Fansplaining

Our latest is live! ⚔️ Amid danmei's rapid global rise, @kalaichik.bsky.social reports on the pressures both fan and pro translators are facing, featuring extensive interviews from translators and other experts in the space. Read or listen to an audio version:

We're in the final days of our six-month anniversary sale: get 50% off subscriptions for the first six months. 🥳 (That includes our higher Benefactor tier as well as our standard Supporter—get access to our special podcast episodes for cheaper than the price of a regular subscription!)

Our six-month anniversary sale (50% off your first six months!) continues for one more week, and we've unlocked another piece from our archives to celebrate: Maria Temming's deep dive into the world of conlang speakers, including Klingon, High Valyrian, Dothraki, Elvish, and Na’vi. Read or listen:

Manga translator Jacqueline Fung, @kalaichik.bsky.social writes, said translating "can be an isolating experience. Some translators want to have a social presence to interact with fandom and share their love for a piece of fiction. But now, intense fan reactions have made them think twice."

Through the rest of the month, we're unlocking pieces from the archives in conjunction with our six-month anniversary sale! Next up: @mldavies.bsky.social on Philip Pullman's Book of Dust trilogy, which brings His Dark Material's Lyra into adulthood. Read or listen to an audio version:

In our latest, @kalaichik.bsky.social reports on danmei's international fandom: "Many fans have forgotten that fan translators, some of whom are now the pro translators they’re harassing, spent time and money to spread awareness of danmei to bring it to English-speaking regions in the first place."

This week's @fansplaining.bsky.social feature is a thorny, fascinating one: @kalaichik.bsky.social reports on the complicated tensions within global danmei fandom, where domestic threats to writers make the stakes feel higher for international fans—and translators wind up on the front lines:

I'm so happy about this piece! Kalai Chik reported the fuck out of this—she spoke so many translators, including Seven Seas staff, and wrote a piece that sheds a lot of light on conflicts in danmei fandom that I've been following for a while without understanding much about.

if you missed this when it ran, the nice folks at fansplaining have dropped the paywall on it as part of their fall promotion! Check it out

To celebrate our six-month anniversary sale (50% off subscriptions for the first six months!), we're putting some of our archival pieces in front of the paywall. This week, we're staring off with @jmrivera.bsky.social's beautiful meditation on comics, storytelling, and our current political moment:

Two things I did not get to shill in this piece: my favorite fic from 1998 which was called Pemberley, Inc. and featured Lizzy as a jazz lounge singer and Darcy as a billionaire CEO; my favorite current JAFF writer, Grace Gibson, who writes lively canon-based books! fansplaining.com/pride-and-pr...

One of the delights of this piece was getting to talk to two OG JAFF novelists, Reynolds and Pamela Aidan, that I first read on the Republic of Pemberley and the Derbyshire Writers Guild back in 1998. It was such a throwback. And they're both still publishing JAFF novels regularly for loyal readers.

To celebrate our six-month anniversary, we're unlocking a few fantastic pieces from our archives. First up, @soila.bsky.social unpacks—and proposes breaking down—English's dominance in fanfic spaces. Read the piece, then take advantage of our sale! 50% off subscriptions for the first six months:

“People feel incredible ownership over Jane Austen. Always have, always will,” longtime JAFF author Abigail Reynolds told @bookshop.bsky.social in our latest feature. “People have very fixed ideas of what Jane Austen is and what Jane Austen isn’t, and get very, very angry.”

For Fansplaining I wrote about Jane Austen fic, aka JAFF, and how a moderating decision 30 years ago set the tone for an entire fan culture of genre-shaming and gatekeeping around content. Also don't forget Fansplaining is currently having a six-month sale with 50% off! Subscribe, read, and share!

Folks who look at fic often treat the big archives as wholly representative, but there are so many subcultures within our subculture. @bookshop.bsky.social reports a fascinating story about rigid content moderation, self-publishing, and what happens when the wide-open spaces of fic are constrained:

Our latest is live! 🪭 Ahead of the new S&S and P&P adaptations, @bookshop.bsky.social dives into the world of JAFF, aka Jane Austen Fanfic. Decades-old limits on content continue to define what gets written and read, even as Amazon publishing has utterly taken over the fic fandom. Read or listen:

"The fourth wall has been shattered, and the character is being sold to me now as a literal skin, an empty shell for me to purchase and customize," @sam.robotsfightingdinosaurs.com writes. "Something important dies in that process, no matter how much fun you’re having with your new toys."

If you missed the Pokémon fangame piece, btw, it's here!

