Episode 174: The Classification of Fandom
In Episode 174, “The Classification of Fandom,” Flourish and Elizabeth break down some of the broad categories people use to define types of fans, starting with a foundational meta that proposed distinctions between “affirmational” and “transformational” fandom. Why do we create these categories, and are they—or have they ever been—meaningful? They also welcome the first Fansplaining Fellow, Pepper Campbell, onto the podcast to introduce her upcoming research project: an ethnography of fans who use Discord for fandom activity.
Show notes
[00:00:00] As always, our intro music is “Awel” by stefsax, used under a CC BY 3.0 license.
[00:01:12] Episode #172, “Safe Spaces.”
[00:06:58] Some of the (pretty qualitative!) results from our 2017 fanfiction definitions survey.
[00:07:37] The interstitial music throughout is “All the answers” by Lee Rosevere, also used under a CC BY 3.0 license.
[00:07:54] You can find Pepper on instagram at pepper.rosina!
[00:12:12] As promised, the sign-up form for Pepper’s Discord ethnography.
[00:14:18] We did just do an episode on meta!
[00:14:29] “Affirmational fandom vs. Transformational fandom” by obsession-inc, from 2009.
[00:25:00]
[00:25:36] Obviously this one features people of many genders, but why watch a single Star Wars trailer reaction video when you can watch a MASH-UP OF MANY:
[00:30:47] You can read all about the Chuck + Subway save-our-show campaign at, where else? The Chuck wiki.
[00:35:08] We talked about “athletic feats of fandom” at San Diego Comic-Con in episode #79, “Who Is Comic-Con For?”
[00:35:19] Flourish and friend-of-the-podcast Zan Romanoff (of Grace and the Fever fame!!) wearing their super-cool ~SDCC-exclusive~ jackets (Elizabeth also got the black cat one):
[00:40:10] The Funko article is “The Funko Pop! Is the Mascot of Nerd Imperialism That Will Outlive Us All” by Tim Maughan at Vice.
[00:40:30] Reminder: Flourish has nothing to do with “The Rec Center,” the weekly fandom newsletter co-curated by Elizabeth and Gavia Baker-Whitelaw. 😇
[00:54:10] Our “infamous episode” was #8, “One True Fandom,” and we created this matrix (please note we did not say “affirmational” vs “transformational”!!):
Would we put ourselves in these spots now? Would we create these axes now? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯¯\_(ツ)_/¯¯\_(ツ)_/¯
[00:57:46]
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 #174, “The Classification of Fandom.”
FK: Sounds extremely scientific, and I don’t think it is.
ELM: Hmm. [FK laughs] Mmm. Yes.
FK: Is that—is that Yoda noises?
ELM: [hums] No, it’s a scientist noise.
FK: Oh, OK. OK.
ELM: [hums] Imagine stroking—the emoji, with the—
FK: Oh, OK, OK, OK.
ELM: —the fingers on the chin. You know that guy.
FK: [laughs] All right—
ELM: He’s a scientist.
FK: —before we say anything more about that, or get to it at all, we have a couple of small pieces of business to cover.
ELM: Yes! So, first, we got a letter from the person who wrote in to us that prompted the “Safe Spaces” episode, which was two episodes ago now. We get responses and thank-yous from folks whose letters we’ve read on the air, and we don’t often read them, even though they’re usually great. They’re always great! What am I saying? But, um. [both laugh] This one I felt like had some sort of actionable advice, and I think part of the point, something we were hoping to do in that episode was to offer, you know, maybe some strategies or ways of framing, and so I really appreciated that Anon picked up that ball and rolled with it, so I asked if we could read it on the air, and they said yes.
FK: All right. Shall I read it out then?
ELM: Sure.
FK: OK.
“Hello Fansplaining! This is the anon who asked the question in the second half of your “Safe Spaces” episode. I really appreciate how you took the time to answer it and I really enjoyed hearing what you had to say and your advice. Thank you so much.
“I can be and quite often am empathetic to the point where I put the weight of others on my back, to a degree where it's no longer productive in making a positive change to the best of my human ability, and I’m only hurting myself. Your discussion made me think about how this aspect of me that has so often been a part of my offline personal life has now leaked into my fannish life, and what I can do about it.
“I didn’t see the end advice as flippant either. If anything, it made me realize how much I’m putting a problem that is much bigger than I, just one single human being, on my shoulders. I also really appreciate hearing Flourish’s perspectives on things too as they are someone who was in the torrents of the Harry Potter ship wars and knows how rough those waters get.
“As Elizabeth said, people are not their best selves right now. I’ve realized I cannot put all of this on my back. (Which is easier said than done, but I will do my best!) I do know that getting out of high-control environments like anti spaces can permanently affect you and how you interact with the online world at the same time. It’s something I’m still figuring out how to navigate nearly four years after getting out of that situation.
“I’ve realized that the best course of action for me right now is to go all in on enjoying the aspects of fandom I love. The canon/source material, the transformative fanworks, and the people I’ve met who are genuine, respectful, and kind people who have helped me a lot since I escaped that space, as well as supporting and boosting my fellow fans and creators who bring joy into my life. I also will keep my heart open to the fellow ex-antis out there, and continue to support them, as well as hope for the best in the future.
“While it’s good to stay in the know about things and not be ignorant, I was paying attention to purity culture and the discourse around it to an extent that was only hurting myself, not helping. Going forward, I am going to make a conscious effort to have a balance, as well as to enjoy the aspects of fandom I’ve always found joy in.
“Apologies for such a long-winded letter, this episode just gave me a lot to think about and I wanted to give a thorough response. I am very grateful for you both taking the time to answer my query.”
And that’s from, as you said, Anon.
ELM: Anon, thank you so much for writing this. I feel like it’s an added layer of context that we didn’t have for the discussion that I think resonates probably across a lot of people, right? Like, it initially makes me think of, like, when there’s some sort of crisis happening, you know, a really tragic news event or whatever, I think it’s helpful that sometimes people will tweet things like, “Hey, you’re just scrolling and you’re absorbing more and more of this. Like, [FK laughs] are you changing the situation? No.”
FK: Yeah, or are you just doomscrolling?
ELM: Right. Are you just, like—yeah, beyond doomscrolling, though, are you just, like, trying to—
FK: Mmm.
ELM: —continually absorbing more and more anger, more and more range, more and more sadness, right? You’re not helping anyone get less sad by just absorbing—taking on their sadness too, right?
FK: Yeah yeah yeah.
ELM: Like, you don’t—especially when these are almost exclusively strangers, right? Like, it’s different if it’s your friend who’s sad and you’re like, “I’m not doomscrolling with you.”
FK: Yeah.
ELM: “I’m logging out of this chat.” Right? Like, you wouldn’t do that, but, like, these are—
FK: No, you’d listen to them.
ELM: Right.
FK: That’s different, though.
ELM: And I think that one thing we see with purity culture conversations—and I think I see it from people pushing back against purity culture, too—is people seeking out stuff, right? That maybe they—you know, like, people bringing the things that make them upset into each other’s feeds. Right?
FK: Yes.
ELM: You even see this in people reacting against purity culture.
FK: Oh—
ELM: And I see more about purity culture from people trying to reblog it and, like, dunk on people, and I’m like, “I don’t want to see any of these takes.” Right? You know what I mean? Like. [laughs]
FK: Yeah, this is absolutely the case. I pretty much—I mostly see purity culture from when other people are dunking on it [laughs]—
ELM: Yeah.
FK: —than my own—just because of the fandoms I’m in, in my case, right? Like, and the people I’m hanging out with.
ELM: Right.
FK: But it’s not an everyday part of my life. But if I wanted to make it an everyday part of my life, I could certainly go seek it out, and I think that I would have much poorer mental health, you know? [laughs]
ELM: Right, right. So, yeah. I think that there are really helpful lessons for all of us, even people who aren’t specifically struggling with what Anon is, in terms of trying to get out of those mindsets and out of those spaces, right? Like, you can’t solve everything, and I think that, you know, whether you are a person—a highly empathetic person, or, I don’t know. Some people are, like, nosy, right? [FK laughs] Like, there’s a lot of reasons why you’re taking on, like—You know what I mean? Or—
FK: Yeah, absolutely.
ELM: —or—you know, the term “concern trolling,” or whatever. Like, there is a true element of, I think, some people, because they have a lack of control—they feel like they can’t control things—are, like, seeking it out and trying to say, “Just so you know, this is wrong. This is wrong. This is wrong.” Right?
