Ten Miniseries Period Dramas for a Long Weekend

It probably comes as no surprise that we at To the Lamp Post are period drama aficionados. While you’re waiting for the new season of Downton Abbey to hit our shores, here are ten period dramas to tide you over.

1. North and South (2004) – Margaret Hale leaves her idyllic home in the south of England to live in the northern industrial town of Milton, where she meets gruff industrialist John Thornton. They hate each other, long for each other, and end up together. The plot isn’t ridiculously surprising, but it is gorgeously filmed, designed, and acted. And it famously ends with an insanely romantic scene in a train station in which Margaret is wearing a truly gorgeous pinstripe dress and John Thornton has somehow managed to lose his cravat.

2. Sense and Sensibility (2008) – One of the best things about this adaptation is the way that it truly allows for the melancholy that exists in the text. Edward (played by Downton-famous Dan Stevens) is melancholy, Marianne (Charity Wakefield) is performatively melancholy, Elinor (Hattie Morahan) is really melancholy, and the seaside setting is really really melancholy. Throw in a dash of Dominic Cooper as Willoughby, though, and no one can stay melancholy for too long (at least for the first half?). The 180 minutes allows for the quiet moments to really shine.

3. Bleak House (2005) – Based on Charles Dickens’s sprawling novel indicting the English legal system, Bleak House features tragically star-crossed lovers, mysterious upper-class women, heinously awful barristers, and – surprisingly – a man who spontaneously combusts. Anna Maxwell Martin is fabulous in as Esther Summerson, and the cast is rounded out by such luminaries as Gillian Anderson (The X-Files), Charles Dance (Game of Thrones), and Carey Mulligan (An Education).

4. The Bletchley Circle (2012-2013) – Four women, who met as code breakers during World War II, reunite in 1952 to track down a serial killer who targets young women. The four make an excellent team: one is exceptional with patterns and puzzles, one has a photographic memory, one is a reference librarian, and one has her fingers in the black market. What could be better than a miniseries that address sexism and misogyny head-on and features ladies saving ladies from the patriarchy? Warning: it’s definitely creepy.

5. Emma (2009) –  Romola Garai gives a stunningly nuanced performance as Emma Woodhouse, adding layers of complexity and humanity to a difficult character unseen in other adaptations. Beautiful lighting, design, and costumes add to the richness of the adaptation – plus, Garai’s chemistry with Jonny Lee Miller’s Mr. Knightley doesn’t hurt.

6. Persuasion (2007) – An adaptation of Austen’s perhaps most romantic novel, about a young woman who finds love again with her estranged former fiance, Persuasion is gorgeous. We know, we know, the ending is painful: heavy mouth breathing, incorrect geography, and so much running, all undermining Wentworth’s beautiful letter. But the shyness that Rupert Penry-Jones portrays and the longing Sally Hawkins shows, combined with their chemistry, makes the whole thing worth it.

7. The Hour (2011-2012) – A twelve-episode-long story about a BBC news program in the 1950s, The Hour features the always wonderful Ben Whishaw, Romola Garai, and Dominic West as a brilliant – and romantically entangled – investigative news team breaking stories about both Britain’s foreign scuffles in the Cold War and governmental corruption on the domestic front. It’s very much a high-class soap opera – but isn’t that why we watch period dramas in the first place?

8. Little Dorrit (2008) – Based on a lesser-known Dickens novel, Little Dorrit centers on Amy “Little” Dorrit (Claire Foy), the daughter of a Marshalsea prisoner (Tom Courtenay), who begins to work for a bitter Mrs. Clenham (Judy Parfitt) and befriends her son Arthur (Matthew Macfadyen). Arthur and Amy’s will-they-won’t-they maybe-romance is very Austen-esque, but the rest of the miniseries is filled with all the money/family/business drama, blackmail (executed superbly by a French ex-convict played by Andy Serkis), and quirky characters one can expect from a Dickens story. Bonus: Doctor Who alums Freema Agyeman, Arthur Darvill, Russell Tovey, and Eve Myles all pop up in the ensemble.

9. Northanger Abbey (2007) – An adaptation of Austen’s earliest (although posthumously published) novel, Northanger Abbey is the story of Catherine Morland, a voracious reader of gothic novels who becomes convinced that she is the heroine of her own romantic horror story. Felicity Jones is delightful as Catherine and J.J. Feild is perfect as the flirtatious gentleman who catches her eye.

