Episode 141: The Year In Fandom 2020
In Episode 141, Elizabeth and Flourish end a very unusual year in a very ordinary way: revisiting big fandom trends from the past 12 months. What happened in 2020? (What didn’t happen in 2020?) Topics covered include J. K. Rowling’s continued radicalization, the explosion of Anglophone interest in both K-pop and Chinese dramas, and the moments when the waves of fan expectation crashed against the rocky shores of reality. And they wrap up with an analysis of the ways that the pandemic is reshaping fandom: the entertainment industry, celebrity culture, and how fans engage with both the things they love and with each other.
Show Notes
[00:00:00] As always, our intro music is “Awel” by stefsax, used under a CC BY 3.0 license. The cover image is from Pixabay.
[00:01:00] Episode 116, “The Year In Fandom 2019.”
[00:02:23] “The Ever-Mutating Life of Tumblr Dot Com” by Allegra Rosenberg.
[00:08:38] Episode 140, “Miranda Ruth Larsen.”
[00:09:20] Episode 108, “#TheOAIsReal.”
[00:15:15] Our interstitial music here and later is “How I Used To See The Stars” from Music for Podcasts 4 by Lee Rosevere, used under a CC BY 3.0 license.
[00:17:59] We spoke with Destination Toast in Episode 138, “2020 By the Numbers.”
[00:20:05] We talked about J. K. Rowling far too much this year, but particularly in Episode 129, “Letting Harry Potter Go.”
[00:22:38] Our “Race and Fandom Revisited” episodes were #135A and #135B.
[00:34:20] Listen to our complaints on the Festivus episode of It’s All Fandom!
[00:37:17] Episode 139, “The ‘Q’ is for ‘Queerbaiting’”
[00:53:41] January Jones is having a fucking time.
Meanwhile, Laura Dern is stealing her daughter’s spotlight.
[01:04:28]
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 #141, “The Year In Fandom 2020.”
FK: 2020 has been an unusual year.
ELM: Understatement.
FK: And… [laughs] in order to seek comfort and also because this is what we do every year, we’re gonna do our usual thing for this year-ending episode.
ELM: Yeah. So starting the first year we had this podcast, at the end of the year we talked about five…five? I think we’ve always done five.
FK: It’s always been five I think.
ELM: Five-ish? Trends. Things we’ve observed in all sorts of kinds of fandom things, whether it’s like—
FK: And just, like, big stories.
ELM: Yeah, but fandom ones.
FK: Yeah.
ELM: [laughs] Just kinda trends that we’ve been observing over the year. And then every subsequent year, we revisited the previous year’s five trends, looked at whether they’d continued or whether they’d dropped off a bit, and then we named five new trends. And so that’s what we’re gonna do!
FK: That is what we’re gonna do! OK. Shall we talk about the trends from 2019?
ELM: Yeah, I have literally no memory of 2019, so please, tell me.
FK: [laughs] It was a year. OK. The first trend was one that we said was continuing from 2018, which was people saying Tumblr is dead when it isn’t. And this was you. You were mad about this.
ELM: Yeah, I mean, all right—mad? Was I mad? Just a little weary, you know? Cause it’s just like, how many people hae to use a social network and create original content on it for people to consider it, you know, still live and not on life support. So yeah, I guess, when we talked about this last time it was not long after the sale of Tumblr from Verizon to Automattic for one dollar, or whatever the amount was. I think it was [laughs] like, what, three million dollars or something? Anyway, it was a lot less than the billion dollars Verizon paid for it, so that remains a point of pride.
But what I will say is this: in February of this year, I wanna say, we published a really great piece by Allegra Rosenberg, a very smart piece I thought, about Tumblr, called “The Ever-Mutating Life of Tumblr.com,” kind of talking about how the reports of Tumblr’s death had been greatly exaggerated. And in the months since, every freaking Google Analytics report that we get to our email says some of the top search terms that bring people to Fansplaining.com are “is Tumblr dead” and “is Tumblr still a thing 2020.” Literally people go and type that.
FK: You, you heard it here first: Tumblr is still a thing!
ELM: They pull up their search bar and they go “Is Tumblr…” I imagine they’re typing this with one finger. “Is Tumblr still a thing 2020?” And then they come and they read this article and hopefully they learn it’s still a thing, and then they go revive their account or start a new one. And they add to Tumblr’s number one ship for the year: Reylo.
FK: [laughs] I’m not gonna touch that one with a 10-foot pole. Can I tell you what the next trend was?
ELM: All right.
FK: The next trend we were talking about was the fannish monoculture, which was about sort of the way that like—the concept of fandom being used, like, in people’s minds, was just for these super mass-culture things, like Marvel or Star Wars or Game of Thrones, these really really big, like, culture things. And that, like, engaging with them at all was fandom, and that’s what fandom was in 2019. We’re not saying we think this. We’re saying that was a trend or a statement or a thing that people felt like.
ELM: There was a lot of, yeah. There was a lot of year-end reflection, commentary about this last year, around this time last year, that frustrated me a great deal. I think that to some degree this has fractured a bit. Not that I—not that much. I think that the hold of the Walt Disney corporation is still quite strong, as the recent spate of Star Wars announcements showed.
But I do think that the kind of, the weird confluence…there’s a reason that we did our SDCC panel last year about the ends of, like, big chapters in franchises, because Game of Thrones finale, Avengers: Endgame, and The Rise of Skywalker was coming out later that year, and just this kind of…I mean, those are mass culture events, it’s undeniable, and there’s a lot of fans within those, right? But I think that we both push back at the idea that was what fandom was, or that everyone who cared a lot about those was necessarily in the fandom. Maybe they were fans of it, but like, trying to call a mass audience a fandom is—is, I think, we both think is pretty sloppy.
FK: Yeah, yeah absolutely. Yeah, I agree with you that it’s fractured some, but I also think that that concept or idea of what fans are has stuck around, and is likely to keep taking up people’s mental space for some time.
ELM: Yeah, I mean, I think you may be coming at this from an entertainment industry perspective. I’m coming at it from a media perspective, and there was almost no unifying media to, to kind of—and things that even looked big… When I think about the Verzuz, you know Verzuz?
FK: Yeah!
ELM: These battles—it was always funny because it was so, you know, very very enthusiastically livetweeted by a portion of my feed, and then literally never mentioned by the rest. And obviously especially big with Black Twitter, and so there’s the way that some of these mass culture events can fall along different cultural lines, right? And you know, similarly, the SPN—the neverending SPN finale, I think, felt like a mass culture event to us, whereas like, people I know in the normie world may have only distantly heard of it or been like “Why are people tweeting about—”
FK: No idea.
ELM: “—Supernatural and Vladimir Putin?!” You know what I mean?
FK: No idea, none.
ELM: So it’s like, these things can still be really large and still not be the same thing as, like, you know—100 million people buying a ticket to see Avengers: Endgame or whatever and it spurring a bazillion pieces of reactionary media or whatever, you know what I mean?
FK: Right. Speaking of which, all right, our next trend from last year was fantitlement. And when we said “fantitlement”—
ELM: Speaking of which! Speaking of which?
FK: Speaking of which—eh, speaking of which, speaking of all of these things, I think all of these things were things that—
ELM: OK?
FK: —all of these fandoms, these big fandoms, were things where we were like “Wow: fans are entitled and they suck, and creators also suck in the way they respond to fan entitlement and their choices in the way that they interact with that.” I was gonna say that I think we’ve seen less of this fantitlement, but I think that we’ve just seen it in a more fractured way, just like the previous one. I think we’ve seen the same reactions from fans and creators, but because it hasn’t been for, you know, the Game of Thrones finale or a Star War, like— [laughs]
ELM: Yeah.
FK: You know?
ELM: Yeah, I think so too, and I think that we even saw some of the biggest ones we saw this year still were hold-overs from some previous years, right? Like—most of the #ReleaseTheJJCut stuff, which I know we’re gonna talk about in our 2020 trends, was this year, technically, because that movie Rise of Skywalker came out in the waning days of last year.
