August 21, 2021 • 46 mins
Fanfiction is a space dominated by women, and it is often derided as weird, immoral and/or terrifying. In Part one of this two-part classic episode, A & B go over the basics of the world of fanfic.
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Speaker 1 (00:05):
Hey, this is Annie and Samantha. They're welcome to Steph.
I've never told your protection. I heart radio, So Samantha,
I know we've talked about fan fiction a lot, a lot,
A lot a lot. Do you remember the first time
you heard about it and what you thought it was? Okay,
(00:28):
not to sound judg mental, but I don't think i've
thought about it. I knew it existed, but that was it.
That was the end of it. Like I didn't have
a judgment either way. I didn't. I thought, great, do
your thing. I think great, it exists. Oh, I didn't
know how big the world was, and I have learned
more and more and more and more and more about
(00:50):
it as of late. Thanks to you. Holy to you,
like there's no end part like holy to you. I
don't think I've ever gond to anyone else about fan faction.
Oh yeah, I've never talked to anyone else about fan fiction.
Although again I have read things like Twilight, which I
know was fan fiction, and then when she had the
(01:12):
only online available of that specific version, I read it
before it was out, like ten years before it was out.
So I guess I knew existed, didn't know that was
fan fiction. Until later, M yeah, so did that answer
the question? Yeah? Yeah, I mean I try not to
(01:34):
be because I am such a fan fiction evangelist. I
tried very hard not to. Well, actually, every time someone's
like I don't like fan fiction, on my well did
you like this book or did you like this thing?
Because that's correctly fan fiction. And I would argue a
lot of what people think isn't fan fiction, that is
was written by men and a scene as like academic,
(01:55):
whereas if women did the same thing, then it's trashy
and not with your time. I was in seventh grade
the first time I heard a fan fiction, and then
my good friend Katie is the one who introduced it
to me, and she was like, oh my god, you've
got to go. There's so much stuff you can read,
and it's all kinds of stuff, and she was like,
(02:17):
you can read all kinds of parents and stuff. And
I'm like, what about the Yanks? And she's like, there's
so much thanks, Oh, oh my gosh. At the time,
the first fan fiction I ever read was a whole
of the Rings fan fiction and I only had a
certain amount of time on the computer. I think I
tell this story in this episode and it's thirty minutes,
and everything took so long, so I just printed off
(02:38):
the fan fiction seventy two chapters long, huge chapters. It
took forever, like I had to keep replacing things, and
then I whole punched it tied together. Luckily, I loved it,
but it was sad even for me. I will say, um,
that was my first introduction to it, and then I
was in love with it ever since. I've always read
fan fiction. I go through like ebbs and flows of
(02:59):
how much I read, but I've always read it since
then and recently on the trip I took with my
good friends that I've known since we were young to
the beach, there were times where we were all reading
fan fiction, like we're all reading are different hand fiction.
We'd be like, oh, what are you reading this? She'd
say like, oh, Hermione, Draco, whatever, whatever, what are you reading? Oh,
(03:20):
something about like l Frights and Harry Potter, and I'm like,
I'm reading my tragic Luke Skywalker story. And then we'd
go back to silence and reading it was so fun. Yeah,
I could talk about it forever, and I do try
to restrain myself. But speaking of a while back, Virgin
I did a two part fan fiction episode and we've
(03:43):
been mentioning it in reference to a bunch of things lately,
so we thought we would bring them back as classics.
So enjoy part one of our fan fiction Extravaganza. Hello,
this is Annie and this is a Bridget, and you're
listening to stuff Mom never told you, and today it's
(04:16):
finally time, finally, to talk about fan fiction. Finally. It
feels like such a long time coming, It really does, it,
doesn't it. Yeah, I was telling Bridget before this we
started recording. It's just been coming up a lot and
I'm not sure why, but it seemed right. It seemed
like we had to talk about it. And do you
want to have this disclaimer right at the top. We're
(04:39):
totally aware that fandom can be toxic, and it absolutely
can be extremely toxic, and we will touch on elements
of that here in this episode. We're definitely gonna talk
about it more in depth in a future episode. Today,
we're focusing mainly on fan fiction, a little bit of
fan art, but mostly fan fiction. So for folks out
there who don't know what fan fiction is, what is it?
(05:00):
Sometimes called fan fic r f F. Fan fiction is
writing typically done by amateur but not always writers and fans.
Par is the work of other works, usually but not
always works of fiction. So you're kind of in the
fan fiction world. We call it playing in someone else's sandbox.
And if you haven't surmised, I have a lot of
experience with fan fiction. Tell us more about your experience
(05:23):
with fan fiction, Annie, have you ever written any fan fiction?
I have written some fan fiction, probably as soon as
the Internet was available to me. I had a friend
shout out Katie Um who introduced me to fan fiction.
I read mostly Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, some
Star Trek, some X Files. I guess I dabbled all
(05:44):
over the place, but the Harry Potter was my big one.
Later I got into like Supernatural and Star Wars, but
I wrote one for I wrote I think a couple
of Harry Potter ones. I wrote a Star Wars one
that one was the worst, and a Peter Pan one
and a Lord of the Rings one. So yeah, I
have quite a bit of experience. What about you, Bridget
have you ever read any fan fiction? I have not
(06:06):
written any. I have read some. I'm a I'm I
guess you could call me an appreciatory. I think I
think it's cool that people express themselves via fan fiction
and fan art. I think fandom is cool. I feel
a bit left out of nerd fandom because I am
solidly like, not in the mix on most of it,
except for X files fandom maybe like xpils a lot
(06:26):
um so there are a few things, but for the
most part, I feel a bit left out of like
nerdy sci fi fantasy fandom, but I am a major
appreciator of it. From afar, Yes, I'm a fandom fan
because I think I am just fascinated by folks who
express their love of different things via art and cosplay
(06:47):
and meticulous recreations and you know, expanding on a universe
to make it, you know, what they want to see.
I think that's really cool. So I'm you can call
me a fandom fanom fan fiction about fanom fiction would uh.
Doing the research on this episode, while being one of
the most delightful experiences of research I've ever ever gotten
(07:07):
to do luckily for work, also made me appreciate fan
fiction a lot more. It made me respected a lot more.
So we we've touched on fandoms. Fan fiction is made
up of fandoms. Like books, TV shows, movies. You can't
even have real person fiction r p F as it's
sometimes called based on celebrities. And I know some of
our how Stuff Works colleagues have featured in some fan fiction.
(07:28):
Maybe we have bridget. I don't know. Is there any
bridget fan fiction there could be? I love to read it.
Here's a challenge for you. Pretty much anything you can imagine.
But one misconception to get out of the way right
up front is fan fiction is not full on adoration
of whatever fandom. Often it's a critique and or subversive
and almost always pushing past boundaries and breaking rules. We've
(07:50):
talked about the barrier gage trope before. Fan fiction was
a place for people to course correct tropes like that,
to find representation in fandoms they loved, but we're vastly
nordon or to write that representation themselves. It was a
place for l g b t q I stories that
were anonymous and where you were generally accepted. This is
actually where some of my fandom fandom comes in. I
(08:13):
really enjoy reading kind of lgbt q I reimaginings of
different stories. I definitely read some Good Gilmore Girls fan
fiction wherein do you ever watch Gilmore Girls? Okay, so
I've seen every episode twice, multiple times, usually more than twice.
But it was a pretty Actually I didn't really like
the show towards the end, but I kept watching it.
(08:35):
But one of the characters on the show Rory. She
has one of those sort of three main boyfriends, and
the question is always like, oh, do you like Logan,
do you like just do you like Dean? And I
enjoy fan fiction where she doesn't date any of them,
but in fact falls in love with her best friend Paris.
So I I really appreciate fan fiction that reimagines characters
(08:56):
as living in the queer identities I feel they should
be rightfully living. Oh, absolutely, Curiosity. Have you ever read ash?
I have not. It is reimagining of Cinderella with two
women as the lovers. Oh is the woman a princess? Yes?
Oh put that on my list. Yeah. And that is
an example. And we're going to talk more about this later.
(09:18):
But of like actual fan fiction that has been published,
sort of depends on how you define fan fiction. But anyway,
so fan fiction, especially when we're talking about the online
the Internet can be multi chaptered or it could be
a stand alone, sometimes called a one shot. It could
be a drabble, which is a couple of hundred words,
but they're generally, on average about twenty thousand words, or
at least the best reviewed ones are. I just remembered
(09:40):
I did write some fan fiction. Oh stop everything, tell
me more, Bridget it was. This is gonna sound absurd.
It was number of the Babysitters Club. It was. It
was Babysitters Club, Mallory and Jesse all grown up, living
in Brooklyn and having a relationship together. Oh my gosh,
(10:01):
that doesn't sound absert at all. I just kind of thought,
so if you live, if you've read the Babysitters Club books,
Jesse and Mallory are like the junior Babysitters are not
actual members of the BSc, not yet because they're younger,
but they're always sort of mentioned in tandem. And Mallory
is clearly a lesbian, Like it's very clear. They could
not have made it any clearer. Homegirl lives in like
(10:21):
an Oxford, you know, Like it's very clear to me. Um,
And so yeah, I always thought, like, wouldn't it be
cool if Mallory and Jesse grew up and moved to Brooklyn?
And Jesse worked at a dance nonprofit and Mallory was
a writer for Slate. Wouldn't that be cool? I think
it would be. Do you still have access to this? God?
(10:43):
Oh well, this is embarrassing. I blocked this out, untild
this and told this very moment. We're having kind of
an intervention thing right now. I want to when did
you write it? Not that long ago, like two years ago?
Oh my gosh, I thought it would make a funny series.
It is. I'm so on board. All right, Maybe we're
going to revisit this episode at a later date and
(11:05):
we'll both share a little taste old fan fiction. Taste
fan fiction, daste, And not to embarrass our producer to Dylan,
but he also wrote a fan fiction. He doesn't have
his headphones on. He won't hear to you, I know,
but he will hear this later. He's editing it. He
wrote one bro. I don't know if you remember Arthur
the animated Yeah, he's an art park. He's an ant eater.