10. Pride and Prejudice (1995) – Colin Firth going for a swim in his shirtsleeves? Jennifer Ehle being ridiculously charming as the witty Elizabeth Bennet who first hates – then slowly falls in love with – the introverted, rich Mr. Darcy? Chances are you’ve already seen at least the highlight reel from this six-episode BBC series, but there’s always something wonderful about watching Mrs. Bennet twitter around about her daughters’ marriage prospects in the gorgeous English countryside. (Also, Ehle here has THE BEST hat and shrug combos from any period drama miniseries.)

  

Eight Podcasts You Should Be Listening To

Emily here!

So I’ve been listening to podcasts off-and-on for a while now: when I was in middle school and the Harry Potter books were still coming out, I actually burned myself CDs of Mugglecast episodes so that I could have podcasts with me on a plane trip. But in this past year, I’ve really come to love the podcast format: podcasts can provide a space both for innovative fiction experiments and for delightfully unstructured conversations between friends.

To that end, here are eight podcasts that you should be listening to:

1. Stuff You Missed In History Class – An occasionally rotating panel of hosts discusses historical subjects that your high school teachers probably didn’t get around to mentioning. The hosts are particularly drawn to stories that focus on identity politics and marginalized groups, but they also have a lot of fun talking about con men, “cursed” ships, and weird cultural fads.

Want to check it out? Your mileage here will really vary depending on the historical people and periods that fascinate you, so click around and try a few. To sample what they have to offer, though, I recommend “Alan Turing: Codebreaker,” which discusses Turing, the Enigma Machine, and the persecution of homosexuality in twentieth-century Britain. (Bonus: this episode will also give you some background knowledge if you’re excited about seeing the Benedict Cumberbatch film The Imitation Game in a few months.) You might also enjoy “The Bone Wars,” in which hosts Deblina and Sarah tell the fascinating story of a conflict between two paleontologists that led to the rival scientists dynamiting fossils in order to sabotage each other, or the more recent episode “Building Disneyland’s Haunted Mansion.”

2. The Thrilling Adventure Hour – A staged production in the style of old-time radio, The Thrilling Adventure Hour uses the new audio format of the podcast to explore the conventions of what radio used to sound like. Actors as diverse as Nick Offerman, Juliet Landau, Nathan Fillion, and Emily Blunt perform in campy serialized stories – written by Ben Blacker and Ben Acker – about a time-travelling Amelia Earhart, a pun-happy superhero, and many other wacky premises.

Want to check it out? I particularly recommend the ongoing stories of “Beyond Belief” and “Sparks Nevada, Marshal on Mars.” In “Beyond Belief,” the wonderful Paul F. Tompkins and Paget Brewster play a fast-talking married pair of boozy upper-crust detectives – very much descendents of Dashiell Hammett’s Nick and Nora or Agatha Christie’s Tommy and Tuppence – who solve supernatural mysteries. In “Sparks Nevada, Marshal on Mars,” Marc Evan Jackson and Mark Gagliardi play an Earth-born lawman and his Martian companion, and the stories feel very much like what would happen if you marooned a grumpy Han Solo on Mars and told him to try to keep the peace amongst the robots and outlaws. It is weird. And very silly. Because the show is serialized, you might as well begin with early episodes, perhaps with “Beyond Belief: Love Love Me Doom” and “Sparks Nevada, Marshal on Mars: Inside Out in Outer Space.”

3. How Did This Get Made – A panel of comedians watches bad movies then sits down and tries to figure out (1) what just happened? (2) who thought this was a good idea? and (3) how did this get made?? The joy of this podcast comes from how seriously these podcasters take their task, genuinely trying to work out plot holes and strange character motivations in movies such as From Justin to Kelly and Speed 2. Also, they get distracted and end up just riffing on things.

Want to check it out? HDTGM is particularly wonderful when the panel is trying to piece together the plots of heist movies that didn’t quite work. To that end, you might enjoy “Reindeer Games,” in which they discuss a bizarrely complicated Ben Affleck Christmas movie and “Hudson Hawk,” in which they discuss the Bruce Willis heist movie and then realize that they should write their own secret identity/ heist film about nuns on the run: Nundercover.

