On My Radar: Fangirling Over Fandom Folks
digital culture critics i can't get enough of this week
Hi y’all! Welcome to the first edition of Skim Milk, my (Montana’s) offshoot of I Have No Milk. Though Lana and I have an uncomfortable number of things in common (barf), these separate newsletters give y’all an opportunity to hear from us individually and get to know our writing styles and passions separately as we navigate this landscape as indie writers and podcasters.
For now, I’ll do what I love best, which is screaming into the void about the authors & cultural critics I’m obsessed with lately. So, without further ado, here are the authors & critics whose work has rocked my week.
Digital Culture Writers Ryan Broderick Allegra Rosenberg Have Me In A Chokehold (Pleasantly and Consensually)
📨 Garbage Day: Ryan Broderick
Everyone loves to blame every bad thing that happens these days on the internet. And to be honest, most of it is true. But the web is still good and this newsletter is your regular reminder that, actually, being online is still pretty fun!
I first followed Garbage Day back in the Spring after my second read of All The Young Dudes because they had an interview with Ms.KingBean89 behind a paywall. For those of you unfamiliar with the seminal, marauders-era Harry Potter fanfiction All The Young Dudes, Ms.KingBean89 published the work in 2017 and with it, left an indelible mark on the fandom than cannot be measured nor quantified. So, did I pay $5 per month for several months in order to have access to said interview after consuming every single AMA post on Tumblr from the queen herself? Yes I did. However, my current financial situation has made it such that $5 each month is a bit too steep for me (I’m saving up to open a bookshop, okay? And Ryan Broderick, if you ever read this, grab a paperback on me when it eventually opens! I’m sorry I had to switch to unpaid👉👈) but I still read every free post in earnest.
Reader, I am eager for Garbage Day, okay? And I freaking lurved this post by contributing writer Allegra Rosenberg, which of course brings me to…
📨 tchotchke: Allegra Rosenberg
EXCERPTS FROM THE ONGOING EXPLORATIONS OF ALLEGRA ROSENBERG. TOPICS OF NOTE: DIGITAL CULTURE, FANDOM, FASHION, NORTH & SOUTH POLES, PUBLIC HUMANITIES, MUSIC & TV
Allegra Rosenberg is like…very cool. And I am freakin’ stoked that they just got a book deal all about the history and cultural importance of fandom! Look out for Fandom Forever (And Ever) coming from W.W. Norton publishers in ‘25 or ‘26. I’m excited to follow as much of the writing journey as they want to share with us.
As a person relatively new to the world of Harry Potter fanfiction, I have learned a lot over this past year about what participation in fandom entails, what the codes of conduct are, and what legacies certain works of fanfiction, fanart, and fandom discourse have left on the current subcultural landscape.
What I love about the community of fandom is how anti-establishment it feels. Though capitalistic / commercialist interests are always seeping in, I’ve been impressed by the strength of the fandom’s resistance to it and to the willingness of fellow geeks to hold one another accountable to its ethos. The history and ultimately the fate of fandom is something Allegra is constantly talking about in their tchotchke newsletters, (the future of fandom amid AI and corporate gash-grabs on trends like Barbenheimer etc.), and I feel like I always learn something from their analysis.
For those of y’all who don’t participate in any fanfiction communities, I’ll won’t try to explain it better than Allegra has (and will in the new book!) Check out their substack!
Book X Culture Writers/Commentators Mel Thomas and Josh Lora Have Me Sat For Class (Willingly and Eagerly)
📨 PageMelt: Mel Thomas
It feels like sacrilege to call Mel a tiktok creator when they are so so much more than that. Self-identifying “book punk” and corgi lover, Mel speaks and reader, I listen. They are one of the only people on my For You Page that stops.me.in.my.tracks. I’m sat. Class is in session. Ticonderogas* are out. They have the freshest takes on everything: fanfiction, fantasy, romance, book-to-film adaptations, queerness in media, etc. They are very funny but never laugh at their own jokes which I find to be a REFUGE from my own proclivities…ahem. Also they are a staunch OG Ursula le Guin stan, which I always appreciate seeing. Follow them everywhere! (Not IRL tho, don’t be weird).
