July 22, 2023 • 30 mins
Fanfiction has long been a very queer, very woman-dominated space. One of the biggest names in fanfic is AO3. We trace the history of this site, and ponder its future in this classic episode.
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Speaker 1 (00:05):
Hey, this is Annie and Samantha, and welcome to Stefan.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
Never told you a protection of iHeartRadio, And today I
am bringing back a pretty recent one. We try to
wait a year at least before we bring a classic back.
But you might have seen on the news, you might
(00:28):
have seen on social media, and I'm sure you thought
of me that AO three, the fan fiction website, was
the victim of a DDoS attack, which is a denial
of service attack. And so I'm bringing back this this
episode that is about fan fiction and AO three specifically,
(00:49):
and I thought I would also update two because now
since recording this, I have published fan fiction on AO three,
So now I know there's a section in there where
I was talking about something that I had never done before.
Now I know it, Okay, So I think it was
July tenth. July tenth is when AO three went down.
(01:12):
This is terrible news for me and many people who
read fan fiction. It is one of the biggest, if
not the biggest, fan fiction website. It is run by volunteers.
It is a five on one three c.
Speaker 3 (01:25):
My partner yesterday was like, oh it went down, did
you take on Annie? I was like, oh, yes, I
texted her yesterday or the day before yesterday. I made
sure she was alive.
Speaker 1 (01:37):
Is my coping mechanism being taken away?
Speaker 2 (01:40):
There has been a lot of confusion about what happened.
It is back up as we record this, which is
July twelfth. July twelfth, and thank you to all the
volunteers that did that, because it is YEAP run by volunteers,
so they were the ones that were having to figure
out a solution. But there was a lot of discussion
(02:01):
around like who was behind it and all the confusion
around who's behind it. There was a lot of talk
about it being a religious political group, but it seems
that it was yes, Russian hackers doing it and the
(02:21):
people communicating about it at at because it was like
they have a Twitter where you can monitor the status
if something is wrong. They have a tumbler where you
can monitor if something's wrong, and they were very open that,
like the people who are taking claim for this were
being told didn't do it.
Speaker 1 (02:38):
That's what the cybersecurity people are telling us.
Speaker 2 (02:41):
But it was funny because Samantha and I were just
talking about like it was a horrible for me and
my friends who read fan fiction, It was a horrible
like thirty ish hours. But it was funny because they've
attacked this group or who they proclaimed to be, has
attacked big companies, like really big companies, and they came
(03:03):
for AO three. So I feel like that means AO
three has made it, has made it mainstream.
Speaker 1 (03:13):
It was trending. It's so odd.
Speaker 3 (03:16):
Again, Like I said, if it weren't for you, literally
just you, I would have never known about what I
would be like. It's that who was this and the
fact that they don't profit off of anything and they're
not a corporate any entity. I'm like, what what is happening?
Speaker 2 (03:32):
Right? I mean, it was not a good thing. I'm
really angry about it. It was said because that there's
queer content on there, and when I like joke about
there are articles written within the past decade that are
fearmongering around fan fiction from the US, I am not
kidding like people like to say, it's like terrifying that
(03:54):
young girls especially are writing about sucks or whatever, especially
queer sex.
Speaker 1 (03:58):
Because I was thinking about it.
Speaker 2 (04:00):
Even stories where the main couples are straight, there's almost
always a queer couple in there. There's almost always some
queer element in there. It is a very queer space.
But that was the reason this group gave for attacking
AO three was basically like, it's a blasphemous queer space.
But when you texted me to check in, the thing
I kind of half jokingly texted back was my PDFs.
(04:23):
This is why I don'tload the PDFs, which I'm like
the only person I know that does that. But you
can download fan fiction to read later or offline PDF.
I usually do it because I'm afraid they'll delete it later,
because you can, you know, maybe one day you're like,
oh no, that thing I wrote when I was fifteen,
I don't want that up anymore.
Speaker 1 (04:42):
And that's fair enough, so I download the PDF. But
I was thinking about it.
Speaker 2 (04:47):
The reason AO three exists at all is because Tumblr
started just erasing fan fiction on their platform without warning,
without like any reason, and so people were like, we
need an archive of our own.
Speaker 1 (05:02):
It's the name.
Speaker 2 (05:04):
But I was thinking about it, and it reminded me
of what we talked about in our fanzine episode, where
now they're trying to upload all of these things from
fanzines that.
Speaker 1 (05:14):
Would be lost otherwise.
Speaker 2 (05:16):
I was like, what if i'm I'm I have to
be a part of the rebuilding because I have all
these meds that I could upload the.
Speaker 1 (05:25):
Luckily it never came to that. And that's not what
a deitya. She comes in with a save.
Speaker 3 (05:31):
Oh, it's kind of like that Toy story story where
they erased all the data, but someone had gone on
maternity leave and she had like a hard copy of it,
and she was the one that saved the entire movie.
Speaker 1 (05:42):
I don't remember this, but yeah, I remember this.
Speaker 3 (05:45):
Yes, I remember this.
Speaker 2 (05:46):
Yes, I mean fingers crossed. That is not what a
d DOS attack does. It wouldn't have debleted like everything
they have. But I had the thought, basically, it's just
like being overwhel by bots. There are some people, but
it prevents others from logging in or using the website
(06:07):
at all. And it did have a whole message that
was popping up that was like weird under addo as
attack the world'll be back, don't worry.
Speaker 1 (06:16):
I was like, no, I'm worried.
Speaker 2 (06:20):
One day I will come back, and I'll because it's
still the desk is still kind of settling around this
and figuring out just what happened and who was behind
it and everything. Another thing that happened in the wake
of this was a lot of discussion around what we're
seeing with book banning and what happens if that goes
(06:41):
into a more online space, and there have been some
proposed legislations around specifically protecting kids, some in good faith
and some and very bad faith, especially when it comes
around queer content and trans content and what that could
look like. So that's something that we need to look
out for and it is very scary. But I wanted
(07:03):
to give a quick update to on so in here
I was talking about archive warnings and I'd never used
them before as a writer from the writer's side, and
one of the things they're trying to fix is by
adding another archive warning for racism. So essentially archive warnings
(07:25):
when you are going to post a story, and I
know I talk about it in here, but I'm just
gonna come. Now that I've used it, I feel much
more comfortable and I know what I'm talking about. When
you publish a story, one of the first things you
have to fill out is archive warnings, and so you
can choose not to have them, but it will tell
then every reader will know like the author chose not
(07:48):
to use archive warnings. And the archive warnings are big
things like as we talked about rape and non con
non consent, so you have to say like that that's
in there underage any underage contents and then uh like
major character death things like that, and so people are
(08:10):
really pushing to add racism to that. That has to
be a thing that is in the archive morning so
and I've seen they just had their their big elections
and they are I've seen movement in that and talking
about that.
