A Geek History of Time - Episode 220 - Fan Fiction Part IV

Episode Date: July 15, 2023

I'm not here to poke holes and suspended this belief. Anyway, they see some weird shit. They decide to make a baby. Now, Muckin' Merchant. Who gives a fuck? Oh, Muckin' which is a trickle, you know, baby. You know what it's called. Well, you know, I really like it here. It's kind of a stone,

yeah I'm able to open people up. Well yeah, anytime I hit them with it right? Yeah, so my cleave landing will make me a cavalier. Good day, it's free. If sysclothed it was empty headed, plumbian trash, it's notrashed. It's not that bad. It's really good and gruey. Because cannibalism and murder, we'll back just a little bit, and build walls to keep out the rat heads.

We can't use to live in the ground. A thorough intent doesn't exist. Some people stand up to write gibots. Some people stay seeing gibots. Let me just... This is a geek history of time. Where we connect nerdery to the real world. My name is Ed Blaylock, I'm a world history and English teacher of

sixth graders here in Northern California. And we don't broadcast these in the order in which we record them. So this may seem jarring to to listeners, but I mentioned in an episode we recorded earlier that 13-year-old me was like ridiculously amped that a particular model was about to be released for Warhammer 40,000. And that model was released. And I picked it up and I held it in my shaking geek hands

and had the opportunity to open it up and look at all the parts on the spru and have my geek out. And that's awesome. The problem is I have been away from the 40k hobby for... I mean since I really picked up a brush or did anything, it's been over a year and since I was playing the game regularly, it's been longer and the the problem I'm now running into is I I have that one model and I have a plan for a whole fucking army to go with it and I have a plan for a whole fucking army to go with it which would be awesome except finding the money to buy the models

and the time to build them and paint them and then play the game again is in short supply. So still no regrets mind you, Hashtag worth it like a thousand percent. But yeah, I'm spending way more of my waking hours in the 42nd millennium than is at all healthy right now. And I'm falling back into the, oh my God, I'm going to rebuild a pile of shame mode. So yeah. So that's what I have going on right now. How about you?

Well, I'm Damien Harmony. I'm a Latin and US history teacher here, the high school level in Northern California. Your story reminds me of the productivity circle. The productivity circle, you can have three things. And you have to pick two. So you can have miniatures. You can have them painted and you can have sex. Pick two. Okay. Yeah.

You're okay. Yeah. Yeah. There you go. I'm sorry. I'm wrong. No, for me, I was not painting miniatures or buying them the other day. And my phone went off. I so I did not answer it because it was taco night. And I, that's a good reason. Yeah. And, and then I saw that they also tried to FaceTime or like, yeah, I think FaceTime or Facebook video, ChatMe. Like, okay, clearly this is a friend of mine who's very proud of something that he's done.

And he loves, I mean, he's somebody I've known since I was 13. So he loves sharing with me the things that he loves. And he loves hearing from me the things that he loves and he loves hearing from me the things that I love like it's a really wonderful friendship. I call him a couple days later, so I think yesterday as a break for my research as a reward for watching some of the things I had to watch for this show. And he and his wife adopted a baby girl. Oh my God, this is awesome. So I got to meet her and three days old yesterday, so four days old now, as of this recording. By the time this releases, she'll have a favorite look

or probably tap dance lessons. Yeah. And a boy or a partner. Yeah. Yeah. But as it stands right now, my friend is a brand new dad. And given that he and I met when we were both 13, that means he is 45 and just starting this.

And man. I feel his pain. and just starting this and man. I feel his pain. Oh, oh, like I'm like, and I dare say he doesn't know what he's getting himself into. But I also say that about anybody who has ever had children, because if they knew they wouldn't,

they would paint and buy miniatures. That's all they would do. So, but, you know, I'm very happy for them. They did not, I will not be disclosing names as I did not ask their permission to tell this particular story. So if you are that friend, you know who you are. And if you aren't, it could be any number of my friends

who are my age, because I've known quite a few people since I was 13. So yeah, it was really cool. It was really neat to see somebody just starting it and knowing that I am on the tail end now. Both of those things are true. I'm in the final third. You're yeah, but in some ways it's the most challenging. Not for me. Remember because the age group that I excelled with, always have. Okay. All right. But but having said that,

I will withhold further commentary. Sure. Sure. But I mean, don't get me wrong. I did a decent job up until this point. But now I'm in what I call the tumble and polish phase. Because there's not much direct stuff that I need to do with them anymore. Now it's just like, here's some guardrails. Let me know if you fall down. Like, it's very much that. So I look forward to hearing you and one of our guests get to that point. So speaking of guests, who guests again and just so everybody knows, this is the fourth iteration of this episode or fourth episode of this series.

If you don't know what we're talking about, you really should read the titles. This is either part four or D, either way, you should be going back to A or part one and work your way forward because that's how things work. I don't know what kind of weird-ass choose your own adventure way of listening to podcasts you're doing here. But I strongly... You're psychotic. Yes. Yeah. You are a monster. But Ed would you like to introduce our guests? Yeah. Our our two guests have a long experience in fan spaces. As you would already know if you're not a psychopath who listens to podcasts out of order.

And this time I'm going to hand it off to Sean first, alternating. Sean, go ahead and introduce yourself to the people. Hi, I'm Sean Smith and I'm a Peter Geek engineer by trade and a fanfic writer, occasional and video editor by Avi. Very cool and Tessa. Hi, I'm Tessa. I have a lot of experience in phantom spaces specifically as an artist where you will find me either drawing deeply emotional heartwarming stuff or Absolutely to pray for and there is no in between

All right, well there we go and when we last left off we had gotten out of the use net era and we were moving out of the fanfiction.net era. We were talking about rating systems, if I remember correctly. So let me just kind of ask, and I might be opening a can of discussion worms here by phrasing the question this way. But why is the existence of a rating system or the implementation of rating systems by fan fiction repositories archives, why is this such an inflection, such an important inflection point in the development

of fanfiction culture? Well, there's two. So the first one is that there's a legal aspect, which is not so much because there's necessarily like an actual legal standing, but there's an implied moral high ground of people who would prefer to limit access to certain amounts of content, or certain types of content, which we're seeing in legislation and things like that right now. But none of that is new. There are people that have wanted to limit people's access to materials. And so having a very clear, very consistent, and well-organized

and accessible way to allow people to sort through media that they interact with gives that supposed moral high ground of, well, we're putting the information out there, we're being very transparent, and so there's, it makes this look like a more legitimate system, but then there's also the aspect of implied consent. Because when a person is engaging with the piece of media, if they don't know what is in media, they're not actually consenting to what they are going to consume. Like, technically, yeah, they're opening the file,

or they're watching the thing, or they're doing whatever. But unless you actually know like what's in it you decision that is best suited for your needs and especially with certain types of content that can be triggering media for people um of different situations like people who experience domestic, or people who have experienced sexual abuse, or just people that don't want to read about those things, because they're uncomfortable. It has to do with that consent piece. And so the more clear you can be in your rating system,

and the more specific you can be in your rating system, the more informed that the reader of the viewer will be. And so everybody's happier, because the viewer will be able to engage with content that they are comfortable engaging with. And the creator will have people engaging with their content who want to engage with it. And so their possibility of having a more negative reaction from a consumer is greatly reduced and the abuse that they can experience due to the non-informed consent is also greatly reduced. So that's, I think, I think it would be a little succinct way to answer that question. Well done.

Okay. All right. I didn't need to go. No, no, no questions. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense in in regard to. Yeah, I guess what I the the follow on question to that is then how is this a what is the what is the what is the historicity or what is the history of that development?

Because we we we left off on the last episode using this as the like historical inflection point. And so what is it? Yeah, what is it that what is it that? What is it that shifted there? What is it that shifted there as we move from use net and the earliest beginnings of fanfiction.net, what coalesced there around that within fanfiction culture and outside of fanfiction subculture, what are we looking at as the forces that work there? So I guess if it's OK if I start with this one,

I'm going to be coming at this with, again, like a queer creator lens, and someone who was engaging with a lot of fear of content, both through fanfacient.net, at dual fanfacient.net, made it rough forever, and then subsequently AO3 in Tumblr. But essentially what it started with was a very generic rating system

with minimal understanding of what it was that you would be reading. And what you have is a platform in which anyone can create anything of their liking and anything of their interest, anything of their fancy. And as we started to look at more mature content, anything of their kinks, fetishes, et cetera. And so when you don't have a clear way to let a person know, like a cliff notes, of what they're going to be walking into, when you see something that has a rating of R, that R can be for numerous things. It can be for Gary theme. It can be for violence. It can be for sexual content.

