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“Wait It’s All Parasocial? Always Has Been”: A Breakdown of HR Fandom
258 Plays1 month ago
HAPPY FRIDAY! Join us this week with ANOTHER LIVE GUEST as we talk different aspects of fandom with people who literally research it. PLEASE let us know what your first fandoms were in the comments or on our socials!
Follow us!
Threads & IG: @sincerookieseasonpod
Email: srspod@protonmail.com
Citations & Sources & Further Reading:
Four pivotal ages in your brain's development
Forbidden Feline Fanfiction with Ashley Reese - Normal Gossip
Moving Across Lands: Online Platform Migration in Fandom Communities
Parasocial Relationships
Parasocial relationships, social media, & well-being
Historical Fandom Research
Lauren’s Research
Over*Flow: Fan Demographics on Archive of Our Own
Kate’s Research
Daddy issues/daddy kink: Remixing masculine authority in Spider-Man fan fiction
Race in Fandom
The Unbearable Whiteness of Fandom & Fan Studies
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to the Podcast
00:00:00
Speaker
Welcome to Since Rookie Season. Well, the summer before. a heated rivalry fan companion podcast where your hosts, Amanda, Lau, and Lauren break down the episodes from the Crave Canada television series, the Game Changers novels, and various media surrounding this fan phenomenon.
00:00:15
Speaker
Today we're looking at the concept of fandom and how the heated rivalry fandom works. Stay with us for some discussion on this social phenomenon with another new guest.
00:00:26
Speaker
Welcome.
00:00:37
Speaker
welcome back. We were off last week because some of us were in Florida. us living Honestly, like three out of the four people on this podcast today are in Florida. So we're happy to be back and we're happy to be talking about one of my favorite topics, which is fandom
Meet Kate Pryor: Fandom Studies Expert
00:00:54
Speaker
today. and our guest today is Kate Pryor, who is one of my friends from my PhD program. And I'm going to let her go ahead and introduce herself.
00:01:03
Speaker
Okay. Hi, my name is Kate Pryor. i am a PhD candidate at the University of Central Florida in the text and technology program. So Lauren was just a few years ahead of me, same advisor. So a lot of our focus is fandom studies and like digital media as a whole. My work that I do is I kind of situate myself between a queer fandom and how fans communicate on social media, particularly with each other and with the creator of the IP or the show, the show runner, the director, et cetera. And so I, my current dissertation that I'm working on um is looking at Superman, the DCU Superman by James Gunn.
00:01:48
Speaker
And when Lauren invited me to talk about the fandom, I kind of laughed because what I did for my dissertation is basically the exact same thing that the heat heated rivalry fandom is going through, just a different fandom. And so i was like, yeah, no, that's literally, ah that is my bread and butter of how different fans talk on different platforms, you know, the Twitter versus threads, how they talk about the person of interest or like that parasocial relationship and how they talk about the creators. So like, how do fans talk amongst themselves about Jacob Tyranny or about Rachel Reid on different platforms. Yeah, so Kate and i do a like very different kind of parts of fan studies, but I feel like we have definitely some interactions. So I know I'm very excited to hear what you all have to say about all of the stuff today, but I guess we'll kind of get started on our various notes. Kate, I thought it would be good for us to, first of all, talk about how did you get into
Kate's Journey into Heated Rivalry Fandom
00:02:51
Speaker
Heated Rivalry? Where did you, where were you, you know, started at? Where did you get started at? I vaguely remember during 2023 kind of seeing people talk about like more, not mainstream because it wasn't really mainstream until now, but the more the picking up of queer romance novels like across like Twitter and Tumblr and that kind of stuff, like very after like COVID.
00:03:16
Speaker
And so some of the people I had followed for White, and Real Blue like were talking about and sharing the trailer. And so I heard about it over the summer, like last summer, like officially. I was like, okay, people are talking about this book. I'm always like looking for ah queer fandoms on social media. What are these people talking about? I love would love to you know consume the product myself. What is it? And so I started following people on social media when... the first trailer come out, which is when I think October is when they started like promoting the show. And at that point, I had read Heated Rivalry. So I read the second Game Changers book before the show came out.
00:03:59
Speaker
Okay, awesome.
Why is Heated Rivalry Addictive?
00:04:00
Speaker
The other thing we have been kind of like before we get into like the nitty gritty of our conversation, we've been talking about throughout this entire season of since rookie season, this entire podcast, Why do we think heated rivalry is so addictive? We talked about it as a book. We've talked about it as a TV show. We want your feedback. Why do you think it's addictive? Why do you think people are into it? i think it's a combination of things. Like I really think different types of people get different things out of it, or at least what made them gravitate towards the story, towards the TV show. I know for me personally, it was just more um openly queer ah media in general, having like the main characters be openly queer and openly like having sex, dealing with like day to day stuff. And then having it have a happy ending or happy ish. You know, i I'm with Hudson, like on the kind of happy ending. But that idea of it just being very open and explicit and like any other romance show would be, you know, like how last summer was like the summer I turned pretty or like that kind of stuff where it allows you to like, oh, it is presented as normal.
00:05:15
Speaker
yeah And then I also think part of it is the explicitness of it, like of the sex scenes where typically, again, if a TV show or movie has explicit queer sex, It's typically on a movie or TV show that is inherently darker. So it's usually presented as like Game of Thrones or some of the other like HBO TV shows. The topic and the the theme of the story itself is darker and usually, you know, unhappy or at least, you know, not a romance at all. So it's usually like a drama, a thriller, historical period pieces. It's not usually set in modern day.
00:05:55
Speaker
And so to have a modern day setting romance that is so explicit, that is like any other romance show, I think a lot of people were like, oh, okay, this is different because we've never had this before. i think Red, White and Royal Blue did a lot in terms of the zeitgeist of everyone wanted to watch the movie.
00:06:17
Speaker
I do think there was like a little jump where um in at least the movie, they kind of toned down the sex scenes a little bit where this was like, no, we are literally like showing you everything except, know, so I think having that, know yeah. um But I think that level of like, okay, like we actually get to watch something sexy and happy that involves like queer sex and And think the other piece, and we'll probably get into this in a minute, but we know based on Lauren's research with Dr. Sanfield, that queer women love to read and write and consume mm romance, whether that is fan fiction, in books, movies, TV shows. We know that it is queer women who are in this market of wanting to consume those types of
Evolution of Fandom Through the Ages
00:07:08
Speaker
stories. Yeah, I think that actually leads us really nicely into kind of like our first point, which is like, what is the history of fandom?
00:07:17
Speaker
And I think you and I can definitely take this. I know Amanda wants to talk a little etymology about where that word comes from, but I think we can do a little bit of history first. So when we think about fandom, as it's, you know, kind of currently conceived, this is really rising out of like the 1960s and 70s Star Trek fandom who are, you know, meeting in person at conventions. We have people writing and producing fanzines for the first time in their lives and handing them out at conventions. It's very physical fandom. And it's all centered around the shipping of Kirk and Spock. like this is where our like initial our original fandom comes from you know like it is mm shipping fandom studies as a field is really conceived in like the eight late eighty s early 90s um with works like by camille bacon smith which is the enterprising young women or enterprising women it's not young women It's Enterprising Women, which is specifically about women in the Star Trek fandom. We've got works from Constance Penley, as well as the guy that everybody has probably read if you've ever read fandom studies, Henry Jenkins, who is an emeritus professor out at the University of Southern California. They kind of kick off fan studies as a field in the 90s. But fan studies, it's super white. It's super focused on white women and their reading habits and their understanding of the media objects that they consume. Really big fandoms during this time are the X-Files fandom.
00:08:51
Speaker
A lot of it is really focused on either MM romance or, as we call it, slash romance. Fiction, we see an uptick in what we call femslap, which is lesbian or FF shipping in the early 2000s with things like Xena, Warrior your Princess. I know that Mel, our advisor, or my former advisor, Kate's current advisor, does a lot of work there. But largely the field is very focused on white women and how they read and consume things. Now, I've done more recent research. I did a demographic like survey in 2022, and it does show that fandom is getting queerer and that it is getting, like, it is maybe less white people, but it is, like, 75% white people and, like, 50% straight people. So there's definitely a lot of that.
00:09:39
Speaker
Most people still ship MM romance as, like, their main ship, but we also see a rise in things like gen fiction, which maybe doesn't technically have a ship. There are more people who are identifying as you know bisexual or asexual. So a lot of that content is being brought in. But that's kind of a very, very brief of fan studies, I would say. you know There are a lot of people who are now trying to focus the field into talking about things like race and gender. And disability, that's where a lot of my work is at. It's all always been very queer
Diversifying Fandom Studies: Challenges and Efforts
00:10:11
Speaker
focused. I feel like that has always been kind of a part of it. But names like Rukmini Pandey, she writes a book called Squee from the Margins about being a fan of color and the way that fans of color are systematically and system like systemically pushed out all of the time. There's Squish's or I don't know if it's, is it Squish? Squish?
00:10:32
Speaker
queens that Stitches Media Mix. Also Blackman does a lot of this kind of research. Our advisor, Mal Stanfield, does a lot of research on whiteness studies and fandom. also how we can conceive of like um alt-right movements as fan movements like how we can use the language of fandom to talk about the alt-right movements that are currently happening in the United States like the Trump MAGA disgustingness like I think that is kind of very briefly where we can start off um Kate do you want to add anything to that I think Just to highlight, because I'm sure we'll mention this later, is that we know historically that the original like Star Trek fans were older women. And so like they were in their late 20s, 30s, and beyond, who were the founders and actively engaged in writing the fanfic and doing the fanzines and all of that kind of stuff. is that they weren't teenagers or like young adults.
