Opening with the role call of Captain Brown Pants and his boisterous crew aboard their fictional ship, The Prairie Dog, the boys lead with their basest sense of humor as yet another poo bit spirals out of control.

Season 2, Episode 2, begins with an exploration of guilty pleasures. Wes discusses meme culture— what is the social currency of the little photos that seem to saturate our feeds, and how have they evolved? That deep discussion is quickly stifled, however, by Rhys’s guilty pleasure of creating Facebook events to attract people to parties, and the alleged cyberbullying that he needs to keep it functioning.

The LAST Random Fandom for the foreseeable future takes a look at the merging of two nerdy video game icons: World of Warcraft and Final Fantasy. A rousing AI Generated Fanfic creates a resulting world with interesting implications for Chocobos, Moogles, and Cactour.

Rhys brings in an Avatar the Last Airbender story to kick things off, taking a look at post-war life as Aang and the gang prepare for a unity festival of the four nations. Full of culture, sentiment, and historical allegory, this story provides the boys with a wonderful discussion regarding the associations between art and war. Wes leads with a unique Seth Meyers x Stefan story that takes us all into a colorful, musical, and trippy reading as they explore New York’s Hottest Club with the Saturday Night Live duo.

This is STFF 2, 2?

Welcome to Season 2 of Stranger than (fan)Fiction! 

Pioneering into 2021 comes a new moniker: LEVEL-UP. The boys hope to continue to learn, grow, and farm podcast XP as they create more content just for you (and figure out how this whole business thing works). They then pivot as they discuss aliens, the hit Chinese ballet production Shen Yun, the intricacies of building their respective Truman Show productions, and Guy Fieri.

Hunter kicks off Season 2 by embracing his current pirate obsession by finding an epic Pirates of the Caribbean mashup with Percy Jackson and the Olympians. A Pirate's Life for Me by Celestial Element takes a creative look at our favorite demigod, Percy Jackson, at the end of his emotional rope after yet another harrowing encounter. With a distraught Percy no longer wanting to be a pawn of Olympus, Athena offers him a chance at a new life away from the influence of the gods— conditional on the loss of his prior memories, free to construct his own path. His girlfriend, Annabeth, follows suit with a plan to restore their affections and remind each other of the life they loved in the modern world. The boys read an excerpt from the opening chapter, then speculate about the limitless trajectory ahead as Percy and Annabeth are sent back into the peak seafaring world of PotC. How will the son of Poseidon, gifted with a new mystical compass, grow in this new adventurous world? More importantly, how will characters collide as our Olympian transplants find themselves in the company of the eccentric Captain Jack Sparrow? The boys deep dive into their own theories as they discuss the possibilities.

In the face of COVID, there are a slew of new interpretations of storytelling that are unique, and often very humorous as a means of lifting our spirits. This was readily apparent within the second fanfiction of the show, The Fellowship of the Quarantine written by Thalion Estel (who also wrote Misrepresented, read on our S1 E17 Christmas Special). This particular telling of The Lord of the Rings takes a new look at a familiar scene in which Gandalf and Frodo discuss their realization of the dark force spreading across the land. Sauron’s means and influence, however, have evolved in this story as Mordor’s release of a novel coronavirus is the primary conversation weighing on the minds of our aged wizard and curious Hobbit. In a reading that carries all of the beats of Tolkien’s storyline merged with the modern precautions of hand sanitizer, masks, social distancing, the boys revel in the enjoyment of this tale, and proceed into their own ridiculous ideas for the world that Thalion Estel has set in motion.

Though it’s a new start, the shenanigans remain the same as ever. Welcome to Season 2. Stay Strange.