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SMNTY Classics: Fanfiction Extravaganza Part 1 · Stuff Mom Never Told You

0:05
Speaker 1: Hey, this is Annie and Samantha. They're welcome to Steph.
0:07
Speaker 1: I've never told your protection. I heart radio, So Samantha,
0:19
Speaker 1: I know we've talked about fan fiction a lot, a lot,
0:22
Speaker 1: A lot a lot. Do you remember the first time
0:24
Speaker 1: you heard about it and what you thought it was? Okay,
0:28
Speaker 1: not to sound judg mental, but I don't think i've
0:32
Speaker 1: thought about it. I knew it existed, but that was it.
0:34
Speaker 1: That was the end of it. Like I didn't have
0:36
Speaker 1: a judgment either way. I didn't. I thought, great, do
0:39
Speaker 1: your thing. I think great, it exists. Oh, I didn't
0:43
Speaker 1: know how big the world was, and I have learned
0:47
Speaker 1: more and more and more and more and more about
0:50
Speaker 1: it as of late. Thanks to you. Holy to you,
0:54
Speaker 1: like there's no end part like holy to you. I
0:57
Speaker 1: don't think I've ever gond to anyone else about fan faction.
1:00
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I've never talked to anyone else about fan fiction.
1:04
Speaker 1: Although again I have read things like Twilight, which I
1:09
Speaker 1: know was fan fiction, and then when she had the
1:12
Speaker 1: only online available of that specific version, I read it
1:15
Speaker 1: before it was out, like ten years before it was out.
1:19
Speaker 1: So I guess I knew existed, didn't know that was
1:21
Speaker 1: fan fiction. Until later, M yeah, so did that answer
1:28
Speaker 1: the question? Yeah? Yeah, I mean I try not to
1:34
Speaker 1: be because I am such a fan fiction evangelist. I
1:37
Speaker 1: tried very hard not to. Well, actually, every time someone's
1:42
Speaker 1: like I don't like fan fiction, on my well did
1:43
Speaker 1: you like this book or did you like this thing?
1:45
Speaker 1: Because that's correctly fan fiction. And I would argue a
1:48
Speaker 1: lot of what people think isn't fan fiction, that is
1:51
Speaker 1: was written by men and a scene as like academic,
1:55
Speaker 1: whereas if women did the same thing, then it's trashy
1:58
Speaker 1: and not with your time. I was in seventh grade
2:04
Speaker 1: the first time I heard a fan fiction, and then
2:07
Speaker 1: my good friend Katie is the one who introduced it
2:09
Speaker 1: to me, and she was like, oh my god, you've
2:10
Speaker 1: got to go. There's so much stuff you can read,
2:13
Speaker 1: and it's all kinds of stuff, and she was like,
2:17
Speaker 1: you can read all kinds of parents and stuff. And
2:19
Speaker 1: I'm like, what about the Yanks? And she's like, there's
2:21
Speaker 1: so much thanks, Oh, oh my gosh. At the time,
2:27
Speaker 1: the first fan fiction I ever read was a whole
2:28
Speaker 1: of the Rings fan fiction and I only had a
2:31
Speaker 1: certain amount of time on the computer. I think I
2:33
Speaker 1: tell this story in this episode and it's thirty minutes,
2:36
Speaker 1: and everything took so long, so I just printed off
2:38
Speaker 1: the fan fiction seventy two chapters long, huge chapters. It
2:41
Speaker 1: took forever, like I had to keep replacing things, and
2:44
Speaker 1: then I whole punched it tied together. Luckily, I loved it,
2:46
Speaker 1: but it was sad even for me. I will say, um,
2:51
Speaker 1: that was my first introduction to it, and then I
2:53
Speaker 1: was in love with it ever since. I've always read
2:56
Speaker 1: fan fiction. I go through like ebbs and flows of
2:59
Speaker 1: how much I read, but I've always read it since
3:02
Speaker 1: then and recently on the trip I took with my
3:04
Speaker 1: good friends that I've known since we were young to
3:08
Speaker 1: the beach, there were times where we were all reading
3:11
Speaker 1: fan fiction, like we're all reading are different hand fiction.
3:14
Speaker 1: We'd be like, oh, what are you reading this? She'd
3:16
Speaker 1: say like, oh, Hermione, Draco, whatever, whatever, what are you reading? Oh,
3:20
Speaker 1: something about like l Frights and Harry Potter, and I'm like,
3:23
Speaker 1: I'm reading my tragic Luke Skywalker story. And then we'd
3:25
Speaker 1: go back to silence and reading it was so fun. Yeah,
3:32
Speaker 1: I could talk about it forever, and I do try
3:34
Speaker 1: to restrain myself. But speaking of a while back, Virgin
3:39
Speaker 1: I did a two part fan fiction episode and we've
3:43
Speaker 1: been mentioning it in reference to a bunch of things lately,
3:46
Speaker 1: so we thought we would bring them back as classics.
3:50
Speaker 1: So enjoy part one of our fan fiction Extravaganza. Hello,
3:59
Speaker 1: this is Annie and this is a Bridget, and you're
4:01
Speaker 1: listening to stuff Mom never told you, and today it's
4:16
Speaker 1: finally time, finally, to talk about fan fiction. Finally. It
4:22
Speaker 1: feels like such a long time coming, It really does, it,
4:25
Speaker 1: doesn't it. Yeah, I was telling Bridget before this we
4:28
Speaker 1: started recording. It's just been coming up a lot and
4:31
Speaker 1: I'm not sure why, but it seemed right. It seemed
4:34
Speaker 1: like we had to talk about it. And do you
4:36
Speaker 1: want to have this disclaimer right at the top. We're
4:39
Speaker 1: totally aware that fandom can be toxic, and it absolutely
4:42
Speaker 1: can be extremely toxic, and we will touch on elements
4:46
Speaker 1: of that here in this episode. We're definitely gonna talk
4:49
Speaker 1: about it more in depth in a future episode. Today,
4:52
Speaker 1: we're focusing mainly on fan fiction, a little bit of
4:54
Speaker 1: fan art, but mostly fan fiction. So for folks out
4:57
Speaker 1: there who don't know what fan fiction is, what is it?
5:00
Speaker 1: Sometimes called fan fic r f F. Fan fiction is
5:03
Speaker 1: writing typically done by amateur but not always writers and fans.
5:07
Speaker 1: Par is the work of other works, usually but not
5:09
Speaker 1: always works of fiction. So you're kind of in the
5:12
Speaker 1: fan fiction world. We call it playing in someone else's sandbox.
5:16
Speaker 1: And if you haven't surmised, I have a lot of
5:20
Speaker 1: experience with fan fiction. Tell us more about your experience
5:23
Speaker 1: with fan fiction, Annie, have you ever written any fan fiction?
5:27
Speaker 1: I have written some fan fiction, probably as soon as
5:31
Speaker 1: the Internet was available to me. I had a friend
5:34
Speaker 1: shout out Katie Um who introduced me to fan fiction.
5:38
Speaker 1: I read mostly Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, some
5:41
Speaker 1: Star Trek, some X Files. I guess I dabbled all
5:44
Speaker 1: over the place, but the Harry Potter was my big one.
