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SMNTY Classics: A Love Letter to Fanfiction · Stuff Mom Never Told You

• 0:05
  Speaker 1: Hey, this is Annie and Samantha, and welcome to Stefan.
• 0:07
  Speaker 2: Never told you a protection of iHeartRadio, And today I
• 0:20
  Speaker 2: am bringing back a pretty recent one. We try to
• 0:23
  Speaker 2: wait a year at least before we bring a classic back.
• 0:26
  Speaker 2: But you might have seen on the news, you might
• 0:28
  Speaker 2: have seen on social media, and I'm sure you thought
• 0:31
  Speaker 2: of me that AO three, the fan fiction website, was
• 0:36
  Speaker 2: the victim of a DDoS attack, which is a denial
• 0:39
  Speaker 2: of service attack. And so I'm bringing back this this
• 0:45
  Speaker 2: episode that is about fan fiction and AO three specifically,
• 0:49
  Speaker 2: and I thought I would also update two because now
• 0:53
  Speaker 2: since recording this, I have published fan fiction on AO three,
• 0:58
  Speaker 2: So now I know there's a section in there where
• 1:00
  Speaker 2: I was talking about something that I had never done before.
• 1:03
  Speaker 2: Now I know it, Okay, So I think it was
• 1:07
  Speaker 2: July tenth. July tenth is when AO three went down.
• 1:12
  Speaker 2: This is terrible news for me and many people who
• 1:15
  Speaker 2: read fan fiction. It is one of the biggest, if
• 1:18
  Speaker 2: not the biggest, fan fiction website. It is run by volunteers.
• 1:23
  Speaker 2: It is a five on one three c.
• 1:25
  Speaker 3: My partner yesterday was like, oh it went down, did
• 1:28
  Speaker 3: you take on Annie? I was like, oh, yes, I
• 1:31
  Speaker 3: texted her yesterday or the day before yesterday. I made
• 1:34
  Speaker 3: sure she was alive.
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: Is my coping mechanism being taken away?
• 1:40
  Speaker 2: There has been a lot of confusion about what happened.
• 1:45
  Speaker 2: It is back up as we record this, which is
• 1:48
  Speaker 2: July twelfth. July twelfth, and thank you to all the
• 1:51
  Speaker 2: volunteers that did that, because it is YEAP run by volunteers,
• 1:55
  Speaker 2: so they were the ones that were having to figure
• 1:57
  Speaker 2: out a solution. But there was a lot of discussion
• 2:01
  Speaker 2: around like who was behind it and all the confusion
• 2:03
  Speaker 2: around who's behind it. There was a lot of talk
• 2:06
  Speaker 2: about it being a religious political group, but it seems
• 2:14
  Speaker 2: that it was yes, Russian hackers doing it and the
• 2:21
  Speaker 2: people communicating about it at at because it was like
• 2:25
  Speaker 2: they have a Twitter where you can monitor the status
• 2:27
  Speaker 2: if something is wrong. They have a tumbler where you
• 2:29
  Speaker 2: can monitor if something's wrong, and they were very open that,
• 2:33
  Speaker 2: like the people who are taking claim for this were
• 2:36
  Speaker 2: being told didn't do it.
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: That's what the cybersecurity people are telling us.
• 2:41
  Speaker 2: But it was funny because Samantha and I were just
• 2:45
  Speaker 2: talking about like it was a horrible for me and
• 2:48
  Speaker 2: my friends who read fan fiction, It was a horrible
• 2:50
  Speaker 2: like thirty ish hours. But it was funny because they've
• 2:54
  Speaker 2: attacked this group or who they proclaimed to be, has
• 2:59
  Speaker 2: attacked big companies, like really big companies, and they came
• 3:03
  Speaker 2: for AO three. So I feel like that means AO
• 3:06
  Speaker 2: three has made it, has made it mainstream.
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: It was trending. It's so odd.
• 3:16
  Speaker 3: Again, Like I said, if it weren't for you, literally
• 3:20
  Speaker 3: just you, I would have never known about what I
• 3:22
  Speaker 3: would be like. It's that who was this and the
• 3:25
  Speaker 3: fact that they don't profit off of anything and they're
• 3:28
  Speaker 3: not a corporate any entity. I'm like, what what is happening?
• 3:32
  Speaker 2: Right? I mean, it was not a good thing. I'm
• 3:36
  Speaker 2: really angry about it. It was said because that there's
• 3:39
  Speaker 2: queer content on there, and when I like joke about
• 3:43
  Speaker 2: there are articles written within the past decade that are
• 3:46
  Speaker 2: fearmongering around fan fiction from the US, I am not
• 3:49
  Speaker 2: kidding like people like to say, it's like terrifying that
• 3:54
  Speaker 2: young girls especially are writing about sucks or whatever, especially
• 3:57
  Speaker 2: queer sex.
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: Because I was thinking about it.
• 4:00
  Speaker 2: Even stories where the main couples are straight, there's almost
• 4:02
  Speaker 2: always a queer couple in there. There's almost always some
• 4:06
  Speaker 2: queer element in there. It is a very queer space.
