Transformative Taskmaster | Ep01 – The horny side of the Taskmaster fandom

VO
Hello and welcome to Transformative Taskmaster, a podcast by fans, for fans and about fans. This episode TK will be speaking with fic enjoyer and friend of the podcast, Nat. Together they’ll be discussing fic trends and the effects of a fandom that has been perceived and discussed on national television.

TK
All right. Nat, welcome to the Transformative Taskmaster podcast!

Nat
Happy to be here!

TK
Yay! Happy to have you. So, you have been part of our little group chat for awhile, and, it has been so much fun to get to know you over the last, what, year and a half? Or something like that.

Nat
I think year. I think year, I think I showed up a little bit after the first, Greg and Alex, New York event.

Tk
Awesome. Now, you didn’t go to that, did you?

Nat
No, I did not, I did not.

TK
So sad. Hindsight’s 20:20 am I right? That would have been fun

Nat
No, I like just hiding out at home.
Other people can get in the lineup and do the crowded things, and then they just feed me the really good videos and highlights and I get to stay cozy.

TK
Yeah. That’s real. So we are going to be talking about the history of Taskmaster fanfic and I understand that you bring many stats with you.

Nat
[laughs] I do. They’re kind of rough stats, but when I started looking at, started writing and started reading Taskmaster fanfic, I at some point thought, how the heck did this happen?

You know, it’s a show that has a lot of things that you could pick up and make fanfic out of. Like there’s a lot of content on the show that’s clearly, you know, ripe for fic. But I just thought, how did it get to be such a lively fic community? On AO3 specifically on our Archive of Our Own.
And so I went to the Taskmaster UK, RPF tag, and I went all the way back to the very first stories, and I scrolled all the way through page by page, to just see how this all developed. So, yeah, I’m here to, to share that, that weird moment of just hyper fixated brain rot, and to share my, my pet theories, of why Taskmaster has so much fic.

TK
Yeah. So tell me, what was your experience like going back through, like, to the original, you know, first few fics and like, did they have any kind of like, theme to them? Because you said earlier that there’s a lot of things in the show that you’re like, well, that’s just waiting to be written. But was that like, was it like, a Greg and Alex dynamic? Was it like a specific task? Like, what was it?

Nat
So it was at first, absolute crickets. And that’s what really surprised me when I went back. So Taskmaster premiered in July of 2015. There is no fic whatsoever until November of 2015, and then there’s only like four. There’s one in November, three in December, and then it’s back to absolutely no fic until the summer of 2016.
So we have, you know, a year and a half. Oh no, not summer of 2016. I’m sorry. Much later until June of 2018. So in the first like three years, we have four fics. And they’re, adorably G-rated. [both laugh] They’re like, what if somebody did a task differently? Or what if we had a task but it had live Pokemon? Or, you know, Josh would have come get caught in a time loop, like it’s really tame. It’s really, sweet. And, and it just doesn’t really develop into anything. So then what changes is, one particular poster shows up, and that’s, Sashataakheru. I’ll call them, Sasha, I don’t I don’t know them, I hope that’s okay to shorten their name. But basically we have one person holding down the tag absolutely single handedly for the first ever. Sasha publishes 56 consecutive fics before anyone else writes one.

TK
Wow. That’s incredible.

Nat
Yeah. And Sasha from day one is in with, like, heavy BDSM themes. Bringing in other contestants. Like a wide range of different ships. We’ve got, like, Greg and Josh Widdicombe, we’ve got Greg and Cheryl Pascoe and Alex, we’ve got, you know, Greg and Rasheen. But yeah, Sasha just goes super, super, super hard. Pretty much on their own for quite a long while.

TK
As somebody who is like, a people pleaser and is, like I, I’m known on our little group chat as like the, the, the raccoon that will, like, steal your ideas with permission, of course, with my grubby little raccoon hands, and I’ll go write a fic.
Nat
If you want a story, I’ll get you a story.

TK
Yeah. Yeah. I can’t imagine. Right. What was it, 56?

Nat
56.

TK
I can’t imagine writing 56 fics like, just for myself. Like, that sounds wild,

Nat
Right? So, like, just this single minded writer just really, kind of setting up how all the fic goes from there, essentially. We have other authors start to show up after Sasha’s been writing for, you know, a few months. And we start to have people in a very small cluster of authors, doing a lot of gifts for each other. So there you see that kind of people pleaser and that kind of, like, community part come in, right where people are now enjoying this together.
They found their little, their little clan, of folk who are into the same thing and they’re writing with each other. So this kind of peaks in, like December 2018. We’ve got 28 fics written that month, which is, you know, not that, like we only have 40 some fics written in total before that month. And then we’ve got this burst in December of 2018. It seems like people are like making each other Christmas presents. Right. Or their on breaks. This is also by this point we are up into series seven, of Taskmaster airing. [TK makes anticipatory ohhh] Right. So you know we’ve got Rhod. We’ve got James. But also I think in series six and in series seven, this is when we have a lot more of the kind of on-air, chippy BDSM dynamic between Greg and Alex.
So one of the things I noticed as I was scrolling through is by this point when we’re in series seven, the fics have a lot more explicit, references to things said on the show. So we have fic titles like So Servile It’s Vile and Obscenely Obedient. And then the flip side of that Obediently Obscene.
But these are quotes like straight quotes from the show. And at first we didn’t have that. At first it was people kind of, you know, writing their own fics, but not necessarily having as much like canon content and like literal word for word quotes from the show to use.
But by series seven, that’s there. We have the Thank you Daddy outtake, and we have, the Asim asking, you know, I don’t know if you two are going to fuck or fight outtake.
Right? Like there’s a lot more of the show kind of feeding the fic really directly, I think.

TK
And do you think that was intentional by them?

Nat
By the show?

TK
Or like by Alex. or Greg? I think probably by Alex, because Greg didn’t even know that there was fic being written about that one podcast that Alex brought it up.

