A few weeks ago, the cast and crew of "Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip" joined Twitter en masse. And it's not just head writer Matt Albie and multi-talented S60 star Harriet Hayes. Just about everyone involved with the show hopped on board, including producer Danny Tripp, director Cal Shanley, little-used cast member Dylan Killington, staff writer Lucy Kenwright and Albie's personal assistant Suzanne (no last name). Even former S60 writer Ricky Tahoe, famously cut loose after butting heads with Albie, coincided his Twitter coming-out party with the social-network debut of his former co-workers (though maybe the upcoming premiere of his Fox show "Peripheral Vision Man" had something to do with it). It's all laid bare in 140-character bits: the bonhomie, the backstage drama, the creative struggles, the 4 a.m. miracles and, every Friday night like clockwork, the live broadcast of the long-running comedy show they all work on. There are just a couple of catches—"Studio 60" is actually a show about that aforementioned long-running comedy show, and it was cancelled four years ago. So why now, and why Twitter?

When NBC chose to debut two series about backstage antics at a comedy show in 2006, the safe bet was that the one from the guy that had the Emmys and "The West Wing" was going to outlast the one from the woman that was an actual actor and head writer on a long-running comedy show. One year later, and audiences showed they prefer their shows about making the funny to actually be funny, giving Aaron Sorkin's resume its most inauspicious black mark. Creating fake sketches that didn't revolve around Nic Cage impersonations and Gilbert & Sullivan numbers would've helped a bit, but failing to write good jokes was only one of "Studio 60"'s failings. The attempts to portray the art of comedy writing as some sort of noble suffrage were laughably overwrought, as were the show's soapier elements.

Of course, any TV show is going to have fans that want to continue the stories either untold or unfinished by the show itself, as the "Studio 60" section of fanfiction.net demonstrates. Give Albie/Tripp shippers another couple of years, and they might start to eat into the 25,000+ story lead that "Glee" fans have amassed. That still doesn't explain why this "Studio 60" "hashfic"—a term for this Twitter-based type of fanfic that I'm really surprised no one else has coined (and that I'm about to trademark)—is happening.

Making stuff up on Twitter is nothing new; if it were, there wouldn't be a need for Verified Accounts. Still, folks willing to cop to the charade can get their ya-yas out putting words in other people's mouths. Sometimes, it even pays off: Just recently, Columbia College journalism professor Dan Sinker was revealed to be the voice behind @MayorEmanuel, the popular Twitter account that blatantly pretended to be the then-mayoral candidate. Sinker was rewarded for his efforts with a book deal collecting his Emanuel tweets, as well as a crapload of publicity (including an appearance on "The Colbert Report" and a meet-and-greet with Emanuel himself). Twitter's found itself host to a wide range of accounts with people pretending to be actual people from all walks (and eras) of life: everyone's favorite blockbuster director Michael Bay, music industry pundit/crank Bob Lefetsz, famous 18th century English lexicographer Dr. Samuel Johnson, and so on.

It's also host to a wide range of folks pretending to be fictional characters, and not just for semi-promotional purposes, as in the case of author John Wray. Both the "Buffy" and "Firefly" sections of the Whedonverse are alive and well, as are the Marvel and DC universes, with Tweeters using the accounts for these characters as a way to engage in textual LARPing. (There are also outliers that are just out to have their own sort of non-continuity fun: pop-cult musings from @GodDamnBatman, @JJohanJameson's CAPS-LOCKed work-place rampages, all the "HULK" accounts regarding feminism or literary criticism or personal hygiene, etc.) Even "The West Wing" has inspired its own LARPing subculture, as this list of sixty-three WW accounts compiled by speech writer Elsie Snuffin (cough cough) attests. (So glad to see Mrs. Landingham is doing so well after that fatal car crash!) Still, these accounts are mostly people responding to current events (and each other) in the voices of the characters.

