Episode 172: Safe Spaces

Episode 172, “Safe Spaces,” is split into two parts: first, Flourish and Elizabeth read and respond to a series of listener letters about their recent “Fandom-Tinted Glasses” conversation; then, they discuss another listener letter on younger fans’ struggles to avoid or escape “anti” or “purity culture” dynamics. In increasingly fractured—and increasingly hostile—digital spaces, is it possible to create fandom environments that allow us to truly protect ourselves?

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Show Notes

[00:00:00] As always, our intro music is “Awel” by stefsax, used under a CC BY 3.0 license.

[00:00:42] Our previous two episodes: “Fandom-Tinted Glasses” and “OFIC Magazine.”

[00:1:42] Episode 162: “Ways of Seeing.”

[00:17:54]

[00:22:30] Found family!!! 😍

[00:23:11] “bestie theyre barely co-workers” 

[00:37:47]

[00:41:31] Our interstitial music this episode is ​​“Glass android” by Lee Rosevere, also used under a CC BY 3.0 license.

[00:42:58] TO BE FAIR we actually did do a special episode on the “found family” trope…

[00:43:35] You can listen to our Phantom episode if you become a $3-a-month patron! 

[00:50:38] Our first full episode on purity culture—part of our “Discourse Trilogy”—was recorded in 2018.

[00:58:28] 

[01:17:30]

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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 #172, “Safe Spaces.”

FK: Yes. And it’s sort of a double-barreled episode, because first, we’re going to talk about follow-ups to our last episode, which was called “Fandom—”

ELM: Two episodes—two episodes ago. 

FK: Two episodes ago. Two episodes ago, you’re right. Called “Fandom-Tinted Glasses.” Time has no meaning. 

ELM: Our last episode was a delightful conversation with Betts about OFIC Magazine. Don’t erase Betts. 

FK: It was wonderful, and if you didn’t—I don’t want to erase Betts. If you didn’t listen to it, you should listen to it, but—but! We’re gonna be hearing follow-ups to the “Fandom-Tinted Glasses” episode, and then, in the second half, we’re going to be talking about another new letter. 

ELM: Yeah, this is kind of like a themed AMA, a little bit. 

FK: Yeah, that’s, like, a good way of talking about it. 

ELM: It’s not “Ask Me Anything.” It’s “Ask Me Mostly Things About The Thing We Said A Few Weeks Ago.” 

FK: [laughs] OK, so, Elizabeth, for people who didn’t listen to “Fandom-Tinted Glasses,” could you just say in, like, a couple of sentences sort of what the vibe was?

ELM: You want me to do the vibes?

FK: I do! I’m putting you on the spot. 

ELM: OK, well, we had a letter from someone named Ruth, and Ruth had written us, uh, last fall, when we had recorded an episode—this is very…recursive isn’t the right word, but we’re just doing layers upon layers here. [FK laughs] We did an episode called “Ways of Seeing” in the fall, where we were talking about our recent fandom experiences, and how they deviated from our past patterns, how we were frustrated with a lot of fandom’s current patterns, and the things that we once may have enjoyed participating in, we were less than thrilled by. Perhaps, made weary by now. [FK laughs] 

So, this resonated with Ruth, and she wrote us a letter talking about a variety of things. It was a very thoughtful letter. Uh, long. A lot of components. You should just go read it if you didn’t listen to that episode. You can check it out in the show notes—or rather the transcript. But she talked about, you know, how there are, like, certain kinds of set dynamics and she would often find that fandom is kind of sticking characters into these dynamics. Uh, you know, this reference—“the grumpy one and the sunshine one.” That kind of thing. Um, and sort of flattening the source material and kind of putting it into these prescribed fandom patterns that just keep cycling over and over again, and memorably she said that she kind of wanted to get off the merry-go-round, which we used as a—we held onto that metaphor. [FK laughs]

So, we talked about all of that. I think that there were a lot of things that struck us, and, from the responses we got, a lot of things that struck listeners, too. And one thing that we didn’t talk about, but I found very ironic, is in the week between recording that episode and putting it out, Our Flag Means Death literally [both laugh] took over my—I’ve never had to so quickly mute some terms. No offense, everyone, I just—it was too much. Too much content. 

FK: We love all of you!

ELM: Yeah. 

FK: But there’s a lot of you, and you’re saying a lot of things. 

ELM: It’s a lot of things. 

FK: At all times. [laughs]

ELM: And so, it was very funny to record this episode about, like, frustration with fandom patterns and maybe representing perspectives of people who haven’t been caught by something new, and then to see, like, just—just fandom explosion. 

FK: [laughs] I’m envisioning, you know, it’s sort of like the comic book, like, “Woomf!” [laughs] You know? 

ELM: What—what—OK, tell me—you meant a comic book going “woomf” or, like, in a comic book panel—

FK: No, like, in a comic book, when something hits and there’s like a “Woomf!”

ELM: Oh, and you see like the dust kind of—lines of the dust going—

FK: Yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly. 

ELM: Yeah, OK, I gotcha, gotcha. Yeah. It was a bit like that. So, that was what that episode was about. Was that a good summary?

FK: That’s a great summary. So, I’m going to read the first response to that episode that we got. How’s that? 

ELM: Perfect. 

FK: All right. This is from someone anonymous. They say:

“Hello! I just listened to the newest ep. ‘fandom-tinted glasses’ and I related *hard* to what you all and the letter writer were talking about. Unlike the letter writer, I am coming at this from the angle of shipping the most popular ship in my fandom (the blond one and the black-haired one, who many also slot into the ‘sunshine one and the grumpy one’—though it is not a great fit in my humble opinion.)

“I was never in fandom as a kid and got into fandom for the first time and started reading and writing fic for the first time because of this ship—I just really really really thought they were going to kiss in canon, and when they didn’t, I turned to the internet—and… There was so much fanart and fanfic! I made a tumblr account as a 30+ adult! I felt OLD for the first time in my life. And then I started reading the fic.

“Some of it scratched the itch I had at the time for an extension of canon that filled in gaps, or just gave me more of these characters I love interacting with each other. But then there was a lot of fic that flattens them in the way you all discussed in the episode: any two guys/sunshine and grumpy/woobie and edgelord. These portrayals contrasted so starkly from how I saw these complex, interesting fictional humans that I love so much.

“Mandatory disclaimer since I am being such a snob (hence the anon): as you both say all the time on your podcast, there is no correct way to do fandom. People can read/write/enjoy fic across a whole range of characterizations and canon-connectedness. I do not begrudge people enjoying things I do not.

“My solution to all this has been to stay in my little corner of the fandom with like-minded fans. I don’t search the ship tag, I stick to reading fic from authors who know the canon and whose portrayals I like—or recs from friends who have a similar take on the characters to mine. And then I do what my rarepair-shipping friends do and write my own damn fic! It does feel crummy sometimes to get relatively fewer kudos and comments, but my heart explodes with joy any time someone compliments my characterization or a detail or dynamic that is unique to these two people.

“Thanks for another thoughtful and thought-provoking ep.”

And that’s from Anonymous. 

ELM: Anonymous, I wanna know what ship this is! [both laugh]

FK: We’re nosy.

ELM: [laugh-sighs] Oh my God, I’m so nosy! I’m like, “A black-haired one and a blonde one, who could it be?”

FK: [laughs] Could be literally anybody.

ELM: No! Sometimes both guys have blond hair. 

FK: Or both guys have dark hair, occasionally. 

ELM: Sometimes. 

FK: [laughs] Anyway, thank you so much, I think that’s a very—I mean, that’s a familiar feeling, I think, for many people. 

ELM: Yeah, I think that this is very interesting, because, you know, we were framing it as…partly chalking up some of the weariness—and I think Ruth was as well—to something that built up over time. You know? 

FK: Mm-hmm. 

ELM: I talked about how even the pan-fandom things that I might have reblogged from Fansplaining five years ago now, I’m just like, whenever I see anything like that, I’m like, [sigh] “Oh my God.” [both laugh] I sent you something from fandom—like a pan-fandom thing from 2013 yesterday—

FK: Yeah, yeah. 

ELM: —and I was like, “What a…this is like the…”

FK: You were like, “This is the beginning of, like—”

ELM: “This is where it started.” 

FK: Yeah, oh, no.

ELM: Uh…generic relatable fandom content. So, I think it would be, uh, very interesting and, it sucks to Anon here, to have this be your first ship? You know?

FK: Mm-hmm. 

ELM: And then to immediately encounter these dynamics and not even have that comparison. You know, and sure, like, I think that when both you and I got into fandom, there were specific ways—patterns that were popular that we probably didn’t like. 

FK: Yeah, yeah. Definitely. 

ELM: I remember feeling frustrated with things. They weren’t this, but they were some other things that I didn’t enjoy, you know? 

FK: Yeah…and I think they also weren’t—I mean, I think they were more fandom-specific at the time. You know what I mean? Like, there were specific characterizations that I couldn’t—that I was, like, not into at all. But it wasn’t necessarily a theme across fandoms that I knew of, anyway. And looking back on it, I still don’t think they were, like, thematic across fandoms. Whereas this is a thematic across fandoms thing. 

ELM: Yeah. I agree with you, I think—and even when we talk about, even though we have a shared fandom, we had different ships and prior to that we were in different fandoms, so when we compare notes, it does seem pretty clear that they were things specific to those corners. 

FK: Yeah, I mean, they were definitely widespread across that corner, but then, like, it wasn’t the same thing elsewhere. 

ELM: Yeah. So, I think that Anon here offers up—what they’re doing is, I think, one of the only takeaways we ever have in this conversation, right? You know, like, it’s interesting to think about, you know, being a rare-pair within your own juggernaut ship, right? [FK laughs] You know? Like.

FK: Yeah. 

ELM: But I definitely think that that happens, you know? 

FK: Mm-hmm. 

ELM: And you see, you know, sometimes I see that it happens in the stuff that feels really in-character to me, and then sometimes I feel like there’s a little corner that’s a rare pair, and it’s, like, a certain characterization that doesn’t feel connected to canon, but it’s something that a few people are vibing with, right? You know? And you’re like, “Oh, you guys over here—”

FK: Yeah, totally.

ELM: “—in your corner. Stay in your corner.” So, like. 

FK: Yup. [ELM laughs] Do your thing! Enjoy yourself over there! [laughs] 

ELM: So, it sucks, but I think that kind of—if the generic kind of “any two guys” gloss doesn’t, like, scratch that itch—which it does for a ton of people, but it doesn’t for you—I think there’s no way around it. That’s—there’s a reason why it’s that popular. 

FK: Yup. Agreed. 

ELM: So, anyway, thank you, Anon. I really appreciate this letter. 

FK: Yeah. All right. You ready to read the next one? 

ELM: I am. Letter #2? So, this one is from Buster. 

“Hi Elizabeth and Flourish,

“I really appreciated the discussion you had on your last episode in response to Ruth's email. As a fellow fandom old, I have similar feelings about the very social media-based fandom space that we now all inhabit. 

