Episode 161: Brent Lambert
In Episode 161, Elizabeth and Flourish talk to writer and editor Brent Lambert about his work with FIYAH, a literary magazine of Black speculative fiction. Topics discussed include Brent’s formative experiences with collaborative fanfic writing, his journey from fan to pro, how the events of the 2020 Hugo Awards led to the creation of FIYAHCON, and the ways SFF publishing has (and hasn’t) changed with regard to race.
Show Notes
[00:00:00] As always, our intro music is “Awel” by stefsax, used under a CC BY 3.0 license.
[00:00:49] Elizabeth and Brent met on a panel at CoNZealand Fringe, which you can watch below, or read a full transcript!
[00:03:40] Last time we talked about the situation at the AO3 was in Episode 145.
[00:08:56] Our interstitial music here and throughout is “Gone” by Lee Rosevere, used under a CC BY 3.0 license.
[00:09:26] You should check out Brent’s website and Brent’s podcast, “Just Keep Writing.”
[00:37:42] FIYAH is available in PDF, MOBI and EPUB formats! There are 20 issues so far.
[00:39:05] Future FIYAHCONs haven’t been announced yet, but you can see what 2021 was like on the FIYAHCON site and read L. D. Lewis’s reflections on FIYAHCON 2020.
[00:40:46] George R.R. Martin’s Hugos fail was a big enough deal that Esquire ran a write-up about it, which is quite a thing for what is essentially SFF fandom inside baseball! We suggest, for a more internal fandom viewpoint on what happened, you read “George R. R. Martin Can Fuck Off Into The Sun” (which was also nominated for a Hugo award the following year).
[00:50:25] In addition to his forthcoming work from Tor, Brent also co-edited a flash fiction anthology for them, Breathe FIYAH—and you can read it online!
[00:53:55]
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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 #161, “Brent Lambert.”
FK: Yes! I am so excited to get to talk to Brent, of FIYAH, the journal of Black speculative fiction, and FIYAHCON.
ELM: Right, so, Brent and I were on a panel together last summer. We had both been nominated for Hugos, and there was an adjacent series of panels basically happening called CoNZealand Fringe, and so we were on one that was about fic, and I thought all the panelists were great, but he was especially delightful, and so I messaged him after and I was like, “Someday come on my podcast!” [FK & ELM laugh] And then, you know 150 years later, or, what? Fourteen months later [FK laughs] or whatever month we’re in right now, um, he came back on.
So, yeah. He is a writer of not just fanfiction, but mostly of science fiction/fantasy stuff, and FIYAH, as you said, is a magazine—it’s a Black speculative fiction magazine, and I know that he was nominated for more Hugos this year for FIYAH and also for FIYAHCON—
FK: Woo-hoo!
ELM: Which is a con that they—I believe they made in response to the Hugos that year.
FK: Because it was a debacle.
ELM: It was a debacle. We don’t need to go into that now, we should wait for him to talk about that.
FK: OK, we can do that. And before we get to Brent, though, I think we’ve got some points of business to touch, yeah?
ELM: [deep breath] Yeah! Some points [FK laughs] to touch.
FK: So we’ve been hearing from a bunch of people about different like, kinds of episodes that they want us to do, and we thought we should give you a preview of things that we’re planning on doing, and also invite people to respond prior to us doing those episodes? This is the most awkward way to say this, Elizabeth. Please help me say this in a less awkward way.
ELM: Jesus Christ. [FK laughs] OK. So, one of the reasons I thought maybe we should talk about this, you know, kind of give a little peek behind the curtain, planning-wise, is because the topics that we’re about to discuss are like, kind of thorny ones that require like, people of different backgrounds with different experiences to weigh in, and they’re the kind that take a fair amount of preparation and, I don’t know, I just feel like it’s valuable for us to let people know that we’re planning them, and we’re working on them, but it might be a little while before we gather together the right resources and the right folks, and like, even have the bandwidth to do extra work to put them together, because some of this stuff is gonna take a little longer than normal.
FK: Yeah.
ELM: And so like, you know, just giving people a little preview of what’s coming eventually, that might be valuable, because I’m sure that all of these are topics that—you know, each of them probably has a substantial portion of listeners who would be really interested to hear the topics. So.
FK: OK. So the first one is—I’m not going to start getting into what’s the most or the least thorny, but the first one is—[ELM laughs] I can’t rank these! The first one is, people have been asking us about whether we’re going to do another episode about what’s been going on with the Archive of our Own lately, which includes their response to racism, and also some stuff about their governance, and the answer is: Yes, we want to talk about this. We are currently reaching out to people at the Archive to see if we can get someone to come on and talk with us about this stuff, and even if we can’t get someone to do that, we’re still gonna do another episode about it. We had one about six months ago, but it’s [laughs] definitely time for us to talk again.
ELM: Yeah, um, I just think that this is like a really big topic, and I’m glad that people are asking us about it, and I know we do have a platform, and yeah. I’m really hopeful that we’ll be able to talk to someone, or at the very least have a productive conversation about it, even if it’s just the two of us.
FK: Yeah, and I think that we’ll be able to, but yeah. If you’re wondering, I mean obviously it’s been very topical recently. We are very interested in talking about it, just, you know. We want to make sure that we’re doing it justice, basically.
ELM: Right, right. OK. Speaking of doing things justice, right? [FK laughs] Right? So, a way’s back, we got a message from a listener asking if, in the style of our Race and Fandom episodes—which, if you don’t remember, are really about getting as many voices of fans of color as possible onto the podcast, which is hosted by two white people—we’ve been asked if we would be up for doing the same sort of thing for disability in fandom and disabled fans. And, definitely we are. And it’s a topic that we have asked around over the years to see, is anyone in fan studies working on disability in fandom, and haven’t gotten a lot of great leads, and I would love to hear if there’s, you know, someone that we haven’t heard about yet like, please, please write in.
But, the Race and Fandom episodes are a lot of work, and they just take a bunch of extra time, and so, you know, we’ve gotten these suggestions in over the last six months or so, and it’s just like, yeah, we totally want to do a similar style like, many voices of disability in fandom, because disability is an equally broad category with many sometimes even contradictory experiences, right? Like, this is one of the things we talk a lot about with disability. And, you know, it’s just not something we’ve had the bandwidth for, but it’s something that I think we want to publicly commit to doing in the first few months of the new year, I would say, schedules permitting.
FK: So if you’re a disabled fan and you would be interested in taking part in that, you can send us an email, send us a voicemail, what have you. We’re not sure, I mean it’s gonna depend on how much response we get how many people we’re able to take, but we’re really excited to hear from you guys. And also, particularly if you are or you know somebody who does work on this topic, you know like academic work, or has done a lot of journalism or something along those lines, really spent a lot of time—
ELM: Writing, you know, extensive meta, like I think about, we had—
FK: Oh, yeah, absolutely.
ELM: You know, we had—
FK: I’m not trying to be—
ELM: Yeah yeah yeah, no I just want to make sure.
FK: Yeah.
ELM: Right? Like, you know, um, we had breathedout on the podcast earlier this year to talk about femslash, right?
FK: Mm-hmm.
ELM: And like, she’s just a really beautiful meta writer [FK laughs] and fic writer, but she’d thought about it at that kind of broader meta level, of talking about like, the practice, you know? That kind of thing.
