Episode 181: The Illusions of Crowds

 
 
Image cover: Photograph of a herd of sheep with a single sheep centered staring straight at the camera. Black Fansplaining fan logo in top corner.

In Episode 181, “The Illusions of Crowds,” Elizabeth and Flourish discuss a listener letter about the ways fans convince each other of interpretations or outcomes—and what happens when creators are on a very different page. Who’s responsible for mismatched fan expectations? Should fandom hold some responsibility for wishful but ultimately misleading theories? They also respond to a follow-up letter from a fanbinder about the fanworks “gift economy,” and how its meaning has shifted in the era of ~hustle culture~.

 

Show Notes

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

[00:00:54

Still photograph of Mystiue from the X-Men flying through the air while handcuffed, and the suited men who were interrogating her cowering in terror.

[00:01:16] Episode 179: “Fan Labor, Fan Consumption

[00:10:08] Flourish’s independent-game-making friend is Jeeyon Shim, and you can check out her Patreon here

[00:14:54] Our interstitial music throughout is “Decompress” by Lee Rosevere, also used under a CC BY 3.0 license.

[00:16:01] Friends of the podcast! Our newest Tiny Zine features ficlets by Flourish as well as two past (and repeat!) guests: Betts (#118, “The Craft of Writing (Fanfiction),” #171, “OFIC Magazine”) and Britta Lundin (#43, “A Fangirl Goes to Hollywood,” #73, “Ship It”).

[00:18:50] We talk about queerbaiting a fair bit, but we tackled it head-on in Episode 139: “The ‘Q’ is for Queerbaiting.” 

[00:30:38]

 
 

[00:38:20]

Animated gif of the ensemble cast of The Bear sitting down at a long table for a meal

[00:42:24] Phoebe Robinson’s piece on the aforementioned 2016 episode of How To Get Away With Murder began: “Let me just start by stating that THIS IS THE SINGLE GREATEST MOMENT IN BLACK WOMEN TELEVISION HISTORY.”

[00:43:17] Lindy West spoke to the troll impersonating her dead father in this 2015 episode of This American Life.

[00:47:06

Animated gif of Brian Slade from Velvet Goldmine

[00:55:37

Drawing of the Kool-Aid man with the speech bubble "OH, YEAAAHH!"

[01:02:16] PERHAPS FLOURISH SHOULD WATCH THE OTHER TWO!!!

 
Screencap of Carey from The Other Two in front of a green screen. Subtitle reads: "In more Gay News, Laura Dern was spotted kayaking -- "
 

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 #181, “The Illusions of Crowds.”

FK: A very tantalizing title. But before we get into the body of the episode…

ELM: You don’t wanna say anything about it?

FK: Nope, I feel like it is, um…it is perfect as it is, people are gonna think about it and wonder. [ELM laughs] I like this…mystique.

ELM: Mmm, I love Mystique, she’s great.

FK: OK. But, before we get to the body of this episode, we have a letter that we wanted to respond to that is relevant to one of our recent episodes.

ELM: Yeah, so, the episode before last—last episode was our anniversary, you may recall—the one before that was about, was called “Fan Labor, Fan Consumption” and it was about a bunch of things, but the instigating letter was about the…the idea of the fandom gift economy kind of being, you know, the philosophical principle that people often cite in fandom, but we saw increasing numbers of people being critical of, like, writing fanfiction about properties owned by giant corporations and that sort of thing. That, like…how do those things…tension between those things, basically.

FK: Right. And so this person, who I think you say their name “Desmothene,” and I’m really sorry if I’m pronouncing it wrong, wrote in with—I’m not gonna call it a corrective, but I will say, a really helpful addition to some of what we had said in that episode. So, would you be so kind as to read the letter, Elizabeth?

ELM: I would love to do that. All right. So Desmothene writes: 

“I think that you are correct about the meaning of the ‘punk’ fandom gift economy being less about transgressive content than it previously used to be. However I do think that the concept and meaning of the ‘fandom gift economy’ has pivoted towards one that is anti-capitalistic—aka, not explicitly profiting from your fandom creative activities. It seems more intentional than it used to be, because there is a choice now (more than there was before) to join or not join the hustle. You can have a Patreon for your fanfiction works; selling fanart and fanwork is more normalized than before. 

“A lot of people explicitly choose not to. I do a particular type of fancrafting that I have sunk hundreds of dollars into, and I do it for free. I offer related gifts to authors for free, and I don’t do commissions. I’ve had a lot of people say that I should sell my work, and I just don't want to. The authors that inspire my work (likely) did so for free, and I intend to gift back freely in return, and I don’t really want to taint my hobby and my fandom engagement with money. I don’t want it to be a job. 

“I freely admit that there’s a privilege to that choice—I am financially stable enough to do this. I try not to begrudge those who need to do so, but I also don’t want that mentality to be part of my own personal fandom experience. I also know people who take fandom commissions with pricing strictly based on materials and shipping so that they can continue the hobby, and that’s how they do their best to keep it within the fandom gift economy sphere. 

“Anyways, I think that was all just supposed to support my perception that the fandom gift economy nowadays is more about intentionally divorcing certain aspects of fandom from the capitalist sphere. Most people, I think, are aware that it’s not fully possible to do this, especially in terms of what was discussed in this episode. But when so many creative skills are about the hustle or are pressured to be something ‘marketable,’ there’s a pressure release in intentionally choosing not to do so. 

“Thank you for the episode!! I think it's a fantastic discussion.”

Um, and then when we asked if we could read this on the air, they said yes, and added: 

I should probably mention this isn’t just a me thing! I’m part of an international community of fanbinders and as a group, we explicitly subscribe to the fandom gift economy as a guiding principle for our work.”

FK: I think this is, this is a really great addition. Thank you, Desmothene. It really puts the finger on something that I think I wasn’t, wasn’t at the forefront of my mind, which is that unlike in the past, now so many of the kinds of things that fans do are really kind of indistinguishable from other forms of cultural production, right? Like, I load a fanfic onto my Kindle and I read it, exactly like I read, I don’t know, a romance novel or a literary novel or anything else. You know? There are people making gifs and so forth for the major television shows and so forth, the same way fans used to do for free for fun. I mean obviously, you know, we can argue about the quality of those gifs and whether we’d rather consume ones from fans or not, but like…it’s still all on that playing field, right? People who craft things, some people are selling them and some people are not, and you can’t really necessarily tell which is which based on, like, looking at a picture of it, and I feel like that’s…I mean, that really undergirds, it does make it more powerful to say like, “I could sell this, and I’m actively choosing not to, I am giving it back to people. Be free, I’m opting out.” Right? There’s a real choice there.

ELM: Sure. Yeah, no, I think so, I mean obviously I agree with you and I agree with everything in this letter, and I do think that, you know, it was a bit of an oversight of us not to bring this up in the initial discussion. You know, I mean I also think that culture on a whole is wildly different than it was even a decade ago, let alone a few decades ago, in this regard, right? I mean whatever, I walk down the street to the subway and there’s a man who sells poems for like $1, right, you know…

FK: Yeah.

ELM: That’s not to say that that wasn’t… [FK laughs] …an option, certain people were doing that 30 years ago also. But there’s definitely been this vast, vast overhaul of the way that people frame any sort of hobby or artistic pursuit on the internet, that’s, um, like, super depressing and bums me out on a daily basis.

FK: Yeah, absolutely, I mean obviously there are people for whom hustle culture is like…yeah, they need the hustle, they need it to make rent, they’re hustling for a very, very clear and pressing reason, because they need money. But I do, I can’t shake the feeling that there are also a lot of people who are hustling either because they sort of view money as, like, the way to keep score and to tell if they’re doing OK, and that’s the only way they know if they’re succeeding? 

