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Book Club: Y/N · Stuff Mom Never Told You

0:05
Speaker 1: Hey, this is Annie and Samantha and welcome to stuff
0:07
Speaker 1: I've never told you productive iHeartRadio, and today we are
0:21
Speaker 1: back with our first book club of twenty twenty four
0:24
Speaker 1: with a very recent novel from twenty twenty three. So spoilers,
0:30
Speaker 1: trying to avoid them, I will say I'm not going
0:33
Speaker 1: to talk about the ending too much, so if you
0:35
Speaker 1: were go and read it.
0:38
Speaker 2: This was a TikTok vine by the way, that was
0:40
Speaker 2: intriguing to me because fan fiction which is anything, and
0:44
Speaker 2: then you had talked about what pad, which is like
0:48
Speaker 2: what is typically used for cap pop fan fiction, and
0:52
Speaker 2: I did when I was looking up yan the first
0:55
Speaker 2: one of the third results was bts yn, So I
1:00
Speaker 2: guess it's a huge thing. I know nothing about this,
1:02
Speaker 2: but I was interested by the description the TikToker was
1:07
Speaker 2: giving and including Kofka esque, which I do like Kafka.
1:11
Speaker 2: It's interesting to see that level of surreal novelist today,
1:16
Speaker 2: which I guess China Melville is kind of similar to
1:18
Speaker 2: that to me, because go ahead, this is this is
1:20
Speaker 2: not my style of uh fiction and for me, like
1:24
Speaker 2: the surrealist UH not my thing because it takes me
1:27
Speaker 2: forever to figure out what the g is happening, which
1:30
Speaker 2: was the theme in this entire thing for me as
1:33
Speaker 2: I was, I was listening to Audible not a sponsor
1:35
Speaker 2: right now, but like I was like, what's happening? Who?
1:40
Speaker 1: What?
1:41
Speaker 2: So that's kind of my thing. China Melville apparently bt'd up.
1:45
Speaker 2: Side note, Uh did a novel with Keanu Reeves just
1:49
Speaker 2: recently recently. Oh okay, just say you know, oh moving on.
1:58
Speaker 1: That's just funny because I'm going to talk about some
2:01
Speaker 1: of my experiences in this realm. And I did have
2:05
Speaker 1: a huge crush on Keanu Reeves's neo, so it's just
2:10
Speaker 1: kind of funny relationship I wasn't expecting. Yes, it is
2:16
Speaker 1: very surreal. So we are talking about the twenty three
2:20
Speaker 1: novel by Esther Ye called y N or y slash
2:22
Speaker 1: N that stands for your name for people who don't
2:27
Speaker 1: know the fan fiction world. But basically I.
2:30
Speaker 2: Was one of those week bleasses for the longest time.
2:32
Speaker 2: I thought was yes no, which is implied in them
2:35
Speaker 2: in the novel as well.
2:36
Speaker 1: But I was like, what, yes, I'm going to talk
2:41
Speaker 1: about my experience with this. So basically it is a
2:43
Speaker 1: type of self insert fan fiction wherein it will be
2:50
Speaker 1: a character in my experience, usually a dude and they
2:55
Speaker 1: are with your name, and as the reader, you are
2:58
Speaker 1: supposed to put in your name. You can even like
3:02
Speaker 1: download it and it will replace your name for every
3:05
Speaker 1: instance that it says, why slash and Wayan. So it
3:09
Speaker 1: is a type of fan fiction. So the story follows
3:13
Speaker 1: our narrator, who by the way, we never get her name,
3:15
Speaker 1: after she becomes obsessed with a member of a K
3:18
Speaker 1: pop band named Moon, eventually leaving. She eventually goes to
3:23
Speaker 1: Seoul in South Korea because he kind of disappears and
3:27
Speaker 1: she's located in Berlin, Germany. At first she goes in
3:30
Speaker 1: order to find him. It is a very surreal story.
3:32
Speaker 1: It blurs the lines between fanfic, fandom and reality. And yes,
3:37
Speaker 1: she does post this self insert fanfic online after attending
3:42
Speaker 1: a concert with a flatmate, which by the way, she
3:44
Speaker 1: did not seem interested in going to.
3:46
Speaker 2: Feel like she's one of those that was like, I
3:48
Speaker 2: don't want to be caught up in this, I'm not something.
3:52
Speaker 1: Yeah, then she really did and she knew herself very quickly.
3:57
Speaker 1: It happens. Yes, So while she is in Soul, she
4:02
Speaker 1: meets a woman named Oh who works at a shoe
4:04
Speaker 1: factory and O enters the narrator's name into a lottery
4:08
Speaker 1: to go to the band's headquarters, and the narrator wins
4:13
Speaker 1: and she meets Moon, and later she returns to Oh
4:18
Speaker 1: who wants the narrator to feel something real And it
4:22
Speaker 1: doesn't seem like the message goes home. But it deals
4:26
Speaker 1: with fandom obsessions, celebrity culture, loneliness, and parasocial relationships. It
4:33
Speaker 1: is an award winning debut for Ye, who has said
4:36
Speaker 1: that it's an examination on mass consumption.
4:39
Speaker 2: And who.
4:41
Speaker 1: And how we interact with art and literature. But she
4:44
Speaker 1: has been cleared it is not a criticism of K
4:46
Speaker 1: pop and fandom. Yeah.
4:49
Speaker 2: I think she mentions just like her fascination, I love
4:52
Speaker 2: something so much.
4:54
Speaker 1: Yes, And we do have a couple quotes throughout this
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Speaker 1: one from her. Most of them are from an in
5:00
Speaker 1: pr interview that she did about this book. Here's one
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Speaker 1: to speak, I guess specifically to my narrator's case. It
5:07
Speaker 1: seems to me that she wants, and again related to
5:10
Speaker 1: this desire for love, to practice devotion. But it seems
5:13
Speaker 1: to me that she is capable of meditating upon a
5:16
Speaker 1: single object for a very long period of time. And
5:19
Speaker 1: of course there's a lot of irony in the fact
5:20
Speaker 1: that she is choosing to practice this meditation upon one
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Speaker 1: of the most you know, poppy, rapid pace forms of
5:26
Speaker 1: cultural consumption right now. But that's where she wants to
5:29
Speaker 1: do it. I'm not judgmental about, you know, K pop
5:32
Speaker 1: or celebrity culture. That's really not my intention for the book.
5:35
Speaker 1: I'm not a journalist. I'm not here to write some
5:37
Speaker 1: kind of takedown or critique. I'm just very curious about
5:41
Speaker 1: this form of worship, and I take it very seriously
5:43
Speaker 1: in some sense. But it seems to me that it's
5:45
Speaker 1: speaking to some kind of absence within our current landscape. Yes,
5:51
Speaker 1: and this is especially interesting because the author is has
5:55
Speaker 1: like the same background as the narrator, which I think
6:00
Speaker 1: is on purpose. Like at the end, there's a scene
6:02
Speaker 1: there's like a movie of a painting. I feel like
6:05
Speaker 1: it's like that. Yeah, yes, yes, And I did want
6:10
Speaker 1: to before we get into the themes, I wanted to
6:13
Speaker 1: briefly talk about my experience with why in fan fiction,
6:19
Speaker 1: because I think that there is sort of a misunderstanding
6:23
Speaker 1: or like maybe not even that, but I feel personally
6:29
Speaker 1: in my long story experience with fiction even if it's
6:34
Speaker 1: not a self insert fick, which by the way, is
6:37
Speaker 1: kind of interesting because it's supposed to be the reader
6:39
Speaker 1: inserts themselves, not necessarily the writer. Usually there is some
6:46
Speaker 1: element of self insert fick to any fan fiction. This
6:50
Speaker 1: is my opinion. I could be wrong, but I feel
6:52
Speaker 1: like there's usually one character that you're like, that's me,
6:55
Speaker 1: or I'm vibing with that person, orm connecting with that person,
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Speaker 1: and that's a lot of our art is that's not
7:01
Speaker 1: like unique to fan fiction necessarily, But I just think
7:05
Speaker 1: like there is a misunderstanding around, well, why in fan
7:13
Speaker 1: fiction is only this and it's different from every other
7:16
Speaker 1: fan fiction. I personally think that a lot of fan
7:20
Speaker 1: fiction is let me put myself in the story somehow,
7:23
Speaker 1: or let me experience something with a character somehow, and
7:27
Speaker 1: that can be various levels. I personally don't really read
7:32
Speaker 1: why in fan fiction because the part I like the
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Speaker 1: other people doing the thing, I don't necessarily want to
7:39
Speaker 1: do the thing, so I don't really read it, but
7:42
Speaker 1: I see it all the time. Is a popular type
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Speaker 1: of fan fiction. I also was thinking about this because
7:50
Speaker 1: I have had huge celebrity crushes in my life. It's
7:55
Speaker 1: usually more of like the fictional character they play. But
7:57
Speaker 1: you know, but one time I was thinking about this
8:01
Speaker 1: because I've kind of jokingly told the story of the
8:04
Speaker 1: time I wrote a self insert fan fiction of me
8:09
Speaker 1: and Billy Joel Armstrong from Green Day and I never
8:13
Speaker 1: published it. It's just for me. I burnt it, so
8:15
Speaker 1: we'll never know the beauties of what it was, but
8:19
Speaker 1: in it because I was thinking about it, and I
8:21
Speaker 1: remember thinking when I wrote it, this is a halfly married,
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Speaker 1: way older man. So it wasn't about the romance part.
