Episode 200: Maia Kobabe
For their 200th!!!! episode, Elizabeth and Flourish are joined by artist, author, and longtime Fansplaining collaborator (and fan!) Maia Kobabe to celebrate the occasion. Topics discussed include the fandom elements of eir graphic memoir, Gender Queer, the pleasure of creating fanart while working as a professional artist, eir experiences in K-pop fandom, and the secret to making friends, whether fellow fans or a pair of podcast hosts (spoiler: make art for them!) (like the cover of this episode—thank you, Maia!).
Show Notes
[00:00:00] As always, our intro music is “Awel” by stefsax, used under a CC BY 3.0 license.
[00:01:00] That’s Maia Kobabe (Instagram, Tumblr, Patreon) and eir graphic memoir is Gender Queer.
[00:02:08] The 100 fans!!!! Featuring such romantic fan pairings as:
[00:02:46] Our interstitial music throughout is “Theme from penguins on parade” by Lee Rosevere, also used under a CC BY 3.0 license.
[00:05:48] Maia made us a series of three Tiny Zines called “Fandom Firsts,” each featuring one of our early fandom memories. They were originally sent to our $10-a-month patrons, but now you can read them in digital form:
[00:09:28] Maia’s first K-pop show giveaway!
[00:20:43] Maia’s work at The Nib.
[00:21:09] Maia illustrated the covers for episode 31, “Get Recced,” and episode 44, “Mary Sue,” and a version of the latter cover was also used in Elizabeth’s corresponding article.
[00:25:42] Judy Blume said:
“I just read a book that was wonderfully enlightening to me. It’s called ‘Gender Queer’ [a memoir by Maia Kobabe]. It’s probably the No. 1 banned book in America right now. And I thought, ‘This young person is telling me how they came to be what they are today.’ And I learned a lot, and became even more empathetic. That’s what books are all about.”
[00:27:04]
[00:30:20] Our fanartist episode—a conversation with Fox Estacado—was #193: “Ask Me About My Fanart.”
[00:33:26] Maia’s phone wallpapers for BTS Festa.
[00:36:54] One of Maia’s illustrations of eir K-pop friends’ outfits at shows!
[00:38:39] That’s right: the very first appearance of the Steve Martin of Fansplaining, Destination Toast, was episode #13, “Destination: Stats!”
[00:39:26] Yes, Maia is the creator of our *extremely* charming header image:
In addition to the 100 fans, e also made art for our 50th episode and our 3rd anniversary (and the cover for this episode, of course!).
[00:40:59] We’ve made our peace with the fact that Maia also loves other podcasts enough to make fanart for them. 😂 “Witch, Please” and “Secret Feminist Agenda.”
[00:53:04]
[00:53:55] Two more of Maia’s fancomics: “Kpop in the Time of Covid” and “Harry Potter and the Problematic Author.”
[00:56:19] That’s right: our latest “Tropefest” special episode, which will come out in the next week or so, is on fake relationships. This is the NINTH of the series; you can see the full list via our most recent installment, “Soulmate AU.” Pledge $3 a month or more to get access to this and all our other special episodes.
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 #200!!! “Maia Kobabe.” [laughs]
FK: Yeaaaahhhh!!! I, um, I can’t believe…200 episodes, wow. And I also, we could not have a better person to come celebrate with us for this one.
ELM: Right. So, Maia is one of—I would say one of our oldest collaborators.
FK: Mmm hmmm!
ELM: We thought the 200th episode would be a good opportunity to have em on. So! Maia Kobabe, you may recognize eir name, e is the author of Gender Queer, which is—I mean, infamously…infamous? Is that the word I mean?
FK: Nooo, famously!
ELM: [overlapping] No…ig—ignanamously, is that the word I mean, is that a word?
FK: [laughs] I don’t think that’s a word. [ELM laughs] Ignominiously is maybe a word, but I don’t know—but all these things suggest that the book is ignominious, when in reality it’s great.
ELM: [overlapping] No no no, the circumstances—OK, the book, the book, the book, [FK laughs] Maia’s book is called Gender Queer. It’s unfortunately the most-banned book in America right now.
FK: Yeah. And it is a memoir about being genderqueer, and also includes a bunch of stuff in the memoir—because that’s part of like, teenagerhood, and Maia’s teenagerhood specifically—about fandom and fan culture and the way that that influenced growing up and gender.
ELM: Right. So—
FK: It shouldn’t be banned. [laughs]
ELM: [overlapping] Maia— Yes. No, I mean, obviously, obviously not. Um…[both laugh] So, Maia is an artist, fanartist, K-pop fan, fan of this podcast? I would go so far as to say. [FK laughs] If you follow us on Twitter or Tumblr, you may notice that our fans have little…like, little additions? They’re not just fans, right, they, like recently our fan was holding up a Buffy-style tome that said “Vampyr” on the front, [FK laughs] because for our 100th episode, Maia illustrated 100 different fans themed around different things that we had talked about, different fandoms we were in, et cetera, et cetera, which was the greatest honor to receive. So.
FK: Yeah, like, peak life experience, was opening that, [ELM laughs] the first time, and being like, “What?? You made what???” [both sigh-laugh]
ELM: So I’m, I’m really interested to talk to Maia, you know, just as a fan and how that intersects with eir work right now.
FK: Yeah!
ELM: So, yeah! Should we call em up?
FK: Let’s do it!
[Interstitial music]
FK: All right, let’s welcome Maia to the podcast! Hooray!!
Maia Kobabe: [singsong] Hello! Thank you for having me. [ELM and FK laugh]
ELM: Thank you so much for coming on, we are honored that you could be our…well, not our 200th guest, but our guest for our 200th episode.
MK: Yes. I’m very delighted to celebrate this milestone episode with you. [ELM and FK continue to make noises of general delight]
ELM: All right, well, you are a longtime listener, you know where we’re gonna start.
MK: Mmm hmmm.
ELM: What is your fandom origin story, please?
MK: Oh my gosh. I mean, my fandom origin story, not unlike the two of you, starts in, like, the ’90s. But I got on…I got online I think a lot later than many people who are my age, I’m in my mid-30s, and so so much of my fandoming as a child was like, all of these…very offline in-person activities. I was into Harry Potter, and I was into Lord of the Rings, and all of these book series, the Tamora Pierce books, but I was doing things like…knitting Harry Potter scarves, and like, you know, painting a shield with the Tree of Gondor on it—
FK: Yeaaahhhh. [laughs]
MK: And like, I also lived way out in the country, I lived in this, on this 80-acre piece of property, and I remember walking over the entire piece of property that I lived on, mapping out where I would place every major location from The Lord of the Rings if I was to make like, a tiny theme park out of the property they lived on, I was like, “OK, I would build a little replica Shire over here, and this far walk away should be like, Bree, and this far a walk away should be Rivendell,” and I was literally like, designing tiny replica Lord of the Rings structures to be like, “Maybe I can get my dad to build these!” So a lot of my fandoming was this type of stuff as a young person.
FK: [laughs] I love this. As a person who embroidered a Tree of Gondor shirt for myself…
MK: Oh yeah, oh yeah.
FK: I feel you. [laughs]
ELM: Oh wow, you should’ve gone to Maia’s plot of land there, you guys could’ve done a lot together.
MK: [overlapping] Honestly, we grew up about two and a half hours away from each other in Northern California, and had we just been a little bit closer…
FK: Oh yeah.
MK: We would…like had we gone to the same school we would’ve been, we would’ve been besties for sure.
FK: It would’ve been over. [FK and ELM laugh] For all of you.
MK: Yeah. Yeah. Just two little fandom nonbinary nerds over here. Yeah.
