Episode 199: Reflecting Reality?
In Episode 199, “Reflecting Reality?” Flourish and Elizabeth tackle a trio of listener questions on the ways fanfiction does—and doesn’t—mirror our own lives. Topics discussed include changes in how queerness has been depicted over the past few decades, whether longer-running fandoms tend to produce more generic modern AUs, and the ways English as a global language of fandom shapes fic setting choices—and creates a sense of placelessness, no matter where an author lives.
Show Notes
[00:00:00] As always, our intro music is “Awel” by stefsax, used under a CC BY 3.0 license.
[00:01:41] That’s episode 191: “Femstats February.”
[00:03:36]
[00:06:48]
[00:18:14] The primary fic Flourish is thinking of is “ELS” by Dawson Rambo (warning: this is a story about serial killers and includes all sorts of potentially triggering stuff).
[00:23:15] Two English academics who do teach fic-as-text (and there are more of course!) are Anne Jamison and Maria Alberto, who joined us for episode 151, “Teaching Fanfiction.”
[00:23:58] Our interstitial music throughout is “4th avenue walkup” by Lee Rosevere, also used under a CC BY 3.0 license.
[00:25:11] Our last episode was a conversation with Javi Grillo-Marxuach on the WGA strike, and for only $1 a month on Patreon, you get access to the special episode we recorded with him a few years back, “No Edith, No Peace.” (And if you’d rather make a one-off donation, you can do that via PayPal.)
[00:27:28] That’s episode 195, “Fandom Life Cycles.”
[00:36:59]
[00:42:50] “And lo, thou gently masterest the orbs.”
[00:46:09]
[00:47:24] 34 of the 50 states have a Springfield, and many of them are, in fact, named after Springfield, Massachusetts. Matt Groening, the creator of The Simpsons, did name it after Springfield, Oregon—but the show is not specifically set in Oregon:
Springfield was named after Springfield, Oregon. The only reason is that when I was a kid, the TV show “Father Knows Best” took place in the town of Springfield, and I was thrilled because I imagined that it was the town next to Portland, my hometown. When I grew up, I realized it was just a fictitious name. I also figured out that Springfield was one of the most common names for a city in the U.S. In anticipation of the success of the show, I thought, “This will be cool; everyone will think it’s their Springfield.” And they do.
[00:49:12] Charles Xavier’s house (and various iterations of the school) are in fact canonically located in North Salem, New York, which in reality includes an area nicknamed “Billionaire’s Dirt Road.”
[00:50:54] For Untamed fans interested in reading fics about the Chinese diaspora recced by folks from those backgrounds, a crowdsourced list!
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 #199, “Reflecting Reality?” Question mark?
FK: [laughs] Question mark! Question mark.
ELM: [high-pitched] Question mark? [laughs]
FK: [laughs] What? Are we?
ELM: That’s what they call upspeak? Going up? [both laugh]
FK: OK, so we have, I think, three messages that we wanted to talk about, and I think we want to say in advance that there’s sort of two parts to this episode. Each of them could be covered with the title “Reflecting Reality?” question mark, [ELM laughs] but they maybe wouldn’t naturally be talking to each other always, so, you know, two parts.
ELM: OK, the commonality, too—you know, they fall under this broader umbrella about the things that we read and write in fanfiction today, in 2023, and in the past, and how things have shifted over time, right? But this is specifically about fanfiction. We should say that up front.
FK: Mmm hmmm. OK, so, should I read the first one?
ELM: Yeah, do it.
FK: All right, this is from someone anonymous.
“Hi, Elizabeth and Flourish! I got a little behind on episodes, so I am listening to ‘Femstats February’ with Destination Toast tonight, with the short discussion about trends in fandom/fanfiction over time. One of my fandoms is Star Trek—” Yeaaaaaaaahhhhhhh. That was editorial.
ELM: It’s almost redundant, that response that you just, like—everyone knew you were doing that in your head.
FK: “—and I feel like it’s the perfect candidate [ELM laughs] for a case study of fic trends through the decades, but I also have a more specific anecdote. Most of what I read is recently-written, but I spent a brief period reading Enterprise slash fic from when the show aired in the early 2000s, and I was fascinated to find the distinct difference in the treatment of same-sex attraction. The 2000s fic tended to portray characters as much more conflicted about homosexuality and much more likely to be closeted, whereas fic from the last five-ish years skips over all that, and everyone is out and queer and poly, or skips any kind of labels or bounded identities. I think this pretty clearly reflects the change in general societal treatment of queerness, and I wonder if similar tonal shifts are everywhere. Have either of you noticed this or other major trends over time in your long-running fandoms? Thanks for always making me think.”
And that’s Nonnie.
ELM: Thank you very much, Nonnie. A great question. A question for the ages. Literally, [FK laughs] different ages.
FK: Yeah, so what have you noticed? Because you’re a much more inveterate slash reader than me.
ELM: [deep inhale] Inveterate? Well! Yes, I can absolutely confirm that—when did Enterprise come out? What years are we talking, here?
FK: It came on in 2001, so, and it ran until, like, the mid-2000s.
ELM: Ah-ha!
FK: Yeah. Early 2000s.
ELM: I don’t even know who was in that one, side note. You know, I feel like by osmosis, I could recognize a lot of the characters of Deep Space Nine or of—
FK: Scott Bakula.
ELM: Which is so—yeah! [laughs] See, I can’t even imagine Scott Bakula wearing a Star Trek outfit. What’s the one with Kate—with, uh, sexy lady?
FK: Voyager.
ELM: Janeway?
FK: [laughs] It has two sexy—
ELM: Voyager. OK. All right.
FK: It has Janeway and Seven of Nine.
ELM: No, that’s different vibes, and you know I meant Janeway, when I said sexy lady. [FK laughs] You know that’s what I would pick.
FK: I do. I know, I know. I know that.
ELM: Yeah. All right, all right. So, um, yes, definitely, definitely. This specific topic, as opposed to other trends we’ve observed over time, when I started reading slash in the very beginning of the 2000s, absolutely. You know, there was—it wasn’t just, like, closeted, feeling conflicted. I’m sure you saw some of this, not even really being a slash person at the time, but you would see a lot of, like, gay for—not gay, [FK laughs] just gay for the other guy in the slash ship, right? You know?
FK: Yup. Yup. Yup.
ELM: That was very popular, which is interesting. And then also, of course, you know, metatextually, and not within the stories, people were putting warnings on their stories, being like, “This is slash! Don’t like, don’t read!” And the obvious implication in that—and sometimes spelled out, and not just implied—was, “Maybe this is not gonna be to your liking, because it’s gay.” Right?
FK: Mmm hmmm.
ELM: Which I think would put someone in the wrong now. Imagine saying that. Imagine being like, “If you don’t like gay people, don’t read this,” you know? Like, imagine—that’s an absurd thing to imagine, right?
FK: Right.
ELM: And I think that it is hard for folks who were not alive back then, [laughs] or, you know, were small children—
FK: Mmm hmmm.
ELM: To really, really grasp the cultural context, and this is in an American context, but also in a broader, global context, of just what discussion was like in the broader culture around this, and how that was kind of filtering into fanworks.
FK: Absolutely, absolutely. I mean, I think it’s also, like, [laughs] I don’t want to get too fandom-specific in this, but, [laughs] I am an Enterprise apologist, but also, that was at a point at which they were still not allowed to have gay people on Star Trek. There was a ruling that the fandom could not have—the shows could not feature gay people, and Enterprise is, like, intensely [laughs] heterosexual and heteronormative, [ELM laughs] and—I mean, despite having, like, it’s very horny. They’re always needing to be decontaminated, which results in a lot of shots of Scott Bakula, like, wiping his thighs with [laughs] some kind of ointment.