It can be for any combination of them. It can be for language. Yeah, I was going to say profanity. From my earliest interaction, yeah, with profanity. And they wouldn't necessarily say why. Especially when you were looking at content that was being published on live journal or Zenga where you had to rely on the blur but the beginning of the post to kind of give you an idea of what you were going to be reading. And this is where it kind of brings me back to one of the things that I had mentioned in an earlier episode when you have non-queer creators

creating fetishized queer content. And without a tagging system, what you would see were ratings for explanations of a rating of a fake that would insinuate, but it was going to be really graphic or that there was going to be explicit sexual content or something, when in reality it's just the same sex relationship having any form of intimacy or on the flip sides,

having a heavily fetishized, heavily explicit thick, that is not properly labeled, has some really toxic tropes with heteronormonactivity and the idea of like the girl in the relationship or the guy in the relationship or the guy in the relationship. Again, if the reader isn't aware of this, and then they start reading this material, they may potentially be really offended, really upset, whatever, and you just kind of had to hope that you weren't about to walk into a minefield. The other issue was that on fanfiction, not necessarily, there wasn't really any type of accountability.

So there was no way to actually accurately track or hold accountable authors or creators that were not accurately rating their work. And so that was part of why you would see a discrepancy of queer media versus this head media being rated higher than the other and other things like that. And so what, oh, sorry, go for it. Oh, I'll say the other part of this is the timing issue. And separate from

being a gay or a head is the fact that 1998 was when the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act became law in the United States. And it had a fairly chilling effect on a lot of the archives, because they were saying, you know, in the event, parents are letting their little ones go running around on the internet and do whatever they want and get into think there's it's all your fault and so there was a certain amount of Fear of fear fear of litigation. We this country loves loves themselves lawsuit and People are terrified of that. It's really important to know this too because we're actually gonna come back to the fact that they didn't have any type of

It's really important to know this, too, because we're actually going to come back to the fact that they didn't have any type of legal teams or any type of legal protection. So what they would do was they would just like raise it and not deal with it because they didn't have any of the legal backing to do anything else. It doesn't make it right, but that is part of what we saw. So what you would start to see with people moving over to places like Zenga or Tumblr or Live Journal and this specifically happened in anime fandoms initially is where I first saw it and I believe it's where it first started. There's no actual official of like where it was very first seen but we started to see a new type of reading called the citrus scale. And the citrus scale was specifically designated for any type of romance, intimacy, or erotic in any type of material. And so the citrus scale went citrus, orange, lime, lemon, and grapefruit. And so citrus

meant that there was just like romantic themes, just general shipping, orangement. Real quick, why was citrus the acid used to denote romance. And type of. Great question. It's from an anime that was called Cream Lemon, which was a Hensaya. And so lemon we get to. So citrus was like general orange was like G-rating,

like handholding, kissing, whatever. Lime is more like clearly sexual content without explicit descriptions. Lemon, you have explicit descriptions, and it's like you know what's happening. And then grapefruit was one that you didn't usually see, but grapefruit meant that there was gonna be some kinky stuff. Stuff stuff that was not of the norm, quote unquote, because we don't kink shame in this house. But that would be where you would start to see like, BDSM, things like that.

And so this scale was utilized on live journal zenga fanfiction.net and different message boards and places that people would publish fix. Later it can be used. Yeah. Two downsides. I wrote for it. That should be pointed out.

On many of these platforms, the scale is not demarked or notified. So it relies on you being part of the cool kids group. Yes, please note the old bald guy here is going is mentioning this because I of course come across this and make what? You're telling me you're right and the fan thick about citrus. Okay. I don't got to understand when your kids are up to I don't understand when your kids are up to. Absolutely, it was what came out of my mouth. And so that was the first one. The second one was, you may have noticed this, was a 100% about sex. And this kind of gets to the crux of the matter. The whole thing is the American, you know, you look at what's on TV in America. You can absolutely shoot somebody in the back of the whole thing is the American, you know, you look at what's on TV in America. You can

absolutely shoot somebody in the back of the head in a TV show. That's fine. But if you suggest that there is oral sex that would have occurred off screen to bear, but it's nuts. And we're far far far far far far. Working's earned about sex. Then we are about violence or profanity or intolerance or language. And if I may ask about that, do you think that that's a holdover from the MPAA and the CCR? I mean, CCA, not critically water revival. Couldn't give a shit less. But the comic book code authority, because both of those were like, here's the acceptable violence, but don't you dare show them in the same bed. Well, yeah, and if you look at it, right, what is being purged from these archives?

What is being targeted by the legislation? It's any type of sex media. And so our first tags per se, our first rating systems, are going to be code words that are unique to the communities that they're used in that allow them to circumvent these systems, which is why they were so wildly ineffective because they are moderately effective within that niche community. But again, it's still very blanket. You still don't really know what you're walking into. You just have an idea trying to sort of maybe what you might run into. And again, you've also got that personal feeling of like a person writing it and going, well, I feel like

this is a line where another person may feel like it's a higher level of intimacy or a higher level of sexual content. Yeah, well, yeah, it me that being strictly self-reported can lead to some issues, not least of which is what you mentioned earlier about accountability. Like if somebody's just like, no, I'm going to write what the fuck I'm going to write and I don't want to worry about who it's going to piss off and deal with it, is still an issue there. And I had another thought, and I thought it was really profound. And I got into what I just said, and it went away. Shit, I hate when that happens.

Well, let me, while you're thinking on that, let me ask this, you had mentioned Sean a second ago. I just want to make sure I understand the way that they took on different sex acts. Now you mentioned oral sex. There are many different couplings of people that can result in oral sex. Was the citrus rating different for had a normative oral sex compared to homosexual oral sex? No.

Okay. It actually wasn't. And that's a good sign. That was, at least that is focused on the ass. It's standard good sign. At least that is focused on the ass. It's standard. Yeah. And the other thing, I remembered what the other thing was. So any kind of a system that uses code words like this has the effect of it,

it has just shown you also use the phrase, you know, the cool kids, that winds up turning into a shibboleth. Very good reference there. Can you explain to everybody here who is neither a Jewish or Catholic what a chibaleth is. Oh, I could do that. That's the secret.

Or a Westwood that you hit people with in Ireland to chibaleth. No. No. That's a chilele. No, chilele is one of the elder gods from Kthulu. That's Shagath. Yeah.

No, and Shagath is Shagath. That's the speed at which the thing goes on a camera to determine the exposure. So anyway, for those of you who aren't familiar with the term, there's a passage from the Bible in which there's there's an internecine warfare between various of the 12 tribes of Israel. And the code word that one of the groups uses, the password to be allowed past a checkpoint, is the word shibaleth because the dialectical differences between the tribes meant that there were certain groups who could not pronounce shibaleth because it would come out sounding as shibboleth. And so if you ask them to say the word and they pronounced it wrong, they were the enemy. And so shibboleth is any kind of in-group code or in-group reference that is a clue to, hey, you know, who's really part of the inner circle,

and who's one of those filthy plebs from outside. Except in the case of this rating scale, it wasn't so much of like excluding people, but it was trying to come up with a way to communicate that would circumvent these systems that were attempting censorship. Yeah, no, I certainly don't mean to insinuate that there was an attempt to exclude anyone, but if you were not up on the lingo, it would effectively be, yeah, it could potentially have that effect. I was like, well, okay, wait, what? Huh? You know, I would describe it as the exact same thing as the issues running with the mpa, I, you know, RPG, X, whatever scale in that they are well-meaning intentions to do a particular task that then

proceed to run at full speed like Wiley Coyote into the wall of reality and run into one problem or another. And yeah, I think Damien said repeatedly on the show progress is a series of was it problematic steps forward. Oh, yeah, I have crib that completely from Dr. Gable Cruz out in North Carolina. But yes, it makes it no less true. In fact, it might give it more credence given that he has more letters after his name. We back to credence. They're what a revival again. at always always. Yeah, I mean, I try to center that in the field. So. Well, I only see that field when I'm looking at my back door. Fair, fair. But that actually would

get you a different citrus rating looking out your back door. That's very true because that's where the shock off company. That would be lemon. Yeah. There's tambourines and elephants. If you plan in a women. Yeah. There's tambourines and elephants. If you plan in a band, yeah. I'm going to say if it involves a shark, I'd call grapefruit on that just like. Oh, yeah, that's fair. That's fair.

