Episode 179: Fan Labor, Fan Consumption
In Episode 179, “Fan Labor, Fan Consumption,” Flourish and Elizabeth use a listener question to discuss some of the intersections between fans and corporations. Is there an inherent tension when fanfiction communities’ “punk gift economies” are centered around properties owned by mega-conglomerates? What happens when fans performing unpaid labor for networks and studios start pushing back? And fresh off their return to San Diego Comic-Con, is it true that when it comes to fandom and capitalism, most fans just don’t care?
Show notes
[00:00:00] As always, our intro music is “Awel” by stefsax, used under a CC BY 3.0 license.
[00:04:00]
[00:07:32] If there’s one thing James McAvoy has, it is certainly vibes.
[00:08:11] We talked about fans preemptively putting down the source material in an act of self-protection in episode 177, “The Good, the Bad, and the Popular.”
[00:12:28]
[00:14:35] Much has been written about fanfic’s gift economies, but if you’re unfamiliar with the term, this piece written by fan studies scholar Dr. Lynn Zubernis is a good place to start.
[00:16:52] 💀💀💀 “The Crypto Revolution Wants to Reimagine Books” 💀💀💀
[00:19:37]
[00:24:00] For a deep dive on SDCC and corporate media consumption, see Elizabeth’s 2018 article “You’re Gonna Love This Franchise” and the corresponding episode, “Who Is Comic-Con For?”
[00:25:53] Pour one out:
[00:29:44] There is, in fact, an entire site dedicated to Star Trek glassware, but since Flourish is next-level, they own a bottle that isn’t even on this site:
[00:31:43] In the Mad Men finale Don Draper does famously wind up at Esalen, but Elizabeth is waxing poetic about the aesthetics of season 2 episode “The Jet Set.”
[00:32:38] Our interstitial music throughout is “HEAVN” by Lee Rosevere, also used under a CC BY 3.0 license.
[00:34:36] Britta and Javi have actually both been guests twice: Britta on episode 43, “A Fangirl Goes to Hollywood” and episode 73, “Ship It,” and Javi on episode 82: “Javier Grillo-Marxuach” and special episode 9, “No Edith, No Peace” (which all patrons—including pledges at just $1 a month—get access to).
[00:35:38]
[00:36:30] The tweet from the AHS News Accounts. And spoiler: in fact, after we recorded this ep, they did get results: “American Horror Story Finally Has Some Season 11 News.”
[00:45:58]
[00:48:06] Grey’s Anatomy has, in fact, been renewed for a ***19th*** season!!
[00:51:44] Or put more eloquently:
[00:55:35] The new show may suggest otherwise, but never forget Boba Fett is a lesbian.
[00:58:28]
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 #179, “Fan Labor, Fan Consumption.”
FK: I’m really excited to talk about this. We are pulling out a very old ask!
ELM: It’s not—don’t—you don’t have to tell them it’s old!
FK: I do, because I want people to understand that sometimes we don’t respond to questions for a long time. [both laugh] And then…a long time after someone asks us the question, we’re like, we’re, “It’s finally your moment. We’re gonna do a whole episode around your question.”
ELM: Yes. That’s true, this ask, as far as I can tell—even though Tumblr doesn’t have dates—came in at the end of last year. And we held onto it, because we thought, “That’s not an AMA question, that’s a full episode.”
FK: And now we’re doing it!
ELM: Full episode time. Do you want me to read it?
FK: Go for it.
ELM: OK. Anonymous writes:
“Hi Fansplaining! Thanks for the great podcast. I’ve been wondering about the recent rise of anti-fandom (not anti fandom) takes. In particular the ones that come from ‘inside the house.’ For example, someone who writes fic for a Disney property will say writing fic for that property is capitalist (derogatory) because it advertises for the original property.”
FK: [laughing] “Capitalist (derogatory).”
ELM: [laughing] You know that was in parentheses.
“Is there something to say here about fandom and consumer identity, or is this just a new flavor of self-deprecation? How much advertising does a Disney fic with 10,000 views (or a fic for a cult film from 1986 with 15 views) equate to? This way of thinking about it is quite different from the ‘fanfic is punk because it’s a gift economy’ message I’m used to, and while I’m not opposed to it, I feel like I am catching on slowly. Is this likely to change how people interact with fic? Thanks again!”
FK: Thank you, nonny.
ELM: Yes, thank you!
FK: I do feel the need to say something right up at the top of this.
ELM: Yeah?
FK: Which is, that there is basically no fanfic that is equivalent to spending real advertising money. [both laugh] Like I just, no, I mean, I genuinely want to put that out there. It’s not even just that there is no individual fanfic that is equivalent to spending real advertising money, it’s also that it’s very rare for fandom in general to reach the point of being equivalent. Like, not saying it never happens, but just like…if you think that fans have the power to be the equivalency of an international advertising campaign, [laughs] it’s not true. It’s not a thing. And I think we have to start with that.
ELM: Hold on, I didn’t know we were gonna go right here so quickly. I know that you have a…decade-plus experience researching questions like these. But I’m curious, OK, so yeah, maybe even the 100,000-hit Captain America fic is like, nothing compared to, I don’t know, one normal ad campaign that Marvel runs, right?
FK: Yeah.
ELM: Yes, I’ll give you that. But what about something like Our Flag Means Death, where literally, literally no one outside of fandom, except for a few TV critics I’ve seen, has ever mentioned it, and when I mention it, they’ve never heard of it? Right?
FK: Yeah.
ELM: So it’s not like HBO was smacking their faces on the side of buses, right? And yet everyone in fandom is really really into it, to make it the most streamed show on that streaming platform for weeks on end. That kinda seems like it was purely coming from fandom word-of-mouth.
FK: Well, I would say two things. One of them is, it totally was on the side of buses, it’s just, that was a long while ago.
ELM: [overlapping] I did not see any of those buses, Flourish. What buses, what bus line did you see?
FK: [overlapping] Really? I saw them. Ones in Manhattan! [both laugh] Anyway.
ELM: [overlapping] Which ones!
FK: [overlapping] No no no no no. I don’t know, it was a while ago!
ELM: [overlapping] What’s the Vampire Weekend song about the Manhattan bus, the M7…9?
FK: [laughing] I don’t know, I don’t usually take the bus! [ELM laughs] Anyway, um…I’m not, no, you’re right, that there are certain things like Our Flag Means Death I think is doing a little bit more than some other things. One thing I will note is that streaming numbers are…soft, is how I would put it, so I don’t actually know how much it means. Netflix in the past has counted, like, .3 seconds as a stream. [laughs] You know?
ELM: Mmm hmmm.
FK: So I’m not trying to say that there’s not any effort being put into this, or that there’s no difference being made or anything like that, I just don’t actually know whether…like one of the things about Netflix is that they will say, “This is the most-streamed show ever,” but then they don’t tell you what that means, and in the past sometimes when we have found out what that means, it means something that’s like, a much smaller audience than you would imagine.
ELM: Yeah.
FK: Which, again, doesn’t mean that they weren’t doing anything, but if you compare that to, like, I mean there’s also an order of magnitude between the number of viewers of a streaming show, even the most-streamed show, and, like, a film that’s released globally. Right?
ELM: Yes, that’s fair.
FK: So we’re also talking about those orders of magnitude, and it may be unfair for me to be like, “It doesn’t count!” when what I really mean is, “Your Captain America fic really is a drop in the bucket,” whereas maybe it’s true, it’s possible, that your Our Flag Means Death fic did indeed contribute to that being the thing it is, but I still think it’s too, I still think that your individual contribution is really small, and so you shouldn’t get too in your head about it. That’s not to say it’s not important that you’re participating in a system, or that you’re one of a group of people or anything. I’m not trying to say that those things, there’s not like a collective action thing or anything, I just think that like, we gotta keep it in perspective, you know? And I do wanna put that out front, because I’ve seen so many people get so obsessed with this idea, and I don’t think it helps the conversation. [both laugh]
ELM: OK, I think that is a good thing to put out front, and I’m glad that you followed it up with a more nuanced [FK laughs] second version of the statement.