Teenagers and Fandom: Misunderstandings and Compassion
00:11:34
Speaker
It was usually 25 and up. yeah and' we have tweet Yeah, I was gonna say, and they were mostly, or like a majority of them were in um like STEM fields or like they were working women, right? So they knew about life, like they had life experience. And so I think that is important to highlight because I think we are seeing like different age groups appear in the heat of rivalry fandom.
00:12:00
Speaker
Yeah, for sure. So Amanda wants to know, where do you think the etymology of fandom comes from? So I did some some googling, some poking about checked a couple of different sources just to verify, but I found that fandom comes from the early nineteen hundreds which surprised me. It was first mentioned in 1903 and then later in 1928 in Ruffin East Ball, which I find funny, but fandom was a bit of a portmanteau of like fan from fanatic. Fnatic got shortened to fan and then dumb, D-O-M, meaning from like an area like controlled by someone or like wisdom, dumb like a certain like realm. And so this area of community or these people that you know partook in this, i don't know, media that were big fans of it it got shoved together to be fandom, which makes a lot of sense. And and I would believe it. I've tripped a couple sources that seem to be true, but I trust YouTube. Y'alls over the internet. um but yeah that's where i thought fandom came from yeah i mean it's definitely got that fanatic root in it and so i think it also stems out of things like beetlemania like yeah fandom really popular i was i was going to ask about me beetlemania yeah i see me is that that that's the first reference that i have yeah yeah and it's like it's taking place at the same time that like star trek is yeah like coming out You know, so like that is definitely something that is like going to be ah definitely like a... Yeah, because you are having like all this phenomenon of fan mail suddenly like showering these musicians and all like, well...
00:13:30
Speaker
We have all seen the images, i think, of people waiting, like mostly women waiting for the band. For sure, yeah. I'm i'm sure we'll talk about this. Like, I think a lot of fandom gets like a bad rap because it's like associated with teenagers and that's where like some of that Beatlemania aspect came in because it was a lot of like young teenage girls. But like the, like when we're talking about early fandom, like they were not, like there was no internet connecting them. They needed to have disposable income to be able to go to conventions, to be able to send each other zines. We've seen like, I've seen like letters from fans to other fans that were like, when I die, erase all of my, like burn all of my physical zines, get rid of them because I don't need people to know that I was shipping. kirk ands spot which I think is hilarious. I just want to add before we continue, as someone who, like, I'm not a psychologist, but my mom is a child development expert. She's a psychologist. And I helped write her most recent book with her business partner. And it's about teenagers and yeah the teenager brain. And I just want to say teenagers get very bad rap. And it's one of the most fascinating moments of human development. And yes um since we're going to talk about fandom and there's like all this stigma around it and around fandoms that involve mostly teenagers, I just want our listeners to hold a lot of compassion. I am sure if you have been a teenager that you remember how miserable you were. Yeah.
00:15:03
Speaker
And how absolutely chaotic your brain process could be sometimes, how impulsive you
First Fandom Experiences: A Nostalgic Dive
00:15:11
Speaker
felt. But I don't want anyone listening to us disqualifying teenagers as non-intelligent or incapable of nuance because we have brilliant human beings that are going through this very difficult moment.
00:15:27
Speaker
Yeah, there's also like research that says that like your brain is actually in the like teenage phase until like your mid-30s. Yeah, so we are teenagers. Well, I'm- I am a teenager.
00:15:38
Speaker
There's this poem that I adore. I adore Olivia Gatwood. I love her writing. I love her poetry. But one of my all-time favorite poems ever, but also by her is called We Are All Teenage Girls.
00:15:49
Speaker
I really encourage everyone to go either listen or read it. Her readings are my favorite. I just love spoken poetry. But she's talking about like, I think like the ocean is a teenage girl and my dad is teenage girl, my dog is teenage girl. this whole thing of all of these different things of how teenage girls make up different components of our society. And it's like, who teaches us to scream like at boy bands or at sports events or different things like that. And I think that's very intrinsic to fandom culture um and I'm gonna bring up sports as well later on but the which inherent gender dynamics within it but I think you know coming into adulthood or like being a young adult and finding things to get really attached to is inherently like teenager once you're finding your personality and things to attach yourself to um as you're growing into your character I think uh it is a very relevant as well yeah for sure when did you all discover fandom that's what I would love to know like what was your what was your like first fandom and then like when did you discover I can go first because I'm wearing a shirt even though I know like there's a whole discussion like the death of your fandom because it's so old that something problematic happened now you're kind of like okay like this is fine but like my first fandom was a boy band and so like I have my big timer shirt on but a lot of it was surrounded like a boy band and so you have that level of real person fiction of you are fans real people versus fictional character like in a movie or a tv show um so that was my big thing and so i was on tumblr between like 2012 to 2016 like in its heyday and then quite quickly like simultaneously was into the sherlock fandom so i was just the sherlock of the super who lock but i was like i had the boy band track and the queer bait sherlock track at the same time God bless Karen. This so interesting, Kate, because I have told Amanda and Lauren before, one of my best friends in a boy band. He's quite famous in the Hispanic world. And I've seen fan fiction about him and other members of the... boy band and I've seen the behavior of some fans some fans have tried to get me to share personal information with them and all of that so I've always found to be a fascinating phenomenon especially when my students are like oh you know them can you get me tickets to the concerts and I'm like
00:18:13
Speaker
No. No? I can't even like that much. And also, sometimes I don't get tickets, you know? Right. My first fandom was Harry Potter.
00:18:25
Speaker
ah I was very autistically attached to it, so I probably read the books at least three times. Each book, maybe more. I knew everything about it. Everything. And there was this platform that was like some sort of role-playing...
00:18:42
Speaker
platform for like a virtual Hogwarts that was for the Hispanic world. It was called Harry Latino and ah it was in Spanish because I didn't I I i became able to communicate in English at 19. So A lot of the fandoms were closed for me. Yeah. But this had like a huge presence in Latin America and Spain. So you would like be a student at Hogwarts and enter chat rooms that were like the Commons room, the Big Hall, blah, blah, blah. You will even like have clubs inside it. There will be like blogs for fanfiction. So every single like, and this was the only way I could engage with fandom because my mom, my parents were very knowledgeable of the risks of the internet for little kids. So they liked this site because this site was very like PG 13 there. There were like very strict rules on how you could engage with people and they felt like I was protected. So we will have like Christmas balls and Halloween balls. And it was all chat, you know? Yeah, no, I love that.
00:19:51
Speaker
They had a radio so you could like make your own song about Harry Potter and send it to the radio. And then my poor mother was subjected to listening to a lot of people who could not hold a note for two hours in the car singing rewritten known songs with lyrics changed to like Harry Potter's.
00:20:15
Speaker
I love it. I love it. It was fascinating. I think that's like my biggest experience with fandom and it's very sad how it ended for me. Yeah. And I recently gave up all of my Harry Potter stuff because I felt they were cursed. Yeah. No, same. So that was my first fandom and I think that plus I was briefly engaged in the Twilight fandom here in Bogota only because my mom had a writer friend who was friends with the publisher who was bringing Twilight to Latin America. And I had actually been the founder of a fan club for another Spanish author that was coming to Colombia just because they needed someone who read and they were like, you, because you know someone who knows someone. And then that's how I got tickets to Twilight stuff. But my Twilight frenzy lasted for like four months. So yeah, I am more present in fandoms right now than I was when was a teenager, actually. Besides Harry Potter. Yeah, what you're talking about, the early chat room style fanfiction is really how fandom started on the internet. You had things like LiveJournal, which was a blogging website, early Tumblr. You had private servers, you had servers where people would roleplay the whole time. Justin, lack of memory, I think I just lied to you. totally forgot that I was like a warrior cats, like role player.
Role-Playing and Its Influence on Fandom Culture
00:21:50
Speaker
and like Wait a minute. a Okay. Do you know the podcast Normal Gossip? Okay, highly recommend it to everyone. It's a great podcast. But they do have an episode. This is like- On Warrior Cats? People people submit gossip and they anonymize and tell it to guests. I've seen a clip of this Warrior Cats. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And there's one episode on the on unlike a fan club.
00:22:21
Speaker
of warrior cats and the ah people who write fan fiction but just there was like a year or she inside the club and so you could only like go up in the year orhi if you had like someone very powerful in the club inserted in your fan fiction and stuff like that it was fascinating Yeah, yeah because i a lot of people like this would have been i was in sixth grade. It would have been like circa 2006, 2007.
00:22:48
Speaker
and seven Like people would make websites off of like it was like free web, like the thing if to like role play in the chat rooms and you would pretend.
00:23:00
Speaker
to be a cat and you like you like in tank I was like wait a minute no I totally did that no yeah and like this is this is how fan like fandom was early conceived like you would be in AOL chat rooms you would be kick chat rooms you would be on your own website you would be live journal is huge like archive of our own didn't start till 2008 and eight and then it was basically because like hey fandom is everywhere what if we started centralizing things and what if we were also able to write rpf and what if we also rpf is real person fiction and what if we also didn't give a shit what ann rice was saying about the because the real reason our room started was because they were like we hate ann rice and the fact that she said we can't write fan fiction about her fans or about her stuff But no, so my first fandom, like I definitely participated in a Harry Potter fandom. I was on Fiction Alley. I was there when Cassandra Clare was there doing her racisms. well-documented racisms. We are at that age.
