few people show up who hadn’t posted a fic since 2011. Right? You know, and whether they’re just feeling nostalgic, or they were like, “Oh, yeah, I just flit in and out, and now I’ve got all these past fandoms, and I’m feeling this one right now, and next week I might feel the one I was into in 2013 or whatever.”
FK: Yeah, yeah. Totally.
ELM: I don’t know what’s in their hearts. But it’s interesting to see people crop up—
FK: Mm-hmm.
ELM: —and kind of run counter to the, like, “Once you leave a fandom, it’s like, you’re never coming back.” You know? So…
FK: Yeah, yeah. I think that’s really true. And I think that—I don’t know whether I would pin that on Discord or not. But maybe! Maybe.
ELM: Yeah, I have no idea how much of a role Discord plays, because—
FK: I am interested—see, like, this is a great example of someone being like, “My perspective is, fandom’s all moving to Discord, and that’s the life that I’m experiencing.” And, like, I’m sure there would be other people who would be like, “I have no interaction with that at all, and have no awareness of it, and, like, that’s not my fandom experience.” Right? So, I think that’s really interesting.
ELM: Well, I mean, neither of us use Discord for fandom things, so these aren’t hypothetical people.
FK: I mean, I’ve studied fandoms within Discord. I don’t use it myself frequently for fannish things, but, like…
ELM: Sure, but you’re not moving your fandom activity there. I’m not saying we’re unfamiliar with what happens on Discord.
FK: Yeah yeah yeah. [laughs] Yeah yeah yeah. No, that’s true. Yeah. You’re right. That’s a [ELM laughs]—yeah.
ELM: Yeah, no, I think it’s very interesting. And it’s like, I would say as someone who doesn’t use Discord for fandom things, what Betts is describing is absolutely stuff I’ve observed.
FK: Mm-hmm.
ELM: So, I suspect it’s happening—I suspect all of these things are true at once, right? Like…
FK: Right. You can still be moving to a—yeah. A smaller group of people.
ELM: Some fans are moving to Discord, and that’s why they’re doing more of what Betts is describing, but I think some fans are not, and that’s—these are still trends that are happening. I think a lot of it is because, like, time marches on, and people become, I don’t know, fans with more—now I’m having all these visions in my head. Now I’m imagining just more and more things attaching to you, like you’re metallic or something, you know?
FK: I think that’s true though, because the other thing is it has to do with the size of fandom, because I definitely know, like, old fandom grandmas who have been around since, you know, the early ’80s or earlier, who have been in a lot of fandoms, and when I met them in, like, 2000, a lot of fandoms had attached themselves to them, you know what I mean?
ELM: Yeah. Right.
FK: Like, they had written for a lot of different things, but most of their writing had been on paper, and then, like, there wasn’t really an archive for that thing that they had written about in 1982, so they never put it online…and, like, also there weren’t as many of them, just numerically, which is something I think it’s easy to lose track of, is that there are exponentially more people involved in fandom now than there were in even 2000—in an organized way, I mean. Not to say that people didn’t love things. They obviously did.
ELM: Yeah.
FK: But, like, in a centralized way. And so, you know, now people have been online for a long time, and I can go back and be like, “Oh, yeah, here’s 20 years of your different fandoms, and you’re still popping into them” in an easy way.
ELM: Right, right. Yeah, whenever you see, like, a certain type of AO3 writer and you click and they’ve got, like, one to three works in, like, 200 fandoms or whatever, and you’re like, yeah. I get you.
FK: Yeah, I know what you—yup. Yeah. Yup.
ELM: I know who you are.
FK: Uh-huh. Exactly.
ELM: But it’s wild to see, like, I remember seeing those folks five years ago, and now it’s just like—I don’t know. It just keeps building and building, because time marches on and they keep writing fic, right?
FK: Time marches on.
ELM: Yup.
FK: All right, should we move on to the next letter?
ELM: Um, yes. Thank you very much, Betts, and congrats to you once again for OFIC.
FK: Oh, absolutely. All right, so this one is—you kind of spoiled it. This one’s from Destination Toast.
ELM: I didn’t spoil it! You don’t know what Toast is gonna talk about.
FK: Oh, all right. Fair.
ELM: All right, Destination Toast, longtime friend of the podcast, um, has been on many times. Came on this past year in that “Writing Trans Characters” episode to talk about some stats around certain tags to look at trends in that regard. Toast sent us an audio message. Shall we play it?
FK: Let’s do it!
Destination Toast: Hey, Fansplaining! This is Destination Toast. I’m calling to wish you a happy anniversary, and to talk about my past year in fandom. This year, I’ve gotten into a new fandom. That’s very unusual for me. I get obsessed with a lot of media, but I’ve only gotten deeply involved with a transformative fandom—which, for me, means reading and writing a lot of fic—twice over the past few decades. My new fandom, Ted Lasso, is quite different from my older one, Sherlock. And I’ve spent the past year thinking a lot about the differences in my fandom experiences. I’ve come up with some questions that I thought I’d share.
One thing I was wondering is whether most fanfic authors tend to be drawn to similar canons or to similar ship dynamics. The two shows I’ve been drawn to have been very different in terms of genre, subject matter, and…basically everything? And Johnlock was a very different ship from my Ted Lasso OT3. I was at first pretty surprised that I could be drawn to such different fandoms. But it’s got me wondering whether that’s actually all that atypical. Do most fic writers tend to be drawn to a narrower range of media or ships? Or is this kind of fandom and ship diversity actually pretty common for fic authors?
Most of my questions, though, are about differences between fandoms. One thing I was wondering is whether or not smaller fandoms tend to have more multishippers. Anecdotally, I think I’m seeing that difference, but maybe that’s mostly because Ted Lasso has a large ensemble cast. I don’t know. I’m also wondering whether or not smaller fandoms tend to more quickly foster a sense of community than giant fandoms, and relatedly, whether or not they have different commenting culture.
After being in an enormous fandom and an enormous ship, it’s pretty funny for me to now see the same few names commenting on almost every fic in my current ship tag, and I quickly made a couple of new fandom friends when readers left me long, thoughtful comments on my fic. I think I also feel more compelled than usual to comment on fic in this fandom when I like it, because the fandom feels relatively small to me, and I just feel like I want to be sure to give people attention. But I’m not sure whether or not that’s typical of smaller fandoms or just my experience here.
I also wonder whether or not fandoms that are based on light comedies inspire fluffier fic on average than those based on dramas, and whether or not they create different reader expectations. I’m absolutely not asking this one because I ran into unexpected fandom drama over not portraying some of my Blorbos sympathetically enough. Nope.
Anyway! All of this thinking is getting me interested in potentially doing more fandom stats about how fandoms differ, and how things like fandom size and canon genre might affect that. But I’d really love to hear any responses that you have to my questions, or any additional thoughts or hypotheses that they raise for you.
Anyway, thanks so much again for another great year of podcasting about fandom. I really love the work you do.
FK: All right, I am delighted to hear all this from Toast, because I’ve got no idea how they’re gonna be able to do stats about some of these questions, and I wanna find out how they innovate that.
ELM: Wow. I don’t know if all these can be statted.
FK: I don’t either! But I wanna see what they try.
ELM: You know, my first thought reading this was actually, “This sounds like a Fansplaining survey.”
FK: I’m not ready—I’m not sure if I’m psychologically and emotionally and also timewise ready to sign on for that yet, but you’re not wrong.
ELM: No, because a lot of these questions and—you know, I loved hearing this from Toast. You know, obviously we’re friends with Toast—obviously, I don’t know if people would know that. We’re friends with Toast, and [FK laughs] I think Toast and I talk a fair amount, and so I had heard a lot of this, and I was like, “Come on, [laughing] synthesize all these things that you’ve been working through for the past year.” Um, you know, the kind of questions that Toast has been asking, with a sample size of two, which I find, you know, kind of charming because it’s like, [FK laughs] “I’ve got an apple, and I’ve got an orange. Hmm.” You know? [both laugh] Like, “What are some fruit features?” Um…
FK: Uh-huh. Acidity? [both laugh]
ELM: It reminds me a lot of when we do surveys, we get a lot of responses from people who are like, “I literally had just never thought about this before, and now you’re making me think, like, why, how do I feel about these five ships I’ve had, [FK laughs] and do I have a pattern? Oh my God, I’m all over the place. Oh my God, I always do the same thing.” You know? That kind of thing, right?
