Episode 176: Liang Ge

 
 
Image cover: photograph of Liang standing with their back to a tree, with autumn leaves on the ground, and the Fansplaining fan logo in the top corner

In Episode 176, Elizabeth and Flourish welcome Liang Ge, a PhD candidate studying Chinese boys’ love fiction (aka danmei) and its fans. Topics discussed include a history of danmei, ambivalence around gender and sexuality amongst its readers, and how fan culture has shifted with the huge success of several BL-adapted web series—and the subsequent crackdown from the Chinese government. They also respond to a listener letter about the recent meta episode, and (spoiler!) Flourish grows even more rigid in their definition of meta.

 

Show Notes

[00:00:00] As always, our intro music is “Awel” by stefsax, used under a CC BY 3.0 license.

[00:00:50] You can find Liang on Twitter, or via King’s College London

[00:01:22] Our episode with Anne Jamison and Maria Alberto was called “Teaching Fanfiction.” 

[00:01:44] Liang has actually co-authored two articles with Erika Wang recently: 

[00:02:43] “The Meta Episode” was actually THREE episodes ago. 😅 Time flies, eh?

[00:10:35] Anisa Khalifa, our guest in episode #147, co-hosts the K-drama podcast “Dramas Over Flowers.” 

[00:11:43] Our interstitial music throughout is “Last call” by Lee Rosevere, also used under a CC BY 3.0 license.

[00:16:54] Heather Love’s Feeling Backwards: Loss and the Politics of Queer History

[00:17:28] The feminist scholars Liang names: Sara Ahmed, Sarah Banet-Weiser, and Clare Hemmings

[00:34:39] The OTW interview with Wenzhan, the creator of Feiwen/SOSAD.FUN. 

[00:38:00] “That man with the glasses” is in fact Zhu Yilong, who plays Shen Wei on Guardian

Animated gif of Zhao Yunlan and Shen Wei from Guardian looking at each other

[00:41:42] You can read a basic rundown of the 227 incident on Wikipedia.

[00:49:15] More of Liang’s work on ambivalence, queerness, and female danmei fans: 

[01:04:17] You may not be able to see Flourish’s hand gestures, but you can see the scale of our enamel pins ($5 a month patrons) and Tiny Zines ($10 a month patrons): 

 
Animated gif of Flourish pointing to the fan-shaped enamel pin on their jumpsuit lapel
Animated gif of a Fansplaining Tiny Zine being opened and shut
 

(You already know this, but as a reminder: patreon.com/fansplaining ✨)


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 #176, “Liang Ge.”

FK: And we are going to be speaking to that titular person.

ELM: [laughs] Titular!

FK: But first—titular! 

ELM: Let’s introduce Liang briefly. 

FK: OK, fine. 

ELM: Before we get to our business, which is reading a letter. Spoiler.

FK: Yes. So, we’re really excited to get to talk to Liang. They are a PhD candidate at King’s College London, and they study boys’ love culture. Chinese boys’ love culture. 

ELM: And danmei, right? Which is—

FK: Yeah, and danmei, also. 

ELM: —male/male romance novels, right? 

FK: Yup, absolutely. And they are Chinese, I think that you could probably figure that out. And they’ve studied at the London School of Economics and at Peking University before this. Let’s see…I think they’re really interested in, like, embodiment? And I’m really excited to hear what they have to say. [laughs]

ELM: Yeah! So, a little bit of background. Um, so, last year we had two academics on. One was Anne Jamison and the other was Maria Alberto. And afterwards, we were talking to Maria, who is, like, an early-career scholar, you know, she’s getting her PhD currently, studying with Anne and others. And she was suggesting some other, like, early-career scholars who are working on different things, and Liang and another person, Erika Wang, who we’re hoping to have on later in the summer, were suggested. They’re coauthors of a paper about Chinese fans and censorship, uh, within China. 

And so, we reached out to both of them, and I’m hoping we’ll have Erika on as well, as I said, but Liang was scheduled first, and so I am very excited to talk about danmei, because I feel like we often get a transcultural perspective that still, like, centers, or at least heavily involves the West, or Anglo-American spaces, English-speaking spaces, et cetera. But I would really love to learn more about this from the Chinese perspective, specifically, that doesn’t have to be constantly comparing how that works with the West, right? 

FK: Yeah, me too. Me too. And it’s something that I think neither of us really know very much about. So, it’s gonna be a learning experience—

ELM: Correct.

FK: —for every—

ELM: Correct.

FK: All right. 

ELM: For everyone? No. Just for the two of us.

FK: Yeah. Well, for everyone, meaning the two of us who are currently speaking to each other. [laughs]

ELM: Every host of Fansplaining.

FK: [laughing] Every host! OK, OK. But before we do that, we have a letter that we wanted to read. 

ELM: Yes. This was a response to two episodes ago, “The Meta Episode,” which was about meta. 

FK: Like, fan meta. 

ELM: Fan meta. It wasn’t a meta episode. It was an episode about meta. 

FK: Right. 

ELM: I’m gonna say that joke so many times. Never gets old to me. 

FK: And if you don’t know what meta is, and you’re listening to this for some reason, go and listen to that episode and find out what meta is. OK!

ELM: Homework. 

FK: Homework. All right, shall I read it? 

ELM: Yes, please. 

FK: All right, this is from @thegirlsfromroom417 on Tumblr. 

“Hi Flourish and Elizabeth!

“I was listening to the latest episode, the meta episode, and wanted to comment on the last couple of minutes. I found it interesting that you mentioned youtube as a place of meta, but not podcasts! I listen to some podcasts but not a lot, and it was interesting to me to consider whether podcast shows that talk about specific pieces of media and analyze them would be considered meta. If the hosts aren't affiliated with outside businesses, and are fans talking for other fans, I think it would? But maybe that brings up monetization and whether that affects the definition of meta, which could also be an issue with youtube. If ads or patreon money is involved does that make it no longer meta?

“In the episode you made a point that you would not consider the articles you write for fansplaining to be meta. I would assume that you also wouldn't consider your bonus episodes meta, but I could potentially see that a piece of writing talking about tropes and how they are used across fandom could be considered meta.

“Or maybe I have moved too far past the definition of meta, and need to relisten to the episode to clarify it in my mind.

“Either way, I love the podcast and wish the both of you much health and happiness!”

And that’s from @thegirlsfromroom417.

ELM: Thank you very much, @thegirlsfromroom417, um, [FK laughs] for the letter and for the wishes of health and happiness. Uh, ditto. Likewise. [FK laughs] OK, so, my initial response is: No! [both laugh] I don’t think most of those things are meta. 