• 4:08
  Speaker 2: But that was the reason this group gave for attacking
• 4:11
  Speaker 2: AO three was basically like, it's a blasphemous queer space.
• 4:16
  Speaker 2: But when you texted me to check in, the thing
• 4:19
  Speaker 2: I kind of half jokingly texted back was my PDFs.
• 4:23
  Speaker 2: This is why I don'tload the PDFs, which I'm like
• 4:26
  Speaker 2: the only person I know that does that. But you
• 4:29
  Speaker 2: can download fan fiction to read later or offline PDF.
• 4:33
  Speaker 2: I usually do it because I'm afraid they'll delete it later,
• 4:36
  Speaker 2: because you can, you know, maybe one day you're like,
• 4:39
  Speaker 2: oh no, that thing I wrote when I was fifteen,
• 4:41
  Speaker 2: I don't want that up anymore.
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: And that's fair enough, so I download the PDF. But
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: I was thinking about it.
• 4:47
  Speaker 2: The reason AO three exists at all is because Tumblr
• 4:52
  Speaker 2: started just erasing fan fiction on their platform without warning,
• 4:57
  Speaker 2: without like any reason, and so people were like, we
• 5:00
  Speaker 2: need an archive of our own.
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: It's the name.
• 5:04
  Speaker 2: But I was thinking about it, and it reminded me
• 5:06
  Speaker 2: of what we talked about in our fanzine episode, where
• 5:10
  Speaker 2: now they're trying to upload all of these things from
• 5:13
  Speaker 2: fanzines that.
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: Would be lost otherwise.
• 5:16
  Speaker 2: I was like, what if i'm I'm I have to
• 5:18
  Speaker 2: be a part of the rebuilding because I have all
• 5:21
  Speaker 2: these meds that I could upload the.
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: Luckily it never came to that. And that's not what
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: a deitya. She comes in with a save.
• 5:31
  Speaker 3: Oh, it's kind of like that Toy story story where
• 5:34
  Speaker 3: they erased all the data, but someone had gone on
• 5:36
  Speaker 3: maternity leave and she had like a hard copy of it,
• 5:39
  Speaker 3: and she was the one that saved the entire movie.
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: I don't remember this, but yeah, I remember this.
• 5:45
  Speaker 3: Yes, I remember this.
• 5:46
  Speaker 2: Yes, I mean fingers crossed. That is not what a
• 5:50
  Speaker 2: d DOS attack does. It wouldn't have debleted like everything
• 5:54
  Speaker 2: they have. But I had the thought, basically, it's just
• 5:58
  Speaker 2: like being overwhel by bots. There are some people, but
• 6:02
  Speaker 2: it prevents others from logging in or using the website
• 6:07
  Speaker 2: at all. And it did have a whole message that
• 6:11
  Speaker 2: was popping up that was like weird under addo as
• 6:14
  Speaker 2: attack the world'll be back, don't worry.
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: I was like, no, I'm worried.
• 6:20
  Speaker 2: One day I will come back, and I'll because it's
• 6:23
  Speaker 2: still the desk is still kind of settling around this
• 6:26
  Speaker 2: and figuring out just what happened and who was behind
• 6:28
  Speaker 2: it and everything. Another thing that happened in the wake
• 6:33
  Speaker 2: of this was a lot of discussion around what we're
• 6:35
  Speaker 2: seeing with book banning and what happens if that goes
• 6:41
  Speaker 2: into a more online space, and there have been some
• 6:44
  Speaker 2: proposed legislations around specifically protecting kids, some in good faith
• 6:52
  Speaker 2: and some and very bad faith, especially when it comes
• 6:55
  Speaker 2: around queer content and trans content and what that could
• 6:58
  Speaker 2: look like. So that's something that we need to look
• 7:00
  Speaker 2: out for and it is very scary. But I wanted
• 7:03
  Speaker 2: to give a quick update to on so in here
• 7:06
  Speaker 2: I was talking about archive warnings and I'd never used
• 7:11
  Speaker 2: them before as a writer from the writer's side, and
• 7:14
  Speaker 2: one of the things they're trying to fix is by
• 7:18
  Speaker 2: adding another archive warning for racism. So essentially archive warnings
• 7:25
  Speaker 2: when you are going to post a story, and I
• 7:27
  Speaker 2: know I talk about it in here, but I'm just
• 7:29
  Speaker 2: gonna come. Now that I've used it, I feel much
• 7:31
  Speaker 2: more comfortable and I know what I'm talking about. When
• 7:34
  Speaker 2: you publish a story, one of the first things you
• 7:37
  Speaker 2: have to fill out is archive warnings, and so you
• 7:42
  Speaker 2: can choose not to have them, but it will tell
• 7:45
  Speaker 2: then every reader will know like the author chose not
• 7:48
  Speaker 2: to use archive warnings. And the archive warnings are big
• 7:53
  Speaker 2: things like as we talked about rape and non con
• 7:56
  Speaker 2: non consent, so you have to say like that that's
• 7:59
  Speaker 2: in there underage any underage contents and then uh like
• 8:06
  Speaker 2: major character death things like that, and so people are
• 8:10
  Speaker 2: really pushing to add racism to that. That has to
• 8:13
  Speaker 2: be a thing that is in the archive morning so
• 8:16
  Speaker 2: and I've seen they just had their their big elections
• 8:19
  Speaker 2: and they are I've seen movement in that and talking
• 8:22
  Speaker 2: about that.