00:24:06
Speaker
But I would say like the first fandom that was like a really big fandom for me was One Direction. Like wrote fic, I wrote RPGs. We were at the same time. Yes.
00:24:16
Speaker
I wrote RPF. I ran 1D updates blog on Tumblr. Like I've seen stuff recently that would have gone triple platinum on my 1D updates blog. Like I would have been the most popular person on the internet. I had a Tumblr. Like I was all over that. I saw One Direction like when Big Time Rush, they opened for Big Time Rush. I was there. I remember that too.
00:24:42
Speaker
are you re you and you know what you can all come for me in the comments but i'm that cool okay i was there before harry styles was who he is today okay i watched i used to call him when he was but he was haza okay carly before yeah before okay You just unblocked a memory now for me. like, I did for Kate. So my other fandom was, there was this TV producer in Argentina that has produced like, my mom used to watch something produced by them when she was a teenager, you know? Like, this is very prominent in Latin America. They're like the, I don't know if they still are, but they were like the big boss of teenage telenovelas and kids telenovelas. and i forgot the name of the of the whole like um producer but the main thing that got me into this was floricienta who that became like this this huge phenomenon to the point where you had a brazilian floricienta a colombian floricienta because the floricienta from argentina was so so like this big thing to the point where the main characters marriage to like the Prince Charming you know like the Galán was produced live on a stadium with people like a concert and was a huge thing and they still do like 10 year 20 year anniversary concerts with like the big names and they that later produced like Floricentor was very tame kid friendly Disney Channel got the rights for like the rest of Latin in America and then they got teenagers teenagers
00:26:24
Speaker
Teen Angels, usually how these programs worked is what you were following, like a story, but in the story there was a music group, so you would get music as well to buy and you would go to concerts. So teenage Teen Angels was the band and Kasi Angeles was the show.
00:26:41
Speaker
And that for me was like huge because I was, it was the first time that I saw ah a show talking about sex education. oh about consent but it was messy it was toxic and it was messy and one of my first uh sapphic crushes is lali esposito who grew up in the in those telenovelas like she started at four years old oh as an actor and teenagers was like she was like 1918 by the end i think she's now like this very like huge musician and actress in latina So that was like huge.
00:27:21
Speaker
It was like your Degrassi. Yeah, that's what I was thinking. Exactly. It was my little Degrassi. Yeah. Okay. Amanda, young one. And that's where Rebelde, I don't know if you know about the phenomenon that was RBD and Rebelde in Mexico, but it's actually a remake like this was a huge telenovela and band in Mexico that I think is like the the model for stuff like Elite right now but it was actually a remake of one of the Argentinian thing because the way the original one was like in the 90s and early
00:27:56
Speaker
All right. Awesome. Yes. Thank you. though That was, that was very cool. I like the international lens. Yeah. And I'm sure you'll be linking all of these in our show notes so we can. Yes. Which also I want to shout to our listeners. Please share with us your first fandoms. I want to, I want to know. I'm so curious where else y'all, where else. Yeah. yeah Because I feel like we'll talk. anyway and then.
00:28:13
Speaker
You know what? I mean, I'll go first. I'm so excited. I'm sitting here like rocking, fucking tweaking, wanting to talk about rocking fandom so bad. Because I, growing up, I always made fun of for like wanting to be in fandoms or wanting to engage in this and in all of this. But as I've said before, and I think I've really touched as my like special interests and my like favorite thing in the world is Percy Jackson. That's my ride or die. That is like my number one, my my first and last, like my one and only like Percy Jackson
Amanda's Percy Jackson Fandom Journey
00:28:39
Speaker
is my thing. I was.
00:28:40
Speaker
We have Percy Jackson books holding up the mic right now. but i have a percy jackson i have a sea wind brain podcast merch right that's that's how amanda and lao met is yeah through a podcast that they listen to about percy jackson i like so i because i am younger i remember when the harry potter hype started and i was like not really into reading at the time i was like those books are big i was in like second or third grade i don't really know and then i found percy jackson and i was like i'm not like other kids and All these stupid people are reading Harry Potter and I'm gonna read this other one. And I fell in love. I was probably, if I was in third or fourth grade, that was like, I don't know, somewhere around the 2008 election, maybe a little after, maybe towards 2010s in that realm, until the second series started coming out and I hopped in your annualies around Son of Neptune, which is the second book, whatever. And that's a whole other discussion, but I was also in the early stages of Instagram. Like, I was on Instagram within the first couple of years that it came out. And I- and also Facebook pages, because my parents let me get a Facebook really young. i don't remember what lie I told them I wanted one for, but I ended up running both a Facebook and Instagram account for Percy Jackson fan pages that also had roleplay. So I would email ah with this random girl I found online. I like- don't remember her name, but she had curly red hair. I remember that. And we admin this old Instagram. It was before you could easily switch a accounts. You had to like manually log out. And we would like make edits and be like, okay, like this, I'm so and so we would have like this special denotation for whoever was admin, like and people wouldn't be in the comments, replying, I was in different chat rooms. being like, like, whatever Annabeth, whatever situation, that was a whole thing. And then, um, in my middle school years, I got into Super Hulak, so I wasn't just Supernatural, I was into all of Super Hulak, and I've been in so many subsequent fandoms since I've mentioned a couple, um, and i don't I won't go into all of them, but really, Percy Jackson was my first one, was my OG, a little bit after y'all got into fandoms, and a little bit in, like, I'd say like a middle stage internet, not like as early internet as y'all, but definitely more middle stage, but that is, and i mean, like I said, to this day, still, fercy jackson my number one I'm thinking about it every day, I'm like engaging with internet fandom and seeing going from the change to like Instagram to Tumblr to Twitter to everywhere else, seeing all the difference, to TikTok even, seeing the differences in fandom has been really interesting, and especially as someone who's engaged with fandom for like so long. like I'm sure y'all have seen that too, but like being in different spaces makes for different discussions and and all sorts of stuff. Yeah, and that's an interesting one too because it's still going like with the TV show and the books. So like it is a very long period. That's how I got into it. I got into it two years ago. so so there's this whole new generation of people getting into it now, who didn't grow up with it like we did, so we have this different perspective because in the late 2010s, like once Trial of Apollo and and afterwards, after that stuff came out, fandom was functionally gone, like from like 2016 on. It was really really quiet. Like every once in a while I could find like people using like Vyria art, like making edits or whatever. But it really, as soon as, once season one started getting into production with the show, that was when it like launched so hard and it has not been off my feed for the past, like what, I don't know, four or five years now. And I'm so thankful. like like Literally, Percy Jackson was one of the reasons I never killed myself, if I'm so for real. oh That's a lot. That's a sentiment who meant that a lot of have. Fair. Yeah. Yeah.
00:31:56
Speaker
it's And I'm serious so serious about that. Yeah. So I think something that a lot of the heated rivalry fandom is getting flack of is that like, everybody's like, oh, these people have never been in a fandom before in their life. And so like, I want to like kind of talk about that. Like, have you guys encountered people Like on threads, on Twitter, like who are like, oh my god, this is my first time in fandom. Like, what do I even fucking do? Or have you encountered people who are like, yeah, I've been in this forever. Like what you guys don't know what you're doing.
00:32:27
Speaker
i would say i have both just because like, I'm very active on like every social media platform for my research for better or worse. Whether it's through a fandom lens or like my professional like social media pages. I think where like my algorithm on Twitter is more like older or at least people who have come from different fandoms, whether that's Red, White, Royal, Blue. There's a lot of like 911 fans who like merged into Heated Rivalry. A lot of like K-pop fans. I see a lot of like BTS. Yeah.
00:32:59
Speaker
So a lot of it was people were into the latest like queer media and then they just got on this one because they were like, oh, another queer media. I would say i also have friends like real friends who she is around my age, like in her 30s, and she hasn't been in a fandom since like One Direction circa like 2013. So they were a fan. They were in online social media fandom spaces more than a decade ago, but have since like you know, been away from the internet, how the social etiquette and norms go and are now getting back into it in 2026. So i'd I would say there's a mix from at least like what my algorithm shows me, but it's, it's varied on the platform. Like I would say threads to me shows me more like older millennials and or fans who are new to fandom or getting back into it.
00:33:51
Speaker
And I think Twitter was the space where it was like people this, like they've done this before. They're currently in multiple fandoms at the same time. Yeah, I remember like early in the heated rivalry craze, like probably in the beginning of December, I saw a thread, which I'm sure I'll never be able to find for the show notes. But it was like, when was the last time we were all collectively obsessed with this? Was it Twilight? And I was like, really I've been here. I was like, I've been here the whole day. I was like, first of all, ah yeah, if you were a white woman, like, did y'all not, like, did y'all not watch K-pop Demon Hunters? Did you not go through Sinners? like
00:34:27
Speaker
Like, those have also been huge cultural moments in the past year. I don't know what to tell you. Like, get on the internet more, I guess, but also get off the internet and go touch grass. Yeah, I understand that people will take breaks off the internet where it just doesn't reach their feed or like whatever. I've had things that I'm fan of where it just doesn't reach my feed and so I don't engage with them that way. But I will say that i've seen i haven't seen a lot of new people to heated rivalry in a way. I've seen them like start to get into where they don't understand like the parasocial like RPF side of it. Whereas I've engaged with a lot of like Twitch culture, and Twitch culture is very separate, and another conversation that we can have about fandom, but like the RPF understanding there is a bit different in trying to like navigate these two of the... like it just like Basically, like don't let it get back to creators as a whole...
