Brittany Luce

And so was Alchemized by Sen Lin Yu.

Those latter two are both getting screen adaptations as well.

Studios are spending millions of dollars in deals to adapt these stories.

To get into how fanfic is becoming mainstream and the burgeoning culture war over what gets published and who reads it, I'm joined by Ashley Reese, writer, cultural commentator, and fanfic veteran.

Welcome, Ashley.

And Eli Cugini, culture writer, PhD student, and author of a defector article called Fan Fiction's Total Cultural Victory.

Hey, Eli.

Hello, hello.

I'm Brittany Luce, and you're listening to It's Been a Minute from NPR, a show about what's going on in culture and why it doesn't happen by accident.

So the first fanfic I ever read was for The Pit on HBO.

Someone linked to their own fanfic on their ex-account.

And I was like, okay, I get now why people are into this.

But then I started to learn about Omegaverse, which has really kind of opened up a portal in my brain.

OK, so for those who don't know, Omegaverse is a subgenre of erotica where people have like specific roles based on pseudoscience about hierarchies within wolf packs.

Like characters are either alphas, betas or omegas.

Not safe for work, but you can look it up if you're curious.

Also, I wasn't reading the tags of anything.

I was just like, you know, going through it.

And I'm like, I think this is supposed to be set in a Wendy's.

And I'm like, everyone's pregnant.