This Week In Fandom History

Welcome to another episode of the TWIFH special miniseries podcast, CONstruction: How to Throw A Fan Convention. Each month, V will catch up with John @jarrow, the logistics guy with all the spreadsheets and contracts for TGI Femslash, about, well, how to throw a successful fan convention. If you've ever thought, "It sure would be fun to spend the weekend with other people talking about my blorbo" but didn't know where to start, Jo...

She doesn't even go here! This week, V and Emily are joined by a friend who, indeed, does not normally go here, but we're glad she did for this episode: Allegra Ponti from STAN Podcast. She is here to join our cafeteria clique as we discuss the 2004 movie phenomenon Mean Girls, and how the worldwide fandom for this movie a) destroyed Lindsay Lohan, and b) shaped our own high school experiences to varying degrees. (While we didn't h...

PHIL LESTER, YOU’RE A GENIUS! This week’s episode is a little different. This week, Emily and V finally release an episode that has been sitting in our vault for over a year — not because it wasn’t good, but because the universe pulled off one of the most chaotic, timeline‑breaking acts of accidental fandom trolling we’ve ever witnessed.

We originally recorded this episode as a thoughtful, slightly...

Hunters, get your salt! This week, V and Emily are joined by friend-of-the-pod Heidi Tandy, who calls in from San Diego Comic-Con 2026 to discuss the fandom that spells SDCC for her, and thousands of others in the fannish community: Supernatural. The premiere of the show on the WB (progenitor of The CW) in 2005 changed fandom permanently, in more ways than could possibly be discussed in one hour. But SPN also changed fandom for Hei...

Aiyiyiyiyiyiyiyiyiiii! This week, Emily and V head back to the mid‑90s — the era of dial‑up internet and aggressively pointy shoulderpads — to revisit the rise of Xena: Warrior Princess. It’s hard to overstate how much this show reshaped the fandom landscape: a morally complicated heroine, a narrative built on redemption… and a relationship between two women that sparked decades of essays, fanfic, fanvids, ...

Absolute potato! This week, TWIFH is delighted to bring you a special preview of Femme & Furious, a new pod-friend and great listen for fans of fandom, and especially for listeners who liked our old behind-the-scenes pop culture rundown episodes for Patreon. In this episode, our friend Julia Portela looks with a feminist lens at five (secretly six) pieces of extremely current media: Obsession, The Drama, Odyssey, Spider-Man: Br...

Never enough! This week, V and Emily travel back to TWIFH’s oldest historical event thus far: opera singer Jenny Lind’s landmark 1850 tour in the United States and its accompanying “Lindmania.” Did you know that the fangirls of 1850 were Just Like Us? They sobbed, they squeed, they schemed to meet their faves, and they spent way, WAY too much on concert tickets. The quotes from antebellum Lind fans reacting ...

Welcome to another episode of the TWIFH special miniseries podcast, CONstruction: How to Throw A Fan Convention. Each month, V will catch up with John @jarrow, the logistics guy with all the spreadsheets and contracts for TGI Femslash, about, well, how to throw a successful fan convention. If you've ever thought, "It sure would be fun to spend the weekend with other people talking about my blorbo" but didn't know where to star...

No pithy exclamation this week, because we are too angry. While #Gamergate easily warrants an entire long-form investigative podcast all on its own, Emily did a fantastic job condensing it down to one infuriating hour for V. We look at both the surface and underlying reasons behind the reactionary far-right gamer movement, as well as its continuing fallout and the ways that it has irrevocably changed the entire modern world. For th...

What happened to your shirt?! This week, V and Emily indulge in talking about one of their favorite MCU films -- and the most handsome star of the Marvel Cinematic Universe -- Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, and its star, Simu Liu. Did you know that this film/character does not even have a Fanlore page, which is a TRAVESTY? Listen as we make a case for everyone to hop on board the Shang-Chi train and start including Shan...

Two can keep a secret if one of them is dead! This week, TWIFH is delighted to bring you a special preview episode of Lez Hang Out, the #1 lesbian hangout podcast and a super-fun listen for fans of fandom. Our good friend -- and CONstruction co-host, @jarrow from TGIF/F! -- is their expert guest on this episode, a deep dive into the batshittery of Pretty Little Liars. Check out what they have to say, and listen to our episode over ...

#StreamBTSDynamiteNewSong! This week, V and Emily head back to the days of quarantine to look at an event that is... sigh. It showcases the culture differences between pre-2020 fandom and post-2020 fandom, Twitter fandom and the lineage of Livejournal-originated fandom, and corporate internet versus free internet. When fans take it upon themselves to become de facto employees for their blorbos, are they still acting out of fandom o...

Slash fans, rise up! (Sorry.) This week, V and Emily look at a triple-shot of '90s slash goodness: the multifandom zine "Nothing to Hide," the STIFfie Awards of 1998, and STIFfie founder Mary Urhausen. We're wading deeper into a pool that we thought we knew the depths of but boy, were we wrong, because there are shows that got slashed that we NEVER thought had slashy sexiness content. Plus, a look at the 1997 MediaWest controversy ...

Muffins! This week, Emily and V are... surprisingly heartwarmed? Pleasantly shocked? Tentatively on board with a fandom they were very nervous to cover? We're talking about Bronies this week, which is to say, adult (mostly male) fans of My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic. This week in fandom history, they were acknowledged by their show canon with the inclusion of their fandomwide blorbo, a backgrounder named... well... therein li...

Welcome to another episode of the TWIFH special miniseries podcast, CONstruction: How to Throw A Fan Convention. Each month, V will catch up with John @jarrow, the logistics guy with all the spreadsheets and contracts for TGI Femslash, about, well, how to throw a successful fan convention. If you've ever thought, "It sure would be fun to spend the weekend with other people talking about my blorbo" but didn't know where to start, Jo...

Do ya feel lucky? Punk! This week, V and Emily are so, so, sososo delighted by a new-to-them fandom: Harry/Johnny, which is technically -- technically -- the Dirty Harry fandom, but is REALLY just an offshoot of Starsky & Hutch. Created wholecloth by two fannish friends based on a single look in the middle of a movie that is only the second out of five in a series that is Decidedly Not Slashy, Harry/Johnny was a hugely influent...

He tries his best! This week, Emily and V look at a fandom event that was listed on our research spreadsheet as, simply, "A HUGE FUCKING DEAL." Fandom has loved few characters the way it loved, and still loves, Ianto Jones of Torchwood. Unfortunately, he was created by a showrunner who hates fandom even more than most showrunners with the urge to Punish hate their female fans. Even so, fans' love for Ianto is -- like his love inter...

You have two nickels! This week, Emily and V joined forces with... Emily and Vee! You requested it in our May listener survey: it's a wild conversation with fellow fandom podcast, Mind the Tags. We stumble over direct addresses and begin to wonder which universe we're really in (is it 616??) as we discuss the past, present, and future of fanfiction, and our own origin stories as Vs and Emilys of the fandom podcasting multiverse. Th...

::Magical girl transition!:: This week, V and Emily were asked to finally, after three and a half years of hosting a fandom podcast, tackle an anime episode. So, because we are not anime girlies, we asked THEE anime expert, Erica Friedman, to join us and explain all things yuri! From school stories in the 1920s and 1930s to Sailor Moon's magical girls, and from Japan to the United States, Erica teaches us about the importance of F/...