FK: Yeah yeah, totally.
ELM: I feel like even when our surveys are more quan—you know, don’t even have a lot of free response or, you know, places to write prose, we still get that commentary of, like, “I really had to think about it.”
FK: Yeah.
ELM: And I think that, you know, I admire Toast for, like, prompting themself into these questions without needing a bunch of survey questions to kind of get at what the similarities and differences are.
FK: Yeah. All right, you know what, Toast, consider this an invitation to collab [ELM laughs] if these things interest you.
ELM: Wow, yeah, collab invite.
FK: Collab invite.
ELM: But, OK, there are some questions here. Do we have any answers? Like, I don’t know—it does make me think a little bit about our recent episode about “The Good, the Bad, and the Popular.”
FK: Mmm.
ELM: I feel like there’s some overlap in some of these questions and what we were talking about there. And I think a lot of our conclusions were kind of like, “It depends.” [laughs] You know?
FK: Yeah, I mean, I think it does depend. But on the other hand, like, I do see some of these things. Like, I think smaller fandoms tending to have more multishippers make sense, because if you have less of a total volume of fic, and you’re really into the thing totally, then maybe you’re more willing to sort of go outside your normal interest. But if you’ve got, like, every Captain America/Bucky fic in the world at your disposal, and you could just read those for the next million years until the sun dies, then do you ever really need to or want to, you know, spread out and read other fic and engage in other kinds of things? So there’s that.
ELM: That’s interesting. I don’t know if my personal observations have borne that out.
FK: Mmm.
ELM: You know, I don’t know how we’re defining small fandom. I was thinking about, when we were looking at comedy fic numbers, kind of lighter comedies, like the Mike Schur comedies, I was pulling out some numbers from the AO3 for our show notes—
FK: Mm-hmm.
ELM: —and, like, one of them I pulled out, not a Mike Schur show, but I think tonally similar to all these shows is Schitt’s Creek, and while I do think you find other ships in there, it’s overwhelmingly, like, the top ship, whether it’s the only ship in the story or not, is Patrick and David—
FK: Right.
ELM: —which is a canonical gay ship. Right? You know?
FK: Yeah yeah yeah. That’s true. And also, just reading across ships doesn’t mean that you’re a multishipper, right? So, I am, like—even if my idea was true, that doesn’t necessarily mean people are multishippers in the way that I think that Toast is talking about. Yeah.
ELM: Right. But I guess I’m also partly talking about source material.
FK: Mmm.
ELM: Like, I think that a person who doesn’t like David and—to me, that’s not even, like—is that shipping? That’s, like, you’re actually just writing about the text of the show.
FK: Right, right.
ELM: I don’t know if, like—where’s the line between describing what’s in there and shipping, right?
FK: Totally.
ELM: Whereas in Ted Lasso, you haven’t seen it, but there are some romances, but it is a little bit more wide open and a question mark. I think that probably will change in the third and final season. I think there’s gonna be some get-togethers, is my guess.
FK: Yeah, probably.
ELM: But I also find that I’m not sure I wholly agree, because I have seen in the giant fandoms that I’ve been in a lot more multishipping, and maybe that’s just because of a sheer number thing. But, you know, especially when I think back to Harry Potter, or when I look at this stuff from Marvel, you know—
FK: Mm-hmm.
ELM: —you can find every—somewhere, you can find every combination of everyone, right? And actually—
FK: You absolutely can!
ELM: —you know, you can find, like, a few of the most random people, right? You know? Or, like—
FK: Totally.
ELM: And so, yeah, it may feel like—if you’re looking at 100,000 Harry/Draco fics, it may feel like that’s the world. But if you really want, like…I don’t know. Draco/Millicent Bulstrode or whatever, like, I’m sure there’s at least a dozen of those out there.
FK: That one’s not even that random!
ELM: Yeah, they’re both Slytherins! Uh…
FK: Yeah. Yeah yeah yeah. Uh…Draco/Rita Skeeter.
ELM: Pansy…no…[laughs] Is that your ship?
FK: It’s my ship now. [ELM laughs] All right. Why are we using Harry Potter, The Thing That’s Dead to Us, as an example again?
ELM: No, no. Yeah I’m trying to think of what my ship name would be for that. Dreeter? [laughs]
FK: All right, you know what? I’m cutting us off now. I think—
ELM: [laughs] Drita?
FK: I think that we need to have a collab with Toast to answer these questions, and I think that we need to take a break so that I can rinse these ideas out of my head.
ELM: [laughing] You don’t like my Dreeter ideas?
FK: Toast, thank you so much for writing in to us. We’re looking forward to exploring these questions maybe with you in the future.
ELM: Get ready, we’re gonna do a survey together. All three of us.
FK: Oh my God.
ELM: I’m not gonna tell Toast about this. They’re gonna have to hear it on the episode.
FK: On the podcast? [laughs]
ELM: Mm-hmm.
FK: All right, let’s take a break.
ELM: OK, bye.
[Interstitial music]
FK: All right, we’re back, and as usual, it is time to talk about how we support this podcast.
ELM: OK, so you may have forgotten from the last episode, but Flourish, you were banned from giving our contact information. So you can start.
FK: Great. [ELM snorts] You can support this podcast by [both laugh] pledging to our Patreon. Patreon.com/Fansplaining. There are a lot of different levels that you can pledge at, from $1 a month to $10 bajillion a month if you are Jeff Bezos, who, as we know, is a fan of The Lord of the Rings, [ELM snorts] and he could spill some of that money over onto us if he so chose. Anyhow!
ELM: Yeah. [laughs]
FK: There’s lots of cool stuff. We’re doing a Tiny Zine right now. So, the $10 a month patrons will be getting that, you know, fairly soon. So that’s cool. We’ve also got little enamel pins. Lots of other things.
ELM: If you become a new patron at $10 a month, your first shipment from us will be a cute fan pin and a Tiny Zine.
FK: Yeah. And if you don’t have the money or don’t want to give us the money because you don’t like fun and Tiny Zines and enamel pins or whatever—you know, or some other good reason, you can also support us by spreading the word about the podcast. Tell your friends!
ELM: Wait!
FK: But also by—
ELM: This is the part you were banned from. Stop talking!
FK: Ah! [both laugh]
ELM: OK, so, the best way to support us non-monetarily is, as Flourish said [FK laughs] somewhat articulately, to share the podcast. Right? Subscribe, share our transcripts. On our website, fansplaining.com, we have transcripts of every single episode, alongside the audio and show notes. Just getting the word out there for different kinds of listeners and readers, not necessarily the people who are podcast listeners.
But! You could also become a participant in the show. You can send us your thoughts in a variety of places. The easiest is probably fansplaining@gmail.com, or leaving a voicemail so we can play your voice, just like Toast’s, and some of our upcoming people, at 1-401-526-F-A-N-S, FANS. And you can remain anonymous in all of this, or give a pseud, that’s totally fine.
We also have a form on our website, at fansplaining.com, that is similar to the ask box on Tumblr. If you’re a Tumblr user or not, you can be anonymous if you’d like to there. We ask that you be respectful. And you can also follow us on Twitter and Instagram, though those are just more for getting updates as opposed to communicating.
FK: OK! Shall we dive back into it?
ELM: Let’s do it.
FK: All right, this next one is from Gavin Daphne.
ELM: So, just as a refresher, Gavin Daphne was the person who sent in a voicemail. They’re a nonbinary transfem who identifies as a lesbian, and they were talking about, back when they thought that they were a straight guy, they were really into femslash, right? And they were like, I don’t know. “This is weird, right? Like, this doesn’t seem—” And then they were like, “Oh…” [both laugh]
And I noticed that we pulled a quote from Gavin Daphne’s voicemail from that episode, and I know that really resonated with a lot of people who had that experience. Also people who are transmasc having that experience of, like, unlocking why dude slash did it for them in a really specific way.
