Special Episode 31: Tropefest: Friends to ?

In the newest “Tropefest” episode, Elizabeth and Flourish look at the full range of friendship within fic: platonic relationships, friends to lovers, friends with benefits, work partnerships, team dynamics, found family…it’s a long list. Topics discussed include “ship supremacy” in (relatively) normative friends-to-lovers arcs, the term “pre-slash,” historically and today, and how the lack of friendship ties in modern life are reflected back in fic—and in the media that fic’s based on.

To listen to this special episode or read the full transcript, pledge to our Patreon!

---

Show Notes

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

[00:40:00] Technically we forgot the “Tropefest” in the title—because this is the latest installment of our “Tropefest” series! If you’re a Patron at $3 a month or higher, you can listen or read full transcripts for: 

• “Trapped Together” 

• “Canon-Divergent AU”

• “Enemies to Lovers” 

• “Omegaverse” 

• “Found Family” 

• “Hurt/Comfort”

• “Modern AU”

• “Soulmate AU”

• “Fake Relationships”

[00:03:10] Googling “hard gen” gets you a bunch of results about whether Gen Z is a difficult generation in the workplace 😂 but here’s the SuperWiki page with some of these terms (including “gencest”). And yes, it was one of the terms respondents were least familiar with in our tropes survey—the second-least-known, in fact.

[00:05:25] 

[00:15:50] Interestingly, the Fanlore entry on “pre-slash” offers another historical angle: it could be a signal that no explicit scenes would occur in a fic (whether you were actively seeking that out or actively trying to avoid it). Since early internet fic as well as pre-internet analog fic didn’t often have tagging or explicitness ratings, it could be hard to tell from a title and description alone.

[00:21:35] 

(And yes, the second female character is Cameron Diaz.) 

[00:25:53]

[00:27:37] That was “Femstats February” from earlier this year.

[00:34:42]

[00:44:00] Aja Romano did a great interview recently on found family:

“...we graduate into independence in adulthood that really often means isolation, because I think that’s probably true for a lot of fans who turn to these fandoms for simulacra of healthy interconnected friendship networks.”

[00:52:54]

[00:59:00] FACT CHECK: Elizabeth found a literal email thread between her and Lev Grossman from SDCC that year coordinating meeting up…so perhaps Flourish is correct about that point…but Elizabeth is also correct about the stalking. 

[00:59:36] 😇

[00:59:54] Our outro music “Knowing the truth” by Lee Rosevere, also used under a CC BY 3.0 license.