Fansplaining

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

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

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

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

In Episode 93, "User-Generated Content," Elizabeth and Flourish tackle the thorny intersections between making stuff you love and getting paid. They start with the recent round of layoffs at BuzzFeed—including the revelation that a good portion of their traffic comes from uncompensated "community" members—and segue into a conversation about the uncompensated things fans enjoy doing, and the complicated ways that the tech, media, and entertainment industries profit off fans' work. What is exploitative—and what is just fans having fun?

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

In Episode 91, "Casey Fiesler," Flourish and Elizabeth welcome the information science professor back onto the podcast to discuss her research, especially her study on the way transformative fandom migrates across platforms. Topics covered include feminist HCI, if you can truly get a "representative" sample of fans for a survey, privacy concerns as fandom comes under more scrutiny from researchers, and what Tumblr could have done—and still could do—better regarding the Great Porn Crackdown of 2018.

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

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

In Episode 88, Flourish and Elizabeth interview Kenyatta Cheese, a founder of Know Your Meme and currently of Everybody At Once, the company behind the social media presences of Doctor Who, Orphan Black, and other shows. They discuss EA1's philosophies of community and fandom, the way the entertainment industry understands fan culture, and how official accounts navigate fannish spaces—plus a good ol' critique of 20th-century Marxist frameworks.