FK: Look, you gotta make the big controversial statement and then follow it up with the nuance! [laughs]
ELM: This isn’t a pitch deck, this is a podcast, Flourish, [FK groans] you really gotta get in there. OK.
FK: OK, but tell me where you wanna go with this, because I wanna know what you’re thinking.
ELM: So, the initial thing is, this question is interesting to me because it frames it as coming from inside the house, and coming from the fan who’s doing the activity themselves, right?
FK: Mmm hmmm.
ELM: So, so take me. I technically, sadly, write fanfiction for a Disney property. Me and James McAvoy [FK makes a funny wail] are both very sad about this. But am I gonna sit here and be like, [in a deep voice] “Yeah, I’m simping for Disney, fuck me.” [FK laughs] First of all, no. Me and James McAvoy refuse to kind of accept this spiritually, that this is now a Disney property, right? You know? It’s…[laughs] Just gotta bring up my buddy, J.M.
FK: [overlapping, laughing] OK, you and your buddy James McAvoy.
ELM: No, this is like a vendetta, he brings it up in interviews a lot.
FK: [overlapping] Oh my God. Wooow.
ELM: [overlapping] He’s like, very negative about this franchise going over into the MCU, so. I think it became clear to him that his participation was over?
FK: Then he decided, “Fuck ’em! Fuck ‘em! If I’m not getting that MCU money, fuck it!”
ELM: [overlapping, laughing] Yeah, and he was like, “I’m gonna make passive aggressive or vaguely aggressive comments about uh…about this franchise.”
FK: [overlapping] Because he’s not gonna get cast in the MCU now.
ELM: [overlapping] I think also like, maybe he has some taste?
FK: Wow, you think an actor has taste? [ELM laughs] Wooow. Your brain really has gotten the McAvoy worms.
ELM: [laughing] I’m not saying—
FK: [laughs] He doesn’t have taste! He might have vibes, but he doesn’t have taste, Elizabeth. [both are still laughing] Sorry, James McAvoy, when you listen to this, I promise I think that you’re fine.
ELM: He, he tells me, yeah, he’s a regular listener. [FK laughs] That’s what he told me, actually, so. OK.
FK: No, but, to your point.
ELM: All right. So, setting the two of us aside. I definitely have seen this, from fans doing this to themselves, and I do think that OP here is right, letter-writer is right, about saying that there’s a self-deprecation element to it. And it makes me think of our last episode, or maybe it was two episodes ago now, where we were talking about that self-protection. Right? You say like, “This is corporate trash and I’m trash for the corporation, for you know, like, furthering this.”
FK: Yeah, once you’ve acknowledged it, no one else can be like…
ELM: Right, yeah, you’ve got this big armor, put a big giant label across your head that says like, “I’m a slut for Disney” or whatever and that’s that. So when it’s coming from internally, you know, I don’t see that as massively different than the “I know this show is garbage,” regardless of its level of corporate behemothness. Like, it’s very rare that anyone is writing fic for things that are truly independent, and even an independent piece of media that has the scale to prompt fics is probably still something that cost millions of dollars, if it’s a film or a TV show, you know? It’s not like people are writing fic about their friend’s chapbook that they self-published or whatever. Maybe!
FK: With the exception of Check, Please! Which is kind of… [laughs]
ELM: Yeah! Sure. Yeah.
FK: But yeah, the fact that I can list an exception doesn’t mean that, [laughs] you know? Like.
ELM: Yeah yeah yeah, right, exactly, I’m not saying this is a universal truth. So I think there’s an element of that. But when it’s not coming from inside the house, and I don’t think it’s super productive when it’s coming from inside the house, but people can do what they want. I also don’t think people being like, [low self-deprecating voice] “This is garbage and I’m garbage and here it is and my brain is rotten but I spent the last ten months writing this 100,000-word fic about this show that’s the worst thing that’s ever been made,” like…OK, whatever you need to tell yourself, maybe you could be proud of it, I don’t know.
But what I see more is when it’s coming not from inside the house but when it’s coming from other parts of fandom, other parts of social media, definitely from outside of fandom, and not (derogatory) in parentheses like the jokey way, but truly derogatory.
FK: Yeah, yeah, definitely.
ELM: And that’s when you start seeing arguments getting flung around, and these are not new, and we’ve both seen them many times over the years, saying, “You’re doing free advertising for this corporate garbage.” Right?
FK: Right.
ELM: “You are…you’re furthering its position in the world.”
FK: “Stop, I can’t believe that you would do that, stop it, you are not really, you can’t possibly be liberatory or anything like that, you are in fact, just a stupid man, and that’s—”
ELM: [overlapping] Right, yeah, there’s nothing…there’s nothing transgressive, doesn’t matter what you’re doing within this fic, it’ll never be transgressive because it is about Captain America. Right?
FK: And, usually there’s this tone of like, “And that’s on you.” [ELM laughs] “You could make better choices.” No genuinely, right? In this conversation, inevitably, it’s like, “And you have chosen this life, and you could make better choices, but you don’t, so you’re kinda garbage actually, too. You joke about it, but you are.” You know?
ELM: Right. So the first thing I would say to that is that I think there are some grains of truth in those kinds of accusations. You know, there’s the like, kind of…people getting so swept up in whether their, like, two male faves in the giant blockbuster are going to kiss, and I don’t know what’s in their hearts and I don’t know what’s in their libraries or whatever, but you never see them actually talk about queer media made by queer people.
FK: Yeah.
ELM: And not made by a giant corporation, right? You know what I mean? And I certainly think some of these folks don’t only care about straight men in blockbusters kissing, but I think there are a lot of people in fandom who only care about that. And to them, that is the queer media that they, you know.
FK: Right.
ELM: So that’s, that’s not a hot take, but that’s like, um…a lukewarm take, I would say.
FK: No, there’s miles of difference between like, I don’t know. I think about, I cried when I saw that there was a female X-wing pilot in the new Star Wars—
ELM: [overlapping] I remember, I remember.
FK: —I totally did, because I was so upset that they had been taken out of the first one and this, that, and the other. But like—I’m gonna shock you—I also read books written by women and starring women and nonbinary people, and like, having them fly planes. And like…you know?
ELM: [overlapping] Pilot a… Girlboss pilot, that was you, you loved her.
FK: And in fact I like even other corporate media, right?
ELM: [overlapping] Wait, you read, you read independent fiction about fighter pilots?
FK: OK, I might not read independent fiction about female fighter pilots. [ELM laughs] But I, but I, [laughs] but I don’t know, I love other corporate, you know, whatever, women in powerful roles of…you know. I’ve read some nonfiction about female fighter pilots. [laughs] Anyway, the point being though, right—
ELM: Really? I didn’t know you were such a fan of female fighter pilots.
FK: It was recommended to me, it was pretty good. [ELM laughs] I’m not obsessed with this. Anyway, whatever, there was a brief time when I was obsessed with this because I love Starbuck in Battlestar Galactica. But anyhow.
ELM: OK.
FK: Anyhow, this is all aside, because my point being, I don’t believe that, I think it’s reasonable to have a big reaction to when something happens in the corporate media that you love and care about, when you see yourself reflected in that, or when you see, like, somebody else reflected in that, that you really would like to have happen, in no way am I saying you can’t have a reaction to that or you can’t want that. I think that you can. But I think you, Elizabeth, are absolutely right in saying, like, “Is that the only thing you’re doing?” [laughs] And there are some people for whom that’s the only thing they’re doing.
ELM: Sure, and I think it’s impossible to actually see, because I do think that, like, you know, your Tumblr could be about your fave superhero ship, and you don’t feel…like, that’s a space, you know, like on my fandom Tumblr I’m not posting about the literature that I’m reading, I’m posting about the X-Men, you know?
FK: Right, right.
ELM: And the people who only follow that and don’t know it’s me will not know, like, anything about my life other than the fact that like, here’s what I think of Magneto, you know? [close to the mic] That he’s great. That he’s the best.
FK: [overlapping] Yeah yeah yeah. Right, right, this is, this conversation is about searching one’s own heart, [ELM laughs] and determining like, where you are. Yeah…
ELM: I think that that thing is important to say up front. Because I don’t want to like…I initially framed those kind of critiques of, like, you know, you’re a simp for corporate media or something, as very sneering. And I think they often are delivered in a pretty negative tone, and a pretty dismissive tone, and a somewhat blunt, un-nuanced fashion. But, I also think that I would argue against—I’m using a lot of double negatives here—but I would argue against arguing against that. Like, in a wholehearted rejection of that. If that makes sense.
