Speaker 1: Hey, this is Annie and Samantha and welcome to stuff
Speaker 1: I've never told you productive iHeartRadio, and today we are
Speaker 1: back with our first book club of twenty twenty four
Speaker 1: with a very recent novel from twenty twenty three. So spoilers,
Speaker 1: trying to avoid them, I will say I'm not going
Speaker 1: to talk about the ending too much, so if you
Speaker 1: were go and read it.
Speaker 2: This was a TikTok vine by the way, that was
Speaker 2: intriguing to me because fan fiction which is anything, and
Speaker 2: then you had talked about what pad, which is like
Speaker 2: what is typically used for cap pop fan fiction, and
Speaker 2: I did when I was looking up yan the first
Speaker 2: one of the third results was bts yn, So I
Speaker 2: guess it's a huge thing. I know nothing about this,
Speaker 2: but I was interested by the description the TikToker was
Speaker 2: giving and including Kofka esque, which I do like Kafka.
Speaker 2: It's interesting to see that level of surreal novelist today,
Speaker 2: which I guess China Melville is kind of similar to
Speaker 2: that to me, because go ahead, this is this is
Speaker 2: not my style of uh fiction and for me, like
Speaker 2: the surrealist UH not my thing because it takes me
Speaker 2: forever to figure out what the g is happening, which
Speaker 2: was the theme in this entire thing for me as
Speaker 2: I was, I was listening to Audible not a sponsor
Speaker 2: right now, but like I was like, what's happening? Who?
Speaker 1: What?
Speaker 2: So that's kind of my thing. China Melville apparently bt'd up.
Speaker 2: Side note, Uh did a novel with Keanu Reeves just
Speaker 2: recently recently. Oh okay, just say you know, oh moving on.
Speaker 1: That's just funny because I'm going to talk about some
Speaker 1: of my experiences in this realm. And I did have
Speaker 1: a huge crush on Keanu Reeves's neo, so it's just
Speaker 1: kind of funny relationship I wasn't expecting. Yes, it is
Speaker 1: very surreal. So we are talking about the twenty three
Speaker 1: novel by Esther Ye called y N or y slash
Speaker 1: N that stands for your name for people who don't
Speaker 1: know the fan fiction world. But basically I.
Speaker 2: Was one of those week bleasses for the longest time.
Speaker 2: I thought was yes no, which is implied in them
Speaker 2: in the novel as well.
Speaker 1: But I was like, what, yes, I'm going to talk
Speaker 1: about my experience with this. So basically it is a
Speaker 1: type of self insert fan fiction wherein it will be
Speaker 1: a character in my experience, usually a dude and they
Speaker 1: are with your name, and as the reader, you are
Speaker 1: supposed to put in your name. You can even like
Speaker 1: download it and it will replace your name for every
Speaker 1: instance that it says, why slash and Wayan. So it
Speaker 1: is a type of fan fiction. So the story follows
Speaker 1: our narrator, who by the way, we never get her name,
Speaker 1: after she becomes obsessed with a member of a K
Speaker 1: pop band named Moon, eventually leaving. She eventually goes to
Speaker 1: Seoul in South Korea because he kind of disappears and
Speaker 1: she's located in Berlin, Germany. At first she goes in
Speaker 1: order to find him. It is a very surreal story.
Speaker 1: It blurs the lines between fanfic, fandom and reality. And yes,
Speaker 1: she does post this self insert fanfic online after attending
Speaker 1: a concert with a flatmate, which by the way, she
Speaker 1: did not seem interested in going to.
Speaker 2: Feel like she's one of those that was like, I
Speaker 2: don't want to be caught up in this, I'm not something.
Speaker 1: Yeah, then she really did and she knew herself very quickly.
Speaker 1: It happens. Yes, So while she is in Soul, she
Speaker 1: meets a woman named Oh who works at a shoe
Speaker 1: factory and O enters the narrator's name into a lottery
Speaker 1: to go to the band's headquarters, and the narrator wins
Speaker 1: and she meets Moon, and later she returns to Oh
Speaker 1: who wants the narrator to feel something real And it
Speaker 1: doesn't seem like the message goes home. But it deals
Speaker 1: with fandom obsessions, celebrity culture, loneliness, and parasocial relationships. It
Speaker 1: is an award winning debut for Ye, who has said
Speaker 1: that it's an examination on mass consumption.
Speaker 2: And who.
Speaker 1: And how we interact with art and literature. But she
Speaker 1: has been cleared it is not a criticism of K
Speaker 1: pop and fandom. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I think she mentions just like her fascination, I love
Speaker 2: something so much.
Speaker 1: Yes, And we do have a couple quotes throughout this
Speaker 1: one from her. Most of them are from an in
Speaker 1: pr interview that she did about this book. Here's one
Speaker 1: to speak, I guess specifically to my narrator's case. It
Speaker 1: seems to me that she wants, and again related to
Speaker 1: this desire for love, to practice devotion. But it seems
Speaker 1: to me that she is capable of meditating upon a
Speaker 1: single object for a very long period of time. And
Speaker 1: of course there's a lot of irony in the fact
Speaker 1: that she is choosing to practice this meditation upon one
Speaker 1: of the most you know, poppy, rapid pace forms of
Speaker 1: cultural consumption right now. But that's where she wants to
Speaker 1: do it. I'm not judgmental about, you know, K pop
Speaker 1: or celebrity culture. That's really not my intention for the book.
Speaker 1: I'm not a journalist. I'm not here to write some
Speaker 1: kind of takedown or critique. I'm just very curious about
Speaker 1: this form of worship, and I take it very seriously
Speaker 1: in some sense. But it seems to me that it's
Speaker 1: speaking to some kind of absence within our current landscape. Yes,
Speaker 1: and this is especially interesting because the author is has
Speaker 1: like the same background as the narrator, which I think
Speaker 1: is on purpose. Like at the end, there's a scene
Speaker 1: there's like a movie of a painting. I feel like
Speaker 1: it's like that. Yeah, yes, yes, And I did want
Speaker 1: to before we get into the themes, I wanted to
Speaker 1: briefly talk about my experience with why in fan fiction,
Speaker 1: because I think that there is sort of a misunderstanding
Speaker 1: or like maybe not even that, but I feel personally
Speaker 1: in my long story experience with fiction even if it's
Speaker 1: not a self insert fick, which by the way, is
Speaker 1: kind of interesting because it's supposed to be the reader
Speaker 1: inserts themselves, not necessarily the writer. Usually there is some
Speaker 1: element of self insert fick to any fan fiction. This
Speaker 1: is my opinion. I could be wrong, but I feel
Speaker 1: like there's usually one character that you're like, that's me,
Speaker 1: or I'm vibing with that person, orm connecting with that person,
Speaker 1: and that's a lot of our art is that's not
Speaker 1: like unique to fan fiction necessarily, But I just think
Speaker 1: like there is a misunderstanding around, well, why in fan
Speaker 1: fiction is only this and it's different from every other
Speaker 1: fan fiction. I personally think that a lot of fan
Speaker 1: fiction is let me put myself in the story somehow,
Speaker 1: or let me experience something with a character somehow, and
Speaker 1: that can be various levels. I personally don't really read
Speaker 1: why in fan fiction because the part I like the
Speaker 1: other people doing the thing, I don't necessarily want to
Speaker 1: do the thing, so I don't really read it, but
Speaker 1: I see it all the time. Is a popular type
Speaker 1: of fan fiction. I also was thinking about this because
Speaker 1: I have had huge celebrity crushes in my life. It's
Speaker 1: usually more of like the fictional character they play. But
Speaker 1: you know, but one time I was thinking about this
Speaker 1: because I've kind of jokingly told the story of the
Speaker 1: time I wrote a self insert fan fiction of me
Speaker 1: and Billy Joel Armstrong from Green Day and I never
Speaker 1: published it. It's just for me. I burnt it, so
Speaker 1: we'll never know the beauties of what it was, but
Speaker 1: in it because I was thinking about it, and I
Speaker 1: remember thinking when I wrote it, this is a halfly married,
Speaker 1: way older man. So it wasn't about the romance part.
