Aja Romano
@bookshop.bsky.social
Longtime culture writer, formerly of Vox. Member, WGAE, ATCA. They/them or she/her. http://ajaromano.com - I am NOT @bookshop.org lol.
I'M ON FANSPLAINING Y'ALL plus as an added bonus you can hear my voice
Fansplaining@fansplaining.bsky.social · 2w ago"The simultaneous proliferation of AI, social media, and the massive success of unlikely brand collaborations have blurred the lines of how characters are portrayed, and how the characters’ brands portray themselves in turn." @sam.robotsfightingdinosaurs.com on Fortnite's uneasy brand crossovers:
Also: reminder to grab your six-month subscription to Fansplaining for 50% off our subscriber rate through the end of the month! fansplaining.com/celebrating-...
Celebrating Six Months of Fansplaining: The Publication!
In October, we’re marking the half a year since we launched with a special sale.
fansplaining.com
I'm so happy about this piece! Kalai Chik reported the fuck out of this—she spoke so many translators, including Seven Seas staff, and wrote a piece that sheds a lot of light on conflicts in danmei fandom that I've been following for a while without understanding much about.
Fansplaining@fansplaining.bsky.social · 3d agoOur latest is live! ⚔️ Amid danmei's rapid global rise, @kalaichik.bsky.social reports on the pressures both fan and pro translators are facing, featuring extensive interviews from translators and other experts in the space. Read or listen to an audio version:
Idk how many of you are into tarot, but the Thoth Marseilles is one of the coolest decks I've seen in a minute. Artist Alejandro Rozan took the elements of the Thoth and redrew them in the classic TdM style and it looks amazing. And the stretch goals = 🤌 www.kickstarter.com/projects/ale...
Update 8: SIXTH STRETCH GOAL UNLOCKED! ❤️ · The Thoth Marseille Tarot
We've reached $50,000, unlocking the Traditional Marseille Paper Wrapping! ❤️I have to say this is one of my favorite stretch goals. Inspired by the traditional way Tarot de Marseille decks were wrapp...
kickstarter.com
To celebrate our six-month anniversary sale (50% off subscriptions for the first six months!), we're putting some of our archival pieces in front of the paywall. This week, we're staring off with @jmrivera.bsky.social's beautiful meditation on comics, storytelling, and our current political moment:
What Spider-Man Can’t Save
In which our hero contemplates a career writing about superheroes and pop culture—and imagines an ending.
fansplaining.com
Hi if you use #Libby go in to your settings, scroll down to content controls, tap that, then tap “AI contributions” and turn all that shit off. You can filter out AI “authors,” “narrators,” graphics, and translations. 💪💯
“People feel incredible ownership over Jane Austen. Always have, always will,” longtime JAFF author Abigail Reynolds told @bookshop.bsky.social in our latest feature. “People have very fixed ideas of what Jane Austen is and what Jane Austen isn’t, and get very, very angry.”
Pride and Prejudice in the Jane Austen Fanfic Community
A 30-year-old moderating decision still defines the Austen fic fandom’s identity.
fansplaining.com
To celebrate our six-month anniversary, we're unlocking a few fantastic pieces from our archives. First up, @soila.bsky.social unpacks—and proposes breaking down—English's dominance in fanfic spaces. Read the piece, then take advantage of our sale! 50% off subscriptions for the first six months:
The Elation and Anxiety of Reading Fic in Your Native Tongue
For fans in Kenya, Nigeria, and Burundi, “uncringing” non-English fanfiction is an endeavor in decolonialism.
fansplaining.com
Reddit has apparently recently instituted an AI automod that appears to override the content settings on individual moderated subreddits to immediately and automatically remove content deemed inappropriate -- even if that content is explictly allowed on the sub. www.reddit.com/r/TarotDecks...
One of the delights of this piece was getting to talk to two OG JAFF novelists, Reynolds and Pamela Aidan, that I first read on the Republic of Pemberley and the Derbyshire Writers Guild back in 1998. It was such a throwback. And they're both still publishing JAFF novels regularly for loyal readers.