ELM: Wow, that sounds like a great piece of television right there. I know why it’s everyone’s favorite.
FK: Oh, it’s quality. [laughs] I love Enterprise. It’s terrible.
ELM: I’m being sarcastic. [laughs]
FK: Oh, I know. I know! [laughs] But I mean, what I’m trying to say, though, is I think that there’s also an element where the characters were being, at least in this case, and I think in some other fandoms too, the characters were being portrayed as so straight, you know? [laughs]
ELM: [laughing] Yeah.
FK: [laughing] Just really straight, in a way that, like, I don’t feel is the norm on TV now. There’s just norms of masculinity, especially, are different than they were at that time.
ELM: Yeah, you know, it’s interesting to think about this kind of in a broader arc, because actually it was a real swing backwards. If you look at some of the original slash heavy hitters—
FK: Mmm hmmm.
ELM: You know, like, Starsky & Hutch—
FK: Right.
ELM: —that was a subtextual show, you know? [FK laughs] They, you know, because the ’70s were quite different.
FK: Yup.
ELM: And the way that male, like, romantic friendship was really depicted. You could see this in a lot of movies in the ’70s, too, right?
FK: Yeah.
ELM: It was very, there’s a lot of kind of vulnerability and tenderness, and the ’80s, I don’t know, the ’80s were, just kind of wiped everything out and then we went into this weird—I don’t know, you know? This is, again, from an American context, but I think a lot of this is around American pop culture, and that was setting the tone for a lot of stuff at the time, you know?
FK: Yeah.
ELM: My only experience of other media from a firsthand perspective is the United Kingdom. And I was living there in the mid-2000s at the time, and even more…it felt like even more of a repression, and kind of a desire bursting out, you know what I mean? Just under the surface, right?
FK: Yeah. I think one of the things that’s important to note, and this relates maybe to the kinds of stories that were being told in fanfic too, is that that was a time at which we did have some queer characters on TV. There was Queer as Folk, there—you know, like, [laughs] Ellen had been doing a thing—
ELM: Will & Grace.
FK: Will & Grace! I mean, I know it’s silly to say those things now, but those things were actually a step forward, and a lot of times they were very stereotyped.
ELM: A massive step forward! It’s not silly to say—no serious, like, scholar of pop culture history would ever say—
FK: I know! I know, I know.
ELM: —that, like, Will & Grace was not one of the most important shows to ever air, you know?
FK: Right, right. Yeah, yeah.
ELM: For changing the tone.
FK: Right, but I think that one of the things that then happened was that a lot of the stuff that people were seeing about gay people did have to do with, like, [laughs] you know, there was a coming-out story. There was, you know, all of this stuff. That was what the media was reflecting, and so I’m not surprised that in addition to the fact that individuals were experiencing that, you know, like, just the people who were writing the fanfic probably, you’re also seeing those so constantly being shown on TV and everywhere. And I feel like now, that coming-out story is something that exists, but it’s definitely not the major mode of conversation, you know, in—
ELM: Yeah.
FK: There’s a lot of network TV with gay people who are not having those kinds of stories.
ELM: Yeah. I think that’s a good point. I mean, I think to the point where, yeah, no, I don’t think that every single story on television needs to be a frickin’ coming-out story, but I also think within fanfiction, one thing I’ve observed in the last 10 years is, just as Anon is pointing out, skips over all of that, and, you know, of course, I am guilty—[FK laughs] and maybe guilty’s not the right word, but as you know, I’ve written fics where the characters are just, I just say they’re queer from the start and we’re not gonna explain how that doesn’t match up with what is happening in the source material, you know?
FK: Yeah.
ELM: Also not explaining how they’re suddenly young adults in the 2020s—
FK: Yeah, totally.
ELM: —and not, like, in the ’60s or whatever, you know what I mean?
FK: Right.
ELM: We’re not explaining any of that. That’s fine. That’s just who they are. But I feel like it’s definitely left a lot less space for those kind of more ambivalent stories, and people who might be struggling, right? And maybe some of that is a reflection of, a lot of people’s lived experiences of it not being a huge deal because they have, you know, a liberal family or live in a liberal area or whatever, but there’s huge swaths of the country, let alone the rest of the world, where it would be something to struggle with, where it would be something to keep secret, and I feel like fandom has a lot less space for stories like that.
FK: Yeah, I think that that’s true. I think that that’s especially true when you look at sort of the broad range of different fandoms that people are writing these stories in, right?
ELM: Mmm hmmm.
FK: Within the Star Trek context, they’ve sort of, like, basically retconned all of those years of not talking about gay people, and now it’s like, “Actually, it was always cool to be queer in the Federation. There’s never been a problem with it.” [laughs] Is the current, like, line. So it’s sort of like, “OK, great.” We’ve now sort of erased, in a certain sense, the idea that any of these characters, because they’re, like, “Yeah, it’s the future. People are all queer in the future, it’s fine.”
ELM: Mmm hmmm. Mmm hmmm.
FK: So there’s sort of an almost retroactive characterization happening. But when I look at other fandoms, I mean, OK, I know this is older and a deeper cut, and maybe that’s not useful, but I’m thinking about, like, something like Supernatural or whatever, where you’ve got this masculinity thing going on. [laughs] I don’t know, I’m only coming up with old fandoms for this right now. But I’m sure that there are ones that still exist
ELM: Supernatural is still one of the biggest [FK laughs] and most active fandoms around.
FK: OK, but it’s been on forever and ever, right?
ELM: Yeah, it only ended a couple years ago.
FK: Yeah, OK, that’s true. OK, like, I think about Supernatural fic. I think about, I don’t know, I was just watching The Walking Dead, which is a show about men! [laughs] Not entirely about men, but it’s—there’s a lot about men being fuckin’ men in it. And I think, you know, yeah, those characters, you do need to convince me that—I would like to see more people thinking about particular characters who maybe need that convincing or discussion or, you know, thinking about it or life-changing in that way. Because it seems natural in a bunch of fandoms—
ELM: Yeah.
FK: —and I’m not seeing that in fic, usually.
ELM: Yeah, I mean, of course, this is all happening under a pretty modern fan practice of just kind of laying a label, or one or more labels over a character, and not just about sexuality, but obviously about gender and, you know, sometimes race or disability or whatever, like, various marginalizations, saying, like, you know, blank!Bucky Barnes, right? [FK laughs] I don’t know. Autistic!Bucky Barnes or something, right? You know?
FK: Yeah.
ELM: And it’s not about that, it’s just a character trait that you’ve added to them, right? And whether that is something that you saw subtextually in the original work or something that you just wanted to add onto them, right? There you go.
FK: Right.
ELM: That’s what they are now, right? And that is something that I think if more people had tried that 20 years ago, I think they would have been met with a lot more opposition.
FK: Mmm hmmm.
ELM: They’d be like, “Bucky Barnes isn’t autistic.”
FK: Yeah. [laughs]
ELM: “Why are you doing this? That’s out of character!” Or, “That’s not right! That’s offensive!” You know? They would probably get real mad about it, too, whatever it was, right? You know?
FK: Mmm hmmm. Totally.
ELM: You had people getting really mad that people were suggesting that characters were gay, you know? And it’s like—
FK: Yes you did! [laughs]
ELM: “Well, Joanne Rowling did not say otherwise, so we’re going for it now.” You know? [FK laughs] And then she said otherwise.
FK: [groans] Womp womp womp.
ELM: And you were like, “OK, I got you. I really got you.” You know? So it’s like, I feel like there’s also that element of it too, and, like, yeah. I don’t need every story to be some, like, you know, after-school special, tearful exploration of, like, someone having to tell their loved ones that they are X thing or whatever, or talk about that journey.
FK: Yeah.
