001 - The Fandom Menace

[00:00:01] Speaker A: Hi there. My name is Bryce Rankins, and you're listening to episode one of Sneaky Geek. What? [00:00:13] Speaker B: You're listening to sneaky geek. Sneaky Geek is your podcast to help you slip past the intentional and accidental gatekeepers of today's geek culture. From Sci-Fi to fantasy books to video games and everything in between, we're here to educate, celebrate, and contemplate all that the geek world has to offer. And now, Bryce Rankins and Brian Romero. [00:00:39] Speaker A: Hi, everybody. My name is Bryce Rankins, and this is my co host, Brian Romero. [00:00:44] Speaker C: Hey, everybody. [00:00:45] Speaker A: And this is Sneaky Geek. Our first episode. [00:00:49] Speaker C: First episode. [00:00:50] Speaker A: The fandom Menace. [00:00:51] Speaker C: Not the special edition. [00:00:52] Speaker A: Not the special edition. [00:00:54] Speaker C: Give us 20 years. We'll see what's up. [00:00:56] Speaker A: Yeah, 20 years. Be prepared for a lot of CGI in this podcast. [00:01:01] Speaker C: Maybe an extra musical number. [00:01:02] Speaker A: Maybe we'll take out a really beloved musical number at the end and replace it and show planets that probably shouldn't have been still in existence after all that time and include a clip of a well beloved character from this episode that actually was hated. [00:01:21] Speaker C: Are we gonna jar jar here? [00:01:23] Speaker A: So before we get started, the first question you must ask yourself is, what is by far the worst behaved fandom? [00:01:33] Speaker D: Homestuck League of Legends players. [00:01:35] Speaker E: Five nights at Freddy's. [00:01:37] Speaker F: The Doctor who fandom, the halo fandom. [00:01:40] Speaker A: My little pony fan. [00:01:41] Speaker G: I think Sherlock actually can. [00:01:44] Speaker F: I could, like, combine them like the super Hulakians. [00:01:46] Speaker E: I think bronies are kind of awful. [00:01:48] Speaker A: Then you got to ask yourself, what's the best behaved fandom? [00:01:53] Speaker F: Like? [00:01:53] Speaker A: Steven universe. [00:01:54] Speaker G: The Star wars fandom versus the Star Trek fandom. [00:01:57] Speaker H: Oh, cosplay. [00:01:58] Speaker D: I think it's probably comic book fans, people who are really into comics. [00:02:02] Speaker A: What makes the worst fandoms so bad? [00:02:07] Speaker G: Oh, I actually started on blank season. You started on blank season? You should have started a blank season. [00:02:12] Speaker E: They come in and just kind of act like they're entitled and they're the big cheese. Like, oh, you're a nerd, but are you part of Sherlocky Huey? Whatever the heck we are? [00:02:22] Speaker A: They are over vocal about their weird obsession. [00:02:25] Speaker G: Is this what everyone's going to be like if I really get into this? [00:02:27] Speaker F: The fans taking things out of control and kind of slandering other fans because that's really prominent. [00:02:32] Speaker E: Oh, yeah, but you weren't there waiting two years when I was for every single. Yeah, you didn't have to deal with the hiatuses, so you're not a true fan. I feel like that's one of those fandoms where they're very excluding, but I. [00:02:43] Speaker F: Believe that anybody can take it too far with any kind of fandom. [00:02:48] Speaker D: People kind of look down on you for wanting to learn, for wanting to be a part of it. [00:02:52] Speaker A: They put a bad stigma on adults watching cartoons. Not every adult viewer is a creep. [00:02:56] Speaker H: Or they talk to them like they're idiots. [00:02:58] Speaker D: And I've been told that I am a terrible fan and a disgrace to the community because I haven't seen the extended versions. [00:03:06] Speaker H: The people who buy into the idea that here are these images, here are these artists who are basically performing monkeys. [00:03:15] Speaker G: It pushes you away from the thing that you're enjoying. [00:03:18] Speaker A: What makes all the best fandoms so. [00:03:21] Speaker H: Great, the passion that goes into it, regardless of the skill level. I don't care about that. I give no fucks about your skill level. If you care enough to make the effort to create a costume of your favorite superhero anime character, Game of Thrones character, whatever, and put yourself out there like that, good for you. You're awesome. Keep being awesome. [00:03:45] Speaker E: From what I've seen and from what I've met, like actually getting to meet other fandom people, people are so welcoming. [00:03:52] Speaker G: They obviously go head to head all the time. But from what I've seen, it's very respectful. It's very pokes and jabs, never really meaning anything. [00:04:04] Speaker D: If I've ever expressed any kind of interest, you almost can't get them to stop talking to you about it because they get so excited about this medium, about this form of storytelling that they're passionate about. It's really cool because it's such a. [00:04:17] Speaker F: Welcoming community and be like, you know what? I love your cosplay. Let me get a picture of you and things like that. Even if the cosplay is not that great, you know that someone put a whole bunch of time and effort into it. So it's like, you know what? Nice. [00:04:27] Speaker A: So common trend here that you might have noticed the best fandoms are the most welcoming, and the worst fandoms that everyone seems to be completely tired of are the ones with barring the problem with MLP are the ones with my little pony. Other than that, the ones that are pretty much the most disliked are the ones with fandoms. With gatekeepers. [00:04:59] Speaker C: You should explain a gatekeeper. [00:05:01] Speaker A: A gatekeeper is a person who believes that they somehow have the complete and total ability to prevent you from entering a particular group or phantom. In this case, there are a lot of people who will put themselves at this sort of forefront of mastery and knowledge of their fandom and say that they somehow can determine what is and isn't a quote unquote true fan true. And sometimes these people do it intentionally. Sometimes there's unintentional gatekeeping, and that's the sort of thing where they're just a little too intense and they're kind of blocking you from getting in because you're a little intimidated. [00:05:51] Speaker C: Yeah, intimidating is good. Yeah. You're just like, I'm kind of interested, but I'm a little bit unsure. Like, oh, no, you have to see this, this and this. But start we're here and you have to go to this one first, but skip this season. And you're just like, I'm going to go over here now. Yeah, I'm going to rewatch scrubs for the 20. [00:06:07] Speaker A: What was your first example? What? One was probably the first major instance where you were like, I want to get into this, but now I don't because of the people who like it. [00:06:15] Speaker C: Anime in general, because, same kind of thing. You have to start with this anime, but don't watch this anime because real anime people don't watch that show. And that's pretty much it right there. [00:06:28] Speaker A: Yeah, I had a good experience with people like that in high school. I had just seen Akira, or Akira, depending on how you want to pronounce it. It's actually Akira, but I had just seen that, and I had seen the Dragon Ball series, and I said, I like these shows. And this cool guy in my class in forensics in high school was like, oh, dude, those are, like, terrible compared to some of the others. And I was like, yeah, but I really like them. And he's like, sure, and that's great, but you got to see blah blah, blah blah. And he gave me this big old list of anime to watch, and he wound up becoming the president of the anime club. And then when he got too busy, he passed that torch on to me. And then I was the president of the anime club. And it was a really sad time for my reputation, for sure, because this was high school in 2005, and that was not a time where being really into anime was cool. Whereas the coolest kid in my class for one of my periods when I was teaching played that Naruto app like there was no tomorrow as well as the DBZ app. [00:07:43] Speaker C: Times have changed. [00:07:44] Speaker A: Times have changed. But the thing is, back in the day, the big problem was you felt like you were being barred from entry to your various geekdoms by outsiders. They were like, you can't like that. You're too old for that. Or that's really girly, or you're not macho enough for that sort of thing. That never happened. No one ever told me I wasn't macho enough to like a comic book. But now, when I got into college, my big thing that I started to encounter were people that like things to the point where it felt unhealthy. And I didn't necessarily want to be associated with those people. And those are the unintentional gatekeepers, the ones who were just a little too intense. They're not necessarily mean about it. They're not necessarily going to tell you that you're not a true fan. But their level of enthusiasm is intimidating. Intimidating. It's hard because you got to find