FK: Walking around in nature, and looking at things, and thinking about nature.
MK: Yes.
FK: And fantasy.
MK: Yeah. I also, I took riding lessons, fencing lessons, and archery lessons in my junior high years, because I was like, I have to be ready [FK laughs] in case that like…wardrobe to Narnia opens or something, [ELM laughs] I need to have these skills, just in case I get sucked into a fantasy world.
FK: [laughing, overlapping] So real.
ELM: Amazing. OK wait, what happened when you got the internet though? The way you engaged changed, I’m assuming, somewhat.
MK: Yeah, so again, I…super rural, we had dial-up internet, I was barely online in high school. I actually heard about—oh, I made a Tiny Zine for your podcast about this—I heard about fanfiction when I was in probably about eighth grade, and I was like, “OK, people are writing stories about media properties, and they’re putting them online. That’s very cool.” But I basically don’t have the internet, so I couldn’t be like, “That’s a cool hobby that people have,” I have no way to access that.
So I didn’t get really into online fandom until I was in college, which was about 2009, and a friend introduced me to the show BBC Merlin, and also LiveJournal. And so, my online fandom life started in college, and that was when I was like, “Oh, wow, people have these whole communities around loving shows or books or movies, and they’re making art, and they’re making GIFs, and they’re writing stories, and they’re making fan crafts, this is amazing, I wanna get into this!” But I was already probably like…maybe twenty-ish when I found that.
FK: I feel like that was an era. So like, we’re looking, BBC Merlin was, the AO3 was maybe just getting started around that time, and…
MK: Yeah, yeah. It was, it was interesting ‘cause I feel like I joined LiveJournal in its fading twilight years, [FK laughs] but I, but AO3 was in its first flush of being like a baby new website. But I think—and I also, because again I started fandoming online in about 2009—I had never read anything on FF.net, I have still never read a fanfiction on that site, I never read a fanfiction on any fandom-specific site, I wasn’t in like, I wasn’t even on MuggleNet or any of those.
FK: Yeah.
MK: Gryffindor Tower, like I’ve heard of these sites, because of your podcast, [all laugh] but like, I read fic exclusively on LiveJournal for many years and then I joined Tumblr, and then I was getting links to things on Tumblr, and then it was like, “Oh, people are starting to link on Tumblr to AO3 instead of LiveJournal, that’s interesting.” And so that was, I was kind of there for the beginning part of that fandom era.
FK: And were you always in…like, I mean, I think people think of you primarily now as an illustrator, a comic artist, were you always, did you ever do that? Or were you always in fanfic fandom primarily? Were you a fanartist?
MK: Oh yeah, no, I, um…if people don’t know, yes, I am a full-time author/illustrator of mostly comic books, cartoons, short comics, et cetera. No, I was primarily an artist, probably through all of my childhood. So again, in my sort of pre-internet fandom I was also drawing a lot of fanart, just for myself, just in sketchbooks and journals. And then when I started being online, I—I do write fic but it’s definitely a smaller part of my fandoming life. And through many of my early fandoms, including Merlin and then BBC Sherlock, I have many overlapping fandoms with both of you, for better or worse. [ELM and FK laugh] I was mostly drawing fanart or writing short fan comics. And at that point I was posting them on Tumblr.
FK: Right.
ELM: But you, you do…you still do this to some degree, but not very much, I feel like.
MK: I do it as much as I have time for, you know?
ELM: Yeah.
MK: I have been one of those people who’s turned my passion and my hobby, which is drawing and writing, into my full-time career and job, and I obviously love doing it, but sometimes after an entire day of like, drawing for work, [laughs] I don’t have that much energy anymore to like, draw for fun, which is really sad, I’m honestly always wishing like, “Oh, God, I wish I had more time to draw fanart.” [FK and ELM laugh]
So I make time for it when I can, and then something like, it’s often special occasion things that like, “Oh, this new book is releasing,” or “This movie is coming out, I’ll do one piece of fanart to be excited,” or lately, because my current fandom is K-pop, I’ll be like, “Oh, this person’s touring, I’m gonna do one piece of art,” maybe even also to produce as a fan giveaway, because K-pop fandom has a huge culture of fans making little cute giveaway products and trading them with other fans at shows. So the most recent fanart I’ve been doing is designing tour-specific buttons, and getting little pinback buttons made with my art on them to give to other fans at K-pop shows.
FK: That’s so cute!
ELM: Do you just go up to strangers and offer them buttons?
MK: Oh yeah. It’s so fun.
ELM: Oh my God.
MK: It’s a lovely way to interact with strangers at a show. Because literally you’ll just be like, walking through the parking lot, you haven’t even made it to the venue, and someone’ll be like, “Do you guys want freebies?” and they’ll have like, you know, little bead bracelets with those letters that have the name of the artist spelled out, or they’ll have what’s called photo cards, which is basically a fan-made trading card, or sometimes it’ll be a little packet with some candies and some stickers. Or washi tape, or like, just little things that people have made. They’re so cute. And yeah, and then people will just give them to you, you don’t have to have anything in return. But it’s really lovely to have something to be like, “Oh, I have one too!” and then you can, you can trade.
ELM: Like a barter, this is so charming.
MK: Yeah. Yeah.
FK: I love this.
ELM: That’s really lovely. Oh wait, so I’m curious though, when you…I guess you distantly knew other fans existed. Right? But when you actually were able to kinda join fandom in that way, you know, like, you didn’t have a period like, I mean as you know, my story, lurking, so knowing the community exists and kind of seeing it, but you more went from not really having access into being amongst other fans.
MK: Yeah, and I would actually say I’m the exact opposite of a lurker, because I was introduced—like, the friend who introduced me to LiveJournal and Merlin was a friend from college, and we actually were roommates for briefly, and she was like, she had been in fandom since she was a kid, she’d gotten online much earlier than me. And for her it was this kind of almost embarrassing sort of secretive hobby, where she was like, had a lot of weird sort of almost guilt about it, and then she introduced me to it and I was like, “This is great. Gimme some fic!” and she gave me some on a flash drive, and I just opened it and immediately started reading it, and she was almost shocked that I was gonna sit there and read a fanfiction right in front of her, and then like, be commenting on it verbally.
And because it was, I was introduced to it by IRL friends, I had no shame or compunction about talking about it with IRL friends, so I would literally like, if I met people who seemed like they were in this, when I made some other friends in college, I would be like, “Oh yeah, what fic do you read, what fandoms are you into, what ships do you like, what tropes do you like?” Just immediately start talking about it right away, and a lot of people were like, “Whoa, you don’t seem to find this secretive or shameful at all,” and like, “Why would I? I love reading gay stories.” [ELM laughs] Because I think I’d been reading queer manga, and queer fantasy novels as a high schooler, and to me it felt like a very just natural extension of like, I am queer, I love queer narratives, this is just another way to read queer stories.
ELM: It’s funny, I mean I feel like younger listeners may not even have a perception of like…I mean, I didn’t realize you were so young. You were in college in 2009?
MK: [overlapping] I’m 34.
ELM: Yeah. What a youth. [MK laughs] Totally different generations.
MK: I graduated high school in ’07. So I guess like, that is a whole fandom generation younger.
ELM: You’re my sister’s age, not to blow up her spot. And I, there are some really distinct differences, I think. You know?
MK: Yeah.
FK: But it also feels like no difference at all, it’s one of those things where like, at the time it feels like a million years, and now we’re like, well, I don’t know, we’re all sort of thirtysomething.