8:30
Speaker 1: It was like I just wanted someone to validate me,
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Speaker 1: Like I just wanted to like somebody that I respected
8:37
Speaker 1: and did think he was hot, but I just wanted
8:40
Speaker 1: There was no like I want to end up with him.
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Speaker 1: It was more like I want to be in the
8:45
Speaker 1: band with you. I learned to play guitar for this
8:47
Speaker 1: whole thing. So sometimes the book talks about this a
8:51
Speaker 1: little bit. Sometimes it's not even like a sexual thing
8:53
Speaker 1: or like a romantic thing. It's just like some you
8:57
Speaker 1: want to feel desire, weird or validated. I'll share some
9:06
Speaker 1: stories throughout that for content warning, There is a brief
9:10
Speaker 1: discussion of kind of disordered eating, an obsession also cicadas,
9:15
Speaker 1: which was funny.
9:17
Speaker 2: Yeah, I thought the same thing. I was like, let's
9:19
Speaker 2: spread this. Was she thinking about cicadas already, or but
9:21
Speaker 2: it doesn't like pop out? Or was this after I.
9:25
Speaker 1: Know the cicadas. Sounds like it's going to be a
9:28
Speaker 1: messing thing this summer.
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Speaker 2: Also, South Korea is going to hit some things too.
9:34
Speaker 1: I don't know. God, okay, So let's get into some themes.
9:48
Speaker 1: And one of them has already alluded to with that
9:50
Speaker 1: quote is kind of fandom as religion or religious awakening.
9:56
Speaker 1: So here's a quote. What I feared most wasn't death,
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Speaker 1: our global cataclysm, was that everyday capitulations that chipped away
10:03
Speaker 1: at the monument of seriousness that was a soul. My
10:06
Speaker 1: spiritual sphincter stayed clinched to keep out the cheap and stupid.
10:10
Speaker 1: So this is early on when she's like, no, I
10:13
Speaker 1: don't need to get involved in this, but her friend
10:19
Speaker 1: convinces her to go to a concert and things quickly changed.
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Speaker 1: Here's a quote from that. This screen, as large as
10:28
Speaker 1: a Berlin apartment building lying on its side, reproduced the
10:31
Speaker 1: happenings on stage with astonishing clarity, so that when the
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Speaker 1: five boys drifted in as if by accident, heads bowed
10:38
Speaker 1: and hands clasped over their stomachs. I couldn't fathom how
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Speaker 1: they were real. Bodies as small as grains of rice
10:43
Speaker 1: from where I stood would survive an evening at the
10:46
Speaker 1: feet of their gigantic images, thousands of women erupted into shrieks.
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Speaker 1: I remembered Varva telling me that incidents of shattered ear
10:54
Speaker 1: drums at the boys concerts were rising, prompting the entertainment
10:57
Speaker 1: company that managed them to recommend earplugs. But I saw
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Speaker 1: none being worn by the fans around me. They were
11:03
Speaker 1: finally breathing the same air as the boys. Now was
11:07
Speaker 1: not the time to be less of a body. Yes,
11:10
Speaker 1: as mentioned, all members of the bands are named after
11:15
Speaker 1: celestial objects.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, not as I had originally wondered, And I'd still wondered.
11:21
Speaker 2: Because this was written in twenty twenty three. One of
11:24
Speaker 2: the bigger K pop stars had just recently passed away.
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Speaker 2: His name was Moon like I think that's his surname,
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Speaker 2: and he was for Astro, so I wondered if that
11:32
Speaker 2: had any influence. She doesn't know much about K pop,
11:35
Speaker 2: so I don't know. I think she knows like this,
11:37
Speaker 2: I'm guessing this is somewhat based on like bigger fandoms
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Speaker 2: that have a lot of a lot of fanfic out
11:44
Speaker 2: on what Pad specifically, So it goes on with a
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Speaker 2: theme about fandom or obsession, which again maybe this is
11:53
Speaker 2: where I'm like, I don't have hobbies and loves for things,
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Speaker 2: so this is very like, very unaware of this world.
12:01
Speaker 2: So to me, this was really uncomfortable looking. But I
12:04
Speaker 2: also know this is exaggerated, so I was just like,
12:07
Speaker 2: huh hah, this book anyway. So here's a quote. The
12:11
Speaker 2: pack of boys called the their fans livers because we
12:14
Speaker 2: weren't just expensive handbags they carried around. We kept them alive,
12:18
Speaker 2: like critical organs. I suspected they used the English word
12:22
Speaker 2: liver because it sounded like lover. They could be koy
12:25
Speaker 2: like that, but I would much rather be Moon's liver
12:28
Speaker 2: than lover, which was kind of the implication she wants
12:31
Speaker 2: to be inside of his body, not necessarily with his body.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, and we're going to talk about that more.
12:38
Speaker 1: But it is one of the things that is unsettling
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Speaker 1: about this. And I feel like a lot of the
12:46
Speaker 1: uh self insert fan fiction or are just like when
12:52
Speaker 1: you love someone, this was written for a place where
12:55
Speaker 1: she almost seems like she didn't like him. It was
12:58
Speaker 1: like kind of coming from a very cold place, whereas
13:02
Speaker 1: in my experience, a lot of this comes from a
13:06
Speaker 1: very enthusiastic, happy place. Sometimes it's healthy and sometimes it's not,
13:10
Speaker 1: but it's not what the vibe the narrator was giving
13:15
Speaker 1: was very like cold to me. Interesting, But this does
13:20
Speaker 1: hit the narrator hard and fast. She goes from like, no,
13:23
Speaker 1: don't take me to this concert too, I must know everything.
13:26
Speaker 1: And one of the things I kind of laughed at
13:30
Speaker 1: this quote, I tapped up my phone with vigor. I
13:33
Speaker 1: do hope you skip the occasional meal. When you're on
13:36
Speaker 1: the thinner side, your soul becomes more visible, almost hypodermic.
13:39
Speaker 1: You become a pure streak of energy, like the blue
13:42
Speaker 1: flame of a blowtorch. But the entertainment company better not
13:45
Speaker 1: put you on a diet that would be disgustingly presumptuous.
13:48
Speaker 1: You know best how to flagellate yourself. No company can
13:51
Speaker 1: be as perverse as you, and i'd reach the end
13:55
Speaker 1: the maximum character count. I pressed enter and watched my
13:58
Speaker 1: block of tech disappear and dream afar with your messages.
14:02
Speaker 1: So kind of like coming into this whole the online
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Speaker 1: social media part of fandom, and already being like, I
14:12
Speaker 1: know you better, these other fans don't know right.
14:19
Speaker 2: This would be the Korean term of say songs, which
14:23
Speaker 2: is the intense fan that hits into what she does,
14:27
Speaker 2: stocklerish and being almost dangerous, possessive and angry that other
14:31
Speaker 2: people can love you.
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Speaker 1: Yes, yes, and just like the whole thing of like
14:37
Speaker 1: her telling him about the diet, but like the company
14:40
Speaker 1: shouldn't tell you but me right, Yes, here's another quote.
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Speaker 1: Moon lay on his back. I crawled on top of
14:49
Speaker 1: him and brushed the hair out of his face. He
14:51
Speaker 1: looked back at me with pure recognition. Both encouraged by
14:54
Speaker 1: his gaze and unable to bear it. I closed my
14:57
Speaker 1: eyes and kissed him, but it was like pressing my
14:59
Speaker 1: lips against the back of my own hand. I felt
15:02
Speaker 1: what he felt of me. I felt what I felt like.
