Episode 135A: Race and Fandom Revisited: Part 1

 
 
The cover of Episode 135A, featuring images of John Boyega, BTS, Riri Williams, and the family from Blackish.

Four years after the original “Race and Fandom” double episode, Flourish and Elizabeth return to the topic with a mix of old contributors and new voices. In the first installment, they interview Sunny Liu and Paracelsus Caspari, and they hear clips from Dr. Rukmini Pande, The Navy Language, Holly Quinn, PJ Punla, Roz, and Clio. Topics covered include the way Western fans engage with Asian media, fans’ prioritization of white characters over characters of color, and the experiences of Black fans who speak out about racism.

 

Show Notes

[00:00:00] As always, our intro music is “Awel” by stefsax, used under a CC BY 3.0 license. The cover, from the upper left, features John Boyega on the red carpet, the Johnson family from Black-ish, BTS, and Riri Williams, aka Ironheart. The image of John Boyega is from DFree/Shutterstock.com. 

[00:01:19] Our previous Race and Fandom episodes were 22A and 22B.

[00:06:07] Dr. Rukmini Pande is @rukminipande on Twitter. She first came on Fansplaining for the original “Race and Fandom” episodes, but we also talked to her in Episode 29 “Shipping and Activism” and Episode 89 “Rukmini Pande.”

[00:10:15] TheNavyLanguage is @thenavylanguage on Tumblr.

[00:13:30] Sunny Liu is @AReturnToForm on Twitter.

Some Untamed flute-playing

[00:18:32]  For further reading, Sunny recommends: 

[00:29:47] Holly Quinn is @diversehighfantasy on Tumblr.

[00:32:32] Our interstitial music is “Snakes” from Music for Podcasts 2 by Lee Rosevere, used under a CC BY 3.0 license.

[00:34:10] PJ Punla is @ninemoons42 on Twitter and also @ninemoons42 on Tumblr.

BTS bein’ BTS

[00:38:21] Paracelsus Caspari is @paracelsus on Twitter.

[00:43:38] The Reylo pro gamer AU is “Play to Win” by Enterprisingly.

[01:05:19] Roz is @rozfost on Twitter and @rozf on Tumblr.

A gif from Blackish: “Devante, you’re my only son.”

[01:07:50] Clio’s fic is on the AO3.

Transcript

Flourish Klink: Hi, Elizabeth!

Elizabeth Minkel: Hi, Flourish!

FK: And welcome to Fansplaining, the podcast by, for, and about fandom!

ELM: OK. All right. This is Episode 135A, “Race and Fandom Revisited: Part 1.” 

FK: The A, the 1, they’re just—I know that we have to do it this way, but it is, it is bothering me.

ELM: Two different pieces of data. [FK sighs] Episode number, we need a way to differentiate between this episode and the second half, because this is a two-part episode if you didn’t get it from the A and the B, the 1 and the 2 in the title.

FK: All right, so this is a follow-on to our original “Race and Fandom” episodes, which we did four years ago, and have the same unusual-to-Fansplaining format, where we invite on a bunch of people of color within fandom to talk about race in fandom. And four years ago we were doing this in response to controversy around racism in Star Wars fandom, and you know, one of the ideas basically was to elevate the voices of people of color and not have, you know, two white people talkin’ about this all the time. And it’s been a long time since then, and a lot of stuff has changed, so we really wanted to check back in with some of the people we had on the podcast back then, and also invite some new voices to, to lend more thoughts.

ELM: Yeah, and this has been in the mix, like, of our ideas, of something that we wanted to come back to, for quite some time now. I think that—you know, obviously we’ve had guests of color since then who have talked about race and fandom, but like you’re saying, one unique thing about this episode—about these episodes—is the kind of multiplicity of perspectives that we get. And it does make me think sometimes, could we do this for like, a different topic, where we just get 15 people to come in here and talk about whatever? Maybe!

But we were talking about doing this last year at some point, and this is the time that we came to do it, and I think it’s worth noting that like, general context of the world underpins all these conversations, and obviously the events of the last few months, I think, are an extremely heightened foundation under which these conversations are being had, and fandom is not disconnected from the real world and vice versa. And so I think that it’s, it’s certainly an interesting time to hear from everyone. Obviously an extremely fraught time. But I’m glad that everyone was able to take some time to talk with us or to send in their thoughts.

But fandom specifically, we should say, there are a number of themes that I suspected would come up. One is, I think we’ve seen a huge increase in Western fans coming into specific Asian fan spaces, whether it’s K-pop or Chinese dramas, I think we’ve seen a really big explosion of that since our last episode.

FK: Yeah, absolutely. Obviously it’s not like it’s a new thing that Western fans are enjoying Asian media, but it feels like there’s a new wave going on.

ELM: Yeah, and different kinds of media, right. There’s a big difference I think between—whatever, our guests will get into this I’m sure, but like, you know, different patterns throughout different kinds of media coming from different countries in Asia and different kinds of Western fans engaging with them. You know, and the context matters, right? And again, the broader context of the world matters in terms of our relationships and access to other parts of the world right now.

FK: Yeah, and there’s been a ton about that too. I mean just one example—the, around the time that Black Lives Matter, all the protests were going on in the United States at their very height—not that they’re not going on now, still, they absolutely are. But there was a lot of discussion of the Organization for Transformative Works, which runs the Archive of Our Own, and their response to that, and their response overall to issues of race within fandom. And that’s definitely something that has, has shaped, I think, the transformative fandom discourse about this stuff also.

ELM: Yeah, absolutely. So I think those are some themes. I’m, you know, pretty certain that those are themes that will come up throughout these conversations. OK. So we should talk about how we did this, so we first reached out—we had 10 guests come on our 2016 episodes, and we reached out to all of them and said “Would you be interested in sending in your reflections four years later?” We heard from a majority of them, so we have their thoughts and they sent in voicemails. Those are interspersed throughout. 

We also put out a call for new voices and new perspectives, and amongst those new people, we asked four of them if they wanted to do short interviews, and everyone else sent in their thoughts via voicemail. So overall, I believe it’s 15 guests? So it’s a lot. 

And different than last time, one of those guests is a white person so we can talk about whiteness as a structuring force and whiteness as a race. Which is I think one of the biggest oversights that we had the first time around. There’s, I think, a lot of value being just two white people shutting up and listening to people of color, but there’s an equal value to white people frankly and uncomfortably talking about whiteness, and so we wanted to include that at some point in this episode. So that’ll be our final guest.

FK: Yeah. And it’s worth noting that because—with the exception of that final guest—our goal really is to lift up people of color’s perspectives, we are not gonna be doin’ a lot of commentary on each guest, we’re just gonna be letting people speak for themselves.

ELM: You didn’t like my version, which was ‘shut up and listen’? 

FK: Yeah! We’re gonna be shutting up and listening. So just as we go through we’ll basically just introduce each person or interview or whatever and try and move forward very quickly and let people’s words speak for themselves.

ELM: Yeah, we’ve got 15 guests, so we don’t need to add our minute of commentary after every one, being like “yes.” [both laugh] So we asked every single guest to send in a short bio that we can read, so we’ll introduce you to them that way, and then we will go to the audio! So this episode has half the guests, and then Part 2, which will come out in two days, has the other half.

FK: OK. So shall I introduce our first guest?

ELM: I think you should.

FK: OK. So our very first guest is a returning guest! Dr. Rukmini Pande. She sent in this bio: “Dr. Rukmini Pande works on race and racism in online fandom spaces. She published Squee From The Margins: Fandom and Race in 2018, and will have an edited collection, Fandom, Now in Color: A Collection of Voices, focusing on the operation of race in transnational fandoms, at the end of 2020.

ELM: All right, shall we listen?

FK: Let’s do it.

Dr. Rukmini Pande: Hello everyone! My name is Dr. Rukmini Pande and my area of research is topics of race and racism in online fandom spaces. 

