Publish & Prosper
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Publish & Prosper
Lauren Finally Gets to Talk About Fanfiction
In this episode, Lauren finally gets to explain the intricacies and impact of fanfiction to Matt. Listen now for a slightly chaotic dive into fanfiction origins, the evolution of fanfiction as we know it today, the legal gray area of transformative works, and how fanfiction has impacted modern publishing.
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Lauren: It is absolutely an undeniable fact that fanfiction is having a direct influence and impact on modern publishing.
Matt: I agree with that.
Lauren: Whether that's trad pub or indie pub.
Matt: Yeah, I mean now, you know, after talking through this, I agree with that.
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Matt: So this is episode 77.
Lauren: Yep.
Matt: And we are going to be talking about fanfiction.
Lauren: Yep.
[intro]
Matt: Okay, fanfiction. What is it? Why is it most commonly associated with nerds?
Lauren: That's how you're starting this episode?
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: Okay.
Matt: Coming in hot.
Lauren: Alright.
Matt: I did eat lunch, but it hasn't really processed yet. So I still have a little bit of that hangry hangover.
Lauren: Okay, that's fine.
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: I knew this was gonna be a spicy one.
Matt: Well, it doesn't have to be.
Lauren: Oh, it's going to be though. Come on.
Matt: But I'm very curious.
Lauren: Alright.
Matt: Where's fanfiction come from? Why is this a thing?
Lauren: That is actually a great question.
Matt: Why can't you just read a book and be happy with it, move on to the next book?
Lauren: Plenty of people can.
Matt: But where's the desire to go and then create alternate stories, endings, plot lines, characters?
Lauren: You know, at the risk of insulting all of the media that I love so much, I would say that the work that has the most fanfiction is the work that had great potential and did not follow through on that potential. So if it's something that the characters are really compelling, fleshed out, great characters, but the narrative for them kind of fell apart. Or a show got canceled. Or a book series, maybe there's so long in between installments of the series that people start speculating about what's going to happen next, because they can't wait that long. So I think it's, I think the heart of it is about fulfilling potential.
Matt: Okay.
Lauren: Yeah.
Matt: That seems really involved. I mean, like I have my favorite books and TV shows and movies, but I guess when they're done, they're done for me. Like, yeah, I wish they'd do another season or another book would come out, but like that's where it ends for me.
Lauren: Look, I would love to be normal about things, okay? I would love to be like, wow, that was a really good show and I'm done with it now and I'm going to move on with my life. But unfortunately that’s not the case.
Matt: But I consider myself a book nerd or a TV nerd about certain shows or a movie nerd about certain movies and… But I don't know. I don't know. Okay. What I don't understand is like, where did this all come from? Like, where did this start? Who's the first fanfiction nerd? Is there one?
Lauren: Well, it depends on how you –
Matt: Can I Google this?
Lauren: You can, but it's going to depend on how you choose to define it. If we're talking about fanfiction in its modern form, we're talking about fanfiction as it is right now – and as we will get into on this episode – that you can blame the Star Trek nerds for.
Matt: Star Trek?
Lauren: Yep. Circa 1960s. That's really where modern fanfiction started taking shape. If you really want to get technical about it, or you really want to make this argument, which I am going to –
Matt: Google says it goes back further than that.
Lauren: Fanfiction has existed for as long as storytelling has existed.
Matt: Yeah, this is kind of what it says. I like your – I like you pinning it on the Star Trek nerds. So let's go with that.
Lauren: I mean, we can. I don't want to offend anybody
Matt: Because I'm a Star Wars nerd. And so which means I don't like Star Trek or Star Trek nerds.
Lauren: Sure.
Matt: No offense, Robert Rose, but come on. Yeah, I like the fact that maybe we pin it to the Star Trek nerds.
Lauren: We can do that if you want to.
Matt: What's the story there? I don't understand.
Lauren: I actually, I don't know the nuances of the origin there, but it was a lot of – this was a bad example because it is not media that has wasted potential in it. But I think that it was media that resonated with a very niche audience of people that really, really connected with these characters for a lot of the – I mean, there were a lot of things about Star Trek that were revolutionary for their time.
Matt: To me, Star Trek wanted to be Star Wars. So maybe it fell short of being Star Wars. And that's why people started doing fanfiction on it.
Lauren: Sure.
Matt; Sure.
Lauren: So I'm not going to I'm not going to engage in that debate with you. But Nichelle Nichols, who played Uhura –
Matt: Okay.
Lauren: Was one of the first like leading black actresses on an ensemble TV show. She also was like, very famously… Her co-stars advocated for her to be making the same amount of money as them because she was being paid less than her white male co-stars. So a lot of people have resonated very strongly with that character. There are a lot of other people that have found a connection with different characters on that show. Obviously the shipping becomes a huge part of it too. And Star Trek has one of the most famous ships of all time. And I don't mean the Enterprise.
Matt: I don't understand.
Lauren: Spock and Kirk? No?
Matt: Wait, what?
Lauren: No? Is this news to you?
Matt: Hold on a second.
Lauren: Hold on, we have to go –
Matt: This episode just took a – It just went sideways.
Lauren: Wait, I'm sorry.
Matt: Wait a second. Wait a second wait a second.
Lauren: We had to go so much, so much further back than I thought. What?
Matt: Okay. So you're talking about shipping in terms of a relationship.
Lauren: Yes. Oh, yes.
Matt: Oh, are we about to upset a lot of people? I don't know anything about this.
Lauren: What are we?
Matt: Are people going to get upset that you're assuming that Kirk and Spock were together?
Lauren: No one's assuming. No one's assuming anything. That's definitely not what we're assuming. The point is...
Matt: Oh, so it's a thing.
Lauren: So much fanfiction is based in that idea of… I want to see these two characters together, or I think there's potential with these two characters, or –
Matt: But wait –
Lauren: – this show is never going to be brave enough to put these –
Matt: – was it actually on the show that the two of them were together?
Lauren: No. I mean, it's not canon, which is…
Matt: Right.
Lauren: But there are probably people that have written actual dissertations on contextual evidence that proves that they were romantically invested in each other, even if that was never officially a part of the narrative.
Matt: What about George Takei? Was he in on it?
Lauren: You know what, I think actually he might be one of those people who's like, very pro these days. Like, yeah, I’m… There are – that's – okay. We're getting so far ahead of ourselves.
Matt: Yeah dude.
