June 22, 2018 • 26 mins
In our fanfiction finale, A & B look at why fanfiction is largely written by women, why so much of it is slash, and why any of this matters. Past fanfics and embarrassing usernames will be revealed.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:05):
Hello, this is Annie and this is Bridget and you're
listening to stuff. Mom never told you. This is part
two of our fan fiction Extravaganza, because, surprise, surprise, we
(00:25):
were very excited to talk about fan fiction. Um, if
you haven't caught the first episode, go check it out.
It was kind of more of a primer the history,
what what is this fan fiction thing? And in this
episode we're gonna look more into why it's mostly women
writing fan fiction and slash. Yeah. I was pretty surprised.
I had no idea there were so many ins and
(00:48):
outs to fan fiction. I thought it was going to
be something that was sort of a quick overview, but
when you actually look at the history, there's so much
going on and it's so gendered. After part one of
this episode aired, I was having a conversation with a
friend and I was like, oh, we were talking about
fan fiction and he said, oh, isn't that a bunch
of weirdos writing stories where Harry Potter and Gandolf have
(01:10):
sex with each other? And I was able to say, no,
that is a common fan fiction misconception. So I was
pretty proud of how how useful the information about fani
fiction turned out to be in my own life. I'm
proud to Bridget. Good for you standing up for fan fiction.
But yeah, let's let's dive right in, shall we. Let's
do it. Yes, fantic fear, that's what we're going to
(01:31):
talk about, and it does largely seem to do with
our anxieties around women and sexuality, and male anxieties about
women in the phantom Surprise surprise that's never come up
here on the show. No, never, never, And this fear
feminine media goes way back to take this quote from
a pastor from eighteen sixty four. I've seen a young
(01:52):
lady with her table loaded with volumes, a loaded of
fictitious trash, pouring day after day and night after night
over highly we're all seeing since carefully portrayed pictures of romance,
until her cheeks grew pale, her eyes became wild and reckless,
and her mind wandered and was lost. A lot of
intelligence passed behind a cloud, and her soul was forever benighted.
(02:12):
She was insane, incurably insane from reading novels. Is he
describing you? Is that what you look like when you
read band fiction? So I am a vampire. I wasn't
planning on admitting it. It's right to be hunting you, dad.
Wait is she behind you? That's why I was so
nervous before. Oh no, I hope she doesn't listen to
(02:34):
the show. She's gonna come's gonna come. I'm a vampire though. Anyway.
According to a survey from Fanfic, the fan fix site
AO three that we mentioned earlier, an overwhelming majority of
fan fiction is written by people who identify as women,
more identify as gender queer at six percent than male
at four percent, and only thirty eight percent identify as heterosexual.
(02:57):
When AO three was first coded, it mark to the
biggest majority female independent coding project ever. Wow. As to
age demographics, to go back to that whole horny teenagers
are the only ones writing this. That's not true. It
depends on which site you look at, but it probably
excused slightly older than you'd guess, like college aged outside
of what Pad, which we talked about earlier. See this
(03:18):
doesn't actually surprise me at all, because I've often found
that anything that involves sort of people power and media,
whether it's you know, YouTube or independent content creation, those
spaces tend to be heavily dominated by non heterosexual men's
which women, queer folks, non byronary filips, books of color,
like marginalized people really combine their voices in these alternative
(03:40):
sources of you know, creativity and media. Yeah, I am
kind of curious. I wonder how common it is for
perhaps men to pretend to be women writing fan fiction,
or like choose a name that maybe you couldn't get
a sense of whether or not they were male or female.
Sort of like how in in the video game world,
(04:01):
a lot of female gamers, including myself, which is a
masculine sounding name. Hopefully that people would leave us alone.
Like I wonder, I'm just curious if there's kind of
an embarrassment or maybe even male fan fiction writers feel
like they'd be more accepted. What was your fan fiction handle?
It was winded? W Why in D E D? What
(04:22):
is that? What? Where did that come from? What's the
origin of that? Gosh, it's actually a really embarrassing story.
I don't want to tell it. If you can, we
can tell it off air. You can still look it up.
It does exist, but there's nothing. They are deleted everything. Unfortunately.
I kind of wish there's something there for you. Maybe
if I find find them. I'll repost. This is so silly.
Once I snuck down to the hometown I grew up in,
(04:44):
had a really fancy neighborhood, really fancy, well known, and
I was just kind of curious about what went down
in there. So when I was eight or nine, I
um snuck in and I was looking around and these
police roll up and they had a bunch of like
big dogs. Really scared me, and also, you know, I'm
I'm a young kid, the last and they asked me
(05:06):
what my name was, and I panicked and I said,
August Wind. Do you believe it was it? August? Tell
me it was a windy night in August. It was
George Glass, it was it was August. And I'd like,
(05:27):
it was clearly thank you for laughing at my name,
thank you. I'm sorry, I'm sorry, but being a I
got I got windy August night. What's your name? August Wind?
And it was so clearly fake, but I like did
not abandon it, Like I went all in dawn with
(05:47):
the ship and You're like, where are you from, August Wind?
And I was like, oh, you know, neigh bows down,
They know me around here. August wouldn't ask anyone. I'm
so glad, I asked, But then I turned it into
like a pun, a play on winded, because you know,
(06:09):
I was an emo teenager and I was tired. I
was winded, But also I was staying with my roots
of my bad fake name that I made up when questioned,
that's such a good story. Yeah, it wasn't one of
my better fake names, but you know, I gave you
a swing in a mess, as they say, away from
(06:30):
my embarrassing pen name. But first we're gonna take a
quick break for word for our sponsor, and we're back.
Thank you, sponsor. Here is a quote from Vox. There's
(06:51):
a special I reserved for the particular corner of the
web where people make transformative works about the media they love.
