Episode 131: Happy Anniversary #5
Flourish and Elizabeth celebrate their fifth anniversary with an annual tradition: inviting back guests from the past year to talk about changes in fandom, from the global to the personal. Topics discussed include race and racism in fandom, harassment and accountability, increases in “migratory fandom” behavior, and the act of rereading providing comfort over the past few months.
Show Notes
[00:00:00] As always, our intro music is “Awel” by stefsax, used under a CC BY 3.0 license.
[00:02:00] Flourish miscounted! We actually had eight guests and MISSED ONE so EarlGreyTea68 will be sharing her thoughts on these questions in the next episode!
[00:02:48] Pam Noles was our guest for Episode 130.
[00:06:38] This year, Gavia Baker-Whitelaw joined us for Episode 126, “Social Media Fic.” Previously, she appeared on Episode 31, “Get Recced”, and Special Episode 11, “The Marvel-Industrial Complex.”
[00:12:54] Keidra first joined us in Episode 101, “Stan Culture,” and the piece she wrote for us was “The Empowered Stan.” This year, she was our guest for Episode 128, “The K-pop Narratives.”
[00:20:14] Betts joined us for Episode 118, “The Craft of Writing (Fanfiction).”
[00:34:13] Rainbow was our guest for Episode 112.
[00:38:27] We discussed rereading in Episode 123, “Reread, Rewatch, Replay.”
[00:39:10] Our interstitial music here and elsewhere is “Bunny Needs a Shave” by Lee Rosevere, used under a CC BY 3.0 license.
[00:39:54] Saturday Night Live captures the true spirit of SHOWTIME!!!!
[00:44: 49] Yes, everyone here has to see these things too:
[00:45:30] The Twilight parody film was called Vampires Suck and has a rating of 4% on Rotten Tomatoes. Behold, the former neighbor on Gossip Girl:
[00:50:31] Morgan Leigh Davies joined us for Episode 72, “Alternate Universes.”
[01:01:54] Ryan Reynolds’s program is called the “Group Effort Initiative.” Read about it in the Hollywood Reporter. [Elizabeth would like to note that this conversation was recorded before Reynolds made the news for (in 2020! c’mon buddy) feeling bad about his plantation wedding, so…😬]
[01:05:58] There are no gifs of Fassbender-as-Magneto clenching? Just...imagine.
[01:08:23] The gentleman’s club in question is called “Secrets,” it’s in Deer Park, and everything Elizabeth described is absolutely accurate.
[01:10:54] You too can enjoy Flourish’s AirTable database of every Star Trek book ever.
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 #131, “Happy Anniversary #5”!
FK: Whoa.
ELM: Five.
FK: Wow. It’s been five years? That’s a lot of years. That’s like, the number of years that like…
ELM: Yes?
FK: I mean, like…a kid who’s five is approaching the historical age of reason! Ah, they still have two years to go.
ELM: Waiting to see where you would take that. That’s, what? That’s—this is bad. Bad.
FK: [laughs] It’s a long time! That’s all I’m saying.
ELM: In fact four years is a lot more significant in our culture, you go to high school for four years, you go to college for four years, you become the president for hopefully four years for this president…
FK: Yeah, but five is more than four, so.
ELM: There’s those math skills!
FK: [laughing] Yep. All right! So, as we do every year on our anniversary, we have reached out to the folks who came on the podcast as guests in the past year to talk about the past year in fandom! What has changed in fandom broadly and also for them. And we’ve done that again, and we have… five people who’ve responded.
ELM: Five for five!
FK: Five responses!
ELM: Well that’s lucky. I’m glad that the other two guests—we only had seven guests—I’m glad they weren’t available. [FK laughs] Great. I won’t say who they are! No one’s gonna cross-reference that one. OK, but we are gonna change the format slightly from years past.
FK: We are. We’re going to listen to everything that our guests had to say in the first half, and you know, talk a little bit, but then we’re going to talk together in the second half and sort of, you know, discuss our own years and fold in our commentary on what our guests said into that larger conversation.
ELM: That’s a big promise and I don’t know if we’re gonna fulfill it, but uh, let’s do it.
FK: All right. Shall we listen to our first guest?
ELM: Yeah, I mean the promise, like, obviously we can fulfill the “we are going to play the audio of these five people.” Like, we can handle that. [FK laughs] But.
FK: I don’t know! It’s a lot to handle.
ELM: Yeah, I can handle it. If you can’t handle it, I’ll do it for you. I can listen.
FK: All right. So the first person that we’re going to listen to is…actually the most recent guest we’ve had on, Pam Noles!
ELM: OK, so if anyone didn’t listen to our last episode—and you should!—Pam is an employee of San Diego Comic-Con, amongst other cons. She manages the one of the restricted entrances for Hall H, which is the big giant space where people camp out overnight and all the A-list celebrities get trotted onstage for 10 minutes. And she is very good at telling people “No, you don’t have the right pass. Doesn’t matter who you are, you can’t come in here.” I love her.
FK: [laughs] I do too. OK, let’s see what Pam felt changed this year.
Pam Noles: Hello Fansplaining! My name is Pam Noles and I wish you a very happy anniversary with many more to come.
One of the trends I’ve observed in fandom over the past year is a growing willingness to engage with sociopolitical issues, and not only engage with them, but to organize around them, to speak back, to push back, to try to do whatever works, whatever they can within our community of vast geek and nerdom. Granted, it still skews a little white, there’s still a lot of issues concerned by POC creators and fans that—you know, some of the big guns really haven’t said anything about. But, it’s changing slowly, and to me that can only be for the better, because we all know—especially in the capes—Superman, Captain America, the big stuff, Love & Rockets (which is my heart)—it all started really from a place of “fight back against the man, stand up for ideals that are the best of us, as opposed to the worst of us.” Slowly—it’s taking people time to come around and look beyond their myopic sphere, to see more than just the pale gaze, but it’s happening. And I think that’s something I want to encourage and see more of and I’m happy that it is happening. All right! Keep hope alive! Bye.
FK: That’s a really hopeful, hopeful response to this year! I didn’t totally—you know, it’s funny, I think everybody sees a different piece of fandom, and I felt like it was a very mixed year in some of the ways she was talking about, but it makes me happy to know that that’s been her experience of the past year, you know?
ELM: Yeah, absolutely. I think we should get a little deeper into this in terms of our own perspectives on it in the second half. You know, I’m fresh off having watched last night’s Hugo ceremony… [FK laughs and sighs] Which I wouldn’t discuss in a hopeful tone…well, I won’t say much more. Let’s hold that till later. But I, I loved Pam’s commentary here regardless of whether it’s something I’m seeing in my own spaces. Yeah, it is hopeful, I think it’s a—it’s a nice note to start on for cynical me.
FK: All right. [laughs] So should we listen to our next guest now? And who is that next guest, Elizabeth Minkel?
ELM: Speaking of the Hugos, for which we were finalists—sadly we did not win. Really, it’s not fueling my opinion of what happened otherwise, we weren’t expecting to win. [FK laughs] My newsletter partner…
FK: Is this a little bit of the, like, “Man, the food is terrible, and such small portions!”
ELM: No, I mean like, it’s very funny because I follow a bunch of people who did win and they’re like more angry about some of the things that happened at the Hugos than I am. I mean, I—again, I’m not, I shouldn’t be going into this too much, but I am a bit of a, tangentially related to that world. I’m not in science fiction fandom. I think I would feel a lot more ownership over potential anger if it was my, like, primary space.
But anyway! Gavia Baker-Whitelaw, my newsletter partner! With whom I was a finalist for the Hugo awards! We have a newsletter called “The Rec Center,” and Gav came on for the second time this past year to talk about social media fic on Twitter. Fic written on social media platforms, in particular Twitter. As opposed to being written as a traditional story and posted on an archive. And it was a really fascinating conversation. So, uh, yeah!
FK: All right! Let’s roll Gav!
Gavia Baker-Whitelaw: Hi Fansplaining! It’s your pal Gavia. Happy anniversary!
So it’s very hard to think what happened in the past year, or indeed, what the past year consisted of. But, um, I think kind of the two things that really stand out are the topic that we discussed on the episode I was on, which is social media fanfic—there’s been so much amazing kind of Twitter storytelling going on, which I think we’ve already discussed at length. But that is definitely something I was really into kind of about the first half of the past calendar year.
And also The Untamed, which like so many people I became completely obsessed with. I have not read the translation of the novel or watched the cartoon series but I’ve watched the TV show on Netflix and fell in love, and it’s just been—it’s a really great and creative fandom, with loads of talented writers, and it’s also the first time I’ve been in a really big fandom where the original source material isn’t in English, and I’ve just really enjoyed reading a lot of fanfic that is from Chinese writers or Chinese-American writers who are kind of bringing some of their own experiences and kind of knowledge of the canon that I couldn’t pick up. You know, it just feels very refreshing compared to the amount of American kind of mainstream blockbuster media that I often consume. So The Untamed, love that.
And I guess finally, one trend that I’ve been sort of enjoying second-hand is all the Zoomers experiencing Avatar: The Last Airbender for the first time, because that also appeared on Netflix. Actually, you know, I guess, in some cases Netflix can be good, because it’s bringing amazing new fandoms to the world, but because this perfect and genius children’s cartoon is now on Netflix, a new generation is realizing how good it is, and there’s loads of really cool stuff that is appearing on TikTok. And one thing I’ve been amused to notice is that while the original fandom was really into a shipping war between Katara and Zuko or Katara and Aang, the new generation seems to have completely solved that by shipping Zuko with Sokka, thus removing the love triangle element there. So loving that. Never considered that at the time. So yeah, very cool! Thanks, Netflix, I guess, but mostly thanks fan creativity and TikTok.
All right! Have a good next half of 2020. Bye bye!
FK: All right, someday I’m gonna have to check out The Untamed. I know it. It’s coming for me.
ELM: I don’t know if I can at this point because I’ve witnessed secondhand discourse and I’m like, do I wanna participate in this?
FK: Oh no. [laughs]
ELM: I mean, you can watch a show and not be in the fandom. I’m sure there’s a lot of great parts of the fandom too. But it’s like, do you know, sometimes when you see—especially like a large fandom like this, and you see it, and you’re like “I’m literally never going to engage with that because I don’t want to participate in this in any way, or actually know what anyone’s talking about.”
FK: Right, because you see the discourse happening and you’re like “Oh-ho.”
ELM: Right. I understand all of you love it, tons of my friends love this show, and I do think it’s really interesting—one of the things that I am hoping we can do in the next year is get an expert on Chinese media and like, transnational Chinese media, to talk about the ways that Chinese entertainment media is shifting as it, as it like, expands to Western audiences. And I think that The Untamed and the other Chinese dramas are very very interesting to look at from a fandom standpoint right now in a way that like, I know that you’ve done a lot of work in the film space with Chinese entertainment executives and things like that, but I feel like there is something different going on right now with even the methods of like—even with the channels of distribution. Like Gav talking about how just, The Untamed would not be what it is in Anglophone spaces in the West if it wasn’t for Netflix just tossing it on there, right?
FK: Absolutely. Yep.
ELM: Integral to it, right? I think that’s very very interesting as opposed to like, the big studio partnerships with Chinese studios.
FK: Right, as opposed to the attempts to make film happen. This is a different—this is a different beast.
ELM: Right. That’s interesting too, but I think this is different and it’s a little bit easier for fans to see, because you’re actually seeing this sort of like, this viewer response in real time as opposed to the, like, mechanics of the business side, which are pretty opaque to a lot of people.
FK: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. All right, well.
ELM: Wow, I set that right up for you, as someone who has a great deal of experience, to comment on, and you said “absolutely” and then “well.”
FK: No, I mean absolutely, because I think the thing is— [ELM laughs] The absolutely I mean is because the thing is I don’t actually have that experience in TV, right? TV and film are such different universes—
ELM: OK, all right, yeah yeah.
FK: —and I think that you’re right to say that there’s all of these mechanics. And there’s also like, with film, the kinds of movies that are, that people invest in with regard to that? With regard to China and so on? Tend to be huge big-budget things anyway, because China provides such an important market for big-budget American films, right? So it’s like, it’s just a totally different, like, anything that you would conceive—anything you would consider doing, it’s just like a completely different universe, you know what I mean.
ELM: Yeah, it needs to make a billion dollars. Yeah.
FK: Yeah, exactly. And it’s, and that’s the kind of thing that people are talking about doing by and large. I’m not saying there’s no indie filmmakers trying to make stuff happen, that would be absurd, but like, you know. That’s, that’s where the energy is in my experience. So, you know, I mean, what you’re saying makes sense and I’m not an expert at what’s happening with The Untamed at all. I’m not even an expert about the film side, but at least I’ve observed a little more of that!
ELM: OK! Cool! I really appreciate you, the opposite of Dunning-Kruger.
FK: [laughs] I try!
ELM: Yeah.
FK: OK. The next person that we are going to hear about, though, so that we don’t give me lots of, you know, lots of time to say things and discover that they’re wrong…
ELM: You’re actually, that you actually are Dunning-Kruger…perfect. See, a Dunning-Kruger person would not know to, where to draw that line. They would just, just keep going.
FK: Right, right. But I do know, and so I’m drawing it.
ELM: That’s really impressive.
FK: So the next person that we’re going to hear from—thank you! I really appreciate that. [ELM laughs] The next person we’re gonna hear from is Keidra Chaney, who is of The Learned Fangirl—that might be one of the places you know her from—and we were lucky enough to have her on to talk about K-pop and Black Lives Matter a couple months ago. Was it a couple months? It was a couple months ago now.
ELM: It was a couple months ago! Jeez.
FK: Time! Continues to pass. Anyway, Keidra’s brilliant, she’s been on the podcast before as well, and, um, yeah!
ELM: All right, let’s listen to her!
Keidra Chaney: Hi, Fansplaining, and happy anniversaries! This is Keidra Chaney from The Learned Fangirl and here are some of my thoughts about fandom in the past year.
In terms of what trends I’ve seen in fandom in the past year, they’ve not really been great ones. At least on Twitter, I feel like there’s been a big uptick in harassment and doxxing and normalization of that, and a lot of excuses made in fandom for doing harassment, and it’s incredibly troubling.
But on an up note, I do feel like that there’s been a lot more conversation in fandom about accountability when it comes to harassment, when it comes to invasion of privacy, I feel like—with this uptick, I feel like there are more people who are willing to speak out within their fandom or to write articles or essays about them. I feel like it’s being taken more seriously now, rather than being swept under the rug as like a dirty little fandom secret. I think there are more systems of accountability that are popping up, and I think that fandoms are starting to understand the importance of keeping folks accountable and protecting each other, staying safe, as a response to some of the bad behavior that’s happened in fandom.
In terms of my past year in fandom, it’s been kind of stressful! I ended up getting pulled into the “discourse”—I say with air quotes—about K-pop fandom and Black Lives Matter and I had—in addition to good things, I was able to write an article, I was on Fansplaining, and those were great experiences—but I also had a lot of unwanted attention from fans and from the media. And so it took a lot of the fun out of doing this and being in fandom and participating. I felt pretty distant from fandom activity. [cicada noises in the background] Oh, here come the cicadas! Sorry! But I think as a result of that, I’m more personally invested in private fandom spaces now, so I’m on Discords and group chats, I’m keeping my fandom social media accounts on lockdown right now. I’m really focusing on my friends and my fellow fans and really rather than being a part of something—the broader conversation, taking it, being more insular about it. Which sounds more negative, but has actually been quite freeing for me, to just be a part of a smaller group of fandom rather than being a part of fandom as a whole.
So that’s kind of where I am now. Again, happy anniversary and thanks for everything that you do! Bye.
FK: I really feel Keidra on the issue of like, being in smaller groups in fandom and sort of pulling back from the, the big fandom discourse and into sort of smaller little chunks of fandom? I feel like—I totally hear what she’s saying about harassment and all of these things happening and I feel like those things, like, intertwining with larger world issues, you know? Even more than they did before. Not that those things were ever separate? But even more than they did before.
ELM: Yeah. Right. I mean, I feel like the specifics of this do really matter though and I just, I—I don’t know if Keidra’s gonna listen to this, but I am so grateful that she not only came on during this very heightened period when this story was also quite heightened and everyone was trying to get a piece of the, you know, an angle here.
FK: Yeah.
ELM: You know, but also—contextualize in the broader distress of June. I was trying to think of the right word to describe what June was like. And I’m really grateful that she, she counts her coming on here as one of the positive things to experience! But having, having observed the kind of media meltdown over this story which basically—for anyone who didn’t follow it—was that K-pop stans mobilized around a few different things in the kind of really really peak of Black Lives Matter protesting in June. Some of it seemed a bit productive, like shutting down police scanning, like, snitching apps and stuff like that by just flooding them with like, pointless content to the point where their stuff was unusable. Some of it less so, like amplifying—flooding racist hashtags and in the process amplifying those messages, right? Because that’s how flooding hashtags works.