(11:28):
Oh gosh, now I'm having doubts about I always thought
he was an art park because when he's in the
Spelling Bee, he spells Ardvark, so like enthusiastically. Oh my god,
he's an art vark. I don't think he was an
ant eater. I don't know, Bridget, I don't know. But
Dylan wrote a fan fiction about Arthur and a friend
(11:49):
of his getting stuck in an ice cream shop and
eating ice cream together, which I thought was very cute.
I've read some fan fiction that are over a hundred chapters,
some that are less than one hundred words. Genre a
rise are usually a mix of action, adventure, romance in
a way that a lot of traditional media cannot be.
The chapter ones are like old school TV shows or
even maybe a podcast per se, where maybe the author
(12:10):
has a day each week they publish or try to
publish in the meantime. You just I remember just being like, Oh,
I can't wait till the chapter comes out. I hope
this happens. This allows the writers to learn and adapt
from readers as they go and create a product that
appeals to a wider audience because there is a comment
and review function, so it really sounds like an expression
of community kind of fandom where people are excited to
(12:32):
read more and they give feedback about what they want,
and so it's kind of a collaborative project in a
kind of way. Yeah, and that's that's a big, not
really point of contention. But some people say that published
works of fan fiction aren't really fan fiction because they're
lacking in that community aspect and community it's so important
to fan fiction. And if you're wondering kind of like,
(12:54):
why are they talking about fan fiction on stuff, mom
never told you other than I love it, clear you
the community that writes and reads fan fiction is mostly
women are non binary. We're going to talk about that
later in the podcast, but just know in the back
of your mind that this is mostly a female community
and the breakdown is is really fascinating. But first we're
(13:17):
gonna take a quick break for word for a sponsor
m H and we're back. Thank you sponsor. That I
wanted to talk about some lingo because I love some
fan fiction lingo. You've got a U, which stands for
alternate universe O O C are out of character o C,
(13:41):
which is original character cannon, staying within the confines of
what the fantom has laid out. Usually that means relationship
wise SLASH, which we're going to talk about a lot later,
and it refers to a noncanon couple of the same sex,
usually male females denoted by film slash impreg male pregnancy
cross over when two fandoms crossover for that. For research.
(14:04):
For actual research on this episode, I read a Harry
Potter and Avengers crossover and it was the best. I
was so happy. I got curtain fick, which is a
genre of fan fiction that focuses on domestic situations, like
say Kirk and Spock er out shopping for curtains, Like
it would never happen on the show, but people like
to imagine what it would be like. I love that. Yeah,
(14:27):
there's hurt comfort. That was one of my favorite things.
Hc race bending, when characters are either whitewashed or reclaimed
for minorities it could be could go either way. Gender
swap when you swap genders of characters UST, which I
use in real life unresolved sexual tension ship which you
can hear probably a lot outside of fan fiction to
(14:47):
ship a couple. And we talked about Mary Sue and
self insert in our Star Wars episode. So those are
some of the some of the big ones. Quite the glossary.
Oh my gosh, there's so many more, and like if
we narrow the focus even even more to fandoms. They
have a lot of their own lingo within fandoms. So,
like I already mentioned on the show once DESTI l
(15:07):
from Supernatural, it's Dean and Castile and Harry Potter, you
had Snape. Harry was Snary, Truemani was Draco. Hermione are
Dreary Draco. Harry had a competition with a friend of
mine to find the most rare couple in all of
HP fandom, and I found never long Bottom and Memboless Membletonia,
(15:29):
which if you don't remember, is a plant that he
carries around and the story Neville gets transformed into a
plant and they fall in love. But she found one
that was between Harry Potter and the Giant Squid. Rule
thirty four. You can find sexually related or pornographic material
for pretty much everything, including Harry Potter fiction. Oh absolutely,
(15:51):
And if anyone has this beat, please right in. But
I would like to note it's a popular misconception that
most fan fiction is weird and pornographic. Most of it
is not at all, not at all, And speaking of
Harry Potter, it is often credited with bringing fan fiction
more mainstream. Fan fiction dot net, which was where I
went when I was getting my fan fiction, has almost
(16:12):
eight hundred thousand Harry Potter stories. Yeah, there's a lot
of Harry Potter fan fiction writers out there. Yeah. Back
in my heyday, every night I would check so, I mean,
it's kind of like search results, and I would just
go through every new page a fan fiction of the day,
and it was usually over thirty pages of new fan
fiction in one day. Yeah, newer, updated. Yeah. Oh, and
(16:36):
in general, fan fiction is free. What Pad does have
a premium ad removed service, but for the most part
totally free. And we are mostly talking about online fan fiction.
But fan fiction exists in several recognized forms of art
and business. The creator and showrunner relationship is a good
example once the original creator has left. I think Aaron
Sorkin once famously said, like, you couldn't watch The West
(16:58):
Wing after he left. Or you've got the officially sanctioned
Star Wars authors, So tell me more about that, as
as our resident Star Wars expert. Yes, so, I guess
it's Disney Disney on Star Wars now, but Disney kind
of picks an author to write the books that they
(17:19):
consider official canon for Star Wars. And yes, so they
kind of are just writing fan fiction published work. We'll
talk a little bit more about that later because it's
sort of an interesting dynamic, a big trend in fan
fiction right now, our stories written by teens that more
accurately reflect their lives. So when you were explaining, I'm
(17:40):
very interested by your fan fiction because it showcases a
lot of things that we are going to touch on,
but particularly right now, teens are writing about the prevalence
of social media and technology, maybe putting that into like
I've seen so many Harry Potter gets Facebook and what happens, Um,
Jenny Weasley, it's very upset that Harry Potter leaves eye
emojis under some random girls Instagram. Um, as she should
(18:03):
stuff like that. Yeah, that actually again, that's a that's
a bit like curtaining the curtain. Curtain. Yeah, it's a
reimagining of something that would never be in the books,
that would never be a plot line in the book.
But it's interesting, right, and it kind of goes to
show what fan fiction is really about, which is sort
of exploring certain aspects of yourself and your life. According
(18:24):
to Publishers Weekly, what Pad, which is a user generated
storytelling app reached eighteen million users in the space of
seven years, and this translated to sixty four thousand stories
getting updated per day and twenty three million stories a year.
The number of users rose to thirty five million, with
forty five percent of those in the age rage of
(18:46):
thirteen eighteen. Some classrooms have started using fan fiction as
a writing exercise now. Of note though, about what pod
this is specifically, of all of the places where you
can find fan fiction, it does skew a lot younger,
and it is a lot of one direction stories, like
real celebrity stories, so it's a little bit different than
most of the other ones that we're going to talk about. Well,
(19:08):
as a former teacher, I absolutely love the idea of
using fan fic to teach writing classes for young people.
That was something that I did in my classroom. Is
quite a bit where if us, if students won't get
out their cell phones or won't get off social media,
can you find a way to integrate with they're already
you know, loving and enjoying and what they're not paying
attention to your boring lecture to do instead? Can you
(19:28):
find a way to marry those two things? And so
I love, love, love the idea of using fan fic
as a writing tool, because it's just meeting young people
where they're already at. The fan fiction universe is being
dominated in small parts by young folks. Educators would be
you know, remiss to not capitalize on that because it's writing.
It's just another way that shows that young people are
fired up about writing, so you may as well turn
it into a curriculum. Absolutely. Another big fan fiction site,
(19:52):
Archive of Our Own or a O three, had over
four hundred thousand users generating over one million seventeen stories.
And I, like I said, I was a fan fiction
dot net person. And DVA Arts, which is more fan
art and illustrations Coming full is another site where that
has a visual component that's really kind of unique and
(20:14):
often beautiful. So if you're interested, I would absolutely speak
it out. In his Time article, Lev Grossman, author of
The Magician's Trilogy, described fan fiction in the context of
mainstream culture as quote what literature might look like if
it were reinvented from scratch after a nuclear apocalypse by
a band of brilliant pop culture junkies trapped in a
(20:34):
sealed bucker. That's so good. I know, it's really good
and he was speaking as a fan, but he acknowledges
how strange and extreme fan fix might seem to the
outside observer, particularly the outside celebrity as observer who might
be a bit weirded out by it. Yeah, as you
might be able to guess. Not all authors or creators
(20:55):
are on board with this. Some of them are buzz kills.
For example, in en N two, author Marian Zimmer Bradley,
who broadly encouraged fan fiction, but when one of her
upcoming novels closely paralleled a fan fiction she read, she
attempted to negotiate a deal with the author to avoid
a lawsuit. Now in the end, Bradley abandoned the novel.
Other authors like Anne Rice and mcafree and George R. R.
(21:17):
Martin have publicly denounced fan fiction for this reason. As
the Internet has grown older, a lot of authors have
softened their stance. Andie and I were joking earlier off
Mike about how we wanted to do fan fiction about
and Rice, because apparently an Rice is notoriously litigious, and
if you try to knock off her intellectual property, she'll
basically be at your door with a lawsuit in her hands.
(21:39):
So what if we did fan fiction about and Rice
hunting down. She's a fan fiction hunter's a fan fiction hunter.
I think it will work. Yeah. She posted like a
really intense note about like, you have to trust me
on this. You cannot. You cannot post fan fiction if
you look today, if we went to fan fiction dot net,
you would find no and Rice fan fiction. They won't
(22:01):
host it. And fan fiction is frequently looked down upon,
mostly because of some high profile ones being made into
books and movies that are also generally looked down upon,
but either way, it's popularity is growing. Even Amazon has
a fan fiction website now that lets authors published and
receive royalties from e books from popular license series like
(22:23):
Vampire Diaries. They kind of have a relationship with these
companies producing these series. The Washington Post wrote, what used
to be a disregarded copyright nightmare is a new, youth
friendly approach for publishers. Independent publisher Big Bang Press was
founded solely on finding new voices in fan fiction to
write their own fiction novels, and while getting published is nice,
(22:43):
it's not really the goal. One of the most common
arguments against writing fan fiction is essentially, go write your
own thing. You'll never succeed as a writer with a
fan fiction, But most people who write it are not
thinking they're going to be a published writer one day.
That's that's like saying people who play football are doing
so thinking that they're going to go pro one day.