So it’s like—it’s a little hard to think about, time-wise, because I feel like there’s a very firm before-and-after around March of this year [laughs] so that makes it hard to visualize what 2020 was, but like, I still think that we definitely saw this stuff continuing, and maybe we should not talk too much about it, because I think that we’re gonna touch on this when we go into some 2020 trends.
FK: All right, fair enough. Well, and the next one is also—these are all sort of interconnected, these three, because the next one was fans versus audiences versus consumers, particularly around like—I think we were mostly talking about the way that, like, streaming video services choose to make things, like, and also the way that fans began to approach winning the box office. So this was like sort of a—how weird it is, the way that fans are constructed from a business perspective in the entertainment industry, and then how they construct themselves, we construct ourselves, as a part in that machine, and what that all means.
ELM: I like how all of these are you just saying what they are and me giving my immediate reaction. You can react to it too, but I do have a reaction.
FK: I like this. I like your reactions, because you have great reactions.
ELM: Thanks!
FK: I just looked through all of this, and for you, you’re a little fresher on this, and you’re like, “Aw, yeah. Aw. React.”
ELM: I did review the document in advance, but I didn’t read the transcript, so I will say that I think that one of the ways that we’ve really seen this manifesting this year—and Miranda Ruth Larsen, who was our last guest, really dug into this—was this kind of rise of metric culture, which I think has really kind of exploded over the last year. It’s not new, and I think that this is an extension of it—this interest in the box office numbers, right, that you’re talking about, I think that you see that everywhere now, in all sorts of different fandom ways, right?
Like—and I think you see, even outside of metric culture, people being really interested in how many streams a music artist gets. I’ve been seeing it across media fandom too, people being really concerned about how many hits or views something’s getting, even as we get—especially with the streaming services—how much evidence needs to pile up that they actually don’t care, right? You know?
FK: Yeah.
ELM: How many people watched The O.A. and Netflix was like “We don’t give a damn, you’re gone”? Right, you know what I mean? So it’s just like—I know there is some connection between successful save-our-show campaigns or whatever and what stays on, but also it seems like it’s not that direct when—it’s kind of a black box of the decisions that are being made. Especially in these streaming services.
FK: Right, right. I mean, because among other things, the thing that streamers really care about is how do you get people to sign up? Right? [laughs] You know? Or re-activate.
ELM: Right, so they’re not incentivized unless you’re really seriously gonna cancel your Netflix, because they canceled your favorite show—which probably most people don’t actually do, because there’s four other shows you might kinda care about, you know?
FK: Yep, totally. Yeah, I mean, I—I, I think that this is just a continuing trend, and I think that it has—I think that the difference I saw, this year, is that it’s gotten…its tendrils have gone into everything, in a way that I thought, like, there were a few big things in media fandom that really had it last year, and then there was you know—obviously stuff that I had been observing in pop music and so on. But now, it feels like it’s just a natural part of fandom for everything. Which is different.
ELM: Yeah. I mean, not every—not every fan of a property or artist is doing this—
FK: No, but every property it feels like has some people—
ELM: Yes, yes.
FK: —who are fans of it who are doing this. Yeah.
ELM: Yeah yeah yeah, totally.
FK: All right, well… [sighs] You know what the last one of last year was.
ELM: Tell me.
FK: [laughs] It seemed so naïve, but at the time, we thought “J. K. Rowling fucking sucks” was a 2019 trend.
ELM: Wow. Little did we know.
FK: And we thought “goodbye Harry Potter” was like, that was the thing in 2019.
ELM: You know, she definitely listened to that episode, and she was like “Oh. They think this is it?” [FK laughs] “I’ll show them! I’ll show myself cancel, I’ll make myself cancelable! Truly cancelable!”
FK: Oh no!
ELM: “Not ambivalently cancelable, as at this time last year!”
FK: Not “Oh, I don’t like this, but you know, I got my Harry Potter tattoo because it was a time in my life and I guess I’ll never let it go—” now it’s like, booking the tattoo removal appointment. [laughs] I don’t have a Harry Potter tattoo, also, to be clear. I have other tattoos.
ELM: Just the name that’s now on your driver’s license, but that’s fine.
FK: It’s not a—it’s not really a Harry Potter name. It’s like, mentioned once in the books. The connection is tenuous.
ELM: My Dobby back tattoo is not really related to Harry Potter at all.
FK: [laughs] Elizabeth…
ELM: I don’t have that, in case anybody was wondering.
FK: I’m gonna murder you. I think we need to take a break so I don’t murder you.
ELM: If you had to get a back tattoo of any Harry Potter character, what would you pick?
FK: Oh, Dobby.
ELM: [laughs] That’s cool. Mine’s Kreacher, actually, so…Dobby was just a ruse to throw you off.
FK: Because you’re dark. And brooding.
ELM: Mm-hmm, because I love Sirius, when you get right down to it. So. It’s a complicated relationship we have.
FK: Wow, OK. Well, I’m gonna go and try not to murder you and you’re gonna get your Kreacher back tattoo, and in a minute we’re going to come back here and talk about this year in fandom—but before we go, actually, we should probably talk about how we make this podcast and how people can support us.
ELM: Oh, you wanna do it before the break this time, huh?
FK: Mixin’ it up!
ELM: OK, so if we’re mixing it up then I guess I should go first because you usually go first.
FK: I do.
ELM: Patreon.com/fansplaining.
FK: Take it away!
ELM: All right, I’m taking it away, OK?! Patreon.com/fansplaining is the website where you can go and pay money to us to help us continue to make this podcast. I’m doing a great job so far, I know.
FK: Great. Really.
ELM: So that is how we are funded. There are different tiers, you probably know how Patreon works by this time, but it can be as little as $1 a month, as much as you want at the upper level—realistically $10 a month is usually the higher end of our pledges. And there are all sorts of rewards in between. $2 a month you get early access to every episode. $3 a month, our most popular tier, you get almost two dozen—we should probably do a few more so we can say two dozen special episodes. We’re at like 21, I wanna say?
FK: Mm-hmm!
ELM: On various media that we’ve watched, some things we liked, some things we liked a little bit less. And also, we did a whole series last year called—in this past year, rather—called “Tropefest.” And we should continue that. I think that we’re overdue for another trope.
FK: Yeah. Yeah, we’ll have to think about what trope it should be.
ELM: Yeah! Let’s do it. Anyway, $5 a month you get a really cute enamel pin, and $10 a month—in addition to all those things at lower tiers, you get our semi-regular tiny zine. I believe we still have some tiny zines left.
FK: Uh, I think that we do! Yeah, we’ve got like one or two.
ELM: OK! So really get in there if you want it, this tiny zine, like the previous two, a collaboration with Maia Kobabe, an extraordinary artist, and this one was about my discovery of fanfiction and it has a beautiful illustration of Rupert Giles, Watcher and librarian.
FK: Your favorite person ever.
ELM: I mean, he’s everyone’s favorite, to be honest.
FK: I’m not gonna argue with you on that one. I’m just not going to do it.
ELM: Thank you!
FK: I’m not gonna have the argument. If you cannot afford to or don’t want to give us money, there’s lots of other ways that you can help us out: by telling your friends about our podcast, by writing in with questions, comments, thoughts, opinions, by giving us a phone call—1-401-526-FANS. And, oh, the way that you write in is by writing to fansplaining at gmail dot com, or contacting us on one of many social networks on which we are pretty much “fansplaining.” You can guess which ones. You’ll be able to figure it out, I promise.
ELM: It’s such a short list, it’s not that hard to say Tumblr—
FK: Twitter—
ELM: Twitter—
FK: Tumblr, Instagram and Facebook.
ELM: You leave it so open-ended, and people might think, again, that they can find us on LinkedIn.
FK: All right, I think that we need to take a break on that. Let’s take a break.
ELM: All right. I’m gonna go connect with you on LinkedIn.
FK: All right, update your LinkedIn.
ELM: Yeah.
[Interstitial music]
FK: All right, we’re back, and unfortunately the first of this year’s trends slash stories is: J. K. Rowling fucking sucks.
