A Geek History of Time - Episode 217 - Fan Fiction Part I

Episode Date: June 24, 2023

BELLS Blow in her face and she'll follow you anywhere. You are destroying the Constitution of the United States, may God have mercy on your souls. Good day. Yes. It's a very sad word. We could be sad if we just elected the right white man to power. That's creepy, but that's a different category of creepy.

Zitsu, Zitsu, Zitsu, Zitsu. Gary Gai Gai. Of course he introduced zoning law. creepy but that's a different category of creepy. Z with most episodes I can bring him back to wrestling. Right, well he's got other people who work for him who also do things. And they can use mutate, kill and size into smaller worlds after all. Fuck you. He still don't give a shit about getting fake property in a fantasy game. ʃən ʃən ʃən ʃən ʃən ʃən ʃən ʃən ʃən ʃən ʃən ʃən ʃən ʃən ʃən ʃən ʃən ʃən ʃən ʃən ʃən ʃən ʃən ʃən ʃən ʃən ʃən ʃən ʃən ʃən ʃən ʃən ʃən ʃən ʃən ʃən ʃən ʃən ʃən ʃən ʃən ʃən ʃən ʃən ʃən ʃən ʃən ʃən ʃən ʃən ʃən ʃən ʃən ʃən ʃən ʃən ʃən ʃən ʃən ʃən ʃən ʃən ʃən ʃən ʃən ʃən ʃən ʃən ʃən ʃən ʃən ʃən ʃən ʃən ʃən ʃən ʃən ʃən ʃən ʃən ʃən ʃən ʃən ʃən ʃən ʃən ʃən ʃən ʃə This is a geek history of time. Where we connect, in order to the real world. My name is Ed Blalock.

I'm a world history and English teacher at the middle school level here in Northern California. And the biggest thing going on in my life right now that actually comes to mind as I'm speaking is today was the first time in close to a year that I actually felt comfortable putting on my kilt. Not for any like dress code reason, but simply because I have managed to lose enough weight that when I put it on, I no longer look at myself and go, oh, I lad, no, no, no, no, no, bad, no. And so that's a, that's a big moment for me. I've been working very hard to try to get in more exercise and cut sugar and alcohol out of my diet. And so it has paid off. So that's that's kind of a kind of a

brag for me today. How about you, sir? Well, I'm Devin Harmony. I am a Latin and US history teacher up here in northern California at the high school level. And my son decided to tell me right before bed that he has finally started on a project that I've been encouraging him to do ever since I saw certain things on his search engine. Tabs that were open. They were completely innocent. But they were clearly exploratory as well.

And so I had to talk with him about what is good, about what he is doing, what is natural, what is what he needs to make sure he doesn't do in terms of hiding things from me. And he, so. Yes. Sorry, I just need you to be honest with me. Is your son using black primer on miniatures?

Is that is that what's going on here? Wrong kid. Okay, right. Sorry. Yeah. But he he says he said a word that I was like, wait a minute. And it sent me spinning in a different direction. He talked about characters getting shipped. And I was like, wait a minute, are you reading the I need? Turns out, no, he's not where Dino and I need us were shipped. But by Venus, well, the first fanfic, if you will. But he has started writing his own fanfic as of today, he told me right before bedtime bedtime and I'm like, oh my god, that is awesome. Wow. I assume any Give me permission because I asked him immediately. I was like, hey, okay, yeah, it was on my show and he gave me permission and He I think it's Sonic the Hedgehog So Sonic the Hedgehog, okay, yeah

My son would would probably very much be eager to read that. I am too. I am too. Okay. Well, yeah. I'm sure. So, you know, it's remarkable the the the the kismet of that because if you look closely, you may notice we have a couple of people in this virtual room with us. Oh, we do indeed. Right now. Who I have invited to speak with us on none other than fan fiction. And I'm going to real quick give them an introduction. The first one is a very dear friend of mine who was a best man at my second wedding. Sean Smith, who go ahead, Sean, let the people know your background who you are. Hi, I'm Sean Smith. And part of the background that I think can be useful here at least is I'm very old.

And I spent all of it on at least is I'm very old. And I spent all of it on computers and much for writing fanfic. Okay, real quick, just for a little bit of additional depth on that. What what I don't do depth properties. Nice, nice, that's good. But what? Back to brutal. Yeah.

What? What fandoms have you primarily written in? But what? Yeah, what? What? What fandoms have you primarily written in? Well, let's see. Most active in X files going back to the 90s and quantum leap. And then in more recent years, Harry Potter. Okay. And so talk about one of the things that really can use the

transformation power or fanfic. Oh yeah, Harry Potter. Yeah, we will definitely get into that. So glad to have you here, sir. And the other guest has actually been on the show before. A friend of the show and a great friend of mine, sadly former co-worker from a number of years ago, Tessa. Say hi, Tessa. Let us know. And what is your specific background in fanfic? So, everybody knows. So, hello. We're just doing this first name because I don't need any crying young mimes trying to find anything more. Should they stumble upon this about my participation in internet subcultures, but I have spent a lot of my younger

repressed figuring out my queer self consuming a lot of fan fiction and not a writer myself but doing a lot of fan art and working with big writers to either draw themes or do collaboration as well as some better work. Awesome. What work? Better work, which is something that we'll talk about at some point on the show, but it's basically like an editor. Okay. Cool. Nice. And you don't want your last name of rap being mentioned.

Absolutely not because I will say the fandoms that I am involved in or have been involved in one of them is quite small. involved in one of them is quite small. And I am quite well known as an artist on there, but definitely was in the very first fandom of Supernatural, which ended in season five, and we'll never talk about any other part of it, except for the one season of the Dix. We'll let that one slide. The rest of it never happened, though.

And also being very prolific in the carry on fandom. And I have started illustrating for a new anime that came out called Buddy Daddy's, so that has absolutely annihilated me as a parent of a four-year-old because there is a four-year-old in it. So that'll just go badly. Yeah. So all fandoms were not using the last name. Okay. So very cool. Yeah. All right. Well, Ed, these are people that you brought to us. I know nothing of fanfic other than my understanding of what Virgil did. So as my understanding.

And I got to say, that is fanfic. I mean, that is that was state sponsored fanfic by the by yeah Because because it wasn't actually really a I neis it was actually Augustus Augustus. Yeah, sorry. I had a complete brain fart there But yeah, and it's just basically whatever Odysseus did so did I neis so Odysseus did Cersei so did I ne So Odysseus did Cersei so did I Nias. Odysseus went to Sicily so did I Nias. Like it's just it's overall.

Yeah, so it's, oh yeah. Now the state sponsor fanfic, we've seen the golf and Tonkin resolution also states monitored fanfic, but beyond that. Um. But beyond that. Interestingly, the one thing that you were also counting about. Yeah, well, I did. Yeah, all right. I mean, that was that was an early example of a flag. Sure. In fact, her, I guess guess a tag of a sort.

But the one thing I would add to what you were saying about Virgil and the idea is since it was actually really about Augustus, it was that kind of a real person thick, which is a whole other subgenre that's just deeply, deeply weird, but at this point, I'm going to hand it over to our invited experts. And specifically, I think the best place to start would be with Sean, because I know from the moment I mentioned to him that I was thinking about trying to do a show on FanFick. He gave me a great number of resources out of a fire hose and I know he has been preparing acidiously for this. So I think we'll probably start there and then as we usually do when questions come up or we have things to add, we'll jump in. So Sean, as our first expert up, please lead in with fanfic.

Alrighty. Well, for everybody who either has a highly elevated, liter, literate taste in fiction, uh, or alternatively, um, you know, just tries to stay away from the weirdos on the internet. You may not know what fanfic is. A fanfic is a portmanteau of the words fan, fandom fiction. It's a transformative new work written by a fan of an existing work fiction that is based on that work. Basically, the good parts of this is that it can be a recontextualization of that original work. It can involve genre shifting that out of what it had been into something new or it can be straight up revisionist. And I know you guys usually start these things with the thesis statement. I'm

going to give here's a thesis and then I will lead into a bunch of evidence and and does that I better organized. I usually like give an entire episodes worth of history and at the very end and go, by the way, here's the thesis. So like, I mean, it is the whole to do that. But I'm horrible about my background information. Ed is highly prepared. Yeah. No, I said organized. There's a distinct difference. Oh, okay, okay, okay. Yeah. I was. Yeah. You had Mark going there, man. I was like, yeah, you had my heart going there, man. Both of you worry me. I just want to say like as much as I love the both of you, dearly, I cue anyway.

It's okay. I'm just here to ping off of whatever happens. So that's great. Brother deep inside. So so but based on your definition there, would it be fair to say then that the 7th Samurai, not 7th Samurai, the magnificent 7th is fanfic of the 7th Samurai? Oh my gosh. You know, it's not even, no, you know what?

I don't think it's even necessarily fair to say that. Because the problem no, because the problem is that one is fanfic all the way down to like the bottom of the ocean. That one's even crazier than that. There is actually more movies before that even. There was based off of it. It's actually if you go and checkers, I want to say 14 or 15 different movies that have each been based one off the other all the way through most recently, uh, lucky number 11, I think was most recent one. Oh, wow. Really?

Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. I mean, I didn't see that one, but looking at the trailers, I didn't, I didn't immediately look at that and go, Oh, that's seven samurai again. Okay. Wow. Oh, that movie seven was just fanfic of the seven samurai as well. Talk about a genre shift. Yeah. All right. All right. It was head and shoulders above the rest. Really. You know, all right. All right. What's our time?

What's our goddamn time? I don't know. This room's been open for over an hour. Just in case. All right. Fine. God damn it. Sorry.

All I can say is, you was thinking outside of the box. That's right. Oh. God damn it. Okay. Sorry. Carry on. And we're walking. We're walking. Okay. So. So yes, you're these are getting. I'll actually definitely go to avoid that because I thought it'd be really clever. I thought it'd be going, you know, outside of the box, if I saved that till the end. Yeah, yes, Ed. I went back there.

Yeah, yeah, I know. Yeah, but good news. May a call, but may I max, McCulpe? I'm very sorry for all of my sins. Okay, a little too far there. A little too far. Sorry for I got greedy. Yeah.

