Episode 170: Fandom-Tinted Glasses
In Episode 170, “Fandom-Tinted Glasses,” Flourish and Elizabeth use a letter from a listener weary with certain patterns in fandom as a springboard to discuss pan-fandom dynamics in 2022. Topics discussed include flattening characters and source material, the interchangeability of some fandom memes, supercut videos, and how this is all structured by current fandom platforms and scale. They also read a response to a portion of the previous episode, on fandom AUs, bystander fic, and “in-universe RPF.”
Show Notes
[00:00:00] As always, our intro music is “Awel” by stefsax, used under a CC BY 3.0 license.
[00:04:28] The AMA in question was our last episode, “Ask Fansplaining Anything: Part 12.”
[00:06:00] Fanlore entries for “bystander fic” and “fandom AU”; there doesn’t appear to be one for “in-universe RPF,” unless it’s also known by some other term, so someone who knows the trope well should create one!
[00:09:10] The Magneto-in-fandom fic Elizabeth loves is “Magneto vs. The Magical X-Men” by aesc. Like, c’mon, this is just perfect:
Really, Magneto thought as he clutched his Professor X plushie to his body armor and glared at the impertinent adolescent standing between himself and the poster display, it was absolutely ridiculous. If he just so happened to have the complete series on DVD, a complete plushie team, the complete manga series, the trade paperback loaded into his e-reader for bedtime reading, a handful of doujinshi in the shoebox under his bed, a poster of Professor X on the ceiling, and two sets of action figures—one still in the boxes—it was only because he needed to keep an eye on mass media that stood in the way of his goal to take over the world. Magical X-Men was probably some highly-lucrative propaganda tool, used by cynical humans to manipulate the ever-growing mutant public.
[00:11:30]
[00:13:38]
[00:16:26] The interstitial music throughout is “Bigger questions” by Lee Rosevere, also used under a CC BY 3.0 license.
[00:17:22] Ruth’s letter is in response to episode 162, “Ways of Seeing.”
[00:18:18] Our astute transcriber, Maria, shared these fact-checking links for the correct pronunciations of “Jaskier” and “Geralt.” When Elizabeth said to Flourish, “Didn’t you watch this show??” Flourish replied:
[00:24:44] “The Fic and the Source Material” survey and subsequent episode was, in fact, just about a year ago. The fiction during times of crisis mini-survey was just about two years ago.
[00:30:20]
[00:32:35] In case you have managed to never encounter the term, here’s “sweaterboy.”
[00:39:16] Alas, the TRL Reylo fic has been pulled to publish! 😭😭😭 (That’s Flourish, crying that they can’t share it with you all!!!)
[00:39:50]
[00:42:35] Frasier says: “Oh dear God.”
[00:43:26] We all agree: “TV Dramas Are (Literally) Too Dark”
[00:44:23] “Starships” by bironic:
[00:44:36] “A Fannish Taxonomy of Hotness (aka Hot! Hot! Hot!)” by Clucking Belles
[00:47:48] If you have been blessed and have yet to encounter “Blorbo” (deeply unlikely, but still), here’s an explainer on the meme’s origins.
[00:51:56] The aforementioned “Canadian shack” ask.
[00:52:44] The “Trapped Together” episode was the first in our patrons-only “Tropefest” series.
[01:04:10] Flourish was right the first time—it’s “Starship Smackdown.” Here’s the blurb from SDCC 2019.
[01:09:48] The bracing ginger-based juice was from Pasa Pasa in Brooklyn, which Elizabeth now highly recommends if you’re in the area.
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 #170, “Fandom-Tinted Glasses.”
FK: A slightly…[laughs] opaque title.
ELM: Ironic.
FK: [laughs] But, before we get to the main point of this episode—so, we’re gonna talk about a letter we received, but first we wanted to talk about a shorter ask that we got. And then we can dive into the main thing.
ELM: Before that, I think we should talk about the elephant in the upper respiratory tract.
FK: All right! Elizabeth got COVID! [ELM laughs] She’s fine!
ELM: If you’re wondering why I sound so congested, it is because I am on day…mmm, depends on how you count it. I’ve seen different ways of counting the days. If, ah, the first day of symptoms was Day 0, then this would be Day 8.
FK: Woo!
ELM: Or, Day 6, since testing positive. It’s been really cool. A really cool experience.
FK: Yeah, yeah. You have Omicron—no, you’ve got whatever Omicron 2 is.
ELM: I—look, I don’t know, because I took a home test, and I don’t have a genetic sequencing lab. [FK laughs] And I will say that the City of New York—and I’ve heard this is true of most other parts of the United States—has given you no way to tell them if you have COVID—
FK: Right.
ELM: —uh, if you test at home. So there’s that.
FK: Well, I mean, you know. I guess it’s like flu. Like, if you get the flu, no one really cares until you go to the hospital.
ELM: Yup.
FK: So, I guess they’re just going on that—
ELM: That’s what we’re moving on to, yeah.
FK: —you know, that presumption.
ELM: I already tweeted about this, but my, uh, my plea is then for our leaders to stop referencing case count numbers, because I don’t think those are accurate in any way.
FK: Right. Because it’s not true.
ELM: Just—just stop talking about them. Like. [laughs]
FK: Yeah. Right.
ELM: I know many people who have gotten COVID recently who also had no way to report it.
FK: That is very true.
ELM: And I think it’s healthier to not, once you test positive and it’s pretty clear you have symptoms, to not go back out in the world and stick your nose out here—
FK: Right? Like, don’t just go [laughs]—
ELM: —be like— [laughs]
FK: [laughs] —go get another test. Like, “Woo-hoo!”
ELM: So, anyway, uh—
FK: [laughing] “Just confirming!”
ELM: I would say, um, continue to exercise caution, Flourish. Cause, Omicron—
FK: Great, I will.
ELM: Omicron 2.0 is, uh, coming. It’s here. It’s happening.
FK: Great. And, uh, I still have not gotten it, and to ease anyone’s minds who is listening to this and doesn’t know, we do not record together. [ELM laughs] Elizabeth is safely quarantined in her apartment, and I am in mine.
ELM: Yeah. I mean, I haven’t been inside with another human since at least—well, since at least Day -1.
FK: Yeah.
ELM: Perhaps with the stranger who gave it to me, so. [laughs]
FK: Since you’re one of the most extroverted people I know, like, I am shocked that you have not literally physically climbed a wall yet.
ELM: I—look. I gotta say, um. It’s interesting because it’s also mid-March. That’s the irony, that this is happening right now. There’s strong March 2020 vibes for me. And, I do feel like, in the periods of deep lockdown that we went through, it was kind of practice for this, right? Like.
FK: Yeah.
ELM: You know?
FK: Yeah.
ELM: And it’s giving me a lot of flashbacks, and I was like, well I was—then we were supposed to act like we had it, just in case. Now I literally do have it, so I have a lot of prep.
FK: Great.
ELM: That’s fine. OK, this has been a COVID report. So, I apologize for my congested voice, but it’s sounded like this for lo, these eight days, [FK laughs] and I don’t know when it’s going to go away, so we cannot wait for my [sighs] fluids to clear.
FK: Wow. “Fluids.” Thank you.
ELM: I don’t know—what do you want me to say? Congestion? Congestion.
FK: Much better. OK, all right. [ELM laughs] Having got that bit of business out of the way, ah, I think I speak with everyone else’s voice when I say: Get better soon, Elizabeth. But before that—
ELM: Thanks, thanks.
FK: —we’re gonna finish recording this episode.
ELM: Yeah, we are.
FK: All right.
ELM: So, uh, do you wanna read the follow-up message to our last episode that we received?
FK: Sure thing. This one is from someone anonymous.
“Hi fansplaining! Love y’all’s podcast, just listened to the most recent ask episode where you talked about reader inserts that were specifically watching the pairing get together. I just wanted to say that the name for that trope, specifically for superhero fandom, is in universe rpf. It’s my favorite trope right now and I just had to tell y’all or it'd drive me crazy for the rest of the day lol! But I find the trope is really interesting because it pokes fun at fandom culture in a way that's accurate, kind of a punching sideways rather than punching down. Anyway, thank y'all so much for all the good work you do for the podcast!!!”
That’s from Anonymous.
ELM: Thank you very much, Anon. Really appreciate the eagerness [laughing] expressed there to write in. I think that this trope that Anon is describing is not exactly what we were talking about.
FK: Well…
ELM: So, just to recap, we were discussing another letter where the person was describing the trope where—it is more common in superhero fandoms—but the protagonist is like, a third party to the ship, and they are observing the ship and maybe shipping them. So, you have, you know—I think the example given was like, a barista. And I do think that what Anon is describing, I think is like a Venn diagram, right? There’s like, a fandom AU—
FK: Mm-hmm.
ELM: —that’s a broader category, right?
FK: Mm-hmm.
ELM: Where characters in the story are in fandom in some way.
FK: Right.
ELM: And so in this case it would be maybe an original character, maybe a character we know—
FK: Right.
ELM: —is like, shipping these superheroes or whatever, right?
FK: Right, right.
ELM: And doing in-universe RPF. And that’s overlapping with this kind of thing that I found on Fanlore—I don’t know if this was the original thing that I was looking for, but I mentioned that I had seen this article somewhere, called “bystander fic.”
FK: Right.
ELM: Where, they’re not necessarily shipping them, or treating them in a fannish way, or in an RPF way, but they definitely are observing them.
FK: Right.
ELM: And so, I think that there’s some space in the middle where these things meet.
