Transcript
Speaker: Welcome to since rookie season. Well, the summer before.
Speaker: A heated rivalry fan companion podcast where your hosts, Amanda, Lau, and Lauren, break down the episodes from the Crave Canada television series, the Game Changers novels, and various media surrounding this fan phenomenon. We decided to pause our well -deserved rest to bring you this episode about the most recent recent scandal um in this fandom, the use of generative AI in some very well -known fanfiction works. Keep listening to hear our thoughts and know more about the experience of some of us with the New York Times piece on this topic.
Speaker: Bye!
Speaker: In that intro, I'm like... the most recent scandal. I wrote that like A week ago. And we already have new scandals. We already have about both of them. well so so We have like six new scandals. It's crazy. yeah Crazy. I've sure seen that coming like No, literally, we should have seen that coming. But... Here we are. The New York Times article came out.
Speaker: about a week ago was it a week ago It was. what's the book Something like that. Yeah. It came out in early August. it came out in early It came out the Thursday that I was working Lollapalooza. So, yes, last week.
Speaker: No, that wasn't last week. That was two weeks ago. It was two weeks ago. It was like 10 days ago. And... It's body time. Here we go.
Speaker: What is time? Time is timeing is nothing. Yeah. We're basically going to talk about that because that was an experience. And then at the end of our episode today. It's just going to be a little short update, but we'll talk about the new casting rumors and confirm confirmations um and give our little feedback there. And then we will probably not see you again until October. I don't even know when we're coming back. September? doesn' co september november We said September. I think i think September is when we are.
Speaker: coming back to record but we weren't in here The October. Yeah, we'll be back in October. We'll be back in October for sure. What is time? and Also, what is time? Because I have now lost all sense of time because I got a job!
Speaker: Yay! Yay!
Speaker: It is the same exact thing that I was doing. They just actually put me on payroll now. so We love that. We love getting paid for your labor. Yeah, I was at less than $5 an hour before. so Yeah, I mean, not then and not that you're probably getting adequately paid for your labor, but we love that you're getting paid for your labor. My rent will be like 80 % of my paycheck. each month. that's i mean That's also just also where you live, which is fucking crazy.
Speaker: Yeah, but like $2 ,800 for a ah studio or two bedroom is... yeah Kind of nuts. Listen, at first that is that is that is an experience in the in some places in the U .S. that I find to be... Absolutely not.
Speaker: Just an us aside, I thought it was really funny when I asked you, Lau, if you needed us to fundraise for your surgery. I thought that too. I was like... Lauren, she has insurance. And also... Columbia has like... Good.
Speaker: healthcare. care or like actually I actually wanted to mention this on like the main. Podcast, not just us. like That was the most... Funny Colombian versus US s conversation. Yeah, I've had it in a while.
Speaker: and Yeah, I saw that. i was running simple so i couldn't respond but i was immediately i was like Lauren? She's not? She's not here. Okay, so four listeners. Four listeners. Because... ah We should mention what has been happening in my country. ah So yesterday we had a... Strong earthquake is the strongest it has been in a decade. This is a Earthquakey.
Speaker: area of the globe. And Colombia tends to dance. Every once in a while. But yesterday was absolutely terrifying in a lot of regions of my country. Fortunately Bogota was just like stronger than usual but ah not terrifying. I'm also not terrified of air earthquakes for some reason.
Speaker: um And we're fine. Curry is fine. He hated evacuating. Oh, I'm sure. He was not happy, but he let me put him in his carrier. And so he won at Churu. So a little treat afterward. Oh, my God. I was talking about this. In our podcast chat. And I... was also getting a doctor's appointment yesterday about my recent diagnosis of endometriosis.
Speaker: And then I updated everyone on the chat. I'm getting surgery. Toot. treat this condition that is uncurable so far because it's a mystery of science.
Speaker: and And it's a mystery because they haven't actually studied it. Yeah. Because why would we study women's health? Or vaginas. be Why would we? what is What is two weeks every month of being incapacitated by pain in your legs and... back and lower like Buddy, I...
Speaker: Why would anyone care about that, right? So this morning I wake up. Choo! Very kind messages from both Amanda and Lauren asking...
Speaker: A lot of stuff. And celebrating the fact that I'm finally getting, like, Proper medical attention for this. Hell yeah. uh but at the same time we were talking about the earthquake and how we wanted to use our platform to maybe help. people in my country. um and fundraise and all that. and Then Lauren asks...
Speaker: Joe, we need to fundraise. Lauren was talking about my surgery. I was like... Is this about surgery? Is this about the earthquake?
Speaker: Like... I am not in the US. um I haven't. I have good - health insurance and also public health. We'll cover this. ah So no, we do not need to fundraise for my endo stuff. Maybe for the air earthquake? question mark.
Speaker: well like Okay, I just looked it up. Like, in the US, s it's... $12 ,000 to $20 ,000 if you're uninsured, but with insurance, it's $2 ,300 to $4 ,900. And, like, that's still, like...
Speaker: For many Americans. I am like so happy. i am Completely out of pocket. I came back. to my motherland you know viva colombia gracias mi querida patria because i can get my without surgery, without... They're filing for bankruptcy.
Speaker: Yeah, right. No, I mean, like, and that's like the reality of most Americans is like they cannot pay for their health insurance. oh So yeah, that was a very funny interaction. Thank you Lauren. You made me laugh.
Speaker: um But also, if you want to donate money to the refugees and the crisis in Colombia, we have all of those links on our threads and on our Instagram and on our Twitter as well. So you can go ahead and do this whenever you listen to this podcast, which will probably be in the show notes.
Speaker: And a little. in the show notes Yeah. Thank you very much. Okay. So. Are we ready to get into it? are we ready Are we ready to talk about the thing? I think so. yeah i guess where should we start where should we start okay can i can i start can i start with the overview of the event of the ah the overview of the event. okay Just give us context.
Speaker: Yes. So basically... It is. The end of Pride Month. All the gays! have decided that they have extinguished all of their... gay energy at all of their pride celebrations. They're ready to go back to be cha ah chaotic online.
Speaker: And. This account on Twitter publishes... like Basically a manifesto. um That is about how to... Create a skin.
Speaker: for archive of her own and basically if you're not familiar with like any computer things. A skin is just a way to view a web page. And on Archive of Our Own, there are a lot of different skins that do a lot of different things. Some creators make specific skins for their stories. I use the Reversi skin, which is basically like dark mode. all of the time on AO3, but basically skins are just ways to view the websites.
Speaker: So. This account on Twitter. Created a skin that de detects. If Claude has been used in a fan fiction.
Speaker: And how it knows that is because when you copy and paste things into Claude, the metadata, which is like all of the code. that like helps create a web page. So like HTML and CSS and JavaScript. the metadata.
Speaker: Like. gets a little bit of like... quad code left behind and it basically will say like quad response and some way, shape, or form. And so basically in this big document that came out.