MK: Well, it’s also like…I often relate more to the internet experiences of people who are roughly five years older than me, because I didn’t get the access until I was in college, so like I don’t have the experience of like, I wasn’t on MySpace in high school, or I don’t know, and it’s really because of this, I lived very very rurally, and also my parents are not very tech savvy, it’s the opposite of the people who were like, “Oh, my dad got the first computer,” we just didn’t get computers, and then didn’t get the internet, and didn’t get cell phones, until later than anyone else in my class or my peer group. So I feel like when people talk about like, “Oh, I didn’t start using email until college,” I’m like, yeah, I basically didn’t start using email until college, even though many people my age did, and I was just kind of like, a step behind everyone. Which is also the story of my life. I am [laughs] a late bloomer and a late adopter to nearly everything. [all laugh]
FK: That’s fine, like…
MK: Oh yeah. Oh yeah. [ELM laughs]
FK: You know, it’s not like…a bad thing. In fact I’m like, I loved being on the internet as much as I was, but I’m also slightly jealous, you know, because it seems like you did a lot of things that were very self-directed within fandom, in ways that, you know, now seem nostalgic to me, and like, I wish I could get back to those feelings, [laughs] a time before it was poisoned by the rest of the internet! You know?
MK: I also, in my teenage years of living rurally and not being on the internet, what I did with my free time was read 200 fantasy novels per year.
FK: Yeahhhh.
MK: Like, that’s what I was doing. [ELM and FK laugh] I started keeping a list of every book that I read my freshman year of high school, and I can tell you that that first year I started keeping a list I read 259 books, basically. And that’s what I did. Yeah. [laughs]
ELM: Did you have to read books for school? Wait, were you homeschooled or were you..?
MK: I was homeschooled in junior high, but by high school I was at a Waldorf high school.
ELM: Right.
MK: Yeah.
ELM: Homeschooling with others.
MK: Mmm hmmm. Arts and crafts time, baby. [FK laughs] But I would be assigned like, you know, maybe 4 to 5 books, and then I would read, you know, an additional 100 and…
ELM: 195.
MK: …140 books or whatever, [FK laughs] yeah. Yeah yeah yeah yeah, for sure.
ELM: That’s funny. So, I’m wondering if you could talk a little bit about the development of your professional career as an artist, because it sounds like, I mean obviously fandom was kind of, I mean, part of how you learned to draw was doing fannish drawing—fannish drawing, I don’t know why I’m saying that—drawing fanart, right?
MK: Yeah yeah.
ELM: To some degree, and I feel like there is a big connection, a throughline running through there.
MK: Definitely. Yeah, I mean I think from quite young, I…part of my story too is that I’m very dyslexic, and I actually, I’m a very big reader now, but I didn’t actually learn to read until I was 11.
FK: Wow.
MK: I wasn’t, sixth grade was the first year that I was like, fully literate. And that is actually part of why I started keeping the list of all the books that I read in high school, is that I was like, “I feel very behind all my peers, everyone else has read all of these books and I haven’t, and so I need to read a lot to catch up.” And then I read a lot, a lot, and I sort of overpassed everyone in reading. [ELM and FK laugh]
But, before I could read and before I started writing, I was very, I drew. I have always been very, like…loved drawing, and it was always, I had a certain natural talent for it but it was literally just that I went to Waldorf school, drawing is very encouraged, you draw a lot in many classes, and then people would say to me like, “Oh, you’re good at drawing, do you want to be an artist when you grow up?” And I would just kinda be like, “Yeah!” without any comprehension of what that meant as a career path.
But I think a certain natural talent plus like, a lot of encouragement, enthusiasm from friends and family members, and then taking a lot of art classes through elementary school and into high school where I finally got to take, like, AP Art, and take life drawing, and take it a little bit more seriously. I was like, “I really, really love this.” And when I was a senior in high school—this is another Waldorf thing—we had a big senior thesis project where we got to choose literally whatever we wanted to do. And I decided I was going to illustrate poems by Tolkien in the style of the Book of Kells. [FK laughs] And so I taught myself…
FK: [laughing, overlapping] This is so on-brand.
MK: Um, it’s deeply on-brand. It turns out I’ve been the same person this whole time. [FK laughs] So I taught myself the Celtic uncial calligraphy style, and I bought, I studied the Book of Kells, and I had all these replica pieces, and I designed all of the capital letters. And we were also allowed, for our final semester, to go home after lunch and spend the—the idea was we would spend the last two hours of the school day at home working on our solo big thesis project. I don’t know how many of my classmates actually did that, but I did. [FK and ELM laugh] I went home at lunchtime, and I would put on, usually an audiobook or the soundtrack of a musical, [laughs] and I would draw for like two hours before anyone else in my family came home. And I was like, this is it. This is the life. [FK laughs] I want to work from home, as an illustrator. I’ve never been happier, being the only person in my house, playing my music as loud as I want, working in my pajamas and drawing. Like this is what I want out of life.
And so that was really when I was like, OK, I want to pursue being a full-time work from home illustrator, and so that was what informed my decision to go to art school, I have two art degrees, [laughs] and at first I was really focused on children’s picture book illustration, but that it turns out is a very difficult world to break into, and is very…it’s really hard to get into that as a newbie illustrator with a kind of underdeveloped portfolio.
Whereas comics welcomes self-publishing. That’s like, one of the big differences: in children’s picture book world, self-publishing is really frowned on and it’s kind of seen as embarrassing. Whereas in comics, self-publishing is how you prove you’re serious. So again, I’m a nerd, I’m starting to go to, like, comic conventions, there’s a couple great ones that don’t exist anymore that were in the Bay Area, WonderCon, and the Alternative Press Expo, RIP. And I started going to these when I was in college, and realizing that, again, this bartering system of comics, if you make a self-published comic and go, and you ask people like, “Do you wanna trade?” almost everyone says yes. It’s very welcomed and very celebrated, and once you’ve, like, even if you’ve just drawn…just a quick-and-dirty little comic and run it off on a Kinko’s and stapled it together, people are like, “Oh, you’re a comic artist!” It’s like this immediate acceptance. [ELM laughs]
So that made me think, “Oh, well maybe I will go into comics and I’ll try to draw comics for a while, until I can build up my skills and my name and my brand big enough that I can get a children’s picture book published.” And that was kind of where I turned from thinking book illustration to comic illustration. And informed my decision to go to California College of the Arts, and get a Master’s degree in comics, which really kind of set me on the career path that I’m on today.
ELM: That’s really interesting. So Gender Queer was your debut graphic novel, right?
MK: Yes. Gender Queer: A Memoir, which came out in May of 2019, [ELM and FK laugh] um, is my first full-length, uh, my first full-length book.
FK: [laughing, overlapping] The spiel.
ELM: [also laughing, overlapping] What publisher?
MK: Oh my God. Well, that’s drama, because it was a publisher that was called Lion Forge at the time, and then bought and merged with another publisher called Oni Press, so it is now the, I think Lion Forge/Oni Publishing Group? Question mark? [ELM laughs] The merger was stressful.
ELM: [laughing] I’m sorry.
MK: That’s fine. Yes, but before that I had published a lot of short stories, there was, I also got lucky that I was sort of coming up in comics in the heyday of Kickstarter anthologies, and so I have a lot of short stories in various anthologies around different themes, some of which were put out by like, one was put out by Dark Horse, another medium-sized comic publisher, but a lot of which were funded and produced via Kickstarter campaigns. And I also, I’ve published comics online—The Nib, a wonderful comics journalism website, which sadly is closing its doors this year.
FK: [overlapping] RIP!!
ELM: [simultaneous] I know!
MK: [overlapping] I know! I’m so sad about it. And then, I have now been published on The New Yorker magazine online, and the Washington Post, and various other more official sites, but. Yes. But Gender Queer is my first book.