“For me, I think my disillusionment specifically has to do with how social media now mediates how we often discover new ships and fandoms. Until the mid-2000s, I usually discovered new fandoms by watching or reading some or all of a given canon, and getting attached to one or more ships in that canon on my own. It was only after I had already started shipping something that I would go online to see if there was a fandom for it. 

“Now, if one is on fandom spaces on social media, it's usually the opposite: I will see gifs and fanart of fandom or ship before I have seen or read a given canon. I will then go into watching or reading the canon in question hoping to come out of it with a new fandom obsession. The problem is, this also means that I go into such known fandom canons with higher expectations than I would any old canon because I know that other people of my acquaintance seem to be over the moon for it. 

“Paradoxically, I have more emotional distance watching or reading canons that I know will be shippy and have fandoms attached to them. Rather than first getting engrossed in the world, and then being delightfully surprised by the shippy moments, I am looking out for the upcoming scenes that I've seen gifs of and hoping that the characters live up to the wonderful pictures that my fandom friends have painted of them. 

“Even with those high expectations, I do sometimes still come out of experiencing these canons with a new fandom to obsess over, but it's much less often than I did when it was easier to discover a new ship before learning about the existence of the fandom.

“Anyway, thanks as always for your insightful commentary—keep up the good work!”

FK: Thanks, Buster!

ELM: I love this letter. I’m gonna say this about all the letters, but. Love it. 

FK: Yeah, no, but this one, I agree, is also really good, and I also have that experience. And it’s funny, because, you know, one of the spaces that I don’t have that experience right now is with adaptations. And I’m sick of adaptations. I think a lot of us are pretty sick of adaptations, but that’s, like, one of the few areas where often, like, I will have read a book, and, like, had some feelings about the characters of the book—

ELM: Mmm. 

FK: —and then, like, that was my intro to it. I mean, I’m thinking of Game of Thrones, specifically. 

ELM: Yeah. 

FK: I read that before it was on-air. Like, I had feelings. I had feelings about the casting of the characters. And it was really nice to have other people show up for the ship that I was already interested in. 

ELM: OK.

FK: But, like, that doesn’t happen with almost anything else at this point, for me, ever, you know? 

ELM: Yeah yeah yeah. 

FK: Unless it’s a book that I read, and it’s getting adapted. 

ELM: Yeah, I think that—I mean, I think that you could extend this to a lot of broader media. And, like, you know, I say this as someone who runs a recommendation newsletter. Obviously, like, a huge way that people learn about new pieces of media and not, like, necessarily to ship within, but also just to consume—

FK: Right. 

ELM: —is hearing about it from, you know, either professionals they trust or amateurs they trust, or friends. Right? But I absolutely go into some media with big expectations. Maybe not shippy ones… 

But I think that I really relate to Buster here. You know, like, I’ll see shippy-seeming gifs, and then I’ll watch the thing, and I’ll be like, “You literally took all the shippy moments, and now I know what they sound like, and now I know the context, and like…I guess!” [FK laughs] But, you know, like. [laughs] I don’t know.

FK: Yeah, and also, like, I mean, I’m not against plot spoilers or anything like that. You know that I’m one of the most spoiler-friendly people in the world. But I do think that there’s a place where, like, if I’ve seen their faces 10,000 times, and been—you know? Right, like, I agree, there’s—I’m not sure I would frame it as high expectations, so much as just, like, I’ve kind of already been primed for this? You know what I mean?

ELM: Yeah. 

FK: And it’s not the same kind of organic growth of that feeling, and then it isn’t as satisfying. 

ELM: Yeah. You know, I would even say, things I don’t ship, but things that I spot as I mean, like, “That’s—that’s a dynamic right there. I got that.” You know? Before I know, like—you know, I remember when I saw The Winter Soldier, and I hadn’t seen the original Captain America, and I, like, wasn’t paying attention [FK laughs] to that kind of fandom—well, it was before I got really into, like, studying fandom at large. Right? You know? 

FK: Sure. 

ELM: So, I had no idea that was already a ship. And then I saw The Winter Soldier, and I was like, “Oh my God, that’s so shippy.” Right? And, like, I’m not shipping it, but, like—

FK: Yeah, there’s—there’s a dynamic. There it is. 

ELM: That’s—that’s—I got it. Like, you know? 

FK: Uh-huh. 

ELM: Or, well, problematically so, but [laughs] Kylux. When I saw the first Star Wars movie, I was like, “Those guys got a little dynamic.” And then it became the most fraught ship, or whatever. Um, and I was like—you know, whatever. I mean, I acknowledge the other dynamics of the other popular ships there, too, but that one was just like, I understood why that happened, basically, and I had seen it before I saw fandom doing it. Right? 

FK: Yeah, totally. 

ELM: And so, that’s funny. I mean, it’s kind of, like, falls into my “oh, we’re trapped in these constant patterns and cycles,” if I can spot what’s gonna be, like, a big ship from just watching the movie, but, yeah. I don’t know. I just think that, like, when I think about the media in general—not just the ships I feel most passionate about, but the media in general I feel most passionate about in the past few years—I don’t know. I didn’t know very much going in. And it hadn’t been giffed to death to me beforehand. It hadn’t been recced to me in detail. And I feel very distant and very alienated from the culture of—you know, I don’t know if you see them very much, because you’re not on Tumblr, but they have these kind of “why you should watch X shows.” 

FK: Mm-hmm. 

ELM: And they’re very reductive, and they’re like, “Well, it’s got a gay character, and it’s got, like, a woman!” You know? [laughs] And it’s like—

FK: Great. 

ELM: [laughing] That’s mean. Some of them are better than that, but it’s like, sometimes they read like that, and you’re like, “Oh. A gay character. Wow. I’ll put that on my list.” You know? And it’s just kind of trying to distill it down to these bullet points, and then it’s like, “Now go watch it.” Right? And it’s like, I don’t know. Something about that—I think that ties to your priming. It’s not just a visual thing, but, like, fandom kind of framing how you should—what is valuable about it in advance. 

FK: Right. I mean, it’s also, like—I do—obviously, I like getting recommendations from friends, and I’ve watched many things and enjoyed many things on the basis of recommendations—

ELM: You’re reading a little fic right now, that, uh, I recommended to you. [laughs]

FK: I am, I am. But [ELM laughs] I think there’s also, like—there’s also a time when—have you ever had a thing where someone recommends something to you—I think I’ve done this to you—and then they sit with you, and you watch them watching you react to it? And you’re like, “I don’t have the same feelings as you do about this.” [laughs] You know what I mean? 

ELM: I think you maybe, uh, you maybe really were struck by how I didn’t instantly think that Twin Peaks was a work of genius when you and your husband—

FK: Sure. 

ELM: —both stared at me while we watched the first episode, which, I will say—

FK: Right!

ELM: —I don’t know if when you watched that first episode, you were like, “This is a work of genius.” [FK laughs] Or maybe it took more than a few…

FK: It probably did. But my point being that, like, I know I’ve done this to people, and I’ve had other people do it to me—

ELM: [laughing] You’ve done it to me.

FK: I recommend—I know, I know, I know! I’m just saying, where somebody recommends something to you, and then it’s, like, they’re really invested in your reaction to it, and you’re like, [laughing] “I can’t manufacture the reaction for you.” You know? 

ELM: I mean, I try not to do it for this reason. Right? Like—

FK: Yeah, no. I mean, me too. I actually do—like, despite having done it to you, I try not to do it. [ELM laughs] Like, I’m sorry. Sometimes I fail. But I think that that’s part of what I feel sometimes with online, right? Is like, even if it’s not actually an individual thing, it’s like—I feel like the internet [laughs] is trying to manufacture a reaction in me, and I’m like, “No!”

ELM: Yeah, it’s interesting though, because it’s like, I don’t doubt the depth of feeling from folks. You know? Like—

FK: Oh, no. 

ELM: But it just—in the aggregate, it starts to feel like that. You know? 

FK: Yeah, exactly. 

ELM: And you just framed it as “the internet is doing it,” like it’s some disembodied thing, right? You know? Like, Mr. Internet—

FK: Yeah, it feels like a disembodied thing! It’s not that there’s, like, one person, you know what I mean? 

ELM: Yeah. 

FK: Like, God bless you, go on and post your feelings. Like, I really—I don’t want to say that’s bad. I just…you know. 

ELM: Yeah. 

FK: It feels like there’s something out there that wants me to feel this way, and I’m like, “I don’t know if I can do it for you.” 

ELM: Yeah, yeah. I mean, just to go back to this letter, you know, every single ship I’ve had has been a, like, it’s caught—actually, that’s not true. I think you know my one example, or my one exception here is, in Torchwood, the reason I started watching it is because I was reading some Harry Potter fic, and this person was, like— 

FK: Yeah. Yeah.

ELM: —some migratory slash person, and they had all these gifs of these, like—all these canon, like, gay ships, like, on the side—

FK: Yeah yeah yeah. And you got into it. Yeah. 

ELM: And I was like, “Who are those guys?” Right? And then I watched it, and I was like, “Oh, I love this.” Or whatever. But all the other ones, you know, I began shipping them because—in the way that is described, the way Buster here used to do it and would like to maybe prefer to do it, right? And that’s one of the most amazing things about it. And, like, you know, I think that you’ve experienced this too, where you’re like, you kind of fall for something, right? And it’s not—

FK: Oh, yeah. 

ELM: —and you’re just like, “Yesterday was ordinary, and today, [FK laughs] I only want to think about those people.” Or like, “I only want to think about this thing.” Right?

FK: Uh-huh. 

ELM: That feeling is so good. 

FK: Yeah. 

ELM: And, when it’s something that you weren’t primed for, when it wasn’t recommended to you, it feels just, like, so serendipitous. Like—

FK: Right. 

ELM: —if I hadn’t been on that plane five years ago, or whatever, and watched a fucking X-Men movie that I hadn’t seen [laughs] before, and was like, “Oh no.” You know? Like—

FK: Yeah, yeah. 

ELM: —then that wouldn’t be my ship. You know? 

FK: Yup. 

ELM: And like, I’m really grateful for that kind of experience, because I think that’s part of what makes them enjoyable for me. It is kind of, like, me and that ship’s eyes met across a plane, and we were like, “Oh my goodness.” You know? 

FK: Oh my God. All right. Yeah. OK, well, thank you so much, Buster, that was a wonderful letter. 

ELM: Totally. A hundred percent. So relatable!

FK: All right, next up. Shall I go? 

ELM: Go! 

FK: All right. This one is from Hannah. 

“Hi Flourish and Elizabeth,

“I really enjoyed your latest episode about fandom tinted glasses. My friends and I have been discussing these things a lot lately, so the episode felt very timely. 

“One thing that I feel that I can add to the discussion of the ‘any two guys’ phenomenon in het ships is that in my experience, this usually takes the form of forcing the characters into more traditional gender roles, especially in smut, than they would ever exhibit in canon. In the case of the ship I’m invested in, in my fandom, this also often has the effect of flattening what I perceive to be the male character’s neurodivergence as well. That’s pretty depressing to me because I like the ship because it feels removed from traditional general expectations and features a neurodivergent character.

