Episode 163: Freya Marske
In episode 163, Flourish and Elizabeth talk to novelist and Be the Serpent co-host Freya Marske upon the publication of A Marvellous Light, the first novel in her historical fantasy romance trilogy “The Last Binding.” As they discuss tropes, characterization, genre expectations, and other elements of fiction writing, Freya draws from her prolific fanfic-writing history to talk about the ways that fic did—and didn’t—prepare her to write original fiction, and the way her original fiction connects back to the fanfic world.
Show Notes
[00:00:00] As always, our intro music is “Awel” by stefsax, used under a CC BY 3.0 license.
[00:01:02] Visit Freya’s website and listen to her podcast, Be the Serpent. And look at the glorious cover for A Marvellous Light!
[00:01:27] Our interstitial music here and throughout is “I’m Going for a Coffee” by Lee Rosevere, used under a CC BY 3.0 license.
[00:37:59] We love McNally Jackson, and you too can buy A Marvellous Light there if you’re in New York City. (No matter where you live, buy your books through indie bookstores—if you’re based in the U.S. and don’t have an indie near you, we recommend bookshop.org!)
[00:39:47] Freya recommends several books that have come out recently or are set to come out in 2022, all m/m fantasy with strong romance elements:
Paladin’s Hope by T. Kingfisher
Seducing the Sorcerer by Lee Welch
Winter’s Orbit by Everina Maxwell
A Strange and Stubborn Endurance by Foz Meadows
A Taste of Gold and Iron by Alexandra Rowland
[00:52:48] Elizabeth’s memory was correct: the Cherik brony AU and Cherik bird AU were both by the very talented winterhill (whose fics are archive-locked, so make sure you’re logged in).
[00:55:41] Freya’s little riff on her characters’ social media use in a modern AU setting (click through for the full gif-y goodness!)
![@kaitlin_m_ruiz tweets: "Can't stop thinking about Robin is actual bottled sunshine and Edwin is a precious little hedgehog." Response: "Edwin, reading this tweet: [image of chicken narrowing its eyes]".](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/57d81f7f9f74567839f5633b/919eff0c-c4db-4b8d-99c7-903990a46dd1/Screen+Shot+2021-11-30+at+10.22.56+AM.png)
[00:58:48] We’ve had a lot of episodes featuring pro writers who’ve had some engagement with fanfic—#161 “Brent Lambert,” #159 “Gwenda Bond,” and #112 “Rainbow Rowell,” just to name the most recent three.
Transcript
[Intro music]
Flourish Klink: Hi, Elizabeth!
Elizabeth Minkel: Hi, Flourish!
FK: And welcome to Fansplaining, the podcast by, for, and about fandom!
ELM: This is Episode #163, “Freya Marske.”
FK: Woo-hoo! We are so excited to have her on this podcast. You may know her as—well, she’s a fanfic author, but she more recently has come out with a book called A Marvelous Light, which is available from Tor.com, right?
ELM: Tor.com.
FK: It’s awesome. We both read it, and we loved it, and we’re really excited to get to talk to her about all sorts of stuff—her publishing process, fanfic, you know. All that.
ELM: She’s also, speaking of—we didn’t speak of it, but we are speaking on a podcast [FK laughs]—she’s also—
FK: Smooth.
ELM: [laughing] She’s also—Yeah! Podcasting skills. She’s also the co-host of a podcast, which probably has some crossover listenership with this podcast, I’m guessing based on what they talk about. It’s called Be the Serpent, and it’s pretty popular. I know it’s been a finalist for a Hugo. So, uh, you know, I’m excited to talk to another podcaster in this realm—fandomy realm.
FK: [laughs] Me too! Should we give her a call?
ELM: Let’s do it!
[Interstitial music]
FK: All right, it’s time to welcome Freya to the podcast! Welcome!
Freya Marske: Hello!
ELM: [laughs] Hi! It’s very good to talk to you again.
FM: Yes, it is lovely to be on this podcast that I have listened to many times. [FK laughs]
ELM: Wait, is that true?
FM: Yeah!
ELM: Oh, I didn’t know that! [laughter]
FK: That’s so nice!
FM: Surprise! [ELM laughs] I can’t say I’ve listened to every single episode, but like, you know, occasionally I’m like, “Oh, that one sounds interesting.” So yes, I have listened to this before.
FK: Yeah! Success!
ELM: Aww, I’m so delighted. I had no idea. OK, great! Great. That’s why we had you on, actually, so.
FM: Obviously. [laughter]
ELM: OK, well, since you have listened before, perhaps you know that when we have guests on, we like to start in the same spot every time, which is like, if you tell us your origin story, basically. As a fan, but also the way that potentially connects to your professional journey, because I know that your writing comes from a fannish place, to some degree.
FM: It definitely does. So the fan journey is obviously a lot of a—a longer origin story than the professional one, in that, I think I was reading, especially fantasy, but reading since I was very small. I think the first piece of fanfiction I wrote was one of those classic things where you’ve never heard of fanfiction. You don’t know that fanfiction exists. You definitely aren’t even putting it on the internet, but there’s just something that you really object to, and you want to fix it. [FK & ELM laugh] So I think I wrote like a, some kind of weird self-insert. You know, I objected to a…what character? Some side character’s love interest, and I was like, “She’s not good for him. [laughter] I’m going to come up with a better love interest transparently based on myself. [FK laughs] I think I was probably about like, 11 or something at this point. But that was just like something I wrote on the side and did not actually go searching for fandom.
I actually came to online fandom relatively late compared to some people, in that I was probably 15, 16, and a group of my friends at school and I discovered LiveJournal, and this was pre-Facebook, so we kind of used LiveJournal as our social connection site. Like, we planned parties on locked posts, but we also used it to be fannish, and because I was already interested in writing, I started using it to find fanfic writing communities, so I quickly branched out into the wider fannish world and made a load of connections and friends in different fandoms, and then just stayed, basically. And stayed and stayed and stayed and stayed, [FK laughs] and kept writing fanfiction and kept writing fanfiction, and you know, still have friends that I’ve known since I was 16, when we were just on LJ together.
And the professional side of things only really started in my 20s when I began writing short stories first, and then slightly longer things, and eventually wrote an original novel, and at that point, some of the people that I knew through fandom were at a similar stage. Like, a lot of us all kind of made the turn towards professional fiction around the same time, so some of them had been publishing short stories for years in various magazines. Most of us were writing in science fiction/fantasy, so I, at that point, had some connections who were both fannish but also in the industry—so either had just been agented or were looking to be agented, or at least had a much more awareness of the industry.
So I was very lucky, in that I then managed to make further connections through them, not in a very sort of like, formal networking way, just a, “Ah, you know, we’ve been reading each other’s original stories for a while, do you want to read my novel… Oh, I really like your novel, I’ve got a friend who I think would really like it, do you want to jump into this Slack chat?” And so it was all quite organic, and it all started just through conversations with fannish people. But it did mean that I had a sort of ready-made community of people who were at a very similar stage of their publishing journey to me, which I think is one of the most useful things you can have. And I’ve basically kept one foot in fandom while the other foot has been gradually stretching itself off into the professional world.
FK: So you don’t see yourself as like a, you know, fanfic once and now professional writer?
FM: No! Definitely—no. I am not in ex-fandom. I am still definitely a fandom person. I definitely am not writing as much fanfic as I used to. I was very prolific for a while there, but I am still writing fanfiction, albeit very slowly [laughs] and fitting it around all the other things that I’m writing, but I’m still definitely reading a bit of fanfiction, and I’m still, you know, interacting in fannish spheres and still think of myself as someone who is active in fandom, if not as active as I used to be.
ELM: That’s interesting. How many of the peers that you have on the pro side, who kind of made that leap, are balancing it that way? Because I know maybe not 10 years ago, even, but even five years ago, I would say that, you know, people would put up kind of hard lines between the two, and it seems like that’s kind of breaking down for a lot of people, and it seems like it’s not that way for you. You’re happy to keep a foot on both sides. Is that unusual?
FM: I think it depends on the person and where they’re trying to put their energy toward. So, certainly a couple of my friends are still very active fic writers, as well as writing—because a lot of publishing is waiting. Like, there’s a lot of time, especially in traditional publishing, when you’ve just finished your draft and you’ve turned it over to your agent or your editor and you’re waiting on edits, which could be months, you know, unless you have a really firm idea of the next thing that you want to write, or you know, sometimes you just want to write something that takes a little bit less energy or has slightly lower stakes than something that is being sold on contract, so certainly I know a lot of people who do write both.
