Transformative Taskmaster | Ep13 | Newt | Taskmaster as exposure therapy

Lewis: Hello and welcome to Transformative Taskmaster. The podcast by fans, for fans and about fans. This week, TK and fellow fic author Newt discuss neurodivergence in relation to Taskmaster, and why it hits different than other similar shows.

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TK: Okay then. Welcome, Newt, to the Transformative Taskmaster podcast.

Newt: Hi.

TK: Hi! Where are you, by the way? Because you’re not in the US, obviously.

Newt: No, I’m in Germany.

TK: That’s really exciting.

Newt: Something new entirely.

TK: I have never been over there, so I know nothing about Germany. But I know some good people from Germany, so there we go.

Newt: Yeah, we have an unusually high rate of Germans in our group chat, I feel.

TK: We do. It’s surprising how many there are. I guess it shouldn’t be that surprising. But then again, I don’t know how many Germans speak English, because I feel like all of the Germans that we have in our group chat speak English really well. And I’m like, “Easy second language, I guess?” I don’t know.

Newt: Well, compared to German, most of the languages are easy, I feel like.

TK: That’s fair.

Newt: We are not that particularly good at English, especially in the older generations I think, but it’s getting better.

TK: That’s pretty cool. Awesome. Well, today we are going to be talking about neurodivergence, which is a subject that we have brought up on the podcast before, with Tasha. So tell us about – because I put out a thing in the group chat and I was like, “Hey, if you want to talk about something on the podcast, let me know what you want to talk about”. And you were like, “I want to talk about this.” So, tell me what was your thought process behind “this is the thing I specifically want to talk about.”

Newt: Well, I don’t know. I feel like it’s a subject I have a lot to say about, in the regard that it affects my life a lot. Tasha already– somewhere on the autism spectrum, and I feel like Taskmaster is kind of a series that is deeply connected to that somehow, in a way that other series aren’t.

TK: One of the things that you were telling me about earlier when you sent me your notes was that the way that the series is cut is really good for keeping people’s attention on it. And I definitely agree with that because I am somebody who will either watch a show and I have to only be watching the show – I can’t do anything else – or I’ll just put something on in the background while I do chores or something. And Taskmaster is definitely one of those shows that I have to actively be watching it. Because there’s a lot of – it goes by pretty quickly, but there’s also a lot of little things that if you blink, you’ll miss it. And there’s a lot of times where even I’ll be watching with my partner and he’ll be like, “Wait, pause. Can you go back 10 seconds? Because what did he just say?”

Newt: Yeah, the small things, they’re the best jokes mostly, often. I think that if we’re in our group chat or watching the new episode together, I always have to watch it a second time afterwards. Because if I’m trying to scream together with all of you guys and watch the episode, it just doesn’t work because there’s just too much stuff that’s happening in very short intervals of time.

TK: For sure. I do love watching live with other people, but it does make it really hard to focus in on what’s happening, ‘cause we’ll be like, “Muppet features!!”

Newt: Definitely. I feel that’s also a thing that kind of got me into watching more, because I have the problem with other series that often I watch 1 or 2 episodes, and even though I like the series, it’s still that I’m kind of forgetting about it afterwards because I just get distracted by something else. Or you don’t have the energy after a whole day to sit down and focus on this one thing, and I feel like Taskmaster is just really good at keeping your attention, and kind of dragging you along with it. That just makes it easy to come home and you’re tired, but you can still put on an episode and just go all in.

TK: Definitely. I think it helps that it’s a comedy show, because I feel like comedy shows are a lot easier to watch when you’re tired and you’re like, “I just don’t want to do anything.” But it’s like, “I just watch this fun, funny show and just enjoy and relax and have a laugh,” which is great.

Newt: I mean, that was also the thing with Taskmaster and the lockdown, right? Because what drew a lot of people to it, it’s really good at just putting out your head and just enjoying.

TK: Definitely. Something to kind of escape the real world for a minute. So talking about the contestants on Taskmaster, as far as neurodivergence goes, but also just being yourself and being allowed to be yourself, I know that in a lot of interviews that contestants and Greg and Alex have had, they say a lot of the times that Taskmaster is a show that you can’t really hide who you are. And not in a bad way of like, “Oh, we’re going to show you, the worst parts of yourself, in a negative light,” or whatever. Clearly that’s not what they’re doing, but more of a, “You have to be able to think of how to do this task that literally no one has ever done this specific thing ever before.” Because why would you? So you have to think laterally and you have to think of what would make the most sense for you, and obviously every contestant has different things that they think is what they would call route one. Ed Gamble always says “Oh, this is route one for me is, do this.” But I feel like a lot of the contestants have different ideas of what a route one looks like. And so it opens up that door for the contestants to just be themselves and know that they’re going to be okay with showing their inner thoughts and everything on international television.