(23:04):
It's a hobby. It's something that people enjoy doing, that's
cathartic and satisfying. But most people are not like thinking,
if only I write best fan fick, I'll get published,
although some authors do use it to like stay up
the snuff. Do you think that one of the reasons
why it's so looked down upon is because it's so
heavily dominated by women and non binary people. Oh yes,
(23:26):
and we are going to talk about that because there's
a there's an entire article that I'm going to reference
it later, but it's called when men write fan fiction.
It's seen as academic. Of course it is right, but
I definitely think there is an element to that. And I,
as someone who is pretty nerdy and tapped into nerd culture,
(23:48):
I used to get really angry when I was younger
about how it's so accepted to be in a sports
fandom and I couldn't figure out the difference. And then
when I was researching this, I had a moment of
all sports is of very highly masculine fandom, and nerd
media fandom is still kind of Machlin, but it's way less.
(24:08):
So that's one of the reasons that I think that
we just accept sports fandom, but we don't do the
same with media fandom. And I think beyond that, you
see that with so many different kinds of fandom and writing,
Like in the episode we did around journaling, because journals
are associated with femininity, they're seen as un serious. But
(24:28):
then when a man writes one, it is seen as
like his writings, his papers. But its female authors, even
very famous authors, you know Sylvia Plath, Emilee Dickinson, their
journals are thought of as their sort of frivolous diary.
But men their papers or they're collected writings. You know
that it's seen differently. And I think it's I think
(24:48):
fandom is just like any other thing where when there
is a male association, it's sort of highbrow, and that's
when it's a woman doing it, it's just an un
serious thing and you should just quit. Why are you
doing this anyway? Yeah, And I can think of examples.
I ran across doing this research of that. One is
the Beatles. Before, like when it was just a bunch
of fan girls that were mooning over this band, they
(25:10):
were looked down upon. But then when men were like,
you know, actually these albums are pretty good, then it
became like Beatlemania totally acceptable. And another example is Brownies
because I loved my Little Ponies, as did a lot
of women for a long time, but it wasn't until
dudes were like, you know what, I really like my
little ponies. I'm gonna dress up. I'm gonna be at
(25:32):
Brownie and then it became legitimate and cool and nerdy.
Before that it was like lame and now you see
that at conventions like Brownies. So once again, when it
was a largely female fandom, it was not cool at all,
and then when men came in and legitimized it, now
cool Brownies. And not to disparage on Brownie's more power
(25:54):
to I'm just saying like, culturally, it shows where we're
where we're at when it comes to those kinds of things.
More on all of that later, but let's talk a
bit about some some famous examples of published fan fiction.
Because it did fan fiction did used to come with
this risk of a cease and desist letter. And if
you write about a rice, then yes you still gotta
(26:14):
be Look, he's gonna hut you down. It'll be a
rice like at your door. Yes it's an rice. I
know your home. I like a book rice. She's behind you.
She knows all in my time, and I'm sure still
now at the top you always put like disclaimer. I
(26:35):
don't know the powers that be own everything actually do
anything or is it just so? I'm sure it doesn't.
But it's supposed to be like, well, maybe this will
soften them. If they find it, they'll be like, well,
at least she acknowledges there are these powers that be
that own it. But nowadays you very well might have
read a fan fiction and not even known it. We've
(26:55):
mentioned before E. L. James, whose Twilight fan fiction became
the fifty Shades of Gray series, and this is probably
the biggest one. It's estimated that at one million copies,
it out sold Twilight, the work it was based on.
I have to ask a dumb question, how is it
a fan fiction when it doesn't involve vampires? Well? So E. L.
(27:16):
James deleted the original fan fiction once she got published,
but there you can still find people who have like
saved it and you can read it. And she just
swapped out the name, so it used to be Edward
and Bella and now it's Christian and Anna. I'm not
sure how much the vampire thing came up in the
original fan fiction, but the characters were essentially the same,
and I believe that side by side comparison showed she
(27:38):
only changed five percent. Yes, so probably just the names.
And this has brought up a lot of questions of
legality and calls a lot of concern about the end
of good writing and original work as we know it.
As one writer at The Washington Post put it, the
most scandalous part of Fifty Shades of Gray isn't what
Christian Gray does behind closed doors, is that the book
(27:59):
might well be in illegal art. And I know the
author of Twilight has kind of She's never come out
against it per se, but there's definitely an air of
like she kind of wrote her own fan fiction on Twilight,
which is interesting, can you write your own fan fix?
Would she abandoned a project that was essentially a retelling
of the first one from Edward's point of view, and
(28:19):
she kind of made it sound like it was because
the Fifty Shades of Great, at least in one interview
I read, it does have to chap Her ask that
Fifty Shades of Gray is more popular than Twilight. Oh, sure, absolutely.
You've also got Cassandra Claire's The Mortal Instruments, which was
originally a Harry Potter fan fiction, and I I remember
seeing that. I never read it because I was never
(28:39):
into Gremianny fan fiction. I had very specific things I
would read and that wasn't one of them. But I
remember seeing that one getting updated pretty pretty consistently. Anatod's
After which was based on a one direction fan fiction
Pride and Prejudice and zombies of course, wide Sargasso c
by Genres, which I at in graduate school, and seminar
(29:02):
on women's writing. So yeah, I was taught fan fiction
when I was trying to get a PhD. It is
being taught in the academic setting a lot of There's
so many examples like that, like Wicked by Gregory McGuire
it's essentially Wizard of Os fan fiction, or Roger and
Hammerstein South Pacific, which is the only musical to win
a Pulitzer based off of a work that also won
(29:22):
a Pulitzers. Yeah, but again, there are some there is
some debate about whether these count because the community isn't
necessarily there get that of curiosity. What's your take on
that divide. I feel like these do count as fan fiction,
but there is a part of me that almost wants
to like classify it differently, if that makes sense, because
the community is a big part of it. Yeah. I
(29:43):
don't know. I would count most of this as fan
fiction honestly personally, but I do think it's missing that
that community part, that part that is so collaborative. You've
also got a series of James Potter novels, sort of
Harry Potter sequels by George Lippard that J K. Rolling
has more or less been like, yep, okay, cool. You've
got mag Cabot and Neil Gaiman who have dabbled in
fan fiction, or Hamilton's, which is sometimes compared to fan fiction.
(30:06):
I mean, if you think about Hamilton's, it kind of
is fan fiction. It's taking this very familiar story that
pretty much everybody knows and completely spinning it on its head. Yeah.
There's a whole article about it on Box and it
was quite a lovely read. Here's a quote from it.
In essence, Hamilton is a postmodern, meditextual piece of fan
fix functioning and precisely the way that most fan fix do.
It claims the cannon for the fan. In this case,
(30:28):
Hamilton's cannon is history and the fan. Miranda is doing
a lot more than simply adapting it. Like the best
fan pick writers, He's not just selectively retelling history. He's
transforming it. That was a that was a good quote
in the article. Enjoyed a lot of it. Also sens
south by. Southwest saw the premiere of a movie called Slash,
which was supposed to be about a teenager exploring its
(30:50):
sexuality through erotic slash fan fiction. But from what I read,
it really didn't have much to do with slash fiction
after all, and it got most of what did have
to do with it pretty wrong. Is very erotic and weird,
which that does exist, but again it's the outlier. Most
fan fiction is curtain fick. I wonder where that misconception
around fan fiction comes from. That it's all you know,
(31:13):
erotic or sexualized or pervy or you know, where do
you think that comes from? I think it kind of
goes back to that it's mostly women writing fan fiction.
A lot of it does have perhaps slash, but in
a lot of those slash stories, like they're buying curtains,
you know, like maybe there's sex, maybe there isn't, and
maybe if there is sex, it's very like tame. I
(31:35):
think it's a misunderstanding that all these women are writing
about sex, so it must be weird. And yeah, there's
a lot of misconception about that. I was someone who
really enjoyed like slash that never had any sexual thing,
just like the relationships, like, oh they're they're close, that's intimate. Yeah,
I like this. I like this, And a lot of
(31:57):
times I would get to a certain like say I
all read nineteen chapters and then chapter twenty they have sex.
I would just like skip that that and you did
this when you were in a teenager. Yeah, you're the
only teenager out there skipping the sexy parts. I'm like this,
this isn't for me. A lot of times I really
appreciated it because a lot of authors would put like,
(32:17):
if you're not into sex, this chapter is not that important,
you can skip it, And I was always like, thanks
for the warning. I really liked that, and fan fiction
did for better or play a role in learning about
sex for a decent amount of as me included or
learnings fan fiction. You taught me some things. An article
in Vice dealed into this how fan fiction served as
(32:39):
a tool of sexual exploration, especially for women in LGBTQ
who might not get much of a sex education or
see themselves represented in media. Yeah, me and more than
one of my friends definitely learned about sex from fiction.
I remember this per six fan fiction because again I
used to print them out, and so I wouldn't know
that was coming and surprised prize to characters or having sex.
(33:02):
And I'm trying to understand what's going on young Annie
with her printed out fan fiction. Oh yeah, man, I
wonder if I still have that stuff. I should look.
Most sites do have rating systems, like the m p
A almost and you can as some of them, especially
like geared towards a younger audience. Do you have settings
that you can set up so that you can prevent
(33:24):
children from getting exposed to some of those things if
that's something you're worried about. Some of them are less
effective than others. But some sites don't allow adult material,
and I kept getting a chuckle out of they would
say fan fiction dot net, because there is adult fan
fiction dot net. But that's where I stumbled onto my
sexy Lord of the Rings. And just think you'd be
if you hadn't done that, who knows where you'd be.
(33:46):
I'd be lost, lost at sea. Fan Fiction has also
led to so so so many academic studies. You've got
the Writing and Reading a fan fiction and transformation theory
by Virl van steen Hooy's Out of Perdue. This one's
really interesting because talks about how fan fiction does not
need the world described. That part is already done for
you and are seen if we're talking about a visual medium,
(34:07):
so like the same is true with the characters, the
pass the memories, their motivations, the readers all know this universe,
how it looks, it's rules. This means that it's extremely
immersive right off the bat, Like you don't have to
spend time setting that up. Everyone's kind of seeing the
same thing, which I didn't really think about, but that
that's again kind of that communal aspect. You're entering into
(34:30):
this world that you already know and it's it's there
for you, and then they're playing with the characters within
it are the rules within it. Yeah, you've got this
nice backdrop already set up for you, like a canvas, exactly. Yeah.
