Ashley Reese

We got two men who read.

Let's go.

You don't even have to buy these books.

You can buy other books.

Indeed.

It's actually really funny because there was a tweet a few weeks ago about some guy took a picture of a display at a bookstore and a lot of it was romance novels.

He said something to the effect of, I haven't been to the bookstore in like five years and I come back and it's all this.

I'm like...

You have not been to the bookstore in five years.

We can talk about, you know, the cynicism that comes with marketing and all the stuff for like these spaces and the romance space.

But at the end of the day, they are trying to make a buck.

And if you are saying that you have not been to a bookstore since before the pandemic and all of a sudden you're like, what's going on?

It's like you are not you are not the audience.

as someone who does care about craft, it really helped me realize I want to do this all the time.

It made me realize I want to become a writer.

But I think the thing that keeps people in fandom spaces and keeps them wanting to be in fandom spaces is honestly the community.

It's like, I cannot explain the extent to which

I have developed lifelong friendships with people I met 15 years ago while talking about a fanfiction.

Now we've gone to each other's weddings.

We've developed like real relationships with other people just based on like fun thought exercises.