August 28, 2021 • 30 mins
In our classic 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):
Hey, this is Annie and Samantha and welcome to stuff
I've never told your protection to I heart Radio and
we're back with our second part of our two part
look classic on fan fiction. And I know we've talked
(00:29):
about shipping and you're not really into shipping, which is
a lot of what fan fiction can be. But if
you did read fan fiction, what do you think you
would read? I honestly don't know. I mean, like, Twilight
is the one I guess, so I guess so in
that in that technically would have been the Twilight. It
(00:50):
was a long time ago. I couldn't read it now,
I don't think which, uh just I'm just a different
space in life understanding different things and in likes are different.
This is why I think I have a problem them
right now because I hardly read as it is, except
for when we do our book club. It makes me
sad because I used to love to read. But again,
my stuff was maybe at the tragedy level, murder mystery level.
(01:11):
If there are things like that, I don't necessarily care
about the shipping. That's not something that's been a part
of Like I need this to happen because I don't
know if I just I just accept what it is.
Maybe I don't have a good imagination, but I love,
like you know, Southern Gothic is my favorite form of
probably things that I really really really really love. So
(01:33):
it's hard for me to think on beyond that. Yeah,
I mean all of that stuff does exist, believe believe me.
And I will say about shipping, like I think for me,
this isn't the case for a lot of people, but
for me, shipping is fun when it's like I don't
want this to happen, or I'm glad it didn't happen,
or I know it never will happen, and that's okay,
(01:54):
but at least I can read about it and right.
Because I'm not really a romantic person, I do like
sweet like relationships, kind of like innocent, loving, caring relationships
that don't really involve sex, which a lot of times
is what fan fiction is, even though it's been totally
misinterpreted as this is like a place where all kinds
of sex is going down. It's usually just like domestic
(02:15):
what's called curtain fick of, just like, oh, this couple
cares about each other and they take they take care
of each other. It's very sweet. Yeah, Somebody asked me
the other day of like, how much do you read?
And I was like, well, my problem is every time
I try to read a book now I think I
could be reading, I have kind of the opposite issue.
(02:39):
That's fair, that is fair, I guess, I guess. I
mean I still Yeah, I still read, but I'm often
like I thought I could be reading fans or writing
fan fiction. But yes, we are bringing back this two
part classic on fan fiction, The bridgeon I did, and
in this one I reveal my very embarrassing user name,
(03:00):
which I believe is still up. It's empty, but it's
still there. You can find it. Oh, I wish I
had deleted all my stories. I wish I had left
them up. But me too. Such a shame, Such a shame. Anyway,
please enjoy the second part in our too Fart Look
on fan Fiction. Hello, this is Annie and this is Bridget,
(03:27):
and you're listening to stuff. Mom never told you. This
is part two of our fan fiction Extravaganza, because, surprise, surprise,
we were very excited to talk about fan fiction. Um,
(03:49):
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 my sli
women writing fan fiction and slash. Yeah, I was pretty surprised.
I had no idea there were so many ins and
outs to fan fiction. I thought it was going to
(04:10):
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
(04:30):
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 fan
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, fan fic fear, that's what we're going
(04:51):
to talk about, and it does largely seem to do
with our anxieties around women and sexuality and male anxieties
about women in the fantom surprised a prize 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 have
seen a young lady with her table loaded with volumes,
(05:13):
a loaded of fictitious trash, pouring day after day and
night after night, over highly wrought, seeing some skillfully 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. She was insane, incurably insane from
(05:35):
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 the show. She's gonna come.
(05:55):
I's gonna come from me. I'm a vampire though, anyway.
According to a survey from fanfic the fan fixed 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.
(06:17):
When AO three was first coded, it marked 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 that it probably exkews slightly
older than you'd guess, like college aged outside of what Pad,
which we talked about earlier. See, this doesn't actually surprise
(06:39):
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 with women, queer folks
on by anario folks, books of color, like marginalized people
really combine their voices in these alternative sources of you know,
(07:02):
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 the video game world a lot of female gamers,
including myself, which choose a masculine sounding name, hopefully that
(07:26):
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 is that? What? Where
did that come from? What's the origin of that? Gosh,
it's actually really embarrassing story. I don't want to tell it.
(07:48):
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 sill. Once I snuck onto
the hometown I grew up in, had a really fancy neighborhood,
really fancy, well known, and I was just kind of
(08:09):
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 to it. Also,
you know, I'm a young kids police and they asked
me what my name was, and I panicked and I said,
(08:30):
August Wind. Do you believe it wasn't August? Tell me
it was a windy night in August. It George Glass,
it was, it was August, and I'd like, it was
clearly thank you for laughing at my name. Thank you.
