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Monday Mini: Slash Fanfiction · Stuff Mom Never Told You

• 0:05
  Speaker 1: Hey, this is Annie and Samantha and welcome to stuff.
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: I never told your production of I Heart Radio, and
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: today we are doing a bit of a lighter Monday many.
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: To be honest with you, this was originally meant to
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: be one of my happy hours, but then the Last
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: of Us kind of like took over all of my
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: as it should. As it should, but I did think
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: it might be cool to talk about this one as
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: it comes out. It is the day before Valentine's Day. Um.
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: That being said, this one we are going to be
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: talking about, not in depth, but some some sexual things,
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: sex and stuff and stuff, and also we this is
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: my personal take. I just want to be super clear
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: on this. We're talking today abou slash and fan fiction,
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: which I'll explain more in a second, but this is
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: my personal take. I know it's not the same for everybody.
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: I have gotten an arguments with some friends about how
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: it felt the same for everybody, So I understand that
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: this is just definitely me trying to kind of work
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: some stuff out. And I'll talk about that more in
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: a second. Um as well, so you can see our
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: episodes on fan fiction, specifically on dub Con the book club.
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: We did on the book. Dub con would be good
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: for this one. We've talked about this a lot in episodes.
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: I can't remember, but it comes up a lot because
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: I read a lot of fan fiction. UM So I'm
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: sure there's other things. But okay, that being said, let's
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: talk about slash um So slash it is basically it
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: denotes a romantic, usually sexual relationship between two characters and
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: usually two men, but not always uh, but usually two men.
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: I've heard I've been reading all fan fictionsince seventh grade,
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: and I am far away from seventh grade right now.
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: I've heard that the term is kind of evolved. I
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: would like to look into that, but it is something
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: that just shows like this is more of a romantic
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: sexual relationship as opposed to if you did like this
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: character plus this character, that is platonic slash romantic usually
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: sexual um and it has given a lot of people.
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: It has made them scratch their heads a lot of
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: the time because the question is why are so many women,
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: a lot of them queer women, who are writing fan fiction.
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: Why are they writing so many stories about two men together? Um?
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: And there are a lot of theories why that is.
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: There's also a lot of very in my opinion, hilarious
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: articles about women. What's wrong with You? Fan fiction is
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: so scary. It just like really is something people, especially
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: people who don't write fan fiction, struggle to understand. And
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: I've talked about it before. That's actually not really my
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: point today, though, I wanted to talk about something that
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: came up when I was talking with my other friends
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: about what we read when it comes to fan fiction,
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: and I realized I can't read hetero fan fiction, or
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: at least it can't be. I can't read like if
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: that's the main thing in terms of a sexual relationship,
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: and it just made me wonder, like, why is that?
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: It's yeah, it's just definitely. I was thinking about it, like,
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: I can read a story where there's a hetero couple
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: and they're super happy and super healthy, and I love
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: that actually, but I can't read the like deeper romantic
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: part or the sexual part at all, and that's not
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: something I normally read anyway, but I will read it
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: more if it's between two men. So I was just
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: kind of like, what could this be? And one of
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: the biggest reasonings people have behind it, which we have
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: talked about before, is a power dynamic there's an inherent
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: gender power dynamic between men and women. So I was like,
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: maybe that's it, Like maybe I'm always kind of constantly
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: questioning is this consensual? In a way I don't, which
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: I still should, but in a way I don't in
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: relationships of the same sex because I also will read
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: two women together. I can do that. But then I remembered,
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: as we discussed in our conversation about deb con and
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: I want to come back to this so badly. Is
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: I all? I do read, not very often, but I
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: do read fan fiction from the A B O universe,
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: which is you might recall that stands for alpha beta omega,
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: and that's when there's kind of a biological you have
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: a secondary gender. It's biological. One of them, in my opinion,
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: is very clearly still feminine. One of them is still
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: very masculine um and there's like biological and usually societal
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: reasons why one is lesser. The omega specifically is lesser,
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: and the omega is the feminine. One can get pregnant,
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: usually whether it's a male character or not. So I
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: read that. So it can't be just the power dynamic, right,
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: because that's still like there's a a male character and
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: a female character. Uh, and there's usually there's still there's
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: a differential in power no matter what. Still, yeah, and
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: I've just said that before, where I feel like in
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: a lot of Sash couples between men specifically, there is
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: still a character that I would say coded very feminine,
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: especially in what I read at least, which again, perhaps
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: I'm like in my own niche as I've said, and
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: maybe there's a lot more than I don't realize. Probably
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: there is. There is still kind of the this idea,
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: which is a toxic idea, but I get why people
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: read it, but that toxic idea of like, oh I'm desired'
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: I'm sexually desired. There's something like hard to resist about me,
