Argh, DC... This week, V and Emily take another frustrating look at how DC Comics just loves to kill off Robins, this time with added explicit misogyny toward the fanbase as well as the character they've doomed to the gallows. On the bright side, V got an amazing primer from listener katieiscunning, who loves the character of Spoiler AKA Robin AKA Batgirl AKA Stephanie Brown, and made V and Emily love her, too! Plus, author Mary Borsellino began a comics accountability website known as...

Scullay!!! This week, Emily and V head back to a happy happenstance in 1994 as the birth of Gillian Anderson's real-life baby changes the fictional life of Dana Scully forever, in more ways than one. By changing the scope of Scully's life, the lore of The X-Files grew and expanded into something network TV had never seen before. Plus, we love how much Gillian and David Duchovny love each other, and we're both terrified IRL about Eugene Tooms possibly hiding in V's A/C vents. Sources ...

Apocalypse now? This week, V and Emily start out the episode by talking about the super-cool annual convention that Good Omens fans created and host as part of The Ineffable Society: the Ineffable Con, going strong since 2019. Then, we have to delve into the allegations against Good Omens co-author and showrunner Neil Gaiman, former Tumblr everyman and (alleged) total sleazebag. Looking at the Gaiman situation through the lens of, "how are fans reacting, and how are fans treating each other's...

*insert Tarzan yell here* This week, Emily and V explore a totally new-to-them fandom thanks to requester pandaimitator: Tarzan of the Apes. And frankly, it's crazy that we haven't heard about everything this old-timey fandom created that we still use and do today. Fan clubs! Conventions! Fan campaigns! Fanfiction! The Pizza Hut Book-It model of consumerism! The concept of the franchise itself! While the source material does not stand up to modern sensibilities — at all, and we're not...

Get out your tissues, listeners! (Seriously.) This week, V and Emily split the episode in two parts: first, the very silly attempt to understand how the Forever Knight fandom went to WAR! for the thirteenth time in 2010. Second, a look into the fannish life and ongoing impact of Forever Knight BNF Susan M. Garrett, who seems like she was a completely awesome fangirl, writer, and person. V and Emily both weep like babies in this episode because sometimes, the fans who make history ARE...

What?! This week, Emily and V travel all the way back one year to look at... the dumbest thing we've ever had to cover for this show, possibly. You all remember this one: @ao3topshipsbracket pitted Steve Rogers/Bucky Barnes against Edward Teach/Stede Bonnet, and things got insanely, unnecessarily, WEIRDLY nuts. We're baffled. We're a little bitter. We're mostly confused? Sources The Infamous Poll The Mary Sue This Week In Fandom History is a fandom-centric podcast that tells you… what...

#*@%$(*! This week, V and Emily head back to the event that caused the Great Schism Of One Direction Fandom: The B******t Tweet. V has an epiphany about her longest-ever fic and one of her big OTPs of the early 2010s, and Emily feels a lot of empathy for both Harry Styles and Louis Tomlinson in the face of all the, well, b******t thrown at them for years. Plus, Zayn Malik has common sense about emus. Have you ever been in a fandom that got its wrist slapped by the object of its affection (or...

Come together, right now! This week, Emily and V head back to the extremely seventies 1970s to look at a fandom currently having a resurgence on Tumblr: The Beatles. V has actually been to "The Fest," as groovy kids call it, and wrote a paper on Beatlemania that got published a zillion years ago to boot, so she chimes in about what this fandom is like from ground level while Emily marvels at the guts of The Fest's founder, Mark Lapidos, and how very accessible people were in 1974. Then we end...

Fukkin' preps. This week, V and Emily have their brains melted by not ONE incredibly stupid and obvious literary fraud, but TWO incredibly stupid and obvious literary frauds! Yes! In one week! And both involving the most infamous fanfic of all time, everyone's favorite: My Immortal. Dust off your fishnets and stretch out your middle fingers, it's time to get goffik. Sources The Hollywood Reporter EW Books V's Handbook for Mortals tag on Tumblr jewishkeith on Tumblr Vox Culture ...