Even there in there in is the flaw of the system. Is it not? Because again, if it's subject to interpretation, it brings me to. Some of the cool tagging systems that we started to see. What kind of systems are? Tagging. The tagging systems started to develop in which a user on various platforms could tag or

label their content with certain phrases or words that would be searchable and then would link their content to other content that is similar. And one of the places that we saw this, and the list is on Tumblr, Tumblr started having a tagging system in which you could put specific tags on your posts. I think you're limited to 140 characters much like Twitter at this point where either the tags are helpful and it will tell you like what to the fandom is, the content is whether or not the person creating the magical journey of consciousness streaming, which is part of the flaw in the tumbler, is that the tags can be any tags that you want. They have multiple times done things to attempt to refine the tagging system, actually just last year because in 2019 they did the great Tumblr porn purge in which anyone who produced any NSFW, which is not safe for work content,

any type of erotic photography, any type of art, writing, anything that was considered to be sexually explicit, what they did was they shut it all down. Post-wred deleted or hidden from view, accounts were deleted. And the main thing that actually caused this urge was because there was this idea that people were using a platform for sex work, posting pictures, et cetera, basically before only fans would like a thing. And so it was like a non-paid way, they didn't have to pay to utilize this platform

in order to engage in sex work online. And actually, the main lens was, the children, because definitely there's a bunch of children on Tumblr doing sex work that makes perfect sense. The main thing was that Tumblr doesn't have a legal team to do anything if they are accused of this. And porn bots are still on there. And they're fandom themed now, which is kind of hilarious actually. But I will I will I will say because I remember when that happened because I have a lot of friends who do fan fiction and costuming and stuff like that. And pretty soon all of their erotic stuff was just you know wholesale just gone. So instead of using, you know, the

old phrase of user broadsword, we should use a scalpel. They nape home the village when they should have used it. They did. And this was only the most basic version. Right. But what I was going to say was that one of their justifications, which it does hold some water is that anybody could find porn accidentally or on purpose if they were looking for it. And since you don't have to be 18, all you gotta do, all you had to do was type in words like deep throat.

And you would get to, that's very true. That's very, very true. But that was the thing that they were saying. And it's like, well, okay, it's one of those. You can use the truth to hide a bunch of bullshit, which is what they did. And like you said, they did not have the legal team.

So there's like, fuck it. We don't want to lose everything. So here's what we're doing. And yeah, they napalm to the village. And it was a huge thing because a lot of artists who had a huge body of work, it was just gone. And they didn't have it like really anywhere else. And so you'll still see artists, but like randomly we'll come back. Because there was a moment, I want to say five months ago, six months ago, where there

was a misleading communication that was sent out where they were basically saying that they were going to allow it under certain things with their tagging system where you could tag it NSFW or you could tag it mature. And a whole bunch of people were making just stunningly tasteful jokes. My personal favorite was the meme was cycling around of the or a

kay thing meets back on the menu boys. It's great. And then abruptly there was like, which is going to be another point I come back to, but because there's so many people that are in fandom, people who are also lawyers were like reading through the terms and conditions that are going, no, hold on, don't, don't do it, don't, don't post the thing. And they're not as strict anymore, I will say, because I have made it my personal game to play Will Tumblr bandmas or not. And if you do things, because like I had drawn some, what was important is that it was a non-lady nipple. And they hit it. It got hidden and it was said to be explicit content.

And I would they have people to check it. And I think I literally challenged it with that's not a lady titty. Like that's that's not lady nipples. You're stupid and they put it back. I would like to point out. So there's no like sexist. But it's not lady nipple is a good name for a band, by the way. I hate.

Yes. So a jug band, obviously. Oh, nice. So it would be a good one. So before we get to the 2018 stuff, oh, no, I'm drawing that. God damn it. I'm drunk. I can't. Make them all fun characters to like they're all they're all just like hillbilly goats. I'm gonna to draw this to be here. Yeah. A little Billy. Nice. Yeah.

All right. There you go. So anyway, Sean, you were about to say before the 2019 on many people. Yes. The board's 2019 bit from Tumblr. We mentioned there was the 2002 bit where fanfiction.net did a part of their archives by notifying people in advance and communicating and whatnot. Then you get to 2012.

And this one is when the admins acted selectively, they targeted particular stories for being, to mature, the common theme with their selection was, now it really was full on LGBTQ AI. I mean, it was like, Bob is gone crazy with the edit hammer and they purge 62,000 stories from the archive without any notification to anybody,

without any communication, just delete them. It's in favor, they couldn't delete them. It's just, it's a favorite thing to do anything. It's just gone. Yeah. With and your, your, your, your, your, your your recourse is to maybe go to the ocean and yell at it because that's the only thing you can do. There's no recourse, no response, no debate, just

automated. So there's no one to talk to you. It's almost like they really didn't want people to play with them anymore. And everyone actually then did, as a matter of fact, tend to pick up most their toys and walk away. Uh, and now it's probably a good time to mention that after the, uh, the buckle that was the first pass through by by their By the right. It's algorithm. No, those are actually moderners. These are actually wow. Yeah, I know right. Well, that's part of it was of course human decisions being really bad The organization for transformative works with creating 2007 The organization for transformative works was created in 2007.

This is a point which when they owe to OTW creates what is known as an archivaro. Sometimes you'll see it abbreviated as AO3. Most yeah. They also created fan lore and open doors at the same time. And fan lore is kind of what we're talking about now would be fan lore, be the history of all of the backstory behind fan interactions and these things are recorded there. And open doors provides legal advocacy for fan creators of one type or another. And this is what's really cool about them is that they were able to do the legal advocacy

and everything because what you had were people in fandom who realized that there's other people in fandom and that people in fandom are people who have day jobs, who have fields of expertise, who are like leaders in their fields, who have fields that they can share in order to preserve fan content and can in lore and fan lore, and want to put their energy into it so that the energy that they put into their creations isn't just wiped off the pages of the planet whenever they feel like it. And so that is where they were able to tap into things like lawyers who are writing fan fiction or who are reading fan fiction and engineers and software engineers and programmers who are reading fanfiction and engineers and software engineers and programmers who are writing fanfiction and reading fanfiction

and they are literally creating an archive that not only has an incredibly powerful legal team and incredibly knowledgeable legal team, a really good platform that is run by people who interact with it, it's not automated. that is run by people who interact with it, it's not automated. People who have been in fandom and have seen the failing of rating system,

tagging system things that make it weak to legislation or public judgment and like witch hunts and things like that. And they are combining all of these forces into a non-profit that can raise funds and protect the creative materials that people create as a collective. The tagging system should just be pointed out

is ludicrously, wonderfully, amazingly powerful and easy to use and is actually documented. It really is. You can hold people accountable. You can put if somebody doesn't tag a thick appropriately or doesn't tag material as triggering. You can notify and put a marker so that that person will have to change it. They won't necessarily have to be wiped off the face of the map, but there's accountability.

You can't just sneak it in. You have to accurately tag door work. It sounds like a more honest and accountable MPAA, because that's kind of what they do in the MPAA is they'll give you a note like change change this scene. And then people go back and they edit and stuff like that. But that's about where the account of a lady ends, which is why famously South Park, you know, had had the Satan dick picks section. because they were like putting stuff in there for them to be like objecting to. And then they did. So he, you know, I want to say the story goes, he changed the penis to be a different kind of penis. And that was it. And it counted,

but you're talking about actual group accountability. It's interesting to me here because what we're talking about is you're essentially talking about an author's collective. And it's a nonprofit one because is anybody making any money off of this? No, all of the money goes to funding and actually I just share this because they are currently in the donation phase and this is just how popular and how much of an impact that they have, like just to give you a numerical thing. Every year they do a fundraiser. If you donate $10 you get added to their board, whatever.

They ask for $50,000 every year. They try to raise $50,000 in order to be able to have the funds that they need to run the website effectively. As of today, which I think were on day two, 230,000, $326,000, that is how much money. And that's not the end. I guarantee it's going to be in the higher at the end. People value this. And I mean, they even do archive work where they do rescue projects. So when the Yahoo groups were closing where people would do role play, writing and things like that. They were working to archive it. They tried to archive these materials

They've done geo cities web pages. They've done other types of fan work where they are actively trying to archive all of this information, but Hickchalya slowly moving through the open-to-earth project starting in 2018? So, I just wanna come back to this because, again, talked with Teresa Halverson on our show, a while back, and she talked about the 55 books. And it's essentially if you're gonna be an author

of fantasy slash sci-fi, you have to have 55 books to your name before you can start making a living off of your own writing. And that is, you know, hoping that the publishing house picks you up and continues to let you do all that kind of stuff. And, you know, theoretically, you're making money doing that. And it's just you doing that and you're kind of at their whim. This is, like I said, more of a author's collective. It's for the love of the art more than it is for the paycheck, obviously. And they're raising money in a way that doesn't go to one person's pocket.

And then they dribble a few coins down to the actual creators. And is that why it's considered less than or not legitimate? It can't just be a quality issue because there's so much volume out there that the quality is going to be matching that which has been actually published. It's literally just because there is a... I'm trying to think of the word for it. It's like, the word is escaping me right now, but it's seen as less than because it's not considered to be real writing or real art.

And it doesn't matter because it is. It's just basically like, it's like the idea where it's it's bleeding like a person. It's that but also the idea of like unless it's original it's worthless but then nothing is truly original and you can yeah it's also brings me back to the previous point of the last episode where I said, people are really offended when you mention the Dante's and Fernandes' fanfiction.

