The Feral Fandoms Podcast

Twilight, Ship Wars, and Why Cringe Wins

• Onley James & Shannon Ezzell • Season 1 • Episode 3

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Remember the first time you picked a side and meant it? Twilight wasn’t just a teen vampire romance—it was a portable universe that made you choose a tribe, memorize the quotes, and plan midnight screenings with friends who laughed at the same lines you did. We revisit that spark and unpack how a “cringe” classic evolved into a cozy, communal ritual that still fills theaters, Discords, and bookshelves.

We get candid about why the story works despite its flaws: first-person POV that pulls you inside a rainy small town, a love triangle built with real parity, and a world so inhabitable fans still visit Forks and sleep in “Bella’s house.” From Team Edward vs. Team Jacob to the billion-dollar merchandising machine, the magic sits at the intersection of relatability, ritual, and memes that aged into nostalgia. Along the way, we map the growth of adjacent fandom cultures—AO3 tagging, “dead dove do not eat” warnings, and the consent language that lets readers explore darker territory without stumbling into it.

We also dive into why some readers drift from certain MF romances, how queer romance reframes power, and what “cozy dark romance” offers that keeps trust intact: punish the villains, protect the bond, deliver catharsis. Expect hot takes on love triangles that actually work, why ship wars supercharge engagement, and how marketing misreads around intimate partner violence can tank a film even when the source material tries to tell the truth. If you’ve ever defended a campy favorite with a grin, or built a playlist for a ship no one can talk you out of, you’re in the right place.

Join our rewatch plans, weigh in on teams, and help steer future breakdowns. Subscribe, leave a review, and share this with the one friend who still knows every line by heart—then tell us in Discord what fandom we should unpack next.

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Want the uncut chaos + bonus episodes? Join us inside the cult at Patreon.com/TheBurnedOutMuse. Or find everything else (Discord, socials, freebies) at linktr.ee/theburnedoutmuse.

SPEAKER_00:

Hey everyone, welcome to episode three of the Feral Fandoms Podcast. Today we are talking about Twilight. I'm only James, romance author, fandom guru, and educator on all things righty. And Shannon here is Shannon Azelle, and she is I'm a author PA, Mother of Dragons, Breaker of Chains.

SPEAKER_01:

That's it. That's my bio. Nothing else. It's right there.

SPEAKER_00:

It's right there on our website. Supporting Mother of Dragons. Supporting actor. I'm excited to talk about Twilight. This is usually the time of year we start watching Twilight. We do a rewatch.

SPEAKER_01:

Practical magic, all of it.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. I was thinking about maybe we should watch it online together and then put it on the Patreon.

SPEAKER_01:

Or we can do it live. We can do it live.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. We can do live on Patreon now. So if you guys want to watch practical magic with us or Hocus Pocus or hell, even Twilight, let us know and we'll set it up. Yeah. We can either do it in the Discord or we can do it live on Patreon. Either one. I thought that would be fun because I love watching movies and watching people react to them. It's my favorite thing. And it's what we do every year anyway, so we might as well let people watch it.

SPEAKER_01:

Trigger warning if you don't like talking during the movie.

SPEAKER_00:

Oh yeah, no. We're very MST3K about our movies. Even if they're not supposed to be funny, we're gonna talk shit. That's just what we do. 100%. It's who we are, it's people.

SPEAKER_01:

I never read it. You've never read the book? I didn't read it. I was a huge vampire diaries fanatic. Absolute.

SPEAKER_00:

I introduced you to the vampire diaries.

SPEAKER_01:

I had a whole journal about how I was in love with a man that is fictional and I was really processing my 12-year-old emotions with that. I had to really unpack that too.

SPEAKER_00:

It was such a good series. I was, as far as the vampire diaries goes, I was preaching the word. I was preaching the gospel. I was giving those books to everybody. Like, no, you have to read these books. And then when Twilight came out, I'll tell you what, I learned about Twilight the weirdest way. I was on a date. Which one? Fuck was it?