(08:53):
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 down with the
ship and you're like, where are you from? August Wind?
And I was like, oh, you know, neighbors down, they
(09:14):
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 I you know,
I was an emo teenager and I was tired. I
was winded, but also I was staying with my roots
(09:36):
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 swinging a miss, as they say, away from my
embarrassing pen name. But first we're gonna take a quick
break for word for a sponsor, and we're back. Thank you,
(10:07):
spots are. Here is a quote from vox. There's 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
(10:28):
gate keeping of fandoms, it's largely done by men, and
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
(10:48):
of fan fiction is from male critics. In an article
titled when men write fan fiction, It isn't fan fiction
because it's academic. Okay, that's first of all, how is
it that men are the most vocal critics of a
landscape dominated by For me, that this 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.
(11:10):
And I found so many articles written by men that
were criticizing fan fiction and they were just so condescending
and like dismissive, just kind of insulting about the people
who would do this, and it was hard misogynistic, very
kind of left a bad taste in my mouth. And
there are a lot of theories as to why women
(11:31):
make up a majority of the fan fiction community. One
is that it allowed young girls and women traditionally 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,
(11:53):
I know, we're like a broken record on the show
about this, but that really matters, you know, feeling like
you're the one who is the author of your own
ory 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,
(12:14):
and it also breaks my heart about how a lot
of the like dismissiveness of it is like these are young,
stupid girls, like young and you know, like fan girls.
I remember Christie Caroline 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
(12:35):
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
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, saying they're going to go all
(12:56):
in on it, and I think it's actually quite innovative,
Like we don't think of young girls and their fandom
as 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,
(13:16):
these women and young girls actually are quite innovative. They're
innovative creators who are carving off their own space of
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 exists, 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
(13:38):
at least if they are, they're like a quiet minority.
So I like that. I think that, you know, write
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
(13:59):
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
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
(14:20):
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,
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
(14:42):
their 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,
and we've touched on before having to prove your fandom
as a woman or geek girl, fear she's just faking
(15:02):
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 band fiction and all the women writing it.
This does bring us to Slash. It's time. 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,
(15:23):
it's more often than not not pornographic. And it's important
to keep in mind when we unpack why most Slash
is written by women, just in case people are as
tuned into this world as me. Slashes male two men together,
that's noncanon. So if we look down, if we break
down readership demographics, it's generally at split between heatersexual readers,
(15:46):
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 that I
am now totally on board with has changed my view
of most media for a while. Personally, I had a
theory it was because most well developed characters we consume,
(16:07):
our male female options are limited, so most relationships were
seeing on screen are between two dupes. I think everybody
Cop Movie or Kirkin's Black. So we're just we're taking
what we see and expounding upon it. Another idea. I
read that in particular in Japanese fan fiction, a slash
might be preferred because it removes the pressures of marriage
(16:29):
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 about
slash in Asia. In Japan, where manga based slash is
called at ya oe, the romance between two male characters
(16:50):
usually still fits into the traditional, often regressive, masculine feminine pairing.
There's pretty clear like this one was meant to be
the masculine, this one is meant to be the feminine one.
It's pretty wide seen as a way for women to
express their sexuality and desire and to experience the emotional
aspects of relationships of the attendees at the two thousand
and three Yayoikon and San Francisco or Women That's Fascinating.
(17:13):
Slash Our Den Mai is popular among heterosexual women self
identified as rotten Girls and China. To an estimated two
seventy five million people read slash fan fiction 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
(17:34):
the sites hosting don 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 men are gay
characters to have platonic relationships, and that it fetishizes and
objectifies gay men, particularly more visual mediums like yo, which
is traditionally more visual. A counterpoint to that is that
(17:56):
a decent portion of the women creating slash are not
attracted two 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, 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
(18:20):
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, this is the
one that is. I feel like it's kind of changed
how I look at all media, because, like I said,
I'd never liked the sex part of slash, but I
did like slash fan fiction because of the relationships in there.
(18:43):
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 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 are at least I felt like as a woman,
it almost makes me tense knowing she's going to have
(19:04):
to deal with all of these things. It's just like
what you said before, Women's bodies are apherently political, and
so if the point of view consuming this media, it's
just sort of get an escape from that. 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.
