Episode 143: Ask Fansplaining Anything: Part 9
In Episode 143, “Ask Fansplaining Anything: Part 9,” Elizabeth and Flourish read a fresh batch of listener letters. Topics covered include age and fandom, fanfics of fanfics, pop culture’s role in protest movements, and a trio of letters about trans, nonbinary, and asexual exclusion in fan spaces.
Show Notes
[00:00:00] As always, our intro music is “Awel” by stefsax, used under a CC BY 3.0 license.
[00:03:55] We’re discussing Episode 142, “Copyright Brainworms.”
[00:07:12] Episode 112, “Rainbow Rowell.”
[00:10:13] We interviewed Betts in Episode 118, “The Craft of Writing (Fanfiction).”
[00:17:20] This letter refers to Episode 136, “Political Fictions.” As for sexy Spiderman, well—judge for yourself. He’s even given interviews.
[00:21:39] We’ve had two episodes about purity culture— #84, “Purity Culture,” and #132, “Purity Culture 2020.”
[00:22:47] The pro-ship blocklist in question has been long ago removed, but the amusement of Hannibal fandom remains:
[00:26:40] Episode 141, “The Year In Fandom 2020.”
[00:28:53] This animation truly is the best expression of our 2020 mood.
[00:33:17] Our interstitial music here and elsewhere is “Southside” by Lee Rosevere, used under a CC BY 3.0 license.
[00:41:54] Stephanie Burt actually featured in a two-parter because her comments were so long and so good: Episode 67 and Episode 68. Also relevant: this wonderful comic.
[00:43:20] Episode 139, “The ‘Q’ is for ‘Queerbaiting.’”
[01:01:12] Live footage of Elizabeth hearing the words “Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell”:
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 #143, “Ask Fansplaining Anything: Part 9.”
FK: Wow. Nine. I can’t believe we’ve done nine. Thank you to everybody who has written in. This is wild.
ELM: It is wild. You’re right. Many letters. Sometimes we get voicemails. This time, we got a—what started as a voicemail, and then we got a message saying the voicemail-leaver had gotten cut off. [FK laughs] And so we have the transcript of the voicemail. We appreciate the attempt a great deal. That’s 1-401-526-FANS, in case anyone feels compelled to add their own voice in the future.
FK: Yeah!
ELM: But yeah, these are mostly from our website submission form. Thank you to everyone who included contact info there. That was pretty cool. And Tumblr and a few things that we got to fansplaining at gmail dot com. Now, I’ve given most of the places you can leave questions, so we can skip that part in the middle.
FK: Great. We will skip it in the middle.
ELM: [laughs] OK cool.
FK: Don’t worry! We will. Shall we get right down to business with this then?
ELM: Uh, yeah! I think we have eight questions or letters, so we should get reading.
FK: All right. OK. Shall I read the first one?
ELM: Please do.
FK: Great. The subject is “People entering fandom for the first time when they are adults—how common is it?” And the message goes:
“Hi Elizabeth and Flourish! I wanted to bring up a recent phenomenon that I’ve been seeing increasingly in my social group, that I am wondering if you might explore more on your podcast. I’ve always been nerdy and most of my friends have been nerdy too. I’ve been in transformative fandom since I discovered it as a teen in the mid-’90s. I was pretty closeted about my participation in it back then, but beginning in college in the early ’00s, I met other nerdy people who were also in transformative fandom. Most of my nerdy friends were not in transformative fandom, though—or at least they weren’t until a few years ago.
“Now, almost of all of my nerdy friends are deep into fandom—fic reading and writing, fanart creation, etc. Many of my friends who are most deeply involved in fandom now didn’t get involved in it until their thirties or early forties! They found their way to fandom in different ways—some through me being more open about my own participation in fandom, some through learning about fandom from other friends who were newly open about their participation in it, and some through learning about fandom’s existence through pop-culture news pieces about it. I’ve always thought of fandom as something you get into as a teen and that adults in fandom were people who had kept participating in it as they got older, but my friends’ trajectory of involvement in fandom goes against that pattern.
“So I’m wondering, how common is this phenomenon of people getting involved in fandom only when they are older? And if it is common, how does it change the dynamics of fanwork production and fandom culture at large? Thanks!” And that’s from an anonymous person.
ELM: Anon, really great letter!
FK: Yes. Full of questions that have been asked by many, and issues that have come up often, like, you know, people are always talking about like, who is supposed to be in fandom and like, what people—
ELM: Yes.
FK: —what ages people normally are, all these things.
ELM: All right. You want me to take a crack at it?
FK: Go for it.
ELM: I have a lot of thoughts about this question. You know, some of it is a little bit chicken-and-egg, because I think we would say historically—obviously people of all ages are fannish about stuff in a way that we would define as like, not connected to corporate-owned IP or whatever, but you know—obsessed with stuff, right.
And even corporate-owned IP, if you think about like, you know, people in our parents’ generation, when they were kids, like reading comic books and being really into it, right? And that may not have been described as fandom at the time, but if they were doing that now, they would probably be watching the MCU films as well, and they—you know, they probably watched the Batman TV show back then, or whatever. I know that’s not in the MCU.
But. But then you get that kind of chicken-and-egg thing of like, I’m—and actually this kind of touches on some of the stuff we were talking about last episode, in terms of whether like, doing your fannish activities within the context of fandom, like, creates—shapes the kind of ideas and the way that you wanna engage, and like, the things that you, you know, maybe the way that you engage with the text, or the things that you wanna do around it in response, right?
FK: Mm-hmm.
ELM: And so I’m thinking about like—who has had access to, like, capital-F Fandom, and how that’s shifted over the years. Right? And you may really have liked a movie back in the day, but if you didn’t see other people, like, writing fic about it, maybe you didn’t feel compelled to do that yourself…
FK: Right, because you just didn’t know it was an option, and it didn’t ever occur to you.
ELM: Right. Whereas now you might—we’ve encountered so many people who’ve said they learned about fic through Rainbow Rowell’s Fangirl.
FK: Right.
ELM: Which, you know, strikes me as funny, but like—why is it funny? They just hadn’t encountered it and it seemed appealing to them, right? But if you go back historically, like, setting aside Boomer-age kids reading comic books, like—capital-F Fandom, in the last century, was an adult—overwhelmingly an adult activity, right? Whether it was, you know, going to conventions or collating zines, in the pre-internet era, or who had access to the internet in the ’90s. Especially at the very beginning of the web and in the pre-web days, on Usenet and stuff—a lot of that was people in academic settings in particular, not just adults, but a specific subset of…granted, a lot of young adults, because there were a lot of college students, right?
FK: Right.
ELM: But then, you know, around the turn of the century… [laughs] The turn of the 21st century…that was when you started to see a ton of actual, you know, not to say college students aren’t young, but teens getting online, right? And like—it’s very funny because I often, like, I’ll have friends who have never been in fandom, nothing to do with fandom, and they’ll talk about how they were like, LiveJournal teens, and I’ll be like, “What ship?” And they just mean like, they wrote, like, emo blog posts on their LiveJournal, right? And that was LiveJournal culture to them. Whereas to me the only way I’d known LiveJournal as a teen was as a fandom thing, right? And so, like…
FK: Right.
ELM: I think you have two decades of this perception of social media platforms and blogging—maybe not blogging platforms, but LJ in particular—being something for the young, and that’s kind of, sort of twisted this sort of idea that fandom is a young person’s space, and something that you were meant to age out of, and it’s a really pernicious kind of cycle. You get like one ding-dong writing, like, “Oh, you’re 27? You’re in fandom? Why don’t you go make babies?!” And then you have like a thousand people reblogging it being like “Look, you whippersnapper, I’m 34 and I’m still here!” You know? [laughs]
FK: Yeah yeah yeah!
ELM: It’s like, “OK guys.” Like—I don’t… [laughs] I don’t know, actually, how widespread this is, you know what I mean?
