Episode 216: Allegra Rosenberg
On Episode 216, “Allegra Rosenberg,” Elizabeth and Flourish talk to the fandom journalist and con organizer about her journey from tween fan reporter to writing a book about the pre-digital history of fan culture. Topics discussed include coming of age on Tumblr, learning to put on IRL events while deep in music fandom, getting that fannish feeling from immersive theater, and, of course, Terror Camp, a fandom-academia hybrid event that celebrates fans’ investment in historical research.
Show notes
[00:00:00] As always, our intro music is “Awel” by stefsax, used under a CC BY 3.0 license.
[00:00:44] First things first! You can find Allegra at her extremely clever website, as well as on Tumblr, Twitter, and Bluesky. And if you never read her piece for us on Tumblr, it’s “The Ever-Mutating Life of Tumblr Dot Com.”
[00:01:03] Kenyatta Cheese was our guest way back in 2018!
[00:01:32] That’s Garbage Day and Today in Tabs. (Plus Allegra has her own newsletter!)
[00:02:34] We highly recommend you read Elizabeth’s piece on Terror Camp before you listen to the interview!
[00:03:40] Our interstitial music throughout is “Keeping stuff together” by Lee Rosevere, also used under a CC BY 3.0 license.
[00:09:50] A Homestuck photoshoot at ACEN in 2013!
[00:10:13] Teen Allegra in Danganronpa cosplay from that same con!
[00:27:51] The fic archive Allegra’s referencing actually wasn’t ship-specific—it was the Doctor Who site “A Teaspoon and an Open Mind” (where Elizabeth also used to read Torchwood fic!). And in case you’ve forgotten about the ~dynamics~ between the Tenth Doctor and John Simm’s Master:
[00:29:53] We talked about OA fans—and their attempts to save the show—in Episode 108, “#TheOAIsReal.”
[00:35:28] Brick Whartley and The Naturalist.
[00:37:41] If you’re unfamiliar with Sleep No More, it’s an immersive theater experience that’s been running in New York since 2011 (and closes at the end of March). A retelling of Macbeth, it’s set in a 1930s hotel and you move from room to room (and, if you’re like Allegra, fall in love with a random character).
[00:48:57] The Cold Boys Fandom Hub—check out all those fests!
[00:55:21] SORRY EMMA THOMAS!!!
[00:57:20] You can see some of the Terror Camp presentations at their website, and here’s Allegra with Terror showrunner Dave Kajganich:
[01:06:37] Our newest “Tropefest” episode is here! Come for a discussion of arranged marriage in fic, stay for like 35 minutes of Flourish talking about their gender journey. You get that and 10 other “Tropefest” episodes—plus nearly two dozen other specials—for just $3 a month.
Transcript
[Intro music]
Flourish Klink: Hi, Elizabeth!
Elizabeth Minkel: Hi, Flourish!
FK: And welcome to Fansplaining, the podcast by, for, about fandom.
ELM: This is Episode #216, “Allegra Rosenberg.”
FK: Yay! Allegra is a longtime friend of the pod, has written a piece for us that went, like, all over the internet. You may remember it, it was about Tumblr. And it’s kind of amazing at this point that we have not had her on yet. So I’m really excited that we’re finally rectifying that omission.
ELM: Yeah, Allegra has had a lot of intersections with, like, past guests and things we’ve talked about. I know that she worked for Kenyatta Cheese at one point, at Everybody At Once, who was one of our guests way back in the day. And you may recognize her, if you didn’t read that Tumblr piece, though, yeah, it went all over the internet, as one says. It did go mildly viral, I would say. Still our most noted—our Tumblr post with the most notes.
FK: Wow, I didn’t know that.
ELM: Yeah, that’s because you don’t log on to tumblr dot com.
FK: Yeah, I don’t.
ELM: But Allegra now writes for a lot of different places. You may have seen her work in a couple of different popular newsletters, Garbage Day, and Today in Tabs. And then she’s written for traditional publications, too. So you may have seen her work in The Rec Center. And if you have been reading my work, you may have seen me interview her recently. And this is why I thought to rectify the fact that we hadn’t had her on yet, because she organized an event called Terror Camp, and that was the subject of my most recent Atlas Obscura piece.
FK: Yeah, I thought that was—I mean, of course, I would read your Atlas Obscura work, even if I didn’t find it interesting. But I found that one— [laughs]
ELM: You say that, but I literally had to be, like, “Flourish, this is your homework, you have to read this.”
FK: [laughs] OK, I’ll admit it. But I found that really interesting. I’m excited to talk about Terror Camp, because it’s kind of a different sort of conference than I have seen certainly anytime soon and, like, kind of its own thing on its own, really integrating academia and fan culture. And I am very excited to talk and think about that, as someone who is sort of professionally interested in, you know, conference running and how that all works.
ELM: Yeah, like, OK, TL;DR, just in case anyone didn’t read that piece, though we’ll put it in the show notes, I recommend pausing, reading that. Of course, I recommend reading my own work. But yeah, Terror Camp, like, she describes it in the piece as, like, a true hybrid, right? Like, it is polar academics and people who are really into The Terror. And a lot of people who are into The Terror, which is a show on AMC, also get themselves really into polar history. So now I think Allegra has moved on from—not moved on from The Terror but, like, she’s really interested in Antarctica now, I know, [FK laughs] which is—and that show is about the Arctic, right? So it’s like she, you know, literally traversed the globe.
And it was a super interesting piece to report, because it was both about really giving a lot of space for academic engagement, even from non-academics, that kind of scholarly hobbyist kind of vibe, to fans, and also giving more space within academia for them to be fannish and really enthusiastic, right? And so it felt really relevant to a lot of the stuff we talk about and these kind of artificial barriers.
FK: Yeah, absolutely. But she’s also done tons of other stuff and been in other fandoms. She, like, did band stuff for a while, like local bands. So I want to hear all about all of this, and I think that we should call her.
ELM: All right, let’s do it.
FK: All right.
[Interstitial music]
FK: All right, it’s time to welcome Allegra to the podcast! Hey, Allegra!
Allegra Rosenberg: Hi, guys!
ELM: Thank you so much for coming on. We’re very excited to have you.
AR: I’m so excited to be here! I have been a Fansplaining listener for so many years.
FK: And, like, to some extent collaborator, yeah, you know? You’ve written—
AR: Yeah! I’m around.
ELM: Not “to some extent.” You literally were a collaborator. OK, so well, then you probably know that we’re going to start with a specific question that we have of our guests.
AR: Mmm hmm.
ELM: Which is, can you tell us your fannish origin story? And for people who do, like, fan-pro stuff, particularly interested in that kind of way that led into or interacts with your, like, professional fandom side.
AR: Yeah, so, I mean, my fannish origin story definitely has to be Harry Potter. I was an early reader. My mom took me to see the movie when it came out. So I must have been five or six and immediately started tearing through the books on my own, sitting in the corner of the first grade classroom while I think all the other kids were, like, you know, being taught to read, just, like, [laughs] ripping through the Harry Potter books. And I pretty quickly after that, maybe age seven or eight, I got my own computer with internet and found MuggleNet, and just was so enamored with the fact that there was a community around this book series that I loved.
And my first ever, I guess you could call it, like, my pro fan origin story, but also my journalist origin story, was that my favorite magazine for kids, Muse magazine, I reached out to them, I think this was when I was 11, and before the seventh book came out. And I was like, “Can I write an article for you guys about what it’s going to be like when the seventh book comes out?” Because, you know, I had all those—that stack of MuggleNet books that’s like, “What’s gonna happen in Harry Potter?” And I would just, like, highlight them and whatever. So I was so excited. [ELM laughs]
So I pitched them this article. My dad, who was a writer and journalist himself offered to help me with it. And then I went around as, like, a little 11-year-old reporter to, like, [AR & ELM laugh] the MuggleNet events in Chicago, like, interviewing Emerson Spartz and stuff like that. And we, my dad and I, wrote this whole article about what it’s going to be like when Harry Potter seven comes out, and that was the first time I ever got paid to write anything, the first time I ever sort of turned my fandom into a job, and it was super exciting.
FK: That is the cutest thing I’ve ever heard. [laughs]
ELM: OK, were your predictions correct?
AR: I’ll be honest, I don’t remember. [AR & ELM laugh] I have such specific, like, sense memories of where I was when I was reading and, like, what I was doing and how I felt, but I remember none of the details. I do remember, I think it was book six, I had, like, you know, when you’re a kid, you’re obsessed with office supplies. So, like, I bought a clipboard, put a piece of paper on it and wrote down the name of each person that died in the sixth book, and I was really sad. [all laugh]
FK: Your death clipboard!
