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Speaker 1: Hey, this is Annie and Samantha. I'm welcome to Stephane.

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Speaker 1: Never told your protection of I Heart Radio, and today

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Speaker 1: we are doing one that is very near and dear

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Speaker 1: to our heart. Well, it is your birthday week, even

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Speaker 1: though as we're recording it's not, but it's coming upon

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Speaker 1: it as if the listeners are listening to it. It

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Speaker 1: is Annie's birthday week, so we must do all things

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Speaker 1: and he loves and I was thinking that we needed

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Speaker 1: a whole week of Annie's favorite things. I want to

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Speaker 1: do it that way, but you know, I feel like

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Speaker 1: this month has had a lot of topics that are

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Speaker 1: some of my favorite things. So as it should be,

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Speaker 1: as it should be, UM, So hopefully you're enjoying all

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Speaker 1: of the nerd jum and nursery so much. And Samantha

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Speaker 1: and I were discussing before this. I think we've said

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Speaker 1: before how we generally when we do these episodes, UM,

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Speaker 1: somebody will take the lead and do the research and

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Speaker 1: write it out and then we kind of split who

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Speaker 1: says what. But there are some topics that it just

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Speaker 1: feels so obvious that I'm the one that probably wrote

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Speaker 1: this one. Well, the title you have for this, and

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Speaker 1: I don't know if we're using it is a love

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Speaker 1: letter to fan fiction. Yeah, I think we know whose

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Speaker 1: love letter it is, Like, it's kind of obvious, it's true.

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Speaker 1: It's true. So I once again, I'm going to be

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Speaker 1: talking a lot in Savantha is going to be supporting

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Speaker 1: me and perhaps asking questions. There is confusion. Yes, that's

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Speaker 1: what I love about you. Um, however, you did reveal

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Speaker 1: right before this you had a live journal, and I

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Speaker 1: want to come back and revisit this at all later date.

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Speaker 1: It will be later times, yes, because I have quite

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Speaker 1: a lot to say about fan fiction, as it turns out,

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Speaker 1: surprice no one. And actually this one could have been longer,

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Speaker 1: so it's a Monday mini and I tried to limit myself,

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Speaker 1: but it's already quite long alright. So yes, today we

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Speaker 1: are this is a love letter to one of the

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Speaker 1: loves of my life, which is fan fiction, and we

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Speaker 1: are going to be focusing specifically on a O three

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Speaker 1: or Archive of our own, which is my current favorite

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Speaker 1: fan fiction site, though I grew up on fan fiction

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Speaker 1: dot net, which is still around as well. And also

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Speaker 1: I wanted to shout out a recent article that gave

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Speaker 1: me this idea from The Verge written by j Costello

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Speaker 1: called Archive of Our Owns fifteen year journey from blog

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Speaker 1: post to fan fiction powerhouse. A O three, by the way,

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Speaker 1: is not a sponsor. It's also a nonprofit, so I

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Speaker 1: doubt they would be a sponsor, but you know sometimes

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Speaker 1: and you can see our episodes on dub Con and

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Speaker 1: fan fiction I think specifically dub Con for this one. Actually.

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Speaker 1: All right, So, according to this article, the first stirrings

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Speaker 1: of what would become Archive of our Own OREO three

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Speaker 1: started in two thousand seven, when fanfic authors, who again

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Speaker 1: are mostly women and marginalized folks, saw some efforts from

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Speaker 1: companies created by men to capitalize on the space UM.

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Speaker 1: One such company was called fan lib, a commercialized fan

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Speaker 1: content site. It eventually garnered about twenty five thou members,

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Speaker 1: but also a whole bunch of criticism from people who

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Speaker 1: had been writing fan fiction for free in this space

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Speaker 1: four years and felt like these outsiders were coming in

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Speaker 1: and making money off of stuff that they always offered

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Speaker 1: for free. UM And a part of the whole thing

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Speaker 1: that keeps people from being sued from writing fan fiction

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Speaker 1: is that they aren't making money. So I'm kind of

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Speaker 1: confused by that. UM We're going to talk about that

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Speaker 1: a little bit more later, because apparently it's not as

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Speaker 1: a big deal as I was taught that you might

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Speaker 1: be sued at any minute. But yeah, one of the

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Speaker 1: big things is I'm not making any money. Don't come

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Speaker 1: at me, Disney, al right. So seeing this kind of

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Speaker 1: commercialization attempt, a published author both of more traditional stuff

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Speaker 1: and fan fiction named Naomi Novik wrote on live journal,

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Speaker 1: which was and still is space rife and growing with