Speaker 1 (08:23):
So that's good. But now I feel I know what
that is much.
Speaker 2 (08:27):
Better now that I've done it, and it is it
does feel like very I just want all my readers
to have a good time, and it feels like so
special to be like, here's what I have to I
don't want something to upset you without you knowing it.
So you do have to be really mindful about the
tags and the tagging. But yeah, that's my update. I
(08:51):
have so much I have so much fan fiction to
catch up on, Samantha.
Speaker 1 (08:55):
Everyone's like publishing now.
Speaker 3 (08:58):
That's the first thing you said to me, yes yesterday.
Speaker 2 (09:01):
I know, I know it was exciting because I started
getting comments on my work because I published on Sunday,
and that was like right when it was happening.
Speaker 1 (09:09):
I was like, something's amiss, and I wasn't getting any
of my usual comments. But now they're rolling in. As
long as they're rolling in.
Speaker 2 (09:18):
Well they're rolling in all right, So I know, you know,
I love to talk about fan fiction. I'm sure I
will come back and revisit this when I have more details,
but in the meantime, please enjoy this classic episode.
Speaker 1 (09:35):
Hey, this is Sanny and Samantha. I'm welcome to Stefan.
Speaker 2 (09:38):
Never told your protection of iHeartRadio, and today we are
doing one that is very near and dear.
Speaker 1 (09:52):
To my heart.
Speaker 3 (09:53):
Well it is your birthday week, even though as we're
recording it's not, but coming upon it as if the
listeners are less to it. It is Annie's birthday week,
so we must do all things Annie loves an. I
was thinking that we needed a whole week.
Speaker 1 (10:07):
Of Annie's favorite things. I don't want to do it
that way, but you.
Speaker 2 (10:11):
Know, I feel like this month has had a lot
of topics that are some of my favorite things.
Speaker 1 (10:15):
So true as it should be.
Speaker 2 (10:18):
As it should be, So hopefully you're enjoying all of
the nerd gum and nerdery so much. And Samantha and
I were discussing before this. I think we've said before
how we generally when we do these episodes, somebody will
take the lead and do the research and write it
out and then we kind of split who says what.
But there are some topics that it just feels so
obvious that I'm the one that probably wrote this one.
Speaker 3 (10:41):
Well, the title you have for this, and I don't
know if we're using it is a love letter to
fan fiction. Yeah, I think we know whose love letter
it is. Fun Like, it's kind of obvious, it's true.
Speaker 1 (10:52):
It's true.
Speaker 2 (10:52):
So I once again, I'm going to be talking a lot,
and Samantha's going to be supporting me and perhaps asking questions.
Speaker 1 (11:00):
There is confusion. Yes, that's what I love about you.
Speaker 2 (11:04):
However, you did reveal right before this you had a
live journal, and I want to come back and revisit this.
Speaker 1 (11:08):
At a later date, later times.
Speaker 2 (11:11):
Yes, because I have quite a lot to say about
fan fiction. As it turns out, surprice no one. And
actually this one could have been longer. So it's a
Monday mini and I tried to limit myself, but it's
already quite long, all right, So yes, today we are
this is a love letter to one of the loves
of my life, which is fan fiction, and we are
going to be focusing specifically on AO three or Archive
(11:34):
of our Own, which is my current favorite fan fiction site,
though I grew up on fanfiction dot net, which is
still around as well. And also I wanted to shout
out a recent article that gave me this idea from
The Verge written by j Costello called Archive of Our
Owns fifteen year journey from blog post to fan fiction powerhouse.
AO three, by the way, is not a sponsor. It's
(11:55):
also a nonprofit, so I doubt they wouldn't be a sponsor,
but you know sometimes and you can see our episodes
on dub Con and fan fiction I think specifically dub
Con for this one actually, all right, So, according to
this article, the first stirrings of what would become Archive
of our Own OREO three started in two thousand and
seven when fanfic authors, who again are mostly women and
(12:17):
marginalized folks, saw some efforts from companies created by men
to capitalize on the space. One such company was called
fan lib, a commercialized fan content site that eventually garnered
about twenty five thousand members, but also a whole bunch
of criticism from people who had been writing fan fiction
for free in this space four years and felt like
(12:41):
these outsiders were coming in and making money off of
stuff that they always offered for free. And a part
of the whole thing that keeps people from being sued
from writing fan fiction is that they aren't making money.
So I'm kind of confused by that. Then we're going
to talk about that a little bit more later, because
apparently it's not as a big deal. I was taught
(13:01):
that you might be sued at any minute, but yeah,
one of the big things is I'm not making any money.
Don't come at me, Disney, right, all right. So seeing
this kind of commercialization attempt, A published author both of
more traditional stuff and fan fiction named Naomi Novic wrote
on live journal, which was and still is space rife
(13:23):
and growing with fan fiction, wrote in two thousand and seven,
we are sitting quietly by the fireside, creating piles and
piles of content around us, and other people are going
to look at that and see an opportunity. The people
behind fanly but don't actually care about fanfic the fanfit
community are anything except making money off content created entirely
by other people and getting media attention. They don't have
(13:46):
a single fanfic reader or writer on their board. They
don't even have a single woman on their board. We
need a central archive of our own, and so only
a few months later, the nonprofit the Organization of Transformative
Works was formed with a goal of preserving fan works
and advocating for them as well. And Archive of Our
(14:08):
Own was launched in two thousand and nine, which is
a part of the Organization of Transformative Works are OTW
and has become just about the biggest and well known,
most well known name and fan fiction. However, as Costello
details in the article, Novic starts the story about a
decade earlier, in nineteen ninety seven, and yes, I remember
(14:30):
it well, that's about what I was, you know. I
was coming up reading fan fiction and the fan fiction
sites at that time, where they were spread out, they
often didn't work well.
Speaker 1 (14:39):
Or at all, I remember, just like wonky.
Speaker 2 (14:43):
Text, like how it was laid out, would be very
difficult to read. And sometimes these whole sites would break
and it would lose people's.
Speaker 1 (14:51):
Works forever, just devastating.
Speaker 2 (14:54):
Novic was a self taught programmer and a fan fiction
reader who was seeing all of this happened to her friends,
and so to help, Novic brought some Pearl scripts and
it was through this she eventually got the idea of
what was important when it came to archiving, which eventually
these ideas made it their way to AO three things
(15:16):
like highly searchable pages, all the tags you could ask for,
and easily understandable recommendation functions. So, once familiarized with scripting
and coding, Novic started running a holiday fan fiction exchange
in two thousand and three, which Samath has been around
and I've like reaped the benefits of these exchanges.