ELM: Yes. So… [laughs] I put this on here and now I’m like “What more can I say?” That’s really all I wanted to say. I think that, you know, it’s all well and good to kind of joke and say “little did we know, at this time last year, about what would happen,” but like, I think it’s massive. I think that the, there was some…maybe not plausible deniability, but I definitely think there was some level of ability for even people who thought that what she had done last year—which was, for the record, she had faved some tweets from notable transphobic voices, and then she tweeted explicitly about a transphobia-related legal case in the U.K. saying she supported the person who had been fired on the grounds of transphobia, the person who had been accused of being transphobic. So that kind of explicit support for this person suggested that she agreed, right.
FK: Right.
ELM: I think that at that point, it allowed a lot of people to say, “This is really hurtful, I’m really hurt,” people of all sorts, but I encountered a ton of people saying, like, “I’m just gonna have to learn to separate her from my continued love of Harry Potter, and it belongs to us now,” and all this stuff, and what happened in June when she released her—you know, thousand thousands of words, screed, manifesto, about her feelings about gender…I saw so many people who had reactions like us, which was “I don’t want anything to do with this stuff ever again.”
FK: Yeah.
ELM: Right? And I think that’s the big difference. And I think both you and I were feeling very ambivalent around this time last year, but like, in June we were just like, “No, that’s that.” You know?
FK: Yeah, yeah! To me the difference was definitely, around this time last year I was like “Well, I’ve stuck with this through a lot of shitty things that she’s done, and I don’t wanna cut her off because like, Harry Potter, such a big thing,” you know. I still…
ELM: I wanted to cut her off, but I was just like—and I didn’t really want to engage with Harry Potter anymore, but yeah, I wasn’t like—
FK: But like, I didn’t want to have a clean break with Harry Potter. But, after June, it was like—truly no. Actually, I don’t—the difference was I don’t want anything to do with this any more. Right?
ELM: Mm-hmm, yeah.
FK: It makes me feel bad.
ELM: Yeah. It’s interesting, I was really struck, I think we both were, when we talked to Destination Toast a few weeks ago, that the fanfiction fandom is busier than ever, more productive than ever, this year. That was striking to me, because I saw so many people—cause I have a lot of Harry people on my feed from being in the fandom relatively recently, within the last five years—so many people saying “I’m not sure I can continue with this” and sounding like we were in June, and now six months later are posting their new fic and saying, “Really excited about my new fic!” You know. “Harry is a whatever!” And I’m like, “Oh, OK! I guess that’s the decision you made.” And I don’t fault anyone, but I was a little surprised that it seemed like so many people I knew had just kind of decided it was OK. And I’m not shaming anyone, I was just surprised.
FK: Yeah, I mean…I’m surprised too. I guess I’m not shocked, because it seems like that’s, I don’t know. I think that I’ve been there with other things, where I was like “Ugh, I hate this!” And then I was like “Well, maybe I’m coming back to it, I guess.” You know? Like—I will confess that I have watched a couple of episodes of SVU since…
ELM: [gasps] Wow.
FK: I know! I have. I’ve done it. So, I can’t, you know. I will not throw stones, is what I’m saying on the subject.
ELM: Yeah, and I’m honestly not throwing stones. I just think it’s interesting, because I feel like, I don’t know. I’d be curious to—I should actually reach out to some of my friends who are still in the fandom and see how they’re feeling. Because we talked about it around that time, and you know, I’ll admit that I haven’t done the best job, you know, checking in and being like “How do you feel about J. K. Rowling six months later?” Which is like…kind of on me as a fandom friend. And absolutely I understand people kind of being able to make that distinction between the creator and their fanworks or their fandom experience. I’ve done that many times in the past. But you know, I was a little surprised at where we were at the height of the rawest of the feelings, and where it sort of seems things have ended up. And yeah, I guess a little surprised, not shocked.
FK: Yeah.
ELM: I will say, on a wrapping-up note, I am also—not shocked, but I am appalled that the BBC, someone at the BBC deemed it one of, that, the manifesto one of the best pieces of writing of the year.
FK: Yeah!
ELM: And I feel very comfortable saying “Go fuck yourself” to that guy and to the entire BBC, and I regret ever paying my license fee.
FK: Wow. Big words, Elizabeth Minkel.
ELM: Yeah! To be fair, there were times I didn’t pay it. Don’t tell the Queen!
FK: [laughs] OK OK OK OK. Trend number four—we’re counting down this year—trend number four…
ELM: Yeah! David Letterman style, that’s right!
FK: Trend number four was really more of a non-fandom trend that could not help but impact fandom, which is Black Lives Matter. And that’s like—it’s weird to say a “trend,” right. Movement, a theme, a topic, an issue. Right?
ELM: Yeah. So I wanted to put this on the list because I think this is, you know, alongside the pandemic and the presidential election, I think they’re three equally interconnected topics, at least in American life this year, that were just massive and shaped everything. I think that there were some flash points, or notable events, within the fandom spaces that we spend time in, around racial politics and in particular anti-Blackness, connected to the Black Lives Matter protests and the uprising in the beginning of the summer.
That being said, comparing that to fandom and racial politics, where we started the year and where we ended the year, it’s also notable in the sense of—if we’re putting a lens on it, a lot of more of the same, a lot of the same arguments, of people pushing back at any suggestion of racism or racial bias, a lot of “Oh, we’re just here to have fun,” you know. That kind of thing. And so that’s, that’s obviously pretty disheartening to see, because I think I saw from a lot of people in fandom—and they still have in their bios!—like, BLM and really strong, you know, supportive white people in June…
FK: [laughs] Yeah.
ELM: And yet still seeing all the same patterns in fandomy spaces, you know? It’s just like, what is the disconnect here? Why is this not a point of action for people?
FK: Yeah, I mean, I do find it a little…I agree. I agree that the same issues keep coming up, I agree with all of that. I also wonder what points of action would look like that aren’t sort of a proper sea change, do you know what I mean? Like, anything that would be a point of, that would be a real change I would say—I would, I mean, it would have to be a change of a lot of different behaviors from a lot of different people, do you see what I’m saying, as opposed to like—it’s harder to pick action points of like, the Archive Of Our Own being able to make good on some of the things that were being talked about and so on would be one, but—which hasn’t happened. But beyond that, you know.
ELM: I think the action points thing is hard and I think, you know, we did our “Race and Fandom Revisited” with a lot of different new guests and our returning guests and there were a lot of comments from—particularly from the returning guests, about how nothing’s changed, if anything it’s worse, et cetera, et cetera. And what I will say is I think that what I really felt at the beginning of the summer, around all aspects of Black Lives Matter, is this kind of desire for action points—particularly amongst anxious white people who are like “How do I…”
FK: “Give me something to give money to!”
ELM: “I did it wrong, how do I fix it though? Now?” Right? And it’s like, OK. You’re not gonna fix it overnight. And I absolutely understand that impulse and I think that one carries over into fandom too, especially when there is some sort of big discussion or whatever, but I will say that in the six months since then I have seen on my dash, just casually, discourse in new fandoms, fresh discourse playing into what I think are pretty racialized or racist tropes, relatively uncritically presented, and it’s like, this is—these aren’t old arguments! These are new ones, you know?
And I’m not trying to call anyone out, and I’m, you know, I’m saying that everyone is learning at a different pace and learns about history and learns about language at a different pace, but it was a little bit like—really? In 2020? These are the headcanons you’re coming up with about this non-white character? That kind of thing.
FK: Gotcha.
ELM: It’s just sort of like—at that point you start to feel like, when are you gonna start to see a little movement of the needle? Not necessarily a shoomp, you know, a big needle shift, but a little needle, you know? That kind of thing.
FK: Yeah, yeah. I don’t know. But I mean, I also don’t know how I would measure that, right. Again, I’m not trying to say that it has happened—I don’t particularly think it has. But I also don’t know how I would measure it, because I, you know… I don’t know. It’s rough. But I also don’t feel like we saw the sea change that I think people would like to see. So.