Nat
Right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I don’t know if Alex is intentionally feeding fic. I think Alex has absolutely, from day one, been fully on board with fic. So this is my pet theory about Taskmaster fanfiction, and it’s that it’s essentially Alex Horne’s fault. That, that this man kind of single handedly has, has stoked this whole, this whole phenomenon. So, yeah, like you said, it’s September 2019, so it’s after Sasha and that kind of small group of authors have kind of built themselves up a bit. September of 2019, we have a Horne Section podcast episode where Alex has Greg on as a guest and has Greg do along with himself. Like a dramatic reading of one of Sasha’s fics. Which is wild. That is a wild thing to do. Yeah. Yeah. This is, I think, still a bit arm’s length from Taskmaster, right? So this is on Alex’s Horn Section podcast. So, smaller following, you know, a bit more niche. But, yeah, he reads the fic out along with Greg. You have the feeling that kind of like he was waiting until Greg was on as a guest, you know, to spring this on him. So my sense is that Alex was probably aware of this for a little while. Yeah? So he reads it out and weirdly I thought that this would kind of spark some additional fic. But when I go and look, somebody, very kindly ran the comment frequency by time. And in this tag this has zero impact on comment frequency. And this actually seems like it has a negative impact on the number of fics that are published

TK
That’s wild.

Nat
Yeah. So this airs in September and in September there’s 13 fics published. Then in October there’s four, and in November there’s zero. Yeah. So I think because it was a small group. And a group was probably pretty invested in Alex. Right? So probably knew about The Horne Section podcast, I think he actually just spooked people

TK
Interesting

Nat
And everybody ducked their heads for a little bit.
It does come back though. [laughs]

TK
Thank goodness

Nat
November 2019 is like the last month to ever have no fic in it. So then, yeah, 2019, we’re averaging seven fics per month. So still pretty, low. Steady but low. And so, you know, we move into like we’ve got series seven airing which is obviously a big deal. 7,8,9. And by series nine we have that fanfic on the podcast. We have that blog post about the psychosexual intimacy of Taskmaster. Right? So I think by this point, we’re in 2020. Things are being uploaded to YouTube for free, and there’s like, at least a sense within the fandom that there is like a dirty side to the Taskmaster fandom, right, that people are talking about the thank you daddy people are talking about, the fic and things like that.
Things kind of stay pretty steady. 2020 we have an average of ten fics a month. You would think that Covid would have made more people sit at home and be horny, but apparently not.

TK
Yeah. We were all too busy sitting at home freaking out

Nat
Just sobbing. Just. Yeah, [both laugh]

TK
All day, every day baby

Nat
and figuring out Zoom. [both laugh]
So 2021, there’s this big boom. And I think, weirdly, that it is because people were so obsessed with Mike Wozniak.

TK
I mean, valid

Nat
Fair, right? Totally fair. So when series 11 airs, we have more and more fics and we’re getting up to, like, almost by the end of 2020, daily or a little bit more than daily.
And we also have a like, they’re much more, like a more diverse, like, author ecosystem, basically. We have some people who are still posting, like all the time. We’ve got NoStarsForNaughtyBoys, we’ve got properverse, TheKeyToMyPie, they’re posting a lot. Sasha is starting to kind of fade out and not post as frequently.
We have a huge uptick in the frequency of comments. People are a lot more interactive, and we have a lot more people who are just showing up and posting like just one, and then going away like a lot more casual authors or people who are just posting a couple. So it’s not like a small dedicated group anymore.
It’s like we have, you know, some dedicated posters, but it’s also like a big enough set of authors that you can do just a casual post and people will still find it. People will comment on it. Yeah. So 2021, we’re averaging 24 fics a month.

TK
Pretty good.

Nat
Pretty good. Yeah. I feel like the next kind of high watermark is in 2023. 2022 we’re just kind of chugging along. We have some really cool authors start posting. Knop_e is one of my favorites, Panda. We’ve got CarpetSnake posting all the time. All of a sudden. But it holds pretty steady, like 2021, we had 24 fics a month, 2022, we’ve got 17. So like not a huge explosion there.

TK
But 2023, we have a whole bunch of things happening. [both laugh] So we have, series 15 airing, and so series 15, we have those on air fic mentions. Yeah?

TK
Oh, is that the. I keep saying it’s series 14, but I, that’s just me with my horrible memory. So it is series 15, huh?

Nat
Yeah. Series 15, episode three.
If you know, filthy little ferrets, and let’s ruin our friendship. And that’s the one that, like, actually makes it into the episode, I believe too. Right? Like that’s the one that actually airs in the main episode.

Tk
Yes.

Nat
Because we have some other mentions that end up in the outtakes.
And, you know, there’s just a whole kind of like, secondary set of content in the outtakes where like, the super obsessive fans are seeing all the horny stuff in the outtakes, and then the mainstream fans who are seeing the kind of stripped down version on YouTube are like, what the heck are you talking about?

TK
Yeah. Yeah.

Nat
But this is like not only on the show, but like, in the actual main aired version.

TK
Yes, I, I remember that specifically because when I was watching, I was just like binging, you know, like the whole, you know, series by series. And when he mentioned that in the episode, I don’t think I had been watching outtakes at that point just because I don’t think I knew they existed.
But he said that and I literally paused my video and I was like, there’s no way. And I went on AO3. I was like, oh my God [both laugh]That was my moment.

Nat
Yeah. Absolutely! And by that point, like you go, oh my gosh. And you go to AO3 and by that point you show up on AO3 and there’s like, a conversation you can take part in, hey? Like there’s a big cluster of people. You can find stuff that you like. And like my feeling is that, early in the fic, like, we started with kind of a free for all. Then it got very Greg and Alex focused. And then we have, these periods where sometimes we have a lot of different pairings, like especially when Mike Wozniak shows up and then it kind of goes back to, okay, we’re just doing the Greg and Alex we’re just doing this kind of specific dynamic.
Sometimes you’ll have someone kind of like Rhod or James breakthrough. But in 2023 we have UnquietSpirits start posting and then like, all the pairings. Right? Like UnquietSpirits writes about everybody and has a much wider diversity. And we also have, Illuminescence start posting, who does these huge long fixed again with like multiple relationships and a lot going on in them.
So like, we have just yeah, kind of this explosion in creativity. We have this on air fic mentioned that drives a lot of people there. I was looking at the numbers, and I was a little surprised that it didn’t seem like that the on air fic mention didn’t like immediately made everything explode. But partly, it takes a while to get an Archive of Our Own account approved,sometimes.
Right? Right. And then also, I feel like, you know, Archive of Our Own is just getting more and more and more known at this point, itself. So more people are likely to have pre existing accounts or to kind of know where to find the fic, you know, now, as opposed to, to then. So we have the on air fic mention, and then kind of following that, in August of 2023, we have the Little Alex Horne Fic Club start up on Tumblr and on Archive of Our Own.
So this is a group where they do, monthly prompts, people are kind of giving each other gifts, talking about fake writing, interacting more. So again, we have like, enough authors and enough variety that people are now able to build these little kind of communities within it.
2023 we’re still, weirdly enough, just averaging 17, fics a month. So we have, I think, like more variety and more community and this on air fic mention. But like it’s still a bit of a slow burn.

