Episode 37: Mailbag Transcript
Mailbag Transcript for Episode 37
Hosts: wook77, emmagrant01, elanorofcastile, chaeche, djin7
Emma: Welcome to the mailbag segment for episode 37. I am Emmagrant and I am here with several other folks of the slashcast staff and we’re gonna talk about your comments on the last few episodes of slashcast and we’re also gonna talk about some stuff relating to this episode. So first of all we got some new comments on our Halloween episode, which was really exciting, that’s episode 35 and one of the comments was from numberthescars who said that Wook’s argument to stop using the term Gay Marriage and start using the term Marriage Equality really rang true with her and she’s not going to say anymore. So Wook you convinced somebody.
Wook: Yay. I just drives me nuts whenever I hear it especially when it’s something like a human rights campaign when they refer to gay marriage, and I’m like if you are using the language of the person that you hate you’ve already lost the debate. So yay that makes me very happy.
Emma: In the 90’s when republicans were using the term tax relief, the moment democrats started saying tax relief they had lost the battle. Because they were admitting that taxes are something you need relief from, when they say that. So gay marriage is like on the same page as that. It’s a term that the right coined to separate it from “real marriage”. Awesome argument I thought that was fantastic.
Rachel: Though I have to admit that because I’ve been playing a lot of videogames lately with a lot of teenage dudes, this is like level 2.01 for me. Im trying to get people to stop saying, you know when the other team is losing or it’s not a fun game that it’s gay
Emma: OMG I can imagine.
Rachel: I’m a whole echelon lower on the awareness.
Emma: But you’re fighting the good fight that’s awesome.
Wook: I’m trying but the site Backbone Zone has been quite helpful they did a bunch of promotional material that’s popped up on tumblr and elsewhere and I will link to them in the shownotes for anybody that hasn’t seen them. The best one is This Party is Gay and it shows like the gay pride parade and then this really boring party, saying This Party is Boring.
Wook: There was also one going around tumblr it shows all kind of different words you can use instead of gay and then it says ”and you picked gay? Go find a dictionary?” I like those too those are pretty awesome posters
Emma: And another comment that was left on that episode was from laeathearcher who talked about the lack of variety in the Teen Wolf fandom. Now I can’t speak to this, not being in the teen wolf fandom, but we have a few people on our staff who are.
Elanor: I think it was definitely overwhelmingly Sterek fic depends on who you kind of lurk around on tumblr but I started seeing more Peter and Danny kind of working into the edges so that’s been kind of nice. It’s kind of overwhelmingly Sterek for the most part.
Wook: I think part of that and this is obviously just my interpretation, it’s the fact that for the most part technically everyone else is involved in a relationship, Scott and Allison have a relationship, Lydia and Jackson have a relationship and even Boyd and Erica have a relationship and so when you have all these relationships, I think my tendency personally is I don’t break up the canon relationships. That’s why, you know I might have started with Harry/Draco in Harry Potter but I started liking Harry/Ginny, am I gonna get run out of slash fandom for saying that?
DJ: I liked Harry/Ginny too.
Wook: It’s hard to break up a healthy relationship. I think if Scott and Allison weren’t so funny and cute and quirky together, if he was a dick or she was a bitch I would have no problem breaking them up but the fact is they obviously love one another so for me to break that up as an author and then put them with other people, it’s really hard in my brain to do that and I think that’s why there’s a lack of diversity in the fics because there are these healthier relationships. And ok Scott and Allison are always constantly breaking up and getting back together but you can tell even when they’re broken up that they do care.
Emma: Well that’s really interesting, there are other fandom that I’ve been involved in, just as a lurker where I didn’t feel compelled to write any fic because the pairing I was interested in was canonical and it was being done well enough in the show or in the movie and I didn’t feel I had anything to add so I didn’t go there. So I can kind of see everyone’s paired off except these two guys and I can see how that would then lend itself to be the OTP of the fandom.
Wook: I think there’s been some really great Scott/Isaac fic out there that has dealt with that breakup and sort of pulled it into a believe fic but for me a lot of the times when Im reading a Sterek fic and Sciaac is the background pairing it drives me nust and I have to get out of the fic because it’s so unbelievable to me, to break up Scott and Allison. As much as I would like to see some diversity for me personally it has to be really well done if it its well done in canon. One character I would like to see more of is Danny. Danny is the only canon gay character and he’s barely in any of the shows, let alone any fic.
Elanor: And he’s awesome he’s so awesome.
Emma: Actually in her comment laeathearcher recommended a couple of fics with Danny. One of them she says is Danny/ Everyone. And the other one is Danny /Jackson. I have no idea who these people are but she recommended a couple. Have a look at her comment.
Wook: And Jackson is involved with Lydia. I’m not going to spoil Season 2, the Jaskson and Lydia dynamic becomes a pretty pivotal part of everything since halfway through season 1 so, for me Danny/ Jackson is really hard to buy because Jackson is clearly in love with Lydia and Lydia is clearly in love with Jackson and that’s one of the reasons why I have a problem reading Stiles/Lydia as well because of that same dynamic, so it’s not just that I can’t read slash fic with breaking up the canon pairs I can’t read het fic breaking up the canon pairs either. But more Danny would be lovely. Danny/Stiles if people have recommendations for that especially, I would love to read more of that.
Elanor: Oh that would be good. Yay!
Emma: So please post your recs in comments. On the post show post or on a tumblr ask. Wook wants them. And now we are going to move on to the topic of our current episode which is the fourth wall and fandom and how that relationship has changed over the last few years. So I’m gonna ask the staff to talk about our favourite personal fourth wall breaking experience you had in the fandom or another thing that we can talk about is crazy cool celebrity encounters within fandom.
Elanor: So something that’s going on right now, now as in the day we are recording this is, it likely won’t still be continuing when this episode is released, is the Desert Bus for Hope, it’s these guys and gals from the sketch comedy group LoadingReadyRun, they’re from Vancouver I believe and so they play the most boring videogame ever constantly to raise money for Child’s Play charity. They have the video of the game going on and then there’s also a chatroom and so you can do different, like, I’ll donate $20 of you sing this song. And so they sing a song on camera and then you donate money. It goes on for however many days. I think last year it was 6 days maybe 7 maybe 8.