Speaker 1 (15:35):
Oh yes, oh yes.
Speaker 2 (15:37):
It's sort of like a Secret Santa for fan fiction
where authors will usually there's a prompt and authors will
assign get assigned one of another author in the group,
and they write a story for that author. And it
means that like one Friday night, one hundred stories are posted.
Speaker 1 (15:54):
So it's excellent, excellent, Oh it is. I love it.
I love it.
Speaker 2 (15:59):
Through the Novic really made a name for herself and
the fan fiction community, and she recounts how people started
volunteering to help her, meaning she pretty much never worked alone.
Speaker 1 (16:11):
At this point.
Speaker 2 (16:12):
Novic said, after a while, the community you keep around yourself.
Are the people who are reliable, who care enough about
fandom that fandom is a way of life, that are
willing to invest some time, not just in reading the
stories and writing the stories, but in the building of
the infrastructure. Two of the people Novic worked with were
an English performance and fan study scholar named Francesca Copa
(16:33):
and a legal scholar and former clerk for the Supreme Court,
Rebecca Tushnet. Both were highly engaged in fandom's future and
the legality of fan fiction and fan works, and on
top of that, how fan fiction was perceived, as discussed
(17:03):
in our past fan fiction episodes. While now people write
articles about their favorite fan fiction their recommendations.
Speaker 1 (17:10):
If you like this, go read this.
Speaker 2 (17:12):
You can find TikTok recommendations about fan fiction. Big movies
mention fan fiction, embrace it. When I was growing up
reading it, oh no, you did not talk about your
fan fiction. You won't be the case like your older brother.
You're reading fan fiction, you try to hide it. You
had like you, select group of friends that knew who
(17:34):
and they also read it, and the articles being written
about it were not kind at the time.
Speaker 1 (17:38):
They were deriding it and even whipping up.
Speaker 2 (17:42):
Fear mongering around it, like why our young girls writing
ever wrote a And also, yes, you'll get sued, you're
wasting your time, Why don't you do something original? All
that stuff, and yeah, historically it had been like this
for a long way, going back to the eighteen hundreds,
when religious people were worried about women writing fan.
Speaker 1 (18:01):
Fiction with any romantic or sexual content.
Speaker 2 (18:05):
They were these women were not upstanding and maybe even possessed.
So long time we felt like this as a society,
and a big part of this fear or derision, as
recounted in the article and as I can personally attest to,
was homophobia and sexism, specifically, like a real fear of
(18:26):
women's sexuality, since fan fiction is pretty queer, it's a
pretty queer space dominated by women. Kappa recalls receiving frantic
emails from authors word they'd lose their jobs if their
boss found out that they wrote fan fiction. One example
Kappa gave was from a woman who wrote, I'm going
through a divorce and my husband is going to take
(18:47):
my fick and tell the judge I'm an unfit mother
and try to take my children. How fast can you
make me disappear from the internet? Coppa also shared her
own anxieties about fandom and being asked if there was
fiction about Kirk and Spock having sex like a lot
of times when she would appear to talk about it,
that was like the thing people asked, to which she
remembers responding essentially, yep, you should go read it. She
(19:11):
herself had nightmares about losing her job over fan fiction,
and I have too, because I thought I accidentally gave
a whole flash drive of my fan fiction to a coworker.
I won't say, but I spent like a year twisting
and turning at night thinking about this.
Speaker 1 (19:31):
I was gonna kill you long. I'm still scared.
Speaker 2 (19:35):
I don't know the answer for sure, but I've kind
of come to peace with it, like I can't worry
about this any longer. But then I was afraid, like
what if he never saw it but he lost a flaship.
And then someone else saw it and they put it
up and they were like, look what this deprived girl
is writing. She's oh, gosh, it's a real fear.
Speaker 1 (20:00):
Yes.
Speaker 2 (20:00):
And then meanwhile, Tushnet was one of the first who
was outspoken in defending fan fiction on the legal side,
maintaining that almost all of it was completely legal because
this was I'm telling you at the time, everybody would
put like a disclaimer at the top, like this is
owned by Disney, I'm only playing in their sandbox and
you don't make any money. Please don't see Like people
(20:22):
every van fiction had something like that top.
Speaker 1 (20:25):
We were very scared about getting sued or something.
Speaker 2 (20:29):
So all of this came together with fan lib acting
as a catalyst in two thousand and seven. And as
I've discussed before, one of the beautiful things about fan
fiction is the community around it, and Novic and Kappa,
along with many others, have been a part of the
building and cultivating this fandom.
Speaker 1 (20:46):
And they weren't just gonna let FANLB and the like
come in.
Speaker 2 (20:49):
And erase that COPA said, I'm in a fandom where
somebody is hurt and another fan drives two states over
to help. And so there was a sense of urgency
that we had to build something before somebody else, something
shiny that would make new people who've come to fandom think, oh,
that's what fandom is. Another catalyst. Not long after Novac's
original two thousand and seven post live journals suddenly and
(21:13):
permanently suspended over five hundred accounts that made some kind
of mention around sexual content, and they did this without
warning to accounts that did nothing illegal and did not
violate live journal's terms. They didn't give any consistent reason why.
The CEO even called the whole thing a total mess
and promised to reinstate those wrongfully banned. But surprise, surprise,
(21:35):
a few months later, the same thing happened with even
more bands going through. And this was a major cause
for concern for fan communities when people or whole groups
could get banned without warning, and fanfiction dot Net had
a similar issue, so on new space was needed. Originally,
Novic had said she wasn't interested in building the archive herself,
(21:58):
but so many people reached out to her wanting to help,
but unclear on what to do. I'm sure of how
to organize, so Novac changed her mind. She decided on
a nonprofit to protect it from being sold if founders
ever moved on and or wanted to sell. Fan lib
itself was purchased by Disney and shut down almost a
year after beta testing, So that's what they were trying
(22:19):
to prevent. Through years of running events both online and off,
with participants the world over, of coding. Novac had a
lot of the necessary skills and knew people who had
the ones she didn't. All kinds of volunteers stepped up
with experience in law, server maintenance, design, accessibility, coding, design,
all kinds of things.
Speaker 1 (22:38):
I said design twice.
Speaker 2 (22:38):
It's very important because fans are everywhere and do everything.
