Episode 204: Happy Anniversary #8
Flourish and Elizabeth celebrate their eighth (!) anniversary with eight (!) guest responses to their traditional query: What changes and trends have you observed in fandom over the past year, on a broad level and/or on a personal level? Topics discussed include accessibility on fandom platforms, rethinking “canon” in an era of franchise oversaturation, finding fandom at scale vs. deeper individual connections, and the effects of the Hollywood strikes on fan conversations today—and the entertainment industry in the future.
Show Notes
[00:00:00] As always, our intro music is “Awel” by stefsax, used under a CC BY 3.0 license.
[00:00:58] All of our past anniversary episodes: #7, #6, #5, #4, #3, #2, and #1!
[00:02:01] Hannah was one of our guests for “Disability and Fandom: Part 1,” and you can find her on Twitter and Instagram.
[00:04:09] We’ve focused on the strikes in Episode 198, “Strikesplaining,” and Episode 203, “Solidarity and SDCC.”
[00:05:27] Project K has been retitled: Kalki 2898-AD.
[00:06:58] A little background on the House of the Dragon situation. And for a broader look at the global television situation—including why streamers’ “fill programming gaps with international shows” plan may already be failing—this is a good overview.
[00:11:10] You can find Rebecca on Twitter, Tumblr, and at recklessenough.com. She’s also posted the initial data from her Fanfiction and Mental Illness Survey!
[00:21:24] Maia was our guest on Episode 200: “Maia Kobabe.” You can find em on Instagram, Tumblr, and Patreon. You could also find em with Elizabeth last weekend at Flame Con. :-)
[00:25:00] Yes, John Green has returned to Tumblr. He also wrote about leaving Tumblr the first time around.
[00:25:36] x
[00:27:50] Flourish’s pair is in the mail.
[00:30:36] Cory Doctorow on “enshittification.”
[00:33:36] Bodge was on the second part of our “Disability and Fandom” double episode. You can find her on Twitter, Tumblr, Instagram, and the AO3.
[00:36:31] You can find us both on Bluesky (Flourish//Elizabeth) though only one of us actually uses it!!
[00:38:40] That’s Episode 197: “Stitch.” Their commentary is at “Stitch’s Media Mix,” and their Teen Vogue column is “Fan Service.”
[00:45:06] Our interstitial music throughout is “Systematic” by Lee Rosevere, also used under a CC BY 3.0 license.
[00:49:37] Flourish is right about one thing: you can’t rely on them for name pronunciations. Ever.
[00:52:44] Javi did come onto the podcast this year to talk about the strikes. You can find him talking about that topic and much more on Twitter, Tumblr, and Instagram.
[00:53:09] We talked about our 2019 SDCC panel on Episode 106: “The Neverending Franchise,” and we discussed the franchise-building “fan-first” approach earlier this year, in Episode 189: “No Cultural Impact.”
[00:57:29] GET READY.
[00:58:26]
[00:59:08] The Steve Martin of Fansplaining (Destination Toast) was most recently on to talk about their data research in Episode 191: “Femstats February,” and they’re referencing Episode 195: “Fandom Life Cycles.” You can find their work on Tumblr and the AO3.
Transcript
[Intro music]
Flourish Klink: Hi, Elizabeth!
Elizabeth Minkel: Hi, Flourish!
FK: And [laughs] welcome to Fansplaining, the podcast by, for, and about fandom!
ELM: This is Episode #204, “Happy Anniversary #8.”
FK: Eight!
ELM: [laughs] Your—you did a whole face journey that is lost to the podcast listener.
FK: Eight!
ELM: Oh my God, you did it again. You did it again.
FK: [overlapping] I mean, eight! That’s a lot of years.
ELM: That was, like, Pixar-level face [FK laughs] going on.
FK: Well, that’s my feelings. I have emotions, and they’re showing.
ELM: Yeah, eight is a lot of years.
FK: [laughs] OK, great. Our tradition on our anniversary episodes is to invite everybody, every guest that we talked to in the past year and have them tell us a little about what their year in fandom has been, and what kinds of, like, trends or, you know, what they’ve observed about fandom in the past year.
ELM: Yeah, well, specifically, we ask them about changes and trends—
FK: Right.
ELM: —not just to talk about their year in fandom. Which, you know, we always get a few responses from folks saying, “I haven’t really been paying attention,” or “I haven’t really been in fandom much this year.” Which we did this year as well. So no worries at all. But we got I believe eight of the past year’s guests to send in a lot of voicemails this year. I was pretty excited about. Good to have different people’s voices and not just us reading eight letters.
FK: Yeah, and eight guests for eight years. It just, you know, I mean—
ELM: Ah, yeah!
FK: You know, not that we wouldn’t have loved to have everybody’s input. We would have. Not everyone could, but, you know, it worked out.
ELM: All right. That’s pretty good. OK, well, should we get to it and then, and after we go through all of this, I think we can talk a little bit about our observations as well.
FK: Great. Let’s listen to our first one, which is I think from Hannah.
ELM: Right, so Hannah was one of the guests from our big double “Disability and Fandom” episodes that we did last December, I believe, is when they aired. Late November of last year, and so I was really pleased to hear from Hannah again.
Hannah: This has been a really fun year in fandom for me personally. I got back on Tumblr after many years and have been able to make connections with other fans there outside of my IRL friend group, who are all very fannish and write fic, but it’s fun to expand my friendship circles. I’ve also gotten into TTRPG actual play shows, which is a whole new medium of storytelling and type of fandom for me! So that’s been really fun, especially since now I feel like I have enough backlog of content to keep me going through however long the strikes last.
I’m sure you will talk about this in more depth, but it has been interesting to see how different fandoms have reacted to the strikes. One of my fandom shows was shut down in the middle of production for season two, and there are definitely people feeling stressed about that. Another is a foreign production, so when I’m in those spaces no one is talking about the strikes at all. And in the actual play fandoms, some shows are affected and some aren’t, so there was a lot of uncertainty, especially when the SAG-AFTRA strike first started. Overall, I do think all of the fandoms have remained supportive of the striking workers, though, which is really good to see.
Since I contributed to the “Fandom and Disability” episode, I did want to do a little update about those issues. Since that episode, I've gotten more involved in two fandoms that have a canonically chronically ill character and neurodivergent character respectively, and I’m continuing to see a hesitance to write fic for those characters or engage deeply with their disabilities. I think some of this is internalized ableism, and some of it is fear of messing up. But I have started to see more general discussion about disability rights and history on online platforms like Tumblr, so I am hopeful that more people will join me in writing fic and meta about disabled characters in the future.
FK: It’s really interesting to me to hear about the different, you know, the different responses to the strikes. I think that we have covered sort of—we’ve talked about the strikes on this podcast from sort of a broad fandom perspective, but we haven’t really gotten into individual—the way that those strikes are affecting individual fandoms as much, and so it’s interesting to me to think about that.
ELM: Yeah, so, I’m really glad that Hannah brought up a foreign-production fandom, because I know this has been a topic of discussion among some fans of TV properties in particular, or fans of, you know, like, K-dramas or other Asian-language dramas. I’ve talked to folks who are in those fandoms who have a lot of complex feelings about this, and I know these conversations are happening in those spaces, at least in the English-language spaces, saying, like, you know, people making K-dramas right now and cutting deals with Netflix to fill in these gaps, they’re not scabbing, because they don’t have any actual formal agreement with the American, you know, entertainment industry in that way and with the striking unions. When the striking unions hopefully get what they want, that doesn’t actually make anything better for people making television in South Korea or Thailand or whatever, right? But it still feels bad, [laughs] you know? It feels like—I will say, at Comic-Con, one of the only movies that was there was this big Indian production.
FK: Mmm hmmm.
ELM: I cannot remember the name, even though they were advertising everywhere, oh my God. [both laugh] That’s very funny. I think it’s called Project K, and I even—the only industry party I went to was them, you know?
FK: Mmm hmmm.
ELM: And a publication that was sponsoring it, right?
FK: Right.
ELM: They were all there, and it was like, “This feels weird, and it’s not their fault.” They are not, you know, they’re not American actors, right? They are in a different industry. But it just felt, like, slipping into this space that would have been taken up by the industry that is based here, you know what I mean?
FK: Right. Totally. And that’s so mixed, too, because it’s like, that brings in all this stuff about race and different nations and all this.
ELM: Uh-huh.
FK: I mean, I’m sure also just from a fandom perspective, people in the House of the Dragon fandom, Game of Thrones, you know, they must be [laughs] really feeling mixed about this stuff, because as I think you know, my understanding is House of the Dragon is basically, like, the one sort of Western show, big Western fandomy show, which is gonna continue shooting, because of the way that the union regulations in the UK work and elsewhere in Europe, you know? I mean, when I say big, I mean obviously there’s a bunch of shows [laughs] in the UK that are still shooting, right?
ELM: Sure, sure.
FK: But this is an international, like, big fandom, big franchise thing.
ELM: American-based franchise. Yeah. American-owned franchise. Yeah.
FK: Exactly. And so I’m sure that there’s a lot of, like, “How do we think about this?” Because I mean, I don’t think the actors are [laughs] necessarily thrilled that they’re being required to work—
ELM: Right.
FK: —when everyone else is striking, either. But that is based on their, actually their union obligations in the UK.
ELM: That’s interesting, because, you know, you have, I guess there aren’t any American actors in the show?
FK: My understanding is that it has to do somehow with the way that SAG-AFTRA had made a deal with the union representation of actors in the UK.
ELM: Mmm hmmm. OK.
FK: And so I think that there are people who are in both unions but are required not to strike based on UK law. I don’t know the details, I’m not, you know, I’m not a lawyer. I just know that they’re continuing production and that it’s not something the actors get a choice in.
ELM: Right. That’s interesting. Yeah, I wonder what the conversations are like there. You know, one thing I’ve talked about with friends who are in K-drama fandom and K-pop world, you know, what’s the broader Korean media space, right? You know, is that there is a massive amount of exploitation—
FK: Right.
ELM: —within those industries, right? There’s been a lot of press about the creator of Squid Game on this front, I know.
FK: Right.
ELM: And so, you know, it’s kind of like, you don’t blame anyone who’s legally allowed to still work for working, but also people working under really exploitative conditions there, and like I said earlier, not going to get really anything directly benefiting them out of this strike.
FK: Mmm hmmm.
ELM: They’re not gonna get an agreement out of this with the studios.
FK: Right, and realistically, it’s [laughs] you know, I mean, actors from the UK have long found it easy to cross over into American film and TV. That is not the case for actors from Korea, [laughs] you know?
ELM: Right. Right.
FK: There are some, but not that many. [laughs]
ELM: Yeah.
FK: This is where race comes into it, too, right?
ELM: It’s interesting. And I mean, of course, like, you know, one thing I’ve been thinking about when we say, like, fandom and the strikes, there is a way that I think both of us probably over-index on how much it matters to fandom at large, because we are both kind of almost exclusively in TV and film fandom, right? Book fan—
FK: Right.