But what this "Studio 60" crew is attempting—coordinating a real-time story told between multiple Twitter accounts—is on a whole different level. For each of the past three weeks, the person(s) behind these fake accounts have put on a show pretending to put on a show. From Monday through Thursday evening, the creators voice their creative frustrations with comedy and with each other. Come Friday, 11 p.m. EST, though, "Studio 60" hits the airwaves, and showrunners (and buddies) Albie and Tripp, along with other members of the S60 family, dutifully detail the dram-com goings-on of a television show (and that show's after-party) that no one else can see. They've even gotten some actual Twitterers in on the act as well; a discussion between Albie and Tripp about getting comedian Chelsea Peretti to replace an outgoing S60 cast member got a response (in the affirmative!) from the flesh-and-blood Peretti. Unfortunately, attempts to get Tim Heidecker and Eric Wareheim to publicly discuss or explain their S60 short films, or to get a what-what from Ashton Kutcher, haven't earned any responses.

Despite those minor failures, though, what the mastermind(s) behind this endeavor are accomplishing is pretty impressive. The only thing that comes close, in terms of scale, is last year's Twitter "retelling" of Home Alone, and that was just a one-off occurrence working from an established script. If these "Studio 60" "writers" are merely doing this out of boredom, then they are some oddly inspired slackers. Thankfully for them, Twitter lends itself to lazy inspiration. The ability to indulge one's fondness for purple prose is cut off at the ankles by Twitter's limitations, but as far as getting quick-and-dirty fanfic out the door, there are worse ways. Instead of having to write actual paragraphs describing setting and character, you just write some dialogue that contains signposts of some sort—references to other characters or recurring thematic elements—and post it next to a picture of the character saying these words. Having mentions of "Dolphin Girl" and "walk-and-talks" in a blurb next to a picture of Matthew Perry's face allows folks that were ever exposed to "Studio 60" to instinctually fill in the gaps that would've previously required lines upon lines of text.

However, this S60 hashfic doesn't seem to be pitched at Sorkin apologists. Whoever's behind this effort seems to have as much fun skewering the show's oft-derided pretensions, and Sorkin's writing tics, as they are making up stuff for these characters to go through. If Sorkin stand-in Albie isn't continually fretting about his on-again/off-again relationship with Kristin Chenoweth stand-in Hayes, then he's Twittering about the serious business of comedy and how his latest "Science Schmience" sketch is a pile of garbage. More often than not, a series of Studio 60 tweets read like one-liners "30 Rock" writers scribbled on bar napkins back when they were worried about getting the ax. Hell, the "first week" of Studio 60 tweets ended with the show's cancellation, which seemed as noble a way to end this experiment as any.

Of course, with the death of bin Laden, the fine folks at NBS (Studio 60's network) just had to bring "Studio 60" back in order to give America a way to fully grapple with the enormity of this historical moment. And of course NBS flew the S60 crew out to Abbottobad to film this important event. With Dakota Fanning and Alison Janney co-hosting because of a double booking mix-up. And the show planning to end with a building explosion that might or might not have been cleared with the proper authorities. And Harriet Hayes flirting with a local cricket player, to the dismay of one Matt Albie. Actually, I take back what I said earlier: given the absurdity and hyper-dramatized nature of the plots detailed in these tweets, maybe the folks behind the Studio 60 accounts are actually the folks behind "Studio 60."

Still, despite the sarcasm and eye-rolling that seemingly oozes out of almost every batch of text posted by these characters, there's something oddly endearing about this entire enterprise. In light of the way Sorkin took his licks in his recent "30 Rock" cameo, it's only right for this take on "Studio 60" to be equally self-mocking. Yet this mockery, even at its most brazen and merciless, seems to come from a place of fondness. I doubt anyone would have the energy to come up with new stuff for these accounts for nearly a month if they didn't care at least a little bit for what the show was, or what they hoped it would become. And short of someone trying to pay tribute to a stillborn show like "Lone Star or "Skin," creating additional stories 140 characters at a time for a one-season show cancelled four years ago is as lost a cause as any.

That said, each ending from the past three weeks has been set up to give whoever's behind this charade a pretty clear exit strategy, should they choose to pull the plug. In addition to the initial cancellation, and the aforementioned Abbotobad pyrotechnics, this past "episode" ended with all sorts of cliffhangers: in addition to being the season finale, both Hayes and Simon Stiles are leaving the show, and (most importantly) Studio 60 (the studio) blows up. Despite these easy outs, however, this enterprise seems to still be an ongoing concern: no one's dead, Albie's written 420 minutes of "good comedy" since the show went on hiatus, and Hayes is already booked to host the 4th episode of next seaon, as well as (according to her Tumblr) (yes, her TUMBLR) hosting her own talk show on Fox. From the responses and growing audience this back-handed tribute has garnered, the show's "revival" promises to only get bigger and even more elaborate. Depending on where this endeavor goes next, this tweet (from sad-sack S60 staffer Andy Mackinaw) might prove to be this project's most appropriate epitaph:

David Raposa ran a fake Rickey Henderson Twitter account for almost 24 hours, and is this close to writing Terriers hashfic.