In the words of Copa, fangirls do absolutely every job
there is. The founding members of the team put together
coding programs so that people who wanted to learn to
code could They had an avenue to do so. People,
(23:00):
mostly women, recount doing this and having fun in a
space they may have never entered or thought that they
couldn't do it or intimidated by it. They join with
friends and then go on to train others so that
the community could support itself. And because it was built
by volunteers who are fans, it was built around their feedback.
(23:20):
The tagging system, which is one of my absolute favorite things.
Speaker 1 (23:23):
For instance, it's so good, it's so good, they're so creative.
Speaker 2 (23:29):
So basically, if an author wants to tag a thing
in a way that might not be how a reader
searches for it, but it is the same thing. They
should end up wrangling to the same story. So they
are these people called tag wranglers. And so if I
type in sad murder Dad and Star Wars fan fiction,
(23:51):
but it's really just sad Darth Vader exactly, it should
still bring me to that story even if it's not
tagged sad murder Dad. People who worked on this the
tagging system understandably feel really proud of it, including founding
member Michelle Tepper, who told Verge, I actually have saved
on my phone the tag page for feels I E.
Speaker 1 (24:13):
Emotional stories.
Speaker 2 (24:15):
You can just scroll through and see all the different
version of feels. Feels exclamation part, all the fields, so
many feels. I'm like, this is the greatest thing I
have ever helped make happen in my career.
Speaker 1 (24:27):
She worked for MTV and BBC.
Speaker 3 (24:29):
By the way, I mean, I we used to say
that as a kid, all the fields.
Speaker 1 (24:34):
Oh, I have to feel all the fields.
Speaker 3 (24:36):
That was a common phrase I used in high school
and hot college for real.
Speaker 1 (24:40):
So Who's spying on me?
Speaker 2 (24:44):
Archive of our Own is all about getting to use Samantha.
Speaker 1 (24:48):
The truth comes out.
Speaker 2 (25:04):
And then Lucy Pearson, who was originally a volunteer in
one of the coding initiatives and moved on to become
the chair of the Accessibility, Design and Technology Committee. Said
of the experience, it was really quite exhilarating coming in
on the coding side and doing something that I'd never
even really considered doing before. It really made me rethink
who I was and what I could do. So with
(25:26):
all of this work and organizing, AO three went into
alpha in two thousand and nine.
Speaker 1 (25:32):
The launch wasn't without problems.
Speaker 2 (25:34):
For one, they realized they didn't have a real way
to invite people to join. People worked around the clock
over Christmas holidays that year after they ran Novic's Holiday
fan fiction Exchange on AO three and it involved people
around the world and did result in a lot of
burnout in their early days. On top of that, because
it was developed by mostly white, mostly middle class, and
(25:54):
mostly American Western women, some of that biases went into
the programming and that has been a time topic of
much discussion and debate lately. And yes, it's something we
always have to keep in mind with technology around AO
three d's policies and handling of concerns of people of color.
So basically, there's three tags. Oh, there's three tags. That
(26:14):
you have to tag no matter what. And one of them,
as we talked about in con is rape or are
non consensual. But right now racism isn't one. So that's
one of the pushes is to get that as one.
In twenty twenty, a group of scholars and fans wrote
the OTW a letter reading, in part, we strongly urged
the board to take immediate steps to help make fandom
a space where all fans, particularly black, indigenous, and ethnically
(26:37):
marginalized fans from all over the globe can thrive. In response,
AO three launch functionalities like blocking users when locked in
and turning off comments, But still many on the board
lam meant how slow it is to change and how
there are still pages up from two thousand and nine.
The perception of fan fiction, however, has changed quite a bit.
One of the board members was on a Wizcom panel
(27:00):
soon after AO three launch called fanfic a threat or menace.
It was scheduled at ten thirty at night, and a
part of the description asked if fan fiction should be
quote accepted as a legitimate creative activity. A decade later,
that same board member appeared at the same conference on
a PACK panel in the middle of the day, explaining
to people's shock they had not always been welcomed at
this convention. Time magazine named AO three one of the
(27:23):
best websites in twenty thirteen, and it won a Hugo
Award in twenty nineteen. Copa's university, the one she'd been
afraid of being fired from for writing fan fiction, put
her picture on the front page. A part of their
success was their ability to lessen the fear of lawsuits. So,
as I said, in the early days, you would be
scared these big companies were to show up at your door.
(27:45):
You'd get in huge trouble and you'd have to explain
your fan fiction in front of people.
Speaker 1 (27:48):
I like the legal setting. Yeah, they've been.
Speaker 2 (27:50):
Able to lessen that fear, which is allowed fan fiction
to strive even more. Something else is the community. Yeah, Ultimately,
that keeps it running. That's what keeps it running. It's
why there are no ads. Geek culture at large is changing,
and more women in marginalized folks are claiming their space.
People who worked on and in some cases continue to
work on E three warn that we're still seeing bands
(28:13):
like what Happened on live Journal that in part spurred
all of this on other platforms, and then I just
wanted to mention this is something else. Samantha gets random
text for me about they have donation weeks and it
is wild. They have a goal of like fifty thousand
and they'll raise five hundred thousand and no time. And
so I donated to the last one and I got
(28:35):
these really cool cards that have a different fan fiction
trope on all of them, a different tag.
Speaker 1 (28:39):
I love them, and I also love this story.
Speaker 2 (28:43):
It's what we often talk about when Bridget comes on
women in marginalized folks teaching themselves, making spaces on the
internet for themselves when they don't see them or feel
threatened by like male.
Speaker 1 (28:54):
Capitalist dudes coming in.
Speaker 2 (28:56):
And yes, there are still problems to be addressed, absolutely
changes to be made to make sure it is as
inclusive as it can be, as beautiful as I know
it can be, and so that it can continue to
grow and thrive and be this space that I am.
So it has given me so much and I want
to make sure it's this So anyway, thank you, thank you,
thank you for letting me share this story. It was
(29:18):
a bit long, but but I just I really I
didn't know this as somebody who uses this website every
day and I thought it was a great story.
Speaker 1 (29:28):
So listeners as always.
Speaker 2 (29:31):
If you want to share your favorite fan fiction sites
or your favorite fan fiction, that would be great.
Speaker 1 (29:38):
You are your favorite tags, that'd be great.
Speaker 2 (29:40):
You can email us at SEFFIDM, mom Stuff at heurtneia
dot com. You can find us on Twitter at mom
Stuff podcast or on Instagram at stuff I Never Told You.
Speaker 1 (29:46):
Thanks as always to our super producer Christina. Thank you Christina,
and thanks to you for listening. Stuff I Never Told
You is protiction of my Heart Radio.
Speaker 2 (29:53):
For more podcasts from my Heart Radio, you can visit
the Ihart Radio app, Apple Podcast, orhever you listen to
your favorite shows.