ELM: You know, that—not, I mean, obviously, you were in one music RPF fandom, but for the most part….
FK: And I love video games, but I wouldn’t call myself being in the fandom for any video game, right? Yeah.
ELM: Right. And yeah, we’re not in other, you know, video game stuff or, like, role-playing, you know, the kind of TTPR—TT—[laughs] TTRPG.
FK: Right. TTRPG. [laughs]
ELM: [laughs] All those letters. You know, and obviously not in music. The music space is totally different.
FK: Mmm hmmm.
ELM: And also I think because of your former job and because of my current job and our connections to people who are on strike, I feel like, to me, that feels like—it’s like, oh, nothing—you know, I mean, obviously we can talk about this at the end, too. But I’m like, “That’s the only story right now.” And it’s like, [both laugh] obviously it’s not. You know?
FK: Right, and we haven’t covered other stuff like the Ticketmaster meltdowns, which were obviously such a central thing. We—I’m sure that if we were, one of us was deeply in a music fandom right now—
ELM: Yes.
FK: —we would be like, “No, we have to have major coverage of this.” And I mean, we’ve mentioned it, I think, but it hasn’t been central, so…
ELM: Yeah.
FK: Definitely—
ELM: Yeah.
FK: —revealing our biases. [both laugh]
ELM: You know, and then on the non-strike portion of Hannah’s voicemail, I mean, interesting is a word. It’s obviously disheartening to hear that people are still hesitating to engage with disabled characters in Hannah’s new fandom. I think that really echoes a lot of what we heard in those episodes.
FK: Mmm hmmm.
ELM: In terms of people just unwilling to go there, you know what I mean?
FK: Yeah, although I do, you know, to play devil’s advocate, I think there is also, like… [sighs] There is also a thread of anxiety, which is partially based on, you know, not wanting to create bad representation. Not wanting to create something that is offensive or that is, you know, and I have sympathy for that. It’s the same reason why I think, you know, sometimes people will hesitate to write characters that are…you know, that don’t share whatever characteristic with them, and ultimately, you have to get over it, [laughs] because otherwise we’re not going to have very good representation at all. But I think that there is some level of that, that comes from a place of not wanting to offend.
ELM: Well, is this a good lead-in to our next voicemail?
FK: Yeah! Let’s listen to it. We’re gonna hear from Rebecca Milton next.
ELM: So, one of the reasons why I am thinking it’s a really good lead-in is because Rebecca, who was one of the anchor guests on the “Fandom and Disability” episodes recently did a survey. Did you see this at all? You’re extremely offline, aren’t you?
FK: I didn’t!
ELM: [laughs] Wow.
FK: I’m so offline, I have been having offline summer, so… [laughs]
ELM: This is weeks ago now, and it was shared in The Rec Center, a newsletter you receive, and also was shared on the social media channels of Fansplaining, the podcast by, for, and about fandom, which really shows [FK laughs] how plugged-in you are with our own work. That’s great. So Rebecca is a PhD student—
FK: [laughs] I’m sorry.
ELM: —and she is doing research about—[laughs] Flourish, you’re funny. [laughs] Rebecca is doing research about fandom, about disability in fanfiction and so she had a survey go out that I dutifully shared in all our channels, you and me, the channels we share.
FK: [laughs] And I didn’t. [both laugh] I’m sorry.
ELM: And it was basically talking about, you know, asking people to kind of self-disclose, anonymously, of course, in a survey, about whether they had any disabilities, mental illness, you know, Rebecca was the one who did Mad Studies, capital-M, Mad.
FK: Yeah, she was, like, that interview really made me go, “Whoa!” [laughs]
ELM: [laughs] Yes, agree.
FK: It was great.
ELM: And so the survey was about, like, whether they read fic about people with disabilities, mental illness, et cetera, et cetera, whether they wrote it, when they’ve had good experiences, when they’ve had bad. I took the survey. It was very interesting. And I think she got, like, hundreds of results. So I’m really excited to see kind of the aggregate of that.
FK: OK, [laughs] I also am excited to see the aggregate of that, [ELM laughs] and now I’m sad that I’ve been so offline.
ELM: Just one newsflash after another for you. Just keeping you abreast. That’s great.
FK: There’s some pleasure in that! OK, all right, let’s listen. [both laugh]
Rebecca Milton: Hi, Elizabeth and Flourish. It’s Rebecca Milton here, also known as melodioustear. Reflecting on 2023 is particularly interesting for me, because this is the year where I first started studying fandom academically. So not only has my experience as a fan shifted, my awareness of fandom as a whole has.
Before this, I was quite a background player in the fan world—I posted fanfic periodically, read almost constantly, but wasn’t super involved on a meta level. That’s really changed this year, and with it my perspective on things is also very much renewed. I say that my experience has “shifted” because in many senses I don’t think it’s changed—I’ve not magically become a new person because I’ve started writing about fandom academically. But the things I notice and pay attention to are very different.
For me, there’s been a huge shift towards the political and towards activism. In doing my research on mental distress in fanfic, I’ve started to learn more about how things like stereotype, stigma, ableism, criticism and anti-criticism, and purity culture play out in both our stories and the communities around them. I’ve become more active in participating as a voter in OTW elections, engaged with and supported movements like End OTW Racism, and I’ve sought to actively help educate other fans on my own academic fields of Mad Studies and Disability Studies.
And though it might be confirmation bias or echo chambering, I’ve noticed other fans around me going on this journey towards resistance and self-reflection too. Fans have always been a really thoughtful group, but I see a lot more activism and even rebellion going on around me than I used to. So for me, the things I’ve observed and what’s changed for me are really very much intertwined.
I can’t wait to hear what everyone else has to say, and thank you both so much for your work on the podcast this year!
FK: I think this is really, really interesting and really cool, because I don’t know, it’s making me think a lot about how—I mean, the purpose of this episode is to think about how people’s experiences shift over time, and I think it’s interesting to me how, by paying attention in a different way, and shifting what your approach to something is, even when you still have all the same feelings, it can really have major impacts on what you do. I thought it was really cool to see that, like, you know, [laughs] she’s been participating as a voter in elections, right? All of these things. That’s awesome. I would wish that for everybody. [laughs]
ELM: [laughs] Yeah, I totally agree. And, you know, it makes me think about my own experiences with this.
FK: Mmm hmmm.
ELM: I bet you probably haven’t ever had this, because you were always kind of…in it. [both laugh] You know, but, like, when RaceFail happened in 2009, I didn’t know that was happening. It was just not—
FK: Mmm.
ELM: I didn’t see any discussion of it. You know?
FK: Yeah.
ELM: And I’ve encountered people since, and they’ve been like, “How could you have missed that?” And it was like, “I don’t know. I was just in fandom, I wasn’t thinking about what it meant to capital-F, like, ‘be a Fan.’”
FK: Mmm hmmm.
ELM: That didn’t start with an F, but you got that, right? [FK laughs] Capital-B, capital-F, “Be a Fan.” You know? And the fandom I was in at the time—actually, in 2009, I don’t even know what I was doing then. You know? There were also some periods where I just wasn’t super really, you know, for life circumstances or whatever, like, there were a few fallow periods, and because I wasn’t thinking of myself on that meta level, I didn’t have that—you know, I feel like we get a lot of people, guests and listeners writing in talking about how they don’t really feel super fannish about a thing right now, but they’re still in fandom. They’re still paying attention to the discussion. And I feel like that’s a different way to be than you’re just kind of in the fandom that you’re in, and maybe then you’re in another fandom and you’re really only thinking about the stuff. And I think it’s hard to see patterns sometimes, because you’re like, “Well, [laughs] I see some discourse in this fandom, but…” And then you, you know, once you start, you know, comparing and contrasting, you’re like, “Oh. [laughs] There are some arcs.” You know?
FK: Right. And you can never really totally undo that. Although, [laughs] I will say that I kind of feel like I’m having the mirror version of this—
ELM: No!
FK: —which is just that, like—no, OK, I know. You can never totally go back on that. But I do actually think that because, you know, when I was doing my old job all the time, I was being so attentive to things and really trying to keep track across multiple fandoms and doing all of this stuff and thinking about it on a day-to-day basis in that highly analytical way.
ELM: Mmm hmmm.
FK: And right now, because I”m not doing that for my day job, I do find—I mean, it’s not just that I’m really offline this summer because I’ve been traveling a bunch and so I miss big things. It’s also that, like, I’m not seeking it out the way that I used to be. You know? And when it comes to me, I still have those meta thoughts about it. But a lot of times, I’m just, you know, like, “Hey! [ELM laughs] I love Star Trek!” [laughs] You know? And, like, I think I think of this as, like, a fallow period for me, [laughs] you know? It’s not going away. But I do think it is interesting to sort of see it as, like, almost a, you know, a wave of in and out over time.
ELM: Right, right. Yeah. But it’s like, I mean, and it’s tricky, too, because it’s not like, I don’t think you would want to [sighs] feel like you were apathetic, right? Obviously—
FK: No! No no no no.
ELM: The “End OTW Racism” campaign, you weren’t just like, “I’m not really in fandom right now, so I don’t really care about that,” right?
FK: Right.
ELM: But you are less online, so you’re not seeing, you know, the full range of discussions and, like, you’re kind of relying on me to be like, “Here’s something that happened!” [laughs] You know?
FK: Right, and when I do see things, I’m more likely to be like, “Well, I don’t know enough about this right now to make a really strong stance, so I’m gonna make a decision about whether I prioritize finding out about it and making, like, a strong stand—”
ELM: Mmm hmmm.
FK: “—or if I’m just gonna let it go.” And it used to be that I would 100% of the time pick, “I need to find out more about this so that I have a strong opinion, because this is my community, and it’s what I owe to people, and—”
ELM: Yeah.
FK: “—I care about it, and there it is.” And right now, I’m much more likely to be like, “I have some impulses, but I’m not sure that I know. I’m excited to talk with Elizabeth about it and see what she knows.” [both laugh] You know? But, like, it’s OK.
ELM: Yeah, has this reached the level of “Fansplaining should comment on this as a group.” [laughs]
FK: Right, [laughs] but it’s OK for me to just, like, go and read some fanfic and be like, “I have some feelings about this.” You know, I don’t have to be, like—
ELM: Yeah.
FK: —The Most, right? So…
ELM: That’s interesting.
FK: But it’s a good thing to know that other people are entering into that space, [laughs] so that it’s not just everybody being like me and getting out of it.
ELM: Yeah, you know, and it does make me feel hopeful too, because, you know, cynical me sees a little bit of this, people are like, “I’m learning about fandom history. What a rich, progressive history,” you know? And I’m like, [weary voice] “OK…” [FK laughs] You know? There are certain narratives that I think have gotten really…reified? Is that the word I want? You know?
FK: Mmm hmmm. Yeah, that’s the word.