Lauren: But there are so many modern examples of actors that are like, yeah, I will be outspoken about… Yeah, you guys ship that, I ship that too. The guy who played Castiel on Supernatural, Misha Collins, like since the day the series ended has not shut up about like, I shipped Dean and Cas too, you guys are right.
Matt: Wow. Okay.
Lauren: Bless his heart.
Matt: Let's – we should probably back up.
Lauren: We should probably back up.
Matt: Damn.
Lauren: Yeah.
Matt: I'm gonna assume that everybody, all five people listening, know what you mean when you say shipping. You want to just go through that real quick?
Lauren: I should, yeah.
Matt: It took me a minute to realize you weren't talking about the Enterprise. So –
Lauren: It's amazing to me how many things I'm going to have to define in this episode, because they're going to come out of my mouth like they're normal, natural things.
Matt: You're going to have to define the relationship between Spock and Kirk. That's for sure.
Lauren: There's like a million fics out there that are trying to do just that. You can't pin that all on me.
Matt: Okay, tell people what shipping is.
Lauren: Alright.
[6:58]
Lauren: Should we start with what fanfiction is? Or are we assuming that everyone knows what it is?
Matt: Did we already blow past that?
Lauren: We did blow past that.
Matt: Okay. Let's talk about what fanfiction is.
Lauren: So fanfiction is quite literally what it says on the tin, a phrase that you know now, and it is fans of a certain piece of media – or sometimes not media, but real world, but that's gross and I don't condone that – will write their own fiction about the existing media content.
Matt: Create their own storyline.
Lauren: Yes. Yeah.
Matt: Spin-off.
Lauren: So it'll be, it'll be taking the characters and the world that somebody else has created and writing your own version of events using that content.
Matt: Got it.
Lauren: And it is something that as we're talking about modern interpretation of it versus fanfiction in the entire history of literature, we have seen this. In the past, people would not obviously have called it fanfiction. This is a modern definition. But when you look at something like The Divine Comedy, where it is literally self-insert, Dante –
Matt: Right.
Lauren: – walks through hell and meets all of his heroes and gets to hang out with all these really cool famous people.
Matt: Yeah. So is it safe to say that the term fanfiction really became a thing after copyright became a thing?
Lauren: I think that's a reasonable guess. I don’t know.
Matt: Because to be clear here, fanfiction.
Lauren: Yes.
Matt: Like, blatant fanfiction cannot be published.
Lauren: Yes, correct.
Matt: Or sold.
Lauren: Yes. You want to jump all the way to the end of the outline now? Already?
Matt: No, no, I’m just –
Lauren: Okay.
Matt: I'm trying to understand –
Lauren: Yes.
Matt: – fanfiction, why it's a thing, where it came from. What does it mean? Why is it not more prevalent in bookstores and places like that? But I'm just trying to find the whole definition here before we get into just how –
Lauren: We, well we can get into all of that –
Matt: – ridiculous some of this gets.
Lauren: – if you don't derail me about Kirk and Spock.
Matt: You derailed me with Kirk and Spock.
Lauren: That's not even one of my –
Matt: Listen. It’s not, it’s not –
Lauren: I mean, I do ship.
Matt: That’s not a show that I’ll ever watch.
Lauren: That's not, that's not a ship that I'm going to hang a lantern on.
Matt: But I know who those two are, and I would have never thought that that was the lore.
Lauren: That’s wild to me. We have such different cultural experiences.
Matt: We 100% clearly do. But okay.
Lauren: Okay.
Matt: Also, I don't really use the terminology ship. I'm not sure I like it.
Lauren: Right. Okay. So to, so a ship. Or shipping –
Matt: But I get why it means – Yeah, it’s okay. Yeah.
Lauren: – is when you are advocating for a relationship between two characters. So much of the terminology around fanfiction is just shortening or combining references to the content itself. We'll see that with…ship names are also usually portmanteaus of the two characters names.
Matt: Kay.
Lauren: So you're gonna see that –
Matt: Like, I understand that in pop culture.
Lauren: Right.
Matt: Like Brangelina.
Lauren: Right. Yeah. Yeah, pretty sure that came from fanfiction.
Matt: Wow.
Lauren: Like, I'm pretty sure it came first in fanfiction and then made its way into modern media. Because we've been doing that for years on fanfiction –
Matt: Oh my god.
Lauren: – before they started doing it in like, magazines and stuff.
Matt: Okay.
Lauren: Yep.
Matt: I did like the Divine Comedy example.
Lauren: Yeah. That's a good one.
Matt: Okay. I would have never thought about that.
Lauren: Well, and yeah, because you don't –
Matt: It makes sense.
Lauren: You don't see them that way because of where they fall in history, in terms of like –
Matt: Yes.
Lauren: – the modern understanding of what fanfiction is.
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: But like, any retelling of Arthurian legend is fanfiction.
Matt: Technically.
Lauren: Essentially. It is somebody else's reimagining of a story that they heard a long time ago.
[10:19]
Matt: Are there examples of, and is it okay, like for fanfiction, like let's say you take something and you want to do a different version of it. Or let's just say you want to do a spin-off of a couple of the characters. But let's say you change enough things about the characters where it's not quite obvious. You change their gender, or something like that. Is that still cross the fanfiction copyright… I – see I'm still stuck on the legal part of it –
Lauren: Yes.
Matt: But I'm still trying to understand.
Lauren: Well, I mean, we can get into that first if you want, if you think that's the easier –
Matt: I don't know I just – I feel like maybe fanfiction is broader than I thought it was.
Lauren: Yes.
Matt: Because…yeah.
Lauren: Well, it is. And that's one of the things that makes it legal gray area and also –
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: – divisive within the literary pop culture, publishing media spaces. Is that it is kind of where do you draw the line on where it's allowed and where it isn't allowed? I mean, unfortunately, the most famous example that we will never be able to escape from is Fifty Shades of Gray.
Matt: Wait, why is that fanfiction?
Lauren: It was originally Twilight fanfiction. It was it was originally –
Matt: I'm shutting my laptop. I –
Lauren: Am I going to blow your mind when I tell you that it was also originally published on Lulu or do you at least know that part?
Matt: No no, I knew that.
Lauren: Okay.
Matt: I actually have the distribution sales records at my desk.
Lauren: Okay.
Matt: Did I not show you this?
Lauren: No, you have shown me that.
Matt: Yeah, yeah.
