Episode 221: Self-Inserts
On Episode 221, “Self-Inserts,” Elizabeth and Flourish welcome fan studies scholar Effie Sapuridis to talk about the wide world of self-inserts, including Y/N and x reader fic, imagines, shifting, and classic Mary Sues. Topics discussed include differences between platforms, including AO3, Wattpad, Tumblr, and especially TikTok; ties to things like roleplaying, LARPing, and theme parks; and whether self-insert forms are leading us towards a future of ~personalized AI storytelling~. Plus: they talk about why there’s so little academic work on self-inserts, and the ethical issues around continuing to study the Harry Potter fandom.
Show Notes
[00:00:00] As always, our intro music is “Awel” by stefsax, used under a CC BY 3.0 license.
[00:00:40] You can learn more about Effie on her academic faculty page! She’s also on Twitter and Bluesky.
[00:00:46] Elizabeth first talked to Effie for a piece in WIRED on Character.AI and fans interacting directly with characters entitled “Sexy AI Chatbots Are Creating Thorny Issues for Fandom.”
[00:01:35] Elizabeth’s 2017 article about Mary Sues, and the accompanying conversation on the podcast.
[00:03:02] Our interstitial music throughout is “Cloudloop” by Lee Rosevere, also used under a CC BY 3.0 license.
[00:08:42] The paper Effie wrote with Maria Alberto is “Self-Insert Fanfiction as Digital Technology of the Self,” and since it’s open access, you can read the whole thing for free!
[00:09:05] Maria and Anne Jamison were actually our guests three years ago, on Episode 151: “Teaching Fanfiction.”
[00:18:20] The skin that replaces “y/n” with your name on AO3! From this very handy and wide-ranging collection—definitely check it out if you’re interested in customizing the platform.
[00:18:55] *chuckles* Hey there, Why Enn.
[00:29:03] An example of a TikTok made in response to JKR’s ethnic and racial stereotyping: “If Black People Went To Hogwarts.”
[00:30:02] A romantic self-insert on TikTok using scenes from the movie: “Love Triangle.”
[00:31:02] Yes, Flourish: shifting.
[00:38:17] Joe Russo—who, with his brother, Anthony, directed the Captain America trilogy and Avengers Infinity War and Endgame—paints a REAL BLEAK PICTURE of the future of film:
So potentially, what you could do with it is obviously use it to engineer storytelling and change storytelling. So you have a constantly evolving story, either in a game or in a movie, or a TV show. You could walk into your house and save the AI on your streaming platform. “Hey, I want a movie starring my photoreal avatar and Marilyn Monroe's photoreal avatar. I want it to be a rom-com because I've had a rough day,” and it renders a very competent story with dialogue that mimics your voice. It mimics your voice, and suddenly now you have a rom-com starring you that's 90 minutes long. So you can curate your story specifically to you.
Also worth noting since this bit has been going around recently out of context: he’s specifically talking about what he believes Gen Z will want going forward.
[00:47:36] A few examples of self-insert TikToks (with silent-movie screens of text!):
[00:56:12] “The Manacled situation” (and our episode discussing the article and much more).
[01:07:38] Flourish is referring to Bill Amend’s FoxTrot. A sample:
[01:14:27] Our pitching document! We’d love to receive more pitches from Fansplaining listeners—you’ll likely know the depth of fandom analysis we’re looking for. If you’ve never written a piece like this but you have written meta in the past, definitely consider getting in touch—Elizabeth is happy to help take you through the article-writing process if you’ve got a good argument.
[01:15:05] If you haven’t read Kayti Burt’s piece for us yet: “The Fan-Journalist Tightrope.”
[01:16:21] That’s https://patreon.com/fansplaining. We’d also LOVE any one-off donations; anything we get in that pool will go directly to writers, either to raise the rate for an individual article, or to be able to publish more writers each month.
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 #221, “Self-Inserts.”
FK: Ah, I’m so excited about finally getting to this topic!
ELM: [laughs] OK, so, our guest is Effie Sapuridis, she is a Ph.D. student working on self-inserts; I first met her when I was reporting a story where I was looking for someone in fan studies doing self-inserts. I’m really excited that she’s working on this, I gotta say, because I remember when we first—when, right when we started this podcast we were really interested in this topic. You were writing a fic?
FK: Yeah! I mean this has been a long time interest of mine, is like, that sort of sense of…deep interest, and emotional engagement, and also like, repulsion and cringe. [laughs]
ELM: [overlapping] Wow, wow.
FK: [overlapping] That I think a lot of people feel. No, I mean, I don’t mean that with shade, I find it embarrassing that I find it so cringey, because I’m like, “I should have a broader mind than this.” But especially for people of a certain age, I would say, uh…it’s like, I don’t know, it’s a really stigmatized topic. But there was nobody working on it, which is kind of shocking!
ELM: Yeah, I remember, because I wrote a piece…maybe it was 2016 that we did an episode, I think it was, within the first few dozen episodes, we did one on Mary Sues.
FK: Yeah.
ELM: And I remember there was very little, like, fan studies scholarship. There was stuff about Mary Sues, but I really couldn’t find much at all about self-inserts. Which—you know, very quickly we should, um, obviously we want Effie to kind of define these in more detail, but if you’re totally unfamiliar with this term, it’s kinda this broad area of fanfiction where…I don’t know, it’s not two characters, right? You are one of the characters.
FK: Yeah.
ELM: Or, or a stand-in for you is one of the characters.
FK: Right.
ELM: And that goes back to like, that was happening when we got into fandom, you know, I always think of bandom.
FK: Oh, absolutely. And, and that’s the explicit, intentional pleasure of it, right? Which I feel like is already a pleasure that…I feel some of that pleasure, in books that are about characters sometimes, right? I’m like, “No, this character is a stand-in for me.”
ELM: Sure.
FK: “I’m imagining myself to be this person.” But in fics like this, we’re talking about it’s, it’s usually more explicit. It’s like, yeah—
ELM: It’s definitely explicit, right?
FK: [overlapping] This character is you. Or, you know, it is me. [laughs]
ELM: Right, well it’s not you overlaying yourself onto an existing character—
FK: Exactly.
ELM: It is a, it is a new character, whether that is a very blank one that’s supposed to be you, or it’s a stand-in for you.
FK: Right. Anyway, obviously, I mean I think that most people who have encountered any fanfic have some idea that this is a thing that exists, and it’s so popular, and yet…yeah, nobody, nobody really digging into it. And now Effie is! So…
ELM: All right, well, should we call her?
FK: Yeah, let’s do it!
[Interstitial music]
FK: All right, it’s time to welcome Effie to the podcast, hello!
Effie Sapuridis: Hi!
ELM: We’re so excited to have you on, our very last guest!
ES: I’m honored.
ELM: [overlapping] Which is wild!
FK: But about a subject that—I mean we have literally been talking about this subject since we first started the podcast, and we’ve never had anybody on to talk about it. So I’m so excited about this. [laughs]
ELM: I mean, when we first started the podcast, you had just started writing your—Larry, what are their names? Harry…Louis… [ES laughs] …original female character, I think you can, you can safely say that is a version of a self-insert.
FK: Oh, it absolutely, I mean it was intended to play with that. Like, very much. So yeah.
ELM: In which you impregnated one of them. [all laugh]
FK: Yeah. How the turns table. [ES laughs]
ELM: Anyway, OK. So, we’re gonna talk about self-inserts, but first I would love for you to quickly talk a little bit about yourself, just about your like, your fannish background.
FK: [overlapping] Insert yourself into this, please.
ES: Oooh. [laughs]
ELM: Oh my goodness. [laughs] And how you got into fan studies stuff. Maybe even how you got into self-inserts, I don’t know if you personally are a self-insert person.
ES: Yeah, it’s a fun story, because I’m not. Um… [laughs] but, I’ll start with—
ELM: OK good, tell us the whole thing. [laughs]
ES: Yeah, I’ll start with the more boring information. I’m a Ph.D. candidate at a school in Canada called Western University, it’s in London, Ontario, which is the other London, the not-as-cool London, but you know, great school. [ES and ELM laugh] And my Ph.D. is in Media Studies, and I got into fan studies because I was doing a Master’s in English Literature, and said to my advisor, when it was time for my final project, that there was nothing that I read more than fanfiction, so how am I gonna choose a final project topic? Since fanfiction can’t be the topic. [ELM and FK laugh] And she said, “Have you heard of fan studies?” and I was like, “Wait…” [laughs]
And so… [ELM laughs] This is like, fall 2016, I think? I was at UMass Boston, shoutout to my old mentor, Sarah Hamblin. She introduced me to everybody, you know? All of the, all of the kind of foundational stuff, and it transformed my whole academic journey, I guess, because I didn’t really know what I was gonna do in life. [ES and FK laugh] Let alone in academia.
And then I found out that I could study this thing that I love, and so that’s what I did! So my Master’s project was on Ginny Weasley fanfiction as a form of what I thought would be kind of like transformational works, and I read it and it was not, it was just… [FK and ELM laugh] uh, reinscribing the same kind of like, dominant, you know, patriarchal…damsel in distress storytelling that we hear all the time, and I was like—
FK: [overlapping] Yep.
ELM: Fascinating.
ES: Yeah, I was like, “Wow, this is really, uh, depressing.” [ES and FK laugh] But…
ELM: Wait, hold on, hold on. Had you been reading a lot of Ginny fic before and you had it in your mind it was super transgressive?
ES: Yes.
ELM: And then you came at it with an academic angle and you were like…
ES: Yes.
ELM: “Oh…”
ES: Yes.
