Fansplaining: A Hundred Thousand Worlds
| Podcast Episode | |
|---|---|
| Fansplaining | |
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| Episode Title: | Fansplaining: A Hundred Thousand Worlds |
| Length: | 1:08:27 |
| Featured: | Bob Proehl |
| Date: | October 19, 2016 |
| External Links: | Episode at Fansplaining.com |
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Fansplaining: A Hundred Thousand Worlds is a podcast by Flourish Klink and Elizabeth Minkel.
For others in the series, see Fansplaining
Introduction
Elizabeth and Flourish talk to Bob Proehl, the author of A Hundred Thousand Worlds, a novel about comics and cons that includes characters inspired by Gail Simone and Gillian Anderson. (!!!) They discuss “literary” vs genre fiction, gender dynamics in convention culture, and the fuzzy boundaries of RPF. In the second half, Elizabeth and Flourish discuss some initial results from the Fansplaining Fic Preferences Survey, in which more than 7,500 respondents weighed in on their favorite and least favorite fanfiction tropes.
Links
- Episode, show notes, and transcript: 34: A Hundred Thousand Worlds, Archived version
- Tumblr Promotional Post, Archived version
Topics Discussed
- Initial results of the Fansplaining Fic Preferences Survey
- Challenging the popular notion of "geek culture" and what it means to be geeky
- Why A Hundred Thousand Worlds is written from the perspective of a woman
- Writing fandom and fannishness into literary works
Excerpts
ELM: OK, great, but the actual reason we titled is because we’re going to be talking to a writer, Bob Proehl, who wrote a novel called One Hundred Thousand Worlds, about…well, it’s about a bunch of things, but it’s about fandom-y things, so we wanted to have him on. We should probably talk about that, because I bet a lot of our listeners are going to not have read it, and they should read it.
FK: They should definitely read it. So it’s a book based on fan conventions, comic book-y conventions, but like New York Comic-Con style convention, Emerald City Comic Con, San Diego Comic-Con, and it follows —
ELM: Or smaller cons than that.
FK: That’s true, there are big ones and also small ones in the story, because it’s about a bunch of people who are all doing the same con circuit and they all have different perspectives on the con. So there are a couple of people who write and draw comic books, and there’s also an actress who’s from a cult television series. She’s a version of—I shouldn’t say she’s a version of Gillian Anderson, she’s clearly inspired by Gillian Anderson, except in this world she also has a child and she hasn’t worked since she was on the cult TV series, so she’s road tripping back to Los Angeles bringing her kid with her through this circuit of cons.
ELM: Go back. She had the child with —
FK: David Duchovny. Or, crypto David Duchovny. Which is a delight, by the way.
BP: I was never a fan in public, you know. I was never beaten up or hazed, or publicly shamed about it. Public fandom wasn’t part of the type of fan that i was when I was a kid. That’s unfortunate but that doesn’t mean I’m going to shove someone in the closet for it.
ELM: Yeah, I also feel like…there’s, I mean, I’m not a boy so I had different experiences in school about things I liked, but it’s not just comic books and superheroes and stuff. Nerdy boys get bullied and you don’t see guys in Silicon Valley going like, “Wel,l I was shoved in a locker,” you know? They’ve embraced the fact that geeks have won.
FK: It was better when everyone was shoved in a locker.
ELM: But like, I think it’s awesome now that a 13-year-old can become a millionaire app developer, like, go for it. So it’s just, I think people should be proud that the subculture has become culture.
BP: Yeah, I think it’s awesome that a 13-year-old can go as a TARDIS for halloween and not get grief about it. I think fan culture is better than it’s ever been, and that’s not to say that it doesn’t have serious, serious problems, but I think it’s a better place to be. And something I wanted to do with this book was help public culture catch up. You know I see things like The Big Bang Theory and I’m like, “You guys are talking about a version of this culture that probably never actually existed. Even if it did, it’s probably moved on, and it’s not accurate if it ever was.”
ELM: ...The question is, I have read a bunch of books about fandom or fans, and most of them have been YA, or YA romance, mostly written by fangirls, fanwomen. And a lot of them I’ve kind of had this feeling in the back of my mind that fan things aren’t very good subjects for very good novels, and I think it’s more on those novels than fan subjects. But I’m wondering if you have feelings about this, because it’s a tricky thing to write about, it’s this big subculture and I think there’s just this big desire to explain it, because you don’t have to sit around explaining the dynamics of sports fandom when you’re writing a sports novel. I don’t know, maybe you do.
...
BP: Yeah, I think there was a real desire on my part to make it relatable. I wanted to get across to people that I don’t care how you feel about Spider-Man, but please understand that I get excited about Spider-Man is not fundamentally different from the way that you are really excited about the Mets, is not fundamentally different from the fact that you are a huge Belle and Sebastian fan, or an enthusiastic knitter. My feeling is that like, I’m really excited when people are excited about stuff, and for me, where I go with that is fandom. And it hasn’t always been that way. It used to be more about going to see bands, and it’s that same kind of thing, it’s this level of enthusiasm and engagement with some part of the world that’s not fundamentally or objectively important, but can be hugely important to you, and it’s a form of your best self when you are that way, when you’re able to just be really excited or really enthusiastic about something. It’s not a space that day to day life necessarily provides for us. Most of us don’t go in to work like, “I’m so stoked to be here! I’m totally cosplaying administrative assistant today.”