The Fandom Advantage: How Fan Creativity Fuels Pro Entertainment Careers
Fansplaining’s panel from San Diego Comic-Con 2025, featuring fannish creators who work on television, comics, novels, and more.
Our panelists (and moderator), from left to right: Meghan Fitzmartin, Tessa Gratton, Elizabeth Minkel, Lin Codega, Brent Lambert, Javier Grillo-Marxuach, and Daphne Olive.
Fansplaining was born on at San Diego Comic-Con in 2015, so it was fitting that we were back—sadly sans Flourish—for our ten-year anniversary at SDCC this past week. This was the fourth Fansplaining-hosted panel at SDCC, and it tackled a topic a perennial topic on the podcast: how fannish backgrounds (both past and present) help creative professionals in their work. Here’s the full panel description:
Creativity. Collaboration. Thinking about The Character in way too much detail. Fandom gives you a unique set of skills for creating things future fans will connect with. These award-winning creators got their start (and are still spending time) in fan spaces. How did that translate to professional success—and how does fandom shape their work? With Javier Grillo-Marxuach (The Witcher, Lost), Daphne Olive (Percy Jackson and the Olympians, The Old Man), Lin Codega (Motheater, Interview With the Vampire), Meghan Fitzmartin (Supernatural, Tim Drake: Robin), Tessa Gratton (The Mercy Makers, Star Wars: The High Republic), and Brent Lambert (Tordotcom, FIYAH Literary Magazine), moderated by Elizabeth Minkel (Fansplaining).
Thanks once again to all our incredible panelists, and to Sadie Witkowski (the host of the In Defense of Fandom podcast, check it out!) for recording the audio, which you can access via our podcast feed, and the video on this page. Because we were in a fairly echoey auditorium without access pro recording equipment, sound can be hard to make out at times—so be sure to check out the full transcript below, too!
Elizabeth Minkel: Hi everyone! Good morning—or good afternoon. Thank you. My name is Elizabeth Minkel, and I am the co-host of the Fansplaining podcast, which was born here at San Diego Comic-Con in 2015, so this is the ten-year anniversary. It’s not a podcast anymore because my podcast last year became a priest. [laughter] It does happen sometimes.
Javier Grillo-Marxuach: Priests can’t podcast? Is that, like, a commandment? [laughter]
Elizabeth: You can text them right now and ask. [laughter]
Daphne Olive: Flourish, where are you?
Elizabeth: Flourish Klink. I almost said RIP, but they’re still around, so... [laughter] I love Flourish.
Daphne: OK, good.
Elizabeth: So yeah, we met on the panel in 2015. We started this podcast. 250 episodes. Several people on this panel have been guests; hopefully someday the podcast will come back and the rest of you will come on. And now we’re a longform publication, analysis and reporting about fandom.
Just introducing me very briefly: I’m a journalist. I’ve been covering fan culture in mainstream publications for 15 years now. New Yorker, WIRED, Guardian, like, a long list of publications. And I have a weekly newsletter called The Rec Center, which was a Hugo finalist. If you like fanfiction, highly recommend, every Friday. Next week we will have our 500th issue. [cheering] Probably doing literally nothing for it. We’re gonna just note it. [laughter]
So thank you so much for coming. I’m so excited to talk to all of these extremely talented panelists—all of whom are extremely talented and accomplished. The way I like to do panels is we can introduce each of you and have a question for each of you, so it’s not just, like, a row of bios. So I have Daphne first—Daphne, you want to go first?
Daphne: Sure.
Elizabeth: So that’s Daphne, Daphne Olive. [cheers] She came to the world of fandom relatively late in life 10 years ago, when she found a little pirate show called Black Sails, one of the greatest shows ever made.
Daphne: One of the greatest shows ever made. [laughter]
Elizabeth: The road from quiet lurking fan to online engaging fan to Black Sails podcaster happened in the span of two years. Formerly a jewelry designer, Daphne became a writer 6 years ago when the showrunners of Black Sails invited her to join the writing team for The Old Man in 2019, and then for Percy Jackson and the Olympians in 2020.
All right, so Daphne: you were a fandom podcaster. You were not a fanfiction writer, you were not doing any kind of writing. Actually—I hear a little rustling noise, is that just in my head?
Lin Codega: Sorry, that’s me. That’s my fidget. [laughter]
Elizabeth: OK, starting over. Daphne, I don’t think you did any writing at all, not even original—like, fiction writing, right?
Daphne: I did not.
Elizabeth: Right, but you were a deep analyst of a show, which is a really specific kind of fan skill and creativity. And so I’m wondering how you found that transition into being on the fiction-writing side from that analytical element, like, breaking things down?
Daphne: Yes. Well it started with a whole lot of impostor syndrome. Which, you know, I know people have in a lot of things. I had to decide to have faith in people that—I mean, faith that people who have faith in me are right. Maybe.
So that was the main part. And then it was really a process of exploration. Because the invitation sounded something like, “Hey, let’s see if how you analyze story and talk about story could become...make a story.”
And so I just said yes, and was terrified. And so we have kind of collectively figured out what that means. And it involved a lot of listening. A lot of hanging out with people who’ve been doing this a long time—hello, Sarah Watson [laughter]—who know a lot of, like, a lot of the skills that are not the analysis part or even, you know, figuring out how to turn analysis into story, but like, kind of understanding what I’m good at and what I’m not good at.