FK: Yeah.
ELM: And so I was really glad that Gavin Daphne articulated it so well, and so many people related to it.
FK: Absolutely. Let’s listen.
Gavin Daphne: Hi, Flourish! Hi, Elizabeth! Gavin Daphne here, from the “Writing Trans Characters” episode. I’m not sure what the general trends in fandom are right now, because my personal involvement in fandom has evolved a lot recently. Everything has been so different for me that it’s hard to separate the signal from the noise. There’s a few things I’ve noticed in my spheres, though.
First off, there’s been a lot of diversity in what people will engage in transformative fandom for. Part of this is embracing of older fandoms, finding new lenses to examine properties from 10 or 15 years ago. On the flip side, there’s also been a lot of activity creating fan content for really niche, small, online fandoms. I feel like both of these are, to some extent, a rejection of the cultural monolith that mass media has become recently, the MCU being a big part of it.
I’ve also noticed an uptick in fics that try to explore things from new social perspectives. I talked previously about trans fanfics of course, and I’ve definitely noticed more of those. But there are also a lot of conscious explorations of other social dynamics. Just in the past few days, I’ve seen fics cross my dash that dealt with fatphobia, academic discrimination, criminal rights, and that’s all from the same fandom. This includes a fun little side current of explicitly pro-union fanfic, I’ve noticed. More of that, please.
Personally, I’ve gotten a lot more involved in fandom in the last nine months or so. I’ve joined a couple of fanfic writing spaces, including participating in my first ever Big Bang, which is lovely, and I finally started posting a longfic that I was too hesitant to put to paper before this year. I also rejoined Tumblr after a six-year hiatus. A lot of the fan spaces I’m involved in skew towards the mid-30s, where I am, and the discourse from demographically younger fandoms that I see is nigh incomprehensible at times.
I’ve also taken a more active interest in fandom anthropology, though. So, when I see something I don’t understand, I try to take the time to research what’s going on and where it fits into the greater fan sphere. For that reason, I’m really looking forward to this episode and what everyone has to say about this strange moment of fandom we’re living in.
FK: All right, so, I think this is really, really interesting, and I mean, it kind of relates to some—maybe to some of what we were talking about, about people becoming interested in both older fandoms, but also, like, different lenses. I guess, it just seems like there’s a thread running through several of these about, I guess, the diversity of different fandoms people are engaging with, as well as what they’re talking about…I don’t know. I’m not being very articulate about this. It seems like there have been several people who are sort of pointing to, “There’s more kinds of fic.”
ELM: Yeah. No, it actually makes me interested to go back to Betts’ quick-and-dirty stats pulling. She didn’t articulate it that way. [laughs] I shouldn’t have called it quick-and-dirty, but you know what I mean.
FK: Yeah.
ELM: I’m curious how much of that is new stuff.
FK: Mm-hmm.
ELM: Right? Because, you know, I have been in an older fandom for years now. You have just returned to your first fandom—
FK: Oh yeah.
ELM: —within this last year and, spoiler alert, we’ll talk about that in a little bit. And it’s interesting, because I wonder too, you know…I’m sure I’ve talked plenty about this, in the last, like, five years of being in a somewhat—you know, a little bit older fandom. But, like, it’s not necessarily—all right, you know, yeah, there’s like—it feels less heightened, right? There’s less, like, “Oh my God, oh my God, is that ship gonna be canon? What’s the creator gonna say? Are they gonna do something offensive in the next season?” Or whatever. Or just write a bad season in the next season? Right?
FK: Yeah.
ELM: You know, like, all of that stuff kind of, you know, feels a lot less heightened because a lot of it is fairly settled. Which is definitely something we’ve talked about before, and it’s, I think—you never feel like you’re in the white-hot center of the discourse—
FK: Yeah.
ELM: —in a fandom that’s been around for a decade or two decades, right? Even though people still argue about stuff. But I also sort of feel like, for me, part of it is, like, there’s such a deep base of—I don’t want to say canon within the fandom—
FK: Mm-hmm.
ELM: But there is a huge base that you're working with, right? You know?
FK: Mm-hmm.
ELM: And that can get a little frustrating, because you can see the kind of fanon decisions that kind of got crystalized 10 years ago, and you feel like you’re like, “...OK, I guess I’m responding to that, too.” But in a way, it feels like another part of the source material that you’re responding to a little bit, right? You know, like, you’re taking all of those kind of responses together, and that’s sort of forming your own, whereas when you’re in a fandom for something that is ongoing and new stuff is coming out, I feel like—I don’t know, it feels a little bit more reactive to me?
FK: Mmm. Mm-hmm.
ELM: And like there’s less time to really synthesize and let all these different ideas and all these different interpretations kind of sit and then see how you want to engage with or respond to them.
FK: Yeah, you know, [laughs] I hesitate to say this. There’s something there, but I really wanna think about it more.
ELM: OK.
FK: Because this is a really interesting—like, it’s an interesting idea. It’s an interesting question, and I don’t want to just spew something half-baked out. [laughs]
ELM: Yeah.
FK: But I’m interested in thinking about it.
ELM: Well, you know, I’m curious—you know, we have both our personal experience with this—you know, maybe it’s worth doing a whole episode about, and getting other people’s perspectives on this, because…I don’t know. I’d be curious to know why other people—because it does seem like there’s a lot of embracing older fandoms, you know?
FK: Yeah.
ELM: And I think we’re seeing this even amongst our letter writers, you know?
FK: Definitely.
ELM: Like here, not just Gavin Daphne, right?
FK: Yeah.
ELM: So…
FK: Well, let’s put that in the hopper, then, for potential future episodes.
ELM: Oh, the hopper?
FK: In the hopper. [laughs] And, I mean, that’s the mark of a great letter. Thank you, Gavin Daphne, that was wonderful. Very thoughtful. All right, should we hear from our next person, Brent Lambert?
ELM: Yeah, so, Brent came on last fall, I believe, and he’s an editor at FIYAH, which is a Black speculative fiction magazine that has been a Hugo Award winner, I believe. And he is heavily involved in queer SFF spaces. So, we kind of talked to him a bit about his fan-to-pro journey when he came on. He was a great guest.
FK: All right, let’s listen.
Brent Lambert: Hi, uh, this recording is for Brent Lambert, and I will be answering the two anniversary episode questions.
So, what changes have I observed in fandom this year? I think the biggest change that I’ve observed is, I see a lot more hard conversations happening, in terms of, like, who’s included, who isn’t included, especially in things like, you know, how characters of color get depicted in fan art. I think that’s a big one I’ve noticed. Just talking about skin tones, why is it always acceptable to have Black characters be of lighter skin tones? Or, you know, why that shouldn’t be happening. So, I’ve just noticed a lot more difficult conversations. That’s just one of them. But that’s the main one that sticks out in my head.
What’s changed for me personally regarding fandom, um, in general—well, I guess my fandom, my biggest one, is X-Men. And in the comics recently, with the new direction with Krakoa and, you know, mutants kind of forming their own nation, I’ve seen the full-on embrace of the X-Men as a queer metaphor in a way that I never really saw maybe, like, a decade ago. And it’s just been really, really fun to see that. Really, really fun to see people lean into the X-Men as a queer metaphor, and also seeing more just explicit queer representation in the X-Men. So, that’s been really fun for me.
So, yes, I think that’s what changed in what I’ve observed in the past year in fandom.
FK: So, I really love this for a variety of reasons. One of them being that it illustrates how big the fandom experience is, because I feel like I would have said this about some previous years, but not this year in fandom.
ELM: Interesting.
FK: Like, I mean, not to say that there haven’t been difficult conversations. But, like, the idea of how characters of color get depicted in fanart? I feel like I heard that, but in past times. But Brent’s in a different chunk of fandom than we’re in, and that’s what the current thing is there, and I think that’s really interesting. I really like being reminded that, like, actually my experience of what the current discourse [laughs] is is not necessarily the end-all and be-all for all human beings at all times.