15:05
Speaker 1: With a start, I realized I had no sexual desire
15:08
Speaker 1: for Moon. My sexuality simply loved his sexuality totally and unblinkingly,
15:13
Speaker 1: without my needing to know anything about what he did
15:17
Speaker 1: with his I felt disgraced by life. It's strange personal,
15:22
Speaker 1: it's strange personal commandments that I couldn't simply want him.
15:26
Speaker 1: And yeah, I think this is sort of an interesting
15:29
Speaker 1: thing that a lot of people don't understand. Again, I
15:31
Speaker 1: feel like this is talking about a lot of times,
15:38
Speaker 1: the person that you're envisioning, whoever that is, is a
15:42
Speaker 1: mirror of what you want, but it is like you.
15:45
Speaker 1: It's still a reflection of you. So in this moment,
15:48
Speaker 1: it's more like this is honestly, and we're going to
15:52
Speaker 1: talk about this more later, but this is like an
15:53
Speaker 1: avatar I've created of someone to sort of feel a void,
16:00
Speaker 1: fill the void that I have. But it's more about
16:04
Speaker 1: you filling that void than you experiencing any kind of
16:09
Speaker 1: like desire sexual need. It's like there's something that's hurting
16:15
Speaker 1: inside me. What can I do? And so it's more
16:19
Speaker 1: of a reflection of you.
16:22
Speaker 2: And another quote, we once turned to philosophy for an
16:25
Speaker 2: interpretation of God, for that which lies beyond our comprehension,
16:29
Speaker 2: But philosophy has relinquished its authority to data. Now we
16:33
Speaker 2: know too much, especially what people want and how to
16:35
Speaker 2: give it to them. Religion is no longer a site
16:38
Speaker 2: of our interminable struggle with negativity. Religion shorn. Philosophy is
16:43
Speaker 2: now a vending machine for manifestation and fulfillment. That's why
16:47
Speaker 2: there are so many lowercase gods in this secular, cynical era,
16:51
Speaker 2: Oblivious to the contradictions. We yearn for spiritual practices that
16:54
Speaker 2: will make us worthy of receiving permanent answers and solutions.
16:58
Speaker 2: A boy band like this Masterson's Waved the Picture of
17:01
Speaker 2: Moon is one such god. Here we have data disguised
17:05
Speaker 2: as philosophy, information disguised as art. We no longer go
17:09
Speaker 2: to church once a week. We attend a stadium concert
17:12
Speaker 2: once a year. This was a quote by her current boyfriend,
17:16
Speaker 2: who she for a while told people was our adopted brother.
17:19
Speaker 2: So I was like, what's happening, what's happening. This is
17:22
Speaker 2: one of those moments in which when he discovers her
17:24
Speaker 2: love for moon is she gets very offended, very offended
17:28
Speaker 2: that he would talk about Moon in such a calm
17:32
Speaker 2: and casual manner of was it a very interesting odd
17:37
Speaker 2: segue of like reality for her right.
17:40
Speaker 1: And I do love that quote we attend a stadium
17:43
Speaker 1: concert once a year, because it's true. And I was
17:46
Speaker 1: thinking about it, and I've read quotes from the author
17:50
Speaker 1: about what she was kind of intending to capture here,
17:54
Speaker 1: and the relationship between religion and fandom. It's true, you're
18:01
Speaker 1: in a concert, you're in a stadium, you're singing all
18:03
Speaker 1: the songs, you know, all the things, like it's so
18:06
Speaker 1: important to you that you attend, that you have to
18:12
Speaker 1: do these kind of rituals around. It's very interesting.
18:15
Speaker 2: Again, she kind of hits on this one character. But
18:17
Speaker 2: like in the reality, a lot of the fans, diehard
18:20
Speaker 2: fans follow follow the different groups. I've seen a lot
18:24
Speaker 2: of TikTok videos. When BTS's last shows, they went to
18:28
Speaker 2: several different cities, including going to Soul to try to
18:32
Speaker 2: watch them for the final time. So, like so many
18:34
Speaker 2: there are fans who, if they have the disposable income,
18:37
Speaker 2: which by the way is a big TikTok train right now,
18:40
Speaker 2: will do these things. And it's it is not just
18:45
Speaker 2: a show, right for many of them. In another quote,
18:49
Speaker 2: he fees my imagination more than you do. Of course
18:52
Speaker 2: he does, Masterson says, because he exists in your imagination.
18:56
Speaker 2: He's a person breathing, eating and dreaming in Soul, and
19:00
Speaker 2: I'm a person breathing, eating and dreaming in Berlin. Masterson
19:04
Speaker 2: reached over to give my thigh a painful squeeze, and
19:06
Speaker 2: I know you exist right.
19:09
Speaker 1: Here's another quote. I think what you mean is that
19:11
Speaker 1: he designs his lyrical content and sexual appeal with the
19:14
Speaker 1: specific intent of exploiting the most basic of human emotions,
19:17
Speaker 1: like loneliness or the desire for unconditional love, and then
19:20
Speaker 1: derives massive profit from his vampirism. I rolled off the
19:24
Speaker 1: bed and began to dress, checking the picture into my pocket.
19:27
Speaker 1: He works one hundred times harder at our relationship than
19:30
Speaker 1: you do, I said, jamming my foot into my shoe
19:32
Speaker 1: with an aggressive twist of the ankle. He has physical
19:35
Speaker 1: therapy every day because his tendons are on the constant
19:38
Speaker 1: brink of snapping. Can you say the same about your tendons? Yes,
19:47
Speaker 1: So this is all on her mind. She's having these conversations.
19:52
Speaker 1: And then this brings us to online fan culture. Here
19:57
Speaker 1: is a quote. I discovered Archmage not long after. The
20:00
Speaker 1: website contained thousands of fan written stories organized by the
20:03
Speaker 1: celebrity or fictional character featured in them. There were smaller
20:07
Speaker 1: categorizations based on the stories and motive instigation, tagged with
20:11
Speaker 1: what each story quote makes you ellipses my favorite stories
20:17
Speaker 1: about Moon almost always had the tag makes you end friendships. Frankly,
20:21
Speaker 1: most of the stories were unreadable. After all, the authors
20:24
Speaker 1: weren't writers, but fans who had turned to language as
20:27
Speaker 1: a last resort. I could feel the frustration mounting as
20:31
Speaker 1: the pros grew ever more sodden, as the author submitted
20:34
Speaker 1: to yet another cliche, hoping their strange feelings would foment
20:38
Speaker 1: coherently limbed out of the primordial soup of failing story.
20:42
Speaker 1: But I preferred these stories to most contemporary novels, which
20:45
Speaker 1: mirrored the Pietes of the day with observed ardor for
20:49
Speaker 1: all the lone superiorities suggested by their tone of moral indignation,
20:54
Speaker 1: these books were mind numbingly easy to agree with. I
20:57
Speaker 1: preferred reading Fans and Dead People because they were hard
21:00
Speaker 1: to agree with. I couldn't stop thinking about my two
21:02
Speaker 1: love sick characters, so I took my scenes and copied
21:06
Speaker 1: them into a dedicated notebook, then continued the story there.
21:10
Speaker 1: Once I'd completed what felt like a chapter, I typed
21:13
Speaker 1: out the text and published it on Archmage under the
21:15
Speaker 1: username floor floor. So this is interesting because we have
21:20
Speaker 1: talked about this. You can see our past episodes on
21:22
Speaker 1: kpop and fan fiction. By the way, one of the
21:26
Speaker 1: things about fan fiction is that it is you can argue,
21:31
Speaker 1: you can disagree, you can agree. I recently had somebody
21:34
Speaker 1: leave your comments on one of mine that's like, this
21:36
Speaker 1: feels so alive because you can like contact, connect with
21:41
Speaker 1: each other. They can give you ideas and you'll put
21:44
Speaker 1: them in and it changes what you thought it was
21:46
Speaker 1: going to be. And that is often very beautiful and fun,
21:49
Speaker 1: and I think a key aspect of fan fiction. But
21:52
Speaker 1: it can be toxic, as like I don't a lot
21:55
Speaker 1: of that I've like cut out of my experience, but
21:58
Speaker 1: I remember it and I seen it. It still exists.