FK: Yeah, that makes absolute sense. I think the original asker was doing, was smart to bring in the idea of like, the sort of “fanfic is punk because it’s a gift economy” framing also. Because I think that one of the things about this is, “fanfic is punk because it’s a gift economy” is usually related to the idea “and it’s punk because fanfic does the stuff that corporate media will never do.” Right? And one of the things that this is centered around… [ELM makes a skeptical noise] I mean, I’m not saying it’s always, those two things are not always hooked up together, but when you look back at what people were writing in the early ’90s, it’s like…
ELM: [overlapping] Sure, and like, “We’re gonna wrest it out of their hands, and we’re gonna like, twist it all up, make it gay, and then…” [laughs]
FK: [overlapping] Yeah, and then “make it empowering in ways it will never be on our screens,” and it’s like, OK, but…
ELM: [overlapping] “And then we trade it around, and we give each other porn as gifts and it’s porn made by ladies!”
FK: Right. Right. So I think that at that time, you know, when I think of punk I think about like, wresting shit out of people’s hands, like you’re saying, right? Today, it’s more like, “Well, we’re all writing this thing about this gay couple, and we really want it to be canon, and it could be canon. And we’re focused on that, as a central thing.” And to me that’s not necessarily bad, but it’s not punk. Right? Like, there’s nothing punk about that. [laughs]
ELM: You’re saying when it was, when slash was like, always reading against the will of the creator, like you’re reading against the grain inherently because it was 1985 or whatever, that was more punk. OK. All right.
FK: Yeah, and of course, was it always against the grain of the creators? I am 100% sure that there were plenty of people who worked on Star Trek who knew all about what was going on with that, you know what I mean? [laughs]
ELM: Sure.
FK: So like, we can complicate that too, but if we’re looking at it sort of from a 5,000-foot lens…
ELM: Right, right. OK, so I’m curious. So you think…all right. We’re talking about fanfiction in particular.
FK: Mmm hmm.
ELM: Back in the day.
FK: Sure.
ELM: Whatever day that was.
FK: [laughs] Whatever day.
ELM: And now.
FK: A day.
ELM: So do you think that fanfiction cultures now are inherently more like…simpatico with the source material, the rights-holders, the creators of the things people are writing fic about? Or is that too broad?
FK: Well, that’s very broad, but we’re talking in very broad strokes.
ELM: Sure.
FK: And I think the answer is yes, because I think that there’s nothing that’s happening in…I shouldn’t say nothing. The majority of things that are happening in fanfiction culture now are not remotely as controversial as like…
ELM: Sorry Flourish, didn’t you hear? That they’re gonna put Hermione on the blockchain?
FK: [laughs] No! I’m just saying—
ELM: [overlapping] Stupidest thing I’ve read in a while, by the way, we’ll put that in the show notes if anyone wants to know about it, but I’m not gonna talk about it anymore.
FK: [overlapping] Yeah…oh my God. I can’t believe that—no, we’re done, I can’t believe you brought that into, you bring this into our house? [laughs]
ELM: [laughs] I, I was just thinking about truly stupid and exploitative things around fic that I’ve seen in the last six days.
FK: No, but what I would say is like, I think that there’s very little within fanfic—I mean obviously, this is a hot take right now when [laughs] you know, gay and trans peoples’ rights are being rolled back in a lot of places.
ELM: Sure.
FK: However, I think that even with all of that happening, like, as a person who remembers the early ’90s, [laughs] we are nevertheless in a much less, it’s much less controversial to write about gay relationships or anything like that than it was then.
ELM: [overlapping] Flourish, Flourish. You were three in the early ’90s. Don’t. Don’t.
FK: As a person who remembers the mid- to late-90s… [both laugh]
ELM: I’m sorry, I just had to put my foot down. As a person of age, compared to you, to your youthful age…
FK: [overlapping] Fair, fair. Oh, yes, [laughs] the two years made a difference. But you get what I’m saying though, right? You know? I do think that there’s a vast—
ELM: [overlapping] I was six in the early ’90s, so, uh…in 1990.
FK: Wow, I do think that there was a large difference between…I do think there’s a big difference in that, and I don’t think that, I can’t think of anything that’s happening in fic right now that is as controversial compared to that.
ELM: Sure. So that’s interesting, because I wonder…I agree with you, and I wonder if that’s part of the reason why some of these, you know, we talked about this stuff a couple of episodes ago, you mentioned that you felt like fans had a less combative relationship and a less antagonistic, less critical relationship with the rights-holders than ever before. And I wonder if some of what we’re seeing in the critique of fanfiction… I don’t think, I would be surprised, and I would be happy to be proven wrong if someone has the old chat logs from 1992 or whatever, Usenet, of people saying that like, writing fanfiction about Star Wars was like simping for… I’m saying “simp” over and over again, do people even still say that word anymore or was that from like, 18 months ago?
FK: [overlapping, laughing] I don’t know, I’m too old to know.
ELM: [overlapping] I don’t know. You know what word they say all the time now, those young people, they say “slay” and they use it in every form of speech.
FK: I find that to be distressing to me. To me, “slay” is—it’s come back, I guess, right? Like, it means…
ELM: [overlapping] Yeah! It’s, yeah, yeah yeah yeah.
FK: In a distressing way.
ELM: Yeah.
FK: Wow. Well, the youths.
ELM: Just wanted to let you know what’s up. What’s going on out there. I’m on the internet, so I know.
FK: [laughs] Thanks. I’m not on the internet, I spend most of my time these days talking to elderly people. I truly don’t know.
ELM: [overlapping] Yeah, tell them that “slay” is back.
FK: I will. You know, I will tell, um, the…gay men in their 80s that I know that “slay” has returned, and see what they say. [laughs]
ELM: I think they’d be cool with that. I really, I do enjoy when they have like, intergenerational gay slang videos, you’ve seen these, right?
FK: Oh yes, oh yes.
ELM: So cute. Yeah.
FK: Anyway.
ELM: So I wonder if that kind of trend is like, a part of why, you know…I don’t think that a few decades ago, people would accuse the people writing fanfiction as, like, being in the pocket of the corporation, because I think it was framed as oppositional. Whereas now, I think that at the scale of fandom, at the sanitization of fandom, all the different trends we’ve seen, we talk about when it comes to fic and the kinds of fic that people write, it feels more in-step with the rights-holders, even if you’re kind of stepping parallel to them and not, like, kind of holding their hand and stepping in a path behind them, like other kinds of fans might seem to be doing.
FK: Yeah. Right.
ELM: That have more direct affirmational relationships with creators.
FK: Yeah. Well I mean, I think that the other thing about this is that more people just know about what fanfiction is. Because I feel like there were people who had heard vaguely about fanfic, or knew about it a little bit, who would be like, “Oh yeah, they’re just like all the other fans, they’re mindless automatons, just so excited about whatever their fandom is.”
ELM: Yeah.
FK: But that was coming from a place of not having read a piece of fanfiction or really knowing what it was or whatever, and the difference is, I feel like people who make these critiques now, they may not be “inside the house,” but they’ve definitely, like, grown up with fanfiction. They know what it is.
ELM: Yeah.
FK: They’re making a critique from a place of, of awareness in a way that I don’t think was the case in the past.
ELM: Yeah, I feel like you do see a lot of backlash of this, especially amongst genre lit communities on Twitter. There’s accusations of, like, “Oh this is the fanficification of these genres.”
FK: Yeah.
ELM: Which often seems, like, I don’t know what fic they were reading when they were teens, which was clearly the last time they were involved, [FK laughs] but you know, it’s stuff like people wanting, like writing fluffy science fiction and fantasy, or writing hopepunk or whatever, you know. There’s that discourse that I tried not to look at and then I did about “squeecore”—
FK: Oh, wow.