ELM: And they’re not super critical ones, and they absolutely affirm a certain stance. And it’s really nice to hear from someone who’s like, “I’ve gotten more involved in a capital-F Fandom level and I’m super attuned—” I mean, obviously, Rebecca as a researcher around disability and a disabled person and someone who’s very attuned to those conversations hopefully [laughs] would, you know, be seeking out these kind of complicated questions, too. So, which obviously we don’t—doesn’t always happen, but…
FK: Yeah, but it’s also, I mean, it also reflects, like, it makes me happy to think that somebody who’s coming in to a…you know, I mean, at least tangential to a fan studies narrative and so forth, like, actually is hearing some of that, because there was a long time in which—I mean, I think it’s still the case that a lot of intro classes and so forth in fan studies are still reifying, to use your word—
ELM: Yeah.
FK: —that progressive narrative, and, like, continuing—
ELM: Is it the right word? Did I use the right vocab word?
FK: Yes it is.
ELM: OK thank you. [laughs]
FK: It is actually the right word. It’s a great word, and it’s the correct one.
ELM: Continue, continue. [laughs]
FK: [laughs] No, but I think that there are, like, a lot of people, even a lot of academics, who are like, “Hey, I’ll teach—I’m interested in this. I’ll teach one class in fan studies,” maybe don’t see that depth always.
ELM: Yeah.
FK: And so people will come in and get that story. And so it makes me feel really, really happy to see people who are, you know, entering that academic space already questioning some of those aspects, which I guess is just repeating what you said. Yeah! We’re on the same page. [both laugh]
ELM: OK, incredible move. I think every time you restate what someone says, you should end it with, “Yeah! We’re on the same page!” [FK laughs] And then they just sit there like, “What? What just happened?” Next item. [laughs] I think you—
FK: [laughing] Should we move on to the next item?
ELM: I think you built on it and added to it, don’t you worry.
FK: Thanks.
ELM: OK, but yes, let’s move on. Let’s move on. [laughs]
FK: [laughs] All right, the next person we’re gonna hear from is Maia Kobabe, who I hope that everybody who listens to this podcast knows all about.
ELM: Maybe they don’t because they didn’t listen to the episode, Episode #200, “Maia Kobabe.”
FK: [laughs] OK, Maia’s a longtime friend of the pod.
ELM: Yes. Maia is an illustrator, comic book artist, graphic novelist, that’s the word I’m looking for. Why did “graphic novel” [FK laughs] slip from my mind’s fingers? Who is the author—Maia—[both laugh] Flourish just mouthed “mind’s fingers.”
FK: There are days when I wish it was a video podcast and this is one of them, because I can’t.
ELM: I just gotta say, it is 9:47 on a Sunday morning. I have had one cup of tea and one seltzer. I am stone-cold sober.
FK: For context, [laughs] yeah, we’re having some odd recording times because I’m currently in Norway.
ELM: Look, I would record at 9:00 a.m. on a Sunday when we were both in New York also, you know? But anyway, Maia, author of the graphic memoir, Gender Queer, and the illustrator of our logo—logo? Icon? The picture of us.
FK: Yeah, our logo. Well, not our logo. But yeah, the picture of us on our—yeah.
ELM: Our logo is the fan, which is an old-timey Creative Commons illustration.
FK: The picture of us on our website. Also my icon on social media.
ELM: Oh yeah yeah.
FK: Yeah.
ELM: All of our decorative fans. OK, this is a very tedious introduction. Sorry, Maia. OK.
FK: OK, should I read what Maia had to say?
ELM: Yeah.
FK: All right. Maia’s response to our first question, “What changes or trends have you observed in fandom at large over the past year?” is:
“I’ve seen K-pop fandom, especially references to BTS, become more and more common in mainstream Western media over the past year. In the past few weeks alone, Ryan Gosling made a Barbie promo video offering Jimin of BTS his guitar because he wore an outfit very similar to one of Jimin’s from a music video in the movie, and the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles released a whole BTS-specific movie trailer. It’s interesting to see these references come while half of BTS is enlisted and they are not promoting or releasing music as a group.
“Other K-pop groups are also starting to get more shout-outs. Stray Kids just played Lollapalooza Paris, which comes about a month after Troye Sivan met Stray Kids member Hyunjin at a fashion event, also in Paris, then posted a Hyunjin fancam on TikTok asking, “Anyone know how to get in touch with this man?” Troye Sivan followed this a week later with a TikTok in which he wrote, “That's the last time I publically crush on a K-star; I almost got murdered,” presumably by a deluge of K-pop fan engagement. These kinds of interactions now feel expected, rather than unique rarities. I think overall more and more people, especially in the U.S., know what K-pop is, and it becomes less and less of a niche interest.”
So then Maia’s answer to our second question, “What’s personally changed for you as a fan or in fandom over the past year?” was:
“My personal experience of fandom has involved retreating to older platforms: revistiting Dreamwidth, joining more fandom Discords, and seeing many comic and fanartists revive their Tumblr accounts. The past 12 months have been the most active and more joyful on Tumblr since before the 2018 exodus. I never left, but for a while being on Tumblr felt like inhabiting a quiet, peaceful, abandoned house being slowly overtaken by vines and mosses. Now it feels flooded with new energy. I’ve loved watching Reddit users join Tumblr for the first time and be charmed by its odd holidays and other quirks. John Green has returned to Tumblr, in the role of unpaid intern promoting the Green brothers’ charity coffee company. Nature is healing! As I watch nearly every social media platform crumble into chaos, Tumblr and Discord, despite their flaws, feel like the best places to be right now.”
And that’s what Maia had to say.
ELM: Thank you, Maia, for sending in these thoughts. So these are both interesting to me. The second paragraph is something I can comment on personally as well. But the first one, I have, like, no knowledge of any of these things, [FK laughs] and it feels—I don’t know who that Troye person is. I feel like—do you know that famous tweet about being over 50 and hearing about pop stars?
FK: Yes! He is indeed a pop star. Former YouTuber and a singer. And I also have no idea who he is. He’s from South Africa and Australia. I’ve heard his name… We’re old.
ELM: [laughs] OK, so we don’t know who these people are, but I am curious, you know, I feel like my distant armchair observation of this is, like, we saw this already happen in the media about five years ago, right?
FK: Mmm hmmm.
ELM: Where they were like, “Oh, if we mention BTS, we can get a million clicks. [FK laughs] It’s gotta be positive, because if we don’t say positive things about them, they will threaten to kill our journalists. But if we say good things, [both laugh] they’ll love us forever.” And you know, like, that turned into entire K-pop verticals at publications and you know, hiring some actual journalists who knew about K-pop and also could do good reporting, you know? And not just…clickbait doesn’t even feel like the right thing. It’s more like…I don’t know. What’s the right word for that kind of…?
FK: Yeah, um…pandering? No.
ELM: Yeah, kind of! It’s, like, basic—but it’s mutually beneficial, because people would be like, “This publication mentioned our boys.”
FK: Yeah.
ELM: So it was like—and they were like, “Wow! These 300,000 people clicked on our article, [FK laughs] you know, that would normally get 3,000 clicks,” or whatever.
FK: Totally.
ELM: So I feel like we saw that early on, and as I said, one of the good things that came out of it is there are serious journalists who had K-pop expertise, that are now, were able to get a leg up, right? A foot in the door. And I wonder if this is happening in Hollywood right now, too. I’m cynically saying I don’t know if Ryan Gosling cares about BTS.
FK: [laughs] I mean, the thing is, I don’t know if people care about a lot of things that they do, you know what I mean? There’s—this brings it—if Ryan Gosling doesn’t care about BTS, but knows that people care about BTS and therefore is going to do some promo thing? That’s also how Ryan Gosling feels about an awful lot of Western things, [laughs] right?
ELM: No, this is what I’m saying, though. I’m saying—
FK: Yeah.
ELM: —that a collaboration with a famous K-pop band is now part of the package that—
FK: Yeah yeah yeah. Agreed. For sure.
ELM: —that Hollywood engages with, right? You know?
FK: Yup.
ELM: You know, and obviously much has been discussed with the Barbie marketing blitz and all the different things—
FK: There’s so much of it.
ELM: So much of it.
FK: I just got served an Instagram ad for “Barbie loves toe socks.”
ELM: [laughs] Well…
FK: I mean, that’s fine but, like, really? Every single object is Barbie.
ELM: I don’t know if you are familiar with the Mattel corporation and the Barbie brand, [FK laughs] but in fact, they are very good at this.
FK: Yes, I know.
ELM: One thing I would say about them is that’s literally what they do.
FK: I know! [ELM laughs] I just, it had been a while since I really felt so much like—what it felt like to me was that literally, like, Instagram overheard me talking about using—because, whatever, I’ve been hiking a bunch, right? So I was using toe straightener things, [ELM laughs] and it felt like the internet was like, “Hmm…I hear you talked about weird toe items. [laughs] We’re therefore going to serve you Barbie weird toe items.” [both laugh]
ELM: OK, I’m gonna keep an eye out for the next—
FK: It’s like, this is too much.
ELM: —Barbie-served ad that I get. At first I was like, “Oh, this is kind of fun.” And now I’m like, deeply cynical. Also, now having seen the movie, which I think I liked less than you.
FK: Probably. I liked it a lot.
ELM: I liked it.
FK: OK, you liked it less than me.
ELM: [laughs] I saw the hand of Big Brand. It was too visible.
FK: Yeah, the hand of Big Brand was very visible. It was.
ELM: It was like, “You’re asking me to weep over the ghost of your first CEO?” [Flourish makes a shushing sound to try and silence the truth] Like it’s a human statement, between a doll and a brand?”
FK: [laughs] Yes.
ELM: I’m just saying—and I love Rhea Perlman as much as I love Danny DeVito. I was devastated when they broke up. [FK laughs] They were my favorite celebrity couple.
FK: All right, we’re now far afield. I wanna hear what you have to say about Tumblr, because Maia’s description of this as a quiet, peaceful, abandoned house being slowly overtaken by vines and mosses made me feel so—I was like, “What a description.”
ELM: Yeah, there was a period where, you know, I’ve never felt like, you know, after the exodus, definitely slowed down, but I never had the experience of feeling, “Oh, my dash is so dead.” And whenever people say that, I’m like, “Well, that means you’re probably not following many active accounts.” Literally, speaking of vines and mosses, I do weed out accounts.
FK: Mmm hmmm.
ELM: It’s like, if you haven’t updated in eight years? You’re out. It definitely feels to me, I think I’m having a different experience. I love all the Reddit people. So, if anyone doesn’t know, a few weeks ago, maybe a few months ago now, Reddit announced they were going to start charging significant amounts of money to third-party developers, many of whom made tools that were, like, integral to using Reddit. And this just seemed like another hacky, like, squeezing every last dime out of people thing that the tech industry does in the enshittification process, is the term we’re using now.
FK: A good term. A real term.
ELM: From Cory Doctorow, and so there was a mass protest, there was a boycott, you know, there was kind of a blackout, right? People stopped using it. Some subreddits, they started kind of doing bits, basically. Reddit breaking down is a massive loss for the internet, and I don’t feel like the dust has settled enough to really reflect on that.