ELM: Well, that’s funny, because I think you and I are in more similar spaces, and I definitely have seen a lot of conversations about colorism in fanart. [both laugh]
FK: I mean, I’m not saying it doesn’t exist! I’m just saying, you know.
ELM: No, I’ve seen a lot of it this year, so…
FK: Wow.
ELM: Yeah.
FK: OK, well maybe I’m out of touch. [laughs]
ELM: Yeah, I mean, or it could just be the fandoms that you’re in currently.
FK: There are not characters of color, particularly, in The X-Files. Um, pour one out for Mr. X.
ELM: Are you seeing a lot of, like, discourse about The X-Files?
FK: No! [laughs] That’s part of the joke! Actually, there should be more discourse about The X-Files because Monica Reyes, who is—the character is a Latina woman from Mexico City, and she is played by a very white actress.
ELM: You’re saying there should be more discourse now for a show that was around—
FK: Shh!
ELM: Twenty-five—I mean, whatever. Whatever.
FK: Anyway, anyway. Tell me about this discourse, because I obviously missed some. [laughs]
ELM: No, no, no. I’ve seen a lot of colorism discourse this year.
FK: Mm-hmm.
ELM: But I do think that—it’s interesting, because I agree that we all have different perspectives here. I agree that it’s also something I’ve seen a lot of. So, what I’ve seen a lot of is, like, a weariness of like, [sighs] “Again?” You know? [FK laughs] Like, “How many times do we have to say stop doing this?” Right?
FK: Right.
ELM: And so, like, I definitely think there’s different fandom spheres. But I’m glad to hear that in Brent’s spaces, people are having hard conversations, because I think that isn’t universal across fandom, right?
FK: Yeah.
ELM: You know, something that we talk about with Comic-Con, right?
FK: Agreed.
ELM: Where we go, and, uh, just trying to drag any scrap of any controversy out of anyone is like, you know, not gonna happen, so…
FK: Yeah. Ain’t that the truth.
ELM: [laughs] You’re very folksy today.
FK: It’s just my nature.
ELM: But yeah, I also—I would say, it’s really nice to hear Brent’s personal reflections, too, because I feel like…you know, it makes me think back when we had Stephanie Burt on, talking about X-Men comics fandom, it must have been five years ago, now, you know?
FK: Mm-hmm.
ELM: And talking about, like, I remember I was saying, you know, “Yeah, it’s great that there’s queer metaphors, or whatever. Trans metaphors. But, like, are there any actual queer X-Men or whatever?” And from what I get from osmosis from the comics fandom, it’s now much more both/and than it was even a few years ago, right?
FK: Yeah. It definitely is.
ELM: And I would love to see that trend continue across big franchise media. I’m feeling very cynical that it will for, like, the big blockbusters. I know that lesbian kiss in Star Wars really was groundbreaking. Live slug reaction.
FK: No one can see the face I’m making right now, but [ELM laughs] yeah, yeah. No, I agree with all of that. And I also think, you know, it’s just refreshing to hear about somebody who, it sounds like, is having a good fandom year and is feeling like things are moving in a positive direction, which has not always been a trend among people who have written in, so it’s really—
ELM: It’s true.
FK: —it’s refreshing to be reminded that, like, again, not everyone’s experiences are my experiences, or yours, and that there are people out there having good times, [laughs] and seeing things moving in, you know, positive ways.
ELM: Not 15 minutes ago, I said I was having a good time!
FK: I’ve erased it from my memory already, just like I do most things that you say.
ELM: Incredible.
FK: [laughs] All right, should we listen to the next person’s? Because I actually think that this also sort of relates.
ELM: Yes. This is the other Elizabeth, who I love—when she sent in her thing, she [laughs] labeled it “the Other Elizabeth.” This is another person named Elizabeth, and I’m delighted that she has embraced—I’m sorry to make her the “other,” but I am the Elizabeth here. If you recall, Other Elizabeth is an agender former kindergarten teacher. Do you remember the former kindergarten teacher?
FK: Oh yeah! I do. I do.
ELM: Her initial submission for the “Writing Trans Characters” episode was talking about a big variety of things, some of it positive and about inclusivity and about feeling more comfortable in stories when they—when she knew there were going to be trans or nonbinary representation, but also feeling like sometimes—you know, I don’t know if you remember this particular detail talking about, like, a “gender-neutral reader”—
FK: Right.
ELM: But then it was, like, it felt like a cis female reader. You know that kind of thing. Right?
FK: Totally.
ELM: You know, so, that was some of the critique. It was a really good, thoughtful letter. Um, and like all of our “Writing Trans Characters” episode participants, I’m so delighted to hear from them again.
FK: All right, well, let’s listen.
Other Elizabeth: Hello, Elizabeth, Flourish, and Fansplaining fans. Other Elizabeth here, the agender one from your trans episode, with a few thoughts on the year from my view of K-pop real-person fanfic.
Well, despite being middle-aged, I’m still pretty new to fandom. Not even two years yet. So, without much to compare it to, I can say I see an increased deletion rate or dormancy of fanfic accounts on Tumblr over the previous year, and many others wondering if they want to continue. Writers are citing a lack of feedback or any interaction at all from algorithm-valuable reblogs to like hearts. Even AO3 surprised me too, that the amount of fics in my area of interest did not change much when comparing the volume of each pairing a month apart. Some even had fewer fics, making me think deletions are a common thing everywhere.
As for what changed for me personally regarding my fandom this year, I would say I soured on some aspects of K-pop watching after yet another young idol put his foot in his mouth, offending a vulnerable racial group, and yet seeing a segment of the Twitter fandom pounce on the justifiably offended fans speaking up in even the most gentle ways. As much as it should not, that happens everywhere, of course. But it was a surprise when the idol group themselves are open to learning and has asked to be held accountable because they want to do right by all their fans. They did not want to be defended in this sort of situation. You never know how young someone is, so it may have been a child, but one of the YouTube comments sticks in my mind that claimed the idol was not even capable of hurting anybody, when that is clearly not the case. To recognize the toxic ways people can behave, because some are using their fandom as escapism from their own issues so can take no critique, was a real eye-opener into human behavior. I sense this is probably common across fandoms, but this was my first exposure.
There was so much good in the year too, though. I have been discovering the pleasure of watching my K-pop fandom await, then react to new content, and their excitement is contagious. For me, the best of fandom has been making friends discovered through writing or gifsets. Moreso in the last year, I have also found my people, the ones telling stories from the queer and disabled margins. The recognition that I am here for the personalities more than their work has been a good thing to realize, too. If my special interest level of consuming fan content moves on, I know I will still have friendships that outlast my participation as a fan.
I appreciate being asked for my thoughts, and I look forward to more episodes of Fansplaining. Thank you for the analysis and entertainment you both provide. Happy anniversary to such an informative show.
ELM: So, there’s so much in this message that is interesting to me. The thing that immediately strikes me is, from the very beginning, talking about seeing an increase of writers very quickly posting and deleting fics or orphaning fics, um, or deleting their accounts, and it being chalked up to a lack of feedback. You know, it makes me think of, I don’t know if you’ve seen over the last week, there’s been a lot of talk about “the AO3 algorithm.”
FK: I have seen it, like, very tangentially. In fact, I’m excited to hear you talk about all this, because mostly this has missed me. I’ve just seen that people discussed, like, the existence of an AO3 algorithm. [both laugh] But even, like, the deleting the fic stuff, I’m just sort of out of it, so…I don’t know.
ELM: [laughs] I think you spend less time on, like, Tumblr of people who look at overall fandom trends than I do.
FK: I definitely do.
ELM: OK. So, the—but I have seen the algorithm thing on Twitter as well. So, there were a few posts, one in particular, that were highlighting people’s comments about the quote-unquote “AO3 algorithm” in the tags of their fics, being like, “You know the algorithm doesn’t wanna reward hard work. I wrote so much, and it only got this many hits. [FK laughs] It’s not gonna see me, it’s not gonna…whatever.”