And given that this corner is primarily composed of young women,
it's hard to avoid the conclusion that this ire is gendered.
And also, apart from that, if you think about the
gate keeping of fandoms, it's largely done by men, and
(07:11):
having women dominate this one particular aspect of fandom made
a lot of men in the fandom uncomfortable, like, what
are you doing this weird thing in my fandom? For
another article, Oh, this is the one I mentioned earlier
from the Mary Sue noted that the most vocal criticism
of fan fiction is from male critics, in an article
titled when men write fan fiction, it isn't fan fiction
(07:34):
because it's academic. Okay, that's first of all. How is
it that men are the most vocal critics of a
of a landscape dominated by For me, that just tells
you all you need to know about how men show
up in this space. And that sounds hostile. It is.
It's really hostile. And I found so many articles written
by men that were criticizing fan fiction and they were
(07:56):
just so condescending and like dismissive, just kind of insulting
about the people who would do this. And it was hard, Yeah, misogynistic,
very kind of left a bad taste in my mouth.
And there are a lot of theories as to why
women make up a majority of the fan fiction community.
One is that it allowed young girls and women traditionally
(08:16):
excluded from fandom by default and from the world of
professional writing and media making as well. It provided the
space that they could enter freely and create empowering storylines
that they weren't seeing anywhere else or even if the
storylines weren't empowering, they felt empowered because they created them. Yeah. Yeah,
I know we're like a broken record on the show
about this, but that really matters, you know, feeling like
(08:37):
you're the one who is the author of your own
story that matters so much. And even if it's not
an empowering story, knowing that you have a voice and
that you are have a seat at the table as
a creator is important. And I just hate seeing men
on it because of their own hang ups around gender. Yeah,
and it also breaks my heart about how a lot
of the like dismissiveness of it is like these are young,
(08:59):
stupid girls, like young and you know, like fan girls.
I remember Christen Carolin did an episode on how we
kind of deride the fan girl. It's a part of
life where you're you're growing and boys go through the
same thing, but we don't loving what they love. And
I think this is this is one of those times
where I want to say, oh, we should do another
episode on blah blah blah. But I've always thought that
(09:21):
it's young girls who are the real kind of Internet pioneers.
Look at things like Tumbler, look at things like meme, culture.
So much of that is fueled by very young girls
online who are like left to their own devices. They
really love this one thing. They're going to go all
in on it, and I think it's actually quite innovative. Like,
we don't think of young girls and their fandom as
(09:42):
purveyors of Internet innovation, but that's what they are. And
we because it's girls, because it's feminized, um, and because
of our hang ups around and anxieties around gender, people
have to put it down. But if they could look
at it with a fresh perspective, they would see, Oh,
these women and young girls actually are quite innovative, their
innovative creators who are carving off their own space of
(10:03):
the Internet. Yeah, and I'm kind of again. I had
a really I had a really good experience with fan fiction.
I'm sure this exist, like negativity exist, but for me,
I didn't really stumble onto it. And I'm I've been
proud that generally nobody's making fun of another fandom, or
at least if they are, they're like a quiet minority.
So I like that. I think that you know, write
(10:25):
your one direction fan fiction. I'm gonna write my Harry
Potter fan fiction. We're all just creating these things here,
and I like that the kind of judgment isn't there
as much as you see with the male dominated parts
of fandom. Writing fan fiction may also give women that
sense of community that we've talked so much about, which
is even more important. Research suggest for lesbian and queer
(10:48):
girls who wrote our found role models and slash fiction
at times when they felt isolated. Elizabeth Minkl wrote in
The New Statesman, my preferred explanation, and she's talking about
why fan fiction is sort of dominated by women, is
the idea that a vast majority of what we watch
is from the male perspective, author directed and filmed by men,
and mostly straight white men. At that fan fiction gives
women and other marginalized groups the chance to subvert that perspective,
(11:12):
to fracture a story and recast it in her own way.
It often feels as if there isn't much space for
difference in the dominant cultural narratives in fandom. By design,
there's space for it. I love that, And even though
I'm not someone who's super into fandom, that's the thing
I find so beautiful that it's it can be such
an inclusive space where all different narratives get to be included. Yeah,
(11:34):
and we've touched on before having to prove your fandom
as a woman or fake geek girl, fear she's just
faking it to infiltrate or fandom. Then that's another thing
that we'll have to return to. But it does play
a role, and I think in kind of the hang
ups we have around fan fiction and all the women
writing it, this does bring us to slash. It's time.
(11:55):
It's finally time to talk about Slash. Okay, So first off,
Slash is not always pornographic, like I've said many times.
In fact, it's more often than not not pornographic. And
it's important keep in mind when we unpack why most
Slash is written by women, just in case people aren't
as tuned into this world as me. Slashes male two
(12:17):
men together, that's noncanon. So if we look down, if
we break down readership demographics, it's generally at split between heater,
sexual readers, and queer readers. When it comes to Slash,
it can differ depending on the fandom and the site.
And there are a lot of theories um as to
why slash is such a phenomenon, and I have one
(12:38):
that I am now totally on board with and has
changed my view of most media for a while. Personally,
I had a theory it was because most well developed
characters we consume our male female options are limited, so
most relationships were seeing on screen are between two dubes.
I think Everybody, Cop Movie or Kirkin's Black. So we're
just we're taking what we see and expounding upon it.
(13:00):
Another idea I read that in particular in Japanese fan fiction,
a slash might be preferred because it removes the pressures
of marriage and that little line item we call pregnancy.
No matter where you are, the female body is inherently political,
and it comes with all of this invisible baggage that
male bodies don't, And we could do a whole thing
(13:22):
about slash in Asia. In Japan, where manga based slash
is called at yaoe, the romance between two male characters
usually still fits into the traditional, often regressive, masculine feminine pairing.