Speaker 1: It was like I just wanted someone to validate me,
Speaker 1: Like I just wanted to like somebody that I respected
Speaker 1: and did think he was hot, but I just wanted
Speaker 1: There was no like I want to end up with him.
Speaker 1: It was more like I want to be in the
Speaker 1: band with you. I learned to play guitar for this
Speaker 1: whole thing. So sometimes the book talks about this a
Speaker 1: little bit. Sometimes it's not even like a sexual thing
Speaker 1: or like a romantic thing. It's just like some you
Speaker 1: want to feel desire, weird or validated. I'll share some
Speaker 1: stories throughout that for content warning, There is a brief
Speaker 1: discussion of kind of disordered eating, an obsession also cicadas,
Speaker 1: which was funny.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I thought the same thing. I was like, let's
Speaker 2: spread this. Was she thinking about cicadas already, or but
Speaker 2: it doesn't like pop out? Or was this after I.
Speaker 1: Know the cicadas. Sounds like it's going to be a
Speaker 1: messing thing this summer.
Speaker 2: Also, South Korea is going to hit some things too.
Speaker 1: I don't know. God, okay, So let's get into some themes.
Speaker 1: And one of them has already alluded to with that
Speaker 1: quote is kind of fandom as religion or religious awakening.
Speaker 1: So here's a quote. What I feared most wasn't death,
Speaker 1: our global cataclysm, was that everyday capitulations that chipped away
Speaker 1: at the monument of seriousness that was a soul. My
Speaker 1: spiritual sphincter stayed clinched to keep out the cheap and stupid.
Speaker 1: So this is early on when she's like, no, I
Speaker 1: don't need to get involved in this, but her friend
Speaker 1: convinces her to go to a concert and things quickly changed.
Speaker 1: Here's a quote from that. This screen, as large as
Speaker 1: a Berlin apartment building lying on its side, reproduced the
Speaker 1: happenings on stage with astonishing clarity, so that when the
Speaker 1: five boys drifted in as if by accident, heads bowed
Speaker 1: and hands clasped over their stomachs. I couldn't fathom how
Speaker 1: they were real. Bodies as small as grains of rice
Speaker 1: from where I stood would survive an evening at the
Speaker 1: feet of their gigantic images, thousands of women erupted into shrieks.
Speaker 1: I remembered Varva telling me that incidents of shattered ear
Speaker 1: drums at the boys concerts were rising, prompting the entertainment
Speaker 1: company that managed them to recommend earplugs. But I saw
Speaker 1: none being worn by the fans around me. They were
Speaker 1: finally breathing the same air as the boys. Now was
Speaker 1: not the time to be less of a body. Yes,
Speaker 1: as mentioned, all members of the bands are named after
Speaker 1: celestial objects.
Speaker 2: Yeah, not as I had originally wondered, And I'd still wondered.
Speaker 2: Because this was written in twenty twenty three. One of
Speaker 2: the bigger K pop stars had just recently passed away.
Speaker 2: His name was Moon like I think that's his surname,
Speaker 2: and he was for Astro, so I wondered if that
Speaker 2: had any influence. She doesn't know much about K pop,
Speaker 2: so I don't know. I think she knows like this,
Speaker 2: I'm guessing this is somewhat based on like bigger fandoms
Speaker 2: that have a lot of a lot of fanfic out
Speaker 2: on what Pad specifically, So it goes on with a
Speaker 2: theme about fandom or obsession, which again maybe this is
Speaker 2: where I'm like, I don't have hobbies and loves for things,
Speaker 2: so this is very like, very unaware of this world.
Speaker 2: So to me, this was really uncomfortable looking. But I
Speaker 2: also know this is exaggerated, so I was just like,
Speaker 2: huh hah, this book anyway. So here's a quote. The
Speaker 2: pack of boys called the their fans livers because we
Speaker 2: weren't just expensive handbags they carried around. We kept them alive,
Speaker 2: like critical organs. I suspected they used the English word
Speaker 2: liver because it sounded like lover. They could be koy
Speaker 2: like that, but I would much rather be Moon's liver
Speaker 2: than lover, which was kind of the implication she wants
Speaker 2: to be inside of his body, not necessarily with his body.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, and we're going to talk about that more.
Speaker 1: But it is one of the things that is unsettling
Speaker 1: about this. And I feel like a lot of the
Speaker 1: uh self insert fan fiction or are just like when
Speaker 1: you love someone, this was written for a place where
Speaker 1: she almost seems like she didn't like him. It was
Speaker 1: like kind of coming from a very cold place, whereas
Speaker 1: in my experience, a lot of this comes from a
Speaker 1: very enthusiastic, happy place. Sometimes it's healthy and sometimes it's not,
Speaker 1: but it's not what the vibe the narrator was giving
Speaker 1: was very like cold to me. Interesting, But this does
Speaker 1: hit the narrator hard and fast. She goes from like, no,
Speaker 1: don't take me to this concert too, I must know everything.
Speaker 1: And one of the things I kind of laughed at
Speaker 1: this quote, I tapped up my phone with vigor. I
Speaker 1: do hope you skip the occasional meal. When you're on
Speaker 1: the thinner side, your soul becomes more visible, almost hypodermic.
Speaker 1: You become a pure streak of energy, like the blue
Speaker 1: flame of a blowtorch. But the entertainment company better not
Speaker 1: put you on a diet that would be disgustingly presumptuous.
Speaker 1: You know best how to flagellate yourself. No company can
Speaker 1: be as perverse as you, and i'd reach the end
Speaker 1: the maximum character count. I pressed enter and watched my
Speaker 1: block of tech disappear and dream afar with your messages.
Speaker 1: So kind of like coming into this whole the online
Speaker 1: social media part of fandom, and already being like, I
Speaker 1: know you better, these other fans don't know right.
Speaker 2: This would be the Korean term of say songs, which
Speaker 2: is the intense fan that hits into what she does,
Speaker 2: stocklerish and being almost dangerous, possessive and angry that other
Speaker 2: people can love you.
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, and just like the whole thing of like
Speaker 1: her telling him about the diet, but like the company
Speaker 1: shouldn't tell you but me right, Yes, here's another quote.
Speaker 1: Moon lay on his back. I crawled on top of
Speaker 1: him and brushed the hair out of his face. He
Speaker 1: looked back at me with pure recognition. Both encouraged by
Speaker 1: his gaze and unable to bear it. I closed my
Speaker 1: eyes and kissed him, but it was like pressing my
Speaker 1: lips against the back of my own hand. I felt
Speaker 1: what he felt of me. I felt what I felt like.