And you can label it as a fan fiction. Because in their mind, it values it. Even though in reality, you're just pointing out, it's not unique. It's not brand new. It's a new interpretation of material that already exists. And the same way that you could argue that any kind of religious text, I'm going to say

this is trying not to be offensive in any kind of way. But if you look at religious texts as a book form, you can find similarities in all the religious texts. Well, yeah, there's a Mediterranean cycle. Right. There's a thing where they're not original. They're all kind of, they've all got aspects of each other within them. And so it's that kind of a thing. And so to tell somebody that their art or their creation is worth less because it's inspired by something else, it literally just exists to attempt to deluditimize and cut down the person who has done the thing

Yeah, by a person who can't do the thing or doesn't want to do the thing And part of it doesn't want to be judged for doing the thing They don't want to experience what they are doing to someone else who has put their stuff out there And there is the other half of that one which I mean the the if you look at the Longstanding history of art forgery I look at the longstanding history of art forgery. I mean, it's huge. It's just ludicrous amounts of money. And everybody who has bought a forged painting immediately turned around and is screaming bloody murder.

The painting did not change between, when you bought it and when you just got to be able to, but you had a belief that a person with a name that you knew had been the one with a brush, not somebody who was competent and skilled and created this thing that you liked, but the person with that name and that provided a value an intrinsic value separate from the art itself. And I feel like that is a portion of this and that if it is in a book form on a shelf somewhere and a company has put their name on it and printed it out, that has more value than if that company didn't put their name on it. And it brings me to actually like another thing that we've been seeing in fandom spaces, most more recently in the last like two, three years I want to say, there's been a huge thing on book binding, where people who learn how to bind

book will take their favorite fan picksics with art from their favorite artists and they will literally bind the physical book of these thick, I mean, they're beautiful and they will at times sell them just for the cost of the material. They will send them to the authors of the artists which which then brings the, well, then how is that now? Because now you're saying, oh, you know, if somebody is like, well, this one's printed. So is this printed inbound? It looks just like a published book now.

Yeah. About 15 years ago, I got a fan letter from a reader who was in a Scandinavian country and the taxes for importation of English language novels were appallingly large and so the local libraries would actually look for good English language, look for a good English language, uh, fanfic they could download and bind and, and have on the shelf. So, um, she'd, uh, uh, read it by checking it out at the public library. It's getting even country. Which is very cool. So I guess, I guess what it does is like, oh, yeah, they've got like this huge, I actually wouldn't even say it's the majority anymore.

I feel like we're really seeing this incredible acceptance and unwillingness to hide participation in fandom and interacting in creating fan materials. But even they will always have these people who will attempt to delegitimize it. They will never be louder or more impactful than the people who reach out to you, it's how you how much they liked what you made. Like, you just, you know, and so I feel like even when they're like, and I think that that's the thing is that we really have more people more willing to engage in these fandom spaces, and reach out to the creators, and they're starting to recognize like what goes into creating these fan works and things like that. That they're having a harder time delegitimizing it

and they're having a harder time delegitimizing it when you're having a upsurge of IP owners engaging with people who create things based off of their IP and encouraging it because I feel like it was easier back in like I was like 2001 when Anne Rice did her thing and to give a little bit of history on this another way that it was able to delegitimize it was because you had people who held the intellectual property actively going against people who were creating these fan works, which is all the part of the reason why our archive of our own has such a strong legal

team and has so much to it to keep it running the way that it does. Part of it being protective of fan works is being reactive to what they've learned through Disney, season-to-sister things. I think Sony did one and then you've got Anne Rice. Anne Rice, who is is basically and i'm going to say that somebody who i love the empire corals i love them i love them they were one of my first fendoms i love them uh... but

for somebody who wrote and incredibly explicit bd sm fanfiction AU of fucking leaving beauty. She had a lot to say negatively about fan works. And her and her legal team were the nightmare of fan creators and fan fiction writers from like 2001 to 2003. I want to say. She would do season deceased, she would target specific individuals. I mean people were terrified of her

because of what she would do to people who loved her characters and wanted to create things. She is the reason that if you look at older thick, specifically thick that is posted on fanfiction.net or live journal or Zingha, I don't think you'd see it on a lot Pat, I think Web had my beat you knew. But you would literally see a blurb from the creator that said, these characters do not belong to me. I am not profiting off of it. It was like a thing that people would post. It was boilerplate. They couldn't be suit. Yeah, it was like a template that everybody did.

And I mean, it was almost nostalgic at this point. Like I drew something from like high school that I loved. I drew fake fan fiction or not fake fiction. I drew a fake fan art. And I was like, I have an urge to put the characters you don't belong to, but I don't have to. But I want to, because like you had to do that. And her legacy, the scar she left on fan creating spaces

was so intense that the day she died, one of the other cool things about Archive of our own, is you can back date things to when you actually made them. There were fake writers who had been sitting on fanfiction that they had written about our mom and Louis and Lista and Marius and all of them and they backdated it to the day of the file the day she died and they posted it. There was a huge amount of content from the vampire chronicles that got posted the day and right side. That is how much of an impact of a negative impact but she had that much of an impact on the space and creation.

And that is part of, again, why the legal team for AO3 is so good and exists to the capacity that it does. So, a couple of things occur to me here, the devaluation of fan works. I think to get pointyheaded and put the historian hat on hat on. What we see here is an outgrowth of industrialism. And it's not just the idea that, well, you know, this has to be original, but at the same time, there's the idea of ownership of intellectual property, which was not a concept prior to, I was going to say Adam Smith a moment ago, but even in the wealth of nations, the idea of intellectual property wasn't a thing. That doesn't become an issue until we have mass-produced mass media being driven by corporate interests. And there is this need by those publishing houses to

delegitimize anything that isn't, that they are that they don't they're not making a buck off of yeah and so and so I think we we We kind of have to point it at you know capitalism as As part of the issue here. It ties in with the fact that just culturally There is this urge, or not urge, but there is this tendency to think that, well, okay, you know, you want to draw on your spare time. You want, you enjoy singing, playing a musical instrument, whatever, you know, are you going to make any money doing that? If you're not, yeah, if you're not going to make anyone doing it, why bother? Right.

Right. You know, and it gets and it gets devalued and pushed aside, you know, like never mind the fact that as high level primates, we need to to play in various ways, you know, in order to stay sane. And then what also strikes me talking about the shift from use net to fanfiction.net to Archive Varon, and what I see happening is a shift from anarchism into syndicalism. You know, this is a and I think there's a really strong generational thing going on because at the same time that I'm talking about the

devaluation of these things, being rooted in the late stage capital or any capitalism, but right now we're talking about late stage capitalism. The changes that we're talking about are being made by people who are, let's say, late gen actors or millennials. Yeah. And you've got, you are who are looking at these ideas of what it means, you know, what is the root of the value of work? Right. And you're saying, no, fuck you, whether it's going to make me a buck or

not doesn't matter, I love this thing. I want to keep doing this thing. And the fact that I'm a grown up means I get to define what that means to borrow phrase, I want to write a free AU of insert fandom. That's my thing. I want to come up with a coffee shop universe for the X-Files. And you've also got this neat shift where people who are now the intellectual property holders, they got their starting fandom. For example, my biggest, my biggest fandom currently and has again for the past. To do what I have here is the Simon's no fandom, which is a trilogy that was written by Bravo Raul. As essentially, she wrote the books that she wrote a book called Fan Girl,

which is basically a love letter to Fanfiction. And this girl goes to college and she writes Fanfiction for this fake story called Simon Snow. And she's writing fanfiction, and it's her navigating as someone who's a fan girl, when it's not a popular thing to do. And in reading it, you can really see, Rainbow wrote, she has absolutely written and read copious amounts of fanfiction. And it's this, I mean, it is, it's this beautiful love-lethered fanfiction.

And then this book became so popular that she wound up actually writing this series. In the book, it's supposedly written by Gemma Teelazley, who's not an actual author. And so Rainbow Ballerines of writing a trilogy of these characters that is in the fan-frivoled book. And so it's actually a novel. But what she does is, oh my god, so cool. But what she does is she engages with

the people that create things of her characters. And what you have is an author on social media who is expressing her love for the fact that people love her characters as much as she does. And so we can ask questions and she will answer. We can make jokes about changing things from the cannon. And if sometimes somebody has like a really good idea, she'll be like, buggy, yeah, that's cannon now. That's better. She engages with artists the most because she can like look at our stuff without having the weird legal cross-over. She can't read fan fiction, but she's aware of people who write a lot of fan fiction and she's aware of the people who did, who do a lot of art. And like what's cool is that she will do things to legitimize basically the creations of the people that are involved. She will repost our art. She will, you

know, make comments about our art or or add where it fits in in the cannon or something. And it creates like more of a community. And there's a lot of authors actually now that got their certain fan fiction that still engage in fan spaces. And you may not necessarily know what fan fiction or what fandom they were in. Sometimes they're just like on Tumblr like bucket. Yeah, here's my AO3 handle. It just really depends on the author but having that as well further legitimizes the art because like for example with the third book that came out July of 2020, 2021, I remember

The third book in the trilogy came out and everybody was like really excited about it. She wanted working with artists. She reached out to artists who are fan artists and had them do work for promotional things for this book. She has fan artists do the end pages of the books, like artists that I've seen on Tumblr. I mean, I want to throw the opposite direction out there because I think it's also interesting to see the people who are the opposite of inclusive in many different ways

and how they're engaged. It gives me an opportunity to quote a paper by Jennifer Dugan who wrote transformative readings Harry Potter fanfiction, Transqueer Reader Response and JK Rowling in 2021. It's awesome by the way. I mean, just to find out. Did she write other books? I've only read this.