ELM: But sometimes I think about how much good storytelling there was in these ones where people really had to, you know, were talking about internal struggles and mulling it over and not being sure, and—
FK: Yeah.
ELM: —kissing their male costar and then being like, “Oh no!” And, like, oh, gay panic, you can’t write that anymore, but people totally panic! You know? That’s a real thing that happens, because people are unsure, right?
FK: People absolutely panic. [laughs] Yeah.
ELM: And that’s a real thing that happens in reality.
FK: Right. And sometimes it’s about homophobia, but sometimes it’s just about what—[laughs] “I’m having a feeling that I didn’t expect to have! What the fuck?” Right?
ELM: Right, right, exactly. And so I feel like there’s less space for that and sure, maybe not zero space for that, and if you warn properly about stuff, then I think that’s fine, but I don’t know. It’s just, you know, I’m not saying things were great back then, but I do think that there’s been kind of a big swing in the opposite direction.
FK: Yeah.
ELM: And maybe a swing a bit farther.
FK: It’s interesting that you mentioned warning, because I kind of wonder—and I don’t know if this is true, but I kind of wonder whether part of it maybe has to do with people feeling afraid of writing the wrong thing in a certain way, because you don’t have to deal with difficult elements in a fic if everybody’s already—well, I mean, not that there’s no difficult elements, but if everybody’s already queer, and they’re just having fun together, you don’t necessarily have to write a fic where you might reveal what you think about, I don’t know, like, issues of being nonbinary, are you trans or not? You know what I mean? You don’t have to reveal what you think about—
ELM: Mmm hmmm.
FK: —or what your experience was or, you don’t have to risk that somebody is going to find it triggering that you wrote a homophobic character. You don’t have to take any of those risks. And in a context where I think some people are very afraid of saying the wrong thing or doing the wrong thing and being considered, like, to not be sufficiently sensitive, that might be a reason why some people aren’t doing this. And, for what it’s worth, I mean, I’m not doing it either, so [both laugh] you know, I’m not saying that as a finger-waggy “oh, you all aren’t brave,” like, no. I mean, I don’t want somebody to think I’m a jerk, [laughs] right? But I wonder.
ELM: Yeah, I mean, you’re making me think too, I feel like I have read more than my fair share of what felt like gratuitous gaybashing scenes in older fic, right? And it felt like, it was like, why does that have to be the impetus for the hurt/comfort, and am I sad to see that trend kind of fade away? Not particularly, [FK laughs] because I often felt like it was being used as a plot device—
FK: Right.
ELM: —and not as, like, just a depiction of a thing that truly does happen.
FK: Right.
ELM: That being said, it is a thing that truly does happen, right? You know? And I don’t know, actually. I don’t know if you know, as someone who reads more fic about women than me, [both laugh] if there’s been a decrease in, you know, depictions of sexual violence against women over the years.
FK: I think there has. I think that there has.
ELM: Mmm.
FK: Or, let me rephrase. I think that there has in the sense of, like, there was sexual violence and now someone else needs to comfort them. I think there’s still plenty of, like, “Here is some, tee-hee, sexy…” [laughs] You know? Like, the sort of—there’s plenty of stuff that’s still in that sort of fantasy zone, but I think that there’s less where it’s like, “This is actually a tragedy that happened to her, and now she’s going to be saved by X character, who’s going to patch her up and sort of heal—” You know what I mean?
ELM: Right, right, right.
FK: Yeah. You know, the rape fantasy stays strong, but not, you know, that as a threat to a character.
ELM: More reality presenting, like, a female victim.
FK: Right. Exactly.
ELM: Right? You know? Right.
FK: That’s my impression, anyway.
ELM: Yeah. I mean, I wonder, because this all started from Toast’s episode on femslash, I wonder if there’s stats on this. This would be a very hard thing to measure, I feel like.
FK: Oh yeah.
ELM: Because some of this stuff is like, what are you tagging for exactly? And how do you sort out something like that from a rape fantasy, from a non-doing-a-thing [laughs] depiction of rape. I don’t know a more eloquent way to describe that.
FK: And very subjective! Yeah. Like, and very subjectively—
ELM: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Right.
FK: —because you can write a story that one person would read as a fantasy and another person would be like, “That is a bleak story.” [laughs] And you’re like, OK, You know?
ELM: Yeah. Yeah.
FK: Yeah.
ELM: Can you think of other things? I remember when I originally sent this to you, you were talking about reading a story written in the ’90s about porn addiction?
FK: Oh, yeah. [laughs] Yeah! You know, OK, [ELM laughs] so in The X-Files, Mulder canonically watches porn, and it’s like a slight joke. He’s, you know, he’s always, like—
ELM: Just a man in the ’90s.
FK: Yeah, he’s a man in the ’90s.
ELM: Or now. [laughs]
FK: He has porn VCRs. You know, there’s a joke about how his best friend’s gonna, like, come destroy his stash or whatever if he dies. You know. [ELM laughs] But there were a bunch of fanfics in the ’90s where they presented Scully as being really freaked out by him being into porn, and even, like, presented him as having an addiction. He’s not portrayed as having a porn addiction particularly in the show, I wouldn’t say. It’s played as a joke.
ELM: Mmm hmmm.
FK: And it’s not compulsive or something. It’s just, like, he’s a guy who watches porn and sometimes [laughs] doesn’t hide it from Scully very well. [ELM laughs] But there’s lots of fic in which she’s really upset about it. Maybe not tons and tons, but it’s a plot point I saw multiple times. She’s like, “I can’t be in a relationship with you if you watch porn. I really am disturbed by the fact that you’re watching these plastic women.” Whatever. And there’s some fics where this becomes a major relationship point between them, and, like, they have to work it out, and it becomes one of the plot things. And it’s wild to me, because [laughs] I cannot imagine this in a fic [ELM laughs] any time now. But that was, like, a totally—I actually believe in that. Like, Scully at the time, and in the place, she could have that opinion.
ELM: Yeah, in the ’90s?
FK: Really. I believe it. You know?
ELM: That totally tracks. Yeah, which, again, is, I think, a hard thing—I mean, whatever, we were children in the ’90s, but I was an aware child.
FK: Yeah.
ELM: You know, I feel like this is a hard thing to really express what the texture of the cultural conversation was like then.
FK: Mmm hmmm. Yeah.
ELM: For folks who were not there, just like I don’t feel like I really, you know, deep down, get what it was like to be in the ’70s, you know? Much to my chagrin.
FK: Right.
ELM: Seems like a pretty cool time, you know?
FK: Yeah.
ELM: But, like, I feel like absolutely. And it’s funny, I’m trying to think of, like…I feel like, you know, if we’re reading all these stories about men, there’s not a lot of mention of porn. [FK laughs] The only times I feel like I’ve encountered porn in stories, is one of the characters, like, watching porn to fantasize.
FK: Mmm hmmm.
ELM: Like, to use it as a fantasy module to think about the other one, because they haven’t gotten together with the other one yet. And that’s not presented as a weird, shameful thing. It’s just, like, a moment to have an additional sex scene in advance of the two of them having a sex scene when they get together, right?
FK: I think I might have seen, like, one or two where it’s like, they’re roommates, and one of them realizes the other one is watching porn. And it’s like, “Oooooh! Ooooh, I know what he’s doing!” [both laugh] You know? Maybe that, you know? Yeah.
ELM: Right. But so that’s a really—I think that’s a really interesting example of how cultural norms have changed.
FK: Mmm hmmm.
ELM: And, like, you know, I mean, we’ve been talking about this recently. This isn’t about, like, sex or sexuality or anything like that, but I can see that in the—you know, my fandom has been around for more than a decade now, and when I read stuff from the early Obama era, [FK laughs] I can see it in the politics. I can see it in the way people talk about stuff, you know what I mean?