22:02
Speaker 1: But people get like angry if you perhaps portray there
22:07
Speaker 1: the person they love the most in the way they
22:09
Speaker 1: don't like. A big part of that used to be
22:12
Speaker 1: don't like, don't read, but now it's become more like,
22:15
Speaker 1: I feel I have to defend this person. So here's
22:19
Speaker 1: a quote from you about fan fiction. I think for
22:23
Speaker 1: that reason, I find fan fiction especially really interesting and
22:26
Speaker 1: a really rich mode of expression that, of course a
22:29
Speaker 1: lot of people look down on because it's, you know,
22:31
Speaker 1: it lacks a certain literary polish. But I respect that
22:34
Speaker 1: about fan fiction, Like I respect that fan fiction is
22:37
Speaker 1: so much the product of a compulsion, of a yearning
22:40
Speaker 1: that it almost forgoes all these pretensions of polish, of quality,
22:43
Speaker 1: of sophistication. And in that sense, for me, there's something
22:46
Speaker 1: that's revealed the heart of fan fiction that I think
22:49
Speaker 1: is essential to all great literature, which is this desire
22:52
Speaker 1: to put yourself in the same space as the transcendental,
22:55
Speaker 1: you know, to almost touch the hymn of it without
22:57
Speaker 1: really quite grasping it. Yes, so I think this is
23:01
Speaker 1: interesting because I've talked about this a lot. You can
23:04
Speaker 1: read fan fiction that, in my opinion, is better than
23:07
Speaker 1: what they're making. But it is true that there's something
23:11
Speaker 1: very liberating about Like let's just skip that part and
23:15
Speaker 1: get to what we all want. Like there's really bad
23:19
Speaker 1: fan fiction, there's really good fan fiction, and I think
23:21
Speaker 1: there's a place for all of it. But it does
23:23
Speaker 1: some of it is like really telling, and like, oh,
23:26
Speaker 1: this is what a lot of us are craving or
23:29
Speaker 1: don't find in a lot of the literature entertainment that
23:33
Speaker 1: we have.
23:34
Speaker 2: Yeah, I was actually going to read another quote because
23:37
Speaker 2: she had a different interview. In the interview, I feel
23:40
Speaker 2: like are different for MPR and this specific one because
23:43
Speaker 2: this one was for Centerfoffiction dot Org. Her answers are
23:48
Speaker 2: sound a lot more like her book, so the language
23:52
Speaker 2: is different. But the interviewer will asked, you know, oh,
23:55
Speaker 2: why does she bring fine fiction? Why in faine fiction
23:58
Speaker 2: as a way to outlet to this character's desire, and
24:01
Speaker 2: then whether it's interspersed or incorporated, and it's to a
24:05
Speaker 2: different level of the way she needed to tell her story,
24:09
Speaker 2: And so she replies with I'm intrigued by the words
24:12
Speaker 2: interspersed and incorporated. They suggest that the fanfic can be
24:16
Speaker 2: cleanly separated from the rest of the novel raisins in
24:18
Speaker 2: a piece of bread. There's also the implication that the
24:21
Speaker 2: fan fixed position is one of subordination, as if the
24:24
Speaker 2: non fanfic parts constitute the main world of the novel
24:27
Speaker 2: because the stakes there are higher and the events are
24:30
Speaker 2: quote real, as if the fans fix is thusly quote fake,
24:34
Speaker 2: a place where my narrator lets her imagination kareem beyond
24:37
Speaker 2: the bounds of reason, a playroom for everything that doesn't
24:39
Speaker 2: fit into her quote real life. I don't view her
24:42
Speaker 2: thick in any of these ways. I can speak from
24:44
Speaker 2: personal experience. My writing is not less real than me.
24:47
Speaker 2: In fact, my writing is better at being me than
24:50
Speaker 2: I am. So I thought that was interesting because she
24:54
Speaker 2: wants to make sure you understand, as the reader, don't
24:57
Speaker 2: get this wrong. The fanfic is not added. It is
25:01
Speaker 2: the story, like she's like, it is as real as
25:04
Speaker 2: the rest of the story.
25:04
Speaker 1: So I thought that was.
25:05
Speaker 2: An interesting quote, and beautifully and so another quote from
25:08
Speaker 2: the book. I wasn't sure how to navigate a space
25:11
Speaker 2: filled with strangers who knew I loved what they loved.
25:15
Speaker 2: It was like going to the sauna, except our naked
25:17
Speaker 2: bodies were identical, which made the embarrassment recursive and pointless.
25:22
Speaker 2: And of course I think that's for a lot of
25:24
Speaker 2: those as much as I don't know, I do know
25:29
Speaker 2: being young and thinking I could be if we just met, Yeah,
25:33
Speaker 2: he might see me like that whole moment and in
25:36
Speaker 2: that understanding, when you're not by yourself loving something and
25:40
Speaker 2: coming to a group, it feels like it lost this
25:43
Speaker 2: loster a little bit.
25:44
Speaker 1: Right for sure. And that's one of the things with
25:49
Speaker 1: something like a Yan fan fiction is like, it's interesting
25:52
Speaker 1: that it's not the writer. It's interesting that it's like
25:56
Speaker 1: anyone's reading it, insert your name, But as the writer
26:00
Speaker 1: in it's sort of like, this is a very strange
26:03
Speaker 1: place to be where we're all experiencing this desire or
26:07
Speaker 1: want or whatever it is, and it's I'm not unique,
26:11
Speaker 1: I guess, but you keep trying to find ways to
26:13
Speaker 1: tell yourself like, no, I'm unique, I'm unique. But I
26:16
Speaker 1: also think it's funny for me as I've started posting
26:21
Speaker 1: fan fiction. There's just a certain number of authors you
26:25
Speaker 1: see a lot if you're in the same space, and
26:27
Speaker 1: you start being like, oh, it's you, But then if
26:30
Speaker 1: they don't comment, then you're like, oh, no, I've done something. No,
26:36
Speaker 1: It's just funny, especially for me because I'm in such
26:38
Speaker 1: a niche, smaller space that you just start to recognize
26:42
Speaker 1: names and you're like, we must there's something about us
26:44
Speaker 1: that if we met in real life, either we'd hate
26:46
Speaker 1: each other and we really get along the hard to say.
26:51
Speaker 2: Or best friends, yes, nemesis turn to best friends or yeah.
26:56
Speaker 1: Oh popular fan fiction trup I know, I know, yes.
27:01
Speaker 1: And this brings us to parasocial relationships, which we've done
27:04
Speaker 1: an episode on. This is basically kind of the like
27:08
Speaker 1: when you feel you have a relationship with someone you
27:10
Speaker 1: don't know, usually a celebrity, just because you experience their
27:14
Speaker 1: life through social media or whatever entertainment, which we'll talk
27:17
Speaker 1: about in a second kind of our experience with that,
27:20
Speaker 1: but here's a quote. It had all started when she
27:23
Speaker 1: stumbled upon a piece of y in fan fiction, which
27:26
Speaker 1: she explained was a type of fan fiction where the
27:27
Speaker 1: protagonist was called why in or your name. Wherever Yann
27:31
Speaker 1: appeared in the text, the reader could plug in their
27:33
Speaker 1: own name, thereby sharing events with the celebrity they had
27:36
Speaker 1: no chance of meeting in real life. Reading her first
27:39
Speaker 1: Wyan story, Lee's had learned incredible things about herself. At nineteen,
27:43
Speaker 1: she gave birth to Moon out of wedlock and was
27:45
Speaker 1: forced by an aristocratic family to leave him at an orphanage.
27:48
Speaker 1: He grew up to become a truck driver who specialized
27:50
Speaker 1: in transporting prize horses. This was how she reunited with
27:54
Speaker 1: her son, who strode up to the gates of her
27:56
Speaker 1: estate with a chestnut mare rearing at his side. The
27:59
Speaker 1: two recognized each other without exchanging a word. What commenced
28:02
Speaker 1: was a dream like summer in which the pairent covered
28:05
Speaker 1: great distances side by side. She on horseback Moon in
28:08
Speaker 1: his truck. Only after finishing the story did these find
28:11
Speaker 1: out about the pack of boys, their fame, how Moon
28:15
Speaker 1: sang and danced alongside the others. But all of this
28:18
Speaker 1: mattered little to her. Hungry to uncover new facets of herself,
28:21
Speaker 1: she began to read one Whyan story after another. So
28:25
Speaker 1: I thought that was interesting because sometimes, yes, people read
28:28
Speaker 1: fan fiction of something they don't know anything about.
28:30
Speaker 2: The con twist of the fact that the author looked
28:34
Speaker 2: similar to Moon and the fact that this so this
28:38
Speaker 2: was done at a convention that was like they had
28:41
Speaker 2: what convention for the specific boy band, and they had
28:46
Speaker 2: different people pretending to be the boys, and the main
28:50
Speaker 2: character is asked to be Moon and walks around and
28:54
Speaker 2: people are taking pictures and just like falling in love
28:57
Speaker 2: with her as Moon, including Lise, who they already had
29:01
Speaker 2: an interaction because they had been with the same.
