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Speaker 1: Hello, this is Annie and this is Bridget and you're

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Speaker 1: listening to stuff. Mom never told you. This is part

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Speaker 1: two of our fan fiction Extravaganza, because, surprise, surprise, we

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Speaker 1: were very excited to talk about fan fiction. Um, if

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Speaker 1: you haven't caught the first episode, go check it out.

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Speaker 1: It was kind of more of a primer the history,

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Speaker 1: what what is this fan fiction thing? And in this

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Speaker 1: episode we're gonna look more into why it's mostly women

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Speaker 1: writing fan fiction and slash. Yeah. I was pretty surprised.

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Speaker 1: I had no idea there were so many ins and

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Speaker 1: outs to fan fiction. I thought it was going to

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Speaker 1: be something that was sort of a quick overview, but

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Speaker 1: when you actually look at the history, there's so much

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Speaker 1: going on and it's so gendered. After part one of

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Speaker 1: this episode aired, I was having a conversation with a

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Speaker 1: friend and I was like, oh, we were talking about

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Speaker 1: fan fiction and he said, oh, isn't that a bunch

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Speaker 1: of weirdos writing stories where Harry Potter and Gandolf have

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Speaker 1: sex with each other? And I was able to say, no,

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Speaker 1: that is a common fan fiction misconception. So I was

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Speaker 1: pretty proud of how how useful the information about fani

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Speaker 1: fiction turned out to be in my own life. I'm

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Speaker 1: proud to Bridget. Good for you standing up for fan fiction.

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Speaker 1: But yeah, let's let's dive right in, shall we. Let's

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Speaker 1: do it. Yes, fantic fear, that's what we're going to

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Speaker 1: talk about, and it does largely seem to do with

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Speaker 1: our anxieties around women and sexuality, and male anxieties about

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Speaker 1: women in the phantom Surprise surprise that's never come up

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Speaker 1: here on the show. No, never, never, And this fear

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Speaker 1: feminine media goes way back to take this quote from

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Speaker 1: a pastor from eighteen sixty four. I've seen a young

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Speaker 1: lady with her table loaded with volumes, a loaded of

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Speaker 1: fictitious trash, pouring day after day and night after night

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Speaker 1: over highly we're all seeing since carefully portrayed pictures of romance,

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Speaker 1: until her cheeks grew pale, her eyes became wild and reckless,

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Speaker 1: and her mind wandered and was lost. A lot of

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Speaker 1: intelligence passed behind a cloud, and her soul was forever benighted.

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Speaker 1: She was insane, incurably insane from reading novels. Is he

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Speaker 1: describing you? Is that what you look like when you

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Speaker 1: read band fiction? So I am a vampire. I wasn't

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Speaker 1: planning on admitting it. It's right to be hunting you, dad.

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Speaker 1: Wait is she behind you? That's why I was so

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Speaker 1: nervous before. Oh no, I hope she doesn't listen to

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Speaker 1: the show. She's gonna come's gonna come. I'm a vampire though. Anyway.

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Speaker 1: According to a survey from Fanfic, the fan fix site

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Speaker 1: AO three that we mentioned earlier, an overwhelming majority of

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Speaker 1: fan fiction is written by people who identify as women,

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Speaker 1: more identify as gender queer at six percent than male

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Speaker 1: at four percent, and only thirty eight percent identify as heterosexual.

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Speaker 1: When AO three was first coded, it mark to the

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Speaker 1: biggest majority female independent coding project ever. Wow. As to

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Speaker 1: age demographics, to go back to that whole horny teenagers

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Speaker 1: are the only ones writing this. That's not true. It

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Speaker 1: depends on which site you look at, but it probably

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Speaker 1: excused slightly older than you'd guess, like college aged outside

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Speaker 1: of what Pad, which we talked about earlier. See this

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Speaker 1: doesn't actually surprise me at all, because I've often found

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Speaker 1: that anything that involves sort of people power and media,

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Speaker 1: whether it's you know, YouTube or independent content creation, those

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Speaker 1: spaces tend to be heavily dominated by non heterosexual men's

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Speaker 1: which women, queer folks, non byronary filips, books of color,

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Speaker 1: like marginalized people really combine their voices in these alternative

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Speaker 1: sources of you know, creativity and media. Yeah, I am

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Speaker 1: kind of curious. I wonder how common it is for

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Speaker 1: perhaps men to pretend to be women writing fan fiction,

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Speaker 1: or like choose a name that maybe you couldn't get

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Speaker 1: a sense of whether or not they were male or female.