FK: Yeah.
ELM: And it’s like, “OK, I don’t—you’re not gonna make it go away by—”
FK: Right.
ELM: “—repeatedly kind of bringing it into your life—”
FK: Right.
ELM: “—letting it upset you—”
FK: Mm-hmm..
ELM: “—and then trying to share that upset with others.” Right? So.
FK: Right.
ELM: Yeah. I think this is—I really appreciate this response, Anon. So, I think, thank you for taking the time to write it.
FK: Absolutely, thank you. All right, the next small piece of business we have is: We have taken on our very first Fansplaining Fellow, Pepper Campbell.
ELM: Fansplaining Fellow.
FK: Yeah!
ELM: So, Pepper reached out to us. She is a student at USC, talking about doing—working with us in some way to do a project, and Pepper’s gonna talk a little bit about this when we get her on the phone, but, you know, one thing that we haven’t done any of in our data collection is more, like, qualitative data collection. Right? Like, obviously in our surveys, we do leave free responses, and I mean, that’s—maybe that’s overstating it. Like, I know in the “definition of fanfiction” survey you left things pretty open, and you were doing some qualitative coding of those answers, right?
FK: Right, but we haven’t done any actual, like, we’ve done nothing that I would call an anthropological method. We’ve done no, uh, you know—we’ve done no interviews with people, you know, in that sort of way.
ELM: Yeah.
FK: So, Pepper wanted to do a study with us that was using some of those methods, and we were excited to work with her on it.
ELM: OK, so, we want to talk about it with her in her own words. Yeah, let’s call her right now.
FK: Yeah, let’s do that.
[Interstitial music]
FK: Hi, Pepper! We’re so glad you could come on.
Pepper Campbell: Hello, Flourish and Elizabeth! Thank you for having me.
ELM: We are so excited about this project. Um, I’m wondering if you wanna start by introducing yourself a little bit, and the stuff that you work on.
PC: Yeah, so, I’m Pepper, and I, um—well, I just finished my junior year at the University of Southern California in the film program there. I’m in media studies, so I mostly write papers about film and television. But beyond that, I’ve also done some ethnography work about audience, viewership, and fandom. So, that’s one of my biggest passions, so I have a lot of experience with that kind of writing.
ELM: So, I don’t think we’ve ever had anyone talk about ethnographies in detail on the podcast before. If people are unfamiliar with it, can you explain what that means?
PC: Um, yeah, so, an ethnography is, like, an anthropological form of writing, basically, that is made up of interview, instead of quantitative data. So, often these interviews can last anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour, and pretty much just asking broad questions, and finding common themes between multiple people within a certain group to find answers about culture, and other forms of more personable conversations that you couldn’t really get from, uh, just numbers.
FK: So, tell us a little bit about—I mean, this is obviously leading into the project that you’re working on with us! [laughs] Tell us a little bit about that.
PC: Yeah! So, I reached out to you guys because, uh, I’m really interested in fandom, and you guys have such a broad audience that I’m really fascinated in fandom and this combination of anthropology, since fan culture is its own culture. So, um, one part of fan culture that I’m not super familiar with is, um, how Discord is used in fandom. So, that was something that I really wanted to look into. So, I’m really interested in creating an ethnography and interviewing some people about how they use Discord in fandom, and with their friends, and just all the different aspects of that, and how it differs from other fan platforms that they use.
ELM: OK, so, we are going to have a form that people can fill out if they’re interested. It’s gonna be really simple, just, like, a short answer thing, right? But I’m wondering if you have any idea of, like, if someone does use Discord for their fandom stuff, what should they know to expect, if they sign up and get chosen?
PC: If they sign up and get chosen, they would have to volunteer about 30 minutes to an hour of their time to be asked a set of about six questions, I believe it is, and a few demographic questions that are a bit smaller. They are not obligated to answer every question, and they are also allowed to use an alias and remain anonymous, if that’s what they want. But it’s pretty much just to get an idea of how they use Discord, and they can get as personal or as intimate as they want to. But it would be nice to get as much responses to the answers as possible. So, we’re really looking for people who are willing to talk honestly and openly about how they use fandom in Discord.
FK: And this would be done, like, on an audio or video chat, right?
PC: Yes, it would be. Yeah. Face-to-face is preferable, but audio is also fine.
ELM: And it’ll be recorded, too.
PC: Yes.
ELM: So you can transcribe the interviews.
PC: Yes.
FK: Cool. And then, just to be clear, so, even though it’ll be recorded, not everything will necessarily get published, right? Like, maybe just highlights, or how will that work?
PC: Yeah, so, there will be certain quotes that are picked, but for the most part it’s just looking at common themes, and if there’s anything or any specific quotes that participants do not want published, they just need to let me know, and I would totally respect that. But the entire transcripts of the interviews will not be published, so it’s really just those common themes that will be in there.
ELM: Gotcha. OK! I hope, like, a million people [laughs] sign up for this. [FK laughs] I don’t know. Yeah, I’m really curious to know, because we don’t talk about Discord a lot, but I’m certain that some of our listeners are big Discord uses, because I see people referencing this all the time on Tumblr and Twitter, so I’m excited, and I hope you can get, like, a wide—like, a diverse variety of folks with different experiences.
PC: Yeah.
FK: Yeah, and we’re really, really looking forward to interviewing you fully when all of that’s done and having an episode that’s all about Discord.
PC: Yes! I’m looking forward to it as well.
ELM: OK, well, thank you for coming on and previewing this, and as we said, we will be circulating this form. We’ll put it in the show notes, we’ll also share it on social media, and over the next couple of weeks, I guess you’ll be getting back to folks—
PC: Yes!
ELM: —who express interest.
PC: Sounds good, thank you so much!
ELM: Thanks, Pepper!
FK: Bye!
[Interstitial music]
FK: All right, I am super excited for whatever’s gonna come out of Pepper’s work, and just again, to say, we will have an episode covering that once we are at that point. But now, should we get on to the main point of this episode?
ELM: Yeah! Let’s do it. Let’s talk about it. Let’s classify some fans.
FK: [laughs] OK, so the genesis of this episode was, we were recently giving a talk at an entertainment industry event, which is just one of many that we’ve both done, and we were sort of explaining some of the different ways that people in fan studies and in fandom have classified fandom behavior and, like, impulses and instincts. And we realized we’d never really done an episode about this.
ELM: Yeah, so, like, I think some of these terms we’ve used not just in passing, but a lot, right? And I think you and I have more nuanced distinctions of some of this stuff in our heads—
FK: Right.
ELM: —but we haven’t sat down and, like, defined them at length, right? And I think we use them as a bit of a shorthand.
FK: Right.
ELM: So, I think the biggest one that I’m thinking of is the division between affirmational and transformational fandom.
FK: Right. Or sometimes people will say between curatorial and transformational fandom, right?
ELM: Right. And then, people will conflate curatorial and affirmational, even though those are different vibes, and actually, we’ve found that we don’t quite agree on what those two things mean.
FK: Right.
ELM: So, I think that we should talk a little bit about this, because I think this is a binary that I’ve seen reified in fandom over and over again, and also to some degree within fan studies over the last decade, and I’ve also seen people pushing back, and saying it’s not that simple, and all that. But I think that’s a good place to start.
FK: Right. It’s kind of funny, because we just did an episode on meta, and this is actually a term that comes from fan meta, and then came into fan studies from meta.
ELM: Yeah.
FK: So, obsession_inc made this post in 2009 about what they were calling the difference between affirmational and transformational fandom, and the idea is sort of that some fans want to affirm and agree with and celebrate everything that the creators—the original creators of their fandom—are doing. Their object of fandom, I mean, are doing. And other fans want to transform whatever the original creators were doing, and make something new and different with it, and that this is, like, a fundamental binary. You know? The two genders.
ELM: Yeah, I mean, to give some credit to that meta, I don’t think it is actually presenting it as this hard-and-fast binary.
FK: No, I mean, like many other metas, it’s sort of, like, looking at it and being like, “Hey! Here’s something I’ve noticed.” [laughs] Like, “Here’s some things!” And then people were like, “Yes.”
ELM: Right.