Hey, this is Annie and Samantha, and welcome to Stefan.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
Never told you a protection of iHeartRadio, And today I
am bringing back a pretty recent one. We try to
wait a year at least before we bring a classic back.
But you might have seen on the news, you might
(00:28):
have seen on social media, and I'm sure you thought
of me that AO three, the fan fiction website, was
the victim of a DDoS attack, which is a denial
of service attack. And so I'm bringing back this this
episode that is about fan fiction and AO three specifically,
(00:49):
and I thought I would also update two because now
since recording this, I have published fan fiction on AO three,
So now I know there's a section in there where
I was talking about something that I had never done before.
Now I know it, Okay, So I think it was
July tenth. July tenth is when AO three went down.
(01:12):
This is terrible news for me and many people who
read fan fiction. It is one of the biggest, if
not the biggest, fan fiction website. It is run by volunteers.
It is a five on one three c.
Speaker 3 (01:25):
My partner yesterday was like, oh it went down, did
you take on Annie? I was like, oh, yes, I
texted her yesterday or the day before yesterday. I made
sure she was alive.
Speaker 1 (01:37):
Is my coping mechanism being taken away?
Speaker 2 (01:40):
There has been a lot of confusion about what happened.
It is back up as we record this, which is
July twelfth. July twelfth, and thank you to all the
volunteers that did that, because it is YEAP run by volunteers,
so they were the ones that were having to figure
out a solution. But there was a lot of discussion
(02:01):
around like who was behind it and all the confusion
around who's behind it. There was a lot of talk
about it being a religious political group, but it seems
that it was yes, Russian hackers doing it and the
(02:21):
people communicating about it at at because it was like
they have a Twitter where you can monitor the status
if something is wrong. They have a tumbler where you
can monitor if something's wrong, and they were very open that,
like the people who are taking claim for this were
being told didn't do it.
Speaker 1 (02:38):
That's what the cybersecurity people are telling us.
Speaker 2 (02:41):
But it was funny because Samantha and I were just
talking about like it was a horrible for me and
my friends who read fan fiction, It was a horrible
like thirty ish hours. But it was funny because they've
attacked this group or who they proclaimed to be, has
attacked big companies, like really big companies, and they came
(03:03):
for AO three. So I feel like that means AO
three has made it, has made it mainstream.
Speaker 1 (03:13):
It was trending. It's so odd.
Speaker 3 (03:16):
Again, Like I said, if it weren't for you, literally
just you, I would have never known about what I
would be like. It's that who was this and the
fact that they don't profit off of anything and they're
not a corporate any entity. I'm like, what what is happening?
Speaker 2 (03:32):
Right? I mean, it was not a good thing. I'm
really angry about it. It was said because that there's
queer content on there, and when I like joke about
there are articles written within the past decade that are
fearmongering around fan fiction from the US, I am not
kidding like people like to say, it's like terrifying that
(03:54):
young girls especially are writing about sucks or whatever, especially
queer sex.
Speaker 1 (03:58):
Because I was thinking about it.
Speaker 2 (04:00):
Even stories where the main couples are straight, there's almost
always a queer couple in there. There's almost always some
queer element in there. It is a very queer space.
But that was the reason this group gave for attacking
AO three was basically like, it's a blasphemous queer space.
But when you texted me to check in, the thing
I kind of half jokingly texted back was my PDFs.
(04:23):
This is why I don'tload the PDFs, which I'm like
the only person I know that does that. But you
can download fan fiction to read later or offline PDF.
I usually do it because I'm afraid they'll delete it later,
because you can, you know, maybe one day you're like,
oh no, that thing I wrote when I was fifteen,
I don't want that up anymore.
Speaker 1 (04:42):
And that's fair enough, so I download the PDF. But
I was thinking about it.
Speaker 2 (04:47):
The reason AO three exists at all is because Tumblr
started just erasing fan fiction on their platform without warning,
without like any reason, and so people were like, we
need an archive of our own.
Speaker 1 (05:02):
It's the name.
Speaker 2 (05:04):
But I was thinking about it, and it reminded me
of what we talked about in our fanzine episode, where
now they're trying to upload all of these things from
fanzines that.
Speaker 1 (05:14):
Would be lost otherwise.
Speaker 2 (05:16):
I was like, what if i'm I'm I have to
be a part of the rebuilding because I have all
these meds that I could upload the.
Speaker 1 (05:25):
Luckily it never came to that. And that's not what
a deitya. She comes in with a save.
Speaker 3 (05:31):
Oh, it's kind of like that Toy story story where
they erased all the data, but someone had gone on
maternity leave and she had like a hard copy of it,
and she was the one that saved the entire movie.
Speaker 1 (05:42):
I don't remember this, but yeah, I remember this.
Speaker 3 (05:45):
Yes, I remember this.
Speaker 2 (05:46):
Yes, I mean fingers crossed. That is not what a
d DOS attack does. It wouldn't have debleted like everything
they have. But I had the thought, basically, it's just
like being overwhel by bots. There are some people, but
it prevents others from logging in or using the website
(06:07):
at all. And it did have a whole message that
was popping up that was like weird under addo as
attack the world'll be back, don't worry.
Speaker 1 (06:16):
I was like, no, I'm worried.
Speaker 2 (06:20):
One day I will come back, and I'll because it's
still the desk is still kind of settling around this
and figuring out just what happened and who was behind
it and everything. Another thing that happened in the wake
of this was a lot of discussion around what we're
seeing with book banning and what happens if that goes
(06:41):
into a more online space, and there have been some
proposed legislations around specifically protecting kids, some in good faith
and some and very bad faith, especially when it comes
around queer content and trans content and what that could
look like. So that's something that we need to look
out for and it is very scary. But I wanted
(07:03):
to give a quick update to on so in here
I was talking about archive warnings and I'd never used
them before as a writer from the writer's side, and
one of the things they're trying to fix is by
adding another archive warning for racism. So essentially archive warnings
(07:25):
when you are going to post a story, and I
know I talk about it in here, but I'm just
gonna come. Now that I've used it, I feel much
more comfortable and I know what I'm talking about. When
you publish a story, one of the first things you
have to fill out is archive warnings, and so you
can choose not to have them, but it will tell
then every reader will know like the author chose not
(07:48):
to use archive warnings. And the archive warnings are big
things like as we talked about rape and non con
non consent, so you have to say like that that's
in there underage any underage contents and then uh like
major character death things like that, and so people are
(08:10):
really pushing to add racism to that. That has to
be a thing that is in the archive morning so
and I've seen they just had their their big elections
and they are I've seen movement in that and talking
about that.