But most people, I think, are in a similar situation to me, where obviously you’ve only got so much, you know, hours in the day, and so much creativity to burn, and if you are lucky enough to be on a contract with a publishing house, then you do have to meet those deadlines first, and then think about fanfiction otherwise. Which is why I’ve had two fanfiction pieces that I really desperately want to finish, sort of burning a hole in my Google Drive for the past…probably a year, for one of them, a bit less than a year for the other. And I desperately want to finish them, but every time I open them, a little gremlin is like, “No, you should be doing something else.” They’re growing very slowly. [laughter] They’re growing in dribs and drabs. Because I do miss that feeling of fanfic writing, when I’m not doing it.
ELM: That’s funny. But you know, the book’s out. You must have some free time now!
FM: Haha! Ha. [ELM laughs] Yes. So the first book is out. The second book is now…we’ve done revisions with the editor, but I really, really should be writing book three. [FK laughs] So I’m at a stage where I’m outlining book three. So I technically could be using some of my like, prose creation to be working on fanfic, but I think at the moment I’m in one of those sort of like, recharge fallow periods where you just flop around and consume other people’s media and wait for the battery to refill before you can start being creative yourself again.
FK: Mmm.
ELM: OK, that’s fair. I don’t want to pressure you into constantly writing things at all times. [FM laughs]
FK: I also kind of want you to finish books two and three, so.
ELM: Yeah, yeah that’s true.
FK: I do want that. [laughs] OK, but I’m curious, so I’m always interested when authors like, have been writing fic, and then they write professional fic, what the things are that cross over between the two, what skills cross over, or what like, lessons, or I don’t know what, you know? What really transfers and is important, because people will say all sorts of stuff, but I feel like a lot of times, when people say, “Oh, yeah, fic prepared me to do X,” either they don’t really write very much fanfic, or they don’t really write much pro fic? Like I’ve heard a lot of people opine on this, [laughs] who I’m like, “I’m not sure that I buy your perspective.” But I do buy your perspective! So please tell me. [laughs]
FM: OK, well, I think, I mean, to be honest, I think fic writing prepared me for like, 85% to 90% of what it takes to write an original book, and that’s literally just because I moved from writing like 3,000-word emotional vignettes to writing like, 65,000-word fics that were either like, almost entirely AUs or they were very like, a lot of the world-building and original characters were people that I’d just come up with, so there were a couple of things, even before I started writing original novel-length things that I thought, “OK yup, this is me deliberately seeing, am I almost ready to take that next step?” But the years and years and years of writing fanfiction taught me like, my literary voice, I suppose, taught me prose, a little bit especially about romance beats, and romance pacing, and just like, it taught me what I enjoy. What I enjoy reading and what I enjoy writing.
I think in terms of what lessons transfer well, thinking about a given book or a given story in terms of tropes, set pieces, and even like AO3 tags, can actually really help crystallize what you think people will enjoy about it.
FK: Mmm.
FM: Or, what am I excited about, about writing this?
FK: Mmm.
FM: So, you know, being able to look at my book and say, “OK, it is a grumpy-sunshine pairing, there is library porn, you know, there is people having feelings about sleeves-rolled-up forearms, like even down to that scale, the more you can write about like, here are the things that I can tease out that I think people will like, or latch onto in this, even at the very beginning of the writing process, helps me say, “OK, what am I writing this about? What’s the fun stuff that’s going into this going to be?”
But on top of that, I think the main lesson is just, you can’t really go wrong if you’re going feelings-first. That’s a very fic thing, and obviously coming from fanfic, I’m a very feelings-driven writer, so feelings and character are the things that are gonna get you through a story, and if you’ve got the feelings and the character right, nobody’s really going to mind that much if they’ve seen a plot similar to this before, there’s no original plots really under the sun, but you know, you can still do fun things with structure, but if you get the feelings and the characters right, people are gonna come along for the ride.
And so I think even though this is something that doesn’t apply when you’re writing fanfiction, it’s something that you need to know about fanfiction to translate it into original fiction, which is that the emotional investment in the characters has to happen as soon as possible, because writing fanfiction, you are working with an advantage, in that people are coming in, usually, knowing who these characters are already. There are some fic writers that I will read their work even if I know absolutely nothing about the canon, just because I really like them as writers and I’ve had people leave comments on my fic saying, “I’ve got no idea what the source material is for this, but this was fun.” Which makes me [laughter], you know, you think, “OK, well, good—yup.” You know, because I do that too, and I think a good fic writer can give you a snapshot of who characters are and why you should be invested in them very quickly, and when you’re writing original fiction that is the thing that I think is the hardest final leap to make from fanfic writing to original fiction, is how do you create characters that are entirely new and get your readers to feel invested in them quickly, so that you’re not having to sort of drag people along for pages and chapters and chapters before they feel that they know them, and feel that they’re actually invested in their outcomes. So, even though it’s not something that can transfer from fic to original fiction, I think being aware of it as the last step was something that was very deliberate, where I thought, “This is the one thing that I have to work on when I’m making that step.”
But I think the last thing that you can learn from fic is you can’t really go wrong if you write what you enjoy reading, because there is an audience for everything. There is an audience for everything from sex scenes every two chapters to 300,000-word slow burn. Like, whatever it is that you enjoy, there is going to be somebody else out there who enjoys reading it, so why not just write the thing that you love?
ELM: It’s funny because you’re also like, you’re a beloved fic writer, right? You know, like—I feel like, do you think that’s a somewhat unique position? Like, how many novelists have had thousands and thousands and thousands of people praising their work for years, you know what I mean? Like, do you feel like that gave you a bit of a boost of confidence?
FM: Confidence-wise, yes. Because it made me think, “Yes, I’m doing something right.” Like, I know—I’ve never lacked confidence in my own ability. Like I know that, at this point, I am a fairly good writer, and so I was pretty confident that I could make that jump, in the first novel that I wrote—which is not the one that’s just come out, but it was a different novel that actually got me my agent and then we went on submission with, but we didn’t end up selling, like I thought—I wrote it, I read it, I thought, “This is a good book. [FK laughs] You know, I would like to read this book.”
You know, it was my first novel, and there’s a lot of stuff out there about how everyone’s first novel is nonsense, or you know, everyone’s first novel is going to be a mess, and you should just put it in a drawer, but as far as I’m concerned, my first novel, slash novels, were the hundreds and hundreds of thousands of words of fanfic that are out there. Like, people can see my improvement process if they are bothered to go back through the years and read my fanfiction from the age of 16 onwards, and that’s something that a lot of people in the original writing world don’t have. Like, you don’t have people watching you improve in real time, pre-publication. A lot of people can follow a career and say, “Ah, look, we can see this is a very promising first novel, but look at them later in their career, you can see growth.” But I felt like I’d already been in the process of growing and learning for so many years that writing an original novel was just a next step.
So, yeah, there was a certain amount of confidence, in at least knowing that the things I liked to write, there are people out there who like to read them. And that’s always a comforting feeling to have if you’re going from, “I’m writing this for fun and putting it on the internet for fun,” to, “I’m writing this and we’re going to try to make—ask people to pay money for it,” you want to have a certain amount of confidence that people will enjoy it enough to feel that it’s worth the dollars.
FK: So, I asked you about what did transfer from fic to pro fic. But I’m curious about what didn’t transfer. Like, what do you do in fic that you absolutely like, can’t or shouldn’t do [laughs] in an original novel or story?
FM: All right, so this is the flip side of “write what you love, there’s an audience for everything,” because [FK laughs] as much as you might want to write exactly and only what you love, there probably is an audience for it, but there may not be a capital-M Market for it, and what I’m talking about here is very much in the realm of traditional publishing. You know, going through an agent, going to a traditional publishing house, approaching editors, because you have to then be writing something that fits into an existing market niche of one kind or another. So the thing that didn’t transfer for me is a complete and utter disregard for genre. [FK laughs]
So the first novel that I wrote was also, like A Marvelous Light, very much in that overlap area between romance and fantasy, ah, except unlike A Marvelous Light, it did not actually fall into a particular fantasy genre. So, A Marvelous Light is historical fantasy. You know? That is a known genre, it fits, even if it was to be published as a romance, historical fantasy romance is also a thing.
FK: But you could totally pitch it as like, you know, Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell meets…you know, X meets Y, right?
FM: Yes, so, it was able to be pitched—
FK: You could be the jerk in a meeting pitching it that way. [laughs]
FM: Yeah, yeah, exactly, so there—
ELM: Yeah.
FM: There were obvious comps, both in romance and in fantasy, but more importantly, because we were trying to sell it to a science fiction and fantasy imprint, you could turn to it and say, “This is a historical fantasy novel.” That is the genre that it is.
FK: Mm-hmm.
FM: The first book I wrote, it was set in a secondary world that had no magic, so it wasn’t like a traditional fantasy fantasy, and it was even more romance-driven, like there were less external stakes, and that—like if you turned to a romance publisher, you can’t say, “This is fantasy romance,” because fantasy romance carries particular genre connotations. They would expect some form of magic, like something speculative.
