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“And that does it for Outta the House!”
Travis Kelce snuck another look at the rundown for this week’s episode of New Heights as Jason handled the transition, his voice booming in Travis’s headset. The only thing they had left was No Dumb Questions and then they would wrap it up until next Tuesday, one of the stable points in the chaos of their weeks.
“Oh, and speaking of out of the house,” Jason veered into an unexpected segue with a glint in his eyes that promised trouble, “Travis, have you ever heard of this thing called Yuletide?”
“Of course I’ve heard of Yuletide, Jason,” Travis scoffed, affronted. Brandon was slashing his finger across his throat vigorously for some reason, but since he was trapped in another box on their screens, it was easy enough for both Travis and Jason to ignore him.
“You have not,” Jason fired back, “I guarantee you that you have not—”
“Yuletide is, like.” Travis groped for the words that he was looking for, and settled on some. “Yuletide is an old-timey word for Christmas.”
“Okay, no, you have a point,” Jason conceded.
“I told you!”
“It is a Christmas thing,” Jason barreled ahead with his digression while Brandon just buried his face in his hands, “but this specific Yuletide that I’m talking about is an absolutely legendary fan fiction exchange. You know about fan fiction?”
“Uh, I know about fan art,” Travis retorted. “Which, sorry to all the Ninety-Two Percenters who keep sending me fan art and I haven’t even looked at it yet, I’m so behind on all my mail, but I’m sure it’s amazing. Love all the fan art.”
“So, fan fiction is like—you know when there’s, like, a movie or something that you love, but you really want to know what happens next?”
“Uh, sure.” Travis acceded to the proposition, but without any real conviction.
“Like, you know, Happy Gilmore.”
Travis’s face lit up. “Hooooooo,” he crowed happily, “you already know! I’m not allowed to say anything, but it’s going to be absolutely epic when it comes out. Mark your calendars. Wait, do we have a release date yet?” He appealed to Brandon and Jake, but either of them leapt into action to help him out.
“The thing is,” Jason continued, “most people can’t just get in touch with Adam Sandler—”
“The Sandman!”
“—and get themselves written into the sequel to one of their favorite movies, so what they do is, they write the story that they want to see themselves, and that’s fan fiction.”
Travis looked pained. “Jason, you know that I’m not so much into the whole ‘reading’ thing.”
“Well, you’re missing out, because some of these stories are absolutely incredible.”
“I will take your word for it.”
“But the beautiful thing about Yuletide is that every year, all these fan fiction writers sign up, and they make these requests, like wishlists of the stories that they want to read. And it can’t just be something that everybody knows, like Harry Potter—”
“I don’t know Harry Potter.”
“Yes, you do, because I explained it to you. It was right here on the podcast. You can go back and listen to it if you don’t remember.”
“That doesn’t count.”
“Well, it’s close enough,” Jason insisted. “The point is, you can’t ask for Harry Potter. There are too many stories about Harry Potter already. Like, I think there are millions of them.”
“Millions?”
“Something like that. I haven’t counted them all. But yeah. It has to be something that’s rare. Maybe there isn’t even any fan fiction about it at all yet. Then everybody writes a story off of somebody else’s wishlist, and then on Christmas, everybody gets a story to read, even if they requested, like, the craziest thing you ever heard of in your life. Now, I’m not going to lie, most of these stories are not for me, but I respect the creativity behind them.”
“This is so complicated,” Travis complained, fidgeting in his desk chair. “How did we even start talking about this?”
“Right!” Jason snapped his fingers. “So the only reason I know anything about this is that I had a bunch of the guys sending me this link, I guess it went viral on Twitter or something. It was this story that somebody wrote for Yuletide last year. It’s all about how these zombies attacked the city of Philadelphia, so I had to team up with Gritty to fight them off and save the city.”
Travis cracked up at that. “Holy shit, dude,” he managed, through peals of laughter, “that’s hilarious. I would so watch that movie.”
“Well, unfortunately, it’s not a movie.” Jason leaned forward in his chair. “I mean, maybe some of your friends could help us out with that. Do you think we could get Ryan Reynolds to be the voice of Gritty?”
“You saved the city from zombies?” Travis chortled incredulously. “You wouldn’t even save your own wife from a shark.”
“Kylie was not in any danger from that shark,” Jason insisted. “She wasn’t even anywhere near the shark. The shark was a nonissue.”
“Kylie didn’t seem to agree that the shark was a nonissue.”
“You’ll notice that Kylie remains unbitten, by sharks and also by zombies, because I was correct in my risk assessment.”
“You’re ridiculous.” Travis snickered. “The zombies would never get to Ky, anyway. She could just lop their heads off with a field hockey stick.”
“Obviously, I would never let the zombies get within field hockey stick range of my wife. But yeah, she could take them,” Jason added, dreamily.
“Put that in the movie!”
“You need to read the actual story.” Jason’s eyes darted away. “Let me send you the link.”
“Jason, there’s no way I’m reading all this.”
“Fine, I can read it to you.” Jason cleared his throat. “‘Outta the House’ by—”
“Can we please finish recording the podcast first?” Brandon finally unmuted himself and interrupted them both.
“We’re recording the podcast right now,” Travis pointed out.
Brandon shook his head. “We’re cutting all this fan fiction stuff. I told you, Jason, it’s called the fourth wall, and we’re not breaking it. It’s my job to save you guys from yourselves, remember?”
“Whatever,” Jason grumbled. “I saved the city of Philadelphia from zombies, though.”
“You did not,” Travis said. “It’s called fan fiction, Jason, not—uh—fan nonfiction.”
Jason ignored him. “And now, it’s time for another edition of No Dumb Questions, because there are no dumb questions—”
“—just dumb fuckin’ people,” Travis chimed in.