Newt: Totally. I don’t know. There are, of course, some contestants on there – someone who always sticks out to me particularly was Sam Campbell. I think Tasha also mentioned him on your episode. There are just so many contestants who are just, objectively speaking, really weird, and the way they approach the tasks is really weird. But usually weird is often used in a context where it’s kind of a bad thing. But that’s not the case with Taskmaster. So it’s always, your weirdness is kind of what makes you unique, what makes you interesting. And I feel that’s something that really puts Taskmaster apart from other series. If I think about normal casting in shows or something, it’s usually that people who are unusual, weird, are always made fun of in a way that’s not nice. You have this voiceover and then it’s kind of retrospective that the people are not there to really put in their own words. But with Taskmaster, with this studio setting where the people can explain why they did things the way they did, or make a joke about what they did. It gives them the opportunity to make themselves likeable, and put everything in a good light.

TK: They can defend themselves a little bit.

Newt: I feel like that’s often what makes the people who are the weirdest, or the most unusual, in the end, they often end up being fan favorites or the ones that stick out the most.

TK: John Kearns is one that sticks out to me particularly for this topic. I haven’t seen any of his other shows or anything, but apparently what he does is he wears a wig and fake teeth, and he goes out on stage and he has this whole character. Which again, I don’t know anything about because I only know him from Taskmaster. But I have heard interviews with him where he was on the official Taskmaster podcast. And he was saying to Ed, “Oh, I was thinking about coming on as my character, but then the Taskmaster team told me not to do that and it would be better if I just came on as myself.” And, of course, John Kearns did so spectacularly poorly! But again, like you said, he’s a fan favorite because of that, because we’re all just rooting for the underdog, and when he fails miserably, it’s just so funny. And not because he’s failing, but the way that he fails, is – he knows he’s done a bad job and he’s just like, “God damnit”.

Newt: I think the same with Ivo or maybe, or more recently, Nick. Failure’s not really a bad thing in Taskmaster because in the end, the thing that’s the most important is not winning the show, but being there and having a fun time. And also embracing the stupid things that you did because they’re part of yourself and they are funny. You can laugh about it.

TK: I know Alex in interviews has said before, if you do really poorly, that’s great for us as the producers, because that’s gonna make great telly. So we’re happy that we have some people that just fail miserably because you’ve got to have the winners and losers and everything in between. So, definitely good to have that stretch of the run.

Newt: It’s the diversity. The diversity not only in different people, but also in losers and winners.

TK: Definitely. And I do like how they – and you phrased this a little bit this way – is that people are never really made fun of, but made fun with. So “We’re not laughing at you, we’re laughing with you,” kind of thing. Which I really like, because even with people like Rose Matafeo, every time she gets halfway through her prize task and she just gives up and puts her head in her hands. And she’s like, “I don’t know what I was thinking!” But it’s like, “No, no, keep going, we still want to hear your shit idea even if it’s a shit idea!” I like how whenever they poke fun at anybody, it’s all in good faith and good humor. And I think the one time that it didn’t happen like that was, I forget who it was, but I think it was one of the Covid series. And Greg had made fun of somebody, the masks that they had made.

Newt: Oh, yeah, I remember.

TK: I forget who it was. And then afterwards he felt really bad about it and he’s like, oh my gosh, I think I actually upset her. And I think he said he might have given her more points at the end, during the live task to make up for it. But he’s like, “I genuinely felt so, so terrible about that, because it was clearly something that she’d been working on during lockdown, and I made fun of it a little bit too much,” crossing that line just a little bit. So it’s good to know that they never poke fun at people to the extent that they are trying to make them feel bad at least. So that’s refreshing.

Newt: Definitely.

TK: I wonder who that was…

Newt: So I don’t really remember the Covid series that well because I always found them very weird to watch in retrospective.

TK: I want to say Victoria Coren Mitchell but that also feels- not correct. But one of the things about Taskmaster is you kind of have to embrace embarrassment. Because if you don’t, you’re not gonna do well, ironically. So you have to go for these stupid things, and sometimes we get contestants that don’t. You get your Jo Brands and your Fatiha El-Ghorris occasionally, who are just like, “I’m not gonna do this. I’m not gonna do this specific thing!” Which is fair – sometimes you have to do that, protect your own personal boundaries and everything. But I feel, for the most part, people are pretty willing to just let themselves do stupid things for the sake of the show.

Newt: Definitely.

TK: Which is really nice.

Newt: The thing that makes a Jo Brand or Fatiha interesting is that it’s then a kind of an outlier. Most people actively engage in the show, which, if you look at it objectively, is the stupid thing to do because you are making a fool out of yourself. And the other people, the ones who are not interacting with it are the ones who are being sensible. But in the context of the show, it’s the other way around.