I was really interested in this study Slash as a
Queer Utopia by Dr Eco Willis out of the University
of Bristol. Here's the quote from that one. The reader
has to decide not only what readings of the show
(34:51):
are possible, but what is possible at a fictional universe,
and this decision must necessarily engage what she believes it
is possible in her own universe. And you know, as
queer people, that is kind of pitch perfect for our
media consumption experience, sort of deciding what things look like
within our own understandings of ourselves and how that is
(35:12):
reflected on these characters that we, you know, are coming
up with scenarios for yes and letting it play out.
Some of the other studies we found have suggested that
writing fan fiction can help foster empathy, can decrease feelings
of depression and isolation, can improve self esteem and overall
psychological well being, which is all pretty good and fan
(35:34):
fiction does. Like I mentioned earlier, you do have that
review function, and my experience with it is it was
generally a very positive community. I did live in fear
of the flame, the bad review, but generally most people
really encouraging or are appreciative, and it was a really
I had a really good experience with the community. And
(35:54):
perhaps that does go back to it being mostly women.
It's like a little slice of a woman only internet.
I've often thought, what would the Internet look like if
it was just women. I think it will be a
less toxic place. But it seems like fan fiction is
a place where they've kind of tested that out a
little bit. Yes, absolutely, and because of that it has
drawn like a lot of criticism, a lot of derision,
(36:18):
a lot of fear. It's widely disparaged and misunderstood. Some
of the popular stereotypes of arguments against fan fiction include,
it's a much of nerds, they don't know how to socialize. Nope,
all fan fiction is pornographic slash written by straight teenaged
girls are middle aged gay men, depending on who you're
listening to. Also not true. All fan fiction is written
by horny teenage girls and is largely illiterate and immoral.
(36:41):
Yeah don't way yeah, also not true. And again, stop
writing about someone else's characters. Start writing your own thing.
And again it's not about that, but how did we
get here? Well, the history of fan fiction probably goes
back further than you think, and we'll talk all about that,
but first we're gonna take a quick break for word
for our sponsor and we're back. Thank you spots there. Okay,
(37:14):
So pending a date two when fan fiction began is difficult,
and it depends on how strict of definition of fan
fiction you're using. Some arguments say that the Grand Brothers
fairy Tales of the eighteen hundreds or fan fiction, they
took oral stories and then kind of made them into
their own thing, telling their own moral, whatever moral they
want to convey. Some arguments say, the Bible counts is
(37:35):
fan fiction? The o g fan fiction the Bible Dang, Yeah,
so that's pretty far back. Shakespeare often comes up in
the conversation with the history of fan fiction as well.
Most of his plays are derived from a legend or
myth that he took and then added the Shakespeare touch.
And it didn't take long after novels started to become
more commonplace in the eighteen hundreds for popular authors like
Daniel Dafoe to voice concerns of folks quote kidnapping his
(37:59):
work a little strong but all right. Um. Jane Austin
didn't seem too worried about it, though, and fans of
her works j Nights engaged in fan fix swapping in
the late eighteen hundreds with early fanzines. This eventually led
to the publishing of the nineteen thirteen novel and Jane
Austin fan Fiction, Old Friend and New Fancies. To date,
two forty two published novels that are Jane Austin fan
(38:21):
fiction are listed on good Reads. So she inspired quite
a bit of published fan fiction. Wow, she's like the
Harry Potter of her generation. She was the j. K
Rolling of her generation. Absolutely. Moving into the unitteen twenties,
we get Sherlock Holmes fan clubs and bigger cities like London,
and these clubs put out the Baker Street Journal. The
journal had both academic type research and straight up fan
(38:44):
fiction that the authors would read at fan events. And
this is some of the first recorded self insert fix
where the authors you're talking about themselves in the world
of like Oh, I love it Yeah. In the next
few decades, sci fi communities pretty much had the market
on fan fiction. Folk in The community coined the term
fan fiction in nineteen thirty nine, but they used it
to mean amateur sci fi writings and professional sci fi
(39:07):
writings are profic was a different thing. The first known
fan historian, John Jack Bristol Spear, defined the term in
his nineteen forty four in Fans Cyclopedia, and then in
nineteen fifty two The Enchanted Duplicator became the first book
that was fanfic about fans and one of the first
uses of fandom and print in regards to fans of media.
(39:27):
That word was first used in late eighteen hundreds as
a mashup of fan and domain for sports fans. Fan
fiction as we know it got it start in the
nineteen sixties with Star Trek. This property gave fans a
new way to interact with the work through magazines that
published a fans work and conventions. Fans would make copies
of his zines and hand the mad a conventions. When
Doctor Who started to be included in these conventions in
(39:47):
the nineteen seventies and eighties, this is when we saw
some of the first crossover. So Doctor Who meeting was
spock that I would read it, I would read it?
What about Doctor Who? And Spock shopping for Kurt is
that I ka, oh my gosh. I had a crush
on both Spock and Doctor Who the tenth Doctor David Tennant,
so I would totally be into it. Annie, Annie is
(40:09):
on board, as we talked about a little bit in
our Star Wars episode the First Mary Suit Debuty in
nineteen seventy three with a Treky's Tale. Although it was
meant to be a parody, Yes, and Star Trek fandom
also gave us the first slash thick in nine, a
Kirk slash Spock Fick called The Ring of so Schern
in which the two characters must have sex or die,
(40:31):
fall in love, and quote spend all of their remaining
days on the planet exploring both the planet and each
other's bodies. Is this a bad Is it a bad
situation for them? Or is it it's good? This started
a whole I mean, I'm about to nerd out so hard. Okay,
get get do it, Okay. So Spock, his species of
(40:52):
Vulcan species has this sexual kind of ritual that they
go through. It's it's a called pond far and you
kind of go and heat and if you don't have
sex and bond with someone you die. So Spock went
into pawn far while abandoned on this planet with Kirk,
and so they had to have sex are Spock would die.
(41:12):
This is actually a popular trope called her time on
fan fiction, where you put two characters in a situation
where they must have sex, forcing intimacy usually between two
men that wouldn't otherwise happen. So, no, this is a positive.
I'm going to assume Kirk was like, Okay, I don't
want my friend to die. We can have sex. And
then from there they fell in love and exploited each
(41:35):
other's bodies for their aspect. Yes, and this story and
the Kirk Spock ones that followed calls a lot of
debate in the community during the seventies, and they were
written mostly by women, and that was a part of
the debate that did come up. Now there are a
lot of articles in defense of fan fiction, mostly penned
(41:55):
by women, But the one that really started the most hubbub,
if you will, was in the New York Times. In
this article, she discusses hol her professor, a woman said
that when compared to men, women quote must learn linear
narratives slowly and with much greater difficulty. The author points
to fan fiction writing, saying women who traditionally spend large
(42:16):
portions of their lives working in relative isolation for little
or no pay, bring a different set of motivations to
their writing and art. They want to talk to other
women to express themselves in the science fiction form that
until recently has all but excluded them, which I think
really drives home this idea that it's about a female
form of expression and that it's really it's almost kind
of like anti capitalist. It's not it's not attached to
(42:37):
this idea that you're going to be rich and famous
from doing this. It's it's more about personal growth and
personal creation. Yeah, and that's another criticism often hurled at
fan fiction is that it's nonprofit, as if, like women,
you have no ambitions. Of course you have no ambitions.
What are you doing. You're wasting your time on this
thing that's never going to make you money, which, again,
it's a hobby. I mean, would you say that to
(43:00):
someone who made watercolors for fun, or someone who knitted
but didn't sell their blankets they just liked knitting. Yeah, exactly.
I mean, I'm sure someone does, but it doesn't make sense.
It's not it's not. It's not a cogent argument. Not
everything needs to be to make money or to get
fame and to get you know, rich and famous. Some
things can just be for the pursuit of creativity. And
(43:21):
that's what it sounds like. These women were looking for absolutely,
And as things moved more online in the ninety nineties,
X files that virgin I are a fan of exiles
became the largest online own fandom. Scotland Yard, worried about
a Heaven's Gate situation, started putting together secret files on
the X files, X files, on the x file love
(43:42):
it and on star check on the fandoms around them.
In at least one case, occult hazardism from fandom, but
it's pretty rare. Also, if you look at violence and
sports fandom, no secret files put together on that. Again,
could it be because that is a male dominated fandom
and therefore cool well people act truly get hurt. In
Europe they have to separate different soccer teams by like
(44:04):
a wall, otherwise they would murder each other. People have
gotten hurt from sports fandom. I don't know that there's
been fanfic murders. Yeah, there's certainly some troublesome aspects in fandom,
but fan fiction specifically. I mean, unless you're talking about
ladies hurt and dudes feelings by entering their fandom, talk
about a murder, you're murdering. How I think this fandom
(44:27):
should be otherwise? Yeah, I don't. I don't know. I
don't know. And there is a lot of discomfort around
fandom and fan fiction to this day, which is about
where this springs. As for instance, why are those zangus
writing Harry Potter Pard all these women writing about sex
and manly man fandoms? Its ruining? Are to's dirty, it's moral.
These are all things that you'll hear I read in
(44:49):
plenty of places, and it kind of made me feel
ashamed and embarrassed. Yeah, did you grow up thinking that
what you were doing was gross and weird and like
for weird perverts, like antisocial perverts. Oh. I did luckily
dodge that, but I did think it was really embarrassing
on something I should hide. I didn't think that if
people found out. I was barely certain I would be
(45:10):
mocked quite heavily. And it was difficult because again, my
brothers were very much the kind as I've mentioned before
on this show that would pick on you and would
make fun of you. And we all shared the same computer,
and I tried for so long to hide what I
was doing. Luckily, I don't think they ever figured it out.
I wonder what they thought I was printing out though
(45:30):
lots of recipes, yes, for all the all the cooking
that I did not do at that age. But this, yeah,
this kind of brings us to talking about women and
fan fiction and representation and sort of society's apparent fear
and discomfort with that. It's the dreaded fan fic trope,
(45:54):
the cliffhanger. But never fear. We have a part two,
and uh, we have so much to say about fan fiction,
So please join us for the second part, coming to
your ears soon. M m h m hm hm
Hey, this is Annie and Samantha. They're welcome to Steph.
