G33K Out: Roundtable — The Politics of Shipping

Episode 40: Roundtable — The Politics of Shipping

There are parts of fandom that have problems — because, surprise, fandom is made up of people. My first roundtable, episode 35, dealt with the toxicity in the Star Wars fandom. A side conversation in that podcast led to this episode, wherein we (very broadly) talk about some of the more taboo aspects of shipping.

Basic show notes:

• Running time is 57 minutes, 24 seconds.
• The interview was recorded on February 3, 2019.
• Joining me in this roundtable were:
  • Jessie Salsbury: you can follow her on Twitter, find her (and her plays) on the New Play Exchange, and read her fanfic on AO3.
  • Angelique Jurd: you can follow her on Twitter, like her author page on Facebook, and check out her writing on her website.
  • And then I promised in the podcast that I would link to my AO3 account, as well as my Dreamwidth.
• General notes about the discussion/further reading:
  • Wikipedia’s entry on shipping — and the etymology of the term ‘ship’ and ‘shipping’.
  • Slate’s article “Luke Skywalker is Gay?”, that got me sent down the slashfic rabbit hole.
  • An essay on ComicsVerse on “Why We Need to End Toxic Shipping as a Fandom Community”.
  • Fanlore’s section on Lord of the Rings RPS, with a brief mention of the conspiracy of Dominic Monaghan and Elijah Wood.
  • Aja Romano (who I think I mispronounce her first name)’s article on the One Direction baby conspiracy. She doesn’t make the comparison to the Cumberbaby like I thought, but that theory is pretty much the same thing.
  • My Freebatch Pinterest.
  • The Fail Fandomanon Wiki entry on TJLC (warning: this is a time-sinking hole).
  • The “Ten Commandments of Fandom” that Jessie summarizes.
  • I mentioned writing a darkfic essay: after recording, I remembered it was for Zendom (and it was Diaryland). Alas, my essay isn’t on the Wayback Machine.
  • However, after recording, I came across this Tumblr post that goes into many of the same things I did.
  • An article that goes into a brief explanation of Tumbler’s ban on adult content, and why that’s not been going so well.
  • The Organization of Transformative Works, and one of its subsites, Archive of Our Own (aka AO3).
• In the Angie Geeks Out section:
  • Jessie recommends the podcast The Subtext: Conversations with Playwrights. She also recommends it on her blog here.
  • Angel talks about how Supernatural got renewed. Here’s Entertainment Weekly’s article on their 300th episode.
  • I geek out about going to Gallifrey One again this year. The con was the topic of my 30th episode.
• Theme music is “Schoolyard Haze”, by Jari Pitkanen, available via the Free Music Archive.
• This podcast is released under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share-Alike License.
• Interested in hearing other episodes of G33K Out? Check them out here.

And now, it’s time to geek out.