Speaker: the creators not only showed a way to download and create this skin for Archive of Our Own for yourself. But then also it... tagged about 38 current heated rivalry fics that have instances of Claude Code in them. all Right. And this is to say that like...
Speaker: people who maybe are a little more well -versed on metadata. could be deleting this. could be deleting the Claude lines out of their own code. But that... The average user of Archive of Her Own, of the internet in general, doesn't know how to do HTML code, doesn't know how to do CSS. So it was getting left in there.
Speaker: Now... At this point, I think most of the fics have either addressed... Like, the clod in their fic. or they have been deleted.
Speaker: kind of substantially off of archive of her own. um But this has ah been a big issue, not only in the heated rivalry fandom, that like one of the most popular Stranger Things fan fiction was discovered to have Claude in it, in the metadata. But...
Speaker: essentially with this clawed response that it leaves in the metadata.
Speaker: It... doesn't tell you what Claude is used for. All you know is that something was copied from Claude and put into that. document. So we don't know why people are using the AI, just that it's showing up. And basically what this skin does is it turns the entire page, if there are any instances of Claude, it turns the entire page that you're viewing, the web page. bright red.
Speaker: So you know that it's in there. Did I describe that accurately enough to to you both? That was perfect, thank you. Thank you. So... Then... lauren mentioned someone published this manifesto i believe it was anonymous yeah but anonymous yeah it called out all of these users and all of these people and I don't know that it had a lot of like value neutral like words like good or bad. Did it say things were good or bad or did it just happen? Because I thought it was like value neutral.
Speaker: Like, it just said, like, these are AI, or no. it just It just said that these have instances of clogged code in them, but it didn't say, like, go attack these authors. like it Like, specifically in the documentation, it says, like, we're not advocating for you to, like, go after these creators and, like, call them out yeah online. We're just trying to, like, make you aware that this exists. They were trying to be, like, a centrist, basically, on this issue. Yeah, that's that's what I was trying to get at, that they weren't trying to attack people, they were just trying to make people aware of it. And so this manifesto came out, and of course everyone like lost their shit, because now...
Speaker: we have this thing that that shows ai in some capacity in these fics and of course everyone immediately was like very polarized about it even though the manifesto itself was value neutral. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. I mean, like when I saw it.
Speaker: My first, my immediate like first response was let me go run it on. So basically like a while ago, I orphaned all of my fics on.
Speaker: um Archive of Her Own because I... i've been a long time user of our cover of our own Because there are like, we've often posted links of things that I've written in the podcast bio. I didn't want people to know all of the smut that I was writing throughout my, you know, 10 years on the website. um So I orphaned a bunch of accounts. So my first thing when I saw this skin was I, of course, created this skin for myself. And then I wanted to see if it was...
Speaker: If it would like do that on a fic that I knew hadn't been used, hadn't been using quad at all. And it was like a fic I wrote back in 2023. And so I needed to test it. I was like, of course, at first I was like.
Speaker: Oh. I need to test this first. And then my second immediate thought was, well, like how are people using AI? like how Like, is it... this because it doesn't tell you like it just says that quad has been used so is it like
Speaker: Claude is writing this and maybe in FIX where there are large instances of Claude, where there's like hundreds of instances in the metadata, maybe that's more likely that it is using Claude to write it. But like...
Speaker: a fic that i really enjoyed had clawed instances in it and i was like oh my god it was like six instances and I was like what the fuck and I was like especially pissed because the person has said that they're an academic and like. this fic is about Shane and Ilya being academics. And so I was like,
Speaker: Oh, shit. Like... What do you mean? Like, that's so disingenuous. Like, to me, especially because we're having such problems in the academy with AI. Like, Lau and I talk about this literally all of the time. All the time.
Speaker: But then the person ended up addressing it like right after it came out. And they were like, I was doing a workshop at my job to talk about AI editing. And like it wanted us to write something, but we didn't have like a really big amount of time. So I just like copied something that I had already had. I pasted it into Claude. I had it edited. It was terrible. And then I, you know, like moved it back over to AO3. And that's why it was in there. And like...
Speaker: i don't know i'm taking that at face value i realize that might be naive but like Truly, like... the amount of detail that this person has in their story about like academics and like the academy, I'm like, there's no way they could get all of that information from Claude. Like Claude is not that smart to write about this because like Claude does the average, right? That's all of Gen AI. It just writes the average of something. And so I was like, like I think I trust this person.
Speaker: But like some fics that had like you know hundreds of instances, they've been completely removed from the archive. So I just want to point out... First of all, that I love that you ask yourself these questions. I am maybe the... from the three of us the last informant this issue, because I have been on a social media detox this few months, because the pain was so...
Speaker: debilitating I was losing interest in a lot of stuff so And that's so real. and Yeah. and so I was learning about all of this from you guys. And I love... that you both demonstrated critical skills in that you're not just like Oh, this is, this happened. Someone says this happened and I'm just going to. Believe it. And that's it.
Speaker: And... This is something I repeat to, like, I tell the professors that I coordinate a lot because they are, all of them are trying to use this, like, software that... supposedly tell you if a student used AI on their paper.
Speaker: And. When this came - Out and out. our universities were testing it, I remember my husband saying, Oh! Let me try and do exactly what Lauren did. So let me try and put my... undergrad thesis that this was like Back in 2016, so...
Speaker: None of this existed, you know? And see what happens. And if life did... Like 90 % AI. wow And we tried it with a lot of our undergrad peepers.
Speaker: ah That we know we wrote. mm -hmm You know? And it kept plugging it. And so I started reading on it and those softwares tend to flag.
Speaker: Neurodivergent. writing and also foreign people. writing English, since you get flagged, usually. So... Every single time I see someone claiming that something has AI, I need to know. How do you know?
Speaker: And how was AI used? And how do you know? If... Like, do you know what kind of use was - Even. to the AI because I hate DA. But I think that... Different uses.
Speaker: have different consequences and mean different things. Oh, absolutely. I was so happy. Two. be informed by people that were asking questions instead of just jumping to conclusions because if I had been relying on y 'all and you were not doing that I would be in a very bad spot right now. Right. So the reality is, is that...
Speaker: there are a lot of people in this fandom who have never been in fandoms before we've joked about like baby's first fandom baby's first day on earth like before on this podcast But there is a level of scrutiny on fan fiction that I have never seen before. And there are so many authors who are like...
Speaker: i am not writing for this fandom anymore because you guys criticize every little thing like i've seen a lot of like authors be like i don't speak english as my main language and honestly like Or as my first language and like.
Speaker: i'm getting hate because of how my grammar and my spelling are and so like People might - be seeking out AI to do like grammar and spelling for them. um And I mean, like... Grammarly ends like...
