Transcript
Speaker: Amen.
Speaker: Hi, Branwen. Hi. What is your thoughts slash relationship to fanfiction? It's something I hadn't thought about for a while, but it's something that I did think about quite a lot some years ago when I was deep into the the fandom that shall not be named. A franchise that shall not be named, yeah. And when a very, very famous rich author who shall not be named came out as the transphobe, I kind of leaned into the fan fiction of that fandom a little bit.
Speaker: I was already a contributor to fan fiction from that fandom at the time. i was part of a big online community and I'd written some. But I don't think I really have a relationship with the Star Wars fanfic.
Speaker: Ooh. community. So I am intrigued. Do you want one? I do. Sia. Hi. What's your relationship to fan fiction? Oh my gosh. I love it.
Speaker: I love it. I don't contribute to fan fiction really, but I do read a lot of it. I use it as a palette cleanser between longer stories. I use it as a, I'm feeling some kind of way and I just need this particular character, this particular thing, and I will go out and find that. I'll tell you what as well, like before we even get into this, that is a beautiful thing I've not thought about with fan fiction. There's so much fanfic out there yeah of all different shades and yep styles that you can like be very niche about what you're looking for. Oh, you can be so niche. And if you are in the kind of online spaces where it's being created, you can even make requests and they'll do it for you. Like yeah there are myriads of incredibly creative people out there yeah that are just writing this stuff and putting it on the internet for free. Yeah. We love it. It's so good. could we just say before we start, we love it. We love it. We love it. I love it. Yeah, it's hot it's got a stigma around it, which yeah I don't appreciate. So we will get into that. But I think for me, this episode is going to be my unapologetic love letter to fan fiction.
Speaker: i'm here for it you're listening to sisters of the force a star wars podcast with me bramman and me see ya and we got a super especial especial especial episode today another journeys into wild space for you and when we say wild space it's pretty wild wild space As if our episodes weren't already wild enough, we are delving into Star Wars fanfic, which is a huge universe or galaxy. It is massive. Of fiction, which has been written by countless people from all around the world celebrating the fandom that we love so much. yeah And yeah, Sia, you've been on a massive deep dive for this episode. Yeah.
Speaker: I have been on a mission, quite the mission, to just find out more about what what this is, where are these people, what's going on in the fandom, what's going on in the deepest, darkest corners of the internet, yeah and how can I even be involved. i love it So maybe we should, like, before we get deep into the Star Wars and this of it, talk about fanfic in general. Like, for anybody who's listening who doesn't know, maybe they've never heard of what fanfic is. Yeah. Where does it come from? It's kind of underground, really, isn't it? Yeah. Through the nature of copyright, it's quite underground. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker: I feel like it is quite punk. It's quite, you know, DIY. I kind of like that about it. Yeah. i In my limited research that did this episode, because you told me not research. told you not to do research. Literally took you to your word. Excellent. But I did go back in the day as, you know, as an older podcaster, I went back to the pre-internet era of yes the fandom and how that evolved. Yes. And even from as early 1977, people were making Star Wars fanzines, which, again, is very punk.
Speaker: Fanzines in the music world are mostly associated with punk and yeah alt music. And what struck me immediately, which I'm sure we're going to talk loads about, is the fact that a lot of the early Star Wars fanzines were made by women, yeah which says a lot to me yeah without needing to think too hard about it Maybe yep the women of the 70s and weren't, they loved Star Wars. They loved the galaxy far, far away as so many of us did. But maybe there wasn't enough of the content that they liked to read out there maybe. Yeah. I don't know. Well, that ties in quite nicely with, there is a, something that I read a bits of is that the Fan Fiction Studies Reader, which is a collection of essays on fan fiction collated by Karen Hellickson and Christina Boos. Yeah. It's, an amazing set of essays on all of this, like academic essays spanning from the 80s to now. Amazing. High recommend if you want some like kind of really, really interesting stuff. But one of the earliest essays in there is by Joanna Russ and it was written in 1985. She did a lot of her case studies on pre-Star Wars fan fiction. Hers was Star Trek fanzines. Yeah, I think that was, I got the feeling that was around before, yeah, because obviously Star Trek was sixty s So Yeah. And and they had that void. you know After the original series of Star Trek, nothing happened until the late 80s. Yes. And was that women-led as well? Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah. It was mostly women. And in that, she's discussing kind of this other weird void thing that happens, is where women are trying to put themselves in equal relationships because they're not at the time. yeah And still aren't. And still aren't, yeah. She was saying that the alien-ness is stand-in for women in these relationships. Which it was just like, the ah the whole time I was reading it, my mind was just going, who Just expanding ever outwards going, oh my gosh, I'd never even thought of it like this. There's a whole like there's a whole world out there. It's it's really hard because ah you know like I'd say we're still not in this equal thing between women and men. in the
Speaker: In the filmmaking world, storytelling world, whatever, yeah, that's a little bit glib to say that, but it's really difficult to put yourself back in the mindset of the 80s. I was kind of too young and I was pre-transition, so I was living with a lot of like privilege back then. Yeah.
Speaker: And to imagine what it must have felt like without that like online community thing that we just take so for granted nowadays. 100%. you know there's people out there who you can share your ideas with. And I guess the fanzines were a way of yeah trying to connect and communicate.
Speaker: They're completely aware of doing that. Yeah. i'm going to name check a couple if that's cool. Yes, do there's a could There were a couple of sisters, Nancy and Tracy Duncan. And during 70s, early 80s, they did not like Empire Strikes Back. That's okay. Yeah. They wrote a series called Against the Sith, which came out from 78 to 80. So before Empire Strikes Back came out, to be fair. Okay. um And they there was this terminology I saw of bnf yes which is big name fans. Is that a thing that you've come across? Okay. I've never heard of that before. Okay. So has that continued into fan online content? kind of. And it's not necessarily the same and there's lots of different acronyms for them, but yeah.
Speaker: BNFs, big name fans. And you do end up with these people in fan fiction communities who are revered because their writing is incredible. Awesome. Yeah. yeah And they're prolific. Yeah. yeah love them. Cool.
Speaker: Anyone else from there? Yeah. There was Patricia Nussman or Nussman who wrote the Alderani Imperative in 1983, which looks amazing. I don't know. I didn't find, I didn't go deep enough to find out if you can read any of these things online. I'm sure they exist. They'll be somewhere. They'll be on corners of the internet. Everything is on corners of the internet.
Speaker: A later one. So this would have been during the internet, but it was still, I think, a paper hard copy thing called You Could Use a Good Kiss, which was edited. It was like collections of stories. yeah I think it was exclusively Han and Leia fanfic. Yeah.
Speaker: edited by Susan Zahn and Marjorie Joyce. And I'm wearing my Hannah Lea t-shirt today, which ah you listeners can't see, but I will post a picture of it on the day. And i found I think I found Susan Zahn, who I don't think he's in any relation to Timothy Zahn, by the way. okay I think I found Susan Zahn on Pinterest. And there was lots of saved collections of Pinterest boards that she had made. And one of them was called Pan Geek Girl. And I was like, yeah, that's our girl. there go.
Speaker: and We need more pan representation. We do, definitely. We're doing our hardest here. We're doing our best. It's good to find some others. If that indeed is the Susan's on. I feel that's too much of a coincidence. Yeah, yeah, yeah, to not be.
Speaker: Well, yeah, this is the this is the other thing about fanfic is it's it's such a queer and female-dominated space. Yeah. Yeah, and I think because of the stigma around it, there's stigma around lots of things that women and queers enjoy. 100%, yeah. That's kind of not anything new. Often for no reason. Often for no reason, yeah, exactly. Other than society. Oh, my goodness. I...