TK
I wonder if that’s because, and I know like, Illuminescence specifically, but I know there are also other writers that do this is that they will write like long fics. So I wonder if that’s, if that’s affecting the numbers at all.

Nat
Yeah. And I should say like these are really rough numbers where I’m just going by the last date updated, which especially if something’s being published multi parts is not always accurate. We have some authors, like, NotAlexHorne, who, you know, pulled everything at one point and then reposted it all at a different date.
So like this won’t be fully accurate. But yeah, I think you’re right. Like, sometimes just the length of writing will push things along, and smooth it out. And then also, now that I can compare the dates that things were last updated and the comment frequency, you’ll see the comment frequency is a lot more sensitive to like specific events or specific mentions, things being published, etc..
But the actual fic publication frequency is much smoother. So the comments will spike while a new series is airing, and then they’ll fade off while there’s nothing on air.

TK
Right.

Nat
But the fics just keep coming. As the people who are writing fic are the year round fans. And also, you know, are taking some time, like, I mean, Illuminescence writes things that are often like 80,000 words long?

TK
Yeah, I’d say like 40,000. Is is, her like low point?

Nat
Yeah yeah yeah yeah. Unlike, you know, you’re in there with your, your 1500, and so you your, our, you know, not our year round fan, but our day to day fan.

TK
Yeah, when Alex is saying there’s two a day, that’s me. [laughs]

Nat
Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. For sure. So 2024 is when things go completely cuckoo banana pants in terms of, of fic frequency. So we were at; 2021: 24 fics a month, 2022: 17, 2023: 17, 2024: we have 52 fics per month.

TK
Yeah…

Nat
Yeah!

TK
And that’s how you.

Nat
Yeah,

TK
Can tell that’s when I joined the fandom. [both laugh]

But yeah.

Both
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Nat
But we also have some other things. So we’ve got, in Champion of Champions three. January of 2024. Partly we have, Seth and Alex go to New York, you know, like the international fandom is, is is boosting. We have champion champions three, which has that mention of A Big Boy Like You, which ends up in an outtake, which is a James/Ed fic, hey? Another, that’s an UnquietSpirit. But I think in Champion of Champions three, we also and maybe we’ll talk about this more, later when we talk about how all the different people who are kind of contributing to this, like mythos. We’ve got Sophie Duker just like, showing up for Champion of Champions three as an unapologetic shippy fangirl.

TK
Yes.

Nat
She’s got temporary tattoos on with, like, Greg and Alex’s face and hearts. She brings the couples cosplay kit, right? So the fact that Sophie is able to, like, riff on this stuff on air, I think shows you just how established the horny side of the Taskmaster fandom is by this point. We’re all like, oh yes, we’re all aware, we’re all aware of the Greg and Alex dirty stuff. This is now a normal part of the show. This is something that, you know, a comedian on the show can just come in and mention. And we all understand.

TK
Yeah.

Nat
So that brings us basically to now, January of 2025, we have, Greg and Alex reading out fic on Seth Meyers. This time it does seem to have immediately caused an uptick in comments. And, I think partly because of the excitement around that event, but partly just because there’s so much fic now. We also have the highest ever month for total fic published on Archive of Our Own in the Taskmaster tag. So that’s 110 works published in January of 2025 alone.

TK
Yeah.
And I don’t know, my personal stats are. But I know so far this year, I’ve been posting at least one fic a day, and there was a day that I posted six.
So, a good chunk of the January numbers are definitely. I mean, I’m guessing I’m maybe like 20% of that number [laughs]

Nat
Yeah. No for sure. And, and that’s the thing where I 100% a lot of those numbers are you.
I think what we see over, kind of the course of, you know, kind of 2020 through 2024 is that different people will pick up that mantle [laughs] of being like, the hyper frequent fic writer.
So, like, you are probably the most hyper frequent check writer. But, you know, like, there’s times when Sasha posting one a day, there’s times when all of a sudden somebody, you know, just goes on a tear and they post 1 or 2 things a day for, you know, maybe it’s only for three weeks. And then they fade out. But like, I don’t think that that boost in the numbers is just like, oh well TK’s here now.

TK
No. Definitely not. I mean, yeah, there are people. That you and I both know in our group that are like, posting at a rate that is like coming really close to mine.
And I’m starting to sweat, you know, I’m like, oh no. There’s like these, these people are fast, like, they’re, they’re almost as fast. Or even, you know, a little faster in some cases. But yeah, we’ve definitely got like a, I think there’s like at least three of us like currently that I know of that are

Nat
just like churning it out.

TK
Yes

Nat
Yeah. And I’m interested, you know, partly because selfishly, I’m like, well I have, you know, six fics, total. I’m interested in, like, the casual writers too. Right? Like, I think that there is a higher frequency of casual writers and of like, regular but lower volume writers. And that having people who really hold down the tag and are publishing constantly makes it easy for everybody else to kind of like, slip in, try it out, you know, post here or there and know that there’s an overall activity level that’s going to get their fics read,is going to get them feedback, is going to get them, you know, interaction that they want. But yeah, nearly 40% of all Taskmaster fic has been posted in the past 12 months.

TK
Wow. That’s wild.