FK: Oh no! [FK and ELM laugh]
ES: Yes, yes. I—
FK: This was a moment of self-realization that you were not prepared for. [all laughing]
ES: [overlapping] Yeah.
ELM: That’s fascinating.
ES: [overlapping] I, I’d been reading Harry Potter fanfiction since 1999, so an OG of [laughs] the Harry Potter fanfic world, and always gravitated to like, you know, Ginny’s the main character, or Hermione’s the main character, basically telling the story from one of the female main characters’ points of view since I was a kid. Like, since I really started reading this. And so I just thought it was badass women kind of, you know, taking on Voldemort because Harry can’t do it on his own! [ELM laughs] And then I had this methodology…
ELM: Well, he can’t. [laughs]
ES: He can’t. But like, when the fanfic authors still want the—or, at the time, still wanted her to fall in love with him at the end. Or to fall in love with Draco Malfoy at the end, and have that happy family, and happy life, and so I was like, “OK, she’s badass for a little bit, until the male character still has to be the hero.” So that was kind of my Master’s project that changed my whole perspective [laughs] on fandom. [FK laughs]
ELM: That’s so—and so, then you went to do a Ph.D., and were you intending to study more in that realm? Or just to see what came out of just, I mean looking at fanfiction, obviously.
ES: Yeah, I was planning to do like, textual analysis, but in the media studies world of fanfiction, that’s what I had entered with, or as an idea at least. And then being exposed to media studies theories kind of, you know, naturally kind of changed what, how I was thinking about things. But I was still, until two years ago, pretty certain I was gonna do a textual analysism or at least like a digital humanities, you know, distant reading kind of project.
And then I wrote this paper with my colleague and friend, Maria Alberto, on self-insert fanfiction, because we just wanted to do a project together and we thought it would be really cool to do a project on self-insert fanfiction. Particularly because neither of us were readers or writers of it, and it just kind of like, all these things clicked and started falling into place, and I got really invested in how it appears in different spaces. So now my project is on self-insert videos on TikTok. Who woulda thought? [all laugh]
ELM: I love it. [ES laughs] OK, and if people don’t remember, Maria was one of our guests—was it two years ago, I wanna say, when we had Maria on with Anne Jamison?
FK: Around then, I think, yeah.
ELM: I, I don’t know what time is anymore, it was some years ago, and that’s how we initially got put in touch, because I was looking for someone—I was writing about Character AI, which is the AI…character..I said those two words [FK laughs] in reverse order. It’s the, [laughs] it’s the platform where people chat with AI versions—“versions”—of the characters, and so I wanted to talk to a self-insert person to see if I could find, and so that’s where we first met, and I was so glad you were happy to come on again.
ES: Yeah!
ELM: OK. So. Self-inserts. I have a perception, Flourish has a perception…
FK: Yeah, I feel like we should start by talking about different kinds of self-inserts, because I think that people are gonna have very different understandings of what a self-insert is, depending on like, when they entered fandom and, like, what they have been exposed to.
ELM: Yeah.
FK: So could you just like, run us through? Because I mean, the self-insert TikTok videos, I’m sure there are people who are listening to this who are like, “There are self-insert TikTok videos, and what would that even be?” [ELM and ES laugh]
ELM: Right.
FK: But if you run through a bunch of different kinds and talk about them, that would be super helpful.
ES: Yeah, so, in our article, we kind of started with looking at the history of Mary Sues, as a, perhaps a starting point for self-inserts, kind of exploring that. And then we looked at existing conversations on self-insert—academic, less than, academic, more than fan-based conversations. There’s this distinction between self-insert and reader-insert, that’s really blurry to me. So the self-insert is the author, and the reader-insert is when you invite the reader to insert themselves.
FK: Whoaaa! OK. Yeah, that makes sense.
ES: So, there was this distinction between self-inserts and reader-inserts that I think is really blurry, but people keep wanting to draw this line? And the way that Maria and I approached it was actually just to use the word self-insert as an umbrella term for like, the use of a self. Not necessarily your self, but a self, the reader’s, or the author’s. So then we kind of had that umbrella term, and then all the sub-genres under it, y/n, imagines, x reader—which is kind of a little bit more explicitly reader-insert—and we kind of just explored what these look like across different platforms.
The most interesting thing is that the conventions of the different types, y/n is a—y slash n, right—stands in for “your name,” and it essentially asks, or allows the reader to place themselves into the story, where it’s whenever they see the y/n they should read their name in that spot, or hear, you know, imagine their name in that spot, right? So would kind of, it falls under reader-insert, in reality.
The convention of y/n would be just that use of y/n in the story. But everything else depends on the platform. Some platforms do y/n much more second person, some do it in first person, some are more, like, sexually explicit, some are more kind of like, you can tell it’s a younger writer and they’re working through a more high school-esque…you know, “I have a crush on somebody” fantasy, right?
So even though we have these genre words that we’re using for self-insert, I didn’t find that they—or, we didn’t find that they were very strict. And in fact like, the platform that things existed on seemed to make more of a difference than what it was being labeled as. Which makes sense, because the fan authors are doing the labeling, they’re deciding what category they’re putting their fic into. But it was just really cool to see that across those four platforms that we looked at.
ELM: Which four?
ES: Fanfiction.net, AO3, Wattpad, and Tumblr.
ELM: Interesting. And so…all right. Imagines. On Tumblr, I always think of imagines as like, it’s like a, a gif of the, the character or the actor or whatever, and then like, kind of a brief, like a blurb. Right?
FK: Like maybe a paragraph, right? Yeah.
ELM: [overlapping] Yeah. This is your little fantasy, go. Whereas like, I feel like “imagine” is used on other platforms, Wattpad, in a way that maybe it’s used on AO3 as a reader x character name. Is that accurate?
ES: Um…for Tumblr, we definitely, I mean the gifs are definitely a big part of it. I found that there were gifts—gifs [laughs]—more on Wattpad as well, because it allows for that, like, multimedia addition.
FK: Right.
ES: But yeah, on Tumblr the biggest thing that stuck out to me with imagines was that they were mostly prompts, or asks.
ELM: Sure.
ES: Often written as requested, and very sexually explicit, right? Super short, very sexually explicit, very fantasy, you know, almost always second person, heterosexual, female main character. In other places, imagines almost felt like headcanons sometimes to me, like there were some that we noticed were just kinda like, almost as if you had a bulleted list of like, “Imagine this, imagine this, imagine this.”
ELM: Yeah.
ES: So I thought that change was really interesting, too, from story to, to bulleted kind of headcanon-esque list. But yeah, on Wattpad I found that there were more, a little bit more of those headcanon-type ones. It was more queer on Wattpad than I saw on Tumblr, which was interesting, and a little bit less sexually explicit. These are the main things, [laughs] I guess these are the main things I was looking for. It’s like, what person is it in, [ELM laughs] what’s the structure, is it sexual, and is it queer? [laughs]
ELM: That’s really interesting. And then what about AO3 and FFN?
ES: For imagines?
FK: Or for any of them, yeah, what’s the texture?
ELM: Do we see—I don’t see the word “imagines” used on AO3 that much, right?
ES: Yeah.
ELM: I mean I’m always nosily poking around on AO3 reader because you do some search for something and then you look at the top ships and you're like, “Oh…”
FK: [overlapping] Like, x reader, there’s so much x reader. [ES laughs]
ELM: Bucky Barnes x reader, I wanna know what they’re thinking about Bucky Barnes here, you know?
ES: Yeah, yeah.
ELM: Yeah.
ES: Yeah, no, imagines in—and totally inconclusive on FFNet, because it just does like, a boolean-style search, so if you search “imagines” you just get every use of the word “imagine.” And I think it was pretty rare on AO3 too. AO3 definitely had the most stuff that was x reader, or reader and y/n.
So, on AO3, it was usually the x reader stuff got you a lot of, um…character description up front? Which was different from Tumblr, which was again, answering specific requests. So on Tumblr we would see an ask that was like, “Can you write me a story where Fred Weasley asks me out to the Yule Ball?” And then the person would, you know, answer that ask and would say, you know, “I hope this worked for you,” and they keep the descriptions of the x reader character very blank, very easy for anybody to kind of envision themselves into.
On AO3 the ones that I looked at were semi-blank, is what I would call them, because they would…they might not be specific about physical characteristics, let’s say, of the character that you’re supposed to insert yourself into, but they would say, “You’re a third year Griffindor and you love Potions class.” They would give this, these kinds of interesting backgrounds where you’re almost creating an OC, but not fully creating an OC.
FK: Yeah.
ES: Yeah. So it was…
ELM: Or you’re meant to roleplay as the, right?
FK: Yeah! That’s interesting, yeah.
ES: [overlapping] Yeah, that’s cool, I like that.
ELM: That’s interesting too because I feel like…[laughs] when I, when I have done some poking around in this on Wattpad, back in the day, I encountered a lot more like, not just y/n for the name but like, blanks for other, like… “You came home from (your favorite class),” you know what I mean?
FK: Yeah, yeah.
ES: [simultaneous] Yeah.
ELM: Oh, yeah, what class is that, right?
ES: Yeah.
ELM: And it felt a little Mad Libs-y at that point, and it’s just like…and ostensibly, I always read those and I don’t know if you do, as really it’s supposed to be me.
ES: Right.
ELM: Like, what’s my favorite? English class, OK, you know? [FK laughs] It’s not supposed to be like, what’s fantasy character’s favorite class, this girl, right?
ES: Right. Yeah, absolutely, they do do that a lot more on Wattpad. You know, they’ll do like, y/n, l/n which is last name, h/c hair color, right?
FK: Right.
ES: Yeah, so, I totally read that as an invitation to put myself fully into the story. And somebody told me that you can—I don’t think on Wattpad, but I think there are AO3 skins, like on GitHub, that will insert your name into y/n stories.
