This Week In Fandom History

No quippy exclamation this week, because V and Emily delve into probably the worst, most shameful, most infuriating, just awful pair of people ever to be associated with fandom history: scifi authors and fucking monsters Marion Zimmer Bradley and Walter Breen. This is not a lighthearted episode in any way. Please heed the trigger warnings and take care of yourself if you choose to listen.  History...

NET.SPACE! This week, Emily and V surf their way to the earliest days of being able to connect with other human beings in cyberspace, and also, once again bow to the king of fandoms that takes place in actual space. First, Emily explains the pure haterade that was the Die, Seven, Die! Challenge after the series finale of Star Trek: Voyager. (Also, we looked up how to pronounce "Chakotay.") Then, t...

Don't stop believin'! This week, V and Emily go back to a very different world. A pre-Glee world. And it kind of isn't pretty. While V loved Glee at first, its legacy is... not super chill and great? Outside of a few key ships that will get their own episodes later on this year and/or early next year? So this episode is about Glee as a whole, which... listen. The songs slapped. They did. However....

Paprika! This week, Emily and V head back to 2021 -- but mostly 2022, carte blanche -- to look at the phenomenon of Dracula Daily and its explosion of popularity on Tumblr. We also head to 1992 to look at the worst movie of all time, Bram Stoker's Dracula , starring extremely beautiful people who were all in extremely different movies all at once. And then we traipse to 1897 to look at the origina...

Keep your friends close, but your enemies closer! This week, Emily and V head West to Texas and back in time to the 1980s to visit with the most melodramatic family in television history: the Ewings. As a cultural phenomenon that helped define the decade, Dallas ... has surprisingly few (surviving?) fanworks. But thanks to one teenage fan nigh twenty years after the Ewings bid South Fork adieu, Em...

Iceberg right ahead! This week, V and Emily plumb the depths of the entire world's massive Titanic fandom and its accompanying "Leomania." James Cameron's Titanic was impossible to ignore in 1998 -- from the cinema to some weird video store in Utah, from middle school dances to the Oval Office, from the pages of Vanity Fair to the wilderness of GeoCities, Jack Dawson and Rose DeWitt-Bukater were i...

What would they think? This week, Emily and V -- okay. This episode was supposed to be about the April 2000 Slate Magazine article, "Luke Skywalker Is Gay?"  And it does start out that way. But thanks to Emily's personal fannish history and a tiny footnote in the article, this episode goes... somewhere else. And oh my god . Links Follow This Week in Fandom History on Tumblr at http://thisweekinfan...

It wasn't me... it was... my evil twin brother! This week, V and Emily look at a somewhat different kind of fandom by delving into the long, long history of As The World Turns, a daytime soap opera that ran for over 50 years. ATWT made television history in 2007 when they featured the first M/M kiss, and first positively-portrayed M/M relationship, on American daytime television, but of course, Lu...

Fantastic! This week, Emily and V finally get to talk about one of their shared favorite fandoms: Doctor Who (New Who). With a focus on the emotional, oft-overlooked Ninth Doctor as played by Christopher Eccleston, they discuss the best and worst aspects of the show, how it makes them cry, and some timely (pun intended) elements brought specifically to the reboot by Eccleston, Billie Piper, and wr...

He's darkness! He's vengeance! This week, V and Emily look at the uniquely nerdy StarKid fandom and their superhero parody musical, HOLY MUSICAL B@MAN! (That's "B@man," not "Batman," in case Warner Brothers asks.) They look at the way StarKid musicals feel like your Tumblr dashboard, how Sean Astin will do basically anything you ask him to do apparently, and how absolutely insufferable your hosts...

Do you want to know how he got these scars? This week, Emily and V take a trip to Gotham City to look back at Alan Moore's Batman magnum opus, The Killing Joke. While it garnered tons of accolades for its darkness, grittiness, violence, and portrayal of The Joker's semi-definitive backstory, The Killing Joke has also received a lot of (totally warranted) criticism for its darkness... grittiness......

There's no need to call him 'sir,' professor! This week, V and Emily really, really try very, very hard to be generous and understanding about people loving Severus Snape even though it is extremely difficult for them because he is the worst. In their personal opinions. Which are not facts, just opinions, and do not mean that you cannot love Severus Snape if you love him!!! Go ahead and love him!!...

No pithy exclamation this week, folks, we're jumping right into the actual episode description: This week, V and Emily are joined by Maggie @bossymarmalade, who was one of the key meta-writers during this unfortunate fandom (and wider writing world) event. "Racefail '09" is the moniker for a lengthy discussion on LiveJournal in 2009 about the role of race in fandom and the SF/F community, from hei...