Speaker: Even Microsoft Word, like, those are not generative AI, but they are a form of AI. You know, like, spellcheck is a form of AI. Like, even the, like... predicator of what you're going to text next is a form of ai you know so like I think there is a lot of...
Speaker: Like... I'm like really struggling with this fandom with how... toxic it is and how toxic it treats its like fan fiction authors because of this AI thing and like the other thing is is that people will be like, oh, these are the tells of AI. And I'm like...
Speaker: Girl, no, like, that's just how I write, you know? And, like, we know in academia, like Lau and I do, like... they literally tell us that we can't use AI checkers because they hallucinate and like tell us that things are AI when they're not AI and so like the other thing is AI is constantly evolving and so as soon as I feel like you learn one towel then that towel corrects itself and then you got to go learn all of the other ones And so.
Speaker: You have to do so much work and so much like brain power that. Listen, this fandom, people are not willing to even think about racism in this fandom. You think we're going to want to critically think about AI?
Speaker: to determine if something is AI or not. And so it's just... it became this whole big thing and I mean, people are, like, comparing it to a witch hunt, which I fucking hate that phrasing. That's honestly disgusting phrasing because, like, people actually died during the Salem witch trials hunts. And, like...
Speaker: They're, you know, like... are negative consequences for like women especially as a result of witch hunts and like it is a drawback to like puritanical culture which i mean the world is going that way anyways so This is, I mean, we all hate the term witch hunt here. i It's more, I think it's more aligned with like call out culture or like cancel culture than it is aligned with like witch hunting or anything like that.
Speaker: And not only Salem. You know, like... The experience in the Americas, in South America, the experience of all the colonies that were governed by... the ah Spanish Empire.
Speaker: the ones the people that were targeted We're black.
Speaker: Enslaved people. and Exactly. people And their religion were... like their religion and uses of medicinal herbs were being uh persecuted and treated as witchcraft So... There was, like, a racial profiling. And there was, like, a lot of the the Catholic Church. persecuting everyone that behaved outside of the norm of what they... believed was sacred.
Speaker: And every time I hear witch hunt, I'm like... Listen. You have no idea. And I actually cringe when I see, like... I'm sorry if you're one of this people. I have nothing directly against you but I would like you to hear me out and maybe get educated on what witches and witch burning and all of that means because I've seen a lot of feminists.
Speaker: Going to manifestations and protests with... Stuff That Says. I am the granddaughter of the world the witches you couldn't burn.
Speaker: And I... um I don't like it. Because you're not. You're not actually... not You need to learn your history. You need to learn that your grandmother was probably one of the...
Speaker: No. Yeah. i mean yeah like the amount of indigenous people in the americas that have been annihilated by the government. and in Canada.
Speaker: Two? Yeah. like Do not use the term witch hunt because you don't like that somebody's using AI. yeah Not to make us seem like AI defenders. We just wanted to take this with a nuanced take because the first time Lauren started talking about this, I was like, Lauren, what the fuck are you saying? You sound like you're defending the use of AI, which I know.
Speaker: you are morally against, like I was trying to understand, but I think it's just how we talk about these things and how we approach them, like that we hate the term witch hunt and we need to think about people complexly. Yeah. I mean, it's literally, it's cancel culture is what it is. Yeah. And it doesn't really have a place in our fandom. I mean, maybe it does in certain ways in terms of like holding people accountable. and like criticizing people to hold them accountable for different things but but What you're talking about is Colin culture.
Speaker: which is something very different than cancel culture calling culture is saying okay we as a group collectively as a fandom as whatever we need to address these things and here's how we're going to like move forward and like calling culture has a pathway for like restorative justice
Speaker: cancel culture which is what is actually happening in this fandom doesn't have any pathways forward it's like we're just going to cancel you because you're using ai not because we care why you're using ai just because we have Whatever. We have this.
Speaker: On. nuanced way of looking at things on like we are so stringent and like what our boundaries are.
Speaker: Yeah, and I think maybe an example of this that would also apply to this fandom is trying to use Colin Coulter on Rachel Reed and trying to get her to better understand either like different aspects of Shane that we've talked about on the show before, like either autism or his heritage or different things like that, and which is also why Unrivaled, the - the book is taking so long to come out is because she heard those responses and wanted to take more time and so i think that that's a good example of we're not just like icing someone out of whatever because of the things they said were trying to get them to. change it away.
Speaker: Right, exactly. And like...
Speaker: The thing about like Rachel and Jacob Tierney is they seem receptive to fans. Like I was just having an argument about this with someone the other day and they were like, well, if you don't like Rachel Reed and you don't like the director and you don't like the characters, then don't watch the show anymore. Don't engage in the fandom. And it's like, okay, first of all, you just said, yo, fuck all the people who are calling out racism, sexism, homophobia, all of these things. First of all, that's what you basically just said, because we can use inference, which is a critical reading and reading comprehension response. But also like...
Speaker: We can want better for our media and we can criticize the media that we consume and want people to do better and to learn more and to grow as humans and be more accepting. And if we just our cants are constantly being like, yeah, well, fuck that person. Like, I'm just not going to engage with it anymore. Things don't move forward. Right.
Speaker: This is completely different as to what's going on with... J .K. Rowling. who I hate that I'm even saying this online. She... continues to target the trans community, continues to spend the money that Harry Potter fans have given her to target the trans community and to hurt them in a myriad of ways.
Speaker: Okay. Cancel that bitch. Stop doing Harry Potter stuff. Don't give her any more money. That is completely different. I'm i'm sorry that we're touching on this, but...
Speaker: I read this morning that... ah The UK was forced to... derail the - I saw that! Yeah, something about their like...
Speaker: I don't know if it was like... cabling or something it's an underwater cable yeah Yeah, fans were upset. Fans were not upset about the environment. Fans were upset that it would desecrate Dobby the Elf.
Speaker: fictional. Grave. The fake grave. A slave. Yep. A slave. Let's be real. because The house elves are slaves in those books. Exactly. The fictional grave of the elf that was used by J .K. Rowling to defend slavery. as something that just happens.
Speaker: And some slaves are happy. to quote the books. Honestly that fandom. Right, and then... Have you heard where it's going now? It's going through a Bronze Age archaeological site now. Yeah.
Speaker: Yep. I hate it. I hate like Nothing good can come. out of harry potter anymore like no Wear us. Even though we have said... That we...
Speaker: Have little faith. Maybe. me Maybe. There is... Like... Rachel Reed and Jacob Tierney All right. Are participating micro and macroaggressions?
Speaker: And... have not acknowledged it and have failed in defending their diverse cast, but we still think Maybe they... are not completely evil because i as There's nothing about JK Rowling, absolutely nothing, that you can defend. like No. It's nasty. towards people, like the the original actors of the movie. Right. He... is A pro -sionist?
Speaker: She is... at this point i believe she's a white supremacist Oh I knew that! Years ago. yeahs But I think at this point she has said stuff like there are not just like the clues that she's leaving all around, but now she's tweeting without shame. Right. And I mean, she's a Zionist, but then she's also anti -Semitic.