One thing that started coming up is in the chat they started writing slash fic about the people doing the marathon and so, you know they acknowledge it and they talk about it on air. And they’re like, ah so they’re writing slash fic about us, awesome, and that sort of stuff. They do, ok now do some art. I think at one point they did a dramatic reading of slash fic about themselves on camera. It pretty hilarious to watch when it’s two in the morning and they are still going and that’s when the crazy staff starts happening they you know pull out the random books to read starting pulling up videos on youtube to dance to, like Caramell dansen I think they’ve done gangnam style several times so far. But yeah it’s a good time, the chat write slash fic about the actual people doing the marathon and sometimes they perform it. It’s a good time.
Wook: Even better is one of the gangnam styles that they did, William Shatner was watching it was like a confluence of awesomeness.
Elanor: Yeah they broke their $1 million time donation milestone. They’ve been doing this is the sixth year and they’ve accumulated over 1 million dollars, that they’ve had donated to Child’s Play charity. Yeah they do auctions and stuff, really great cool things, I mean now they go for thousands of dollars for like a custom N7 Mass Effect jacket that is really gorgeous. Yeah that went for like $7,000, but yeah they raise a lot of money and they have a lot of fun doing it. It’s just hilarious to watch. They only bummer is that at my current job I don’t have appropriate internet to be able to watch it all day long, like I did at my last one (laughs). It’s a nice way to start your day by getting a good morning story read to you and a bedtime story at night.
Rachel: So the closest thing I’ve had to a like a fourth wall experience in kinda slash fandom, I had like a back history before I was in fandom where I was in Detroit rave culture fandom so much fourth wall stuff there but it’s not about slash so probably not pertaining to this podcast.
Um but I did last year attend one of the Creation Cons that, the big Supernatural cons that this group called Creation Entertainment puts on and they are horrible they are not very fannish conventions. They are otherwise known by the name VanCon the one in Vancouver and they are horribly overpriced and really bad in terms of content. But, they are where a bunch of the celebrities go, you can get their autograph you can pay for meet ups and you see them do like these panels that are on youtube and stuff. I’m really close to Vancouver so I decided to go to one last year, when I was and I still am in my Supernatural phase for sure, I’m loving season 8 right now. But I was even more geeked about it then, so I went up there for that and decided to actually bid on a meeting of Misha Collins, he does, all the actors do like a meet and greet and basically it’s auctioned off. And so, he meet and greet for Jared Padalecki vs Jensen Ackles vs Misha, Jared and Jensen are in this echelon of like, it’s so expensive it’s ridiculous and Misha is really cheap. I got my Misha meet up for like $500. The way I figured it , I was like I support this guy I want to pay his salary, I assume he gets a cut of this and I like to meet him and see what it’s like. Um and it was kinda of a cool experience. It was 10 people, um we met in this hotel room, not like of a hotel room (laughs), a hotel conference room.
The thing that was just incredibly awesome about him, it was an experience where a lot of people were extremely nervous to meet him a lot of people wanted to talk about sensitive things like slash that they’re not really sure how he feels about, and Misha being the ridiculous goofball that he is does a fabulous job kind of, you know harnessing that nervous energy and making it good. A good example is, I had a friend who made like a little present for him that was basically a wine stopper that said “I found a liquor store. I drank it.” which is a reference to Castiel in the show and it’s this nice little wineplug and it has all this like or, um a winestopper, and it has all this neat art and I gave it to him and he said “thanks for the butt plug I’m gonna use this tonight” so he’s already opening the door to that kind of thing.
That’s the kind of fourth wall maybe that I’m comfortable with, because it’s like we know where we stand, we know I’m paying to meet you, there’s certain rules around those meetings like there’s rules you can’t take pictures, there’s rule about where you go. Misha broke them all, Misha actually told us he thought that the hotel was stuffy so he wanted to give us a tour of his favourite places in Vancouver so he actually ended spending twice as long with us. The meet up was supposed to be an hour and he spent two hours with us, he walked around Vancouver with us and bought us tea and coffee and just did an awesome job of making it everybody feel included in this situation yet also acknowledging kind of slash and some of the other things that are happening in fandom. But relate to people on a personal level so I have to say if you are going to break the fourth wall with somebody, Misha Collins is the person to it with. It’s an awkward situation being in a group of ten people who they all paid to meet this person, what the hell do you have to talk to them about other than the fact you read porn about them, it’s sort of weird. And some people are reading RPF not just Castiel porn and he knows about all this. He’s just a cool guy. I mean you gotta love him.
Emma: So I don’t have any cool celebrity encounter stories, I guess I got to the standing line to meet Ian McGregor once years ago, back when I was like all about Ian McGregor. But was just autograph move on nothing special. But right now the big fandom I’m in is the Sherlock fandom and one of the things that’s been really fascinating for me is being in this fandom in particular, which is so much on tumblr is to see how the fandom memes come up are noticed and acknowledged by the creators of the shows and the actors of the show and that blows my mind.
So there’s two things, a couple of things that have happened, one of the big ones which not so much slash but it’s bigger is the whole comparing Benedict Cumberbatch to otters and Martin Freeman to hedgehogs. And both of the actors know about this and they’ve made comments about it before. I think there was something going on on tumblr just the other day, Benedict was talking about how people thought Martin looked like a hedgehog because of this hair which is really kind of cute. So there’s a lot of that going around. But the other thing that happened recently that was is really funny. So there is this artist called Reapersun who is incredibly famous in the Sherlock fandom and she created this meme in the Sherlock fandom called the Red Pants, and the idea is that John Watson wears red underwear. So Reapersun just drew this picture once and John had on red underwear and it became a thing and suddenly, everybody everywhere puts red pants on John and on tumblr Mondays are Red Pants Mondays and everyone creates art of John Watson in red pants in various stated of undress and they are all sexy and smutty. It’s a very very smutty meme and everyone knows about it. So apparently a couple of weeks ago there was a talk.