But the media, like, just clowned itself over and over again basically [laughs] by like, first being like “Oh, K-pop stans are gonna save us!” And then, you know, moving on to “Oh, maybe not everyone in K-pop is a revolutionary? Or maybe there are bad things happening in K-pop? Maybe not every K-pop fan is actually very good at you know, anti-racist activism or…”
FK: Gosh, you think?!
ELM: “Or anti-racist feelings?” You know? And then like, Teen Vogue got a white writer to first cover anti-Blackness in K-pop fandom, and then they had to be like called out, and then they were like “OK, we’ll get a Black writer to do it!” And it’s like, “Why is this taking so many tries?” You know? So like, watching them—the media like, stumble over itself step after step in real time, and then kind of pounce on the few Black K-pop academics and experts, like Keidra and a few other people, to the point where it seemed like they were like “I can’t, I can’t give any more quotes!” Like, “How many times can I give this quote?”
FK: “It’s the same quote, guys! You don’t need it again!”
ELM: You know, like, quote the other publication! And I know academics, I’ve seen them complain about this too, you don’t get paid when you’re quoted in a piece. You get paid when you write the piece, and even then it’s not very much money usually, FYI. So it’s like, asking people to do unpaid labor while their very personhood is being, you know, is under attack within their own fandom spaces and the media’s trying to exploit—you know what I mean? So it’s like… Sorry, I feel like I just went down a long, sad rabbit hole just talking about how sad it was.
FK: You did, but I think the summary is that we’re really grateful that Keidra came on and I’m really grateful that Keidra’s finding good places to be in fandom right now and I wish that for all of us. [laughs]
ELM: Yeah! I just wanna, I’m just trying to contextualize it cause I’m not trying to put you on the spot by saying that it’s a little flip to be like—I too have, over the past few years, appreciated having very small fandom spaces. But it’s not really the same thing—
FK: No no, it isn’t the same thing. It’s not the same thing.
ELM: I didn’t have to turn—yeah, I didn’t have to turn my fandom into, like, a—my personal fandom experience into a soundbite about people being bigoted towards me in my own fandom spaces, you know what I mean?
FK: It’s true. Yeah yeah yeah.
ELM: I don’t wanna diminish that while I also totally get that element of like, it’s way better to do the small groups, because… [FK laughs] You know. You know.
FK: Yeah, completely. I do know.
ELM: Cool, great. We all know.
FK: All right, so shall we listen to the next person?
ELM: Yes. So. Betts.
FK: Betts!
ELM: Betts? Incredible. You say “Send in one, two, three minutes,” Betts sends in eight.
FK: Yeah. So [laughs] Betts came on to talk about the craft of writing fanfic, Betts is an amazing writer and a writing instructor and doing a PhD in Creative Writing, and generally awesome…
ELM: A multi-fandom writer, you—if you’ve been in the fandoms she’s written in you’ve probably encountered her.
FK: Yeah, yeah!
ELM: And does really really—yeah, she has really great writing advice on Tumblr in a way that I find many fic writers are very hesitant to do, you know? She’s willing to kind of dig in there and say, “You should do what you, whatever’s best to achieve the goals that you want to achieve, but actually, if you wanna achieve this specific goal, there are better ways to do it,” right? Which is, I find that fandom people tend to be like, “There’s no wrong way!” And it’s like, “Well, actually, if your goal is to be super clear, then there are some better ways to go about it!” You know? You know what I mean?
And I really really appreciate that about her, because I think it takes a—I think it takes some confidence and some bravery to be able to go into a space where people can get very touchy about even a hint of criticism, and it just be like “Well, here’s my experience, take it or leave it,” she’s not being prescriptive. She is—you know what I mean? You know what I mean.
FK: I do. Let’s listen to Betts.
Betts: Hi! This is Betts. First I wanted to say happy anniversary, and thanks again for inviting me on the podcast earlier this year. So: trends in fandom!
The number one thing I’ve noticed is that I think people are changing fandoms more quickly and more easily than they used to, even—especially this year with quarantine. I think there’s, people are rapidly going through content. I think it also has to do with streaming and binging and the amount of time between new canon updates. So you know, if a show drops an entire season in one go, and we have to wait a year or two for the next season, I think people are responding to that initial drop, creating the content, engaging in the community, and then there’s a dip between you know, one season and the next, where they pick up a different canon and they join different fandoms.
I think more migration means that fandom interaction has less and less to do with being a fan of a specific canon and more embodying the identity of what it is to be a fan and a transformative creator. And to that end, you know, fandom fandom is becoming more prevalent and I think it’s more of a method of engaging with pop culture—its own language, more or less. Maybe even a lifestyle. So you know, when…just because you lose interest in one thing doesn’t mean you stop being a fan, it means you move on to another thing and you continue all of those things that you were practicing with the other canon. I think AO3 has a huge part, takes a very large part of this in that people can become interested in specific dynamics, you can search for tags rather than fandoms, and so, you know, the fan experience is so much wider now and easier to navigate around than I think it used to when archives were more individual.
Um, another thing I’ve noticed is that I think Tumblr has in part somewhat recovered from the titty ban of 2017, and I don’t know if that’s a good or a bad thing, but I think there was a major migration to Twitter and I think Twitter has now become incorrigible [laughs] and so people have been moved back to Tumblr as kind of a safe haven. I’m sure they’ll swing back again, but yeah. I’ve just noticed a lot more activity than there has been in the past, since Tumblr stopped being what it used to be.
My year in fandom…I haven’t really had, to the end of moving and migration, I haven’t had a home base, a primary fandom, this entire year, and I haven’t even written or read that much fic, but I’ve really been enjoying writing for small fandoms and small audiences, and very recently—just these past few weeks—I’ve been reaffirming my initial instincts of fanfic as—and just bear with me—the highest ideal of art. [laughs]
It sounds like I’m being hyperbolic, but when I first got into fanfiction, I remember thinking like, “This is, this is the ideal. You can do anything, you can do whatever you want.” And that opinion has changed so much, but you know, now, however many years later, I’m looking back on it—I’m about to start a PhD in creative writing thinking, you know, this is still artistically, you know, the most complex thing my mind is capable of, of navigating!
And I think that’s in major part because we’re allowed to name the canon we’re transforming, which is a huge difference between, you know, I guess the fundamental difference between fanfic and original fic. And because we begin with this common text, I think we can speak beyond that text and above that text and with more detail and nuance than the text itself, you know. All art speaks to other art, you know, there really is no such thing as originality, but I think we…with the way that we perceive intellectual property rights, we pigeonhole ourselves into believing that, that all creativity, like, happens in a vacuum, and we’re not allowed to own the idea of “well, I’m responding to Lord of the Rings,” you know. All we can say is “general fantasy universe.” But obviously it has derivations in Lord of the Rings and other fantasy predecessors!
But I think we open canon texts, books, movies, TV, with only—we have to have this kind of blank mind in that we’re going into it only with our understanding and expectations of the genre in which we’re reading or watching, you know. I start a sitcom and if I haven’t heard anything about it, all I can—my only impression of watching that sitcom is the other sitcoms I’ve watched. And that shapes my impression of what I’m about to see, but I can’t guarantee that that sitcom is responding to any other sitcom. However, in fanfiction, because we own that derivation, because like the first thing you see below the title is the fandom, readers come in already knowing the extent of the canon universe and everything it’s capable of. And therefore all fic, I think, exists in addition to the work of canon, and can find deeper and more interesting creative conclusions that way. I like to think of it as, you know, 2D animation versus motion capture or CGI. You know, both are great in terms of, you know, their medium, but the latter can render shapes that the former can’t because it’s in two dimensions.
On Twitter I’ve kind of changed my, my approach so that it’s not really—it’s kind of a half-fandom Twitter and a half-literary Twitter? Which is kind of a bad move on my part, but it’s too late to go back [laughs] and so I have, you know, this kind of divide of—I see all this fan content and I see all these literary writers talk about their work, and in some ways I feel bad for them, because they have no understanding—and by that I mean the literary writers—they have no understanding of fandom or the work of transformative art. I feel like in that way they’re limited in their understanding of what art can be when you let go of this idea of originality and take ownership of, of the idea of transformation, of saying “I am writing a response to this existing text.” And therefore you can come into this new text with everything you know of the other one, and it will shape your impression of the story and add more depth to it. It’s as if all these other writers, who work in originality and conventional notions of intellectual property rights, you know, they’re seeing art in greyscale, and fanfic writers like—OK, yeah, we can see grayscale too, but also we have the full spectrum of color available to us, and you don’t know that even exists, because people dismiss fanfiction as being…well, I’m preaching to the choir here. [laughs] They dismiss fanfiction, period!
So that’s all I think I had to say. Thank you so much for inviting me to speak and I hope you guys have another great year!