Speaker: Definitely, definitely. I watched a really, really interesting hour and a half long video, by the way. I'm not going to go into my gosh all of that stuff. But Sarah Z on YouTube has got a video it titled An Exhaustive Defense of Fan Fiction, which came out in 2022. Amazing. And it makes so many really, really interesting points, but it goes, it's kind of talking about ah that transformational art of transforming something that already exists into something else. oh yeah yeah. And how we've sh** on that at every turn, really. When film was beginning to be made, it was, but that's not theatre. Yeah, of course. this kind of stuff. so it Yeah.
Speaker: It's happening over and over again. And her argument was, this is just the latest iteration of this. And yeah why isn't it art? yeah Why isn't it? Because I've read some fan fiction stories that are the same length as books. yeah They're better written than a lot of books that I've read. They're more moving, they're more powerful. There is so many... Yes, you have to wade through a lot of stuff that maybe isn't that good, but the other thing that fanfiction's doing is giving people a chance to practice these skills and to like yeah get their stuff out there and get their stuff read. yeah
Speaker: so and so Some of this is pretty raw as well. Like if you read a published novel, oh yeah it's been through iterations. It's had editors and possibly multiple editors. yes And I think that you sent me a couple of Star Wars fanfics to read, which I absolutely loved both of them. Really amazing for completely different reasons. they're both very different. yeah But the only thing I noticed about them were just tiny little editorial mistakes that would have been picked up by an editor. But you can be sure that, yeah, like say, any novel that you've read will have been heavily edited. And I think that's a lot of people get put off fanfiction because of those editorial things. Because it's raw, Because it's raw, yeah. Are there fanfic editors out there? Do people like pass? Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm in the process of beta reading some stuff for people. Nice.
Speaker: Awesome. It's not necessarily fanfic space, but I am still doing the test reads. Yeah. That's in a slightly different space. But it's it's a really interesting process. And quite often you have multiple people on it. And people make friends in these communities of fan writers. And they'll always give shout outs to the people have helped in their notes. and I noticed that in like work that is inspired by this piece. You know, it gets added to later. All gets added in. Stuff that inspired this piece. so like there's this kind of ongoing legacy. There's a through line through all of it. Which is really helpful. Yeah, and beautiful. but The community aspect of it is yeah so cool. It is really cool. absolutely love that. And there's loads of writing challenges. This is like one of my favorite aspects of it is being or I i lurk. I'm a lurker. This is me adhuting to my lurking on Reddit, subreddits and just watching these things happen. Yeah, I am in a couple of Star Wars fan fiction ones just watching what's going on just to because I wanted to know. Yeah. for the For this episode and partly for my brain. I'm quite nosy. Yeah.
Speaker: But they have like these events and they'll be like, okay, this month we're looking at this particular aspect or this relationship or whatever. Here's all the writing prompts. Here's a month's worth of writing prompts. Off you go. Do a little bit every day. And then that's creative people flexing creative muscles and having all of this input and feedback. And they are really beautiful spaces. Yeah. The most prolific I've ever been in terms of writing fiction myself, and I've not written loads, you know I've written a few plays and films with nothing...
Speaker: massive and not consistently but the most consistent I ever was was about seven years ago when I was in a big Facebook group um trigger warning for any queer people listening but I'm going to mention a few things from the fandom that shall not be named we'll just skip forward a few minutes if you don't want to hear those words yeah I was in ah a Facebook group called Dumbledore's Army and there were 20 something thousand of us in there and I was on the Ravenclaw moderator's house I also lurked in that one Did you? Oh, yeah, I think you did. Yeah, you were. I remember.
Speaker: And as moderators or a prefects, we were Ravenclaw prefects, we would set like writing challenges for anybody who wanted to get involved. Because as well as being a Facebook group where people could share their love of that fandom, it was also a fairly creative space and yeah people would get points for their houses. And every month we'd have a, you know, who won the house tournament this month.
Speaker: And just by setting my own prompts for people to do and playing along, because as prefects, we were allowed to so partake as well. So I would end up reading prompts that somebody else had written, like write a fanfic about, blah, blah, blah, bla blah. And so I'd then go and write this massive essay and like reread it and edit yeah edit it myself and i really go deep into the presentation, make sure was all right. And then I'd load it. just for that fun thing. had no other purpose. But I did enjoy reading other people's work like that and they would write to me and tell me how much they enjoyed reading mine. and yeah i've really like like I've got friends from that era, I'm going to shout out RJ, yeah they were the one that started this online festival of it and in the aftermath of JK Gate. yes and yeah They're a really good friend that I consider. They're also a bird watcher like I am as well. i think you You kind of forge these bonds with people through
Speaker: sharing creative stuff yeah it's one of the best things about the internet as far as i'm concerned yeah and it's been there since really early internet days hasn't it it has yeah has if you know where to look you can find them so so where can you look let's let's get into these places so in terms of where you can find fan fiction i've got some stats for you nice love a stat yeah i know If you're looking for Star Wars in particular, as of the 14th of July, fanfiction.net has fics that are tagged as Star Wars. Okay.
Speaker: Wow. That's a lot stories. That's a lot of stories. AO3, which is Archive of Our Own. I'm more familiar with that. yeah Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I am also more familiar. That is where I tend to go. Yeah. Archive of Our Own has 247,000...
Speaker: house and All of the content. Over 247,000. And it's the second highest in books and literature and fourth highest in cartoons, comics and graphic novels. Fifth highest in movies. So it ranks them. Okay, so who's higher? Who's the first? The franchise that shan't be named is the Of course, yeah. so um And it overtakes it by a lot. But actually, interestingly, I then logged into AO3 because I do have an account. It's slightly interesting. You have to be you have to be verified to have an account. So you have to yeah request. Do age verification, yeah. You have to age verification and you have to request. And like someone basically has to vouch for you now. I don't know what it what it used to be like. but
Speaker: And as soon as I did that, the number of Star Wars ones then went up by another 100,000.
Speaker: and So there's some some of them are like hidden to non-users. Yeah. That's a way of kind of protecting the authors, I guess. Yeah. You can choose to publish your work only to people that have accounts in these spaces yeah for whatever reason you might Some of that also to do with the spiciness of some of the stories. No. You can still access really, really spicy stories regardless it Sidebar. Freddie who's not familiar with fanfic, there's a lot of spicy fanfic out there. Yeah, so it goes there quite quickly, as as does everything eventually, really. I am of a mind that sex and smut is a part of life, and it's going to go there. Because, again, where do we have safe spaces to explore these things? Yeah. Really? Yeah.
Speaker: So I think that's responsible for a lot of it. Yeah. there's also the force.net, which I have not forced used. It's a vintage website. I remember it from back in the day. It's been around since the internet, as far as I can remember. Certainly when the prequels were coming out, i remember TheForce.net as being there. I feel like i didn't know there was fanfiction on there. I just knew it as like a community, an online community with like message boards and things like that. They do have a fanfic hosting part of the website now. I don't know whether that's always been there or whether it's... Probably, guess. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So basically, as soon as people could start pushing these things on the internet and putting them out there for everyone, they have been. Yes. So I did a more of a deep dive into AO3 because that's where I'm most comfortable. yeah That's where I read and most of my stuff. And that's where I know how to search for things. Because there are so many, yeah you have to wade through a lot of stuff yeah to get to what you're looking for, which is where the like subreddits come in really helpful because you can ask really specific questions and people will respond to you and they'll tell you where to go. Like even on the massive general Star Wars subreddit, you occasionally get, I just went on there and I searched for people asking about fan fiction stuff yeah and got the recommendations through there. I prefer it when people, this is a shout out to anyone using Reddit, prefer it if you link the actual fic that you're yeah recommending because a lot of the time it's really hard to find just from a name. yeah I did it a few times where I found one that I was like, oh, I want to read that one, forgot to bookmark it and then lost it forever. Yeah.
