This Week In Fandom History

Latest Episodes:

June 10, 2016: Voltron: Legendary Defender Premieres & June 10, 2017: #shoegate Jun 16, 2024

Show notes

See ya later, pala-dudes! This week, V and Emily hit a double-header in the Voltron: Legendary Defender fandom (thanks to two requesters and V's VLD primer pal, Fran!). First, V attempts to explain what the show is about and why it launched on Netflix with a built-in fandom. And then... oh, boy. You know how our ending stinger is "well-behaved fandoms rarely make history"? Well, this fandom is VERY POORLY BEHAVED and therefore, have made history. That's for sure...

Not really a TW, but just be aware that this episode is heavy on discussions of purity culture, particularly with regard to shipping age gaps.

This Week In Fandom History is a fandom-centric podcast that tells you… what happened this week in fandom history!

Follow This Week in Fandom History on Tumblr at @thisweekinfandomhistory
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June 5-6, 1832—Present: Barricade Day Makes Les Amies de Les Mis Fandom Cry Jun 09, 2024

Show notes

And I can hear them now! This week, Emily and V pre-emptively apologize for their French accents and inability to pronounce "Enjolras" as we look at the Les Mis fandom holiday of Barricade Day. While the real event was an unmitigated tragedy, and it was also an unmitigated tragedy in the book, musical, and movie adaptations, Barricade Day is a wholesome fandom holiday for Les Mis fans to gather and write, draw, sing, and hope for a happier ending for their beloved Amis de l'ABCs. We love it.

This is also a very silly and loosey-goosey episode to make up for the total bummer of last week. It is not... misérable, one might say.

This Week In Fandom History is a fandom-centric podcast that tells you… what happened this week in fandom history!

Follow This Week in Fandom History on Tumblr at @thisweekinfandomhistory
You can support the show via our Patreon at http://www.patreon.com/thisweekinfandomhistory.
If you have a fannish company, event, or service and would like to sponsor or partner with TWIFH, please contact us via the Tumblr link above.
Please remember to rate the show 5 stars on your listening platform of choice!

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

June 1, 2015: The Marion Zimmer Bradley & Walter Breen Episode (TW: CSA, Rape, Incest, Total Institutional Failure) Jun 03, 2024

Show notes

No quippy exclamation this week, because V and Emily delve into probably the worst, most shameful, most infuriating, just awful pair of people ever to be associated with fandom history: scifi authors and fucking monsters Marion Zimmer Bradley and Walter Breen. This is not a lighthearted episode in any way. Please heed the trigger warnings and take care of yourself if you choose to listen. History is not always fun and celebratory and silly Star Trek holidays. Sometimes it's going, "This horrible, ugly thing is part of our architectural foundation. Now what?"

TW: CSA, rape, incest, total institutional failure to safeguard minors.

Sources

Marion Zimmer Bradley's Child Abuse

MZB Gave Us New Perspectives, All Right

Timeline of Events

MZB on Fanlore

Joanna Russ on Fanlore

1960s Fan History Outline, Chapter 8

Vonda N. McIntyre: Darkover Landfall Reviewed (1974)

The Guardian comments section (2014)

Tor.com Yanks MZB Birthday Tribute

Elizabeth Waters Deposition (1997)

Breendoggle on Fancyclopedia

The Great Breen Boondoggle on Fancyclopedia

Breendoggle Wiki

Walter Breen on Fanlore

This Week In Fandom History is a fandom-centric podcast that tells you… what happened this week in fandom history!

Follow This Week in Fandom History on Tumblr at @thisweekinfandomhistory
You can support the show via our Patreon at http://www.patreon.com/thisweekinfandomhistory.
If you have a fannish company, event, or service and would like to sponsor or partner with TWIFH, please contact us via the Tumblr link above.
Please remember to rate the show 5 stars on your listening platform of choice!

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

May 23, 2001: Die, Seven, Die! + What Was Usenet? May 26, 2024

Show notes

NET.SPACE! This week, Emily and V surf their way to the earliest days of being able to connect with other human beings in cyberspace, and also, once again bow to the king of fandoms that takes place in actual space. First, Emily explains the pure haterade that was the Die, Seven, Die! Challenge after the series finale of Star Trek: Voyager. (Also, we looked up how to pronounce "Chakotay.") Then, to give some context for this unconstrained summer hatefest of fun, we look into what, exactly, Usenet was, and why Alice was the fucking best. Did you Usenet? Were you a September nuisance?

This Week In Fandom History is a fandom-centric podcast that tells you… what happened this week in fandom history!

Follow This Week in Fandom History on Tumblr at @thisweekinfandomhistory
You can support the show via our Patreon at http://www.patreon.com/thisweekinfandomhistory.
If you have a fannish company, event, or service and would like to sponsor or partner with TWIFH, please contact us via the Tumblr link above.
Please remember to rate the show 5 stars on your listening platform of choice!

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

May 19, 2009: Glee Premieres on FOX May 19, 2024

Show notes

Don't stop believin'! This week, V and Emily go back to a very different world. A pre-Glee world. And it kind of isn't pretty. While V loved Glee at first, its legacy is... not super chill and great? Outside of a few key ships that will get their own episodes later on this year and/or early next year? So this episode is about Glee as a whole, which... listen. The songs slapped. They did. However. There are so many "howevers." Also, V had a life-paradigm-shifting experience on YouTube vis-a-vis show choir while researching this episode, so there's that.