FK: Absolutely. So if you are a person who has done that, or if you know a person who has done that, who you think would be a really good person for us to talk to, please write us and let us know who those people are, or throw your hat in the ring. We would love to hear from folks.
ELM: Right. OK, so that’s topics one and two. Topic three, this is another audience participation one and one we’re putting out a call for right now with hopes of doing this this year. So, Destination Toast, great friend of the pod, um, has done some stats recently about trans, nonbinary, genderfluid, et cetera, characters, whether canonical or writing them as—writing, you know, maybe cis characters as such in fanworks. And we’ve simultaneously gotten a couple of asks about talking to folks who do write these works, right? And saying like, “Can you include some of those voices on the podcast?” So, we were hoping that we could simultaneously talk about those stats and include the voices of people who do create works like this, whether it’s written or through our voicemail.
And so, if you are one of those people, especially if you are a trans, nonbinary, genderfluid—any of those, you know, gender-nonconforming categories, we would love to hear about your experiences—why, how you write characters this way, what it does for you, like how you relate to them. I don’t know, I don’t want to put too many boundaries on what you could say about this, right? Like.
FK: Yeah, but just as like, a starting point. You know? Like—
ELM: Yes, those are some things you could say.
FK: —what does this mean to you?
ELM: Right.
FK: What have you noticed? Like, what’s important on your mind about this?
ELM: Right. So, you know, just, if you’re gonna write something, a couple of paragraphs, leave a voicemail, a minute or two. And we should say, we’ve been saying contact us, but just as a reminder, it’s fansplaining at gmail dot com.
FK: Yup.
ELM: Fansplaining.com, our submission form.
FK: Yup.
ELM: Or, our voicemail, 1-401-526-FANS. Those are the three best ways to send in your thoughts for all this stuff, and you know, be pretty clear about like, what name we can use, whether to keep you anonymous, that kind of thing. The more information for us, the better, but we don’t have to air that all on the podcast.
FK: Yup. Absolutely.
ELM: I think that is the business. So that’s a lot of audience participation.
FK: Yeah, please participate, audience! [ELM laughs] We need you! This is the Bat-Signal! All right. On that note, do you think that we should wrap this part of the podcast up and go make a phone call?
ELM: Yeah, I think that we should uh, call Brent.
FK: Excellent. Let’s do it.
[Interstitial music]
FK: All right, I think it’s time to welcome Brent to the podcast! Hurray! Welcome Brent!
BL: Thank you for having me! I’m happy to be here, this is great!
ELM: It’s so good to see you again!
Brent Lambert: I know! It’s been so long.
ELM: It’s been—like, what? Fourteen months? Fifteen months?
BL: Yeah, 15, 16, something like that.
FK: It’s been a long pandemic.
ELM: A hundred thousand pandemic months. [FK laughs]
BL: Yeah. [laughs]
ELM: Yeah. Yeah. All right, so we usually start in the same place with guests, by talking about your fannish background, like your origin story. Um, so I would love to hear about that and like, eventually kind of connecting it up to your professional career, because you know, obviously those things are linked. But like, I just—to start off, like where did you get started?
BL: Yeah, for sure. OK, so I absolutely hated reading when I was a little kid. Like, would not do it, [laughter] could not stand it. And my dad’s solution to that was, “Imma get him a comic book.” [FK & ELM laugh] So he got me X-Men, and I was enthralled from that moment forward. I just wanted X-Men all the time.
And so, at the time, we were living on army bases, bouncing around, and in the PX, or like the army exchange stores, they had comic book aisles back then. So every time my mom would go shopping, I literally would just dart off from her and go stay in the comic book aisle the whole time she was shopping. And she never ever was worried about me getting lost, [FK & ELM laugh] or getting snatched up, because I was solidly there. So she would come back, she would find me, she would be like, “OK Brent, it’s time to go, come on,” and every now and again she would get me a comic. But most of the time I would literally just sit there reading the comics, and I would like, just keep going through them. I’m sure the store hated me, because I didn’t pay for anything, [FK laughs] but so I just like, consumed it all. It was like, “I just want X-Men.”
And then, I started venturing off into like, other Marvel heroes, and then started dipping into DC, and I got into the X-Men cartoon, the X-Men animated series, and I religiously watched that. In fact, [laughs] there was a story, when um, it was right when the last episode before the Phoenix Saga—my parents decided they wanted to go get Mexican food that night. I didn’t want to get Mexican food! [FK & ELM laugh] I wanted to watch the episode. [FK laughs] And this is before the days of Netflix, where you could just go watch the episode later. So I was the biggest brat the entire time, [ELM snorts] because I missed that episode. [FK laughs]
That was kind of like, one of those seminal moments where I look back on it and I’m like, “Oh my God, you are def—that was your nerd, like, origin story right there. [FK & ELM laugh] You cried about an X-Men episode that you missed.” [all laugh] So, it just kind of—it kind of—
ELM: Well, you got free Mexican food, you know?
BL: Yeah! Like, you know? Like, yeah, so. [laughs]
FK: But at the same time, like, being a child, like, that’s frustrating. You know what I mean? You’re like, “I want to make decisions about my life—”
ELM: Oh yeah.
FK: “—and I don’t care about dinner right now. I care about the X-Men.” And you all—
BL: Yes!
FK: —have different priorities, and your priorities are wrong! They’re wrong!
BL: Wrong!
ELM: Right?
BL: So wrong. I was so mad, and I was so frustrated, and I did not have a good time, but. [all laugh] And it grew from that, and then I got into the trading cards that they used to have, with all the Marvel characters, and the little backstories of them, and I remember I had a huge binder of just trading cards, and like, me and the neighborhood kids would all bring our binders out and we were all swapping, like trading cards and trying to figure out who had what, and who needed what to complete this puzzle, because at the time, some of these trading cards, if you put them all in like a row of nine, it created a giant picture. So we used to fight [ELM laughs] over who gets to complete their picture first.
So, yeah. It started off with comics and the X-Men, and then about fifth grade? I’d say fifth grade, yeah, I was in the library all the time reading books. So I started off with like, The Phantom Tollbooth, the Chronicles of Narnia, like those stories I just kind of like, really devoured them. I was in the library so much that the librarians actually made me an assistant librarian, [FK laughs] and I was able to come out of class and help them in the library.
FK: Did you thank you dad later? For his like—
ELM: Yeah, seriously.
BL: Oh, yeah. [laughs]
FK: This is like, the most effective parenting idea that has ever happened. [ELM laughs]
BL: Yeah! And that’s why I get so frustrated when people try to tell kids like, graphic novels isn’t real reading. I’m like, absolutely not!
ELM: Mm-mm.
BL: Like, I am the poster child for how that kind of visual storytelling can create a lifelong reader. And I mean, I was the library assistant. They saw this little kid in the library so much, they were like, “Oh, we’re gonna give you a job.” [all laugh] Yeah. It was fun, though. You know, I loved it. I was like, “I love books, I want to be around them all the time.” Then, in middle school, Animorphs came out—
FK: Ahh.
BL: And I’m a huge Animorphs fan to this day.
ELM: Mmm.
BL: So, my mom, bless her, she never said no. She got me every single one of those books. [FK laughs] I’d come home with a Scholastic thing and I was like, “Mom, new one’s out!” And she would get it for me every single time. So, that’s when I decided like, I was like, “I wanna do this. Like, I wanna do this one day.”