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When the star of the young adult Twilight movie franchise, Robert Pattinson, finally took the stage, he was greeted by a swell of withering sighs.

When that panel's frenzy eventually climaxed and petered out, a smaller squadron of females emerged from the bubbling mass. Together, they rode the escalator to the second floor so that they could have their own conversation about the Twilight world's attendant online fan fiction. I went up the escalator expecting to sit in another room filled with gasping girlies. I was completely wrong.

We were given a rose-colored program with panelists' names and bios at the door. They all went by their online handles: Angstgoddess003, Hopey, Lolashoes, Psymom. The forces behind Twilight fan fiction are women over thirty. Many of them are mothers.

Dressed in tidy, modest clothing, these women were spending this late July weekend away from their jobs as store clerks, hospital administrators, scientists and homemakers to meet and mingle with a group of strangers who, like them, were all enthusiastic consumers and purveyors of smut.

Smut is their playful nickname, given to X-rated fan-authored fiction pieces (Twilight fan fictions are called Twi-Fic or fandoms). The biggest Twi-Fic fan site is called Twilighted. It's a 60,000-member online community that, they said at the panel, gets three million unique hits a month. It was founded in March, 2008. The site, according to its tag line, is dedicated to 'All-Inclusive, High-Quality Fan Fiction.'

The top titles of the website have included: The List (a 78,890 word novelization of all the places the teenage couple of the series will have sex after they marry), The Office (an X-rated hybrid version of the NBC show, wherein Dunder Mifflin is staffed by vampires). There is a nine-part series named Edward and Bella's Sex Anthology. Here's a passage from The Office:

"Very, very bad move," he seethed through his teeth. Placing his hands on my shoulders, he looked into my eyes and slid the fabric to the floor. His hands took mine, turning me around, bringing them up and pressing my palms against the wall.... His touch left a spark of electricity all the way down my back, over every inch of skin he touched. I felt his hands grab my ass and squeeze, his breath hot and heaving in my ear. "Very naughty girl."


I yelped out in surprise as I felt his hand come hard against my ass, and my only response was a moan of pleasure. What the fuck was he doing to me? I would never do these things. Yet here I was, panting heavily at his rough touch. I breathed in another sharp gasp as his hands clasped the scant material on my ass and yet again, ripped it off.

These women edit stories, write reviews, judge writing contests, host podcasts, and have five conventions planned in the course of a year. The stories range from traditional romance plots (a cabin, a fireplace, a hot tub, general yearning) to ecstasy-fueled threesomes in college dorm rooms. Sites like Twilighted have filled a space on the internet that no publishing house ever could. They dodge copyright laws and taboos about teen sex. Also they do it for free.

And the leaders of Twilighted are trying to thread an extremely narrow needle. Nobody wants to get rid of the smut, because that's where the audience is. But no one really wants to talk about the smut either.

Twilight is not about vampires; it's a love story, a bodice ripper for tweens about the forbidden love between a killer and a shy girl. At the center is Edward, a 108-year old vampire housed in the exquisite body of a teenager. Though he harbors some Victorian notions about chastity and women, he also embodies the timeless qualities of a romantic lead: he is protective, mysterious and lusty.

Bella, a human in high school, has some quirks-she's klutzy and sarcastic-but really she acts as an unthreatening stand-in for the reader's affair with Edward. Most of the fan fictions on Twilighted are devoted to the sex life of Bella and Edward. (Sex between Rob and Kristen runs into legal trouble.) Many follow a general pattern: a slow build to the couple's first-usually forbidden-sexual encounter, a Bella masturbatory session, some explosive sex scenes, reflections about the nature of love and then more rapacious sex scenes.

Twilighted grabs hold of the Stephenie Meyer franchise and turns it inside out: sex, the rough and forbidden sort, which is the novel's subtext or denied desire, becomes the main focus of the writing. The fact that the characters involved are vampires is just a useful device.