FK: Yeah, totally, but it’s also like—the “I’m still here” narrative is funny, because we’ve got this “I’m still here” narrative, but I actually think that the entire time there were adults who were finding fandom. Like, there were the Twilight moms, for instance. That was such a big thing that there were jokes about them on like, mainstream television shows, about Twilight moms, right?
ELM: Right.
FK: That’s not a small thing, that there are these adult women who are finding fandom for the first time. That was an entire phenomenon.
ELM: Yeah.
FK: And we’ve had plenty of stuff like that since then. So again, I think it’s—I think that it’s, I understand why that narrative gets in people’s heads, and I definitely like—the “I’m still here, young whippersnappers” thing is such a common response, but it’s also not just people who’ve always been there. There’s been people who have joined it at different points in their life this whole time.
ELM: Right. You know, I remember when Rainbow came on the show, and she talked about having some of this, you know? And she had extremely fannish feelings, very solitary fan, for—up until what? Her 40s.
FK: Yeah!
ELM: And all the way through the Harry Potter movies! And then was like, “Wouldn’t it be great if this and this?”
FK: “Holy crap!”
ELM: Her husband was like “You know the whole internet’s been doing that for like 10 years, right?” [FK laughing] And that’s when—so it’s just sort of like, I think that there are a lot of people like that. We heard from a lot of people after that saying “I’m so glad to hear someone talk about this.”
That being said, I think there are a lot of people like the letter-writer’s describing, who maybe had the sensibility but didn’t really have a desire or an access point in, and something can just, I think, flip for some people, where they say like, “Oh! I never really tried this, but I,” you know, “I was familiar with it, but like, I never really had the impulse,” and I think that between like, many many different access points, and this extreme mainstreaming, and…
FK: Yeah.
ELM: You know, just kind of this explosion of content, and there’s so many ways to kind of breadcrumb your way in at this point. You just have to google, know to google, like…
FK: Right, right.
ELM: “Harry Draco fanfiction” or something. You can see a funny TikTok or a meme and then click on someone’s Tumblr and then be in their fanart and then start seeing fic recs, et cetera, et cetera.
FK: Yeah, and there’s not so much shame around it as there once was, you know?
ELM: Yeah.
FK: Not that there’s—there’s still occasionally someone who has a bad take about fanfic or whatever, OK.
ELM: Occasionally, occasionally.
FK: Go back to the garbage pile. But now, I think a lot of people have had their minds changed, right? I see people who have been nerdy and who at one time didn’t like fanfic, and who’ve really come around on this idea. So there’s that too.
ELM: Yeah, absolutely. So I think that the way this changes, though, is I think that it’s worth kind of breaking down these, these narratives. And I’m not saying the letter-writer is like, reinforcing them or anything, I think these are very common.
FK: Yeah.
ELM: There’s a famous Tumblr post that talks about how like, most of your favorite fic probably is written by people who are like, 30+, which is, you know, obviously the threshold for elderliness. [FK laughs] But it’s absolutely true. I think that the sheer force of—I think I’m a better writer now than I was at 20 or 25 or certainly, you know, in my teens. I’m not, that’s not saying that younger people are not, you know, “Just wait your turn and then you’ll be good at writing,” absolutely not. But like, to really really be able to pull off some of the really high-quality creations, I think that you need years of practice, and so like—it’s not surprising that older people are creating incredible fanworks, right?
And so I think the way this changes the discourse is people need to, like, shift the narratives. Because the actual activity and content, it’s just not—that’s not describing it accurately to say that it’s, you know, all young people, right. If you actually surveyed people who were writing the fic, you could see that it’s people of all ages, and in particular a lot of your favorite stuff probably is written by people who are older than 30.
FK: Yeah, and to the original letter-writer’s point, a lot of those people didn’t get into it when they were teens.
ELM: Sure, right. Yeah! I mean, to say that they have years of practice—it doesn’t necessarily mean years of practice writing fanfiction. Look at another one of our more popular, somewhat later in life—she’s in her 20s, but Betts, who came on about a year ago: she’s written all sorts of things and had written a lot of other stuff, and really found a voice within fic that led her to find her voice in other kinds of writing, right? But so, like—there’s no hard bright line between fic and other kinds of writing, obviously, so…
FK: Totally.
ELM: Yeah.
FK: All right.
ELM: Great letter.
FK: Thank you very much to that letter writer, and will you read us the next one?
ELM: I will, I’ll do it. So I recognize this username. I don’t know how to pronounce it.
FK: I think that the last time we did it we tried “jamie,” because…
ELM: D-Z-A-M-I-E.
FK: Sometimes…however you say it, dear…
ELM: Last time we did “jamie” and this time I’m going “dee-zammie.” [both laugh]
FK: To cover our bases!
ELM: That’s the spectrum! All right. Wrote to us on Tumblr: “What’re y’all’s opinions on fix-it fics…of other fanfics? I’ve only—” [laughs] I put in that inflection, by the way. That wasn’t something that was instructed.
FK: There was a dot dot dot.
ELM: The dot dot dot was there, but I did the, you know, the metaphorical eyebrow waggling. “I’ve only seen it a handful of times, but the reactions seen to vary wildly from ‘Oh this is a much more pleasant alt ending, thanks!’ to ‘how dare you do this incredibly rude thing, I’m blocking you on everything and I hope your crops wither.’”
FK: All right, so I’m of two minds about this one.
ELM: Hook me up.
FK: Because on the one hand, I wanna say—what’s good for the goose is good for the gander, right?
ELM: Sure.
FK: You know, you’re writing fanfic and you know that that means that you’re messin’ with someone else’s story, or a group of people’s story if it’s a TV show, and like—it is what it is. So it’s real, real, real silly to be mad at someone for doing the same thing to your work. Right?
On the other hand, I also think that there are some interpersonal things that relate to this, right? So like, if I wrote a fix-it fic of your story that made it clear that I thought your story sucked?
ELM: Yeah.
FK: And that it should end differently? That would be a bit of a different thing, because we’re friends!
ELM: With a different ship or something?
FK: Right. Because if I did it without talking to you or anything—we’re friend.
ELM: [laughs] Can you imagine?!
FK: You know? Like, I just write this passive-aggressive fic about, you know? That would be shitty, and I actually do think that would be shitty to do. Because that’s like—I could write something and think you would like it and then it turned out you were offended or whatever, obviously, but it’s different because we have a personal relationship. I think that’s the point of difference.
But I actually think that if you just write a fanfic and put it out there, and someone who’s never met you chooses to, you know, do something with it and carry it forward, then you don’t get to be mad about that. I mean, you can be mad about it, but you don’t get to like, say that you’re mad about it and tell the person not to do it and that you hate that. Because that’s the relationship you have to the writer of the original thing.
ELM: Yeah, I absolutely think that—we always get into hypocrisy territory when we talk about this topic, and I do think there are some hypocritical reactions. I think that in the favor of people who get upset about this, there is this kind of power differential issue where if you…people even talk about this with writing fic about much more niche creations, smaller web creators or something like that. I mean, we mostly get into it with RPF.
And I think that there’s an argument to be made there, right? You can have a blanket, any RPF is fine, you can do it of your mom, you can do it of these web creators that your friend knows or whatever—I mean, you can do it with these celebrities that you will never have any access to and are totally untouchable. But I also absolutely understand that kind of grey space and that spectrum of saying, like, “These people have a pretty small podcast, and they are—you’re, you know, et cetera et cetera.”
FK: Yeah, it’s like writing a memoir, and you have to think, like: What is my mom gonna think about this shit I put in my memoir? Right?
ELM: Yeah.
FK: She’s gonna have an opinion!
ELM: And it’s like, you know—they’re small enough that it would be very easy for one of their friends to just find it by googling. Not even googling fic, but stumble across it and then send it to them and then how are they gonna feel, et cetera.
So I definitely understand that stuff, and I think that you get some levels of that too when it comes to fanworks of fanworks. And I think the spirit of it does matter a little bit too. You know. In fandom, obviously, there’s a huge tradition of remixes—remixes are some of my favorite things. Like, obviously I’ve seen people argue “Oh, you should say, like, ‘feel free to remix or create art or whatever,’” or like, podfic—put some kind of blanket permission in your tags or whatever. But I also think that that’s not, like, historically what’s been a standard, like, you know?