There's pretty clear like this one was meant to be
the masculine one, this one is meant to be the
feminine one. It's pretty widely seen as a way for
women to express their sexuality and desire and to experience
(13:43):
the emotional aspects of relationships of the attendees at the
two thousand and three Yoecon and San Francisco, or women
That's Fascinating. Slash Our den Mai is popular among heterosexual
women self identified as rotten girls in China. To an
estimated two seventy five million people read slash fan fiction
(14:03):
in China. Researchers into why positive it's because women like
reading don my because it's a way for women to
rebel in a society that expects women to be obedient.
Owners of the sites hosting down Mike can be jailed
by the government, and the readers are often described as
needing psychiatric help. And a criticism I see about slash
fairly regularly is that it makes it harder for gay
(14:25):
men are gay characters to have platonic relationships, and that
it fetishizes and objectifies gay men, particularly more visual mediums
like yoe, which is traditionally more visual. A counterpoint to
that is that a decent portion of the women creating
slash are not attracted to men, and almost all of
the women writing slash grew up in a society that
is prohibitive when it comes to women exploring their sexuality
(14:47):
one that shames women and objectifies their bodies. Male characters
are a safe, shame free way to dip your toe
in and kind of a funny way. It removes the
male gaze that women have internalized. It's so fascinating how
women are using this medium to sort of explore their
own sexuality, but not even necessarily in a overtly sexualized
way if they're not actually attracted to men. Yeah. Yeah,
(15:11):
this is the one that is. I feel like it's
kind of changed how I look at on media because,
like I said, I never liked the sex part of slash,
but I did like Slash fan fiction because of the
relationships in there. And the more I think about it,
the more I think it was because of this, because
it was a safer way it removed the female body
(15:31):
does come with all of this stuff that kind of
almost takes you away from the story. You can enjoy
it as much because you, or at least I felt
like as a woman, it almost makes me tense knowing
she's going to have to deal with all of these things.
It's just like what you said before, Women's bodies are
inherently political, and so if the point of view consuming
this media, it's just sort of get an escape from that.
(15:54):
It makes sense that including a sexualized female body would
only sort of add to your anxieties. It wouldn't be
that like escape that you're looking for. Yeah, and we
have penned so many things to women, and that the
way they behave. I read an article by someone else
who was saying she realized when she got older than
almost every character she'd ever written, almost every fan fiction
she'd ever read, all had like men in them, even
(16:17):
though she's a feminist, and she was trying to at
the bottom of why that is. And she thinks it's
because women are almost always passive, or should be seen
as passive, whereas male characters are men, they're active, they're aggressive.
So you're telling a story you want like an active character,
you don't want a passive character. And I think we've
internalized so much about what society tells us is how
(16:37):
a woman should behave and what we see in media,
that it is hard to escape it. If you introduce
a woman into a story, whether you like it or not,
whether you know it or not. I think in the
back of your head there are all these assumptions that
you're making that are perhaps making it hard to just
enjoy it. After I read this, I started to think
that maybe this is why we see so much romance
(16:57):
as a culture. We've sexualized the female body so much.
Having a story with a female character played against a
male character or another female character, it automatically becomes sexualized,
even if it's platonic exactly. You're thinking in the back
of your head, they're going to get together, exactly. But
that doesn't happen with two male characters for male viewers,
(17:20):
which is what media is traditionally, has traditionally been made
for as male viewers, for the male gaze, and sometimes
that comes through through the writer, through the director, or
sometimes it comes through the audience, just as observing. We
might be putting that on there. I would say a
lot of times we're putting that there because that is
what's been ingrained in us. But for so long the
female character has existed in the story solely for some
(17:43):
kind of like objectification or sexual aspect. That's why she's there.
I think we're moving away from that. But I think
that is one of the reasons perhaps that so many
women are writing slash two male characters that hawn't even
occurred to me, but that makes so much sense. Yeah,
I did have a moment of like, trans fiction, you're
changing my view on the world. Everything's making sense now.
(18:06):
Over at the High Hat, Melissa writes that slash gives
the author the chance to quote have the freedom of
being male in their female bodies. And I do think
there is more freedom in the male body, I would say.
And also, young straight men have a plethora of mainstream
accepted media to help them explore their sexuality. Definitely, they
(18:28):
have an abundance. Yes, oh yeah, slash challenges gender norms, masculinity, femininity.
I'm not sure the same fear would exist around male
authored fim slash if it were men writing sex between
two women. I'm pretty sure we would just be like, oh, man,
you know, just doing Yeah. And a side note in
(18:51):
the article I was reading about the fear of fan
fiction from Box, they specifically call out the fact that
despite having an all male cradive team Captain America, The
Winner's Soldier, which is one of my favorites, is popularly
read and turned into a homoertic love story between the
two men by young women, which as someone who dresses
up as the Winner's Soldier at conventions and sees this
(19:12):
all the time. For some reason, in my Pinteres feed,
I really appreciated it. When I read that, I was like, yep,
I hadn't thought about it, but yes, we're gonna take
a quick break for word for a sponsor and we're back.
(19:35):
Thank you sponsor. Okay, So you can probably tell I
am no fan fiction expert, but this I found really
really interesting and I wanted to include it. A quick
note about celebrities. When reporters asked celebrities to comment on
weird fan fiction, they are doing it to mock their fans.
Probably neither the reporter nor the celebrity know about fan fiction,
and that's fine, but then you wonder, like, why even
(19:57):
talk about it at all. So there's this really misinterview
with Benedict Cumberbatch in Out magazine that really did a
lot of this kind of thing, demeaning people who read
fan fiction, who write fan fiction, and who are excited
about fan fiction. But those fans took one phrase in
that interview that phrases quote lustful monster and put it
(20:17):
in art. One actually put it on a T shirt,
and the sales of that shirt go to the nonprofit
behind a oh three the Organization for Transformative Works. So
that just goes to show you that these innovators are
taking a reporter basically trying to make fun of them,
making lemonade out of lemons, and using it to raise
money for a great cause that they care about. Who
(20:38):
would have ever thought that lustful clonster could generate such
positive impact. My heart is fit to burst to birth.
Do you own a lustful You should? If you had it,
you would be wearing it. I didn't know this existed,
but now I really want one. And another show I
mentioned before, Supernatural, did the whole episode of fan fiction
that's really difficult to explain without having the fundation of
(21:00):
what that show is, but basically, the main characters have
a cult following and stumble upon a high school that's
putting on a musical about their lives. And this musical
is almost exclusively put together by young women. It's pretty
great because the two main characters of that show are
pretty like macho dudes, and then they stumbled upon these
young ladies making a musical about their life. And at
the end, one of the characters is like, look, I
(21:22):
really don't like what you're doing, but I appreciate your
right to do it, and you do it well. Yeah.
And one of the actors from the show, Misha Collins,
he has some really awesome quotes about fan fiction. For instance,
when somebody asked him about slash because his character, as
I mentioned earlier, CASTI L and Dean, there's a lot
of slash about them the STL. When he was asked
(21:43):
about it at a convention, he said, talking about slash,
I think it is a great cultural asset that unites
the world and makes it better, which is lovely, Which
is lovely. Author Daniel Being spoke that her experience with
fan fiction taught her that she wrote about common themes
and would write with quote, urgency, joy and discipline. When
she provided a Buffy the Vampire Slater fiction as a
(22:03):
sample for previous work. When applying for a writing program,
she had to explain and her follow up interview what
fan fiction was and why she was drawn to it.
It gave her the space to experiment with her voice
freely and with characters and universes that she was comfortable with,
and she got in and is now a two time
recipient of the Romance Writers of Australia Media Industry award,
So good for her, for all the men who were
(22:24):
like looking down at it and on it. It's actually
changing people's lives. Absolutely, It's just kind of this beautiful
democratic thing. We have this industry of published fiction as
a lot of barriers, of barriers socio economically, even having
access to education to get the degree that's going to
get agents to sign you, Like, there are barriers. But
(22:46):
in the world of fan fiction at its best, and yeah, again,
going back to Binks, she says, fan fiction is a
more accessible platform for writing and experimentation and I'm all
for it, and so am I. It's made me really
really happy to do this research and us. I really
appreciate this world that we've kind of made for ourselves.
And Annie, I appreciate this master class in fan fiction.
(23:09):
I feel like I could really teach a class now,
believe it or not. I cut a lot of stuff.
I was like, I'm here's a sample of across over
like I had a sample for everything. You've got to
calm down, Annie, are else will never leave the studio. Well,
I hope that you listeners have enjoyed this as much
as we have enjoyed putting it together. And please if
(23:33):
you're comfortable with it, send us some fan fiction that
you've written. We're thinking about doing kind of a kind
of an on ongoing series of reading fan fiction, perhaps
with some like production value. You've got, You've got a
little whole project idea kicking around. Yeah, send us that
fan pic, absolutely, and Bridget and I I will jump
in the fray. I will read my fan fiction. I
(23:56):
might okay, I might well see Okay, I gotta get
I gotta like psych yourself. I gotta check myself up
a little bit. Okay. But speaking of asking people to
send in their fan fiction, no, this time for some
listener mail, Skyler wrote, I wanted to share a small
anecdote from my junior prom. We didn't have a specific
(24:18):
dress code for prom other than formal attire and to
use our brains on what is quote appropriate. It was
definitely less strict than our school dress code. The administrators
were more concerned with alcohol than dress. To their credit anyway,
there was a group of about ten guys that chose
not to wear shirts under their vest. Somehow that qual
is formal. They were confronted by the chaperones eventually for
(24:40):
jumping on in over tables. Come to find out she
went to high school with the Chippendales dancers. That sounds
like it could happen in a fan fiction. Honestly it does.
It does. Our next email us from Sarah, Sarah writes,
I just listened to your episode on prom and I
thought it was so interesting. It really got me thinking
(25:01):
about my own prom experiences. I never thought I would
consider my school liberal, but when it comes to prom,
it definitely is. We don't have a prom dress code,
and two girls or two guys buy the couple's prom
ticket all the time because it's cheaper than buying two singles.
Listening to the controversies and activism around prom and comparing
them to how my school handles the same issue was fascinating.
I lit up when you mentioned how you wish you'd
(25:21):
want our suit to prom, because that's exactly what I did.
I'd warn dresses to every single school dance before my
senior prom. But I went on a vacation to France
a month before prom and and impulse bought these fabulous,
glittery pink saddle shoes. Of course, it had to base
my entire problem. Look around them, my makeup, my jewelry,
my manicure and the vest and tie. My mom completely
supported me, although I felt super awkward at first, as
(25:41):
can happen when you're defying gender expectations. I got so
many compliments. My other friends were complaining about how they
couldn't breathe in their dresses, how their strap was bras
kept slipping. But I got to be comfortable and stylish.
Suits of the way to go man um, Sarah, I'm
like living vicariously through you. I wish i'd worn a
suit to UM and I wish I had had pink,
(26:02):
sparkly saddle shoes. She sent a picture and that was
that was a dope outfit. So good, Sarah, Well done, Yes,
well done. Thanks to both of them for writing in.
Thanks it's always to our producers, Delan Fagan and Kathleen Quillian.
We would love to hear from you. Please send those
fan fiction please, or any other thoughts that you have.
