The Cult of Fanfiction

Summary

Sounds Like A Cult – “The Cult of Fanfiction” (March 17, 2026)

Episode Overview

This episode of Sounds Like a Cult explores the vibrant, complex, and sometimes controversial world of fanfiction. Hosted by Reese Oliver and Iman Hariri-Kia, with guests Christina Lauren (the best-selling author duo of Christina Hobbs and Lauren Billings), the discussion examines fanfiction’s cultish qualities: its unique lingo, passionate communities, controversies, and the ways it both empowers and sometimes polarizes its members. The episode digs into the fandom ecosystem, legal/ethical controversies, fan-to-author pipelines, and whether fanfiction falls under a “live your life” or “watch your back” cult category.

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Fan Call-Ins: First-Hand Perspectives

(Timestamps: ~01:54 – 03:07, 22:51 – 23:53)

• Insider Lingo & Acceptability

  • Lauren Billings (Florida): Highlights fanfiction’s “very specific shared language and structure,” including “author’s notes at the top and bottom of chapters” and the normalizing of taboo topics (01:54).
  • Monica (Sydney, Australia): Points to fanfic being “embarrassing” on the outside, but accepted and supported on the inside—“a kind of live your life situation” (22:51).
  • Salem (Louisville): Notes the “lot of terminology” newcomers need to learn to navigate fanfiction spaces like AO3 and Wattpad (23:15).

• Fanfiction Involving Real People

  • Elora (California): Describes “ways people try and force celebrities in fandoms to interact with fanfiction”—including sending erotic stories to the real people involved (02:47).

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What IS Fanfiction? History, Lingo, and Vibes

(Timestamps: 03:13 – 13:59)

Defining & Contextualizing the Phenomenon

• Fanfiction Definition (Reese Oliver, 06:51):

  “Fanfiction describes stories that are written by fans using pre-existing characters and plots from any piece of media…they often steer the original story world in new and unexpected directions.”

• Historical Perspective

  • Origins with Star Trek zines in the 1960s.
  • Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet cited as literary “fanfic.”
  • Even the Bible is humorously described as “kind of fanfic” (07:30).

• Modern Platforms

  • Fanfiction.net, Wattpad, AO3 (Archive of Our Own).
    • AO3 = “Mecca…with its own taxonomies, tags and tropes” (08:14)
    • AO3’s Hugo Award win is celebrated.

• Fanfic Lingo Crash Course (Iman Hariri-Kia, 08:51, 48:42)

  • Terms like OTP (“One True Pairing”), “ship,” “canon,” “fanon,” “headcanons,” AU, “your name” reader inserts, tags (fluff, smut, angst, DNI, one-shot), and Omegaverse are explained.
  • Omegaverse: “What if misogyny were biologically justified?” (10:44) and “where the women go into heat…and all of the men become pregnant.”
  • Lingo as in-group marker: “If you’re there, you’re family…but in other fandoms, you have to earn your stripes a bit” (49:23, Lauren Billings).

Memorable Quotes

• “If you have a scenario in your head about a piece of media…some little nerd out there has written it in the dark of their room at 3am, I guarantee you.” – Reese Oliver (07:04)
• “The Bible is kind of fanfic.” – Reese Oliver (07:30)
• “If you’re not looking for it, you can probably find it traditionally published and sold in Barnes & Noble.” – Iman Hariri-Kia (11:14)

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Fanfiction Goes Mainstream: Successes and Ethics

(Timestamps: 11:13–13:59; 29:35 – 33:09)

From Fic to Bestseller

• Fifty Shades of Grey: Once Twilight fanfic (“Master of the Universe”), now a global phenomenon.
• After series: Began as One Direction fanfic.
• The Love Hypothesis by Ali Hazelwood: Adapts a Reylo (Rey x Kylo Ren) Star Wars fic.
• Heated Rivalry by Rachel Reid: Inspired by but not directly based on fanfic.

Quotes & Reflections

• “A lot of fanfiction is actually derived from marginalized communities and queer people wanting to write themselves into narratives they don’t often see themselves in.” – Iman Hariri-Kia (13:43)
• Christina Lauren’s Origin: Wrote The Office (Twilight fic) for fun, which later became a professionally published romance (Beautiful Bastard) after legal and ethical drama around “fic theft” (32:09).

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Controversies: Stigma, Legal Gray Areas, and Community Drama

(Timestamps: 13:59–20:06, 43:11–46:46, various)

Stigma & Gender Bias

• “For decades, fanfic has been dismissed as cringe or embarrassing teen girl behavior…when teenage girls write 100,000-word One Direction fics with impeccable emotional arcs…suddenly the writing is unserious.” – Reese Oliver (13:59)
• Communities led by young women or marginalized groups are treated as ‘frivolous,’ “fodder for bullies.” – Iman Hariri-Kia (15:00)

Legal/Ethical Issues

• Fanfic’s legal gray area: “If you have to outlaw fanfic, you have to outlaw song remixes.” – Reese Oliver (16:27)
• “As long as it’s not being sold…it’s not technically stealing.” – Iman Hariri-Kia (16:30)
• Controversy around publishing fanfic as original work (Manacled to Alchemized, 17:43–19:51), issues with J.K. Rowling’s transphobia and community backlash.

Community Drama

• Fandom drama is compared to “cultish excommunication” and “parasocial mania” (44:51).
• The phenomenon of “big name authors” (BNAs) and their meteoric rise and fall within the community.
• Insider “gossip rags,” e.g., the “Twankard” site in Twilight fandom, and flare-ups over perceived slights, author egos, or shifting community norms (37:40, 43:11–46:11).

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Christina Lauren Interview: Deep Dives into Fanfic Subculture

(Timestamps: 24:17 – 59:07)

Meet-Cute and Entry Into Fandom

• Christina and Lauren met via Twilight fandom, collaborating on a one-shot fic called “A Little Crazy.”
• Emphasize the collaborative, in-group nature of writing and the normalization of niche topics (“uncut Edward” stories, “parka word” in Twilight fic, 26:12).

Being BNAs and Their Experience With Cultish Dynamics

• Fandom features “charismatic” figures with large followings (AngstGoddess, Tara Sumi/E.L. James).
• Icy (E.L. James) was followed almost religiously, even having “IcyCons” in her honor (35:31).
• “She had a big following that would go after people pretty hard if you said anything negative about her.” – Lauren Billings (35:34)

Rituals and Community Rules

• Insider jargon (Fanon, Canon, One-Shot, AU, OTP) and unwritten rules, such as not profiting from fanfic and never calling readers “fans” (41:35).
• “Everything seems completely normal when you’re in it…and then outside, you’re like, ‘huh, that was interesting.’” – Christina Hobbs (25:31)
• The cycle of in-groups, ego, community drama, and excommunication/‘flounce’-ing (e.g., authors leaving in high-profile ways).

Scandals & Cancel Culture

• Describes periods when big-name authors were “cancelled” or “excommunicated,” often over issues of ego or publication, with their followings polarizing the community (43:37, 44:29).
• Christina shares a story of being doxxed after taking down her fic (51:55).

The “Us vs. Them” Bunker Mentality

• Many in the community are queer or marginalized people who find belonging through fandom (“I found my people”).
• Fandom as a space to “write into existence” the representation mainstream media lacks (46:46, 47:18).

Cultish “Language” & Status

• Coded lingo creates both kinship and status (“You get this kind of shorthand…some situations where it is a status thing.” – Lauren Billings, 49:23).
• “The more tags you can decode, the further in you are, the longer you’ve been in the cult.” – Reese Oliver (49:55)

Leaving the Fandom: Escape or Evolution?

• The transition to professional publishing often involves “leaving” the fandom—sometimes with backlash from those who feel a sense of communal ownership (51:49).
• “We left, but we didn’t leave…we just didn’t want to be in the online space because it was messy. But we still love writing fanfiction.” – Lauren Billings (51:27)

The Role of Controversy

• Scandal tends to polarize and strengthen subgroups, rather than dissolve the overall fandom—“It strengthens the splinters” (53:50).
• Despite claims that fanfic is derivative, fandom is lauded as a space for genuine innovation and creative exploration (55:32).

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Fanfic vs. Cults: The “Ships in the Night” Game

(Timestamps: 56:32 – 59:07)

• The hosts quiz Christina Lauren on whether various portmanteau names are fic ships or cult figures (“Destiel,” “Prefect” from NXIVM, “Drinny,” “Stucky,” “Thetan,” and more).
• Fun, insider-y, and a showcase of the blur between obsessive fandom and cultish behavior.

