Book Club: Y/N

Esther Yi's 2023 novel Y/N delves into fandom, obsession and loneliness, all while blurring the lines between fantasy and reality.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:05):
Hey, this is Annie and Samantha and welcome to stuff
I've never told you productive iHeartRadio, and today we are
back with our first book club of twenty twenty four
with a very recent novel from twenty twenty three. So spoilers,

(00:30):
trying to avoid them, I will say I'm not going
to talk about the ending too much, so if you
were go and read it.

Speaker 2 (00:38):
This was a TikTok vine by the way, that was
intriguing to me because fan fiction which is anything, and
then you had talked about what pad, which is like
what is typically used for cap pop fan fiction, and
I did when I was looking up yan the first
one of the third results was bts yn, So I

(01:00):
guess it's a huge thing. I know nothing about this,
but I was interested by the description the TikToker was
giving and including Kofka esque, which I do like Kafka.
It's interesting to see that level of surreal novelist today,
which I guess China Melville is kind of similar to
that to me, because go ahead, this is this is

(01:20):
not my style of uh fiction and for me, like
the surrealist UH not my thing because it takes me
forever to figure out what the g is happening, which
was the theme in this entire thing for me as
I was, I was listening to Audible not a sponsor
right now, but like I was like, what's happening? Who?

Speaker 1 (01:40):
What?

Speaker 2 (01:41):
So that's kind of my thing. China Melville apparently bt'd up.
Side note, Uh did a novel with Keanu Reeves just
recently recently. Oh okay, just say you know, oh moving on.

Speaker 1 (01:58):
That's just funny because I'm going to talk about some
of my experiences in this realm. And I did have
a huge crush on Keanu Reeves's neo, so it's just
kind of funny relationship I wasn't expecting. Yes, it is
very surreal. So we are talking about the twenty three

(02:20):
novel by Esther Ye called y N or y slash
N that stands for your name for people who don't
know the fan fiction world. But basically I.

Speaker 2 (02:30):
Was one of those week bleasses for the longest time.
I thought was yes no, which is implied in them
in the novel as well.

Speaker 1 (02:36):
But I was like, what, yes, I'm going to talk
about my experience with this. So basically it is a
type of self insert fan fiction wherein it will be
a character in my experience, usually a dude and they
are with your name, and as the reader, you are

(02:58):
supposed to put in your name. You can even like
download it and it will replace your name for every
instance that it says, why slash and Wayan. So it
is a type of fan fiction. So the story follows
our narrator, who by the way, we never get her name,
after she becomes obsessed with a member of a K
pop band named Moon, eventually leaving. She eventually goes to

(03:23):
Seoul in South Korea because he kind of disappears and
she's located in Berlin, Germany. At first she goes in
order to find him. It is a very surreal story.
It blurs the lines between fanfic, fandom and reality. And yes,
she does post this self insert fanfic online after attending
a concert with a flatmate, which by the way, she

(03:44):
did not seem interested in going to.

Speaker 2 (03:46):
Feel like she's one of those that was like, I
don't want to be caught up in this, I'm not something.

Speaker 1 (03:52):
Yeah, then she really did and she knew herself very quickly.
It happens. Yes, So while she is in Soul, she
meets a woman named Oh who works at a shoe
factory and O enters the narrator's name into a lottery
to go to the band's headquarters, and the narrator wins

(04:13):
and she meets Moon, and later she returns to Oh
who wants the narrator to feel something real And it
doesn't seem like the message goes home. But it deals
with fandom obsessions, celebrity culture, loneliness, and parasocial relationships. It
is an award winning debut for Ye, who has said

(04:36):
that it's an examination on mass consumption.

Speaker 2 (04:39):
And who.

Speaker 1 (04:41):
And how we interact with art and literature. But she
has been cleared it is not a criticism of K
pop and fandom. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (04:49):
I think she mentions just like her fascination, I love
something so much.

Speaker 1 (04:54):
Yes, And we do have a couple quotes throughout this
one from her. Most of them are from an in
pr interview that she did about this book. Here's one
to speak, I guess specifically to my narrator's case. It
seems to me that she wants, and again related to
this desire for love, to practice devotion. But it seems
to me that she is capable of meditating upon a

(05:16):
single object for a very long period of time. And
of course there's a lot of irony in the fact
that she is choosing to practice this meditation upon one
of the most you know, poppy, rapid pace forms of
cultural consumption right now. But that's where she wants to
do it. I'm not judgmental about, you know, K pop
or celebrity culture. That's really not my intention for the book.
I'm not a journalist. I'm not here to write some

(05:37):
kind of takedown or critique. I'm just very curious about
this form of worship, and I take it very seriously
in some sense. But it seems to me that it's
speaking to some kind of absence within our current landscape. Yes,
and this is especially interesting because the author is has
like the same background as the narrator, which I think

(06:00):
is on purpose. Like at the end, there's a scene
there's like a movie of a painting. I feel like
it's like that. Yeah, yes, yes, And I did want
to before we get into the themes, I wanted to
briefly talk about my experience with why in fan fiction,
because I think that there is sort of a misunderstanding

(06:23):
or like maybe not even that, but I feel personally
in my long story experience with fiction even if it's
not a self insert fick, which by the way, is
kind of interesting because it's supposed to be the reader
inserts themselves, not necessarily the writer. Usually there is some

(06:46):
element of self insert fick to any fan fiction. This
is my opinion. I could be wrong, but I feel
like there's usually one character that you're like, that's me,
or I'm vibing with that person, orm connecting with that person,
and that's a lot of our art is that's not
like unique to fan fiction necessarily, But I just think
like there is a misunderstanding around, well, why in fan

(07:13):
fiction is only this and it's different from every other
fan fiction. I personally think that a lot of fan
fiction is let me put myself in the story somehow,
or let me experience something with a character somehow, and
that can be various levels. I personally don't really read
why in fan fiction because the part I like the