ELM: Mmm hmmm.

FK: And there are other people who are, I think are doing it just because they think that that’s just what you do. That’s just the norm. They don’t necessarily need the money from their side hustle, but they, you know, feel like they have to, or they need to or that’s the only way you can have anything that you do in your life other than your day job, [laughs] is if it’s a side hustle. And I find that super depressing.

ELM: Yeah, if it can be monetized, it should be, you know? I guess part of me thinks, is this so new? Obviously the channels to do so are new, and the pervasiveness is new, but you know, the old chestnut, if you’re at a cocktail party and say you’re a writer and they ask what you published, right, you know? As opposed to, like, you could just be a writer, and it’s a non-monetized hobby, and why couldn’t you say that?

FK: Sure, but—

ELM: That’s not super new, I feel like there’s always the…if people spend a lot of time doing stuff, like physical crafts that you could have sold in a pre-internet era, like a woodworker or something, right, I think there’s always been some element of people who devalue that as the idea of like—being productive for fun basically seems weird to people, because their fun is much more passive and doesn’t produce a product. 

FK: Yeah, I mean, I…I think that you’re right, but I do feel like it’s become more culturally central recently. 

ELM: Oh yeah! 

FK: I mean there’s been a lot of stuff about this, the ads that are about your side hustle and all this stuff, right, and all of that just sort of throws fuel on the fire. So…

ELM: Yeah, yeah, I mean I think that Etsy has been life-changing for so many people who wanted to sell things, but also very tedious addition to the like…I mean I, I’m not a person who makes crafts, but you are, someone who… [FK laughs] crafts things, and I’m sure it’s annoying to receive the like, “Why don’t you sell this?” comment on something that’s beautiful that you just wanna have in your home that you made for yourself.

FK: Not to mention that with a lot of this stuff, I mean I am sure fanfiction is like this also, it’s like why don’t I sell this sweater I made? Because no one can afford to buy it. 

ELM: Right.

FK: Like, we’re talking—you know, right, I made this thing, it cost like, $200 of very, very fancy wool, and then I spent 200 hours on it [ELM laughs], and so if you’re gonna pay me, you know, probably more than minimum wage, because I have spent many years learning how to knit and so forth—and this is in fact a very difficult thing to do—pretty soon, if you don’t have thousands and thousands of dollars to spend on a sweater, then you’re not gonna be buying a sweater from me, right? [laughs]

ELM: Right, right.

FK: And I mean, I guess there are people who would say like, “I’m gonna be writing the fanfic anyway, so if I enjoy it then why not see if people want to, you know, chuck me some money?” and I’m not, I don’t wanna be down on that, I think people can make their own choices, but I do really respect what Desmothene is saying here about choosing to opt out if you can afford to do so.

ELM: Yeah, no, absolutely, 100%. I mean, like, it’s an important callout, too, and I think that you’re saying that too, with hustle culture, there are some people for whom…I mean, that’s why I don’t like framing that as hustle culture, that’s your job! Right? You know, a hustle is like [doing a shady voice] a side—”I’m doing something on the side,” you know? [FK laughs] “I’m already makin’ this so why don’t I just sell it too, right?” I don’t know why I had to do this kinda jazzy voice here, but like…

FK: I, no, I get the jazzy voice, the jazzy voice feels like an important part of this character.

ELM: Right, yeah, yeah, I got some fics for you right here. 

FK: Right.

ELM: But like, no, I wish that actually more people just framed that as their job, and not a “side hustle.” I mean yeah, it could be an additional steam of income, but there’s something very, like…the word “hustle” even has a…

FK: Yeah, a, it makes it smaller.

ELM: [overlapping] It has a connotation. Yeah, it’s, it makes me feel like you’re selling fics out of a trenchcoat, you know, you’re like, [doing the voice again] “Hey, I got a few streams goin’ here,” you know, “You like hurt/comfort over here?” 

FK: [overlapping] Totally, yeah. And it really does downplay people for whom this is a big part, I mean I have a friend, Jeeyon, who’s an independent games maker, and her Patreon is I think right now her only form of income. And she works incredibly hard, and makes really incredible games, and…that’s really difficult. And she’s worked really hard to build that income stream and figure out how to make it all happen. Calling that a hustle—even though it’s something that a lot of people do for free and choose to do for free out of love, and that she chooses not to—that does seem like it sort of minimizes it. So.

ELM: Yeah, you know what’s interesting? It makes me think about the open-source community, and software engineers, and I don’t know if I’ve ever heard anyone describe an open-source project they created or worked on—for free, in their spare time—as a side, like, any of that language around, or an expectation. And I mean it’s easy to say, but I think one of the reasons that’s such an extreme example is because software engineers in their day jobs are compensated so well—

FK: Yeah.

ELM: And it’s also an expectation within the engineering community that you will do some pro bono work, essentially, right? 

FK: Yeah.

ELM: You know? At some point. Like, you’ll contribute to some projects, you’ll help this kind of community health, right?

FK: Yeah. Well, now that you bring that up, it’s interesting to me too because when I was a kid, my dad wrote computer programs, software, as, effectively, a side hustle. And made icons and things—we’re talking in the early 90s—he made shareware programs, and he made this like, set of beautiful butterfly computer icons that he had and stuff, and no one ever called that, to my knowledge, a—like, he’s never used the terms of hustle for that. Right? 

ELM: Yeah, yeah.

FK: He was like, “Yeah, I was the shareware software developer, and I was also working as a schoolteacher.” You know? It’s like, OK.

ELM: Right, right, right. So yeah, I think a lot of this, I think you were right earlier saying a lot of this is coming from the platforms that want people to, you know, like Patreon or Etsy or whatever, treating it like…or Fiverr or whatever, [FK laughs] all these ways that you can make a little money on the side. I mean, this is a little far afield of fandom at this point, too, but I do think that that language, and the platforms that people use to collect money for fan things, has infected the way people frame things in fandom. You know? 

FK: Yeah.

ELM: And…and I think the hustle language, and the vibes that it sends off, I think is one of the reasons why there’s such a clash within fandom, ‘cause it feels not just like, “Oh, I’m talented, I deserve money for my work,” but like, [doing the voice again] “Always gotta be turning my thing into a thing! You know? You know? You know?” [FK laughs] Like that, right? And I think that that’s not the way everyone frames it, but I wonder if that’s some of the tension you hear. Because I think that some people who do take money for fanworks are sort of like, “I’m talented, I need to pay rent, you like—” I don’t know, makes me think of like, the artists who take commissions from the furry community, right?

FK: Yeah!

ELM: Which is like, it’s partly a joke but partly very real, that they’re like, the furries are deeply reliable, they would love to spend their hard-earned extra cash—

FK: Excited!

ELM: On drawings of their fursona and other furries, right?

FK: God bless.

ELM: You know? And so like, when I see people talking about that, that just feels like a very, like, “Oh, that’s a nice artistic transaction,” [FK laughs] right, you know? It seems—

FK: [overlapping] What a great market that needs people to give it the thing it wants!

ELM: [laughs] Right? It seems a bit unencumbered from the kind of…I don’t know, these kind of clashing sort of ideologies that I think we see in fandom, around frankly somewhat similar…I think a lot of people who are taking commissions, for fanart in particular but also increasingly for fanfiction, don’t care about the source material very much at all, they’re just competent or talented artists, and they’re like, “Yeah, I can draw any character you want, $40 for a head, and $60 for their body” or whatever, you know those, the commission charts you see.

FK: Yeah, absolutely.