FK: I definitely think so. And, it is true that you explore some of the same things, whether you’re talking about a bystander fic, or whether you’re talking about something where that third party is in fandom and is shipping in an RPF kind of way, right?
Like, I’m thinking about—I’m pretty sure there’s these fics in like, every situation where you’ve got like, two characters working a case, right? You know, they’re detectives or they’re cops or whatever, right? And so one natural thing to do is to be like, OK, well, if you ship the two partners, then you write something from the perspective of a person who witnessed the crime—
ELM: Sure.
FK: —or a person who’s part of the investigation, right? And in those cases, you are still enjoying the fact that you’re thinking about what it’s like to look at these characters from the outside. There’s like, a voyeuristic element. All of that is the case. And that’s also true if you’re doing something that’s explicitly RPF, right?
ELM: Mm-hmm.
FK: Where it’s like, “Oh, they’re superheroes, and I—a bystander—am now interested in whether they’re banging!” [ELM laughs] You know? And that is what this person is talking about, which gets like, much more pointedly into specific fandom things. Um—
ELM: Yeah, yeah.
FK: But they’re both dealing with the voyeurism aspect, and like, all that. And I don’t mean voyeurism as like a “nasty, nasty, you’re bad” way. Like, I think, whatever. [ELM laughs] Anyone—
ELM: Wow, just got very moralistic very quickly.
FK: Well, I’m just saying! Like, voyeurism is a word that sometimes is charged morally, and I don’t mean it in that way, right?
ELM: Sure, like a Peeping Tom. [laughs]
FK: Yeah, no, it’s not like that, I mean. Whatever. I don’t know, if you’re like, if you’ve ever been a regular at a coffee shop or a bar or a gym or something, like, you look at people and you wonder about their lives or whatever, and I don’t think that’s bad, right?
ELM: Sure.
FK: So, fine.
ELM: I think that’s a normal human instinct [FK laughs] that lets you perceive of other humans as three-dimensional beings that are not yourself.
FK: [laughing] Right?
ELM: Yes. Yes.
FK: Yeah, anyway. That’s a long way of saying that I agree with you, Elizabeth. I think it’s like a subset of the stuff that we’re talking about—and an interesting subset. But not the only chunk.
ELM: I mean, I’m gonna hold onto this Venn diagram image, because I don’t necessarily think it’s wholly contained. I think there’s overlapping elements here.
FK: Yeah.
ELM: And I think that what Anon is talking about, with the fandom AU more broadly, is absolutely true. I think fandom AUs are very interesting, and it’s a…it’s not my favorite trope, personally. I was gonna say, maybe it’s something we could describe in-depth, because I think that sometimes, when it doesn’t gel for me, it’s often when people are writing characters in a world I know very well as people in fandom in a way that starts to feel OOC.
FK: So—so it’s like Magneto and…Professor X are both fans of this other thing.
ELM: No, Magneto is absolutely a fan. Right? There’s a very charming fic, actually, ah, where Magneto—
FK: [laughs] I like how I like, tried to propose something—
ELM: No.
FK: —and you’re like, “No no.”
ELM: Not those people. [laughs]
FK: [laughing] “Not them.”
ELM: There’s—no, he’s like, totally obsessed with him, right? So, like, there’s a very charming story where, ah, he gets totally obsessed. He like, goes to a con and he does it in a very—there’s a version of Magneto people write that is very much a cartoon villain, where he’s just like, [evil laugh] “I’m plotting! I’m Magneto!” Right? And this is that version—
FK: Uh-huh.
ELM: —that’s at a con, and I will put it in the show notes, because [FK laughs] it is a delightful story, and it works, right? Because he’s just like, he’s an obsessive—
FK: Right.
ELM: So, no. Not them. But other people, where it’s just like—or doing fan practices that I find really [laughs] stretch the bounds of my, uh—
FK: Mm-hmm.
ELM: —suspension of disbelief.
FK: Uh-huh.
ELM: Right? Where it just feels like people wanted to overlay their own personal fannish interests onto characters, which obviously people do with every kind of—
FK: Right.
ELM: —AU, or non-AU, and…yeah.
FK: There are some characters I can envision being a cosplayer, and there are others I truly cannot.
ELM: Yes. I find this more with fic, especially, you know—
FK: Mmm. Fic writing, right.
ELM: Yeah, and I’ll be like, “That guy? Really?” You know, like.
FK: Yeah.
ELM: Whereas some characters, that totally works for me, right? But it’s just like, it’s not something that everyone does—
FK: Yeah.
ELM: —so I don’t—
FK: Yeah yeah.
ELM: —I don’t find it to be this universal trait you can slap over every character.
FK: Right.
ELM: But, you know, I absolutely agree with Anon that when it’s done well I think it’s this kind of punching sideways sort of thing, where it doesn’t—unlike depictions of fans in pro media, even if they are made by fans, often they have that slight patronizing or—when they’re even good, right?
FK: Right. Right.
ELM: [laughs] You know? Like, and most of the time they’re just insulting. Right? And—
FK: Yeah. It’s rare that you get a Galaxy Quest. Most of the time you’re getting, I don’t know. The villains in Buffy, and you’re like, “Oh, OK.”
ELM: Even the villains in Buffy feel—I mean, they feel all right to me. Like, you know.
FK: They’re all right.
ELM: They are…I don’t know. I think it helps in Buffy that like, most of the—I mean, not Buffy herself, but like, there’s a range of nerdiness within the crew.
FK: It is—
ELM: They don’t feel like—
FK: Yeah.
ELM: It’s not like a bunch of cool people, right? And—
FK: It’s certainly not the most egregious example, it was just the one that came to my brain. [both laugh]
ELM: As always, I will cite the many references to Star Trek in Frasier.
FK: Mmm.
ELM: I think which offer a pretty good mainstream—and it’s a loving one, but it’s, and it’s clearly written by someone who is in this world—
FK: Right.
ELM: But it also feels like they don’t miss an opportunity to make fun—
FK: Right.
ELM: —of the Trekkie, right?
FK: Right.
ELM: You know, and it’s just like, at a certain point you’re like, “I get it. Like, he’s a loser.”
FK: Yeah.
ELM: “William Shatner has a restraining order against him, I get it.” Right? You know?
FK: Yeah.
ELM: Um.
FK: Yeah, I mean, that’s fine, frankly. William Shatner has blocked everybody on Twitter, so [ELM laughs] actually, that’s a sign that he’s probably a good dude, at this point.
ELM: Yeah, this was two decades ago.
FK: Right, before William Shatner—
ELM: I mean, I’m sure he wasn’t a drastically different person, but uh—
FK: No, but he didn’t have Twitter on which to show his ass repeatedly. [laughs]
ELM: [snorts] Anyway, I think that all of these story dynamics and tropes we’re talking about are super interesting, and I really appreciate Anon writing in to give us the opportunity to talk about them more.
FK: Yeah, thank you very much for writing in. And actually, this might be a good time to remind people that they can write in.
ELM: You wanna talk about that before the break?
FK: I know. Shaking it up, right?
ELM: Oh my God. First I get COVID, then you shake it up.
FK: [laughs] Shake shake shake shake shake.
ELM: Too much shaking. All right, go ahead. Go ahead.
FK: OK! So. As Anonymous did, and as the person-to-come second half of our episode did, [ELM laughs] uh, you can and should write in to us or leave us a voicemail and tell us what you’re thinking, what your responses to our episodes are, et cetera. Um, you can do that by emailing fansplaining@gmail.com. You can do that by calling 1-401-526-FANS. Um, you can do that by leaving us an ask on Tumblr. The box is open, anon is on. You—
ELM: “The box is open.” I don’t, like—
FK: The box is open.
ELM: [laughs] OK, continue.
FK: [laughs] You can leave us a message through our website, there’s a little form there that you can use. You can message us on social media, we’re Fansplaining everywhere. And that is a really good way that you can support the podcast without paying us any money.
ELM: This is so reversed. Oh, this is hard for me to handle.
FK: But if you wanted to support us [ELM laughs] with your money, you can also do that by joining our Patreon, patreon.com/fansplaining.
ELM: OK, I think now is the moment that we can reveal the topic of our next special episode, because it is edited, it is in the hands of one of our trusty transcriptionists.
FK: [imitating dramatic organ music]
ELM: [laughs] Oh my goodness. [FK laughs] As I rightly critiqued in the episode, because I have just edited it, I really don’t think you should do that without doing the synth lead-in.
FK: Yeah, I remember that. In fact—
ELM: And the drum machine lead-in.
FK: —yeah, I did that just to get up your nose. Can you please?
ELM: [imitating synth] No, I have COVID. You want me to do a synth impersonation?
FK: [laughs] I—I—
ELM: I mean, I’d do it for Andrew. OK. All right. We saw—long before I had COVID—[laughs] not long before, it wasn’t like in the—whatever. The Phantom of the Opera.
FK: On Broadway!
ELM: On. Broadway. What a musical.
FK: The tickets were cheap. There weren’t many people there. And we experienced the Phantom. [laughs]
ELM: That was nice. It was a nice, uh, spaced-out kind of experience. It feels like so long ago now.
FK: It kind of was actually a while ago, but the point is [ELM laughs] it was—I mean, I wanna say great, but I’m not sure it was great, but it was certainly quite an experience.
ELM: No, it was great. I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about. [FK laughs] It was great. It was great. I had not seen it before, but I knew the music very well from my youth and so I had—I didn’t know how it was gonna turn out, so we talk about that, we talk about our youthful interests in it, we talk about Flourish’s self-insert fic—
FK: Hey! That’s not true. [laughs]
ELM: Flourish’s, uh… [laughs]
FK: I’m giving you a look right now.