Speaker: And that was really upsetting. I can imagine. Because although there are like tagging systems is how a lot of these places operate. yeah So you can search for like specific characters or settings or whatever. You can. But then like you say, just for sheer quantity, let's talk about Raylo, which is... yeah guess now Let's talk about shipping. Should we talk about shipping? Let's talk about shipping. Yeah. is that Would you associate that with a fanfic thing? yes Yeah. I mean, it's it's something that came from fanfic that seems to have moved over into more mainstream. Into more mainstream, yeah. So ship, is is that short for relationship? It's short for relationship. And it used to be like shipping could be an imagined, any kind of imagined relationship, but more often than not, it now revolves around a love interest or a sexual relationship.
Speaker: yeah And so like if you ship a couple of characters, you often fuse their names together. Yes. God, I sound like such an old person though. Yeah. Yes. So the biggest ship in Star Wars is Reylo. By a considerable amount, imagine. By a considerable amount. The second spot jumps around a lot okay as to who it is. And that's based on your subreddit or your fanfiction community are having a particular thing. Those will be higher in the tags. So i see yeah yeah so it changes all the time. yeah But Poe and Finn are up there. but but
Speaker: What's the ship name for Poem Fin, is it? ah It just comes up as... Foe or pin? Yeah, I suppose it would be, wouldn't it? Raylo's the only one that came up as like an actual thing for me. Well, no, it's not. there There's another one that upsets me greatly, but... Oh, gosh.
Speaker: ah Okay, come to that. We'll come to that later. and One of the most popular ones on there at the moment is Din Djarin and Luke Skywalker. Interesting. Very interesting. some psychology involved in that. Yeah, I know.
Speaker: It's like Grogu fighting over Grogu. No, it's not. Grogu co-parenting. They're all co-parenting ones. It's yeah really domestic and really lovely. that That's kind of like the ideal Star Wars shiver of these times. Yeah, like because I know. Because, mean, Grogu, who doesn't want to co-parent Grogu? No, exactly. And the whole Grogu story is Jedi versus Mando and can he be both? and So why not have both? Oh my God. Okay, honourable mention. I'm going to tell you about the fic I read. Okay. It's called Stumbling Into Paradise by Volpeculi4r. This is going to be fun, me trying to do the username.
Speaker: So this is a really, really cute. It was really funny. It's an alternative universe where because Luke has seen Din Djarin's face, he has two options and they are to kill him or marry him.
Speaker: Amazing. And he chooses to marry him because he doesn't want to kill him. Oh, fair enough. It was so cute. I didn't know anything about this ship before kind of doing this research for this episode. No, I'd never thought of it, but it's perfect. Yeah. It's the perfect ship. It works really well. They're essentially raising Grogu together and they were so kind of neurodiverse coded yeah and like bumbling fools and not sure how to communicate or be with each other, but it worked. Oh, wow. It brought me a lot of joy.
Speaker: I mean, that tracks. I had never thought of Luke being neurodiverse, but definitely Din Djarin. Oh, yeah, yeah. He's hugely autistic. He comes across as more autistic of the two, whereas Luke's kind of like the ADHD puppy dog of is the ship. There was a language barrier as well with Din Djarin using a lot of old Mandalorian words that Luke was like, I don't understand.
Speaker: Interesting. It was great. It's not finished yet. I'm eagerly awaiting the last chapter of that one. so Oh my gosh. Do people release fanfics as like serials? Yeah. So it's generally serially done. Some people do write the whole thing and then drop it all in one go. yeah But the serial nature of it is interesting because then people are commenting as it goes. Yeah. And that shapes what happens sometimes. And it can be a really, really collaborative process, which is really cool. yeah So yeah, that was an interesting pairing. Again, never thought about.
Speaker: Loved it. Then, yes, there's all your classics. There's lots of Han and Leia ones. Yeah. Raylo's an interesting one. Should we talk about Raylo? Yeah, I feel like we can't not talk about Raylo. It's such a big thing. And it's been in the news this year, this year or late last year, where Adam Driver leaked or dropped in an interview somewhere the fact that he and Steven Soderbergh had written...
Speaker: or Steven Soderbergh had this idea for a film called The Hunt for Ben solo And Star Wars fans in general really got behind it because I feel like Ben Solo was a character we barely saw. yeah We only saw him for a few minutes at the end of Rise of Skywalker. yeah And the prospect of having more Ben Solo was sort of taken away from us by the way that film ended upset a of people. And I can see that everyone went bananas, but a lot of it did feel quite Reylo driven in that yeah part of why we want to see more Ben Solo is because we want to see more Rey and Ben together because we're together yeah we had this like tension between them for three movies yeah that got more and more intense and finally paid off with this kiss.
Speaker: And then he died. And then it was cruelly ripped away. Yes. So a lot of fan fictions that came out directly after that were a genre that we call fix it. Yeah, okay. So fix it, fix are when the canon media goes somewhere that... You don't want it to. You don't want it to. And people will go and be like, no, I'm abandoning that. This is my personal head canon. And you kind of get all of these weird and wonderful things going off from that. Yeah.
Speaker: So yeah, there was a lot of fix-it-fix where everyone was like, you you can't kill him off. You can't. That's not allowed. People love it because it's it's that enemies to lovers romance trope. yeah They've got that forced bond connection thing. yeah But I'm not particularly interested in it I will tell you why. Okay. I'm intrigued because I i am. like i I'm a bit of Raylo, yeah. Okay. Yeah. No, interesting. i'm I'm not interested in, how do I put this? It's too straight for me. Hi.
Speaker: It's not queer enough. I'm not really that interested. Yeah. I think a lot of the fanfic stuff and a lot of the stuff that I'm interested in in fanfic isn't necessarily like in-universe. I quite like yeah another genre, which is AU's alternative universes, where the writer will take those characters and they will what-if them and stick them in an entirely different setting, entirely different universe. And Reylo in particular has sparked loads of published stories. Yeah. Which is bizarre because they've taken these two characters and gone, here's all the tropes of this romance and let's put them somewhere completely different. Wow.
Speaker: Yeah. Do you know what it's called when fanfiction gets published? I don't know. ah It's called filing off the serial numbers. ah ah love that. I love that. So if someone goes through and edits their fanfic to file off all the serial numbers and redo it slightly and then bung it out into being published.