SPEAKER_01:

How uniform did he wear?

SPEAKER_00:

I went through a stage. He went to the bathroom and I was standing in the theater with a bunch of teenagers, and I was listening to them gossip about how excited they were that the Twilight movie was coming out. They saw me and they were just like, you know about Twilight, right? Do I look like a fucking teenager? I do not know about Twilight. And they just started going on and on about, oh my god, it's the best thing ever. And they're just going crazy. Damn. Okay. Shit. So I'll go to the bookstore and I'll start to read it. And if I can get through one chapter and I really like it, I'll buy it and I'll read it. Because I wasn't really in the YA stuff back then. I was more into my thrillers and my Kathy Reich era and my what's her name? Freedom McFadden. That type of book was my thing at the time. So I opened Twilight and I read chapters just standing in the aisle. And so I bought the book. And the thing about Twilight is that it's not technically. I don't want to say well written, but it's not literary. You know what I mean? It's not Jane Austen.

SPEAKER_01:

I'm not a snob. I'm in it, I'm in it to have a time. Like, I don't care.

SPEAKER_00:

I always say you don't have to be a good writer to write a good book. Correct. It was there was this feeling of you wanted to live in forks, you wanted to meet these characters, you wanted to be part of that world, but also you could relate to Bella even though she was kind of whiny. Yeah. Yeah. Even Elena. Elena in the show was very whiny too, the vampire diaries. But yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

We gotta do a vampire diaries a podcast. Oh, we're definitely doing it. Unless I don't want to hear anything Elena has to say.

SPEAKER_00:

We can have an entire podcast just about the vampire diaries. Especially right now. Jordan's doing her annual rewatch of the Vampire Diaries, so it's in the background in our house all the time. But Twilight specifically was just this magical sort of I don't know, it just took over and it got in your head. And looking back, there's so much camp and there's so much like cringe in it. But at the time it didn't feel that way. You know what I mean? The movie definitely came off a little cringe.

SPEAKER_01:

It didn't have time. It did at the time at the time I thought it was cinematic masterpiece.

SPEAKER_00:

Masterpiece. Yeah. It makes me laugh that nobody hates that movie more than Mr. Cullen himself. Robert Patton hates that movie. He doesn't even want you to bring it up. He'll never get away from the South. Never. Yeah. It must suck to have the movie that made your career be something that you just want people to forget exists.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. Sometimes you gotta be a little cringe. People take themselves too seriously. Robert, you were a silly little teenage vampire. It's all right. Doesn't care. Taylor Lautner. Taylor Lautner's like, hell yeah, I'm a wolf. Ow. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

Taylor Lautner marrying Taylor made me laugh. Because now there's like Taylor. Taylor Swift.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. Like, yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

Sir, do you just really love yourself?

SPEAKER_01:

I love the sound of my name, and I want to make sure I have the opportunity to say it in bed.

SPEAKER_00:

If I looked like Taylor Lautner, I would probably be in love with myself too. He went through a bit of a phase where he definitely uggied up a little.

SPEAKER_01:

I think it was hard for him to maintain that muscle mass for him. It was.

SPEAKER_00:

I guarantee you, whatever they made him do to gain that muscle mass between movie two and three was not healthy and not safe in any way, shape, or form. When you hear people talk about, oh, I can't drink water for 24 hours before I shoot or I look bloated, that's not normal. You shouldn't not drink water.

SPEAKER_01:

And then a one reason why I think this movie was so addictive and created the fandom that it did is people love a team situation. Team Edward, Team Jacob, and that created like a fun atmosphere. I'm in this, not just in this fandom, I'm in this, in this niche thing.

SPEAKER_00:

Yep. Ship wars can make or break a movie. When it comes to ship wars, you have to make both sides equally appealing. Because if one is the clear winner, it's not really a love triangle. Nobody would choose that guy over this guy. So you have to make them both equally appealing, but in completely different ways. Yeah. And that takes talent that you have to be real careful with. Also, you gotta roll with the punches. Look at the vampire diary. She ends up with Stefan in the book, she ends up with Damon in the book. Don't get me started.