And I had a teacher, I mean, cause what gay person doesn’t have an English teacher that transformed their life? [FK & ELM laugh] Or maybe that’s a stereotype, but it was my English sixth-grade teacher, and um, she gave us this assignment to write a story about like, an alien world or whatever, and I just went completely for broke. I went well over the top. I even drew like, a little illustration with it. And so she pulled me aside after class, and she was like, “Brent, you have such an imagination.” She was like, “Don’t ever quit. You can tell stories.” And so from that point forward I was just like, “OK, I wanna do this.”
And um, I got into fanfiction writing about…seventh grade? Seventh grade, I found this website, a Marvel fanfiction website, and I just lost it. [FK & ELM laugh] I was like, [gasps in awe] “There’s people telling stories!” And it’s crazy, there was this one particular series that, he’s actually my friend now, but at the time I was reading it, and I was just so blown away by—he did like this alternate universe future story of like, the Marvel Universe, and it was just so engrossing and so epic and it captured my attention just as well as the comics. And so I was like, “I love this! I want to be a part of this too!”
So from about the time of 13 to I’d say, mid- or late-twenties? About 26, I was writing fanfiction. I was doing Marvel fanfiction, I did a couple little Animorphs here and there, dabbled in some DC stuff, even tried to do a little Buffy and Angel—yeah, no. Huge. Ahh! [ELM laughs] Yeah, like. And um, I was in the AOL message boards back then, so a lot of us like, met there and kind of, you know, built these little shared universe websites and collaborative fiction websites and, yeah, it was cool. That was um, really formative.
And then there was a point where I wanted to make my own world and like, have people dig into them, and I just—I wanted someone to love something I created as much as I loved these worlds. So that’s when I kind of started pursuing like, trying to be my own science fiction and fantasy writer, and like, trying to make my way in this publishing world that’s crazy as hell, but. [all laugh] Yeah, so that’s kind of like, I guess, a short version of the journey of kind of, from comic books to trying to be in publishing.
ELM: I have a ton of—there’s so many potential follow-ups. But one thing that immediately strikes me is, you wanted to created a fresh world, because I think there’s probably another path you could have gone in where you said you wanted to be a Marvel writer, right?
BL: So there was a point I actually wanted to do that too, and um—
ELM: Oh, OK. [ELM & BL laugh] Tell me more.
BL: It’s still like a dream of mine to definitely like, write for Marvel. And it’s funny that, I have one of my best friends, Danny Lore, they write for Marvel, so it’s like, it’s so crazy to think about—nine-year-old me never would have thought that he would be friends with like, people that write for Marvel. Like, it’s so crazy—
ELM: Yeah.
FK: Yeah. Totally.
BL: —to even consider it. But um, I actually wrote as a kid, this is like, just I guess how ambitious I was, I wrote Marvel a letter and I sent them a story [FK gasps] and I sent them some drawings, and they were super cool. They sent me the letter back with feedback, they were like, “Keep going, you’re doing great—”
FK: Do you still have this?
BL: I wish I had the letter.
FK: [disappointed] Oh…
BL: I think it’s somewhere over at my mom’s house, because my mom’s very good about keeping stuff, so I’m sure it’s—
ELM: You’ve gotta find it.
FK: You have to find this thing.
BL: Actually, I had more than one, because I kept going. [FK laughs]
ELM: Oh wow.
BL: See this was like, how stubborn I was as a kid. Like, I was like, “Oh, OK they’ll like the next thing.” And I think that actually plays very well into like, the stubbornness that’s required to be a writer in any form.
FK: I was gonna say, isn’t that like—
ELM: Yeah.
BL: Yeah.
FK: That like matches with everything I know about publishing. [laughs]
ELM: Yeah, right?
BL: Yeah, it was just like, “OK, I well I’m gonna keep going.” Yeah, so I definitely wanted to um, I definitely wanted to write for Marvel. I still do. Like, that’s a huge dream of mine, but I also just wanted to…there was just something about storytelling. I also just wanted to create something where I wanted people to love it as much as I loved this other stuff. Like, you know, because sometimes I think people that want to create their own worlds, they come at it from this like, selfish place or whatever, and it’s like, “Oh, I’m beneath—I’m above IP or whatever,” and I’m like, no no no, I’m totally with all of this, I just want to build the same kind of love and community that some of these other works have given me.
ELM: Do you think that your fan past, your fan—I mean your fan present, obviously, [FK laughs] do you think—like, how do you think that affects the kind of original writing that you do?
BL: For me, I guess the biggest thing is that I don’t have a hostile relationship with the people who may read my work.
FK: Mmm.
BL: Or like, may interact with it.
ELM: Yeah.
BL: I feel like some creators, it’s like they hate the people that interact with their work!
ELM: Yeah.
BL: It’s like, they do things in their storytelling to purposely like, poke fun at the expectations of the people that enjoy their work, and I think that’s just cruel and kind of like, callous, and like, no. I want to write the kind of stories where, they’re not predictable, but if I’m setting something up and you have a certain expectation, then I’m gonna give you that. Like, I’m not gonna sit here and try to just maliciously have this sort of disregard for the people who interact with what I do. That’s the biggest thing.
Also too, I’m not afraid of tropes. For whatever reason, some people like, treat tropes as if it’s like, lesser literature. It’s like, that’s not the case! [ELM laughs] Not at all. Like, this stuff is—these are simply building blocks of good storytelling, and it’s no different than any other piece of craft when it comes to writing, I think. If you know how to use it and use it well, it’s just as good as knowing how to write fight scenes well, or knowing how to use like, setting well. I don’t have that kind of snobbery I think sometimes that comes out of certain areas of genre fiction. Thankfully, I feel like that’s definitely changed in the last couple of years.
ELM: Mmm.
BL: I think we even talked about it on last panel me and you were on, Elizabeth, [ELM laughs] how like, some of those attitudes have kind of shifted.
ELM: Yeah.
FK: Yeah, I was gonna say, do you feel like this is like, a broader thing, but it’s not—I mean, it sounds like yeah.
BL: Yeah, no I think a lot of these attitudes have definitely started shifting, for good and for bad, in certain ways, but I do think that like, a lot of people are way more accepting and see the value in fanfiction storytelling, and like, what it teaches you as a writer, because there’s definitely things that I learned in um, being a fanfiction writer that translate very well into traditional publishing, I think.
ELM: Can you tell us what those are? [FK laughs]
BL: Yeah! So, like when I was writing for a lot of these group fanfiction sites, for the Marvel comics, we treated it like an actual comic company. So it was like, you had to have a story out every month, so I was writing Fantastic Four. I had to have a Fantastic Four story out every month. Same with when I was writing Avengers. So it taught me to one, like, don’t sit there and overanalyze your work. Sometimes you just got to accept it as it is, [FK laughs] and get it out there.
ELM: Mmm.
BL: And it also taught me like, I think just the consistency of sitting down every day and getting some writing done, and building that habit and building that muscle, and I think with particularly the kind of fanfiction that I was doing, it was great because you had a community of people who were expecting you to meet this expectation, whereas I think sometimes it’s harder to develop that habit when it’s just you and you’re by yourself—
ELM: Mm-hmm.