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: So that's good. But now I feel I know what
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: that is much.
• 8:27
  Speaker 2: Better now that I've done it, and it is it
• 8:30
  Speaker 2: does feel like very I just want all my readers
• 8:34
  Speaker 2: to have a good time, and it feels like so
• 8:35
  Speaker 2: special to be like, here's what I have to I
• 8:39
  Speaker 2: don't want something to upset you without you knowing it.
• 8:42
  Speaker 2: So you do have to be really mindful about the
• 8:44
  Speaker 2: tags and the tagging. But yeah, that's my update. I
• 8:51
  Speaker 2: have so much I have so much fan fiction to
• 8:54
  Speaker 2: catch up on, Samantha.
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: Everyone's like publishing now.
• 8:58
  Speaker 3: That's the first thing you said to me, yes yesterday.
• 9:01
  Speaker 2: I know, I know it was exciting because I started
• 9:04
  Speaker 2: getting comments on my work because I published on Sunday,
• 9:08
  Speaker 2: and that was like right when it was happening.
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: I was like, something's amiss, and I wasn't getting any
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: of my usual comments. But now they're rolling in. As
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: long as they're rolling in.
• 9:18
  Speaker 2: Well they're rolling in all right, So I know, you know,
• 9:22
  Speaker 2: I love to talk about fan fiction. I'm sure I
• 9:24
  Speaker 2: will come back and revisit this when I have more details,
• 9:28
  Speaker 2: but in the meantime, please enjoy this classic episode.
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: Hey, this is Sanny and Samantha. I'm welcome to Stefan.
• 9:38
  Speaker 2: Never told your protection of iHeartRadio, and today we are
• 9:50
  Speaker 2: doing one that is very near and dear.
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: To my heart.
• 9:53
  Speaker 3: Well it is your birthday week, even though as we're
• 9:55
  Speaker 3: recording it's not, but coming upon it as if the
• 9:59
  Speaker 3: listeners are less to it. It is Annie's birthday week,
• 10:02
  Speaker 3: so we must do all things Annie loves an. I
• 10:06
  Speaker 3: was thinking that we needed a whole week.
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: Of Annie's favorite things. I don't want to do it
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: that way, but you.
• 10:11
  Speaker 2: Know, I feel like this month has had a lot
• 10:13
  Speaker 2: of topics that are some of my favorite things.
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: So true as it should be.
• 10:18
  Speaker 2: As it should be, So hopefully you're enjoying all of
• 10:21
  Speaker 2: the nerd gum and nerdery so much. And Samantha and
• 10:24
  Speaker 2: I were discussing before this. I think we've said before
• 10:26
  Speaker 2: how we generally when we do these episodes, somebody will
• 10:30
  Speaker 2: take the lead and do the research and write it
• 10:32
  Speaker 2: out and then we kind of split who says what.
• 10:35
  Speaker 2: But there are some topics that it just feels so
• 10:37
  Speaker 2: obvious that I'm the one that probably wrote this one.
• 10:41
  Speaker 3: Well, the title you have for this, and I don't
• 10:42
  Speaker 3: know if we're using it is a love letter to
• 10:45
  Speaker 3: fan fiction. Yeah, I think we know whose love letter
• 10:48
  Speaker 3: it is. Fun Like, it's kind of obvious, it's true.
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: It's true.
• 10:52
  Speaker 2: So I once again, I'm going to be talking a lot,
• 10:56
  Speaker 2: and Samantha's going to be supporting me and perhaps asking questions.
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: There is confusion. Yes, that's what I love about you.
• 11:04
  Speaker 2: However, you did reveal right before this you had a
• 11:06
  Speaker 2: live journal, and I want to come back and revisit this.
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: At a later date, later times.
• 11:11
  Speaker 2: Yes, because I have quite a lot to say about
• 11:13
  Speaker 2: fan fiction. As it turns out, surprice no one. And
• 11:16
  Speaker 2: actually this one could have been longer. So it's a
• 11:19
  Speaker 2: Monday mini and I tried to limit myself, but it's
• 11:21
  Speaker 2: already quite long, all right, So yes, today we are
• 11:25
  Speaker 2: this is a love letter to one of the loves
• 11:27
  Speaker 2: of my life, which is fan fiction, and we are
• 11:30
  Speaker 2: going to be focusing specifically on AO three or Archive
• 11:34
  Speaker 2: of our Own, which is my current favorite fan fiction site,
• 11:37
  Speaker 2: though I grew up on fanfiction dot net, which is
• 11:40
  Speaker 2: still around as well. And also I wanted to shout
• 11:43
  Speaker 2: out a recent article that gave me this idea from
• 11:45
  Speaker 2: The Verge written by j Costello called Archive of Our
• 11:49
  Speaker 2: Owns fifteen year journey from blog post to fan fiction powerhouse.