Elanor: It was Mark Gatiss and friends I believe, a fundraiser.
Emma: Yeah, there was a fundraiser for a LGBT charity in England and Mark Gatiss was part of it and they had several of the actor on the show. They had Martin and they had…
Elanor: Rupert.
Emma: Rupert Graves and Lou. They had several of the actors from the show there. And I guess Mark had taken questions from all, his asked people to submit questions and he chose the ones to ask. And one of the questions that he chose to ask was “Is there any chance we’ll see John wearing red pants in series 3?” And apparently the audience was all fangirls just erupted and all of the actors on the stage looked completely confused except for Martin Freeman who said something to the effect of I know what that’s about and you guys are all fucking perverted or something like that, but he said it in a really good natured way and then he went on to joke how John would wear red pants when he’s mad and blue pants when he’s depressed. And then the fandom kind went nuts for like a minute, like OMG he knows, but there was not hide the porn, because it was just so clear that they know about it.
Rachel: Also cause you can’t hide the porn.
Emma: you can’t hide the porn
Rachel: what else could you do? I mean technically you can’t remove it.
Elanor: And in his case, I mean Amanda Abbington his long time partner, I mean she’s on Facebook, she is everywhere. And twitter. She’s pretty fabulous and she’s pretty tuned in. She has seen all sort of things, and I think a lot of the hide everything panic might have blown over when she first appeared and turned out to be really amazing and queen of the trolls.
Emma: Right.
Elanor: She is brilliant (laughts). And they have a frikking twitter for their dogs. That twitter is pretty much full of swearing (laughs) and the one dos hates the other. And so yeah they are really like in the know with all the fandom stuff. She has a couple of fanpages on facebook as does Martin that are kind of tied to each other about her being like queen of the trolls and the fangirls.
Emma: There’s bit of rumour going around that she has a tumblr.
Elanor: She said that she doesn’t but she goes on, I’m sure. Because that’s been kind of, what I’ve seen around for a while for rumours
Emma: But you don’t have to have a tumblr to see all the porn.
Elanor: Oh no exactly.
Emma: You just have to know how to click on a tag.
Elanor: Pretty much it’s just the Sherlock tag and you’re good. (laughs)
Rachel: Which is interesting, I think maybe 4 or 5 years ago when tumblr wasn’t as prominent this sort of, I mean this king of fourth wall stuff always goes on, but it’s a question of how big it is, like do the really big name actors know about it and do they acknowledge it publicly. And I think with Sherlock is a great example of wow these really famous people that are not just in a weird little BBC show now they are in movies, they are huge movie stars and they are acknowledging it and I wonder if the function of tumblr being a really open space and a space where you really can’t take it back once you put it out there like there is no hide the porn option.
Emma: Right that’s really true. And it so different with say LJ, 7 or 8 years ago in the Harry Potter fandom where people would lock their explicit fic and their explicit art and there was such a culture of not breaking the F-Lock and there’s not such thing on tumblr. I mean there’s a whole generation of fangirls that don’t even know what that would be like, that not even breaking the F-Lock thing is not part of their culture at all. It’s fascinating to me how different that thing is.
Wook: Everytime somebody get down on another fandom , like you know this kinda happened recently where somebody was part of the supernatural fandom got down on Teen Wolf like those people are bashing and saying about the actors (inaudible)
Rachel: That’s kinda funny. Pot calling the kettle black.
Wook: (inaudible) kicked out of the con how dare she get our va-j-j in on our slash time. Teen Wolf is still pretty young I’m sure who know god forbid something happens but Dylan O’Brien ended up getting a lot of his photos of him and his girlfriend leaked out there and people were so freaking positive about it. They were lie OMG they are such a cute couple and I’m like that shit would never fly in supernatural. Yeah as long as its positive I guess it ok. It’s just everytime I think about breaking the fourth wall I think of, and I processed that before, where a fan handed , it was actually Billy Boyd and Dominic Monaghan a fic of Merry and Pippin and their faces, just really like that horror, really made an impression on me, and then looking at the twins who play Fred and George the Phelps twins their faces when somebody mentioned twincest to them and showed them some fanfic and how horrified they were that’s what I think about whenvever the fourth wall gets broken and I have to admit that I’m not a fan of like actively seeking out creators and actors’ approval for what we are doing.
Rachel: Oh they have no legitimate case for providing an approval I mean…
Emma: Says the lawyer
Wook: It doesn’t matter that matter if they have a legitimate case a lot of people want to go out and have that approval I mean that’s what Jeff Davies is having a major issue with. And actually they run fanfic contest through Teen Wolf so they basically did legitimatize fanfic.
DJ: Yep.
Wook: And they used fanart in commercial breaks. So they are sort of legitimizing the fan creations.
Rachel: I don’t know if that’s legitimizing so much as its monetizing it. And this is the issue, like, so I’ve been to a few cons this year actually a shit load of cons and there’s always been a fourth wall panel this year which has really interested me to hear it discussed across all these spectrums and we always get to this point where its lie what do we do next what do we want. And I think I don’t think the goal should be getting approval or legalization, um, I think a lot of savvy media company are starting to realize they can monetize fanworks and I think the goal should be to realize to have our creativity unbridled and to when we put in a lot of work that somebody professionally would get paid for to get a cut of it as opposed to being just so godamn thankful that they’ve approved of it. But I’m kind of opinionated in this cause I am an IP lawyer, I recognize that fanworks are, they are intellectual property they are creative, they are not sanctioned, we want them to be sanctioned but they don’t necessarily need to be under fair use and a lot of companies are figuring out ways to monetize fanworks and not necessarily always giving back what they could. I guess I think fans should be a little bit more aggressive and not seek, the idea that fandom needs to be legitimized is just offensive to me.
Emma: No I totally, I mean I agree with you in that, I think I want them to be separate. I have zero interest in anything I write within a fandom being read or acknowledged by anyone who is associated with the canon, like with the creators of the show or the book, like I don’t want there to be any connection. I want them to continue to pretend that I don’t exist and that’s fine with me.