FK: Whoa!
ELM: Fascinating.
FK: So you’re just reading and you never see “y/n” anymore, you just see your name right there.
ES: Right, exactly.
ELM: You know that whenever I read a—I don’t know if you guys have this—but whenever I read a y/n sentence, I literally just hear the character, the character we know, whoever, Bucky Barnes, saying “y/n” in a goofy [FK laughs]—or like, in a goofy voice, [overly sultry] “Hello, your name.” Like I could not put another name in there.
ES: [overlapping] Same! I’m the same way! Yeah!
ELM: [overlapping, laughing] That’s really funny.
ES: That’s why the skin was so interesting, I was like, OK, it’s not just me, [laughs] everybody else is having this problem too, [ELM laughs] so they found a way around it. But yeah, it’s…
FK: I find this really interesting from a writing perspective, I mean Elizabeth knows I find this interesting from a writing perspective because like, I wrote an entire fanfic that was sort of partially me trying to think through some of this from a writing perspective. But uh…this question of making a character who is generic, and explicitly generic, and yet having a story that makes sense, or that, [laughs] you know, feels compelling? I mean it’s, it’s really interesting to me. I, I also have this difficulty with the y/n thing, partially because I feel like if I don’t know what the person’s favorite class is, like, how do I build a character for them? You know? [laughs]
ELM: But you know what your favorite class is, it’s like Ancient Greek or whatever, right? [ES laughs]
FK: Sure, but you know, as a writer, like…
ELM: [overlapping] Stick that in, y/n, just put it in there.
FK: [overlapping] But as a writer, you know, it’s like, what is the motivation for this character? I guess there’s, it’s interesting to me because there’s like, almost a…there’s a level that you have to be…how much are you putting in of yourself, and how much are you, yeah, roleplaying or taking on whatever this character is doing?
ES: Yes.
FK: Like there’s a real negotiation happening between the reader and the character they’re being asked to inhabit, which I find fascinating.
ES: I think there’s…for me, one thing that I realized is I think that writing these types of stories is a lot more difficult, doing it well is a lot more difficult than most of, than most of these authors realize. One of the things that I looked for—and I don’t mean that they were bad, I mean that they had, you know, “slip-ups,” right? So they might set up the story to intimate to the reader, “This is a story that you can fully insert yourself into, that you can be, you know, the character, I will not give any kind of descriptive language, I won’t, I’m making it your story.” But they would then have a slip-up that they wouldn’t notice where they would maybe say, “His white chest,” or “her curly hair.” And suddenly the reader, who was supposed to put themselves in there, is like, knocked out of it by this kind of language.
FK: [overlapping] “My hair’s not curly!” Yeah. [ELM laughs]
ES: [overlapping] Right. And I found that it was like, the most, you know, kind of troubling—in terms of whiteness, which was almost always implied in these stories, right? Able-bodiedness, fitness, right? So you’re invited to be this blank-slate character.
FK: Right.
ES: But then because it’s a difficult thing to do, some word is in there that throws you out of it, and it could be in a really kind of violent way, you know? Where you’re like, “Wait…I actually am not able-bodied, and this character is.”
ELM: Right, right.
FK: Right. Yeah, I, this is much less serious than that, but I have often noticed this, because I’m tall and people are looking up into somebody’s eyes or whatever, [ELM laughs] I look up at him, and I’m like, “I don’t look up at anybody.”
ES: Yeah!
FK: “I’m not lookin’ up at that guy. I know how tall he is, he is 5’ 10” [ES laughs] and I am looking directly at him or possibly down at him.” You know? [FK and ELM laugh]
ELM: Pretty sexy, starin’ him down. [ELM and ES laugh]
FK: I mean, look, it’s an important part of the way that I view the world, right?
ES: Yeah, yeah.
ELM: Well, this is interesting to me because one thing I have noticed on AO3 a lot in recent years—and I have not done much research on these other platforms, certainly not recently, because I wrote a Mary Sue piece years ago and I did a bunch of Wattpad research at the time, and Tumblr research—but on AO3 now I see, and I wonder if you’ve noticed this elsewhere, it’s kind of reverting back to…bringing us more into a self-insert space or a Mary Sue space in the sense of more specifics, right? So it’d be like, plus-size reader, or it’ll be transmasc reader, or whatever, you know? Or Black reader.
ES: Yeah.
ELM: Right? And giving those specific details. And I always assume that’s the person, the author’s background. But I don’t actually know, right?
ES: Yeah. I did notice that on AO3 for sure, and on Tumblr. I think on Tumblr, because there’s that kind of gift community happening, and there’s a lot of people doing asks and requests, I did see quite a few times, people specifically asking for, you know, a nonbinary x reader or something like that. But yeah, I did notice that more and more, not on FFNet and Wattpad, that's for sure.
ELM: Interesting. Interesting.
ES: But yeah, definitely on AO3 and Tumblr.
ELM: Yeah. It does make me curious about, like, the motivations there.
FK: Well it also makes me curious about the, the level of networked that people are. Because on Tumblr that makes perfect sense to me, because people are responding back and forth to each other all the time.
ELM: It’s like, draw me with a favorite cha—you know? People ask fanartists to do this, right, “draw me with my favorite character.”
FK: [overlapping] Right! Exactly. And I mean, AO3 doesn’t have those kinds of facilities, but I also feel like a lot of people who are using AO3 are also active elsewhere, whereas like, when I was writing on Wattpad—which was a long time ago now, admittedly—but the community, it’s not like there’s a huge community element to the actual site itself, and so you do get people doing stuff in community for sure, and responding to each other in comments, but it’s much, it’s like a different flavor of networked writing, right?
ES: Yeah. Yeah, I did notice, like on AO3 there was a lot of—and I think…I can’t make assumptions about generational use, right, because I haven’t done that digging—but I saw a lot of cross-platform conversations happening between Wattpad and TikTok, which reads to me as a little bit of a younger generation, or AO3/Tumblr, which reads to me as a bit of an older generation.
FK: Right.
ES: And so it’s a lot of that. One of the spaces on there allows you, in that kind of exchange, allows you to build that community, the other space almost functions as a…where you hold your fic. Or your…right? Like, where it actually lives.
FK: Right.
ES: So I notice that a lot, that kind of cross-network collaboration, or networking, or whatever, you know, community. Which is really cool, because it takes it from…I was an FFNet girlie for a very long time. [all laugh] I didn’t let go of FFNet until it was way overdue, because it was just what I was [FK and ELM laugh] comfortable with.
But like, now when I look at these platforms, and I see how people are, you know, kind of adding links like, “Go to this TikTok account where I’m creating short videos that match my fic on AO3, or on Wattpad,” or “I’ll send you these gifs of my fancasting,” I think that’s so cool. And it almost reminds me of the old forums, like, where we could put everything in one place, right? And kind of share pictures, and art, and link to each other. And I feel like we haven’t had that in the fic world for a minute. Or if we did have it, I was missing it, because I was on FFNet like a, like a dummy. [all laugh]
ELM: Well yeah, I think that this is a big critique of the AO3 too, is it kinda pulled—and because a lot of the, a lot of folks were coming from LiveJournal…
ES: Mmm hmm.
ELM: Not FFNet, right?
ES: Yeah.
ELM: You know, and where everything was in one place, and then AO3 kind of split it in half. And so everyone was posting their fic on AO3 in those communities, but not everyone was on Tumblr, and so you kind of…like, you’d see people bemoaning the loss of something like a kink meme, where you were writing the fic in the comments, that kind of thing, right? Which I still don’t think we have a replacement for anywhere, you know?
ES: [overlapping] Right, right.
FK: No, we don’t, we don’t, and it’s also different to like—I mean even the people who were creating AO3, who I think were a lot of people who had been in LiveJournal but they had previously been in Usenet, and I think that one of the things with AO3 was like, the idea of an archive, at least for some of those people, I know for a fact, comes off of what Use—what was happening with Usenet, where you’d have Usenet messages and then you would like, pull them out and put them into an archive so that they wouldn’t get lost in the Usenet ether. But like…on Usenet you were having that conversation—
ELM: [overlapping, laughing] Because it was forums. Of course, yeah.
ES: [overlapping] Yeah.
FK: —that was why you needed the archive, because the archive was like, pulling stuff out of the forums, that people wanted to archive. Right? But then like, then we got to a place where we just had the archive, and like…anyway. But I’m interested though, because you just talked about TikTok…
ELM: [overlapping] Yeah, I was gonna say…
FK: Let’s go to TikTok. [laughs]
ELM: You said TikTok.
FK: [overlapping] You said the word. [laughs]
ELM: Because we don’t know anything about this. Please tell us.
FK: [overlapping] I literally, I mean, I…the thing that I know about TikTok is, it is so addictive that I have had to ban it from my phone, because when I had it on my phone, I didn’t do anything but TikTok.
ES: Yes. Yes. That’s…
ELM: Flourish…
ES: That is everyone. [laughs] That is…
FK: Yeah, but like, but I actually have had it off my phone for almost a year now, and I’m very proud of that.
ES: That’s great.
ELM: Yeah, congrats.
FK: I still have Instagram reels, so they’re like the worse version.
ES: Yeah.
ELM: [overlapping] Yeah, they are!
FK: [overlapping] They’re not as addictive, because they’re worse!
ELM: I hope you like corporate humor! [ELM and ES laugh]
FK: Yeah, it doesn’t suck me in the same way.
ELM: [overlapping] Generational corporate humor. [ES laughs]
FK: Yeah! It’s great! [ELM laughs] Because I look at it, and I’m like… “No, not that.” [all laugh] Anyway. TikTok! The good thing that I can’t have. [laughs]
ES: Yeah.