that middle ground where you say, I like this thing, or I think I'll like this thing, but, well, you, as the person approaching the fandom will have to think, I like this thing, but you have to find somebody who likes it but doesn't like it to a level that it's a little bit scary. [00:09:05] Speaker C: Right. [00:09:06] Speaker A: And you're worried that, well, he likes it. If I get into this, am I going to like people going to associate me with me with that? And I hate thinking like that. I'd hate to be like, this guy likes what I like and I don't want to be associated with him. That's really snooty. But it's true. It happens. There are times. And you're like, I don't have that level of commitment. I don't have that level of commitment to. I feel like I'd have to change my whole personality just to like this show. And that's not okay. No, that's not okay either. So you got to find that middle ground between I like this, but I'm welcoming and I like encouraging and encouraging, but not. [00:09:44] Speaker C: Yeah, not intimidating. [00:09:45] Speaker A: Yeah. So my big example, yours was anime. My first time really ever feeling this was Doctor who. Yeah, Doctor who. [00:09:55] Speaker C: Another one. [00:09:56] Speaker A: Another big one is there was one particular guy in my college who was obsessed with Doctor who, and he made improv miserable because he wouldn't stop with bad british accents and he wouldn't stop suggesting the Tardis for a location. [00:10:13] Speaker C: He was the. [00:10:14] Speaker A: It was. He was worse. I worked for the Michael Scott of my college. This was way just. He was so obnoxious. And there were so many things about him that drove me nuts that by association, I couldn't do it. And then I moved into a place with my former roommates, Britt and Craig. And they were like, bryce, you gotta watch Doctor who. And I'm like, I don't know Doctor who, people are kind of weird. And now you associate, and now somebody says, you got to watch Doctor who. I hear it as Bryce. You got to become this guy from like, no, no. And they're like, no, seriously, just sit down. Get through three episodes. So I watched the first episode with Chris Eccleston. If you can get past that episode and deal with that plastic garbage bin eating Mickey, you can pretty much get through anything on that show. I made it to the next episode and then the next episode, and I was like, I really like these. And then I watched one of the last episodes of tenants run, and I was like, oh, man, this show gets so good. So I dove in and I watched. And I watched. I binged, like, four seasons. I rarely have the attention span to binge anything, but I watched the crap out of it, and suddenly I was like, oh, my God, I get it. I get how people could become obsessed with this show. I get how people could love this show that much, which makes me a lot more understanding now of people who have that level of obsession that goes a little too far. I'm definitely that way with Steven Universe now. I'm sure that it's a little difficult for you to want to get into that show. [00:11:48] Speaker C: Yeah, I have no, yeah, whatever. I'm sure I'll watch an episode or. [00:11:52] Speaker A: Two, but when you see somebody who's as intense of a fan as I am. But the thing is, I went to Comic Con and I met a bunch of other Steven universe fans, and many of them were really, really cool, and many of them scared me the same way that doctor who fans do. And you know what? I still love all of them because I understand that level. But when you're coming into a geek fandom and you've never been there before, you've never had that, like, oh, my God, I have to get into this. I mean, if I walked into your room right now and you said, I'm going to introduce you to the world of Star wars books, and then you showed me your bookshelf, I would be scared. [00:12:29] Speaker C: There's way too many. There's way too many. [00:12:32] Speaker A: I mean, the first time you gave me a stack of comics, it was probably three inches thick. [00:12:37] Speaker C: Yeah. Which is probably good, which is a. [00:12:40] Speaker A: Good way to start. But now I get long boxes from you. [00:12:42] Speaker C: Yeah, you do. But you're always excited now. But it took a while to get there. [00:12:46] Speaker A: You got to ease into. [00:12:47] Speaker C: You have to ease into it. [00:12:48] Speaker A: So how do we go about easing people into this? Well, I think one of the first things you got to understand, and this is how the shows is going to work. Have a