FK: Mm-hmm.
FM: Ah, you could turn to fantasy and say, “Well, this is a secondary world, but there’s nothing magical about it and also it’s mostly a romance,” and they’ll say, “We don’t know where this goes.” You know?
FK: Mmm.
FM: And that’s why we couldn’t sell it, because we took it to romance publishers, and they said, “This isn’t the genre, like where does this fit? We like it, but it’s too much something else.” And the fantasy publishers said, “This isn’t fantasy enough, it’s too much romance, like you would have to—if you want us to publish it as fantasy, it needs higher stakes outside of the romance, and it needs to be, you know—there had to be a lot more world-building, or the world-building would have to be magical in some way.” And I had a look at it and thought, “Well, there’s no point in me adding magic just for the hell of it. [FK & ELM laugh] Like, that’s not what this story is about.”
And I still love that book a lot, and it’s very tropey, like it’s even more a product of my fannish writing, and I think there would be an audience for it, but there isn’t a market niche for it, in the capital-M Market sense. So that’s in a drawer, for the moment, and possibly might one day see the light of day in a publication, since depending on you know, how my career goes, or if I ever feel like self-publishing, I don’t know. It’s very much a, keeping it in the back pocket for the moment. But that was something that I definitely had to learn when I sat down and had a conversation with my agent about how do we want to pitch this, and then writing A Marvelous Light while we were on submission with that other book, I was writing it very deliberately, even though I first conceived of it as a trilogy of linked romances, I was writing it very deliberately to be a fantasy trilogy that was still a trilogy of linked romances, but I put a lot more meat, I guess, into the world-building, into the magical plot, and just made sure that the romance was still there, everything I wanted out of the romance was still there, but there was a lot more on the bones to make it publishable.
FK: Wait, it’s linked romances?
FM: Yes!
FK: I want to know whose story the next one is! [laughs]
ELM: [laughing] Will you look at—you should see Flourish’s face!
FM: Yes, so it’s—
FK: Whose is the next story!
FM: Yes, so it is three linked romances. So, each book has different narrators, uh, like a different pair of narrators and so has a slightly different vibe—
FK: Mm-hmm.
FM: —because obviously who the narrators are—
FK: Have we met the current—the people in the next one?
FM: We have met one of the protagonists/narrators of book two, and we have also met, briefly, one of the protagonists/narrators of book three.
FK: But you’re not gonna tell me who they are.
FM: I can. I can tell you that book two, Maud is one of the protagonists. Robin’s sister.
FK: Yeah, Maud! Yeah! [laughter]
FM: Yes, and so while book one is very—I wouldn’t call it a quiet book, but I think the vibe of it is fairly intimate, and like, it’s about vulnerability and intimacy, [FK laughs] book two, Maud is not quiet. Maud is a ball of chaos.
FK: I am delighted by this.
FM: And so her book is a little bit more chaotic. And so in book two, you meet her love interest, and you also get a lot more of both of the protagonists of book three, who I will not talk about yet, because I haven’t actually written book three yet. [FK laughs] We can talk about it, like I can spill some secrets when we stop recording, but I—
FK: Perfect.
FM: At the moment, I am attempting to only talk about book two, in as much of book two as I’m allowed to talk about, and book three teasers will wait until book two exists.
ELM: Flourish, I should have known you would be a linked romance fan—
FK: Of course I love linked romance!
ELM: —but you are so—
FK: Are you kidding? [ELM laughs]
FM: See, this is what I love about historical romance, is that whole, you know, you get the first couple of people, and then you see some people on the page, and then you’re like, “Ooh, I think we’re gonna get that person’s story next.” And I love that.
FK: Exactly! Exactly.
FM: And it’s not something that you really see in fantasy a lot. So even though I am building, it’s really fun—
FK: It’s a great way of chaining stories.
FM: Yeah yeah yeah. I think book one is very, very insular, with Robin and Edwin. Like, it’s very much about their story, them against the world. Book two, and this is a very fantasy trilogy thing, each book opens the world a little bit more, but it also opens the cast a little bit more. So, book two you’ve got your two protagonists, but we also have a stronger supporting cast, and by the time we hit book three, we have six main players. So I’ve got a whole Leverage heist crew ready to go [laughter] to have an adventure in the third book.
ELM: Wow. Is it a heist?
FM: There might be—there’s a bit of heisting in book two…
ELM: [whispering] Aww, yeah.
FM: And there’s some heist elements in book three as well, yeah.
ELM: [whispering] Oh, great.
FK: This is so exciting to me, because I felt like at the end of book one, I was like, “I so enjoyed that. It also feels like the love story is like—I mean obviously ongoing, but it feels also very like, satisfied.” And I was like, where am I gonna feel like in number two?
FM: Yeah, and that’s the thing, I want to be very clear about this—like, I’m giving each of these couples their happy-ever-after in their own book. I’m not going to break them up. I’m not going to kill off half of them. [FK & ELM laugh] Like, this is a romance—
FK: Thank you.
FM: —as well as fantasy. You have to feel safe reading it, knowing that your characters are going to end up together, and I’m not gonna like, randomly shoehorn in a breakup for them. But you do get to see them being a couple in the later books in the series. I don’t know if there are people out there for whom that would ruin their experience of reading it, but I want people who are reading it for the romance to feel like they’re not going to have the carpet dragged out from under them, and there’s not going to be any romantic cliff-hangers or anything like that.
FK: Like, it is—like, they are romance novels—
FM: Yeah.
FK: Even though they’re not sold as romance novels. Like, you can embrace them the way you would a romance novel.
FM: Yeah, I hope so.
ELM: OK, so this is like the fundamental way that I’m not like, a romance [FK laughs] genre person, right? Like, I’m like why would you ever—we’ve got our ship now, right? [FK laughs] Like, we’ve got—Why, are you like, abandoning them, why not just do now—next one should be like, an established relationship fic, you know?
FM: I mean, they are an established relationship, you will see more of—
ELM: Yeah, but like, still the center?
FM: Because, well, I mean—
ELM: No, like I totally get it. I get it.
FM: —even as a fanfic writer, I am more interested in getting-together stories than—
ELM: Sure.
FM: —established-relationship stories. Like, those are more fun for me to write.
ELM: Yeah, I mean that tracks with the fanfiction world, also, I would say.
FM: Hmm.
ELM: You know? I feel like that’s way more common than established relationship, right?
FK: I think so.
FM: I think so, and I think like, even in published fiction, there’s a lot of—there’s a lot more getting together, even if you’re talking about like a romantic relationship in a series, something like an urban fantasy series. Very, very seldom we’ll get the main couple together early and then follow an established relationship in books. It’s much more common for them to have like an, on-off, will-they-won’t-they, you know, spread out over books and books—
ELM: Sure, sure.
FM: —and books.
ELM: Right.
FM: I mean, I don’t read a great deal of urban fantasy, but what I have read, I think that’s a more common pattern for the central happy-ever-after romance, if that’s the way that a series is going. I can’t think of a great deal of series in fantasy that will get people together in book one and then follow an established relationship.
FK: I mean, Outlander.
ELM: What about the Twilight series?
FM: I haven’t read the Twilight series.
FK: Well, they break up. In Twilight they break up—
ELM: Don’t they have that fast-growing baby together? In the later ones?
FK: That all happens in the last one. [ELM laughs]
FM: I do know what happens in the Twilight books, but I have never read them. [laughs]
ELM: I saw one in the movies while deeply hungover, [FK laughs] and so that’s my whole knowledge of this.
FK: And in the second Twilight book, that’s why it’s like, Team Edward versus Team Jacob, is that—
ELM: She does get with Jacob?
FK: Well, she and Edward are broken up, so like—
ELM: And so it’s a question of whether—
FK: It’s a question of whether she’s going to, you know—but, no, I was just saying the only one I can think of is Outlander, where like, they are—
FM: Mmm, that’s true.
FK: —I mean, they’re parted for a long time, but on the other hand, they’re never really broken up.
FM: Well, look, this is a sentence that I’m not going to say again, but Twilight is more like something like Captive Prince, which is a romance arc told over multiple books.
FK: Mmm, mm-hmm.
FM: So…
FK: Yeah, that’s true.
FM: You can do a romance within one book, and you can do the whole arc of, you know, get together, come together, have doubt, have your breakup, have your dark moment, have your reconciliation, and you can do that in a single book, or you can do that arc over multiple books. It just depends on what you’re going for and how much other stuff there is going on.
FK: Yeah, with like, mini-arcs in between them.
FM: Yeah, and so like—
ELM: Sure.