Okay, so we're going to start with the beginning and the report head. I can't torture him. This grass ball. Enjoy. I'm not even gonna know. Okay, just all right. Retake number four. Yes. You were saying I was saying we're gonna start the very beginning of all fanfic and that is going to be the gold press Latin the major fanfic Star Trek. Yeah, I know. So if we go back to immediately preceding the the 60s of 1959, at that point in time, we had people making 75 cents an hour

people making 75 cents an hour in wage. Okay. And in what it was 1959 was the invention of the first popular version of the Xerox machine printing a page cost 25 cents. Okay, so third of an hour's ages to make one photocopy. One page. Yeah. It should be noted that the Xerox 94 is the kind of incredibly reliable machine that came with a built-in fire extinguisher. I'm pretty sure we had one of those in a job I worked at in Seattle. Oh, yeah. Well, I mean, that sounds familiar to me from from an office job

from a long time ago, but yeah, okay. In education, you guys have things like, you know, Kuneha form still in use, I would not be surprised. This was this was oddly enough not an education job, but anyway, carry on. So sorry. So we've got this quite frankly technological situation, which you are not going to be making prittings. At the time, the most popular method for published work is a version of the lithograph that is still in use today.

the lithograph that is still in use today. And this is something that requires quite frankly a lot of setup. It had been up until a few decades before, movable type, which is the thing you always see people do if you see the movie and they've got somebody setting up a printer, they got the little metal blocks with letters etched on each one of them. That was replaced with etching the entire text for an entire page onto it. She is something originally stone hence lithograph but Didn't matter etch something and then printing well it meant that you had to make a master for every print so if you're doing You know the Bible or you know, the Bible or Dr. Javago or something, someone's going to go ahead and pay for all those, but if you wanted to print something for a few friends, not so much, y'all have probably in your education careers encounter the memiograph Or am I the only old one? When, when I was, it was, oh, I'm sorry, go ahead. No, no, maybe you go ahead. I was just going to say there's one in the

corner for emergency purposes when the other two late, like four generations old, um, machines break down. And there's always that one teacher who still knows how to run the mimeograph. And in my career, we have seen both of those go away, both the one who knew and the machine in that order. Let's be honest, they also enjoyed getting high on the new graph fluid. Could be. That was why they learned how to use it. I mean, you know, I, we had one, my first semester of student teaching the middle school. I was at had one That their secretary I think was a was a Mimeo ink addict because she'd be in there every morning running so much shit through it so yeah

well God and that memiograph was basically the printing machine for the very first iterations of a fanfic. You go to the mid 60s when we now get Star Trek on the air, and you look at what's on the air with it. And yeah, there's things like Bonanza, green acres. Got women on the show, but bewitched, Beverly Hill Belize, Gilligan's Island. This is not really if you were a woman at the time, you weren't looking at this and thinking, I see myself in this show, and this show was aimed at me.

No, not really. they aimed at me. No, not really. And that's just TV. If you wander over and look at what you're seeing in movies, you're seeing even more. I mean, it's just, it's kind of brutal to look through and just see exactly how many movies didn't actually have female characters even talking. So many of the historical ones are like, oh, well, it's, you know, it's Jason the Argonauts, we don't really need any female characters there. No, no, but he is just a set piece. Yeah, whatever. Yeah, whatever. Yeah, really, and so this is

the point where people started seeing for all of his white frankly, tremendous and epic personal flaws, Jean Roddenberry's idea of what a story should be and what a society should look like. And it involves women on the bridge involved people of ethnicities who were not approved of the time on the bridge and involved originally involved unisex uniforms. And originally involved in the 60s and forms. Yeah. Before the studio got involved, it involved a woman as the first officer. They actually that was one of the exactly that was one of the first things they said, okay, first things you got to do here. You got to make sure you got there's a way to just realistic.

Jane, Jane, Bobby, yeah, Bobby, no, but she has authority and it's competent. I know. Right. Nobody's going to want to watch that. No, man, come on. Yeah. Listeners, who have come to the show in the most recent 100 episodes, if you go back to episodes 93 and 94, you will find Star Trek, the original series, Gene Roddenberry, a utopian fuck boy. And enjoy the heck out of those episodes. I did. And I hadn't really thought of using that phrasing until I heard you say it.

And then I was like, I'm going to be stuck with that for the rest of my life. Yeah. So 93 and 94. So in general, yeah. And back to back to the scene. Yeah. Back to the old gene. Gene does his thing.

And this is kind of the part that I find a little bit wacky. Star Trek comes out in 66. The first of the Star Trek fanfix, Spock and Alia, was published in 67. It was literally, yeah. Oh yeah, it was crazy. Now, unfortunately, I am old enough and decrepit enough to remember some of the...

There really weren't the kinds of abilities to choose what was on TV that you have now, or even what you had in the 80s. I came to my Star Trek fandom because of my uncle Mike. And he had one of the second generation VHS VCRs that was about the size of a backpack. And the top loader, right? The big top loader snapped down. Yep.

Yep. Did it have space for two cassettes? It did not have space. Oh, okay. All right. But did it have wood paneling? No, no. It was, it had the, it was the Japanese import.

So it had the fan bow paneling. Actually, I was going to say ridiculous, ridiculous slur finish they seem to like at the time. You know, I've got you. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Fairly spray paint. And no, he had gone through and taped off of TV the episodes because at the time even going into the 80s, you couldn't buy tapes of Star Trek. Or any TV show. If you wanted to see a TV show, you turned on TV and wherever they had.

That was what you watched. And so in that environment, the moment that Star Trek was on the air, it's great, but the moment they went on hiatus or put anything else on, you were done. It was a thing to go and buy copies of these scripts just so you could read the script that you had originally liked.

Wow. And I remember tables full of old paper scripts as being a thing to be sold. I think my first experience with fanfic was walking over to one of the tables full of kind of mid-purple, mini-agraft copies. I go, oh, I like to read this. And having the vendor reach out, go, uh, that maybe that side of the table for your kid. This side of the table, not so much. But Sean, why ever would that be? Well, some people... Can I tell you what this is?

Oh, please. Because in 1977, we had the very first flashback ever written, also in the Star Trek fandom, and it was a woman-loved woman flashback written by a female author. Did you say flashback? It just flashback, which is something we'll be talking about more in depth, but a flashback is essentially like the early term for a fanfiction that had a romantic plotline and a romantic connection between two characters, which generally took a more erotic turn at some point in the story. Hypergraphic note.

It means it's the slash in between the two characters' names when you're trying to describe it as in her slash Spock. And the slash being railed by Spock. It should be noted by the way that- But the Flash indicates sexual content, whereas the AND indicates either just like romantic or it can also be like friendship, and it's the non-sexual. Gotcha. That one comes later.

That was not- Yeah. Those of us who are really older like, oh you kids. I'm serious. Yeah to be a kid. Yeah, I came later. But that's why that side of the table was you got scared away from that side of the table. There's other things that come up later on.

Wait a minute. So is there other kinds of punctuation to like clue you into certain things? Like is there like if you're having sex with a chicken, thick, it's like semi-colon, thick? That's tag. We'll get there. We'll get there. There's tags for that. like if you're having sex with a chicken, thick, it's like semi-colon, thick. That's tag. We'll get there.

We'll get there. There's tags for that. You kids with your tags. In my day, we had Unix, Unix coffee protocol, and we liked it. Wait, they had like Unix having sex. We're not ever gonna let Damien write the fanfic, are we? No, in fanfiction, honestly. You could have that. I that I bet in fact I bet if I went on AO3 right now I could find it so you know

There's ever a bonus round. I will find it. Oh, it's that What is that HBO J.R.R. Martin series that you like so much Ed the hobbit J.R.R. Martin series that you like so much, Ed. The Hobbit? He muted himself because he's swearing at me and so. No, I was rendered speechless. You know how hard that is to do. I think there are a couple of unit characters in that show.

And I'm sure someone's done something. I had actually picked up my phone to try to look up that. Well, that will have been done. Okay, see that you're not going to hurt me with, because I don't give a shit about Robert. I know you just thought about Robert. I never had so known. Yeah, like, Rayworm and what was the...

The Sanctuary. Varus. They didn't have sex. Not a series. Not a series. But it is worth noting that George R.R. Martin has has made remarks about fanfic that are not So what I'm looking for not complimentary not friendly And and there there is there there are

significant ongoing issues between many authors and the fans of their work who want to create fan fiction, because of the ideas that these authors have about authorial ownership. Because we know, mean, author, yeah, well, also, we must be honest, George R.R. Martin has just got made a ton of money writing quite frankly Holkin fanfic so he can just Quite frankly suck at sideways. Yeah, I'm sorry. I'm talking token worth the roses fanfic, but yeah For the I don't keep a keeping score at home. There are 224 fix with the unique tag. You're welcome. You're welcome. Thank you. All right

Okay, All right. On AO3. On AO3. I'm sure I'm not going deeper than that. But there's more. That's just on AO3. If there's a kink for it, somebody has probably written for it. If there isn't a kink for it, after you mentioned it, there is now.

Right. So the other part of this that I want to bring up as we're running through the timeline, look at the money is 1970, which is right immediately after Star Trek goes off the air in 1969. 1970, Cerox kind of gets a little bit more of their shit together. Printing prices dropped from 25 cents to 3 cents. And now, what happens? Fan-fix and fan-zines explode. And I mean that the metaphorics in that literally, they did not actually explode. They just got very...

You didn't need a fire extinguisher for the copier anymore. Right. Well, a lot of the newer ones, they were able to save it down to three cents because you don't really keep buying. You fire extinguisher propellant and retardant and all that.

