The Critical Stans Episode 11: “Time To Say Goodbye For Now!”

Join The Daily Vox journalists SHAAZIA EBRAHIM and FATIMA MOOSA every week as they chat all things fun and serious around fan culture, fandoms and what it means to be a stan. They’ll be destroying tropes around the supposedly traditional hardcore male football fan and the manic pop culture fangirl; covering everything from football, Young Adult fiction to Beyoncé and K-pop. Living in the fanworld as women of colour who are avid consumers of all things fan-related means that it is impossible to ignore the politics of these things. And that’s what the Critical Stans are all about.

It’s the special edition of The Critical Stans. In this episode we lament all the podcasts we could have made, but didn’t because pop culture news never takes a rest. We talk Comic Con Africa and what we learned about cosplay, consent and representation. We speak of all the badass female characters that JK Rowling wrote in Harry Potter from Hermione Granger to Dolores Umbridge. The final two topics we wanted to cover was K-dramas and the romance novel genre. We chat about our favourite K-dramas and why we think romance gets such a bad reputation in literary circles.

Produced by Sipho Hlongwane

If you missed our last ten episodes, check them out below.

Episode 10: How Women Are Misportrayed In Pop Culture

Episode 9: Cause-Sumption And The Commodification Of Activism

Episode 8: Pleasures and Perils of YouTube

Episode 7: Desi Girls Feels

Episode 6: On the Obsession with Reality TV

Episode 5: The (Mostly) Wonderful World of K-pop

Episode 4: The Science Behind The Boy Bands

Episode 3: Worshipping At The Altar of Celebrity

Episode 2: YA Is Lit

Episode 1: World Cup and Misogyny

Follow us on Twitter: @shaazzeea and @fatimamoosa17