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: which we've talked about other episodes as well, like when
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: we talked about like the Women Love Monsters episode and
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: things like that. I'll also say I've seen kind of
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: a rise of characters UM where the feminine character is
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: trans written by a trans person usually, which I find
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: really interesting. UM. And a lot of the characters I
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: read that I connect with art trans. So that's something
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: else that I'm kind of like stewing on. UM. I
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: don't know, I'm trying to figure that out. That that
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: is interesting and one of the I mean, it's no
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: surprising anybody, but I'm usually talking about Luke Skywalker here,
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: but he's often written as trans and he is kind
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: of very pretty and feminine in terms of a lot
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: of the and I've said that before, like he's he's
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: written in a way that he's very kind of equally balanced,
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: I would say, at least in the original trilogy, between
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: masculine and feminine coded things. So that's been really interesting
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: to me to see that, because that definitely wasn't happening
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: when I was first starting reading fan fiction, and I'm
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: happy it is now um as long as it's done
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: well and not harmfully. One of the other things that
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: people throw out and why maybe people don't like while
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: they're writing two men together is because of pregnancy. Because
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: if you take out the looming and heavy quotes looming
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: threat of pregnancy, then that's one less thing you have
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: to worry about in these relationships. But again, there's something
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: called imprig It's not super popular, but men can get
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: pregnant and a lot of fish. Is it like real say,
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: or is it like alien movie pregnancy? It's real pregnancy.
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: It's real pregnancy. However, this again is very personal to me,
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: but I do think that they're onto something in terms of,
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: like I have hang ups around my own body, like
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: my own woman body, and so I think that it's
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: easier for me to not read about because it'll just
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: like trigger some thing inside my body. I mean, maybe
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: it's also we're always on the defensive and when we
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: see women being written in general, that we kind of
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: cringe and are always on edge. Yeah, yeah, that's true.
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: And I do think like this is a larger conversation
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: for this episode, but I do think there is something
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: to be said. And again I'm not putting this on
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: anyone else, but for me, like I've really internalized like
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: even if something is being written in a way that
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: is very respectful, I've just internalized that the a lot
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: of the like shaming when it comes to women in
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: their bodies and sex and being sexual, and a lot
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: of the like, yeah it will this turned into something
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: non consensual very quickly, like how consensual is it? And yeah,
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: that it's it's it's a shame really, but that we've
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: sexualized women's bodies so much that it's hard for me
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: not to read it as degrading, even if it's not
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: degrading right, which to reiterate, is my own stuff. I
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: know it um but I think that is part of it.
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: I think that is something that I would like to undo.
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: But it's just it's hard to describe the feeling when
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: I come across like a heterosexual sex scene and fan
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: fiction where I'll like, slam my, I'll go on, it's
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: very strong, and I get I think it is mostly
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: it's a lot of societal stuff, and I think a
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: lot of it is me. And we've talked about, you know,
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: our own traumason here. I'm sure that has a lot
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: to do with it for me as well. I do
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: think there are just more male characters. There's more men
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: and a lot of stuff. There's more fleshed out male
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: characters and a lot of stuff. I don't think that's
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: the whole equation at all, but I do think that's
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: a part of it. I haven't really found a way
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: to articulate it yet, but it is internalized misogyny as well.
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: But I do think like for me, I've said, I
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: can connect to a fictional character and for me, I
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: could process trauma through that because I think that they
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: are well, I would never judge them for going through
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: this or whatever it is. And I think that a
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: lot of the characters that it's easiest for me to
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: connect to or the like every person characters, but they're
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: almost always every man characters because they're kind of the
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: main so it's easier for me to like connect to them,
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: and it feels like, oh, if they're in heavy quotes weak,
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: it's okay for me to be which again is like,
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: but that is kind of I think that kind of
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: internalized misogyny of oh, if a man can emote like
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: this and do this and go through this, and then
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: it's okay for me a woman, which is yes, I
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: know it's bad, but I do think it's a part
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: of what whatever is going on here for me, right,
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: I mean, that's stuff only we we have are so
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: caught up in the extremes of everything, like the toxic
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: masculinity versus uh, feminine energies. And it's kind of odd
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: because I think the other word to being weak is
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: just non threatening and that's that's not a bad thing,
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: that's not an either or, And I think it's kind
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: of like, huh, the term is weak because that's what
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: they want to classify that as if it has an
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: energy where it's like, oh, you're not trying to intimidate me,
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: you're not trying to invalidate me, and you're not trying
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: to take something from me, whether it's personal or space
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: or whatever. But like that being it's like, no, it's
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: just meaning that they're non threatening and that's actually great.