(19:26):
I read an article by someone else who was saying
she realized and 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 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, should be seen as passive, whereas male characters
are men, they're active, they're aggressive. So you're telling a
(19:49):
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 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
(20:09):
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 bromance. As a culture,
we've sexualized the female body so much that 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
(20:31):
head they're going to get together, exactly. But that doesn't
happen with two male characters for male viewers, 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
(20:53):
times were 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 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 and hadn't even occurred
(21:16):
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. Over
at the high Hat, Melissa writes that Slash gives and
the author the chance to quote have the freedom of
being male in their female bodies. I do think there
(21:36):
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
have an abundance. Yes, oh yeah, slash challenges gender norms, masculinity, femininity.
I'm not sure the same fear would exist around male
(21:58):
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 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 creative team Captain America,
(22:19):
the Winners Soldier, which is one of my favorites, is
popularly read and turned into a homorotic love story between
the two men by young women, which as someone who
dresses up as the Winners Soldier at conventions and sees
this all the time for some reason in my pinters 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
(22:41):
a quick break for word for our sponsor and we're back.
Thank you, spotsor okay, so you can probably tell I
am no fan ofiction expert. But this I found really
(23:02):
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 of the reporter nor the celebrity know about
fan fiction, and that's fine, but then you wonder, like,
why even talk about it at all. So there's this
really infamous interview with Benedict Cumberbatch in Out magazine that
(23:23):
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 from that interview that phrases quote lustful monster
and put it in art. One actually put on a
T shirt and the sales of that shirt go to
the nonprofit behind a OH three, the Organization for Transformative Works.
(23:46):
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
would have ever thought that lustful gloster could generate such
positive impact. My heart is fit to burst to birth.
(24:08):
Do you own a lustful You should? If you had it,
you would be wearing it. Yeah. I didn't know this existed,
but now I really want one. And another show I
mentioned before, Supernatural, did the whole episode on fan fiction.
That's really difficult to explain without having the foundation of
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
(24:29):
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 stumble upon these
young ladies making a musical about their life. And at
the end, one of the characters is like, look, I
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,
(24:51):
he has some really awesome quotes about fan fiction. For instance,
when somebody asked him about slash because his character, as
I mentioned earlier, cast Dale and Dean, there's a lot
of slash about them. The stl when he was asked
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
(25:12):
is lovely. Author Daniel Beings wrote 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 Slayer fiction as a
sample for previous work. When applying for a writing program,
she had to explain in her follow up interview that
what fan fiction was and why she was drawn to it.
It gave her the space to experiment with her voice
(25:33):
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
like looking down on 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
(25:54):
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
in the world of fan fiction at its best and yeah, again,
going back to thinks, she says, fan fiction is a
more accessible platform for writing and experimentation, and I'm all
(26:16):
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.
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
(26:38):
like I had a sample for everything. You've got to
calm down, Annie or 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
you're comfortable with it, send us some fan fiction that
you've written. We're thinking about doing kind of a kind
(27:00):
of a on ongoing series of reading fan fiction, perhaps
with some like production value. We've got. We've got a
little whole project idea kicking around. Yeah, send us that
fan Pi absolutely and Bridget and I I will jump
in the fray. I will read my fan fiction. I might, Okay,
I might. We'll see. Gotta I gotta get, I gotta
(27:20):
like psych yourself. I gotta check myself up a little bit. Okay.
But speaking of asking people to send in their fan fiction, no,
it is time for some listener mail. Skyler wrote, I
wanted to share a small anecdote from my junior prom.
We didn't have a specific dress code for prom other
than formal attire and to use our brains on what
(27:42):
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 jumping on and over tables.
(28:03):
Come and 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 about my own prom experiences.
I never thought I would consider my school liberal, but
(28:25):
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 want our suit
to prom, because that's exactly what I did. I'd wore
a dresses to every single school dance before my senior prom.
(28:47):
But I went on a vacation to France a month
before prom and and impulse bought these fabulous, glittery pink
saddle shoes. Of course, I had to base my entire
prom 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 can happen
when you're defying gender expectations, I got so many compliments.
My other friends were complaining about how they couldn't breathe
(29:08):
in their dresses, how their strap was Brau's kept slopping.
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 warn a suit to
prom and I wish I had had pink, sparkly saddle shoes.
She sent a picture and that was that was a
dope outfit. So good, Sarah, Well done, Yes, well done.
