Retronauts - Retronauts Episode 453: Fan Fiction

Episode Date: May 9, 2022

Fanfiction has long been associated with theft, creative bankruptcy, poor writing, and Cloud and Sephiroth from Final Fantasy 7 entangled in a forever-embrace. Join Nadia Oxford and authors Laura Mauro and Sarah Blair as they explain its benefits, too. Retronauts is made possible by listener support through Patreon! Support the show to enjoy ad-free early access, better audio quality, and great exclusive content. Learn more at http://www.patreon.com/retronauts

You're listening to Retronauts a part of the HyperX Podcast Network. Find us and more great shows like us at podcast.com. This week on Retronauts, you have the power to help Cloud and Suffrauth make a beautiful family. Hello, everyone, and welcome to Retronauts. I'm your host for this week, Nadia Oxford of the Acts of the Blood God RBG podcast. Thank you for joining me. Today we're going to talk about something that's very near and dear to my heart, and that is fanfictions and the various benefits thereof. This is going to be a lot of fun. For this worryingly meaty topic, I'm joined by two very special guests, author's Laura Morrow,

and Sarah Blair, both of whom say or confess that they got their start as fanfiction writers. So let's start with you, Sarah. Say a quick hello and give us an introduction to your work. Hi, I'm Sarah, and I actually got my start writing X-Files fan fiction. And now I write the Ties of Darkness series, which is kind of like X-Files meets King Arthur. It's about a paranormal investigator in New York City. And it's a lot of fun. So, yeah. That actually does sound like a lot of fun. Like King Arthur and X-Files, there's nothing there that's not to love. And how about you, Laura?

Say hello. Hi, nice to meet you all. I'm Laura Mauro. I got my start writing, well, initially Final Fantasy 7 fan fiction, but I did dabble in X-Files as well. And now I write short horror fiction. So, yeah, that's how I got my start. Oh, that's awesome. Man, like, we'll get into it, but Final Fantasy 7's fanfic is real, that's just real

sicko mode right there in terms of fan fiction. that like that is the entryway for so many people but yeah we'll get into that to put things very broadly if you're not familiar and i know you two ladies are before our general audience fan fiction is the act of writing fiction in a universe that's already established by another author or creator in modern times this usually means a lot of fan fake is based around like licensed properties e g we just talked about x files final fantasy seven also like the marvell universe the hunger games literally any property you could think of there has certainly been a fan fiction for it that said Fanfiction has been around as long as people have been telling stories. I mean, what is Paradise Lost, but an angsty, AU telling of the Bible? In another age, it'd have, like, a whole bunch of mind chemical romance lyrics peppered all over it. Most studios and publishers are fine with fan fiction. They see it as, like, good, easy community engagement. It's also free advertising, let's be honest.

But I think we can, both of us, not suggesting we're old, but I think we're well-learned and wise and know that there wasn't a time when fan fiction wasn't looked upon quite as friendly as it is today. Like one of my writing teachers actually called fan fiction writing like a creatively bankrupt act that was actually bordering on illegal. And that kind of almost scared me out of writing fan fiction for a long time. But there was also certain examples like we were talking about X-Files. Wasn't that quite heavily come down upon by Fox? Like were you part of that at all, Sarah? Do you remember anything about that?

I do remember. I was a reader then, and I never posted any fan fiction in any public way. I wrote it just for myself. But that was one of the reasons I never posted. I was a little bit too frightened of all of that. And I remember people used to get so creative with their disclaimers at the beginning of the fan fiction. Oh, God, yeah. You know, referring to Chris Carter as Mr. Twinkle Eyes and just getting really, really creative with that. It was kind of, that was one of my favorite parts of the fan fiction. It was trying to, you know, see how different people did their disclaimers. It was pretty fun. And then I recently noticed someone on Twitter asking about it and saying, did people, really have to do disclaimers? Was that just something that they did for fun? Because they were

looking through kind of the older archives. And like, why do people put the disclaimers? They didn't understand why they did that. I was like, that was actually a thing that you had to kind of do. And that was sort of, you know, I don't know if it was like a necessary legal thing that really counted for anything. I don't think it was. I think it was just a way to make people feel better about writing and posting. a magical incantation to keep us safe. That's all right. Stay away lawyers.

I'm just picturing the lawyers looking at this gobbledy cook by some 13-year-old and saying, oh, if they got us, airtight case, can't order the C&D. Right. Yeah. And at the reverse, I was out of fan fiction for a long time and only recently got back into it and discovered A-O-3. And I was looking through the fan fiction on there. I was like, why don't they have the disclaimers?

I don't understand. How are they allowed to do this? What's happening? I was very confused. That's amazing. Just like, why are these people not in jail? What's going on here? Yeah, just the opposite effect. So, yeah. It kind of reminds me, like, all those weird disclaimers and whatnot, how we thought they would help. Reminds me of when the age of file sharing and lime wire and stuff like that, you'd rename very subtly files so they couldn't get nabbed. They got nabbed anyway. They lasted for a bit longer that way. How about you, Laura, you know, you mentioned your, that you mentioned you wrote some X-Files Fick. I'm wondering if you remember anything from that particular dark age.

I remember because, like, you talk about A-O-3 and obviously FFF.net. And I remember, I mean, I'm, you know, full disclosure, a fandom old. And when I was posting and reading X-Files Fick, it was all on like various archives. Like, you didn't have centralized archives like we do now. So you used to have people hosting their own kind of little archives. And then I think we all felt like they were these kind of almost semi-secret corners of the internet where the big bad lawyers couldn't get us. But it was interesting as well because obviously Fox was a bit funny about fanfic. But I remember that the writers of the X-Files were quite, they were quite positive about fan work.

So I remember, I can't remember what episode it was, but there's an episode that has the names of several kind of fan artist and fan writers that they... I know which episode it is. Do you know which one is it? Please tell me. It's alone. It's alone. It's in season eight, episode 19. I literally just recorded our episodes on it. It's fresh in my mind. I'm so glad actually, because I kind of want to go back and see that again.