Yeah, I was going to say office workers, but yeah, that works too. Yeah. But yeah, so they, the price of printing has dropped for specifically in a very short time period. And with it, the ability for people to actually copy what they wanted

went up. You know, for those of you who didn't have to make a lot of memiographs, the kid, as a memiograph, you know, you can only print a couple of times. You know, actually, I think it's a couple, but a thousand times or so before the original goes away. And at the time what you'd have to do is retie everything to create a new master. So it was kind of brutal. So you could make a fancy, you could have an idea, tell a story, put a story out there,

go to a one the early Star Trek conventions and sell it to people to recoup the cost of making it. But you couldn't make very many of them. It was just going to take literally all the time in your life to do it. Come to 1970, you could just hit copy. Right. And all of a sudden things start changing. And they kind of kept going like that through the 70s

up until the end of the, what I'm referring to is the Gold Press, Latin, the Major Fanfic ending in 1979. And it's really fascinating too, because when you look at, there's still copies that are out there. And because a lot of the time what you had was that women were the majority of fanfiction creators and fanzine creators, they were also the least employed at the time. So they were dependent on the income of like their spouses. And oftentimes what you would see, I was trying to find the post and I gave up. There are people who have copies of these originals means that have these, these, these

like thank you as an acknowledgment at the beginning, much like books do and actually is something that has carried into, um, thick, uh, build to this day. We still see authors giving acknowledgments to the people that help them. But in these early zines, what you would see are these women who were thinking, their family members, who, like their husbands, who financed these. Like we're willing in, you know,

at a time where we saw a lot of misogyny and we saw a lot of you know, negativity towards the creation of women these women memorializing basically the support of their spouses and their family members that pulled together the funds to allow them to print these To be sent as well as the people that provided like the support and the editing and things and so it was just really really neat When you put it in the context of that time to understand How important it is for us to have this type of evidence of this creativity movement that got started because of the societal

Constraints that it was growing and flourishing in right Right. And and the depth of it is kind of quite frankly shocking to read. If you go back to 1959, only 37% of women were employed outside of the home. Those who were were earning 60% roughly half of what a man in the same job would earn. half of what a man in the same job would earn. And that was completely legal, right? Quite frankly, saying just flat out, and I'm only going to pay you less because you're a woman would still be completely legal. Now, I'm gonna break in there for just a second.

When you say 30% were working, was that the number? 37. 37%. Now, is this of all women or of middle class white women? Because, okay, because then you get into the racial politics of what jobs are allowed to women. And you start to see that the work that a white man would do is worth a dollar. The work that a black woman would do would be worth 59 cents.

And they're only allowed in certain jobs. You get servant class type stuff, you get things like that. So like when we're talking about fanfic writers, where is this population coming from? Number one, and number two, do we see a commensurate representation amongst fanfic or is it still a very white thing with just a few people of color? Welcome to first wave feminism It's it's it's a beta release of feminism right. We do not actually support people of color or People who are maybe not binary or are not

heterosexual in any fashion, if you will, lavender menace is all unsupported in this release. A future release is planned to support these additional features. No, what you see is white women. Okay, this middle class white women. It's predominantly middle class white women. Which there will be like a couple. Mm-hmm. But yeah, and even now it's still very,

it's very fandom based, but I'll come back to it. It is really fascinating though to see that part of fan creation is sometimes creating representation in characters where there is a representation, which is really neat, especially from the art. And I'm back to that. Oh, don't worry, I have so many notes. Yeah, perfect.

I have, this is like my meat potatoes on this one. So as as friend of the show, Dr. Gabriel Cruz has said a number of times, progress is a series of problematic steps forward. Yes. So before we go, a fashion first wave feminism for not doing what third wave did, recognize that first wave came out of zero in terms of recognition. So it's important in problematic thing.

So it sounds like fanfic followed that same trajectory. A thousand percent. It should be noted that Star Trek was on the air 1966 to 1969 right the civil rights act That started the EOC was only 1964 is only literally two years before that right So in other words the death of a president to bring it out too Absolutely because that's how Johnson pushed it. He's like, Hey, remember who died. And the death of party in a region. I mean, can he push the CRA through? And then Johnson,

and there are multiple filibusters to stop him putting the CRA through. And even that, yeah. And even that, yeah, there's a great song there. But as Tepad and Weakass as the Sierra is as the bare minimum saying humans have rights, we'll push that. That was so far, a bridge that the Democratic party in the South jumped ship ship became Republicans overnight. Up until 64, the South voted as a block Democratic in every presidential election. Since the Civil Rights Act, none.

Yeah, so. Something about the current state of the party vote. I was gonna say a few, for the genuine Georgia, and a few others had a few times where they did Arkansas, another, yeah, but never, never get a block of voting. No, never is a block. You're absolutely right. Yeah. I shouldn't say like it was like,

and then no one ever voted for, for a liberal ever again. Right. Not that bad. But it is important to recognize it because one of the things that was, like one of the big impacts of Star Trek outside of fan creation, was the fact that the civil rights movement leaders,

like Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. actually like reached out to Ohorah, before I'm like blanking. I'm so bad with name, Michelle McCullth. I am like the worst with names. Everyone just be aware of that right now. I just remember like the characters, but he like actively reached out to her and talked about how important it was to have her in a main character role. A typical stance and what message. Just her doing that role gave to the community as a whole, to society as a whole.

And when you're looking at fan work, and you're looking at the history of it, looking at all of those pieces of nuance that are sitting there too, or just it's so much. Even though it's like a lot of people will be like, I was just start trying to just say if I would, it was doing so much work. It was been heavy lifting.

At so many levels. Yeah, that was just, you wouldn't think about necessarily. Oh, and I mean, it just, the number of hits that Americans took in the 60s in terms of the changes that were occurring, how they were frequently violent or threatening, how they were scary, and how they were upending things, including a lot of self-assessments. People, the laziest amongst us were upset that they weren't able to treat people,

however they wanted, because they were differently colored or they were women. The people who weren't just garbage were all of a sudden feeling really bad, because wait, hang on, I was part of this. I did not know this. When did this happen? I mean, going down the list of just the changes in the women's movement over that time period.

JFK is killed in 63. We get this civil rights act immediately. They're afterwards in 63. We get this civil rights act immediately thereafter. We're afterwords in 64 voting rights act as well. Yeah. And the voting rights act, but 65. So year before Star Trek, Griswold, the Connecticut, the Supreme Court holds that if you add the first, the third, the fourth and the ninth amendments together,

you effectively created a right to privacy. And that means that basically the state has no right to tell two married people that they cannot use contraception. Right. Because until 1965, it was just sort of assumed that your state government could tell you what you could do in your marriage bed between a man and a woman too. I mean, like, as, yeah, I like a small government, just small enough to fit through the bedroom door. Bedroom window. Bedroom window. Amazing. So 66 same year start tricks. Great. It is first on the air. Betty Frieden found the National Organization of Women. The following year, by executive order,

1, 1, 2, 4, 6, because they couldn't pass this through Congress because this was a bridge too far. Amazing, again, how minimal behavior is still too much. Executive order, 1, 1, 2, 4, 6. Bars government contractors from discriminatory hiring the more behavior is still too much executive order one one two four six bars government contractors from discriminatory hiring practices and establishes affirmative action. Saying you can't actually say these protected categories are reasons why you're not going to hire somebody. And if you do, we're not going to give you a government contract. Right. And the best bill not- Bill not taking private action,

but, you know, we're not gonna give you government money. Right. And the best part is that when people look at affirmative action, the lazy thinkers amongst the critics will speak to the racial stuff and not realize that the number one group of people who benefited from that

were actually white women. Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. 67, right down the bend on interracial marriage, loving for V. Virginia. Please note, 1967. So put it this way, you know that season of Star Trek with where Chekhov wasn't there.

That was 66. So after that, then you get Chekhov wasn't there. That was 66. So after that, then you get Chekhov in the second year. That's the year they said, hey, you know what? It's okay for you to marry somebody, even if they don't look the same as you. And what I love there is that Virginia puts on its license plates now. Virginia is for lovers. And I'm like, you can't do that.

That's not, you don't get to do that. Like that's like selling portraits that you painted of young men that you crippled with your own fake reasoned war. Like, imagine someone doing that. That would just be, you understand. You understand, Virginia is one of the founding states of America, right? I mean, our number one export, you'd think,

is guns and bombs, but no, it's not, it's hypocrisy. That's actually one extra. We actually have a nice little registration with the EU. Everybody else can't call it hypocrisy, it has to be here. They have to call it sparkling. A- Sparkling double standards. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah. Okay. So, I mean, it's absolutely crazy how, how this time when we're seeing people in space and we're seeing starships in our TV and, and all this, and by vacuum tubes, run by vacuum tubes, because the reality is, is far backwards. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Like, I mean, honestly, loving V Virginia. Okay, so that's 67. Two years later, we put a man on the moon. Like, yeah. Oh, yeah. Well, you know, but what I'm talking about putting people on Mars is the same time that they're talking about reversing everything that

allows for all of these things. It's amazing how you can go forward to the back greats at this time. It's interesting to me that this relates in my head to what friend of the show and previous guest Jason Barger told us is that you don't get punk rock in a society where everything is going great. Yeah. You wouldn't get Star Trek in a society where everything was going awesome. And you wouldn't get fanfic of the kind, you wouldn't see it show up the way it did in a society that didn't need for particularly in this case at this generation that we're talking about that didn't push an awful lot of mostly fairly young

middle-class white women to see this show where they saw themselves and feel like they needed to create something in this world because of how it affected them. So that I mean, you know, first get your picture, get your picture, get your picture. It's going to say that impetus toward art is as a real interesting It's kind of like when you test for antibodies To see if someone's been exposed That impetus for art is like that fascinating because what was missing that brought this art about What's going on? Yeah, which is the thesis statement of our whole show?

What's what's happening that this art is being made at this time? And that is a wonderful way to look at society is through the lens of, okay, we've cut out the stencil that was that art. What was missing? What did that overlay? Yeah. I did put a note in here.

In my notes, I put a subnote. It was explicitly for Damian as a little gift. I know Ed is also a unit in Rep, but I know you need. Definitely your thing. There you go. You got three years left. Three years left right here. Yeah.

Amen. Yeah. You're talking to the person who attempted to organize IT workers and network engineers 20 years ago to unionize. Yeah. That went that well. The, the, the input is that matters. I do not care the result. Because you know, people were not good. I, I, I didn't really quite understand what the dead men's zone and you know in between the trenches and where one looked like until I tell you started trying to do that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, but okay, so this kind of interesting. 1921 is the formation of the screenwriter skilled and 1936 is the director's guild of America. When was the Hayes Code 38? In 38. Yeah. And so this is a part that's interesting though, is this is a good generation after the 10, 12 years after the start of the film industry.