(26:24):
Um our email is a mom Stuff at how stuff
works dot com. You can also find us on Twitter
at mom stuff and on Instagram at stuff Mom Never
told You
Hello, this is Annie and this is Bridget and you're
listening to stuff. Mom never told you. This is part
two of our fan fiction Extravaganza, because, surprise, surprise, we
(00:25):
were very excited to talk about fan fiction. Um, if
you haven't caught the first episode, go check it out.
It was kind of more of a primer the history,
what what is this fan fiction thing? And in this
episode we're gonna look more into why it's mostly women
writing fan fiction and slash. Yeah. I was pretty surprised.
I had no idea there were so many ins and
(00:48):
outs to fan fiction. I thought it was going to
be something that was sort of a quick overview, but
when you actually look at the history, there's so much
going on and it's so gendered. After part one of
this episode aired, I was having a conversation with a
friend and I was like, oh, we were talking about
fan fiction and he said, oh, isn't that a bunch
of weirdos writing stories where Harry Potter and Gandolf have
(01:10):
sex with each other? And I was able to say, no,
that is a common fan fiction misconception. So I was
pretty proud of how how useful the information about fani
fiction turned out to be in my own life. I'm
proud to Bridget. Good for you standing up for fan fiction.
But yeah, let's let's dive right in, shall we. Let's
do it. Yes, fantic fear, that's what we're going to
(01:31):
talk about, and it does largely seem to do with
our anxieties around women and sexuality, and male anxieties about
women in the phantom Surprise surprise that's never come up
here on the show. No, never, never, And this fear
feminine media goes way back to take this quote from
a pastor from eighteen sixty four. I've seen a young
(01:52):
lady with her table loaded with volumes, a loaded of
fictitious trash, pouring day after day and night after night
over highly we're all seeing since carefully portrayed pictures of romance,
until her cheeks grew pale, her eyes became wild and reckless,
and her mind wandered and was lost. A lot of
intelligence passed behind a cloud, and her soul was forever benighted.
(02:12):
She was insane, incurably insane from reading novels. Is he
describing you? Is that what you look like when you
read band fiction? So I am a vampire. I wasn't
planning on admitting it. It's right to be hunting you, dad.
Wait is she behind you? That's why I was so
nervous before. Oh no, I hope she doesn't listen to
(02:34):
the show. She's gonna come's gonna come. I'm a vampire though. Anyway.
According to a survey from Fanfic, the fan fix site
AO three that we mentioned earlier, an overwhelming majority of
fan fiction is written by people who identify as women,
more identify as gender queer at six percent than male
at four percent, and only thirty eight percent identify as heterosexual.
(02:57):
When AO three was first coded, it mark to the
biggest majority female independent coding project ever. Wow. As to
age demographics, to go back to that whole horny teenagers
are the only ones writing this. That's not true. It
depends on which site you look at, but it probably
excused slightly older than you'd guess, like college aged outside
of what Pad, which we talked about earlier. See this
(03:18):
doesn't actually surprise me at all, because I've often found
that anything that involves sort of people power and media,
whether it's you know, YouTube or independent content creation, those
spaces tend to be heavily dominated by non heterosexual men's
which women, queer folks, non byronary filips, books of color,
like marginalized people really combine their voices in these alternative
(03:40):
sources of you know, creativity and media. Yeah, I am
kind of curious. I wonder how common it is for
perhaps men to pretend to be women writing fan fiction,
or like choose a name that maybe you couldn't get
a sense of whether or not they were male or female.
Sort of like how in in the video game world,
(04:01):
a lot of female gamers, including myself, which is a
masculine sounding name. Hopefully that people would leave us alone.
Like I wonder, I'm just curious if there's kind of
an embarrassment or maybe even male fan fiction writers feel
like they'd be more accepted. What was your fan fiction handle?
It was winded? W Why in D E D? What
(04:22):
is that? What? Where did that come from? What's the
origin of that? Gosh, it's actually a really embarrassing story.
I don't want to tell it. If you can, we
can tell it off air. You can still look it up.
It does exist, but there's nothing. They are deleted everything. Unfortunately.
I kind of wish there's something there for you. Maybe
if I find find them. I'll repost. This is so silly.
Once I snuck down to the hometown I grew up in,
(04:44):
had a really fancy neighborhood, really fancy, well known, and
I was just kind of curious about what went down
in there. So when I was eight or nine, I
um snuck in and I was looking around and these
police roll up and they had a bunch of like
big dogs. Really scared me, and also, you know, I'm
I'm a young kid, the last and they asked me
(05:06):
what my name was, and I panicked and I said,
August Wind. Do you believe it was it? August? Tell
me it was a windy night in August. It was
George Glass, it was it was August. And I'd like,
(05:27):
it was clearly thank you for laughing at my name,
thank you. I'm sorry, I'm sorry, but being a I
got I got windy August night. What's your name? August Wind?
And it was so clearly fake, but I like did
not abandon it, Like I went all in dawn with
(05:47):
the ship and You're like, where are you from, August Wind?
And I was like, oh, you know, neigh bows down,
They know me around here. August wouldn't ask anyone. I'm
so glad, I asked, But then I turned it into
like a pun, a play on winded, because you know,
(06:09):
I was an emo teenager and I was tired. I
was winded, But also I was staying with my roots
of my bad fake name that I made up when questioned,
that's such a good story. Yeah, it wasn't one of
my better fake names, but you know, I gave you
a swing in a mess, as they say, away from
(06:30):
my embarrassing pen name. But first we're gonna take a
quick break for word for our sponsor, and we're back.
Thank you, sponsor. Here is a quote from Vox. There's
(06:51):
a special I reserved for the particular corner of the
web where people make transformative works about the media they love.
And given that this corner is primarily composed of young women,
it's hard to avoid the conclusion that this ire is gendered.