I'm really glad you know that, which I thought was a really cool thing, you know, like this kind of task of acknowledgement of, you know, we see the love you have for this thing that we're making and we share it. And, you know, it's even if Fox, you know, as an entity were being kind of, it's our intellectual property, the fact that the creators were sitting there going, you know, we love how much you love this. That's a really meaningful thing, I think. Yeah, that was, yeah, definitely. And you were mentioning the real ancient days of kind of decentralized archives, because, yeah, I used to run a Mega Man fan page, and I used to write and host a lot of fan fiction, and back in those days, what you did was you gave your, like,

I used Clare's Works on a Mac, so you'd give your file to the proprietor of the site, and they'd convert it to HTML, and they'd put it all up. It was a real slep, but it was a real labor of love at the same. time. So that goes way back, I think. But I think even further back, of course, you have the Star Trek zines and whatnot, which is even outside of my time. Yeah. I mean, it's something amazing about doing physical. I mean, actually, zines have kind of made a comeback, haven't they? Yeah. But the idea of like, you know, actually physically printing them out and handing them out. There's so, I was, yeah, I was a little bit, a little bit late to that. I know there were some

X-file scenes around, but that was a little bit before, a tiny bit before my time. But, yeah, the whole, I remember my, the Final Fantasy 7 fanfic that are you, there were two, there were two main sites at the time, I see Brian, I remember, I think everyone, it was Icy Brian. Yeah, I see Brian and the other one was Lioness World and, uh, that one I don't know. Yeah, that was, I think that was a very British one. I remember the, the, uh, the person who ran the site was British and, um, yeah, I just, yeah, you had to send them your file and they'd put the file up and then when

you had a chapter update, you send them the chapter update and it was all like, you know, none of this kind of really convenient AO3 where you could just upload it, you know, it was such a lot of work that you went into it. It was a real kind of labor of passion, I think. Yeah. I mean, not to mention that there was no social media to promote on it. It was just like, hey, sending out an email. You had to find the archives like, you know, the old-fashioned way. It was, you know, the word of mouth. Maybe that's why we felt safer because you had to kind of put effort in finding stuff, didn't you? Yeah, I mean, again, I could just picture the lawyers being completely stumped by 13-year-old girls, like, more power to you, girls, I love you, and everyone who wrote fan fiction back in the day.

Actually, the reason, speaking of young people, the reason why I wanted to talk about this episode is I think that fan fiction, speaking for myself and maybe for you too as well, fan fiction had a lot of benefits to helping me become a professional writer. Like, I think that fan fiction can be a really good way to supplement writing, teaching, how to teach writing, how to teach grammar, how to teach spelling. But we'll get into that. Basically, what I want to know first is what was your first fan fiction that you read and the first one you wrote? Starting with you, Sarah. I don't remember the exact first one that I read. But I do remember there was one called Dance Without Sleeping. And I want to say, I think it was Lydia Bauer that wrote it, but I can't, I'm not totally

sure. I just remember the title, Dance Without Sleeping. And it was, you know, obviously X-Files, Mulder and Scully. And I don't remember a lot about it. I just remember just being amazed that this world could exist outside of the show. And how enlightening that was to me. Like, I was just like, wow, people are, you know, making up their own things for the show. And they're, like, using, like, putting the characters and, like, this is amazing.

Like, it's everything that I want from the show because, you know, being a shipper of the X-Files, I wanted Mulder and Scully to get together. Yeah, of course. You know, what I wanted. And, you know, obviously on the show that, you know, it took a while. Yeah, yeah. So we were really impatient. And we needed them to just smash their face together. So.

Now kiss. Big moods. Among other things. But yeah, it was definitely an introduction to a world that I had not even known existed. And I was probably, probably too young for that. But here we are. You know, definitely had an influence on me. So. We all have to learn. We all have to learn sometime. I write adult books. So I don't, I don't keep the characters from kissing in my books at all. No, no. They wouldn't sell very well if that was the case, I think. No. No. How about you, Laura, do you remember anything about earliest reading, writing? Yeah, I kind of do. I remember I was about 14, so I was, you know, pretty young in hindsight. And I don't remember, again, I don't remember the exact first one that I read. But I remember the first one that I was really captivated by was, it was Final Fantasy 7.

It was called Sink to the Bottom with Hugh by Catalina. And it was like a mulchamil. Yeah, it was Vincent and Yuffy, which was a weird, a weird combination. But like. Somehow that works, though. It really did. And the way they wrote it, they, they wrote all this original stuff in and, like, original characters, original storylines. And it just worked so beautifully.

Like, I was, I was in awe of their writing. And that, actually, that thick was what made me want to write mine. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And then I wrote a terrible epic Final Fantasy 7 fick, which was like 27 chapters and had original characters in it, which was not as good. It was awful. But, like, the fact that I did write a 27 chapter epic, awful fanfic, I think was a necessary.

a necessary stepping stone in kind of, you know, writing things that were less awful. Oh, absolutely. Yeah. And, sorry, I didn't mean to cut you off, Sarah. You didn't get to tell me what your first fan think you wrote was, if you remember. It was, I don't really remember, to be honest. It was probably just, I would imagine, Mulder and Scully kissing and liked that they did. There was no, no plotting.

I had not even began to imagine that I could be on that level. um yet so it was how i started writing and how i felt like maybe it was something that i could do eventually but as far as like my actual writing fan fiction i i just kind of dabbled here and there and it was just you know for me to kind of figure it out and it wasn't anything i ever felt comfortable sharing or anything like that but um you know later i did like recently now that I've had some practice at it, I actually did start writing and posting fan fiction. So, oh, yeah, yeah. That's like, I'm still writing fan fiction, even though I'm writing professionally because it's just such a, it's such a good outlet. You know, it's kind of like,

it is. Just scratching yourself in private. I don't know. I don't want to continue this metaphor. That's why they pay me the big bucks, I guess. Writing novels takes forever and just, you know, sitting down, sometimes you just want to write like a quick, you know, 2,000 word thing. And it's, it's fun. and you feel like you can finish something and get, you know, an immediate reaction. Yeah, exactly. I post anything. Everybody's like, it's like immediate gratification.

I'm like, actually, I can write. That's great. I don't have to wait, you know, six months until my next book comes out. I can, you know. No, absolutely. It is like brain candy, isn't it? I don't think there's anything wrong with that. Sometimes you just need the boost of writing something, putting it out there.

People go, oh, M.G, I love this. And you go, oh, I can do it. You know, I feel validated. My existence as a writer is, you know. And I don't think there's anything wrong with that. You know, I think a little bit of self-indulgence is a really good, good and healthy thing, especially for writers because it's a lonely job and it's a slog sometimes. Yes.

No, you're absolutely right about that. I came into fan fiction a bit of a strange way, I suppose, in that I, the earliest things I remember reading, you'll appreciate this, Laura, is Archie Comics and Beano. Like, I have a lot of relatives in Ireland, and they always send over Bino. They used to send over a ton of Bino stuff, so I learned how to read using Bino, which probably didn't help my sentence structure whatsoever. And then as in addition to Archie Comics, I read a lot of Archie Comics. My parents collected them. So that's, I just kind of remember going around and looking at the words and trying to figure them out alongside the pictures. So inevitably, the first fan fictions I started writing were Archie fan fictions.

And what I would do is I just like, sometimes I'd write the characters in a new situation. And more commonly, though, I would take a story that I read, of course, since Archie is a comic, I'd take that visualization and try to put it back into narrative, which is, I guess, a bit of a backwards pursuit, but it's what I did nonetheless. So that was my start. And then in grade six, I was like really, really, really super duper into video games and Super Mario in particular. and I remember they had old cartoons for Super Mario Brothers, like Super Mario Brothers Super Show, Super Mario Brothers 3, and they were terrible. And even as a kid, I characterized, oh, my God, these are just not fun or funny or, you know, you could make Mario and Luigi swear, you know, why would you not do that?