ELM: And it’s like, these are weird critiques to level at fanfiction in particular. Yes, some writers are coming out of fandom, but in fact, like, some of the most well-known ones are people who’ve tried to go pro and almost got canceled for having written fucked up shit [both laugh] in fandom, you know what I mean?
FK: Ain’t it the truth.
ELM: I don’t know, I just feel like this is like, what the actual answer is is like, we’re seeing a blurring of genres and of styles, and you see romance conventions coming in, you know what I mean? The lines aren’t even that strong anymore.
FK: Definitely.
ELM: So like, you’re seeing conventions from romance come over, or you’re seeing readers from YA aging up into other kinds of literature, and wanting to bring YA sensibilities in or whatever, right? And also it’s not taking up the space that that person would have occupied with their hardcore, dark, edgy hard sci-fi. You know?
FK: [laughs] I do know all of that, and I think it’s also interesting when people are complaining about that, because I think that sometimes the other thing is like…I mean one of the things we’re really talking about here is people with differing—I’m gonna be kind and just say differing—views of “What is fan culture?” and where people fall within it, and where fanfic falls within it, where different kinds of fandom stuff falls within it, right, because we just got back from San Diego Comic-Con, a place that is full of people, primarily people who are just excited to consume…stuff…
ELM: Sure.
FK: And have no critique of that. And of then like a small scrim of people who are, like, on the make, and excited to take part in the industry in a way that feels deeply un-punk and also deeply un-trying-to-move-anything, you know, they’re just, they’re in! There’s a lot of people who are in fact all in, either on the consuming or the trying to make it end of this industry. And that’s still part of fandom.
ELM: Yeah. You know, we are fresh off of Comic-Con, what a time. [FK laughs] A time was had by all, including us.
FK: Oh yes.
ELM: And…I don’t know, Comic-Con is interesting to me because I’m always reminded of…I always just feel like when I’m there, it’s like the discourse, I can’t even see it anymore. I’m like…
FK: [laughs] It all fades away.
ELM: It doesn’t, I’m like, grasping for it, I’m like, “Wait, but there’s controversy, are we gonna talk about..?” And everyone’s just like, “Nope, I want more Funko Pops.” [FK laughs] Right, you know? And I don’t wanna be patronizing, but it does always feel like that, and it felt like that this year, too. And I feel like these conversations about like, is your fan activity capitalist (derogatory), that’s not a question that you could utter aloud in that space, because unless you were just there like me, not enga—like, I didn’t like anything there. I had no fannish feelings about anything. I didn’t see James McAvoy? Who cares? [FK laughs] You know?
FK: Yeah, yeah yeah, sure.
ELM: You did, I got to witness you have a total nerd-brain meltdown, incredible, incredible scenes.
FK: Oh yeah, no, incredible scenes, I did enter a fugue, I would call it a fugue state.
ELM: Oh God. And, ah, you know, I think that you would be hard-pressed to deny that the way you acted at Comic-Con was not capitalist.
FK: Oh, it was absolutely capitalist, are you kidding? I was, I was, I was, I literally—
ELM: [overlapping] Right? No, yeah yeah, you’re not gonna deny it.
FK: No, I entered into a fugue state, and I was like, “Licensee of Paramount who makes this really awesome Star Trek clothing—”
ELM: [overlapping] Oh, I wasn’t, I wasn’t even talking about when you bought all those things.
FK: “—please take my money!” [laughs]
ELM: When your brain slipped out of your ears and then you purchased—all right, all right. Here’s what happened. [FK laughs] We were just like, wandering around the convention hall floor, and I’m like, “Where’s all the cute stuff, there’s nothing even cute here,” because sometimes there’s people selling non-fannish things that are cute.
FK: [overlapping] And we were, we were all together in our like, “None of this is that interesting to us, buh buh buh buh.”
ELM: Yeah.
FK: This is part of what was so striking about it, right, we were in a little group and we were all like, not impressed. [laughs]
ELM: Yeah. And we turned a corner, and you were like, “Ohh wooow.” [FK laughs] And then you, and the greatest thing about it was, they were this little booth that had all this Star Trek shit, it was all clothing, right, and they gave you, like, this sheet where you got to check off all the items that you wanted to purchase, so a little man in a booth could hand—like, package it all up for you.
FK: Hand it to you, yeah.
ELM: Like we were at Service Merchandise or something—is that before your time? I know because you’re younger than me, maybe you never went to Service Merchandise.
FK: I never did go, but I don’t know if it’s because I’m younger than you.
ELM: I don't know if they had them where you were. But it was basically like—
FK: Yeah, I don’t know. Anyway, whatever.
ELM: It was like, one of each item was behind glass, and you would like, get an order slip and then they would, like, get it from the back.
FK: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
ELM: Like Argos, in the United Kingdom, which is still very much alive. Anyway, you, with that pen in your hand and that sheet, just…just possessed, [FK laughs] you were like…
FK: I entered, I entered a nerd fugue! [laughs]
ELM: Yeah, first you were like, “Which badge, which patch should I get for my jacket?” And then the person working there was like, “They’re only $2!” and you were like, “OK, OK, OK,” and you’re over here checking off like 9,000 things. [FK laughs] But then the part where I was like, “Oh, Flourish is gone,” you were like, you were buying this jacket that was not cheap, and you were like, “Should I get the pants, too?” [FK laughs] And I was like, “What the f—” [laughs]
FK: I was, I was—you know, I regret nothing. [both laughing] I regret nothing, but, but…I will admit that it was, like, I got a brain-eating parasite. I took one look and I was like, “That’s for me!” [laughs]
ELM: It was so funny! And it was even better too because our other friend that was there, I think may be even like, a deeper…a deeper nerd about Star Trek than you, and was like, not having any of it. She was like, “I don’t want this.” [FK laughs] And I was like, “What’s going on?”
FK: I don’t care what she wants or doesn’t want! [ELM laughs] I wanted it, and I got it! But I mean how would I ever say that wasn’t capitalist, it was like, completely brain-free. And, later on, my… [laughs]
ELM: [overlapping] OK. I’m, I was not talking about that. [FK laughs] I was not talking about that, for the record, I just wanted to, like, lightly rib on you for like five minutes.
FK: Oh my God.
ELM: But I was talking about your enthusiasm about the corporate-presented panels for Star Trek, for example.
FK: Oh yeah!
ELM: Right? You know, like, I think that there’s no way to be in a space like that where it’s literally being presented by the corporation…you can’t sit there and be like, “Well, the way I engage with this is different, actually,” you know? [laughs]
FK: No, and it’s funny, because I know how the sausage behind it gets made, much better [laughs]...
ELM: Sure.
FK: Than almost anybody—not, maybe, there’s lots of people in Hall H who know that—than lots of people in Hall H at that time. [both laugh] You know, like, I know how the sausage gets made, it doesn’t fuckin’ matter. I wanted to see their faces on that stage, and hear them say canned things, some of which are probably actually untrue. [laughs] You know? Like, I still wanted that.
ELM: You think they’re lying?
FK: I know that people have lied on the Hall H stage many a time. So I can only assume that they are also lying about Star Trek things, because they’re certainly lying about a lot of other things.
ELM: They wouldn’t lie to you, Flourish.
FK: They would. But it’s fine, I don’t care, they can abuse me. [laughs]
ELM: Wow.
FK: No, but this is my point, right? I mean whatever, it’s easy for, if we’re both experiencing that total distance from the discourse, the majority of people who are engaging there, they’re not thinking about, like, their positionality as a fan vis-à-vis corporate America or capitalism or anything else. And not even necessarily because they don’t hold political views or anything, just because…that’s just not the way they’re engaging with it at all. [laughs]
ELM: Right. Right. And so this is interesting, because I feel like…I don’t know, I mean bringing it back to the fanfiction thing, I wonder if part of the reason that people in fanfiction fandom do talk about this is because it feels a little bit hypocritical.
FK: Mmmm. Mmmm.
ELM: Right? Like, there’s no way to deny if you are like, just eager for the next—eager to buy the pants and the jacket, like, there’s no way to spin that. You’re in. Right? You are…
FK: I’m not, yeah, I am not trying to spin it. [laughs]
ELM: Yeah.
