BONUS! Feed Drop - Femme & Furious - Fast 5 - August 18, 2026
Absolute potato! This week, TWIFH is delighted to bring you a special preview of Femme & Furious, a new pod-friend and great listen for fans of fandom, and especially for listeners who liked our old behind-the-scenes pop culture rundown episodes for Patreon. In this episode, our friend Julia Portela looks with a feminist lens at five (secretly six) pieces of extremely current media: Obsession, The Drama, Odyssey, Spider-Man: Brand New Day, Sterling Point, and the novel Girl's Girl by Sonia Feldman. Julia is funny, smart, and definitely a fangirl. Listen to our #Gamergate episode over on her feed, too!
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This week on Femme & Furious, we're breaking our own format because while it's technically a "Fast 5," we've got six properties on deck, because there was too much good pop culture to cover this month. Spoiler-free pitches up top for each one, then we go all the way in with spoilers, feminist analysis, and a few unhinged theories.
What I'm covering:
Obsession — the viral horror hit that outran Supergirl in theaters, the "man or the bear" discourse hiding in plain sight, and why Bear is absolutely a dog guy.
The Drama — Zendaya and Robert Pattinson's wedding-week-gone-wrong dark comedy from Kristoffer Borgli, and the racial double standard baked into who gets forgiven for what.
Odyssey — Christopher Nolan's mythic epic, the Emily Wilson feud, and a full breakdown of Circe, Calypso, Helen, Clytemnestra, and a theory about who Athena really is.
Spider-Man: Brand New Day — Tom Holland's loneliest Peter Parker yet, the Frank Castle friendship that's carrying the movie, and a hard pass on that Little Caesars order.
Sterling Point — Amazon's CW-coded YA drama, a love triangle the writing doesn't quite earn, and the most joyful period scene we've seen on TV ever.
Girl's Girl by Sonia Feldman — one of my favorite books of the year, a queer coming-of-age story about girlhood, friendship, and phones as a silent second language.
We're starting a newsletter! Head over to http://www.thisweekinfandomhistory.com to sign up for behind-the-scenes content, episode-thematic fic recs, and extended show notes every Monday starting August 31, 2026! (And send us your fic recs for Supernatural, Dan & Phil, Mean Girls, and any PBS Kids fandom!)