Am I answering the question? [laughter] But yeah, I think—I mean, I wish, which I think is great for any type of collaboration, which I also didn’t have a lot of experience with, because I was a jewelry designer, so I mostly just sat alone in a room and designed stuff by myself. So that was also a learning process.
And I don’t know, I think that the analyzing did help me figure out certain things I’m good at, like the really big picture, tracking themes, tracking sometimes we have part of the story that we’re adapting that drives my fellow writers in the room crazy because I bring it up too much.
But you know, again, we all have our roles. And I think that’s one of the parts I like best about this job, is that you get to work with other people, and everyone has the things they’re good at, and if we all respect each other, and enjoy each other, and enjoy what everyone’s good at, then that’s a pretty awesome job.
Elizabeth: Good answer. [applause] All right, next I have Javi at the very end. Hi Javi. So Javi Grillo-Marxuach is one of the Emmy Award-winning producers of Lost and Jim Henson’s The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance, and is currently Executive Producer of the hit Netflix series The Witcher. His work includes stints as writer/producer on From, Cowboy Bebop, Blood and Treasure, Raising Dion, The 100, Medium—this is a long list, Javi [laughter]—Boomtown, and the original Charmed, which I remember watching in the 90s.
An advocate of mentorship and education, Grillo-Marxuach and his family have granted scholarships for writers at the University of Southern California School of Cinematic Arts, and the Creative Writing program at Carnegie Mellon University. He is also co-host—this is probably relevant to everyone here—and co-creator of the Children of Tendu podcast, an educational series for aspiring television writers. Javi is Puerto Rican, and you have a pronunciation—Javi, I’ve never pronounced your name this way, I’m so sorry. [laughter] I’m not a Spanish speaker, I don’t want to sound like I’m imitating…
Javi: It’s all good.
Elizabeth: OK, so Javi, I’m not trying to make you feel like the elder statesman on this panel [laughter], but you are. It’s true—you’ve been in the industry the longest, right? So, and also, I think of you as a very classic kind of fanboy, and I’m wondering how you’ve seen, because you started working in television in the 90s, did you tap into those, your fannish childhood, adolescence, then, and did you find it an asset then?
Javi: Oh yeah. You know, look, I was the—so I have a really interesting origin story, because I got my master’s degree, and I wanted to be a film writer. I wanted to write for movies and not TV, and I thought TV was awful, and I had this boundary about it. And then the job, I got a job at NBC as a junior executive in the current programming department, so I was literally, I was working on these three little indie shows called—well the one was called Law & Order. [laughter] It was in his third season, Sam Waterston—Sam Waterston’s first season, OK, so that’s how ancient I am. [laughter]
But I was also working on seaQuest and Earth 2, which were sort of NBC sci-fi shows at the time, and one of the reasons I was able to a niche in that environment was that I knew science fiction, and you know, this is 1993, the executives are about as ignorant about sci-fi as they could be, you know? There was not a lot of sci-fi in prime time, and what there was was terrible.
So I quickly became the person that they would go to—like, literally, some people would come in to pitch a sci-fi show, right? And you know, there’d be the vice president of the network, and a couple of other people with high titles, and I’d be sitting in a back corner. And you know, the people would pitch, and then they would leave, and then all these people would look at me, and I’d be like, [makes a slow thumbs down gesture] [laughter].
So that was sort of my role, and it literally became my identity as an executive, and then as a writer, I think aside from a single episode of Law & Order: SVU that I wrote in the year 2000, all I’ve ever done is genre, because it’s the only thing that I find interesting and fun and awesome, you know? So being a fanboy and being a creator, they’re just the same—they’re just a continuum for me.
Elizabeth: Very brief follow-up—do you find it’s different now? Like, because you can’t be the only fanboy in the room now.
Javi: I think the problem right now is that Generation X, a lot of men like me, and I’m fully complicit in this, I think we have not outgrown our fandom in a healthy manner. [crowd murmurs in agreement] And I think the biggest problem—look, I’ve spent 30 years writing other men’s daddy issues, OK? [laughter] I’ve also spent 30 years, you know, with a generation of writers, and there’s a lot of them who suffer from the disease that they idea of creativity is we’re just gonna rewrite Star Wars all the time and hope we get called a genius for it, you know?
And at a certain point, Generation X really has had a rough time kind of coming of age from those—we are a generation that has these humongous pop-cultural touchstones. Amblin movies—ET, Raiders, Star Wars. We were present at the birth of modern-day scripture. [crowd murmurs in agreement] But that doesn’t mean that has to be your identity, you know? And I think that’s one of the biggest issues in terms of being a fan and being a creator right now is getting over it.
Elizabeth: I’m glad you said that. I wasn’t gonna say it. [laughter]
Daphne: One thing I would like to say about Javi?
Elizabeth: Mmm hmm?
Daphne: Is that a big part of my process going from fandom to a writer’s room was listening to Children of Tendu. [crowd aws and cheers] It was very self-serving, I just didn’t want to ask my bosses all the time. [laughter] So I found this podcast, I was like, “Wait, they know how things work. I can just listen to them.” It’s a really fun podcast. Really informative.
Javi: It’s not as up to date as it could be because the industry has changed so much in last five years—
Daphne: Still so useful.
Javi: —but it’s still useful, yeah.
Daphne: So useful. Sorry. I meant to say that in my bit.
