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#0: Death To The Shippers
84 Plays1 month ago
Allegra & M.W. discuss: has there really been a recent influx of “normies” into fandom spaces? What problems are they causing?
Plus: Fujo News (AO3 fundraiser discourse, #prestwt), RPF Updates (basketball needs shippers, Irish Revolution fancams), art history yaoi, "patient 0" of fandom, & more!
Transcript
Introduction to Fandom News Network
00:00:03
Speaker
Hello and welcome to the pilot episode of Fandom News Network, hosted by me, Allegra Rosenberg, and my mysterious co-host, Marble Whips.
00:00:16
Speaker
Today, we are going to be taking a look at some of the events and issues affecting fandom in the year of our Lord, the godforsaken year of our Lord, 2025.
AO3 Fundraising and Platform Debate
00:00:27
Speaker
beginning with some discourse that's going on online. We like to start with a segment that we call Fujo News, short bites of shit that's been going down.
00:00:37
Speaker
In general Fujo News, we've got this first topic coming up, and and this is a perennial one. So ah co-host Marble Whips, you want to introduce this one? Yes, it is that time of year again for the AO3 fundraising ah effort and the discourse surrounding it around whether or not you should donate to nonprofit websites that you use.
00:01:01
Speaker
Generally, it happens pretty much annually whenever they're doing their fundraising drive that people get very upset around what other people are doing with their money. And it's also like not even upset about like what people are doing with their money. It's like they're upset at the very idea that a website should be financially transparent about them asking for money and the money that they're raising. i mean, like, do you think people get this mad when like Wikipedia or the Internet Archive asks for money? And don't answer that because the answer is probably yes.
00:01:33
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, I know that I've definitely seen some of that with Wikipedia, but I feel like at least with Wikipedia and the Internet Archive, there has been more of a concerted understanding towards like why these websites need the support.
00:01:48
Speaker
And also i think because they both have like larger user bases who are less inclined towards arguing with each other perhaps, that it might be like, I think that there's a little more, there's been more flexibility I think around that. It's become almost more normal in a way to like write think about it. Whereas with AO3, I think that there's a split between people who think of it as like, well, this is a website that I use, like Wikipedia or the Internet Archive. This is a nonprofit organization. like a resource. This is a resource.
00:02:27
Speaker
And there are people who are like, you are donating to host your porn, um which in and of itself... I wouldn't have an issue with because again, websites take money to run and host.
00:02:42
Speaker
um I also don't really care what anyone's doing with their like personal, like I think it should probably be hosted somewhere private if you're making porn.
00:02:53
Speaker
um But yeah, I mean people get mad every year because there's always i mean there's always other things going on that you can also donate to, obviously.
00:03:05
Speaker
Going back a second to this idea of people just being outraged at the concept of donating. So here's a screenshot posted by at Jor Doofus on Twitter. And this is a screenshot of somebody else's post complaining. And this this post says, ignoring all the issues with AO3, why the fuck does a fanfic site that gets millions of fics uploaded to a today to it a day need donations to thrive? AO3 is literally the YouTube of fanfics.
00:03:29
Speaker
And like... There are so many things wrong this. There are so many things wrong with this, but it really sums up the ignorance that people have about what AO3 is, why it exists, why it was founded, and then how it supports itself. yeah and i And then the the person quoting this at George Dufus says, YouTube fanfics is so funny in this context because these fundraisers are literally the reason we don't have to watch ads every 3,000 awards Or pay $14 a month for an AO3 premium subscription to read without ads.
00:04:02
Speaker
Like, I think that, and this is, you know, maybe painting Gen Z with a broad brush, but people don't understand that there are ways to run websites that aren't, like, apps or, like,
00:04:16
Speaker
like, for-profit platforms. I think that's really sad. Like, people don't know what a website is. Yeah. I think that that's definitely part of it. I also just, um as a research endeavor, typed Wattpad.com into my computer to figure out, because I was like, what fan fiction site is offering premium swap pad?
00:04:36
Speaker
um ah Yeah. And then, yeah, there was, like, someone, like, tweeting, like, what are alternatives to AO3? And so like, you know, try Wattpad. I'm like, what? Yeah. Literally what? Literally $8 a month.
00:04:49
Speaker
Oh, my God. And what do you get for that those $8? Oh, sorry. there's There's premium, which is $5 a month, and then premium plus is $7.49. um And then so with the premium plus, you get no ad interruptions, unlimited offline stories, bonus coins on purchase.
00:05:09
Speaker
You purchase stuff on Wattpad? Yeah, it's like you have to there's like a there's like a pay per read model where like, it's like Patreon. It's like you can yeah unlock stories earlier, like unlock further chapters. Like there's a rev share.
00:05:22
Speaker
model there and and authors can actually make a lot of money on there. um But yeah, I mean, that's completely the opposite like function of AO3, essentially. Yes. I mean, and for those listening that doesn't know that don't know the lore, was founded as as an alternative fan-owned and fan-run archive. Not a platform, an archive.
00:05:44
Speaker
AO3 was... It's interesting because AO3, like, at its foundation, was was meant to coexist ah like alongside other fanfiction platforms like LiveJournal and Fanfiction.net and stuff like that. But it was established as this as a hosting service, essentially, to ensure that fanfiction was preserved in the face of these takedowns, these like copyright and like explicit content takedowns that were affecting LiveJournal and Fanfiction.net. Fanfiction.net banned song fic RPF um and a couple other and a couple other forms of fanfiction and then LiveJournal
00:06:18
Speaker
was dealing with these takedowns of explicit content because the parent corporation, the parent for-profit corporation of LiveJournal was receiving like DMCA's and stuff like that. So in the face of all that, that's when the founders of AO3 set up this call to have literally an archive of our own. Like, do people know that that's what is for? literally was about to be like, Allegra, what does the AO3 stand for? the Archive of our own. yeah Some of the wires are also getting crossed.
00:06:47
Speaker
And like an hour being fandoms, right? Like, I think at that time, that side of fandom, which was kind of like the, like slightly the older women, like slash fans who'd like been around on LiveJournal for like a while. a lot of them were like probably in their mid-30s.
00:07:02
Speaker
had professional jobs, like understood how to you know run and form a nonprofit. They were the ones that had the initiative to found AO3 So that fans had a safe place to put their fan works that would not be under so perpetually under threat and like under like the whims of these corporations. And it was so prescient, honestly, because we're just deal we we have kept dealing with the transience of the platforms on which people do.
00:07:32
Speaker
their fandom. So Tumblr's troubles, Twitter's troubles, all this TikTok stuff. AO3 is standing strong and has remained, you know, yes, there's a quite a lot of things wrong with it. And like the way that it's run, like frankly, is ridiculous. Yeah. But it's still there and it's not as endangered because it's not subject to these commercial whims. And I just like...
00:07:54
Speaker
Yeah, i'm like comparatively, because like I work in a nonprofit. yeah In fact, I have only ever worked in nonprofits and never at a for-profit organization. um So, like yeah, it is one of those things that is like there are things that nonprofits are able to do and are able to ensure that corporations can never promise you.
00:08:14
Speaker
But there are also any nonprofit is going to have a lot of issues because it was founded. Like a lot of nonprofits do. There is a lot of like power controlled at the top, which is then.