FK: Wow, this was, this was great. I really appreciate also that Betts was like, sort of started out about things that were happening in the past? And then was just like, “But, now let’s talk about fanfiction and literary fiction and the way people think about that and how you can free your mind,” and all right, Betts, we’re comin’ on this ride with you.
ELM: Full-on manifesto.
FK: Totally down with the ride!
ELM: I’m here, I’m here!
FK: This part was not new to this year, although thinking about it for Betts might—
ELM: I don’t think so!
FK: —that’s not new this year either! She thinks about this all the time!
ELM: No!
FK: So this part is just Betts coming in being like, “Here’s something that we did not ask for but that’s a beautiful gift.”
ELM: Very well-articulated. I do think we should talk more about this in the second half, I think that the observations about people’s longevity or lack thereof in fandoms, I think, is a good one. I haven’t observed this as new this past year, but I feel like it’s just been ramping up from year to year over the course of this podcast, at least I’ve observed that. I think it’s interesting. I think the way that AO3 works and the way that AO3 fosters this kind of thing is very interesting, the way that Tumblr fosters this is interesting.
FK: So it’s, it’s funny because I actually wouldn’t have said that I felt like it was ramping up further. I do think there was a period of acceleration around that...I mean, maybe it’s ramped up a little bit since Netflix started dropping, to Betts’s points, since Netflix started dropping stuff, but I guess maybe it’s because of the fandoms that I’ve been in, but it feels like a lot of—like, particularly because I’ve been so in Trek this year, and so I’m seeing a lot of other people who are also into Trek and have been into Trek for a long time, or are like—
ELM: So you’re saying you have big ol’ Trek blinkers on your face.
FK: Yeah, maybe it’s Trek blinkers, but I think there’s also stuff like that with Star Wars and with other things like that too, you know what I mean? It’s not just Trek. I think that there’s like, multiple things going on, multiple tendencies that are happening at the same time.
ELM: Yeah, I don’t know. You are not on Tumblr any more, but I would say on my Tumblr dash I follow several hundred people, most of whom I started following six, seven years ago? When we were all in different fandoms. And literally almost everyone is now in a different fandom than they were seven years ago, but I’ve noticed in the last year—if we’re just taking that for example—tons of them jumped on the Witcher train for, like, six weeks. And then that was it. They were writing fic for it…
FK: [laughs] That’s true.
ELM: And then they left. Right?
FK: Yeah.
ELM: Now I’ve seen a bunch of people writing Old Guard stuff. I don’t imagine that will last much longer than a couple of months, because it’s just one movie and I think people are enjoying it. And that’s not saying that some people who are into it right now won’t be in that fandom two years from now, but I think it’s a similar sort of thing…
FK: I’m not saying this doesn’t exist by any means, and I think that it is a trend, I just think that there may be like, multiple trends going on in different areas. Maybe it is a Tumblr thing—but I don’t know. I see some people like this on Twitter as well, which is now where I do most of my fandoming. I don’t know.
ELM: Yeah, I mean, Betts is mostly talking about content creators as well.
FK: Yeah.
ELM: Fanart and fanfiction creators.
FK: True, that’s true. That’s very true. That might be—that might be true overall if it’s specific to, you’re right. She’s specifically talking about content creators and that I think I buy more.
ELM: And obviously, like, I’m in a fandom that’s now almost 10 years old and there’s still a solid core of people who are continually writing stuff.
FK: [laughs] Yeah, it’s true. There you go.
ELM: I assume in the holiday exchange in a few months there will be a solid set of people who are gonna write great new fic, you know. So it’s not to say that everyone just every six weeks changes fandoms, writes one story and then joins a new fandom six weeks later, you know?
FK: Yeah, yeah yeah yeah.
ELM: But I definitely see a lot of that. So.
FK: Yeah. The fact that this is called out as a trend doesn’t mean that it’s the only thing that people do, but it is a trend. Yeah.
ELM: I know we were trying not to get too much into this, but I actually think this is a really—it’s really thought-provoking, because I think that Betts is right. I think there is for a lot of people, and it’s a habit that forms over time of a fannish lens, and it’s not necessarily…exactly what she’s saying. We were talking a lot about this this past year, saying “Oh, in the ’90s if you were online and you were in fandom, it was around a specific thing, you were in the blank fandom and you joined that mailing list, and maybe you made friends there and they turned you on to a new show and then you joined that fandom and you joined the other mailing lists,” you know? As opposed to the structures of AO3 and Tumblr, and to some extent Twitter, where you are your own person…
FK: Right.
ELM: And you might list your 19 fandoms, or you look at your AO3, you know, your works list and there’s, you know, you’ve written one story in 50 different fandoms.
FK: Totally.
ELM: I think that that is more about a way of looking at media than it is about any particular affect. Because I don’t think you can have—if you’re only into something for six weeks, I don’t think it’s the same kind of affect as being a Star Wars fan for 10 years. And acting like it’s your job to care about Star Wars content for 10 years. You know what I mean? That’s a different situation!
FK: I do.
ELM: Right? Like…
FK: I do, I do know.
ELM: And that’s not to say that one of them is a deeper feeling than other, but it’s just different!
FK: Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.
ELM: It’s interesting.
FK: All right. I agree. More on this later.
ELM: OK.
FK: Let’s listen to our, our final guest, which is Rainbow Rowell!
ELM: Rainbow!
FK: All right, so Rainbow came on, talked about her writing, her…
ELM: You gonna say who Rainbow is?
FK: Does she need introduction? Yes. Rainbow is the very popular YA novelist, author of Fangirl as well as, um…
ELM: Carry On.
FK: Oh God. Thank you! Thank you. [laughs] Carry On, Wayward Son…
ELM: Wayward Son.
FK: And has the third book in that trilogy coming out fairly soon.
ELM: And she is a somewhat famous fangirl herself.
FK: Indeed! So let’s listen.
Rainbow Rowell: So you guys asked me to think about how fandom has changed in the last year, and I was only really able to think about my personal relationship with fandom and how my fandom has changed.
As you know I don’t, very solitary, I don’t usually engage or get involved or make friends in fandom, so I have this like, one-on-one relationship with fic, mostly. And the thing that I’ve noticed—reading fanfiction has always been really comforting to me and my reaction to stress is often to disappear into a ship or disappear into a fandom and read a lot of fanfiction. And the thing I noticed when the pandemic started was how quickly I just leaned hard into reading fic. So I read a lot of Star Wars fic. I noticed that I didn’t even wanna read anything new. Like, at some point I was just so stressed out every day by the onslaught of information and bad news and just sort of information that I couldn’t really process, that I didn’t know what to do with, you know, or plan for, or cope with or that I couldn’t help. And what that made me want was just this, this extreme comfort.
So I really, for the past, you know, month or two, have been reading fic that I’ve read multiple times before. So not only am I taking comfort in reading fanfiction, I find that I only want the most comfortable fics, like, the fics that I know that I love about characters who I feel deeply invested in, where I kind of know what I’m—it’s almost like the world is so uncertain and so frightening that I can only handle fiction when I know where it’s headed. Where I know where it’s headed and I know, like, it’s…not a safe ride, because I don’t, like, I don’t necessarily just read happy stuff all the time. In fact, I don’t read happy stuff all the time. But I definitely have this feeling of not wanting to be surprised. The world is so surprising that I can’t really—that I need a place to go in my head that isn’t surprising, where I know—well, frankly where I know that people are gonna fall in love.
ELM: OK. So, I suggested we put this one last because there were things in every single comment that we got from our past guests that resonated with me, but this is the one that felt really current and present and somewhat unique to this year. And that’s not to say that, like, massive conversations around the uprisings around racial justice and Black Lives Matter is not extremely unique to this year because it is, obviously, at this scale, and every cultural effect that will come on from that, you know what I mean?
FK: Yeah, I do know what you mean. The, the—
ELM: But the like, the pandemic is like—this is fucking bizarre. Everything is super weird. This is like, we all wear masks all the time, you know? Like…
FK: Yes.
ELM: Aah! I don’t know! Like… [laughs]
FK: Racism has always been with us, but we did not always wear masks while protesting it? I don’t know. Yeah.
ELM: You know what I mean? I don’t want to say like “The pandemic’s the only thing that’s unusual about this year?” Because that’s not correct at all.
FK: That’s not true.
ELM: But…
FK: But.
ELM: Just the way that the pandemic has been so, like, brain—brain-breaking for so many people in different ways? You know, we talked a lot at the very start about some of the stuff that Rainbow was talking about, ideas about re-reading, you know, even if it’s re-reading sad stories, just knowing what’s gonna come next in the sadness as opposed to this big swirling amorphous existential crisis that we’re in, right? You know what I mean?