5:47
Speaker 1: Later I got into like Supernatural and Star Wars, but
5:51
Speaker 1: I wrote one for I wrote I think a couple
5:53
Speaker 1: of Harry Potter ones. I wrote a Star Wars one
5:55
Speaker 1: that one was the worst, and a Peter Pan one
5:58
Speaker 1: and a Lord of the Rings one. So yeah, I
6:01
Speaker 1: have quite a bit of experience. What about you, Bridget
6:03
Speaker 1: have you ever read any fan fiction? I have not
6:06
Speaker 1: written any. I have read some. I'm a I'm I
6:09
Speaker 1: guess you could call me an appreciatory. I think I
6:11
Speaker 1: think it's cool that people express themselves via fan fiction
6:15
Speaker 1: and fan art. I think fandom is cool. I feel
6:18
Speaker 1: a bit left out of nerd fandom because I am
6:20
Speaker 1: solidly like, not in the mix on most of it,
6:23
Speaker 1: except for X files fandom maybe like xpils a lot
6:26
Speaker 1: um so there are a few things, but for the
6:27
Speaker 1: most part, I feel a bit left out of like
6:30
Speaker 1: nerdy sci fi fantasy fandom, but I am a major
6:35
Speaker 1: appreciator of it. From afar, Yes, I'm a fandom fan
6:40
Speaker 1: because I think I am just fascinated by folks who
6:43
Speaker 1: express their love of different things via art and cosplay
6:47
Speaker 1: and meticulous recreations and you know, expanding on a universe
6:51
Speaker 1: to make it, you know, what they want to see.
6:54
Speaker 1: I think that's really cool. So I'm you can call
6:55
Speaker 1: me a fandom fanom fan fiction about fanom fiction would uh.
7:01
Speaker 1: Doing the research on this episode, while being one of
7:03
Speaker 1: the most delightful experiences of research I've ever ever gotten
7:07
Speaker 1: to do luckily for work, also made me appreciate fan
7:10
Speaker 1: fiction a lot more. It made me respected a lot more.
7:13
Speaker 1: So we we've touched on fandoms. Fan fiction is made
7:16
Speaker 1: up of fandoms. Like books, TV shows, movies. You can't
7:19
Speaker 1: even have real person fiction r p F as it's
7:22
Speaker 1: sometimes called based on celebrities. And I know some of
7:24
Speaker 1: our how Stuff Works colleagues have featured in some fan fiction.
7:28
Speaker 1: Maybe we have bridget. I don't know. Is there any
7:30
Speaker 1: bridget fan fiction there could be? I love to read it.
7:33
Speaker 1: Here's a challenge for you. Pretty much anything you can imagine.
7:38
Speaker 1: But one misconception to get out of the way right
7:40
Speaker 1: up front is fan fiction is not full on adoration
7:43
Speaker 1: of whatever fandom. Often it's a critique and or subversive
7:47
Speaker 1: and almost always pushing past boundaries and breaking rules. We've
7:50
Speaker 1: talked about the barrier gage trope before. Fan fiction was
7:53
Speaker 1: a place for people to course correct tropes like that,
7:56
Speaker 1: to find representation in fandoms they loved, but we're vastly
8:00
Speaker 1: nordon or to write that representation themselves. It was a
8:03
Speaker 1: place for l g b t q I stories that
8:05
Speaker 1: were anonymous and where you were generally accepted. This is
8:09
Speaker 1: actually where some of my fandom fandom comes in. I
8:13
Speaker 1: really enjoy reading kind of lgbt q I reimaginings of
8:18
Speaker 1: different stories. I definitely read some Good Gilmore Girls fan
8:23
Speaker 1: fiction wherein do you ever watch Gilmore Girls? Okay, so
8:26
Speaker 1: I've seen every episode twice, multiple times, usually more than twice.
8:30
Speaker 1: But it was a pretty Actually I didn't really like
8:33
Speaker 1: the show towards the end, but I kept watching it.
8:35
Speaker 1: But one of the characters on the show Rory. She
8:37
Speaker 1: has one of those sort of three main boyfriends, and
8:39
Speaker 1: the question is always like, oh, do you like Logan,
8:41
Speaker 1: do you like just do you like Dean? And I
8:44
Speaker 1: enjoy fan fiction where she doesn't date any of them,
8:48
Speaker 1: but in fact falls in love with her best friend Paris.
8:52
Speaker 1: So I I really appreciate fan fiction that reimagines characters
8:56
Speaker 1: as living in the queer identities I feel they should
8:59
Speaker 1: be rightfully living. Oh, absolutely, Curiosity. Have you ever read ash?
9:03
Speaker 1: I have not. It is reimagining of Cinderella with two
9:08
Speaker 1: women as the lovers. Oh is the woman a princess? Yes?
9:12
Speaker 1: Oh put that on my list. Yeah. And that is
9:15
Speaker 1: an example. And we're going to talk more about this later.
9:18
Speaker 1: But of like actual fan fiction that has been published,
9:21
Speaker 1: sort of depends on how you define fan fiction. But anyway,
9:24
Speaker 1: so fan fiction, especially when we're talking about the online
9:27
Speaker 1: the Internet can be multi chaptered or it could be
9:29
Speaker 1: a stand alone, sometimes called a one shot. It could
9:32
Speaker 1: be a drabble, which is a couple of hundred words,
9:34
Speaker 1: but they're generally, on average about twenty thousand words, or
9:37
Speaker 1: at least the best reviewed ones are. I just remembered
9:40
Speaker 1: I did write some fan fiction. Oh stop everything, tell
9:44
Speaker 1: me more, Bridget it was. This is gonna sound absurd.
9:50
Speaker 1: It was number of the Babysitters Club. It was. It
9:53
Speaker 1: was Babysitters Club, Mallory and Jesse all grown up, living
9:57
Speaker 1: in Brooklyn and having a relationship together. Oh my gosh,
10:01
Speaker 1: that doesn't sound absert at all. I just kind of thought,
10:03
Speaker 1: so if you live, if you've read the Babysitters Club books,
10:06
Speaker 1: Jesse and Mallory are like the junior Babysitters are not
10:08
Speaker 1: actual members of the BSc, not yet because they're younger,
10:11
Speaker 1: but they're always sort of mentioned in tandem. And Mallory
10:15
Speaker 1: is clearly a lesbian, Like it's very clear. They could
10:18
Speaker 1: not have made it any clearer. Homegirl lives in like
10:21
Speaker 1: an Oxford, you know, Like it's very clear to me. Um,
10:25
Speaker 1: And so yeah, I always thought, like, wouldn't it be
10:27
Speaker 1: cool if Mallory and Jesse grew up and moved to Brooklyn?
10:32
Speaker 1: And Jesse worked at a dance nonprofit and Mallory was
10:36
Speaker 1: a writer for Slate. Wouldn't that be cool? I think
10:39
Speaker 1: it would be. Do you still have access to this? God?
10:43
Speaker 1: Oh well, this is embarrassing. I blocked this out, untild
10:49
Speaker 1: this and told this very moment. We're having kind of
10:52
Speaker 1: an intervention thing right now. I want to when did
10:54
Speaker 1: you write it? Not that long ago, like two years ago?
10:57
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, I thought it would make a funny series.
11:00
Speaker 1: It is. I'm so on board. All right, Maybe we're
11:03
Speaker 1: going to revisit this episode at a later date and
11:05
Speaker 1: we'll both share a little taste old fan fiction. Taste
11:08
Speaker 1: fan fiction, daste, And not to embarrass our producer to Dylan,
11:12
Speaker 1: but he also wrote a fan fiction. He doesn't have
11:14
Speaker 1: his headphones on. He won't hear to you, I know,
11:16
Speaker 1: but he will hear this later. He's editing it. He
11:19
Speaker 1: wrote one bro. I don't know if you remember Arthur
11:22
Speaker 1: the animated Yeah, he's an art park. He's an ant eater.
11:28
Speaker 1: Oh gosh, now I'm having doubts about I always thought
11:32
Speaker 1: he was an art park because when he's in the
11:34
Speaker 1: Spelling Bee, he spells Ardvark, so like enthusiastically. Oh my god,
11:40
Speaker 1: he's an art vark. I don't think he was an
11:42
Speaker 1: ant eater. I don't know, Bridget, I don't know. But
11:45
Speaker 1: Dylan wrote a fan fiction about Arthur and a friend
11:49
Speaker 1: of his getting stuck in an ice cream shop and
11:51
Speaker 1: eating ice cream together, which I thought was very cute.