(07:36):
other people doing the thing, I don't necessarily want to
do the thing, so I don't really read it, but
I see it all the time. Is a popular type
of fan fiction. I also was thinking about this because
I have had huge celebrity crushes in my life. It's
usually more of like the fictional character they play. But

(07:57):
you know, but one time I was thinking about this
because I've kind of jokingly told the story of the
time I wrote a self insert fan fiction of me
and Billy Joel Armstrong from Green Day and I never
published it. It's just for me. I burnt it, so
we'll never know the beauties of what it was, but

(08:19):
in it because I was thinking about it, and I
remember thinking when I wrote it, this is a halfly married,
way older man. So it wasn't about the romance part.
It was like I just wanted someone to validate me,
Like I just wanted to like somebody that I respected
and did think he was hot, but I just wanted

(08:40):
There was no like I want to end up with him.
It was more like I want to be in the
band with you. I learned to play guitar for this
whole thing. So sometimes the book talks about this a
little bit. Sometimes it's not even like a sexual thing
or like a romantic thing. It's just like some you
want to feel desire, weird or validated. I'll share some

(09:06):
stories throughout that for content warning, There is a brief
discussion of kind of disordered eating, an obsession also cicadas,
which was funny.

Speaker 2 (09:17):
Yeah, I thought the same thing. I was like, let's
spread this. Was she thinking about cicadas already, or but
it doesn't like pop out? Or was this after I.

Speaker 1 (09:25):
Know the cicadas. Sounds like it's going to be a
messing thing this summer.

Speaker 2 (09:30):
Also, South Korea is going to hit some things too.

Speaker 1 (09:34):
I don't know. God, okay, So let's get into some themes.
And one of them has already alluded to with that
quote is kind of fandom as religion or religious awakening.

(09:56):
So here's a quote. What I feared most wasn't death,
our global cataclysm, was that everyday capitulations that chipped away
at the monument of seriousness that was a soul. My
spiritual sphincter stayed clinched to keep out the cheap and stupid.
So this is early on when she's like, no, I
don't need to get involved in this, but her friend

(10:19):
convinces her to go to a concert and things quickly changed.
Here's a quote from that. This screen, as large as
a Berlin apartment building lying on its side, reproduced the
happenings on stage with astonishing clarity, so that when the
five boys drifted in as if by accident, heads bowed
and hands clasped over their stomachs. I couldn't fathom how

(10:41):
they were real. Bodies as small as grains of rice
from where I stood would survive an evening at the
feet of their gigantic images, thousands of women erupted into shrieks.
I remembered Varva telling me that incidents of shattered ear
drums at the boys concerts were rising, prompting the entertainment
company that managed them to recommend earplugs. But I saw
none being worn by the fans around me. They were

(11:03):
finally breathing the same air as the boys. Now was
not the time to be less of a body. Yes,
as mentioned, all members of the bands are named after
celestial objects.

Speaker 2 (11:17):
Yeah, not as I had originally wondered, And I'd still wondered.
Because this was written in twenty twenty three. One of
the bigger K pop stars had just recently passed away.
His name was Moon like I think that's his surname,
and he was for Astro, so I wondered if that
had any influence. She doesn't know much about K pop,
so I don't know. I think she knows like this,
I'm guessing this is somewhat based on like bigger fandoms

(11:40):
that have a lot of a lot of fanfic out
on what Pad specifically, So it goes on with a
theme about fandom or obsession, which again maybe this is
where I'm like, I don't have hobbies and loves for things,
so this is very like, very unaware of this world.

(12:01):
So to me, this was really uncomfortable looking. But I
also know this is exaggerated, so I was just like,
huh hah, this book anyway. So here's a quote. The
pack of boys called the their fans livers because we
weren't just expensive handbags they carried around. We kept them alive,
like critical organs. I suspected they used the English word

(12:22):
liver because it sounded like lover. They could be koy
like that, but I would much rather be Moon's liver
than lover, which was kind of the implication she wants
to be inside of his body, not necessarily with his body.

Speaker 1 (12:35):
Yeah, yeah, and we're going to talk about that more.
But it is one of the things that is unsettling
about this. And I feel like a lot of the
uh self insert fan fiction or are just like when
you love someone, this was written for a place where
she almost seems like she didn't like him. It was

(12:58):
like kind of coming from a very cold place, whereas
in my experience, a lot of this comes from a
very enthusiastic, happy place. Sometimes it's healthy and sometimes it's not,
but it's not what the vibe the narrator was giving
was very like cold to me. Interesting, But this does

(13:20):
hit the narrator hard and fast. She goes from like, no,
don't take me to this concert too, I must know everything.
And one of the things I kind of laughed at
this quote, I tapped up my phone with vigor. I
do hope you skip the occasional meal. When you're on
the thinner side, your soul becomes more visible, almost hypodermic.
You become a pure streak of energy, like the blue

(13:42):
flame of a blowtorch. But the entertainment company better not
put you on a diet that would be disgustingly presumptuous.
You know best how to flagellate yourself. No company can
be as perverse as you, and i'd reach the end
the maximum character count. I pressed enter and watched my
block of tech disappear and dream afar with your messages.

(14:02):
So kind of like coming into this whole the online
social media part of fandom, and already being like, I
know you better, these other fans don't know right.

Speaker 2 (14:19):
This would be the Korean term of say songs, which
is the intense fan that hits into what she does,
stocklerish and being almost dangerous, possessive and angry that other
people can love you.

Speaker 1 (14:33):
Yes, yes, and just like the whole thing of like
her telling him about the diet, but like the company
shouldn't tell you but me right, Yes, here's another quote.
Moon lay on his back. I crawled on top of
him and brushed the hair out of his face. He
looked back at me with pure recognition. Both encouraged by

(14:54):
his gaze and unable to bear it. I closed my
eyes and kissed him, but it was like pressing my
lips against the back of my own hand. I felt
what he felt of me. I felt what I felt like.
With a start, I realized I had no sexual desire
for Moon. My sexuality simply loved his sexuality totally and unblinkingly,
without my needing to know anything about what he did

(15:17):
with his I felt disgraced by life. It's strange personal,
it's strange personal commandments that I couldn't simply want him.
And yeah, I think this is sort of an interesting
thing that a lot of people don't understand. Again, I
feel like this is talking about a lot of times,

(15:38):
the person that you're envisioning, whoever that is, is a
mirror of what you want, but it is like you.
It's still a reflection of you. So in this moment,
it's more like this is honestly, and we're going to
talk about this more later, but this is like an
avatar I've created of someone to sort of feel a void,

(16:00):
fill the void that I have. But it's more about
you filling that void than you experiencing any kind of
like desire sexual need. It's like there's something that's hurting
inside me. What can I do? And so it's more
of a reflection of you.

Speaker 2 (16:22):
And another quote, we once turned to philosophy for an
interpretation of God, for that which lies beyond our comprehension,
But philosophy has relinquished its authority to data. Now we
know too much, especially what people want and how to
give it to them. Religion is no longer a site
of our interminable struggle with negativity. Religion shorn. Philosophy is

(16:43):
now a vending machine for manifestation and fulfillment. That's why
there are so many lowercase gods in this secular, cynical era,
Oblivious to the contradictions. We yearn for spiritual practices that
will make us worthy of receiving permanent answers and solutions.
A boy band like this Masterson's Waved the Picture of
Moon is one such god. Here we have data disguised

(17:05):
as philosophy, information disguised as art. We no longer go
to church once a week. We attend a stadium concert
once a year. This was a quote by her current boyfriend,
who she for a while told people was our adopted brother.
So I was like, what's happening, what's happening. This is
one of those moments in which when he discovers her
love for moon is she gets very offended, very offended

(17:28):
that he would talk about Moon in such a calm
and casual manner of was it a very interesting odd
segue of like reality for her right.

Speaker 1 (17:40):
And I do love that quote we attend a stadium
concert once a year, because it's true. And I was
thinking about it, and I've read quotes from the author
about what she was kind of intending to capture here,
and the relationship between religion and fandom. It's true, you're

(18:01):
in a concert, you're in a stadium, you're singing all
the songs, you know, all the things, like it's so
important to you that you attend, that you have to
do these kind of rituals around. It's very interesting.

Speaker 2 (18:15):
Again, she kind of hits on this one character. But
like in the reality, a lot of the fans, diehard
fans follow follow the different groups. I've seen a lot
of TikTok videos. When BTS's last shows, they went to
several different cities, including going to Soul to try to
watch them for the final time. So, like so many
there are fans who, if they have the disposable income,

(18:37):
which by the way is a big TikTok train right now,
will do these things. And it's it is not just
a show, right for many of them. In another quote,
he fees my imagination more than you do. Of course
he does, Masterson says, because he exists in your imagination.
He's a person breathing, eating and dreaming in Soul, and

(19:00):
I'm a person breathing, eating and dreaming in Berlin. Masterson
reached over to give my thigh a painful squeeze, and
I know you exist right.

Speaker 1 (19:09):
Here's another quote. I think what you mean is that
he designs his lyrical content and sexual appeal with the
specific intent of exploiting the most basic of human emotions,
like loneliness or the desire for unconditional love, and then
derives massive profit from his vampirism. I rolled off the
bed and began to dress, checking the picture into my pocket.
He works one hundred times harder at our relationship than

(19:30):
you do, I said, jamming my foot into my shoe
with an aggressive twist of the ankle. He has physical
therapy every day because his tendons are on the constant
brink of snapping. Can you say the same about your tendons? Yes,
So this is all on her mind. She's having these conversations.

(19:52):
And then this brings us to online fan culture. Here
is a quote. I discovered Archmage not long after. The
website contained thousands of fan written stories organized by the
celebrity or fictional character featured in them. There were smaller
categorizations based on the stories and motive instigation, tagged with
what each story quote makes you ellipses my favorite stories

(20:17):
about Moon almost always had the tag makes you end friendships. Frankly,
most of the stories were unreadable. After all, the authors
weren't writers, but fans who had turned to language as
a last resort. I could feel the frustration mounting as
the pros grew ever more sodden, as the author submitted
to yet another cliche, hoping their strange feelings would foment

(20:38):
coherently limbed out of the primordial soup of failing story.
But I preferred these stories to most contemporary novels, which
mirrored the Pietes of the day with observed ardor for
all the lone superiorities suggested by their tone of moral indignation,
these books were mind numbingly easy to agree with. I
preferred reading Fans and Dead People because they were hard

(21:00):
to agree with. I couldn't stop thinking about my two
love sick characters, so I took my scenes and copied
them into a dedicated notebook, then continued the story there.
Once I'd completed what felt like a chapter, I typed
out the text and published it on Archmage under the
username floor floor. So this is interesting because we have

(21:20):
talked about this. You can see our past episodes on
kpop and fan fiction. By the way, one of the
things about fan fiction is that it is you can argue,
you can disagree, you can agree. I recently had somebody
leave your comments on one of mine that's like, this
feels so alive because you can like contact, connect with

(21:41):
each other. They can give you ideas and you'll put
them in and it changes what you thought it was
going to be. And that is often very beautiful and fun,
and I think a key aspect of fan fiction. But
it can be toxic, as like I don't a lot
of that I've like cut out of my experience, but
I remember it and I seen it. It still exists.