She may be incredibly. Keep going. I'm looking this up because I think she might have written a book I really like keep going. I would be unsur... I would be unsurprised because everything I've read I've never read this and I was like, oh I want to read everything she writes. But she points out the textual inclusivity of Rowling's Harry Potter works and the her current Rowling's current real world exclusionary politics exist. And one of the ways that readers have squared that circles to excise the author and create transformational works, she points out to this dude

and putting out that the texts are explicitly about acceptance, but the implicit ideology, the author's unexamined assumptions in her own head, are all white, heteronormative, gendered, and appearance biased. She points out the contentious nature of the children's literature, that different groups define very differently what's considered acceptable, and reldling does a lot of taboo topics for children's literature. Vulgarity, peace, geology, alcoholism,

extramentality, homosexuality, but only by slightly, including them from the direct reference and just inferring from context that they're there. This type of quote-unquote sensitive reading bears the striking examples to reading a queer coded work. My favorite two lines from Jennifer Dugan. One, frankly, it would be difficult to argue that the Harry Potter texts do not contain queer elements as a surface reading of the first novel, quite literally documents,

harry being freed from a life in a closet and introduced to a non-normative magical subculture by a pink umbrella wielding half-giant. I love that. Yeah. Followed by second favorite line. It is inevitably difficult for a fan who is read and seen hundreds of different depictions of Draco, Harry, Ginny, or Blazabini, and accepted all of them as valid, to completely dismiss new emancipatory revisions. In other words, once you've been exposed to fan

thick and seen that there are a billion different ways this could go, you're like, yeah, I believe that. That seems total legit, and that's a reasonable response to the universe. It's totally okay if Harry Potter is gay. It's totally okay if a character is transventored. That's... I've seen that. Well, you know, even if we ignore the really obvious symbolism that was just mentioned of Harry literally coming out of a closet. It's kind of hard to know. I don't understand how anybody can read Prisoner of Azkaban and not see like, Camthropy as a stand in allegory for homosexuality,

as a targeted category. Like, I don't, I just, that's why I thought casting David Toulies was a really good move toward that because he is as gender fluid and actor in his presentation of his characters as I've ever seen from Dragon Heart through that. Yes. Yeah.

No, even though we might not mean to. Yeah, very clearly. Well, we've no yet figured out that authorial intent is dead. You know, although David Toulis did say that he actually did play, we must look into that as, as Kay, that was actually. He did. He was absolutely under the impression. And I just, I'm telling you, I know I had a record last time.

All the young dudes makes all of the things that Rowling fucked up make sense in a really loving and beautiful way. Sure. I just like anything that rolls just saying that was a, you had a couple of wonderful ideas. Now please try to go away and I'll go over here and see, and listen to people I really like hearing from. Well, it's interesting to me to bounce back to this idea of if it's not commodified, it's not valuable. I'm just thinking of, you know, the idea, you brought this up a bit ago, if it's not original, somehow it lacks value.

And I'm thinking about like Michael Stackpole, Timothy Zahn, Christie Golden, Aaron Olston, Troy Denning, all of these are authors who have found great success playing in other people's sandboxes. Yeah. Timothy's on, wrote, Thrawn. Thrawn has shown up now in Canon, not just book Canon before the great schism of 2016,

but then book Canon after the great schism of 2016 because they're like we like this character a lot We're gonna bring it back, but then also in cartoon canon All of these authors Christy golden famously said I tend to make more money and Get more people reading my stuff When I'm writing for someone else's in in someone else's intellectual property. She's real big in the warcraft community. She's real big in the Star Wars community. So clearly, them writing not their own IP isn't the thing that makes them more legitimate than somebody else doing the same thing.

Even if you take a look at Star Wars Insider magazine, they would have like four or five page stories. All of those things were still considered more legitimate than fanfic, and it comes back down to the commodification. Who is the money in the pocket of? And if you don't do that, then somehow you're not a real artist, which is funny because they talk about people doing things for the love of the art. And it brings me back actually to the forgery thing because a forger is an artist.

Like if you listen to interviews with people who forged currency, they speak of it as it's an art. They talk about the science of doing it as an art. And it is enough. It just happens to be one that destabilizes currencies. But if you have real currencies, yeah, and they're intense nerds. That's like high-perfaculous, you know, yeah, carving those groups. I think it just really comes down to where you place your value. Yeah. And I think we're starting to see a shift of people who place the value away from the material and away from the money because we have been living through recession after recession,

historical event after historical event, and instead we're seeing value in love and community. And so we're seeing more of a legitimate cessation of these fan work because instead of them being seen as you not being able to make your own stuff, which you're still making your own stuff, you're just using other people's toys to do it. But it's being seen as a love letter. It's being seen as a offering to a community, to share something that you have created within a community. And I think that that is part of what is legitimizing it more and more as we move forward.

Because again, like I said, we've got multiple authors posting their AO3 handles, their author handles from fan fiction that they've written. Or authors admitting their authors in fandom spaces or people engaging and reaching out to fan creators, like I know that there were people that like have done things for Marvel that have been brought on to Marvel projects because of their cosplays and things like that

Starts as a fanfic. Yes, you know, it's really cool because this love that causes this creation And if sometimes the love's a little fucking weird like let's be real real. Sometimes our love letters make you go, you guys okay over there? But regardless. Right. There's value in that connection. You're starting to see this shift. And I think that that's really what is changing a lot of the way that people are

interacting with fan media and are being more accepting of fan media. And so yeah, you were gonna say something. Indeed, I wish that I thought that was the cause, but I don't. I like that cause, that's a great cause. I wish I believed it. What I see is a different bit historically is

that there is a tendency today because of legalism to disclaim ownership, to choose to create for the desire to create and not just to make money. And historically, what has always happened with fanfic is the attempt to make money off the back of somebody else. And in many cases obliterate the original art to start it with. So what I did not understand, you know, my first Reddit was that Ram Stoker's Dracula is fanfic. And I've always heard

like, oh yeah, it's a vampire story blah blah blah. No, he wrote it in 1897. In 1872, Sheridan Lafayneu shared in La Fannu, wrote Carmilla, which is basically the Err example only it's lesbian vampire fiction. Well, lesbian vampire fiction. And what Bramstone her did was, well, he didn't have a computer to just do control C, control V, but he changed it to turn Carmilla into Dracula to make it heteronormative. But he copies the first personeration, he copies the mystery around the vampire. Lucy is the character he creates and Laura is Sheridan's character, who is described using the exact same phrases. The character's sleepwalk, they have elderly vampire experts, it comes to investigate the vampire, they describe the illness, the exact same phrasing. I'm sorry, I don't understand how this is fanfic, this sounds like plagiarism.

Yeah, you're trying to make money off of it. this sounds like plagiarism. Yeah, and then succeed it. And well, but his fanfic was kind of the opposite of what any good fanfic author did was rather than saying, why is this why is excluding me? He said, I really wish this excluded some people. And he he excised all the all the all the gay out of it. And then we're seeing that you're making a lot of money and then sue people. He's Steve Jobs did. He completely see Jobs did. Yeah. And please note, his widow actually managed to get a burnout to destroy every copy of Nosferatu when that was made in the turn of century. It's only blind luck. We still have a couple copies left of that film. That's how you can see it. luck, we still have a couple of copies left of that film. That's how you can see it. Wonderful work, not Dracula, but it was close enough that she's used the heck out of it.

And that's just 1880, 1890s. Okay. So we're seeing, we're seeing then a community that is growing beyond the desire for money and just a love of doing it. And you're saying that while that is so, there's forever been a group of people who are essentially plagiarizing and grifting, who are kind of running parallel. Like they're both doing the same thing, but for wildly different reasons. And the fear of what? Yeah, and because it's the standard, I'm afraid you're going to do the thing I want to do. And that's signaling that happened.

Yeah, what is it? Projection, every accusation is an admission. Yeah, it's, you know, fascism 101. Um, I, you know, Tesla, what you're talking about a little bit earlier reminded me of the time that I met Diogenies. Um, and I only say that slightly tongue in cheek. I, my junior year in high school, I hung or the summer of my junior year in high school, I hung out with a lot of the homeless folks, the unhoused living in Walnut Creek, they caught and killed the goose and we cooked it that night on a shopping cart because you know it's basically a great. And one of

the guys, I mean I was talking to him, I was, I asked him one day, he's my 17 year old self, I said, I gotta say, you don't sound like any of the other people under this bridge, you, you sound like you could fit into the square world perfectly fine. And he says to me, I ran really, really hard and they took it all away. So I ran even harder and they took it all away again. And now I don't run anywhere and they have nothing to take and the results the same. And it just kind of reminds me of like people are like, look, I've got a day job.