FM: If we’re using Twilight as an example, like it’s got a lot of things, but you’re right, it does also have that like, “We get married, we have a super fast-growing baby.” You know. Stuff. [laughs]
FK: Yeah, like all in the last book.
ELM: We haven’t read it, and we know all this about it.
FM: Oh yeah yeah yeah, like there are certain things that are inescapable in our culture. [laughs]
FK: Well, I have read it and I have written a master’s thesis about it, [laughter] so we’ve come to the right place.
FM: Well, we definitely bow to your expertise here. [laughter] I’m not particularly interested in writing that particular narrative, as the central one, really. Fast-growing babies can—
ELM: Have you thought about, yeah, a fast baby?
FM: —not appear on my pages.
FK: Fast baby!
ELM: Maybe in the third one?
FK: A classic in—it’s also a classic in science fiction. Star Trek: The Next Generation has a fast baby. [ELM makes dubious noise]
FM: Yeah, I mean we haven’t like, even started talking about omegaverse fanfiction, so.
FK: Right? [laughs]
ELM: Some fast babies, in that world. Yes.
FK: I’m curious—so, something that I’ve been seeing a lot about your story—“about your story,” that makes it sound like it’s a fanfic story, [laughter] about your novel, about the literal book that you wrote—
ELM: [laughing] Oh my God.
FM: Yes.
FK: that’s published on paper and that I have read—
ELM: That one-shot, yeah. [laughter]
FK: Anyhow. Something I’ve been seeing about it a lot from people is, people talking about it and saying that it feels like fanfic. But meaning it in like, a really positive way? Um, and then you also see people using that in a negative way, with other books, typically? Not your book, I haven’t seen anybody saying that about your book—
FM: Oh, good.
FK: —in a negative way. But I’m curious like, what do you think makes a story like, in that sort of positive and useful, maybe more importantly, and reasonable way, what makes a story feel like fic? And then like, when people are saying that, and you’re like, “Yeah that makes no sense,” or like, “Yeah, you don’t know anything about fic,” [laughs] what then?
ELM: Can I add on to this question, though? Like, how do you feel about people’s like—when you hear, “This reminds me of fanfiction,” do you immediately think about the latter thing Flourish is talking about, and you’re like, it cuts you to the core? Or are you like, “What a nice compliment.”
FM: No, and like, I have seen a few mentions, and they have all been positive, exactly as you say, and so I have absolutely no problem with people describing it as feeling like fanfic. But I think, in being able to pinpoint the ways in which my book is fanfic-like, I think I am a little bit too close to it. Like, I’m not quite sure I would be able to look at it and say, “Oh yeah, this is like fanfic in these ways,” because I am so much a product of the writing that I have been doing over the years, that for me, this is just what my voice is now. And yeah, maybe there are things about my authorial voice that feel fanfic-y, but I think it is quite hard for me to tease them out.
If I had to make a guess, I think there is, what I first mentioned in terms of lessons from writing fic, I think a certain amount of blatant use of trope, and sincerity of emotion, [FK laughs] is what I would say. Like, it is really sincerely focusing on emotion and character dynamics, possibly to a higher extent than other things in the genre. And so for me, that would be the thing about it that feels the most fanfic-y, because people are reading fanfic usually for the emotion, and I can say that, “Yes, this was a book that was written from the emotions and the relationships outwards.” And so I think that’s probably where that feeling comes from, but probably not two people who are saying, “Oh, this feels like fic,” will mean exactly the same thing. So I would be very interested to hear like, what people mean when they say that about my book in particular, but about other books in general as well.
ELM: What’s that? You want me to answer this question? [laughter] About why I would say—
FM: Well, I mean that would be quite interesting. I mean, sure. I’ll sit here and get myself—
FK: We did individually say, like we did individually read it and say to each other, “Wow, that really felt like fic.”
FM: Well, it would be interesting—I would be very interested to hear about why that feeling is there. And I think we are at a point now in modern publishing, where I think the very fact of it being a queer romance is not the thing that’s gonna make people say, “Oh, this feels like fic.” I think it’s got to be something more about the feeling of the book itself.
ELM: Well, yes and no, actually. The way I would answer this is, it didn’t—and it’s interesting to hear that in the rest of the trilogy it is not going to be M/M. But to me it felt—wasn’t so much, I wrote to Flourish when I read it way back in June, when I was moderating that panel that you were on, but I didn’t say it felt like fic, I said it felt like slash, right?
FK: Yeah, OK, you’re right, you’re right.
ELM: [laughs] And like, we—I don’t know if you know it, Flourish and I are somewhat different, I am coming from a historically like, capital-S Slash fandom, and like, this is something that we’ve talked a lot about in the last few years, of like, that doesn’t mean as much these days, or anything, like you can have queer romances of all genders, or queer male-male romance, and that is not what I think of as slash fandom.
But it’s interesting to hear you talk about the lack of space in the market for things that kind of fall in between or at these intersections, because to me, a lot of slash that I really love is what I also saw in this book, which is like, you know you’re reading something like, I don’t know, I haven’t read Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, but you’re reading a book like that, you’re reading these books that people love to write slash about, and you’re like, “You’re just—you’re just looking at each other! Now do it!” Right? [laughter] Like, “Just kiss each other!” Right? You know, but there’s like, meaningful pauses, you know that kind of thing, right? And so like, that is something that I feel like people who are like, longtime slash folks are so used to seeing in science fiction and fantasy and other media of that type for so long, and it’s like, “I see it. Surely it’s gonna happen.” So that’s the lens with which I was reading this, right? And I also knew that it was going to happen, because it’s not like watching like a big blockbuster, or whatever. [FK laughs]
FM: Mmm. That does make sense, and I know exactly what you mean when you talk about slash fandom, because I think that’s where I started my—not necessarily writing, but definitely my reading experiences in fandom. Like, I read a lot of Stargate: Atlantis fanfic, some Due South fanfic—some of those big like, blockbuster slash fandoms.
ELM: Yeah.
FM: Um, I certainly read a lot when I was just getting started in fandom, and I think you’re right, in that what I was doing, coming up through fanfic, was learning that you can just put everything on the page. You can put the world-building on the page, you can put the emotions, the longing looks and the touches and the subtext on the page, but then you can just keep going. [laughter] You don’t have to stop and say, “And now for the fanfiction stuff.” You can be like, “And here’s where the sex scene would go, so here’s where the sex scene is gonna go.” [FK & ELM laugh] And so in that sense, it is more like a seamless combination of a source text and its own fanfiction.
ELM: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
FM: Like, you know, I would obviously like to think that there’s still scope for anybody who reads it, who wants to write fanfiction, go for it, but—
ELM: Sure.
FM: Coming from a space of wanting to make the emotion explicit, wanting to make the sex explicit, fanfiction does that, and I think that’s what probably a lot of people are seeing. When I was talking about sincerity of emotion—
FK: Yeah.
FM: —and use of tropes, that’s partly what I was thinking of, is that you’re taking all the stuff that would have been subtext and saying, “No, you’re right, it’s text. Here it is. It’s part of the text.”
ELM: Yeah, yeah.
FK: It’s really interesting hearing you say that Elizabeth, and I think that it maybe sheds light on why, for me, I felt like—I mean, I see why you say it feels like slash, specifically. [ELM laughs] I’m like, I’ve read plenty of slash and enjoyed plenty of slash in my time, but I think that something, as you were talking about it, I realized like, culturally, it’s a very different thing. But if you look at like, my fandom for Mulder and Scully from like a purely textual perspective, like especially early on in the series where it’s like, occasionally people make jokes about them being together, but like, it’s not a thing, and it’s kept very much off—
ELM: Mm-hmm.
FK: —and every fan is going, “You’re looking at each other! Just kiss!” You know? With increasing desperation. That’s super different culturally, right? And like, different on so many levels. But if you’re looking at it on a purely textual level, of like, “I watched the show, and then I went and wrote the fanfiction about it,” you know what I mean? Just like, what you’re filling in, I see the connections between that in a way that I don’t think that I ever—I think that I always before like, separated those two experiences much more distinctly, because of that cultural element, right? But like, when I think about it with this book, I’m like, “Yeah, actually this—I could envision this book being written in a different way—”
FM: I think what you can see in it is the book that it could be being fanfic of.
ELM: Exactly. Yeah. Yeah.
FK: Right! Exactly. Exactly.
FM: Like, yeah. Like, hidden in A Marvelous Light is a much more like, straightforward historical fantasy. Like, definitely not to the same extent as Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, which is just—
FK: Yeah, no. [laughs]
ELM: Yeah.