00:35:13
Speaker
aspect of it and think that's where I've seen a lot of people misstep in heated rivalry is like there are some conversations that need to stay in private chat rooms and away from the public because then you also get things where it's like oh I don't go here but I heard this or um I don't know them but I heard this and that's how I feel like um a lot of new people misstep is that they just don't understand part of the etiquette yeah so very quickly for all of the people who listen to this podcast what is a parasocial relationship
Understanding Parasocial Relationships
00:35:39
Speaker
Oh, can I go? Because that was a big part of my master's thesis. Yes, I would love to hear your. Because my master's thesis was queerbaiting on Sherlock and Hannibal. And so and that was real queerbaiting. I have seen the word queerbait being tossed around like the last few months. And real people, the record... The last few months? The last... When was Heartstopper? Oh, that's true. I totally forgot about. Yeah, that was like three years ago. So since then, at least. Yeah. Right?
00:36:07
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. So a lot of people like are using queerbait incorrectly. um where they're social And Yeah, and somewhat parasocial, where it's like queerbaiting a term that is used in the industry in terms of media, of the producers, the showrunners, the people who are making the content intentionally hint at having two characters get together and then never do. Like that is that element. Like we can see it with Sherlock and with Hannibal until ah Brian Fuller actually did the thing where real people who are like regular people, they're living their lives, whether they're celebrities or not, you cannot queerate as a person. Like that is nothing.
00:36:48
Speaker
And parasocial, I think has been um extrapolated. I think since COVID, I think that was People were learning like the internet of like, oh, I can, what else am I supposed to do? I'll start reading fan fiction or I'll watch, I'll binge watch TV shows. And so the base definition like that I would use is that it is a one-sided relationship with either a fictional character or a celebrity. So that element is you do not personally know them, but your brain, like you feel like you know them. So that one sided aspect of you feel the emotions when you engage with the fandom. It's not like, okay, I watched it and I'm done, right? Like I watched Zootopia 2 the other day and i was like, great. And then I've never thought about it again. The aspect of wanting to continue the conversation. <unk> So like the act of wanting to go on Tumblr or Twitter or read fanfiction. That is that element of I want to keep my characters alive or I want to keep them in my brain and my heart. And I think part of it is what a lot of people may not realize, like what we're seeing is that the brain, like you personally, It is a relationship to you. Like it's not, you know, a lot of people like it's delusional or delulu or all that kind of stuff. But these people, they are like real emotions and feelings and hormones and all that stuff of you truly think that it affects you, you know, whether you know these people or the, you know, the storylines. Like you really do feel it like in your heart and in your head. And I think, I think like a lot of the negativity is like, that's associated with parasocialness because like, I think the one, the internet co-ops like psychology terms, like nobody's business and then takes them very out of context. Like things like we see, like how gaslighting is taken out of context and now all of a sudden, everything is gaslighting. Love bombing. We talked about that one. That's a new yeah.
00:38:42
Speaker
Yeah, we talked about that, like if somebody was, you know, like being like, is what Scott and Kip go through love bombing? And i'm like, no, that's just a relationship. Like, I think what a lot of people don't and understand is that we're all engaging in parasocial relationship with this object in some way, shape or form. It's just that like sometimes people take it to an extent when it like exits the containment field. like It then becomes things like stalking, like yeah obsession. And like necessarily parasocial relationships at its very heart is not that. like I would, you know, like, I obviously would love for Connor and Hudson to do amazing things. You know, like, I want what's best for them. I also know that they have, like, teams that know what's best for them. I know that they are, like, fully functioning humans that have bodily autonomy and, like, can make decisions for themselves. You know, I can respond to a way that, like, maybe they're walking through an airport and they're getting mobbed and I would be like, oh, like, that's, like, not something that I would enjoy going through. That's parasocialness. Like being like, hey, I have this feeling about them going through this and then this is how I'm responding. That is parasocialness. And that's okay.
00:39:57
Speaker
Like it is okay to be like, this is how I feel about this thing. It's not okay to take that another step and then impose that on the person that you are being parasocial with or extend it even into like obsession or stalking. Yeah, Lauren and I have talked about this extensively, especially relating to wanting your certain fandom object or wanting certain celebrities to hold specific opinions or values like you like it's it gets a little complicated and nuanced and trying to explain this. to i was having this argument with someone that wanted to cancel Chapel Road and i was like,
00:40:26
Speaker
really frustrated because I was like, you you just don't get to like do that. like it It was really hard, but like wanting... It's important to want people you look up to to hold same values as you, and also they are separate people with separate ideologies that were raised separate from you in different cultures. And so wanting to project your own opinions onto them and then wanting to cancel them for not having your own own opinions, I think is parasocial. And this is stuff that Laura and I have really dissected because sometimes it can be hard to understand because we're so such social creatures. But again, it's a one-sided relationship. like you yelling at them on twitter all of the time is like i don't i'm not gonna do anything except annoy everyone i don't know yeah and also like i think like some of this is also like we need to stop celebrity worship like yeah that's fucking weird like that like like we need to stop being like taylor swift is the greatest thing to ever happen to music or whatever people like we need to stop like worshiping celebrities like I think it's very okay to be like, yeah, I want to go see this celebrity in concert. Yeah, I want to go see this celebrity in movies or whatever. Like, I think it's totally fine to consume their content. But then to be like, I expect every single celebrity that I interact with who is, you know, raised differently from me to have the exact same values and hold those exact same values. Like, stop.
00:41:39
Speaker
like Like, stop doing that. No, like, don't. Like, like that's just it's ah like i can understand like wanting your celebrities to have the same values as you but stop looking up to them as like people do that for you because like ultimately like all celebrities care about is money but like i don't know what to tell you that yeah that's all they care about is money So they're never going to say things politically because it will take money away from them. They're never going to do things that you want them to do because it aligns with your value because they will probably lose money. And they are managed by corporations that care about them only because of the money that they produce.
00:42:13
Speaker
Yep. Like they are their own product as a actor or a musician, et cetera. Yeah. I think part of it too is the element of it affecting you as a person. Like I've read some, like stuff, you know, the last 24 hours and et cetera of like people actually like feeling those emotions of like, oh, I'm so worried for this person. And it's like that that's okay. But you like you shouldn't actually affect your day to day life. Like it shouldn't affect your habit eating habits, the addiction of always wanting to like refresh your feed to get updates. Like that is the line of when it infiltrates back into your own life. And like that's what you think about and that's what you like, what it does to you on a day-to-day basis like that of like, I'm so upset on behalf of them. And it's like, you don't know them. Right, exactly. Yeah, I just think like, because we we, in the last months, we like, I discovered Dun & Phil, I was never in that
Influencers and Parasocial Dynamics
00:43:13
Speaker
fandom. But I, one of the things that draw me to them was all this conversation around parasociality and and the toxicity of fandom that I found very interesting. And I was thinking about like when when when you're a celebrity because of you playing a character, there's like this gray area where people like mix the character with you and their feelings for it. But when
00:43:38
Speaker
In this era of influencers and of YouTubers, when the product is your own life, your own private life, like you are the product that is being sold, not like you're acting or singing talents, but yourself, like your home, your day to day, your sleep schedule, ah your home and you and like you're inviting people inside your life. that has like that becomes so so difficult to manage and and i and i have i have friends who have gone through this and it's terrifying because it's also like your identity is then attached to the profit to the product itself to the sponsorships you get and to the idea these fans have of you which eventually after 10 years you want to do something else but your fans want
00:44:32
Speaker
sometimes want the same thing from you. The same vlogs, the same pictures, the same posts, the same frequency of posting. So I think we're in an like in an era where those things are really, really getting to a point where... seeing the line that divides you like the fiction I have or the narrative I have of this person who's actually performing for me you know like they are very like they could be very different once the cameras are off because we perform like i am not the persona that I created for this podcast when we had to interact with so many people you're like eh No, literally.
00:45:13
Speaker
and And I think a lot of people like that perspective. This is something I love to talk with but about with my students when they ask like, do you have concert tickets? And can you tell me something about this or this member of the band? It's like you're consuming their music. You're not consuming their lives.
00:45:29
Speaker
So this is but very, very important for you to understand. And of course, the industry see the profit in all of this. So right now Hollywood, the music industry, everyone is like trying to make actors and singers to also be like on the influencer side yeah things with what they put out and maintaining one's privacy becomes very difficult. So I i think this discussion is very important to have in five years right now.
00:45:58
Speaker
And I think this is also, it leads us in like two really good directions that I will i will try to remember both of them
RPF: Acceptance, Taboos, and Etiquette
00:46:04
Speaker
in my head. The first is like the prevalence of RPF, which i want to get into talking about real person fiction because it's everything to me. But I think the also the other direction this takes us into is like people, like especially with Hudson and his girlfriend like having more of a public like facing thing, like I think this also leads us to a conversation there. Francois and Connor and all of that kind of like side. So let's go RPF first, and then let's go to Francois, Connor, Hudson, Hudson's girlfriend, all of that. Yeah, I'll kick us off and y'all can like back me up academically. But I feel like so I didn't know about RPF, which again, real person fiction. i didn't know about RPF until I got into Twitch streamers and Twitch culture in early 2020s-ish pandemic-ish times. I was not into DSNP. I want to make that so clear. I was never into DSNP. I am familiar with the creators surrounding it. I i was aware of the drama, but I have, no, I was not into DSNP, but which if you don't know, it's fine. But if you know, you know. But I started getting into other Twitch creators, um which Twitch is like streaming like YouTube and stuff, and was watching these creators who had characters, and they would create these characters and roleplay and whatever, and I was reading fanfiction, or I was started getting involved in the fandom about these creators or about these servers they were on, like this whole these interactions they were having, especially across cultures.