AR: My death clipboard! I distinctly remember that.
ELM: Oh, that’s really funny. So you always had that kind of instinct to sort of, I don’t know, I guess, represent fandom? You’d always had that—like you, it’s not like you saw someone else reporting as a fan and you were like, I want to be the one that talks about how I feel.
AR: Yeah.
ELM: You were like, “I’m interested in this. Everyone else should know about it, too. I want to write an article.”
AR: I think it was an interesting combination of my fandom for Harry Potter and my fandom for this magazine, in particular. This magazine, Muse, big part of my origin story. They had, like, a kids forum, which was, like, the first online community that I was a part of. I’m still friends with some of those people today. And I wanted to be a part of Muse as much as I wanted to be a part of the world of Harry Potter. [laughs] So this was a way to combine both of those things and to, like, get myself involved and to get my name in the magazine, which was just about the most exciting thing that I could think of at the time.
ELM: OK, so then after Harry Potter, I know—because I know, I’ve seen you talk about it. I know you were on Tumblr back then.
AR: Mmm hmm. Mmm hmm.
ELM: As a young teen, right?
AR: Yeah, I was...I believe I joined Tumblr in late 2009. I think I was, I must have been, yeah, 14.
ELM: Because I know I’ve seen you talk—I mean, partly because, you know, I edited the article you wrote about Tumblr, I know that, like, that was a part of your, like, adolescent fannish origin story.
AR: Yeah, that was definitely sort of phase two. I would say that phase one was, like, kid fandom, which was dominated by Harry Potter, to some extent, Warrior Cats. And then phase two was teen fandom, which absolutely was dominated by Doctor Who, and then Homestuck and took place almost entirely on Tumblr, and then in real life at conventions.
ELM: Did your desire to be that sort of fandom reporter continue, or were you more focused on, like, being a fan at that point?
AR: I was definitely focused on being a fan. I think that something that began to excite me around this phase of fandom was the idea of being not so much a fandom reporter but being a fandom organizer. Like, when I was a Harry Potter fan, it was kind of just me, and, like, I had MuggleNet as my homepage. But, like, I wasn’t on the forums. I didn’t read fic. I wasn’t part of any community. It was just kind of, you know, what was going on in my head, and then also the other girls at school who loved Harry Potter, like my best friends. We had our little group at school.
Whereas when I joined Tumblr, and I realized for the first time, the potential of combining, like, I had been on that kids forum, and now it was like, I can be, I can combine those two things, I can be part of an online community that’s also where I do my fan stuff. And, like, I sort of just naturally fell into—I mean, I had a fairly popular blog at the time, and I would get excited when my posts got lots of notes, and, like, there was a cool thing about having that kind of exposure.
And then when I started going to conventions, I was like, “Oh, this is really cool. Like, someone had to do this. [AR & FK laugh] Like, someone had to put all this together.” I was friends with the people who organized, like, the Homestuck photoshoots, which were these huge productions where you had to get, like, hundreds of people into one area of the convention space at the same time and, like, take all these photos in order and I was—it just really excited me.
I also did, like, a bunch of—I’ve always been really into fashion and around this time, in high school, I was into Japanese fashion and going to, like, local Lolita meetups and stuff like that, and so I love when fandom goes IRL. I love when people come together over the thing that they like. And so this is when I became interested in being sort of a fandom organizer.
FK: I really want to see some of those Homestuck photoshoot pictures. [FK & AR laugh] If you are willing to share them for the show notes...
AR: I will try to track some down. There are so many pictures of me in Homestuck cosplay out there. [FK & ELM laugh]
FK: I love that.
ELM: Well, and the great thing about Tumblr is even if people delete their blogs, it’s still out there in the reblogs.
AR: Oh, yeah. [all laugh]
FK: What a tone.
AR: But no, I loved Tumblr. It was so important to me, you know, for so many years and continues to be, as just, like, this arena to let your fandom play out in a public way. I think I was always too shy when I was a Harry Potter fan to go on LiveJournal, where I knew people were, or to go on forums. Because I was like, “Well, what do I have to offer?” Like, I would have to be involved in a conversation. I’d have to insert myself.
Whereas on Tumblr, it’s like, my posts don’t need to be original. I can be a curator, I can be a reblogger. And then once I gain followers and gain friends, I can start posting stuff just for them, with that audience being, like, my own little community, and if anybody else on the platform likes it, well then that would be great, too. But it was, like, a sensibility much more suited to the way that I do fandom than, like, LiveJournal, as, you know, a tween it intimidated me so much. I also was not a fic reader, so I didn’t really have any reason to be on there.
ELM: That’s really interesting. I mean, I feel like you’ve obviously done a lot of work on platforms. [laughs] Like, a lot of work on platforms. So I’m sure you can speak to this. You know, but it seems to me—I’ve always thought of—and you’re really articulating it exactly—I’ve always thought of Tumblr as a kind of bridge space between the sort of 2000s-era, really classic Web 2.0 kind of—
AR: Mmm hmm.
ELM: You know, LiveJournal is a blogging platform, versus social media platforms of the last 10 years being, like, pure...I don’t know, like, you could see Tumblr as that kind of link between what we have in social media now for the most part, right?
AR: Yeah.
ELM: Which is, like, you know, either extremely passive liking everything, or pure posting. [laughs] Right? [FK laughs]
AR: Right.
ELM: Whereas Tumblr, I think you can kind of exist in the middle, you know?
AR: Yeah, and there was—I followed lots of people with different posting strategies. I followed people who I just loved the things they reblogged, they were good curators. I followed people who, like, I loved their original posts. Back in the early days of Tumblr, it was all about, like, graphics, and gifsets and stuff like that, and then the funny blogs, like, the memes.
I distinctly remember, like, the first year or two that I was on Tumblr, in 2010, it’s very visual, a lot of, like, really young people who flocked to that platform. And then the migration from LiveJournal really started to occur en masse, and I noticed, just as a user, the way that Tumblr was becoming a little more, like, text-based, because people were bringing in their sort of ways of doing things from LiveJournal, and fandom—at least the fandoms that I was in—took on a kind of different tenor, just based on the people who were joining, and what, like, sort of fannish practices that they were bringing with them, which I found interesting, even at the time.
ELM: That’s super interesting.
FK: Yeah, that’s really interesting to hear. And it makes me think back to that time, right? I was obviously, you know, [laughs] a big LiveJournal person, and the problem that I had with Tumblr and moving over there, which I never—I mean, I did, but, like, never really did. Not the way that I, you know, I was never on Tumblr the way I was on LiveJournal.
AR: Yeah.
FK: And the problem that I had actually was sort of the inverse of what you’re describing as the the benefit, because on LiveJournal, it felt like, I can see how it would have felt maybe cliquish or hard to, like—it’s networks of people who already know each other who are talking to each other, which makes it hard to dive into, potentially.
AR: Mmm hmm.
FK: Whereas on Tumblr, it’s a lot less explicitly—like, there are those networks of people who know each other and are interacting with each other. But it’s not made as explicit in the design, and it feels a lot easier to sort of just jump into, maybe? You know, if you don’t know anybody—if you don’t know people, and you aren’t already, you know, part of that conversation, which felt disorienting to me, but I can see how you’re saying that maybe that would also be freeing or, like, you know, [laughs] make it easier to just be like, “Hey, I can take part here.”
AR: Yeah, I mean, like, ostensibly on LiveJournal, like, you know, there’s no like, there’s no reblog. If I wanted to show somebody that I was interested in what they had to say, I’d have to comment, I’d have to, like, interact in a very sort of explicit way. Whereas on Tumblr, the first friends that I made on that platform, we were all young teenagers, I would follow them because I saw that they posted Doctor Who, they would follow me back because they saw I posted Doctor Who, we’d like and reblog from each other for a couple days, and then we’d start, you know, going into each other’s ask boxes and, you know, replying and, like, being friends. And it was like, for me, as a tween in middle school, that was a very familiar way of doing things, like sidling up to somebody and being like, “Are you cool? You’re cool. Can we be cool?” [ELM & FK laugh] Versus, like, having to go into someone’s, you know, LiveJournal and, like, type up a composed response [ELM laughs] in their comment section that would make them respect me, which, like, I just didn’t have the confidence in myself at that age to do that.
ELM: Do you know how I—that Tumblr is responsible—Flourish, do you know this? That Tumblr is partly responsible for me stopping being a lurker?
AR: Really? I’d be interested to hear about that.
ELM: Well, partly because of what you’re saying, it really resonates with me, because, I don’t know if you know, I was a lurker for, like, the first 15 years in fandom—
AR: Mmm hmm.
