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SMNTY Classics: Fanfiction Extravaganza Part 2 · Stuff Mom Never Told You

0:05
Speaker 1: Hey, this is Annie and Samantha and welcome to stuff
0:07
Speaker 1: I've never told your protection to I heart Radio and
0:18
Speaker 1: we're back with our second part of our two part
0:23
Speaker 1: look classic on fan fiction. And I know we've talked
0:29
Speaker 1: about shipping and you're not really into shipping, which is
0:31
Speaker 1: a lot of what fan fiction can be. But if
0:34
Speaker 1: you did read fan fiction, what do you think you
0:36
Speaker 1: would read? I honestly don't know. I mean, like, Twilight
0:43
Speaker 1: is the one I guess, so I guess so in
0:46
Speaker 1: that in that technically would have been the Twilight. It
0:50
Speaker 1: was a long time ago. I couldn't read it now,
0:52
Speaker 1: I don't think which, uh just I'm just a different
0:54
Speaker 1: space in life understanding different things and in likes are different.
0:58
Speaker 1: This is why I think I have a problem them
1:00
Speaker 1: right now because I hardly read as it is, except
1:02
Speaker 1: for when we do our book club. It makes me
1:04
Speaker 1: sad because I used to love to read. But again,
1:07
Speaker 1: my stuff was maybe at the tragedy level, murder mystery level.
1:11
Speaker 1: If there are things like that, I don't necessarily care
1:14
Speaker 1: about the shipping. That's not something that's been a part
1:16
Speaker 1: of Like I need this to happen because I don't
1:21
Speaker 1: know if I just I just accept what it is.
1:23
Speaker 1: Maybe I don't have a good imagination, but I love,
1:26
Speaker 1: like you know, Southern Gothic is my favorite form of
1:29
Speaker 1: probably things that I really really really really love. So
1:33
Speaker 1: it's hard for me to think on beyond that. Yeah,
1:36
Speaker 1: I mean all of that stuff does exist, believe believe me.
1:40
Speaker 1: And I will say about shipping, like I think for me,
1:44
Speaker 1: this isn't the case for a lot of people, but
1:46
Speaker 1: for me, shipping is fun when it's like I don't
1:49
Speaker 1: want this to happen, or I'm glad it didn't happen,
1:52
Speaker 1: or I know it never will happen, and that's okay,
1:54
Speaker 1: but at least I can read about it and right.
1:58
Speaker 1: Because I'm not really a romantic person, I do like
2:00
Speaker 1: sweet like relationships, kind of like innocent, loving, caring relationships
2:05
Speaker 1: that don't really involve sex, which a lot of times
2:07
Speaker 1: is what fan fiction is, even though it's been totally
2:09
Speaker 1: misinterpreted as this is like a place where all kinds
2:11
Speaker 1: of sex is going down. It's usually just like domestic
2:15
Speaker 1: what's called curtain fick of, just like, oh, this couple
2:18
Speaker 1: cares about each other and they take they take care
2:20
Speaker 1: of each other. It's very sweet. Yeah, Somebody asked me
2:24
Speaker 1: the other day of like, how much do you read?
2:27
Speaker 1: And I was like, well, my problem is every time
2:31
Speaker 1: I try to read a book now I think I
2:32
Speaker 1: could be reading, I have kind of the opposite issue.
2:39
Speaker 1: That's fair, that is fair, I guess, I guess. I
2:43
Speaker 1: mean I still Yeah, I still read, but I'm often
2:45
Speaker 1: like I thought I could be reading fans or writing
2:48
Speaker 1: fan fiction. But yes, we are bringing back this two
2:53
Speaker 1: part classic on fan fiction, The bridgeon I did, and
2:56
Speaker 1: in this one I reveal my very embarrassing user name,
3:00
Speaker 1: which I believe is still up. It's empty, but it's
3:04
Speaker 1: still there. You can find it. Oh, I wish I
3:10
Speaker 1: had deleted all my stories. I wish I had left
3:11
Speaker 1: them up. But me too. Such a shame, Such a shame. Anyway,
3:16
Speaker 1: please enjoy the second part in our too Fart Look
3:19
Speaker 1: on fan Fiction. Hello, this is Annie and this is Bridget,
3:27
Speaker 1: and you're listening to stuff. Mom never told you. This
3:40
Speaker 1: is part two of our fan fiction Extravaganza, because, surprise, surprise,
3:45
Speaker 1: we were very excited to talk about fan fiction. Um,
3:49
Speaker 1: if you haven't caught the first episode, go check it out.
3:51
Speaker 1: It was kind of more of a primer the history
3:53
Speaker 1: what what is this fan fiction thing? And in this
3:56
Speaker 1: episode we're gonna look more into why it's my sli
4:00
Speaker 1: women writing fan fiction and slash. Yeah, I was pretty surprised.