Speaker: Yeah. And a lot of the popularity with Raylo stuff comes from BookTok, again, another side of the internet that I'm not on. Yeah, I imagine TikTok has probably had a big impact yes on the fandom in general because it is such a specific art form in a way. yeah i mean, it has many subcategories within itself. And we were talking about it earlier on before we started recording about... Oh, fan edits. Yeah. Yeah, like fan films generally are a form of fanfic. And if you go on YouTube, there's a bazillion really good Star Wars fan films out there. I was watching one the other day, which does use an awful lot of AI, which is feeding fan film-like technology. and I'm not sure how i feel about that. yeah But it was really weird to watch somebody. Star Wars Chronicles is the channel, and they've made a film version of Shadows of the Empire, which was the multimedia story arc from the ninety s dash rendar dash rendar dash rendar can't remember how say his name and han and leia and boba fett and ig88 there's all these characters that we know and love set between empire and jedi and they've made yeah this really visually quite stunning fan film wow depicting the story of it yeah in about 45 minutes and it's got amazing cinematography and like the they've put like a vhs effect over the whole thing so you looks really like you're watching it in the yeah yeah very nostalgic which is very weird but also a bit creepy because of the AI but then so there's there's that sort of like serious fan film thing which had been going on from time in um immemorial even before the internet of course people have been making fan films of Star Wars and have moved into you know more professional filmmaking through doing that I may have tried to make a Highlander fan film when I was at school yeah
Speaker: Incredible. With my friends, with super VHS cameras, and we very quickly realised we couldn't do it because we didn't live anywhere cool. We needed those amazing, like, cityscapes, which we just didn't have. We had the countryside landscapes. We had bleak moors and everything else, but anyway And we didn't have very good sword fighting skills. Anyway, digressing massively. But yeah, I guess TikTok has, you just mentioned like fan edits, which is a cool way of retelling a story, which has gone from being more of a long form thing to TikTok has got this amazing scene of fan edits, which are really visually stunning and ah not for any particular narrative purpose, other than sometimes they'll focus on a particular character or a particular story arc, but they're just They can just be absolute chaos with all yeah visuals from all through the Star Wars film space. yeah But just cut to music in a really, really cool way. yeah Very, very short form, like one minute long type things. yeah And this could be our next generation of film editors, you know, like this is yeah this is just like fanfic can be our next generation writers. It's all yeah feeding into future creative projects really, isn't it? We could talk about that for a bit. You asked me if I knew of any Star Wars writers, any you published writers who are writing like official canon books. And then I'll tell you about the ones that are doing radio fics. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: So from my research, the only two Star Wars authors who have gone on record for saying that they used to write fanfic is Chuck Wendig, who wrote the infamous Aftermath trilogy, which blew my mind. I mean, I don't know if he's from the LGBTQ community. I should know that, but I don't know. But there are multiple queer characters in Aftermath. So that sort ties into our history of fanfic being connected with queerness. queer and vems. He quote said, yeah I've wanted to be a writer since I was a kid, honestly, and you're darn tooting.
Speaker: That I wrote Star Wars fanfic back then. yeah So he legit did it. And the other one is Claudia Gray, who's i written so many of the most revered Star Wars novels since the new timeline, yeah including Lost Stars and Bloodlines and Master and Apprentice, which are all like yeah really significant books. So it's really cool to hear that they they came through this. background yeah in fanfic writing and i wonder i wonder if there's more but won't admit it because that is also a thing in yeah writing yes because of the stigma around it yeah the stigma of fanfic yeah yeah it's wild really i i find it really really interesting with star wars because of course there's star wars but you can find fanfic about anything literally anything go and go on ao3 have a lovely little afternoon just being like what's the weirdest thing i can put in here someone will have done it
Speaker: The imagination knows no bounds. Exactly. It's amazing. But with Star Wars in particular, there is so much material. like Most of the fandoms that I am in that I kind of read fan fiction for are things that have a limited amount of material.
Speaker: yeah So it's things like Our Flag Means Death, where they only got two seasons. And then like everyone's like, but we've fallen in love with these characters. What do we do now? Yeah. Where do we go? and that's when the fans kind of step in and take this on, whereas Star Wars has got... So much. more than I think I could ever consume. yeah same, same. I've been consuming Star Wars 47 years. Yeah.
Speaker: yeah No, more than that, more than that. 50 years because I was there at beginning. 5,000 years ago. But yeah, but i there's loads that I've not... Yeah, done not touched yet. Yeah, exactly. So that's quite interesting. It's interesting to me that this galaxy and all of these published works are so vast, but yet there's still a hunger for fan fiction. And I do wonder a lot about whether that's the queerness of it. Yeah, yeah. That's something that is an interesting concept. The fact that since Disney acquired Lucasfilm...
Speaker: They have definitely steered Star Wars in a direction where there is more diversity in storytelling. Yeah, 100%. So we've got way more people of colour in lead roles. We've got yeah lots of queer stories, lots more women lead characters, all of the things that we didn't really have before. And that's not a criticism of Lucas and you know the kind of legacy films or anything like that, because that was a different time and it's more of a criticism on society in general, of course. But these days, because we have all of this diversity, like I'm staggered at how many queer characters there are, especially in Star Wars literature. yeah like I'm listening to audiobooks of Star Wars all the time. and It's not the thing that I love most about Aftermath, obviously, but it was part of why i do keep coming back to Aftermath is because we've got lead characters that are queer on both sides, on the Imperial remnant. Yeah. and in the continuing sort of Republic and in the underworld. Like there's just, yeah yeah, so much more diversity of characters. So I wonder if that has impacted the Star Wars fanfic world. Like, did they yeah is there still so much hunger for it now that we've been given some official canon diversity? why Yeah, I don't know. i don't know. i think i think it's twofold, isn't it? Because there's the people like me that read it, yeah and then there's the people who make it, and there's people who are driven to write it and want those prompts and want those right. And that's always going to be a thing. So people are always going to be churning it out, regardless of... yeah regardless of the want for it, really. i mean, the imaginativeness of fanfic is huge and something that makes me really angry when it's stigmatized because it is just so imaginative. yeah And I feel like whatever you give people, if they're the imaginative types that would go off and write fanfic, they're going to think outside of that, yeah whatever you give them. 100%. However unexpected episodes are, you know, when a new TV show comes out, we're like, oh, right, this is where we're going now in Star Wars. And a new novel. And in fact, there's something that the sort of... possible tie-in with this episode is the fact that we've got a new book out in the Star Wars world came out this week. Yes. Two days ago, three days ago. i remember you're listening to this in two weeks time anyway. Time is a lie. Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah. There's a novel called Eyes Like Stars by Ashley Poston that's just come out. And it's the first movement in a new directive in Star Wars publishing to write genre specific fiction. which we've not really had before. All of the Star Wars novels and fiction comics and so on have come out until now are just Star Wars generic, if you like. Yes, sure. There are Star Wars books that fit more into a particular genre, but they're not labelled as such. yeah Whereas this new directive that they're launching this week, the first one, this Eyes Like Stars book, is categorised as a Star Wars romance novel. That's that's on the front of the book in text. you know It says that.
Speaker: And of course, that opens the door for maybe a Star Wars horror novel or Star Wars detective novel. You know, there's all sorts of possible routes we can go down. But it's interesting that we have this book, which is specifically romance. And let's not beat about the bush. A lot of fanfic is about roman romance. Yeah. It is indeed. Yeah. And it's written by woman, which isn't a new thing know Star Wars. You know, we've got lots of women authors, thank goodness. yes But it's interesting that this is direction they're going in. And again, how is that going to be viewed by the fanfic community? Yeah, that'll be really interesting to find out. i I'm going to continue to infiltrate these groups and see. Yeah. Continue to lurk on these subreddits and see what they're all saying and see what's going on. That's quite interesting because on AO3 you can search by genre as well. And I did search by like, oh, let's do some let's do some Star Wars horror. Let's see what that looks like. And like, yeah it's cool. Yeah.
Speaker: I have nothing but admiration for these writers. and like Me too, yeah. And the endless creativity of it all is yeah insanely good. and And commitment to it. Yes. to write a story it seems like such an easy thing to do but it's not it's not it's so hard it's so hard and also this is something that sarah z pointed out as well in the exhaustive defense of fan fiction video was if you're going to be a writer and you're going to sit with however many thousands of words with these characters and these plot lines and whatever you are going to get better at it like you just are Yeah, yeah, yeah. So yes, it might start out not being great or whatever, but it's going to turn into something. If you keep doing it, you're going to turn into a better writer. Yeah.
Speaker: You just are. It's going to happen by accident. Yeah, definitely. The best way to improve in the arts is to do the thing. to do it. Yeah. Is to make mistakes. And yeah, think every creation that you do, you improve. yeah And that never stops. Like I've been in the music industry for three decades and a bit. Yeah. And every day I'm working on music and I'm still discovering new things about how I do things and how I can make this sound better. and Yeah, of course. And it's the same in any creative art. yeah So having a space like Fanfic for writers is just a brilliant way to just throw stuff out. You've got an audience. I did watch a video by ah Eli Evil Eye. Great username. Love that.
Speaker: And they were talking about why are there so many published Reylo fics? What's going on? Yeah, what is going on? And they also read them all, which, great, because then I didn't have to, because I'm not interested in straight romance.
Speaker: I've still not come about in defense of Raylo yet, but we maybe get to that. We'll get to it. I did read one Raylo fic and I'll tell you about it in a minute, but not generally interested. They were saying in their video, they said that the first fanfic to be published was in 1985. And it was a Starsky and Hutch fanfic where wow where Starsky and Hutch were changed into essentially gay cowboys. It's called Cowboy Blues. Oh my God. Yeah. It's incredible. Apparently the first fan fiction to file off the serial numbers and and do a Fifty Shades of Grey, which is the one we all know about filing off the serial numbers, because that was obviously started its life as Twilight fan fiction. But I went on to Goodreads. You can go on to Goodreads and you can see someone has created a list of published works that started their life as Raylo fan fiction. Guess how many there were. I can't even begin to, but I bet it's a lot more than I would. It's a lot more money than you can imagine.
Speaker: There was at least 63. Yeah, and that's all in the last few years. That's unbelievable. I know. So obviously these aren't in the Star Wars universe. They are AUs, so they have been these characters taken out of that context and put in a different context. Some of them have had the serial numbers filed off more convincingly than others. was going to say, did they change the names? Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Except for the biggest one, the kind of most popular one is called the Love Hypothesis. I've heard of that. The lead is literally called Adam. Yeah. And if you look at the cover as well, you're like, you're fooling no one with this.
Speaker: and I didn't read it because I didn't want to, but yeah lots of people are raving about it. Apparently it is good. yeah And it's been through the editing process. And the writer has gone on to do more stuff in the romance genre that isn't necessarily Raylo inspired. Yeah. yeah I think it's cool. I think it's all really cool. i so not Not quite in defence of, but I'm intrigued about like why I would want more Reylo. Yeah. But I'm not sure if it's Reylo that I want or it's Rey-en, like as Ben Solo. because and a lot of it is down to Adam Driver. Yes. And I love Daisy Ridley.
Speaker: She's incredible. Yeah. But Adam Driver, his performance as Kylo slash Ben blew my mind, especially in The Rise of Skywalker. I think it's my favorite thing about The Rise of Skywalker. I know Rise of Skywalker has come under a lot flack, but I love it. I like it. It's such a ride. It's so high adrenaline. Anyway, his performance as he changes to Ben, yes is so mind-boggling to me. It's such an incredible performance. And like his physique changes. I'm sure they use different makeup and different lighting and all of the tricks to yeah sort of give us this different character. yeah And it's that little glimpse that we got for such a short amount of time And it's set up so well by his performance through the entire trilogy, especially in The Last Jedi. The way he plays Kylo in Last Jedi is really specific, and I'm guessing it's different because a different director has a different yeah take and different prompts for him and sure whatever. But at the end of the day, he's still Adam Driver. and He was so, he made that character so fascinating. Yeah. And I just always want to know more about that. And I guess through Raylo is like, or Rayen, depending on which iteration of it. Yeah. Do they distinguish between those things? Yes. guess the Raylo is like the forbidden love. Yeah. Whereas the Rayen is more of like a, can't remember what the word is, but like where it's a resolution kind of relationship. This is redemption arc. Yeah. Redemption. That's the word. Yeah. Redemption relationship.
Speaker: which is all very complicated at anyway. Yes. But I guess it's that like the complicated nature of it, whether you're talking about Reylo or Rey and Ben, either way is very, very complex. And there's a lot of nuance and stuff sure to get into. Yeah. that That's what appeals to me about Yeah. And that appeals to me as well, but only within the Star Wars context. I don't, I think for me, taking them out of that context doesn't work for me. Yeah, yeah, i know what you mean. Yeah. It's so part of Sith and Jedi. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because what has ended up happening, I think, is when they're taken out of that context, it's it's kind of a bit of a messed up relationship. And i yeah a lot of it, for me, is about safety. And again, i read this in this essay from the 1980s. of like fanfic is a way to explore these relationships in a very very safe way yeah and even i listened to a podcast as well uh lily o'farrell does a feminism and internet culture podcast called no worries if not that is incredible it's a hell of a ride of a podcast i recommend it but like there are some really really difficult things in some of those so just oh my gosh i'm gonna be getting over that that title for the rest of the day but touch something in my deepest soul. It's so good, isn't it? She's got an episode called Hot for the Plot. Love that.
Speaker: It's talking about like women's sexuality. She wasn't specifically talking about fan fiction. She was talking about kind of reading and erotica and yeah smut and saucy books in general. yeah Again, it was linking into that historically frowned upon because women enjoy women enjoying things, you know, how we're allowed to do we're not allowed to do that.
Speaker: But she came up with this really, really interesting point in there of when you're reading it, you're in control. If you're being shown it on screen, it's no longer safe because yeah yeah you can't filter it out in the same way. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And a lot of like romance dynamics and sexual dynamics on screen are not necessarily real, very kind of... They're very male-gazy. Male-gazy, very... yeah And that kind of blew my mind. I was like, oh, I'm interested in this because it's safe. Yeah, and and we are doing some work. When we're reading, we're doing a lot more imagination work.
Speaker: yeah in the creative process where is is almost a collaboration reading a novel. Yeah, exactly. Because you're bringing your own imagined versions of those characters, how they look and sound and everything else in your head. yeah Whereas if it's a film that's been made by somebody statistically more likely to be a man, yeah you're stuck with that vision and you're in choice over the matter. That's brilliant. interesting. It's so interesting, isn't it? And I, that was one of the other things that just kind of blew my mind. And the same thing with like, why are lots of women exploring male-male dynamics? Yeah. The essay that I spoke about at the beginning, Joanna Russ essay, and also the kind of forward by the Karen Helkerson and Christina Bousset were saying that that's an equal relationship. Two men is seen as much more equal by women. And even in our own imaginings of fiction, we can't imagine a woman in an equal relationship. relationship yeah because of the way society is and I was just like whoa that's painful and also makes a really interesting point wow in that that is a dynamic that feels much safer yeah and you can enjoy these characters having a having a relationship in a way where there is no kind of weird power dynamics going on yeah yeah yeah so yeah interesting and also the fact that a lot of the sci-fi stuff one of them is not human right Especially with the Star Trek stuff. One of them is not human.
Speaker: And you can explore those dynamics in a different way, which my mind yeah has been expanded by all of this. We get that on a low level in Star Wars generally. Yeah. You know, like the friendships and interactions and the found family and all of that kind of stuff. And those dynamics, we don't get a lot of relationship, like romantic relationships or sexual relationship. Interesting. Interesting. So I got you to read a couple of fics.
Speaker: You did. Yeah. And I loved both of them. Did you? Excellent. Can we talk about them, please? Yeah, please. Let's do that. Okay. So one of the ones that I sent you was the Coat Thief by Gretaus. Yeah. Is that Greta S or Greta's? I have no idea.
Speaker: Again, yeah get in touch with us and tell us. yeah Come and pronounce your AO3 usernames to me, please. That'd be great. There's also a Podfic version of this. Have you heard about Podfics? No. They are the audiobook version of these fics. So as well as people going out there and writing these things for free, you get people recording podcast audiobook versions and uploading them for free as well.