Also, you may be looking at this episode thinking, "Last week, you said the next episode would be about May the 4th." Since we are WELL past that week in fandom history, we're instead jumping ahead to get back on schedule and will be releasing the May the 4th Holiday Special on Patreon for all donors.

Sources

Does Glee Hate Its Women? by Robert George

Dear Writers of Glee by @delladilly

Glee is not progressive. by @feministglee

This Week In Fandom History is a fandom-centric podcast that tells you… what happened this week in fandom history!

Follow This Week in Fandom History on Tumblr at @thisweekinfandomhistory
You can support the show via our Patreon at http://www.patreon.com/thisweekinfandomhistory.
If you have a fannish company, event, or service and would like to sponsor or partner with TWIFH, please contact us via the Tumblr link above.
Please remember to rate the show 5 stars on your listening platform of choice!

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

May 3, 2021: Dracula Daily Delivers the First Message From Our Friend Jonathan May 13, 2024

Show notes

Paprika! This week, Emily and V head back to 2021 -- but mostly 2022, carte blanche -- to look at the phenomenon of Dracula Daily and its explosion of popularity on Tumblr. We also head to 1992 to look at the worst movie of all time, Bram Stoker's Dracula, starring extremely beautiful people who were all in extremely different movies all at once. And then we traipse to 1897 to look at the original novel of Dracula and its extremely weird creation by a very strange l'il guy, Bram Stoker. Plus, bats! Bats everywhere! Also, Jack the Ripper!

Also, you may note that this is actually a date from last week (in fandom history). And um. So is... so is the next episode. V messed up the spreadsheet a little bit and we didn't notice until we'd recorded three episodes in a row that happened on either May 3 or May 4. ...It won't happen again, probably.

Follow This Week in Fandom History on Tumblr at @thisweekinfandomhistory
You can support the show via our Patreon at http://www.patreon.com/thisweekinfandomhistory.
If you have a fannish company, event, or service and would like to sponsor or partner with TWIFH, please contact us via the Tumblr link above.
Please remember to rate the show 5 stars on your listening platform of choice!

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

May 3, 1991: Dallas Closes Out Its Final Season May 05, 2024

Show notes

Keep your friends close, but your enemies closer! This week, Emily and V head West to Texas and back in time to the 1980s to visit with the most melodramatic family in television history: the Ewings. As a cultural phenomenon that helped define the decade, Dallas... has surprisingly few (surviving?) fanworks. But thanks to one teenage fan nigh twenty years after the Ewings bid South Fork adieu, Emily and V get to learn about the JR/Sue Ellen ship (and reminisce about Web 1.0 fansites). Plus... who shot JR?

Sources

Dallas Online Forever

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April 15, 1912: The RMS Titanic Sinks (And 85 Years Later There's a Huge Fandom About It) Apr 21, 2024

Show notes

Iceberg right ahead! This week, V and Emily plumb the depths of the entire world's massive Titanic fandom and its accompanying "Leomania." James Cameron's Titanic was impossible to ignore in 1998 -- from the cinema to some weird video store in Utah, from middle school dances to the Oval Office, from the pages of Vanity Fair to the wilderness of GeoCities, Jack Dawson and Rose DeWitt-Bukater were inescapable. So grab your Jewel of the Sea knockoff necklace, polish off your Céline Dion CD, and rewind VHS1 of your two-tape box set. Are you ready to go back to Titanic?

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April 3, 1999: What Would They Think? Apr 14, 2024

Show notes

What would they think? This week, Emily and V -- okay. This episode was supposed to be about the April 2000 Slate Magazine article, "Luke Skywalker Is Gay?"

And it does start out that way.

But thanks to Emily's personal fannish history and a tiny footnote in the article, this episode goes... somewhere else.

And oh my god.

Links

Follow This Week in Fandom History on Tumblr at http://thisweekinfandomhistory.tumblr.com!

You can support the show via our Patreon at http://www.patreon.com/thisweekinfandomhistory. If you have a fannish company, event, or service and would like to sponsor or partner with TWIFH, please contact us via the Tumblr link above.

Please remember to rate the show 5 stars on your listening platform of choice!

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

April 2, 1956: As the World Turns Premieres on CBS Apr 07, 2024

Show notes

It wasn't me... it was... my evil twin brother! This week, V and Emily look at a somewhat different kind of fandom by delving into the long, long history of As The World Turns, a daytime soap opera that ran for over 50 years. ATWT made television history in 2007 when they featured the first M/M kiss, and first positively-portrayed M/M relationship, on American daytime television, but of course, Luke/Noah were not without drama. Melodrama. This star-studded episode features green-card marriages, murder attempts, doctor-blackmailing, Meg Ryan, and Spanish prisons. What more could you want from your stories?

Links

Follow This Week in Fandom History on Tumblr at http://thisweekinfandomhistory.tumblr.com!

Please remember to rate the show 5 stars on your listening platform of choice!

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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