• 11:53
  Speaker 2: AO three, by the way, is not a sponsor. It's
• 11:55
  Speaker 2: also a nonprofit, so I doubt they wouldn't be a sponsor,
• 11:58
  Speaker 2: but you know sometimes and you can see our episodes
• 12:01
  Speaker 2: on dub Con and fan fiction I think specifically dub
• 12:04
  Speaker 2: Con for this one actually, all right, So, according to
• 12:08
  Speaker 2: this article, the first stirrings of what would become Archive
• 12:12
  Speaker 2: of our Own OREO three started in two thousand and
• 12:14
  Speaker 2: seven when fanfic authors, who again are mostly women and
• 12:17
  Speaker 2: marginalized folks, saw some efforts from companies created by men
• 12:22
  Speaker 2: to capitalize on the space. One such company was called
• 12:27
  Speaker 2: fan lib, a commercialized fan content site that eventually garnered
• 12:31
  Speaker 2: about twenty five thousand members, but also a whole bunch
• 12:34
  Speaker 2: of criticism from people who had been writing fan fiction
• 12:37
  Speaker 2: for free in this space four years and felt like
• 12:41
  Speaker 2: these outsiders were coming in and making money off of
• 12:43
  Speaker 2: stuff that they always offered for free. And a part
• 12:48
  Speaker 2: of the whole thing that keeps people from being sued
• 12:51
  Speaker 2: from writing fan fiction is that they aren't making money.
• 12:54
  Speaker 2: So I'm kind of confused by that. Then we're going
• 12:57
  Speaker 2: to talk about that a little bit more later, because
• 12:58
  Speaker 2: apparently it's not as a big deal. I was taught
• 13:01
  Speaker 2: that you might be sued at any minute, but yeah,
• 13:05
  Speaker 2: one of the big things is I'm not making any money.
• 13:09
  Speaker 2: Don't come at me, Disney, right, all right. So seeing
• 13:12
  Speaker 2: this kind of commercialization attempt, A published author both of
• 13:15
  Speaker 2: more traditional stuff and fan fiction named Naomi Novic wrote
• 13:19
  Speaker 2: on live journal, which was and still is space rife
• 13:23
  Speaker 2: and growing with fan fiction, wrote in two thousand and seven,
• 13:27
  Speaker 2: we are sitting quietly by the fireside, creating piles and
• 13:30
  Speaker 2: piles of content around us, and other people are going
• 13:32
  Speaker 2: to look at that and see an opportunity. The people
• 13:35
  Speaker 2: behind fanly but don't actually care about fanfic the fanfit
• 13:38
  Speaker 2: community are anything except making money off content created entirely
• 13:42
  Speaker 2: by other people and getting media attention. They don't have
• 13:46
  Speaker 2: a single fanfic reader or writer on their board. They
• 13:49
  Speaker 2: don't even have a single woman on their board. We
• 13:52
  Speaker 2: need a central archive of our own, and so only
• 13:56
  Speaker 2: a few months later, the nonprofit the Organization of Transformative
• 14:01
  Speaker 2: Works was formed with a goal of preserving fan works
• 14:03
  Speaker 2: and advocating for them as well. And Archive of Our
• 14:08
  Speaker 2: Own was launched in two thousand and nine, which is
• 14:09
  Speaker 2: a part of the Organization of Transformative Works are OTW
• 14:14
  Speaker 2: and has become just about the biggest and well known,
• 14:18
  Speaker 2: most well known name and fan fiction. However, as Costello
• 14:23
  Speaker 2: details in the article, Novic starts the story about a
• 14:26
  Speaker 2: decade earlier, in nineteen ninety seven, and yes, I remember
• 14:30
  Speaker 2: it well, that's about what I was, you know. I
• 14:32
  Speaker 2: was coming up reading fan fiction and the fan fiction
• 14:35
  Speaker 2: sites at that time, where they were spread out, they
• 14:38
  Speaker 2: often didn't work well.
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: Or at all, I remember, just like wonky.
• 14:43
  Speaker 2: Text, like how it was laid out, would be very
• 14:46
  Speaker 2: difficult to read. And sometimes these whole sites would break
• 14:49
  Speaker 2: and it would lose people's.
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: Works forever, just devastating.
• 14:54
  Speaker 2: Novic was a self taught programmer and a fan fiction
• 14:57
  Speaker 2: reader who was seeing all of this happened to her friends,
• 15:01
  Speaker 2: and so to help, Novic brought some Pearl scripts and
• 15:05
  Speaker 2: it was through this she eventually got the idea of
• 15:08
  Speaker 2: what was important when it came to archiving, which eventually
• 15:13
  Speaker 2: these ideas made it their way to AO three things
• 15:16
  Speaker 2: like highly searchable pages, all the tags you could ask for,
• 15:20
  Speaker 2: and easily understandable recommendation functions. So, once familiarized with scripting
• 15:26
  Speaker 2: and coding, Novic started running a holiday fan fiction exchange
• 15:29
  Speaker 2: in two thousand and three, which Samath has been around
• 15:31
  Speaker 2: and I've like reaped the benefits of these exchanges.