11:54
Speaker 1: I've read some fan fiction that are over a hundred chapters,
11:57
Speaker 1: some that are less than one hundred words. Genre a
11:59
Speaker 1: rise are usually a mix of action, adventure, romance in
12:02
Speaker 1: a way that a lot of traditional media cannot be.
12:05
Speaker 1: The chapter ones are like old school TV shows or
12:07
Speaker 1: even maybe a podcast per se, where maybe the author
12:10
Speaker 1: has a day each week they publish or try to
12:12
Speaker 1: publish in the meantime. You just I remember just being like, Oh,
12:16
Speaker 1: I can't wait till the chapter comes out. I hope
12:18
Speaker 1: this happens. This allows the writers to learn and adapt
12:21
Speaker 1: from readers as they go and create a product that
12:23
Speaker 1: appeals to a wider audience because there is a comment
12:25
Speaker 1: and review function, so it really sounds like an expression
12:29
Speaker 1: of community kind of fandom where people are excited to
12:32
Speaker 1: read more and they give feedback about what they want,
12:35
Speaker 1: and so it's kind of a collaborative project in a
12:37
Speaker 1: kind of way. Yeah, and that's that's a big, not
12:41
Speaker 1: really point of contention. But some people say that published
12:43
Speaker 1: works of fan fiction aren't really fan fiction because they're
12:47
Speaker 1: lacking in that community aspect and community it's so important
12:51
Speaker 1: to fan fiction. And if you're wondering kind of like,
12:54
Speaker 1: why are they talking about fan fiction on stuff, mom
12:57
Speaker 1: never told you other than I love it, clear you
13:00
Speaker 1: the community that writes and reads fan fiction is mostly
13:03
Speaker 1: women are non binary. We're going to talk about that
13:07
Speaker 1: later in the podcast, but just know in the back
13:09
Speaker 1: of your mind that this is mostly a female community
13:13
Speaker 1: and the breakdown is is really fascinating. But first we're
13:17
Speaker 1: gonna take a quick break for word for a sponsor
13:24
Speaker 1: m H and we're back. Thank you sponsor. That I
13:31
Speaker 1: wanted to talk about some lingo because I love some
13:33
Speaker 1: fan fiction lingo. You've got a U, which stands for
13:36
Speaker 1: alternate universe O O C are out of character o C,
13:41
Speaker 1: which is original character cannon, staying within the confines of
13:45
Speaker 1: what the fantom has laid out. Usually that means relationship
13:47
Speaker 1: wise SLASH, which we're going to talk about a lot later,
13:51
Speaker 1: and it refers to a noncanon couple of the same sex,
13:54
Speaker 1: usually male females denoted by film slash impreg male pregnancy
13:59
Speaker 1: cross over when two fandoms crossover for that. For research.
14:04
Speaker 1: For actual research on this episode, I read a Harry
14:06
Speaker 1: Potter and Avengers crossover and it was the best. I
14:09
Speaker 1: was so happy. I got curtain fick, which is a
14:12
Speaker 1: genre of fan fiction that focuses on domestic situations, like
14:16
Speaker 1: say Kirk and Spock er out shopping for curtains, Like
14:20
Speaker 1: it would never happen on the show, but people like
14:22
Speaker 1: to imagine what it would be like. I love that. Yeah,
14:27
Speaker 1: there's hurt comfort. That was one of my favorite things.
14:29
Speaker 1: Hc race bending, when characters are either whitewashed or reclaimed
14:33
Speaker 1: for minorities it could be could go either way. Gender
14:37
Speaker 1: swap when you swap genders of characters UST, which I
14:40
Speaker 1: use in real life unresolved sexual tension ship which you
14:44
Speaker 1: can hear probably a lot outside of fan fiction to
14:47
Speaker 1: ship a couple. And we talked about Mary Sue and
14:49
Speaker 1: self insert in our Star Wars episode. So those are
14:52
Speaker 1: some of the some of the big ones. Quite the glossary.
14:55
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, there's so many more, and like if
14:58
Speaker 1: we narrow the focus even even more to fandoms. They
15:02
Speaker 1: have a lot of their own lingo within fandoms. So,
15:05
Speaker 1: like I already mentioned on the show once DESTI l
15:07
Speaker 1: from Supernatural, it's Dean and Castile and Harry Potter, you
15:11
Speaker 1: had Snape. Harry was Snary, Truemani was Draco. Hermione are
15:17
Speaker 1: Dreary Draco. Harry had a competition with a friend of
15:20
Speaker 1: mine to find the most rare couple in all of
15:23
Speaker 1: HP fandom, and I found never long Bottom and Memboless Membletonia,
15:29
Speaker 1: which if you don't remember, is a plant that he
15:31
Speaker 1: carries around and the story Neville gets transformed into a
15:37
Speaker 1: plant and they fall in love. But she found one
15:40
Speaker 1: that was between Harry Potter and the Giant Squid. Rule
15:43
Speaker 1: thirty four. You can find sexually related or pornographic material
15:46
Speaker 1: for pretty much everything, including Harry Potter fiction. Oh absolutely,
15:51
Speaker 1: And if anyone has this beat, please right in. But
15:53
Speaker 1: I would like to note it's a popular misconception that
15:56
Speaker 1: most fan fiction is weird and pornographic. Most of it
15:59
Speaker 1: is not at all, not at all, And speaking of
16:02
Speaker 1: Harry Potter, it is often credited with bringing fan fiction
16:06
Speaker 1: more mainstream. Fan fiction dot net, which was where I
16:09
Speaker 1: went when I was getting my fan fiction, has almost
16:12
Speaker 1: eight hundred thousand Harry Potter stories. Yeah, there's a lot
16:16
Speaker 1: of Harry Potter fan fiction writers out there. Yeah. Back
16:19
Speaker 1: in my heyday, every night I would check so, I mean,
16:23
Speaker 1: it's kind of like search results, and I would just
16:25
Speaker 1: go through every new page a fan fiction of the day,
16:28
Speaker 1: and it was usually over thirty pages of new fan
16:31
Speaker 1: fiction in one day. Yeah, newer, updated. Yeah. Oh, and
16:36
Speaker 1: in general, fan fiction is free. What Pad does have
16:39
Speaker 1: a premium ad removed service, but for the most part
16:42
Speaker 1: totally free. And we are mostly talking about online fan fiction.
16:46
Speaker 1: But fan fiction exists in several recognized forms of art
16:49
Speaker 1: and business. The creator and showrunner relationship is a good
16:53
Speaker 1: example once the original creator has left. I think Aaron
16:55
Speaker 1: Sorkin once famously said, like, you couldn't watch The West
16:58
Speaker 1: Wing after he left. Or you've got the officially sanctioned
17:02
Speaker 1: Star Wars authors, So tell me more about that, as
17:06
Speaker 1: as our resident Star Wars expert. Yes, so, I guess
17:12
Speaker 1: it's Disney Disney on Star Wars now, but Disney kind
17:15
Speaker 1: of picks an author to write the books that they
17:19
Speaker 1: consider official canon for Star Wars. And yes, so they
17:23
Speaker 1: kind of are just writing fan fiction published work. We'll
17:28
Speaker 1: talk a little bit more about that later because it's
17:30
Speaker 1: sort of an interesting dynamic, a big trend in fan
17:34
Speaker 1: fiction right now, our stories written by teens that more
17:37
Speaker 1: accurately reflect their lives. So when you were explaining, I'm
17:40
Speaker 1: very interested by your fan fiction because it showcases a
17:42
Speaker 1: lot of things that we are going to touch on,
17:44
Speaker 1: but particularly right now, teens are writing about the prevalence
17:47
Speaker 1: of social media and technology, maybe putting that into like
17:50
Speaker 1: I've seen so many Harry Potter gets Facebook and what happens, Um,
17:54
Speaker 1: Jenny Weasley, it's very upset that Harry Potter leaves eye
17:57
Speaker 1: emojis under some random girls Instagram. Um, as she should
18:03
Speaker 1: stuff like that. Yeah, that actually again, that's a that's
18:06
Speaker 1: a bit like curtaining the curtain. Curtain. Yeah, it's a
18:09
Speaker 1: reimagining of something that would never be in the books,
18:12
Speaker 1: that would never be a plot line in the book.
