Fansplaining

In Episode 97, "The Shipping Question," Elizabeth and Flourish unveil their brand-spanking-new survey, on shipping and what we mean when we say we're doing it. They discuss the inspiration for the survey, what's included (and what isn't), and their own shipping histories, practices, and preferences. They also read a trio of listener letters: on shipping and speculation, on fanfiction tastes, and a...

In Episode 96, "Ask Fansplaining Anything: Part 4,"  Flourish and Elizabeth respond to a plethora of listener letters on a wide variety of topics, including genderbending, imagines, political leanings across fannish platforms, Fandom Wank, kink memes, and how to deal with a friend who has GENUINELY TERRIBLE IDEAS ABOUT FANFIC.

In Episode 95, "Back to the Fans," Flourish and Elizabeth discuss director Jason Reitman's recent comments—that the upcoming Ghostbusters film would give the franchise "back to the fans"—and contextualize them in both the morass that is online Ghostbusters discourse and the ways that people in the entertainment industry frame "fans." They also untangle the conflation of fan entitlement, critique,...

In Episode 94, "Save Our Show (It's A Metaphor)," Elizabeth and Flourish talk fan petitions—to keep a show on the air, to get a ship together, to de-canonize a piece of content, and everything in between. On a recent trip to Los Angeles, Flourish gathered perspectives from a variety of entertainment industry professionals, asking the question: Are fan petitions ever effective?

In Episode 93, "User-Generated Content," Elizabeth and Flourish tackle the thorny intersections between making stuff you love and getting paid. They start with the recent round of layoffs at BuzzFeed—including the revelation that a good portion of their traffic comes from uncompensated "community" members—and segue into a conversation about the uncompensated things fans enjoy doing, and the compli...

In Episode 92, "Ask Fansplaining Anything: Part 3," Elizabeth and Flourish read and play another batch of listener letters and voicemails. Topics covered include fandom's future platforms, TV revivals, the dehumanizing aspects of RPF, and a return to The Discourse Trilogy™, from parallels with American fundamentalist church culture to the relationship between purity discourse and happy endings.

In Episode 91, "Casey Fiesler," Flourish and Elizabeth welcome the information science professor back onto the podcast to discuss her research, especially her study on the way transformative fandom migrates across platforms. Topics covered include feminist HCI, if you can truly get a "representative" sample of fans for a survey, privacy concerns as fandom comes under more scrutiny from researchers...

In "The Year In Fandom 2018," Elizabeth and Flourish discuss the events of the year: What trends from 2017 continued, what was less important, and did anything new begin to emerge? Tumblr fell apart; #metoo did not save us from the way systems enable abusers; K-pop more fully entered mainstream Anglophone culture; moral panics around shipping only intensified; and capitalism shaped everything in f...

In Episode 89, Elizabeth and Flourish welcome back Dr. Rukmini Pande, a fan studies scholar whose new book, Squee From the Margins , explores race in both the field as well as fandom at large. Topics discussed include defining the boundaries of "fandom," how queerness and gender structure fan studies while race typically does not, closed vs open digital platforms, how fandom discussions of racism...

In Episode 88, Flourish and Elizabeth interview Kenyatta Cheese, a founder of Know Your Meme and currently of Everybody At Once, the company behind the social media presences of Doctor Who , Orphan Black , and other shows. They discuss EA1's philosophies of community and fandom, the way the entertainment industry understands fan culture, and how official accounts navigate fannish spaces—plus a goo...

In Episode 87, Elizabeth and Flourish offer up an extra (and possibly unwanted) fourth installment of THE DISCOURSE TRILOGY, entitled, "What We Discourse About When We Discourse About the Discourse." Brace yourselves. They read and play responses from five listeners, on topics including the connections between broader cultural conversations and fandom's purity debates, the Feminist Porn Wars of th...

In Episode 86, "The Money Question," Flourish and Elizabeth complete their inadvertent DISCOURSE TRILOGY with a conversation about the monetization of fanfiction. The first half focuses on the Archive of our Own, a nonprofit fanfic archive that strongly discourages authors from monetizing their work. The second half focuses on Wattcon, a recent conference run by Wattpad, a reading-and-writing app...

