Sara sits down with XParrot, whose writing in the Smallville fandom she finds inspiring and incandescent! They talk about getting into the fascinating and flawed mind of Lex Luthor, and his philosophical preoccupation with the unsolvable problem of an imperfect being wielding unimaginable power; they dip into the Yu-Gi-Oh fandom to look at another troubled genius, Seto Kaiba; they discuss dramatic irony, and how canon allows fanfiction authors to anchor a story to certain points, and from there climb to heights unreachable by typical and traditional methods of fiction writing; aaaaand also what Michael Rosenbaum’s famous ad-lib “I love you like a brother” really should mean in the context of a CW show. Also we mention The CoCK. Heh.

Episode References

• "String Theory at 1 a.m." by XParrot - AO3  
• "Exchange Student" by XParrot - AO3 
• "The Right of Truth" by XParrot - AO3 
• “This Mortal Coil” by XParrot - AO3
• "Contingencies" by XParrot - AO3 
• Star Trek “The New Voyages” (Article on Memory Alpha)
• Recc - The Identical Series by Lanning - AO3
• Recc - "The Butterfly Effect" by The Spike (spike21) - AO3 
• Meta Analysis - The Lex-nalysis (XParrot Dreamwidth Entries)
• “The Great Brain Robbery” - YT Clip (Clancy Brown voicing the Flash in Lex Luthor’s Body)
• "Lex Luthor: Man of Steel"  Azzarello/Bermejo - DC Comics 
• A Comic Book Store Owner talks about Why Superman Is the Best

Contact and Credits:

• Music: Kyle Laurin "In the Air Tonight" (Twitter: @cobrakylemusic)
• Tumblr: talkinfanfic.tumblr.com 
• Instagram: @talkinfanfic
• Email: [email protected]