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Speaker 1: Sort of like how in in the video game world,

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Speaker 1: a lot of female gamers, including myself, which is a

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Speaker 1: masculine sounding name. Hopefully that people would leave us alone.

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Speaker 1: Like I wonder, I'm just curious if there's kind of

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Speaker 1: an embarrassment or maybe even male fan fiction writers feel

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Speaker 1: like they'd be more accepted. What was your fan fiction handle?

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Speaker 1: It was winded? W Why in D E D? What

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Speaker 1: is that? What? Where did that come from? What's the

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Speaker 1: origin of that? Gosh, it's actually a really embarrassing story.

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Speaker 1: I don't want to tell it. If you can, we

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Speaker 1: can tell it off air. You can still look it up.

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Speaker 1: It does exist, but there's nothing. They are deleted everything. Unfortunately.

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Speaker 1: I kind of wish there's something there for you. Maybe

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Speaker 1: if I find find them. I'll repost. This is so silly.

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Speaker 1: Once I snuck down to the hometown I grew up in,

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Speaker 1: had a really fancy neighborhood, really fancy, well known, and

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Speaker 1: I was just kind of curious about what went down

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Speaker 1: in there. So when I was eight or nine, I

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Speaker 1: um snuck in and I was looking around and these

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Speaker 1: police roll up and they had a bunch of like

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Speaker 1: big dogs. Really scared me, and also, you know, I'm

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Speaker 1: I'm a young kid, the last and they asked me

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Speaker 1: what my name was, and I panicked and I said,

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Speaker 1: August Wind. Do you believe it was it? August? Tell

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Speaker 1: me it was a windy night in August. It was

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Speaker 1: George Glass, it was it was August. And I'd like,

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Speaker 1: it was clearly thank you for laughing at my name,

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Speaker 1: thank you. I'm sorry, I'm sorry, but being a I

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Speaker 1: got I got windy August night. What's your name? August Wind?

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Speaker 1: And it was so clearly fake, but I like did

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Speaker 1: not abandon it, Like I went all in dawn with

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Speaker 1: the ship and You're like, where are you from, August Wind?

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Speaker 1: And I was like, oh, you know, neigh bows down,

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Speaker 1: They know me around here. August wouldn't ask anyone. I'm

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Speaker 1: so glad, I asked, But then I turned it into

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Speaker 1: like a pun, a play on winded, because you know,

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Speaker 1: I was an emo teenager and I was tired. I

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Speaker 1: was winded, But also I was staying with my roots

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Speaker 1: of my bad fake name that I made up when questioned,

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Speaker 1: that's such a good story. Yeah, it wasn't one of

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Speaker 1: my better fake names, but you know, I gave you

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Speaker 1: a swing in a mess, as they say, away from

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Speaker 1: my embarrassing pen name. But first we're gonna take a

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Speaker 1: quick break for word for our sponsor, and we're back.

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Speaker 1: Thank you, sponsor. Here is a quote from Vox. There's

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Speaker 1: a special I reserved for the particular corner of the

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Speaker 1: web where people make transformative works about the media they love.

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Speaker 1: And given that this corner is primarily composed of young women,

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Speaker 1: it's hard to avoid the conclusion that this ire is gendered.

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Speaker 1: And also, apart from that, if you think about the

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Speaker 1: gate keeping of fandoms, it's largely done by men, and

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Speaker 1: having women dominate this one particular aspect of fandom made

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Speaker 1: a lot of men in the fandom uncomfortable, like, what

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Speaker 1: are you doing this weird thing in my fandom? For

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Speaker 1: another article, Oh, this is the one I mentioned earlier

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Speaker 1: from the Mary Sue noted that the most vocal criticism

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Speaker 1: of fan fiction is from male critics, in an article

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Speaker 1: titled when men write fan fiction, it isn't fan fiction

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Speaker 1: because it's academic. Okay, that's first of all. How is

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Speaker 1: it that men are the most vocal critics of a

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Speaker 1: of a landscape dominated by For me, that just tells

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Speaker 1: you all you need to know about how men show

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Speaker 1: up in this space. And that sounds hostile. It is.

