ICYMI: I wrote about the corporate-IP-ification of fanfic, and how heavily normative biases inflect what's being plucked out of fandom for big fancy book deals.

omg this looks so gooooood

ICYMI: I wrote about the corporate-IP-ification of fanfic, and how heavily normative biases inflect what's being plucked out of fandom for big fancy book deals.

new from me! "A Rebel’s History of Mars never tries to ignore the ugly flaws of humanity. We manage to keep recreating new systems of inequality and oppression, no matter how many times we get a chance for a reset."

Here it is, my last piece for @eater.bsky.social: my treatise on the last 20 years of food culture, and how food turned into fandom. I really hope you read it. www.eater.com/food-culture...

If you were concerned about Kimmel, here's another for you… Journalist Mario Guevara has been detained for 100+ days, ironically arrested as he reported on a "No Kings" protest. The Trump-Vance admin just issued an order of final removal, to send him to El Salvador—where he fled from 21 years ago.

I probably should post about this more because we could really use the help but also I would rather walk into traffic than ask for help most of the time, so you know, that's a thing. BUT! We have some ebook bundles & a few of our ebooks that aren't widely available!

Chotiner interviews Janeway

Really enjoyed this piece. It's been true my entire life that what the mainstream media world accepts from fandom and fanfic is extremely limited, curated, and specific, and Jenny puts her finger on why that is, especially given current publishing trends.

I would have assumed that fanfic authors getting traditionally published would make the industry wider; this was a great read on the argument as to why fanfic-turned-book feeds into corporate franchising, and makes the space for creativity smaller.

Okay, I have read it! Jenny is so thoughtful and clear-sighted here, and her love for the best possibilities of fandom, as well as her awareness of its vulnerabilities, comes through strongly.

A lot of this is what's being discussed by authors in my circle. Glad that, unlike so many other articles on the fandom to trad pub pipeline, it acknowledges that fandom is a deeply queer space but trad pub isn't interested in that part of it. at all.

Great work by @readingtheend.bsky.social who captures not just the cynicism of capitalist exploitation but also the joy of fandom. I'd love to see more by her (or others with her skill and sensitivity) on the internal culture of fic-writing.

What a fantastic piece, in which @readingtheend.bsky.social absolutely nails what's wrong with publisher-monetised fanfic. "Let’s not get into the habit of trawling the wriggling, unknowable sea floor that is fandom, only to feed its most palatable morsels into the hungry maw of capitalism."

If I wrote Star Wars fanfiction, it would be super different from my Star Wars fiction. And I can't really explain that in a post here, but @readingtheend.bsky.social does a great job on this article.

ahahaha yep this is about where I've landed, too

I have befriended my new Gen Z coworker by watching The Summer I Turned Pretty, and now she comes by my office every day and tells me the news from TikTok. she brings me a lot of Renee Rapp news. it's everything I could have hoped for. talking to young(er) people rules.

"From a queer, community-based space that runs on a gift economy, certain winners are now being crowned." When I read this earlier, the phrase I used to describe what trad pub does is "strip mining for the worst goals" which isn't nearly as eloquent as Jenny's excellent essay.

Since quotes are going around from @readingtheend.bsky.social's excellent @reactorsff.bsky.social piece today, here's the full essay I wrote last month on fandom, trad publishing, IP, and navigating it all from a more personal perspective:

everyone should read Tessa's @fansplaining.bsky.social essay! It's so so so so good and gets deeply into the nitty-gritty of writing original fiction and IP fiction and fanfiction. You will love it.

"The stories that get lifted out of fandom—where a bad (white) man is redeemed by the love of a good (ambiguously brown) woman he’s busily oppressing—are being chosen because those are the stories capitalism always wanted to tell." 100000000% yes. Wish I had written it. So glad Jenny did.

I heard it was #BiVisibilityDay so here's a link to my books, all of which have visible bisexuals! They come in various genders and relationship configurations, as bisexuals do

The pull quote below is one of my favorite things anyone has ever said about the fanfic-to-tradpub pipeline. Kudos to @readingtheend.bsky.social to a thoughtful and thorough take on this subject.

"Feed fanfic into capitalism, and it comes out shaped like capitalism." Great work and words. To be glib, this is why fandom elders are so important!!! reactormag.com/with-the-ser...

"It’s a raw, bleeding offering of unalloyed weirdness, by creators poking our heads up out of the earth to see if there’s anyone else out there who matches our freak. It’s precious for all the things it offers us that corporations won’t." I've never seen a better description of fanfiction.