18:13
Speaker 1: But it's interesting, right, and it kind of goes to
18:16
Speaker 1: show what fan fiction is really about, which is sort
18:20
Speaker 1: of exploring certain aspects of yourself and your life. According
18:24
Speaker 1: to Publishers Weekly, what Pad, which is a user generated
18:27
Speaker 1: storytelling app reached eighteen million users in the space of
18:32
Speaker 1: seven years, and this translated to sixty four thousand stories
18:35
Speaker 1: getting updated per day and twenty three million stories a year.
18:41
Speaker 1: The number of users rose to thirty five million, with
18:43
Speaker 1: forty five percent of those in the age rage of
18:46
Speaker 1: thirteen eighteen. Some classrooms have started using fan fiction as
18:49
Speaker 1: a writing exercise now. Of note though, about what pod
18:53
Speaker 1: this is specifically, of all of the places where you
18:56
Speaker 1: can find fan fiction, it does skew a lot younger,
18:59
Speaker 1: and it is a lot of one direction stories, like
19:02
Speaker 1: real celebrity stories, so it's a little bit different than
19:06
Speaker 1: most of the other ones that we're going to talk about. Well,
19:08
Speaker 1: as a former teacher, I absolutely love the idea of
19:11
Speaker 1: using fan fic to teach writing classes for young people.
19:15
Speaker 1: That was something that I did in my classroom. Is
19:16
Speaker 1: quite a bit where if us, if students won't get
19:19
Speaker 1: out their cell phones or won't get off social media,
19:21
Speaker 1: can you find a way to integrate with they're already
19:23
Speaker 1: you know, loving and enjoying and what they're not paying
19:25
Speaker 1: attention to your boring lecture to do instead? Can you
19:28
Speaker 1: find a way to marry those two things? And so
19:30
Speaker 1: I love, love, love the idea of using fan fic
19:33
Speaker 1: as a writing tool, because it's just meeting young people
19:35
Speaker 1: where they're already at. The fan fiction universe is being
19:38
Speaker 1: dominated in small parts by young folks. Educators would be
19:41
Speaker 1: you know, remiss to not capitalize on that because it's writing.
19:44
Speaker 1: It's just another way that shows that young people are
19:45
Speaker 1: fired up about writing, so you may as well turn
19:48
Speaker 1: it into a curriculum. Absolutely. Another big fan fiction site,
19:52
Speaker 1: Archive of Our Own or a O three, had over
19:55
Speaker 1: four hundred thousand users generating over one million seventeen stories.
20:01
Speaker 1: And I, like I said, I was a fan fiction
20:03
Speaker 1: dot net person. And DVA Arts, which is more fan
20:07
Speaker 1: art and illustrations Coming full is another site where that
20:11
Speaker 1: has a visual component that's really kind of unique and
20:14
Speaker 1: often beautiful. So if you're interested, I would absolutely speak
20:18
Speaker 1: it out. In his Time article, Lev Grossman, author of
20:22
Speaker 1: The Magician's Trilogy, described fan fiction in the context of
20:25
Speaker 1: mainstream culture as quote what literature might look like if
20:29
Speaker 1: it were reinvented from scratch after a nuclear apocalypse by
20:32
Speaker 1: a band of brilliant pop culture junkies trapped in a
20:34
Speaker 1: sealed bucker. That's so good. I know, it's really good
20:39
Speaker 1: and he was speaking as a fan, but he acknowledges
20:41
Speaker 1: how strange and extreme fan fix might seem to the
20:45
Speaker 1: outside observer, particularly the outside celebrity as observer who might
20:49
Speaker 1: be a bit weirded out by it. Yeah, as you
20:52
Speaker 1: might be able to guess. Not all authors or creators
20:55
Speaker 1: are on board with this. Some of them are buzz kills.
20:58
Speaker 1: For example, in en N two, author Marian Zimmer Bradley,
21:02
Speaker 1: who broadly encouraged fan fiction, but when one of her
21:05
Speaker 1: upcoming novels closely paralleled a fan fiction she read, she
21:08
Speaker 1: attempted to negotiate a deal with the author to avoid
21:11
Speaker 1: a lawsuit. Now in the end, Bradley abandoned the novel.
21:14
Speaker 1: Other authors like Anne Rice and mcafree and George R. R.
21:17
Speaker 1: Martin have publicly denounced fan fiction for this reason. As
21:21
Speaker 1: the Internet has grown older, a lot of authors have
21:23
Speaker 1: softened their stance. Andie and I were joking earlier off
21:26
Speaker 1: Mike about how we wanted to do fan fiction about
21:29
Speaker 1: and Rice, because apparently an Rice is notoriously litigious, and
21:33
Speaker 1: if you try to knock off her intellectual property, she'll
21:36
Speaker 1: basically be at your door with a lawsuit in her hands.
21:39
Speaker 1: So what if we did fan fiction about and Rice
21:42
Speaker 1: hunting down. She's a fan fiction hunter's a fan fiction hunter.
21:47
Speaker 1: I think it will work. Yeah. She posted like a
21:50
Speaker 1: really intense note about like, you have to trust me
21:53
Speaker 1: on this. You cannot. You cannot post fan fiction if
21:56
Speaker 1: you look today, if we went to fan fiction dot net,
21:59
Speaker 1: you would find no and Rice fan fiction. They won't
22:01
Speaker 1: host it. And fan fiction is frequently looked down upon,
22:05
Speaker 1: mostly because of some high profile ones being made into
22:08
Speaker 1: books and movies that are also generally looked down upon,
22:12
Speaker 1: but either way, it's popularity is growing. Even Amazon has
22:16
Speaker 1: a fan fiction website now that lets authors published and
22:19
Speaker 1: receive royalties from e books from popular license series like
22:23
Speaker 1: Vampire Diaries. They kind of have a relationship with these
22:26
Speaker 1: companies producing these series. The Washington Post wrote, what used
22:29
Speaker 1: to be a disregarded copyright nightmare is a new, youth
22:33
Speaker 1: friendly approach for publishers. Independent publisher Big Bang Press was
22:37
Speaker 1: founded solely on finding new voices in fan fiction to
22:40
Speaker 1: write their own fiction novels, and while getting published is nice,
22:43
Speaker 1: it's not really the goal. One of the most common
22:46
Speaker 1: arguments against writing fan fiction is essentially, go write your
22:50
Speaker 1: own thing. You'll never succeed as a writer with a
22:53
Speaker 1: fan fiction, But most people who write it are not
22:56
Speaker 1: thinking they're going to be a published writer one day.
22:59
Speaker 1: That's that's like saying people who play football are doing
23:02
Speaker 1: so thinking that they're going to go pro one day.
23:04
Speaker 1: It's a hobby. It's something that people enjoy doing, that's
23:07
Speaker 1: cathartic and satisfying. But most people are not like thinking,
23:11
Speaker 1: if only I write best fan fick, I'll get published,
23:15
Speaker 1: although some authors do use it to like stay up
23:17
Speaker 1: the snuff. Do you think that one of the reasons
23:20
Speaker 1: why it's so looked down upon is because it's so
23:22
Speaker 1: heavily dominated by women and non binary people. Oh yes,
23:26
Speaker 1: and we are going to talk about that because there's
23:30
Speaker 1: a there's an entire article that I'm going to reference
23:32
Speaker 1: it later, but it's called when men write fan fiction.
