S03.09: Christina Lauren on FanFiction and Romance: Blissward is How it Should Be
It’s joy month! We’ve got two of our very favorites with us — Christina Lauren is here with us to discuss fan fiction, romance, their romance origin stories, what they love about fic and how fic makes romance better! We talk about about a thousand books and authors, and do a little giggling too, so strap in!
Thank you, as always, for listening! If you are up for leaving a rating or review for the podcast on your podcasting app, we would be very grateful!
Notes
Christina Lauren has a new, delightful holiday romance out this week! Find In a Holidaze at Amazon, B&N, Kobo, Apple or at your local indie.
When we recorded, the wildfire situation was particularly grim in California, and it’s still a huge problem facing many Western states. We hope you're all being safe out there.
A brief overview of CLo’s story from fandom to bestselling authors. The first of their published books came from Christina's fic "The Office," and was published as Beautiful Bastard. Sarah loves it a lot.
Wonder Woman 1984 has been postponed because of COVID, and according to the director the film is best seen in a theater. It is not because Robert Pattinson got COVID (He's back to business now). Sarah loves the preview of the new Batman movie.
Our love of Days of Lives couples Jack & Jennifer and Patch & Kayla is eternal and everlasting. (Ps. Jen's favorite scene is not in that video, her search continues.)
The Twilight fandom was vast, as we discussed in this episode. And there are important reasons why many folks are drawn to fandom. Last summer, Alexis Daria and Adriana Herrera talked about fanfiction and fandom on Instagram Live, and it's a great watch.
Christina and Lauren mentioned “canon” and “AU” and AO3 and livejournal and fandom bootcamp and maybe you want a primer on some fanfic terms.
Maybe you also need a primer on a cinnamon roll character.
These hugely popular romance writers came up through fanfic: Sally Thorne, Alice Clayton, Nina Bocci, Tara Sue Me, Amanda Weaver, Rebekah Weatherspoon, Helena Hunting, Daisy Prescott, EL James, and Ruth Clampett. Present-tense, stream of consciousness flow, and intense character work are some of the hallmarks of fandom writing, and some of those stylistic choices have influenced mainstream fiction in multiple genres, including romance.
Did you miss the community experience of The Submissive? Lucky for you, it's now available as a stand alone novel, and the next books in the series The Dominant and The Training also started as fic.
Christina and Lauren and Nina Bocci worked on the Fandom Gives Back fundraiser to benefit Alex’s Lemonade Stand.
Jen said she loves Beautiful Player, but honestly no one will be surprised that she got the title wrong and her real favorite is Beautiful Stranger. Just read all of them. You won't be disappointed.
The question of who owns these stories and the legalities of fanfic is so interesting, and specifically the history of Fifty Shades of Grey as Fanfic.
As promised, a list of CLo recommend fics:
Tropic of Virgo by in.a.blue.bathrobe (aka Kira Gold)
The Blessing and the Curse by theblackarrow (Sally Thorne)
The Best I Ever Had by whatsmynomdeplume
Mr. Horrible by algonquinrt
Creature of Habit by ezrocksangel
The Art Teacher by spanglemaker9
Summer of Salt by lolapops
A Murmur of Fire in the Vein
Scotch, Gin, and the New Girl by wtvoc
S03.03: Fifty Shades of Grey by EL James: Romance Has Gotten Hotter And I Think I Like It
If we’re going to talk about the last 10 years of romance — what we’d call modern romance — it’s basically impossible to do that out in the world without someone who doesn’t know much about the genre asking about EL James’s Fifty Shades of Grey. This week, Fated Mates is talking about Fifty Shades. Or, rather, we’re talking about what we're really talking about when we talk about Fifty Shades of Grey.
At no point in this discussion do we talk about tampons. You’re welcome.
Next week, we’ve got an interstitial for you! And the week after, we’re deep diving on Milla Vane’s A Heart of Blood and Ashes, which is a long fantasy romance. If you are a reader who needs content warnings, you might want to check out reviews on Goodreads.
Find it at Amazon, B&N, Kobo, Apple Books or Bookshop.org.
Show Notes
There are honestly so many articles about Fifty Shades that Jen couldn't possibly even link to them. But the one about the increase in ER visits, necktie sales up 23%, and Jen wrote about the history of romance between Fabio and Fifty Shades.
Drunk Austen went through a rather spectacular break-up last week; we promise never to do this and swear we are full legal partners in our current venture.
Fanfiction brought Christina Lauren, Tara Sue Me, Sally Thorne and so many others to us. And lots of great BDSM was written after Fifty Shades by too many authors to count, but many think of The Original Sinners series by Tiffany Reisz as being truly excellent.
There's a reason why women hate dealing with car salesmen and mechanics. Jen wants you to know that if you're in Chicago and looking for a mechanic, the guys at Ashland Tire and Auto will never treat you like that.
Perhaps you're interested in whether or not Fifty Shades of Grey was copyright infringement?
The 2010 He-cession vs the 2020 she-cession.
Sarah reviewed Grey for the Washington Post, and just a few weeks ago, Midnight Sun (Twilight from Edward's Point of View was released.
Ope. We forgot to talk about Thomas Hardy, so just read this article from The Guardian instead.
Mrs. Robinson refers to a character in the 1967 film The Graduate.
Flat Stanley is a character in a children's book, but here we are talking about the theory that readers insert themselves into a book and become the main character. Many people believed that teenage girls reading Twilight imaged themselves as Bella, for example, but that's deeply rooted in misogny. In Dangerous Men and Adventurous Women, Laura Kinsale suggested that women reading romance imagine themselves as the hero rather than the heroine.
Fifty Shades of Grey sold a lot of fucking copies. A lot. A lot!
Lori Perkins was the editor of Fifty Writers on Fifty Shades of Grey. You can also check out Hard Core Romance: Fifty Shades of Grey, Bestsellers, and Society by Eva Illouz.
Jen refers to Christian as the Marlboro Man, a symbol of a kind of gruff, male, American renegade loner.
Where does Kink come from? And what Fifty Shades gets right and wrong about kink and BDSM.
