This Week In Fandom History

Co-hosted by V @aimmyarrowshigh and Emily @idontgettechnology, This Week In Fandom History celebrates fandom culture's highest highs and weirdest lows. With which short-lived vampire cop drama was the very first X-Files fic crossed over? Who is Tara Gilesbie? How recently did the Starsky & Hutch Lending Library rent out its last zine? What were Strikethrough, Racefail, LGBTFansDeserveBetter, and Conchobar, anyway? V and Emily trade off some deep-internet research each week to learn and laugh (and sometimes rage) their way through the annals (heh) of fandom history. Come join us!

[allthingswhumpyandangsty]

[sweetwithheatwriting]

@thisweekinfandomhistory

[thisweekinfandomhistory]

💕

[femslashbigbang]

✨🪻 hello femslash enjoyers ✨🪻

Not a self promo, just me thinking at least a few of you might find this event interesting bc it's been brought to my attention:

TGIF/F, a longstanding Femslash Convention, is running a virtual con between 29-30 August this year that's open for registration now.

Additionally, attendees can help vote on what events are happening to help shape the weekend.

It sounds like a super delightful time and is run by a group of really cool people who love Femslash much like y'all.

Find them on Tumblr @tgifemslash ✨🪻

[allthrumyribs]

Low stakes since it is a virtual Con.

Come join us! The Con is so much fun when it is in person and I know that this virtual Con this summer will be just as much fun. 😃💜

[thisweekinfandomhistory]

Come have fun with us!!!

[thisweekinfandomhistory]

Hello, love the podcast. Coming in here with a correction for the Diana Gabaldon episode from a few years back. You mixed up the actor's name with the character's name. Frazer Hines is the actor. Jamie McCrimmon is the Doctor Who character :)

Ahh, thank you! We were so mired in our outrage that we goofed that up! Thanks!

[allthingswhumpyandangsty]

[t00thpasteface]

nothing online is ever truly deleted. except that one fucking thing you're looking for

[tgifemslash]

So you want to start a podcast?

We've got some superstar podcasters in our confam and they've suggested a workshop on how to get into fannish podcasting. It would include the planning/idea generation side and the technical side, with plenty of time for questions!

-

Virtual TGIF/F | Saturday 29 and Sunday 30 August 2026

Just $15 for an entire weekend of femslash fun, accessible from anywhere in the world?! Register now!

[mindthetagspod]

V fast, E furious with This Week in Fandom History

On this special crossover episode, Emily and Vee and joined by - wouldn't you know it - Emily and V, the cohosts of @thisweekinfandomhistory! We talk about the fandoms that shaped us (looking at you, Ducktales), fanfiction we love, and the possibility that one of us might be a reincarnated passenger from the Titanic. 

V fast, E furious with This Week in Fandom History

On this special crossover episode, Emily and Vee and joined by - wouldn't you know it - Emily and V, the cohosts of This Week in Fandom Hist

Sources from today's ep: 

V's epic Hunger Games companion book

The American Girl Doll anthology

Thank you to Erik Potteiger for producing our song and Haflacky for our logo design. 

[thisweekinfandomhistory]

This CROSSOVER EVENT was so much fun!!!

[thisweekinfandomhistory]

Due to technical issues, there will be no new episode today (July 5th). HOWEVER, make sure you check back on Wednesday, July 8, for a super exciting special episode that many of you requested!!!

[hppjmxrgosg]

all you new fandom members need to QUIET DOWN oh my god you're going to get us KILLED. we're happy to have you but if you keep talking about BULLSHIT like PUBLISHING fanfic for MONEY, Anne Rice is going to come back from the dead to KILL US. looking at YOU, maurauders fans, heated rivalry fans, byler fans...out here giving out interviews to news channels SHUT UP. we're going to have to start setting off firecrackers to keep the rent down.

[thisweekinfandomhistory]

https://www.tumblr.com/theonion/819877077849456640/telling-everyone-to-count-down-as-she-turned-to?source=share

Saw this right after listening to a certain recent episode and snickered, bc otherwise I would have had no idea who she was or why this was funny

Hah!

[thisweekinfandomhistory]

I am listening back through your backlog chronologically from the beginning and I am just really appreciative of how yall handle the happy/funny things but also the really hard topics. You are both great and I’m loving listening!!

Aww, thank you so much, friend! I'm so glad that one of the only other Stereo Kicks fans to exist has found the pod :')

[thisweekinfandomhistory]

New merch items, by request! "A Bowl of Mac & Cheese" romantasy title gear!

You can find it for sale ONLY on our official website!

[thisweekinfandomhistory]

I hope the “bowl of mac and cheese” joke makes it into a merch item because I need a gag gift for my romantasy loving sister

Oh, it's coming. It's just surprisingly hard to make pasta look like a sexy dragon. But it's coming...