FK: I am the kind of dumbass who has hunted down Star Trek glassware that appeared on screen and purchased it on Ebay. Like, I’m them. They’re me. [laughs]
ELM: Flourish, there’s so much going on here, right. Whereas like, in fanfiction fandom, I do think there’s a tension, and I think we’ve talked about this a lot recently, but like, the kind of…the way that certain arguments about the transgressiveness or the punk nature of fanfiction have gotten kind of reified or codified, and that looks kinda weird, when you’re like, super excited about the next Marvel movie or next Star Trek installment or whatever, and you’re like, “My existence as a fan is about like, sticking it to The Man and the gift economy, yeahhh.”
FK: Well, yeah, and I think that’s also part of what makes it vulnerable to some of these…like, what I would frankly think shades into purity-culture critiques, right?
ELM: Sure.
FK: Because if you’re already saying “Yeah, I’m committed to all of this stuff, I know that my fandom is a little bit of a trash fire because of X, Y and Z,” then the natural thing to go is to be like, “Well, if you know it, if you know that you’re a trash fire for this, why are you still doing it? You have a choice!” You know? [laughs] You can not do it. And I think that ultimately when you follow that to its logical extreme, which most people are not, but some people are, you get to a place where you almost can’t make art of any kind or engage with culture in any way, because it’s not sufficiently punk, it’s not sufficiently pure, you know, whatever. Not everyone’s at that dark place on the path, but it is a path that goes to a dark place, potentially, if you follow it all that way.
ELM: Yeah. I mean, I think that if you do follow it all the way, I don’t know what you’re—yeah, you can’t, I mean like, what is, how are we defining “art” here? I think this takes us out of the—wow, it’s getting deep man, what is art? You know what I’m saying?
FK: Oh my God, Elizabeth. If we are at a “What is art?” place, I think that might be a sign from God that we need to take a little break.
ELM: Man, I was just in California, so I was thinkin’ a lotta…it’s like Don Draper out there, you know, you know what I’m talking about.
FK: [overlapping, laughing] At Esalen? Yeah!
ELM: No, I was like Don Draper in the early episode when he goes to Palm Springs and he winds up at a count’s orgy or something, do you remember?
FK: You know, very vaguely. [both laugh]
ELM: That left such an impression on me. I was like, that’s what I wanna do, that’s what I wanna be. I wanna be—
FK: [overlapping] That did not, that did not, I would not say it left an impression on me. [laughs]
ELM: Don Draper in the desert. Oh, because it’s like, it must be the second season, so it’s like, I also have a special affinity—because, all right, I’m gonna talk about Mad Men for one minute—they’re, you know, they’re in California a lot later, because of Megan, right, I hope that everyone listening has watched Mad Men. But, the few times they go early on because it’s Los Angeles in 1962, that’s exquisite. Like, late ’60s? Who cares. Early 60s? [kissing noise] Chef’s kiss.
FK: Elizabeth, I’m gonna talk to you in a minute, I need a break from you. [both laugh]
ELM: Me and Don.
[Interstitial music]
FK: All right, we’re back. Brief interlude. How you can support the podcast.
ELM: OK. Patreon.com/Fansplaining, that’s our Patreon, as everyone knows. You can pledge any number of dollars, including as little as $1 per month, and you get all sorts of great things! Like special episodes at $3/month; a very cute pin, I wore my pin on my Comic Con lanyard, it looked super cute. Shaped like a fan. Or for $10/month, we do a semi-regular Tiny Zine, and we are putting together one right now. So if you pledge within the next few weeks, you’ll be on the list, you’ll get one mailed to your house!
FK: Yay, and if you don’t have money, don’t want to support us that way, whatever, for whatever reason, you can also support us by sending in asks, comments, questions like this one, which sometimes we may sit on for several months but we will eventually respond to, almost certainly. And you can do that, fansplaining@gmail.com, there’s a form on our website, our ask box on Tumblr is open, we’re Fansplaining on Tumblr, Fansplaining.com, Fansplaining everywhere! Almost everywhere! Anyway, whatever, you can find us, send us asks, and spread the word about the podcast.
ELM: All right. For the future, you’re not gonna do that part.
FK: [laughs] But it’s not the future yet. So…I think that that is perfectly good and people can figure it out.
ELM: All right, and one more piece of business. While we were at Comic-Con, while I had that cute pin on my lanyard, and Flourish had theirs on their…jumpsuit, we’ll call it, I believe.
FK: Correct, that’s right.
ELM: We did a panel called “Listening to the Fans,” and the guests were: so I was the moderator, Flourish was one of the guests; we also had on Britta Lundin and Javier Grillo-Marxuach, who have both been guests on the show, both TV writers; we also had Sarah Kuhn, who is a novelist who’s written for a lot of big franchises in a lot of different genres; and Justin Bolger, who was on our last Comic-Con panel, who used to run social for StarWars.com.
So that was the panel, and it was about fan-creator interaction. Everyone on the panel currently is and has long-time been in fandom, really understands it from both sides, and just talking about like, how can creators actually listen to fans and it not be super reactionary? And how can fans talk to creators without like, making it seem like a hostage situation or whatever. [both laugh] So…I thought the discussion went really well, you guys gave really great answers, I don’t know how you felt as a panelist.
FK: [overlapping] Aw, thank you! I thought our discussion went great. No, I thought it was good too, genuinely.
ELM: And it was recorded, very graciously, by our friend Mary, and so we have put it up, I will include it in the show notes, it is on our YouTube channel that we use exclusively to put up videos of ourselves on panels.
FK: [laughs] Yeah, calling it a YouTube channel suggests—it’s more really like a YouTube repository for occasional videos.
ELM: [overlapping] Our YouTube repository. Yeah, we’re not, we’re not gonna become YouTubers. And so yeah, go to the show notes, or you can go directly to search Fansplaining on YouTube to find it. I would just recommend looking at the show notes. Some folks were saying in comments that they wished they had been able to go, so now you can see!
FK: Yaaaay!
ELM: All right. Back to the discussion though.
FK: Yeah.
ELM: So, this very interesting tweet crossed our feeds a few days ago, from this network of news accounts for the show American Horror Story and the Ryan Murphy franchise. And it was interesting, basically they were framing it almost like a labor dispute.
FK: Yeah, here, should I just read it?
ELM: Yeah, yeah yeah, why don’t you read it.
FK: OK. “Dear Ryan Murphy Television and FX Networks. As is natural for any long-running TV series, the AHS fanbase has shrunk significantly over time. In the show’s early years it made perfect sense to capitalize off of the ever-theorizing fans to drive up engagement and create hype about the forthcoming season.
“However, this radio silent approach no longer works. Die-hard fans are fewer and farther between than ever before. The overwhelming volume of TV in the current landscape has made interest in this legacy franchise harder to generate and sustain than it was in the past. Even what is leaked thus far about AHS season 11 has failed to stir excitement in a fandom that embraces the fact that the heyday of AHS is behind us.
“Had the few surface details we have so far come from Ryan Murphy himself, been published in the trades, or even been shared through the show’s official social media channels, it might have been a different story. The reach of those formal promotional avenues is far greater than any other.
“Unfortunately, the work of keeping the show relevant and talked about seems to have fallen squarely on the shoulders of the undyingly loyal news accounts this year. We’re the show’s cheerleaders, who play an important, if voluntary, role in the promotional ecosystem. We spend months on end, year round, thanklessly maintaining enthusiasm for the show.
“And we’re tired.
“We understand your prioritization of the currently airing spinoff, your desire to keep some surprises for us, and reluctance to announce anything prematurely in fear that it may change later, a la 2020’s AHS 10 cast announcement. But with all due respect, we cannot spin straw into gold. We struggle to attract a wider viewing audience to this show that we’re devoted to, when there is no news to draw them in with.
“As the fandom has become disengaged and partly jaded because of last season, which we acknowledge was the byproduct of earnest creative experimenting and an unprecedented global pandemic, the tidbits we’ve scraped together have failed to entice them. Even the surprising details and castings are met with indifference, on account of the lack of context or official confirmation accompanying them.
“And when formal announcements of these things do come—if last year is any indication, months down the line at the last possible second—the fandom shrugs them off in frustration. Before we are news accounts we are fans, and we speak for the fandom in saying that we’ve grown bored of having to excite ourselves.