Speaker: I could not love that more. There is. I know. Some of them have sound effects. It does making me feel like we have a calling. I know, right? I looked at a couple of these and it was like, oh, you can download just the audio without the sound effects or you can have the version that has the sound effects. And some of them have produced beautifully. Like not all of them, but like some of them are just recording them onto a phone in notes app. But even that, if you get a dead enough room, sounds great. I mean, we both produce audio dramas. know. What are we What are we doing? Anyway, the coat thief. The coat thief. Anyway, back to this. Oh my goodness. It's so cute. It's a one shot from BB-8's perspective. It could not be cute. Like having a story from BB-8's, I did not know this is something that I needed. Yeah. The way the Greta S, Greta's uses punctuation and stuff, some of it is just regular, in quotes, writing, like regular paragraphs describing what's going on. And it's kind of a retelling of The Force Awakens. Yeah, from BB-8's point of view. Yeah, from BB-8's point of view. And that obviously goes a little bit beyond. You only just get like a little tease almost of Finn and Poe getting together after the legendary scene. With the jacket, you know, when they re-meet. So yeah, the way Greta's uses punctuation for sort of BB-8's voice, and I read quite a few the comments under, and lots of people complimenting the writing on BB-8's voice, and using colons in a sort of almost like code, but not quite coding sort of a way, and square brackets, which is very coding. Yes. I know in coding we use the triangle brackets often.
Speaker: we We use, she says, as though she uses. How much coding do you? haven't coded since the late Actually, no, I did learn HTML in New Orleans' internet. I made my first website using HTML, typing it into Notepad. But anyway, so I was seeing those square brackets and italics and stuff that reminded me of that, and I love that stylistic way of writing. It's just cute. Yeah, that's why the pod fic didn't work as well for me, because I liked the way it was presented on the page. Yeah, definitely. But I did listen to the pod fic as well, because...
Speaker: I wanted to. I might have to go and listen to it now, so I'm going to go and check that out. Yeah, like BB-8s, how he perceives everybody and he labels things yeah in a very codey kind of way, like he names each of the people. yeah The way that he names them changes through the fic. As he gets to know them, yeah. So yeah, Finn goes from being like very, he's very suspicious of Finn. Yes.
Speaker: I'm giving BB-8 a gender here, but Greta's right, BB-8 isn't it. Yeah. Gender neutral droid. Yeah. Which again, I liked, liked enjoyed that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Normally I like to have droids with genders. I do kind of, I find the it thing can be a little bit. little bit jarring. Yeah. And as a gender diverse person, I've got kind of, I don't know, it feels a bit weird to me, but it's a droid. So we'll. So it works. me Yeah. We'll let it slide. Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, like the the perception that BB-8 has of Finn changes. Perception of Finn is like the big change through the story. From really suspicious to maybe, you know, there's like... Yeah, yeah, maybe he's all right. BB-8 appends the name to having like, maybe he's okay. Fine, yeah. So like he then becomes an ally and then ultimately becomes a friend. Like the friend is BB-8's like ultimate... Ultimate one, yeah. Accolade, yeah. If you're a friend, then Poe friend yeah is how Poe starts off. Yeah. And and Finn gets there yeah and becomes friend by the end. And Rey becomes a friend as well. We've got this, the trilogy's trilogy of main characters becomes BB-8's friend. I love it. It's so cute. I would even go so far as to say this is a fix-it for me because, come on Disney. again Yeah. I mean, when The Force Awakens came out, it wasn't long before people were talking about that scene yeah between Finn and Poe. Hey, it looks good on you. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker: Let my boys be gay. I feel like Poe is canonically pan. I don't know that for definite, but I feel like Poe is canonically pan. yeah And I think Finn is the, I feel like he's probably more the kind of heteronormative of the pan. which is sad i'm trying to remember because i'm just nearing the end of resistance which has taken me a long time to get to actually watching it yeah and by the way resistance is amazing if you've not watched star wars i know i keep telling people to watch star wars animation yet another animation there's only two scenes of it it does take a while to get going for me it took me a while to get into it but there's a turning point i think it's in the end of season one where suddenly i was like all right now i'm in i mean i'm fully in got you and i I feel Poe's not in a lot, but I feel like there's something along the way that made me think Poe is not straight. something Interesting.
Speaker: okay Maybe it's in a book. There's a novel about Poe rebuilding the resistance after The Last Jedi, and I feel like there's something in there. Anyway. Something in there. Okay. Going around topic. But yeah, um maybe I'm sort of like, is it a fix-it? It kind of is a fix-it. It kind of is. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Fix-it.
Speaker: Fix It a little bit. Fix It Vic. Fix It Vic. I loved it. It's super cute. So thank you for bringing that into the world. Yeah, thank you for sharing it with me. was really happy to read it Yeah, it's gorgeous. The other one I shared with you Oh my gosh, the most wholesome thing I've ever read in my entire life. Lady Lombax. Lady underscore Lombax. Lady underscore Lombax wrote magic blankets and my heart. LAUGHTER
Speaker: So it's kind of a re-visualisation of Anakin. Yes. Instead of being angry, 3PO teaches him how to crochet. And he crochets all of his love and power and protection and kind of positive emotions into blankets. Yes. It's just... Which then ripple out into the galaxy. And I loved the very specific Clone Wars references, which considering on this Clone Wars reference, and it's not long since we watched the Ryloth arc. And Waxer gets the name check, which, oh, so cool. It was just such a beautiful idea. And a lovely kind of retelling of that. And the way she kind of goes into all of those ripple outs, but all of like, because of this, this happens differently. And then kind of ties it all up in a neat little story and like goes through all of the things that did happen canonically and how they didn't happen because of... Because of these blankets. Because of what Anakin's doing, because of these blankets. The blankets that give off the good vibes. What? I want a blanket because the good vibes. know. I know. And I don't know where this idea came from, but it's beautiful. mean, you're a crocheter. Yeah, I am. I'm going to give this a shout I didn't publish it anywhere. I don't think I sent it to anybody. wrote a poem years ago about wanting to wrap my brother up in an invisible blanket that would keep him safe from the world and from grief and from...
Speaker: everything and i i wrote that at a moment of grief yeah feeling a secondhand grief it was his it wasn't mine but i wrote that poem in my response to watching my little brother go through that and this felt like a similar vibe and i was just like i had that idea and you've written it into this beautiful thing in this universe and i love that yeah so yeah yeah it was gorgeous was and he ended up because everything ended up turned out all right he got to raise his children and he got to teach them how to crochet too it literally ends with him teaching but lot Those last few lines. yes
Speaker: ah So poetic. Yeah. so yeah Another beautiful one. It was. yeah And another one that had like a little punctuation Yeah, yeah, yeah. Where they use brackets lot. Yes. Parentheses around certain lines. I need to go and reread it to try and figure out. what that does storytelling wise because yeah yeah I guess it's prioritising some statements over others or something like that.
Speaker: yeah Like is it a side that she's just feeding these extra little bits but there's a lot of stuff in brackets which is really interesting. Yeah, yeah. But it definitely wasn't somebody who doesn't know how to use brackets. She was using them intentionally this particular Intentionally a very, very interesting way, yeah. And it changes the flow of your reading, which yeah that was the intention for me and how... I guess, yeah, yeah, yeah. Which bit it draws you to. Hats off. The creative literary...
Speaker: stuff that's going on in fanfic is brilliant. I mean, I love when published writers use interesting books. I don't know if if you've read any of the Jasper Ford books. Yes, have. There's a Thursday Next series. They're about literary detectives. Yeah. And so they're I feel like there's a reason they've not been made into films or audio or anything like that because they are so literary. They use text as a weapon, you know. Yes, yeah, yeah. And I love writers that do that and and I feel that there's probably this...
