Retro Fanfic Retrospective

We indulge ourselves in reminiscences about the voyage of discovery and exploration that was being an anime fan around the turn of the millennium. We remember the slow internet speeds, purple Kodocha Fansubs tapes, and inability to find any given volume of manga! Also, we had to walk to the anime con uphill, through the snow.

We return to an old favorite, armed with marginally more Xena: Warrior Princess knowledge than we had the first time around. Xena kills a very large man, Gabrielle tells fairy tales, and the two of them have sex together at LEAST three times.

bit.ly/rfrdragon

After more five years and 170 episodes of podcasting, Amado has finally written a full 1600 words of actual, genuine Magic School Bus fanfiction. And Tory and Della are ready to listen to it and try to serve as betas. Beta readers, I mean. You can't be too careful with the Omegaverse out there.

Link to the (slightly revised) story: https://archiveofourown.org/works/57044551

We return to Newgrounds (not to be confused with Newsgrounds, which is presumably a news site) to discuss the early fan animations of LegendaryFrog. Do they still hold up in 2024? And does it really matter, because dozens of lines from them are lodged in our middle school lizard brains either way? I'm looking at YOU, Aeris!

Link to the videos: https://legendaryfrog.newgrounds.com/

Seatbelts, everyone! Tory and Amado go on a magical journey to compare and contrast two Magic School Bus fanfics that have very different ideas about where the magic lies. Arnold may be the heart of the show. Mary Poppins makes a guest appearance.

Link to the stories:

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/4787280/1/What-Comes-After

https://archiveofourown.org/works/296134

In this roundtable discussion episode our co-hosts discuss the 'why' of fanfiction. What could possibly drive these miscreants to produce such materials?

We discuss things like fan culture, seeing yourself in characters and fiction, and creating spaces for exploration of unrepresented groups.

Beverly Clearly would not approve. 

We make a two-night visit to the fandom of Kino's Journey to read "the nature of uncarved blocks." It's a short piece that explores Kino's transgender journey. (See what I did there?) We get sidetracked overanalyzing the use of parenthesis. Kino is Kino.

Link to the story: https://archiveofourown.org/works/88265

Elite commando fanfic readers Della and Amado read a fancomic that skirts right up to the edge of being official but doesn't quite cross that line. Spartan sharpshooter Jun has some issues that he needs to work through. Della has some Halo lore to talk about. And most importantly, Covenant soldiers get blown up by some sticky grenades.

Link to the comic, where (and we cannot stress this enough) the PDF file is available from the lower-right corner of the page: https://leviathan.bungie.org/flip.html

The magic of Yuletide brings us this delightful pitch for a replacement for Alien 3, in which Ripley becomes a pirate, Hicks sells out, and it turns out the REAL facehugger was Capitalism all along.

Link to the story: https://archiveofourown.org/works/310288

We try not to think about the Pocket Monsters we've left in the box for the last 20 years as we read a love story between a trainer and their huge flying bug with psychic powers. While we're at it, we argue over what happens to Pokemon while they're in their balls, and which interpretation is the most disturbing.

Link to the story: https://forums.serebii.net/threads/butterfree-one-shot-g.557311/