Psymom, the founder and chief administrator of Twilighted, sat at the center of the panel. She's a plump red-head in her late 30s with a cropped Kate Gosselin cut and a candy-coated voice. The seven other authors on the panel show her deference, and the audience praises her with hoots.

During the TwiFic panel, Psymom skirted the sexual nature of the site. It's unclear if this is intentional dodging or just shyness-it would be reasonable to assume that someone who has made her fame in an anonymous online community dedicated to erotica could wilt before a crowd. In her introduction, Psymom plugged new aspects of the website that "have nothing to do with Twilight," such as published romance authors hosting workshops on writing, as well as non-Twilight-related fiction contests. But the crowd seemed uninterested in Twilighted's new ventures. The questions and the conversation stick to one topic: how can readers transcribe their own Twilight fantasies into compelling fiction?

Over a speaker phone, a voice asked Psymom, "Do you have any regrets or lessons learned by conceiving Twilighted?"

"I have no regrets, it has been the most amazing-" her voice cracked and she put the pads of her fingertips below her eyes, so her makeup wouldn't smudge. An audience member yelled out, "We love you, Psymom."

Shortly after the panel, I contacted Psymom to see if she'd be willing to discuss her website and the Twi-Fic world. She was delighted. I also contacted eight other popular Twilighted authors and administrators. All were happy to talk. In the course of one week and three emails, however, all were instructed not to go on record with me and a "message" was passed on from an attorney. "With participation at this level, including that you may want to use direct quotes, Twilighted would need final approval before publication to the extent it involves any input from our perspective," Psymom wrote in an email.

Two authors contacted me and said they'd be willing to be interviewed anonymously. And one actually agreed to talk.

"I'm a pervert," Becca Shear told me.

Becca is one of the top-ten most-read writers on Twilighted. Her series 'Smut, Please' remains of the 'most favorited' series on the site.

"I cuss like a sailor, I like the kinkier stuff," she said.

Becca is a 25-year-old nursing student who divides her days between school and working in the medical records office at a hospital in Phoenix. Becca has been a fan fiction writer for close to four years.

"I used to write about magic," she said. She got her start writing PG-13 fan fiction about Harry Potter. "It was tedious," she said, "because I had to come up with new spells all the time. "

We speculated about the fuzzy line between porn and erotica, and what exactly drives thousands of women to write and read Twilight smut. Becca believes it has to do with details.

"Smut, to me, is like the girl version of porn," Becca said. "Like, I'm a girl! I want details. I want a backstory! Watching two people have sex devoid of context gets kinda boring pretty quickly."

Becca is not prudish about old-fashioned video porn; she likes it. But she finds herself more titillated by serialized sex. "I like the tease!" Becca said. "I want to be seduced. Tell me about what you want to do me. That's so much more exciting."

Becca has created her own raunchy narrative using the characters and concepts from Stephenie Meyer's Twilight series but she has little loyalty to the Meyers canon. In 'canon' Twi-Fic, the characters follow the same romantic lines as they do in the book: heterosexual, single partner, couples like Edward and Bella. All of Becca's stories have the tag "AU," for alternate universe. In Becca's universe, partners swap, get a little queer and have sex in Manhattan publishing houses and elite college classrooms.

There is a splinter faction of Twilighted members who disapprove of AU. Some have taken to trolling the message boards and comment sections and castigating authors of Alternate Universe smut for defiling the series.

What remains a constant theme from 'the canon' to AU fan-fic is the element of restraint. In the Meyers series, Edward refuses to have sex with Bella because the taste of her naked skin would arouse his homicidal vampiric instincts. So when things get hot and heavy between the young duo, Edward will break away. This creates a (really quite steamy) cat and mouse game that unwinds over four books.

In several fictions, Edward is recast as Bella's unimpressed professor or her undermining but ravishing co-worker or-my personal favorite-her dreamy doctor. In a story Becca co-authored, A Tale of Two Edwards, Bella gets caught in sex triangle between the Cullen twins (this is a Becca's own twist on the story; there is only one Edward Cullen in the original Twilight). One twin is cold and irresistible. The other is sentimental and chaste. Bella cannot have both-but oh how she wants to! This scene takes place in a wine cellar:

Opening my eyes, I found Cullen watching me, his face fixed on mine, watching me writhe beneath his touch. It was torture. The look in his eyes-lust, want, need-was all there, and it was almost enough to make me uncoil. Not wanting to waste the moment, I grabbed his face within my hands and said three little words. I knew it was all wrong, but all right all at the same time.