FK: Yeah, I do. I do.
ELM: You’re kind of looking into the middle distance right now.
FK: I am, because I’m feeling the existential crisis all around me as we talk about it.
ELM: Swirling.
FK: Like, yeah. It’s like—it also could just be the August humidity to be honest, it is fucking humid.
ELM: Wow, August just started, so buckle up.
FK: I know. Don’t remind me. OK. I think that we should talk about this, but I think that we should talk about it in the second half of our episode, because I think it’s all gonna have a lot of bearing on our years in fandom. So I think we should take a break.
ELM: OK.
FK: And come back.
ELM: All right, fine, let’s do it then.
FK: OK!
[Interstitial music]
FK: All right, we’re back from our break and before we get going about our year in fandom, you can guess what time it is: it’s the time that we tell you about our Patreon.
ELM: You said “you can guess what time it is,” and I had such a vivid, you know, vivid memory—it’s, “memory” isn’t even the right word, just trigger, of young gentlemen on the subway going “What time is it?!”
FK: [laughs] Showtime. Oh. Will there ever be showtime again? There will be showtime again. There’s already showtime happening right now in masks!
ELM: Let me tell you—have you seen any showtime?
FK: I haven’t seen any showtime because I haven’t been on the subway.
ELM: Oh really?
FK: But I’ve heard from people who have seen showtime.
ELM: OK, so I went up—in the end of June I went up to the Upper East Side to get a coronavirus test, which is a thrilling experience, and I was negative, in case you were wondering—I don’t know if you knew that.
FK: I did know that.
ELM: You did know that, actually, I told you.
FK: You told me like the instant the test came back, Elizabeth. [both laughing] You were very, very excited that it was negative.
ELM: Yeah, I was pleased, because I wanted to see my parents. And I was on the six train and it was quite crowded and I was actually really annoyed and I was like, “If I get coronavirus going to get the coronavirus test I’m gonna be pretty annoyed with myself and with the city of New York.” And then it’s already fairly crowded, like, people are standing so they don’t have to sit in every single seat, it’s the six train so it’s a tight one—you’re familiar with the seating on the six train.
FK: I am, I know about the six train.
ELM: The old six train, not the—you know like the one.
FK: Yeah, yeah yeah yeah.
ELM: You know what I mean. You know what I mean.
FK: I know what you mean.
ELM: And then this guy comes on with a freakin’ guitar, and he has a mask on, and he’s got like a headset microphone over his mask, and he comes on and he’s singing! And it’s like, “Get off! There’s no space for this here! Do this where you can distance in the station, why are you on the train right now? It’s not the time, I’m sorry sir, I’ll give you a dollar in the station.”
FK: Elizabeth?
ELM: I just think it’s too soon for busking on the train! There’s not enough space!
FK: I agree with you. Meanwhile, our busking is about to happen. Right now. This is the part of the, this is the part of the episode where we busk. Where I tell you…
ELM: Good transition! OK.
FK: Although we have now received one ad [laughing] we are almost entirely funded by listeners like you, and the way to do that is to support us on patreon.com/fansplaining so we can keep making more years of Fansplaining like the past five, but better.
ELM: I’m gonna object. This isn’t busking…
FK: Oh my God, Elizabeth, I was trying—
ELM: On the six train—I know, but we are so distanced from the listeners!
FK: Elizabeth…
ELM: We’re not just strumming up in their faces.
FK: I, I want to consciously uncouple from this metaphor. [both laughing]
ELM: You, you started this metaphor! I was telling an anecdote and you turned it into a metaphor.
FK: [sighs] I want to not have showtime be a thing that we’re discussing right now.
ELM: It was kind of more an analogy.
FK: I don’t care what it was, I want it off my episode! [laughing] Just like you want the guitar dude off your fucking subway.
ELM: You brought it up again! You brought it up again! It’s like you don’t wanna let it go!
FK: I’m extending it on purpose now. OK. So. The other ways that you can support us are by subscribing with a podcatcher—that helps us out a lot. You can also support us—
ELM: [laughing] Go back. You barely talked about Patreon!
FK: I’m just trying to power through!
ELM: You just said it existed! Say more!
FK: Patreon exists…we have lots of great bonuses for people who support us on Patreon, including lots of special episodes. Those are great and don’t require you receiving any mail, in case you’re still worried about mail in the time of COVID. Yeah! Support us on Patreon.
ELM: Good sell.
FK: OK. And, also follow us on your podcatcher. And, if you don’t wanna do those things, you can also still help out by spreading the news about Fansplaining, or by sending us a question or, you know, a comment or whatever, fansplaining at gmail dot com, fansplaining on basically every social network—but not TikTok cause so many reasons…
ELM: What? Why would you even bring that up, are you trying to make this political?
FK: [laughs] You can call us at 1-401-526-FANS… TikTok was just on my mind because of, you know!
ELM: Don’t contact us on Reddit!
FK: Yeah, that’s true. We don’t have a Reddit—do we have a Reddit? No. We have individual Reddit accounts but not a collective one. And I don’t even remember mine, so.
ELM: I don’t think we do, but don’t. I’m just naming more social networks.
FK: OK great. Anyway, I think that that concludes the apparently-not-busking, but anyway, asking people for money and/or help portion of this podcast.
ELM: You know, all right. [FK laughing] For an anniversary episode that was the most shambolic money segment we’ve ever done.
FK: You know, we both helped. We both helped to achieve this shambolicness.
ELM: Yeah, but like, you didn’t fix it. You came in like, acting like you were gonna fix it, and then…
FK: Nope, nope, nope.
ELM: You just kept hitting it with a hammer and it’s like, it’s already broken and you were like “Maybe I could put some more holes in it though!”
FK: But I didn’t break it—[through laughter] I just, for some reason this just reminds me of this prop auction, which our friend Sacha sent me to after I posted the rotting Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles prop thing that you shared with me that was really horrible and gave me nightmares…you personally.
ELM: I didn’t share it, Gavia Baker-Whitelaw put it in “The Rec Center,” I didn’t even look at it I just clicked to make sure the link was working.
FK: It’s horrible. Anyway, in the same prop auction apparently somebody is selling Taylor Lautner’s jorts from the second Twilight movie, that he like werewolfed into, but they’re not even jorts anymore, they’re just like a pile of shredded rags? And I just, that’s—
ELM: Are you gonna buy them?
FK: No!
ELM: I’ve gotta tell you, I gotta tell you Flourish: I’m currently at my parents’ house visiting them, and their next-door neighbors? One of the sons of the family—truly awful family—he played, what’s his name? Jacob?
FK: Jacob.
ELM: In, I believe it was the Not Another Teen Movie?
FK: Oh my God.
ELM: You know, like—you know like that parody franchise, right? Not Another… was it…
FK: I do, I do!
ELM: Like Scary Movie, right, that franchise.
FK: Yeah!
ELM: There was a teen one where they did Twilight, and he played the Taylor Lautner character. Which, I mean, he is—
FK: So I should buy the jorts and give them to him.
ELM: Yeah, I mean, I think that’d be fine. I was in a play with him when we were in like fifth grade at the public library.
FK: Your brush with fame.
ELM: I don’t think that playing the parody Jacob… [FK laughs] He was also on Gossip Girl, though, so actually that’s pretty good.
FK: Yeah, that’s fame!
ELM: He may have been in other things since then. I haven’t looked at his IMDB recently and actually I don’t want to engage with him in any way because, you know. You know.
FK: Sure.
ELM: You know!
FK: I, I, I do know. OK. We should get to the part of the episode where we talk about our year in fandom.
ELM: All right.
FK: So what’s changed? What have you observed that has changed in fandom?
ELM: Literally everything has changed.
FK: Over the past year. Since last August.
ELM: Everything has changed.
FK: Everything really kinda has changed. But not in—I don’t know. In fandom has everything changed?
ELM: Yes.
FK: Everything around fandom, everything else has changed.
ELM: OK, so a few things that I think are pretty significant. One is like, what the fuck is going on in Hollywood.
FK: What part?
ELM: There’s this pandemic.
FK: Yeah! I mean…I can answer that, which is that nobody can shoot anything.
ELM: Right.
FK: And can’t do a lot of visual effects, if you’re being remotely reasonable, because you know, it’s probably better to not make people go in to work in Los Angeles, which is a hot spot, and you can’t do visual effects on like your home computer, so…those are also stalled.
ELM: Right, and obviously there’s this, you know, there is a lot of jockeying and uncertainty around even things that are mostly done.
FK: Oh yeah!
ELM: And I think one of the most interesting things we’ve observed in the last decade on the film side in franchise media—and I’m sure you have some feelings about this, this is literally your job—is the kind of, the televisionification, the serialization of these franchises.
