Talkin' Fanfic

Liam/Noel:

The incest rumours used to be common for good reason <3

those two have kissed and groped each other too many times

They are really weird about each other, they have kissed a few times, made incest jokes many times, wrote songs about each other (I could be your lover/you could be all mine) and had a break up so messy they haven't been on speaking terms for +10 years

The song that goes like "I'm your brother/ you're my lover" there are many such cases

"Liam's gotten all religious. It's quite disturbing. He thinks he's Abel for some weird reason. He wrote a new song called "Guess God Thinks I'm Abel." And I thought, "Right, so you think you're Abel. That must make me Cain. Doesn't Cain kill Abel?" But then the first line of that song is "You could be my lover." I'm not too sure about that. That's illegal, innit? It's kind of illegal for two brothers to make love. It's certainly frowned upon."

Thor/Loki:

i mean do i even have to say it. Look at them. theyre in love and in hate and have crazy chemistry. *chef's kiss*

Listen I know adopted brothers are normally the cowards way out but Thor/Loki is so fucking good

Hot friendly jock plus hot grumpy twink, what more could you want?

Q: Can you briefly introduce yourself, the project, and its purpose?

Morgan Dawn: I am Morgan Dawn and have been a slash fanfiction fan since the 1990s. I entered fandom during the last years of paper fanfiction and the beginning era of online fandom. 

The Media Fandom Oral History Project’s goal is to capture our history in our own words and with our own voices. The idea came when I was sitting at our kitchen table with my friend Sandy Herrold. We realized that fans talking to other fans in informal settings was the perfect way to showcase our community and our connections. What could be more fannish than talking about and sharing the things we love? We started interviewing fans at conventions, then moved to phone interviews and have finally switched the project into a Do-It-Yourself Mode with fans taking the lead interviewing their friends and choosing what they want to preserve.

The recordings are submitted to the University of Iowa's oral history collection and are available online. We are hoping to provide transcripts for all of the interviews. The University of Iowa has one of the world's largest fanfiction fanzine collections. You can see the list of interviews at Fanlore, one of the OTW’s projects. 

Franzeska Dickson: I am Franzeska Dickson and have also been a slash fan since the 90s. In my case, I started as a 13-year-old screaming about Scully on alt.tv.x-files during the first season. (I was a NoRomo, as I recall, mostly because I thought Mulder wasn't nearly good enough for her.) I remember being floored when I was told about fanfic. I have no memory of being told that slash existed. I guess it didn't seem like a big deal. I spent the late 90s and early 00s in anime fandom before swinging back to oldschool Media Fandom and later to other Asian fandoms.

I ran into Morgan at a con and informed her that her recording plans were all wrong and she needed the type of voice recorder that linguists use in the field… I ended up with the recorder and the bulk of the early interviewing work.

Q: Speaking as if to someone unfamiliar with oral history and your project, why is the Media Fandom Oral History Project important?

MD: The recordings allow us to speak directly to future generations of fans and control the discussion of what it means to be a ‘fan.’ By having fans talk to other fans we bypass the dominant narrative of how fans interact with the TV, movies, books and comics. It is also an opportunity for marginalized members of our community to talk about their experiences. There has been much scholarship surrounding live action and anime fandoms. Some of it has been done by academics who are fans themselves and it has been wonderful to see the growth of Fandom Studies. But oral history offers every fan the ability to use their own words to talk about the things they remember and what matters to them.

FD: The early zine generation is rapidly dropping dead, and even when they aren't, I'm always running into younger fans trying to do research who have zero clue who's still alive or where to find them. If we wait for people to do their secondary academic research, it will be too late. Primary sources now or we won't have them!

The scope of fans who are interested in fandom history is much wider than the people who can make the right connections to talk to someone older. It's particularly true for early zines, but it's even true for something like Livejournal: I could rustle up thirty people in five minutes who'd be able to speak cogently on that fandom history. A lot of would-be history researchers currently in undergrad would not. For the future academics, the meta writers, or merely our curious fellow fans, it behooves us to record our history in our own words.

Q: What has the Media Fandom Oral History Project accomplished so far?

MD: We have completed 57 interviews. The first few years we went to in-person conventions and used a digital recorder to interview anyone who was interested. In 2017, a graduate student named Megan Genovese obtained funding and did 24 interviews over the phone in a single summer. During the pandemic, we moved into a DIY (do it yourself) phase - instead of a single person doing the interviewing, we now invite fans to contact their friends and spend an hour chatting about their fandom history. They can use their smartphones, Zoom/video conference recording or reserve a time slot on our international audio conference system. 

We have recorded the history of some of the earliest slash writers, publishers and artists. We have preserved the memories of the first fan who created the first fanvid using a slide project and cassette audio tape. We have heard from fans who organized conventions and started letter writing campaigns to save shows. The interviews include filk singers, fans whose passion is meta, and fans who created and ran some of the first fiction archives. These fans are creators, organizers, supporters, and devotees and have so many stories to tell.

Q: In what ways do you hope the project will grow in the coming years? Or, what are your hopes for the project's future?

MD: We’re a small project and it is difficult to scale with our current resources. By shifting to the DIY phase we’re hoping to encourage fans to take the reins of their fandom history and never stop telling their personal fannish stories. The DIY project also allows fandom communities to leverage off our existing “infrastructure” - we can offer permission forms, an international recording platform (if needed), and a place to archive the interviews.

FD: All fandom history resources suffer from a strong predilection for the researcher's friends or their part of fandom to be the main focus. I hope people from very different parts of fandom will interview their friends about areas other people haven't found important or accessible enough to record.

Q: What help is needed, and how can people get involved?