I don't need to use this to make money. And so I'm doing it for the love of it. And it just kind of reminds me of Diatjini's who I met and shared Goose with. And at the same time, I'm always very hard-nosed about this, Pay your artists. Like, and that's the downside is that like, the pricing is, you know, stagnating and getting lower for entry-level artists.

55 bucks. I will say, I mean, I will say though, as someone who has been doing art in these fandom spaces and is now, I would say I'm pretty known by my handle at this point. People in the fandom spaces value the work. But I've used my art for more like, and I'll do this as an example, and I'm not doing this as an example to be like, oh, I'm such a good person, like whatever.

But I mean, I think it's important for people to understand like I'm not profiting off like this was not meant for profit, but I will use my art for charity. So because I am more known within these fandom spaces than people like what I create, I will do things like say, like when Texas was doing some atrocity, one of the many atrocities to trans children,

there was a organization in Texas that was trying to raise funds to help families. And I had people send proof that they donated to one of the two charities and did a raffle and they were able to get a commission or whatever. And people, I said at least $10. Because people not only value the art, but value the cause, donations were $50 or higher. You're generating money, just not pocketing it. Exactly. Which is why it's invalid art.

There you go. Exactly. Obviously. I'm not an artist. And then there was like someone in the fandom space who needed to have their impacted wisdom teeth route. and based on their financial situation, they weren't able to do it and they were trying to fundraise through, I don't remember,

some kind of service, whatever, and they were like charging $10. And I said, commission me, pay what you want, I'll draw. This is my suggestion whatever and again you could see people not only value the cause But the art because the average that I was getting for these commissions is that I was you know not legitimately doing because I wasn't getting paid Was between 150 to 300 dollars was between $1.50 to $300, depending on what they were asking for. So I was really impressed to see people value the work.

But again, it comes back to that sense of community too, because there will be people that will say, like, I really want to commission you for something, but I don't have a lot of money. Like, I'm a student. I'll be like, what's your budget? Like let's work within your budget, like whatever. Again, because there's like a love of doing it, but also the person isn't devaluing my art.

They're not devaluing my skill. They're saying that they can't afford my skill, which I think says something about them understanding the time and the effort that goes into developing the skill and producing the piece. I think you're highlighting the difference between valuing and commodifying too. Yeah, because again, it's like just like, I mean, and for this example of just like art being valued right like fine art whatever. I saw a painting today on Twitter, that. Blue my god damn mind. And the skill of this artist is unbelievable. I mean it looks like one of those

like 15th, 16th century paintings of a table, a still life of a kitchen table with all the things on it. And I immediately was like, I need to buy a print of this from the started, like this is incredible. However, as somebody who's looking at it from the skill set, I know that there's a whole bunch of people that would literally look at the same piece and be like, that's the stupidest thing I've ever seen the first into the way it's

the space, why they even do this. They literally did a still life, like, broke style of a crunch wrap supreme and a baha blah. I mean, it looks so goddamn good. It's like the style, it, oh god. But like, that's the kind of thing, right? Like, there's a camp aspect to it that would cause people to delegitimize it even though it is literally the same technique Right materials and everything people put a red wall or whatever right people put Andy Warhol all the time

Yeah, yeah, I mean So, you know, I mean, it's just it's those are the kind of things that again, it comes back to what do you value? Where is the value place versus like and the intense behind the creation, right? Like are you creating because you feel a need to generate income or are you creating just because you love a thing and you want to create it and then you want to share it with people. And that's not to say that people that want to do things to make an income are any less legitimate than people that do it for the love of it because they can't. They both exist in both be valuable in their own ways. If Ed and I could

have turned this into money, that would have been great. Right. It would have been wonderful. And yet we're still here. We are. Yeah. So I literally draw stupid shit, but I'm like, I'm going to laugh at this. I don't know if anybody else is going to laugh at this. And then when people laugh at it with me, I'm like, it was great.

I was worth the however much time I did. People pretend all the time not to like my puns, which is a weird way to show appreciation, but whatever. Let me tell you, I was trying so hard to work one with the agonies because I can de-ogin these nuts. There you go. I was just pulling the egg. There you go. We'll see that's why the next dog I get is going to be a male who might have castrated, and I'm going to name him to Aginies. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. He's missing the Aginies nuts. So Sean, you were going to say something there. Oh, yes, just that, that the different motivations to transform other kinds of art into something new. Go back on long ways and some of them are really good. I think my favorite is that most of the things we do is wild Bill Shakespeare. Most of his work is based on somebody else's. So Athello is based on some of his Amourish captain from just 1565, so roughly 50 years earlier. And thank Thank heavens because the original one the it's this ludicrously racist tale about anti-missage nation that the moral right and and an absolutely perfect fan-fixed aisle

He turns around and turns it into a story about racism and jealousy um uh The other is for me, but he's not just looking at stories and saying yeah, that was really craply done here. Let me fix it for you As you'd like it was based on Thomas Lodge's Roseland Euphes golden legacy, right lodge wasn't the original author that was based on Chaucer's Canterbury tales concluded the tale of Gammelin and Scholars don't think he actually wrote that he just just included an old ballad from 1350.

So as New York's I can tell, the real Rosalind has been retired these last 249 years and has lived in the Haking, in Patagonia. Thank you. Much to do by nothing, technically, based on the Romando Ferro. So I have no commentary other than just to say, I love much to do by nothing. I don't no commentary other than just to say, I love much about nothing.

And I just worked it in there. Romeo and Juliet. Like I said, Tristan and he sold. And it's yes. And it has been redone over and over again. I've studied stories of personal favorite, Shakespeare and love, and the candy. But it's been restaged and rewritten

to be gang wars the Cold War, the Seven Days War partied. I mean, just so many times, his stories were originally based on others, and their others based on those again. And that shame always has something to say about what had come before. Yeah. And what's coming after. Well, speaking of, I do want to circle back around because Tessa had mentioned tagging and I wanted to make sure we covered that because we're aheading toward the end of this episode. Um, and so I really wanted to make sure that we covered tagging to, to her satisfaction. Um, so much as I, I want to get all the way back to the ancient shit

and talk about pseudolists, we'll have to indulge ourselves with that a little bit later. Because tagging is something that we mentioned and I wanted to give a fair amount of weight to. So Tessa, tell us about tagging. Oh, yeah. OK, so going back to AO3 and how it was this huge change in fan of spaces.

So AO3 has what's called the tagging system. And much like Tumblr, you can tag just about anything. But there are also really specific tags about content that you are consuming on the platform. And they have a couple of specifics to it. There's like a box of the top, which has like four squares, which will tell you if there are any major content warnings, web type of relationship you're seeing, I'm actually going to pull it up right now because I need to look at it. Even though I know a lot about it, I still need to stare at it. I should probably pull up a fix for this. I need to pull up one

of mine. All right. That way I don't have to find anything weird. She says like she doesn't have anything weird on here. So there's like a square at the top that has like various title titles in it. So the first part is going to be a content rating, which is going to give you a general rating. You have G, which is general audiences. T, which is teen and up audiences. M, which is mature.

E, explicit, only suitable for adults. Or there is a blank square. The blank square says that the work was not given any rating. Usually if the work is not given any rating, it is hell explicit. Nine times out of ten, you are walking into a minefield. It will be well tagged, but it's gonna be a adventure. So that's the first box. The second box will give you what's called the relationship pairings and orientation. This is like an adeglanse. So we're not actually into the full tagging system yet. So this is the first thing. The second

box is going to give you either a venous sign or female female relationship. So women, women, lesbian relationships. You will, the women, the women, the women, the women, the women, the women, the women, the women, the women, the women, the women, the women, the women, the women, the women, the women, the women, the women, the women, the women, the women, the women, the women, the women, the women, the women, the women, the women, the women, the women, the women, the women, the women, the women, the women, the women, the women, the women, the women, the women, the women, the women, the women, the women, the women, the women, the women, the women, the women, the women, the women, the women, the women, the women, the women, the women, the women, the women, the women, the women, the women, the women, the women, the women, the women, the women, the women, the women,

the women, the women, the women, the women, the women, the women, the women, the women, the women, the women, the women, the women, the women, the women, the women, the women, the women, the women, the women, the women, the women, the women, the women, the women, the women, women, the women, the women, women, the women, women, the women, the women, the women, the women, the women, women, the women, the women, women, the women, the women, the women, the women, the women, the women, women, the women, the women, women, the women, women, the women, women, the women, women, women, the women, women, women, the women, women, the you've got the Mars science, you've got male, male, so, okay. And then you have a multicolored tile, which means that there is more than one kind of relationship within the thick, or it is a relationship of multiple partners, so like a polyamorous

couple. Then you have another one that is called the content warning thoughts. The first one and the one that is generally the most common is author chose not to warn for content. So there's no archive warning that really applies or there may be one, but they haven't specified that will be in the tags. If there's a red box, it means that there is one of the following warnings. Graphic depictions of violence, major character death, which means that one of the main characters

within the fandom dies usually brutally, sometimes excessively tragically, you're going to be sad. So what you're saying is that what you're saying is that Firefly would have what have had that square? Yes, Firefly would have had that square. Just we can just have that square. Just has that on his forehead. Yeah. Rape and non-consensual sex falls under this square.