TK: For sure, for me especially because I’m definitely neurodivergent. And as a kid I was always terrified of embarrassing myself. And so there were a ton of times that I just didn’t do stuff that I probably should have done, just to have fun with it. I remember I went to one middle school dance and I got asked to dance by some guy I don’t even remember. I don’t think I even knew who he was. And I was just sitting down in the corner, and he asked me to dance, and I was like, “No, thank you”. And I literally just sat there for the entire dance! And, looking back on it, I’m like, “Dude, just go and dance. Nobody cares what you look like. Literally, everybody else is more concerned about what they look like and nobody is paying attention to you.” I definitely missed out on a lot of opportunities to have fun and do stuff when I was younger because I was just so terrified of making a fool of myself. Which is not the worst thing in the world because what are the consequences of that? You look silly, okay, who cares?

Newt: Most people do.

TK: It’s such a weird thing to think about. Now that I’m in my mid-thirties, I think I hit 30 years old and I was like, “I don’t give a fuck anymore about anything. I don’t care what anybody thinks about me.” And I finally got to that point where I was like, “Just do shit, who cares?”

Newt: Good for you, honestly. I think I’m still waiting to get to that point, but we’re working on that.

TK: It’s definitely a journey, for sure.

Newt: I think that’s a trap that a lot of neurodivergent people fall into. Because if you’ve ever been made fun of for your interests or your hobbies or whatever, then the coping strategy is often to just not do anything that you could potentially enjoy, where you could look silly. Because it’s better to do nothing and stay locked within yourself to give less attack surface. But on the other hand, it also means that you never get to enjoy anything in life, and that’s just stupid.

TK: It’s definitely like, as long as you’re having fun and as long as you’re not hurting anybody, do whatever you want. But it definitely is a big barrier, especially for those of us with social anxiety. Because it’s like my fear of what other people think of me is so strong that I don’t want to do this thing. But when you’re doing Taskmaster as a contestant, you don’t really have, like they said, anywhere to hide; you don’t have an excuse. You could not do tasks, but then you wouldn’t have signed on to be on Taskmaster in the first place. The whole point–

Newt: And you probably wouldn’t get paid.

TK: The whole point of being on Taskmaster is to make a fool of yourself and is to get embarrassed. And, you’re gonna do those things and feel those things and be those things, and it’s okay. And everybody is gonna love you for it, because it’s just chaos.

Newt: Definitely.

TK: We’re gonna pause for our games section. Insert trumpet thing here [TK makes trumpet noises] So the game that we’re gonna play today is called, What Is It Alex Has Been? Because–

Newt: I’ve heard this one before.

TK: I need more Fact or Fanfic, which after the recent outtakes that they’ve posted, shouldn’t be too hard to write more.

Newt: Fair.

TK: Okay, so What Is It Alex Has Been is a game in which I will read you five occupations or identities. And you have to tell me which of those you think Alex has been in a fanfic, and which you think Alex has not yet been in a fanfic.

Newt: Yes.

TK: And then for extra points, you can also guess what Greg was in the fics that you do think exist. So first one: in which Alex is a marine biologist.

Newt: Yes, that exists, I’m pretty sure. I think it’s the Illuminescence fanfic if you mean that one.

TK: Yep, that’s the one. Do you remember what Greg was?

Newt: A kind of sea monster?

TK: Yes. My document says, “mermaid, sorta”. But yes, I actually don’t have the fic titles here, so we’ll have to go digging a little bit. But yeah, that one was by Illuminescence, surprising nobody. I don’t know who came up with these, but I’ll have to ask them to grab the fic links so that we can post those on the website. Okay, great. Next one is: in which Alex is a gardener.

Newt: Oh, boy. I think I remember something. I think that existed.

TK: Okay. And if it did, what is Greg?

Newt: I remember one that was set during lockdown and stuff. And Greg was also a TV personality/celebrity, whatever.

TK: I think that counts. This one just says Greg. When I did this game with Alex, and I think it was the Grim Reaper one, and he was like, “Oh, what was Greg?” And I was like, “He was just Greg”.

Newt: “Just” Greg?

TK: Just Greg! Okay. Number three, in which Alex is a Deliveroo driver.

Newt: Oh, man. Well, I don’t remember one, which doesn’t have to mean it doesn’t exist because I haven’t read all the fanfics. It kind of feels like there should be something here now that doesn’t exist, so I’ll go with doesn’t exist.

TK: That is correct. It does not yet exist. Also, do you have Deliveroo in Germany?

Newt: I’m not sure, actually. We have Uber Eats, but I’m not really ordering food that much, to be honest.

TK: That’s fair. We have Uber Eats, but we definitely don’t have Deliveroo. And the first time I heard, I think maybe it was on Off Menu or something, and Ed said Deliveroo. And I was like, what is that? A kangaroo brings you your meal?