FK: No, and there’s still some communities that are active and so forth. It’s hard to say what’s gonna happen. But…
ELM: But, so there were a significant number of people who migrated over to Tumblr and were obsessed with learning the rules and were very eager to post.
FK: Right, because obviously, at Reddit, you have distinct rules for each subreddit.
ELM: Yes.
FK: And so it’s natural that if you’re moving over to Tumblr, you’re like, “OK, what are the rules for this community? I don’t want to be an asshole. You have to learn the rules. Duh.” [laughs]
ELM: Right, and also, as far as I could tell, every single one of these people was a 20-year-old trans person, right? And so they were like, [laughs] so they were, like, relatively young, too, and if they spent their teenage years on Reddit, and now they’re like—and a lot of them are coming from r/tumblr, which I find very funny. So they were like, “We’ve broken containment,” you know… [both laugh] And feeling like they had been observers of Tumblr culture for a long time, and now they were like, “How do I participate? What are the rules?” And it’s funny, like, 20-year-old trans kids, that’s ideal for Tumblr. That’s the perfect demographic, you know? And so…
FK: Perfect! That is Tumblr. [both laugh]
ELM: And there was a really funny post that went viral, where they were like, someone was talking about how they were so used to r/StarWars or whatever, where it was just arguing about ship classes, and all of the sudden, they were having, like, you know, new and exciting feelings about Luke/Han or whatever, [laughs] you know? And it was just like—
FK: [laughs] God bless.
ELM: So it was kind of a fun sort of internet migration story. I don’t know how much these folks—they were mostly posting positively about their new space, which I don’t think you often get in migrations. Usually, you’re like, [sighs] beleaguered, right?
FK: [laughs] Yeah, but this was like, “Look at all these fun things! It’s different! It’s new! It’s exciting!”
ELM: Yeah, so that’s been interesting. I’ve also observed, maybe Maia’s had this, too, a lot of people who haven’t logged on in a while coming back and being like, “Is this thing on?” And I kinda wish they would just pretend it was on and start just using the platform like normal.
FK: Yeah.
ELM: But there’s been a lot of throat-clearing from folks that I hadn’t heard from in years, and I get it. It’s weird to kind of roll up when you’ve kind of abandoned something for a while, but people are in mid-reblog here, like, just jump back in, you know?
FK: Totally. You know, on that note, I think that it would be really good to hear from our next respondent, Bodge, who had some really good points about Tumblr that I don’t want to get lost.
ELM: Yes, agree. And I was really grateful to get this, so, all right. So Bodge was one of our “Fandom and Disability” participants as well and talked a bit about Tumblr and how inaccessible it is. Particularly talking about how it was difficult for people with visual impairments to use it. So Bodge writes:
“Hi Elizabeth and Flourish,
“I haven’t noticed much of anything about fandom recently. Twitter (at this writing still accessible for me) is becoming less and less useful, and Tumblr is still not accessible for me. In point of fact, the site has blocked the use of any browser with an adblocker unless you are also paying them for ad-free, so any use of an XKit or font-changing extension has also been blocked from use on the phone. So I don’t get to see much in fandom right now. But the conversation around Crab[s] Day on Tumblr, and the backlash, has gotten the staff to publicly recognize that they have an issue with accessibility.
“On the upside, Tumblr has reopened my service ticket about the app not using my phone font while being set to system default, so maybe at some point I will be able to use the app without dizziness and nausea. They are also looking at allowing people to report ads with flashing lights, since they haven’t allowed a quick way to report them before and selecting “no flashing lights” has not blocked flashing ads. I am hopeful that they will, at the very least, bring the site up to the minimum required accessibility spelled out in the ADA. I will say I am very tired of explaining the issue to people who are always like, ‘Just ask the staff, they will fix it.’”
FK: Ugh.
ELM: Yeah.
FK: I knew this from the disability episode, but it just sounds really exhausting, and I think it seems like it must be especially frustrating to see this, like, we’re at a real inflection point, where there’s a lot of changes happening in the social media space, and people are saying a lot of things about, like, “Twitter is broken forever! Here’s—you know, Reddit is broken, here’s—we’re going here, we’re going there!” And there really is very little conversation about the accessibility of these sites and what that means for people, even though I know it’s such a major thing, and it must just feel really gross and lonely to be in that place, even though there’s a lot of other people who are also suffering in this way.
ELM: Right, but probably hard to find them if you can’t actually use Tumblr, because—
FK: [laughs] Right? What are you gonna use?
ELM: —it causes you—yeah.
FK: Yeah.
ELM: You know, it reminds me of, I think it was Post, which is one of the quote-unquote “Twitter alternatives” that people toyed with for a while. They said publicly accessibility was a low priority for them.
FK: Mmm hmmm.
ELM: And if you’ll recall, Post was also the one that listed “net worth” as a protected class [laughs] in their content policy.
FK: Whomp whomp. But, like, I mean, I hate to say this but, like, the fact that—I mean, I’m not saying good things about Post in any way by this, but it must be even more frustrating when places make it clear that accessibility is a very low priority for them but won’t admit it, [laughs] right?
ELM: Well, you know, I wonder, right? You know, because it’s, like, so—we’re both on Bluesky, you barely used it but you do have a login.
FK: I have a login. It’s true.
ELM: Not from me. [laughs]
FK: Not from you.
ELM: But Bluesky: constantly talking about alt text. There is very little other functionality to this website, right? [FK laughs] And certainly alt text is not the only thing someone needs for accessibility. I mean, you won’t find flashing images there because GIFs are not supported, so [both laugh] you know, I don’t know the full range of potential accessibility issues, but just, in my own experience on websites, there’s a lot of things that people don’t think about, you know?
FK: Yeah.
ELM: That affect me on a site. And Tumblr, yeah, is a mess. There was a period where I couldn’t use Tumblr, and I know they were owned by a giant corporation then, and so they had more pressure to fix it, and now they have $1, and they’re using the dollar to make crabs, and I don’t actually know what the accessibility conversation was. Crab[s] Day, for anyone—I was working and I was not online that day, but it was a day when people were buying each other crabs. And you got to click and crabs went all over your dashboard. And it was meant to be kind of a fundraiser for Tumblr.
FK: Right.
ELM: Because it was, like, $2 for a set of crabs, right? But I don’t—and I don’t actually know what the accessibility issue was with those crabs, but I’m not surprised there was one.
FK: It doesn’t surprise me to learn that there is one. [laughs]
ELM: Yeah. Yes.
FK: Yeah, I mean that—yeah. I remember hearing about that and thinking that it felt a lot like Kingdom of Loathing or something like that, you know? Some scrappy online community weirdo thing, and I was like, “All right.”
ELM: Yeah.
FK: “Great. We’re doing that. We’re in that world now.”
ELM: If we all need to give $2 to Tumblr so it doesn’t stop existing, OK, but—
FK: And it will make crabs. [laughs]
ELM: But yeah, also, saying that they are severely underfunded and operating at a massive loss or whatever so they can’t do accessibility, that’s not an excuse, you know?
FK: Right.
ELM: And they’re busy doing all this nonsense all over the place, and also the idea that, like, you would need to pay to be able to use a third-party extension that does make it more accessible—
FK: Right.
ELM: —is bad.
FK: Yes. Agreed.
ELM: They are actively blocking it. So, thumbs down.
FK: Yeah. All right. Well, do you want to feel even more down? [laughs]
ELM: Yeah. Yup. I’m ready for this.
FK: Our next contributor is Stitch, who we’ve had on this podcast several times.
ELM: Right, so, if you’ve missed any of those appearances, Stitch is a journalist and media critic who focuses on racism in fandom, in particular anti-Blackness in fandom, and has a fantastic column at Teen Vogue where they write about fandom stuff in general. One of the best fandom journalists out there in this space right now. This past year, we had Stitch on for a full episode specifically about them, rather than being a commentator in our race and fandom episodes, like in the past. Yeah, and it was a tough conversation and maybe unsurprisingly, this is a tough voicemail, but one I really value, so should we play it?
FK: Yeah, let’s do it.
Stitch: It was really hard to figure out how to reply to this. This is my fifth attempt at recording something. [sighs]
One of the things that I’ve noticed that has both affected me as an individual and fandom at large is that fans are actively entering the fight against racism in fandom on the side of racism. They’re actively choosing to defend racists, defend racist tropes, to support people who are doing racist behaviors, and it is out of this sense that they need to protect their space and their energy.
And it’s happening at the same time that fans of color are continuing to be told that fandom isn’t “our safe space,” which is something that we get told a lot. That we can’t complain, that we need to make our own archive, that we need to write our own content. And, you know, we are making our own content. We are liking the media that we’re trying to get other people to get into. And increasingly, I’m seeing fans of color try to make their own spaces to host fanfiction and talk about it.
The thing is, is that we’re seeing all of these people push back at fans of color, especially Black Americans, who they are reacting to with common narratives that we’re seeing in popular politics, of entitlement, and assuming that pro-Blackness is anti-Asian or anti-white, right? We’re seeing this play out in fandom, and fandom is so much worse than before, and no one cares, in fandom. The same people are talking about it, and the same people are being shouted down, and that’s because fandom has a really big racism problem, where everything is personal—except for what they do to people of color who talk about racism. Then it’s justice.
FK: Yeah, this is really…it’s hard to hear, because I think that it’s easy for me to say, like, “Oh, I haven’t been observing this,” but also, I’m not Black, none of this is directed at me, and I’m not that active in those spaces, and so it’s like, “Shit, [laughs] I need to know about this,” right?
ELM: Yeah.
FK: I need to hear about this. This sucks.
ELM: Yeah, I have observed some of this, and, you know, it also makes me think about Rebecca’s comments earlier about people coming into awareness. I think one thing I’ve observed—and I say as a white person who is not being the recipient of this kind of commentary—but I thought it was notable that the End OTW Racism campaign remained anonymous and expressed itself as a collective of people.
FK: Mmm.
ELM: I have no idea who they are. It could be one person saying they’re a group—
FK: Mmm hmmm.
ELM: —so it’s not all falling on an individual saying, “This is one complainer.” Could be a bunch of people. I truly have no idea, because they are anonymous. But they explicitly said, “We’re remaining anonymous because we don’t want, you know, to be harassed.”
FK: Yeah, yeah.
ELM: And as Stitch talked about in that episode, you know, getting death threats, right? You know, actually involving the police.
FK: Yeah, for real.
ELM: You know, if I was coming into political awareness and a fan of color and wanted to talk about racism right now? I don’t think I would be willing to speak publicly.
FK: Yeah.
ELM: And be the voice saying that, right? You know? Because I think I would be too worried, because it has gotten really reactionary—in the same way that people have developed narratives around fandom history, this is now one of those narratives, right? And you saw—the responses I saw to the End OTW Racism campaign, some of them were in such bad faith. So many—
FK: Yeah, I saw that. I did see that.
ELM: It was bad.
FK: That you couldn’t avoid. Yeah.