And also, apart from that, if you think about the
gate keeping of fandoms, it's largely done by men, and
(07:11):
having women dominate this one particular aspect of fandom made
a lot of men in the fandom uncomfortable, like, what
are you doing this weird thing in my fandom? For
another article, Oh, this is the one I mentioned earlier
from the Mary Sue noted that the most vocal criticism
of fan fiction is from male critics, in an article
titled when men write fan fiction, it isn't fan fiction
(07:34):
because it's academic. Okay, that's first of all. How is
it that men are the most vocal critics of a
of a landscape dominated by For me, that just tells
you all you need to know about how men show
up in this space. And that sounds hostile. It is.
It's really hostile. And I found so many articles written
by men that were criticizing fan fiction and they were
(07:56):
just so condescending and like dismissive, just kind of insulting
about the people who would do this. And it was hard, Yeah, misogynistic,
very kind of left a bad taste in my mouth.
And there are a lot of theories as to why
women make up a majority of the fan fiction community.
One is that it allowed young girls and women traditionally
(08:16):
excluded from fandom by default and from the world of
professional writing and media making as well. It provided the
space that they could enter freely and create empowering storylines
that they weren't seeing anywhere else or even if the
storylines weren't empowering, they felt empowered because they created them. Yeah. Yeah,
I know we're like a broken record on the show
about this, but that really matters, you know, feeling like
(08:37):
you're the one who is the author of your own
story that matters so much. And even if it's not
an empowering story, knowing that you have a voice and
that you are have a seat at the table as
a creator is important. And I just hate seeing men
on it because of their own hang ups around gender. Yeah,
and it also breaks my heart about how a lot
of the like dismissiveness of it is like these are young,
(08:59):
stupid girls, like young and you know, like fan girls.
I remember Christen Carolin did an episode on how we
kind of deride the fan girl. It's a part of
life where you're you're growing and boys go through the
same thing, but we don't loving what they love. And
I think this is this is one of those times
where I want to say, oh, we should do another
episode on blah blah blah. But I've always thought that
(09:21):
it's young girls who are the real kind of Internet pioneers.
Look at things like Tumbler, look at things like meme, culture.
So much of that is fueled by very young girls
online who are like left to their own devices. They
really love this one thing. They're going to go all
in on it, and I think it's actually quite innovative. Like,
we don't think of young girls and their fandom as
(09:42):
purveyors of Internet innovation, but that's what they are. And
we because it's girls, because it's feminized, um, and because
of our hang ups around and anxieties around gender, people
have to put it down. But if they could look
at it with a fresh perspective, they would see, Oh,
these women and young girls actually are quite innovative, their
innovative creators who are carving off their own space of
(10:03):
the Internet. Yeah, and I'm kind of again. I had
a really I had a really good experience with fan fiction.
I'm sure this exist, like negativity exist, but for me,
I didn't really stumble onto it. And I'm I've been
proud that generally nobody's making fun of another fandom, or
at least if they are, they're like a quiet minority.
So I like that. I think that you know, write
(10:25):
your one direction fan fiction. I'm gonna write my Harry
Potter fan fiction. We're all just creating these things here,
and I like that the kind of judgment isn't there
as much as you see with the male dominated parts
of fandom. Writing fan fiction may also give women that
sense of community that we've talked so much about, which
is even more important. Research suggest for lesbian and queer
(10:48):
girls who wrote our found role models and slash fiction
at times when they felt isolated. Elizabeth Minkl wrote in
The New Statesman, my preferred explanation, and she's talking about
why fan fiction is sort of dominated by women, is
the idea that a vast majority of what we watch
is from the male perspective, author directed and filmed by men,
and mostly straight white men. At that fan fiction gives
women and other marginalized groups the chance to subvert that perspective,
(11:12):
to fracture a story and recast it in her own way.
It often feels as if there isn't much space for
difference in the dominant cultural narratives in fandom. By design,
there's space for it. I love that, And even though
I'm not someone who's super into fandom, that's the thing
I find so beautiful that it's it can be such
an inclusive space where all different narratives get to be included. Yeah,
(11:34):
and we've touched on before having to prove your fandom
as a woman or fake geek girl, fear she's just
faking it to infiltrate or fandom. Then that's another thing
that we'll have to return to. But it does play
a role, and I think in kind of the hang
ups we have around fan fiction and all the women
writing it, this does bring us to slash. It's time.
(11:55):
It's finally time to talk about Slash. Okay, So first off,
Slash is not always pornographic, like I've said many times.
In fact, it's more often than not not pornographic. And
it's important keep in mind when we unpack why most
Slash is written by women, just in case people aren't
as tuned into this world as me. Slashes male two
(12:17):
men together, that's noncanon. So if we look down, if
we break down readership demographics, it's generally at split between heater,
sexual readers, and queer readers. When it comes to Slash,
it can differ depending on the fandom and the site.
And there are a lot of theories um as to
why slash is such a phenomenon, and I have one
(12:38):
that I am now totally on board with and has
changed my view of most media for a while. Personally,
I had a theory it was because most well developed
characters we consume our male female options are limited, so
most relationships were seeing on screen are between two dubes.
I think Everybody, Cop Movie or Kirkin's Black. So we're
just we're taking what we see and expounding upon it.
(13:00):
Another idea I read that in particular in Japanese fan fiction,
a slash might be preferred because it removes the pressures
of marriage and that little line item we call pregnancy.
No matter where you are, the female body is inherently political,
and it comes with all of this invisible baggage that
male bodies don't, And we could do a whole thing
(13:22):
about slash in Asia. In Japan, where manga based slash
is called at yaoe, the romance between two male characters
usually still fits into the traditional, often regressive, masculine feminine pairing.