Speaking of vampires:

Jenny did good.

There are so many pieces of this that I want to pull-quote, but this in particular is so important. Transformative fandom spaces are not without their own ugly biases, but the stories that get "uplifted" into tradpub books only serve to reinforce whose stories are already seen as worthy of telling.

Paging scholars of Appalachian history. I have a student interested in the origins of Appalachian folklore and the influences on modern perceptions of the region. Especially looking for primary sources (any format but must be available digitally) dating back to the 18th century. Help!

the most important thing is for everyone to watch The In-Laws (dir. Arthur Hiller, 1979) because I quote it like three times per week and nobody ever understands what I am talking about

The emotional aggregation of reading fic in a fandom cannot be replicated by a single work. Some massive series approach the experience (examples springing to mind are Pern, the Honorverse, probably Sanderson's Cosmere and Maas's oeuvre function similarly), but they lack fully collective ownership.

yeah, a troubling thing for me is seeing (some of) these books not being marketed on quality at all. it's more just like, these are from a fandom we know you like! you're going to buy a million of these, right? whether the books are good or not is almost beside the point. which is pret. ty. grim.

This is good

A good article. Proud to say I rejected one of these Dramione submissions based on the fact I didn't want to platform the TERF queen in any form. There are two ways to make money in publishing, and one way is... icky. And, indeed, cynical.

yikes, my "require alt text before posting" setting had been turned off too! check on yours if you haven't lately. it's under Settings / Accessibility.

A comic book artist and a sculptor decide to share custody of a shelter dog. Romance happens! (they do it) A Walk in the Park is available now in ebook and audiobook! rebekahweatherspoon.... 💗 two plus size MCs 💗 forced proximity 💗 a sweet doggy #booksky #romancelandia #blacksky

For this Bi Visibility Day, pick up a sapphic historical romance by a bi author, with a bi heroine! Lady’s Guide is science vs art bi awakening, Waspish Widows is small town bees and bi/pan, and Hellion’s Waltz is bi4bi enemies to lovers with a heist element! #Romancelandia

This is a really great read on how we've tipped from being open about experience writing fanfic (good! fanfic is great and gets unfairly stigmatized!) to a flood of books that are just fantic/someone else's IP with the serial numbers filed off.

As a writer who filed off the (barely visible) Sonic serial numbers off Zyearth, this had me nervous. But this article COOKS. Jenny calls out trad-published fan fic as it is - white nationalist, anti-queer, and capitalist, without disparaging fan fic authors. Makes me want to blog a response!

I have been thinking about this question AN LOT and don't really have good answers. I feel like this most recent crop of books being explicitly marketed as Harry Potter fanfiction have gone well past the line. but where was the line? I don't know.

rapture happened if you can read this you are gay

"Let’s establish a new fandom stigma for the new millennium. We will continue to celebrate, not stigmatize, reading, writing, and loving fanfic. But we will feel free to disdain the practice of shadow franchising, especially for properties like Harry Potter that are owned by monstrous people."

What comes off as so deeply cynical about it is the "why now" of it. Reylo is 10 years old. Dramione is 25. It feels like a regression. And also like, "oh well we did diversity for 5 years, now we're done with it! Have some empty and dubiously legal nostalgia!" Cynical.

"That this kind of imaginative consolidation is bad for art feels so obvious it’s hardly worth saying. Instead of telling their own stories, creatives are funneled into pre-existing IP, often with corporate-issued limitations on what kind of stories they can tell." Yuppity yup yup

If you're looking for One Thing to read on your break today, read this about the publishing industry, "shadow franchises," and the comphet pressures of filing off serial numbers for the mass consumer market. And more! for such a short article, it has So Much Meat on the bones.

This is a spot-on write-up by @readingtheend.bsky.social. "Book deals and massive marketing campaigns have accrued overwhelmingly to white authors writing about straight couples, and have drawn from fandom spaces that prioritize redemption arcs for fashy white guys."

1. an author can prove they can sell in KU, which often means TikTok has picked it up, and we know what TikTok picks up. 2. it's a "shadow-franchise" with a big enough fandom to guarantee a certain amount of sales.

And it goes hand in hand with something else we're seeing, which is the new romance slushpile is fic and KU. Trad romance, like many other forms of media, seems to have zero interest in cultivating talent. Prove yourself elsewhere, which means one of two things:

Had to read this three times and I bet you I'm gonna do it a fourth time before bed! Jenny never misses 😤