00:47:28
Speaker
And then I started seeing people ship the creators themselves, and that was when I first found about RPF, where they're—especially because you are actively watching these people portray these characters, it's not just like they're acting on a TV screen yeah in your home, they're on your laptop and you can type in their chat, and it is a very direct communication. Send them money with bits and then talk to them and they'll answer your questions, and it's a very direct line of communication, which, as we've said, can breed parasocialism. And so—I don't know if parasocialism is a word, but I'm using it.
00:47:55
Speaker
And so... Yeah it is. We use it. So I've seen people, it became this whole discussion it over the pandemic in the early 2020s, at least from my involvement with fandom, about um RPF and and where the lines are with these creators and their boundaries because they're people too and so they would say like, don't shit me with people and like, I've seen creators end friendships with their friends because they kept getting shit with them and were uncomfortable with it and fans were just so relentless with it and so I thought it was like taboo and I thought RPF was very taboo and it was like, oh, don't talk about them like that, and they're just friends, or they're more siblings, and you have to talk about their characters, like this and that, and it was like very heavily policed and very, like, not violent, but like as socially violent as you can be, especially when you get into like those kinds of communities that can get toxic, that where it's like people just don't understand boundaries or lines, especially when you can have cultural differences. And so then hopping into the heated rivalry,
00:48:45
Speaker
fandom and seeing people like casually talk about it or like have a very different perspective on it where they joke about the like Hudson Connor and Hudson's girlfriend being like a throuple like whatever his this is my boyfriend's this is my boyfriend my boyfriend's boyfriend type memes and I was like whoa didn't know y'all were like so cool like that because I just didn't I didn't to me it was taboo and I was y'all are playing fast and loose with this because it can be very hurtful for people and I've seen relationships fall apart because so I think it's really interesting and then I have seen people on Twitter in replies be like yo like cut it out like you know keep it behind closed doors people in our survey we've talked about that of the like don't let it get back to the actors don't let it get back to the creators so i feel like it is uh that more conversation of like open and closed spaces but even then like in some communities i feel like rpf is so taboo and i i've read some rpf i'm not gonna lie and it was like oh i've read so much rpf yeah i was gonna say like
00:49:40
Speaker
I feel a little guilty about it, but like, I guess I don't have to. No. Right. Right. I think a good jumping off point with that is I think it really depends on a fan's journey of where they came from, whether or not RPF was taboo in previous fandoms or not. And I think it also depends on the age of like the age of the fan currently, whether you are a teenager in your et cetera. Because I think for me and like what a lot of i think different groups of heated rivalry fans came up the pipeline of like RPF in sports. Like for me, like the NHL like RPF and like check please. And so like that was about a decade ago. And then like the pipeline then, you know, went into heated rivalry. And so I think a lot of people on that track either are really into like F1 RPF and like other sports like that, you were around to remember the Larry of it all. Oh, the Larry Stylenson, which is an example of RPF going like way too far. yeah because rpf like rpf has a very very storied history and fandom it is like it's one of the reasons why a03 was created because fanfiction.net you put it post rpf on it rpf is like the reason why music fandoms exist those are rps but like as la was saying this is also a persona that we're getting we are getting the public facing of how these people act And we don't know how they act in private. It could be totally different. Even if we are getting fan like insights, you know, like we would watch One Direction videos of them going to cottages together and sitting around a fire pit and like singing songs with one another. Baby, that is stage. That is still a persona. That is still a persona. And like I read hockey fan fiction, like hockey RPF, like for a really long time. Like, get that's the code that reading has been like i I read Hockey RPF about the most Republican, like, MAGA-ass people. And that's a whole other thing. Like, being little baby bottoms who are, like, have never done anything queer in their life. didn't know about this!
00:51:53
Speaker
Who are, like, I have read, I have, like, i almost, this is horrifying of me to say, i almost was like, I like this person because of the RPF.
00:52:04
Speaker
And then I was like, no, I actually fucking don't. Just it an OC at that point. No, and it's, It is original characters. They are original characters. And like RPF does have like a fanon component to it. Fanon is man-made canon. So it's like things that fans say. Like Draco like wears leather. Like leather Draco, that is fanon from the Harry Potter community. Somebody said that Draco wears leather and it just took off in the fandom. right? Like, Fanon is the so heart of RPF, and that does not make it wrong. It's just that, like, when it breaches containment, publish RPF on AO3 and lock your fucking fanfic, okay? yeah Archive, lock that shit. ah Only other people with archive accounts can read it. Do not send RPF to people that you know if they are in the RPF. Don't tag people who are in the RPF on Twitter, Tumblr, whatever. Don't tell them about it because it's the other thing is it's not them.
00:53:07
Speaker
It's a character that we've created collectively. Yeah, I wanted to say, like, and and and some people are going to be, like, fascinated by it. Like, I know, like, Dan and Phil likes like to read fan fiction. Well, they're also a very interesting case. Like, continue, but I want to keep that. My friend that I mentioned also, like... laughs at it like sometimes it's like something we enjoy doing but yeah like because they're real people they're gonna have different reactions to this objectification because it is an objectification and it it becomes like so weird once it's not only like a thing that exists for the fandom but yes
00:53:49
Speaker
the measuring stick that you use to decide if they're performing well or not in reality like right i wish they were like in this thick well that's why you have fan fiction like you write it imagine it you live in that world for a few minutes but you leave these people alone because they're real humans no yeah what were you like these behaviors And yeah, reaching containment. I think there is something, though, where, like, I'm sure Lauren can say this, too, where it's like, I was reading Sid Gino fanfic, you know, like, more than a decade ago. Sorry, I didn't read Sid Gino. I read Austin Matthews' Spence Warner. Yeah.
00:54:31
Speaker
Yeah. i have twenty four Please, thank But it's like i even like a decade ago, mostly because Check, Please, that one of the main characters is based off of Sidney Crosby. So a lot of people who like Check, Please got into the Pissed for Penguins and then into different NHL teams. But I never once, like in my head, actually thought or wanted and Gino to actually get together. i think lately there have been cases like Dana and Phil or Tom and Zendaya, Tom Holland and Zendaya where they actually do and I wonder or like trying to conceptualize like is that feeding into the idea of like oh the will they won't they they actually could because now we have some examples where fans ship them together. Like I remember the a homecoming era of Spider-Man and like, where they were like, you know, I'm just friends. And everyone's like, Zendaya, you're laughing way too hard at this white man, cetera. And so them seeing like, oh, they actually got together and everything we thought we saw was actually real. right i think, yeah, I think it does set this precedent of we have, pre we have case studies now where it did happen.
00:55:45
Speaker
And I think that has changed. I think it's really funny because I keep encountering like fan fiction where it's like Holonov shippers in the fan fiction are on Hockey Twitter. I like this. And they're like, I am not crazy. And everybody's like, oh, you're actually fucking crazy because it's obviously Shaden. And then like 10 years later, Holodoff comes out and they're like, I wasn't crazy. I love those fics because those are so funny to me. I think this also gets into like talking about like fandom etiquette, which I think a lot of people are like, maybe not aware of. Like, I learned fandom etiquette through what we like to call in the fan studies, big name fans. So these are like people who would say, hey i am in charge or I created this server or I created this live journal and I'm really popular in the fandom because I write really popular fics or I do a lot of the work in the back behind scenes of this fandom particularly. And I get to dictate what you you can and can't say, what you can and can't do. So when Lau was talking about what is the the Cats show, whatever it was. Weird. Yes, like that rule where you had to put a person in a fic, that is a rule from a big name fan. Like, and so like, yeah, that fandom etiquette was told to me and it was like, never tag the actual celebrity in the RPF. right
00:57:08
Speaker
Always lock your fix. um on archive of our own never share archived like locked fix on social media platforms like don't do the don't like link drop which i think is a huge problem in the heated rivalry fandom but we'll get into that i'm sure and then like the other big one was like the prevalence of like tagging in your fix and how much you need to tag and what you need to tag for specifically things like not like beyond the archive warning like beyond major character death or rape non-con or underage or graphic depictions of violence like things that you always should tag for are like self-harm or like gore or violence in some way shape or form or like abuse of any kind and things like I'm seeing more of a trend of like tagging for things like racism disability ableism like sexism all of those isms coming in and political stuff too yeah And that's just, I think, like some like lessons that have been imparted on me for the 20 plus years that I've been in fandom that I think a lot of new fans in Hedid Rivalry are maybe not super aware of. Yeah. And I think I've also seen... like and
00:58:19
Speaker
It was more prevalent and then it took it took a break and now like a lot of, I'm trying to think who, they're talking about like a specific author who most likely used AI and like talking about that conversation of like a very popular fic, like do they use it or not? And I think part of it is they want to treat AO3 like a social media platform yeah and try to like ah manipulate an algorithm and it's like that's not how this works. yeah Like the idea of we tag because it's an archive and there are specific things that we do versus like, oh, I'm just, I don't want to spoil anything. And it's like, well, you're not spoiling.
Media, Industries, and Fandom Narratives
00:58:58
Speaker
You are helping people be able to filter out certain things that they don't want to read about. And same with like, I've seen people trying to change like or backdate or change the update. So if people go by a sort like they update it, it'll be on the first page. And it's like, why why do we care about a first? Like there's no first page on EO3. Like that's not how this works.