OK, here’s what I’m gonna say. I think that meta is something that is deliberately authored, and the analogy that I would draw is—and I don’t think that everyone would agree with me, but I feel like you would—RPG forums, or other places where you engage in role-playing—

FK: Uh-huh. 

ELM: —as fictional characters, to me, that is not an act of writing fanfiction. 

FK: Yeah, I’d agree. 

ELM: OK. 

FK: Even when it seems like it’s sort of, like, right there on the edge, it’s like, “Nah, not sure it is fanfic. Nope.” 

ELM: Right. And maybe a chat within an RPG or even a whole RPG could be turned into fic, right? 

FK: Mm-hmm. 

ELM: You know, just like, if you’re actors and you improv a scene and record it, and then you use that as a basis to then script something. But to me—

FK: Right. 

ELM: —in both of those fictional examples, the act of, like, writing the script—no matter whether there’s an origin of improvisation there or not—

FK: Right. 

ELM: —that is the, like, authoring of the fic or the screenplay or whatever, right? 

FK: Yeah. 

ELM: But the transcribed, spur-of-the-moment, improvisational, off-the-cuff conversation? 

FK: Mm-hmm. 

ELM: That is not authored? To me—

FK: Yeah. 

ELM: —that wouldn’t count as those respective things. So, the nonfiction analogy here, coming back to meta, I think you can get as insightful commentary in an unscripted conversational setting on YouTube, on a podcast, anywhere else people will chat. I was gonna say in text, but I don’t know people, like, DM each other and then publish it— [laughs]

FK: Yeah. 

ELM: —a lot. Maybe? I think all of that, you can get some of the most insightful commentary on stuff in the world, and that’s absolutely a part of fandom, and, like, podcasts recapping episodes, podcasts analyzing episodes or books or whatever the object of fandom is, are absolutely works of fandom. But to me, that is not meta, because that is not intentionally authored the way, we were talking mostly about written meta, but YouTube videos feel even more authored to me, because people are so clearly reading a script, often, when they’re, like, “Breaking down in half an hour the, like, you know, this episode.” 

FK: That’s interesting to me, because I do think there are some podcasts that are intentionally authored like that. 

ELM: OK, hold on. You’ve encountered podcasts that are not narrative podcasts, that are commentary that is authored? 

FK: Yeah. I think so. Definitely. 

ELM: Interesting. I’ve never encountered that. 

FK: Yeah. So, like, I listen to a—I mean, [laughs] I listen to—

ELM: Yes? What are you gonna admit to right now? 

FK: —I listen to a podcast about [laughs] the history of polygamy in the Mormon Church, which is 100% like this.

ELM: Sure. 

FK: Which is—I understand that’s not—I’m not saying that’s meta, right? Like, that’s a history podcast. And sometimes they do interviews, and sometimes they do, like, authored episodes that are, like, someone reading from a script, and, like, bringing things in. 

ELM: Yeah, but to me that’s like narrative journalism. 

FK: OK. 

ELM: Everything in This American Life—well, not everything, but a lot of This American Life is scripted. A lot of Radiolab is scripted, right? Like, obviously there’s interstitial moments—

FK: Then how is that different from a YouTube video that is authored intentionally? 

ELM: I’m saying that I haven’t encountered any podcasts—I think that what the questioner is talking about—

FK: Mm-hmm. 

ELM: —is discussion podcasts, right? Like—

FK: OK, fair enough, fair enough. 

ELM: —the kind that we have. 

FK: Yeah yeah yeah. Right. That’s fair enough. 

ELM: That’s not to say that, you know, there isn’t some podcast out there that’s like an analytical YouTube show, where it’s authored and—

FK: Which you might consider meta, potentially. 

ELM: I would absolutely consider that meta. 

FK: OK. 

ELM: If it’s authored? 

FK: Mm-hmm. 

ELM: If it’s, like, written out? Whether it’s narrative—like a narrative reporting kind of thing—

FK: Right. 

ELM: And the people are within fandom and not, you know—like, if they think of it as meta, sure. 

FK: Mm-hmm. 

ELM: But I don’t think that a few fans discussing things within fandom, you know, like, a bunch of—

FK: Yeah. 

ELM: —whatever fans, like, get together and talk about this, like you and I do when we talk about, in our special episodes, like—

FK: Mm-hmm. 

ELM: —the letter writer offers—

FK: Yeah. 

ELM: —I don’t think of that as meta. I think of that as a different kind of fanwork. 

FK: OK. That’s interesting. I mean, I generally do agree with you, but I also think that there’s this element of meta where, to me, for it to be meta, you have to be thinking of it as being in the tradition of meta, which to me is this very specific, like, written thing, which usually also features, like, a comments section or, like, a Tumblr thread or, you know, like, back-and-forth from other people, but with a very authored thing. And then, like, followed by discussion from other fans.

ELM: So, you wouldn’t—you might even draw the line even closer and say, “The YouTube videos are something else, we’re not gonna use the term meta for that.”

FK: I might. I mean, I think I see why people would use the term meta, but I think that I would want those YouTube videos—like, the creators of it, to be thinking about the YouTube video they're making in terms of meta. And I don’t know how many of them do, right? I can think of a lot of YouTube videos that are doing very meta-like things, by people who are obviously fans and consider themselves fans, but who have no awareness of the longer tradition of meta. 

ELM: Yeah. Sure sure sure. 

FK: Right? And so, like, I mean, maybe this is hair-splitting. And that’s OK. [laughs] Like, I can have a hair-splitty definition that’s maybe a little bit useless. But I do think that there is a tradition that meta is operating within that is different from the tradition that some YouTube videos are operating in. Much like I wouldn’t call an AMV a fanvid—

ELM: Mm-hmm.

FK: —even though they’re pretty much the same thing. 

ELM: Yeah. No, I think that’s really fair. I mean, and I know we brought up YouTube in the very last minute in that episode, but I do agree with you to some degree. Like, I mean, this is something about terminology, but it’s also about—

FK: Yeah. 

ELM: —intent in conversations that people are having within…you know, like—

FK: Yeah. Mm-hmm. 

ELM: Like, there’s a more meta conversation about meta. Ha ha ha ha. [laughs]

FK: Yeah. Yeah, well, I mean, whatever. I hope this wasn’t too navel-gaze-y, but I liked gazing at this particular navel, so, you know. That’s fine. 

ELM: Wow, you made it kinda weird. 

FK: [laughs] Sorry. I brought in navels. 