“I’ve also spent a lot of time discussing this with my friends, since we are all are authors who write in fandom and in traditional media. I think this shift towards pan fandom tropes is actually happening outside of fandom as well. I see more and more books being promoted this way, like “if you like only one bed and fake dating, this is the fantasy novel for you.”  I also see this in the way that people, some of whom are not in fandom, recommend TV shows to each other. 

“I find this particularly aggravating when repeated tropes are used to promote lighthearted or comedy shows over more serious or challenging dramas. Both types of shows are good and I’m glad both exist, but it’s very frustrating to see people dismiss thoughtful, engaging shows just because they don’t have the same romance tropes that are used repeatedly in other media. I hope this doesn’t dissuade media companies and creators from investing in work that thinks outside the box, and I hope fans are able to continue discovering and loving stories that don’t only rely on tropes for promotion. 

“This feels like a bit of a chicken and the egg scenario because I’m not sure if this reliance on tropes started in fandom and bled into other industries or if other industries are influencing fandom.

“As always I really appreciated hearing your thoughts on this topic! I look forward to each new episode of the pod.  

“Hannah”

ELM: Just one relatable letter after another! 

FK: It’s true! And I completely agree with her observation. I think that’s really true about het ships, and I think, you know, that’s also true in larger pop culture. 

ELM: OK, so wait, talk me through the het ship thing here. So, the “any two guys”—I mean, this is what I was proposing, and I’m glad to see that—right? Like, in my pure speculation where I was like, “Is it, like, a more complicated woman is turned into—”

FK: Yeah!

ELM: “—a quote-unquote ‘more traditional woman.’” Right? And maybe more—

FK: I think that’s true. 

ELM: —more swoony. [laughs]

FK: Yeah yeah yeah. I think that’s true sometimes, but it’s also not just more swoony, right? Like, I guess the thing that really struck me while I was reading Hannah’s letter was thinking about X-Files fanfic, in which there’s, like, a whole genre in which Mulder and Scully get married and have 2.5 kids or whatever, and it’s like, “Oh—oh…OK. What?”

ELM: Yeah. Yeah. 

FK: [laughs] You know? And that’s not to say that there aren’t real—one of the biggest problems in The X-Files is the way that it treats Scully and Scully’s fertility and her desire for children. Like, it’s kind of fucked up and antifeminist in a lot of ways, in that regard. But it’s also, like, it—then it focuses on some of those aspects to the exclusion of everything else, right? 

ELM: Hmm. Mm-hmm. 

FK: And, like, issues of family and so on—again, in ways that are not unwarranted within the text, to some extent, but that still really feel like they end up twisting the characters into sometimes unrecognizable forms. And I know I’ve seen this in other places as well, where it’s like, suddenly everybody’s goal is to get happily coupled up, and you’re like, “All right… [ELM laughs] that was not previously shown to me as a major goal of any of these people, but, OK.” [laughs]

ELM: Yeah, this is interesting, because I mean—and Hannah’s framing here as the “any two guys” of het—like, I think that some of these dynamics happen in [non]het ships too, right? You know, where you have like—the sunshine one is usually the more I think effeminized one, usually, right? And the grumpy one is like [affects deep grumbly voice]. 

FK: Absolutely. Yup. Yup. Yeah.

ELM: [laughs] That’s my grumpy one. 

FK: Although sometimes it goes the other way—

ELM: Yeah. 

FK: —and it’s like, and that’s part of the fun of it, right? Is that the grumpy one is the lady and the sunshine one is the dude, and isn’t it charming, right? 

ELM: Right, right, right. Exactly. And I think you see that in a version, too, you know, especially with [laughs] the rise of the love of the himbo, right? 

FK: Oh yes. 

ELM: You can have a well-meaning, like, well-meaning dude or whatever—

FK: Yup. Yup. 

ELM: —and the surly little, bitchy guy or whatever. Yeah, I think the second half of this letter too is—I mean, I think there’s a lot going on here. I think this ties into some of the reductiveness that we’re talking about, and it—yeah, it’s hard to describe a more serious drama with a bunch of, like, cheerful little emoji bullet points about the, you know, various tropes. Right? Like, what if I tried to do that about some sad show? Right? Like. 

FK: Oh, man. Do it for Mad Men. Do it for Mad Men right now. 

ELM: Oh my God. I’m trying—it’s been a couple years since I watched Mad Men, can I—I was gonna say, you haven’t seen it yet, and you need to watch it immediately, but my favorite show that’s been on the air recently is Severance. 

FK: Mm-hmm. 

ELM: Everyone, please watch Severance. So good. And I was just thinking [laughs] how I would tag it, and be like, “Found family!” You know? [both laugh] Like, uh, “Work buddies!” I dunno. I mean, whatever, it’s got funny elements. It’s not all sad. It’s actually really fucked up. It’s great. You need to watch it now. [FK laughs] So good. 

FK: Yeah, but I see what you’re saying, I mean it’s—

ELM: Oh, Mad Men could be found family. [laughs]

FK: Oh, God, it could be, unfortunately. 

ELM: I saw a post the other day that was like, [laughs] “You’ll all be calling anything ‘found family.’” And it’s like—and like, “Bestie, they’re barely coworkers.” Or something. 

FK: And 100% of the responses—

ELM: [laughing] Yeah, and then all the responses were tagged #MCU, no offense to the MCU fandom. [FK laughs] Ah, but I think that we could do the same for Mad Men. What a found family. 

FK: Oh yeah. Absolutely you could do that. 

ELM: Sometimes they see each other on the weekends. 

FK: A hundred and ten percent. 

ELM: And uh, some—

FK: I mean, yeah, there are—maybe they’re a found family, and they’re a fucked up found family, an alcoholic and a, you know—

ELM: Yeah, they constantly are drunk together. They sometimes fuck each other in the office. Just like a family. 

FK: Right, like—just like a family. Great.

ELM: Yup. 

FK: OK, uh, trigger warning. [ELM laughs] Anyway! Um. [laughs]

ELM: Thank you, Matthew Weiner. Yeah, I feel like—I mean, I guess the flip side of this is whether folks who are really into light-hearted content, you know, ever get frustrated with this flattening too, right? Like, I don’t think it’s just—

FK: Mm-hmm. 

ELM: I feel like there are comedies and more light-hearted fare that I think actually is really smart and complex, and I think this flattens it just as much, you know? Like.

FK: Definitely. 

ELM: So, I think that all of this is pretty frustrating. And I’m curious, because I think that fandom over-indexes often on how much fandom is responsible for this. I think that Hannah is right to kind of question that chicken-and-egg element. One thing I’ve observed is, I think as romance has really scaled, and—as an industry—and really come to be understood, not just as this kind of rock-solid market, but actually as, like, a potentially infinitely expanding market, right? Which is what I think we’ve observed over the last decade in the way that publishers are thinking about who a romance reader could be— 

FK: Yeah. 

ELM: —I think we’ve seen a lot of that, and I think a lot of this is coming with that scale. 

FK: Absolutely. And I think that some of these—I mean, not all of the same terms, but the categorization…I don’t know which came first, the fandom or the romance aspect, but I’m kind of tempted to think it was romance, because of the way that category romance is sold. 

ELM: Sure. 

FK: And the way that it’s described to people, right? Again, not saying that they said—not that category romance had “found family” printed on it, [laughs] you know what I mean? Or “only one bed” or whatever. But, like, when you read a lot of romance, especially category romance, you begin to see, like, all of the paratextual ways that they communicate to you exactly what’s gonna be in that book. 

ELM: Right right right. 

FK: And I think that that’s a very—I actually wonder sometimes—I mean, I think some of that might have come into fandom from romance. 

ELM: Mmm. Yeah yeah yeah. 

FK: And I don’t know! But also, like, we could never put a finger on this. And there’s sort of no point, right? It can also have multiple routes. 

ELM: Yeah. 

FK: Like, it doesn’t have to be just one place, um. 

ELM: Right, right. 

FK: But I definitely agree it’s a trend. 

ELM: Yeah, and I think similarly, too—yeah, I totally agree that I don’t think that we could—chicken-and-egg is correct. I also feel like we’re getting—as publishers see that romance can really scale, or that market has room for expansion, I think they’re also realizing that fandom—people coming from fandom spaces are a market that they—

FK: Yeah. 

ELM: —kind of hadn’t really understood but always could have been marketing—you know? 

FK: Right right. 

ELM: Like, this isn’t new information, but they just really just didn’t understand. But now that you have writers and editors who are coming out of fandom, and bringing over some of those conventions, and people started to see like, “Oh, The Locked Tomb Series is a bestseller, like—”

FK: Yeah. 

ELM: “Let’s commission more like that.” Right? And you know, it’s like, where is that coming from? Like, that’s coming from fandom, right? 

FK: Yeah, absolutely. 

ELM: So… Not that I’m calling Locked Tomb—I haven’t read the Locked Tomb Series. I did buy the first one, so. Hopefully I’ll read it within the next few months, but [FK laughs] I’m not calling that tropey or reductive in any way. 

FK: OK. All right. 

ELM: I know people love those books. There’s a reason I bought it. 

FK: Well, thank you so much, Hannah, that was a great letter. 

ELM: Agree. All right, should we do our final letter?

FK: Let’s do it!

ELM: OK. This is from @queuest. Do we think that’s how you say it? 

FK: Or [offering alternate pronunciation] @queuest?

ELM: [mimicking FK’s pronunciation] @queuest? Q-U-E-U-E-S-T.

FK: Yeah. Queue…st. 

ELM: Queuest. OK. I’m going for it. Ah, sorry in advance if that’s not how you say it. 

“Hello Flourish and Elizabeth! 

“I really enjoyed the recent episode on ‘Fandom-Tinted Glasses’ and wanted to respond with a bit of a ‘fandom young’ perspective.”

[whispering] Yes! Um, that was my “yes,” by the way. [FK laughs]

“I’ve been involved in fandom for about 9 years with some breaks. So not that young, but my first experiences of fandom were primarily through tumblr and AO3, and I was pulled into fandom in the heyday of Superwholock, which feels like a major milestone in the homogenization of fandom that Ruth spoke about in their letter. 

“From my perspective, while this homogenization can be frustrating, it also has some positive aspects.”

This is a bulleted list. So, first: “With more standardized platforms the bar to entry for fans is lower.”

Point two: “Audiences are more splintered than ever and the homogenized version of fandom can create a collective experience without a big fandom.”

Three: “For those of us that have grown up with this as our experience of fandom, the layering and interrelation of fandoms and source material is part of what we understand as fan culture and can be a source of enjoyment (though I don't want to speak for everyone when I say that).”

“And lastly, I would say these trends in fandom are not created in a vacuum, but they are influenced by the homogenization of source materials, and by issues in society as a whole. 