ELM: Flourish’s—[laughs] Flourish’s Phantom fic that explores the dynamic they love—
FK: There we go. There we go, that’s accurate. I can accept that.
ELM: OK. We talk about our favorite songs, we talk about the Phantom that we saw and his Big Incel Energy, and whether Flourish’s youthful love of him overlooked this incel energy—
FK: Oh my God.
ELM: —or could not recognize it, or—
FK: This is—you have such a spin. I love this spin. You’re just—you’re spinning this! [laughs]
ELM: I just edited it. We recorded this weeks ago, so you probably don’t remember what was in here, but this is exactly what was in here. So, I think it’s a pretty entertaining—I mean, as I edited, I laughed a few times.
FK: Yeah, as well you should. So you can get access to that by becoming a Patreon patron. Um, you’ll get access to that at I believe $3 a month.
ELM: [laughs] You do believe it.
FK: Great. At $5 a month [laughs] you will also get a cool little enamel pin, $10 a month you get our occasional Tiny Zine. All of these things are exciting and you should support us if you can and want to. And I think that’s it.
ELM: All right, well, business concluded before the break. Shall we take the break?
FK: Yeah! Yeah, let’s take a break.
[Interstitial music]
FK: All right, we’re back, and it is time to dive in.
ELM: All right. The big letter for the episode. The fandom-tinted glasses letter.
FK: [laughing] Do you want me to read it since you’re so congested?
ELM: I sure do.
FK: [laughs] OK. This letter is from Ruth.
“Dear Flourish and Elizabeth,
“I was very interested in what you were saying in your latest episode (“Ways of Seeing”) about how your feelings about fandom have developed recently. My own feelings have gone in a very similar direction, which I can only characterize as disillusionment. It feels like fandom as a whole, instead of celebrating and exploring what is unique and interesting about each piece of media it encounters, instead flattens everything into the same old story of the blond-haired man and the dark-haired man (or the grumpy one and the sunshine one, as you said in the podcast). In the process, a lot of what makes the media property compelling in the first place gets left behind - including, in many cases, any characters who are not attractive white men. I saw this process very much at work in my most recent fandom, The Witcher, where most of the fanworks focus on the (dark-haired sunshine one) bard Jaskier and the (white-haired grumpy one) Geralt, rather than on the show’s female characters. (While the show is far from perfect in the way it portrays gender, it does have a rich and varied cast of female characters).
“I’m a part of the problem too of course- most of my own fics have been about these kinds of pairings. Is it then hypocritical to complain about it? Maybe, but like many fic writers I’m writing at least partly for the pleasure of racking up hits and kudos and receiving nice comments, and I know I’ll get more of all that good stuff if I write about the more popular pairings. So I write about the popular pairings, and make them even more popular, and it becomes a feedback loop...
“Well I’m increasingly feeling like I want to get off the merry-go-round. There are doubtless a few factors at play: the ongoing impact of the pesky pangolin making many things less pleasurable, and the fact that I’m now a bit of a Fandom Old and I’ve seen the same patterns play out in too many different fandoms. I do wonder if there is something in the shift of fandom online spaces away from Ye Olde Live Journal and media property specific spaces like Fiction Alley, to tumblr, Twitter and AO3. These newer platforms allow and encourage much more cross pollination of fandoms, enabling the spread of trends and tropes (eg the omegaverse), and maybe also lead to much greater homogenisation. For instance, I’ve often seen memes going across my dash in which exactly the same words are used to describe different pairings and characters- or generic memes which encourage you to “imagine your otp” in a given situation (like buying a dog).
“I don’t see this changing any time soon, with whole generations of younger fans now entirely accustomed to being able to search for fic by tropes and tags instead of having to seek out fic for a specific property. Meanwhile I’m finding myself less and less inclined to read a lot of fanfic as much of it feels a bit samey.
“Anyway, thanks for reading my thoughts, keep up the good work with the podcast!
“Ruth”
ELM: Ruth. You’re speaking my language. [FK laughs] Thank you so much for this letter.
FK: Yeah, thank you very much.
ELM: I think that before we start talking about it, to recap, because we held onto this one for a few months, in the fall, we did this episode called “Ways of Seeing,” and to briefly summarize, you had just gone to like, 900 Harry Styles concerts in a row. [FK laughs] Or four?
FK: I believe that might be closer, yeah.
ELM: Four? I think it was four. And you were thinking about what your Harry Styles fandom meant to you. It was like, a very different kind—you know, it wasn’t a weird kind of—an unusual kind of fandom, right? It was just not what you were used to.
FK: Yeah, different for me.
ELM: Yeah. And similarly, I had just finished my second round of watching Halt and Catch Fire, the greatest television show ever made, about the history of computing—um, it’s the greatest television show ever made, period. New sentence—
FK: Not—not just—
ELM: —and it’s about the history of computing. [laughs]
FK: [laughing] I was gonna say, “Gosh, there’s so many TV shows about the history of computing, Elizabeth.” [ELM laughs] You’ve really gotten this one.
ELM: Oh my God. [laughing] Yes, by far the best. Um, and I was thinking about the characters all the time, I still think about the characters a whole lot, um, considering I haven’t done another rewatch since, and checked out some of the fic, but didn’t really find a way for me to engage in a fannish way, so I felt very individually fannish about it, in the sense that it was just taking up all of my brain cells, but was kind of actively repelled by the idea of like, doing any of my normal fandom behaviors around this property, right?
So, we were both kind of—not necessarily struggling, but kind of trying to work through these other ways, and I think some of that was, you know, as Ruth was responding to what we were saying, a little bit of weariness with some of those patterns, and maybe feeling like, I guess we can break out of those patterns when it comes to these things, right? You know?
FK: Definitely.
ELM: So, that’s the context, and this was such a thoughtful letter that we wanted to hold onto it until we, um, had time to focus and talk about it thoroughly, so, uh, time’s now. Let’s do it.
FK: [laughs] Let’s do it. All right. So, I guess one of the questions I have for you is, this is a letter that’s very focused on slash, which is much more, like, your natural milieu, right? Like, I read slash but I wouldn’t call myself a slash person. I’m certainly not running across all this stuff on my dash all the time. So I want to hear from you about that aspect of this.
ELM: Yeah, because I think there are a bunch of different aspects, and I think you’re right to break them apart. So, I think that the slash stuff that Ruth’s articulating is stuff that we’ve talked about a lot on this podcast, especially when it comes to the kinds of ships that people are drawn to, that people prioritize when it comes to race in particular, but also gender, I mean. I think she’s calling out a few things here, with her specific example. The juggernaut ship that came out of The Witcher is the two white guys, when there are a bunch of ladies, including ladies of color. [laughs] You just did a little dance for ladies. [FK laughs] Thank you very much.
FK: Yeah, yeah. And that one’s an especially notable one, too, because the Witcher franchise as a whole has a lot of really interesting relationships between all the different people in ways that are non…you know, it’s not like, a clear-cut romance, right? So it’s like, “OK, out of all of the possibilities that you could take this, where did we go?”
ELM: Right.
FK: Yeah, we know where we go. [laughs]
ELM: Yeah, I mean, I will say, it’s hard when you’re talking about these things in the aggregate, because I think even within juggernaut white guy slash ships, you can find a lot of variation about what that means, right? You know, and you can find people engaging with the canon and people engaging—you know, not just overlaying dynamics onto them, right?
FK: Right, absolutely.
ELM: And you can find very rich relationships and centering of other kinds of characters even when the story is tagged as that ship.
FK: Mm-hmm. Absolutely.
ELM: But. [laughs]
FK: But. [laughs]
ELM: You know, I think that Ruth is really beautifully articulating some of these things that I in particular struggle with around—you know, so there’s the term “any-two-guys,” right? Where it just feels like if you just copy-pasted and changed their names the story would stay the same fundamentally. [laughs] This is something I’ve encountered in every fandom I’ve ever been in.
FK: Yeah.
ELM: And it is something that I feel like I saw grow with the AO3 growing. We’ve talked about the different ways that people engage with fic. We did that survey—I believe it was last year? The “Fic and the Source Material” survey. I’m pretty sure we did that last year.
FK: Was that only last year? Time has no meaning to me, so.
ELM: It was several variants ago. [FK laughs] Um, and [laughs] I think—I wanna say it was around this time last year. Maybe it was two years ago. Look, I don’t know. No, in the very beginning of the pandemic, we did the fiction in the times of crisis survey—
FK: We did.
ELM: —which, you know, thinking about yesterday after Twitter’s main character—perhaps you saw—
FK: Oh yes, I saw. Twitter’s main character saying, “Don’t read fiction in times of crisis.” [laugs]
ELM: It was so—it was—all right, I gotta say, I almost tweeted this, and then I was like, no, you know what? Never tweet. I almost tweeted, “It’s a really impressive, like, Twitter main character who manages to elicit responses that are as insufferable as the original tweet.” [FK laughs] Right? Like.
FK: That’s true power.
ELM: Because people were just like, “Fiction is—What are we living for if we don’t have fiction?” And it was just like, [sighs] “Oh, you go away, too. [FK laughs] Like, all of you go away.” Right? Like, this journalist tweeted, and she was like, “I know I’m gonna get hate for this, but like, how can anyone engage with fiction right now? Like, I’m reading history books to learn how we got here.” And the only appropriate response to that is, “Wow, you didn’t know history before this? I guess that you’re catching up, huh.”