"Fuck me, Edward."


Cullen stared at me incredulously as the words tumbled out of my mouth. However, his shocked expression was soon replaced with a look of pure desire and need.

This "fuck me" meme is common in fan-fic. At some point Bella insists that Edward break through whatever professional, ethical and/or supernatural barrier prevents their lovemaking. I asked Becca if she thinks the older readers and writers of Twilighted are scandalized by it.

"No," Becca said. "It's the teenagers. They ruin it. Younger readers want you to stick the story. The moms and older set of Twilighted are more sexually adventurous."

The moms, said Becca, enjoy the sexual spontaneity of her fiction because they've "seen it all before." But Becca has shied away from becoming too involved in the website because the older ladies tend to act "cliquish" and also tend to take smut "way too seriously."

Psymom says she works as a research psychologist. Her skittishness regarding being written about is not surprising-it's not uncommon for people who run Internet communities to have a healthy and well-earned fear of outside attention.

But Twilighted is one these amazing user-driven corners of the Internet where the porn is literary and operated for and by women. This is rare; it deserves attention. And as the fandom swells in size and the possibility of monetizing this massive community becomes more likely, it's also possible that those sitting on top may be getting even more squeamish.

The day before our scheduled interview, I received an email from Psymom. She wrote, in part: "When reviewing the interview questions you sent to my staff and me, and seeing that the focus of those questions appears to be directed solely to sexually explicit fanfiction stories, I am troubled."

She also wrote: "I spent some time researching some of your work. Unfortunately, that raised some concerns on my part. Many of your articles seem to be focused on opinion-based commentary designed to tantalize your readers by denigrating the subject of the article."

Psymom did agree to answer questions about her website by email. Her answers included:

Q. What crosses the line from 'smut' to 'pornography'?
A. As with art, it is in the eye of the beholder.

Q. Do you feel like your work is subversive (i.e. sexualizing a teenage romance?) Given the fact that Stephenie Meyer is Mormon and one of the main themes of the book is chastity.
A. The overall theme of the books is love-it is a love story about a couple that falls in love, gets married, and has a child despite the adversities they must face.

Q. How do writers and readers react to gay story lines?
A. People read and write what interests them.

Throughout our correspondence, Psymom insisted that I just didn't get it. She explained that Twilight fan fiction was a huge genre and that what she called "adult" pieces only make up a minority of the fanfiction content. She said that there is nothing naughty or subversive in fantasizing about a married couple (Bella and Edward get hitched in the fourth book).

There are only two stories on Twilighted with "Psymom" as the author. (Her piece "Stranger than Fiction" was taken down "for legal reasons," she has explained on the site.) One of these two remaining pieces is about Rob Pattinson and Kristen Stewart, just after they are cast in Twilight.

In the story, Rob calls Kristen the day before they shoot their first scene, in which the director will have them kiss. She is staying at the Four Seasons in L.A., and he comes by and picks her up in a silver Volvo, just like the character in the books. In the car, they listen to Debussy. They find an Italian place in Long Beach. "'Be with you in a moment...' said a very flamboyant guy with a nametag that said 'Marcus.' He was flipping through a copy of the National Enquirer and didn't seem eager to be interrupted." Then the waiter is overcome with his fandom for Pattinson.

Over dinner, the two actors plan to make out in the car-but decide to save their burning passion for the screen. "Method acting, remember?" Rob says to Kristen.

Her other story is about the characters Edward and Bella. "In honor of your birthday, Rob, I have written some 'Human Edward/Bella' smut...yeah, that's what we'll call it..." she wrote in the introduction. It contains this sentence: "As I slid my hand back down his shaft, I lowered to my knees and let my tongue make the next ascent."

The reviews were good-terrific, in fact.

"I had to take a cold shower after reading this, it was soo good!" wrote Kayleigh, signing her review "xx."

"I was undone from the first line–just imagining that ass!" wrote Laura Cullen. "Kudos!"

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