I've never told your protection. I heart radio, So Samantha,
I know we've talked about fan fiction a lot, a lot,
A lot a lot. Do you remember the first time
you heard about it and what you thought it was? Okay,
(00:28):
not to sound judg mental, but I don't think i've
thought about it. I knew it existed, but that was it.
That was the end of it. Like I didn't have
a judgment either way. I didn't. I thought, great, do
your thing. I think great, it exists. Oh, I didn't
know how big the world was, and I have learned
more and more and more and more and more about
(00:50):
it as of late. Thanks to you. Holy to you,
like there's no end part like holy to you. I
don't think I've ever gond to anyone else about fan faction.
Oh yeah, I've never talked to anyone else about fan fiction.
Although again I have read things like Twilight, which I
know was fan fiction, and then when she had the
(01:12):
only online available of that specific version, I read it
before it was out, like ten years before it was out.
So I guess I knew existed, didn't know that was
fan fiction. Until later, M yeah, so did that answer
the question? Yeah? Yeah, I mean I try not to
(01:34):
be because I am such a fan fiction evangelist. I
tried very hard not to. Well, actually, every time someone's
like I don't like fan fiction, on my well did
you like this book or did you like this thing?
Because that's correctly fan fiction. And I would argue a
lot of what people think isn't fan fiction, that is
was written by men and a scene as like academic,
(01:55):
whereas if women did the same thing, then it's trashy
and not with your time. I was in seventh grade
the first time I heard a fan fiction, and then
my good friend Katie is the one who introduced it
to me, and she was like, oh my god, you've
got to go. There's so much stuff you can read,
and it's all kinds of stuff, and she was like,
(02:17):
you can read all kinds of parents and stuff. And
I'm like, what about the Yanks? And she's like, there's
so much thanks, Oh, oh my gosh. At the time,
the first fan fiction I ever read was a whole
of the Rings fan fiction and I only had a
certain amount of time on the computer. I think I
tell this story in this episode and it's thirty minutes,
and everything took so long, so I just printed off
(02:38):
the fan fiction seventy two chapters long, huge chapters. It
took forever, like I had to keep replacing things, and
then I whole punched it tied together. Luckily, I loved it,
but it was sad even for me. I will say, um,
that was my first introduction to it, and then I
was in love with it ever since. I've always read
fan fiction. I go through like ebbs and flows of
(02:59):
how much I read, but I've always read it since
then and recently on the trip I took with my
good friends that I've known since we were young to
the beach, there were times where we were all reading
fan fiction, like we're all reading are different hand fiction.
We'd be like, oh, what are you reading this? She'd
say like, oh, Hermione, Draco, whatever, whatever, what are you reading? Oh,
(03:20):
something about like l Frights and Harry Potter, and I'm like,
I'm reading my tragic Luke Skywalker story. And then we'd
go back to silence and reading it was so fun. Yeah,
I could talk about it forever, and I do try
to restrain myself. But speaking of a while back, Virgin
I did a two part fan fiction episode and we've
(03:43):
been mentioning it in reference to a bunch of things lately,
so we thought we would bring them back as classics.
So enjoy part one of our fan fiction Extravaganza. Hello,
this is Annie and this is a Bridget, and you're
listening to stuff Mom never told you, and today it's
(04:16):
finally time, finally, to talk about fan fiction. Finally. It
feels like such a long time coming, It really does, it,
doesn't it. Yeah, I was telling Bridget before this we
started recording. It's just been coming up a lot and
I'm not sure why, but it seemed right. It seemed
like we had to talk about it. And do you
want to have this disclaimer right at the top. We're
(04:39):
totally aware that fandom can be toxic, and it absolutely
can be extremely toxic, and we will touch on elements
of that here in this episode. We're definitely gonna talk
about it more in depth in a future episode. Today,
we're focusing mainly on fan fiction, a little bit of
fan art, but mostly fan fiction. So for folks out
there who don't know what fan fiction is, what is it?
(05:00):
Sometimes called fan fic r f F. Fan fiction is
writing typically done by amateur but not always writers and fans.
Par is the work of other works, usually but not
always works of fiction. So you're kind of in the
fan fiction world. We call it playing in someone else's sandbox.
And if you haven't surmised, I have a lot of
experience with fan fiction. Tell us more about your experience
(05:23):
with fan fiction, Annie, have you ever written any fan fiction?
I have written some fan fiction, probably as soon as
the Internet was available to me. I had a friend
shout out Katie Um who introduced me to fan fiction.
I read mostly Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, some
Star Trek, some X Files. I guess I dabbled all
(05:44):
over the place, but the Harry Potter was my big one.
Later I got into like Supernatural and Star Wars, but
I wrote one for I wrote I think a couple
of Harry Potter ones. I wrote a Star Wars one
that one was the worst, and a Peter Pan one
and a Lord of the Rings one. So yeah, I
have quite a bit of experience. What about you, Bridget
have you ever read any fan fiction? I have not
(06:06):
written any. I have read some. I'm a I'm I
guess you could call me an appreciatory. I think I
think it's cool that people express themselves via fan fiction
and fan art. I think fandom is cool. I feel
a bit left out of nerd fandom because I am
solidly like, not in the mix on most of it,
except for X files fandom maybe like xpils a lot
(06:26):
um so there are a few things, but for the
most part, I feel a bit left out of like
nerdy sci fi fantasy fandom, but I am a major
appreciator of it. From afar, Yes, I'm a fandom fan
because I think I am just fascinated by folks who
express their love of different things via art and cosplay
(06:47):
and meticulous recreations and you know, expanding on a universe
to make it, you know, what they want to see.
I think that's really cool. So I'm you can call
me a fandom fanom fan fiction about fanom fiction would uh.
Doing the research on this episode, while being one of
the most delightful experiences of research I've ever ever gotten
(07:07):
to do luckily for work, also made me appreciate fan
fiction a lot more. It made me respected a lot more.
So we we've touched on fandoms. Fan fiction is made
up of fandoms. Like books, TV shows, movies. You can't
even have real person fiction r p F as it's
sometimes called based on celebrities. And I know some of
our how Stuff Works colleagues have featured in some fan fiction.
(07:28):
Maybe we have bridget. I don't know. Is there any
bridget fan fiction there could be? I love to read it.
Here's a challenge for you. Pretty much anything you can imagine.
But one misconception to get out of the way right
up front is fan fiction is not full on adoration
of whatever fandom. Often it's a critique and or subversive
and almost always pushing past boundaries and breaking rules. We've
(07:50):
talked about the barrier gage trope before. Fan fiction was
a place for people to course correct tropes like that,
to find representation in fandoms they loved, but we're vastly
nordon or to write that representation themselves. It was a
place for l g b t q I stories that
were anonymous and where you were generally accepted. This is
actually where some of my fandom fandom comes in. I
(08:13):
really enjoy reading kind of lgbt q I reimaginings of
different stories. I definitely read some Good Gilmore Girls fan
fiction wherein do you ever watch Gilmore Girls? Okay, so
I've seen every episode twice, multiple times, usually more than twice.
But it was a pretty Actually I didn't really like
the show towards the end, but I kept watching it.
(08:35):
But one of the characters on the show Rory. She
has one of those sort of three main boyfriends, and
the question is always like, oh, do you like Logan,
do you like just do you like Dean? And I
enjoy fan fiction where she doesn't date any of them,
but in fact falls in love with her best friend Paris.
So I I really appreciate fan fiction that reimagines characters
(08:56):
as living in the queer identities I feel they should
be rightfully living. Oh, absolutely, Curiosity. Have you ever read ash?
I have not. It is reimagining of Cinderella with two
women as the lovers. Oh is the woman a princess? Yes?
Oh put that on my list. Yeah. And that is
an example. And we're going to talk more about this later.
(09:18):
But of like actual fan fiction that has been published,
sort of depends on how you define fan fiction. But anyway,
so fan fiction, especially when we're talking about the online
the Internet can be multi chaptered or it could be
a stand alone, sometimes called a one shot. It could
be a drabble, which is a couple of hundred words,
but they're generally, on average about twenty thousand words, or
at least the best reviewed ones are. I just remembered
(09:40):
I did write some fan fiction. Oh stop everything, tell
me more, Bridget it was. This is gonna sound absurd.
It was number of the Babysitters Club. It was. It
was Babysitters Club, Mallory and Jesse all grown up, living
in Brooklyn and having a relationship together. Oh my gosh,
(10:01):
that doesn't sound absert at all. I just kind of thought,
so if you live, if you've read the Babysitters Club books,
Jesse and Mallory are like the junior Babysitters are not
actual members of the BSc, not yet because they're younger,
but they're always sort of mentioned in tandem. And Mallory
is clearly a lesbian, Like it's very clear. They could
not have made it any clearer. Homegirl lives in like
(10:21):
an Oxford, you know, Like it's very clear to me. Um,
And so yeah, I always thought, like, wouldn't it be
cool if Mallory and Jesse grew up and moved to Brooklyn?
And Jesse worked at a dance nonprofit and Mallory was
a writer for Slate. Wouldn't that be cool? I think
it would be. Do you still have access to this? God?
(10:43):
Oh well, this is embarrassing. I blocked this out, untild
this and told this very moment. We're having kind of
an intervention thing right now. I want to when did
you write it? Not that long ago, like two years ago?
Oh my gosh, I thought it would make a funny series.
It is. I'm so on board. All right, Maybe we're
going to revisit this episode at a later date and
(11:05):
we'll both share a little taste old fan fiction. Taste
fan fiction, daste, And not to embarrass our producer to Dylan,
but he also wrote a fan fiction. He doesn't have
his headphones on. He won't hear to you, I know,
but he will hear this later. He's editing it. He
wrote one bro. I don't know if you remember Arthur
the animated Yeah, he's an art park. He's an ant eater.
(11:28):
Oh gosh, now I'm having doubts about I always thought
he was an art park because when he's in the
Spelling Bee, he spells Ardvark, so like enthusiastically. Oh my god,
he's an art vark. I don't think he was an
ant eater. I don't know, Bridget, I don't know. But
Dylan wrote a fan fiction about Arthur and a friend
(11:49):
of his getting stuck in an ice cream shop and
eating ice cream together, which I thought was very cute.