Lauren: So, just wanted to make sure you remembered that connection.
Matt: No I knew it was originally published and distributed through Lulu.
Lauren: Yes.
Matt: I did not know that it was crafted from Twilight.
Lauren: Yeah. Fifty Shades of Grey was originally Twilight AU fanfiction –
Matt: How is that, I don’t understand –
Lauren: Which is a subgenre of – there are genres and subgenres of fanfiction.
Matt: Nothing about Fifty Shades strikes me as Twilight.
Lauren: Okay, so it's an AU, which means it's an alternate universe fanfiction. AU fics are like, let's say we wrote a fix that was Stranger Things. It's all the characters from Stranger Things, but it takes place in 2010 and they're just normal high school students.
Matt: That sounds boring.
Lauren: It could be or it could not be. Or it could be the other way around and it could be we're taking this boring, normal piece of media that is just modern, realistic fiction and we're making them all superheroes. So that's an AU fic.
Matt: Alright.
Lauren: Fifty Shades of Grey was Twilight AU fanfiction, but it's – Anastasia Steele is Bella and Christian Grey is Edward. That's where that started, where its life started. And it is –
Matt: I’ll have to take your word for it.
Lauren: That's okay. You can. That was kind of the big breakout oh, we're not hiding it anymore. People are very publicly doing this.
Matt: Well I'm sorry. I have one more question.
Lauren: Okay.
Matt: And then I'll let you continue.
Lauren: Just one?
Matt: Well, so you say that Fifty Shades was fanfiction. AU fanfiction from Twilight.
Lauren: Yes.
Matt: But when I think about Fifty Shades and its storyline and its characters, to me it just seems like, okay, I can see what you're saying where this person developed their characters from characters that already existed, their traits, you know, all those things. To me it doesn't seem like it's fanfiction. To me, because of how different everything else is besides the characters and their personalities and their traits, it just seems like they stole an idea. Like how is that fanfiction? Because there's no werewolves, there's no vampires, there's none of that stuff in it. So how is it fanfiction? I guess I just lost the connection there. And to me it seems like, oh, that's just IP theft. That's copyright infringement.
Lauren: Well, and that's where this –
Matt: To a degree.
Lauren: That’s where this legal gray area comes in. Because it begs the question then of where does it draw the line of I was just inspired by these characters. If enough of the story is different, and the only thing here that really held over from the original work is that there is a one-to-one parallel between these like, characters and their physical descriptions and their relationships with each other, but everything else about it is different. Then how is that any different than being like, I'm going to write the world's first vampire story because nobody's ever written about vampires before.
Matt: Yeah, I – okay.
Lauren: Oh, I watched Sinners this weekend.
Matt: Don't tell me anything because I haven't seen it yet.
Lauren: Okay. I liked it.
Matt: I really want to see it. Good.
Lauren: It was good.
Matt: Okay.
Lauren: Yeah. Another example that's more recent than that, that you're also not going to like because it's also not going to be an obvious comparison is romance author, Ali Hazelwood.
Matt: I don’t know who that is.
Lauren: And that's, that's a more – I know I didn't expect you to, but that is a more straightforward, modern example of how fanfiction has kind of infiltrated the publishing industry. Because Ali is somebody who got her start as a writer and builds up a fan base as a writer, as a Reylo, which is Kylo Ren and Rey from the modern Star Wars trilogy – fanfiction author.
Matt: How is that possible?
Lauren: How is what possible?
Matt: How is it possible that somebody builds basically their brand, their presence, their online persona as a writer around copyright protected IP and characters and – I don't understand.
Lauren: Oh, well. That's, I mean, that's a whole different, are you talking about as a published author or as just like an online personality?
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: Cause those are two different questions.
Matt: That's fair, but both, guess. Yeah. I don't know why I keep going back to the legal aspect of this.
Lauren: Well, I mean, it is, that is how it's relevant to us. So that is completely understandable that that is something that you're interested in because that is where we circle back to it being relevant to Lulu and to publishing in general.
Matt: Yeah, publishing in general, not just – but. Carry on.
Lauren: Where did I lose you?
Matt: I'm so glad I ate lunch before this.
Lauren: Me too. I’m so glad I bothered to outline this.
Matt: Because I closed my laptop and I'm not even looking at it now?
Lauren: Yeah. Yes.
Matt: I just – I'm so floored at the first twenty minutes of this conversation. I don't even know that I, I need to bury myself in the outline.
Lauren: No, I don't think you need it either. I think I think you just need to keep asking questions, and I'll do my best to answer them.
Matt: I seriously thought I knew more about fanfiction and had a better handle on it.
Lauren: Should I –
Matt: But apparently I know zero.
Lauren: Should I back up a little bit then?
Matt: You go at whatever pace you want. I'm just along for the ride on this one.
Lauren: Okay. Do you want to learn more about Ali Hazelwood?
Matt: If we haven't scared off all five listeners at this point, this is truly just a conversation between you and I at this point. Hopefully the attorneys aren't listening, but.
Lauren: This is a great one. I don't know what you're talking about.
Matt: Please.
[16:27]
Lauren: Let's – okay. Let's rewind a little bit.
Matt: Okay.
Lauren: Let's, let's go back to fanfiction. You know, we've talked about what it is, where it comes from. I said the evolution of fanfiction as it looks now. For those of you listening that might not be familiar with what fanfiction is in modern contemporary society. There are entire websites dedicated to literally just hosting fanfiction.
Matt: That I understand. Yeah, for sure.
Lauren: Yeah.
Matt: And we've had interactions with many of them.
Lauren: Sure. Places like Wattpad, which were more modern sites built around this. The OG is fanfiction.net, which is a dumpster fire. So don't bother. But they also, I mean, they go back. The Star Trek fanfiction was literally being printed in zines and print newsletters that were being sent back and forth to people. Like, that predates activity on the internet. The early days of Harry Potter fanfiction –
Matt: Booooooo.
Lauren: – back in the day when she was still, I know. But back in the day when she was still publishing the books.
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: Which was also kind of probably, that's where I would argue that like millennial culture connected with fanfiction was in the window of between the Harry Potter books finding that commercial success right before the release of Goblet of Fire through when Deathly Hallows came out. A lot of people found their way to fanfiction as a like… There's too much time between these books. So –
Matt: I see
Lauren: – I need to fill the void I need to find places and you would go he would start with there were message boards, whether they were on like the Warner Brothers website or just places like LiveJournal or something like that where… People were just it just started as speculating about like hey did anyone catch this little…what felt like a clue dropped in this chapter? And what do you think that –
And how many of these were you heavily active within, these communities?