23:35
Speaker 1: It's seen as academic. Of course it is right, but
23:40
Speaker 1: I definitely think there is an element to that. And I,
23:43
Speaker 1: as someone who is pretty nerdy and tapped into nerd culture,
23:48
Speaker 1: I used to get really angry when I was younger
23:50
Speaker 1: about how it's so accepted to be in a sports
23:53
Speaker 1: fandom and I couldn't figure out the difference. And then
23:57
Speaker 1: when I was researching this, I had a moment of
23:59
Speaker 1: all sports is of very highly masculine fandom, and nerd
24:04
Speaker 1: media fandom is still kind of Machlin, but it's way less.
24:08
Speaker 1: So that's one of the reasons that I think that
24:11
Speaker 1: we just accept sports fandom, but we don't do the
24:14
Speaker 1: same with media fandom. And I think beyond that, you
24:17
Speaker 1: see that with so many different kinds of fandom and writing,
24:21
Speaker 1: Like in the episode we did around journaling, because journals
24:25
Speaker 1: are associated with femininity, they're seen as un serious. But
24:28
Speaker 1: then when a man writes one, it is seen as
24:30
Speaker 1: like his writings, his papers. But its female authors, even
24:34
Speaker 1: very famous authors, you know Sylvia Plath, Emilee Dickinson, their
24:38
Speaker 1: journals are thought of as their sort of frivolous diary.
24:42
Speaker 1: But men their papers or they're collected writings. You know
24:46
Speaker 1: that it's seen differently. And I think it's I think
24:48
Speaker 1: fandom is just like any other thing where when there
24:51
Speaker 1: is a male association, it's sort of highbrow, and that's
24:54
Speaker 1: when it's a woman doing it, it's just an un
24:55
Speaker 1: serious thing and you should just quit. Why are you
24:57
Speaker 1: doing this anyway? Yeah, And I can think of examples.
25:00
Speaker 1: I ran across doing this research of that. One is
25:03
Speaker 1: the Beatles. Before, like when it was just a bunch
25:05
Speaker 1: of fan girls that were mooning over this band, they
25:10
Speaker 1: were looked down upon. But then when men were like,
25:12
Speaker 1: you know, actually these albums are pretty good, then it
25:14
Speaker 1: became like Beatlemania totally acceptable. And another example is Brownies
25:21
Speaker 1: because I loved my Little Ponies, as did a lot
25:24
Speaker 1: of women for a long time, but it wasn't until
25:27
Speaker 1: dudes were like, you know what, I really like my
25:29
Speaker 1: little ponies. I'm gonna dress up. I'm gonna be at
25:32
Speaker 1: Brownie and then it became legitimate and cool and nerdy.
25:36
Speaker 1: Before that it was like lame and now you see
25:39
Speaker 1: that at conventions like Brownies. So once again, when it
25:43
Speaker 1: was a largely female fandom, it was not cool at all,
25:46
Speaker 1: and then when men came in and legitimized it, now
25:50
Speaker 1: cool Brownies. And not to disparage on Brownie's more power
25:54
Speaker 1: to I'm just saying like, culturally, it shows where we're
25:57
Speaker 1: where we're at when it comes to those kinds of things.
25:59
Speaker 1: More on all of that later, but let's talk a
26:02
Speaker 1: bit about some some famous examples of published fan fiction.
26:06
Speaker 1: Because it did fan fiction did used to come with
26:09
Speaker 1: this risk of a cease and desist letter. And if
26:11
Speaker 1: you write about a rice, then yes you still gotta
26:14
Speaker 1: be Look, he's gonna hut you down. It'll be a
26:17
Speaker 1: rice like at your door. Yes it's an rice. I
26:20
Speaker 1: know your home. I like a book rice. She's behind you.
26:28
Speaker 1: She knows all in my time, and I'm sure still
26:32
Speaker 1: now at the top you always put like disclaimer. I
26:35
Speaker 1: don't know the powers that be own everything actually do
26:38
Speaker 1: anything or is it just so? I'm sure it doesn't.
26:41
Speaker 1: But it's supposed to be like, well, maybe this will
26:43
Speaker 1: soften them. If they find it, they'll be like, well,
26:46
Speaker 1: at least she acknowledges there are these powers that be
26:49
Speaker 1: that own it. But nowadays you very well might have
26:53
Speaker 1: read a fan fiction and not even known it. We've
26:55
Speaker 1: mentioned before E. L. James, whose Twilight fan fiction became
26:58
Speaker 1: the fifty Shades of Gray series, and this is probably
27:01
Speaker 1: the biggest one. It's estimated that at one million copies,
27:05
Speaker 1: it out sold Twilight, the work it was based on.
27:08
Speaker 1: I have to ask a dumb question, how is it
27:11
Speaker 1: a fan fiction when it doesn't involve vampires? Well? So E. L.
27:16
Speaker 1: James deleted the original fan fiction once she got published,
27:20
Speaker 1: but there you can still find people who have like
27:22
Speaker 1: saved it and you can read it. And she just
27:24
Speaker 1: swapped out the name, so it used to be Edward
27:26
Speaker 1: and Bella and now it's Christian and Anna. I'm not
27:30
Speaker 1: sure how much the vampire thing came up in the
27:32
Speaker 1: original fan fiction, but the characters were essentially the same,
27:35
Speaker 1: and I believe that side by side comparison showed she
27:38
Speaker 1: only changed five percent. Yes, so probably just the names.
27:43
Speaker 1: And this has brought up a lot of questions of
27:45
Speaker 1: legality and calls a lot of concern about the end
27:49
Speaker 1: of good writing and original work as we know it.
27:51
Speaker 1: As one writer at The Washington Post put it, the
27:53
Speaker 1: most scandalous part of Fifty Shades of Gray isn't what
27:56
Speaker 1: Christian Gray does behind closed doors, is that the book
27:59
Speaker 1: might well be in illegal art. And I know the
28:02
Speaker 1: author of Twilight has kind of She's never come out
28:05
Speaker 1: against it per se, but there's definitely an air of
28:08
Speaker 1: like she kind of wrote her own fan fiction on Twilight,
28:11
Speaker 1: which is interesting, can you write your own fan fix?
28:13
Speaker 1: Would she abandoned a project that was essentially a retelling
28:17
Speaker 1: of the first one from Edward's point of view, and
28:19
Speaker 1: she kind of made it sound like it was because
28:22
Speaker 1: the Fifty Shades of Great, at least in one interview
28:24
Speaker 1: I read, it does have to chap Her ask that
28:26
Speaker 1: Fifty Shades of Gray is more popular than Twilight. Oh, sure, absolutely.