FK: Yeah. Definitely.
ELM: Obviously, there are textural things of the world, too, whether—like, how much people are referencing calling or texting or social media or all those things that novelists worry about making their novels feel out of date, or whatever, which is stupid. [FK laughs] Just write of the moment that you’re in, because that’s all you can do, really, if you’re writing contemporary fiction.
But it’s interesting to think about how—I feel like it’s hard to see in the moment. You know, I’m like, “Oh, what are we reflecting? What anxieties are we reflecting? What broader cultural things are we reflecting right now?” And all I can think of in recent years is, like, yeah, people in fanfiction are all super chill about being gay. [both laugh] And a lot more of them are trans than even a couple years ago, you know? And you’re like, “OK…I guess that’s reflecting something.”
FK: Yeah, I mean, I don’t think that we’re gonna have a good perspective on this. [laughs] Like you said, we’ll check back in 10 years. [laughs]
ELM: Yeah. No, it’s interesting. And I mean, it’s, you know, fanfiction obviously has many, many flaws, as a broad, massive body of fiction, right? You know, there are patterns that get repeated, et cetera, et cetera. But in a way, maybe a more interesting body of work than the contemporary fiction of the ’90s, right? You know? Like, when you think about, if you were to read all the fic in the ’90s—all the fic. Yeah, if you sit down and start reading all the fic of the ’90s, you know, if you read a bunch of fic in the ’90s, you can—
FK: I have made the attempt in The X-Files. [both laugh]
ELM: Right? Whatever. Or the 2000s or whatever. You know, that’s a really different—obviously, you get a lot out of reading the big books of a decade, right?
FK: Mmm hmmm.
ELM: They’re reflecting huge things about the culture. But it’s a relatively small pool that’s gone through a specific set of processes, whereas this is, like, somewhat more unfiltered—
FK: Yeah.
ELM: —kind of lens in on the cultural moments in which they were written, and there’s just a lot more of it, you know? So you get a lot more of that kind of amalgamation, which is interesting to think about. And it’s like, I know part of this is, like, ethical, about reading fic and doing scholarship on the actual text.
FK: Mmm hmmm.
ELM: But it’s interesting that fan studies generally doesn’t include a lot of the English department, you know?
FK: Yeah. Yeah.
ELM: Of, like, you know what I mean? That it’s—obviously it’s very dominated by social sciences, media studies, and things like that, right? But it’s interesting that you don’t have people who are looking at it as contemporary, recent, you know, recent literature and analyzing it on a textual level that way.
FK: Yeah. Yeah.
ELM: Obviously, some people do that, but it’s not a huge component.
FK: Right.
ELM: And it’s funny when you think about how much—
FK: Yeah.
ELM: —literary work there is to kind of look at there.
FK: Yeah, well, we could say some things about the way academia is structured and what causes people [laughs] to, you know, to focus on this or not.
ELM: No, I know, but I mean, maybe the actual critique here is to English scholars and not to fan studies scholars. I feel fine doing that, because I was an English major.
FK: [laughs] Great, I’ll let you have it. I’ll let you have it.
ELM: As an undergraduate. That gives me points to critique professional English scholarship, don’t you worry about it.
FK: I’m not worried about it.
ELM: Love you, English professors!
FK: Not worried about it at all. [ELM laughs] OK, I think at this point, we should take a little break, and then we should come back and look at the other two questions.
ELM: OK, let’s do it!
[Interstitial music]
FK: OK, we’re back from the break, and we should talk to you about Patreon.
ELM: Yes! Patreon.com/Fansplaining. It is the way that we fund this podcast. You’ve heard this spiel, you’re gonna hear it again. Get ready for it. So, you can pledge as little as $1 a month, as much as $100,000,000,000 per month. [both laugh] You would get so many rewards if you did that amount. We would do something very special for you, if you did that amount. [both laugh] Whatever series of numbers I just said.
So our most popular level is $3 a month, and you get access to dozens, not just tens, like I said last time, but dozens of special episodes. At $5 a month, you get a really cute enamel pin shaped like a fan in the mail. At $10 a month, you get our semi-regular Tiny Zine in addition to everything at the lower levels. As we pointed out last episode, when our guest was Javier Grillo-Marxuach, the screenwriter, our $1 a month level gets you access to his special episode, which is about Edith from Downton Abbey [both laugh] amongst other things. I was just looking at it last time and I was like, “What a random topic we had Javi on for, for a special episode.” But he could talk about anything and it would be delightful.
FK: He was a fan of it, you know?
ELM: Yeah, he had written some, like, Indiana Jones crossover fic—
FK: Mmm hmmm.
ELM: —with Edith from Downton Abbey, but, like, the conversation turned into a very Edith-focused one, because he’s a huge Edith stan.
FK: Because he’s an Edith stan, it turns out!
ELM: [laughs] So that’s Patreon. And as we’ve mentioned a few times recently, we also have a one-off donation link, if you don’t want to become a monthly sustainer, as they say on the radio. [FK laughs] You can just give us—there’s a pledge drive right now on WNYC, so I just heard—
FK: Sustainer.
ELM: —sustainer a lot. So we will include that link in the show notes. But…
FK: If you don’t have money or don’t feel like giving us your money, both of which are totally reasonable places to be, you can still support us by sharing the podcast with people, by telling them about how we have these amazing transcripts for every episode that come out when the episode comes out, by sending us letters and comments and voicemails and ideas for episodes. And you can do that at fansplaining at gmail.com. You can do that at fansplaining.tumblr.com. Our ask box is open, anon is on. We’ve got a little form on our website you can use. You could tweet at us, I guess. Or you can call us at 1-401-526-FANS and leave a voicemail, which we will play on the podcast. And we’re about to do that with somebody’s voicemail right now!
ELM: That’s a great setup. [FK laughs] Good job.
FK: You’re welcome.
ELM: A non-awkward transition. So we got this voicemail. As a reminder, if you don’t use the Google Voice number, and you want to send us an audio file, please keep it under three minutes. This one, helpfully, is well under three minutes. Should we play it?
FK: Yeah!
Voicemail: Hi, Flourish and Elizabeth! I’ve really been enjoying the pod. This is a response to your recent “Fandom Life Cycle[s]” episode, but I thought I would send it in as a voicemail, because they seem super fun. So have you noticed, in your own fandoms or in fandom at large, that as a fandom ages, and especially after the canon ends, it seems like there’s more and more generic modern AU fic? Like, the characters have corporate jobs, they live in an apartment together, just a really, really normal modern AU. I was wondering why this was. I don’t know if it’s because it’s harder to have a rich dialogue with the text when the canon is over. I don’t know if it’s just a trend that’s happening to coincide with aging fandoms, but I wanted to know your thoughts. Let me know what you think.
FK: Thank you so much, Nonnie. That was a great, compact voicemail.
ELM: [laughs] Yeah, and not just because it was compact that we love it, but we do love that element about it, too. But the answer is yes, but—but. Yes, but, [FK laughs] I would say, is the start of my answer.
FK: Yeah, OK, so I think I would say, I feel that AUs are a trend. Modern AUs are a trend, and even, I will go so far as to say, I think generic AUs are a trend. And I think that this trend relates to how easy it is to go between fandoms in a way that it has not always been in the past, either culturally speaking, or just literally with all the fic on the same website, in the same spots, if you’re on AO3. I think that that means that people are—I don’t mean this as a criticism, to be clear, I think that’s fine. That’s a good thing, if you’re, like, seeing high-level tropes that you like and going from place to place, like, I know we used to joke about migratory slash fandom in that way, but I actually think that’s all right. You’re enjoying your stuff. But it doesn’t necessarily result in sort of a deep engagement with the specific thing that you’re obsessed with, because you’re obsessed with the trope, not with the canon that gives you the trope, right? So I think that that’s related.