SPEAKER_01:

They butchered it. But I will say too, a lot of people, because I read more traditional stuff, they tell you too soon who it's gonna be. Does that make sense? It's enemies to lovers, but okay, she's with her best friend growing up, and then it's the grumpy guy that has to train her for battle or whatever. And he's a little bit sarcastic and a little bit mean to her, and they're calling that enemies to lovers. I need him to burn her house down. You know what I mean? Maybe he killed her brother. You know what I mean? That's an enemy. So you want Avatar. Yes. You want other Avatar levels of bad. I need him to murder people, and nothing redeems it except for that he's hot and we love him. That's enemy. He's a little mean to me sometimes.

SPEAKER_00:

That's what I keep telling Mikhaila because she's writing now. And she's like, this guy is such a bad guy. The only thing he has going for him is that he's hot. She's like, I want them to know that he's irredeemable. I was like, if he's hot, he's not irredeemable. We're in our dark romance era, babe. There's no line too far. I can tell you just from being in the genre that I am in, there is no line too far. Yeah. They'll never find them again. Oh, I will bring mads on. That girl has read books that are. Morning Glory Milking Farm? Listen, when she told me the story about the shark, the girl's head in the water with the shark and the yeah, no. Mm-mm. Damn, no, you really do read some dark shit. Yeah. Because I write dark romance, but I write cozy dark romance. They call it. So a lot of people. Some girl told me the other day, I just listen to your books every single night to sleep. Yeah. Lately, she's like, oh no, for about the last couple years. But then I watch Buzzfeed Unsolved Supernatural over and over and over again. I sleep to it. So I guess that makes sense. Once you find your comfort.

SPEAKER_01:

You know what's going to happen. And in your books, they're not killing off a beloved character randomly. You're not No, I only kill bad guys. Yeah, you only kill bad guys. So they know they're gonna get that dopamine, the bad guy got it in the end. And you're gonna put them through it trauma-wise for your main characters, but you're not gonna hurt the reader. Some people like their trust broken. They really do. Yeah, I read Troubled Irish Teenagers in Bally Lagan. Nothing good happens to teenagers in Bally Lagun. Just gonna put it that way.

SPEAKER_00:

There. That's I wrote the books I wanted to read because I loved Dexter, and I like that the bad guys always got the worst possible punishment imaginable. Because my sense of justice very much is in line with my autism, and that I have zero sympathy for a certain type of person, and it doesn't matter how bad the punishment is. I just go well. Would startle a therapist.

SPEAKER_01:

They're inside thoughts, but I could tell her because I know that she's also torturing fascists in her.

SPEAKER_00:

Well, she's torturing people in my books is my therapy. It is my catharsis, it is what I do to get through how shitty this world is.

SPEAKER_01:

That's why people like reading them, is the bad guy's getting it. And also there's a backstory for each individual character that every reader picks a different Mulvaney in particular. And they you can see it in the reader group that they're shipping. They're like in Twilight, they have their guy and they give him little nicknames, and then we gather that information, and then Nina does like a standee with you know what I mean, something exactly.

SPEAKER_00:

It comes from the sense of community. I think, like we said with fandoms, there's a community that comes together over a common passion or whatever. When it comes to ship wars and stuff, it gets even bigger than that. It's fun. It's fun to be like, no, I'm Team Edward, or it's fun to say, no, I'm Team Jacob. I wouldn't want to be a vampire, I want to be a werewolf. Like that kind of thing.

SPEAKER_01:

And giving them safe spaces to do it to Reddit or somewhere where someone might like not like the books or not like the authors. They can go to Patreon and Patreon, Facebook, Discord. Yeah. She provides platforms for her readers to be safe in their love for her characters.