ELM: And Fansplaining.com, all right? [FK laughs] I noticed you didn’t list that next to newyorker.com.
MK: [overlapping] Yes! Honestly, honestly yes, the, um, I know. I did cover art for your episodes, I did the cover art, I was looking back over this, of episode 31 and episode 44. And when you also hired me to do the illustration piece to go along with the Mary Sue episode, that was actually a pretty early paid illustration gig for me. I think I was…
ELM: Oh my God! Really?
MK: Yeah! I mean I was, when would that have been? I was out of grad school, but I was definitely still like, hunting around trying to get people to pay me for art at that point. And you guys did!
FK: [laughing, overlapping] Oh…!
ELM: [laughing, overlapping] And in 2018 I think, that makes sense with the timeline.
MK: [overlapping] Yeah, yeah.
ELM: Yeah. Well. We didn’t pay you that much, but we did pay you. [FK laughs]
MK: You know, it’s just really nice to get any money at all for art [ELM and FK laugh] when you’re a newbie, you know?
FK: Yeah… [laughs]
ELM: OK, well I wanna talk a little bit about Gender Queer, because obviously there’s many many things to talk about it, but this is a fandom podcast, [MK laughs] so if you wanna talk about the—because there’s a lot of fandom in it!
MK: There is, yes. I had to talk about fandom at least a little bit in this book, because it is a memoir, and it’s about my life, and I also think that discovering fandom, for me, as for many people, was a way to think about queerness and to think about queer identity and also, you know, reading stories, both because you’re just like, “I’m enjoying this and it’s a lark,” but also being like, “Is this going to [laughing] unlock something in me? [ELM laughs] Is this gonna teach me something about who I am as a person?” You know? Or like, you know, imagining yourself into different features, different relationships, different possibilities.
So I do talk about fandom in my book: I talk about, I talk so much about books that I loved and books that informed me as a person, and especially in sort of like high school and my early 20s. And then I also talk about being in One Direction fandom and getting into that in grad school, and I also feel like many queer people experience somewhat of a second adolescence later in life. For me it wasn’t because I came out later, I actually came out in high school, but I, as a high schooler didn’t really allow myself, or didn’t feel… Many sort of pop culture high school experience things felt completely either uninteresting or unavailable to me when I was actually in my teen years. And it was only sort of in my 20s that I was like, “Oh, I could get into something like pop music, or a pop group, I could get into like, the fashion of this pop group.”
And getting into One Direction in grad school first of all was something that brought me and my grad school roommate and bestie really close together, because it was something we were into together and that we could share, and we were like, listening to the music while we’re both drawing, and then we’re like, we went to a concert together, and we were, yes, reading and reccing fic to each other… [FK laughs] Um, but also it was like, I, when looking at the members of One Direction, was like “Oh, what if I wore skinny jeans? What if I wore snapbacks? What if I started wearing Converse sneakers?” [ELM and FK laugh] And like, it really impacted how I was presenting, gender-wise, in my fashion, as well as other things.
So yeah, and these days in my current life, Gender Queer has been for the past few years the most-challenged book in the United States, and that has come with a lot of media attention, some of which has been really exciting and positive, you know, I’ve been on NPR like, three or four times now, and it’s really raised my profile as an author, and it’s meant I’ve got to have a lot of conversations and experiences I wouldn’t have had. But it’s also been really stressful at times. My book has been subject to a lawsuit, I do receive a certain amount of hate online, and it just…I open the news and I just see these kind of wretched and terrifying news stories about books being challenged, books being banned, libraries being defunded, librarians being threatened with fines and jail time over providing books with queer content to youth, and amidst all of that, one of the ways that I sort of keep myself balanced is being able to retreat into fandom, as kind of like a…a mental health refuge [laughing] from the barragements of the world.
And I do, you know, I spend my whole day thinking about queer stories, and queer narratives, and the sort of legislative world that we’re in, and you know. Speaking out against censorship, and for freedom of speech, and freedom of access, and freedom of information, and to support libraries and to support teachers, and at the end of the day I’m like, “I need to just watch a K-pop reality TV show and just turn my brain off.” [ELM and FK laugh]
ELM: Well, so this is interesting to me, and I say this as someone obviously not in a, like, very public and very precarious—also side note, Judy Blume.
MK: Mmm.
ELM: That was a really nice quote, I thought, what she said.
MK: Yes. Recently Judy Blume was handed my book, by one of the, um…directors of PEN America, Jonathan Friedman, who said “Hey, you talk about book bans a lot, I think you should read this one.” And Judy Blume read Gender Queer, and made a, said a very lovely quote about how she enjoyed it, in I think an article with Variety, if I’m remembering correctly, which was, which was pretty cool, pretty cool, yeah.
FK: [overlapping, quieter and holding it out longer than you’d expect] Ahhhhhhhhh! [laughs]
ELM: I’m curious with the fandom stuff, like…I don’t know, you kind of have a semi-public fandom presence as well, and I’m wondering if that really, is there a space where you really feel like you can…retreat?
MK: I mean, fandom gives me a lot of things. I know it’s not a perfect or safe space for anyone, and it is also not apolitical, as you frequently talk about on this show. But one of the things that fandom gives me is a place where I can just purely love something and enjoy it, and if I have time, yeah, like, make a piece of fanart, and just post it immediately, and be like, “Here’s something that I made because I’m excited about this,” and not have to sort of, like, wade through the machinery of the publishing industry, which is sort of where so much of my professional art and writing now has to go through, all of these layers of like, of my agent, my editor, publishing schedule.
Like, I am currently right now drawing my second book, which I’m very excited about, I started working on it in 2020, it will not come out until 2025 at the earliest. So I will be making art for about five years before I can share it publicly. Whereas if I’m like, “Oh my God, Min Yoon-gi of BTS is touring, I can just draw his little face [FK laughs] and I can post it, and get that immediate serotonin of a) just finishing a piece, and b) being able to share it immediately without having to, you know, like wait until a release schedule that is like, dependent on the marketing team, and the season of whatever is gonna be released, you know what I mean?
So much of the artwork that I make is for these very long-term professional projects that I don’t get to determine the release schedule of. It’s based on the publisher, it’s based on the marketing department. Whereas like, fanart, making fanart, can just be this very like, joyful, immediate expression of like, just made art, and I just wanna share it with you, and I’m not worrying about if it’s marketable or releasing it at a certain time of day to get more views, I can just be like, “Here you go! I made it!” [ELM and FK laugh] And that can be so refreshing, and so joyful.
FK: It’s kinda nice to hear you say that, because I feel like sometimes people do get caught up in the, like, putting it out at a time of day, or kudos, or likes or whatever, and it’s…it’s…there’s nothing wrong with that, but there’s, it’s nice that fandom has like, different approaches, people doing different things, including not caring about that.
MK: Yes, I do know that a lot of people get wrapped up in fandom metrics, and in the fandom I’ve been in for about the past five years, which is K-pop, they do think about metrics a lot. And I wonder if it comes from, like, the culture of paying attention to streaming numbers of your group’s songs, and views on YouTube and all of this. But because I make art and writing professionally, I kind of just refuse to do that in my fandom life. [FK and ELM laugh] I’m like…I have to think so much about, yes, like, the presentation and the production schedule and like…everything, for my professional artwork. When I make fanart, I want it to just be fun. I want it to just be for me, and I want it to just be for a small group of fans who maybe see it and hopefully also love it and get a little bit of joy out of it.
