Episode 192: Death, Mourning, and Fandom
In Episode 192, “Death, Mourning, and Fandom,” Elizabeth and Flourish talk about the complicated dynamics around death within fandom, where our connections to each other can be deep but transient. Jumping off an article Elizabeth recently wrote for WIRED on the AO3’s Fannish Next-of-Kin feature—which lets you leave your fanworks to a fellow fan if you die—they talk about the failings of other digital death policies, disconnects between peoples’ fandom personas and regular lives, the differences between losing a fandom friend and a favorite fanwork creator, and how rarely the subject of death is talked about—in fandom or more broadly.
Show Notes
[00:00:00] As always, our intro music is “Awel” by stefsax, used under a CC BY 3.0 license.
[00:00:49] We discussed death and fandom—specifically around mourning celebrities—in one of our earliest episodes, “Death and the Fangirl.”
[00:01:04] Read Elizabeth’s piece about the FNOK in WIRED! And to check out the FNOK feature directly, here’s the AO3’s FAQ.
[00:06:07] Fact check: the artist was Frank Ocean, but he himself did not put the tweet on the t-shirt, he simply purchased it. The creator of said t-shirt had actually taken the phrase from a tweet written by someone else two years prior. (There was no actual lawsuit as far as we can tell!) This article lays out the incident, and this is a good summary of copyright law when it comes to tweets.
[00:06:40] Actual lawyer Earlgreytea68 sent us some legal thoughts (but not official legal advice!!) two episodes ago, in “Ask Fansplaining Anything: Part 15.”
[00:14:39] There’s a great interview with Jensen Hillenbrand, the guy who bought Barbara P. Gordon’s collection of fanart at auction! In addition to owning a lot of other people’s art, by the way, Barbara P. Gordon was a fanartist herself— below is an example of her work (we aren’t sure if it’s one of the ones Hillenbrand saved from her estate or not). There’s tons more on Fanlore.
[00:15:09] “Zine and Amateur Press Collections at the University of Iowa”—an incredible resource!
[00:22:46]
[00:38:26] A small sample of the INCREDIBLY PURE comments on the video for Simon & Garfunkel’s “America”; please note: they’re not all by Boomers!!
[00:39:34] Don’t you worry: the comments on Usher’s “Yeah” (STILL A MASTERPIECE BTW) are exactly like that.
[00:46:09] We talked about DNIs in Episode 148: “Do Not Interact.”
[00:51:18]
[01:01:22] In our distraction over this CHEERFUL topic, we totally forgot to do our usual episode business. As a reminder, you can help support the podcast—including paying for our amazing transcriptionists, see the work of one of them below!—by becoming a Patron for as little as $1 a month.
$3 a month will get you access to all our special episodes, including recent ones on Interview with the Vampire and Glass Onion, and the one we’ll be releasing very soon on SOULMATE AUS.
And, of course, if you don’t have $$ or don’t want to give us $$, you can also help us out by spreading the word about the podcast and/or getting in touch: you can write us at fansplaining at gmail dot com, leave a question here on our site or at fansplaining at tumblr dot com, or leave a voicemail at 1-401-526-FANS.
[01:01:32] Our outro music is “Old regrets” by Lee Rosevere, also used under a CC BY 3.0 license.
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 #192, “Death, Mourning, and Fandom.”
FK: An uplifting topic.
ELM: Look. [laughs] It is a part of life, and we haven’t talked about it in a long time.
FK: That’s true, and when we have talked about it, we talked about it mostly to do with celebrities dying. But, newsflash, [laughs] celebrities are not the only people who die.
ELM: OK, so the reason that we are doing this topic now is I recently wrote a piece about death and fandom. Specifically, about the AO3’s Fannish Next-of-Kin feature. The piece was in WIRED. We can put the link in the show notes. Highly recommend you read it.
FK: I highly recommend it. [laughs]
ELM: Oh, wow, you recommend it. You didn’t even write it.
FK: Hey, I’m allowed to say that. [both laugh]
ELM: But just TL;DR, if anyone hasn’t read it or doesn’t know about this feature, on the AO3, you can designate a fellow fan to be your Fannish Next-of-Kin. You can do it with each other or you can just do it in a one-way relationship, and if you become incapacitated or die, your Fannish Next-of-Kin is given control of your works. So it’s not of your account. It’s of the works that you’ve posted.
FK: Right, which is, I mean, I’m so interested to hear you talk about this in the context of what other websites do, because my impression is that it’s unusual, both in the way that it functions and also in—you know, as far as, like, not getting control of the account, but instead getting control of the works. But also, it just seems like there’s a lot of places that have nothing.
ELM: Yeah, so, great. I’m gonna summarize all my research from this article.
FK: Please do. [laughs]
ELM: Well, it’s like, it’s interesting, because, you know, I had some personal experience with this. So Facebook, for example, has gone through a lot of different iterations over the years. And I think they kind of had to sort something out, because they have so many people, and, like—
FK: Yeah.
ELM: —just such a broad swath of, you know, like, there’s old people on there and whatever, like, people of all ages die, right? But, like—
FK: But it’s a different thing if you’ve got, like, an old person and everyone’s like, “What do we do with Grandma’s Facebook?” [laughs]
ELM: Yeah. Right. And, like, you know, yeah. There’s a lot of family relationships on there, in a way that there really aren’t on other social media platforms. And so, like, my best friend in college died a year out of college, and it was before they implemented a lot of these policies, so her account—and this was in 2008, so her account just kind of wound up in this sort of weird limbo, and I think one of her family members took it over, but—
FK: Yeah.
ELM: —now, on Facebook, you can—before you die, while you’re still alive, you can designate, like, a “legacy contact,” which could be anyone—
FK: Mm-hmm.
ELM: —not just a family member. And they’re the ones—
FK: Yeah.
ELM: You’ve probably seen this with people you know, if you know people who’ve died in the last five, seven years or so on Facebook. There’ll be a person who’s able to post on their account that can say, “Hey, this is what happened,” or, “There’s a memorial service.”
FK: Yeah.
ELM: And they can change the profile photo, which is nice, because maybe you don’t want to be immortalized [laughs] with a picture of you at, like, a keg party or whatever. [FK laughs] I’m really, like, dating myself here. This is what Facebook used to be to us, back in the day. I guess—[laughs]
FK: No, but it’s still—but still, right? You might have a joke picture up or something—
ELM: Yeah, exactly.
FK: —and, you know, like, after you die, when people are sharing about you, maybe you would—they could put something nicer. [laughs]
ELM: Right, right. So Facebook is interesting in that way, and on Instagram also, a non-family member can request the account be memorialized, which means it’ll just appear differently, right? But for the most part, you know, for all these accounts, the immediate family or, like, someone who’s entrusted—like, a lawyer who’s in charge of an estate, or whatever—are the only ones who will ever have any rights to do anything with the account after you die.
FK: Hmm.
ELM: And for the most part, that just means shutting it down, because—
FK: Right.
ELM: —you know, they’re not gonna give you access. There are privacy things. They won’t give you access to people’s accounts, right?
FK: Mm-hmm.
ELM: There have been lawsuits about this—people have wanted to get into their loved ones’ accounts after they’ve died to read their private messages and things, and they’ve been denied, so—
FK: Yeah. I wonder how that interacts with people who are, like, literary executors. This is interesting, [both laugh] now I want to know other—other slightly unrelated things.
ELM: This is, like—there’s so much, like—I mean, you know, it’s such an interesting topic to research, and also, it really showed me how copyright-pilled my brain has become by this podcast, because I was like, “OK, so, who owns this? Who owns this?” You know? [both laugh]
FK: Yeah, I mean, I guess this is like—I’m thinking about this from the perspective of, like, you know, there are people who I know that, like, Nick is the literary executor for, and I know who Nick’s literary executor is, and I’ve got one. And so then when you think about that, you think about, like, “Oh, what happens to their correspondence?” Because that’s one of the things that that person is dealing with too, right?
ELM: Right.
FK: So then, how does that interact with this? This is, like, actually fairly deep. [laughs]
ELM: Well, so, that’s the thing, though. So the—like, on a lot of social media platforms, it’s not your correspondence.
FK: Right.
ELM: You’re entering into a specific arrangement with a social media platform when you sign up and, as a result, agree to the terms of service.
FK: Right.
ELM: So, like, for example, you do own the copyright to all of the content that you—all your tweets, you own the copyrights to those tweets.
FK: Mm-hmm.
ELM: And you are licensing Twitter to reproduce/reuse your tweets. They could feature them in some new stupid section they create of, like, you know [FK laughs]—you literally, right? Elon Musk could create, like, the World’s Worst Tweets tab and put yours in there. You signed away the rights to where they wind up on the site, right?
FK: Yeah. Right.
ELM: So—[laughs] so you own that copyright, and with everything—including your fanworks—if you die, the copyright passes to your legal heirs, right?
FK: Right.