I've read some fan fiction that are over a hundred chapters,
some that are less than one hundred words. Genre a
rise are usually a mix of action, adventure, romance in
a way that a lot of traditional media cannot be.
The chapter ones are like old school TV shows or
even maybe a podcast per se, where maybe the author
(12:10):
has a day each week they publish or try to
publish in the meantime. You just I remember just being like, Oh,
I can't wait till the chapter comes out. I hope
this happens. This allows the writers to learn and adapt
from readers as they go and create a product that
appeals to a wider audience because there is a comment
and review function, so it really sounds like an expression
of community kind of fandom where people are excited to
(12:32):
read more and they give feedback about what they want,
and so it's kind of a collaborative project in a
kind of way. Yeah, and that's that's a big, not
really point of contention. But some people say that published
works of fan fiction aren't really fan fiction because they're
lacking in that community aspect and community it's so important
to fan fiction. And if you're wondering kind of like,
(12:54):
why are they talking about fan fiction on stuff, mom
never told you other than I love it, clear you
the community that writes and reads fan fiction is mostly
women are non binary. We're going to talk about that
later in the podcast, but just know in the back
of your mind that this is mostly a female community
and the breakdown is is really fascinating. But first we're
(13:17):
gonna take a quick break for word for a sponsor
m H and we're back. Thank you sponsor. That I
wanted to talk about some lingo because I love some
fan fiction lingo. You've got a U, which stands for
alternate universe O O C are out of character o C,
(13:41):
which is original character cannon, staying within the confines of
what the fantom has laid out. Usually that means relationship
wise SLASH, which we're going to talk about a lot later,
and it refers to a noncanon couple of the same sex,
usually male females denoted by film slash impreg male pregnancy
cross over when two fandoms crossover for that. For research.
(14:04):
For actual research on this episode, I read a Harry
Potter and Avengers crossover and it was the best. I
was so happy. I got curtain fick, which is a
genre of fan fiction that focuses on domestic situations, like
say Kirk and Spock er out shopping for curtains, Like
it would never happen on the show, but people like
to imagine what it would be like. I love that. Yeah,
(14:27):
there's hurt comfort. That was one of my favorite things.
Hc race bending, when characters are either whitewashed or reclaimed
for minorities it could be could go either way. Gender
swap when you swap genders of characters UST, which I
use in real life unresolved sexual tension ship which you
can hear probably a lot outside of fan fiction to
(14:47):
ship a couple. And we talked about Mary Sue and
self insert in our Star Wars episode. So those are
some of the some of the big ones. Quite the glossary.
Oh my gosh, there's so many more, and like if
we narrow the focus even even more to fandoms. They
have a lot of their own lingo within fandoms. So,
like I already mentioned on the show once DESTI l
(15:07):
from Supernatural, it's Dean and Castile and Harry Potter, you
had Snape. Harry was Snary, Truemani was Draco. Hermione are
Dreary Draco. Harry had a competition with a friend of
mine to find the most rare couple in all of
HP fandom, and I found never long Bottom and Memboless Membletonia,
(15:29):
which if you don't remember, is a plant that he
carries around and the story Neville gets transformed into a
plant and they fall in love. But she found one
that was between Harry Potter and the Giant Squid. Rule
thirty four. You can find sexually related or pornographic material
for pretty much everything, including Harry Potter fiction. Oh absolutely,
(15:51):
And if anyone has this beat, please right in. But
I would like to note it's a popular misconception that
most fan fiction is weird and pornographic. Most of it
is not at all, not at all, And speaking of
Harry Potter, it is often credited with bringing fan fiction
more mainstream. Fan fiction dot net, which was where I
went when I was getting my fan fiction, has almost
(16:12):
eight hundred thousand Harry Potter stories. Yeah, there's a lot
of Harry Potter fan fiction writers out there. Yeah. Back
in my heyday, every night I would check so, I mean,
it's kind of like search results, and I would just
go through every new page a fan fiction of the day,
and it was usually over thirty pages of new fan
fiction in one day. Yeah, newer, updated. Yeah. Oh, and
(16:36):
in general, fan fiction is free. What Pad does have
a premium ad removed service, but for the most part
totally free. And we are mostly talking about online fan fiction.
But fan fiction exists in several recognized forms of art
and business. The creator and showrunner relationship is a good
example once the original creator has left. I think Aaron
Sorkin once famously said, like, you couldn't watch The West
(16:58):
Wing after he left. Or you've got the officially sanctioned
Star Wars authors, So tell me more about that, as
as our resident Star Wars expert. Yes, so, I guess
it's Disney Disney on Star Wars now, but Disney kind
of picks an author to write the books that they
(17:19):
consider official canon for Star Wars. And yes, so they
kind of are just writing fan fiction published work. We'll
talk a little bit more about that later because it's
sort of an interesting dynamic, a big trend in fan
fiction right now, our stories written by teens that more
accurately reflect their lives. So when you were explaining, I'm
(17:40):
very interested by your fan fiction because it showcases a
lot of things that we are going to touch on,
but particularly right now, teens are writing about the prevalence
of social media and technology, maybe putting that into like
I've seen so many Harry Potter gets Facebook and what happens, Um,
Jenny Weasley, it's very upset that Harry Potter leaves eye
emojis under some random girls Instagram. Um, as she should
(18:03):
stuff like that. Yeah, that actually again, that's a that's
a bit like curtaining the curtain. Curtain. Yeah, it's a
reimagining of something that would never be in the books,
that would never be a plot line in the book.
But it's interesting, right, and it kind of goes to
show what fan fiction is really about, which is sort
of exploring certain aspects of yourself and your life. According
(18:24):
to Publishers Weekly, what Pad, which is a user generated
storytelling app reached eighteen million users in the space of
seven years, and this translated to sixty four thousand stories
getting updated per day and twenty three million stories a year.
The number of users rose to thirty five million, with
forty five percent of those in the age rage of
(18:46):
thirteen eighteen. Some classrooms have started using fan fiction as
a writing exercise now. Of note though, about what pod
this is specifically, of all of the places where you
can find fan fiction, it does skew a lot younger,
and it is a lot of one direction stories, like
real celebrity stories, so it's a little bit different than
most of the other ones that we're going to talk about. Well,
(19:08):
as a former teacher, I absolutely love the idea of
using fan fic to teach writing classes for young people.
That was something that I did in my classroom. Is
quite a bit where if us, if students won't get
out their cell phones or won't get off social media,
can you find a way to integrate with they're already
you know, loving and enjoying and what they're not paying
attention to your boring lecture to do instead? Can you
(19:28):
find a way to marry those two things? And so
I love, love, love the idea of using fan fic
as a writing tool, because it's just meeting young people
where they're already at. The fan fiction universe is being
dominated in small parts by young folks. Educators would be
you know, remiss to not capitalize on that because it's writing.
It's just another way that shows that young people are
fired up about writing, so you may as well turn
it into a curriculum. Absolutely. Another big fan fiction site,
(19:52):
Archive of Our Own or a O three, had over
four hundred thousand users generating over one million seventeen stories.
And I, like I said, I was a fan fiction
dot net person. And DVA Arts, which is more fan
art and illustrations Coming full is another site where that
has a visual component that's really kind of unique and
(20:14):
often beautiful. So if you're interested, I would absolutely speak
it out. In his Time article, Lev Grossman, author of
The Magician's Trilogy, described fan fiction in the context of
mainstream culture as quote what literature might look like if
it were reinvented from scratch after a nuclear apocalypse by
a band of brilliant pop culture junkies trapped in a
(20:34):
sealed bucker. That's so good. I know, it's really good
and he was speaking as a fan, but he acknowledges
how strange and extreme fan fix might seem to the
outside observer, particularly the outside celebrity as observer who might
be a bit weirded out by it. Yeah, as you
might be able to guess. Not all authors or creators
(20:55):
are on board with this. Some of them are buzz kills.
For example, in en N two, author Marian Zimmer Bradley,
who broadly encouraged fan fiction, but when one of her
upcoming novels closely paralleled a fan fiction she read, she
attempted to negotiate a deal with the author to avoid
a lawsuit. Now in the end, Bradley abandoned the novel.
Other authors like Anne Rice and mcafree and George R. R.
(21:17):
Martin have publicly denounced fan fiction for this reason. As
the Internet has grown older, a lot of authors have
softened their stance. Andie and I were joking earlier off
Mike about how we wanted to do fan fiction about
and Rice, because apparently an Rice is notoriously litigious, and
if you try to knock off her intellectual property, she'll
basically be at your door with a lawsuit in her hands.
(21:39):
So what if we did fan fiction about and Rice
hunting down. She's a fan fiction hunter's a fan fiction hunter.
I think it will work. Yeah. She posted like a
really intense note about like, you have to trust me
on this. You cannot. You cannot post fan fiction if
you look today, if we went to fan fiction dot net,
you would find no and Rice fan fiction. They won't
(22:01):
host it. And fan fiction is frequently looked down upon,
mostly because of some high profile ones being made into
books and movies that are also generally looked down upon,
but either way, it's popularity is growing. Even Amazon has
a fan fiction website now that lets authors published and
receive royalties from e books from popular license series like
(22:23):
Vampire Diaries. They kind of have a relationship with these
companies producing these series. The Washington Post wrote, what used
to be a disregarded copyright nightmare is a new, youth
friendly approach for publishers. Independent publisher Big Bang Press was
founded solely on finding new voices in fan fiction to
write their own fiction novels, and while getting published is nice,
(22:43):
it's not really the goal. One of the most common
arguments against writing fan fiction is essentially, go write your
own thing. You'll never succeed as a writer with a
fan fiction, But most people who write it are not
thinking they're going to be a published writer one day.
That's that's like saying people who play football are doing
so thinking that they're going to go pro one day.
(23:04):
It's a hobby. It's something that people enjoy doing, that's
cathartic and satisfying. But most people are not like thinking,
if only I write best fan fick, I'll get published,
although some authors do use it to like stay up
the snuff. Do you think that one of the reasons
why it's so looked down upon is because it's so
heavily dominated by women and non binary people. Oh yes,
(23:26):
and we are going to talk about that because there's
a there's an entire article that I'm going to reference
it later, but it's called when men write fan fiction.