FK: [laughing] What algorithm?
ELM: Um…yes. So, Point one, I think that most users of the internet, if they know the word “algorithm,” don’t know what an algorithm is, and they think it’s like a spell done by a wizard. Point two, the AO3 does not have an algorithm. Point three, what I’ve seen, like, somewhat lacking from this discussion is, it’s also just not, like, a raw—it’s not like looking at the card catalog in the library, right? Where you’re just literally, or—[laughs] they don’t call it that anymore. But it’s not like looking up books, um, in the system at the library, where it’s just giving you raw results. There are kudos, there are bookmarks, there are ways to sort, and there are ways that something that already has a lot of kudos is only going to get more, because it’s self-perpetuating. That’s not an algorithm. It’s also not this kind of raw, pure—
FK: Right, right.
ELM: —democratic search, right?
FK: Totally. Yeah, I find that really interesting. And it’s interesting to me that then people are then deleting, I guess, in response to this.
ELM: Well, so, there’s a variety of things going on. There’s been a lot of commentary for years talking about how, like, people don’t comment anymore—
FK: Oh definitely, sure.
ELM: —people don’t even kudos—
FK: Of course.
ELM: And then you get the, like, “Oh, I can’t comment on a fic if it’s more than a few weeks old, because that’d be like stalking.” And you see these norms coming in from other platforms, like that one coming in from probably Instagram, right? Or SnapChat or something, right?
FK: Oh, totally. Yeah yeah.
ELM: Where it is creepy, right? If you’re, like—you know?
FK: That’s weird. It is creepy. But not for a fic! But yeah, for Instagram it’s true. If I get a comment on, like, something from years ago, I’m like, “Really?”
ELM: Right, but I’m sure you’ve gotten apology comments from things you’ve written more than four weeks ago being like, “Sorry, I know this is old, but…”
FK: Oh, and it delights me every time! Yeah, but it delights me every time. [ELM laughs] I’m like, “Yeah! Kudos that, comment it. I don’t care.”
ELM: Yeah, but it’s like, this is for things that are, like, a year old, and it’s like—I always find it so funny, too—I feel like I’ve said this on the podcast, but it’s like, the fandom I’m still in and have actively posted in within [FK laughs] the last few weeks, and they’re like—
FK: Yeah.
ELM: “I don’t know if this is OK.” And it’s like, clearly I’m still here. Like, it’s—[laughs] You know?
FK: I do think it’s funny that I wrote, like, one Pirates of the Caribbean fic, like, I mean at least 15 years ago now, and it still gets kudos on a regular basis and, like, no one comments. And I think that it’s like—I’m like, “Good. Don’t. Don’t comment. I never wrote another one.”
ELM: No, no one will comment. That’s probably for the best, Flourish.
FK: And, like, I haven’t taken it down. It wasn’t about Johnny Depp. Uh, you know. [laughs]
ELM: I didn’t think it would be.
FK: [laughs] Good. I’m glad you know me well enough to know that. But, like—but, no, yeah, I am—I admit, that one—in that one instance, I’m glad that people aren’t commenting. [laughs] But mostly—
ELM: Real talk. Fifteen years ago? 2007?
FK: Yeah, I think that’s—
ELM: Or more like 20—closer to when that movie came out, which I remember I saw in theaters in 2003.
FK: I don’t know when I actually wrote it. It might have been 2003. [laughing] It probably was 2003. Time marches on.
ELM: Let’s put that in the show notes so everyone can continue to kudos it.
FK: [laughs] It’s not good! [ELM laughs] I wrote it when I was a youth.
ELM: Anyway, anyway. So, I think that what we’re seeing with this—you know, what Other Elizabeth is describing, some of the algorithmic commentary…I’ve seen defenses of algorithms, and how it would be better if AO3 had it, from younger people, you know?
FK: Yeah.
ELM: Like, I literally just read one this morning. You know, saying, like, “What? This is how it works. I get served the content I wanna see.” And obviously you get served the content that the corporation that makes the social media platform wants you to see. Like, this is not—
FK: Yeah.
ELM: You know, like, it’s not some form of altruism on their part, that they’re [FK laughs] trying to give you custom-tailored recommendations because they love you, you know? And so, I think that we’re seeing different expectations from different social media platforms coming into fic spaces. And that’s not to say that, like, the norms that already exist in these spaces are the correct ones, right?
FK: Yeah.
ELM: You know, obviously suggesting that there’s an algorithm is incorrect, right?
FK: Right.
ELM: But what people want and their desires, I think that perhaps the people, you know, quickly posting and deleting when it flops, or whatever, in their definition—
FK: Right.
ELM: —is people coming in with an expectation about what a post is supposed to do on a site, right?
FK: Yeah yeah yeah. Yeah.
ELM: It’s supposed to do the numbers, and if it doesn’t, you delete it, right? You know? Like, which is absolutely something people do on other platforms, right? When a post quote-unquote “fails,” right?
FK: Yeah.
ELM: And so, I don’t know if people can change their expectations, or if that’s just how some fans—perhaps newer fans, perhaps younger fans, I don’t know—are going to continue to engage. But that sucks for other people, if your favorite stuff is getting yanked out from under you, like, two months after you saw it, you know? Maybe you even commented and said you loved it, but if it didn’t do the numbers then it’s gone, right? And that’s really unfortunate.
FK: It is. Aw, OK, well now I’m a little bit depressed about that.
ELM: [laughs] I think it’s an interesting topic and one we should keep an eye on. But, you know, as far as the rest of this message goes, also some really interesting stuff. And definitely stuff that I feel like we’ve seen a lot of echoes of. I remember last year’s episode, there was a lot of commentary about people kind of finding their group, their subgroup, because the big wide world—especially, I think, we had K-pop folks talking about this—they’re such large fandoms that if you kind of open your heart to all of it, it’s like opening your heart to all of humanity. Which, like, you don’t do in your daily life.
FK: Yeah.
ELM: You’re not just like, “Come at me! Say whatever you want to me, literally anyone in the world!”
FK: Right.
ELM: I guess we do do that walking through the streets of New York City, but, like, you know, you have to—
FK: Yeah, but everybody has boundaries. Like, even the people who are the most, like, trying to crack their heart open to everybody, still ultimately have to have boundaries in order to stay sane.
ELM: Absolutely, right? And so I feel like this is some of it, and I think that, uh, Other Elizabeth is describing some of the dynamics that we’ve seen, too, around when other fans are the ones defending the idol or the celebrity, or whatever, you know, and being—
FK: [laughing] Like, I don’t want it!
ELM: Yeah, even the celebrity’s like, “No, no.” You know, like, the kind of—the biggest defender of a celebrity is their fans, not themselves, that kind of dynamic that can really fracture within—different kinds of fans within a broader fandom space.
FK: Definitely. All right, well, I think that was a wonderful letter, and I learned many things from this. [both laugh] Uh, so, thank you to Other Elizabeth. And, uh, shall I read the—
ELM: You don’t want to thank this Elizabeth for teaching you that there’s no algorithm on the AO3? [laughs]
FK: Thank you both—[laughs] Oh yeah, thank you for informing me about that, This Elizabeth. Shall I read our last and final letter?
ELM: OK, so this was our one anonymous participant from the “Writing Trans Characters” episode. And so, you know, they wrote a lot about how validating they found seeing fanon, you know, trans headcanons, or characters written as trans, you know, even if there’s no trans representation in the canon, and then they gave a lot of examples. It was our first letter in the episode.
FK: All right, shall I read what they sent in?
ELM: Yes please.
FK: OK.
“Hello, Fansplaining!
“I was a guest contributor to the trans fic episode and have also written in about femslash. About a year ago, I left most of my long-running fandoms due to the canons ending or my interest waning, and since then I’ve been hopping around, trying to find something that sticks. This makes me feel listless at times and also prevents me from digging as deep with my fic writing as I prefer. However, it’s been nice to avoid spending as long wallowing in grief over a given canon not going in the direction I’d like, or sitting in my anxiety about a fandom’s cyclical toxicity.