These are formed and they're formed because that's the point in which the studio system is developed. The first iteration of movies were all made by people like a small business owner would any other business. You'd have some money, okay, go get a camera and go make something and then go sell it. And that worked great. And then someone said, well, but if I just had a warehouse with cameras and props and stuff, I could just turn these things out.

And that works as long as you've got investment. And if you want investment, you get banks. The banks say, that's very cool. Who's the guy in charge here? And I say guy deliberately, they, they, they, they really videos in the 20s. What do you expect? Well, it is interesting. During the 1910s, directors were split 50, 50 between men and women. I know, right? I thought the ed look up though. Yeah, women made up a tremendous

amount of the creative forces in what would later be considered Hollywood. And then once the business and the finances came in, the number dropped a bit. So here's where it gets kind of interesting. They did a really good job of playing the unions against their members. Specifically, the studio said, well, you know, if you're gonna try and protect the rights of these women directors, women writers, I suppose you could do it, but that means we're gonna pay you all the same.

And well, as I mentioned before, we're paying them in half. And the screen artist killed and director's killed both folded like house cards. Yeah, that missed my own exceptionality is what's going to make me more than others. Certainly does weaken the unions. The space I would say that they did not work would be in the 1990s, lead led by David Schwimmer. He actually got everybody on the cast of friends to agree we all get paid the same no matter what. And by the end of the show, they were each making a million in episode. And that I love that story as much as I think, David Schwimmer. Maybe he did a really good job of playing a tool, but I can never not think of him as a tool.

But he unionized those six actors when Jennifer Anderson, you said an effort went swimmingly. Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh you do see if you're, if you're, sometimes you see that, that undergirding, like, actually working, but you're absolutely right. It did not work in the 20s. No, I was going to say, by the way, if you wanted to look at that at, like, but David Troyden prior to that, look at Bob, Bob Denver and Gilligan's Island. Uh, you remember the cast was not exactly wildly large. No, they're really, they're six people. And Bob Denver was a big star. He'd been on the many loves

of Dobie Gillis and was a riot. Yeah. Oh my gosh. For chance to watch this in black and white. It's a hoot. He is a hoot three three M's by that point, right, for Rocky Mountain. It's amazing. And Annie's song and no wait, what? Wrong one. Bob not John. Oh, sorry, sorry, he invented a new way to eat eggs, right? Well, what I was going to say was he's not the Bob Denver is not the one. I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'll let that pass. I can hate you all. Bob Denver is not the one who managed to take a four hour cruise in an aircraft with only three hours worth of fuel. Four hour crews in an aircraft with only three hours worth of fuel

So That actually hurt yeah that joke crash Good man. Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no burning actually no burning there was no burning is over it was yeah Water and no fuel so yeah, so mostly kind of squish All right, so yeah Bob Denver, but no, but really big on, what's really big on the on TV, but they did yeah, and the, they were going to be just a ensemble cast because there were six people. And you know, he didn't have a lot of, he wasn't the biggest star on the network or anything, so he couldn't do whatever he wanted. But he did say, well, I'm going to have approval

over titles. I want my contract approval over titles. There's a sure no problem. And they made the pilot and said, okay, what we're going to do is we're cutting, um, I'm the last one to blank on the actresses names, but Mary Ann and Ginger, uh, and this is how all the women were going to cut out of the titles. And, uh, yeah, and, uh, you said, well, that's what we're going to do. He said, okay, well, I have approval. Well, you can approve whatever you want, but this is what we're doing. And his response was to say, absolutely no problem. You go ahead and put those together, waves like that and he said, yeah, I don't approve

it. Do it again. And he said, but don't you prove? I have no idea. But until I see all my co-stars names on there, I don't think I'm going to prove anything you do. And I'm okay with you just making this over and over again until you run out of money. And thus, the actresses were actually in the titles because he drove that one home like a semi. Nice. Yeah. All right. So you're back in the 1920s or are we? Oh no. Now we're two four or two things against one last part there because I did

mention that the number of directors did drop a little bit from from the previous equal equality. Afterwards, the number of women directors now in TV and movies dropped to one half of 1%. Yeah, well, speaking not zero. We've been doing this podcast long enough that I'm not surprised. I think the phrase I'm looking for is because of course they did. Because of course they did. So as we're going through the 60s and we're watching what's on the air, I just had to make some notes of things and that just horrified the ever living crap out of me. The same.

67 again, the same year as all of us are else going on. The exhibitionist and Rosemary-winning novel and it was one of the top sellers of the year. And it's referring to a man writing about a protagonist who is a woman who is in adult films. And so of course in his mind she's an exhibitionist. And you know, we'll all be shocked if I tell you that the conclusion of this is bad things happened to her and then the book ends. And isn't he so clever and daring for talking about such things as women having sex

Also Rosemary's baby. Oh another man writing about a woman's rape, you know recreationally speaking Which that is the next year becomes a movie which the next year becomes a movie, which the next year becomes a movie starts off the possession craze starting in 60 with Roman. Yeah, we covered in episodes 24 and 25 if you want to scroll back that far and and made by Roman Polanski. Well, he's not a problematic individual at all. So I know no, no, it's good that he was assigned to it. Hey, I should probably jump in here on 68, the same year that the Rosary Babies come out of the movie. Gore Vidal writes Myra Breckenridge. Myra Breckenridge. Gore Vidal, I would like to a cis by white men. I think really fun medley's more, you know, if it's available and it doesn't move too fast, he's good for it. He's right, this book, Myra Brecknerage, it

becomes a movie immediately afterwards. It's written as the diary of a male to female to male transgendered character. Some of the changes are not by choice. Who in their first person narrative gets increasingly erratic and unhinged and before disintegrating and getting suicide. So great guy to talk about that. Oh, and of course, it's full of lots of graphic depictions of everything that I guess he really enjoyed. To let us all know who Gore Vidal is.

We'll jump forward in time of moment and point out that Roman, Roman Polansky drugged and raped a 13 year old girl, and he admitted to this. And then before he could be sentenced for it, he fled to France where they imprisoned him and he'd been locked up ever since. Yeah, wait, no, you were, you were right on the money, but right up until that last phrase. Did they execute him? No. No chemical castration.

Been no free. He's free. He's he's not that guy. No, no, well, I don't know. I don't know what he pays for in his private time. So maybe they didn't let him make movies or anything. Oh, yeah, it ended his career completely, didn't it? No, I mean, he never made it.

Oh, I think again. Okay. So, so because of course they didn't afterwards. Oh, I think so. So this is this is Roman Plaski, a terrible human being. And I and I use that word human very loosely Yeah, Gorvidal

stated regarding his rape of a 13-year-old child I Really don't give a fuck this a quote. I let me please There are quotes around this. This is not coming from my mouth. This is Gorvidal quote, I really don't give a fuck. Look, am I going to sit and weep every time a young hucker feels as though she's been taken advantage of. End quote.

Gorbidol is already dead. So, I guess that's positive. With that, we can all look at the right lining, the silver lining on this particular cloud. Yeah. So this is where we are. By 1970. 83% of Star Trek fanficrators are women. I would just be because it's because of a great, because of a great society that's working. You don't get

punk rock. Yes. I just want to go back to Gorgavid all for a second. Oh God. Given how awful he is,'s kind of like there was a there was a there was a there was a war movie. I saw a couple years back. It was like not season versus zombies. Yeah, you just yeah, it was a good one. Yeah, that was a good one. Yeah, that was actually good one. Yeah, and this root for the capitation. Yes, you're you're

rooting you're rooting for bloodshed. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I'm saying. You're and we're all voting for the bullets. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's really freeing to watch something like that. Yes, it really is.

And yeah, it's all of them. Twice over, actually, preferably one of them kills the other. And then they have to zombie to win first. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. If the zombie wins first, then you have, then you have zombie, then you have zombie Nazis. And then you can kill the zombie Nazis. Yeah, I don't want that. Oh, yeah. That's exactly good stuff. Yeah. Yeah. Because if you think so, you could farm that out.

All of it. They had a brain in the first place. Right. But you could just farm that out. Well, we're just losing anything. And have people just re-kill the Nazis zombies over and over again. It's kind of like what I imagine Dr. Strange living through 300 or 3 million plus times seeing start die and every one of them Just like that's got to be rewarding. It's just hey, Damien tell me which side you were on in civil war

Without telling me which side you were on it, right? I love the main they mentioned to get they mentioned to pick pick sides for that one that surprised me. Yeah. From a right perspective, you know, I was and then you look and go, no, no, that totally makes perfect sense. Yeah, that tracks. But your first instinct is, wait, what? Yeah. Yeah. All right. So, so 83% of women, oh, go ahead. So I was actually going to say, since 83% of women are fan figrated at this point, and you've got the fact that society generally sucks if you are a woman. And then also just, you know, coming into that part about how transgenderism is being shown.

In that example, that brings me to 1977 with the first flash-fick. But I also want to talk about what happened in 1976, because what we have is kind of how queer people are being represented in media, because again, you can't have punk rock in a society. That's great. And so one of the things that's happening is they are laying the initial foundations that be barrier gays trope. And there is a soap opera, which I have no desire to watch. So I'm just doing this all the wiki article, but I'm aware of it.

It is a bit infamous called executive suite, which is about corporations and it's a soap opera, so therefore it has to suck. And it was canceled very quickly. But in the five months that aired, it managed to do some stunning damage in the barrier gaze category where you have a canonical lesbian character for the first time on public broadcasting on CBS and this character first office shown to be a woman in an abusive marriage so obviously you could only be gay if you've been abused by a man. Lesbians are made not born. On top of that this woman, this character, proceeds to come out in an episode to a friend. And this is in one episode, not even like probably like 20 minutes.

It is a conversation that what I am about to explain occurs. The character comes out to her friend, the friend responds that she likes her to and upon realizing her lesbianism because her friend, the friend responds that she liked her to and upon realizing her lesbianism because her friend coming out has now awakened to its unnatural origin for self-walked into traffic and promptly hit by a truck and spilled. Oh my God.