Speaker: oh Which is a cranky combo. Which was crazy combo, when you think about it. Hot take. Zionism and the creation of Israel. was a very convenient way. of both controlling What Europe calls the Middle East.
Speaker: is And the resources end. ensuring that you can send the Jewish people. elsewhere that is part of our country. Oh, yeah, absolutely. So, Zionism, antisemitism. anti-semitism they Right, exactly. I mean, the thing is, is that Rachel Reid got a sensitivity reader for... unrivaled.
Speaker: specifically to look at issues of race. you know and so like That is important. That is growth. She took what we had to say and she took that in and has decided to go out and do something with it. You know, JK Rowling has never done those things. And like.
Speaker: That is where the call -in versus cancel culture differs. We could talk all night about that. But we want to talk about the New York Times article that...
Speaker: amanda and i were interviewed for because all right listen i Every news. paper. news magazine comes out with some hot takes on fandom every once in a while. And usually what they never do is they never interview fan studies people.
Speaker: And so... We got an email. A couple of weeks ago. And at first we thought it was spam because we get so much spam. we get like i was yeah I was at work and I checked my phone and I was like, oh, there's something in the proton mail because like the spam sometimes goes to my personal email. And I'm like, what the hell? Literally, we have a pot email. And I was like, oh, huh. Let me, this one actually went to the right place. Let me.
Speaker: investigate and actually by that i mean i sent a screenshot to lauren and lao because i was at work and i was like hey can you investigate this person and see if she's legit and if this is like an actual thing yes for i we doing i'm gonna investigate i'm just gonna ask my friends to take this out Exactly. I, yes, I was running the alkalinity of water, which is very important. Anyway, so it was like, they came back and they were like, yeah, she's a real person for the New York Times. Like, this is what we should say. And and actually, I didn't respond fast enough in those five minutes. And so Lauren logged in and responded back for us. Because again, I was at work. And so I was like.
Speaker: I was like... Oh, here's ah here's my chance to be a star. I love this for me. Yeah, because the manifesto had broken containment. Yes, the manifesto broke containment. And I mean, this happens with fandom because...
Speaker: Like, I mean, fandom is more visible than it used to be in years past. I mean, like, especially in the early internet and like the late 90s, we had a lot of like closed list serves, emails. You know, there was things like chat rooms that were all closed to the public. We then migrated over to things like LiveJournal, fanfiction .net, Archive of Our Own, and even Tumblr.
Speaker: But... In 2018 and 2019, there was like kind of a mass exodus from Tumblr and it was caused by regulations in the United States called FOSTA and SESTA that basically were... an attempt to curb online sex trafficking, but basically they delisted Tumblr from the app store.
Speaker: Because... um it had instances of pornography on it. And so Tumblr had to go through and change all of their rules about pornography on their websites. And so a lot of fans ended up leaving Tumblr because they did not want to conform to the new standards because also the new standards were sexist. and didn't actually make sense and are not the actual cause of sex trafficking. ah And all of these things. And so.
Speaker: places that people went are more accessible, more open to places like two people like journalists. things like Twitter or X, things like threads, Instagram, TikTok. And because of the algorithms of those places.
Speaker: You can get into like these pockets of fandom. that then can get amplified into very big spaces like the New York Times. So basically...
Speaker: I was like, I want to be interviewed because I think I have a lot to say about this. Also right now as an academic, I am in the process of writing a book on heated rivalry. Yay! I know! I'm so excited! I'm getting my sample chapters ready to go to my publisher. We love that. I know, I'm so excited. So I was like, I would love to talk about this issue. And so, or Emmy called to me.
Speaker: Emmy is the writer of the article. Emmy? Who? Amanda and you were talking about... As if. I knew we were besties. Really? So Emmy said this, and I was like... Who's Emmy?
Speaker: Sorry. Oh. love emmy emmy was so respectful like very friendly like is i think a member of the fandom like knows a lot of the background so it didn't feel like i was talking to a person who had never experienced fandom before or didn't know what was going on i mean this is like pretty niche like when i talk about this to like my colleagues and stuff they're like
Speaker: I don't actually know what all of those words mean. What do you mean skin? What do you mean generative AI in fanfiction? Yeah. yeah
Speaker: It's not very out there, but... emmy and i for our my first round of the interview i think we talked for like an hour and we talked about so much stuff i think there was definitely an angle that she was trying to portray which is like how upset and how like betrayed fans feel about ai usage in their fan fiction
Speaker: But I was just trying to contextualize a lot of these things. Like I was trying to talk about why fandom is more visible, why the AI generation is kind of like the AI generation conversation is weird. Because even as an academic, this is how I feel. Why heated rivalry as a fandom has so much like negativity in it itself, but then also has a lot of negativity broadcast onto it. I was trying to give a lot of contextual.
Speaker: parts of this we talked i think for an hour and a half the first or an hour the first time and then um we talked for like another 45 minutes um just about various things and i think one thing that i wanted to like reiterate is that like all of us here were very anti like gen ai but also like we And also we recognize like there's a lot of nuances that go into this.
Speaker: um conversation But in general, we think AI is the antithesis of fandom. It is the antithesis of creativity. We don't believe that it has any space in not only fandom spaces, but in creative processes or in general at all. Lau and I see this at the academic level with our students. Every every single day. is Every single day and the how we're fighting. I've started seeing audit it in research. Amanda started seeing it in research. I mean, it's everywhere and it is very exhausting. exhausting to talk about and we want to recognize that as well um but yeah basically i want to say that emmy did a really great job of like my interview and then asked if i wanted if there was anyone else so i recommended amanda to speak with them yeah i spoke with her um for like 20 ish minutes um our schedules were kind of chaotic
Speaker: um and And I kind of I didn't give her what she was asking for in the way that Lauren said, but I did talk about how I do find it disappointing when authors.
Speaker: Use. generative ai for fan fiction like i really don't think that it's necessary like i i told her that like the one of the perks of At least in my opinion, one of the perks of fanfiction is that it's not perfect and that it is community and it's very human. um Because that's what we're looking for in fanfiction is that human experience, that human connection, whether it be like a crack fic or like a hundred thousand angsty fic, you know, or a hundred thousand word angsty fic. And so I did tell her how I was disappointed.
Speaker: in all of that so yeah we talked for 20 minutes and she was like oh here are the quotes i'm going to use um blah blah text me and then everything i said got cut from the article which you know it's it happens it might be for the best because she did use my full name and if um people try to look me up for like my job stuff or like for ah a career and they find that i don't know how well it would be received i mean it'd probably be fine but when i want people to google me i want them well first of all there's a british author who also has my name which is weird but If people are researching me and put Florida or... my work in it, I want them to be able to find my contributions to conservation and my career and not me griping and raving about.