In Episode 85, Flourish and Elizabeth talk about the ever-contentious topic of age in fandom. They start with childhood—are there aspects of childhood that are naturally fannish?—and continue on through later stages of life, including the way mainstream society pits fannishness against maturity (unless you're a sports fan!). Topics covered include ageism, the empathy gap online, Ann M. Martin, and...

In Episode 84, "Purity Culture," Elizabeth and Flourish brace themselves and dive into a topic they've been asked about many times before. They define and deconstruct the term, along with the related "antis" and "stans"—who they are, how they behave, and what impact they have on fandom as a whole. They also address listener letters about the monetization of fanfic, new EU copyright law, and their...

In Episode 83, "Ask Fansplaining Anything: Part 2," Flourish and Elizabeth answer a pile of listener letters from the past few months. Topics covered include responses to the recent episode on real person fiction, whether crossovers are underappreciated, why there is a culture of paying for fanart but not fanfic, what "fuck canon" really means, queer representation in fan-favorite shows, and wheth...

In Episode 82, Elizabeth and Flourish interview writer, producer, and former TV executive Javier Grillo-Marxuach about his long career both as a fan and as a member of the "powers that be." Topics covered include some of the earliest fan/creator clashes on the web, Latinx representation in Hollywood, the legacy of Lost and the idea of "solving" a show, when it's time to give up on a fandom, and th...

As they do every August, Flourish and Elizabeth welcome the past year's guests to talk about what's changed in fandom, on a global level, a personal level, or both. Topics include the increase in fandom's visibility, fans attacking creators, purity culture, and the dangers of treating politics like a television show. Flourish and Elizabeth then share their own perspectives on the past year, explor...

In Episode 80, "Real Person Fiction," Elizabeth and Flourish are joined by Aja Romano, internet culture writer at Vox , to discuss RPF: writing fiction about celebrities and other real, living people. Topics covered include stigma towards RPF within fandom and in the broader culture; the many ways real people turn up in all sorts of art; and what happens when a celebrity encounters online discours...

In Episode 79, Elizabeth and Flourish try to answer the question "Who Is Comic-Con For?" They talk about their experience at San Diego Comic-Con 2018, the third time they've attended the event together after meeting on a panel there in 2015, and consider the con from different angles. How has the arrival of film and TV franchise attention changed SDCC? And from consumer behavior to celebrity-watch...

In Episode 78, "The Fan Studies Network," Elizabeth attends the Fan Studies Network's annual academic conference in Cardiff, Wales, and interviews the founders of the FSN, Lucy Bennett and Tom Phillips. Back in the U.S., she and Flourish discuss some of the most exciting things she heard at the conference, the intersections and tensions between academics and non-academic fans, and the ways in whic...

In Episode 77, "The Truth About Toxic Fandom," Elizabeth and Flourish examine a few widely-held conceptions about "toxic fandom," also known as "broken" or "entitled" fandom. They explore whether these behaviors are inherent to being a fan, the culpability of both social media platforms and the producers and creators of source material, and how abusive fan behavior looks depending on the demograph...

In episode 76, "Camp Austen," Flourish and Elizabeth talk to with Ted Scheinman, the author of Camp Austen, a book about his experiences at an Austen con attended by academics and fans (and academic/fans, too!). They also read a trio of listener letters: two on redemption and antiheroes and one on AUs and reading fanfiction by trope.

In Episode 75, "Bad Fans," Elizabeth and Flourish discuss Emily Nussbaum's concept of the "bad fan": people who read against the expectations of the source material to celebrate the bad behavior of characters, from anti-heroes to villains. They then discuss a listener letter about the concept of redemption: what makes a character redeemable? Do all characters deserve to be redeemed? How does fando...

In Episode 74, "Ask Fansplaining Anything: Part 1," Flourish and Elizabeth answer a pile of listener letters from the past few months. Some touch on recent episodes, from more observations about fan tourism to critique of the discussion on alternate universe fic. Others pose new questions, on topics including the Society for Creative Anachronism, aging into or out of fandom, fic-searching and tagg...

In Episode 73, "Ship It," Flourish and Elizabeth welcome back Britta Lundin, writer on the CW's Riverdale , to discuss her debut YA novel, Ship It. Topics covered include writing craft, fannish interpretations versus production realities, drawing lines on RPF, how much fans should care about canon, and how to explain shipping to someone who doesn't understand it—whether that's your mother or the e...