MD: We need 2 intake coordinators to answer questions, e-mail and collect permission forms (Participants must sign a permission form allowing their recordings to be archived at the University of Iowa). We also need help with outreach to communities that may not be aware of the project - anime, BL fans, cosplayers, filkers, fans in other countries. This is not just a historical project looking backwards. We want to capture our community as it is today and hear from fans whose experiences differ. The central focus has not changed - fans participating in transformative fandom - reading, writing, creating fanfiction, fanvids, podfic, art, managing discord communities. But it all starts with intake coordinators who can keep track of participants and follow up to get the recordings. Each oral history also has a written transcription, as we want this project to be as accessible to as many people as possible. We’ve tried some automated transcription services, and the results are very uneven. This means there’s another opportunity for volunteers, people to listen to the recordings and to help transcribe the contents. 

Q: Is there anything else you'd like people to know about the Media Fandom Oral History Project?

MD: It's a way for fans to be heard. They can describe their experiences on their own terms, in their own words, and take back some of the power of storytelling, rather than having others tell their stories for them.

It's a way to help preserve and honor fan experiences and fan history.

Envision you and your friends, talking about the things you love, your community, and what they mean to you, and describing and preserving these things for history. 

Plus, it's really fun!

Contact and Credits:

Intro Theme: Kyle Laurin "Oasis Supersonic Theme" (Twitter: @cobrakylemusic)

Clip used - Noel Gallagher on The Late Late Show | RTÉ One 

Outro clip - “Beautiful Day” by U2, from the album ‘All That You Can't Leave Behind’ - pulled from Youtube licensed via UMG (on behalf of Universal-Island Records Ltd. ℗ An Island Records recording; ℗ 2000 Island Records Limited

Tumblr: talkinfanfic.tumblr.com 

Instagram: @talkinfanfic

Email: [email protected] 

Time caps:

00:00 - Introduction

06:03 - Start of episode

16:02 - Tory’s music background

24:25 - U2 in bloom right now!

35:06 - A little Irish history 

45:19 - The Troubles, a climate for the formation of U2

56:03 - U2’s Bigness, America, and ‘What is Bono??’ 

01:02:45 - Bono’s useful celebrity, vs individualism of Oasis. Or, “do-gooders” vs “do-badders”

01:08:22 - Bono the Energizer Bunny, and U2 in Vegas

01:13:07 - The other members of U2 (Larry, The Edge, and Adam)

01:20:35 - Christianity and U2

01:31:45 - Religion, U2 vs. Oasis

01:34:50 - Religious imagery in the Achtung Baby-era, and Bono’s ‘characters’

01:41:42 - U2 fanfiction and RPF fandom

01:51:20 - “Fictitious Characters”, by likeamadonna

02:02:26 - Fitting Ali into the Bono/Edge

02:07:20 - Start of Rapid Fire! (which lasts nearly an hour, lol)

02:12:27 - Tory’s Top 5 U2 Tracks

Episode References

U2 Fanfiction.com (Tory mentions they used to read fanfiction from this now defunct archive; link via Wayback Machine) 

The Retro Fanfic Retrospective podcast (Podbean, you can also search for it on Spotify or Apple Podcasts)

Link - Band bio, from threechordsandthetruth.net great U2 overview and biography

U2: The Origins Of The Biggest Band Of The Early 2000s a decent youtube documentary on U2

A live performance of ‘Until The End Of The World’ from ‘Achtung Baby’, filmed during the US leg of the Zoo TV tour in 1992. Kiss for the camera at 2m34s <3 

"One" - U2 Music Video (Anton Corbijn Version) feat. Bob Hewson, and U2 in drag! 

Bono interview with NPR Podcasts -  at 14m46 Bono starts speaking about the concept of ‘Surrender’. “Shut up and listen…is kinda where I’m at.”

Noel Gallagher on The Late Late Show | RTÉ One  - “Who puts the batteries in that guy??” 

Youtube Clip - Noel Gallagher, on U2 (for NME) 

 “Electrical Storm” - U2 Music Video directed by Anton Corbijn (starring Larry!)

Photo via Pinterest - Liam and Bono kissing. According to Bono, Liam had a guitar pick in his mouth and dared Bono to try and retrieve it in front of paparazzi. The photo was printed in a 2002 issue of Rolling Stone.  

Reprint of article - “When Oasis Hit the Road with U2” The Daily Telegraph, June 26, 1997

Bono’s ‘characters’ - Here is MacPhisto making a phone call to a taxi to take him home. This was in Syndey, Australia during the 1993 Zoo TV Tour.

Retro Fanfic Retrospective - Special Episode - Fanfiction Hypothesis The RFR crew discuss…what is and what is not fanfiction? (Spotify link) 

Fic discussion - "Fictitious Characters" by likeamadonna (Ao3 link)  

Bono and The Edge - NPR Tiny Desk Concert (2023) Bono asks Edge to “do an Edge thing!”  

Bono and The Edge - BBC Radio 2 Piano Room (2023) Bono and the Edge vibing together through a string-laden performance of classic U2 songs. Bono serenading the Edge during “Vertigo” around 7m30s, lots of fond looks. 

Fic mentioned - The Scientist or: How Edge Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bono by spacemonkey 

Tory’s Top 5 U2 Tracks (slightly deeper cuts, in no particular order): Red Hill Mining Town , Bad, Lemon, Every Breaking Wave, and Stay (Faraway, So Close!)  

“Ordinary Love” acoustic version, U2 on Jimmy Fallon (2014) with Roots. One of Sara’s favorite U2 live vids ever!! 

Tory is listening to - Leith Ross, an indie-rock Canadian singer-songwriter. Here’s a song from their Youtube channel.