My Favorite Podcasts

It wasn’t until quite recently that I started listening to podcasts. I had always been ambivalent about the medium. I find radio frustrating, because I want to be able to choose my own music, thank you very much. I often find talkshows boring, and I also didn’t quite see how podcasts would fit into my daily routines. Either I’m devoting my full attention to one thing, like reading a book, and there’s lot’s of things I would rather be paying attention to than a podcast, or I’m splitting my attention, for example while doing laundry and listening to music, and I thought podcasts would have too much of a narrative for that kind of half-engaged listening. Oh boy, how wrong I was.

Podcasts are ideal. They make you feel like your time on autopilot was actually well spent. I can listen to a podcast during laundry or cleaning or basically any chore, or I can listen to it during my daily commute, and I will feel like that was time well-spent instead of time spent doing boring responsible stuff. This change of heart was brought about by one podcast in particular: Witch Please.

Slash

You sigh. You roll your eyes. “Hasn’t Frenzied frickin’ Fangirl written enough about slash by now?” you ask. Maybe I have. But this time Slash is the title of a film I’ve just seen, and I’m here to tell all y’all that it rocks. As always, I have a few critical notes, but they’re not many.

So here’s the gist: Neil, the protagonist of Slash, writes slash for the fictional fandom of Vanguard. When his composition notebook is stolen (this is why we never take our attempts at writing erotica with us to school, children!) he accidentally befriends Julia, also a slash writer. Sidenote to people that know me IRL: There is a Julia in this film who writes gay fanfic, wears lots of t-shirts with cats on them and is an avid feminist. Sound familiar? I thought so. Julia encourages Neil to put his fic online, and when he does it soon becomes so successful that Neil is asked to do a reading at Comic Con. Then some other stuff happens that I won’t tell you for the sake of spoilers.

What I loved about this film: it’s about fandom, and more specifically: fanfic. It beautifully portrays the tensions within fandom that arise when old school fans are confronted with newcomers. Its full of in-jokes from RPF to curtain fic. It’s super open and honest about non-hetero sexual orientations.

What I didn’t love so much: Why is the protagonist a white guy? (SPOILER ALERT:

What’s Next?

I know y’all are waiting for an in-depth analysis of The Final Problem and I promise that’s coming up really soon. For now, suffice it to say that I was, overall, really happy, in spite of some blatant queerbaiting. But, surprisingly, Sherlock is not what I’m blogging about today.

Today might be the pinnacle of my career as a Frenzied Fangirl. I threw a Disney-themed birthday party this weekend and people turned up en masse in costumes. It was lovely. Then, last night, I was more anxious than I remember ever being before about Sherlock. This morning I purchased two tickets for Hamilton on the West End. Next weekend I’m going to see Harry Potter And The Cursed Child and today….

Lin-Manuel Miranda published this video.

 

It is the catalyst for a blogpost that has been a long time coming: one about how great it is when people you are a fan of are fans of other people you are a fan of. Kind of like Lin-Manuel Miranda recording a West Wing fanvideo.

Hamilton is THE BEST PIECE OF THEATER I HAVE EVER SEEN. Drop the mic, Miranda, and take your fluids-I'm coming back.

— Bradley Whitford (@BradleyWhitford) October 21, 2015

Explaining Slash Fiction

When I mention to people that I am a writer, and yes, that I write fanfiction, and yes, that I often write this fanfiction about men who fall in love with men, I am sometimes accused of fetishizing homosexuality.

A girl recently told me the following story: She was visiting a pub with her girlfriend when a group of men approached them and asked whether they’d make out so that the men could watch and enjoy the show. She felt violated by the experience, and a debate unfolded over the fetishization of lesbians, both in porn and mainstream media. The idea that women have sex because women enjoy it is somehow incomprehensible to many people. Instead, such people assume that women’s sexuality is there for straight men to enjoy. This fetishization is a disgusting, dehumanizing practice.

However, as a straight girl and an avid writer and reader of homoerotic (slash) fanfiction, I do not feel guilty of fetishizing gay men. Of course, I cannot speak for all of the fangirls all over the internet, as there are multitudes of people and viewpoints out there. I can only say that I consider fanfiction to be an innocent hobby, and in this article I will attempt to tell you why.

Why I Am Obsessed With The Marauders

Prisoner of Azkaban is my favorite Harry Potter book. It introduced a whole set of new characters that I immediately fell in love with: Sirius and Remus, and yes, even Peter. Of course, Lily and James had been previously mentioned, but their characters also got a more in-depth description in the third installment of the series.

So I loved that particular book because it gave me more information about them: the infamous Marauders of Hogwarts and Lily, who I imagine acted as a sidekick to their quartet as soon as she took up with James. So yeah, I love those guys. I probably love them more than any other characters in the book, and that’s a little odd: they hardly get the kind of in-depth attention a character like Harry gets, or Hermione or Snape or almost anyone else apart from, say, Seamus Finnigan.

Yet there is an explanation for my obsession, and I’ll share it with you. Be warned, though: after reading this post you won’t be able to ever think of the Marauders again without gross sobbing. Their storyline is just so freakin’ tragic.