00:08:26
Speaker
Yeah. But like that's any nonprofit. There's going to be kind of a clickiness to it. Yeah. And we we can and should do a whole episode about AO3 and its problems because like as fans and as the people that support AO3 and, you know, give them money and you know like want them to go on like we have a right to be like okay well there's I you know I'm saying all this I've never donated to AO3 I've donated to Wikipedia I think I donated like 15 bucks a couple years ago but I you know like we could do whole episode about like okay well there are things that could be done better if they want to ensure this ongoing stability and know fandom is changing and stuff like that but like
00:09:01
Speaker
Their 2025 yearly budget, it's over $600,000 and like almost $500,000 of that goes to server equipment. yeah They own the servers. They're never gonna be so subjected to, you know, takedown notices from, you know, Amazon Web Services or anything like that, because they own the physical servers. It's like in a fucking closet somewhere. yeah Anyway.
00:09:21
Speaker
Whereas comparatively, like WordPress right now is like, which most sites are hosted on. WordPress is like actively going down. Cargo Collective has been crashing. ah crashed multiple times this week. Anyone whose site was on it, you just couldn't access.
00:09:34
Speaker
um I know because my site was Cargo. um And like, that's also the Matt, the new owner of WordPress, who's just like slashing everything there is the guy that also they own Tumblr now.
00:09:46
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, So. Similar problems, yeah. Whereas. Similar problems. You know, they the fucking servers. They own the servers. And it's like, people are mad and they use world issues as this kind of, like, scapegoat or, like, being like, well well, why don't you donate to, like, people that are in war-torn areas, whatever. This year it's Palestine. Two years ago was Ukraine. It's just, like, this total, um what's the word I'm looking for? Like, straw man argument um about, like,
00:10:13
Speaker
anyway, what people should do with their money. And you the fact is that, honestly, probably a lot of people that are donating to AO3 are also donating to people in Palestine. Yeah, and I think it's also one of those things where, like, you also can't, there's actually no way to compare those two numbers because there is no one fundraising drive for Palestine. It is all spread out across different GoFundMes, which makes it much more complicated and is, like, you can't,
00:10:42
Speaker
possibly understand like the full amount of money that is potentially going in or out of Palestine. Whereas like EO3, they have a number up on the site. And so yes I understand why that's like upsetting to some people if they are like, oh, I have been trying to help with a fundraiser.
00:10:58
Speaker
I'm not seeing that number tick up because you don't have – hundreds of thousands of people clicking through it every single day. and I know that's hard. Like I said, I work in fundraising, like it's, suck yeah. And it's hard when you see another fundraising, like effort that is just coasting by while yours is like, maybe you got one donation two weeks ago.
00:11:20
Speaker
Like that sucks. It's really frustrating. And also it's something that happens literally every field of like, because everyone needs more money. And, Honestly, AO3 is an entertainment website and people like to pay for their entertainment and they like to pay for something that has given them a lot of joy and a lot of pleasure in a time when that is maybe rare. So yeah whatever, this, this goes, this is a whole thing.
Fandom and Mainstream Media
00:11:43
Speaker
It happens every fucking year. So, I mean, it happens like twice a year.
00:11:46
Speaker
ah We will talk about it. Oh yeah, because they do. They do. They do have a fundraising drive twice a year. That's true. Yeah. So we'll be back to this topic, but moving on. Um, this is a bullet point that you added to our general Fujo news, which is, uh, watching the Minecraft movie for the Yaoi, but you did put later episode on there, so I assume that we will.
00:12:04
Speaker
Well, because I did not, in fact, watch the Minecraft movie for the Yaoi. However, many people are watching the Minecraft movie for the Yaoi, and I am seeing, like I've been seeing large amounts of Minecraft yaoi on both Tumblr and Twitter. this with Jack Black?
00:12:20
Speaker
Yes, Jack Black. And I'm not sure who played the other guy. didn't look into it. I also don't know what a chicken jockey is. I just know that there are like two large hairy men yaoi going on. Like it's Bara.
00:12:37
Speaker
It's mine called Bara in fact. ok Introducing children to the wonder that is Bara yaoi. We will have to discuss this after you've seen the movie. I will not be seeing the movie but I'm excited to hear about it from you. um And then there's The Pit. So like what is going on with The Pit? Neither of us watch The Pit, but it seems like people are really like horny for the show as a concept, and then also for some of the characters. We are perhaps the only people left in the world not watching The Pit.
00:13:06
Speaker
um like Literally yesterday, I was just hanging out on my in my front yard with my neighbors, and my neighbor was like, been watching this show called The Pit. And i was like, goddammit, dude, everyone's watching The Pit. um So The Pit, if you somehow are not aware of it, it is a new show on HBO Max. It just finished its first season.
00:13:25
Speaker
There are, I believe, 15 episodes. It is a medical drama and the conceit being that each episode is one hour of the same shift in an yeah ER, um which is a great conceit for a show, I will say. I was like, okay, that's kind of interesting.
00:13:41
Speaker
I personally don't love medical dramas. So have not been going into that. However, you tweeted something that was like, I was, I was going to watch it when I thought it was like a black comedy, but now that I know it's and not, i'm not going to watch it. I kind of feel the same way. Yeah. It's like house pretty funny, pretty funny show.
00:13:57
Speaker
ah Pretty cheesy show. It seems like the pit is like very earnest and woke and dramatic. And the pit. Yeah. Well, the pit's like really pretty hardcore. um My understanding is also that like so this is one shift and my understanding is that there was a mass shooting at the top of the shift oh so like not it's heavy it's yeah it's my understanding is also that like it deals with like multiple characters either like they themselves personally fighting back or like experiencing and trying to move through medical racism or like
00:14:34
Speaker
someone processing and talking about like her father's career being ruined by medical racism or life being ruined. Um, yeah. So it really is this very intense show that seems to be dealing with a lot of real issues. I know that there's also, they do touch on, um and I feel like I heard this from like a friend who is an actual hospital worker who was an essential worker 2020.
00:15:00
Speaker
um in that capacity, they do, my understanding is that, like, in some of the earlier episodes, they talked pretty frankly about the impact that that had on, like, the characters and on our workers as, like, this extremely traumatic experience.
00:15:16
Speaker
So that's also, like, people are really appreciating that it's got all this realism to it, but it's also got the, like, woke hopefulness, like, okay, like, yeah, yeah a no actual doctor's office, and like, no actual hospital in Pittsburgh would have this many, like,
00:15:31
Speaker
liberal people all working together. It's like, like, we can dream. Right. So that aside, i there's, yeah is there a yaoi? So the problem actually that people are having with The shit that Pit is um any ship.
00:15:47
Speaker
It's one of those shows where it's so good that people are like, how could you possibly watch this and ship anything? There's so much happening. And it's like, well, how could anyone watch an emotional drama and imagine...
00:16:02
Speaker
other dramatic moments occurring between the characters on this character driven show god only knows it is such a mystery um that rhetoric is crazy to me because it's like like what like like there's nothing more intrinsic to watching a tv show any tv show or movie and imagining what if two of the characters who have dramatic moments together We're in a relationship. Literally just a perfectly normal thing to be doing.
00:16:33
Speaker
I think my favorite tweet I've seen about it has been from my mutual who was really going through the trenches of, like, making Conclave fan art and people being like, why are people doing ships of Conclave?
00:16:47
Speaker
um Being like, I know I'm throwing stones in a glass house, but I don't understand how people are doing ships in the pit. And I was like, again, yeah, like, it's really just one of those things where, like I think, you know, maybe you don't watch everything. There are stuff like I'll watch and I won't have a thought about it. So I think that's why people are like, how could you possibly have this thought?
00:17:09
Speaker
And it's like, I don't know, man. Everyone has different thoughts all day, every day. Like actually the point of how being people works. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Fun fact. um But so I think the other thing is that that I have been able to decipher is that there are potential yaoi ships being tossed around. They mainly seem to be kind of people with more like rare pair crack ship energy looking at background interactions being like, yes, I can make yaoi out of this.
00:17:41
Speaker
um There is also allegedly Yuri between a female character that most audience members hate And someone else. So that's probably going to be great in like the fan fiction world. I don't know what it will be like on the TV show, but the Yuri will be cooking.
00:18:00
Speaker
um And there's a straight ship. So it's, yeah, I think there's also the like, why are people shipping is also because, yeah and as it always is, everyone does secretly have their preferred ship that they would like to see the content of.
00:18:18
Speaker
And they're like, why would you be making this yaoi instead of the, like, actual heterosexual, like, two main characters who, to my understanding, talk about having lost a baby from a hookup or something?
00:18:31
Speaker
Like, yeah, that's a crazy. I would lock in on that ship. I also would lock in on, like, a one-off about the man in that relationship having, like, a grinder hookup with someone from work because both of those things are possible, first of all. Yeah.
00:18:46
Speaker
And also entertaining in different types of drama. Yes. And I mean, this is like, also like, yeah, it's a workplace show. Like that is where hookups and flings and attraction happens when they're all in like a high stakes environment with these, like, that's like the, that's frankly, that's the terror.
00:19:03
Speaker
So, exactly i mean, i'd yeah, anyway, but this is, it kind of gets into something that we're going to talk about ah in our next segment, the RPF update segment, which is with Severance fandom.
00:19:15
Speaker
ah the the discourse over shipping. And listen, we're not going to spend the whole fucking episode talking about severance ships. I'd kill myself. But we're moving into our RPF update segment and i'm going to play the music.
00:19:29
Speaker
Welcome to RPF Updates from the Fandom News Network. Today we are going to be talking about a bunch of bullshit. So the first bullet point in our RPF update segment is basketball yaoi. Yes.
00:19:45
Speaker
And I am obsessed with this tweet. This tweet was so good that when my co-host sent it to me, I'm like, I think we need to start a podcast. Literally. Just so that we can talk about this tweet.
00:19:57
Speaker
Do you want to read this tweet out? It's so good. So i let me... Start with this tweet is actually a reply. um The, the username is King chef Yali.
00:20:08
Speaker
And the, the original tweet on April 4th was two goat emojis, hashtag bronze stuff. And it is a drawing of um two basketball players, ah LeBron and Steph Curry.
00:20:22
Speaker
And LeBron is holding Steph Curry up against his body. And Steph has cuddled into him saying night, night, night. um And they've got their final scores from the game next to them. And LeBron is just kind of dot, dot, dot. You know, it's a big, it's very like sunshine grumpy type vibes.
00:20:38
Speaker
um And their reply was this blew up. So at Fujoshi's and Fangirls, can I ask a favor, please? Our beautiful sport has been tanking so much lately, especially in viewership and interest the past few years.
00:20:50
Speaker
And our latest All-Star weekend was straight ass. Please tune into some basketball games and save us. Prayer hands, little begging guy, purple heart emoji. And then they followed up. Braun's staff already had their matchup on the 3rd of April, made a thread, plus feel free to look up highlights of GSW at LAL.
00:21:08
Speaker
But here's the separate team schedules for games left of the season. Pick whatever team you're interested in. This is the kind of generous resource giving that we need in fandom. Like I have always said about fandoms and ships in general, if you build it, they will come. Like if you, if your enthusiasm is facing outwards and And it's palpable and it's contagious.
00:21:32
Speaker
You can literally build a fandom around fucking anything, but you need to be doing this consciously. And you need to be be able to put your ego aside for a second and and welcome people in, right? And this is the perfect example of that. And I really hope it kicks off a Braunstaff kind of moment. I think also it was, it what was really like sending me to is that like it immediately broke containment, not just from like, obviously this came across like,
00:21:59
Speaker
my Twitter feed. um But it came across my Twitter feed ah from... like actual just regular straight men who are into basketball being like, yo.
00:22:13
Speaker
and like
00:22:18
Speaker
But like a generous yo, not like a homophobic yo. Of course there were plenty of guys being like, oh, what the hell? But there was a lot of like generous like, whoa, yeah, like, okay. Um, yeah.
00:22:31
Speaker
Yeah, there but bro there's a Braun Stuff lore video. There's... Yeah, literally, like, if the they... Okay, apparently they did some, like, bromance promo type of stuff in the Olympics. Like, they were taking notes from, like, I'm assuming hockey.
00:22:52
Speaker
And K-pop. Yeah. Wow. Yeah, um but yeah, they basically were being, like... Okay. Yeah. They also, there's also some discourse about whether or not Steph Curry or LeBron would be the bottom.
00:23:06
Speaker
But that's good. That's hard. Ron Steph. Okay. But like, that's, that's the kind of discourse that generates more interest because people find themselves taking sides and that generates that kind of like, you know, commitment to being like, okay, well I'm doing this now. I'm in it. Like that's,
00:23:24
Speaker
That's the benefit of discourse is it can give people that sort of emotional, like, you know, hook to swing themselves around if they find themselves caring about something like that when they didn't expect to. um Yeah, and I think, like, the straight guy tweets that I saw were ones that were like, well, wait, wouldn't, like, so-and-so be, like, LeBron's bottom or whatever? like Like, they all immediately were like, well, wait, and because I sent it to my brother, and he pretty much immediately was like...
00:23:53
Speaker
well, like, who's, because I sent, like, there was a screenshot going around of the AO3 as well, and he was like, well, wait, where does the spanking come in?
00:24:03
Speaker
Or whatever was in the tag. And I was like, don't know, man, you'll have to read to find out. And he was like, I think I'm going to. You know, it's really, we're getting people into fandom who would never have considered it.
00:24:17
Speaker
and then And then also like there's that, yeah, that like, that it's like someone has to be patient zero. Someone has to be the evangelist for something like this that's a little more out of the ordinary. I mean, there was a moment when hockey was like this and you were like, wait, what? But because the people who sort of formed the nucleus of what we now know today of as like hockey fandom, like transformative fandom, were so, I think they were already BNFs in fandom. Like, they knew how to do it.
00:24:44
Speaker
Like, the me the mechanics of growing ah fandom, like, they were already pros at that. Hockey also has always cracked me up because um I found out about, like,
00:24:58
Speaker
fan fiction I'm pretty sure about AO3 because of ah hockey RPF. um So growing up, we were like a hockey family. Like my dad coached hockey.