“I was also listening to the episode with Our Flag Means Death in mind because it was released during the internet’s collective freakout over the show. I think OMFD is emblematic of the frustrations Ruth raised and the benefits I mentioned here. It blew up extremely fast on Tumblr and twitter, it centers around a grumpy dark-haired one, and a blond sunshine one, and all the usual fandom tropes have quickly been slapped onto it. I even saw some people campaigning for OMFD/What We Do In the Shadows/Good Omens to be a “new Superwholock” which again shows the negatives of how quickly new media is flattened and mashed together as Ruth described, but also shows people’s genuine enjoyment and excitement for laying fandoms on top of one another. 

“I don’t want this to be a complete rebuttal to the points Ruth was making, especially the parts of fandom always prioritizing white male characters (and actors), because those are genuine problems I also see. But hopefully this provides another perspective on the issue. 

“You ended the episode by discussing how this is what fandom is now, and there's no going back. I agree with that but I’d like to add there is a chance to move forward, and I'm optimistic about the possibilities. My question is, how do you think fan culture might continue to evolve in terms of homogeneity? And how can fans individually push fandom culture towards more nuance and better representation of race and gender? 

“These are big questions but I appreciate hearing both of your opinions on these subjects, and I really appreciate your work! 

“Thank you, @queuest”

FK: Oh, that is such an insightful letter!

ELM: So good. 

FK: [laughing] I really really really—I really love the points that you made, @queuest, and I think that, you know, I mean, they’re good ones. It is easy, from the perspective of people who have experience of fandom that’s different from this to go like, “Ah, the new thing is worse!” And it has its downsides, but—but you’re right! The layering and interrelation of fandoms is a source of pleasure, and, you know—it is for me too, right? Like, it’s just something that I don’t always, you know—doesn’t spring to my mind first when I’m complaining about this stuff, but it’s true, like, it can be really pleasurable. And it is true, like, the bar to entry is much lower than it used to be—

ELM: Sure. 

FK: —so, you know, I’m into all those things that you’re saying. I mean, into…I still feel curmudgeonly about it. [laughs] But I think you’re right. 

ELM: Yeah, so. I agree. I love this letter so much, and I agree with what you’re saying, Flourish. I’m trying to think about how I want to phrase this. But, first of all, sidenote—not what I’m trying to phrase, but thank you for describing the correct campaign for a new Superwholock. These two Taika Waititi properties, and Good Omens, which, as I understand—I’ve seen Good Omens, I haven’t seen Our Flag Means Death, but they have more tonal similarities. As opposed to dragging Black Sails into this, which— [FK laughs] the only similarities here are gay pirates. 

FK: Yeah. 

ELM: Please. Leave Black Sails alone. [FK laughs] If you don’t wanna watch it, don’t watch it. But please, leave it out of this! Please. 

FK: Yeah, I have to say, people putting, uh, Black Sails into this reminds me of when people are like, “Here’s another thing about vampires! You’ll like it if you like the other things about vampires!” And it’s like, “No!” They can be tonally very different. 

ELM: Truly losing my mind over this. 

FK: Anne Rice and Twilight do not necessarily appeal to the same people. [laughs]

ELM: I just…I haven’t—something is wrong with my HBO account, [laughs] so I haven’t seen Our Flag Means Death for a very stupid technical reason, and I’m really trying not to let that make me hate it on principle, but it’s very hard, because I’m like—

FK: Aww.

ELM: These are not—these are just like—and this is, like, talking to friends who like both of them very much, and they’re like, “There’s literally nothing—they have no commonalities.” 

FK: Yeah. 

ELM: Also, sidenote—

FK: They’re both good, but different. [laughs]

ELM: While we’re on the subject, please stop calling Our Flag Means Death the gay pirate show. It is a gay pirate show. 

FK: [laughs] All right, Elizabeth. Do you have your—have you expressed your feelings?

ELM: Yeah. I knew I was gonna say that in some capacity, in some sense, so thank you @queuest for giving me the opportunity. [FK laughs] So, here is something mildly controversial that I was trying to phrase. 

FK: All right. 

ELM: [laughing] It reminds me—this is bad—what is being described here reminds me a little bit of—is it neoliberalism? Is that the thing I wanna say? OK, you made a face. Hear me out. So, say there are these really flattened kind of dynamics. These, like, spaces that things get in. 

FK: Uh-huh. Sure. 

ELM: Uh, that people can put the things that they like into, right? I feel like what is happening, and what I’ve seen is, as Hollywood finally makes better, more diverse choices—

FK: Uh-huh. 

ELM: Not wholly, but it’s truly better—

FK: It is—it is better. It is better. It really is. 

ELM: [laughs] It’s so much better—not—I mean, the bar was on the floor. The bar was in the basement, right? 

FK: Yeah. 

ELM: Like, and maybe it’s on the floor now, but like—

FK: Yup. We have taken a normal step. We didn’t lift our leg very high. We just, like, lifted our foot. 

ELM: Right. 

FK: And we cleared the bar. 

ELM: So, I feel like part of this makes me think of, like, I don’t know how to phrase this exactly. But, like, it reminds me of She-E-Os kind of, you know? Like, isn’t it great—and maybe this is because I just watched The Dropout—but like, isn’t it great that, um, like, there’s a much bigger variety of stuff that fandom is getting into right now. It’s not only prioritizing white male bodies, right? 

FK: Right. 

ELM: It still is prioritizing them, but it’s not only engaging with them. 

FK: Right, but there are other things. 

ELM: Right?

FK: Yeah. 

ELM: But, if you still flatten people into these dynamics, these well-worn dynamics, then that kind of takes away—you know, and I’ve seen complaints from some of the C-drama fandoms—

FK: Mm-hmm. 

ELM: —talking about people just kind of slapping these characters into the United States in particular, and just overlaying all the modern AU things, and just saying in passing, “They’re Chinese American.” 

FK: Right, right. 

ELM: But like, no real engagement with the Chinese diaspora or Chinese American culture either, right? 

FK: Right. 

ELM: Just, they wanna do this thing, right? You know, the big new slash ship is not two white men. Right?

FK: Yeah. 

ELM: But, people are still applying all the same dynamics. 

FK: Yup.

ELM: And so, I think it’s great that other types—fandom is engaging with other types of source material, but if they continue to prioritize the same—or just to kind of squeeze things into the same dynamics—do you understand what I’m saying? 

FK: Yeah, you’re—

ELM: I feel like this is a counterpoint to what @queuest is saying a little bit, right? 

FK: Right, right. You’re saying, like, “Yeah, all these things are great, but you still are having this flattening, so the fact that there’s more accessibility to fandom, but the thing that you’re getting access to is worse.” 

ELM: Right, I—yeah, I mean—

FK: And, you know, audiences are more splintered, and so you can have a collective experience without a big fandom…but if you’re still putting all of the same dynamics on that, like, on all of those different little diverse properties, but you all are only looking at it from one perspective, that’s still not giving you actual diversity, it’s just giving you, like—

ELM: Yeah. 

FK: —not diversity of thought, anyway. 

ELM: Right. 

FK: Yeah. 

ELM: And I think what set me down this road was reading this letter again, and that bit at the end: “How do you think fandom culture might continue to evolve in terms of homogeneity?”

FK: Yeah. 

ELM: You know? And I feel like that’s somewhat at odds with the second question: “How can fans individually push fandom culture towards more nuanced and better representation of race and gender?” Right? I think if you’re so—if you’re so interested in decontextualizing characters and just, like, winnowing down to certain dynamics, and pulling them out into gifs and somewhat generic but lovable AUs and, uh, relatable quotes and all these things we complained about in the last episode, you know, I don’t understand—I don’t see how that can ever lead to really getting that nuance. 

FK: Well, right. Maybe this is where you’re going with this, but the problem I’m seeing is, I mean, @queuest is saying, like, if you’ve grown up with this as your experience of fandom, that’s what, you know—this kind of homogeneity is what you see fandom as being. 

ELM: Right. 

FK: Right? Like, if the definition of fan culture—if fan culture is this set of tropes and expectations, right? If that’s what you understand fan culture as being, then there’s no way to change it, because if you changed that, then it would stop being fan culture, right? And then people who are doing things outside those tropes—I mean, this happens all the time within fanfiction, right? Where, like, you know, I mean—I’m guilty of it myself, where I will read a piece of fanfiction sometimes, and I’ll be like, “Yeah, but it’s not the kind of fanfiction that we’re usually talking about.” 

ELM: Yeah yeah yeah. 

FK: [laughs] Which really just means it’s not, you know, part of this homogenous set of tropes and kinds of engagement. I know it means more than that. I’m not trying to say that’s the only thing it means when we say that, but it’s one of the things we mean. 

ELM: Sure. 

FK: And so, you know, my answer to that question of, like, “How might it continue to evolve in terms of homogeneity?” Like, is, well, I don’t know if fan culture—if you conceive of it this way—can evolve. But I think that there will still be people who, like, love stuff, and are doing weird and unusual things with it, and I hope that, for instance, I hope that I’ll continue to be really interested in things, but I’m not sure—I don’t know! Maybe I will have the ability to free my mind and, like, write some really weird piece of fanfic that doesn’t involve any of these and get zero kudos and, like, [ELM laughs] maybe there will be other people who are into whatever the trope that I’m into, that isn’t any of these homogeneous tropes—do you see what I’m saying? Right? Like, maybe it will fracture, because people will be bored with that sort of homogenous space, but I don’t know. Like, I don’t know that I’m able to do that. I don’t know if there’s going to be a group of people who are able to do that. 

ELM: Yeah. I’m—it’s hard for me right now to see people getting bored of this, because it just seems to be snowballing, snowballing. 

FK: Yeah.

ELM: And I think that @queuest’s point about, you know, the media landscape fracturing, which is something that I’d really like to talk about in-depth in an episode, at one point, because I feel like we’ve touched on it a bunch, but I would love to just zero in on that for a while, because I think that it’s so disparate, and it’s like—it’s funny, right now, there’s a couple shows that I watched recently that I love—I mean, I’m not gonna write Severance fanfiction over here, but like—not gonna write Dropout fanfiction, that would be a short—whatever, I could do a character study. [FK laughs] Sunny? Yeah. 

FK: True. 

ELM: But, you know, it’s very funny trying to recommend them to people, which I rarely do with media, because they’re like, “Oh, OK, I’ll add it to my list…Oh, I saw that…” And I feel that way whenever anyone recommends anything to me. I’m like, “Oh my God, what is it on…”

FK: No, it’s true. I’m like, I don’t—I am not going to watch this thing just because you said to watch this thing. I don’t know why I watch the things I watch, but I can’t—I don’t take recommendations anymore, because there’s just too much shit. 

ELM: That’s exactly how I feel, and it would have to be, like—no one! There are people I, like, respect so much, I think they’re so smart, and they’re like, “This is one of the best things I’ve ever seen!” And I’m like, “...Cool. Glad you saw it.” Right? Like. [laughs] You know? 

