These Curious Times Interview with The Three Patch Podcast
| Interviews by Fans | |
|---|---|
| Title: | These Curious Times Interview with The Three Patch Podcast |
| Interviewer: | Curious |
| Interviewee: | Emma, Caroline and Drinkingcocoa |
| Date(s): | December 12, 2015 |
| Medium: | online |
| Fandom(s): | |
| External Links: | online here |
| Click here for related articles on Fanlore. | |
These Curious Times Interview with The Three Patch Podcast ("Focusing on the Fannish") is a 2015 interview with Emma, ("Emmagrant01") Caroline ("Ava Watson") and Drinkingcocoa.
Part of a Series
See These Curious Times Fan Interviews.
Some Topics Discussed
- the origins of the interviewees' names
- Slashcast, Snapecast
- Sherlock
- Check Please!
- much about producing, writing, and otherwise creating a podcast
- group dynamics
Excerpts
Curious: How do you choose your themes every month? What’s that process like?
Emma Grant: We probably have about ten or fifteen active people on the main staff at any one time. We have a monthly meeting where we try to plan about three or four episodes ahead. We try to always know what we’re doing up through four months from now, so sometimes we pick a theme and then we go back and go “no.” For example, last year, the episode that was going to be on June 1st was going to be “gender issues in fandom”. And then we had that huge blowup after 221B con, so we all decided not to do it. I think instead we made it something silly and cracky like “Sherlock goes on vacation.”
Curious: What is the role of the overall show producer? What do they have to take on?
Emma Grant: The episode producer role rotates, but the episode producer basically becomes the leader of the podcast for that month. They organize and run the meeting, they check at the meetings how the segments are going, and who needs support. They make sure that everything gets done to get that podcast out on time. They’re responsible for getting it posted, putting the show notes together, talking to [Fox Estacado] about artwork, making the lineup, and for going through and making sure that everything makes sense and we’re not missing a bumper somewhere. Their job is just to make sure that it happens, then they hand that to somebody else the next month so nobody gets burned out.
When I did Slashcast, I was the producer for two years and it was so hard. I was so done. But now we get to take breaks. We get to step back and have a smaller role. If you have to step out of an entire month or go on vacation, you can just come back when you’re ready. So that’s one of the things that I love about how this group is organized. There’s always somebody ready to step up and be the leader and so you can step back when you need to. I love it.
Curious: I love to talk about the Elephant in the Room segments you did after Season 3 aired. It was so impressive how you took on what some might consider controversial or divisive fandom topics in such an inclusive and mindful way. How did this series come to be?
Drinkingcocoa: That was my baby. It was very upsetting to be in the Sherlock fandom at that time, because it was so unified during the Reichenbach hiatus. Everyone’s hearts broke in more or less roughly the same way, but then after Series 3, everyone’s hearts broke in wildly different ways. People lost friends over it. It was really painful, as people couldn’t go to their normal support networks. The way that people identified with some of the issues that were explored in Series 3 were so personal, and so difficult to talk about. It was also so difficult to disagree about, because what any of those conflicts meant to any two people could be wildly different. If someone said, “I think this person was a bad person,” they don’t know that to you, that person might represent yourself.
It was so volatile and we felt that even amongst ourselves. We had to be careful with each other because something that made one person thrilled was something that someone else couldn’t even think about. So it was happening for us and it was certainly happening on tumblr for other people that we knew. So we figured if we talked about what we were going through, surely others would be able to identify at least with some of it.
A lot of what made people upset was not just the issues, but the fact that everyone was upset. Sherlock had been such a source of joy and something we had been craving and craving for so long, and now everyone was afraid to talk to each other. Or, unfortunately, not afraid, which made it even worse.
So I wanted to bring in a therapist who was a real expert at conflict resolution and getting people to learn how to talk to each other when the emotions are that riled up. There were others among us in the podcast who didn’t want an expert and wanted to just have it be amongst ourselves, so we decided to do different segments, one or possibly two with the therapist (who was actually the person who got me into Sherlock fandom) and then a bunch of other people who wanted to do it internally worked as their own group on a separate episode.
We wanted to model that we knew that whatever was going on was important, even if it was upsetting. If we could actually get through this and learn how to talk about it, if we could listen to each other we could learn so much more about other people who weren’t like us at all than if we tuned each other out. So it really seemed like the segments were worth doing.
Caroline: I’m not multi-fandom. I’m not multi-shipping. I’m here for Johnlock. I am like the bullet train into hell. I mean I’m here for canon so I can have more fandom if that makes any sense. I’m actually very agnostic about TJLC, like I’m not a true believer, I’m not gonna go with the first wave in the rapture is what I usually say. I’ll go in the second wave. I mean that’s the whole point, you can always go in the second wave. That’s what happened to me because I don’t want to rage quit out of the fandom, that’s my main thing. I don’t want to feel really entitled to having a canon ship. I feel like that’s not necessarily an unpopular opinion. I mean I’ll read all the meta and all, I support Johnlock, obviously, but the canon part of it, I’m not quite there.
I really enjoy the creativity of this fandom, I love the challenges and exchanges that are going on, I love that there is a Sherlock NANOWRIMO during November, I love that there is this Fall Fusion TV calendar that I’m part of, but I’m being delinquent on, which is where you fuse the characters on Sherlock with a pre-2000 TV show. I’m doing Remington Steele and I am not the only one doing Remington Steele. Other people are doing Magnum PI and Gargoyles the cartoon. Some people may think it’s crack but I love it, I don’t care. It’s a really creative amazing fandom and I’m here for that. I mean I’m kind of here for Moftiss too, but they can kind of do whatever they want and I’m still going to have his other thing that’s gonna make me really happy, like Gargoyles and Magnum PI and Bat!John and whatever. I’m here for the stupid, and I’m here for the smart, and I’m here for everything.