Features - Fansplaining

A nighttime photo of a display of the main characters from Heaven Official's Blessing. The display is a 3-D stand of the couple sitting together on the crescent moon together.

Features

The Global Crackdown on Creativity

Governments around the world are censoring—and criminalizing—the currents in which fanworks flow.

Image from Game of Thrones featuring Daenerys and Jon Snow walking towards a pair of dragons, with many skeletal remains on the ground.

Features

How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Dragons

Working in the Game of Thrones content mines killed my fannish feelings for the franchise. Here’s how I got them back.

Image of three portions of the languages drop-down on AO3, with one larger in the center flanked by two others. "Kiswahili" is highlighted. Red background.

Features

The Elation and Anxiety of Reading Fic in Your Native Tongue

For fans in Kenya, Nigeria, and Burundi, “uncringing” non-English fanfiction is an endeavor in decolonialism.

Production still from The Pitt featuring Drs Abbott and Robby standing in front of the red emergency entrance (in the evening), looking meaningfully at each other.

Features

The Pitt Fandom Phenomenon

The hit medical drama showcases three things you need to build a juggernaut fanfic community: popularity, modularity, and intimacy.

Photograph of Oh Hyun-ji playing gayageum in front of an audience, backdropped by green trees and bushes through floor to ceiling windows.

Features

Can Fandom Make Us Better Tourists?

In an era of overtourism, South Korea’s Jeju Island and international BTS fans are building bridges of mutual respect.

Illustration featuring a computer desktop with chat windows and images of popular ships kissing, with a figure in the corner climbing through the screen.

Features

Alternate Universes

Through text-based roleplaying, I’ve lived so many other lives—and experienced so many other bodies.

Image from the back of issue one of Mary Sue, featuring Jessica the blonde vampire riding a bicycle, with Cassie (glasses, long brown hair) hanging on to the back, looking panicked.

Features

Reclaiming the Mary Sue

My new comic interrogates the continued bias against Mary Sues—and brings one life.

Photograph of three people (Alyssa Wong, Lydia Kang, Tessa Gratton) walking onto a stage with a Star Wars-themed backdrop. All three smile and Tessa waves at the camera.

Features

The Fan, the Pro, and the Spaces In Between

Writing for Star Wars challenges me to interrogate fandom power dynamics—and figure out where I fall in a rapidly shifting landscape.

Photograph of the panelists standing on the stage: Meghan, Tessa, Elizabeth, Lin, Brent, Javi, Daphne.

Panels

The Fandom Advantage: How Fan Creativity Fuels Pro Entertainment Careers

Fansplaining’s panel from San Diego Comic-Con 2025, featuring fannish creators who work on television, comics, novels, and more.

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.

Photo of the exhibition in a white-walled gallery. A figure stands in the center. "I came to RUIN you" on the wall. Video installation in corner. T-shirt hangs in the foreground.

Features

I Came to Ruin You: The Collecting Practices of K-Pop Fandoms

From photo cards to video art installations, a tour through a recent exhibition showcasing K-pop fans’ communal creativity and cross-cultural exchanges.

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.