ELM: Honestly, I saw people I know and I thought I respect, generally—
FK: Mmm hmmm.
ELM: —reblogging bad-faith arguments and saying—
FK: Mmm hmmm.
ELM: —you know, like, oh, there was one going around that was like, “Well, I run another archive and here’s why this will never work, censoring—” And it’s like, “Censoring? Did someone—did I miss the word, the sentence in their call to action that was, ‘We would like to censor works’?”
FK: Mmm hmmm.
ELM: “I must have read something else.” Right? You know? And people who I generally think of are smart and claim to care about anti-racist causes were reblogging that blithely, you know? And it was just like, “OK. You don’t see how there’s a bit of a strawman going on here?”
FK: Mmm hmmm.
ELM: And yeah, I saw people invoking Stitch, who was not a part of this.
FK: Right.
ELM: And made it clear that they supported this but were not a part of it.
FK: Yeah.
ELM: And narratives that they had heard about Stitch and a few other folks. You know, I don’t blame anyone for wanting to disengage with that or for not wanting to stick their neck out at this point, and that’s only going to embolden the kind of stuff that Stitch is talking about, saying people are kind of actively being openly racist, right? You know? And not just—
FK: Right.
ELM: —claiming to be anti-racist and then, you know, screwing up or saying things that are insensitive or whatever.
FK: Right. And, you know, I mean, I do think that if there was a rash of people showing up in many of these spaces being as anti-queer as, [laughs] you know—
ELM: Yeah.
FK: Things are being posted that are anti-Black, it would not even be a question. No one would say that’s censorship. People would say, “This needs to stop and we have to find a way to stop it.” It just wouldn’t be a question.
ELM: Sure. I mean, I think you already get that with TERFs kind of trying to encroach into fandom spaces, right?
FK: That’s true.
ELM: You know?
FK: Yeah.
ELM: And there’s, you know, and people pushing back, right? You know? And saying—
FK: Right.
ELM: “Not here.”
FK: Yeah.
ELM: I mean, obviously there’s still TERFs in fandom, undeniably.
FK: Right. But if there was, you know, if there was a problem, a major problem with those—with TERFs coming and, you know, harassing people via the Archive of Our Own, you know, in that way, which I’m sure it has happened, but I don’t think it’s—it’s not, like, a trend.
ELM: Yeah, nothing that I’m aware of that’s been documented, but yeah. That’s not to say it hasn’t happened.
FK: Right. I mean, like I said, I’m not saying it’s never happened, but—
ELM: Right.
FK: —I just don’t think it would be—it would be a totally different reaction.
ELM: Yeah.
FK: And that’s really depressing. [laughs] It’s really depressing, so…
ELM: Yeah. Yeah. Well, I’m really grate—I mean, we said this when Stitch came on. I’m really grateful they were willing to be so open, and I’m really grateful they sent this in, too.
FK: Me too. All right, well, I think that we should take a little break right now.
ELM: Yes, I think it’s break time.
FK: All right.
[Interstitial music]
FK: All right. We’re back, and before we resume hearing from people, we have a word to say about Patreon.com/Fansplaining.
ELM: I actually have a word to say up front.
FK: Say it!
ELM: Patreon fucked up.
FK: Yeah.
ELM: I don’t know if you’ve been following this, but Patreon just randomly canceled a ton of people’s pledges. Just across the platform.
FK: Right.
ELM: And so we would appreciate it—we didn’t notice any drop in patronage—
FK: Yeah…
ELM: Just the normal churn.
FK: I looked, and it seemed like it was kind of normal, but within that, you might have been one of those people who [laughs] Patreon randomly canceled and you might not have noticed it.
ELM: [laughs] Right. You know, and it’s also worth noting, you know, like, we definitely get cancellations because people’s credit cards expire or whatever. I don’t know. It’s worth checking out, if you have been a supporter of us, you know, because it is the money that we rely on to make this podcast, but generally if you are a Patreon user at all, double check what your current subscriptions are and make sure they didn’t just boot you off, because I have seen people say that, like, they rely on it for their rent, you know? And they just had a third of their patrons vanish between the end of last month and the beginning of this month.
FK: A third! That—OK, a third has not happened to us [laughs] for sure. But—[laughs]
ELM: No. Yeah, when I looked at it I was like, “That seems about normal.” You know?
FK: Yeah.
ELM: A couple people cancel, a couple people add every month or so, you know.
FK: Yeah. Right, which is fine. People’s lives change. But anyway—
ELM: Yeah. It’s totally fine.
FK: We may not be relying on this to make our rent moment to moment. Neither of us [laughs] are going to get kicked out of our housing because of this.
ELM: No.
FK: But you could still take a look at it, and it does still really help us to be supported monetarily through Patreon. That’s how we’re able to offer transcriptions, that’s how we’re able to just make the podcast in general.
ELM: Right. It’s how we’re able to pay for people to write articles. We have a great article coming up this fall. I won’t say more now. But I’m pretty excited about this one. And would love to commission more, if we were to get more pledges.
FK: Yeah.
ELM: So if you’ve been thinking about it, you would receive all sorts of rewards at all levels, including as little as $1 a month, you get to hear a special episode with our next participant, Javier Grillo-Marxuach.
FK: Yeah!
ELM: The Tom Hanks of Fansplaining. This is what he asked— [FK laughs] He asked for that.
FK: It’s true, though, he did ask for that. cc
ELM: Toast wants to be the Steve Martin, and I guess Tom Hanks is also a frequent SNL guest.
FK: Fine, great.
ELM: No one wants to be the Alec Baldwin of Fansplaining. No one’s asking for that.
FK: Ohhhhh…..We’ll save it for someone who we don’t like. [laughs]
ELM: Yeah, someone who we don’t like that comes on, like, 15 times.
FK: Yeah, you know, sometimes you’re caught in a friendship with somebody, and you’re just like, “I don’t really like you, but I can’t quit you,” [ELM laughs] you know? We don’t have one of those, but when we do [laughs] we’ll make them the Alec Baldwin.
ELM: Great. I can’t wait to have that person in our lives. So, yeah. As little as $1 a month. At $3 a month, you get access to dozens of special episodes. $5 a month, you get, in addition to all of that, an adorable fan-shaped pin and your name in the credits. $10 a month, you get a Tiny Zine occasionally, and that occasion is coming up soon for the next one. Sometime this fall, we will be sending another one out.
FK: And if you don’t have money or don’t feel like supporting us monetarily, that’s totally fine. You can still support us by sharing Fansplaining with your friends, especially mentioning our complete transcripts for every episode that come out at the same time, because lots of people who are not into podcasts are still into reading transcripts. And you can write in: fansplaining at gmail.com. You can write in our ask box, Fansplaining on Tumblr, you can use the Fansplaining.com little, you know, form that you can fill out and send in. Or you can reach out to us on social media. We’re still everywhere as Fansplaining. Give us your thoughts, your comments, any questions. If you have an episode topic you’d love to see us cover. Those things really, really help us continue to make the show, and keep our, you know, keep our finger on the pulse of things in fandom that we don’t necessarily know about.
ELM: Yeah, just don’t—we’ll get a guest in if you want to hear about…Troye?
FK: Yeah.
ELM: Troye…
FK: We know our limits, but we can, like, find people to help us talk about things, right?
ELM: What’s his name? His name’s Troye, right?
FK: Troye Sivan? Yeah.
ELM: Si—[laughs]
FK: I think it’s Sivan [pronounced “See-ven”].
ELM: Oh, no, I can’t count on you for pronunciation.
FK: You cannot.
ELM: This would be like 20 years ago, and you’re like, “I think it’s Britney Sparrs?”
FK: Yes, that’s exactly it. That’s me.
ELM: Sparr-es?
FK: Sparr-es. Great. OK, let’s listen to our next contributor, the inimitable, the regularly appearing, [ELM laughs] Javi Grillo-Marxuach. [laughs]
Javier Grillo-Marxuach: Hi, Elizabeth and Flourish, this is Javi. Happy anniversary to Fansplaining! You asked me to answer one or both of these questions. What changes/trends have you observed in fandom at large over the past year?
I think the biggest trend-slash-change in fandom is that three of the major franchises are in various states of extreme flux. You’re seeing Marvel kind of struggling to find their footing with their fourth phase, with a number of television shows and movies that aren’t all quite landing with the unity they did previously. Star Wars has finished its sequel trilogy. It was disjointed at best. The individual movies have all of their merits, and at the same time, they did not speak to each other, which is kind of a strange state of affairs.
And DC is wrapping up what was once the Snyderverse with a Flash movie in which the final word on that entire iteration of their characters is that the Joel Schumacher Batman is the One True Batman, and that's going on at the same time as they have the Robert Pattinson Batman, and they're rebooting all of their characters in other properties at the same time that they have an Aquaman from the Snyder universe coming out. So that’s all very confusing, and I think that that’s gonna create a void where other fandoms might actually be able to step up and become more popular than they've been before.
As far as what’s changed for me as a fan, more than anything, this is the year where it just landed for me that, you know, most of these franchises are more like a menu than a canon, and that I can sort of pick and choose what I want to be in my own canon. They’re making Star Wars, Marvel, and DC, and Star Trek by the pound at this point. They all have multiple TV series, they’re all sort of on streaming services and all of that.
So one of the things for me is I’ve decided that I don’t really care about completion anymore as much as I care about seeing a story that appeals to me, and picking and choosing the stories that appeal to me. So my entire approach to canon has just become, it’s whatever I choose to watch and whatever I choose to embrace.
That is probably the two biggest trends and changes that I can see. And again, I wish you both a happy anniversary for Fansplaining! Bye bye.
FK: Javi, you are leaving me. You are leaving me as a completionist. You are going on your own path. You’re allowed. I guess.
ELM: I was cracking up when I listened to this, because I was like, “Javi’s not coming for Flourish, [FK laughs] but it’s a little bit like that.” It’s like, “Flourish, look at your—look at this. Look at Javi. Look at yourself.”
FK: We are different people.
ELM: Maybe, uh, if you follow the Javi Way, you too could be a little more enlightened.
FK: We are different people. [ELM laughs] I am living in an unenlightened way. You know, we’re gonna have to wait for my next incarnation or something.
ELM: You know, I think it is really interesting, too, and I’m glad that—you know, it was funny, because I thought Javi was gonna talk about the strikes, but, like, this is kind of his perspective as a fan, [FK laughs] right? You know?
FK: Yeah!
ELM: Yeah, and he’s just as much of a fan as he is a pro. I feel like we, for a few years, we talked about some of these things, right? You know, like, when Avengers: Endgame came out, it was like, “Well, this is the end of something big.” Actually, a bunch of those things—and we did a panel at Comic-Con—
FK: Mmm hmmm.
ELM: —before the pandemic—
FK: Yeah.
ELM: —in 2019 about these iterations of these franchises—not DC, but, you know, Supernatural coming to an end.