Nat
Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, here’s to 2025 and we’ll see kind of where it goes from there. But I mean, so Alex, Alex showed up in 2019 when it was really one person writing to themselves.
And was like this is fun and picked it up. Yeah? And Alex seems to have kind of stuck with, I think he’s had Sasha in his head as his model for what fanfic is like for quite a while because people would ask him about it and he’d be like, oh, I like the Christmas ones. And Christmas themed ones really was a Sasha thing.
But then, you know, Alex is the one who’s bringing it up in 2015 on air. Alex is the one who’s bringing it up in Champion of Champions in 2024. In the outtake. It’s always Alex driving this bus. Like, Alex has been, entertained by this and interacting with this all the way through from when it was essentially, you know, a one author fandom to now when it is a very, kind of, well-developed, multi author, like lively, thriving tag.
So then for Greg and Alex to go on Seth Meyers and to kind of role play it as though this is Greg. [laughs] Greg is the one who is making Alex feel uncomfortable by reading fic on air is like, just patently ridiculous, right? Like, we see you. We see you, Gregory Daniel Davies.
I think, you know, I assume that they wanted the like, Greg being mean to Alex dynamic to be part of the interview because it’s the dynamic of the show.
But this was really the first time that we have Greg publicly being like, I like this, this is fun. This is my favorite. Oh, I particularly like this part right? So Greg seems, you know, actively on board in a way that he wasn’t, but I think you saw that, like, Alex couldn’t even. He couldn’t even commit to the bit.
And Alex commits to every single bit like that is all he does, right? Alex couldn’t fully commit to being uncomfortable or to pretending to be uncomfortable. He’s like, oh, well, no, I’m just uncomfortable with it being read on American television. He says, right. And then he makes a real point of being like, but the writing is good. The writing is good, you know, double thumbs up, like he really doesn’t want to come across like he’s shitting on fic writers. Right? So, yeah, I mean, I think Alex has been driving this all the way along. And my theory going into looking at the numbers really was that this was, like, entirely Alex’s fault. Like that Alex had really stoked all of this.
I think what I’m seeing now that I’m have a bit better numbers and hopefully I will continue to get better ones and do smarter things with them. But is that it’s really a mix? Like when Alex mentions fic? Absolutely. It drives people to fic, that’s how you know, that’s how we got you. But, when we were looking through the comments, somebody noticed that there was a big spike in common frequency on July 12th of 2021.
And like that spike is not because of anything Alex did or anything that happened on the show. It’s because somebody, AThingWithWings posted the, your body is my body or sorry, My Body is Your Body fan video. And people went crazy for it because it’s amazing, right? So like sometimes the spikes in activity are internally generated.
It’s because fans are doing things that other fans love and were interacting and commenting and liking. So partly it’s driven by like, you know, the show mentions absolutely help. And I think absolutely kind of validate it and make people feel a little bit more comfortable with it where like, okay, Alex thinks it’s funny. Alex doesn’t think it’s creepy. This is okay.
But I think it is this kind of symbiotic thing where partly it’s the fandom is generating the fandom, partly the creators are interacting. Is, is giving it a boost. Yeah? And that that’s kind of going back and forth.

TK
Yeah. For sure. Yeah. I mean, because you know that in our like in our group chat that we’re part of like specifically. We’ll, we’ll sometimes give ourselves like little challenges to be like, oh, this month we’re going to focus on like Top Alex or this month, you know, it’s going to be like Valentine’s Day stuff, you know, like, yeah, fluff and smut and stuff like that. And like, so I’m like currently at the time of recording this, we’re in the middle of, like a bingo, kind of thing where we, where there’s like, there’s like 145, bingo prompts and then everybody gets the right bingo board and then, you know, you just try to fill out.
I’ve already gotten a blackout, but that was like weeks ago. [both laugh]

Nat
Yeah. And if people want to go in and kind of follow up on this and see what this looks like on Archive of Our Own. If you look for Little Alex Fic Club, sorry, little Alex Horne Fic Club. Last summer we did a big, big exchange, where, you know, everybody put in what they’d like to see, what they’d like to have somebody else to write.
And then we all got, paired up and we all wrote each other things. And I think that was. I mean, how many fics were in that? I should look.

TK
Yeah, off the top of my head, I have no idea. I just remember that being really, really fun. Like, that was.

Nat
Oh, it was so fun.

TK
So much fun to do.
Because it was like a

Nat
24.

TK
Oh, okay. That’s not bad. Yeah. No. Yeah. 24 works in that collection. Where people are kind of writing. Writing things for each other. And so that’s all kind of, you know, a core group of, of, like, hardcore nerd writers. But, you know, any time you have that, then all of a sudden, you know, you’ve got 24 fics dropping on the same day, and then people are coming to the tag and they’re sharing it on Tumblr and they’re commenting.
It’s spiraling off other things, like, I think the one that I wrote, I wrote something for UnquietSpirit in the exchange that was about like, basically a, you know, BDSM, party that was like episode themed. And I think you wrote a spin off of that, didn’t you?

Nat
I think so, because you wrote that one for UnquietSpirit, and I read it and I was like, this is my new favorite thing. Oh my gosh, this is. And then I was like, I need there to be a follow up to this, because I think you left it as like, not, not quite a fade to black thing, but like and then

Nat
they were heading to the after party

TK
there was the after party and I’m like, I need to know what happens at the after party. And you’re like, I can’t be fucked to do this. And I was like, okay, then I’ll do it. Let me do it

Nat
yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So I mean, you know, fic, fic, fic, begets fic like, as people are writing, they’re bouncing off each other too. Yeah?

TK
Yeah, absolutely.

[Trumpet intermission]

TK
So we’re going to, we’re going to take a little break in the conversation to play some games.

Nat
oh absolutely

TK
And by some games I mean A game. And the game is called fact or fanfic,So all right, so I’m going to read you three, quotes. And all of these quotes are going to be like Greg’s introduction to Alex at the, at the start of every show type of thing. And so, you are going to tell me whether you think it is fact or fanfic.

Nat
If I do badly at this, I’m going to be, like profoundly upset.

TK
Oh, I like I, one of my guests earlier like that we recorded yesterday quizzed me on stuff and I got zero right. I was so embarrassed

Nat
If, if I was on Taskmaster I would fully be like an Ed Gamble/John Robbins. Like, absolute tryhard who cares way too much.

TK
Yeah, you and me both

Nat
Okay. So let’s see how badly I’m going to embarrass myself.

TK
Okay, here we go. So first, first one and next to me obscenely obedient and believe me, obediently obscene. It’s Little Alex Horne.