Speaker 1 (08:23):
So that's good. But now I feel I know what
that is much.
Speaker 2 (08:27):
Better now that I've done it, and it is it
does feel like very I just want all my readers
to have a good time, and it feels like so
special to be like, here's what I have to I
don't want something to upset you without you knowing it.
So you do have to be really mindful about the
tags and the tagging. But yeah, that's my update. I
(08:51):
have so much I have so much fan fiction to
catch up on, Samantha.
Speaker 1 (08:55):
Everyone's like publishing now.
Speaker 3 (08:58):
That's the first thing you said to me, yes yesterday.
Speaker 2 (09:01):
I know, I know it was exciting because I started
getting comments on my work because I published on Sunday,
and that was like right when it was happening.
Speaker 1 (09:09):
I was like, something's amiss, and I wasn't getting any
of my usual comments. But now they're rolling in. As
long as they're rolling in.
Speaker 2 (09:18):
Well they're rolling in all right, So I know, you know,
I love to talk about fan fiction. I'm sure I
will come back and revisit this when I have more details,
but in the meantime, please enjoy this classic episode.
Speaker 1 (09:35):
Hey, this is Sanny and Samantha. I'm welcome to Stefan.
Speaker 2 (09:38):
Never told your protection of iHeartRadio, and today we are
doing one that is very near and dear.
Speaker 1 (09:52):
To my heart.
Speaker 3 (09:53):
Well it is your birthday week, even though as we're
recording it's not, but coming upon it as if the
listeners are less to it. It is Annie's birthday week,
so we must do all things Annie loves an. I
was thinking that we needed a whole week.
Speaker 1 (10:07):
Of Annie's favorite things. I don't want to do it
that way, but you.
Speaker 2 (10:11):
Know, I feel like this month has had a lot
of topics that are some of my favorite things.
Speaker 1 (10:15):
So true as it should be.
Speaker 2 (10:18):
As it should be, So hopefully you're enjoying all of
the nerd gum and nerdery so much. And Samantha and
I were discussing before this. I think we've said before
how we generally when we do these episodes, somebody will
take the lead and do the research and write it
out and then we kind of split who says what.
But there are some topics that it just feels so
obvious that I'm the one that probably wrote this one.
Speaker 3 (10:41):
Well, the title you have for this, and I don't
know if we're using it is a love letter to
fan fiction. Yeah, I think we know whose love letter
it is. Fun Like, it's kind of obvious, it's true.
Speaker 1 (10:52):
It's true.
Speaker 2 (10:52):
So I once again, I'm going to be talking a lot,
and Samantha's going to be supporting me and perhaps asking questions.
Speaker 1 (11:00):
There is confusion. Yes, that's what I love about you.
Speaker 2 (11:04):
However, you did reveal right before this you had a
live journal, and I want to come back and revisit this.
Speaker 1 (11:08):
At a later date, later times.
Speaker 2 (11:11):
Yes, because I have quite a lot to say about
fan fiction. As it turns out, surprice no one. And
actually this one could have been longer. So it's a
Monday mini and I tried to limit myself, but it's
already quite long, all right, So yes, today we are
this is a love letter to one of the loves
of my life, which is fan fiction, and we are
going to be focusing specifically on AO three or Archive
(11:34):
of our Own, which is my current favorite fan fiction site,
though I grew up on fanfiction dot net, which is
still around as well. And also I wanted to shout
out a recent article that gave me this idea from
The Verge written by j Costello called Archive of Our
Owns fifteen year journey from blog post to fan fiction powerhouse.
AO three, by the way, is not a sponsor. It's
(11:55):
also a nonprofit, so I doubt they wouldn't be a sponsor,
but you know sometimes and you can see our episodes
on dub Con and fan fiction I think specifically dub
Con for this one actually, all right, So, according to
this article, the first stirrings of what would become Archive
of our Own OREO three started in two thousand and
seven when fanfic authors, who again are mostly women and
(12:17):
marginalized folks, saw some efforts from companies created by men
to capitalize on the space. One such company was called
fan lib, a commercialized fan content site that eventually garnered
about twenty five thousand members, but also a whole bunch
of criticism from people who had been writing fan fiction
for free in this space four years and felt like
(12:41):
these outsiders were coming in and making money off of
stuff that they always offered for free. And a part
of the whole thing that keeps people from being sued
from writing fan fiction is that they aren't making money.
So I'm kind of confused by that. Then we're going
to talk about that a little bit more later, because
apparently it's not as a big deal. I was taught
(13:01):
that you might be sued at any minute, but yeah,
one of the big things is I'm not making any money.
Don't come at me, Disney, right, all right. So seeing
this kind of commercialization attempt, A published author both of
more traditional stuff and fan fiction named Naomi Novic wrote
on live journal, which was and still is space rife
(13:23):
and growing with fan fiction, wrote in two thousand and seven,
we are sitting quietly by the fireside, creating piles and
piles of content around us, and other people are going
to look at that and see an opportunity. The people
behind fanly but don't actually care about fanfic the fanfit
community are anything except making money off content created entirely
by other people and getting media attention. They don't have
(13:46):
a single fanfic reader or writer on their board. They
don't even have a single woman on their board. We
need a central archive of our own, and so only
a few months later, the nonprofit the Organization of Transformative
Works was formed with a goal of preserving fan works
and advocating for them as well. And Archive of Our
(14:08):
Own was launched in two thousand and nine, which is
a part of the Organization of Transformative Works are OTW
and has become just about the biggest and well known,
most well known name and fan fiction. However, as Costello
details in the article, Novic starts the story about a
decade earlier, in nineteen ninety seven, and yes, I remember
(14:30):
it well, that's about what I was, you know. I
was coming up reading fan fiction and the fan fiction
sites at that time, where they were spread out, they
often didn't work well.
Speaker 1 (14:39):
Or at all, I remember, just like wonky.
Speaker 2 (14:43):
Text, like how it was laid out, would be very
difficult to read. And sometimes these whole sites would break
and it would lose people's.
Speaker 1 (14:51):
Works forever, just devastating.
Speaker 2 (14:54):
Novic was a self taught programmer and a fan fiction
reader who was seeing all of this happened to her friends,
and so to help, Novic brought some Pearl scripts and
it was through this she eventually got the idea of
what was important when it came to archiving, which eventually
these ideas made it their way to AO three things
(15:16):
like highly searchable pages, all the tags you could ask for,
and easily understandable recommendation functions. So, once familiarized with scripting
and coding, Novic started running a holiday fan fiction exchange
in two thousand and three, which Samath has been around
and I've like reaped the benefits of these exchanges.