00:59:21
Speaker
Yeah, i I started today and I think I'm gonna finish it after we hang up because it's fascinating. I started Gabriela Papadakis, the Ice Skater memoir. it finally got to me because it's it's not available in Colombia yet. so i had someone who brought it to me from france and it's fascinating how how she was like coached to and she and everyone coach everyone in like the pair skating situation was coached to tailor a very like engaging so history of how their relationship as skaters was so in her case it was not like a romance because Guillaume Ciceron, who I don't like, was queer. So it was mostly like the narrative that was curated by coaches and PR people. Like these inseparable friends that met when they were like 10 years old And now, like, we'll go everywhere together. Whereas in reality, as soon as training was done, they would go their separate ways because they didn't get along. And he was super abusive towards her in an exploitative way, not in a sexual way. and but But I had to stop just when I was reading that. And I think all of this, like,
01:00:42
Speaker
What is very unfair, I think, is that it's okay. You were saying like, yeah, and now we're assuming like, because Cyndia and Tom Holland and Dan and Phil are together and we got confirmation of our theories. That's so unfair. for these people, you know? like I know they benefit economically from ah all this frenzy, but I also know like to like this is not something they signed up for when they started. And I think it's unfair from like from fans to expect this to happen now that it it has happened twice. It's unfair to like also make them responsible for living their truth. So now everyone is like, but why did you come out now? I have to come out, blah, blah, blah. but also so unfair from the industry to use this as a hook. And but and and and it's
01:01:34
Speaker
fascinating and terrifying at the same time to see how more and more industries use this and blur the lines between what is public and what is private in order to sell. And I think we're seeing that a lot in this fandom, but it's not unique to this fandom. Right. the way Like if we see it even in ice skating, you know, like you want to see this couple and you want to imagine that they're in love forever or have this...
01:02:01
Speaker
amazing chemistry and some of them hate each other they're just good at what they do so yeah and you can see that in bands you can see that in actors you can see that even in influencers that stay working together even though they hate each other why because it sells yeah i mean like when mac is like the biggest example yeahp I think this is also like really great to talk about the like, like overt racism that like Hudson is
Addressing Racism in Heated Rivalry and Beyond
01:02:27
Speaker
experiencing. So we've talked about it a little bit on the pod, but Hudson went through like a couple well, has been going through basically since he was, you know, named Shane Hollander and saying about a racism and his comments. What happened recently was Francois had commented or Hudson had, no, Francois had commented on something of Hudson's on Twitter. A bunch of people responded to it with like really vitriolic racist shit. And Francois and Hudson then released a statement together that they both put on their story. And we've talked about this before, but like something hu or Francois said was like, oh, we all decided that we weren't going address it. We were just going to ignore it. Now, that was not the cast decision. That was not the creators decisions. That was the media companies that control these people's decisions. They said, don't say anything because excluding any fans results in less money for us.
01:03:24
Speaker
Right. It's all unfortunately about capital. yeah And like the, you can love it as much as you want, but the thing is they are trying to sell you a product and like buy, there is so much just like shit that is like, oh, Francois and Connor are dating. I don't like Francois. Like, I don't like this. I don't like that. Like all of this is getting you to engage with this object even more and getting you to spend more money on this object. And I don't think that is a wrong thing point out, nor is it a reason why you stop watching Heat of Rivalry or stop consuming this content. I think this content has a lot more to it than just its an advertisement of capital. But I think we all need to be more aware of that. And that also leads me into talking about how this fandom doesn't have any fucking media literacy.
01:04:14
Speaker
True. Very true. ah This fandom in general, like we have a crisis in our hands, you know, like when Lori messaged me again, i had said like, oh, in the past 24 hours, you know, this happened. And the last time we talked was like March 10th. And I had mentioned of like, oh, like especially what happened like in the last few days. I couldn't even remember what I was referencing of like three crises ago. and I had to go back on my timeline to be like, what was it? And it was the Francois and ah Hudson shared thing. Because I was like, we've already been through like three others. yeah Three others. This fandom is like speed running over past. I've never seen a show like speed run this fast.
01:04:58
Speaker
yeah Like through the milestones of a fandom that usually takes five years. And I think that is, i think, correlated with the spike of ah Hudson and Conner's fame, where a lot of the industry people say like this type of um zero to 100 is not the norm.
01:05:15
Speaker
Right. Like they would get a little popular and then a little more popular and they're experiencing what would be like a five year journey in four months. And so like I think the fandom is then inherently also like speed running some of the like milestones that we, you know, as scholars like typically see in like a long term fandom.
01:05:34
Speaker
Yeah, because I do remember this amount of vitriol towards some actors, like for example in Harry Potter, I remember like people's, like fans spreading rumors about Evanna Lynch and it's not liking Emma Watson and taking sides. And as you were like 14, you will like probably believe it you know like and then then you like then you grow up and see but the amount of coverage and how instantaneous the content is it's making it spread like fire yeah and this was a phenomenon that like it just exploded from one day to the other there are fames as as you were saying as well so it's it's it's very overwhelming even as a fan I cannot imagine what it is for someone who is involved in the project like an actual person but as a fan i'm like there's so much i i can't keep up like i can't keep up with all the scandals i can't keep up with all the rumors i can't keep up even with the good things it's like there's so much like how many guest appearances are we getting ah two at this point yeah oh how many interviews do i have to watch yeah but so it's it's very overwhelming like i don't know what to tell you guys slow down please please like i've been talking about this with my therapist because i've going through a lot of like my anxieties about social media i think especially being like a social media and fandom scholar and not only loving this object but also researching this object and doing a fan like a fan podcast on this object like just having a lot of this content being consumed all of the time and being like i literally like i get on the internet and i'm like what is the problem today Like, it's not even, like, holding any more joy. And, like, to me, something that, like, really fucking freaked me out was, like, the fandom got so upset over the Hudson racism thing. And then literally the next day I got on threads and everybody was, like, back to, like, cottage posting. Like, it was totally normal. Like, i was, like, we are we just not going to, are we just going to, like, ignore all of that stuff? stuff that happened because like there are fans of color who are like deeply impacted by this who are deeply impacted by like the fandom not wanting to talk about racism uplifting constantly white voices like i have friends of color who are like friends of color jesus christ like i have a black friend no i'm just kidding um like i have friends who are like i don't participate in this fandom anymore because i have gay friends you know i have gay friends i have yeah i I have a wife. I have a black lesbian wife. Like, hello. Hello? Hello? You can't be homophobic. Right?
01:08:13
Speaker
ah No. and someone ask As the wife of... No, I'm kidding. No, it's just like, this fandom is like, and it's and it's like almost like, i think this I think there are a couple of reasons for this and I'm sure Kate and I can like hypothesize and theorize and I'm sure we'll have a paper come out of this at some point. but i wanted I wanted to talk about that specifically in a second. Yeah, Dim and Fiesler, Casey Fiesler and Brianna Dim have written about the like death of fan platforms and like the way that fan content is like all of a sudden everywhere in a way that it didn't. used to be. And I've also written about this because of the Tumblr porn ban that happened in like 2018 2019, which was a direct result of the stopping online sex trafficking, fighting online sex trafficking laws in the United States. and how that kind of resulted in a lot of fans turning to other social media yeah platforms that are more visible like twitter and instagram and tick tock to put out fan contents which then just makes it even more visible to other media pieces and like i'm sure kate you and i have read the same new york times think pieces on you know fandom and how it's ruining everything and like all of this bad stuff and i am by no means saying that like this fandom is beautiful like super liberatory space i've specifically written how it's not but i think that like the death of like fan platforms like live journal tumblr And also the sequestering of like black and brown fans and indigenous fans wanting to keep their peace and wanting to stay away from crazy white fans and going to more like closed off platforms like Mastodon or Discords or whatever, curating their
Impact of Platform Changes on Fandoms
01:10:13
Speaker
fandom a little bit more. I think that has also driven this fandom to be like even more crazy. And I mean like, yeah you know, TikTok is a huge influence on this, especially with like BookTok as well. Yeah, and even like the changes in Twitter as Elon took over and how people left a major fandom space for like over a decade to go to like either Blue Sky or Threads or just off the internet or to the TikTok or back to Tumblr. like in Like this just splintering of fandoms that way and those different like kind of personalities that but came with them in general. How like we see people on threads who maybe have a bit of like the Twitter personality but are still like are a bit different of like the argumentative side of things. But TikTok is just also i feel like people who don't like don't have literacy skills like there's just all these great little personalities and critiques that each of them brings and even as different medias and i think that the death of a platform and or the restructuring of a platform is is so critical especially as algorithms change and then relevant conversations about like ai and grow the rise of bots and et etc and even like the crazy amount of censorship that our platforms go through as well like especially tick tock right now is going through like a whole reworking and is very highly censored in the united states yeah and like you know how we like how twitter doesn't have brazil fans on it anymore does it is it back but like did they come back like are they back yeah you know Or like not interacting with like, like Chinese fans because they're not allowed on AO3, literally. You know, like there is just like this huge, like also looming sphere of censorship over all of this that is also impacting our algorithms and how we consume the content. And also then our media literacy. like yeah The amount of people I've like had to fight with on the internet about stupid stuff is killing It's killing me. Yeah, people don't read. No. Well, like how the leaks of like different group chats of people and how... a lot of them truly were taking people's statements at face well and be like, yeah, obviously you're not lying. Like I believe you full heartedly. And it's like, no, because anybody can say anything. Anyone can have an avatar and a bio. You can just make one.
