I had never heard of The Pudding before, and I just lost half my day to the various rabbit holes. Not sure if my boss will be super excited about that, but I love it - thanks for the introduction!
Fun fact: I'm a literary agent and TIL that my client Adib Khorram was AHP's co-host on a delightful episode of the Culture Study Podcast! P.S. Everyone go read his books; they're excellent! #proudagent
I’ve been directing grad students to The Pudding for a while now as super interesting examples of how to think about data. And of course it was another student who made me aware of them originally, via the pocket story!
I’d be really curious to see the sort of analysis The Pudding could do on other fic sites, such as fanfiction.net or Wattpad. AO3 is an infamous outlier when it comes to the percentage of slash fandom and fanfiction (which makes sense given that it was founded as a refuge FOR such fiction), and het fic (particularly with female self-inserts) blows slashfic completely out of the water numbers-wise if you’re looking anywhere *except* AO3. (And it goes without saying that femslash is even more dwarfed on any other centralized sites than AO3.)
Of course, it would be much more difficult to do this sort of analysis on any site other than AO3, you’d need much more manual coding. (Francesca Zadra did a very interesting hand-coded sample some years back: https://olderthannetfic.tumblr.com/post/746309842253348864/flakmaniak-olderthannetfic ) I think a big takeaway is that AO3’s excellent metadata paradoxically makes slash and femslash more visible in a skewed way.
This AHP/fanfic crossover is thing I DIDN'T KNOW I NEEDED (but holy hell is it making my nerd-heart explode in the best way possible)!
I remember reading, then writing, fanfic in middle school — and feeling like it was such an uncool, embarrassing thing. But I found such a encouraging, uplifting community (DBSK forever) and it is unequivocally how I am a writer now!
And after many dry years reading only "literary" things, last year I gave myself permission to read what I want, guilt free, and have rediscovered my love for all the "embarrassing" things that actually make my soul sing: fantasy, spec, world building, love, fanfiction.
I'll end with a plug for the best thing I've read all year (Reader, she read it 3x): Draco Malfoy and the Mortifying Ordeal of Being in Love by Brigitte Knightly. It has the best, slightly unreliable MMC, truly spectacular slow burn, a romping magical adventure, FANTASTIC banter (I have never giggled so much while reading anything in my life), and really, really good sex scenes with agency on both sides (this last bit seems like such a low bar, but so incredibly difficult to do well!)
I am also floored that she (and her beta readers) did all this amazing work FOR FREE, and was SO EXCITED to hear that she has a debut novel coming out next year! I have never pre-ordered a book so fast.
(Ok, realizing that I sound like a paid ad, but I promise I'm not — Just trying to do the thing that Caitlyn said, and being militant with my support).
Blew my mind to learn of so many creative people telling stories so creatively. Has anyone had the guts yet to create storylines about Trump/Putin (Trutin?), MelBan, Lind-aetz, AmyThom, RepDem etc? If so, please let me know: maybe internet fanfic can save our country from our current IRL dasterdly peril. Heaven knows, as we've recently learned, voting and current political classical PR storylines can't.
I'm not sure which part flew by. My understanding is that fan fiction consists of fans writing their own stories about the characters in their favorite movies and so forth, like superhero franchises, Harry Potter, Sherlock Holmes, Star Wars, and others. These fans then share their writing with other fans, not commercially.
'Slash' is the /, not slash as in slasher movies. Here it refers to coupling up, so Sherlock/Dr. Watson would be about their having probably a romantic relationship in the fan's own story. 'Shipping,' I believe, is in this context being matched up.
That's how I understood all this.
And a big data set is used to look at how many of the stories posted on fan sites are about, say, Marvel, how many Star Wars, and so forth and within those story universes how often the stories pair up, say, Harry Potter and Draco Malfoy versus other character combinations, or how many pair males with males versus two females versus a male female combination.
The analysts can also read from the data how much of the writing is by females, say. So they are interested, for example, in why there are so many stories about male-male romantic relationships written by women.
I had never heard of The Pudding before, and I just lost half my day to the various rabbit holes. Not sure if my boss will be super excited about that, but I love it - thanks for the introduction!