ELM: And like, yeah, maybe they’ll have a list of squicks or whatever, that they won’t draw characters doing certain things, but often it seems like they’ll draw any old character, and that, to me, is not really…that makes me question like, what is fanart then? You know? Does it have to be something you love so much that you draw a picture of, or is it just a drawing of…you know? What is fanart? What is fanart? [laughs]

FK: [overlapping] I do know, I feel like we’ve opened this giant can of worms here, and I’m afraid that we’re gonna have to set that aside for future conversation, because this is gonna be too much.

ELM: [overlapping] Fine…

FK: But Desmothene, this was obviously a great letter, because it got us going so much. [laughs]

ELM: Got a lotta thoughts here.

FK: So many.

ELM: Ah, yes, thank you, thank you very much for writing in. Should we take a quick break before we do the big letter for the episode?

FK: All right, let’s do it. Oh there we go, you dropped another hint. Yeah. The episode is a response to another letter.

ELM: You didn’t say that in the beginning?

FK: Nope!

ELM: [overlapping] All right, well—

FK: I was full of mystique. [laughs]

ELM: [laughs] Yeah, full of mystique. Breadcrumbs for you right here. OK.

FK: [laughs] All right.

ELM: Breaktime!

[Interstitial music]

FK: OK, we’re back, and on the topic of people having Patreons…dot dot dot…

ELM: [groaning] Wooow, wow, wow. What a hustle. What a side hustle. 

FK: [laughs] So the way that we make this podcast is through the support of listeners like you. We have a Patreon, patreon.com/Fansplaining, and right now it’s a particularly exciting moment in the life of our Patreon, because we’re about to release a new Tiny Zine! 

ELM: Let me tell you, because now we can say, so this Tiny Zine is a collection of ficlets from friends of the podcast/part of the podcast. [FK laughs] So we’ve got: Flourish, you’ve written an X-Files ficlet.

FK: Yes indeed.

ELM: We’ve got Britta Lundin.

FK: Woo!

ELM: Writing an Our Flag Means Death ficlet. And we have Betts!

FK: Woo!

ELM: Who, um…I do not know yet, we are awaiting, we are going to slot Betts’ in as the final one. I don’t know what fandom yet, but you know Betts, [FK laughs] prolific fic writer. You know her.

FK: Yeah. Founder of OFIC Magazine.

ELM: Yes. Um, so, I think it’s a charming little, you know, charming little Tiny Zine, as always. But we’re excited we got guest contributors once again.

FK: Yeah, and that is a reward for the $10/month patrons. There’s also cute little Fansplaining pins for $5/month patrons, a lot of special episodes, basically anything that you are willing to pledge, we really, really appreciate it, and it helps enable us to make this, to pay our transcriptionists, etcetera, etcetera. But if you don’t want to, or can’t afford to, give us any money, there’s other ways that you can support the podcast.

ELM: Yes, there are. So, the best way that you can support us non-monetarily is by spreading the podcast. We have—as the transcriptionists that are being paid by the Patreon create transcripts for every episode—on Fansplaining.com you’ll find that each episode has the audio, the full transcription, and show notes on the day that it comes out. You know, because we’ve had over the years a lot of different reasons that people would rather read than listen, and so we’d love to find more—I was about to say more listeners, but we don’t want more listeners, we want more Fansplaining…uh…“consumers” sounds so cold, you know? I don’t know.

FK: [laughs] Readers! Audience members.

ELM: [overlapping] Yeah, Fansplaining audience members, people who are gonna join the conversation. That is the other way that you can help us out, is by, like our letter-writers here, sending in your thoughts. Fansplaining@gmail.com is probably the best way to do it, or if you want to have your voice on the air, you can call our voicemail: 1-401-526-FANS. You could also leave us questions on our website, Fansplaining.com; on Tumblr, Fansplaining.tumblr.com, anon is on in our ask box; in all these places you can remain anonymous, just say so or use a pseud. And you can also follow us for more updates, maybe little preview pics of the Tiny Zine, on Twitter and Instagram.

FK: All right! With that said, since we just talked about letters, shall I read the letter that’s gonna kick off the body of our episode?

ELM: Yeah, let’s do it!

FK: All right. So this is from an anonymous person:

“There’s a phenomenon that I’ve been thinking about for a while, and don’t know if you’ve talked about in any of your episodes. But it’s something that’s been on my mind for a few years now, and might as well bring it up and get your thoughts if you find it an interesting enough topic to cover. 

“We’ve talked ad nauseum in fandom about queerbaiting—the practice where creators tease queer representation but don’t ultimately deliver on it. I want to be clear that I do believe queerbaiting exists, and I’m more inclined to assign queerbaiting to creators now than I ever have been, since it’s been openly discussed as a problem in mainstream media for so many years. 

“However, being a fandom old, I’ve sometimes struggled with the way that some fans, often younger but certainly not always, ascribe the term to creators making content that began in the aughts or earlier. I lived through the decades where there were virtually no examples of queerness anywhere—not even as side characters or with the main characters being allies. Some things we might today call queerbaiting at the time seemed like a confused but often friendly nod of acknowledgement to queer fans who showed up to what the creators themselves didn’t think of as a piece of queer media. Where the creators, in many cases rightfully, seemed to recognize they were probably not up to respectfully handling queer representation, or weren’t at a place where they felt allowed to even consider it. 

“I don’t at all resent the people who were hurt by the expectations of, say, a queer ship going canon, or were shocked that a queer character is killed off. But so often with major franchises, I found myself looking around at the rest of the fandom in bafflement. Confused why, if these fans didn’t want to be hurt, they hitched their expectations to creative teams with no real understanding of queer themes or experiences, or expected a same-sex romance from media made at a time where queer people were barely allowed to even exist onscreen. From creators who so often behind the scenes had really bad track records with handling representation of all kinds. 

“I do want to acknowledge that we’re currently living in a world where representation is much better. But that’s also led, I think, to some confusion, and to me experiencing the phenomenon that I’m writing in about, which I’ve dubbed ‘fandom gaslighting.’ 

“I experienced this a few years ago in The Magicians fandom—I’d watched the entire first season when it came out and decided that it had some problematic stuff I didn’t love, seemed a little too smug, it just wasn’t for me, and moved on. Fast forward several years and several seasons later, almost everyone in my social media feeds is yelling about how this is the best queer representation ever, everyone has to watch this show, this is going to be the one that waters our queer crops, clears our queer skin, etc. 

“So I check it out again. And it is cool! The lead is definitely kissing other dudes. There’s a lot of iffy stuff going on in terms of representation, and just as much if not more textual evidence that the queer ship everyone’s pinning their dreams on isn’t going to be endgame. But it’s still really nice to see, and I can hang out with the rest of the fans and ship it up anyway. 

“But slowly, the fandom started to really devolve into being one of the more discourse-heavy fandoms I’ve ever seen (at least the corners that I somehow ended up in), with tons of meta devoted to ‘proving’ that the ship was going to be endgame. There was even a lot of harassment aimed at anyone who tried to warn people the ship might not be endgame, or calling out other aspects of representation that were mishandled and seemed like red flags. Eventually those voices left or stopped speaking, and there were only a few left and they were sort of ostracized. 

“And over time, even though I always had my misgivings, I started second guessing myself and my perceptions of just how good the creators were at being allies, and how likely this ship was to become actual endgame. Could this many other people, queer people like me, many of them fandom olds themselves, be wrong? Maybe I was the one who was wrong! I’m not the only one capable of perceiving what is and isn’t good representation. I can’t be right all the time! So slowly, even though I still recognized problems with the show, I let my guard down and started to actually believe. 