01:12:22
Speaker
And it's like that inherent trust that I think a lot of people who were in fandoms before this are like, what are you doing? Like yeah you're missing that literacy, like privacy security element to protect yourself. Right, and I think like Kate, you, me, and Lau, we can sit here and be like, you know, we grew up with the internet, it like our parents were afraid of it. like Right, like I was on DeviantArt when I wasn't supposed to. oh Oh, I was on Tumblr when I was definitely not supposed to be, but that was yeah really important. to my understanding of like identity and critical thinking and how I interacted with things because people in their 20s and 30s were like dissecting all of these characters and all of these things and that gave me such insight into like how to operate in these spaces and then of course the like all the infographics about like what is being asexual and I was like oh wow like the everything is so much more broad than I thought it was and my mind as a little 12 year old is exploding yeah and I hit an event yeah and I think like sorry definitely author author
01:13:25
Speaker
I did want to bring up with you, Lauren, specifically, because I think we're in a really weird position.
Balancing Fandom Enjoyment with Academic Work
01:13:30
Speaker
And a lot of fan scholars have talked about this of being a scholar and a fan of the object that you are studying. And I, I, one, I'm just super busy because of like, I'm currently dissertating and like all that life stuff. And I saw recently there was a call for papers about human rivalry. And I was like, oh, I really want to do it. But I actually don't want to do it. and i just Like one. okay So again, my dissertation about Superman for a year, I could manually collected tweets with fans. So like I bookmarked over a thousand tweets over the course of a year. of fans talking to each other about discourse and talking about James Gunn, right? And it's literally like I could be doing the same thing for heated rivalry right now or using my research knowledge to look at the heated rivalry fandom from a scholarly lens. But what my dissertation has done to me, and I knew this was most likely going to happen, my love for DC, my love for Superman, my love for Batman and the Bat Fam and that kind of stuff, because it is work, it now feels like work. Like I feel like I can't watch a movie or the animated TV show or whatever of DC because it feels like work now. But I have to look at it with an academic lens. Even the comics, it's hard for me. And so me discovering heated rivalry from a fan first, I'm like, I don't want to academicize. That's not a word, but know what I mean? I don't want to turn my personal fun thing that I do for me into work, even though it is literally what I study.
01:15:06
Speaker
And so like balancing everything. that idea of like, how much do I bridge the two together? Do I just not do anything, even though academically, it would be perfect, and I could probably publish something. It's like that the duality of like, being a fan and a fan scholar at the same time. I'm not a fan scholar, Kate, but I survived a PhD. Yes!
01:15:28
Speaker
And in literature, you know, my my my favorite hobby is to read. And it took me a year to get into reading again. yeah And what got me into reading and again was Percy Jackson, because it was like super... Like, I study Caribbean literature, you know? Like, it was definitely not the same. And then, like, I got into this podcast fandom, that where i met amanda and we have a book club but if you ever need advice on how to shake the dissertation yes yck because you get an ick like i'm like and now i was telling lauren this last last time like i have very clear boundaries of which like which type of content i consume where like iPad is for job. So papers, books that I have to review, things I read for like planning my classes. And my Kindle is my safe space of books that I can read without having to say anything intelligent about it. yeah But it was like a whole year of developing that. And I do think that mixing what do you love with your job... has this tricky that tricky oh for sure and i mean like kate like you and i have talked about this but like i didn't write anything scholarly for like a year and a half after i got my phd like i was like i like i literally like cannot actually like i was traumatized by my phd like i it is a It is traumatizing. You're constantly under like a microscope of being approved. like Is my work worth it? Is it going to make an impact? like it is It is a very draining, exhausting process. and I mean, I think like something like I'm even finding because I keep getting in fights with people on threads, which these two know very well. But even when I'm like, hey, no, like I have a PhD in fandom studies. I study fan fiction. Let me show you guys how I think about this media. People are like, you're not an expert just because you have a PhD.
01:17:32
Speaker
And I'm like, Bro. That's kind of what that means. That's kind what that means, unfortunately. That's kind of what I, yeah. What I mean, like, that's what I, like, that's my life's work. And so I think I can maybe be like, hey, like, here are the things that I'm seeing this fandom do or this thing do or, you know, and I think there is just like this absolute need to fight with people on the internet. Like, everybody's opinion is wrong. Listen, everybody has an opinion. They're like assholes. Like, they all stink.
01:18:04
Speaker
I think one of the things that helped me is when I got into DC, because I was using my professional Twitter, like my default Twitter to collect the data is I made like a fake persona for like fandom. So I made like a fake name and an email. So then every like fan, like Twitter or like my Tumblr was like on a separate account where I had to like log into it. And I think that has helped somewhat of like this account algorithm is like just heated rivalry. It is the email that like updates from AO3 come to, cetera.
01:18:38
Speaker
two separate like Twitter profiles almost. And I think that has helped a little, but I think again, that idea of like wanting to have fun and kind of take your, you know, the scholarly hat off just to enjoy thing is like very different. And I think again, like my love for DC has changed and I want it to get back to where, you know, why I got into it into the first place. And it's hard to be like, okay, like, I will enjoy it for fun. But I think that's also like, I think that like, there is this like movement, I think in fandom, and I'm sure we'll talk about it whenever we do podcast on fan fiction, but it's like this whole idea of like, Well, if you don't like it, then don't interact
Critique and Trust in Fandom: Re-education Is Key
01:19:20
Speaker
with it. Like we've talked about on this podcast, like the need for critique, especially as we enter into fascist society and like the need to dissect the media that you are consuming and not just swallow whatever people are hand feeding you that there is like this need to be like, okay, let's problematize this. Like, let's talk about this object in different ways. And I mean, like, that's what I, that's like the purpose of this podcast is, you know, we love this object. And I think there is like, I, you know, I go back to the things that I read for my dissertation. I still love those objects. You know, I'm still keeping up with the boys. I'm, you know, it's been a few years. I've been able to distance myself a little bit. But I think there is, you know, like this idea that like, oh, I just want to enjoy it for fun. I think you can still do that and still critique it and be like, hey, I think this is an issue. Like, I think we should talk about this. I think this is where this can go. Because then, you know, we get like what Rachel Reed is doing with Unrivaled where she's like, I saw the fan feedback that like, I don't do enough with Shane's race.
01:20:26
Speaker
And I think that's really important. And I'm sorry that I haven't done that. And I'm going to do that in the future. you know yeah and kind like uh rick i forgot how to pronounce his last name but the brucey jackson where he was like older books you know were a product of its time and since then i have grown and now in new books i get to like play and expand on things like with shane you have the trite effect of race autism and an eating disorder and and a lot of it is like can we can we get some more stuff can we uh just a little up some more can we yeah can we get some character Can you let your character just a little bit, wait little place could wait i maybe, we're begging. And so, like, I think there is, like, I think there is, like, not only room for the source material to grow, but also for the fandom to grow. I think, like, people just need to be, and, like, there is, like, a lot of just blatant homophobia in this fandom. Just, like... Hello? Which is crazy. Yeah. Yeah. Like there is a lot of fetishization of gay men, which I think is also crazy.
01:21:30
Speaker
i think like people need to start being more critically aware of the media that they are consuming and listen to the people who have the experiences that your characters are going through.
01:21:44
Speaker
when they say, hey, this is kind of fucked up. Like, let's talk about this. You know, like, it's kind of fucked up that they don't really address Shane's eating disorder. I've had an eating disorder. This is what I went through. Or i am a gay man in hockey. i want to, ah like, participate and consume this fandom. Don't kick me out of these spaces. Like, I think there is... a lot of room for growth in the fandom and I think there needs to be a desire to want to grow and to like trust people who have the experience because it's the thought that I was thinking of earlier there is in society especially in the United States right now this immediate distrust of academics of people who have have gone through things of people who are seen as, you know, maybe doctors or nurses, like they are like a specialist or experts, let's quote unquote say. I think there is this distrust because of how the government treats those people and how nobody in the government is an expert at anything. And I think there needs to be a re like a re-education of the people to trust those people again. And yeah like unfortunately, that's going to take time. It's not going to be solved overnight.
Racism and Representation in NHL Media
01:22:55
Speaker
But what heat rivalry fans can do or what other fans can do to push for that. yeah
01:23:01
Speaker
I am curious because one of the critiques I've seen from particularly gay men is that the season one didn't talk enough about the racism in the and NHL or that kind of stuff. And a lot of people are like, oh, like it's coming, like book two, you know, book six, two, whatever, you know, we'll talk about it. And I'm curious how once the show presents the long game, how the fandom will react to it and like engage in the discourse that is already in the show.
01:23:30
Speaker
You know, like, talking to the discourse with discourse, you know? But because The Long Game has a lot of those elements, I'm really curious to see how the fandom will grow from season one to season two. Yeah. And I, I mean, we've kind of talked about this a little bit on the podcast. We might maybe in the future, maybe we'll be talking about it more, but I think that the show has a lot to do. i was, you know, a little upset with the way that race was portrayed because I'm an NHL fan and I know how black and brown and NHL players are treated and how they are not given opportunities and the fact that Shane is given all of these opportunities would literally never happen in the NHL.
01:24:13
Speaker
It wouldn't. Like this is a world that Rachel Reid has made up. Like there are Asian players now who are not given the opportunities because of their Asian-ness. Like why else? They are great players. why are they missing out on these things except for the fact that they are not white yeah and so i think that there is going to be a little bit of a reckoning with some of these white people who don't recognize racism out of outside of overt racism like saying word or saying slurs who don't understand that covert racism who did crop up when hudson was having racial issues and were like why can't we all just be friends? And I was like, oh my And then it's like, are you going to start being like, I don't see color. like Like, I thought we all went through 2020 and had these discussions together, but like I guess some people just weren't there for that. No, it's not even that they weren't there for it.