FM: —so Victorian, in so many ways, uh, but yeah. You can see that somewhere in there is a book where this is just two young men forced together by the circumstances of work and bureaucracy, and you know, a magical exploration, and possibly it is the first book in the series where they will have some adventures and solve some mysteries, and then there is a thriving fandom on the side. And I’ve just said, “No, you don’t need the fandom”—well, you do because it would still be nice to have a fandom, [laughter] but, “You don’t need to write the sex entirely on your own, here it is guys.”
ELM: Right, right.
FK: Yeah, you know, and I feel like it even extends to the way that you handle the secondary characters, which maybe has to do with the linked romance that you’re leading up to, but I felt like as I was reading, I was like, “These secondary characters feel to me like they are the main characters in some other story.” [laughs] You know what I mean? The way that you feel in fanfic, where you’re like, “Yeah, this is a story in which like, Harry Potter is not important.” [laughter]
FM: Well, I love doing that with secondary characters, and I think that was one of the things when I was writing fanfic, especially when I was heading towards writing original novels, I found that the secondary characters—especially my original secondary characters—I think one of the best things you can do with those is to make them feel like they are in the middle of their own story, and I love doing that with any kind of secondary character, especially because if you can do that with enough of them in the first half of the book, then you will end up with some very useful characters in the second half of the book, [FK laughs] or the second half of the series or whatever it is that you’re writing.
And so when I was first writing this, the two main characters of book two were going to be completely new people, but I realized pretty quickly that that’s not how you set up emotional investment. [FK & ELM laugh] You need to be somewhat—at least one of them you’ve got to care about pretty hard already, and then I realized that I’d given Maud enough that she was actually a perfect character for book two, and I always, always knew who the main characters of book three were going to be, ah, and I like, always knew how I was going to be writing towards their romance, so that was less of a surprise to me.
But, yeah. I think if you want to be writing linked books with different characters, you’ve gotta have that emotional investment. It’s not like its fanfiction, per se, but if you’re going to open book two with somebody whose narrative voice we’ve never heard before, you want your readers to have some kind of linked-in connection, if it’s a book two—
FK: Yeah, yeah.
FM: —so that you can just say, “Trust me, I know you loved the people in book one. Here’s somebody that you know something about. I’m now going to take you on a ride with her.”
FK: Yeah, and you know I think that maybe—maybe it was a bit of sleight of hand that made me not think of that, in terms of linked romance, because of it being sort of sold to me as a fantasy novel, or because of it being sold to me—I mean, maybe sold to me as a strong word, because I mean, I didn’t buy it, I received it from Elizabeth, who received it from you [laughter] but—
FM: It’s fine.
FK: —but you know, like perceiving it—
ELM: I bought a copy.
FK: —perceiving it first and foremost—
ELM: Just want to put that out there.
FK: [laughs] I’m not saying I’m not going to buy a copy. I’m just saying that, you know, like, the actual—
ELM: I just want to pat myself on the back. I went out and got my booster shot, and then, while feeling quite ill… [laughter]
FK: Great.
FM: You were just drawn to the cover because it’s so pretty.
ELM: Yeah, no. Sidenote, Flourish I know you were going to say something important, but [FK laughs] I did this thing where I saw that the bookstore had like, eight copies in stock, so I went up to the fantasy section and got the one copy off the shelf, and I was like, “Where are the other seven?” And then I went up to the register, and I turned around in my woozy state, and it was right there on like, the Featured New Releases table. There was like a giant stack of them.
FK: Yay!
FM: Was that a Barnes & Noble?
ELM: No, it was McNally Jackson, which is one of New York City’s finest independent booksellers.
FM: Oh, excellent. The reason I was asking about it is because I know that it was like, a bookseller pick for November for Barnes & Noble, so I think they are like, contractually obliged to have stacks somewhere. [laughter] But the fact that there was a stack in an indie is lovely!
ELM: So, yeah, sidenote, Barnes & Noble—this is a sidenote of a sidenote, but Barnes & Noble, you can’t find anything there, because everything is on a fricking table.
FK: Yeah, and also—
ELM: I don’t know if you’ve experienced this. [laughs]
FK: And also, everything is not books, it is now tchotchkes.
ELM: That is true. It is so—
FK: There are floors of tchotchkes, and one floor of books, up by the bathroom.
ELM: Shout out to McNally Jackson, which is mostly books. But uh, yeah, no, it was right there, and literally all I would have had to do is turn and instead I climbed some stairs. Risked my life, on those stairs.
FM: Well, I appreciate the effort that you went through in your woozy state. [ELM laughs] to pick up the book.
FK: You know, I don’t even remember what I was saying now. [ELM laughs]
FM: I think, OK—because you were talking about the fact that yes, it was sold to you, quotations marks—
FK: Ah, ah, ah, I remember!
FM: —as fantasy—
FK: I remember! I remember. Yeah.
FM: Yes. [ELM laughs]
FK: If I had been reading it as a romance novel, you know what I mean? Like, primarily as a romance novel—
FM: Mmm.
FK: And I was reading it as like, “This is a fantasy novel that happens to be a male-male queer romance,” and so I was not looking for characters who were not the main couple. You know what I mean? Like, I was not on the—my Spidey-sense was not attuned to this, and so then that resulted in me feeling like, “Yeah, this feels like fic.” I mean, I don’t know, I’ll have to read it again and see if I still feel that way, now that I know it’s like romance.
FM: Well, I mean, book two, it is going to whack you across the face. Like, it is incredibly unsubtle. You’ll get to certain scenes in book two and be like, “Well, there’s book three. [FK laughs] I can see it being set up for me, in front of my face.” But, you know, I really lucked out with the publisher that I got in Tor.com, in the U.S., who were the first ones to acquire it, and then Tor U.K. as well, in that they said, “Yes, this is a fantasy novel, but we are very interested in publishing, you know, emotional- and romantic-driven fantasy. Especially queer fantasy.”
FK: Mm-hmm.
ELM: Mm-hmm.
FM: Like, Tor.com is doing so much good work in that space at the moment—
FK: Mm-hmm.
FM: Ah, and I know of a couple of books that are coming out next year that are very much in the same vein, in terms of, they are like, highly romantic fantasy.
ELM: Hmm. Do you think that is—is that due to more editors coming from fandom? It really felt like in the—there was an editor’s note in the advance copy that was where we both read it, from your editor, definitely seems like a fandom person. [laughs]
FM: Oh, my editor is definitely a fandom person. [FK & ELM laugh] My editor and I met in Untamed fandom. [laughs]
ELM: Oh, yeah. No, it was quite clear from the—it was like a two-page introduction that was like, for the reviewer or whatever.
FM: Oh yeah, absolutely. That’s absolutely why—
ELM: I don’t know if you’ve read it, but yeah.
FM: —is that the people who are making choices about what gets acquired and what gets published, um, are people who have come up through fandom themselves. And it’s not just that they are able to say, “Oh, yeah, yeah, I love fic and this is like fic.” It’s that they can turn around and say, you know, “This is where the market for this is, because it is like X, Y, Z.”
ELM: Sure, sure.
FM: Because we can talk about it in terms of tropes, because we can market it with a list of AO3 tags that doesn’t just say, “The people producing this can speak the same language as fandom.” It says, “We know that this is like stuff that fandoms already like.” You’re able to make that jump.
ELM: Do you feel like that, over time, could lead to a breakdown of these kind of market constraints? Because it’s like, you know, part of what I was thinking as you were talking about that earlier is just like, I get why the publishing industry has to do this, but it’s so dumb to me. Because it’s just like—you know, like, I’m just talking about things I love about slash, I love that like—I mean, Flourish knows, Flourish has read my fanfiction, but my favorite kind of fanfiction is like, it still has all the other stuff, and there’s romance, right? You know what I mean? It’s like a plotty—and fanfic I’ve read that you’ve written, it’s super plotty, right? And yet—you don’t know what fandoms these are in, but like, I’m gonna play it cool right now. [FK laughs]
FM: You are allowed to name fandoms, if you are comfortable with it. [FK & ELM laugh] If this is for my dignity, you can not bother. If it is for your dignity, you are allowed to stay quiet. [laughter]
FK: What dignity! [laughs]
ELM: Um, well—well it’s funny, too, because also, you’ve written in like, 9,000 fandoms—
FM: Yeah, that’s true.
ELM: —so you’re probably like, I barely remember that, so.
FM: So many.
ELM: But, I really like the fic that you wrote in the X-Men fandom. That’s my current fandom.
FM: Mm-hmm.
ELM: Um, I don’t know if you remember, when you wrote that, maybe probably 10 years ago? But you did write a long fic—
FM: Ah, I think I remember like, two that I wrote. One of them was much more plotty than the other one. That was the one I co-wrote, I think.
ELM: Yes.
FM: Yes.
ELM: This sounds correct.
FM: Yeah.