BL: —because you only have yourself to hold accountable, so yeah. That’s huge in terms of like, work ethic, and um. What’s another one? Learning how to take criticism. [FK laughs] Like, that was a big one, because I think even more so than original fiction, when you’re in fanfiction, you have to have a thick skin, in terms of—because everyone has like, a deep attachment to these characters that you’re writing, so you see the character through a different lens, or you do something to a character like, you have to kind of learn how to navigate people being pissed off about it. [laughter]
I remember one example, so there was um—I was part of this Marvel group fanfiction site, and so all the X-Men writers, we all had like a conference about like, we were gonna do this crossover, and they killed Storm! And I was like, “Hell no! Like, what do you mean you killed Storm!” [FK laughs]
ELM: That’s not right.
BL: Yeah! I was like, “No!” [ELM laughs] And it was a huge discussion. It was a huge argument, and you know, people were flinging stuff at each other back and forth, but as much as I was annoyed with that decision, it also taught me to learn how to write within something I may not necessarily be enthralled with.
ELM: Hmm.
BL: So it was like, “OK, I don’t like this decision, but Imma make the best of it and I’m still gonna do good storytelling.” So I think for traditional publishing, you’re gonna run into that a lot. You’re gonna have to work with people you don’t necessarily like, you’re gonna have to make changes to your story that you may not be 100% comfortable with. It also taught me too, to learn the difference between a compromise and where you draw your lines.
ELM: Hmm.
BL: You know, if there was a certain kind of—like for me, for instance, like, sexual assault in fanfiction was a no-go for me every single time. I’m not doing it. I don’t care who is trying to pressure me into it. So you had to like, draw your lines, whereas like, “You killed Storm? I’m kinda pissed off, but OK, I’ll navigate it.”
FK: Yeah yeah.
BL: So, yeah. [laughs]
FK: What you’re saying is really interesting, because I feel like a lot of times, I mean, when we talk about fanfic on this podcast, and also when people talk about fanfic in general, a lot of people are talking about like, very individual fanfic, but there’s a lot of fanfic that is like, collaborative or like, cross-people, or whatever, and that’s a different experience, and everything you’re saying like, rings true with the times that I’ve been in stuff like that. But I never like, that’s normally not the narrative that I think of when I talk about my experiences with fanfic, you know?
BL: Yeah yeah, and I kind of realized—because for the longest time, I was in this bubble where I thought all fanfic was like group fanfic, so I assumed that everybody was doing what I was doing, and then at some point in my journey, I came across FanFiction.Net, and I was like, “Oh! [FK & ELM laugh] Wow. These people are writing whole-ass epics by themselves? Like, this is kind of cool.” [FK laughs] And you know, so that’s when I kind of like, started experimenting with like, writing my own stuff. And I think…I can’t say with certainty, but I think that’s when I started kind of transitioning to wanting to do my own thing, because once I started writing my own fanfiction, I was kind of like, “Oh, I’m not terrible at this. Maybe I could uh, translate it to my own stuff.”
FK: Yeah, that’s really interesting, Brent, because I feel like, you know the idea that like, you came into this from a total group fanfiction perspective and then, you know, writing fanfic on your own was so like, whoa to you—I’m sure there’s a lot of other people who’ve had this experience. I’ve written group fanfiction before, and so I get that it’s a thing that people do, but I feel like, I don’t know that we’ve ever had somebody on the podcast for whom that was the total normative experience of fanfic—
ELM: Mm-hmm.
FK: —and then they were like “whoa” to the rest of it, you know? [laughs]
BL: Yeah, no, I was totally a group fanfiction person. Like, I actually, it was weird, we had like, um, there was multiple websites and like, all of them were group fanfiction sites, and surprisingly enough, even though fanfiction is like, mostly women writing it, this section was nothing but dudebros. [FK & ELM laugh] It was nothing but guys, and so it was refreshing when I came into scenes where like, I was like, “Oh. It’s mostly women. OK, this is cool. Different kind of storytelling. I like this, [FK & ELM laugh] it doesn’t feel—it’s just…more character-focused. Like, I was looking for that, and I didn’t realize how much I was looking for it until I found more woman fanfic writers.
It was definitely transformative for me, in terms of like, “OK, uh, I wanna do my own thing now, I think.” You know? So it was kind of like—because before, I think being around nothing but men—they were mostly straight. I think I was the only like, gay one amongst the bunch, so it was like, dealing with a bunch of straight guys who were like, comic-book heads is, as you can imagine, [FK laughs] it can be difficult.
ELM: I can imagine, yes.
BL: Yeah. [BL & ELM laugh] So some of the things, trying to explain certain things about, you know, gender or race or sexuality, in terms of how they would write certain things could be like pulling teeth, so finding a space where people were writing all those things in a way more—even more than I thought possible, like nuanced way, it was just like, eye-opening for me, and you know, it made me think, “OK, I want to do this, and I want to also create my own stuff too.” So that’s definitely—I was doing both, kind of simultaneously, so they were both kind of existing, and I was slowly transitioning to the original writing.
ELM: That’s—this is such an interesting origin story. I feel like, it’s fascinating to me that the original folks you were writing with kind of recreated a professional culture that, you know, I think all the things you listed are really valuable, like being able to write to a deadline and like, just being able to be not too precious about it, but also like, the constraints that put on you, you know what I mean?
BL: Oh yeah.
ELM: It’s just, they didn’t have to be there, because it’s not like it was the actual comic book industry, right?
BL: Yeah, it was very—I didn’t even explain the dibs system, but—
FK: The dibs system?
ELM: Please—please explain whatever that is. [laughs]
BL: Yes. So in a lot of these group sites I worked in, you all couldn’t write the same character. So you would basically have to declare, “OK, I’m going to be writing Iceman, Rogue, Blink, and Scarlet Witch, and you would be the only—technically, you would be the like, the owner of that character, so if anybody else wanted to use that character, or if anybody else like, had a potential plan involving that character, they would have to come to you first. And then once you were done with that character for whatever reason, you would release the dib.
What happened to me, being—well, one, I was one of the few Black guys. But I was also one of the youngest, so I always ended up having to get like, the characters nobody else wanted, but it kind of, at the time I hated it, because when I first started off, they gave me Fantastic Four, because nobody wanted to write Fantastic Four, [FK laughs] and now that I look back on it, it was definitely some bullying going on for sure. [laughs]
ELM: Oh no!
BL: But you know at the time, I was just such an eager person to write, I was like, “I’ll figure it out. Whatever, I don’t care.” So like, they gave me Fantastic Four, and I wrote it for a while, and this is the part that I feel like it was just kind of some hate going on, they were like, “OK you made it too weird, we need you to go do this thing.” So I was like, “All right, whatever.” What happened at this one particular site that I was like, really kind of loyal to, for whatever reason, I don’t know, but um, I would always be the person that would jump in and fill in a title that nobody else wanted.
ELM: Hmm.
BL: And then it would always be like, “Damn, you took that in a really weird direction, man, like nah, you can’t do it anymore. Here, go over here.” [FK & BL laugh] That’s pretty much like, I mean it explains a lot about my own original writing, I’ll say that, but um. [FK laughs]
ELM: Yeah.
BL: Yeah, but I think that system, again, it taught me how to operate within constraints, but it got to a point where it was limiting my creativity, because it was like, “OK, I’m having to only write—” There’s a website full of like, obscure Marvel characters, and I actually used to go through that website and be like, “OK I know nobody has this character, I’m picking this one.” [all laugh] Yeah, so it’s kind of like—and after a while, they even started making jokes about me. They were like, “Yeah, I don’t know why Brent’s doing fanfic, he’s picking like, the most obscure characters. Nobody’s writing about these guys but him.” They’re like, “The creators probably forgot about this character like, you’re the only one writing it.” And I’m like, “Forget it. I don’t care. I’m gonna use this character and take it in a completely different direction.”