29:04
Speaker 1: Boy, Masterson.
29:05
Speaker 2: And then now she's kind of falling in love with
29:09
Speaker 2: the main character who also wrote one of the Yen
29:12
Speaker 2: novels or wym fanfict that she started to read and
29:16
Speaker 2: was falling in love with that character too.
29:18
Speaker 1: Yes, I thought that was interesting because again I do
29:20
Speaker 1: think a lot of times the Whyan part is about you.
29:24
Speaker 1: So the fact that she looks like Moon, I think
29:28
Speaker 1: was pretty pretty clear. Yeah, yes, here's another quote. The
29:33
Speaker 1: engineer straightened out his back like a displeased patriarch. Whyan
29:37
Speaker 1: Fick puts me to sleep, he said. In order to
29:39
Speaker 1: accommodate the biography of every reader that might chance upon
29:43
Speaker 1: the story, the writer creates a character void of personality.
29:46
Speaker 1: But there can be no story without a proper protagonist.
29:49
Speaker 1: So there is never a story when it comes to
29:51
Speaker 1: why En, there are only absurd and arbitrary leaps and plot.
29:55
Speaker 1: All of this amounts to a warning when I urge
29:57
Speaker 1: you to heed. Anyone who pursues the delusional fantasy of
30:00
Speaker 1: being Moon's chosen one can expect to have their identity
30:03
Speaker 1: wiped out. This you gestured on our table, The event
30:07
Speaker 1: is so much bigger than you. You are not Yn.
30:10
Speaker 1: All of us are all at once, no, Lee said,
30:13
Speaker 1: without blinking. Only I'm Yn. She recounted how, wanting to
30:17
Speaker 1: know what it was like to be neighbors with Moon,
30:19
Speaker 1: she started reading a story in which he lived in Berlin.
30:22
Speaker 1: To her disturbance, he turned out to be just like
30:24
Speaker 1: her ex They were both philosophers, and they had read
30:27
Speaker 1: the same books, hung out at the same bars. They
30:29
Speaker 1: even had the same birthmark on the inside of their
30:32
Speaker 1: left thighs, and they both waved like a madman whenever
30:36
Speaker 1: they saw her approaching from a distance. The Yn of
30:38
Speaker 1: that story couldn't have been me, she said, because that
30:42
Speaker 1: Yn was to me. The point is that I'm no
30:45
Speaker 1: longer me. I'm y In. I've taken my destiny into
30:48
Speaker 1: my own hands, and I've decided that I am now
30:50
Speaker 1: a person who knows Moon. It appeared that Lise had
30:53
Speaker 1: read my story on arc Image. I've been saying arc Mage,
30:56
Speaker 1: but it's arc Image. Sorry. I tried to meet her
30:59
Speaker 1: eyes once more, but she kept her gaze on the engineer,
31:01
Speaker 1: which I found admirably resilient given his look of intensifying disdain.
31:07
Speaker 1: One person can't possibly be so many different people, he said.
31:11
Speaker 1: You say you're hy In, but you're really no one
31:14
Speaker 1: at all. You're the placeholder itself, a vacancyat waiting to
31:18
Speaker 1: be filled exactly, Lee said, with a dreamy smile. Moon
31:22
Speaker 1: is a feat of singularity. There has never been anyone
31:25
Speaker 1: like him, and there never will be. He is too specific,
31:28
Speaker 1: too unusual. I must try my hand at being everyone
31:31
Speaker 1: if I am to coincide with him. He stays in
31:34
Speaker 1: one place, I room endlessly. You can go listen to
31:39
Speaker 1: the episodes we did on Mary Sue. But that is
31:41
Speaker 1: a similar thing where people often say she is a
31:48
Speaker 1: placeholder for the author. She is bland, perhaps so that
31:52
Speaker 1: anyone can be her. But I feel like a lot
31:56
Speaker 1: of people bring what they think you do kind of
32:01
Speaker 1: make it your own, I guess, because it is a
32:04
Speaker 1: placeholder thing, you can be like, well, she's like me
32:07
Speaker 1: in this way, in this way, in this way. So
32:10
Speaker 1: it's interesting to read this exchange where he's like everybody's
32:13
Speaker 1: why in which is true, but she's like, no, only me.
32:18
Speaker 1: But what I feel like she's saying is when you
32:21
Speaker 1: take that position, it does become something kind of unique
32:24
Speaker 1: to you because you're you're filling all this blankness with
32:30
Speaker 1: yourself and your personality. I don't know, it's kind of
32:34
Speaker 1: hard to describe, but yeah, I think both are like I
32:37
Speaker 1: both are good points.
32:39
Speaker 2: I think to that level of what she's seeing herself
32:41
Speaker 2: is not herself.
32:42
Speaker 1: And what she wants to be. Yes.
32:44
Speaker 2: So that's why alone said when she said that's too me,
32:46
Speaker 2: because she knew that relationship because it was based on
32:49
Speaker 2: this one dude, right, interspersed with this one in being Masterson,
32:53
Speaker 2: who we talked about earlier, interspersed with Moon because that's
32:56
Speaker 2: how the author or the narrator wrote. It was based
32:59
Speaker 2: on him, which is also why she becomes obsessed with
33:01
Speaker 2: him later because she's kind of somehow transferred what she
33:06
Speaker 2: has seen Moon as to him Masterson. And then also, yeah,
33:12
Speaker 2: interspersed to the two of them. But yeah, like having
33:15
Speaker 2: that saying that this is to me, so that wasn't me.
33:17
Speaker 2: I can't be that because that's not where I want
33:19
Speaker 2: to be essentially.
33:21
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, that's I mean. And I say, we're going
33:24
Speaker 1: to talk about that a little bit more later because
33:26
Speaker 1: I think that's another misunderstanding people have. But sometimes it's like, yeah,
33:31
Speaker 1: it's a self imagined fulfillment, like I wish I would
33:34
Speaker 1: be this person. Yeah, but if you were ever confronted
33:37
Speaker 1: with the reality of it, you don't want it. It's
33:40
Speaker 1: just like imagining. It's like, Okay, let me imagine this,
33:44
Speaker 1: but in reality, no, thank you, no thank you.
33:51
Speaker 2: And here's some more quotes from the book. Somehow I'd
33:53
Speaker 2: never imagined Moon as an infant I'd also never imagined
33:56
Speaker 2: him dying. He seemed to have come into the world
33:58
Speaker 2: already complete, and I expect him to disappear in the
34:01
Speaker 2: same way, which honestly could say something about K pop
34:04
Speaker 2: fandom in general, especially when we talk about young deaths
34:09
Speaker 2: and tragic deaths or whatnot. When they kind of disappear.
34:13
Speaker 2: They kind of disappear when they fade out of the limelight.
34:16
Speaker 2: Not many people think about it anymore, and they do
34:20
Speaker 2: just disappear. You don't think about their past too much
34:22
Speaker 2: because their present is what you look for and what
34:25
Speaker 2: you fell in love with, and then when the time
34:28
Speaker 2: dies out and if you get in a new interest, yeah,
34:31
Speaker 2: they disappear.
34:32
Speaker 1: M hm. Yeah. And I think it's true that it's
34:36
Speaker 1: like the idea of to me, it's speaking to this
34:43
Speaker 1: sort of celebrity culture we don't view sometimes we forget
34:47
Speaker 1: celebrities are human, and so you don't purse he's never
34:51
Speaker 1: a baby. Of course, he was never gonna die. He's
34:53
Speaker 1: not human. You don't kind of give them that space
34:57
Speaker 1: or think about that space, because that would interrogate like, well,
35:03
Speaker 1: what are we participating in then? Well what is he
35:07
Speaker 1: going through?
35:08
Speaker 2: Then?
35:08
Speaker 1: Like as a human person.
35:10
Speaker 2: Exactly m M. And then this quote is from when
35:24
Speaker 2: they make an announcement that Moon is retiring and oh
35:27
Speaker 2: dear no details followed the news of Moon's retirement, the
35:32
Speaker 2: other boys retreated from public view and then definitely suspended
35:35
Speaker 2: the release of their next album online. The turmoil was Titanic?
35:39
Speaker 2: Had Moon quit of his own free will? Was he dead?
35:42
Speaker 2: Had he relocated to the moon? Surrendering himself to scientific
35:46
Speaker 2: progress and betrothing himself to a metaphor? I really like,
35:51
Speaker 2: that's just kind of again, there was a lot of
35:54
Speaker 2: this in the book where the surreal conversation was bigger
36:00
Speaker 2: than it needed to be. And at one point there's
36:02
Speaker 2: a line in which he says he is my gasoline.
