Arpad on Fanfiction as Literary Criticism
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2021-03-09T02:04:05+00:00
Arpad Hervanek
18
talks about its experience as a trans person and fan artist who listens to a lot of podcasts.
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2021-03-19T22:45:55+00:00
Arp shares how it got into Friends at the Table after listening to a bunch of actual play podcasts. It discusses the themes of the show and the people it attracts, how friendly the fandom is, how the fandom approaches transness, and how the show and fandom help it with social isolation and depression. It shares its experience doing erotic fanart and drawing "unsexy" bodies and how its appreciated the way the cast treats people on and off the show. It talks about its experience with transness, where it appreciates Friends at the Table's approach to transness, and where it sees the tension between realism and imagining better worlds in Friends at the Table. It concludes by detailing a choose-your-own-adventure fan game its working on right now and comparing fanfiction to literary criticism.
Transcript: On Fandom Approaches to TransnessFinch: What you said about the physical part of it is really interesting to me because Friends at the Table is an audio medium. How do you see like transness and gender working in the show?
Arpad: Well, one, they just talk about it, which is nice, but they only talk about like the, I don't think they’ve mentioned like physical transition at all, but part of it being audio is that whenever you make med—like you make something, it's like you have to fill it in it. For, like, you have to. Like there's no reference for what person whatever’s body is, you have to come up with it. So like, it's like a playground, it's like, uh, free real estate, I guess, like. (Arpad laughs) Put whatever you want here.
Finch: Yeah. I’m curious if you've seen that in… in the fandom at all, like what, what that, what effect that has on sort of how people interpret characters or take up trans characters.
Arpad: Yeah no definitely. I’ve like, the like common designs for characters that just kind of get like accepted because, like everyone draws them. There’s like… or like even in fic, like, there are so many—well it’s mostly transmasculine honestly, but still, that’s like unusual for there to be, like it's consistent, like Gig—I could see it like as I’m reading the Twilight Mirage stuff and, like the stuff all the way, like the early stuff is like a mix, and you can see it get uniform and like. Someone will write him as trans and then people will continue writing him as cis and then like by the newer fics every—consistently, if it comes up, he's trans. Fero, consistently, if it comes up, he’s trans. (Finch laughs)
Like there's just like—and it's, it's neat to see that happen because, like I, I also like, if I’m not listening to it, I’m probably reading fanfic (Arpad laughs). So I read all of it, I don't even try to like pick and choose. I will just like start a tag, go back, open every single one in a tab, and work through it. So like it's neat because you get like the big picture when you do that, because you can see the changes, you know. So it's been really neat seeing that in the fandom for different characters or different, like, the way people talk about the characters.
Even’s—like Even Gardner’s transformation into like, a bug man, like, (Arpad laughs) the different ways, people like write that or draw that is really neat to me too. That one's like, least consistent, people are not very consistent with that one, and I like how that ends up. Or like Apostolosians, are like a gender-neutral like, species, people, whatever. And like, the way people treat that is really neat, that one's like free game, people go wild with that, I love it.Transcript: On Realism vs Imagining BetterFinch: I’m curious what you said about the sort of tension between… there's like, part of their storytelling is like why limit the world and it doesn't have to follow our rules, you know, it doesn't—the fish doesn't have to obey our laws of physics. But then also you've talked about, especially with relation to transness and queerness, like, it's good to see people that are like you in media, so like. I guess what I’m curious about is like, could you speak a little on this balance between, like, realistic representation, but also imagining something better?
Arpad: Yeah, yeah, no, that's hard for me a lot, actually. And that is like it's not a complaint I have, because I don't want anyone to do something they don’t want to do. But like, man, when people depict trans people in worlds where they just have no problems at all? I’m just like—okay? Like, like, I don't know, I really like Millie being trans, I really wanted them to expand on that, like make it some kind of struggle, like a little bit, like Clem’s an ass—like you put a trans woman in a situation where she's like under the power of this, like, canonical asshole. (Finch laughs)
Finch: Yeah.
Arpad: Can we, like, they could make it like a better world where Clem is an asshole about it, and then we get to see her fucking destroyed. Like that'd be great, but like, having it just not come up at all ever is like, I understand that fantasy, and it seems to be one that most people have so like I don't want to be like, “make it edgy,” but like, I just I have, I do have a hard time with that part of it. That balance, I guess? Because, like in an ideal world it wouldn't be an issue, absolutely, you're right, but like, that's just so far out of my perspective that it's like, I don't even like, whenever I do write fanfic I put it right in there because, like I can't, I can't, I just can't like… I don't know, it's hard.
Finch: It's hard!Transcript: On Fanfiction as Literary CriticismFinch: I think you're hitting on something that I have experienced a lot to where it's like… I don't know, a lot of the mainstream understanding of fanfiction or fan work more generally, is often like, it doesn't, it's not real literature or real art because it's only, it's just for people’s satisfaction or it doesn't deal with deeper, intense stuff and I’m like, that runs contrary to every experience I’ve had with fan work and fanfic? Where they're taking about, I don't know, fucking Star Wars or some movie that is like faux deep and being like, “What if we wrote 80,000 words about what it means to be human?”
Arpad: Yeah! Well, to me fanfic is like academic, it's like academic papers, like there's essays people write about literature, and in those essays they take these itty-bitty pieces and say, “This is justification for saying that this literature was about like this, this, and that.” And that's what fanfic does, except for they do it in a story. And that's great. (Arpad laughs) Like it's the same thing, it's the same thing, it's just one's narrative and one's not.
Finch: It really is...
Arpad: There's no difference, like all it is is people being like, “I’m arguing that this is what should have happened here, and here are the details that I’m going to expand on to get that way.” And like that can be really powerful because it's the same, like, it's like I’ve read, like I loved literature courses in college where you'd like read it and you'd be like, “Holy shit, I didn't realize the story was about that!”
Finch: Mm hmm, mm hmm.
Arpad: And fanfic is the same way, where it's like, “Holy shit I didn't think that could happen,” or like you know I know. Yeah no, it does the same thing, except for it's accessible. (Arpad laughs)
Finch: Yep!
Arpad: It's the poor persons’ academic paper. (Finch laughs)
Finch: The poor person’s academia—I mean but literally though! It's like, it—the communities operate on very interesting, similar levels. Anyway, that just blew my mind, um, like.
Arpad: Everything’s the same.
Finch: What is literary criticism but fanfiction?
Arpad: It is, it's all it is.
Listen to the full interview with Arp here.
Read the full interview transcript here.