ELM: You know, we, um, we haven’t done very much of talking with podcasters—

FK: Mm-hmm. 

ELM: —who are creating works within fandom. Anisa Khalifa is one that we’ve had on—a podcaster that we’ve had on. And I feel like we’ve had at least a couple of others. People who have participated in that kind of podcast, where they’re analyzing their object of fandom through that medium, right? 

FK: Mm-hmm. Yeah. 

ELM: But yeah, I mean, you’ve kind of convinced me, I kinda do think of meta as something that is intentionally labeled as such and is a written work. Yeah.

FK: Yeah!

ELM: You know, I’m trying not to—

FK: This might be the first time in the history of the podcast that I successfully—[laughs]

ELM: No, I mean, you’re arguing for, like, a more rigid definition, which—I love that. You know? [FK laughs] Um, but I really appreciate this ask. 

FK: Thank you. 

ELM: It’s a topic that obviously we enjoy…gazing at.

FK: [laughs] All right. On that note, thank you very much for writing in, but shall we get to talking with Liang? 

ELM: Speaking of gaze, it’s about gazing at bodies. Yes?

FK: All right, I’m gonna give you, like, a—five out of 10 stars. There was an effort. The segue? You did a lot of effort on that segue. Not a lot of payoff, but you tried. [laughs]

ELM: [laughing] Danmei. Their work is about danmei and embodiment. There’s gazing involved. 

FK: I—I—you know, you described—you saying this more is not gonna make it better. It’s just gonna overexplain it. [laughs] We need to hang up and take a minute and then, like, come back and talk to Liang. 

ELM: [laughing] Hang up? All right, goodbye. [FK laughs]

[Interstitial music]

FK: All right, I think it’s time to welcome Liang to the podcast. Hello!

Liang Ge: Hi, everyone! Hi, Elizabeth and Flourish!

ELM: Thank you so much for coming on! I’m so excited to talk to you. 

LG: Yeah, me too. It’s so nice to meet you, too. 

ELM: OK, so, here’s the part where we always start with guests, um—

FK: The traditional first question. 

ELM: The—yes. [ELM & LG laugh] It is our classic first question. Um, I’m wondering if you could tell us a little bit about your origin story as a fan and also how that led you to your work professionally with fandom, as an academic. Like, you don’t have to give us every single thing you’ve loved, but, you know, broad strokes. 

LG: Yeah, sure. Actually, it’s a long story. 

ELM: I’m ready. [ELM & LG laugh]

LG: As you may know, I have been reading danmei—the male/male romance and/or erotic stories—for over 10 years. Actually, I started reading this genre of fiction from my middle school, when I was about 12 years old, and I happened to know this genre of fiction from my classmate who just sat next to me, and she just very heartfully recommended this genre of fiction to me and said, “You must read it, and it’s fabulous. [laughter] You’ll learn a new world. You will enter a fabulous new world.” [ELM & FK laugh] So, I just started it after her recommendation and, you know, I’m kind of addicted with—addicted to this genre of fiction from then on. 

And in my middle school, high school, and my undergraduate study, I was kind of, like, immersed in the male/male romance world, and I have read from about…2008 to now, and it’s over 14 years, I guess. And this is also my major motivation for me to pursue my doctoral degree. To explore how fans, or how readers and writers in the male/male romance and erotic world, and how they will imagine the body, including themselves, and the male bodies in the stories narrated, and how their desires are mediated in the male/male fantasy world. 

So, that’s basically a very basic story about my—and one interesting point I should mention is that, when I was doing my master’s degree, I used to study sociology when I started doing my master’s degree, but then I just encountered the gender studies and queer studies, so then—it’s just, like, a very crucial insight, for me, for me to explore the danmei, the boys’ love, the male/male romance from the feminist and queer studies perspective, to think about how bodies are mediated in the fantasy world, how various kinds of desires are satisfied and unsatisfied in this fantasy. Yeah. 

ELM: Yeah. I have so many questions, [FK laughs] I don’t even know where to start. 

FK: You, like, put your nose on—your finger on Elizabeth’s nose, right now, I think, is the vision I’m having?

ELM: [laughing] Where do we start? Oh, man, I just like—I’m like, “I wanna talk about that! I wanna talk about that!” [FK laughs] Um, well, where should we start? You know, like, I don’t wanna jump too deep into it, but I would love, like, some of your top-level—like, the research you’re doing now. Do you have any overall theories or frameworks that you’re working with, or arguments that you’re working with right now? 

LG: Now I’ve started writing my analytical chapters of my PhD thesis. For now, I came to conceptualize my overall PhD thesis from a core concept. It is the ambivalence. So, the ambivalence is related to both feminist thinking and queer study theorists. So, on the one side, I will frame the ambivalence like, “feeling backward and looking forward.” It’s an ambivalent feeling in reading and writing danmei, in reading and writing the male/male romance. It is inspired from the queer studies theorist, Heather Love, the very famous monograph, Feeling Backward. And I wish to explore, or investigate, how these participants in the male/male romance fantasy world construct ambivalent feelings: both happy and sad, both sweet and bitter in the construction of the fantasy world. 

So, that’s one side, and on another side, I will borrow the ambivalence from feminist thinkers, including Sara Ahmed, Sarah Banet-Weiser, and Clare Hemmings, who taught me when I was studying at the London School of Economics. And the feminist ambivalent thinking, for example, is about when these participants are immersed in the male/male romance world, they seem to support LGBTQ rights, in particular gay men’s rights, because they are addicted to such a genre fiction. But I will also frame—there contains a lot of cisheteronormative elements and factors in the stories narrated. That’s one point. 

Another point is that, it seems that—and as many, many previous scholars have argued—that consuming and producing the male/male romance [is] a crucial way for female fans, or female participants, or female readers, to express their desires, or as part of the female empowerment by consuming and producing the male/male romance. However, I will argue on the dark side, or the other side of such desires’ expression, because I find an internalized misogyny embedded in their imagination of the male/male romance—in their distaste of the female characters in the stories’ narration, in their—how shall I say?—ugly feelings, or, like, very negative feelings regarding their own bodies, their own female bodies, to a certain extent. That’s what I want to frame. The overall ambivalent thinking, ambivalent feelings, in my PhD thesis. 

FK: That’s really interesting, because it so strongly mirrors the discussion about these topics in Western slash fandoms. 

LG: Yeah. 