ELM: So I mean, what they want to do with your tweets, I don’t know. But there have been lawsuits about this, too, you know? There was one case that I encountered, and I can’t remember what—it was some famous recording artist had, like, put someone’s tweet on a t-shirt, [laughs] and so there was a lawsuit, where the—
FK: Oh, yeah.
ELM: —OP was like, “No no. [laughs] Like, you know, you can’t just—” Right?
FK: [laughs] Yeah.
ELM: And I believe that he—I should look up the details of this, but I believe that the OP, the original person who wrote the tweet, won, because, yeah. You own the copyright to what you tweet.
FK: Yeah, that makes sense, actually.
ELM: So—
FK: I mean, I guess that gets into the question of how short and long something that can be copyrighted is, but, like, sure. Yeah.
ELM: Yeah. So you can’t—I mean, I’m not a lawyer. I like how I’m doing this disclaimer, and, like, Earlgreytea68 was like, “This is not legal advice,” but she is a lawyer. I’m doing the, like, mini version of that, where I’m like, “I’m really not a lawyer.”
FK: [laughs] You’re like, “It’s not legal advice, and I’m not a lawyer.”
ELM: Really not legal advice. [laughs] But as far as I understand, so you can’t, you know, like, you can’t copyright, like, common phrases, right?
FK: Mm-hmm. Yeah yeah. And there’s also, like, below a certain length.
ELM: Right.
FK: It’s like, sorry. [laughs]
ELM: But I think, like, a couple sentences word-for-word? Yeah. On a tweet.
FK: Yeah, sure. Yeah yeah.
ELM: So all that’s to say, it was very interesting researching this, because some of these social media sites had, like, almost nothing about this. And it was like, you know, all these anecdotes in my research of, you know, this is a—that’s a very—obviously it’s a super fraught time. People are living whole lives on various platforms, right?
FK: Mm-hmm.
ELM: And to just kind of have that cut off, right? And things that people are doing on platforms that their, like, parents or their spouse might not know about, because, like—
FK: Right.
ELM: —you have different facets of your life, you know?
FK: It doesn’t necessarily have to be because that person isn’t someone you would trust with that information or anything, [laughs] right?
ELM: Right, right.
FK: It can just be like, “Oh, this person doesn’t know what to do with it. Or doesn’t have the same understanding.” Right?
ELM: Right, right.
FK: Or, you know, doesn’t know how to—like, what your wishes would continue to be, right?
ELM: Right, right. But so, for most platforms, though, often it doesn’t matter, really, what your wishes are. You’re not supposed to impersonate someone by continuing to tweet for them, like, from beyond the grave, right?
FK: Right. [laughs]
ELM: What’s gonna happen is that they’re gonna shut down your account, right?
FK: Right.
ELM: Or in the cases of the Meta platforms, memorialize your account, right?
FK: Right.
ELM: So the AO3 was really interesting, and that was how I pitched the piece, because I feel like—and in the piece I also talked about the orphaning feature, because I feel like both of these are kind of features that somewhat separate the user from the creations, right?
FK: Right, right.
ELM: And that’s a really—
FK: It’s not a social network—
ELM: Yeah, I mean—
FK: It’s an archive. [laughs]
ELM: There’s that, first of all, right? And, you know—
FK: Yeah.
ELM: —I wasn’t just looking at social networks, you know? I was looking at Steam, for example, and—
FK: Sure.
ELM: —TikTok, I wouldn’t call a social network. That’s a content platform.
FK: Mm-hmm. Yeah yeah.
ELM: You know, like, there’s no—there’s not a lot of peer-to-peer connections on TikTok, outside of—well, you can follow people—
FK: Yeah, there’s, like, response videos.
ELM: Yeah, and you can respond.
FK: And there’s response videos—
ELM: Yeah, OK. All right, all right. Yeah.
FK: You can, you know—
ELM: Obviously, there’s, like, massive amount of, like, intertextuality between TikTok creations—
FK: Right, but it’s different. Yeah.
ELM: —but it’s not meant to be, like, a social network, right?
FK: Right.
ELM: Or a social media platform, right? It’s not necessarily supposed to be about, you know—
FK: Yeah.
ELM: —broadcasting your opinions—I mean, obviously people are broadcasting their opinions on TikTok. You know what I mean.
FK: Yeah, no, but I know what you’re saying. It feels materially different than, like, a Twitter, or—
ELM: Right.
FK: —and definitely different than a Facebook.
ELM: Right, right. Exactly. So, like, obviously the AO3 is an archive. That’s for sure. But one thing that is—I mean, those—the orphaning feature in particular was very interesting to me. I hadn’t realized how many fics were orphaned. It’s a lot. It’s, like, hundreds of thousands of fics, and—
FK: Whoa.
ELM: —if you look into the orphan_account, you know, which will show all of them because it comes up under that one account, people are orphaning the day they post. Like, right now, today, someone is posting and orphaning. So I’m fascinated by that, as a sidenote.
FK: That’s interesting.
ELM: But, like, one thing that was really striking is, I was trying to find parallels. Like, Wikipedia, for example, is about, like, thousands of people—maybe millions at this point; I have no idea actually how many Wikipedia editors there are [FK laughs]—coming together to make something. And obviously, if you’re a Wikipedia editor, and this is your hobby, and you go in the chats and dispute things with people—you know, there’s people who, like, this is their thing, right?
FK: Right.
ELM: And obviously, I think they get to know each other, but—
FK: Yeah, for sure.
ELM: But the primary thing is creating Wikipedia articles and updating them and keeping them accurate, right? You know?
FK: Right. You may know somebody because they’re your nemesis, because they take a different stance on this historical article than you or, whatever.
ELM: [laughs] Yes, I’m certain.
FK: But, like, you’re still, like—no, I know that people have these. [laughs]
ELM: Do you think that there are any Wikipedia editor AUs on the AO3?
FK: Oh, I—I’m pretty sure I’ve read one.
ELM: Oh my God. [laughs]
FK: I’m trying to think about this. I think that I’ve read that. I think that I’ve read that as, like, a—
ELM: I know there’s MetaFilter AUs.
FK: Oh yeah, no no. I’ve definitely read those. But I’m pretty sure I’ve read a Wikipedia editor one.
ELM: That’s very funny.
FK: Anyway.
ELM: But—
FK: It’s not sexy, is what’s funny. [ELM laughs] Anyway, whatever. Moving on. [laughs]
ELM: But, you know, so you have stuff like that, where it feels like people are contributing to a communal whole, but, like, that’s the purpose of it, right? You know? As opposed to, the AO3 is interesting, because you are contributing to a communal whole, but for the most part, it’s really about you posting your individual works, right? Or reading individual works.
FK: Right.
ELM: So I don’t know. I think that all these dynamics are interesting, and so that was what I kind of wanted to look at. And this sort of idea, the Fannish Next-of-Kin feature, was very interesting to me because it was, like, kind of small social ties—
FK: Mm-hmm.
ELM: —on a place that’s not a social network. But these sort of ties that bind together users.
FK: But it makes sense to me that you really need that. I mean, I think about, like, somebody asks, like, “Hey, can I make a podfic of this?” Right? Or, like, “Can I translate this?” or whatever. And I don’t have my Fannish Next-of-Kin officially set up on AO3, but I do have a thing in my will about who, you know, who will take over my fanfic stuff, and, like, definitely something I thought about in that was, well, if I get hit by a bus tomorrow, I would like somebody to, [laughs] you know—
ELM: Yeah.
FK: —be able to answer those questions.
ELM: Right.
FK: And to be able to do it in a way that I feel like our attitudes towards things are similar, [laughs] you know?
ELM: Yeah. Right, right, yeah. Exactly.
FK: And that’s a lot more like what it would be like to, you know, be a literary executor. To be the kind of person who’s like, “Yeah, OK, are we gonna republish this book of poems?” [laughs] You know?
ELM: Yeah.
FK: It’s about the work, and about whether you have the same sort of goals and, like, literary aesthetics and expectations and stuff. And that’s really interesting, because I feel like most people don’t think about that. Like, the average person, unless they do have a body of work of that kind, you know, unless they are a prolific artist or, you know, writer or whatever, they don’t think about that. But fanfiction writers do have that body of work—
ELM: Yeah.
FK: —and should be thinking about it. And so should vidders, by the way. I’m not just saying fanfic writers.
ELM: Right, right. Yeah.
FK: Anybody who has, like—I mean, cosplayers. Somebody should be thinking about, like, what is gonna happen to the images of you, and the way that, you know, those, you know, your—everything that you’ve created, fannishly.
ELM: Yeah, I mean, it’s interesting. So I—for this article, I was hunting around for someone who had been the Fannish Next-of-Kin for someone who had died.
FK: Mm-hmm.
ELM: And I knew it was probably unlikely that I would find that person because, one, how many people has that actually happened to so far?
FK: Yeah.
ELM: Not who has the arrangement in place, but how often has it been implemented? And do you want to talk to a journalist for a national mainstream publication about your friend who died? I’m not sure I would want to do that about, you know, my friends who’ve died, so, like, you know?
