In Episode 144, “Writing Women,” Elizabeth and Flourish celebrate Femslash February by talking to breathedout, a longtime f/f fic and meta writer. They discuss her route into fandom through queer female erotica, fandom’s longstanding biases towards male bodies, what types of characters get to be “default” vs “political,” and the role desire can play in reading and writing.

In Episode 143, “Ask Fansplaining Anything: Part 9,” Elizabeth and Flourish read a fresh batch of listener letters. Topics covered include age and fandom, fanfics of fanfics, pop culture’s role in protest movements, and a trio of letters about trans, nonbinary, and asexual exclusion in fan spaces.

In Episode 142, “Copyright Brainworms,” Elizabeth and Flourish try to get at the diseased intersection of creativity and the law in the U.S.: our broken copyright system. Spurred by conversation around The Great Gatsby coming out of copyright, topics covered include transformative collaboration on TikTok, the Ratatouille musical, fannish feelings amongst pro creators, and what strange impulse leads people to describe God as the “copyright owner” of the universe.

In Episode 141, Elizabeth and Flourish end a very unusual year in a very ordinary way: revisiting big fandom trends from the past 12 months. What happened in 2020? (What didn’t happen in 2020?) Topics covered include J. K. Rowling’s continued radicalization, the explosion of Anglophone interest in both K-pop and Chinese dramas, and the moments when the waves of fan expectation crashed against the rocky shores of reality. And they wrap up with an analysis of the ways that the pandemic is reshaping fandom: the entertainment industry, celebrity culture, and how fans engage with both the things they love and with each other.

In Episode 140, Flourish and Elizabeth interview Miranda Ruth Larsen, a media studies scholar who focuses on K-pop, anime, and horror. They dig into the 2020 spotlight on K-pop in Anglophone spaces, the concept of “affective hoarding,” and her essay in the anthology Fandom, Now in Color, on her experiences as a multiracial American researcher in Japan. They also revisit the last episode’s conversation on queerbaiting and viewer expectations, and read two listener letters on the Supernatural finale.

In Episode 139, “The ‘Q’ is for ‘Queerbaiting,’” Elizabeth and Flourish dig into the thorny concept of “queerbaiting”—when creators tease at queer relationships in their shows and films but fail to follow through. Topics covered include disconnects between creator and audience expectations, fans’ conflation of shipping and representation, and shifting attitudes and norms in television writing and marketing. Plus: they read several listener responses to the previous episode, giving context to Destination Toast’s stats on AO3 fanfic production in 2020.

Nearing the end of a very strange year, Flourish and Elizabeth sit down with fandom stats whiz Destination Toast to dig into recent fanfiction trends on the Archive of Our Own. Topics covered include the massive uptick in fic production (that predated the pandemic!), the impact of China’s AO3 ban and the rise of Chinese media in English-language fandom, which fandoms and tags are growing in popularity, and—inescapably—what’s happened with Supernatural fandom since the events of November 5th.

In Episode 137, Flourish and Elizabeth talk tropes: in fanfiction, outside of fanfiction, the places those ideas intersect—and where they don’t. Topics covered include untangling tropes from themes, formats, and set-ups in fic, how romance and YA authors have adopted the language of fic tropes and fic tags, and how tropes alter the way we search for new reading material.

In Episode 136, Flourish and Elizabeth talk about the messy intersections of politics and fandom, and the narratives we create around political figures and actions. Topics discussed include why journalists keep using fandom terms they don’t understand, political RPF vs. fantasy ideas about candidates, and invoking pop culture during political protest. They also, as a podcast, unequivocally endorse Joe Biden.

In the second half of “Race and Fandom Revisited,” fans of color continue to speak about their experiences—and Elizabeth and Flourish talk with another white fan (and fan scholar) about how whiteness operates in fandom spaces. Featuring interviews with Amanda-Rae Prescott and Dr. JSA Lowe, and clips from Stitch, Anisa Khalifa, Effy, Sam, and Phoebe Sinclair. Topics covered include deprogramming internalized racism, how the dynamics of Facebook shape fandom conversations there, and why characters of color always seem to end up as the secondary ship.