Speaker 1: With a start, I realized I had no sexual desire
Speaker 1: for Moon. My sexuality simply loved his sexuality totally and unblinkingly,
Speaker 1: without my needing to know anything about what he did
Speaker 1: with his I felt disgraced by life. It's strange personal,
Speaker 1: it's strange personal commandments that I couldn't simply want him.
Speaker 1: And yeah, I think this is sort of an interesting
Speaker 1: thing that a lot of people don't understand. Again, I
Speaker 1: feel like this is talking about a lot of times,
Speaker 1: the person that you're envisioning, whoever that is, is a
Speaker 1: mirror of what you want, but it is like you.
Speaker 1: It's still a reflection of you. So in this moment,
Speaker 1: it's more like this is honestly, and we're going to
Speaker 1: talk about this more later, but this is like an
Speaker 1: avatar I've created of someone to sort of feel a void,
Speaker 1: fill the void that I have. But it's more about
Speaker 1: you filling that void than you experiencing any kind of
Speaker 1: like desire sexual need. It's like there's something that's hurting
Speaker 1: inside me. What can I do? And so it's more
Speaker 1: of a reflection of you.
Speaker 2: And another quote, we once turned to philosophy for an
Speaker 2: interpretation of God, for that which lies beyond our comprehension,
Speaker 2: But philosophy has relinquished its authority to data. Now we
Speaker 2: know too much, especially what people want and how to
Speaker 2: give it to them. Religion is no longer a site
Speaker 2: of our interminable struggle with negativity. Religion shorn. Philosophy is
Speaker 2: now a vending machine for manifestation and fulfillment. That's why
Speaker 2: there are so many lowercase gods in this secular, cynical era,
Speaker 2: Oblivious to the contradictions. We yearn for spiritual practices that
Speaker 2: will make us worthy of receiving permanent answers and solutions.
Speaker 2: A boy band like this Masterson's Waved the Picture of
Speaker 2: Moon is one such god. Here we have data disguised
Speaker 2: as philosophy, information disguised as art. We no longer go
Speaker 2: to church once a week. We attend a stadium concert
Speaker 2: once a year. This was a quote by her current boyfriend,
Speaker 2: who she for a while told people was our adopted brother.
Speaker 2: So I was like, what's happening, what's happening. This is
Speaker 2: one of those moments in which when he discovers her
Speaker 2: love for moon is she gets very offended, very offended
Speaker 2: that he would talk about Moon in such a calm
Speaker 2: and casual manner of was it a very interesting odd
Speaker 2: segue of like reality for her right.
Speaker 1: And I do love that quote we attend a stadium
Speaker 1: concert once a year, because it's true. And I was
Speaker 1: thinking about it, and I've read quotes from the author
Speaker 1: about what she was kind of intending to capture here,
Speaker 1: and the relationship between religion and fandom. It's true, you're
Speaker 1: in a concert, you're in a stadium, you're singing all
Speaker 1: the songs, you know, all the things, like it's so
Speaker 1: important to you that you attend, that you have to
Speaker 1: do these kind of rituals around. It's very interesting.
Speaker 2: Again, she kind of hits on this one character. But
Speaker 2: like in the reality, a lot of the fans, diehard
Speaker 2: fans follow follow the different groups. I've seen a lot
Speaker 2: of TikTok videos. When BTS's last shows, they went to
Speaker 2: several different cities, including going to Soul to try to
Speaker 2: watch them for the final time. So, like so many
Speaker 2: there are fans who, if they have the disposable income,
Speaker 2: which by the way is a big TikTok train right now,
Speaker 2: will do these things. And it's it is not just
Speaker 2: a show, right for many of them. In another quote,
Speaker 2: he fees my imagination more than you do. Of course
Speaker 2: he does, Masterson says, because he exists in your imagination.
Speaker 2: He's a person breathing, eating and dreaming in Soul, and
Speaker 2: I'm a person breathing, eating and dreaming in Berlin. Masterson
Speaker 2: reached over to give my thigh a painful squeeze, and
Speaker 2: I know you exist right.
Speaker 1: Here's another quote. I think what you mean is that
Speaker 1: he designs his lyrical content and sexual appeal with the
Speaker 1: specific intent of exploiting the most basic of human emotions,
Speaker 1: like loneliness or the desire for unconditional love, and then
Speaker 1: derives massive profit from his vampirism. I rolled off the
Speaker 1: bed and began to dress, checking the picture into my pocket.
Speaker 1: He works one hundred times harder at our relationship than
Speaker 1: you do, I said, jamming my foot into my shoe
Speaker 1: with an aggressive twist of the ankle. He has physical
Speaker 1: therapy every day because his tendons are on the constant
Speaker 1: brink of snapping. Can you say the same about your tendons? Yes,
Speaker 1: So this is all on her mind. She's having these conversations.
Speaker 1: And then this brings us to online fan culture. Here
Speaker 1: is a quote. I discovered Archmage not long after. The
Speaker 1: website contained thousands of fan written stories organized by the
Speaker 1: celebrity or fictional character featured in them. There were smaller
Speaker 1: categorizations based on the stories and motive instigation, tagged with
Speaker 1: what each story quote makes you ellipses my favorite stories
Speaker 1: about Moon almost always had the tag makes you end friendships. Frankly,
Speaker 1: most of the stories were unreadable. After all, the authors
Speaker 1: weren't writers, but fans who had turned to language as
Speaker 1: a last resort. I could feel the frustration mounting as
Speaker 1: the pros grew ever more sodden, as the author submitted
Speaker 1: to yet another cliche, hoping their strange feelings would foment
Speaker 1: coherently limbed out of the primordial soup of failing story.
Speaker 1: But I preferred these stories to most contemporary novels, which
Speaker 1: mirrored the Pietes of the day with observed ardor for
Speaker 1: all the lone superiorities suggested by their tone of moral indignation,
Speaker 1: these books were mind numbingly easy to agree with. I
Speaker 1: preferred reading Fans and Dead People because they were hard
Speaker 1: to agree with. I couldn't stop thinking about my two
Speaker 1: love sick characters, so I took my scenes and copied
Speaker 1: them into a dedicated notebook, then continued the story there.
Speaker 1: Once I'd completed what felt like a chapter, I typed
Speaker 1: out the text and published it on Archmage under the
Speaker 1: username floor floor. So this is interesting because we have
Speaker 1: talked about this. You can see our past episodes on
Speaker 1: kpop and fan fiction. By the way, one of the
Speaker 1: things about fan fiction is that it is you can argue,
Speaker 1: you can disagree, you can agree. I recently had somebody
Speaker 1: leave your comments on one of mine that's like, this
Speaker 1: feels so alive because you can like contact, connect with
Speaker 1: each other. They can give you ideas and you'll put
Speaker 1: them in and it changes what you thought it was
Speaker 1: going to be. And that is often very beautiful and fun,
Speaker 1: and I think a key aspect of fan fiction. But
Speaker 1: it can be toxic, as like I don't a lot
Speaker 1: of that I've like cut out of my experience, but
Speaker 1: I remember it and I seen it. It still exists.