And I think that is what I mean when I say like, fandom is a refuge for me? It is a place where I can make work outside of the, the structure of capitalism. I think that is honestly one of the biggest things that it gives me, is a way to make work inside the gift economy that so many of us treasure, and talk about in fandom, and just be like, “I loved this fic! I’m going to draw an illustration of it!” or “I love this musician, I’m going to draw a picture of them!” or “It’s my fandom friend’s birthday, I’m going to draw their favorite ship and give it to them as a gift!” And it’s just like, it’s so wonderful to be able to be like, “I still have the juice to make art that I’m not being paid for.” [ELM and FK laugh] Because so much of the time I’m thinking about, like, “How do I place value, like dollar value, on my time and my skill as an artist?” Which is just, it’s hard, because a) I want artists to be paid fairly, and I want to be paid fairly, and I want to earn a living wage, but it’s also like… How do you price art? It’s such a deeply weird thing to put money tags on, and sometimes I do want to remind myself that even if I wasn’t being paid, I would still want to make art, and fandom is a way to remember that.
ELM: That’s interesting. I kinda want you to comment directly now on our fanartist episode. [FK laughs] I think you did comment, you comment on most of them on Patreon, [FK laughs] which I’m so delighted by every time.
MK: [overlapping] I loved the fanartist episode! I loved the fanartist episode—I, too, I met Fox Estacado back in Sherlock fandom, [FK laughs] I met Fox in person at a BBC fan con in, like, 2014, and I love Fox’s work. I thought that was a great episode. Yeah. Mmm hmmm.
ELM: That’s it, we were just fishing for compliments, [FK laughs] I don’t need anything deeper, don’t worry. I, but, I also feel like too it’s interesting, you’re making me think of like, you know, I’m not a, I feel like people probably know I am not a—maybe they don’t know?—I’m not like a drabble person and I’m not a ficlet person, I in fact don’t like to read them even, you know. I’m like, [in a deep voice} “There should be more,” and I’m like, “This is too little.” I turn into my Uncle Jack for some reason when I read a ficlet. But like, it’s interesting to think about…you know, it was very illuminating to me when we did, so we did this collaboration with you, three little Tiny Zines—I don’t know why I said “little” in front of Tiny Zine—three Tiny Zines, that were what, how many panels is that? Like seven total? Or six even, right, with the cover, and the…? Yeah.
MK: Yeah, they were the little zine format where you fold it into a little eight page book out of one sheet of paper, so I guess it was eight pages, but one page was the cover and one was the back cover.
ELM: I think you utilized the cover too. As a page.
MK: [overlapping] I did, usually.
ELM: [overlapping] But when you were like, “Give me the story, give me the beats, what do you want?” And that was very interesting to me, I like writing structure, that’s something I’ve done in a lot of different ways, but I was like, “Oh, this is like I have…” you know, “This is what it’s like to think like a comic artist,” right? [FK and MK laugh].
MK: Yeah.
ELM: And I have to imagine that being able to just see a picture of one of the BTS fellows, or read a fic, and just be like, “I wanna draw this one scene!” is probably extremely freeing, as opposed to, outside of capitalism, it’s just a, you know, you’re working in structures. And they’re not necessarily because it’s also for money, it’s like, you know, there’s a lot of other things you think about with comics, you know what I mean?
MK: Yes. There are, I’m at the stage in my second book where I’m literally emailing back and forth with the publishing company about like, “Can you please send me a page template with the trim and the bleed laid on it, what DPI do I need to work—”
FK: Oh yeah.
ELM: Yeah.
MK: And make sure that like, I’m just about to start on the final art, and I’m like, “I need to make sure I start working in the correct page proportions,” so that we don’t, when we get to like, formatting, we don’t realize that I have all my pages are slightly too wide, or something. So yeah, there’s just so…
FK: Has this happened?
MK: Um, not to me, because I’m very careful. Um, but…
FK: Ohhh… [ELM laughs]
MK: There’s a lot to think about, and yeah, that’s the other thing, is like, generally at this point when I’m making my professional artwork, I am already thinking about the print volume—or the, like, what is going to, how it is going to be formatted in print, to sell, before I even start the art. Because I already need to be thinking of it as a product, before I even, like, begin. And again, when I’m doing something that’s more like a piece of fanart, I can be like, literally it doesn’t matter. I’m, it can just be whatever it is.
ELM: Yeah, you might want to make it more of a square, if you’re planning on putting it on Instagram. [laughs]
MK: [overlapping] Yeah, I post on Instagram. [ELM and FK laugh] Exactly, that’s literally it, like I did a series of um, I designed a series of seven BTS phone background pieces, I was like, I’m gonna make them, you know, like, horizontal and long and narrow so they would fit on the, you know, cell phone wallpaper format. But like, that was it, I was like, “I’m not worrying about this any further than that, and I’m not selling them, I’m just making them because I want to.”
FK: [whispering] Wow.
ELM: This is actually reminding me too, one thing I found really interesting is, I only see bits and pieces because I only look at Instagram through—I’m not like Flourish, the Instagram addict, I only look at Instagram through—[laughs]
FK: Elizabeth, I look at—why are you like this?
ELM: [laughing, overlapping] Flourish is gonna cancel the podcast. [laughs]
FK: I’m going to murder you. [laughs]
MK: I will say, I have been mutuals online with both of you for many years, and I do think of like, I send Elizabeth things on Tumblr and then sometimes I’ll talk to Flourish on Instagram, [FK laughs] it’s like I have one different…I have one account…yeah yeah yeah yeah, uh huh.
ELM: [overlapping] Yeah! Those are our personalities.
FK: [overlapping] You have an Instagram friend and you have a Tumblr friend. Yeah.
ELM: See, Flourish? When Maia says it, you’re like, “Oh, I’m happy to be the Instagram friend,” but when I say it you’re like, “I’ve never opened that in my life!”
FK: [overlapping] Uh, yeah, it’s because you, it’s because you’re always tormenting me, Elizabeth, [ELM laughs] which is part of why—anyway, nevermind.
ELM: [overlapping] Anyway. I barely use Instagram, because I’m just using it to post the Fansplaining episodes, right, but I do see little bits, and I know that…you know, earlier on in the pandemic, you were, you were not just drawing fanart of like, the members of BTS, but also of your fellow fans? Right? Which I found really interesting. I mean do you think of that as fanart, I guess? It felt fannish.
MK: Oh, yeah! Are you referring to, I did a series last year where I drew me and a bunch of my friends who had gone to K-pop concerts together, and I drew our outfits?
ELM: Yeah! Yes.
MK: Yes. That was very fun, and that came from, again, talking about how fandom can impact your real life, even more than One Direction influenced me to start wearing skinny jeans, [ELM laughs] getting into K-pop, part of what I love about it is the gender of it all. And like, I frequently have said that, like, my ideal gender presentation is glam wizard space elf prince, basically? [ELM and FK laugh] Which is why I was very obsessed with David Bowie in my teenage years.
FK: Relatable.
MK: [laughs] Yes. So, I love K-pop for many reasons. I just love pop music. I also really like listening to music that is not in English, any language that I don’t understand, it’s easier for me to write while listening to music without, with lyrics that I don’t understand, ‘cause it doesn’t distract the sort of like, right side of my brain, the writing side of my brain, from what I’m doing. So I’ve found K-pop music to be the perfect level of like, upbeat and incomprehensible, [FK and ELM laugh] to get me into the perfect writing zone. So it just really fits extremely well into sort of the workflow of my, of my creative life, I guess.
But I also love the performance of it, I love the music videos, I love how brightly-colored and like, complicated they are, I love when they have storylines, and reference lore, and powers, and all of these interesting things, and I love how utterly nonsensical the stage outfits sometimes are. [FK laughs] And this, once again, pushed me to try to be more creative in my fashion, and like, wear more colors, and it’s definitely aligned with coming out as nonbinary, and just being like, I want to present more like how I…like, presenting how I want to be in the world, which is like, celebrating things, and joyful, and sort of like, nonbinary not being like, “not this,” but “yes, this.” And including patterns, and colors, and sparkles, and dangly earrings, and contemplating dyeing my hair a bright color, and all of this.