(22:02):
But people get like angry if you perhaps portray there
the person they love the most in the way they
don't like. A big part of that used to be
don't like, don't read, but now it's become more like,
I feel I have to defend this person. So here's
a quote from you about fan fiction. I think for

(22:23):
that reason, I find fan fiction especially really interesting and
a really rich mode of expression that, of course a
lot of people look down on because it's, you know,
it lacks a certain literary polish. But I respect that
about fan fiction, Like I respect that fan fiction is
so much the product of a compulsion, of a yearning
that it almost forgoes all these pretensions of polish, of quality,
of sophistication. And in that sense, for me, there's something

(22:46):
that's revealed the heart of fan fiction that I think
is essential to all great literature, which is this desire
to put yourself in the same space as the transcendental,
you know, to almost touch the hymn of it without
really quite grasping it. Yes, so I think this is
interesting because I've talked about this a lot. You can
read fan fiction that, in my opinion, is better than

(23:07):
what they're making. But it is true that there's something
very liberating about Like let's just skip that part and
get to what we all want. Like there's really bad
fan fiction, there's really good fan fiction, and I think
there's a place for all of it. But it does
some of it is like really telling, and like, oh,
this is what a lot of us are craving or

(23:29):
don't find in a lot of the literature entertainment that
we have.

Speaker 2 (23:34):
Yeah, I was actually going to read another quote because
she had a different interview. In the interview, I feel
like are different for MPR and this specific one because
this one was for Centerfoffiction dot Org. Her answers are
sound a lot more like her book, so the language
is different. But the interviewer will asked, you know, oh,

(23:55):
why does she bring fine fiction? Why in faine fiction
as a way to outlet to this character's desire, and
then whether it's interspersed or incorporated, and it's to a
different level of the way she needed to tell her story,
And so she replies with I'm intrigued by the words
interspersed and incorporated. They suggest that the fanfic can be

(24:16):
cleanly separated from the rest of the novel raisins in
a piece of bread. There's also the implication that the
fan fixed position is one of subordination, as if the
non fanfic parts constitute the main world of the novel
because the stakes there are higher and the events are
quote real, as if the fans fix is thusly quote fake,
a place where my narrator lets her imagination kareem beyond

(24:37):
the bounds of reason, a playroom for everything that doesn't
fit into her quote real life. I don't view her
thick in any of these ways. I can speak from
personal experience. My writing is not less real than me.
In fact, my writing is better at being me than
I am. So I thought that was interesting because she
wants to make sure you understand, as the reader, don't

(24:57):
get this wrong. The fanfic is not added. It is
the story, like she's like, it is as real as
the rest of the story.

Speaker 1 (25:04):
So I thought that was.

Speaker 2 (25:05):
An interesting quote, and beautifully and so another quote from
the book. I wasn't sure how to navigate a space
filled with strangers who knew I loved what they loved.
It was like going to the sauna, except our naked
bodies were identical, which made the embarrassment recursive and pointless.
And of course I think that's for a lot of
those as much as I don't know, I do know

(25:29):
being young and thinking I could be if we just met, Yeah,
he might see me like that whole moment and in
that understanding, when you're not by yourself loving something and
coming to a group, it feels like it lost this
loster a little bit.

Speaker 1 (25:44):
Right for sure. And that's one of the things with
something like a Yan fan fiction is like, it's interesting
that it's not the writer. It's interesting that it's like
anyone's reading it, insert your name, But as the writer
in it's sort of like, this is a very strange
place to be where we're all experiencing this desire or

(26:07):
want or whatever it is, and it's I'm not unique,
I guess, but you keep trying to find ways to
tell yourself like, no, I'm unique, I'm unique. But I
also think it's funny for me as I've started posting
fan fiction. There's just a certain number of authors you
see a lot if you're in the same space, and

(26:27):
you start being like, oh, it's you, But then if
they don't comment, then you're like, oh, no, I've done something. No,
It's just funny, especially for me because I'm in such
a niche, smaller space that you just start to recognize
names and you're like, we must there's something about us
that if we met in real life, either we'd hate
each other and we really get along the hard to say.

Speaker 2 (26:51):
Or best friends, yes, nemesis turn to best friends or yeah.

Speaker 1 (26:56):
Oh popular fan fiction trup I know, I know, yes.
And this brings us to parasocial relationships, which we've done
an episode on. This is basically kind of the like
when you feel you have a relationship with someone you
don't know, usually a celebrity, just because you experience their
life through social media or whatever entertainment, which we'll talk

(27:17):
about in a second kind of our experience with that,
but here's a quote. It had all started when she
stumbled upon a piece of y in fan fiction, which
she explained was a type of fan fiction where the
protagonist was called why in or your name. Wherever Yann
appeared in the text, the reader could plug in their
own name, thereby sharing events with the celebrity they had
no chance of meeting in real life. Reading her first

(27:39):
Wyan story, Lee's had learned incredible things about herself. At nineteen,
she gave birth to Moon out of wedlock and was
forced by an aristocratic family to leave him at an orphanage.
He grew up to become a truck driver who specialized
in transporting prize horses. This was how she reunited with
her son, who strode up to the gates of her
estate with a chestnut mare rearing at his side. The

(27:59):
two recognized each other without exchanging a word. What commenced
was a dream like summer in which the pairent covered
great distances side by side. She on horseback Moon in
his truck. Only after finishing the story did these find
out about the pack of boys, their fame, how Moon
sang and danced alongside the others. But all of this
mattered little to her. Hungry to uncover new facets of herself,

(28:21):
she began to read one Whyan story after another. So
I thought that was interesting because sometimes, yes, people read
fan fiction of something they don't know anything about.

Speaker 2 (28:30):
The con twist of the fact that the author looked
similar to Moon and the fact that this so this
was done at a convention that was like they had
what convention for the specific boy band, and they had
different people pretending to be the boys, and the main
character is asked to be Moon and walks around and

(28:54):
people are taking pictures and just like falling in love
with her as Moon, including Lise, who they already had
an interaction because they had been with the same.

Speaker 1 (29:04):
Boy, Masterson.

Speaker 2 (29:05):
And then now she's kind of falling in love with
the main character who also wrote one of the Yen
novels or wym fanfict that she started to read and
was falling in love with that character too.