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Speaker 1: fan fiction, wrote in two thousand and seven, we are

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Speaker 1: sitting quietly by the fireside, creating piles and piles of

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Speaker 1: kind tent around us, and other people are going to

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Speaker 1: look at that and see an opportunity. The people behind

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Speaker 1: fan lib but don't actually care about fanfic, the fanfit community,

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Speaker 1: or anything except making money off content created entirely by

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Speaker 1: other people and getting media attention. They don't have a

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Speaker 1: single fanfic reader or a writer on their board. They

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Speaker 1: don't even have a single woman on their board. We

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Speaker 1: need a central archive of our own. And so only

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Speaker 1: a few months later, the nonprofit the Organization of Transformative

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Speaker 1: Works was formed with a goal of preserving fan works

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Speaker 1: and advocating for them as well, and Archive of our

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Speaker 1: Own was launched in two thousand nine, which is a

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Speaker 1: part of the Organization of Transformative Works or o t

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Speaker 1: w UM and has become just about the biggest and

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Speaker 1: well known, most well known name and fan fiction. However,

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Speaker 1: as Costello details in the article, no Vic starts the

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Speaker 1: story about a decade earlier in Yes, I remember it well,

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Speaker 1: that's about when I was you know, I was coming

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Speaker 1: up reading fan fiction UM, and the fan fiction sites

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Speaker 1: at that time where they were spread out. UM, they

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Speaker 1: often didn't work well or at all, I remember, just

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Speaker 1: like wonky text, like how it was laid out would

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Speaker 1: be very difficult to read. It's sometimes these whole sites

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Speaker 1: would break and they would lose people's works forever, just devastating.

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Speaker 1: Novic was a self taught programmer and a fan fiction

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Speaker 1: reader who was seeing all of this happened to her

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Speaker 1: friends and so to help, Novic brought some Pearl scripts

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Speaker 1: and it was through this she eventually got the idea

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Speaker 1: of what was important when it came to archiving, which

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Speaker 1: eventually these ideas made it their way to a oh

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Speaker 1: three things like highly searchable pages, all the tags you

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Speaker 1: could ask for, an easily understandable recommendation functions. So, once

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Speaker 1: familiarized with scripting and coding, Novic started running a holiday

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Speaker 1: fan fiction exchange and two thousands which Savanta has been

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Speaker 1: around and I've like reach the benefits of these exchanges.

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Speaker 1: Oh yes, it's sort of like a Secret Santa for

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Speaker 1: fan fiction where authors will usually there's a prompt and

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Speaker 1: authors will assigned get assigned one of another author in

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Speaker 1: the group, and they write a story for that author. Uh.

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Speaker 1: And it means that like one Friday night, a hundred

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Speaker 1: stories are posted. It's excellent, excellent, Oh it is, I

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Speaker 1: love it. I love it. Through this, Novic really made

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Speaker 1: a name for herself and the fan fiction community, and um,

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Speaker 1: she recounts how people started volunteering to help her, meaning

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Speaker 1: she pretty much never worked alone at this point. Novic said,

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Speaker 1: after a while, the community you keep around yourself are

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Speaker 1: the people who are reliable, who care enough about fandom

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Speaker 1: that fandom is a way of life, that are willing

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Speaker 1: to invest some time not just in reading the stories

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Speaker 1: and writing the stories, but in the building of the

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Speaker 1: infrastructure to what The people Novic worked with were an

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Speaker 1: English performance and fan steady scholar named Francesca Coppa and

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Speaker 1: a legal scholar and former clerk for the Supreme Court,

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Speaker 1: Rebecca Tishnet. Both were highly engaged in fandom's future and

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Speaker 1: the legality of fan fiction and fan works, and on

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Speaker 1: top of that, how fan fiction was perceived as disgust

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Speaker 1: in our past fan fiction episodes, while now people write

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Speaker 1: articles about their favorite fan fiction, their recommendations. If you

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Speaker 1: like this, go read this. You can find TikTok recommendations

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Speaker 1: about fan fiction. Big movies mentioned fan fiction and brace it.

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Speaker 1: When I was growing up reading it. Oh no, you

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Speaker 1: did not talk about your fan fiction. You won't be

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Speaker 1: the case like your older brother dad. You're reading fan fiction.

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Speaker 1: You try died, you had like your select group of

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Speaker 1: friends that knew who they also read it. And the

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Speaker 1: articles being written about it were not kind at the time.