00:25:10
Speaker
um And my brother was a goalie. And I was not into hockey, but you know, like we love the Caps. And Ovechkin and stuff, which I don't know if you follow hockey at all, but... I've heard the name. yeah because he's basically one of the greatest ever, and he's D.C.
00:25:27
Speaker
um So pretty easy city to get into hockey. Our family friends, who we also knew from like the hockey sphere, were on like a summer vacation with them one time, and like their family was structured the same as ours. like Older kid, the same as age as me. They had two kids the same as my siblings.
00:25:46
Speaker
So perfect for vacations. We're kind of like chatting. She's like telling me about how like she's so into hockey right now. And i was getting really into like my bands or whatever. So I think we both had Tumblr.
00:25:58
Speaker
um And she was like, okay, well, I need to like read my stories about my hockey guys. And I was like, what do you mean? And she was like, there is this website where you can read about ah hockey boys kissing. And was I'm assuming there are other boys kissing on there as well.
00:26:19
Speaker
um and she was like, yes. And I don't remember what team, like what she shipped because it wasn't caps. It was another um and What year was this? Because that might be clue. It would have been, I'm trying to remember. It would have been like 2010.
00:26:34
Speaker
Blackhawks. Yeah, probably. Yeah. That was when they were winning and they were the sort of like. the starter kit of yeah I was gonna say I was like because I was literally like whatever the very dawn of hockey RPF was was like how I found out about fan fiction existing basically yeah it's so funny because that summer I think was the summer that I think I was i was already on tumblr but like that summer or the summer after it uh or two summers after it maybe was when I was on a ah like a camping trip thing and ah girl was like literally reading out One Direction fanfic to like a group of teenagers.
00:27:13
Speaker
Yes. I was like, girl, you gotta be quiet about that. That's crazy. That's really good. I gotta be This is my Israel trip for context. So it's just a very funny situation. God. We're on our propaganda trip and we're sitting around talking about One Direction fan fiction. Also, like, that was one of the summers that I was, like, super obsessed with Homestuck and was, like, i trying to get Israeli Wi-Fi on my iPod Touch to read my fucking Homestuck updates.
00:27:37
Speaker
That's incredible. Meanwhile, i was in... We were... We drove, like... I distinctly remember reading Homestuck in... the backseat of the minivan that I now drive um but I remember reading Homestuck in the bathroom desperately trying to get the like any yeah connection because we were driving from Maryland to Florida my god and I read most of Homestuck in the car nothing was more important than getting those updates on time um okay what else do we have for this segment
00:28:08
Speaker
Anyway, i I hope to see an explosion of of basketball RPF that we will know can be traceable back to this this cry for help, this very valiant cry for help.
00:28:19
Speaker
Okay, so what is this next RPF update, which I'm really excited for you to explain to me?
Historical and Real-Person Fan Fiction
00:28:24
Speaker
The youth are shipping Eamon DeValera and Michael Collins on TikTok. um from Twitter user Fiona Small.
00:28:32
Speaker
And there is, in fact, from TikTok user Club Collins, a fan cam of Eamon De Valera and Michael Collins, two of the major figures of the Irish ah Revolution at the beginning of the 20th century, to...
00:28:51
Speaker
to um The Chapel Rhone song. To like the bridge of Good Luck Babe.
00:29:11
Speaker
As I sort of explained a little bit in the notes, it's actually quite a good choice for a song for them. The that I Told You So part, especially. yeah so So basically some quick...
00:29:25
Speaker
So crash course in the Irish revolutionary history. um I don't fully know the pre-divorce lore. However, my grandfather wrote his master's thesis on the Easter uprising of 1916, which was when the Irish on Easter, so topical, like the happy anniversary, earn law um they essentially around Easter were...
00:29:50
Speaker
Like, that was kind of the planned day of the first big, like, attack, essentially, from, um I believe they were still, I don't remember if they were called the Irish, they were the Irish Volunteers or Sean Fain at that point, but essentially the precursor to what would eventually be known as the IRA. Yeah.
00:30:06
Speaker
Um, so basically the Irish rebellion, like the Irish revolution is happening, um, around like post world war one then the um, Oh, and like, to be clear, like Easter uprising, it's 1916. Like I yeah are, they are like taking advantage of a situation, the situation to be like enough.
00:30:32
Speaker
Um, so, They then are able to form, there's the first, like, Irish parliament, the Dial, and, um, Eamon de Valera is essentially, like, the president of it, and if I remember correctly.
00:30:48
Speaker
Um, they, and so, around this point, there is supposed to be a signed, like, there's going to be an Anglo-Irish treaty about, like, where they're going to be like, we have peace. The dial has sent five people, including Michael Collins, who had been part of the Easter uprising. That, believe, was probably when he got involved um in either the Volunteers or Sinn Féin.
00:31:14
Speaker
Um... And then, so Collins would have been, because he was sent to London, yeah he absolutely would have been, like, close with de Valera and, like, a trusted person for him.
00:31:28
Speaker
So that already I'm seeing where the yaoi is happening. But, so the treaty, obviously they get, like, five Irish guys in a room with, like, 20 British guys who are all basically, like,
00:31:44
Speaker
You guys, we are about to take everything that you wanted. um Collins is very much on the side of we just need to stop the war.
00:31:55
Speaker
We can't keep losing people. We need to just stop the war. If we have to give up Northern Ireland, we have to give up Northern Ireland to stop the war. Which was, like, those were the two main beliefs of, like, if we have to give up Northern Ireland to stop the war, then we give up Northern Ireland.
00:32:11
Speaker
And the people who were, like, absolutely not. Irish unity or bust. um Which has then obviously continued to be a major split in Irish politics to this day.
00:32:22
Speaker
Yeah. um So... The treaty that they do sign essentially does create Northern Ireland. um And the dial splits and leads to the Irish Civil War.
00:32:37
Speaker
Oh, and let me guess, Collins was on one side Valera was on the other side. Yes. And I i was looking this up last night because I was like, I was like i know that de Valera, so de Valera was one of the leaders of the Easter uprising. And part of what's so interesting about him is he's the only one that wasn't later executed by the British.
00:32:55
Speaker
Because his mother was American. So it's giving like guilty last survivor energy? oh yeah. and Well because he had American citizenship so the British did not kill him. Yeah there's the guilty last survivor energy but de Valera became the president of Ireland when Ireland did secure their independence again.
00:33:12
Speaker
um I don't... I think they do call it the Dales still, so um that would have been it. But yeah, Alan de Valera was then the president of Ireland, um like of the the Republic of Ireland when it became the Republic.
00:33:25
Speaker
um And then... and the fifty s my grandfather had finished his master's thesis on the Easter uprising, partially focusing on Eamon de Valera and the relationship, with the reasons the British did not execute him.
00:33:41
Speaker
um He and my grandmother went on their honeymoon. They were both like teachers at the time, so they took the entire summer. um To go and they went to Ireland because they're both, we're Irish.