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Conclusions & Cult Category Verdict

(Timestamp: 60:00–60:48)

• Consensus: Fanfiction is a “Live Your Life” cult.
  • “Yes, there can be drama…but it’s ultimately derivative work highlighting deeper dramas…as Christina and Lauren outlined, extremely easy to leave.” – Reese Oliver & Iman Hariri-Kia (60:17–60:39)
  • “Anybody reading more is generally a good thing in my book.” – Reese Oliver (60:44)

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Notable Quotes & Moments

• “The Bible is kind of fanfic.” – Reese Oliver (07:30)
• On stigma: “When teenage girls write 100,000-word fics…with deeper character work than most TV shows, suddenly…the writing is unserious.” – Reese Oliver (13:59)
• Fandom as queer/marginalized space: “A lot of fan fiction is actually derived from marginalized communities and queer people wanting to write themselves in.” – Iman Hariri-Kia (13:43)
• On leaving fandom: “We left, but we didn’t leave.” – Lauren Billings (51:27)
• On drama: “Controversy strengthens the splinters.” – Lauren Billings (53:50)
• On creative freedom: “…fanfiction specifically gets some crap for being unoriginal…but it’s actually the most creative and adventurous.” – Lauren Billings (55:44)

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Timestamps for Major Segments

• 01:54 – 03:07: Listener calls on cultiest elements of fanfiction
• 03:13 – 13:59: Definition, history, terminology, major platforms, and rise of fanfic-to-bestseller books
• 13:59 – 20:06: Stigma, legal and ethical controversies, Manacled/Alchemized drama
• 24:17 – 59:07: Interview with Christina Lauren—origins, drama, rituals, cultishness, controversies, fun “Ships in the Night” game
• 60:00 – 60:48: Hosts decide on cult category (“Live Your Life”)
• 46:46 – 48:42: Fandom as a safe harbor for marginalized creators and representation
• 51:49 – 53:34: Challenges, backlash, and “exit costs” when leaving or stepping back

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Final Thoughts

Sounds Like a Cult finds the world of fanfiction surprisingly “culty”—marked by its lingo, charismatic figures, unwritten rituals, drama, and in-group identity. Yet it’s ultimately empowering, easily escapable, and a profound force for creative and social good. It sits comfortably as a “Live Your Life” cult, fueling both community and creativity.

Follow Christina Lauren:

• Instagram: @christinalauren
• Website: christinalaurenbooks.com

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Summary by AI. All quotes and attributions based on the original episode transcript.

Transcript

[Amanda Montell]

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[Lauren Billings]

My name is Liz, calling in from Florida, and I think the two cultiest things about fanfiction are 1. There is a very specific shared language and structure of language, like putting author's notes at the tops and bottoms of chapters and the language of what types of fanfiction is for different types of readers. And I think the other culty thing about fanfiction is the fact that pretty much anything goes. I remember being a very young fanfiction reader and writer and seeing fanfictions about adults having sexual relations with minors. Which sounds horrible, but then when you see the names of your favorite book characters like McGonagall and Harry. All of a sudden this is something that is supposed to become more acceptable, and it's not.

[Reese Oliver]

My name is Elora and I'm from California. And the cultiest thing about fanfiction is the way people will try and force celebrities in fandoms to interact with fanfiction.

[Lauren Billings]

Either they'll be writing fanfic about real

[Reese Oliver]

life people, or they'll send stuff like erotic fanfiction to those celebrities, expecting them to interact and give a reaction.

[Lauren Billings]

If they wanted to be involved with fanfiction, they could do it independently on their own time.

[Reese Oliver]

This is Sounds like a Cult, a show about the modern day cults we all follow. I'm your host, Reese Oliver, sounds like a cult's resident rhetoric scholar.

[Iman Harirukia]

And I'm Iman Hrikia, author of Female fantasy the Most famous girl in the world and 100 other girls.

[Reese Oliver]

Every single week on this show we discuss a different group or guru that puts the cult in culture, baby. From Erewhon all the way to Etsy witches to try and answer the biggest question of them all.

[Iman Harirukia]

This group sounds like a cult. But is it really? And if so, which of our cult categories does it fall into? A live your life, a watch your back, or a get the fuck out kind of cult?

[Reese Oliver]

Because, my dear listener, you can slap the label of cult on just about any group these days. But cultishness comes in different flavors. You have your delicious, nice little harmless obsessions, your Gilmore Girls, your roller derby. And then you move to the right of the ice cream fridge in my brain, and you have your more poisonous flavors, your Christian nationalism and your incels. We're just here to figure out if the flavor of the day is harmful for your health or an innocent little

[Iman Harirukia]

tasty sweet treat like a cult compromised of bookmarked archives, frantic beta readers, and alternate universes, promising the perfect reunion, reimagined endings, and the sweet risk of shipping your otp. Today we are talking about the cult of fanfiction. A vibrant, sometimes chaotic phantom phenomenon that reshapes stories and even goes mainstream. Before we get started, Reese, I have been dying to ask you, have you ever read or written fanfic?

[Reese Oliver]

I feel like if I were to pretend I had not read it, I would look like a fucking liar. I have written fanfic. This is some deep lore. My fanfic was the most reads I believe had 15k reads at the time of my deleting it.

[Iman Harirukia]

Oh, you were a fanfic micro celebrity.

[Reese Oliver]

I wouldn't say that. But I have written precisely two fanfictions and they do not exist on the Internet anymore, so don't try to find them.

[Lauren Billings]

Ew.

[Reese Oliver]

What about you?

[Iman Harirukia]

You're not gonna tell me what fandom you were a part of?

[Reese Oliver]

Well, it does kind of make me feel in utero. It is Stranger Things.

[Iman Harirukia]

Stranger Things.

[Reese Oliver]

Yes. Oh, my gosh. Like, it feels like so recent, right?

[Iman Harirukia]

Wow.

[Reese Oliver]

I was 14.

[Iman Harirukia]

Did you feel, like, personally impacted by the finale?

[Reese Oliver]

This is the craziest falloff of all time. I have not seen the last season yet because everything I loved about the show deteriorated by mid season three. I can get more into that hot take another time. Because that, for the listeners, is probably the cult that I have fallen the hardest into. My dog's name is Finn. Not for no reason.

[Iman Harirukia]

Wow.

[Reese Oliver]

Okay.

[Iman Harirukia]

So from fanfic follower to no longer a watcher. We will return to that. I will make you feel less ashamed. I read and wrote fanfic so hard. I got my start in the Buffy fanfic universe. More specifically Spuffy, which is actually a pretty problematic ship, but also the root of a lot of enemies to lovers romances. And a lot of working authors will credit Spuffy as like their original fic that inspired their OTPs. And a lot of fantasy authors credit Buffy as the model of a strong female protagonist. So I feel very, very confidently about being a part of that community.

[Reese Oliver]

That's good. I feel like I just received a really good Buffy pitch and I would feel good and strong about being a fanfic writer in that community.

[Iman Harirukia]

Absolutely.

[Reese Oliver]

So it's time to get into some history, some literature about the literature, some meta literature.

[Lauren Billings]

I hardly know her.

[Reese Oliver]

So fanfiction for all of you listeners that are not fanfic readers and you're like, I understand these syllables separately. This is what it is. Fanfiction describes stories that are written by fans using pre existing characters and plots from any piece of media. A book, a TV show, a video game, even just like a famous person's life. Although the ethics of that one are kind of murky. So they often seem steer the original story world in new and unexpected directions. Sometimes they put them in alternate universes. That's an au. That's your first lingo lesson of the day. So think about like rewriting the end of Harry Potter so that way Draco and Hermione fall in love. Or what would have happened if Frodo and Sam kissed on Mount Doom. Like, people have written that if you have like a question or a scenario in your head about a piece of media that you have watched, some little nerd out there has written it in the dark of their room at 3am I guarantee you. According to an article in the Guardian, what most of us would recognize as fanfiction today began in the 1960s when Star Trek fans shout out Trekkies. Started creating zines about Spock and Captain Kirk's adventures. Gay, but some would argue that Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet is fanfic itself. Of Arthur Brooke's 1562 story the Tragical History of Romeus and Juliet. Fans have been reimagining the works of their favorite artists in different ways since Homer wrote the Iliad. I would argue the Bible is kind of fanfic.