36:06
Speaker 2: So it was such an odd lie that I was like,
36:08
Speaker 2: it took me out of the book completely, that I
36:10
Speaker 2: was like that was was that a mistranslation or was
36:13
Speaker 2: that just purposely blown to be so flowery that it
36:20
Speaker 2: did the opposite of like, instead of engaging me, made
36:22
Speaker 2: me think, what just happened? Did she mean to say that?
36:27
Speaker 2: I know writing is hard, and definitely this book is
36:30
Speaker 2: definitely that intensive level of like making sure you're kind
36:36
Speaker 2: of spinning around the words rather than just laying on
36:40
Speaker 2: them is a way that sounded like a flowery description
36:43
Speaker 2: in itself, but that's the way I can say I
36:46
Speaker 2: can think of it.
36:49
Speaker 1: I think it's also though, like it's supposed to be
36:52
Speaker 1: the drama of when you're a fan of something.
36:55
Speaker 2: Perhaps where everything felts inclement and die.
36:58
Speaker 1: Saying feels so big, everything feels.
37:02
Speaker 2: Meaning of everything, and then not just a single word.
37:07
Speaker 2: You can't be abrupt. You must make the descriptor so
37:11
Speaker 2: long that you forget what you were originally talking about.
37:14
Speaker 1: Oh, like the God, I wish I hadn't burned my
37:17
Speaker 1: fan fiction. I would read you guys, you would laugh
37:20
Speaker 1: so hard. But I would write like this like it
37:23
Speaker 1: was life or death or whether we could meet each other,
37:28
Speaker 1: like it was so important to me.
37:30
Speaker 2: Yeah, was this about Keanu.
37:33
Speaker 1: No, if we really come back and do this, I
37:38
Speaker 1: was gonna go into my because I've had three I
37:41
Speaker 1: would say that we're pretty big Keanu Reeves. I like,
37:46
Speaker 1: I don't think I ever engaged in the actual fanfic
37:50
Speaker 1: part of it, or even in my head because a
37:52
Speaker 1: lot of times I didn't write it necessarily. But Billy Billy,
37:56
Speaker 1: Joe Armstrong, Daniel Radcliffe Ryan Gosling kinda nut.
38:02
Speaker 2: I'm too young, I guess, yeah, you're quite formal like
38:07
Speaker 2: form to say those flowery words For Ryan Goslin.
38:10
Speaker 1: I him a letter that was dotted in hearts. Though. Yes,
38:17
Speaker 1: I'm actually got to talk about this in a second,
38:18
Speaker 1: but I want to read this quote first. It's fine
38:20
Speaker 1: if I never meet him, I said, staring at the ceiling.
38:23
Speaker 1: I just like the feeling of us moving through time together.
38:26
Speaker 1: I need him there. I need to know that, at
38:28
Speaker 1: this very moment he's looking down at his hands. Somewhere
38:31
Speaker 1: in the world. It's possible that I might have figured
38:33
Speaker 1: him out all wrong, that my imagination has turned him
38:37
Speaker 1: into an absurdd caricature. Even then, I need to know
38:40
Speaker 1: that I'm doing all of this fallacious work in reaction
38:43
Speaker 1: to something that's real. You don't need him back, you
38:46
Speaker 1: don't even need him alive. Just pretend he's the main
38:49
Speaker 1: character of your favorite movie. And now this movie's over.
38:53
Speaker 1: So again, this is like when her and Master Center
38:56
Speaker 1: a kind of having this big falling out fight, this
39:00
Speaker 1: whole thing. But it did remind me. I think I've
39:05
Speaker 1: told this story before. I will go into it. In
39:08
Speaker 1: our magazine episode. I had a huge crush on Ryan
39:11
Speaker 1: Gosling as young Hercules Samtha knows. I finally secured the DVG.
39:16
Speaker 1: I'm very very excited. I'm sure it won't hold up
39:19
Speaker 1: and it's gonna be great. But I had a really
39:22
Speaker 1: huge crush on him, to an embarrassing point that everyone
39:27
Speaker 1: knew it when I was like nine years old, like
39:29
Speaker 1: all not even friends, like everyone knew it. And I
39:36
Speaker 1: had a moment when I think it was nine or ten.
39:40
Speaker 1: My mom found me crying and she was like, what's wrong,
39:44
Speaker 1: And I said, I've just realized I'm never going to
39:46
Speaker 1: be with Ryan Gosling, And to her credit, she like
39:50
Speaker 1: held me and did the laugh in my face. But
39:54
Speaker 1: it was true, Like you had that moment of I
39:58
Speaker 1: remember it sound so j now, but it's funny. I
40:02
Speaker 1: remember thinking, well, he's like twice my age, he's really hot,
40:09
Speaker 1: he's got a lot more going on than me, and
40:11
Speaker 1: he pretty much lives in New Zealand. Like I was
40:13
Speaker 1: taking it like seriously.
40:15
Speaker 2: Oh, you were trying to calculate the possibilities.
40:20
Speaker 1: Oh no, it's embarrassing. I'm gonna blush thinking about it,
40:25
Speaker 1: but I, oh, dear, I will talk about it. It's
40:32
Speaker 1: pretty funny. But I did have that moment where I
40:35
Speaker 1: kind of mourned, but then I moved on kind of
40:37
Speaker 1: that like, you know, the movie's over, which is interesting
40:41
Speaker 1: because after that I never really I did move on.
40:44
Speaker 1: I never came back to her and Gossling, but I
40:48
Speaker 1: did want to put in here because sometimes some of
40:50
Speaker 1: you listeners write in and you'll talk about parasocial relationships
40:54
Speaker 1: or how you feel like, you know, as not in
40:56
Speaker 1: a creepy way, I'll say, but you know, just kind
40:58
Speaker 1: of like, hey, yeah, I feel like anyway. And I
41:00
Speaker 1: think I think that makes sense, especially with a podcast
41:04
Speaker 1: like ours, because I was thinking about this, like a
41:06
Speaker 1: lot of the stuff you get with celebrities is pretty
41:08
Speaker 1: like polished, like pr managed interviews, but with us, you know,
41:13
Speaker 1: we're kind of just talking about our lives. And I
41:18
Speaker 1: experienced that as an editor, where I would feel like
41:20
Speaker 1: I just knew someone so so much and they didn't
41:23
Speaker 1: have any idea who I was, and it's just it
41:27
Speaker 1: is sort of strange, but it is a part of
41:30
Speaker 1: our media landscape. But I think it's different than this
41:33
Speaker 1: because yeah, yeah, because I do think there's a difference
41:36
Speaker 1: between like a celebrity where they like almost have scripts
41:40
Speaker 1: of what to say, so you never really know them.
41:44
Speaker 1: I mean, it's true, like you don't really know us either,
41:48
Speaker 1: but I feel like we're much more kind of ourselves
41:51
Speaker 1: versus I feel like celebrities are much more like a
41:54
Speaker 1: image of themselves.
41:56
Speaker 2: Right well, also with K pop, they are created by
42:00
Speaker 2: the agency, their personality, their level of fashion, their face,
42:08
Speaker 2: their style. They are created to be a specific image
42:12
Speaker 2: to fulfill a specific idea and typically a specific role
42:17
Speaker 2: in that group. I think it's changed since the beginning
42:20
Speaker 2: of that, like I know, more recently, people and maybe
42:24
Speaker 2: this is the fandom being like, no, that's not true.
42:26
Speaker 2: I don't know, but like it seems like people with
42:30
Speaker 2: the fact that their social media in existence now that
42:33
Speaker 2: they can't quite get away with as much pristine like
42:37
Speaker 2: cleanups as they did once upon a time, because truth
42:40
Speaker 2: will eventually come out. But at the same time, yeah,
42:44
Speaker 2: for the most part, and especially with K pop, they
42:48
Speaker 2: are they have a lot of morality stuff that are
42:51
Speaker 2: in place by the agencies that if you, you know,
42:54
Speaker 2: are caught with cigarettes, you might get kicked out of
42:56
Speaker 2: the band. If you're caught with a girlfriend, you might
42:59
Speaker 2: be or a boyfriend you might be kicked out of
43:01
Speaker 2: the vand uh, in fidelity, any of those things. They're like,
43:06
Speaker 2: you're gone. So a lot of this from a start,
43:10
Speaker 2: contrast from us just talking with our bosses, sometimes not
43:14
Speaker 2: knowing that we exist.