I was already excited to do a swap with @aftermath.site (they republished our recent feature on Pokémon fangames by @pokachee.bsky.social), and especially excited that we landed on this brilliant piece, which digs into a topic I find fascinating despite not knowing much about Fortnite itself!

Have you complained about bad fandom journalism in a mainstream outlet in recent months? Do you want to help fund the reporting of people who actually know what they're talking about for the low, low price of $3.50 per month?

We're celebrating our six-month anniversary with a big sale: 50% subscriptions for the first six months. We've published so much incredible work since our launch (including a piece so good that the New York Times borrowed from it without credit 😉). Please help us publish more in the months to come!

Recaps! Reported pieces! Personal essays! Smart writing about fandom, by folks who've been in the trenches for decades.

At @fansplaining.bsky.social we're celebrating our six-month-versary by giving you 50% off for the next six months! We've also made all of @gavia.bsky.social's Lanterns recaps free to read, so once you've caught up on those, take a look at all of our other articles and sign up! Join us! 🎉

I can't believe how much incredible writing we've published in our first six months! 🤩 To celebrate, we're having a BIG SALE through the rest of October: 50% off your first six months. If you've been thinking about subscribing, now is the time!!

This month, we're celebrating the first six months the new and expanded Fansplaining! 🎉🎉🎉 In honor of this milestone, we're having a BIG SALE: 50% off subscriptions for your first six months at our Supporter or Benefactor tiers. If you've been thinking about becoming a subscriber, now is the time!

Headed to NYCC tomorrow? Come and see me talk about fandom with some super-smart folks at the Popcultur Marketing Summit! ✨ "Fandom Doesn't Stand Still: What changing audience behavior means when discovery, identity and community cross every boundary." 11:15 AM, River Pavilion, Stage 2:

Gav's analysis of this show within broader corporate machinations is so smart. I get exceedingly frustrated when critics assess franchise media with a patronizing "this kind of thing will never be meaningful so it's great for what it is." The terms of 'success' might differ, but they still...exist.

I also have a lot of thoughts on how Lanterns plays into the dire trajectory of Warner Bros. under David Zaslav (and now Paramount), with HBO diluting its prestige drama reputation with a slew of creatively inert franchise spinoffs.

My final Lanterns recap is here! A solid ending that does right by John Stewart... but definitely doesn't beat the Surf Dracula allegations. (All of my Lanterns recaps are now available to FREE subscribers!)

As @gavia.bsky.social writes her analysis of the Lanterns finale (no, HBO did not allow critics to see it in advance 🥲) it's the perfect time to catch up on recaps 1-7, which we've unlocked for free members!

hello!! who loves OPINIONS!!

Catching up on Lanterns before this weekend's finale? All of @gavia.bsky.social's recaps are now free to read (or listen to)! fansplaining.com/tag/lanterns/

Ahead of the Lanterns finale, the #1 thing I want to see is John Stewart jailbreaking the Green Lantern ring and becoming an independent superhero. I don't think the show works *without* that ending!

In our latest, @pokachee.bsky.social talks to Pokémon fangame creators like Pokémon Reborn's Amethyst Liddell about the ways that community fundamentally shapes their fanworks. Read the article or listen to an audio version: fansplaining.com/pokemon-fang...

Listen i don't know a jigglypuff from a powder puff but I learned so much from this piece! It's so clear these fans pour *so* much into these games, so of course Nintendo started DMCA-ing them because god forbid people increase the value of your brand by making cool stuff for it 💀

Pokémon fangames, like licensed projects, aren't the result of one person and the communities of volunteer developers, writers, and artists show that some people really are just in it for the love of the game.

*Love* our latest from @pokachee.bsky.social, about a type of fanwork that's massively popular but one I rarely see discussed in convos about transformative fandom. Fangames are technically interesting—literally using the source material in modding—but even more so from a community/fandom angle:

New from me: I did a deep dive and spoke to Pokemon fan game creators for @fansplaining.bsky.social. This was so hard to source, but I am humbled by the sources who took the time to talk to me about this super massive, and relatively under-examined, fandom. fansplaining.com/pokemon-fang...

Our latest is live! 💛 @pokachee.bsky.social reports on the expansive world of Pokémon fangames, talking to a host of popular game creators about the integral role their fellow fans play in inspiring and furthering the evolution of their work. Read the article or listen to an audio version:

In the penultimate episode of Lanterns, we finally spend some time in space—but as @gavia.bsky.social writes, "Everything alien is kept at arm’s length in this show." Read her critiques of Lanterns' uneasy genre balance, shying away from sci-fi, but not willing to commit to mystery or thriller: