Speaker 1: Podcasts are real, I guess is what I'm trying to say.
Speaker 2: Take me back to the place sign know, with the
Speaker 2: Mystery Shack and the forest Gnomes. I'm already back, so
Speaker 2: come on, let's go. Don't get me started. My heart's
Speaker 2: in gravity faults.
Speaker 3: Welcome to Mystery Shack, Look Back, Look Back. A nostalgic
Speaker 3: time capsule and very spoiler filled interview. I'm your fandom scholar,
Speaker 3: Abby Kirby, and today I would like to show you
Speaker 3: our new exhibit. Here behold, it's our beloved curators, Charlotte,
Speaker 3: Ella and Shelby.
Speaker 1: Help us.
Speaker 3: Oh hush, it's not that bad.
Speaker 4: It's pretty bad. It's just one glass case for the
Speaker 4: three of us.
Speaker 5: It's hot in here, yeah, could you have installed an
Speaker 5: air conditioner in the glass case at the very least?
Speaker 5: Or a refrigerator, a magic refrigerator.
Speaker 4: This is serious, This is an emergency. We are being
Speaker 4: held captive in our own podcast museum. Please send help,
Speaker 4: send the McElroy, send anybody.
Speaker 3: Today I'm going to be interviewing our beloved curators to
Speaker 3: find out exactly what it takes to make a podcast
Speaker 3: and what exactly is a curator. When we're talking about fandom.
Speaker 4: Yeah, okay, sure, sure, yeah, yeah I could. I could
Speaker 4: go with the with taking my mind off of off
Speaker 4: of the situation.
Speaker 3: Yeah, oh yeah.
Speaker 5: Talking helps to satiate the hunger.
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, wait no, that's not true. Talking absolutely burnes galleries.
Speaker 5: Yes, but you don't think about it while you're doing it.
Speaker 1: I guess so.
Speaker 3: But you know what does satiate the hunger knowledge? We're
Speaker 3: gonna learn so much about how fandom works today through
Speaker 3: the eyes of everyday people who live, breathe, and possibly
Speaker 3: sweat fandom.
Speaker 5: A lot of sweating, not a whole lot of breathing
Speaker 5: in here, very stinky over here.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So this is the five year anniversary of Mystery
Speaker 3: Shack look Back. Will you talk me through where the
Speaker 3: idea for this podcast came from the setup and exactly
Speaker 3: why did you start this project?
Speaker 1: As with all good aught, the title came to us
Speaker 1: before anything else.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: I remember GMing you that, right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you had Mystery Shack look Back kicking around in
Speaker 1: your head. You liked the rhyme that we actually tried
Speaker 1: to do this podcast in twenty eighteen.
Speaker 4: It was twenty eighteen, yep, two.
Speaker 1: Years after Gravity Falls ended, but that format was more
Speaker 1: based on Everything's Coming Up Podcast? What does it called?
Speaker 4: Formerly? I think it was Everything's Coming Up Podcast, and
Speaker 4: then they changed the title to Everything's Coming Up Simpsons,
Speaker 4: which is a fantastic podcast about Simpsons.
Speaker 3: But yeah, it was.
Speaker 4: It was at the time the version that we did
Speaker 4: because it was just coming off the heels of the
Speaker 4: show ending. It was missing the nostalgic part of nostalgic
Speaker 4: time capsule. I think we actually weren't doing no spoiler either.
Speaker 3: Correct.
Speaker 4: It was relatively new at the time to be looking
Speaker 4: at these episodes with the benefit of knowing everything that
Speaker 4: we then knew that was. That was kind of novel
Speaker 4: at the time to be like, wow, now we know
Speaker 4: all the secrets, let's go back and watch the older episode.
Speaker 1: Everything's Coming Up Simpsons. Of course, Alex Hirsch guested on
Speaker 1: the first episode of the premise of that podcast is more,
Speaker 1: let's talk about a Simpsons episode that's really meaningful to you,
Speaker 1: because there are so many Simpsons episodes and it really
Speaker 1: is specific to the person, which burrowed in their brain
Speaker 1: harder than any others. There are forty episodes of gravity Falls,
Speaker 1: and I don't think that was quite the way to
Speaker 1: re examine this show no, and there.
Speaker 4: Were seeds of what became the show that we have now,
Speaker 4: because I remember we had a segment where was like, okay,
Speaker 4: so where were you when you first saw this? We
Speaker 4: were getting to the actual interesting part of the podcast.
Speaker 4: We hadn't quite nailed it. But I think we recorded
Speaker 4: like three episodes or two of them.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think we recorded three and released two.
Speaker 4: Maybe there somewhere. I don't think there anywhere anymore.
Speaker 5: I hope not everybody was sis at the time. It
Speaker 5: was very uncomfort gribble to go back to you.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it was in vogue to be sizz back then.
Speaker 4: We don't really it was. It's true, it's very passe nowadays.
Speaker 1: So around Thanksgiving twenty twenty, I guested on a podcast
Speaker 1: called come On Forukuapods, a Homestar Runer podcast, and I
Speaker 1: kind of didn't want to leave. What's fascinating about come
Speaker 1: On Fuqua POD's homestow on a podcast is it does
Speaker 1: cover the show in release order, which is possibly the
Speaker 1: worst way to watch Homestar Runner because it took about
Speaker 1: a year for Matt to figure out how to voice
Speaker 1: act and Mike to figure out how to anime of.
Speaker 4: The chatman fame. Yeah, if you haven't, if this is
Speaker 4: your first episode of the podcast that you're listening to, right,
Speaker 4: unlikely but possible.
Speaker 1: And I'd never even thought about watching Homestar Runner and
Speaker 1: release order. That's never been my approach to it. And
Speaker 1: what was fat fascinating was Michael William Hunter did all
Speaker 1: of the research and just brought in David and Alexa
Speaker 1: just when they were ready to record. They just popped in.
Speaker 1: They didn't have to do any pre preparation.
Speaker 4: Alexa who had never seen any of them.
Speaker 1: Right, and Alexa had never seen any of them. So
Speaker 1: there was a segment called Hey Alexa, what do you
Speaker 1: think of this? Where Alexa reacts to these cartoons for
Speaker 1: the first time from the fresh Eyes. But also David
Speaker 1: hadn't really David Spencer hadn't really watched Homestar Runners since
Speaker 1: it was a meme since like two thousand and two,
Speaker 1: two thousand and three, two thousand and four, so he
Speaker 1: doesn't really remember what's a running gag and what just
Speaker 1: comes up once. And what was fascinating to me because
Speaker 1: there's no plot at Homestore Runner, there's no real such
Speaker 1: thing as spoilers. But Michael was so committed, thank you
Speaker 1: sugar glider.
Speaker 3: Sorry, that was muffin.
Speaker 4: That's a great that's a sailient point. Actually, I'm glad
Speaker 4: somebody brought that up.
Speaker 3: Yeah, for those of you wondering, the sugar glider is
Speaker 3: in the glass with our curators. Yeah. I had to
Speaker 3: bring my children with me. I only brought the things.
Speaker 3: I thought I would have.
Speaker 4: Lost my mind if not for these wonderful creatures.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they love giving kisses.
Speaker 1: It's true. Yeah, this is a lot easier with emotional
Speaker 1: support animals, I will say.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: But despite the fact that there are no real spoilers
Speaker 1: in Homestar, Michael was so committed to making sure guests
Speaker 1: didn't reveal too much about cartoons that David didn't remember
Speaker 1: or hadn't seen yet, and that kind of stuck in
Speaker 1: my brain. Is something interesting. And around the same time,
Speaker 1: I was listening to Talking Futurama on the Talking Simpsons
Speaker 1: Patreon feed, and they have a segment called what Happened
Speaker 1: this day in Real World History where they kind of
Speaker 1: set the scene for where this episode aired by saying, like,
Speaker 1: what was the number one movie in theaters? What were
Speaker 1: the big international news at the time, And it really
Speaker 1: helped me in a way that I'd never really thought
Speaker 1: of to understand these Futurama episodes, because Futurama is political
Speaker 1: satire in a lot of ways. It is what if
Speaker 1: the future sucked as much as Right Now did in
Speaker 1: all the same ways.
Speaker 4: Right first show set in the future, there were very
Speaker 4: contemporary references to when it was coming out.
Speaker 1: And so knowing when it came out really kind of
Speaker 1: helps you understand it, and that's why that segment was
Speaker 1: so useful. And then also there's a Tumblr blog called
Speaker 1: Heritage Post, which you know Tumblr used to be this
Speaker 1: big juggernaut of social media. Then it's not really anymore.
Speaker 1: There's not as many people using it. You can't really
Speaker 1: get a thousand notes by just saying something funny enough
Speaker 1: like he used to be able to. So Heritage Post
Speaker 1: was like about preserving the time when Tumblr was consistently
Speaker 1: active and the posts that were important to the community
Speaker 1: at the.
Speaker 4: Time, and spinning off into larger means as well outside
Speaker 4: of tumblrm But.
Speaker 1: More than these three ideas separately, I was more thinking,
Speaker 1: how do I get back on combad for Hooker Pot
Speaker 1: as soon as possible. Yeah, I realized that if I
Speaker 1: had a show on the network, one and I could
Speaker 1: just steal their format, but two they would probably let
Speaker 1: me guess to promote the podcast, which did wind up happening.
Speaker 4: So you developed this this Nathan Fielder style, the plan
Speaker 4: get my own, make my own.
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah? Yeah, and Charlotte for you. Yeah. I wanted
Speaker 1: to make a come on Pots adjacent podcast so that
Speaker 1: I could guess on kub on.
Speaker 4: That was my goal, which like in this weird like
Speaker 4: meta textual way, the fact that our podcast about gravity Falls,
Speaker 4: which is a show that was influenced by Alex Hirsch's
Speaker 4: love of the Simpsons and Homestar Runner, was influenced by
Speaker 4: our love of podcasts about the Simpsons and Home Star Runner,
Speaker 4: and you know Futurama being adjacent to the Simpsons being
Speaker 4: spun off of the Simpsons feed as well.
Speaker 1: I messaged Ella, who was in senior year of college
Speaker 1: at the time. This was around semba of twenty twenty,
Speaker 1: I believe, a month after guests to come out buk Pods,
Speaker 1: and I was like, let's start up mister a shack
Speaker 1: look back again from the beginning, but this time one
Speaker 1: as trans people and two.
Speaker 4: As out trans people. I suppose we could say.
Speaker 1: Two as a a fandom time capsule and uh nostalgic
Speaker 1: nostalgic time capsule. Yeah, as a fandom museum.
Speaker 4: Basically, well, whatever we said, you know that thing, that
Speaker 4: thing we always.
Speaker 1: Say, Yeah, who can remember? It's not like we've said
Speaker 1: it fifty three times?
Speaker 4: Who can remember? I'm losing brain cells in this glass
Speaker 4: box as we speak.
Speaker 3: So what you're saying is the secret to a good
Speaker 3: podcast is caring about the Simpsons and being trans Yes.
Speaker 4: That's just light.
Speaker 1: That's true. That's a fantastic.
Speaker 4: Point, absolutely, because I mean I feel like the thing
Speaker 4: with most podcasts is that, and I'm I've done this
Speaker 4: as well. You know, you go for like five or
Speaker 4: so episodes and then you struggle to find the time
Speaker 4: and the energy. But if there's anything that I could
Speaker 4: keep up the energy to see through and is contained
Speaker 4: enough relatively of a series to do in completion, it
Speaker 4: would be grabbed me false. So I was like, okay,
Speaker 4: that's the motive, right, if we're talking about this in
Speaker 4: terms of a murder.
Speaker 1: The opportunity, Yeah, you were busy with the senior Yeah.
Speaker 4: Well the opportunity was, yes, busy with senior year, but
Speaker 4: also this being twenty twenty, I can't remember at this point.
Speaker 4: I just know that a thing was happening that gave
Speaker 4: me a lot of time at home and not much
Speaker 4: going on outside of the home. I don't remember what
Speaker 4: it was again, because I'm losing brain cells as we speak.
Speaker 4: Who could remember. It's probably over now, right, it's probably done.
Speaker 4: We don't have to worry about it. It doesn't exist anymore.
Speaker 1: If it's not. Staying behind glass is a good way
Speaker 1: to avoid it.
Speaker 4: Oh, I'm sure, yeah, you're probably right. But yeah that
Speaker 4: so then there's the opportunity, right, is that it was
Speaker 4: the perfect storm of at least on my end, you.
Speaker 1: Had to finish senior year, which meant we had five
Speaker 1: or six months of just texting each other ideas for
Speaker 1: the podcast, which is why when it started it was
Speaker 1: like a fully formed idea, which is not how most
Speaker 1: podcasts start. Most podcasts start with just let's record and
Speaker 1: see what happens and figure out the format as we go.
Speaker 4: Yeah, okay, so we have the promise of an idea.
Speaker 4: But I think that planning stage is that where you
Speaker 4: got Shelby in on things.
Speaker 1: So Shelby did the research with me for the first
Speaker 1: episode because Ella was finishing up school, and so Shelby
Speaker 1: has kind of always been a presence on this podcast.
Speaker 1: As soon as Shelby started guesting, we started saying, like,
Speaker 1: you're kind of the third curator, but this was a
Speaker 1: weekly released podcast.
Speaker 4: And then you literally became the third curator, and in
Speaker 4: my you know, retroactively, you always were.
Speaker 1: Like that was kind of how we talked about Shelby
Speaker 1: and the guest spot. In their second appearance, we introduced
Speaker 1: to them as a curocent. Yeah, Shelby just was working
Speaker 1: a full time job and Ella and I was stuck inside.
Speaker 5: So yeah, I also think I moved four times during
Speaker 5: the lifetime of the podcast.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, it was I was a little busy.
Speaker 4: That would do it. Yeah, that would do it.
Speaker 3: I'm going to take a moment here and I'm going
Speaker 3: to talk at you guys, just so that I don't
Speaker 3: get stagnant.
Speaker 4: Please do We're flogging up the glass with our breath
Speaker 4: and when it's causing us to choke on carbon dioxide.
Speaker 5: I drew a little heart for you over here.
Speaker 3: I'm going to drill some holes in this while I
Speaker 3: talk to you.
Speaker 4: Oh good, thank you.
Speaker 3: Finally, can you put some meminems through that hole? If
Speaker 3: you earn them? Have I not earned them yet? No,
Speaker 3: I've got this article in front of me. It is
Speaker 3: called Preserving the Marginal or the fan as archivist, And
Speaker 3: now this is an article that's mostly about collecting physical things.
Speaker 3: It gets a little bit into the digital world. But
Speaker 3: when we think of archivists, we think of people who
Speaker 3: archive physical objects. But it says nostalgia is one of
Speaker 3: the main drivers of fans memorabilia collecting, because preserving the
Speaker 3: things that you liked in the past helps you preserve
Speaker 3: and perpetuate part of your former identity. And we're you
Speaker 3: mentioned like just wanting to start this podcast two years
Speaker 3: after Gravity Falls had ended, which doesn't feel like a
Speaker 3: lot of time for something to be made nostalgic. And
Speaker 3: I know I'm saying this now in twenty twenty six
Speaker 3: and Gravity Falls has now been passed down to the generations.
Speaker 3: But in those early days, how are you kind of
Speaker 3: negotiating this idea of nostalgia of something that, from my perspective,
Speaker 3: was kind of still actively going.
Speaker 5: We were all pretty big in the Gravity Falls fandom
Speaker 5: at the time that you were conceiving of that podcast,
Speaker 5: so it was really more how did you get into
Speaker 5: the fandom than how did this impact you?
Speaker 4: Yeah, we were all fairly popular either blogs or youtubes
Speaker 4: or what have you in the Gravity Falls fandom at
Speaker 4: the time.
Speaker 1: So Shelby was a Facebook.
Speaker 5: Well, I'm tumbler. I wasn't aware that I was big
Speaker 5: in the Gravity Falls fandom. You were the one that
Speaker 5: told me that.
Speaker 1: The couseplace you were posting to Facebook, I hadding a
Speaker 1: lot of attention to the point where like, if I
Speaker 1: would talk to cosplayers in New Jersey, do you know
Speaker 1: of Shelby Andie Cosplay?
Speaker 4: They'd be like, yeah, your kitten fists got the Alex
Speaker 4: Hirsch tweet in I think twenty sixteen, twenty fifteen.
Speaker 3: I believe it was twenty sixteen.
Speaker 4: Whether it was the original twenty eighteen attempt of the
Speaker 4: show where the incarnation we know in love now, I
Speaker 4: think that was always kind of part of the idea
Speaker 4: is that we are again with that's trying to sound
Speaker 4: too narcissistic, somewhat uniquely qualified to catalog what this fandom
Speaker 4: was like.
Speaker 1: We were in the trenches we have I'm not I
Speaker 1: don't feel narcissistic in saying we meant things to certain
Speaker 1: people in the fandom, not everyone we weren't like a
Speaker 1: universal constant for every fandom experience. But there were people
Speaker 1: that think back in the Gravity Falls era and they think, ah,
Speaker 1: I miss what probably happens in Gravity Falls and the
Speaker 1: Gravity Falls full time fandoms and all of the cosplays
Speaker 1: I saw on Facebook, and.
Speaker 4: I was again, it is a little different, I guess
Speaker 4: in my case because unlike it was a my cosplays,
Speaker 4: it wasn't pictures of me or voice recordings of me.
Speaker 4: It was just things that I would post, like you know, posts,
Speaker 4: we would call them. But that's that's gonna get censored
Speaker 4: and sound like nothing.
Speaker 1: I think Ella is mentioned in one of the commentaries
Speaker 1: that's well, yeah, yeah. There's a bit in one of
Speaker 1: the DVD commentaries where they talk about people trying to pause.
Speaker 4: On the second episode.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the second commentary, they talk about people trying to
Speaker 1: pause on in between frames and catch the characters looking weird.
Speaker 1: And in our episode Gobloca, I presented that to Ella
Speaker 1: and I said, now, who do you think they're talking about?
Speaker 4: Yeah, And I think I think the less charitable interpretation
Speaker 4: is like, oh, you're you're trying to insinuate something about
Speaker 4: the way the show looks like no it's just funny.
Speaker 4: The gronkle stand or the Dipper's arm is is around
Speaker 4: gronkle stand and it's like stretched out to his across
Speaker 4: his shoulder. That's what makes cartoons magic. Like that increases
Speaker 4: the magic for me. That doesn't decrease the magic. Yeah,
Speaker 4: it never has.
Speaker 3: They squashed them stretch, that's the that's a whole purpose. Yeah,
Speaker 3: I really love that This podcast is kind of a
Speaker 3: simultaneous story of people doing a whole bunch of different
Speaker 3: fan works coming together, specifically because Charlotte wants to be
Speaker 3: on another podcast, and I just there's this part of
Speaker 3: me that's like, oh, I say, everybody could just do
Speaker 3: blogs or make podcasts and I had to go get
Speaker 3: a degree and write a book just in the room.
Speaker 5: Hey, I mean, I have a degree in music and
Speaker 5: all I do is community theater. Sometimes the path finds you.
Speaker 3: The path definitely does find you. But it's like kind
Speaker 3: of been this hilarious like running gag in my life
Speaker 3: for the past year ish where I'll be out in
Speaker 3: public somewhere donning some kind of gravity falls merchandise and
Speaker 3: someone will be like, hey, I like your gravity false thing.
Speaker 3: I'll be like, hey, yeah, I want to hear a
Speaker 3: fun fact about me. I'm writing a book. I talk
Speaker 3: to people, I'm working really hard, and they'll look at
Speaker 3: me and go yeah, sure, and I'm like.
Speaker 4: Oh, I'll show them, You'll show them all.
Speaker 5: They don't believe you, because who's living that dream? That's
Speaker 5: a dream right there? Who could possibly be living that dream?
Speaker 3: So few people have believed me. Where I talked to
Speaker 3: Ariel Hirsh for a little bit and she was telling
Speaker 3: me over zoom that like she thought I was some
Speaker 3: weird freak who was lying to her.
Speaker 4: She was like, she was like, look, I know I
Speaker 4: work as a therapist, so I don't say this to anyone,
Speaker 4: but you're a weird freak and I don't believe you.
Speaker 3: Yeah, she was, well, yeah, she was like, is this
Speaker 3: a weirdo trying to stalk me? Even though I like
Speaker 3: provided all this evidence of like here's my contract, here's
Speaker 3: here's things I've already talked to to ask your brother,
Speaker 3: and she sent him a text that said, hey, this
Speaker 3: like weird person who's claiming to be an academic reached
Speaker 3: out to me. Is this legit? And all he said
Speaker 3: was ye, cool, incredible.
Speaker 4: That's the best thing anyone can say about anyone.
Speaker 3: I mean, I take it as a really high compliment,
Speaker 3: but like it's it's it's a repeating thing where people
Speaker 3: have not believed me. And I think I've gotten a
Speaker 3: lot of unanswered emails because everybody's like this freak is
Speaker 3: totally lying to me. And I'm here like clawing at
Speaker 3: the door like a cat who can't decide if it
Speaker 3: wants in or out, being like no.
Speaker 1: I mean, I can't decide.
Speaker 3: I went to Grits. I was gonna say, it's the
Speaker 3: meme at the gate. Let me Yeah, yeah, I'm Eric Andre.
Speaker 4: Let just this use this as fuel, though, Use this
Speaker 4: as fuel, and and look down upon the town from
Speaker 4: your balcony and just think I'll show them. I'll show
Speaker 4: all of them what I've got.
Speaker 3: Yeah, someday I'll have my my little Gideon moment where
Speaker 3: I'm like, look at all them little old people. Will
Speaker 3: I collect absolutely zero royalty money on this thing?
Speaker 4: Yeah, then we'll get the Abby Kirby brand blunt objects.
Speaker 3: Mmm, oh my god. So okay, this is a nostalgic
Speaker 3: podcast and you're cure. Yes, there is so much to
Speaker 3: gravity falls, like an inexplicable amount of stuff that there
Speaker 3: is to talk about. It's true, how are you deciding
Speaker 3: what to curate?
Speaker 5: I think that taking it from an episodic point of
Speaker 5: view and only focusing on what was available at the
Speaker 5: time is probably the most effective way to cultivate the
Speaker 5: fandom culture because you're taking bite sides amounts.
Speaker 1: As far as what we decide to preserve and what
Speaker 1: we don't, we wanted the podcast to be fifty two
Speaker 1: episodes because we wanted it to be over in a year.
Speaker 1: We started it a year before the tenure Gravity Falls anniversary,
Speaker 1: so we found forty episodes and then anything else we
Speaker 1: could think of and narrowed it down to the twelve
Speaker 1: we thought the most important to us when we were
Speaker 1: coming up in the fandom, the things that we remember
Speaker 1: making waves people talking about because we were actively there
Speaker 1: in those days.
Speaker 4: It has to also be in order. Yes, so you
Speaker 4: know Rumble's Revenge is right before the hiatus, because that's
Speaker 4: when it happened, you know, just say what we said earlier.
Speaker 1: But as far as what information we decide to include
Speaker 1: in each episode, the secret there is we were on
Speaker 1: a weekly release schedule, so whatever research we could get
Speaker 1: done in a week.
Speaker 4: Basically, yeah, pretty much.
Speaker 1: I was usually the one bringing in the notes from
Speaker 1: the commentary. Ella would be the one digging into the
Speaker 1: way back machine.
Speaker 4: To find fan theories for the Hall of Conspiracies. Yeah,
Speaker 4: which I hope that it's doing. Okay, we haven't been
Speaker 4: able to check on it obviously because we're in the
Speaker 4: we've been in the glass case. I hope you've been
Speaker 4: taking good care of that, Abby. I'm sure you have.
Speaker 4: I mean, it's part of your job too. I just
Speaker 4: hope the conspiracies don't like you more than they like us.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Hana still lives down there, so I'm sure they're
Speaker 1: taking care of it. My other goal, other than listening
Speaker 1: to commentaries, was in bringing in the media that influenced
Speaker 1: the people that made the episode and kind of bringing
Speaker 1: that in to be part of our book club experience.
Speaker 1: It's like, to understand this moment, you need to also
Speaker 1: check out neither of The Hunter for Sock Opera, or
Speaker 1: this episode of The Simpsons or this old commercial Alex
Speaker 1: screw up with.
Speaker 4: I'm just thinking about the fact that all of this
Speaker 4: research again, I was like, this is the thing that
Speaker 4: I could have this much motivation to do on a
Speaker 4: weekly basis. But I think what it needed was that
Speaker 4: spark of like, okay, but what's gonna what's gonna kickstart this?
Speaker 4: And apparently the desire of Charlotte to be oncome on
Speaker 4: for Google Pots forever was the to make all this possible.
Speaker 4: If there was a PBS style funding is provided by
Speaker 4: you know, message, it would be Charlotte's desire to be
Speaker 4: oncome on for Google Pods in perpetuity, get in and
Speaker 4: again it's like it's the kind of thing where I'm like,
Speaker 4: I'm so proud of what we did. I never want
Speaker 4: to do something on that stret.
Speaker 1: People are like, what what what cartoon are you covering next?
Speaker 1: And I'm like, you could do it, you could do it.
Speaker 1: We're not gonna do it. You can do it. I'll
Speaker 1: teach you how to do it if you need my
Speaker 1: help planning, but I'm not gonna do it.
Speaker 4: That is something that actually kind of weirdly mirrors Alex's
Speaker 4: experience with working on season one and then being like,
Speaker 4: I'm only doing one more.
Speaker 1: I can't do because I do remember thinking while we
Speaker 1: were planning it, like why would I be setting myself
Speaker 1: up to do this level of work? Like at minimum,
Speaker 1: you're hearing three hours of editing for every roughly half
Speaker 1: hour forty minutes of audio, So why do I want
Speaker 1: to do that fifty two times? And being uncome on
Speaker 1: Fucha pots forever. That was the start, But I'm like,
Speaker 1: I need, I need something else. And it was when
Speaker 1: we came up with the idea of talking about how
Speaker 1: Gravity Falls would air after Dog with a Blog without
Speaker 1: a commercial break in one episode and then opening with
Speaker 1: the ending of a fake Dog with a Blog podcast
Speaker 1: in the next episode. I was like, that is too
Speaker 1: funny to not do. But for that joke to work,
Speaker 1: we need to get all the way up to dreamscape
Speaker 1: for us. So if I need to make twenty two
Speaker 1: episodes of a podcast twenty three whatever to do the
Speaker 1: Dog with a Pod joke, then so be it. I
Speaker 1: know what I must do. I can't I can't just
Speaker 1: leave this joke in my head.
Speaker 5: Your motivations are well, you also came up with little games.
Speaker 5: You came up with games for yourself while you were editing,
Speaker 5: things that just make you laugh that are in the
Speaker 5: podcast because it makes you laugh.
Speaker 1: That is that is correct?
Speaker 4: Same?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 4: I mean collectively, we would, we would. We were enabled
Speaker 4: by our audience to do these really dumb bits that
Speaker 4: I just love so much, and that was something special.
Speaker 1: Yeah, when we would be pushing up against the deadline
Speaker 1: and I would just not have motivation. Yeah, my brain
Speaker 1: has this tendency to view editing work as not creative,
Speaker 1: as more mathematical, methodical labor. And I like doing creative work.
Speaker 1: I don't really like doing that other stuff. And so
Speaker 1: the way to turn it into creative work, yeah, was
Speaker 1: I would find little games while editing, and one of
Speaker 1: them that you could hear in almost every episode is
Speaker 1: anytime two people say the same thing with roughly the
Speaker 1: same tempo, I will edit it so that they're talking
Speaker 1: in perfect unison.
Speaker 3: That's what I was thinking about.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Yeah, with the idea of being that Ella and
Speaker 1: I having so much in common as the curators of
Speaker 1: this museum, a kind of like kind of have thing
Speaker 1: one thing two tweetled de tweetled. Dumb energy was kind
Speaker 1: of the I because you could make creative decisions in
Speaker 1: editing and like who the curators are as characters. Part
Speaker 1: of that was I have to decide our timing and
Speaker 1: what gets left in and what doesn't.
Speaker 4: Just honestly less distracting than having it just be a
Speaker 4: second off from each other, like half a second off
Speaker 4: from each other, and just put it in unison at
Speaker 4: that point.
Speaker 1: Sure, it is silly, though it's not how anyone could
Speaker 1: have a real conversation. Podcasts are real, I guess, is
Speaker 1: what I'm trying to say.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it really gave us some insight into how all
Speaker 4: podcasts are constructed, even when they feel very naturalistic. We
Speaker 4: also have the Mapleroy's book right.
Speaker 1: Yes, I listened to the audiobook for Everybody Has a
Speaker 1: Podcast Except You or how to Guide from the First
Speaker 1: Family of Podcasting because I didn't want to just learn
Speaker 1: on the job. I wanted to figure out how to
Speaker 1: become a podcast producer before I started producing a podcast.
Speaker 4: It was surprised that you weren't into the idea of
Speaker 4: doing that much much earlier. In twenty eighteen. I was like, Oh,
Speaker 4: this feels perfect for your sensibilities. But then I guess
Speaker 4: ifuga pods was like the thing that opened your.
Speaker 1: Right Yeah, no, they couldn't get rid of me, no
Speaker 1: I and it was guessing on common Fucha pods. I
Speaker 1: realized that my favorite way to contribute to art period,
Speaker 1: my favorite art form is guessing on a podcast. Because
Speaker 1: I have a tendency when I'm left to talk in
Speaker 1: an alex Hershean way not finish talking. I don't notice
Speaker 1: I'm doing it. I'm not thinking like, oh, it's still
Speaker 1: my tan. You don't get to talk it. I don't
Speaker 1: realize how long I've been talking, which is my entire
Speaker 1: life been considered, as one might call it, rude. And
Speaker 1: it was when I started in this podcasting world. I
Speaker 1: had guessed it on podcasts many times prior to that,
Speaker 1: but it was when I started to realize the way
Speaker 1: my brain naturally works is called talent here and rude
Speaker 1: everywhere else in the world.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Right, because these conversations can be edited down afterward.
Speaker 1: You know, like people say you can never hear someone's
Speaker 1: authentic self, and you know, maybe that's exacerbated right now
Speaker 1: by the fact that I'm doing a fake accent, But
Speaker 1: I disagree because there were so many times where Ellen
Speaker 1: and I legit just forgot we were recording it. And
Speaker 1: I don't know if that ever happened to Shelby.
Speaker 5: Oh yeah, I mean this is like every conver we
Speaker 5: have conversations all the time, and it really just feels
Speaker 5: like this.
Speaker 1: Yes, so it there were a lot lot of times
Speaker 1: audacity was minimized. We were just, you know, shooting the shaw.
Speaker 1: Oh no, you're not gonna know what we were shooting.
Speaker 1: It wasn't anything bad. Don't worry. It's a figure of speech.
Speaker 3: We were shooting the Yeah, yes, you know.
Speaker 1: That energy is kind of why it was fun to make.
Speaker 1: Quite like, I got to hang out with Ella way
Speaker 1: more than I ever did before or since.
Speaker 3: So what about fans outside of the podcast? Then? How
Speaker 3: did this change your relationship with them?
Speaker 1: I think I feel responsible for them in a way
Speaker 1: I didn't used to. I feel like I've done something
Speaker 1: for this fandom that I can't undo, and I feel
Speaker 1: like I owe something to them. So the question of
Speaker 1: like I'm kind of burnt out i'm doing Gravity Falls content,
Speaker 1: do I still want to cover the art book? The
Speaker 1: answer internally was I have to because I'm also a
Speaker 1: gravity False fan, and as a gravity False fan, if
Speaker 1: there wasn't a Mystery Shack look back when the art
Speaker 1: book released, I would be upset.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: My favorite Gravity Falls video period is the Say Hunt
Speaker 1: video by Keyan Carlyle. And like there's a bit where
Speaker 1: there's a cutaway gag where they imagine a world where
Speaker 1: the cipher hunt went awry and it damaged Alex Hersch's legacy,
Speaker 1: and Kean wanted to present media from that alternate world,
Speaker 1: and he was like, well, there has to be a
Speaker 1: Mystery Shack look Back. That has to be one of
Speaker 1: the things we show in that alternate world. And so
Speaker 1: that's what I now see Mystery Shack look Back as
Speaker 1: is something kind of bigger than me. Yeah, to the
Speaker 1: extent that like.
Speaker 4: That we are a hallmark of an alternate timeline. If
Speaker 4: mister Potter took over the town and you came back
Speaker 4: and saw that Mystery Shack look Back was different, you'd
Speaker 4: know something was wrong.
Speaker 1: Right, and that means we're something and it's weird to
Speaker 1: ye something. But that was also a third reason, in
Speaker 1: addition to wanting to be on fucopots more and wanting
Speaker 1: to get that dog with a pod joke out in
Speaker 1: the open is My thought was if I don't make
Speaker 1: this podcast, eventually someone else will. I feel like the
Speaker 1: gravity Falls fandom was such a once in a lifetime
Speaker 1: flashing the patent thing that eventually someone would make a
Speaker 1: fandom time capsule, and my thought process was, well, if
Speaker 1: someone else does it, I have to wait, and if
Speaker 1: I do it. I could listen to it now.
Speaker 4: I mean, I think now more than ever with just
Speaker 4: how absolutely bonkers bad the animation stringing landscape is. The
Speaker 4: ephemeral nature of all this stuff is very evident, I think,
Speaker 4: and so wanting to do this for an archival purpose
Speaker 4: if nothing else. On top of just you know, we
Speaker 4: get to do it because it's fun. It also feels
Speaker 4: kind of necessary.
Speaker 1: The structure that I had always thought of in my
Speaker 1: head of like how do I research this and how
Speaker 1: do I record this? Is I am researching a documentary,
Speaker 1: but I am not writing a documentary. I'm just writing
Speaker 1: the bibliography for a documentary I didn't make. And then
Speaker 1: I getting in a call with Ella, with Shelby, with
Speaker 1: our guest ed pretending we're just having a casual conversation
Speaker 1: where every point in the bibliography happens to come up.
Speaker 4: We're not trying to be a wiki either. I think
Speaker 4: there's an important distinction there. We are incorporating our personalities
Speaker 4: and our opinions and things of that nature into that,
Speaker 4: because it's still just filtered through a person's interpretation or
Speaker 4: in this case, our three curator's interpretation.
Speaker 1: Now, I mean, that's what the podcast is is like,
Speaker 1: this could have been a video essay, this could have
Speaker 1: been a documentary. We did the level of research for that,
Speaker 1: but the idea that it just sounds like a couple
Speaker 1: of fans having a conversation was so important because I
Speaker 1: always thought of it as not just a time capsule
Speaker 1: of the fandom, in that we're telling you what happened,
Speaker 1: but we're also making you feel it in a certain way.
Speaker 1: Was one of the most important goals for me. That
Speaker 1: we knew Robin and z Eddie was an easy get.
Speaker 1: We've been in the fandom for years. We'd seen him
Speaker 1: reply to every tweet. We knew the second we tweeted
Speaker 1: out to him he would agree to guest on it.
Speaker 1: But we waited until season two, episode one to make
Speaker 1: it seem like we were not as equipped to get
Speaker 1: big name guests so that there would be an increase
Speaker 1: in the hype of season two. And we did that
Speaker 1: to recreate kind of what it felt like to be
Speaker 1: a gravity Fall season one fan and then be there
Speaker 1: for the premiere of season two.
Speaker 4: Yeah, to echo the feeling of the show.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And that's why we had Alexa on for Tourist Trap,
Speaker 1: because no one's gonna post fan theories after watching only one.
Speaker 3: Episode except Alexa, Well, it was how.
Speaker 1: Do we capture the feeling of watching the show for
Speaker 1: the first time? And then I thought, we get someone
Speaker 1: to watch the show for the first time.
Speaker 4: That's true.
Speaker 5: Who is incredibly good at coming up with theories right
Speaker 5: off the bat? That girl, she can come up with
Speaker 5: things off the dumb. She's incredible.
Speaker 4: Mister donas Esque predictions theories, call them what you will?
Speaker 4: They really were really Yeah.
Speaker 1: The closest I'd ever heard anyone get to guessing the
Speaker 1: mystery and gravity falls and she had only just watched
Speaker 1: one episode.
Speaker 4: Yeah, off the bat, Yeah exactly. There's an XKCD comic
Speaker 4: that basically says, even when they're trying to compensate for it,
Speaker 4: experts in anything wildly overestimate the average person's familiarity with
Speaker 4: their fields. This applies more to like a Dipper hat
Speaker 4: in the wild situation, where it's like, again, I'm trying
Speaker 4: to dial back, not going too deep so as to
Speaker 4: alienate someone, and just be like, I mean, I'm sure
Speaker 4: you've heard about the you know, worldwide scavenger hunt for
Speaker 4: the Bill Czipher statue that happened right after the original
Speaker 4: run of the shoind and they're like, oh no, actually,
Speaker 4: I'm like, okay, cool, we have a cool episode about that.
Speaker 4: Like it's never a judgmental thing. It's always just like, okay,
Speaker 4: I'm so in the sauce.
Speaker 1: That's where I'm at.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: I always say that I've forgotten more about gravity falls
Speaker 1: than most people will ever know. Yeah, because who voiced
Speaker 1: the British dog man in DreamScapers. That would be Clancy
Speaker 1: Brown from Scharwshank Redemption and mister Crabs from SpongeBob. But
Speaker 1: why do I know that? I know that because I
Speaker 1: heard my self say it on a podcast.
Speaker 4: I have no memory of learning the information.
Speaker 1: This information in my brain. I have no memory of
Speaker 1: doing that research. I just was re listen. I'm like,
Speaker 1: I want to listen to the Dreamscapos episode. Maybe I
Speaker 1: was in the mood to hear the dog with a
Speaker 1: pod pot, but I'm like, I'll just keep listening. And
Speaker 1: when I brought up yeah, the British dog Mads, I
Speaker 1: heard Searlotte in the podcast say the British Shakman's voiced
Speaker 1: by Clancy Brown, the voice of mister Crabs, and I
Speaker 1: responded to myself he is I didn't know, Well, I
Speaker 1: guess I did. I had to have known that, or
Speaker 1: I wouldn't have recorded him.
Speaker 3: At one point, you did.
Speaker 4: Part of the echoing of the feeling of watching the
Speaker 4: show wanting to mirror that in the listening of the podcast,
Speaker 4: you know, because it was like poetry sort of they rhyme.
Speaker 4: It went hand in hand with the idea that this
Speaker 4: was always going to be a limited amount of episodes
Speaker 4: that you know, it wasn't a podcast that we would
Speaker 4: just like do for the foreseeable future, like forever, like
Speaker 4: I mean, I certainly.
Speaker 1: I could imagine we were still recording episodes five years later.
Speaker 4: Well yes, and though we knew that there would theoretically
Speaker 4: be additional pieces of gravity Falls media, but it was
Speaker 4: a pretty safe bet that they'd be few and far between,
Speaker 4: which they are. And I think that's a healthy way
Speaker 4: for this to exist now. But at the time, it
Speaker 4: wasn't like that Simpsons podcast, the original Everything's Coming Up
Speaker 4: Simpsons podcast, which probably could still be going on if
Speaker 4: they hadn't made the decision, and the podcast that is
Speaker 4: unlike that. We kind of always had a set limit
Speaker 4: so we could plan these kind of quote unquote emotional
Speaker 4: arcs if you will of like, here's how we want
Speaker 4: the listening audience to feel, and here's how we felt
Speaker 4: at the time of this, this thread of the show
Speaker 4: and the fandom.
Speaker 1: Because ultimately, I've always referred to Mister ey Shack look
Speaker 1: Back as a documentary series. It is a documentary series.
Speaker 1: The format of just friends, just chit chatting, making jokes
Speaker 1: with each other is kind of a trick. We're playing
Speaker 1: on your brain because we're not trying to make you
Speaker 1: feel like you're watching a document We're trying to make
Speaker 1: you feel like you're sitting down to watch the new
Speaker 1: Gravity Falls with your friends.
Speaker 4: Yeah, because that's what it felt like for us in
Speaker 4: the fandom. That's exactly the way to communicate what that
Speaker 4: felt like.
Speaker 1: It didn't feel like we were living through history. It
Speaker 1: felt like we were very focused on talking to each
Speaker 1: other about specific moments.
Speaker 4: Yes. Yeah, part of it was remarking what a shame
Speaker 4: it was that with it all streaming. It's great that
Speaker 4: it's all in one place, but it's all in one place, Like,
Speaker 4: you don't get the feeling of waiting between episodes. You
Speaker 4: don't get the online fandoms.
Speaker 1: I was a Gravity Falls YouTuber and I got to
Speaker 1: see kind of the fandom shift because when Gravity Falls
Speaker 1: post ended, there was art all over the place of
Speaker 1: post series Wendy and the Dipper hat post series Dipper
Speaker 1: in the Wendy hat. But when Steven Universe ended, and
Speaker 1: there was a Tumblr au called Summer Job Au where
Speaker 1: Stephen wound up in Oregon and got a job at
Speaker 1: the Mystery Shack, and I noticed with the autists that
Speaker 1: would draw it, with the people that would talk about
Speaker 1: this au, they weren't so clear on the difference between
Speaker 1: post series and as quo in Gravity Falls. They weren't
Speaker 1: so clear on which hat Tippa was supposed to be wearing,
Speaker 1: what state they were supposed to be living in.
Speaker 4: This was twenty twenty, Yeah, this was four years after
Speaker 4: Gravity Falls ended. For context, yeah, that makes sense. If
Speaker 4: these people had known the show through Disney Channel through reruns,
Speaker 4: they're not going to watch it linearly. That costs money.
Speaker 1: You have to pay for a Disney Plus subscription or
Speaker 1: pay for the DVD unless you could figure out another
Speaker 1: way to get the show linearly. But I don't know
Speaker 1: if children are the best at that.
Speaker 3: Do you think fans treat you differently because of the
Speaker 3: podcast and the other things you've created.
Speaker 4: I don't think they do, but I either way, I
Speaker 4: don't want them to. We have many conversations on the
Speaker 4: podcast about celebrity culture and how it's you know, basically
Speaker 4: inherently fascist and you know, you shouldn't put people on pedestals,
Speaker 4: et cetera, obviously.
Speaker 1: Because that's the opposite of equality.
Speaker 4: Yeah, but also that Alex Hirsch and the crew working
Speaker 4: on the show were not some super genius, you know,
Speaker 4: superhumans making art from nothing. It's like, you know, humans
Speaker 4: made this, and that's important because it means that you
Speaker 4: can make something like that too. I think that there's
Speaker 4: this level of like, oh, I could never make something
Speaker 4: like that. You know, they made my favorite thing, which
Speaker 4: means they must be better than me. It's like, no, no,
Speaker 4: that's actually not true. They went through so many iterations
Speaker 4: and so many ideas that never made it, and so
Speaker 4: many you know, ideas that they'll tell you that the
Speaker 4: were terrible, you know, that they scrapped you know, things
Speaker 4: like that.
Speaker 1: And so many terrible ideas that they think made it
Speaker 1: into the show.
Speaker 4: That's true. Yeah, things that they're still not happy with.
Speaker 5: I mean, the way you guys have always talked about
Speaker 5: it is from a human point of view. The people
Speaker 5: making it are people. We are people, You are people,
Speaker 5: So no, the fans don't tend to treat us any differently.
Speaker 1: Oh, I have a different answer that I.
Speaker 4: Mean in your case, it's like, for part of your
Speaker 4: job for some amount of years was cultivating a brand
Speaker 4: and that comes with its all its other you know,
Speaker 4: side effects of fair Socielli right.
Speaker 1: And I really despised it. There were times at the
Speaker 1: height of my u to fame where I would come
Speaker 1: into a random TikTok stream because I thought the girl
Speaker 1: was hot or something like that, and there would be
Speaker 1: people in the chat like, oh my god, are you
Speaker 1: the public va? And I'm like, hey, can we not
Speaker 1: make to this about me right now? We're being very
Speaker 1: nice as person's doing their hair or something smoking after work.
Speaker 1: Can we all focus on the person who is inviting
Speaker 1: themselves to be sent to stage at this moment. I'm
Speaker 1: glad you like my stuff. Let's talk about it another time.
Speaker 1: You can send me a message. I'm always like, I
Speaker 1: always answer messages from everyone I shouldn't. It did feel
Speaker 1: like I had achieved this status that wasn't quite human anymore,
Speaker 1: and I don't like it, and I'm kind of I
Speaker 1: don't have an audience anymore, so I can't afford groceries.
Speaker 1: But I do like that there's nothing there's no novelty
Speaker 1: to me existing anymore.
Speaker 4: But am I wrong in saying that it was less
Speaker 4: at least significantly less like that for the podcast itself
Speaker 4: because the fan base was distinctly different from your YouTube
Speaker 4: fan base.
Speaker 1: I think the podcast invited people to have a more
Speaker 1: complete understanding of us. I think I was allowed to
Speaker 1: talk about having interests that, in my current brain are
Speaker 1: more present than gravity falls. I feel like a lot
Speaker 1: of the podcast was being like, Hey, I'm a person
Speaker 1: who likes gravity falls, but above all, I'm a person.
Speaker 4: And yeah, because if you're gonna sit down and listen
Speaker 4: to a podcast, you're gonna listen to the podcast. Usually
Speaker 4: you know you're gonna till the Book of Bill episode.
Speaker 4: That's true, that's true.
Speaker 1: The Book of Bill episode, I think breached containment a
Speaker 1: little bit, and there were a lot of people who
Speaker 1: just weren't willing to do the work of going through
Speaker 1: the backlock and learning who we were and what made
Speaker 1: us tick, who just saw us as the people interrupting
Speaker 1: Alex Hirsh and that made me want to die.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that was a weird case because it was, you know,
Speaker 4: contemporary with the thing that was being taught about. More
Speaker 4: or less, we were talking about secrets that people were
Speaker 4: actively also trying to figure out at the same time,
Speaker 4: Unlike the other episode we had Alex on, which was
Speaker 4: the Cipher Hunt, which was a done deal. You know,
Speaker 4: there were things that we found out about that were
Speaker 4: new information, but it was old information in time. It
Speaker 4: was new revelations about stuff that happened years and years prior,
Speaker 4: whereas the Book of Bill was different.
Speaker 1: Right, And this was a little bit after the Book
Speaker 1: of Bill. Hype had died down because it took us
Speaker 1: so long to schedule the interview with Alex and then
Speaker 1: even longer to edit.
Speaker 3: He is the busiest man, but we.
Speaker 1: Kind of brought the hype back because Alex had never
Speaker 1: really spoken about the book to this extent pria and
Speaker 1: so there was just so much new information though.
Speaker 4: Yeah, which was awesome for us, but also yeah, it
Speaker 4: kind of diluted our mission a little bit.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And there are people who come in first through
Speaker 1: the Cipha Hunt episode as well, who were very polite
Speaker 1: everywhere other than YouTube. But on YouTube there's a lot
Speaker 1: of cipher hunt calm that are like, hey, can you
Speaker 1: guys stop interrupting Alex and Jason.
Speaker 4: Because people who watch YouTube videos aren't used to what
Speaker 4: podcasts are like usually.
Speaker 1: Right, because the fact of the matter is it's our show.
Speaker 1: Alex and Jason are coming over our house and they're
Speaker 1: obeying our family's customs, and that's just not what people
Speaker 1: who find videos of Alex and Jason are looking for.
Speaker 4: And podcasts, you just you sit down and you listen
Speaker 4: to a podcast, you'll let it play. You know, a
Speaker 4: YouTube video you can skip around on because you can
Speaker 4: see what you're skipping. But in a podcast, it's a
Speaker 4: different world. It's a different arena.
Speaker 1: It is. Most people who listen to podcasts do it
Speaker 1: while driving, which was another important thing because I was
Speaker 1: starting to realize having a child, audience was kind of
Speaker 1: mismatched with me. Not that I dislike entitating children. I've
Speaker 1: worked at elementary schools and such, but it's just that
Speaker 1: I think what I want to talk about above all
Speaker 1: else is media literacy, and I just want an audience
Speaker 1: that will meet me halfway. And there are plenty of
Speaker 1: young people who are media literate, but it's just not
Speaker 1: my life.
Speaker 4: I've been searching for a love that's right for me,
Speaker 4: and now I finally know her name, and it's singing
Speaker 4: with me.
Speaker 1: Kids media leaders, Yeah, by being a format most people
Speaker 1: listen to while driving, that kind of just naturally gate
Speaker 1: kept me from because children don't know boundaries. And that
Speaker 1: was another hard part about being well known in the
Speaker 1: fandom is like, if they were in my discord notification server,
Speaker 1: then you can call anyone you share a server with
Speaker 1: at any time. You don't need to send them a
Speaker 1: friend request first. So sometimes I'd be like hearing my
Speaker 1: phone ring and I'd be like, oh, someone's calling me,
Speaker 1: and I'm like, I don't know who that is. I
Speaker 1: hang up, and I'd message the I'm like can I
Speaker 1: help you? And talk to them and learn that they're
Speaker 1: like thirteen, and I'm like, hey, please do not private
Speaker 1: message or call someone in the twenties or thirties. Please
Speaker 1: talk to your parents about that. I'm making it safe
Speaker 1: for you right now. But that's not always going to
Speaker 1: be safe for Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, there's not as much education I guess about that
Speaker 4: that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1: Right, And so talking about media literacy, talking about the
Speaker 1: man behind the curtain and not the magic of ours,
Speaker 1: and doing it in a format that pairs best with
Speaker 1: driving kind of naturally brought me the age demographic I wanted.
Speaker 4: Yeah, which was interesting because that was never a goal.
Speaker 4: That was just kind of a happy side effect. I guess.
Speaker 1: I think for me it was a goal. I think
Speaker 1: it was something I talked about with Shelby when we.
Speaker 4: Were Yeah, I'm remembering now. The happy accident was finding
Speaker 4: the audience willing to go with the dumb bits. That
Speaker 4: was the thing we discovered, right, Yeah.
Speaker 1: Because I used to pick whether the bits. I would
Speaker 1: be like, only if it's really really funny while I
Speaker 1: keep it in and other than that'll just keep the
Speaker 1: conversation relatively ADHD free until zero people jokingly pretended to
Speaker 1: be mad about dog with a pod, when zero people
Speaker 1: were like, oh, I have to listen to this, which
Speaker 1: is how they always are when you're doing like a
Speaker 1: prank isn't quite the word, I guess unexpected bit in
Speaker 1: a YouTube video. There are always people who pretend to
Speaker 1: be mad at you, and I just learned that's not
Speaker 1: the manners in podcasting, or who just are mad. No,
Speaker 1: I don't think I would have fully been able to
Speaker 1: embrace myself as a non binary person without that experience
Speaker 1: of just like y, it is possible to do something
Speaker 1: you find funny without your audience getting mad at you.
Speaker 4: Without asking for their approval either. Yeah, the same is
Speaker 4: true of when we would do like humorous posts or
Speaker 4: like weird fan art or stuff when there was a hiatus.
Speaker 4: The response would always be, Oh, this is what the
Speaker 4: hiatus does to your brain. Fellas, like, this is just
Speaker 4: how we are, this is just what we make.
Speaker 1: It's Shelby and Ella. We've always been like that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, what is authenticity as a fan? And this is
Speaker 3: a big question that we as scholars ask a lot,
Speaker 3: and of course there's no single right answer because fandom
Speaker 3: is multiple right answers, all combining into one huge monster
Speaker 3: that leaves a hate comment on youtubem What is authenticity?
Speaker 5: I mean, you were talking about archiving earlier and how
Speaker 5: we accumulate things, but I kind of think that like
Speaker 5: experiencing media is the like you are the archive. You
Speaker 5: are an archive of feelings, and going back to those
Speaker 5: things is re experiencing those Yeah.
Speaker 4: And again, to kind of make a parallel to Gravity Falls,
Speaker 4: the show itself, you know, I don't know if we
Speaker 4: ever wanted it to be the end all be all,
Speaker 4: this is all you need to ever experience about gravity falls,
Speaker 4: but rather a conduit, like I mean, that's the book
Speaker 4: called part is that it's a conduit to be a
Speaker 4: watch along to like have you experienced your own gravity
Speaker 4: falls adventure so to speak, which the show itself also
Speaker 4: kind of does. Toward the end. There's that ending monologu
Speaker 4: where Tipper says like, Hey, go out, have your own adventure,
Speaker 4: find your gravity falls, and then of course take off
Speaker 4: the cipher hunt and that's everyone having a real life adventure.
Speaker 4: And it's like, yeah, I think there's an element of like,
Speaker 4: we can't give you all the answers. That's not that's
Speaker 4: that's that's impossible. You have you you have to find
Speaker 4: that for yourself.
Speaker 1: And and and to me above all else. This is
Speaker 1: why we went with the specific word curator, because I
Speaker 1: don't think there's any version of this where we can
Speaker 1: be one hundred percent authentic. I think one in the
Speaker 1: format how it works is we do have to withhold
Speaker 1: information from our audience. We do have to see a
Speaker 1: triangle man in the intro and go wow, he's interesting.
Speaker 1: Wonder if there's anything there, which is just like lying. Yeah.
Speaker 1: But also I don't think being present in the Gravity
Speaker 1: Falls fandom was always a positive experience for me. I
Speaker 1: think being someone who got very successful for voicing Bill
Speaker 1: Ceipher while closeted, you know, people would I would want
Speaker 1: to do things other than gravity videos. I would stream Skyrim.
Speaker 1: I was streaming Skyrim at the time that my channel
Speaker 1: blew up, and I would have people coming into my
Speaker 1: Skyrim chats and being like, what are your thoughts on podcast?
Speaker 1: And I'm like, hey, don't just dn't. You're a child.
Speaker 1: You don't know why that's inappropriate to ask an adult.
Speaker 1: Don't ask an adult that. And another thing was whenever
Speaker 1: I would like laugh, because I have a very manic,
Speaker 1: skeletal laugh, people in the chat would inevitably go, oh
Speaker 1: my god. He was the correct pronoun at the time,
Speaker 1: even sounds like Bill Ceipher when he's not voicing Bill Ceipher.
Speaker 1: And to be a closeted transperson and to have this
Speaker 1: view of myself that was being backed up by most
Speaker 1: multiple sources of all I ever am and all I
Speaker 1: will ever be is I sound like Alex Hirsh doing
Speaker 1: a David Lynch impression is like they did not like
Speaker 1: viewing me as a person who was voicing Bill. They
Speaker 1: liked viewing it as Bill came to our dimension and
Speaker 1: made these videos. And all of the comments were kind
Speaker 1: of from that perspective, and it kind of just gave me.
Speaker 4: This, which is like a there's a fun k fame
Speaker 4: in theory, but when it's affecting the person making the videos,
Speaker 4: it's like, let's stop this, children, please.
Speaker 1: Yeah no. And I don't like being equated with not
Speaker 1: a male character, but a character that has a is
Speaker 1: voiced by a man wears a top hat uses the
Speaker 1: name William. I don't like being equated with a murderer.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Not only is Bill a bad day, he's a guy.
Speaker 1: It feels like they're asking me to disassociate. I made
Speaker 1: a video, and my interpretation is I practiced this voice,
Speaker 1: I learned it, and I recorded it for this purpose.
Speaker 1: And by saying Bill made this video.
Speaker 4: It's the refusal to see behind the curtain.
Speaker 1: Like it felt like I was being forced to be
Speaker 1: to exist outside of my own mind and I didn't
Speaker 1: like it. And so part of curating was let me
Speaker 1: create a version of the Gravity Falls fandom that I
Speaker 1: proud to be a part of. Let me kind of
Speaker 1: tamper with my own memories overly focus on the good.
Speaker 1: Don't bring up the fact that I ignored Cipher Hunt
Speaker 1: when it first happened because I couldn't tolerate Bill's fans
Speaker 1: at all at that point. Just make it seem like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm part of the fandom and this was a huge thing,
Speaker 1: and that's where I was. As I said earlier, podcasts
Speaker 1: aren't real. So as for what authenticity is, we had
Speaker 1: a unique experience as the people picking which information would
Speaker 1: and wouldn't be in the podcast, of kind of deciding
Speaker 1: what authenticity was on the go.
Speaker 5: I think that the purest form of authenticity is the
Speaker 5: art that you create. And we all met through very
Speaker 5: different mediums of art. Charlotte was working on voice as
Speaker 5: her art form. I was working on costuming and making
Speaker 5: things with my hand as my art form. In Ella's
Speaker 5: art forum was art and animation. True, and we all
Speaker 5: became close through the bond of the fandom, and we're
Speaker 5: still making art today because that fandom brought us together.
Speaker 3: Fandom is beautiful. Yeah it's ugly, but it's also beautiful,
Speaker 3: like a fresh baby. Only you could love.
Speaker 4: Like a baby.
Speaker 1: I was looking through all of the photos of my
Speaker 1: newborn baby, and I was trying to find the ones
Speaker 1: where it had the least goop on its head. Is
Speaker 1: kind of what this podcast.
Speaker 4: Was for, the least leftover amniotic sac you know that
Speaker 4: kind of stuff.
Speaker 1: Oh look, I'm I'm a new mother. Let me take
Speaker 1: six hundred pictures and posts like the four where the
Speaker 1: baby looks cute.
Speaker 4: Larva and this one, well yeah, oh yeah, that there's
Speaker 4: a smile.
Speaker 3: So Shelly, Actually my question was specifically for you. Yeah,
Speaker 3: as Charlotte was talking about being so equated with Bill,
Speaker 3: that's a huge problem in the cosplay community. It is,
Speaker 3: It absolutely is. So like, let's let's talk about identity
Speaker 3: for a second point. How have other fans tried to
Speaker 3: impose identity on you?
Speaker 5: I have gotten very lucky that the character I chose
Speaker 5: to equate myself with fandom wise was Dipper Pines. So
Speaker 5: at the beginning of my Gravity Falls journey, it was
Speaker 5: one of those things where I could either choose to
Speaker 5: be Maple or I could choose to be Dipper, And
Speaker 5: in retrospect, I did choose the most Dipper reason to
Speaker 5: be Dipper. I wanted to make that journal and deep
Speaker 5: dive into that nonsense. So I didn't really have things
Speaker 5: pushed on me specifically. But I had a lot of
Speaker 5: friends in that fandom that, like one of my good
Speaker 5: friends cosplayed Bill and was constantly like nagged and asked
Speaker 5: to do certain things that made him uncomfortable.
Speaker 3: And he was really young too.
Speaker 5: So it's like I've seen the dark side of that
Speaker 5: fandom on other people. My interactions weren't so negative, mostly
Speaker 5: because I didn't choose to associate myself with a darker,
Speaker 5: more maniacal character.
Speaker 1: I do feel there was a little of that for
Speaker 1: you in doing the Princess parties and in voicing the
Speaker 1: ponies in that absolutely and in voicing Mabel, I think
Speaker 1: there was this view of you as hypofem that doesn't
Speaker 1: fit your presentation.
Speaker 5: I can definitely for me, Dipper was like an exploration
Speaker 5: of non binary for sure.
Speaker 3: But I will say that, yes.
Speaker 5: Being if you want to talk about my little pony
Speaker 5: community as an outreach of this, I can definitely say
Speaker 5: I have had negative associations with that, A lot of
Speaker 5: people putting one specific character's personality on top of me
Speaker 5: without that being my actual personality, not getting to know
Speaker 5: me for me, but me for the characters that I've portrayed.
Speaker 3: Yes, I totally understand that.
Speaker 1: And for those who I had listening to this and thinking,
Speaker 1: why does Charlie suddenly go by Charlotte? Why does Charlotte
Speaker 1: suddenly I have a British accent? I realize that no
Speaker 1: matter what I do, I'm going to be associated with
Speaker 1: a character because the Internet, more than ever, is about
Speaker 1: appealing to a person within the first three seconds, so
Speaker 1: they swipe away. Charlotte Driftwood is a character I created
Speaker 1: that isn't an erasure of my identity but a distillation.
Speaker 1: It's like if I have a more feminine speaking voice
Speaker 1: and have the accent you associate pirates having in movies.
Speaker 1: Because I've kind of been in this space long enough
Speaker 1: to know that I cannot break through people's first assumptions
Speaker 1: of me. Ever, they're going to listen, They're going to
Speaker 1: decide who I am, and they were going to check
Speaker 1: out everything I make from that lens from that point on.
Speaker 1: So I am learning and my gravity falls experience was
Speaker 1: a huge part of this that I need to present
Speaker 1: an early understanding of myself that is accurate or I
Speaker 1: will never gain an audience, who is here for me?
Speaker 3: That kind of brings up gravity falls and gender. Yeah,
Speaker 3: seem to be two things that are inextricably linked, and
Speaker 3: in some ways I know why, Like I used it
Speaker 3: in the identical way as Shelby, like, what here's how
Speaker 3: I'm gonna explore with gender and figure out who I am.
Speaker 3: I had significantly more negative interactions during that point in
Speaker 3: my life, which now I can laugh at. What exactly
Speaker 3: is that link? Because there's like some feeling, but I
Speaker 3: have never been able to put words to that feeling
Speaker 3: of certain medias that scream explore your gender. All of
Speaker 3: this is temporary. Societal norms are not real textually.
Speaker 4: It's a show about boy and girl who are on
Speaker 4: the precipice of societally speaking, becoming man and woman and
Speaker 4: what that looks like in the final hours of the former.
Speaker 1: You know, the gender critical crowd will always say, no,
Speaker 1: gender is inherently biological. It is all nature. There is
Speaker 1: no nature, to which I always say, why we mean
Speaker 1: to short men? Then what's that about? It really kind
Speaker 1: of sounds like we're trying to enforce a more standardized
Speaker 1: view of gender.
Speaker 4: She's got a good point there, don key. Maybe it's
Speaker 4: compensating for exaction.
Speaker 1: So gravity Falls takes us to these points where none
Speaker 1: of the things that are culturally true about men and
Speaker 1: women were true about you yet, you know, I remember
Speaker 1: I adored SpongeBob and stopped watching it the second I
Speaker 1: entered sixth grade. I saw the first that Steven hillenbook Seasons,
Speaker 1: but then didn't see the movie until I was an adult,
Speaker 1: because this was the point where it was like, if
Speaker 1: you like baby things, you will be made fun of.
Speaker 1: People in at different in Mabel's age are really trying
Speaker 1: to prop themselves up as we are adults now, but
Speaker 1: you're not. A twelve year old is not an adult,
Speaker 1: and a mab twelve year old has very little testosterone
Speaker 1: kicking around in their body, and they have adults talking
Speaker 1: to them with the assumption that they have testosterone kickut
Speaker 1: around in the body. They have things like you got
Speaker 1: to toughen up, you gotta be a man, and just
Speaker 1: taking yourself to the point in time where that was
Speaker 1: being said to you externally seeing you know, greggle stand
Speaker 1: talk like that, to dip with a manotaz talk like
Speaker 1: that to dipp it and be and and the end
Speaker 1: of the episode is always they're wrong. Dippo gets to
Speaker 1: find his own path, and it's just like, oh, none
Speaker 1: of this is real, None of this is real.
Speaker 4: Yeah. I mean, if there is any any better representation
Speaker 4: that the dimorphism has not kicked in yet, Dipper Mabel
Speaker 4: with the same character design, one just has eyelash. Yeah,
Speaker 4: you stripped them away. They're the same face.
Speaker 5: And body and a little dingle on her head.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and what are these things?
Speaker 5: Also, the first season is written by men, so it
Speaker 5: is a girl written by men. I remember whenever Charlotte
Speaker 5: would direct me to voice Mabel things, the big thing
Speaker 5: she would say is subvert your expectations, m m to
Speaker 5: the point that I would literally write that on the
Speaker 5: back of my wrist. What was ingrained in me to
Speaker 5: be my initial understanding of what I would have as
Speaker 5: an instinct is not the initial instinct that Mabel would have,
Speaker 5: or the instinct that Kristin Shawl would have. She always
Speaker 5: has very interesting takes. So I think that like in
Speaker 5: casting Kristin Shawl as Mabel, you came up with somebody
Speaker 5: who is inherently a feminine woman, very comfortable with her femininity,
Speaker 5: who does not make stereotypically feminine choices, and likewise, Dipper
Speaker 5: is allowed to be soft, Dipper is allowed to feel.
Speaker 5: Dipper is allowed to have emotions, which are a lot
Speaker 5: of things that boys are not always encouraged to have,
Speaker 5: at the very least in that time.
Speaker 1: What Alex said is when other writers would write Mabel,
Speaker 1: they would often just go for Gurley, and Alex said, no,
Speaker 1: it can't just be girly. There needs to be a
Speaker 1: weird spitch.
Speaker 4: She's weird.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, she's a ham is the phrase. And I
Speaker 3: think about that a lot.
Speaker 1: I like this kid's other twelve year old hype of
Speaker 1: fea girls might like kittens, kitten fists, Yeah, not a
Speaker 1: normal twelve year old girl thing. And there's always this
Speaker 1: she wants her femininity to be more extreme.
Speaker 4: Well that's literally in the first episode is just would
Speaker 4: you'd rather have like a doll or something grappling on?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 1: And so so much of the show is about challenging Jenda,
Speaker 1: because that's really what the era of your life of
Speaker 1: puberty is about. Is other people are trying to tell
Speaker 1: me who I am about to become. But I can't
Speaker 1: do that. That is not achievable. I have to figure
Speaker 1: it out for.
Speaker 4: Myself, and then they and then they had and then
Speaker 4: they had this hilarious character who was a girl with
Speaker 4: a really deep manly voice. But they got better, they
Speaker 4: got better, they worked on that y.
Speaker 5: I always really love that Mabel and like Grenda and Candy,
Speaker 5: they're all so secure in who they are. They know
Speaker 5: who they are and they're not scared of what anybody
Speaker 5: else is gonna say. Sixth grade, that twelve year old
Speaker 5: age range, it is such a hard time to be
Speaker 5: a young girl going through puberty, because that is when
Speaker 5: girls start getting real.
Speaker 4: Mean, you're on the precipice of an age where everyone
Speaker 4: will care, where everyone will think of you in a
Speaker 4: certain way, like you're going to be hyper visible, right, And.
Speaker 5: So to see that Mabel is not going through that
Speaker 5: at this point, and Dipper is very much inconsistent with
Speaker 5: how he views himself, and to see them talking each
Speaker 5: other through that and exploring that in different ways, I
Speaker 5: think that that also has like a huge impact on
Speaker 5: why people become more comfortable with themselves as a whole,
Speaker 5: not even just with gender, but as a whole through
Speaker 5: the show, because.
Speaker 4: Was gender envy. I am not taking notes on this.
Speaker 5: I mean, you're yeah, but I think that the ability
Speaker 5: to be like, it's okay to feel what you feel,
Speaker 5: It's okay to be uncomfortable with who you are, and
Speaker 5: it's okay to come back knowing who you are.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And we think about episode two see You Know
Speaker 1: their Ideal Future and Mabel sees herself running around in
Speaker 1: a giant hempster ball and Dipper sees himself dressed as
Speaker 1: Indiana Jones and being interviewed about his accomplishments. So like,
Speaker 1: what it means to be a man in society is
Speaker 1: something that Dipper is just plagued with, and what it
Speaker 1: means to properly conform to femininity is just something that
Speaker 1: Mabel doesn't really think about because she's not being bullied
Speaker 1: for being an outsider.
Speaker 5: Really, now people are a lot more understanding of well,
Speaker 5: gender is something that is made up, and we are
Speaker 5: allowed to have wiggle room. We are allowed to let
Speaker 5: our children express themselves the way they need to express themselves.
Speaker 5: They are allowed to feel their feelings. And I think
Speaker 5: that getting that permission from the cartoon, being able to
Speaker 5: be like, oh, you don't have to be the manliest
Speaker 5: man to still be comfortable with who you are. It's
Speaker 5: okay to be awkward and sweaty, like all of those
Speaker 5: things are things that it's giving you permission to experience
Speaker 5: those things yourselves, because you were never given that permission,
Speaker 5: and you don't need to be given that permission.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I did not realize I was trans yet when I
Speaker 1: had first watched Dipper versus Manliness and it ends with
Speaker 1: him growing his first chest hair. And I was twenty
Speaker 1: at the time, I think, and I had not yet
Speaker 1: growed my first chest hair, And I'm like, is this
Speaker 1: supposed to be comforting?
Speaker 4: That's the twelve old you'd be as manly as this
Speaker 4: cartoon twelve year.
Speaker 1: Olds, not as madly as this to twelve year old?
Speaker 3: What?
Speaker 4: Yeah? I think for me it was, yeah, I very
Speaker 4: much echo that where it's like he would learn like
Speaker 4: what masculinity means to him, and then I'd be like,
Speaker 4: still doesn't it doesn't really resonate with me though I
Speaker 4: don't know, I don't know something.
Speaker 1: Still in No. I just as a non binary person
Speaker 1: who's chosen to keep my facial hairs, chosen to not
Speaker 1: go under hormone replacement therapy, I love characters like Dipper
Speaker 1: because I love the idea of someone born with the
Speaker 1: components that dipp it was with the same chromosomes learning
Speaker 1: to kind of define what all of that means for
Speaker 1: themselves rather than just listening to the authority figures who
Speaker 1: are enforcing it upon them.
Speaker 4: And we've talked about how the show is not perfect
Speaker 4: about this, of course again with a writer's room of
Speaker 4: men for season one, it's like, I think, particularly DreamScapers,
Speaker 4: we talked about how, you know, there's that conflict between
Speaker 4: Dipper and Stand that ultimately ends with Differ lovingly giving
Speaker 4: girgl Stand a choke hold and standing like, ah, this
Speaker 4: is a good moment for us. You're learning tosic masculinity. Wow,
Speaker 4: we love each other. I care about you.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but there's something about that about that show as
Speaker 3: someone who watches twelve year old boys give each other
Speaker 3: a show cold on the daily.
Speaker 1: Listeners who don't know Aby Kobe that well, they're not
Speaker 1: attending baby fights. They're a teacher, just.
Speaker 3: I'm I'm a sixth grade teacher and also the new
Speaker 3: person in charge of the Mystery Shack look Back Museum,
Speaker 3: throwing that out there.
Speaker 4: Remember minute, wait a minute, wait, Charlotte, Charlotte, do you
Speaker 4: have the deed on you?
Speaker 1: Wait?
Speaker 4: Shelby, do you have the deed?
Speaker 1: I don't know why I don't have the deep Where
Speaker 1: did the deed go?
Speaker 4: Why is Keeper's laws is in order? No?
Speaker 3: So Yeah, I'm a sixth grade teacher and being around
Speaker 3: twelve year olds a lot lately has like really shaped
Speaker 3: the way I understand this show. And I know that
Speaker 3: I'm living in a time that is a decade away
Speaker 3: from when the show ended. And I see the way
Speaker 3: young boys are performing masculinity and they put each other
Speaker 3: in a chokehold on the regular and they are increasingly
Speaker 3: violent with each other. Sorry to like air out some
Speaker 3: tea about my children here, No, it's sixth grade. We
Speaker 3: know it's sixth grade, and I know earlier the phrases
Speaker 3: like I don't have a lot of testosterone and them,
Speaker 3: believe me, if you could smell them on its way
Speaker 3: thumbing they are. They are very sweaty and very hot
Speaker 3: all the time, and they smell bad and I'm like,
Speaker 3: take off the hoodie and they're like, no, honestly, yeah,
Speaker 3: and that worries me. There's road and minecraft, roadblocks, hitting
Speaker 3: each other and sports ball. The things I can think
Speaker 3: of when Dipper says, no, it's a choke hold. It's
Speaker 3: not a choke hold. He's not like truly hurting Stan.
Speaker 3: And it's like the performance that they've animated is so
Speaker 3: subtle that where like you can see that Stan is
Speaker 3: like really yucking it up, probably because this is a
Speaker 3: children's show, but Stan is like, oh, oh, you got me,
Speaker 3: but sees it more not as a you're you're performing
Speaker 3: to my standard of toxic male, but you are bending
Speaker 3: expectations in a way you are you are playing. They're
Speaker 3: playing in the way that a puppy does. Not to
Speaker 3: intentionally hurt, yeah, but but to engage in closeness in
Speaker 3: a way that is neither overtly friendly nor threatening, but
Speaker 3: something that kind of comes in between. Because like, the
Speaker 3: way children learn is really fascinating, and they do so
Speaker 3: by testing boundaries. So it's perfectly normal to see children
Speaker 3: like smack the life out of each other and laugh
Speaker 3: at all.
Speaker 4: Do that to each other. Like the water different.
Speaker 3: I love the gag of them strapping the pillow to
Speaker 3: Seuss and running into him, but also the one where
Speaker 3: they're like getting each other with the baseball pats back
Speaker 3: and forth and laughing with like their eyes crossed. I
Speaker 3: love that.
Speaker 4: That's yeah, the wall Different Abel, and that's that's the
Speaker 4: the defining file footage that the Time Cops have of
Speaker 4: Different Mabel is them laughing and whacking each other with
Speaker 4: a bag.
Speaker 3: Which is so beautifully children that's how they play. But
Speaker 3: they're like, there's just something so subtle between children at
Speaker 3: play and hitting and touching and smacking each other as
Speaker 3: a sign of I'm not actually going to hurt you.
Speaker 3: I love you. That's I am enjoying this because I'm
Speaker 3: showing you I can hurt you. And I see a
Speaker 3: lot more of the latter, and it's really it's really
Speaker 3: changed the way I think about Dippery Mabel's characters.
Speaker 4: I think with DreamScapers mainly is more that that the
Speaker 4: that stands idea of like toughening him up in at
Speaker 4: least in that specific episode, it feels very physical, but
Speaker 4: then again like does not get challenge. Yeah, and also
Speaker 4: it doesn't get challenged, and outside of that episode, it
Speaker 4: is more about like even in the next episode in
Speaker 4: Gideon Rise's, it's more about his strength of will you know?
Speaker 4: Above all else, it's about his character.
Speaker 3: I was not going to talk about any aspect of
Speaker 3: shipping in this book, knowing that it would infuriate people
Speaker 3: that I'm not bringing up something that is understandably a
Speaker 3: huge part of Gravity Falls fandom, but also all fandom culture, right,
Speaker 3: just because weird stuff happens. Though I know I, as
Speaker 3: a sane, rational adult, could have this conversation in writing
Speaker 3: without taking it too far.
Speaker 5: For me personally, I did so many like in character panels,
Speaker 5: like at the height of the fandom, and a lot
Speaker 5: of times people would ask me shipping questions, but I
Speaker 5: always take things from a what has the Bible told me?
Speaker 5: Like when I say the Bible, I mean this show. Yeah,
Speaker 5: like what is the word of God? From the show?
Speaker 4: Who should we shipped with? Who? Well, Larry, why don't
Speaker 4: we look at what the Bible says?
Speaker 3: Can you put that in a cut at the end
Speaker 3: of the episode? No context? By the way, I love that.
Speaker 3: I'm obsessed. I love that so much.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 5: Anytimes people would ask me in character as Dipper, like
Speaker 5: what is your thought on this, this or this, I'd
Speaker 5: be like, well, in this specific episode, YadA, YadA, YadA,
Speaker 5: I did not ship.
Speaker 3: I don't ship period. Yeah.
Speaker 5: I was gonna say recreationally until ductails. I Oh, and
Speaker 5: my only ship is Della in Penumbra. That is the
Speaker 5: only ship I have ever had in my life, and
Speaker 5: I'm pretty sure it's canon.
Speaker 4: You could say it's the one pairing that you're true to.
Speaker 3: Eh, yeah, it's my spaceship.
Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, here's my perspective on this, and it's hmmm,
Speaker 1: I have a really long answer. Are you surprised? Now?
Speaker 1: There are five websites, there are five apps that people
Speaker 1: use so they never have to go to a website,
Speaker 1: and so the Internet is kind of all together in
Speaker 1: one space in a way they didn't used to be.
Speaker 1: And that is a form of desegregation, even if it's
Speaker 1: because you know, Mark Zuckerberg wants all the money in
Speaker 1: the world there is. The Internet is less segregated by gender, worldview, sexuality,
Speaker 1: et cetera than it used to be. And the way
Speaker 1: it used to work was that there were boy websites
Speaker 1: and there were girl websites, and me having attended the
Speaker 1: boy websites, the culture there was to make fun of
Speaker 1: the culture on the girl websites. From a point of
Speaker 1: I don't understand this and I'm not going to try to,
Speaker 1: which is to say, diviannat and fanfiction dot net are
Speaker 1: where shipping culture was alive.
Speaker 4: And not well per se, but it was alive.
Speaker 1: It was just treated by us as this just like
Speaker 1: I don't know, I guess xenophobic is the way to
Speaker 1: describe it. Is that if you go past our borders,
Speaker 1: they do this weird And we didn't even think of
Speaker 1: it at the time as gendered. We did not think
Speaker 1: we were making fun of women for liking women things.
Speaker 1: We did not think about the fact that most of
Speaker 1: ff dot net and most of DA were female. We
Speaker 1: were just like, these are weird websites where they want
Speaker 1: Lightning McQueen to kiss Gandhi like Clone high or that
Speaker 1: was how we talked about it.
Speaker 3: Is Gandhi also a car?
Speaker 1: Well, these are all valid questions.
Speaker 3: These are what kind of car with Gandhib?
Speaker 1: I'm just talking about? To us, the more outlandish, the
Speaker 1: more we felt we were representing how we felt about
Speaker 1: those foreign cultures. And that is kind of the humor
Speaker 1: Alex Hirsch was brought up in. He grew up on
Speaker 1: this very segregated internet a lot of the writers did.
Speaker 4: That informed his view of shipping as well, I suppose.
Speaker 1: And what's fascinating here is there is this intertextual aspect
Speaker 1: where the characters start referencing shipping towards season two Love
Speaker 1: that and it kind of almost feels like accept like
Speaker 1: the acceptance stage stage grief. Yeah, they are like, this
Speaker 1: is something that will happen with this fandom, whether we
Speaker 1: want it to or not, and we don't understand why.
Speaker 4: My take on shipping is much more concise. I feel
Speaker 4: like most of the time when I am inclined to
Speaker 4: look at two characters and go, oh, I think they
Speaker 4: should I think they'd be cute together. And then I
Speaker 4: think about it more and I'm like, oh, I guess
Speaker 4: that's just because that character reminds me of me, and
Speaker 4: that character reminds me of some might to be attracted to.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, and then I think I should just I
Speaker 4: should just go talk to people. Did I just go
Speaker 4: talk to people?
Speaker 1: Yeah? None of us are.
Speaker 4: Ship is not that again, Not like I see the
Speaker 4: value in shipping, especially for like queer fans of things.
Speaker 4: I think that's really important. It's just it's never been
Speaker 4: a thing for me really that that didn't ultimately cascade
Speaker 4: into Yeah, what about what I want to get out
Speaker 4: of relationships and then and and dating.
Speaker 5: I'm always a story first person. Yeah, so I would
Speaker 5: rather know where the story's going than the shipping around
Speaker 5: it personally exactly.
Speaker 3: Shipping culture is just a big part of fandom, and
Speaker 3: I have to acknowledge that as someone who like, if
Speaker 3: you're like, what do you ship from this thing? And
Speaker 3: I'm like, ship them where.
Speaker 1: I ship Dipper with bubble wraps so he doesn't get
Speaker 1: scuffed and transit.
Speaker 3: Thank you so much for being responsible. A priority mail
Speaker 3: Dipper is a priority maid.
Speaker 4: What are you saying? I'm not a priority, I'm not
Speaker 4: a male, I'm.
Speaker 3: Not Where is I going with this? I got so
Speaker 3: hung up on the funny jokes for a minute.
Speaker 4: That's hey, welcome this mystery is it's a thing.
Speaker 3: That nobody realizes about my job. And things again have
Speaker 3: changed slightly from when I was. I mean, I'm still
Speaker 3: kind of like an early career academic, but when I
Speaker 3: was like a little baby who hadn't yet like published
Speaker 3: anything at all. If you were an academic and you
Speaker 3: said this was my ship instantly, people would be at
Speaker 3: your throats. Became a lot easier just to be like,
Speaker 3: I don't really care, and I don't really care at
Speaker 3: the end of the day, but you're not.
Speaker 4: A poser who pretends not to care. You just actually
Speaker 4: don't care.
Speaker 3: I don't really care. I've I've grown to care a
Speaker 3: little bit as I consume other types of media, beve
Speaker 3: for gravity falls. I've always been like, I literally don't
Speaker 3: give a shit to whatever you want to do. I'm
Speaker 3: like back and forth on is this thing something that
Speaker 3: I should dedicate a lot of space too in my
Speaker 3: book and like really sink my teeth in it and
Speaker 3: risk people feeling upset or uncomfortable with this book. Do
Speaker 3: I not talk about it at all and have people
Speaker 3: be like, why didn't you talk about this? Or do
Speaker 3: I dedicate like a paragraph to and be like, Hey,
Speaker 3: this thing happened, I have forty five thousand words, figure
Speaker 3: it out for yourself.
Speaker 5: I would that's the direction I would go personally, because
Speaker 5: I think that shipping is the least interesting part of
Speaker 5: fandom culture personally, Like, of the things that we could discuss,
Speaker 5: there's about fifty things on my list, maybe one hundred
Speaker 5: and fifty things on my list before shipping even breaches.
Speaker 1: Well, I would say that themes are the most important thing.
Speaker 1: And in a romance, yeah, those are the same thing. Like,
Speaker 1: it would be very difficult to engage with the fandom
Speaker 1: of our Flagman's death without shipping black Beard instead, because
Speaker 1: that's the point, that is what the story is, their relationship. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I just yeah. For me, when I'm focused on the themes,
Speaker 1: and if that's not a theme of the story, that's
Speaker 1: not where my attention is drawn on a less Like
Speaker 1: Ella said, there's a character that really reminds me of me,
Speaker 1: and a character that really reminds me of someone I
Speaker 1: would be attracted to.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I don't know. Did we want to try to
Speaker 4: conjure some sort of wrap up question or.
Speaker 3: I was going to conjure a wrap up question? Okay,
Speaker 3: and it's probably the wrap up question you were expecting. Okay, hmm,
Speaker 3: Why Gravity Falls? Why did it matter to you?
Speaker 4: I'll do you one better. Why is Gravity Falls? Yeah?
Speaker 4: I mean it started when I was different Mabel's age,
Speaker 4: So I think for me that that was probably a
Speaker 4: big thing. Well, it stood out in that it wasn't
Speaker 4: talking down to me as twelve year olds who started
Speaker 4: watching it, and also the hints that it was, you know,
Speaker 4: bigger than it led on, that it had all this
Speaker 4: depth to it, and people who would make a show
Speaker 4: in the way that I would have wanted to make
Speaker 4: a show and that I want to make things, you know,
Speaker 4: like it spoke to me in that way. At the
Speaker 4: example that Alex always gives is like Nabele gets a
Speaker 4: pet in episode nine, episode ten, she still got the
Speaker 4: pet pig. Like little things like that that really reward
Speaker 4: you for being the obsessive nerd that I was in
Speaker 4: amb And to put it quite simply.
Speaker 1: Like I discovered U Homestar Runo when I was eleven
Speaker 1: in two thousand and four, and it updated weekly. It
Speaker 1: was at the time the only internet video series that
Speaker 1: updated weekly to the best of my knowledge, and just
Speaker 1: a sense of routine. Was doing something for me that
Speaker 1: I didn't have to think about because I'd never From
Speaker 1: that point on, I did not live without it because
Speaker 1: it was every week until two thousand and nine. Then
Speaker 1: it was not every week, and that they released one
Speaker 1: thing in twenty ten and then just disappeared for years
Speaker 1: without anyone knowing anything. And having this sense of routine
Speaker 1: disrupted while I dropped out of college after only three months,
Speaker 1: while my parents were divorcing, while I was moving up.
Speaker 1: It was a really dark time in my life, and
Speaker 1: having this sense of structure pulled from me really hurt
Speaker 1: me in ways that I just didn't even think to
Speaker 1: account for. And that's what stalking Matt Chapman's Twitter and
Speaker 1: IMDb was is he is what grants me this supposedly
Speaker 1: from what from thus far, it's that's what it seems like.
Speaker 1: And what Gravity Falls gave me more than anything else,
Speaker 1: because I've always I've said on many occasions it's not
Speaker 1: my favorite thing in the world. It probably doesn't breach
Speaker 1: the top five. I really really like it. But more
Speaker 1: than anything else I've ever liked, it gave me a
Speaker 1: sense of community and maybe maybe that structure that I
Speaker 1: was lacking was just because I was loadly.
Speaker 4: And that's I mean, it's very much community, yeah.
Speaker 1: And that's I mean, like, yeah, that's why you know,
Speaker 1: I still talk to Ella and Shelby every single week
Speaker 1: if I can help it, And like I met Ella
Speaker 1: in the twenty fourteen Gravity Falls fandom, Shelby in the
Speaker 1: twenty fifteen Gravity Falls fandom, Abby in the twenty twenty
Speaker 1: one Gravity Falls fandom, like it has just opened up
Speaker 1: this kind of swap meet version of life for me
Speaker 1: that I didn't have.
Speaker 5: Privor I love how much Gravity Falls As a love
Speaker 5: letter to Alex's sister A love.
Speaker 3: Letter to his family.
Speaker 5: That is part of what drew me into the show
Speaker 5: was just like how lovingly made the show is like
Speaker 5: not only is it childhood and joy and cryptids and mysteries,
Speaker 5: but it was like all of this love for my
Speaker 5: family is what brought me to making this show and
Speaker 5: then coming back with Book of Bill and his love
Speaker 5: for the fandom. Book of Bill is just a love
Speaker 5: letter to the fans who grew up with this show.
Speaker 5: And there's just something so special about a show that
Speaker 5: is made with that much love that people can palpably feel.
Speaker 5: And I will say that, like the best friends that
Speaker 5: I have are the ones that I made in the
Speaker 5: Gravity Falls fandom. There are people that I still talk
Speaker 5: to on a daily basis, not just Charlie and Ella,
Speaker 5: but like my friend Jess, who is basically my Mabel,
Speaker 5: like I talked to her about like every fandom. It's
Speaker 5: so wild that so many of these people have like
Speaker 5: gone with me, not from just Gravity Falls, but to
Speaker 5: like my brother, my brother and me just like all
Speaker 5: of these other fandoms that are completely outside of this.
Speaker 1: I introduced you to my brother, my brother, and me
Speaker 1: when you invited me over to watch Ducktails.
Speaker 5: I know, I got into the Adventure Zone because of
Speaker 5: gravity Falls, and my brother, my brother, and me because
Speaker 5: of Ducktails. So many of these friends have overlapping interests,
Speaker 5: overlapping interests in ductails, overlapping interests in the Owl House
Speaker 5: in Amphibia, and my brother, my brother and me, like
Speaker 5: all of these shows that like you wouldn't think musical theater.
Speaker 5: My friend texted me was like, I'm good, I'm about
Speaker 5: to go cry and come from away. And I'm like, oh,
Speaker 5: like my friends that have these overlapping interests that like,
Speaker 5: you don't just find in a fandom, but like finding
Speaker 5: that community and having that community grow and move with
Speaker 5: you over decades is just it's it's a very special
Speaker 5: and important thing.
Speaker 4: Well, there you have it, I suppose.
Speaker 3: Well that concludes our tour of the mystery exact.
Speaker 4: Wait a minute, we gotta running out of air here,
Speaker 4: get any folks more holes.
Speaker 3: You can check out this exhibit on curation and what
Speaker 3: it means to be a fan up until whenever I
Speaker 3: get tired of it. I'm your fandom scholar, Abby Kirby.
Speaker 3: You can follow me on Blue Sky at Abby Kirby
Speaker 3: on Tumblr. At Abba is an academic and on TikTok
Speaker 3: at the fandom teacher. As for our curators, well you
Speaker 3: know where to find them.
Speaker 4: Yeah, right here forever?
Speaker 3: Can I please? I beg you one skittle, one skittle?
Speaker 4: Please turn me.
Speaker 1: Back to the place sign No with the mystery shackter
Speaker 1: and the forest nomes. I'm already packed, so come on,
Speaker 1: let's go. Don't get me started. My heart's in gravity falls.
Speaker 4: Dads who should be shipped with? Who? Ba? Well, Larry,
Speaker 4: why don't we look at what the Bible says?
Speaker 3: Can you put that in a cut at the end
Speaker 3: of the episode after the credits