Elizabeth: OK, Tessa, you are next. This is Tessa. [Tessa waves] Tessa Gratton is the New York Times bestselling author of The Queens of Innis Lear, Lady Hotspur, and Strange Grace, as well as many YA and adult SFF books and short stories which have been translated into twenty-two languages. Their most recent work is the sexy epic fantasy The Mercy Makers and novels of Star Wars: The High Republic. Though they have traveled all over the world, they currently live alongside the Kansas prairie with their wife. Queer, nonbinary, she/he/they.
All right, Tessa. So Tessa has—Fansplaining has a publication, and one of my forthcoming articles is by Tessa. About the differences between writing—this is somewhat inspired by Dramione. [mixed reaction from the crowd] So I’m just gonna ask about Dramione. [laughter] I don’t know if everyone’s following this, but there’s some very—
Meghan Fitzmartin: We could do a whole panel on it.
Elizabeth: Yeah... [shakes head] Mmm mmm. [laughter] There’s some Harry Potter fanfics that are currently on the New York Times bestseller list. [a couple of woos] It’s a complicated issue. So Tessa, you’re writing for me about the differences between writing fanfiction and writing original fiction. You also write IP, right? So you writing stuff in Star Wars, for example. And it seems to me that there are probably crossover—but I don’t think it’s one-to-one. I think it’s probably—I’m curious about the differences between playing in someone else’s sandbox for fun, and doing it for them, for money. [laughter]
Tessa Gratton: The biggest difference is, like, where the power comes from. In fanfiction, you know, the power is pretty much shared in the community. The writers and the readers and the conversations that people are having. You know, that’s really where fanfiction comes from, what you just really want to write about, all your little ideas about what your blorbo’s doing, and you know, your best friend in the fandom’s kinks that you really just want to give them a present. [laughter]
But then when you’re writing for Star Wars, the power comes from the owner of the IP and the publisher, which are sometimes different. [laughs] And you, what matters is what the IP people think readers want. And, you know, a lot of times they’re right, but—
Meghan: Eh... [laughter]
Tessa: Right, right. But Star Wars is a really good, interesting example, because it’s so big, and has been huge for a long, long time. It is gospel, pretty much, and depending on who owns it, they decide what is canon. That’s where the power comes from. Who’s deciding what matters? Who’s deciding what stories are being told? And who’s deciding where the money comes in?
And so it really isn’t that difficult, for me, at least, to separate how I think about and create fanfiction and how I write Star Wars—which every once in a while does feel like fanfiction. When I first started, the very first time I created a Jedi, I mean, I’ve loved Jedi since I was five years old, and so it felt very exciting, like, “Oh my gosh, I’m doing this.”
But then there was that voice in my head that was like, “No, you’re not writing a Jedi. You’re creating canon." Like, this is gonna be what, hopefully, fanfiction writers will write about. They’ll take these little things you’re doing. And it was very different, because obviously that’d be great if my own Tessa Gratton books also get fanfiction. But it feels different when there’s such a big layer of power and money over me. So yeah... The weight, that’s the difference. [laughter]
Elizabeth: I have more questions about that, but I’m going to make sure we get to all of our first questions before I dive in. Lin, you are next.
So: Lin Codega is a trans nonbinary writer currently living in Los Angeles with their dog Zigzag. They are the co-founder of Rascal News, a worker-owned tabletop news site. Their debut novel, Motheater, came out in January and their second novel—Pasha the Storm, described as a problematic age gap romance Moby Dick with pirates and mean lesbians [laughter and cheers]—comes out next summer. Write that one down. They were the writers room assistant on season three of Interview with the Vampire and they are currently writing a deeply embarrassing Thunderbolts* fanfic because Marvel is their toxic ex-boyfriend. [laughter] You can find them online everywhere at lin codega.
Lin: Except you can’t find me on Archive of Our Own as Lin Codega.
Elizabeth: Oh, I’m saying your name wrong!
Lin: You are. It’s OK.
Elizabeth: I’m so sorry. Co-DAY-ga?
Lin: [correct pronunciation] Codega.
Elizabeth: You gotta be like Javi and put the pronunciation on here.
Lin: Like a bodega?? You’re from New York City—
Elizabeth: Bodega. Yeah, I have a lot of bodegas.
Lin: I didn’t think I needed to do that. [laughter]
Elizabeth: I’ve been away from New York for ten days now, so it’s really distant to me. [laughter] OK, so Lin, like Daphne, you also have a fan-to-pro transition story, and relatively recently. But you also transitioned, coming—as a journalist, this one is interesting to me. You went from covering the show—
Lin: Yeah.
Elizabeth: To working on the show.
Lin: Mmm hmm.
Elizabeth: So I’m wondering if you can talk about both of those transitions, and how it’s been so far.
Lin: You didn’t ask me about my gender transition. [laughter]
Elizabeth: All your transitions, please. [laughter]
Lin: So going from being a journalist to being a professional on the show?
Elizabeth: Mmm hmm.
Lin: So I covered Interview with the Vampire when it first came out during season one. I was really excited by it. I really loved the books. I was really interested in the changes they were making. So I was able to, you know, get the screeners, do the reviews.
And Rolin Jones, the showrunner of the show, he reads everything. And he was kind enough, after season one had ended, to reach out to me—and I’m sure other journalists—to say, “Thank you for your work. We really appreciated what you did for the show. Your insights were really great.” And I was like, “Thanks. Call me anytime!” [laughter]
And yeah, so we just sort of had that very cordial, collegial relationship, and then he—we were talking, and he wanted me to be...like, he does not like doing press or interviews and he’s said that before, it’s just not his bag. And he was like, “OK, when season two comes out, I want to give you my first interview, I want to give you my big interview.”