Why would you not do something fun with this, people? So for grade six for my English project, I wrote a fan fiction about Mario and Luigi, and they were in a fight and the princess got fed up and rescued herself and it was just it was like complete it was awful but it was like just magical chaos at the same time too that only a child can really manage I suppose and this is where we the the whole idea to me of of school and fan fiction intersect because when I think back by all rights that fan fiction probably should have gotten me in trouble as a kid because I was using swear words and all sorts of other things. Like it wasn't a very G-rated fan fiction. I was a cute little girl with like pigtails.

And I bet my teacher was kind of shocked. But at the same time, she said, look, this is a really good story. You're a very good writer. And I think you have something here. You should really keep on writing. Now, I have had teachers who have said, as I mentioned, that fan fiction is creatively bankrupt. It's actually illegal. You shouldn't be doing it. So here was a teacher who said, this is great. Keep it up. If I had a teacher who had said, this is illegal, this is terrible, you cheating, it probably would have just destroyed my love of writing right then and there because I was a very shy sort of kid who hated confrontation and I would have been shattered and it wouldn't put myself back together. So I know that's, I know that was a bit of a long

divergence. I apologize for that, but I thought it was kind of an interesting perspective to bring to the table here. Absolutely. I never, I don't know that my teachers even knew what fanfic was. I don't know at the time, but I do remember very clearly doing one of my research papers, I think it was my freshman year, so I was probably like 13 or 14 on the Roswell incident because Files. I was so obsessed with X-Files. So every research paper, everything I did was probably like about aliens or Roswell or anything like that. And my teachers did encourage that. And I never, when we did get to do write short stories, I always enjoyed it. I don't, I never really, I don't remember what I wrote about, but I always had fun doing it.

And my teachers, I was always, like, really good friends with my English teachers. Yeah, same. So, you know, they were so supportive and I'm actually still friends with one of my teachers. That's really nice. My junior and senior year. But, yeah, she still encourages me and buys my books. That's awesome. That's great.

Do you find it really odd, though, that, like, you know, teachers saying that fanfiction is morally, you know, it's like, you know, bankrupt or uncreative or anything like that. And it's just like no other creative pursuit do we look at it that way. Like if you get a kid a crochet kit, right? The kit is there. It's done for you. You know, okay, there's no creativity in a crochet kit, but your kid is learning to crochet, right? Or if you give them a paint by numbers, okay, there's no, they're using the paint by numbers, but it's still, we understand inherently that that is still a creative activity, you know. There's nothing wrong with using a structure. I think the idea of it is very much

if you foster the love of something it doesn't really matter how that love comes about it doesn't matter how you learn the skills as long as you learn the skills as long as you learn to love it and it's just I don't really understand the attitude of unless you're writing something that is completely original

like you said earlier on you know and you can totally write you know Paradise Loss is Bible fan fiction you know there's so many other examples of that. Neil Gaiman you know very famous authors has rift off so many other, you know, retellings of Snow White, for example, and things like that. Retelling stories is part of our proud tradition of being storytellers. That's, you know,

oral tradition is all about retelling and re-spinning stories. Folktales are the same thing. You know, we adapt folk tales. And really, fan fiction is just another method of that. It's just another way of us looking at an established story. And actually, you know, you know what, I'm going to be controversial. I'm going to say that, you know, to call it creatively bankrupt is actually completely incorrect because unless you're just word for word retelling the story that you've just observed, there is creativity involved. You know, look at alternative universe fanfic or look at the ways that you're adapting the characters to make them do what you want or, you know, with X-Files fanfic, when people write case fix, they write

their own cases. And I used to love those fix. Because, you know, people are bringing their own influences into it. I just think it's nuts that anybody would look at that a child own fanfiction and say, oh, you're doing it wrong, you know. No, absolutely. No, and that's an excellent way of putting it. I never even thought of that. It would be kind of like handing your child a coloring book than getting angry. Like, why are you coloring someone else's picture?

Yeah. Go make your own picture and color it in. Well, it's funny that you mentioned that because, I mean, I also incorporate, like, Arthurian legend into my stories, too. And, like, basically all of Arthurian legend is just fanfic of another Arthurian legend. Like, it's not even, like, they just all are, like, let's take these characters and make them do French things this time. And like, it's not, they all just borrow from each other and retell the same stuff in different ways. And just, it's all the same characters, but completely different stories.

And I think it comes down to at least part, you know, the way that we perceive high art and low art, which is nothing I've got a big bug bear about, you know, and I'm sure, you know, Nadia, you must understand somebody, you know, is into video games and stuff like that. But, you know, what I knew as well, Sarah, with the exfiles and stuff like that, the idea that genre things or video games. is somehow low art. So anything associated with that must also be low art, which is also rubbish, you know, the idea that some art is inherently, you know, Arthurian legends are okay because it comes from classical literature. But, you know, God forbid that you should want to write about our modern folk tales and comics are modern folk tales. You know, all of this stuff

is modern folklore, right? Absolutely. No, you're absolutely right about that. Sorry, I got my soapbox about this stuff, but... No, no, no, no. I was actually going to ask you guys, so we've already talked about what the challenges we faced as fanfiction was perceived. But what other problems did you have writing fan fiction, especially back in the olden days? Like, let's face it, fans on fanfaction.comfaction.com. could be pretty catty for a start. Yeah.

I mean, I used to, I was so obsessed with it. Like, I didn't want to ever stop reading fan fiction. So, like, I would print it out and take it to school in, like, these secret manila folders. Yeah. And just, like, put it in the back of my notebook and, like, read during class and, like, hand it out to all my friends. Yeah. And I'm like, oh, you should read this one during lunch. And, like, we would trade back and forth.

between classes and like past these you know secret nondescript folders it's very x-filesy you know that's great i love that so much it was a lot of fun yeah it's good times i'm trying to think of i don't think any of my friends were really into fan fiction in fact i kept it kind of on the secret down low when i wrote it uh i thought it was like see this was about 1995 when i started and it was like oh my god i'm such a nerd i'm going to go to jail i'm I just all this like mix of emotions going through my head. So that kind of had me a little bit spooked about the whole thing. And I remember being like terrified because I shared a computer with my family.

And if, you know, I'm a middle child, only girl in a family of brothers. So if they found this, I'd be dead. And this in particular, this was my Mega Man X fan fiction writing phase. So I was really, really, really into this. This is actually how things really set off with me in terms of my career. I met a lot of friends, met my husband eventually. So it was a small steps for big results. And those small steps were quite terrifying.

Like I said, I hid my stuff. Eventually, you kind of do that thing where you change the file to something kind of, you know, discreet or like, hey, homework. That never fools anybody. Once a brother know something is yours, you're going to go sniffing around. So eventually, praise the Lord. I found out how to password protect doc files, and that changed my life. I remember discovering that, yeah. I had the same thing as you, the shared computer, the brother, yeah, yeah.