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Speaker 1: It's really hostile. And I found so many articles written

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Speaker 1: by men that were criticizing fan fiction and they were

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Speaker 1: just so condescending and like dismissive, just kind of insulting

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Speaker 1: about the people who would do this. And it was hard, Yeah, misogynistic,

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Speaker 1: very kind of left a bad taste in my mouth.

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Speaker 1: And there are a lot of theories as to why

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Speaker 1: women make up a majority of the fan fiction community.

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Speaker 1: One is that it allowed young girls and women traditionally

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Speaker 1: excluded from fandom by default and from the world of

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Speaker 1: professional writing and media making as well. It provided the

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Speaker 1: space that they could enter freely and create empowering storylines

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Speaker 1: that they weren't seeing anywhere else or even if the

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Speaker 1: storylines weren't empowering, they felt empowered because they created them. Yeah. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I know we're like a broken record on the show

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Speaker 1: about this, but that really matters, you know, feeling like

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Speaker 1: you're the one who is the author of your own

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Speaker 1: story that matters so much. And even if it's not

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Speaker 1: an empowering story, knowing that you have a voice and

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Speaker 1: that you are have a seat at the table as

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Speaker 1: a creator is important. And I just hate seeing men

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Speaker 1: on it because of their own hang ups around gender. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and it also breaks my heart about how a lot

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Speaker 1: of the like dismissiveness of it is like these are young,

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Speaker 1: stupid girls, like young and you know, like fan girls.

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Speaker 1: I remember Christen Carolin did an episode on how we

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Speaker 1: kind of deride the fan girl. It's a part of

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Speaker 1: life where you're you're growing and boys go through the

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Speaker 1: same thing, but we don't loving what they love. And

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Speaker 1: I think this is this is one of those times

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Speaker 1: where I want to say, oh, we should do another

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Speaker 1: episode on blah blah blah. But I've always thought that

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Speaker 1: it's young girls who are the real kind of Internet pioneers.

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Speaker 1: Look at things like Tumbler, look at things like meme, culture.

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Speaker 1: So much of that is fueled by very young girls

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Speaker 1: online who are like left to their own devices. They

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Speaker 1: really love this one thing. They're going to go all

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Speaker 1: in on it, and I think it's actually quite innovative. Like,

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Speaker 1: we don't think of young girls and their fandom as

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Speaker 1: purveyors of Internet innovation, but that's what they are. And

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Speaker 1: we because it's girls, because it's feminized, um, and because

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Speaker 1: of our hang ups around and anxieties around gender, people

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Speaker 1: have to put it down. But if they could look

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Speaker 1: at it with a fresh perspective, they would see, Oh,

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Speaker 1: these women and young girls actually are quite innovative, their

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Speaker 1: innovative creators who are carving off their own space of

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Speaker 1: the Internet. Yeah, and I'm kind of again. I had

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Speaker 1: a really I had a really good experience with fan fiction.

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Speaker 1: I'm sure this exist, like negativity exist, but for me,

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Speaker 1: I didn't really stumble onto it. And I'm I've been

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Speaker 1: proud that generally nobody's making fun of another fandom, or

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Speaker 1: at least if they are, they're like a quiet minority.

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Speaker 1: So I like that. I think that you know, write

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Speaker 1: your one direction fan fiction. I'm gonna write my Harry

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Speaker 1: Potter fan fiction. We're all just creating these things here,

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Speaker 1: and I like that the kind of judgment isn't there

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Speaker 1: as much as you see with the male dominated parts

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Speaker 1: of fandom. Writing fan fiction may also give women that

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Speaker 1: sense of community that we've talked so much about, which

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Speaker 1: is even more important. Research suggest for lesbian and queer

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Speaker 1: girls who wrote our found role models and slash fiction

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Speaker 1: at times when they felt isolated. Elizabeth Minkl wrote in

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Speaker 1: The New Statesman, my preferred explanation, and she's talking about

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Speaker 1: why fan fiction is sort of dominated by women, is

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Speaker 1: the idea that a vast majority of what we watch

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Speaker 1: is from the male perspective, author directed and filmed by men,

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Speaker 1: and mostly straight white men. At that fan fiction gives

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Speaker 1: women and other marginalized groups the chance to subvert that perspective,

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Speaker 1: to fracture a story and recast it in her own way.