FK: “That. Those are the two genders.” [laughs]
ELM: I think the positioning of that kind of discourse at the time and what came after it, to me, it’s really about defining transformative fandom, fanworks-creating fandom, female-dominated, like, somewhat critical—you know what I mean? All these things that we say, these shorthands of, like, the way we talk about the kind of fandom that we’ve been in, was about defining that in opposition to the, like, capital-F Fan that was seen in popular culture, that was acknowledged by Comic-Con, you know what I mean? This—people who, like, collect all the details and would just like to know what George R. R. Martin’s gonna say next, right? You know, like—
FK: Right.
ELM: Or even, you know, like, spaces that we were in. When I think of the way people talked about Joss Whedon in Buffy fandom, right?
FK: Right, right.
ELM: This kind of, The Powers That Be—
FK: Mm-hmm.
ELM: —but in a more agreeable way, or in a way that disagrees but also affirms that, like, they are in charge, whereas transformative fans were sticking it to The Man, and they didn’t care who was in charge, and it’s so progressive to write fanfiction, et cetera. I think this is a huge root of some of the—what I think are frankly somewhat mythical, you know, progressiveness and subversiveness of transformative fanworks.
FK: Absolutely. And I think that among people who identify as transformative fans, like, there was a big sort of chip-on-the-shoulder element to it? I’m looking at the meta right now, and one of the things that they say about affirmational fans is, “In this world where the internet’s democratization of publishing is making the world a scary place for creators, this is a very non-threatening place for those creators.” Affirmational fandom. “They’re in charge, they’re always the last word on their own works, and the terrifying idea of fanworks taking those works away from them and futzing with them is not one that comes up a lot. As a result, these are the fans that the creator will hang out with, and vice versa. These are the sanctioned fans.”
ELM: Mm-hmm.
FK: And so there’s this element to it of, like, you know, “Transformational fans, on the other hand, nobody wants them and people are mad at them.” [laughs] You know what I mean?
ELM: [laughs] Yes.
FK: Right? And they’re women, and there’s, like, not the same impulse to gather at cons and to talk to the creator, but there’s still underneath it this level of, like, [sigh] “But I wish that they would recognize that we were doing something that was important.” You know? [laughs]
ELM: Yeah. I absolutely understand, I think it’s a really interesting piece of meta, and I absolutely understand where it was coming from at the time. I think part of my cynicism in talking about it, lo these 13 years later, is, you know, kind of seeing how it sort of got embedded into a lot of the ways that people talk about and frame themselves as fans, and as groups of fans, right?
FK: Right, because, to obsession_inc’s credit, like, literally, the second paragraph of this was like, “Please take this with a giant grain of salt!” [ELM laughs] And everybody was like, “Salt? What’s that?”
ELM: Yeah.
FK: “We’re on a no-salt diet.” [both laugh] You know? So, one of the problems that come out of this—I mean, I think that we’ve sort of been touching on this, right? Like, there is this element of us-and-them, which doesn’t—isn’t necessarily accurate, and I think in the worst cases that I’ve seen people using this, because these are terms that mostly transformational—quote-unquote “transformational” fans are using, it turns into a very—a way of creating a narrative that just reifies the position of the transformational fan.
ELM: Yes.
FK: And ignores any aspect where they might actually want to also interact with the creator or have any connection to any of this, and presents them as, like, too cool for school, right?
ELM: Yeah, no, I think absolutely. I think that it’s what people use as a foundation to talk about transformative fandom as inherently subversive, and I think that we’ve had 174 podcast episodes [FK laughs] and at least several of them have been devoted to kind of breaking down that kind of narrative, right? Like.
FK: Mm-hmm.
ELM: I think that’s very flattening to the affirmational side, and I will say that five years ago, I gave a talk and I was using some of these definitions, and I was talking about, like, [sighs] “Affirmational fans often, like, their fannish capital, the way that they determine what’s valuable within the in-group is, like, the acquisition of knowledge, right? And, like, the creator is the all-seeing godhead source of knowledge here, and it’s important for you to, like, learn all this stuff, and the way you can show you’re the best fan is by learning all the things about the world and internalizing that knowledge.” Right?
FK: Right.
ELM: And much in the way that we talk about the term “canon,” and that is, like, a biblical—that’s a term from the Church, right?
FK: Yup. [laughs]
ELM: And the very best people in the church are the people who learn—I mean, you know this. In priest school they’re like, “You’ll be the very best priest if you can learn all the words in the Bible.”
FK: That is—
ELM: True.
FK: —OK. That is not—[laughs] All right, we’ll just—for the purposes of this conversation, we can pretend that that is true. [laughs]
ELM: You cannot deny that in the history of religion, there has been a great—in many religions, there has been a great—
FK: Yes, that is certainly one element.
ELM: Yes. The people in the roles of the clergy—or the equivalent of—in many religions around the world, great value is put on learning the texts.
FK: That is a very Protestant attitude, but we will move forward and embrace it.
ELM: I’m actually thinking of my, uh, religious anthropology classes I took in college, which were not about Western religions at all.
FK: [laughs] No, it is—you’re not wrong, that that is one of the major values that many religions have had. However, anyway. Yes.
ELM: I love this. This is a little thorny area for you. That’s great. Anyway! [FK laughs] You know, I was saying in this talk that affirmational fans are about acquiring knowledge, right? You know, they were maintaining Wikis.
FK: Mm-hmm.
ELM: They were, um, you know—like, watching creator Q&As to get more details and arguing about whether, if the creator said it, was it canon or not. And I’m sitting there watching these people going like, “Who cares?” [FK laughs] You know, what they say after the fact, right? Like, OK. Incorporate that into your fic, guys. Right? And then I said transformative fans, a lot of the way that they determine fannish capital is by showing emotion, which, you know—I got called out at the bar afterwards by someone I was talking to. He was saying, “I think that that first group is also very emotional.” Right? You know?
FK: Yeah. For sure.
ELM: And I was just like, “Oh yeah, I was just doing some weird, like, gender binary thing too, where I was like, ‘Female-dominated, transformative fandom, the level of squeeing determines your value.’” [FK laughs] But actually, I think in a lot of transformative fandom, it’s about the quality of the fanworks that you create. You know?
FK: Right.
ELM: You don’t get extra points if you are more effusive about the characters, right? You know?
FK: Right. But you do get extra points if you’ve written something that people think is really, really well-written, and that they want to—yeah.
ELM: Exactly. So, I think in my attempt to make it accessible to people outside of fandom, I had done a lot of that same flattening that I’d been watching, for years, people do within fandom. Right?
FK: Yeah, oh, no, I mean, I’ve—I’ve definitely been guilty of this myself. And I think that that’s one of the things that has led both of us to tend—like, when I—I think both of us do this. When we now explain stuff to people outside of fandom, we tend to go more on a behavioral sort of kick, and so there’s more terms that we end up using. So, we’ll talk about, like—instead of saying, “Generally speaking, affirmational—” which can still be a useful term, sometimes, we’ll talk about people being, like, specifically curatorial, you know? People wanting to curate their information or knowledge or awareness and, like, put it all in order and have that all together, and that’s one kind of way to develop fannish capital.
ELM: And I mean, I often separate out affirmational from curatorial—
FK: Mm-hmm.
ELM: —and say that they can sit side-by-side. Right?
FK: Right.
ELM: Because I do think that there is an element of this affirmational fandom, this framing, that absolutely exists. Right?
FK: Oh yeah.
ELM: Like, I was just describing a lot of the behaviors.
FK: Yup.
ELM: You know? Like, and I think that one of the things that we’ve observed really strongly in our own spaces over the last five or ten years is the affirmational shipper, right? Or the affirmational…
FK: [laughs] Yeah.
ELM: …person that I would generally think of as a fanfiction person, or a fanart person, right? You know, like—where it’s vitally important to them not only to see their ship depicted in art that they and their fellow fans create, but also for them to see it on the screen, for it to be confirmed by the creator that they love, that these two people love each other—
FK: Right.
ELM: —you know, for them to be, like, fully boning on screen or whatever. Otherwise it doesn’t count, apparently, is what I’ve seen in fandom many times.
FK: Yup. Yeah, yeah.
ELM: It’s fine. Right? And that also kind of complicated some of these binaries, because shippers do tend to be women.
FK: Right. But there’s still this strong need for creator affirmation, which is coming out.
ELM: Right. And so that old, classic binary, like, only dude fans care about the creator and, like, lady fans are rogues—
FK: Right.