And I’m like, “Great...I was laid off.” [laughter] And I was like, “I can, but I gotta tell you, I’ll have to shop that around as a freelance writer.” And unfortunately with a lot of media outlets, they have staff writers that are doing those sorts of interviews, doing those previews, so even if I had this offer in hand, it wasn’t going anywhere. And this was even after being a journalist for like, four, five...maybe even ten.... [laughter] A while. Being a journalist for a while and having those relationships with editors.
And I reached back out to him and I’m like, “Thank you again for this opportunity. I can’t find a place for it. Thank you again.” And he was like, “OK, no big deal. Do you want to come to the season two premiere?” And I’m like, “Is water wet?” [laughter]
So I went to the season two premiere and I met up with him after we did the, they did the screening, and we were both at the bar, and he was like, “Do you want to move to LA?” [gasps] “What are you talking about? You’re out of your mind?” He was like, “Well, are you organized?” And I’m like, “Yeah.” And he was like, “Well, do you want to just move to LA in two months?” And I’m like, “What?!” So he was able to offer me the writer’s room assistant job at a bar in New York City, and I was like, “Yeah, OK.”
So that was sort of the transition. It was a little weird, but it mostly came from the fact that I was, much like Daphne, thinking really hard about the shows that I loved with a passion, and with a criticism that I felt genre work deserves. And it was really nice that Rolin—again, a genuinely incredibly nice man—read all that work and responded to it.
Elizabeth: I want to say, too—I’m biased because this is also my fandom—but as a journalist, I think, and Fansplaining has had panels about this in the past, but it can be a fine line covering something that you’re also a fan of, and I think that you were one of those rare examples of someone who’s really in the fandom, but also very professional about it, and asking the questions that fans want to ask.
Lin: Yeah! Yeah, yeah. I definitely got [laughs] some interviews with—one of my favorite stories is that I interviewed two writers who later became my colleagues during season one, and we ended up talking about Eric Bogosian, and how hot he is. [laughter] And we ended up getting pretty raunchy, pretty bawdy. And I had forgotten to record that interview locally on my laptop, and the PR company never gave me that recording. So I was censored [laughter] for being too horny for Interview with the Vampire.
Elizabeth: Release the Eric tape. [laughter]
Lin: I know! I wish they would. But yeah, so you know, I did ask questions that fans wanted to hear. I’m sorry I didn’t give you the answers. [laughter] Because they are what you would like to hear. [laughter]
Elizabeth: All right—Meghan, you are next, right next to me. Meghan Fitzmartin studied to be a youth pastor to tell people they are loved—and called...sorry, Flourish is a priest now, I should know “calling” as a term, right?
Meghan: Yeah! [laughter]
Elizabeth A calling that transformed into a writing career focusing on the same purpose. She worked on the series Supernatural for four seasons, while also writing on DC Superhero Girls, Monkie Kid Season 2, Justice Society: World War 2, and the—OK, I don’t know how to say this word out loud.
Meghan: “Ruby.”
Elizabeth: Ruby? Is it Ruby? I’ve just seen it a million times. [laughter] I’m a great fan culture expert. RWBY v Justice League movies. She is most recently known for her work in comics—writing Tim Drake’s coming out story in Batman: Urban Legends and the critically acclaimed Tim Drake: Robin. Her creator-owned series Mary Sue comes out in October and is a love letter to fandom. [cheers]
So my question for you—though I really want to hear about Mary Sue, so we should talk about this in some way—
Meghan: [fist pumps] Yeah!
Elizabeth: I think of everyone on here, I think you have worked across the most mediums, because you do narrative podcasts, and also you’re on comics, and Supernatural, the most fandomy show to ever be created. [laughter] And I feel like fan creativity—you know, I’ve been in fan creative spaces for a quarter of a century. Fans are very adaptable, in a way that I sometimes find that pro creators in a variety of mediums aren’t. And I’m wondering if your experience growing up as a fan and spending time in those spaces helped you work across these mediums, helped you look at characters across the mediums.
Meghan: Yeah, I think a little bit. As a fan, and growing up in fandom culture, I just wanted as much time with my faves as possible. I didn’t care how. I was like, “Whatever. Give me the fanart. Give me the fanvids. Give me, I don’t know, your zines. Whatever—give it to me. I want it. I want it in any sort of interaction, because I love story so much.”
So I both was engaging with mediums in a bunch of different ways, but I also was engaging with a bunch of different types of mediums in different ways. Like, I grew up listening to audio drama. There was not a big fandom for that at the time, so it’s a lot of, “OK, I’ll just figure it out for myself, and find that for myself.”
And I think that, there was a level of, like, learning the different mediums that I don’t actually think is as common now. I think, in my experience, people sort of tend to stay in the mediums that they like, which is nice for me because I get to meet new people every time, and they’re like, "Oh, I didn’t know that you’d done anything before this one thing that we did." Which is kind of fun, but I think it’s because there’s so much now. But when I was growing up, the things that I loved did not have as many inroads, so I had to find it myself.
Elizabeth: Mmm. Even with your fannish past—go ahead, I’m leading you here.
Meghan: My fannish past led me to where I am today. [laughter] I mean, I genuinely think that it did. I wouldn’t be as invested in stories if it weren’t for fandom, if it weren’t for the Geocities Doctor Quinn, Medicine Woman sites I loved. [laughter]
Elizabeth: Thank you very much.