So to celebrate some of that, I drew myself and then various friends that I had gone to see shows with in all of the outfits we had worn at different shows. And if people wanna look at what I’m referencing, they’re all on my Instagram, which is redgoldsparks.
FK: We’ll put it in the show notes.
MK: Yeah, and I drew us like, at BTS, and Stray Kids, and MONSTA X, and Seventeen, all these different shows that I’ve gotten to see.
ELM: Yeah, it was so cute, because I just, I don’t know if I’ve ever seen anything—Flourish, I don’t know if you have. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen anyone make fanart of their friends in fandom. [MK laughs] Right?
FK: Yeah, I’ve seen a little bit, but it’s always, a thing I really like about it is that to me when that has happened, it always feels like the greatest possible friendship gift. [ELM laughs] You know? Like, someone did draw a picture of me in Harry Potter fandom way back, like a fanartist did, and it was the most wonderful thing anybody has ever given me, pretty much. [ELM and FK laugh] And you know, it’s just so, I love seeing that, I really love how you’re talking about the gift economy, and your friends, and all this stuff. To me that’s one of the most wonderful things in fandom, is having that kind of like, here we all are, and we’re together, and we’re giving each other things, and giving them back, and like, you know, having it flow…it’s just nice. [laughs]
MK: Yeah, I love it too. And as you both know, one of the other things I am a longtime fan of is podcasts. [FK laughs] And I’ve been a longtime fan of your podcast. I started listening in…
ELM: Amazing transition. [FK and ELM laugh]
MK: …January of 2016…
FK: Well, speaking of pictures that people have drawn of us, [laughs] like, it delights me every time I look at Fansplaining.com, and I’m like, “Here we are!” [laughs]
ELM: [overlapping] Yeah!
MK: Yeah. I think what happened was I was already following Destination Toast on Tumblr? So the first episode I heard about was Destination Toast’s very first ever episode, which was episode 13, “Destination: Stats.” [FK laughs]
ELM: Destination: Stats!
MK: And because we were in BBC Sherlock fandom together at that time.
ELM: Right.
MK: And so I found that episode, and I listened and I was like, “Oh, this is great,” and I was like, “Oh, this show has only like, 12 episodes of back catalog, [ELM laughs] I’ll just go and listen to them all,” and so I listened back to every past episode, and I have now, I have listened to every single episode and every single special episode you have ever aired.
ELM: [overlapping] Oh my God…!
MK: I don’t think I have missed a single one. Your podcast is the one that I have most, that I have listened to consistently for the longest, of any podcast that I listen to. [FK and ELM have been making high flattered noises throughout this series of compliments]
ELM: I’m so touched!
MK: And very early on, I was like, “I gotta be friends with these people.” [FK and ELM laughs] And one of the ways that I do that when I’m like, I want to be friends with someone on the internet, is I draw fanart for them! [FK laughs]
ELM: It works!
FK: It works.
MK: So quite early on, I drew fanart of the two of you, I think it was…I think for your first year anniversary maybe?
FK: [overlapping] Yeah!
ELM: [overlapping] Yeah.
MK: [overlapping] And I then for a couple of other milestones, I remember I did a piece for your 50-episode milestone, and for your 100-episode milestone, and then—
ELM: Oh, don’t get me started, the 100 episode one is the greatest thing, it’s the greatest thing you’ve ever made, to be honest. [FK laughs] All the fans?
MK: Honestly, I still, like, that was a great, it was a great piece, I think about it often. If people haven’t seen it you can link it in the show notes. I drew 100 of the fan logos with little symbols or icons of things that have been referenced in the episodes, including fandoms, or past guests, or books that had been talked about, and it was really fun! I really enjoyed doing it, that’s the kind of fandom project that I get really into. Because I was like, would lay in bed thinking about like, OK, they’ve talked about this, [FK gasps dramatically] they’ve talked about that…
ELM: Oh my God. [laughs]
MK: I have to have an Erik one, [FK makes a high pitched sound of delight] and like you know, a Charles one, all the different fandoms that were being referenced at the time, there’s One Direction references, there are Star Trek, just a million things.
ELM: It’s so, it’s so good.
MK: And that’s kind of like, I love that type of fandom project, where it’s like, deeply steeped in the lore, where if anyone else is like a really big fan of it they’ll look at it and be like, “Oh my God, look how many things they managed to reference! This is amazing!” [FK and ELM laugh] That’s what I want, is another deep-level fan to be impressed by, like, how many Easter eggs I manage to plant in there. [FK and ELM laugh]
And yeah, so like, I drew multiple pieces of you guys, and then yeah, and then you reached out and asked me to do the cover art that we mentioned earlier, and then the illustration piece for the Mary Sue episode, so I was like, “Haha, I’m in!” [ELM and FK laugh] As the hackers say. And I will tell you, [laughing] you’re not the only podcast I’ve done this with. [ELM and FK laugh] I also am a big fan of “Witch, Please,” the wonderful sort of like, feminist literary Harry Potter criticism podcast, by Hannah McGregor and Marcelle Kosman, and I also drew fanart of them enough that I eventually got invited to be a guest on the show. [FK laughs] So.
ELM: Incredible, wait, this is such a sneaky plot! We should’ve compared notes with them!
FK: Yeah! [laughs]
ELM: We don’t know them. We don’t know them. I love it so much.
FK: Yeah! [laughs]
MK: So this is, I mean, if I have sort of an overall thesis statement of like, why fandom is good and also why I like making fanart, it’s like…specifically for me making fanart…it’s like, it is a friendship hack. [FK laughs] It’s like, you made a thing that I liked on the internet, and the way that I will show you that I liked it is I will make art about it, and I’m gonna keep just like, slowly wooing you with pieces of fanart until we are IRL friends. [FK laughs]
ELM: I love this.
MK: Like, that is, that is the overall goal.
ELM: OK, but, don’t you think you have good-artist privilege? [FK laughs] That’s like, you make the cutest—this is like, uh, this is like when you…
FK: Did you just say “good-artist privilege?”
ELM: Yeah, I’m being slightly facetious but slightly real, because, like, look, anyone is welcome to make us fanart, but your fanart is so frickin’ cute. Right? You know it, you know it.
MK: Thank you, thank you for saying that. [FK and ELM laugh] I mean…again, I am a full-time professional artist. [FK and ELM laugh again] Do I have…? I have, I mean I guess the privilege and advantage I have is literally two art degrees, and doing this full-time.
FK: Yes. [laughs]
ELM: Yeah! Yeah. All that was encompassed in “good artist.” Talented and trained. [FK laughs] No, I, no, I mean I find it, it’s funny because it’s like, I do feel—not to bring it down and make it serious—but I do feel like there are anxieties within fandom, people who don’t think they’re very talented at writing, or you know, where it’s just like, “Oh, just write a story for that person” or whatever, and they’re like, “I can’t, I’m bad at writing stories.” You know what I mean? I think it’s hard for people. That being said, I love what you do. [all laugh]
MK: I mean, yeah. I…I actually do… I, of course, yes. I work professionally as an artist, and I hear a lot of people say things like, “Oh, I could never, I can’t even draw a stick figure.” There’s a lot of people who disparage or put down their own art skills, which is very sad to me, because I think—and this is one of the things too about fandom—everyone can make art. Whether that is…you know, drawn art, 2D art, whether that is a type of craft, whether that is writing, like, everyone should be able to be empowered to make art, and I also love that fandom is a space where you are allowed to be a beginner, or at least hopefully, and that people are welcoming to beginners, and enthusiastic even if you aren’t at a professional level.