FK: I mean, also, like. Anybody who starts a tweet with “I know I’m gonna get hate for this—”
ELM: Yeah, she was ready. She was like, “Put me in, Coach. I am ready to be the main character today.” [both laugh] It was funny, she did get overshadowed by the New York Times editorial board, which, uh, was trying to be the main character of the universe yesterday.
FK: Yeah. Anyway!
ELM: Just saying. We had a lot going on.
FK: We had a survey—we’ve gone down a rabbit hole now. Let’s come back. We did this survey—
ELM: I just wanted to make fun of that lady a little bit.
FK: We did a survey.
ELM: Not fiction in a time of crisis. That was the one we started right when the pandemic was hitting.
FK: Yeah.
ELM: But another smaller survey that we did during the pandemic was about fanfiction and the source material. Partly to answer the question of—I feel like we had gotten a lot of conflicting anecdotal [FK laughs] evidence about some people didn’t need to know the source material at all—
FK: Right.
ELM: —to appreciate fic, right? And some people thought that was sacrilegious, right? And they were like, “What? You don’t know the canon at all?”
FK: Right.
ELM: “Like, it’s really important that you know the canon very well.” And our survey findings beared out what we had observed of people’s kind of conflicting stances, to say that some people—
FK: Yeah.
ELM: —don’t actually need to know anything about these people.
FK: Right. They’re just like, “Is it a good story? Great.”
ELM: Right. And I don’t think—I don’t ever want to suggest that even though that is not the way I am, that that is like, intellectually lesser-than or something, right? Because there are a lot of different reasons why you’re reading fic.
FK: Mm-hmm.
ELM: And you might be reading it for aesthetic or enjoyment purposes, or on a text level, saying, “Is this a really well-constructed story?”
FK: Yeah. Yeah.
ELM: Like, you know, “Is this well-written? Great, I’m in.”
FK: Yeah, I’ve definitely followed authors and been like, “I know nothing about this fandom, but it’s hitting some themes I like, and it’s an author I love, so let’s go!” And sometimes that has ended up with like, “I don’t know what this was about, and I have a completely skewed vision of what the canon was, but I don’t care.” [laughs]
ELM: Exactly. Which is—this is not something I would ever do. But that’s the way that you and I are different.
FK: Yeah! And this is not my regular vibe, and there are people for whom it is their regular vibe. Right? Like, that’s fine, too.
ELM: Right, so, when you have that kind of swirling…I think as we’ve discussed in the past, it gets harder to talk about character, honestly.
FK: Yeah.
ELM: Because—and what’s in-character, when you maybe have some people who don’t know what the story is being written against, right?
FK: Right.
ELM: But even beyond that, I have found a real, real range of what people think—I don’t know, maybe the way to articulate it is a bar for like, how much like the characters they need to be [FK laughs] as opposed to like, really sweet, fluffy vibes, or like. I will read a story, and if I close my eyes and change their names, I would be like, “Well this isn’t necessarily my favorite story in the world, but like, this totally makes sense.” Right?
FK: Right.
ELM: But then I open my eyes again, and I see the names of the characters that I know, and I’m like, “What [FK laughs] are they saying? They would never act this way.” Right?
FK: They’re internally consistent, but not consistent to the thing that they’re based on.
ELM: Exactly. But then I will, you know, I’ll see people—I think that I saw this in the past, I’ve even experienced this with people reccing things in The Rec Center that I’ve read, saying, “This is so in-character,” and I’ll be like, “I…I thought this was one of the—this was any-two-guys to me.” You know what I mean?
FK: Yeah yeah yeah.
ELM: So like, we all have really different levels, and I think it’s hard, because it’s really hard to talk about, you know, some of it is subjective, right?
FK: Yeah, yeah.
ELM: And it’s really hard to talk to each other about it in a way where we’re all using the same words with the same language.
FK: Right.
ELM: I mean, setting aside, even if we speak the same language in a literal sense.
FK: Right, right. Yeah. This is interesting to me, too, because it is kind of a different vibe than in het fandoms, uh, where you have—more frequently, the characters are characters who are intended to have sexual tension that you are intended to think could result in something. Right?
ELM: In canon.
FK: In canon, exactly. Right.
ELM: In canon. Yes.
FK: So like, you know, whatever. You don’t—even for things where, like whatever. No one thinks Benson and Stabler weren’t supposed to be kind of flirty, right?
ELM: Yeah.
FK: Like, that was always part of the vibe.
ELM: You wanna witness a case, and they come—
FK: Yeah. Oh, yeah, absolutely, right? Like—
ELM: I think here’s what, here’s what you wanna see—
FK: —Mulder and Scully, right? You got—
ELM: No no—
FK: —whatever, like, any of the people who I’ve been in het fandoms for. Not Benson and Stabler.
ELM: I think you wanna witness Detectives Benson and Stabler come—
FK: Mm-hmm.
ELM: —and something happens, and Detective Stabler gets a little heated, you know?
FK: Oh yeah. Uh-huh.
ELM: He needs to be really protective of Detective Benson, right?
FK: [laughing] He’s ready to do a police violence.
ELM: He’s ready to do a police brutality. And she’s like, “Elliot, Elliot, back off. Back off.” And you’re like, “Ugh, but you can tell how much he loves her. But he just gets too heated.”
FK: That is—
ELM: And then you like, go back to working at the bodega or whatever. I don’t know what your role is here.
FK: Yeah, you’re working at the bodega! [ELM laugh] This is a perfect role.
OK, my point being though, that in het fandoms, more frequently those characters are characters who there’s intended to be some kind of sexual tension between, or whatever. Now, not always, as we all know. Like, I am Team Snape/Hermione, and that was not intended. [both laugh] And there’s other cases, right, like—I mean, I can name a bunch of Game of Thrones characters who people ship together where it’s not a thing.
But that’s a rarer case. Usually there’s some kind of like, not just canonical like, subtext, but yeah, it’s really, really part of the canon. And that’s a different vibe, because even though, frankly, a lot of times these are pretty any-two-guys, right? Like, frequently these do turn into, “Well, here’s just the dynamic that I like.” I know about the dynamic I like! I got a dynamic I like, right?
ELM: Sure, sure.
FK: Like, you know? Even though that’s often there, it’s still, I think is a little bit of a different—I don’t know! It just feels different to me because of the fact that people are—I don’t know, maybe it feels like it’s less of a choice on the fan’s part? Although of course it’s a choice to ship people, like, so that doesn’t really track…
ELM: Here’s what I’m going to say. It’s not necessarily a counter, but maybe a “have you observed this?” because I have, and it’s not even reading het fic, but it’s encountering female characters throughout my various slash ship fandoms. I’ve read so many female characters, uh, who have been wildly mischaracterized. And I have to assume, you know, maybe you have—I think that one of the things that sets me off with anything that I think is OOC is a character who has a strong backbone canonically—
FK: Yes.
ELM: —suddenly being like, “Oh no, I can’t speak to—oh, he probably hates me, I’m worthless.”
FK: Yes.
ELM: And you’re like—with no explanation of why suddenly this quite arrogant character feels completely worthless in the world, right?
FK: Yeah. Right.
ELM: Um, like the sweaterboy-ification—
FK: Mm-hmm.
ELM: —of some of these characters, right? And I’ve certainly encountered that with female characters, um, even if I wasn’t reading a fic where they were a part of the main ship, and I have to imagine, knowing some traditional het romance dynamics that this happens especially to the women in fic, where maybe they are more prickly in canon, but they become a little more [swooning noise] You know? A little more faint-y. Or a little more swoony.
FK: Ah, it happens, but I have to say that I don’t—
ELM: I will say, also I know that this is literally one of your like, fic projects is to reverse that in canon, right? So maybe—
FK: Yeah, yeah. I think—
ELM: —you actively seek out the opposite of that.
FK: —I was gonna say, I think I click out of those really hard. [laughs]
ELM: Yeah.
FK: You know?
ELM: But you’ve encountered this, right?
FK: Yeah, I have definitely encountered it. And I think that I have found it more historically than I do today. So like, actually in X-Files fandom, hoo boy, there’s some great Scully writing, but there’s also some shit [ELM laughs] where it’s just like, “What are you doing, bro?” And I mean, frankly, like, yeah—whatever. I could record an entire episode about the [laughs] vagaries of Scully’s characterization over the years and, you know, by fan authors over the years.
ELM: Right.
FK: But that’s true, there is a woobification tendency. And, I mean, yeah. I agree with you. Like, there’s a tendency to sort of push things into—I guess in het ships, I tend to see it less as an any-two-guys situation, and more as a like, very specific tropey romance beats situation, right?
ELM: Well, I think that any-two-guys is often that.
FK: No, I agree. That’s why I was hesitating. I was like, “Well, it is the same.”
ELM: Yeah.
FK: [laughing] You know?
ELM: Yeah.
FK: But, I don’t know. I guess maybe it’s because, like I said, maybe it’s because of the fact that often these relationships are played up in canon, that I feel like it’s a little bit less any-two-guys-y. But it’s not good! [laughs]
ELM: Yeah, I mean, I think the, uh—I think that what I’ve observed as the interchangeability comes actually more from the canon, right? Like.
FK: Oh, yeah, that’s exactly it. That’s exactly it. Like, it’s already there. [laughs]
ELM: Yeah. Yeah. So, OK. I feel like we’ve—we really dug deep in this particular corner of the letter.
FK: Mm-hmm.
ELM: But maybe we should broaden it a little further.
FK: Yeah, OK, so, you know, one of the things Ruth was talking about was having memes going across her dash all the time with the same words, right? Memes that feel so same-y.