4. Nerdist Writers Panel – Ben Blacker (of Thrilling Adventure Hour fame) interviews writers and talks about both what they write and how they write it. If you’re a process nerd, or if you’re curious about the behind-the-scenes development of particular TV shows, books, films, and comics, then you should absolutely check out this podcast. Blacker is funny and smart, and he always seems genuinely interested in what his guests have to say. The podcast feed includes a Tuesday “regular” Nerdist Writers Panel episode and a Saturday “Comics Edition,” in which Blacker and friends talk about writing comic books – but they also just geek out about their favorite runs of the X-Men and their ideal rosters for the Justice League.

Want to check it out? The recent episode “Legend of Korra/ Avatar: The Last Airbender” provides a particularly interesting glimpse into the process of creating the animated Nickelodeon property – and involves the creators getting rather candid about the M. Night Shyamalan Last Airbender film. I also adore “Comics Edition #20: Kelly Sue DeConnick,” in which the writer of Captain Marvel and Pretty Deadly talks about issues of inclusion in mainstream comics, discusses her writing process and her involvement in the redesign of Carol Danvers, and geeks out about her favorite comic book creators.

5. Welcome to Night Vale – It’s no secret that I love Welcome to Night Vale. But seriously: it’s a fictional radio show set in a mysterious desert town, in which our host, Cecil, updates the community on town happenings, including the fact that Wednesday has been cancelled due to a scheduling conflict. Also, a wormhole has opened during the high school PTA meeting, sending pterodactyls into the gymnasium (details to follow as the story develops). It is weird, but oh so very clever.

Want to check it out? WtNV gets fairly serialized fairly quickly, so there’s perhaps no better place to start than episode 1: “Pilot.” To really get an idea of the creative storytelling and genuine oddity that imbues this podcast, however, also check out episode 13: “A Story About You.”

6. Ask Me Another – Ask Me Another is a geeky NPR quiz show (although perhaps that’s redundant). Hosted by comedian Ophira Eisenberg and musician Jonathan Coulton, it’s charming, silly, and very fun to play along with. It’s part Will-Shortz-esque word games, part pop-culture-based pub trivia, and all very wonderful.

Want to check it out? Recent favorite episodes have included “We Might Be Giant Nerds,” on which They Might Be Giants is the musical guest and “Two Can Slay That Game,” which includes New Yorker TV critic Emily Nussbaum being challenged to a quiz about Buffy: The Vampire Slayer.

7. Extra Hot Great – A pop culture roundtable between TV critics for Previously.tv, in which the podcasters go over the week in TV, vote extraordinary episodes of TV shows into “The Canon,” and play bizarrely hard trivia games. To be honest, half the reason I started listening was because I was fascinated with the insane trivia games, in which, for example, the quiz master will play five seconds of a song from a fictional band (such as Parks and Rec’s “Mouse Rat”) and then ask the players to name the show that the band was on. It’s very silly, but that’s very much the point.

Want to check it out? The podcasters of Extra Hot Great do tend to have strong opinions about reality TV, so episode 5, “You Wanna Be on Top?” – in which the panel discusses lots of reality TV, Tara nominates an infamous episode of America’s Next Top Model into the canon, and the TV game time tests knowledge of TV pseudonyms – is perhaps a good introduction into the show. I also recommend episode 32, “Gone Catfish-ing,” in which the always charming Matt Mira of Nerdist fame is a guest panelist and the group discuss the eponymous Catfish TV show; also, an episode of Star Trek: TNG is nominated for the canon, and the panelists are quizzed on their ability to recognize the last lines of TV shows.

8. Pop Culture Happy Hour – Favorite podcast ever. Hands down. NPR culture critics have roundtable discussions about pop culture which are occasionally interspersed with quizzes about regrettable television, comic book superheroes, and – famously – “Paint or Perp,” in which Linda Holmes challenged her fellow podcasters to determine if particular words were Sherwin-Williams paint colors or episodes of Law & Order: SVU. (It’s surprisingly difficult to tell.) Ending each episode with a segment called “What’s Making Us Happy This Week,” PCHH is also wonderful about recommending more pop culture for listeners to consume!

Want to check it out? PCHH loves its “low-brow” pop culture as much as any of us, so the episode in which they enlist Ari Shapiro to discuss “The Shambolic VMAs and Hollywood in the White House” is a delight. They also, however, make great use of their friendship with the NPR Code Switch team and thereby have great discussions about race and representation, as in the episode on “‘Fruitvale Station’ and Yelling at Clouds.” But really, I love Pop Culture Happy Hour because Linda, Glen, Stephen, and the rest so clearly have so much fun talking about pop culture and fan communities. To that end, “Live From San Diego Comic Con” is absolutely wonderful.