ELM: Well, I do think your use of modern AU here as a trope maybe is not something that I agree with.
FK: Oh no no, I meant that you’ve got a tropey pair of characters and so you’re putting them in a modern AU or whatever because it’s more generic, because you’re not as invested in the canon world in the same way. Do you see what I mean?
ELM: Right. Right right right. OK. Yes. Yeah. I mean, and I do think I’d be curious to know if people remember in their specific fandoms from, like, the ’90s or whatever, a significant number of, like—I think you started us down this road, I’m gonna say it too, generic AU, [both laugh] right? You know, like, I can’t remember any of that from probably the first three fandoms that I was in, you know? Up until the 2010s.
FK: Agreed. Yeah.
ELM: Right? And that’s when I started to encounter it. Once AO3 was created and was chugging along.
FK: Yeah.
ELM: That’s when I started to see it.
FK: Yeah.
ELM: And now I see it obviously constantly. Obviously, I write modern AUs. I hope they’re not generic, [both laugh] you know? But it is something that I like in my fandom, you know? When it feels like they’re living rich, full lives, and not just they work at a corporation [FK laughs] and they live in an apartment and I couldn’t tell you anything about where they live, et cetera, et cetera.
FK: Yeah, absolutely. There were AUs, they were pretty rare, and they were always, in my experience, a very different setting. Not a modern setting. Although, I don’t know. I mean, I guess I wasn’t in any historical fiction fandoms, and maybe there were more modern setting AUs in those.
ELM: Yeah. I mean, like, I encountered the odd Muggle AU, in Harry Potter fandom early on, right?
FK: Mmm hmmm.
ELM: You know? And it was always not something I enjoyed, and I was like, “Why am I reading this?” You know? [laughs]
FK: Right.
ELM: And I’m sure that could be good, you know? If you found clever ways to translate their—
FK: Sure. Yeah.
ELM: —specific circumstances and backgrounds or whatever into real-world stuff.
FK: Right.
ELM: But that was not the things I encountered at the time. [both laugh]
FK: Yeah, totally.
ELM: But, all right, I do think Anon is getting at something here, though, with the life-cycle element and what prompted this.
FK: Hmm.
ELM: Because, you know, I definitely think, and I think you were talking about it in the episode, you know? There’s a certain kind of fanfiction writer and reader who are really looking to be reactive and immediate, you know?
FK: Mmm hmmm.
ELM: The new episode comes out, and you write a fic. Maybe by the following week, that’s somewhat Jossed.
FK: Mmm hmmm.
ELM: But you have this really—this desire to talk back quickly, and other people are looking for ways to process what they saw, and they want to do that through fanfiction, right?
FK: Mmm hmmm.
ELM: And when the show ends, you don’t need to have that kind of response, and people are probably not looking for that kind of closure, though of course, people will always be encountering the show afresh, and then maybe they will still want those more direct responses.
FK: Yeah.
ELM: And I would say, for me personally, I’ve experienced this too, and you’ve read some of what I’ve written. I’ve certainly written fic that is really meant to be a very direct response to the canon.
FK: Mmm hmmm.
ELM: And it felt like something I really had to get out of my system. I was like, “I need to—I have some issues—”
FK: [laughs] Yes.
ELM: “—with the choices that were made, and I am going to put them down in a story.” And I love that, right? And that is obviously, that’s one of the first things that I often feel like I have to do when I enter a new fandom.
FK: Mmm hmmm. Right.
ELM: Is kind of exorcize that. [FK laughs] And now I can say, like, as time has passed, I don’t feel like I have—now I’m like, “Who can be bothered? I’m not gonna argue with them anymore. They made it. I got out my argument, [FK laughs] and now I’m just gonna have fun with them.”
FK: Yeah.
ELM: Because I’ve had plenty of time with these characters to just do all sorts of things, you know what I mean?
FK: Mmm hmmm. Yeah. I do know what you mean. I think that makes sense. I do—I am a bit of a weirdo, because I love a closed canon, and I love going back and trying to sort of account for all the stuff in it and argue back to that thing which is done. But I think that you’re right that once you’ve gotten that out, there’s only so many things that you—that were really in you to say about that in specific, and then, yeah. Then you’re just sort of having fun and playing with it. That all rings true to me. I mean, there’s also just the question of, like, at a certain point, [laughs] you do just want to see these two people kiss, right? That’s OK!
ELM: Wow. You’re so basic. Yeah, no, it’s true.
FK: Yeah! You know? [laughs]
ELM: Yeah, there’s nothing wrong with that, you know? I think that, you know, I can probably be lightly disparaging like, “Oh, it’s just a romcom. Oh, it’s just romance…” And it’s like, no, who cares? That’s great. It is romance. It is a romcom, you know?
FK: Yeah.
ELM: I like it when people are really honest about it. There’s some stories in my fandom where people are like, “This is just a romcom, don’t worry about it.” You know? [both laugh] And it’s like, it’s just, you’re here for the vibes, and you’re like, “I get it. You know what you’re doing. I know what I’m reading.” You know? Yeah, for sure, and I mean, I guess too, one thing I would say for me personally, is the thing I was trying to exorcize early on and what usually happens is I’m having a plot argument, right?
FK: Yes, absolutely. Yes.
ELM: Whereas, when you spend a lot more time, you know, and I’m just like, “Those are some choices that were made, and I know why you did this, or I don’t know why you did this. [FK laughs] Oh, that person’s contract was ending? Oh, that’s why they had to die? OK.” But you know, like, for me personally, five years into the fandom I’m in right now and you know, however many stories in, I don’t feel like I’m engaging with the characters less when I put them in a modern AU setting. I still feel like I’m really trying to get to the heart of who I think they are as characters and make them feel as real and as in-character as possible. And I feel like that’s something that I will always be litigating with these characters, right? You know?
FK: Mmm hmmm.
ELM: Is different ways of pushing and prodding at them—
FK: Right.
ELM: —depending on where I put them in the world. That’s different to me than a plot argument, and it’s rare that my immediate response to something that I’m into afresh is, “I want to do a character study.” [both laugh] You know? Because usually I’m like, “Well, that’ll come via me arguing with the writing choices that they made on this plot.” You know what I mean?
FK: Yeah, yeah. You know, I think I agree with that. I agree with that. It’s funny, I’ve been thinking about the different, you know, as you know, for a while I was really hot, I was like, “Oh, I’m gonna write this X-Files fanfic,” and I didn’t ever actually write it. Whatever.
ELM: We took that walk, and I let you talk to me about The X-Files.
FK: You did.
ELM: I was here to be your non-in-the-fandom beta.
FK: We had the problem—you know what the problem is? We had—I had the talk and that was really what I wanted to do. [both laugh] Anyway, my point being—
ELM: It’s fine. That’s fine. Less work for me, thank you.
FK: I appreciate you. But when I think about the kinds of stories I would want to tell for that, which is definitely my longest-running fandom, you know, a fandom that I have been—it’s a show that I’ve been obsessed with for 25 years. They are really different things than I would have written in the past, and it’s both because I’ve gotten older, and also because my relationship to that has changed. So what you’re saying rings true to me, is what I’m trying to say.
ELM: Hmm.
FK: I think that the longer that you engage with a canon, it shifts. Your relationship to it shifts. And that’s all right. Now, the question of whether it has to be generic is another issue. And actually, our other letter [ELM laughs] was kind of about that. So I want you to read that to us, please.
ELM: You want me to read it? You want me to read it?
FK: Yeah! I read the first one.
ELM: Yeah, I’ll read this one. This is from someone named Who.
FK: Who’s on first?