It's seen as academic. Of course it is right, but
I definitely think there is an element to that. And I,
as someone who is pretty nerdy and tapped into nerd culture,
(23:48):
I used to get really angry when I was younger
about how it's so accepted to be in a sports
fandom and I couldn't figure out the difference. And then
when I was researching this, I had a moment of
all sports is of very highly masculine fandom, and nerd
media fandom is still kind of Machlin, but it's way less.
(24:08):
So that's one of the reasons that I think that
we just accept sports fandom, but we don't do the
same with media fandom. And I think beyond that, you
see that with so many different kinds of fandom and writing,
Like in the episode we did around journaling, because journals
are associated with femininity, they're seen as un serious. But
(24:28):
then when a man writes one, it is seen as
like his writings, his papers. But its female authors, even
very famous authors, you know Sylvia Plath, Emilee Dickinson, their
journals are thought of as their sort of frivolous diary.
But men their papers or they're collected writings. You know
that it's seen differently. And I think it's I think
(24:48):
fandom is just like any other thing where when there
is a male association, it's sort of highbrow, and that's
when it's a woman doing it, it's just an un
serious thing and you should just quit. Why are you
doing this anyway? Yeah, And I can think of examples.
I ran across doing this research of that. One is
the Beatles. Before, like when it was just a bunch
of fan girls that were mooning over this band, they
(25:10):
were looked down upon. But then when men were like,
you know, actually these albums are pretty good, then it
became like Beatlemania totally acceptable. And another example is Brownies
because I loved my Little Ponies, as did a lot
of women for a long time, but it wasn't until
dudes were like, you know what, I really like my
little ponies. I'm gonna dress up. I'm gonna be at
(25:32):
Brownie and then it became legitimate and cool and nerdy.
Before that it was like lame and now you see
that at conventions like Brownies. So once again, when it
was a largely female fandom, it was not cool at all,
and then when men came in and legitimized it, now
cool Brownies. And not to disparage on Brownie's more power
(25:54):
to I'm just saying like, culturally, it shows where we're
where we're at when it comes to those kinds of things.
More on all of that later, but let's talk a
bit about some some famous examples of published fan fiction.
Because it did fan fiction did used to come with
this risk of a cease and desist letter. And if
you write about a rice, then yes you still gotta
(26:14):
be Look, he's gonna hut you down. It'll be a
rice like at your door. Yes it's an rice. I
know your home. I like a book rice. She's behind you.
She knows all in my time, and I'm sure still
now at the top you always put like disclaimer. I
(26:35):
don't know the powers that be own everything actually do
anything or is it just so? I'm sure it doesn't.
But it's supposed to be like, well, maybe this will
soften them. If they find it, they'll be like, well,
at least she acknowledges there are these powers that be
that own it. But nowadays you very well might have
read a fan fiction and not even known it. We've
(26:55):
mentioned before E. L. James, whose Twilight fan fiction became
the fifty Shades of Gray series, and this is probably
the biggest one. It's estimated that at one million copies,
it out sold Twilight, the work it was based on.
I have to ask a dumb question, how is it
a fan fiction when it doesn't involve vampires? Well? So E. L.
(27:16):
James deleted the original fan fiction once she got published,
but there you can still find people who have like
saved it and you can read it. And she just
swapped out the name, so it used to be Edward
and Bella and now it's Christian and Anna. I'm not
sure how much the vampire thing came up in the
original fan fiction, but the characters were essentially the same,
and I believe that side by side comparison showed she
(27:38):
only changed five percent. Yes, so probably just the names.
And this has brought up a lot of questions of
legality and calls a lot of concern about the end
of good writing and original work as we know it.
As one writer at The Washington Post put it, the
most scandalous part of Fifty Shades of Gray isn't what
Christian Gray does behind closed doors, is that the book
(27:59):
might well be in illegal art. And I know the
author of Twilight has kind of She's never come out
against it per se, but there's definitely an air of
like she kind of wrote her own fan fiction on Twilight,
which is interesting, can you write your own fan fix?
Would she abandoned a project that was essentially a retelling
of the first one from Edward's point of view, and
(28:19):
she kind of made it sound like it was because
the Fifty Shades of Great, at least in one interview
I read, it does have to chap Her ask that
Fifty Shades of Gray is more popular than Twilight. Oh, sure, absolutely.
You've also got Cassandra Claire's The Mortal Instruments, which was
originally a Harry Potter fan fiction, and I I remember
seeing that. I never read it because I was never
(28:39):
into Gremianny fan fiction. I had very specific things I
would read and that wasn't one of them. But I
remember seeing that one getting updated pretty pretty consistently. Anatod's
After which was based on a one direction fan fiction
Pride and Prejudice and zombies of course, wide Sargasso c
by Genres, which I at in graduate school, and seminar
(29:02):
on women's writing. So yeah, I was taught fan fiction
when I was trying to get a PhD. It is
being taught in the academic setting a lot of There's
so many examples like that, like Wicked by Gregory McGuire
it's essentially Wizard of Os fan fiction, or Roger and
Hammerstein South Pacific, which is the only musical to win
a Pulitzer based off of a work that also won
(29:22):
a Pulitzers. Yeah, but again, there are some there is
some debate about whether these count because the community isn't
necessarily there get that of curiosity. What's your take on
that divide. I feel like these do count as fan fiction,
but there is a part of me that almost wants
to like classify it differently, if that makes sense, because
the community is a big part of it. Yeah. I
(29:43):
don't know. I would count most of this as fan
fiction honestly personally, but I do think it's missing that
that community part, that part that is so collaborative. You've
also got a series of James Potter novels, sort of
Harry Potter sequels by George Lippard that J K. Rolling
has more or less been like, yep, okay, cool. You've
got mag Cabot and Neil Gaiman who have dabbled in
fan fiction, or Hamilton's, which is sometimes compared to fan fiction.
(30:06):
I mean, if you think about Hamilton's, it kind of
is fan fiction. It's taking this very familiar story that
pretty much everybody knows and completely spinning it on its head. Yeah.
There's a whole article about it on Box and it
was quite a lovely read. Here's a quote from it.
In essence, Hamilton is a postmodern, meditextual piece of fan
fix functioning and precisely the way that most fan fix do.
It claims the cannon for the fan. In this case,
(30:28):
Hamilton's cannon is history and the fan. Miranda is doing
a lot more than simply adapting it. Like the best
fan pick writers, He's not just selectively retelling history. He's
transforming it. That was a that was a good quote
in the article. Enjoyed a lot of it. Also sens
south by. Southwest saw the premiere of a movie called Slash,
which was supposed to be about a teenager exploring its
(30:50):
sexuality through erotic slash fan fiction. But from what I read,
it really didn't have much to do with slash fiction
after all, and it got most of what did have
to do with it pretty wrong. Is very erotic and weird,
which that does exist, but again it's the outlier. Most
fan fiction is curtain fick. I wonder where that misconception
around fan fiction comes from. That it's all you know,
(31:13):
erotic or sexualized or pervy or you know, where do
you think that comes from? I think it kind of
goes back to that it's mostly women writing fan fiction.
A lot of it does have perhaps slash, but in
a lot of those slash stories, like they're buying curtains,
you know, like maybe there's sex, maybe there isn't, and
maybe if there is sex, it's very like tame. I
(31:35):
think it's a misunderstanding that all these women are writing
about sex, so it must be weird. And yeah, there's
a lot of misconception about that. I was someone who
really enjoyed like slash that never had any sexual thing,
just like the relationships, like, oh they're they're close, that's intimate. Yeah,
I like this. I like this, And a lot of
(31:57):
times I would get to a certain like say I
all read nineteen chapters and then chapter twenty they have sex.
I would just like skip that that and you did
this when you were in a teenager. Yeah, you're the
only teenager out there skipping the sexy parts. I'm like this,
this isn't for me. A lot of times I really
appreciated it because a lot of authors would put like,
(32:17):
if you're not into sex, this chapter is not that important,
you can skip it, And I was always like, thanks
for the warning. I really liked that, and fan fiction
did for better or play a role in learning about
sex for a decent amount of as me included or
learnings fan fiction. You taught me some things. An article
in Vice dealed into this how fan fiction served as
(32:39):
a tool of sexual exploration, especially for women in LGBTQ
who might not get much of a sex education or
see themselves represented in media. Yeah, me and more than
one of my friends definitely learned about sex from fiction.
I remember this per six fan fiction because again I
used to print them out, and so I wouldn't know
that was coming and surprised prize to characters or having sex.
(33:02):
And I'm trying to understand what's going on young Annie
with her printed out fan fiction. Oh yeah, man, I
wonder if I still have that stuff. I should look.
Most sites do have rating systems, like the m p
A almost and you can as some of them, especially
like geared towards a younger audience. Do you have settings
that you can set up so that you can prevent
(33:24):
children from getting exposed to some of those things if
that's something you're worried about. Some of them are less
effective than others. But some sites don't allow adult material,
and I kept getting a chuckle out of they would
say fan fiction dot net, because there is adult fan
fiction dot net. But that's where I stumbled onto my
sexy Lord of the Rings. And just think you'd be
if you hadn't done that, who knows where you'd be.
(33:46):
I'd be lost, lost at sea. Fan Fiction has also
led to so so so many academic studies. You've got
the Writing and Reading a fan fiction and transformation theory
by Virl van steen Hooy's Out of Perdue. This one's
really interesting because talks about how fan fiction does not
need the world described. That part is already done for
you and are seen if we're talking about a visual medium,
(34:07):
so like the same is true with the characters, the
pass the memories, their motivations, the readers all know this universe,
how it looks, it's rules. This means that it's extremely
immersive right off the bat, Like you don't have to
spend time setting that up. Everyone's kind of seeing the
same thing, which I didn't really think about, but that
that's again kind of that communal aspect. You're entering into
(34:30):
this world that you already know and it's it's there
for you, and then they're playing with the characters within
it are the rules within it. Yeah, you've got this
nice backdrop already set up for you, like a canvas, exactly. Yeah.