43:16
Speaker 1: Yeah, here's another quote, kind of about that you've settled
43:24
Speaker 1: for a comfortable distance from him so that you can
43:26
Speaker 1: yearn without suffering. Sorry, but you're not in love. You're
43:29
Speaker 1: a fan, boring, lethargic, overfed. If you really loved him,
43:33
Speaker 1: you'd be in soul right now. You'd be walking the
43:36
Speaker 1: streets day and night in search of him. The magnitude
43:39
Speaker 1: of the task would crush you until you became a
43:41
Speaker 1: ball of pulp containing gesture, heart all other organs, crushed
43:45
Speaker 1: into dysfunction.
43:47
Speaker 2: It's a weird stamon to be said by a psychologist,
43:50
Speaker 2: by the way, like challenging, dare you?
43:53
Speaker 1: Yeah?
43:55
Speaker 2: Oh, I was like, who would do this?
43:59
Speaker 1: Well? Yeah, but I thought that was interesting because it is.
44:03
Speaker 1: I do think that point of like you're a fan,
44:05
Speaker 1: and that like lying about being overfed, like you're getting
44:08
Speaker 1: so much stuff as a fan, was important, and this
44:15
Speaker 1: kind of like point of the safety of loving something
44:18
Speaker 1: or someone you cannot have I've read she's talked about
44:21
Speaker 1: that in interviews, and I do think that's true for
44:24
Speaker 1: a lot of people, Like I was saying, when you
44:26
Speaker 1: write a self insert, like you don't really want it,
44:28
Speaker 1: but it's kind of fun to imagine. I think it's
44:32
Speaker 1: I think that a lot of people aren't even if
44:35
Speaker 1: in the back of your head you're like, oh, if
44:36
Speaker 1: we met, I know, but you're also kind of like,
44:39
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna do the for it. I will just
44:41
Speaker 1: write this.
44:41
Speaker 2: Thing, try to reach out to him or anything. I'll
44:45
Speaker 2: see his movie and story.
44:47
Speaker 1: I'll write him a letter that I later hope was
44:49
Speaker 1: destroyed before you could read it. So then, yes, after
44:59
Speaker 1: this sort of like ultimatum, she decides to go to soul.
45:03
Speaker 1: The narrator decides to go to soul, and the conversation continues,
45:06
Speaker 1: you would really do that. His tone was not of gratitude,
45:09
Speaker 1: but of intense hurt. Don't you understand that he went
45:11
Speaker 1: away because he wanted to. Perhaps that's what troubles me most,
45:14
Speaker 1: that even he could no longer endure it. Yes, the
45:19
Speaker 1: pressure is so intense. And then you have kind of
45:24
Speaker 1: what we've been discussing throughout is sort of this construction
45:26
Speaker 1: of an avatar that you feel ownership over or entitlement to,
45:30
Speaker 1: Like I really think a lot of celebrity culture is
45:34
Speaker 1: you're going after somebody who doesn't exist. It's the creation
45:39
Speaker 1: of them in your mind and on social media and
45:41
Speaker 1: entertainment you want, but not the real person.
45:44
Speaker 2: Right again, when we look about and we talked about
45:47
Speaker 2: this previously a little bit about the fact that she
45:49
Speaker 2: chose KP pop for a reason, but like K pop
45:53
Speaker 2: is the epitome of creating someone for the fan they
46:01
Speaker 2: like in the level of ownership given to fandoms is
46:05
Speaker 2: incredibly almost dangerous, which is why things have like been
46:10
Speaker 2: People are like, maybe you need to back off, or
46:12
Speaker 2: maybe there needs to be lost to protect celebrities as well,
46:17
Speaker 2: even though you would think they would be protected but
46:19
Speaker 2: not in South Korea. But yeah, there's this level of
46:22
Speaker 2: the whole they were catered and created in hopes that
46:26
Speaker 2: the fandom would take them all. You have biases in
46:29
Speaker 2: this type of conversation that doesn't really exist in any
46:32
Speaker 2: other kind of celebrity culture outside of K pop, because
46:36
Speaker 2: they want it to be that level. They want you
46:38
Speaker 2: to own things that their faces on, kind of like
46:41
Speaker 2: her cosmetic set or her skin of routine that she
46:45
Speaker 2: talks about throughout the book as well, that because she
46:49
Speaker 2: wants to look more like them. Next quote, it says,
47:03
Speaker 2: to my pleasure. He picked up the notebook and began
47:06
Speaker 2: to read aloud. And this is where she finds him,
47:08
Speaker 2: and Moon is starting to read her fan fiction. I
47:11
Speaker 2: relished the gaminess of his accent. It sounded impossible to fix,
47:16
Speaker 2: he paused when he came across the word why. N
47:19
Speaker 2: He tried to pronounce it as yen, but immediately reconsidered,
47:22
Speaker 2: settling with why in each time he uttered the abbreviation.
47:26
Speaker 2: I increasingly understood myself in the sound, the breath, the
47:29
Speaker 2: insubstantiality of why, which was pulled down the throat by
47:33
Speaker 2: the density of en. He seemed to be asking why
47:36
Speaker 2: of my existence? Why I was what I was.
47:40
Speaker 1: Yeah, so this is she does get to meet.
47:43
Speaker 2: Moon, which I was trying to figure out if this
47:45
Speaker 2: was real.
47:47
Speaker 1: It's definitely meant to made you question it, but I
47:52
Speaker 1: think it was real. I think some of it wasn't,
47:55
Speaker 1: but I think it was. But also I think that
47:57
Speaker 1: she did the thing she of the self insert fan fiction.
48:01
Speaker 1: You meet the person and then she's like, no, this
48:04
Speaker 1: isn't real, this isn't right. This isn't because it's not
48:07
Speaker 1: the person she's created. So here's a quote from her.
48:11
Speaker 1: I'm not a stranger. You know me. All of your videos, pictures,
48:14
Speaker 1: messages they were for me. Don't make that face. It's true.
48:17
Speaker 1: You couldn't have known it at the time since you
48:19
Speaker 1: didn't know who I was, but you didn't need to.
48:22
Speaker 1: Our connection preceded us. I have spent my entire life
48:25
Speaker 1: training myself to feel the feelings I have for you.
48:28
Speaker 1: My perception has been perfectly notched to match the gear
48:31
Speaker 1: of your personality. Don't think I haven't heard this all before.
48:35
Speaker 1: He said, yes, And I think that's interesting in terms
48:41
Speaker 1: of like cause she does. She kind of gets mad
48:45
Speaker 1: and was like, oh, it's not you. It's not you
48:47
Speaker 1: who I thought you would be, right, and then she
48:50
Speaker 1: sort of was Okay, well, I'll go back to my
48:53
Speaker 1: real moon, which is the one in her fan fiction.
48:57
Speaker 1: But that idea of like, okay, this is all for me.
49:01
Speaker 1: Like this, you are specifically speaking to me. I am
49:04
Speaker 1: the unique one. I am the yn that matters. I
49:08
Speaker 1: think that's also fascinating in terms of how celebrities are
49:15
Speaker 1: pressured into like social media, and it's meant to make
49:19
Speaker 1: you feel that way. We've talked about that in terms
49:21
Speaker 1: of like a lot of the songs, those like popular
49:25
Speaker 1: romantic songs are meant to make you feel they're singing
49:28
Speaker 1: to you. That is what the whole point is, to
49:32
Speaker 1: kind of have that idea of like, well, to take
49:35
Speaker 1: that and to seriously be like, Okay, you don't know
49:37
Speaker 1: who I am, but it was me all alone.
49:41
Speaker 2: Right, That's an interesting thing. She actually talks about parasocial
49:44
Speaker 2: relationships and how she does not like it in this context.
49:48
Speaker 2: So I'm gonna read it real quick from those Say
49:49
Speaker 2: You interview or the Center for Fiction. It says, I've
49:51
Speaker 2: seen the word parasocial used to describe my narrator's relationship
49:55
Speaker 2: with Moon. I dislike that word because it pretends to
49:58
Speaker 2: clarify when it actually obscures. And if the implication of
50:00
Speaker 2: parasocial is that my narrator knows Moon falsely through image,
50:04
Speaker 2: through what he represents, then what he really is, then
50:07
Speaker 2: it seems to me that all relationships are parasocial, especially
50:11
Speaker 2: so called love relationships. Have I ever really known anyone,
50:16
Speaker 2: including myself, I'm pretty sure I have a parasocial relationship
50:19
Speaker 2: with myself. In any case, parasociality is precisely what my
50:22
Speaker 2: narrator is trying to escape.
