Trans at the Table: Queer Oral Histories of Actual Play Podcast Fandom

On Queer, or, What's This Project?

Trans at the Table: Queer Oral Histories of Friends at the Table Fandom—that’s a lot of words! I’m using them all in specific ways, especially queer. Understood together, they give a sense of my project. I delve into oral history, actual play podcasts, and fandom in the next few sections. Before that, I’d like to take a second to talk about how I’m using queer.

Queer is a term with a long academic history and an even longer history outside academia. Queer does not have a fixed definition (and whether or not it should is a continuing debate). Instead, queer theory is a lens used to investigate what seems natural or unquestionable about gender, sex, and sexuality.

My project takes special inspirations from Cael M. Keegan’s chapter “Sensing Transgender,” where he expands the definition of trans to an entirely different way of conceptualizing the world. This trans way of sensing applies especially to speculative fiction. Keegan writes:

“…like science fiction, trans* is about how what could happen haunts the present, asking us to consider where elements in reality might lead if permitted to reach” (3).

I use queer in a similar valence. Queer and trans are about how the stories we tell can reshape dominant ideas of personhood, bodies, and desire.

Queer is also a term of personal and community identity. I never want to sever theoretical consideration of queer ways of being from the queer people that the term points to. Instead, I use queer in two ways: first, to align myself with the tradition of queer theory and its attention to intersectional understandings of the tenuous stabilization of categories; second, as a grouping term for a people who fall outside normative ideas of gender and sexuality.

Queer refers to some of the people here, though not all of them. Given its history as a slur, many people are not comfortable with being called queer. None of the interview narrators is referred to as queer if they do not use it to refer to themselves. That’s the source of the “gay, queer, and/or trans” of the project description. When I’m speaking more generally, I’ll say “queer fans,” since I find the term useful for the fluidity and theoretical resonances.  

From here, the intended audience of the digital exhibit is broad. If you’re a fan of actual play podcasts and Friends at the Table, you might find some of the description of the genre and show a bit plodding. If you’re a scholar of fan studies or queer game studies, you might find yourself already familiar with the theoretical contextualization. If you’d like to read an even more elaborated and academic version of the background, check out my (forthcoming) written thesis!

Now, you can jump straight to the interviews, or keep reading the background by clicking the button below.
 

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