So does underage relationship? Oh, so George R.R. Martin wears it too. Yeah, and any of these, like, get tagged, have to have object-specific tags in the warning tags, which we'll get to. If it's blank, it means that there's no warnings that apply, but you want to check the tag, which is like a little section underneath the box

to see if there's anything that you're worried about, or it's an external work, and it's going to be from like a live journal posting or something else and you need to consult for work. There's like a paragraph so you've got to check. So you're warned if you need to find warning in somewhere else, which is kind of nice. The final part of it will tell you if it is finished, or if it is in progress or it is unknown. So if you are somebody who likes to read a fix that is finished, that is a very helpful box for you. This is the adaglan. Then you're going to get what's called the archivorenean section. The archivorenean section is the tag section. And what it is is an adaglan of the content that is very succinct, usually like one to two

words tells you who is in the story, what relationships are occurring between who in the story, as well as any important information that you may need to know that you may want to read, because you're looking for it or you may want to avoid, because you don't want to read it. And so what you have is this phenomenal way to easily see whether or not you're going to open this and start reading. And there's kind of a running joke because you can tag a lot. You're not limited in tags, so you can be really clear.

And so sometimes you may miss the tag, and then there's like running jokes about like, whoop, I didn't read that close enough and now I have some scarred for life. But anyway, so the first thing that you'll see are a series of tags that say the characters that are in it and their relationship. If there is a slash between the two character names, that means that they are in a romantic and or sexual relationship. If there is an ampersand, the amp sign, that means that they are just friends or interacting with each other. If there's no slash or ampersand, that just means the character is there, they are mentioned, and they will be

present in the story. So if you have somebody who you really hate, maybe don't open that one. Then you start to get the specific tag. And so you can do tag, there are fandom specific tags that occur where I'm like looking for some of ours. I'm waiting. Here's a couple of examples. Common ones for relationships, which see would be things like enemies to lovers or slow burn or establish relationship. Yeah, and then there's my personal favorite, which is idiots in love.

Idiots in love, which implies that they all love each other, but they're too stupid to figure it out. And you get to watch them try to figure it out. We also have like, there are like fan-specific ones where we have like, Simon's note doesn't have wings in a tail because if you don't wanna write it or draw it, you just throw it out there. You're like, nope, it's not canon, it's no way.

I'm sure that there's. You're like, nope, it's not canon, it's no way. I'm sure that there's a bunch for like supernatural, probably like casty yellows, a human or something, you know. And so there'll be these little ones. But then you also have content specific ones, including ones that are very specific to the sexual content, sexual action, pink fetishes that are that can be present specific to the sexual content, sexual action, pink fetishes that are that can be present in the tags. And what's cool about AO3 is that when you have an account on there, you can do what's called filtering, where you can preset tags that you do not want to see fix that are tagged with it.

So if you are someone who listened to my three-minute explanation of Omegaverse, and you said, absolutely hell not, fuck that shit, no way, you can actually make it. So Omegaverse or A, B, O, doesn't show up ever. Like, it'll automatically filter it out. It won't show up on your feed. There's no way for you to accidentally click it. They have a ton of very specific tags. If you don't have the tag there, it's not already in the archive. You can edit. There are some people who, I'm going to say this is why I'm one of them, you have, you make like a tag with specific for yours. So for mine, I made a joke off of the magic is friendship. So whenever it is

porn that I have created, the tag is the magic is semen. So if you don't want to see any of the porn that I have created, you should block that tag because then you won't have to see any of the things that have drawn that fall into that category. There are also ones that is the no beta we die like fill in the blank. Those ones are universal but also fall under fandom specifics. So if you are, let's say you're in to the Game of Thrones fandom and you could say no beta we die like Ned Stark. Okay. That would be something.

So you automatically, it's filling the blank with whoever dies within your fandom. And new fandoms, if they don't really have like a major character death or a generic death that is constantly referenced, they will put no beta we die like men. Just to basically say that no one has proofread this, they just raw dog, it's like, you grew it up there. So if you see errors,

whatever, that's why. There's also the tag which I referenced earlier, the dead does do not eat. So when you see a fix that has a major archive warning for like major character death, non-con, something non-consensual, sexual relationship, something like that, they really mean it. So when you see dead do not eat, you are getting exactly what it says. Like you are getting exactly what it says. And anything that's in the tags that they tag, if they tag CDS them, if they tag, I'm trying to think of like ones that like,

I would actively avoid, like water sports, something like that. If you see that, plus dead of do not eat, there's no hyperbole, they're not doing anything that's not like a joke, it's like that's what's in there. When you open the thick and you read it, that's what you're getting. So that also the f*** and you read it, that's what you're getting.

So that also really helps because if you're someone who doesn't want like a literal major character death within your fandom, you don't wanna read that, you can filter out major character death that does do not eat. And it won't show up for you. Or you know to avoid it if you come across it. So,

but this is incredible because previously, right, you just had grapefruit, which means so there's something kink-related happening that is up to the mercy of whoever labeled this, whereas now if I go in there, I know exactly what's in there. And so if I look at it, I can go, ooh, I don't know. Or sometimes you really sit there and go, the hell is that? And then you find out something new, and you can either be like, absolutely not. Or you can be like, all right, okay, maybe that's fine. So part of what you, part of what you mentioned previously was that there's accountability under the system. Yes. So if, for example, I was writing an AU-FIC for Twilight in which it's Bella and the,

oh darn it, I'm forgetting her name. The vampire, the colon sister quotes Alice. Yeah, I hate that I know that. Okay. So, so if I was, if I was writing an AU where no, the main relationship is Bella Alice. And I put in there, if I mislabeled. And instead of, and instead of putting Bella slash Alice, I said Bella Ampersand, Alice. Yeah. Would it be like where? So somebody somebody reads it and they're like, oh, well, okay, I was looking for, you know,

sister to the friendship and girl power and, you know, they send a mod to your house and you were automatically executed on site. It's okay. Shot back in the head. I'm kidding. Okay. So actually what happened is that if there's a mistake in the tag game, what they have is they have a support that you can contact or you can act on Twitter. The A03 Wranglers are the tag wranglers and what their job is is that they go and they talk, they've you tell them like, hey, I don't think this was tagged properly.

I think it's either missing the tag or this tag is incorrect. They will literally go and check. And so if it's an issue, they can make the changes required. So they can override and fix it. The other thing that sometimes happens is depending on the fandom and the community within it. So like in my fandom community usually what we'll do is somebody

to be like, ooh hey buddy, I think you missed tags that. And like you can leave a comment and usually it's not taken as like a negative. And so sometimes people just go, hey, I think you missed a tag here. You should probably put this and you nine times at a time they're like, oh shit, my bad. And they'll fix it. And they'll make like a little blurb at the top to be like, yo, someone called me on on this. I didn't know I didn't tag this, my bad.

Like I fixed it. But there are other ways for them to literally, they have people that like, they, that's what they do. They're like paid through the funds that they raise Their job is to maintain the tag system so that you don't have an accident on the safe like that and they can be checked and There's an accountability outfit which is Those are brave people Yeah, yeah

So it's pretty cool Yeah. Yeah. So given, given this layer of accountability and its largely grassroots and they raised money to do this and given the lack of commodification and essentially the overall effort toward a lack of abuse of the reader, which you know, I appreciate that as, as somebody who's read authors saying that they were going to try to test the reader and see how far they could go. Given all those things, what is, what's in the future for fan fiction? I want to hear from both you on this in terms of what's coming next, because we tend to look at the history of a thing and then try to, based on that terms of what's coming next. Because we tend to look at the history of a thing and then try to, based on that, see what's coming.

So you two are both active in these communities. You two are both very well versed in the history of these communities to the point where I feel like we've given it short shrift and could have gone another three episodes. And I want to hear what you guys think is gonna happen going forward. So Sean, haven't heard from you from a while.

Do you have thoughts on that? Oh, absolutely. I think one thing that's been off a lot of its media variations, I mean, we've seen it last few years since 2000 and the Phantom edit of Star Wars, a lot of pre-edits of movies. Now, it's nearly massive shout out to Adiwan and his Empire Strikes Back revisited in Star Wars and New and you hope revisited where he's creating entirely new special effects shots to revamp the movie.

