It was a DELIGHT to record a Fansplaining episode again!!!

You guessed right! In one final treat before the end of the year, real live priest @fatherflourish.bsky.social returns to Fansplaining to discuss the latest Knives Out installment, WAKE UP DEAD MAN. 🙌🏼 Patrons at $3 and up get access to audio + a full transcript: www.fansplaining.com/episodes/spe...

Thee @tamarherman.com on K-pop is always worth reading. notesonkpop.com/2025-ends-wi... (My only suggestion is instead of reading that sorta basic NYT piece she links, read this much better one I wrote for @fansplaining.bsky.social 🔥 ) www.fansplaining.com/articles/kpo...

Your hint is: What current movie would draw this PRIEST back onto Fansplaining's airwaves???

We’ve got one more holiday treat for patrons before the year ends, featuring a special guest star… 🥰 Keep an eye on your inboxes tomorrow!

I'm so glad I got to work with this batch of talented writers, and very proud of all the pieces I edited in 2025. At a moment when mainstream coverage of fandom is more dire than...possibly when I started covering this beat in the early 2010s?? I'm grateful I can try to counter that in a small way.

✨✨✨ Fansplaining's 2025 year in review! ✨✨✨ Over on Tumblr, a few thoughts about the (bleak) state of cultural—and especially fandom-related—coverage in the mainstream media, followed by a full rundown of the fantastic writing we've been able to publish this year: www.tumblr.com/fansplaining...

In our latest piece, @kaytiburt.bsky.social digs into the motivations behind fandom tourism—and how both entitlement and respect often come from the same emotional place. Read or listen to an audio version: www.fansplaining.com/articles/can...

"The best of fandom isn't transactional. It’s moments of unlikely connection between strangers or friends who might not have crossed paths, let alone traveled them together, if not for loving the same thing." @kaytiburt.bsky.social on fan tourism—and how to make it collaborative, not extractive:

Such a pleasure to publish @kaytiburt.bsky.social again—an incredibly thoughtful writer!! Commission her!! I was also excited to dive a bit deeper on fan tourism conceptually, because I feel like a lot of media coverage about the subject is about the "what," and rarely goes too far into the "why."

I continue to be grateful—as a writer, reader, lifelong fan—that Fansplaining exists as a space to properly wonder about how fandom shapes modern life. In this piece, I am wondering about how fandom can make us better and worse tourists, with the editorial guidance of @elizabethminkel.bsky.social.

Our final piece of 2025 is live! 💞 @kaytiburt.bsky.social writes about fan tourism: the good, the bad, and...the basis for deeper cross-cultural connection? On Purple Festa, an event that brings fans of Korean pop culture closer to traditional Korean culture. Read or listen to an audio version:

We're putting the finishing touches on the final Fansplaining article of the year, by the inimitable @kaytiburt.bsky.social! Out tomorrow—here's a sneak peak. 😘

Loved this piece - text RP reinvigorated my creative drive after I became a parent and introduced me to my writing partners! Highly recommend playing pretend as an adult.

"Some people go to therapy, and some people write with their friends about semi-fictional pirates having sex. Some people do both!" In our latest, @mossheadlives.bsky.social writes about text-based roleplaying in fandom. Read or listen to an audio version:

ALSO MARY SUE 2 IS OUT ON ARCHIVE OF OUR OWN’S 16th BIRTHDAY?! Happy birthday AO3, you and Cassie are the same age.

I'm so excited that this piece is out!! I've always found fandom roleplaying to be weirdly under-discussed (in media, academia) considering how much crossover there is w/ fic spaces. And @mossheadlives.bsky.social took an initial sort of explainer draft to such a beautiful essay in the end—read it!

IT’S LIVE!!!!!!! this piece means the world to me, it’s about connection and exploration, but it’s also about how old man yaoi can be a transformative thing. thank u to everyone who made this piece real!

Our November piece is live! ✨ @mossheadlives.bsky.social writes about text-based roleplaying in fandom—and about using these existing characters to explore their gender identity. Read the piece or listen to an audio version (and check out the gorgeous art by @thebeanbaguette.bsky.social):

hehehe ☺️

being illustrated for rocks. so excited for this piece to meet the world!!! <3

We're putting the finishing touches on our November piece: @mossheadlives.bsky.social on fandom text-based roleplaying and gender exploration! ✨ (Plus: Here's a sneak peak of the gorgeous art we commissioned for the piece by @thebeanbaguette.bsky.social.) Out this coming Wednesday!

In our latest piece, @megfitz89.bsky.social discusses her new indie comic, MARY SUE, and the evolving conversation around the Mary Sues more broadly. Read the essay or listen to an audio version—and check out a sneak peak of the first issue of the comic: www.fansplaining.com/articles/rec...

(absolutely obsessed with issue 1 of this and i'm not even a real comics person, highly recommended)

“I found writing Mary Sues a way to give me the courage I needed to tell a story, to explore themes I was working through, in the safe space of a fictional world I loved.” @megfitz89.bsky.social writes about her new comic, MARY SUE, “a love letter to fandom”: www.fansplaining.com/articles/rec...