ELM: —Yeah! Who needs it? It’s like, I have seen so much bad behavior that disproves this over the last 10 years. Right?
FK: Right. Right. Right, and similarly, I think that that point about—I do think that you could say that another aspect, another way to show fannish capital can be to show your emotion, and I think that that does come out for both men and women. Like, I mean, I’m thinking about, like, the people—
ELM: I love that I set us down a binary gender path by trying to say “female-dominated” and now you’ve just said “both men and women.”
FK: I mean! I mean everybody, when I say this. [ELM laughs] I mean everybody—I mean, as a nonbinary person—
ELM: People of all genders.
FK: People of all genders!
ELM: I know. I just, I wanna call that out because I think that sometimes, when we are talking about places dominated by—
FK: Right.
ELM: —men or women, people—nonbinary people exist in worlds where—
FK: Yes! Hello! [laughs]
ELM: —the majority of people can still be—in a group can still be women—
FK: Yes, exactly.
ELM: —or can still be men, right?
FK: Right, right.
ELM: I just wanted to, like—
FK: Right.
ELM: —be really clear with the language here—
FK: No, no, you’re right. You’re quite right.
ELM: —because you’ve experienced this kind of reactionary backlash—
FK: I have certainly experienced this.
ELM: Yes.
FK: And I have also felt it myself sometimes. But when you’re talking and you’re going along, you’re just like, “Of course you all know what I mean.” [both laugh] But no, I’m thinking about the way that, um, for instance, in Star Trek fandom, which I’m in, there are a lot of men in Star Trek fandom, and many of them have strong emotional reactions to things, right?
ELM: Sure.
FK: Like, “I wept when I saw, [laughs] you know, Captain Pike come on screen! Like, walking.” And it’s like, OK. And that’s a way of showing fannish capital. It really is. Just as much as, you know, the person fainting when BTS come on stage—
ELM: Right. Absolutely.
FK: —is, you know, also doing that.
ELM: I feel like we’ve seen in the last 10 or 15 years, also, a huge increase in the amount of capital that has for male fans in particular.
FK: Mm-hmm.
ELM: When I think about live reaction videos to the Star Wars trailers, right?
FK: Oh yeah.
ELM: You know? Like, in particular, the first one of the new trilogy, right?
FK: Mm-hmm.
ELM: And the pleasure that other men got seeing also some other Gen-X man, like, weeping [FK laughs] as he’s seeing, like, a light saber, right? You know?
FK: Yeah.
ELM: Or, you know, when we’ve been in Hall H, when they’ve announced—they’ve shown, like, the new Marvel trailer or whatever.
FK: Right.
ELM: You know? And, like, obviously through this whole time we’ve always said, like, “Oh, this is how dudes react at sports.” Right? “They cry.”
FK: Exactly! I was just gonna say, like—
ELM: Right? You know, they like—
FK: —and with sports it’s obvious, right? Like—
ELM: Right.
FK: [laughing] You’ve never seen a man sadder than when [ELM laughs] his team lost at the last minute, right?
ELM: Full-on weeping, right? Or, like, screaming—just deeper tones, but as loud [FK laughs] as at the BTS concert, right? Like, and so—I don’t know. But I feel like for the non-sports side, but for the nerd culture side, I think that it’s been really, really normalized, to the point of being celebrated, the fact that like—it’s super cool if you wanna cry when Captain America shows up on screen—
FK: Right.
ELM: —in that final shot, right? You know, like, maybe you shouldn’t cry over his death, but you should cry when he shows up. Right? [FK laughs] Because he’s doing some fighting, like—I don’t know. It’s still fraught, right? You know?
FK: Yeah yeah yeah. Totally. Well, and then there’s other kinds of fan behavior that I think were not as obvious at the time that obsession_inc wrote this meta, that are now much more common. Like, you know, the sort of competitive drive to make your movie or your band or whatever, number one. That kind of behavior, the, like, streaming all the time, whatever it is—I mean, I’m not saying that it didn’t exist back then, because I’m sure that it did exist, but it was much less foregrounded. And so, I don’t think that that really falls into that schema at all.
ELM: I think there’s a huge swath of fannish behaviors in, like, broad behavior categories that we would use if we really had to, that exist solely because of the structures of social media [FK hums] for the last 10 or 15 years, right? I’m starting to say 10 or 15 years and not decade, because time is passing and I’m like, [FK groans] “Oh, Twitter’s been around actually for more than a decade. I have to actually say that.” Right?
FK: Yup.
ELM: So, like, one of them—you know, as we were talking about earlier—definitely is the affirmational shipping culture, right? I think that the things we’ve seen in the 2010s were largely not super possible—
FK: Mm-hmm.
ELM: —when there weren’t ways to tweet at the creator, right? You know, like—
FK: Right, you—
ELM: People got mad. People wanted their ships to be canon, and they talked about it amongst themselves, but the, like, the lobbying stuff?
FK: Right.
ELM: I think is something I think has really been enabled by social media.
FK: Yeah. I hate to bring this in, but I’m going to anyway. Uh, you know, it makes me think about people’s reactions to, like, J. K. Rowling talking about Harry and Hermione versus Ron and Hermione, right? Like, that could happen once or twice, like, there was a special chat—
ELM: Oh yeah.
FK: For those of you who weren’t around at the time, she would occasionally—there would be a time where she would be in a chat room, and there would be like—
ELM: Lost my mind when she would do a special chat, and I would just be like, “Give me all the information.” Like an affirmational fan, I was like, “Affirm! Give me info!” Right?
FK: Exactly! Exactly! So, like, you might get the chance to have one question answered and it might be about your ship, but that’s, like, one question out of all the bajillion ones, and it’s nowhere near the same, right? So there was still that desire, obviously, within people, but it didn’t have a way to come out.
ELM: Right. And also, like, you could join as a group and say, “This ship should have been canon! I’m so mad! We’re all gonna write meta! We’re all gonna be angry together in our chat!” But that’s very different than, “We’re gonna organize a campaign against this creator, and we’re gonna do it on social media, and we’re gonna tweet at them, we’re gonna @ them in all our commentary, we’re gonna, like, kind of force their hand by being really, really loud at them, and putting them in the spotlight—”
FK: Right.
ELM: “—where people are gonna expect a response.” Right?
FK: Right. And similarly, you couldn’t—it was a lot harder, let me rephrase—it was a lot harder to organize the kinds of campaigns to be number one at X thing or Y thing, right? I’m not saying it didn’t happen, like—
ELM: Right, yes, so going back to that. Yeah yeah yeah.
FK: Yeah, like, I’m thinking about—there were all sorts of, um, times where there would be, like, a poll [laughs] online. You know?
ELM: Yeah.
FK: Like, E! News would be running a poll, and people would be like, “Go vote in the poll!” Uh, “Vote to make our guy the best!” But it didn’t go as far as when this got on social media. You just couldn’t reach as many people. You couldn’t get out to, you know—like, it just—it was much, much more limited. So the desire was there, but the ability to achieve was not.
ELM: Right, and I also think part of what we see with the kind of streaming fandom culture, stats-based fandom culture, quantitative, whatever term we wanna use with this stuff, is…you know, we’ve talked about this in the past, but, like, a misunderstanding of how the money is made—
FK: Right.
ELM: —for these artists, right? And thinking, like, “Well, if we can get their YouTube video to be the most-watched YouTube video of all time…”
FK: Right.
ELM: “...then they will succeed.” Right?
FK: Right.
ELM: But, like, instead of saying, “Oh, I want my guy to win the poll,” which is just like, “Haha, he won! Look, our guy won! We had the most votes. We did it.”
FK: Yeah.
ELM: It’s this kind of, like, myth of, “Our guys will get the money.” Which, in most cases, the behavior is false. Though, I gotta say, there are those times when it’s true. When an idol endorses a product—
FK: Sure.
ELM: —and then it sells out within two hours, I think that actually, you did win. Right? You know, like—
FK: Yeah.
ELM: —everyone won. The partnership—the people who did the partnership with the idol won, the idol won. They’re gonna get more lucrative partnerships in the future. Right? Like.
FK: Well, and this is funny, because it’s also related to, like, you know, famously the successful save-our-show campaign for—was it Chuck? Where they all went and bought Subway sandwiches?
ELM: Fascinating.