ELM: This is part of my origin story. Now we’re talking about me. And I got on Tumblr in 2012 when, like, all the—you know when journalists now are like, “I used to have a Tumblr,” and they mean that they had one in 2011 and 2012 only?
AR: Yes. Yes.
ELM: Right? So I was a part of that group, right?
AR: Mmm hmm.
ELM: Like, New York, like, arty journalist vibes. And, you know, I used it, but it was a very different feel to the platform.
AR: Uh huh.
ELM: But when I got into Sherlock, I remember liking—like, seeing some Sherlock posts, [AR laughs] and feeling like it was so daring to like them, because I had been a lurker for 15 years, right?
AR: Yeah.
ELM: But I was just like, “But I actually love this, and I can like it.” Right? And I don’t have to actually, like, set up a LiveJournal, and then go talk to someone, exactly as you’re saying. And so it was, like, through that, that I felt like I had had the space to actually start… It felt like slight participation.
AR: Yeah.
ELM: Right? You know? And then reblogging something was like, “Oh my God.” [all laugh] You know? Like, “Look at this!” And so yeah, exactly what you’re saying. And I was not a tween. [AR laughs] I was in my mid-twenties and worked at The New Yorker, so… [laughs]
FK: OK, so where did you go from there? Because, I mean, we’ve covered a little—like, all right, you’re in fandom, you’re doing the thing. You’re interested in, like, organizing stuff and so forth. You’ve written a little bit and gotten paid a little bit, but your whole job now, I mean, [laughs] is fandom-related and so forth. Like, obviously, you’re in high school, you’re in college. Like, where do you start making this turn into a career [laughs] that is connected with this?
AR: Yeah, it’s interesting. I just made a major sideways turn in college. After high school, you know, I got hired off of Tumblr to work on a brand’s Tumblr, which was so exciting. So the summer I was 18, I went to New York, lived in NYU dorms, did this internship, was in, like, sort of New York media [laughs] for the first time ever. It was really exciting.
And that summer, I discovered the first band that I ever fell in love with, and I joined the fandom for that band. And that sort of completely changed the trajectory of my college years because I had never been in a fandom for a band before, at that point. It really, like, opened my eyes to being a fan of that versus, like, a TV show. Like, going into college, I was about to go to film school. I thought that I was going to be a screenwriter or, like, work in film marketing. I was excited to go to USC because, of course, Henry Jenkins taught there. Like, I really was very oriented on that track.
And then suddenly, this band fandom moment threw off the next, like, [laughs] six years of my life, and I became a music obsessive. I was in the fandom for one band, I was in the fandom for another and then another, and I became so—not, like, not media fandom, really, but band fandom was my raison d’etre for the entirety of my college years, especially, like, local band fandoms. So, like, these were people that I ended up meeting and working for, because I tend to have a knack if I get really, really excited about something, to wiggle my way in and become involved somehow.
So I did that a bunch of times in college, got some amazing, amazing opportunities in L.A., I got to go on tour, I got to go to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, I was in a band, I managed to band, and that was feeding my fannish soul in a way that took me away from online fandom. So from, like, 2014 to 2018, I don’t know what was going on [laughs] in online fandom. I kind of was pretty logged off for a period there, and then I ended up picking up a music industry minor at college and working in the music industry for two years after college.
And it was during that period that I was in my first—and only, until now—office job, so bored at my desk that I rediscovered online fandom and media fandom when Good Omens aired. And that sort of catapulted me back into the world of digital media fandom that I remembered as a teenager and sort of put me back on that track. Although I still love music, and I still, like, really treasure the time that I spent doing that.
ELM: I love that you missed the absolute worst years of Tumblr. [AR & FK laugh] Like, you know this now, I’m sure.
AR: I do, yeah.
ELM: But, like, the truly worst time of fandom on Tumblr was 2014 to, I would say, 2016. That was not a good time.
FK: I also find this really funny because I think I first heard about you from Kenyatta when you were, like, an intern with him.
AR: Uh huh.
FK: And I didn’t know that you spent six years doing music fandom things. So I just assumed that you, like, had always been around that whole time. [AR & ELM laugh] This is, like, brand new information to me. I’m like, “Wait, what?”
ELM: I also did not know you didn’t come back into media fandom until Good Omens—
FK: I mean, I knew that you did music stuff, but I didn’t know that.
ELM: —which was five years ago, right?
AR: Yeah. I mean—
ELM: I love it.
AR: —I dabbled. I was still around, but I was so taken up with the—and I’m glad that I was logged off. I’m glad that I spent, like, four to five years, like, touching grass. [ELM laughs]
FK: Yeah! You missed the worst part of Tumblr.
AR: Yeah.
FK: You had experiences in, like, music venues and had, like, a college and early twenties lifestyle—
AR: Yes.
FK: —that did not involve staring at a glowing screen.
AR: Yes! I’m really grateful for these bands that let me have that, because I made some incredible friends and, like, also, I booked shows in L.A. for four years at venues, I did, like, a campus festival, I did music consulting, I did P.R., I did all this really cool stuff that gave me just, like, a big skillset in terms of how to, you know, get people in a room together. Like, how to get people excited about an event. That was, you know, [laughs] I had a really traumatic experience. My best friend and I, our birthdays are a week apart. And we, sophomore year, we threw ourselves a joint birthday party in our dorm, and nobody came except our one other best friend, and we were so sad.
ELM: Oh no!
AR: And the next year I was like, “I’m booking a show on my birthday with the best frickin’ lineup, and if people come, I’ll just pretend that they’re there for me.” And that was—and tons of people came. And it was, like, secretly my birthday party. [laughs] So I did that for, like, three years.
ELM: I feel—all right, now feel like we’re in a therapy session. I have questions— [laughs]
FK: Yeah, I’m like, that’s simultaneously, like, both very inspirational and also incredibly sad. [laughs]
AR: Well, listen, it was a Friday night, sophomore year in college. People had parties to go to. They didn’t want to hang out in the dorms with me and my friend.
ELM: [overlapping] They had a birthday party to go to!
AR: Well…
ELM: No, who are these people? These are bad. These weren’t your friends. [AR laughs] No.
AR: We have recovered from this trauma. No, we’re good. But I really—I loved—
FK: [laughs] I don’t know that I would have ever recovered. [ELM & FK laugh]
AR: This is really what gave me the taste and the experience for event production. And, like, eventually I got fed up booking bands, just because, as my people would say, it’s a bit of a potchke, which means it’s just, like, a hassle, and I got pretty frustrated. But I love event production. I love, like, you know planning some bashes and blowouts and themed events. And you know, I’ve had for almost—I think it’ll be four years this year, I’ve done an annual picnic for the local fandom people in New York for my current fandom, and it’s just always a fantastic time.
ELM: I have more questions about this.
AR: Yeah.
ELM: I know we’re gonna get to and we talked about Terror Camp.
AR: Yeah.
ELM: But you know, you wrote for us about Tumblr...I’m looking at the date now. I cannot believe it. This is such a portentous date, February 28, 2020. [FK laughs] So, like, knew COVID was out there, but we didn’t really know.
AR: Uh huh.
ELM: We weren’t fully aware, right?
AR: Mmm hmm.
ELM: But were you in grad school at the time?
AR: No, this was still, I was still working in music, and I was beginning to feel antsy, and that I was not being properly fulfilled, because that prior year, I had gotten back into fandom, via mainly Good Omens, and I was feeling the call once more. And I was back on Tumblr for the first time, like, since really before college. And I was so inspired by the people that I was, you know, the stuff that I was seeing. And more importantly, this was the first, like, Good Omens was the first time in my life that I ever, like, consistently read and wrote fanfiction.
ELM: Interesting.
AR: There were, I have my favorite Homestuck fics, like, I read the big ones. But it was never, ever my main way of doing fandom until I was in my twenties. It was a big change for me. This is something that I feel kind of strongly about, because there’s a tendency, especially in acafan academia to really focus on fic and fic writing and reading culture to the exclusion of all else.
FK: Yeah.
ELM: Mmm hmm.
AR: And I know from personal experience that there are so many other ways to do fandom and to express those, like, same internal feelings. Yet it wasn’t until after college that I really became—I can call myself a fic reader and a fic writer.
ELM: Do you have theories about this? Because, like, at first blush, I would be like, “Oh, well, yeah, academics...” [laughs] But then also often I see fan studies presentations, and I—or I talk to fan studies folks—and I get the sense that they aren’t really active in fic fandom anymore, either. And so it’s more, like, a historical, [laughs] like, an adolescent interest in fic, you know what I mean?
