Talkin‘ Fanfic

Sara welcomes the great and wonderful Tory, best known for their reliably insightful analysis of fanfiction on the Retro Fanfic Retrospective podcast (found wherever you get your podcasts!) Tory shares their lifelong love affair with the legendary band U2, and their knowledge of the band’s history and music. Tory also digs into the amazing feat of how the band’s joyful, sublime chemistry seeps into the very music they produce, sust...

Summary:

Sara takes (kind of sort of) a break from talking fanfic and bandfic to talk about a different form of storytelling– music, and writing about music! shineswithyou is a familiar face around Oasis and U2 tumblr, but what you might NOT know is that she has recently embarked on a writing journey of her own, with a substack blog about music and its place as the soundtrack of her own life.

Sara and shines talk about her blog, an...

Summary:

Sara sits down with the amazing, sublime, talented Jeevey, a legend in the Oasis RPF and Gcest world. Jeevey talks about the challenges of finding time to express yourself amid real life responsibilities; telling the truth through amateur writing; the joys of RPF and her start in the U2 fandom; rejecting the shame of writing taboo topics, and why she likes writing about interesting, compelling characters versus ‘unproblema...

Are ye mad fer it?! In episode 303 Sara and Laura crack open a lager and spend three hours indulging in their most problematic (or NOT) obsession yet– The Gallagher Brothers of Oasis! RPF, or ‘real person fiction’ is fanfiction based on the lives of real people. We figure, if you’re gonna get into RPF, you ‘might as well do the white line’ and in true rock’n’roll lifestyle Slide Away into the nitty gritty of one of the most complic...

Talkin’ Fanfic 

Episode No. - 302

Episode Title - Interview with phyn, aka RedHead

Summary:

Yet another incredible treat for the ColdFlash fans! On this episode of Talkin’ Fanfic, Sara sits down with phynali, better known in ColdFlash circles as (the one, the only!) RedHead. RedHead has authored two of the top five kudos’d works under the ColdFlash tag on Ao3, and their work is commonly counted as some of the most seminal in the ...

Talkin’ Fanfic 

Episode No. - 301

Episode Title - Interview with Crimson1, professional author Amanda Meuwissen 

In Talkin’ Fanfic’s third season opener, Sara sits down with professionally published author Amanda Meuwissen, who has openly and proudly published fanfiction on both ff.net and Ao3 for decades, as Crimson1 ! Sara and Amanda discuss how Amanda’s introduction to popular fiction (via, ironically, Anne Rice novels) almost i...

A literal throw-back! Recorded in February 2022, Sara didn't get around to editing and posting until September 2022. 

In this belated Season 2 closer, Sara and Laura discuss (after some updates on recent ColdFlash and Gallaghercest obsessions) a commonly forgotten or misunderstood Archive Warning: the "Choose Not to Warn" tag. They discuss the purpose of CNTW in context of and along with a phenomenally written story, "The Operative...

Talkin’ Fanfic 

Episode No. - 209

Episode Title - Interview with elsi

Sara sits down to talk with elsi, aka Prince_of_Elsinore, an incredibly talented author who has spent many thousands of words exploring the heart of the relationship between the characters of Dean and Sam Winchester from Supernatural. Sara and elsi cover the show itself (that finale!) and discuss three of elsi’s works centered around Sam and Dean over the cours...

Talkin’ Fanfic 

Episode No. - 208

Episode Title - Interview with museaway

Sara sits down with long-time multi-fandom author and community organizer MUSEAWAY, where they discuss three of muse’s works in Smallville, Supernatural, and the Alternate Original Series Star Trek fandoms. Topics include: 

• Their love of the edenic, the singular! old school Smallville fandom 
• The d...

Sara and Laura catch up and talk about what they’ve been reading (angsty ‘Toy Story’ teen romance! Wincest in the world of ‘Tremors’ ! fake-marriage-scifi! Jason Todd/Dick Grayson!) ; what they’ve been writing (Batfamily! Green Lantern GuyKyle space husbands!) ; and Laura talks about her recent adventures in DC Comics land, where among other things, Guy Gardner of Space Sector 2814 gets KO’d by Batman, and tries to take his prospec...