Happy Listening!

Top Ten Reasons You Should Be Watching Sleepy Hollow

Sleepy Hollow is a network drama about a small town cop and a Revolutionary War soldier fighting demons and researching the secret history of the United States as they try to avert the Biblical Apocalypse. It’s a strange little show, with horror elements that mark it as a descendent of Buffy and The X-Files and conspiracy genes that show its debt to The Da Vinci Code and National Treasure. It’s also completely wonderful. And bonkers.

The second season premieres next Monday (9/22) on Fox, so now’s the perfect time to get caught up on season one! In honor of this, here are our top ten reasons you should be watching Sleepy Hollow:

1. Nicole Beharie as Lt. Abbie Mills. It’s unusual to have a petite black woman as the well-developed lead in a supernatural TV show (or, let’s be real, any TV show). Abbie is the smart, no-nonsense, kick-ass center of the show, and Beharie is fantastic.

2. The awesome diversity of the cast – and the general awesomeness of the cast. The cast and creators have spoken frequently about how important it is to have a show that represents the diversity of its viewers. Well over half of the main and recurring casts are people of color, and while race isn’t ignored in the script, it also isn’t the focus. It also bears mentioning that the excellence of the cast is pretty ridiculous: John Cho, Orlando Jones, Amandla Stenberg, Lyndie Greenwood, Clancy Brown, Nicholas Gonzalez, and John Noble (to name a few) backing up Nicole Beharie and Tom Mison seems almost too good to be true!

3. It plays with history in hilarious and excellent ways. Crane’s constant need to correct modern interpretations of his time forces us to acknowledge the way that history is rewritten over time. At the same time, characters like Abbie and Irving aren’t afraid to tell it like it is (was?), correcting Crane’s privileged views (like when they break the news about Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings). At the same time as all this real talk, the show creates an alternative history in which George Washington was successfully resurrected from the dead (a thing his doctors actually tried to do, by the way) and the secrets to preventing the apocalypse are hidden in his Bible.

4. Sleepy Hollow knows just how insane its premise is, and it embraces its own camp elements. As cultural critic Susan Sontag famously wrote, camp happens when you extravagantly embrace the ridiculous stylization of your decidedly silly idea. The premise of Sleepy Hollow is appropriately silly. (The secrets to averting the apocalypse are found in Washington’s Bible? Really?) And the show has oh so much fun making it sillier and sillier: when an evil witch, for example, is preying on the people of Sleepy Hollow, the show samples Frank Sinatra’s “Witchcraft” and, in the next episode, during a sequence riffing on Sandman folklore, the soundtrack flips over to The Chordettes’ “Mr Sandman”. You’d never accuse this show of taking itself too seriously.

5. This is a show with a male and a female lead in which the pair’s romantic attraction does not figure into their relationship. Abbie and Ichabod rely upon each other and care for each other, but the show is utterly uninterested in the will-they-won’t-they dynamic that defines all too many relationships between men and women on TV shows. (In fact, the show goes to some effort early on to let both Abbie and Ichabod assert that they’re not romantically interested in each other.) Instead, they just have a fantastic friendship, complete with teasing, trust, and heckling little league baseball games.

6. An awesome – and conscientious – depiction of disability. Frank Irving’s daughter, Macey, has recently started using a wheelchair because she was injured in a car accident that Irving blames himself for. But whenever he acts differently toward her and moves to pity her for what she has lost, Macey calls her father on his privilege. In a late episode in the first season, then, when Macey is in danger from the supernatural forces of evil that plague the characters in this show, Irving affirms that he knows that she is still strong and apologizes for ever believing that she might need “fixing.”

7. John Noble being wonderfully enigmatic and creepy. For those of us who are still mourning the end of The Lord of the Rings film franchise, of Fringe, and of the wonderful venues these provided for Noble’s particular brand of slightly sinister, slightly unstable character work, Sleepy Hollow gives him a wonderful stage.

8. The number of amazing female characters, and the genuine interest that the writers and actors show in exploring the relationships between these women. Half of the principle cast are women, and a number of additional women play interesting and complex recurring roles on the show. These women have strong personalities, nuanced relationships, and awesome lines. Yes, most of them can hold their own in a fight. But Sleepy Hollow understands that having strong female characters doesn’t just mean putting your female characters through training in mixed martial arts. Instead, this show embraces assertive, funny, powerful, and caring women who make their own fates.