And then in 1977, we see our first film, Slashvik, come out in the Star Trek fandom. No, they literally threw her under a bus. Literally, truck, but yeah. Well, okay, motor vehicle. I mean, it's like, Oh, no, I'm gay. So the teamster is pure the nationalism. Yeah. And I was like the big thing. And it should be noted things that are going on at this time

that are just in just Remind everybody what's what's 76 77 look like in 76 The Supreme Court ruled that women women do not require a written commission slips in their husbands in order to get in the portion. Right. Because prior to this, please note, you know, seven years after the end of Star Trek on TV, you need a permission slip. The same, the same barrier to, to health care was what we expected of women to have

is the same barrier to, can I leave school early mom? Like, you need a written permission slip. That's just, yeah. Come on, Damien, at this point, the outlook was, they're not fully legally people. It's not until seven that they can get their own credit cards. Yeah, what kind of 70 that they get their own credit cards. So yeah, what what kind of silly boy attitude do you have

about that? Like come on, no, they started out the property of their father. They become the property of their husband. It's just it's Romans all the way down. It's a transaction. Yeah. Yeah. Trans section. Yeah. No, no, no, that one. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, That was so long ago. That was that. Yeah. She's that old.

She. I don't think it's just. Well, you know, sure, yeah, that comes up later. Yeah, she's dead. Sure. We'll go with that. She was a boss battle. Like I love her book.

Love her book. She was a boss battle as far as fanfiction was. Oh my God. Yes. But I bring it up because this is kind of a thing you see is during this time period we're talking about Slicehick being the the the titographic slice in between two characters names and most commonly it's two male characters and the writers are mostly female. There's there's some troubling subtext to the objectification of gay male relationships for straight

women's sexual titillation. Is that too far? No, I mean, one of the things that we'll be will be talked that I'm gonna keep chiming in with anyways Really the only part I make and I get nothing. I'm sorry you will because you have to I mean Get it to you, but you've got to who? Areas as far as queer content in fandom where you've got queer content being created by queer people and then

you've got queer content being created by Adder and Orbit of People who objectify and fetishize these types of relationships. I'm going to put aspects on that when not all are the heteros is objectification or fetishizing I'll come back to that. Not all, but a lot. Well, it's a mind. It's a mind field. I've been in the trenches. It goes from rats in the 1340s carried bubonic plague. Not all of them. Not at all. Well, actually, it should be perfectly honest. I mean, I'm going to jump. I'm jumping. You don't mind. I got ADHD, I don't care, go for it.

Okay. Sorry, is there anybody here who's not medicated for ADHD? Really? I'm not medicated. The two single subject teachers, yeah. No, I can't be. I can't.

Yeah. So, so, so in other words, you're undiagnosed. Got it. No, the mask. There's a difference. Ah, you pass. Okay, No, the medication. I can't do it anymore. Oh, God. So sorry. No, the, there's an interesting thing here with, with, um, uh, straight women and writing. Right, frankly, gay male, male, fanfic. And I'm gonna kind of jump a little bit ahead to this because this is kind of an interesting thing.

You've talked about this a little bit on the show before. The Mary Sue. The Mary Sue is the kiss of death for all writers. If you write a Mary Sue, the story is automatically bad. You are a terrible person and you should feel bad for having done this. This is not true, but that's a talk. Well, so yeah, George Lucas sucks is a writer because Luke Skywalker, I mean, well, you know, here's the thing. The character of Mary Sue was in a one-page

story written in a fan scene back in the 1960s. And it was a parody send up of some bad writing. And it was the character Mary Sue shows up and everybody falls in love with her and and everybody falls in love with her and she's half, bulk in half, something else. She saves the ship and dies. This is the actual finale of V. It's basically that. It's, yeah. Mm-hmm.

And Mary Sue and I'm like, prette dolema. Oh, shit. What it is is, it is a very much a subjective hyping of someone writing a character that you disapprove of because you think that their success is a wish fulfillment of the authors. Like all the other writers writing success was not wish fulfillment by an author. I don't think failure or failure. Yeah, replaying a problem in their heads that they can't get out. But so the here's the interesting thing. All of the self-actualized

protagonists and Star Trek are all men. They're all men. Okay, we mentioned Sheldon Coles and Bartlett or King saying, you've got to stay on the show. You are where people are seeing that a black woman can be professional and competent and it's not running around and say, oh, help me. Kind of no. That's bullshit. This is what we look like. And so she stayed.

That's great. It wasn't until 15 years after the creation of Star Trek that the fanfic loving writer, Von McIntyre, actually put down names in the book for Uhura and Sulu. They didn't have first names until 1981. 1981, she names them, who were, she names Uhura, Nyota and she names Sulu Hikaru. And instantly, if you wanna read the end of PFX, it is a phenomenal novel,

and it is basically fanfic, but that's where it comes from. And that was still not accepted as canonical because it was in a novel when no one gave a crap. And so although she wrote this and everybody else wrote this and it's been around, Peter David, who was another author, but this one has external genitalia,

went to the set of Star Trek 6, you know, discovered country. And he was Nicholas Meyer to insert the names into the script. So they would become truly canonical because until these two men, uh, whipped out and peed on it, it wasn't real, but now they made it real. Uh, and so that was what the 98 or undiscovered country. Yeah, I think 90. I was still in high school. So I was 695.

Oh, yeah. Yeah, I was going to say, I was discovering that's five, right? No, that was six. It's the cleanest. Okay. That would be 95, 96 there. The one where they read the clean on language to having the verb to be. Right. Yes. Which still still bugs those of us who remember that clean on is supposed to be spelled to the TH. And yeah, so with the characters not having names, all the protagonists are men. If you're trying to write about your experience and you're saying, okay, well, you

know, I'm a woman who has sex with men and I have have a relationship with a man. And I would like to see this relationship in the thing I'm writing, what in the hell are you gonna do? You got three choices. You create a new character. Okay, great, maybe works. But let's be honest, if the character is able to do all the same things the Kirkans back can do, everything I call him very soon.

Because, oh, so this new person shows up and they can do all the same things the Kirk and Spock can do, everything I call it in a Mary Sue. Because, oh, so this new person shows up and they can do all these things. Yeah, I call that a character from a story, but that will get blamed for creating Mary Sue. Option two, you promote one of the three named female characters in all of Star Trek, to the role of girlfriend. Uhura, Rand, and your example. Yeah.

You only got three characters. They pick one of those three and say, someone, have a sex with them. Which is, I suppose, one thing you could do, but a couple of unfortunate implications there, they're all subordinates in the military at hierarchy. It's kind of creepy. I mean, it's really, really creepy if you're sleeping're all subordinates in a military hierarchy. It's kind of creepy. I mean, it's really, really creepy if you're sleeping with your subordinates. And they're not,

quite frankly, the characters have been doing everything. So either you have to turn them into the characters who do everything, or you have created a girlfriend character who's psyched secondary and subordinate, and that's kind of what you're trying to avoid in the first place. And your third choice is your right-slash-fick. And you just say, you know, Spock is a, is half-fulcans, half-fulcans have deep, powerful emotions that they don't show. Right. And they're much stronger than human men. And they have these, these, almost uncontrollable sexual

drive-up things. They absolutely have to control them. That's what makes them good people. And Kirk, meanwhile, is empathic, is empathetic. He's the communicator. Fundamentally, he's the bottom. And you just write them is you know A straight couple who just happened to be you know not

yeah, and So there is a portion of it that is absolutely I would like to write porn because I find it fun if if if if everybody has a ding dong because I like ding dong. So this is double the ding dong that's a thing dong because I like ding dong. So this is double the ding dong. That's a thing. And and I will poo poo it about as hard as I will poo poo all the straight porn aimed at men that have lesbians. At the end of the day, I just really couldn't care that much about what other people do. That's fair. Just that when you are the queer kid on the internet, it's very different and there's also that toxic aspect to people that make it weird and they impose toxic, misogynistic, stick like ropes onto characters that they are putting into like a feminizing kind of role,

but in a really toxic sense, or just like objectifying it where there is basically what it boils down to is, it's not just like, like ding-dong, here's some ding-dongs, it's like, I don't think like how it is. There's an exploitative quality of it. It's like, I don't think like how did it be? There's an exploitative problem. It's like, it was, yeah, and it's like, queer exploitation.

Well, yeah. And like, really like, creating like more of like the barrier gaze or like really doing like toxic things, like one of the things that always really made me angry as a bisexual person. Having somebody when they enter a same sex relationship or they're written in a same sex relationship, now they are no longer bisexual. They no longer identify as bisexual, but as bisexual, they have been cured of that ailment

and that. Bisexual erasure. Bisexual erasure is a whole category. Oh, it's like. And quite frankly, it is even, at this time, even weirder, huge in the gay creative culture. I mean, within... It can be, yeah. It's really bizarre. The older, the older.

Um, and that's keeping you... You look better through time, you know? Yeah, and you start to see as more people, you know, are more outspoken about being bisexual and doing that. But yeah, you're right. There was, and there still is especially a thumb of the older, yeah. Yeah, but those aren't the people who are writing bisexual fanfic. It sounds like it's it's straight. Oh, some are. Some are. But it's like a, but if we're looking at the big numbers, right. And and it's like a big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big LGBTQ community, generally when you're seeing bi-arachia there, it's the fact that it's within the weakening of the community, right?

Like you've got people who are attracted to pretty much all genders. Some people use the term hands actual, some people use the term bisexual, but you have these people who can be in what are called straight passing relationships where you have a opposite sex partner or a You know something that makes you look like a cis-head couple Regardless of if you are cis-head or not that then causes some people in the community to decide that you are no longer part of the community

and you can no longer identify with the struggles. And then what it winds up doing is weakening the community structure, which is still frustrating. And if you go and look through basically every single group everywhere that's existed, ranging from the issues within the African-American community regarding skin tone and passing and

colorism. If you look at that same skin tone issue for India, the subcontinent in Pakistan, if you look at, I'm Irish and over there, the number of us who are part English and that that's because it a big damn thing and in my own family with the combination of the Irish and Protestant or a Catholic and a nice Protestant. Yeah, that's the whole thing. an interesting thing where our native, not really tribalism, but troopism, because it's more great obnoxious monkey behavior, it's fundamentally about primate thing. That bit where like, I'm a, this is my little group, is really great, but we tend to do this thing where is really great, but we tend to do this thing where now we start looking inside that group and saying, well, but, you know, do we all really count? Right. And then we start through.