ELM: I was—it was very good! [FK laughs] But you know, like, it’s the kind of thing where it’s like, it has all the elements of the canonical thing, right, that kind of stuff, you know like, “Oh, there’s some kind of action plot, there’s some kind of suspense plot, but also, those two are in love.” You know?
FM: Yeah. I think it’s difficult to say whether like, those “boundaries,” in quotation marks, between genres are actually going to be blurred, because I think, you know, publishers and bookshops and like, everyone’s always going to want to know, “Where do we put this?”
FK: Yeah.
ELM: Mmm.
FM: Like, there’s always going to be that sense of, “Which box does it fit into?” But I would hope that books like mine, and books like some of the other ones coming out, can show that there is a lot more room for these really emotion-forward books within the existing boxes. I think where a lot of the work is being done to expand genre is actually in self-publishing.
FK: Mm-hmm.
FM: Because there, all you need is to prove a market and to be able to make the market that is out there aware that the book exists.
FK: Mm-hmm.
FM: So there’s a lot less barriers to getting a book into the hands of people who would enjoy it in self-publishing, and I have a great amount of respect for the people who are working in self-publishing in romance, especially in science fiction and fantasy, as well, and in that messy overlap section. I think that’s where a lot of the work is being done. And so, what’s happening in traditional publishing is just a slow, ah, acknowledgement that these books exist, that this kind of book has a potentially huge readership, but I don’t know if we’ll ever be able to say, “Oh, you know, let’s just do away with genre,” because that’s really not how publishing is ever going to work. But I would be hopeful that I can sort of act as part of, not necessarily a vanguard, because there’s been very romantic fantasy for years and years and years and years and years.
ELM: Sure.
FK: Mm-hmm.
FM: But, you know.
ELM: Yeah, it’s funny—so often these conversations are so funny to me. Flourish is very much coming from a genre world, I think. Not to overstate it. [FK laughs] Flourish, is that right? You feel OK with that?
FK: Yeah, no. I read in a lot of genres that sure are genres. [laughs]
ELM: No, yeah, and you, um—and I really respect your knowledge of those genres.
FK: Yeah, and I’m fairly committed to the genre—like, I often commit to a bit—
ELM: Yeah, like, you’re not—
FK: I’ll commit to that bit. [laughs]
ELM: Thank you? I have been saying “commit to the bit” a lot, and I feel like I’ve infected you, so I really feel great about that.
FK: You have.
ELM: You’ve committed to my bit. [FK laughs] But like, I’m coming from the literary fiction world, and that’s such a wanky term, because it literally just means like, all the other things that people have deemed not-genre, right?
FM: And this is one of those places where I think you’re right, that the boundaries are a bit nebulous, or arbitrary, because there are a lot of things that are published as general fiction, or literary fiction—
ELM: Yeah.
FM: —that are science fiction and fantasy.
FK: Right. But—
FM: But they’re just not being sold that way.
FK: But—but it also means that it can’t be tropey in certain ways, you know what I mean? Or maybe not can’t be, but like—
ELM: You say that, but like, so much of this, especially some of these respected boomer types—
FM: OK, like, The Time Traveler’s Wife was sold—
FK: OK, that’s a different kind of trope.
FM: The Time Traveler’s Wife was sold as general fiction.
FK: Yeah.
FM: And it is tropey science fiction romance.
FK: That’s true, that is very true.
ELM: That’s fascinating.
FK: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then it had this veneer of respectability about it—
FM: Yeah, because of where it was on the bookshelf.
FK: —that I always wondered, “Why does it have this veneer of respectability?”
FM: And like, Kazuo Ishiguro like, writes science fiction.
ELM: Right. Absolutely.
FK: Yeah, that’s fair.
FM: Margaret Atwood writes science fiction. Yeah.
ELM: I mean, it’s always so weird to me because like, he’s not sitting there, clutching his pearls, being like, “Oh, I’m writing literary—” Like, he’s—
FK: No.
ELM: He’s like, very honest about it, but it’s like—
FK: Yeah.
ELM: I mean, he writes beautiful sentences, but so do people in genre, so. I don’t know. I just don’t know.
FK: All right, we’re running out of time, and I have one more question I wanted to ask you. You’ve been talking a lot about emotional stakes, and the fact that like, the emotions being up-front is really important. And sometimes people talk about the characters being up-front as being what’s really important in fanfic, or in things like that. I’m curious, what do you think makes characters compelling to fanfic writers? And is that the same thing, or is that a different thing from what makes a character a good character in an original story, right? Like, when you’re writing those characters, were you like, “Yeah, someone’s gonna write fanfiction about this guy!” [ELM laughs] Or were you like, “This is a different kind of character. Not one that people are gonna want to write fanfiction about.” You know what I mean? [laughs]
ELM: [laughing] Are those the two choices?
FK: Yeah! The two genders. People you wanna write fanfic about and people you don’t.
FM: Well, see, I think the urge to write fanfiction is not necessarily always coming from character, and that’s because of what I was saying about how A Marvelous Light is both a fanfic-generating text and its own fanfiction, all in the same covers.
FK: Mm-hmm.
FM: Because I think if I had left the romance and the sex out of it, they are the kinds of characters who would generate a fandom and generate fanfiction, and that’s because of the, I guess—
ELM: Juggernaut. [FK & ELM laugh]
FM: —the archetypes that they are, and the dynamic between them.
ELM: Yeah.
FK: Yeah.
FM: So I think things that make characters interesting for fic writers is a distinct voice of a character—
FK: Mm-hmm.
FM: —a handful of specific quirks, traits, or idiosyncrasies that you can sort of write them down as a list and say, “This is the kind of character that this person is.” But it’s more about, then, do they have an interesting dynamic with another character, or characters. So I think in film and TV, interestingly, a lot of this does come down to the acting choices that is made.
FK: Mm-hmm.
FM: Like, a lot of ships can be launched by some specific choices made by actors, not necessarily what’s in the script itself, or like a couple of really good one-liners in a script can also launch a ship. Shout out to Inception, [laughter] which was basically a juggernaut launched on two quips and some good suits and Tom Hardy’s way of like, lounging louchely and flirting with his eyes. Like, that’s it! You know?
ELM: They are good suits. Yeah.
FM: And I think for a fandom to grow, if you have that dynamic, you have those traits and idiosyncrasies, then that’s what you’ve got. If you have those things, you can then launch those characters into other settings and have them be recognizable, and I think because a lot of fandom does really enjoy playing with AUs, you can then take these characters and say, “I can put them somewhere else, and the dynamic between them and their personalities are still recognizable.” And that, to me, says what people are looking for is the type of character that they are and the way they relate to the other characters in that setting.
FK: Mm-hmm.
FM: So I think, in that sense, yes, it is good writing, if you have written a character that can then be transplanted, recognizably, by hundreds of other writers, into a different setting and still come across as themselves? They are a well-written character. [FK laughs] You know? They’re not just a blank sheet of paper.
FK: Right.
FM: They’re not—they are something that is recognizably themselves. So I think yep, that even for canons that are not the most well-written, that in itself is a good character. But also, you want those gaps to be present.
FK: Mmm.
FM: Like, you want there to be some unexplored areas. You don’t want—like, Literary, let’s go with a capital L, fiction, that gives you like, a bildungsroman, or like, the full story of an intergenerational family that really gives you someone’s entire life and puts everything on the page, there’s not much there in terms of what fanfiction writers can dig into and say, “Here’s a gap I want to explore.”
FK: Yeah. How does that interact—I mean, it feels to me like there’s a tension between—in what you’re talking about, between the sort of specificity and the individuality of those characters, and the tropeyness of them.
FM: Hmm.
FK: Right? Like you talked about the story, and you’re like, “This a grumpy-sunshine pairing.” You know? And it’s like, yes, this is a grumpy-sunshine pairing, but like, how do you walk that line, because it feels to me like, you know, obviously we love reading fanfic, sometimes you read fanfic and you’re like, “This is any two guys.” It is…
ELM: Sometimes it does happen.
FK: You know? Like it is a grumpy-sunshine any two guys, but it’s fundamentally any two guys. Like how do you, you know—
ELM: Literally what I was thinking as you were saying like, hundreds of fanfiction writers can recognize that character, it’s like. Oh, but so much of that is just like…[FK laughs] you know what I mean.
FM: I must say, I don’t read a lot of fanfiction, and the stuff that I do read tends to be quite high-quality, because I’m only going by recs given to me by friends, or following writers that I really love.
ELM: Smart. Yeah.
FM: So, I must admit, I have not read a lot of fanfic that comes across to me as, “This could be any two guys,” because I only read a small amount of what’s out there. And just from the nature of my selection process [laughter] it tends to be very good.