Nat
Oh that’s a gimme. Because Sasha wrote fics with that as a title. So that, that has to be real.

TK
That is correct. It is a fact. All right.

Nat
See, reading fanfic will help you in your life.

TK
Yes. That’s true.

[both laugh]

TK
All right, next, second one. And next to me is a man who most days I desperately wish I didn’t know and who most nights I know. Biblically, it’s little Alex Horne.

Nat
I’m going to say that that’s also real.

TK
That one is by Illuminescence.

Nat
That’s a good one. That’s a really good one.

TK
Yes. It’s bums get all the fun by Illuminescence. She’s really good at those banter sessions.

Nat
She’s so good.
TK
Yeah. All right, last one. This is your. This is your redeeming chance because you’ve. You’re one and one so far.

Nat
This is a tie break.

TK
Yes. Here we go. And to my left is my assistant. He excels at Excel and the schedules are his happy fuel. But he’s never met a spreadsheet he wouldn’t spread on the sheets for. It’s little Alex Horne

Nat
That’s fic.

TK
That is fic. It’s another Illuminescence. It’s

Nat
honestly the one that at first the second one, I was like, this feels like fic. But what got me was Biblically because I can just I can so clearly picture Greg saying that.

TK
Yeah, it’s so easy to hear it in his voice. Yeah.

Nat
Oh, Illuminescence is so good.

TK
Just so amazing. That one is, Unconventional Upholstery Repair. Which is, quite the title.

Nat
Nothing says sex like upholstery repair.

TK
You know these. If anybody can make it work, it’s these guys.

Nat
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

TK
Like, to be fair,

Nat
Alex doing a double thumbs up. The writers are good. They’re good.

TK
Oh, I love that little reaction image because his little face is just, like, so torn. It’s just like, ahhhhh, I’m uncomfortable. But it’s good. I love you guys. Like, Alex, please, I’m begging you.
Oh, goodness. All right, well, good job. You, You won, you won the game section. You’ll get a little trophy on the website.

Nat
Oh, good, good, good.

TK
I’ll make sure you get it, a little Greg’s head trophy.
Okay. So, so we’ve talked a lot about the history of the stats of Taskmaster fanfic. We’ve talked about how, you know, Alex has made it happen, how the community has made it happen. And, you know, kind of the trends in when things happen on the show or during the off season or whatever, stuff like that.
So now I want to talk about how Taskmaster, how the Taskmaster universe or, like the lore, if you will, is like a co-created type of world between like canon contributions and then fanon contributions, which would be like fan contribution. Feel like that, pretty straightforward. But so like the actual canon of the show, plus what the fans create, equals this kind of Taskmaster universe kind of thing.

Nat
Absolutely. Yeah. And to me, this is really, really fascinating. And I think it has its roots, partly in improv and in collaborative storytelling and the way that everything just gets kind of. Yes and-ed right? But my half baked theory is that, I mean, of course, there’s all sorts of real people fiction out there. You can find fiction about anything rule 34 but I think the fandoms that have really active, real people fiction tags are often fandoms where there’s something in the original work itself that opens the door to imagining these people together, or that kind of makes some kind of invitation to fans to imagine these people together.
So, you know, outside of Taskmaster or some of that kind of more, mainstream, big, real people fiction, fandoms are boybands and professional sports.
And in both of those, there’s like an implicit invitation to think about these people as being in relationships with each other or with with fans. Right? Like boybands are there as surrogate boyfriends. And a lot of their appeal is that they invite young women to imagine being in relationships with them. And so, you know, fanfic is partly that and it’s partly imagining them being in relationships with each other, but a lot of their marketing is this kind of often synthetic, like, oh, yeah, we totally have this real friendship. We totally live in a house together, you know, and, and celebrate birthdays and hug each other, and. Right? So there’s something there for fic writers to latch on to.
Professional sports obviously not often with that romantic angle, but you do spend a lot of time thinking about how do these personalities mesh? What’s the give and take here? How do these people work together? What’s their relationship? And so then, you know, hockey fandom takes that and turns it into into hookups.
So, with Taskmaster, like, it’s a game show, it’s very weird, but it has that a game show has this much fanfic. And I think a big part of it is that Alex and Greg are in persona a lot of the time that they’re on screen and they’re creating those characters together for with each other and with all of the contestants.
So we have Alex, you know, as Little Alex Horne, and we have Greg as The Taskmaster. And of course, Greg as The Taskmaster is nothing like Greg in real life, who’s the world’s biggest, you know, people pleasing sweetheart softie. But, there’s this lore that starts getting developed where, you know. Oh, yeah, we live in a house together. Oh, yeah he removes all the dead skin from my feet. You know, Alex says I never scream and Greg says, oh, yes, you do. Right! There’s all these little moments that build up this, canon sexual relationship between The Taskmaster and Little Alex Horne, right? Like, not between Greg and Alex, but between those two personas like, it’s canon that those two characters are together and fucking.
And so at first you’re kind of getting this mostly in the Greg and Alex back and forth, and then sometimes it’s they’re doing it collaboratively. Right? Like Greg goes in the house where we live together. And Alex immediately kind of echoes him, and goes together,

TK
our lovely house together.

Nat
Thank you. Yeah, I couldn’t quite get it, but yeah. But then you start to get the contestants are feeding into this, right? Sometimes they’re torturing Alex because they know that that’s going to make Greg happy. Yeah, and they say so. They’re like, I knew this would get me points because this is. You want to see him getting debased and tied up and turned into a water feature and a mermaid and all these things.
But, you also get contestants starting to kind of throw, throw, like throw the ball back, right? Play the game too. So the one that stands out to me is Asim in Series six saying, you know, I don’t know whether you two are going to fuck or fight. And Greg immediately. Yes ands it and says, oh, you know, frequently both, simultaneously.
And so you start to get these broader conversations happening on screen between Greg, Alex, and the contestants where they’re all making this lore together. And you have it where you can also, you know, in on purpose, kind of like throw a wrench into things and mess with it. So you have Greg doing those repeated intros to Alex, you know, saying that he doesn’t think women should vote or fly airplanes or, that he thinks his middle child’s tutor is hot as hell and no, his neighbor is hot as hell and twice as spicy, he has a crush on his kid’s teacher and things like that. So, like, it’s not that Alex is in full control of the Little Alex Horne persona. Greg gets to add stuff if he wants to. Everybody gets to add stuff if they want to. And so there’s like this really open invitation to everybody involved in the show to add stuff to, to contribute to the lore.
And so canon is never as tightly controlled on Taskmaster as it is on, you know, a show that has a clear showrunner or a book that has a single author, like it’s already co-created, it’s already always collaborative and always open to like, reinterpretation and additions. And so I think the fans see that and they’re like, oh, cool, me too.
You know, I want to play, pass me the ball. Absolutely, I’m going to yes and the heck out of that, right?