FK: Nope.
ELM: People just remixing—especially when remixes, I feel like, were at their height. I feel like you saw a lot more remixes from mid-2000s to maybe mid-2010s, right?
FK: Sure, yeah.
ELM: You know. Huge remix fests and I’m sure some people didn’t like the way their work was remixed, but in general, it was seen as like, a—a very standard fan practice, and I do think that the fact that this has fallen out of fashion, to some extent—at least compared to the proportion of which it made up, kind of, you know, the dynamics back in the day—
FK: Right, right.
ELM: I— think does influence the way people think about, you know, especially tied up with like…I’ve seen people say, this is not, I don’t think, a popular stance, but I have seen people say, like, “Reccing a fic without someone’s permission is against the rules.” And it’s like…
FK: Nope!
ELM: If you really need this much control over your stuff, then I don’t actually think you can publish it, you know?
FK: No, you can’t. I mean, I—I don’t wanna be a jerk about it, but no! You can’t publish it. You can send it to, like, a small group of your friends.
ELM: Right.
FK: That’s the way to get it read.
ELM: But like, you can write a fic, and nothing can stop me, in my head, from thinking “This is a piece of crap.” Right? Like—that’s, you can never stop the way I think about it, right? And so if you, you need to have that much control over what goes out there, like…you know. Obviously, I’m also welcome to go write somewhere, “I think this is not good.” I’m not gonna do that, but like, I could.
FK: Right.
ELM: If just the fact of that potential, of someone interpreting your work just as you’ve interpreted someone else’s, stresses you out, I think you’ve got to think about sharing it more privately then. But I understand, obviously, why it feels different, because it is, you know, amateur work, et cetera, et cetera.
FK: Right, and I also get there’s lots of stuff in there too—like if the remix of your work is more popular than your work—
ELM: Yeah.
FK: —I can understand that that would be kinda crushing.
ELM: Which tends to happen.
FK: Yeah.
ELM: Somewhat often, often.
FK: But you know what? I do think that unfortunately, like, some parts of life involve disappointing things happening to us. Like, man, I feel disappointed that some of my fics aren’t mega-popular, right? Like—we all have, like, those experiences in life that we need to sort of like, I guess process, and they aren’t all pleasant, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that the person who wrote the remix did something wrong.
ELM: Yeah, I mean, you could also think about it as: you’re part of an iterative process, right?
FK: Right! That wouldn’t exist without you. Yep. All right, well, I think that’s our answer is—probably OK; in some circumstances, a dick move, but also understand that you have mixed feelings about it, that’s normal.
ELM: I would say, I mean, it doesn’t hurt if people wanna say like, “All follow-on works, transformative works of my work, are welcome.” You know? Because then you just let people know.
FK: Yep.
ELM: But like, yeah. I don’t know. Don’t, don’t write a fic with like, a different—like a fix-it with a different ship. Write your own.
FK: Yeah.
ELM: That’s what I have to say.
FK: All right. OK. Shall I read the next one?
ELM: Yeah.
FK: All right. “Hello Fansplaining! I’ve always wanted to send an email, but didn’t feel I had much to contribute until Episode 136. I’m from Chile, and I think it’s fair to say we have a master’s degree in protesting. Protests have been part of Chilean culture since the beginning of the 2000s, but last October, due to a huge social crisis, a movement started that had over a million people on the streets at some point.
“And one of the main characteristics of protestors was how they flaunted their fannishness. Every protest there was at least a person dressed as Harry Potter or an anime character, signs with quotes from The Simpsons were everywhere, and two of the most iconic symbols of dissent were 1) “Sexy Spiderman,” a person who went to the protests and climbed lampposts to dance provocatively, and 2) “Dancing Pikachu,” a woman dressed in an inflatable Pikachu costume that marched with the protesters. It’s come to a point where being part of the anime and k-pop fandoms is almost synonymous with social awareness.
“Having been in the protests myself, I can’t tell you the impact these things had. In a context where we were angry and frustrated, screaming for our rights, seeing popular characters used in clever signs or people paying homage to them brought not only laughter, but comfort. As Flourish said, it created a sense of solidarity between the protestors, be it through a smile, asking for a picture or allowing people to start conversations. To me, this intersection between popular media and social justice is one of the most beautiful expressions of fandom. It’s not only good for morale, but also allows the transformation of corporate property to serve a social cause. When I saw Sexy Spiderman I didn’t associate them with Marvel, but with a cause, and that’s just another transformative work, isn’t it? Do you think Marvel would approve of one of their beloved characters being used to tell the Chilean government to go fuck themselves?
“In those moments, when we were angry about an unfair system, facing a violent police force and an uncertain future, fandom was a vehicle to create community and keep us smiling. So yeah, maybe it can seem a bit cringey from the outside, but I think it’s such a positive thing and will defend it with my life. Even if sometimes it allows for the flaunting of some empty Harry Potter quote.
“I’m such a fan of both of you, thank you for your conversations and keeping us critical! You really are a joy to listen to.” And that’s from Laura.
ELM & FK: Thank you Laura!
ELM: Aww, so nice!
FK: Yeah, and it means a lot to hear from, you know, from someone in the thick of that.
ELM: Absolutely. So this is a really great letter. It’s interesting, thinking back to that episode, because one of the things we talked about was how people, like, pick and choose what intersections of politics and pop culture are good and what ones are cringey. And it’s been interesting to think about that and to read this letter after, like, many days…I think too many days at this point…of the Bernie-sitting-on-a-chair meme? Like, Bernie being photoshopped into every pop culture scenario. I really enjoyed it at first, and now I’m done.
FK: Yeah, there’s been enough. We can move on.
ELM: Quick flash of a meme. And also seeing tons and tons and tons, in the last few weeks, of Star Wars references around, you know—frankly, from some of the same people who, when a Harry Potter reference comes up, say “read another book,” and maybe they should watch another movie. [FK laughs] But it’s like, what pieces of pop culture, what fannishness, makes you—gives you solidarity, makes you feel like you have some sort of shared collective thing or idea that you can like, unite around, while you do these political actions, and which ones do people say “Eww, cringey, gross,” like—I’m certain there are people who would see Sexy Spiderman and say “Aww, it’s owned by Marvel, it’s a corporation, what about the CIA.”
FK: Right, right, right.
ELM: [laughs] There’s probably many people who would say that, right?
FK: Yeah, yeah yeah. Yeah.
ELM: You know? And it’s just like, OK! That’s your interpretation, maybe there was another character that came into your sphere and the same people will be like “Cool!” Right? Or “I’m gonna photoshop this politician into my favorite movie, Pulp Fiction” or whatever. I don’t know. You know? Like… [laughing]
FK: I love, I love this straw person that you’re coming up with, because they sound awful.
ELM: I think I follow at least six or seven of him, so…
FK: Oh, I’m not saying that he doesn’t exist. I’m just saying that he sounds awful.
ELM: Uh, so, so anyway, I—you know, I think it’s very contextual.
FK: Yeah, yeah. I definitely agree with that. I don’t know, reading a letter like this makes me feel, you know, more kindly inclined to all of this stuff, I think I would say. And more willing to give people sort of—I don’t know. Maybe, it just makes me, makes me feel—makes me feel better about all of this and less, like, I don’t know.
ELM: Well, I really appreciate this letter. It is really great to hear from someone who has been in the thick of it. And we support you and everything you’re fighting for.
FK: All right.
ELM: You and Sexy Spiderman.
FK: [laughs] All right. Read me the next letter, Elizabeth.
ELM: All right, I’ll do it. Anonymous, anonymous said to Fansplaining: “Hi, I listened to your purity ep, and I was reminded of a theory I’ve heard before: that the more ‘pure and innocent’—” that’s in quotes. “—the source material is perceived the more likely it will have a large toxic fandom because they are corrupting. Like how many cartoons like Steven Universe have so many antis and why shows that are darker and more niche don’t have the kinda vocal hatred that quote-unquote ‘pure’ shows do. This isn’t to say these fandoms don’t have drama, just that they’re unlikely to attract a purity culture.”
