Hello all! This week we have articles about Knicks fanart, sexism in The Pitt, and a K-Pop fandom friendship—along with Fansplaining pieces about Game of Thrones and my latest Vampire Lestat recap. Also some gorgeous Witch Hat Atelier art, and a fascinating list of historical fanfic recs curated by the hosts of This Week In Fandom History! — Gav

new stuff

“Celebrating the Knicks Win, One Stitch at a Time” by Isa Farfan at Hyperallergic
One of the many delightful Knicks fandom moments last week was this fabric artist doing DIY Knicks embroidery in the middle of a street party.

“The Pitt women respond to fans criticizing Dr. Robby’s treatment of women: ‘I noticed the whole time’” by Shania Russell at EW
Months after The Pitt’s second season, there’s still a lot of discourse around Dr Robby’s misogynistic behavior, and how this interacts with how the show (and its fanbase) positions him as a beloved protagonist. Now, some of The Pitt’s lead actresses are weighing in.

“Growing Up With K-Pop” by Minji Kim and Eunice Lee at The Pudding
If you aren’t familiar with The Pudding, they do big, engaging visual stories that mix data with reporting/narrative. This piece is about two friends tracing their fandom through the various K-pop generations.

I feel like “horror is having a moment” has been a sudden trend in Hollywood since 1933.

— Peter Labuza (@labuzamovies.com) June 6, 2026 at 2:35 PM

new stuff: fansplaining

“How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Dragons” by Michelle Jaworski
Michelle (who was Gav’s longtime colleague at the Daily Dot!) spent years on the Game of Thrones beat, recapping the show and covering the fans (and the fandom discourse). In the process, her own fannish love for the franchise was totally destroyed. In this piece, she looks at what it was like to be inside the grinding Game of Thrones #content mines, and how she was able to find her fandom again when she finally stopped covering it.

“The Oedipiphany” by Gav
Lestat’s mother Gabriella takes center stage in episode 2 of The Vampire Lestat, revealing the extent of their incestuous relationship dating back to their human origins in 18th century France. Gav’s recap examines how this plays into Lestat’s current sense of self, tying into the show’s longstanding interest in abusive and dysfunctional relationships.

Lestat, looking in a mirror: I could fix him

— Dr. Damien P. Williams has to go the way his blood beats (@wolven.blacksky.app) June 15, 2026 at 11:41 AM

older stuff

“I’m a fake brand, in a fake world: The secrets behind designing a great fictional brand for TV and film” by Ayla Angelos at It’s Nice That
The design choices behind fictional brands, including Barbie, Wes Anderson’s films, and more.

tumblr & beyond

Witch Hat Atelier fanart by fruitgravies

now here’s a Vampire Lestat theory we can get behind.

there was only one bed!??

an incredible Hear Me Out cake from some AO3 tag wranglers

a classic gripe

“Lestat at 3 AM and absolutely high”

fanfiction

This Week In Fandom History is a weekly podcast deep-dive into one event from the past that has shaped the way fandom works today. We wanted to write a rec list of fics from the past that also shaped how fanfiction exists today, and we chose to include one fic representative (to us) of the decade in which it was written and the way fic and fandom culture worked at that time. We’ve talked about several of these works on our show, and we’re always open to receiving requests and recommendations of other fics and topics from fandom history to cover! TWIFH releases a new episode every Sunday, so check us out on your favorite podcatcher. – Emily & V

1960s

“The Ring of Soshern” by Jennifer Gutteridge. 45 typewritten zine pages, Not Rated. Fandom: Star Trek; Ship: Kirk/Spock
Backstory: Written by Jennifer Gutteridge and originally published in 1968 as a “drawer fic” or a “passaround fic,” meaning it was originally written just for personal use or to share with a few friends—and considering homosexual content was illegal due to obscenity laws in the UK at the time, writing and sharing slash was a brave and radical thing to do.
Rec: The intro in Alien Brothers says it best for this story: it sets the pattern for early K/S slash, and while it has had many imitators, none surpass it. For being written in a world that is in some ways as alien to ours as the planet where it takes place, the author did a great job of writing a story that still holds up so many decades later.
Content warnings: The original “Pon Farr in a Cave” fic, so there’s sex-pollen-type themes. Read at your own risk. There are no stated warnings or disclaimers on the story as it appears on the Internet Archive.

