I’m heading to the UK tomorrow to produce/board-op BriTANicK’s run of UK shows. If you’re in London, Manchester, or Brighton, come through!
Meanwhile I’ve been doing a lot of writing. In addition to the Antarctica one linked below, since the last newsletter I’ve also dropped a piece in Insider (on scammers of American history) and a guest column in Garbage Day about fan labor which commenters are calling “absolutely brilliant” and “a banger.”
Yesterday my CPA called me and had good news and bad news. The good news was that I made more than I thought I would last year… the bad news is that that meant I owe more money to the IRS. C’est la vie—maybe one year in the distant future I’ll actually get that fabled prize, a tax refund, which I’m still not sure really exists. But in the same conversation he asked me to do my estimate for this year’s income, a task which filled me with anxiety. I honestly have no idea how much I’ll make this year. Between finishing my MA in the spring, planning to go back to the Edinburgh Fringe and spend some more time in Europe this summer, and my insurance running out at the end of August, things are completely up in the air. I’m really happy with having been able to finally spin up a consistent freelance writing hustle, but I have zero plans to try and take that full time. I don’t have plans to take anything full time. As my beloved father, who is reading this, will certainly cop to, I inherited a genetic predisposition to Never Want A Real Job. All attempts to “get over this” have been met with misery and failure. But a girl needs her doctor’s appointments so I will have to suck it up and figure it out! Looking forward to it!
This week in fandom
Recently it was announced that A24 had struck a deal to produce a feature film version of the popular YouTube found footage horror series “Backrooms.” The film will be directed by the 17-year-old creator of the original web series, Kane Parsons. Under the moniker Kane Pixels, he began posting his now-iconic Backrooms series a little over a year ago, beginning with the first “Found Footage” clip which has racked up over 45 million views since. The videos use some minimal live action footage but are mainly expertly animated in Blender.
The Backrooms slot neatly into the internet-native genre of horror lore familiar to anyone who has encountered various spinoffs of SCP or Slenderman. It has a great deal of crossover with “analog horror,” the video subgenre which relies on found footage and retro aesthetics to build suspense and atmosphere. Recent breakout film hit Skinamarink also has ties to this genre.
Communal worldbuilding sandboxes like The Backrooms, which began as a single post on 4chan’s /x/ board before expanding out into various independent interpretations, might center on analog aesthetics from the 80s and 90s, but they are very much a product of the internet, and of a certain undersung type of emphatically folkloric type of participatory fandom that, for a reason that certainly needs exploring, tends to revolve around the horror genre in particular. (See also: FNAF and its various spinoffs!) SCP Wiki may have found wide exposure in games like Containment Breach and Control, but it began (and continues) as an open project which anyone could contribute to. The delightfully unstable, open-source, social nature of the canons in these cases contrast with the traditionally-produced canons that many major fandoms revolve around.
When the canon does become “defined,” so to speak, coalescing into a single commercial product, it can surface potential rifts in the community. The comments of the Deadline article show how precarious the Backrooms fandom’s relationship is to future adaptations. Most are hopeful and excited; some are nervous, hoping that “[A24 has] respect for the community and accepting the backrooms lore as creative commons.” Parsons’ films, while excellent, are not the end-all-be-all of Backrooms for the fanbase’s many active members, who create and catalogue lore on Discords and wikis. Searching “backrooms” on YouTube gets you similar videos from a variety of aspiring creators, many of which are quite good. But Parsons’ certainly stood out in a crowded field, and I’m very interested to see how the eventual film performs, and if the larger fandom continues to persist or ends up coalescing around the most “professional” and well-produced product on the market.
This week in polar exploration
My article for Long Now about Antarctic conspiracies was finally published! I’m really thrilled to get to write these sorts of pieces for such a fantastic organization—if you don’t know, Long Now is the current project of Steward Brand (of The WELL fame) devoted to exploring the long-term past and future of humanity. The article discusses the conflict between the frequently warped public perception of Antarctica and the real geopolitical structures that underlie its ongoing habitation:
That isn’t to say the vital climatic science done on Antarctica is in any way false or tainted. Scientists like Neff just want to be transparent about how it is they get to do the things they do, and go to the places they go. “It’s so hard to access these places, and the best way to get to them from a science perspective is through organized government programs,” he says. The mantling of the truth, though, is something that perhaps the conspiracists can sense, but are unable to understand or articulate, and so seek explanation in the outlandish. So the communal cooperative fantasy fails, and through the cracks come the crackpots.
The article has gotten a wonderful reception. Following my heart/mind/enthusiasm when it comes to career stuff has never not worked out for me and I’m loving how diving into polar journalism has allowed me to connect with all sorts of awesome people around the world who study polar science and humanities at universities as well as out in the field. (Yes, my goal is to try and somehow get to Antarctica. Check back with me in like five years.)
Stuff I read this week that I liked
Darth Vader, the problematic fanzine fave of 1977 by Jay Castello
Some of it was designed to be humorous. Jokes helped to “create some distance” between fans and the atrocities Vader and the Empire committed, says Nowakowska. Some of it was less so. “He was big and tall and masculine,” she adds. However, Lucasfilm kept a close eye on the fandom’s activities, including buying copies of many popular zines. It had a policy against allowing “X-rated” fanfiction and sent several cease-and-desist letters, discouraging the production of explicit fic overall. Outright Vader fans were outspoken and even defensive of the character. “I did not write Vader as a likable person,” says Nowakowska, “and this one woman really argued with me that I was not being fair to him. He had his point of view and he had his background and I should recognize that. So there were people like that right from the very beginning.”
And if you’re one of the fortunate few to get your story in print? You might get a few hundred dollars for it, if you get paid at all. Most small magazines are volunteer-run, with budgets that go entirely into getting your work out into the world. Well-paying markets are fiendishly competitive, and rich authors are a rarity. The idea that you “need the money” you’re hoping to get from badly-produced, plagiarized AI fiction is absolutely delusional.
Richard Belzer was a Jewish comedian. Why didn’t his obituaries say so? by Eddy Portnoy
To call Burt Bacharach an “American composer” or Barbara Walters a “pioneering woman newscaster” is accurate, but misses a significant ethno-cultural aspect of these people, one that was integrally responsible for making them who they are and influencing their creative choices. The notion that “Jewish” is something more than a religious denomination — that it’s a wide-ranging culture that includes art, literature, music, food, folkways and languages — is terribly difficult to grasp for some people.