Speaker 1 (15:35):
Oh yes, oh yes.
Speaker 2 (15:37):
It's sort of like a Secret Santa for fan fiction
where authors will usually there's a prompt and authors will
assign get assigned one of another author in the group,
and they write a story for that author. And it
means that like one Friday night, one hundred stories are posted.
Speaker 1 (15:54):
So it's excellent, excellent, Oh it is. I love it.
I love it.
Speaker 2 (15:59):
Through the Novic really made a name for herself and
the fan fiction community, and she recounts how people started
volunteering to help her, meaning she pretty much never worked alone.
Speaker 1 (16:11):
At this point.
Speaker 2 (16:12):
Novic said, after a while, the community you keep around yourself.
Are the people who are reliable, who care enough about
fandom that fandom is a way of life, that are
willing to invest some time, not just in reading the
stories and writing the stories, but in the building of
the infrastructure. Two of the people Novic worked with were
an English performance and fan study scholar named Francesca Copa
(16:33):
and a legal scholar and former clerk for the Supreme Court,
Rebecca Tushnet. Both were highly engaged in fandom's future and
the legality of fan fiction and fan works, and on
top of that, how fan fiction was perceived, as discussed
(17:03):
in our past fan fiction episodes. While now people write
articles about their favorite fan fiction their recommendations.
Speaker 1 (17:10):
If you like this, go read this.
Speaker 2 (17:12):
You can find TikTok recommendations about fan fiction. Big movies
mention fan fiction, embrace it. When I was growing up
reading it, oh no, you did not talk about your
fan fiction. You won't be the case like your older brother.
You're reading fan fiction, you try to hide it. You
had like you, select group of friends that knew who
(17:34):
and they also read it, and the articles being written
about it were not kind at the time.
Speaker 1 (17:38):
They were deriding it and even whipping up.
Speaker 2 (17:42):
Fear mongering around it, like why our young girls writing
ever wrote a And also, yes, you'll get sued, you're
wasting your time, Why don't you do something original? All
that stuff, and yeah, historically it had been like this
for a long way, going back to the eighteen hundreds,
when religious people were worried about women writing fan.
Speaker 1 (18:01):
Fiction with any romantic or sexual content.
Speaker 2 (18:05):
They were these women were not upstanding and maybe even possessed.
So long time we felt like this as a society,
and a big part of this fear or derision, as
recounted in the article and as I can personally attest to,
was homophobia and sexism, specifically, like a real fear of
(18:26):
women's sexuality, since fan fiction is pretty queer, it's a
pretty queer space dominated by women. Kappa recalls receiving frantic
emails from authors word they'd lose their jobs if their
boss found out that they wrote fan fiction. One example
Kappa gave was from a woman who wrote, I'm going
through a divorce and my husband is going to take
(18:47):
my fick and tell the judge I'm an unfit mother
and try to take my children. How fast can you
make me disappear from the internet? Coppa also shared her
own anxieties about fandom and being asked if there was
fiction about Kirk and Spock having sex like a lot
of times when she would appear to talk about it,
that was like the thing people asked, to which she
remembers responding essentially, yep, you should go read it. She
(19:11):
herself had nightmares about losing her job over fan fiction,
and I have too, because I thought I accidentally gave
a whole flash drive of my fan fiction to a coworker.
I won't say, but I spent like a year twisting
and turning at night thinking about this.
Speaker 1 (19:31):
I was gonna kill you long. I'm still scared.
Speaker 2 (19:35):
I don't know the answer for sure, but I've kind
of come to peace with it, like I can't worry
about this any longer. But then I was afraid, like
what if he never saw it but he lost a flaship.
And then someone else saw it and they put it
up and they were like, look what this deprived girl
is writing. She's oh, gosh, it's a real fear.
Speaker 1 (20:00):
Yes.
Speaker 2 (20:00):
And then meanwhile, Tushnet was one of the first who
was outspoken in defending fan fiction on the legal side,
maintaining that almost all of it was completely legal because
this was I'm telling you at the time, everybody would
put like a disclaimer at the top, like this is
owned by Disney, I'm only playing in their sandbox and
you don't make any money. Please don't see Like people
(20:22):
every van fiction had something like that top.
Speaker 1 (20:25):
We were very scared about getting sued or something.
Speaker 2 (20:29):
So all of this came together with fan lib acting
as a catalyst in two thousand and seven. And as
I've discussed before, one of the beautiful things about fan
fiction is the community around it, and Novic and Kappa,
along with many others, have been a part of the
building and cultivating this fandom.
Speaker 1 (20:46):
And they weren't just gonna let FANLB and the like
come in.
Speaker 2 (20:49):
And erase that COPA said, I'm in a fandom where
somebody is hurt and another fan drives two states over
to help. And so there was a sense of urgency
that we had to build something before somebody else, something
shiny that would make new people who've come to fandom think, oh,
that's what fandom is. Another catalyst. Not long after Novac's
original two thousand and seven post live journals suddenly and
(21:13):
permanently suspended over five hundred accounts that made some kind
of mention around sexual content, and they did this without
warning to accounts that did nothing illegal and did not
violate live journal's terms. They didn't give any consistent reason why.
The CEO even called the whole thing a total mess
and promised to reinstate those wrongfully banned. But surprise, surprise,
(21:35):
a few months later, the same thing happened with even
more bands going through. And this was a major cause
for concern for fan communities when people or whole groups
could get banned without warning, and fanfiction dot Net had
a similar issue, so on new space was needed. Originally,
Novic had said she wasn't interested in building the archive herself,
(21:58):
but so many people reached out to her wanting to help,
but unclear on what to do. I'm sure of how
to organize, so Novac changed her mind. She decided on
a nonprofit to protect it from being sold if founders
ever moved on and or wanted to sell. Fan lib
itself was purchased by Disney and shut down almost a
year after beta testing, So that's what they were trying
(22:19):
to prevent. Through years of running events both online and off,
with participants the world over, of coding. Novac had a
lot of the necessary skills and knew people who had
the ones she didn't. All kinds of volunteers stepped up
with experience in law, server maintenance, design, accessibility, coding, design,
all kinds of things.
Speaker 1 (22:38):
I said design twice.
Speaker 2 (22:38):
It's very important because fans are everywhere and do everything.
In the words of Copa, fangirls do absolutely every job
there is. The founding members of the team put together
coding programs so that people who wanted to learn to
code could They had an avenue to do so. People,
(23:00):
mostly women, recount doing this and having fun in a
space they may have never entered or thought that they
couldn't do it or intimidated by it. They join with
friends and then go on to train others so that
the community could support itself. And because it was built
by volunteers who are fans, it was built around their feedback.