9. Ichabod Crane has a lot of fish out of water scenes, and they are superb. More than 230 years after he was killed by the Horseman, Ichabod has a LOT of culture to catch up on: cell phones, Starbucks, the “nin-na-net,” skinny jeans, fist bumps, chained pens, and showers are all new and puzzling for him, which provides endless entertainment for us.

 

10. Fans call themselves Sleepyheads. Which is adorable.

 

Pop Culture Summer Favorites

As summer wraps up, the school year begins in earnest, and television networks pervasively advertise the return of their fall programming, we want to reflect on some of our favorite pop culture experiences of the summer.

Emily’s Summer Picks

1) Geeky Games

    

Over lazy summer nights and weekends this year, I really enjoyed playing geeky games with friends. Classics like Clue, Monopoly, and The Lord of the Rings: Trivial Pursuit are, of course, perennial favorites. But this summer, in particular, I had a lot of fun playing two very different card-based games: Dominion and Geek Out!.

Dominion is a strategic card game in which players are feudal lords trying to expand their power through the acquisition of land. Players make use of resources such as bureaucrats, militias, and witches to expand their own coffers and territories while sabotaging those of their opponents. Geek Out!, on the other hand, is a party game that plays as a sort of geek-culture cross between Trivial Pursuit and Name that Tune. Cards have prompts on them which each elicit some sort of knowledge about geek culture (i.e. Spider-Man villains or Hogwarts teachers). On each turn, then, players bid up how many items from this particular category they can name. The wonderfully fun – albeit very chaotic – aspect of this game is that the answers aren’t on the backs of the cards. So if your friend swears she can name twenty-two YA dystopian novels, it’s up to you to decide if she gets a point. This game inevitably devolves into arguments about the distinctions between science fiction and fantasy and between cyborgs and androids. But that – and the glory of demonstrating that you can name more characters from Buffy: The Vampire Slayer than your friends can – is very much the point!

2) Welcome to Night Vale live shows

I’ve been a fan of the podcast Welcome to Night Vale for a while now (sometime in the fall we’ll have a blog post solely devoted to the show). This summer, though, I was finally able to make it to one of their live shows, and it was wonderful!

Welcome to Night Vale is a fictional community radio show hosted by Cecil Palmer, a citizen of the quasi-Lovecraftian desert town of Night Vale. Much of the podcast involves Cecil reporting on the week’s news while making numerous asides about both his personal life and his opinions of the other residents of Night Vale. Other characters occasionally call in to the station, or visit Cecil in his booth, but much of the show is simply one man giving a monologue in front of a microphone. Welcome to Night Vale might thus not seem like the ideal candidate for a touring live show. But, in fact, the WtNV live show experience was wonderfully interactive and communal – we cosplayed; we cheered when favorite characters were mentioned; we bonded over this strange little podcast-that-could that we love. And the show itself was aptly tailored for the live-show experience: the script encouraged audience interaction, and the actors did fantastic work bringing their radio script alive on stage. Going to the live show was fantastic, and it made me appreciate even more the live show episodes that WtNV has released on iTunes and on their podcast feed (the recorded live shows are “Condos,” “The Debate,” and “The Old Oak Doors”). I very much recommend checking out Welcome to Night Vale, and going to a live show if they tour near you!

3) Hawkeye

I am absolutely in love with the current run of Hawkeye comics, which I finally started to read this summer. Written by Matt Fraction and drawn principally by David Aja, Hawkeye follows the adventures of Clint Barton, an archer sharpshooter who happens to be one of the Avengers. (Kate Bishop, a lady Hawkeye, often shares the center stage with Clint in these stories.)

First, and perhaps most directly, Hawkeye is just a really good superhero comic about a man who doesn’t have any superpowers but who bases his life around standing up for the underdog (and getting into consequent scrapes). As a writer, Matt Fraction is great, and he has fun experimenting with unconventional narrative styles. In addition to making frequent use of non-linear storytelling, Fraction pokes at the possibilities of the comics medium so that, for example, one issue is told entirely from the point of view of a dog while another explores deafness and incorporates American Sign Language. But what especially keeps drawing me back to Hawkeye is Aja’s brilliant drawings and panel-layouts: Aja is aware of the physical geometry of the comic book page like no other comic book artist I’ve seen, and his work is amazing. Fraction recently tweeted that he was working on his last Hawkeye script, so you should catch up while there are still new issues to enjoy!