podcast. You have a podcast you go listen to, which allows you to, a, learn about it, or b, celebrate it. Either way, they're both good things. First, we'll talk about the industry. In most episodes, we'll talk about what's going on in that industry. We have a few people who work within various aspects of the industry who will be on our cat podcast as well. [00:13:16] Speaker C: We got a bunch of different episodes. So a lot of people from a. [00:13:18] Speaker A: Lot of different industries, as well as just people who are hardcore experts but also know how to not to be too extreme. Right. So first we talk about what's going on in the industry. So you kind of understand how this world comes to be from a sort of God perspective. Right. And then we talk about the actual lore of the know, basic background, some minor story points. [00:13:43] Speaker C: That's not going to spoil too much, but it'll give you a good idea of what's going on. Yeah. [00:13:46] Speaker A: So if you're doing Star wars, we start with what's going on with Lucasfilm. We talk about Filoni, George Lucas, whoever's. [00:13:57] Speaker C: Writing Disney buyout, Disney buyout, things like that. [00:14:01] Speaker A: You talk about the actual universe, what's happening in the actual universe of things. So if we're talking Marvel, while we might have started with writers, then we talk about how it affects the greater Marvel cinematic Universe or the Marvel comics universe or what have you, then we will talk about projections of the future. We won't go too much into fan theories, because what if we come up with a good fan theory and it doesn't end up happening? Then you'll be disappointed. [00:14:29] Speaker C: Yeah, because we could talk for hours. [00:14:36] Speaker A: On that kind of hours. Nobody got time for that. And then that leaves us with the kind of personal, what does it do for the fandom? And that's the other side of the industry. Art is completed by the viewer sort of thing. So then we talk about what this means to fans and people like you, and that's kind of the format of the podcast. There's not much else to really talk about. You got kind of everything you need to know. [00:15:05] Speaker C: Right? [00:15:08] Speaker A: Quick history lesson. This podcast has kind of been in the making for about five years now, give or take. It started out as a potential YouTube show with a contract with a large corporation, and then it turned itself into a floating, enigmatic piece of work that I could do nothing with because of contracts waiting to be dead. And then after certain divisions of large companies got shut down, the rights were brought back to me, and then we turned it into a podcast. Brian here with his prior podcasting experience. I'm here with my one time experience podcasting with Brian and my small and tiny and hopefully growing voice acting career. And that leaves us with this. This is what you got. [00:16:07] Speaker C: This is what you get. [00:16:08] Speaker A: If you think you can deal with this on a long drive for approximately 45 minutes to an hour and 15 minutes every other week, then this is the podcast for you. [00:16:17] Speaker C: We usually have other guests, too, not just us. [00:16:19] Speaker A: It won't just be us. We'll have other people. In fact, episode two has our dear friend Stephanie touch, and this episode's got several people who've been asked to be on the show in the future, as well. So, special shout out to Clay, who is on the other side of the room right now watching us record like a creep. [00:16:38] Speaker C: Yep. [00:16:39] Speaker A: Say, hey, Clay, I'm sleeping. I'm just listening and enjoying, which is exactly what you should be doing. The point of a podcast, unless you're driving, don't sleep while you drive. [00:16:50] Speaker C: How many times have we told you? [00:16:52] Speaker A: How many times? Wake up. Wake up. I know we're not that boring. And if we're putting you to sleep, then let us know on Twitter. You can find me on Twitter at. At Bryce Rankins. You can also find me on Instagram in the same name. That's brycerankins. And Brian. Where can we find you? [00:17:06] Speaker C: I'm on the twitters at ShiELD agentbrom. It's kind of a long one, but it's there. [00:17:14] Speaker A: That's S-H-I. [00:17:16] Speaker C: You got to sing it, though. [00:17:17] Speaker A: L-D-A-G-E-N-T-B-R-O-M. Shield Agent B rom. [00:17:23] Speaker C: Boom. [00:17:24] Speaker A: Ding. I hope I spelled shield wrong. I before e. I hope it's spelled shield right. Rather, I hope I didn't f enough.