Lauren: Don't worry about it. It's fine. It's in the past. No, well, Harry Potter fandom is in the past.
Matt: Yeah well, I understand.
Lauren: I'd be lying if I said I wasn't reading fanfiction at one o'clock in the morning last night.
Matt: I think a lot of people were into it.
Lauren: Yeah.
Matt: You know, until she decided she was a horrible person.
Lauren: And decided to torch her legacy in every single way.
Matt: Okay
Lauren: Yay. But yes, in the same way that so much of this has taken over in other forms of media and other types of fanfiction or not fanfiction, fandom spaces. Back in the day, it was – we didn't have social media platforms we were using for stuff like this. So it was these message boards and fan sites –
Matt: You say we like you're old enough to be in that group. You've had social media since you were a baby.
Lauren: I joined Facebook when I was a senior in high school because you still needed to have a .edu email address. So I had to wait until I got officially accepted to Lafayette before I could join Facebook.
Matt: I don't know if I believe that, but let's move on.
Lauren: You don't have to.
Matt: What do your bracelets say today?
Lauren: Go Bananas.
Matt: Is that for the baseball team?
Lauren: Yeah, I went to the game this weekend.
Matt: Did you really?
Lauren: Yeah, out in Charlotte.
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: Yeah, it was great. It was awesome. Jesse Cole is so cool.
Matt: I'm jealous.
Lauren: It was, it was so much fun. Great game. The Greatest, which was also for that. Sunshine Riptide, which is a Fall Out Boy song.
Matt: All right. Let's go back into the other nerd stuff.
Lauren: Right. Yeah, that's fine. So it started as this thing online that then evolved into people creating dedicated websites for them. Right now the preeminent place to find fanfiction is Archive of Our Own, or AO3. And that was a website that was built up by the Organization of Transformative Works, which is a nonprofit that is dedicated to advocating for the right of transformative works, which is something that we talked about in our copyright episode. Yes, Matt.
Matt: There's a nonprofit.
Lauren: Yes.
Matt: That argues for and supports fanfiction?
Lauren: Among other things. Yes.
Matt: How could you legally get a 501c or 503? I don't understand.
Lauren: That I don't know.
Matt: Wow.
Lauren: That I don't know. But they are –
Matt: Is it because they call it transformative? Is that what you're saying?
Lauren: Yes. So that is –
Matt: So transformative is another way to describe fanfiction?
Lauren: Yes. Well, transformative work is one of the things – we talked about this in our copyright episode – where it was under copyright law.
Matt: Yeah, but we usually skim past that because at the end of the day, honestly, whatever, but.
Lauren: What?
Matt: I just, I can't believe there's a nonprofit now also involved in all this.
Lauren: There is, and they have been, I think it's been at least a decade at this point that they've been actively involved in this.
Matt: And they, I'm sorry, they host a site where people can post fanfiction?
Lauren: Yes. Actually one of the things that they've also done as a part of their mission to protect and advocate for all kinds of transformative works and to serve as an actual archive, they regularly find defunct websites and these old message boards and these old sites that were dedicated to just a specific, like one specific –
Matt: Communities
Lauren: – fandom of fanfiction.
Matt: Digital communities.
Lauren: Yes. And they transfer all that work into A03. So you can now find websites that died years ago, they have preserved that work on this, like this is the whole thing that they're doing. They're pretty – one of my favorite authors also was involved in starting it, so.
Matt: That does not surprise me.
Lauren: No, it shouldn't. It’s fine. So yeah, this is something that is still very, very relevant. It is something that is getting more and more mainstream.
[21:47]
Lauren: And it's also something that we're seeing more and more, it is influencing the traditional publishing industry in a variety of ways. And because of where it kind of hit its peak in popularity, if we're talking about it as, okay, it started really gaining traction with millennials in the Harry Potter era. I was 13 to 17 in that window of time. I'm now 36. My contemporaries that were also going through that same thing as me are now at the age that they are the people that are being published as romance authors or commercial fiction or sci-fi fantasy or whatever. So those people are now the ones that are much more like, hell yeah, I got my start online writing fanfiction. They're the ones that are out there openly being like, I am an author today because I spent the last twenty years writing fanfiction and that eventually evolved into me writing original fiction. Matt: That's an interesting spin.
Lauren: Yeah, it is. I mean, it's what got me into writing. I started writing fanfiction first and then was like, what if I wanted to do this with my own characters instead of book characters.
Matt: To be clear for our legal team, you have not published any fanfiction through Lulu, have you?
Lauren: No, I'm not allowed to.
Matt: Now seems like a good time to put the disclaimer out there that Lulu does not condone –
Lauren: I haven’t –
Matt: – nor support the publishing of fanfiction –
Lauren: No no no.
Matt: – or probably this episode, to be honest with you.
Lauren: We are going to – we're going to talk about that for sure. But no, I have not even tried to cheat and order a personal print copy for myself.
Matt: But I see where that is kind of somebody's segue into writing things to be published –
Lauren: Right.
Matt: – that maybe are not fanfiction, but they sort of discovered that love and joy of writing because of fanfiction. I think that's great.
Lauren: Yeah. Yeah.
Matt: I'll leave it there.
Lauren: That's where it comes from for a lot of people.
Matt: That's interesting.
Lauren: And because of, probably for a lot of different reasons, because we live in a world where social media makes it so that nobody's ever had a unique experience in their entire life. Every single one of us.
Matt: Yeah, boo social media. Social media sucks and anybody who works in social media sucks. Just kidding.
Lauren: Sure. Okay. I think people are a lot more open about things that used to be not taboo, but things that used to be more like a…it’s weird to talk about this thing that I'm really into. So I'm not going to. And now these days –
Matt: Yeah, like Kirk and Spock hanging out in the back room.
Lauren: Again, not my ship. So.
Matt: Weird.
Lauren: You can choose to harp on that one all you want, but you're barking up the wrong tree.
Matt: I just, that's the first I ever heard of this. It's weird.
Lauren: That's insane to me, actually.
Matt: I don't run in these nerd circles that you do.
Lauren: Okay, but.
Matt: I don't know anything about shipping.
Lauren: That's my point. That's my point about like, where where fanfiction –
Matt: Did you guys ship Luke Skywalker and Han Solo?