And it wasn't even writing anything particularly illicit, but it was just a fact of like, and I'm still like that now a little bit. Like, you know, I kept it on the download with, like you did more out of the fact that I didn't really know anybody else who was into it. But even as an adult, you know, it's not, it's not a shame thing. It's not even a privacy thing. It's just it's because fanfiction is my thing. It's my thing for me only. You know, it's my indulgence base. So I don't really share it so much because, you know, I've got like certain groups of online friends who I do share it with.

But it's my thing for me, you know, my, the published writing is for everyone. But fanfic is just for me to go hog wild with whatever I want to write. That's awesome. Yeah, I do kind of still keep it a little bit on the download. I am, uh, my modern fan fiction, I don't, I try to keep it on the download that I'm just like star for attention. I'm like, hey, everybody, look at this story. I wrote about Final Fantasy 4 characters kissing, and it inevitably gets out there. So I can't help myself.

It is fun. When I first started dabbling in it again, it was kind of funny because the way I got into it again is that I do an X-Files podcast. So I had friends and listeners that I become friends with, and they knew that I'm a writer. and had, you know, read my first book when it came out. And they're like, you're such a good writer. Like, don't you write fanfic? And I was like, I kind of did like a long time ago, but I don't really do it anymore. And they're like, no, you should really write something.

And I was like, okay. And I was really shy about it. It's like, because before I never knew really anybody that read it. Like, I, you know, shared other people's stories with my friends, but I never told them that I had thought about. writing myself. Yeah. So now that they're like, well,

you're a writer and you love X-Files. So of course you're going to write fan fiction. I was like, am I though? I don't know. So I was very reluctant to get back into it. But I wrote a story just for fun and shared it with, you know,

like two people and are like, you have to put this on A-O-3. And I was like, I don't know. But finally, I caved and did it. And the response was just so exciting. Everybody really liked it.

And I was like, okay, this is fun. And so, you know, I did a little bit more. It's been a while since I posted anything. But, yeah, it's been fun to get out there again and actually share it with people finally after all this time. The serotonin is unparalleled, isn't it? Yeah. It kind of is for sure. I had like a similar trajectory that I would.

I wrote it as a kid and then for a while I stopped. And I think it was a combination of like, in my head it was I can be a sensible writer or I can be an indulgent fanfix, but I can't be both, which obviously is incorrect. And I've kind of, you know, realised that as I got older. But I did go through a phase of no, I must focus on proper writing. You know, I did go through that. And then I got in at Metal Gear Solid and Live Journal. Oh, live journal. I miss it so much. And I joined a live journal community, which I've met some people who are still some of my best friends now. And it was the same thing as true. It was like, oh, why don't you write some fan fiction? I was like, ah, I don't think that. can. And they're like, yeah, sure you can. And then as soon as you kind of like dip your toe back in the water, it's like, that's it. I'm here. I'm back. Did you guys have like, I know fandom is a whole drama thing now. And it was a drama thing then. But we mentioned Live Journal a minute ago. Well, I do think that things were better than before social media. Things still could be a huge mess in terms of fandom back in the day. And did you have any problems, like writing a foul of, you know, people, unfortunately. I didn't. Oh, you're lucky.

No, I think, I think, yeah, like, obviously you had, you did have problems in the life journal days. Like, it wasn't a utopia, but I do look back on it really fondly, and there was none of this kind of slightly odd puritanism about what you can and can't write. Yeah. You know, all these forbidden things that, all of you write this, you're a bad person. I mean, that just wasn't really there. You know, when you did get problems, it was because it was shippers fighting with other shippers. You know, I mean, Final Fantasy 7 is the classic, you know, oh, cloud an airiff or cloud and tiffa kind of, you know, all that.

I mean, both of them, duh. Exactly, right? He's got two hands. But yeah, you've got a lot of shipwars and stuff like that, and that still goes on. But I think, you know, I won't go into it too much. I've got kind of a working theory that the nature of Tumblr and Twitter as platforms and the way that they make it impossible to curate.

communities and curate your spaces is what's fostered this kind of very defensive tribalistic attitude in fandom now and this kind of very everyone's on the defensive and everyone wants to attack. I do think it's the nature of the platforms. So, you know, if I had an ounce of coding sense, I would create a live journal-esque platform, but I don't. So, you know, we make do with the tools that we've got. I think that makes sense. Yeah. I was on AOL. So I know how I, yeah. I got on AOL Also, the way that was all set up is, you know, you had your chat rooms where you would go and they would be specifically labeled, like, Romo, spoilers, you know, so as soon as an episode of The X-Files was over, I would, like, hop on AOL, find my Romo episode, spoiler, whatever, and, like, get in there. And it was very, you know, limited as far as the scope goes. because, like, I was like, I'm not a no-romo.

Yeah. I'm like, I don't want to be in that one. I'm going to be in the shipper room, chatting with other shippers, and it was very, you know, it was a good bubble to be in. And that's great, though, isn't it? Because then, like, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, Ramos don't have to deal with ship content. You don't have to sense to yourself because, you know, you got your space

for you Molder and Crychecks shippers who were out there doing their own thing, you know. Live journal was the same, you know, we had an MGS Metal Gear Solid slash community, and you know exactly what you're getting on the tin there is moderated, And, you know, there was rules about what you could post and, you know, things that had to be put behind cuts and all of that kind of thing. And it was just so much more curation and community-mindedness, you know, rather this kind of constant stream of stuff that you can't avoid, you can't filter for, you can't tack for. No kind of spaces for people who are interested in this thing but not that thing or, you know, that just doesn't exist anymore. You either get all or nothing and I think people get resentful of that. Oh, and I'm going to be. Oh, my. Make room for huge plays with the HyperX Alloy Origin 65 Mechanical Gaming Keyboard and the Pulsefire Haste Wireless Mouse.

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Make room for huge players. with the HyperX Alloy Origins 65 Mechanical Gaming Keyboard and the Pulsefire Haste Wireless Mouse. The Alloy Origins 65 has a functionally compact form factor, keeping the arrow keys without the numpad and function keys. The Pulse Fire Haste is the lightest wireless mouse from HyperX featuring a robust connection up to 100 hours of battery life and it's even water resistant.

The Ally Origins 65 and Pulse Fire Haste Wireless. Keep your setup clean and clutter-free with the Alloy Origins 65 Mechanical Keyboard and the Pulsefire Haste Wireless Mouse. The Hardcore Gaming 101 podcast is on a mission to rank the top games of all time. I like the idea that when Bruce Wayne gets angry, he switches to the Batman voice. Why do you have a problem making boomer eggs shaped like a bat? You mean like Batman? Not like Batman. Just make it for me. Bruce Wayne, I can't even with this guy. It's a Hercules task, and I'd be lying if I said it has.

has it taken a toll on our cognitive faculties. Most people would be happy to have a job during a global pandemic. Goodness. Hardcore Gaming 101, twice a week, every week. Right here on the HyperX Podcast Network. Now, we've already gone over how, like, fan fiction should be taught in schools, but I also think it's not only a good opportunity for kids to learn how to write, but also how to critique each other without just destroying each other's like shark in a tank. Like, we're all probably very familiar with the state of social media more so than ever.