[Iman Harirukia]

It's definitely giving like a you.

[Christina Hobbs]

Yeah, oops.

[Reese Oliver]

Fast forward to today, however, and fanfic looks a little different. We've got thegodfather, fanfiction.net, wattpad. That was where I wrote and read most of my fanfic. And AO3, which is like Mecca, aka Archive of Our Own. That's the three O's. That's the O3 there, which like the Vatican, the Mecca, whatever you call it, it's the spot to be. AO3 alone has millions of works and hundreds of fandoms with its own taxonomies, tags and tropes. If you've never been on, it is quite the thing to try to navigate for the first time on your lonesome. I recommend Taking a Friend. It's really big and well organized that the site actually has won a Hugo Award, which is one of science fiction's highest honors.

[Iman Harirukia]

Like any cult, fanfic very much has its own lingo, its own language, its own ability to make you feel like you are a part of the inner circle. So just a few words that you might come across. Otp, which stands for One True Pairing, and that's the ship that you would literally go to war for. So if anyone ever disrespects your otp, that's definitely grounds for excommunication or cancellation. Ship, by the way, is short for relationship. It can be canon, meaning the official story, or fanon, meaning creation of the fans. So following your example, if the Bible is technically fan fiction, then people have been arguing over what's canon and what's fanon for centuries. And you've also got your headcanons, your personal beliefs about a character that aren't confirmed in the text. Also very biblical. And then there's the eight, or the alternate universe where your favorite characters might be reimagined as baristas or royalty or pirates or in some cases all 3yn is short for your name. It's as a reader insert. So that's basically how readers can insert themselves into whatever their story they're reading when they read fanfic. And then you've got story tags, fluff, smut, angst, DNI one shot, etc. There are so many story tags that honestly, it's easy to lose track of where you are. There is as a fic reader, there are also trigger warnings that are very much embraced and normalized in fanfiction. Consent is very important and boundaries are always respected. There's also mention of the Omegaverse here, which is a topic that Rhys and I had already discussed off camera. The Omegaverse is a subsection of fanfiction that deals with werewolf hierarchies and I don't know if this is the place to go over the specific anatomy of werewolves.

[Reese Oliver]

Think about the ways that wolves work and imagine humans work like that. Yeah, and you've got Omegaverse. My best friend says that she feels like Omegaverse fan fiction is people being like, what if misogyny were biologically justified?

[Iman Harirukia]

Yeah, and then there's a subset of Omegaverse fanfiction where the women go into heat and then they then need to go off and have crazy sex for three to four business days.

[Reese Oliver]

There's a subsect of Omegaverse fanfiction wherein all of the men become pregnant.

[Iman Harirukia]

If you're looking for it, it probably exists.

[Reese Oliver]

If you're not looking for it.

[Iman Harirukia]

And if you're not looking for it, you can actually now probably find it traditionally published and sold in Barnes and Noble. Speaking of which, there have been so many success stories in the fandom community, fanfiction has launched actual careers. You probably already know that the 50 Shades of Grey started out as Twilight fanfic on fanfiction.net and it was called Master of the Universe Then. Then there's also After. The after series was originally One Direction fanfic that turned Harry Styles into this like brooding bad boy named Hardinson Scott that became a multi book and movie franchise. And don't confuse that with the Larry Stylinson ship, which is a very, very, very real fan theory that Harry and Louis were secretly dating or are depending on who you're talking to. By the way, that also inspired tons and tons of fic. The number one best selling romance author Ali Hazelwood got her start adapting Reylo fanfiction and the Love Hypothesis. Her OG fic is even getting a movie adaptation with Lili Reinhart. And the man who is playing her love interest is married to Daisy Ridley, who of course is Rey. Is Rey.

[Reese Oliver]

For those of you, Reylo is Rey and Kylo Ren. It's a Star wars show.

[Iman Harirukia]

Yeah, see, here we go. Getting too much too into your own cultishness. But we can't not mention everyone's favorite gay hockey romance that we have all binged 100 times by now. Me, probably about a thousand. It honestly needs its own episode. The Cult of Heated Rivalry Back book is not actually fanfiction, but the book that inspired the show was originally workshop on AO3 as Steve Rogers and Bucky Barnes fanfic. And the author Rachel Reed was fine tuning that story and looking for reader feedback. To be clear, she firmly states that heated Rivalry did not start out as stucky fanfic. But the insightful readers of AO3 were a really great source of feedback when she was getting started.

[Reese Oliver]

That's actually so teeny to be like, I don't have money for an editor. Let me change all these names to fandom names. Put it on AO3. And the people who are actually doing the writing that the readers their age are interested in will tell me what they want.

[Iman Harirukia]

That's so smart and getting all of that like affirmation right off the gate. What's wild is that some of these stories not only gained millions of online reads, they gained enough momentum to leap from cult content to cultural canon. They left the fandom temple and took over the town square. So if you've ever dismissed fanfiction as just teenage fantasy with too much smut, well, first of all, that's rude. Second of all, a lot of fan fiction is actually derived from marginalized communities and queer people wanting to write themselves into narratives that they don't often see themselves in. So you should suck it, suck it. And third, the cult is bigger, smarter and more powerful than you might think.

[Reese Oliver]

And now that we've covered some history, we know where we are, we know where we stand. It's time to get into some controversy. Because if there's one thing that the fandom community has, it's a whole lot of controversy, a whole lot of drama. Like any self respecting cult, fanfic has its controversies. The biggest one is honestly just the stigma though. For decades, fanfic has been dismissed as cringe or embarrassing teen girl behavior. I mean, you guys saw how embarrassed I was the beginning of this episode. That didn't just come from nowhere. That is a socially derived attitude, okay? Especially because fanfiction is primarily written by like young Girls and centers around romance and sex. Double standard is real purity. Culture hates us all. And when male fans are like obsessively building all these Star wars timelines and on 4chan doing all their fandom shit, they're super fans and collectors and like groundbreaking dudes. But when teenage girls write 100,000 word One Direction fics with impeccable emotional arcs and deeper character work than most TV shows, when they're writing men of more emotional depth than most of the men will date in their lifetime, suddenly the writing is unserious.

[Iman Harirukia]

Yeah, I want to poke some holes in that theory. I think that there is a lot to be said about not only people that get off on yucking others. Yum. But also that pick communities that are popularized, especially by young women, so that they can make them feel frivolous or stupid or vapid. And I think fanfiction, because it's been championed by so many women and marginalized people for so long and is seen as kind of something that you do under the COVID of night with like your bed covers held over, it's fodder for these bullies.

[Reese Oliver]

Maybe the fact that none of you guys are reading is your problem and not ours.

[Iman Harirukia]

And I can't tell you how many people credit fanfic with getting them back into reading.

[Reese Oliver]

Reading, writing.

[Iman Harirukia]

Yep.

[Reese Oliver]

And we need that these days.

[Iman Harirukia]

Absolutely.

[Reese Oliver]

Another issue with fanfic is just like knee jerk legal panic. Fanfic has always lived in a legal gray area. It's like unauthorized, but it's pretty tolerated. I mean, it's usually directing traffic towards the source material. So most of the time people don't mind. In early days, some authors were like, really openly hostile about it and Rice and other authors embraced it and loved it and were totally decided to capitalize on it. But technically speaking, is fanfic stealing? We don't know. I don't think so.

[Iman Harirukia]

I don't think fanfic is stealing. I think there are always very specific language at the beginning of a fic stating that they do not own the rights to what they're talking about. That this is done entirely, like, with reverence and respect for the source material.

[Reese Oliver]

I think you'd have to outlaw like song remixes.

[Iman Harirukia]

Exactly. As long as it's not being sold, then it's not technically stealing.