4:05
Speaker 1: I had no idea there were so many ins and
4:08
Speaker 1: outs to fan fiction. I thought it was going to
4:10
Speaker 1: be something that was sort of a quick overview, but
4:13
Speaker 1: when you actually look at the history, there's so much
4:15
Speaker 1: going on and it's so gendered. After part one of
4:19
Speaker 1: this episode aired, I was having a conversation with a
4:22
Speaker 1: friend and I was like, oh, we were talking about
4:24
Speaker 1: fan fiction and he said, oh, isn't that a bunch
4:26
Speaker 1: of weirdos writing stories where Harry Potter and Gandolf have
4:30
Speaker 1: sex with each other? And I was able to say, no,
4:33
Speaker 1: that is a common fan fiction misconception. So I was
4:36
Speaker 1: pretty proud of how how useful the information about fan
4:39
Speaker 1: fiction turned out to be in my own life. I'm
4:42
Speaker 1: proud to Bridget. Good for you standing up for fan fiction.
4:46
Speaker 1: But yeah, let's let's dive right in, shall we. Let's
4:49
Speaker 1: do it. Yes, fan fic fear, that's what we're going
4:51
Speaker 1: to talk about, and it does largely seem to do
4:53
Speaker 1: with our anxieties around women and sexuality and male anxieties
4:57
Speaker 1: about women in the fantom surprised a prize that's never
5:01
Speaker 1: come up here on the show. No, never, never, And
5:04
Speaker 1: this fear feminine media goes way back. To take this
5:08
Speaker 1: quote from a pastor from eighteen sixty four. I have
5:11
Speaker 1: seen a young lady with her table loaded with volumes,
5:13
Speaker 1: a loaded of fictitious trash, pouring day after day and
5:17
Speaker 1: night after night, over highly wrought, seeing some skillfully portrayed
5:21
Speaker 1: pictures of romance, until her cheeks grew pale, her eyes
5:24
Speaker 1: became wild and reckless, and her mind wandered and was lost.
5:28
Speaker 1: A lot of intelligence passed behind a cloud, and her
5:30
Speaker 1: soul was forever benighted. She was insane, incurably insane from
5:35
Speaker 1: reading novels. Is he describing you? Is that what you
5:37
Speaker 1: look like when you read band fiction? So I am
5:40
Speaker 1: a vampire. I wasn't planning on admitting it. It's right
5:46
Speaker 1: to be hunting you, dad. Wait, is she behind you?
5:49
Speaker 1: That's why I was so nervous before. Oh no, I
5:53
Speaker 1: hope she doesn't listen to the show. She's gonna come.
5:55
Speaker 1: I's gonna come from me. I'm a vampire though, anyway.
5:58
Speaker 1: According to a survey from fanfic the fan fixed site
6:01
Speaker 1: AO three that we mentioned earlier, an overwhelming majority of
6:05
Speaker 1: fan fiction is written by people who identify as women,
6:08
Speaker 1: more identify as gender queer at six percent than male
6:12
Speaker 1: at four percent, and only thirty eight percent identify as heterosexual.
6:17
Speaker 1: When AO three was first coded, it marked the biggest
6:21
Speaker 1: majority female independent coding project ever. Wow. As to age demographics,
6:27
Speaker 1: to go back to that whole horny teenagers are the
6:29
Speaker 1: only ones writing this. That's not true. It depends on
6:31
Speaker 1: which site you look at that it probably exkews slightly
6:34
Speaker 1: older than you'd guess, like college aged outside of what Pad,
6:37
Speaker 1: which we talked about earlier. See, this doesn't actually surprise
6:39
Speaker 1: me at all, because I've often found that anything that
6:42
Speaker 1: involves sort of people power and media, whether it's you know,
6:46
Speaker 1: YouTube or independent content creation, those spaces tend to be
6:49
Speaker 1: heavily dominated by non heterosexual men's with women, queer folks
6:54
Speaker 1: on by anario folks, books of color, like marginalized people
6:57
Speaker 1: really combine their voices in these alternative sources of you know,
7:02
Speaker 1: creativity and media. Yeah, I am kind of curious. I
7:07
Speaker 1: wonder how common it is for perhaps men to pretend
7:10
Speaker 1: to be women writing fan fiction, or like choose a
7:13
Speaker 1: name that maybe you couldn't get a sense of whether
7:17
Speaker 1: or not they were male or female, sort of like
7:19
Speaker 1: how in the video game world a lot of female gamers,
7:22
Speaker 1: including myself, which choose a masculine sounding name, hopefully that
7:26
Speaker 1: people would leave us alone. Like I wonder, I'm just
7:28
Speaker 1: curious if there's kind of an embarrassment or maybe even
7:31
Speaker 1: male fan fiction writers feel like they'd be more accepted.
7:34
Speaker 1: What was your fan fiction handle? It was winded? W
7:40
Speaker 1: Why in D E D? What is that? What? Where
7:43
Speaker 1: did that come from? What's the origin of that? Gosh,
7:45
Speaker 1: it's actually really embarrassing story. I don't want to tell it.