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Speaker 1: It often feels as if there isn't much space for

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Speaker 1: difference in the dominant cultural narratives in fandom. By design,

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Speaker 1: there's space for it. I love that, And even though

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Speaker 1: I'm not someone who's super into fandom, that's the thing

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Speaker 1: I find so beautiful that it's it can be such

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Speaker 1: an inclusive space where all different narratives get to be included. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and we've touched on before having to prove your fandom

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Speaker 1: as a woman or fake geek girl, fear she's just

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Speaker 1: faking it to infiltrate or fandom. Then that's another thing

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Speaker 1: that we'll have to return to. But it does play

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Speaker 1: a role, and I think in kind of the hang

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Speaker 1: ups we have around fan fiction and all the women

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Speaker 1: writing it, this does bring us to slash. It's time.

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Speaker 1: It's finally time to talk about Slash. Okay, So first off,

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Speaker 1: Slash is not always pornographic, like I've said many times.

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Speaker 1: In fact, it's more often than not not pornographic. And

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Speaker 1: it's important keep in mind when we unpack why most

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Speaker 1: Slash is written by women, just in case people aren't

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Speaker 1: as tuned into this world as me. Slashes male two

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Speaker 1: men together, that's noncanon. So if we look down, if

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Speaker 1: we break down readership demographics, it's generally at split between heater,

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Speaker 1: sexual readers, and queer readers. When it comes to Slash,

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Speaker 1: it can differ depending on the fandom and the site.

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Speaker 1: And there are a lot of theories um as to

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Speaker 1: why slash is such a phenomenon, and I have one

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Speaker 1: that I am now totally on board with and has

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Speaker 1: changed my view of most media for a while. Personally,

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Speaker 1: I had a theory it was because most well developed

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Speaker 1: characters we consume our male female options are limited, so

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Speaker 1: most relationships were seeing on screen are between two dubes.

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Speaker 1: I think Everybody, Cop Movie or Kirkin's Black. So we're

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Speaker 1: just we're taking what we see and expounding upon it.

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Speaker 1: Another idea I read that in particular in Japanese fan fiction,

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Speaker 1: a slash might be preferred because it removes the pressures

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Speaker 1: of marriage and that little line item we call pregnancy.

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Speaker 1: No matter where you are, the female body is inherently political,

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Speaker 1: and it comes with all of this invisible baggage that

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Speaker 1: male bodies don't, And we could do a whole thing

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Speaker 1: about slash in Asia. In Japan, where manga based slash

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Speaker 1: is called at yaoe, the romance between two male characters

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Speaker 1: usually still fits into the traditional, often regressive, masculine feminine pairing.

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Speaker 1: There's pretty clear like this one was meant to be

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Speaker 1: the masculine one, this one is meant to be the

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Speaker 1: feminine one. It's pretty widely seen as a way for

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Speaker 1: women to express their sexuality and desire and to experience

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Speaker 1: the emotional aspects of relationships of the attendees at the

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Speaker 1: two thousand and three Yoecon and San Francisco, or women

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Speaker 1: That's Fascinating. Slash Our den Mai is popular among heterosexual

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Speaker 1: women self identified as rotten girls in China. To an

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Speaker 1: estimated two seventy five million people read slash fan fiction

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Speaker 1: in China. Researchers into why positive it's because women like

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Speaker 1: reading don my because it's a way for women to

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Speaker 1: rebel in a society that expects women to be obedient.

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Speaker 1: Owners of the sites hosting down Mike can be jailed

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Speaker 1: by the government, and the readers are often described as

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Speaker 1: needing psychiatric help. And a criticism I see about slash

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Speaker 1: fairly regularly is that it makes it harder for gay

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Speaker 1: men are gay characters to have platonic relationships, and that

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Speaker 1: it fetishizes and objectifies gay men, particularly more visual mediums

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Speaker 1: like yoe, which is traditionally more visual. A counterpoint to

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Speaker 1: that is that a decent portion of the women creating

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Speaker 1: slash are not attracted to men, and almost all of

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Speaker 1: the women writing slash grew up in a society that

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Speaker 1: is prohibitive when it comes to women exploring their sexuality

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Speaker 1: one that shames women and objectifies their bodies. Male characters