FK: Yeah, DC has always been sort of—it never really started, entirely, [ELM laughs] the way that it hoped it would, but yeah. And what’s weird is, like, you know, I think I sort of thought that there would be the next thing that would come out. At least one of these would have, like, another phase that felt like it was, like, really fully another phase, and I don’t know that that’s true.
ELM: Well, no, because it’s like, I mean, obviously Star Wars and Star Trek have kind of—and Marvel’s trying to do it too. They’re trying to shift it into this, like, oversaturation, you know, this kind of wave, this bath of content, right? You know? And it’s like, “You’re gonna want it all at all times. Live in this world.” You know? “Subscribe to these nine platforms, man.”
FK: I’m not mad about this with Star Trek.
ELM: No…
FK: Star Trek to me feels, like, I want one Star Trek episode every week of my life, and I am receiving that, and I am happy.
ELM: I guess Star Trek is a little different, though, because there were movies, but Star Trek is first and foremost a television show, right?
FK: Yeah, I mean, it’s also different because it’s like, it’s just on Paramount+. Yes, there’s some problems because they memory-holed Star Trek: Prodigy, which I’m mad about, but we can discuss that later. But I do feel like Star Trek, although it is, Javi’s right, it’s being made by the pound, [both laugh] you know, there’s lots of it, but it’s a bit different than these other things that are much more sort of, “We’re gonna do 1500 things and you’re gonna care about all of them at all times!” You know? It’s—
ELM: Yeah.
FK: It’s not quite like that.
ELM: It sort of makes me wonder, and I wonder what your perspective is, as a former advisor to franchise…people. [laughs] That was a weird way to say what your job was.
FK: Sure.
ELM: But that was a part of it. It sort of feels like…what’s the word? It’s not the, like, capitalism, or business. Maybe it is. It doesn’t feel like business. Here’s what I’m gonna say. Here. Lemme actually say the statement before I start to analyze it myself. Is, like, this kind of idea of, 15, 20 years ago, they were like, “Oh. Oh. People love Star Wars. So the way to do this is to really think about a fan-first approach.” You know, we talked about this in the—
FK: Mmm hmmm.
ELM: Avatar episode at the beginning of this year, right? You know?
FK: Absolutely.
ELM: Who cares if there’s cultural impact when you make billions of dollars, you know?
FK: Mmm hmmm.
ELM: Because that’s the point of this movie.
FK: Right.
ELM: But most of them were saying, “Fans. Fans. You’re gonna love this franchise. We’re gonna get you in there. You’re gonna love it.” Because fans are the most loyal audience members, and we’re really gonna focus on them.
FK: Right.
ELM: And this idea that there is sort of an ever-expanding appetite—there’s an ever-expanding number of fans, and an ever-expanding capacity within each individual fan for more fan things, right?
FK: Right.
ELM: As opposed to realizing, in fact, there is probably a finite number of people who are going to care that much.
FK: Mmm hmmm.
ELM: Because most people are going to care just enough to buy the ticket.
FK: Right.
ELM: And maybe a t-shirt.
FK: Yeah.
ELM: And also there is a limit to how much one individual Javi or any other fan, wants, you know? And can handle. He’s not gonna sit there and make it his full-time job to watch and obsess about every single property across three different franchises, you know?
FK: Right. Yeah, and I think that the idea of infinite expansion, in addition to being the problem with capitalism as it is practiced today, is also a problem with this, right? One of the things I like about actually, where Star Trek is currently is it feels to me that it is at, like, the maximum saturation that can be sustained. And I feel like that is not the case with a lot of other, [laughs] you know—
ELM: Yes.
FK: With a lot of other properties, right? There’s a fantasy—they’re spending more money on bigger things, and there’s a fantasy that they’re going to get, like, more and more and more and more and more people to get everything, and the answer is just no, like, at a certain point, I haven’t watched the 26 previous Marvel films, and I’m not gonna start now.
ELM: Right. Right.
FK: You know? Or, like, I’m not gonna get into the comics on top of this, right? It’s really hard to find that sort of homeostatic level, and that’s kind of against the way that people think of making more money in capitalism anyway. The idea that you’ve reached homeostasis is not, like, [laughs] good.
ELM: Right. And also, the idea of, like, you know, their theory that, “Oh, we’re gonna make them all linked, and so you’re gonna be confused if you don’t see all 16 of them,” right? You know?
FK: Mmm hmmm.
ELM: People have been talking a lot about Barbie and Oppenheimer as stand-alone projects.
FK: Yeah.
ELM: Who knows if Barbie will probably have sequels at this point, and of course there’s the upcoming Uno movie that I’m really excited about, as you know, [FK laughs] and the 45 other Mattel movies, right? But this kind of idea of, like, I haven’t seen any Mission Impossibles since—
FK: Mmm hmmm.
ELM: —the very first one, which I was obsessed with, right?
FK: Right.
ELM: In, what year was that? 1998 or something, right? You know? Obsessed, right? Just thinking about him pulling off his face, and I was just like, “Wow! Amazing!” [FK laughs] Right? I literally don’t think I’ve seen any of them since then. I don’t know what happened.
FK: Uh-huh.
ELM: But I have no doubt that I could roll up to the next—to the one coming out shortly, and I would have a fun time.
FK: Right.
ELM: Right? And that’s, like, a normal blockbuster thing. And will I feel compelled to go back and see the other ones? Probably not.
FK: Yeah.
ELM: Because it’s part of the experience, right? You know what I mean?
FK: Right. And that ties into this question of completionism. I mean, I think that—I do think that it’s not a bad idea to have sort of easter eggs across different things. I think that—
ELM: Sure.
FK: —the thing that people often lose is, it has to stand on its own first.
ELM: Right, I mean, think about our beloved Interview with the Vampire, and all of—there are little bits that if you were already a book fan—
FK: Right.
ELM: —you would have been like, “Oh!” You know?
FK: But it stands on its own first. [laughs]
ELM: Right! And it did, and now I’m glad I have those extra things, and I can see those references, but it works just fine without it.
FK: Absolutely.
ELM: All right, well, you know, I’m really happy for Javi, and I’m sad for you. [FK laughs] I’m sad that you’re still trapped.
FK: Great. Well, I’m enjoying being trapped. [ELM laughs] So, you know, I love my little—I love my trap.
ELM: All right.
FK: All right, let’s listen—let’s hear from the next person, which is Destination Toast! [laughs] The other most frequent—[laughs]
ELM: Oh, the Steven Martin of Fansplaining. [laughs] Destination Toast is a very frequent guest on this podcast, and they are known in fandom for their work on fandom stats, and so they come on to talk stats with us.
FK: Let’s listen!
Destination Toast: Hello, Fansplaining—this is Destination Toast calling to wish you a happy anniversary and to tell you about my year in fandom.
I joined my current primary fandom, Ted Lasso, during the last hiatus, and a new season came out this year. Watching the fandom go through a huge increase of activity during season three got me thinking a lot about the different ways fans interact with a fandom.
While the new season aired, I saw some Tumblr users who were very prolific and posted mostly about the show, and I followed them thinking they were Ted Lasso blogs. But after season three ended, a lot of them very quickly stopped posting about the show, which was different from what I remember of the Sherlock fandom, though that was a long time ago, but it aligns with some of your observations in the “Fandom Life Cycles” episode that you did last year.
Anyway, I had assumed that most of those blogs were hardcore fans in the same way that I was, and I will be writing about the show for a very long time. But a lot of them seem to be migratory hardcore fans, perhaps, who like to engage very deeply with something that’s currently airing, which is also cool!
This led me to start looking at AO3 authors who’d written for Ted Lasso, and also looking for different types of fan behaviors there. In addition to finding the hardcore fans who migrate in between seasons and those who stick around longer, I also saw fly-by fans who posted just a single work. I found fans who were only inspired by one older season before permanently moving on. I found polyfandom folks contributing to several fandoms for extended periods. And baby fans who joined AO3 specifically because of this show.
All this has gotten me wondering: what percentage of fans and fanworks come from each of these clusters of fan behavior, and how much does that vary by fandom? Are most fans consistent in how they interact with different fandoms? And will the Hollywood strikes affect any of the migratory behaviors, if there’s less new content to migrate to? I may gather some data. I will, of course, let you know if I find any interesting answers.
Thanks again for another great year!
FK: All right, my only response to this is: I want the stats! I want the stats! Give me the stats! So, you know, I mean, like, this is obviously a future episode. [laughs]
ELM: Yeah, but I also want more qualitative analysis. I love this. I was making fun of Toast slightly [laughs] when they sent this in, and I was like, “I love how you made it sound like you’ve been in two fandoms ever.” [laughs] And it was like— [both laugh] And Toast said that they were playing that up a little. But it’s interesting, this is absolutely also something I’ve observed of things that I’ve—you know, I’ve talked a little bit about what it’s like in my own fandom to see people cycle in and out and feel very weird about. Fanartists, in particular, real fast, you know? You’ll get three great things, and then they’re gone, and they’re like, “Hyperfixation: next.”
FK: Yeah.
ELM: And these aren’t people who, you know, there’s the classic kind of omnivorous fanartist and fanfic writer, who, you know, the person on AO3 who’s written one thing in 100 fandoms.
FK: Right. [laughs]
ELM: They’re there for the fic, you know? There are artists who are there because they love—
FK: They have fic goggles, or fanart goggles on anything that they see.
ELM: Yeah, yeah, and they love—there are some fanartists who I think do beautiful work and they, just, they see something and they’re like, “I’m drawing it.” But it’s not like—
FK: Mmm hmmm.
ELM: “I love this. I’m drawing, you know, 10 of these,” or whatever. But now, you know, having seen too, you know, I have some mutuals that I follow for other reasons, who are, like, really into Succession, and when it was on, they were doing memes, they were doing meta, some really kind of basic meta [laughs] was being reblogged onto my dash. You know, and just, like, really, really feeling it, in it. I have not seen a word on Succession from these people since the show ended.
FK: Ha!
ELM: You know?
FK: Yeah.
ELM: And it’s so interesting to me. It’s like, “Oh, this is a collective viewing experience, but you were doing it in a super fannish way,” right? It wasn’t just—
FK: Mmm hmmm.
ELM: —you know, live-tweeting the episodes, which is also a kind of fandom, right? You know? Or, like, discoursing about it on Mondays. It was like, things I recognize as fandomy things on Tumblr.
FK: Mmm hmmm.
ELM: And now that’s over. And that’s very interesting to me.
FK: Yeah.
ELM: That’s, like, fandom as a mode of watching.
FK: Mmm hmmm.
ELM: But I think that’s hard for the Toasts of the world, you know? [FK laughs] And probably there are people in Succession fandom right now who are like, “Wow, everyone really left,” you know?
FK: Mmm hmmm.
ELM: “They were here, and now it’s just a few of us left.”