ELM: No, absolutely not! I think that’s why it’s notable, it’s like, I think that—and I think that you’re seeing that reflected in kind of some broader cultural conversations about race and also about racial justice in general outside of culture. Saying, like, you know—where are all those job offers from June, you know? [laughs] Where are all the promises to boost up, you know, Black creative voices or whatever? How much change has happened?
And I think that this is just a reflection—I think it’s worth including because seeing that across all levels, kind of, of the culture, whether it’s things happening just between fans or the kind of way it’s playing out in the entertainment industry or whatever, and obviously I know things move slowly, but like—it’s notable, and I think it’s a huge story of 2020, even if it’s a pretty disappointing one, honestly.
FK: Totally. All right.
ELM: Cool, great.
FK: Number three.
ELM: Are we gonna have any positive stories? No. We didn’t pick anything positive, did we.
FK: Well, I mean, this one—this one I’m not sure is inherently positive or negative, which is the rise of C-dramas. And also Korean and Thai dramas. And I don’t, I think that there are certain things that—I mean, as we’ve had people on the podcast to say, there’s certain things that are not thrilling about that, but I think there’s also lots of things that are nice about it, and overall it’s interesting, right?
ELM: Pause. Let’s define “rise.” So obviously, Chinese, Korean and Thai dramas have been…
FK: These have been huge things! [laughing] Worldwide!
ELM: [laughing] In Asia!
FK: By “rise” I mean “people in the Anglophone world falling into them headfirst.”
ELM: Right.
FK: And having it be truly a huge, huge, huge, huge aspect of…
ELM: Yeah.
FK: Fan culture.
ELM: I honestly think that there have been Anglophone fans who have been interested in Korean dramas in particular for a few years now.
FK: Oh, yeah. There absolutely have.
ELM: I do think that The Untamed in particular, which is Chinese drama, it has kind of opened a floodgate. I just could say this even anecdotally on my dash or my feed: just seeing people who started 2020 as Untamed fans now reblogging or retweeting Thai and Korean and other Chinese dramas onto my feed, you know.
FK: There’s also a specifically fannish aspects of it. So I, the first time that I encountered dedicated K-drama viewers was when I was working on East Los High, which was also sort of a soap opera, right? And so we actually saw a lot of people who were into K-dramas, and we had a big Korean audience, and also people who were into K-dramas from elsewhere. But they were not—they weren’t doing things the way that, in the sort of like, fandomy way that is in the thing that we were usually talking about. Right? It was more like dedicated soap viewers, right.
ELM: Yeah, yeah.
FK: People who are watching these on Hulu or on whatever, and they were into soaps, and then they got Hulu, and they were like “Oh shit, look at all these amazing soaps here,” right? [laughs] Which is not—it’s not not fandom. But it’s also a different kind of fandom. And I feel like the difference in this year has been like, suddenly it’s not just those kinds of fandom, it’s also the kinds of fandom that typically apply to Supernatural or Star Wars or whatever else. Now that eye is turned onto—
ELM: Transformative media fandom.
FK: Yeah.
ELM: I think that the kind of flip side of this story is—which started in 2019, we saw a massive influx of Chinese users into the Archive Of Our Own and other English-language fan, like, transformative spaces. And obviously a big story on that front this year was about how the AO3 got banned in China in March, and you know, that was one thing that we were really trying to parse with Destination Toast, was like: there are some huge Chinese and Korean drama fandoms on the AO3, like, fast-growing, and how much of that is Anglophone fans who might be like, coming from Supernatural or whatever, kind of, crossing that transnational sort of fandom divide, and getting really interested in East Asian media, and how much is it in reverse, other fans who had a very global fannish appetite prior to this? And it seems like it’s a real mix, which is interesting, because it really feels like there’s sort of been a…
I mean not just that. I know we’re talking about East Asian dramas right now, and we are gonna talk about K-pop obviously later—spoiler—but like, even hearing from Toast about like, how the, you know, when we got that letter afterwards from Nary Rising about how there’s—the reason why we saw a huge influx of Brazilian and Russian users in the middle of the summer was because people were shifting their fannish activities onto the Archive Of Our Own, and it’s really interesting to think about, I mean—these are huge language groups, right? Like, and maybe it’s a little unfair, because there’s plenty of activity from [laughs] languages with, you know, that don’t have hundreds of millions or billions of speakers, you know?
FK: It would be interesting to see this based on population, right? That would be cool to see.
ELM: Yeah, yeah, totally.
FK: Is it—you know, does everybody, does everybody who speaks, you know…I don’t know what language. Everyone is on the AO3 in that country. You know? [laughs] That would be interesting.
ELM: Toast! It’s time for you to do more language stats for us or anyone else! You know, it is interesting to see—I wonder, I am curious to know if that might lead to more cross-cultural exchange or if we’re seeing something…our conversation with Miranda was really illuminating, talking about Korean media and culture exports, as a kind of a nationalized product, and thinking about, you know, the different ways that people all over the world are encountering these different pieces of media. I think it’s interesting to see, alongside the clashes that like, you know, some of our guests talked about on the Race and Fandom episode of—you know, people stereotyping or not doing a lot of research, et cetera, et cetera, that kind of thing, right? It’s, it’s all been—
FK: Totally.
ELM: It’s been a lot! This has been a very interesting year in transnational fandom.
FK: And I think that’s gonna continue next year.
ELM: Oh, you don’t think that in 2021 everyone’s gonna…no?
FK: Yeah, I don’t think everyone’s gonna just go back to, you know, Anglophone works only. I think that, I’m gonna make—that’s a prediction that you can take to the betting book or I don’t know what. Anyway.
ELM: Can I just say, one final point before we move on, I will say that I’m aware as I’m saying this that like—obviously global fandom has existed forever, to some degree because of American hegemony. [FK laughs] I’m aware that when we say this it sounds so ethnocentric. “Finally Americans are learning about Chinese stuff!” [laughs] And obviously fans all over the world have engaged with American or Anglophone pop culture. So I just wanna make that really clear, not suggesting that there is no cross-cultural exchange, but obviously…
FK: Yeah, there’s also been cross-cultural exchange that happen in cultures that have nothing to do with Anglophone people! [laughing]
ELM: Are you saying that America hasn’t been involved?!
FK: Shockingly enough, there are some things that happen that America is not involved in. I know.
ELM: I don’t believe it! But no, I wanna make that clear that I don’t mean to say—I just, I’m very wary of it sounding like some sort of terrible Columbusing or whatever. Being like “Hello! Fans learned about fans in other places!” That’s not my intent at all, but…
FK: Yeah.
ELM: Just for a point of clarity before we…
FK: But American fans did kind of learn about fans in other places. Anyway, moving on, moving on, moving on: OK. Our second trend is [laughs] the wave of fan expectations crashing against the bluffs of reality.
ELM: All right. So this is a thorny one.
FK: Yeah. So…in this year we saw a variety of cases where fans had really strong expectations or beliefs about what was going to happen in their media, and then when those things didn’t happen, or happened in a way they didn’t like, there was a lot of sturm und drang about it, and a lot of like, a lot of stuff coming up from that. Stuff from like, ideas about like, conspiracies, to ideas about like, there’s a secret cut of this movie, to ideas about like, we need to find someone to blame, to pin on who interfered with this property and made it suck—cause there has to be someone and it’s not the person I like, it’s someone else. Right?
ELM: Right.
FK: Just a lot of reactions like that.
ELM: So, as we’ve been watching—obviously this isn’t one big subtweet of Supernatural, though it is a very big—
FK: No it is not.
ELM: —fandom that has happened recently.
FK: Don’t worry, Supernatural: we see you, but it also was not just you.
ELM: So I was really struck when the Supernatural stuff was going down and this kind of idea that the network was silencing characters or silencing actors or silencing rogue translators in various countries around the world…I immediately thought of #ReleaseTheJJCut and #ReleaseTheSnyderCut and…well, to be fair to #ReleaseTheSnyderCut, there actually is a Snyder cut that…
FK: There is a Snyder cut.