And whereas it can be a really encouraging tool to use, it can also have some really, I find kids are really vicious to each other. I mean, kids are always vicious to each other. That's not news. But just the way they kind of go after each other for, like, say, promoting the wrong ship or doing something, quote, unquote, problematic, I find it quite depressing. And I feel like maybe school could have a little bit of a course in, you know, alongside fanfic, how to write fanfincts, just calming down and having fun and critiquing without

eating? You know what I mean? What do you think about that idea? Well, I think it's definitely a great help to teach constructive criticism in any shape or form and how to how to form, you know, ideas and opinions that critique the actual work instead of a person's thoughts or ideas. So it's, it definitely would be helpful, I think, to have that and to encourage that. And I do think that perhaps on the flip side, it could be a great way for kids to discover friends who might share their opinions and who might, you know, they might make a new friend out of it. Be like, yeah, I didn't know you shipped these two people. I do too. Amazing. I have friends for like 20 years ago from like my oldest days of writing fanfax

and some of my best friends of all time. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And fanfic is such a great way to explore those ideas and really put yourself kind of in a different frame of mind. And, you know, whether it's any kind of like friendship pairing or romantic pair or whatever. Like, you know, just taking yourself out of what's canon and creating your own ideas and sharing those with people. is really valuable because, you know, maybe they might find a new idea that they didn't know

before and you could, you know, celebrate that. So, yeah. One thing I think I actually would like to see children calm down with more these days, which was really a non-issue in my day, was people really, really hate OCs. And I find that, oh, that's original characters. That is for a dear reader, a dear listener. Basically, when you write a character of your own and insert them into this license, in its world. And it was kind of a little bit controversial when I was writing fanfiction in like the early 2000s, but people will talk about, oh, Mary Sue. Mary Sue's and Gary Stu's. Yeah, yeah, which is like, oh, your character's overpowered. Oh, how dare they love the

protagonist. And that I find is so much worse now because people want to read about the characters exclusively and are really focused on shipping, I find, a really hyper-focused on shipping. So, yeah, I just feel like, that's another factor where kids really need to calm themselves. a little bit. I think it kind of comes under a wider umbrella of like, you know, bullying behavior and tolerance and kind of, you know, accepting difference, accepting different approaches. And on one hand, yeah, I totally think that school should be teaching and promote this. On the other hand, it really depends on the school that you go to and where you go to school because then you're going to have certain environments where a kind of conservatism is the norm. That's where it gets a little bit tricky, I think,

because, you know, the judgment kind of comes with the territory. Especially if you're talking about stuff like shipping, which has romance inherent in it. And obviously, you know, whether you want teenagers to talk about it or not, they are going to talk about sex. And that is going to be part of it. You might not want them to, but they are still going to do it anyway. And so I think it's one of those areas that, well, I 100% agree that teaching is there's a lot of benefits teaching it. Who's teaching it and how they are taught to teach it is going to be just as important as the teaching, I think, because the last thing you want to do as well is kind of instill those kind of, I guess, kind of quasi-puritan values on kids and scare the life out of them in a school

environment when the online environment is already doing that, you know? It's difficult. It's a tricky one to balance, I think. Now, that isn't actually a very, very good point because we all know in the States, unfortunately, in particular, in the UK, we have a lot of anti-Trent, just anti-LGBQ. And of course, fan fiction is extremely LGBTQ focus. It's where a lot of the community expressed themselves for the many times maybe people for the first time and right now unfortunately a very conservative um kind of mindset that's prevailing that's like kids should not know anything about alternative sexualities nothing nothing and i could see like some teachers like who are not objective being like oh this is god what a nightmare would be if like not only like

online was policing as he said not only online's policing what you're writing but your teachers as well It's like almost like teachers telling me, oh, it's illegal to do that, except now it's like, oh, it's immoral to do that. Yeah, immoral. It's interesting how we've gone from like issues of legality to issues of morality, isn't it? Like, it's a very, I think it's really a sign of our times that that's what we're worried about now. But we learn nothing. We don't. We don't.

We just switch targets, don't we? But yeah, I think generally cultivating an environment in which, because kids, I think kids are always going to be tribal to an extent. That's kind of how we form as teenagers, isn't it? We kind of bunched together in our little groups and our little identities. But I think teaching people to be tolerant beyond their little bubbles and beyond their spheres, you know, accepting, not just accepting other ships, but accepting, you know, like one of the things I always see kids getting angry with each other about is things like dark thick and stuff like that. Oh, you know, you can't write about taboo subjects and stuff like that. Yes, it's always a thing.

Yeah, and that's kind of just an extension for when I was a kid. It's like, oh, you can't read those horror books. that's all taboo. If you read, you know, it's... Shoes bumps. Yeah, yeah, it's the same thing just in different clothing, right? But the source is the same, you know. I think teaching kids that fiction is a safe place to explore all manner of things because it isn't real.

Because, you know, fiction has no real life consequences. Teaching people the difference between healthy expressions of certain subject matters and real life. There is a goal between those two things and reminding kids of that, I think, is a good thing. And writing adults of that is a good thing, too, because I think adults to get that sometimes. I think so. I think adults need several lessons about that. It's one of the best ways to, you know, form empathy with people because you can explore those things, like you said, Laura, with, you know, in a safe way and learn about other people and other cultures and other experiences that are outside of your own. And that's so important to

be able to expand your world. And, you know, a lot of kids don't have access to that. And they don't have access to travel. And they don't have ways to do that. But books and fiction, you know, are so, are so easy. And, you know, you've got a library, you know, exactly. Like, how many times we heard about, like, troubled people who became authors or whatever and books were their friends, like, because they had nothing else. I was that child. Yeah, I was the kid who'd, you know, books for my friends and books for my saviors. I was the kind of stereotypical kid. But, you know, it's true.

You know, you do get that. And, you know, having a refuge in fiction, no, not just reading it, but then being able to write it and being able to express your feelings through that medium. It's like, you know, it's therapy before kids realize that therapy is a thing. And I think for kids, you know, like I was a bully kid, I was, you know, I went through a lot of stuff at school. And it was, it was like, you know, expressing a lot of that on the page and being able to get it. out and, you know, it is an important outlet. It is cathartic and letting kids have that is important, especially if... It's very important. Yeah, especially if they don't have that as a friend group or a peer group. And as Sarah was saying, you know, the opportunity to

expand your friend group and your peer group, people that maybe you might not have realized you had something in common with, but you do. No, absolutely. No, it's really important. And speaking of children, Sarah, we were talking earlier about how you have a son, correct? And they, he is really into Minecraft. And I was thinking about maybe if teachers aren't really prepared to handle the really, you know, heavy subjects that come with writing fan fiction, maybe they can even do something as simple as saying, hey, your writing prompt for this day is to write about your Minecraft character. Tell me about their adventures in the land that you built and not like write a assignment about ice cream. You know what I mean?