That just, I'm going to push back a little bit. That feels a little diffusury and, and Tessa, feel free to jump in on this as well. But it feels like that's a bit diffusiny because we're talking about, we started with here, straight people, largely, writing about queer content and they are exploiting it because they're not of it. And, you know, I don't think that everybody should just write what they know, but we're talking about that. And it gets into the straight approach toward by or homosexuality in the fiction is it almost I'm not going to say it's inherently exploitative, but it sounds like acknowledge the straight relief when a, uh, by person, uh, is in a heteronormative, but it's like, okay, thank God. Now we don't have to worry.

There's a thing that happens there too. Um, and the thing that that I want to just really make sure that we, we cordon off there is, um, that we don't diffuse that because there is a layer of power that is overlaying all of that. The the straight community has the power to define all the other things and we queer folk are reacting to those definitions on an existential level. And so if we then diffuse that out to end of so do the Irish do this and so do other people do this and that it's tribalism, I think it gets away from the power dynamic involved

in having, in having a conflict written in that way. There's the representation part too because like you've got, you know, like we were, you know, saying that like, you know, we, we don't have that type of really quality representation when you've got super heteronormative individuals writing about queer relationship. There is a narrative where you generally are like, you're not queer. Oh, yeah. And the same thing goes for like, I've seen work, which is something we're going to talk about later, like going to talk about later

like when we talk about like manga and dojinchin, things like that, but where you can you start to get this vibe where you're like, you are a little too into with the emotional aspects here, you're all so aware of some of the nuance of the conversations that go on in the thoughts that we have. You're not, you're not straight. You're, you're putting it on as if you are, but you're not. They're like these little towels that really are experiential. And if you are a queer reader, you're going to pick up on them more. The same way you're going to pick up on the expletive aspect when you're like, oh, they're just sexualizing people that identify

or in this group with this identity. It's often for bisexuals in particular, we have the unicorn concepts, where we are particularly spedishized and sexualized as someone who could be the other in a threesome. Never minding the fact that bisexual people have agency create romantic. Yeah, we have agency.

We create romantic and emotional bonds. And like, you know, we go through romance the same way that every house doesn't like how yeah, some of us have a whole phase. Have the whole phase. That's great. But it's like there's an objectification that is associated with the label, which is automatically this person is bisexual therefore they will have sex with somebody who has a whole

But I think I was a p-d. And there is no agency there. There is no There's sexuality is a situation it turned on here. Yeah, yeah, and so it's that kind of a thing And when you see that kind of thing written or you see like a person who is bisexual suddenly be like, oh never mind, I identify as gay, right? I identify as straight based on how they're being written. You're like, oh, yeah. That's not how that works. And it's not necessarily a bit of seething or racial.

It's just literally a straight person who has no idea what it's like to be bisexual. As spoken to a real life bisexual person, has no interest in like what it's like to be bisexual. As spoken to a real life bisexual person, has no interest in like what it genuinely needs to be bisexual. I really think of Willow and Buffy. Yeah. Wait, hang on, you're gay.

You've dated Ben, like Ben, romantically. But now that you're with a woman, you are. Exactly. 40 years ago. 40 years ago. There's also the idea of the, But now that you're with a woman, you are. Exactly. Because I can't wait for that. There's also the idea of the, oh god, why did they call that? They have a special term used for a, I can't remember. And it's super isolationist and it's really gross.

But for lesbian, I can't remember. Gold star lesbian. Gold star. Yeah. Where they never had any sexual experience with anyone who I never touched a piano for the gold star which is really weird because sexuality is fluid and sexuality is a process and it is an identity that you figure out and some people are really fortunate where it's just like I got this and then there's other people that

you know go through a whole series of events figuring out where they fall on this spectrum. And there is, and like the cold star lesbian, you'll see within the gay community. But you really see it more with people who don't understand. Yeah, yeah. And it's the same kind of thing

where like when you see his head straight then writing, lesbian, they're also the the same kind of thing where like when you see hits his head straight and Writing lesbian. They're also the ones that don't understand how food work like you know Hey, Georgia are my Why am incredibly sexily when she's depressed like no that bitch has a scarer everywhere. She's wearing it She is thinking weird songs to her cat her cat is Questioning every life choice. She looks a lot of things super hot, not one of them. And let's you have a kink about crying,

in which case I'm not here to shame you, but she has to be inside too. I don't know. I mean, one of the consensual things, say fuck, I'm not gonna care. I'm not gonna shame you. Yeah, yeah. But it's one of those things where I'm like, you know, and that's kind of like what it

is. Yeah. That's when you did a lot of the Bayer, Bayer, reading for a lot of authors, some of who were writing slash. And yeah, there's an awful lot of this that is very dependent upon the art. And some people are writing fundamentally erotica. And when you're writing erotica about somebody else and somebody else's sexuality because you're fetishizing it, that's fundamentally that is the definition of objectification. When you're as a creative person,

identifying with somebody who's different than you, and trying to inform a story or inform a character with your experience as you're trying to identify with somebody who's got a different life experience than yours. Sometimes, that's not successful, but it's certainly an entirely different category of thing than objectification. It's just hopefully what all great people should be doing, which is trying to understand. I mean, if you're not trying to understand, I'm not really sure what you're doing making

things. Well, if you're not trying to understand what you're doing, sure what you're doing making things. Well, if you're not trying to understand, that's what we're talking about. Yeah, yeah. But that's the point of like the better readers and bringing in people from those communities to give you the feedback. And you can tell when the writer has had a sensitivity reader go through it versus like, or like, I just think, you know, like, specific, but I've read where they literally say like, I'm not bisexual anymore. And I'm like, as soon as I would I've read where they literally say, like, I'm not bisexual anymore.

And I'm like, as soon as I would see that, I would be like, ooh, we're done. I kind of see it coming. You could kind of be like, hmm. Oh, not kind of. Usually you can see it coming in the first page or two honestly. And you'd be like, okay, you know what this feels

like a straight perturbed, yep, there it is. It's the, Yep. There it is. It's the it's it's it's it's it's from just mentality. It's I am opt and again, there's nothing wrong with being interested in a culture or being interested in that, which is different than you. That's it sounds to me. That's what fanfics fanfick is. It's somebody else's laid out a sandbox and you're like, I want to play there. Play the fanbar. Yeah. But at the same time when you treat other people's sexual. and fake is, it's somebody else's laid out a sandbox. And you're like, I want to play there. Play the sandbox with that.

But at the same time, when you treat other people's sexual identity, which is an aspect of who they are, not the aspect and accept aspect. And you treat it as the aspect, the defining feature is not that he's a red shirt, and that he is the son of an engineer. And he's a disappointment to that, that an that engineering. Now he has become a security guy. The only aspect you really focus on security Bob is that security Bob likes dick. When you do that and you define him only as that, that's where it gets into prom dress stuff. Because as a sis hat writer, you can opt back out. You can you can go back to your passing in your in your straight world afterwards.

A square folk are still navigating in multiple worlds. And that's that's speaking as a man who has been perfectly fine letting everybody leave him the hell alone. Most of my life as they just assume, oh, you're a big fat guy. You're probably straight. I don't give a shit where you think I'm not interested in you. So I don't care. Right. And there's like a, there's a harmful effect too. Yeah, come out for me, you know, and they're like, oh, you're a bear. I'm like, yeah, probably. But there's like, there's, there's harm that can be done through that prom dressing where like the unicorn keeps getting perpetuated or idea that you You you you you're like who sides of the coin and whatever sides you land on that becomes your identity and that kind of stereotype and then there's also the stereotype of being promiscuous and things and oh my

gosh my husband it's never not going to be hilarious and wholesome to me. I was ranting about this one day about how frustrating it is and how I have had to navigate having partners who have assumed that I am promiscuous or more prone to cheating to cheating and in fidelity because I am bisexual and this man who is so sheltered looks at me and goes oh my god that's awful why would anyone think that and I just look at him and I'm like, you don't, you don't know that stereo type and he's like, that's a stereo type. And it's like my favorite stories, especially within my fandom circles because we're all queer shit. But like, I will say this and that is incredibly cute. The idea of cocaine is in my username and he goes, he's Mr. cocaine within this.

And he's like, he is so... Yeah, I picked the username because I thought it was really funny because I didn't have diagnosed ADHD at the time and was still immedicated and unaware. And yeah, I was like, you know what I mean? Really? Because I was like, oh, things are made of stardust. I love science. And I love curl thinking., oh, things are made of stardust. I love science.

And I love curl thinking you know what else the made of stardust cocaine makes you see stars. And that became. It went downhill from there. So you're Mr. cocaine. Having met your husband number one, I had never heard that story from you before.

It was so. It was. But it is three years ago. Okay. Okay. But that is that is that is oh my that's so him number one. So him because he really is a human cinnamon roll. He really is. Yeah, number two. And you want to know the best part. I'm never going to be able to look at his picture again without thinking that's Mr. cocaine right there. Oh, he's a legend within the fandom

circle. Like we have like death of the author in real time. Like she engages with the fandom. It's fantastic. She knows who my husband is. It's great. I showed him. I was like, look, she reblogged you. He was like, I'm cooler than you know. I was like, yeah, but oh, no, he's such a, he's such a cinnamon roll and it was wonderful because after a day of endlessly cackling, bringing it back to fanfic, I got the pleasure of explaining the Omegaverse to that man. Oh, good. And yeah, regularly, I might do you want to watch the lawsuit, you want to watch the lawsuit

documentary, I know you do. He'll be a friendly drop-to-the-roller. You just documentary. I know you do. He'll be friendly, drop the terminology. You do those within a frame. I see a question in the eyes of our hosts. Yep. Yeah. Did you explain it? Yeah.

I was going to say this. I am far too curious from my own good. I think in several various lifetimes, a dead cat. And a schmuck bait always, always inevitably gets me. Yeah. I mentioned this to tell you that Tessa brought this up to me. I told him not to Google it. And she said specifically, don't Google it. Don't do it. You won't be happy. I said, but you want to say that I This is this sounds like schmuckbait. She got to do both and I did I did I did I regret it. I Will always regret it

And I'm here to tell you don't fall for the schmuckbait The schmuckbait is it is major Band of lore especially when it comes to supernatural and it is cursed is yet It is a generational curse that we will never end from the earth. All right, so let me Wish it's go bad Sammy. The wishes go real bad All right, so let me let me let me reel this back in one We were still working our way through the chronology and we we needed to kind of plunge depths there.