FK: Well, it’s also just easier to do research on fic than it is on anything else, because you can, like, do so much kinds of crunching on—
ELM: I don’t know, there’s so many, like, ethnography, like, “I talked to 12 different fans” kind of thing. You could do that with any fan practice.
FK: You could in theory, but, like, if you’re gonna do something like—like, if you’re gonna go to a convention, you have to go to the convention. You know, you have to do that with—you can’t, like—it’s a lot harder to search visual things. So you can’t, like, as easily find cosplayers as you can just literally go on AO3 and, like, look this up.
ELM: I think you’re overestimating the amount of academic fan writing that is about statistics on AO3, Flourish, but I want Allegra’s thoughts. [ELM & FK laugh]
AR: I think fanfiction is interesting, right? And it presents, it’s an expression of fan feeling that is presented in a way that is accessible to analysis. So yeah, basically what Flourish is saying. It’s like—it’s interesting. It’s this sort of—I think of it as sort of, like, the tip of the iceberg. It’s very visible. And because it comprises so much content, like, people are doing so much with it, in a literary sense, it presents a very fertile field for analysis and to sort of be synecdoche for whatever else fans are doing, right?
But, like, when I was a Doctor Who fan on Tumblr in, like, 2011, 2012, my fandom consisted of impact font memes and jokes. It was very humor-based. And then, like, sad gifsets. I was a vidder. I was doing all of this—I was a cosplayer—I was doing all this other stuff, which of course, doesn’t make me any less of a fan. But one of my good friends from my current fandom, at the same time that I was doing all that, she was deep in, like, the Master/Doctor, like, specific fic website where, like, they had—it wasn’t AO3, it was a specific ship archive. And I was like, “I had never heard of that!” [ELM laughs] Even though I loved those episodes, and I loved that ship, and I reblogged tons of gifs and graphics of those two. But it’s like we had these completely divergent fan experiences, because at that time, she was more literarily oriented, and I was more visually oriented.
ELM: Hmm.
AR: So I feel kind of like I missed out, but also, it’s too late now. I had a great time. So, like, whatever.
ELM: [laughs] I bet that archive is still up. I feel like if you really wanted to get back in there...
AR: [laughs] Listen, I don’t have the time.
ELM: [laughs] The Doctor and The Master. It’s, like, the ones from the third season, that was, like, that iteration?
AR: [overlapping] Yes, yes. Those. Mmm hmm. Mmm hmm. Mmm hmm.
ELM: OK, yeah. That makes total sense. Very shippable.
AR: Oof, so good. So good. [ELM laughs] Like, I remember fangirling over that specific pairing, but I just like, yeah. I had a different platform and expression and, like, way of going about it than my friend did.
ELM: But something about Good Omens shifted that for you, and then you became a fanfiction person.
AR: Yeah. I mean, I loved the book. I was in the book Good Omens fandom on Tumblr, in, like, 2011, right around that time, and I reblogged tons of fanart, and I made posts, and I made, like, fancasting graphics, but I never really read fic. [laughs] So when the show came out, I rediscovered that fandom. I was like, “Well, this is one of my favorite books ever, I’m so excited for the show. Obviously, I love David Tennant.” So that’s when I was working this office job. I was so unbelievably bored. I don’t think I’ve ever been that bored in my life. I was, like, the level of boredom where I was reading Refinery29 Money Diaries every single day. [ELM laughs]
FK: Oh, yeah. Yup. Yup.
AR: I was essentially a glorified secretary. I had to be in the office every day, it was a small office. But most of the time other people didn’t come in. So I’d be alone, waiting for the phone to ring, waiting for the doorbell ring, just bored to tears. And Good Omens came out towards the end of that job, and just it was like, “Oh, my God!” Like, “My brain can do interesting things again. Like, I have a blorbo. [ELM laughs] I have the ship. Like, I have the dopamine.” I will say that prior to that, I had primed myself, but with the show The OA, which I got into a little earlier, and that kind of woke me back up. I don’t know if you’ve seen the show. It’s insane.
FK: Yes.
ELM: We have.
AR: It has a very spiritual element to it. And I genuinely feel like I was, like, Manchurian Candidated by The OA to become a real creative person again. It was so powerful. [AR & ELM laugh] But there wasn’t really a fandom for it. I was, like, on Reddit a lot writing about theories.
FK: There were that kind of—there were a lot of fans, but they were, like, earnest people who would—
AR: Yes.
ELM: —go to Times Square and do the dance, right? You know?
AR: Yeah, and I love that shit.
FK: We had an episode about this and, uh, yeah.
AR: Oh my God.
ELM: Yeah.
AR: I loved The OA. And that sort of, like, yeah, literally woke my brain back up, allowed it the capacity to love a television show again. And then when Good Omens came around, I was ready for it. And so that started me right off, and I had, within the first couple months of that show coming out, a couple really popular fics, and I’d never had a popular fic before. But, like, I think, to this day, like, two of mine are on the front page, sorted by kudos, of the entire television tag, which was just crazy. And so I was getting that feedback, like, [laughs] that dopamine loop of, like, posting something, people love it, they comment, I want to write more to write for those people, you know? So that sort of kept me alive that year.
ELM: [laughs] Wait, and so then you decided to go to grad school to study fandom stuff?
AR: I had already planned on going to grad school, just because I felt like as soon as I was, like, a year into working in the music industry that I missed being in school, and NYU happened to have a really cool master’s program, and I knew I wanted to move to New York. So this was all, like, percolating. [laughs] I planned to move to New York, and I planned to go to grad school, and so yeah, it all lined up pretty perfectly.
ELM: But you did study fan stuff while you were in grad school.
AR: It was a program called Experimental Humanities. I studied a bunch of stuff. It was very much, like, not Gallatin, but a very much kind of, like, you know, do what you want within the realm of the humanities program. I ended up—yeah, I did some fan studies stuff. I did some history stuff. I ended up doing my thesis on the historical role of the amateur, which of course, ties into fan studies, but it also ties into, like, social history and stuff like that, which I became really interested in.
ELM: Before you wrote your Tumblr piece for us, had you done any fan journalism as an adult?
AR: No, because during college, I was trying to be a music journalist.
ELM: Sure.
AR: Which I suppose is a kind of fan journalism.
ELM: Yeah, but I get why you would separate those two.
AR: Yeah. So I dabbled in music journalism, but I think—I mean, that piece that I wrote for you genuinely changed my life, because that’s what got me a job at Tumblr later on. And, like, that was the first time I had done any kind of—I think that was, like, my first time being edited like that, that I can remember. I remember that being a really interesting experience. I was like, “Oh, wow, they care about what I’ve written. They want to make it better.” [AR & ELM laugh] That was really cool. That got me in front of the folks at Tumblr, which eventually got me an awesome job there. And then it also just gave me a piece in my portfolio, like a clip that I could then use in further pitches, and it was a really important step for me.
ELM: Oh my God, that’s so exciting. As the editor, I’m glad that that wasn’t, like, a scarring experience. I really felt like it was a good back-and-forth editorial experience.
AR: Yeah, and it was, like, you know, of course, I wasn’t gonna say, “I’ve never been edited like this before,” because, you know. [ELM laughs] But I don’t think that I could remember that, remember going through that before. And it made me feel like a real journalist. It was very confidence-building.
ELM: Oh my God, I’m so—that’s a really nice thing to hear, as an editor. I mean, I think a lot of people aren’t edited like that. [laughs] Even some journalists aren’t edited like that, right?
AR: Yeah.
ELM: But you started writing all over the place.
AR: Yeah.
ELM: You’ve done so much good work.
AR: [laughs] Thank you so much. I mean, it surprised me, but I think that once I’d written that piece, and then once I was in grad school, I realized, like, “I think that this is what I want to do.” I think that I had the realization, which was a very poorly timed realization coming within, like, a year of ChatGPT coming out, but I was like, “There’s nothing that I enjoy so much is the act of writing.” And then, of course, publishing and people telling me that they like what I wrote. But I was like, I had never, like, even as I churned out fanfiction, like, between 2019 and 2020, like, I never thought to consider myself as a writer, but between the Fansplaining piece, and then, like, a year later, I started writing a weekly column for Garbage Day, Ryan Broderick’s really excellent internet culture newspaper, I was like, hey, I really, really like doing this. I love being the person especially to translate fan stuff for a broader audience. Like, I think that that’s something that I really, like, enjoy and find interesting, and I think that other people find it valuable, and it would be worthwhile for me to figure out a way to keep doing it. So that’s sort of how that started.
ELM: But you also, from that article, wound up working at Tumblr?