FK: But I’m sure that there’s so much cultural specificity that’s happening in both those cases, right? Like, it’s easy for me to say “cultural specificity in the Chinese context,” but, like, obviously there’s tons of cultural specificity happening in a Western context, also. I guess I’m really curious—I’d like to know more about the specifics of that research, because I’m sure there’s all these—it seems from this, like, high-level perspective, they seem similar, but I’m sure that when you get down granularly—

LG: Yeah. 

FK: —there’s similarities and also differences. 

LG: Yeah, yeah. Actually, you mentioned a great point, that when I was doing the danmei studies, and when I heard feedback from researchers who are doing the slash studies or Japanese yaoi manga studies, they also mentioned that these discussions or these arguments are kind of mirrored or, like, echoed the previous discussions among the slash fans or yaoi fans, or previous or preceding research on yaoi or slash. So, that’s maybe, like, similar points among these fans, who are addicted to the male/male romance in general, or—I tend to frame it like a global male homoerotic world, or global boys’ love culture. 

The cultural specificities and historical contingencies are crucial to my research. Actually, the historical trajectory is quite different in China. And for my research, I will mainly refer to mainland China. And this genre of fiction—the male/male romance—emerged in the 1990s, which was quite late, compared to the yaoi manga world, because slash emerged in the 1970s, and Japanese yaoi manga also emerged in the 1970s as well. 

So this danmei word was borrowed from the Japanese word, and it just literally means “addicted to beauty”—is the literal meaning. But it contains two genres, in general. The sexually explicit genre, and those fictions without those explicit sex scenes—perhaps known as qingshui in Chinese—fictional world. It means “pure water” to refer to the [laughter] fiction without the sexually explicit scenes or descriptions. 

The 1990s is also quite—how can I frame this? It’s a quite interesting period for all the Chinese citizens, because the Chinese government just started the opening and reform from the 1980s, and it is in the 1990s that mainland China was connected to the internet, from about 1994 or 1995. So, that’s kind of, like, a quite chaotic, and a quite flourishing digital world in the late 1990s. In the initial stage, those first-generation lovers of danmei—of the male/male romance—were highly influenced by the Japanese yaoi manga. Maybe in the initial years it was from the pirated copies transferred from Hong Kong or Taiwan, and later they read those pirated copies online on different website forums. 

Entering the 21st century, in the beginning years, when the censorship—when the Chinese party-state censorship was not that rigorous compared to now—we can witness a lot of genres emerging in the beginning of the 21st century. It includes, like, the father/son subgenres, with many, many sexually explicit scenes. Those incest genres, like, the narration between brothers and so on. 

So, that’s a basic, like, a prehistory from nowadays, danmei genre fiction. And another thing which is quite different from the Japanese yaoi world is that even now, we can witness a transmedia landscape among Chinese danmei, including the fiction, manga, animation, the web series. But the major participants of this subculture will tend to pay more attention to the fiction—the textual one, compared to comics, animations, or web series. 

So this pertains to the substantial number of these subcultural participants, which is quite different to the Japanese yaoi readers. They pay more attention to the comics, to the mangas. Compared to slash fiction, which is more like the fanfiction, right? They’re more like the audiences of certain TV series or certain fictions, and they will create fanfiction which features the male/male romance. But the danmei—what I refer to is original male/male romance or erotic fiction. So, that’s another feature within the Chinese danmei world. 

ELM: That’s really interesting. So, initially when it was coming into China, was this stuff that was published for money? Or was it published for free and distributed? Like, how quickly was it something that’s official, as opposed to just shared between readers and writers?

LG: Yeah, actually, the commercial feature, or commercialization begins from about 2010. And actually the largest online danmei website, known as Jìnjiāng in China, it started its commercialization process, like, pay for reading, in 2008, if my memory is correct. And—

FK: Wow, so there’s like 20 years—there was, like, 20 years in which it was just—

ELM: Fifteen. 

LG: Fifteen years. 

FK: Fifteen? 

ELM: Doing the math for you.

LG: Yeah. 

FK: Yeah, fifteen years. No, you’re right. [ELM laughs] I can do math. Math is one of my skills. 

ELM: Almost half a century, you know? [all laugh] Like. 

LG: But—but I should mention that that’s the official commercialization process. Before that, before 2010, the writers, the danmei writers [were] also writing and got paid by publishing paper copies.

FK: Mmm. 

LG: But those paper copies are mainly like the fanmade paper copies, which does not have official copyright from the Chinese government. 

FK: Yeah. 

LG: And another version is, they will tend to publish these paper copies in Hong Kong and Taiwan. Taiwan was a major site for mainland China danmei writers in the 1990s and in the beginning of the 21st century, and they would publish the paper copies there. And some readers from mainland China would buy those paper copies from Taiwan and Hong Kong. 

Even now, it is still the same, because paper copies published in mainland China, which is published in the simplified Chinese characters, they will delete those scenes which contain sexually explicit things. The bad scenes. The sex scenes. And those descriptions which hamper, or are in conflict with, the so-called “Chinese socialist core values.” Those things will be deleted. So, mainland China readers will also tend to buy paper copies published in Taiwan—in the traditional Chinese characters, not the simplified. The traditional Chinese characters. 

ELM: That’s really interesting. So, is it widely known amongst folks in mainland China—like, danmei readers know the official version they might be getting is a censored one, right? 

LG: Yeah, actually, I—in my research, I will frame three levels of censorship. And the first level is from the Chinese party-state level. They will censor all the content which is not heteronormative. They will delete all the sexually explicit scenes. They will delete all of the male/male kissing descriptions, uh, sex scenes in the novels. And another level, the second level, is on the website level. The website administrators will do the censorship. They will delete those explicit scenes as well. 

And the third level, which permeates all the participants in the danmei culture, is self-censor. Both the writers and the readers will do the self-censorship. For the writers, they will tend not to write those sexually explicit scenes in their novels, nowadays, especially from last year. The Chinese government kind of cracked down on the BL-adapted web series from last summer. 

And for the readers, they internalized, or inherited, the censorship logic. They will think, like, those kissing descriptions, those sex scenes are not normative. And they will be marginalized, they will be excluded by the normative society, by the normative Chinese party-state censorship power. So, they may somehow regard such censorship as normal—as kind of ordinary in their daily lives, in their daily readings. So, they will also do the self-censorship as well. 

When I observe the comments on Chinese social media platforms, you can encounter many fans’ comments like, “Can this content be published on Jìnjiāng’s  website? Can this content be published on the social media platform with such rigorous censorship? Can we actually say this directly, because of the censorship?” You can see a lot of similar comments on those social media platforms. 