FK: Right.
ELM: But I did find in my search someone—a post on Tumblr where they were talking about a fanfic writer who had died, and they were saying, “I’m his Fannish Next-of-Kin, and I’m gonna post all his—he wanted me to post all his WIPs.” You know? And it’s just like—
FK: Wow. Yeah.
ELM: That’s really interesting, and it’s also, like—you know, that’s a conversation you would need to have, right?
FK: Mm-hmm.
ELM: You know?
FK: Mm-hmm.
ELM: Just like with a literary—I think the literary executor is a really great parallel, you know? To say, like, “If I die, you can publish my unfinished book.” You see these, like—
FK: Right.
ELM: —weird zombie novels coming out from very famous people, and you’re like—
FK: Yeah yeah yeah.
ELM: “Did they consent to this? I don’t know if they thought this was ready.” [FK laughs] And maybe now their son said it was OK, you know?
FK: Yeah.
ELM: Yeah.
FK: And also, like, I mean, obviously this is not an issue for most writers, [laughs] you know, in general, but yeah, what happens to your papers? One of my friends has made an arrangement for her papers to be donated to a particular university and so forth.
ELM: Mm-hmm.
FK: And this is actually something that fans need to think about, too, particularly if you have, like, a collection of fanzines—
ELM: Right.
FK: —or fanart, you know? There was, a while back, an interview with this guy who, like, at auction bought a huge trove of Star Trek fanart. Like, early Star Trek fanart.
ELM: Hmm.
FK: And he was not himself a Star Trek fan, but he knew about fandom and was like, “I’m gonna save these.”
ELM: Yeah. Oh, that’s great.
FK: And everybody was like, “Oh my goodness! You saved these! These actually are of deep interest.”
ELM: Yeah, yeah.
FK: [laughs] You know? To lots of people and potentially to, you know, university collections and so forth.
ELM: Well, yeah, you know, the University of Iowa is where they have the big zine preservation collection, right?
FK: Yeah!
ELM: Which, I think they do really interesting work. But it’s—I mean, all this is making me think, I’ve seen a fair amount of discourse—maybe that’s overstating it. Conversation recently about saying, “Is this stuff really worth saving?” Like, you even see this before—not even talking about people dying, but people saying, like, “This is just some garbage. It’s not even worth putting on the AO3,” right? And then you have these [FK laughs] hardcore fandom history people who are like, “No! Everyone—just put it up there! Historians will thank you!” And it’s like, in reality, so much of this will never be looked at again.
FK: Right.
ELM: Who cares? Right? Like, I don’t know. I just, I feel like there’s an element of self-gatekeeping going on with some of this stuff, too. Or, like, just saying, “Oh, it’s not serious.”
FK: Right? You don’t know what’s going—that’s the thing that really gets me. And, like, I will admit that there have been things that I’ve thrown away that now I wish I hadn’t.
ELM: Yeah.
FK: [laughs] You know? Particularly stuff relating to early Harry Potter fandom, which, you know, whatever. I was moving cross-country and things, like, fine. I know there are other people who have it.
ELM: Yeah.
FK: And if someone cares it will get there eventually. But you don’t expect that your thing is going to be important, and then it is, right?
ELM: Right.
FK: Most of the people who we still have, like, letters or diaries or commentaries from, you know, from thousands of years ago, like, they didn’t think that their stuff was so special it was going to be preserved.
ELM: Right, right.
FK: I mean, they kept it, but they didn’t think, like, “Oh, yeah, this is gonna be—I’m doing it for—[laughs] I’m doing it for posterity.”
ELM: Right, I feel like if you feel like you’re doing anything for posterity, it’s going to be…I don’t know. Creatively paralyzing. If you’re writing thinking everything needs to be this perfect preservation, perfectly—you know what I mean?
FK: Right, right.
ELM: Or you’re keeping a journal thinking that someday someone’s gonna collect your works or whatever. That’s not, you know? Obviously, I get there’s—
FK: Yeah, write like no one will ever see it, [ELM laughs] and then save it like everyone will care about it.
ELM: I mean, I feel like we could probably name some famous examples where they were clearly—like, famous diarists who were clearly writing for a reader.
FK: Yeah.
ELM: But let’s just say that those are few and far between, and generally even great writers don’t create that way.
FK: I think that’s true. But also, like, I don’t know. I’ve been spending a bunch of time looking at—because of being in seminary, looking at people’s little notebooks full of their favorite prayers and whatever else from the late medieval period.
ELM: Mmm.
FK: And none of those people were thinking that I was gonna care about that [laughs] in the year 2023, right?
ELM: Yeah, right.
FK: And it’s very touching sometimes. It’s kind of…you know, it’s kind of like their little—it’s like their little journal, you know what I mean? It’s very touching, and it’s very interesting, and I’m very grateful that they decided to save those things and didn’t just use them for kindling, or whatever.
ELM: Yeah.
FK: And so I think that people should feel confident, particularly if it doesn’t cost them anything, to save something. You know? [laughs]
ELM: Sure. Yeah, I mean, I’m of mixed feelings about this topic, if we’re not talking about—whatever. I just gave a rousing, like, “Oh, you should just save it!” But I do think there’s an element of modern digital culture that leads to kind of hoarding. [laughs]
FK: Sure. [laughs]
ELM: You know? And it’s just like, “Do you need every single photo from that party from 2006?”
FK: Yeah yeah yeah.
ELM: I’m not sure you do.
FK: Eh, these things we hold in balance.
ELM: I mean, not 2006, because you didn’t have a camera phone then. From 2017. You know? I mean, like—
FK: You might have had a digital camera in 2006.
ELM: I think people take way more photos with phones than they did, like—
FK: They do. They do. Yes. But I’m just saying, there are some.
ELM: I took a lot of photos with digital cameras, but, like—
FK: Yeah.
ELM: —I would never take as many as I take with my phone, because it’s so much easier.
FK: That’s very true. Also because there just wasn’t enough space on a camera.
ELM: Exactly! There were limits.
FK: Yeah, yeah.
ELM: And then you’d have to plug it into your computer and load ’em up, you know?
FK: Yeah, yeah.
ELM: Oh, those days. So, like, you know, I think there is an element or, like, saving every last message. And, you know, yeah, I would say from personal experience, do I really value having all the emails from my friend who died? Like, yes? Do I sit around and read them? No.
FK: Yeah.
ELM: Literally never would I sit around and read them. So it’s like, it is a little—I get how it’s a psychological thing, too, with all of this stuff, right?
FK: Right.
ELM: Just to know it’s not gone.
FK: Yeah, I mean, I think that there is also this element—whether or not you’re keeping every piece of everything, it is important to the people that you leave behind to have it not just disappear, right? It’s super destabilizing and upsetting when something—like, someone you loved, they die, and then, I don’t know. If you always talked with them on a social network and then suddenly their profile is gone—
ELM: Yeah.
FK: —that’s upsetting, you know what I mean?
ELM: Sure.
FK: Or inaccessible, or something happens. I don’t know. Just—there’s so many things that can go sideways on it, and I think it’s really good to have a plan for that.
ELM: Yeah. It’s interesting, it’s one thing that I asked the people I interviewed for this piece about, and it’s one thing I’ve been thinking a lot about that wasn’t—it was a little far afield from what this piece could have, but it also made me think about…so there’s been a lot of commentary recently about people deleting their fics.
FK: Yeah.
ELM: Right? We’ve talked about this a little bit.
FK: Yeah.
ELM: And we’re talking about fanfiction, so just, like, let’s stay there. But, you know, people creating whole new pseuds, deleting accounts, right?
FK: Yeah.
ELM: I say as someone who created a whole new pseud when I joined a certain fandom. But, like, you know, for every time they do that—
FK: Yeah.
ELM: —and every six months, they create a new thing, right? Or, like, you know, if you’ve ever tried to go in the tags on Tumblr for anything that’s older than a year, it’s just like—I don’t want to be flippant with the term and say it’s like a graveyard, because I’m sure most of these people are still alive, but it’s just deactivated, deactivated, deactivated, right? You know?
FK: Yeah, absolutely.
ELM: All these quote-unquote “dead” accounts, right?
FK: Yeah.
ELM: And it makes me think about not just that behavior on a platform that actually winds up saving—you know, talking about Tumblr—saving more stuff than—you know, on Twitter, you delete your account—
FK: Mm-hmm.
ELM: —those tweets are gone forever.
FK: Right.
ELM: Right? Like, anything I retweeted from you, if you deleted your account, my retweet would be gone.
FK: Yeah yeah.
ELM: Whereas on Tumblr, if I reblog it from you, my version is still there, right?
FK: Mm-hmm.
ELM: So that’s why it feels like a weird graveyard, because you can see these, you know, kind of dead links.
FK: Yeah yeah yeah.
ELM: But then you have, you know, folks who grew up on SnapChat, who—literally, the design of it was for content to vanish almost immediately, in the grand scheme of things, right? You know?