I was really interested in this study Slash as a
Queer Utopia by Dr Eco Willis out of the University
of Bristol. Here's the quote from that one. The reader
has to decide not only what readings of the show
(34:51):
are possible, but what is possible at a fictional universe,
and this decision must necessarily engage what she believes it
is possible in her own universe. And you know, as
queer people, that is kind of pitch perfect for our
media consumption experience, sort of deciding what things look like
within our own understandings of ourselves and how that is
(35:12):
reflected on these characters that we, you know, are coming
up with scenarios for yes and letting it play out.
Some of the other studies we found have suggested that
writing fan fiction can help foster empathy, can decrease feelings
of depression and isolation, can improve self esteem and overall
psychological well being, which is all pretty good and fan
(35:34):
fiction does. Like I mentioned earlier, you do have that
review function, and my experience with it is it was
generally a very positive community. I did live in fear
of the flame, the bad review, but generally most people
really encouraging or are appreciative, and it was a really
I had a really good experience with the community. And
(35:54):
perhaps that does go back to it being mostly women.
It's like a little slice of a woman only internet.
I've often thought, what would the Internet look like if
it was just women. I think it will be a
less toxic place. But it seems like fan fiction is
a place where they've kind of tested that out a
little bit. Yes, absolutely, and because of that it has
drawn like a lot of criticism, a lot of derision,
(36:18):
a lot of fear. It's widely disparaged and misunderstood. Some
of the popular stereotypes of arguments against fan fiction include,
it's a much of nerds, they don't know how to socialize. Nope,
all fan fiction is pornographic slash written by straight teenaged
girls are middle aged gay men, depending on who you're
listening to. Also not true. All fan fiction is written
by horny teenage girls and is largely illiterate and immoral.
(36:41):
Yeah don't way yeah, also not true. And again, stop
writing about someone else's characters. Start writing your own thing.
And again it's not about that, but how did we
get here? Well, the history of fan fiction probably goes
back further than you think, and we'll talk all about that,
but first we're gonna take a quick break for word
for our sponsor and we're back. Thank you spots there. Okay,
(37:14):
So pending a date two when fan fiction began is difficult,
and it depends on how strict of definition of fan
fiction you're using. Some arguments say that the Grand Brothers
fairy Tales of the eighteen hundreds or fan fiction, they
took oral stories and then kind of made them into
their own thing, telling their own moral, whatever moral they
want to convey. Some arguments say, the Bible counts is
(37:35):
fan fiction? The o g fan fiction the Bible Dang, Yeah,
so that's pretty far back. Shakespeare often comes up in
the conversation with the history of fan fiction as well.
Most of his plays are derived from a legend or
myth that he took and then added the Shakespeare touch.
And it didn't take long after novels started to become
more commonplace in the eighteen hundreds for popular authors like
Daniel Dafoe to voice concerns of folks quote kidnapping his
(37:59):
work a little strong but all right. Um. Jane Austin
didn't seem too worried about it, though, and fans of
her works j Nights engaged in fan fix swapping in
the late eighteen hundreds with early fanzines. This eventually led
to the publishing of the nineteen thirteen novel and Jane
Austin fan Fiction, Old Friend and New Fancies. To date,
two forty two published novels that are Jane Austin fan
(38:21):
fiction are listed on good Reads. So she inspired quite
a bit of published fan fiction. Wow, she's like the
Harry Potter of her generation. She was the j. K
Rolling of her generation. Absolutely. Moving into the unitteen twenties,
we get Sherlock Holmes fan clubs and bigger cities like London,
and these clubs put out the Baker Street Journal. The
journal had both academic type research and straight up fan
(38:44):
fiction that the authors would read at fan events. And
this is some of the first recorded self insert fix
where the authors you're talking about themselves in the world
of like Oh, I love it Yeah. In the next
few decades, sci fi communities pretty much had the market
on fan fiction. Folk in The community coined the term
fan fiction in nineteen thirty nine, but they used it
to mean amateur sci fi writings and professional sci fi
(39:07):
writings are profic was a different thing. The first known
fan historian, John Jack Bristol Spear, defined the term in
his nineteen forty four in Fans Cyclopedia, and then in
nineteen fifty two The Enchanted Duplicator became the first book
that was fanfic about fans and one of the first
uses of fandom and print in regards to fans of media.
(39:27):
That word was first used in late eighteen hundreds as
a mashup of fan and domain for sports fans. Fan
fiction as we know it got it start in the
nineteen sixties with Star Trek. This property gave fans a
new way to interact with the work through magazines that
published a fans work and conventions. Fans would make copies
of his zines and hand the mad a conventions. When
Doctor Who started to be included in these conventions in
(39:47):
the nineteen seventies and eighties, this is when we saw
some of the first crossover. So Doctor Who meeting was
spock that I would read it, I would read it?
What about Doctor Who? And Spock shopping for Kurt is
that I ka, oh my gosh. I had a crush
on both Spock and Doctor Who the tenth Doctor David Tennant,
so I would totally be into it. Annie, Annie is
(40:09):
on board, as we talked about a little bit in
our Star Wars episode the First Mary Suit Debuty in
nineteen seventy three with a Treky's Tale. Although it was
meant to be a parody, Yes, and Star Trek fandom
also gave us the first slash thick in nine, a
Kirk slash Spock Fick called The Ring of so Schern
in which the two characters must have sex or die,
(40:31):
fall in love, and quote spend all of their remaining
days on the planet exploring both the planet and each
other's bodies. Is this a bad Is it a bad
situation for them? Or is it it's good? This started
a whole I mean, I'm about to nerd out so hard. Okay,
get get do it, Okay. So Spock, his species of
(40:52):
Vulcan species has this sexual kind of ritual that they
go through. It's it's a called pond far and you
kind of go and heat and if you don't have
sex and bond with someone you die. So Spock went
into pawn far while abandoned on this planet with Kirk,
and so they had to have sex are Spock would die.
(41:12):
This is actually a popular trope called her time on
fan fiction, where you put two characters in a situation
where they must have sex, forcing intimacy usually between two
men that wouldn't otherwise happen. So, no, this is a positive.
I'm going to assume Kirk was like, Okay, I don't
want my friend to die. We can have sex. And
then from there they fell in love and exploited each
(41:35):
other's bodies for their aspect. Yes, and this story and
the Kirk Spock ones that followed calls a lot of
debate in the community during the seventies, and they were
written mostly by women, and that was a part of
the debate that did come up. Now there are a
lot of articles in defense of fan fiction, mostly penned
(41:55):
by women, But the one that really started the most hubbub,
if you will, was in the New York Times. In
this article, she discusses hol her professor, a woman said
that when compared to men, women quote must learn linear
narratives slowly and with much greater difficulty. The author points
to fan fiction writing, saying women who traditionally spend large
(42:16):
portions of their lives working in relative isolation for little
or no pay, bring a different set of motivations to
their writing and art. They want to talk to other
women to express themselves in the science fiction form that
until recently has all but excluded them, which I think
really drives home this idea that it's about a female
form of expression and that it's really it's almost kind
of like anti capitalist. It's not it's not attached to
(42:37):
this idea that you're going to be rich and famous
from doing this. It's it's more about personal growth and
personal creation. Yeah, and that's another criticism often hurled at
fan fiction is that it's nonprofit, as if, like women,
you have no ambitions. Of course you have no ambitions.
What are you doing. You're wasting your time on this
thing that's never going to make you money, which, again,
it's a hobby. I mean, would you say that to
(43:00):
someone who made watercolors for fun, or someone who knitted
but didn't sell their blankets they just liked knitting. Yeah, exactly.
I mean, I'm sure someone does, but it doesn't make sense.
It's not it's not. It's not a cogent argument. Not
everything needs to be to make money or to get
fame and to get you know, rich and famous. Some
things can just be for the pursuit of creativity. And
(43:21):
that's what it sounds like. These women were looking for absolutely,
And as things moved more online in the ninety nineties,
X files that virgin I are a fan of exiles
became the largest online own fandom. Scotland Yard, worried about
a Heaven's Gate situation, started putting together secret files on
the X files, X files, on the x file love
(43:42):
it and on star check on the fandoms around them.
In at least one case, occult hazardism from fandom, but
it's pretty rare. Also, if you look at violence and
sports fandom, no secret files put together on that. Again,
could it be because that is a male dominated fandom
and therefore cool well people act truly get hurt. In
Europe they have to separate different soccer teams by like
(44:04):
a wall, otherwise they would murder each other. People have
gotten hurt from sports fandom. I don't know that there's
been fanfic murders. Yeah, there's certainly some troublesome aspects in fandom,
but fan fiction specifically. I mean, unless you're talking about
ladies hurt and dudes feelings by entering their fandom, talk
about a murder, you're murdering. How I think this fandom
(44:27):
should be otherwise? Yeah, I don't. I don't know. I
don't know. And there is a lot of discomfort around
fandom and fan fiction to this day, which is about
where this springs. As for instance, why are those zangus
writing Harry Potter Pard all these women writing about sex
and manly man fandoms? Its ruining? Are to's dirty, it's moral.
These are all things that you'll hear I read in
(44:49):
plenty of places, and it kind of made me feel
ashamed and embarrassed. Yeah, did you grow up thinking that
what you were doing was gross and weird and like
for weird perverts, like antisocial perverts. Oh. I did luckily
dodge that, but I did think it was really embarrassing
on something I should hide. I didn't think that if
people found out. I was barely certain I would be
(45:10):
mocked quite heavily. And it was difficult because again, my
brothers were very much the kind as I've mentioned before
on this show that would pick on you and would
make fun of you. And we all shared the same computer,
and I tried for so long to hide what I
was doing. Luckily, I don't think they ever figured it out.
I wonder what they thought I was printing out though
(45:30):
lots of recipes, yes, for all the all the cooking
that I did not do at that age. But this, yeah,
this kind of brings us to talking about women and
fan fiction and representation and sort of society's apparent fear
and discomfort with that. It's the dreaded fan fic trope,
(45:54):
the cliffhanger. But never fear. We have a part two,
and uh, we have so much to say about fan fiction,
So please join us for the second part, coming to
your ears soon. M m h m hm hm
Stuff Mom Never Told You News
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Anney Reese
Samantha McVey
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