(29:33):
Thanks to both of them for writing in. Thanks it's
always to our producers, Delan Fagan, Kathleen Quillian. We would
love to hear from you. Please send those fan fiction
please or any other thoughts that you have. 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 Two
(30:00):
two
Hey, this is Annie and Samantha and welcome to stuff
I've never told your protection to I heart Radio and
we're back with our second part of our two part
look classic on fan fiction. And I know we've talked
(00:29):
about shipping and you're not really into shipping, which is
a lot of what fan fiction can be. But if
you did read fan fiction, what do you think you
would read? I honestly don't know. I mean, like, Twilight
is the one I guess, so I guess so in
that in that technically would have been the Twilight. It
(00:50):
was a long time ago. I couldn't read it now,
I don't think which, uh just I'm just a different
space in life understanding different things and in likes are different.
This is why I think I have a problem them
right now because I hardly read as it is, except
for when we do our book club. It makes me
sad because I used to love to read. But again,
my stuff was maybe at the tragedy level, murder mystery level.
(01:11):
If there are things like that, I don't necessarily care
about the shipping. That's not something that's been a part
of Like I need this to happen because I don't
know if I just I just accept what it is.
Maybe I don't have a good imagination, but I love,
like you know, Southern Gothic is my favorite form of
probably things that I really really really really love. So
(01:33):
it's hard for me to think on beyond that. Yeah,
I mean all of that stuff does exist, believe believe me.
And I will say about shipping, like I think for me,
this isn't the case for a lot of people, but
for me, shipping is fun when it's like I don't
want this to happen, or I'm glad it didn't happen,
or I know it never will happen, and that's okay,
(01:54):
but at least I can read about it and right.
Because I'm not really a romantic person, I do like
sweet like relationships, kind of like innocent, loving, caring relationships
that don't really involve sex, which a lot of times
is what fan fiction is, even though it's been totally
misinterpreted as this is like a place where all kinds
of sex is going down. It's usually just like domestic
(02:15):
what's called curtain fick of, just like, oh, this couple
cares about each other and they take they take care
of each other. It's very sweet. Yeah, Somebody asked me
the other day of like, how much do you read?
And I was like, well, my problem is every time
I try to read a book now I think I
could be reading, I have kind of the opposite issue.
(02:39):
That's fair, that is fair, I guess, I guess. I
mean I still Yeah, I still read, but I'm often
like I thought I could be reading fans or writing
fan fiction. But yes, we are bringing back this two
part classic on fan fiction, The bridgeon I did, and
in this one I reveal my very embarrassing user name,
(03:00):
which I believe is still up. It's empty, but it's
still there. You can find it. Oh, I wish I
had deleted all my stories. I wish I had left
them up. But me too. Such a shame, Such a shame. Anyway,
please enjoy the second part in our too Fart Look
on fan Fiction. Hello, this is Annie and this is Bridget,
(03:27):
and you're listening to stuff. Mom never told you. This
is part two of our fan fiction Extravaganza, because, surprise, surprise,
we were very excited to talk about fan fiction. Um,
(03:49):
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 my sli
women writing fan fiction and slash. Yeah, I was pretty surprised.
I had no idea there were so many ins and
outs to fan fiction. I thought it was going to
(04:10):
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
(04:30):
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 fan
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, fan fic fear, that's what we're going
(04:51):
to talk about, and it does largely seem to do
with our anxieties around women and sexuality and male anxieties
about women in the fantom surprised a prize 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 have
seen a young lady with her table loaded with volumes,
(05:13):
a loaded of fictitious trash, pouring day after day and
night after night, over highly wrought, seeing some skillfully 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. She was insane, incurably insane from
(05:35):
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 the show. She's gonna come.
(05:55):
I's gonna come from me. I'm a vampire though, anyway.
According to a survey from fanfic the fan fixed 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.
(06:17):
When AO three was first coded, it marked 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 that it probably exkews slightly
older than you'd guess, like college aged outside of what Pad,
which we talked about earlier. See, this doesn't actually surprise
(06:39):
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 with women, queer folks
on by anario folks, books of color, like marginalized people
really combine their voices in these alternative sources of you know,
(07:02):
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 the video game world a lot of female gamers,
including myself, which choose a masculine sounding name, hopefully that
(07:26):
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 is that? What? Where
did that come from? What's the origin of that? Gosh,
it's actually really embarrassing story. I don't want to tell it.
(07:48):
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 sill. Once I snuck onto
the hometown I grew up in, had a really fancy neighborhood,
really fancy, well known, and I was just kind of
(08:09):
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 to it. Also,
you know, I'm a young kids police and they asked
me what my name was, and I panicked and I said,
(08:30):
August Wind. Do you believe it wasn't August? Tell me
it was a windy night in August. It George Glass,
it was, it was August, and I'd like, it was
clearly thank you for laughing at my name. Thank you.