FK: Yeah.
ELM: And so, part of me thinks about, especially younger folks, like, who grew up on an internet that was really built to be temporary.
FK: Ephemeral, yeah.
ELM: Yeah, ephemeral. Yeah. And, like, I’m not saying that’s bad and permanence is good, or whatever. You know, like, you contrast it to the internet we grew up on that was ephemeral because it was kind of janky, you know? [both laugh] Right? Or, like—
FK: Oh, it’s still kind of janky.
ELM: Yeah, or, like, corporate takeovers and, you know, the whole—things getting deleted en masse and stuff like that.
FK: Yeah.
ELM: So I guess the web has never felt super permanent, but there is, it feels like, a difference between that and pretty glossy platforms that are designed to be ephemeral, right? And designed to be anonymous and quick and just things flitting past you and not actually making any connections with anyone else.
FK: Right. It’s also funny how sometimes you don’t recognize what you wish you had until someone is gone.
ELM: Sure.
FK: I’m thinking about someone that I was friends with in fandom died a couple years ago, and [laughs] he was a Snape cosplayer. And, like, I mean, everybody knows I love Snape. It’s not like I had—you know, I didn’t have a thing with this guy or anything. But I really, like, he was a great Snape cosplayer, and I had some really lovely memories of being at cons where he was cosplaying Snape, because he was always really in character and really, like, you know, had great costumes.
And I knew that there was a video of him singing karaoke as Snape that had been put on YouTube, like, a long time before. And all of the sudden, I really needed to find that video, you know? And it was—and I found it, and it was fun and it was great, but I realized, like, how upset I would have been if I had not been able to find that video. If it had been a situation where I was just left with this memory of this particular con and all of that, like, I would have been totally crushed, even though having already lost him as a member of the community, and then also losing this documentation—
ELM: Mm-hmm.
FK: —of this really wonderful thing that he would do? You know, it just felt like a lot, and I don’t think that I—if you had asked me before that happened, I don’t think I would have been like, “Yeah, I’m gonna be really upset if YouTube ever takes this thing down.” But now I can tell you, [laughs] you know?
ELM: Well—
FK: It would have been crushing.
ELM: That’s funny, because you’ve definitely mentioned this video to me many times before, over the years. Possibly before he died.
FK: You know, definitely before he died. I obviously knew the video existed and, like, I liked that it existed and I had, like—I think it was in the show notes before this, right?
ELM: Yeah, yeah.
FK: But it didn’t occur to me that it could be gone.
ELM: Right.
FK: You know?
ELM: Which is ironic, because YouTube is not the most—it’s not an archive.
FK: No! It’s not. And every previous time, I’m like, “Oh, I wonder if that’s still up. I hope it is. That was great.” You know? Doop-a-doop-a-doop. And then he died, and I was like—
ELM: Right.
FK: “Shit!” [laughs]
ELM: Right, right.
FK: “I really hope it’s still up. I care about this a lot more than I thought.”
ELM: Yeah, that’s interesting. I mean, it’s kind of the idea of, like, you know, because that’s a specific thing that’s, like, almost a bit disconnected from him. It’s just wanting that memory again. You know what I mean?
FK: No, it’s definitely disconnected from—I mean, it’s not disconnected from him, but, like—
ELM: Not from him, but from him dying, right?
FK: Exactly. Exactly.
ELM: You know, that’s, like—that wasn’t about having a continued relationship. I think it’s actually interesting, too, you know, saying—and I think this also reflects some of the kind of, like, long-term-ness of the AO3 feature—
FK: Mm-hmm. Yeah.
ELM: —is you describing him as a member of “the community.”
FK: Yeah.
ELM: Because that’s not—you’re not in the Harry Potter fandom, and obviously you still think of the people that you were friends with and you worked with doing cons there as a community.
FK: Absolutely.
ELM: And you’re still in touch with them, but you’re not bound by—and I bet some of them are still deep in Harry Potter and—
FK: Yeah.
ELM: —you are deeply not in Harry Potter, so, like—you know what I mean?
FK: Right. But, like, we still are friends on Facebook.
ELM: Yeah yeah yeah. Yeah.
FK: Like, I know what they’re doing, you know, in a general way.
ELM: Yeah.
FK: Many of them have—I mean, many people in the Harry Potter community have died over the years.
ELM: Right.
FK: And many times they have been people that I have not, like, interacted with their fanworks recently or even interacted with them in a long time. But it still, every time, is like, “Oh, shit.” You know?
ELM: Sure. Yeah, absolutely.
FK: Yeah.
ELM: Right, which I think is, like, you know, thinking about the way that kind of OG—like, a lot of OG AO3 users use the site, right? We’ve talked about this before, I feel like. You look at a—there’s a certain kind of account, you look at their page, and it’s like 100 fandoms, you know? And you’re like, [FK laughs] “Wow, this person really loves fanfiction. They’ve been around forever.” You know?
FK: Yeah.
ELM: And, like, every year I think about this. It’s just growing and growing and growing, right? You know? And these are people who I think are, like, in this fanfiction world. Whereas you have bazillions of people using this site in totally different ways, right? And, like, the idea that you would make fandom friends via AO3, or maybe not via AO3, but people that you know the fanworks of, closely enough that you would have a discussion—
FK: Mm-hmm.
ELM: —like, “What if I die? Will you take these over for me?”
FK: Yeah.
ELM: Like, “Who knows what fandom we’ll both be in in five years? But I still know that we have this connection as fandom people together. We’re friends, and you understand me.”
FK: Yeah.
ELM: And I feel like that might even be a minority of people in this space—
FK: Mm-hmm.
ELM: —because of just looking at the speed at which so many people kind of flit in and out of different fandoms, how could you ever make, you know, lasting connections if you are changing your username and deleting all your stuff once every six months, you know?
FK: And maybe, if you change your pseud for every fandom, maybe for you that fandom is over and you might as well be dead in it, and you’ve set it up so that your fics will stay there—
ELM: Sure.
FK: —and if you die, who’s gonna know?
ELM: You orphan them. Yeah.
FK: Yeah, or you orphan them or whatever, but whatever happens to it, you know, when you leave the fandom, you do whatever you’re doing by orphaning them or just be getting a new account and, like, forgetting about the old one. And, like, you might as well be dead. [ELM laughs] Doesn’t matter. You don’t need a Fannish Next-of-Kin—
ELM: Sure.
FK: —because as far as you’re concerned, that’s it. If someone wants to podfic it, you’re not responding.
ELM: Right.
FK: You’re done. You know? [laughs]
ELM: Well, it’s the thing where people are always like, “Oh, I can’t comment on a fic that’s older than, like, one day old, because what if the fandom’s dead to them?” You know? And they’re gonna be so offended, right?
FK: Well, I—OK. I am an old person, because somebody asked me about this. They were like, “Is it stalker-y?” [ELM laughs] Someone straight-up asked me, “Is it stalker-y?” And I was like, “It is not stalker-y. Some young people will tell you it’s stalker-y to comment on an old fic, and they’re wrong.”
ELM: In what context did this conversation happen?
FK: It was just, like, a text conversation, you know? It was like, someone was like, “I have a question about fannish etiquette.”
ELM: Oh. All right.
FK: You know, a person who reads fanfic and stuff, like, I think fairly recently got really into it, and I was like, “All right, there are different schools of thought, and one of them is wrong. [both laugh] I rarely say this, but they’re wrong.”
ELM: Yeah, no, you were—that was the correct advice. I don’t have any problems saying there’s a right way and a wrong way to do things, [FK laughs] and so cosigned. But not to be flippant about it, because I fear the language of like “they may as well be dead to us,” like, sure, but also, they could be dead. I think that is one of the things that’s so weird about fandom—
FK: Hmm.
ELM: You have such a limited view.
FK: Mm-hmm.
ELM: Yeah, everyone has a limited view of everyone right? You only know bits of your coworkers’ lives.
FK: Sure.
ELM: But you’d know if they died, right? [both laugh] You would learn. Someone would tell you, right?
FK: Yes.
ELM: You know, like, a family member. You would hear of it. A high-school classmate—
FK: People you went to high school with.
ELM: Yeah, the word would get to you, right?
FK: You’re gonna hear, probably.
ELM: Right. But someone dies in fandom and maybe their family knows they have this hobby, maybe they don’t, and if they do, maybe they don’t know who to tell. I’ve certainly seen people posting on behalf of spouses or family members on Twitter to say that someone had died, which is—I mean, it’s always very jarring, you know? But I appreciate it, because I would rather know that than just to see their account vanish and just think, “Oh, they quit Twitter.”
FK: Yeah.
ELM: But I think fandom is weirder on this front, because you can have such an intimate connection with people, whether it’s like, “Oh, I really love their fanworks,” which I think gets into the parasocial thing, which we’ll probably talk about at some point—
FK: Mm-hmm.