“In the past, I had a hard time accepting that I had no true control over these things. A lack of control has been a major theme these past few years, and I’ve been thinking about how this plays out in fandom. A lot of people seem to want to exert control over online spaces and media as a way of coping with how out of control everything else feels. While I can try to empathize with this, it worries me and is one of the reasons I tend to remain on the outskirts of fandom these days.
“In some ways, I get it. When I am in a long-term fandom, I can feel like it’s possible to be the change I want to see. If I get involved in more conversations, or I archive and contribute the kind of works I value, then it may draw in others who feel the same way or help someone appreciate something they didn’t before. However, at some point I have to acknowledge that I can’t make people care. If my only goal in writing a fic is to have fun, I can better control that outcome than how others react.
“For me, a hard but important lesson has been that it’s okay to move on. Rather than stay in fandoms where focusing on female/female relationships can feel like squeezing blood out of a stone, or where every trans and nonbinary interpretation must be inherently fanon, I’ve felt freer to try to find media and fandoms that suit my needs. It’s easier said than done, but it helps that I have noticed an uptick in sapphic and trans representation this year, even if there’s a long way to go for true and intersectional equity.
“All in all, while I’m still hoping for another long-term love, I’m currently embracing temporary joy where I can get it. I hope you guys and all the listeners have fulfilling times in fandom this year. Happy anniversary and thanks for another year of great podcasting!”
And that’s from Anon.
ELM: Well, this is a very interesting letter to end on. Thank you, Anon. It calls back to Flash’s message talking about modding the Dreamwidth—right, that was, you know?
FK: Yeah, yeah.
ELM: Like, the being the change you wanna see.
FK: Yeah. I really appreciate this, because I feel like this is something that we have talked a lot about on the podcast. Maybe it isn’t just this year, but it feels like it’s been a theme to some extent this year, and also before that, of, like, not being able to control fandom any more than you can control the rest of the world, and only being able to control your own reactions to it.
ELM: Right, right. Yeah, and I think also, like, knowing when to let go—we were even talking about that in the last episode, saying, you know, a lot of fans saying, “This show doesn’t love me back, or whatever. I feel like—"
FK: Yeah.
ELM: “—it’s like an uphill battle.” You know, I don’t know if Anon is explicitly saying this, but one of the things the end of this letter made me think of is, like… [sighs] You know, it can feel like squeezing blood from a stone. You know, saying, “Why doesn’t fandom—why aren’t people writing fics about these kind of relationships? Why isn’t fandom doing this?” And, like, yeah, you want fandom to be more inclusive. You want fandom to write about a wider range of bodies, or perspectives, or whatever.
FK: Mm-hmm.
ELM: You want those shows that you love to do that. But at a certain point, if it’s not doing that, it might be necessary—you know, like, I’ve watched so much good queer media this year, and almost none of it has any real quote-unquote “fandom” to speak of, right?
FK: Yeah.
ELM: You know? Like, it’s rare that I see a show now that doesn’t have at least one queer main character. It makes me think back to, like, the kinds of—our conversation about the kinds of things that people are fans of, and what prompts a fandom. And it’s like, well, there’s a lot of media that’s wonderful and that you can love and is gonna give you all those things, but maybe is not gonna give you all of the, like, fandomy things. And maybe you don’t need that, because you’re gonna love those stories and you’re gonna love those characters—
FK: Mm-hmm.
ELM: But maybe you don’t need to have them, I don’t know, be in a—I don’t know. Maybe you don’t want to read fic about them, or whatever, you know?
FK: Yeah, totally. I mean, I think conversely, also, like, I think it’s totally fine to decide, “I want to change this space,” or “I want to try to be part of the change I want to see,” or whatever. Um, but, not everything in your life can be that way, right?
ELM: Sure.
FK: And so, if you decide, like, “Yeah, this fandom is the space in which I’m going to fight for this kind of representation,” and so forth, then I think that’s a fine choice. But it is, you know—it is a choice that you’re making, and even though it may be hard to give that up—just like it would be hard in other areas of life, right? I mean, like, I don’t know. I think about, like, [laughs] all of the various problems that, I don’t know, a church, any church, can have. Just thinking about my own life in other areas where sometimes I feel like I’m fighting, it would be hard to decide to give a community up of any kind, whether it was fandom or something else, because you felt like you were being pushed out. I’m totally aware of that. But then, you’re also making a conscious choice to stay in. Do you see what I’m saying?
ELM: Yeah, yeah.
FK: And there have to be other areas in your life where you’re like, “Nope. This is in fact going to be a space I retreat to.” And if there’s no space for you to retreat to, that’s awful. I’m not saying that everybody necessarily has that. But I feel like a lot of times, there are. If nothing—I do think that there is someplace for everybody to sort of veg out in, somewhere. It may be harder to find for some people than others, but I do think that it’s possible. I don’t know.
ELM: Well, yeah, but, like, I kind of feel like this isn’t exactly—like, this isn’t about, like, retreating from spaces that are negative.
FK: Mmm.
ELM: Which is obviously a huge theme that we’ve seen in people’s responses. This, I think, is a little bit more—calling back to Flash’s, too—about, like—I mean, calling back to a lot of these letters about, like, wanting to create—like, “Oh, I want—you guys aren’t making enough of this thing?”
FK: “I’m gonna find that thing elsewhere!” Yeah.
ELM: Yeah. “Let’s make more of this thing.” Right?
FK: Right.
ELM: Or, “Let’s make more of it.” But I think that, like, you know, if you take the femslash example, right? If you’re sitting there in a fandom and you’re like, “Please, can we—can you—there are women in the show, like, come on!” And you write a bunch of femslash, and then no one engages with it, right?
FK: Yeah, totally.
ELM: And so you’re just sitting there, being like, “Well, you know, I’m a one-person show, just churning out the femslash.”
FK: Yeah yeah yeah.
ELM: You know, like, at a certain point, if you’re not, like, just jazzed to write that, which obviously some folks are. Look at every rarepair writer, you know?
FK: Yeah.
ELM: Maybe they’re the only one, and they just wanted to write it.
FK: Totally.
ELM: But I can definitely see…I think there’s an absolute limit to—you know, people always say, like, “Instead of just being negative about what you’re not seeing, why don’t you create more of that?”
FK: Totally.
ELM: And it’s like, “OK, sure.” But if it starts to feel like you’re just one lone voice crying in the wilderness, you know?
FK: Totally.
ELM: Is that biblical reference that I accidentally…said…?
FK: [laughs] I think you might have walked into one! Yeah. [laughs]
ELM: No, I was thinking more about, like, you know, nature shows.
FK: Well, it was a biblical—
ELM: Like, a single person, in nature—
FK: Yeah. I do know.
ELM: —in the wilderness, just crying, shouting. You know, in nature? Yup.
FK: Yeah. I get that.
ELM: Secularly. Secular shouting.
FK: [laughing] Secular shouting. Well, I’m really glad that Anon wrote in, and I feel like it’s a really—I mean, I think it’s a good note to end on. That makes me feel…I guess positive about where they’re at. And, like, I wanna channel that, too.
ELM: Well, we’re not ending, because we have to do our own personal answers.
FK: Yeah! What’s your answers?
ELM: I have to go first?
FK: Well, yeah. I mean, I have—yeah, you have to go first.
ELM: [laughs] OK. All right, well, so, my answer to, uh, what I’ve observed, on a broader level, is I feel like—I feel like we’ve talked about this in the past few years, but I feel like now it feels truly—with the shake-ups with the streamers right now, it feels like it’s truly coming to a head. You know, for quick reference, Netflix seems to be, like, kind of imploding a little bit. [FK laughs] They’ve done a ton of layoffs in the last few months—
FK: Yeah.
ELM: Like, huge—canceling projects, pulling back. It seems like the ceiling is…falling? The floor is being pulled out? What’s the—some part of the building is being moved.