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: Oh yes, oh yes.
• 15:37
  Speaker 2: It's sort of like a Secret Santa for fan fiction
• 15:40
  Speaker 2: where authors will usually there's a prompt and authors will
• 15:45
  Speaker 2: assign get assigned one of another author in the group,
• 15:48
  Speaker 2: and they write a story for that author. And it
• 15:50
  Speaker 2: means that like one Friday night, one hundred stories are posted.
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: So it's excellent, excellent, Oh it is. I love it.
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: I love it.
• 15:59
  Speaker 2: Through the Novic really made a name for herself and
• 16:02
  Speaker 2: the fan fiction community, and she recounts how people started
• 16:07
  Speaker 2: volunteering to help her, meaning she pretty much never worked alone.
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: At this point.
• 16:12
  Speaker 2: Novic said, after a while, the community you keep around yourself.
• 16:15
  Speaker 2: Are the people who are reliable, who care enough about
• 16:18
  Speaker 2: fandom that fandom is a way of life, that are
• 16:21
  Speaker 2: willing to invest some time, not just in reading the
• 16:23
  Speaker 2: stories and writing the stories, but in the building of
• 16:25
  Speaker 2: the infrastructure. Two of the people Novic worked with were
• 16:29
  Speaker 2: an English performance and fan study scholar named Francesca Copa
• 16:33
  Speaker 2: and a legal scholar and former clerk for the Supreme Court,
• 16:36
  Speaker 2: Rebecca Tushnet. Both were highly engaged in fandom's future and
• 16:40
  Speaker 2: the legality of fan fiction and fan works, and on
• 16:44
  Speaker 2: top of that, how fan fiction was perceived, as discussed
• 17:03
  Speaker 2: in our past fan fiction episodes. While now people write
• 17:06
  Speaker 2: articles about their favorite fan fiction their recommendations.
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: If you like this, go read this.
• 17:12
  Speaker 2: You can find TikTok recommendations about fan fiction. Big movies
• 17:17
  Speaker 2: mention fan fiction, embrace it. When I was growing up
• 17:20
  Speaker 2: reading it, oh no, you did not talk about your
• 17:24
  Speaker 2: fan fiction. You won't be the case like your older brother.
• 17:28
  Speaker 2: You're reading fan fiction, you try to hide it. You
• 17:31
  Speaker 2: had like you, select group of friends that knew who
• 17:34
  Speaker 2: and they also read it, and the articles being written
• 17:37
  Speaker 2: about it were not kind at the time.
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: They were deriding it and even whipping up.
• 17:42
  Speaker 2: Fear mongering around it, like why our young girls writing
• 17:44
  Speaker 2: ever wrote a And also, yes, you'll get sued, you're
• 17:48
  Speaker 2: wasting your time, Why don't you do something original? All
• 17:53
  Speaker 2: that stuff, and yeah, historically it had been like this
• 17:56
  Speaker 2: for a long way, going back to the eighteen hundreds,
• 17:58
  Speaker 2: when religious people were worried about women writing fan.
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: Fiction with any romantic or sexual content.
• 18:05
  Speaker 2: They were these women were not upstanding and maybe even possessed.
• 18:09
  Speaker 2: So long time we felt like this as a society,
• 18:13
  Speaker 2: and a big part of this fear or derision, as
• 18:19
  Speaker 2: recounted in the article and as I can personally attest to,
• 18:22
  Speaker 2: was homophobia and sexism, specifically, like a real fear of
• 18:26
  Speaker 2: women's sexuality, since fan fiction is pretty queer, it's a
• 18:31
  Speaker 2: pretty queer space dominated by women. Kappa recalls receiving frantic
• 18:35
  Speaker 2: emails from authors word they'd lose their jobs if their
• 18:39
  Speaker 2: boss found out that they wrote fan fiction. One example
• 18:43
  Speaker 2: Kappa gave was from a woman who wrote, I'm going
• 18:45
  Speaker 2: through a divorce and my husband is going to take
• 18:47
  Speaker 2: my fick and tell the judge I'm an unfit mother
• 18:50
  Speaker 2: and try to take my children. How fast can you
• 18:52
  Speaker 2: make me disappear from the internet? Coppa also shared her
• 18:55
  Speaker 2: own anxieties about fandom and being asked if there was
• 18:59
  Speaker 2: fiction about Kirk and Spock having sex like a lot
• 19:02
  Speaker 2: of times when she would appear to talk about it,
• 19:04
  Speaker 2: that was like the thing people asked, to which she
• 19:06
  Speaker 2: remembers responding essentially, yep, you should go read it. She
• 19:11
  Speaker 2: herself had nightmares about losing her job over fan fiction,
• 19:16
  Speaker 2: and I have too, because I thought I accidentally gave
• 19:21
  Speaker 2: a whole flash drive of my fan fiction to a coworker.