FK: Yeah, so there was this—one of the few times that a save-our-show campaign actually worked, it was because they banded together—this was, I wanna say, the mid-2000s. They banded together and decided that instead of actually writing letters or whatever, they were going to target the largest advertiser on the show.
ELM: That’s so smart. So smart.
FK: And it was Subway, and they all went and bought sandwiches, and—I think it was Subway, anyway. I’m pretty sure it was a sandwich chain. And they all went and bought sandwiches and, like, wrote in their notes—
ELM: Quiznos!
FK: Yeah! They went and wrote things in the, like—they wrote to the chain and said, “I bought this because you advertised on my show.”
ELM: That’s incredible.
FK: And it worked! Yeah.
ELM: That’s really funny.
FK: But yeah. I mean, I think the other aspect of this is probably that that took a lot of faith, right? Like, it takes a lot of faith to write stuff and not see a little number tick up, right?
ELM: Mm-hmm.
FK: To not actually see anything you’re doing. And I feel like people since that time have become really acclimated to the idea of, “There’s gonna be more likes, and the number of likes will tick up. The number of views will tick up. I’ll be able to see the number of streams tick up. I’ll be able to see, you know, all of this change.” That’s itself kind of rewarding, actually. Right? In a way.
ELM: Absolutely.
FK: Which didn’t exist before.
ELM: Right. If you look at all the platforms that fans really derive a lot of their fannish activity from focusing on numbers, almost all of this has come out in the last 15 years, right? Because you have YouTube, which started in the mid-2000s. You have Twitter, right?
FK: Mm-hmm.
ELM: Kind of social media. And then, I think about the AO3, right? I think that the stats on the AO3 have dramatically changed the way people think about fanfiction.
FK: Right.
ELM: And it’s always so interesting to me, because, you know, with the fan artists on Tumblr saying, like, endless posts on Tumblr for years about why do you only like and you don’t reblog? Like, there is an actual monetary path there, right? The more people who see their art, the more likely they are to get commissions, right?
FK: Right.
ELM: Whereas in fanfiction, where they’re ostensibly not making money for the most part, even though some people are starting to do commissions now secretly, or outside of the AO3—
FK: Right.
ELM: —there is literally no value to winning the AO3, if you just get a ton of hits, right? Or a ton of kudos. Maybe there’s a lot of value in getting a lot of comments, if you really love comments.
FK: Right.
ELM: But there’s no, like—the only value is to your ego, basically. Right?
FK: Mm-hmm. Yeah.
ELM: Um, which I find very interesting, and I definitely think that changes the way people think about—you know, I definitely encounter people saying they’ve changed the things they write about, they’ve changed the tropes they write about, because they know—they want more hits.
FK: Right, right.
ELM: And they want more readers, you know, and they don’t want to alienate them with something they are interested in but they know is not very popular.
FK: Right. It’s funny you saying that, because it makes me think about, like, another classic fan behavior, right? Which is collecting.
ELM: Yes.
FK: And it makes me think about collecting, and collecting for the resale market versus collecting for a desire of, like, completing your own collection, right? Versus collecting for a desire of—you know, I mean, I think that there are some people who have large collections of stuff because it helps them sort of feel immersed into the world. I’m thinking especially of people who collect costumes or, like, objects that they can—you know, things like that. Um…
ELM: Yeah.
FK: It’s interesting to me to think about the way that that, then—OK, here, let’s bounce to this other fandom behavior, which, by the way, you know, if you go back to that affirmative versus transformational thing, I think people would typically call collecting affirmational, but I don’t know. I mean, I think a lot of people who are really into transformative works love having stuff, you know? [laughs]
ELM: Yeah. I feel like it’s a totally separate behavior, that, like, you could talk about side-by-side with all of these.
FK: Mm-hmm.
ELM: But also even within collecting, you already named a couple of the motivations, but there are other ones still. I mean, obviously, it’s—a lot of it is inherently tied up in, like, the different capitalistic structures, right?
FK: Right.
ELM: Like, there are people who want exclusive stuff, right?
FK: Mm-hmm.
ELM: You know, like, they like limited runs.
FK: Right. Proving that they are able to get the stuff.
ELM: Right! Yeah, and maybe there’s some sort of physical challenge and—you talked about this. We talked about this at Comic-Con years ago, this sort of athletic fandom, like—
FK: Yeah! [laughs]
ELM: “I slept out overnight.” Right? You know? Or even, “Oh, I got the Comic-Con exclusive item.” There’s a ton of stuff like that in the convention hall at Comic-Con. You know, like—
FK: Right.
ELM: “This is the Comic-Con exclusive.” And, like, I think we’ve bought stuff like this. Not, like, figurines or whatever, but, you know, there’ll be like a—I mean, we all bought jackets last time we went, right?
FK: Oh yes, we did.
ELM: We got these cute satin bomber jackets. They’re so cute, right? Like.
FK: They’re adorable.
ELM: Don’t regret that at all. But I’m pretty sure they were, like, Comic-Con exclusives. Right? And we were like—
FK: Yeah.
ELM: “Well. [FK laughs] I’m here.”
FK: “Here we are!”
ELM: And it’s—you know? Like, and that definitely drove it. If they had been like, “Yeah, you can buy these in our online shop,” I might have been like, “Oh, maybe I’ll think about it.” But instead I was like, “I’m here.”
FK: Yup. “It’s here.”
ELM: “It’s exclusive. I want it. It could be on my body right now.” Right?
FK: Yeah, totally.
ELM: And so I think there’s some element of that too, and—not for those jackets, but, like, if it’s related to something you’re a fan of, then you could say like, “I was able to get it, because I got to that space, and I’m the best fan because, you know—”
FK: Right.
ELM: “—I’m the one who goes wherever it takes to get all the ones that they only make a limited batch of.”
FK: Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah, or the—[laughs] Yeah, “I managed to hold it through six hours of standing at the rail at the concert.” [both laugh] You know? Like…
ELM: Right. Right right right. Yeah, there’s a lot of different athletic behaviors, you know? [FK laughs] “Athletic” is really overstating it—they’re just, like, pushing your body in ways that you can’t, right? And obviously, as we talked about with athletic fandom, it’s, like, you know, totally inaccessible usually to folks with physical and/or mental disabilities. Right? You know, so it’s like—I don’t know. Whatever. I guess you could say that about most of these things—
FK: Right.
ELM: —that they’re limited to—there are people who gonna are left out of them for whatever, you know—
FK: Absolutely. Money, or—
ELM: Personal or physiological—
FK: Yeah.
ELM: Yeah, or monetary or whatever. Et cetera.
FK: But there’s also sort of athletic feats of fandom that relate to some of those more curatorial ideas. Right? I mean, like, you know. I mention all the time, but to some extent my reading and categorizing every Star Trek novel is an athletic feat of fandom, it’s a [laughs] feat of, like, boring yourself sometimes, ruining some of those neurons.
ELM: We are pushing the bounds of the word “athletic” if you’re describing reading a bunch of boring books as an athletic feat.
FK: No, but I think—OK, you’re right that it’s pushing the bounds, but you see what I’m saying about, like, there’s certain curatorial things—not just that, but also, like, the person who has dug through every frame by frame, you know what I mean?
ELM: Yeah.
FK: Like, there’s this level of dedication that, you know, can be a source of fannish capital.
ELM: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I don’t know. The collecting stuff is so interesting to me, and we don’t talk about it often enough, I think. It would be really good to get some people on to talk about it, right? Because I think part of the reason that we haven’t is I don’t think either of us are huge collector kind of people, right?
FK: Yeah. Not really.
ELM: Like, I’ve certainly, when I was growing up and in fandom, acquired items. Like, little statues or whatever, of, like—
FK: Definitely.
ELM: —Hedwig the owl, or whatever. Right? You know? And it’s just like, kind of fun, and, like—especially when it wasn’t everywhere. Right?
FK: Yes.
ELM: Like, now it’s like you can’t buy a frickin’ book at Barnes & Noble—
FK: Yeah.
ELM: —because you’re too busy sorting through all the branded merch crap—
FK: Right. Yup.
ELM: —from, like, Harry Potter and Star Wars or whatever, right? You know? But, like, back in the day? It was a bit harder, right? You know?
FK: Yeah, definitely.
ELM: And there wasn’t Etsy to buy actual cute fancrafts or whatever, right? [FK laughs] So you were just, like, thrilled with whatever. And I mean, all right, this is back to affirmational. You’re thrilled with whatever, like, shit Warner Bros. produced, right? You were like—
FK: Right.