Speaker 1: But people get like angry if you perhaps portray there
Speaker 1: the person they love the most in the way they
Speaker 1: don't like. A big part of that used to be
Speaker 1: don't like, don't read, but now it's become more like,
Speaker 1: I feel I have to defend this person. So here's
Speaker 1: a quote from you about fan fiction. I think for
Speaker 1: that reason, I find fan fiction especially really interesting and
Speaker 1: a really rich mode of expression that, of course a
Speaker 1: lot of people look down on because it's, you know,
Speaker 1: it lacks a certain literary polish. But I respect that
Speaker 1: about fan fiction, Like I respect that fan fiction is
Speaker 1: so much the product of a compulsion, of a yearning
Speaker 1: that it almost forgoes all these pretensions of polish, of quality,
Speaker 1: of sophistication. And in that sense, for me, there's something
Speaker 1: that's revealed the heart of fan fiction that I think
Speaker 1: is essential to all great literature, which is this desire
Speaker 1: to put yourself in the same space as the transcendental,
Speaker 1: you know, to almost touch the hymn of it without
Speaker 1: really quite grasping it. Yes, so I think this is
Speaker 1: interesting because I've talked about this a lot. You can
Speaker 1: read fan fiction that, in my opinion, is better than
Speaker 1: what they're making. But it is true that there's something
Speaker 1: very liberating about Like let's just skip that part and
Speaker 1: get to what we all want. Like there's really bad
Speaker 1: fan fiction, there's really good fan fiction, and I think
Speaker 1: there's a place for all of it. But it does
Speaker 1: some of it is like really telling, and like, oh,
Speaker 1: this is what a lot of us are craving or
Speaker 1: don't find in a lot of the literature entertainment that
Speaker 1: we have.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I was actually going to read another quote because
Speaker 2: she had a different interview. In the interview, I feel
Speaker 2: like are different for MPR and this specific one because
Speaker 2: this one was for Centerfoffiction dot Org. Her answers are
Speaker 2: sound a lot more like her book, so the language
Speaker 2: is different. But the interviewer will asked, you know, oh,
Speaker 2: why does she bring fine fiction? Why in faine fiction
Speaker 2: as a way to outlet to this character's desire, and
Speaker 2: then whether it's interspersed or incorporated, and it's to a
Speaker 2: different level of the way she needed to tell her story,
Speaker 2: And so she replies with I'm intrigued by the words
Speaker 2: interspersed and incorporated. They suggest that the fanfic can be
Speaker 2: cleanly separated from the rest of the novel raisins in
Speaker 2: a piece of bread. There's also the implication that the
Speaker 2: fan fixed position is one of subordination, as if the
Speaker 2: non fanfic parts constitute the main world of the novel
Speaker 2: because the stakes there are higher and the events are
Speaker 2: quote real, as if the fans fix is thusly quote fake,
Speaker 2: a place where my narrator lets her imagination kareem beyond
Speaker 2: the bounds of reason, a playroom for everything that doesn't
Speaker 2: fit into her quote real life. I don't view her
Speaker 2: thick in any of these ways. I can speak from
Speaker 2: personal experience. My writing is not less real than me.
Speaker 2: In fact, my writing is better at being me than
Speaker 2: I am. So I thought that was interesting because she
Speaker 2: wants to make sure you understand, as the reader, don't
Speaker 2: get this wrong. The fanfic is not added. It is
Speaker 2: the story, like she's like, it is as real as
Speaker 2: the rest of the story.
Speaker 1: So I thought that was.
Speaker 2: An interesting quote, and beautifully and so another quote from
Speaker 2: the book. I wasn't sure how to navigate a space
Speaker 2: filled with strangers who knew I loved what they loved.
Speaker 2: It was like going to the sauna, except our naked
Speaker 2: bodies were identical, which made the embarrassment recursive and pointless.
Speaker 2: And of course I think that's for a lot of
Speaker 2: those as much as I don't know, I do know
Speaker 2: being young and thinking I could be if we just met, Yeah,
Speaker 2: he might see me like that whole moment and in
Speaker 2: that understanding, when you're not by yourself loving something and
Speaker 2: coming to a group, it feels like it lost this
Speaker 2: loster a little bit.
Speaker 1: Right for sure. And that's one of the things with
Speaker 1: something like a Yan fan fiction is like, it's interesting
Speaker 1: that it's not the writer. It's interesting that it's like
Speaker 1: anyone's reading it, insert your name, But as the writer
Speaker 1: in it's sort of like, this is a very strange
Speaker 1: place to be where we're all experiencing this desire or
Speaker 1: want or whatever it is, and it's I'm not unique,
Speaker 1: I guess, but you keep trying to find ways to
Speaker 1: tell yourself like, no, I'm unique, I'm unique. But I
Speaker 1: also think it's funny for me as I've started posting
Speaker 1: fan fiction. There's just a certain number of authors you
Speaker 1: see a lot if you're in the same space, and
Speaker 1: you start being like, oh, it's you, But then if
Speaker 1: they don't comment, then you're like, oh, no, I've done something. No,
Speaker 1: It's just funny, especially for me because I'm in such
Speaker 1: a niche, smaller space that you just start to recognize
Speaker 1: names and you're like, we must there's something about us
Speaker 1: that if we met in real life, either we'd hate
Speaker 1: each other and we really get along the hard to say.
Speaker 2: Or best friends, yes, nemesis turn to best friends or yeah.
Speaker 1: Oh popular fan fiction trup I know, I know, yes.
Speaker 1: And this brings us to parasocial relationships, which we've done
Speaker 1: an episode on. This is basically kind of the like
Speaker 1: when you feel you have a relationship with someone you
Speaker 1: don't know, usually a celebrity, just because you experience their
Speaker 1: life through social media or whatever entertainment, which we'll talk
Speaker 1: about in a second kind of our experience with that,
Speaker 1: but here's a quote. It had all started when she
Speaker 1: stumbled upon a piece of y in fan fiction, which
Speaker 1: she explained was a type of fan fiction where the
Speaker 1: protagonist was called why in or your name. Wherever Yann
Speaker 1: appeared in the text, the reader could plug in their
Speaker 1: own name, thereby sharing events with the celebrity they had
Speaker 1: no chance of meeting in real life. Reading her first
Speaker 1: Wyan story, Lee's had learned incredible things about herself. At nineteen,
Speaker 1: she gave birth to Moon out of wedlock and was
Speaker 1: forced by an aristocratic family to leave him at an orphanage.
Speaker 1: He grew up to become a truck driver who specialized
Speaker 1: in transporting prize horses. This was how she reunited with
Speaker 1: her son, who strode up to the gates of her
Speaker 1: estate with a chestnut mare rearing at his side. The
Speaker 1: two recognized each other without exchanging a word. What commenced
Speaker 1: was a dream like summer in which the pairent covered
Speaker 1: great distances side by side. She on horseback Moon in
Speaker 1: his truck. Only after finishing the story did these find
Speaker 1: out about the pack of boys, their fame, how Moon
Speaker 1: sang and danced alongside the others. But all of this
Speaker 1: mattered little to her. Hungry to uncover new facets of herself,
Speaker 1: she began to read one Whyan story after another. So
Speaker 1: I thought that was interesting because sometimes, yes, people read
Speaker 1: fan fiction of something they don't know anything about.
Speaker 2: The con twist of the fact that the author looked
Speaker 2: similar to Moon and the fact that this so this
Speaker 2: was done at a convention that was like they had
Speaker 2: what convention for the specific boy band, and they had
Speaker 2: different people pretending to be the boys, and the main
Speaker 2: character is asked to be Moon and walks around and
Speaker 2: people are taking pictures and just like falling in love
Speaker 2: with her as Moon, including Lise, who they already had
Speaker 2: an interaction because they had been with the same.