📨TellTheBeees: Josh Lora
Josh Lora first came across my FYP because of his analyses of how Buffy the Vampire Slayer has informed culture (which it has, immeasurably, and anyone is allowed to fight me on this). What I love about Josh’s takes on book, television, twitter discourse etc. is that he is critical of what he loves and is wary of bandwagons and echo chambers, so he isn’t pedantic or on an annoying moral high horse. He offers a nuanced perspective with connections I never would have thought of, but is still able to do it in a super fun way? I don’t watch reality tv all that much (go to Lana for your dose of Housewives recaps!) but I love following culture critics who consume a ton of celebrity news and then spit it back out to me in really smart and compelling ways. Of particular interest is his take on the trend of anti-intellectualism (available as a Tiktok playlist here). Like all of the writers mentioned before him, I walk away with something to chew on and questions to ponder.
A rabbit hole into which I’ve descended so deeply, that I must recount it to someone or it was all for naught...
Rabbit Hole: “used to refer to a bizarre, confusing, or nonsensical situation or environment, typically one from which it is difficult to extricate oneself” (Oxford Languages).
Black Hole: “a region of space having a gravitational field so intense that no matter or radiation can escape” (Oxford Languages).
Jack Black: American musician and actor (common knowledge?). My love for him knows no bounds, actually.
This section is absolute chaos. The etymology of the section title is as follows: On the fourth episode of I Have No Milk, I was recounting an experience to Lana wherein I had watched so many Jack Black interviews in a row (not just Tiktoks, I’m talkin’ deep dives into the Youtube here) that I found myself in a “Jack Black Hole.” What I meant, obviously, was a rabbit hole of Jack Black interviews + a black hole of internet scrolling in which no force in the universe could help me escape. What came out, however, was that I was trapped in a “Jack Black Hole,” which Lana, understandably heard as “Jack Black’s Hole,” and reader she had more questions than I had answers. But alas, I now use the term as synonymous with “rabbit hole.” Without further ado…the JBH of Ticonderoga pencils:
*According to Wikipedia (lol) “The name "Ticonderoga" comes from the Iroquois word tekontaró:ken, meaning "it is at the junction of two waterways." I obviously fell down a JackBlackHole about the history of America’s Pencil and feel like I can’t really rest until I know the specifics. I was really hoping someone had written a dissertation about this since people seem to be getting their PhD in literally anything these days, but I came up short in my 12 minute lunch-break deep dive. What I’ve gathered from the New Jersey City University’s Library Guides on the Dixon Company is that this dude, Joseph Dixon, had been manufacturing crucibles up in New England and became super interested in graphite, so he shimmied down to New Jersey for its proximity to the Chilson Mines and also to more business methinks.
Apparently pencils became super popular during the American Civil War because their invention sort of solved the whole ink-drying-out issue. Questions I have are as follows: who lived on the site of the mine before it was built? Who was displaced by whom and how and also what did resistance to the mine look like at the time? How much of Dixon Ticonderoga’s business went to the Confederacy v. the Union during the war that made the company so profitable? What is the impact of using an Iroquois name for an invention that I have a hunch required displacement of indigenous people to create. Also! After some mergers and acquisitions (I watch Suits, I know M&As) Ticonderoga shut down almost all of its manufacturing in the US, but makes a small number at a domestic distribution site in order to retain the image of American-made. What’s up with that?
If you want to see every model of every Ticonderoga ever created click here. If you’d rather me stop talking about pencils, you’re in luck. I’m done.
That’s it for me this week! If you want to follow my other newsletter you can subscribe below! Find my socials here :) See ya on the Pod!
‘Til Next Time,
M
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