Speaker 1 (29:18):
Yes, I thought that was interesting because again I do
think a lot of times the Whyan part is about you.
So the fact that she looks like Moon, I think
was pretty pretty clear. Yeah, yes, here's another quote. The
engineer straightened out his back like a displeased patriarch. Whyan
Fick puts me to sleep, he said. In order to

(29:39):
accommodate the biography of every reader that might chance upon
the story, the writer creates a character void of personality.
But there can be no story without a proper protagonist.
So there is never a story when it comes to
why En, there are only absurd and arbitrary leaps and plot.
All of this amounts to a warning when I urge
you to heed. Anyone who pursues the delusional fantasy of

(30:00):
being Moon's chosen one can expect to have their identity
wiped out. This you gestured on our table, The event
is so much bigger than you. You are not Yn.
All of us are all at once, no, Lee said,
without blinking. Only I'm Yn. She recounted how, wanting to
know what it was like to be neighbors with Moon,
she started reading a story in which he lived in Berlin.

(30:22):
To her disturbance, he turned out to be just like
her ex They were both philosophers, and they had read
the same books, hung out at the same bars. They
even had the same birthmark on the inside of their
left thighs, and they both waved like a madman whenever
they saw her approaching from a distance. The Yn of
that story couldn't have been me, she said, because that
Yn was to me. The point is that I'm no

(30:45):
longer me. I'm y In. I've taken my destiny into
my own hands, and I've decided that I am now
a person who knows Moon. It appeared that Lise had
read my story on arc Image. I've been saying arc Mage,
but it's arc Image. Sorry. I tried to meet her
eyes once more, but she kept her gaze on the engineer,
which I found admirably resilient given his look of intensifying disdain.

(31:07):
One person can't possibly be so many different people, he said.
You say you're hy In, but you're really no one
at all. You're the placeholder itself, a vacancyat waiting to
be filled exactly, Lee said, with a dreamy smile. Moon
is a feat of singularity. There has never been anyone
like him, and there never will be. He is too specific,

(31:28):
too unusual. I must try my hand at being everyone
if I am to coincide with him. He stays in
one place, I room endlessly. You can go listen to
the episodes we did on Mary Sue. But that is
a similar thing where people often say she is a
placeholder for the author. She is bland, perhaps so that

(31:52):
anyone can be her. But I feel like a lot
of people bring what they think you do kind of
make it your own, I guess, because it is a
placeholder thing, you can be like, well, she's like me
in this way, in this way, in this way. So
it's interesting to read this exchange where he's like everybody's

(32:13):
why in which is true, but she's like, no, only me.
But what I feel like she's saying is when you
take that position, it does become something kind of unique
to you because you're you're filling all this blankness with
yourself and your personality. I don't know, it's kind of

(32:34):
hard to describe, but yeah, I think both are like I
both are good points.

Speaker 2 (32:39):
I think to that level of what she's seeing herself
is not herself.

Speaker 1 (32:42):
And what she wants to be. Yes.

Speaker 2 (32:44):
So that's why alone said when she said that's too me,
because she knew that relationship because it was based on
this one dude, right, interspersed with this one in being Masterson,
who we talked about earlier, interspersed with Moon because that's
how the author or the narrator wrote. It was based
on him, which is also why she becomes obsessed with
him later because she's kind of somehow transferred what she

(33:06):
has seen Moon as to him Masterson. And then also, yeah,
interspersed to the two of them. But yeah, like having
that saying that this is to me, so that wasn't me.
I can't be that because that's not where I want
to be essentially.

Speaker 1 (33:21):
Yeah, yeah, that's I mean. And I say, we're going
to talk about that a little bit more later because
I think that's another misunderstanding people have. But sometimes it's like, yeah,
it's a self imagined fulfillment, like I wish I would
be this person. Yeah, but if you were ever confronted
with the reality of it, you don't want it. It's
just like imagining. It's like, Okay, let me imagine this,

(33:44):
but in reality, no, thank you, no thank you.

Speaker 2 (33:51):
And here's some more quotes from the book. Somehow I'd
never imagined Moon as an infant I'd also never imagined
him dying. He seemed to have come into the world
already complete, and I expect him to disappear in the
same way, which honestly could say something about K pop
fandom in general, especially when we talk about young deaths
and tragic deaths or whatnot. When they kind of disappear.

(34:13):
They kind of disappear when they fade out of the limelight.
Not many people think about it anymore, and they do
just disappear. You don't think about their past too much
because their present is what you look for and what
you fell in love with, and then when the time
dies out and if you get in a new interest, yeah,
they disappear.

Speaker 1 (34:32):
M hm. Yeah. And I think it's true that it's
like the idea of to me, it's speaking to this
sort of celebrity culture we don't view sometimes we forget
celebrities are human, and so you don't purse he's never
a baby. Of course, he was never gonna die. He's

(34:53):
not human. You don't kind of give them that space
or think about that space, because that would interrogate like, well,
what are we participating in then? Well what is he
going through?

Speaker 2 (35:08):
Then?

Speaker 1 (35:08):
Like as a human person.

Speaker 2 (35:10):
Exactly m M. And then this quote is from when
they make an announcement that Moon is retiring and oh
dear no details followed the news of Moon's retirement, the

(35:32):
other boys retreated from public view and then definitely suspended
the release of their next album online. The turmoil was Titanic?
Had Moon quit of his own free will? Was he dead?
Had he relocated to the moon? Surrendering himself to scientific
progress and betrothing himself to a metaphor? I really like,
that's just kind of again, there was a lot of

(35:54):
this in the book where the surreal conversation was bigger
than it needed to be. And at one point there's
a line in which he says he is my gasoline.
So it was such an odd lie that I was like,
it took me out of the book completely, that I
was like that was was that a mistranslation or was
that just purposely blown to be so flowery that it

(36:20):
did the opposite of like, instead of engaging me, made
me think, what just happened? Did she mean to say that?
I know writing is hard, and definitely this book is
definitely that intensive level of like making sure you're kind
of spinning around the words rather than just laying on
them is a way that sounded like a flowery description

(36:43):
in itself, but that's the way I can say I
can think of it.