Fun fact: I'm a literary agent and TIL that my client Adib Khorram was AHP's co-host on a delightful episode of the Culture Study Podcast! P.S. Everyone go read his books; they're excellent! #proudagent
I LOVE THIS
I’ve been directing grad students to The Pudding for a while now as super interesting examples of how to think about data. And of course it was another student who made me aware of them originally, via the pocket story!
Obviously this is extremely my shit, but I’ll just reiterate: this is extremely my shit!! Thank you AHP!
I’d be really curious to see the sort of analysis The Pudding could do on other fic sites, such as fanfiction.net or Wattpad. AO3 is an infamous outlier when it comes to the percentage of slash fandom and fanfiction (which makes sense given that it was founded as a refuge FOR such fiction), and het fic (particularly with female self-inserts) blows slashfic completely out of the water numbers-wise if you’re looking anywhere *except* AO3. (And it goes without saying that femslash is even more dwarfed on any other centralized sites than AO3.)
Of course, it would be much more difficult to do this sort of analysis on any site other than AO3, you’d need much more manual coding. (Francesca Zadra did a very interesting hand-coded sample some years back: https://olderthannetfic.tumblr.com/post/746309842253348864/flakmaniak-olderthannetfic ) I think a big takeaway is that AO3’s excellent metadata paradoxically makes slash and femslash more visible in a skewed way.
The abortion maze is really really good. https://pudding.cool/2024/10/abortion-mazes/
Truly a gift to receive in my inbox this morning! Thank you for shining your light on my favorite part of culture!
This was such a fascinating look at something really cool! Thanks for sharing.
This was amazing. Thank you AHP and The Pudding!
This AHP/fanfic crossover is thing I DIDN'T KNOW I NEEDED (but holy hell is it making my nerd-heart explode in the best way possible)!
I remember reading, then writing, fanfic in middle school — and feeling like it was such an uncool, embarrassing thing. But I found such a encouraging, uplifting community (DBSK forever) and it is unequivocally how I am a writer now!
And after many dry years reading only "literary" things, last year I gave myself permission to read what I want, guilt free, and have rediscovered my love for all the "embarrassing" things that actually make my soul sing: fantasy, spec, world building, love, fanfiction.
I'll end with a plug for the best thing I've read all year (Reader, she read it 3x): Draco Malfoy and the Mortifying Ordeal of Being in Love by Brigitte Knightly. It has the best, slightly unreliable MMC, truly spectacular slow burn, a romping magical adventure, FANTASTIC banter (I have never giggled so much while reading anything in my life), and really, really good sex scenes with agency on both sides (this last bit seems like such a low bar, but so incredibly difficult to do well!)
I am also floored that she (and her beta readers) did all this amazing work FOR FREE, and was SO EXCITED to hear that she has a debut novel coming out next year! I have never pre-ordered a book so fast.
(Ok, realizing that I sound like a paid ad, but I promise I'm not — Just trying to do the thing that Caitlyn said, and being militant with my support).
Anyway! Read the fic on AO3:https://archiveofourown.org/works/34500952
Blew my mind to learn of so many creative people telling stories so creatively. Has anyone had the guts yet to create storylines about Trump/Putin (Trutin?), MelBan, Lind-aetz, AmyThom, RepDem etc? If so, please let me know: maybe internet fanfic can save our country from our current IRL dasterdly peril. Heaven knows, as we've recently learned, voting and current political classical PR storylines can't.
Yay! I love the Pudding!!!
I wish I knew what any of this was about. Over my head completely.
I'm not sure which part flew by. My understanding is that fan fiction consists of fans writing their own stories about the characters in their favorite movies and so forth, like superhero franchises, Harry Potter, Sherlock Holmes, Star Wars, and others. These fans then share their writing with other fans, not commercially.
'Slash' is the /, not slash as in slasher movies. Here it refers to coupling up, so Sherlock/Dr. Watson would be about their having probably a romantic relationship in the fan's own story. 'Shipping,' I believe, is in this context being matched up.
That's how I understood all this.
And a big data set is used to look at how many of the stories posted on fan sites are about, say, Marvel, how many Star Wars, and so forth and within those story universes how often the stories pair up, say, Harry Potter and Draco Malfoy versus other character combinations, or how many pair males with males versus two females versus a male female combination.
The analysts can also read from the data how much of the writing is by females, say. So they are interested, for example, in why there are so many stories about male-male romantic relationships written by women.