FK: So, am I understanding it correctly that there was a time when it was viewed as more norm—maybe not normative, but more common that you would have kissing, or sexually explicit scenes in danmei—that was maybe not super legit, but it was also not actively censored on every level. People understood that it was sort of a normal part of the subculture, and that recently, that has been falling away, and people have been turning away from that and saying, “No, actually, we don’t think that’s normative anymore. We think that that’s bad.” 

LG: Yeah, that’s right, and a crucial time is 2014. The Chinese government initiated the anti-porn movement—anti-porn war initiation across the Chinese internet. And from then on, they arrested several danmei writers, from 2014. And it is from then on that the censorship on Jìnjiāng and other websites publishing danmei literature are getting increasingly serious. And those genre fictions which feature father/son, those incest genres, will be forbidden to publish on those kind of commercial literature websites as well. 

You can see this year is quite interesting, because 2014 is also marked as somehow President Xi Jinping’s new epoch. The new Chinese president just embarked on the Chinese new government and before that time, in about, for example, 2008—when I began to read danmei—the genres and the descriptions of writing are quite free, and you can write and you can read whatever you want to read or write. And there’s no restrictions, to be honest, at that time. 

So, that’s why many old—like, the first-generation danmei readers were like, “Well, I really want to go back to the initial years in the 21st century, and I can read whatever I want to read.” And writing at that time will be much better, compared to writing nowadays. 

ELM: Is there a—now, is there a, you know, a subculture, like an underground, where people are avoiding the—like, writing that kind of classic stuff that will never be in a position to be censored, right? Like, because it’s underground? 

LG: Yeah, exactly. Just quote ​​Michel Foucault: “Where there is power, there is resistance.” Right? For those commercial rights, like Jìnjiāng, the sexually explicit scenes and genre fiction which features incest genres, will not be published and will be forbidden to publish there. But some stans—some, like, really intensive readers of danmei, they will establish their own websites to publish those forbidden genres, like the father/son genres, like, the very sexually explicit genres, on their own websites. And these websites are kind of, like, underground, compared to those commercial sites. And [on] these websites, also, you need to get a recommendation code, and then you can register on these websites. So, these websites are kind of, like, not that pervasive, not that popular, but they live and get…flourishing in a kind of underground world, in the overall danmei culture. 

ELM: Do they ever get caught and shut down? I assume that they couldn’t get too large individually, right? Because then they’ll attract attention. 

LG: Yeah, yeah. If they are too visible, they will be kind of punished by the Chinese party-state censorship. So, they will be very cautious to publish the recommendation codes, and only previously registered users can have such a recommendation code, and you also need to, uh, pass a test on a website—the name is Feiwen, the website. Feiwen. You need to [pass] a test, and then you can officially be a member of that website. And the test of the Feiwen website contains a lot of knowledge, which features a history of danmei, the famous writers and works [laughter] and, yeah, it’s really difficult [ELM & FK laugh] to pass that test. You need to memorize, like, what’s a bottom, a male character in a certain fiction—

ELM: Oh my God!

LG: Yeah. It’s really difficult. [laughs]

ELM: That’s so hard! Also, like, I don’t know, what if there’s some guy in the government who’s like, “Yeah, I’ve read those, [FK & LG laugh] and now I’m gonna snitch on them.” Right? Like…[laughs] Ah, that’s very, very interesting. 

LG: Yeah. And last year, I think, the AO3—Archive of Our Own—had interviewed the founder of the Feiwen website.

ELM: Oh, we should look that up and put it in the show notes for sure.  

FK: Definitely. 

ELM: That’s very interesting. 

LG: Yeah, yeah. I will send you the link later. 

ELM: Thank you very much. 

FK: So, one of the things that was most interesting to me, when I was looking over some of the stuff that you’ve written, was the idea that, like, the policing is sort of coming from inside the house, right? You’re describing this test that people have to take to get into the underground websites, but it also sounds like there are people who love at least some kinds of danmei, [laughs] who are happy to help the government censor and reduce the amount of sexuality in the stories. How does that play out? 

LG: Yeah, actually that’s related to how I frame the self-censorship internalized by the danmei readers. Actually, some readers do love those “pure water” genre fictions, and they kind of hate those explicit sex scenes in the novels. And some of them even will report those sexually explicit genre fictions to the website administrators, to the social media platform administrators, by saying that, “This contains pornographic descriptions in this genre fiction.” So, the reporting, the self-censorship, was kind of internalized by all of the danmei readers. 

Another thing is that because of the commercialization process officially started in 2010, it generated two levels of Chinese danmei culture, which is the commercialized and which is not—the other one is the non-commercialized one. For the non-commercialized readers, they prefer those, like, kind of the liberal writing, the free writing, whatever content—just if the descriptions are good, if the writing styles, if the story settings or worldbuilding are good, they will love it. 

But for those commercialized fiction readers, they tend to accept the censorship logic. They tend to internalize the self-censorship sensibility in their reading habits, and they will also hate those fictions that contain, like, mutual penetration, things in the danmei novels. So, you know, it’s quite chaotic. Or, you could also say it’s quite heterogeneous—heterogeneity within the Chinese danmei readers. 

ELM: That’s really interesting. I’m wondering now, too, with the increasing commercialization, and there have been some big hits with the adaptations to screen, how much of this intersects with celebrity fandom, right? Because I’ve heard of people wanting more censorship because they don’t like the way the actor who played the character is being depicted, right? You know? So, is that growing a lot? It seems…that’s my perception. 

LG: Yeah, yeah. Actually, the self-censorship was kind of accelerated by the BL-adapted web series. You know, I don’t know if you have watched other BL-adapted web series produced in China, like the Guardian? Zhèn Hún.

ELM: I’ve seen that man with the glasses [LG laughs]—his gifs—so many times. [FK laughs]

LG: Of the Guardian? Yeah, yeah! 

ELM: Such nice little glasses on him, so…yeah. No, I haven’t watched any of these yet. 

FK: No. 

ELM: I’ve been meaning to, but I’m bad at watching TV. [all laugh]

LG: Actually, now we have, like, the three phenomena—BL-adapted series in China, which we call generation one, generation two, and generation three. And after generation three, which is last year—published last spring, so, Word of Honor—and after that, summer, the Chinese government just cracked down on the BL-adapted web series. So, the first one, the Guardian, the first generation BL-adapted web series, achieved a great hit, and it was adapted from a novel by Priest—a quite popular danmei writer in China. Actually, she ranked top #1 in the Jìnjiāng ranking list. 