Speaker 1 (36:49):
I think it's also though, like it's supposed to be
the drama of when you're a fan of something.

Speaker 2 (36:55):
Perhaps where everything felts inclement and die.

Speaker 1 (36:58):
Saying feels so big, everything feels.

Speaker 2 (37:02):
Meaning of everything, and then not just a single word.
You can't be abrupt. You must make the descriptor so
long that you forget what you were originally talking about.

Speaker 1 (37:14):
Oh, like the God, I wish I hadn't burned my
fan fiction. I would read you guys, you would laugh
so hard. But I would write like this like it
was life or death or whether we could meet each other,
like it was so important to me.

Speaker 2 (37:30):
Yeah, was this about Keanu.

Speaker 1 (37:33):
No, if we really come back and do this, I
was gonna go into my because I've had three I
would say that we're pretty big Keanu Reeves. I like,
I don't think I ever engaged in the actual fanfic
part of it, or even in my head because a
lot of times I didn't write it necessarily. But Billy Billy,

(37:56):
Joe Armstrong, Daniel Radcliffe Ryan Gosling kinda nut.

Speaker 2 (38:02):
I'm too young, I guess, yeah, you're quite formal like
form to say those flowery words For Ryan Goslin.

Speaker 1 (38:10):
I him a letter that was dotted in hearts. Though. Yes,
I'm actually got to talk about this in a second,
but I want to read this quote first. It's fine
if I never meet him, I said, staring at the ceiling.
I just like the feeling of us moving through time together.
I need him there. I need to know that, at
this very moment he's looking down at his hands. Somewhere

(38:31):
in the world. It's possible that I might have figured
him out all wrong, that my imagination has turned him
into an absurdd caricature. Even then, I need to know
that I'm doing all of this fallacious work in reaction
to something that's real. You don't need him back, you
don't even need him alive. Just pretend he's the main
character of your favorite movie. And now this movie's over.

(38:53):
So again, this is like when her and Master Center
a kind of having this big falling out fight, this
whole thing. But it did remind me. I think I've
told this story before. I will go into it. In
our magazine episode. I had a huge crush on Ryan
Gosling as young Hercules Samtha knows. I finally secured the DVG.

(39:16):
I'm very very excited. I'm sure it won't hold up
and it's gonna be great. But I had a really
huge crush on him, to an embarrassing point that everyone
knew it when I was like nine years old, like
all not even friends, like everyone knew it. And I
had a moment when I think it was nine or ten.

(39:40):
My mom found me crying and she was like, what's wrong,
And I said, I've just realized I'm never going to
be with Ryan Gosling, And to her credit, she like
held me and did the laugh in my face. But
it was true, Like you had that moment of I
remember it sound so j now, but it's funny. I

(40:02):
remember thinking, well, he's like twice my age, he's really hot,
he's got a lot more going on than me, and
he pretty much lives in New Zealand. Like I was
taking it like seriously.

Speaker 2 (40:15):
Oh, you were trying to calculate the possibilities.

Speaker 1 (40:20):
Oh no, it's embarrassing. I'm gonna blush thinking about it,
but I, oh, dear, I will talk about it. It's
pretty funny. But I did have that moment where I
kind of mourned, but then I moved on kind of
that like, you know, the movie's over, which is interesting

(40:41):
because after that I never really I did move on.
I never came back to her and Gossling, but I
did want to put in here because sometimes some of
you listeners write in and you'll talk about parasocial relationships
or how you feel like, you know, as not in
a creepy way, I'll say, but you know, just kind
of like, hey, yeah, I feel like anyway. And I
think I think that makes sense, especially with a podcast

(41:04):
like ours, because I was thinking about this, like a
lot of the stuff you get with celebrities is pretty
like polished, like pr managed interviews, but with us, you know,
we're kind of just talking about our lives. And I
experienced that as an editor, where I would feel like
I just knew someone so so much and they didn't
have any idea who I was, and it's just it

(41:27):
is sort of strange, but it is a part of
our media landscape. But I think it's different than this
because yeah, yeah, because I do think there's a difference
between like a celebrity where they like almost have scripts
of what to say, so you never really know them.
I mean, it's true, like you don't really know us either,

(41:48):
but I feel like we're much more kind of ourselves
versus I feel like celebrities are much more like a
image of themselves.

Speaker 2 (41:56):
Right well, also with K pop, they are created by
the agency, their personality, their level of fashion, their face,
their style. They are created to be a specific image
to fulfill a specific idea and typically a specific role

(42:17):
in that group. I think it's changed since the beginning
of that, like I know, more recently, people and maybe
this is the fandom being like, no, that's not true.
I don't know, but like it seems like people with
the fact that their social media in existence now that
they can't quite get away with as much pristine like

(42:37):
cleanups as they did once upon a time, because truth
will eventually come out. But at the same time, yeah,
for the most part, and especially with K pop, they
are they have a lot of morality stuff that are
in place by the agencies that if you, you know,
are caught with cigarettes, you might get kicked out of
the band. If you're caught with a girlfriend, you might

(42:59):
be or a boyfriend you might be kicked out of
the vand uh, in fidelity, any of those things. They're like,
you're gone. So a lot of this from a start,
contrast from us just talking with our bosses, sometimes not
knowing that we exist.

Speaker 1 (43:16):
Yeah, here's another quote, kind of about that you've settled
for a comfortable distance from him so that you can
yearn without suffering. Sorry, but you're not in love. You're
a fan, boring, lethargic, overfed. If you really loved him,
you'd be in soul right now. You'd be walking the

(43:36):
streets day and night in search of him. The magnitude
of the task would crush you until you became a
ball of pulp containing gesture, heart all other organs, crushed
into dysfunction.