01:25:06
Speaker
They were there for it. They just haven't thought about it since then because it hasn't been their face like that was.
Kate Pryor on Fractured Fandoms and Batman
01:25:12
Speaker
Yep. So I think that um kind of wraps up our discussion on fandom. I think there's a lot of room to grow. I mean, we'll continue talking about this. Kate, thank you so much for coming on to this podcast recording. We loved having you. Do you have anything that you would like for us to plug or would you like to plug anything right now?
01:25:30
Speaker
I'm mostly just active on my professional Twitter, which is at the Kate Pryor, mostly because like that's where I do a lot of my DC like reposting and stuff. And I did want to plug just last year, my first journal article was published.
01:25:45
Speaker
Yay. And it's about fan fiction, which I think is a really cool element where I use like three different methods to confirm a theory that I had. And I think the the idea of fractured fandoms in different spaces where where i looked at two different parts of a fandom who read similar things but like different very like morale different and how that I think like a lot of those things like I mentioned before like play a role in the heated rivalry fandom and so if you're more interested in that I will warn it's about Batman fan fiction and it is looking at Peter and Tony's relationship one in like an Iron Dad mentor mentee relationship versus a romantic sexual relationship between the two of them. And I compare and contrast the two and like what themes are in both or not, et cetera.
01:26:34
Speaker
But no, that's awesome. I've read it, but i'm I'm sure these two are definitely going to get into it. I'm slowly dragging Lao into fan studies very slowly. Well, and we all know that this came from a Stucky fanfic, so I think it's a good of like going back to my roots of Marvel, you know? Yeah, exactly.
Rachel Reid's Fanfics: A Stucky and Superbat Discussion
01:26:57
Speaker
Did any of you read, before she purged it in December, did any of you read um any other Rachel Reid fanfics? Because she had some Stucky and I think two Superbat, and I was like, I knew she was a Superbat fan, and I saw it. And you know what? I did not. I did not, but I will be leaving internet archiving that as soon as possible. Well, Amy, you can still find the copy of Game Changer where it was still, like, Stucky fix. There are copies of that floating around too, if you look for it.
01:27:23
Speaker
I love that. Well, we will be finding links to provide too in our show notes. But again, thank you so much, Kate. Of course, really glad that you invited me. Yeah, have you we're so glad to have you. That's so cool. Yeah, absolutely.
Quebec's Profanity and Cultural Contexts
01:27:36
Speaker
All right. Thank you again to Kate for coming on the podcast. We are going to kind of switch gears now. We have a lovely piece of fan mail from a new person. So we are going to go ahead and read their fan mail and do a little commentary on it and get into it. So Amanda, I'm going throw it over to you.
01:27:55
Speaker
Yeah, this is from Grace from Toronto. Thank you so much, Grace from Toronto. We've been holding on to this for a hot minute. I've been very excited to read it and I'm sorry for the delay, but here it is. Starts off. Hi, JJ is from Quebec. At one point he swears using the word calice, C-A-L-I-C-E. Calice. Uh huh. Thank you. this might be translated as shit but literally means chalice and refers to this cup used by catholic priests to hold wine for communion during a mass canadian french in particular kept quebec has a long tradition tradition of using explicitly religious words to swear some of them tana daak Some of the first permanent European settlers in what we now call Canada were Catholic priests from France who wanted to convert indigenous people, and there's a long, terrible history there.
01:28:37
Speaker
The Catholic Church was a dominant force in Quebec society and politics until the 1960s, so swearing by using religious language became very common. The word profanity or profane originally meant disdain or keep the sacred. JJ loves to shit talk, so it makes me happy that he's also shit talking to Catholics. He does that.
01:28:52
Speaker
So how we know this series is Canadian? Forget the loons, consider that the Canadian government provided funding for this series and our Prime Minister, who was a hockey goalie at Oxford University, brags about it. Link here we'll put in the show notes. And the word chalice, or no, sorry, the word calice is in the script. Yay Jacob Tierney for including that nod to fantastic Hebeco swearing traditions.
01:29:10
Speaker
Check the Wikipedia page to learn more. And we'll include that link in there as well. Just to clarify, JJ says this, it's in episode 5 when he tells the Metro's locker room that Ilya did not go with his team to Nashville. It's translated as Who Gives a Shit?
01:29:21
Speaker
Which Lauren and I did watch last night. Yeah. I love it. It reminds me of Spanish people. they Like, the Spaniards use a lot of Catholic stuff to swear. like ostia, which means like, how do you call the thing that you eat? Like the body of Christ? The body of Christ. The but like wafer? The and the wafer. yeah It's like the bread.
01:29:43
Speaker
It's bunch of different things. So ostia is how we call it in Spanish. And a lot of people in Spain say ostia to say like shit. We say like here, we say like, me cago en Dios. I shit on God. So I really appreciate it. Like now I like JG more. Yes! Yeah. No, I love that. Yeah, I feel like it's kind of similar to how we say like, oh my god or Jesus Christ, which like, which I know i know is very colloquially used across many cultures, but I thought that was really interesting, and I had no idea. I think it's like a big kind of like middle finger to a lot of it, which I think is really interesting, and like the, how colonialism relates to it, yeah um I think is really interesting, because like indigenous people were not Catholic, even though now, Catholicism is really huge in Latin cultures as a result of colonization. So I think using that in turn to be swear words is is really interesting. i
01:30:34
Speaker
I'm just now thinking of it as he says this. it's like It doesn't say he just didn't go to Nashville. Yeah. Where because Shane's all like, is he sick? Is see like he okay? He didn't seem hurt. He's like all weird, which I saw this week where it was like, you know if there was a woman in that locker room when that happened, she would have immediately She would've been really like, yeah. What do mean you're asking questions and then going to text someone? Like, that's sus as hell. And so the fact that JJ and, um, who else is there? Hayden. Hayden. Are like, maybe okay, fuck that guy, whatever. I think that's really funny.
01:31:01
Speaker
Um, as I was talking about earlier in this episode, I did, i have read a lot of hockey RPF. And there are a lot of Quebecois hockey players who use a lot of these swear words. And so I've come across them in several fan fictions before.
01:31:18
Speaker
um I always thought they were very funny um because i I, that's where I learned Tabernak. Which I don't even know what that means. A tabernacle is like tabernacle. It's um where you like the host or like the body of Christ between that's been blessed between yeah like between masses or like the excess go.
01:31:43
Speaker
Like when you are done with mass, you put it in the tabernacle or the tabernacle. So it's like literally like it houses Jesus's body. quote unque And what like does like the prayer
01:31:59
Speaker
Like I appreciate it, but it still feels like a little random. Like I do, I love profanity and the etymology of the profane words. Yeah, but it- Listen, for example, in Spain, the way that Ostia became a thing, I think. I might be wrong because I have people from Spain in my family, but I might be wrong. They used to say, I shit on the hostia. So, and that, it starts to like be shorter and shorter to the point where you're saying just hostia. Yeah. So that might be what this case is about, like, Tabernak de merde, or quelque chose comme ça, something like that.
01:32:34
Speaker
And it becomes Tabernak. This is just a thesis I have. yeah this Language sometimes does that, like you start with something very elaborate and it becomes shorter and shorter. until it makes less sense than before. Yeah, they also have the word for baptism, the word for picks or ciborium, which is like it's a rep receptacle in which the host is stored. It's usually like very ornate. Chrise, which is Christ. Osti, a host. i heard people say Christ on a stick, which feels very... I say Christ on this I have said it before in my times of dire. No, my favorite name is jesus Jesus Christ on a motorbike. is not ah That's a good one. Sacrament. So sacrament. soft The sin of simony? And, you know, that there's m'aird, you know. M'aird is shit in French. I know that.
01:33:31
Speaker
madam murder madam yeahtle but thank you so much grace for sending it that fan mail grace from toronto thank you so much for sending in that fan mail i love adding new curse words to my repertoire as you know i have so many on this show i will be going around last um and i'm sure your lab tech will know what you're talking about because there are definitely chalice yeah i'm gonna start pulling him off he's like how do you know that i'm sure there's french canadians on the maple leaves that he knows of so yes thank you so much grace from toronto for sending that in if you ever want to send in fan mail you can always do so we accept it on any of our social media platforms include
01:34:16
Speaker
threads, Instagram, or you can send it to our email, which is srspod at protonmail.com.
Engaging with Listeners: Fan Mail and Gratitude
01:34:22
Speaker
I still don't love that you say X. It's Twitter. e Well, you need to get off that Nazi website.
01:34:30
Speaker
it's an important thing I kind of agree. this And it's a Nazi space too. With that, that is all we have got for you. we will see you next week when we cover fan fiction.
01:34:41
Speaker
Second favorite part. We're going to have Amanda and Lau and our special guest submit fan fictions for us to maybe read out loud. Oh, deep okay. we will be back now iwork out but editing i have awork I have homework I have homework.
01:34:58
Speaker
All right. you all i have want i'm I'm usually the one that assigns homework. I never know, right? Now you're back on the other side.
01:35:11
Speaker
know, right? Since Brookie Season was created by Lauren, Lau, and Amanda. Covered art by Lauren and Lau. Amanda is our editor. Thanks for listening.