Speaker 1: Boy, Masterson.
Speaker 2: And then now she's kind of falling in love with
Speaker 2: the main character who also wrote one of the Yen
Speaker 2: novels or wym fanfict that she started to read and
Speaker 2: was falling in love with that character too.
Speaker 1: Yes, I thought that was interesting because again I do
Speaker 1: think a lot of times the Whyan part is about you.
Speaker 1: So the fact that she looks like Moon, I think
Speaker 1: was pretty pretty clear. Yeah, yes, here's another quote. The
Speaker 1: engineer straightened out his back like a displeased patriarch. Whyan
Speaker 1: Fick puts me to sleep, he said. In order to
Speaker 1: accommodate the biography of every reader that might chance upon
Speaker 1: the story, the writer creates a character void of personality.
Speaker 1: But there can be no story without a proper protagonist.
Speaker 1: So there is never a story when it comes to
Speaker 1: why En, there are only absurd and arbitrary leaps and plot.
Speaker 1: All of this amounts to a warning when I urge
Speaker 1: you to heed. Anyone who pursues the delusional fantasy of
Speaker 1: being Moon's chosen one can expect to have their identity
Speaker 1: wiped out. This you gestured on our table, The event
Speaker 1: is so much bigger than you. You are not Yn.
Speaker 1: All of us are all at once, no, Lee said,
Speaker 1: without blinking. Only I'm Yn. She recounted how, wanting to
Speaker 1: know what it was like to be neighbors with Moon,
Speaker 1: she started reading a story in which he lived in Berlin.
Speaker 1: To her disturbance, he turned out to be just like
Speaker 1: her ex They were both philosophers, and they had read
Speaker 1: the same books, hung out at the same bars. They
Speaker 1: even had the same birthmark on the inside of their
Speaker 1: left thighs, and they both waved like a madman whenever
Speaker 1: they saw her approaching from a distance. The Yn of
Speaker 1: that story couldn't have been me, she said, because that
Speaker 1: Yn was to me. The point is that I'm no
Speaker 1: longer me. I'm y In. I've taken my destiny into
Speaker 1: my own hands, and I've decided that I am now
Speaker 1: a person who knows Moon. It appeared that Lise had
Speaker 1: read my story on arc Image. I've been saying arc Mage,
Speaker 1: but it's arc Image. Sorry. I tried to meet her
Speaker 1: eyes once more, but she kept her gaze on the engineer,
Speaker 1: which I found admirably resilient given his look of intensifying disdain.
Speaker 1: One person can't possibly be so many different people, he said.
Speaker 1: You say you're hy In, but you're really no one
Speaker 1: at all. You're the placeholder itself, a vacancyat waiting to
Speaker 1: be filled exactly, Lee said, with a dreamy smile. Moon
Speaker 1: is a feat of singularity. There has never been anyone
Speaker 1: like him, and there never will be. He is too specific,
Speaker 1: too unusual. I must try my hand at being everyone
Speaker 1: if I am to coincide with him. He stays in
Speaker 1: one place, I room endlessly. You can go listen to
Speaker 1: the episodes we did on Mary Sue. But that is
Speaker 1: a similar thing where people often say she is a
Speaker 1: placeholder for the author. She is bland, perhaps so that
Speaker 1: anyone can be her. But I feel like a lot
Speaker 1: of people bring what they think you do kind of
Speaker 1: make it your own, I guess, because it is a
Speaker 1: placeholder thing, you can be like, well, she's like me
Speaker 1: in this way, in this way, in this way. So
Speaker 1: it's interesting to read this exchange where he's like everybody's
Speaker 1: why in which is true, but she's like, no, only me.
Speaker 1: But what I feel like she's saying is when you
Speaker 1: take that position, it does become something kind of unique
Speaker 1: to you because you're you're filling all this blankness with
Speaker 1: yourself and your personality. I don't know, it's kind of
Speaker 1: hard to describe, but yeah, I think both are like I
Speaker 1: both are good points.
Speaker 2: I think to that level of what she's seeing herself
Speaker 2: is not herself.
Speaker 1: And what she wants to be. Yes.
Speaker 2: So that's why alone said when she said that's too me,
Speaker 2: because she knew that relationship because it was based on
Speaker 2: this one dude, right, interspersed with this one in being Masterson,
Speaker 2: who we talked about earlier, interspersed with Moon because that's
Speaker 2: how the author or the narrator wrote. It was based
Speaker 2: on him, which is also why she becomes obsessed with
Speaker 2: him later because she's kind of somehow transferred what she
Speaker 2: has seen Moon as to him Masterson. And then also, yeah,
Speaker 2: interspersed to the two of them. But yeah, like having
Speaker 2: that saying that this is to me, so that wasn't me.
Speaker 2: I can't be that because that's not where I want
Speaker 2: to be essentially.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, that's I mean. And I say, we're going
Speaker 1: to talk about that a little bit more later because
Speaker 1: I think that's another misunderstanding people have. But sometimes it's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a self imagined fulfillment, like I wish I would
Speaker 1: be this person. Yeah, but if you were ever confronted
Speaker 1: with the reality of it, you don't want it. It's
Speaker 1: just like imagining. It's like, Okay, let me imagine this,
Speaker 1: but in reality, no, thank you, no thank you.
Speaker 2: And here's some more quotes from the book. Somehow I'd
Speaker 2: never imagined Moon as an infant I'd also never imagined
Speaker 2: him dying. He seemed to have come into the world
Speaker 2: already complete, and I expect him to disappear in the
Speaker 2: same way, which honestly could say something about K pop
Speaker 2: fandom in general, especially when we talk about young deaths
Speaker 2: and tragic deaths or whatnot. When they kind of disappear.
Speaker 2: They kind of disappear when they fade out of the limelight.
Speaker 2: Not many people think about it anymore, and they do
Speaker 2: just disappear. You don't think about their past too much
Speaker 2: because their present is what you look for and what
Speaker 2: you fell in love with, and then when the time
Speaker 2: dies out and if you get in a new interest, yeah,
Speaker 2: they disappear.
Speaker 1: M hm. Yeah. And I think it's true that it's
Speaker 1: like the idea of to me, it's speaking to this
Speaker 1: sort of celebrity culture we don't view sometimes we forget
Speaker 1: celebrities are human, and so you don't purse he's never
Speaker 1: a baby. Of course, he was never gonna die. He's
Speaker 1: not human. You don't kind of give them that space
Speaker 1: or think about that space, because that would interrogate like, well,
Speaker 1: what are we participating in then? Well what is he
Speaker 1: going through?
Speaker 2: Then?
Speaker 1: Like as a human person.
Speaker 2: Exactly m M. And then this quote is from when
Speaker 2: they make an announcement that Moon is retiring and oh
Speaker 2: dear no details followed the news of Moon's retirement, the
Speaker 2: other boys retreated from public view and then definitely suspended
Speaker 2: the release of their next album online. The turmoil was Titanic?
Speaker 2: Had Moon quit of his own free will? Was he dead?
Speaker 2: Had he relocated to the moon? Surrendering himself to scientific
Speaker 2: progress and betrothing himself to a metaphor? I really like,
Speaker 2: that's just kind of again, there was a lot of
Speaker 2: this in the book where the surreal conversation was bigger
Speaker 2: than it needed to be. And at one point there's
Speaker 2: a line in which he says he is my gasoline.