Filming new actors even. And the democratization of some of these tools, I think you're gonna see a lot more of that. You're gonna see a lot more really, pretty high end, creative works like that. I think you're probably also going to see an awful lot more spread of this to more people. I think you're going to see a lot of people considering, you know, fanfic the thing that they're going to be reading on the beach you know, for vacation time rather than picking up an awful book in the airport gift store.

Okay cool. Pass on, what do you think? I can see it going two ways. can see it going two ways. We continue on this trajectory where people are using big to create these communities of creative of people creating art and literature together, increasing accessibility, increasing accessibility of people seeing your work, like I hate to use the word exposure, but it is exposure. But like, having it become more socially acceptable, because previously it really wasn't socially acceptable. And so not having to be a dirty word anymore and having people engage with it more and having it become more rewarding. Again, from the love aspect for the people that are creating it because, you know, we see

people now making big talks and Instagram videos about the fact that their Kindle is literally full of ePubs of fanfictions that they've downloaded off of AO3. I'm freaking it is. I I'm not gonna lie about it. And encouraging their friends who write things that they really like, to go places with it, because we're actually seeing people that started as fanfic authors changing their fanfics so that it becomes original content and they're able to publish it. Like I don't like her stuff. No hate. It's not clear. Because like, Titan, no, I mean, I don't like her either, but it's in particular.

The trope was like basically like if you flipped it, it really wouldn't be okay. But I don't think a woman assaulting a man is okay either. And so it was like a tight-on-line violation basically in workplace. naman, is okay either. And so it was like a title nine violation basically in workplace. It's a Ray Lofiq, and it was called Love Hypothesis, I think. Ali something would, I don't know. My husband mentioned it.

He was gonna read it. And we were both like, we had a whole bunch of like romance novels. And he was like, oh, but it goes like this. And I was like, that's a title nine, the violation. I will never read that. I hate that. I hate that trope entirely. That is the worst. Again, not the out of anybody else's. Yum. I'm fantasy's one thing. All right. But you know, as the person who's cast to work with these things, yeah, I can't condone that. So again, not for me. You know, King Shane in the house.

What was his fiction? I guess it's fine. But that was a fanfic. It was a reloaf fanficion. That literally, if you look at the cover, it's still reloaf. The art is still definitely like that's out of driver, but whatever. He's just rendered in a vector art form.

Anyway, so like it'll be interesting because like there are bookstores that have like displays of office that started with like fixed in like 50 shades and all that stuff. Which like, oh yeah, I mean, I'm pretty sure I read. I'm like a hundred percent sure. If it is, then I don't understand how. But like I read a book

called If this gets out and Really cute? very tropey Boy band and I was like this is the one direction fan fiction This has to have been a one direction fan fiction if it isn't I Don't believe you but I mean it was cute. It didn't matter. It was cute But so we're either going to see this continued appreciation for fanfishing and this continued embrace of people

that are fan creators. Or we're going to see what starts the like wholesome engagement and interaction with fan creators and bringing them into IP spaces into exploitive. And I'm really hoping it's not the Explosive one and I would love to see it continue to be like a Mutual agreement People being willing to work as opposed to feeling forced to work and

Right now with what I'm seeing and what I'm seeing with AO3 and how fiercely people are defending these fandom spaces and how important it is for people that these fandom spaces be preserved. I'm hoping it's going to be the library of Alexandria that doesn't get burnt down. Okay. So yeah, that's actually the analogy that occurred to me was, you know, when you talk about all the folks that are involved and it and all the folks that are involved in, especially the fan lore portion of it. Yeah, I think we need to worry less about it being burned down and more about storage media, changing too rapidly

for things to be shifted over, you know, with the March of Technology, which is a whole other historian talk I could get on to on another occasion. But yeah. Cool. All right. Well, geez, thank you both for being here with us and for taking us on this long and winding journey. Yes. They've already done a long winding journey.

What people don't know is that we edited about eight hours of content out of this. Yeah. So that's that's on the cutting floor. That'll be the bumper reels for years to come. There you go. Yeah, for forever. That's on the kind of floor. That'll be the bumper reels for years to come. There you go.

Yeah, forever. So, well, let's go around the horn as I see it. And Sean, what do you recommend in people read? Or what media would you like them to partake of? I'll say two. First one is Alexandra Quick in the Thorn Circle by Inverarity. It is the first in a series of novels that are in the

Harry Potter universe but are completely disconnected from it and set in the United States dealing with our history and our... failings over time. It is truly amazing, wonderful, basically it's what Paylings over time is truly amazing, wonderful, basically, but Jake here on the wood've written Haji, not sucked. It's also telling you to go look up at anyone's versions of Star Wars and the Empire Strikes Back. They are the definitive versions. Cool. Thank you.

Taza, how about you? I'm actually looking at my little, my little thin PDF ePo style. I'm going to also recommend two. I'm going to do one that is a fanfiction of the novel Red, White, and Royal Blue by Kasey McQuinton. Definitely read that book if you haven't. Most of their stuff is actually all three

of their books that I read are really good. But the stick in particular is by an author, an author that goes by Quoted Cream Fudge. They are probably one of the wittiest and funniest authors. And the funniest author is I've read. Their banter is peak. I have like last-to-life cried. And it was called You Know the Rules. And I highly recommend that you read it. And I can only hope that someday somebody will tell me what they thought of it.

And probably yell at me because there is absolutely a lovely little surprise in there. Once you start reading it and then trying to find it, we could recall it. The friend of mine wrote it, I did art for it. I don't know why I'm going to put this on there, but I will. Because she's such a good author. Her name on here is Pretty Life Big City, all one word. She writes numerous things in me, Simon's, Mel Panda. Really, really talented author who does very emotional and meaningful adult content. So I will say that if you are under 18,

don't touch this with a 10 foot pole. Well, you shouldn't be listening to this podcast anyway. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. Super down. Um, and it is called, it is called. Nope. That's right. Oh, there it is. It is. Nope. That's not it. Just kidding. You know what, I'm gonna just, anything by Pretty Life's Big City, I'm just gonna put it that way, because I can't find what the heck we called it,

because we've written so many together. All right. So you'll find it at some point, but all of her stuff is amazing. Ed, what are you recommending? I'm, I'm going to recommend what I consider to be a commodified fanfic. And I'm only going to recommend the first book in the series.

It's a very long series. Started in 2006, the first book is Horus Rising by Dan Abnet. And it is essentially legitimized fanfic written in the War Hammer 40,000 universe. And they mean you actually enjoy it despite your disdain for Warhammer 40K. Well, and all fiction that isn't Star Wars because basically it's about the interactions of the space marine primarcks, which means it is excuses for a whole bunch of roided out, hyperdramatic men to engage in grudge match after grudge match after grudge match. Are they like pun battling? No, they're engaging in power armored murder gymnastics.

Oh, you know. So, you know, it's got that pro wrestling angle. Okay. I mean, right all the way up to, you know, fur fringe and, you know, dark eyeliner. So yeah. Also, after I finally get around to doing Cyberpunk, I'm going to be talking about the Primarks. So in the development of their lore in the 40K universe. So yeah, I very strongly recommend the first book in the series.

It's a very long series and it turns into a slog after a while, but the first book is a good read. Okay. How about you? There we go. Well, I'm going to recommend as the one of these kids is doing his own thing. I'm going to recommend City of Plagues, Disease Poverty and Deviants in San Francisco by Susan Cratic. It's about the bubonic plague amongst others that happened in San Francisco from 1900 to 1904. A spoiler alert, it turns out that people back then didn't believe in quarantining properly

and thought that business mattered more than people's lives and then blamed the entire thing on Asians. So yeah, it's a good thing that we've learned so much from those lessons. I know. Compressed disc. Yes. So anyway, that's what I'm going to recommend. Sounds delightful. Well, you guys have all these cheerful things and I figure just you know a little something that most people We're gonna read and go this can't be fucking real

So there we go. Yeah, all right. So does anybody want to be found anywhere online or elsewhere? Getting head shake head shake. Okay, don't find me. There you go. Ed, where can you find us? You don't admit that you found me. There you go. We collectively can be found at www.gikhistorytime.com or I mean, you're listening to us. So you've either found us there or you've found this podcast on Stitcher or the Apple Podcast app wherever you have found it. Please subscribe. Please give us the first or review that you know Sean and Tessa have earned us. And we can be found as long as that Hellsite remains operating on Twitter as Geek History Time. And where can you be found?

Let's see. July 7th, August 4th, and September 8th, you'll find me at Luna's in Sacramento, slinging puns with capital punishment. It's going to be some really good shows. Yeah, I mean, come out there. The weather will be nice and you will really, really enjoy all the puns that we slain. So cool. Well, thank you both, Sean and Tessa for being on our show with us for the duration. This has been fantastic. Oh, thank you guys.

Thank you, yeah, thank you both. You're welcome. I'll say it again, it has been fantastic. Oh, there we go. There we go. Come on people. All right. Well, for Hikiki's Reef Time, I am Damien Harmony. And I'm Ed Laylock. And until next time, keep rolling 20s. Rolling 20s.