This Week: Is Money Ruining Fanfiction?

The world of fanfiction has changed a lot since our 2017 episode, Fanfiction (Don’t Judge.) At the time, I thought that 50 Shades of Gray – the novel that began as Twilight fanfiction – was a fluke. It turned out to be a harbinger of a controversial fanfiction-to-media pipeline. I talk with Elizabeth Minkel, editor of the site Fansplaining, about how a financial motivation has altered the way fanfiction writers tell stories and the characters from pop culture they choose to focus on. We also discuss how the conversations around representation in fanfiction have become more complicated over the past decade.