Rachel: My position is, you own that IP, you own your publicity image as a fan author and you can choose to make that, like you have a control level that not all fans realize they have. Contact the OTW if you have any questions about this, sidenote to the DMCA discussion going on. But fans have rights, they create valuable property, you can choose to promote that yourself, you can choose to do that completely non commercially and under the radar or you can choose to legitimize it and monetize it but make sure you are getting paid, because you are doing work, you are doing their advertising work.
Emma: Oh that’s interesting.
DJ: Well I’ve been trying to say for a while now, I’m not a big fan of breaking the fourth wall at all when it comes to actual celebrity/actors. Anything like that is not, when I think of a fourth wall I tend to think of them pandering to me bur that’s fine you can do that and you can go back to examples, you know in film like Rocky Horror or Ferris Bueller they are looking at me in the camera and they are talking to me right? That kind of fourth wall, like I’ve never deliberately gone of my way to talk to anyone who I’m a fan of their show for or in their fandom I avoid them actually if I can cause I don’t like knowing these people and like Emma says I don’t like them knowing what I do with their characters on the side. So that kind of fourth wall to me is what I avoid in life. But I sure do like the pandering that they do for me and generally the fourth wall that I enjoy are the shows like The French Mistake for Supernatural, that’s a great fourth wall episode I love that.
Rachel: I agree
DJ: And there are so many out there, like I said Rocky Horror Picture Show is probably the first one that I can think of that’s deliberately pandering to the audience and look what happened. Even Misha Collins no matter how nice he is, cause the dude is, he’s just a dude, he’s an actor I don’t really care.
Rachel: But I like that he knows he’s just a dude.
DJ: That’s true, yeah. And he does, like, he’s not pandering and then running away from you that’s for sure. He owns it. He’s like, yeah you love me, you love Cas and I’m here you can go on ahead and touch the jacket.
Rachel: Yeah it’s funny, I was listening to Winchester Radio which is some Supernatural podcast, they had Misha on the other day and it’s was funny cause he was talking about what a shitty actor he is. So I mean he owns it. He’s so honest.
DJ: He totally owns it, that’s great and you know David Hewlett is like that from Stargate Atlantis, he tweeters with his fans all the time. And they ask all kind of question as though he is still Dr. Rodney McKay from Stargate. He totally panders to them too. He even pimped the After Elton slash poll that was shipping with Sheppard. He pimped it on his twitter.
Rachel: That’s funny.
DJ: He was like why aren’t we beating these guys. I think he was up Teen Wolf or something. I mean it was a lost cause but thanks to him they got like 10K more votes or something. I personally feel that if I were to ever approach a single celebrity, in my head I am that creepy crazy person, like why would I do that. I don’t know why I just don’t like doing it.
Emma: I think something to do with not wanting to be the creepy fan, I kind of for me it’s the other way around my reluctance to do the celebrity encounter. This is going to sound really horrible, is I’m afraid I’m going to be disappointed by them.
Rachel: This is way, I’ve never met Alan Rickman nor do I try to meet Alan Rickman. I know I’m going to be disappointed.
Emma: Because they play all these amazing interesting characters but you know that they are not that interesting in real life and it’s not like I expect Alan Rickman to have magical powers it’s not that. For me, the example that I like to give is, a certain actress who is in a certain TV show about high school kids who sing, who I have been a huge fan of for years and years since I saw her on some Broadway productions and I just thought she was amazing, I watched the show because of her. So I was a huge fan, loved her, loved her, and then I started following her on twitter and the shit that she tweets about , it like OMG I’m going to beach it’s gonna be so awesome, and that’s like what she tweets about and it was just so disappointing. Then I kind of thought, this is going to sound really elitist and horrible, you know she didn’t go to college, she’s probably spent her whole life working on her acting career, she hasn’t travelled a lot, she hasn’t done like any of the things that I look for in people I liket o hang out with. So we have nothing in common anyway, it wasn’t like I thought we’d be friends, it wasn’t like that…
Rachel:Let me share a short story about the same situation with me. I mentioned I was in techno fandom prior to joining real fandom. I was a huge fan of this guy Richie Hawtin, aka DJ Plasticman, like he’s really famous if you listen to techno, you are a fan of him. And I hired him to do, I did this sneaky breaking the fourth wall thing, where I hired him to do this art show at the University of Michigan and paid him a bunch of university money to do it. Like he’s an awesome guy, he has a lot of interesting, he makes great music, but I had this idea in my mind who Richie Hawtin is, all these thing that he does, and I’m like 18 and hes interesting if I can just have dinner with him I can, I’m gonna learn all this shit from him. Yeah I had a few meetings with him, I actually stayed at his house in Berlin, and like he disappointed me. So the fantasy sometimes a little bit better than the reality and I like Misha’s ability to continue playing the role even when he is in that situation and to keep the fantasy going.
DJ: I don’t want you to tarnish the image of my hero. My heroes stay heroes and I don’t go to conventions where the actors are going to be, because I don’t care, I don’t want to know. In fact I try to avoid really even hearing about what they are doing on the side or if I hear that they are divorcing their wife of there is some kind of scandal or whatever. I ignore it all cause I don’t want to know. Like I like the character that you did and that’s good and your private life, is your private life, like your crazy Tom Crusiness is your crazy Tom Crusiness. I like Mission Impossible so there, blah! You know what I mean, don’t want to go there.
Emma: Ok and that is the mailbag segment for episode 37, if you have a comment for us or a question or if you would just like to add your own 2 cents on anything you’ve heard us talk about on this episode. There are lots of way that you can do that, you can leave a comment on the post show post on Livejournal, or you can leave a comment on the post show post on our website that’s slashcast. org or can leave us an ask on tumblr or you can reblog our tumblr post and put your comment there. You can email us on islashdoyou@ gmail.com, you can contact us via twitter, ect there’s lots of ways to do it. So please, don’t be shy, please let us know what you like and what you don’t like about our podcast. We’d love to hear from you. And that’s it for this episode. Thanks everybody!