Speaker 2 (43:47):
It's a weird stamon to be said by a psychologist,
by the way, like challenging, dare you?

Speaker 1 (43:53):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (43:55):
Oh, I was like, who would do this?

Speaker 1 (43:59):
Well? Yeah, but I thought that was interesting because it is.
I do think that point of like you're a fan,
and that like lying about being overfed, like you're getting
so much stuff as a fan, was important, and this
kind of like point of the safety of loving something
or someone you cannot have I've read she's talked about

(44:21):
that in interviews, and I do think that's true for
a lot of people, Like I was saying, when you
write a self insert, like you don't really want it,
but it's kind of fun to imagine. I think it's
I think that a lot of people aren't even if
in the back of your head you're like, oh, if
we met, I know, but you're also kind of like,
I'm not gonna do the for it. I will just

(44:41):
write this.

Speaker 2 (44:41):
Thing, try to reach out to him or anything. I'll
see his movie and story.

Speaker 1 (44:47):
I'll write him a letter that I later hope was
destroyed before you could read it. So then, yes, after
this sort of like ultimatum, she decides to go to soul.
The narrator decides to go to soul, and the conversation continues,
you would really do that. His tone was not of gratitude,

(45:09):
but of intense hurt. Don't you understand that he went
away because he wanted to. Perhaps that's what troubles me most,
that even he could no longer endure it. Yes, the
pressure is so intense. And then you have kind of
what we've been discussing throughout is sort of this construction
of an avatar that you feel ownership over or entitlement to,

(45:30):
Like I really think a lot of celebrity culture is
you're going after somebody who doesn't exist. It's the creation
of them in your mind and on social media and
entertainment you want, but not the real person.

Speaker 2 (45:44):
Right again, when we look about and we talked about
this previously a little bit about the fact that she
chose KP pop for a reason, but like K pop
is the epitome of creating someone for the fan they
like in the level of ownership given to fandoms is

(46:05):
incredibly almost dangerous, which is why things have like been
People are like, maybe you need to back off, or
maybe there needs to be lost to protect celebrities as well,
even though you would think they would be protected but
not in South Korea. But yeah, there's this level of
the whole they were catered and created in hopes that

(46:26):
the fandom would take them all. You have biases in
this type of conversation that doesn't really exist in any
other kind of celebrity culture outside of K pop, because
they want it to be that level. They want you
to own things that their faces on, kind of like
her cosmetic set or her skin of routine that she
talks about throughout the book as well, that because she

(46:49):
wants to look more like them. Next quote, it says,
to my pleasure. He picked up the notebook and began
to read aloud. And this is where she finds him,
and Moon is starting to read her fan fiction. I

(47:11):
relished the gaminess of his accent. It sounded impossible to fix,
he paused when he came across the word why. N
He tried to pronounce it as yen, but immediately reconsidered,
settling with why in each time he uttered the abbreviation.
I increasingly understood myself in the sound, the breath, the
insubstantiality of why, which was pulled down the throat by

(47:33):
the density of en. He seemed to be asking why
of my existence? Why I was what I was.

Speaker 1 (47:40):
Yeah, so this is she does get to meet.

Speaker 2 (47:43):
Moon, which I was trying to figure out if this
was real.

Speaker 1 (47:47):
It's definitely meant to made you question it, but I
think it was real. I think some of it wasn't,
but I think it was. But also I think that
she did the thing she of the self insert fan fiction.
You meet the person and then she's like, no, this
isn't real, this isn't right. This isn't because it's not

(48:07):
the person she's created. So here's a quote from her.
I'm not a stranger. You know me. All of your videos, pictures,
messages they were for me. Don't make that face. It's true.
You couldn't have known it at the time since you
didn't know who I was, but you didn't need to.
Our connection preceded us. I have spent my entire life
training myself to feel the feelings I have for you.

(48:28):
My perception has been perfectly notched to match the gear
of your personality. Don't think I haven't heard this all before.
He said, yes, And I think that's interesting in terms
of like cause she does. She kind of gets mad
and was like, oh, it's not you. It's not you
who I thought you would be, right, and then she

(48:50):
sort of was Okay, well, I'll go back to my
real moon, which is the one in her fan fiction.
But that idea of like, okay, this is all for me.
Like this, you are specifically speaking to me. I am
the unique one. I am the yn that matters. I
think that's also fascinating in terms of how celebrities are

(49:15):
pressured into like social media, and it's meant to make
you feel that way. We've talked about that in terms
of like a lot of the songs, those like popular
romantic songs are meant to make you feel they're singing
to you. That is what the whole point is, to
kind of have that idea of like, well, to take
that and to seriously be like, Okay, you don't know

(49:37):
who I am, but it was me all alone.

Speaker 2 (49:41):
Right, That's an interesting thing. She actually talks about parasocial
relationships and how she does not like it in this context.
So I'm gonna read it real quick from those Say
You interview or the Center for Fiction. It says, I've
seen the word parasocial used to describe my narrator's relationship
with Moon. I dislike that word because it pretends to
clarify when it actually obscures. And if the implication of
parasocial is that my narrator knows Moon falsely through image,

(50:04):
through what he represents, then what he really is, then
it seems to me that all relationships are parasocial, especially
so called love relationships. Have I ever really known anyone,
including myself, I'm pretty sure I have a parasocial relationship
with myself. In any case, parasociality is precisely what my
narrator is trying to escape.

Speaker 1 (50:24):
Interesting. It wants to know like a real thing.

Speaker 2 (50:28):
But at the same time she's disappointed by the real
thing was in her head, which is parasocial. This author
is interesting. I like our takes going.