Speaker: a gay hockey show so much Well, okay, I'll talk about that. I mentioned it once. Like, I talked about it when I went to the rave in Chicago um in February. But... Yeah. I'm Googleable, I want it to be... my work and not me complaining about other people. you know. Right, for sure. Yeah, I mean...
Speaker: That's totally understandable. um I mean, I talked to Emmy for like an hour and 45 minutes and I had one quote in it and it was just like, yeah fan news the fandom's really big. But then there were pictures. Can we talk about that? Yes! Yeah, because that was an experience. um So basically, I mean, it was like.
Speaker: you know like i think the cover photo is gonna be like this burn book kind of vibe which is from mean girls and like things just spilling out of it but like here's you know like kind of what I envisioned. So they ended up contacting a photographer who does freelance for the New York Times who lives in Chicago.
Speaker: Um. I wore. I wore. I was talking about those pants. I'm obsessed with them. once My Polly Pocket party pants, which basically in... This is a whole story. But in the ah promo for Connor's story on SNL, one of the comedians, her name is Sarah, she's wearing these like... jeans that have like plastic pieces of fruit glued to them or like sewn onto them in some way shape or form um
Speaker: But I was like, I really love that idea, but I want to do it with the rubber Polly Pocket clothes. And so I ended up sourcing a bunch of vintage rubber Polly Pocket clothes and I put them in like rainbow on the front of these jeans. And so if you want to go look at the article, we'll probably also post it in our show notes and on our socials of the Polly Pocket party pants. That was most important to me was that those got shown.
Speaker: Um. But basically, um I'm on summer break right now. So I do a lot of my work from home. I had this random man come to my house. We were kind of like keying. We're just like talking about a bunch of different places in Chicago. We're talking about like tattoos and stuff.
Speaker: um And then I, in a lot of the photos, I'm sitting at my desk and I have Connor and Hudson on my desktop background. um and so this is when the vibe started kind of getting weird because he was like Can you like reach out and like caress them? I was like. Okay, that's kind of weird. um ah sure like I don't really know what you're going for but like this man had like no idea what was going on like he
Speaker: didn't he'd never seen heated rivalry before he didn't understand like the ai really part to it so i had to like kind of walk him through that as well um and like i understand like he's just a freelance photographer that's kind of how that's going he probably just is like paid to take pictures and stuff and like he has like notes from the people on what he should take pictures of but like
Speaker: I don't know how much of the story he knows in the background. And it was also like being written and edited at the time that we were taking these photos. So he had me take some photos at my desk and then I took some pictures of the Claude showing up. And then he had me like sit on my couch and put on Heated Rivalry and like watch that so he could take pictures of me doing that. But he kept being like...
Speaker: forward to like a steamy he wanted to capture you on your natural habitat laying on my couch watching teen rivalry yeah um but he kept being like go to a steamy scene go to a steamy scene so i put on the cottage because like there's not really that many steamy seats i really should have put on episode five but he was like oh they're kind of like in love this is romantic and i was like
Speaker: yeah a bit like yeah yeah Exactly! Like, okay. it's the whole fucking point and then he had me wear some of my like black hawks gear Which he was like, do you have any heated rivalry stuff in your house? And I was like, no, my house is too curated for me to just have a poster or a stand up.
Speaker: a connor although if somebody wants to send me like a stand -up of hunson or connor i would love Bye. My house is a little too curated to do that. So I'm good. You have an immaculate apartment. I have an immaculate apartment. i deal Only thing that I have that is...
Speaker: Holonov themed is what I carry my joints in when I go out. in public and it's literally i have a holinoff sticker from house party on the inside of it so there is a picture of my weed in the new york times which i felt like was a very important contribution to society Um,
Speaker: And then he left. It was, he was there for like an hour. But I immediately, like, texted. Emmy and was kind of like. hey the vibes were weird i don't really appreciate like being seen as like some crazy fan person who's like only obsessed with like gay men having sex because one i'm queer and that's not true and two like that's not what this show is about and like not how i relate to this show
Speaker: and emmy was like super receptive of that she was like i mean obviously i'm gonna look at all of the photos before we put them out i like i i'm sorry that happened to you like i will definitely go through this and like i don't think it's really like his fault i think he just has like never seen the show and he only has one viewpoint of it from the media which is that it's like this raunchy smutty show but like That's... I wish he would have done a little bit more research into it before he came and took photos at my apartment. But also like.
Speaker: I survived it. Also people are exploited and unpaid so we're not surprised that people are being mediocre at their jobs. He goes, run! Must I say?
Speaker: The final result. The photos are gorgeous. You look great! Amaze, I mean. You always look amazing. I've never seen you in person. Wow. Yeah.
Speaker: I've never seen you in person, so I can only say that through video. Lauren always looks amazing. Mm -hmm. not only you looked amazing, your immaculate apartment did as well. So I was really happy for you because I knew that this was very important for you. Yes. That your apartment, like... Was.
Speaker: portrayed. As it is yeah in these pictures. And actually, happy for you the picture of the joint case, there's a little framed picture in the background, and it's of a postcard that Lau sent me.
Speaker: Because I have it framed on like my little fronts because I don't have any pictures with Lau to put on my like. I have like a big metal locker for all my shoes and I have pictures of Nanda on it, but I don't have any pictures of Lau. So I put the postcard that Lau sent me on it.
Speaker: I love this. Yeah, can confirm. Lauren's apartment has always been and always will be the utmost vibe. People should make Etsy pages about it or whatever they do on Etsy. Not Etsy. Hello. um what Pinterest. Pinterest. Yes.
Speaker: Lauren's apartments have always been the Pinterest board. Like ever since I've known Lauren for what, like four or five years now, I always inspired to make my place where I live like Lauren's. Like that's why I've got all this shit on the wall. People walk in and they're like, wow, like you've got so much cool stuff. And I'm like, no, I just throw shit on the wall like Lauren does. It's great. My mom is always like, there's too much stuff on the wall. like No, it's great. You've got to build it. It's a vibe. It's i love awesome. It's a vibe. I love it. So yeah, look at the pictures of Lauren's awesome apartment. And I can always i can always post more. But yeah, I mean, I think.
Speaker: I think... i I heard a lot of chatter about the New York Times article. A lot of people were really upset that they focused on like the negatives part of this fandom. And I will say that in my interview, I did talk about like some of the positives that have come out of this fandom, you know, like raising a ton of money for mental health on Ilya's birthday or like the fundraiser for the Innocence Project, which came out of a fic. And like, I think it ended up raising like the most.
Speaker: money that they've ever raised in a single day. Like, because, like, the author of this fic mentioned the Innocence Project. And I mean, that's a like a... uh for Yeah, that's a...
Speaker: a non -profit that's really close to all of us so like i did mention a lot of that but like Unfortunately, also at this point with this fandom, so much of the negativity outweighs the positivity. And like, I... constantly see people. on both Archive of Her or Own, both.