ELM: “Well, this isn’t what I would put on a jacket, but—”
FK: “But it’s what I’ve got!”
ELM: “It’s got the Hogwarts houses on it, so—and I’m here in Hot Topic, [FK laughs] and so…” You know?
FK: Yeah, completely.
ELM: This is a very kind of “old man yells out cloud” path that I led us down.
FK: That’s OK. Sometimes it can be. But I think that is interesting, though. And it also… [sighs]. I don’t know. It’s interesting because that volume changing is another way that things have shifted and made it more, like—I don’t know, owning a couple of Funkos now seems sort of standard, right? Like, it’s not—that’s not—whereas in the past, you might say, “Oh, yeah, that’s a collecting impulse.” Now it’s like, “Well, the collecting impulse is higher.” Right? [laughs] Like.
ELM: Yeah.
FK: I’m not gonna call myself a collector just because I have, like, 10 Funkos. [laughs]
ELM: Right, but then I think—all right, if you get into actual Funko land, I think then you get into something that is in between, like, collecting and, like—in between fandom and what I think of as kind of pure collecting.
FK: Right.
ELM: Like, that makes me think of Beanie Babies, right? You know, like—
FK: Oh, absolutely. Yeah.
ELM: Um, maybe without the speculative value element, but, like, there was an element in the Beanie Baby era of, like—
FK: Oh, there’s some speculative value element of Funkos. Absolutely there is.
ELM: Yeah. Yeah. Right.
FK: I mean, people may be deluding themselves about it, but there is one.
ELM: But I think some of the Funko people—and I mean, they do this well, too. They’re like, “We’re gonna make this version of it,” and I’ll see people tweet like, “Well, I already have the other five versions of this character, but…cute!”
FK: Yeah.
ELM: You know? [FK laughs] And I’m like, “OK. They got another $15 out of you.” You know? Like, that’s interesting, right?
FK: Yup. Totally.
ELM: I get it. And it’s funny, too—you know, I was reading this article and I wound up finding it not quite fandom-y enough to put in the newsletter, um, that was about this guy talking about Funko, and—
FK: To be clear, for anybody who doesn’t know, the newsletter is not our newsletter, mine and Elizabeth’s—
ELM: No. [laughs]
FK: It’s Elizabeth’s and Gav’s newsletter. The newsletter makes it seem like it is a Fansplaining production, which it is not.
ELM: Nope. It has nothing to do with this podcast. Just me.
FK: Moving on. Sorry, I just needed to put it in there. [laughs]
ELM: Uh, The Rec Center. Yes. If anyone doesn’t subscribe, we include—uh, we, Gavia Baker-Whitelaw and me, [FK laughs] not anyone else, just the two of us, just us—include articles that are about fandom or about things that people are super fannish about. You know, like Star Trek or whatever.
FK: Mm-hmm.
ELM: In addition to fanfiction recs and fanart. So, I was, you know, we both spend a lot of time looking around at articles to see if they should be included, and this one was a kind of deep-dive into Funkos. And, you know, the elements that were about the evolution of the company and, like, the way they were designing this stuff were interesting, right? Like—
FK: Mm-hmm.
ELM: —they managed to create this thing that feels very appealing with these little—
FK: Right.
ELM: —little big heads and the big eyes and stuff like that. But it was interesting, the very beginning of the piece, the guy was like, “I was looking at the Funkos trying to figure out which one I should buy. And I was like, ‘Well I guess I kind of like this, [FK laughs] and I sort of like that movie…’” And it was such a like—you don’t have to! You know? [both laugh] But I feel like they kind of create this sort of impulse to be like—and it’s a very light version of being a fan, like, “What am I the biggest fan of, of this wall of things?”
FK: Right. Right.
ELM: And, I think his—the way he talked about it really represented the way people approach it, where they’re like, “Oh, I like that movie.”
FK: Right, right.
ELM: “That was my favorite character in that movie.”
FK: Yeah.
ELM: Like, “I haven’t thought about them for more than five seconds, but sure, I would own that item about them.” You know what I mean?
FK: Right, which is—I mean, I think we’ve talked about this in the context of things like Comic-Con as well, where people are like, “I came to Comic-Con! All right! [ELM laughs] What is the most exclusive thing I can get into? Am I gonna wait in line for Hall H? Whatever’s in here, I guess we’re gonna see it, because whatever it is, like, I’m here to get the first—” Right? Which is, I mean—it’s hard to say that that’s not related to fandom, but—it’s not related to fandom in the sense of an abiding connection to one particular thing, right? It’s more sort of a generalized fan of entertainment properties.
ELM: Yeah. I mean, I think that’s using the word “fan” very loosely, but yes. Right.
FK: It is! I’m using it loosely. [laughs]
ELM: You can feel it so acutely in a space like Hall H, where it’s—people have camped out, or whatever, and they have to sit through the whole day to see the thing that they want. And I remember very distinctly the Doctor Who panel a few years ago. And I think it must have been right when Jodie Whittaker was joining, and there were so many trembling, excited Doctor Who young people, [FK laughs] right? You know?
FK: Yeah.
ELM: Of all genders. Uh, and wearing costumes. And the first panel was, like—I can’t remember what studio it was, but it was just not a good—it was, like, very adult movie, right? And I was just like, “This is so funny.” Because, like, half the people I can physically see right now are people who are, like, in it for the day. They’re gonna watch this one. They’re gonna watch that one. They’re gonna see all the offerings from the studios. And you listen to their comments, and they’ll be like, “That looks cool.” You know? And you’re like, “All right.” [FK laughs] And then you see the, like, Doctor Who people who are like, [high-pitched incoherent Doctor Who squeeing] [FK laughs] Right? You know? Like, and so, it’s very funny, and I’m not saying that people in the first group are not fans, like, you know?
FK: No.
ELM: But it’s just very funny to see them side-by-side, right?
FK: Right. Well, and also, like, you know, if we go back to where we were at in the beginning of this episode, I think that, at least at the time, that transformational and affirmational fans were introduced as an idea, and a lot of what people have brought on since, people would say, “Well, no, like, fans who do fanfiction wouldn’t be in Hall H, like, waiting for The Powers That Be to tell them what’s happening.”
ELM: Mm-hmm.
FK: But they absolutely would be! Right? Like, I’m sure that many—maybe not all, but a bunch of those Doctor Who fans are people who have read a fanfic [laughs] and, you know—
ELM: Absolutely.
FK: —and looked at some fanart and, like, of course, right? In fact, Doctor Who is one of the famous cases where the fanart is often reblogged by them, [laughs] and they, you know—
ELM: Sure.
FK: —like, there’s this close relationship there.
ELM: Right, right. Yeah, I mean, it’s also one of the very, very long-running fandoms that has, uh, circular pipelines between the people who are fans of the show and the people who make the show, right?
FK: Right.
ELM: You know? Like, it’s not all—I feel like some of these divisions, you know, in that original affirmational and transformational framing and also in a lot of the commentary you see stemming from that—or people coming to those kind of conclusions independently—is, like, this strong, strong separation between the creators and the fans, right?
FK: Right.
ELM: You’re either fighting them or you’re treating them like a god, right?
FK: Right? [laughs]
ELM: And it’s a lot blurrier than that in all of these places, right? You know? Like, I feel like these are divisions that have never been as strong as people claim they are, but they’ve only gotten more blurry as time has gone on.
FK: Yeah, I think that’s right. And I think, you know, the other thing that this is bringing up for me is—so, we’ve sort of traced this idea of, like, “Well, we used to talk about it like affirmational—” We, I mean, like, you and me, personally—
ELM: Sure.
FK: —not just sort of fandom in general—used to talk about it using these affirmational/transformational terms, but those aren’t really sufficient, so now we’re sort of talking about it in these broad behavioral categories. But the behavioral categories, as we’ve just been talking about, those overlap with each other too, and I think we kind of lose something if we start being like, “Well I am primarily a curatorial fan in this space.” And then you’re like, “But wait, doesn’t that actually have a lot to do with the way that people who collect things—and don’t you also—part of your curation, you really enjoy curating your favorite fanfics? And, like, the pleasure you’re getting out of that is to do with, like, the sorting—”
ELM: Right.