ELM: Zach Snyder. But OK. So #ReleaseTheJJCut.
FK: Which is actually part of the problem, that there is a Snyder cut.
ELM: Yeah, right? So #ReleaseTheJJCut is a suggestion that Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker would have been good if the version that J. J. Abrams had cut was the version that went to theaters. And that it had been meddled with and that he’s a true visionary and something just doesn’t feel right, doesn’t add up. Obviously something went wrong and there was interference from Kathleen Kennedy or whoever—Lucasfilm, et cetera, et cetera. And all of everyone’s narrative and thematic issues will be resolved if they could just see the J. J. Abrams version, which honestly is not based on any of J. J. Abram’s résumé, in my opinion, having seen some of his other work, that his version would suddenly be great.
FK: No! I mean, I think—now, would it be, would it be bad in different ways that you might like better? [ELM laughs] Probably! Because it would be a different cut, so it would probably be bad in different ways that you might like better, you know? OK! Does such a cut really exist? It’s not like there’s a finished cut of it. I don’t know. Anyway.
ELM: Yeah, so there’s this kind of idea, I mean, we’ve been talking about this—we did this airing of our grievances for the Fandom, the Festivus episode of It’s All Fandom, a podcast about fandom, and you brought up one of your grievances—we had some grievances—that you were tired of fans having a little bit of knowledge about how the entertainment industry works but not enough.
FK: Yeah.
ELM: I feel like this is the prime example—and perhaps what you were thinking of at the front of your mind, amongst other things.
FK: Yes. It really was. And I mean—ugh! And the thing that’s frustrating about it too is that people inside the industry don’t necessarily know all the details about how the stuff works, you know what I mean? Like—there’s stuff that…I don’t know. It’s just so… [sighs] Man, fans are so good at extrapolating on such tiny amounts of evidence.
ELM: Right. You know, you—I mean, there’s a lot of different things going on here, but it’s kind of like, it’s rare that in mass media—which is mostly what we’re talking about—it’s rare that there is actually some, the subtext you might think you’re seeing, it’s rare that that is actually some sort of nuanced subtlety and a set of secret clues. And I’m saying this about all mass media. I am not talking about a specific show or a specific movie, right? Choices get made! And the choices are usually pretty big and blunt, in terms of like, which characters are gonna be centered or what they, the big beats are. You know? It’s not like if you just cut together a bunch of different scenes in that movie, it suddenly would lead to a wholly different outcome. Right?
And frankly, I’ve seen commentary around this, around certain characters who I think were really poorly treated on a writing level in Star Wars, for example, especially characters of color, like—I don’t think a different cut is gonna change that! You’d have to have writers who truly cared about centering them and giving them fully-fleshed-out storylines, right? And like—
FK: Yeah.
ELM: Giving them a couple more scenes, or a few more lines—you’d have to make a whole different movie. That’s not something that just happened in editing, just because maybe you didn’t get a few moments that they filmed and you didn’t get to see, right?
FK: Right.
ELM: And that’s something that I think, you know, it carries over into the queerbaiting arguments too, like…
FK: Yeah, the things that you can change in the cut of a movie like that are pacing things and tonal things and so on, in my experience, right? And that can make the movie feel really different, but it’s not going to fix the problems of like, who the characters are. It’s very rare, I think, that you leave in or take out a scene and it totally changes the meaning and who’s important in it.
ELM: I don’t know if you can even talk about this, but I know you have come in to consult on movies after they were done and you were like “What do we do now?” Right?
FK: Yeah, every once in a while I have had experiences where I’m like “Well, you shot the whole thing, and man.” [laughs] “There were some bad ideas in there. Don’t know what you were thinking.” You know? I mean like… “Don’t know what to say to you at this point because you made a lot of choices that I would not have made, and I wish you had called us sooner.” Like, shrug, you know? There’s no—there’s no cut that’s gonna fix it.
ELM: I think that bringing it to fandom—this is something we obviously talked about a lot in the queerbaiting episode, and it’s something we’ve talked about, like, back when we did that characterization episode—there’s a huge resistance in fandom these days, it’s a trend that’s been steadily growing over the last decade, I would say, of being able to look at the product that you receive.
FK: Mm-hmm.
ELM: I mean, obviously some people are good at this. But like—[laughs] I sure am! But being able to look at it and say like, “This is bad! I wanted something different, and you fucked it up.” Right? There’s an increasing desire to say, “Something’s gone wrong, because this isn’t what I was expecting, and I thought it was gonna go like this, and it didn’t, and clearly there must be something happening behind the scenes that kept the good thing from us.” Right?
And it’s a very weird shift to me, but I don’t—I walked, kinda tiptoed around this in the queerbaiting episode, and I’m going to tiptoe around it now but I’m still going to bring it up: I think it does reflect kind of broader society and these ideas of realities, right? Like, “I don’t like the way things are going in the world,”
FK: [laughs] Yeah. Therefore…
ELM: “That’s not right!”
FK: Therefore, I reject your reality and substitute my own!
ELM: Yeah! I got some different facts! You know? Who’s to say? Maybe there’s a different cut of reality! And I choose to believe there’s a better cut out there, and I’m gonna believe in that one. You know, right?
FK: If only it were so.
ELM: I’m not trying to, you know, it’s not like just a political thing or whatever. Or I think that, I think that you see people on the entire political spectrum kind of constructing these preferred realities, you know?
FK: You certainly do. Yep! I know.
ELM: So I absolutely understand why this is happening, but I don’t love it, because I truly am a fan of—a fan—of watching something and taking it on its own terms and then judging it.
FK: You like the judging part especially.
ELM: It’s so pleasurable. Just be like, “God, maybe 50 people shouldn’t have tinkered with this screenplay, because this is bad.”
FK: All right. On that note, let’s talk about our number one thing for 2020…
ELM: Yeah!
FK: Which was K-pop.
ELM: You knew it was gonna be.
FK: This has been something that we talked about like two years ago or something? And we didn’t talk about it in 2019, but continuing to roar on the scene. It was roaring the whole time. But now it’s roaring even more.
ELM: I don’t know if we need to go into a massive amount of detail about this, because we did just talk to Miranda, who is an actual expert in this, for the length of an entire episode. I think that my biggest takeaway is from my position as an American looking at the way Americans in particular—Anglophone fans—have engaged with K-pop over the last year. A ton of people in my life came to K-pop fandom.
FK: Yep.
ELM: People I’d previously known to be only media fans.
FK: Yep.
ELM: Only, only in TV, movie, book fandoms.
FK: Yeah.
ELM: I find that as we discussed with Miranda, a lot of this seems to be directly entwined with the pandemic and this kind of idea of…I don’t know, this sort of flattening of global fandom. To say that like, “Well, we’re all in our homes and we’re all on the internet, and no elements of going to concerts or anything, and no really—” A kind of, I’m not deep in these fannish conversations of these—many people I know who are now in K-pop fandom. But it is interesting to see sometimes, I feel like there is sometimes a more localized reading of K-pop as a genre, and sometimes there’s a kind of somewhat flat global reading.
FK: Right, and this is very flat global, right? That being the trend.
ELM: Yeah. Which is interesting, and I mean, I don’t think it’s necessarily a wrong take, because when you are…I mean, it’s, when you are like…I’m not gonna sit here and argue for the inherent Americanness of the American hegemonic cultural products when you see they go around the world and they go into different contexts, and obviously they are still American, but…
FK: Right.
ELM: Different cultures and different areas kind of make them their own, and they mean something to different people. You know what I mean? That kind of thing.
FK: Yeah, totally.
ELM: It seems to be somewhat similar, you’re seeing those dynamics kind of play out in a similar way.
FK: Yeah, I think it’s also interesting because there’s a real, like…the concept of a virtual idol or a virtual, you know, being a fan of a virtual thing, is something that has existed and been associated with K-pop, with J-pop, with all sorts of Asian pop, and I think that it’s interesting that in the pandemic that is…it’s like almost like that is the reality. Again, I’m looking at it from outside, but it’s almost like that is the reality.