And I think that’s when I started realizing I really wanted to start doing my own thing, because some of these characters I was writing, they literally appeared in maybe one issue, so I was sitting here building out a whole history for them, finding a way to meld them in with these other characters and these other things, and I’m like, “I’m practically making my own stuff at this point.”
FK: This is like, such a perfect dovetail with our last episode, about like—
ELM: Oh—
FK: —taking characters and being like, they didn’t say anything about this character, and now they’re mine. [laughs]
ELM: Yeah, our last episode, for context, was about original characters, and so it was like, partly about self-inserts and imagines and that kind of thing, you know, where it’s like you and the celebrity or whatever. But then it was also, we had this bit at the end where we talked about this meme that was like, “Writing original characters? No. But like, fleshing out a minor character’s backstory until they’re basically unrecognizable? [simultaneously with FK] Yes.”
BL: Yes. [laughs]
ELM: Which it sounds like you [laughing] were definitely doing very actively.
BL: Oh, I did that so much. [ELM laughs] So much. I mean, at one point I found out Darkseid has a third son that no one knows about, because he’s only appeared in like, 10 issues. I was like, “Oh, cool! I’ll make him like a badass conqueror, [FK laughs] and I’m gonna add in all these back details, and yeah.”
ELM: I love it. I love it.
BL: So it kind of taught me how to like—well it taught me that I wanted to actually build my own worlds eventually.
ELM: Yeah. Can you—so I want to keep talking—obviously, I’m fascinated by your fanfiction stories, here, because I think like Flourish was, saying, this is like a very different way in. And actually the stuff you’re describing, I’ve never encountered anyone who was like, you know, the dibs system. I don’t know. That doesn’t seem like the greatest experience, but like—
FK: There was stuff like that happening in like, some LiveJournal communities and things that I know, but yeah, it is weird—not weird, but it’s so different from like, a lot of—
ELM: Yeah.
BL: Yeah.
FK: —it’s just like, its own system.
ELM: No, it’s very interesting. But that’s all to say, ah, this was all leading you towards the path of writing original stuff. I’m wondering if you want to talk about that a little bit.
BL: Yeah!
ELM: And in the context of SFF too, because that is like a fandom world in and of itself. There are like, broader communities around that, right?
BL: Right, so, for sure. So, when I first decided I wanted to kind of start really, really making my own worlds and try to be traditionally published, [laughing] I was working a third-shift job, so there was a ton of dead time. Like, so much dead time.
ELM: Mmm.
BL: And there was a guy, he read like, science fiction and fantasy, and he was so happy to have someone who was into that stuff too. So he was basically like, chucking books at me, like all the time. [FK laughs] And I’m like, “OK, I’m reading them, whatever. I’ve got someone to talk with this stuff about.” So you know, we were going back and forth and he gave me this one trilogy, and it was—well, two trilogies, actually. So, the first one was Brandon Sanderson’s Mistborn trilogy. And then there was the War with the Mein trilogy by David Anthony Durham. I read those two, and I was blown away by like, the world-building, the creativity, the epicness of it. And that’s not to say I didn’t see that before in the other things I loved, because I certainly did, but for whatever reason, reading those two things, it just made something click in my head, and I was like, “Oh, I wanna write stuff like this.”
So I started like, pecking away, night after night, on like, this one story. It was awful, I’ll never let it see the light of day. [all laugh] But I was, you know. I was committed, and then I got to the point where it was finished, and you know, I didn’t know anything about how to get it out there. I was like, “I don’t know anything about publishing. I don’t have a clue.” So, for whatever reason, life stuff happened, I let it drop for a couple of years, and then I moved out to California. And coming out here, kind of having that new start, it was like, “Oh, I’m pursuing this again, and I’m gonna make it happen.” So I started looking on Facebook. Not a great source of information. [laughs]
ELM: Interesting choice.
BL: Yeah.
ELM: That’s a—that’s a website. [FK laughs]
BL: Not a great source of information! Everything I saw basically was telling me the message that as a Black writer trying to write science fiction and fantasy, your only way to even get published is to self-publish. So I digested that and I was like, “OK well, this is what I gotta do.” So I was trying to learn that and kind of take on that um, path. And then I was in a Facebook group, and I happened to—it was a Black nerd Facebook group, and I happened to run into Troy Wiggins and P. Djéli Clark and DaVaun Sanders, and they were not taking that self-publishing path. They were going a different way. And I think they—for whatever reason, they were nice enough to reach to poor naïve me, and be like, “You’re coming with us, go over here.” [FK & ELM laugh]
They kind of taught me some of the stuff like, “Oh, well you’ve actually got to submit to magazines. Oh, you gotta query, you gotta do this that and…” You know, from there, they kind of built me up and showed me the way, introduced me to other people who kind of were on that same path or wanting to be, and I was really lucky to just sort of, kind of build a community—again, because I didn’t have the fanfiction community anymore, because I kind of pulled away from them, and so it kind of built up a community again, and I found people who not only liked the things that I liked, in terms of fandom, but also wanted to kind of see me succeed in the goals I had for original fiction.
So it was a great space, and from there, we kind of decided to make FIYAH happen. When FIYAH came along, that was such an eye-opening lesson for me, in terms of like, what the industry actually expects of you. That’s when I really was deciding like, “OK, I gotta buckle down. I gotta start talking to people, I gotta get on social media, and try to build a career.”
FK: How did—what about it made you get that? You know, what about that experience made you realize those things?
ELM: Well I alsowant—hold on, also, not to add too many questions here, but can you like, tell our listeners about FIYAH?
BL: Yeah! For sure. All right, so FIYAH is a magazine for speculative fiction, science fiction, and fantasy, specifically focused on Black writers. And, to kind of talk about why it kind of clicked for me once FIYAH came along, was because that first issue was so well-received, and there were so many people who I looked up to and people who like, to me, felt larger than life, who reached out about it, and were like, “This is good! Y’all did a great job! We love the work,” and so on and so forth. It kind of clicked for me. I was like, “Oh, OK, well I’m actually being perceived over here, and…” [all laugh]
FK: [faux frightened tone] I’m being perceived! [ELM laughs]
BL: Yeah, yeah! I was like, “Oh, OK, I need to—if I really want to do this, I need to get serious about it, so. Yeah, it just kind of like—and I think, if anybody’s out there listening, and you have some degree of influence, you have no idea how much a single compliment can change someone’s whole trajectory, because like, just getting those responses was enough to make me be like, “Oh, I can actually do this! OK! Let’s go.”
FK: Wow.
ELM: This is very, very inspiring.
FK: It’s—it’s pure and inspiring.
ELM: [laughing] Yeah, yeah! Absolutely. So, you saw the success with the magazine itself, and then when did you guys start the FIYAHCON? Was it last year, or?
BL: Yeah, it was last year, oh my God, yeah.
ELM: Yeah.
FK: Yeah. [ELM laughs]
BL: Yeah. OK yeah, it was last year. Yeah, so—
ELM: [laughing] We’re all having this issue with this.
BL: Time…
FK: Time is a flat circle.
ELM: I was like, that was last year, right? Yeah.