FK: Yup.
ELM: And obviously Marvel is the best at this, right, but kind of creating a calendar, creating a rhythm, giving fans things to look forward to, right?
FK: Yeah, and that’s all just had a giant torpedo blown into it.
ELM: Just fucked. Right?
FK: Just fucked.
ELM: And so on one side you’re like “fans don’t care,” but fans do care. Like, fans—there’s no more immediate Star Wars movies coming out, but like, Star Wars fans, deep in it Star Wars fans, had those December release dates for the three movies on their calendars from the second they were announced, right? You know? Like…
FK: Yep, absolutely. Yeah, and it’s also just a situation—movies in particular, like, TV and so on obviously is impacted by the shooting and the VFX stuff, the fact that you can’t actually get together and film things, but with films there’s not even anyplace to release them.
ELM: Right.
FK: And I mean obviously—the thing that I am incredibly tired of hearing people say, like, “Just put it on streaming! Just put it on streaming!” Like…
ELM: Sure, why don’t you just take a massive loss just so a couple people can watch it!
FK: That’s not how that’s gonna work.
ELM: The thing I don’t understand about people saying this, it’s like first of all, several—several. Some people on my feed who say this should know better. Because they perhaps study media or whatever, maybe they’re journalists. So obviously there are clear economic reasons why they wouldn’t do that, but from a viewer perspective, it’s bonkers to me in the same way that like—once every four days, someone on NPR says “We’re all so bored right now, we’re just looking for things to do,” and I go, “Who the fuck?” Like, are you, do you not have enough work, host at an NPR show that I’m sure is very busy?! Like—that’s, how many articles do I have to read about, like, women having to quit their jobs to take care of their kids, you know what I mean? Like…
FK: Not bored!
ELM: Who’s bored? I’m sorry! And like, I don’t know, like, are you bored enough that you wanna pay $20 to watch a Christopher Nolan film in your own home, when he could just wait to show it in the theater in like a year or whatever?
FK: Particularly for films that like, are gonna be much better in a theater.
ELM: Yeah!
FK: I like watching, like—I have a very thought-through home film watching setup, and I much prefer going to a theater, especially the first time, for like, a Christopher Nolan film! Wouldn’t you?
ELM: Sure would!
FK: For most of these, for most big summer movies, too, right? Do you think that you really get as much enjoyment from that movie, from that big summer blockbuster, if you’re like watching it on your TV, your home TV screen, as you would if you had like a giant tub of popcorn and like, were being blasted by the 4DX like, scent-o-vision? No, you do not enjoy it as much as you would.
ELM: I miss it. Yeah, I was just talking about this with—my favorite person to go see blockbusters with is Morgan Davies, who’s been on this podcast before, who’s Gav’s podcasting co-host. We both want blockbusters to be better than they are, usually. Like, we’re not like—I hate the like, A. O. Scott, like, “Well, this is a good as this kind of thing could ever be,” and I’m like, no! There’s so many decisions that could have made this script not like this, right? That’s such a patronizing thing that these, like, these film critics will do, right?
FK: To say—yes. For sure.
ELM: But then like, you go, and there’s only one other choice, which is “Why can’t people just enjoy things?” It’s like, I can also have a critical thought about a fun movie, right? There’s a space—! Anyway.
So I go to see these things with Morgan and I think we’re cursed because we just, we wind up seeing—I’ve seen a few good blockbusters, and it’s like accidentally been with someone else, right? I think it’s when you put the two of us in one space together, we retroactively turn the movie awful. But I will just, I will be watching and I’ll be like “this is a mess” and I will just feel Morgan’s psychic energy and I’ll look over and she’s just glaring at the screen. [FK laughs] And I miss that! I miss that, I miss paying $20 and feeling vaguely resentful…
FK: To glare at—yeah.
ELM: I’m just feeling cheated out of my $20, I’m like “I didn’t want this, this is three hours of my life I’ll never get back and I had to spend this money, and I’m here with someone else who’s mad about it,” I miss that.
FK: I like how my feelings about missing the movies are about, like, the fun of smell-o-vision and seeing Christopher Nolan’s beautiful cinematography on a large screen, and you’re like “I miss resenting them.” [laughs]
ELM: I mean…
FK: But it is, but it is, to get back to the point though, I think you’re really right to point out that, that it is different to have fandom without those rhythms, without the rhythms of the big blockbusters and so on. Like, even if you’re not yourself in a fandom that is like that, right? Like, I don’t know. I can, I can feel it. Even though I’m not in any of those fandoms.
ELM: I think that Betts’s comment, I think that you know, thinking about that—that part of her message, the pandemic accelerates the destabilization of this kind of idea that you might wanna spend more than two months in a fandom. Right? You know, like, because—if you can’t even say, you know… When I think about—even though I don’t ever want to think about it—when I think about the Harry Potter release schedule, right, like…and there was that long gap, right? But like, you know, with the last three coming out every two years, and having that date on the calendar, and the anticipation leading up to it, and the kind of rhythm of the several months after trying to process everything…
FK: Yup.
ELM: Right? And then creating the fanworks after that, and that high and low and up and down…it was so big, and it was so important to what being a fan was at that time. Like, I don’t think even the most transformative transformative fan still probably measured their Harry Potter life around those books, the up and down of those books coming out and then the lulls, you know what I mean?
FK: Yeah, I do, I do.
ELM: That’s not to say, tons of fandom stuff isn’t like that. I find continued inspiration and opportunities for creativity in my fandom and there are not gonna be any more movies in this iteration of it.
FK: Right. This is all making me feel a little guilty that with Star Trek being my current primary fandom, I’m gettin’, I’m gettin’ fed in this pandemic. It’s great.
ELM: You know, one of the most important developments of the past year—
FK: Has been my—
ELM: No.
FK: That you watched Star Trek and decided you’re never gonna get in on my— [laughing]
ELM: I’m visiting my parents for a few weeks and we all, I love the ’60s, right? Like, I’m very interested in them.
FK: Yeah.
ELM: And my par And so we were like “What should we watch?” And then we were like, “Maybe we should try to watch Star Trek, like, the original series!” And so we watched the first two episodes. God. We had the novelty of like, “Oh, the buttons! Oh, look at those skirts,” right, “Look at the ’60s, ha ha ha!” Right? Like, you know.
FK: Yeah!
ELM: And then…they were not very good. And I said to you, [FK laughing] I’m sorry, you were like, floored, and you were like “Those aren’t the good ones, you need to watch the good ones.” So then we watched…
FK: And then I admitted…yeah, OK.
ELM: Sorry, what did you admit? What was that?
FK: And then I admitted that perhaps my love for them doesn’t have as much to do with anything about quality of those particular episodes…
ELM: That’s fine. [FK laughing] I have no problem with that! I love fandom!
FK: …as much as the entire structure built around it…
ELM: It’s just, I don’t have any affect for this, and…I don’t know, they’re interesting. So then we watched the mirror, the mirrorverse one. And I understand it as foundational in terms of tropes, but like, also did not love my experience. And then after that I was like, my mother and I were just like…
FK: You didn’t even make it, you didn’t make it to “Amok Time.” I do feel like sometime I’m gonna make you watch that one. You don’t have to watch anything else, but you do have to watch “Amok Time” someday.
ELM: I just, I’m sorry. Like, I don’t know.
FK: I mean, I—I respect your reaction to this, because I too, I will admit, did not love them all when I first watched them. In fact, I did not love them at all when I first watched them. And I, possibly it was like a frog in boiling water, discovering that I loved them after all. [laughs] But anyway no. I respect this reaction. This was truly one of the big developments, is that we discovered that you’re never gonna join me in this fandom.
ELM: Which I don’t think was really much of a development. I think we already knew that. [FK laughs] But you know, it’s good to actually try stuff out, before you, you know. I’m a vegetarian, but I became one when I was 12, like, I had 12 years of being like, “I don’t enjoy eating meat. I don’t like it. I think it’s gross.” Right? So it’s just like that.
FK: Totally.
ELM: It’s just like vegetarianism.
FK: [laughing] Uh, OK. I’ll let you, I’ll let you have that. I’ll let you have that one.
ELM: Anyway, this is a little far afield. I’m sorry I took us down this path from, uh.
FK: That’s OK. I can bring us back some.
ELM: Go ahead.
FK: Try and bring us back.
ELM: Well you were saying that you were like “Ah, I got so much Star Trek! I don’t know what it’s like to be COVID-denied!” It’s like, yeah, whatever. My fandom is complete, they made the movies nine years ago, like…
FK: I was gonna say, you don’t know what it’s like to be COVID-denied either, because you were already denied!