When I was asked to contribute to this episode of Fansplaining, which is revisiting the topic of fandom and race, I realized that it has been four years since I first discussed this problem on this platform. And as I said then, I suppose the issues continue to be, key issues continue to be, anti-Blackness and structural whiteness. 

Since that time I have noticed an increasingly dangerous weaponization of discourse against critical voices of fans of color, particularly Black fans. This weaponization is also due to the fact that the critiques that are being voiced have gotten much more clear and focused on naming the problems in fan spaces, and fan spaces that are pretty invested in the idea of their own progressiveness.

At the present time, the discourse wars are making it increasingly difficult for anyone to talk critically about any trends in fandom regarding the operation of structural racism—that is, the kind of structural racism that is reflected in shipping patterns or the elevation of certain characters over others, or patterns in fic writing, et cetera, or even art—without being classified instantly as a so-called “anti-fan” who always has a hidden agenda of censorship of content.

This is, of course, a particularly effective shutting-down of critique, because it fundamentally glosses over the nuanced nature of the arguments being advanced by such critical fans who have, by and large, not been asking for any such major, you know, mass takedowns or censorship, et cetera.

It doesn’t seem to matter how much evidence a critical fan—or in my case, a fan academic—produces of their participation in fandom or their personal history of queerness in non-U.S. societies or their understanding of fandom culture and the role and function of fanwork. The moment someone points out that fannish choices, particularly in Western-centric and Anglophone fandoms, are not neutral, one is immediately dismissed as, once again, an “anti,” if one is a fan, or as an elite academic with no connection to fan spaces, or someone with a hidden agenda of enforcing censorship. Or, as a special treat, all of the three that I have mentioned at the same time.

I’m not honestly sure where we go from here, but I suppose I will reiterate my usual position on this, even though it feels like a losing battle most days: firstly, these critiques are not new. They have been raised as issues for as long as fandom has been around. 

Secondly, they are not being made by people who hate so-called “edgy content,” as they are being raised by fans who are well aware of fandom history, but who also recognize that racism is as much a part of that history as anything else.

And finally, that if we truly believe in fandom’s progressive credentials, then perhaps it is necessary for us to listen to critiques that make us uncomfortable rather than those that keep arguing that the status quo is perfectly acceptable—even as there is plenty of evidence to the contrary. Perhaps then we will be able to come at these, yes, these very complex and nuanced discussions with the type of openness and good faith that is required for them to succeed, rather than approaching them with hostility. Thank you.

FK: It’s wonderful to hear from Rukmini again. Who’s the next guest, Elizabeth?

ELM: All right! Next up we have one of our new contributors, TheNavyLanguage. She sent us this bio: “Philosopher obsessing over the hard questions: fandom and civil rights. It’s intense, but there are plenty of laughs along the way.”

FK: All right, let’s listen!

TheNavyLanguage: Hi! I am thenavylanguage on Tumblr, and these are my thoughts on race in fandom. Through the years I have seen fans strive to correct the glaring -isms present in the MCU films. However, how characters of color are portrayed in fanworks, especially fanfiction, is worse than in the actual films. They are portrayed as supportive, almost invisible understudies. Any characteristics which they already possess in the films are stripped and given to other white characters. It is not only erasure. It’s a theft of identity. 

Characters of color are positioned within storylines to support the main, white characters. Even within the slash biracial pairings, the character of color is underdeveloped and in a position of servitude within the relationship. The growth and development is centered on the white character. The power dynamics seem to always tilt in the white character’s favor. In most fanfic, the authors tend to explore sexuality, gender, mental illness, social and economic caste systems—but race tends to be ignored. 

If you read most fanfic, without any knowledge of the characters, and all adjectives describing skin color were to be removed, you would be unable to identify any character of color, given that the perspectives of the stories being told are all white men/ women centered. Authors continue to fail to recognize their own racial biases within their writing, thus perpetuating a white-centric-driven narrative.

Regardless of the current social, racial climate, those lessons, that awareness, has not yet seeped into the writing in any nuanced way. The few exceptions depict events such as protests, but shy away from allowing characters of color to exist as they are, fully authentic, with their own views, beliefs, and experiences, which are influenced by the color of their skin.

When it comes to race in the MCU fandom, it can be described as the occasional presence of adjectives to describe skin color. I hope this changes in the future.

ELM: Thank you so much for your thoughts, TheNavyLanguage. OK. So our next guest is our first interview.

FK: Yeah! Our next guest is Sunny Liu, a first-generation Chinese New Zealander and a current media/communications grad student. And we’re gonna have that interview now!

ELM: All right, let’s do it!

FK: All right! I think it’s time to welcome Sunny to the podcast. Welcome, Sunny!

Sunny Liu: Hi, Flourish! Hi, Elizabeth! 

ELM: Hello! Thank you so much for coming on! We’re very excited to have you.

SL: I’m very excited to be here!

FK: All right, so just to get us started, could you tell us a little bit about yourself, a little bit about your fandom world, the relevant stuff?

SL: Well, I discovered fandom one fateful day in 2006, when I first read a Yu-Gi-Oh fanfiction on Fanfiction.net. But sort of more generally, I run in the kind of AO3, Tumblr fandom sphere. But sort of to the side, I am a Chinese New Zealander, so I also do dabble in Chinese-language fandom spaces and I’m actually working on a thesis about that, which is quite interesting. And I write fic, I guess that’s sort of my main contribution other than sort of headless screaming. [all laugh]

FK: How do you scream if you’re headless? Is it like… Never mind. Too—move on. [laughter]

ELM: OK. I think that we’re both extremely interested in the research that you’re doing and how that connects to your fandom experience, and you don’t have to go too deep into it if you don’t want to. But you know, I’m really interested to know—so it sounds like a lot of your fandom life has been a very transcultural one. Would you say that’s accurate, or that’s just what you’ve outlined so far?

SL: Actually I feel like…hm. That might not always be true. I think the kind of, you know, the media fandom that, you know, I’ve been in—you know, the, I don’t know how to say this beside BSO, but you know, the main property itself, you know, in Chinese fandom spaces, you get sort of your Marvel fandoms, your Supernatural, your Sherlocks. But sort of the actual fandom—the fans themselves, there’s not really a lot of sort of, you know, intermixing. So it’s a weirdly segregated experience where kind of, maybe, going into an English fandom space for the same fandom as a Chinese-language fandom space—it’s two sort of vastly different parallel experiences. It’s actually a little bit strange sometimes.

ELM: But you individually, like, you traverse those two spaces, right? But you find that they’re in relatively sectioned-off…?

SL: Yeah, well, I mean, I think obviously you know, English-language fandom, you know, doesn’t really pay attention to, you know, other sort of language spaces. But I think…Chinese-language fandom to a lesser extent. I think there’s a lot more translation of fic from English into Chinese, you know. Fan subbers, you know, translators, things like that, especially for, you know, Western fandoms. Or you know, Japanese fandoms, I think that’s definitely a lot more of a thing.

FK: How does that translate, like—does it feel different when you’re in each of those two different spaces, like, what does it—what is it like for you as a fan, you know, a fan of color, a Chinese New Zealander, to be in English-language spaces versus in Chinese-language fan spaces?

SL: I think, you know, not to be a cultural cliché, but you know—sort of, first-gen immigrant experience of not really belonging anywhere, I think, is kind of my primary experience. I think it is why I kind of flip-flop between the two, despite being, you know, more fluent in English than in Chinese. I think there are aspects that definitely sort of carry over, but—how should I put this? I think Chinese-language fandom, the parts that I dabble in, is, you know, it’s generally focused more on sort of, you know, the Western media, things like that. So I guess, you know, there’s some cross-over there, but—yeah, I just, I just feel, you know, sort of like an awkward lurker, especially in Chinese spaces. 