BL: Time! [laughs] Well, for that I have to kind of shout out like, L. D. Lewis. L. D. Lewis was one of those people who very early on, like she taught me so much. I didn’t know anything about like, how to reach out to agents, or like how to get your manuscript ready, or all that. She taught me all that. She was basically like, “Oh, I like you! OK, well I’m gonna teach you these things. And so, eventually we kind of just became like, two peas in a pod, because we both have this mentality of like, “Oh, well I’m just gonna do it myself.” [ELM laughs]
And so, we were talking about like, doing something for like, the BIPOC community, because we just kept seeing online so many people kind of lament the experiences that they were having at conventions, or you know, not feeling like they were being seen, not feeling like their work was being recognized, and Lekesha came to me and she was like, “I wanna do this, and I think we can do this, so are you on board?” And I was like, you have my sword, let’s go.” [all laugh] So we kind of like, you know, we just started building it out. And then unfortunately, the Hugos happened, with George R. R. Martin as host, and the catastrophe that resulted by that. [laughs]
ELM: Hold on, I was watching, because that was when I got nominated too, but should we say a little more about this?
BL: I mean, if you want to, I’m down to talk about it. [ELM laughs]
FK: There’s a lot of people who listen to this podcast who are in fandom, but not SFF fandom, so I think that would be helpful.
ELM: Yeah.
BL: Oh, I’m down to talk about it, for sure, because I’m still full of spite about it. [FK laughs] But um…
ELM: Yeah, I was literally doing my job, because I was shipping a product while that was on in the background in my parents’ kitchen, and I was just like, [muttering] “Oh, Jesus Christ,” the whole time, it was like—
FK: Wait, someone say what this is so that our listeners know what we mean.
ELM: [laughing] OK, fine, fine. I just got transported back to August of 2020—
BL: I know, I’m sorry I didn’t mean to make you time travel. [ELM laughs] OK, so for those listening, the Hugos is essentially science fiction and fantasy’s like, Oscars. It’s not quite that fancy, by any means, but it’s a prestigious award and, you know, it’s kind of one of those things that the industry recognizes you for.
So, myself and Elizabeth were among the many nominees, finalists, for the Hugos, and they had George R. R. Martin, of Game of Thrones author fame, as the host for the award ceremony. It was in the midst of the pandemic, so it was completely virtual, and a lot of this stuff was prerecorded. Well, as part of these awards, we had to send him pronunciation guides so he knew how to say everyone’s name regardless of if it was a Western name or not.
So, we gave him all of that information, we kind of explained our whole deal for like every category, and so he just—[laughs] he just completely failed as a host. He made crude jokes about women, [ELM makes disgruntled noise] he made crude jokes about trans people, he completely screwed up any name that was not a Western name, and I’m not even talking like—because I know people automatically think like, just people of color, like no. If the name was a white, Eastern European name, he screwed that up too. So, he just went out of his way to screw up everybody’s name, [ELM laughs] and our magazine is called FIYAH. He says, “fee-uh.” [FK laughs]
ELM: God, it’s not that hard. [laughs]
BL: And at that point, when he did that, I just completely lost it. I could not watch it anymore. I turned it off. I refused. I was so mad, like I had angry tears, because—
ELM: Aww, I’m sorry.
BL: It was such an insult to like—it wasn’t even just like for us. I was just upset for everybody, because it was like, this is supposed to be a good night of getting recognized and seeing your work being like—
FK: It’s potentially the pinnacle of your career, right? Like, for a lot of people—
BL: Right, right.
ELM: Yeah.
FK: —this is the largest event, the most prestigious thing. It’s like if someone gets called to the Emmys stage and their name is mispronounced, like that’s…
ELM: Well, yeah, I gotta say, this was the astounding thing about it, it was—OK first of all, it was like you were trapped at the Thanksgiving table with your like, problematic uncle—
BL: Yes.
ELM: —and you’re like, “Oh, no, he’s just gotta stop. [FK laughs] He’s just like, what’s he gonna say next?”
FK: But he’ll never stop.
ELM: Right? Like he’s gonna say some—but he won’t, and then you can’t leave for some reason. But then also, like on the Emmys or the Oscars or whatever, it’s live, so maybe Faye Dunaway or whoever’s drunk and like says the wrong movie, whoops, you know? Like, I don’t know, it was her, right? Or was it Warren Beatty? Who said the wrong thing?
BL: I think it was Warren Beatty.
FK: Well, whoever it was, I mean they’ve all been—
ELM: I think it was Warren Beatty. Sorry to blame her.
FK: —we get it. Yeah.
ELM: But like, it’s live, right? You know, so it’s like, yeah, there’s some funny mis—I mean there’s some problematic mispronunciations, but like, it is live and they’re obviously all intoxicated. This! Was! Prerecorded!
FK: Yeah.
BL: Right.
ELM: They could’ve watched it first and said, “Nope, try again.” You know?
BL: Right.
ELM: Or like, a lot of it was. Maybe he was doing that bit live, but like a bunch of it was prerecorded and it was like, how…how…
BL: Yeah.
ELM: There’s no reason for this.
BL: I think the emcee bits were live, but then like when they read the names, that was prerecorded.
ELM: Yeah.
BL: So like, he literally was given pronunciations, and he could have listened to it again and cross-compared and saw where he screwed up.
ELM: The whole thing.
BL: Totally chose not to.
ELM: Yeah.
BL: Yeah, so it was a whole debacle, and we, at that point, that kind of added the fuel to the fire for our convention, because now it’s like, we were doing this out of like community, but now—
FK: The fuel to the…FIYAH? [laughter]
BL: Yes yes yes!
ELM: Oh, Flourish. Go away.
BL: Yes! Go for it! Yes, I love it!
ELM: No, go, leave. [ELM & BL laugh]
BL: So yeah, so it was the fuel to our FIYAH [ELM laughs] and we were like, “You know what? Forget this. We’re going to do our own awards, and we’re going to recognize people within our community. So we started the Ignyte Awards, which were L. D. Lewis and Suzan Palumbo, they kind of like, manned that ship and, yeah. So the first FIYAHCON went off very well. It was amazing. It was a great time. Everybody seemed to have had a really good time.
We got such great feedback for it, and so um, we decided, “We’ll do it again next year,” even as things were kind of like, opening up, we’re like, we still think it’s valuable to have these virtual cons, because one big element that we had, and a lot of people reached out to us about, thanking us, was having an international element. There’s like a large—I’m sure people in other fandoms feel this too. There’s so many people across the world, but it feels like they’re bound to the rules and constraints of the United States, in terms of like, the times they can show up to panels, the times they can talk to their favorite actors or creators or whatever. So we wanted to create a space that like, acknowledged that there’s other parts of the world, and they should be able to be involved too. And so, um. Yeah. A lot of people were really happy about that. And then uh, we just did it again for the second time, last month? Wait. Yes, last month, September, sorry. [FK & ELM laugh]
FK: Time is a flat circle. [BL laughs]
ELM: Don’t worry about it, don’t worry about it. [laughter]
BL: So we did our second one last month, and that one went off pretty well too, so yeah. I’m proud of the work we did on the con.
ELM: Congratulations.
FK: Yeah.
ELM: And then you—you got nominated for Hugos again though.
BL: Yes! Yes, so I am up for two Hugos, in the category of semi-pro magazine, with the FIYAH staff, and the con actually got nominated for best related work. Which, there’s some controversy behind that apparently, because some people don’t think a con should get nominated, but you know.