Lauren: No?
Natt: That would be – I don't know if I would like that or not, actually.
Lauren: No, I actually don't –
Matt: I kind of like –
Lauren: – have any Star Wars ships. Of the original trilogy.
Matt: – I like Han with Leia. I don't think I want to see him with Luke. What about Chewie and R2?
Lauren: Okay, first of all.
Matt: I don't know how this works.
Lauren: R2 and C3PO are a married couple. You don't need to ship them with anybody else.
Matt: Are they?
Lauren: They're platonic life mates.
Matt: No. Come on.
Lauren: That’s fine.
Matt: That's because they're the only two droids on the show. That doesn't mean they're... I feel like that's a bit racist or something.
Speciest?
Matt: Speciest, yeah. Droidist.
Lauren: Sure.
Matt: Whatever.
Lauren: Okay.
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: None of these are... You haven't landed on any fandoms that I have –
Matt: I just don't know how to do it. I don't know how to fanfic.
Lauren: That's fine. I'm not asking you to.
Matt: Right.
Lauren: That's okay.
Matt: Where were we?
Lauren: We were talking about how it has made its way into modern publishing
Matt: Yes.
Lauren: – and how it is absolutely influencing modern media and modern publishing. So now we're coming back to Ali Hazelwood.
Matt: Oh right, okay.
Lauren: Ali Hazelwood is an author who got a fantastic following online on her Reylo fic and wound up turning that into original content. And she is somebody she is, she has published like eight or nine books in the last…she's, she’s putting out books faster than anybody can read them, which good for her. She just put another one out like last week.
Matt: But they're not Reylo books?
Lauren: So the first few, like you look at them and you look at the covers on…this, on them, and you go, oh, they're not even pretending. Like, they're not even pretending that this is anything other than – the main character…okay, first of all, let me see if I can find the cover.
Matt: I don't like that ship, by the way.
Lauren: I didn't expect you to. So this is – this is the cover of her first book. So they look like –
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: – Kylo Ren –
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: – and Rey. And the character who is very clearly supposed to be Kylo Ren, played by Adam Driver. His name is Adam Carlsen in the book.
Matt: Okay.
Lauren: It's like, very blatant. It's like really, really overt. But she did well with these first few books. They really took off. She sold very well. And as she's gotten further away from that original success, her newer books that are coming out are other kinds of fiction and other kinds of content. And they're not just typecasting these same characters over and over again.
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: So she's a New York Times bestselling author in multiple ways. I've read several of her books. I'm not knocking any of them.
Matt: I mean, like in that respect, I think it's hard to, to not recognize and give credit to… I don’t want to call it a genre, but I guess it is a genre, fanfiction –
Lauren: Yeah.
Matt: – for what it's done as a jump off point for people's careers.
Lauren: It absolutely has. We've absolutely – there are so many authors. There's another, another very popular romance author is Christina Lauren, which is actually a duo. It's Christina and Lauren. And they started as Twilight fanfiction authors and they now co-write books.
Matt: Lauren who?
Lauren: Not me.
Matt: Okay.
Lauren: If I was a New York Times bestselling romance author, you would know it.
Matt: What’s your sister’s name?
Lauren: Emily.
Matt: It's not Christina?
Lauren: It's not Christina.
Matt: Okay.
Lauren: Yeah, no. I – there would be signs. I wouldn't brag about it too much, but you'd know.
Matt: You'd have double the amount of Pop dolls in your apartment that you do now?
Lauren: Yeah, they'd all be customs of my own characters. Duh.
Matt: Duh.
Lauren: But yeah, there are a lot of people. Casey McQuiston is another one, the author of Red, White & Royal Blue. Which is also another example of a book that there's been tons of speculation about whether or not it originally was fanfiction. But Casey has openly said that they got their start in writing as a fanfiction author.
Matt: Alright.
Lauren: But then we're also seeing within the traditional publishing industry. We're now at a point where they're actually seeking out the authors of popular fanfiction. They're now actually trying to acquire authors that are fandom famous within –
Matt: So it would seem to me that in theory, traditional publishing, at least, should almost embrace this and find a way to have less of a legal gray area, and maybe strike certain accordances with authors and their IP that would encourage and allow some of this. They could find new and emerging authors faster, because it does seem like a lot of them are kind of getting their start in and coming out of fanfiction.
Lauren: The problem with that is that you can't control – as you have said very succinctly on this podcast in the past –
Matt: Oh, I like that.
Lauren: – you cannot control virality.
Matt: Oh, yeah for sure.
Lauren: So they could make all these situations where they say like, we're building it into contracts moving forward that you are giving permission for, for fanfiction for your books. But you can't control what media people choose to write fanfiction for.
Matt: Well I understand that, but by making it a little more acceptable legally and otherwise you might see more of it and therefore, by seeing more of it, there are more opportunities for it to actually go viral.
Lauren: You mean like see, more fanfiction?
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: Oh, I don't think that's something that you have to worry about.
Matt: I don't see it.
Lauren: There's plenty of it. That's because you're not looking for it.
Matt: Yeah, but that's what I'm saying. I mean, well, nevermind. But yeah, I don't like the sound of that.
Lauren: I mean, there's plenty of it. So one of the examples that's actively happening in the traditional publishing industry right now, is a piece of fanfiction called Manacled.
Matt: Called what?
Lauren: Manacled.
Matt: Manacled.
Lauren: Manacled.
Matt: Okay.
Lauren: It is Dramione, which is Draco Malfoy and Hermione Granger.
Matt: Eugh.
Lauren: And it is a Handmaid's Tale inspired post-Harry Potter timeline AU. So not only is that one piece of IP, but two separate pieces of IP. It is one of the most, if not – no, it's not the most, but it is one of the most popular pieces of fanfiction to ever exist. No, I have not read it. No, I do not have any interest in reading it.
Matt: I can't think of a better way to ruin Margaret Atwood's good work and name by pairing it with that garbage.
Lauren: Yeah, it's a choice for sure.
Matt: You were right when you said I would not like this.
Lauren: I know.
Matt: But it's popular. Is that what you're saying?
Lauren: It is extremely popular.
Matt: Gross.
Lauren: It is popular enough that trad pub marketing teams use it as comp titles for works that they've acquired. And a traditional publisher has acquired Manacled and is commissioning the author to… not fully rewrite it, but revise it enough to be, to make it –
Matt: to get around the, the IP infringement.