00:33:53
Speaker
And they were talking to someone in a bar who was like, oh my God, we have to bring this American scholar to meet Eamon de Valera. Fuck. And so I think I texted you earlier a photo of both of my grandparents with image of Alera. They were in like, it's like from a newspaper. It's like they were in like the Dublin Times or whatever.
00:34:14
Speaker
It was a big deal because people were like, oh my God, the Americans recognize the impact of the Easter uprising and image of Alera. But it's really just that your grandfather was like a nerd.
00:34:25
Speaker
Literally.
00:34:29
Speaker
um yeah Well, I'm so glad that you have the context for this fan vid And i think that that it's sort there's there's a relationship there. Also, I would like to note that the account that posted this is called Club Collins, which is a reference to Club Chalamet. Yes, I did. yeah I was like reading the the names out and I did not yeah pause on that, but I i did yeah notice it and I thought that was amazing.
00:34:54
Speaker
But this is like, there's a relationship here to our favorites, the Nixon shippers. Yes. Who are, I think, going strong, although now they're part of a larger sort of fleet of 20th century political yaoi fetishists called Preztwit.
00:35:11
Speaker
um But like, there's this I'm just fascinated by the way in which these fandom structures of creation and of imagination like like fan cam set to Chapel Rhone can be applied to anything if your mind and body are and are strong enough and if you have a community of people around you that are willing to sort of play in that sandbox with you.
00:35:31
Speaker
yeah Like the person on Twitter who's part of PrezTwit that's shipping, what is it, Lee Harvey Oswald and George H.W. Bush? Yes. Have you seen this? What? No. It's so... And they're they're like and they're drawing. readible They're drawing. like And I don't know the lore. I don't know the history there at all. But they're drawing really beautiful, like kind of like... um two generic white dudes, Yaoi, that people are like retweeting being like, who is this?
00:35:57
Speaker
And then the OP gets to be like, ha ha, I got you, which is so good. oh my God. Wow. Wait, that's amazing. Okay. um And so that's a part of like this larger like political Yaoi Twitter sphere, which like we saw emerge last year kind of in, con or maybe two years ago in conjunction with like Oppenheimer and the people like sort of shipping like the real life dudes from Oppenheimer and that sort of like World War II thing.
00:36:23
Speaker
ah political sort of arena don't know I'm just like endlessly I think that gave it a big boost but I feel like
00:36:34
Speaker
feel like there's been stuff around it for ah while and you know I mean not to come back to everything eventually returns back to Homestuck but Obama was a homestuck character as well.
00:36:53
Speaker
was a homestuck character. And so were, um, uh, oh my God. Insane Clown Posse. Yes. And Guy Fieri. And the, yeah, but ah so there's that. Oh no you know what also would have, um, been just kind of, I mean, for the, the generation that grew up and depressed to it.
00:37:15
Speaker
um And us. ah so ah We were, you know, predisposed towards this thanks to Night at the Museum.
00:37:25
Speaker
Oh, yeah. I thought you were going to say Hamilton. Hamilton also was a big one. I forgot about Hamilton. i forget about Hamilton's Right, but you must never forget. We must never forget about Hamilton. should never also, like, pre-Hamilton and even to this day, there was, like, you know, if a fair-sized community of, like, Revolutionary War yes shippers on Tumblr. Yeah, like, 1776 has had a strong but small contingent forever. Yeah.
00:37:51
Speaker
Yeah. So the energy is always there. But like I was saying before with the basketball thing, like there needs there, there has to be like a sort of patient zero that establishes the sort of ground rules and aesthetic and like emotional tenor of a kind of subgroup and like what fandom tools they are using to perform in the, within the community in this way. And also like how they come off to like a larger, like the larger audience on a given platform.
00:38:17
Speaker
Because I've had this conversation too with um a mutual who I will refer to as Banjo, um so that you are aware who they are They have also said to me, because we both have had independently, never really before shared experiences.
00:38:35
Speaker
like art historical RPF thoughts, but nobody in our history is really doing that. Um, but we did once then like share, because we both had this kind of interest in the same period of contemporary art history and our, our like kind of cliques of artists that,
00:38:53
Speaker
Yeah. Had overlapped. So that was – but, like, exactly, we were kind of connecting over, oh like, oh, my God, no one else has done this, and we don't really want to bear the cross of doing this at the moment.
00:39:05
Speaker
Right. But much to think about. Right. Like, the the person that starts it is a brave person, right? but they're also have the potential to really build something that gets bigger than themselves.
00:39:19
Speaker
Yeah. Like if i really wanted to put in the work to make people understand the like Cy Twombly, Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns, like triad, love triangle situation. Uh-huh.
00:39:33
Speaker
I absolutely could and would do that. And wait, so who would get that Chapel Roan? Who would get the Chapel Roan good luck babe bridge of those three? Yes. So it would go to, it would be like Jasper John.
00:39:47
Speaker
It would have to be like Cy kind of reacting to a Jasper John's piece later. But I will say the thing that I constantly think about was when I was working at a museum that had pieces by all three of them.
00:39:59
Speaker
um And the Johns and the Rauschenberg were in the same room. The Twombles were separate space. I know. um um I had a visitor come who I can say pretty with certainty based on their like job position and me actually knowing like who this person was in our historical field that they were not making any of this up.
00:40:18
Speaker
Um, the Tuamlu pieces on display had been on display originally at the National Gallery, like, a decade or two prior. And Jasper Johns had come because it was part of, like, a bigger retrospective of that period.
00:40:31
Speaker
He was kind of walking around he' like and his, in his 80s, at this point. And he says to, like, this person and another person who were looking at one of the pieces that was now in the museum that I worked at, he just goes, I mean, isn't it just sad what this, this attempt.
00:40:47
Speaker
And then he like walks away. And it's like, this is a man in his who like, whatever, like, I'm pretty sure all three of them get, like, married, like, Twombly has a wife, Twombly has kids, like, Twombly's dead, Rauschenberg dead, Jasper Johns is alive, i'm pretty sure he, like, they all, like, got married or whatever, and he is the sole survivor at the art museum where all of their art is fucking on display in the National Gallery, and he is, like, because they also all went to, like, college together, and he is, like, fucking size, stupid, fucking art is, like, so lame. It is.
00:41:20
Speaker
It's funny because out of all those, I think Twombly is my favorite. Yeah. Twombly is my favorite is also why I'm super biased. Well, I will say like Rauschenberg is probably my like true, true favorite. And at least it's had the most impact on like whatever I would consider my practice.
00:41:34
Speaker
But Twombly, the pieces that I'm thinking of are some of my favorite pieces. Yeah, I think I like to look at the Twomblies the most. because I like, you know, like Miro and Kandinsky and like all of those. Like, I like think he falls into that category for me of sort of aesthetics that I enjoy. Well, yeah and part of the the thing that was being talked about was he he had he did sculptures.
00:41:56
Speaker
Yeah. And so Johns is making fun of the sculptures because he was like, these are stupid and nobody likes them. um my God. um You were just trying to do assemblage. So so would would the Good Luck Babe Bridge be Johns and Twombly?
00:42:10
Speaker
I think so. Okay, I love that. Well, you kind of have to do that now. I know. So, and we skipped completely over the thing. Oh, no, no. So, sorry. And that I said earlier, I i mentioned it.