And it was also from then on, because of the sudden great popularity of those male protagonists, and some book fans who are different from the TV series fans, they tend to hate, or became the anti-fans, or the haters of the male celebrities. So, they may somehow show their distaste, or their negative feelings, against the male stars [who] played in the Guardian. Somehow they would also tend to report the fans’ behaviors of the male stars, or report the male celebrities [who] played in the Guardian

ELM: That’s so interesting to me, that it works in both directions, because I think that one thing that we’ve encountered in fandoms that we participate in over here, is celebrity fans getting really mad at fanfiction writers, right? But this is people who love the original text [FK laughs] getting mad at people who are fans of the actors in the adaptation, right? Which feels so different to me, right? But they first and foremost like the text, right? They don’t like the people portraying the text.

LG: Well, it also contains a two-way [street] of distaste, or two ways of hate, or anti-fans. [FK laughs]

ELM: [laughs] OK, sure, all right. 

LG: Because of the first generation of the BL-adapted series—​​so, previously, like, unknown people—or, like, not-that-famous male stars, they can achieve great popularity by playing the male protagonist in a BL-adapted series. So, from then on, we will call these celebrities, these male stars “BL-adapted male stars”—the dangai mingxing, which literally means “BL-adapted male stars”—because they can achieve their success by playing in the BL-adapted series. 

But such a great popularity also contains great danger, because it absorbs numerous fans in a short time, and these fans are addicted to the male/male romance, and they will kind of get crazy, or get mad, regarding certain behaviors or certain actions conducted by the male star, if they cannot satisfy, or if they do not [conform] with the expectations or imaginations of those new fans—those new fans who are addicted to the male/male romance. They will get really mad. 

So, I don’t know if you have heard about the 227 Incident about male star Xiao Zhan, the—

ELM: I have, but no, pretend I haven’t. [all laugh]

LG: The celebrity who played Wei Wuxian in the Untamed series. The—

FK: Yeah. 

ELM: With the flute. Yeah. It’s either glasses or flutes. Yeah. [ELM & LG laugh]

LG: Yeah. Actually, actually, Xiao’s fandom is a great example to elaborate the fan conflict, or the fan wars, between the book fans—the fans of the original novels—and the coupling fans, or the shippers of the BL-adapted series, and the fans who only love Xiao Zhan himself. So, the fan conflicts, or fan wars, are, like, generated among these different communities. 

And when I observe the fans of Xiao Zhan, they kind of have a trajectory for their love of Xiao Zhan. Because in the initial stage, they love Xiao Zhan because of the implicit male/male romantic things depicted in The Untamed, in the web series. But, after they express their love for Xiao Zhan, after they’re immersed in Xiao’s fandom for a while—for example, one year—they tend to—some of them tend to only pick Xiao as their only idol, and they also tend to support the heteronormative values at the same time, because they will tend to support Xiao to not feature in other BL-adapted series. They will not support that. They will tend to support Xiao to be the leading star, be the star in the heterosexual romance series. 

So, that’s also a route chosen by the BL-adapted stars, because they also want to enter into the mainstream society. Playing in the BL-adapted series was kind of like a stepping stone for the BL-adapted stars, and after that, they will then enter into the mainstream society, into the heterosexual romance, into the main narrative in Chinese society. 

For example, like all the previously BL-adapted male stars, they will not play in a second BL-adapted series. They will not, uh, have, like, explicit or close connections with the other male protagonists, with the other male stars, in the BL-adapted series after the screening of The Untamed or the Guardian or the Word of Honor, and they will start to play in the heterosexual romance after the sudden great popularity of the BL-adapted series. This is kind of the heteronormative trajectory embraced by both the fans and the male stars’ teams themselves. 

ELM: This is so interesting to me. So, I’m wondering—so, it’s, like, widely known, you know, by a mainstream—a normie [laughs] viewer that these shows are coming from BL, right? 

LG: Yeah. 

ELM: You know? And is it widely known—does your average viewer know that, at one point, it was coming from a novel that was more explicit, and it’s not just a very intimate friendship? Is that generally known, or is that, like, a—working at multiple levels for different kinds of viewers?

LG: Well, for most—I should say for most of the audiences of The Untamed, for example, they know that it was adapted from a danmei genre fiction, and the original novel features male/male romance. They at least know that, even if they have not read the original novel before. And I also know some audiences of The Untamed, they did not know nothing before they watched the Untamed series. But, after watching The Untamed, they started reading danmei, and we can also witness numerous new readers in Jìnjiāng fiction after the sudden popularity—either the Guardian or The Untamed—we can see a flourishing of the new readers on the Jìnjiāng website, after the popularity—after the great hit of those BL-adapted series. 

ELM: But then for some people—I don’t know. I’m just thinking about these trajectories, and the idea that this is a stepping stone, right? And then you can, like, step your way up to the proper het romance, you know? Like, I don’t know. It’s very interesting that there would be a widespread knowledge that this is somewhat censored queer text.

LG: Yeah, they at least know this is kind of, like, not a normative genre, and they at least know it previously featured—or explicitly featured—male/male romance in the original novel. But [to] consider if they know it is a gay text or a queer text, the answer is not really, because “queer,” the very term, is not widely accepted among Chinese audiences, and it is kind of, like, a very Euro-American, or very Western concept for average, for ordinary Chinese audiences, and they tend not to use that word in their reading practices or in their comments on social media platforms. They just use, “It’s boys’ love. It’s danmei. It’s, like, a love story between two men, two cute men, two kawaii, two handsome men, two young handsome men.” Yeah, they tend to describe it like that. They will not say “this text is a queer text” in an explicit way. 

ELM: I’m maybe trying to understand the distinction here. But is it not still seen as gay—like, if they’re having—if it’s two dudes having sex, like, you know? That’s a gay text, right? What is the perception of that, if you wouldn’t frame that as a gay work? 

LG: They will not just refer to this genre fiction as gay literature, or text about gay[ness] in very explicit ways. 

ELM: Interesting. 

LG: They just tend to say, “It’s love stories, or romances between two younghandsome men.” They tend to describe [it] like that. And I also see in previous slash fictions, you can also see such descriptions, like, “I’m not gay—”

ELM: Yeah. 

LG: “—but I’m just a man who happens to love another man.” 

ELM: Right.

LG: So, such a disclaimer is also widely accepted or used among Chinese danmei fans. They happen to love another man. This is true love embraced by these fans. 

FK: So, it’s, like, a separation from a political category. It’s saying this is not a—like, “gay” would be sort of a political cateogry? Is that right? And that is not about that?

ELM: Or, like, a life category. I don’t know—

FK: Yeah. 