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Speaker 1: They were deriving it um and even whipping up fearmongering

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Speaker 1: around it, like why young girls writing a rodica and also, yes,

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Speaker 1: you'll get suited, you're wasting your time. Why don't you

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Speaker 1: do something original? All that stuff, and yeah, historically it

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Speaker 1: had been like this for a long way, going back

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Speaker 1: to the eighteen hundreds, when religious people were worried about

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Speaker 1: women writing fan fiction with any romantic or sexual content. Uh,

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Speaker 1: they were. These women were not upstanding and maybe even possessed.

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Speaker 1: So a long time we felt like this as a society,

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Speaker 1: and a big part of this fear or derision, as

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Speaker 1: recounted in the article and as I can personally attest to,

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Speaker 1: was homophobia and sexism, specifically like a real fear of

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Speaker 1: women's sexuality since fan fiction is pretty queer. Uh, it's

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Speaker 1: a pretty queer space dominated by women. Kappa recalls receiving

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Speaker 1: frantic emails from author's worried they'd lose their jobs if

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Speaker 1: their boss found out that they wrote fan fiction. One

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Speaker 1: example Coppa gave was from a woman who wrote, I'm

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Speaker 1: going through a divorce and my husband is going to

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Speaker 1: take my thick and tell the judge I'm an unfit

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Speaker 1: mother and try to take my children. How fast can

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Speaker 1: you make me disappear from the internet. Kappa also shared

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Speaker 1: her own anxieties about fandom and being asked if there

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Speaker 1: was fan fiction about Kirk and Spock having sex like

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Speaker 1: a lot of times when she would appear and to

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Speaker 1: talk about it, that was like the thing people asked,

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Speaker 1: to which she remembers responding essentially, yep, you should go

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Speaker 1: read it. She herself had nightmares about losing her job

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Speaker 1: over fan fiction. And I have to because I thought

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Speaker 1: I accidentally gave a whole flash drive of my fan

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Speaker 1: fiction to a co worker. I won't say, but I

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Speaker 1: spent like a year twisting and turning at night thinking

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Speaker 1: about this. I was going, I'm still scared. I don't

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Speaker 1: know the answer for sure, but I've kind of come

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Speaker 1: to piece with it, like I can't worry about this

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Speaker 1: any longer. But then I was afraid, like what if

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Speaker 1: he never saw it, but he lost a flash Even

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Speaker 1: then someone else saw it and they put it up

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Speaker 1: and they were like, look what this deprived girl is writing.

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Speaker 1: She's oh gosh, it's a real fair yes. And then meanwhile,

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Speaker 1: Tushnet was one of the first who was outspoken in

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Speaker 1: defending fan fiction on the legal side, maintaining that almost

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Speaker 1: all of it was completely egal because this was I'm

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Speaker 1: telling you, at the time, everybody would put like a

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Speaker 1: disclaimer at the top, like this is owned by Disney.

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Speaker 1: I'm only playing in their sandbox and they don't make

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Speaker 1: any money. Please don't like people. Every van fiction had

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Speaker 1: something like that top. We were very scared about them

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Speaker 1: getting sued or something, so all of this came together

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Speaker 1: with fan lib acting as a catalyst in two thousand seven.

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Speaker 1: And as I've discussed before, one of the beautiful things

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Speaker 1: about fan fiction is the community around it, and Novik

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Speaker 1: and Kappa, along with many others, have been a part

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Speaker 1: of the building and cultivating this fandom. And they weren't

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Speaker 1: just gonna let fan lib and the like come in

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Speaker 1: and erace that COPA said, I'm in a fandom where

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Speaker 1: somebody is hurt and another fan drives two states over

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Speaker 1: to help, And so there was a sense of urgency

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Speaker 1: that we had to build something before somebody else built

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Speaker 1: something shiny that would make new people who've come to

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Speaker 1: fandom think, oh, that's what fandom is. Another catalyst, uh.

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Speaker 1: Not long after Novic's original two thousand and seven, post

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Speaker 1: live journals suddenly and permanently suspended over five hundred accounts

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Speaker 1: that made some kind of mention around sexual content. And

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Speaker 1: they did this without warning to accounts that did nothing

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Speaker 1: illegal and did not violate live journal's terms. They didn't

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Speaker 1: give any consistent reason why. The CEO even called the

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Speaker 1: whole thing a total mess and promised to reinstate those

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Speaker 1: wrongfully banned, but surprise, surprise, a few months later, the

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Speaker 1: same thing happened with even more bands going through and

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Speaker 1: this was a major cause for concern for fan communities

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Speaker 1: when people our whole groups could get banned without warning,

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Speaker 1: and fan faction dot net had a similar issue, so

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Speaker 1: a new space was needed. Originally, Novic has said she

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Speaker 1: wasn't interested in building the archive herself, but so many

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Speaker 1: people reached out to her wanting to help, but on

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Speaker 1: clear on what to do. I'm sure of how to organize,

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Speaker 1: so Novic changed her mind. She decided on a nonprofit

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Speaker 1: to protect it from being sold if founders ever moved

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Speaker 1: on and or wanted to sell. Fan lib itself was

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Speaker 1: purchased by Disney and shut down almost a year after

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Speaker 1: beta testing, so that's what they were trying to prevent.

