Book/interview anon here! Much appreciate your replies and I understand why you decided to not publish! I just wanted to add something to your second reply - sadly, there are plenty of people in the SPN fandom (and especially those that are new to it) that DON'T know about Fangasm's past and and clear bias. They see a university professor with published books and articles, so they see them as legitimate. It happened to me as well, when I first got into SPN, I went looking for info. And sadly, her books were recommended and she was an academic, so by association, they seemed to be more reputable and accurate. I bought her books as e-books then I started following her on Twitter - where after a while I noticed that her con reports were often different to con reports from other attendees who were also livetweeting. Completely omitting or distorting details, putting her own commentary on her tweets and passing it off as ''summary'' of what is being said when that is absolutely not the case. And of course, Misha is often the victim of her omitting or distorting stuff - meanwhile, when reporting on J2 panels, she always finds a way to make them look like ''bros4life'' and supposedly ''highlighting ''cute'' J2 moments - wile again distorting details and mentioning things out of context.
Anyway, what this leads to, is unsuspecting people that just follow the livetweeting or the con hashtag believing her half-truths and distortions, and people new to the fandom following her based on her ''academic SPN fan'' status. She clearly leaned hard on "I'm a fandom academic, I'm writing an academic book" in order to get access to the cast and crew of SPN. After re-reading some passages of her Fangasm book, I realized that a) she is OBSESSED with Jensen and b) she and her friend (the 2nd author of Fangasm, who has since passed away) wrote both wincest and J2 RPF fics. Hell, even Jared fans on Tumblr are complaining that Fangasm is always focusing on Jensen and shortchanging Jared and his projects - and while we know how they want everyone to pay attention to their special boy, it's actually true: Fangasm does overwhelmingly focus on Jensen. Apparently she goes to all US cons and to all Jensen M&G's.
Also, when it comes to matters of production/editing/script writing/narrative/story telling, she is just SLIGHTLY more knowledgeable than the average fan. Why? Because having a PhD in Clinical Psychology does not make you an expert in script writing, filming, editing, cinematography, production choices etc. But people seem to think , ''She has a PhD! She's published books!'' and confuse this with authority and superior knowledge on all topics. Given the fact that BOTH FILM/TV and Fandom Studies exist as very real academic fields, with thousands of publications per year, her co-opting her PhD credentials to appear so authoritative rubs me VERY MUCH the wrong way.
Sorry for the rant, lol. As a former academic, I can't help but be utterly grossed out by how she weaponized her identity as an academic to push her own narrative and bias to unsuspecting people, while implicitly claiming knowledge and objectivity. Sometimes I wonder how SHE would like if someone used her words in an academic article but distorted them or left half the original sentence out. Or if someone would make a nice article compiling all the times she deliberately misinterpreted/omitted/added her own shitty take and share this with all the students of her uni program as a warning: ''so much for academic standards, huh?'' But if that ever happened, she'd default to ''I'm just a fan reporting on fandom events!''- Yes, and you're also a Wincestie AND a J2 RPF stan, so how about making that known as well??
I decided to publish this follow up message from you because there are so many new fans coming in and latching on to the not-so-great-or-accurate fan accounts out there.
Thanks so much for your input and information. It’s appreciated and rather illuminating.
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