Icicle?! This week, Emily and V hold a sort of jazz funeral for a fandom event that shaped both of them as human people, and that cannot and should not ever happen again. The Three-Year Summer was a pivotal stretch of time for fandom culture as a whole because a) every f*****g person alive was in this fandom, b) the whole point was that there was no canon and the world was wide open for the taking, and c) the Internet was young enough that you could claim ANYTHING on that shit. And we all...

::General rage noises:: This week, V and Emily discuss the trope-namer for "fridging," or the killing off of female characters purely to cause manpain and advance male characters' stories. It's rage-inducing. Plus, the Hawkeye Initiative brings attention to undue sexualization of female comics characters, and Dead Men Defrosting debunk the myth that male superheroes suffer as much as women do.  Additional Reading The Woman Dies by Aoko Matsuda, trans. Polly Barton This Week In Fandom...

Buy gold...! This week, Emily and V look at one of the coolest fan experiences that they've ever heard about: Gravity Falls fandom's Cipher Hunt. To both celebrate and mourn the end of the series, writer Alex Hirsch created an international scavenger hunt for the fandom, and OUR LOVELY PATRON HOLLY played a pivotal role in connecting fans across the world! Plus, a look at the messages between Alex Hirsch and the absolute f*****g goons of Disney Channel's S&P department. Sources Holly's...

Up, up, and... oh no. This week, V and Emily look at yet another fandom whose femslash juggernaut OTP got dealt an unfair hand by TPTB, in looking at the fallout of the Supergirl Season 2 Musical Recap from San Diego ComicCon 2017. So much rage. So much disappointment. So much annoyance. Why can't femslashers have nice things?! 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...

Dream a little bigger, darlings. This week, Emily and V go deeper and deeper into the mindscape of fandom in 2010, when Inception became an unlikely juggernaut fandom-that-ate-fandom because of two minor (as in tertiary) characters played by internet boyfriends Tom Hardy and Joseph Gordon Levitt. They talk that iconic ending, reasons this weird movie resonated with people so hard, and how fandom itself was in a time of transition in 2010, which left its mental landscape wide open for...

ATTACK! This week, V tells Emily about the 2023 DDoS attacks against the OTW, particularly AO3, and how amazing the SysAdmin volunteers defended the servers and got the sites back online. Plus, how fandom reacted to A Very Bad 24 Hours In Fandom History -- because there was ANOTHER dumb/bad event happening over on Tumblr, too! -- and perhaps the greatest fanfiction of all time.

We can do this all day! This week, Emily surprises V with an episode all about her blorbo, Steve Rogers (Captain America). It's a loosey-goosey chat about their baby blorbo boy, from his origin as the creation of two Jewish men who wanted a golem to punch Hitler in the face to their own origin stories as Steve fangirls. Plus, a rundown on AO3's top ten Steve ships! Note: There were some technical issues with the recording on this episode, so there are a few places where the audio goes a bit...

Bubble, bubble, bubble pop! This week, V and Emily explore the highs of fandom and lows of the kpop trainee system as they look at one of the coolest fanworks ever made, possibly: the guerilla zine Bubble Pop! Spearheaded by one Washington D.C. kpop fan who wanted to know who the other kpop fans of her city were, Bubble Pop! was the coolest (and most fun-sounding) party of this week in fandom history. V also tells Emily a lot of things about kpop that Emily does not enjoy at all. This episode...

Beam us up! This week, Emily and V were expecting a disaster of epic proportions and bad feelings all around, but instead we got a surprisingly delightful and warm story of fandom community spirit saving a very bad situation. We both cry in this episode. It's fine. It's just Star Trek fans being great, okay?! Have you ever met a new friend at a convention? What would you do with a suitcase full of fanfiction? This Week In Fandom History is a fandom-centric podcast that tells you… what...

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...

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. ...

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 f*****g 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...