ELM: Yeah, and I’m also curious because I think that you stumbled into what they—you, you didn’t set out to be like…
ES: No.
ELM: “I hear they’re doing self-inserts on TikTok,” right?
ES: [laughs] No.
ELM: You kind of discovered what they were doing there, right?
ES: Yeah, it was actually, um…so I was on TikTok already, and had noticed this trend of videos, but didn’t really have language for it. It didn’t occur to me to like, consider it as self-insert until we wrote that article. But basically, these videos roughly kind of started when J. K. Rowling outed herself as a transphobe on Twitter, that summer of 2020. Height of the pandemic, George Floyd’s murder, J. K. Rowling’s a transphobe, everything is just falling apart around us, and…
ELM: Literally that week, she was like, “Hey, look at me, I have something to say.” I was like…all right, lady.
ES: [overlapping] Yeah. Like, girl. You know?
ELM: Good times. [FK laughs]
ES: Yeah. But the response of Harry Potter fans was to create these kind of sarcastic TikTok videos, where they were like, “If J. K. Rowling wrote a blank character.” So if J. K. Rowling wrote a Latino character, if she wrote a disabled character. And they used the green screen, and their kind of, like, Hogwarts outfits, scarves, whatever they had, to put themselves—so they green screened that they’re like, in the Potions classroom or something. They’re dressed up in Hogwarts gear. And they’re mimicking, you know, this stereo—overly stereotypical Latino person, that if J. K. Rowling, because she’s awful, if she had written a Latino person, this is how badly she would write them. This is how racist the character would be.
So that’s kind of like, where it started, and then people went from there to creating actual little stories, and plots, where they’re again using this green screen technology, or splicing—and/or splicing—scenes from the movies, the Harry Potter movies, to put themselves in conversation with the actors as if they’re inside Hogwarts with them. Going to class with them, going on adventures with them, or reacting to things happening as if they’re at Hogwarts while it’s all happening.
So I just thought they were cool. Clearly my main fandom has always been the Harry Potter fandom, and so I was like, “Whoa, fans are awesome, this is such a cool thing that we’re, that they’re doing!” As I continued to like, work on my textual analysis dissertation, not even considering that.
And then Maria and I wrote this article, and I had really never read self-insert before, I had avoided it like the plague, I thought it was really bad, [laughs] and I didn’t wanna read it. And um…this kind of just, I don’t know, a lot of things clicked, and I was like, “Wait. Those videos are a type of self-insert, right?” And started to think about it, and that’s where it grew, from there, I guess.
ELM: This is so interesting. So, what about the…when was the shift, when did the shifting stuff start? Because I feel like that’s connected too.
ES: Yeah, I think it was…
FK: [overlapping] Shifting?
ES: Oh…
ELM: Flourish, you know about shifting.
FK: Talk about shifting, please. [ELM and ES laugh]
ELM: Go ahead. [laughs] Please.
ES: So…shifting is when you…prime yourself to shift into a fictional world in your sleep. So you…essentially, a lot of what they were doing was kind of writing out their ideal scenario on paper, and thinking about it a lot, and then they’d go to sleep, and then when they would wake up, they would film these kind of confessional TikToks where they’re saying that they just spent six months at Hogwarts, or like, three months with Bella and Edward, or whatever, and tell everybody all about what they’ve done. It would, it would be really emotional, a lot of them, they would be crying, like, “I need to go back, I can’t believe I shifted out, I need to shift back, I hate the real world, I wanna shift again,” and it was…it had a moment where it was everywhere.
ELM: When was that? Was that around the same time you were looking at these, like, these stereotype TikToks, or…
ES: I think it was a little bit later, I think it was…
ELM: OK.
ES: Because the stereotype TikToks happened around the time that Tom Felton got on TikTok and DracoTok took over, and everybody was talking about Draco Malfoy. [FK laughs]
ELM: Sure.
ES: Because he was responding to everybody’s TikToks, so there was a thing. And I think about, not a year, but maybe six months later was when shifting really picked up.
ELM: And you saw shifting that—I had mostly heard of it in Harry Potter, but you saw it for other things too, then?
ES: I saw it for a few other things, yeah, but I did also mostly hear about it in Harry Potter. I think, honestly, that first year—at least from my perspective—that first year or two of TikTok, like, 2020-2022 was…those were big Harry Potter years. Like, the fandom had this big presence on the app for a minute. It’s kind of died down now, but…
FK: Yeah. Yeah.
ELM: Interesting.
FK: This is making me think a lot about the blurry lines between roleplaying and self-insert, right?
ELM: Mmm hmm, yeah.
FK: I mean not, maybe not quite so much the shifting stuff, but…but that, too, I guess, yeah.
ELM: [overlapping] Oh, no, for sure! You know, and people were taking like, I don’t know, people acted like, some of the people responding to it took it very seriously, I don’t know how much of that was performance, too, but they were like, say “You did what?” Like…
FK: [overlapping] Right, exactly. Exactly.
ELM: There was one famous one where they said that, like, they killed Draco, in the shift, and people were, like, really mad at the person who killed him.
FK: [overlapping] “You did what?” Right! [ES and ELM laugh] You know? And it’s, it’s making me think about performance, and how much people are… I mean when you’re roleplaying, that’s also—we were talking about the play between who you are and who the character is, and I feel like that’s also a big part of roleplay, is, you know…more so than traditional acting, where you’re acting a part that someone else wrote, in roleplay you’re still roleplaying a character, but there’s a lot more sort of interaction between you the person, I think, and the character than… I don’t know, maybe we should have an actor on here to tell us if… [laughs] Wait, no, you're our last guest, shit, we can’t! [ELM laughs] But you know, it could be interesting to hear from an actor, to hear about how they think of their experience of acting versus, like, what roleplayers often talk about with their experience of roleplaying.
ES: Yeah. I think…so for me, and it’s not like, I’m not an expert in the roleplay world, I would be curious to talk to somebody about that, but for me, if you’re roleplaying, there’s an intention to embody a different character, whereas even though it maybe is not acting, it’s might be a character you created, so you’re—the only experience that I can think of is like, a D&D campaign that I did, you know, where I was like, playing a character that was a bit me, but not really me?
FK: Right.
ES: And I think that, I think, you know, the next step of my academic life, would be to make this a big project, where I actually talk to the fans and really hear what they’re—if there’s any kind of intention that they have. But I assume that if you’re writing a self-insert, or if you’re doing one of those kind of self-insert videos, that you’re really just acting yourself, in the fictional world. I think that that’s how I understand it, rather than creating a character for yourself in the fictional world.
FK: Right. Yeah, I guess I’m, I’m curious about where that line is, particularly thinking about like, older Harry Potter stuff, like forums, roleplay forums and so forth.
ES: Right.
FK: That would be a fascinating project.
ELM: Well, all of this also makes me think of, like… OK, so I think it’s very classic for children to imagine themselves into a fictional—directly imagine themselves into a fictional world, right? And I think it’s interesting, I mean I know the TikTok folks are mostly younger, but they’re not children, for the most part, right?
ES: Right.
ELM: It’s like, [laughing] teens and 20-somethings, I’m assuming, right?
ES: [overlapping] Yeah, yeah.
ELM: Yeah, I don’t know if you ever watch like, a six-year-old shifting or whatever. Sorry, I keep saying shifting, it’s not all that. [ES laughs] But you know, part of it makes me think, it’s interesting to think of like, the…I think I’m also kind of tripping up around the lines. I guess they’re very blurry lines, and that’s why we struggle with it a bit, right? Because like, if you think about Mary Sues, that’s supposed to be you, right, or your stand-in?
FK: Yeah, or somebody that you can relate to so closely, you know? Yeah.
ELM: Like, I’m, I, yeah, this embodiment of yourself, right, and then the historical Mary Sue thing is like, “and she rocks.” [FK laughs]
ES: Yeah!
ELM: “She’s the best, everyone loves her,” right? But then you have classic self-inserts, like bandom self-inserts, where it’s like, “she doesn’t even know she’s beautiful.”
ES: Right. [laughs]
ELM: You know, and then like… [laughs] I don’t know, Lance Bass or something, I can’t think of any other boy-band men. [ES laughs] Not him. But you know what I mean, right? Aaron Carter, I have no idea. Um…and so…
FK: Wow, you know how to pick ’em. [laughs]
ES: Yep. Yep. [laughs]
ELM: [overlapping, laughing] I don’t know, is he bad? I’m just naming the men in those bands.
FK: [overlapping] No, just, I mean, Aaron Carter, if you were gonna pick… [ELM laughs] There’s so many levels on which we could talk about this, but we’re gonna move on.
ELM: I’m just trying to remember any of their names, OK?
ES: [overlapping] I, I also…I also think he’s dead…
FK: Yes! That’s one of the levels.
ELM: [overlapping, in a high voice] Nooo, did he die?? Did he die?
ES: [overlapping, laughing] Yeah.
FK: [overlapping] Yes!
ELM: Oh no, when did he die, recently?
FK: Yeah, pretty recently.
ES: Like, a couple of, a year ago, two years ago?
ELM: [overlapping, still in a high and tiny voice] Oh, I’m sorry…
ES: Yeah.
ELM: Was it tragic?
FK: I mean, he was, he was young, yeah. [laughs]
ELM: [simultaneously] Well, probably, he died young, right?
ES: Yeah.
ELM: OK, all right, anyway… Justin Timberlake.
ES: There you go.