[Reese Oliver]

If you're not claiming it's yours. Do whatever you want, man. Be your weird little self. However, sometimes fics converge on downright unethical. And there are huge debates within fic communities on writing fanfiction about real people. Whether it's like actors or people like Jeffrey Dahmer. Enter our first thought terminating don't like, don't read. This has been the defense of controversial writers for years. If you don't like the content, don't read it. Which honestly is so strange to hear the same rhetoric from like fanfic girlies that you hear from like Republican comedy bros. It's kind of funny and it does not justify the behavior. So the last controversy that I want to touch on, as there are many we could not possibly touch on them all in one short hour. We'll hear a few more specific ones from our guests later, is about the recent sale of Manacled. The Manacled controversy centers on one of the most beloved and widely read stories on AO3, a dark Dramione that's Draco and Hermione Harry Potter fanfic by author Sen Lin Yu, which at one point ranked as the second most popular fic of all time on the platform. In 2023, Sen. Lin Yu requested the FIC be removed from AO3 and began the process of publishing it as an original after rewriting the characters and removing Harry Potter ip. This sparked backlashes in the fanfiction community as many felt it blurred ethical lines around monetizing derivative work and betrayed the communal gift based ethos of fandom. In response, readers began fic binding, the DIY practice of printing and hand binding fanfics into physical books for personal use, both to preserve Manacled and as a protest against fanfic disappearing behind paywalls. But then of course, the manacled being taken down. This also led to people trying to make a quick buck selling the original Manacled series after it had been long gone. The debate raised larger questions about ownership, profit, and the sacred, slightly culty bond between fic writers and their readers. I'm struggling to understand how this is much different than what happened with 50 Shades.

[Iman Harirukia]

So here's where I understand the bulk of the controversy comes from. I think that a lot of people saw this as a front to the trans community because of J.K. rowling's terfdom and that by republishing fanfiction that's connected to the Harry Potter ip. They were worried that it might then encourage people to engage more in the Harry Potter universe and put more money into J.K. rowling's pocket. I want to note that author Sen Lanyu is non binary themselves and has been very vocal about how much they do not align themselves with J.K. rowling and and from what I have seen, a Lot of the popular fanfiction authors who have written Germione fanfiction and even the ones whose books have gotten adapted have been very vocal about how they want to separate themselves from Harry Potter. You have to look at who's profiting. Why aren't the publishers protecting both their readers and their authors? Alchemized. The book that Manacle became is over 1000 pages long, which requires a ton of work to write, all the new world building. But then you have to trust that once you've done the work to completely remove any and all essence of the Harry Potter IP from your work, that then your publisher would do the work of marketing it as its own separate entity, its own separate work of fantasy sales materials were leaked of the publishers marketing the books as like Dramione Summer

[Reese Oliver]

as Harry Potter related because three of

[Iman Harirukia]

them all came out around the same time. And then you could walk into a bookstore and there were Dramione tables. And it actually then did inspire some people to then go back and read Harry Potter. That's unfortunate, but it's a failure on the publisher's part.

[Reese Oliver]

I think that's a well measured way of looking at it. Okay, well, I think it's time to get into our interview right after a short break.

[Amanda Montell]

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[Reese Oliver]

hey, this is Monica from Sydney, Australia. And for me the cultiest thing about fanfiction is the idea that it's kind of embarrassing to write fanfiction. Yet when you're within that community, it's all very accepted and everyone's supporting you and wants to enable you. So if it is something where you really are in an in group, there's like little subsections of fanfiction. There's a lot of passion and it certainly feels very culty to be a part of. But I do feel it is a kind of live your life situation because ultimately everyone is also learning how to write and it gives you the confidence to make your own original works one day. Hi, my name's Salem and I'm calling from the Louisville area. And the cultiest thing about fanfiction is probably all the terms and words that you have to know to go through places like AO3 and Wattpad. There's just a lot of like terminology that if, if you're a newcomer, you definitely will need a guide for sure.

[Iman Harirukia]

Well, we are so excited to get into our interview. Joining us today are Christina Hobbs and Lauren Billings, better known together as the best selling rom com author duo. Christina, Lauren, creator of hits like Josh and Hazel's Guide to Not Dating, the Unhoneymooners and my personal favorite, the True Love Experiment. Welcome, guys.

[Lauren Billings]

Thank you.

[Christina Hobbs]

Hello.

[Reese Oliver]

We are so excited to have you both on slack. Could you start off with just giving a little introduction to our listeners of who you are and your relation to the cult of fanfiction?

[Lauren Billings]

Hi, this is Lauren. I Met Christina in 2009. We started writing together, just doing some fan fiction. We did a little one shot. We met at San Diego Comic Con and our first collaboration. We'd known each other for like four days. So we're like, yeah, let's write together, you know, because that's just what you do. It's so collaborative. Then after writing literally one chapter together, we're like, let's write an entire book. Not knowing that that was a very crazy decision to make with a stranger. But it was incredibly serendipitous because we met our person in that process. And so now we've been writing together since 2009. And she's my best, best friend, business partner, sister, wife. Everything's. I mean, not really my wife, but like my life wife.

[Christina Hobbs]

I mean, people wonder sometimes.

[Reese Oliver]

I was gonna say, what a romance novel of a story in itself.

[Iman Harirukia]

Yeah, you guys have the most adorable. Meet cute. Okay, so I wanna ask you a little bit more about the fic that you mentioned writing. I wanna know what that one shot was. If you feel comfortable sharing.

[Reese Oliver]

Of course.

[Christina Hobbs]

I get this question. Hi, this is Christina. So I think one of the things about fandom is that a lot of things seem completely normal when you in it. And then when you're not in it every day you go, huh, that was interesting. And one of those is like how collaborative everything is that it just felt completely normal for us to just jump into writing together. And another is the kind of language you speak. And in Twilight Vic, which is where we met because it was Edward, everything was a word. So it was like bliss word, Dom word. So this story, there were these one shots which are just like little novellas or something. And this one was called a parka word. And basically what that meant was that every Edward has an uncircumcised penis.

[Reese Oliver]

What?

[Iman Harirukia]

Stop it.

[Christina Hobbs]

Which just felt completely normal at the time. So we wrote this story that was just actually so lovely. It was called A little Crazy. And the only thing about it was that he Just was uncut. That's it. It was not even, like, a thing in the story. It just happened to be that he was a Doctor without Borders and he traveled internationally, was born out of the country, all of these things, and he just happened to be uncut. And we just had so much fun writing, and it was so popular that it just felt like it was what we were supposed to be doing together.

[Lauren Billings]

W. And the funniest thing is the first time we ever told that story, I think it was to Forbes.

[Christina Hobbs]

Forbes or the Atlantis.

[Lauren Billings]

It was the other.

[Christina Hobbs]

It was the moment that I realized, we are ruined for polite society.

[Lauren Billings]

And it was like we were having such a good conversation with the journalist, and we were just, like, gabbing. And halfway through the story, I realized, oh, my God, we're talking to the Atlantic about foreskins, uncut penis. Like, are we able to come back? Is this our moment of, like, polite society cancellation? You know what?

[Christina Hobbs]

I'm so insanely proud of that story. We had so much fun, and it was the first thing we wrote together. And here we are, 30 plus books later.

[Lauren Billings]

Yep.

[Iman Harirukia]

Well, let's take a step back for a second. I want to know from both of you, what was your, like, OG fanfic lore? Who indoctrinated you into the world of fanfic?

[Lauren Billings]

So I, Lauren, was writing fic before I had a computer because I am an old. And I was writing Days of Our Lives fanfiction. I was obsessed with Patch and Kayla, and so I would come home from. From school and write in my journal little scenes that I didn't get. Because, you know, like, in soap operas, you don't get every couple every episode. And if you do, sometimes you get, like, one scene. So you're hungry for this couple that you ship, but you don't always get what you want. And it's a very good strategy to keep viewers totally locked in. But anyway, so I would write Steve and Kayla fanfic, and my mom found all of my notebooks under my bed when I went to college because I had this bed that had, like, a drawer full of fanfic that I was just, like, writing for myself. But then my first, like, online, other people knew I was doing it. Fandom was Buffy, and that was, like, the best community.

[Iman Harirukia]

Lauren, I got my start in Buffy, too. Did you really?

[Reese Oliver]

Yeah.

[Iman Harirukia]

The Buffy in me sees the Buffy in you.

[Christina Hobbs]

So I came to it much later in life. I was a normie before, and I did not even know what fan fiction was. And then when I was 32, I had a hysterectomy. And so I was just recovering, and I had read Twilight and loved it. And while I was scrolling the Internet one day, I stumbled upon this site called Twilighted, which was where the majority of the Twilight fic was posted. Because, you know, back then it was that or fanfiction.net and I was like, what is this? It's just all these people just writing stories of the thing that I love for fun. And it just changed my entire life. And I started meeting all these people, and then I started writing. And so I, like, always joke that I, like, lost a uterus, but I gained an entire new life. And I met so many people that are still so important to me. All those years ago, this was, like 2009. But that was my first fandom. And since then, I've, like, read a lot of fic and stuff, but I've only ever written in Twilight.