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: So being feeling safe with someone, which can be like
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: and then you go into like what people think is
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: safety and like can they beat up someone for you?
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: That's not safety, that's not safety. So there's a conversation
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: and all of that and like how we see and
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: how a term what is acceptable what isn't acceptable when
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: it comes to sex anyway again kind of like how
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: you talked about it. Sex has been dirty for women
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: for so long, and then sex has always been a
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: power move for so long, and then even today when
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: we talk about families and um, reproduction is the power
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: play more than anything else. And that's that's what you
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: It's hard to not to separate, especially when you don't
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: have the rise to your own body period right right.
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: And I think that is something else too that i've
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: because I don't, you know, we talked about it all
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: the time of the show. I don't think that if
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: you have consensual sex, I don't think that's bad. But
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: because we have, especially growing up when like we can
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: grow up in a kind of a religious conservative environments,
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: can be hard to let go that it feels like
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: and even in our terminology when we talk about sex
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: when it comes to women, it feels like you've like
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: given ground to something, you've given something up um, and
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: now you are in the quote weaker position, which I
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: don't believe it, but sometimes you have to face like
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: the whatever it is is still inside to you that's
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: reacting this way, and I do I get, like going
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: back to the A b OH thing. Clearly that's not all.
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: I think there's a bunch of pieces to this puzzle
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: for a lot of people, I don't think there's like
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: one answer. And I even had an interesting conversation with
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: a friend of mine recently about like, you know, I
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: read this toxic stuff and I don't know why, like
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: I don't like it, I don't like want that to
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: be true, but I read it um And I think
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: that's also some of the messaging we've just received about
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: what is sexy and what is romantic. Also, you just
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: might not like hewn't know sex like just like people. Yeah,
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: sexuality is a thing, prepperence and sexuality. You just may
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: not like head road sex. And they're like, nah, I'm good,
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: moving on. It's true, no, And I did think about that.
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: But I just find it kind of interesting that I
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: don't I can read two men together like two women.
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: I get more than two men. But I think there's
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: a lot going on. But also yeah, just the I
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: wish I could read at a road sex and like
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: maybe I can, maybe I can not missing out. Oh
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: this was supposed to be like, let's get into Valentine.
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: Good luck y'all. No, no, no, no, no no no, just
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: refin fiction and drink some wine. Yeah, that the best
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: Valentine's stay for you. Already my plan, But I also
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: wanted to add in here, and I really I think
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: also when I compared what my friends are reading what
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: I read, um, not all the time, but a lot
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: of time, they've had more sexual experience in me, And
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: so I feel like there's almost like a logic like
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: that's not how sex works between two like almost like
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: questioning how it's written, um, which I don't do. I'm
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: just like I really don't want it to be. I
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: don't want to get into the nitty gritty of this
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: when I'm reading my fan fiction. I would say that's
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: probably more accurate than when men write about sex. Yeah, honestly,
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: And you know, like I could. I I am very
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: good at stepping back from like, I know this isn't realistic,
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: but I kind of don't want to read at its juncture. Um,
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: it's fan fiction and that's not my thing, super like
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: it normally all even because I've said it before, but
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: in fan fiction, a lot of times you can They'll
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: tell you at the top, like if you don't want
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: to read the sexual scene, the sex scene, you can
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: just here's the line, skipped the next line lovely, and
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: then it's over. And I do that sometimes, but not
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: all the time. Sometimes I'm curious. I don't know. I
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: hope I haven't offended anymore. I'm just trying. This is
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: me trying to figure out why why I why I
• 15:59
  Speaker 1: read what I read and what I don't read, why
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: I don't read what I don't read, um and more.
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: Kind of that visceral reaction and visceral reaction. Yeah, it's
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: kind of anyway if anyone has any thoughts about this,
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: because I know people have thoughts about Yes, you do.
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: You can email us at Stuffie your Mom, stuff at
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: iHeart media dot com. You can buy us on Twitter
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: at Mom's podcast, or on Instagram and TikTok at stuff
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: I've Never Told You Thinks. As always to our super
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: producer Christina, Christina, do you like fans fiction? No, I
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: need to know, and thanks to you for listening Stuff
• 16:37
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