FK: Interesting. I have seen this argument before, and I have to say I don’t think that I totally buy it. I definitely—I see where it comes from, right? And I definitely think that there are certain arguments, like, you know, the “think of the children” argument, right? That really is more applicable if you’re talking about a show like Steven Universe that’s made for kids, something that’s like, family-friendly and all that—you can sort of do more pearl-clutching than about something like Hannibal, which is literally about a serial killer. But, we’ve also seen purity culture stuff within Hannibal fandom!
ELM: Yeah.
FK: Like, literally a fandom about a serial killer eating people!
ELM: Right.
FK: You know? So like…
ELM: But he and Will have that age gap, so…
FK: Oh my God. Yeah, genuinely, right? Like—when you get to the point where the creator of the show is on, like, a blocklist…
ELM: Cause he ships it.
FK: Right! Because he ships it…
ELM: Pro-ship.
FK: Also, right, other people have lauded how he is, you know, into the gayness of this couple, and then you know, other people are like…it just, I totally get where Anonymous is coming from here, but unfortunately I don’t think there’s a correlation—I don’t think there’s a real correlation. I think that this is just throughout.
ELM: Yeah, I think—you know, yes and no, a little bit, too. I definitely agree with you. I do think that certain types of shows that do attract a—I don’t wanna pin all anti behavior on the youths, but I do think some of these dynamics you’ll see if you, like, dig into blogs, like, you know, or bios, and you see about who’s perpetuating these arguments, you often tend to see: it is younger folks. Teens, mostly. Older teens, early 20s.
And I do know there’s a big—a large, a large contingent of people who will say “Oh, I like shows that are for a younger audience, because you know, shows for adults are just about adultery and divorce and murder and things, and…”
FK: Yeah, and bad people.
ELM: Yeah, yeah. “And why would I want to watch that when I could watch something that’s wholesome and uplifting and not about adultery?” I don’t know—like, I don’t know. Are all these shows about adultery? It’s really unclear to me. I say this, but then like, I definitely—I, you know, I love Mad Men and there is certainly some adultery…
FK: Yeah, you love a show that is about adultery.
ELM: Mad Men is like, Mad Men and Breaking Bad deserve this. They are these shows. But to say that those are the totality of like, entertainment made for adults, is absurd.
FK: Yeah.
ELM: But I see these arguments daily on Tumblr, in particular. And so if you have people who say, who do really value, like, pure and wholesome storytelling, gravitating towards—
FK: Sure.
ELM: —Steven Universe, but then you’re also—or something like that, just as an example—and then you also have people who enjoy it but like, you know, maybe in fanworks or whatever wanna do all sorts of things, right? That’s obviously gonna be a clash.
Whereas if you showed up to—I don’t, there’s no Mad Men fandom in this way. But if you showed up to like, write some Mad Men fic, and you had, like, you know, I don’t know…
FK: And you were like “I need, I need stories only—”
ELM: “Peggy cheats on Stan the second after the show ends” or whatever, I can’t come back at you and be like “No! They’re pure!” Because, like, probably. Probably, honestly. I don’t know. No offense to Peggy and Stan, I’m sure they really made it work. But like, you know? So it’s like, and the same thing—anyone, like, objecting on purity grounds to Hannibal is hilarious to me. That’s why most of the fandom can just go, “Ha! Good luck with that.” Right? You know?
Whereas in other shows with maybe an audience base with different expectations based on the source material, it’s that mismatch, and I think for some people, you know—that’s not to say that there’s not space within somewhere like Hannibal for you to write your sweet fluffy fic or whatever, right? I would be surprised if there were people saying, “How dare you write something sweet and fluffy here.” Like, “I only want murder.”
FK: Yeah, there’s absolutely sweet and fluffy fic. There’s tons of it, right, lots of people want that as a contrast.
ELM: Right.
FK: All right. Thank you very much for that, our dear anonymous person. Shall I read the next letter?
ELM: I think it’s the last one before we take a break, right?
FK: It is!
ELM: Yes please!
FK: All right. The subject is, “Connection in fandom in 2020.” The message is: “I tried to leave a voicemail, but it got cut off—sorry for taking too long!” So this is that one. Thank you very much for trying again, Jazz. This is, this is from Jazz, as you probably just figured out. OK.
“Hi Flourish and Elizabeth! I’ve been following Fansplaining since around March of 2019, and first just wanted to say thank you for the work that you do. My experience in fandom has always been highly curated, which means I don’t usually get to see how fan experiences differ in the fandoms of pop media I don’t consume. I pretty much use your podcast as a jumping off point, and how I feel about fandom has been changed for the better by learning that this ocean is a lot deeper than previously believed.” Aww. Thanks, Jazz! All right. Back to the letter.
“Today I was listening to Episode 141, ‘The Year in Fandom 2020,’ and when you were talking about your own experiences in 2020 fandom I paused to give you a call. Specifically, you mentioned how you did or didn’t connect with other fans in fandom last year. It made me think about how I connected last year, and it was different enough that I wanted to share.
“Since I joined a fandom for the first time in 2002 (which was an online fandom, as dial-up internet had just been installed in my family’s house), I’ve always been social. I wanted to talk to other fans, and I’d sum up my fannish history as a series of fluctuating friend groups formed on different platforms.
“But in 2020, I found myself pulling back from fandom. I pretty much stopped writing until late summer, like Elizabeth, but then suddenly had a bloom of ideas and the focus to make them. I have a few close fandom friends that I still see regularly, but I’ve stopped using most of the social media outlets where I was active, and ditched all of my group chats and Discords. Previously, I valued being a part of busy, noisy fan spaces, so the growing lack of patience and feeling of disconnection is surprising, looking back.
“It’s weird. I miss feeling connected to my fandoms, but right now every social platform where I have an account is so content-focused that it feels like my perceived value is only as a content generator. That’s left me feeling emptier as time goes on, and I think that may be why I’ve abandoned so many spaces where I was spending my time. I’m not sure what to do at this point. So much of my adult life has been deeply informed by fandom, but right now I’m not pursuing the fandoms for new content I like, because I kind of expect them to be the same as my longest-running ones.
“The urge to make content hasn’t gone away, so right now I just make fic, read fic, and skip everything else. I’m hoping maybe this will change after an extended break from fandom, or after everything else in my life stops feeling so disjointed because of the pandemic, but I have no idea. Thanks again for producing Fansplaining! Jazz.”
ELM: That’s a great letter. Thank you, Jazz!
FK: It’s a wonderful letter, and you know, feels really very relatable to me.
ELM: Well, it’s interesting, I think that a lot of people—including me, maybe you—have described this. So the structure of it went like, in March and April, maybe, like, this kind of extreme need to like, “Oh! Gotta do some Zooms. We’re Zoomin’, we’re Zoomin’ every night, I’ll see you, I’ll see you,” talking to these people I haven’t talked to in like 10 years or whatever.
FK: Yep.
ELM: And then within a few months, it was just like, “I don’t even wanna Zoom with my closest friend.” Like, “I can’t do this any more. I am so tired of this.”
FK: Yep.
ELM: And not really ever recovering from that kind of…and I think that’s one of the reasons why a lot of people are having such a hard time with the winter, because, I mean, not just like—it’s just, this is going on and on. But I do think even up until as late as November, being able to relatively safely see people—you know, relatively easily outside, to have that end and to have it be a big struggle and like, you know.
FK: Yeah.
ELM: Huddling for warmth with only your closest friends outside.
FK: Yeah, yeah.
ELM: Not huddling though! At a distance, wearing a mask.
FK: [laughs] So you can’t even really be warm cause you can’t huddle.
ELM: No. You huddle with yourself under heat lamps, far away from each other. But then also being so tired of doing digital connecting, and it’s just like—so I think that like, it seems like for me and I think for you, and most people I know, and people I don’t know describe this on the internet—a lot of us are having just very abnormal ways of interacting with people and a lot of desire to just retreat and not really socialize. And so…
FK: Yep.