Speaker: on threads everywhere being like i cannot be in this fandom anymore i am at my wit's end like there is just so much toxicity there's so much negativity and I'm not saying that the toxicity and the negativity is like people being like, well, don't be racist anymore. It's like people being like, I'm experiencing racism and like, I can't be in this space anymore. Or I'm experiencing yeah homophobia and I can't be this in this space anymore. And like.
Speaker: you know, a lot of people with this AI issue are really upset about. especially Opal. um But I think that issue... And like.
Speaker: Nutcracker and... um wolf bird those are very also convoluted issues on top of it and i don't think this is really the place to talk about it because i think all of the things that have been said about opal and her work and her don't run my stuff through ai but then also uses ai It's already been said. So I don't think we need to express more of it, but I think.
Speaker: Like. there is real like feelings attached to how people felt about that like We... And we've seen it even like in this past week with Super Straight Bros Live, which was another fic, where the person's being...
Speaker: super homophobic in their fic and like doing things that, like... people and like responding to when they're like hey this scene really like icked me out this was really not a good time like trying to be like, hey, can we talk about this with the author? The author just kind of brushed them off.
Speaker: I'm like... I mean, we do unfortunately develop these parasocial relationships with the big name fans in our fandoms. And so the feelings that people are feeling about this is very real. like But also we have to like also kind of look at the other side of this and how it's also being perceived in the media and also like how.
Speaker: So many people have left this fandom because they just can't deal with the racism or the sexism or the homophobia or the transphobia or whatever. And those are very real things that we have to deal with. and like address I agree.
Speaker: Yeah. And I think that's part of being in community is and dealing with other people is balancing these things. For sure. And I think that's one of the things that like kind of drove me to accept, like to talk about this was not only because I always want to have the fan studies perspective in a lot of these things. Fan studies scholars, while we are numerous, we are rarely asked to comment on fandom in public spheres, which is kind of crazy because I think our scholarship is.
Speaker: is very easily. digestible by the public exactly that's how i write a lot of my own research as someone who's doing research with you I agree.
Speaker: so Ah. I can confirm. also i think Yeah, I think like something that drove me to want to talk about this more was that like. I - I -
Speaker: I've been struggling a lot with the heated revelry fandom and the responses to things and kind of the continued racism and just horrific fan behavior that's been happening. But I think like we as a duty of fans and participants in this fandom, we should address it in a calling culture and begin to.
Speaker: develop pathways for people who have never participated in fandom or don't understand why behavior is maybe icky or don't know that much about racism or whatever pathways for them to learn and to be still a part of this and to grow as humans And I think that's always something we've tried to set out to do with since rookie season.
Speaker: um And so it was important for me to get into the New York Times and talk about that as well. Yeah. And I think you did a great job. With my single quote. Listen, it was to me you're out there a very important quote.
Speaker: So... Should we read it? Yeah, let's read it. The quote? My single quote in the article? We need to have the attitude of Mike Wazowski. And this. So we're going to celebrate that you have a quote on this article.
Speaker: I appreciate that. Don't you remember Monsters, Inc.? Yes, but what is the... My Wazowski is always like... They take a picture of them. And then the... And they put in like the cover of the magazine. But the...
Speaker: Oh, yeah, and his eye is, like, covered. Yeah, or something. And he's, like, covered by the sticker. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And he's, like, I'm so sorry. And he's just, like. the cover of the magazine!
Speaker: They called you Miss Rouse. I know, in one of the captions. I specifically was like, it's Dr. Rouse, but that's okay. No, because you are. You actually are a doctor.
Speaker: Okay. Yeah. um The quote starts, heated rivalry became one of the most popular fandoms in the world, said Lauren Rouse, 30, a Northwestern University postdoctoral scholar in writing studies who co -hosts a heated rivalry fan companion podcast, end quote. And Since Rookie Season is mentioned in the caption of the image of me where it says, Lauren Rouse co -hosts a podcast about heated rivalry called yeah Since Rookie Season. So if you heard about us.
Speaker: from the New York Times article. Welcome. We're so happy to have you here. here I want to chew on those pieces so bad, by the way. The Polly Pocket pieces, I want to chew on them so bad. Okay, I have like... 20 left over and i really want to make like a uh in case of emergency break glass um and put the poly pocket clothes in there
Speaker: And literally... My boss replied because I just sent this out to everyone. And my boss, the director of my program, just replied and said, your Polly Pocket jeans made the New York Times. Amazing.
Speaker: they're so slay that yeah we wrote i can't wait to wear them to class this fall i'm so excited All right. um We will be right back. Since rookie season, don't leave us.
Speaker: Bugs shot. casting. Yay! We're gonna switch very quickly over to the new casting announcement that was made. um We have our Troy. Andrew Harris. um Troy is being played by Charlie Gillespie.
Speaker: And Harris is being played by my... The love of my life, Justice Smith. However, there was a lot of discourse. about both of these choices, one of them being their justices. Black. He's biracial.
Speaker: And the second being that justice is thin. So let's chat about it. Yeah, i have I have some opinions on this. I would love to hear them go. Well, first of all, people complaining that justice is black when like
Speaker: this is something that happened in the prissy jackson fandom like talking about annabeth and grover being black specifically annabeth like that was the whole thing so like fandoms being racist we we knew that like that's not especially we've been new so and also did you see justice in i saw the tv glow like hello hello god
Speaker: A queer icon. I love that movie. Yes, a queer icon. like I read the Wikipedia pages for both of these actors. one of I think Justice is explicitly queer, right? Or is it? Uh. i think so yeah there has been explicit queerness and i'm just really excited about that Yes, Justice is queer. He came out in an Instagram post on June 5th, 2020.
Speaker: Yeah. So that's fantastic and awesome. And we love including. We love that. Yeah, because also I know people wanted like smaller actors, but also like having a big actor that's outwardly queer is... Fantastic. Really important. Yeah. And I wouldn't say that Justice is like a huge actor. um I mean, he's done like Jurassic.
Speaker: world. Bigger than Hudson. and con yeah I mean, yeah, he's played like smaller roles. I mean, Connor, remember, was in. uh the second joker movie oh yeah do I didn't see that. And was the guy who kills the Joker. Spoiler. um so i also saw it I saw the TV glow. Yes, but so I love...
Speaker: I love justice. um I'm super excited. I am. I think... There are a couple of concerns that I have. One. Especially in the way that...
Speaker: The... companies who run this TV show and the directors. fail to protect their other castmates of color. yeah i'm like really really nervous about there being a biracial man there Also... Troy is like massively a bigot.
Speaker: I know. And it's never implied that he's a racial bigot, but like... Girl, if you're... a b c d d You're all soaked. Racist. I have a recommendation for this because um So Steve McQueen.