FK: Uh, he’s just, he’s just horrible. So that’s fine. [ES laughs]
ELM: I feel like most of them are probably pretty bad. Anyway, you know, all of those kind of classic things, and then we’re talking about these like…who, what is the authorial intent in the Wattpad imagine, or the, you know, the y/n, the reader-insert on AO3, and I think it’s interesting…
I don’t know, I just have a lot of questions about like, the, if there’s, if it’s suggesting something broader about the direction that readership and storytelling are headed in. Like, you know, I reached out to you initially because it was about an article about chatting to a bot-character, which is a very solipsistic act, right? And in researching that, you know, there were all these comments and they’re swirling around still, about the future of movies is just you in the AI-generated world, and you’re the star, and you get to interact with Marilyn Monroe or whatever, right, and it’s like… Is this where we’re heading? You know what I mean? I don’t know, these are some questions I have.
FK: Is this the pleasure, is this a pleasure that people are seeking more than identifying with somebody who is not them?
ELM: Sure.
FK: In a more extensive way, right? [laughs] But I don’t know, I mean, it’s…
ELM: [overlapping] Yeah, yeah, I don’t wanna be too “kids these days,” but I’m, it’s more a question of like, is this a general…
FK: [overlapping] It’s not even just kids, right, this is everybody, this is not a “kids these days” question, this is a people…
ELM: [overlapping] No, I believe it was Joe Russo, director of the Avengers movies, who said the thing about Marilyn Monroe, and he is extremely not a child.
FK: Yeah. [ES laughs]
ELM: That’s a Gen X man.
ES: Yeah.
ELM: Anyway. I don’t know, I’m just, I’m wondering if you have any thoughts about these broader trends, or do you think that’s too much of a reach or too much trying to like, put a neat arc over all the stuff that’s going on?
ES: Yeah, I don’t know if I’ve thought about it that way…in my dissertation, I do spend some time with storytelling. There’s this anthropologist, his name is Michael Jackson, um…not, no relation. [laughs] To the other Michael Jackson.
ELM: Just bringin’ up all the problematic artists right now, yeah. [laughs]
ES: Yeah. And he talks about the importance of storytelling for people in moments of crisis, and so I thought that really…that was a really important finding, for me, his work. It’s actually just, like, the introduction to a book. It’s not even his whole book, but he just, the way that he talks about the importance of storytelling really struck me when I thought about it in conversation with fanfiction.
Particularly in the Harry Potter world, now that J. K. Rowling has shown her true colors, the way that she excluded so many of her fans just by that one act, and the fact that they continue to produce fanworks and tell stories in her world. Like, he talks about the importance of storytelling when there’s moments of recognition being withheld, or moments of crisis, that’s when we reach for stories.
And so, I don’t want to ever think about a world where we don’t reach for stories, because I do think that there’s something there about like, reflection and representation that we need from them. So like, I don’t know, considering an AI-generated [laughing] storied existence is terrifying to me, [ELM laughs] because how do we then get, you know, what he’s saying we need from the stories?
Or like Ebony Elizabeth Thomas talks about like, restorying, and how important it is for youth to do that—and Amy Stornaiuolo, I didn’t mean to exclude the other author—but you know, this sense of kind of being able to retell stories that represent you, and put yourself into these spaces. That’s what I’m really leaning on for this project, but also for the way that, like, I engage with fanworks, and with stories, so. I’m terrified of AI ruining that. [laughs]
ELM: Well, then maybe not, but I mean, but you have this…like, imagine a world, if AI technology, more accessible, maybe less hated, and…
FK: Better.
ELM: If the tools are there, yeah…
ES: Better AI, yeah.
ELM: If the tools are up to snuff, right…then why wouldn’t there be a world in which you used your program, and you made a Harry Potter video that you suck yourself in? All the work that they’re doing now, of splicing and clipping… I guess it’s less about the technology and more about the affective experience, right?
ES: Right.
ELM: Or the, like, centering of yourself, right?
FK: [overlapping] Yeah…look, I’ll be real, I can totally imagine using AI, if it were good, you know? I could imagine using AI for certain kinds of, like, certain kinds of things that I currently enjoy in a romance novel or a fanfic or whatever, some of the more solipsistic, or self-insert, or…
ELM: Interesting.
FK: You know, like, scratching an id-candy itch, right?
ELM: You wanna get arranged in that marriage, Flourish. [laughs]
FK: Well sure, right? Or, you know…
ELM: Get put in that castle…
FK: There’s a—
ELM: That cold chamber. [ES laughs]
FK: Right, but there’s a specific, you know, if I could say like, “Here are some of the specific things that I would like to have in this story, generate me another, one that feels like this but it’s set in here,” right, that’s what so many book blogs are about.
ES: Mmm hmm.
FK: “I just read Outlander, and that was great, do you have one that’s Vikings?” You know? [laughs]
ES: Yeah, yeah.
ELM: And it could make you a Vikings one.
FK: Yeah, you know?
ELM: Yeah, look, I didn’t mean to steer this too much toward AI in particular, I guess I’m just like…as I’m asking these questions, too, I’m thinking about like, theme parks, and the desire to be immersed, right?
FK: [overlapping] Yes! Yes! Right, totally.
ES: [overlapping] Right.
ELM: And to feel like you’re in the world, and… So I’m not saying there’s a…
FK: [overlapping] Or doing a LARP, right?
ES: Yeah.
ELM: Yeah, right.
FK: [overlapping] Like, a LARP being the most extreme version of a theme park, in my opinion. [laughs] A really good LARP.
ES: One of my committee members asked if I see—and she’s not a fan studies person—but she brought up theme parks, and she, and it’s stuck in my head and I don’t know what to do with it, but she asked if theme parks were like a commercialized self-insert project. That like, the media industry has created, you know, so that when you go to Harry Potter World, and you go to, you know, whatever it’s called, at Universal, you’re dressed up, you’re buying the props, you’re doing things, and you’re inserting yourself into the story world.
FK: [overlapping] Right. The wand chooses you, right.
ES: Yeah, exactly, and I was like, “Oooh. That’s, that’s, we need to go there.” [laughs]
FK: Yeah, there’s also so many moments of pleasure in other kinds of fan activities, I mean I think that, for instance, interacting with a great cosplayer, you know? I have had many instances, like when there’s a great cosplayer for a character that I’m totally obsessed with, and I have an incredible interaction with them? It’s like, “Whooo!”
ES: Yeah. [laughs]
FK: You know? [ELM and FK laugh] Like, I just had an interaction with this character, and it felt really real, and it’s a little bit like having the Disney princess meet and greet.
ES: Yeah.
FK: When you’re four. [ELM and ES laugh] And you get to hug the Disney princess, and like…when you’re four, you don’t know that’s not the real princess, and when you’re an adult hugging a cosplayer you know that they’re not the real character, but at the same time you can sort of enter into that space, and it is a self-insert, it is like, “I just got to hug my favorite character, I just got to interact with them.” Right?
ES: Well, I think that’s why it’s blurry too. Like, that’s why we have trouble defi—kind of creating delineations between all of these things and stuff, partly because there’s an authorial intent that we’re not familiar with, right? There’s a part of me that’s like, “Do we need to know what the authorial intent is, does it matter?” Because the other side, the side that we tend to focus less on sometimes in fan studies, is like, the pleasure, the consumer side. Right? Like, who’s taking in the fanworks?
We’re very, I feel like we spend a lot of time looking at the objects, the fic, the fanart, and we don’t spend as much time just with the fans. Because that’s the most affective piece of it, how you experience the fanworks, and that’s the part that feels less, you know, rigorous and serious, [laughs] in like, academic ways. But I think because the audience, the fan user or whatever we wanna call them, the fan, is taking in everything differently, each individual is experiencing it differently…that’s why the lines are so blurry. You know? That’s why we can’t, like, put these things into boxes.
ELM: Well that makes me think—OK, so like, you started researching self-inserts, do you read them now for pleasure? You can say no.
ES: No.
ELM: No, OK. [ELM and ES laugh]
ES: No. Yeah.
ELM: [simultaneous] That’s fine, that’s fine.
FK: [overlapping] You’re not required to, in fact it probably makes you a better, [ES laughs] it probably makes you a better researcher in a lot of ways, right?
ES: [overlapping] I know, I know. Yes, yes, yeah.
ELM: Yeah, I’m just thinking about, I’m…I absolutely agree with what you’re saying, and I think it’s a good [laughing] critique of what I’ve seen in fan studies, too. But you know, when I think about, when I look at like, a y/n story or an x reader story on AO3, and it’s pure academic interest, I’m like, “OK. Just curious to see what you’re saying,” right? Like sometimes I’ll look at the way the two members of my ship are written in reader-inserts and I just crack up a little, [ES laughs] because I’m like, “OK, that’s not how I would ever write or read them.” But I think there’s a difference here that I think…it’s not even like, oh, the lines are blurry. In a way it’s some of these practices feel kinda diametrically opposed. Like, if I’m watching you in a “my adventures with Draco Malfoy” story, that’s very much about you.
ES: Yeah.
ELM: Like I’m not watching that—it’s like a Mary Sue, like Draco dates the Mary Sue.
ES: [overlapping] Yes. Right.
FK: [overlapping] The author self-insert is sometimes less—like, this is, which is the complaint about the Mary Sue, right, it’s fun for the author to write but maybe not for the reader to read.
ES: [overlapping] Right.
ELM: [overlapping] But like, I don’t care about you, and…you know, the classic protagonist problem that lots of movies have, where it’s just like, a boring white guy, and you’re supposed to think it’s interesting, because… [all laugh] Because it’s just like…
FK: [overlapping] Because you’re supposed to imagine it’s you.
ES: Yeah.
ELM: The stand-in for the screenwriter but it’s like, actually you should’ve given him three character traits.