ELM: —when we talk about celebrity death, too. Or, maybe for those fleeting few months that you were in the same fandom and on the same page, you were like, loving each other’s tags in the reblogs, you know? Or, like, messaging, and then they vanish and, like, you know—
FK: Mm-hmm.
ELM: There have been people that I’ve been friends with in fandom, we don’t know anything about each other, we’re having a hot communication for a few months, [FK laughs] and then they disappeared, you know? Or, like, there have been times when I—like, most of 2020 I didn’t log on to my fandom account at all.
FK: Yeah.
ELM: Because I was just like, “I am not doing this right now.”
FK: Yup.
ELM: And they don’t know. They could have thought, what if I got COVID? You know? If they thought of me at all. But, like, I thought of them, the people who vanish and don’t come back, you know? I wonder.
FK: Definitely. And…[sighs] I don’t know, this is giving me all sorts of thoughts about death and what it means today and what we expect, you know? Like, who do we expect to hear about their death and what, historically, people have not always known if somebody they loved died or somebody they knew died, right?
ELM: Well, are you getting at the idea that with the internet, we have so—I mean, think about these analog examples. Yeah. I’ve heard when people in my high school—people I hadn’t thought about in 15 years died, right? You know?
FK: Yeah.
ELM: And I feel like, say, it’s 1950, and you lived in a town, you would hear when someone died.
FK: Right.
ELM: Right? You would—
FK: Yeah, if you lived in the same town. But if you moved to—you know, if you moved away, then you might or might not, right?
ELM: Yeah, I mean, if you kept in touch with the people who still lived there, they would probably give you the news.
FK: Yeah.
ELM: They’d say, “Hey.”
FK: Right right right. Right.
ELM: “Guess what happened?” You know? Right?
FK: Yeah.
ELM: I mean, all right, a real-life example, I’ve heard when people on my street where my parents still live have died. You know?
FK: Oh yeah, for sure. Yup.
ELM: They aren’t people I think about ever, you know?
FK: [laughs] Yeah. Totally.
ELM: The people—like, but the same families, some of the same people still live there, and, you know.
FK: Yeah yeah.
ELM: And that’s just the news. The news from home, you know? Like, that—
FK: Sure. That’s happened with me, too, right?
ELM: I think—yeah.
FK: Yeah.
ELM: I think that’s very standard—
FK: True.
ELM: —whereas on the internet, you can have such deep but also kind of—not shallow, but you know what I mean?
FK: Yeah, passing.
ELM: Yeah. Right.
FK: Non-networked, right? Because, like—or maybe not even non-networked, but, like, when you know somebody in the physical world, and you live near each other, then there’s multiple people that you both have in common—
ELM: Sure. Yeah.
FK: —and you all see each other in different ways all the time. So, like, maybe, yeah. Trying to think about, like, how is it that my mother hears about the death of somebody that I knew when I was 12, you know, and it gets back to me? Oh, well, it’s because this person went to that Lutheran church—
ELM: Sure.
FK: —and my mom’s friend also attends that church, and so my mom’s friend—you know what I mean?
ELM: Yeah yeah yeah.
FK: Those kinds of connections—
ELM: Exactly.
FK: —which are common, and easy to have in, you know, many contexts in the real world, if you’re, like, in a space where you also have family members and lots of community ties, but they don’t—even if you have lots of other fannish friends on the internet, you’re all still coming to the same place. There’s only one, like, locale that you’re interacting in, you know?
ELM: Right, yeah, exactly. And so you have to learn about these things by, like, someone who had a different connection to them announcing it, right? Saying, like—
FK: Right.
ELM: Maybe that’s a person who was closer to them and they were, like, you know. They texted, or they—
FK: Right.
ELM: —knew their partner or someone else in their analog life, right?
FK: Yeah.
ELM: You know?
FK: If I get hit by a bus, you’re gonna be the person probably telling the internet, you know?
ELM: I’ll tell Fansplaining listeners. Thanks. I love this. This is such a violent end for you. [sighs] Anyway. I guess I’m hesitant to say—my examples were very small town-y, but I also do think that, like, you know, there’s a lot of—you know, and there’s social science research about the, like, the…what is it? The many loose ties, right?
FK: Yeah.
ELM: In a city, you have so many loose ties, right? Like, if you leave your house.
FK: Mm-hmm.
ELM: You know? [laughs] There’s so many. Like, I have a relationship—I mean, I guess I don’t know how—like, would I hear if something happened to one of the baristas, or whatever? Maybe not. Maybe I’d just assume they quit, you know? It’s hard to say.
FK: Maybe, but I feel like probably there would be something at the workplace, like, memorializing them.
ELM: Yeah, and someone else would mention it, right?
FK: Yeah.
ELM: So, like, there’s a lot of different ways we know each other, and it is interesting, because—I mean, I really want to get to the parasocial element a little bit, because it is different with fan creators, right?
FK: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
ELM: Because then it gets into a little bit of a realm, too, of—you know, it’s not just a person dying, but it’s the creator of works you loved, right?
FK: Right. And you maybe never talked to them at all and never knew anything about them personally, but they wrote this thing that meant a lot to you.
ELM: Right, and I feel like that can get a little murky, and I’ve seen some of this in actual fandom spaces, too, because it’s like, you know, you have a very personal relationship to that person—to that person’s work.
FK: Mm-hmm.
ELM: Whereas other fans may have had actual relationships with the person, right?
FK: Yeah.
ELM: And it’s, like, this kind of weird in-between thing on a spectrum. The other end of the spectrum being, like, celebrity fans feeling protective of celebrity deaths, right?
FK: [laughs] Yeah.
ELM: You know, like, “This is so important to me,” and it’s like, “OK, but you didn’t know Prince,” or whatever.
FK: Right.
ELM: You know? As opposed to, in fandom, you have this kind of mixed space—
FK: Mm-hmm.
ELM: —where you have people who have different kinds of—you know, some people have two-way relationships, and some people have one-way relationships.
FK: Yeah. For sure. I don’t know, I mean, I do feel like that—I think it’s heightened, but I think that that also happens in day-to-day life sometimes, where, like, people who are most emotionally destroyed by a death are not always the people who—or maybe “most” is the wrong word. But there can be people who can be really emotionally impacted by a death who didn’t know somebody that well.
ELM: Sure.
FK: But they’re still taking it really hard. And that’s, like, reasonable, actually. But it can also lead to a lot of distress [laughs]—
ELM: Well, sure.
FK: —when people who did know them really—you know what I mean?
ELM: Yeah.
FK: It’s very—it’s complicated. Grief is hard to deal with.
ELM: Yeah, I mean, I’ve definitely witnessed that firsthand, but I think it’s different when you’re talking about the works that someone created.
FK: Hmm. Mm-hmm.
ELM: Right? Because that’s not, like, “Oh, I knew this person existed, and their death makes me so sad.”
FK: Mm-hmm.
ELM: It’s like, “Oh, they wrote this fanfic that, like, unlocked something in my soul [FK laughs] that I’ve always, like, deeply internalized and felt like it was a personal part of me.”
FK: Yeah.
ELM: In the way that people talk about the music or the writing of famous artists who’ve died, right?
FK: Yeah.
ELM: You know? And I feel like that’s interesting, because you don’t get that with celebrities, right? Obviously, other celebrities are like, “Hey, my close friend—” You know what I mean? But it’s not the fans. They don’t have any ownership of that person, as a person. Even if they met them, they met them as a—
FK: Right.
ELM: —fan-to-celebrity relationship, right?
FK: Right, right. Absolutely. It’s interesting to think about what that grief is like. You know, I’ve known a lot of people in fandom who have died, but I don’t think I’ve ever known anybody who, like, wrote a fanwork that was deeply important to me that died.
ELM: Hmm.
FK: You know? I’ve known people who I cared about a lot, but they weren’t necessarily—it wasn’t in this category.
ELM: Yeah. I’ve heard of people dying, like, I didn’t know them, but I had read their work and liked it, but none of—no one, as far as I know, the stories where I’m like, “Oh, yeah, that rewired my brain,” or whatever—
FK: Right.
ELM: —of which there are not that many, to be fair.
FK: Yeah.
ELM: [laughs] To use the hyperbolic language of fandom.
FK: But I would be interested to hear from people who have gone through that, you know?
ELM: Yeah.
FK: Who have had that happen, where, like, a story really rewired their brain, they didn’t know the author personally, and then they found out the author died. Like, what would that be like? I don’t think that that’s particularly happened with any other kind of writer that I’ve loved, either. For me. You know? I don’t know.
ELM: Like, a professional? Like, a famous writer, you mean?
FK: Yeah. Yeah.
ELM: Hmm. Now I’m trying to think.
FK: There are people who were dead before I got to their books, [laughs] you know?
ELM: Like Anne Rice!
FK: [laughs] Yeah.
ELM: It is true. With someone like that, it’s like, “Oh, yeah, she could have written more. She could have written 10 more batshit books.” You know? [FK laughs] She was in her 80’s, I don’t think that’s actually realistic, but, you know.