Uh, and so I want us to get back to that and find a stopping point there. Wait, at which point somebody will explain what all of this inside baseball was because many of our audience doesn't know it. That's the whole point we had you here. What the Omega first I'll do it. Everyone will give a warning. Oh, I will do it. Everyone will be able to give a warning, oh, I will. We will have a warning though.

First, I want to get back to a logical breakoff point on that chronology. So, okay. Okay, yeah, Sean, you're good. Get to a logical breakoff point on the gold press Latin the major fanfic. And how everything is shit and marginalized communities are creating content in which

they have representation. Yes. Well, we got this. It's sort of. Because here's the interesting thing. 19, the copyright act of 1790 was current in Star Trek was created. That said, 14 years of copyright, and if you're alive after 14 years you can extend it for another 14 they amended it a couple of times changing it to 28 year copyright and the 14 year extension if it's still alive. They made some tweaks to you know then change it to 28 28 but 56 years you're a cartoon mouth. We'll get there.

Yeah. Because that's the law as of 1912 with all that. They create Star Trek. Star Trek is created. Star Trek will become public domain in 2022 or for those of you who are looking at your calendars last year. Cool. So we progress. 1976 they create a new copyright law. New copyright law does couple of cool things, but they say, well, the copyright terms now extended

to the entire life of an author plus 50 years. And 75 years from publication or a hundred of creation picked the shortest if it's a non-homeless or work for hire. And anything made before 1878 is reactively given this extension to this extended time period. As of 1976, Star Trek will now become public domain in 2041. Star Trek will now become public domain in 2041. Eventually, it's just going to become like public domain once Zephyrm Cochrane does his thing. In point of fact, actually, you are actually really horribly, awfully, painfully, brutally accurate. Yeah. When they make the next change in 1998, Star Trek Interest Public Domain in 2086, as of now,

which is 23 years after first contact with Falcons and the invention of the Warpbright. 23 years after Zephram Cochrane launches the first Warpbright craft. Yeah. First Warpbright's Starship. Yes, technically speaking, Captain Archer would not be flying the NX-01 around. And do we really unfortunate post 9-11 Star Trek stories?

But yeah, that's just how far it gets messed up. And at the same time that we're dealing with this quite frankly this unprecedented expansion of copyright it should be pointed out that the purpose of copyright going back to the rid of Ann going back to the English was always one thing which was it's got to be some way to It's got to be some way to encourage writers, encourage creative people to make stuff. And so it's to give them a temporary, legally enforced monopoly on their work product for

a limited time period so that you make it, it's yours, and you get the profit off of it for a while before everyone's bought a copy and now it's theirs. And you should probably go on and write something else now, shouldn't you? Well, this extension, well, first of all, any extension turns us into I wrote something once. So it was successful. So I'm done. Right. And it defeats one of the purposes and making it retroactive. It's not like when they made this law in 76, they included a time machine to go back and tell Gene Rodinger, here's your pilot money, go make a couple more seasons, it didn't

make any more stuff. It was just there. So it didn't help anything. And what exactly, what's the point of this goofball crap? So it didn't help anything and What exactly What what's the point of this goofball crap? Well Here's something interesting 65 The heirs of Edgar Rice burrows

File four and receive a trademark on Tarzan Yes, the heirs the heirs. Yes. The air. The air. The air. The air. Yes. Yes. I always thought that he seems a little bit pompous, but apparently he had airs. Okay. Mm-hmm.

Okay. Okay. Sorry. The trick to do is swung on that one. You swung on that one, but swung on the heart. Well done. You know what? The trick to doing a pun in the show is you keep

going. You let him smell the fart after you've just did him. What's the problem is he's the problem is he's the problem is I'm looking at him. He's just staring at me like no. No, you keep going. He will catch it. He'll catch it. Yeah, he'll be okay. Oh, you get salmon. It'll be fine. Yeah. Oh my God, how did you tell? No. So this is the, there's a thing with a trademark is designed for, well, business purposes. Right. And the idea is this is a thing you used to sell stuff. And a trademark does not ever expire. It's why Coca-Cola is still called Coca-Cola. Ford is Ford is the... The British is East Indies, yeah. It's still called evil.

And so the existence of a trademark defeats copyright because it's now a perpetuity. It's gonna last forever. I don't know how in the hell that is legal, but they made made it work or they got someone to say yes, so there you go. And you go back through what's been made over this time period. From our good friends at Disney, Cinderella sleeping beauty. Got a jungle book. All of these are public domain stories that quite frankly Disney went and made a ton of cash on. Right. And and they

weren't alone. I mean at the the end of the day, we mentioned the magnificent seven, which was 1960 and Ed, you know, in Jimbo, which was 61. Talk about not taking a lot of time to say, that was a great idea here. Let me copy it. But really go back and look at it. It's kind of nuts. They were even the first one there. But Ben, her, during the center of the earth's King Solomon's minds, Jason the Argonauts, Mask of the Red Death, My Fair Lady, Fearless Vampire Killers, Murders of the Rue Mord, Voyages in Bed, Young Frankenstein, Monty Python of the Holy Grail, Rocky Horror Picture Show in 75, 76, Murdered by Death. By the way, pretty much all parodies, you can just kind of put a big capstone on say, this is fantastic,

because you're taking somebody else's story and saying, I kind of have to reference your story in order to be able to poke fun at it. Right. Yeah. And it's just as, it is an endless stream of this. And this kind of gets to an important part. Oh, I probably should mention that Star Wars

was released somewhere in there. And it is a copy. 77. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, it was a copy and paste of, uh, uh, Karasawa's, um, the reporters. Oh, by the way, watch that. It's awesome. And you'll be like, oh my god, I never realized that R2 and C3PO were were two Japanese dudes, but they were. Or that they were Laurel and Hardy. Oh my god, yeah. I heard that one. I was like, oh hard, I don't really see it. And I watched 10 Fortress and I was like, oh my god. But yeah, all these people are making a ton of money off of what a public domain.

And at the same time, Disney is backing these laws to collapse public domain into private ownership. Right. And that public domain is kind of important because that's how we communicate. I mean, Darmak and Jalad is not just a great episode of Star Trek,

an declaration, but I mean, it's kind of a commentary on fiction itself that we use the stories to exchange ideas, to say, this is what this is like, this is what this feeling was, this is what this feeling was, this is what this experience was. And when we collapse public domain back into private ownership, you lose the ability to comment on it. Harry Potter is left to his own devices for 11 years and you know, being clearly abused and no one's ever shown up?

That seems kind of, well, insane. British, isn't it? Yeah. Oh, British. Hey, you know, for the two confirmed bachelors in that friend group seem awfully friendly. And there's no gay people to story. Is there a reason for this? Right. No, you know, it sounds like what you described is a history of

people and then corporations seizing upon what everybody is at access to. And then pulling the ladder up after themselves once they've made enough money to lift the ladder. And that fanfic is people building their own ladders to climb back up. Which I like that. And there's been a lot of history of that too because Anne writes his mention. And one of her lasting legacies is always going to be exceedingly negative because it's the beginning. And like she is a fanficker, right? Her sleeping beauty trilogy, which is apparently now a quartet, is a fan fiction.

And I know she's dead, but I will die on that hill. It is a fan fiction. It is a erotic, poorly negotiated BDSM relationship, version of Retelling. It is, it's poorly. I realize I read this as a teenager. I'm going, wow, imagine if that was where my King education stopped.

I would have been, poorly negotiated. Very, this woman has no idea how BDS actually works. It's actually the great kind of bad. Yeah, but worse, because they are more depraved. But I mean, I would definitely remember these books. I appreciate the way it was, was the nila, but...

Twilight fanciest. But deeply well, yeah, but deeply imbalanced and negotiated and unsafe. It was a brave and I mean I was badly it was the more of a yes. Anyway because it's a Twilight fanfic. But she wrote fanfiction. And initially when she first created the Vampire Chronicles and interview with the Vampire, she engaged with fan creators and encouraged creations. And she would create these queer-coded characters. And then when people who are queer started creating content with these characters, it was far more accurately queer. And she started to have a big problem with it.

And that's when we started seeing her doing a misceasing, and intimidating fan-fick writers and fan-hartists, and led to these hilarious now, but at the time they were necessary, these disclaimers at the beginning of stories, absolving the fit-criders of any implied ownership of these characters that they were playing in the sandbox with, to the point that her impact was so lasting and so terrible that the day she died, people on A3, which is a fanfiction, our own, it's like the best organized one that's ever come out, ever literally people, you can back date when your FIC was published. And they had it set to the 90s of fanfic that they had written and racist characters that they published the day she died because she could no longer

come after them. Like that is how deep-seated people were building this ladder like I've just been a book and when they added rungs for the ladder out of spite. And like the whole one of the whole things about A03 as a platform is that they literally have a legal team because of an rights. Typically. And there's other authors and things that you know have attempted to follow suit, but with that idea of public domain or just you know, you know. Some, yeah, fair use kind of a thing. Boyle. That was just, it was fascinating to see

because you also have authors who hated their creations, which brings my favorite public domain and shrink Sherlock Holmes, who was entered the public domain this year, January 1st. Depends. Technically, it became full to the point that he hated his character didn't care what the hell you did to him. I was like, kill him.

I don't care. I tried to kill him. It's in fucking words. He wouldn't have gotten damn died. But with the people that then held the trust being like weird enough to be about it, but now they don't. Yeah. Delightful.

So usually at this point, yeah, usually at this point, we reflect on what our takeaway is so far before we go to a break in a two-parter, or you know, four parter, six-parter, whatever we wanted to do it just reference Batman. Yeah, I'm so sorry. Oh, mega. Yeah, I still have we don't watch packs. No, no, we probably don't. So but based on that, I'll throw it to Damian first. What is your takeaway at this point? I'm going to defer my takeaway and I'm going to seed my time to the lady from the box below me because we promised at the end that people would get a payoff on a quick and easy of the Omegaverse.