FK: The sky is actually falling on, like, Kitchen Little. [laughs] Kitchen little! Chicken Little.
ELM: [laughing] Kitchen Little! Yes, that’s right. No, I think it’s more about something being pulled out from under, right?
FK: The rug being pulled out from under.
ELM: I don’t know, whatever. No more metaphors. Um, and then, there was a big brouhaha last week with the merger with HBO and Warner Bros. and Discovery—
FK: Yeah.
ELM: —where they were talking about HBO Max just, like, being deleted completely, or all the shows being canceled. I don’t know where we stand with that. It seemed like there may have been some kind of scaremongering rumors—
FK: Yeah.
ELM: —that were turned into facts, um, and we all know the state of the entertainment press. Um, it’s full of garbage, [FK laughs] and so there was a lot of garbage being repeated as fact. I don’t know where we are right now, but I don’t feel super confident about the fate of shows on HBO Max, including my fave, currently, The Other Two. Everyone should watch it. Very gay show. But I just feel like, you know, we’ve talked a lot about how fractured the viewing landscape and thus the fandom—
FK: Mm-hmm.
ELM: —how everyone’s all over the place, and it’s hard for things to get a foothold, because people haven’t even seen the same things.
FK: Right.
ELM: And I feel like—it feels so much like just sand slipping through your fingers right now, to talk about the media, and obviously, it does make me wonder a little bit, if that’s partly one of the reasons why, um, I’ve seen so many—what I would have thought of historically as media fans, turning to music and, in particular, K-pop.
FK: Mmm.
ELM: Right? Because that feels like it has some of the kind of entertainment industry stability, you know, that—
FK: Yeah.
ELM: And also, looking at the kind of—the fracturing, while it feels more franchise-y than ever, it feels less like a buildup and release, the way the MCU did for a decade.
FK: Right.
ELM: That sort of feels like—now it’s just, like, content everywhere, and “Have you seen this one? Oh, I haven’t seen that one. Oh my God, there’s another one?” Like, you know?
FK: Yeah yeah yeah.
ELM: Star Wars and Star Trek just constantly—
FK: Mm-hmm.
ELM: —churning out stuff, and so, there’s no big tentpole to look forward to and to get excited about together. And I do feel like some of these massive music artists, because they’re coming from such a regimented industry, it does feel more—I mean, obviously they, like, drop surprise tracks or whatever. But it feels a bit more like something solid that people can gather around. And I mean, you’re in Harry Styles fandom. I don’t know if you feel that way about his career.
FK: Yeah, and also, like, if it’s about a person or a group of people, until those people die, they still exist, you know what I mean?
ELM: [laughs] That’s true.
FK: Genuinely! But that’s it, right?
ELM: [affecting ominous voice] What if they get canceled, Flourish?
FK: Yeah, they still exist. [ELM laughs] So, yeah, no, I agree with that. It’s interesting hearing you talk about this because…I don’t know. I felt so separated from fandom this year, that while when you say those things, I’m like, “Yeah! That is a thing that’s been happening!”
ELM: Oh, you mean broader fandom. Because I was like, “You have been deep smooth-brain fannish personally.”
FK: Oh no, I have been smooth-brained personally, but I’ve been so separated from, like, observing things like—I mean, every once in a while on this podcast, I’ve felt like, at any moment we’re gonna cross that Rubicon, and it’s gonna turn into the thing where Elizabeth explains something to me, and I’m like—and she’s like, “All right! [ELM laughs] What’s the reacts, Flourish?” And genuinely, that may be where things are heading, you know?
ELM: I don’t think that’s a bad thing, though. Like, I know that—well, not to psychoanalyze you while we’re recording, but, like, I know you had anxiety about that, leaving the entertainment industry.
FK: Yeah.
ELM: Yeah, now we’re coming back at it, looking at this year on.
FK: Yeah.
ELM: I also don’t think it’s a terrible thing for you to be, like, pretty outside that, and to use your vast historical knowledge [FK laughs] and experience to comment on new things—
FK: Yeah.
ELM: —and to put them in perspective and to have a little distance.
FK: I definitely think that that’s true, and I mean, that’s part of why it’s hard for me to say, like, what have I observed in fandom changing this past year. Honestly, like, I have been so internally focused with this stuff that, like—I mean, sure, I could say a couple of things about things I saw happen in Star Trek, or whatever, but I am far from thinking that that’s about, like, fandom overall, right?
ELM: Yeah, but I mean—
FK: But maybe that’s not bad.
ELM: But I also think it’s interesting to look at just contextual—I just, like, named Star Trek in a list of a few huge franchises right now [FK laughs] pursuing the same strategy.
FK: Yeah yeah yeah, that’s true.
ELM: So I think the things that you are observing are the things that are affecting a lot of media fans of these big franchises, right?
FK: Yeah, for sure.
ELM: What happens—was it Star Wars or Star Trek, there was that viral tweet a while back that was like—I think it was Star Wars. They were like, “If you told me when I was a kid that there would be, like, new Star Wars content every single week, and that I wouldn’t be happy about it, I would have [laughing] thought you were a crazy person, or something.” You know? Like…
FK: Yeah, it was definitely Star Wars. I saw that tweet also. Yeah.
ELM: Yeah.
FK: Yeah, I think that’s true. I mean, I have—I still—I have a lot to say and to think about the way that Star Wars versus Star Trek has been handling some of this, and I certainly am not a fan of everything Star Trek has done, but yeah, no, that’s true.
ELM: Sure.
FK: That’s true.
ELM: Yeah, so, I think that’s interesting, and I feel like, you know, another thing I’ve observed is seeing more and more cross-cultural, more and more global, as these distribution channels keep opening up further.
FK: Hmm.
ELM: And I think, you know, not to frame everything—I hate to frame this in the very, like, Western-centric or Orientalist, or something, to be like, “Well, now that white people in the United States, like—”
FK: Yeah, this—I mean, this is a podcast run by white people in the United States.
ELM: It’s true. It’s true.
FK: So, our positionality is real. We know it. We talk about it, like…
ELM: Right? But I definitely feel like we’ve seen, you know—I feel like there have been some, like, kind of international fandom barriers that may have been broken down or continue to be broken down. And obviously, there are still massive growing pains. There are people fucking up all the time in these conversations, you know? We’re gonna have more folks on in the coming year talking about some of these kind of different fan perspectives and cultural perspectives globally, right?
FK: Mm-hmm.
ELM: But I do think we see a shifting landscape, and I think that, in a way, it sort of feels like, to Betts’ point, potentially, like, maybe freeing people’s minds about what they can even get fannish about, right? It doesn’t have to be the next Marvel installment, right? Or the next Star Wars installment.
FK: Yeah, totally.
ELM: It could just be the next show that catches you emotionally, and you have more access to different kinds of shows from different places.
FK: Yeah.
ELM: So, you know, that is the kind of flip side of the fracturing of the media landscape. Maybe you won’t get scale, but that doesn’t mean you’re not gonna get that, like, deep connection, right?
FK: Mmm, that’s true. Speaking of deep connections, what have you been doing in fandom, Elizabeth?
ELM: “Speaking of deep connections…”
FK: You have a deep connection to some mutants.
ELM: Yeah, we’re deep—[laughs] That’s my power. I deeply connect to them. Yeah, no. Literally nothing’s changed. I continue to write a lot of fanfiction, um…I don’t know. It’s interesting, working on fics, I mean, you’ve read them. Things that I wasn’t planning on writing and then really enjoyed writing, like, you know? I don’t know. That continues to please me, like, [FK laughs] you know? Signing up for random things and just doing them, and you’re like, “Oh, I didn’t expect to write this. OK.”
FK: I’ve been enjoying that aspect of your fandom life. Thank you. Keep doing it.
ELM: Yeah, I’m glad that you’re very—you know, it’s funny. Just a few years ago, you’d never read anything I had written, and it was, like, weird and awkward.
FK: Yeah! And now it’s not weird and awkward at all.
ELM: Look at you now. Look at you.