Speaker: Who's a black director, which... and Who I love. Like he's amazing. He did this. series that is like the the compilation of like different movies, but they're a series called Small Axe. And one of the... movies slash episodes.
Speaker: It's about this black man. Foo! Decides to join the police force because he believes he can change it and then He experiences a lot of backlash from his own community because they feel betrayed. And... Nothing you see um in that movie. will give you like a black and white answer like this is very nuanced so For the...
Speaker: Like... I appreciate... Taking the risk? mm -hmm What worries me is the lack of... care that we have seen.
Speaker: from the people in power in this series towards their cast. But I do appreciate taking the risk to show us complex... Reality is just like a biracial man being a bigot. Right? And I think it's very important because...
Speaker: No. yeah Justice is Harris, remember, so he's not. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. The biggest. but even falling in love with What is the bigger? Yeah. You know, like. The the small apps example is like, this person acknowledge.
Speaker: Blah. amount of issues and racial profiling that goes into police force. in that era because this is during like the 70s and 60s and 80s in the UK small x covers like those tickets and so um This - this man is like, I believe I can - Your owner, I can change him. And you'll see him go through that. go through believing that you can change a system that was built to kill you.
Speaker: And i I really think. I... Appreciate. hugely when we see this when we see people perhaps not getting into the best relationships, people...
Speaker: Perhaps. having like complex and relationships or or tensions with a loved one. um one who is definitely very against a lot of what my family stands for most of the time I have been like thinking a lot around these
Speaker: idea of how can you love someone. That stands for... someone someone else who wants to kill you for example or wants you to be erased I recently read this amazing Memoir.
Speaker: that I just forgot the name for, but I will check and we will put in your show notes! Um, And it's this woman who's telling the story of her relationship to her family. And you discover very early on that his father is in jail for raping women.
Speaker: And she's trying to... understand how to build a relationship with his father and the memory of with her father and the memory of her father and where like what is her responsibility and how can she like as And she's a survivor of rape as well. so there's like this whole complex Building a family and um building of, like...
Speaker: Sometimes you get into relationships. And then you discover, because she loved her father before she knew that this man. was in jail for that like she Learn that. he was in jail for raping people when she was an adult. So she had grown up idealizing her father.
Speaker: in a way it's very complex for her to come to terms with the reality and she does this in a very feminist very vulnerable way and i loved it so i i actually appreciate when we do those nuances what worry is that, um,
Speaker: the way this fandom operates and the way this industry operates will erase those nuances to the point get to the cast and biracial and black people. paying the price again for the discourse that will be produced online.
Speaker: Yeah, I'm hoping the Colin culture... comes in clutch and the team is a lot especially now that they have more resources and more money there's more eyes on them they will be more proactive with it Right, absolutely. i Yeah, I mean, like...
Speaker: I think telling the story. uh white men falling in love and one of them as a bigot is very different than telling the story of a black man and a white man falling in love and one of them as a bigot and i think they are going to have to address the elephant in the room AKA race.
Speaker: in interesting ways that... I hope are also then carried over. to talking about Shane and his race, especially since the long game has so many references to Shane's race in kind of icky and gross ways.
Speaker: Yeah, and I... hope that they'll touch on the way that And like Lau was saying with like with your family and stuff, like when they don't... Dude.
Speaker: like against people with your identity but they love you i think that that's a way we can change people's minds is instead of arguing with them is that showing them the people they love are part of these communities and i think think that hopefully that's something that the show will demonstrate is like you might think this way about these people but this is affecting someone you love and this is someone you love that you're talking about this way and that's a with it. that person's going to need to change. So I'm hopeful that that's his arc, perhaps.
Speaker: And just to be clear. we dont We would never and you should never put the weight of changing the bigot on the on the people they love yeah and that belong to marginalized communities like it really sucks that i have to continuously Educate. people I love, on why...
Speaker: My rights should not be erased as a queer woman. in It sucks. It's... One of the most anxiety -inducing. situations in my life and I really resent when people assume that it's my job to educate them all the time and to have them change their behavior. so What we appreciate is that Art portrays.
Speaker: this very real Complex. human relationships, but we do not ah want this to be turned into like, oh we're using this biracial man as a way for this white biga to become a better person. just as a lot of movies have used a woman to make a man less of a misogynist.
Speaker: yeah yeah that's not what i was going for at all just in the way of like i think if troy wants to wrestle with his queerness and like coming out i think he needs to address a lot of his internal i agree oppressiveness and that include because it's all intersectional i think that includes addressing his internal racism that he likely has as well so i'm hopeful for that i was sure you didn't meant that but i know this fandom so i was like That's true. People love to not understand the things that we say. yeah We know that for sure.
Speaker: well the other thing that we have to address when we're talking about this casting of harris is the fat phobia yeah which this is something i also have we all i'm sure we all have strong opinions about and at first i was a little neutral on it i was like i didn't understand i went to some the casting and i was like okay great and then i saw
Speaker: because normally my twitter is very i've said this before my twitter is very like fine and respective but i saw both sides of this argument on twitter or all sides of this i guess there's never just two but i saw people up in arms on either side and my like my algorithm didn't know which one i'd be on and i had this thought that i was really excited to share excited in that I thought i thought it was like...
Speaker: so we saw we've talked about how it was scott and kip scott's a hockey player Kip just likes to work out. Like Kip, it just has that body. Like maybe when we were watching that episode, I don't know, but it's just, he's just just has that body. and but and i Yeah. Just like. Poof!
Speaker: Yeah, like he that he just likes to work out. I think the thing with Harris is that he just... Does it? work out i think he just has a like Like, I don't even know how to describe it other than like, I don't think he's like obese. Like, I don't think he's like.
Speaker: doing the that one mcdonald's challenge what was that movie oh a big plus size uh
Speaker: Supersize me. Supersize? Yeah, I don't think he's like... like that i think it's just like just is the average person that doesn't work out and is maybe just like stocky like i don't know i just did not understand what everyone was speaking about like they wanted him to be like a certain size and i was like i don't think they were gonna make everyone happy because that's literally impossible but i do think and from my perspective i just thought he was kind of like me just like a little a little round around the edges and not all the hard abs that kip has I don't know. What did you guys think?
Speaker: Um... I always pictured Harris as like... I mean, he says he like doesn't have a hockey player's body. They use words like stocky or like other things. Like I've dated men who are like.
Speaker: you know six three six four and usually like 300 pounds but like That looks very, like... I think one, people don't realize how much bodies actually... look like like how much bodies like look like weights or like you know like what how people like different body types carry that yeah
Speaker: I always figured that Harris was a little more full -bodied in a way that, like, I am more full -bodied. Yeah, same. technically like if we somebody was passing around like a scale of fatness and it was like i am like the very like i am skinny fat or whatever it was but like It's because like I am, I fit into like extra larges or like one Xs.