ELM: At least that’s what they put in the message. [laughs] So we’re gonna call them Who, why not? All right, so Who writes:
“Hi! I really enjoy listening to the podcast, especially while drawing fanart—” OK, side note, that’s awesome. “—and I’m not—” Imagine, like—see, this is what fanfiction writers can’t do. [FK laughs] OK, anyway. “—and I’m not through all the episodes yet, so maybe you’ve talked about this, and I just haven’t found it yet. I’m not from the U.S., but the fandom spaces I’m in tend to be very U.S.- or North American-centric, which I think is perfectly understandable. My fandom is part of the MCU, so it’s mostly U.S. characters and settings. Where there are modern AUs, that pretty much exclusively means modern U.S. AUs, but not necessarily still having the characters live in New York, but pretty much anywhere in the U.S., although most keep New York as their setting.
“I’m also in the Merlin (BBC) fandom, which feels less U.S.-heavy. Maybe it being set in Wales is a factor, maybe it’s just the corners of the fandoms I hang around in, but when I read modern AUs in that fandom, there is a lot more range in where it’s set. Maybe it’s not really comparable since Camelot is not on a modern map of Wales, but a lot of modern AUs either just go with a modern version of Camelot as a setting, or they set the fic in London. But I’ve seen more Merlin fics set in the U.S. than Stucky fics set in London. This might of course only be my impression, but I’m curious if there might be a pattern of U.S.-based fans, or generally culturally Western fans, seeing modern AUs as modern U.S. AUs. I got into online fandom on German-language sites, and maybe it shifted over time, because that was over 10 years ago, but modern AUs were also pretty popular there. Again, most of them set based on canon, but also a few that were high school AUs but for the German/Austrian/Swiss school equivalent.
“There was a post on Tumblr a while ago, when The Untamed was everywhere, pointing out something similar in the fandom and asking people not to write modern U.S. AUs of The Untamed characters, because it’s set in China (I think, all I know about that show is by osmosis and GIF sets).” [FK laughs] Us too. “Around the same time, there was a post asking non-U.S. fans to write AUs set in their own countries and cultures.
“These things together made me think about how I see modern AUs and where I set them when writing them. I guess for me, it’s really about where the characters live in canon, but that might just be my personal preference. Also, I’m not from the U.S. and English isn’t my native language and maybe that is also a big influence for me. I watch the movies or shows I write fic for in English and I’ve written fic only in English for years now, and I know of a few other people from Europe who do the same.
“Which makes me wonder about how the language used in a certain part of fandom influences the fic written in it, and with English being an internationally used language, we non-native speakers make it very hard for native English speaking fans to have a space of their own to have these modern AUs without immediately having someone from outside the English speaking world go and be like, ‘Actually that’s ignorant of the culture canon is set in.’ Like, how much should the canon setting matter if what you’re doing is writing an AU? Do you think the fact that the English-language fandom automatically becomes more global than, for example, the German-language fandom affects English-speaking fic writers in any way? Or is there more of a tendency of non-native speakers to try and adapt to the English-language fandom?
“Sorry for going on about this for so long, the differences between these two fandom worlds I know have always been fascinating to me. I hope you have a lovely day!”
And that’s from Who.
FK: I am having a lovely day, and that is fascinating to me also, Who! [both laugh] I mean, I was particularly struck—
ELM: I like that we’re just going with Who. Who?
FK: Who? Uh, yeah, I was particularly struck by the idea that, like, maybe—I thought this was a very generous idea, maybe too generous, that [ELM laughs] non-native-English-speaking fans were, like, making it hard to write something set in Germany or wherever for people from America, because they would be like, “No no, that’s not what—”
ELM: I too, as I read that out loud, I was like, “So generous.” I was like, “This is the nicest way to frame that. Thank you very much, Who.”
FK: That is really nice. Thank you, Who. I hope that that’s true. But I don’t think it’s true. I think that the truth is that there’s a lot of people who live in the United States and that those people tend to mostly know the United States and mostly write about the United States, [laughs] because that is who we are as a people.
ELM: Yes. OK, so let’s break this down a little. There were a lot of different things going on in this letter. One is this idea of language, right? You know? When we initially got this letter, I thought maybe this would be for an episode about language, but then it wound up fitting this theme just as well, right? But this is something I absolutely have observed. I have some mutuals who are non-native speakers, who post in English on Tumblr, and they post a lot of posts about the ways they think about English, which are always fascinating to me, and also sometimes blow my mind, because these are just not things that I have ever experienced personally, right? And one thing I’ve observed is people talking about—I don’t know how widespread this is, but certainly on Tumblr, people were talking about it, you know, about English being the language of, like, pop culture, right? And being the language of fanfiction, for a lot of people, you know?
FK: Yeah.
ELM: And we always often kind of joke about there’s, like, longstanding running fandom jokes about, like, fanfiction phrases—
FK: [laughs] Yeah.
ELM: Like, toeing off his shoes, or whatever. Orbs. Orbs.
FK: Orbs.
ELM: Right? Which, I hope everyone knows, when I read the word “orbs,” I say it out loud.
FK: I did it the other day! I read a book and it had the word “orbs” in it, and I said it out loud and I thought of you.
ELM: I’m so proud that I’ve infected you with this orbs policy.
FK: The orbs virus. [laughs]
ELM: I will never see it again without saying it.
FK: I never will. [both laugh]
ELM: Recently, I sang Vaughan Williams’ Sea Symphony, which is a wonderful piece to sing, and at a certain point, someone, not me, it was either one of the soloists or the bases and tenors, sang “orbs” and whenever we passed it, I whispered in the middle of the choir, “Orbs.” [FK laughs] Can’t let that go. It’s Walt Whitman’s text. He loved those orbs.
Anyway. So, you know, there’s all these language quirks. They come in waves. There’s some that I recognize from a very specific period of fandom that I complain about, because they're just, like, weird clichés that take me right out of it.
FK: Mmm hmmm.
ELM: But there are certain ways of writing that are specific to fanfiction, right?
FK: Yeah.
ELM: And ways of structuring sentences. So that’s interesting, if that’s the majority of the way you encounter written English, also.
FK: Right.
ELM: Or, like, written English prose.
FK: Mmm hmmm.
ELM: That will certainly affect the way that you write.
FK: Yeah.
ELM: And the way you read. So, like, that’s the language component. But there’s also the idea of people mostly writing about English-language media and American and British media.
FK: Right.
ELM: You know, it is very interesting to me that the Merlin fandom would just put them in London.
FK: Yeah.
ELM: You know, one thing I think that both you and I have observed at great length is an interest in sticking American characters in New York without much knowledge of New York City.
FK: [laughs] Yes, that is a notable thing that exists in fandom. [both laugh]
ELM: Which is, like, you know, and it’s funny, because I think about, there was someone in a fandom I was in who I had read a few of the works of, and they were a really good writer on a sentence level, but I always felt like their work was very placeless.
FK: Mmm hmmm.
ELM: And then, but they were writing in English, and they didn’t use any descriptors of any places or anything, right? You know?
FK: Mmm hmmm.
ELM: Or any cultural identifiers.
FK: Yeah.
ELM: And then I later found out that they weren’t American at all, or British. They were European and I think writing in a second language. And I was like, “This is so interesting. Did I just make assumptions that these stories were just set in—” It’s like, no, I think that they were meant to be set in New York, but because this person lived half a world away, they didn’t have any sense of place there, because why would they? That’s not somewhere where they live or the daily reality that they have.
FK: I was actually just gonna say this, that’s something I was thinking about as [laughs] we were talking about, like, how generous of a take this is, that, “Oh, people from the U.S. don’t write things outside the U.S. because people will nitpick them.” I have to say, I don’t read very many stories that feel like they are really set in a place in the U.S. to me. I read a lot of things that I feel like are set in a vague place—
ELM: Yes.