FK: You know? [laughs] And—
ELM: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
FK: Right? These things are so, um, so overlap-y! [laughs]
ELM: Yeah, or—I think, too, also sometimes when—I mean, this is a critique of us now. I think sometimes the behavioral elements can overshadow some of the more important contextual elements. So, one thing I think about, one term I’ve used to explain to folks about different types of fan groups, is “critical media fandom.”
FK: Mmm.
ELM: Which is a term I’m sure that we’ve used on this podcast before, and I’ve seen it many, many times on Tumblr, in particular, in the last decade or so, right?
FK: Right.
ELM: And when we say “critical media fandom,” usually what we mean is, like, us. [FK laughs] Right? Like, um, you know, people who are not—you know, people of various marginalized backgrounds, right?
FK: Mm-hmm.
ELM: Who have a sort of inherent oppositional relationship to the stuff that they are fans of, right?
FK: Mm-hmm.
ELM: You know? And they’re always wishing it was more progressive, and pushing and writing these metas, where you’re really analyzing, critiquing, and breaking it down, and you get mad when you see people saying that fans are just, like, slavish devotees to the show, [FK laughs] because you’re like, “To me, fandom is about critique.” Right? You know?
FK: Yeah.
ELM: “I’m a criticizer.” Right? And then I think about people losing their minds over The Last Jedi, right? You know?
FK: Right.
ELM: And, like, yelling at Rian Johnson, and I’m like, “Those media fans are pretty critical.” [FK laughs] Like, “Those are some critical people—”
FK: They are!
ELM: “—criticizing media.” Right?
FK: Yeah.
ELM: You know? Um, but the texture of their critique is different.
FK: Mm-hmm.
ELM: Perhaps one might say…a little more emotional, right? [FK laughs] And the, like, the backgrounds of those folks can be different, too, right?
FK: Yeah.
ELM: You know, like—and then I bring back what I brought up half an hour ago, the affirmational shipping people, where if you look at them demographically, and you look at their politics, you’d think, “Oh, these are the people who’d be writing these critical takedowns—”
FK: Right.
ELM: But actually, if then their faves kiss at the end, they’re like, [FK laughs] “This show is the best show I’ve ever seen, and I’ve never seen better representation in my life.” Right? You know? I’m being very reductive right now, and it’s just like—these are fake people that I’m making up here.
FK: Right.
ELM: But I think all those people—those aren’t the three genders, right? [FK laughs] Like, all those people can critique. All those people can reify. All those people can admire things in the works, you know?
FK: Right.
ELM: And, like, it’s very—I think that there’s a point—yes, anti-fandom exists, where people are there to hate on it, but deep down also, like, they’re there to be around it, right? You know, like, otherwise they wouldn’t be in the fandom anymore.
FK: Yeah, that’s the point of anti-fandom, is that you have to be fascinated by something in order to jam into it. I mean, I think that this is—what we’re really getting to is a big point of tension here, which is that the map is never the territory.
ELM: Mm-hmm.
FK: And the question of what you choose to put on the map is gonna shape what you think is there.
ELM: Sure.
FK: As you sort of try and encounter the territory, right? So, like, if I decide that I’m going to draw a map, which is a map of nothing except for, like, I don’t know, water levels, and that’s all I care about in my map, and then I go out and I’m like, “OK, I’m gonna take a hike.” And then I’m like, “Oh shit! Turns out this area is the top of a mountain! Didn’t know that because it was just about how much water was on this.” You know? Like—
ELM: This is a great analogy. Great one.
FK: Right? Like, and you’re gonna be like, “What the fuck? Like, I didn’t see any of that on my map.” Right? [laughs]
ELM: Mm-hmm.
FK: And you can be perfectly accurate, as far as how much water, you know—you were right, it wasn’t a desert. It was not arid, and it wasn’t an ocean. So you got that part. But it turns out you might need a few more pieces of information to, like, have a successful hike. Right? [laughs]
ELM: I mean, I might argue in this—taking this analogy further, a map is not gonna do it. Right? You know what I mean? Like—
FK: Mm-hmm.
ELM: This is ironic for people who have made a career, or part of a career, explaining fandom, um, and analyzing it. I think that we have an instinct, whether we’re within fandom or whether we’re, like, trying to translate across to draw these big conclusions, but I think this conversation hasn’t been, like—this has been a very big like, “And what about blank? [FK laughs] And what about this? And what about this layer? How about this conflicting layer?” Right? You know? Like, this entire conversation is representing the way it actually is, right? You know, like, I think that there is a great desire within fandom to kind of explain what you’re doing, right?
FK: Yeah.
ELM: Because fans like to—I mean, like, most fans like to kind of look at the thing and over-look—look a lot at the thing, right? You know what I mean?
FK: [laughing] Yes.
ELM: Um, and so, then they turn that inward and they’re trying to explain what they’re doing, right? But, I don’t know. It also I think kind of gets down to this desire of like, then you can diagnose it, right?
FK: Right.
ELM: Or, like, you give yourself a label, and your fucking Hogwarts house, right? You know? [FK laughs] And it’s like, I get it, because it helps you find other people who are doing the same thing, but, like, I think that one thing we’ve seen over and over again, is that, like—I mean, we technically are from the same kind of general swath of fandom, and we have very different preferences, and very different behaviors, right?
FK: Right, right.
ELM: “Very” is probably overstating it, but we have some different—I am not reading a bunch of shitty books, just for the—to get the merit badge.
FK: I know that you’re not. I know you’re not doing that.
ELM: Almost no one I know would ever do that, Flourish.
FK: Yeah I know! I’m special and unique.
ELM: You’re gonna get that merit badge. You’re gonna be the only one who gets it.
FK: Yeah! [ELM laughs] Someday.
ELM: You know what I mean? But I think that, like, there is a desire to label yourself, to classify yourself and to find other people who fall into that label, and then when you get into that space with them, you’re like, “Oh actually we kind of value different things, and we’re sort of doing different things, even though on the surface it looked like we both really loved fanfiction, or we both really loved this ship—”
FK: Yeah. [laughs]
ELM: “—but actually, I just wanted to read fanfiction about it, and you want the creators to die if it doesn’t happen and, like, [FK laughs] maybe we’re not on the same page in any way whatsoever except, like, we both like to look at their faces? And, like, that’s maybe not enough for a connection—”
FK: Yeah, yeah.
ELM: “—and maybe we’re gonna fight each other now.” You know?
FK: Yeah. I mean, similarly this is making me think about how many conflicts come up whenever somebody tries to explain fandom to—like, I’m thinking about, you know, if somebody writes anything trying to explain fandom, either in a fan studies way or sometimes to a corporation or to people like that, right?
ELM: Mm-hmm.
FK: They’re inevitably doing the map, not the territory—
ELM: Sure. Yup.
FK: —to some degree. And a lot of times, the purpose of that map is different from the purpose of the maps that fans make of themselves. Right?
ELM: Sure.
FK: Like, fans making those maps of themselves are trying to locate themselves within this space to find people they like for this pleasure, and there’s a different purpose to trying to—you know, whatever. Like, I’ve definitely written reductive things about fandom to people who I know are never going to learn enough about fandom. They just need to—I need you to approve this social media strategy, so I’m going to, like—here is something that’s actually fairly reductive, but it gives you the information that you need to understand why this strategy is good.
ELM: Sure.
FK: And then, you know, the actual implementation of the strategy has to be done by somebody who has more of an understanding of the territory, not just the map, right?
ELM: Yeah.
FK: Because they’re on the—they’re quote-unquote “on the ground,” but—
ELM: I wanna push back a little bit, because I think that I wouldn’t conflate fan studies with what you’re describing.
FK: Oh, they’re not exactly the same thing.
ELM: I think that academic writing about fans—I mean, to be fair, I think can get hyper-specific in a way that I think is really good. One of my issues with fan studies, often when I would read something is or watch a paper, then there is no, like, pulling back of the lens and looking at the map, right?
FK: Right. Right.
ELM: They’re like, “We are in this one cove in the forest. [FK laughs] Look at the trees!” And you’re like, “What kind of trees are they? Do they exist in another ecosystem?” You know?
FK: Yeah.
ELM: And, like, that’s not the purpose of a lot of—because fan studies is also interdisciplinary, so, like, I’m coming at it from the humanities, and maybe I wanna, like, find, you know, themes, right?
FK: Yeah yeah yeah.