(08:53):
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 down with the
ship and you're like, where are you from? August Wind?
And I was like, oh, you know, neighbors down, they
(09:14):
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 I you know,
I was an emo teenager and I was tired. I
was winded, but also I was staying with my roots
(09:36):
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 swinging a miss, as they say, away from my
embarrassing pen name. But first we're gonna take a quick
break for word for a sponsor, and we're back. Thank you,
(10:07):
spots are. Here is a quote from vox. There's 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
(10:28):
gate keeping of fandoms, it's largely done by men, and
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
(10:48):
of fan fiction is from male critics. In an article
titled when men write fan fiction, It isn't fan fiction
because it's academic. Okay, that's first of all, how is
it that men are the most vocal critics of a
landscape dominated by For me, that this 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.
(11:10):
And I found so many articles written by men that
were criticizing fan fiction and they were just so condescending
and like dismissive, just kind of insulting about the people
who would do this, and it was hard misogynistic, very
kind of left a bad taste in my mouth. And
there are a lot of theories as to why women
(11:31):
make up a majority of the fan fiction community. One
is that it allowed young girls and women traditionally 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,
(11:53):
I know, we're like a broken record on the show
about this, but that really matters, you know, feeling like
you're the one who is the author of your own
ory 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,
(12:14):
and it also breaks my heart about how a lot
of the like dismissiveness of it is like these are young,
stupid girls, like young and you know, like fan girls.
I remember Christie Caroline 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
(12:35):
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
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, saying they're going to go all
(12:56):
in on it, and I think it's actually quite innovative,
Like we don't think of young girls and their fandom
as 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,
(13:16):
these women and young girls actually are quite innovative. They're
innovative creators who are carving off their own space of
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 exists, 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
(13:38):
at least if they are, they're like a quiet minority.
So I like that. I think that, you know, write
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
(13:59):
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
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
(14:20):
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,
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
(14:42):
their 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,
and we've touched on before having to prove your fandom
as a woman or geek girl, fear she's just faking
(15:02):
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 band fiction and all the women writing it.
This does bring us to Slash. It's time. 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,
(15:23):
it's more often than not not pornographic. And it's important
to keep in mind when we unpack why most Slash
is written by women, just in case people are as
tuned into this world as me. Slashes male two men together,
that's noncanon. So if we look down, if we break
down readership demographics, it's generally at split between heatersexual readers,
(15:46):
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 that I
am now totally on board with has changed my view
of most media for a while. Personally, I had a
theory it was because most well developed characters we consume,
(16:07):
our male female options are limited, so most relationships were
seeing on screen are between two dupes. I think everybody
Cop Movie or Kirkin's Black. So we're just we're taking
what we see and expounding upon it. Another idea. I
read that in particular in Japanese fan fiction, a slash
might be preferred because it removes the pressures of marriage
(16:29):
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 about
slash in Asia. In Japan, where manga based slash is
called at ya oe, the romance between two male characters
(16:50):
usually still fits into the traditional, often regressive, masculine feminine pairing.
There's pretty clear like this one was meant to be
the masculine, this one is meant to be the feminine one.
It's pretty wide seen as a way for women to
express their sexuality and desire and to experience the emotional
aspects of relationships of the attendees at the two thousand
and three Yayoikon and San Francisco or Women That's Fascinating.
(17:13):
Slash Our Den Mai is popular among heterosexual women self
identified as rotten Girls and China. To an estimated two
seventy five million people read slash fan fiction 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
(17:34):
the sites hosting don 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 men are gay
characters to have platonic relationships, and that it fetishizes and
objectifies gay men, particularly more visual mediums like yo, which
is traditionally more visual. A counterpoint to that is that
(17:56):
a decent portion of the women creating slash are not
attracted two 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, 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
(18:20):
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, this is the
one that is. I feel like it's kind of changed
how I look at all media, because, like I said,
I'd never liked the sex part of slash, but I
did like slash fan fiction because of the relationships in there.
(18:43):
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 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 are at least I felt like as a woman,
it almost makes me tense knowing she's going to have
(19:04):
to deal with all of these things. It's just like
what you said before, Women's bodies are apherently political, and
so if the point of view consuming this media, it's
just sort of get an escape from that. 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.