FK: —which is pop culture U.S. land, but I don’t read that many that feel like they are set in Washington, D.C. [laughs] or, you know, like, [ELM laughs] Cleveland, Ohio, and that convince me that they are really in that place from a person who has lived there or who has done a lot of deep research into it, or who, even sometimes, like, understands the nuances and differences of, like, American regional cultures in places. Those things are not major features in fic.
ELM: Sure.
FK: And I sometimes think that that does have to do with the fact that A, I don’t think Americans are great at this either. I think that everybody is sort of living in that pop culture netherworld of the U.S. And I think that people who are not in the U.S.—
ELM: Yes.
FK: —are at a disadvantage further, as far as that goes, because, you know, you’re just getting the pop culture netherworld, and you can’t even look to your own suburb and say, “At least I know this place in the U.S.” You know?
ELM: 1000% agree with this. I mean, it’s the same world that most high school media exists in, right? You know? And, like, you know, sometimes when I try to explain my high school experience to people outside of the U.S., I’ll be like, “Yeah, it kind of was like that.” You know? [FK laughs] There were cheerleaders, right? We had lockers, right? You know? I don’t know—
FK: We also had cheerleaders and lockers. [laughs]
ELM: Cheerleaders and lockers, really? You know, people had tables. Actually, there was no, like, you know, mean girl table and hot Asian nerd table or whatever, you know? Did you do tables?
FK: We had those a little bit. There was a group of—yeah, there was a group of people that called themselves the Desi Club—
ELM: This is a California thing, obviously. [laughs]
FK: You know? And they were obviously—and then, the thing that really blows people’s minds who are not from the United States, and even some people who are, is that in addition to having, you know, your homecoming dance, which is obviously attached to your homecoming football game, we had a homecoming parade with floats that everybody made floats and you paraded through the streets of the town.
ELM: And now, you told me about this. I feel like you guys were next-level on this, but the parade thing is not, like, unique to you.
FK: It’s not unique.
ELM: That’s something pretty common in—
FK: I think it’s pretty common, although I’ve met people who are like, “What are you talking about?”
ELM: The level of investment that your town had in this—
FK: [laughs] Yeah, it was a big deal.
ELM: Yeah. Yeah, no, that’s definitely something I’ve heard of before. But, you know, like, most media of this sort, you couldn’t tell me where it is, right? And that’s kind of the point, right?
FK: Yeah.
ELM: I mean, it’s always the joke of The Simpsons, is like, what Springfield is it, right? You know?
FK: Yeah! Is it—[laughs]
ELM: Do they actually say at some point?
FK: I don’t think so.
ELM: Anyone outside the U.S. listening, there’s a Springfield in, like, the majority of states, right? You know? And so it’s like, oh, that’s kind of the point.
FK: I think it’s in—it’s—he’s from the Pacific Northwest, so. [laughs]
ELM: In my mind, that show is always set in the Midwest, so I like that we both assumed things about that. And the only Springfield I’ve ever spent any time in is Springfield, Massachusetts. So…
FK: Huh.
ELM: Anyway. So yeah, this is, like, definitely resonating with me very strongly. It’s this, like, I don’t think that the sense of placelessness is all foreigners not knowing how to write about the U.S. I mean, there’s separate questions going on here. There’s also the question of, like, why don’t people set more stories in their countries? Right?
FK: Mmm hmmm.
ELM: I guess there are some elements of a lot of the media being ostensibly set in the United States, right?
FK: Mmm hmmm.
ELM: Or in the U.K., in the case of Merlin. You know? Sure, there’s an element of, like, you have to think about—I don’t know. If you suddenly—all right, whatever. Let’s take my ship, Cherik, maybe you’ve heard of it, [FK laughs] and if you suddenly had them living in, I don’t know…yeah, it’s not like you could just plop them into Japan or something and be like, “This is where they live.” It’s like, “I’m gonna need to know why they live there, because I assume they’re still played by these two white men.” Right? In my—you know what I mean?
FK: Yeah.
ELM: And so I’m guessing they weren’t born there, and if they were born there, and now you’re gonna give me a new backstory—you know what I mean?
FK: Yeah.
ELM: So it’s like, it doesn’t feel as easy as when they both live in New York City. I don’t need an explanation, even though Erik is not American in the original, right?
FK: Right.
ELM: I can just be like, “Oh, his family emigrated,” and I can do that.
FK: Yeah.
ELM: And I don’t know why. That’s my own cultural bias, why I’m like, “That makes total sense.” [FK laughs] But if it was some other country, I’d be like, “Oh, that doesn’t make any sense to me at all.” You know? [FK laughs] So it’s like, that feels like my American problem, you know what I mean?
FK: Yeah. I do know what you mean, yeah. And then there’s also, like, there’s shows that—
ELM: I mean, that being said, Charles does live in Westchester.
FK: Charles lives in Westchester. Yeah. He does.
ELM: So I feel like that is—you gotta keep him near his house in a specific town in Westchester.
FK: Yeah, you kind of do. I mean, and there’s other shows, I mean, like, whatever. We were talking about Supernatural, like, talk about a show that’s about Americana. I know why people are not setting that in Europe very often, [laughs] and it’s because that show is about America. [laughs] You know? But I do wonder, you know, I don’t recall reading many Supernatural fics, and maybe there’s more, because, I mean, I’ve read a fair bit but not exhaustively, but I don’t recall reading that many that felt like someone had decided that they were going to have the brothers come to their town. The town where they lived that they knew like the back of their hand, right?
ELM: Hmm.
FK: I’ve read a lot of fics that feel placeless, where they’re going to some small town somewhere and there’s, you know—and sometimes it’s, you know, more or less like in a setting, but not a lot that really felt like—and that is a show where you could say, man, if I wanted the Winchester brothers to come through Sacramento, California, they can come through Sacramento, California. [ELM laughs] Not a problem. You know?
ELM: Right.
FK: Anywhere in the U.S., they can come through.
ELM: Right right right.
FK: So I’m curious about that.
ELM: Yeah, that’s interesting. And I, I mean, we’ll put this example in here too, because it’s, like, taking the actual canon into account and all these examples we’ve been giving are ones that are American pop culture, or whatever.
FK: Hmm.
ELM: You know, I understand, this is, like, Who is talking about—[laughs] it really does feel like Who’s On First when I say this. [FK laughs] Our letter writer, Who, is talking about, you know, there’s obviously been a massive amount of discourse in the Untamed fandom in particular.
FK: Yeah.
ELM: But, you know, C-drama fandom generally, or K-pop and stuff like that, and K-drama.
FK: Mmm hmmm.
ELM: Of them just plopping them in America and saying, “Oh, they’re Chinese American now.” And then not even engaging with that diasporic experience.
FK: Yeah.
ELM: And just having them just be people with no backgrounds—
FK: Mmm hmmm.
ELM: —living generic lives here, or I’ve heard that Canada is a popular location to send them, which is interesting to me. I don’t know. I’ve heard this.
FK: Are people very confident that they know about Canada? [laughs]
ELM: I don’t know. I have no idea, but I’ve heard people mention this, and I have seen it in summaries that come through “The Rec Center.” Maybe that’s a self-selecting sample.
FK: Huh.
ELM: But I thought that was interesting. So this kind of idea of, you know, my example was, “Oh, I can’t just stick these two white guys in Japan.”
FK: Yeah. [laughs]
ELM: But then I’m like, but then people are over here being like, “Sure, you can stick the Chinese people in the United States. Don’t worry about it.” You know?
FK: Yeah.
ELM: And don’t have to engage with the idea of, like, are they from China? Are their parents from China? You know, et cetera. Massive double standards going on there, I feel like. I don’t know. But this undercurrent of, like, so much of it is placeless, I feel like is really an important thing.