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Speaker 1: are a safe, shame free way to dip your toe

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Speaker 1: in and kind of a funny way. It removes the

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Speaker 1: male gaze that women have internalized. It's so fascinating how

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Speaker 1: women are using this medium to sort of explore their

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Speaker 1: own sexuality, but not even necessarily in a overtly sexualized

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Speaker 1: way if they're not actually attracted to men. Yeah. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: this is the one that is. I feel like it's

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Speaker 1: kind of changed how I look at on media because,

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Speaker 1: like I said, I never liked the sex part of slash,

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Speaker 1: but I did like Slash fan fiction because of the

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Speaker 1: relationships in there. And the more I think about it,

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Speaker 1: the more I think it was because of this, because

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Speaker 1: it was a safer way it removed the female body

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Speaker 1: does come with all of this stuff that kind of

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Speaker 1: almost takes you away from the story. You can enjoy

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Speaker 1: it as much because you, or at least I felt

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Speaker 1: like as a woman, it almost makes me tense knowing

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Speaker 1: she's going to have to deal with all of these things.

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Speaker 1: It's just like what you said before, Women's bodies are

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Speaker 1: inherently political, and so if the point of view consuming

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Speaker 1: this media, it's just sort of get an escape from that.

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Speaker 1: It makes sense that including a sexualized female body would

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Speaker 1: only sort of add to your anxieties. It wouldn't be

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Speaker 1: that like escape that you're looking for. Yeah, and we

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Speaker 1: have penned so many things to women, and that the

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Speaker 1: way they behave. I read an article by someone else

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Speaker 1: who was saying she realized when she got older than

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Speaker 1: almost every character she'd ever written, almost every fan fiction

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Speaker 1: she'd ever read, all had like men in them, even

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Speaker 1: though she's a feminist, and she was trying to at

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Speaker 1: the bottom of why that is. And she thinks it's

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Speaker 1: because women are almost always passive, or should be seen

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Speaker 1: as passive, whereas male characters are men, they're active, they're aggressive.

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Speaker 1: So you're telling a story you want like an active character,

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Speaker 1: you don't want a passive character. And I think we've

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Speaker 1: internalized so much about what society tells us is how

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Speaker 1: a woman should behave and what we see in media,

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Speaker 1: that it is hard to escape it. If you introduce

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Speaker 1: a woman into a story, whether you like it or not,

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Speaker 1: whether you know it or not. I think in the

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Speaker 1: back of your head there are all these assumptions that

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Speaker 1: you're making that are perhaps making it hard to just

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Speaker 1: enjoy it. After I read this, I started to think

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Speaker 1: that maybe this is why we see so much romance

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Speaker 1: as a culture. We've sexualized the female body so much.

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Speaker 1: Having a story with a female character played against a

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Speaker 1: male character or another female character, it automatically becomes sexualized,

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Speaker 1: even if it's platonic exactly. You're thinking in the back

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Speaker 1: of your head, they're going to get together, exactly. But

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Speaker 1: that doesn't happen with two male characters for male viewers,

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Speaker 1: which is what media is traditionally, has traditionally been made

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Speaker 1: for as male viewers, for the male gaze, and sometimes

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Speaker 1: that comes through through the writer, through the director, or

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Speaker 1: sometimes it comes through the audience, just as observing. We

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Speaker 1: might be putting that on there. I would say a

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Speaker 1: lot of times we're putting that there because that is

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Speaker 1: what's been ingrained in us. But for so long the

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Speaker 1: female character has existed in the story solely for some

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Speaker 1: kind of like objectification or sexual aspect. That's why she's there.

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Speaker 1: I think we're moving away from that. But I think

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Speaker 1: that is one of the reasons perhaps that so many

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Speaker 1: women are writing slash two male characters that hawn't even

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Speaker 1: occurred to me, but that makes so much sense. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I did have a moment of like, trans fiction, you're

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Speaker 1: changing my view on the world. Everything's making sense now.

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Speaker 1: Over at the High Hat, Melissa writes that slash gives

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Speaker 1: the author the chance to quote have the freedom of

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Speaker 1: being male in their female bodies. And I do think

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Speaker 1: there is more freedom in the male body, I would say.