AR: Yes, I did. So that article got passed around internally. I was reached out to by some some folks at Tumblr, and then, like, a year later, like, fully a year later, once I was in New York and about to start school and kind of needed a part-time job, I reached back out, and I was like, “Hey, any chance you’re hiring?” [FK laughs] And, you know, things kind of went from there. And I ended up working for Tumblr as a contractor on their marketing team for over two years.
ELM: Are you allowed to talk about anything that you did there?
AR: Um, yeah, I mean, I don’t see why not. [laughs]
ELM: [laughs] All right.
FK: [laughs] I love to hear it.
AR: I mean, my favorite things that I did there, the things that I am the most proud of, were my platform narratives. So I worked on two April Fool’s Days in a row, and I voiced or wrote everything that the character of Brick Whartley posted. [FK laughs] And I had so much fun with this, like, marketing guy who has a brick for a head and sort of speaks in business-speak and is being tormented by crabs on a tropical island where he was exiled to. [ELM & FK laugh]
And then the other thing that I did that I really, really loved doing was this project called The Naturalist which was featured on the Tumblr main dashboard, kind of as featured posts. And it was the story of this kind of, like, Victorian-era naturalist who comes to Tumblr to study it like it’s some strange foreign continent, [FK laughs] and ends up, like, sort of observing the wildlife in a way that is very complementary to the culture of Tumblr.
So I loved—I love doing that sort of thing. I wish that I had gotten to do more of it, or that I had gotten to workshop it with a larger team. But I worked with a really, really cool illustrator on The Naturalist project. And then for the April Fool’s stuff, it was just fun to see that go up all over the site on April Fool’s Day and see people, like, interacting with this character that I’d built.
ELM: I feel like if anyone doesn’t use Tumblr, this is gonna all sound very foreign to them, because I can’t think of another social platform [AR laughs] that has, like—wait, what was the term you used? Narrative—platform narratives.
AR: Like, platform narratives. Yeah.
ELM: Yeah. Like, it’s not like, on, you know, March 3rd on Twitter, all of a sudden—
FK: Right.
ELM: —there’s, like, some random fictional narrative happening that we’re all, you know—
FK: Although, in fairness, like, even I heard about the crabs. [AR & ELM laugh] Like, I’m not on Tumblr, but I know about the crabs. I know about that one. [laughs] I couldn’t avoid it.
AR: Yeah.
ELM: I mean, it’s partly too, you know, you, and I know other folks who are working on that team who are extremely, like, in Tumblr and Tumblr users and understanding that, like, some of that comes from the users themselves. Some of it comes from—like, it’s somewhat symbiotic and circular, I feel like, in terms of, like, some of the crab stuff was coming from the users, for sure. [FK laughs] It wasn’t like Tumblr was like, “Hey, get interested in crabs,” right?
AR: Yeah.
ELM: You know what I mean? Like, it’s definitely symbiotic, right?
AR: It’s just cool to be able to be on the other side of that, like, participatory platform relationship. And that job was also just another way in which I discovered, like, other kinds of writing that I like to do, like that kind of immersive storytelling stuff, which I have been increasingly into.
ELM: Is there anything—are you actually, like, working on stuff you can talk about in that realm?
AR: Well, there’s nothing I’m working on. But I have become deeply obsessed with Sleep No More within the last, like, six months, which is, you know, great timing for me—
FK: Just as it closed?!
AR: —because it’s about to close.
ELM: It’s not closed yet, Flourish.
FK: Yeah, I know it’s not closed yet, but it’s closing. I guess you got in right under the line.
AR: It’s closing! Yes, they’ve extended it, like, a bunch. So I think it’ll be open for, like, until maybe April? So I definitely want to hit it a couple times when I’m back in New York. But the thing about Sleep No More, and I think that if I had realized this, I would have started going the minute that I moved to New York, but I didn’t really have a sense of what it was. The thing about Sleep No More is that it is, you know, the sort of dream of fandom, right? The dream of the young fangirl and her Mary Sues and her self-inserts, is that one day that she can be part of a story, and her blorbo will take her by the hand. In Sleep No More, he will actually take you by the hand! And I think that that was such a transformative moment for me. [laughs]
ELM: Is Macbeth your blorbo? Is that what you’re saying? Or is it Macduff?
AR: No! No, neither. [ELM laughs] I will say nothing. But it was so—it’s, like, very physical. It’s like you are there, you’re in the world of the story. And of course, like, for many people, you know, it’s beautiful set design and beautiful dance, and it’s a wonderful production, but, like, I didn’t realize how specifically it would push my fandom buttons. And of course, it doesn’t do that for everybody. But, like, there is a subculture of Sleep No More fans who’ve seen it hundreds of times. Tickets are incredibly expensive, so that’s just insane to me, but I have spent money that I didn’t have to see it one more time before I left for L.A., and I followed my guy around and he took me by the hand [ELM laughs] and whispered some, you know, Bible verses into my ear, and I was like, “OK, I can die happy now.” I mean it’s insane!
FK: [laughs] It’s very—I mean, I don’t know. It’s very LARPing-adjacent, actually, in certain ways.
ELM: Mmm hmm.
FK: I’m enjoying this because I feel like you have been exploring many things that I also explored, like, 10 years before but in, like, a different context.
AR: Mmm hmm.
FK: Some of these things are—they’re hard to access until you get to a major city.
AR: Yes.
FK: You know what I mean? Or, like, a space where there’s lots of other people. Things like Sleep No More, things like—I mean, even LARPing can be hard to access unless you’re in a space and you’ve got, like, money and time and all that. The immersive storytelling stuff, like, sometimes is easier or harder to access for people, and so I find it really interesting and cool that you’re finding some of this stuff now. People are gonna continue to find it.
AR: Yeah.
FK: It’s not—for a little while, I think I felt like, oh, there was a surge of interest in this around 2010, and then it sort of felt like it faded away. But that’s not at all true. Like, it has not faded away. It’s continuing to exist. It’s just that I was into it 2010, [laughs] and now you’re into it. You know what I mean?
AR: Yeah, I mean, I won’t lie, it has given me a genuine interest to try LARPing. [ELM & FK laugh] I always thought that I wouldn’t like it, because I have a very sensitive cringe reflex that makes it hard [laughs] to, like, even watch improv sometimes. [FK laughs]
ELM: Sure.
AR: But being at Sleep No More and being pulled into the one-on-one, it’s like I have already been, like, desensitized. I’m already in the world.
FK: Yeah.
AR: So, I felt that it kind of freed me to interact with this character and to, like, just fully lean into it. And it just felt like playing pretend, like as a kid.
FK: Mmm hmm.
AR: Which is, I don’t know if this is relatable, but you know, I feel like people of our fannish ilk sometimes play pretend for longer than the other kids at recess are, [ELM & FK laugh] and then are sad to sort of have to have the social pressures to give it up. I very distinctly remember that being a thing.
FK: For real.
AR: And this is a way to get back to that, and I would love to try LARPing. I’m saying that right now in the podcast, if anybody wants to invite me to a LARP near, in the New York area, in the next couple of months, please. I would like to come to your LARP.
ELM: Wow.
FK: Wow!
ELM: I love that this is breaking news right here. [all laugh]
FK: Wow! I think you’re gonna like LARPing because when you’re in it, like you said, you don’t notice how cringe it is. It’s true.
AR: Yeah.
ELM: But I’m also interested in something you said that is different from LARPing, which is the idea of, I mean, I wouldn’t say all fans want this. I think a lot of fans don’t, in terms of—
AR: Mmm hmm.
ELM: They don’t want their blorbo to take them by the hand. [FK laughs]
AR: Yeah.
ELM: They don’t want to be perceived by their blorbo. They’re like, “Why would I put myself in the self-insert?” But I do think there is some element that’s different from LARPing, which is peer-to-peer—
FK: Hmmm.
AR: Yeah. Yeah.
ELM: —or roleplay or anything like that, of the idea of going to a show you love and kind of having that fourth wall crossed, where they’re like—
AR: Yeah.
ELM: “We are the objects of affection.” Whereas like, in the LARP—
AR: Uh huh.
ELM: —unless you’re into your fellow LARPers, you know, it’s not the same—
AR: Right.
ELM: —in that way, and that’s interesting to me, too.
AR: Yeah, I think that this is something that struck me in Sleep No More. I’ve been three times. The first time I noticed Blorbo, the second time, [ELM laughs] I got one of his character’s one-on-ones. And the third time I got his other character’s one-on-one. And it’s like, that second time you’re like, “Did he recognize me behind the mask? Does he know me, even though he’s the other character and, like, it’s all connected?” And, like, I’m part of it, it’s just like…yeah, it’s like ASMR for the soul. [ELM laughs] It’s truly, like, I walked out of there, like, it was just such a sort of peak experience. It felt like…
I mean, there’s this post that I always think about, this Tumblr post. It wasn’t even a very popular one, it just summed up the way that fandom sort of looks to me so well. It’s just like, the post goes something like, “Fandom is so crazy, you know, this is insane, I look at a picture of Harry Styles, and I feel like I’m literally on drugs.” Because that sort of sums up the sort of somatic element of fandom, [ELM & FK laugh] the sort of physical, you know, nerve-activated feeling that you can sort of summon at will, with exposure to some sort of fannish object. And it’s the equivalent of chasing a high, and you can get addicted to it, [laughs] you know?