FK: Elizabeth, who goes to the end of every pairing—
FM: Elizabeth has this like—
FK: —that she gets into on the internet, is like—
FM: “Oh, the things I’ve seen…”
ELM: Here’s the problem with shipping, right? You’re like, “I like this ship, so I’m going to start reading.” And I also have high standards, and yet I like punishment. [FM & FK laugh] So I’m like, I just want more of this ship. Next page. Oh no. Next page. Oh, this is really bad—
FM: But there’s still something about that ship that drew you to that process in the first place.
ELM: Well, yeah, but at a certain point, it’s like, I’m just reading a rom-com starring Michael Fassbender and James McAvoy, right?
FK: She’ll—you gotta understand that she goes through, and she does what you do for the first like, maybe, mmm, week or two weeks of being obsessed with a pairing? I’ve seen this with several obsessions now.
FM: Hmm.
ELM: Yeah.
FK: And it’ll be like, for a little while she’s just reading all the good stuff, really obsessed, like basically I won’t hear a word out of Elizabeth because she’s just like buried in it for a long time, and then she like, goes back, and all the stuff that she had previously slightly rejected, you know what I mean, as just not quite there—
ELM: You think you know my process, but you don’t. You don’t know what’s going on over here.
FK: This is what it seems like from the outside, because to me it looks like you’re sort of spiraling out. You like, start off in the middle, and then you find more fic that you’re going to deign to read, and then you go more fic, and then you go—and then by the end you’re like, “What the fuck is all this?”
ELM: Look, this isn’t about me, but that’s not really how it goes down. In fact, I wind up reading things which are highly kudosed, which is my fault, because [FK laughs] often things with a lot of kudos are bad.
FK: I love this new insight into what—like, I was not seeing from your—
ELM: Yeah, no. Um, I mean, also for context, Freya, you know—not my current fandom, because I have a new fandom, but I’ve been in X-Men fandom for the last like, three to four years, and so in the first few months, I like, read a lot, with a very open spirit. Like, I read one where they were all birds. [FK makes high-pitched noise] You know.
FM: That is an open spirit. [laughs]
ELM: I read one that I really liked where—yeah. I read one where Charles is a brony. I really liked that story, actually.
FK: I think you told me about the one where Charles is a brony. [laughs]
ELM: He was a voice actor on the My Little Pony show, and Erik is an actor who plays a gay pony.
FM: OK.
ELM: Pretty all right. Pretty all right.
FM: Listening to a premise, I am not gonna throw out any premise just by listening to it, because I tend to follow writers, and like, there are some fan writers out there who, if they wrote that, I would raise my eyebrows very high, but I would probably click anyway, because I trust them. But I don’t think I would click on it just off the AO3 page. [laughs]
ELM: No, I would not either, and I actually think both of these fics were maybe by the same person, [laughs] who I was just like, “Sure, I’ll do all their AUs,” and that’s how I ended up reading their birds.
FM: There are people out there who can pull off anything. And obviously, the more cracktastic the premise, if the person pulls it off well, I will be very impressed and want to read more by that author, so. [laughs]
ELM: Yeah, no. This is how I felt, and this was unusual to me, because there’s so many batshit AUs in this fandom, and AUs have not really, historically, been my scene.
FM: Hmm.
ELM: So, Flourish, you don’t know me. [FK laughs]
FM: Jumping back to what Flourish said—
FK: [laughing] I don’t know you at all.
ELM: Yes, yes.
FM: You’re absolutely right, in that there is a balance between—you know, a character has to have those specific original things that says, “This is somebody new.” But—and I’m talking just for me, here, like I can’t speak for obviously everybody else in fandom. But, the kind of things that make me feel interested in writing fanfiction about characters is, there is usually an element of the ship or of the character that fits with certain tropes that I like. I tend to like, you know, sort of buttoned-up, repressed, controlling characters who are very much into being in control, ah, you know, often the morally ambiguous ones, what I call the murder unicorns, like Hannibal Lecter and Villanelle and things—like I like that kind of character. And so, for me, it’s not just that this is an entirely new and original character. There’s usually something about them that fits into an existing character type that I like. But there has to also be something about the way that specific character is written or portrayed, and that interacts with the other characters in their vicinity that sparks something in me, and makes me actually want to write fanfiction about it.
ELM: OK, I have a question. I know we’re running out of time.
FM: Go.
ELM: When you think about your characters in A Marvelous Light, and the forthcoming other books in the trilogy, and you think about how you—you know, I know you want a fandom, when people write AUs—and I’m not saying they’re bronies or birds, but you know—
FM: They could be bronies. I have no objection.
ELM: All right.
FM: Sorry. Continue.
ELM: Yeah, I assume you’d have no objections, but like, when you think of these characters, do you—maybe this is like, putting too much of the authorial, the author’s vibes onto the scene that you don’t want to do, but like, can you imagine these characters in those kind of AUs?
FM: Oh, yeah. Like, I think I had a Twitter thread yesterday, where somebody, ah, said something about like, Edwin being a precious, prickly hedgehog, and I flippantly quote retweeted it with like, “Here’s a gif of Edwin’s reaction reading this tweet,” and then I did like a little tiny riff on the ways in which Edwin and Robin would use social media, or not, in a modern AU. And like, you know, nothing of this—
ELM: Amazing. OK, so you actually wrote the AU already.
FM: Yeah, of course I have! [ELM laughs] I’ve had long discussions with friends about like, the ways in which our characters would interact if they all went to the same university in a modern AU. Like, what is the fun of writing original characters if you can’t then like, blossom off these huge AUs in your head. But obviously like, the only thing that is, you know, Word of God is the stuff that’s in the text.
ELM: Sure.
FM: So I can like, blather on about my modern AUs on Twitter as much as I want, but then anybody writing fanfiction can take it in a completely different direction if they want to. Like, that’s what fandom’s for.
ELM: This is super fascinating to me. I mean, I just—it totally tracks with you talking about it being character-driven and dynamic-driven, right? Because I think that like, there have been multiple fandoms I’ve been in, where I hate the idea of any AU—I mean, canon-divergent, sure, but like [FK laughs] removing them from their setting, because it feels so contextual? But I also feel like these characters are very dynamic-driven. So, it’s interesting to hear you say you feel that way about them too.
FM: Yeah, I think so. Like, I think they would definitely translate. All six of the main characters in the series, you could translate them into, you know, a various number of AUs and roles and things, because for me, the fun is, yeah, what is the dynamic between this person and their personality, and this other person and their personality. And yeah, like, the characters are products of their context. Like, Edwin is a product of being less magic than the rest of his family, but you know, you can produce that wound and that inferiority complex in a whole lot of different ways. It doesn’t have to be magic that does it.
ELM: Sure. Totally.
FK: Well, you heard it here first, Freya wants you—
FM: I want you!
FK: —dear listener [laughs]—
FM: To write AUs! Anything that makes you happy.
ELM: Yeah.
FM: I can’t read it, but I would be so happy to know it exists. [FK laughs] If there is fanart, definitely link me to it.
ELM: You can see that though, right?
FM: Yes.
ELM: What if I draw them all as birds?
FM: Perfect. Go for it.
ELM: I’ll write them as birds.
FK: Let’s see. What would they be as birds? I gotta think about this. [ELM laughs]
ELM: I don’t know enough about birds to actually do this. I could do cats.
FM: Hmm.
FK: All right, well, [FM laughs] I think that when we’re at the point of like—
FM: Starting to have bird headcanons. [laughs]
FK: —casting the characters as animals, [ELM laughs] that might be a sign that it’s time for us to hang up. It was so nice having you on, Freya.
ELM: Delightful!
FM: It was lovely to have a conversation like this. I don’t think I can think of any other podcast that would get me to do my birdsonas for my characters. [laughs]
FK: Yes!
ELM: Birdsonas! [laughs]
FK: Birdsonas! All right.
ELM: Thank you!
FK: We’ll look forward to talking to you again, I’m sure, [ELM laughs] someday in the future.
FM: Goodbye!
[Interstitial music]
FK: That was a wonderful interview. I’m so glad Freya was able to come on.
ELM: Yeah, you know what, that was—it’s interesting, we’ve obviously had other guests on who have written fanfiction and professionally published fiction. But, unless people have really prolific secret lives, some of the pro authors we’ve had on, I think that she may be the most prolific fic writer we’ve had? You know, like—and I feel like—
FK: Yeah, definitely.
ELM: The amount of insight she was able to give into these different kinds of writing and different patterns and stuff, I feel like was somewhat unprecedented in conversations we’ve had in this realm, and it was just like—I’m very pleased that we were able to kind of dig into some of that, because I think it’s something that—I mean, there probably aren’t a lot of people in the world who actually have this much experience, of like, you know, writing a bunch of pro stuff, and writing that much fic, in so many different fandoms and different kinds of stuff.