7:48
Speaker 1: If you can, we can tell it off air. You
7:49
Speaker 1: can still look it up. It does exist, but there's nothing.
7:52
Speaker 1: They are deleted everything. Unfortunately. I kind of wish there's
7:55
Speaker 1: something there for you. Maybe if I find find them,
7:57
Speaker 1: I'll repost. This is so sill. Once I snuck onto
8:01
Speaker 1: the hometown I grew up in, had a really fancy neighborhood,
8:06
Speaker 1: really fancy, well known, and I was just kind of
8:09
Speaker 1: curious about what went down in there. So when I
8:12
Speaker 1: was eight or nine, I um snuck in and I
8:16
Speaker 1: was looking around and these police roll up and they
8:19
Speaker 1: had a bunch of like big dogs, really scared to it. Also,
8:23
Speaker 1: you know, I'm a young kids police and they asked
8:26
Speaker 1: me what my name was, and I panicked and I said,
8:30
Speaker 1: August Wind. Do you believe it wasn't August? Tell me
8:36
Speaker 1: it was a windy night in August. It George Glass,
8:41
Speaker 1: it was, it was August, and I'd like, it was
8:47
Speaker 1: clearly thank you for laughing at my name. Thank you.
8:53
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, I'm sorry, but being a I got, I
8:56
Speaker 1: got windy August night. What's your name? August Wind? And
9:02
Speaker 1: it was so clearly fake, but I like did not
9:05
Speaker 1: abandon it, Like I went all in down with the
9:08
Speaker 1: ship and you're like, where are you from? August Wind?
9:10
Speaker 1: And I was like, oh, you know, neighbors down, they
9:14
Speaker 1: know me around here. August wouldn't ask anyone. I'm so
9:21
Speaker 1: glad I asked. But then I turned it into like
9:26
Speaker 1: a pun, a play on winded, because I you know,
9:29
Speaker 1: I was an emo teenager and I was tired. I
9:32
Speaker 1: was winded, but also I was staying with my roots
9:36
Speaker 1: of my bad fake name that I made up when questioned,
9:40
Speaker 1: that's such a good story. Yeah, it wasn't one of
9:44
Speaker 1: my better fake names, but you know I gave you
9:47
Speaker 1: a swinging a miss, as they say, away from my
9:51
Speaker 1: embarrassing pen name. But first we're gonna take a quick
9:54
Speaker 1: break for word for a sponsor, and we're back. Thank you,
10:07
Speaker 1: spots are. Here is a quote from vox. There's a
10:11
Speaker 1: special I reserved for the particular corner of the web
10:14
Speaker 1: where people make transformative works about the media they love.
10:18
Speaker 1: And given that this corner is primarily composed of young women,
10:21
Speaker 1: it's hard to avoid the conclusion that this ire is gendered.
10:25
Speaker 1: And also, apart from that, if you think about the
10:28
Speaker 1: gate keeping of fandoms, it's largely done by men, and
10:31
Speaker 1: having women dominate this one particular aspect of fandom made
10:35
Speaker 1: a lot of men in the fandom uncomfortable, like, what
10:38
Speaker 1: are you doing this weird thing in my fandom? For
10:41
Speaker 1: another article, oh, this is the one I mentioned earlier
10:43
Speaker 1: from the Mary Sue noted that the most vocal criticism
10:48
Speaker 1: of fan fiction is from male critics. In an article
10:51
Speaker 1: titled when men write fan fiction, It isn't fan fiction
10:54
Speaker 1: because it's academic. Okay, that's first of all, how is
10:58
Speaker 1: it that men are the most vocal critics of a
11:01
Speaker 1: landscape dominated by For me, that this tells you all
11:04
Speaker 1: you need to know about how men show up in
11:06
Speaker 1: this space. And that sounds hostile. It is, it's really hostile.
11:10
Speaker 1: And I found so many articles written by men that
11:13
Speaker 1: were criticizing fan fiction and they were just so condescending
11:18
Speaker 1: and like dismissive, just kind of insulting about the people
11:23
Speaker 1: who would do this, and it was hard misogynistic, very
11:27
Speaker 1: kind of left a bad taste in my mouth. And
11:29
Speaker 1: there are a lot of theories as to why women
11:31
Speaker 1: make up a majority of the fan fiction community. One
11:34
Speaker 1: is that it allowed young girls and women traditionally excluded
11:36
Speaker 1: from fandom by default and from the world of professional
11:39
Speaker 1: writing and media making as well. It provided the space
11:42
Speaker 1: that they could enter freely and create empowering storylines that
11:45
Speaker 1: they weren't seeing anywhere else, or even if the storylines
11:48
Speaker 1: weren't empowering, they felt empowered because they created them. Yeah, yeah,
11:53
Speaker 1: I know, we're like a broken record on the show
11:54
Speaker 1: about this, but that really matters, you know, feeling like
11:57
Speaker 1: you're the one who is the author of your own
12:00
Speaker 1: ory that matters so much. And even if it's not
12:02
Speaker 1: an empowering story, knowing that you have a voice and
12:05
Speaker 1: that you are have a seat at the table as
12:07
Speaker 1: a creator is important. And I just hate seeing men
12:10
Speaker 1: on it because of their own hang ups around gender. Yeah,
12:14
Speaker 1: and it also breaks my heart about how a lot
12:16
Speaker 1: of the like dismissiveness of it is like these are young,
12:19
Speaker 1: stupid girls, like young and you know, like fan girls.