• 19:24
  Speaker 2: I won't say, but I spent like a year twisting
• 19:29
  Speaker 2: and turning at night thinking about this.
• 19:31
  Speaker 1: I was gonna kill you long. I'm still scared.
• 19:35
  Speaker 2: I don't know the answer for sure, but I've kind
• 19:37
  Speaker 2: of come to peace with it, like I can't worry
• 19:39
  Speaker 2: about this any longer. But then I was afraid, like
• 19:41
  Speaker 2: what if he never saw it but he lost a flaship.
• 19:44
  Speaker 2: And then someone else saw it and they put it
• 19:46
  Speaker 2: up and they were like, look what this deprived girl
• 19:48
  Speaker 2: is writing. She's oh, gosh, it's a real fear.
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 20:00
  Speaker 2: And then meanwhile, Tushnet was one of the first who
• 20:04
  Speaker 2: was outspoken in defending fan fiction on the legal side,
• 20:08
  Speaker 2: maintaining that almost all of it was completely legal because
• 20:11
  Speaker 2: this was I'm telling you at the time, everybody would
• 20:14
  Speaker 2: put like a disclaimer at the top, like this is
• 20:17
  Speaker 2: owned by Disney, I'm only playing in their sandbox and
• 20:20
  Speaker 2: you don't make any money. Please don't see Like people
• 20:22
  Speaker 2: every van fiction had something like that top.
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: We were very scared about getting sued or something.
• 20:29
  Speaker 2: So all of this came together with fan lib acting
• 20:32
  Speaker 2: as a catalyst in two thousand and seven. And as
• 20:35
  Speaker 2: I've discussed before, one of the beautiful things about fan
• 20:37
  Speaker 2: fiction is the community around it, and Novic and Kappa,
• 20:41
  Speaker 2: along with many others, have been a part of the
• 20:44
  Speaker 2: building and cultivating this fandom.
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: And they weren't just gonna let FANLB and the like
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: come in.
• 20:49
  Speaker 2: And erase that COPA said, I'm in a fandom where
• 20:53
  Speaker 2: somebody is hurt and another fan drives two states over
• 20:55
  Speaker 2: to help. And so there was a sense of urgency
• 20:58
  Speaker 2: that we had to build something before somebody else, something
• 21:00
  Speaker 2: shiny that would make new people who've come to fandom think, oh,
• 21:04
  Speaker 2: that's what fandom is. Another catalyst. Not long after Novac's
• 21:09
  Speaker 2: original two thousand and seven post live journals suddenly and
• 21:13
  Speaker 2: permanently suspended over five hundred accounts that made some kind
• 21:16
  Speaker 2: of mention around sexual content, and they did this without
• 21:19
  Speaker 2: warning to accounts that did nothing illegal and did not
• 21:22
  Speaker 2: violate live journal's terms. They didn't give any consistent reason why.
• 21:27
  Speaker 2: The CEO even called the whole thing a total mess
• 21:31
  Speaker 2: and promised to reinstate those wrongfully banned. But surprise, surprise,
• 21:35
  Speaker 2: a few months later, the same thing happened with even
• 21:38
  Speaker 2: more bands going through. And this was a major cause
• 21:41
  Speaker 2: for concern for fan communities when people or whole groups
• 21:44
  Speaker 2: could get banned without warning, and fanfiction dot Net had
• 21:47
  Speaker 2: a similar issue, so on new space was needed. Originally,
• 21:54
  Speaker 2: Novic had said she wasn't interested in building the archive herself,
• 21:58
  Speaker 2: but so many people reached out to her wanting to help,
• 22:01
  Speaker 2: but unclear on what to do. I'm sure of how
• 22:03
  Speaker 2: to organize, so Novac changed her mind. She decided on
• 22:07
  Speaker 2: a nonprofit to protect it from being sold if founders
• 22:10
  Speaker 2: ever moved on and or wanted to sell. Fan lib
• 22:13
  Speaker 2: itself was purchased by Disney and shut down almost a
• 22:16
  Speaker 2: year after beta testing, So that's what they were trying
• 22:19
  Speaker 2: to prevent. Through years of running events both online and off,
• 22:22
  Speaker 2: with participants the world over, of coding. Novac had a
• 22:26
  Speaker 2: lot of the necessary skills and knew people who had
• 22:29
  Speaker 2: the ones she didn't. All kinds of volunteers stepped up
• 22:32
  Speaker 2: with experience in law, server maintenance, design, accessibility, coding, design,
• 22:37
  Speaker 2: all kinds of things.
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: I said design twice.
• 22:38
  Speaker 2: It's very important because fans are everywhere and do everything.