ELM: OK, wait. So from your vantage point, in this kind of—the straddling vantage point, and I imagine also too, just based on the population of New Zealand, being a Chinese New Zealander even puts you in a minority amongst the Chinese diaspora, right? Because you’re not Chinese-American or Chinese-British or a place where there are very large diaspora populations. But one of the most interesting things to us, observing kind of Western fandom migrations over the last couple of years, has been this big Western turn towards Chinese media. And I’m wondering what that looks like from your perspective, and I don’t want to assume, but I have to imagine that some things don’t look great. [laughs] In terms of the way that the West is engaging, Western fans are engaging with Chinese media and Chinese characters, but maybe that’s a bad assumption? I don’t know.

SL: I think probably, you know, the sort of—the average non-English-speaking Chinese fan, it probably doesn’t really have much impact on sort of their experience of fandom, but because I am sort of mainly in those English-language sort of fan spaces, you know—a lot of my mutuals suddenly turned into Untamed blogs overnight, things like that. [all laugh]

FK: You just woke up one day and there they were, right?

ELM: I mean, that happened to me also. I was like, “Where’d these flute-playing people come from?” It’s just the one guy who plays the flute, right? I don’t know. I haven’t watched it yet, so. 

SL: Yeah, it feels like the K-pop fandom of the past, where you know, everyone suddenly turns into a K-pop stan account, but now with sort of—people with blue ribbons on their heads. [laughter] I think it’s, how should I put this? So, I myself, I’m a fan of the kind of, the genre of novels that The Untamed was adapted from, so sort of my thesis is about the platform that published that novel originally. So I have a lot of feelings about it, but it’s not always positive. When it’s in the English-language sort of fandom space, I think—you know, before kind of Chinese media got a lot bigger in the West, it was kind of easier to kind of maybe dissociate myself, or you know, to turn my brain off. But now I’m just—agh! I’m just constantly fuming. But you know, it’s, it’s still nice to be able to talk about something that previously had basically been totally obscure, sort of, in English-language spaces, you know, with my friends and things.

ELM: But even if you’re constantly fuming? [laughs] Like, I don’t know, it seems like a hard trade-off!

FK: It does seem unpleasant.

SL: I mean, I think it’s about sort of 40% someone does something, you know, slightly—a microaggression, you know, something slightly insensitive. And I think maybe it’s 20% someone does something really insensitive. But the rest? That fandom—the fandom of The Untamed itself—the Chinese fandom is not known to be the most socially aware, mature, well-adjusted crowd in the first place? Um… [all laugh]

FK: What a, what a, what a way to put it. You really—

SL: Yeah, they reported AO3 to the government until it got banned because of a fanfiction, RPS fanfiction where one of the main leads of The Untamed, the lead actor was a trans sex worker. Um.

FK: Wait, so that was happening from within the fandom! That was Untamed fans reporting the AO3!

SL: It was fans of the actor himself.

ELM: The idol fans.

SL: Yes, the idol fans.

ELM: Right, right, yeah. That strikes me as really hard when I add up your percentages. If it’s 40% microaggressions and 20% macroaggressions—and presumably the remaining 40% is not racist or xenophobic or culturally insensitive things that set you off…but I’m wondering, you know, if it’s a majority of your time, where you said you’re fuming all the time—how, I’m thinking of it from just a, do you find it really hard to find joy in that space? If you’re on edge or repeatedly being exposed to things that, that are insensitive or offensive?

SL: I mean, I don’t think those percentages are of my total fandom experiences. Just a percentage of what makes me mad! [all laugh]

FK: So the other 40% is just stuff that makes you mad because it’s like, someone had a bad opinion about a character that you don’t like. OK, that’s much less terrible. Because I definitely was over here being like, “That sounds like hell.”

ELM: Two-thirds! Just—but all right, even if it’s a small percentage of your overall percentage it’s still a real percentage, right? And I think it’s a theme that we’ve heard over and over again from fans of color, talking about how it really takes them out of that—you know, the whole “this is my place to have fun” argument that white people often use to say “I don’t wanna hear about these things that you’re talking about.” And I wonder what that experience is like for you.

SL: Yeah, I think it’s definitely frustrating and somewhat alienating, because I don’t sort of, you know, talk a lot about, sort of, The Untamed. I don’t post about it much. But you know, like—many people who I follow who, you know, mutuals and things, they do. So it’s, it’s kind of like a previously more neutral space turned into a space that was a little bit more upsetting than it used to be? 

But I don’t think it’s necessarily a bad thing that, you know, so many of the people I follow or so many of my friends enjoy The Untamed. I think it’s more generally how, you know, Western Anglophone fandom engages with maybe sort of non-Western, non-Anglophone media that kind of frustrates me the most. And I think, you know, the friction—there’s definitely some, like, you know, there’s racists, but some of it, it’s—you know, that cultural friction.

FK: So I guess I’m curious: what would make things better in that space for you? Is there—can you give any advice or anything to fans who are into The Untamed, Western Anglophone fans of whatever race they are, about how they can be more sensitive, basically, to people who are in your position or—anything like that? Cause I know, hearing that I’m like, I don’t even know—I haven’t even watched The Untamed yet myself either, but when I do and I wanna post about it, like—I don’t wanna be a jerk, but I don’t know where to start!

SL: Yeah, I think part of it is that people maybe don’t really have a sense of the culture behind it, so they don’t tend to be maybe as sensitive about it? You know. I think there’s, for example, Japanese culture, I think that has a lot more cultural saturation in the West. Yeah, I think just try to tread lightly and remember there’s, like, a culture and a people who belong to that culture. That’s all I want to ask for. 

ELM: But it’s interesting the paradox that you’re laying out too, because you’re saying like—well, these people weren’t here before and so they’re causing, you know, like—these Western fans weren’t here in these spaces around this community before, and it’s upsetting me, but it’s nice that they’re here now cause they weren’t here before, right? And so that’s the paradoxical part, and I’m wondering with an eye on the next few years—it really seems to us, we were just discussing it, and I’m wondering how this looks to you too, that this is just the start of a lot of Western fans engaging with a lot more Chinese media, and I wonder if that, that worries you—like, the same paradox, but just like, thinking about how this is just getting bigger and bigger with different properties, and not just the one big show that’s happening right now.

SL: Well to be honest, it’s a process, right? I mean, anime fandom is—well, you know, at least the parts of anime fandom that I’m in is a lot less horrifically weeaboo [laughs] than it used to be. I think people nowadays are maybe a little more aware of things. I mean obviously, you know, sort of what’s going on in America and things, people are having more conversations about race, and I think maybe that’s one thing. 

But I think also, people approach fandom, you know, maybe as a reflection of, you know, how they approach many other things. So I don’t necessarily think that people are going to make me less frustrated, but I don’t—I also don’t necessarily think that parts of it where, you know, The Untamed is held up as this kind of—as having kind of invented, you know, however many thousand years of culture and, you know, everything in service of these two boys they wanna make kiss, you know, I don’t think it’s gonna be like that forever. I think people are gonna be, you know, more culturally fluent, and maybe have a bit more respect for kind of the cultures that they’re drawing on. But also, you know, people are people, and you know. People.

ELM: Yeah.

FK: Totally.

ELM: It’s an interesting thing to think about, you know, if I think about imagining if people just took Game of Thrones as the only example of Western history. And based on—you know? Like…I mean, and you could learn some things about Western European history and American history in turn and its values from Game of Thrones, certainly, right? But that’s not…it’s not a history lesson, right, you know? So.

SL: Definitely not representative! [all laugh]

ELM: OK, like, just to kind of wrap up—I am curious, we’ve been asking mostly about Western fans coming into Chinese in particular, Asian media spaces, but I’m wondering if you have any observations, as this person kind of straddling cultures, about race and racism in Western fan spaces? Because I imagine that you’re, you’re looking at these things from all sides. You have this kind of cross-cultural view. Right?