ES: Yeah. [ES and FK laugh]
ELM: But like, that to me, when I think about y/n stuff, reader-insert, intellectually I understand—I can’t do it, but I understand that ostensibly people are reading them and putting their name in that y/n spot, and imagining Magneto saying very out-of-character romantic things to them.
ES: Right. There are y/n videos on TikTok that are more explicitly y/n, and they appear in a few different ways. So sometimes it’ll be, let’s use Harry Potter as an example, because that’s what I know. They’ll splice kind of a scene of Harry talking to somebody, and then the next scene will be a blank page, and it’ll have dialogue that y/n is saying back to Harry. And then it’ll go to Harry, and then…
ELM: Like a silent film?
ES: Exactly! Yeah.
ELM: [laughs] I love it…
ES: [overlapping] And like, the one side, sometimes they actually use movie clips, so it’s a half-silent film, where the movie clips are playing, you know, actually have dialogue, and the other side is just the writing. Sometimes they use the movie clips on mute, and they just kind of transcribe dialogue on top, so a little bit more kind of fuller silent film. Sometimes it’s just the silent film cards, and there’s no movie clips at all, and it’s just text on a TikTok. [laughs]
Um…but I’ve been seeing those more and more, like definitely the first kind of wave that I saw was the putting yourself into the story world, which is another thing that, you know, this kind of embodied presence of the fan in the story world is a whole other thing that I think about a lot with these videos.
And then after that came these y/n ones. A little less in the Harry Potter world, honestly, and a little bit more in other fandoms that I am less familiar with, that I think are bigger on Wattpad and stuff, I think it’s a younger generation again that’s doing those y/n TikToks.
So it’s really interesting, because I’m curious why you wouldn’t…I think the visual element adds something for the viewer, right? At first I was like, why wouldn’t you just go read a fic? But then you wouldn’t have, you know, Dan Radcliffe looking at you, you know, “saying” the words, right? And so the visual element amps the stakes or something, a little bit.
FK: I feel like I’ve seen this, maybe not—I was trying to think if I’ve seen any cosplayers doing this—but I’ve definitely seen, like, social media personalities who are sort of, there’s a guy who looks like a vampire, he looks like a romantic vampire with long hair and stuff.
ELM: Like Lestat?
FK: Ah, I mean I think he’s dark-haired, but you know. Anyway… [ES laughs]
ELM: Like book Louis?
FK: Like book Louis. [ELM laughs] He does look a little bit like book Louis. Anyway, point is—
ELM: Like a sad sack? Go ahead.
FK: Well, my point is though, that he, I haven’t looked—I didn’t save this guy, so I haven’t seen him in a while, but I remember having some, like, TikToks come up and it was him, you know, talking to the camera in a seductive way, as though he were talking to you. And I could imagine cosplayers doing that, like a really good cosplayer of somebody doing that, or, you know?
ES: Right, right.
FK: I mean in this case it already felt a little bit like that, because he was, he’s this sort of vampiric character, there’s definitely a generic vampire fandom thing [laughs] that could be forming around that. And I wonder, you know, whether that’s happening…
ELM: But that’s like a, a much broader thing on TikTok, right, where it’s this first person, someone’s romancing you, and it’s like, very tropey.
FK: Right. Right, exactly, like there’s that, but I sort of wonder whether it has blurred into cosplay specifically, so that you’ve got people who are enacting an actual character, right? That’s what I was trying to think about, I was like, “Oh, there’s vampire guy, but he’s not doing a, he’s doing a generic vampire, not a specific one.”
ELM: [overlapping] Actual characters…yeah.
ES: There’s definitely, yeah, there’s some, there’s one—there’s two big Harry Potter cosplayers who I’m pretty sure were not cosplayers at first, and this is something that, like, happened because of TikTok. Don’t quote me, but I’m like 90% certain. One of them does Professor McGonagall, and the other one does Draco Malfoy, and they also…
FK: Professor McGonagall, I love that someone is doing Professor McGonagall…
ELM: [overlapping] Is this, is that one sexy? Or is it just, like, her…giving you detentions?
ES: [overlapping] No, hilarious. So funny.
ELM: [laughing] OK.
ES: Just like, really funny. And the Malfoy one, the Draco Malfoy one is just like, petulant, spoiled Draco Malfoy. Like not, not cute.
ELM: [overlapping] That’s very in-character.
ES: Yeah, it’s great.
FK: Not sexy.
ES: Not sexy, no.
ELM: That’s, that’s what he’s like. [laughs]
ES: [laughing] Yeah, exactly, yeah.
FK: [overlapping] But there’s not any, there’s, there’s gotta be some, there’s gotta be some like…
ELM: [overlapping] Heads up, Dramione world, that’s what he’s like. [ELM and ES laugh]
FK: [overlapping] There’s gotta be some very handsome blond and blue guy who is, you know, maybe gonna listen to this and go, “Oh. I know how I’m gonna get my followers on TikTok.” And he’s gonna go do the Draco Malfoy, you know? [laughs]
ES: Yeah, well that happens on BookTok all the time, right? Like, I keep finding, I keep seeing these men who are like, “BookTok found me, I don’t know what it is, but they found me,” and they’ve been swarmed by… [ELM laughs]
FK: [overlapping] Right! “And apparently I am so and so.”
ES: [overlapping, laughing] Yeah! Apparently I look just like, you know, Xaden Riorson or whatever, and suddenly they’re doing, they’re reading lines from Fourth Wing and they’re, you know, kind of creating this character.
ELM: That’s so funny.
ES: But I highly recommend—
FK: [overlapping] God bless these apparently attractive men. [ELM and FK laugh]
ES: [laughing] Yeah.
FK: They’ve found their calling. [all laugh]
ES: Yeah. This one guy, he just took off his suspenders as he was making a TikTok for like, friends or something, after a wedding, so he just went like, you know, the motion of taking off your suspenders? And BookTok exploded, [FK laughs] it was just like, “Do that again,” and he was like, “I don’t understand what is happening.” [laughs]
FK: “But…I guess, guys?”
ES: [all laughing] But then he kept doing it!
FK: I mean, realistically, like…yeah. I don’t know, would I keep doing it? It’s hard to imagine.
ES: Yeah.
ELM: You would, Flourish. [ES laughs]
FK: Maybe! I don’t know! You don’t know until you’re, until you are faced with this existential question.
ELM: Redownload that app.
FK: No, no, this is not happening. [ES laughs] No, absolutely not. [laughs]
ELM: That’s so funny.
FK: [overlapping] This is so interesting though, I’m really, I’m so excited that you’re doing work on this, because it’s an area that I feel like…I mean I feel like we’ve approached it on the podcast, not from a self-insert angle, but maybe from a roleplaying angle? And I’ve seen so much…touching at the edges of it? But it’s actually a really deep question that gets into performance studies, it gets into fan culture, it gets into all of these elements, and I don’t think I’ve ever really seen anything authoritative or… I mean, it’s not even a question of being boring or interesting, just nothing that has gotten that deep in it.
ES: Yeah. I think—I don’t know, I mean, I think part of it is the aversion to people doing work on self-insert, or anything where the fan is explicitly, like, interacting with the fictional world. We don’t…maybe that’s not the right way to put it, but we know that there’s not a lot of work on self-insert, just generally.
FK: Right.
ES: In fan studies, and so I also wonder, because I’ve been talking about this now for two years, and I’m still not seeing anyone else talking about it, and I’m, you know…
ELM: Interesting.
ES: From a Ph.D. candidate perspective I’m like, “Yes!” You know? [all laugh] That’s great.
FK: Yeah, I am literally saying, you are gonna break this thing wide open [ES laughs] and I think this is actually a great place to go in the scholarship world.
ELM: There’s, there’s room for several self-insert cakes, right?
FK: Oh, yeah.
ES: Right.
ELM: In the many-cakes world, you probably want other people to like, bounce ideas off of.
FK: [overlapping] Talk and think about this?
ES: [simultaneous] Talk to, yeah. [laughs]
ELM: I mean, do you think part of this is…when fan studies works on fanfiction, it’s often stuff that—like, you admitted, and I’m the one saying I have an academic interest in this, too. Neither of us are self-insert readers in our personal lives, right?
ES: [overlapping] Right.
ELM: And I feel like fan studies really reflects, often, what people actually, historically… [laughs] like to read and write, you know what I mean?
ES: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I think it’s partly that. I think it’s partly that, I think it’s partly that it’s self-insert, I think it’s partly that whenever I have seen TikTok on panels, not just in the fan studies space, but at other conferences, it’s really serious. Like people really wanna theorize TikTok deeply, and sometimes you can just, you know, look at kind of, take in what people are doing and think about it creatively, or in terms of pleasure, or something. But most TikTok panels that I see are, you know, “How are youth understanding the TikTok shop, and how is it affecting their consumption habits?” [ELM laughs] And I’m like, um…it’s interesting, but not what I’m looking at [laughs] when I’m on TikTok.
So, I think it’s a kind of culmination of things. It’s also that I use Harry Potter fandom, and a lot of people have stopped engaging with that fandom in their fan studies work, and I think a lot of this is really prevalent in that fandom. And so I kind of have access to it in ways that other people just are not—you know, they’re not existing in Harry Potter spaces anymore, so they might not be seeing it as much.
ELM: That’s so interesting, because it’s like, you know, we have this personal policy where we are extremely hands-off from this fandom now, but, like, obviously I’ll still report on it, because, like I just reported on the “Manacled” situation, because it’s huge…
FK: Yeah.
ELM: And so it’s like, interesting to hear that this is…
FK: We talk about it on the podcast, obviously.