FK: I love it. Write more.
ELM: Great. I’m working on it.
FK: Keep writing.
ELM: OK.
FK: OK.
ELM: I’m on it.
FK: Yeah. By comparison, like, I have embraced the smoothest brain, and it’s delightful. I’ve had a couple of ideas for fanfic and then just, like, written a little bit and then let it go. And, you know—
ELM: Wait, did you already let go of the one that we talked about a few weeks ago?
FK: I don’t know that it’s totally let go. [ELM laughs] It’s still—that one’s still bubbling. That one’s still bubbling.
ELM: Would you just frickin write, like, a scene? Like, it doesn’t have to be—
FK: I’ve written a scene!
ELM: Just post that!
FK: I wanna write the whole—anyway, whatever. [sigh]
ELM: I know you do. I do too, but then I write the rest of it, but you don’t, so why don’t you just post the one scene? [laughs]
FK: Well, because I don’t feel ready to. You know?
ELM: I know you’re capable of writing the whole thing.
FK: I don’t feel ready.
ELM: OK. All right.
FK: I’ll probably do it, but point being, like, I have been enjoying holding fandom really lightly in a way that I don’t think I’ve ever done before. Like, I’ve always been pretty all-in and, like, doing shit and getting engaged and doing all this and, like, I’m just watching things I like and feeling feelings about them.
ELM: This is interesting to me, because you’re describing a person that I’m not sure I’m familiar with. I feel like this is your answer, like, every year. You’re like, “I used to be—” I feel like it’s, like, comparing your first 15 years in fandom to since I’ve known you, right?
FK: Yeah, I think I’ve—no, I’ve been on this trajectory since you’ve known me, for sure.
ELM: Yeah. Yeah yeah yeah.
FK: Because I was leaving that zone when we first met, and now I feel like I’ve gone all the way to the point of, like, honestly, I don’t know. I’m enjoying being part of this and, like, bringing to bear my historical knowledge and all of that, and I’m sure someday I’ll get back to stuff in a more active way.
ELM: Well, OK—
FK: But, like, I’m just letting it ride. It’s nice.
ELM: All right, no. Here’s what I think—I mean, this is gonna be slightly insulting, but slightly flattering. [FK laughs] OK, so, I feel like ancient Flourish was, like, you know that tweet that’s like, “I’m gonna get a good grade in blank, a thing that is totally normal to achieve and want.” [FK laughs] I can’t remember what it was. It was like, you’re at the dentist, and you’re like, “I’m gonna get a good grade in teeth,” or something, which is actually—
FK: Yeah, and good flossing. [laughs]
ELM: That is actually how I feel at the dentist.
FK: Yeah, I think we all feel that way.
ELM: Having had a lot of dental problems.
FK: [laughing] Yeah.
ELM: Yeah. I’ve gotten some D’s and F’s, um, [FK laughs] and felt ashamed, so…I’m not saying this to diminish you, but I feel like, you know, growing up and even in grad school and going into your company in the beginning, I feel like you had some, like, “I am a star fan,” like, “I am getting an A in fan” vibes. Do you think this is wrong?
FK: I don’t know. I mean, I think right now, like, I don’t talk about it on the podcast, but I think that I’m, like, very engaged in, like, other stuff in that way. Yeah.
ELM: No, what I’m trying to say is I feel like this is growth. Right? Because, yeah, you found other things to get an A in, and [both laugh] sometimes literally. Um, and, fandom didn’t have to be that, right? And I think that you spent a lot of even your early adulthood defining yourself as, like, a pro fan, you know?
FK: Mm-hmm.
ELM: And now I think you’re just letting yourself like things as you like them, and maybe kind of returning to the place where you started very early on, because you very quickly went from being a normal fan to being, like, a star fan.
FK: Yeah, maybe that’s true. I don’t know. I mean, there was a period in college when I was not really engaging with fandom for a couple years there.
ELM: That’s because you were getting A’s in things you were supposed to get A’s in. Classes.
FK: I was not getting A’s. I was not getting A’s.
ELM: You were getting D’s and F’s in classes.
FK: [laughing] I was getting—
ELM: B’s.
FK: —a nice—yeah, a C/B situation happening there. [ELM laughs] Um, I was in a lot of theater…
ELM: I don’t know what your grading—I didn’t even know if you had grades there. It seems like the kind of place where you maybe didn’t do grades.
FK: Um, it is a [laughs] place where they have refused to do grade inflation to the extent that they actually send a letter with your transcript saying, “Don’t freak out. There have only been, I believe 10 people since 1990 who got straight A’s at Reed College.” [laughs]
ELM: Stop. That’s very funny.
FK: Yeah, it’s kind of bad, actually. Uh, fortunately no one cares anymore, but…
ELM: Well, it is bad because, like, every other college is inflating their grades. [laughs]
FK: I know, it’s very bad. Everybody tried to get a job, like, a normal job on Wall Street or whatever, where you have to write in your GPA, like, they got fucked. Yeah.
ELM: No, I mean, I think this thing is so silly. Anyway.
FK: It is silly! Anyway, whatever. This is—we don’t need to have a referendum on my alma mater’s grading system, which I think I thought was cool and quirky when I was 16 and now I’m like, “Why are you doing that?” But, [laughs] you know.
ELM: Incredible. Yeah—
FK: Anyway.
ELM: I mean, I don’t mean to be patronizing to your current or past self, but I do think that there is an element of—I don’t know. You know, this is a little bit of like—I think of, like, when we were talking to Kait Tiffany, and I was talking about the advice I was given when I was shifting from, like, being a fan to being a fan plus…you know, making being a fan part of your job.
FK: Yeah.
ELM: And about what that would mean to your fan experience. But, like, for me, having been a lurker, didn’t really feel like much would change, and, you know. I don’t know. I feel like I’ve gone through a lot of ups and downs with this, right?
FK: Mm-hmm.
ELM: But I feel like you’ve now given yourself permission, with a career change, to not have to define yourself that way and to just actually experience it.
FK: Yeah, I think that’s true, and I really appreciate that you are sort of supportive of that, and that in the context of this podcast you’re supportive of it too, that I can be like, “Yeah, I have not been keeping up with this shit.” And you’re like, “That’s fine!” [laughs]
ELM: That’s fine. That’s fine.
FK: Like, it’s OK. We don’t need—
ELM: My narratives get to dominate. You know? What I see is what we, uh, talk about.
FK: Yeah, I mean, all right! You know, that’s OK. I’m just—
ELM: Yeah, I’m your extremely online friend.
FK: Yeah.
ELM: And now you’re—I’m like, “Did you see this meme?” And you’re like—
FK: I’m like, “No!” It’s been—I mean, that’s the other part of it, right? Is that, like—
ELM: To be fair, you have seen a lot of the memes still.
FK: I have still seen a lot of memes, but it’s nowhere near what it used to be.
ELM: Yeah.
FK: And, like, with my old job I felt like I was constantly online, and now it’s like, I can go an entire day without checking what happened on Twitter. And then I walk in and it’s like the pizza-on-fire meme always. Uh, you know?
ELM: Every day.
FK: But—every single day. But I’m actually enjoying that. I think that, like, it’s really helping my mental health, so—
ELM: That’s great! That’s great.
FK: —good job, me, for having, like, a career change. [laughs]
ELM: Yeah, and you can get an A in mental health, a thing that is totally normal—I actually think that the original might have been therapy.
FK: Well, what’s funny about that is that I had a class last year that was basically “Have you gone to therapy? If so, prove it. If not, you should consider going to therapy before you become a priest.” And I got an A in the class, so there you go.
ELM: A thing that is normal to want and achieve.
FK: [laughs] All right, well, I don’t know what to say about seven years of doing this podcast! It’s been real, and we’re gonna keep being real.
ELM: It’s been real?! All right, see ya!
FK: And it’s gonna keep being real!
ELM: [laughs] Yeah, no, I got nothing. Happy anniversary, Flourish.
FK: [both laughing] Happy anniversary, Elizabeth.
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