In Episode 168, “The Entertainment Media Machine,” Flourish and Elizabeth use a recent Business Insider article about Netflix’s editorial strategy—and some subsequent worries in fan spaces—to talk about the shifting dynamics between the entertainment industry, the media, audiences, and fans. Netflix’s Tudum may not affect fans at all in the short term, but what will the entertainment media landscape look like in a few years? They also read a listener letter in response to the “Writing Trans Characters” episode, on exploring gender via femslash A/B/O.

In episode 167, “Our Secret Identities,” Elizabeth and Flourish use a listener voicemail on pseudonyms as a springboard to talk about the many facets of fannish personas online. Topics discussed include the way pseudonymous norms vary in different fandom spaces, the effects of platform features like Tumblr’s sideblogs or AO3’s orphaned works, catfishing and other forms of digital abuse, and what “the right to be forgotten” means in a fandom context.

In Episode 165, “Fests,” Flourish and Elizabeth use a listener letter about Yuletide—a long-running fanfic exchange for tiny fandoms—to talk about fanwork fests more broadly. While they approach fests from an observational perspective (for the record, only Flourish would like to see the return of the “Fuh-Q-Fest”), they also talk about their personal experiences writing in these events: why Elizabeth likes the structured pressure of an exchange, and how Flourish has been known to sign up for Yuletide fandoms for which they’ve never even seen the source material.

As the pandemic marches on and Flourish and Elizabeth (and presumably many other people) struggle to remember whether individual events happened in 2020 or 2021, they break their longstanding “year in fandom” format and simply revisit last year’s fandom trends, from the influence of the Black Lives Matter movement to the rise of C-dramas in Anglophone fandom to fan campaign movements like #ReleasetheSnyderCut. They also spend time assessing the continuing influence of the pandemic on both the entertainment industry and on fans: In this fractured media landscape, will Hollywood ever see the kind of fandom scale they want again?

In episode 163, Flourish and Elizabeth talk to novelist and Be the Serpent co-host Freya Marske upon the publication of A Marvellous Light, the first novel in her historical fantasy romance trilogy “The Last Binding.” As they discuss tropes, characterization, genre expectations, and other elements of fiction writing, Freya draws from her prolific fanfic-writing history to talk about the ways that fic did—and didn’t—prepare her to write original fiction, and the way her original fiction connects back to the fanfic world.

In episode 162, “Ways of Seeing,” Flourish and Elizabeth dig into their recent respective fannish experiences—and how those experiences differ from the way they’ve “done fandom” in the past. Flourish considers whether their masked conga-line participation at four consecutive Harry Styles concerts counts as “community”; Elizabeth manfully resists saying Lee Pace’s name out loud while describing her descent into obsession with AMC’s Halt and Catch Fire; and they both talk about breaking patterns of feeling and behavior, and what it means to be a different kind of fan. They also respond to a letter from past guest Anisa Khalifa on what reader-insert fic can—and can’t—do for diversity and representation.

In Episode 161, Elizabeth and Flourish talk to writer and editor Brent Lambert about his work with FIYAH, a literary magazine of Black speculative fiction. Topics discussed include Brent’s formative experiences with collaborative fanfic writing, his journey from fan to pro, how the events of the 2020 Hugo Awards led to the creation of FIYAHCON, and the ways SFF publishing has (and hasn’t) changed with regard to race.

In Episode 160, “The Original Character,” Flourish and Elizabeth discuss the ways that fans create their own characters in their favorite story-worlds—especially when those characters are some version of themselves. Topics discussed include the history of the term “Mary Sue,” imagines and x Reader fics, generational shifts in the way original characters are perceived, and that time Flourish wrote a second-person One Direction fic that could arguably be described as sheer self-insert wish-fulfillment.

In Episode 159, “Gwenda Bond,” Flourish and Elizabeth interview Gwenda Bond, author of many novels, including Lois Lane: Fallout, Stranger Things: Suspicious Minds, and (just released!) Not Your Average Hot Guy. Topics covered include  the differences between writing licensed novels, fanfiction, and original fiction, the way social media impacts the relationships between authors and audiences, and why, despite a recent boom in rom-com novels, Hollywood seems so uninterested in the form these days.