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Speaker 1: Through years of running events both online and off with

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Speaker 1: participants the world over of coding, Novic had a lot

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Speaker 1: of the necessary skills and new people who had the

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Speaker 1: ones she didn't. All kinds of volunteers stepped up with

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Speaker 1: experience in law, server maintenance, design, accessibility, coding, design, all

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Speaker 1: kinds of things. I said design twice. It's very important

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Speaker 1: because fans are everywhere and do everything, and the words

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Speaker 1: of COPA fan girls do absolutely every job there is.

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Speaker 1: The founding members of the team put together coding programs

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Speaker 1: could they had an avenue to do so. People, mostly women,

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Speaker 1: recount doing this and having fun in a space they

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Speaker 1: may have never entered or thought that they couldn't do it,

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Speaker 1: were intimidated by it. They joined with friends and then

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Speaker 1: go on to train others so that the community could

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Speaker 1: support itself. And because it was built by volunteers who

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Speaker 1: are fans, it was built around their feedback. The tagging system,

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Speaker 1: which is one of my absolute favorite things for instances

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Speaker 1: so good. It's so good, they're so creative. So basically,

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Speaker 1: if an author wants to tag a thing in a

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Speaker 1: way that might not be how a reader searches for it,

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Speaker 1: but is the same thing, they should end up wrangling

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Speaker 1: to the same story. So they are these people called

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Speaker 1: tag wranglers. And so if I type in sad murder

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Speaker 1: Dad and Star Wars fan fiction, but it's really just

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Speaker 1: exactly it should still bring me to that story even

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Speaker 1: if it's not tagged sad murder Dad. People who worked

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Speaker 1: on this the tagging system understandably feel really proud of it,

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Speaker 1: including a founding member, Michelle Tepper, who told Verge, I

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Speaker 1: actually have saved on my phone the tag page for

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Speaker 1: fields i e. Emotional stories. You can just scroll through

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Speaker 1: and see all the different version of feels, feels exclamation part,

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Speaker 1: all the fields, so many feels. I'm like, this is

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Speaker 1: the greatest thing I have ever helped make happen in

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Speaker 1: my career. And she worked for MTV and BBC. By

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Speaker 1: the way, um, I mean I we used to say

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Speaker 1: that as a kid, all the fields, I have to

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Speaker 1: feel all the fields, and that was a common place

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Speaker 1: I used in high school and college for real. So

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Speaker 1: who's spying on me? Our chive of our own is

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Speaker 1: all about getting to the truth comes out. And then

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Speaker 1: Lucy Pearson, he was originally a volunteer and one of

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Speaker 1: the coding initiatives and moved on to become the chair

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Speaker 1: of the Accessibility Design and Technology Committee, said of the experience,

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Speaker 1: it was really quite exhilarating coming in on the coding

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Speaker 1: side and doing something that I'd never even really considered

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Speaker 1: doing before. It really made me rethink who I was

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Speaker 1: and what I could do. So with all of this

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Speaker 1: work and organizing a O three went into our in

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Speaker 1: two thousand nine, the launch was out without problems. For one,

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Speaker 1: they realized they didn't have a real way to invite

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Speaker 1: people to join. People worked around the clock over Christmas

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Speaker 1: holidays that year after they ran no Vic's holiday fan

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Speaker 1: fiction exchange on AO three and it involved people around

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Speaker 1: the world and did result in a lot of burnout

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Speaker 1: in the early days. On top of that, because it

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Speaker 1: was developed by mostly white, mostly middle class, and mostly

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Speaker 1: American Western women, that some of that biases went into

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Speaker 1: the programming and that has been a topic of much

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Speaker 1: discussion and debate lately. UM, and yes, it's something we

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Speaker 1: always have to keep in mind with technology around AO

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Speaker 1: three's policies and handling of concerns of people of color.

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Speaker 1: So basically, there's three tags. Oh there's three tags that

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Speaker 1: you have to tag um no matter what. And one

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Speaker 1: of them, as we talked about in doubt com is

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Speaker 1: rape or non consensual. But right now, racism isn't one.

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Speaker 1: So that's one of the pushes is to get that.

