Encouragement, not dissaproval
I hope I’m not the only one who took today’s episode basically as a validation for all the fic writers, rather than as an discouragement? They never said anything that I saw as discouraging, instead, they specifically said that the part that they would react with shock to was that they were reading fanfiction about themselves - which I understood as meaning that they (and surely most people) were uncomfortable reading out loud stuff about them in explicit sexual context.
Just because they don’t like reading these stories themselves, doesn’t mean that they think these fics shouldn’t exist - or that they should not be written. They are not implying we should stop writing, they just prefer not to read the fics themselves. I guess what they said could be interpreted differently, but it didn’t even occur to me to think this was intended as a negative thing.
I do think it would have been nice to ask the writers for a permission to use their texts (I was kinda hoping they would have), but then again, letting the writers know would have risked spoiling the surprise. But seriously, I think, they treated the topic with respect, they mentioned the writers, and in the end, despite the awkwardness of sitting next to their staff and best friend while reading about having sex with said friend, they ended up having fun - which is pretty awesome. Instead of going yuck, this is gross and nasty, they smiled, giggled, made jokes about themselves - both the fictional versions and the real ones, and basically reacted in a very positive way.
I totally took this episode as an encouragement, and frankly, I loved it.