ELM: I have to wonder not just Jazz’s personal experiences, but also their fandom friends—having similar ways. Like, I don’t, still don’t really want to talk to—I don’t wanna make new friends. Sorry to say. You know? Like…I’m delinquent. I owe my actual current friends emails from, literally from nine months ago, you know?
FK: Oh my God.
ELM: What, you know? You don’t owe anyone an email from nine months ago?
FK: I actually don’t owe anyone an email from nine months ago, Elizabeth. [laughing]
ELM: Do you send people long emails? Like, you know, 1000+ word emails?
FK: Sometimes!
ELM: Really?
FK: Yeah!
ELM: Well, I don’t know what to tell you. Everyone else I know agrees with me. I see this daily.
FK: No, I mean, I’m not—I’m not, I, it’s not emails for me, but it’s other stuff. So.
ELM: I don’t know what that means but OK.
FK: Phone calls…interactions that, you know, don’t involve a text…
ELM: Sure. Sure. So I think that’s part of it. But one of the other things that struck me in this letter was the idea of the spaces that Jazz has been spending time in being so content-focused, and I actually didn’t really understand what that distinction was, because then Jazz goes on to say that they are continuing to write and read a lot of fic, and I don’t really know what content means, then, in this context. Because that’s, that’s content to me.
FK: Well, I think—I mean, I think I kinda get that. Because AO3 is not like, I never feel like a cog in a machine just like, creating eyeballs to be monetized on AO3.
ELM: Sure.
FK: Whereas on other social media platforms, you know, it kinda begins to feel like that, especially as fandom becomes more and more and more focused on things like numbers, right? And views and streams and sales and has this tweet gone viral and like, all of that.
ELM: Wow. I’m gonna tell you: it doesn’t have to be that way. You don’t have to have anything to do with those things.
FK: I know it doesn’t, I’m just saying that I think that—I think that, I mean, maybe this is reading too much into what Jazz is saying, but that would make sense to me, if that’s part of what’s going on there. And I do think that there is a difference between AO3 and even tweeting or something, right? Like, I love to tweet—love tweeting—but—
ELM: You love tweeting?!
FK: Love tweeting.
ELM: What?!
FK: I mean, that might be extreme to say. I tweet, OK. Like—
ELM: No one loves tweeting!
FK: There is a tweet that comes out of me. But—
ELM: No one loves Twitter, no one loves tweeting. It’s just something we all agreed to do and we don’t know how to stop.
FK: Right. So, but you know what I’m saying, right? That still feels like every—every bit of stuff I put into Twitter, I know is getting processed back into that money machine. So.
ELM: Yeah, I mean, I can’t imagine doing any fandom stuff on Twitter. That just seems very tiring to me. That’s why I love, I do still like using Tumblr! Because I know that everything I post loses Tumblr at least one penny!
FK: Right. So maybe that’s the solution. Just—
ELM: That’s the solution: get back on Tumblr and [laughs] lose a corporation a bunch of money. You, too, could be a part of this movement. Yeah, I would way—I just would say, like, I think it’s a really hard time. I think we, like, in non-pandemic times, we go through phases where we’re just not clicking with the way everything else is going right now, but it’s like, almost impossible to know if you’re really—if it’s you. Because it’s like, probably not. It’s like, so external right now. I think that anyone who feels like it’s not working for them—I know it sucks because it can feel like…
FK: Yeah.
ELM: You wish it could, you wish that could be a place to retreat or whatever.
FK: Yep.
ELM: You know? But…
FK: Totally.
ELM: I don’t think anyone should beat themselves up if they’re not clicking, because I just think as a species we’re not clicking right now.
FK: Great. As a species we’re not clicking right now. On that very cheerful note, should we take a break and then go on to the next half of the letterbox?
ELM: Let’s go click.
FK: All right.
[Interstitial music]
FK: OK, we’re back, but before we can get into our last few letters, we need to talk about Patreon.
ELM: We do, we do. That’s patreon.com/fansplaining, right?
FK: [laughs] Yes, which is how this podcast remains on the air? I guess it’s air.
ELM: Internet.
FK: It’s how we keep, you know, makin’ this podcast! So you can go there, you can pledge as little as, like, $1 a month, or as much as $25 a month—
ELM: Or more!
FK: Or more if you want to! You know, I mean: you can do that, if you feel like it.
ELM: We’d love it!
FK: And we have really cool—I was gonna say “prizes” but they’re not prizes. Rewards for the different levels of pledging, which range from having access to all of our special episodes—we’ve done tons of these. They are about, a lot of them are about sort of individual TV shows or movies or things, like, we don’t usually do an episode of the podcast about a movie or about a TV show or that fandom, but we’ve got those in special episodes! And we’ve also done, like, the Tropefest series about different fanfic tropes. We once did a fanfic book club, and we might do one again! Um…
ELM: Yeah, that was very ambitiously titled “Fanfiction Book Club #1.” That was like four years ago.
FK: Yeah, we have not done #2. We’ll get there. We’ve also got, at $5 a month you can have your name in the credits and get a cute enamel pin. At $10 a month you get a periodic Tiny Zine. So sign up! And support us! And we would really appreciate that!
ELM: We really would. If you have no money, absolutely understood. There’s this big pandemic going on, and subsequent financial crisis. So you could also help us out by sharing the podcast, sharing transcripts with anyone who doesn’t listen to audio, you know, contacting us—I already gave the stuff, but I’ll say it again: fansplaining at gmail, fansplaining.com submission form, fansplaining.tumblr.com. Also Twitter, Instagram, Facebook—those are not great places to send us messages in this way. And our voicemail, 1-401-526-FANS. I don’t know what numbers those are, so you’ll have to figure that out for yourself.
FK: I don’t either.
ELM: No, we just know it’s FANS. So contact us! Be a part of fansplaining, Ask Fansplaining Anything: Part 11, because for Part 10 I’m only asking Flourish questions.
FK: That is not what’s gonna happen, but we’re gonna have to fight about that later, because right now we need to read the next piece of mail.
ELM: You’re gonna wake up and I’m going to have created a Twitter poll and I’m gonna say—
FK: No.
ELM: “Should AMA 10 be just Elizabeth asking Flourish questions?” And you’re gonna see—
FK: NO!
ELM: It’s gonna be like 99% to 1%—
FK: No. Read me the next one!
ELM: OK. So we have three remaining questions, and we grouped these three together in the second half because they are all kind of swirling around some of the same topics. But we should read them individually and talk about them individually, right?
FK: I think so.
ELM: OK.
FK: So read me the first one.
ELM: All right, I’ll do that. This was a message we got on Tumblr. Anonymous asks: “Hi there! I recently read a comic wherein one character who is a ‘genetimorphic’”—genetimorphic?! “—’sentient strand of DNA,’” that’s in quotes, “self-identifies as non-binary. This character refers to themselves with we/us pronouns, while the narration uses they/them. At first, I was pleased to see a nonbinary character in a very typically heteronormative superhero comic book. But then I wondered if this can really be called representation—certainly no one’s lived experience is being a shape-shifting strand of DNA. What are your thoughts?”
FK: Boy, do I have thoughts!
ELM: Hook me up.
FK: All right. So to give anyone context who doesn’t know that, I am a nonbinary person and one of the early experiences I had that like, led me to understand this a little better was being in Second Life in like, 2008, and encountering people who chose to go around in Second Life as like, inanimate objects. And I was like “Whoa! Amazing!” Right? Like—this meant a lot to me, actually. I was like “This is like a different, non-gendered thing that’s happening here! What is this?!” Right?
So you know, I think that what this question is really asking, right, is like—does it count as representation if you have something that bears no resemblance to someone’s actual lived experience, but still…raises those flags for us, right? Raises those “Oh, actually this is something that’s different from, this character’s experience is different from the norm,” right.