And also even if you aren’t either a writer or a 2D artist, there are so many ways that you can appreciate the stuff people put online, including writing a glowing review of it, or like, if you wanna celebrate fic writers, writing a rec list, especially one around a really specific topic, being like, “Here are my favorite, you know, stories in this fandom where this character works in a coffee shop or is trans or like, is racebent.” Whatever kind of super niche type of thing that you love, you can make gifs, you can make edits, you could make graphics or headers or like, you could just be a very enthusiastic commenter. Every fic author knows that if someone goes through and writes a long comment on every single one of your works, you recognize that username. You know, you know, you start being like, “Oh, it’s my bestie, so-and-so.”
ELM: [overlapping] Yeah, you do. Yes.
FK: [simultaneously overlapping] Yeah you do! Absolutely you do, uh huh. [ELM and FK laugh]
MK: And then like, if they then, say, follow you on a social media, [FK makes an “oooo” noise like a studio audience when two characters are about to kiss] and they have the same icons and username, you’ll be like, “Oh, it’s my friend, so-and-so!” [ELM and FK laugh] And like, I know many people who have met and become friends in the AO3 comment section.
FK: Yeah!
MK: Like, it’s not meant to be a social media, but it can be, and you can make friends there. [laughs]
FK: Yeah. You know, it’s funny, because it’s really, it’s refreshing, because I think one of the things that people start talking about often as they get older, as you get out of school and—like when you’re a kid, right, your sort of forced friendships where you’re like, we’re in school together and I guess we’re gonna be friends, because you’re, the palette is the 20 kids in my class.
MK: [overlapping] Proximity. Friendships of proximity.
FK: Yeah yeah yeah yeah. Exactly. And as you get older, some of those friendships of proximity options, they fade away. And it’s harder for people to make closer friendships and to figure even out how to break into that kind of a thing. I talk to lots to people who are like, “I’m 35 and I moved away from where I knew people and now I just go to work. How do I make friends?” And it’s nice, because this feels like it’s, you know, obviously there’s some people like, “Oh, join a hobby, join a sports league, do this, that, you know,” and all those things are true, but in this case it’s also like, no no no, there’s an expression of love and appreciation that is normalized. And naturalized, and like, that’s part of the way it works, whereas, like, it would be kinda weird if you were like, you would be in a sports league and be like, “Hey, you wanna get a beer afterwards?” and like, OK, that’s great, but it’s not the same thing as being like, “I really admire,” you know.
MK: [overlapping] The effusive gushing…
ELM: That’s so funny, though, because like, I don’t know, that’s a weird example, because I think a…playing even one game of a sport with people, you’re like, instantly best friends.
MK: [overlapping] Can bring you together.
ELM: Yeah, you’re like, “Oh, we, we—[in an intense voice] we loved and died together!” [laughs]
FK: [overlapping] I don’t know that you’re instantly best friends. [laughs]
MK: [overlapping] I think, I think anything that you, like, express a really genuine level of enthusiasm and joy for is a wonderful way to make friends.
FK: Yeah.
MK: And like, it could be any hobby, many that we could mention, but like…yeah, in many ways and for many years fandom has been that hobby for me, and I love what you’ve said about fandom being a space where you’re allowed to, like, gush. Like, I love that it just is a place where you can say “I love this thing so fricking much, [ELM laughs] I’m gonna let it consume my brain for a long time,” and nobody thinks that’s weird, that is the normalized level of interactions.
So I do really, really love that about fandom, and I will also say like, one of the other joys of K-pop fandom for me is like, I have made more friends through K-pop fandom in the last couple of years than I have through anything since grad school. And I now, like, I met multiple people on the internet who I have now road tripped eight hours to go to see K-pop concerts with. [FK laughs]
ELM: I love it, I love it.
MK: Or met up with from out of state. And I have found K-pop to be a really, like, wonderful…just like, yeah, friendship aggregator? I don’t even know how to say it. There’s always, almost always a new album releasing, or a new music video releasing or something, there’s a really steady drip of new content to be hyped about, but then also there’s this reason to gather in person, which is a concert. Which kind of makes me think back to fandoms that have fan conventions, back in the Harry Potter days, and like, you know, Supernatural has had fan conventions, Sherlock, many fandoms had, like, fan conventions. And it’s like, a reason to be like, “OK, we’re all going to prioritize being in this city, around this date, so we should share a hotel, or we should get dinner, or we should, you know, have a karaoke party,” or whatever it is. And like, it has been such a, it’s been the richest fandom for me for building new friendships than any fandom I’ve previously been in.
ELM: This is so interesting, there’s something specific about a certain kind of music fandom I feel like, too… Anne Jamison, you may remember, the professor, took me and her parents to a, she invited me along with them to a Grateful Dead concert a few years ago. [FK laughs]
MK: Ah! Yeah.
ELM: And I don’t really know, the, any of their music. [FK laughs] You know, the Grateful Dead is like the most fa—I guess I know like, the “Keep on Truckin’” or whatever, right?
MK: [overlapping] Both my parents are Deadheads. I know. I know.
ELM: They’re Deadheads? So you know this vibe, right? This famous, decades-long vibe of like, very concert-specific, and the taping and all that. But I, even just being there, I felt like it was a real brotherhood-of-man vibe.
FK: Yeah! [laughs]
ELM: We’re all, we’re all on the same page, for these four hours. And I feel like that’s a vibe I get from my K-pop friends, too, [FK laughs] right, not, not so stoned, but you know what I mean? [laughs]
FK: I cannot believe that you’re like, “Jam bands and K-pop, same feeling!” [laughs]
ELM: [overlapping] I just feel like that there’s a bit of a shorthand element to it, where as opposed to some other kinds of music fandoms, I feel like there is a little bit more…obviously there’s competitiveness within K-pop and there’s the metric stuff you were talking about, but I feel like other…there’s, there’s real capitalist striving vibe I get from some other music fandoms, where it’s like, “I’m gonna get the exclusive, I’m gonna get the thing,” whereas like, I get this kind of like, “We’re all here for each other as much as for the artist” from the K-pop folks, and I don’t know if that’s just…that’s my outsider observation I guess. [FK laughs]
MK: That’s definitely how I feel, when I go to a show I am almost always [laughing] equally as excited to see my friends there as I am to see the group, I don’t know that that’s true of everyone, there are other people who experience fandom very differently than me. I am also just a very, like, friendship-oriented person. And so like, I, I agree with what you’re saying, Elizabeth, I don’t think every K-pop fan would, but I do. [FK and ELM laugh]
But also I think…I mean I think anytime a music becomes like a subculture, which many music types have, you develop these different norms, and K-pop fans still feel like underdogs in the United States. They feel like, you know, we are not, our groups are not being recognized by, you know, awards such as the Grammys, or they don’t tour very often, so there’s also this kind of feeling of like, “Well if our group is gonna come all the way over from South Korea, we have to make an effort to show up. Because they’re coming so far here to see us.” And so there’s this feeling of like, “Oh, we all have to go, we have to make sure the stadium is full.”
Also like, every single person at the show is going to be wearing, like, an outfit that either references a band look, or merch of the band, and like, there’s this real celebration of like, we love them, we love them so much, we need them to know that we love them. [FK and ELM laugh] You know? Whereas like, I think some other types of music feel like you’re supposed to be like, cool, and you’re supposed to wear someone else’s band shirt to the band, like it’s…[ELM laughs] I’ve heard in, like, I don’t know, emo music? It’s uncool to wear the shirt of the band you’re going to see?