Transcribed by imifos
Hosts: wook77, emmagrant01, elanorofcastile, chaeche, djin7
Emma: Welcome to the mailbag segment for episode 37. I am Emmagrant and I am here with several other folks of the slashcast staff and we’re gonna talk about your comments on the last few episodes of slashcast and we’re also gonna talk about some stuff relating to this episode. So first of all we got some new comments on our Halloween episode, which was really exciting, that’s episode 35 and one of the comments was from numberthescars who said that Wook’s argument to stop using the term Gay Marriage and start using the term Marriage Equality really rang true with her and she’s not going to say anymore. So Wook you convinced somebody.
Wook: Yay. I just drives me nuts whenever I hear it especially when it’s something like a human rights campaign when they refer to gay marriage, and I’m like if you are using the language of the person that you hate you’ve already lost the debate. So yay that makes me very happy.
Emma: In the 90’s when republicans were using the term tax relief, the moment democrats started saying tax relief they had lost the battle. Because they were admitting that taxes are something you need relief from, when they say that. So gay marriage is like on the same page as that. It’s a term that the right coined to separate it from “real marriage”. Awesome argument I thought that was fantastic.
Rachel: Though I have to admit that because I’ve been playing a lot of videogames lately with a lot of teenage dudes, this is like level 2.01 for me. Im trying to get people to stop saying, you know when the other team is losing or it’s not a fun game that it’s gay
Emma: OMG I can imagine.
Rachel: I’m a whole echelon lower on the awareness.
Emma: But you’re fighting the good fight that’s awesome.
Wook: I’m trying but the site Backbone Zone has been quite helpful they did a bunch of promotional material that’s popped up on tumblr and elsewhere and I will link to them in the shownotes for anybody that hasn’t seen them. The best one is This Party is Gay and it shows like the gay pride parade and then this really boring party, saying This Party is Boring.
Wook: There was also one going around tumblr it shows all kind of different words you can use instead of gay and then it says ”and you picked gay? Go find a dictionary?” I like those too those are pretty awesome posters
Emma: And another comment that was left on that episode was from laeathearcher who talked about the lack of variety in the Teen Wolf fandom. Now I can’t speak to this, not being in the teen wolf fandom, but we have a few people on our staff who are.
Elanor: I think it was definitely overwhelmingly Sterek fic depends on who you kind of lurk around on tumblr but I started seeing more Peter and Danny kind of working into the edges so that’s been kind of nice. It’s kind of overwhelmingly Sterek for the most part.
Wook: I think part of that and this is obviously just my interpretation, it’s the fact that for the most part technically everyone else is involved in a relationship, Scott and Allison have a relationship, Lydia and Jackson have a relationship and even Boyd and Erica have a relationship and so when you have all these relationships, I think my tendency personally is I don’t break up the canon relationships. That’s why, you know I might have started with Harry/Draco in Harry Potter but I started liking Harry/Ginny, am I gonna get run out of slash fandom for saying that?
DJ: I liked Harry/Ginny too.
Wook: It’s hard to break up a healthy relationship. I think if Scott and Allison weren’t so funny and cute and quirky together, if he was a dick or she was a bitch I would have no problem breaking them up but the fact is they obviously love one another so for me to break that up as an author and then put them with other people, it’s really hard in my brain to do that and I think that’s why there’s a lack of diversity in the fics because there are these healthier relationships. And ok Scott and Allison are always constantly breaking up and getting back together but you can tell even when they’re broken up that they do care.
Emma: Well that’s really interesting, there are other fandom that I’ve been involved in, just as a lurker where I didn’t feel compelled to write any fic because the pairing I was interested in was canonical and it was being done well enough in the show or in the movie and I didn’t feel I had anything to add so I didn’t go there. So I can kind of see everyone’s paired off except these two guys and I can see how that would then lend itself to be the OTP of the fandom.
Wook: I think there’s been some really great Scott/Isaac fic out there that has dealt with that breakup and sort of pulled it into a believe fic but for me a lot of the times when Im reading a Sterek fic and Sciaac is the background pairing it drives me nust and I have to get out of the fic because it’s so unbelievable to me, to break up Scott and Allison. As much as I would like to see some diversity for me personally it has to be really well done if it its well done in canon. One character I would like to see more of is Danny. Danny is the only canon gay character and he’s barely in any of the shows, let alone any fic.
Elanor: And he’s awesome he’s so awesome.
Emma: Actually in her comment laeathearcher recommended a couple of fics with Danny. One of them she says is Danny/ Everyone. And the other one is Danny /Jackson. I have no idea who these people are but she recommended a couple. Have a look at her comment.
Wook: And Jackson is involved with Lydia. I’m not going to spoil Season 2, the Jaskson and Lydia dynamic becomes a pretty pivotal part of everything since halfway through season 1 so, for me Danny/ Jackson is really hard to buy because Jackson is clearly in love with Lydia and Lydia is clearly in love with Jackson and that’s one of the reasons why I have a problem reading Stiles/Lydia as well because of that same dynamic, so it’s not just that I can’t read slash fic with breaking up the canon pairs I can’t read het fic breaking up the canon pairs either. But more Danny would be lovely. Danny/Stiles if people have recommendations for that especially, I would love to read more of that.
Elanor: Oh that would be good. Yay!
Emma: So please post your recs in comments. On the post show post or on a tumblr ask. Wook wants them. And now we are going to move on to the topic of our current episode which is the fourth wall and fandom and how that relationship has changed over the last few years. So I’m gonna ask the staff to talk about our favourite personal fourth wall breaking experience you had in the fandom or another thing that we can talk about is crazy cool celebrity encounters within fandom.
Elanor: So something that’s going on right now, now as in the day we are recording this is, it likely won’t still be continuing when this episode is released, is the Desert Bus for Hope, it’s these guys and gals from the sketch comedy group LoadingReadyRun, they’re from Vancouver I believe and so they play the most boring videogame ever constantly to raise money for Child’s Play charity. They have the video of the game going on and then there’s also a chatroom and so you can do different, like, I’ll donate $20 of you sing this song. And so they sing a song on camera and then you donate money. It goes on for however many days. I think last year it was 6 days maybe 7 maybe 8.