ELM: Wait, I think that’s overegging it a little bit. I think that representation, for most people, the way that term gets used, is like, actual—a Black person seeing a Black character, right? Or a nonbinary person seeing a nonbinary character and they are described as such.
FK: Right, and I mean—but in this case this is, right? I mean, this is a nonbinary character that is described as such. Just because it’s not like a nonbinary person…
ELM: Person!
FK: Is that, you know?
ELM: Human! This is a long-standing, this is a huge critique. I don’t have to tell you, right? That like—
FK: Yeah.
ELM: Why are all nonbinary characters, you know, aliens or sentient—
FK: Sure.
ELM: Objects. Non-human sentient objects. Or animals or whatever. And you know, it’s a similar thing to, obviously—or robots. You see it from ace people as well, and I’ve also heard this complaint from friends of color who talk about like, you know, “Why is it always, like, seven white guys on the spaceship, and then the one blue girl, and then I have to be a fan of the blue girl because that’s the only non-white person.” Right? And it’s similar, like—why does the Other have to be not a human being.
FK: Sure, sure, absolutely but—and I don’t think that those, that doesn’t, that kind of representation doesn’t replace representation that, like, that is representing a lived human experience. But at the same time, it lets you get at things that are really hard to get at otherwise, right? I mean like—there are so many people who will tell you, like—I have so many friends who are biracial, for whom Spock was really important representation.
ELM: Right.
FK: Even though Spock is like, I mean, he’s played by a Jewish guy…I don’t know, but he’s green. And like…
ELM: Is he? I mean he’s just got a little…
FK: He’s green-tinged. He has green blood. He is green. Kind of. It’s just old TVs and all that.
ELM: What are you saying about olive-skinned people like me, Flourish?
FK: He has green blood! You have red blood. You don’t look like Spock.
ELM: Have you seen it?
FK: I have seen your blood.
ELM: Really?
FK: You’ve had a Band-Aid on! [ELM laughing] And taken it off in front of me! I’ve seen your blood, Elizabeth Minkel. Now this is creepy.
ELM: You’ve never seen my blood! You’ve never seen it!
FK: I don’t think that’s true! This is now creepy. [laughing]
ELM: [laughing] YOU made it creepy! Don’t look at my blood!
FK: You made it creepy!
ELM: It’s my blood! That’s in my interiors!!!!
FK: Anyway—anyway! [laughing] We are now down a rabbit hole! But I think, all I’m trying to say is I think that both of these—these are both good things. So like, should this comic get like, praise for including like, an important—
ELM: [laughing] From GLAAD or something.
FK: —like, an important nonbinary narrative or whatever? I mean, that’s a stretch. But that doesn’t mean that this character can’t be really meaningful to nonbinary people, potentially, or that it’s not a good thing to have that kind of a character in it.
ELM: Yeah. I think that—I mean, when I say that people complain about this all the time, I think that the biggest complaint… well, I think there are a few things going on. I think one of them is just a pure scarcity thing, right? And if the only character, nonbinary character you see is a robot, or…
FK: Yeah, that’s real tiring.
ELM: Or a piece of DNA, right? Yeah. And, but like—and I think that there’s two, there’s always these conflicting arguments, too, about representation in sci-fi versus representation in realism, right? Or in fantasy, you know. It’s probably that too, but I also feel like—and I don’t wanna jump the gun, because I think this gets a little bit at our next question too, but like…I would argue that sometimes, in these more ambiguous, not one-to-one things where it’s just like, you’re seeing someone who’s exactly like you, I think there is more space.
I mean, that’s kind of what you’re just saying, right. There’s more room for more people to see themselves in an experience, and like—maybe that’s problematic because the experience is one of like, othering, often, in these narratives, right? But that being said, when it is more vague…and I mean, I’m saying this as someone who’s in the X-Men fandom, too, right now, where the X-Men have always, always been particularly potent metaphorical beings. [laughs]
FK: Right.
ELM: They’re humans. But you know. I mean, Magneto wouldn’t say so. For queer people, for trans people, for disabled people, for autistic people. This huge range, and obviously people may have intersections of all of these things, right. But like—the experience of a cis, straight, disabled person, they may have some commonalities with a queer person of color who is not disabled, right, but like—the fact that they could both find representation within this big metaphor?
FK: Right, yeah yeah.
ELM: It’s interesting to me! And I remember when we had Stephanie Burt on to talk about, cause she’s deep in the X-Men comics fandom, and I kind of called her out a little bit on this, with this representation question, of like: well, it’s not representation, you know? Like, like a metaphorical minority group that’s persecuted isn’t the same thing as seeing trans superheroes or—
FK: Right.
ELM: —autistic superheroes or whatever. And she had a really compelling 19-part answer, as she did for all of our questions, right. Talking about how it can be, like, both things at once, and how you need both things at once.
FK: Right.
ELM: And that was a really resonant answer for me, particularly as someone who has literally never seen a one-to-one representation of the way that I feel about gender and sexuality, ever, ever, ever on screen or on paper. But being able to find characters whose experiences have some echo with the way that I feel in the world, and sometimes it’s just pure, pure metaphor. So the idea that there needs to be one-to-one representation inherently feels exclusionary to me, you know what I mean?
FK: Right.
ELM: So then I feel shitty because I’m telling people who feel represented by the one whatever character, like—then I’m stomping on their parade just because they got one, you know what I mean? Does that make sense?
FK: Totally. No, that makes perfect sense. I have so much more to say about this, but I think that we should probably move on to the next question—
ELM: I mean, the next one relates.
FK: —because I bet that some of it’s gonna keep coming, coming out as we talk! [laughs]
ELM: Yeah, do it! Do it, read it.
FK: Yeah, OK. So the next one is: the subject is “Queerbaiting and how being outside the binary makes it hard to be recognized.” The message is: “Hello Flourish and Elizabeth! I really loved your ‘Queerbaiting’ episode, but had some thoughts about how shipping kinda limits characters who aren’t easily put into boxes. In particular I was reminded of Good Omens and how both the book and the show make it very clear that the main characters are nonbinary and to some degree asexual—despite the pronouns they use—yet most of their fics have M/M on the label because that’s more familiar and the only label for nonbinary relationships on AO3 is ‘Other.’ By that same token I got into a fight about Jughead Jones, a canon aroace character, and defending him being so, because many people think that his lack of romantic interest meant he was coded as gay.
“I don’t intend to be mean just to point out how limiting slash can feel to people who exist outside of the gender binary and traditional sexual interest. Some people feel than nonbinary and aspec folks are stealing representation from ‘real LGBT’ people and often this discussion can bleed into fandom when representation often feels like a struggle. I hope you guys are doing well and I’m sorry for such a complicated ask.” And that’s from someone anonymous.
ELM: Very complicated ask, anon! I appreciate it.
FK: Yeah, super complicated. Especially when you’re talking about, like, characters and like, what they are in canon, and then people’s fannish interpretations of those characters, and then, like, what gets the most sort of space within fandom.
ELM: Right.
FK: That’s a whole lot of different levels.
ELM: Yeah, so I feel like a lot of this stuff replicates the problems that exist in broader queer communities, you know.
FK: Yep.
ELM: This kind of idea of what really counts is such a perpetual terrible, terrible, every single fucking Pride month everyone needs to talk about it at length, and it’s just like—why? Why can we not just post last year’s posts? Like, why do you need to write fresh discourse posts about this? Right?
FK: Yeah.
ELM: I mean, obviously the actual “why” is like, why do you have to be such an exclusionary shithead? But like…
FK: Yeah. [laughs] I was gonna say, I can think of some reasons, but mostly it’s because every year I fuckin’ get into arguments with people about this!
ELM: If you’re never gonna change your mind, then just quote-tweet yourself from the previous year! You don’t need to write a fresh new one to add another thing into the world. I don’t know. I have a million things. I mean, I feel like we already kind of jumped the gun on this, but we’re already leaning into this question as we talked about our last answer, but…
FK: Yeah…weirdly I think this also connects back to some of the other stuff, too, because one of the challenges that’s within this, right, is—so, you know, talking about how, for this writer-inner, for this person, right—
ELM: Writer-inner.