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Speaker 1: And also, young straight men have a plethora of mainstream

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Speaker 1: accepted media to help them explore their sexuality. Definitely, they

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Speaker 1: have an abundance. Yes, oh yeah, slash challenges gender norms, masculinity, femininity.

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Speaker 1: I'm not sure the same fear would exist around male

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Speaker 1: authored fim slash if it were men writing sex between

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Speaker 1: two women. I'm pretty sure we would just be like, oh, man,

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Speaker 1: you know, just doing Yeah. And a side note in

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Speaker 1: the article I was reading about the fear of fan

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Speaker 1: fiction from Box, they specifically call out the fact that

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Speaker 1: despite having an all male cradive team Captain America, The

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Speaker 1: Winner's Soldier, which is one of my favorites, is popularly

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Speaker 1: read and turned into a homoertic love story between the

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Speaker 1: two men by young women, which as someone who dresses

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Speaker 1: up as the Winner's Soldier at conventions and sees this

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Speaker 1: all the time. For some reason, in my Pinteres feed,

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Speaker 1: I really appreciated it. When I read that, I was like, yep,

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Speaker 1: I hadn't thought about it, but yes, we're gonna take

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Speaker 1: a quick break for word for a sponsor and we're back.

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Speaker 1: Thank you sponsor. Okay, So you can probably tell I

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Speaker 1: am no fan fiction expert, but this I found really

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Speaker 1: really interesting and I wanted to include it. A quick

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Speaker 1: note about celebrities. When reporters asked celebrities to comment on

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Speaker 1: weird fan fiction, they are doing it to mock their fans.

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Speaker 1: Probably neither the reporter nor the celebrity know about fan fiction,

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Speaker 1: and that's fine, but then you wonder, like, why even

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Speaker 1: talk about it at all. So there's this really misinterview

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Speaker 1: with Benedict Cumberbatch in Out magazine that really did a

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Speaker 1: lot of this kind of thing, demeaning people who read

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Speaker 1: fan fiction, who write fan fiction, and who are excited

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Speaker 1: about fan fiction. But those fans took one phrase in

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Speaker 1: that interview that phrases quote lustful monster and put it

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Speaker 1: in art. One actually put it on a T shirt,

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Speaker 1: and the sales of that shirt go to the nonprofit

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Speaker 1: behind a oh three the Organization for Transformative Works. So

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Speaker 1: that just goes to show you that these innovators are

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Speaker 1: taking a reporter basically trying to make fun of them,

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Speaker 1: making lemonade out of lemons, and using it to raise

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Speaker 1: money for a great cause that they care about. Who

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Speaker 1: would have ever thought that lustful clonster could generate such

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Speaker 1: positive impact. My heart is fit to burst to birth.

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Speaker 1: Do you own a lustful You should? If you had it,

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Speaker 1: you would be wearing it. I didn't know this existed,

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Speaker 1: but now I really want one. And another show I

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Speaker 1: mentioned before, Supernatural, did the whole episode of fan fiction

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Speaker 1: that's really difficult to explain without having the fundation of

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Speaker 1: what that show is, but basically, the main characters have

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Speaker 1: a cult following and stumble upon a high school that's

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Speaker 1: putting on a musical about their lives. And this musical

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Speaker 1: is almost exclusively put together by young women. It's pretty

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Speaker 1: great because the two main characters of that show are

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Speaker 1: pretty like macho dudes, and then they stumbled upon these

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Speaker 1: young ladies making a musical about their life. And at

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Speaker 1: the end, one of the characters is like, look, I

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Speaker 1: really don't like what you're doing, but I appreciate your

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Speaker 1: right to do it, and you do it well. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: And one of the actors from the show, Misha Collins,

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Speaker 1: he has some really awesome quotes about fan fiction. For instance,

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Speaker 1: when somebody asked him about slash because his character, as

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Speaker 1: I mentioned earlier, CASTI L and Dean, there's a lot

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Speaker 1: of slash about them the STL. When he was asked

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Speaker 1: about it at a convention, he said, talking about slash,

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Speaker 1: I think it is a great cultural asset that unites

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Speaker 1: the world and makes it better, which is lovely, Which

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Speaker 1: is lovely. Author Daniel Being spoke that her experience with

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Speaker 1: fan fiction taught her that she wrote about common themes

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Speaker 1: and would write with quote, urgency, joy and discipline. When

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Speaker 1: she provided a Buffy the Vampire Slater fiction as a

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Speaker 1: sample for previous work. When applying for a writing program,

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00:22:06,760 --> 00:22:08,800
Speaker 1: she had to explain and her follow up interview what

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Speaker 1: fan fiction was and why she was drawn to it.