ELM: Yeah. Well, we talk about it a lot because it’s like a historical basis of so much of our fandom experience, I think, but like…
FK: Sure. But I am interested in the idea that the self-insert stuff is happening more there, maybe it is on TikTok, I just, I’m curious about that. Because I feel like, yeah, maybe it is, that’s fascinating if it is, I feel like self-inserts are so spread around, right?
ELM: Well, don’t we feel that way because it’s like, “clogging up our tags” or whatever? [ES laughs] Maybe not you, because you don’t use Tumblr, but definitely any Tumblr person who wants to go into the tags of their own character complains about this constantly, right?
FK: Right, the x reader stuff…
ELM: “Get this out of here! [laughs] Get this man out of here!” [ES laughs] Because it’s often, it often feels extremely different, like, it’s obviously written for and by a different audience than the people who are writing non-self-insert fanfiction, right?
ES: Mmm hmm.
ELM: But no, I’m just saying with the Harry Potter stuff, I think it’s interesting that if scholarship is turning away from it—which seems like a mistake, because it’s so…like, all the stuff with the, the stuff that I’ve been reporting on recently, you know, I hope someone’s working on that, because it’s wild. And it’s specifically happening in Harry Potter fandom, right?
ES: Yeah. Yeah, I grappled with it for sure. I mean, I…as I said, I wrote my Master’s thesis on Harry Potter fanfiction, it’s the only fandom that I engage with in terms of fanworks. I have other fandoms that I’ll like, you know, I was part of the LiveJournal communities and the Tumblrs and I spent time with other fans, and bought merch, and did all the stuff, and waited for the release of the new episode or whatever, right, I’ve been in fandoms. But I don’t read any other fanfiction, I don’t look at any other fanart, I’m very strictly in that space. I don’t know why, if you have any guesses let me know, I can’t figure it out, I can’t get out of it.
ELM: I’m fascinated. [ES laughs]
ES: But…
ELM: You like characters saying “prat” far more often than British people do in real life. [all laugh]
ES: Um…but like, I had to really think about if I was gonna continue to work in this space, because of her, you know? And what she…
ELM: Yeah.
ES: Not just because her, you know, morals are awful, but because she hurt the fandom, you know? Deeply, and I have a lot of queer and trans friends who are, you know, forever feel alienated by a space that gave them a lot of inclusion when they were younger. And so I had to sit there and really think about if this was what I wanted to continue doing, and ultimately, as you’re saying, Elizabeth, we still have to study this. This is still so interesting and tells us so much about fans and communities, in spite of her and also because of her, right?
And I think it’s not a coincidence that this all happened as she started tweeting that summer of 2020. I think that part, it’s partly because of her. But I think it makes sense, I mean we all, anyone who’s a big Harry Potter fan did have to have that kind of conversation with themselves, I think, of just like, what do I…what do I do now? You know? Do I stay, or do I go? [laughs] Or do I stay within, like, with my boundaries, and my limits of what it means to me at this point?
FK: Yeah.
ELM: Yeah.
ES: Yeah. It sucks.
ELM: Do I shift, or do I not shift? That’s the question I always ask, personally.
ES: [overlapping, laughing] Yeah, that’s the question. [FK laughs]
ELM: Do I kill Draco when I shift? Yes, I do. [all laugh]
OK, so we’re almost out of time, so as a kind of wrapping up question, I guess one thing that I’m wondering… I think of this as a very young person’s practice, but I think that we’ve been, like, you know, seeing reader-insert stuff for at least a decade, right, and so ostensibly those people are in their 20s at least right now. I also know that it hasn’t always, you know, when I was looking at Wattpad stuff back in the day, there were middle-aged women writing these, too, so I don’t wanna paint it with too broad a brush.
Do you see, as people grow up and more young people come into these spaces, do you see that kind of…I don’t know, even shifting the tenor of fanworks overall? Do you know what I mean? Like, as more and more… Like I’m wondering if we’ll see more scholars looking at this as, like, people who ten years ago started doing self-inserts are now becoming grad students, you know what I mean? Are you seeing that shift?
ES: Right… Yeah. Maybe. I think I hope to see that shift. [all laugh] I think that’s so interesting, I hadn’t thought about it that way, but you’re right that it’s not the oldest practice, and so that could contribute to less scholarship, or less kind of conversation.
ELM: Or even thinking about the stigma around Mary Sues, when we were all starting in fandom, right?
ES: Right, exactly.
ELM: So why would you—unless you were really gung-ho reclaiming it as you worked on it, you know, you probably wouldn’t want to touch it, you know? Back in the day.
ES: Right, right. I wonder if there’s just a different relationship, like you mentioned the fact that there’s more specific kind of characterization in the x readers or something, right? Like, you know, queer x reader, or fat x reader, or whatever, plus size, all this kind of stuff. I wonder if that is a reclamation that’s happening, of what used to be considered, you know, a…maybe a younger or a “sillier” writing practice. Like actually using it to offer space to people with marginalized identities, or marginalized backgrounds, and just kind of being more explicitly inclusive.
I found it to be the most popular—we kinda tried to come up with a methodology that would give us most popular, whatever that could mean on a platform, most read, most kudos, you know, when we looked at the different fics. The most popular were still exclusive, in that, you know, as I said earlier, you could think it’s a blank-slate character and you enter it and suddenly they’re really thin, and you’ve been excluded from the story.
But if we’re seeing this shift towards like, more specifics, where you’re including other kinds of identities that aren’t the “norm,” you know—hate that phrase, but—maybe that is the reclamation. So maybe the scholarship is not gonna be like, we don’t write about Mary Sue because we’re like, “Eh, do we wanna revisit that?” But they might write about this because they’re like, “Hey, we reclaimed it, [laughs] we did something really cool with self-insert to make space for everybody.” I’m down for that, I hope that happens.
ELM: That’s so interesting. You gotta, you gotta interview some of these writers.
ES: Yeah.
FK: Yeah.
ELM: I need to know more. Please.
FK: [overlapping] I am so excited to follow your scholarship as this goes on, truly.
ES: [overlapping, laughing] Thank you.
FK: Thank you so much for, like, doing this work. And for coming on and talking to us about it.
ES: Yeah!
ELM: Yeah. A wonderful final guest. [laughs]
ES: Yay, thank you, this was so much fun.
[Interstitial music]
FK: That conversation was everything that I have dreamed of for the past many years of this podcast. And more!
ELM: And more?
FK: And more!
ELM: [overlapping] Did you have a lot of self-insert dreams before we started the podcast?
FK: No, I meant that it was more than I imagined.
ELM: Oh, OK. [laughs] All right. Um. No, it’s so interesting, and it’s so…I don’t know, I mean, I’m kinda curious about your take on this, because this world…I find it interesting, but it is something that I will never—I believe I will never personally be interested in doing. But setting aside the like, One Direction fic that you wrote, you know, the roleplay stuff, right? Like…
FK: Absolutely.
ELM: I feel like this is very much in your world.
FK: Yeah! No, it absolutely is. I mean, that’s part of why I’ve been interested in it, is because I feel like there’s so many spaces that touch on it, right? Like, that actually are closer to it than people maybe want to admit, and uh, for me, acknowledging that, I think a lot of fans would be better served recognizing that this is active in their fandom, right? [laughs] That tendencies toward this—and I’m definitely one of them. [laughs]
ELM: Yeah, I mean, I think there are a lot of people who are more like me.
FK: Oh, there definitely are. But there’s, I mean, there’s both, right?
ELM: Yeah.
FK: And I do think that people who are more like you is a little bit more the respectable position [both laugh] in a certain way.
ELM: [overlapping] That’s right, very respectable, mmm hmm.
FK: [overlapping] Genuinely, I do, I do. Because I think that there’s—I do think that there’s an anxiety, for a lot of fans, myself included, around being too much. You know? Affect, those, some of those things, and especially when it is like, about you and your personal imagination about yourself.
ELM: Yeah.
FK: It feels closer, and that’s…you know, I mean on the one hand that’s something that’s at the heart of a lot of fannish enjoyment, but it’s also like, a little bit embarrassing.
ELM: Sure. Yeah, I definitely—all right. Setting those things aside, like LARPing or whatever, roleplaying, you know, which is, like, you really gotta commit to the bit, and I do think we’ve seen a huge shift in the last five years. So many people I know, especially not just fandom people, but like, people I never would’ve expected, are like, “Yeah, my D&D game,” and I’m like, “You??” You know?
FK: It’s gotten a lot more normal!
ELM: It’s fascinating, right?
FK: Yeah!
ELM: And I’m sure there’s people working on that, because I know there’s scholarship about, about RPG…
FK: [overlapping] Oh, I know there are.
ELM: But it also makes me think of like…you know, OK. So we have this “Manacled” situation, the stuff that’s getting pulled, and that’s super super popular and crossing over into romance, Dramione but like, is it really about Harry Potter? Is it mostly just kind of a classic het romance dynamic, right?
FK: Yeah.
ELM: You know, I was talking to someone who is I think in the community, or has spent time in those communities, and I was like, “You know, it’s interesting there’s so little slash where this is happening,” and she was like, “Well, it’s not all Dramione, there’s also this one, it’s Remus/Hermione, and this one is Sirius/Hermione,” and I was like… “OK, what are we doing here?” [FK laughs] Right? It’s just, Hermione just going through every man in the book, like obviously I know those are long-standing ships, but it’s also like…
FK: [overlapping] Right, but…
ELM: There’s an element, to me, of that as kind of like, there’s a whole vast world of people that are kind of self-inserting, and they would never describe it that way, right? That’s not to say that people, you know, people who are not men, who are writing slash, are not… [laughs] Hermione-ing themselves into a story also, you know what I mean?