A-TEAM, ASSEMBLE!! Sara joins forces with Beth from The Fanfic Maverick Podcast to take a DEEP DIVE into the history of fanfiction as we know it. From Ancient Greece to Ao3, we try and cover it all. 

• How are fanfic authors protected by US Copyright Law? (Fair Use!) 
• If George Lucas gets squicked out by your Luke/Han lemon, can his team of lawyers punt your PWP? (Not if y...

PART TWO!! Sara and Andrea continue their discussion, this time with the aid of White Claw and more beer. Topics include: motherhood and writing, the challenges of being a short-form/flash fiction writer in a novelist’s world, finding motivation for wanting to do the “professional writing thing”, and the “silliness of the sequel.” We talk more about “Light as a Feather”, how ‘Kentucky South’ is a little different than the rest of t...

IT'S A TWO-FER!

Sara sits down with professional author Andrea Anderson, who also writes fanfiction under the pen name provocative_envy. In Part One, Andrea talks about early writing (total and complete creative freedom! Wearing black! Missing the subtext in Sylvia Plath!), her work in fanfiction digging into the least explored characters in the Harry Potter universe, and how that bridged her into writing her own original fiction. 

Talkin’ Fanfic 

Episode No. - 203

Episode Title - Interview with RivkaT

RivkaT has written 53 stories in the Smallville fandom, and many, many stories in other fandoms such as Supernatural, The X-Files, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and Fringe. Sara notes that nearly every time she sits down to read a RivkaT story, she learns something-- new vocabulary, a joke she hadn’t picked up on the first time, a new way of looking through a chara...

Sara sits down with XParrot, whose writing in the Smallville fandom she finds inspiring and incandescent! They talk about getting into the fascinating and flawed mind of Lex Luthor, and his philosophical preoccupation with the unsolvable problem of an imperfect being wielding unimaginable power; they dip into the Yu-Gi-Oh fandom to look at another troubled genius, Seto Kaiba; they discuss dramatic irony, and how canon allows fanfic...

A quick and dirty on what's coming in 2021! BONUS BADASS NEW THEME BY COBRA KYLE!! You've been waiting for this podcast, for all your life, oh Law-awd!! AWARDS, nominations close March 3rd!! PLUS listen to my buddy ChaosBlue's badass podcast "The Fanfic Maverick Podcast" 

Episode References:

• MASTER POST - 2021 CK Fanfiction Awards (tumblr)
• The Fanfic Maverick Podcast (stream on Cast)
• The Fanfic Maverick Podcast (tumblr) 
• Fanf...

This week Sara and Laura discuss “Who Is Like God?” a work in progress (WIP) written by A_LazyPanda (some of you may know her as Gia467). Centering on the character of Miguel, this work is a type of hero’s journey story that straddles the metaphysical line between the Valley as we know it, and something far more mysterious, magical, dark, and dangerous. It’s a story about the gray areas-- between right and wrong, between the ‘real’...

Sara interviews LibertinePast, author of “Foreigner”, “The Backyard Series”, “Misgivings”, and SO MANY others! As one of the OG writers in the quiver, she has contributed so much to the LawRusso community, and also was one of the first to write “Amoush”, the Amanda/Anoush pairing. Her writing is chock-a-block with pop-culture, tongue-in-cheek references, and humor-- but is always infused with heartache and melancholy, resulting in ...

A shorter solo episode! Sara looks at what's new on AO3, briefly (and politely, worry not!) discusses the recent kerfuffle on Tumblr over "ship hating", plugs supporting your local independent bookstore, and digs into the first couple of chapters of John Gardner's "The Art of Fiction". 

Episode References

• "The Art of Fiction" by John Gardner - Goodreads
• Work - "Good for You" by A_LazyPanda
• Work - "#NotAllMen" by lostmagician ...