FK: Yeah! Exactly, exactly, exactly. 

ELM: And so, I feel like that’s just gotten so much worse in the last few years, and I feel like that trajectory’s going to continue. I cannot imagine it doesn’t, because they’re just putting out too much content. There’s, like, too much stuff here, right? Like, so then people need that base, right? You know?

FK: Yeah, yeah, yeah. 

ELM: So. And I mean, like, I think that there are versions of this outside of fandom. I see reductive commentary constantly from people I respect, where they’re like, “This is just like Mad Men meets, uh, Vampire Diaries.” Or whatever. And you’re like, “What?!” Like. [laughs]

FK: Oh yeah, I mean, like, that’s an entire—that’s an entire—yeah. That’s the entire entertainment industry’s only way of talking about things. 

ELM: It’s the entertainment industry—that’s—I get it, in the entertainment industry. It’s schlocky, and I understand why they do it. That’s them, right? Like. 

FK: Right, because you literally have—well, there’s also literally too many things to, like—right? It’s like, in the entertainment industry, it’s not that you can ever be obsessed with one thing and have that be the thing, right? Like, you’re, like, trying to think about 200 different shows that are potentially coming on the air, right? You know what I mean? Like—

ELM: Right, right. No, and like—

FK: —there’s 200 pitches, so then how do you think about them? 

ELM: Yeah. 

FK: That’s how you think about them. There’s too many of them. [laughs] 

ELM: Like, and I get it on an executive level, and I think that, uh, writers and directors, when they—when you can tell that they also really are thinking about it this way, you can tell in the work that they create. And then, you know, the rest of them, who are able to define their work in a more original way, [FK laughs] and less schlocky way, still know how to, like, say the words to sell it, right?

FK: Right. 

ELM: But then they go make something interesting, right? And so, like, I get—I absolutely get that from a business angle. I get it in the publishing industry. You know, in a proposal, there’s something called comps, and you have to say, like, exactly where your book will sit amongst its contemporaries, right? You know? Like. 

FK: Mm-hmm. 

ELM: And the question is always like, “What if it has no contemporaries?” And then people are like, “We can’t sell it.” 

FK: Yeah. 

ELM: And that sucks! Right? [laughs] You know, that’s so chicken-and-egg too. 

FK: Yup. 

ELM: But I don’t think that viewers and critics should be doing this. Like, say what it’s about, and then—

FK: Yeah, but if there’s so many different things, [ELM sighs] and you’ve gotta find common ground…right? Like. 

ELM: Yeah, I don’t know. I just—I don’t get it. I think the very best critics don’t engage in this kind of thing. And the people I respect who are not critics who I respect in media don’t. 

FK: Yeah. 

ELM: Like, you can—you can talk about how it makes you feel, or describe the dynamics within it without instantly flattening it into some predefined mold. 

FK: Yeah. 

ELM: So. 

FK: Yup. Well, in any case, @queuest, thank you so much. You did have really, really good points. 

ELM: Incredible points! Such a good letter. 

FK: Yeah. And it’s wonderful to get your perspective as a quote “fandom young.”

ELM: I mean, I would—not to—we don’t have to become pen pals, but I would love to know @queuest’s thoughts about the idea that, like, pushing homogenization in fandom forward doesn’t actually leave space for diversity. Like, or anyone’s thoughts on that, right? I’m really curious. 

FK: Yeah.

ELM: If we say, “Oh, every kind of character could be a part of these stories that people write in fic.” It’s like, “OK, but if you’re just kind of slotting them in…”

FK: Can they?

ELM: I mean, these are stories that are inherently rooted particularly in whiteness, right? 

FK: Yeah. 

ELM: You know, et cetera. 

FK: Right. 

ELM: Fraught. 

FK: All right! With that, is it time for us to take a break? 

ELM: It sure is!

FK: Let’s do it. 

[Interstitial music]

FK: All right. We’re back, and as usual, I think we should talk a little bit about how you can contribute either monetarily or intellectually to Fansplaining. 

ELM: Intellectually…

FK: Yeah! I mean, look. You—OK. Right before the break, you were talking about how we were looking for people’s comments, thoughts, opinions, so—

ELM: Yeah, I was. 

FK: —that is one good way that you can contribute to Fansplaining and help us out. You can email us: fansplaining@gmail.com. You can put something in our Tumblr ask box. Uh, it’s open, anon is on. You can use a form on our website, fansplaining.com. You can get in contact with us on social media. We’re Fansplaining at a variety of places. Or you can call us, at 1-401-526-FANS and leave us a voicemail. Any of those ways, you can be anonymous. Just, you know, sock us your thoughts and that’s how we make episodes like this one, and it’s actually how we get the idea for a lot of our top-level episodes in general. People have ideas or thoughts or wanna hear things, so. Send us what you’re thinking. 

Or you can spread the word about the podcast, you can talk about it, you know, recommend it to your friends—

ELM: Wow. You can say—

FK: —even though they’ll be like, “Whatever.”

ELM: —say it’s like Mad Men meets The Vampire Diaries. 

FK: Sure. But also—

ELM: Found families. That’s right. 

FK: Um. [laughs] We do rely on the monetary support of listeners like you to keep the podcast running. How can people help us with that, Elizabeth? 

ELM: Yeah. Back off, let me talk about that. All right. 

FK: OK. 

ELM: Patreon.com/Fansplaining. As you may have heard in the last episode, our newest special episode is live. You wanna sing one of the songs again?

FK: [to the tune of “Angel of Music”] Do do do do do do do do do….

ELM: Oh, I was just—this is more of a litmus test to see which one you picked. [FK continues to sing] You didn’t wanna pick, uh, [singing] “Past the point of no return…”

FK: [laughs] Yes, it is a Phantom episode. [ELM imitating synth] Phantom of the Opera. 

ELM: Uh, Phantom of the Opera. We went to see it on Broadway a few months ago. A few months ago? It was a few months ago, wasn’t it? 

FK: Yeah. Time means nothing. 

ELM: [laughs] It’s flying on by. What a show. What a musical. What a guy, that Andrew Lloyd Webber. Love him. Um, and we had a lot of fun recording it. So, I would highly recommend it, even if you are not the world’s biggest Phantom fan. We have the audio and a full transcript, thanks to, ah, one of our transcriptionists, on patreon.com/Fansplaining for patrons $3 a month and up. Obviously, if you don’t have $3 a month, if you have a dollar or two, there’s still things you get. $2 a month is early access. $1 a month, we have one of our special episodes from a few years ago with Javier Grillo-Marxuach available for listening. If you have more money than that and want to toss it our way, in addition to everything below, at $5 a month you get your name in the credits and a very cute enamel pin in the mail, and $10 a month, you get all those things, plus you get the occasional Tiny Zine. Our last one was a collaboration with Destination Toast on some tiny stats. Maybe our next one will be a collaboration with another fandom luminary. 

FK: Oooh. We’ll have to find out.

ELM: Yeah, I hope Toast appreciates being described as a luminary. [laughs] So, that’s patreon.com/fansplaining. We really appreciate even a dollar. If any—if you have any monetary support, because, you know, in addition to hosting costs, we’re paying transcriptionists. We really value their work. We couldn’t make it without them. So, basically, we need money to pay them. 

FK: Excellent. OK, shall we get on with the second half of the episode?

ELM: Let’s do it. We have a letter, you’re gonna read it. 

FK: I will read it!

ELM: I’ve deputized you. 

FK: OK. This is from someone anonymous. So, they say:

“Hello fansplaining! I started listening to the podcast a couple months ago and have been hooked ever since. 

“What I want to ask would be in regards to purity culture as you have both discussed on this podcast before. So I am a fan that is considered to be Gen Z, some as a late millennial (though I see myself more as a zillenial [ELM laughs] since nobody can really agree about 1997).”

ELM: Wow. Could you say that in a less, uh—that’s real, Flourish. Zillenial is a real term. 

FK: I’m not saying it’s not real! 

ELM: Get outta here, grandpa.

FK: Let me get back to the letter. Lemme get back to the letter. All right:

“I know a lot of Gen Z fans, but not all, are deep into purity culture. I think about how sad I am to look at people my age, around my age and even younger to be deep into it. As someone who was once in a friend group of people like this, before eventually getting out of there, I know how miserable it feels to be an ‘anti.’ While I didn’t really do any anti behavior while in this space, besides just agree in this echo chamber since it's what I had to do in order to survive, it’s miserable. And I feel horrible for people around my age and younger who are stuck in these circles, and have no means of getting out safely and feel like they have to keep playing pretend so they don't deal with horrible harassment these sorts of people dish out. I keep seeing tweets about how older fans miss how earlier internet fandom used to be. 

“While it was never all sunshine and rainbows, people tended to just ignore what they didn't like, move on, and mind their business. And I keep seeing people tweet about how much they miss those days. As someone who lurked in fandom for most of their life, going from Geocities, checking all sorts of fanfiction archives, LJ communities and more as a digital passerby, but only really getting into it at a time when purity culture sucked so many people into it, I feel like I really missed something. And part of me wishes I could go back to try to be active in those spaces when things weren’t like how they are now. (But at the same time, I was a small autistic child who did not know I had autism at the time. I felt like I saved myself a lot of grief, because I knew I would have made a clown of myself and knew back then my actions on the web had consequences, so I just lurked for most of my fannish life.) 

“I also feel like us older Gen Z/zillennial fans also feel incredibly tired and sad in fandom too. Seeing people in my generation younger than me partaking in this cult-like behavior, and seeing some of those people be secretly miserable, afraid of getting cannibalized by these groups they are stuck in makes me sad beyond belief. I also am disgusted by people my age and even older, acting like they are ‘safe’ for minors who are antis to go to, when all they do is show untagged sexual content and tell these kids ‘how evil and immoral this is,’ because sadly this is a very common occurrence in anti spaces. 

“The question here is: How do us Gen Z/zillenial fans try to capture a safe as humanly possible and non-judgemental environment in fandom in a time when fandom has become incredibly hostile? Where your life can be ruined by being doxxed, sent death threats or more forms of harassment for liking the ‘wrong’ ship, character, or piece of media. What are some strategies for us who are not into purity culture, that we can use to create and cultivate fandom environments where we can not be judged for what we enjoy? And for those who are still stuck in these groups of antis but want to get out, what are some pieces of advice you can give?”

And that’s from Anonymous. 

ELM: Well, Anon, thank you so much for writing. Very interesting letter. 

FK: Yeah, I really—I really got the exhausted vibe from this letter. [both laugh] I think I felt, like, every bit of your vibe. 

ELM: So, the very first thing I wanna say off the bat, and I don’t wanna linger on this, is, I’m pretty frustrated by, uh, older fans—as referenced here—talking about the good old days. I know that Anon here said it wasn’t all sunshine and rainbows, but I think that everyday I see someone who’s, like, our age or older tweeting about how it just wasn’t like this back in the day, and, like. It wasn’t like this, but it was fucking shitty. I’m sorry. Like, I don’t know. You know? Like, I wasn’t being doxxed, but some people were, right? You know, like, I don’t understand this desire in fandom to frame the past as so much better. 