Lauren: – publishable. Yes.
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: And that is something that is going to be available on market sooner rather than later.
Matt: I know it won't happen, but I wish Margaret Atwood’s team would go after them.
Lauren: I'm shocked that JK Rowling’s team hasn't gone after them actually. Because she is also very anti everything good in the world, but including –
Matt: She should be flattered that anybody wants to write anything that has to do with her garbage.
Lauren: Right. Well.
Matt: I mean, that’s just my
Lauren: Don't forget that –
Matt: – my hot take there.
Lauren: Don't forget that a huge element of fanfiction is the queerness inherent within it. So, god forbid her characters be gay.
But that's part of my point. Like, yeah. I mean, why would any – Yeah. Alright. On to the next.
[31:45]
Lauren: The other thing that fanfiction has had an impact on for sure is actual marketing within the publishing industry. Like that’s –
Matt: I thought you're gonna say you're dating life.
Lauren: Please. What dating life?
Matt: How has it had any impact on…
Lauren: Because of how popular the like system for understanding tagging promoting fanfiction is, they've started using it in traditional publishing. And this is where your favorite word is gonna come in.
Matt: Oh, okay. Let's hear it.
Lauren: Fanfiction is promoted primarily on tropes. That's how it works. Because if you're going into…in reality if you're thinking about, this if you're reading fanfiction for the shipping elements of it, and not the specular of what's gonna happen next, or what could have happened if it went this way instead, or whatever. You're reading it purely for the shipping elements of it.
Matt: And you’re saying that's a big part of why fanfiction exists is the shipping component?
Lauren: Yeah.
Matt: People want to see these relationships thrive that otherwise wouldn't have with the original author.
Lauren: Yes.
Matt: Okay, go ahead.
Lauren: Yes. I'm not saying that that's the only thing –
Matt: No no, I understand.
Lauren: – that they do.
Matt: I understand completely.
Lauren: I am saying that is a huge part of it.
Matt: But that is a huge driving component.
Lauren: Yes.
Matt: And when you see a lot of fanfiction, it's – what you're seeing is that.
Lauren: Yes.
Matt: Okay.
Lauren: So because of that, it tends to be, I'm not going to say repetitive, it's not repetitive, but it is literally just 10,000 different stories that all boil down to this is, this is one possible story of how these same two characters fall in love. Or finally get together or whatever. And so because of that, instead of marketing on this is… These are the two character types, or this is the world that they're in. Those things are already known. So the things that people use to promote and market their own fics or specific fics is this is an AU. This is hurt comfort. This is a fix-it fic This is a canon divergent. This is canon compliant. But then they get deeper into it and they say this is, this is one that is a fake dating fic. This is a Hogwarts AU. Sorry to keep going, she is so inherently tied within fanfiction. It's impossible to separate it from her whether she likes it or not. And she definitely does not like it. What else is there? There's…
Matt: I get it.
Lauren: Okay so all of those things. So that's, that's – those tropes come from fanfiction. So now we're in a place where modern publishing companies and marketing and publicity teams are using those tropes. And so when they're going, promoting a new book and they're saying, this is a grumpy sunshine fake dating book that came from fanfiction that has its roots in fanfiction.
Matt: Grumpy sunshine.
Lauren: Uh huh.
Matt: What?
Lauren: Fake dating.
Matt: Grumpy sunshine fake dating.
Lauren: Yep.
Matt: What even is that?
Lauren: One character is grumpy and the other character is a ray of sunshine and they shouldn't get along with each other, but they do because they're a perfect match for each other. And circumstances beyond their control require them to pretend to be dating for some kind of convoluted reason, except they either A already have real feelings for each other or B are going to fall in love with each other while pretending to be in love with each other. There will probably be a third act breakup that was planned, because the whole point of fake dating is that you do eventually have to end the ruse, but then they're going to get together for real.
Matt: I'm going to step out and let you be alone with this. This is just…
Lauren: I could do this all day.
Matt: Yeah, that's what scares me. Grumpy sunshine. Alright.
Lauren: Yep.
Matt: Point taken. I get it. Traditional publisher marketing and publicity teams –
Lauren: Yes.
Matt: – are taking note of these –
Lauren: Yes.
Matt: – tropes. They are using them to promote their own titles to these crowds of people.
Lauren: Yes, they are.
Matt: To say hey look, this is very similar to the – okay. Got it. Okay.
Lauren: I mean, you see, and it's like very overt at this point. I have absolutely seen actual marketing copy right now.
Matt: I believe you.
Lauren: That uses tags straight off of AO3
Matt: I’m sure.
Lauren: And tropes straight off, and –
Matt: And it was probably all written by AI.
Lauren: Well that too.
Matt: They probably just said hey –
Lauren: Which, we do actually know –
Matt: – look at this site please write us a a description of this new title based on – yeah.
Lauren: Probably. And we do actually know for sure that part of what generative AI used as like, a writing and learning tool was different fanfiction sites. Because there are phrases that it uses that are pretty much unique to fandom. So…
Matt: That's, that’s just perfect.
Lauren: Yes.
Matt: The icing on the cake.
Lauren: It really is. It's great.
Matt: Wow.
Lauren: But yeah, it is something that has kind of gotten pretty pervasive, even to the point of a lot of publishers will have, you know, we've talked about this a lot where a lot of the gatekeepers within trad pub, one of the things that they're looking for with new authors, they don't want to take a risk on a new author that they don't feel like there's going to be a payout. So they're looking for, do you have some kind of existing audience already?
Matt: Sure.
Lauren: Do you have, they will accept fanfiction as an existing audience. If you say like, you know, I've got a hundred thousand people have read my fanfiction. They will accept that as a stat towards you proving that you have an existing audience.
Matt: That doesn’t surprise me, because they function more as sales teams than anything else –
Lauren: Yeah.
Matt: – and their goal is to sell books. So. I mean, that's understandable.
Lauren: Right.
Matt: That doesn't surprise me.
Lauren: No. I mean, it shouldn't. Sorry to disillusion anyone that thinks that the publishing industry is all about delivering high quality stories into the hands of readers for the good of sharing storytelling, but it is all capitalism.
Matt: Well, let's back up a second on that one, because I am a fan of capitalism.
Lauren: Okay.
Matt: And I think there's a place for it, even in publishing. I do think there are people in publishing, traditional or otherwise, who seek to deliver good literary content.