ELM: I’m not denied! I don’t need that. Like, you know? Like—me waxing poetic about the rhythms of the Harry Potter whatever, like, I was just thinking about that today when I was thinking about this episode. I’m working on a fic. So for me, unlike Rainbow, I haven’t really been able to read very much fic, even stuff that I’ve read before. And I’ve tried. I’m just having a really hard time focusing while reading. And in turn, a lot of trouble focusing on writing. But about a month ago, maybe mid- to late-June, that started to shift, and I’ve probably written like…I don’t know, 15,000 words of fic in the last month?
FK: Oh wow!
ELM: Which, yeah! No, I mean like, it’s pretty legit!
FK: Yeah, that’s legit!
ELM: Femslash!
FK: Ooooh! [ELM laughs] I know. I’m excited for it. I know about this fic, because you’ve been asking me things about it.
ELM: Right right right! I finished, I finished that section. Yeah, I, it’s been interesting, and I haven’t found it—writing it feels a lot like writing did six months ago or…six months ago was when the pandemic started. But you know, in January or last November, whenever, when I was working on the last fics that I was writing. It feels like that, it feels no different to me and that feels very strange. Because like, I tried to write in like May, and it was literally like pulling teeth. I was, I would write like three words and I’d be like, “I don’t, what are words?!” You know? And like, I don’t really understand what’s going on inside my brain and you know, why some things feel so hard and insurmountable and then so easy when I still feel an extraordinary amount of, like—all my feelings about the pandemic aren’t significantly different than they were two months ago, you know? It’s bad! Don’t like it!
FK: I really do. And it’s funny because it does not hit everybody the same way. I still can’t write. At all. Like…
ELM: Oh, zero words? Have you tried?
FK: I have struggled. Yes, I’ve tried. I’ve struggled, I can’t do it. Fanfic in particular. I have been able to write sermons, but those have also been harder than usual. Like, I, you know. And by comparison I can read just fine. And it hasn’t been fic lately, it’s been other stuff, but in a similar sort of comfort reading kind of way.
ELM: Yeah.
FK: I think that if I had an active ship right now, it would be fic.
ELM: Right, right.
FK: Like something, a ship I was really really passionate about as opposed to like a fandom that I, that is not like shipping-focused for me. And I mean I’ve read some fics, there was that period where I read like a bunch of Sherlock fics for some reason.
ELM: That was very strange.
FK: You know and you were like “What? Sherlock A/B/O suddenly?” I don’t know, I picked it up and it was good and I kept reading. It wasn’t all good. Anyway I kept reading. But so, yeah, I don’t know. It’s interesting. You’ve got the writing part and I’ve got the reading part and together we make one complete fan person!
ELM: Sure, that’s great. The only two activities fans do: reading and writing.
FK: [laughing] According to you!
ELM: Why do other behaviors?
FK: All right. Well.
ELM: Yeah.
FK: I don’t know. I’m not sure what else to say about all of this. I don’t want to suggest that like—it’s not like there haven’t always been big things happening in the world, but I don’t think I’m the only person to say that it feels like everything has accelerated and that this year is just like, many things all happening at once. So it’s really hard to…
ELM: Oh Flourish, are you gonna be like one of those tweets of like, “It’s like Spanish flu and the Great Depression and…”
FK: No, no no. But I am gonna say that I think it’s hard to like, on the one hand it feels like fandom is sort of…it just makes it hard for me to say, to feel like I know what’s a real trend within fandom versus what’s just like, the whole world is weird right now and so everything is impacted by it. Whereas in previous years I feel like sometimes I’ve been able to be like—and you’ve been able to be like— “Yeah! Here’s a trend that we see continuing,” you know what I mean, whereas now it’s like “Agh! Things happened and now things are different! Are they? I don’t know! Ack!”
ELM: Yeah, no, I think it’s really hard. Because I also think that a lot of people are really on edge, and…
FK: That’s definitely true.
ELM: Yeah. Don’t have a lot of patience. Not that I think people in fandom had a lot of patience a year ago, you know. But I don’t think it helps!
FK: No.
ELM: And I do think that when it comes to political discussions around media, particularly when we’re talking about race this summer, I think there is a justified undercurrent of like, “Can we fucking fix this?” You know, like, “if not now, when” kind of vibe to it.
FK: Yeah, I agree.
ELM: That, that makes the stakes feel a little higher and makes people’s failures feel more disappointing. It’s like, you can’t even do it now in the month where everyone is trying to pretend to be not racist? Like…you know. And I’m not just talking about the OTW stuff, though obviously that is in my mind right now.
FK: Yeah, but there’s a lot of examples.
ELM: Yeah!
FK: You don’t have to pick just one!
ELM: Right, right. And both the kind of two sides of the coin of Pam and Keidra’s commentary, talking about like, hopeful signs of people actually committing to change, you know. It’s interesting, today I saw someone retweeted onto my feed—Ryan Reynolds is starting this program on his next movie, if they actually film it which seems unlikely—he said this fall. And it’s like “All right, good luck to you.” Maybe somewhere else? Maybe he’s filming it in Europe where they didn’t refuse to…
FK: Yeah, I believe that there are places that—I mean there are places that are already starting filming. Filming is happening in New Zealand right now.
ELM: Right. I don’t think it was in New Zealand, but.
FK: No, but I predict there’s gonna be more places that open. There’s a big, you know, there’s a big incentive because film obviously brings a lot of money to an economy and an area and they’re all looking for someplace to go, so.
ELM: Yeah, but Flourish, why don’t you just say it’s OK? That’s the American way!
FK: Oh God.
ELM: Just say it’s fine and do it and see what happens! Just cross your fingers.
FK: You know…
ELM: Anyway, it was Ryan Reynolds and he said he was starting this program where he was gonna pay out of his salary on the film 10 to 20 people from marginalized backgrounds as like a training course, basically. And he did it in a nice kinda casual like, he was like “I really hope other people should join me in doing this.”
FK: Yeah.
ELM: And it was just like, the person who retweeted it on my feed was like “This is great, but it’s really ridiculous that an individual actor has to do this.” And the studios can’t actually commit in a really serious, substantive way, instead of continually recycling the same things about how they wish there was more diversity.
FK: Yeah.
ELM: At some point you really have to just start building the pipeline actively and explicitly as opposed to just scratching your head and saying “Well, there’s no one who can do the big job,” you know what I mean? So it’s like, I don’t know. It’s interesting to see that even in this moment there’s, there’s really clear paths to how you can signal that you’re—I mean there’s ways to signal that you’re creating paths, basically, and it doesn’t seem like the entertainment industry has been particularly interested in doing that.
FK: Yeah, I mean… [sighs] I don’t know.
ELM: Is that too cynical a read?
FK: I mean, I think that—I’m sure there’s some people who aren’t interested in doing it. I think that there’s also like—I think it’s just been an extremely complicated time. I’ve seen a lot of things happening behind the scenes in places that I think are positive that have not been shared with the public because, like, sometimes the things that need to be fixed are not the things that look shiny?
ELM: Sure.
FK: That’s not to say that people are doing great, but I also think that, yeah, with the pandemic that is an extra complicating factor where like, something that I have observed is that just like women aren’t necessarily going to be the people who are going to advocate for other women if they feel anxious about their own job…
ELM: Sure, sure.
FK: Right? Like, this is something that is currently affecting everybody in the industry who is a person of color, who is a woman, who is of any marginalized background. So I think that it’s a really complicated issue there. And I think that—I mean I think that it’s more complicated than some of the stuff that’s happening within fandom…I don’t know, maybe “more complicated” is the wrong word to use.
ELM: No no, I think that’s true. I mean I think you’re seeing that in the media right now. You can’t say “Well, you should be hiring this type of person” when they literally just fired half your staff. Because no one’s being hired.
FK: Yep.
ELM: In fact people are being negative-hired.
FK: Exactly. So yeah, it’s...it’s rough. But “rough” isn’t, you know, I’m not trying to give anyone a pass by saying this, I’m just trying to be like [strangled noise], you know? [laughs]
ELM: Right, right.
FK: I don’t know. But, but in the fandom space I think that there is some of this also. It’s a mix. Everything is really hard right now on every level. I hope that what we’re seeing is sort of going to be—I hope that what’s happening right now is gonna be a little bit of a reset button. I don’t have any faith that it will be, but I kind of wonder if like, you know? When there’s like a crisis, you sort of hope that the thing that happens after that is something thoughtful and good and—it’s not gonna be any of those things.
ELM: Yeah, I don’t know why you would think that would happen, but.