Speaker: world of that going on in fanfic that not discovered yet. There is one of my favourite fics that I've ever read. use a lot of it is done through text message exchanges and it's like yeah formatted as text message exchanges and it wouldn't work any other way. yeah That's quite a common thing that happens a lot but it's it's just it works really well for reading. yeah yeah But yeah I sent you those two because they were potentially my favourite. Yeah, they were great. I loved them. they were quick read, you know, each one only took me up 15 minutes to read. This is why I use them as a palette cleanser, because like if I've been in a long story for a long period of time and I need something to come out to and I'm like, I'm still really stuck in that story, but I'd like to move on to my neck next book, please, or my next story. I will quite often search for fanfic one shots yeah within whatever genre I feel, because you can, you can filter by anything. yeah I did read some smutty ones because...
Speaker: I had to. You didn't send me any. No, I didn't. well I may have read some. I've maybe read any Star Wars ones, but i certainly read some.
Speaker: I read some very disturbing ones that had to bail out. Well, yeah, this is the thing with fanfic. So sometimes you do have to bail out. And i I'm mean incredibly sex positive, kink positive, all of it. My brain says, don't yuck someone else's yum. If that's what they're into, fine, as long as it's not hurting anyone. 100%. Fanfic space, perfect space to explore this. yeah And also, if you go in with an open enough mind, you might learn things about yourself as well. so absolutely true so don't knock it but you can also just put them down you don't have to get cross with them and I think yeah this is where a lot of people go wrong with all media really instead of getting cross with it put it down just go that's not for me and that's fine plenty more out there yeah yeah exactly so I read ah one shot Raylo smart fest
Speaker: It's called Just One Dance More. Great. I wasn't against it, actually. This was an alternate universe. The username is fantastic, by the way. The AO3 username is The Way of the Trash Compactor.
Speaker: That's incredible. So if that's you, beautiful poetry. Shout out. Yeah. It's all lowercase, all one word. Love it. um So this was, again, in the author's notes at the beginning of this, this was a a request from someone on Tumblr. okay So you make the requests and fanfic writers will give you the things. So this is a masked ball, Raylo Ficks. It's an alternative universe where Rey's going to steal something. Right. We're never told what she's going to steal or we're not told ah initially. It's all from her point of view. The First Order are having a masked ball raised and Rey's been sent in to go and nick something. She's going to use it as cover to steal something from Kylo Ren.
Speaker: Obviously, she has to have a cheeky romp in a corridor first with a masked person who is obviously... on know read Yeah, of course. It's great. Spoiler alert. Spoiler alert. That wasn't the most interesting bit of it for me. Most interesting bit was that she does manage to steal the thing.
Speaker: She escapes out of the window by turning her outfit into a rope and using her hairpiece as a grappling hook. So like, oh my gosh, 10 out of 10 for that. Yeah.
Speaker: And also i was just like, this is a really fun thing. I'm not entirely sure how she did that. It was instructions were unclear, but it was really fun. i mean, her outfit is basically a load of wrappings. Yeah. Well, she was masked in this. So she was also masked and skirted yeah because she was trying to look the part. Oh, so it wasn't like her regular. No, it wasn't her regular clothes because she was done up. That not should have been too recognizable. Yeah.
Speaker: Well, yeah, of course. And this is a power move to have a semi-public frisson on a job and then rob the man and run away. loved it. Sounds like a good episode or something. It's great.
Speaker: So hats off. Amazing. Great. No notes. Some other interesting pairings that I hadn't thought of. Yeah. Another pairing that seems quite popular is Obi-Wan and Cody. Oh, yeah. That tracks. That definitely tracks. Also, isn't Obi-Wan canonically bisexual? Um...
Speaker: I feel like yes, but can't think how I know that or where I've heard that. I think he is. Well, I'm claiming him anyway. He's got one big romance arc, which is hetero arc. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, we're not going with that. I read this quite angsty one called To Endure by Aeon Tricks.
Speaker: Yeah. I'm going to go with that being the pronunciation. Come and shout at me if you hear this. It was written as part of a prompt challenge and it's an alternative one-shot where Anakin and Fives manage to start de-chipping some of the clones. Oh, wow, yeah. so that Order 66 can't happen. Yeah. They realise what's going on and they start... That's amazing, yeah....getting rid of the chips. They're not fast enough because it happens before... That's because there's a lot of clones today. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker: They're not fast enough, but they are fast enough to get quite a few of them, but they don't get to Cody in time. So Cody tries to kill Obi-Wan, which is a problem because they're lovers. Oh my gosh.
Speaker: The worst betrayal. Yeah, that it got me in the feelings a little bit, actually. i was like, oh no, yeah this is all a bit much. And I was so in it as well. Again, nicely written. i was in it enough to be like, yeah, no, I completely, I'm going along with this. yeah And it's kind of told from Obi-Wan's perspective after this has happened. So Cody's tried to kill him yeah and failed because Anakin's shot him. But then he's still pining for him and he's going through the med bay trying to reassure all the clones that have been detripped because they're all kind of... Yeah, yeah, yeah. coming out of this going, war and he's still pining and holding out hope for Cody. And the end scene is Cody's in a Bacta tank and they're trying to work out whether he's going to pull through.
Speaker: doing? Why putting boy through? I don't like it. But also it was great. I really enjoyed it. Well done. Oh my gosh. Beautiful. Loved it. Another little aside.
Speaker: ah Have you heard of crack fics? No. No? Is that another a fanfic term? This is another fanfic term. I am a big fan of a crack fic. Crack fic just means like written for a joke.
Speaker: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. So like some of them are really serious. Some of them have like lots of feelings, lots of stuff going on. And then others are written for an absolute joke. Yeah. My favorite one that I read for this, another really short one shot was The Chips Didn't Work by Peppermint underscore Shamrock. Yeah. This is a really, really short one shot about the clones not carrying out Order 66. And it's essentially told from Palpatine's point of view, as he calls around them all, and they're badly disguising Jedis in the back of the hologram.
Speaker: that's hilarious and i loved it they've all got like really crudely disguised jedi masters behind them like in full view that's hilarious so and they're all just like no there's no jedis here we've done it we've done it we've definitely done what you said i feel like somebody somebody needs to make an animation oh my god Some of this feels a bit like um the Marvel What If series, which is an animated show where you do get into these. I mean, some of those are very serious and dark and whatever, but there is a lot of comedy in them. yeah
Speaker: And a lot of comedy in that what if-ness of fiction is really good. Yeah. It's so silly and it's just funny, silly alternative when no one dies. it could be considered fluff in that sense. And Palpatine gets angry. Palpatine gets angry. It's part of a larger series called Palpatine is the Worst and Deserves to Have His Plans Day and Life Ruined.
Speaker: Which I also loved. And I will be following that link to find out what else is in that collection. That could be like our alternative if we ever get around to doing our Intrigue episode, which is still on the cards. Palpatine Intrigue. We can do the opposite of like Palpatine Undermined by fanfic writers. It was so funny. It was so funny. And I just... I really enjoyed it. I just laughed the whole way through, really. There was a really angsty one, another really angsty one, I'm good at angst, called I Myself Have Torn Myself to Shreds by Iscos, double I-S-C-O-S.
Speaker: And this one was very, very angsty. It did have like a surprise smut scene in it, which I was a little bit like, ooh, because it was a surprise. i'm like yeah And it was tagged. It did say that it there might be something there, but it was, I don't know, it felt more jarring to me than than it needed to. Yeah. I really enjoyed the writing, but it was angsty and sad.
Speaker: And it involved Anakin going back in time, lots of different ways to try and fix what he'd done. Yeah, yeah. And it was kind of five short scenarios of how it could have gone in each way. And it turned out bad and sad every time. Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, even if you didn't do this, this is still going to happen and it's still going to lead to this. It's still going to lead to this. It's still going to lead to this. And you're just like, oh. You can't change the force. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. But it was well written and I did enjoy that as well. I'm definitely going to have to on adventure after this and read some more of these. I feel like we should put the links to these in the show notes as well. So if you're... Be aware for the spice content because some of them are spicy. So that's another thing find really interesting about fanfic stuff is the tags and also author's notes. Yeah. So having that kind of dialogue, even chapter by chapter. Yeah.