Meghan It was great.
Elizabeth: OK, our final panelist is Brent Lambert. [cheers] Brent heavily believes in the transformative power of speculative fiction across media formats. As a founding member of FIYAH Literary Magazine, he turned that belief into action and became part of a Hugo Award-winning team. Currently, he has a novella, A Necessary Chaos, out from Neon Hemlock, and is part of the Black horror anthology All These Sunken Souls. He also recently was in the exceptionally gay anthology—incredible title, get ready—I Want That Twink Obliterated. [laughter] Ask him his favorite members of the X-Men and you’ll get different answers every time.
So the only question I have for you is who your favorite member of the X-Men is, and then we’ll be done. [laughter]
Brent Lambert: Today, it’s definitely Magik.
Elizabeth: OK, all right.
Brent: Illyana every day—well not every day, but today, yeah.
Elizabeth: You said every time you answer— [laughter]
Brent: You’re right. She’s just always in the back of my head. [laughter]
Elizabeth: OK, so Brent, you have been talking a lot on social media in the last few weeks about how SDCC in particular was part of your creative journey. So I’d love for you to share that with the audience.
Brent: Yeah, so this is a huge moment for me personally. The reason is ten years ago, I had been living in California for a year. Now, I had a lot of dreams, and not a lot of knowledge. The biggest example of that is I moved to San Diego, and did not know Comic-Con was happening. [laughter]
So I moved here, and a year into living here, I have a friend of a friend who is like, “Oh, well I’ve got an extra badge. Do you want to go to Comic-Con.” And I’m like, “That’s here? What??” So yeah, of course, I’m gonna go. But small problem: I am so broke. [laughter] I am “ramen every day, seven days a week” broke. So at the time, I was living about 20 minutes from the convention center. I’m so broke I can’t even afford an Uber ride to get down here.
So I had to swallow a lot of pride—and if you’re an older sibling, you know how much this hurt. I had to call my little brother and ask him for Uber money. [laughter] I was like, “I just need to get down there. I feel like this would be a big moment for me.” And credit to him, this was a moment where he could have given me crap, but he decided to show me a lot of love, and he was like, “You don’t need to tell me why. Here’s the money. Go have fun. I know this is gonna be big for you. I have so much faith in you. I know you want to be a creator, so go out there and have fun.”
So I came out here and I just saw all this creativity—creators, people up here, and I just got so inspired, and I decided right then and there, “I’m gonna do this. I’m pursuing it. I’m gonna make it happen. I don’t care how I gotta make it happen.”
And I gave myself a little caveat, too, to give myself a little push. I’m like, if my first time I got a free badge, I’m never paying for this thing. [laughter] So literally ever since, I’ve either had a friend help me out, or the time when I had an agent, she helped me out. Or in this case, finally, I’m on a panel, so... [cheers]
Elizabeth: All right, these are our panelists. So one of the questions I wanted to talk to you guys about—and I was thinking, Brent, when you came on Fansplaining, which was like, 50 years ago. I don’t know when that was. A couple of years ago? Don’t worry about it. [laughter]
I remember you were talking about how you used to do X-Men roleplaying when you were a 12 year old, or whatever, and you just got assigned whatever character—do you remember telling me about this.
Brent: In... [laughter] You know what, oh! OK, yes, yes, I remember now.
Elizabeth: You were saying—
Brent: Sorry, I had to think back to the AOL days. That was a while ago.
Elizabeth: Sorry, going back, going back. But you were saying you would just get assigned whatever character people didn’t want to do, right?
Brent: So when I came into fanfiction at first, it was the AOL days. You had the message boards, and there would be group sites where people—and a lot of them would be really toxic, but a lot of guys would come together and we would do these group websites, and we tried to treat it like an actual comic company.
So say for instance, I wanted to write X-Men or whatever: well, if someone else already called dibs on Magneto, I couldn’t use Magneto. I was surrounded by a lot of, like, very bro-ish white guys, who immediately, this gay little Black kid comes in and wants to start playing in the sandbox? They’re like, “OK, well, you can only have Marrow, and you can have Leech, and you can only have Artie.”
And so I’m like, “Well, fine! I’m going to take Marrow, Leech, and Artie, and I’m gonna blow you guys out of the water.” [laughter] So that was kind of, yeah, that’s what would happen in my fanfiction experience. I didn’t really have control of everything in a way I think a lot of fanfic writers today have, they don’t have to collaborate. Whereas I was kind of forced to collaborate with people that weren’t the best. [laughter]
Elizabeth: OK, I didn’t mean to dredge up trauma, but the reason I wanted to start there is because I wanted to ask about collaboration. I found that story so interesting when you told it on the podcast, because it was kind of like.... You were doing things that feel a little professional, right? You were getting assigned a character, and, “Oh, I gotta do this arc...I’ll do it,” you know? And so I’m wondering if anyone else has had any experiences like that, or things within their collaborative creative work in fandom that have influenced their professional work.
Meghan: Oh yeah—I also RPed. Not on AOL, though. A much more embarrassing location: the Neopets forums. [cheers and laughter] I did some Lord of the Rings stuff there. And probably one of my first Mary Sues, now that I think about it, that was absolutely like, it was Arwen’s twin sister, [laughter] it was the most deep Mary Sue to ever exist. And it was very similar to what you were talking about.
