We’ll admit to a slightly perverse fascination with things like this, because we’d dearly love to know how much oversight any given answer is being given, either by the show’s creative or its legal teams. In this case, faux-Carol keeps things pretty light, with no creepy foreshadowing to the Joining or any of the other world-altering events of the series. (Timeline-wise, the AMA seems to “take place” right around the events depicted in the show’s pilot episode, as Carol winds down the book tour for Bloodsong.) The fans asking questions, for their part, gamely play along with the fiction, leaning into things like asking the repeated question of why Carol’s hero, Raban, is absent from the book’s cover, and not flooding the whole thing with “Please, Carols.” (On a slightly more meaningful note, they do ask probing questions about rumors that the swashbuckler Raban might originally been written as female; Carol’s decision to hide her sexuality from her fanbase to lean into the heterosexual preconceptions of romantic fantasy fans is one of the drama points the show has tapped repeatedly in its first four episodes.)
Honestly, though, we’re mostly here for the more winking references, as well as weird little factoids that get sprinkled in: “Carol” reads horny Wycaro fan-fiction, namechecks real-world romantasy authors Diana Gabaldon, Sarah J Maas, and Rebecca Yarros, and apparently once considered setting her books in “a version of Tudor England…one with giant steampunk robots.” She also has no idea why you’d ask if she has an Albequrque-based lawyer, but does note that she used to write in “a wonderful old diner” in the city, which certainly feels like a reference to frequent Better Call Saul and Breaking Bad location Loyola’s Family Diner.
You can read the whole AMA here, or just trawl Carol’s specific comments at this link.