FK: [overlapping] Right. Right, right, absolutely. No, I think that that’s true, and I think that there’s different ways that… I mean, whatever, yeah, maybe it comes out more in roleplay and so forth, but the tradition of imagining yourself as an ensign in Star Trek is long and storied, right? It literally was a running joke in a major US newspaper comic strip, [both laugh] that there was a character who imagined himself as, like, being on Star Trek all the time, right? So this is like, this is like a super common thing we’re seeing come out in certain ways right now, through—
ELM: [overlapping] Yeah, but what you’re saying is bringing it back to the roleplaying thing, what I’m saying is like… I mean I guess I kind of said it in our conversation with Effie, there’s kind of this classic, like…the male protagonist is not actually that interesting or well-developed because the screenwriter’s like, “Yeah, it’s just me, don’t worry about it, everyone’s gonna like him, it’s just a guy, like me.” You know?
FK: [overlapping] Right, but…right. Right. Yes. “It’s just me.” Yeah yeah yeah. Or like, “Like you, man who is watching this.”
ELM: Yeah.
FK: “And also, of course women would, if they ever think, [ELM laughs] would be able to, [laughing] you know, identify with this person.”
ELM: [overlapping] “I mean mostly they just find him pretty dreamy, because chicks dig me, so.”
FK: Right, yeah.
ELM: So I guess that’s the version of it that’s the kind of parallel version to the like, Hermione [laughs] with every man ever, you know? Romance.
FK: [overlapping] That’s right, that’s right. Well, I was thinking specifically of Wesley Crusher, so. [both laugh] You know.
ELM: Sure. Right, but I think that there’s like, there’s a wide spectrum, and one thing that makes imagines so interesting is just how explicit they’re willing to be.
FK: Yes.
ELM: And that’s what makes it feel kind of—I’m not saying these are very progressively written texts, but it does feel a little bit transgressive in the broader scheme of things—you’re not just saying, it’s Hermione and Remus. You’re like, “I would like to be ‘taught’ by Remus, [FK laughs] if you know what I’m saying,” you know?
FK: Right, right.
ELM: And that’s interesting, right, that’s a boundary that I think a lot of people—even in a less stigmatized era now than it was when we were younger, I think a lot of people don’t want to cross that boundary.
FK: Definitely, definitely. And I mean, I’m not, you know… [laughs] I’m not saying that I’m out here for like, let’s make everything in our society massively sexual and talk all the time about the people we’re lusting after in x, y, and z ways. But it is…
ELM: OK… [laughs] Where’s this goin’...?
FK: Well, I was just gonna say, but I also can see how it is…it’s interesting to see women in particular feel more comfortable talking about that. You know what I mean?
ELM: [overlapping] Sure. Sure. Yeah, I mean…
FK: Do I, do I love that? From the, [laughs] you know, I’m gonna objectify this person? I don’t know that that’s always great, but on the other hand, like… [laughs]
ELM: Yeah, to be clear, I think a lot of these are not erotic, so I don’t think it’s like, some great erotic reclamation for women, right, but like…
FK: No, not always, no.
ELM: Sure. But I definitely understand, yeah, I understand that point too. You know?
FK: Yeah.
ELM: Yeah, again, it’s like looking it in the face and saying this is what my actual desire is, right?
FK: Right, exactly. As opposed to pretending that you don’t have them, or like, that they can never be uttered, [laughs] or whatever.
ELM: Yeah yeah yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. So…it’s interesting.
FK: Yeah.
ELM: Very interesting space. I am curious to see how this shifts with…with the continual, continually making storytelling experiences hyper-personalized, hyper-specific. That’s the part I feel more negative about, honestly. But like…uughh, [both laugh] I don’t know. I’m not gonna pin it all on the person who’s writing imagines, though you are cluttering up our tags. [FK laughs]
FK: Yeah, I don’t know, I have mixed feelings about this, I am much more interested in—I will say, I am much more interested in something like roleplay or writing your own self-insert, where you are writing yourself into it, where there is more of a creative element on your own side, than having something tailored to you.
ELM: Yeah, yeah.
FK: But you know, would I turn it down? If it was that great? Maybe not. I don’t know. We’re not there yet, so I guess we’ll see. [laughs]
ELM: You wouldn’t turn it down, I know you.
FK: [laughs] Yeah, I don’t know, I can say that I think that one of these things is better than the other, but yeah, would I do that? Maybe not.
ELM: [overlapping] You’ve got the full, immersive, really well done Star Trek experience where you really felt like you were, and they turned to you and they were like, “Ensign Klink.” [FK laughs]
FK: Yeah, you know, that would be…I mean, that would be hard to say no. Right?
ELM: Yeah.
FK: Anyway. This was wonderful, I’m so happy that we finally got to have this conversation, squeakin’ in under the wire.
ELM: Yeah, 100%. And we will be sure to include links to the original paper that Effie is referencing a lot, and some examples of some of these TikToks, in particular, in the show notes.
FK: Yes. And, we should remind everybody that our next episode is our last AMA episode, so if you have any burning questions, comments, thoughts…not so much about us wrapping up the podcast, but about fandom topics—we also will have a wrap-up episode, where we’re gonna sort of do a, I don’t know, Fansplaining This is Your Life. [laughs] But do send us your remaining questions and comments.
ELM: I mean, beyond “wrapping up,” like, reflection. We’re gonna look at the ways that fandom has changed over the last decade.
FK: Yeah. We will.
ELM: For the worst.
FK: Wow, I was not, I had not confirmed that that was what we were gonna do, but apparently you have.
ELM: Oh man…no, I mean, it’s like…the structures are so much worse. The media is so much worse, the entertainment industry is so much worse.
FK: I’m not saying that you’re wrong, but I am gonna say that you’re a little bit old man yelling at clouds right now. [laughs]
ELM: [overlapping] Technology platforms, way worse. Waaay way worse. Like, all the intersections that we’ve, we set out to—spoiler, I don’t wanna give too much away, you gotta keep listening to really hear my complaints.
FK: Let’s, yeah, let’s leave it there.
ELM: You’re gonna be like, “I wanna reflect,” and I’ll be like, “And another thing.”
FK: OK. But. But. The way that people can send that information to us, their comments, their questions that are not about this, but rather about sort of general fandom topics—
ELM: Just more normal AMA questions, yes.
FK: —is [laughs] you can email them to us at fansplaining at gmail.com; you can use our ask box on Tumblr, which is fansplaining.tumblr.com; there is a little form on our website, Fansplaining.com, which you can also use; or you can give us a call at 1-401-526-FANS, I love hearing people’s voices, leave a voicemail and we will be able to play you on the air. My personal favorite way to do this.
ELM: Wouldn’t that be a nice treat, for Flourish, who has now said two episodes in a row that they love that, which I didn’t realize that love was so strong, but all right.
FK: [overlapping] I do love that! It’s really strong, I love it.
ELM: Call in. Or send us a, a file, three minutes or less please.
FK: Yes, please do. And, by the way, our Patreon is not going away, despite the fact that the podcast is going on hiatus. Elizabeth, wanna talk a little bit about, like, the plan? [laughs]
ELM: All right, good setup, thank you very much Flourish. Yes, Patreon is staying on for now, we’ve actually had some new patrons since we announced you were leaving, so that’s really an enticement for people, obviously.
FK: Thank you, people!
ELM: [laughs] Um, so…in the, as we’ve mentioned, you know, when we announced this a few episodes ago, Fansplaining’s going to temporarily transition into a written publication, and we are formally soliciting—this connects to Patreon, I swear—we are formally soliciting pitches. If you’re a journalist, or even if you’re not a journalist but you’re interested in, you know, maybe writing something fairly rigorous, and you know, well thought-out or well reported about fandom, we’ll include a link to the pitching document in the show notes.
But my hope is to be able to use the Patreon support we currently have—and maybe even more, if people keep signing up—to fund the short-term journalism that we’re gonna be doing, at least one to two articles a month. And as a reminder, our most recent piece by Kayti Burt, is about being a fan/journalist. If you missed that, you can definitely go check it out.
And if you’re, if you’ve been considering becoming a patron but you’re like, “Uh…I don’t know, the podcast is ending.” No! Now is the time! Because a) you still get access to all the special episodes, we’ll still send you a tiny pin, if you do it within the next few weeks Flourish will send it—
FK: Yep.
ELM: And then after that I have to send it.
FK: That’s true.
ELM: I’ve gotta start going to the post office. [both laugh] I’d be happy to do it. And I may kind of rearrange the structures a little bit, there’s a chance that patrons at a certain level might get access to a Q&A with the writer of an article, that sort of thing.
FK: Ooooh.
ELM: But in the short term, you definitely still will get access to…I believe at the time we finish it’s gonna be 33 or 34 special episodes, which is a pretty substantial back catalog. That would take you…well, if you’re Flourish, it would take you probably one day to listen to.
FK: [laughs] Uh, that would not, there would not be enough hours in that day. So no, it wouldn’t.
ELM: You could do it on double, double speed, but yeah. Maybe a weekend.
FK: That’s true, I might do it on double speed. But then that would take away some of the pleasure, so no.
ELM: [overlapping] No, don’t do it…[laughs] So yeah, patreon.com/fansplaining, also we do have a Paypal that if you were interested in just making a one-off donation, that could go to fund future journalism, we’ll put a link for that in the show notes, too.
FK: Cool. Thank you for sharing that, Elizabeth.
ELM: I think it’s pretty, it’s news you can use.
FK: Yeah. Absolutely. And I look forward to joining you for our penultimate episode next time.
ELM: Oh, get ready. Get ready.
FK: [laughs] Talk to you later.
ELM: All right, bye.
FK: Bye.
[Outro music]