12:23
Speaker 1: I remember Christie Caroline did an episode on how we
12:26
Speaker 1: kind of deride the fan girl. It's a part of
12:29
Speaker 1: life where you're you're growing and boys go through the
12:32
Speaker 1: same thing, but we don't loving what they love. And
12:35
Speaker 1: I think this is this is one of those times
12:37
Speaker 1: where I want to say, oh, we should do another
12:38
Speaker 1: episode on blah blah blah. But I've always thought that
12:41
Speaker 1: it's young girls who are the real kind of Internet pioneers.
12:44
Speaker 1: Look at things like Tumbler, look at things like meme culture,
12:48
Speaker 1: so much of that is fueled by very young girls
12:52
Speaker 1: online who are like left to their own devices. They
12:54
Speaker 1: really love this one, saying they're going to go all
12:56
Speaker 1: in on it, and I think it's actually quite innovative,
12:58
Speaker 1: Like we don't think of young girls and their fandom
13:01
Speaker 1: as purveyors of Internet innovation, but that's what they are
13:06
Speaker 1: and we because it's girls, because it's feminized, um, and
13:09
Speaker 1: because of our hang ups around and anxieties around gender,
13:12
Speaker 1: people have to put it down. But if they could
13:14
Speaker 1: look at it with a fresh perspective, they would see, Oh,
13:16
Speaker 1: these women and young girls actually are quite innovative. They're
13:20
Speaker 1: innovative creators who are carving off their own space of
13:23
Speaker 1: the Internet. Yeah, and I'm kind of again, I had
13:26
Speaker 1: a really I had a really good experience with fan fiction.
13:28
Speaker 1: I'm sure this exists, like negativity exist, but for me,
13:32
Speaker 1: I didn't really stumble onto it. And I'm I've been
13:34
Speaker 1: proud that generally nobody's making fun of another fandom, or
13:38
Speaker 1: at least if they are, they're like a quiet minority.
13:41
Speaker 1: So I like that. I think that, you know, write
13:45
Speaker 1: your one direction fan fiction. I'm gonna write my Harry
13:48
Speaker 1: Potter fan fiction. We're all just creating these things here,
13:53
Speaker 1: and I like that the kind of judgment isn't there
13:56
Speaker 1: as much as you see with the male dominated parts
13:59
Speaker 1: of fandom. Writing fan fiction may also give women that
14:02
Speaker 1: sense of community that we've talked so much about, which
14:04
Speaker 1: is even more important. Research suggest for lesbian and queer
14:08
Speaker 1: girls who wrote our found role models and slash fiction
14:11
Speaker 1: at times when they felt isolated. Elizabeth Minkl wrote in
14:14
Speaker 1: The New Statesman, my preferred explanation, and she's talking about
14:17
Speaker 1: why fan fiction is sort of dominated by women, is
14:20
Speaker 1: the idea that a vast majority of what we watch
14:22
Speaker 1: is from the male perspective, author directed and filmed by men,
14:25
Speaker 1: and mostly straight white men. At that fan fiction gives
14:28
Speaker 1: women and other marginalized groups the chance to subvert that perspective,
14:32
Speaker 1: to fracture a story and recast it in her own way.
14:35
Speaker 1: It often feels as if there isn't much space for
14:37
Speaker 1: difference in the dominant cultural narratives in fandom. By design
14:42
Speaker 1: their space for it. I love that, And even though
14:44
Speaker 1: I'm not someone who's super into fandom, that's the thing
14:47
Speaker 1: I find so beautiful that it's it can be such
14:50
Speaker 1: an inclusive space where all different narratives get to be included. Yeah,
14:54
Speaker 1: and we've touched on before having to prove your fandom
14:58
Speaker 1: as a woman or geek girl, fear she's just faking
15:02
Speaker 1: it to infiltrate or fandom. Then that's another thing that
15:05
Speaker 1: we'll have to return to. But it does play a role,
15:07
Speaker 1: and I think in kind of the hang ups we
15:09
Speaker 1: have around band fiction and all the women writing it.