Speaker: Or I wear, like, a size 14 -16. And, like... skinny people think i'm fat but fat people think i'm skinny and so it's all about like your own perception of it but i never thought that harris was going to look like a hockey player but also like hockey players are like big bulky dudes like yeah they're like 250 pounds and they're tall you know so like
Speaker: when harris was described i thought he was a little more quote -unquote plus sized but like i Also, I can't visualize shit, so... We talked about my Aphantasia. Aphantasia. So I couldn't picture him. And I know that Rachel has like posted that he's, you know, bigger or things like that.
Speaker: um But I understand why a lot of fat fans were really upset about like this. guessing Yes. Because fatphobia is rampant. I mean, like... the Bears are doing Ozempic, like... I... Like, look at Ariana Grande. like girl like she is literally skin and bones like cocaine chic is back and like i grew up in that era Where, like, body image was...
Speaker: Like you had to be a size zero or a size double zero or a size triple zero in the early 2000s, you know, and I was never that. So I understand where a lot of fans are coming from and why they're upset that that representation doesn't exist anymore.
Speaker: Yeah, we understand that. I mean, y 'all understand it better because I haven't read... book I'm waiting for us to cover it Love that. so I have no idea, but I'd like again I'm trusting my co -hosts. of this podcast with ah this assessment.
Speaker: So yeah. I... I... I did. say that one of the things like i love kip I love the skim.
Speaker: episode even if we joke that is the skip episode. One of the things I did see. back then was that I was a bit disappointed. that ah we were getting only like perfect crossfit bro types of bodies and that I yeah have heard from a lot of my Men gave friends.
Speaker: comments about how that made them feel considering the way that the gay community treats People do not like fit in those standards of like...
Speaker: body image. So I... I do agree that I would appreciate that at some point. We could get... Buddies that are not the traditional steamy novel. uh
Speaker: Right. and and And we can do that. like The way Alice Osman draws Nick nelson is not like yeah He's a rugby lad, but he's also a teenager. Right. Shh. They... They draw him. in a way that is...
Speaker: I actually appreciate it because a lot of people who are considered overweight or fat or... they that they don't see themselves as skinny, they see themselves in Ignatian. And they see themselves portrayed in ah in in a light that... never even like considers that that's a bad thing. Right. So I...
Speaker: but anything else to see that and honestly like at the beginning of the summer I was scrolling on threads and it was like
Speaker: there was this like thread that said like most people don't understand what 200 pounds looks like in a body and it was like if you're femme and you're 200 pounds like reply to this and like I'm 200 pounds. And like, I've always had like feelings about being 200 pounds. And I like opened the replies and it was like all of these.
Speaker: gorgeous, stunning femmes. in bodies very similar to mine and like doing very interesting things with fashion and it was like very healing for me in a way you know like to see that like oh i just look like all of these other people and i don't think these people are fat so like why am i calling myself fat in some way shape or form and i mean like
Speaker: I've dealt with body image issues all my life. And like, ah you know, like that is something that I'm working through and therapy and things like that. and I, and yeah, like like... I understand where people are coming from.
Speaker: The other thing that I want to address is how fat phobic people have been to Hudson recently. um Because Hudson has like put on a bunch of muscle. before like they're gonna have to bolt down that goddamn set but like all all people are doing is saying how fat he is and everything And it's like...
Speaker: Do we really want to expose an actual fat person to this fandom? No. Like. I'm good. So yeah. I think there are a lot of conversations. There are a lot of really great threads out there of people replying to or talking about their experiences and why they're disappointed about this. And so while we're really excited for Justice to be in this role and we're really excited for Charlie.
Speaker: um all of these things can also be true at the same time that we're upset that there's a loss of representation about of fatness that we are concerned about how a black person is going to be portrayed in this relationship and how he is or is not going to be protected by Cast and. Crew members.
Speaker: It's... existing at all at the same time. Forever and ever. yeah And remember, we're using calling culture, not cancel culture. because Exactly. We think we can all get... A bead.
Speaker: more educated on these issues and ask the questions and maybe change our perspective and do the work. And you know what? there's a great option for you to do the work and to learn more um not to plug this but to plug it we are running a summer reading challenge with basically every piece of literature
Speaker: whether that be fiction, nonfiction, academic, non -academic, that we mentioned in our first season of Since Rookie Season. um It is on StoryGraph. We will link it in our show notes below. There are so many amazing texts on it. And if you are one of the first three people to get the list to 90 % on your StoryGraph, we'll send you a little prize from all of us here at Since Rookie Season. We would love for you to come learn new stuff about race, gender, sexuality, romance novels, etc.
Speaker: in this Storygraph Challenge. And yeah, really think about a lot of different parts of culture that you may not be exposed to. Yo! So let's read together because none of us have... read a hundred percent of this list because this list is compiled by stuff that we all contributed
Speaker: too So ah there's a lot that I'm reading right now and I'm learning a lot. And I'm sure that's true for my co -host as well. So join the conversation. I'm actually not participating in that challenge. You don't have Storygraph. I know. I don't have...
Speaker: i don't have a story wrap and i'm reading too much for the book this summer so don't tell people lauren yeah sorry But yeah, join the conversation, please. Yeah, join our conversation. And as as always, you can find us on any of our social media. We're on threads, Twitter, Instagram, at SRS.
Speaker: Pod. or since rookie season pod, you can email us at srspod at protonmail .com with any of your thoughts on today's episode, as well as any of your thoughts on our past episodes. We love hearing from you all. And if you could like and give this podcast five stars on whatever platform you're listening to, I fight with too many people on the internet and it might be taking our view.
Speaker: something just a little bit we do have haters so if you can contribute to the ones who love us side we appreciate it We would appreciate you so much. Yay. And we appreciate your emails when you reach out. We do read them and talk about them. Sometimes we take a million years to respond, but we we do like hearing from you all about what you think and what your lives are like.
Speaker: And also look out on your social media because Lau and I, ah our IRB just got approved. So we'll be sending a survey your way very soon. please we need 5 ,000 participants send it to all your friends and the Colombian people, please, support this.
Speaker: Colombian people as well. Okay. That's all we've got. We'll see you very soon. We'll be back in October. If you have anything you want us to cover, we're thinking about covering Game Changers novels that...
Speaker: are Between.
Speaker: The long game and heated rivalry. So all of those. um And then also we're going to be talking about stuff that's going on on set from wherever we can find it. um But if you have anything you would love for us to cover, like maybe a little wish list, we're happy to do that. We're also going to be looking at the other media that Connor and Hudson have been doing. So we will be watching Yaga this October when it comes out. I'm so yeah excited. But yeah, feel free to email us or connect with us on social media. We love you all so much and we will be back soon. This is Since Rookie Season signing off. Bye!
Speaker: Bye!
Speaker: Since birthday season, it was created by Lauren, Flower, and Amanda. The cover art is by Lauren Kamau and I'm your editor. Thanks for listening.
