Fansplaining

In the newest installment of the long-running "Ask Fansplaining Anything" series, Flourish and Elizabeth tackle a fresh batch of listener comments and questions. Topics discussed include fic that "breaches containment," AI and fanworks, differing norms around the AO3's "Major Character Death" tag, and what to do when Someone Is Wrong On the Internet.

As they do every December, Elizabeth and Flourish revisit the previous year's fandom retrospective, and then turn to the biggest fan culture stories and trends in 2023. Topics discussed include the mainstreaming of purity culture, the fracturing of social media platforms, the shortening of fandom life cycles, and, of course, the big two: the Hollywood strikes and the rise of AI.

In Episode 212, "Fandom Truthiness," Elizabeth and Flourish break down the recent pair of (GREAT) video essays on James Somerton, a YouTuber known for queer (and often fandom-related) media analysis who's been wholesale lifting passages from others' articles and books—while playing fast and loose with the truth in his original writing. Somerton himself fed plenty of falsehoods into the fannish ecosystem, but how much of this is about a pattern of, to borrow Stephen Colbert's phrase, fandom "truthiness," which we can see far beyond a single bad actor? Plus: they read and respond to a pair of letters about Episode 210: "The RPF Tipping Point."

In Episode 211, "The Copyright Conundrum," Flourish and Elizabeth welcome prolific fic writer and copyright expert EarlGreyTea68 back to the podcast to discuss her new Fansplaining article, "How U.S. Copyright Law Fails Fan Creators." After giving a little primer on copyright, trademark, fair use, and how they all intersect with fandom, EGT discusses the ways current U.S. intellectual property law is unequipped to deal with non-monetized creativity—and how the system fails everyone but the big publishers and studios. They also discuss copyright and AI, and whether copyright claims have the potential to take down LLMs and AI tools.

And an exciting note: this episode has a sponsor!! Ellipsus is a new collaborative writing tool that lets you and your co-writers/editors/betas create different drafts and merge them together. They are very anti-generative AI, and they reached out to us because they have roots in fic fandom. Ellipsus is currently in closed beta, but if you use our SPECIAL LINK, you'll go to the top of the list. We've really enjoyed testing it out—and we hope this can supplant Google Docs (ugh) in our fic writing.

On Episode 210, "The RPF Tipping Point," Elizabeth and Flourish welcome back Grace and the Fever author Zan Romanoff to talk about her new podcast, On the Bleachers, on Taylor Swift, football player Travis Kelce, and the pop-culture firestorm their relationship (???) has sparked. Topics discussed include the backlash against the ripped-from-the-headlines romance novel Roughing the Princess, the fuzziness between RPF, biopics, celebrity profiles, and social-media narratives, and how Zan—who's written plain old RPF in addition to meta fiction about celebrities and fans—thinks about her own work in light of these thorny boundaries.

In the newest (17th!) installment of the "Ask Fansplaining Anything" series, Flourish and Elizabeth read a mix of responses to recent episodes and fresh queries. Topics discussed include communal versus solitary fandom, how the "BNF" role shifts when global fandoms rely on fan translations, asexuality and aromanticism in fic, their (EXTREMELY MIXED) experiences running surveys, and, importantly, AMC's Interview with the Vampire.

In Episode 208, "What Fans Owe Each Other," Flourish and Elizabeth share a letter from longtime friend-of-the-pod Destination Toast about whether we can make fandom culture kinder and more nuanced (spoiler: they take a far more pessimistic stance than Toast!). Topics discussed include good old-fashioned "netiquette," whether we're at the end of big social media, the dangers of toxic positivity, and systemic versus individual change. They also share and respond to a pair of listener comments on the recent "Fanfluencers" episode, and the way fans' comments online connect back to the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes.

In Episode 207, "Paul Cornell," Flourish and Elizabeth talk to the eponymous writer (of a bazillion different things) (seriously, look at his Wikipedia) about his journey from fan to pro—and about continuing to be a deeply fannish pro. Topics discussed include how his Doctor Who fanfiction became both an official novel and a pair of episodes on the show, the enormous flurry of creative fandom activity in the 15 years Doctor Who wasn't on TV, depicting fans in a loving way while writing on Elementary, and, among his many current projects, Con & On, a comic that chronicles the changes over the years at a totally 100% fictional large comic-book convention in Southern California.

Woobies, poor little meow meows, anti-heroes, and problematic faves: in Episode 206, "Bad Fans Revisited," Flourish and Elizabeth use a listener voicemail on investment in morally dubious fictional characters to revisit a perennial hot topic in fandom. Specifics discussed include the heightened language of performative tags, blurred lines between fiction and reality, what a dark AU can offer that a dark original story might not, and yes, Lestat de Lioncourt. Plus: Flourish lets you know how you, too, can become a Certified Villain Fucker (there's a test!).

In Episode 205, "Fanfluencers," Flourish and Elizabeth use a listener voicemail on fan screenings for Red, White & Royal Blue to dive into a broader conversation about influencers, fandom, and the Hollywood strikes. Marketers today know more about fans than they ever have before, and more types of properties are both targeting and featuring fans in their promotional campaigns. How does that sit within the broader entertainment ecosystem—and what does it mean for fan communities?