Fandom History - Fansplaining

Photograph of Hutch and Starsky sitting together against a collection of stacked fruit crates.

Features

How Friendships Onscreen and Off Fueled Half a Century of Fandom

For the admins of the Starsky & Hutch Fiction Archive, preserving fanworks and fannish community go hand in hand.

Photograph of actors Elijah Wood, Orlando Bloom, Dominic Monaghan, and Billy Boyd with their arms over each others' shoulders, posing for a photo.

Features

The RPF Question

Amid blurry boundaries between fic, celebrity fandom, and conspiracy theories, how real person fiction evolved from forbidden to mainstream and back again.

Promotional photo of the cast, standing behind a silvery table with props.. See the caption for actors' names.

Features

The War That Almost Broke a Classic Fandom

Blake’s 7 fans and actors mixed regularly at cons and on the pages of zines—until an anonymous letter changed everything.

Episodes

Episode 61: Episodic

Why does fandom love engaging with—and creating—episodic content?

Drawing of a man at an old-timey printing press

Episodes

Episode 59: Fandom Histories

What is the “history of fandom”—and what gets erased when we perpetuate a single narrative?

On old illustration of a woman writing and appearing to swoon into a sofa as a man apparently confronts her about what she has written.

Episodes

Episode 10: Fangirling Through Time

Scholar Evan Hayles Gledhill on historical fangirling—and the age-old patriarchal attempt to suppress it.