Speaker 2: So it was such an odd lie that I was like,
Speaker 2: it took me out of the book completely, that I
Speaker 2: was like that was was that a mistranslation or was
Speaker 2: that just purposely blown to be so flowery that it
Speaker 2: did the opposite of like, instead of engaging me, made
Speaker 2: me think, what just happened? Did she mean to say that?
Speaker 2: I know writing is hard, and definitely this book is
Speaker 2: definitely that intensive level of like making sure you're kind
Speaker 2: of spinning around the words rather than just laying on
Speaker 2: them is a way that sounded like a flowery description
Speaker 2: in itself, but that's the way I can say I
Speaker 2: can think of it.
Speaker 1: I think it's also though, like it's supposed to be
Speaker 1: the drama of when you're a fan of something.
Speaker 2: Perhaps where everything felts inclement and die.
Speaker 1: Saying feels so big, everything feels.
Speaker 2: Meaning of everything, and then not just a single word.
Speaker 2: You can't be abrupt. You must make the descriptor so
Speaker 2: long that you forget what you were originally talking about.
Speaker 1: Oh, like the God, I wish I hadn't burned my
Speaker 1: fan fiction. I would read you guys, you would laugh
Speaker 1: so hard. But I would write like this like it
Speaker 1: was life or death or whether we could meet each other,
Speaker 1: like it was so important to me.
Speaker 2: Yeah, was this about Keanu.
Speaker 1: No, if we really come back and do this, I
Speaker 1: was gonna go into my because I've had three I
Speaker 1: would say that we're pretty big Keanu Reeves. I like,
Speaker 1: I don't think I ever engaged in the actual fanfic
Speaker 1: part of it, or even in my head because a
Speaker 1: lot of times I didn't write it necessarily. But Billy Billy,
Speaker 1: Joe Armstrong, Daniel Radcliffe Ryan Gosling kinda nut.
Speaker 2: I'm too young, I guess, yeah, you're quite formal like
Speaker 2: form to say those flowery words For Ryan Goslin.
Speaker 1: I him a letter that was dotted in hearts. Though. Yes,
Speaker 1: I'm actually got to talk about this in a second,
Speaker 1: but I want to read this quote first. It's fine
Speaker 1: if I never meet him, I said, staring at the ceiling.
Speaker 1: I just like the feeling of us moving through time together.
Speaker 1: I need him there. I need to know that, at
Speaker 1: this very moment he's looking down at his hands. Somewhere
Speaker 1: in the world. It's possible that I might have figured
Speaker 1: him out all wrong, that my imagination has turned him
Speaker 1: into an absurdd caricature. Even then, I need to know
Speaker 1: that I'm doing all of this fallacious work in reaction
Speaker 1: to something that's real. You don't need him back, you
Speaker 1: don't even need him alive. Just pretend he's the main
Speaker 1: character of your favorite movie. And now this movie's over.
Speaker 1: So again, this is like when her and Master Center
Speaker 1: a kind of having this big falling out fight, this
Speaker 1: whole thing. But it did remind me. I think I've
Speaker 1: told this story before. I will go into it. In
Speaker 1: our magazine episode. I had a huge crush on Ryan
Speaker 1: Gosling as young Hercules Samtha knows. I finally secured the DVG.
Speaker 1: I'm very very excited. I'm sure it won't hold up
Speaker 1: and it's gonna be great. But I had a really
Speaker 1: huge crush on him, to an embarrassing point that everyone
Speaker 1: knew it when I was like nine years old, like
Speaker 1: all not even friends, like everyone knew it. And I
Speaker 1: had a moment when I think it was nine or ten.
Speaker 1: My mom found me crying and she was like, what's wrong,
Speaker 1: And I said, I've just realized I'm never going to
Speaker 1: be with Ryan Gosling, And to her credit, she like
Speaker 1: held me and did the laugh in my face. But
Speaker 1: it was true, Like you had that moment of I
Speaker 1: remember it sound so j now, but it's funny. I
Speaker 1: remember thinking, well, he's like twice my age, he's really hot,
Speaker 1: he's got a lot more going on than me, and
Speaker 1: he pretty much lives in New Zealand. Like I was
Speaker 1: taking it like seriously.
Speaker 2: Oh, you were trying to calculate the possibilities.
Speaker 1: Oh no, it's embarrassing. I'm gonna blush thinking about it,
Speaker 1: but I, oh, dear, I will talk about it. It's
Speaker 1: pretty funny. But I did have that moment where I
Speaker 1: kind of mourned, but then I moved on kind of
Speaker 1: that like, you know, the movie's over, which is interesting
Speaker 1: because after that I never really I did move on.
Speaker 1: I never came back to her and Gossling, but I
Speaker 1: did want to put in here because sometimes some of
Speaker 1: you listeners write in and you'll talk about parasocial relationships
Speaker 1: or how you feel like, you know, as not in
Speaker 1: a creepy way, I'll say, but you know, just kind
Speaker 1: of like, hey, yeah, I feel like anyway. And I
Speaker 1: think I think that makes sense, especially with a podcast
Speaker 1: like ours, because I was thinking about this, like a
Speaker 1: lot of the stuff you get with celebrities is pretty
Speaker 1: like polished, like pr managed interviews, but with us, you know,
Speaker 1: we're kind of just talking about our lives. And I
Speaker 1: experienced that as an editor, where I would feel like
Speaker 1: I just knew someone so so much and they didn't
Speaker 1: have any idea who I was, and it's just it
Speaker 1: is sort of strange, but it is a part of
Speaker 1: our media landscape. But I think it's different than this
Speaker 1: because yeah, yeah, because I do think there's a difference
Speaker 1: between like a celebrity where they like almost have scripts
Speaker 1: of what to say, so you never really know them.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's true, like you don't really know us either,
Speaker 1: but I feel like we're much more kind of ourselves
Speaker 1: versus I feel like celebrities are much more like a
Speaker 1: image of themselves.
Speaker 2: Right well, also with K pop, they are created by
Speaker 2: the agency, their personality, their level of fashion, their face,
Speaker 2: their style. They are created to be a specific image
Speaker 2: to fulfill a specific idea and typically a specific role
Speaker 2: in that group. I think it's changed since the beginning
Speaker 2: of that, like I know, more recently, people and maybe
Speaker 2: this is the fandom being like, no, that's not true.
Speaker 2: I don't know, but like it seems like people with
Speaker 2: the fact that their social media in existence now that
Speaker 2: they can't quite get away with as much pristine like
Speaker 2: cleanups as they did once upon a time, because truth
Speaker 2: will eventually come out. But at the same time, yeah,
Speaker 2: for the most part, and especially with K pop, they
Speaker 2: are they have a lot of morality stuff that are
Speaker 2: in place by the agencies that if you, you know,
Speaker 2: are caught with cigarettes, you might get kicked out of
Speaker 2: the band. If you're caught with a girlfriend, you might
Speaker 2: be or a boyfriend you might be kicked out of
Speaker 2: the vand uh, in fidelity, any of those things. They're like,
Speaker 2: you're gone. So a lot of this from a start,
Speaker 2: contrast from us just talking with our bosses, sometimes not
Speaker 2: knowing that we exist.