(23:20):
The tagging system, which is one of my absolute favorite things.
Speaker 1 (23:23):
For instance, it's so good, it's so good, they're so creative.
Speaker 2 (23:29):
So basically, if an author wants to tag a thing
in a way that might not be how a reader
searches for it, but it is the same thing. They
should end up wrangling to the same story. So they
are these people called tag wranglers. And so if I
type in sad murder Dad and Star Wars fan fiction,
(23:51):
but it's really just sad Darth Vader exactly, it should
still bring me to that story even if it's not
tagged sad murder Dad. People who worked on this the
tagging system understandably feel really proud of it, including founding
member Michelle Tepper, who told Verge, I actually have saved
on my phone the tag page for feels I E.
Speaker 1 (24:13):
Emotional stories.
Speaker 2 (24:15):
You can just scroll through and see all the different
version of feels. Feels exclamation part, all the fields, so
many feels. I'm like, this is the greatest thing I
have ever helped make happen in my career.
Speaker 1 (24:27):
She worked for MTV and BBC.
Speaker 3 (24:29):
By the way, I mean, I we used to say
that as a kid, all the fields.
Speaker 1 (24:34):
Oh, I have to feel all the fields.
Speaker 3 (24:36):
That was a common phrase I used in high school
and hot college for real.
Speaker 1 (24:40):
So Who's spying on me?
Speaker 2 (24:44):
Archive of our Own is all about getting to use Samantha.
Speaker 1 (24:48):
The truth comes out.
Speaker 2 (25:04):
And then Lucy Pearson, who was originally a volunteer in
one of the coding initiatives and moved on to become
the chair of the Accessibility, Design and Technology Committee. Said
of the experience, it was really quite exhilarating coming in
on the coding side and doing something that I'd never
even really considered doing before. It really made me rethink
who I was and what I could do. So with
(25:26):
all of this work and organizing, AO three went into
alpha in two thousand and nine.
Speaker 1 (25:32):
The launch wasn't without problems.
Speaker 2 (25:34):
For one, they realized they didn't have a real way
to invite people to join. People worked around the clock
over Christmas holidays that year after they ran Novic's Holiday
fan fiction Exchange on AO three and it involved people
around the world and did result in a lot of
burnout in their early days. On top of that, because
it was developed by mostly white, mostly middle class, and
(25:54):
mostly American Western women, some of that biases went into
the programming and that has been a time topic of
much discussion and debate lately. And yes, it's something we
always have to keep in mind with technology around AO
three d's policies and handling of concerns of people of color.
So basically, there's three tags. Oh, there's three tags. That
(26:14):
you have to tag no matter what. And one of them,
as we talked about in con is rape or are
non consensual. But right now racism isn't one. So that's
one of the pushes is to get that as one.
In twenty twenty, a group of scholars and fans wrote
the OTW a letter reading, in part, we strongly urged
the board to take immediate steps to help make fandom
a space where all fans, particularly black, indigenous, and ethnically
(26:37):
marginalized fans from all over the globe can thrive. In response,
AO three launch functionalities like blocking users when locked in
and turning off comments, But still many on the board
lam meant how slow it is to change and how
there are still pages up from two thousand and nine.
The perception of fan fiction, however, has changed quite a bit.
One of the board members was on a Wizcom panel
(27:00):
soon after AO three launch called fanfic a threat or menace.
It was scheduled at ten thirty at night, and a
part of the description asked if fan fiction should be
quote accepted as a legitimate creative activity. A decade later,
that same board member appeared at the same conference on
a PACK panel in the middle of the day, explaining
to people's shock they had not always been welcomed at
this convention. Time magazine named AO three one of the
(27:23):
best websites in twenty thirteen, and it won a Hugo
Award in twenty nineteen. Copa's university, the one she'd been
afraid of being fired from for writing fan fiction, put
her picture on the front page. A part of their
success was their ability to lessen the fear of lawsuits. So,
as I said, in the early days, you would be
scared these big companies were to show up at your door.
(27:45):
You'd get in huge trouble and you'd have to explain
your fan fiction in front of people.
Speaker 1 (27:48):
I like the legal setting. Yeah, they've been.
Speaker 2 (27:50):
Able to lessen that fear, which is allowed fan fiction
to strive even more. Something else is the community. Yeah, Ultimately,
that keeps it running. That's what keeps it running. It's
why there are no ads. Geek culture at large is changing,
and more women in marginalized folks are claiming their space.
People who worked on and in some cases continue to
work on E three warn that we're still seeing bands
(28:13):
like what Happened on live Journal that in part spurred
all of this on other platforms, and then I just
wanted to mention this is something else. Samantha gets random
text for me about they have donation weeks and it
is wild. They have a goal of like fifty thousand
and they'll raise five hundred thousand and no time. And
so I donated to the last one and I got
(28:35):
these really cool cards that have a different fan fiction
trope on all of them, a different tag.
Speaker 1 (28:39):
I love them, and I also love this story.
Speaker 2 (28:43):
It's what we often talk about when Bridget comes on
women in marginalized folks teaching themselves, making spaces on the
internet for themselves when they don't see them or feel
threatened by like male.
Speaker 1 (28:54):
Capitalist dudes coming in.
Speaker 2 (28:56):
And yes, there are still problems to be addressed, absolutely
changes to be made to make sure it is as
inclusive as it can be, as beautiful as I know
it can be, and so that it can continue to
grow and thrive and be this space that I am.
So it has given me so much and I want
to make sure it's this So anyway, thank you, thank you,
thank you for letting me share this story. It was
(29:18):
a bit long, but but I just I really I
didn't know this as somebody who uses this website every
day and I thought it was a great story.
Speaker 1 (29:28):
So listeners as always.
Speaker 2 (29:31):
If you want to share your favorite fan fiction sites
or your favorite fan fiction, that would be great.
Speaker 1 (29:38):
You are your favorite tags, that'd be great.
Speaker 2 (29:40):
You can email us at SEFFIDM, mom Stuff at heurtneia
dot com. You can find us on Twitter at mom
Stuff podcast or on Instagram at stuff I Never Told You.
Speaker 1 (29:46):
Thanks as always to our super producer Christina. Thank you Christina,
and thanks to you for listening. Stuff I Never Told
You is protiction of my Heart Radio.
Speaker 2 (29:53):
For more podcasts from my Heart Radio, you can visit
the Ihart Radio app, Apple Podcast, orhever you listen to
your favorite shows.
Stuff Mom Never Told You News
Hosts And Creators
Anney Reese
Samantha McVey
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