• 22:43
  Speaker 2: In the words of Copa, fangirls do absolutely every job
• 22:47
  Speaker 2: there is. The founding members of the team put together
• 22:51
  Speaker 2: coding programs so that people who wanted to learn to
• 22:55
  Speaker 2: code could They had an avenue to do so. People,
• 23:00
  Speaker 2: mostly women, recount doing this and having fun in a
• 23:02
  Speaker 2: space they may have never entered or thought that they
• 23:05
  Speaker 2: couldn't do it or intimidated by it. They join with
• 23:09
  Speaker 2: friends and then go on to train others so that
• 23:11
  Speaker 2: the community could support itself. And because it was built
• 23:15
  Speaker 2: by volunteers who are fans, it was built around their feedback.
• 23:20
  Speaker 2: The tagging system, which is one of my absolute favorite things.
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: For instance, it's so good, it's so good, they're so creative.
• 23:29
  Speaker 2: So basically, if an author wants to tag a thing
• 23:34
  Speaker 2: in a way that might not be how a reader
• 23:37
  Speaker 2: searches for it, but it is the same thing. They
• 23:41
  Speaker 2: should end up wrangling to the same story. So they
• 23:44
  Speaker 2: are these people called tag wranglers. And so if I
• 23:47
  Speaker 2: type in sad murder Dad and Star Wars fan fiction,
• 23:51
  Speaker 2: but it's really just sad Darth Vader exactly, it should
• 23:55
  Speaker 2: still bring me to that story even if it's not
• 23:58
  Speaker 2: tagged sad murder Dad. People who worked on this the
• 24:02
  Speaker 2: tagging system understandably feel really proud of it, including founding
• 24:06
  Speaker 2: member Michelle Tepper, who told Verge, I actually have saved
• 24:10
  Speaker 2: on my phone the tag page for feels I E.
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: Emotional stories.
• 24:15
  Speaker 2: You can just scroll through and see all the different
• 24:17
  Speaker 2: version of feels. Feels exclamation part, all the fields, so
• 24:21
  Speaker 2: many feels. I'm like, this is the greatest thing I
• 24:24
  Speaker 2: have ever helped make happen in my career.
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: She worked for MTV and BBC.
• 24:29
  Speaker 3: By the way, I mean, I we used to say
• 24:33
  Speaker 3: that as a kid, all the fields.
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: Oh, I have to feel all the fields.
• 24:36
  Speaker 3: That was a common phrase I used in high school
• 24:38
  Speaker 3: and hot college for real.
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: So Who's spying on me?
• 24:44
  Speaker 2: Archive of our Own is all about getting to use Samantha.
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: The truth comes out.
• 25:04
  Speaker 2: And then Lucy Pearson, who was originally a volunteer in
• 25:08
  Speaker 2: one of the coding initiatives and moved on to become
• 25:10
  Speaker 2: the chair of the Accessibility, Design and Technology Committee. Said
• 25:13
  Speaker 2: of the experience, it was really quite exhilarating coming in
• 25:16
  Speaker 2: on the coding side and doing something that I'd never
• 25:18
  Speaker 2: even really considered doing before. It really made me rethink
• 25:22
  Speaker 2: who I was and what I could do. So with
• 25:26
  Speaker 2: all of this work and organizing, AO three went into
• 25:30
  Speaker 2: alpha in two thousand and nine.
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: The launch wasn't without problems.
• 25:34
  Speaker 2: For one, they realized they didn't have a real way
• 25:36
  Speaker 2: to invite people to join. People worked around the clock
• 25:39
  Speaker 2: over Christmas holidays that year after they ran Novic's Holiday
• 25:42
  Speaker 2: fan fiction Exchange on AO three and it involved people
• 25:47
  Speaker 2: around the world and did result in a lot of
• 25:49
  Speaker 2: burnout in their early days. On top of that, because
• 25:51
  Speaker 2: it was developed by mostly white, mostly middle class, and
• 25:54
  Speaker 2: mostly American Western women, some of that biases went into
• 25:58
  Speaker 2: the programming and that has been a time topic of
• 26:00
  Speaker 2: much discussion and debate lately. And yes, it's something we
• 26:05
  Speaker 2: always have to keep in mind with technology around AO
• 26:07
  Speaker 2: three d's policies and handling of concerns of people of color.
• 26:10
  Speaker 2: So basically, there's three tags. Oh, there's three tags. That
• 26:14
  Speaker 2: you have to tag no matter what. And one of them,
• 26:18
  Speaker 2: as we talked about in con is rape or are
• 26:20
  Speaker 2: non consensual. But right now racism isn't one. So that's
• 26:24
  Speaker 2: one of the pushes is to get that as one.
• 26:26
  Speaker 2: In twenty twenty, a group of scholars and fans wrote
• 26:29
  Speaker 2: the OTW a letter reading, in part, we strongly urged
• 26:32
  Speaker 2: the board to take immediate steps to help make fandom
• 26:34
  Speaker 2: a space where all fans, particularly black, indigenous, and ethnically
• 26:37
  Speaker 2: marginalized fans from all over the globe can thrive. In response,
• 26:41
  Speaker 2: AO three launch functionalities like blocking users when locked in
• 26:44
  Speaker 2: and turning off comments, But still many on the board
• 26:47
  Speaker 2: lam meant how slow it is to change and how
• 26:49
  Speaker 2: there are still pages up from two thousand and nine.