It’s not just like, you’re an American and so they’re never gonna come on tour and shake your hand, you know, in a place that you can see. It’s like, actually, no one, no one can touch these people because we are in a pandemic—like you were saying, because we are all in our homes. And so now this a truly virtual experience where these people exist, supposedly, somewhere, but they’re not, you know—they’re not, there’s no reaching over that gap, there’s no way that you’re gonna wait for pit tickets, there’s no way that you’re going to, you know—none of that is gonna happen. You are going to consume really highly produced music videos and love them. So.
ELM: It’s really interesting. I mean, I’m sure a thousand dissertations are being written on 2020 in K-pop at this very moment.
FK: Yeah.
ELM: I mean, we also should say, obviously we talked about it a lot with Miranda, but probably the biggest story about fandom in the media this year, in the American media anyway, has been about K-pop’s supposed activist power.
FK: Right, right! Which is the BLM piece, right? Which ties back to what we were saying about BLM.
ELM: OK, I should clarify: not “supposed activist,” because obviously lots and lots of K-pop fans and other pop music fans mobilize to do activist work and to raise money all the time. But I mean their, like, the inherent political slant that was being framed as like, “These are—”
FK: Right.
ELM: “These K-pop fans are the new, this is,” I don’t know, “digital antifa” or something. I have no idea what the people who are doing these basic takes were thinking as they wrote these pieces that were generally quite bad.
FK: Digital antifa. Great.
ELM: Digital antifa. I, as you know, am the president of digital antifa. So.
FK: Great. All right…
ELM: How about you? What’s your role to antifa?
FK: I…I can’t…I mean, I, I, uh, I can’t, I can’t. I’m not at liberty to speak about that. [both laughing] All right. So in our notes for this though, we had listed a note which is “the big kahuna.” Which is the pandemic.
ELM: So 2020, actually a year like no other, which is why I thought we should do a surprise zero item! [FK laughs] It’s called SARS-CoV-2. The coronavirus pandemic.
FK: Yeah, I mean…
ELM: Of 2020.
FK: I almost don’t even know what to say about this because it was such a, you know, the water we swim in, you know what I mean.
ELM: Terrible water.
FK: I’m almost to the point of being unable to talk about it at this stage, although there’s no way we can not talk about it, because what do you talk about in 2020 if not that?
ELM: Yeah, all right, so I think it’s fractured a lot of things, and I think it remains to be seen what will happen, and here’s what I think is fractured related to fandom: the entertainment industry, which you could obviously speak to, but like—all of the stuff that we talked about in the last few years about engagement patterns and the different, the actual, like…
FK: What the fuck’s gonna happen with movie theaters? I don’t know! Nobody knows. It’s gonna be fun! We’ll see!
ELM: I mean, frankly I don’t wanna say too much about it, having not seen it, but today is the day after Christmas—happy Boxing Day, Flourish.
FK: Happy Boxing Day.
ELM: And every time I peek between my fingers to look at Twitter, cause I’m trying not to be on it right now, I saw discourse flying about Wonder Woman 1984, and part of me just thought, like: this is—are we seeing, is video on demannd going to utterly fracture this sort of…I don’t wanna speak ill of the blockbuster, but I do think that there are many blockbusters that people say are great that I think are not very good movies. But you paid $22 and it’s air-conditioned and—
FK: And there were big booms!
ELM: —maybe you were eating popcorn. Yeah!
FK: The noise happened!
ELM: And [kapow noise] and so you go “Aaah! That was an experience!” Right? And you walk away. And I think that seeing some of these films in your living room…
FK: Yes. Is different! [laughs]
ELM: Is, is bursting the bubble a little! And I say this having not watched this movie, nor having any idea of how the people would’ve reacted had it been, like, a normal time in normal theaters, but like…
FK: I think that’s very true. I think there are some movies that like, there are some movies that you have to see on a big screen because they are a spectacle. And sometimes that spectacle is worth it, and sometimes you see a movie and you’re like “Well, that wasn’t worth seeing not on a big screen, because it would’ve been a spectacle, but I’m also not sure if there was anything else in there.” You know what I mean?
ELM: You know, I paid $22 to go see It Chapter Two, which I know is a popular fandom, so I don’t want to insult anyone, but I thought that movie was quite bad. But I did enjoy seeing, on the big screen, James McAvoy riding a bike while wearing jeans. And that wouldn’t have been the same on my TV!
FK: [laughing] How many feet wide was his ass?
ELM: [laughing] I mean it was sizeable! It was great. It was great. Thanks for riding that bike in jeans, James McAvoy.
FK: Yeah, yeah. So I actually have, I have some ideas about this in general, like: there’s some films that I think have bad reputations because nobody saw them in high quality or whatever, you know what I mean. So I think that this is really interesting and I think it’s going to have a lot of impact on that, and I also, you know, just generally in the industry I have questions about how that’s gonna, like, affect the timing of releases and the way that franchises are built.
But I think that within fandom, it’s also interesting, because it’s like: when you have these content drops in different ways, then you have to have fan experiences in different ways too, right? So assuming that things shake up and we have different—I mean, it’s, what does it look like if you’re not focused around sort of in-person theatergoing experiences for film franchises? And what does it look like if everything is like a Netflix content drop for television?
ELM: Right.
FK: Which everything is not going to be, right, like—obviously that has been happening for a longer time, and we know that there’s different strategies that people are choosing for release for things. But I don’t know. It’ll be interesting to see.
ELM: Yeah, I mean, this is similar—there’s a similar flattening element, right? If everything just comes out of your TV all at the same time…and I mean like, it’s interesting to think about, you’re a Star Trek fan. Like, Star Trek—obviously there are movies, I don’t wanna diminish those important cinematic works.
FK: They are important cinematic experiences. [laughs]
ELM: But…
FK: Especially the one with the whales!!
ELM: Mostly it’s a television show, and I think Star Trek fans are pretty used to consuming it in serialized TV format.
FK: Mm-hmm.
ELM: And so to me, having a bunch of different Star Trek shows on streaming at once doesn’t feel, I mean it’s a lot…
FK: They’re also not all on at once, that’s the thing, is that they’re not all coming out at the same time.
ELM: Oh really?
FK: Yeah! No, it’s so that you—the, literally one ends and the next one begins. [ELM laughs] So I always, there’s always Star Trek on Thursday any day of the year.
ELM: That’s a lot of Star Trek.
FK: Which is great! And then like for a little while it’s Picard, and then it becomes Lower Decks, and then it became Discovery, you know?
ELM: OK, but also, this is a like—if you were watching, I don’t know, any of the ’90s shows on the air while they were airing, you would watch it every week for several dozen weeks, right?
FK: Yeah!
ELM: So that’s really different than “Oh, there’s gonna be like 15 Star Wars shows and get ready, cause Sunday is Star Wars day.” I don’t know what day it’s gonna be.
FK: Yeah and Star Wars doesn’t seem like they’re doing the thing—it doesn’t seem like the shows are gonna come out consecutively the way they’re coming out for Star Trek, right? That’s the thing with Star Trek is that it’s genuinely just so that like, you pay for CBS All Access year-round.
ELM: OK, I love how animated you got when I mentioned that there was constant Star Trek.
FK: I love it!! Dude!!
ELM: This is delightful.
FK: It’s everything I ever dreamed of! I’m living the dream!!!
ELM: I’m happy for you! The point is that—I mean, I saw someone tweeting about Star Wars the other day saying like, it was something along the lines of like, “this used to be something that was really special and these huge big movie events, and I would think ‘Oh, if only there was more Star Wars, what if there was Star Wars every day,’ and now that there’s going to be, it’s just like ugh.” I don’t know, they said it much more eloquently than that, but it was just kind of like—I’m sure it’s really working for some people, but for others I think it’s just like, you know, like—do you wanna just…
It also to me, as a super fandomy fandom person, like, someone who likes the fandom element more than the canon element, it’s sort of like, I love thinking about, you know, Magneto every day. I truly think about him every day. I don’t need, like, a Magneto show every day. That would kind of ruin it for me because I don’t wanna sit and stew in my own head with Magneto, stewing in his own head.