28:32
Speaker 1: You've also got Cassandra Claire's The Mortal Instruments, which was
28:35
Speaker 1: originally a Harry Potter fan fiction, and I I remember
28:37
Speaker 1: seeing that. I never read it because I was never
28:39
Speaker 1: into Gremianny fan fiction. I had very specific things I
28:44
Speaker 1: would read and that wasn't one of them. But I
28:47
Speaker 1: remember seeing that one getting updated pretty pretty consistently. Anatod's
28:52
Speaker 1: After which was based on a one direction fan fiction
28:54
Speaker 1: Pride and Prejudice and zombies of course, wide Sargasso c
28:58
Speaker 1: by Genres, which I at in graduate school, and seminar
29:02
Speaker 1: on women's writing. So yeah, I was taught fan fiction
29:06
Speaker 1: when I was trying to get a PhD. It is
29:08
Speaker 1: being taught in the academic setting a lot of There's
29:11
Speaker 1: so many examples like that, like Wicked by Gregory McGuire
29:14
Speaker 1: it's essentially Wizard of Os fan fiction, or Roger and
29:17
Speaker 1: Hammerstein South Pacific, which is the only musical to win
29:19
Speaker 1: a Pulitzer based off of a work that also won
29:22
Speaker 1: a Pulitzers. Yeah, but again, there are some there is
29:27
Speaker 1: some debate about whether these count because the community isn't
29:29
Speaker 1: necessarily there get that of curiosity. What's your take on
29:32
Speaker 1: that divide. I feel like these do count as fan fiction,
29:36
Speaker 1: but there is a part of me that almost wants
29:38
Speaker 1: to like classify it differently, if that makes sense, because
29:41
Speaker 1: the community is a big part of it. Yeah. I
29:43
Speaker 1: don't know. I would count most of this as fan
29:45
Speaker 1: fiction honestly personally, but I do think it's missing that
29:49
Speaker 1: that community part, that part that is so collaborative. You've
29:52
Speaker 1: also got a series of James Potter novels, sort of
29:54
Speaker 1: Harry Potter sequels by George Lippard that J K. Rolling
29:56
Speaker 1: has more or less been like, yep, okay, cool. You've
29:59
Speaker 1: got mag Cabot and Neil Gaiman who have dabbled in
30:02
Speaker 1: fan fiction, or Hamilton's, which is sometimes compared to fan fiction.
30:06
Speaker 1: I mean, if you think about Hamilton's, it kind of
30:08
Speaker 1: is fan fiction. It's taking this very familiar story that
30:10
Speaker 1: pretty much everybody knows and completely spinning it on its head. Yeah.
30:15
Speaker 1: There's a whole article about it on Box and it
30:17
Speaker 1: was quite a lovely read. Here's a quote from it.
30:19
Speaker 1: In essence, Hamilton is a postmodern, meditextual piece of fan
30:22
Speaker 1: fix functioning and precisely the way that most fan fix do.
30:25
Speaker 1: It claims the cannon for the fan. In this case,
30:28
Speaker 1: Hamilton's cannon is history and the fan. Miranda is doing
30:31
Speaker 1: a lot more than simply adapting it. Like the best
30:34
Speaker 1: fan pick writers, He's not just selectively retelling history. He's
30:37
Speaker 1: transforming it. That was a that was a good quote
30:40
Speaker 1: in the article. Enjoyed a lot of it. Also sens
30:44
Speaker 1: south by. Southwest saw the premiere of a movie called Slash,
30:47
Speaker 1: which was supposed to be about a teenager exploring its
30:50
Speaker 1: sexuality through erotic slash fan fiction. But from what I read,
30:54
Speaker 1: it really didn't have much to do with slash fiction
30:56
Speaker 1: after all, and it got most of what did have
30:58
Speaker 1: to do with it pretty wrong. Is very erotic and weird,
31:01
Speaker 1: which that does exist, but again it's the outlier. Most
31:05
Speaker 1: fan fiction is curtain fick. I wonder where that misconception
31:09
Speaker 1: around fan fiction comes from. That it's all you know,
31:13
Speaker 1: erotic or sexualized or pervy or you know, where do
31:16
Speaker 1: you think that comes from? I think it kind of
31:19
Speaker 1: goes back to that it's mostly women writing fan fiction.
31:23
Speaker 1: A lot of it does have perhaps slash, but in
31:26
Speaker 1: a lot of those slash stories, like they're buying curtains,
31:28
Speaker 1: you know, like maybe there's sex, maybe there isn't, and
31:31
Speaker 1: maybe if there is sex, it's very like tame. I
31:35
Speaker 1: think it's a misunderstanding that all these women are writing
31:38
Speaker 1: about sex, so it must be weird. And yeah, there's
31:40
Speaker 1: a lot of misconception about that. I was someone who
31:43
Speaker 1: really enjoyed like slash that never had any sexual thing,
31:49
Speaker 1: just like the relationships, like, oh they're they're close, that's intimate. Yeah,
31:54
Speaker 1: I like this. I like this, And a lot of
31:57
Speaker 1: times I would get to a certain like say I
32:00
Speaker 1: all read nineteen chapters and then chapter twenty they have sex.
32:02
Speaker 1: I would just like skip that that and you did
32:05
Speaker 1: this when you were in a teenager. Yeah, you're the
32:09
Speaker 1: only teenager out there skipping the sexy parts. I'm like this,
32:12
Speaker 1: this isn't for me. A lot of times I really
32:15
Speaker 1: appreciated it because a lot of authors would put like,
32:17
Speaker 1: if you're not into sex, this chapter is not that important,
32:20
Speaker 1: you can skip it, And I was always like, thanks
32:23
Speaker 1: for the warning. I really liked that, and fan fiction
32:27
Speaker 1: did for better or play a role in learning about
32:29
Speaker 1: sex for a decent amount of as me included or
32:33
Speaker 1: learnings fan fiction. You taught me some things. An article
32:36
Speaker 1: in Vice dealed into this how fan fiction served as
32:39
Speaker 1: a tool of sexual exploration, especially for women in LGBTQ
32:42
Speaker 1: who might not get much of a sex education or
32:45
Speaker 1: see themselves represented in media. Yeah, me and more than
32:49
Speaker 1: one of my friends definitely learned about sex from fiction.
32:51
Speaker 1: I remember this per six fan fiction because again I
32:54
Speaker 1: used to print them out, and so I wouldn't know
32:57
Speaker 1: that was coming and surprised prize to characters or having sex.
33:02
Speaker 1: And I'm trying to understand what's going on young Annie
33:07
Speaker 1: with her printed out fan fiction. Oh yeah, man, I
33:10
Speaker 1: wonder if I still have that stuff. I should look.
33:13
Speaker 1: Most sites do have rating systems, like the m p
33:16
Speaker 1: A almost and you can as some of them, especially
33:19
Speaker 1: like geared towards a younger audience. Do you have settings
33:21
Speaker 1: that you can set up so that you can prevent
33:24
Speaker 1: children from getting exposed to some of those things if
33:26
Speaker 1: that's something you're worried about. Some of them are less
33:29
Speaker 1: effective than others. But some sites don't allow adult material,
33:32
Speaker 1: and I kept getting a chuckle out of they would
33:34
Speaker 1: say fan fiction dot net, because there is adult fan
33:36
Speaker 1: fiction dot net. But that's where I stumbled onto my
33:39
Speaker 1: sexy Lord of the Rings. And just think you'd be
33:43
Speaker 1: if you hadn't done that, who knows where you'd be.
33:46
Speaker 1: I'd be lost, lost at sea. Fan Fiction has also
33:49
Speaker 1: led to so so so many academic studies. You've got
33:53
Speaker 1: the Writing and Reading a fan fiction and transformation theory
33:56
Speaker 1: by Virl van steen Hooy's Out of Perdue. This one's
33:59
Speaker 1: really interesting because talks about how fan fiction does not
34:01
Speaker 1: need the world described. That part is already done for
34:04
Speaker 1: you and are seen if we're talking about a visual medium,
34:07
Speaker 1: so like the same is true with the characters, the
34:09
Speaker 1: pass the memories, their motivations, the readers all know this universe,
34:13
Speaker 1: how it looks, it's rules. This means that it's extremely
34:17
Speaker 1: immersive right off the bat, Like you don't have to
34:19
Speaker 1: spend time setting that up. Everyone's kind of seeing the
34:23
Speaker 1: same thing, which I didn't really think about, but that
34:26
Speaker 1: that's again kind of that communal aspect. You're entering into
34:30
Speaker 1: this world that you already know and it's it's there
34:33
Speaker 1: for you, and then they're playing with the characters within
34:35
Speaker 1: it are the rules within it. Yeah, you've got this
34:37
Speaker 1: nice backdrop already set up for you, like a canvas, exactly. Yeah.