FK: This is all reminding me so much of, like, when a little kid goes to Disney and has an interaction with their favorite Disney character, who they really feel like is real.
AR: Mmm hmm.
FK: And you can see that child just being, like, overwhelmed by the fact that their blorbo— [laughs]
ELM: It’s like a celebrity, you know?
FK: Exactly! But, like, a celebrity that they have such a pure and, you know, total love of and that cannot possibly disappoint them because—
AR: Yes.
FK: —they’re not a celebrity, they’re fictional, you know? [laughs]
AR: Yeah, this is the thing, like, this is not something—like, I’ve met, you know, celebrities in my time, and that level would never—I think I’m not susceptible to it at that level. Like, there has to be that intermediating layer of story, because that is, I think, for me, where that intoxication is produced. It would be like if I went to Antarctica and I stood, like, where my blorbo stood, it’s like there’s that level of narrative that’s interfacing between me and the object, or me and the person that’s producing that kind of frisson that makes me, like, feel physically like I’m gonna, you know, die.
FK: OK, but now we’re to Antarctica, so… [AR & FK laugh] We need to talk about Antarctica.
ELM: We knew it was all gonna wind up in Antarctica. OK, so we all know you love The Terror.
AR: I do love The Terror.
ELM: And we want to talk a bit about Terror Camp. So it feels like all of this has been building up to that, right? The, like, organizing piece—
AR: Mmm hmm.
ELM: —and the getting back into media fandom in a big way piece, and the kind of crossing modes I guess, right?
AR: Yeah.
ELM: Because, you know, the kind of like—the kind of fandom explaining you’re doing in journalism, right? I feel like all of these things are tying together.
AR: Yeah, it’s true. It feels definitely like my current organizing practices have definitely been where all of this has been leading to. So yeah, I watched The Terror, AMC’s The Terror 2018, season one. I watched it, like, early pandemic. I think it was, like, April 2020. I had just been fired from three jobs at once—
FK: Oooh!
AR: —in the music industry.
ELM: Aw...
AR: And had nothing to do, was on unemployment, and I was like, “I’ve seen people that I like from Good Omens fandom posting about this show The Terror, I’ll give it a whirl.” And pretty much immediately I was, like, sucked fully in. And for those that don’t know, The Terror is a miniseries, a 10-episode miniseries, adapted from a quite bad book about the 1845 lost Franklin expedition to the Arctic, and the show took the good—
FK: [laughs] Ouch. Poor Dan Simmons.
AR: I’m sorry, it’s bad. But the show took the good elements of the book and made them better and then put in—took out the bads—a lot of the bad elements of the book, and then put in a ton of their own, like, research and ideas. And it’s just, like, it’s truly, I think, one of the best shows of the past 20 years, it’s so good.
And, like I said in your article, Elizabeth, like, it kind of awakened me like a sleeper agent, this interest in history, and in studying history, that I had heretofore never experienced. I mean, my only sort of thing that I can compare to the way that The Terror made me feel, the way that I dove headfirst into the history behind the show, is like when I got into a band and I would go on the Wayback Machine and look at all their old MySpaces and, like, try to find every picture of them from 2004. Like, [AR & ELM laugh] except now it’s, like, dead guys from 100 years ago. But it’s the same, like, my attention was directed in the same way.
And The Terror is, like, an example of a show that holds up. It’s a sort of—it’s closed, you know, there’s a closed canon. It’s only 10 episodes. It’s richly, richly detailed, it sustains dozens of rewatches. And so when it first aired in 2018, it didn’t get a lot of attention. But since then, it has been picking up fans like a frickin Katamari, you know? I think there’s something like 6K or 7K works in the tag on AO3. It has stayed alive. And in part, that is due to the dedication of its fans in creating a welcoming space and sharing resources and stuff like that, which I have been, you know, proud to play a part in.
ELM: It’s a very interesting fandom to me, because one thing we’ve talked a lot about in the last year is fandom lifecycles, right?
AR: Mmm hmm.
ELM: And the kind of shifting sands of production, and, you know, this kind of idea, like, The Terror is a one-season show, essentially.
AR: Right.
ELM: Obviously, it’s an anthology, right? So there was another one, but like—
AR: That’s not part of it. Yeah.
ELM: Yeah, you guys are interested in those 10 episodes. But it’s got this, like, big historical well, and I know from interviewing you, also, that there’s more information, there’s new canon coming out, right?
AR: Mmm hmm.
ELM: As people, like, discover more. But it’s very interesting to me—
FK: [laughs] Did you just describe new historical discoveries about Antarctica as “new canon”?
ELM: New canon, new lore...
AR: Yeah.
ELM: You know, to put in your fan wiki. So it’s interesting to me, because it kind of runs counter, I know Flourish has done a lot of research in their old life, on, you know, what’s likely to spur a long-term fandom, and a one-season anthology show—
FK: It ain’t it! [laughs]
ELM: —without these structures, but I find it very interesting. Like, I was looking at the, like, kind of fandom hub.
AR: Yeah.
ELM: While I was researching your article, and, like, you guys have so many fests.
AR: Yeah.
ELM: Like, fic fests, for such a relatively small fic fandom. It’s like, it’s interesting to me. It was very heartwarming to me, as a—I feel like fandom does not have the staying power these days for a lot of people, and people are flitting in and out.
AR: Mmm hmm.
ELM: And you guys are, like, kind of buckled down in a way that I really admire. [laughs]
AR: Yeah, I mean, it’s kind of like the television equivalent of slow fashion. I don’t know if you’re into, like, fashion at all. [ELM & FK laugh]
FK: Yeah!
AR: Slow fashion being this sort of, like, sustainable, you know, you buy a piece and you buy it for life. [ELM laughs] It’s kind of expensive, it’s an investment, but then you’ll wear it forever. It’s not super trendy. It’ll be in style for a while, [laughs] you know? So yeah, The Terror is the sort of slow fashion of television shows, being that I know so many people who got into it four or five years ago, they’re still there, because it’s just sort of endlessly generative, in terms of, like, the possibilities that the canon offers.
First of all, it’s an ensemble cast. There’s a bajillion guys, [ELM & FK laugh] and you can just sort of mix and match the guys at your pleasure. So many possibilities for ships. [ELM & FK laugh] And there’s also, like, it’s a tragedy where everybody dies at the end, and so, like, I feel like a lot of people who came in from say, Les Mis, where there’s a similar, like, the milieu of the characters, you know, people didn’t have a happy ending. So this huge cottage industry of AUs sprang up, where everyone is sort of churning out happy or different endings for these guys. That is also a huge motivator. It’s the motivator to fix the canon.
But the difference between The Terror and, I think, a lot of other canons where people are motivated through fanworks to quote, unquote, “fix it,” is that The Terror is this sort of perfect-gem, jewel-box of a show, where you would not change anything about the show itself. It’s not the canon itself that you’re trying to fix. It’s the history behind it, because, of course, all these guys died in real life. And of course, you know, they kind of got what was coming to them, because they were these, you know, you know, idiot colonialists tramping all over this place where they shouldn’t have been. That’s the point of the show. [FK laughs] So it’s like, you’re not objecting to what happened in the show, you’re not objecting to the way it was portrayed. But you also do have that urge within you to give them a different ending solely through the realm of fanworks. That’s a very powerful motivator.
FK: [laughs] I’m also interested in the connection, because I feel like even having been in a bunch of, or observed, at least, a bunch of fandoms that have a connection with history and just studying history, it feels like this is extra [laughs] for The Terror fandom. I mean, you know, hearing about the way that Terror Camp connected with academic work was one of—I mean, I was really excited about that, because I feel like there used to be at least a few sort of conventions that bridged that gap.
AR: Mmm hmm.
FK: And then it sort of fell out of fashion, and now you’re doing this thing, and it’s like, “Yeah, the academics are here again!” But I find it really interesting that there is this, like, deep connection with the actual real history, and actual real discoveries, like Elizabeth was joking about, like, there’s new canon coming out or whatever.
AR: Mmm hmm. Yeah.
FK: Which just feels like it’s a lot more extensive than many other fandoms’ engagement with that.