ELM: Yeah, so there’s a bunch of different things going on here, and I spend a lot of time on Tumblr, and you spend almost none, so I’m the expert here. Ask me anything. [both laugh] But. Um, I find prompts compelling, right?
FK: Mm-hmm.
ELM: And, every day, people reblog onto my various feeds, lists of, like, “imagine your OTP doing these things.” Right? The other day, I saw one that was like, kid scenarios. And actually, it was like, you know. It was a fairly generic list, but it was interesting enough. It was like, Person A has kids, they don’t know how to tell Person B about it, they just started seeing each other. It was like, a bunch of various real-life scenarios, in which kids could be involved. But they were like, somewhat complicated and different, right? You know?
FK: Right. Right.
ELM: And so, you could say, “OK, well, I’m being given that scenario. Person A has these kids, and Person B doesn’t know about it.”
FK: Right.
ELM: “And I’m gonna think about my characters—”
FK: Mm-hmm.
ELM: “—and what would happen if one of them was Person A and one of them was Person B.”
FK: Sure.
ELM: “And actually maybe what would happen if they were reversed?”
FK: Right.
ELM: “Which one is a more compelling story?”
FK: Yup.
ELM: And then, “What is the scaffolding that I’m gonna build around it to make it feel like a real world? And how would they respond?” And I think that’s one of the things both you and I really appreciate about fanfiction, is you have these characters and they feel somewhat sturdy in your mind—
FK: Right.
ELM: —and you can put different pressures on them or different scenarios—
FK: Yeah yeah yeah.
ELM: —and see how they react, right?
FK: Yeah, yeah. And some of those are cute. Like, whatever. Like, what would—yeah.
ELM: No, like, I could literally make any of those work, I guarantee it, right? [laughs]
FK: What happens when Mulder suddenly gets a dog for reasons that we don’t understand. [ELM laughs] What does he do?
ELM: I mean, that sounds like a delightful fic, and I only know that fandom through osmosis.
FK: It actually, it really does. [ELM laughs] Right? Maybe I’m gonna write this.
ELM: But, so—OK, all right, we got our prompts. You’re gonna write that. I’ll get a prompt by the end of this, don’t worry. I think that the thing…the way this falls apart for me, and maybe the way it falls apart for Ruth is when you have a whole idea of how Person A has kids, and Person B doesn’t know about it, and you can see that whole story written with Person A and Person B literally being the character names—
FK: Mm-hmm.
ELM: —because of hundreds, if not thousands of stories, that you’ve read and seen before—
FK: Right.
ELM: —and you have these dynamics and then you kind of just slot in their names.
FK: Right. Right.
ELM: Right? And you kind of feel like you’re squishing these characters into kind of tired, well-worn stories—
FK: Right. Right.
ELM: —and flattening them, as Ruth is saying.
FK: Yeah, it’s the thing where you’re like, “What if I had an AU where he was a popstar, and she was a fan?” And you’re like, “OK. How does that connect with anything about their stories or journeys or anything else?” You know?
ELM: Right.
FK: And you’re like, “I don’t have an answer. I just thought that it would be hot.” And you’re like, “All right…”
ELM: I mean, I don’t know. I’ve come so far on AUs [laughs] since we originally—
FK: No, I know, but there are AUs—
ELM: Absolutely.
FK: —like, I like AUs, but there are ones like this.
ELM: That’s what I’m saying! No, I feel like I’ve gone on a great journey about AUs over the last five years. I’ve now written many, and I, as you well know, I feel like I have instincts about what would work for certain characters and what wouldn’t.
FK: Yeah.
ELM: Like, we’ve teased at it, but that racetrack Star Wars fic that I wrote for you came about because you said—well, we were talking about, ah, I remember you were taking me out to dinner for my birthday—
FK: Uh-huh.
ELM: —years ago—
FK: Uh-huh.
ELM: And we were talking about like, people writing work AUs about a workplace they truly know, as opposed to a lot of coffee shops, [FK laughs] where it feels like people have never even been to a coffee shop, let alone worked in one. And I worked at a racetrack for 18 years, and you were like, “You should write a fic where the X-Men are at the racetrack, and I was like, “That’s the worst idea. That makes no sense.”
FK: Yeah. “That wouldn’t work. That makes no sense.”
ELM: Right? And I was just like—I didn’t even have to think about it. I was like, absolutely not. There’s no way I can make that work, and I’m sure if I really sat down I could make it work.
FK: Yeah yeah.
ELM: But then, the second—I don’t remember which one of us said, “Star Wars, though…” And I was like, “Oh, it’s so easy.” [FK laughs] Right? Like, that makes total sense to me. And I don’t know, these are just, like, vibes, right?
FK: Right.
ELM: These are just instincts, right?
FK: Yeah, completely.
ELM: And so obviously that’s subjective too! Right? I’m sure someone out there could do—I mean, whatever. No, I don’t think anyone but me should be writing this X-Men racetrack AU. I think this is my special spot, but. [laughs]
FK: It is your special spot, and I mean, one of the pleasures of AUs is also when you see somebody who writes something that you didn’t think could be done, right?
ELM: Sure.
FK: You coulda knocked me over with a feather, discovering that my favorite Reylo thing was a, like, TRL, you know, ’90s pop music AU. Like, what?
ELM: See, you say that—conceptually, to me, I could totally see it.
FK: No, well—I mean, it worked, turns out. [ELM laughs] So, you know, you’re right. But, uh—but I did not expect it. So, anyway—so, but there is this generic version of it, which is not good, and exactly the same words being used to describe different pairings, right? Like—
ELM: Right, and I think that like—I mean, we’re talking a lot about fic, but to take it up to a less labor-intensive level, you see this so often with fake quotes—
FK: Mm-hmm.
ELM: It’ll be a little dialogue, and they just insert people’s names or memes—like, lines of memes where you pick a character for each one. Like, the most famous one I can think of is that scene from Parks and Rec, where um, Andy is trying to figure out who threw the—you haven’t seen Parks and Rec—
FK: I haven’t seen Parks and Rec.
ELM: Someone—[laughs] someone threw a pie at…at Leslie? Or at Ben? I can’t remember. Leslie’s running for office, someone threw a pie, and Andy, who sort of has this secret identity as an FBI agent, Burt Macklin—he’s the dumb one, that’s Chris Pratt, he’s like—it’s his only charming role. And, um, so he’s been tasked with finding out who threw the pie, and so he gives everyone code names. And so, you may have seen it, he goes like, “You’re Eagle 1, you’re If I Had to Do a Dude, like, Did It Once in a Dream…” Like, he labels each one of them, right?
FK: Yeah.
ELM: Like, based on who he would or would not sleep with. And he just delivers it in very—it’s very well-delivered, and everyone’s reactions are priceless—
FK: Mm-hmm.
ELM: And so, I’ve seen that for literally every fandom, right? [FK laughs] You know, people figure out who’s gonna be the Chris Pratt figure, and then who’s gonna get everyone else’s label.
FK: Right.
ELM: And when I’ve been in the height of a fandom, like, just really loving everything about it, just wanna see the words more, I find those charming. And then, the shine wears off so quickly on those for me, and I’m just like…
FK: I really like “just wanna see the words more,” because I so relate. [ELM laughs] Where it’s just like, “I just wanna see the character names some more. Can I just see them?” Sometimes you’re like, scrolling on your phone, like I’m doing this on Twitter, not Tumblr, but I’m just like, “Yeah. Lemme just like, see that more.” [laughs]
ELM: Yes. Yes.
FK: I’m getting, like, dopamine from just seeing the character names. [laughs]
ELM: I love that feeling. That’s great.
FK: Yeah.
ELM: But it doesn’t last forever, in my experience. And, when you have people doing some of these kind of, very generic interchangeable memes, especially the kind of fake dialogue quotes you see a lot on Tumblr.
FK: Yeah.
ELM: It’s just…it wears me out. And it makes me a little resentful, and you know. It’s hard, because obviously it’s working for some of the people I follow, and they also reblog great gifs onto my feed, and I don’t wanna—
FK: Yeah.
ELM: There’s no way to block that out, right?
FK: Right.
ELM: Because they’re not tagging, you know, like—what am I gonna block, the Magneto tag? Never. I would never do that.
FK: Yeah, yeah.
ELM: Then I won’t see pictures of Magneto, right?
FK: Yeah, right.
ELM: But. It’s something that I don’t really love—
FK: Mm-hmm.
ELM: —I just find pretty generic.
FK: You know, one of the things this is making me think about is supercuts. Ha! Blast from the past. Things I haven’t thought about in many years right now. But like, the whole genre of supercuts, where you have like—you know, a lot of supercuts are like, “every time this character says this word.” Right?
ELM: Hmm.
FK: And so you, whatever. And there’s like, 1,000 of them, and you’re like, “Ha ha, look at that. It’s every time Frasier said that word.” You know?
ELM: Wow. You don’t even know what word Frasier says.
FK: I don’t know what word Frasier says. [both laugh] But I’m sure there’s a supercut somewhere.
ELM: I would love to see one. When he’s fighting with his neighbor, um, Cam Winston. I would love to see just him shouting “Cam Winston!” over and over again. I would watch that right now.
FK: Right, so, there probably is one, and you can go on YouTube. [ELM laughs] But so, there’s those supercuts—
ELM: [laughing] I think you’re overestimating the labor of the Frasier fandom.
FK: [laughs] Maybe. There was a real vogue for them, though. But then there’s other supercuts that are supercuts like, across different shows, you know?
ELM: Mmm.
FK: And like, the reality is that, you know, for instance, with TV shows, they’re all shot with the same vocabulary, basically, right?