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Speaker 1: As one in a group of scholars and fans wrote

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Speaker 1: the O t W a letter reading in part, we

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Speaker 1: strongly urged the board to take immediate steps to help

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Speaker 1: make fandom of space where all fans, particularly black, indigenous,

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Speaker 1: and ethnically marginalized fans from all over the globe can thrive.

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Speaker 1: In response, AO three launch functionalities like blocking users when

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Speaker 1: logged in and turning off comments, But still many on

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Speaker 1: the board lament how slow it is to change and

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Speaker 1: how there are still pages up from two thousand nine.

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Speaker 1: The perception of fan fiction, however, has changed quite a bit.

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Speaker 1: One of the board numbers was on a wiscom panel

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Speaker 1: soon after A three launch, called fan Fic Threat or Menace.

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Speaker 1: It was scheduled at ten thirty at night, and a

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Speaker 1: part of the description asked if fan fiction should be

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Speaker 1: quote accepted as a legitimate creative activity. A decade later,

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Speaker 1: that same board member appeared at the same conference on

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Speaker 1: a packed panel in the middle of the day, explaining

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Speaker 1: to people's shock they had not always been welcomed at

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Speaker 1: this convention. Time magazine named AO three one of the

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Speaker 1: best websites in two thousand thirteen, and it won a

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Speaker 1: Hugo Award in twenty nineteen. Cope's university, the ones she'd

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Speaker 1: been afraid of being fired from for writing fan fiction,

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Speaker 1: put her picture on the front page a part of

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Speaker 1: their success was their ability to lessen the fear of lawsuits.

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Speaker 1: So as I said, like in the early days, you

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Speaker 1: would be scared these big companies are to show up

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Speaker 1: at your door. You're getting huge trouble and you have

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Speaker 1: to explain your fan fiction in front of people like

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Speaker 1: legal setting. Yeah, they've been able to lessen that fear,

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Speaker 1: which is allowed fan fiction to strive even more. Something

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Speaker 1: else is the community. Yeah, ultimately, that keeps it running.

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Speaker 1: That's what keeps it running. It's why there are no ads.

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Speaker 1: Geek culture at largest changing and more women and marginalized

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Speaker 1: folks are claiming their space. People who worked on and

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Speaker 1: in some cases continue to work on three worn that

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Speaker 1: we're still seeing bands like what Happened on live Journal

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Speaker 1: that imparts spurred all of this on other platforms UM

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Speaker 1: and then I just wanted to mention this is something else.

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Speaker 1: Samantha gets random text for me about they have donation

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Speaker 1: weeks and it is wild to have a goal of

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Speaker 1: like fifty and they'll raise five hundred thousand and no time.

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Speaker 1: And so I donated to the last one and I

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Speaker 1: got these really cool cards that have a different fan

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Speaker 1: fiction tripe on all of them, a different tag. I

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Speaker 1: love them, and I also love this story. It's um

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Speaker 1: It's what we often talk about when bridget comes on

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Speaker 1: women in marginalized folks teaching themselves, making spaces on the

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Speaker 1: internet for themselves when they don't see them or feel

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Speaker 1: threatened by like male capitalist dudes coming in. And yes,

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Speaker 1: there are still problems to be addressed, absolutely, and changes

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Speaker 1: to be made to make sure it is as inclusive

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Speaker 1: as it can be, as beautiful as I know it

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Speaker 1: can be, and so that it can continue to grow

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Speaker 1: and thrive and be this space that I I'm so

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Speaker 1: it has given me so much and I want to

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Speaker 1: make sure it's this So anyway, thank you, thank you,

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Speaker 1: thank you for letting me share this story. It was

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Speaker 1: a bit long, but but I just really I didn't

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Speaker 1: know this as somebody who uses this website every day,

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Speaker 1: and I thought it was a great story. So listeners

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Speaker 1: as always, If you want to share your favorite fan

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Speaker 1: fiction sites or your favorite fan fiction, that would be great.

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Speaker 1: You who are your favorite tax that would be great.

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Speaker 1: You can email us a Stuff da Mom, Stuff that

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Speaker 1: I Hurt mea dot com. You can find us on

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Speaker 1: Twitter at mos stuff podcast or on Instagram and stuff

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Speaker 1: I Never told you thanks as always to our super

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Speaker 1: producer Christina. Thank you Christina, and thanks to you for

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Speaker 1: listening stuff I Never told you the protection by I

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Speaker 1: Heart Radio. For more podcast in my Heart Radio, you

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Speaker 1: can visit me I Heard You, app Apple Podcast, or

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Speaker 1: ever you listen to your favorite shows