“Long story short, in case any of your listeners aren’t aware, the ship decidedly did NOT become endgame. And while I wasn’t in danger or anything, and while I know it's ‘cringe’ to admit to being affected by media this deeply, it definitely had a temporary effect on my mental health and overall mood and feelings about representation, in a big way. On one level, I absolutely agree that the creative team did a lot wrong. They really did, there are things that they tried to handle in that show that they had no business trying to address, with handling of queer relationships and identity being only one small piece of a very big pie. 

“But the other people I still harbor resentment for, to this day, are my fellow fans in that fandom. Because I absolutely know that I never would have gotten that invested in the idea this was going to be the One True Piece of Good Queer Representation without a campaign to get more viewers (some people passively just reblogging or writing fic, as fans do, but some people actively involved in trying to recruit other queer fans to the fandom and ship). And I’m even more resentful of the rest of the fanbase who actively tried to defend the show, even to the point of harassing fellow fans voicing alternative interpretations. 

“When I look back at other fandom meltdowns like Supernatural—how many people expected Destiel to go canon, how many people believed that from when they were as young as middle school, barely able to process the finer points of media literacy or any larger cultural context. Or at how there are little fandom wars popping up right now over things like whether Good Omens is amazing rep or just another form of queerbaiting. Or at how the Our Flag Means Death fandom seems to have made the executive decision that the show doesn’t just provide great queer rep, but also should be praised for having great neurodivergent rep, too? 

“I find myself seeing more examples of where this likely has happened and might be happening again now. And I wonder how culpable we are, as fans, for the way we portray a given piece of media to other fans. Not just with queerbaiting, but with other forms of representation, too. How many times have we seen white fans praise a piece of media for its supposed BIPOC diversity, for example, with most white fans being completely unqualified to bestow that status? 

“So my question is, where’s the line? When does misrepresenting media to fellow fans become accidental versus predatory? When are we responsible, as well as creators, for misrepresenting what to expect from a piece of media, especially in regard to vulnerable identities? When are we allowed to be as angry at our fellow fans for recruiting us into fandoms, ships, or interpretations/predictions of media as we are at media creators? 

“Thanks, Fansplaining!”

And that was from anonymous. 

ELM: Thank you very much, anonymous. There’s so much here. So much. 

FK: [laughs] There absolutely is.

ELM: [overlapping] So much. All right, I don’t…I don’t know, do you have a place you’d like to start? Flourish Klink?

FK: Yeah, you know, one of the things that’s really striking me here, and I’m gonna call back to the title of this episode, is how much this has to do with sort of…large numbers of people influencing each other’s ideas about what a show is, and how that’s something that I’m not sure was possible until social media. 

ELM: Yeah, I absolutely, I mean you’re immediately making me think of like…could stuff like this happen in an era of smaller fandom…you know, an era with fewer people in fandom, or even in the pre-internet era?

FK: Mm hmm.

ELM: You know, I’m thinking it could happen on a small basis, you could have a small group of friends totally convince each other that their interpretation of something was right. [FK laughs] Um…and that it was totally gonna happen, right?

FK: [laughs] Yeah, but in that case it’s also, I think there’s more outs to it. Because if you’ve seen just one person who you know really well, then you’re like, “OK, yeah, but…you know, they’re a Pollyanna.” You know this about your friends, like, someone hates everything, someone loves everything, and you begin to sort of be like, “Is that true?”

ELM: Sure, but it could also be, like, someone who sees the same things in the media that you see. I don’t know, I’m thinking back to like…because I was a lurker in the 2000s, so I guess I did see some conversations, but most of the time my theorizing about Harry Potter was done with just my best friend in high school. And I think that, I think I could easily convince her of many theories. You know?

FK: [laughs] A folie à deux. Like, aaahh!

ELM: [overlapping] Um…I…to my credit, I think that my theories were based on a more generous…interpretation of the talent of the creator of those books.

FK: For a second there I thought you were just gonna say, “My theories were based.” [both laugh] I was like, “Oh, all right.”

ELM: My theories were based, man, they were pretty good! Little did I know, how smooth-brained she was. [FK laughs] But anyway, continue.

FK: Right, whereas…but I think that in that case, it would sort of be like, one would feel upset about the fact that you had sort of…convinced yourself of this, but I think that would feel more like a sort of culpability, like an individual culpability. Like, “Why did I let myself get convinced, why did I talk myself into it?”

ELM: [overlapping] Yeah, yeah! Yeah, she could’ve come back to me and be like, “Why did you, why did you put that idea in my head when it so obviously wasn’t what was gonna happen?”

FK: “And why did I believe it? I’m such a—” You know? [both laugh] 

ELM: Yeah, yeah, right.

FK: [overlapping] Whereas with this I think, I do think that there’s something that the author is pointing to, which is that sort of self-doubt of like, “It feels like everybody on the internet has a totally different read on this than me, and maybe they’re right and I’m wrong! If I’m the only one and there’s thousands of people out there all agreeing with each other, then actually maybe I might be wrong.” [laughs]

ELM: Yeah. I think there are so many instances in fan culture, particularly at the scale we’re at now, where people wind up in relatively isolated…I mean, it’s interesting thinking back to the last episode, we had people mentioning Discord a bunch, and thinking about how actually that’s a perfect echo chamber if that’s most of where you’re doing your theorizing, because you literally— I mean that’s part of the reason people talk about going to places like Discord, is so they don’t have to deal with people’s terrible drive-by opinions or harassment, right, from out in the big wide world. But it also could be a, a perfect breeding ground for this sort of echo chamber stuff. 

But even out in the main internet, I think you can wind up in a pretty cloistered fandom space, and I think it’s—absolutely I understand, and this isn’t unique to fandom, we see this all the time with politics, and conspiracy theories about politics or about the world in general. You look around and you see what literally everyone else…”This many people can’t be wrong, we all see it, we’re all here seein’ it,” you know? Right? [FK laughs] It’s like, I regret to inform you, that many people can be wrong, and actually, they’re just reinforcing each other. This has been widely, widely cited with conspiracy theories, for sure.

FK: Right, and one of the hard things about that is when you get to that idea of culpability, or misrepresenting media to fellow fans becoming accidental versus predatory, it’s like, I totally see why it feels predatory, to have a large number of people kind of gaslighting you about what this is, and to have your mind changed in that way. 

But it’s sort of like…I don’t know, it makes me think about being an individual and being hurt by something that someone online said, and clapping back at them. Rightfully, righteously, right? And then discovering that you’re now one of 20,000 people who have clapped back at them, and then getting caught up in, like, a dialogue about how this person is very bad, and so forth. That kind of like…a thing where stuff snowballs, and the sheer number of people taking part in it means—no, actually every individual was genuinely hurt by whatever the original instigating incident said, and their feelings are not wrong—but taken collectively, we’ve got a problem. [laughs] Because like, that weight is too big. 

And similarly here, right, I don’t think that you can say that…is it predatory to have a bad reading of something? [laughs] No, it’s not predatory for an individual usually. I mean, OK, maybe in certain circumstances. But like, mostly I think people are just self-deluding because they want something so bad.

ELM: Yeah, OK, so…that brings me to what I wanted to say, but you invoked the phrase “fandom gaslighting.” I would push back against letter-writer on the use of the term “gaslighting” here in general. I mean, I do think that “gaslighting” as a term has jumped a thousand sharks, [FK laughs] I don’t think that, I…right? But.

FK: [overlapping, both laughing] I’m now imagining just like, a bunch of like, shark tanks? Each of which is being jumped, like a motorcycle going over one? And then over the next…for like a mile.

