#areyougonnabe

[fansplaining]

Some fangirls would spend entire fan-club meetings doing “Beatle-talk” in their approximation of Liverpudlian accents. They would act out scenes from “A Hard Day’s Night,” or even make up their own scenes, assigning each other Beatles personas, which they would stick with in the long-term. (Pity the girl who got Ringo!) ... Pamela des Barres, the groupie famous for her dalliances with real-life rockstars like Mick Jagger and Keith Moon, recounted her experiences with fantasy ones, too—as a teenage Beatles roleplayer. “We were two girls in a constant state of Beatle skits. I played John and myself, and she played Paul and herself. We could switch personalities with the flick of an accent. We [...] professed undying love with semiperfect working-class Liverpudlian accents. At night, we played all four people at the same time, when we would lie entwined in each other’s arms, pressing our four sets of lips together in an eternal expression of Beatle Love.”

@areyougonnabe's latest for Fansplaining digs into modern-day Beatles shippers and fanworks creators—but she also casts back to the fan practices of the 1960s, particularly the act of “Beatle-play.”

Read the article—or listen to an audio version, read by Allegra herself!

[elizabethminkel]

My latest fandom column for Atlas Obscura is live! This one is on @terrorcamp, a Terror fandom con + polar history conference that truly feels like it straddles both fandom and academia. Many thanks to the brilliant group of people who spoke to me for this piece, especially TC organizer @areyougonnabe, of course!!

There are so many quotes I love, but one of my favorites was from Hester Blum, a Penn State English professor, on how the event reshaped her thinking about current teaching in the humanities:

Watching the presentations from younger fans also made her reassess the way she and her colleagues approach their students; many academics discuss younger generations’ interest in “relatability,” and how it prevents them from engaging with history and literature. “One of the things that this conference made me realize is how fundamentally we have misunderstood what it means to be ‘relatable,’” she says. “And it’s not simply a lack of critical distance or affinity—but the kind of passionate fan response, as something that is deeply critical and deeply thought-through. It was one of those moments that was like, ‘Oh, this can be the future of engagement.’ This was incredible.”

[anotherwellkeptsecret]

New Good Omens Comic!

I will be starting a new Good Omens comic soon! I'm finishing up One Night in Bangor and will be making a PDF version of the entire comic swiftly. Yay!

The next comic will be it's a new craze by attheborer or areyougonnabe on Tumblr. Please give them some love!

Crowley and Aziraphale are very possibly the people least qualified, on the entire planet, to start up an advice podcast. But what else is there to do when the world isn’t ending anytime soon, you’re technically on indefinite sabbatical from your lifelong careers, and you need a plausible excuse to spend more time with your best friend who you’re definitely not, absolutely not, maybe just a little, actually maybe overwhelmingly in love with?

It's a cute fic in script format so I'll be able to add in my own little sprinkles of body language for some extra fun. Tune in soon for the first update!

[cockroachesunite]

Tagged (on my main, @danse-de-macabre ) by the wonderful @desvoeux to post 9 books I want to read in 2025.

Thanks for the tag! This was so hard to narrow down! I have a reading list a mile long, but these were some that I’ve really been looking forward to (and for some of them, am already in the process of reading)

In no particular order:

1. In the Land of the Penguins — Georges Lecointe

2. Through the First Antarctic Night — Dr Fredrick A. Cook (reading currently)

3. Endurance — Frank A. Worsley

4. A First Rate Tragedy — Diana Preston

5. The Worst Journey in the World — Apsley Cherry-Garrard (reading currently)

6. South — Ernest Shackleton

7. Shackleton’s Captain — John Thomson (reading currently)

8. Moby Dick — Herman Melville (reading currently)

9. The Code of the Woosters — P.G. Wodehouse (rereading currently)

I can’t speak for the ones I haven’t read yet, but so far I highly recommend all the ones I’m in the middle of.

Now, I am terrible at remembering the proper spelling etc of usernames, and I can never remember who’s already been tagged, so I’m not the best at this. But here goes: tagging @areyougonnabe , @packloafer , @patrice-bergerons , @scurvees , @jirving , @fishlad , @antarcticlovebirds , @arcticpines , @grahhams , @jamesfitzjamesdotcom , @vintage-polar , @cherry-garrard , @roaldamundsen , and basically anyone else who wants to! I love talking about books so if you see this consider yourself tagged!