ELM: Well, this is making me wanna talk to—I mean, I would love to go back to the kind of—the ambivalence and the distance between, like, a lot of female readers here, and these male bodies, and the bodies of the readers, you know? Like, I think one of the things that’s been leveled globally at fans of m/m content is this kind of dehumanization, or not thinking of the characters as full human beings in the world, you know? Which I think is kind of what we’re getting at here a little bit, right? You know, like, they wouldn’t see it as a gay text, right? Even though, ostensibly the characters are queer characters. 

LG: Yeah, actually, it’s just related to the core concept I wish to explore, I plan to explore in my PhD project about the ambivalence. You can see some of the danmei readers, they will claim themselves as feminists as well, and they will read male/male romance, and at the same time they will support the feminist movement, the online or digital feminism on Chinese social media platforms at the same time. But, you can also see other danmei readers, they contain very kind of salient misogynist expressions in their daily posts. 

The second point is that you can see support for gay rights and homophobic expressions at the same time among the Chinese danmei readers. For example, one danmei stan I interviewed during my fieldwork in China, I just witnessed a post one night, after she [was] reading male—not that explicit male/male romance fiction on Jìnjiāng, and they just had published a post saying that, “Does anyone really like the gay life stories in their real life?” Because she will feel disgust when they happen to see two real-life gay men kissing in the street. 

So, that kind of shocked me, because she loves reading the male/male romance. She loves reading the two handsome young men kissing in the textual descriptions. But she cannot accept real-life kissing in the street, in the real world. So, you can see the very salient homophobia exhibited by this female interviewee. 

But it is not just one case. Actually, it’s somehow quite widespread, either in explicit or implicit ways, for female danmei readers, because only some of them will [say], “I will support gay rights, I will stand together with gay men, with my gay friends, in real life.” But others, they will tend to say, “I only love the textual descriptions between two men.” But for the real life—for the real world, they may not support, or may not explicitly support the gay rights in their real lives. 

And the second ambivalence, regarding homophobia, is that when danmei readers express their intensive love for the male/male romance, some of them will show disgust or show very little interest in the girls’ love fiction, which is known as baihe in Chinese. They will kind of have homophobia against lesbians, because they cannot accept the explicit sex scenes between two girls. They feel kind of disgust, when I interviewed them [about] why they don’t read girls’ love fiction. Some of them will respond like that: “I cannot accept reading scenes featuring girls’ love. Featuring female/female romance.”

ELM: When you did your fieldwork, did you talk to them about their personal sexuality and gender identity?

LG: Yeah, yeah, exactly. That’s part—that’s also part of my focus for my PhD thesis, because I want to use the intersectional lens to examine the readership and the participants of Chinese danmei culture. Because, you know, previously, even in slash and yaoi studies, most scholars will tend to focus only on female readers or female fans, and perhaps most of their focus is heterosexual female fans, by and large. And I also want to pay attention to non-heterosexual fans in Chinese danmei culture. 

Actually, I do find a substantial number of fans who identified as bisexual. But again, I should mention the different features, or the differences between the Euro-American identity politics and the Chinese-specific sociocultural context. Because when they say, “I’m bisexual,” they will not explicitly stand with a bisexual identity. They’ll just tend to say, “I love boys and girls at the same time.” Or some of them will tend to say, like, “Generally, I’m heterosexual. I’m a girl and I love men, but I also wish to try to fall in love with a girl, and I can also accept being in a romantic relationship with a girl at the same time.” 

ELM: That’s really interesting. I don’t—stop me if you don’t wanna get personal, but you are not a woman, and I’m wondering, interviewing these women, how do you, like, mediate your own perspective and identity, right? Like, and, you know, you’re saying even when you discovered it in middle school, it was the girl next to you, right? And I’m curious about how that has shaped your experiences and how it shapes your research. 

LG: Yeah, actually, my previous experience and actually my own sex as a male-at-birth assignment, has largely influenced how and why I approach—I explore the Chinese danmei culture. Because, from my middle school, all my friends—actually, even now, most of my friends are girls, and I tend to have very close relationships with girls, and with schoolgirls in my middle and high school. And it is also because of this reason I know a lot of danmei fans—female danmei fans from then on. 

And such a phenomenon, such an experience, also kind of drove me to think about myself, my own identity. Am I the only male—biologically male—to be addicted to the male/male romance? [all laugh] Because there are so few readers who are biologically male in the Chinese danmei culture. So, that’s also one of my major motivations to conduct, or to explore my doctoral project at the same time. 

And during my fieldwork, I do find there are a number of male readers at the same time, and most of them are gay men. They will identify themselves as gay men, and I should say, their thinking and their love for danmei—their love for the male/male romance—is kind of, or considerably different from the reasons embraced by female readers. And I should not talk about that more, because that will be my kind of original arguments [all laugh] for my doctoral project. 

ELM: OK, you tease us—

FK: You’ll have to come back! [laughter]

LG: Definitely I will. After I finish my doctoral project. But I should—

FK: Oh no, oh no! We just got into dangerous territory, [laughter] with finishing—we didn’t mean to—didn’t mean to put any—

ELM: No pressure. [laughs]

FK: No pressure!

LG: But I should say that, when I grew up, all the TV series, all the fictions, before I encountered danmei, were heterosexual romance, or heterosexual romantic TV series. And at that time, I sometimes tended to imagine myself as a girl, as a female protagonist, to fall in love with a male protagonist, with heroes in the TV series, and it also kind of, like, drives a kind of ambivalent feeling of my own body. I was kind of questioning my gender, questioning my body, questioning my sexuality at the same time, before I encountered the queer theories, before I knew and learned the queer theories, and I learned the feminist thinkings. So that also drew me to think about how genders, how the bodies, how different bodies, bodily desires, as well as psychic desires, are mediated and kind of satisfied in the male/male fantasy world. 

And actually you mentioned another point, which is quite crucial for my fieldwork, for my interviewing, that, you know, for the physical appearance, I look like a male when I do the interviews, and it will kind of generate anxiety for my interviewees, for my respondents, because for a lot of time, they thought I was a girl, and they thought they were talking to a girl before they met me in a café when we’ve done the interview in a café or somewhere else. And they were kind of shocked. “You’re a boy!” [ELM laughs] And it kind of shocked them, even though I told them before we met—we chatted on a social media platform like, “I’m a boy and I wish to conduct a research project on boys’ love, on danmei, with you.” 

So, you can see the predominant women in the Chinese danmei culture, even though there are a few, or a number of males in the Chinese danmei culture, and I wish to explore how they met, how they encountered the danmei. Are they similar to me? To my experience? Like, recommended by their classmates, their female classmates, schoolmates, during high school or middle school? 