Kazia’s Summer Picks

1) Lumberjanes

I cannot fully express my love for Lumberjanes. This summer I decided to start reading comics (like, walk-into-the-comic-shop-and-pick-up-individual-issues comics), and I chose Lumberjanes (along with the excellent new Ms. Marvel). I was not disappointed! Accurately pitched as “Buffy: The Vampire Slayer meets Gravity Falls,” Lumberjanes is basically my dream come true: it’s a feminist, queer-friendly comic with a racially diverse all-lady cast who shout “Holy bell hooks!” when surprised by supernatural creatures. Jo, April, Mal, Molly, and Ripley are the five campers who make up Roanoke Cabin at Miss Quinzella Thiskwin Peniquiqul Thistle Crumpet’s Camp for Hardcore Lady Types where, in addition to making friendship bracelets and earning badges like Pungeon Master, they frequently battle yetis, velociraptors, and mutant boy scouts. Written by Grace Ellis (writer at Autostraddle.com) and Noelle Stevenson (creator of the superb Nimona webcomic, also a summer favorite) and illustrated by Brooke Allen, Lumberjanes is quirky, campy, clever, and deep. The sixth issue is scheduled for release on September 10, so you still have time to run to your local comic shop and catch up.

2) This One Summer

I’ve been reading a LOT of graphic novels this summer, but far and away the best was This One Summer by Jillian Tamaki and Mariko Tamaki. A moody, beautiful piece printed in blueish-purple and white, a color scheme that perfectly reflects the quiet, contemplative story. This One Summer follows friends Rose and Windy as they return to their annual summer vacation spot with their families. On the cusp of adolescence, Rose and Windy are growing up and growing apart at different paces, giving a tension to their relationship as well as the relationships around them as the summer progresses. With themes of adolescence, gender, family, and sexuality, it’s an exquisite piece and a must-read for anyone who remembers or experiences difficult transitions.

3) Emma Approved

Now for a switch in format: anyone for a serialized contemporary vlog-style adaptation of classic British literature? Emma Approved (an 72-part Youtube adaptation of Jane Austen’s Emma) totally hit its stride this summer. In this adaptation, Emma, a young event planner and relationship coach for a company she co-founded with family friend Alex Knightley, is documenting her work for when someone someday makes a documentary about her. She hires intern/personal assistant/secretary/personal project/friend Harriet, and the rest (if you know the story of Emma) goes as expected. As a hardcore fan of its predecessor The Lizzie Bennet Diaries, I initially found it difficult to immerse myself in the world (too many camera angles, a traditionally unlikable Emma, etc.). However, it was totally worth the wait! While it got better and better every episode, by the time we reached the turning point in the novel (in this case, Boxx Hill), it had elevated to another level. All in all it’s a really compelling and faithful adaptation, and one that I would definitely recommend (in addition to Pemberley Digital’s aforementioned The Lizzie Bennet Diaries). It’s easy to catch up and watch entirety of Emma Approved here.

What were you favorites of the summer? Comment below!

Rainbow Rowell’s Fangirl: A Conversation

Emily: The first book we are both really excited to discuss is Rainbow Rowell’s Fangirl, a novel that engages in a conversation about fan culture and the importance of people’s relationships with beloved artifacts of pop culture.

Fangirl follows a young woman named Cath – the aforementioned fangirl – through her first year of college. She’s an anxious introvert and a “Simon Snow” fan, and over the course of the book, which takes place during her first year of college, she negotiates her roles as a geek and a grown-up.

This was my first time reading Fangirl, but I know that you’ve read it before, Kazia. How was the re-reading experience for you?

Kazia: Re-reading this book was so much fun, but also so much more painful the second time around. Cath’s struggles with social anxiety, with her need to balance taking care of her father and herself, and with shifting status quos regarding her writing all made the book a heavier read the second time around. That said, I couldn’t help but be swept up in the joys and struggles of her first-year college experience and her fandom experience.

One of the things that I really love about Fangirl is the way that the Simon Snow series closely parallels the Harry Potter series. Cath’s obsession with Simon Snow is very much the same obsession that so many of us have with Rowling’s universe, and her writing of Simon/Baz slash fic (essentially Harry/Draco) is one that many Potter fans recognize.