I also recently listened to a podcast that talked about the Warrior Cats fandom that sounds very similar—
Sadie Witkowski [our audio/video recorder]: I know that podcast.
Meghan: —even now, it’s still happening. And I look back on that very weird time fondly, because it does give you a lot of tips and tricks to be collaborative. It gives you a lot of tips and tricks on how to engage with people that come from different life experiences with you, and come from different parts of the planet, maybe different cultures from you.
And having to learn how to communicate in a really positive manner, in a really understanding manner? That’s being in a room. That’s working with editors. That was such a useful skill set that I’m always very encouraging of other people to engage with in fandom culture, is there are so many people who, what brings you together is this love of something. That’s so powerful. That’s so powerful!
And it makes it to where you’re like, I’m willing to maybe overlook some certain things about this person that, if I had met them on the street, we probably wouldn’t be friends. I don’t know if I like this. It meant that, for a lot of folks, at least that I met, or came across, I was like, “Oh, well we like this thing, so obviously we’re going to be on the same page about this.” And we weren’t, but I wanted to get to that space, because I love this thing so much.
So I think that it gave me skills early on, in terms of how to collaborate, and how to really work together with people, and how to really, like, listen to people in a way that I don’t know if I would have gotten that lesson in any other place.
Javi: I would like to co-sign that. I think, whenever anybody asks me, “How can I learn what you do in the writer’s room,” I say, “Play Dungeons & Dragons.”
Meghan: Mmm. Yeah, yeah.
Javi: Because—
Lin: OK, but not Dungeons & Dragons anymore.
Javi: I’m sorry?
Lin: The fifth edition’s terrible
Javi: You know what? I just roll a d20 and tell a guy what to do. [laughter] That’s how I’ve been playing it since 1981. Like, I looked at that, even the slim 1991 rule book, and I was like, “No, I’ll just roll this.”
Lin: [inaudible arguing about D&D]
Javi: And then roll whatever die he tells me to roll. It’s actually quite easy. No, but listen, literally if you are with a bunch of people with whatever RPG you’re doing, and you are collaborating on creating a story together, you know? And you don’t all have the same agenda, because some of you are rogues, some of you are wizards, some of you are thieves, some of you are magic users of some sort.
So it actually is collaborative storytelling in a very pure form, and it teaches you how to sit with people for ten hours in a room, and you all stink, and you’re all drinking Mountain Dew, [laughter] or whatever energy drink or trendy flavored water it is [laughter] and you come up with a story. It’s pretty simple.
Daphne: I would love to talk about a different form of collaboration, because I came from podcasting. So I had a podcasting partner. We did a format that was very popular when we were doing it in 2016, which is one of us knew the story inside-out, and the other one was kind of newer to it. [murmurs of understanding] And we came from very different backgrounds. But it’s what came out of that.
We would never talk about an episode before we analyzed it on-mic. So a big part of it was finding the magic—and that’s why we didn’t do it. We never talked about anything beforehand, because we knew that in the moment, when we agree, when we disagree, when we have completely different ways of seeing something, there’s always this magic moment that happens where you convince each other—it doesn’t matter, where something happens when two ways of thinking and seeing collide and it really is, it’s creating something new.
So what we tried to do is we actually tried to do that with our fans as well, with our listeners. And so we tried to find ways to incorporate them, through Twitter, through emails, through whatever, to incorporate their ways of seeing the show we were talking about, Black Sails—you all should watch it.
And then, but it...it was, interestingly, I feel, a really good precursor to working with other people in story, because that’s actually what I’m always looking for. I’m always looking for this place where…
I was just listening at the panel that Javi and my friend and co-worker Sarah were in, and they were talking about people coming from different places, and different voices and all of that. And like, to me, what that is, what you do, you have these moments where it’s just, like, everyone’s different opinions actually does create something beautiful and new. And those are the moments in a writer’s room where I think you’re really creating something that’s going to inspire the people who are gonna watch the show that you’re making eventually.
And I feel that’s what we were always trying to do as a podcast. We were always trying to delight people, and not in a self-serving way, but really delight. Because we were coming from a place of love and delight ourselves.
Elizabeth: Very good answer. I’m aware that we’re... Do people in the audience have questions? OK, because I have questions. [laughter]
Javi: We do have one from the audience here.
Elizabeth: OK, well not yet, but— [laughter] It’s just you. No one else wants to say anything. OK. [laughter] So my next question, and maybe Lin or Tessa want to jump in on this one first.
So Fansplaining a few years ago did a panel, Javi was on it, talking about, it was called “Listening to the Fans,” and it was like, you come from fandom, now you’re in the writer’s room—how reactive should you be? Should you be, like, thinking about every single fan reaction in advance, because you know how fans think, right?
And so I’m curious—this isn’t exactly that question, but obviously you know how fandom is. You’ve been in it, and you’re in it now, not for your own shows or properties or whatever. How does that inform creative choices you make, or the way you think about your creative work, the idea of kind of knowing what it’s like to be on the other side? If it does at all. I mean, I don’t want to put you on the spot, but I’d love to hear from you both.
Lin: So Interview with the Vampire, we wrapped our writer’s room in early spring. We... As a fan, I was always interacting with the writers as someone who really loves the property, but we do not think about fandom very much. We do not think about fandom in a way that would impact our decision-making. We always rely on the story to come out as it needs to come out, and hopefully the fans will follow that story. So while we respect our fans and love having a fandom, and are very grateful for it, it’s not something that dictates the work that we do.