SPEAKER_00:

The reason Stephanie Myers became a billionaire off of this wasn't just the books and it wasn't just the movies. It was the merchandising. It was being able to sell the licensing for all of the stuff that came with it. Because there's no shortage of Twilight merch to this day. I have the Hoa Hoa Hoa calendar that I bought my daughter-in-law, and it lives in our dining room, and we change it every month. And I bought it last year. There's no shortage of it. And now it's become a little bit of a joke. A lot of means to go back and we're growing up now. Where you been, Loca? Yeah. Orman, you know. So yeah. And that's also some of the stuff. I read book one, but book four, Breaking Dawn wasn't out yet. Mick, of course, loved the movie. She eventually got into the books, but at first she loved it. My daughter loved the movies, and she was so obsessed with it. For her 11th birthday, it was an complete Twilight theme. We took seven 11-year-olds, we took them to the movies, and they had, I had made like these Twilight VIP passes that looked like, you know, little, and they had little lanyards and stuff like that. And it was fun. Everybody in the theater was excited. Everybody in the theater was just there's an anticipation.

SPEAKER_01:

Something and we gather in groups. There's something so magical about it.

SPEAKER_00:

It is a positive environment where everybody is just enjoying themselves. Yeah. And I haven't really felt that since when you and I went and saw True Crime Obsessed live.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, that was fun.

SPEAKER_00:

Like we met so many cool people. The only thing we had in common was that we all like true crime. And this podcast in particular.

SPEAKER_01:

And it is a certain group of people that get the humor of it and the inclusiveness, and they share our same viewpoints.

SPEAKER_00:

They have the vibe. Exactly. And that's what this podcast is going to be. It's going to be people who either get our vibe or they don't. And some people are just for the love of fuck. Why am I tuning into this? Get to the point. Yeah, please, God. There is no point. Please don't one star us. Just keep going. Just walk away. It's fine. We're used to it.

SPEAKER_01:

I don't like criticism.

SPEAKER_00:

I have a problem. I picked the wrong career for somebody who doesn't like criticism. Let me just tell you that. Oof.

SPEAKER_01:

Don't do it.

SPEAKER_00:

No. I need seven to ten business months to get over one bad review. So I don't read my reviews.

SPEAKER_01:

We're banning her from Goodreads and Amazon.

SPEAKER_00:

And honestly, I don't know a single author who has the ability to just take criticism. Actually, that's not true. I know one author, a guy, who it doesn't matter what you say to him, he's like, you know what? I'll look into that. And I'm like, how are you so well adjusted? Like, how do we just go book?

SPEAKER_01:

Oh, you know what? You're right. Criticizing your book is like criticizing you personally because it came from your brain.

SPEAKER_00:

It's like calling my baby ugly.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. I worked really hard on that.

SPEAKER_00:

You do it then. Go ahead. Write a book. You do it. You do it. Actually, if you're listening to this, that's the whole reason I'm doing this. Oh, yeah. Write a book, please.

SPEAKER_01:

You can do it.

SPEAKER_00:

We're behind you.

SPEAKER_01:

I support you.

SPEAKER_00:

With Twilight, it felt like a ritual. Like you got a spell cast on you. You got sucked into it. People wanted to go visit Forks, Washington. You can still stay in Bella's house in Forks, Washington.

SPEAKER_01:

I watch it as how old I'm getting.

SPEAKER_00:

I always thought Charlie Swan. Listen, if you had given me uh Daddy Cullen and Charlie Swan as a couple, I would have been all for it. Just write that down. You can write that. Team Edward, Team Jacob. No, give me Team Charlie. Team Charlie. That man was fine. And he took it like a trooper. Let me just tell you, a guy. He had the most realistic reaction of any man who had all of that shit shoved in his face. That's interesting. All right. I guess this is where we're now. Okay. I'm here for 20 years.