15:12
Speaker 1: This does bring us to Slash. It's time. It's finally
15:16
Speaker 1: time to talk about Slash. Okay, So first off, Slash
15:20
Speaker 1: is not always pornographic, like I've said many times. In fact,
15:23
Speaker 1: it's more often than not not pornographic. And it's important
15:28
Speaker 1: to keep in mind when we unpack why most Slash
15:31
Speaker 1: is written by women, just in case people are as
15:34
Speaker 1: tuned into this world as me. Slashes male two men together,
15:39
Speaker 1: that's noncanon. So if we look down, if we break
15:41
Speaker 1: down readership demographics, it's generally at split between heatersexual readers,
15:46
Speaker 1: and queer readers. When it comes to Slash, it can
15:49
Speaker 1: differ depending on the fandom and the site. And there
15:52
Speaker 1: are a lot of theories um as to why slash
15:55
Speaker 1: is such a phenomenon, and I have one that I
15:58
Speaker 1: am now totally on board with has changed my view
16:01
Speaker 1: of most media for a while. Personally, I had a
16:04
Speaker 1: theory it was because most well developed characters we consume,
16:07
Speaker 1: our male female options are limited, so most relationships were
16:10
Speaker 1: seeing on screen are between two dupes. I think everybody
16:14
Speaker 1: Cop Movie or Kirkin's Black. So we're just we're taking
16:18
Speaker 1: what we see and expounding upon it. Another idea. I
16:21
Speaker 1: read that in particular in Japanese fan fiction, a slash
16:25
Speaker 1: might be preferred because it removes the pressures of marriage
16:29
Speaker 1: and that little line item we call pregnancy. No matter
16:33
Speaker 1: where you are, the female body is inherently political, and
16:35
Speaker 1: it comes with all of this invisible baggage that male
16:38
Speaker 1: bodies don't. And we could do a whole thing about
16:42
Speaker 1: slash in Asia. In Japan, where manga based slash is
16:46
Speaker 1: called at ya oe, the romance between two male characters
16:50
Speaker 1: usually still fits into the traditional, often regressive, masculine feminine pairing.
16:55
Speaker 1: There's pretty clear like this one was meant to be
16:57
Speaker 1: the masculine, this one is meant to be the feminine one.
16:59
Speaker 1: It's pretty wide seen as a way for women to
17:01
Speaker 1: express their sexuality and desire and to experience the emotional
17:04
Speaker 1: aspects of relationships of the attendees at the two thousand
17:08
Speaker 1: and three Yayoikon and San Francisco or Women That's Fascinating.
17:13
Speaker 1: Slash Our Den Mai is popular among heterosexual women self
17:16
Speaker 1: identified as rotten Girls and China. To an estimated two
17:20
Speaker 1: seventy five million people read slash fan fiction in China.
17:25
Speaker 1: Researchers into why positive. It's because women like reading Don
17:28
Speaker 1: My because it's a way for women to rebel in
17:30
Speaker 1: a society that expects women to be obedient. Owners of
17:34
Speaker 1: the sites hosting don Mike can be jailed by the government,
17:37
Speaker 1: and the readers are often described as needing psychiatric help.
17:41
Speaker 1: And a criticism I see about slash fairly regularly is
17:44
Speaker 1: that it makes it harder for gay men are gay
17:46
Speaker 1: characters to have platonic relationships, and that it fetishizes and
17:49
Speaker 1: objectifies gay men, particularly more visual mediums like yo, which
17:53
Speaker 1: is traditionally more visual. A counterpoint to that is that
17:56
Speaker 1: a decent portion of the women creating slash are not
17:59
Speaker 1: attracted two men, and almost all of the women writing
18:02
Speaker 1: slash grew up in a society that is prohibitive when
18:05
Speaker 1: it comes to women exploring their sexuality, one that shames
18:08
Speaker 1: women and objectifies their bodies. Male characters are a safe,
18:12
Speaker 1: shame free way to dip your toe in and kind
18:14
Speaker 1: of a funny way. It removes the male gaze that
18:16
Speaker 1: women have internalized. It's so fascinating how women are using
18:20
Speaker 1: this medium to sort of explore their own sexuality, but
18:24
Speaker 1: not even necessarily in a overtly sexualized way if they're
18:28
Speaker 1: not actually attracted to men. Yeah, Yeah, this is the
18:31
Speaker 1: one that is. I feel like it's kind of changed
18:34
Speaker 1: how I look at all media, because, like I said,
18:36
Speaker 1: I'd never liked the sex part of slash, but I
18:39
Speaker 1: did like slash fan fiction because of the relationships in there.
18:43
Speaker 1: And the more I think about it, the more I
18:46
Speaker 1: think it was because of this, because it was a
18:48
Speaker 1: safer way it removed the female body does come with
18:52
Speaker 1: all of this stuff that kind of almost takes you
18:56
Speaker 1: away from the story. You can enjoy it as much
18:58
Speaker 1: because you are at least I felt like as a woman,
19:01
Speaker 1: it almost makes me tense knowing she's going to have
19:04
Speaker 1: to deal with all of these things. It's just like
19:05
Speaker 1: what you said before, Women's bodies are apherently political, and
19:08
Speaker 1: so if the point of view consuming this media, it's
19:12
Speaker 1: just sort of get an escape from that. It makes
19:14
Speaker 1: sense that including a sexualized female body would only sort
19:17
Speaker 1: of add to your anxieties. It wouldn't be that like
19:20
Speaker 1: escape that you're looking for. Yeah, and we have penned
19:23
Speaker 1: so many things to women, and that the way they behave.
19:26
Speaker 1: I read an article by someone else who was saying
19:29
Speaker 1: she realized and she got older than almost every character
19:32
Speaker 1: she'd ever written. Almost every fan fiction she'd ever read
19:34
Speaker 1: all had like men in them, even though she's a feminist,
19:38
Speaker 1: and she was trying to at the bottom of why
19:39
Speaker 1: that is. And she thinks it's because women are almost
19:42
Speaker 1: always passive, should be seen as passive, whereas male characters
19:46
Speaker 1: are men, they're active, they're aggressive. So you're telling a
19:49
Speaker 1: story you want like an active character, you don't want
19:52
Speaker 1: a passive character. And I think we've internalized so much
19:55
Speaker 1: about what society tells us is how a woman should
19:58
Speaker 1: behave and what we see in media, that it is
20:00
Speaker 1: hard to escape it. If you introduce a woman into
20:03
Speaker 1: a story, whether you like it or not, whether you
20:06
Speaker 1: know it or not, I think in the back of
20:07
Speaker 1: your head, there are all these assumptions that you're making
20:09
Speaker 1: that are perhaps making it hard to just enjoy it.
20:12
Speaker 1: After I read this, I started to think that maybe
20:15
Speaker 1: this is why we see so much bromance. As a culture,
20:18
Speaker 1: we've sexualized the female body so much that having a
20:20
Speaker 1: story with a female character played against a male character
20:23
Speaker 1: or another female character, it automatically becomes sexualized, even if
20:28
Speaker 1: it's platonic. Exactly. You're thinking in the back of your
20:31
Speaker 1: head they're going to get together, exactly. But that doesn't
20:36
Speaker 1: happen with two male characters for male viewers, which is
20:41
Speaker 1: what media is traditionally, has traditionally been made for as
20:44
Speaker 1: male viewers, for the male gaze, and sometimes that comes
20:46
Speaker 1: through through the writer, through the director, or sometimes it
20:49
Speaker 1: comes through the audience, just as observing. We might be
20:51
Speaker 1: putting that on there. I would say a lot of
20:53
Speaker 1: times were putting that there because that is what's been
20:56
Speaker 1: ingrained in us. But for so long the female character
20:59
Speaker 1: has existed in the story solely for some kind of
21:03
Speaker 1: like objectification or sexual aspect. That's why she's there. I
21:07
Speaker 1: think we're moving away from that. But I think that
21:09
Speaker 1: is one of the reasons perhaps that so many women
21:11
Speaker 1: are writing slash two male characters and hadn't even occurred
21:16
Speaker 1: to me. But that makes so much sense. Yeah, I
21:18
Speaker 1: did have a moment of like, trans fiction, you're changing
21:22
Speaker 1: my view on the world. Everything's making sense now. Over
21:27
Speaker 1: at the high Hat, Melissa writes that Slash gives and
21:30
Speaker 1: the author the chance to quote have the freedom of
21:33
Speaker 1: being male in their female bodies. I do think there
21:36
Speaker 1: is more freedom in the male body, I would say.
21:40
Speaker 1: And also, young straight men have a plethora of mainstream
21:44
Speaker 1: accepted media to help them explore their sexuality. Definitely, they
21:48
Speaker 1: have an abundance. Yes, oh yeah, slash challenges gender norms, masculinity, femininity.
21:54
Speaker 1: I'm not sure the same fear would exist around male
21:58
Speaker 1: authored fim slash if it were men writing sex between
22:02
Speaker 1: two women. I'm pretty sure we would just be like,
22:03
Speaker 1: oh man, you know, just doing Yeah. And a side
22:10
Speaker 1: note in the article I was reading about the fear
22:12
Speaker 1: of fan fiction from Box, they specifically call out the
22:15
Speaker 1: fact that, despite having an all male creative team Captain America,
22:19
Speaker 1: the Winners Soldier, which is one of my favorites, is
22:21
Speaker 1: popularly read and turned into a homorotic love story between
22:25
Speaker 1: the two men by young women, which as someone who
22:29
Speaker 1: dresses up as the Winners Soldier at conventions and sees
22:32
Speaker 1: this all the time for some reason in my pinters feed,
22:35
Speaker 1: I really appreciated it. When I read that, I was like, yep,
22:37
Speaker 1: I hadn't thought about it, but yes, we're gonna take
22:41
Speaker 1: a quick break for word for our sponsor and we're back.