ELM: [overlapping] Yeah, oh— You, you say that, but we live here in New York City, where there’s just sharks doing cute tricks right off our shores. [FK laughs] So just imagine 1,000 sharks all along Rockaway Beach, and you’re just like, whoop! Whoop! Whoop! You know? 

FK: [overlapping] You’re jumping— You’re imagining running through the waves and jumping over them, wow.

ELM: [overlapping] Yeah! Yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah. Exactly.

FK: [overlapping] Anyway, OK, OK, you were saying about fandom gaslighting, though.

ELM: [overlapping] That would be so fun. That would be so fun. Um…so gaslighting, in its original framing, is based on a film in which a woman is made to feel insane, deliberately, by this dude, right, who is making her…deliberately fucking with her mind.

FK: [overlapping] Yeah, he’s abusing her, this is like, a form of mental abuse. Which is being done intentionally in order to break her down, personally.

ELM: Yeah, like, “Who are you gonna believe, me or your own lyin’ eyes?” You know? And taking things that the man knew were factually true, and telling her that she was imagining them, right?

FK: Right, with the goal of ultimately making her be dependent on him and…totally broken down.

ELM: Right. And I think this is a tactic that happens constantly, I think in abusive relationships—it is a hallmark of abusive, of a lot of kinds of classic abusive dynamics. Wearing the abusee down so much that they doubt their own perceptions of the world.

FK: Right, and it happens in larger contexts too, like religious abuse, this is a classic element of religious abuse.

ELM: Sure. Sure. So, that’s gaslighting. And I think it also brings me to the framing of the use of the word “predatory” in this letter too, I think I’ll push back against in a similar way. Because both of those terms are really about intent and about malicious intent. Right? And unless your goal is to like, trick a bunch of fans…I’m not gonna say, I think there are individual actors in fandom who have specific malicious goals. Or, they have specific goals, self-serving goals, that they are willing to act maliciously to achieve, right, like…like, “I want the most followers,” or something, “so I’m going to engage in these weird games to get people to follow me.” Right? Or, I mean all of these goals are so stupid and pointless. [FK laughs] They’re like, “I want people to give me the most likes on Tumblr, so I’m gonna play weird games.” And I think, I have to assume, I’m not a psychologist here, I don’t know, but I feel like the game is part of what they’re doing, right? Like, it’s to create these dynamics and to kinda watch them all, watch the dominos fall.

FK: [overlapping] Totally, yeah.

ELM: So, I’m not gonna deny that those people don’t exist, and I also think there are other ways that you might deliberately mislead to get people to watch your show that are serving different fandom goals. Like, maybe you want more…maybe you’re very metrics-driven and you just want more viewers, right? You know, you want to dominate Tumblr’s top ships ranking. [FK laughs] Again, pointless goals. Things where I don’t understand why anyone would be—would do anything misleading to achieve these goals, or care about doing anything, period.

FK: But evidently people do, so sure.

ELM: Right. So all of those things, I think, exist. But I think that you’re absolutely right, that, like, I think it would be very rare, beyond individual one-off bad actors, for people who are perhaps false advertising about a show, or hopeful advertising, or somewhat delusionally advertising a show, to try to get more people to watch it. I think they’ve drunk the Kool-Aid, and they’re trying to get you to take a sip, too. You know? 

FK: Absolutely. And I think it’s, it’s sort of weird because at one point in time in fandom, we would’ve talked about this stuff as reading against the text, right? We would’ve been like, “Yeah, people want to see these things in it, and so they’re reading it into it.” But now it’s turned into a, “No, it must actually be there in some ‘real’ fashion, it’s going to be made explicit, it’s going to be…always exactly what I want. It’s going to somehow justify all of my hopes and dreams and visions and reading into this, all of that’s gonna be justified at some point.” And then when that inevitably doesn’t happen, because it doesn’t happen in most shows, about other things either—

ELM: Yeah.

FK: Right? Most shows, people are really upset about the finale even if it has nothing to do with representation or queerness or anything else, it’s still disappointing inevitably. 

ELM: Right, right.

FK: And then people get really—reasonably enough, they’ve invested a lot in it and they’re upset.

ELM: Yeah, I mean, what I was gonna say is that I think some fans, in the past, would say “Oh, we’re reading against the text,” especially with shipping, or writing fanfiction. But I think many, many other fans, at the same time and earlier, were doing exactly what you’re describing, saying like, “OK, so I’ve seen The Empire Strikes Back, and I think, in the next movie, this is gonna, Luke’s gonna get this, and this is gonna happen, and this is how it’s all gonna wrap up, and this is my prediction.” And then none of that happened, and then they’re mad. You know? 

FK: Right. 

ELM: Because like, they’ve talked themselves into what’s gonna happen next. I think this is a very classic fan thing, right?

FK: [overlapping] Absolutely, yeah.

ELM: [overlapping] And you say like, “Oh, here’s my evidence, in this part of the movie this happens, and I have all this background information because I studied it, so I should be able to predict it.” 

FK: Right.

ELM: And I mean, whatever, this is also not unique to fandom, people get this way about politics or whatever too, as we were saying, you know. And it’s just not easy to think that not only did you guess wrong, but like, you did all that work and you showed your work, and it’s wrong, you know what I mean? That you made a really informed guess. But people don’t frame it that way, they say they’re theories, you know?

FK: Yeah, and I think that maybe part of what we’re seeing as that tension, is that tendency now has entered into this space, this highly emotionally charged and contested space, of representation and shipping. Because, I don’t know, I’m thinking about…so one of the classic ships that people always talk about as being “reading against the text” is Kirk and Spock, because of course, it’s the 60s and you couldn’t have gay people. But there’s actually, like, quite a bit of stuff about Gene Roddenberry talking about Kirk and Spock, not explicitly being gay for each other, but like…pretty much, they were hiring authors who had written queer science fiction to write, you know, Roddenberry is talking about how Kirk and Spock have the deepest love for each other, and it has never textually gone into the physical but shruggy shruggy! You know? 

ELM: Yeah.

FK: This is all stuff that was actually out there, but at the same time, no fan really thought that this was going to show up on their television screen, no matter how into it they were, no matter how educated they were about like, the fact that people making this were very aware of that tension, because it was just never possible. Which is, I mean, which our anonymous writer knows, and has written about here, and I think that what we’re seeing is that tension where it feels like all of this is suddenly on the table, and so now it could happen. Oh, shit, but it didn’t. You know? [laughs]

ELM: Yeah. Yeah, but that, I mean… Oh, God, I mean I don’t wanna go too far back, I literally just started thinking about like, the history of male friendship or whatever, you know? [both laugh] These are very slash-specific sort of framings, too, right? 

FK: Yeah, very true, very true, and this letter is also to some extent about race and other issues.

ELM: Yeah, yeah, well no, I mean I also think about, I mentioned in the last episode, I was thinking about it after I said it, I said something like, I couldn’t remember the last show I’d seen that didn’t have at least one queer character in the main cast or whatever, and I realized it was The Bear, [FK laughs] but to be fair, I don’t know about any of their sexualities, right? Like, none of them do any straight things either, [FK laughs] like all they do is cook and shout at each other and make donuts, right?

FK: Yeah.

ELM: So there’s that, but other than that I really can’t think of anything that I watched this year that doesn’t, right?

FK: Well, the thing that occurred to me afterwards was Succession, which, I understand that Tom/Greg is, like, you know, a dream, but [laughs] it’s not…

ELM: Didn’t watch that this year, also. So…

FK: OK, all right, all right, fair enough.

ELM: But that being said, you know, I can say this, but all those shows, all those shows, the shows that I’ve liked this year, the shows that I loved this year, are very different from a lot of the stuff that fandom really likes, right? 