SL: I think it’s more that, you know, these Chinese properties are being taken up by sort of Western fan spaces. So there’s some places where they mix, where—it’s a little bit frustrating for me. 

For example, you know, I’m quite active in the Tolkien fandom, you know, Silmarillion, Lord of the Rings and things like that. And there’s quite a tendency, after The Untamed became really popular, where people would draw fan art of, you know, the elves, in hanfu and sort of either, you know, vaguely generic or even sometimes quite historically accurate Chinese clothing. And actually, they—some people used to do that before The Untamed got big, but after that happened I think this tendency to kind of exotify the elves this way, it got a lot less sensitive about it.

Yeah, and I definitely think that there’s maybe this tendency to use that Chineseness as a shorthand for kind of “the other” and for, you know, like, making something exotic. And it’s—it’s a little bit alienating.

FK: Wow, yeah. I’d seen some of that fan art and I don’t think that it had ever—I mean, I had wondered why there were all of these elves wearing hanfu, but I don’t think it had ever really struck me that way as how frustrating and kind of—I mean that must feel like it’s alienating something that you love from you, but by using something else that’s part of you…that must be an incredibly frustrating and tough position to be put in.

SL: Yeah. And you know, it’s—you know, it’s meant to maybe equate those cultural elements with, you know, being cool and ethereal and beautiful and I guess, on the surface, it’s easy enough to kind of make myself dismiss it, but sort of, you know, when I lay awake in bed at night—oh, I see, I see—! [all laugh]

FK: Oh man. I think that that’s gonna have to be it. I think that we have, there’s so many other things we could ask. I would love to continue this conversation. I hope that maybe we can do that sometime!

ELM: Yeah, I mean, we would love to hear more about your research, so as it continues, will you come back and talk about it?

SL: Mm-hmm! Of course, of course.

ELM: Excellent.

FK: Thank you so much, Sunny!

ELM: Thank you so much for coming on!

SL: Thank you guys for having me!

FK: It was really wonderful to talk with Sunny and I felt like I learned a bunch.

ELM: Yeah, I’m very hopeful that as they move forward in their research they can come back on and we can discuss this for a whole episode, because I think that this is only something that, you know, I think that there are a lot of listeners of this podcast who are involved in these spaces and maybe weren’t a year ago, or two years ago, and are only gonna continue to be interested in these kinds of intersections and friction points.

FK: Absolutely. OK, so who’s our next person?

ELM: OK, our final guest before the break is Holly Quinn, who was one of our original guests. Holly Quinn runs the blog Diverse High Fantasy, celebrating Black and brown characters in fantasy, sci fi, and horror, and discussing race and representation in media, and I’m excited to hear her returning thoughts!

FK: All right, let’s run it!

Holly Quinn: Hi, it’s Holly. Thanks for inviting me back.

It’s been interesting to watch fandom in 2020. Since June we’ve seen organizations and people and companies we never would’ve imagined would’ve ever come out and say “Black Lives Matter” releasing statements of support for Black people. People in fandom dutifully put “BLM” in their bios, but very little has changed as far as actually confronting racism in fandom spaces. A lot of fandom’s lagged way behind, picking up on that conversation later in the summer.

Fans who would call anyone who talks about racism in fandom an “anti” and lumped us in with purity wankers were now parroting language we’d been using for years, but in a very strategic way that kept their own fandom status quo safe, so its politics and its appearances—it’s not really about supporting Black people a lot of the time. There were no olive branches extended to those of us who’ve gotten heat for years about talking about this. The term “fanpols” for “fandom police” was increasingly used against Black fans who talked about racism in fandom after the murder of George Floyd.

The aggressions against Black fans who didn’t conform to white fandom never stopped. The conversations really haven’t been productive at times because, for example, some hashtag events, like John Boyega Week, actually excluded Black fans. I knew that it wasn’t actually safe for me to like a tweet in that hashtag, because if it led to them engaging with me, someone would step in to warn them away. So that was an interesting facet, being Black and being shut out of something that supposedly was fighting against fandom racism. And that’s really in a lot of ways a reflection of the sudden embrace of BLM by the mainstream in general. It becomes about their own image more than anti-Blackness. 

So it’s not easy, but seeing more conversations about racism across fandom is generally a good thing. I would just like to see more of an acknowledgment of the systemic nature of anti-Blackness and the empathy gap, and less on defining racism as “bad apples” and defining oneself as a “good apple,” because it doesn’t work that way. Thanks!

ELM: I think that was a great one to wrap up with before we take our first break. Thank you so much, Holly.

FK: All right, let’s take a break!

[Interstitial music]

FK: All right, we’re back from the break and we’re going to hear from another returning guest!

ELM: Hang on, hang on. Very quickly, because this is still an episode of Fansplaining—

FK: Ah, OK.

ELM: Super fast, I don’t wanna take up too much time with—I’m already taking up so much time just saying I don’t wanna take up time. But Fansplaining is brought to you by patrons, so if you are a regular listener, if you’re just finding us for the first time and you have a couple dollars a month to spare to help us keep making this podcast, it’s patreon.com/fansplaining, and we have a ton of rewards including physical stuff like pins and tiny zines—for the higher level patrons. At $3 a month, the most popular tier, you get access to now 22? Special episodes? I believe?

FK: Yep!

ELM: Including the three we just did in honor of these heavily nominated—and now heavily rewarded, at the Emmys—shows. I said that so awkwardly, but you know what I mean. Succession, Watchmen and Schitt’s Creek. We talked about all three of them in three special episodes, and so if you’re a fan of any of those, have $3 a month, fun hour of your life listening to us talk about how Flourish is scared of comedy!

FK: [laughs] That is a misrepresentation! In any case… 

ELM: I don’t think so.

FK: That is a great way to help us out. If you don’t have any cash to spare, that’s cool too. It is super helpful to hear from you! You can reach out to us at fansplaining at gmail dot com, you can call and send us a voicemail at 1-401-526-FANS. Those are great ways to share your thoughts if you have responses to anything that we have on any episode, this one or any other one, feel free to do that.

All right. Shall we get to our next guest?

ELM: Yeah, we totally should!

FK: OK. Our next guest is a returning person, it is PJ Punla. PJ is nearly in her 40s and has been in fandom for 20+ years. She’s Filipina, stans BTS and Holland, she’s a fic writer and a small artist.

PJ Punla: Hi, Flourish, hi Elizabeth, thanks for having me back on the show “Fansplaining: Race and Fandom Revisited.”

Last time we spoke I was in Dragon Age: Inquisition, I was getting into Star Wars. We spoke about that briefly, and now it’s 2020, it’s been awhile since we’ve had that conversation; I have since been in Star Wars: Rogue One fandom. I did a long stint in Final Fantasy XV fandom, and now I’m in BTS fandom.

What has changed in my years in those places? So, right now I was, I’m happy to report, we really had a good streak of awareness and welcoming of non-Western ideas, non-Western cultures in Final Fantasy XV fandoms. Maybe that was just my part of Twitter. I was able to support fanworks and fan creators who were showing off non-Western depictions of the guys, the characters. South Asian. That was one of the major strands that I was following. So that was pretty good, that was pretty cool. I thought that it was a great thing to have had that space to be welcome, to have those interpretations that were really different from what you’d see in the Western-centric focus. So that was a nice thing.

But now coming over to BTS fandom, I’ve not been here long. I’m “baby Army,” as we say. But there’s been a lot of problems over centering which groups of fans. Like, there’s the International Division, which I’m part of. Then there’s the Korean version. I cannot speak for them, because I’m not part of that culture, so I wanted to talk about—briefly about the Western side.

And the problem with this is that it’s still the white fan contingent, the Western fan contingent, specifically the white culture people, who are centered, and every time somebody wants to raise the issue of “what about centering BTS from the perspective of people of color?” there’s always going to be a debate. Someone’s going to get shouted down. Someone’s gonna get insulted. Which is really not what should be happening, considering what the band sings about.