Speaker 1 (50:38):
Yes, well, I have another quote. This one is from
the NPR article. I don't see the novel as a
cautionary tale against anything, to be honest, It's simply documenting
this one individual's attempt to perhaps experience something beyond the
boundaries of her given conditions, beyond the boundaries of her
human consciousness, which, of course, for any person is an
extremely dangerous thing to embark upon. Either you are sent

(51:00):
over to the other side and possibly you never come
back to reality, you never survive it to tell the story,
or you come back and you're probably a little bit destroyed,
to put it mildly. Yeah, I think the narrator is
certainly skirting some kind of boundary, testing some kind of
boundary between reality and fantasy. And she does have a
lot of quotes about mass consumption, how we consume media

(51:24):
currently as mass consumption, and how we interact and enjoy
art in our modern times and how that can lead
to blurring of these lines. And so at the end, Yes,
there is this whole thing where the narrator comes back,
meets back with Oh, Oh has this documentary like short

(51:47):
film that has painting in it of the narrator, and
the narrator keep asking to see the painting, like I
want to see the real thing, and Oh is like
you're missing the point, Like if you want that, then
I don't know if I can. So it's sort of
that idea. She's always the narrator is always trying to

(52:09):
find this quote real thing, but it's never happy with it.
It is never satisfied with it, doesn't believe it, which
I think is interesting. There's also a quote from that
NPR article about there is something in her that is
in all of us, and that's about the being anonymous
online like the net. We never have the name. And
I did try the the y N thing in this book,

(52:32):
which is where you put your name in evershabby Cyan,
and it was unsettling, which I believe was the intent.

Speaker 2 (52:38):
Yeah, I would not like that because none of Yeah
again I already thought this book was like definitely out
of my style, So like that would have made me
real uncomfortable. But like this, this is not my This
is not a thing that I would Yeah, this is
not one thing I would have picked up by myself.

Speaker 1 (53:01):
I it was interesting. I've never done that, I don't think,
because again, it's not I don't want to be in it.
I just want no not me, which I think is
a whole other thing. But I tried it. It was okay. Yeah,
it made me feel a certain way.

Speaker 2 (53:23):
Yeah, it made me well, it made me like I
was just like huh again, Like there's just moments of
like trying to figure it out and trying to be
like I don't know if I feel sad for this person,
for the narrator because she's going to be unhappy, or
if I'm just concerned for the narrator because there's some

(53:47):
red flags. Obviously I was gonna write read this because
I think it's pretty on point with ye. But she
says about the writing of the book, all I learned
from why In is how to write why In. I
don't seem to have learned how to write novels in general.
I could never write something like why In. Again, my

(54:09):
thinking has changed too much. I wrote most of why
In on the pure benzene of instinct, almost blithely and desperately,
which not paradoxically made me very fastidious. At the microscopic
level of the text, I suspect that whatever I write
next will be the reverse. It'll have to account for
the quote relaxed ruthlessness that has come to dominate my

(54:30):
style of thinking since why.

Speaker 1 (54:31):
In yeah, I mean it's it was interesting to you
because like that sounds like writing fan fiction to me,
that is what you just have to write it. You
just get in this mind space, So that makes sense.
Here's another one last quote from you. I always imagine
Moon almost as a knife kind of a violent figure.

(54:52):
I don't mean that in a wilful way, but that
he seems to be exposing some kind of wound or
void in these characters' lives. And it's both offering for
film but also exposing that void. And I think the
exposure of that void can be full of potential for
an individual who's experiencing that, but it can also be
a moment of great Of course, it's leaving open a
lot of possibility for disappointment, for lack of fulfillment, right, Yeah,

(55:17):
that void, mm hmm, it's true.

Speaker 2 (55:19):
I mean, yeah, we didn't talk about the part where
it's implied that he's what brought the group together and
without without him, they all fell apart and filmed like
they lost a part of themselves. So they were trying
to find the new moon with the new with the fans,
it seemed when they all want to go meet them. Yeah, yeah, again,

(55:40):
I didn't know if that was a fanfic portion on
the real book.

Speaker 1 (55:45):
I think that was real. But it's also like it's
true the I don't know, it's it's the in fandom,
it can be so strange because you can feel something
so strongly and then if it goes away you it's

(56:06):
almost like scary where you're like, well, what's what I
could never ever give up on this person I love
so much? And then years later I'm like Ryan Gosling,
like it's a bizarre were you kind of like if

(56:27):
you feel you would never ever it would be a
betrayal to like let them go, and then you find
something else do. Yeah, but it is a it's a
part of fandom that you've heard me talk about it,
like one day I won't want to dress is this anymore?
And it's like such a silly thing.

Speaker 2 (56:48):
But yeah, well there you go.

Speaker 1 (56:54):
Yes, there you go. It's a short read. It is
very intense.

Speaker 2 (56:59):
There's a lot to unfold. There might be some rereading.
It needs to happen.

Speaker 1 (57:05):
I had to reread the end because I was like, wait,
hold on.

Speaker 2 (57:13):
It does again. It makes me a little sad more
than anything else, I will say. And I'm not sure
if that was her point to that, but yeah.

Speaker 1 (57:23):
Yeah, I mean it's to me, it's mostly about like loneliness, unfulfillment. Yeah, yep,
and not being able to find that. So well, we've
come out strong in twenty twenty four. As always, if
you have any suggestions listeners, we would love to hear

(57:43):
from you. You can email us at Stephanie and moms
Stuff at iHeartMedia dot com. You can find us on
Twitter at mom Stuff podcast, or on Instagram and TikTok
at stuff. I never told you. We have a tea
public store, and we also have a book you can
get wherever you get your books. I talked about Mary
Sue in there. Lots of ampiction stuff. Thanks as always
to our super producer Christine, our exective producer Maya, and

(58:04):
our contruder Joey. Thank you and thanks to you for listening.
Stephane Never Told You is production of iHeart Radio. For
more podcast from my heart Radio, you can check out
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