TK
Yeah. Yeah. My for, the thing that I always think about is Sophie Duker on the bike or like Alex is on the bike and she needs to put all the ducks in his basket or whatever. Something about a bike and ducks and baskets. And she’s like, Alex, you’re doing this to yourself. And he’s like, I do that for him. Just like, you did not need to say that. But like, okay.

Nat
Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So you’ve got Alex, you know, chucking that in. You have moments to, in that same series we’ve got enable Alex to bite his duck.

TK
What a what a task.

Nat
What a task. Where Alex is in a pink suit, out of nowhere. And Alex long term wore pink underwear until he started wearing black underwear, specifically because Greg told him to switch colors. That’s on Alex’s off menu episode, which is a wild episode. Anyway, so pink has like, this weird loaded meaning, and then it is very much like you’re trying to get him to like, use a duck as a ball gag, essentially, while he’s restrained and getting soaking wet.

TK
Just normal things

Nat
But back in studio. Normal things!

TK
Haha, comedy,

Nat
back in studio, you know, everybody is teasing Alex about this and saying, like, you’re having a difficult year. Hey, like, what are you trying to do? Even back in series seven with, excite Alex, it’s, you know, is this phrased in a deliberately provocative manner, you know, are you trying to get people to do this? So there’s like a lot of kind of, like acknowledgment and almost like fourth wall breaking around, like, hey, I’m now talking to, like, Alex Horne, Alex Horne, are you, are you trying to fuel this stuff? Are you trying to feed the perverts on the internet? You know? And I don’t think he is necessarily, I don’t know, right? Like, I. But for sure he is, in leaving, leaving intentional openings for other people to pick up the lore, to pick up the personas and the relationships and to, make their own contribution to that.

TK
Yeah. And it’s interesting that originally Alex had been the one to kind of spearhead this, but now, as we were talking about earlier in New York, you know, Greg is the one that seemingly is like having so much fun with this. And I’m not even going to say seemingly, I’m going to say he is having so much fun with this. Because when we were at the Q&A, I’m like, I’m 100% sure that you know where I’m going with this is like where I’m going with this. But, you know, we were at the Q&A, they’re not there as The Taskmaster and his Assistant. Like they’re not in their costumes. You know, they’re just like, we’re Greg and Alex, you know like yes, we’re here for all Taskmaster event. But like, you know we’re not like The Characters, which I feel like is, is different because they have done, you know, stuff where they’ll come out in, in costume and everything. But they didn’t for this and, and you know, Greg immediately brings up fanfic in like the first like ten minutes of the Q&A, he, like he, he’s the one bringing it up.
I like, I say this like all the time, but he was the one that brought it up. Like there wasn’t like, a question about fanfic. Like he just brought it up of his own volition. And then later, much later during one of the tasks, like the live tasks, Alex is laying flat down on the floor like, for some reason

Nat
on his back.

TK
On his back, like looking up at the ceiling. And Greg is like sitting in the chair that’s like pretty much right by his head. And Alex says, I don’t like this view. And Greg says, oh well first of all, Greg leans back unbuttons his jacket, and leans forward again, and he’s like, his legs are spread and he goes, you’re not used to seeing it with trousers, are you? And then he leans down, slaps Alex on the face and goes, we’re in public. And it’s like, you need to stop,

Nat
you’re right,

TK
you are doing that, because.

Nat
He knows exactly, like, he knows that the people who come out to the live shows are the, the most obsessive fans. Right? Like he knows he’s not talking to like, a Sunday brunch audience. He’s talking to the internet perverts. And he’s like, hey, buddies, I see you, I’m here for this.

TK
And not only that, but like, he 100% knew that we were in the room because, early like an hour. He had literally been talking to us like our little group of like 14 writers who was sitting all together because when Alex brought up there, you know, there’s like 867 fics. And we were all like, that’s not right. You know, we were like, that’s way more than that. But like, we like, I forgot that you had to, like, have an account and login to see them, but then like so then we so we were all like bursting out into like little chicken chatter, like. [blwalarawar] And he was like, what’s that person over there saying? And then suddenly all of us went dead quiet. And I was like 1025. Because that was the last number that I remember seeing when we were like, because you know, we don’t check the numbers too terribly often, but I was like, yeah those are, like 800, those are rookie numbers

Nat
stats to know. Yeah, yeah,

TK
100%. Greg knew that we were that like fanfic writers were in the audience because he even said, yeah, to us. Or like, more specifically to me, he was like, oh, I bet you’re the one that wrote Daddy’s Little Screamer, aren’t you? And like, and I didn’t I mean, that’s not one of my fics.

Nat
For the record, it’s 1802 works in the Taskmaster RPF tag, and that’s UK specific.

TK
That’s wild

Nat
So New Zealand and Australia would be another collective.

TK
But that’s not Greg and Alex, though. That’s. That’s not Greg and Alex. That’s the Taskmaster

Nat
Yeah, yeah, Greg and Alex. We’ve got 1319.

TK
Yeah. So that would have been the one that they would have .

