Welcome new readers from Fansplaining! For everyone else, my long (long) article on The RPF Question dropped yesterday. I loved having the space to go deep on this, because the thorny issue of rpf has been around since the dawn of fandom, but our attitudes toward it have shifted and changed over the decades, and so much of that (I think) has to do with the eroding boundaries around fandom. Everything lacks context when it all happens on main. I’d love to hear from you about this article — or just share with me your fave rpf stories (or horror stories).
If you’re in Sydney this week, I’d love to see you at Sunrise. And I can promise that one of the images in this email is in my keynote, and it’s not the lego.
By now you’ll be tired of every meme you’ve seen about the Pope’s passing and whether JD Vance had something to do with it. As ever, I’m more interested in the fandom. And by that I mean the death of a much more fictional pope.
Prime immediately announced this week that they would be adding Conclave (2024) to their streaming platform.
It struck me that while we’ve always had a pop culture fascination with the election of a new pope, and most of us could make some joke about the colour of smoke, last year’s hit film has made an arcane and secretive process something that feels culturally familiar. My mother even texted me:
I’m super interested in what it is about this movie that inspired an instant, passionate fandom to grow up around it. I know I sought it out early on because it appeared like the whole thing was a bunch of messy bitches who live for drama. Plus, Stanley Tucci. And for fans, it’s got a lot going for it.
Fans have taken to Conclave like ducks to water (turtles to fountains?). The art on Tumblr is great. There are already 800 stories on AO3. The twitter account Pope Crave (@clubconcrave) has over sixteen thousand followers, and posts a constant stream of excellent Conclave memes. Speaking about the draw of the film for fandom, the owner of the account said:
“The costumes. The cinematography. The characters. The languages. The score. The sound design. The intent of the camera. The way it is Mean Girls meets 1970s Pakula paranoid political conspiracy. Its earnest and sincere depiction of hope. Its lightness and brevity for humor. Its deep capacity for grief,” she said. “The church as a sacred space juxtaposed with the imagined celluloid Vatican of red on red on red and fascist imprisonment. Absolute cinema, nothing like it.”
But more than that, the fans created and sold a charity zine that raised over US$45,000 for charities and nonprofits like the Intersex Human Rights Fund, Freedom Fund, & Librarians and Archivists with Palestine. Here’s another cute interview with the creator.
I hate linking to the old place, but I love crediting the original artist, so make sure you don’t miss this unbelievable fanedit: “Let’s have a Conclave”. Even the Scissor Sisters reposted it. (seriously, click on it, it will make your day). I also loved this student essay about this (and other fan edits) “Conclave is Brat”:
By creating this edit, or ones like it, the creators poke fun at themselves, the media, and fan culture as a whole. They are able to highlight the unseriousness of their fandom happenings, and how they like silly songs and “blorbos from shows,” but also add levity to a piece of artwork.
There’s something idealistic and hopeful about the film’s ending, where the legacy of the Catholic Church has often been the exact opposite. The film itself is a kind of fix-it fic. The death of the actual pope may have caused a bit of a crisis of tone in the fandom (I mean, is it okay to post priest slash right now?!), but it’s also meant a lot more people are paying attention to the conclave, and hoping for a true-to-fic outcome.
And while we’re waiting, don’t forget you can play the fan-made Conclave dating sim I linked to a couple of weeks back.
if you are up-to-date on The Last of Us (seriously stay offline if you’re not) this is a great read on the adaptations made to bring season two to the screen from the game from a fan of both.
we weathered Cyclone Tam over the Easter break, and the beach afterwards was extraordinary and a bit heartbreaking, like an ocean graveyard. Amazing video.
i cannot watch cringe comedy, even through my fingers, so I nope out of everything Nathan Fielder does, including the first season of The Rehearsal, but this review of the second season convinced me to watch, and it is unreal, unhinged, and very extra.
Pass this email on to someone — that’s how we get the good internet back.