22:55
Speaker 1: Thank you, spotsor okay, so you can probably tell I
22:58
Speaker 1: am no fan ofiction expert. But this I found really
23:02
Speaker 1: really interesting and I wanted to include it. A quick
23:04
Speaker 1: note about celebrities. When reporters asked celebrities to comment on
23:08
Speaker 1: weird fan fiction, they are doing it to mock their fans.
23:11
Speaker 1: Probably neither of the reporter nor the celebrity know about
23:15
Speaker 1: fan fiction, and that's fine, but then you wonder, like,
23:17
Speaker 1: why even talk about it at all. So there's this
23:19
Speaker 1: really infamous interview with Benedict Cumberbatch in Out magazine that
23:23
Speaker 1: really did a lot of this kind of thing, demeaning
23:25
Speaker 1: people who read fan fiction, who write fan fiction, and
23:28
Speaker 1: who are excited about fan fiction. But those fans took
23:32
Speaker 1: one phrase from that interview that phrases quote lustful monster
23:37
Speaker 1: and put it in art. One actually put on a
23:40
Speaker 1: T shirt and the sales of that shirt go to
23:42
Speaker 1: the nonprofit behind a OH three, the Organization for Transformative Works.
23:46
Speaker 1: So that just goes to show you that these innovators
23:49
Speaker 1: are taking a reporter basically trying to make fun of them,
23:54
Speaker 1: making lemonade out of lemons, and using it to raise
23:56
Speaker 1: money for a great cause that they care about. Who
23:58
Speaker 1: would have ever thought that lustful gloster could generate such
24:03
Speaker 1: positive impact. My heart is fit to burst to birth.
24:08
Speaker 1: Do you own a lustful You should? If you had it,
24:10
Speaker 1: you would be wearing it. Yeah. I didn't know this existed,
24:12
Speaker 1: but now I really want one. And another show I
24:15
Speaker 1: mentioned before, Supernatural, did the whole episode on fan fiction.
24:18
Speaker 1: That's really difficult to explain without having the foundation of
24:21
Speaker 1: what that show is, but basically, the main characters have
24:23
Speaker 1: a cult following and stumble upon a high school that's
24:26
Speaker 1: putting on a musical about their lives. And this musical
24:29
Speaker 1: is almost exclusively put together by young women. It's pretty
24:33
Speaker 1: great because the two main characters of that show are
24:35
Speaker 1: pretty like macho dudes, and then they stumble upon these
24:38
Speaker 1: young ladies making a musical about their life. And at
24:41
Speaker 1: the end, one of the characters is like, look, I
24:42
Speaker 1: really don't like what you're doing, but I appreciate your
24:45
Speaker 1: right to do it, and you do it well. Yeah.
24:49
Speaker 1: And one of the actors from the show, Misha Collins,
24:51
Speaker 1: he has some really awesome quotes about fan fiction. For instance,
24:55
Speaker 1: when somebody asked him about slash because his character, as
24:58
Speaker 1: I mentioned earlier, cast Dale and Dean, there's a lot
25:01
Speaker 1: of slash about them. The stl when he was asked
25:03
Speaker 1: about it at a convention, he said, talking about Slash,
25:07
Speaker 1: I think it is a great cultural asset that unites
25:09
Speaker 1: the world and makes it better, which is lovely, Which
25:12
Speaker 1: is lovely. Author Daniel Beings wrote that her experience with
25:15
Speaker 1: fan fiction taught her that she wrote about common themes
25:18
Speaker 1: and would write with quote, urgency, joy, and discipline. When
25:21
Speaker 1: she provided a Buffy the Vampire Slayer fiction as a
25:24
Speaker 1: sample for previous work. When applying for a writing program,
25:26
Speaker 1: she had to explain in her follow up interview that
25:28
Speaker 1: what fan fiction was and why she was drawn to it.
25:31
Speaker 1: It gave her the space to experiment with her voice
25:33
Speaker 1: freely and with characters and universes that she was comfortable with,
25:35
Speaker 1: and she got in and is now a two time
25:38
Speaker 1: recipient of the Romance Writers of Australia Media Industry Award.
25:41
Speaker 1: So good for her for all the men who were
25:44
Speaker 1: like looking down on it and on it. It's actually
25:46
Speaker 1: changing people's lives. Absolutely. It's just kind of this beautiful
25:50
Speaker 1: democratic thing. We have, this industry of published fiction as
25:54
Speaker 1: a lot of barriers of barriers socio economically, even having
25:59
Speaker 1: access to education to get the degree that's going to
26:03
Speaker 1: get agents to sign you like, there are barriers, but
26:06
Speaker 1: in the world of fan fiction at its best and yeah, again,
26:10
Speaker 1: going back to thinks, she says, fan fiction is a
26:12
Speaker 1: more accessible platform for writing and experimentation, and I'm all
26:16
Speaker 1: for it, and so am I. It's made me really
26:19
Speaker 1: really happy to do this research and us. I really
26:21
Speaker 1: appreciate this world that we've kind of made for ourselves.
26:25
Speaker 1: And Annie, I appreciate this master class in fan fiction.