1980s

“The Rose” by Kendra Hunter and Diana Barbour. 3:32, Not Rated.
Fandom: Starsky & Hutch; Ship: Kenneth Hutchinson/David Starsky
Backstory: A vid! A vid from before the internet! A VHS vid! It is so exciting that this still exists and that we can watch it on demand today. “The Rose” is one of the earliest-known fanvids—tied with another 15 vids by the same creators, which premiered alongside this vid at ZebraCon 1980. Rec: Modern fanvids generally cut together many clips from an episode, movie, or whole series to tell a story, but the creators of “The Rose” didn’t have that option. And yet their vid tells a complete and cohesive story that made us start to ship Starsky/Hutch, a couple from a show neither of us has ever seen, anyway! The lyrics and the chosen clip fit together gorgeously, and it’s really a joy to watch.
Content warnings: N/A

1990s

“Like a Shepherd” by Lisa Payne. 4K words, Not Rated.
Fandoms: The X-Files/Forever Knight; Ship: Gen—NoRomo
Backstory: The first X-Files fanfiction ever posted. It’s a crossover with the show Forever Knight, which, if you—like us—have not seen it, is about a centuries-old vampire working as a cop in Toronto. “Like a Shepherd” was written early into the first season of The X-Files, so knowledge of its extensive and very convoluted lore is not necessary to enjoy this work.
Rec: The A/N at the end of this story is not to be skipped, because it’s so cute and sincere and really enhances the “wow, this is the first-ever X-Files fic!” experience. It also serves as a great introduction to Forever Knight, which we now want to track down on streaming and watch obsessively.
Content warnings: Genre-typical police procedural content, and also genre-typical vampire content (mentions and descriptions of blood and dead bodies)

2000s

“Flesh Mechanic: Not An AU” by Kel and Lise. 3K words, rated Mature.
Fandom: NSYNC; Ships: Lance Bass/Justin Timberlake, Justin Timberlake/Pharrell Williams, Lance Bass/Chris Kirkpatrick, JC Chasez/Justin Timberlake, past Justin Timberlake/Britney Spears
Backstory: NSYNC was a pre-fabricated boy band put together in Orlando by Svengali and crime boss Lou Pearlman in the mid-1990s, and they were one of the biggest pop acts of their era. This story was written in 2002, published in 2003, and takes place in a dual-timeline between 2006 and 2009. WHICH IS INSANE.
Rec: Also read the Authors’ Commentary Track, but only after you read the fic itself! It’s so hard to talk about this story without spoiling it, especially while giving responsible content warnings. But it’s truly a story that it’s better to go into as a blank slate. This fic is so good that we abandoned our entire podcast premise to record an episode just gushing about how mind-meltingly good this story is.
Content warnings: Gore, violence, murder, car accidents, serial killing, cults, allusions to underage sex/sexual abuse, psychological torture, missing persons, disassociation, memory issues

2010s

“Infinite Coffee & Protection Detail” by owlet. 264K words over 8 works, rated Teen and Mature.
Fandom: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Captain America—Chris Evans Era; Ship: Gen until the very last installment, and then it’s Steve Rogers/Bucky Barnes
Backstory: There’s a tumblr post that says something like “The Captain America trilogy is not about two traumatized soldiers returning to their own humanity through their love for and connection to each other after being thrown through time to a world that no longer sees either as a man, but a symbol… but it could have been.” And that’s, oof, that is it in a nutshell.
Rec: V mentions this fic every single time we talk about either fanfiction or Captain America on the podcast, which is, like, most episodes. It is such the epitome of “and they all lived in Avengers Tower”-era MCU fic, and it is DELICIOUS.
Content warnings: Disassociation, past trauma including allusions to sexual abuse, past torture, canon-typical violence, PTSD including explicit flashbacks

Bonus: 1910s

“Old Friends and New Fancies: An Imaginary Sequel to the Novels of Jane Austen” by Sybil Grace Brinton. 503 printed pages, Not Rated. Fandom: Jane Austen; Ship: Every Jane Austen canon ship. All of them.
Backstory: “What if all of the Jane Austen novels took place at the same time and they were friends?”
Rec: For a novel written in 1913—and one that has to contend with an awful lot of characters all at once—this is a delightful romp of a read. Hilariously, this fic also gets complaints from some critics about “anachronistic language not used in Austen’s time,” which is really a reminder to us all that people have always been people and fic has always been fic.
Content warnings: N/A

Do you think if a xenomorph kissed a predator it’s little second mouth would go into the predator’s like vagina-mouth

— Ethan Kocak (@ethankocak.com) June 17, 2026 at 11:39 PM

FINAL THOUGHT

Emily and V of This Week in Fandom History are in the newsletter this week as part of an Ambitious Crossover Event—because I was recently a guest on their Patrons-only side podcast, “Batman Wouldn’t, Spider-Man Would,” which asks one of the most important questions of our age: Does a given superhero fuck? While I have devoted a great deal of thought and literally hundreds of thousands of my own words to the idea of Charles Xavier and Erik Lehnsherr (and some other X-Men characters) fucking, this was an interesting exercise for me, a person with few opinions about superhero characters outside the X-Men. My guest episode is intriguingly titled, “Are You Familiar With Straight Women?” (go ahead, guess which superhero I had to discuss before clicking through) and will be unlocked in their feed until next Wednesday! — Elizabeth