FK: It’s also kind of a different vibe, because like you were saying, with Star Wars there are television shows, right? There were the animated shows and so on. But I think that for a lot of people Star Wars, until the Mandalorian, was a movie thing, and that’s a very different vibe than—
ELM: And a big—
FK: A big movie thing.
ELM: I said this before, my parents almost never go to the movies, and I took my dad to each of the big three of the last trilogy, and you know, he was really excited and he never wants to go to the movies. Not to blow up his spot. Sorry, Dad. But like, you know? And it was fun! And I don’t even like Star Wars that much and I still found it fun, you know?
FK: Right, exactly, and this was what you were saying about Star Trek being different—there are movies for Star Trek but nobody thinks of Star Trek as a movie-first franchise. And I would say that there’s other stuff, where—if you were into soaps, soaps having been a thing that happen every day, that’s a different kind of fandom and a different relationship that you have to those characters.
ELM: Yeah.
FK: It’s not, you know, it’s not like transformative media fandom, but it is a fandom. And it has a very particular, like, cadence. Right? So I think that that’s, I think that that’s really different.
And maybe, maybe there are people for whom Star Wars—kids who grew up on Clone Wars, the animated series, maybe feel differently about Star Wars than I do or you do, right?
ELM: Want all constant Star Wars? Yeah, yeah.
FK: Yeah, maybe for them it is a TV fandom and they’re like “This is exciting because this means that I get the Star Wars TV that I remember when I was a kid, and I’m excited to have that be happening on a regular basis again.”
ELM: I guess more, maybe it’s more—it feels like, with the huge Disney properties, they’re just trying to obliterate the big…you know, I mean, Marvel also has 17,000 television shows coming out, right?
FK: Yes.
ELM: I don’t know. People have made such a big deal in the last 10 years out of these, especially the last five or six years, out of these big events and these franchises, and maybe they still will, but like—I don’t know. And like, whatever. Who cares. Maybe that’s not that important to fans.
FK: Will the bloom be off the rose with all of this stuff, right. Yeah.
ELM: Yeah, it’s interesting to think about. So that, al right. That’s one huge wave of the pandemic, and I, you know, I would pay lots of money for the pandemic to—I would pay lots of money for the pandemic to be over. If you were like…
FK: Right.
ELM: “Would you pay all of your money?” I wouldn’t pay all of my money because I have to pay my rent, but like…I would pay some money for the pandemic to be over.
FK: I would, I would—if the pandemic was over for everybody, I would pay all my money! That would save hundreds of thousands of lives, Elizabeth! I would pay all my money and be a pauper! [laughs]
ELM: Yeah, that’s true, I probably would too, honestly.
FK: I think that you would too if you really thought about it!
ELM: Would you—if it was just one of us, could I come and live with you? If I had to give up my apartment for this?
FK: Oh, yeah, absolutely.
ELM: Thank you. Orlando’s coming too.
FK: I’m pretty sure that if you paying all your money ended the pandemic, I’m pretty sure we could organize the world’s greatest GoFundMe for you.
ELM: [laughs] Thank you. I would get a mansion after that.
FK: You would get a mansion.
ELM: It would be a good investment.
FK: It would be!
ELM: Wow, the cost of ending the pandemic is quite low when you get right down to it! [both laughing]
FK: All right.
ELM: Anyway! But I would, I would love if there was no pandemic, I would pay so much money to just go to the movies and just see something mediocre, like—it would just be so delightful, and so I bristle a little bit at the conversation of “Are movies gonna come back, now that people can just watch it in their living rooms, are they gonna bother?”
FK: Yes! Because we all have noticed that it sucks to watch in our living rooms!
ELM: Who likes this?! I hate it! Oh, God.
FK: All right.
ELM: So there’s that. That is one element. I think that other pandemic things that have really shaken everything, already talked—it’s touched this conversation throughout with the, like, kind of flattening, the whole, you know, kind of ruining of celebrity culture, because celebrities can’t really do anything in public without getting dunked on, like…
FK: Yeah, yeah!
ELM: Private island, we all got tested? You know?
FK: Yeah, although I will say—there are, whatever, there’s some people who are thriving on it, clearly. Like Cardi B is rockin’ out. Like, Cardi—Cardi is doing her thing.
ELM: Cardi B was already great. But there’s the kind of slightly unhinged celebrity that’s been very good.
FK: Oh yeah yeah yeah.
ELM: In lockdown.
FK: Absolutely.
ELM: January Jones was already great, but like, she’s really, she’s really bringin’ it right now. This is her time to be just like, very weird, alone in her house. And you’re like “That’s very relatable.”
FK: Laura Dern in her daughter’s TikToks? Great. Perfect.
ELM: Yeah. These are great.
FK: Because they also make you imagine “What if Laura Dern was my mom, how weird and great would that be,” it makes you feel really great about that.
ELM: I think it’s definitely, you’ve seen, obviously you saw many celebrities crash and burn very early in the pandemic, singing “Imagine” at us and we were like “please go away.” And then you saw many white celebrities do a very bad job in June, trying to say that Black lives matter. And then also the rhythms of celebrity fandom have been totally ruined, right?
FK: Oh yeah.
ELM: Cause they can’t do, I mean, they’re not premiering these movies, they can’t do these press tours, they can’t go to events and tell us they’re at their events. So it’s like, [sighs] are celebrities gonna bounce back?
FK: [laughing] I don’t know! I’m not sure how much I care. I will still care, I mean, I think we are still gonna care about some celebrities. I think that there’s a lot of people who are learning about how being relatable is more important than they thought, and that’s my good word on that subject.
ELM: All right. And then the final pandemic topic that I put in our little notes was about its effect on fans themselves.
FK: Yeah.
ELM: Fan professionals, I would say. Like, I know for cosplayers and artists who sell at cons, this has been, like, really brutal, and we don’t really have—you know, we don’t really have great digital platforms for a lot of that kind of monetizable fan activity.
FK: No.
ELM: You know? It’s not like there’s some great—obviously people cobble things together with Patreon and…
FK: Sure.
ELM: Ko-fi. You know.
FK: “Koh-fye.”
ELM: But it’s not the same thing as being able to [laughs] being able to sell, make most of your rent money in a few weekends at big cons, that kind of thing.
FK: Right.
ELM: That’s really hard because I think it’s—seems like a long-term unsustainable sort of, these are relatively new ways to make money, also, and this has sort of—
FK: Yeah.
ELM: —shown that there aren’t a lot of, you know what I mean?
FK: Yeah, and we also don’t know, like, what cons, like—there’s been a lot of cons that are just, you know, like, cons themselves that are run sort of on a very…I don’t want to say “fly by the seat of the pants” or anything like that, but I think there’s a lot of cons that are in real financial trouble and who aren’t sure whether they’re going to have the momentum to keep going after the pandemic. And I have no idea what that’s going to look like. And I have no idea what travel and people wanting to get together and people having the money to get together, you know, in the—in the…
ELM: Yeah.
FK: In the years, especially, the next few years, like—this has really, you know, cratered a lot of people’s, not just their money for like now but like—it’s, it will have continued to crater a lot of people’s situations for years to come. So it’s really hard to say, like, what that in-person fan culture will be like in the future.
And then it’s also just changed people’s interactions with stuff like, personally, like on a day-to-day basis.
ELM: You just mean like the way people are having a time, and so they just do fandom differently? Yeah.
FK: Yeah. I think a lot of people are doing fandom differently somehow. Not always the same kind of differently, but differently.
ELM: Right. I think the AO3 has shown us that fan activity has, you know, skyrocketed there, right? Because a lot of people are using fan stuff as coping mechanisms. And probably, you know, people either are furloughed or maybe they’re unemployed, and—or maybe they just can’t do anything fun with their friends outside. [FK laughs] Or inside. So they just sit. At home. It’s fine. It’s fine! Don’t worry about it. But you know what I mean?