AR: Yeah, and I saw a tag on the reblog of Elizabeth’s post of her article, which was like, the tag was something like, “Didn’t we already do this in Hamilton?” And of course, like, my instinct is to go—
ELM: I saw that one. [laughs]
AR: First of all, I see what you’re getting at. Second of all, no, and here’s why. [ELM & FK laugh] Hamilton, and also other historical shows, like, you know, The Tudors, and whatever, those shows are about famous historical figures, where everything to excavate about these figures has already been excavated by decades upon decades of academics, whereas The Terror is about obscure guys who died in obscurity, and we literally only have their names apart from the top officers. So while the event is known, and there’s been a lot of work on, like, the archeology of it, the social history, and the biographical history is almost completely untapped, especially of the men of the lower deck, and the men who didn’t get attention, you know, in the news and stuff like that at the time.
So The Terror, there’s the canon itself. There’s, like, the 10 episodes of the show. But there’s also this huge amount of sort of undiscovered material to do with the men themselves, and the men who also are, in some ways, the characters themselves. And it’s like you, as a fan, are empowered to dive into archives and to, you know, to look at old pieces of paper and to, like, search old newspapers to find out as much as you can about these men, because nobody has ever done it before. It’s not like, you know, Hamilton, it’s like, there was the whole, you know, book. It’s, like, the books have been written.
ELM: There was that whole book. [laughs]
AR: So that is, I think, something that distinguishes The Terror from other sort of historical canons, is that a lot of the work, like, even for the show, even the research for the show, turned up stuff that had never been incorporated into any academic paper or book.
One of the characters on The Terror, John Irving, the third lieutenant of the ship The Terror, in the Dan Simmons book, Dan Simmons just, like, made up a character for this guy. But the showrunners were like, “Hmm, there’s actually, like, a—his friend after he died published all his letters, and it’s this volume that’s been scanned in Google Books, so let’s just take a look at what this guy was actually like in real life.” And it turns out, [laughs] he was, like, very sad and kind of like a tortured, repressed gay man, basically. You can read that into it from his letters.
But that had never been in any kind of academic publication. That was a primary source that the showrunners went back to. And they had the actor read the letters to, like, help them build the character, and they incorporated it into the script. And it was just like, “Oh, he’s this, like, religious, repressed guy.” That was not in the book. But that was in the primary sources.
So you have the fans following the showrunners’ leads and going back to these primary sources in order to build up the world of the canon for their transformative fanworks, which is just this incredible cycle that yeah, like, I don’t really see an analogue to that anywhere else.
ELM: This is so funny. So Flourish and I recently went to a screening of Oppenheimer—
AR: Mmm hmm.
ELM: That there was a Q&A with Christopher Nolan and Matt Damon and Christopher Nolan’s producing partner I can’t remember the name of. [ELM & FK laugh] She’s very important. Anyway. And it was so funny, because one of the things that really struck me is they said, I don’t if you’ve seen Oppenheimer, there were, like, a lot of guys in it, right?
AR: Yeah.
FK: It’s, like, many, many guys. One of them mentioned that these are all, like, famous physicists.
FK: It was Matt Damon. [AR & FK laugh] Yeah, Matt Damon was like—
ELM: No, I think it was both of them, because he was saying that they—yeah, they had all written autobiographies.
AR: Uh huh.
ELM: And so each of the actors went and read the autobiography of their guy.
AR: Uh huh.
FK: Which Christopher Nolan had not read all the autobiographies. [laughs]
ELM: And so they said that they, like, kept coming up to him and being like, “Well, it says in the book...” And he was like, “I haven’t read every single one of these guys’ autobiographies.” Right?
AR: Yeah.
ELM: And it’s funny, because it reminds me of what you’re talking about, and also something you said when I interviewed you for the piece that I couldn’t—I didn’t have enough space, unfortunately, to fit everything—that I was so struck by when you were talking about how, like, fans can do this massive amount of research, like, kind of without end.
AR: Yeah.
ELM: Without a goal. Like, an academic might have an argument to make, whereas fans will just keep looking and looking and looking and looking.
AR: Yup.
ELM: And it’s like, you guys all have these, like, random guys.
AR: Mmm hmm.
ELM: And you know, each person might have an investment in a minor character, and that can kind of lead to this sort of...
AR: Yeah.
ELM: It’s a similar thing in a sort of a way, right?
AR: Yeah, it’s exactly the same. And I think that especially in academics, an academic might have pressure to publish, like, they might have, like, you know, deadlines and, you know, they don’t have the freedom that a fan has, yeah, to do research without end, you know, because they love it, because it feels—like, I spent last night—spending, like—like, last night I spent, like, two hours just clicking through photos [laughs] from an album from, like, 100 years ago, and I was like, “That’s not what I was planning to do with my night.” [ELM laughs] But I was having so much more fun doing that than I would have, you know, watching whatever episode of a show I’m watching.
And so the first year that I organized Terror Camp was 2021, and it was just a one-day conference. And we were gonna have the keynote from the showrunner, David Kajganich, at the end of the day, and we were all so excited. And that first year was the only year that I presented along with being an organizer. And my presentation that year was on this thing that I called “Terror Fandom’s Biographical Turn,” and it’s exactly what we’re talking about here. And I used stuff from Jenkins, and I used stuff from Umberto Eco’s theory of the cult film, to sort of explain exactly what we’re talking about, which is like, why is it that The Terror drives this impulse to research.
And I used this example that I had, you know, spent hours going through this scanned diary of a man who might have been on a ship once with the guy that I liked and, you know, I was like, I transcribed the whole thing, I was looking for any mentions of, like, my favorite guy. And I didn’t find any mentions of him, but I did find the mention of another man who ended up on the ship The Terror, who had also been on this previous ship. And this mention of this other guy cleared up a historical reference in one of these documents that people had been wondering for for ages.
And nobody had ever—why would anybody bother to read through 20 pages of a handwritten, like, ship’s diary from 1838 that had nothing to do with the actual Terror expedition. But I had known this guy was on the ship, and he was there with the other guy, and I was like, “Let me just read it and see. I have the time, I want to.” [FK laughs] And I ended up finding this little detail in a primary source. It’s like, no one would ever find that in a million years, unless they were this insane!
FK: If not for the power of your favorite guy! [laughs]
ELM: [laughs] I love it. I love it.
AR: Yep. And what’s crazy is that when I was presenting that, the guy who played my guy was in the—was watching it on Zoom. [ELM laughs] And I knew that he was there, and I was like, “Sir, thank you.” [FK laughs]
ELM: We are short on time. I want to make sure that we talk to you a little bit about your book.
AR: Oh, yeah. [laughs]
ELM: Congratulations.
AR: Thank you!
FK: Book book book book book!
AR: Yeah, like, I’m psyched. It’s called—the working title right now is Fandom Forever (and Ever). Honestly, I want to change it, I need to find something better. And it’s going to be coming out with Norton, probably not next year, but the year after. Depends on when I finish it. And yeah, it’s a—something that doesn’t really exist. It’s something that I’ve always wanted to read, which is a historical overview of fandom. So I think that a lot of my favorite books about fandom are wonderful, sort of incisive commentaries on modern fandom, late 20th, early 21st century, fandom culture, and I have always been much more interested in, like, were people fans before then? How were they fans? Like, what were they fans of? And so this is a book in which I’m trying to answer some of those questions.
And you know, a lot of it is about, like, structures of culture and how entertainment and leisure culture and audience culture evolves, like, as a whole. But I’m finding these really interesting pockets of what I would call historical fan stories that I want to sort of draw out and use as examples. And then of course, in the second half of the book, I do get into 20th century fandom. You know, I sort of am cutting myself off at, like, the year 2000, [laughs] because there’s other people who have written about that. But, you know, sort of up through when we get to the internet era of fandom, that’s what I’m covering.
FK: I feel like this is a book that people have been asking for for years and years and years. So I’m really excited. I’m excited that you’re writing it, because I also feel like there have been some attempts [laughs] that have not been very satisfying in the past, and I want to see what you do. I feel it’s going to be better. [ELM & FK laugh]
AR: Yeah. I hope so. I mean, like I—
FK: If it’s bad I won’t tell you. I’ll tell you it’s good.
ELM: Oh, my God. [laughs]
AR: I mean, I make no promises. Like, if anything, I just want to provide inspiration to other people to chase down some of these individual—like, any of the individual stories that I’m writing about could be like whole books in and of themselves. But, like, so much of the 19th century stuff is so interesting to me. I honestly wish that I had more of a background as, like, a qualified historian or literary theorist versus a fan scholar to really dive into the ways that people were engaging with this sort of cultural material. But it is just cool to see, like, reading about Byron’s fangirls, and, you know, Dickens merchandise crazes. And I just finished writing a chapter which included the story of The Bowery Boys, if you know who they are.