When I initially talked to @megfitz89.bsky.social at SDCC about promoting Mary Sue when it came out, I thought, "You are going to write something for me." 😈 I'm so pleased to be able to run this essay & excerpts from the (fantastic!!) first issue. A work about fic fandom from a fic fandom person!!

Trigger warning -- I talk about some of the death threats I've gotten in the past, and how those death threats led to writing Mary Sue. (starting with the death threat I tell at parties bc it makes me laugh) ALSO, if you haven't read it yet, the end of the piece links to an extended preview!

Our October piece is live! 💞 @megfitz89.bsky.social writes about MARY SUE, her indie comic about a fanfic writer for a CWesque vampire show whose Mary Sue character comes to life. This piece is part essay about Mary Sues, part excerpt from the first issue. Read or listen to a full audio version:

when someone gives you the chance to actually make good on your IN THIS ESSAY I WILL threat, you take them up on it.

We're putting the finishing touches on our October piece, an essay from @megfitz89.bsky.social (who's written for DC Comics, Supernatural, and many other fan-favorite properties) about her new indie comic, Mary Sue, which is—you guessed it—about a fic writer! It'll be out on Wednesday! ✨

This is today! ✨

Congratulations!! 😍😍😍 (Meghan was a Fansplaining SDCC 2025 panelist—and she’s the author of our October piece! She’ll be diving into her experience writing Mary Sue in an essay with excerpted images, though don’t wait til that’s out to get yourself a copy!)

Yes! I recorded the article too which was a lot of fun (in between my cat trying to sabotage the project)

Your weekend read! 💓 @bookshop.bsky.social digs into the complicated intersections between the skyrocketing Kpop Demon Hunters fandom vs the (real) K-pop industry & fans. As always, if you prefer listening, we've got a full audio version along with the text! www.fansplaining.com/articles/kpo...

It's been FOREVER since I've been to New York Comic-Con, so I was very pleased when I was asked to be on a panel this year! If you'll be there, please put this one on your calendar. 🥰

"If no one expected KPDH to take over the latter half of 2025, does that mean it’s a game-changer for K-pop as a whole, or a fluke that has nothing to do with the broader K-pop fandom?" In our latest, @bookshop.bsky.social explores the wild success of Kpop Demon Hunters—and what it means for K-pop:

Why yes, I did respond to @bookshop.bsky.social's news about no longer being at Vox with a) a great deal of sympathy and support b) a very loud WOULD YOU WRITE FOR ME. 😅 I'm thrilled to publish such sharp reporting on these complicated fandom intersections—all editors should do the same!

it was so nice to write about K-pop and about fandom again! 🩷

Our September piece is live! 💞 @bookshop.bsky.social digs into the smash success of Kpop Demon Hunters, the complicated state of the K-pop industry, and why, despite media narratives, the fictional and real streams of K-pop might not actually be crossing. Read or listen to a full audio version:

everyone should read Tessa's @fansplaining.bsky.social essay! It's so so so so good and gets deeply into the nitty-gritty of writing original fiction and IP fiction and fanfiction. You will love it.

Since quotes are going around from @readingtheend.bsky.social's excellent @reactorsff.bsky.social piece today, here's the full essay I wrote last month on fandom, trad publishing, IP, and navigating it all from a more personal perspective:

Yaaaay! (Free agent sounds so sexy lol) (hire me)

We're putting the finishing touches on our September piece, which is out tomorrow from (now free agent!!! hire them!!!) @bookshop.bsky.social on....you guessed it: K-Pop Demon Hunters!* And its intersections (or lack thereof) with K-pop fandom itself.

"In the case of several recent and forthcoming trad published books openly connected to the Dramione fandom, it reasserts the value of canon created by a heinous TERF, directly funding an anti-trans agenda that gets real kids killed." PREACH

"Power doesn’t care about joy. Ultimately, it only cares about value, which means money. Trad publishing loves fanfic right now because it sees dollar signs instead of kudos." In our new piece, @tessagratton.bsky.social tackles the messy intersections between pro entertainment and fans right now:

ICYMI here's my essay on navigating the queered spaces of fandom, pro writing, and complicity with power

This essay by Tessa Gratton is a journey! It's about being queer, being a fan, being a pro writer, being a fanfic writer, and the ways those things ping off each other, and more, and it is amazing and relatable in all the best ways. ❤️

This is such a beautiful, thoughtful essay, and I'm so pleased @tessagratton.bsky.social wrote it for me!! On the societal power structures (aka money) that bestow cultural capital, publishers' changing attitudes about both queer fiction and fanfiction, protecting fannish joy, and much, much more.

🫣

Our August piece is live! 🚀 Novelist (and Fansplaining SDCC 2025 panelist!) @tessagratton.bsky.social on about the complicated intersections within their own fannish identity: writing for Star Wars, writing original queer fiction, and writing fic. Read the piece or listen to a full audio version: