Alternate Universes by Newt Albiston

Huge news!! Fansplaining is becoming a full-on weekly publication, with a wide range of writing (and audio! and art!) by, for, and about fandom. Head over to the site to sign up for updates about Fansplaining 2.0. "Fansplaining's Next Chapter": We're relaunching as a weekly publication featuring reporting, analysis, criticism, personal essays, and more—all by, for, and about fandom. Read the whole piece: https://www.fansplaining.com/articles/fansplainings-next-chapter

Our final article of 2025 is here! Kayti Burt—who first wrote for us last spring, in a fantastic piece on the precarity of being a fandom journalist (https://www.fansplaining.com/articles/the-fan-journalist-tightrope)—returns to Fansplaining to tackle the subject of fandom tourism, and how fans can approach journeys with respect rather than entitlement.  "Can Fandom Make Us Better Tourists?" In an era of overtourism, South Korea's Jeju Island and international BTS fans are building bridges of mutual respect. Read the whole piece: https://www.fansplaining.com/can-fandom-make-us-better-tourists/  

Our November piece is here! Newt Albiston's essay is one part guide to fandom text-based roleplaying, one part meditation on working through gender exploration via roleplay. Plus: be sure to click through and see the gorgeous art we commissioned from illustrator Anna Lark. "Alternate Universes" Through text-based roleplaying, I've lived so many other lives—and experienced so many other bodies.  Read the whole piece: https://www.fansplaining.com/articles/alternate-universes/

Our October piece is part essay/part excerpt: Meghan Fitzmartin, who's written for DC Comics, Supernatural, and many other fan-favorite properties, has published an indie comic, Mary Sue, about—you guessed it!—a fanfiction writer. While the essay is a standalone text you should be able to listen to just fine here, we highly recommend heading over to the piece itself to see excerpts from Mary Sue's first issue! "Reclaiming the Mary Sue" by Meghan Fitzmartin. My new comic interrogates the continued bias against Mary Sues—and brings one life.   Read the whole piece: https://www.fansplaining.com/articles/reclaiming-the-mary-sue/

September's piece is by longtime fandom journalist Aja Romano, on the explosion of Kpop Demon Hunters, and its intersections—or lackthereof—with real K-pop artists and fans. "K-Pop's Demons, Real and Fictional" by Aja Romano. KPop Demon Hunters has seen massive mainstream success in the U.S. What does that mean for real K-pop artists and their fans? Read the whole piece: https://www.fansplaining.com/articles/kpops-demons-real-and-fictional

Our August piece is by novelist (and Fansplaining SDCC 2025 panelist!) Tessa Gratton, about navigating the intersections of the fan and pro writing worlds, and how their queerness shapes their framings of these worlds. "The Fan, the Pro, and the Spaces In Between" by Tessa Gratton. Writing for Star Wars challenges me to interrogate fandom power dynamics—and figure out where I fall in a rapidly shifting landscape. Read the whole piece: https://fansplaining.com/articles/fan-pro-spaces-between/ 

Fansplaining returned to San Diego Comic-Con this year (our tenth anniversary!) with a fantastic panel of fandom folks who work in pro entertainment careers. There's an audio recording here on our feed, and over at the website:   https://www.fansplaining.com/articles/sdcc-2025-the-fandom-advantage   You can watch video version as well as read a full transcript. Because the intro to the audio is only on this feed, that's transcribed below.   Transcript of intro:    Hi everyone! Elizabeth here. I am fresh off San Diego Comic-Con 2025...or not...fresh, but I'm off. [laughing] I got home in the wee hours of yesterday morning. Had a wonderful time, but am happy to be home and sleeping in my own bed.    So as you almost undoubtedly know, because we mentioned it a million times over the course of the podcast, Flourish and I first met at San Diego, we were on a panel together in 2015. So this is the ten-year anniversary.    And so I was really honored to be able to host a panel again on Fansplaining's behalf, though it was obviously bittersweet because Flourish wasn't there...though I will say I sent over some pictures, and I think Flourish, I'm just dragging them back towards coming, just for Comic-Con in the future. [laughing]    So this was the fourth panel that Fansplaining has hosted since we started doing our own panels in 2019. It was called "The Fandom Advantage: How Fan Creativity Fuels Pro Entertainment Careers."    So this was an incredibly talented collection of panelists. I'm always so thrilled by the people we can get together for these panels. They've worked on huge properties like Interview with the Vampire, for example, The Witcher, Supernatural, just a long list of fan-favorites—Star Wars. And then indie stuff like FIYAH Literary Magazine and queer indie publishing.    And they came onto talk about their fannish past and presents, and how that connects to the work that they do professionally.   So this audio, I really appreciate, recorded by Sadie Witkowski, who is the host of another fandom podcast, In Defense of Fandom. Definitely go check that out, if you just google it, or go to fansplaining.com, you can get a link from the show page. Sadie was kind enough to, while sitting in the front row of the audience, record on her phone and on her recorder, but this was an echoey auditorium, this was what we could manage without having access to professional equipment, so the audio quality is a bit mixed.   So I would highly recommend going over to fansplaining.com and checking out the full transcript, because I think that will make it a lot easier to follow along, whether you're listening to the audio version here or watching the YouTube video, which is on YouTube itself, of course, and on our site, fansplaining.com.   So hopefully you enjoy this conversation, and thanks again to all the panelists. It was really great to talk to you this weekend.

Our latest piece is about making fanworks—and fandom friendships—last through the decades!  "How Friendships Onscreen and Off Fueled Half a Century of Fandom" by Jay Castello. For the admins of the Starsky & Hutch Fiction Archive, preserving fanworks and fannish community go hand in hand.   Read the full piece: https://fansplaining.com/articles/how-friendships-fueled-half-century-fandom  

This month's Fansplaining piece is a bit of a departure from our usual fandom reporting and critical analysis: for the first time, we're very excited to share a virtual art exhibit of sorts, from Toronto-based curators and BTS fans Rea McNamara and Bo Shin.  I came to ruin you: The Collecting Practices of K-pop Fandoms was on display at York University this past spring, and what follows is an expanded version of the exhibition's brochure, plus images, videos, and interviews with some of the fan collectors and participating artists Jiwon Choi and Lux Pyre.  You can listen to the main text of the piece on this feed, but! We'd highly recommend going to the article itself to see all the images and videos (with descriptive captions and alt-text):  https://www.fansplaining.com/articles/i-came-to-ruin-you-the-collecting-practices-of-k-pop-fandoms