34:41
Speaker 1: I was really interested in this study Slash as a
34:44
Speaker 1: Queer Utopia by Dr Eco Willis out of the University
34:47
Speaker 1: of Bristol. Here's the quote from that one. The reader
34:49
Speaker 1: has to decide not only what readings of the show
34:51
Speaker 1: are possible, but what is possible at a fictional universe,
34:54
Speaker 1: and this decision must necessarily engage what she believes it
34:57
Speaker 1: is possible in her own universe. And you know, as
35:01
Speaker 1: queer people, that is kind of pitch perfect for our
35:04
Speaker 1: media consumption experience, sort of deciding what things look like
35:08
Speaker 1: within our own understandings of ourselves and how that is
35:12
Speaker 1: reflected on these characters that we, you know, are coming
35:16
Speaker 1: up with scenarios for yes and letting it play out.
35:21
Speaker 1: Some of the other studies we found have suggested that
35:23
Speaker 1: writing fan fiction can help foster empathy, can decrease feelings
35:26
Speaker 1: of depression and isolation, can improve self esteem and overall
35:30
Speaker 1: psychological well being, which is all pretty good and fan
35:34
Speaker 1: fiction does. Like I mentioned earlier, you do have that
35:36
Speaker 1: review function, and my experience with it is it was
35:40
Speaker 1: generally a very positive community. I did live in fear
35:43
Speaker 1: of the flame, the bad review, but generally most people
35:47
Speaker 1: really encouraging or are appreciative, and it was a really
35:51
Speaker 1: I had a really good experience with the community. And
35:54
Speaker 1: perhaps that does go back to it being mostly women.
35:57
Speaker 1: It's like a little slice of a woman only internet.
36:00
Speaker 1: I've often thought, what would the Internet look like if
36:02
Speaker 1: it was just women. I think it will be a
36:04
Speaker 1: less toxic place. But it seems like fan fiction is
36:07
Speaker 1: a place where they've kind of tested that out a
36:08
Speaker 1: little bit. Yes, absolutely, and because of that it has
36:14
Speaker 1: drawn like a lot of criticism, a lot of derision,
36:18
Speaker 1: a lot of fear. It's widely disparaged and misunderstood. Some
36:21
Speaker 1: of the popular stereotypes of arguments against fan fiction include,
36:25
Speaker 1: it's a much of nerds, they don't know how to socialize. Nope,
36:28
Speaker 1: all fan fiction is pornographic slash written by straight teenaged
36:31
Speaker 1: girls are middle aged gay men, depending on who you're
36:33
Speaker 1: listening to. Also not true. All fan fiction is written
36:36
Speaker 1: by horny teenage girls and is largely illiterate and immoral.
36:41
Speaker 1: Yeah don't way yeah, also not true. And again, stop
36:44
Speaker 1: writing about someone else's characters. Start writing your own thing.
36:47
Speaker 1: And again it's not about that, but how did we
36:49
Speaker 1: get here? Well, the history of fan fiction probably goes
36:54
Speaker 1: back further than you think, and we'll talk all about that,
36:56
Speaker 1: but first we're gonna take a quick break for word
36:58
Speaker 1: for our sponsor and we're back. Thank you spots there. Okay,
37:14
Speaker 1: So pending a date two when fan fiction began is difficult,
37:17
Speaker 1: and it depends on how strict of definition of fan
37:19
Speaker 1: fiction you're using. Some arguments say that the Grand Brothers
37:22
Speaker 1: fairy Tales of the eighteen hundreds or fan fiction, they
37:25
Speaker 1: took oral stories and then kind of made them into
37:28
Speaker 1: their own thing, telling their own moral, whatever moral they
37:31
Speaker 1: want to convey. Some arguments say, the Bible counts is
37:35
Speaker 1: fan fiction? The o g fan fiction the Bible Dang, Yeah,
37:38
Speaker 1: so that's pretty far back. Shakespeare often comes up in
37:41
Speaker 1: the conversation with the history of fan fiction as well.
37:44
Speaker 1: Most of his plays are derived from a legend or
37:45
Speaker 1: myth that he took and then added the Shakespeare touch.
37:49
Speaker 1: And it didn't take long after novels started to become
37:51
Speaker 1: more commonplace in the eighteen hundreds for popular authors like
37:54
Speaker 1: Daniel Dafoe to voice concerns of folks quote kidnapping his
37:59
Speaker 1: work a little strong but all right. Um. Jane Austin
38:03
Speaker 1: didn't seem too worried about it, though, and fans of
38:05
Speaker 1: her works j Nights engaged in fan fix swapping in
38:08
Speaker 1: the late eighteen hundreds with early fanzines. This eventually led
38:12
Speaker 1: to the publishing of the nineteen thirteen novel and Jane
38:15
Speaker 1: Austin fan Fiction, Old Friend and New Fancies. To date,
38:19
Speaker 1: two forty two published novels that are Jane Austin fan
38:21
Speaker 1: fiction are listed on good Reads. So she inspired quite
38:24
Speaker 1: a bit of published fan fiction. Wow, she's like the
38:27
Speaker 1: Harry Potter of her generation. She was the j. K
38:31
Speaker 1: Rolling of her generation. Absolutely. Moving into the unitteen twenties,
38:35
Speaker 1: we get Sherlock Holmes fan clubs and bigger cities like London,
38:39
Speaker 1: and these clubs put out the Baker Street Journal. The
38:41
Speaker 1: journal had both academic type research and straight up fan
38:44
Speaker 1: fiction that the authors would read at fan events. And
38:47
Speaker 1: this is some of the first recorded self insert fix
38:49
Speaker 1: where the authors you're talking about themselves in the world
38:52
Speaker 1: of like Oh, I love it Yeah. In the next
38:55
Speaker 1: few decades, sci fi communities pretty much had the market
38:58
Speaker 1: on fan fiction. Folk in The community coined the term
39:01
Speaker 1: fan fiction in nineteen thirty nine, but they used it
39:03
Speaker 1: to mean amateur sci fi writings and professional sci fi
39:07
Speaker 1: writings are profic was a different thing. The first known
39:10
Speaker 1: fan historian, John Jack Bristol Spear, defined the term in
39:13
Speaker 1: his nineteen forty four in Fans Cyclopedia, and then in
39:17
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty two The Enchanted Duplicator became the first book
39:21
Speaker 1: that was fanfic about fans and one of the first
39:24
Speaker 1: uses of fandom and print in regards to fans of media.
39:27
Speaker 1: That word was first used in late eighteen hundreds as
39:29
Speaker 1: a mashup of fan and domain for sports fans. Fan
39:33
Speaker 1: fiction as we know it got it start in the
39:35
Speaker 1: nineteen sixties with Star Trek. This property gave fans a
39:38
Speaker 1: new way to interact with the work through magazines that
39:40
Speaker 1: published a fans work and conventions. Fans would make copies
39:43
Speaker 1: of his zines and hand the mad a conventions. When
39:45
Speaker 1: Doctor Who started to be included in these conventions in
39:47
Speaker 1: the nineteen seventies and eighties, this is when we saw
39:49
Speaker 1: some of the first crossover. So Doctor Who meeting was
39:53
Speaker 1: spock that I would read it, I would read it?