FK: Yeah!
ELM: Yeah. Oh yeah.
AR: And, like, their obsession with this actor, Forrest, which turned into a huge riot. And they were sort of, like, one of the sources that I was reading about them described them as “America’s first fan culture,” which I thought was so interesting. So looking at it through that lens. I mean, a lot of people have written about The Bowery Boys as, like, a street gang, and, you know, a political faction, but, like, I’m looking at them sort of as fans, [laughs] which is—should be something cool and different.
ELM: No, I mean, I think that’s what’s so exciting about it too, because, like, you know, as someone who was an English major that crossed over with history a lot, you see so many things in scholarship, that you’re like, “That’s fannish.”
AR: Mmm hmm.
FK: Yeah!
ELM: Right?
AR: Yeah.
ELM: But you know, but I also think you need someone with a, you know, I mean, my angle on this is fanfiction-specific, too, like, you need someone with the knowledge to not just paint it with a broad brush and be like, “Well, it’s all fandom.” You know?
AR: Mmm hmm.
ELM: Because I lose my mind when people say, “It’s all fanfiction.” And it’s like, “OK, but actually—”
AR: Yeah.
ELM: “—there are, you know...” And so I feel like you having all these disparate threads kind of gives you that lens in which to look at these things that you could hear about, or read about in a kind of straight-up history or literature class that people wouldn’t label it as such.
AR: Yeah.
ELM: You know, or be able to tie it back to the more modern lineage.
AR: Yeah, I mean, that’s really what I’m hoping to do is to compile all of these stories. And I also, like, my time in the fandom for The Terror has instilled in me this love of primary sources, where it’s like I, you know, get sick and tired of like reading what other people have written [AR & ELM laugh] about these sorts of groups, and I’m like, “Well, let me just go to the newspaper archive and, like, see how people were talking about them then, and let me try and find diaries.” My favorite secondary sources are the ones that heavily involve diaries and personal reports. It sort of falls into that larger category of reception studies.
ELM: Mmm hmm.
AR: Which is studying how people received what they wrote, what they saw, what they listened to, and stuff like that. So I obviously don’t have the time or the resources to fly around the world reading pages and pages of people’s diaries, but, like, the more of that sort of stuff that I can find I know, like, that’s really what I want to include, is the perspective of these early fans themselves.
ELM: I can’t wait to read it.
AR: Yeah!
FK: Seriously. I can’t believe we have to wait so long! [ELM laughs] Write faster!
AR: Oh God, I’m not even halfway done writing it. But yeah, send me good vibes. [laughs] I’ll get through it.
ELM: We are looking forward to it whenever you finish it.
AR: [laughs] Thank you. Thank you.
ELM: Any time in the future.
AR: It will come, it will come. I signed a contract.
FK: And we’re glad that you took time out of your writing schedule to come talk to us because it’s been great.
AR: Ah! Yeah!
FK: It’s been a pleasure to have you on.
AR: It’s my dream come true. Thank you guys so much for having me.
[Interstitial music]
FK: I say it every time, but it’s always true. That was a delight, [laughs] and I could have gone longer. So I’m really, really happy that we finally had Allegra on.
ELM: Yeah, I learned so much. I didn’t realize that she—you know, I feel like I first became aware of her somewhat around the time, it must have been in 2019, because I knew of her as a Good Omens fan.
FK: Yeah.
ELM: And I had no idea that that was, like, her first foray into fanfiction and all that stuff. That’s wild to me.
FK: [laughs] Me neither! Well, you know, I mean, now we know.
ELM: Yeah, so super interesting journey. And I’m so excited about that book. I really am glad that it exists.
FK: Me too. It’s a book that we’ve needed, and I believe it’s gonna be great.
ELM: Well, in the interest of smooth transitions… [both laugh] The face you’re making.
FK: [laughs] This is not a video podcast, it’s too bad.
ELM: We paid Allegra for that Tumblr piece—
FK: Uh huh.
ELM: —with money from...
FK: From patreon.com/fansplaining! Yeah!
ELM: Yeah, pretty smooth, pretty smooth.
FK: Yeah, look at that, that was smooth. OK, yes. patreon.com/fansplaining is how you support the work of this podcast, both these episodes, the transcripts that go with them, all of the journalism that we are able to commission. You can support us at any level from like $1 a month all the way up to as much as you want. And there’s different levels of cool little stuff you get, including access to our special episodes, we’ve pretty recently done some of those, to having a cute little Fansplaining pin, enamel pin, and up to, like, Tiny Zines that we send out periodically. So you know, go over there and check it out. If you happen to have some spare money and want to support the work that we’re doing here.
ELM: Glossed right over, some special episodes we recently did—we have put out a new special episode since last time.
FK: You’re right, I guess we have.
ELM: You blocked it out somehow. So on the tin, let me tell you. [FK laughs] I’ll give you a little peek here. On the surface, it’s the latest “Tropefest” episode. It’s about arranged marriage. And as you’ve probably heard, we’ve teased for a very—“we’ve.” I’ve teased for a very long time about this being Flourish’s, like, id trope, like, their deepest, darkest desires, et cetera, et cetera. And instead, the episode turned out to be, like, at least a good 35 minutes of you talking about your gender identity.
FK: [laughs] Well, they’re related, and that’s why I was so, like, not—I was like, “I don’t know if I’m prepared to talk about this, because these things are connected to me.”
ELM: And then the floodgates opened and you were so prepared. So I actually honestly think it’s a very interesting conversation even if you’re not interested in the arranged marriage trope.
FK: This is a peak example of Elizabeth, like, this is a peak example of why our relationship works, is that you tease me about something, and I get uncomfortable and clam up and then I go, “BLAHHHH.” [laughs]
ELM: That is exactly what happened. No, it’s an interesting episode.
FK: OK, good. I’m glad that it was interesting.
ELM: It’s that, and then it’s, like, 15 minutes of you repeatedly talking about, like, why slash arranged marriage fic doesn’t work.
FK: Yeah, it doesn’t, though. Fight me. [both laugh]
ELM: So that is available. It is the eleventh “Tropefest” episode, so it’s a huge range. I have some breaking news for you, Flourish. Guess what I started watching?
FK: House, M.D.! House, M.D.!
ELM: Yeah, you know what? I will say what year did that show start?
FK: When we were in college, maybe? Like, 2004 or 2005?
ELM: It’s early—yeah, it’s, like, mid-Bush years.
FK: Maybe 2003. No, it was later than 2003. Yeah, yeah. Mid-Bush years.
ELM: Bryan Singer, disgraced, deeply problematic man in charge of the X-Men franchise, was the director of the pilot.
FK: Yeah.
ELM: And, I think, one of the first episodes, and it’s very funny. It feels like—I’m not saying it feels just like the X-Men movies. [FK laughs] But, like, there’s some—I can tell these are made by the same man.
FK: Uh huh. Great. Well, I’m looking forward to your incisive commentary. We will be doing a House, M.D. episode—
ELM: Yeah.
FK: —once Elizabeth watches more of it, because I watched the entirety of it, and Elizabeth had not yet started her rewatch.
ELM: I also want to note that I really like that—I love looking at notes that clearly get given between the pilot and the first main episode.
FK: Yeah! [laughs]
ELM: My favorite note that was clearly given was Chase must be more blond. [FK laughs] Because he’s, like, a dirty brunette in the first one, and then he’s a full-on dumb blond by the next episode.
FK: Yeah, yeah. Right. Love it.
ELM: Great note, great note.
FK: OK. All right. If you do not want to give us money for this incredible content, which I don’t know why you wouldn’t want to, but there may be many reasons. You can still support us by—mostly by spreading the news about the podcast, especially our full transcripts, which come out at the same time as every episode. Also, by writing in and giving us ideas, comments, thoughts. That’s how we develop a lot of our episodes. So you can write to fansplaining at gmail.com You can put things in our ask box on Tumblr, anon is on. That’s Fansplaining on Tumblr. fansplaining.com also has a little box that you can write into. And you can give us a call at 1-401-526-FANS. And that way you can get your voice on this podcast, which we really like, because it’s nice to have multiple voices.
ELM: Is that all the business?
FK: I think that’s all the business, Elizabeth. Thank you for a lovely episode.
ELM: [laughs] Thank you, Flourish.
FK: And thank Allegra, I guess, really mostly. [laughs]
ELM: Yeah, mostly. Mostly.
FK: [laughing] All right, I’ll talk to you later, Elizabeth.
ELM: OK, bye.
[Outro music]