Fansplaining

In Episode 141, Elizabeth and Flourish end a very unusual year in a very ordinary way: revisiting big fandom trends from the past 12 months. What happened in 2020? (What didn’t happen in 2020?) Topics covered include J. K. Rowling’s continued...

In Episode 140, Flourish and Elizabeth interview Miranda Ruth Larsen, a media studies scholar who focuses on K-pop, anime, and horror. They dig into the 2020 spotlight on K-pop in Anglophone spaces, the concept of “affective hoarding,” and her...

In Episode 139, “The ‘Q’ is for ‘Queerbaiting,’” Elizabeth and Flourish dig into the thorny concept of “queerbaiting”—when creators tease at queer relationships in their shows and films but fail to follow through. Topics covered...

Nearing the end of a very strange year, Flourish and Elizabeth sit down with fandom stats whiz Destination Toast to dig into recent fanfiction trends on the Archive of Our Own. Topics covered include the massive uptick in fic production (that predated...

In Episode 137, Flourish and Elizabeth talk tropes: in fanfiction, outside of fanfiction, the places those ideas intersect—and where they don’t. Topics covered include untangling tropes from themes, formats, and set-ups in fic, how romance and YA...

In Episode 136, Flourish and Elizabeth talk about the messy intersections of politics and fandom, and the narratives we create around political figures and actions. Topics discussed include why journalists keep using fandom terms they don’t...

In the second half of “Race and Fandom Revisited,” fans of color continue to speak about their experiences—and Elizabeth and Flourish talk with another white fan (and fan scholar) about how whiteness operates in fandom spaces. Featuring...

Four years after the original “Race and Fandom” double episode, Flourish and Elizabeth return to the topic with a mix of old contributors and new voices. In the first installment, they interview Sunny Liu and Paracelsus Caspari, and they hear...

In Episode 134, “Ask Fansplaining Anything: Part 8,” Elizabeth and Flourish once again open up the mailbag and answer listener questions. Topics covered include sports RPF, the ethics of sporking, adaptations of fan-favorite properties, how to...

In Episode 133, Elizabeth and Flourish talk directly about a topic that creeps into a lot of Fansplaining discussions: slash fic and the people who write it. They walk through the history of “slash fandom” and the ways that early narratives about...