Nat
Yeah yeah yeah yeah. But but yeah I mean no I mean they’re clearly clearly happily fueling it at this point I feel like Greg you know, maybe he takes a while to warm up to things.
But yeah, clearly feeling it at this point. And again I’ll point to Sophie Duker as the, I think the person who, really bridged the two worlds, to say like, not only is this like something that Greg and Alex are doing and that the people who are literally in the chairs across from them are invited to participate in.
But Sophie showing up and being like, my prized task is a couple’s cosplay outfit.
TK
For the fans

Nat
Yeah, yeah, for Sophie to show up and be like, my prize task is not just something that’s making a joke about you two fucking, but it’s something that’s saying, hey, I know there’s a lot of people out there who would like to like, actively engage in, the Taskmaster lore like to even as a, I mean, obviously it’s a joke, but to to show up and be like, oh no, there’s people who would actually want to put these suits on and fuck each other.
It’s probably something that has happened. You know, like she’s they’re mentioning a level of fan investment in the horny side of the show that just, like, was not on the show before, except maybe in that, that fic mention in season 15. You know, and she’s kissing the Greg statue. She’s, leaning into that kind of every possible chance she gets.
And it really is like, Sophie is us. We are Sophie. Sophie. Sophie showed up and she was us for us on the show. You know, like, so to make it okay for a comedian to engage with the fan stuff as a fan, like it really seems like she’s a fan herself. I think was like the last little barrier between the fan world and the on air world, like, died that day in Champion of Champions three.

TK
Yeah. What a queen. We we. Yeah. We love Sophie so much.

Nat
I mean, like, you know, James is a fan of the show, but he was a fan of the show, kind of fairly directly and was just like, oh yeah, I really loved doing well on this task because I’m a fan of the show and that was the best moment of my life, you know, crushing the one where you had to scream. But James would not show up and be like, actively egging on the shippy part. And Sophie absolutely did that, like there’s a huge difference there. So yeah I think Sophie as fan stand-in is, is a big moment.

TK
Yeah it it definitely is. Yeah. I mean. It’s just wild that we got to see her, like living all of our dreams, you know, on on the big screen. And we were just so happy for her. So, so happy.

Nat
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I get to go back. Cool. I’m going to go back and I’m going to give just the biggest present to all of the internet perverts.

TK
Yeah, truely. And I know that Greg used to say, you know, I don’t know where these people are getting the idea that, you know, Alex and I have some kind of romantic or sexual relationship. I think he’s past that point now. I think that he’s he specifically does stuff, you know, like the, like the thing that he did in the Q &A where there’s no more denying that whatever it is you’re doing, Greg, like, you can’t,
Nat
you’re doing it.

TK
I don’t know where people are getting these ideas from. It’s like, you know, full fucking well where people get these ideas from. [laughs]

Nat
Well, and like the initial on air kiss, you know, seemed like it was planned. It seemed like it was scripted. It was still great. I mean, you know, I really want to kiss you right now. Oh do you come on then. And, like, it’s perfect. It’s wonderful. But that was clearly like something that was, like, negotiated and planned out ahead of time. Whereas you watch the series 18 kiss, where Greg is egging Alex on to say the word [ding] because he knows that Greg, Alex doesn’t like to swear on air, and Alex doesn’t like to be flustered. And Alex is doing the whole, like, turning bright pink, like, you know, can I whisper it to you? Okay. Lean in. And Greg. Absolutely like, lures him in just so that he can, like, smack his, clipboard away and sneak a kiss. Right? Like a very spontaneous kiss. So, like Greg, both like baiting Alex, flustering Alex, humiliating Alex. Like all of that stuff. That’s just right in that, like, BDSM kind of lore relationship. And turning it into yet another excuse to kiss Alex Horne. Like, that’s coming straight from Greg. Greg is clearly playing with this and having fun with this at this point. And I think that helps, writers feel more like it’s okay, right? Like real people fiction is a bit loaded, and it does get more kind of negative responses, online, even within fandoms. Greg and Alex fic and Taskmaster fic, generally I feel a lot more comfortable with, I’m not like anti anything specific, but, you know, like my other fandom that, my other fandom that I kind of ever really participated in was Our Flag Means Death. And there is some like, Rhys Taika real people fiction and I’m like, it doesn’t really grab me as much. I’m not as interested in it. And I don’t feel like kind of as absolutely, 100% totally okay with it as I do about Greg and Alex stuff, right? Because I’m like, oh no, no, no, no, Greg and Alex are writing fanfiction every goddamn day they show up to work, you know, and are clearly, clearly, tickled by it and engaging with it and catering to the people who write it in, in a million different little ways.

TK
Yeah, yeah. And I think so for me personally, like, I knew about RPF, but I didn’t like seek it out or write it or anything like that because, you know, for me, I was like, yeah, that’s like kind of weird. I mean, and like, this is coming from someone who has had RPF written about them and it made me feel deeply uncomfortable.

Nat
Yeah. I think when it’s people, you know, it’s at that is, you know, without their consent. Like that’s immediately icky.

TK
Right. But I think the difference between, like, I don’t want to say like most of RPF because I don’t like, I don’t know anything about, you know, the, the wider RPF world or whatever because I’ve only ever interacted with the Taskmaster one.
But, the difference between that and like, Greg and Alex is that like, they are out there bringing it up willingly and they wouldn’t be doing that if they didn’t like, you know, take some kind of absolute joy in the fact that there are people writing about them, you know, like they printed out fanfic to read on Seth Meyers. Like, you don’t do that by accident. You don’t, you don’t

Nat
No, there’s a million other things you could have done.

TK
Exactly. Yeah.

Nat
Yeah.

TK
So yeah. And I think that’s, that’s the thing that made me be like, okay. Like I feel like I can write RPF and not feel like, weird about it with these guys because, like, they’re like, they’re pretty much just asking for it, you know, at this point, like they love that it exists, which is great.

Nat
Yeah. And you see some RPF where it is, people are writing about the personas. And you see some RPF where people are writing about, like the guys, it’s still not actually ever them, right? And like, and we know that, it’s still just kind of like this is my sense of them. But I think having that persona layer helps for a lot of people. Because again, like, it’s opening this space where we’re all writing this story together, we’re all adding little bits of flair to this story. And because it is kind of an open, ongoing project, to create this relationship and to create this world that, that feels really kind of comfortable and appealing for a lot of folk.

TK
Yeah. Yeah, and I think it also helps that Greg and Alex, like, actively welcome fan works into like that. Not even just, you know, like, oh, you can give them, a piece of fanart or whatever, and they’ll be like, thrilled about it. Which, you know, from what I’ve seen and heard and seen in person, like every single piece of fan art that they get, they’re just blown away by it.
But not only that, but like, they have like fan creations in the Taskmaster house. Like hanging up on the walls, like in the shed, you know, like, they take like just from, like the New York City trip. They were gifted two stained glass portraits of themselves. And now those portraits are hanging up in the Taskmaster house.