“As a result, effective August 1st, we will not be posting about American Horror Story season 11 or about American Horror Stories season 2, until such a time comes that the mothership series receives an official overdue acknowledgement of its existence.
“This can come in the form of a logo reveal, a premiere date, a title announcement, a casting confirmation, plot details, the launch of a sweepstakes website, key art, or some other substantive form of promotion.
“We feel like our beloved show has been forgotten about. It is clear that you believe in the power of silence. The most respectful manner we can express our feelings in is to reciprocate that belief.
“Kind regards, the AHS News Accounts.”
And there’s like, 10 or 12 accounts, and more, who have signed this.
ELM: So. This is fascinating to me. Just fascinated.
FK: Yeah.
ELM: So here’s the thing. You think about people saying like, “Oh, you’re writing fanfiction and you’re doing, you’re actually doing labor for the corporation” or whatever, which I think is a bit of a panel 1 galaxy brain take.
FK: Yeah.
ELM: Or, as we’ve been saying a lot recently to each other, a smooth-brain take. Ensmoothened.
FK: [overlapping, laughing] My, we’re, we are saying this because I have been working hard to ensmoothen my brain lately. Just gettin’ out that fine grain sandpaper!
ELM: [overlapping] Yeah. You’re doin’ some labor for The X-Files.
FK: [overlapping] Bringin’ us to a high-gloss sheen. [both laugh]
ELM: Um, but. There’s a lot of nuance in what fans are actually doing for corporations, and when it comes to something like this, these people are genuinely doing labor for the corporation.
FK: Yeah! Like, straight-up labor. Like, not just “labor,” but like, labor in which the job that they’re doing has a direct…there is a person hired by the corporation to do basically the same job.
ELM: Right. And the person on the corporation’s side knows about these people, they work with them. Right?
FK: Absolutely, absolutely.
ELM: They are literally, like, unpaid colleagues, or paid by—poorly paid by the banner ad colleagues.
FK: Yeah.
ELM: So like, if you, if everyone, if all Captain America fanfiction got—I don’t know why I keep saying Captain America, that’s not an active franchise. [FK laughs] What’s one that’s currently going on that’s big? I mean it is, actually, there’s the new Captain America movie with the antisemitic title. But you know what I mean. I’m sorry.
FK: [laughs] The discourse didn’t totally miss you, it turns out. [ELM laughs] I love that you’re like, “I don’t, I didn’t absorb any discourse, but.”
ELM: I’m sorry, that one definitely did ping a few things for me. The…you know, who knows, whatever. Star Trek! Star Trek. You know?
FK: Sure.
ELM: If every single Star Trek fic tomorrow was deleted from the face of the internet and you know, wiped from the zines, right?
FK: Yeah.
ELM: I mean, maybe Star Trek is a weird example because I think that they know, I think they’d feel a little sad, but I don’t think they’d be like, “The marketing’s gone!” You know? They’d be fine.
FK: [overlapping] No no no no, they wouldn’t. But if every Star Trek update account and, like, person who cares about Star Trek who posts about it unpaid disappeared and stopped doing it, they would care! [ELM laughs] They would really care!
ELM: Right. And I mean, I assume you are also speaking from personal experience, not on that franchise, but on other ones, you.
FK: Oh, yeah!
ELM: How well are—if you’re allowed to say—you had personal contact with people who run these fan news accounts.
FK: Definitely. Yeah, absolutely, and there was like, deep—the AHS people are not wrong, that team of people, if they’re doing their job well, which I’m going to assume they are because I’m not gonna make any other…I’m just gonna assume that they’re competent, which may or may not be true.
ELM: Sure. Yeah.
FK: But I’m assuming that they are—they’re thinking about what they’re giving the update accounts, and why, and when, and they’ve made a calculated decision not to do it. You know? And that calculated decision may be because the update accounts are actually low priority compared to X, Y or Z other consideration. I’m not saying that it’s strategic and they have a greater plan that’s going to lead to success.
ELM: Sure.
FK: But you know, they’re not unaware. And in fact the update accounts, posts saying this, it’s not actually that ridiculous for them to do this. Like, they’re…
ELM: No! I don’t think it’s ridiculous at all, no.
FK: You know, I mean I’m sure that there’s people whose hackles are up as a result of this, being like “Oh yeah? Why are you, you shouldn’t be mad that we’re not giving you things, we give you things out of pure kindness!” But that’s not true. It’s not out of pure kindness. [laughs]
ELM: Right. So I feel like it’s interesting, because I feel like about ten years ago there was a lot of conversation about exploitative corporate practices, like, say, for example, running a fanart contest, and you pick the winner but actually they own the rights to all submissions.
FK: Sure, yeah.
ELM: Or not even, just like, “Oh, we got this from a fan artist, and they’ll just be thrilled that we’re gonna get permission to use it and that we’re gonna put it as the cover of the whatever,” right, you know?
FK: [simultaneous] “We used it!” Yeah.
ELM: But I feel like it’s interesting to see in the last ten years, I feel like there’s been so much stuff like these update accounts that have emerged, and have formed a symbiotic relationship, and now are just kind of like…a part of the structure of the entertainment industry, and no one ever really said anything, and no one’s really being called out until something like this.
FK: But also, I mean one of the reasons people aren’t saying anything or calling them out is that, like, the people who run these update accounts are also social media professionals who are doing this for their day jobs, too!
ELM: Sure.
FK: Like, not all of them, but a lot of them, you know? I have met many, and many people who have like...I mean I can think of a lot of people who have run some really O.G. update accounts, not called that at the time, who have since entered the entertainment industry in a variety of different ways, sometimes even in the franchises that they were involved in. I can think of a lot of people I know who started off by running something like this and then got connected up and entered, you know, fully into the world of getting paid to do this stuff.
Yes, it is definitely a weird symbiotic thing that no one’s talking about, but just as much as, like, all of those viral dog accounts that you love are…well, the ones that aren’t run by shady people in Russia somewhere, are run, a lot of them are run by social media professionals who are trying things out or like, think it would be fun to get an account up to a certain number and then sell it, or whatever.
ELM: Sure.
FK: A lot of that is also happening in this space. Which is kinda different from the fanfic space. [laughs] You know?
ELM: Extremely different, right? Or well, this also makes me think about what we’ve come to call metrics fan culture, right? You know, and there are BNFs who are organizing kind of…the general of the army, and I’m not just talking about ARMY, but you know.
FK: Yeah, yeah.
ELM: If there are hierarchical ranks and there are people who are giving orders to people about how you can trim up the numbers and various things, at this time, in this time zone, you need to be like, “Sign on for this action!”
FK: Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
ELM: You know, etcetera, right? One thing that we’ve always talked about with these folks is, there’s kind of dubious cause and effect thinking going on here. You say like “OK, I guess we could all stream at this time,” and like, what’s the underpants gnome? You know.
FK: Yeah, yeah yeah. [laughs] Yeah, underpants gnome.
ELM: What’s the name, what’s the underpants gnome, what’s step one?
FK: [overlapping] I don’t remember what the steps are.
ELM: [overlapping] Is step one “underpants gnome” or something like that? And step two is “?”, and step three—
FK: [overlapping] And then step three is “profit.”
ELM: —is “profit.” Profit, yeah.
FK: I mean I think that’s very true, I think that the other thing about this is, it almost doesn’t…it’s funny because as you were saying, the language of labor disputes and the idea of being really exploited by corporations is more real in contexts like update accounts, it feels very real, like there’s a direct connection.
ELM: Yup.
FK: But at the same time, it also feels like the people who are doing this are not necessarily going to be the ones being like, “We’re being exploited!” because there is a path to a career for a lot of them.
ELM: Mmm.
FK: Or they’re already on that path. It’s one of those things where it’s like, yeah, you’re being exploited, but it’s also, maybe it’s a fictional dream and only like two people get there, but some people are professionals and there is this fuzzy place where like, what is it? Is it professionalized, are you going there? And I think that’s really interesting, because I think that’s one of the reasons why you don’t see the same level of angst around that. Because there’s some level of, of…buy-in, I guess is the word I’m gonna say. You know?