Quickly, I have to say one of the things that I think is incredibly well done is the way that Rowell distinguishes between the writing style of Gemma T. Leslie (the author of the Simon Snow series) and that of Cath’s fanfiction. It’s so clear she’s familiar with the world of fanfiction – both the canon and the fanfiction included in Fangirl have believable narrative voices that balance sounding similar yet not the same.

For me, the ways that the fanfiction (and fiction) excerpts interact with the chapters reinforce the questions that Cath (and I think the reader) ask about the purpose and place of fiction and fandom in readers’ lives. As Cath’s story unfolds, so too does Simon’s, both in the canon and in fanfiction. As Cath creates, maintains, and repairs her relationships during her first year of college, Simon begins to question everything he knew about his relationship with Baz. For me, the fanfiction excerpts do exactly what all literature does: it helps me see myself and others differently and more complexly. I gain a better understanding of Cath through reading snippets from the fictional world she loves so passionately, and from her own writings set in that world.

Emily: I was also swept up in the fun of reading about this oh-so-familiar fan experience. Like you, Kazia, much of my childhood, adolescence, and now even adulthood has been colored by my love of the Harry Potter books and the fandom that surrounds them. (One of the next knitting projects in my queue involves Harry-Potter-themed knee socks.) This is a world I recognize and a world that I love, and so I’m interested in the way that Rowell explores and interrogates this world of fan culture without marginalizing it.

Particularly, here, I share your interest in the way Rowell uses fanfiction in the novel. Cath writes a lot of Simon/Baz fanfiction, and excerpts from her stories often appear as epigrams at the beginnings of chapters. Although Cath’s stylistic tics are noticeably different from Rowell’s own writing – and Cath’s writing can often sound less trained than Rowell’s does – Rowell is clearly interested in the possibilities afforded by the world of fanfiction communities.

There are a couple interesting aspects of the way that Rowell treats Cath’s fanfiction that I want to mention here. First off, Rowell has clearly done her research: Cath follows current fanfiction trends in her writing, to the extent that Cath’s stories wouldn’t feel out of place if she were actually actively writing and posting these stories on Archive of Our Own or fanfiction.net today. Additionally, Cath writes slash fanfiction and, throughout the plot of the novel, uses these fictional romantic interactions between men as a lens through which to work through her own nascent relationship with a boyfriend. The popularity of male-focused slash fiction in this genre which is dominated by women readers and writers – as well as the ties between slash fic and female sexuality – becomes an interesting conversation and one that Rowell is clearly aware of. But most directly interesting to me, Rowell takes seriously the way that fanfiction writers and readers – most of whom are women or “fangirls” – form supportive relationships and communities. Through both her fanfiction and her more general involvement in the Simon Snow fandom, Cath has found a community that understands her and embraces her.

Kazia: It’s also been really interesting to see Rowell’s response to fans of Fangirl. She treats them (us) with the same care she gives to Cath, and she actively participates in fandom-heavy communities like Tumblr. She frequently uses her Tumblr platform to bring positive attention to the Fangirl fandom (as well as the fandoms for her other books), highlighting everything from videos and fancasts for characters in the Simon Snow universe to dolls and so much fan art.

Fangirl was also the first book chosen for Tumblr’s Reblog Book Club, and fan responses through the book club have been varied, thoughtful, and complex. Archive of Our Own has 36 fanfiction pieces listed, most of which is pretty equally divided between Cath/Levi and Simon/Baz and ranges from “General Audiences” to “Mature” (and let’s be real–after finish the book, who didn’t want to read more?). I’d also be remiss not to mention the superb cover art by Noelle Stevenson (who is known for, among other things, doing alternative universe fanart of her webcomic and other well-loved series), which plays with a lot of fan art and fanfiction themes.

And that’s what I love so much about Fangirl: it invests so much in fandom that a new fandom can’t help but form and invest so much back.

Welcome to our blog!

Hi there!

We’re two graduate students who love talking about pop culture, and we want to try talking about it in a new format.

We plan to post semi-regularly on Monday mornings, and we’ll cover everything from contemporary super hero comics to serialized narrative podcasts to feminist YA fantasy novels. We want this to be a space in which we can engage with different ideas and cultural interests, with regards both to cultural theory concepts and to our own anecdotal experiences with geek culture. We’re excited to share our thoughts with you, and we hope you’ll engage with us in the comments!