ELM: You’re not supposed to wear the—yeah, in a lot of cool genres, yeah.
MK: [overlapping] Right. But in K-pop, you are definitely supposed to wear the shirt of the group you are actively seeing. [all laugh] Um…so, anyway. Yeah. There is a real feeling of like, we’re very in this. And also if you spot another fan in the wild, it’s still pretty exciting. Like, I do wear my K-pop merch shirts around in public, because I want someone to be like, “Oh, hey, are, you know, [FK laughs] do you love EXO, do you love Seventeen, do you love Stray Kids, do you love BTS?” so I can be like, “Yes!” [ELM laughs]
Another friendship story, I was at a completely unrelated to K-pop party in like, December of 2019, you know, just at the edge of when we were allowed to be at parties for a while there, and I noticed someone sitting next to me on a couch had a K-pop member as the lockscreen on their phone, and I turned to them and I was like, “What’s that on your phone?” and they kind of dismissively were like, “Oh, it’s just a K-pop idol,” and I was like, “Oh, no, I know that, who is it? Which one?” [ELM and FK laugh] and their face like, lit up, and we immediately just started talking, and from that became a friendship that lasts to this day, and then when the pandemic hit we started doing a weekly call every Friday night, to watch K-pop music videos together, that we are still doing three years later.
FK: Oh…!
ELM: Oh my God…wait, every Friday night you watch K-pop videos?
MK: Every Friday night I watch K-pop videos. [ELM and FK laugh]
ELM: [overlapping] I love it, I love it.
MK: I watch, I try to watch every new video from any group that has come out in the previous week.
FK: Wild and crazy Friday nights.
ELM: [overlapping] Wow. Wow.
MK: [overlapping] With my friend. And I’ve discovered so much new music from it, it’s wonderful.
ELM: That’s amazing.
FK: [simultaneous] That is wonderful.
ELM: Aren’t you glad you came on this podcast and we talked about book banning for, like, two minutes [FK laughs]—
MK: Yeah, it’s great.
ELM: —and we talked about the things you love for like, fifty minutes? [laughs]
MK: Yeah, this is, I think the maybe sixth interview I’ve given this week? And definitely the most fun of all of them. [FK laughs]
ELM: [overlapping] Oh, yes. Yes.
MK: [overlapping] Most of the others were like, 90% about the book bans.
ELM: Take that, NPR hosts! [MK laughs]
FK: Yeah! [ELM laughs] We’re so glad that you came on the podcast, and we are…I mean, I think I probably speak for us both when I say that like, you know, you are possibly the number one fan in our hearts. [MK and ELM laugh]
MK: Yes!
ELM: Yeah!
MK: I’m winning! [FK laughs] Desiring to be the number one fan! Something…what is the quote? Possible to want, realistic to achieve? [laughs]
ELM: Yeah, extremely normal thing to want and achieve, [FK laughs] to get an A in being a fan.
MK: Yeah. Yes!
ELM: Good grade, it’s good to get a good grade in being a fan.
FK: Yeah.
ELM: Yes.
MK: I want…yeah. [ELM laughs] Yeah, and I know for a couple of years there we got to meet up at San Diego Comic-Con, and I haven’t been in a few years, and I think you haven’t been in a few years, but like…
ELM: Oh, we have!
MK: OK. I missed, I missed last year.
ELM: You weren’t there. Yeah.
MK: I did, I skipped it, and a bunch of my friends got COVID, and I was like, I made the correct decision. But I am hoping to be at San Diego Comic-Con again in the future, and I am also, fingers crossed, going to be at FlameCon in New York in August.
FK: [gasps, overlapping] Yaaay!
ELM: [overlapping] Well, let’s hang out, let’s hang out!
MK: [overlapping] So, I might…I might be able to see you in August. And if any listeners of this are gonna be at FlameCon, uh, come say hello! [MK and FK laugh]
FK: Hooray!
ELM: Amazing. All right, well thank you so much for coming on for our 200th episode!
FK: Wow!
MK: Two hundred episodes! [ELM laughs]
FK: Two hundred. Thank you so, so much Maia.
MK: Should I join you for the Patreon spiel? I’m a longtime patron. [FK and MK laugh]
ELM: Oh my God. Do you want to?
MK: Let’s see, what can I say… Can attest supporting Fansplaining on Patreon is a wonderful investment, and all of the episodes available at the $3 level are very good, very funny, very informative, and if you wanna be a number-one fan like me, [FK and ELM laugh] you should support them on Patreon! And listen to all the special episodes.
ELM: And get excited, we have another special episode coming out.
FK: Yeahhh.
ELM: About…fake dating.
FK: [whispering] Fake dating!
MK: Excellent.
FK: Yeah. It has been so good having you come on the podcast, Maia. I look forward to many many more collaborations in the future.
ELM: Yes, 100%, thank you.
MK: Fingers crossed. [FK laughs]
[Interstitial music]
FK: lt is always a pleasure to get to talk to Maia.
ELM: Such a delight! [FK laughs] And also, half our work is done for us, we don’t have to do the full Patreon spiel. Thank you very much.
FK: Y’all know now how great it is.
ELM: “Y’all?” Flourish, you’re in California, what’s goin’ on over here? [laughs]
FK: [laughs] OK, OK, OK. So, if you, despite Maia’s incredible testimonial, do not have the money or the inclination to support us on Patreon, you can still help the podcast out by, basically, getting in contact and sharing your thoughts! You can do that by email, fansplaining at gmail.com; you can do that by social media, we’re Fansplaining wherever fine social media exists, and some places where it’s not so fine—
ELM: Un-fine, Twitter.com.
FK: [laughs] You can do it via voicemail, 1-401-526-FANS; or you can do it via like…I guess I said social media, but on Tumblr, the ask box is open, anon is on, and we’ve also got a form on our website that you can use. So. Send in questions, comments, thoughts, ideas for episodes, those things really really help us as we plan the next episode.
ELM: Right. And, sorry, going back to Patreon, I know you just gave the spiel [FK laughs] about if you didn’t wanna engage with Patreon, but I will reiterate, we have recorded the episode now, that’s about fake relationships. So…if you’re interested in hearing about that, an ever-popular trope, that’s $3/month or more, and you’ll get access to all special episodes at that level.
FK: Yeahhhh. All right! I think that might be all our business for today.
ELM: Well, Flourish, 200 episodes. What have you learned?
FK: Not to argue with you.
ELM: [laughs] Stop it. [FK laughs] You argue with me all the time. And you say things like, [pretend Flourish shouting] “We’re not even arguing! I’m telling you, we’re not arguing! We’re agreeing!” [FK laughs] But little do you know, that’s still arguing, so. Yeah. I’m just saying.
FK: Well, I can’t think of another person that I could record 200 episodes of a podcast with. [ELM laughs] I don’t think they exist. So. Thank you, Elizabeth.
ELM: Well, thank you, Flourish.
FK: [overlapping] For way more than 200 hours of…[laughs]
ELM: Oh, yeah, sure, I don’t, let’s not remind each other of that. [FK laughs] But, I think it’s been a pretty, it’s wild to think about, you know? Like, look at all those episodes we did! Hey! Technically it’s more, I mean obviously there’s the special episodes, but we had several doubles, so we kinda already—but whatever, this, the number, it’s, it’s ceremonial. That’s great.
FK: [overlapping] Yeah, well. Don’t. [laughs]
ELM: Cool. OK.
FK: Well, with that done, I’m going to utter a ceremonial talk to you later, Elizabeth.
ELM: [laughs] OK, goodbye, Flourish.
FK: Bye.
[Outro music]