[Iman Harirukia]

Wow. I didn't realize that you'd come to it so much later than Lauren. And then at what point in the process did writing fanfic together start to feel like it could be more than just a hobby?

[Lauren Billings]

I think when we decided to write a book, we were like, we gotta do this.

[Christina Hobbs]

It was like, 2010.

[Lauren Billings]

Yeah. And I think once we decided and we outlined a book, we were like, okay, we are gonna make this a thing that we're doing. We're gonna publish a book. But we hadn't planned on leaving our jobs or having it be our primary source of income. Like, we had no delusions that that was a possibility in any way, shape, or form. And so we just wanted to publish a book. We just wanted to be authors. And so we outlined the this story. We thought, well, since we're going to be serious authors, we have to write a really serious book, and we can't write smutty stuff. So we outlined this really depressing book about this guy whose wife died in a car accident and how he finds love again. And then neither of us ever wanted to work on it. We're just always putting it off. And we realize it's just because it wasn't our voice. Like, it's not the kind of book we write. And so as soon as we outlined something that was like, skinny dipping and magic and the fates and, like, all kinds of stuff, it was just like, we flew through it. So I think once we outlined that book, we were like, this is something we are going to be doing together.

[Iman Harirukia]

So you never actually adapted one of your fanfics?

[Lauren Billings]

Well, we did, but that wasn't the Original plan.

[Iman Harirukia]

Got it.

[Lauren Billings]

So Christina had a really popular fic. It was called the Office. It was basically like, Edward is the asshole boss and Bella is his scrappy assistant, and they hate each other, but they have sex all over the office, right? And it was very big at the time. And so we had done this charity called the Fandom Gives Back, and it was in collaboration with Alex's Lemonade Stand foundation, which is like a childhood leukemia charity. So we had people donate things, like one shots that readers could request a certain pairing or a fan art. And the first one we did, we raised like, a quarter of a million dollars. So over a few years, it had raised almost a million dollars for this charity. But in the process of doing that, Christina took her fic down because it was kind of getting some media attention, and she didn't want to have have the fics up online associated with it. Since it was this, like, childhood charity. We just didn't want to mix that up. Right. We wanted to focus on the idea of fandom being generous. So Christina took her fic down and she never put it back up. So fast forward a couple years, and a fanfiction called Master of the Universe was pulled from the website and published as 50 Shades of Gray by E.L. james. So publishing kind of lost its mind. It was selling a ton, and they were like, oh, here we have this source of steamy romance that we can mine. Like, we need to find the next 50 Shades. And Christina got this call, and this person was like, hey, I work in publishing. And I just saw the office come across my desk, but it had a different name attached to it, like, is this you?

[Reese Oliver]

Whoa.

[Lauren Billings]

And Christina was like, no. So we called our agent, and we hadn't told her about writing fic because at the time, this was probably 2012. It was still sort of a black box mark on you in publishing if you had written fan fiction, like, people still gave you shit about it. So we hadn't told our agent that we had this fanfiction pass. We didn't tell her that we deleted our big fandom Twitters. We had all this stuff deleted. So we had to come clean and tell her. We were so worried she was going to drop us. And she's like, so you're telling me that you guys had a giant fandom following, and I'm supposed to be worried about that? That's not a bad thing. So we told her, this person is trying to sell Christina's fanfiction as their own. What should we do? And she was like, why don't you just get in there, edit it it, post it online. That way no one can steal it and you guys can move on with your life. And so we both got in it, threw away the ending, edited the whole thing, and we sent it to Holly, and she was like, you guys, this is really good and really different. Do you mind if I send this out to a few editors? And we're like, sure, why not? Go crazy. So she sent it to a few editors, and it sold in 12 hours. And that's beautiful.

[Amanda Montell]

Bastard.

[Lauren Billings]

And that was our first book that we ever published. So, like, it had never been our intention to do that, but because of the way everything unfolded, that was how we got our start in romance.

[Iman Harirukia]

Romance, you guys became de facto leaders of the cult of fanfiction, which actually seamlessly brings me to my next question, because obviously what we do on this podcast is try to evaluate different groups, level of cultiness. And so fanfiction fandoms often operate like decentralized cults of personality, and they tend to orbit around specific pairings or authors like YouTube. So who do you think the charismatic figures of the fanfic world are? The ones that everyone follows, reveres, or maybe in some cases, fear?

[Christina Hobbs]

I mean, in Wildlight Phantom, you know, we used to always come like a bna, which is like a big name author. So the first one, her name was Angst Goddess, and she wrote this book called Wide Awake, which was on LiveJournal. And it just was the most amazing story about Edward and Bella are both insomniacs, and the only way they can sleep is when they are together. And it was just amazing. She was sort of like the first big author. And then there was this one called Submissive, and her name was Tara Sumi. That was the one. Like, back then, Twitter was sort of like, you know, we all are in these little circles. You know, everybody's talking about the same thing. And it really felt like we were in a cafeteria, and the minute the Submissive would update, everybody would be gone and we would all be reading at the same time. And my fic was pretty popular. And then when Masters of the Universe came, it was sort of like she had taken the big popular aspects of a couple fics and put them together and numbers and stuff. Back then, you know, I remember the office had a couple million reads, six months, million reads. But Masters of the Universe, by that point, the fandom was, like, even bigger. And it became huge. It became bigger than anything. So Snow Queen's Ice dragon, what's her name?

[Lauren Billings]

We called her Icy. And actually. So she's from the uk. Everybody knows that now. And when she first came to the States, I used to have this panel at Comic Con that was like a fan fiction panel where we would invite some of the bigger named authors from the fandom to come out. And so the second year that it went on, we invited her out to be on the panel. And so on her journey from the UK to San Diego, she did different tour stops as a fic author. Like, she hadn't published 50 Shades yet, and they held what was called icycons for her in, like, different cities.

[Amanda Montell]

That's.

[Iman Harirukia]

I did not realize that. Wow.

[Lauren Billings]

Yeah. So she had a really rabid group of people in the Twilight fandom. I wouldn't necessarily say at any point and was scared of her, but she had a big following that would go after people pretty hard if you said anything negative about her.

[Reese Oliver]

Ooh.

[Iman Harirukia]

That kind of reframes my understanding, too, of why 50 Shades was as popular as it was when it finally hit the mainstream.

[Christina Hobbs]

And there are a lot of popular, like, contemporary authors now who started out writing with us, like Sally Thorne, who wrote the Hating Game. She was the Black Arrow. That was our favorite fic ever. Helena Hunting wrote as Hunter Hunting.

[Reese Oliver]

So by and large, it's funny to me because it sounds like even though fanfic in theory revolves around, like, the fandoms themselves, the things that are actually driving most of the cultish behavior are these authors that are kind of these more like behind the scenes figures almost. I think that's an interesting cult y dimension of this.

[Lauren Billings]

Well, and I think, like, in any community, there's different themes that kind of vibrate through the community. Right. You'll have people who feel very strongly about the pairings where they only want to see Bella with Jacob, or they're die hard Bella, Edward. And those feelings create tensions that are just completely manufactured and absurd when you step back from it. But in the fandom, it's a big thing. And then I also think that there are different conversations about slash fic, which is like, male male, or the underrepresentation of the Quaalutes and like the wolves and all that stuff. And I mean, there's a lot of these different things happening in this fandom. And I think one thing that was interesting is when the fandom had gotten to a certain point, there just was so much drama simmering under the surface. And so somebody started this website called twankard, like a tmz, like revealing fandom drama anonymously.

[Iman Harirukia]

And no one for fanfare oh, literally.

[Christina Hobbs]

Yeah.

[Lauren Billings]

And so nobody knew who was behind it for the longest time. And we eventually found out that it was Sam Ink's goddess. But it was so funny because everybody was like, who's gonna get exposed next? You know, just like, the craziness.

[Christina Hobbs]

And I remember thinking this was just, like, exclusive to TWI fandom. But now you'll talk to people who are in different fandoms, and they'll be like, oh, this person was so drama in this fandom or this person. And you realize that it's like, these little, like, communities.

[Lauren Billings]

It's just what happens. Yeah.

[Iman Harirukia]

Are you dreaming of the perfect prom? But there's just one thing holding you back.

[Reese Oliver]

Speak English, Mom.

[Amanda Montell]

Welcome to Ethnosync Ethnic modification.

[Iman Harirukia]

What is this place?

[Lauren Billings]

We help you reach your true potential. How are you feeling?

[Reese Oliver]

It's good to be Hawaii. Hey, new girl.

[Iman Harirukia]

Hey.

[Amanda Montell]

Look at what you've done to yourself.

[Reese Oliver]

For a new plant to grow, the

[Christina Hobbs]

seed has to die.

[Amanda Montell]

Slanted Rated R Only in theaters March 13th.

[Christina Hobbs]

Side effects may occur.

[Amanda Montell]

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[Reese Oliver]

Hi, this is Lauren from Reno.

[Iman Harirukia]

I have been kind of involved in

[Reese Oliver]

fandom for, like, 20 something years. Unfortunately, there are a lot of people

[Iman Harirukia]

in the fanfic community that kind of

[Christina Hobbs]

take it too far.

[Reese Oliver]

I definitely think there's a lot of unspoken rules that people who aren't in the community are definitely not going to understand. Also, there's always been people doing incredibly invasive harassment campaigns where people are mad that there are fans who ship a different ship than they do. Or maybe they love a character more than someone else does, especially if it's just a controversial character, whatever the property is. But it's something where people just get, like, so angry about something that we're all ostensibly doing for fun. Right? And unfortunately, it feels like everybody has started to lose the plot, so to speak. Like they're taking it way too seriously. Hi, my name is Elle. I'M calling in from New Orleans, and I think the cultiest thing about fanfiction is how people can treat characters in a source content as almost like they're dolls to play with and set them up in different scenarios without regards for the fact that oftentimes this involves real people, and it could pose a lot of consequences in that aspect. AvidListener review show. So, yeah, thank you. You okay, Lauren? I want to pull out something culty that you said earlier, which is a lot of things happen that seem totally normal from the inside, but then you'll step outside, and you'll be like, what is that? From, like, an outside of the fandom perspective? Even if you're, like, a casual enjoyer, it'll look completely foreign to you. So I want to talk rituals on that same note, what are some of the unspoken rules or sacred fanfic customs that feel totally normal? As an insider, but on the outside you would be like, what the hell is going on over there?

[Lauren Billings]

That's a really good question. I mean, I think that there are some things that we call Fanon that are, like, canon, right? That weren't in the books but kind of made their way through fandom, and you never really remembered where it came from. And there were moments, like watching the movies where we're like, wait a second. Does Carlisle get beheaded in the books? Like, what the heck are we watching right now? Right? So I think the things that are probably built in or they have to be there is, like, the way that Edward loves Bella. So, like, whatever he does, he's doing it because he loves her. And I think that's one of the things about fic that's so wonderful, is, like, as a way to learn how to write, you can be dropped into the story. And because this world has already been built for you, you can skip all of that exposition up front and just be like, okay, well, Jacob's gonna get shafted. Edward's obsessed with Bella. Bella's gonna slip on the ice. Like, there's certain things that you're gonna have her do. She smells amazing. Even if she's a human. There's these things that everybody builds in. What do you think, Christina?

[Christina Hobbs]

I mean, if I think of, like, the rules. One of the rules, like, we never said fan fans, and this is something low and I have carried even into, like, being a published author, is that sometimes our publisher would be like, we're gonna do, like, a fan contest, and we would be like, reader. Because, you know, when you're in fandom, you're a fan. Of someone else. So they're not your fan, they're your readers. And that is always carried on. And if somebody said fan, it was kind of this, like, what? You know, and there was always this rule, you're not supposed to profit from fan fiction, you know, because everybody had a thing at the very top of their fic that's like, I do not own Twilight. These are property of Stephanie Meyer. Blah, blah, blah. So it's been so interesting for Lo and I to see the way that communities have changed. I mean, like, when we published Beautiful Bastard, it was a very different story, but it didn't matter. It still had its seed started in fandom. So there were some people who were really mad at us. And that's totally fair. Where with Ralo Thick, you've seen so much where that community just comes around them and they're so excited because they're like, one of our own is being lifted up and publishing and getting, you know, all this visibility and stuff, and they really rally around that. So, you know, in our day, I remember we were going on submission somewhere, and we just had this thing where we were like, oh, my God, if they see our Twitters. And we immediately deleted them, like, that day. And now you have agents going into fan authors. DMs asking them if they've ever thought about publishing. And so it's changed so much in that way.

[Iman Harirukia]

Now it's become fodder for big publishing blockbusters.

[Christina Hobbs]

Yeah, because everybody wants, like, some of the work already done for them. They want somebody who has a big reader base already, and that sort of in some fandoms comes, you know, built in.

[Reese Oliver]

It does, does. It comes built in, but not without effort and lots of cultivation. And the fanfiction space is very creatively freeing, but it is also a very insular space. I'm wondering if there are moments, as I'm hearing allusions to where the community has turned on itself or on you that you find particularly culty and feel comfortable sharing. And if there is a version of excommunication or cancellation, what might that look like?

[Lauren Billings]

You know, it's interesting to. Because I think, at least for the Twilight fandom, it really did center around publication. And I think it also centered around when people. Their egos got too big. So when Sam started Twink Hard, and before we knew it was Sam, I think we found out it was Sam once Sam had posted the chats with Erica. So Sam, I think, was helping E.L. james build a website, and they were talking a little bit about how Erica Icy was sort of separate from the fandom and kind of let minions kind of handle some of her beefs with people and would DM people if she was, like, upset or her feelings were hurt. And I was definitely on the receiving end of that once. And we're far enough in our career now that I, like, honestly don't give a shit anymore. We've never told these stories. Like, I'm happy to tell them because I don't even care. But, like, when she came out to Comic Con, I had just had a baby. I had, like, leaking boobs.

[Amanda Montell]

Baby.

[Lauren Billings]

Tiny, tiny, tiny baby. Okay. And because I had invited her and then I had somebody else take over, like, kind of managing it, I didn't get to meet her. I didn't get to spend any time with her. And I guess, like, she saw that as sort of a snub. Like, she thought I was rude and whatever. So I had all of these people who were her big readers in my DMs, telling me what a terrible person I was for snubbing her. And I was like, apologies, but I literally have a newborn.

[Iman Harirukia]

I just gave birth.

[Reese Oliver]

That's so parasocial. Sick Demania.

[Christina Hobbs]

She's like, six weeks old.

[Lauren Billings]

Yeah. And so that, for me, was really painful. And it kind of started this whole thing. But I think I remember when Sam was setting up this website, and she was saying to Erica, like, how you kind of have this distance from the fandom. It's sort of like you're up on your perch. And Erica replied, well, I quite like my perch. And that was so indicative of how she felt to a lot of people in the fandom. Like, she sort of wanted the attention, but she didn't want to be down in the mosh pit with us. Right. And so Sam posted those on twinkard. And I think she exposed herself because she had to do that in order to say, like, that this is what Erica thinks of all of you.

[Christina Hobbs]

Right before she flounced. That's the word we used to use.

[Iman Harirukia]

She flounced.

[Lauren Billings]

So that was Sam's big, like, later, you know, and everybody was like, whoa. And I think that's when Christina and I were like, we are so done with this. Like, this is just too much. And so we kind of took a step back, and that's sort of how I was with the DMs from people who were mad at me. It's like, Christina and I just don't get involved in drama. And so we just sort of were like, okay, this is a lot. And so I think those Kinds of things. They can kill fandoms because you can have these really big authors who are sort of seen as leaders or whatever to new people, or they have a huge readership or whatever, and it feels sort of like the community that has been built around them begins to crumble when they show their asses like that.

[Christina Hobbs]

Yeah, you have this thing that it's supposed to be a source of joy, and then it turns into not fun anymore.

[Iman Harirukia]

Yeah, yeah. No, that actually makes me think a lot of the root of fanfic comes from this us versus them mentality, because so many people who write fanfic or read fanfic are queer or marginalized, and they want to see themselves in popularity narratives, but they don't, so they end up putting themselves there. Do you think that that us versus them mentality then leads to your classic, like, cult bunker effect? Do you think it's the outsider stigma that fuels this feeling of it's the fanfic community against the world? People don't understand us.