[roaldamundsen]

thank you again @areyougonnabe for the confirmation that fred would be the instagram husband even though roald hates it and never asked him anything

[jamesfitzjamesdotcom]

Happy birthday to him!

I'm late with my Fitzjames birthday post because I was out all day leading a tour of Hertfordshire to places connected to the birthday boy. 🥳💕 About 20 people attended and it was such a joyful day. Met friends and made new ones. Both Gambier and Coningham descendants were there. The best day celebrating James Fitzjames. 🥹

Pic by @areyougonnabe 🙏❤️

[itsevidentvery]

FFRMC Day 2: AU of my Heart

I missed Day 1 on Tumblr (though I did celebrate on Twitter) but wanted to make sure I cover my bases for Day 2.

The Terror fandom has so many fantastic AUs it's impossible to pick just one. Below the cut is a non-exhaustive list of some of my darlings.

A sparkling Howl's Moving Castle fusion: moving, thrilling, unputdownable.

2. @soft-october-night's fleet-footed, deft imagining of Thee Sexiest Dynamic Ever: cross-grained detective Crozier giving chase to dashing thief Fitzjames on the rooftops of London.

3. @veganthranduil is responsible for so many gorgeous AUs, but this one really has all of my heart. It's about colonialism, it's about personhood, it's about an obsessively engineered piece of machinery who will break your heart into tiny pieces.

4. I was given, some years ago, this exquisite, thoughtful story about anarchists, expressionist poetry in a flawlessly-rendered turn-of-the-century setting, and I really do think everyone should read it.

5. @areyougonnabe gave me this sparkling, barnstorming 60s spy caper absolutely stuffed to the GILLS with My Favourite Things, and I think we should be talking about it all the time.

6. Old Devil Moon is @corinthes's absolutely luminous Western, and is its own prestige drama adaptation.

7. I thrilled from head to foot when I read this gentle, thoughtful, lovingly-crafted AU of Mediaeval Lesbian Nuns waiting out a plague.

8. One of the abiding joys of the insanely talented Terror fandom is its ability to find the inherent Terror-ness in the most unlikely of sources. For example: you could probably guess that George Hodgson is the most PG Wodehouse of all Terror characters, but did you know how simultaneously hilarious, poignant and terrifying a Wodehouse pastiche could be?

9. Earthrise is a series about finding oneself, coming to terms with what it means to change, and the mortifying ordeal of maybe allowing oneself to be happy... in space!

[ripeteeth]

last line game

tagged by the incomparable @rcmclachlan , thank you!

rules: share the last line you've written, then tag some people, and have fun

So I recently developed trigger finger in my thumb, which is WILDLY unpleasant, so I haven’t written much, but here are the last line(s) I’ve written on the next chapter of Revachol Calling:

“Kim had been born on January first at the stroke of midnight. Cut in half, with his feet in one year and his head in another.

No wonder he could never seem to make a decision.”

Tagging: @wildcard47 @brawlite @perverse-idyll @danpuff-ao3 @pearwaldorf @darcylindbergh @junemermaid @mia-ugly @soft-october-night @weatheredlaw @racketghost @kiingbooooo @et-in-arkadia @robotmango @fortinbrasftw @areyougonnabe @gullbones @grimdarkfandango @greenycrimson @jesslovesboats @ectoplasm-james @iodhadh @rootingformephistopheles @jaggededges123 @zaxal @veganthranduil @itsevidentvery @iamwestiec @ivorycloudscape @orchisailsa and anyone else who wishes to!

[bikenesmith]

ive noticed some engagement on some of my monkees (shit)posts from way back in 2012/2013 — my 14/15 year old self. which is endearing, bc im aware the monkees fandom is still going, and is perhaps even more active than it was in my day. this did remind me of a @fansplaining article by allegra rosenberg / @areyougonnabe that i finally got around to reading earlier this week, the beatles live!