ELM: You know, across or, like—some sort of theoretical framework, or whatever, and people are coming from different disciplines, and maybe that’s not the goal, right? So, like, this not on them. This is on me.
FK: Yeah, I’m definitely talking about a certain—and actually currently not as common—kind of fan studies thing. The grand theory of fandom, you know? [laughs] Um…
ELM: I would argue that the grand theory of fandom has now shifted to the media, and I have seen some takes in the last few days.
FK: [laughs] Oh, do tell.
ELM: I just wanted to get in a little subtweet, because it’s like, anyone trying to tell you a grand theory of fandom that only talks about people migrating from Tumblr to Twitter, [FK laughs] has glommed onto an idea, maybe read one book, and I’m not putting this on one person. I’ve seen this from multiple people in the last few weeks—
FK: Ah!
ELM: —and it’s like, “Yeah. I think there’s really interesting things to analyze about this. But, like, if you think that’s fandom, look at another site.” [FK laughs]
FK: All right, I mean, where do we go from here with this? I think that one of the things I would say is just encouraging people to think about, when they start categorizing themselves and other people in any terms—I mean, I’m even thinking about terms like “anti,” you know?
ELM: Yeah.
FK: And other things like this, which are not terms that would come up in these discussions, but they are a way of categorizing ourselves.
ELM: I mean, I think about—back in our, uh, our infamous episode where we almost canceled the podcast, we created a little matrix, right? And on one side was community—how in community you wanted to be, versus how solo you wanted to be—
FK: Yeah.
ELM: And the other one, I believe, was affirmational—we may have said affirmational and transformational, to be honest.
FK: Uh-oh, we might need to edit our matrix!
ELM: It was like, “How much do you care about the canon?”
FK: Yeah.
ELM: And even in that matrix, it’s gonna be insufficient.
FK: Oh yeah. There’s gonna be other directions. [laughs]
ELM: Also, like, we’ve talked about this—I am, when it comes to, like, how much canon matters in fic, I am, as they say in the courts, arbitrary and capricious. Like, [FK laughs] there are times when someone will include a detail that I find so uncanonical, I’ll be like, [gasps] “Everyone knows, [FK laughs] that happened in, like, you know, 1977 or whatever.” Right? You know? (This is a random date that’s not related to my source material.) Whereas, there’ll be times when they, like—they clearly know what they’re doing and cast it aside—
FK: Right.
ELM: —and just make up their own things, and it works for me, and then sometimes it doesn’t. You know what I mean? There’s no rhyme nor reason. So, if I were to sit here and be like, “It really matters to me that people care about the canon,” or, “It doesn’t matter to me at all,” I know that both of those are false, because it is not consistent within my own head, within the specific fan practice I like best—
FK: Definitely.
ELM: —let alone how I feel about everything else, right?
FK: Right.
ELM: So, I mean, as they also say in the courts, you know it when you see it. [FK laughs] So…
FK: Yeah, I mean, I guess, take everything with a grain of salt. And, like, maybe also—I do think there’s something here about thinking about why you’re categorizing anything. I think most of the time when we are using categories, there’s a reason why we’re doing it, but maybe we don’t always state or acknowledge the reason, right? Like, “We need to talk about X phenomenon because we want to respond to somebody who is using those terms and, like, talk about their feelings and experiences.” Or, you know, “We need to talk about a phenomenon, and it does seem to be something, and if you don’t categorize it somehow, there’s nothing to point to.” Right?
ELM: Sure.
FK: But being aware that you’re doing it is really important.
ELM: Yeah, I mean, just go back to my shipping example. I think it’s really important to define if you’re talking about fans who ship, being a bit more specific. And maybe it is saying, like, “Some of them value this, and some of them value this,” right? You know, like, “There’s a range of things that they value.” And then, the next sentence of your thing has to be like, “And when they value different things within this broader umbrella, [FK laughs] that’s when they fight with each other.” Right? You know?
FK: Yeah.
ELM: Because I think that, you know, all of this leads back to friction points, right? With people with different values clashing with each other, you know? And saying, like, “Ostensibly we want the same things, but actually we don’t.” Um.
FK: Yeah.
ELM: Or, “We don’t want the same things at all, and the things we want are in opposition, [FK laughs] and I know I’m in a different group than you.” Right?
FK: Yup. Totally.
ELM: I don’t know. I think it’s hard. I totally get the instinct to do this, and sort yourself, but, like, in the end I don’t think it’s that valuable, and I think that it creates the illusion of similarity, when it’s not there.
FK: Yeah. All right, well, on that note—
ELM: Cool.
FK: —I think it’s probably time that we should wrap this up. But before we go, we need to talk about how you can get more extremely insightful [ELM laughs] episodes about things like—
ELM: [hums] Thinky emoji.
FK: —fandom categorization. Thinking too much, perhaps!
ELM: No, one of my favorite ones to use in Slack is, uh, where they animated the thinking emoji to be kind of a 3-D globe that spins.
FK: Uh-huh. Yeah.
ELM: Love that.
FK: Really thinking.
ELM: And then one of my favorite animated gifs to use in Slack, especially in work contexts, is the one where it shows the various thinking emojis kind of flashing? You know that one?
FK: No I do not.
ELM: It’s like, zhoom, zhoom, zhoom. [hums]
FK: There’s some—there’s some hand gestures happening here, [ELM humming] and I don’t know how to describe them.
ELM: I’ll put that one in the show notes. It’s—
FK: Great.
ELM: —It’s a really good gif.
FK: OK, so if you want to support us in doing more thinking emojis—
ELM: And describing gifs.
FK: —you can do that [laughs] by subscribing to our Patreon. Patreon.com/fansplaining. There are a bunch of levels on which you can get different rewards, which range from a bunch of our special episodes to having your name in the credits, to having a cool enamel pin, to having a Tiny Zine very periodically mailed to you. So, go and take a look at that, and please do support us. You are the way that we make this podcast happen.
ELM: Or, if you don’t have any money, absolutely no worries. Or if you have money and don’t want to give it to us, I mean, whatever. You do you. Elon Musk has not offered to buy this podcast—
FK: Dammit. [laughs]
ELM: —after our last question to him. Now he doesn’t even want to buy Twitter, so, um.
FK: Yeah, right?
ELM: I dunno. It sounds like he has $44 billion to spare.
FK: I think this podcast is a lot cheaper than Twitter, so.
ELM: That’s what I’m saying. He could buy multiple—he could buy so many podcasts.
FK: Yeah.
ELM: He could probably buy, like, literally every podcast for $44 billion. Like, every single one that exists.
FK: [laughs] He certainly could do that.
ELM: Right? And be like, the Joe Rogan podcast for, like, millions, and then everyone else he’s gonna give, like, $10,000 to.
FK: Yeah.
ELM: It’s fine.
FK: It costs more than $10,000.
ELM: All right, so, I’m just trying to get a price point here.
FK: [laughs] All right, but point being! If you don’t have any money—
ELM: Right.
FK: If you’re not Elon Musk, or you are Elon Musk and you don’t want to give us your money, you can write in.
ELM: [laughs] I don’t want Elon Musk to write in.
FK: OK, great! Anyhow, if you are not Elon Musk, [both laugh] you can write in and, uh, send it to fansplaining—
ELM: [laughing] If you are Elon Musk and you don’t want to give us money, you can write in, and the answer is no, that’s false, you cannot do that. He’s not allowed.
FK: OK, all right all right all right. Keep talking.
ELM: OK, so anyway, not talking about him anymore. Um, you can write in to us, because, as you can see, we really value and incorporate a lot of our listener letters and voicemails into the episodes, either in AMAs or as the basis of full episodes, like the one that letter writer spawned two episodes ago, the “Safe Spaces” one. Um, so, you can get in touch at Fansplaining.com. There’s a form. Fansplaining@gmail.com. You can leave a voicemail. 1-401-526-FANS. Or you can leave an ask on Tumblr. Anon is on. In all of those spaces you can remain anonymous, you can just say so in your email. And you can also find us on Twitter and Instagram. As a reminder: no more Facebook.
FK: All right, I think that’s probably closing up our business for the day, Elizabeth.
ELM: Closing up our business. Great! Cool.
FK: All right, well, I will look forward to talking to you again soon.
ELM: [laughing] Oh, OK.
FK: And, uh, yeah, that’s it. I got nothing.
ELM: Get out! Goodbye, Flourish.
FK: Bye!
[Outro music]