Speaker 1: Yeah, here's another quote, kind of about that you've settled
Speaker 1: for a comfortable distance from him so that you can
Speaker 1: yearn without suffering. Sorry, but you're not in love. You're
Speaker 1: a fan, boring, lethargic, overfed. If you really loved him,
Speaker 1: you'd be in soul right now. You'd be walking the
Speaker 1: streets day and night in search of him. The magnitude
Speaker 1: of the task would crush you until you became a
Speaker 1: ball of pulp containing gesture, heart all other organs, crushed
Speaker 1: into dysfunction.
Speaker 2: It's a weird stamon to be said by a psychologist,
Speaker 2: by the way, like challenging, dare you?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Oh, I was like, who would do this?
Speaker 1: Well? Yeah, but I thought that was interesting because it is.
Speaker 1: I do think that point of like you're a fan,
Speaker 1: and that like lying about being overfed, like you're getting
Speaker 1: so much stuff as a fan, was important, and this
Speaker 1: kind of like point of the safety of loving something
Speaker 1: or someone you cannot have I've read she's talked about
Speaker 1: that in interviews, and I do think that's true for
Speaker 1: a lot of people, Like I was saying, when you
Speaker 1: write a self insert, like you don't really want it,
Speaker 1: but it's kind of fun to imagine. I think it's
Speaker 1: I think that a lot of people aren't even if
Speaker 1: in the back of your head you're like, oh, if
Speaker 1: we met, I know, but you're also kind of like,
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna do the for it. I will just
Speaker 1: write this.
Speaker 2: Thing, try to reach out to him or anything. I'll
Speaker 2: see his movie and story.
Speaker 1: I'll write him a letter that I later hope was
Speaker 1: destroyed before you could read it. So then, yes, after
Speaker 1: this sort of like ultimatum, she decides to go to soul.
Speaker 1: The narrator decides to go to soul, and the conversation continues,
Speaker 1: you would really do that. His tone was not of gratitude,
Speaker 1: but of intense hurt. Don't you understand that he went
Speaker 1: away because he wanted to. Perhaps that's what troubles me most,
Speaker 1: that even he could no longer endure it. Yes, the
Speaker 1: pressure is so intense. And then you have kind of
Speaker 1: what we've been discussing throughout is sort of this construction
Speaker 1: of an avatar that you feel ownership over or entitlement to,
Speaker 1: Like I really think a lot of celebrity culture is
Speaker 1: you're going after somebody who doesn't exist. It's the creation
Speaker 1: of them in your mind and on social media and
Speaker 1: entertainment you want, but not the real person.
Speaker 2: Right again, when we look about and we talked about
Speaker 2: this previously a little bit about the fact that she
Speaker 2: chose KP pop for a reason, but like K pop
Speaker 2: is the epitome of creating someone for the fan they
Speaker 2: like in the level of ownership given to fandoms is
Speaker 2: incredibly almost dangerous, which is why things have like been
Speaker 2: People are like, maybe you need to back off, or
Speaker 2: maybe there needs to be lost to protect celebrities as well,
Speaker 2: even though you would think they would be protected but
Speaker 2: not in South Korea. But yeah, there's this level of
Speaker 2: the whole they were catered and created in hopes that
Speaker 2: the fandom would take them all. You have biases in
Speaker 2: this type of conversation that doesn't really exist in any
Speaker 2: other kind of celebrity culture outside of K pop, because
Speaker 2: they want it to be that level. They want you
Speaker 2: to own things that their faces on, kind of like
Speaker 2: her cosmetic set or her skin of routine that she
Speaker 2: talks about throughout the book as well, that because she
Speaker 2: wants to look more like them. Next quote, it says,
Speaker 2: to my pleasure. He picked up the notebook and began
Speaker 2: to read aloud. And this is where she finds him,
Speaker 2: and Moon is starting to read her fan fiction. I
Speaker 2: relished the gaminess of his accent. It sounded impossible to fix,
Speaker 2: he paused when he came across the word why. N
Speaker 2: He tried to pronounce it as yen, but immediately reconsidered,
Speaker 2: settling with why in each time he uttered the abbreviation.
Speaker 2: I increasingly understood myself in the sound, the breath, the
Speaker 2: insubstantiality of why, which was pulled down the throat by
Speaker 2: the density of en. He seemed to be asking why
Speaker 2: of my existence? Why I was what I was.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so this is she does get to meet.
Speaker 2: Moon, which I was trying to figure out if this
Speaker 2: was real.
Speaker 1: It's definitely meant to made you question it, but I
Speaker 1: think it was real. I think some of it wasn't,
Speaker 1: but I think it was. But also I think that
Speaker 1: she did the thing she of the self insert fan fiction.
Speaker 1: You meet the person and then she's like, no, this
Speaker 1: isn't real, this isn't right. This isn't because it's not
Speaker 1: the person she's created. So here's a quote from her.
Speaker 1: I'm not a stranger. You know me. All of your videos, pictures,
Speaker 1: messages they were for me. Don't make that face. It's true.
Speaker 1: You couldn't have known it at the time since you
Speaker 1: didn't know who I was, but you didn't need to.
Speaker 1: Our connection preceded us. I have spent my entire life
Speaker 1: training myself to feel the feelings I have for you.
Speaker 1: My perception has been perfectly notched to match the gear
Speaker 1: of your personality. Don't think I haven't heard this all before.
Speaker 1: He said, yes, And I think that's interesting in terms
Speaker 1: of like cause she does. She kind of gets mad
Speaker 1: and was like, oh, it's not you. It's not you
Speaker 1: who I thought you would be, right, and then she
Speaker 1: sort of was Okay, well, I'll go back to my
Speaker 1: real moon, which is the one in her fan fiction.
Speaker 1: But that idea of like, okay, this is all for me.
Speaker 1: Like this, you are specifically speaking to me. I am
Speaker 1: the unique one. I am the yn that matters. I
Speaker 1: think that's also fascinating in terms of how celebrities are
Speaker 1: pressured into like social media, and it's meant to make
Speaker 1: you feel that way. We've talked about that in terms
Speaker 1: of like a lot of the songs, those like popular
Speaker 1: romantic songs are meant to make you feel they're singing
Speaker 1: to you. That is what the whole point is, to
Speaker 1: kind of have that idea of like, well, to take
Speaker 1: that and to seriously be like, Okay, you don't know
Speaker 1: who I am, but it was me all alone.
Speaker 2: Right, That's an interesting thing. She actually talks about parasocial
Speaker 2: relationships and how she does not like it in this context.
Speaker 2: So I'm gonna read it real quick from those Say
Speaker 2: You interview or the Center for Fiction. It says, I've
Speaker 2: seen the word parasocial used to describe my narrator's relationship
Speaker 2: with Moon. I dislike that word because it pretends to
Speaker 2: clarify when it actually obscures. And if the implication of
Speaker 2: parasocial is that my narrator knows Moon falsely through image,
Speaker 2: through what he represents, then what he really is, then
Speaker 2: it seems to me that all relationships are parasocial, especially
Speaker 2: so called love relationships. Have I ever really known anyone,
Speaker 2: including myself, I'm pretty sure I have a parasocial relationship
Speaker 2: with myself. In any case, parasociality is precisely what my
Speaker 2: narrator is trying to escape.
Speaker 1: Interesting. It wants to know like a real thing.