ELM: This is interesting. I mean I don’t, I’m not questioning you, and I think you know more people in this space, but I don’t know, I would be curious to know if the majority of the people involved in fannish update accounts are actually trying to be, or actively working in parallel roles in social media.
FK: Oh, I don’t think the majority are, I just think there’s enough that there’s like, a…you know.
ELM: OK, but I think that there’s a good portion of people in the fic world who are also simultaneously or hoping to be in the pro media space, right, like…
FK: Mmm, that’s a good point.
ELM: One way I do think that these are similar is that I think that the way I could see this going down—and I don’t know if there’s been a response yet, maybe by the time this airs there will be—is the folks that they’re addressing on the corporate side being like, “OK.” You know? [FK laughs]
FK: Yeah!
ELM: Like…as they outlined in the thing, like, this is a lower priority, this is an older franchise—I did not realize there had been 11 seasons of American Horror Story, I feel like…that’s like, I was talking about, someone was telling me about something and made a reference to McDreamy, from the mid-2000s or 2000, whenever that show came on the air, from Grey’s Anatomy.
FK: Yeah, yeah.
ELM: And I was like, “Wait that show’s still on the air actually.” [FK laughs] I was like, “I know exactly the era you’re talking about,” but it was like, when it began. [laughs]
FK: [overlapping] Yeah, but also…we’re still in it! It’s like, God, what’s, there’s a bunch of stuff like this where you’re like “Wow, wait a minute, that was on for…oh, that crossed entire eras of culture.” [laughs]
ELM: [overlapping] I mean I guess like, 60 Minutes or The Simpsons or whatever doesn’t count here, but some shows you’re like, “15 seasons?” Anyway. Supernatural, that had 15 seasons, didn’t it?
FK: Well, yeah, I mean, it really, it really blew my mind when I realized that when Supernatural came on the air, YouTube was not a thing. [both laugh]
ELM: But anyway, I think that, so there’s a scenario in which the, you know, FX or whoever are like, “OK, this is a low priority for us, so end your sites.”
FK: Definitely.
ELM: And in that way, to me, that is how even though I feel like they have a different—a vastly different relationship to the creators, your average fic writer—
FK: Yeah.
ELM: That’s a way in which I actually feel they’re quite similar. Because I think that you do see, like, fanfiction fans, or all sorts of kinds of fans, say, like, [sighs] “God, I feel like I’m giving so much to this show and it’s not giving me anything back.” Right? “You know, I keep opening up my heart and they keep giving me shit, and I’m writing all this fic, it still sucks…”
FK: And they’re like, “OK.”
ELM: And the show does not care. They don’t care. Right, you know.
FK: Yup.
ELM: No one is ever gonna validate how much you’re doing for it, and if you’re looking for some kinda validation out of that, or for it to suddenly be good when it’s letting you down, that’s not gonna happen, and so you’ll see people being like, “I can’t do this anymore, I gotta, I can’t keep loving this show that doesn’t love me back, I’m gonna quit,” and it’s like…then quit. You know? [laughs]
FK: Yeah! And in that regard, that’s the regard in which I have a great deal of sympathy to the humorless, funless people who are like, “Capitalist! You jerks doing this capitalist dumb thing.” It’s like, yeah, it’s never gonna love you back, it’s true, if that’s what you’re looking for from this relationship, I don’t know, your relationship to this thing that’s owned by a corporation and that you’re like, contributing to, it is what it is, you know? You’re making that choice. [laughs]
ELM: It’s interesting though, because I mean I feel like…we, as a society, the society we live in, it’s like, how do we even…why do you find joy in the female…TIE fighter, is that the name of her ship?
FK: X-wing fighter.
ELM: What’s a TIE fighter? Is that the bad guys’ ship?
FK: [overlapping] It’s the Empire, that’s the bad guys, the TIE fighters are the bad guys.
ELM: [overlapping] Were there any ladies in those? That would be real equality.
FK: I don’t think so. But I don’t remember.
ELM: There was the tall lady though.
FK: Oh yeah, sure, there was Captain Phasma, of course. I mean, I think that she, no, I believe that she pilots a TIE fighter, but I don’t know, there wasn’t, I wasn’t like, sitting here going “Yeaahh” for her.
ELM: [overlapping] But she wouldn’t…she’s not a. I’m sorry, that would be so sexy.
FK: I’m pretty sure she does pilot a TIE fighter at one point. We can find this out, I don’t remember.
ELM: [overlapping] I wanna see it. I would like to see it.
FK: OK. Great. [ELM laughs] You know, all that you’re seeing is like, her head in a little window, so. I don’t know…
ELM: No, I wanna see her getting into the vehicle, that’s the point of fighter pilot media.
FK: [overlapping] Yeah, I don’t believe that we get to see that with her.
ELM: [overlapping] Is seeing them on the tarmac. I don’t know if they call it “tarmac” in Star Wars…
FK: [overlapping] Oh, yeah, yeah, with the like, the like, slightly, slightly stripped down, glistening…[laughs]
ELM: [overlapping] Oh my God, yeah, no, it’s, you gotta have, it’s important, like from the Alien franchise or whatever right, it’s important to have the flight suit like, half on, and then like, a…
FK: [overlapping] Yes! Obviously, central.
ELM: Yeah, and then like a white, a, like a white…muscle shirt.
FK: [simultaneous] White, like a white, yeah yeah yeah.
ELM: Or just a sports bra or something. That’s pretty important. It’s really important.
FK: [overlapping] Exactly. Absolutely. It’s very important. [ELM laughs] And then ideally you find some reason to do a pull up, like on some object nearby. Yeah.
ELM: OK. That’s great. Anyway. [laughs] I don’t know what I was talking about.
FK: [overlapping, laughing] Where’s my pull-up object? I need a pull-up object, [ELM laughs] can the wing of this plane work? Yes. Only…
ELM: Look, there are gentlemen who make literally every surface of the subway work, I think that the wing of a plane could work. [laughs]
FK: [overlapping] A pull-up object. [both laugh] Anyway, where were we? Where were we?
ELM: OK. Why…
FK: You were saying, what choice do we have?
ELM: Why, why…why were you moved to see…like, OK, isn’t that #feminism, isn’t that like, the girlboss, the space girlboss, right? Just to see…
FK: [overlapping] 2000%!
ELM: OK, so can you break that down? Do you have a—I’m not, you don’t have to interrogate your soul here, but do you have, have you thought about this?
FK: Yeah, I mean, I, like everybody else, grew up in a culture steeped in…I mean, this is the most common thing people say, but I think it’s true. I, like everybody else, grew up in a culture steeped in corporate properties that we watched and cared about, I watched Star Wars when I was a kid, and I, at the time, being assigned female at birth and not having the context to think about nonbinaryness, I was like, struggling to find people in that world that I related to, and I was upset to not have a fighter pilot that I thought was cool in there, and I guess I was upset because when I became an adult, it still, it rang some bell deep in my heart, you know? That I didn’t know was there. And there it was, you know? And I don’t think that I was, that was not a choice that I made, I wasn’t making a choice to be…you know, when I was ten and watching Star Wars—
ELM: [overlapping] A corporate simp. [laughs]
FK: Yeah! I wasn’t making a choice to be a corporate shill, and I don’t think I was making a choice to be a corporate shill when I felt a feeling about it later either, [ELM laughs] you know what I mean? And I don’t think anybody is. I mean, it’s a little bit being, like, “How, why, how are you supporting capitalism when you bought food the other day?” [ELM laughs] It’s like, it turned out that…
ELM: We do live in a society.
FK: We live in a society, even a freegan occasionally needs to buy some fucking food, [ELM laughs] you know? Like, the dumpster only gets you so far, my bro! [both laugh] Spoken as somebody who has done plenty of a dumpster dive in their life, you can’t get everything out of there. [laughs] So, you know, I mean it’s just, it’s one of those things, we live in a society.
ELM: [laughs] You were making fun of me for saying, “What is art?” [FK laughs] but you took us to, “We live in a society.” So I do not think you have a leg to stand on here. Absolutely not.
FK: You, you opened the doors to this and I walked through them.