ELM: I mean, It’s literally related work. Like it—
FK: Weirder stuff has happened and they can live with it. And, there’s another opportunity for someone to say “FIYAH” correctly. [FK & ELM laugh]
BL: Right, right, right.
ELM: But like this con is like, kind of a transformative work, of the—you were like, not happy—
FK: It’s a transformative work of the Hugos!
ELM: [laughing] Of the Hugos! You were like, “I’m gonna rewrite this better.” [FK laughs]
BL: Yeah.
ELM: You know, with people pronouncing names correctly. [FK & ELM laugh]
BL: You know, and honestly, I don’t really get fazed by people being you know, agitated or annoyed about us being in those spaces, because those aren’t the people were talking to anyway, nine times out of 10, so you know. You can be mad. [FK laughs] I’m not particularly fazed by it. That’s just kind of like, the whole theme so far of my, I guess career—I can call it career—
ELM: Yeah.
BL: —in science fiction and fantasy, has just been like, pushing back against people that don’t want us in these spaces, so.
ELM: That actually segues really nicely into something I wanted to ask you. So like, uh, you know probably 15 minutes ago, you were talking about like, you do it for yourself, right? You know, starting all this stuff. Do you have like, strong feelings about the kind of—so I see two pathways. One is like, trying to fix the system, the system here being like, the deeply engrained biases in science fiction and fantasy, and obviously all of publishing, and all other arts or whatever, but you know what I mean.
BL: Mm-hmm.
ELM: Versus just like, you’re making your own magazine that’s specifically BIPOC writers, you’re making your own con that’s specifically—you know what I mean? And like, would you rather focus all of your energy in creating those fresh spaces, where it’s just like, these systems aren’t changing, or do you feel like there’s a way to do both? I’m just curious how you think about those questions.
BL: I definitely think there’s a way to do both, and I think you gotta do both, because like—so, and this is the thing we kind of said after the end of this con is like, we’re writers too. Like all the organizers, we’re writers too, and like, we want to write. We want to be able to create, but instead we’re having to give so much time to community work, and we like the work, we wanted to do the work, but at the same time it’s like, it’s a burden that we have to carry that other groups of people don’t necessarily have to carry.
FK: Yeah.
BL: So I don’t want all the focus to be on that, because you know, people—you should have these new spaces, but you should be able to make your way in the established spaces too. Especially in terms of like, not everybody wants to be an organizer.
ELM: Yeah.
BL: Not everybody wants to do this community work, and they shouldn’t have to, just to be able to have a space for themselves to be creative, so yeah. I think both have to exist.
FK: Yeah.
BL: Because unfortunately like, I mean FIYAH has grown significantly in the time we’ve existed, but we still don’t have the pull of a HarperCollins, or of a Penguin Random, or like Marvel Comics. We don’t have that level of influence, and it would take a significant amount of time to get there, so I think you have to have both.
ELM: Do you feel like since you started writing in the professional world, have you seen demonstrative changes coming out of those giant orgs, or?
BL: Well…
ELM: Not to put you on the spot, about your professional connections here. [laughs]
BL: Yeah, no no, I don’t mind. Look, I’m totally down to talk about it, um—
ELM: OK cool.
BL: So, I will give Tor.com some props here, because they have been very good about trying to create inclusive works and put inclusive works out there. And also, they brought me and a couple other people on as freelance editors for them. So, I think they are intentionally trying to create spaces for people to bring in different kinds of narratives, and yeah. Because I just sold a book to them with Malka Older couple of months ago, so um.
FK: Congratulations!
ELM: Yeah.
BL: Yeah, thank you, thank you. Yeah, but it’s just like, you know I never would have thought that that was something that was possible, until they like, actually reached out to me and was like, “Hey, is that something you would like to do.” So I think there are certain spaces in the Big Five that are trying to address these inequalities. Maybe not fast enough. [laughs]
ELM: Yeah, yeah.
BL: And maybe not in a bold enough way, in some places, but you know, I’m not gonna completely say that they aren’t trying, but yeah, I would definitely like to see more.
ELM: Sure.
BL: But um, yeah. I think there is progress being made. And unfortunately, I feel like a lot of the time, it has to start at the bottom, before these bigger organizations recognize it, because they’ll hop on it once they see like, “Oh, this is actually viable. This is actually something that can make us money.” And then you know, they’ll do it. Because it’s like, unfortunately, we’re still having to fight some of these same battles of representation. All these weird stereotypes like, “Oh, Black people don’t go to the movies.” Like, after Black Panther why is that even a discussion still? But. [laughter] Yeah, so I guess to kind of answer your question, I think they’re doing something, but they could do more.
ELM: Yeah, it’s interesting. I feel like you calling out bringing in editors too, that’s what I’ve observed in the last, especially in the last five years with some of these places, Tor amongst them, is like, you feel like the people who are actually commissioning, that’s where the change needs to happen, it’s not like the editors who have always been there suddenly like, learning how to be better, because like, at some level that’s never really gonna happen, you know? For people to be able to commission work from their own backgrounds and communities—
BL: Yeah.
ELM: —you know, it’s really hard to replicate that.
BL: Well the next thing I want to see tackled is acquisitions at a lot of these places, because the fact that—and I actually heard this from a friend, that the reason you don’t see a lot of like, anime or you know, cartoons or whatever, used to market a book is because people in acquisitions are—they don’t watch anime.
FK: Hmm.
BL: Generally, they’re the demographic that doesn’t watch anime. So they don’t get it. Like, they don’t get how marketing a book as like, “Naruto meets Narnia” would be cool for a lot of people, because they don’t watch anime. So it’s like you know, you’ve gotta get people in all levels, because it’s like, you can have an editor who understands it, but they still have to go fight with acquisitions to get them to see it.
ELM: Sure.
BL: So it’s like, there’s still some of these barriers in publishing that make it hard, and so yeah. There’s plenty of room for growth. But they’re trying.
ELM: We are almost out of time, but I know you brought your list of fandoms.
BL: Oh, yeah!
ELM: And we like, only talked about the X-Men, which to be fair is also my fandom, so that’s great, but.
BL: Well, yeah, OK so I know we talked a little bit about Animorphs, so I think that still is a strong fandom I’m in.
ELM: That’s true, that’s true.
FK: Gotta make sure we hit off of them though, as our like, parting shot.
ELM: Yeah.
BL: All right. Star Wars, huge Star Wars fan. Um…
ELM: Flourish also shares that fandom with you.
BL: Avatar: The Last Airbender, I have a Kyoshi tattoo—
FK: Oh wow!
ELM: Oh wow.
BL: Like right here. Yes—
ELM: Is that gonna go in the show notes? Are we gonna get a picture?
BL: I mean, I can do a picture. Like everyone at the con asked for a picture, so—
FK: Yeah yeah yeah.
BL: Well, they wanted to see it, so I had to like, show them.
ELM: Yeah. [laughs]
BL: Let’s see what else I have on here, uh… OK, so this is a really, really small one, and not many people remember this, but it’s a show called Exosquad from the ’90s, I love it, it’s like one of my favorite things, um—
ELM: Wait, what’s it called? Exosquad?
BL: Exosquad. Yeah.
ELM: I don’t know this one.
FK: No idea.
ELM: What network was it on?
BL: It’s, it was on—
ELM: I watched a lot of TV in the ’90s.
BL: —USA. It was on USA, Saturday mornings.
ELM: USA.
BL: It was very—I’ve only ran into like, maybe five other people who know it.
ELM: I love this.