Exactly. Yeah. So I think that's a very good direction for at least a start for the. younger grades to kind of to jump in on. Yeah. It's amazing to see how their faces light up too when it's something that they can relate to. And I had this experience too. When I first discovered fan fiction, I didn't know that it was possible. You know, I was big into the X-Files and I didn't even know that was a thing that could happen, that I could read about these characters and that people could write the things that they wanted to see on the screen. It kind of seemed like black magic at first

when you first to your first fan section, doesn't it? It opened up like this whole like vista of experiences that I didn't know were possible. And then, you know, I told my son like, hey, if you if you don't want to write about this thing, write about Steve and Alex, you know, have them go on an adventure. Tell me, you build all these amazing cities in Minecraft and you build these houses. What happens in that house? What adventures do they get up to? And, you know, you can write about that. And he's like, really?

And I'm like, yes, that is a thing that you can do. That's the amazing thing, isn't it? When you get that, really? Because we were all there. You could do that. Like, there are no rules. You can do whatever you are. Yeah, but you just come into it assuming that there are things.

And maybe you absorb it through osmosis, like, oh, no, the proper way to write fiction, the proper way of fiction. And then when you realize, I can do whatever I want, that is the most freeing moment. It's so, so freeing. And, I mean, even if you want to think about it from, you know, say teachers saying, oh, it's a creatively bankrupt thing to do. It's really not in terms of, especially something like Minecraft because other than the name, Steve and Alex, like, everything else is his. Like, I can, I, the best I can do in Minecraft is I build some lame-ass, like, cave house and say, ah, there, I did that. I'm great.

But as you know very well, like, kids can just, they, it's like just three-dimensional, it's sorry, it's digital Legos. Like, it's bonkers. Yeah, it is so cool. And he'll come and show me these things that he, he does. And I'm like, should you be having that much screen time? And I really worry about it. But then I see the things that he makes. And I'm just like, whoa, this is like an engineering feat of, you know, and he's using his brain and his imagination and building things and learning how to, you know, create.

And of course, that's going to like serve him later in life because he's going to, he's going to see things, you know, from an engineering. perspective and see things in a way that, you know, maybe I never will. No, exactly. Like, just because I can turn on Minecraft doesn't mean I'm going to build anything remarkable. It's fun. I can tool around. But I've seen, as you said, just people build these incredible vistas and stuff. And that's as valid as anything, really.

In fact, I have zero, zero reason, zero right to complain about children on screens these days because I find I didn't not really learn to love how to write until I learn to type. Yes. And look on a screen. And that's because I have, like, a few minor learning disabilities that, all, like, are vastly improved upon when I switch to typing versus handwriting. When I was a kid, gosh, computers weren't a regular thing in classrooms, like, until many, many years down the line. And so I was just always being berated, like, write slower, do better. You got to have – and I can't. My motor skills were not that – were not that good.

So to me, writing, the active writing, was kind of painful as much as I loved it because I'd be getting criticism for my handwriting and whatnot and my spelling, which was absolutely and still is atrocious. So I think that even though we talked about how fan fiction, as we know, it kind of started with zines and stuff like that, it really blossomed with the digital age because I think I'm not the only person out there who had trouble with their motor skills and really improved upon when they, when they, when they, when they. they switch to the computer. And I think that actually segues into a valid topic about how fan fiction can be a good tool for children who have learning disabilities because if you're not spending as much mental real estate on making your own world and instead saying, okay, here's Steve and Alex, that's handled. Now I can really focus on my sentence structure. Now I can focus on this and this and that.

I think that's really, really, really important. Absolutely. And my son is similar. I mean, he has anxiety and tendencies towards perfectionism because he's the kind of kid. He worries so much. And he's like a sponge. He does all the absorbing, but he won't put anything out until he knows that he can do it, until he knows that he is confident and that he can produce what's inside his head,

which is never the case when it comes to writing, whatever is inside your head. I wish. Never makes it to the page ever. So, you know, I keep, as a writer myself, you know, I keep telling him that. I'm like, you just got to start and you can fix it later. You've just got to get the words down. And it's okay if it's not perfect the first time, but he really struggles with that. I understand that.

Yeah, like you said, like having the characters established, having the world already established, and having him be so familiar with that really gives him a jumping off point to start thinking about the story. and the action and what happens in the plot and that kind of thing. Whereas, you know, he doesn't have to sit and come up with character names in the whole world. He doesn't have to world build and all that. It's already there. So that's a good, that's a really good point that, you know, it does help get them started off, I think. I think I've said this before, but like, obviously now in my mid-30s, I can,

You know, I can do all that. I can build the worlds. I can make the characters. I can do all of that. But I would never have had the confidence to that or even knew that I could do that if I hadn't started off, you know, in someone else's sandbox. And exactly. Because the thing is you don't realize how much you are building your own world within that world, right? You know, you've got, it's like, so you said Lego earlier and it is like that. Like, you've got the set. And you can build the exact thing that's on the box, right? But also, you can kind of make it slightly different or add things or take some bricks from that pile and make it look a bit different. And then maybe I want to build a tower over here instead of I'm over there and before you know it you have actually created a world out of the world and get okay all the pieces are there but you're still rearranging them and you're still putting them in places and then when you sit back at it like with the benefit of a little bit of hindsight and you look at all the work that you've done and you thought you think oh wow I have actually created you know I did more than I thought I could it isn't it isn't like you know getting a colouring book and rigidly staying within the lines and picking all the right colours it's more like here's the colouring book I can pick any colour I want and actually if I want to add some lines

and turn this into something else, I can do that. You know, I think people underestimate how much creativity and autonomy goes into fan works. I think everyone who is familiar with it just assumes that you're literally just copying it. You're copying the story, but you're not. You're writing your own stories within the world. Like, you know, with X-Files, you can write your own cases. You can bring your own monsters of the week into it. You can do what you want.

You can change the relationship dynamics. You know, as you said, Nadia, you could bring original characters into it. There's so many ways to extrapolate from the source material. You can do alternate universe and put like a Mulder and Scully in high school or something. Exactly. It's the cool thing. How popular is the coffee shop at you? Oh, yeah.

You know, it's such a popular trope, right? You're going to have to fill me on it. I do not know the coffee shop at you. Oh, the coffee. See, I don't go there myself, but it's like, you know, taking your favorite characters, what if they worked at Starbucks kind of thing, you know, what if they did this, you know? Or like a meat cute, like one of them's a barista and the other one's a regular customer, and they always order the same thing and they fall in love over a cup of coffee, that kind of this.

You know, I love hearing about this because this is something that absolutely did not exist whatsoever in my heyday of writing fan fiction. Yeah, it's a relatively new thing. Yeah. And I'm, I'm too old and too jaded for coffee shop I use. But I like seeing people like. I like the idea. Yeah. It's kind of pleasantly mundane, isn't it? And I don't mean that in an insulting way at all. I mean that in a kind of like, you've got this really, I don't know, violent and dramatic series. What if they worked at a coffee shop? I kind of love that. There's something pretty amazing about that. I do like that. There's also a Regency. Yes.