FK: Yeah, absolutely. I will say just one more thing, which is that I mean, yes to all of that, and [laughs] one of the things I’m excited about with this, like, realm of thinking is that this is the kind of thing, the kind of, like, behavioral observation that I used to do in my job, and try and come up with, usually for a specific fan culture, in order to sort of try and explain, “Why are we seeing, like, drops in engagement at this point and how can we engage—” You know? So I love the idea of Toast doing this outside the constraints of— [laughs]
ELM: Sure.
FK: The entertainment industry stuff. So I’m into it.
ELM: Yeah, it’s interesting. I mean, but I’m curious how this is affecting the research that’s happening within Hollywood, too, because it’s like, oh, well everything needs to be caught while it’s on the air? If the long tail is getting shorter?
FK: Yeah.
ELM: That kind of sucks, because the long tail is really where the magic happens, you know? In all sorts of things.
FK: Ain’t it the truth.
ELM: In fanworks too, you know? And especially in—this is not relevant to the Hollywood stuff, but I think especially in fanfiction. We’ve talked about this, you know? We talked about this with the couple of episodes we did where we talked about closed canons and fallow periods and stuff like that.
FK: Yeah, absolutely.
ELM: I don’t know what that means for the future, but I am—I’ve been in the X-Men fandom for, like, [FK laughs] five years now? So…not my problem, personally.
FK: I mean, the one guarantee we have is we’re gonna find out what it means for the future. We’re going there! [laughs] So, you know.
ELM: Cool! That is the one guarantee, thank you.
FK: Unless we die.
ELM: All right, thank you.
FK: Unless we die.
ELM: Thank you. OK.
FK: [laughs] All right, let’s listen to our last but certainly not least respondent. And I’m really excited, because this is Maria Temming, who although not on the podcast that often, has only been once, has transcribed many, many podcast words, so has been part of people’s podcast experience even when they didn’t know it.
ELM: With her actual—her finger fingers, [FK laughs] not just her mind fingers. Her fingers are all over this podcast. Literally.
FK: I can’t believe that you called back to that. [laughs]
ELM: Finger [laughs] fingers.
FK: That was great.
ELM: Yeah. And she’ll be in fact, I transcribed this little bit of her own audio, so she had the pleasure of not transcribing herself, but she did the rest of this. Also shout out to our other transcriptionist, Rachel. Both wonderful. I don’t want Rachel to feel left out. [laughs]
FK: We love you also, Rachel. [laughs] But Maria’s here because Maria wrote an article about whump, which was awesome.
ELM: Right, and then she came on to talk about it in an episode entitled “The Pain Fandom.” And I gotta say, I was really thrilled that that article got such a positive response from the whump folks. Really, I feel like, if it had been in the hands of a less sensitive journalist, that could have been, like, an incident on Fanlore. [laughs] But it wasn’t.
FK: [laughs] Yeah! We escaped [both laugh] being an incident on Fanlore! I’m in enough incidents on Fanlore. I don’t need more of it.
ELM: Yeah, you are familiar with the kind of thing I’m talking about, right?
FK: Oh yes, absolutely.
ELM: All right, all right. So but Maria did—
FK: Great job, Maria. [laughs]
ELM: —a wonderful job, and I was really glad that she sent us something for this, too.
FK: All right, let’s listen.
Maria Temming: Hey, Flourish and Elizabeth! Happy anniversary.
So I think the biggest recent change in my personal fandom experience has been that this time last year, the only fandom-related projects that I was really working on were reporting the whump story and working on a couple of articles on fandom research that were for my day job. Both of which were projects that I really cared about deeply, but kind of required situating myself as an outsider looking in on fan communities—or looking in on research communities that were looking in on fan communities.
And so since I had been kind of between homebase fandoms and hadn’t written any fic in more than a year, I was feeling a little bit detached from my personal identity as a fan. But a couple months ago, because of reporting that whump article, I was introduced to somebody who has, like, an almost uncanny overlap with my own fandom interests, and she sent me so many exquisitely targeted fic recs in the first few weeks of knowing her that after gorging myself on, like, 500,000 words of stuff I was like, “I have to start producing something again.”
So yeah, I’ve been dusting off fic outlines from 2020, and I’ve got somebody who regularly sends me fandom memes and art, and will spend an hour or two unspooling a fic scenario or unpacking a headcanon over text. And so despite still largely being dormant on AO3 and on Tumblr right now, I feel more active in fandom than I have in a couple years.
And it’s given me a new appreciation for, like…I think the things that have made me feel active in fandom in the past have been publicly sharing fic, or chatting with people in comments sections of other fic or being active in various corners of Tumblr. But this new phase of my fandom life has made me appreciate how much, like, a single connection with one other fan can make me feel in community and active in fandom. And it’s also been a good reminder that when I do go through these phases of feeling more detached from fandom, or from my fan identity, that isn’t forever, and maybe those phases of detachment are also just bridges to experiencing a whole new way of being fandom in the future.
So…yeah! Thanks again for all of the work that you guys do on the podcast, and it’s been a joy transcribing for you guys for the last couple of years, and I look forward to seeing everything that you do next. Bye!
FK: Oh…! [sighs] I mean, that was, like, very personal, and it was also really heartening and made me feel good. I really love hearing people, like, reconnecting to fandom. It’s a beautiful thing. I don’t know, I mean, maybe just as I’ve gotten older and had more time in and out of fandom things, it makes me feel so good to be like, “We’re all going through this together, and we all have these moments, and this too shall pass.”
ELM: Put on your Barbie toe socks, Flourish. [both laugh] Kumbaya.
FK: Uh, look, excuse me, kumbaya, I am from Northern California [ELM laughs] and grew up with all of that. You cannot make me ashamed of kumbaya.
ELM: [laughs] One thing—I’m going to Vermont in an hour, so I wouldn’t make you ashamed of that.
FK: Ah! Also a land of kumbaya!
ELM: Gonna slide on my Birkenstocks and pull on my tote bag. Get over there, so…
FK: Perfect. Love it.
ELM: I also would do that in New York City. But yeah, [both laughs] one thing that really strikes me about this, I feel like these are some themes that we’ve talked about many times over the year, especially, both of us, personally, I think, finding a lot more pleasure in fandom when you just have, like, a couple of mutuals.
FK: Yeah.
ELM: It’s interesting to think about, like, for so many people saying, “I don’t know what platform to be on, I can’t find my people, I can’t find the people who are doing the thing that I want to do…” You know, just look at Toast’s response saying, like, “Oh, these people were there,” and then the second the show ended, they were gone, you know?
FK: Mmm hmmm.
ELM: And this kind of idea that it felt like a community for a period and then that community was, like, really diminished.
FK: Yeah.
ELM: And it’s interesting to think about how many people maybe just want one mutual, you know? Or just need one mutual and don’t know that’s what they want, right?
FK: Yeah.
ELM: They want one person who is on their wavelength, who they can bounce ideas off of. And I’m not just saying, “Oh, they want a friend,” or whatever, right? But yeah, a friend, you know? Someone who you’re on the same page with and so much of fandom is just kind of, like, putting out signals, being like, [higher tone] “Page? My page? My page?” [FK laughs] You know? And not really—and people being like, [lower tone] “This is my page. My page.” You know? And it’s not really lining up? And you’re like, “I guess it’s close enough, and so we’re kind of on the same—we’re in the same book, so I guess we can—” You know? And it’s like, but you’re not on the same page, and so then there’s terrible discourse and clashes and, you know—
FK: It’s true. It’s really true.
ELM: Yeah. And it’s just like, I guess that is the way of it, right? You know? And I think there are certainly fans who do not just want one mutual. They want 1,000 admirers, you know? And that’s different.
FK: Right. Yeah, but so much of it is really just like, I mean, I think that honestly this is a lot like life overall, too, [laughs] you know?
ELM: Good. Good.
FK: There’s a lot of—no, genuinely, like, you know, there’s a lot of people that you meet in life, and you make friends with and they’re, like, situational friends. You know, they’re your work friends or, like, if you have kids, they’re the friends that have kids the same age as you, or if you’re in school, they’re people that are in school with you, or you know, whatever it is. And then you’re really looking for those people who you’re like, “Yes, you.” [laughs] You know?
ELM: Right, right.
FK: Whether that’s a friendship or a romantic relationship. I’m not distinguishing between these for this purpose, right? You’re looking for your people. And then, you know, there are some people who are more fulfilled by having lots of light-touch relationships that way, and some people who really need just one person and most people are kind of in between, and you do need both to sort of—
ELM: Sure.
FK: —live your life. But, like, fandom’s like that, [laughs] actually.
ELM: Yeah, yeah. But I mean, I do wonder if the platforms and the modes of engagement right now are leading people away from—you know, if I was coming up now, I’d probably think, like, “Oh, if I have a headcanon or whatever, or a theory, I post it.”
FK: Yeah.
ELM: “I hope I get a lot of engagement. I hope a lot of people see my really great headcanon and they like it.”
FK: Mmm hmmm.
ELM: Whereas, like, I feel like because I’m tired and, you know, not super youthful, I’m like, “I just have an idea.” You know, it’s super fun when you want to talk about a fic idea I have, right?
FK: Mmm hmmm.
ELM: You know? And it’s like, I don’t need to blast that to the world. I want another person to talk about it back with me.
FK: And if I have somebody who will do that…
ELM: Yeah. But I think that’s hard, and I think that’s really hard to find, right? You know?
FK: Mmm hmmm.
ELM: And I see people kind of crying out for it, you know? And saying, like—
FK: Yeah.
ELM: “Won’t anyone else watch this show so I have someone to talk about it with?” [laughs] You know? And it’s like, “Oh no.”
FK: Yeah, and I feel lucky that I have, like, several friends who will do that for different things and to differing varieties, of course, you being one of them.
ELM: Right.
FK: But that has been—that’s one of the most important things for me, is knowing that I have, like, three or four people, and between those three or four probably one of them, if I get obsessed with something [both laugh] will at least be willing to tolerate me talking about it and maybe even get into it with me. [laughs]
ELM: No, yeah. Yeah, no, and I mean, I also think that you don’t need—neither of us particularly need—like, for me, and I think you too, when it comes to fanfiction, you know, I haven’t seen The X-Files, but I was happy to talk with you about—
FK: Yeah!
ELM: —the problems of your X-Files story, right? You know?
FK: [sighs] I love that. Thank you. [laughs] Yes.
ELM: No, I mean, I love solving—I love helping people talk through their draft. If it was your original fiction, I’d be like, “Go for it.” You know? What’s the issue here? You know?
FK: Yeah, totally. Totally. That helps.
ELM: So I think that’s part of it too. You know, I think that it’s helpful to find…I don’t know. If there were more people out there who were, like—I do see this. I see people who are not in the same fandom but they’re like, “We’re all gonna do a fic writers’ retreat,” right? You know? Or, “We’re in a fic writers’ Discord and we just talk about writing problems,” or whatever.
FK: Mmm hmmm.
ELM: And you know you’re all on a similar page, because you’re all writing fic, you know? And so you’re working within the same world.
FK: Yeah. It’s a little different when you are primarily, like, having sort of an affirmational or, like, a crush-based kind of fan feeling, and you’re like—
ELM: Yeah, yeah.