Yes, there was that big thing about Black Lives Matter, and the huge donations that were made in the name of the group and from the group itself. But I couldn’t still say that there was still something more welcoming, unfortunately. I think there’s still a long way to go there.

Thanks for having me back on the show!

FK: I really am enjoying hearing from guests who were on before. I really like, sort of, getting updates on their lives! That was really, I mean, obviously we’re talking about serious stuff, but it’s also nice to hear about people who are continuing in fandom.

ELM: No, it’s funny because all of our guests that we had on—if they are still on social media—like, I follow a few of these people on Tumblr, and I think we follow almost everyone who’s on Twitter, at least on whatever account they had back in 2016. So I’ve seen all of these names from this episode, like, over and over again over the last four years, and their commentary, but it’s just nice to hear their voices again.

FK: Absolutely.

ELM: OK. But, new voice—though he’s not, his presence is not new to us, because we have, we’ve been chatting with him for—when did Para first come into our lives, like a year ago?

FK: Yeah. Something like that.

ELM: Paracelsus Caspari, who kinda reached out to us to ask us questions, because he was coming from different corners of fandom. So we reached out to him back, because we felt like we would love to have a cis male perspective on race and fandom, because as you may have noticed, almost all of our guests are… 

FK: Not men.

ELM: Not men. [laughs] I was about to summarize all the other genders and that’s probably the fastest way to do it, so thank you. People of marginalized genders, I would say.

FK: OK.

ELM: Para gave us this bio: Paracelsus Caspari, just Para, is a Nigerian Twitter user who is a passionate and prolific fan of most sports, Marvel comics, video games, and entertainment media.

FK: All right!

ELM: And so…our next interview. Should we roll it?

FK: Let’s do it. OK, I think it’s time to welcome Para to the podcast. Hey, Para!

Paracelsus Caspari: Hello, guys! Very nice to talk to you for the first time! [all laugh] Talk in person, obviously.

ELM: Yeah! No, this is exciting, because we have had so many DMs but no faces, so.

PC: Yeah, exactly.

ELM: Do our faces look like you think? I mean, you’ve listened to our voices.

PC: I will say—might be embarrassing to admit—but the first time I started listening to Fansplaining, one of the first things I did was see if you guys had a YouTube channel, because most podcasts have one. And I found this, like, video of you and Flourish, I think it was maybe the first few episodes that you did? But it was you and Flourish sat beside each other talking about something, but like, your voices pretty much look like…what, I mean… [FK & ELM laughing] You guys look like Americans, I guess? You sounded like Americans.

FK: We just looked like Americans, Elizabeth, that’s excellent!

ELM: We know who you are but we should introduce you to everyone else. Can you start by like, kinda situating yourself as a fan? Like, give us your origin story?

PC: OK.

ELM: You’re all over in fandom, I feel like.

PC: Yeah, I know.

ELM: You’re in a lot of different corners, so.

PC: OK, so probably the closest, the most succinct origin story would be, I started with sports fandom obviously, because growing up in Nigeria, everybody watches football, so I guess I started watching football because my dad was a football fan. I’ve always liked to draw as well, so in liking drawing, my mom would get me things like, you know, comic books, Archie comics, stuff like that. So I started reading comics and eventually moved to Marvel comics.

So once I started reading Marvel comics, I think it was “Civil War,” the first comic that I read. So I started caring about comics as well as sports, and then from there also watching movies because everyone watches movies, so I guess—what was the first movie I really cared about, cared about? Probably, I don’t know, Harry Potter I would say? I really can’t remember. But also, I cared about movies as well from that age. So I would say comics, movies, and obviously video games because I’ve always played video games all my life—although I didn’t really think there was any sort of fandom to be found there, I didn’t really care about video games in the same way, until later.

But yeah, sports, movies, video games and then comic books are like the main ones. And so as I got older, I probably started developing opinions, and maybe when I was like 10 I found out what Reddit was. [all laugh] So I joined Reddit, and around the same time I joined Twitter as well, but Twitter back then was—it wasn’t really used the way it’s used now. It was very very random. There weren’t any subcultures on Twitter like you see now. So most of my fandom activity was on Reddit, joining subreddits for different fandoms like soccer, /r/soccer and then like other things, like /r/thisvideogame, stuff like that.

And then doing the activities there, and then as time went on, gaining more specific fandoms, like instead of just being a fan of Marvel I would be a fan of like, Iron Man specifically, and then obviously football was ever-present. It’s just a constant, every season there’s a new season, so that continues as well until—yeah, it’s literally never changed [laughs] it’s just been a continuous journey as more things have come, as more movies have come out I’ve cared about those, as more comics have come out I’ve cared about those, and then it just continues on.

I will say, as time went on, my complexity and my understanding of those things increased as well, so my engagement level, my ability to have like, you know, complex thoughts and reactions to the things that happened, would increase as well. So maybe when I was like 10 years old I would just be happy that Milan played a game and won. But now I can write a full article about what went wrong for Milan in that game, and like share it to my followers, and maybe one person reads it and doesn’t really care. [FK & ELM laugh] Make like a 20-tweet thread about what’s wrong with the comic book industry, but like, when I was 10 I didn’t really know what a writer was or what an artist was, I just thought comics just appeared. So I would just say as time has gone on my engagement has increased as well.

FK: Well, and at some point you found fanfic fandom and—

PC: Yes.

FK: That was like when we first started talking. That was like, the big thing.

PC: The thing that led me to you guys was, I think I followed Noelle Stevenson on Twitter, and one day she retweeted hellotailor, Gavia Baker-Whitelaw. So I started following her as well because her takes are very—like, she has this thing where like [laughs] it’s very intimidating because it’s like, makes you challenge all these conceptions that you have and makes you feel very dumb, but in a good way, basically.

ELM: Oh my God.

PC: So one day she talked about your newsletter, so I subscribed to the newsletter and it led me to you guys’ podcast here. So I listened to the episodes and like, eventually it got to the point where Flourish mentioned a pro gamer AU that was Reylo. And obviously at the time I liked Star Wars, I liked Reylo, I liked The Last Jedi, The Last Jedi was my favorite Star Wars movie, whatever. So I was just like “Damn, a pro gamer, I like video games, fanfiction with Reylo—I will just check it out,” and then like, I stayed up till like seven a.m. reading this thing. [all laugh]

ELM: Oh my God. That was your first fic?!

PC: That was my first fic.

ELM: A Reylo?

FK: Reylos rise! Reylos rise!

PC: [crosstalk] Was it “Play to Win”? “Play to Win.” By whoever wrote it, I can’t remember their name.

FK: It’s down now because they pulled to publish.

PC: Yeah I heard, I heard, yeah.

ELM: Oh, wow.

PC: That was the first fic I read. And I always knew AO3 was a thing, because I knew of fanfiction. I’d never been, like, interested enough to like, care, you know? But this thing I was fucking pressing next page! I was like, “What happens next, man?” And by the time I looked like, the sun was up. So it was just like, wow.

ELM: This is incredible.

PC: So yeah, that was my entrance into specifically fanfiction. Even though before I found out about fanfiction I was also in, like, online movie fandoms. Like, I was in Star Wars subreddits. But I feel like because I missed out on Tumblr, I didn’t really get to participate in the—what’s the word? Transformational fandom. I was only in affirmational spaces like Reddit and the wiki sites, I was never anywhere where the point was just to contribute. It was all about just who knows facts and who can argue better. So that was one thing I missed out on in that journey.

ELM: So I’m curious to know, because you are relatively new to transformative fandom, because the subject of this episode is about race and racism in fandom. I’m just wondering about your experiences in these spaces and if you find parallels across different—because you’ve been in so many different kinds of fandom, like, your sports fandom experiences are very, I think, like, classic sports. Like, you’re really into the games, and like the stats, and all that. You know what I mean?