Elizabeth: I just want to say, sidenote, Rolin talking about this in interviews has literally inspired me, as a fanfiction writer. Because I’m like, “What if I get yelled at—” And I’m like, “No. [laughter] He would say, ‘Just do it.’” You know?
Lin: Yeah.
Elizabeth: Yeah. You can tell him that.
Lin: Sure.
Elizabeth: You can talk about that. Thank you very much.
Lin: I’ll text him. [laughter]
Elizabeth: Tessa, did you want to get in here? You don’t have to, on this question.
Tessa: It’s pretty much the same.
Elizabeth: Yeah.
Tessa: All of the, you know, the interaction or thinking about fans, particularly when it comes to Star Wars, tends to be after the bulk of the writing is done. And you know, I’ve been working on a project, the High Republic, is a really specific chunk of storytelling that was always going to be three phases, and for a certain amount of time, so most of the big story beats were plotted out from the beginning.
And definitely, you know, I will say that some characters survive until the end because fandom really latched onto them, and by the time we were getting to the points of, who’s going to actually make it, there were a few times where one of the other writers would be like, “We really cannot kill this character. We’ll ruin what we’ve been building if we disappoint the fandom who’s really latched onto this.”
So in some of those kind of nuances, it did happen, but that’s because of the length of the project and everything. So yeah.
Elizabeth: I suppose in your case, it’s a bit out of your hands, because it is—
Tessa: Right.
Elizabeth: At that level. I know Daphne and I were talking about this the other day. It seems like it is a little more in your hands in your role, and I know that you are thinking about this.
Daphne: Oh, me?
Elizabeth: Yeah, you, Daphne. [laughter]
Daphne: Yes, yes. We do, because we’re adapting Percy Jackson, so it’s very much an adaptation of a beloved series. God, Sarah, I’m saying exactly what you said, aren’t I? [laughter] And yes, I am made fun of in the writer’s room as the “but the fans” person.
And I think it is partly maybe because I’m the person who is most recently from a fandom background, but also, maybe it’s because it’s children’s books, not that just children read, and not that just children watch it, but there is something—it’s a story that’s so essential to some peoples’ sense of self. So I just feel like in some ways, we’re preserving something that is bigger than anyone involved in it, like much bigger.
So there is that sense. It’s not like—obviously we’re not, like, you know, reading social media and saying, “Oh, let’s do exactly what they’re saying.” But they’re always in our minds and in our hearts, because again, these are people who started—I can’t tell you how many people told me that this book series is why they became readers. Or this book series is, you know, why they made peace with whatever sort of neurodiversity they have.
Or, you know—it’s so important to people, and it’s just like, yes, we have to tell a good story. Obviously this is an adaptation. Obviously we have to adapt for television, books and television are different. All of those things, but it’s just, like, it’s....yeah, it’s a sacred text for a lot of people.
Meghan: There’s definitely a sense, I feel you have to walk the line, right?
Daphne: Yeah, always.
Meghan: You have to walk that line.
Daphne: Always.
Meghan: I know people who are like, writers especially who are like, “Well I just don’t think about it at all.” And I’m like, this is such a wealth of knowledge, knowing what works, especially on short-order shows now, you don’t get always a chance to see how characters have that chemistry, like, different actors having good chemistry, or things like that.
There’s so much that you just, we don’t have the time and space for anymore, that there is a level, there’s a sort of cheat sheet sometimes, to figure out sometimes, OK, so like, how is this being received? It does not mean that you advocate this within it, right? Like, it doesn’t mean this is gonna change the way that anything—because I also firmly believe with these types of conversations that what some people sometimes call “fan service” is just reading comprehension? [laughter]
Elizabeth: Yes.
Daphne: Thank you.
Meghan: There’s so much of it where I’m like, “You’re putting these two characters together because of blah blah blah.” Yes. Because at the beginning of this, that was the plan, and this is a slow burn. [laughter] Like, there is a level to which sometimes I’m like, it’s not fan service. You just, you figured it out. Good job. You’re gonna keep going with it.
That, I think, needs to be talked about more, I think? Because it doesn’t mean you’re only listening to what the fans say all the time. But knowing what characters work and what characters aren’t, what things are big within the fandom, what things are big within the story, is always useful. It’s always useful information. It’s always useful to know this is working, but this doesn’t. Or what you see that story as being is maybe not as interesting as what we want it to be over here, so like, that is what fanfiction is for. Super grateful for it. You can go in that direction, but we want to take it in this direction, I think is really valuable.
Javi: I think fan culture is a buzz that is everywhere.
Meghan: Mmm hmm. Mmm hmm.
Javi: When you work in things that are big genre projects. You cannot avoid it. Can you keep the opinions of fans out of the writer’s room? Probably. But there’s gonna be at least one person in the writer’s room that reads the social media and knows what’s happening. [laughter]
It is going to happen—but by the way, you know another way fan culture influences the writer’s room? So you know, I’m working on The Witcher. I worked on Cowboy Bebop, and Shannara and The Dark Crystal, right? Now, look, we’re in the writer’s room, and somebody goes, like, “Hey, what’s the serial number on the main computer of the Bebop?” What do you think we go look at? Wiki! [laughter] Who writes the wiki?
Daphne: Fan wikis!
Javi: [pointing at the crowd as they shout out] It is literally when you work on a big franchise property that has existed for a long time and is a series of novels, the fans are practically in the writer’s room—
Meghan: It’s there!
