Fansplaining: Why Wasn't I Consulted?!
| Podcast Episode | |
|---|---|
| Fansplaining | |
| First Episode · Episode #1 · Next Episode | |
| Episode Title: | Fansplaining: Why Wasn't I Consulted?! |
| Length: | |
| Featured: | |
| Date: | July 29, 2015 |
| External Links: | |
Click here for related articles on Fanlore. | |
Why Wasn't I Consulted?! is the inaugural episode of the Fansplaining podcast series by Flourish Klink and Elizabeth Minkel, aired on July 29, 2015.
For subsequent episodes in the series, see Fansplaining (podcast).
Links
- Episode, Transcript, and Notes at Fansplaining website: Fansplaining Episode 1: "Why wasn't I consulted?!", Archived version
- Podfic: Fansplaining Episode 1: Podcast, Archived version
- Transcript: Fansplaining Episode 1: Transcript (post deleted, archived), Archived version
- Interview Notes: Fansplaining Episode 1: Notes (post deleted, archived), Archived version
Topics Discussed
- the recent Comic Con panel they were on; the podcast contains audio clips from that panel and Minkel and Klink's commentary about them
- their fannish history
- fandom and profit
- name smushing and history
- why this podcast was titled: "Why wasn't I consulted?"
- the good old Harry Potter days
- Fifty Shades of Grey
Introduction
So this is our first-ever episode. Maybe we should talk about why we decided to do this. It was your idea, Flourish, so maybe you should talk about it.
FK: So we were on a panel at Comic Con together—San Diego Comic Con—and it was a really big panel. There were a lot of great people on it. But none of us really got a chance to talk very much about what we were there to talk about. We each just sort of got a soundbyte.
So after the panel we were talking in the hallway and I was like, ‘Dude! We should have a podcast! And talk to each of the people who were on this panel, and lots of other people.’
ELM: Exactly. And the one thing that we were saying, too, is that we felt like we were having a lot of different conversations on this panel, but Flourish and I were having the same conversation. And so I think that’s a good start for having these conversations, coming from the same perspective, but talking to people from different perspectives.
FK: I think that we’re both pretty invested in communicating about fandom, but also not changing fandom, letting fandom be fandom…hey West Wing.
ELM: But also acknowledging that, like, lots of things are changing and have changed.
FK: Right! Because nothing’s static, and we’ve both been around long enough—I mean, I think that I was reading my first fanfics in ’96 or ’97, so we’ve both been around long enough to see some real big changes.
Excerpts
FK: So I think fandom has become more acceptable because…it has become more socially acceptable because of money.
ELM: That’s so hard, though, because I just feel like…I personally don’t see a huge…well, there could be exceptions, I’m not going to say carte blanche, like, every fanfic should become a novel. I don’t think… A) I think as a literary critic and as a student of English, like, I don’t believe that many fanfiction stories structurally should be novels. Or I think tons and tons of them, millions of them, don’t serve the same purpose as, you know. And that’s fine. I mean, I’m not—when I go around looking for, like, fake boyfriend stories, that’s totally different than what I’m doing when I pick a novel up. That doesn’t mean they’re not amazing, you know?
FK: Completely! Well and that’s the other piece of this, right? I think that one of the ways that fanfiction has become acceptable is because there’s this idea that every fanfic should be a novel, or many fanfics could be a novel, or let’s have Wattpad help connect your fanfic with somebody in Hollywood. And I don’t think that that’s actually—I agree with you.
I mean, in my job, I do not option fanfics. That’s not a thing that I do. I’m not saying that it will never happen, but I do not read fanfic thinking, ‘Hmm, which of these people am I going to, like, pull out of here and turn into 50 Shades of Grey next?’
ELM: Yeah, and even from the far, high intellectual end of the spectrum: I’m friends with Anne Jamison, and I think you are, too, who wrote a book about fanfiction, and she talks about this a lot, too, the fact that a lot of fanfic is networked texts, and the way they work together in a system, and you know, it’s not just about the story and plucking them out and turning them in…because a lot of it doesn’t work without that context, the system of tropes, the history, where these stories come from, how they link together.
FK: Completely. And it can be…I usually don’t like it when people compare fanfic to Ulysses, because I think it’s true in certain ways and really not true in others, but one way in which I think they are related is, man, you know, you read Finnegans Wake, you get really pissed off at the thunderwords, because you don’t know what they are, and that’s the reaction people who have never read much fanfiction before have to a lot of the tropes in fanfiction. They’re like, ‘What is this Mpreg, that’s like a thunderword. I don’t get it.’ Like, not just don’t get it in terms of what male pregnancy is, but more like don’t get it in terms of what it means culturally within fandom.
ELM: You’re upstaging me with a literary reference, so I can’t connect to you because I haven’t read that.