FK: Right.

ELM: And you got me thinking about Kirk and Spock, and about the way that they talk about slash in kind of historical fan studies writing, early wave fan studies writing, talking about the deep homosocial bond stuff. And like, that stuff is embedded in at least American media storytelling, right, that is embedded in the history of 20th century film and then television.

FK: Totally.

ELM: And like, their relationship—[in a dramatic deep voice] these two dudes’ relationship is more important than any of these—they sleep with these women on the side, [FK laughs] but who cares, the most important thing is their relationship.

FK: Sometimes one of the men is a horse, if you’re talking about a Western. [both laugh]

ELM: And nothing is more important than the relationship between a man and his horse. [FK laughs] You know what it’s like. You know, Flourish.

FK: I, I do know! [both laugh]

ELM: So, like, I mean these are slash-specific things, but it’s also like…I get it, I get that tension too, of now people saying like, “Oh come on, it’s 2022,” right, there are queer characters on the screen elsewhere, so why are these kinds of stories continually setting up what seems like these deep dynamics and then…I mean this is like, we’re talking about queerbaiting now, or I’m talking about queerbaiting, you know, it seems like why create yet another one of these shows with the same kind of dynamic, and then just be like, “But, but just friends.” You know? I get that, right? 

FK: Yeah!

ELM: And I get why that feels different now than it did in—I mean, I know why it feels different now than it did in 2002, and I wasn’t alive in 1982 [FK laughs] but I’m certain I can understand why it feels different, you know what I mean?

FK: Yeah, yeah, I do. And yet at the same time, our writer is talking about a lot of shows that do have queer representation on them, and then feeling like that representation is bad, or not what they want. And I do, I have some mixed feelings about this, because I think that it’s…I have a hard time assigning “bad representation” to any single show. I shouldn’t say that, I’m sure there are some where I would be upset. But I just think that a lot of times it’s just like, well it’s not representing what I wanted to see in this case.

ELM: OK, pause, hold up. What does representation mean to you? [FK laughs] I don’t even know if we…what does this mean? Tell me a definition. 

FK: [laughing] Lord, I don’t know either! [both laugh]

ELM: Wow, that came out so folksy. “Lord, if only I knew!” [laughs]

FK: I mean, I do, I do sort of, you know, like…Jesus, please drop this piece of information into my head right now, [ELM still laughing] because I sure don’t have it, I talk about it a lot but I don’t know. 

ELM: Oh my goodness. So I think that this term has also jumped the thousand sharks of Rockaway Beach, I don’t know what it means anymore. [FK laughs] You know, like, I feel like it makes sense to me when…you know, when you see a specific cultural experience, in whatever your culture is, whether it’s being bi, or being South Asian or whatever, using “culture” as a broad term for identity here—

FK: Right, right.

ELM: And seeing an experience depicted on the screen that you hadn’t before, that I understand as a representational thing. Like, a Black woman seeing a Black female protagonist taking off a wig, and like, you know, that kind of thing. There was a lot discussed if Viola Davis in…remember that, in How to Get Away With Murder?

FK: Yeah, yeah yeah.

ELM: Right? Yeah, it being a very specific, intimate moment that people hadn’t seen depicted on screen that was reflected from their own lives, right? 

FK: Absolutely.

ELM: I had this experience in a way that surprised me, when I was watching the show Shrill, which I have mixed feelings about. Do you know Shrill, the one that’s based on the Lindy West book? Starring Aidy Bryant?

FK: I mean I’ve heard of the book, I haven’t read it, and I didn’t know almost anything about this, in fact now that you're saying it I’m like, “Oh yeah, there is a show of that,” but. [laughs] No.

ELM: So, it’s funny—so, just side note, Lindy West is a journalist, who got a lot of harassment, in like a very—you know, by her own admission, a very loudmouthed journalist [FK laughs] who’s goin’ for it, right, and then people like, were, sending her some of the most vile harassment around, there’s a really interesting This American Life actually where she talks to this man who impersonated her dead father?

FK: [overlapping] Oh! I heard that one!

ELM: [overlapping] Remember? 

FK: [overlapping] That was incredible.

ELM: And he said like, “I’m ashamed of my daughter,” like the ghost of her—and it was just like, one of the most horrific, like, harassment cases I’ve ever heard of.

FK: [simultaneous] The worst things that you could imagine someone doing.

ELM: And so, they made a show out of her memoir, and it’s about a lot of things, and it’s starring Aidy Bryant, and so a lot of it is about like, you know…I don’t wanna lump it in there but it does feel like the Millennial show for like, fat white women, right? [FK laughs] Like, every group gets a Millennial show, like Master of None is for South Asian men or whatever. 

But there’s a moment when she’s talking to her editor—played by John Cameron Mitchell, of course—where she’s talking about harassment. Being harassed on the internet, as a journalist. And I found myself really moved, and I was like, “Why is this—why is this making me feel like crying?” [FK laughs] And then I was like, “Oh my God, I just, I’m having this experience where I know it exists, everyone I’ve ever worked with knows it exists, we’ve experienced it, but like, now a television character is saying it?” [FK laughs] “And so that makes it real,” right? And I was just like, “This is such a strange reaction that I’d like to interrogate.” Because I don’t think they were doing it particularly subtly, I think a lot of these shows suffer from, I don’t know, “get the issues out there” kind of vibe, like, you often feel like characters are saying talking points, and they’re right, but it doesn’t feel like the way people talk.

FK: Totally. I have, I have also observed this. [laughs]

ELM: [overlapping] And this…this has some of those issues—you know what I’m talking about.

FK: I believe I have said many times with regard to new Star Trek, I’m really grateful that there is such great trans representation, and nonbinary representation, if only the characters were…[laughs] a little better. [ELM laughs] Sorry. 

ELM: Uh, I mean, this is interesting, OK so this is like, this is the way to frame representation, but like, the idea of “good” and “bad” rep, I feel like then gets into this sort of weird moral space. And I don’t know how letter-writer thinks of this, because I think those were being used as a bit of a shorthand, and I don’t think everyone uses those terms the same way. 

FK: Yeah.

ELM: So I’m not gonna ascribe intent to anon. But I often see the term “bad rep” meaning like…exactly like you’re saying, “I didn’t like the writing decision.” Right? “I didn’t like the ship that this person—I didn’t like the relationship this person wound up in.” Or, you know, “I think that they have too much sex, I think they don’t have enough sex.”

FK: Right.

ELM: “I think that they’re too femme, I think that they’re too butch.” Like, I’ve seen every single one of these for a queer character on screen.

FK: And sometimes they conflict with each other, right? Because like, I mean—

ELM: [overlapping] Absolutely!

FK: [overlapping] As like, a—if you’re like, a bi man, it can be a wonderful thing to see a man who has a relationship with a man, and then a relationship with a woman, and like, that’s totally fine and not a big deal. But then at the same time someone else is going, “You made him not gay!” [laughs] You know?

ELM: [laughs] Right, right. Well, I mean, now you’re describing fights between... [laughs] 

FK: I’m just saying, you know, this is, sometimes that—

ELM: I mean those are, those are real-world conflicts too though. I’m not saying that things that happen in media are not real world, but those are things that people talk about with real people also.

FK: Absolutely, absolutely, yeah.

ELM: And I guess people say that with real people too. Like if there’s a queer celebrity who seems to be fun lovin’ and slutty or whatever, they’re like, “Bad example!” Right, or other people will be like…if a character or whatever isn’t super sexual on screen they’ll say like, “This is just respectability politics.” Right?

FK: Right, exactly. [laughs] And you’re like, “Uhhh…”

ELM: [overlapping, laughing] “You need to show them like, fisting at all times! [FK laughs] Otherwise it’s respectability politics.” And it’s like, people, why.

FK: All right, great, yeah. Are we, are we…are we fisting? Or are we not fisting? [laughs]

ELM: Yeah. And you know, I see this, I’ve seen this a lot recently talking about like… I’ve seen so many people be really into the show Heartstopper, which is about these very tender, tender teen boys. 

FK: Right.

ELM: Coming into their sexuality or whatever, you know. And I went to this screening of Velvet Goldmine a few weeks ago, which was wonderful to see on the big screen, I hadn’t ever seen it, and Todd Haynes was there, and his producing partner—

FK: [overlapping] You’d seen it, you just hadn’t seen it on the big screen.

ELM: [overlapping] Yeah, yeah, sorry, I guess, because, I—

FK: [overlapping] OK. [laughs] That was unclear and I was like, “What do you mean??”

ELM: No, I, I don’t know if it played at the cinema in eighth grade in my hometown, [FK laughs] I’m guessing I would’ve had to go down to Albany to the cool indie cinema where I saw a lot of movies in high school. 

FK: [overlapping] Yeah, probably.

ELM: But you know, Velvet Goldmine is a complicated…extremely queer movie, about the messiness of gender and sexuality, right?

FK: Yeah.

ELM: And a questioner, after the screening, to Todd Haynes and Christine Vachon, Todd Haynes’ longtime producing partner, was talking about how grateful he had been to find Velvet Goldmine on IFC at like, midnight, when he was 15 years old, right, and saying how depressed he’d be now if he saw the sanitized, very tender handholdy stuff, right? [FK laughs] And it’s like, I absolutely believe that’s true for them, for him, I also believe that the folks on the internet who are talking about how valuable Heartstopper is to them, I believe them too, you know? 

FK: Right.

ELM: It’s the assertion that one is inherently superior over the other that I think are where a lot of these conflicts come from. So, all this to say, I just think “bad” and “good” representation, those are not terms that really mean anything to me, or if they do, they don’t mean something helpful about a framing of any piece of media.

FK: Right, and maybe that’s really the thing to get pissed off about here, is the whole concept of the One True Piece of Good Queer Representation, right, I mean there’s never gonna be one true piece of good queer representation. Any kind of representation you receive, like, someone else is gonna be like, “Not that! Not for me, motherfucker!” Right? 

ELM: Sure, right.

FK: And it’s, there’s never going to be one true piece, and that means that when you get into a space where people are going, “Oh, this is gonna be perfect, it’s gonna be perfect, it’s gonna be perfect,” you know automatically that’s not gonna be true. 

ELM: Right.

FK: I mean maybe you will really like it, but it’s still not going to be true, because there’s gonna be someone else who's gonna hate it and feel really left out and upset about it.

ELM: Well, sure, and I think to bring it closer to shipping, because I think—or to fandom, because I think I pulled the lens back to kind of talk about broader media, in my experience, most of the time people are talking about queer representation, they’re talking about their specific ship becoming canon.

FK: Yeah.

ELM: You know? I mean, immediately when we were talking about this I thought about, you know, what’s good and bad queer rep, and I thought about my love, Black Sails. [FK laughs] And, uh…and I certainly think that there are some people who don’t wanna watch it or don’t like it because it frames… It’s like, the best show about queer rage, right, but like, he’s just goin’ for it, right? [FK laughs] He’s mad, and he’s gonna just murder people, right? And you’re like, “Yeah, go James go!” But like, I definitely saw—I’ve said this many times on the podcast—but I saw many, many accusations of queerbaiting, and I was like, “Is there anything queerer than this angry gay pirate who’s just going around murdering people because he’s mad about, you know…[FK laughs] He’s mad about England and homophobia?” Like, that’s great! How is that queerbaiting, just because he doesn’t get together with the, a character that you wanted? 

FK: Right.

ELM: That didn’t change anything about him, he’s still that character.

FK: Yeah, I totally hear what you’re saying. And I guess, to bring it back around to our writer’s question, when are we allowed to be angry at our fellow fans the same way that we’re angry at media creators for queerbaiting us?

ELM: Always. Just go around like the James Flint of fandom, and just be full of rage.

FK: I mean, I kind of actually do think…[ELM laughs] Right, I mean, look—

ELM: Yeah!

FK: You don’t need somebody to say that you’re allowed to be angry, angry is a feeling that you have. [laughs] You have the feeling or not. Anger is not something that you can sort of negotiate, and be like, “Well, I’m not allowed to, so I won’t be.” [laughs]

ELM: Sure. Yeah yeah yeah.

FK: Like, you’re allowed to feel angry, and I wanna like, if you need license, here’s your license. At the same time, I also think that there’s questions about what is the proper target of that anger, and is there an individual that you can point to and say, “You’re at fault,” and how much of that also has to do with just like, situations that, it’s complicated, right? To some extent, you let yourself fall into this narrative, and then the narrative is being created by a lot of different people, none of whom individually are doing anything that you can put your finger on being wrong. But all together they create this sort of toxic brew, and then it doesn’t happen, whatever it is that you wanted, and sure, maybe you can say “Well we should’ve known all along that it wouldn’t.” But it just…it’s not that you’re not allowed to be angry. [laughs] It’s just that it’s a really complicated question of where to direct that and how.

ELM: Well, I think that’s why people so often will focus it on the creators, is because that actually is an individual or group of individuals or, I don’t know, spiritual body, to get mad at, you know, creators, creators, right? I mean whatever, I also think there are power elements here too, and I think it’s easier to say, “They misled us. They’re in charge, and they hoodwinked us, they pulled one over on us,” than to kinda look inward at yourself and your friends, or the people around you in the fandom, and be like, “Why did we think this again?”

FK: Right.

ELM: Like, “Did we have any…” It’s hard for fandom—I mean I think this generally, not just in these situations but with anything fanon, it’s really hard to figure out why it happened. 

FK: Right.

ELM: Or how it came about. It’s rare that you can be like, “Well, on January 19th, like…user whatever wrote this post, [FK laughs] and then everyone decided it was the law, and now we’re not allowed to write about this character not having like—” I don’t know, what was the thing Scully liked, strawberry shampoo?

FK: Strawberry shampoo! [laughs]

ELM: An adult woman. I guess in the 90s—adult women in the 90s, in the 90s, yeah…yeah…

FK: [overlapping] Yeah, in the 90s, yeah. [laughs] Adult women did use strawberry shampoo, I regret to report. But it was still weird. [ELM laughs] Yeah, I think also, I guess something I would say is that when I have sometimes felt anger at [laughs] fans in general, or a group of fans, or even sometimes coming up with a term, I’ll be like, “Oh, well, those anti-X people, who I hate.” 

ELM: Sure. 

FK: You know, as a group. It can be more useful to think about what…who are the individuals that I’m really thinking about here? Like, are there people that I know and that I like— 

ELM: Wh—

FK: Genuinely, because when I think about the individuals, I realize—

ELM: To make a target list?

FK: No, it’s the opposite! [ELM laughs] It’s like, I have, I mean obviously I’m not saying—I’m saying the opposite of making a target list, because I think that if you actually—

ELM: [overlapping] I thought you were gonna channel James Flint, you need to make a list of targets. [laughs]

FK: [overlapping] Oh yeah, a list of targets. [laughs] No, but like, when you think about it you’re like, “Oh man, yeah, my friend who was so excited about this show with me and got me into it and told me it was gonna be great rep, actually I know them and I know they’re feeling really betrayed right now, too. And so I blame them for getting me into it, but at the same time, it wasn’t malicious on their part. 

And then this other person, who I clearly like, was really trying to get everybody into it, and now they’re continuing to spin conspiracy theories about how this isn’t really the end or whatever, that seems quite wild to me. And maybe there’s something going on mentally for them that’s like, because it’s obvious to everybody else that there is no conspiracy here, so like…maybe I can’t say that they were being malicious, because they’re going in a direction that I’m not sure I can sign off on—

ELM: Sure.

FK: So maybe I actually need to sort of more…feel sorry for them, that they can’t see what’s happening, and hope that…” You know? Because I feel like when you look at people on that individual level, it starts once again resolving into your relationships with others, and you can still feel anger, right, [laughs] that’s still OK, but at least you have some way to express that. And work it through with somebody, as opposed to just being like, “I was hoodwinked!” [laughs]

ELM: Yeah. Yeah, well I mean, if you have that individual friend who brought you into the situation then it seems like you probably will get more catharsis by just commiserating with them together, right, just the two of you. Especially if it’s your friend, and like, who’s, no one’s guilty here, whatever, you both took a sip of that Kool-Aid, it was delicious, Fruit Punch flavor. Oh, yeaahh.

FK: [laughs, overlapping] Wow.

ELM: Right, and you’re like—yeah, I just wanted to bring that, my favorite guy of the 90s in. But like, I don’t know, just thinking about like…having watched some great fandom disappointments, some ships not becoming canon, some conspiracy theories rising up and destroying people’s lives, you know, it helped me figure out who I wanted to—not even as a friend, but just who I wanted on my feed, to see how they reacted in times of disappointment.

FK: Yeah.

ELM: And like, sometimes, and I don’t blame anyone, it got…some responses I’ve seen get so deep inside their own head, and are so much about their own issues, and they’re really not about what we’re all…you know. It’s a very personal problem. And sometimes if you don’t feel like you have the bandwidth, if you’re already feeling really bummed out by what happened, if you can mute that person or unfollow them, just get their spirals out of your life, right?

FK: Right, right.

ELM: But I’ve found it to be very helpful to find people whose feelings resonated with mine, and acknowledge that, you know, you can take the time to grieve something that you thought was gonna happen and didn’t, or a bad ending of a show, doesn’t even matter if you had no expectations and it was bad, I think people have this all the, like you were saying, with series finales, right? It’s just like…God, I just, I spent fifty episodes with these people and this is how they end it? [sighs deeply]

FK: [laughs] Right, and also, if you’re the person who brought people into something, then you can potentially, from that place of disappointment, be like, “Man, feel like I talked up this show to a lot of people and then it turned out not to be the thing I thought it was gonna be. I’m so sorry that it ended up this way.”

ELM: Yeah.

FK: “This sucks. I regret that I—” I mean whatever, I feel this way about Harry Potter a bunch, I’m like, “Oh, man, I sure did a lot of stanning for Harry Potter over the years, and it sucks that it’s like this now. I regret it.” I mean, I don’t regret the friendships I made, but I sure regret like…investing so much into it and supporting it so strongly in so many ways, sure. I’d rather have supported something better. [laughs] But I mean, so yeah, on some level I guess we are culpable in those ways, and can express it. But that’s the important thing, is being able to recognize, like… “Well, shit!”

ELM: Yeah. But I think that that’s like…I don’t know, I think that takes some degree of emotional maturity, which I think many, many people don’t have. And so the situation that you’re gonna wind up in is like, the person who recruited you into this world is like, not gonna, they’re gonna be like, “I was lied to by the creators! We were betrayed! This is a violence!” And you’re just sitting there like, OK, so they’re not gonna acknowledge, you know, any of the ways that they may have misrepresented or misinterpreted, and I’m left here being like, “I guess I misinterpreted,” and no one else wants to join the self-reflection train. Or just the sitting in disappointment and sadness train. 

FK: Yeah.

ELM: And instead is looking for someone to blame, and like…not even want an apology for, but just someone to blame. 

FK: Yeah.

ELM: Like, “You did this to me,” and they’re like, “I’m sorry,” and they’re like, “You did this to me!” And it’s nothing, you know?

FK: Yeah.

ELM: I just feel like, I feel like that’s what we see more often, and whatever, emotions don’t have to be productive, but I also feel like there’s a way they can be unproductive, you know? [laughs] And be actively trapping people in kind of angry spirals. And I think that letter-writer is really correct to point out, and you know, I’ve experienced this, and I don’t think it’s cringe to say you’re affected by a piece of media. I’ve had experiences with things I’ve been a fan of where things have turned out in ways that really made me sad that truly made me, like, pretty depressed for weeks or months. And that wasn’t the same as, like, having experienced clinical depression, it’s different, but it made me sad, for a while.

FK: Yeah, absolutely. Well, I don’t know how much we’ve helped the person who wrote in, but I hope that we’ve…at least this conversation has sort of illuminated some aspects of it? I don’t know, I’m really glad that they did write in, because this is, this is such a sticky thing, and I think it’s so familiar to people in fandom, even if they aren’t talking about queer issues, just in general. Disappointment in something that has meant a lot to you.

ELM: Yeah, I think that what I would say in terms of like…I mean I guess I would try to look at it, if we’re trying to give any suggestions or advice or whatever, is in a proactive, for your next fandom kind of way. And I think that anon is also kind of hinting at that, saying like, the bar is continually being raised. When something is deemed to be “good,” like, people deem Our Flag Means Death as good on queer things but also it needs to be this, right, you know.

FK: Right.

ELM: And also it needs to be that, and no show is gonna be all those things, I’m sorry to say. 

FK: Yeah, absolutely.

ELM: And also, again, no one agrees on what “good” means—

FK: [simultaneous] “Good” is. [laughs]

ELM: —in any of these things, right?

FK: Yeah.

ELM: So, I, you know, I would say…I don’t know, it’s important for me in my, the people that I choose—the very few people, probably fewer than three dozen—people I choose to follow on my fandom Tumblr, that there are no…like, I’m not gonna sit there with people, like, total haters, that’s not enjoyable, right? But I’m also not gonna sit there with people who are only full of effusive praise for things. My current thing, you could not possibly be only full of effusive praise, but like. [laughs] You know, I just feel like if I were to get into a new fandom that was still in progress, I would really look for people who had somewhat of a critical balance. 

FK: Right.

ELM: Because I think if you get swept up into celebrating things that you think are good, even writing decisions that aren’t about people’s identities, right, I think that you’re just setting yourself up for the inevitable disappointment, because no piece of media is flawlessly written. Partly because we can’t agree on what flaws are, a lot of the time.

FK: Yeah, absolutely. All right, well. On that piece of good advice, [both laugh] I think that, I think that wraps up our episode for today. Thank you so much for writing in, anonymous person, you gave us great food for thought. 

ELM: Yeah, I really appreciate it, this is a…it’s a complicated topic, and I’m sure one we’ll talk about again in the future, so people should send in their additional thoughts to this thorny issue.

FK: Please do.

ELM: Fraught topic, we never say fraught topic anymore.

FK: Fraught topic…all right, I am now going to go and…I don’t know what I’m gonna do, maybe watch something that’s complicated and flawed.

ELM: Oh, I have a long list. Or you could watch any of the great shows that are not fandomy that I recommend that have queer characters. But perhaps you would need to subscribe to HBO.

FK: I do subscribe to HBO.

ELM: Wow, perhaps you should watch The Other Two. [laughs]

FK: [laughs] All right. I’ll talk to you later, Elizabeth.

ELM: [still laughing] OK, bye Flourish!

FK: Bye.

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