[Christina Hobbs]

I think it really fuels this, like, I found my people sense. I mean, there are times we'll be texting some of our author friends that were fit, and we'll be saying something, and it's not even something bad, but it's like the language we use, and nobody else would understand this sentence. So there is a sense, like, you know, the first time we met Ali Hazelwood, we were like, oh, my God, we speak the same language because we're all from fandom. And there's just something about, like, an enthusiasm and sort of, like, need and love of joy that comes, I think, from fandom. So there really is a sense, I think, of, like, you have found your people.

[Lauren Billings]

Yeah. I do think, though, like, when you're talking about marginalized communities, I was gonna say that I think fandom is like a microcosm of the larger publishing conversation about, like, representation and inclusivity and all of that. But I actually think fandom is sort of like the seed where it starts and then it radiates out into other spaces, these conversations. You know, one of the things that Christine and I have long said is that romance is a space that is kind of positioned to have a lot of societal and cultural impact because it moves very fast in the publishing world. You know, romance publishes really quickly. The cycle is really short relative to other genres in fiction. And so because the goal is to have a happily ever after, you're sort of creating. Creating this space where you can have marginalized people see it happily ever after. You can have people Go through hard, difficult, stressful things, and they have this, like, safe place at the end. And so because of that, you can do a lot of hard work in the book that talks about, like, society and culture and all these things. I actually think a lot of that conversation happens first in the smaller spaces of fandom because people don't hold back what they're feeling and thinking. And I think a lot of people do go to fandoms to write the pairing, the queer pairing, the marginalized pairing, the disability, whatever it is that they want to write. They're able to write that in that safe space.

[Christina Hobbs]

Yeah, because there's no, like, quote unquote rules.

[Lauren Billings]

Exactly. And so they can have patience there. So I do think a lot of the things that we are seeing in publishing have been happening for so much longer in fandom.

[Iman Harirukia]

I want to go back really quickly to something that Christina said, which is that when you meet other members of the community, you immediately feel like you have your own language and you can communicate as such. I hate to say it, it's sounding, oh, wee bit culty. You guys have already used some of that language with us. You know, words like fanon and canon, one shot au, otp. But do you think that this, like, coded vocab then functions like the jargon of a high control group? Like, do you think that the lingo part is part of gaining status as, like, a member of the fanfic cult, if you will?

[Christina Hobbs]

I mean, okay, it's like, yeah, you get this kind of, like, shorthand that, like, you can just say things in little clip things, and people, they know exactly what you're saying.

[Lauren Billings]

Yeah, but I think there are some situations to your question, like, where it is, like, a status thing. I can't think of a time where there was really that in the Twilight fandom. It was very much, if you're here, you're welcome. Because we're all doing this crazy thing together. And I think there were a lot of us, most of us found ourselves sort of bewildered to be there in the first place. You know, a lot of us came into the books not expecting to get kind of hooked by them in that way. And so I think if you're there, you're family, but I think in other fandoms, you have to kind of earn your stripes a little bit.

[Christina Hobbs]

Yeah, it's like, how long have you been in there? Or something like that.

[Reese Oliver]

Yeah, I noticed that a lot. I see this the most in, like, tags, where it's like, the more tags that you're familiar with and can decode. That's how you know, like, the further in you are, the longer you've been in the cult. Yeah. Or like, it's just a lot of acronyms. And I think that's also similar with the writers. Based on how many tags they have attached to the work, you can see how serious they are about it and whether or not you want to engage with it. So I almost think, like, not even so much whether or not you understand the lingo, but the volume and comfort, Comfortability with which you use it, I think is a big contributing factor to fanfic cult status. You mentioned earlier the big dramatic moment when the both of you kind of realized. You said you were done with this. I think in reference to just, like, the Twilight fandom, or maybe fandom as a whole. I don't want to put words in your mouth, but that being said, one way or another, you cross the bridge from fic to mainstream publishing, which is rare and difficult. I applaud you very much. Do you feel like you escaped a cult, or do you feel like you maybe just started a new sect? That's a little cozier.

[Christina Hobbs]

I think for me, when we decided we were going to pull back a little, it just started to feel a little messy. And so we were like, I think I need a break. But we were writing for a couple years between the time we were posting and reading fic. You know, a lot of fandoms sort of have their cycle and they come and they crest, and then your favorite authors stop updating. And, you know, and it was sort of doing that, and we were just doing something else. But mom and I just have, like, fandom souls anyway, so we always have something that we're sort of in love with. Like, number one, we could not do this job now without the things that we learned in fandom. And so, again, because we have. We say readers, we don't say fans. So I don't think we ever felt like we were like, oh, the head of this fandom or something. I don't think we've ever felt like that.

[Lauren Billings]

No. And I mean, we left, but we didn't leave. Like, we still always champion Twilight. We wouldn't let people talk. Steph Meyer. We're still like, fans. We just didn't want to be in the online space because it was messy. But, I mean, after my last fic, I wrote Hunger Games fic, and I started writing Crash landing on you fic, and, you know, I think we still love writing fanfiction. It's just now we sort of Focus more on our book.

[Christina Hobbs]

Yeah, we just don't have as much time anymore.

[Iman Harirukia]

But were there exit costs to you guys leaving? Do you feel like people got upset when you stopped writing fanfiction?

[Christina Hobbs]

People were upset when I took my fic down because readers do have a sense of ownership over a thing, which is why, you know, some people were upset when fic is published because they do. They feel like it belongs to the community. So there were people who were upset when I took my fic down. Also, somebody had taken my fic. And I was always really good about not giving personal information about myself. But I had said a couple things, like, I lived this and I could hear this or whatever, and they were able to, like, track down where I lived, and I worked at a school at the time, and they were able to find me on the school's website, and they sent my fic to my boss. And that was one of the big things where I sort of started to go, I'm not putting it back up. So that was when I kind of started to pull away just a little bit. We dedicated Beautiful Bastard to Stephenie Meyer because she brought us together. And we are always like, man, we will fight to the death for her because she let us have this space where we were able to meet some of the most important people in our lives. And like, I always say that I didn't know I had anything to say until I was in this place and had a platform to say it. I didn't know I had a voice until there were people who were listening. And so I'll always be so grateful for that. And the minute anybody says Twilight, I'm like, twilight and start talking about it way more than I should. So I don't even know if it's like, we just, like, broke up with it or something. It's just like, I think you just start checking your sick updates less often and stop going on Twitter as much and that kind of thing.

[Reese Oliver]

Yeah, I do think that's something that gives it, like, minus cult points is like, from the author perspective, when you leave, if you just, like, stop checking the website, it can kind of leave you. But then, you know the story you just told. Maybe not. Maybe not always until it shows up at your boss's house, until it mails your boss.

[Christina Hobbs]

Yeah, yeah.

[Reese Oliver]

So it sounds to me, and I mean, it's just. Just clear that the fanfic community as a whole has had its fair share of scandal. Do you think that controversy strengthens the cult, like, bonds of fandom, or do you think it splinters them.

[Lauren Billings]

I think it strengthens the splinters. Right. So, like, you'll have different camps that feel different ways about things, and then those people will pull more strongly together. And I think, at least from my perspective, that's probably what happened with Twilight. I think that there's more than just two sides to every single little fight that happens, happened. And I couldn't possibly name all of them because I don't even know all of them. But I think in general, like, when you have big beefs in fandom, they tend to polarize. I could be wrong, though.

[Christina Hobbs]

But they're also this thing when you go to explain it to somebody in real life and they're like, they're mad because. Huh. And then you sort of realize, oh, right, it only feels big when it's online.

[Lauren Billings]

Yeah.

[Iman Harirukia]

Well, tracking that, like, do you think that there is a Dogma fanfiction that cannot be questioned under any circumstances unless then chaos will ensue. Like, is there a certain ship or certain tropes? Is it, like maybe the sanctity of a space like AO3?

[Christina Hobbs]

I think every fandom has their own set of rules. I think every fandom has their own little community. You know, like, being in BTS fandom is very different than being in Twilight. Fandom is very different than being in Reylo or Harry Potter or, you know, any of those.

[Lauren Billings]

But I don't know that there was anything that was, like, absolutely verboten in Twilight fandom. And like, on AO3, I feel like people can just brightware whatever they want. Doesn't necessarily mean people are going to read it. And I kind of like that about fandom. I feel like this is the space frontier of writing, where you never know what's going to kind of hook the imagination and get readers excited until you try it. And publishing isn't willing to take risks in the same way. So I think that, like, the crazy sort of fringe stuff that fandom wants to try, that's what I love about fandom is it really pushes the way that we write and what we write about and, like, what kind of stories we're to going. Gonna tell, you know? Yeah.