00:42:23
Speaker
There's some severance um RPF drama. Yeah. um I'm just going to give you my take because you've tried to communicate to me what is happening and I'm like, I don't follow any of these people so I don't really understand. So this is what I've asked most is going on with Severance RPF is that um ah Britt Lower and um Adam Scott were seen getting into a car together and then someone wrote a fic about it. That was the first Severance RPF fic and then there was drama about that. Is that what happened?
00:42:55
Speaker
Essentially, yes. Um, Adam Scott and Britt Lauer, who are both married to other people, um were wearing, i believe they've been wearing different like coordinating parts of their outfits to the like last few press events of Severance, while at the same time there were a bunch of articles coming out and interviews with both them and the crew and the writers talking about how like Mark Kelly, the main love dynamic, was not originally going to be a love story,
00:43:29
Speaker
But Adam and Brit had such insane chemistry that they changed the plot of the show. So this is coming out at the same time as they're doing all their little events. They're wearing, like, matching socks and shoes. They're going to each other's, like, premieres for... Like, I think Brit Lower was in some... she was in, like, an indie film.
00:43:49
Speaker
Adam is, like, showing up at the premiere, laughing the loudest at all the jokes. um so you know, the kind of thing that's, like, are they... Two good friends supporting each other's work and leaning into the on-screen relationship to for promo at promotional events.
00:44:06
Speaker
Or are they fucking? um But, you know, the age-old question. And... So someone wrote some severance RPF and it hit the tag like later that same night.
00:44:19
Speaker
And it was pretty much immediately a big call to being like, this is you are all disgusting, these are married people, blah, blah, blah, et cetera. Fix locked, it's on a o three you can't find it unless you have an AO3 account.
00:44:33
Speaker
um you know And a lot of the uproar. so what has also then become the discourse about this? A lot of the uproar about both the Severance RPF and the Mark Kelly dynamic in the show, like the things that really started the big ship war around Severance, were posted by a user who ah is very, very passionate about Adam Scott, Amy Poehler RPF.
00:45:07
Speaker
punchline yeah so that's the deal and that's why people are not taking it seriously yes and again I think this goes back to our my idea of patient zero it's like the first person to do something like that to like post an RPF fic for a specific pairing has to be pretty brave and they have to be you know either really following their heart or like doing it in the hopes that it will catch on and then it won't be just them anymore there is ah the bravery of that act I, you know, I've broken in some RPF tags and it is, it is a, it is a frightening endeavor.
00:45:43
Speaker
Cause you are like, is anyone, where what do I even, do I want anyone to be able to find this? Right, right. and you know, there, there, I think for some people there is a pleasure in like completely doing it alone. But I think for quite a lot of fans, I would say the majority, like it's, you know, you're doing it cause you're in a community yeah and you want other people to share in the joy that a particular person ship or trope or show or whatever it gives you and yeah like you you do need to kind of like reach out into the void sometimes in the hopes of finding your people and if you're the one to say something that everyone goes oh my god I was I was thinking that too like your art history thing it's like you happen to get onto this topic of conversation with someone you discover that you've both been like thinking similar things but you never would have known that right yeah like someone sort of has to
00:46:27
Speaker
to break that barrier and I always think it's interesting when when it really works and like a huge phenomenon comes out of it and also like maybe when it falls and s sinks below the surface but only to be rediscovered the next time that somebody tries tries to do that or like is struck with a similar ah similar thought um so on that note we are going to move into our final segment of the show which is our long form discussion
Evolution of Fandom Spaces
00:46:53
Speaker
So today for our long-form discussion, giving this episode its title, we're going to be talking about deaths in a shipper, something that people... Have they been saying it?
00:47:04
Speaker
Are people just imagining that they've been saying it um We're going to talk about it. um Also, sorry that everything from this episode is from fucking Twitter. um We need to start talking about what's going on on Tumblr, which is our true spiritual home.
00:47:19
Speaker
But unfortunately, we do be scrolling. i'm I'm a true Twitter addict. I mean, I know said was on Tumblr in 2010, which was true doing hockey RPF, but I'm a true Twitter addict. That was my true fandom home.
00:47:31
Speaker
Co-host Marble Whips, you want to read out this tweet that that got us talking about this idea of death to the shippers? Oh, absolutely. um So this was at Kinderhooks posting a ah screenshot of a tweet that read, when I got my account locked for saying death to the shippers a couple weeks ago, I knew it was over.
00:47:53
Speaker
um I am fairly certain this is about the Severance RPF, the original tweet, but the Kinderhooks tweet says, really sad that this is how your average fandom operates now.
00:48:05
Speaker
A bunch of people who don't like fandom and have no interest in being a part of it, but they're here for some reason and they're going to make it everybody's problem. So this got us thinking, I think that there's been this sort of larger umbrella discussion, maybe the past year or two, about, you know, like, has there been this influx into fandom of people who don't enjoy fandom?
00:48:28
Speaker
You know, and is this new? Is this a problem? and And if so, to what degree? i think for me, like, there are there this like and This is like as a post-COVID thing, like this whole sort of argument that, oh, like during COVID, a lot of people who wouldn't normally be into fandom got into it because there was nothing else to do.
00:48:47
Speaker
And now they're like this faction of people who like don't fundamentally don't get it and and are making other people's lives hard. But a part of me really wants to be skeptical because there's no way for people to get into fandom other than starting as normies.
00:49:04
Speaker
So this is like kind of the question of like the eternal September, right? Yeah. Yeah, no, and I think, like, also kind of goes back to what, like, I was also just saying about how, like, I was like, yeah, I was on Tumblr in 2010. I was knowing about hockey RPF. I was reading, like, I was in band. I was reading Homestuck, all of that.
00:49:24
Speaker
And then i like, went to college and stopped being as online all the time because I was double majoring in shit. And, like, i I had a Tumblr, but I mostly followed, like, my girlfriend on it. um And i didn't really partake in fandom much in college because I was just doing other shit. um And then, but like I still like re-blocked gif sets whatever and I was still locked in on Game of Thrones.
00:49:49
Speaker
But like, yeah, and then like probably around, yeah, it was around COVID when I would have, or in 2020, summer 2020, I'm an essential worker. So I'm fucking going back to work at my allegedly essential job at the art museum.
00:50:04
Speaker
um And I am like, I'm going insane. And there was also just a bunch of like other shit happening in my personal life. So I was kind of in a place of I was like, okay, I need to be like watching. I need to be just like injecting a bunch of content and shows into my mind.
00:50:19
Speaker
But I also can't watch anything that's like, heavy so I was just watching like Avatar the Last Airbender I was fully doing that like I know I'm like an adult but I'm gonna watch a bunch of kids shows and finally I was like you know what I should do I should watch anime like I never did in high school because I was too afraid of becoming an anime kid that would be bullied like I said I was big into Tumblr and all of the fandom stuff my friends and i we stood everyone used to like hang out in their little cliques outside between that like first two bells and We had our little spot for like the nerds kind of like we were like kind of the nerds and the anime kids who wore capes and cosplay to school were in a separate spot.