50:24
Speaker 1: Interesting. It wants to know like a real thing.
50:28
Speaker 2: But at the same time she's disappointed by the real
50:30
Speaker 2: thing was in her head, which is parasocial. This author
50:34
Speaker 2: is interesting. I like our takes going.
50:38
Speaker 1: Yes, well, I have another quote. This one is from
50:40
Speaker 1: the NPR article. I don't see the novel as a
50:43
Speaker 1: cautionary tale against anything, to be honest, It's simply documenting
50:47
Speaker 1: this one individual's attempt to perhaps experience something beyond the
50:50
Speaker 1: boundaries of her given conditions, beyond the boundaries of her
50:53
Speaker 1: human consciousness, which, of course, for any person is an
50:56
Speaker 1: extremely dangerous thing to embark upon. Either you are sent
51:00
Speaker 1: over to the other side and possibly you never come
51:03
Speaker 1: back to reality, you never survive it to tell the story,
51:06
Speaker 1: or you come back and you're probably a little bit destroyed,
51:09
Speaker 1: to put it mildly. Yeah, I think the narrator is
51:12
Speaker 1: certainly skirting some kind of boundary, testing some kind of
51:14
Speaker 1: boundary between reality and fantasy. And she does have a
51:18
Speaker 1: lot of quotes about mass consumption, how we consume media
51:24
Speaker 1: currently as mass consumption, and how we interact and enjoy
51:29
Speaker 1: art in our modern times and how that can lead
51:32
Speaker 1: to blurring of these lines. And so at the end, Yes,
51:39
Speaker 1: there is this whole thing where the narrator comes back,
51:43
Speaker 1: meets back with Oh, Oh has this documentary like short
51:47
Speaker 1: film that has painting in it of the narrator, and
51:52
Speaker 1: the narrator keep asking to see the painting, like I
51:54
Speaker 1: want to see the real thing, and Oh is like
51:56
Speaker 1: you're missing the point, Like if you want that, then
52:00
Speaker 1: I don't know if I can. So it's sort of
52:03
Speaker 1: that idea. She's always the narrator is always trying to
52:09
Speaker 1: find this quote real thing, but it's never happy with it.
52:12
Speaker 1: It is never satisfied with it, doesn't believe it, which
52:15
Speaker 1: I think is interesting. There's also a quote from that
52:18
Speaker 1: NPR article about there is something in her that is
52:21
Speaker 1: in all of us, and that's about the being anonymous
52:25
Speaker 1: online like the net. We never have the name. And
52:28
Speaker 1: I did try the the y N thing in this book,
52:32
Speaker 1: which is where you put your name in evershabby Cyan,
52:35
Speaker 1: and it was unsettling, which I believe was the intent.
52:38
Speaker 2: Yeah, I would not like that because none of Yeah
52:43
Speaker 2: again I already thought this book was like definitely out
52:47
Speaker 2: of my style, So like that would have made me
52:50
Speaker 2: real uncomfortable. But like this, this is not my This
52:53
Speaker 2: is not a thing that I would Yeah, this is
52:57
Speaker 2: not one thing I would have picked up by myself.
53:01
Speaker 1: I it was interesting. I've never done that, I don't think,
53:06
Speaker 1: because again, it's not I don't want to be in it.
53:10
Speaker 1: I just want no not me, which I think is
53:15
Speaker 1: a whole other thing. But I tried it. It was okay. Yeah,
53:21
Speaker 1: it made me feel a certain way.
53:23
Speaker 2: Yeah, it made me well, it made me like I
53:26
Speaker 2: was just like huh again, Like there's just moments of
53:30
Speaker 2: like trying to figure it out and trying to be
53:33
Speaker 2: like I don't know if I feel sad for this person,
53:37
Speaker 2: for the narrator because she's going to be unhappy, or
53:42
Speaker 2: if I'm just concerned for the narrator because there's some
53:47
Speaker 2: red flags. Obviously I was gonna write read this because
53:51
Speaker 2: I think it's pretty on point with ye. But she
53:55
Speaker 2: says about the writing of the book, all I learned
53:59
Speaker 2: from why In is how to write why In. I
54:03
Speaker 2: don't seem to have learned how to write novels in general.
54:07
Speaker 2: I could never write something like why In. Again, my
54:09
Speaker 2: thinking has changed too much. I wrote most of why
54:12
Speaker 2: In on the pure benzene of instinct, almost blithely and desperately,
54:16
Speaker 2: which not paradoxically made me very fastidious. At the microscopic
54:20
Speaker 2: level of the text, I suspect that whatever I write
54:23
Speaker 2: next will be the reverse. It'll have to account for
54:26
Speaker 2: the quote relaxed ruthlessness that has come to dominate my
54:30
Speaker 2: style of thinking since why.
54:31
Speaker 1: In yeah, I mean it's it was interesting to you
54:37
Speaker 1: because like that sounds like writing fan fiction to me,
54:39
Speaker 1: that is what you just have to write it. You
54:42
Speaker 1: just get in this mind space, So that makes sense.
54:46
Speaker 1: Here's another one last quote from you. I always imagine
54:49
Speaker 1: Moon almost as a knife kind of a violent figure.
54:52
Speaker 1: I don't mean that in a wilful way, but that
54:54
Speaker 1: he seems to be exposing some kind of wound or
54:56
Speaker 1: void in these characters' lives. And it's both offering for
55:00
Speaker 1: film but also exposing that void. And I think the
55:03
Speaker 1: exposure of that void can be full of potential for
55:05
Speaker 1: an individual who's experiencing that, but it can also be
55:09
Speaker 1: a moment of great Of course, it's leaving open a
55:11
Speaker 1: lot of possibility for disappointment, for lack of fulfillment, right, Yeah,
55:17
Speaker 1: that void, mm hmm, it's true.
55:19
Speaker 2: I mean, yeah, we didn't talk about the part where
55:21
Speaker 2: it's implied that he's what brought the group together and
55:25
Speaker 2: without without him, they all fell apart and filmed like
55:29
Speaker 2: they lost a part of themselves. So they were trying
55:30
Speaker 2: to find the new moon with the new with the fans,
55:33
Speaker 2: it seemed when they all want to go meet them. Yeah, yeah, again,
55:40
Speaker 2: I didn't know if that was a fanfic portion on
55:43
Speaker 2: the real book.
55:45
Speaker 1: I think that was real. But it's also like it's
55:49
Speaker 1: true the I don't know, it's it's the in fandom,
55:58
Speaker 1: it can be so strange because you can feel something
56:00
Speaker 1: so strongly and then if it goes away you it's
56:06
Speaker 1: almost like scary where you're like, well, what's what I
56:12
Speaker 1: could never ever give up on this person I love
56:15
Speaker 1: so much? And then years later I'm like Ryan Gosling,
56:18
Speaker 1: like it's a bizarre were you kind of like if
56:27
Speaker 1: you feel you would never ever it would be a
56:31
Speaker 1: betrayal to like let them go, and then you find
56:35
Speaker 1: something else do. Yeah, but it is a it's a
56:41
Speaker 1: part of fandom that you've heard me talk about it,
56:43
Speaker 1: like one day I won't want to dress is this anymore?
56:46
Speaker 1: And it's like such a silly thing.
56:48
Speaker 2: But yeah, well there you go.
56:54
Speaker 1: Yes, there you go. It's a short read. It is
56:57
Speaker 1: very intense.
56:59
Speaker 2: There's a lot to unfold. There might be some rereading.
57:04
Speaker 2: It needs to happen.
57:05
Speaker 1: I had to reread the end because I was like, wait,
57:09
Speaker 1: hold on.
57:13
Speaker 2: It does again. It makes me a little sad more
57:15
Speaker 2: than anything else, I will say. And I'm not sure
57:18
Speaker 2: if that was her point to that, but yeah.
57:23
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean it's to me, it's mostly about like loneliness, unfulfillment. Yeah, yep,
57:30
Speaker 1: and not being able to find that. So well, we've
57:34
Speaker 1: come out strong in twenty twenty four. As always, if
57:40
Speaker 1: you have any suggestions listeners, we would love to hear
57:43
Speaker 1: from you. You can email us at Stephanie and moms
57:47
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57:49
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57:51
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57:53
Speaker 1: public store, and we also have a book you can
57:56
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57:59
Speaker 1: Sue in there. Lots of ampiction stuff. Thanks as always
58:01
Speaker 1: to our super producer Christine, our exective producer Maya, and
58:04
Speaker 1: our contruder Joey. Thank you and thanks to you for listening.
58:07
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