There's pretty clear like this one was meant to be
the masculine one, this one is meant to be the
feminine one. It's pretty widely seen as a way for
women to express their sexuality and desire and to experience
(13:43):
the emotional aspects of relationships of the attendees at the
two thousand and three Yoecon and San Francisco, or women
That's Fascinating. Slash Our den Mai is popular among heterosexual
women self identified as rotten girls in China. To an
estimated two seventy five million people read slash fan fiction
(14:03):
in China. Researchers into why positive it's because women like
reading don my because it's a way for women to
rebel in a society that expects women to be obedient.
Owners of the sites hosting down Mike can be jailed
by the government, and the readers are often described as
needing psychiatric help. And a criticism I see about slash
fairly regularly is that it makes it harder for gay
(14:25):
men are gay characters to have platonic relationships, and that
it fetishizes and objectifies gay men, particularly more visual mediums
like yoe, which is traditionally more visual. A counterpoint to
that is that a decent portion of the women creating
slash are not attracted to men, and almost all of
the women writing slash grew up in a society that
is prohibitive when it comes to women exploring their sexuality
(14:47):
one that shames women and objectifies their bodies. Male characters
are a safe, shame free way to dip your toe
in and kind of a funny way. It removes the
male gaze that women have internalized. It's so fascinating how
women are using this medium to sort of explore their
own sexuality, but not even necessarily in a overtly sexualized
way if they're not actually attracted to men. Yeah. Yeah,
(15:11):
this is the one that is. I feel like it's
kind of changed how I look at on media because,
like I said, I never liked the sex part of slash,
but I did like Slash fan fiction because of the
relationships in there. And the more I think about it,
the more I think it was because of this, because
it was a safer way it removed the female body
(15:31):
does come with all of this stuff that kind of
almost takes you away from the story. You can enjoy
it as much because you, or at least I felt
like as a woman, it almost makes me tense knowing
she's going to have to deal with all of these things.
It's just like what you said before, Women's bodies are
inherently political, and so if the point of view consuming
this media, it's just sort of get an escape from that.
(15:54):
It makes sense that including a sexualized female body would
only sort of add to your anxieties. It wouldn't be
that like escape that you're looking for. Yeah, and we
have penned so many things to women, and that the
way they behave. I read an article by someone else
who was saying she realized when she got older than
almost every character she'd ever written, almost every fan fiction
she'd ever read, all had like men in them, even
(16:17):
though she's a feminist, and she was trying to at
the bottom of why that is. And she thinks it's
because women are almost always passive, or should be seen
as passive, whereas male characters are men, they're active, they're aggressive.
So you're telling a story you want like an active character,
you don't want a passive character. And I think we've
internalized so much about what society tells us is how
(16:37):
a woman should behave and what we see in media,
that it is hard to escape it. If you introduce
a woman into a story, whether you like it or not,
whether you know it or not. I think in the
back of your head there are all these assumptions that
you're making that are perhaps making it hard to just
enjoy it. After I read this, I started to think
that maybe this is why we see so much romance
(16:57):
as a culture. We've sexualized the female body so much.
Having a story with a female character played against a
male character or another female character, it automatically becomes sexualized,
even if it's platonic exactly. You're thinking in the back
of your head, they're going to get together, exactly. But
that doesn't happen with two male characters for male viewers,
(17:20):
which is what media is traditionally, has traditionally been made
for as male viewers, for the male gaze, and sometimes
that comes through through the writer, through the director, or
sometimes it comes through the audience, just as observing. We
might be putting that on there. I would say a
lot of times we're putting that there because that is
what's been ingrained in us. But for so long the
female character has existed in the story solely for some
(17:43):
kind of like objectification or sexual aspect. That's why she's there.
I think we're moving away from that. But I think
that is one of the reasons perhaps that so many
women are writing slash two male characters that hawn't even
occurred to me, but that makes so much sense. Yeah,
I did have a moment of like, trans fiction, you're
changing my view on the world. Everything's making sense now.
(18:06):
Over at the High Hat, Melissa writes that slash gives
the author the chance to quote have the freedom of
being male in their female bodies. And I do think
there is more freedom in the male body, I would say.
And also, young straight men have a plethora of mainstream
accepted media to help them explore their sexuality. Definitely, they
(18:28):
have an abundance. Yes, oh yeah, slash challenges gender norms, masculinity, femininity.
I'm not sure the same fear would exist around male
authored fim slash if it were men writing sex between
two women. I'm pretty sure we would just be like, oh, man,
you know, just doing Yeah. And a side note in
(18:51):
the article I was reading about the fear of fan
fiction from Box, they specifically call out the fact that
despite having an all male cradive team Captain America, The
Winner's Soldier, which is one of my favorites, is popularly
read and turned into a homoertic love story between the
two men by young women, which as someone who dresses
up as the Winner's Soldier at conventions and sees this
(19:12):
all the time. For some reason, in my Pinteres feed,
I really appreciated it. When I read that, I was like, yep,
I hadn't thought about it, but yes, we're gonna take
a quick break for word for a sponsor and we're back.
(19:35):
Thank you sponsor. Okay, So you can probably tell I
am no fan fiction expert, but this I found really
really interesting and I wanted to include it. A quick
note about celebrities. When reporters asked celebrities to comment on
weird fan fiction, they are doing it to mock their fans.
Probably neither the reporter nor the celebrity know about fan fiction,
and that's fine, but then you wonder, like, why even
(19:57):
talk about it at all. So there's this really misinterview
with Benedict Cumberbatch in Out magazine that really did a
lot of this kind of thing, demeaning people who read
fan fiction, who write fan fiction, and who are excited
about fan fiction. But those fans took one phrase in
that interview that phrases quote lustful monster and put it
(20:17):
in art. One actually put it on a T shirt,
and the sales of that shirt go to the nonprofit
behind a oh three the Organization for Transformative Works. So
that just goes to show you that these innovators are
taking a reporter basically trying to make fun of them,
making lemonade out of lemons, and using it to raise
money for a great cause that they care about. Who
(20:38):
would have ever thought that lustful clonster could generate such
positive impact. My heart is fit to burst to birth.