Fansplaining@fansplaining.bsky.social · last wk.“People feel incredible ownership over Jane Austen. Always have, always will,” longtime JAFF author Abigail Reynolds told @bookshop.bsky.social in our latest feature. “People have very fixed ideas of what Jane Austen is and what Jane Austen isn’t, and get very, very angry.”
Two things I did not get to shill in this piece: my favorite fic from 1998 which was called Pemberley, Inc. and featured Lizzy as a jazz lounge singer and Darcy as a billionaire CEO; my favorite current JAFF writer, Grace Gibson, who writes lively canon-based books! fansplaining.com/pride-and-pr...
Pride and Prejudice in the Jane Austen Fanfic Community
A 30-year-old moderating decision still defines the Austen fic fandom’s identity.
fansplaining.com
For Fansplaining I wrote about Jane Austen fic, aka JAFF, and how a moderating decision 30 years ago set the tone for an entire fan culture of genre-shaming and gatekeeping around content. Also don't forget Fansplaining is currently having a six-month sale with 50% off! Subscribe, read, and share!
Elizabeth Minkel@elizabethminkel.bsky.social · 2w agoFolks who look at fic often treat the big archives as wholly representative, but there are so many subcultures within our subculture. @bookshop.bsky.social reports a fascinating story about rigid content moderation, self-publishing, and what happens when the wide-open spaces of fic are constrained:
Just a shout-out to the staff of @weareravenous.com for being some of the classiest journalists around. <3
It's spooky season so i'm bringing back this post from when I ordered one vintage sepia-toned tarot deck, the author dead-ass slipped a bunch of FREAKY PUMPKIN HEADS into my deck, and i was so creeped out i bought a completely different vintage sepia-toned tarot deck in order to exorcise the first 😭
Aja Romano@bookshop.bsky.social · last yr.I have been absolutely losing it all day because I ordered this tarot deck — an RWS clone I've wanted to get since like 2018 — and when it came, most of the wands HAD PUMPKIN HEADS!!!!!!!!
At @fansplaining.bsky.social we're celebrating our six-month-versary by giving you 50% off for the next six months! We've also made all of @gavia.bsky.social's Lanterns recaps free to read, so once you've caught up on those, take a look at all of our other articles and sign up! Join us! 🎉
Celebrating Six Months of Fansplaining: The Publication!
In October, we’re marking the half a year since we launched with a special sale.
fansplaining.com
My very longstanding opinion of MF is that he is not actually writing horror but rather using the aesthetics of horror for what he would rather write instead, which is dysfunctional but loving epic literary family sagas. This impulse always undermines his darkest projects bc he's *not doing horror.*
Jason Takes Man-Adams@jamnpp.bsky.social · 2w agoWhat a grotesque misunderstanding not only of the story he was adapting but, like, HORROR ITSELF
It is fall!! so I have been reading Fall Into You by @dylanthyme.bsky.social and it has been such a lovely time, full of the comfort of apples and the bittersweet nostalgia of going home and writing that feels like an old friend.
Listen i don't know a jigglypuff from a powder puff but I learned so much from this piece! It's so clear these fans pour *so* much into these games, so of course Nintendo started DMCA-ing them because god forbid people increase the value of your brand by making cool stuff for it 💀
Ana Diaz@pokachee.bsky.social · 3w agoNew from me: I did a deep dive and spoke to Pokemon fan game creators for @fansplaining.bsky.social. This was so hard to source, but I am humbled by the sources who took the time to talk to me about this super massive, and relatively under-examined, fandom. fansplaining.com/pokemon-fang...
laughing bc I was so exasperated by this gormless bad fic take in *2010* that I wrote a low-key viral response to it (this one bookshop.livejournal.com/1044495.html) pointing out that many of the most elevated literary masterpieces operate exactly like many fics, and yet somehow we are still here. 💀
Elizabeth Minkel@elizabethminkel.bsky.social · 4w ago"How could I, an adult, read fan fiction?" — A sentence I read in a major publication just now. These articles could stop whenever we want them to. It would be quite simple. Everyone would just need to agree to it.