[Christina Hobbs]

I think, like, other than breaking the terms of service, you know, things that are not accepted by, like, each individual platform. I mean, the biggest thing for us was like, if you got too big for your britches, there was just always somebody there to.

[Lauren Billings]

Yeah, but there were people who made you big by being your fan. So, like, obviously a majority of people wouldn't necessarily feel the same because they were following and making that person big. You know, I just think there's like a lot of jealousy in writing sometimes, and I think that's always where that sort of came from. But I mean, it's just funny to me that, like, fan fiction specifically gets some crap for being, like, unoriginal and derivative. But then at the same time, it's the space that is actually the most creative and most adventurous and brave in writing. So I don't know, it just feels like sort of this interesting paradox also.

[Iman Harirukia]

Just like every idea has been written before. Like, you are always what makes the difference. But alas, I guess publishing would rather say go write a fic about it and if it takes off, then get back to Danny, then we'll pay you, then we'll talk. Okay, guys, switching gears a little bit, we would like to play a little game with you.

[Reese Oliver]

Yippee.

[Iman Harirukia]

That sounds fun. So this is gonna be called Ships in the Night. We are going to tell you a name and you have to tell us if it's the name of a fanfic ship or a real life cult name bestowed upon a cult member.

[Lauren Billings]

Okay, I might not do well on this, but let's do it.

[Christina Hobbs]

Same.

[Iman Harirukia]

Okay, so we're gonna start off with Dusteel.

[Christina Hobbs]

No idea.

[Lauren Billings]

I'm gonna say fanfic ship.

[Iman Harirukia]

You are correct. Ding, ding, ding. That is Dean and Castiel from Supernatural.

[Christina Hobbs]

Oh, okay, I should have got that.

[Reese Oliver]

Okay, round two.

[Iman Harirukia]

You did get it.

[Reese Oliver]

You did get it. Yeah, you did. Round two. Prefect.

[Lauren Billings]

Oh, that's a cult.

[Reese Oliver]

Do you know which one?

[Lauren Billings]

For bonus points, my brain just wants to yell Scientology, but I know that's not right close.

[Reese Oliver]

It was Nexium. Oh, my God.

[Lauren Billings]

I just listened to a freaking podcast.

[Iman Harirukia]

It's fresh in your brain. Okay, number three, Drinny.

[Christina Hobbs]

I mean, that sounds like fiction.

[Lauren Billings]

That's a ship name. Yeah.

[Iman Harirukia]

You guys are absolutely killing it. That's Draco and Jenny from the Harry Potter universe.

[Christina Hobbs]

Why am I surprised by that pairing? There's everything.

[Iman Harirukia]

I know.

[Christina Hobbs]

I tell you, it exists.

[Reese Oliver]

Okay, next up, Stucky.

[Lauren Billings]

Oh, that's definitely fandom. That's an OTP man, listeners.

[Reese Oliver]

That's Steve Rogers and Bucky Barnes from the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

[Christina Hobbs]

My husband knows whenever I watch that, I go and kiss he goes.

[Iman Harirukia]

Knock it off, everyone watching hockey games now after he was over.

[Lauren Billings]

I know, right? Yeah.

[Christina Hobbs]

Yeah.

[Iman Harirukia]

All right, for number five, we have Pheaton.

[Lauren Billings]

Oh, that's. That is Scientology.

[Christina Hobbs]

Yeah. That sounds like a cult.

[Lauren Billings]

That's like your soul that like is in your body. Your human body form thing. Yeah, absolutely.

[Reese Oliver]

Cult.

[Iman Harirukia]

Yeah. And it sounds like a cult.

[Reese Oliver]

Like, it truly does sound like a cult. Next up. Next up, Scolder.

[Christina Hobbs]

That sounds like an X Files.

[Lauren Billings]

That's X Files.

[Reese Oliver]

That's X Files.

[Iman Harirukia]

I knew you guys were gonna get that one.

[Reese Oliver]

You guys are gonna miss.

[Iman Harirukia]

Yeah, it feels. Feels right, Sheila.

[Lauren Billings]

I'm gonna say that's a cult.

[Christina Hobbs]

That sounds culty.

[Reese Oliver]

That is a cult.

[Iman Harirukia]

Wow. We really can't. We really can't get by. Nothing gets by you. Yeah, that's the Rajneesh movie.

[Lauren Billings]

I was gonna say the Rajneeshi.

[Iman Harirukia]

Yeah. Good job. Good job, guys.

[Reese Oliver]

Okay, and last but not least, Black Bonnet.

[Lauren Billings]

I think that's a fan name.

[Christina Hobbs]

I'm gonna say Colton.

[Reese Oliver]

Okay, any guesses for specifics from either of you?

[Lauren Billings]

I feel like Marvel something. I don't know.

[Reese Oliver]

No, it's Stede Bonnet and Ed Teach or Blackbeard. From our flag means death.

[Iman Harirukia]

Oh, my God.

[Lauren Billings]

One of my goddaughters is gonna kill me for not getting that. I'm so sorry, Ava.

[Iman Harirukia]

No, I'm glad we finally got one over on you because you were very accurate. You absolutely, absolutely slayed that game. I cannot thank you guys enough for joining us. This has been so insightful. I am such a big fan of your work. If listeners want to read said work, follow you and your cult, where can they do that?

[Christina Hobbs]

We're just Christina Lauren on Instagram, and we don't really use anything else, I don't think.

[Lauren Billings]

No, we're mostly books dot com.

[Christina Hobbs]

Yeah.

[Lauren Billings]

Christina Lauren. Books dot com has all of our info.

[Iman Harirukia]

Incredible. This has been such a treat. I am so, so grateful to y'. All. Thank you for all of your beautiful insight. And we will talk soon.

[Reese Oliver]

Yeah. Thank you so much.

[Lauren Billings]

Thank you.

[Christina Hobbs]

Thank you.

[Reese Oliver]

Okay, Iman, out of our three cult categories, A, live your life, A, watch your back or get the out. Which do you think the cult of fanfiction falls in into?

[Iman Harirukia]

I hate to say it because I think I'm gonna get the reputation for being too soft on this show, but I think it's a Live youe Life.

[Reese Oliver]

I feel the other way. I feel like I can be too critical. But I also honestly think it's a Live youe Life. Like, I think, yes, there can be drama that comes from it, but because it's ultimately like derivative work, usually it's just highlighting deeper underlying dramas that would have existed or come to light in other scenarios otherwise.

[Iman Harirukia]

And it is, as Christina and Lauren outlined, extremely easy to leave. If you really, really need to just

[Reese Oliver]

log off, just pick a new. Pick a new fandom. Pick a less toxic one.

[Iman Harirukia]

Come on guys, log off and lock in.

[Reese Oliver]

Anybody Reading more is generally a good thing in my book.

[Iman Harirukia]

Yeah, it's a win. It's a win for society.

[Reese Oliver]

Well, culties, that is our show.

[Iman Harirukia]

Thanks so much for listening.

[Reese Oliver]

Join us all for a new cult

[Iman Harirukia]

next week and in the meantime, stay culty, but not too culty.

[Reese Oliver]

Foreign.

[Amanda Montell]

Sounds Like a Cult was created by Amanda Montel and edited by Jordan Moore of the Pod Cabin. This episode was hosted by Reese Oliver and Iman Harirukia. Our managing producer is Katie Epperson. Our theme music is by Casey Cole. If you enjoyed the show, we'd really

[Reese Oliver]

appreciate it if you could leave it

[Amanda Montell]

5 stars on Spotify or Apple Podcasts. It really helps the show a lot. And if you like the Spot podcast, feel free to check out my book Cultish the Language of Fanaticism, which inspired the show. You might also enjoy my other books, the Age of Magical Notes on Modern Irrationality and Word A Feminist Guide to Taking Back the English Language. Thanks as well to our network studio 71 and be sure to follow the Sounds Like a Cult cult on Instagram for all the discourse. Sounds Like a Cult Pod or support us on Patreon to listen to the show ad [e-mail] sounds like a Cult.

[Reese Oliver]

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[Lauren Billings]

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[Reese Oliver]

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