One thing that started coming up is in the chat they started writing slash fic about the people doing the marathon and so, you know they acknowledge it and they talk about it on air. And they’re like, ah so they’re writing slash fic about us, awesome, and that sort of stuff. They do, ok now do some art. I think at one point they did a dramatic reading of slash fic about themselves on camera. It pretty hilarious to watch when it’s two in the morning and they are still going and that’s when the crazy staff starts happening they you know pull out the random books to read starting pulling up videos on youtube to dance to, like Caramell dansen I think they’ve done gangnam style several times so far. But yeah it’s a good time, the chat write slash fic about the actual people doing the marathon and sometimes they perform it. It’s a good time.
Wook: Even better is one of the gangnam styles that they did, William Shatner was watching it was like a confluence of awesomeness.
Elanor: Yeah they broke their $1 million time donation milestone. They’ve been doing this is the sixth year and they’ve accumulated over 1 million dollars, that they’ve had donated to Child’s Play charity. Yeah they do auctions and stuff, really great cool things, I mean now they go for thousands of dollars for like a custom N7 Mass Effect jacket that is really gorgeous. Yeah that went for like $7,000, but yeah they raise a lot of money and they have a lot of fun doing it. It’s just hilarious to watch. They only bummer is that at my current job I don’t have appropriate internet to be able to watch it all day long, like I did at my last one (laughs). It’s a nice way to start your day by getting a good morning story read to you and a bedtime story at night.
Rachel: So the closest thing I’ve had to a like a fourth wall experience in kinda slash fandom, I had like a back history before I was in fandom where I was in Detroit rave culture fandom so much fourth wall stuff there but it’s not about slash so probably not pertaining to this podcast.
Um but I did last year attend one of the Creation Cons that, the big Supernatural cons that this group called Creation Entertainment puts on and they are horrible they are not very fannish conventions. They are otherwise known by the name VanCon the one in Vancouver and they are horribly overpriced and really bad in terms of content. But, they are where a bunch of the celebrities go, you can get their autograph you can pay for meet ups and you see them do like these panels that are on youtube and stuff. I’m really close to Vancouver so I decided to go to one last year, when I was and I still am in my Supernatural phase for sure, I’m loving season 8 right now. But I was even more geeked about it then, so I went up there for that and decided to actually bid on a meeting of Misha Collins, he does, all the actors do like a meet and greet and basically it’s auctioned off. And so, he meet and greet for Jared Padalecki vs Jensen Ackles vs Misha, Jared and Jensen are in this echelon of like, it’s so expensive it’s ridiculous and Misha is really cheap. I got my Misha meet up for like $500. The way I figured it , I was like I support this guy I want to pay his salary, I assume he gets a cut of this and I like to meet him and see what it’s like. Um and it was kinda of a cool experience. It was 10 people, um we met in this hotel room, not like of a hotel room (laughs), a hotel conference room.
The thing that was just incredibly awesome about him, it was an experience where a lot of people were extremely nervous to meet him a lot of people wanted to talk about sensitive things like slash that they’re not really sure how he feels about, and Misha being the ridiculous goofball that he is does a fabulous job kind of, you know harnessing that nervous energy and making it good. A good example is, I had a friend who made like a little present for him that was basically a wine stopper that said “I found a liquor store. I drank it.” which is a reference to Castiel in the show and it’s this nice little wineplug and it has all this like or, um a winestopper, and it has all this neat art and I gave it to him and he said “thanks for the butt plug I’m gonna use this tonight” so he’s already opening the door to that kind of thing.
That’s the kind of fourth wall maybe that I’m comfortable with, because it’s like we know where we stand, we know I’m paying to meet you, there’s certain rules around those meetings like there’s rules you can’t take pictures, there’s rule about where you go. Misha broke them all, Misha actually told us he thought that the hotel was stuffy so he wanted to give us a tour of his favourite places in Vancouver so he actually ended spending twice as long with us. The meet up was supposed to be an hour and he spent two hours with us, he walked around Vancouver with us and bought us tea and coffee and just did an awesome job of making it everybody feel included in this situation yet also acknowledging kind of slash and some of the other things that are happening in fandom. But relate to people on a personal level so I have to say if you are going to break the fourth wall with somebody, Misha Collins is the person to it with. It’s an awkward situation being in a group of ten people who they all paid to meet this person, what the hell do you have to talk to them about other than the fact you read porn about them, it’s sort of weird. And some people are reading RPF not just Castiel porn and he knows about all this. He’s just a cool guy. I mean you gotta love him.
Emma: So I don’t have any cool celebrity encounter stories, I guess I got to the standing line to meet Ian McGregor once years ago, back when I was like all about Ian McGregor. But was just autograph move on nothing special. But right now the big fandom I’m in is the Sherlock fandom and one of the things that’s been really fascinating for me is being in this fandom in particular, which is so much on tumblr is to see how the fandom memes come up are noticed and acknowledged by the creators of the shows and the actors of the show and that blows my mind.
So there’s two things, a couple of things that have happened, one of the big ones which not so much slash but it’s bigger is the whole comparing Benedict Cumberbatch to otters and Martin Freeman to hedgehogs. And both of the actors know about this and they’ve made comments about it before. I think there was something going on on tumblr just the other day, Benedict was talking about how people thought Martin looked like a hedgehog because of this hair which is really kind of cute. So there’s a lot of that going around. But the other thing that happened recently that was is really funny. So there is this artist called Reapersun who is incredibly famous in the Sherlock fandom and she created this meme in the Sherlock fandom called the Red Pants, and the idea is that John Watson wears red underwear. So Reapersun just drew this picture once and John had on red underwear and it became a thing and suddenly, everybody everywhere puts red pants on John and on tumblr Mondays are Red Pants Mondays and everyone creates art of John Watson in red pants in various stated of undress and they are all sexy and smutty. It’s a very very smutty meme and everyone knows about it. So apparently a couple of weeks ago there was a talk.