Nat
Wow, that’s amazing. Or like the previous New York trip or somebody gave them friendship bracelets. And then they wore the friendship bracelets on Seth Meyers. And so, yeah, it’s not just fic, it’s, it’s things like that. It’s things like that. Alex has that crocheted doll of him that somebody made that I think he made some school tasking videos with.
Yeah. They really do seem to enjoy it. Enjoy the creativity and the nerdiness and the intensity of, of the kind of geeky obsessive, I love you so much that I had to crochet this, style of fandom.

TK
Yeah, yeah and I really do think, go ahead

Nat.
Sorry. I was gonna say, Alex will you know, he will cheerfully like, like and repost, you know, drawings of himself and things like that. Yeah. And then so that kind of thing that you’re handing to them, that’s usually, you know, ideally you’re not handing them anything that’s not G-rated. Right. But then the fic you hold behind a wall because, like you said, like, you know, if you hear it about yourself and you don’t want to, that’s icky.
Right? So, fanfic writers oftentimes like the reason why they didn’t know how many fics there actually are is because it’s locked down. A lot of people, will lock down their accounts, so you can only see it if you’re logged in, just as a way to restrict a little bit the odds of, you know, Alex reading what you wrote about Alex giving somebody a blowjob.
And so, but the fact that it’s then set up that way and they have to go and seek it out themselves and decide, yes, today I want to click this link that is warning me that there is explicit content if I go forward. Right? Like that’s another part of, of how their interactions with the sick, I think feel okay for not everybody but a number of people, because they’re having to actively go and seek it out, and dig for it.

TK
Yeah. Yeah, it’s definitely different, like going out and, like, looking for it yourself rather than, like being handed it. Yeah, like, for sure. So yeah, I think that definitely sets a lot of us at ease that they just keep bringing it up, which is ridiculous that they keep doing it. But like, we love it. Yeah. So keep keep on doing it.

Nat
Yeah. We’ve made a boundary. If you want to blow past it then y’all go ahead. But
[both laugh]

TK
So all right so speaking of fan work recommendations since you’ve joined the Taskmaster fandom, tell me like your, your all time favorite, it can be like Taskmaster fanfic. It can be fan art. It can be a music video. Like what, what are your your fan work recommendations for the podcast?

Nat
Yeah, I have I have three one is Blood in the Cut, which is a video, which is just the most, kind of, bizarre and wonderful fan vid. Watch a lot of creepy moments where people are, you know, bleeding or uncomfortable or, pretending to be dead. It’s really intense and it’s weird. And I think it’s a wonderful thing where if you said, oh, let me tell you about this, like British comedy, entertainment show that I like. And then you show them that video, they’d be like, what the fuck is going on? But a great example of how weird the on screen canon of Taskmaster is.
For fics, my all time absolute favorite Taskmaster fic is Welcome Home by Knop_e which is on AO3. It is a slow burn, roommates to lovers, alternate universe where, Greg and Alex are, you know, not famous comedians. It has so many Easter eggs and references to the show all the way through, and it’s also just like, oh, it’s so sweet, it’s so emotional. And there’s really good porn. So it’s everything I want. I have read that one, probably. I mean, I’ve read it dozens and dozens of times. I’m obsessed with it. It’s perfect. For more recent fic, which Illuminescence has come up a few times, Illuminescence is, I think, in terms of like, writing quality and like ability to to spin complex plots and also to nail characterization, like one of the absolute best writers, like the most skilled at writing writers that we have, in in Taskmaster fic.
So last year we had that Little Alex Horne Fic Club Exchange and Illuminescence wrote me something based on a, Taskmaster Star Trek crossover. So it’s Star Red and Heart Hot. [urng] Just absolutely, absolutely destroyed me. There is a time loop Q shows up. Rob Gilbert is there as a Klingon named Rudd of house Gilbert, like the Star Trek references are on point. The Taskmaster references are on point. You’re reading it and you’re like, this is fun and nerdy. And then before you know it, you’re like, sobbing because you’re emotionally destroyed, by these two people like finding love in an unexpected way. And it’s just like, oh, it’s so good. It’s perfect, it’s absolutely perfect.

TK
Yeah, I definitely agree with you. It’s, I have a tattoo of it on my leg.

Nat
Right?

TK
Yes. Right. sun red blood hot,

Nat
Star Red and Heart Hot. Star Red and Heart Hot. I know I had, I was like, I’m gonna make sure I have a tab open with that on it, because I will not say it correctly otherwise.
Oh, and she worked in Sam Campbell, who is my, my particular blorbo perfect obsession person. So, I’m forever grateful to her for that. Yeah. Yeah, it’s it’s incredible. I mean, any, anything by her is just incredible.

Nat
Yeah. If you got the time to spare because they’re long.

TK
Yes. Yes, they are definitely long.
All right. So, you are on A03. Do you want me to plug your, your AO3 account? Anything else you want to plug?

Nat
You know, like, I have not updated my fics for, some months. So if anybody wants to come on to AO3 and look me up under TheNaturalFriends, and then just, like, politely, politely threaten me in the comments, that that may motivate me to actually finish my, my big long Greg/Sam fanfic.
But yeah, no, you’re welcome to find me. But I’m not, super duper active at the moment. And, yeah, on Tumblr, under the same under the same handle.

TK
Sweet. Good deal. Well, it has been a pleasure having you on the pod. It’s been, really interesting chat of, all of the TM fanfic and just the history of it and how we’re just going to keep chugging forward with it.
And I’m really excited to see what we all come up with.

Nat
We broke 100 in a month. 200 is next up, friends like

TK
Oh,no,

Nat
Gotta keep blowing it up. Gotta make more Seth Meyers content for the boys.

TK
That’s true. Yep. Well, thank you so much for coming on the pod.
[various overlapping goodbyes]

VO
And that was TK speaking with Nat on fic, stats, and being perceived, you can read all the fanworks mentioned in this episode right now by clicking on the episode description or by going to our website, tftaskmaster.uk. If you have any questions, fanwork recommendations, suggestions, or anything else, you can email us at fans@tftaskmaster.uk