Again, not a Damien level insane amount of research on it, just the readers digest version so that people know what the hell that was for 10 minutes, about 20 minutes ago. So I can do that. Please do. So I will say what this is based in a lot of things, including cake, but also identity and gender roles. So if you are someone who regularly avoids various tags, I'm going to throw this in with a dead-do-not-eat. If you don't know what that is, we will get deep into it. If you are unsure if this applies to you, it does. Okay, so should I tell people to scrub forward three minutes? Yes, scrub forward like three minutes or so at this point

because I'm going to give you the most. Starting now. In my opinion, beloved yet cursed trolls that have gone. Yeah, you got three minutes to do it. All right, let's go. So it started with the supernatural fandom as all awful, wonderful wonderful terrible things do. But the Omegaverse is an alternate universe in which fan writers and creators can create content

which assigns a secondary gender to individuals. This is for storytelling purposes, but also is for This is for storytelling purposes, but also is for erotic purposes and relationship purposes. But instead of having the gender binary, as we know it, it includes three extra genders, alpha, beta, and omega. The alpha gender, I have to do with the idea of an alpha apex predator is the strongest gender, generally has some kind of phallic device that produces reproductive fluid. I don't remember what it's called. Okay.

I should, it doesn't matter. Goes by various names depends on what you're doing. And that reproductive is basically like the equivalent of semen. Then you have the beta gender. The beta gender is like a middle of the road, is sort of slightly more dominant, but also slightly more submissive

than the other gender. And then you've got the, and they're just kind of like a vibe, they're there. They could technically carry offspring, I think, sometimes, sometimes they are sterile. It really depends on the way that you're interpreting it. And then you got the final gender, which is the omegas and the omegas are the terrier gender, the gender that's going to have the like womb type of organ that is able to be

impregnated by the alpha. Doesn't matter what the other gender is because if you have an omegagender, that is what you are able to do. There are various ways that this is to stress, but there are lots of terminologies and things that go with it as well as gender roles, and they often fall back onto instincts to give certain gender expectation

or gender-based behaviors to characters that have these secondary sexes. Sometimes they use it to subvert gender roles where an omega character would be less docile and would actually have more alpha characteristics, which you see. But yeah, it's basically just a way where you can have reproductive qualities added to any character, however you would like, and change dynamics with a secondary gender aspect Okay, but it's fascinating because they also do things where it's like They can explore discrimination based on the secondary gender and expectations subverting those gender expectations all that stuff

So it just you know kind of depends on what would minefield you're walking into? Okay, and that's the omega verse. I'm surprised you did put all the cross portions. That was nice of you. I mean, do you really want me to get in this flick? I don't think you do. Yeah, I mean, you don't want that. And we're back. Thank you guys for scrubbing forward three minutes.

That is what I have gleaned. Back to you Ed, what have you gleaned? Okay. I think the biggest issue that leaps out at me is, as much as Star Trek itself was a utopian response to the ugliness and all the chaos that people were seeing going on in the world and the inequality and the outright oppression and everything.

Even Star Trek by itself, as it was written, was a problematic enough first step to, again, paraphrase Dr. Cruz, that more was needed for many of the people who were most passionate about the fact that they were represented in it, if that makes sense. It was that somewhere, somewhere partway through that, I was afraid I was losing the thread, but I think I managed to get that thought out in a somewhat coherent manner. And I think in a somewhat coherent manner. And I think it'll be interesting in our next episode to get into what happens when we have, there's a combination of issues of authors who are antagonistic toward fan fiction creations of their own work.

And when a group of people who feel like a work has represented them, find out that the creator of that work is not their ally. And I'm going to put that out there without any names attached, but I'm pretty sure anybody who listens to this podcast knows exactly what I'm talking about already. And so with that, I will hand it off to our guests as quickly as you can. What is your takeaway at this point from the conversation that we've had this evening? Oh, I can go.

I think right now, the takeaway is, yeah, we're kind of like studying those foundational layers where we're talking about what kind of spawned this type of art that we're seeing and what that art is designed to do and how I kind of think like one of the things that we are starting to do and that I'm hoping we can do more is subverting this idea that fanfic or fan art is somehow cheap or not important work, really. And I think by giving it that context and really bringing in the historical components through its development and kind of where all those things are in line with how it's progressing, how it's developing,

or starting to see, as well as how it impacts the people who consume it. I'm hoping are starting to break down some of those misconceptions and misunderstanding about it and are allowing for more context and more nuance and things to be brought to this often under appreciated art form. Very cool. Sean. Um, Might take away from this. This is a day in and a, you have a really hard job.

I mean, We bring it on ourselves and we don't get paid. So, and you brought us on to make it even harder. I don't know. I'm worried about you guys. I might think away. Plenty of people are, but you're not. It's not not for the reasons you're talking about, but playing people are.

So. I brought on two neurodivergent dorks to talk about one of their hyperfixations. So it has a long running history. Yeah. Yeah. Godspeed. Yeah. So next round is whatever we're plugging. What are you recommending first?

I will. That's that's what I meant. I will. I will. I will. I will. I will. I will. I will. I will. I will. I will. I will. I will. I will. I will. I will. I will. I will. I will. I will. I will. I will. I will. I will. I will. I will. I will. I will. I will. I will. I will. I will. I will. I will. I will. I will. I will. I will. I will. I will. I will. I will. I will. I will. I will. I will. I will. I will. I will. I will. I will. I will. I will. I will. I will. I will. I will. I will. I will. I will. I will. I will. I will. I will. I will. I first? I will, that's what I meant. I will, I will, yeah. No, I will strongly recommend as yet more homework in preparation for me talking about Cyberpunk. It's going to be a big part of what I talk about. So I strongly recommend if you haven't done it already, find a copy, probably go to your, well, I don't know, maybe not your local library, but if they have one great, find a copy of Massimone Shiro's The Ghost in the Shell, the manga, I'm not recommending you go out and try to watch any of the anime or the, especially not the live action film. anime or the especially not the live action film. Not because like I poopoo the live action film, but because of what I want to talk about, the preparations is I want you to go to the source. It is a visually amazing and very, very, very thoughtful examination of a lot of the tropes

examination of a lot of the tropes that come up when you are talking about cyberpunk. It dates to 1998, so it's late enough that Shiro had the opportunity to really see the genre in the beginning and really comment on it in his work. So find it, check it out. Let's go reverse order, Sean. What are you recommending for people? I'm going to go with a piece of fanfic for everybody because I feel like it's an apropos. This is an unusual choice, I think. It is Alexandra Quick and the Thorn Circle

by Inverarity, I-N-V-R-A. Heck, heck, I think it's made a pronounce. It is a Harry Potter fanfic in the most loose sense imaginable and then it takes place the same universe, is a Harry Potter fanfic in the most loose sense imaginable, and then it takes place the same universe, but it is entirely set in the United States and follows entirely different characters

through very much the same arc of discovering your, in this case, a witch and going to a magical school. But other than that, it's completely unrelated. And very much a product of looking at the history of the conquest of North America and Central South America by European powers and what that's led to and the kind of the, there's so much to it.

Reading it, you read it, where can we find it? You can find this on fanfiction.net. There we go. But quite frankly, it's a complete series or the number of novels. And reading it, you will immediately go, wow, JK Rowling really did know homework, did she? I have things to say about that woman in her. Not even not even all the shit that's

the lowest hanging fruit, but just exactly that thing you're talking about. And I'm going to bite my tongue real hard right now. Perhaps we'll bring her up for dinner on the next show. Tessa, what are you gonna recommend for us? Actually, I'm gonna save my Harry Potter fuck Jake, here I lean, thick for the next one because it's actually quite well known. So there'll probably a lot of people that have read it, but I'm gonna save that one and

instead I'm gonna bring a personal favorite of mine that was written by a very dear friend by one of the fandoms I'm currently in. And regardless of whether you've read the books or not, I highly recommend Sort of Mejus Tattoo. The author is Rubadly. They're one of my all time favorite figure figures they have a just beautiful voice and they're just very gentle with

their romance and they're just they've got such a loving author voice I just it's just delightful it's like a warm cup of tea it is in the carry on fandom. It is the first thick I read in that fandom and they... Like I said, wonderful person, absolutely delight. And it's just a very lovely example of alternative universe utilizing characters, but just going really deep. I'm just just making the most adorable little relationships but just making you feel so delightful. Like you just feel joy reading it. There's no suffering.

All comfort, no hurt. Very cool. Very cool. It's on A03. Okay. Archives of our own. Excellent. Alright, so, Damien, where can we be found?

Well, you can find us on the Apple Podcast app. You can also find us on Stitcher and Spotify. And if you don't want to go to any of those, you can stream us directly from our website, geekhistorytime.com. So that's where you can find us. You can also find us on Twitter at Geekorytime.com. So that's where you can find us. You can also find us on Twitter at Geek History Time. If you feel like swimming through a pool of turds

to reach out to us, just take a shower afterwards. I myself can be found on, let's see, this, as the time that this airs, let's say that you will be able to find us on the May 5th. And if that's already happened, the June 2nd show of capital punishment at Luna's in Sacramento, bring 10 bucks, bring a mask, and bring proof of vaccination because it's still ongoing. But you will find all kinds of wonderful puns being sung there. We've got some really good lineups coming up so come check that out. And that's that's about all the places you can find me. Ed, where are you going to be?

All right. Well, I am a shadow in the warp. Do not try to find me. Yeah. But we collectively, of course, you're listening to this podcast. So you found us somewhere, whether that's on our website, www.yakhistorytime, or if you found us on Twitter at gakhistorytime there, or on Stitcher or the Apple Podcast app. No matter where it is that you found us, please do our guests. Don't do it for us. Do it for Sean and Tessa because they've put in the work. Give us the five star rating that you know they have earned.

See what I did there. And please make sure to subscribe if you haven't done so already. And I think that's it until next time. Well actually, let's start. I'm at John. What's Sean? Is there any? Oh, yeah, want to be found? I'm trying to be I'm trying to be even I'm trying to be the less of a of a presence in the warp than the net is as you like.

And Tessa, is there anywhere you want folks to find you? Don't find me. I'll find you. Fair enough. All right. Now I go for it. There we go. Okay. And so this is Ed Blalock for a geek history of time and my partner is. I'm Damien Harmony. And until next time, keep rolling 20s. rolling 20s.