Badwards and cookies and unicorns, oh my! This week, V and Emily head to Forks and dive off the cliff into the world of Twihards, Twank, and one very special gazebo as they look at the first Twilight superfic and, arguably, the one with the biggest impact on the fandom: Wide Awake by angstgoddess003. Is this fic the reason that 50 Shades of Grey exists? Kind of. Is it ridiculous? Absolutely. But d...

The Author would like to tell you all to suck it! This week, V and Emily scroll way, way, way back to 2021, when every single fucking page of AO3 was blighted by the tagslist on the one, the only: Sexy Times With WangXian. You know it. You hate it. And it led to archive-wide changes in tag limits and a discussion about tagging etiquette (and those terrible multifandom short-fic works that take up...

CUT! This week, Emily and V go back in time for a retrospective of truly despicable actions and quotes by a truly despicable man, Joss Whedon, whom fandom-at-large gave far too many passes for far too long. From killing off Cordelia Chase to punish Charisma Carpenter to outright racism against Ray Fisher, Joss Whedon's career is as full of people to whom he was joyfully cruel as it is full of nerd...

PEPPERONI! This week, V and Emily go completely off the rails as they join in on the annual Star Trek holiday of Threshold Day. This is the silliest episode we have ever done and likely will ever do. Get ready for salamanders! Polls! Crabs! Daddy issues! If you've never celebrated Threshold Day, just... get ready. With thanks to @hollie47, @vanilkaplays, @fictionalred, @forfuckssakejim, @myenterpr...

Helloooooo, internet land! This week, Emily and V were treated to a primer on the OMG Check Please! fandom by listener and friend-of-the-pod korechthonia, and Emily explains the divide between the pro-Parse and anti-Parse sides of the otherwise sweet and peaceful fandom. Plus, she tells V about growing up on a boys' hockey team herself and losing a tooth on the ice! Also, inextricable from OMGCP's...

Hey kids, you want some recs? This week, V and Emily go back to LiveJournal to explore a mainstay of 2000s-era fandom: the rec blog, The Crack Van. They discuss the problems with convergence culture, changing multifandom and multishipping norms, and the eternal question -- where are the rec blogs of today?

Oh, boy. This week, Emily and V dig into yet another cult of personality and banana-bonkers conspiracy theory within fandom: BBC Sherlock's The JohnLock Conspiracy, or TJLC. From the totally normal metas dissecting why curtains are blue on the show to totally abhorrent doxxing at a convention, this episode has everything. Gay tea. Secret BBC vaults. Un... aired... specials. Were you a BBClock fan?...

Happy one year of TWIFH! To celebrate the end of our first year and to give you a huge chunk o' podcast to get through New Year's Eve, this week V and Emily are holding their breaths and taking a deep dive into the strange, insidious, bananapants crazytown world of Andrew Blake AKA Jordan Wood AKA Amy Player AKA Victoria Bitter AKA VoyagerBabe AKA strwriter AKA thanfiction and his many, many crime...

Happy one year of TWIFH! To celebrate the end of our first year and to give you a huge chunk o' podcast to get through New Year's Eve, this week V and Emily are holding their breaths and taking a deep dive into the strange, insidious, bananapants crazytown world of Andrew Blake AKA Jordan Wood AKA Amy Player AKA Victoria Bitter AKA VoyagerBabe AKA strwriter AKA thanfiction and his many, many crime...

Bonjour! This week, Emily and V look into another fandom neither of them knows much about: Miraculous Ladybug, one of Tumblr's biggest fandoms of 2023. They look into the premise and basic plot of the show, its adorable OTP love square (with only two people), and the long and much-anticipatory road to its premiere in America. Just what makes this show such fandom bait? Do you Miraculous Ladybug?

The great game is on! And by the great game, we mean the invention of modern fandom as we know it. (Although we also discuss The Great Game, which: nerds.) This week, Emily and V go further back in the fandom time machine than we've ever gone or likely ever will. The Victorian gaslamp fandom of Sherlock Holmes lost their main man this week in 1893, and in the first documented act of modern fandom,...

NSFW! No, but really, this episode is extremely NSFW. And not child-safe. If you ignore that warning, it's on you. This week, V and Emily take a trip back to a contested date in fandom history: the first usage of "tongues battling for dominance." Since there's debate about the origin of that term, they decide to go whole-hog (double entendre intended) and talk about all kinds of fanfic terminology...