Yes. I've read the website. Mulder's going to the Regency. Yeah. Yeah. It's superb. I love those in particular because it really takes a lot of research. And I love,

I love writers who go Hogwold. And that's another thing as well. Another underrated aspect of fan fiction is it actually turned you into a researcher. Yeah, it does. It really does. It really does. Yeah. Because in order to write anything that's vaguely,

obviously when you start you might not be worried about accuracy but the more you do it the more you think oh you know where is this set where did this episode happen how far is moulder's house from scully's house you know and all that kind of thing just little things and you look it up and you do your research and before you know it you've got a database of all this information you know oh where was the jersey devil first sighted and you know all this kind of stuff and you become a researcher yeah this before you even get into alternate universities which turns you into an even more of a researcher but even just to write something in canon I just recently wrote a Final Fantasy 4 fan fiction, and I had to look up how long to take for a body to decompose.

I love those. Please don't look at my Google search history. Nobody look at my Google search history. Oh, my gosh. I'm a horror writer. You have no idea. Yeah, don't even. It's a hot mess in there.

I'm trying to remember, like, the latest thing that I've Googled. That was really horrific. I did Google how to make a pipe bomb once, which was I worried about for a long time. That one you put on your secret search. Yes. You put on your inside video. I still thought MI5 are going to knock on my door at any moment, but I got away with it. Yeah.

I had to look up burns because one of my characters got burned by a dragon and the story I'm working on right now. So I was like, let's see. Oh, you probably got some bad pictures. So now I can tell you all about how to treat a burn. So you become a research and now you're a first aider. It's perfect. Exactly. Exactly.

The things you learn as a writer. Yep. I think also, one thing's especially beneficial for children in particular is that when they write fan fiction. You kind of have an instant audience with you, and that means, in turn, that you have people who are very much more quickly engaged than if you wrote like your own universe. No matter how good of a writer you are, it is so much easier to get people invested in your fan fiction than it is your original fiction. And to be fair, they could go from your fan fiction to your original fiction. It happens to me all the time, and it's really great when that happens. But for children, I think we're going to want, like, not only like valid criticism as quickly as possible, but also encouragement.

because I thrive on the compliment sandwich. I don't know about anybody else. No matter how long I've been at this, you can't just come at me and say this, this, this, this, and this sucks. I have to hear some sort of, some sort of good news. So kids will kind of learn how to give criticism and receive criticism. Yeah. And it will, and let's be honest, like get that gratification. And if you don't have that gratification, you're not going to continue writing unless you really hate yourself,

which most of us do. Don't get me wrong. But this makes it a little easier to keep on going. I think you two would agree with me on that one, right? For sure. Absolutely. Yeah. It is, it is, for me personally, I'm an obliger personality.

So I have to know that people are enjoying the things that I'm doing. And I need that immediate gratification, like you said. It fuels me and it keeps me going. Because if I feel like I'm just writing for myself, I'm like, well, you know, I already have these characters living inside my head. They're always there. And I don't need to write them down to have to experience that. But when I can share that with other people and they talk about things that my characters

did and they laugh about it, like I laughed about it when it happens inside my head. I'm like, oh, right, it makes it more real and it makes it so much more gratifying because I can share that with another person and then my characters are in their head too. and I was just thinking about how wild it is that I've put these books out into the world and there are people in Australia who have my characters living inside their head now. That's always the best feeling. And then they give you fan art and you lose your mind. It's amazing.

Oh, the best thing. I'm still, yeah, fan art is the great, like I just flip out when I see fan art. So, yeah. I must admit, I'm the same with fanfic as well. like if I'm writing a real rare pair or something and no one else is into it, I'm like, oh, why am I bothering? Like, you know, I can just sit here and run my imaginary scenarios in my head all day long. You know, it's but putting it onto the page does require, like, a little bit of feedback.

It is there is, I think one thing that's really good for kids to encourage them to start with is give them, give them the encouragement first. Like, don't worry about critiquing. I think the instant gratification of fanfic for kids is all about motivation. It's about encouragement. It's about teaching them they can do it. Once they've built that confidence, they've got that foundation of I can do this, that's when you can come in kind of with the gentle critique

and go, okay, let's talk about grammar. Let's talk about world build. Let's talk about all the little technical nuts and bolts. But first and foremost, they've got to believe they can do it. And I think that's where fan fiction is uniquely poised to do that. Because you do have that kind of instant. Oh, I love this. I love this story.

I love these characters. You know, let them have that first. you can worry about the rest of it later on. I think you're definitely right about that because, I mean, we can all agree that the hardest thing is just getting it on the page, period. Like, I have terrible executive dysfunction, which is a fancy way of saying I'm a terrible procrastinator, but I also worry just when I get started, I'm okay, but it's just like, ugh, like it is hard to write. The blank page is terrifying, isn't it? Oh, nothing worse. I have right now in my Google drive, I have a review, and the only thing on that paper is a letter A.

And I don't even know how the A got there. But that's where I am for, that's my life. That is completely my life. So you're absolutely right. Even if a kid gets something out and it's their first time, it's a complete dog's breakfast. It's like, good for you. This is in your head. You got it on the paper.

That's extremely hard. Let's work on it from there. But just good job. You took the step. You can polish what's on the page, but you can't polish nothing, right? That's what I always tell myself. Yeah. You can't work with nothing.

Yeah. No, I actually think of something Margaret Atwood said, which is, if I waited for perfection, I would never write a word. And I would like to live by that. I really try to live by that. But I do my best. I'll just say that much. Yeah. I'm a work in progress. I'm trying to train myself to write faster because, you know, I do agonize over every word. And it's like, you know what? This is the first draft. The whole point of a first draft is simply to exist. Whatever words are there are perfect because they exist. I have seen a good tip for writing a first draft, and that is switch your font to comic sons because then you can't take it too seriously. It works a little bit. I like that. I definitely draft in different fonts. Like, my font for drafting has to match the mood of the story. So, like, you know, if I'm writing historical fiction, I'll do like a fancier font.

And if it's, you know. That's pretty cool. That's cool. Yeah. Like I'm writing for this book that I'm writing right now wants to be in Garamon. so, like, I don't know why, but it just... Garamont's a nice fun. That's how it's coming out.

It looks, you know, kind of, yeah. A little bit antique, kind of, so, yeah. I've never heard of that before. It's working. I don't know why. You kind of have that visual aspect of it, which is still a very important part of writing as well. Huh, neat.

One final point to hit on here is, I think it would actually also be beneficial to teach fan fiction in school because kids can learn about law, because I think we all had that one friend in school who just wrote Final Fantasy 7, filed off the serial numbers and said, this is mine. And whereas kids kind of have to learn, it's perfectly okay to write fan fiction, it's not okay to take someone else's story and say, this is mine. So that might not exactly be first priority, but it certainly should come up at some point. We don't have Anne Rice anymore. You know, God rest us, so.