(i have no idea how long some of you have been here, so to recap i was fully obsessed with classic rock bands and 1960s/70s pop culture from like, 12 to 15 years old. profound impact on me in many ways, still love 60s/70s music, culture and history. also lmfao at my fandom of the last near-decade being sparked by a film set in the 60s. the several page video essay script about x-men first class' anachronistic 1960s fashion, which is sooo close to actually being filmed, will likely be the ultimate culmination of it all) the beatles were my first music fandom — while i still have feelings for the monkees [obviously, considering my ~12 year attachment to this url across nearly all of my social media] it is the beatles that i still have brain worms for. a tiny, isolated worm, but one nonetheless. so this article, i had to read.)

i was really taken by this section on the anachronistic modernizing of beatles fandom activities.

It takes a certain stripe of fannish brain to obsess over music from a bygone age instead of modern artists—taking something as broadly popular as classic rock and treating it with all the intimate, loving attention that other fans devote to a sci-fi television show, a fantasy book series, or a cult video game. These fans are cultural archaeologists, working with the materials of the past to create the passion of the present. The phenomenon is not limited to the Beatles. On TikTok, fans place meme tweets on pictures of the Stones and Bob Dylan; celebrate Freddie Mercury’s style; and make Monkees fancams. But the Beatles fandom is still top dog, with a kind of default dominance it retains from the dawn of Beatlemania. On Tumblr, you can find gifsets of Beatles movies, fanart, and the occasional Yoko Ono stan post, side by side with more typically Tumblr-esque wackiness along the lines of Paul McCartney posts tagged “#my twink wife”, “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer” memes, and toxic yaoi polls.

it made me think about how this phenomenon — the blending of modern fan practices and modern pop culture (fancams, memes, insaneposting, etc) with classic rock fandom is not new (not that allegra insinuates it is — i am speaking generally), but is something that has been around for a while, and is something i participated in quite heavily when it came to monkees fandom. whether it was

editing a music video to the tune of marina + the diamonds

making art of mike nesmith as a genderbent marina + the diamonds analog

not to mention the entirety of the who (slight flashing tw)

creating mockups of a classic rock-themed homestuck/OFF/undertale/earthbound analog:

classic rock icons using homestuck icons as a base

blending classic rock into my ~aesthetic~ blog theme sensibilities:

this video where i did nothing but put the beginning of baby got back over a scene from the first episode of the monkees and the music lined up almost frighteningly well

or creating emo notepad screenshot aesthetic posts with quotes from head (1968)....

i was very invested in engineering (or maybe just yearning for + acting out desires?) a form of classic rock fandom that was "hip" to the modern fandoms i was aware of. this was likely inspired by the fact that monkees fandom at the time skewed older.

i cannot for the life of me find these accounts or screenshots of them, but i think the ultimate expression of this was a collection of twitter accounts i made as mockups of twitter stan accounts, modeled directly off of one direction accounts at the time. complete with icons that were cut-outs of musicians overlayed onto aesthetic background, and descriptions that noted how many times the musicians had interacted with them.

importantly, i could not have sustained this if not for the close friends i had at the time that were around my age and were on my wavelength, that supported it, commiserated with me, made lots — especially on the homestuck parts. even if it was a small thing, in a small fandom, it was a communal effort

idk. its interesting to see that these dreams of mine have now come to fruition.

abrupt stop, no conclusion bc this is just a post not an essay (a comment directed at my autistic ocd self). may be interesting to some of the nouveau classic rock fandom.

[suddenly-frankenstein]

commission for @areyougonnabe with Deb and Silas on their Canadian Honeymoon! 💚

just chilling and having a good time :)

[theterrorpinup]

Hi! I hope you’re doing well, just wanted to ask whether there’s any way to buy/access art from previous year’s calendars?

Hello nonny!

Overall, once the calendar's leftover sales are closed there is no way to purchase any physical calendars or merch. However, we do still have access to some of the PDFs, and if you'd like to donate to one of our nominated charities we are always more than happy to send over the PDF files! At present we have the 2021 and 2024 calendars available, we are working on sourcing the 2022 and 2023 PDFs. If you'd like to know more, please contact mod Phil.

That being said, most of the art from previous years has been reblogged on this blog! However, we don't believe we have anything from the first year the calendar was running (2021) as we didn't have a dedicated account back then (it was all done by @areyougonnabe and @brainyraccoons from their personal socials).