SPEAKER_01:

Never noticed.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. Not a good copy. It reminded me of have you ever seen The Lost Boys? I know your mom and I used to watch that movie all the time. Okay. So 1980s movie about two brothers and their mom who move in with their grandpa in this small town in California that is just absolutely crawling with vampires. And the one brother gets turned into a vampire, and the other brother is just such great lines. You're a vampire. Wait till I tell mom. So funny. The very last line in the movie is they think they're hiding everything from the grandfather, and he comes in at the last minute and he saves the day. And he's like, the one thing I can't stand about, I think it was Santa Anna, all the goddamn vampires. That's where the movie ends. And the whole time he knew, and they thought they were hiding it from him, but he's known the whole time. It's one of my favorite jokes. They did it in Teen Wolf, too, where you think you're hiding something, and then they just give the line, and you're just like, oh, this whole time we've been thinking they were just a normie, and they've known the whole time. That this whole supernatural thing is existing. But that's what I love about magical realism is when you can make people believe that this world does exist in your world right now, it makes it feel way more real than some. I don't want to bring up the author that I'm thinking of since it triggers so many people. But she who shall not be named. Her stuff, there wasn't it wasn't realistic. It was a fairy tale. The same rate they wrote the books like they were an omniscient narrator. They weren't the character, they were watching it all happen. Right. You know, that's how they wrote the book. So it read like a fairy tale. Whereas Stephanie Myers, like LJ Smith, when they wrote, they wrote in character quote in first person. Yeah. So you felt you were that character. And part of the reason I don't read MF romance anymore is because I don't want to identify with the female character because so much romance, straight romance, and I'm sorry if I'm offending romance authors, but there's a lot of misogyny in straight romance. I don't want to identify with the girl who's, oh, I don't care that you treat me like garbage. It's fine. You have trauma. Whereas strangely, in gay romance, no matter how the power imbalance shifts, because they're both men, they both start on an equal playing field. Yeah. Society-wise, they're both considered equal because they're both men. That's true. Whereas in a male-female relationship, even though women themselves are, nope, we can do better than most men.

SPEAKER_01:

I don't want to do it.

SPEAKER_00:

Society-wise, you still know that men are out there going, Oh, that's cute. Isn't she cute? More than we thought.

SPEAKER_01:

You know. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, way more than we thought. And it's only getting worse. So I feel a little bit when I read straight romance like I'm betraying my gender. I don't know. And a lot of women feel that way. That's why a lot of women don't go back to reading straight romance after they find gay romance. You can just watch two people fall in love and you don't have to relate to them. You don't have to put yourself in their shoes.

SPEAKER_01:

Well, if you think about that Colleen Hoover movie flopped, you know? Well, because she portrayed it. She wrote the book. It was what it was. Right. And you're allowed to write about domestic violence, in my opinion. Yeah, of course. And I don't think she romanticized it. But the way that the movie was advertised as a rom-comp when really it was like the uh It wasn't the of how abuse happens small and goes big. Um but they didn't advertise it like that.

SPEAKER_00:

No, because they wanted it to Colleen Hoover and what's his name? Baldoni. I can't remember. Oh, yeah, that whole thing. They both wanted it. Yeah. They both wanted it to be realistic. And I think that's what Colleen Hoover was going for. Because you don't leave a lot of women, don't leave their abusers. Right. And also in the movie, she's an adult, but in the books, she's a teenager.

SPEAKER_01:

It goes back and forth. It goes back and forth. She has the I read it. She is the original guy, the homeless teenager. The guy she ends up with the first one. It should have been a standalone. But anyway. I didn't realize there was more than one book. It begins with us, I think, is the next one. But I read it ends with us before she got canceled for whatever. I don't know when she got canceled. But yes, it goes back and forth. And Ellen is oddly a big part of it. That's her conflict.

SPEAKER_00:

Like Ellen DeGeneres?

unknown:

Right?

SPEAKER_01:

Oh. She writes.

SPEAKER_00:

Talk about a blast from the past.

SPEAKER_01:

And then she meets the hot doctor guy. And anyway, it ends with him, the original guy from when she was a teenager. It ends with us.

SPEAKER_00:

Gotcha. Because she gets away from the guy.

SPEAKER_01:

But she has a baby with her abuser.