FK: Good Omens, the book and the show make it very clear that the main characters are nonbinary and asexual. And I don’t know that, I don’t know that everybody would agree with that statement. In fact, I know that not everybody would agree with that statement.
ELM: Right.
FK: You know? Like—it’s not as though the book or the show has one of them, like, out there, like—talking about nonbinary and asexual rights. Right? Like, and let’s note: I don’t say that because I think that people shouldn’t write them as nonbinary and asexual. I think people should do that. I think that’s wonderful, obviously. But whenever we engage in fanfic, we’re almost always engaging in reading into characters’ lives and deciding what we think is going on with them, right?
And sometimes even on television shows where there’s lots of evidence going the other way, right? Like, on Star Trek, like, Kirk and Spock feel like they’re really into each other. Kirk also bangs a lot of ladies.
ELM: Right.
FK: And like, later on Spock semi-canonically has a wife and stuff—doesn’t stop me. I mean, there is something about the like, power differential of like, taking characters who are presumed het and making them gay and then you could say, well, there’s something also like, weird in the power differential when aspec people are like, doubted and dismissed, and like, you know. So there’s a power differential there too. But it’s just really sticky, because I think we’re always reading into characters, and then the question then becomes, who gets to say what these characters quote “really are.”
ELM: Right. Yeah, and you know what, I think this comes back to the scarcity thing. Right? Like—so here’s what I’ll say: absolutely it can feel like a binary in some of these, like, kind of big queerbaiting—and this came out of the “Queerbaiting” episode, right. So take this example of Sherlock. Take this example! [FK laughs] Something I happen to know about! So there’s Johnlock, right, classic ship, great one.
FK: Yep.
ELM: And there’s Sherlock in the show, and honestly in most versions of Sherlock Holmes, who I think it’s very easy to read as canonically asexual, whether he would ever say “Hey, I’m Sherlock Holmes, I’m ace,” he probably would not. Unless this is some radically different version that you’re doing here. But you know, he says things like, you know, he’s not—he just says explicitly, like, “Not interested in any of that, no thank you, I don’t understand what all this is about, goodbye,” right.
FK: Yep.
ELM: And him falling in love with John—which obviously happens in the show, I think that we would all agree, in a homoromantic sense, doesn’t preclude the idea that he is still ace, right?
FK: Right.
ELM: That being said, more power to him! If you, if you wanna write him as someone who’s into sex. That being said, when you’re going through the show, and hoping for an outcome, one of those does preclude the other.
FK: Right.
ELM: Right? Because the show technically ended with, like, an ace Sherlock, in the sense of like: he never ever shows any explicit confirmation that he has sex with anyone. And so is that a—it’s not much of a victory, because the show is such a garbage fire, and the fact that it even has to be that kind of contest or victory sucks, right? But it is true that in the outcome of, in these queerbaiting questions, it can feel like, well, you’re both battling for something that in the end probably you’re not even gonna get, cause they’re gonna say “Actually, he’s straight! He had sex with a lady!” Not in that instance, but almost always, that is the, you know.
So it’s like—but there are things that people outside the more normative sexualities and genders, I think, that leads back to the nonbinary question we were just talking about too, in the absence of confirmation, people can see themselves or have hope in the stories. And…
FK: Right.
ELM: Fandom’s extreme desire for confirmation often can run against that, and layer that on with transphobia or aphobia or anything like that, and saying: “if you read this character as ace, you’re homophobic.” Right? Or…
FK: Right. Right.
ELM: Or “if you read this character as nonbinary, you’re a misogynist, because she’s clearly a cis woman,” or whatever. You know.
FK: Right.
ELM: Which is definitely—I’m sure, arguments you’ve encountered in your various fandoms, as I have in mine. And so then—
FK: Oh yeah.
ELM: What are people supposed to do with that? I don’t know. I’ve talked very obliquely about being frustrated with the Black Sails fandom to the point where I left, and part of it was—a huge part of it was this: it was people arguing over whether Anne Bonny was lesbian or bisexual, even though those labels were not conceived of. Like, the—
FK: Right.
ELM: The behavior was not conceived of in a labeling way for quite some time after that.
FK: Yeah.
ELM: And then I saw people saying they read Flint as on the ace spectrum also, not something they would’ve had any conception of, and then people saying that was homophobic and they should be ashamed of themselves, because they’re erasing his sexuality. Which is absurd! They weren’t saying that he didn’t have sex with anyone, they were just saying that he seemed less motivated by sex and, you know, et cetera. And the fact that they would immediately come back with that argument was just like, I don’t wanna be around these people arguing about these things, because you’re really ruining it for me. This like—
FK: I hear ya.
ELM: You’ve seen the show now! This interesting complicated show about human relationships and people are, you know…
FK: Right.
ELM: Insulting each other over labels. And it’s just like, [sighs]
FK: All that said, I do think that there’s—point well taken within this email, because on the one hand I really appreciate that the Archive Of Our Own doesn’t try and chop thing super-finely and that there is this sort of “Other” label, but I also don’t love the idea that it’s just “Other.” You know? [laughs]
ELM: Yeah, but what would you want?
FK: That feels a little weird. I don’t—but I don’t have a better idea. And I do appreciate also that there’s like, a challenge of like, if the majority of people are calling this male/male, this pairing male/male, and you read them as nonbinary characters…
ELM: Yeah.
FK: Then labeling it “Other” is potentially kinda weird and like, I get that there’s something that rubs up against it there. I don’t know, though, what I would propose instead and I feel like…
ELM: I think it’s so hard, because then you’re gonna start, every time you—this is what I’m saying about the, like, the further, the winnowing of boxes. Every time you start to put more labels, then you’re excluding someone else. That being said, the catch-all “Other” box, I understand why people don’t love that…
FK: Yeah.
ELM: But also, like, [sighs] I don’t know. Do people use that for navigational purposes?
FK: Yeah, I don’t know.
ELM: I think femslash folks do, for sure.
FK: Yeah, but—
ELM: But if I was reading Aziraphale/Crowley—Crow-ley?
FK: Cr-OW-ley?
ELM: No, isn’t that the whole, Crowley, isn’t that the whole joke—
FK: However you say his name! I watched this entire series and I don’t remember.
ELM: David Tennant. You know. If I was in that ship, I would be clicking on that ship? Right? Like…
FK: True.
ELM: If someone wanted to write my current ship—and I’ve read some fic, not a ton, but I have read some with non-cis, you know, making one of them not cis.
FK: Yeah.
ELM: I have no idea what they’d put in the little label, right? Of the gender, pairing, whatever that category is. Because I was clicking on the ship, and I know that doesn’t really help people who are not reading by ship or by fandom, right. Like, obviously there’s a lot of different ways in. But yeah, I agree. I don’t know what the label would be.
FK: Yep.
ELM: I don’t know. Should we read our last question? Because I think it also connects to some of what we’re talking about right now.
FK: Yeah, let’s do it.
ELM: All right, I think it’s me, right?
FK: Yeah, it’s you.
ELM: All right. This was an anonymous message to our website, fansplaining.com. You too could leave a message on fansplaining.com. Subject: “fandom transphobia.” I don’t know why I said all that cheerfully, because it’s a very depressing subject line.
Message: “Do you have any suggestions for fighting transphobia in fandom? It feels like a losing battle. For years, I’ve seen transphobic radfem rhetoric repackaged for queer fandom on Tumblr and Twitter. It’s similar to antis and purity culture, but more singularly focused. (There also tends to be some overlap with the shipping as activism crowd, at least in femslash circles.) Is there any way to broadly push back against this? If someone I’m close to reblogs or retweets some TERF talking points, I’ll reach out to them, but it's exhausting and puts me in a vulnerable position. And at this point I only interact with like three trusted people. But I still see transphobic rhetoric all over fandom.
“For example, there were so many posts this week from cis people ‘mourning’ their favorite actor because he came out or asking ‘what this means for female representation’ in that show. Is there any hope for fandom becoming less of a transphobic nightmare? This feels like a problem only trans people care about right now.”