FK: Yeah, I agree with that. I think that there are ethical considerations as to where you place people in your AU. But I think that they’re too complicated to talk about, you know, just casually off the top of—you know, off the top. Right? Is it OK to write about these real people in the U.S.? What if you did engage with the diasporic, you know, experience? Is that OK? What if you’re white but you’re writing that? What if you’re, you know, a member of the diaspora yourself and you’re writing that? You know? There’s so many different levels of complexity to it. But I think the one thing that we can say is that I don’t think that the solution is—I don’t think that placelessness is always wrong, but I don’t think placelessness is always right or acceptable in that way.
ELM: I mean, do you want to hear how I feel about placelessness?
FK: Sure.
ELM: Do you want to guess?
FK: You hate it!
ELM: I do hate it! [both laugh] How did you know exactly how I feel about it? Yeah, it upsets me. It, like—I mean, upsets me, whatever. I don’t lie awake crying about it, you know? But it frustrates me, you know?
FK: Hmm.
ELM: And especially when I feel like there’s no internal coherence when characters are set places in a story and I can’t even envision, is this a town? Is this a city?
FK: Sure.
ELM: What, oh, the university’s nearby? What kind of university? [FK laughs] Oh, this is a bad neighborhood? Oh, it’s a good—you know? And it’s just like, I don’t know. I’ve written a lot of stories set in New York, and I make it very clear it’s New York, because I live here and I know what the streets are, and I know the vibes. I love writing about those vibes. But I’ve also set stories in places that I haven’t named, and I based them on real places where I’ve been or lived.
FK: Yes.
ELM: And I’m strongly thinking about the feeling of walking through those streets.
FK: Right.
ELM: And, you know, like, imagining—I mean, whatever. You were talking—we were talking about this recently, about, like writing—always making sure that you know where characters are in space, in a scene.
FK: Mmm hmmm! Yeah, absolutely. And really, like, you know, when I’ve—[laughs] Yeah, like, looking on—if I’ve never been to a place and they have to be in that place and I can’t go there, am I going to Google Earth all the streets? Yes I am! I’m going to—
ELM: Oh yeah.
FK: Absolutely, you know? Yeah. For sure. I find it really hard to write without.
ELM: Yeah, I’m literally walking around those streets. I’m like, click click click click click.
FK: Yeah.
ELM: I’m like, you know, if I’m—I’m looking at the interiors of hotel rooms—
FK: You’ve been—yeah. Yup. Yeah.
ELM: —and I’m like, “What would it feel like? Is this the one they’d give me?”
FK: Yeah.
ELM: You know? In countries I’ve never been to, [FK laughs] you know?
FK: Yeah. Yeah.
ELM: And then keeping the details to the minimum, so if it isn’t a place I’ve been, it doesn’t seem like—you know, I won’t say something egregious—
FK: Right.
ELM: But enough to know that I’m imagining, because I would never write a scene where I didn’t imagine exactly where that—
FK: Right.
ELM: —what the space was—
FK: Yeah.
ELM: —that was surrounding the character that they would see through their eyes.
FK: Yeah.
ELM: So that’s whatever. Fanfiction’s for fun. But I do think that [laughs] this letter is really reflecting some of the, like, you know, kind of more negative effects of this kind of big, global pool of writing, you know? Of this sort of, whether people don’t feel empowered to put it in their own area? And I mean, like, I think your example of a lot of Americans are not doing this, is a really good one. You know? Do they not feel empowered to put the characters in their town? Who cares?
FK: Yeah. [laughs]
ELM: You know? Why not? Right?
FK: Yeah!
ELM: Yeah, I mean, like, I don’t necessarily believe Tony Stark would be living in some random town, but, like, godspeed, you know? Do what you want, right? Maybe you could sell it. Maybe he’s not a billionaire inventor in this story also, you know?
FK: Or whatever. He’s a billionaire who, like, buys up something and moves, you know what I mean? I don’t know.
ELM: That’s true. He totally could buy the whole town.
FK: He could—he could—
ELM: Right, so—
FK: Yeah, like, he gets an Elon Musk, you know, vibe going [ELM laughs] and who knows what he’s gonna do?
ELM: [laughs] Wow, that’s the next story to write. Tony Stark creates a Neo-Victorian company town.
FK: Yeah! I believe that he would do it. That seems in-character for Tony Stark, actually. [both laugh] He built a tower with a floor for each one of his friends and was like, “Hope you like where you live now.” [laughs] The man would buy a company town! Anyway.
ELM: Oh my God. Yeah, I do think it’s interesting, and I feel like, I wonder if, as fanfiction keeps growing and growing, because it is just getting bigger and bigger, if more people will feel empowered. You know, I get it if you come from a small country or place where there aren’t a lot of speakers of your language, that that’s gonna feel very isolating.
FK: Mmm hmmm.
ELM: But I saw a post on Tumblr the other day that was talking about the top kudos’d fics in each language.
FK: Aww.
ELM: And it was really interesting, and it linked to all of them, and it was all sorts of different languages and stuff and, you know, it was a very interesting selection of stories, you know? And it was, like, the point of it was kind of saying, like, “Hey, if your native language is one of these, why don’t you add to this pool?” You know what I mean? The non-translated fic. They weren’t translations of other fics.
FK: Yeah.
ELM: They were the original one in those languages.
FK: Yeah yeah. Yeah.
ELM: So, you know, I wonder. But then ironically, this post was in English, like, I could read it. So, you know, there is still that kind of universal base running through all of this and, you know, for better or for worse.
FK: Yeah. All right, well, I don’t know. I mean, do we feel that we’ve talked about reflecting reality, question mark, sufficiently?
ELM: Yeah! I mean, I think, well, this second half, we’ve talked a lot about how these things don’t really reflect reality. I also feel like…I don’t know. I do think some of this is probably a reflection too of, I know fanfiction writers come in all ages, but there are a lot of young people, you know?
FK: Mmm hmmm.
ELM: And I think it’s hard if you—and I know this from my own experience, being a high school student and a college student. If most of your life has been in your town and you’ve never had a job in an office but you’ve seen The Office—
FK: Yeah.
ELM: Just put ’em in an office. You know? [FK laughs] And it’s like, the specifics of individual offices vary a lot. But I could see, like, if you didn’t want to write a college AU, why not?
FK: Sure.
ELM: You gonna make them doctors, and that’s gonna be a ton of research, or whatever, you know what I mean? So it’s like, I understand why people go for these generic settings, but I don’t know. Yeah. There’s a lot of beauty in specificity. You know, don’t you love an AU that’s clearly someone’s thinly veiled obsession, [laughs] and they’re just using the characters as pawns to talk about some really highly detailed world that they want to talk about? You know what I mean?
FK: I love that. I love that. I live for that. [both laugh]
ELM: Right. So that’s all I’m saying, you know?
FK: All right, we go out on a note of: specificity! [laughs]
ELM: Specificity is great. It’s the heart of good writing.
FK: Great.
ELM: So.
FK: OK. Well, good job, team.
ELM: Well, these were very interesting letters. Yeah.
FK: By team, I mean everybody who wrote them. Yeah. [laughs] That’s the good job. It’s not just you and me.
ELM: Allllll three of you.
FK: It’s all of the people who—
ELM: All five of us.
FK: Yeah.
ELM: Great team. Give us each our own floor of Avengers tower in Anytown, U.S.A.
FK: I’m hanging up on you now.
ELM: Looming over the houses. All the houses that he built for his workers.
FK: Yeah.
ELM: Evil billionaire. [laughs]
FK: Cutting off their light, like the towers at Central Park. OK, we’re done. I will talk to you later, Elizabeth.
ELM: [laughing] OK, bye, Flourish.
FK: [laughing] Bye.
[Outro music]