Do you own a lustful You should? If you had it,
you would be wearing it. I didn't know this existed,
but now I really want one. And another show I
mentioned before, Supernatural, did the whole episode of fan fiction
that's really difficult to explain without having the fundation of
(21:00):
what that show is, but basically, the main characters have
a cult following and stumble upon a high school that's
putting on a musical about their lives. And this musical
is almost exclusively put together by young women. It's pretty
great because the two main characters of that show are
pretty like macho dudes, and then they stumbled upon these
young ladies making a musical about their life. And at
the end, one of the characters is like, look, I
(21:22):
really don't like what you're doing, but I appreciate your
right to do it, and you do it well. Yeah.
And one of the actors from the show, Misha Collins,
he has some really awesome quotes about fan fiction. For instance,
when somebody asked him about slash because his character, as
I mentioned earlier, CASTI L and Dean, there's a lot
of slash about them the STL. When he was asked
(21:43):
about it at a convention, he said, talking about slash,
I think it is a great cultural asset that unites
the world and makes it better, which is lovely, Which
is lovely. Author Daniel Being spoke that her experience with
fan fiction taught her that she wrote about common themes
and would write with quote, urgency, joy and discipline. When
she provided a Buffy the Vampire Slater fiction as a
(22:03):
sample for previous work. When applying for a writing program,
she had to explain and her follow up interview what
fan fiction was and why she was drawn to it.
It gave her the space to experiment with her voice
freely and with characters and universes that she was comfortable with,
and she got in and is now a two time
recipient of the Romance Writers of Australia Media Industry award,
So good for her, for all the men who were
(22:24):
like looking down at it and on it. It's actually
changing people's lives. Absolutely, It's just kind of this beautiful
democratic thing. We have this industry of published fiction as
a lot of barriers, of barriers socio economically, even having
access to education to get the degree that's going to
get agents to sign you, Like, there are barriers. But
(22:46):
in the world of fan fiction at its best, and yeah, again,
going back to Binks, she says, fan fiction is a
more accessible platform for writing and experimentation and I'm all
for it, and so am I. It's made me really
really happy to do this research and us. I really
appreciate this world that we've kind of made for ourselves.
And Annie, I appreciate this master class in fan fiction.
(23:09):
I feel like I could really teach a class now,
believe it or not. I cut a lot of stuff.
I was like, I'm here's a sample of across over
like I had a sample for everything. You've got to
calm down, Annie, are else will never leave the studio. Well,
I hope that you listeners have enjoyed this as much
as we have enjoyed putting it together. And please if
(23:33):
you're comfortable with it, send us some fan fiction that
you've written. We're thinking about doing kind of a kind
of an on ongoing series of reading fan fiction, perhaps
with some like production value. You've got, You've got a
little whole project idea kicking around. Yeah, send us that
fan pic, absolutely, and Bridget and I I will jump
in the fray. I will read my fan fiction. I
(23:56):
might okay, I might well see Okay, I gotta get
I gotta like psych yourself. I gotta check myself up
a little bit. Okay. But speaking of asking people to
send in their fan fiction, no, this time for some
listener mail, Skyler wrote, I wanted to share a small
anecdote from my junior prom. We didn't have a specific
(24:18):
dress code for prom other than formal attire and to
use our brains on what is quote appropriate. It was
definitely less strict than our school dress code. The administrators
were more concerned with alcohol than dress. To their credit anyway,
there was a group of about ten guys that chose
not to wear shirts under their vest. Somehow that qual
is formal. They were confronted by the chaperones eventually for
(24:40):
jumping on in over tables. Come to find out she
went to high school with the Chippendales dancers. That sounds
like it could happen in a fan fiction. Honestly it does.
It does. Our next email us from Sarah, Sarah writes,
I just listened to your episode on prom and I
thought it was so interesting. It really got me thinking
(25:01):
about my own prom experiences. I never thought I would
consider my school liberal, but when it comes to prom,
it definitely is. We don't have a prom dress code,
and two girls or two guys buy the couple's prom
ticket all the time because it's cheaper than buying two singles.
Listening to the controversies and activism around prom and comparing
them to how my school handles the same issue was fascinating.
I lit up when you mentioned how you wish you'd
(25:21):
want our suit to prom, because that's exactly what I did.
I'd warn dresses to every single school dance before my
senior prom. But I went on a vacation to France
a month before prom and and impulse bought these fabulous,
glittery pink saddle shoes. Of course, it had to base
my entire problem. Look around them, my makeup, my jewelry,
my manicure and the vest and tie. My mom completely
supported me, although I felt super awkward at first, as
(25:41):
can happen when you're defying gender expectations. I got so
many compliments. My other friends were complaining about how they
couldn't breathe in their dresses, how their strap was bras
kept slipping. But I got to be comfortable and stylish.
Suits of the way to go man um, Sarah, I'm
like living vicariously through you. I wish i'd worn a
suit to UM and I wish I had had pink,
(26:02):
sparkly saddle shoes. She sent a picture and that was
that was a dope outfit. So good, Sarah, Well done, Yes,
well done. Thanks to both of them for writing in.
Thanks it's always to our producers, Delan Fagan and Kathleen Quillian.
We would love to hear from you. Please send those
fan fiction please, or any other thoughts that you have.
(26:24):
Um our email is a mom Stuff at how stuff
works dot com. You can also find us on Twitter
at mom stuff and on Instagram at stuff Mom Never
told You
Stuff Mom Never Told You News
Hosts And Creators
Anney Reese
Samantha McVey
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