The Cult of Fanfiction

Long before publishing executives "discovered" the internet, a very dedicated group of fans had already built their own literary universe complete with sacred terminology, power hierarchies, and enough drama to make the actual source material blush. This week, Reese and Iman sit down with the iconic Christina Lauren duo, Christina Hobbs and Lauren Billings (@christinalauren), to dissect fanfiction's glow-up from AO3 comment sections to genuine big business. We're getting into the culty dialect (slash, ship AU, canon, OTP), the plagiarism scandals, the parasocial power trips, and the Fifty Shades pipeline that proved E.L. James wasn't the only one who could monetize her Twilight feelings. Press play, culties, your kudos await.

You can listen to The Cult of Fanfiction online on Radio and Podcast. Open the player on this page to stream the available audio.

The Cult of Fanfiction is an episode from Sounds Like A Cult by Studio71.

This episode is 60:42 long.

This episode was published on Mar 17, 2026.

Yes. Use the heart button on the episode page to add it to your favorite episodes list.

Yes. This page shows related episodes from Sounds Like A Cult when more episodes are available from the podcast feed.