This Week In Fandom History V. Arrow, Emily Jaye

Iceberg right ahead! This week, V and Emily plumb the depths of the entire world's massive Titanic fandom and its accompanying "Leomania." James Cameron's Titanic was impossible to ignore in 1998 -- from the cinema to some weird video store in Utah, from middle school dances to the Oval Office, from the pages of Vanity Fair to the wilderness of GeoCities, Jack Dawson and Rose DeWitt-Bukater were inescapable. So grab your Jewel of the Sea knockoff necklace, polish off your Céline Dion CD, and rewind VHS1 of your two-tape box set. Are you ready to go back to Titanic?

What would they think? This week, Emily and V -- okay. This episode was supposed to be about the April 2000 Slate Magazine article, "Luke Skywalker Is Gay?" 
And it does start out that way.
But thanks to Emily's personal fannish history and a tiny footnote in the article, this episode goes... somewhere else.
And oh my god.
Links
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You can support the show via our Patreon at http://www.patreon.com/thisweekinfandomhistory. If you have a fannish company, event, or service and would like to sponsor or partner with TWIFH, please contact us via the Tumblr link above.

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It wasn't me... it was... my evil twin brother! This week, V and Emily look at a somewhat different kind of fandom by delving into the long, long history of As The World Turns, a daytime soap opera that ran for over 50 years. ATWT made television history in 2007 when they featured the first M/M kiss, and first positively-portrayed M/M relationship, on American daytime television, but of course, Luke/Noah were not without drama. Melodrama. This star-studded episode features green-card marriages, murder attempts, doctor-blackmailing, Meg Ryan, and Spanish prisons. What more could you want from your stories? 
Links
Follow This Week in Fandom History on Tumblr at http://thisweekinfandomhistory.tumblr.com!
You can support the show via our Patreon at http://www.patreon.com/thisweekinfandomhistory. If you have a fannish company, event, or service and would like to sponsor or partner with TWIFH, please contact us via the Tumblr link above.

Please remember to rate the show 5 stars on your listening platform of choice!

Fantastic! This week, Emily and V finally get to talk about one of their shared favorite fandoms: Doctor Who (New Who). With a focus on the emotional, oft-overlooked Ninth Doctor as played by Christopher Eccleston, they discuss the best and worst aspects of the show, how it makes them cry, and some timely (pun intended) elements brought specifically to the reboot by Eccleston, Billie Piper, and writer Russell T. Davies. Come along with us on the TARDIS, won't you?
Additional Sources
A Love Letter to the Aggressive Queerness of Captain Jack Harkness by Patrick Lenton
What Does the New Doctor Who Offer Working-Class Whovians? by Sarah Hattfield
Links
Follow This Week in Fandom History on Tumblr at http://thisweekinfandomhistory.tumblr.com!
You can support the show via our Patreon at http://www.patreon.com/thisweekinfandomhistory. If you have a fannish company, event, or service and would like to sponsor or partner with TWIFH, please contact us via the Tumblr link above.

Please remember to rate the show 5 stars on your listening platform of choice!

He's darkness! He's vengeance! This week, V and Emily look at the uniquely nerdy StarKid fandom and their superhero parody musical, HOLY MUSICAL B@MAN! (That's "B@man," not "Batman," in case Warner Brothers asks.) They look at the way StarKid musicals feel like your Tumblr dashboard, how Sean Astin will do basically anything you ask him to do apparently, and how absolutely insufferable your hosts were as high school theatre kids. (Yes, theatre, not theater. That's how insufferable.) Musical references abound! And, amazingly, we understand a joke in the show BECAUSE OF A PREVIOUS EPISODE OF TWIFH! 

Do you want to know how he got these scars? This week, Emily and V take a trip to Gotham City to look back at Alan Moore's Batman magnum opus, The Killing Joke. While it garnered tons of accolades for its darkness, grittiness, violence, and portrayal of The Joker's semi-definitive backstory, The Killing Joke has also received a lot of (totally warranted) criticism for its darkness... grittiness... violence... and misogyny. The history and continued legacy of what happened to Barbara Gordon in The Killing Joke is complex, dark, and hard to reconcile. Oracle was a badass character who represented a deeply underserved portion of the DC Comics audience; however, Gail Simone kind of had a point that it was metatextually misogyny keeping Babs in her chair. DC's choice(s) surrounding Barbara have no easy answers.
However, your intrepid hosts do find a light in the dark-grim-grittiness of Gotham as they discover (create) its worst strip mall and the heroic citizens who brave its potholes...