BL: But I’m like, we’re the five best people in the world. [FK laughs]
ELM: That sounds amazing. This is delightful.
BL: Let’s see, what’s the other one I have on here? I’m trying to read my own handwriting. I was scribbling this. [ELM laughs] “Final Fantasy VIII.” Did I say that one already?
FK: No, you did not.
ELM: No.
BL: “Final Fantasy VIII,” that’s like my favorite Final Fantasy. I love all the characters. I have like all these different ships for them in my head, [ELM laughs] and um, “StarCraft.” I don’t know if you ever watched that—well, played the game.
FK: Oh, “StarCraft.” Oh yes.
BL: “StarCraft.”
FK: Yep.
BL: Kerrigan, she’s like one of my favorite villains ever.
FK: Yup, yup. [ELM laughs] A classic, a classic video game—
BL: [whispering] Classic. Classic.
FK: —that made a lot of people go, “Wow, video games made me cry!” [laughs]
BL: Yo! Like, seriously. I had so much emotion for these characters. Um, and then the last one I have—sorry I gotta squint—down on this list was…oh. I mean, Narnia. Yeah, I brought it up a couple times already though. But yeah.
FK: Yeah.
BL: Yeah, like a huge Narnia fan, so.
ELM: I thought you just brought it up in the context of pitching worlds, but—
BL: [laughing] Nah, nah I love Narnia.
ELM: People love to just toss that one into the concept, to be like, “It’s like Narnia!” And it’s like, “OK—”
FK: “Is it really like Narnia?”
ELM: “Not all gateways are Narnia.”
BL: Nah, like yeah—no. I really have to like, I judge that. I don’t like when people say Harry Potter—“It’s like Harry Potter.” No, just because they have wands—
ELM: Just because they’re wizards and they’re British.
BL: Yeah.
ELM: No, there’s more than that, so. Yeah. [FK laughs]
FK: OK, well on that slightly judgy note, [ELM laughs] all of us together, united in our slight judginess, it was so wonderful to have you on, Brent. I’m so glad you came.
BL: Thank you, yeah, no, this was fun! I love getting the chance to talk about fanfiction and all that stuff.
ELM: Delightful. Thank you, it was really good to see you again.
BL: Yeah, likewise. You gotta come to San Diego.
ELM: Yes. Next Comic-Con [FK laughs] we will see you there. Definitely.
FK: [laughing] Next year at Comic-Con, [laughter] All right.
[Interstitial music]
FK: That was a delight.
ELM: That is the word we always, use, but—
FK: I know! But it’s so right, every—
ELM: But it is completely accurate here, it’s so delightful.
FK: It’s, I’m—[unintelligible noise] [laughs]
ELM: Just, yeah.
FK: I really, you know, having a guest on who like, you simultaneously vibe with and also brings a totally different perspective to your own is like, that’s like perfect podcasting bliss, you know what I mean?
ELM: Hard agree. I would say not necessarily a delight, but a joy.
FK: Ugh! Yes. OK. [ELM laughs] All right, so. Having had that wonderful conversation, I think that the only thing left to do is to remind people about how they can support this podcast.
ELM: Right. So, I mean. Maybe doing things a little out of order, but we already mentioned all of our contact info, but we should say it one more time.
FK: Yes! So, as we asked at the beginning of this episode, there’s a lot of opportunities to participate coming up in our episodes about particularly disability in fandom and folks writing trans characters in fanfic. So, if you have stuff to say about those two topics, or any other topic you want to ask about or talk about, you can email us at fansplaining at gmail dot com. You can send us a message through the form on fansplaining.com. You can leave us a voicemail at 1-401-526-FANS. And of course, you can use our social media accounts, like on Tumblr, Twitter, Facebook. We’re “Fansplaining” everywhere. You can get in touch with us those ways. We really, really love having people write in, and that’s a great way that you can support us without spending a dime.
ELM: But if you have some dimes to spend…[FK laughs] Did I do it right? Did I do it right?
FK: Yeah yeah yeah, that was perfect, thank you.
ELM: All right, ah, so, patreon.com/fansplaining, our Patreon, that’s the place where you can do, maybe 10 dimes, 30 dimes, [FK laughs] 100 dimes per month. That makes it feel like a lot when you say 100 dimes, um. [laughs]
FK: But also simultaneously not very much!
ELM: Yeah if you just think about a sack of dimes, oh man, that is just—just mentioning so many dimes gives me terrible flashbacks to receiving perhaps $10 in small coins in jobs I’ve had in the past, particularly at the racetrack.
FK: Woo-hoo! [laughs]
ELM: That’s cool, that’s cool.
FK: It’s time to truck down to the Coinstar machine. [ELM laughs]
ELM: Anyway. patreon.com/fansplaining, that is the way that we make this podcast. This is the way that we pay our transcriptionists, who are doing an amazing job—
FK: Woo-hoo!
ELM: —at typing away, and we’re very grateful to be able to collect donations from folks to pass on to them to do that labor. So you can pledge as little as $1 a month, upwards of $100 million a month, or more realistically like, $10 or $20 a month [FK laughs] if you have that in your budget. And at $3 a month, our most popular pledge level, you get access to all of our special episodes. We’ve got about two dozen of them. A range of like, media properties and films and television, and um, a series we call Tropefest, which has a bunch of tropes that we have positive to mixed feelings about, I would say.
FK: Yeah, yeah.
ELM: Just kind of honest conversations about things we’ve read a lot of and written some of.
FK: I don’t think any of them are like, diss-fests, you know?
ELM: No, but—
FK: They’re all like, positive to mixed.
ELM: There are some negative points, which I think is a sell, you know?
FK: Sure! Yeah.
ELM: Yeah.
FK: No, sometimes we do talk about the realities of some of these tropes.
ELM: Right, and so we have a special episode that we have just concocted. It was my idea, and Flourish loved it, and I don’t want to say what it is, but it is gonna be…something. [FK laughs]
FK: So stay tuned for that! That mystery special episode.
ELM: We’ll see! And then we’re gonna do one on Succession…
FK: Mm-hmm.
ELM: I have a new fandom now…
FK: I know.
ELM: So if you do watch my new show—
FK: Maybe.
ELM: It’s not a new show, new to me…
FK: Maybe.
ELM: It’s Halt and Catch Fire, the greatest show that was ever made, so. Sorry Black Sails, [FK laughs] but maybe you’re #2, actually?
FK: All right.
ELM: They’re both equally great.
FK: Great. OK anyway! Long story short—
ELM: Yes.
FK: There’s lots of great special episodes. You can also get like, an enamel pin, which is really cute, you can get a Tiny Zine, which is really cute. All of these adorable, wonderful things, so.
ELM: [laughing] Yes.
FK: Sign up!
ELM: Yes, OK. And, if you can’t afford it, don’t want to pay for it, we also really appreciate nonmonetary support. You can share our transcripts, share the audio, subscribe to us on the podcatcher of your choice, just generally get the word out, and as we already said, engaging with us and contributing to our episodes is extraordinarily valuable. So, thanks for that.
FK: All right. I think that’s pretty much all we’ve got!
ELM: All right, great! [FK laughs] Addressed. As I say in meetings, for six hours a day: Addressed.
FK: All right, well you have a good night, Elizabeth. [ELM laughs] And I’ll talk to you later.
ELM: OK, I’ll talk to you later. Bye!
FK: [laughing] Bye.
[Outro music, thank-yous and credits]