FK: Yeah, I’m not sure that she could have written 10 more batshit books.
ELM: She could have written a couple more. But yeah, when I think about the celebrity deaths that affected me a lot, definitely musicians and actors, I would say.
FK: Mm-hmm.
ELM: Actors in particular. And actors are so interesting, because, I don’t know. Part of the thing that you’re into is, like, their portrayals of characters, right?
FK: [laughs] Right.
ELM: So it’s like, “Oh, that, you know, like—them being this fake person meant a lot to me.”
FK: Yeah.
ELM: It’s less about them as a person, and more about what you’ve seen them do.
FK: Definitely. Yeah yeah yeah.
ELM: So I mean, actors—it’s weird being a fan of an actor, in general, I would say.
FK: Yeah. Well, and with musicians, it can be, like, a weird sort of both—you know, like, it’s—musicians, it’s sort of like, some part of it’s maybe about their persona. Is that really who they were as a person? And then some part of it is about their music, which is art that they’re making, which is not who they are, but it is personal to them…I don’t know.
ELM: Oh, yeah.
FK: Yeah yeah.
ELM: So much about musicians dying, too, especially these older ones, is about people, like, mourning their youth also, you know?
FK: That’s true. Yeah. A particular moment in time.
ELM: Oh my God, have I ever told you one of my favorite pastimes, which is reading the YouTube comments on the greatest hits—the, like, greatest Boomer hits. [FK laughs] So, like, I was reading Simon & Garfunkel YouTube comments—
FK: Oh man.
ELM: They’re beautiful. They’re like, “Yeah, it was the winter of ’70, and me and Sally were just doin’—” And it’s like they’re telling these little [laughs]—
FK: Yeah.
ELM: —these little novellas in the comments. And they’re so pure. There’s, like, no one being mean. It’s just always some anecdote from 1970. You know, and they’ll be like, “I didn’t hear from Sally after ’72, but I’ll always treasure that moment.” And it’s just like [laughs]—this might be special for Simon & Garfunkel songs, but I feel like I experimented and looked at some other parallel artists, and I found the same thing.
FK: No, I believe that. I also am shuddering to think about what songs—you know, like, my mom used to do this with songs, that’s like, “Oh, I danced to that in high school,” or whatever. And they were all really, you know, sort of sweet, like, early ’60s things, right? And now I’m thinking about the songs that I danced to in high school, and what I’m going to be, you know, like, writing things about, [laughs] and it’s pretty horrific.
ELM: “I’ll never forget when I was in the basement of the social dorms and, as always, Usher’s ‘Yeah’ came on…”
FK: Exactly! [both laugh] Yeah.
ELM: “The lights were low, the vibes were sweaty, but we had that night.”
FK: Yeah. Exactly, right? You know? “It was getting hot in here, [ELM laughs] and I did consider taking all my clothes off…”
ELM: “Our clothes were mostly off, in the door, because it was 2003, and that’s how we dressed then.
FK: Yeah, exactly, exactly.
ELM: Spaghetti strap city. Yeah.
FK: Right? Yeah. My chunky highlighted hair [ELM laughs] flying in the wind. I mean, like—and I’m laughing about this, but this is exactly the same vibes as Boomers are having for Simon & Garfunkel, so, I don’t know.
ELM: [laughs] No, now I kind of want to go look at the comments on “Yeah,” and see if people are reminiscing about being in dorm parties [FK laughs] in the early 2000’s.
FK: I’m gonna go for yes.
ELM: Yeah?
FK: Yeah, I mean, like—
ELM: I’m gonna go for “Yeah”?
FK: [laughs] Ha ha ha. No, I mean, I think that at this stage, we’re at the point where people say, “Music was so great back then.”
ELM: [laughs] I mean, “Yeah” is a really good song.
FK: I’m—I mean, I don’t know, whatever. I still, you know, I work out to throwback hits, [ELM laughs] and I do in fact get low when I squat.
ELM: Don’t get me started about that song. [FK laughs] So, OK, yeah. So I do feel like there’s a lot of—and I mean, I guess you see this when ordinary people die, too.
FK: Mm-hmm.
ELM: Absolutely people make it about themselves, and I don’t necessarily mean that in a mean way.
FK: Yeah.
ELM: Just in a describing-humans way, and saying, “Oh, you know, I remember when we were both doing this together—”
FK: Mm-hmm.
ELM: “—back in 1970,” you know? And it’s like, yeah, that person was there, but this is also about you—
FK: Right.
ELM: —and kind of mourning, like, a moment that’s passed, right? Or, like, you know, I wonder for you—you can tell me if I’m totally off-base, but you know, thinking about your Snape friend who died and thinking about how much you—what a good time you had then.
FK: Yeah, exactly. He was a great person. Like, genuinely, one of the world’s great, nice people, you know? But, like, it is about that time, that moment, which was so much fun, and he was a part of that, and it’s just one—like, that moment was never coming back for 50 reasons, and when I, you know, when I’m sad about him dying, I’m sad about him dying, but I’m also sad about one more reason why that moment will never happen again, right?
ELM: Right.
FK: And I think that that’s part of the—that’s natural. That’s what mourning is, actually, right? Because, like, one of the ways that we exist as friends, with each other, is in creating those moments.
ELM: Sure.
FK: That’s what it is. It is selfish, and it’s not only selfish. But, like, also, when a person is dead, they’re dead. You know? [laughs]
ELM: I think selfish is not exactly the word. Maybe self-centering. You know?
FK: Yeah, yeah.
ELM: Selfish as a—“I’m hoarding all these memories to myself, where it’s all about me,” you know? Yeah.
FK: Right, right, right. But—right. But the self-centered thing, right? But, like, I mean, that memory was not, like, any memory of people being together, having that memory is not necessarily self-centered, because there’s other people involved in it, too. And then when that person dies, it is only your memory, [laughs] you know what I mean?
ELM: Sure, sure.
FK: They’re gone. It’s not theirs anymore, in some deep sense.
ELM: Yeah.
FK: So, yeah, I think that’s natural.
ELM: I’m happy about this example, obviously, and I’m very sorry for your loss, but it’s interesting to talk about a con.
FK: Mm-hmm.
ELM: Because I feel like so much of this conversation was thinking about digital platforms, and how hard that makes a lot of this, right?
FK: Yeah. Totally.
ELM: You know, I mean, obviously, like, there are probably people that you’ve known from cons who’ve died that you’ll never know, because they’re just, maybe they’re not in fandom anymore, you know?
FK: Definitely. I’m sure.
ELM: Yeah.
FK: Yeah.
ELM: But that’s interesting, too, to have that, like, in-person connection.
FK: Right. And I think that that makes it…well, I don’t know about making it stronger. I really don’t know about that. Yeah.
ELM: Yeah, I mean—
FK: I don’t think it necessarily does.
ELM: You know, does a fun night rewire your brain like a great fic does?
FK: [laughs] I don’t know. I mean, like, I obviously think about that particular con a lot, because as you noted, I’d mentioned it many times. So it was a very memorable fannish experience, but—
ELM: Yeah, but it was like an id fulfillment of seeing Professor Snape karaoke.
FK: It was—yeah! It was very id fulfillment-y.
ELM: Yeah.
FK: But I think that sometimes id-fulfillment fics do rewire your brain, on some level.
ELM: Sure, sure.
FK: Maybe not in the, you know, [laughs] fancy, like, serious way. But in the, like, “that was really great” way.
ELM: The fancy, serious way of rewiring your brain?
FK: Yeah! Like, I think that there are fics that make you think of the world in a different way—
ELM: OK.
FK: —or think of yourself, you know what I mean?
ELM: That’s fair, that’s fair.
FK: Yeah.
ELM: Yeah.
FK: Don’t suggest that fics can’t have serious philosophical implications on your life, Elizabeth.
ELM: I would never suggest that. [FK laughs] One element I want to touch on here, too, is, like, one thing that’s really valuable about fandom is the right to pseudonymity or anonymity, and privacy.
FK: Yeah, it’s true.
ELM: And being very regimented—there are so many people in fandom that have such a hard wall between their real life, and that doesn’t leave a lot of space for, like, the death of the fan, you know?
FK: No.
ELM: And obviously you want to respect people’s right to privacy, and you know, like, I mentioned it in passing in the article, but it’s something that I think is really important to this, too, is you literally could be living a different life in fandom. That could be the—you could use different pronouns in fandom, right?
FK: Yeah.
ELM: You could be speaking in totally different ways—
FK: Yup.
ELM: —and in ways that would be unrecognizable. Especially thinking of younger people, and their immediate family is their parents, right?
FK: Yeah, yeah.
ELM: I would hope that folks’ spouses know a little bit, you know—maybe not, you know?
FK: Yeah. No, I mean, I don’t know.
ELM: You could also live a totally different life, you know?
FK: Yeah. I mean, I think that you and I both know people who use different pronouns in fandom and who, you know, it seems like have a really hard wall, and it’s just, they’re a different person.