FK: I mean, I do think that the one—one thing that was very different—I agree that it was not good [ELM laughs]—but I do think that there was something that was very different, which is just the sheer size, right? 

ELM: Sure, sure, sure. 

FK: I mean, like, and I think that there is a qual—there is a difference in quality between being shamed and yelled at by a few people on the—by fewer than 1,000 people—

ELM: Yup. 

FK: —on the internet, who you never have to interact with ever again, who don’t know your real name, who, maybe one of them doxxes you, but when they do, it’s like, it’s just one person who found you, right? Like, not the entire internet. [laughs] 

ELM: Yeah, yeah. 

FK: Right? And I do think there is a qualitative difference between the experience of even really bad—like, I mean, and I think I can say this as someone who, like, truly went through it in the Harry Potter ship war universe, right? Like, it is like—

ELM: [laughing] You fought in the ship wars. 

FK: [laughing] I fought in the ship wars. Like, no, I mean really, it was the white-hot center of what was, at the time, considered the most controversial fandom on the internet. It was not like it is now, in the regard of, like, the sheer numbers of people. That said, it was shitty. [both laugh] So, like, you know. Um. And people did not just decide that they didn’t like a thing and then move on. The difference is that, like, there were only less than 1,000 of them yelling at you. 

ELM: Yeah. That is a very fair corrective. [FK laughs] All right—

FK: That said—

ELM: Moving on from the past. The present. 

FK: The present. 

ELM: OK, so, I think it’s been a little while since we talked about purity culture. Maybe we should, like, take five minutes to reestablish some terms, and how we’re gonna talk about them. 

FK: Yeah, that’s a good idea, because, um, people who have been listening to us for a long time or who have been in, you know, the same fandom spaces as this person know exactly what they’re talking about, but maybe not every listener does. 

ELM: Right. Well, I mean it’s totally possible that, like, the things that I observe and you observe are not the same as the things that the letter writer observes, right? Also, I think—

FK: Also true. 

ELM: —one of the fraught things about this is, uh, a lot of people using the same words in different ways. 

FK: Yeah. 

ELM: So, I think my perspective—and stop me if you have any different perspectives here—is there’s a couple different ways that “anti” is used. One is within an individual fandom. Uh, you know, like anti a ship—

FK: Mm-hmm. 

ELM: —which is a much older version, right? There’s anti-fans, people who hated on a property or a ship back in the day. 

FK: Right. 

ELM: And the thing that unifies those people as a group, as a fandom, is the anti-ness of it, right? 

FK: Right. Is that they don’t like this character, or this ship. 

ELM: Right. Yeah. And we talked a lot about this kind of behavior when Tumblr changed its tagging functionality in the mid-2010s. Um, we had a lot of people, like, going into the tags and looking for people who had tagged the character or the ship they liked as their fave, and then harassing them, right? You know, people, like using—

FK: Right. Let’s fight! 

ELM: —weaponizing this, literally looking for a fight because they hated this so much that they were seeking out people that they disagreed with. 

In the years that followed, in the last, like, almost decade now, I think we’ve seen a pretty steady shift towards “anti” meaning something much broader. That’s where the purity culture comes in. You have people having very moralistic framings. People like to toss around the term—I was gonna say “puriteens” is one people like to say. I don’t think everyone involved is a teen—people like to toss around the term “puritanical,” but I’ve also seen a lot of good commentary about how it aligns with Christian fundamentalist thinking, which, for any international listeners who may not know, Christian fundamentalism in the United States is, like, one of the shaping [laughs]—shaping forces of American culture and American kind of black-and-white framings of things, right? 

FK: Right. Which is kind of ironic, because sometimes they are, you know—they express that they are queer or, you know, they’re whatever—any of these things that you would not normally associate with—or that they’re feminist, or that they’re, you know, anything that you wouldn’t normally associate with a Christian fundamentalist viewpoint. But there’s still this idea of, like, there’s bad, evil people, and they must be kept out. 

ELM: Yeah. Right. 

FK: And then, “We’re the good people.” And that’s—that’s the thing that’s similar. 

ELM: Yeah. I mean, I think that if anyone is doing any real kind of study of this—I’m sure some academics are, you know, I’ve definitely anecdotally seen people also saying that they—people who are in purity cultures saying that they’ve grown up in these spaces, right? 

FK: Definitely. 

ELM: And so, they have these framings, right?

FK: Right.

ELM: But they’re queer, right? You know. But they’re trans, or whatever.

FK: Right. They’ll say that I’ve rejected it. But, you know. [laughs] Yeah.

ELM: So, and I don’t want to paint this wholly on that culture, but there are very strong parallels, right? So, I think that one thing you find with a lot of classical “anti culture,” quote-unquote, is, uh, ideas that—depicting things that are morally wrong—

FK: Right.

ELM: —in the real world, in fiction, furthers those things. Normalizes them, leads to them—

FK: Right.

ELM: That ties back to some real classic things like “video games made this kid a school shooter,” or whatever. Right? You know, there’s been so much research on this stuff.

FK: Right. And they won’t draw that connection themselves. They won’t say “video games made this kid a school shooter,” they’ll say, “this thing is supporting pedophiles.” Or, like, whatever it is, right?

ELM: Right, so, in anti culture, it often zeroes in specifically on pedophilia, incest, and rape. And, you know, a lot of this kind of aligns with the kind of free speech maximalism on the AO3, uh, where those things are allowed but have major archive warnings, et cetera, et cetera. 

So, then—since we’re talking about fandom cultures at large, you know, these people are not specifically thinking of one ship—though, often they are, when it comes down to it, right? But like, you know—

FK: Right, but also sometimes they frame themselves as, like, anti-fan culture, in general. Right, you know? Because they see it—you’re all—

ELM: Right, you’re all pedos, et cetera, et cetera.

FK: It’s all tainted.

ELM: Yes. Exactly.

FK: Right.

ELM: And so, then you saw the rise of this kind of anti-antiness. Which, uh, sometimes you see the label “proship,” which I think now has also taken on too many meanings to be meaningful.

FK: Yes.

ELM: Because “anti” as well means a million things, right? And you see, for example, fans calling out racism being accused of being antis.

FK: Right.

ELM: Saying, “Just live and let live! Let people do whatever they want!”

FK: Right.

ELM: Like, you know, “You’re just trying to bring us down.”

FK: Right.

ELM: And so, conversely, you have the kind of proship crew, people being very adamant about how they are producing adult content, kind of blends in with that, in saying, “Proship just means I approve of all ships,” right? And so then the antis come back and they’re like, “Oh, so you’re a pedophile, huh?” Right?

FK: Right.

ELM: And it’s like, oh my God. [FK laughs] Just stop. Everyone stop talking. So, that’s my brief summary of antis.

FK: Yeah. And so that’s the background for all of this—I mean, this pain.

ELM: Well, yeah, and I feel like—yeah. It’s just—it’s just such a bad discourse now.

FK: Right, and one of the things that’s tough about it is that to our anonymous interlocutor’s point. 

ELM: Interlocutor, jeez.

FK: Yeah, look at that. That’s a $5 word.

ELM: Yeah. What a—that’s a $10 word. [FK laughs] Inflation.

FK: To their point, one of the things that is, you know, hard about this is that sometimes it feels like you can just—to many people it feels like you can just be going about your day and suddenly have these people show up in your business. You’re like, “I didn’t ask for this! [ELM laughs] Why are you suddenly in my—why are you in my mentions? Why are you engaging with me?”

ELM: Right.

FK: “Where did you all come from? Fuck off!” [laughs] You know? Um, and, you know, when a group of people descends on you, that can be—I mean, even if it doesn’t happen very often, it happening once is too much, right? [laughs]

ELM: Sure, absolutely. Yeah, and I feel like I’ve seen this happen a million times, and there’s nothing you can do as a bystander. You’re like, “Oh no, they’re swarming this person.” Right? You know.

FK: Right.

ELM: They’ve decided that the fanart this person draws doesn’t seem quite right. It seems like maybe actually they’re suggesting that incest is cool in the real—you know what I mean? And you’re like, “How? I’m looking at the picture too.” You know? But like—

FK: Right.

ELM: This certainly happens. Or people who are drawing incest, right? You know?

FK: Sure.

ELM: And they’re saying, “I’m gonna come for you.” Right?

FK: But also, like, you know—anyway.

ELM: Yeah. But, I think that when—you know, Anon is talking about being within these spaces, right? And we’ve seen these kind of ex-antis in the last few years come out and talk about exactly what Anon is describing, and I really appreciate Anon detailing some of those feelings. I think that one thing it makes me think of immediately is stories from fandom friends from the past—not from the era of anti culture and proship culture and all these discourse points now—who talk about being in the thrall of, like, a fandom clique, or—

FK: Oh yeah.

ELM: —um, under the spell of a big name fan—

FK: Definitely.

ELM: And I’ve also been to high school, and [laughs], like, elementary school, and I’ve seen Mean Girls. And I absolutely understand, when you have a powerful voice, or a few voices, and then you have a unifying kind of groupthink that comes around it, I don’t think these are unique to anti conversations, basically—

FK: No.

ELM: —these dynamics that are some of what Anon is describing.

FK: They’re not. And I think the other thing is a feeling of that group or that conversation being the, like, most important or central, or a really important part of your world.

ELM: Mm-hmm.

FK: Because one of the things that happens—I think that when you’re in high school, this happens a lot because you literally are forced to go to school with these people every day, and so, like, you cannot get away from it, right? [laughs] 

ELM: The worst.

FK: Like, whatever’s happening in that high school, you’re stuck with, right?

ELM: Yeah.

FK: Um, but even when it’s actually not true that you can never get away from it, right? You know, online, doxxing is one of the things that breaks this barrier, but a lot of times, you could in theory get away from it, right? Like, you can delete your account and leave.

ELM: Oh, is this time for da share z0ne?

FK: Yeah! Get out! [ELM laughs] Hit da bricks!

ELM: [laughing] Hit da bricks!

FK: You know, like, you can actually do it, but it doesn’t feel like you can do it always, right? Especially if you’re in, like, a season of your life where that was a really important part of your socializing, you know?

ELM: I mean, like, not to just bring it back to that meme, which we’ll put in the show notes, but, like, every single example on there feels like it’s a situation you can’t just walk out of, and the point of it is like—

FK: Too fancy weed store!

ELM: [laughing] Yeah, and you’re like, “What do I do? Can I get out of this?” And it’s like: Yes. [laughs]

FK: Yeah. “I’m talking to a budtender. [ELM laughs] He keeps talking to me. He’s too fancy! What do I do?” You can just leave. You can be rude and go. Goodbye. You don’t even have to say goodbye! You can just hit da bricks. [ELM laughs] But yeah!