Lastly, we are working on putting together a list of previous contributors to share on this blog - people often post their art on their own socials, and tag accordingly, so it would be easy to find their works!

Hope this answers your question, nonny :)

[fansplaining]

We're thrilled to publish our newest piece—this time by a returning writer. @areyougonnabe first wrote for us about Tumblr back in 2020 (and also was one of the podcast's final guests this year before we went on hiatus). Now she's back with a deep dive into contemporary classic rock fandom—the shippy, transformative kind—and the interesting temporal shift that happens within historical RPF:

Today’s young Beatles fans can consume every atom of sound and image from the 1960s, but however fond they are of Ringo’s silly tweets or Paul’s new music, there’s a line of demarcation somewhere in the past which spiritually separates then from now. Real-time, ongoing celebrity pop culture can be full of anxieties, but an older band’s story can be more like reading a book that was already written. 

Read or listen to an audio version via the link above—and to support more in-depth fan culture journalism, consider becoming a patron!

[haveyoureadthisfanfic]

Summary: “You are clever. Admit it.” Aziraphale let the sword fall from his palm, and raised his empty hand to rub at his face. “Oh, but I’m not,” he said with great passion, his eyes falling shut in what looked like pain. “Crowley, I was so blind—“ Two men, two women, three children, and one entire dog were watching this bit of domestic drama unfold, yet neither Crowley nor Aziraphale seemed capable of realizing they had an audience. It was as if they were the only people in each others’ universes.

Author: @areyougonnabe

[radiojamming]

Question: do you know about many polar expeditions or just the doomed/mummy-producing ones? My wife is reading a book on the Endurance/Shackleton and I was wondering if you knew any cool facts I could impress her with.

AGH I ALMOST MISSED THIS

I do know some stuff about Shackleton! And other polar exploration attempts! And failures! So all my facts are just kind of general knowledge pool stuff, but I'd also happily call on lovely people like @areyougonnabe, @bluebluebacchus, and @simplyirenic who know so, SO much. (Full disclosure: my interest in expeditions increases dramatically depending on how many mummies are involved. Or frozen people in general. RIP Émile Danco, ilu every day.)

Polar bear liver is so high in vitamin A content that consuming certain amounts could potentially kill you. As William Stillwell says, "A single polar bear liver (about 500 g) has an astonishing 9 million IU of vitamin A, and acute human toxicity occurs at about 300,000 IU!" And Joe Schwarcz: "You could eat it. If you are lucky, you would live to regret it."

Roald Amundsen sailed on the Belgica to Antarctica and survived by eating raw penguin when virtually no one else would. According to Madhouse at the End of the Earth, he was pretty hype about the challenge of daunting, maddening survival and tbh was kinda into it.

There's a really great food called hoosh. The continental dish of Antarcticaaaa~!

James Clark Ross (of Ross Ice Shelf fame, among soooo much other stuff) was called "the handsomest man in the Navy".

The hut from Shackleton's Nimrod expedition is perfectly preserved well over a century later.

JUSTICE FOR MRS CHIPPY

[roaldamundsen]

artocho being wrong in the antarctic voyage of the "belgica" during the years 1897, 1898, and 1899 (published 1901)

@areyougonnabe thank you for making him even prettier in photoshop (originals can be found on amundsen's website)

[chiropteracupola]

IT IS GONNA TAKE AN ACT OF GOD TO REMOVE THE STICKERS OFF OF THIS IPAD CASE!!

sticker origins under the readmore:

red jaguar: equator coffee

beam me up scotty, first rodeo, qr code (open if you dare): made by @alizuriacrow

art jam, betty the yeti, teacup cat, puzzle heart, deer: made by high school friends

strawberry, insects: odd dot antiquarian sticker book

livesey, penguin time, pullings: made and printed by me

tiffany aching: made by @potato-lord-but-not

william bush: hornblower screenshot printed by me

krlx heart: redactedville midwestcollege

pizza ray: gift from a friend (provenance unknown)

academic heart: university of chicago

surfboard seal: made by @/getblobbedcomics on instagram

hodgson's weird outfit: edit by @/areyougonnabe, printed by me

mary the ghost: edit by @/i-was-bored-so-this-happened, printed by me

holographic skeletons: michaels? i think?

rei, pride flag: found it on the floor