(19:26):
I read an article by someone else who was saying
she realized and 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 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, should be seen as passive, whereas male characters
are men, they're active, they're aggressive. So you're telling a
(19:49):
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 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
(20:09):
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 bromance. As a culture,
we've sexualized the female body so much that 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
(20:31):
head they're going to get together, exactly. But that doesn't
happen with two male characters for male viewers, 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
(20:53):
times were 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 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 and hadn't even occurred
(21:16):
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. Over
at the high Hat, Melissa writes that Slash gives and
the author the chance to quote have the freedom of
being male in their female bodies. I do think there
(21:36):
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
have an abundance. Yes, oh yeah, slash challenges gender norms, masculinity, femininity.
I'm not sure the same fear would exist around male
(21:58):
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 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 creative team Captain America,
(22:19):
the Winners Soldier, which is one of my favorites, is
popularly read and turned into a homorotic love story between
the two men by young women, which as someone who
dresses up as the Winners Soldier at conventions and sees
this all the time for some reason in my pinters 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
(22:41):
a quick break for word for our sponsor and we're back.
Thank you, spotsor okay, so you can probably tell I
am no fan ofiction expert. But this I found really
(23:02):
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 of the reporter nor the celebrity know about
fan fiction, and that's fine, but then you wonder, like,
why even talk about it at all. So there's this
really infamous interview with Benedict Cumberbatch in Out magazine that
(23:23):
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 from that interview that phrases quote lustful monster
and put it in art. One actually put on a
T shirt and the sales of that shirt go to
the nonprofit behind a OH three, the Organization for Transformative Works.
(23:46):
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
would have ever thought that lustful gloster could generate such
positive impact. My heart is fit to burst to birth.
(24:08):
Do you own a lustful You should? If you had it,
you would be wearing it. Yeah. I didn't know this existed,
but now I really want one. And another show I
mentioned before, Supernatural, did the whole episode on fan fiction.
That's really difficult to explain without having the foundation of
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
(24:29):
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 stumble upon these
young ladies making a musical about their life. And at
the end, one of the characters is like, look, I
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,
(24:51):
he has some really awesome quotes about fan fiction. For instance,
when somebody asked him about slash because his character, as
I mentioned earlier, cast Dale and Dean, there's a lot
of slash about them. The stl when he was asked
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
(25:12):
is lovely. Author Daniel Beings wrote 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 Slayer fiction as a
sample for previous work. When applying for a writing program,
she had to explain in her follow up interview that
what fan fiction was and why she was drawn to it.
It gave her the space to experiment with her voice
(25:33):
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
like looking down on 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
(25:54):
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
in the world of fan fiction at its best and yeah, again,
going back to thinks, she says, fan fiction is a
more accessible platform for writing and experimentation, and I'm all
(26:16):
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.
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
(26:38):
like I had a sample for everything. You've got to
calm down, Annie or 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
you're comfortable with it, send us some fan fiction that
you've written. We're thinking about doing kind of a kind
(27:00):
of a on ongoing series of reading fan fiction, perhaps
with some like production value. We've got. We've got a
little whole project idea kicking around. Yeah, send us that
fan Pi absolutely and Bridget and I I will jump
in the fray. I will read my fan fiction. I might, Okay,
I might. We'll see. Gotta I gotta get, I gotta
(27:20):
like psych yourself. I gotta check myself up a little bit. Okay.
But speaking of asking people to send in their fan fiction, no,
it is time for some listener mail. Skyler wrote, I
wanted to share a small anecdote from my junior prom.
We didn't have a specific dress code for prom other
than formal attire and to use our brains on what
(27:42):
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 jumping on and over tables.
(28:03):
Come and 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 about my own prom experiences.
I never thought I would consider my school liberal, but
(28:25):
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 want our suit
to prom, because that's exactly what I did. I'd wore
a dresses to every single school dance before my senior prom.
(28:47):
But I went on a vacation to France a month
before prom and and impulse bought these fabulous, glittery pink
saddle shoes. Of course, I had to base my entire
prom 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 can happen
when you're defying gender expectations, I got so many compliments.
My other friends were complaining about how they couldn't breathe
(29:08):
in their dresses, how their strap was Brau's kept slopping.
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 warn a suit to
prom and I wish I had had pink, sparkly saddle shoes.
She sent a picture and that was that was a
dope outfit. So good, Sarah, Well done, Yes, well done.
(29:33):
Thanks to both of them for writing in. Thanks it's
always to our producers, Delan Fagan, Kathleen Quillian. We would
love to hear from you. Please send those fan fiction
please or any other thoughts that you have. 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 Two
(30:00):
two
Stuff Mom Never Told You News
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