FK: All right. Well, this is a really depressing note to end on. Elizabeth, let me come up with something that’s gonna be less depressing. What is the thing that is bringing you, has brought you or is bringing you joy in fandom in this past year?
ELM: Jesus Christ.
FK: Your personal fandoms, also! It could literally be, like, Fassbender’s butt.
ELM: [laughs] Uh…
FK: It sounds like Fassbender’s butt might be the answer!
ELM: Well, in fact we saw him clench that clench more than a year ago. It wasn’t in the last 12 months, I’m sorry to say that was 14 months ago.
FK: Wow.
ELM: I know! It feels like it was only yesterday when we were in a movie theater getting sprayed with the pine mist of Genosha while he clenched and clenched and clenched. [FK laughing] Um, oh! Well I mean this is very shallow, but I did get to go to—speaking of the other half of my ship, I did get to go to London, my last trip. Which I had—I had been like between gigs, and I was like “Is this a terrible idea?” in January. Like, “Should I go on a trip when I’m not 100% sure about my next project?”
FK: Yeah.
ELM: Fiscally. And then I was like “No, fucking seize the day, because I want to see James MacAvoy in a play!”
FK: And he’s great and you had great joy.
ELM: In fact I had a professional reason to go, basically, but it was like, you know. And so I got to see James MacAvoy in a play, and then like a month later like, there was no more crossing borders. So I really, I guess my, the moral of the story is if you are wondering if you just should do something, but it seems foolish, you should just do it! Unless…
FK: Unless it’s walking around without a mask. [laughs]
ELM: Yeah, unless it’s like, going to, I don’t know. I was gonna say Buffalo Wild Wings, but I actually think that evoking fast casual dining in these examples is quite classist.
FK: I agree.
ELM: Your local… [laughs] brewpub.
FK: Fancy brunch spot.
ELM: I will say I’m in upstate New York in my hometown and I have been to restaurants twice.
FK: Great.
ELM: I don’t know, it was OK.
FK: Yeah!
ELM: It was a little weird.
FK: Yeah.
ELM: Out in the street, right in the middle. Felt like I was in the intersection!
FK: Yeah!
ELM: Have you been to any restaurants?
FK: Yes.
ELM: Oh you have?
FK: I have!
ELM: How many? I have mostly, I have generally restrained myself to—I think once I went someplace with table service but mostly I have been restraining myself to places with like a walk-up window, you know? Which like, reduces the amount that you are interacting with somebody? But yeah. It’s fine. I don’t go during big hours and only at places that seem like they’re actually taking social distancing seriously. Of which there are many that are not.
ELM: Yeah, you know what my favorite was? It was called like “Secret, Secret Eyes Gentleman’s Club” or something, Secret Somethings.
FK: Secret Tits? [ELM laughs] It was a gentlemen’s club, I don’t know.
ELM: It was in Nassau County in Long Island and [laughs] which, I mean, you already have a picture then if you know Nassau County as I do. And I read the, I read the article about how the state like, suspended their liquor license, right? And apparently they were doing no distancing and like, the dancers were like, giving lapdances and dancing together on the pole and stuff without masks. And [laughs] the owner claimed he had no idea any of that was happening. He was like, “I thought they were distancing.” Then the article was like, “But in fact, they had video footage of him bragging to the undercover investigators that he was getting away with not doing social distancing”! [laughing] And I was like, man, this shit is—this is ripe for a movie, you know? The gentleman’s club on Long Island, the undercover sting.
FK: So that’s what’s been bringing you pleasure. [both laugh] All right.
ELM: No no no, my serious answer isn’t James MacAvoy and his strong Scottish accent, what has brought me pleasure is I have written a lot of fanfiction in the last year. I’ve probably written like 125,000 words, I wanna say? Maybe that’s not a lot for some people, but that’s a lot for me. And it’s been very, like, being able to get back to writing it has been very reassuring to me, because it’s something I just truly enjoy. And there’s something very rhythmical—huh, “rhythmical.” Something very rhythmic about it, and it’s really nice to be able to just produce something and not feel like, you know, all the things everyone always says about fic, like, it’s nice to be able to produce something without all the pressures of doing X, Y and Z with it, but it feels much stronger to me now than it even did this time last year. This kind of idea of like, I can just write it for the sake of writing it, and it’s not for the sake of publishing it, it’s just the act of writing. That’s been really valuable to me, and I think there’s something specific about the context in which I’m writing this that’s making me feel that way. That it could be something for me, you know what I mean?
FK: Yeah, completely!
ELM: That’s the serious answer.
FK: It’s funny, because you’ve leaned more into the—yeah, we’ve both leaned into different things because the thing I was gonna say is that I finally think that I fully understand, like, the pleasure of collecting things? Which I have never been a big collector in my life.
ELM: What are you collecting?
FK: Star Trek novels.
ELM: Novels count as collecting?
FK: It’s kind of collecting in this case because I have this database I’m keeping of not just all the novels but also all the books that have been published, which is like, thousands. You know?
ELM: God, Flourish.
FK: The thing that I’ve been enjoying about it is specifically that, so this is something that there doesn’t exist, as far as I know, a list of actually every officially licensed Star Trek book that has been published. You can’t just download a list of all of them. It doesn’t exist. Memory Alpha probably has record of all of them existing, but you can’t just find a single list of them. And so it’s like on the one hand, this is a completely solvable and knowable problem—I can encompass it. Unlike everything else in the world, this I can know. [laughs] But it does require some work, you know, to know and encompass it. So it’s like, this very like, comforting thing to be working on.
ELM: It’s real, real affirmational fandom. That’s fascinating to me.
FK: It’s real affirmational fan! And I, it’s funny, I’ve never—I mean I’ve had plenty of affirmational fan feelings in my life, but I don’t think I’ve ever so fully leaned, I’ve never had a period that was as affirmational as this is.
ELM: It’s that kind of idea that like, if you can log all the things in this category, you’re gonna be in control of it, right? Like, you will be in control of that knowledge.
FK: It’s completely that. It totally, and it, right now the reason I’m doing it is because it feels like the only thing that’s simultaneously big enough to feel like a challenge but small enough that I can actually control it, you know? [laughing] In this whole scary world. So I apologize if I ever made fun of anybody for having that feeling because now I have it and I don’t love that? But I do get comfort from it. So.
ELM: Cool, that’s great.
FK: Yeah!
ELM: Did you see any beloved Scottish actors on your last-minute trip to a foreign country before they shut the borders?
FK: I didn’t, and I didn’t even buy any Star Trek novels on my last—my last trip really was moments before they shut the borders, too, and you know it.
ELM: Yeah, you really cut it close.
FK: I really cut it close, but I didn’t even get any Star Trek novels when I was in Norway.
ELM: Was that something that you would’ve done normally?
FK: Usually when I travel I pick up Star Trek novels wherever I am.
ELM: Interesting.
FK: Because they’re always in—that’s one of the things that’s fun about them! They’re in used bookstores and you can almost always find one you don’t have. Little used bookstores in any city, you can just go in and you can buy one for 99 cents.
ELM: Flourish, you know that the first boy that I kissed, that I “dated,” quote-unquote dated when we were 12, you know this, right? The first movie we went to was—
FK: Yes, I do.
ELM: First Contact.
FK: I know that.
ELM: But you know what I gave him for Valentine’s Day?
FK: What?
ELM: A Star Trek novel.
FK: I feel so close to you right now, Elizabeth.
ELM: You should feel close to him. David. I went to the Waldenbooks—
FK: Elizabeth.
ELM: It was off the food court.
FK: Elizabeth!
ELM: And I picked one out at random and gave it to him.
FK: Wow. That was both a very thoughtful and a very not-thoughtful gift, and I appreciate…
ELM: What, am I gonna research? There was no internet then! What was I gonna—
FK: Fair enough, fair enough.
ELM: I mean, there was an internet but I didn’t really have access to it. So what was I gonna do, like, you think the guy at Waldenbooks had an encyclopedic knowledge of the Star Trek novels? There were like literally hundreds of them!
FK: Yeah, there were.
ELM: You can imagine. You can smell it, right? Smell a Waldenbooks? Like, you can imagine that. Did you have Waldenbooks?
FK: We did have Waldenbooks, but we are totally out of time right now. [ELM laughs] So we’re not gonna go down this particular, like—
ELM: I wanna reminisce!
FK: “Do you remember what the before world smelled like.”
ELM: There was a Jamba Juice.
FK: Oh, yeah, I remember, do you remember when Jamba—no. I’m not! I’m not gonna get sucked into this mall—Elizabeth, it has been wonderful talking to you. I’m gonna talk to you later.
ELM: OK happy anniversary Flourish!
FK: Happy anniversary, Elizabeth!
[Outro music, thank yous and credits]