Javi: —giving you the reference, you know? [laughter] So ultimately, that’s a very positive way that fan culture has affected us, because we’re more likely to get it right, thanks to you. But also, it just goes to show, in 1993, when AOL first came out, and a showrunner talked to a fan, or Aaron Sorkin got on Mighty Big TV and pissed off a couple of people, that was a huge deal. But everybody is, you know, everybody’s in it.
Meghan: Yeah.
Javi: And it’s just a buzz, and it’s there.
Daphne: Yeah.
Javi: And it’s just something you have to deal with. And you know, you keep it from affecting the important creative decisions, but otherwise, you know, The Witcher’s huge and these things are huge and you’re just in the soup, you know?
Daphne: And also, you know, it’s not a—like, story is story, and that’s the most important part. It’s not a crime to want to make people happy. [laughter]
Elizabeth: Making sure we have time for our one question. [laughter] You want to just say it and I’ll repeat it back, maybe that’s just faster? [to AV guy] Thank you, though.
Audience member: Yeah, I was curious, because I feel like, as somebody who’s been in the fanfic world a little bit, I feel like now, especially in marketing for books in the publishing world, fanfiction is really playing a much bigger role, I feel like, both the people who get their start in it, and also, like, you see books marketed kind of with AO3 tags, almost. [laughter] I was curious if anyone had any interesting thoughts on that, as writers, or also specifically how it might play into TV, too, because I’m more on the book side of things.
Elizabeth: Wait, let me quickly summarize in case anyone didn’t hear it?
Audience member: Sorry, that was a long question.
Elizabeth: No, no. We’re increasingly seeing people referencing fanfiction in the publishing world. There’s this trend of, like, putting AO3 tags on books in a bunch of different genres. And the question is, do people have thoughts on that, and about that affecting television as well, outside the world of genre novels?
Javi: I think that fanfic is such a huge thing now, and is so widely disseminated on the internet and all that it has become a little bit of a farm team.
Meghan: Mmm, yes.
Javi: You know, you’ve got people like E. L. James, or Cassandra Clare, and a number of other people getting their starts in fanfic and stuff like that. I think that’s phenomenal. I think fanfic in general is great, and I encourage and applaud it, because there’s two things. One of them is if you want to be a professional writer, that’s a good way to get good, because you’re just constantly, most of these communities, you have a lot of incentives to write, and people are giving you prompts and stuff like that.
But also, I think that having a healthy amateur class of writers who generally love writing—and I mean amateur like you love writing, right? Actually, I find that it makes people respect the work of the professionals a lot more, because you’ve been where we’re at, and it’s part of your psychology as a consumer of it.
So for me, you know, I think fanfic is awesome for a couple of reason, including a farm team thing, and it creates great respect for the craft of writing. I think in terms of television, it’s a little bit more difficult, because if you’re writing a spec script, it could be fanfic. But you know, I wrote a Xena reboot—it’s a Xena fanfic. [laughter] I wrote Dark Crystal fanfic—I just wrote it for money, you know? [laughter]
So it is, again, like so much of fandom, it is a buzz, and it has so many different benefits that it provides both to the professional community, those of us who are producing work, but also to the community of writers. It’s phenomenal.
Brent: So there is some part of it that worries me, though. And I’ll say this being on the editorial side sometimes. I will see it where they try to force books to fit wedges and tags that they do not fit. And it does a disservice to those authors, who, you know, they’re like, “Oh, well we have to market it. Oh, we have to get it out there.”
And then the book gets out there, and people read it with this expectation, because that’s how it was marketed to them, and then they read the book and it’s not what they thought they were getting, and then the backlash isn’t on the marketing team, it’s the marketing team that has to pay for it.
So that is my one concern. And that’s not fanfic writers’ fault at all, that’s the industry’s fault for not understanding what they’re dealing with. But—
Tessa: I have a lot more concerns. [laughter]
Lin: I do want to say that I have no problem with people taking their fanfic and scraping it and putting it out for traditional publishing. I have a huge issue with using Harry Potter as a marketing tool, especially considering the violent transphobic shit that J. K. Rowling has pulled. [applause] It is absolutely unconscionable that traditional publishing is using Dramione as a marketing tool. That is deeply disturbing to me, and also might invite more cultural cachet to be given to a woman who is responsible for legislation that kills people.
So fundamentally, happy with fanfic, I literally said I’m writing one. But there’s such a can of worms to be associated with an author like that, and a fandom that huge, and it is irresponsible of traditional publishing to be working within those boundaries. [applause]
Elizabeth: Thank you. I think we’re getting the time.
Javi: On a lighter note?
Elizabeth: Yeah?
Javi: I wrote an Indiana Jones/Downton Abbey crossover fanfic. [laughter] Where Lady Edith meets Indiana Jones in Bombay, and they have an adventure, because they actually... It’s also an E. M. Forster fanfic. [laughter] Because I did the math, and they could have actually met at the home of the guy from The Remains of the Day. [laughter] So it’s on Tumblr...of course.
Elizabeth: Uh, not only is it on Tumblr, you can listen to Javi’s special episode of Fansplaining, if you’re a patron, and you can hear him discuss this for, like, 45 minutes. [laughter]
Someone in the audience: I’m pulling it up right now.
Elizabeth: Thank you so much, everyone. All of our panelists, and thank you so much for being a great audience. [applause and cheers]