Elanor: It was Mark Gatiss and friends I believe, a fundraiser.
Emma: Yeah, there was a fundraiser for a LGBT charity in England and Mark Gatiss was part of it and they had several of the actor on the show. They had Martin and they had…
Elanor: Rupert.
Emma: Rupert Graves and Lou. They had several of the actors from the show there. And I guess Mark had taken questions from all, his asked people to submit questions and he chose the ones to ask. And one of the questions that he chose to ask was “Is there any chance we’ll see John wearing red pants in series 3?” And apparently the audience was all fangirls just erupted and all of the actors on the stage looked completely confused except for Martin Freeman who said something to the effect of I know what that’s about and you guys are all fucking perverted or something like that, but he said it in a really good natured way and then he went on to joke how John would wear red pants when he’s mad and blue pants when he’s depressed. And then the fandom kind went nuts for like a minute, like OMG he knows, but there was not hide the porn, because it was just so clear that they know about it.
Rachel: Also cause you can’t hide the porn.
Emma: you can’t hide the porn
Rachel: what else could you do? I mean technically you can’t remove it.
Elanor: And in his case, I mean Amanda Abbington his long time partner, I mean she’s on Facebook, she is everywhere. And twitter. She’s pretty fabulous and she’s pretty tuned in. She has seen all sort of things, and I think a lot of the hide everything panic might have blown over when she first appeared and turned out to be really amazing and queen of the trolls.
Emma: Right.
Elanor: She is brilliant (laughts). And they have a frikking twitter for their dogs. That twitter is pretty much full of swearing (laughs) and the one dos hates the other. And so yeah they are really like in the know with all the fandom stuff. She has a couple of fanpages on facebook as does Martin that are kind of tied to each other about her being like queen of the trolls and the fangirls.
Emma: There’s bit of rumour going around that she has a tumblr.
Elanor: She said that she doesn’t but she goes on, I’m sure. Because that’s been kind of, what I’ve seen around for a while for rumours
Emma: But you don’t have to have a tumblr to see all the porn.
Elanor: Oh no exactly.
Emma: You just have to know how to click on a tag.
Elanor: Pretty much it’s just the Sherlock tag and you’re good. (laughs)
Rachel: Which is interesting, I think maybe 4 or 5 years ago when tumblr wasn’t as prominent this sort of, I mean this king of fourth wall stuff always goes on, but it’s a question of how big it is, like do the really big name actors know about it and do they acknowledge it publicly. And I think with Sherlock is a great example of wow these really famous people that are not just in a weird little BBC show now they are in movies, they are huge movie stars and they are acknowledging it and I wonder if the function of tumblr being a really open space and a space where you really can’t take it back once you put it out there like there is no hide the porn option.
Emma: Right that’s really true. And it so different with say LJ, 7 or 8 years ago in the Harry Potter fandom where people would lock their explicit fic and their explicit art and there was such a culture of not breaking the F-Lock and there’s not such thing on tumblr. I mean there’s a whole generation of fangirls that don’t even know what that would be like, that not even breaking the F-Lock thing is not part of their culture at all. It’s fascinating to me how different that thing is.
Wook: Everytime somebody get down on another fandom , like you know this kinda happened recently where somebody was part of the supernatural fandom got down on Teen Wolf like those people are bashing and saying about the actors (inaudible)
Rachel: That’s kinda funny. Pot calling the kettle black.
Wook: (inaudible) kicked out of the con how dare she get our va-j-j in on our slash time. Teen Wolf is still pretty young I’m sure who know god forbid something happens but Dylan O’Brien ended up getting a lot of his photos of him and his girlfriend leaked out there and people were so freaking positive about it. They were lie OMG they are such a cute couple and I’m like that shit would never fly in supernatural. Yeah as long as its positive I guess it ok. It’s just everytime I think about breaking the fourth wall I think of, and I processed that before, where a fan handed , it was actually Billy Boyd and Dominic Monaghan a fic of Merry and Pippin and their faces, just really like that horror, really made an impression on me, and then looking at the twins who play Fred and George the Phelps twins their faces when somebody mentioned twincest to them and showed them some fanfic and how horrified they were that’s what I think about whenvever the fourth wall gets broken and I have to admit that I’m not a fan of like actively seeking out creators and actors’ approval for what we are doing.
Rachel: Oh they have no legitimate case for providing an approval I mean…
Emma: Says the lawyer
Wook: It doesn’t matter that matter if they have a legitimate case a lot of people want to go out and have that approval I mean that’s what Jeff Davies is having a major issue with. And actually they run fanfic contest through Teen Wolf so they basically did legitimatize fanfic.
DJ: Yep.
Wook: And they used fanart in commercial breaks. So they are sort of legitimizing the fan creations.
Rachel: I don’t know if that’s legitimizing so much as its monetizing it. And this is the issue, like, so I’ve been to a few cons this year actually a shit load of cons and there’s always been a fourth wall panel this year which has really interested me to hear it discussed across all these spectrums and we always get to this point where its lie what do we do next what do we want. And I think I don’t think the goal should be getting approval or legalization, um, I think a lot of savvy media company are starting to realize they can monetize fanworks and I think the goal should be to realize to have our creativity unbridled and to when we put in a lot of work that somebody professionally would get paid for to get a cut of it as opposed to being just so godamn thankful that they’ve approved of it. But I’m kind of opinionated in this cause I am an IP lawyer, I recognize that fanworks are, they are intellectual property they are creative, they are not sanctioned, we want them to be sanctioned but they don’t necessarily need to be under fair use and a lot of companies are figuring out ways to monetize fanworks and not necessarily always giving back what they could. I guess I think fans should be a little bit more aggressive and not seek, the idea that fandom needs to be legitimized is just offensive to me.
Emma: No I totally, I mean I agree with you in that, I think I want them to be separate. I have zero interest in anything I write within a fandom being read or acknowledged by anyone who is associated with the canon, like with the creators of the show or the book, like I don’t want there to be any connection. I want them to continue to pretend that I don’t exist and that’s fine with me.
Rachel: My position is, you own that IP, you own your publicity image as a fan author and you can choose to make that, like you have a control level that not all fans realize they have. Contact the OTW if you have any questions about this, sidenote to the DMCA discussion going on. But fans have rights, they create valuable property, you can choose to promote that yourself, you can choose to do that completely non commercially and under the radar or you can choose to legitimize it and monetize it but make sure you are getting paid, because you are doing work, you are doing their advertising work.
Emma: Oh that’s interesting.
DJ: Well I’ve been trying to say for a while now, I’m not a big fan of breaking the fourth wall at all when it comes to actual celebrity/actors. Anything like that is not, when I think of a fourth wall I tend to think of them pandering to me bur that’s fine you can do that and you can go back to examples, you know in film like Rocky Horror or Ferris Bueller they are looking at me in the camera and they are talking to me right? That kind of fourth wall, like I’ve never deliberately gone of my way to talk to anyone who I’m a fan of their show for or in their fandom I avoid them actually if I can cause I don’t like knowing these people and like Emma says I don’t like them knowing what I do with their characters on the side. So that kind of fourth wall to me is what I avoid in life. But I sure do like the pandering that they do for me and generally the fourth wall that I enjoy are the shows like The French Mistake for Supernatural, that’s a great fourth wall episode I love that.
Rachel: I agree
DJ: And there are so many out there, like I said Rocky Horror Picture Show is probably the first one that I can think of that’s deliberately pandering to the audience and look what happened. Even Misha Collins no matter how nice he is, cause the dude is, he’s just a dude, he’s an actor I don’t really care.
Rachel: But I like that he knows he’s just a dude.
DJ: That’s true, yeah. And he does, like, he’s not pandering and then running away from you that’s for sure. He owns it. He’s like, yeah you love me, you love Cas and I’m here you can go on ahead and touch the jacket.
Rachel: Yeah it’s funny, I was listening to Winchester Radio which is some Supernatural podcast, they had Misha on the other day and it’s was funny cause he was talking about what a shitty actor he is. So I mean he owns it. He’s so honest.
DJ: He totally owns it, that’s great and you know David Hewlett is like that from Stargate Atlantis, he tweeters with his fans all the time. And they ask all kind of question as though he is still Dr. Rodney McKay from Stargate. He totally panders to them too. He even pimped the After Elton slash poll that was shipping with Sheppard. He pimped it on his twitter.
Rachel: That’s funny.
DJ: He was like why aren’t we beating these guys. I think he was up Teen Wolf or something. I mean it was a lost cause but thanks to him they got like 10K more votes or something. I personally feel that if I were to ever approach a single celebrity, in my head I am that creepy crazy person, like why would I do that. I don’t know why I just don’t like doing it.
Emma: I think something to do with not wanting to be the creepy fan, I kind of for me it’s the other way around my reluctance to do the celebrity encounter. This is going to sound really horrible, is I’m afraid I’m going to be disappointed by them.
Rachel: This is way, I’ve never met Alan Rickman nor do I try to meet Alan Rickman. I know I’m going to be disappointed.
Emma: Because they play all these amazing interesting characters but you know that they are not that interesting in real life and it’s not like I expect Alan Rickman to have magical powers it’s not that. For me, the example that I like to give is, a certain actress who is in a certain TV show about high school kids who sing, who I have been a huge fan of for years and years since I saw her on some Broadway productions and I just thought she was amazing, I watched the show because of her. So I was a huge fan, loved her, loved her, and then I started following her on twitter and the shit that she tweets about , it like OMG I’m going to beach it’s gonna be so awesome, and that’s like what she tweets about and it was just so disappointing. Then I kind of thought, this is going to sound really elitist and horrible, you know she didn’t go to college, she’s probably spent her whole life working on her acting career, she hasn’t travelled a lot, she hasn’t done like any of the things that I look for in people I liket o hang out with. So we have nothing in common anyway, it wasn’t like I thought we’d be friends, it wasn’t like that…
Rachel:Let me share a short story about the same situation with me. I mentioned I was in techno fandom prior to joining real fandom. I was a huge fan of this guy Richie Hawtin, aka DJ Plasticman, like he’s really famous if you listen to techno, you are a fan of him. And I hired him to do, I did this sneaky breaking the fourth wall thing, where I hired him to do this art show at the University of Michigan and paid him a bunch of university money to do it. Like he’s an awesome guy, he has a lot of interesting, he makes great music, but I had this idea in my mind who Richie Hawtin is, all these thing that he does, and I’m like 18 and hes interesting if I can just have dinner with him I can, I’m gonna learn all this shit from him. Yeah I had a few meetings with him, I actually stayed at his house in Berlin, and like he disappointed me. So the fantasy sometimes a little bit better than the reality and I like Misha’s ability to continue playing the role even when he is in that situation and to keep the fantasy going.
DJ: I don’t want you to tarnish the image of my hero. My heroes stay heroes and I don’t go to conventions where the actors are going to be, because I don’t care, I don’t want to know. In fact I try to avoid really even hearing about what they are doing on the side or if I hear that they are divorcing their wife of there is some kind of scandal or whatever. I ignore it all cause I don’t want to know. Like I like the character that you did and that’s good and your private life, is your private life, like your crazy Tom Crusiness is your crazy Tom Crusiness. I like Mission Impossible so there, blah! You know what I mean, don’t want to go there.
Emma: Ok and that is the mailbag segment for episode 37, if you have a comment for us or a question or if you would just like to add your own 2 cents on anything you’ve heard us talk about on this episode. There are lots of way that you can do that, you can leave a comment on the post show post on Livejournal, or you can leave a comment on the post show post on our website that’s slashcast. org or can leave us an ask on tumblr or you can reblog our tumblr post and put your comment there. You can email us on islashdoyou@ gmail.com, you can contact us via twitter, ect there’s lots of ways to do it. So please, don’t be shy, please let us know what you like and what you don’t like about our podcast. We’d love to hear from you. And that’s it for this episode. Thanks everybody!
Transcribed by imifos