PC: Yeah.

ELM: Do you find commonalities across them or do you find that race plays out differently depending where you are?

PC: The thing that I will say that is usually common is that when you’re in a fandom of something that is usually like, white men that like it—so for example, sports, whether you like American football, NFL, or like college football, or like soccer, Premiere League, it’s mostly white men that like these things, and so the spaces that develop online to congregate and follow that thing usually will also be white men.

So the commonality is that, like, in any sort of—and I’m sure you guys have heard this a million times—anywhere you find yourself online to talk about something, it’s more than likely that you’re one of very few Black people in that space, just because that’s just the reality. First of all, the online world we live in, where like, most of these things are congregated, is mostly first-world people. So like, most of them are white. That’s just how it is.

But then, most of the things that set them off to say will be the same across, also, whether that’s football or whether that’s films or whether that’s a comic book. For example, anything like, you know, political—people will be angry. “Oh, we don’t want to talk about politics here.” Or things like, trying to highlight maybe this thing is kind of like, very insensitive, if that’s the right word? And people will be like “Oh no, there’s nothing wrong with it.” 

For example, the biggest number-one thing: I’m a Milan fan, I support AC Milan, that’s an Italian team, and obviously most Italians don’t interact with Black people a lot. So let’s say something happens in football, like this player got racially abused. And then people will have an opinion that’s like, “Oh well it’s not that bad, it’s just what fans do. It’s just, someone that plays on the other team, they’ll want to say bad things about them and it’s not any different. I mean, there’s Black players on our team, so our fans can’t be racist.” 

And when you try and engage with that stuff, that’s when you really see that like—damn. This thing really loses out from not having a lot of Black people here, because the level of discourse is very…what’s the word? Like when you’ve not leveled up in a game. Everybody’s still level one, and like, you’re used to talking about it with people who are level twelve or level thirteen, but these guys are at level one, so you have to like, scale everything back and start from basics. And that can be very exhausting to do. Most Black people in these spaces, they just check out, they just stop participating. They’re just like, “I don’t want to deal with this.” So it’s, either they’re there and they’re passive, they don’t really talk, or if they talk they’re very confrontational and very—because they’re used to their defense being up. 

So it’s very difficult, and that’s something I’ve found common in both football fandom and like elsewhere, like in movie, maybe, someone doesn’t think something is racist and you, you think it’s racist, and it’s like—I think it’s racist, you do not think it’s racist—and then it becomes like, who is right? And most people just don’t have that actual discussion of like, “Is this thing racist or not?” So.

ELM: You know it’s interesting, because—I always think of you as my young friend. We’re not that much older than you! [PC laughs] But it’s really funny, like, you joined Twitter when I, when you were 10, and… 

PC: Yeah, that was 2008.

FK: Yeah, at the same time we did!

ELM: No, I didn’t join till a few years later, but when I was 10 the internet was invented that year. So like, you know… [laughs] But it’s not that much! It’s, compared to me versus like a 75-year-old it’s not that much of a difference.

PC: Yeah, it’s not that much!

ELM: But I wonder if you, I wonder—this has been a very action-packed decade, over the last, you know. And I think that like—I wonder how it’s looked to you, like, growing up throughout adolescence as big cultural conversations, like, at this point in 2020 I think that a lot of people, a lot of white people in these fan spaces who wanna say like “I don’t wanna get politics involved in this”—they know that race exists now. Right? [FK laughs] Like, they just don’t wanna talk about it, you know what I mean?

PC: Yeah.

ELM: Whereas 10 years ago I feel like more people could just be like—white people could be, like, wildly ignorant about it.

FK: Yeah, because if you lived in a place that was super segregated and you only knew white people, then it was not something that you encountered.

ELM: That anyone forced you to talk about ever. [laughs]

FK: Yeah, no one would make you look at that, right.

PC: But do you know something interesting about that, the thing with that conversation specifically is a bias that the internet has in general where you always see the sentiment from people on the internet where like—the internet is just greater America. [all laugh] Anyone that’s on the internet, they have to care about America, even if you’re not from America. 

Like me, I’m from Nigeria, and Nigeria is 100% Black. So like, I did not know there was such a thing as race until, like, later later later, after I had gone to school and like, seen that “OK, wow, white people exist, number one, and then number two, some of those white people don’t really care for Black people that much.” So that’s something that you have to come to terms with, and then online, it translates to—everyone starts out just being purely vanilla, you know. You don’t think about politics that much. When people think about politics, not the type of GamerGate, Black people and women existing kind of politics. Like, the actual politics, you don’t really think about it that much.

And then you get to a point—everybody has their thing that happened that made them realize that politics was real. For most people in my generation it would be like, GamerGate, or feminism being this sort of thing that everyone has to have an opinion on. Like, is feminism good or bad? And obviously if you’re like, 12, 13, you can’t really have complex opinions on feminism yet. So you just go on, like, what your thought leader says. 

And I was lucky, I wasn’t really that impressionable that I would just see some white man YouTuber complaining about Anita Sarkeesian and just be like, “Yes, I hate Anita Sarkeesian too.” I think in my case, people were talking about this, I watched the video, and I was like, “She’s making sense. Video games, yeah, they kind of like, treat women badly I guess. I don’t see what the problem is.” So I was very lucky. I know some people, they fell down that rabbit hole, you know, they started absorbing all of this content that was very toxic, and then that just became their sense of self. 

Cause also, people on the internet, like, the thing that they care about—they base their identity on it, so they feel, “Oh, if I’m in this fandom and I don’t want to be ostracized, I don’t want to stick out, I have to make sure that my takes line, you know, the party line,” so to speak. I would say most people, they have the excuse of “oh, I’m young still.” Because some people who are younger than me are going through this. But anyone my age, past like 2015—because I think that was when, like, OK, Trayvon Martin was 2013, and Mike Brown 2014. So as far as Black Lives Matter is concerned, I would say most people like, mid-2010s is when they should be like, you know—if you have a head on your shoulders, you should have…not necessarily being active, but just like, caring about this stuff. Not being blind to it, because a common frustration among Black people is that thing where this white person just found out racism exists today and is definitely fluffed about it. And I’m just like, “OK. Good for you that you just discovered, in 2020, that racism is bad.”

FK: Yeah.

PC: “Well done.” I mean, better late than never, but like… [laughs] Some of us, some of us have been seeing this thing since early 2010s, mid-2010s. So. At the same time, no one is born woke. Everybody has their own different time to analyze. But as far as I’m concerned, as long as you know the right thing and you accept “this is the right thing today,” then it doesn’t matter. But that’s just a trend to be mindful of.

FK: Yeah, I was going to ask you actually about that, because—I don’t understand 99% of the things that you tweet about sports [PC laughs] but I do understand that you get into fights with people who are being dicks at you about sports, and about race, and all that. And I know you’d mentioned before that you like, changed how you approached that at some point. How does that interact with your experiences around race?

PC: Yes. The thing with race is that, so—obviously some people, they may not realize that what they were doing was racist. I mean, some people, obviously they know that the N-word is bad, you know? But there’s all sorts of things that they can do that they may not realize is not OK, and then when you tell them, when you’re like “Oh wow, this thing isn’t, you know, OK,” they will accept it—and then some people will double down.

And obviously you can’t do much about the doubling down, because at that point you have to just consider your mental health and be like, “Do I want to spend 10 minutes arguing with this person about how I exist, or can I just mute them, too?” That’s what I started doing. 

And I would say a lot of it is unconscious. Obviously, no one is out here saying “I hate Black people” or anything like that. But there’s still a lot of things that come from being white in this world that we live in, so to use the example again: if a player gets racially abused, there are still some people who would be like “it’s not that big a deal, he can just ignore it, he can just…” 

Or like, when COVID restarted, all the players were taking a knee for Black Lives Matter and they were wearing the Black Lives Matter patch—there’s still some edgy people who are like “Get this stuff out of football, politics shouldn’t be in football,” but for the most part I would say that people have started to come around. Now that’s less me particularly influencing people and more just, people just coming to the conclusion on their own, that like, trying to be racist online—I think it’s something that is less appealing now than it used to be.

Probably a lot of factors. I would say, also, just people growing up. I mean, in the mid-2010s, most of these people were like 15, 16, and now most of those guys are like 19, 20, and I feel like even as they are growing up they are realizing that like, I don’t really want to sound like a 16-year-old online anymore. So like, that just—adopting more mature positions. And maybe the trend is just, you know, online people just growing up, and realizing that these things I used to see when I was 14 and 15, they’re not OK.

I know everybody realizes that stuff at different times, so I’m not saying it’s their fault that, like, they didn’t know the full Ta-Nehisi Coates breakdown of racism when they were 14, but like, at least they understood that like, when you’re young and edgy you can say some things that you won’t be proud of. And it’s not as if everybody was born coming out from the womb understanding this stuff, but like, at some point, most people got enough empathy to be like, “OK, maybe being this toxic for an immutable characteristic like race is not really the best thing.” So they just on their own…

I wouldn’t say I influence it, but obviously, since I’m Black there’s less for me to do, because I’m just Black. So if you interact with me, and you’re racist, you understand the risks of doing that, and [all laugh] especially as far as Italians go, one of the big issues is just knowing where the line is. Some people, there are things like, let’s see—during the World Cup, France’s team was very African. They had a lot of African players. So someone made an edgy joke of like, they tweeted the France side, they tweeted the formation, and instead of like the French flag, they just put like, monkey emojis to show that like, they had a bunch of black players.

FK: Whoo!

PC: And like—the tweet got a lot of retweets and stuff like that. So like, I quoted the tweet and was like “Wow.” I think I just quoted it with the year, 2018, by the way. And like, obviously some people that followed me understood what I was trying to say, and obviously there are still some people who are just like “Oh, it was just a joke.” And that’s mainly how the racism manifests—just people saying edgy things, and like, some mutuals that followed me would do things like that, and I would just talk to them like, “Do you actually think this is funny? Do you look at this and you’re like ‘ha ha ha that’s so funny’? Or are you trying to push buttons? And if you’re trying to push buttons, just ask yourself why.” Why is that something that, like, you feel the need to do? 

So that’s, that’s where it’s at now, where some people—especially the Italians, cause I mean, I guess Italy is just like—apart from migrant communities there’s not really an indigenous Black population there. It’s harder there. So obviously a fan of an Premier League team will have a different experience than a fan of an Italian team, but like, I would say that most of them these days, that’s the only form of racism that you still see. Just edgy jokes, edgy comments, those sort of things.

Usually, most of these people, unfortunately, they fell down those reactionary holes—most of them are already reactionaries. And so that’s what informs their behavior. And if they saw me in real life, no, they wouldn’t be able to say that stuff. Because— [laughs] They wouldn’t say that stuff to my face, but it’s online, so that’s another factor as well. I just look and say, like, OK. I can’t effect this, but I can draw the line and say, if you’re my mutual and you interact with me, you know that—I don’t even have to tell you, you know that you can’t do that kind of stuff. 

I don’t see it, but I know that people do it. Those people are all muted, they are all blocked. I don’t deal with it. But I know it exists. And that’s just what it’s like, that’s where online is at these days. It’s the same everywhere, but on Twitter, especially.

FK: So that’s been your experience in like, your longest-running, in sports fandom.

PC: Mm-hmm?

FK: You’ve been watching the conversation about race within transformative fandom now for awhile and taking part in it too, I’m sure. What about that stands out to you? What’s the—in that conversation, what’s going on?

PC: So I’ll just use a specific example to highlight what I’m sure is a general trend, but like, in something like the MCU fandom—which I’m in, cause I like comic books—something that I notice a lot is that all of the discourse surrounding things like ships or things like, even just like potential new entries in a thing, there will always be the white characters and then like, the Black characters—even from that thing—will be excluded or will be talked about less. It’s just something that you notice when you’re in these spaces.

So a specific example I would say is in the MCU fandom, everyone knows that like, in Endgame Tony Stark dies, and he has a daughter in the thing. So in Marvel Comics, there’s a character called Ironheart, and Ironheart is Riri Williams, a Black girl. And obviously, people read Ironheart, they want Ironheart to be in movies, because it’s just something that’s good to see that character represented. But a lot of MCU fans I see, they will like, fancast Stark’s daughter as Riri Williams, or they will be like, “Shuri should be Ironheart.” And it’s just like, but there’s literally a Black character there! Why do you guys pretend like Riri Williams isn’t there?

FK: There can also be like, more than one, right? [laughs]

PC: Yeah, exactly! More than one! And like, it’s so unconscious that to them, it’s so completely normal. Of course, yes! But it’s just like—you’re sitting there and it’s just like, “Really, Morgan Stark? Really?” I search on AO3, if you search on AO3 now and you search for “Morgan Stark,” you see like 5,000 fics on Morgan Stark, Stark’s daughter, for one movie that came out in 2020. But Riri Williams’ first comic was in 2015, and she still has comics now, and if you search on AO3 you will see less than 500 for Riri Williams. And it’s just like, it’s just the level of engagement with white characters versus Black characters.

Which obviously to some extent you can’t blame, because people just reflect on people who look like them, which is just how it is. I mean, the people who were making these stories, back in the day, were mostly white, so I mean—something like, where people say, like, “Oh Avengers was so white because it was all white heroes,” but it’s not really their fault, partially. Because they’re just adapting these books! These books were written in the ’60s and in the ’60s everybody was white, so…that’s just how it is. But like, in the final… 

FK: [laughing] Everybody was not white in the ’60s! I just wanna throw that out here! [crosstalk] There were definitely not white people in Nigeria in the ’60s!

PC: That’s true. But the biggest example I would say is X-Men, if you want to adapt X-Men now, in the MCU, everyone looks at the X-Men and they say “Oh, you have to have Cyclops, you have to have Jean Grey, you have to have Angel, you have to have Iceman,” and like, naturally you’d expect, OK, yes: if Marvel is adapting X-Men, they will adapt Cyclops and Jean Grey. But all these people are white. 

So it’s like, you want this X-Men movie, but it’s going to be five white characters. White Professor X, white Magneto. And it’s like, OK. Let’s think about that. And then the problem now is if you now say, “OK, let’s make one of these characters Black,” people are like “Oh my God, it’s not accurate, oh my God they are changing—they are changing Jean Grey, they made Jean Grey Black! Oh my God!” And it’s just like—Black people that are in these spaces that might say… 

It usually goes one of two directions: the common response is to say “Well, diversity, blah blah blah, is good, but don’t change the old characters, just make new characters and make them Black.” And it’s just like, OK. That’s fine. Or, make someone Black. Just change their race. And it doesn’t affect the story. Like Cyclops—there’s no real reason that Cyclops has to be white, but it just so happens that they made him white. He can be Black! There’s nothing that changes about Cyclops for him being Black.

I just like, why not both? Why can’t you also make new Black characters, which no one is against, and then also just make these things a bit more—spice it up a little, you know? It doesn’t have to be five white kids. Especially if you are adapting something modern era: how likely is it that you walk in New York and you just see five white kids? I don’t know, maybe there might be some rich areas where you see some, but.

ELM: It’s true. There are some neighborhoods where it’s easy to see five white kids.

PC: Definitely. But I would say that in these spaces in particular, the type of racism that I see is more that sort of erasure than like, explicit racism. I mean, obviously the explicit racism still exists, but it’s mostly erasure, it’s mostly that sort of like, just white people forgetting that Black characters exist or feeling defensive about the race of a character in a weird way. [laughs] Like, why is it so important to you that this person is white? Just think about that. It’s like, why do you need this person to be white? And like, them being Black makes you kind of, you know, gives you shivers or something like that?

But it’s very strange, the sort of opera when someone is announced as Black. It’s just this huge thing of wow, this person is Black! And it’s like, they changed it! And people are up in arms. And it’s just very confusing. But I would assume that like, it’s something that has been going on, and I just entered at the point where these things have become public because the public eye is on them in a big way. I mean, everybody follows all these entertainment media in a very hands-on way, they wouldn’t have 10 years ago, but they do now because like, Twitter and the MCU making all these things, like, very important—people caring about casting. 10 years ago, people don’t care who’s the cast of this thing! Just watch the thing. 

But now people care about the trailer, they care about the cast, they care about the director, the writer, and like, if they are Black, it’s like a good thing, but if like—the level of engagement is increased now. People are more, especially with behind the camera, behind the scenes, they are more engaged with who the people are that are making these things and so there’s more discourse about that, because the general consensus is that something is all white people is bad, because diversity is good. So we need things to not be all white people. But that sort of conversation wasn’t happening 10 years ago, so that’s something I would say I’ve noticed.

But I don’t know if I’ve touched on every single thing you asked…?

FK: I think it would be impossible to touch on… 

ELM: I mean you didn’t mention Storm, who’s right there.

PC: Oh, yeah, yeah! [all laugh] 

ELM: You don’t need to invent a new character, cause she’s right there! I mean… 

PC: Exactly, things like that. Especially X-Men, it’s such a good example, man. And there’s more discourse with like, colorism, where like, whenever Storm appears in these movies she’s always very light-skinned, even though in the comics she’s Kenyan. It doesn’t get darker than Kenyan, man! Literally doesn’t get darker than that! But all the fancasts are all these light-skinned actors. There’s a whole lot of those kind of ones about Black people, they have to be fair-skinned to be seen as palatable. But you get too dark—their hair is too tight, it’s like “Oh!”

FK: Yeah. Well, I regret that we cannot continue talking about this for like a full episode, because there’s so much more to talk about, but we’re so glad that you came on.

PC: Yeah, definitely man! Like, it’s very, it makes me very happy because I got to talk to you guys in real life and not just messaging you in DMs hoping you answer. But yeah.

FK: [laughs] I’m just sorry that we can’t have more time with you because this has been an amazing conversation, Para. Thank you so much for coming on, this has been great.

PC: I appreciate it, man. Thanks.

ELM: OK, well, speaking of putting a voice to a social media presence… 

FK: What a delight.

ELM: Yes! OK, so we have two more voicemails, and they’re both from returning people. 

FK: Yeah!

ELM: Before we wrap up this half of the double ep.

FK: Yeah. So the first one is from Roz, who lives in the Los Angeles area and enjoys too much pop culture for a job as a high school teacher—or maybe not. Let’s hear from Roz.

Roz: Hey Fansplaining! It’s Roz calling about your update request for race and fandom. I think—I’ve been thinking, well, I have been thinking a lot about issues of race and social justice, and I don’t think that fandom has gotten better, because I think there’s still so much other work that we should be worrying about. And there are issues in fandom where I wish there were more fic, more representation, for BIPOC characters, yes. I want to see that more in our world, I want to live in a world where there’s more than just one character in the show who fits that, like, BIPOC, non-white descriptor.

But I also want non-BIPOC fans to reach out and appreciate shows that feature strong BIPOC representation. I wish more of my white friends would watch Blackish or Mixedish or Grownish, to think about that Black experience in the United States. I wish I had more friends who watched A Different World when I was a kid. I just wish fans that weren’t part of any sort of underrepresented group—and “underrepresented” in quotes, because for the most part, white people are not the majority across the entire globe!—I just wish that people would be more aware and cognizant of what they are watching and that they watch a variety of shows and they look for experiences that are not their own to better understand those around them that they meet that are not part of their group.

I think there’s a multiplicity of ideas that we can look at and experience by living in a world where we see a variety of different people in your neighborhood, in your city, in your state, and I don’t think we’re doing enough of that. So that’s kind of where I see fandom as a whole. I just wish it were doing a—I wish people would do a better job of exploring things that make them uncomfortable. So. That’s my short answer and I hope that helps! Bye.

FK: Thank you so much, Roz, that was a really—you know, I felt like that was a really meaningful, and I don’t even know how to put it. That was a really great perspective.

ELM: Absolutely. OK, our final guest of Part 1 is Clio. Clio sent us this bio—Clio is an old fandom friend of yours.

FK: Indeed.

ELM: Clio’s fandom—which you can tell from the first half of this bio! Clio’s fandom life began in Harry Potter in 2002. She later wrote American Idol, Star Trek, MCU, and Teen Wolf fanfic. Nowadays she mostly tries to get more femslash into Yuletide. Which is a laudable goal, BTW. That’s my editorial commentary. Yeah, let’s play Clio’s clip.

Clio: Hi, Flourish and Elizabeth! This is Clio. Thinking about what I wanted to say today, I went back to our conversation in May 2016, and saw how many of my frustrations were already present. At the end of 2017, I’d mostly left fandom. I still do Yuletide or a fic here and there, but that in the thick of it, reading and writing and posting on social, awareness of the discourse sort of being in fandom that I’d done since 2002, I’ve left behind—mostly because of race. Partly misogyny too, so let’s call it misogynoir.

The reason wasn’t just the endless microaggressions and cultural appropriation, not just the neglect, ignorance, and bad writing that surrounds characters of color, not just the presumption that BIPOC in fandom will talk about racism, not in ways that reflect their truth but in ways that white folks in fandom can hear and find useful, not just the wholesale hijacking of any race conversation by white folks so they can show how woke they are, not just white folks calling for more fanworks about characters of color but then failing to rec or even read them, but the exhaustion—and ultimately the feeling of futility that anything I could do would be but a drop in an enormous bucket that keeps emptying out and refilling with every new wave of people into fandom.

I’ve realized this summer that anti-Blackness writ large, and within fandom, isn’t my problem to solve. I can keep pointing it out where I see it, but it’s not my mind or my behavior that needs to change. Thanks again for the opportunity to speak on this.

ELM: It’s a very declarative note to end this episode on, and I really appreciate Clio’s forthrightness here.

FK: Yeah.

ELM: I think it’s—I think, I hope that, there’s such a diversity of perspectives already in this first half, and I think amongst all of our guests, that I’m really grateful that we have so many people who are on different pages about their—you can see commonalities across experiences, but what people are, have had to let go or what people are trying to find ways to continue with, varies. And I’m really hopeful that people listening to this will see someone reflecting their own, kind of, positioning.

FK: Yeah.

ELM: Just because there are so many different positions here. And I really, I can’t tell you how much I appreciate all of our guests sending their thoughts.

FK: Yeah. I feel the same way. All right, well, since we’re at the end of this Part 1, shall we just wrap it up and head over to Part 2?

ELM: Yeah! So if you were listening to this in real time the day it came out, Tuesday for patrons, Wednesday for regular—ah, regular people. Wednesday for everyone else. Part 2, we’re going to give patrons another early access, so it will come out on Friday—that’s Thursday for patrons, obviously. And if you’re listening to this after those four days, well, you can listen to Part 2 right now, so head on over there. And there’s full links to people’s commentary, their social media handles, call-backs to the first pair of episodes in our show notes. So definitely check those out alongside the transcript if you want more info.

FK: Yep indeed!

ELM: Thank you to our first eight guests, and I’m excited to hear from the remaining seven. There’s so many guests! It’s so great.

FK: All right. I will see you in the next episode, Elizabeth.

ELM: OK bye Flourish!

FK: Bye!

[Outro music, thank yous and credits]

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