00:50:58
Speaker
And so that's where it comes in. I'm like, you're, are you, everyone first of all had to start as a normie as you pointed out. And there has been a massive change over the last like 10 years. Um,
00:51:12
Speaker
around what is and isn't acceptable to post or do that I think also like as you also grow older you don't really give a fuck anymore like when 15 I care so much about what the people around me think of me what they might say about me how they know what they know of what I'm doing online um And then like as an adult I was like i don't really care. I want to post about anime. I want to find people that are posting about Hunter Hunter. I can't stop thinking about Hunter Hunter.
00:51:38
Speaker
I like wrote I'd been writing fanfic on my phone and I was like texting my friends about it and they were like we don't care. We did not watch this anime. You have to go online and talk to people about anime. And I was like fine. I will go online and talk about anime.
00:51:53
Speaker
um And I was alarmed to come back into fandom and kind of discover that I was like oh shit there's like ways to be problematic. um And like, they canceled. And especially because going back into like, from Homestuck and Bandum, directly into 2020 anime Twitter.
00:52:12
Speaker
oh God. On one of the most popular anime. Oh, God. and I was like, what is approach it? What is an anti? What is any of this mean? and yeah None of this is in the Homestuck fucking Bible. Yeah.
00:52:24
Speaker
I was like, why would, why, why do you have an issue with people? Like, what do you mean those two characters hate each other? They literally, it's kismet. um but Like, I'm sorry, like, like, let's just reiterate that in 2012, we were all 16 and shipping like 13 year old incest pregnancy and it was cool.
00:52:40
Speaker
Yeah, literally. i There was RPF about me age 15. That's that Lauren. Well, we'll get to that. um But yeah, like there's such a sea change. I also was off.
00:52:54
Speaker
but off fandom during college because I was in college but it's so funny that talking about the cliques in high school it's like i knew that I was like a nerd and knew like I was on Tumblr and I like I did watch anime and I super into Homestuck but even then I was scared of being associated with like the anime kids clump at school and these were like people I'd been really close with during middle school and I I so I like section myself off from them and like in what in retrospect it's a really mean way because we dont like the exact same stuff but I was like I don't want to be associated with you liking those things the way that you like it even though it's like fucking identical I'm just like slightly slightly cooler than you I don't know what people are talking about like when they say the normie thing and I'm like i first of all don't believe that there is a majority of people who were openly like
00:53:44
Speaker
I don't care what other people think. I think that the majority of fandom has probably been sustained by people who were somewhat embarrassed about it for a while as teenagers. And then as they become adults are like, I actually, you know what? I ah appreciate the things that bring me joy. Yeah.
00:53:59
Speaker
And... Like we have both just described. And i think also like comes back to, yeah, like people are always kind of exiting and re-entering fandom spaces.
00:54:10
Speaker
And if you're not entering and re-exiting, then you're too deep in it and you you actually do need those cycles. You desperately need to go do something else. Yeah. Uh-huh. yeah Like, I think that that's the healthy way to do it is to come back to it when you feel like you really need it.
00:54:24
Speaker
And then there will be a moment when, you know, stuff is is going on in real life and and you can leave it for a while. And then when you come back to it with new eyes and new experiences sort of out in the world, then you bring something better to the way that you do fandom and you interact with people in those spaces. Exactly.
00:54:39
Speaker
And I think the people that tend to cause the most trouble are the ones that don't have those cycles and are sort of just either perma in it or they're too casual and they haven't spent enough time in it to know the consequences. Like the person who said death to the shippers and then they had to lock their account. It's like, what the fuck did you think would happen? Saying death to shippers on the fucking shipping website?
00:55:02
Speaker
And I think that also goes back to like this other weird like microgenerational split thing of like, Younger people genuinely don't think it's a problem to, like, send death threats online.
00:55:14
Speaker
Because they're like, it's not a serious death threat. I'm just, like, saying it. And it's like, no, it's a death threat. That's what that means. That's actually, you are wishing death upon people. that isn't logical.
00:55:28
Speaker
and of course, you don't have the upper hand because you said death to anyone, like to everybody basically. Yeah. Like want to kill people. Like that, like that's, those the words that you said you kind of have to say hi then.
00:55:41
Speaker
Yeah. And yeah, and it's like, so as much as I do want to push back against this idea that like this influx of normies is like a new problem or like a particularly like 2020s like Gen Z problem, people who don't know the etiquette and and i haven't been immersed in a community for long enough to know how to fucking act is a problem. Yes, always. And I think that that's really what it is It becomes this problem of people being like,
00:56:10
Speaker
oh, we have to do like and such and such. like ah people like The deaths of the shippers, but also how you get people around the pit being like, oh my God, why is anyone shipping this? And it's because they like to ship. Right?
00:56:26
Speaker
Right. and this idea of like putting like certain fan practices in a hierarchy and you're only allowed to perform some of them on certain media, yeah it's impossible.
00:56:37
Speaker
You're never going be able and I, you know, I have this, this concept that I work with called movable practices, which is the idea that once a fan practice is developed in one fandom, it can be moved and transported to another fandom. And it's sort of like ah a meme, like a, pra like a, you know, like yeah an action meme.
00:56:53
Speaker
It's like the way that like people are probably making K-pop shiny K-pop photo cards of Ima de Valera, right? yeah Like that comes from one fandom and it goes somewhere else. And there's no structure that you can put up or finger that you can wag strongly enough to stop people from taking practices from one fandom space to another and applying them sort of at will because they found that it it's fun. Yeah. Like literally that's the problem is like you're trying to stop people from doing something they find fun.
00:57:24
Speaker
and Most of the time, the reason behind it is that they are like, well, this practice and this fun is essentially degenerate. And we are going to find ways to, like, people find ways to dress that up and have, like, other real issues attached to what always boils down to this way of having fun is degenerate.
00:57:49
Speaker
It is improper. Right. that That disgust reaction, right? And it's always the fucking Joanna Russ quote that I'm going to fucking pull up. you know which one I'm talking about?
00:58:00
Speaker
ah I feel like it's on my blog. I'm just going to read it out on this fucking podcast because it is the ah mission statement.
Understanding Fantasy Appeal
00:58:13
Speaker
i'm sure i've I'm sure I've seen it. Okay. ah Here it is. Joanna Russ said, and this is in a classic 1985 essay about Kirk Spock erotica, right?
00:58:25
Speaker
Yes, yes, I definitely read this. She said, I'm convinced after reading through more than 50 volumes of K slash S material that only those for whom a sexual fantasy, quote, works, that is those who are aroused by it, have a chance of telling us to what a particular set of conditions that fantasy speaks and can analyze how and why it works and for whom.
00:58:47
Speaker
Right? Sexual fantasy that doesn't arouse is boring, funny, or repellent, and unsympathetic outsiders trying to decode these fantasies or any others will make all sorts of mistakes.
00:59:00
Speaker
So that's the Joanna Russ quote. She wrote that in the fucking 1980s and it is still every day I see examples of this. this this it's a decod It's a coding issue, right? it's a coding and decoding issue that has to do with the most personal thing, which is erotic fantasy.
00:59:19
Speaker
And because fandom is essentially, i wouldn't say for everybody, but the kind of fandom that we live and work and play in is more or less an erotic subculture. This is...