SPEAKER_00:

Well, and I mean that happens. A lot of women don't even realize they're with an abuser until they get pregnant.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. Well, it honestly did show, I don't know. It started off small and then went big. But anyway, the movie flopped because the way they advertised it.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, and that's what happens when you try to be too relatable. And I think that's what Blake Lively was going for. She wanted to be like, hey girls, I'm just like you. The girl in the movies, just like you. It could happen to anybody, but that's not what she did. She was so out of touch with what the average person thinks when it comes to domestic violence.

SPEAKER_01:

The outfits.

SPEAKER_00:

Intimate partner violence. The outfits were one of the worst fights I ever got into was over 50 Shades of Gray, which we will also be breaking down. And it was because as a nurse, I made the comment that Christian Gray checks every box on the intimate partner violence checklist we have at my job. And you would have thought that I said it was the worst book I ever read. That's all I said was that listen, it's not actual BDSM. I know, I've been a part of it. Safe, sane, and consensual is literally the slogan for the BDSM community. Nothing he did was safe, sane, or consensual. And you get that kind of spades when you read his version of the book. When she went and created his point of view, I think it was just called Gray. It read like Ted Bundy wrote it. It was so disturbing. His inner monologue. She's having a normal conversation and he's picturing tying her up and torturing her. This is a criminal minds episode. If he was poor and this was happening in a trailer, we would be watching it as a criminal minds episode. They have to be watching. But I didn't say any of that.

SPEAKER_01:

In every book, he's not like a poor abuser.

SPEAKER_00:

If we're romanticizing.

SPEAKER_01:

I just never stop the moblins romance episode. The moblins aren't bad.

SPEAKER_00:

Oh, but like 365. I didn't even know 365 existed until it became a movie. But and I get it. I get wanting that fantasy. I do. I write dark romance. I get wanting to be able to live out some weird, vicarious fantasy where you know you can like all of the dark shit and just no bad things happen to you. Great. I personally, I just it's just not my vibe. But I remember two authors, very big names, came for me so hard just from that intimate partner violence comment. They were, you better never get into the romance field. You better never write romance if you can't stand behind your fellow romance authors. And I was like, they have a literal movie. Do you think E.L. James is upset that I said that? She's still at home blotting her tears with hundred-dollar bills. The bitch is a billionaire. She doesn't have time to worry about some random girl on Facebook who mentioned that her character is an abuser. She doesn't give a shit. She started it as Twilight Fanfiction. She didn't expect her book to blow up. It just did. Because, again, it scratched an itch for a bunch of vanilla soccer moms who had never really gotten a taste of taboo romance. You know, and I think it opened a lot of doors for a lot of authors who have a lot of really dark ideas. And I'm super happy for all of those romance authors who their careers blew up 100%. Write anything you want. I don't believe in censorship at all. Honestly, but it just wasn't my vibe.

SPEAKER_01:

This smut, people calling everything smut, especially when it's a good book. The clean versus smut romance. Or they're like, oh, like, what do you consider smut? The whole there's a beginning, a middle, and end, there's a plot. But like, what's smutty? What's smutty about it?

SPEAKER_00:

Well, people jokingly say I write gay porn. I'm like, no. No, you don't. I don't write gay porn.

SPEAKER_01:

That's honestly people that would just never venture into a different genre that doesn't have a direct reflection of how they live their day-to-day life. And that's sad. Dragons, but not fucking a sentient doorknob. It's okay, it's sentient. Okay. It's a sentient doorknob.

SPEAKER_00:

Sented. It scented to this. And that's what's so if you told people 10 years ago that there would be books where women were reading romance between a centaur and a human.

SPEAKER_01:

Morning glory milking candles.

SPEAKER_00:

And they were yeah, and they didn't switch into a human before the you know sex stuff occurred. The milking occurred. You would have been people would have been like, no fucking way. Well, and that's the thing. We're moving the bar a little bit further and further every year. Ice Ice Burns.

SPEAKER_01:

I think Barbara is a pretty common book that people have read. Ice something barbarians. Ice Planet Barbarian. People have read it. And it's and I just need to know what's going on over there.