ELM: Mm-hmm.
FK: Like, there’s trends. There’s ways that people are doing lighting that are the same. People complain about this all the time but like, it’s just a fact—
ELM: So dark.
FK: Yeah, right now it’s that everything’s very dark. We understand.
ELM: Also, Flourish, everything is like, there’s a battle and it’s literally like the battle’s in your room, and you’re like, ashamed that your neighbors are hearing this, and then they start speaking again, and you can’t hear a single word they’re saying.
FK: Yeah. I have some other thoughts about that, but it is true [ELM laugh] that that can be poorly done. But my point being though, that like, there’s reasons why—there’s certain structures, there’s certain like, act structures, there’s kinds of characters, there’s shots—like, things can begin to feel quite same-y if you put them next to each other—
ELM: Sure.
FK: —across any genre of shows. And then I think about like, you know, there’s fanvids that are enjoying some of this and also being, you know—like, I don’t know. Like, “Starships,” a classic fanvid is like, in the positive sense. It’s like, “Look at all of these different spaceships that we love! [ELM laughs] Sometimes they all do the same thing! They all go to superspeed and then the woo! The stars woosh by, right?” You know? Or, whatever. “Hot! Hot! Hot!” that fanvid, where it’s like a fannish taxonomy of hotness, and it’s like, “Here are all of these tropes of people being in bathtubs, of people dancing with each other, of whatever.” Right? And it’s just like, characters being hot in the same way the movies communicate hotness, or TV shows communicate hotness.
ELM: Sure, sure.
FK: So I guess it’s making me think about that, in the sense of like, it can be really annoying and frustrating when this stuff starts to feel stale, but it also provides some of the backbone for why we like things. Which is hard, right?
ELM: Yeah.
FK: Like, we like it because we like pattern recognition, sometimes.
ELM: Yeah! Absolutely. It’s just, I feel like what you’re describing is a little reductive. Right?
FK: Oh, of course it is!
ELM: I mean, it’s literally the point, right?
FK: That’s literally the point.
ELM: They’re literally reducing it—
FK: Yeah.
ELM: —to these gestures or these kinds of shots or whatever. And I think it’s an interesting thing to study.
FK: Mm-hmm.
ELM: But is it a pleasurable thing to consume? I think that for a lot of people…yes? And then for others: no. [laughs]
FK: Yeah, I mean, you are talking to the person who is still working on reading every Star Trek novel ever, and let me tell you, [laughing] if you want same-y, motherfucker…
ELM: Talk about pattern recognition.
FK: Yup.
ELM: Right, I mean, but you’re also doing that as, like, a project, right? In a little bit of a—you get a different pleasure from that, which is, like, a completion element.
FK: It’s—I get multiple—I get so many pleasures from this. [both laugh]
ELM: Right. But I think that I don’t—I don’t get a lot of pleasure out of—I think that brings me into analytical mode—
FK: Mmm.
ELM: —and usually that makes me fairly tired.
FK: Mm-hmm.
ELM: Right? Like, not—you know, I’m not tired of analyzing things. I’ll never tire of that. [FK laughs] But like, you know. Like, just kind of weary about the—I don’t know. I feel like often the way it’s done is very reductive, right? And it’s like, you know, “Look they used this color over here, and this color over here. Reds.”
FK: Mm-hmm. Right.
ELM: Right? And you’re like, “OK. Some reds.” You know? Like, I don’t know what we’re actually saying about this.
FK: Yup.
ELM: It’s just more observation, right?
FK: Yup. There they are. [laughs]
ELM: So, OK. You know, and, I don’t know. This content seems to be very popular. So, maybe we are just not the target audience, but like. It’s something that I puzzle over, because I feel like, you know, maybe it’s a reflection of people kind of spinning over and over and over at scale, right? That we’re kind of seeing, if you have thousands of people—
FK: Mm-hmm.
ELM: There’s only a two-hour movie or whatever, right? But if you have thousands of people analyzing every single bit to death—I mean, what we’re talking about right now is pretty far afield—I don’t know how we got here—from inserting character names into the Burt Macklin, you know, [FK laughs] pie sting, or whatever, right?
FK: Yeah.
ELM: You know? Like, that’s just arbitrarily putting people’s names in, and sometimes it hits and like, a lot of times it doesn’t.
FK: Right.
ELM: And people just go like, “Ahaha, funny.”
FK: Yeah.
ELM: “If I Had to Do a Dude…those two, OK great.” You know?
FK: Yeah yeah.
ELM: And so like, I don’t know. Just to kind of gear us back a little bit towards Ruth’s letter, because I think what we’re describing is something that frustrates us also—
FK: Mm-hmm.
ELM: I think this is more about not necessarily analyzing the stuff that’s on the page or the screen to death, but kind of not even. Just kind of plucking out—
FK: Mm-hmm.
ELM: —the things and kind of squeezing them into these meme-y boxes.
FK: Yeah yeah yeah.
ELM: I feel like we can’t let this conversation pass without me expressing my weariness for the word “Blorbo,” which [FK laughs] I’m sure has trickled to you, even as a non-Tumblr user—
FK: Oh yes.
ELM: —because I have seen it on Twitter.
FK: The Blorbos have attacked everywhere.
ELM: Tumblr is awash in Blorbos, and if anyone has blessedly lived their life for the last two months without seeing the term “Blorbo,” which I enjoyed at first and now will not allow in The Rec Center, it’s now become a stand-in for your fave.
FK: Mm-hmm.
ELM: Your characters. Right? My Blorbos.
FK: Yeah—
ELM: My Blorbo from my shows, multiple Blorbos from multiple shows.
FK: Mm-hmm.
ELM: People meme-ing on top of memes, you know. Like, an early one that was very popular was someone talking about a normie friend’s Instagram was full of pictures of their baby, and someone reblogged “Blorbo from my uterus.” [FK laughs] Right. So.
FK: Yeah. Yeah.
ELM: And I’ve seen a lot of Blorbo content recently. I don’t know, I feel like a few years ago, I was even reblogging some of this stuff. Not with Blorbo, obviously, because he’s a new invention. [FK laughs] But, you know, these kind of pan-fandom memes, or like, people making—winding up on an only-one-bed punchline, or they-were-roomates punchline—
FK: Mm-hmm.
ELM: —and spinning on variations of that. And this kind of pan-fandom language, grumpy one/sunshine one, all these things, right? And I too would like to get off that merry-go-round.
FK: Yeah.
ELM: I’m just kind of done with it.
FK: Yeah.
ELM: Right? Like, and I’m not sure what shifted. Maybe it was overexposure, or maybe even watching these memes get kind of driven into the ground, and having so, so many different fandoms overlaid onto them…
FK: Mm-hmm.
ELM: I don’t know—this is not a very like, cheerful fandom podcast host thing to say, but like, I don’t find that stuff enjoyable.
FK: Yeah.
ELM: I find it—it kind of feels like the culmination of this sort of generic flattening that we have been seeing across the AO3 and Tumblr and Twitter, now TikTok, right?
FK: Yeah.
ELM: Where capital-F Fandom is this kind of just, big, flat hand, just kind of squashing everything into [FK laughs]—you know what I mean?
FK: Yeah, yeah, I do know what you mean. I mean, I think—it’s funny, because as you were talking about this, I was trying to unpick in my head how much of this has to do with us and our age, and how long we have been involved in this. I mean, Ruth talks about this, being a fandom old—
ELM: Yes.
FK: —and I do think I have a different perspective, and I’m sure you do as well, to somebody who has been in fandom less long.
ELM: Sure. Not necessarily age, but fan age, right?
FK: Fan age, exactly. Exactly. Not age like, “Because I am 35, I am smart.” Age like, “Because I’m 35, and have been in fandom since I was 12, I have seen a lot of stuff.”
ELM: I guess so your fan age is twenty…
FK: Yeah, sure. Oh, that’s a bad age. [laughs]
ELM: It’s different for fans. It’s like dog and cat years.
FK: OK, great. [ELM laughs] Anyway, my point being that I think there is a different perspective that comes from that.
ELM: [laughing] Also, no offense to 22-year-olds, Flourish.
FK: Oh, full offense to 22-year-olds. [ELM laughs] Twenty-two is not a good age for me or for anyone else, and I’ll stand by that.
ELM: No, yeah, it’s not a great age, I’m not gonna lie.
FK: It’s just fraught. If you’re 22, like, it gets better, guys. [laughs]
ELM: Yeah, yeah, all right. That’s fair.
FK: Anyway.
ELM: No offense meant, but like, if you’re struggling at 22—
FK: It gets better.
ELM: —normal. Just hang in there.
FK: Yeah. Uh. [both laugh] So I think that has an impact, but I also don’t want to discount what Ruth’s saying about—and what I think you’re saying about sort of pan-fandom-ness becoming ever more of a thing. And I think that does have to do with the shift away from media property–specific spaces, and it has to do with the, you know, the everything-cross-pollinating-everything—it feels like it’s just sped up. These tendencies existed in the past, but they were much less intense, and much less like, fast and much less of them all the time.
ELM: Right, right, and you didn’t have people from fandom at publishing houses using terms like “the grumpy one” and “the sunshine one” in jacket copy. Right?
FK: Right.
ELM: It feels like—which is something we’ve discussed in the past, right?
FK: Yeah.
ELM: You don’t have, you know, brands using kind of, language that seems like it would be relatively isolated to fandom.
FK: Right.