26:29
Speaker 1: I feel like I could really teach a class now,
26:32
Speaker 1: believe it or not. I cut a lot of stuff.
26:35
Speaker 1: I was like, I'm here's a sample of across over
26:38
Speaker 1: like I had a sample for everything. You've got to
26:42
Speaker 1: calm down, Annie or else will never leave the studio. Well,
26:46
Speaker 1: I hope that you listeners have enjoyed this as much
26:49
Speaker 1: as we have enjoyed putting it together. And please, if
26:53
Speaker 1: you're comfortable with it, send us some fan fiction that
26:57
Speaker 1: you've written. We're thinking about doing kind of a kind
27:00
Speaker 1: of a on ongoing series of reading fan fiction, perhaps
27:04
Speaker 1: with some like production value. We've got. We've got a
27:06
Speaker 1: little whole project idea kicking around. Yeah, send us that
27:09
Speaker 1: fan Pi absolutely and Bridget and I I will jump
27:13
Speaker 1: in the fray. I will read my fan fiction. I might, Okay,
27:17
Speaker 1: I might. We'll see. Gotta I gotta get, I gotta
27:20
Speaker 1: like psych yourself. I gotta check myself up a little bit. Okay.
27:23
Speaker 1: But speaking of asking people to send in their fan fiction, no,
27:27
Speaker 1: it is time for some listener mail. Skyler wrote, I
27:35
Speaker 1: wanted to share a small anecdote from my junior prom.
27:37
Speaker 1: We didn't have a specific dress code for prom other
27:39
Speaker 1: than formal attire and to use our brains on what
27:42
Speaker 1: is quote appropriate. It was definitely less strict than our
27:45
Speaker 1: school dress code. The administrators were more concerned with alcohol
27:49
Speaker 1: than dress. To their credit anyway, there was a group
27:51
Speaker 1: of about ten guys that chose not to wear shirts
27:54
Speaker 1: under their vest. Somehow that qual is formal. They were
27:58
Speaker 1: confronted by the chaperones eventually for jumping on and over tables.
28:03
Speaker 1: Come and find out she went to high school with
28:05
Speaker 1: the Chippendales dancers. That sounds like it could happen in
28:12
Speaker 1: a fan fiction. Honestly, it does. It does. Our next
28:15
Speaker 1: email us from Sarah. Sarah writes, I just listened to
28:18
Speaker 1: your episode on prom and I thought it was so interesting.
28:20
Speaker 1: It really got me thinking about my own prom experiences.
28:23
Speaker 1: I never thought I would consider my school liberal, but
28:25
Speaker 1: when it comes to prom, it definitely is. We don't
28:27
Speaker 1: have a prom dress code, and two girls or two
28:29
Speaker 1: guys buy the couple's prom ticket all the time because
28:32
Speaker 1: it's cheaper than buying two singles. Listening to the controversies
28:35
Speaker 1: and activism around prom and comparing them to how my
28:37
Speaker 1: school handles the same issue was fascinating. I lit up
28:40
Speaker 1: when you mentioned how you wish you'd want our suit
28:42
Speaker 1: to prom, because that's exactly what I did. I'd wore
28:44
Speaker 1: a dresses to every single school dance before my senior prom.
28:47
Speaker 1: But I went on a vacation to France a month
28:49
Speaker 1: before prom and and impulse bought these fabulous, glittery pink
28:52
Speaker 1: saddle shoes. Of course, I had to base my entire
28:54
Speaker 1: prom look around them, my makeup, my jewelry, my manicure,
28:57
Speaker 1: and the vest and tie. My mom completely supported me,
29:00
Speaker 1: although I felt super awkward at first, as can happen
29:02
Speaker 1: when you're defying gender expectations, I got so many compliments.
29:06
Speaker 1: My other friends were complaining about how they couldn't breathe
29:08
Speaker 1: in their dresses, how their strap was Brau's kept slopping.
29:11
Speaker 1: But I got to be comfortable and stylish suits of
29:13
Speaker 1: the way to go man, um Sarah, I'm like living
29:17
Speaker 1: vicariously through you. I wish i'd warn a suit to
29:20
Speaker 1: prom and I wish I had had pink, sparkly saddle shoes.
29:24
Speaker 1: She sent a picture and that was that was a
29:27
Speaker 1: dope outfit. So good, Sarah, Well done, Yes, well done.
29:33
Speaker 1: Thanks to both of them for writing in. Thanks it's
29:35
Speaker 1: always to our producers, Delan Fagan, Kathleen Quillian. We would
29:38
Speaker 1: love to hear from you. Please send those fan fiction
29:40
Speaker 1: please or any other thoughts that you have. Um Our
29:44
Speaker 1: email is a mom stuff at how stuff works dot com.
29:47
Speaker 1: You can also find us on Twitter at mom stuff
29:50
Speaker 1: and on Instagram at stuff mom Never told You Two
30:00
Speaker 1: two