SPEAKER_00:

It's a big joke, especially in the Discord. I always say I would publish my social security number before I published my fan fiction history on AO3. Is that oh yeah, no? AO3 is going strong. It's it, yeah, no, I'm on there all the time. But who I am on AO3 is not who I am in real life. So it's not only James LLC on A. It sure isn't. My name couldn't be more anonymous on AO3. It's definitely not only James L. No, nothing to see here. No. But I've had the same AO3 account since 2012. So if anybody was to see my history, it would be a wild ride. But yeah, that's something I'll ask you. Do you know what the term dead dove do not eat means?

SPEAKER_01:

Dead dove do not eat.

SPEAKER_00:

There's this whole dark genre where if you're going to write uh fucked up taboo shit about people's favorite characters, people are reading fanfiction because they want to read about the characters they love. Uh but for some reason we also occasionally want to read about the fucked up shit that some random person puts them through. And if it's really bad, and I mean really bad, it could be anything from cannibalism to uh underage stuff, and they put dead dove, do not eat. Basically meaning this is your warning that this is the most fucked up shit you're going to read. So if you progress further than this line right here, that's on you. You did this, not me.

SPEAKER_01:

Manacle, there she's publishing that shit. I can't believe what is it? Manacle. It's an extremely, extremely popular, huge fan fiction of basically Handmaid's Tale, but Hogwarts and Draminy. The Dramy one. People cry. And it's, I mean, I can't read on my phone. It hurts my eyes. And obviously, you can't just buy it, um, because that's illegal.

SPEAKER_00:

I don't read depressing fanfiction. I it's the same reason I don't read depressing books. Like my life feels depressing enough on the day-to-day, just when I look outside. I don't want to be sad about the people I love. And honestly, my current obsession is actually not even fictional characters. I am reading fanfiction about two people who exist in real life and who are an actual couple in real life, which is really creepy and weird, but I do it anyway. BL? No, it's not. Well, it's definitely a gay ship, but it is not technically BL. But there was this fic going around that everybody was raving about, and they're like, you have to read it. And then I started looking into it, and every person who read it is sobbing hysterically, just sobbing when they're talking about it. They're like, it's the best, it's the best thing I've ever read in my whole life. It was so sweet and so sad. And I'm just like, no. And so I looked. I was like, fuck it, I'll look. The tags, terminal illness. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Terminal? That means there's no hope. Nope. No way.

SPEAKER_01:

You had to get me to give me any kind of false hope. That's why I love trigger warnings.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, me too. I'm a big fan of trigger warnings for sure. It's necessary. I'm sorry, we definitely went on a tangent on that one. No, but we didn't.

SPEAKER_01:

We brought it back. We're talking about fandom. Because Fifty Shades of Grey is in fact part of the Twilight Fandom. And I think we did at least 20 minutes on task. I think we did. We're on task for the actual podcast.

SPEAKER_00:

Considering what our last podcast was, we're doing really well. I give us a gold star because we haven't brought up politics in this whole episode. So until now, I want to talk about the one that got away. No, they charge you a dollar a minute. Oh, yeah. Well, she doesn't want to be a broke mother. So if you like this, please rate, review, subscribe. It really helps us. Downloads really help us. You have us in your ear at all times. You can find us at linktree. That will take you to our Discord, our Patreon, our website, and where you can listen to all the back episodes that will hopefully exist. Eventually. So we will talk to you next time. I think we're breaking down supernatural next.

SPEAKER_01:

You'll be surprised. Be surprised.

SPEAKER_00:

And if you have an opinion, go to the Discord and tell us what you want us to break down.

SPEAKER_01:

Nice opinions.

SPEAKER_00:

Yes, nice opinions, please.

SPEAKER_01:

We won't follow you there, I promise.

SPEAKER_00:

We won't forget. We love you. Bye.

People on this episode

Head Shot

Onley James

Host
Head Shot

Shannon Ezzell

Co-host