Lauren: Oh, of course.
Matt: Regardless of genre or origin or any of that stuff, the problem is that they work for people –
Lauren: Yes.
Matt: – who are beholden to shareholders, number crunchers, investment bankers. The top five publishing companies, they're owned by actual media companies.
Lauren: Right.
Matt: They're not even self-owned entities anymore. So the idea that they're… Yeah, anyways. That doesn't necessarily bother me per se because I do think a lot of them still deliver good content, but you're right. It's – they've got goals they need to hit every quarter and they're going to do what they need to do to do that.
Lauren: Of course. And of course there are going to be instances where what it is is… I'm going to work on publishing this piece of garbage that is going to be like a, just a money printer so that I can then make the case for this –
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: – quiet sleeper success that I think is actually really valuable and want to invest in.
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: But I need to make my quota first.
Matt: I mean, case in point, no publisher on the planet from an ethical and moral standpoint wants to publish J.K. Rowling. But would they publish another book from her? 100%.
Lauren: Yeah, they would.
Matt: Because it's going to keep their P&L sheets balanced for an entire year.
Lauren: Yeah.
Matt: But then they know after that, they'll probably publish at least ten other books that are done by people that they can certainly be putting out very good quality content that in one way or another makes the world a better place.
[38:59]
Lauren: Do you want me to get back to that copyright question now? Because we do – that is important.
Matt: I do. Yeah, let's let's move on because we're an hour in almost at this point and I –
Lauren: Did you think this was going to be under an hour?
Matt: I don't know what I thought to be honest with you.
Lauren: Okay. You gave me a platform to talk about fanfiction.
Matt: Yeah, I don't know what I was thinking in general.
Lauren: I don’t either. I will remind you that Paul offered to do this episode instead of you.
Matt: Well, it's not a matter of who should do it. It's a matter of should we have done it?
Lauren: I think we should, because I do think that despite the roundabout way that we got through talking about it, it is absolutely an undeniable fact that fanfiction is having a direct influence and impact on modern publishing.
Matt: I agree with that.
Lauren: Whether that's trad pub or indie pub.
Matt: Yeah, I mean now, you know, after talking through this, I agree with that.
Lauren Yeah.
Matt: I understand that there are far reaching implications of good and bad –
Lauren: Yes.
Matt: – for fanfiction. But that's interesting.
Lauren: Yeah. Absolutely. Leading us to the copyright question
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: And to the question… The question that we as Lulu.com, self-publishing print-on-demand company, get all the time is: can I publish print copies of my fanfiction through Lulu? And the answer is no.
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: And that is whether you are publishing them because you want to sell print copies to other people. But it is also if you are trying to just order copies for yourself. We are not legally allowed to print physical copies of fanfiction, even if it is just literally me, I, Lauren, who works at Lulu –
Matt: Yep.
Lauren: Wrote the fanfiction myself, edited it, formatted it, did all the cover design, did all that. And I want to go on my account and order one single copy for me. That is illegal.
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: That is not allowed.
Matt: That is absolutely correct. And we have several stop gaps in place to try and catch that. As I'm assuming some other self-publishing companies do, I can't speak to that, but sometimes we catch it here at Lulu as the files come in. And other times, I know there have been instances in the past where somebody at the print facility on the line saw the book block coming through and recognized that it was blatant fanfiction –
Lauren: Yeah.
Matt: – and they'll pull it and they'll let us know, hey, this order that came through that we're printing right now, like this is pure fanfiction. It's probably copyright infringement. We're pulling it. I mean, so, there are multiple checkpoints for that stuff. The flip side to that is it has to be fairly blatant fanfiction.
Lauren: Yeah, and it is, I mean, it is something that I think is always entertaining to me when I see people trying to sneak it through. Where I'm like, you know, it's one thing like. So, one type of fanfiction that we've seen a lot of people try to get printed copies of is One Direction fanfiction. That is a little less obvious because the boys names are just pretty standard names.
Matt: But also why?
Lauren: Don't actually get me started on. That's the whole thing that I can't get up on that soapbox right now. But it's the Harry Potter fanfiction for me that I'm like, there is no other piece of literature out there where the two main characters names are Sirius and Remus. Like, did you think you were sneaking one past us here? What do you mean?
Matt: And then there's just the blatant people who are actually pirating –
Lauren: That, that too. But that's a whole separate thing. To answer the question of why it's not legal, why you can't do that, even if it's just a personal use copy for yourself, it is because nobody is allowed to make money off of copyrighted works.
Matt: Including us.
Lauren: Including us. And that's where it is. So it's not even if you're just ordering it for yourself.
Matt: We're still making a couple bucks on it.
Lauren: Yes. We are making a profit off the production of that book. And because the material within it is copyrighted, that is illegal.
Matt: Yeah. That's important to note, though, because I think we have gotten questions from people in the past, or I have at events and things mostly, but. Basically, like, why do you guys care? Why would you care if I, if I just wanted to print a copy for myself of, of my spin off of, whatever? I think people don't realize that, even if you're making a copy for yourself, we're making a couple of bucks on that because we're printing it for you. And obviously we're charging to print it and it's not worth it to us to potentially find ourselves in a situation where we have to stand up against lawyers for Simon & Schuster.
Lauren: Right.
Matt: Or Penguin Random House or Harper Collins or they have very expensive and very good attorneys and we're just not going to put ourselves in that situation for somebody's fanfiction.
Lauren: Right.
Matt: So.
Lauren: It has actually been really interesting to watch the sentiment on that change, even in the last few years, like –
Matt: How so?
Lauren: I used to see a lot of online content that was teaching people how to do it. Like, teaching people how to format their files, how to…like here's where you can download this, like here are references to…
Matt: In these fanfiction communities, you mean?
Lauren: Yes.
Matt: Okay.
Lauren: Yes.
Matt: I got you.
Lauren: And now in the last like two or three years, maybe like last two years, there's been very much a shift of people saying like, no, that's illegal. We are not teaching you how to do that. People have started putting disclaimers in their actual published fanfiction saying that I do not give permission for you to print a copy of this, whatever. I actually had a very weird meta moment like a year or two ago. I was on TikTok and, on my personal TikTok, and scrolling and saw somebody talking about this specifically and talking about like printing fanfiction and I started watching it because I was like, oh, this is interesting and a topic that is relevant to me and halfway through her explanation of why, she turned on the green screen behind her and put up the blog post that I wrote on Lulu.com about why printing fanfiction is illegal. And so I was watching a video where somebody cited me as the source for this information. And I was like, whoa, hold on.