FK: Absolutely. And I think also, you know, how can I put this? Freya writes fic, and Freya writes like, very fic-y fic, [laughs] you know what I mean? And—
ELM: Sure.
FK: And, right? And like, as we talked about, you know, A Marvelous Light also has some of those feelings in it, and so in some ways I feel like the conversation—like, I found it very useful to think about, “OK, you know, if were going to write a bunch of fic and then try and write pro things, how would I think of it?” Because I think I would take more like, Freya’s viewpoint on it than some other folks I know who have dabbled in fic and then written different kinds of pro stuff. And, I don’t know. I just, I was very excited to hear from her also.
ELM: What’s that? You’re saying you also want to write some fic-y professional fiction?
FK: No, I think that I have determined that is not my calling, although I have toyed with it many a time.
ELM: I’m still waiting for you to write—do that, probably not just one, it’d be like a whole career’s worth of romance novels under your romance name.
FK: Yeah.
ELM: You’re not gonna say it out loud?
FK: I’m not gonna say it out loud. I can’t do it. I can’t say it out loud.
ELM: Madeline Montfort.
FK: AHHHHHH! It’s such a romance name.
ELM: I can see it—
FK: Can you see it in like, the curly font?
ELM: You know the—that font [FK laughs]—yeah, but no, I’m seeing it more in like a—do you know the kind of like, puffy, raised text—
FK: Yes. Yes.
ELM: —on the paperback, right?
FK: I can.
ELM: And in like, a very narrow width.
FK: Uh-huh.
ELM: Tall and narrow width.
FK: Right right right.
ELM: And big M’s.
FK: And there’s probably also like, an embossed rose on the front.
ELM: Oh, yeah!
FK: That’s how the cover is, right?
ELM: Oh, yeah.
FK: It’s like a gold cover, and then like, embossed rose.
ELM: [whispering] Madeline Montfort.
FK: Well. This is an alternate universe world.
ELM: Good. My next fic. Flourish [FK gasps & ELM laughs] Madeline’s next book. Sorry, I’m saying Madeline over and over again, which is probably like, not something that—
FK: It’s fine. It’s fine. It’s fine. I’m the one who brought us down here by saying that I had like, an alternate universe romance novelist name, and you know. It is true.
ELM: All right, great.
FK: Probably I should note to anybody who’s wondering about this, because some people might not know—
ELM: Oh, yeah. [laughs]
FK: My husband’s last name is Montfort, and my former first name is—was Madeline. So, there you go. Now you know.
ELM: Right. [FK laughs] Right. Yeah. I don’t know. Flourish Klink is like, to me, your Hollywood name, because that’s how I’ve always known you. I think you’re gonna have to come up with a third priest name.
FK: There is not going to be a third priest name. Flourish Klink is my name. [FK & ELM laugh]
ELM: Just think about like, what would a vicar’s name be? Have you thought about like—
FK: Oh, gosh.
ELM: Like, Nigel...
FK: [laughs] Nigel Throgmorten!
ELM: Start there. Yeah, that’s right. That’s right.
FK: There we go.
ELM: Nigel Throgmorten?
FK: [laughing] That’s my vicar name, I guess. I don’t know where it comes from.
ELM: [laughing] Father Throgmorten. [FK laughs]
FK: All right, all right. We’re getting way too silly at this point.
ELM: Thank you, Father.
FK: I think that we should probably talk about Patreon. You say that now, but someday you’re actually going to have to call me it, you know. [laughs]
ELM: Yeah. I would do it now if it didn’t upset you because it’s not the right order of things.
FK: It does kind of upset me. [FK & ELM laugh] All right, all right, let’s talk about Patreon.
ELM: OK, all right. So, patreon.com/fansplaining. This is the way that we fund the podcast and the work of our transcriptionists, who are chugging away now. We’ve done a few episodes with them, and I think they’ve been doing a wonderful job.
FK: Yeah! Thank you so much!
ELM: I’m saying this aware that one of them will have to type those words. [FK laughs] You’re doing a great job! [laughs] So, we use some of the money from the Patreon to pay them and also to fund the other like, hosting costs and things we have for the podcast. So, we have a number of levels, anywhere from $1 a month to unlimited dollars per month. And when you pledge at $3 a month, you get access to all our special episodes. There’s two dozen and counting right now. We have a few more in the works for the next few months. $5 a month, Flourish will send you an enamel pin in the mail, extremely cute. $10 a month, you get our Tiny Zines that we do every so often. Our last one was a collaboration with a semi-regular and our next guest, Destination Toast.
FK: Woo-hoo!
ELM: Just a little spoiler. Toast is coming on next episode, hopefully. So, you can check all that out, and uh, if you have a couple dollars a month to spare, we want them, so you should pledge.
FK: Oh my God, oh my God.
ELM: I didn’t know how to end that.
FK: Ah—
ELM: We’d love them! [FK laughs] We’d really appreciate them.
FK: If you don’t have that money, or just don’t feel like giving it to us, there are still ways that you can support the podcast. The very best thing you can do is to spread the word about the podcast to your friends and loved ones. [ELM laughs] You can also write in—
ELM: Yeah, tell your grandma.
FK: Tell your grandma!
ELM: Put a URL in your Christmas cards to—
FK: Great holiday conversations. Have you heard about this great podcast?
ELM: Tell your dentist, yeah. Everyone.
FK: Um, [laughs] but you can also—
ELM: A loved one, obviously.
FK: —send us a message. Write in. Write with your questions, write with your comments. As you guys all know, this is how we get a lot of our episode topics and we love including people’s voices on this podcast. You can do that by emailing fansplaining at gmail dot com. You can leave a message through our website, fansplaining.com. You can leave a message through our Tumblr. Our ask box is open, anon is on. If you really feel like you need to, you can send those messages through social media. We’re pretty much Fansplaining everywhere, but you know, I mean. Twitter’s not the greatest vehicle for an extensive question, so, you know. Consider email, really.
ELM: Yes.
FK: Oh! And, you can leave us a voicemail at 1-401-526-FANS, [ELM laughs] which is maybe even my favorite of these options, because then we get to include your wonderful voice on our podcast. And you can be anonymous there, too, just don’t tell us who you are, or say like, “This is me, but cut this part out,” or something.
ELM: All right. I know sometimes you think I make it awkward, [FK laughs] but I want to be clear, you also make it real awkward.
FK: I would not dispute that.
ELM: OK, great.
FK: All right. Do we have anything else to talk about at this point?
ELM: Nope! I don’t think so. I think that that’s all the business.
FK: Business.
ELM: We’re done.
FK: All right, wonderful.
ELM: Business concluded.
FK: [laughs] Well, it’s been a pleasure to chat, Elizabeth, and I will talk to you soon.
ELM: Bye, Flourish!
[Outro music]
FK & ELM: Thanks to all our patrons, and especially Alaine Sepulveda, Amanda, Amy Koester, Andie Cavin, Anna Cook, Anne Jamison, Annie, Boxish, Bradlea Raga-Barone, Carrie Clarady, Chelsee Bergen, chestnut_pod, Citizen D, CJ Hoke, Claire Rousseau, Cuda, David, Desiree Longoria, Diana Williams, Don’t-stop-her-now, Dr. Mary C. Crowell, E, Earlgreytea68, Elasmo, Eat the Rude, Emily Crone, Emma Couhi, Fabrisse, Felar, Ferty, Georgie Carroll, Goodwin, Graham Goss, Gwen O’Brien, Heidi Tandy, Heart of the sunrise, House of Squee, Ignifer, Jackson Nair, Jamie Always, Jean-Michel Berthiaume, Jennifer Brady, Jennifer Doherty, Jennifer McKernan, Jes, (another) Jes, Josh Stenger, Jules Chatelain, Julianna, JungleJelly, Katie Byers-Dent, Katherine Lynn, Kfan, Kiki Lynskey, Kim Rhodes, Kirsteen M, Kitty McGarry, Kristen P., Laura, Lucy in Bookland, Maria, MathClassWarfare, Matt Hills, Meg, Menlo Steve, Meredith Rose, Michael Andersen, M. J. Fiori, Molly Kernan, Myrmidryad, Nary Rising, Naomi Jacobs, Nia H, Nozlee, Paracelsus Caspari, Rebecca Freeman, Sachiko Schott, Sam Markham, Sarah Southwood, Sarah, Sekrit, Selina Packard, Tianna, Tiffo, Veritasera, and in honor of A.D. Walter Skinner and fandom data analysis and One Direction and Harvey Guillén and The Incorruptible Chastity Meatballs and Yuri Katsuki and Captain Flint! The opinions expressed in this podcast are not our clients’, or our employers’, or anyone’s except our own.