ELM: [overlapping] Oh my goodness. It’s true. All right, in all seriousness though, we do live in a society, and yeah, you grew up watching Star Wars, but we also do get to decide how we spend our precious free time.
FK: [overlapping] It’s true.
ELM: You know, and I don’t think that anyone involved in the American Horror Story News Network…they didn’t have to be doing that, you know? Like, that’s voluntary, right, they love the show. You know?
FK: Yeah. I know.
ELM: You love Star Wars.
FK: The irony of all this is that I don’t actually love Star Wars that much, but. I did.
ELM: You love Star Wars.
FK: Sure.
ELM: How many Reylo words have you written, Flourish?
FK: I mean, a lot, but there’s a difference between loving Star Wars that way and…nevermind.
ELM: Sorry. You love Reylo. Sorry, I should have been more specific.
FK: [overlapping] OK. All right. Sure. [ELM laughs] Move on, this is, this is not important, move on. I just, I felt like I was being missed, I was being not seen, I needed to be seen, but that’s not the point.
ELM: Yeah, you love Boba Fett.
FK: [laughs] You have named a person who I feel less than nothing about. [ELM laughs] I understand that there are Star Wars people who feel a lot about Boba Fett—
ELM: [overlapping, laughing] Boba Fett? The lesbian representation in Star Wars?
FK: I don’t care! He’s nothing to me.
ELM: [overlapping] Don’t you remember? [laughs]
FK: He’s nothing to me. Go on.
ELM: Um…so, I think it’s partly about, some of this is partly about—and going back to the original question—about whether we feel the need to make excuses for the things that we’re choosing to spend our time on, right?
FK: Yeah.
ELM: And like, I don’t feel like I have to be particularly defensive about writing fanfiction about the X-Men, not least because that is not the only, my only engagement with literature, and if it was I’d be a little concerned for myself, because I don’t think that fixating on one and one thing alone is great. You know? If I was only reading a certain kind of literature, I would also feel that way.
FK: Yeah.
ELM: But I feel like that…I feel like there’s a closed-mindedness to saying…I feel like a lot of this is a reaction to the parts of fan culture that do feel like they just want more, just want more of the corporate stuff, “Give it to me, what’s Marvel gonna do next, who are they gonna cast, are they gonna cast my fave from another giant franchise in this giant franchise?” [FK laughs] And you’re like, “Free your mind, bro,” is this, you know what I mean?
FK: Right.
ELM: Is this all you can imagine, is like, the things you already know and how they’re gonna be repackaged? I think a lot of this is a reaction to that. Right?
FK: Yeah.
ELM: But, if your mind is free and this is just one thing you’re interested in and you’re, like, curious to see…I don’t know, I don’t even know what Marvel’s doing next, I didn’t go to that panel, but you know. [FK laughs] If it’s a part of a more balanced media landscape that you engage with—
FK: Yeah.
ELM: Then I don’t think you have anything to be defensive about. Because as we’ve said, I mean at least with the fanfiction example, no, your fanfiction is not supporting the corporation. [FK laughs] It’s not. And like, look, if I wasn’t writing X-Men fanfiction, I would not be writing, like, queer original fiction right now. I would like to write about the X-Men. That’s that. Right? I mean, I wanna write about Magneto, I don’t wanna write about the X-Men.
FK: Yeah, I mean I think there's also something to be said for like, yeah, everything…like, there’s nothing that we do that is actually an unmixed moral situation, right? The other thing about this is I think there’s this idea that you could…obviously some actions are better than others and sure, it feels great to support an indie creator and so forth, right, I’m not saying that any of that is not true, but there’s no action that we can take in this world, like, this is like Chidi and the almond milk, you know? In The Good Place, it’s like—
ELM: Oh wow, made by NBC, a giant corporation, [FK laughs] Flourish, you’re saying you consume that?
FK: Exactly, right? It’s like, yeah, actually every day, whatever, I live in New York City and I turn on my air conditioner at night so that I can sleep because it’s really hot right now here, and that’s definitely helping kill the planet, and sure, big corporations do more but, like, I’m contributing, and that’s bad. And like, OK, you know, what do you say to that?
ELM: I’m hot. [laughs]
FK: Yeah! I mean, I’m gonna sleep, I need to sleep! [laughs] I’m gonna choose to sleep, I’m not gonna go out and get myself a composting toilet so that I use like, a gallon less water a day or whatever, you know what I mean? Like, there’s all of this…I think there’s an extreme level, a purity-culture level, that…we just, we have to acknowledge that everything that we do is mixed. And you can still make choices within that. But it’s gonna be mixed, and that’s OK.
ELM: Right, and I mean, I don’t think like…if you bring the purity-culture element, there was a really good thread about fans as consumers and the source of purity culture that I wonder if we could dig up for the show notes. But it was talking about how fandom is, at its heart, about consumption, and it wasn’t saying about monetary, you know, wasn’t framing consumption as that, but it is, right. But consuming the material—
FK: [overlapping] Reading, taking it in, it’s primarily about that.
ELM: [overlapping] In addition to, obviously parts of it are monetary, right, and when you’re taking it in you’re maybe monetarily supporting the corporation or whatever, etcetera etcetera. But it was talking about the purity-culture element, saying it’s you are what you eat, so if you start to think like, “I’m consuming it, it’s inside of me, but it’s morally bad, it’s got problematic depictions of things, so then it’s me,” right, which is a theme we were also talking about a couple episodes ago, saying people really taking on this mantle of identifying and internalizing themselves as a certain type of fan.
FK: Right.
ELM: And so if you can distance yourself from that, then maybe you’ll actually be good, and in fact that does not determine goodness in the world. Like, not being an asshole—
FK: Yeah.
ELM: And doing good, and being good to other people.
FK: Right.
ELM: That’s, that’s the way to do it actually, it’s not that you read the most pure, [FK laughs] anti-capitalist media.
FK: Well and I mean I was gonna say, there’s also, we’ve been talking this entire time from an anti-capitalist point of view, there’s also a bunch of people out there who’d be like, “I think capitalism is good actually,” you know? [laughs]
ELM: I don’t know those people at this point.
FK: Those people totally exist and like, I have, they exist in fandom, they exist in the world, I have met many of them, like…
ELM: You’ve met a lot of—how many capitalists have you met, Flourish?
FK: You know, I mean I’m just saying, there’s, there’s also this other section of, what does this even like…
ELM: Like, “Who cares?”
FK: I hate to bring it in at the end, but it’s true also that this is not everybody’s perspective on this whole question.
ELM: Yeah, but I think it’s hard within, you know, we’re talking about…we don’t have time to go into all this, but when you have these giant corporations and you look at the state of copyright, and the way that—we’ve talked about this—the way that people think about characters and stuff…
FK: [overlapping] Oh, yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah. Of course. It’s hard to—
ELM: [overlapping] It’s gross. It’s gross and sad. You know what I mean? Like…
FK: [overlapping] It’s hard for even very pro-capitalist people, I think, tend to be like, “Yeah…does it have to be like that?”
ELM: [overlapping] Yeah, so that’s why I’m saying, I’m saying we need to disrupt that. And if we put Hermione on the blockchain…
FK: OK. We’re done. That’s the end of this episode. The—you invoked it once and you said it wasn’t coming back, [ELM laughs] and then you lied to me, and it came back. Get the fucking blockchain out of this episode.
ELM: I just, I, Flourish, have you heard the good news about crypto?
FK: Elizabeth, I’m hanging. Up. On. You.
ELM: This is where you need to free your mind, man. [laughs] No, I, I—
FK: [overlapping] Absolutely not.
ELM: [overlapping] I think crypto is the worst thing in the world, just wanna get that on the record before we— [laughs]
FK: [laughing] OK, I’m glad, I’m…I’m…I’m glad that you did that, I’m still hanging up on you.
ELM: [overlapping] Imagine, imagine if I just left it at that and everyone thought I had just taken a really sharp turn in the last two weeks. I went to California, I went to the Crypto Arena and they converted me. [laughs]
FK: [overlapping] Elizabeth… It’s sort of been nice talking with you, until the last two minutes. I’m gonna talk to you later. Bye.
ELM: [overlapping] Bye, bye, Hermione on the blockchain.
FK: NO!
[Outro music]