FK: Yeah, but I mixed up Ulysses and Finnegans Wake, so, you know, I look very non-erudite. Don’t read Finnegans Wake. You’ll get to the thunderwords and be like, ‘What the fuck??’
FK: I just came from VidCon, where I was on a panel talking about developing shows, and when you think about things in terms of 50 Shades of Grey, let’s buy it and repackage it and sell it, you’re thinking in terms of, ‘let’s make money on this one book,’ right? Whereas if you’re somebody like an agent looking for a talent, you’re looking at them and going, ‘OK, you aren’t there yet, but how are we going to nurture you so you ultimately become really amazing. And I think that that’s one of the things right now in the publishing world, looking at fandom, is they see it as a cash cow, to some degree, or as a way to find, ‘Oh, we didn’t have to do anything, and these stories just rose to the top.’ Right?
ELM: Yeah. Oh, and these billion readers will be…a billion book buyers? Probably not. This is the thing that’s also not proven, right? I mean, 50 Shades of Grey is really the only one where you had huge read numbers that translated then into huge sales numbers. And it’s not even that black and white. A lot of the book sales came from people who never knew it was fanfiction.
FK: I find [IP/intellectual property] a really useful term, which is why I use it even when I’m not talking to corporate people.
ELM: It’s interesting because it’s just, it sounds cold and legal to me. And if I thought about Sherlock Holmes, I wouldn’t think, “Oh, that’s some intellectual property right there.” I’d think, “he’s an idea, he’s a man, he’s a legacy, a literary legend,” you know, it just sucks kind of the mystique about these big broad old universes that we kind of turn over and retell, which I find very interesting–I know people seem to be sort of weary of the fact that we’re just recycling the same characters, but I think it’s just more interpretations, which is exciting. But using legal language on it is kind of a bummer, but I also understand why it exists.
FK: Yeah, it’s a bummer, but on the other hand, so I’ve been really into Hannibal, and whenever I’m watching Hannibal, whenever anybody’s watching Hannibal, it’s inescapable to think of the realities of that IP and who owns what copyright. Because the reason there’s no Clarice Starling on Hannibal is because they’re not allowed to have her. So she’s been parceled out into the storylines over the course of –I mean, you’re sitting there going “oh, now Will is more like Clarice! Now Alanna is more like Clarice!” Right? I mean, once it’s been seen it can’t be unseen.
FK: But it is actually kind of interesting, right, because when people in the literary world talk about fanfic–
ELM: Did you just, like, rustle your fingers to gesture to the literary world?
FK: The literary world!
ELM: I’m gonna be offended on behalf of… no, that’s fine, go for it.
FK: When people in literature talk about fandom, fanfic, they use terms like “the death of the author” and it’s really all about separating out from a romantic idea of having a story and getting lost in the story and all, you know? It’s so funny cause I feel like that’s completely the opposite of a lot of fans’ experiences, and yet that’s what fandom represents to them because of the way fans play with stories and rewrite them.
ELM: But yeah, we can’t have it both ways. There’s an interesting clip, I’m not sure if I pulled it out of the panel, but someone said something about how there is a spotlight now and you can’t get upset because it’s–you’re gonna get upset, because it’s shining on some things and you might say, “oh, that’s not what I know. Why isn’t it shining on me? But then I don’t want it to shine on me…!” You know. But you’re gonna be resentful that it’s shining on other people and things you’re not familiar with. It’s hard! And I always think that part of what it comes down to is that I feel like we get really hung up about who gets that spotlight. Because this is the stuff that we love. And we’re like–you know, I think even some of the wank that comes from BNFs [Big Name Fans] and people arguing about whose opinion is the loudest, it’s like, “no, I love this the most!”
ELM: Going back to the fandom vs. fandoms thing... there isn’t one big fandom. The person who’s defining fandom inherently gets to shape the narrative. I think that was one of the tensions on this panel, you know, between, whether it was between the people on the panel or the audience and the people on the panel. You talk to people coming from these big corporate platforms…
FK: Of course.
ELM: Even Betsy coming from the OTW or the AO3 in general, the people who compile an encyclopedia are the people who determine, you know, Wikipedia’s written by men, right, and so it inherently has a bias…
FK: Not SuperWiki!
ELM: Exactly.
FK: Yeah, but I see what you’re saying is that we’re in a situation where everybody has their own platform, and so nobody really wants to be spoken for by somebody, no matter how great that somebody might be. There’s always something that you can disagree with and do disagree with.
ELM: ["Why wasn't I consulted?"]: And that’s literally, that’s exactly it. And you think that every time someone writes something about fandom, because it’s like, “Oh, I’m an expert in this. Why didn’t they ask me?” And I think that’s just, that’s the inherent reaction. And I have to wonder if it’s something, something about the web that really lends itself to that. Because when I watch TV and people are talking about something I know about, I mean yeah, I probably actually get annoyed at them too. There’s something about the democratization of the internet where I’m like “I coulda said that LOUDER!”