FK: Ugh. Man, I wish I had something positive to say in response to this. But… [sighs]
ELM: So, for context, I’m guessing this came to—I mean, I can figure out who they’re talking about: Elliot Page came out as trans—
FK: Yeah.
ELM: And I only saw this second-hand, but I did hear that some people in the Umbrella Academy fandom were being transphobic in their discussions of this.
FK: Yeah.
ELM: But talking about reflecting broader society, most of what I saw around those transphobic talking points were like, British TERFs being like, “A loss for butch women!” Or whatever. And it’s like, “Oh, stop. Just stop!”
FK: Yeah. I think—I think the problem that I have with this is that it’s exactly, you know, this is exactly the…it’s unfortunately the same position as people of color in fandom are in. Which is that we live in a society which is both racist and transphobic, and it shows up in fandom all the damn time.
ELM: Yeah.
FK: And it fucking sucks. And I wish I had something to say about it, because it is incredibly tiring, and misery-making, but I really, you know—the only advice that I could possibly give about it, and I suspect that you’ll be, you’ll have this position too, is the same stuff that I would say to anybody about dealing with this sort of discrimination and shitty stuff in their regular life. Right? Which is to push back when you have the strength to push back and when you have the opportunity to, like, preserve your sanity and preserve your self as a person by stepping back, to take those opportunities. Because I just—it’s, you know, I mean, I do think it’s better than it was. I know that transphobia, there’s less of it than there was 10 years ago, and it’s this miserable marathon, right?
ELM: I mean, you say that but like—I don’t know. I don’t know if I would agree in the sense of like, in some ways it feels better when a lot of people just didn’t know, right?
FK: Sure, right.
ELM: It activated a whole new thing for people to hate, right?
FK: It did activate—it did activate a whole new thing. There’s probably more stated stuff happening now. But, on the other hand, like: there’s a lot of stuff that does not fly anymore that...
ELM: Yeah, that’s true.
FK: That was just, like, unstatedly fine.
ELM: Absolutely.
FK: In a way that felt very bad! I’ll tell you: it felt very bad! [laughs]
ELM: Yeah.
FK: I mean, you know!
ELM: Yeah. I think that, I mean, I think that you drawing a parallel with fandom racism is a correct one, and the problem there is the same problem here, is for trans fans or fans of color—and/or fans of color, obviously—you say like “take a step back when you can’t engage anymore,” but this was the thing that you wanted to step back to! And it’s just like…
FK: Yeah, I know!
ELM: You know?
FK: It fucking sucks!
ELM: And I think that—I mean, obviously like, there’s some scarcity arguments here too, right? There are very few out queer actors. I think that a lot of people, I think that one thing that runs across all of these—all of these questions—is a reminder that a lot of people can really internalize characters that they love, and you know, you feel like you can’t relate that character any more because actually the actor is a trans guy? Like…
FK: Yeah.
ELM: Maybe not! Maybe they can’t. I don’t know. I’m not excusing that. And you see racists saying “I can’t like this character anymore now that she’s played by a Black woman,” like—you’re like, OK! [laughs] You know? Like…
FK: Yeah, I mean, well—I don’t wanna be a jerk about this, because I do think that that’s something that can happen when—I mean, there are a lot of people out there who don’t think that, who don’t agree with me on this one. But I think that like, you know, you’ll see parents talk about like, “Well, I needed to have a period of mourning when I found out that my kid was trans, because I had all of these ideas about them, and those ideas were wrong.” Right?
And I totally get why a lot of people find that to be—find that to be offensive and don’t like hearing that language. But I think that it is speaking to an emotional thing that happens, which is when you have illusions about somebody, and they’re proven to not be what you thought they were, you know, then you do have to go through some emotional processing about that.
ELM: Right.
FK: And obviously, like—I mean, I think that racists who can’t relate to a Black woman also need to go through some emotional processing about why they’re a racist! But like…
ELM: Emotional processing, [laughs] yeah!
FK: But I also think that there are real emotions within that or within someone coming out as trans or within anything like that, it only does a—you know, it only reduces the chance that people are gonna be able to get through the thing and not be shitty at the other end, if you pretend it didn’t happen, if you pretend that’s not relevant or it didn’t happen or whatever.
ELM: Right.
FK: However, I don’t think that that’s like—you know…
ELM: An excuse to be transphobic!
FK: I don’t wanna hear about it. It’s not an excuse to be transphobic, you know what I mean? People need to go and deal with that in private, on their own time. [laughs]
ELM: I think that’s an interesting analogy too, because like, a parent’s perception of their child is as much about them as it is about their child. Right?
FK: Absolutely.
ELM: They say like, “I’m a mother and this—I thought I had a daughter.” Right? Like, and that’s about like, you being the mother of a daughter. Right? I don’t know. I’m not a parent, so I don’t know what it’s like.
FK: It is, no, I think it’s true—
ELM: That’s what I gather from hearing parents talk.
FK: That’s what I gather from all my parent friends, yeah.
ELM: [laughs] Right? So with fandom, obviously, it’s really different and I—you know, these are fictional characters. I mean, we’re talking about a real actor right now, but a lot of the time these conversations are around fictional characters. But like—you have this like, really internal relationship. It’s not just, like, “I like that.” It’s like, “this is someone that is important to me.” And you know, I already went on the record here in this episode saying that I didn’t find a lot of, like, one-to-one or any one-to-one representation or whatever—but I understand from other people that one-to-one representation in these realms, they’re really into it, right? You know? And so if you feel like that’s being taken away from you because you are a lesbian and…
FK: Right.
ELM: The person that you thought was a cis female lesbian is actually a trans guy…
FK: Yeah.
ELM: Whatever, it’s still transphobic! I’m not excusing it in any way, but I do understand why that feels like a severing. Like, just as much about you as it is about them. Because fandom people can make it so internal. And not just fandom! Like, people’s relationships—
FK: Everybody!
ELM: —with characters and actors, these parasocial relationships, it’s about, it’s as much about you as it is about them.
FK: Yeah. But, but: from the side of like, trans people dealing with this, this fucking sucks and I don’t know what to say about it, you know. I mean, I guess I hope that—I don’t know. I try and cultivate as much sort of sympathy and kindness towards everybody who’s being shitty to me and to my friends as I possibly can, but at a certain point you run to the end of your rope with that, and you’re like “Nope! It’s over. I can’t do it anymore.” And that sucks!
ELM: Yeah.
FK: And I don’t know what to say about it beyond, you know, dear anonymous person like—stay strong the best you can and you’re not the only person who’s noticing this. So.
ELM: All right.
FK: That’s a depressing note to end this episode on, but it’s all I got.
ELM: Well, here’s what I’m gonna say: every time I listen to the radio and they say “Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell,” a little glow fills me.
FK: So you’re saying, like, take joy in the small things here…?
ELM: It’s even bigger than the joy I get—this isn’t right. This seems misplaced. But like, I feel like I should get as much of a glow when they say “former president Trump.”
FK: Uh-huh?
ELM: But for some reason…
FK: You really hate Mitch McConnell.
ELM: I mean I hate them both so much, but just in different ways. But it’s just like—he still has his job. It’s just…
FK: Lesser.
ELM: Lesser now.
FK: Yeah.
ELM: So I was just trying to think of something positive, because it’s been a very rough [laughs] few weeks! And that doesn’t solve fandom transphobia or aphobia or any phobia, or ism, but…everyone should just think of me listening to NPR and hearing “Senate Minority Leader McConnell” and going, “Mmm! That’s great.”
FK: [laughs] I’ll do that. I can tell you that’s gonna help me in the coming, in the coming weeks.
ELM: Have yourself start doing it! It’ll bring you pleasure.
FK: I’ll, I’ll do my best.
ELM: Yeah! Great.
FK: All right. I’ll talk to you later, Elizabeth.
ELM: OK, bye Flourish!
FK: Bye!
[Outro music, thank yous and credits]