Speaker: Having that dialogue with the author and they can tell you things and they can give you warnings. And in a lot of the longer form ones that I read, they will say, if you're not here for the smut, you skip to this point and you can. Oh, wow. And they'll give you a summary instead. So you don't have to you don't have to read it. And like, amazing there's this real sense of kind of care. Yeah, yeah, yeah. in fandom communities where people are generally trying not to trigger people, not to upset people. and like yeah But that that contributes to the safety of the space. Yeah, yeah, yeah, completely. And I've been reading stuff that I've been like, you know what? Not today. I don't want to read that today. And it goes, yeah great, skip to here. They'll do a page break or whatever, and they'll have a special symbol in there that they've established in the author's notes. That's amazing. where to skip to and like it does contribute to the safety of it and also get so many warnings out of there you can literally filter out anything that you do not want to see yeah and i think that's quite beautiful in a lot of ways because i increasingly know people who are having to search online for trigger warnings for things that don't have trigger warnings you know yeah yeah
Speaker: and There's a whole website called Does the Dog Die, which lists all of the trigger warnings for things and a really useful tool if you're going through some stuff and there's stuff that you really can't handle at the moment. but yeah Because it can be so jarring. yeah And I mean, again, not all fan fiction in the same way not all films and books and blah, blah, blah. Yeah, of course. yeah It won't always be that case. I think is one thing's for sure is that fanfic has a spectrum. Yes, yeah. Of course, there's massive spectrum. That's what we definitely establish from.
Speaker: Definitely. so yeah, the last one that I read was one i wanted original golden trio, original trilogy golden trio. So I read one called No One Can Stop Me, Not Even Gravity or NASA by Magnetic Wave. what I had nothing to do with what was going on. That was a very late night. Yeah. It's a one shot. It's Leia's point of view five years or so after Return of the Jedi. She's running a big base. She's girl bossing all over the place. She's very busy. She's got limited time and patience for both Han and Luke. Yeah.
Speaker: But she has found out that she's pregnant and she's angry and sweary and very funny. Yeah. Luke's turned up to support her but she still hasn't told Han what's going on because he keeps just disobeying her orders. Yeah.
Speaker: We get some really sweet kind of Alderaan flashbacks. She's obviously kind of struggling with her own parentage and adopted parentage. And there's lots of yeah sweet found family stuff, but also quite angsty pregnancy related. yeah You would go through that. You just would. yeah And then Han finds out by hacking her medical droid.
Speaker: And basically storms in and demands that she marries him. And she's like, no, I will not. Yeah.
Speaker: The implication is, and he's kind of going, but we need to be a family if we're going to do this. And she's like, but we are a family. Why do we need to do this? Interesting. Yeah. And the implication was that she does give in in the end, but i mean I'm not so sure.
Speaker: It's definitely, yeah, space where you can sort of like explore things that no other Star Wars official writers have gone yeah with. You know, the nuance of our characters' lives, things that they've been through. that Yeah.
Speaker: Like there's only a limited space for official, canonic writing yeah to cover. You know, there's just loads of blank space within that. Yeah, exactly. Which leaves room for fanfic writers to explore their own thoughts and feelings and everything. Yeah. You a lot of those things are stuff that we can all relate to. and will resonate with us all in different ways yeah yeah it's such a huge thing and i am endlessly impressed with the creativity of people and i think part of the reason i love it so much is that i genuinely if you talk to me passionately about anything i will listen and be intrigued Yeah. I just enjoy people enjoying stuff. Yes. so Yeah. Yeah. It's kind of a really, really pure version of that. Yeah. Like an unfiltered. i love that. I think that's something to take away.
Speaker: Definitely. Definitely, definitely. And also kink shaming. Stop. Just stop it. It's not worth it. There's space for everybody. There's space for everyone. It's all great. just We didn't even get into the Omegaverse. That was for another episode. That is definitely, yeah. I feel like this is going to be a follow-up of this at some point. So if you enjoyed this episode, are yeah, literally a journey into Wild Space. Yeah. Then, yeah, I'm sure there'll be another one, part two. A part two of this. Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah. I've got more to say. Yeah, I've got way more to read. And I definitely, another thing that I'm going to take away is that we should be doing some kind of audio drama ourselves. Yeah. kind of fanfic audio drama.
Speaker: Yeah. That would be really interesting. And I think, like, go away, have a read of things. It is hard to trawl through That's why the subreddits are so useful. That's why asking communities is really useful. If you're a Tumblr user, that's where a lot of the freaky little weirdos seem to hang out. And I say that in the most loving way possible because that's where they are writing this. Yeah, we are. I'm also there. Yeah. involved in this stuff so but if you do want somewhere to start go to the show notes and yeah we'll link the stories we mentioned yeah we'll link some nice ones and i will put some content warnings on a couple of them yeah also if you've got any that you've really enjoyed dear listener yeah send them my way i'm always steer us yeah we want to read them we want to read i love share the fanfics fanfic love yes I've got several more tabs open that I didn't have time to read before this episode, but I'm going to. They're going to be read.
Speaker: They're on my list. I love it. last Shout out to all of the creative fanfic writers. We love you, and honestly. And the people that before them made the zines yeah and anybody who's made a fan movie, fan film. Fan edits.
Speaker: you're doing You're doing great stuff. keep Just do what you enjoy and don't let anyone tell you it's anything other than great. yeah and so If you enjoyed this episode, we'd love it if you could give us a little five-star review somewhere on Apple or Spotify, preferably. Those two are really important. Yes. anyway Anywhere. Anywhere. Anywhere. Come talk to us. We've got some new followers on our socials, on Instagram, especially we've been accumulating new followers. People are finding us. Hello to you if you're new listener. Yay!
Speaker: Hello. We're excited that you've got a back catalogue if you feel like going binging some stuff. far yeah I can see people are doing that. i'm watching our stats. I'm a binge listener. say yeah me too. I'm currently binging Blast Points, which is lot to binge. They've got a lot of episodes. Shout out to Blast Points, by the way, because they are always reacting to our posts yeah really quickly. we love you guys. Yeah, You're great. Huge inspirations to us. We're on Instagram. We're on Facebook.
Speaker: Sisters of the Force pod on both of those places. TikTok. I think we're just Sisters of the Force. I always forget. Same as Blue Sky. get in contact with us if you've got anything to say about this episode or anything else we've we've done over the the course of our episodes so far.
Speaker: Next week we are coming back with our Clone Wars rewatch. Clone Wars. We're hitting season two. I've missed it so much. That's what I've done. Me I filled my Clone Wars void with fan fiction. I know. On my Disney Plus, continue watching. It's got like season two, episode one, waiting to be watched. And I'm like, I really want to get to it. I'm hooked. Season two is called Rise of the Bounty Hunters. That's like the little kind of caption that comes alongside season two. Excellent. We're kicking off with a three episode arc like called Magic of the Holocron. Lush. And we've got a guest. Yay!
Speaker: we got a guest coming on. I'm very excited. My mama is coming back to watch it. She loves Star Wars animation. She's been watching Resistance with me. She loves Rebels more than Clone Wars, I think. But she loves Clone Wars too. I think she, like me, is enjoying the Clone Wars way more on this rewatch, this more in-depth rewatch. Interesting. So go and watch season two, episodes one, two, and three. Yay!
Speaker: ah Holocron Heist, Cargo of Doom and Children of the Force. That's quite dark one. Dark episode. Okay. And join us next week with our episode where we break those three down with my mum. What more could you ask for?
Speaker: It's going be great. So excited. Thanks for listening and we'll see you then. Bye. Bye.