Matt: You just achieved queen nerd status.
Lauren: I think I did.
Matt: Do you think that the decline of people blatantly trying to teach others how to do it and get away with it has to do with the fact that, as you alluded to earlier, fanfiction has become this place where bestselling authors careers have been born out of? And it's becoming this place where trad pub people are starting to go and look, potentially, for new up and coming authors, and they want to make sure they're being seen as like, hey, we're toeing the line here. I'm not, I'm not printing this stuff, but look how good my writing is.
Lauren: That’s –
Matt: Or do you think that's not much of a factor there?
Lauren: That's an interesting question. That –
Matt: Cause it could also just be that enough people have been litigated against in the past where everybody's like, I don't want anything to do with that.
Lauren: I think there's actually kind of a two-part answer to that. And first of all to be clear about it, most of the people that are trying to get printed copies of fanfiction are not the authors of that fanfiction.
Matt: Right.
Lauren: So I don't think they care particularly about being seen as toeing the line one way or another because they're not the ones with stake in the game. But also, I think that I think the sentiment comes more from a lot of people didn't know that it was illegal. I mean, I didn't when I first started working at Lulu. That was my first thought when I first started here was I was like –
Matt: You didn’t –
Lauren: – oh, I'm going to publish all my fics.
Matt: You didn’t know that when you first started working at Lulu?
Lauren: I did not know that it was illegal to get printed copies of it.
Matt: Oh, okay.
Lauren: I mean.
Matt: I got you, I got you.
Lauren: I knew I – Yeah.
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: So that was, that was something that I – but I didn't and I worked in publishing before I worked here.
Matt: Well, that's why I was asking.
Lauren: Right. But I –
Matt: I get what you’re saying.
Lauren: I knew I couldn't publish it and sell it.
Matt: Right.
Lauren: But I didn't know it was also illegal for me to order a personal copy for myself. Because there are workarounds. And this is the one thing that you still see.
Matt: Oh boy.
Lauren: People have learned how to hand-bind books. So you see some really cool, people are hand binding books in like the old style of making these really gorgeous books. And some of them will do – there was one creator that I was following for a while who wanted her entire bookshelf to look like the Penguin Classics collections, but her books were not the kinds of books that were…
Matt: Right
Lauren: Going to be made into classics.
Matt; They didn’t qualify as Penguin Classics.
Lauren: Yeah, so she made her own. And so every book that she owned she designed like, she redesigned the covers, made them by hand, and then rebound the existing books into those, those new casewrap linen wrap covers.
Matt: That's pretty cool.
Lauren: Yeah, they're incredible. So some people are doing that with existing books like published books and then some people are doing it with fanfiction. And if you are truly doing it where you are making it from scratch on your own and you're not making any profit off of it,
Matt: Right.
Lauren: You're just doing it as a hobby for yourself. That is the only way that you can actually legally have a printed physical copy of fanfiction. And there's some really, really incredible ones out there. I've seen some really cool ones. I live in fear of the day that I come across one that I recognize. Because then I'm going to want it. And that's just not an option for me. But as long as it's not one of mine, it's okay.
Matt: No comment.
Lauren: Yeah. But I do also think that to your point about do you think that the sentiment has changed on that because people are like, trying to be more favorable within the publishing industry? There's a lot of really weird… I don't want to. I don't know if it's mixed sentiment. That's not really it. But like, there are a lot of people within the reader communities and reader spaces online that are going to sit here and argue that traditional publishing is so bad because the gatekeeping is so bad and they're they're doing all this work to not amplify diverse voices and and limiting the kind of content that can be published and the kind of stories and everything. And then we'll also go out and pirate books from whoever they want. And say well I should be entitled to this because stories should be accessible to everybody and it's not my fault I can't afford them. So you're on the one hand talking about like –
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: Wanting to dismantle the existing capitalist traditional publishing industry. And then on the other hand, stealing from the authors that are contributing content to it.
Matt: I'm not touching that one.
Lauren: Okay. That's fair.
Matt: You know, safe to say I err on the side of you.
Lauren: Yeah. I don't think anyone cares one way or another about the optics of breaking the law with fanfiction. I think it's more along the lines of people are finally… Because it's become more mainstream to talk about it. And within that it's become more well-known where the legal gray area is on that.
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: I think that's, that's really what's kind of shifted the tides on that.
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: Yeah.
Matt: Well.
Lauren: Yeah.
[49:07]
Lauren: Did you know this is what you were signing up –
Matt: No.
Lauren: What did you think this episode was gonna be?
Matt: I quite honestly, I don't know that I thought it through all the way. I just thought, you know what, she wants to talk about fanfiction. Let's do it.
Lauren: I could keep going for another hour.
Matt: Yeah, we won't.
Lauren: Okay .
Matt: But.
Lauren: We didn't even get into the good stuff.
Matt: Yeah. Well, I beg to differ. But if that's the case, you'll just have to save it for another time.
Lauren: If anybody on the team wants to come talk to me about fanfiction, we can.
Matt: Off the camera.
Lauren: And on. It's always good to have a few backup episodes in the bank just in case. What if there's an emergency? A fanfiction emergency?
Matt: I don't think there is such a thing.
Lauren: Fanfiction has cured so many things in my life, why not a work emergency?
Matt: The only way we will ever get on this camera and talk about fanfiction again is if you can get Kirk and Spock in here with us.
Lauren: Which ones?
Matt: Both of them.
Lauren: No, I mean, which actors?
Matt: The originals.
Lauren: Oh, no thanks.
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: Chris Pine?
Matt: Oh. Alright.
Lauren: Zachary Quinto?
Matt: Thanks for joining us, everybody.
Lauren: Come on.
Matt: Hit the like button down there. Subscribe. Do all those things.
Lauren: Argue with me about fanfiction.
Matt: Leave us a review. Don't leave us a review after this episode. Listen to a different episode and then leave us a review.
Lauren: Unless you want to talk to me about fanfiction.
Matt: No, nobody wants to do that.
Lauren: I will accept a review based on fanfiction.
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: You want to know what my favorite tropes are? You let me know.
Matt: Alright.
Lauren: But I won't tell you what my username is. That's between me and the Internet.
Matt: Later.
Lauren: Bye.