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Speaker 1: It gave her the space to experiment with her voice

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Speaker 1: freely and with characters and universes that she was comfortable with,

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Speaker 1: and she got in and is now a two time

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Speaker 1: recipient of the Romance Writers of Australia Media Industry award,

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Speaker 1: So good for her, for all the men who were

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00:22:24,000 --> 00:22:26,359
Speaker 1: like looking down at it and on it. It's actually

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Speaker 1: changing people's lives. Absolutely, It's just kind of this beautiful

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Speaker 1: democratic thing. We have this industry of published fiction as

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Speaker 1: a lot of barriers, of barriers socio economically, even having

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Speaker 1: access to education to get the degree that's going to

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Speaker 1: get agents to sign you, Like, there are barriers. But

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Speaker 1: in the world of fan fiction at its best, and yeah, again,

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Speaker 1: going back to Binks, she says, fan fiction is a

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Speaker 1: more accessible platform for writing and experimentation and I'm all

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Speaker 1: for it, and so am I. It's made me really

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Speaker 1: really happy to do this research and us. I really

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Speaker 1: appreciate this world that we've kind of made for ourselves.

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Speaker 1: And Annie, I appreciate this master class in fan fiction.

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Speaker 1: I feel like I could really teach a class now,

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Speaker 1: believe it or not. I cut a lot of stuff.

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Speaker 1: I was like, I'm here's a sample of across over

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Speaker 1: like I had a sample for everything. You've got to

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Speaker 1: calm down, Annie, are else will never leave the studio. Well,

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Speaker 1: I hope that you listeners have enjoyed this as much

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Speaker 1: as we have enjoyed putting it together. And please if

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00:23:33,760 --> 00:23:37,240
Speaker 1: you're comfortable with it, send us some fan fiction that

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00:23:37,280 --> 00:23:39,880
Speaker 1: you've written. We're thinking about doing kind of a kind

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00:23:39,880 --> 00:23:44,000
Speaker 1: of an on ongoing series of reading fan fiction, perhaps

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00:23:44,000 --> 00:23:46,200
Speaker 1: with some like production value. You've got, You've got a

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00:23:46,240 --> 00:23:49,560
Speaker 1: little whole project idea kicking around. Yeah, send us that

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00:23:49,640 --> 00:23:53,119
Speaker 1: fan pic, absolutely, and Bridget and I I will jump

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00:23:53,119 --> 00:23:56,240
Speaker 1: in the fray. I will read my fan fiction. I

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00:23:56,359 --> 00:24:00,160
Speaker 1: might okay, I might well see Okay, I gotta get

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00:24:00,200 --> 00:24:02,679
Speaker 1: I gotta like psych yourself. I gotta check myself up

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00:24:02,680 --> 00:24:05,639
Speaker 1: a little bit. Okay. But speaking of asking people to

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00:24:05,680 --> 00:24:08,560
Speaker 1: send in their fan fiction, no, this time for some

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00:24:08,760 --> 00:24:15,880
Speaker 1: listener mail, Skyler wrote, I wanted to share a small

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00:24:15,920 --> 00:24:18,600
Speaker 1: anecdote from my junior prom. We didn't have a specific

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00:24:18,640 --> 00:24:21,000
Speaker 1: dress code for prom other than formal attire and to

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00:24:21,119 --> 00:24:23,960
Speaker 1: use our brains on what is quote appropriate. It was

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00:24:24,000 --> 00:24:27,160
Speaker 1: definitely less strict than our school dress code. The administrators

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00:24:27,160 --> 00:24:30,800
Speaker 1: were more concerned with alcohol than dress. To their credit anyway,

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00:24:30,840 --> 00:24:33,040
Speaker 1: there was a group of about ten guys that chose

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00:24:33,040 --> 00:24:35,760
Speaker 1: not to wear shirts under their vest. Somehow that qual

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00:24:36,280 --> 00:24:40,560
Speaker 1: is formal. They were confronted by the chaperones eventually for

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00:24:40,720 --> 00:24:44,359
Speaker 1: jumping on in over tables. Come to find out she

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00:24:44,400 --> 00:24:51,159
Speaker 1: went to high school with the Chippendales dancers. That sounds

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00:24:51,160 --> 00:24:53,680
Speaker 1: like it could happen in a fan fiction. Honestly it does.

