Special Episode 9: No Edith, No Peace
In Special Episode 9, Javier Grillo-Marxuach returns to Fansplaining to talk about the only television character worth discussing: LADY EDITH CRAWLEY. Specifically, Javi’s Downton/Indiana Jones crossover fic, “Indiana Jones and the Peril of the Middle Child.” Topics covered include family histories, crossovers and curative fandom, writing fic versus writing for television, and fanfiction’s marginalization in the broader culture. Plus they plot out a (possibly horrific) fic featuring everyone’s favorite slash ship, Benedict Cumberbatch’s Julian Assange and Martin Freeman’s nude-body-double character from Love Actually. To listen to this episode or read the transcript, pledge to our Patreon!
Show Notes
[00:00:00] As always, our intro music is “Awel,” by Stefsax.
[00:00:59] Javi last appeared on the podcast in the eponymous Episode 82. Destination Toast has joined us several times, most notably in Episode 13, “Destination: Stats!”
[00:01:49] Read Javi’s story, “Indiana Jones and the Curse of the Middle Child,” before you listen to the rest of the episode!
[00:02:51] Starship Smackdown is an annual thing at SDCC, and if you really want to learn more, The Mary Sue covers it every year.
[00:03:36] The Grand Moff Tarkin book of which Javi speaks is Tarkin, by James Luceno, and Wookieepedia has the details—though we suspect the Venn diagram of “people who care about Tarkin” and “people who have already purchased Tarkin” is a circle at this point.
[00:14:41] Javi’s great-grandfather, Teófilo Marxuach, was (it turns out) kind of a snack. Wikipedia has more details on this story.
[00:26:53] Javi's Middleman/Doctor Who crossover fic is “A Christmas Card From the Middleman.”
[00:35:54] We got this slightly wrong! The Doctor Who/Star Trek crossover is Assimilation², and it is indeed a comics miniseries. The X-Men/Star Trek crossover, on the other hand, is a crossover between the X-Men comics and Trek, but it’s actually in the form of a novel—Planet X, by Michael Jan Friedman. Flourish is still convinced that we’re gonna read both of these someday for a special episode...maybe.
[00:42:17] The issue of The Rec Center in which Flourish recs J2 is from November 2, 2018. The fic we’re discussing is Restraint, by DarkEmeralds.
[00:43:53] The character that fans made up to bring Eliza Taylor to Fear The Walking Dead is called “Elyza Lex.” There are 316 fanworks about her on the Archive of Our Own.
[00:53:06] Was this not enough of an explanation of the Eugenics Wars? Memory Alpha has you covered. (Make sure to click on through to Memory Beta as well to find out about the pseudo-canonical stuff!) Unfortunately, Love, Actually came out in 2003, so it’s probably set too late for this to work. Whatever, seven years, right? We can fudge it! This is fanfiction!
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[01:10:07] Episode 8 was called “One True Fandom,” and you should listen to it, but note the fight has been EXCISED!
[01:17:17] DO YOU LOVE TINY ZINES? We do!! You can get ours, which (as we have noted) sometimes includes Klinkel fanfic, by pledging $10/month!
[01:18:15] Our outro music is "Rainbow Road" from the game Glitch, which has been placed in the public domain.