ELM: Sure, yeah. Right.
FK: And like, OK.
ELM: And so you really want to protect that right for people to kind of sever their real-world life from—
FK: Mm-hmm.
ELM: —their fannish life. Not to say that being in fandom isn’t part of the real world, but, like, we need some language here to separate those two, right?
FK: Yeah, but it’s actually a good thing, you know? I mean, like, I understand some people see that as deception. I don’t see it that way. I see it as a good thing to be able to inhabit these different roles.
ELM: Right. Well, I mean, the irony here is there is, like, a total culture clash, right? If we have to talk about younger fans and DNIs and putting your age and your location and all this stuff, right?
FK: Yeah.
ELM: And saying it’s—I was gonna say “sus.” It’s suspect, uh, [FK laughs] as the older folks would say, you know, to see people in fandom who don’t give any identifying information or whatever.
FK: Yeah, totally.
ELM: And so that’s interesting to me. I mean, one thing about the—you know, kind of bringing it back to the Fannish Next-of-Kin thing, is that relationship can be set up with you giving literally, you know, maybe your Fannish Next-of-Kin knows more about you, but—
FK: You can do it without them knowing. Yeah.
ELM: Yeah, you don’t have to reveal much about yourself at all to create those kind of ties, and that’s very interesting, and I think pretty unusual—
FK: Mm-hmm.
ELM: —to say, like, “This is kind of the heir of my works, and they might not—”
FK: “They don’t know my legal name!” [laughs]
ELM: “They don’t know my name.” Yeah, exactly.
FK: And they won’t find out, either, right?
ELM: Right, right.
FK: Not necessarily. If somebody dies and, like, that—everything I read, it didn’t seem like—you could correct me, but if somebody dies and that’s reported to the AO3, the AO3 hands that over to the Fannish Next-of-Kin, it’s not like they say, “Oh yes—”
ELM: Yeah.
FK: “—So-and-so so-and-so from Tampa, Florida, died, AKA…”
ELM: No, no, right. Well, they, so—what happens is they contact—so you both—both parties have to give contact information.
FK: Yeah.
ELM: And so, one party will inform—
FK: Mm-hmm.
ELM: —the living party will inform the OTW, and then the OTW will email the other people, and if they don’t respond within a certain time period, then they are presumed incapacitated. But it’s like, also why would you lie about that?
FK: Right.
ELM: With this person [laughs] that you went into this, like, trusted agreement with, you know?
FK: Yeah yeah yeah.
ELM: But they still have a verification element to it.
FK: Mm-hmm.
ELM: So I guess the person who is your Fannish Next-of-Kin would need to have some way of knowing that you did die, right? So they might have more information—
FK: Right, someone would need to tell them, somehow.
ELM: Yeah, so that’s tricky. Then probably you would have more information about their life, or maybe you would know someone. You know, they would need to get that information somehow.
FK: Well, or maybe not. You could write into your will, you know, that you needed this email address to be notified of—
ELM: Or, alternately, someone that you only know in fandom, you don’t know anything about their life, but your very trusted—I mean, it seems unrealistic based on having made friends in fandom that you wouldn’t reveal anything about yourselves, but maybe, and you don’t hear from them for three months.
FK: Yeah yeah. Maybe you just say, “That’s the deal. If you don’t hear from me for three months, assume I’m dead.”
ELM: Yeah.
FK: Sure.
ELM: Or incapacitated, also. This isn’t just for death, right? You know?
FK: Yeah yeah, that’s true. That’s right. That’s right.
ELM: And if you’re incapacitated, but then you recover, then you, you know, take your works back, right?
FK: Yeah.
ELM: So that’s interesting to think about, though. The, like, the things we ask to know of each other, right?
FK: Yeah.
ELM: And, like, how little you can know about someone in fandom and still how much…
FK: Mm-hmm.
ELM: How much of them dying you feel—
FK: Mm-hmm.
ELM: —some personal stake in, right? You know?
FK: Yeah.
ELM: I mean, I’ve definitely experienced this with people. I didn’t know them at all, but I was just like, “Oh, that’s so sad. I liked their works.” You know?
FK: Mm-hmm.
ELM: And that’s—I mean, whatever. I guess I’ve experienced that on Twitter, when I’ve seen that someone—and I was like, “Oh, yeah, I really liked their journalism. That sucks.” You know?
FK: Yeah, totally.
ELM: But it feels a little different when it’s in fandom, because you both had that affective relationship to the same thing. It wasn’t like, “Oh, you wrote really great articles.”
FK: Yeah. Yeah yeah yeah yeah.
ELM: I’m not like, “I feel—I love Slate so much, you know? [FK laughs] And you were such a good contributor.” Right? Like, I’ll never feel that way about a publication—
FK: Totally.
ELM: —as about a person who liked Magneto as much as I did, or whatever, you know?
FK: Right. And this is also self-centered. But I do think that there’s also a level of, “Oh, that could be me,” right?
ELM: Hmm.
FK: And maybe not for everybody always, but, like, I do think it’s one thing to have somebody who you don’t have a lot of interests in common with, or you don’t see yourself in them or whatever, right?
ELM: Mm-hmm.
FK: And they die, and you’re sad, but you’re, you know, there’s not that level of identification. Whereas I think that when you’re both loving the same thing with so much affect—
ELM: Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
FK: You know, like, even if they’re very different than you, you still have this sense of kinship.
ELM: Yeah.
FK: Maybe it’s exactly what you’re saying. But I do think there’s something really strong in that sense of kinship, and that sense of ephemerality of, like, anybody could die. If they could die, anybody could die, you know? [both laugh]
ELM: I mean, some of us already think that, so we don’t need reminders, but yeah. I definitely think there’s a different quality to it, and I’ve found this with people who are just in fandom who’ve died—
FK: Mm-hmm.
ELM: —who I’ve never shared a fandom with. I think there is a difference when it’s someone who was, like, liking the same things as you, because you had that particular connection.
FK: Yeah.
ELM: But I do think there have been people in fandom and it’s like, “Oh, I totally—because I get that element of that person’s life.”
FK: Mm-hmm.
ELM: “That was a big part of their life, this is how I’m learning about. I’m not learning their legal name right here, I’m learning—” You know what I mean?
FK: Right.
ELM: I don’t know. I think that’s pretty big. It’s an important—it’s a subculture that we’re a part of together, you know? And a set of behaviors and relationships that we have in common, and that does feel different than, you know, frankly, from a celebrity dying. We have very different lives from David Bowie, [FK laughs] you know?
FK: Yeah.
ELM: That feels like a different sort of thing. You don’t, I mean—
FK: Yeah.
ELM: Maybe that’s a weird example, because he also felt like an alien. But, like, you know what I mean.
FK: But there is also—also, when somebody in fandom dies, there is a moment where their everyday life sometimes, not always, but where their everyday life kind of reaches out and touches their fandom life—
ELM: Hmm.
FK: —and all of a sudden you go, “Oh, wow.” You know? Like, I’ve seen people who died and their family was having a hard time making funeral expenses, and so someone was like, “Why don’t we post on their fannish thing?”
ELM: Yeah, yeah.
FK: You know what I mean? And, like, I’ve seen times when somebody who, you know, their parents or their significant other or whatever is like, “I had no idea that they touched this many people.”
ELM: Yeah.
FK: You know? Like, “I had no idea that this all was—” Like, “I knew that they loved their fandom thing, but I didn’t know it was like this.”
ELM: Yeah.
FK: And it is actually a beautiful thing, I think, to have that moment for their survivors to go, “Wow, there were so many more people who really cared about this person than I could have imagined.”
ELM: Yeah, yeah.
FK: “They had this community that is, like, helping me pay for their funeral and, like, really loved them and cares.” And I think that’s a special thing, too.
ELM: Well, that just makes me feel like there should be more routes. You know, the Fannish Next-of-Kin on the AO3 is very much a fan-to-fan, like, it’s a peer-to-peer connection, right?
FK: Mm-hmm. Yeah.
ELM: I don’t know of any kind of formalized ways that people connect across the lines as you're describing them, you know?
FK: Hmm.
ELM: To say, like—that’s something that I guess if it’s your spouse or your legal heir, and it’s someone who’s very close to you—
FK: Yeah.
ELM: —would say, “Hey, like, don’t ask me about this right now. This is my—the other world I’m in. [FK laughs]
FK: Yeah.
ELM: “But if something happens to me, here’s the email address of one of my friends over here. They’d want to know.” You know?
FK: Mm-hmm. Yeah.
ELM: That’s something that you could set up. But I think that that—you know, and like I said earlier, that seems harder when it’s a younger person and maybe that person in their life is their parents.
FK: Right. But I would—I mean, I have to say, like, having—one of the things about becoming a priest is that you get a lot of information about this stuff, right?
ELM: Yeah, yeah.
FK: Because you—because, I mean, in a year and half, I will probably be on the front line of some people’s end-of-life planning. [laughs]
ELM: Sure.