And one crucial point I want to mention is about the right for romance, because throughout my life story, given that most of what I encountered on the popular media were heterosexual romances in the Chinese media landscape, I wish to argue and wish to interrogate, or investigate, the right for romance for gay men. The right for romance for lesbians, at the same time. To challenge the dominant heterosexual romantic things in the media landscape in China, and I will argue about how the right for romance is important for the male, as well as lesbian danmei readers. 

ELM: This is very interesting. How—when did you start your PhD? 

LG: I started in the autumn of 2019. I will finish by the end of next year. 

ELM: Oh my God, we don’t have to wait that long at all! [LG laughs] I can’t wait to read more of this. No seriously, would you come back on, once you finish your dissertation and tell us some of your conclusions? 

LG: Yeah, for sure. I definitely will come back to say more about my PhD thesis, because I do have a lot more I want to tell you and your audience about how I explore, how I embrace an intersectional lens to explore the Chinese danmei participants. 

FK: I can’t wait!

ELM: Yeah, I really can’t wait. Good luck with the rest of your research and your writing. That’s really exciting. 

LG: Thank you!

ELM: And thank you so much for coming on! Fascinating to talk to you.

LG: Yeah, me too. It’s really fascinating to know all of you and to talk to you today.

[Interstitial music]

FK: Oh, it was such a pleasure to talk to Liang. 

ELM: That was such a wonderful conversation. I am just delighted. 

FK: I—yeah. I—yeah! [laughs] I know, I’m making this noise because, like, it was really that good. And I’m so, so, so happy to have learned so many things. 

ELM: Yeah, I feel like, you know, we don’t have as many guests as we used to, just because it’s logistically more challenging, and it’s a real delight to, like, have a guest on that you’re really learning a lot from—

FK: Yeah. 

ELM: This is brand new information to me!

FK: Yeah! Because there’s lots of wonderful kinds of conversations you can have with guests, right? Like, you can have a conversation where it’s, like, they’re bringing a different perspective that you’ve considered, but, like, they’re giving voice to it, and you can have a discussion of it. Or, like, you know, everyone’s sort of agreeing with each other very aggressively. [laughs] And then another vibe is, like, here’s some information that you did not have, [laughs] and you should have!

ELM: Wow, you’re getting very meta about this. 

FK: Oh! Bringing it back around! 

ELM: It’s been a while. 

FK: All right, that one was good.

ELM: Thank you. How many stars do I get? 

FK: I would say, eight to nine out of 10. That was really good.

ELM: Oh, wow! That’s great. Thank you very much. Thank you. 

FK: Yeah! The secret is I really only give two grades, which is an A or a C. 

ELM: Wow. [both laugh] Not—you’re saying eight out of 10 is an A. 

FK: OK, I said eight or nine. 

ELM: Nine. 

FK: Yeah. 

ELM: Thank you very much. [FK laughs]  All right, well, I’m thrilled that Liang is up for coming back on when they’ve finished their dissertation, so…

FK: Yeah, I cannot wait. 

ELM: Looking forward. 

FK: All right, before we go, we should probably talk about how we make this podcast happen, for anybody who does not know. 

ELM: Yes. Well, how we make it happen is we record our tracks separately, and then we stitch them together. I use Audacity, which is a free, open-source software. 

FK: And, [ELM laughs] we fund it through Patreon. [both laugh] Patreon.com/Fansplaining. Uh, the letter writer at the beginning of this episode was mentioning the bonus episodes, which some of our patrons get access to. We also have other stuff like cute little enamel pins, occasional Tiny Zines, different levels of support get different kinds of little rewards, so go check it out if you’ve got some money to spare and feel like supporting us. 

ELM: Your hand just did so much work, doing the scale gestures of how large the pin was, versus the Tiny Zine. 

FK: No one will ever see it. 

ELM: Just me. 

FK: Just you. 

ELM: So, our Patreon also pays for our transcriptionists, who transcribe every episode, and one thing you can do if you cannot afford to or would prefer not to support us monetarily, is spreading the word—spreading those transcriptions. Every episode on our website has audio, show notes, and a full transcription of the entire thing, and we like to put those up all at once, and we would love for more people to encounter the podcast in whatever form they prefer to engage with it. 

FK: Yeah!

ELM: You can also be like our initial letter writer here, or many letter writers in our last episode, or all the ones in future ones, by sending in your questions. You can do that at fansplaining@gmail.com. That’s probably the most straightforward way to do it. Uh, we have a form at fansplaining.com, where you can leave a message similar to the ask box on Tumblr, if you’re a Tumblr user, or not. You actually don’t have to be a Tumblr user to leave an anonymous ask, um, which, sometimes non-Tumblr users don’t realize. Have you encountered this?

FK: Yeah! I have. 

ELM: People will just leave you an ask, and they’ll be like, “Hey, it’s—it’s, like, whoever.” And you’re like, “What am I gonna do with—like…” It’s like an answering machine, there’s nowhere to call them back. [both laugh] You’re like, “Thank you! Thanks for leaving this comment. I can’t contact you now.” Our Tumblr ask box, anon is on, whether you have a Tumblr account or not, you can leave a message there. Um, or you can leave your own voice. 1-401-526-FANS is a phone number we have hooked up to a voicemail. We will never pick up that phone. 

FK: Nope. 

ELM: Sometimes it rings while I’ve got the window open and I’m like, “Oh my God! I’m never—no!” You know? [laughs]

FK: Yup, me too! [laughs] It actually goes to my phone, and I don’t pick it up. 

ELM: [gasps] I didn’t know that! 

FK: Yup. It does. 

ELM: We’ve had this for years, and I never knew. 

FK: Yup. 

ELM: That’s so funny. 

FK: It rings on my phone. 

ELM: That’s so funny. 

FK: So you can call that number, and it will ring in my house. I won’t answer it, but—

ELM: Like a true millennial, Flourish will not answer the phone when it rings, so don’t you worry about that. 

FK: I will not! [both laugh] I will not. You can leave me a voicemail if it’s important, and you will. 

ELM: So, those are some ways you can leave us questions or comments. You can also find us on Twitter and Instagram, though those are not great platforms for leaving questions and comments. 

FK: All right. 

ELM: And, uh, hopefully we’ll use these questions and comments in future episodes. 

FK: I think that might be it. 

ELM: I think so too. 

FK: All right, I’ll talk to you later, Elizabeth. 

ELM: OK, bye, Flourish!

[Outro music]

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