• 26:53
  Speaker 2: The perception of fan fiction, however, has changed quite a bit.
• 26:57
  Speaker 2: One of the board members was on a Wizcom panel
• 27:00
  Speaker 2: soon after AO three launch called fanfic a threat or menace.
• 27:03
  Speaker 2: It was scheduled at ten thirty at night, and a
• 27:05
  Speaker 2: part of the description asked if fan fiction should be
• 27:07
  Speaker 2: quote accepted as a legitimate creative activity. A decade later,
• 27:12
  Speaker 2: that same board member appeared at the same conference on
• 27:14
  Speaker 2: a PACK panel in the middle of the day, explaining
• 27:17
  Speaker 2: to people's shock they had not always been welcomed at
• 27:20
  Speaker 2: this convention. Time magazine named AO three one of the
• 27:23
  Speaker 2: best websites in twenty thirteen, and it won a Hugo
• 27:26
  Speaker 2: Award in twenty nineteen. Copa's university, the one she'd been
• 27:29
  Speaker 2: afraid of being fired from for writing fan fiction, put
• 27:32
  Speaker 2: her picture on the front page. A part of their
• 27:35
  Speaker 2: success was their ability to lessen the fear of lawsuits. So,
• 27:39
  Speaker 2: as I said, in the early days, you would be
• 27:42
  Speaker 2: scared these big companies were to show up at your door.
• 27:45
  Speaker 2: You'd get in huge trouble and you'd have to explain
• 27:47
  Speaker 2: your fan fiction in front of people.
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: I like the legal setting. Yeah, they've been.
• 27:50
  Speaker 2: Able to lessen that fear, which is allowed fan fiction
• 27:53
  Speaker 2: to strive even more. Something else is the community. Yeah, Ultimately,
• 27:58
  Speaker 2: that keeps it running. That's what keeps it running. It's
• 28:00
  Speaker 2: why there are no ads. Geek culture at large is changing,
• 28:04
  Speaker 2: and more women in marginalized folks are claiming their space.
• 28:07
  Speaker 2: People who worked on and in some cases continue to
• 28:10
  Speaker 2: work on E three warn that we're still seeing bands
• 28:13
  Speaker 2: like what Happened on live Journal that in part spurred
• 28:16
  Speaker 2: all of this on other platforms, and then I just
• 28:20
  Speaker 2: wanted to mention this is something else. Samantha gets random
• 28:23
  Speaker 2: text for me about they have donation weeks and it
• 28:27
  Speaker 2: is wild. They have a goal of like fifty thousand
• 28:29
  Speaker 2: and they'll raise five hundred thousand and no time. And
• 28:32
  Speaker 2: so I donated to the last one and I got
• 28:35
  Speaker 2: these really cool cards that have a different fan fiction
• 28:38
  Speaker 2: trope on all of them, a different tag.
• 28:39
  Speaker 1: I love them, and I also love this story.
• 28:43
  Speaker 2: It's what we often talk about when Bridget comes on
• 28:46
  Speaker 2: women in marginalized folks teaching themselves, making spaces on the
• 28:49
  Speaker 2: internet for themselves when they don't see them or feel
• 28:52
  Speaker 2: threatened by like male.
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: Capitalist dudes coming in.
• 28:56
  Speaker 2: And yes, there are still problems to be addressed, absolutely
• 29:00
  Speaker 2: changes to be made to make sure it is as
• 29:02
  Speaker 2: inclusive as it can be, as beautiful as I know
• 29:04
  Speaker 2: it can be, and so that it can continue to
• 29:06
  Speaker 2: grow and thrive and be this space that I am.
• 29:10
  Speaker 2: So it has given me so much and I want
• 29:12
  Speaker 2: to make sure it's this So anyway, thank you, thank you,
• 29:16
  Speaker 2: thank you for letting me share this story. It was
• 29:18
  Speaker 2: a bit long, but but I just I really I
• 29:23
  Speaker 2: didn't know this as somebody who uses this website every
• 29:25
  Speaker 2: day and I thought it was a great story.
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: So listeners as always.
• 29:31
  Speaker 2: If you want to share your favorite fan fiction sites
• 29:34
  Speaker 2: or your favorite fan fiction, that would be great.
• 29:38
  Speaker 1: You are your favorite tags, that'd be great.
• 29:40
  Speaker 2: You can email us at SEFFIDM, mom Stuff at heurtneia
• 29:42
  Speaker 2: dot com. You can find us on Twitter at mom
• 29:44
  Speaker 2: Stuff podcast or on Instagram at stuff I Never Told You.
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: Thanks as always to our super producer Christina. Thank you Christina,
• 29:50
  Speaker 1: and thanks to you for listening. Stuff I Never Told
• 29:52
  Speaker 1: You is protiction of my Heart Radio.
• 29:53
  Speaker 2: For more podcasts from my Heart Radio, you can visit
• 29:55
  Speaker 2: the Ihart Radio app, Apple Podcast, orhever you listen to
• 29:57
  Speaker 2: your favorite shows.