FK: I do, I do.
ELM: I’m not saying that writing fanfiction is a consolation prize to hanging out with your friends. [FK laughing] I love both of those activities.
FK: I know you do, Elizabeth. OK. I think that that is kind of bringing us to our personal years in fandom, Elizabeth, our experiences of the pandemic and…
ELM: Sure.
FK: What fandom’s been like for us.
ELM: Well, do you want me to continue what I was just talking about and go first?
FK: Yeah, I do! I do.
ELM: All right. Well, here’s what happened to me: in January I published some fic and then in March, the pandemic came to New York City, and then I stopped being able to read or write for like six months. [laughing]
FK: Yeah.
ELM: And I literally could not, I mean, I could still write for work, but barely, and I really couldn’t read. And I read a few fics that I liked and knew, we talked a lot about re-reading during that very heightened period.
FK: Yeah.
ELM: But even then I was not feeling it and I was very distracted and I could not read anything at all. And then in July, out of nowhere, I started being able to write again, but I still couldn’t really—didn’t really have any interest in reading, haven’t read a single new fic all year.
FK: Wow!
ELM: But I have written probably close to 100,000 words of fic this year. So, that’s actually pretty productive when you get right down to it!
FK: That’s a lot—that’s a lot for you, too. It’s not like you were previously like a million-words-of-fic-a-year crank, you know?
ELM: No! I mean, that’s like, you know, that’s not much more than I—actually it’s more than I wrote last year but not much more. It’s pretty similar to how much I wrote last year.
FK: And you only, and you did it in half the time, pretty much!
ELM: Well, I guess I am counting January and February output as well. But like, you know. Whatever! I think it was a pretty significant turnaround that I went, I literally could not string together one sentence and then all of a sudden I was just like “OK, I guess I can!” And I started writing. So it’s very strange to me that that happened that way. But that’s how it happened.
And so I feel a little bad, because I was trying to be a better, like, fandom member, like I have an account for my pseud, like a Tumblr account for my pseud, and was like, trying to you know, not just write stuff but participate a little. And then I just like—I literally dropped off the map for most of this year, and then was like “Here’s some fic!!” And it just makes me feel a little bit one-sided and like, you know, guilty. Like not a very good fandom participant, I guess all of your words about how you really have to participate in fandom to be a true fan really sank in deep, so.
FK: [lauhging] Well, I mean…
ELM: Whatever! I’m publishing lost of fic! That’s participating!
FK: That’s participating! At least you’re doing that, you know? I mean… At least you’re doing that!
ELM: Yeah, I don’t know. I don’t want it to just seem like, I don’t know. I don’t wanna seem unsupportive, but it’s hard, because I just like, limit—there’s probably a lot of people who aren’t really feeling like they’re able to write right now. [FK laughs bitterly] And feel like they’re not contributing. But they’re reading, is that how you feel?
FK: That’s also participating! Reading is participating! I don’t know.
ELM: Heavy chuckle?
FK: I mean, [sighs] I’ve been having a weird year because I pretty much—it’s not that I haven’t been consuming things or thinking about them in a fannish way, but I have not been participating in fandom.
ELM: Yeah.
FK: Like, I’ve read a few fics. I read a bunch of Profiler!Mulder X-files fanfics after I got out of the “I can’t read anything” stage a few months ago. So like, in the middle of this.
ELM: When were you in that fanfiction book club? Wasn’t that this year?
FK: Yeah, I was in a fanfiction book club, but I really—and I read a little bit of stuff for it, you’re right, I read a few Sherlock fics. So there you are. I read a little bit more. I was doing that. But it didn’t really, um, gel for me, either. You know? It was like, I was having a hard—I read a couple of fics and I liked them but…and I’ve been watching Star Trek and reading my Star Trek novels and feeling things about Star Trek, but… [sighs] I just haven’t really been participating, you know? In a, in a genuine connected-with-other-fans kind of a way. Which is unusual for me. Apart from tweeting once or twice.
ELM: I mean, I know we hear from a lot of people—at least I do, I don’t know if you do—talking about how they, nothing’s really capturing them in that way, and they say like…
FK: Yeah…
ELM: You know, “maybe I’ve grown out of it” or whatever, and then they’ll—or they’ll contact us after they’ve re-joined fandom and started participating again and they’re like “I thought this was over for me but then I fell into something else!” We get this all the time, I feel like.
FK: Yeah! Oh, and I’ve had it happen before, right? I mean, like, when I fell into One Direction fandom—
ELM: Yeah, me too.
FK: —I was like, I had had a long time where I was like “I don’t really have—” At least now, I do feel like I have a fandom. I am a Star Trek fan. And I am really engaged with Star Trek. It’s just I’m not engaged with Star Trek fandom in the same way, you know what I mean? That’s different.
ELM: Well that’s a little bit about what I was just describing.
FK: Yeah.
ELM: How I haven’t actually read anything new in this fandom, but I still am thinking lots and lots of thoughts about the—I mean, I have, you know, two different long works-in-progress in progress, right?
FK: Yeah.
ELM: You know? And so I’m thinking a lot about those.
FK: Yeah.
ELM: And I’m thinking all the same thoughts about all the characters and what I wanna do with them, you know what I mean? But it’s just like—I don’t know. Maybe it feels a little different for me because I’m in a fandom with an old, somewhat old in fandom terms, and relatively closed canon. And so it’s just kind of like…
FK: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I’ve always—
ELM: It’s not like there’s a lot of fresh arguments to have! [laughing]
FK: Yeah, I’ve also always actually been less engaged when a show was on the air or whatever, you know what I mean? Weirdly, like, for me, I’ve enjoyed things when they’re on the air but then like, it’s only afterwards that I start really wanting to dig into them. So maybe that’s part of this too, is right now I’m getting fed so much Star Trek all the time that I’m like, “I don’t need to have arguments about it, I don’t need to do that. I can think about it a lot, but like…”
ELM: Maybe this is the problem with it!
FK: Maybe this is the problem with it. Well, regardless, I mean, I guess we’ll see what happens next year also! Because part of it could just be that this has been a big, like, there’s been a lot of other stuff going on, and I have not had a lot of emotional energy to deal with people [laughing] outside of, like, work, things that I have to do! Like…do I have enough energy for your discourse? I don’t have that much energy for your discourse!
ELM: Look, I always have energy to glare at discourse.
FK: I know you do.
ELM: You know I do.
FK: You do.
ELM: I mean, you do from time to time as well.
FK: Yeah.
ELM: It’s undeniable.
FK: It’s undeniable.
ELM: But I will say, I really support everyone who’s been, I don’t know, doing things. But like, the idea—I have not gone to a single Zoom event. I’m too tired. I have, like, gatherings with my friends.
FK: Sure.
ELM: Right? Where it’s like six or eight of us.
FK: But not like a poetry reading or whatever.
ELM: Yeah, no, but I have not been to a reading, I can’t imagine people doing these parties right now, and I’m just like—I will see you in July. [FK laughs] We can have our Christmas party then. I’m sorry.
FK: All right, all right.
ELM: I’m tired.
FK: On that note, I think it’s probably about time to wrap up.
ELM: 2020. It’s time to wrap up 2020.
FK: It’s time to wrap up 2020. Don’t let the door hit you on the way out, 2020. 2021: not guaranteed to be better.
ELM: I don’t even know what that expression means.
FK: But at least it’s different.
ELM: “Don’t let it hit you on the way—” like, we know 2020’s on the way out! I want the door to hit it. I want it to suffer on the way out.
FK: [laughing] All right.
ELM: I don’t know. I don’t get that one.
FK: Suffer, 2020. That’s where we’re ending this.
ELM: [laughing] I just got a really strong vision, you remember that old Tumblr meme, “then perish”? Do you remember that one?
FK: [laughing] I remember it! All right.
ELM: That’s our message to 2020.
FK: I’ll talk to you later, in 2021!
ELM: OK, well, truly cannot wait! OK, bye.
FK: Bye!
[Outro music, credits and thank-yous]