Speaker 2: But at the same time she's disappointed by the real
Speaker 2: thing was in her head, which is parasocial. This author
Speaker 2: is interesting. I like our takes going.
Speaker 1: Yes, well, I have another quote. This one is from
Speaker 1: the NPR article. I don't see the novel as a
Speaker 1: cautionary tale against anything, to be honest, It's simply documenting
Speaker 1: this one individual's attempt to perhaps experience something beyond the
Speaker 1: boundaries of her given conditions, beyond the boundaries of her
Speaker 1: human consciousness, which, of course, for any person is an
Speaker 1: extremely dangerous thing to embark upon. Either you are sent
Speaker 1: over to the other side and possibly you never come
Speaker 1: back to reality, you never survive it to tell the story,
Speaker 1: or you come back and you're probably a little bit destroyed,
Speaker 1: to put it mildly. Yeah, I think the narrator is
Speaker 1: certainly skirting some kind of boundary, testing some kind of
Speaker 1: boundary between reality and fantasy. And she does have a
Speaker 1: lot of quotes about mass consumption, how we consume media
Speaker 1: currently as mass consumption, and how we interact and enjoy
Speaker 1: art in our modern times and how that can lead
Speaker 1: to blurring of these lines. And so at the end, Yes,
Speaker 1: there is this whole thing where the narrator comes back,
Speaker 1: meets back with Oh, Oh has this documentary like short
Speaker 1: film that has painting in it of the narrator, and
Speaker 1: the narrator keep asking to see the painting, like I
Speaker 1: want to see the real thing, and Oh is like
Speaker 1: you're missing the point, Like if you want that, then
Speaker 1: I don't know if I can. So it's sort of
Speaker 1: that idea. She's always the narrator is always trying to
Speaker 1: find this quote real thing, but it's never happy with it.
Speaker 1: It is never satisfied with it, doesn't believe it, which
Speaker 1: I think is interesting. There's also a quote from that
Speaker 1: NPR article about there is something in her that is
Speaker 1: in all of us, and that's about the being anonymous
Speaker 1: online like the net. We never have the name. And
Speaker 1: I did try the the y N thing in this book,
Speaker 1: which is where you put your name in evershabby Cyan,
Speaker 1: and it was unsettling, which I believe was the intent.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I would not like that because none of Yeah
Speaker 2: again I already thought this book was like definitely out
Speaker 2: of my style, So like that would have made me
Speaker 2: real uncomfortable. But like this, this is not my This
Speaker 2: is not a thing that I would Yeah, this is
Speaker 2: not one thing I would have picked up by myself.
Speaker 1: I it was interesting. I've never done that, I don't think,
Speaker 1: because again, it's not I don't want to be in it.
Speaker 1: I just want no not me, which I think is
Speaker 1: a whole other thing. But I tried it. It was okay. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it made me feel a certain way.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it made me well, it made me like I
Speaker 2: was just like huh again, Like there's just moments of
Speaker 2: like trying to figure it out and trying to be
Speaker 2: like I don't know if I feel sad for this person,
Speaker 2: for the narrator because she's going to be unhappy, or
Speaker 2: if I'm just concerned for the narrator because there's some
Speaker 2: red flags. Obviously I was gonna write read this because
Speaker 2: I think it's pretty on point with ye. But she
Speaker 2: says about the writing of the book, all I learned
Speaker 2: from why In is how to write why In. I
Speaker 2: don't seem to have learned how to write novels in general.
Speaker 2: I could never write something like why In. Again, my
Speaker 2: thinking has changed too much. I wrote most of why
Speaker 2: In on the pure benzene of instinct, almost blithely and desperately,
Speaker 2: which not paradoxically made me very fastidious. At the microscopic
Speaker 2: level of the text, I suspect that whatever I write
Speaker 2: next will be the reverse. It'll have to account for
Speaker 2: the quote relaxed ruthlessness that has come to dominate my
Speaker 2: style of thinking since why.
Speaker 1: In yeah, I mean it's it was interesting to you
Speaker 1: because like that sounds like writing fan fiction to me,
Speaker 1: that is what you just have to write it. You
Speaker 1: just get in this mind space, So that makes sense.
Speaker 1: Here's another one last quote from you. I always imagine
Speaker 1: Moon almost as a knife kind of a violent figure.
Speaker 1: I don't mean that in a wilful way, but that
Speaker 1: he seems to be exposing some kind of wound or
Speaker 1: void in these characters' lives. And it's both offering for
Speaker 1: film but also exposing that void. And I think the
Speaker 1: exposure of that void can be full of potential for
Speaker 1: an individual who's experiencing that, but it can also be
Speaker 1: a moment of great Of course, it's leaving open a
Speaker 1: lot of possibility for disappointment, for lack of fulfillment, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that void, mm hmm, it's true.
Speaker 2: I mean, yeah, we didn't talk about the part where
Speaker 2: it's implied that he's what brought the group together and
Speaker 2: without without him, they all fell apart and filmed like
Speaker 2: they lost a part of themselves. So they were trying
Speaker 2: to find the new moon with the new with the fans,
Speaker 2: it seemed when they all want to go meet them. Yeah, yeah, again,
Speaker 2: I didn't know if that was a fanfic portion on
Speaker 2: the real book.
Speaker 1: I think that was real. But it's also like it's
Speaker 1: true the I don't know, it's it's the in fandom,
Speaker 1: it can be so strange because you can feel something
Speaker 1: so strongly and then if it goes away you it's
Speaker 1: almost like scary where you're like, well, what's what I
Speaker 1: could never ever give up on this person I love
Speaker 1: so much? And then years later I'm like Ryan Gosling,
Speaker 1: like it's a bizarre were you kind of like if
Speaker 1: you feel you would never ever it would be a
Speaker 1: betrayal to like let them go, and then you find
Speaker 1: something else do. Yeah, but it is a it's a
Speaker 1: part of fandom that you've heard me talk about it,
Speaker 1: like one day I won't want to dress is this anymore?
Speaker 1: And it's like such a silly thing.
Speaker 2: But yeah, well there you go.
Speaker 1: Yes, there you go. It's a short read. It is
Speaker 1: very intense.
Speaker 2: There's a lot to unfold. There might be some rereading.
Speaker 2: It needs to happen.
Speaker 1: I had to reread the end because I was like, wait,
Speaker 1: hold on.
Speaker 2: It does again. It makes me a little sad more
Speaker 2: than anything else, I will say. And I'm not sure
Speaker 2: if that was her point to that, but yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean it's to me, it's mostly about like loneliness, unfulfillment. Yeah, yep,
Speaker 1: and not being able to find that. So well, we've
Speaker 1: come out strong in twenty twenty four. As always, if
Speaker 1: you have any suggestions listeners, we would love to hear
Speaker 1: from you. You can email us at Stephanie and moms
Speaker 1: Stuff at iHeartMedia dot com. You can find us on
Speaker 1: Twitter at mom Stuff podcast, or on Instagram and TikTok
Speaker 1: at stuff. I never told you. We have a tea
Speaker 1: public store, and we also have a book you can
Speaker 1: get wherever you get your books. I talked about Mary
Speaker 1: Sue in there. Lots of ampiction stuff. Thanks as always
Speaker 1: to our super producer Christine, our exective producer Maya, and
Speaker 1: our contruder Joey. Thank you and thanks to you for listening.
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