00:59:30
Speaker
Every single day there's stuff going on that fits this. Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, i think it's also like, it's this and then it's, there's when it also like comes to like the RPF world, there's also this layer of like, not only is it like, do these, do the fantasies appeal to you, but like the,
00:59:50
Speaker
the act of what to people who don't like know the term RPF, the act of gossip, the bonding over gossip, the tantalizing, the titillation of gossip, which is what RPF essentially is, um, comes from the idea that like, maybe it is arousing, maybe it's funny in some cases, but like, it's what's compelling about it is that like you've find it compelling. Not that you're like, oh, this is, I'm interested in this for the this specific reasons.
01:00:22
Speaker
Right. Like, not to be like a fucking Evo psych freak, but like humans love gossip yeah and they love true crime and they love reality TV and they love celebrity rumors and RPF and, you know, shipping in general to some extent.
01:00:38
Speaker
This act of imaginative, communal imaginative play about the sex and romance lives of real or fake people that you do not know is extremely psycho like deeply naturally psychologically compelling absolutely and i think also just like from an anthropological perspective too like there are oh like you see it just in anthropology itself as a science that like um Whenever, like, so much of anthropology then became so fixated on the differing sexual practices around the world, different forms of gender and sex, different marriages, different ways that, like, people were allowed to be because, like, that, like, goes back to that root of being like, well, wait, this isn't what arouses me.
01:01:24
Speaker
So what then? And then you kind of come back to, like, throughout the 20th century when anthropologists started being like, well, wait, let's look at ourselves, being like, well, this actually, a lot of the reactions... are extremely illustrative of the like culture or society that like session that this German or this American anthropologist came from that. Like, it really says so much more about you than it does about yeah people.
01:01:46
Speaker
says more about friends, fucking Boaz or whatever. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. and And that is why think, honestly, I love talking about fandom, especially the parts that I am not part of or can't relate to.
01:02:00
Speaker
Because that, yeah, it's another subset of gossip of like, I love Preztwit because it's sort of like what I do, but not. Exactly. Right. And i and i I can see myself reflected in those people, but also they're quite foreign.
01:02:16
Speaker
And so I want to- have left some supportive comments on my on my fix that are completely unrelated to them. And i I went and read one of their fix as well and was like, wow, have no idea what's going on here. But like you are cooking. Yeah.
01:02:28
Speaker
Yes. I mean, there's something beautiful. And I think that people in fandom generally could stand to have more of an anthropological approach yeah stand to be more generous and allow for the differences in practice and the difference in approaches between different fandom subgroups because what you find is when people...
01:02:45
Speaker
You know, I don't know. This is not like an anthropology word that's probably like 100 years out of date. When people get tribalistic within fandom and they start infighting and being like, well, that's the wrong way to do this. I'm like, you're all we're all fucking freaks.
01:02:56
Speaker
We're all freaking talking about doing whatever. There's no like right or wrong way. And it's like you come also to things where it's like it comes down to like people having literally this like linguistic difference around what they mean by shipping.
01:03:08
Speaker
Um, too, because like... Because the word, the words meaning changes, first of all. Yeah. Because it's been, what, 30 years since that word entered sort of common parlance in fandom? Yeah. And there's, it's a generational thing.
01:03:20
Speaker
And it's also the the way that fans interact with creators has super... Oh, yeah. Has changed a ton. That's another episode. um and so, yeah, you have these sort of semantic divides between subgroups of fandom ah through which...
01:03:35
Speaker
misunderstandings and disagreement can erupt. And yeah I'm not saying that fandom like, you know should be centralized, but that's why something like AO3 is really important. Because it's a place where, at least the transformative side of, like, it's how, like, the Minecraft kitties get introduced to the idea of the Organization for Transformative Works and fandom's long history. Because they're interfacing with a platform that but was built by those people.
01:04:00
Speaker
Exactly. And, and they like, when you see things that also, like, it's also how you get things to come from, like Just, yeah, just things from like when you are coming in from like having seen TikTok edit, having seen something else and you click on the hashtag to go somewhere else, then you click on the link in someone's bio, then you see their fan art on somewhere, then you see that someone made it thick and then you go in there and then you're part the fandom and then you're like continuing to engage.
01:04:28
Speaker
on Yeah, it really is this like, we do kind of have to keep having
01:04:37
Speaker
an archive of our own to return to. We do. And like AO3 is I think gonna be increasingly more important as an example of continuity,
AO3's Role in Fandom History
01:04:45
Speaker
right? the The women, the adult women that started AO3 came from a tradition of what's called media fandom, which is the branch of fandom that emerged in the 1960s with Star Trek, that unlike mainstream science fiction fandom, which started in the 1930s, media fandom was mainly women and focused on relationships and characters.
01:05:05
Speaker
So through AO3, and this is, you know despite how big fandom is and how fan everything is fandom now, yeah despite fandom having, like, eaten the fucking world, Archive of Our Own is almost, like, one or the only example of ah something that connects fans today two fans of 100 fucking years ago who hosted the first science fiction convention yeah in Philadelphia with, like, 10, you know, teenage boys, right?
01:05:31
Speaker
That is our connection. And it's it becomes increasingly important to I'll say it, support the continued existence of the Archive of rome Because without that continuity, fandom can so easily lose its identity and being co-opted by corporations, by commercial media and all that stuff.
01:05:48
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. Now I'm getting super earnest, so we need to shut this
Embracing Cringe in Fandom Communities
01:05:52
Speaker
down. Yeah. No, I know. was like, oh, no. I literally was about to be like, oh, my God. Like, ugh, the marvelization of movies. Oh, my God. Yeah. don't know.
01:06:01
Speaker
Um, it's no, like, don't be cringe. Don't wear a cape to school. No, please wear a cape to school. Please wear a cape to school. Uh, like I definitely wore homestuck horns to school on Halloween.
01:06:14
Speaker
Yep. On Halloween only. And other people were doing it. So one of the worst days of my life was when I went like full Jesse Pinkman cosplay on Halloween. And my friend who was supposed to be Walter White didn't dress up as Walter White.
01:06:26
Speaker
Oh, He was like, i just I forgot that I had to like go to something after school today. And I was like, I should kill you. I should kill you. I have a beard on my face.
01:06:38
Speaker
um I privated all my photos on my Facebook of my Homestuck cosplay, but like maybe I will... put them in the show notes because it's really important. And you know, if there are people entering fandom as 20 something adults that weren't cringe in high school, that's okay. As long as they are open to becoming cringe later. Yeah. You have to accept like, you have to be like, wow, I wasn't able to be cringe in high school, but now I accept the things that I did. Like there are also a lot of other shit you probably didn't like about yourself in high school.
01:07:08
Speaker
So like, hopefully you've been working on that. Yeah. You can start accept the more cringe parts. um and Anyway. Enjoy your life. ah This was a great first episode of the Fandom News Network.
01:07:23
Speaker
And if you like what we do, you like what we did ah let us know and maybe we'll do more of it. And we'll talk about all the things that in this episode we said that's another episode about. so this has been the Fandom News Network pilot episode. I'm Allegra Rosenberg.
01:07:41
Speaker
And I'm Marble Whips. And we might see you next time.