ELM: And I think just within fandom too, you know, it makes me think of—so like, the other day, I saw [laughs] someone left an ask. I can’t remember who the responder was. Someone else reblogged it onto my feed. And it was like, ah, “Canadian shack?” Like, “I’m Canadian! [FK laughs] And like, what the fuck? OK…”
FK: Oh boy. We have—can I just say that we have had multiple rounds of Canadians going “what the fuck” about the Canadian shack? [laughs] This is like—
ELM: I love it. I love it.
FK: This is like, every five years there’s a new someone going “what the fuck” about Canadian shacks, and it’s like, “OK, guys.” [laughs]
ELM: Um, and so then the person was like, “Well, you know, back in—” And for anyone who doesn’t know, it was because in Due South fandom, this was like a mini trope within the fandom, which is a famous Canadian show, right?
FK: Yeah.
ELM: It’s not just using Canada, it’s a Canadian show. [FK laughs] And, um, someone decided that to make it a—like a cross-fandom fest, right? To say, like, “Have other characters be in shacks in Canada.”
FK: Yeah.
ELM: As we’ve discussed when we talked about this in our Trapped Together episode, sometimes it’s unclear why these characters may be—these British people have somehow wound up in Canada. How did they get there?
FK: Who cares? [ELM laughs] Shhh. Doesn’t matter! The shack has to be in Canada because fandom said so!
ELM: I think there’s a lot of places where you could have a cold shack. But.
FK: But.
ELM: I get it. I get it.
FK: Here we are.
ELM: And so I was just thinking about, like, the world in which the Canadian shack like, pan-fandom trope like, as a fest was something intentional and rare, right?
FK: Mm-hmm.
ELM: You know, this kind of idea of like, “What if across fandoms we did these things?”
FK: Mm-hmm.
ELM: And now, it just feels like—I do think there’s something to be said for your age point and for our weariness with patterns and our weariness with feeling like we’re seeing the same dynamics play out over and over again.
FK: Mm-hmm. Yeah.
ELM: But I also feel like the landscape is so drastically different than it was 15 or 20 years ago, or even 10 years ago, right?
FK: Right.
ELM: Like, in a way that is not going to change.
FK: Mm-hmm.
ELM: I cannot imagine it changing. This is what fandom is now. At least, this kind of fandom.
FK: Right.
ELM: Obviously, there’s tons of different kinds of fans, but like, the fandom that we talk about, this is it.
FK: Yeah, I mean, it is this way in the kind of fandom that we’re in, but I think it’s also, um—speaking of sort of the pan-fandom-y-ness, right? That’s also not just about the fandom that we’re in. I think as fandom—like, I don’t know. I’m thinking about Comic-Con, and I’m thinking about the ways that like, people show up—like cosplayers come to Comic-Con, and what are you gonna cosplay? And that being less centered around what the thing you were a fan of, and more like, “Well, what could I cosplay that would look really good and get me attention in these ways?”
ELM: Yeah.
FK: And let’s be clear: I think that’s fine. Like, I think that’s OK. I’m not trying to diss people for being quote “not real fans” or something. But I do think that that’s a different attitude than people had about cosplay when they, for instance, went to a Star Trek convention in 1977, right? Like.
ELM: Sure.
FK: Like, it’s a different attitude. They’re both OK, but it’s a different thing. [laughs]
ELM: Yeah, I mean, I think that’s a direct parallel to what Ruth explicitly describes here, about saying like, “Well, I want the hits and I want the kudos, so I’m also gonna write about these popular characters.”
FK: Exactly.
ELM: Right? Like, you know, we’ve kind of half-joked that you could reverse-engineer your way into the most kudosed fic on AO3—
FK: Right.
ELM: —via data, right?
FK: Yeah!
ELM: You know, and being able to write a decent story, right? But like, there are ways—
FK: Mm-hmm.
ELM: —to get all those eyeballs, and I see that same—in cosplay, there’s money involved, obviously.
FK: Of course.
ELM: But, it’s attention, right?
FK: Right.
ELM: Just like in fandom—in fic fandom, it’s attention.
FK: And similarly like, when you get into people who are like, I don’t know, geek YouTubers, do you think that they really love all of the things that they’re talking about? I’m sure that they can build up a head of excitement about them, because like, I can get excited about anything, if you want me to. I can find stuff to love.
ELM: The MCU.
FK: Sure. I could do that. Like, if there was like, benefit to me involved, I could figure out what I liked about the MCU. You know? And perform that for people.
ELM: Sure.
FK: Like, and I probably could even convince myself that I really loved it. You know? Like, I’m not saying that people are being false. I’m saying that there’s reasons why people get into these things that are not just like, specific bits—
ELM: Yeah.
FK: —and then when everybody sort of feels like they’re converging on one thing, whether that’s a meme that sort of seems to fit everything, or whether that’s like, whatever. It’s because there never has been a time in fandom where the only thing has been love, right?
ELM: Mm-hmm.
FK: Like, there’s always been other factors as to what people are talking about and doing and why, and I think that we’re just seeing a lot of other factors that are coming in and having big influences, you know, in new ways.
ELM: It’s really interesting, because it’s like, if you think about this kind of classic construction of being a fan—
FK: Mm-hmm.
ELM: —and it’s something that like, you watched the thing and you like it too much—
FK: Mm-hmm.
ELM: —and you like it in a weird way—
FK: Yeah.
ELM: —and maybe you find a couple of other weirdos that like it in a weird way or whatever—
FK: Yeah.
ELM: —and now we’re talking about like, how do you write the fic with the dynamic that everyone loves, to get all the kudos, right?
FK: Yeah.
ELM: And, you know, obviously like, as some smart people on Tumblr have pointed out, like. Fan culture is a relatively small subculture in human—in all of humankind, right? Like, it’s not—
FK: Sure, there are billions of people on this planet. [both laugh]
ELM: Right. Or this idea that like, dressing up in a costume and going to the Star Trek convention in 1977 was like, this super weird thing that you might do, right? You know.
FK: Right.
ELM: And you find a couple other people who are like, “Ohhh!”
FK: Yeah.
ELM: You know? And now you have like, the news trying to interview you, being like, you know—and everyone trying to get your picture and stuff like that. It’s a weird shift, and it doesn’t necessarily—it’s not the same narrative as like, oh, “geek culture won,” or whatever, because I find that to be a tiring narrative, because that to me is very much about like, people found highly profitable mass culture appeal—
FK: Mm-hmm.
ELM: —within something that previously had niche appeal.
FK: Right.
ELM: Right? Like, to me that’s such an eye-roll-y statement. This is about behaviors. Right? And it’s interesting to see that the scale exists now—
FK: Right.
ELM: —for people to modify their behaviors, so it’s not necessarily about what they even like.
FK: Mm-hmm. Yeah.
ELM: But it’s about what they can garner the most likes from.
FK: Yeah. Yeah.
ELM: But. [sighs] I mean, it just brings me back to like, thinking of myself in times of fannish passion when I just wanna see their names more. [FK laughs] It makes me wonder if the people who are reblogging this stuff onto my feed, these posts that are clearly meant to have some virality because they’re so, you know, relatable memes or whatever.
FK: Right.
ELM: Like, funny memes, where it just feels so generic, or people write a fic that just feels so generic and fluffy and—
FK: Right.
ELM: —not to insult fluff. I’ve read generic angsty fics, too, honestly, but you know the kind of stuff I’m talking about.
FK: Yeah.
ELM: To the people who are bringing this into my feed, do they also have these same doubts? Do they really like it? Do they have a higher threshold for suspension of disbelief? Uh, like, you know, I have a lot of questions.
FK: Or, I mean, maybe this is just because I’ve worked with people who are professional social media people, but there are some people for whom a big chunk of the pleasure is feeling like you, like, gamed it. You figured out what other people were gonna like. You know?
ELM: No, you’re talking about the creator. I’m talking about the sharer.
FK: No, I’m talking about the sharer too. There are people who choose to share things partially because they’re like, people I know—
ELM: They’ll get more shares.
FK: Exactly!
ELM: Yeah, they’ll get shared. Yeah.
FK: “People I know are also gonna like this, and they’re gonna follow me because they’re into it.”
ELM: Mm-hmm.
FK: Like, “I’m going to build up my—I’m thinking about who my followers are right now.” I can only assume that—I mean, maybe it’s different on Tumblr, but like, this is certainly—
ELM: Oh, no, I don’t think so.
FK: —something that happens in like, every other social media space, and, like, I don’t think it’s everybody, at least not consciously, but there’s definitely like, a subset of power users. Like, people who I’ve worked with in these contexts who are like, “Yeah. Not only am I a professional social media person, but for fun. [ELM laughs] I create social media accounts and take ’em as big as I can by sharing relatable content. I don’t come up with it. I share it.”
ELM: Yeah. You know, people on Tumblr like to post big—big, uh, moralistic thoughts about how there’s no reward for posting on Tumblr, it’s why it’s the best social media network because you can’t monetize it, you can’t become an influencer. But there are certainly some people creating some shareable content.
FK: Yup.
ELM: And I think that they’re underestimating the power of like, getting a bunch of likes and feeling really liked by people hitting like, you know?
FK: I agree.
ELM: There are these relatable fandom meme accounts on Twitter, and I just marvel at them. They lightly recycle content that I see elsewhere.
FK: Oh yeah.
ELM: Uh, a few of them are blocked from the Rec Center. [FK laughs] They don’t know this, but they will never appear.
FK: Right?
ELM: If I see you lifting a meme that I saw on Tumblr a week ago?
FK: Uh-huh.
ELM: And putting it on Twitter? Like.
FK: You’d be pissed!
ELM: Not like, screenshotting it, but like, rewording it for your Twitter?
FK: Oh, yeah!
ELM: Yeah. You’re not getting my precious eyeballs. [both laugh] So, suffer. But I look at them and I’m like, “What…what are they doing this for?” Right? Like, and it’s just like, yeah. Dopamine, right?
FK: Yeah.
ELM: It’s getting a lot of likes.
FK: Yup.
ELM: Which, I don’t understand, because the few tweets I’ve had go viral were just miserable.
FK: Different strokes for different folks, Elizabeth.
ELM: I don’t understand how anyone enjoys that, it’s just like. I don’t wanna—now they show you people’s quote tweets? And I have to see people’s like, semi-internal thoughts?
FK: Yeah, I don’t like that one.
ELM: Anyway. I relate so much to Ruth and everything she writes here, and I think that one thing that—obviously Ruth’s responding to us, so it’s not like a newsflash to say that we find this relatable. We’re in like, a little relatable cycle here, right?
FK: Right.
ELM: I think both you and I have been struggling to find exactly where we fit into this current fandom milieu.
FK: Yeah, I think that’s true.
ELM: You said milieu earlier—
FK: Milieu.
ELM: —I think. You say it differently than me, but I think we’re both—
FK: [pronouncing it different ways] Milieu? Milieu?
ELM: —pronouncing it incorrectly.
FK: [laughs] Probably.
ELM: It’s more of an [makes an “ʊ” sound] I did take French.
FK: Yeah. [ELM laughs] You’re way more likely to be right than I am. Let us be clear about that.
ELM: I have been [laughs] to Quebec. I’ve been to France too! [laughs] I don’t know why I didn’t mention that one first.
FK: So have I! It didn’t make me able to speak their language, though. [laughs]
ELM: Anyway, ah, as I was saying, I think that as we kind of struggle and feel—you know, like, I don’t feel—I think I’m in a different position to you, because I am feeling still very engaged with a fanfiction fandom.
FK: Yeah, definitely.
ELM: Right? I don’t—I still wanna see pictures of their faces. But I don’t care very much about the films beyond like, taking away the information I need, but like, I don’t feel the need to like, analyze them very much, because frankly, most of them are not very good. [FK laughs] And you just take what you need, and then you go and you make more enjoyable content out of them. But beyond that? If my ideas for these characters dry up? My interest in these characters dries up? Which feels sad to me, but could happen, obviously, it’s happened to me in the past. I don’t have very much interest in engaging, in the way that I see a lot of folks engaging with newer stuff.
FK: Yeah.
ELM: And I feel like that’s the position you’re in right now.
FK: Yeah! I, uh, I mean, I’m enjoying the fandoms that I’m engaging in at the moment in the way I’m engaging with them. I’m reading a lot of Star Trek stuff. I’m watching Star Trek all the time. I’m on Star Trek Twitter, and sometimes I see some jokes that I find good, or am annoyed by certain things. There’s a couple of people whose takes I like, you know? But like, I’m just mostly living my life, and that’s fine. And I’m largely able to avoid, because I’m not like, invested in a ship, I think, of any kind, for the first time—
ELM: What about the, uh, Enterprise?
FK: Uh, thank you. Different kind of ship. Except, OK, possibly Jurati and the Borg Queen. Maybe they need to get together. Jury’s still out. [laughs] We actually have never used the title of this episode in talking about this, but I will say this—
ELM: Yes.
FK: —the fandom-tinted glasses [ELM laughs] that people are wearing when they look at, you know, some of this stuff, like, I feel a little bit like I just sort of have taken them off.
ELM: Yeah.
FK: And there’s probably other, you know, ones that I may get sucked into. Maybe I’m gonna turn into one of those people who goes to Comic-Con and gets obsessed with like, spaceships and goes to the Starship Smackdown—Spaceship Smackdown?
ELM: Mmm. Mmm. That’s a whole different—we didn’t even talk about that. I don’t know if I can go there right now.
FK: All I’m saying is, maybe I’ll get sucked into other sort of forms of fandom glasses, right?
ELM: Oh, oh, Flourish, you’re gonna turn into like a Spaceship Smackdown kind of person?
FK: Maybe! I don’t know. Like, I’m sure that those people also occasionally have moments of like, “Are we really just comparing like, [ELM laughs] you know, how fast this goes? Like, is this really the only joy that we get out of these stories?” You know? [ELM groans] Right? So, who knows? But for now, I’m sort of just enjoying living life without it. So I guess, I mean, that’s not helpful to say to anybody who still wants to be involved though, right? It’s not useful for me to say to Ruth, “Hey Ruth, why don’t you just like, peace out? You can still love your things. You can still watch shows and write fic and stuff, you just don’t have to interact with those people.” Like, that’s not satisfying advice to give on how to get over this, you know?
ELM: But I think Ruth is also pinpointing the sheer numbers of, you know—I bet the femslash fandom in The Witcher is, uh, significantly smaller, if that’s what—you know what I mean?
FK: Oh, yeah. Definitely.
ELM: And I think that—I know folks who write in rare pairs and write femslash and various things that aren’t like, these white-hot centers of fandom, or whatever, can feel isolated—
FK: Mm-hmm.
ELM: —and a little discouraged because, yeah. You know, you write it for the love of the thing or whatever, but—
FK: Yeah.
ELM: —if you don’t have anyone to talk to, then why are you sharing it at all? You know. It starts to feel a little futile, right?
FK: Yeah.
ELM: So like, I get it. You know, I get why people get drawn to the popular things, because they wanna be around other people. That’s kind of—
FK: Yeah!
ELM: You know, the point of participatory fandom.
FK: Yeah. How the tables turn! [laughs]
ELM: I said participatory fandom. [FK laughs] Um, so they didn’t turn at all. I used a very precise—
FK: OK.
ELM: I don’t feel like there are a lot of other ways. I think that Ruth is correct that she probably has to get off the merry-go-round.
FK: Yeah.
ELM: Like, we’re kind of like, I don’t know. Are we on it right now? Are we like, are we sitting in one of those stationary—you know the ones that aren’t horses? The little carriages that they have on merry-go-rounds? You know there’s other things where you don’t have to ride a horse. There’s little things you can sit in.
FK: Yeah. I do know that about merry-go-rounds. I—I’m not on this merry-go-round right now! And I’m enjoying it, frankly.
ELM: You’re just watching the merry-go-round like a creeper?
FK: I’m watching the merry-go-round go, you know? It’s fine. I’m waving at all of you.
ELM: I’m not on it.
FK: All right, well, I think we’ve now gone down like, 50 different metaphors and talked around this subject a bunch. I don’t know that we came up with any, like, conclusions.
ELM: Yeah, we did. You’re gonna write a fic where you work—I think a bodega’s not right for you. You don’t have that life experience.
FK: Oh, no, I’m not gonna write a bodega fic.
ELM: But if you’re a chaplain in a…hospital…
FK: This has occurred to me. I haven’t done that yet. So, we’ll see. Sometime.
ELM: I mean, you’re probably gonna have interactions with law enforcement.
FK: Well, I’m not gonna be at a hospital this summer. I’m gonna be at a nursing home, so I probably won’t have so many interactions with law enforcement.
ELM: Never mind. All right. Maybe make that a real-world experience, and not fodder for your, uh—
FK: I think maybe we’ll just let it be—[ELM laughs] instead of writing a nursing home fic, I think I’ll just stick with keeping those two worlds separate.
ELM: [laughing] OK.
FK: For those who don’t know, because I’m in the process of becoming an Episcopal priest, one of the things that you do is you work as a chaplain over a summer and do a, uh, you know, while you’re studying how to be an effective chaplain, so. I’m not gonna be sharing much about that experience [laughing] on here.
ELM: No, I think you should keep that confidential. I think that that is a private experience for you—
FK: I think so.
ELM: —and your—
FK: —and the people I’m working with.
ELM: Yes. OK. Well, to bring us right down.
FK: Great, well.
ELM: Yeah, so, I guess in closing, I would say: Ruth, thank you so much for this letter. Obviously we found it quite relatable. Gonna reblog it right now. You know, and I don’t think Ruth is necessarily looking for, uh, any…
FK: [laughing] Solutions.
ELM: Solutions. Like, I think that this was just a, you know. Something to talk through.
FK: Yeah.
ELM: But, I would be absolutely open to hearing from people who share this kind of content and have something deeper to say than “I like seeing their names.” Which, like, more power to you. I’ve also been there, right? [FK laughs] But I don’t know if we need verification that sometimes you feel that way, but I am curious, because, you know. I—while I feel worn out by this sort of meme-ification of fandom and the spreading of those memes into professional spheres and just feeling super flat and all this. Like, maybe there are people for whom it feels empowering, and they feel like they get pleasure in the fact that it’s something that seems to be relatable across a lot of different spheres and platforms and stuff. I don’t know. So. Please write in. Let us know.
FK: That’s a great note on which to end. Write in! We look forward to it!
ELM: Yeah!
FK: Looking forward to hearing from you guys.
ELM: Or, 1-401-526-F-A-N-S. Fans.
FK: Great. All right. On that note, I will talk to you later, Elizabeth. Get better!
ELM: OK, I’m gonna— [laughs] I’m gonna go, uh, I don’t know. I ordered something from my CSA delivery, they had a new item this week. It was like, immunity juice. It’s like, all ginger. So I ordered a bottle, and uh, I may go treat myself to that right now.
FK: Good luck with your pseudoscience, Elizabeth.
ELM: Ginger makes you feel better! It’s not pseudoscience, it’s a delicious taste.
FK: Byeeeeee.
ELM: [laughs] Bye.
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