39:57
Speaker 1: What about Doctor Who? And Spock shopping for Kurt is
40:00
Speaker 1: that I ka, oh my gosh. I had a crush
40:02
Speaker 1: on both Spock and Doctor Who the tenth Doctor David Tennant,
40:06
Speaker 1: so I would totally be into it. Annie, Annie is
40:09
Speaker 1: on board, as we talked about a little bit in
40:12
Speaker 1: our Star Wars episode the First Mary Suit Debuty in
40:15
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy three with a Treky's Tale. Although it was
40:18
Speaker 1: meant to be a parody, Yes, and Star Trek fandom
40:21
Speaker 1: also gave us the first slash thick in nine, a
40:25
Speaker 1: Kirk slash Spock Fick called The Ring of so Schern
40:28
Speaker 1: in which the two characters must have sex or die,
40:31
Speaker 1: fall in love, and quote spend all of their remaining
40:34
Speaker 1: days on the planet exploring both the planet and each
40:37
Speaker 1: other's bodies. Is this a bad Is it a bad
40:41
Speaker 1: situation for them? Or is it it's good? This started
40:44
Speaker 1: a whole I mean, I'm about to nerd out so hard. Okay,
40:47
Speaker 1: get get do it, Okay. So Spock, his species of
40:52
Speaker 1: Vulcan species has this sexual kind of ritual that they
40:55
Speaker 1: go through. It's it's a called pond far and you
40:58
Speaker 1: kind of go and heat and if you don't have
41:00
Speaker 1: sex and bond with someone you die. So Spock went
41:05
Speaker 1: into pawn far while abandoned on this planet with Kirk,
41:08
Speaker 1: and so they had to have sex are Spock would die.
41:12
Speaker 1: This is actually a popular trope called her time on
41:15
Speaker 1: fan fiction, where you put two characters in a situation
41:18
Speaker 1: where they must have sex, forcing intimacy usually between two
41:22
Speaker 1: men that wouldn't otherwise happen. So, no, this is a positive.
41:25
Speaker 1: I'm going to assume Kirk was like, Okay, I don't
41:28
Speaker 1: want my friend to die. We can have sex. And
41:31
Speaker 1: then from there they fell in love and exploited each
41:35
Speaker 1: other's bodies for their aspect. Yes, and this story and
41:40
Speaker 1: the Kirk Spock ones that followed calls a lot of
41:43
Speaker 1: debate in the community during the seventies, and they were
41:47
Speaker 1: written mostly by women, and that was a part of
41:51
Speaker 1: the debate that did come up. Now there are a
41:52
Speaker 1: lot of articles in defense of fan fiction, mostly penned
41:55
Speaker 1: by women, But the one that really started the most hubbub,
41:59
Speaker 1: if you will, was in the New York Times. In
42:02
Speaker 1: this article, she discusses hol her professor, a woman said
42:05
Speaker 1: that when compared to men, women quote must learn linear
42:09
Speaker 1: narratives slowly and with much greater difficulty. The author points
42:12
Speaker 1: to fan fiction writing, saying women who traditionally spend large
42:16
Speaker 1: portions of their lives working in relative isolation for little
42:18
Speaker 1: or no pay, bring a different set of motivations to
42:21
Speaker 1: their writing and art. They want to talk to other
42:23
Speaker 1: women to express themselves in the science fiction form that
42:26
Speaker 1: until recently has all but excluded them, which I think
42:28
Speaker 1: really drives home this idea that it's about a female
42:32
Speaker 1: form of expression and that it's really it's almost kind
42:35
Speaker 1: of like anti capitalist. It's not it's not attached to
42:37
Speaker 1: this idea that you're going to be rich and famous
42:39
Speaker 1: from doing this. It's it's more about personal growth and
42:42
Speaker 1: personal creation. Yeah, and that's another criticism often hurled at
42:46
Speaker 1: fan fiction is that it's nonprofit, as if, like women,
42:50
Speaker 1: you have no ambitions. Of course you have no ambitions.
42:52
Speaker 1: What are you doing. You're wasting your time on this
42:54
Speaker 1: thing that's never going to make you money, which, again,
42:57
Speaker 1: it's a hobby. I mean, would you say that to
43:00
Speaker 1: someone who made watercolors for fun, or someone who knitted
43:05
Speaker 1: but didn't sell their blankets they just liked knitting. Yeah, exactly.
43:10
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm sure someone does, but it doesn't make sense.
43:12
Speaker 1: It's not it's not. It's not a cogent argument. Not
43:14
Speaker 1: everything needs to be to make money or to get
43:16
Speaker 1: fame and to get you know, rich and famous. Some
43:19
Speaker 1: things can just be for the pursuit of creativity. And
43:21
Speaker 1: that's what it sounds like. These women were looking for absolutely,
43:24
Speaker 1: And as things moved more online in the ninety nineties,
43:27
Speaker 1: X files that virgin I are a fan of exiles
43:31
Speaker 1: became the largest online own fandom. Scotland Yard, worried about
43:35
Speaker 1: a Heaven's Gate situation, started putting together secret files on
43:39
Speaker 1: the X files, X files, on the x file love
43:42
Speaker 1: it and on star check on the fandoms around them.
43:45
Speaker 1: In at least one case, occult hazardism from fandom, but
43:48
Speaker 1: it's pretty rare. Also, if you look at violence and
43:50
Speaker 1: sports fandom, no secret files put together on that. Again,
43:54
Speaker 1: could it be because that is a male dominated fandom
43:57
Speaker 1: and therefore cool well people act truly get hurt. In
44:02
Speaker 1: Europe they have to separate different soccer teams by like
44:04
Speaker 1: a wall, otherwise they would murder each other. People have
44:07
Speaker 1: gotten hurt from sports fandom. I don't know that there's
44:10
Speaker 1: been fanfic murders. Yeah, there's certainly some troublesome aspects in fandom,
44:16
Speaker 1: but fan fiction specifically. I mean, unless you're talking about
44:19
Speaker 1: ladies hurt and dudes feelings by entering their fandom, talk
44:24
Speaker 1: about a murder, you're murdering. How I think this fandom
44:27
Speaker 1: should be otherwise? Yeah, I don't. I don't know. I
44:31
Speaker 1: don't know. And there is a lot of discomfort around
44:34
Speaker 1: fandom and fan fiction to this day, which is about
44:37
Speaker 1: where this springs. As for instance, why are those zangus
44:40
Speaker 1: writing Harry Potter Pard all these women writing about sex
44:44
Speaker 1: and manly man fandoms? Its ruining? Are to's dirty, it's moral.
44:47
Speaker 1: These are all things that you'll hear I read in
44:49
Speaker 1: plenty of places, and it kind of made me feel
44:51
Speaker 1: ashamed and embarrassed. Yeah, did you grow up thinking that
44:54
Speaker 1: what you were doing was gross and weird and like
44:56
Speaker 1: for weird perverts, like antisocial perverts. Oh. I did luckily
45:01
Speaker 1: dodge that, but I did think it was really embarrassing
45:04
Speaker 1: on something I should hide. I didn't think that if
45:07
Speaker 1: people found out. I was barely certain I would be
45:10
Speaker 1: mocked quite heavily. And it was difficult because again, my
45:14
Speaker 1: brothers were very much the kind as I've mentioned before
45:17
Speaker 1: on this show that would pick on you and would
45:19
Speaker 1: make fun of you. And we all shared the same computer,
45:21
Speaker 1: and I tried for so long to hide what I
45:24
Speaker 1: was doing. Luckily, I don't think they ever figured it out.
45:27
Speaker 1: I wonder what they thought I was printing out though
45:30
Speaker 1: lots of recipes, yes, for all the all the cooking
45:34
Speaker 1: that I did not do at that age. But this, yeah,
45:37
Speaker 1: this kind of brings us to talking about women and
45:41
Speaker 1: fan fiction and representation and sort of society's apparent fear
45:46
Speaker 1: and discomfort with that. It's the dreaded fan fic trope,
45:54
Speaker 1: the cliffhanger. But never fear. We have a part two,
45:58
Speaker 1: and uh, we have so much to say about fan fiction,
46:02
Speaker 1: So please join us for the second part, coming to
46:06
Speaker 1: your ears soon. M m h m hm hm