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00:24:53,960 --> 00:24:56,920
Speaker 1: It does. Our next email us from Sarah, Sarah writes,

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00:24:57,280 --> 00:24:59,000
Speaker 1: I just listened to your episode on prom and I

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00:24:59,040 --> 00:25:01,200
Speaker 1: thought it was so interesting. It really got me thinking

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00:25:01,240 --> 00:25:03,960
Speaker 1: about my own prom experiences. I never thought I would

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00:25:03,960 --> 00:25:06,040
Speaker 1: consider my school liberal, but when it comes to prom,

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00:25:06,040 --> 00:25:08,840
Speaker 1: it definitely is. We don't have a prom dress code,

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00:25:08,840 --> 00:25:11,000
Speaker 1: and two girls or two guys buy the couple's prom

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00:25:11,000 --> 00:25:13,719
Speaker 1: ticket all the time because it's cheaper than buying two singles.

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00:25:14,000 --> 00:25:17,080
Speaker 1: Listening to the controversies and activism around prom and comparing

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00:25:17,119 --> 00:25:19,480
Speaker 1: them to how my school handles the same issue was fascinating.

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Speaker 1: I lit up when you mentioned how you wish you'd

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00:25:21,800 --> 00:25:23,880
Speaker 1: want our suit to prom, because that's exactly what I did.

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00:25:24,240 --> 00:25:26,679
Speaker 1: I'd warn dresses to every single school dance before my

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00:25:26,720 --> 00:25:28,919
Speaker 1: senior prom. But I went on a vacation to France

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00:25:28,920 --> 00:25:31,400
Speaker 1: a month before prom and and impulse bought these fabulous,

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00:25:31,400 --> 00:25:33,720
Speaker 1: glittery pink saddle shoes. Of course, it had to base

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00:25:33,800 --> 00:25:36,640
Speaker 1: my entire problem. Look around them, my makeup, my jewelry,

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00:25:36,720 --> 00:25:39,280
Speaker 1: my manicure and the vest and tie. My mom completely

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00:25:39,320 --> 00:25:41,920
Speaker 1: supported me, although I felt super awkward at first, as

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00:25:41,960 --> 00:25:44,920
Speaker 1: can happen when you're defying gender expectations. I got so

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00:25:44,960 --> 00:25:47,760
Speaker 1: many compliments. My other friends were complaining about how they

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00:25:47,760 --> 00:25:50,240
Speaker 1: couldn't breathe in their dresses, how their strap was bras

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00:25:50,280 --> 00:25:53,119
Speaker 1: kept slipping. But I got to be comfortable and stylish.

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Speaker 1: Suits of the way to go man um, Sarah, I'm

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00:25:56,640 --> 00:25:59,560
Speaker 1: like living vicariously through you. I wish i'd worn a

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00:25:59,600 --> 00:26:02,080
Speaker 1: suit to UM and I wish I had had pink,

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00:26:02,119 --> 00:26:06,280
Speaker 1: sparkly saddle shoes. She sent a picture and that was

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00:26:06,480 --> 00:26:11,480
Speaker 1: that was a dope outfit. So good, Sarah, Well done, Yes,

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00:26:11,960 --> 00:26:14,560
Speaker 1: well done. Thanks to both of them for writing in.

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00:26:14,960 --> 00:26:18,000
Speaker 1: Thanks it's always to our producers, Delan Fagan and Kathleen Quillian.

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Speaker 1: We would love to hear from you. Please send those

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00:26:20,040 --> 00:26:23,800
Speaker 1: fan fiction please, or any other thoughts that you have.

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00:26:24,040 --> 00:26:26,320
Speaker 1: Um our email is a mom Stuff at how stuff

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00:26:26,320 --> 00:26:29,040
Speaker 1: works dot com. You can also find us on Twitter

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00:26:29,200 --> 00:26:32,120
Speaker 1: at mom stuff and on Instagram at stuff Mom Never

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00:26:32,160 --> 00:26:32,600
Speaker 1: told You