in case anyone is wondering how seriously Tennesseans are taking 9/25 Day, apparently the governor made it an official state day, this concert I'm at is at least 40% Dolly covers, and grown people who have likely never cosplayed in their lives are out here in Dolly wigs
The stats on 2013 top ships is like someone walking over my grave 😅 just a long litany of every major LJ-era old-school slash pairing. What a trajectory we've since had.
Fansplaining@fansplaining.bsky.social · last mo.Our latest is live! 📊 And it's by none other than our most frequent podcast guest, @destinationtoast.bsky.social! Toast gets meta on their stats works, writing about how they got into fandom data analysis, and the way their practice has evolved over the years. Read or listen to an audio version:
I was so delighted that @bookshop.bsky.social wanted to revive the Tropefest series with me! 💓 We started with the broad umbrella of "secret identities," touching on masks, identity porn, fairy tales, opera, superheroes, bodyswapping, romance, transness, RPF....and even more topics somehow lol.
Special Episode 40: Tropefest: Secret Identities
He’ll never know the real me hiding behind this mask…
fansplaining.com
This was such a fun conversation! This is maybe my all-time favorite trope in all its many forms. I wound up talking about everything from Death Note to The Shop Around the Corner to my favorite fairy tale! Drive-by mention of Wangxian and I do need to know whether you all think Lan Zhan would peek.
Fansplaining@fansplaining.bsky.social · last mo.Our September special episode is live! 🎭 @bookshop.bsky.social joins @elizabethminkel.bsky.social for a revival of the Tropefest series, tackling the theme of SECRET IDENTITIES. Why do we love stories about people who wear masks—both literal and metaphorical? Listen or read a full transcript:
3LBE needs an infusion of pledges to make their goal! Help them continue pubbing weird and wonderful fiction from authors like Nisi Shawl, Premee Mohamed, Laird Barron, Cat Rambo, SO many more! 🙏
Three-Lobed Burning Eye magazine@3lobedmag.com · last mo.Support us because you love to read genre fiction and we love to publish it! We have it all: ghostpunk, mushroom rotica, cozy doom, monster dance, carnivorous hair, sad professor, weremollusc, cosmic mess, yarn slasher, liminal faces, bad algebra. kck.st/4x4r1oz
3LBE needs an infusion of pledges to make their goal! Help them continue pubbing weird and wonderful fiction from authors like Nisi Shawl, Premee Mohamed, Laird Barron, Cat Rambo, SO many more! 🙏
Three-Lobed Burning Eye magazine@3lobedmag.com · last mo.Support us because you love to read genre fiction and we love to publish it! We have it all: ghostpunk, mushroom rotica, cozy doom, monster dance, carnivorous hair, sad professor, weremollusc, cosmic mess, yarn slasher, liminal faces, bad algebra. kck.st/4x4r1oz
Hey folks, 3LBE is still seeking support for their next year of work, and with only 12 days left they've barely passed 50%. Please consider giving them your love, your support, and most of all your cash so we can keep enjoying their uniquely delightful publication!
Three-Lobed Burning Eye magazine@3lobedmag.com · last mo.The only place to get the exclusive 3LBE t-shirt or hoodie is our Kickstarter—happening right now! Support us publishing another year of weird, wonder, and horror stories, and wear the apparel with a bevy of strange beasts. (Warning: This garment comes unexorcised.) kck.st/4x4r1oz
I'm still thinking about Matthew elaborately scheming to use the ease of modern streaming access to inundate his child with Star Trek, only to have all his attempts fail and wind up streaming Liverpool matches instead 😂 fansplaining.com/fandom-the-n...
Fandom: The Next Generation
Maybe the 80th attempt to get your kids to like your show will be the one that sticks.
fansplaining.com