FK: You know? One of the big things that I’ve taken away from what I’ve studied so far is that everybody should have a will, which you can write on your own. You don’t have to go to a lawyer to do it.
ELM: Mm-hmm.
FK: And even if you don’t have a formal will, everybody should have a little folder about what they want to be done—
ELM: Yeah.
FK: —when they die. And you can put it in an accessible place. You don’t have to tell anybody about it. Just, like, put it on the desktop of your computer, or at the front of your file folder, or wherever somebody would find it if they were going through your stuff. And you can have all sorts of stuff in there, right? You can have, I mean, do your Fannish Next-of-Kin, but you can also say, “Hey, my parents—”
ELM: Yeah.
FK: “If I die, and only if I die, you know, please tell this person.” You can say, also, “I would like to have a memorial service that is—like, I would like to try and have somebody set up a memorial service online for me, so that my friends online can Zoom in, or whatever.”
ELM: Sure, sure.
FK: You can do all that kind of thing. And it’s a huge kindness to your next-of-kin to have it done. Huge. [laughs]
ELM: Sure. There’s this—I mean, there is, like, a—you know, it’s called a social media will—
FK: Mm-hmm.
ELM: —for social media in particular.
FK: Mm-hmm.
ELM: Obviously you can write that information into a standard will too, right? But, like—
FK: Yeah yeah yeah, for sure.
ELM: —there are legal things about you’re really not supposed to give your passwords to other people, but, like, I don’t know. What are they gonna do about it? [both laugh] But, like, that being said, I think there’s really something valuable in the Fannish Next-of-Kin model not requiring something like that.
FK: Hmm.
ELM: To kind of set up these connections and kind of a tether that aren’t just someone acting on your behalf—
FK: Right.
ELM: —but just sort of, like, the actual connection there feels important to me, that it exists.
FK: Mm-hmm.
ELM: And the fact that—or, like, you know, to their credit, Facebook. The “legacy contact.”
FK: Mm-hmm.
ELM: The fact that that’s a specific task that you can set up in advance—
FK: Yeah.
ELM: —and it’s triggered by the platform, and you don’t have to have someone hunting down all these—
FK: Right.
ELM: You know, logging in and requesting and—
FK: Yeah yeah yeah. Yeah.
ELM: —et cetera, et cetera.
FK: Gmail does that too, right? I mean, you can have sort of a dead-man switch, literally, where if you don’t log in for three months—
ELM: Yes. There is that for the entire Google suite. Yes. Exactly.
FK: Mm-hmm.
ELM: Yeah, and Apple has something like that, as well. So, like, those obviously exist in advance. I mean, those are kind of more for security and just for logistics, right?
FK: Yeah, yeah.
ELM: As opposed to, like, the actual…I don’t know. Affective connection of leaving your fanworks to another fan, you know?
FK: Yeah.
ELM: If you could leave your Tumblr posts to another fan—like, you know, transfer over—
FK: [laughs] Yeah.
ELM: Wouldn’t that be a lot?
FK: [laughing] “I bequeath to my wife [both laugh] my bed and my household furnishings. And to Elizabeth Minkel, everything I have ever Tumbl’d.”
ELM: And I’ll say, “Too bad I have so many of those tags blacklisted. [FK laughs] I don’t actually want that.” I don’t want pictures of Harry Styles. He’s on my list.
FK: Great. Don’t worry, if you thought that I was gonna give you my Tumblr, you were very mistaken.
ELM: I don’t want it.
FK: You don’t want it anyway. [laughs]
ELM: Don’t want it. All those things you love reblogging that I have blocked, like Destiel. [FK laughs] If you were to look at my blocklist and compare it to, like, AO3’s top ships, you would see some similarities. It’s fine.
FK: [laughs] I can well imagine.
ELM: Anyway. Yeah, I just think that kind of, like, the internet is too—it’s not mature. But, like, it is too far along at this point for so much of this to feel so ad hoc, right? Like, the fact that—
FK: Yeah, I definitely agree.
ELM: Like, TikTok has jack shit to talk about, right?
FK: Yeah.
ELM: You know? And it’s just like—and that’s wild to me, too, some of this stuff, like, YouTube has a lot more on this. Obviously, because it’s part of Google, but, like, you have people making whole careers out of this, and now you’re gonna have, like—
FK: Mm-hmm.
ELM: Now you’ve got to have lawyers and everything buttoned-up or whatever, you know? And, like, I don’t know. It’s just such a messy space. When you start to think about all the copyright stuff and the content that people are creating and where it’s going, I think AO3 makes that easy, because it’s all noncommercial. You know, like, obviously the copyright is not changing hands unless you specify that in a will, too.
FK: Yeah.
ELM: But, like, it just seems like a weird afterthought and, like, the internet has existed for too long for it to feel like an afterthought.
FK: Yup.
ELM: It shouldn’t have been an afterthought in 1995, but it certainly shouldn’t in 2025, or whatever. I know we’re not there yet—
FK: Yeah. Absolutely.
ELM: —but you know what I mean.
FK: Eh, it’s OK. We’re almost there. God, that’s horrifying.
ELM: That’s weird to think about.
FK: Yeah, it is weird to think about.
ELM: Anyway, those are some takeaways that I had.
FK: Yeah, good talk. Uh, I…[ELM laughs] am now, as I feel every time I talk about something like this extensively, want to go and look back at my will and funeral planning and that whole file and be like, “Do I still like all of this?”
ELM: Yeah. That’s fair.
FK: Yeah. Sure.
ELM: I mean, that’s another thing, too, is none of it’s set in stone, right? You know?
FK: Nope.
ELM: You can always change it.
FK: Yup, you can.
ELM: So, why not?
FK: It does require—I mean, it does require recognizing the fact that you will die, which a lot of people don’t like to recognize.
ELM: Why not.
FK: Psychology! OK, I’m done with this. You know.
ELM: All right. So, yeah. This has been an—it’s nice to, you know, to take a debrief after researching this. It’s nice to talk through some of this, because, like, yeah. I feel like it’s not a topic that gets discussed a lot in fandom, because obviously people don’t want to talk about people dying. You know?
FK: For sure.
ELM: And people don’t want to talk about, like, all these, like, ambivalent, or ambiguous relationships we’ve been describing, right?
FK: Mm-hmm.
ELM: You don’t want to presume anything about anyone you know. I’m not gonna slide into the DMs of someone who only knows me as my pseud and be like, [FK laughs] “What are your plans for if you die?” You know what I mean? You just—
FK: Yeah.
ELM: You don’t know where the lines are, and—
FK: Yeah.
ELM: —some people might be happy to talk about that, and some people might be like, “I never want to speak of this,” right? You know?
FK: Right.
ELM: And so, I think that’s really challenging.
FK: But maybe—but I do think it starts with those of us who are willing to talk about what we want to have happen, right?
ELM: Yeah.
FK: So, if you’re listening to this and you’re open to that kind of conversation, maybe just think about, like, I don’t know. Posting about it or talking to a friend about it or whatever to try and destigmatize some of that conversation, and also just make sure that they know what you would want, because [laughs] it really helps.
ELM: Well, you know—
FK: It really helps.
ELM: —I will say, as a kind of, to put a final pin on this, one thing—I quoted one of the AO3 volunteers who coordinates—she’s, like, the point person on the Fannish Next-of-Kin, and she put hers in place, she said, in 2020, and they saw a big uptick in requests.
FK: Hmm.
ELM: So I quoted her as saying, like, you know—paraphrasing right now, obviously. You can read the full quote in the article at wired.com, but [both laugh] she said something like, you know, the pandemic, in 2020 in particular, just made it easier to bring it up, you know? At least for her.
FK: Yeah, for sure.
ELM: And she thinks for other people too, right? Because it’s like—
FK: Mm-hmm.
ELM: “Oh, we’re actually talking about this now.” And, like, people—I obviously noticed that on social media—
FK: Definitely.
ELM: —in 2020, people were sometimes being a little doom-y about it, but [laughs] you know, like—
FK: Yeah, they were talking about it. Yeah.
ELM: But it was the most discussion of people saying “I could die” I’ve ever seen on social media, you know?
FK: Yeah.
ELM: And that’s not necessarily a bad thing. I think if you fixate on it and post about how you’re convinced it’s going to happen—
FK: [laughs] Right.
ELM: —that maybe is something you’d want to work on, but yeah.
FK: But, yeah. But, like, if it gets you to write a will, then maybe it’s not bad. [laughs]
ELM: Yeah, saying, “This could happen, and so here’s what I’m doing just in case.” You know?
FK: Yeah. For sure.
ELM: And so, you know, maybe with that out in the open, like, maybe that’ll help more people talk about it.
FK: Fingers crossed. I think that is a good place to end for today.
ELM: All right. Cheerful topic.
FK: [laughs] But one that I’m glad to talk about with you, Elizabeth.
ELM: Likewise!
FK: All right. See you later then.
ELM: OK, bye, Flourish!
FK: Bye.
[Outro music]