[theseventhcrow55]

i get so emotional every time i think about fanfic culture. it's just so beautiful that people are writing and anonymously posting these thousand-word stories about characters we all love and not even getting any money or public fame from it. it's literally just for the love of the game.

shout out to everyone who participates in fanfic culture, be it reading or writing fanfics. you are contributing to such a lovely thing <3

[fanlore-wiki]

Featured Article: the lonely assassins trailer

This week’s Featured Article covers the legendary brain child of vidder hath5712, a 2012 fanmade fake trailer video titled “the lonely assassins trailer” that depicts the super team up of SuperWhoLock's extraterrestrial Time Lord from Dr. Who, the ghoul fighting trio from Supernatural, and the crime fighting duo from Sherlock to take on the terrifying Weeping Angels from the Dr. Who TV series. At the height of the SuperWhoLock's fame on Tumblr, this video was shared extensively across the site and praised for its use of music and editing to create a realistic and terrifying crossover event.

The vidder combined the strengths of the SuperWhoLock teams. The opening is the Tenth Doctor almost calling out to the world about the dangers of the Weeping Angels, with the iconic warning to not even blink. Flashing shots of Sherlock and John from Sherlock show them searching out answers along with images of Dean Winchester, Sam Winchester, Castiel, and Bobby Singer from Supernatural in their element hunting. All of our iconic characters in transitioning shots that lead up to the horrifying encounter with the Weeping Angels as they get closer and closer to the viewer. The use of the song “Judge and Jury” by Automachine creating a tense and building momentum up until the end, truly calling back to the horror aspect of many of these shows that the commenters agree on.

Ready to feel that spark of fear of the early days of SuperWhoLock or even just looking for a bit of nostalgia? Read more on the Fanlore page for this lovely work and take a peek for yourself – if you dare.

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We value every contribution to our shared fandom history. If you’re new to editing Fanlore or wikis in general, visit our New Visitor Portal to get started or ask us questions here!

[thisweekinfandomhistory]

This week's episode will be posted late due to illness. Apologies, and thank you for your patience! (But when it is up, it's an extra-long interview with a great guest!)

[sigmastolen]

Actually, let's see if I can do a temperature check on this.

Is it okay to link to lost or deleted fanfics on the Wayback Machine?

Yes, always

Yes, but not if the author deleted it/their account on purpose

Yes, but only if it seems lost 'accidentally' e.g. hosting website got deleted

No, never

Nuance (explain in the tags)

chickenshit button (see results)

Voting ended onJun 26

ah shit I probably should have said "using the Wayback Machine" but now i've hit post and can't edit the poll

for context: i've been thinking about making reclists for some older fandoms that predate AO3, where many works may have been lost as their archive sites stopped existing or their authors left a platform. to me, it seems unproblematic to find them in the Wayback Machine -- indeed, there are some fics that I first read because I was looking at a defunct archive in the WM. however, i've recently been in a fandom where authors seem to delete/get bullied out unusually frequently and it feels ethically dubious to distribute WM links (or saved files) of these authors' works, and i've left such works off reclists before. what do we think, folks?

please reblog for greater reach!

[hedwig-dordt]

This is an interesting question that I haven't thought very deeply about and I feel like I should.

@fansplaining @elizabethminkel do you happen to know who HAS thought about this?

[elizabethminkel]

Yes! Me hahaha. We've had a longstanding rule on the Rec Center submission form:

We won't share recs that aren't broadly available to the public—locked-to-archive-members AO3 fics are totally fine, but Google doc copies of fics that have been taken down are not. We have no strong feelings about sharing the latter amongst friends, but we're not comfortable sharing it with thousands of people, especially if we don't know the intentions of the original author when they took their stuff down.

I tried to really hammer home the context when I first wrote this: the "this newsletter has thousands of subscribers" bit does matter imo. In contrast, there are a few notable writers in my fandom who hid/removed their works because they went pro, and I have their collected works in zipped folders. I never hesitate to share when someone in my fandom is asking about one or all of them—directly, privately. I know those authors took their works down intentionally, and I feel certain they would not want someone, like, republishing or otherwise very widely redistributing their work, but I don't see an issue with fan-to-fan exchanges. I would not put them on a rec list.

Funnily, we are breaking the "no archive links" rule for The Rec Center today because @thisweekinfandomhistory is doing a guest list with fics from each decade, starting with the 1960s. With this, the context is clear: exploring fandom history. But in my own fandom, which has existed for 15 years and which I've been in for 8, it's not really history. People delete work for lots of reasons, and I don't know them. I think it's a balancing act, which is why I voted "nuance." 😄

[thisweekinfandomhistory]

Totally agreed! Sharing a recently deleted fic is ~spiritually different than looking at something that never got the chance to appear online at all without being a scan or re-type on the Wayback Machine. We purposely didn't share stories that were available and then deleted from an online source (to the best of our knowledge!), including some that were definitely influential in fandom history. (Not that we'd ever recommend snowqueensicedragon iykyk.)

And there ARE decades-old fics on AO3 through Open Doors and on blogspot, LJ, dw, and independent websites just organically as well! You can do a lot of digging into fandom history without the Wayback. :) And their authors still have the right to delete them if they want to do that, as much as it pains my heart when any fic stops existing in the wider world.