ELM: Oh, I hate it Flou—not a weed store, but have you ever been in, like, a boutique and you’re like, “This was a mistake.” [laughing] And it’s like, the one clerk—

FK: Yes I have. Yes I have.

ELM: And they’re like, “Can I help you with anything?” And you’re like, “Never mind!”

FK: And you’re like, [groans] “Absolutely not.” [both laughing] Um, I definitely have been in these situations.

ELM: You look at the one price tag and it’s like $800, and you’re like, “What do I do?” [laughs]

FK: Yes. Yes, yes! This happens to me also particularly because of living in the East Village. Sometimes—

ELM: Oh, it’s so tricky down there!

FK: Sometimes you go into a store that’s, like, a secondhand store, right? Sometimes the secondhand store is normal. Like, I’m looking for, like, nice vintage Levi’s or whatever, and sometimes you go in and it’s perfectly fine. And sometimes you go in and it is $800, [ELM laughs] and you’re just like, “I did not sign up for this. I am going to slowly be like that Homer entering—” Anyway.

ELM: I’m sorry. The East Village. That’s like ground zero for this kind of dynamic.

FK: It is! It is! I’m living it every day.

ELM: Where you’re like, “You tricked me!” Yeah. “This store looked kind of shitty!” And it’s like, yeah, great, cool.

FK: Every day I live it. [laughs]

ELM: All right.

FK: And then sometimes the nice stores are not like that. It’s a mystery. Anyway.

ELM: Great. The world.

FK: So, my point being that it feels sometimes like you can’t get out of that space, because it’s an important source of validation for you, or, like, it’s a space where you’re doing a lot of your socializing, right? Like, I’ve definitely been in points where I was—in my meat-space life, I was not [laughs] really connecting with anybody, and so the internet became really important to me, but we do have the power to make those changes, and it can be rough, but we can make those changes, and I think it’s really important to try and cultivate that, and remind yourself of that, in basically every circumstance, because feeling trapped is one of the ways that people get stuck in cults and cliques and all of these spaces, right?

ELM: Yeah, no. Exactly, I 100% agree. I think when you bring the fandom element back into it—so, say it’s not just Mean Girls. Say, it’s not just a cult of personality around a leader, which is certainly something I’ve seen in fandom spaces. Say it’s like, “Well, these are the people I talk about the show with.”

FK: Yeah!

ELM: Right, and it’s like, “OK. Well, if they are making you hate every waking thought you have about the show, then no. [FK laughs] These are not people to keep hanging out with.” Right?

FK: Right.

ELM: So then you say, “Well, OK, what are the other spaces?” And, like, I think, you know, there are very small fandoms, but I think it would be—it would be hard for us to find a fandom where, like, everyone is an anti. Right?

FK: Yes.

ELM: Like, there are other—you know? Like, there’ll be another corner. Fine, maybe it’s gonna be small. But then I look back on here, and I see, like, you know, in the penultimate paragraph here: “I’m also disgusted by people my age and even older acting like they are safe for minors who are antis to go to, when all they do is show untagged sexual content, and tell all these kids how evil and immoral all this is.” Actually, can you parse that for me? I’m a little bit confused by this.

FK: I think that they’re saying that there’s a bunch of people who are adults, who are in sort of anti spaces, who say, like, “I’m a safe person for you to hang out with.” But then instead of providing positive content or anything, you know, happy or good that is genuinely, like, uncontroversial, they just point to all of these other people and are like, “Look at this awful stuff!”

ELM: Mmm.

FK: “Look at that terrible thing!” And then, by the way, because they’re pointing to it, they’re forcing you to look at it anyway, right?

ELM: Yeah, right, right, right.

FK: You know? [laughs]

ELM: Gotcha.

FK: Like, “Look at this terrible, like, incest porn drawn by this person.”

ELM: Yeah.

FK: Which you have to look at, in order to be angry about, right?

ELM: Right.

FK: Which is twisted.

ELM: Yeah, yeah. I’ve seen this kind of commentary a lot where it’s like, folks who are deliberately going and seeking this stuff out, to get mad about it, right? And it’s like…you never would have known this story existed, if you didn’t actually click on those tags, right?

FK: Right!

ELM: You know. But I absolutely—I understand how these mindsets get. You know, if you’re mad about something, you can’t help yourself, right? You’re like, “I’m gonna go find it! It’s out there! [FK laughs] I’m gonna find it! I’m so mad!” You know? Like…

FK: Yeah. I mean, you know, it’s funny because I think that a lot of this stuff genuinely comes down to, like—I mean, it’s kind of embarrassing to bring in, like, sort of self-help-y mindfulness practices into this, but I genuinely think it’s helpful!

ELM: [laughs] You’re from California. It’s OK.

FK: I’m from—not only am I from California, my mother is, like, an exercise physiologist who focused on stress reduction techniques to help with cardiac rehab. I can tell you about how to not get a heart attack— [laughs]

ELM: OK—

FK: —by meditating.

ELM: —no, all of that is, like, medical. I thought you were gonna say some woo-woo shit right now. Go for it.

FK: No, but it genuinely is medical! It’s real! [laughs]

ELM: I am bountiful, Flourish. I am grateful. Tell me. [laughs]

FK: That doesn’t hurt! [both laugh]

ELM: No, Café Gratitude doesn’t hurt. You’re right. I miss it so much.

FK: Café Gratitude is great, and we both love Café Gratitude. [ELM laughs] Don’t hate on Café Gratitude to us. That’s our jam. Um, coming from very different places, but we both love it. 

ELM: I wish I was there.

FK: Yeah, don’t—don’t we all.

ELM: [laughing] Yes.

FK: Um, but genuinely I think that, you know, when you—there’s something really important about being able to identify your own mindset and think, like, “I am caught in a bad loop right now.”

ELM: Yeah, yeah.

FK: “I am seeking out something that’s making me more upset.” And I’ve worked really, really hard over a long time on—and I know I’m not always great at it—

ELM: Yeah.

FK: —but I can definitely tell that I’m better at it than I was 10 years ago, and my life is so much better. And that was, like, a conscious effort—

ELM: Yeah.

FK: —you know?

ELM: This is also something I’ve worked on. I don’t know if I’m gonna go out there and say my life is better, but in this regard I think it is, right? Like—

FK: Well, OK, not in every regard, right? [laughs] Like, I mean—

ELM: Yeah.

FK: —there’s been a global pandemic, but. [laughs]

ELM: Yeah, I mean, like—no, I’m just thinking of even my—when I think of my online mental hygiene, or whatever. Like—

FK: Mmm.

ELM: And I think that we’re probably all guilty of doom-scrolling, and you know I love a hate-read, right? Like—

FK: I do. Elizabeth—

ELM: —I’ll click on shit knowing I’m gonna hate it. [laughs]

FK: You’re my number-one purveyor of hate-reads.

ELM: Yes!

FK: Like, if I was really trying to remove this from my life, then we couldn’t talk. [ELM laughs] Because you’re the only person who brings it into my life—

ELM: I think that if you—

FK: —I just want you to know. I value you so much— [laughs]

ELM: If you were like, “This is a hard line, and I don’t want this anymore,” I would respect that, right?

FK: Yeah, but it’s OK actually, I kind of like it in very small doses.

ELM: See?

FK: But you just have to—balance in all things! Right?

ELM: See? See? But, you know—

FK: Genuinely it is OK, sometimes.

ELM: Yeah. But, like, when I—I remember when—but back before Tumblr introduced a muting functionality, I used “Missing e”—

FK: Oh, yeah.

ELM: —which, uh, is a tool—I don’t think it still exists; I have no idea—to block those tags. 

FK: Mm-hmm. 

ELM: And I remember still clicking on them, right? Especially, like, in the Sherlock fandom, there were certain tags I would click on, and I’d be like, “Why am I doing this? All this is gonna do is make me feel worse.” And literally every time it made me feel worse. Right? You know? Like, or I’d see someone being upset, and I’d be like, “I gotta go find out why they’re upset.” You know? [FK laughs] And it’s like, why? They’re upset. Isn’t that enough?

FK: Yeah.

ELM: I can comfort them, but I wanna be—like, you know, it’s like you’re driving along and there’s an accident on the side of the road, and you’re like, “I’m just gonna veer my car into there, too, so I can also be in an accident.” [FK laughs] Right? “I would love to be a part of this activity.” You know? 

And it was around the same time, too, that I, as a journalist, it was back still when a lot of sites still had comment sections, and I would look. On Twitter, I would look to see what people were saying about my articles and stuff. And then, you know, after, like, a few months of that, with journalism, I was like, “I can’t do this anymore. This is just making me feel awful.”

FK: Yeah, yeah.

ELM: And you got me this, like—I don’t think this was directly related, but you got me a keychain that I still use that says “Don’t read the comments.”

FK: Yeah! Yeah!

ELM: I stand by it, you know? Like…

FK: Yeah! I mean, and this is so hard because it’s advice that’s given—like, we’re giving this advice, but it’s really, really hard when you’re in it. And I don’t want to suggest it’s not, right?

ELM: Right.

FK: Like, when you’re in that moment, and you’re feeling compelled, I get it. And when you’re in that moment, and you feel trapped in a particular group of people, and that group of people is all reinforcing this, like, loop of looking at things that are gonna make you mad and then getting mad together, and that’s how you have a friendship? You know what I mean?

ELM: Yeah.

FK: I get how hard it is, but unfortunately, I just—I don’t see other people stopping being what they’re like—

ELM: Right.

FK: —so I don’t see any way out of it beyond encouraging people to really, really try and be mindful of where they’re at.

ELM: OK, so what does that look like in practice? Like, OK, so, you’re in this group. You’re in this echo chamber. Maybe it’s on Tumblr, maybe it’s on Twitter. You delete your account?

FK: Maybe!

ELM: OK.

FK: That may be necessary, you know? And I know that that sucks, but it might be something that you have to think about—

ELM: Just cold turkey.

FK: —because—you may have to go cold turkey and delete your account and start a new one and find other people. [laughs] Right? Like.

ELM: All right. So, how do you find those other people?

FK: Well, first of all, there may be other people who you have seen on the internet existing who don’t seem to be caught in this, and this may be a good opportunity to, like, look in the general tags for your fandom—

ELM: Yeah.

FK: —and find people. Because, like, genuinely, there are a bunch of people who are not in this space, and you can find them through general Tumblr tags—

ELM: It’s true.

FK: —or through looking on Twitter, right?

ELM: It’s interesting. I feel like—you know, I’ve talked about this on the podcast in the past. Something I’ve kind of actively worked to avoid in setting up a fresh Tumblr for my pseud, is, like, initially—I think I mentioned this story to you a while back, but, like, I followed a bunch of people, and then within a day I was like, “I hate this, and I’m starting to hate, you know—”

FK: Yeah. Right. Unfollow! Remove!

ELM: “—not Magneto, but, like, I’m just starting to hate this fandom.” Right? Yeah.

FK: Yeah!

ELM: And then I unfollowed, like, half of them—I mean, we’re talking a couple dozen total, and it totally made my feed a different place, right? You know.

FK: Yeah!

ELM: And I was just like, “OK, so, what works for me is actually not getting a lot of discourse—”

FK: Mm-hmm.

ELM: “—people in there.” Because one of the problems with people who like engaging in discourse is you’re not them. Your brains are different, and you may agree with one of their takes one day, and then the next day they might have a take that makes you wanna murder someone. Maybe them. Right?

FK: Right.

ELM: You know? And, like, you can’t control them. Right?

FK: Yeah.

ELM: You can’t control their thoughts. And so, if like—I mean, I’m guilty of this all the time, with all sorts of scenarios. I’m like—I have friends who, um, have strong takes on films, and whenever they hate something I hate, I’m like, “Yeah. We’re geniuses, you and me.” [FK laughs] And whenever they hate something I love, I’m like, “They’re the stupidest person I’ve ever met in my entire life.”

FK: I have—I’m glad—but you also have enough emotional maturity to recognize that you do this—

ELM: Oh yeah.

FK: —and I’m really glad to hear you say it. [laughs]

ELM: Oh yeah!

FK: I mean, I knew you that you said it, [ELM laughs] but I’m glad every time I hear you say it, because I’m like, “Yeah Elizabeth—Elizabeth has got it figured out. Like, it’s all right.”

ELM: Yeah! No, I mean, and you come to recognize it, and then when you get those moments where you’re both mad, or you both think it’s good, you’re like, “I’m riding this.” Like, you know? This swing, I’m, like, on it. Right? And then you need to, like, try to minimize when you’re on the down swing, or whatever. And so I’m not saying don’t follow anyone who does discourse, but, like, I don’t know. That might be where I would start. 

FK: Yeah. 

ELM: Because I think part of this too is I don’t see antis creating a lot of interesting fanworks.

FK: No.

ELM: It seems like they spend a lot of their time using words differently than to create fanworks. And to me, the people I want to follow in fandom are the people who are making interesting stuff, because that’s first and foremost why I’m in fandom, is because I’m interested in fanworks. I totally get that that’s not why everyone’s in fandom. But if that’s something that is important to you, maybe that’s a way to find, you know, like—I think part of this is, like, antis define themselves by things they hate, and their behavioral activity—if you had to say, what do they do in fandom—is, like, complain in a circular fashion. Right?

FK: Right.

ELM: And, like, attack people. Complaining at other people, right? That is their fan behavior.

FK: Right.

ELM: And so, I think part of this is, if you’ve been in that space, and that’s the fan behavior that you’ve been immersed in, to step out of that, you’ve gotta think, like, “Well, what do I actually want?”

FK: Right.

ELM: “Do I want to talk about this show with people?”

FK: Yeah.

ELM: Like, “Do I wanna look at art? Do I wanna look at gifs?” You know? Because that choice was taken away by that group—

FK: Right.

ELM: —because they were on a different page, obsessed with something else.

FK: Right, and then once you’ve got your thing going on, and you’re loving something, if people come and, like, drive-by attack you, you can block with prejudice, [ELM laughs] right? I mean, that’s—because that’s the thing, is once you free your mind from being sort of attached to what they’re thinking or saying about you, you’re like, “It does not matter.” I’m sure that there’s somebody out there who thinks that I’m a terrible person and is talking about it somewhere. I’m 100% certain.

ELM: Oh yeah, I know them.

FK: You probably do!

ELM: No, I’m kidding. I’m totally kidding. [laughs] You were like, “What?” [laughs]

FK: I mean, genuinely. Like, no, I believe it. I do.

ELM: OK.

FK: I believe it. There’s undoubtedly—right? Like—I mean, whatever. Fail Fandom Anon has done it in the past.

ELM: I love all those people, so…

FK: Right. You know? So, whatever. But like, OK? So they said some shit. If I don’t hear it, it can’t hurt me.

ELM: Yeah.

FK: You know? Like, go forth with it. And if I do hear it, then I can decide, like, do you—are you actually going to show up at my door, or can I just mute you forever?

ELM: Right. And if you fucked up, and you are in need of a critique, I don’t know. I kind of feel like you can’t block your way out of that one. Right? Like—

FK: No, because among other things, [ELM laughs] your conscience will hopefully begin working on you, you know? Right? Like—

ELM: Can’t block yourself out of that—mute and block that conscience. Yeah.

FK: Yeah. Like, I don’t—I think that—I mean, maybe it’s not true, but I think that a lot of times when I have done something that was really fucked up, someone has—someone who I trust has approached me and said, like, “No, that actually was really fucked up.” Instead of just a random drive-by person, right?

ELM: Yeah.

FK: Or, if there were enough random drive-by people, then maybe I would be like, mute-block. But then I would start thinking about it, and I would be like, “Oh shit, I did fuck up.” Right? [laughs] Like.

ELM: Right.

FK: Trust yourself!

ELM: Yeah, no, exactly. I mean, I’m thinking of some experiences I’ve had as an editor and as a journalist too, but like, someone’s not gonna say this important critique, you know—people are not delivering the important critique in the comments of the Facebook post of the article. [FK laughs] Like, of the publication. Right? You know? Like, that is not the place where you’re gonna get the sparkling discourse—

FK: Right.

ELM: —and the critiques you really need to internalize and make peace with, right? Like, you know. I and plenty of other journalists and editors I know have had the experience of having people write thoughtful letters saying, like, “Hey, I think you missed the mark.” Or, “Hey, I really wish you hadn’t done this.” Right? Obviously, people write incredibly creepy letters constantly that are not useful, so I’m not gonna say letters are great all the time, right? But like—so, I’m putting these caveats on here to say, like, I’m always a little wary of people who are just like, “If you don’t like what they’re saying, just delete them!” You know? [FK laughs] Because I think there are times when maybe you need to hear it.

FK: Sure.

ELM: But…but.

FK: Sure, there are, but. And also, like, in this particular perspective—I mean, I know we’re getting towards the end of our time, we’ve gotta wrap up, but Anon, I mean, like, your pain and your distress about all of this really comes through. And I think that if you’re feeling that much pain and distress about all of this stuff, you really need to, like, detach from it. You know what I mean? Like, not in a—I mean, I know that’s easier said than done, but I think that you really need to, like, try and work on building that sense of separation from it, and then there may be a point at which you’re able to look back and it and be like, “OK, this is a good point.” Right?

ELM: Yeah, yeah.

FK: Like, when you’re in the midst of those feelings, it’s like if you’re reacting out of—if someone gives you a critique and you react out of a sense of shame? Yeah, maybe you feel terrible about something that you did, but it’s not gonna actually help you change anything, right?

ELM: Right.

FK: Like, you have to develop that point where you can think about it, like, separately. And what I’m hearing in this letter is so emotionally engaged that it just feels like, no, work on creating a better and more positive mindset for yourself, and then if there’s anything to be taken on from this, then you’ll be able to process that.

ELM: Yeah. I think that’s really smart. I also think that—I don’t want to be too fatalistic here, but, like, I don’t know. People are not their best selves right now.

FK: No.

ELM: I think [laughs] —that’s a very mild way of putting it. And I’m thinking about the real world, um—

FK: Yes.

ELM: —where I’ve seen some truly appalling behavior in the last few months.

FK: Oh, yes.

ELM: And, you know, I don’t think people, like, turned into monsters overnight. I think that people just, like, got five clicks worse. You know? Like—

FK: Yeah.

ELM: —five degrees worse on the wheel.

FK: Yeah. Yeah.

ELM: And that pushed them over from, like, kind of being a jerk to, like—

FK: Yeah.

ELM: —doing something harmful to another human, like, physically, right? You know?

FK: Yeah. Definitely.

ELM: Like, from shouting to throwing something at someone, I think is the, like, kind of over the arch, here. 

FK: Yup. 

ELM: And I think we’re seeing a version of this online, and I know that—I think everyone’s struggling, but I know from hearing from a professor and a high-school teacher friends that—

FK: Yeah. 

ELM: —that students, young people, are struggling in a very particular, extremely, like, what’s the word I’m looking for? Nihilistic kind of—

FK: Yeah. [laughs]

ELM: Just—just like, you know, “What’s the point?” You know? And, like, I feel a little bit of that right now, but, like, I feel like there’s a point. I still have to go to my job, et cetera, et cetera. But if I was 20? Right now? 

FK: Yeah. 

ELM: I can’t imagine how I would feel, and I have the utmost sympathy for folks, for younger people right now, but I don’t think that this is gonna help any of these dynamics. I think we’ve talked about this a lot during the pandemic, that, like, this is making things that were already bad worse. 

FK: Yeah. 

ELM: I don’t know. I think that short of finding, like, the things in fandom whether it’s the source material or other people’s fanworks that, like, actually bring you joy, maybe the solution is actually to, as Ruth put it in that letter from two episodes ago, get off the merry-go-round. At least for a little while. Because—

FK: Definitely. 

ELM: You know, there must be something that brings everyone who was in this position that Anon’s in to fandom in the first place, but I think that can be very hard to get back when you’ve been mired in really bad dynamics. I certainly experienced that when I was trying to retreat from Sherlock. 

FK: Yeah. 

ELM: I don’t know if you felt that way, when you [laughs] climbing out of the Harry Potter ship wars.

FK: Yuuuup. Definitely. 

ELM: [laughing] Dusting off your naval uniform. 

FK: Oh man. 

ELM: I’m just imagining you in tatters, like, in a naval uniform but, like, in—I’m just really thinking about Black Sails. The gay pirate show? 

FK: OK. [ELM laughs] You know what’s gonna happen right now? I’m cutting us off. I’m cutting us off. Anon, thank you for this wonderful letter. It gave us so much to think and talk about, and I really hope that we were able to give some good advice. 

ELM: I hope so!

FK: For what it’s worth. 

ELM: I hope that Anon and anyone else hearing this doesn’t see the, like, “log off, touch grass” advice here at the end as flippant, because it’s not. Right? Like—

FK: No. 

ELM: —literally, it’s not! [laughing] It’s not in any way. 

FK: It’s not flippant. And it’s hard!

ELM: Um, you know, and not just physical grass. Like, uh, psychological grass. You know? 

FK: I—I do know. On that note, Elizabeth [ELM laughs] I think I need to log off and—well, realistically it’s kind of late at night here, so I’m probably gonna log off and, like, brush my teeth and, you know. 

ELM: [laughing] There’s no grass near your house, Flourish, I’m sorry. 

FK: No—[laughs] no grass near my house. All right—

ELM: That’s not true, you—there is grass at Union Square. One time I was sitting on the grass and, uh, it got darker and darker, and then a rat ran almost over my leg. It was, like, maybe two inches from my leg. 

FK: New York City!

ELM: [laughs] Hell of a town!

FK: All right. Elizabeth, I’ll talk to you later. Go dance with the rats. 

ELM: [laughing] You live over there. You do it. 

FK: Bye, Elizabeth. 

ELM: Bye, Flourish.

[Outro music]