FK: Right? And, like, sometimes that works out, because sometimes, I mean, I have at least one friend who I can be like, “I’m sorry, I just need to spam you with five pictures of this person, because I need to yell.” And when you have a person that you need to spam me with, go for it. [ELM laughs] And we both understand that we do not find these—
ELM: Yeah.
FK: You know, like, that we have different ideas about what is attractive here, and that’s fine. And so, like, that’s great. When that can happen, that’s lovely. But it’s also not totally the same as having someone who’s also actually as into that. You know what I mean?
ELM: Yeah.
FK: So it has limits, but you gotta work around it, you know? [laughs]
ELM: Yeah, I’m glad that you know that I am your friend to talk about writing with, and not to send [FK laughs] five pictures of a person you personally find attractive, because I don’t think we’re on the same page.
FK: [laughs] Sometimes—
ELM: I do not want to see a picture of Harry Styles.
FK: There are some Venn Diagram things that cross over, but it’s—I understand that that is not a large—
ELM: Lestat! [laughs]
FK: Yeah. Lestat. I mean, but, Lestat also, like, have a pulse.
ELM: [laughs] He doesn’t have a pulse.
FK: All right.
ELM: He’s a vampire.
FK: I know, but we do. [both laugh] Anyway.
ELM: I wish we were vampires.
FK: All right, Elizabeth, what are your observations about trends and changes?
ELM: I feel like we’ve actually talked a lot throughout. I don’t know, you know, like, going back to the beginning, whether we’re over-indexing on the strike or not, I still think that’s the biggest thing. And I don’t think it’s just because the actual act of the strike is happening. I think the reasons for the strike are the thing, right? You know?
FK: Yes.
ELM: And this is—there’s different sets of problems in music fandom, there’s different problems in sports fandom or whatever, you know. The book industry, don’t get me started. [FK laughs] But in film and television, this is it. This is everything, you know? The AI stuff right now, and interestingly, no one brought up AI, but I think that’s probably— [laughs]
FK: I thought that was interesting, too! We’ve talked about it a bunch, but I feel like it’s, like, a big deal, right? [laughs] And that is a change. People were not freaking out about this one year ago.
ELM: No, not at all, because I think the technology took a massive leap very quickly. I think people—I’ve heard, you know, machine-learning scholars say they were actually really taken aback. The things that they thought would happen in five years happened in a month, you know?
FK: Yeah.
ELM: And they were like, “Oh boy. Wait, what are we doing?” You know. Like, “Take a step back.” You know, like—
FK: Right. The underlying technology existed, but then when it hit the big scale, it accelerated really quickly.
ELM: Right, right. And it started to feel like, “Oh no, then we actually can’t—if we couldn’t predict how fast this was gonna go—"
FK: Mmm hmmm.
ELM: “—then we can’t predict how fast the next few things are gonna go.” You know, the strikes are not just about AI—
FK: No.
ELM: —but they’re about AI, right?
FK: Mmm hmmm.
ELM: The things that are being put in place right now are going to fundamentally change everything. For the arts, media, entertainment industries, for that realm, which is most of what we touch on here—
FK: Yeah, in that industry space, yeah.
ELM: Huge, massive downsides. And I think that’s gonna affect fandom, that’s gonna affect the things in the future that we can be fans of, and the way we do fandom. The platforms that we have. I think that the collapse of Twitter is a massive loss for fandom, and it was interesting to see it only lightly touched on in these comments, probably because the folks who wrote in were just not Twitter fandom people, but for the folks I know losing that space? That’s huge, you know? It’s one of the biggest social platforms of all time.
FK: It more or less took me out of my last, like, actual social interaction space about fandom. Like, I talk with my friends on text now.
ELM: Right, but I mean, the kind of things you do, you could be doing on Tumblr or Bluesky.
FK: Mmm hmmm.
ELM: But the translation folks?
FK: It’s true, they couldn’t. It’s not a thing. Yeah.
ELM: It’s a massive ecosystem of millions of people, and they don’t know where to go.
FK: Right.
ELM: And, like, there’s no good alternative, and they built all these structures and that sucks, you know?
FK: Yeah. [sighs] Yeah, I mean, I think that my feeling about it is maybe I’m experiencing the reactionary back-to-the-land feeling, except it’s about, like, drawing pictures of people you like. [both laugh] You know? Which is not necessarily, like, a you know, I’m not saying that this is good or this is the way that everyone should experience it, but I’m definitely experiencing much more of a highly individualistic, like, I’m just going to enjoy things for me, and I’m gonna have a couple of people and I’m gonna, like, basically do the equivalent of growing my own fanart in my garden, which is doing some drawing! [laughs] And you know, writing a couple of things—
ELM: I didn’t know you were drawing.
FK: Yeah. I’ve been drawing.
ELM: Why haven’t you shown me any of your drawings?
FK: Because I’m not ready to. [ELM laughs] But my point being, yeah, this is literally I haven’t drawn in 20 years. I last drew when I was 16—
ELM: Oh my God! Wow.
FK: —and considering going to art school, and then I didn’t, and then I stopped drawing and I just crafted, because I was like, “I guess I don’t need this.” And now I’m drawing again. [ELM gasps] So that’s great. And I’m bad at it, [laughs] because I haven’t done it for 20 years. I’m really bad.
ELM: Don’t worry, you’re getting back in the saddle.
FK: But that’s part of my point, right? I’m enjoying being bad at it. And so, like, some of those things are just, like, this doesn’t solve any of the big problems, right? This is the turtling-up reaction. [laughs]
ELM: Yeah, you’re also sitting there drawing in the garden while we have the hottest month in recorded human history, right? You know?
FK: I know.
ELM: And you’re like, “This sucks.”
FK: It’s true.
ELM: “The world sucks around me, but I’m still having a nice individual time.”
FK: Yeah.
ELM: And can you solve climate change? Can you stop Star Trek from generating a hologram Michelle Yeoh in 30 years? No! [FK laughs] You can’t do anything about either of those things, right?
FK: Yeah, totally. Yup.
ELM: So it’s like, yeah, I don’t blame any individual response, but I’m also just, like, the broader space feels—
FK: Yeah.
ELM: —very imminent to me, and—
FK: It’s true.
ELM: —I’m not feeling hopeful. But yeah, I’m still getting plenty of joy in writing fanfiction.
FK: Yeah. Yeah, that’s right, that’s right. I think that we’re sort of on the same page, but I’m more in the, like, “Look at my little garden!” And you’re more like, [laughs] “Look at the bad things outside of it!”
ELM: Well—
FK: And I’m like, “I know, that’s why my garden is so great!” [ELM laughs] And you’re like, “I know, that’s why you should—” [both laugh]
ELM: Part of the reason I’m saying this is all our problems, when I’m talking about the strike and the AI stuff is, like, I do think too, you are…you changed careers, you’re moving towards a significantly more offline career—
FK: Yeah.
ELM: You know, I used edit a science and technology—a future-facing [laughs], like, a futurist science and technology publication funded by the Gates Foundation.
FK: Yes, you did. [laughs]
ELM: And I had to pay a lot of attention to climate change news, in particular. I pay so little attention to it now. Obviously, I’m concerned, but, like, [FK laughs] your brain changes, like you were saying earlier.
FK: Yeah.
ELM: You were, like—
FK: Right.
ELM: —attuned to a lot of this, the industry conversations and the fandom conversations for your job, and now it’s just kind of like washing background noise, or whatever.
FK: Right. Really true.
ELM: So that’s part of why I can see, like, climate change affected me just as much when I was scouring the news for interesting stories—
FK: Hmm.
ELM: —to include in our climate change-related newsletter as it does now.
FK: Mmm hmmm.
ELM: And—
FK: Yeah.
ELM: I think it’s very easy for people who are not, you know, directly monetarily affected by these strikes or, you know, by what the media industry is experiencing right now in a parallel way, to say—
FK: Yeah.
ELM: “I support them, but I’m kind of doing my own thing over here.” But—
FK: Right.
ELM: We are gonna get, you know, hologram Michelle Yeoh, [both laugh] you know?
FK: Yes, we are in fact affected by it! Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
ELM: [laughs] You know what I mean?
FK: No, that’s very true. That’s very true. Yeah, I do.
ELM: Obviously, the literal destruction of the planet is not as bad as hologram Michelle Yeoh. I’m not saying [FK laughs] that, like, all human life—
FK: You just said it’s not as bad as hologram Michelle Yeoh. [laughs]
ELM: Oh no! Sorry, other way around. It’s much more bad.
FK: [laughing] Yes.
ELM: Hologram Michelle Yeoh, for, if anyone didn’t hear last episode, this was a joke that we made about what Hollywood would like to do—
FK: Yes.
ELM: —is just create—
FK: It’s not great, but— [both laugh] I’d rather have that than the destruction of the planet.
ELM: Yeah, I would rather have hologram actors of celebrities after they’ve died than, yes, literally all humans ever dying.
FK: Great, now that we’ve established that…
ELM: Cool. You didn’t know this was gonna be so much about climate change, did you?
FK: No, I didn’t!
ELM: Sorry, it’s just, you know, it’s hot out. Actually, it’s kind of nice out today. It’s very pleasant where I am.
FK: Great. Well, [laughs] now that we’ve—I mean, I agree with you. I mean, I don’t know, it’s kind of a depressing year, all things considered, despite the fact that lots of people said nice things. All in all, like, I think that’s what’s felt like it’s changed. I feel like things have gotten harder, and we have yet to see what that outcome will be.
ELM: I think it’s hard, because you know, these strikes, and the other strikes going on, the labor movement in general, feel hopeful, you know?
FK: Yeah.
ELM: But it’s also then the cynical side slips in and you’re like, “What happens if this doesn’t work out?”
FK: Totally.
ELM: You know? So I think it’s hard while it’s happening to, you know, so…
FK: Yeah.
ELM: We’ll see.
FK: All right. Well, we will see!
ELM: [laughs] Cool.
FK: We’re gonna find out. All right, it’s been great making this podcast for the past eight years with you Elizabeth. I’m delighted that you’re one of my people.
ELM: Aww! Likewise. I can’t wait to see your drawings.
FK: Someday! Maybe.
ELM: Will you draw me some fanart?
FK: No.
ELM: I wrote you a fanfiction.
FK: I’ll draw you some fanart when I’m ready to do it. I’m not ready yet.
ELM: James McAvoy does have a hard face to draw.
FK: Yeah, it’s gonna take me a long time to be ready. But I will do it when I’m ready.
ELM: Draw some Mystique fanart. She seems fun to draw.
FK: Someday! Someday.
ELM: [laughs] You’re like, “I regret telling you about this.”
FK: I regret telling you this. There’s a reason I didn’t. [laughs]
ELM: When you’re ready, Flourish. No rush.
FK: OK, all right. I will do that.
ELM: OK.
FK: [laughs] All right.
ELM: All right.
FK: I’ll talk to you next time.
ELM: OK, bye!
[Outro music]