About Most Writers Are Fans: A Support Group and Idea Workshop for Independent Creatives
Join host, Terry Bartley, as he talks to writers, songwriters, and game designers about what got them interested in storytelling, the successes and struggles of being an indie creative, and their thoughts of mainstream writing tropes. Most Writers Are Fans is a support group and idea workshop for independent creatives.
Terry gets real about why the podcast has been quiet and why he's not sorry about it. For the past several months, he's been navigating his grandmother's medical crisis, the labyrinthine nightmare of American elder care, and the financial brutality of a system designed to strip elderly people of everything they've worked for. It's been a lot.
But this episode isn't just a personal update. It's a permission slip. If you're an indie creative who's been white-knuckling your posting schedule through a life emergency, Terry has something to say to you: the algorithm doesn't get to set the terms of your life. The real ones are the ones who keep coming back, not the ones who never stop.
Also: the Rae Shawn interview is out and it's incredible, the Starlight King Herald newsletter is live on Substack, and Terry will be on Greatest Movie of All Time next month watching The Princess Bride.
Timestamps
0:00 — Welcome & what's been going on
0:46 — On not apologizing for inconsistency
1:58 — What's actually been happening: grandma's medical journey
3:00 — The American elder care system is broken
4:35 — What it means to advocate for someone who still has their mind
6:01 — The past few months: mom's surgery, FMLA, trying to hold it together
6:31 — The Starlight King Herald newsletter (Substack)
6:56 — On banked interviews, the Rae Shawn episode, and releasing without promotion
9:12 — Why Terry is sharing this (and why you've probably been here too)
10:04 — The consistency gospel is bullshit for indie creatives
11:10 — The infrastructure problem: Starlight King Press is Terry and Dustin
13:18 — The book is happening. It's okay to pause.
15:13 — You have permission to take a break
15:55 — "The best work comes from pain" and why that's more complicated than it sounds
17:08 — The real ones keep coming back
17:21 — What's coming: edited episode in the queue, back by August
18:57 — Check out Kirsha Fox on YouTube
19:14 — Terry on Greatest Movie of All Time next month (The Princess Bride!)
19:56 — Sign off
Links
Starlight King Herald on Substack (https://starlightkingherald.substack.com)
Rae Shawn interview (https://creators.spotify.com/pod/profile/terry-bartley/episodes/Not-a-Token-What-It-Really-Takes-to-Write-Outside-Your-Experience-e3k1mou)
Kirsha Fox on YouTube: The Tell Not Show (https://www.youtube.com/@thetellnotshow)
Greatest Movie of All Time podcast (https://gmoatpodcast.captivate.fm)
11 Jun 2026
Content Without Context: What Girls Told Us About the World We'd Become
Episode Summary
Terry revisits HBO's Girls as a long-overdue cultural blind spot and comes away with something more interesting than a hot take. This minisode unpacks what the show did and didn't do well, why Lena Dunham's approach was genuinely ahead of its time, and what Girls accidentally predicted about the content ecosystem we're all living (and creating) in today.
What We Get Into
The "did you like it?" honest answer — not exactly, but not because it's bad
Flawed characters vs. bad people — why the Girls friend group hit different from shows like Crazy Ex-Girlfriendor The Mindy Project
Old friends vs. good friends — a framework borrowed from the Sondheim musical Merrily We Roll Along that explains a lot about Hannah, Marnie, Jessa, and Shoshana
The content vs. context distinction — Terry's ongoing framework for thinking about what media is for
Why the Lena Dunham pile-on was mostly unfair — and why the critique that mattered wasn't about realism at all
Hannah as a writer-character — and what it means when "I lived this, so it counts as story" is treated as sufficient
How prestige TV trained audiences to consume "content without context" — and what that unlocked for everyone who came after
The real stakes — why a world that stops valuing context stops valuing people who are different from us
The Central Argument
Girls wasn't gritty for shock value. It was, in many ways, bracingly real, and that's exactly the problem Terry wants to dig into. When reality becomes the whole point, you stop needing meaning. And once audiences were trained to find that acceptable in prestige television, the leap to algorithmically driven social media content wasn't a rupture. It was a continuation.
Want More?
Terry has significantly more thoughts about Girls, including comparisons to other shows, and invites listeners to weigh in. Loved the show? Think he's completely missing it? Drop a comment. This conversation is open.
28 May 2026
Not a Token: What It Really Takes to Write Outside Your Experience
What does it actually mean to write diverse characters, and who gets to do it? In this conversation, Terry sits down with Black romance author Rae Shawn to dig into one of the messiest, most necessary questions in contemporary fiction: when writers reach beyond their own experience, what separates authentic representation from tokenism, trend-chasing, or outright harm?
Rae writes contemporary Black romance rooted in real cities, real class dynamics, and real psychological complexity, and she brings that same grounded honesty to this conversation. She and Terry discuss the difference between wanting to include diverse characters and actually doing the work, why the sports romance genre's whitewashing of majority-Black leagues is such a tell, and how "just having a trans person in your book" isn't the same as having a trans character.
They also get into the industry-level problem: what it means when a white author lands a six-figure deal for a story about a marginalized community's experience while actual members of that community are still screaming into the void, and what indie publishing does and doesn't change about that dynamic.
Topics covered in this episode:
Why "inclusive" can still be cringy and how to tell the difference
The cowboy romance moment as a case study in selective historical memory
Token characters vs. characters who happen to be marginalized
Trans representation, coming-out narratives, and the gap between what fiction offers and what trans people actually experience
Writing characters "outside your experience" and the cultural knowledge required to know when you're outside the norm
How Rae thinks about class, mental health, grief, and regional identity across her ensemble casts
Sensitivity readers: why Rae used two trans readers for one character, and why beta readers alone aren't enough
The 50 Shades problem and why romance bears a specific burden around prescriptive reading
Brave New World, younger readers, and the question of whether fiction should only reflect what authors believe
Why consuming diversely isn't just a writer's responsibility it's a human one
The publishing industry's role in gatekeeping whose story counts as a universal story
Find Rae Shawn:
Website: loveraeshawn.com
Social media: @RaeshawnStories (Instagram, TikTok, Reddit)
Patreon: Raeshawn Stories
Most Writers Are Fans is a Starlight King production. Audio/video editing by David Riverol.
Reach and audience
Public platform figures. Ratings count people who left a rating, not total listeners.
Apple Podcasts (US)
5.0 / 5
4 ratings
Spotify
5.0 / 5
7 ratings
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