But, yeah, I think all of us who lived through the kind of Anne Rice here, we remember the kind of what felt like terrible cosmic unfairness of like the threat of, yeah, the real threat that Anne Royce's lawyers were going to find you and knock on your door specifically if you ever wrote anything about the stat ever. But yeah, like, you know, the difference between fair use and just like totally ripping someone off, you know, there's nothing wrong with like doing that for a school project if your teacher turned around to go, okay, look, the technical aspect of this is fine, but you kind of did just like copy this. completely wholesale, didn't you? Like, you can't. That's not, okay. We all do it. We all do it a little bit. You know, everyone does that when we start out. But like, you know, as long as someone teaches you that, you know, plagiarism is a thing. Yeah. Well, they do teach you that in my writing classes. We had assignments. Yeah. I mean, we had assignments. Like read, pick an author, read their work and then write a story like them. Oh, but, you know. I've done that. Yeah. So it's a great way to practice. and a great way to learn different styles and to find your voice, but at the same time, you know, you can't take the specific elements.

Emulating the style of is really cool. Like, I think when I first started out, my absolute favorite fanfiction author, I actually, it's slightly embarrassing, but the reason I started out is because I wanted to write like her so bad. So I just kind of thought if I write a story that's like kind of like hers, I try and sound like her, but I write about different characters, then maybe I'll be as good as her. And, you know, I wasn't. I was absolutely not as good as her.

But it was the first step in becoming nearly as good as her. We all go through that period where we want to write like another author. My first one was Essie Hinton from who did like The Outsiders and Rumblefish. Because we read The Outs in school. And then I actually for an assignment for I did a prestige of a C.S. Lewis story. And that actually was really kind of, we talked about how I read a lot of Beano when I was younger. And I really kind of picked up that British dialect and man. it and then fed it back through C.S. Lewis and what came out was, it was interesting. I'll

say that much. But yeah, writing pastiches can be fun. Yeah. And like learning how to capture a character's voice. Yeah. Yes. Personally, Mulder and Scully, that's one of the things that made me so nervous to start writing. And one of the things that kind of held me back from putting my fan fiction out into public because Mulder and Scully have such a distinct voice. Yeah. Yeah. And Chris Carter was very very. particular about how they sounded, and he would go through the scripts and rewrite scenes where he didn't feel like Mulder and Scully sounded like themselves. Plus, then you had on top of that, David and Cudney and Julian Anderson, adding their own acting skills and their own improvisations to their characters, and they were really unique, solid characters. So if I find a fan fiction that's X-Files and it doesn't sound like Mulder and Scully, and I put that in air quotes.

But if it doesn't sound like them, I can't read it. So to capture that voice, like on the page in a fan fiction is a really unique talent that takes practice. Absolutely. And that's a good thing to do, I think, because it helps you develop your own writing voice. Yeah. you can emulate the other, you know, characters that already exist. It helps you understand what voice is as well, doesn't it? Because I think that's one of those really nebulous things as a beginner writing.

You don't really understand voice all that well until you kind of dissect it in exactly that way. Like, okay, how does Molder talk? How does Scully talk? Yes. Or like if you get like, you know, if you're in video game fandom where it's all text-based, you know, like Final Fantasy 7, for example, you know, their characters still have distinct voices. And, you know, try to extrapolate that from text to your own text. There's lots of different ways that you can do it, but learning how voice works and learning the importance of voice is one of those things that you only really learn by doing, I think so. I think that voice was the thing that took me longest to learn. I was looking back at some of my old writing from my 20s, God help me. And I had a good grip on environmental, like describing environments and events, but dear God in heaven, I could not write a voice. Everybody sounded the same, which was to say some like, smart ass video game character from the 90s and it was the worst part of it all was in my 20s

I thought it was I thought I was incredible I thought it was great and that's a really bad part of being 20 yeah is it bad though I think that's kind of a good thing that at that moment of like I'm immortal and no one can touch me in your 20s yeah okay it does make you it does turn you into a little bit of an asshole sometimes and like you look back and go oh my god and you cringe but like I think you have to have that a little bit you might be on to something in order to push through yeah yeah yeah yeah I think you're on to something there because if I didn't think, hey, screw you. I'm editor.

I'm the best writer that ever existed. You're probably just going to give up. But the 20s does give you that fire that you need to push through the awful times. And eventually, the most important thing to learn with any sort of writing whatsoever is that practice does make perfect. Oh, God, it pulled out a cliche. So there you go. I'm still not perfect. So practice doesn't make perfect, but it makes something resembling.

Progress. Practice makes progress. Practice, yes, I like that. That's, yeah. Yeah. That's perfect. Yes, because as we have been over, progress is by far the hardest part of writing. So this has been a really, really great discussion.

I really enjoyed this. I hope you too enjoyed it as well. Absolutely. Yeah. It's a blast. Yeah, it's been really good to talk fanfiction with people. I never get to talk fan fiction. I know, right? I am always here to talk about fan fiction. 24-7. If you guys want to go ahead and promote some stuff, Laura, why don't you go ahead? head first. I know we talked a little bit beforehand, but let's do it again. Right. So, yeah, I'm on Twitter as at Laura N. Mauro, and I'm also on sporadically blogging

at Laura Morrow.com. Sorry. And, yeah, so my short story collection, Sing Your Sardness Deep, is out now. And I'm also working on an as yet unannounced video game with the company Bonsai Collective, which will be hopefully announced sometime in the middle of this year. I'm writing for an unannounced video game too. I love Super Secret Squirrel Projects. And how about you, Sarah? You can find me over on Twitter at Sarah L. Blair, and you can find me on Instagram at author.sara.blair.

I also am one of the hosts over at the Xcast and X Files podcast, and you can find that on Instagram at Xcast pod or Twitter at the X underscore cast. and I have a series. My book series is titled Tides of Darkness series, and it's a lot of fun. If you like fan fiction, sure, I dropped a lot of Easter eggs in there. So, you know, yeah, it's good times. It's an adult's paranormal series, so, yeah, good times. Awesome.

And if you, dear listener, think that this episode is cool, we have tons of more content like it. Just visit the Retronauts Patreon at patreon.com for slash Retronauts. or access to media that is even more spiritually nourishing than your favorite OT3 fan fiction. Support us at the $3 level to get early access to weekly episodes. Supporters at the $5 level to get episodes a week early as well as two exclusive episodes a month. Support us at the magic number 64 for the opportunity to set a retronaut topic of your own once every six months. As of this recording, there's one spot left, so go ahead and snap that up. As for me, I am Noddy Oxford, co-host of the Accident Blood God RPG podcast.

talk about RPGs old and new Eastern Western. You can support us on Patreon at patreon.com for slash bloodgod pod and or follow me on Twitter at Nadia Oxford. I also do a Final Fantasy 14 podcast called Charlene Dropouts and then it's also under the blood god umbrella. So if you support us, you can get access to that. And I don't know, maybe pet grothia's ears, which gosh, I want to put his ears. So until next time. Sorry.

That was off the cost. Until next time, thank you for listening. And don't forget to password lock those doc files on your family computer. They are not as well hidden as you think. I don't know I'm going to And... ...when...

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