Newt: We have, I think, Lieferando it’s called. I’m not sure if it exists somewhere else, but I think that’s the main one most people use.

TK: That’s cool. You don’t really think about these things existing in other countries until you start watching stuff from other countries. So you’re three for three so far, which is very impressive. Okay, so number four, in which Alex is a prospector.

Newt: A prospector, what even is that?

TK: A prospector is like a mining for gold type of person.

Newt: Oh, I see. That exists. Wasn’t this your fanfic?

TK: Yeah, that’s mine.

Newt: Okay. Glad I got that one right.

TK: Yes, and then do you remember what Greg was?

Newt: He was also mining for gold.

TK: That’s correct. That one is one of my favorite ones that I’ve written and it’s called, oh, it’s a really long title. It’s something like Why Would I Need Gold When I’ve Got You? Or something like that.

Newt: Oh, yeah, true. I enjoyed that one. It was really sweet.

TK: I liked it a lot. I based it off of the song Clementine, which is a US folk song. And also the song, Gold Rush, which is what the title is based on a line from the chorus of that song. I love that song. So good. Okay, you’re four for four. So number five is in which Alex is a cat lady.

Newt: Cat lady? Well, is Alex a cat person? I feel like Alex is a dog person. I don’t know, feels counter-intuitive to me, but I’m not sure. I’ll go with no.

TK: That’s correct! You got them all right.

Newt: Woo!!

TK: Wow, that’s eight out of eight. Good job. Man, Alex did so bad.

Newt: I’ve been studying for this all my life!

TK: Amazing. Okay, let me go to my spreadsheet, and I will make sure that you get the trophy. Ding ding ding. Okay, cool.

Newt: Not a green t-shirt?

TK: Oh, man. I feel like shipping a green T-shirt to Germany would cost a lot of money.

Newt: Probably.

TK: Oh, good times. Okay, so continuing the conversation. Part of the notes that you sent me says, using Taskmaster as exposure therapy. And I forget what task it was, but I was watching a task from the latest episode with my partner yesterday. And something happened that made me physically curl up into a ball in my chair. I was like, I can’t watch this, it’s too cringe! But, I feel there’s a lot of moments like this.

Newt: That’s true. I mean, depends also a bit on what kind of thing you really find embarrassing. But I don’t know if I remember it. Was it last season where we had those tasks where one of the contestants was sitting on Alex’s lap?

TK: Joanne McNally.

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Newt: Yeah true, Joanne. This is also the kind of thing that I physically recoil from. And it’s really [inaudible] and, obviously she’s kind of owning up to it, but I don’t know, I feel like it’s nice seeing people doing these weird and cringe things, because, if you have a positive example for how you can do these things without being embarrassed about it afterwards, then you kind of start thinking, “Well, if they can do it, why shouldn’t I?”

TK: Definitely. And that kind of segues nicely into the Taskmaster Live Experience, which I don’t think is currently going. But they had it open for a few months in London I think. So they, I think Alex said their lease ran out for that place, so now it’s all in storage I guess. And I assume that they’re going to see if they should do it again somewhere else, hopefully come to the States or something? Go to Germany? Go to other places?

Newt: Go to Germany, yeah.

TK: Other than England. So basically, your average person on the street could go to the live experience and, for lack of a better word, experience what it’s like to be on Taskmaster as a contestant. To have that experience of fear of embarrassment, but also when are you ever going to get to do something like this, in your life ever again?

Newt: Exactly.

TK: We know a few people that went and had a great time, which is awesome. And I’m very envious that they got to do that because it definitely sounds like something I would love to do. Because I also love doing escape rooms and stuff like that, where sometimes you do have to think laterally, or think outside the box, in order to solve a puzzle or whatever.

Newt: I went actually.

TK: Oh my gosh, that’s so cool.

Newt: Even though it was a longer journey for me. But we made a holiday out of it, so it was really nice. But you’re totally right with what you said. You kind of know that it’s going to be a nice experience, probably, but still it was kind of a struggle for me to decide in the beginning to go there because, my friends, they won the opportunity to buy tickets in the first raffle that they did and they asked me if I wanted to come because obviously they knew I was a Taskmaster fan. I was kind of at the height of my Taskmaster phase at that point, so it should have been an easy decision. But, you still kind of have these doubts in the back of your mind, that you don’t really know the way things are set up there, and there are so many unfamiliar people there and then it’s kind of the thing with, “What if I embarrass myself in front of all these people?” And, in the beginning, we didn’t really have a lot of information about what exactly the Live Experience was. And you know, that when things are unfamiliar, it’s even worse. I think it kind of was for me, a really, positive experience in the sense that, I wasn’t really good at tasks, but it was still enjoyable, because all these other people around you are also failing. Some are doing good, but most of them are failing. And it doesn’t matter because they’re just there to enjoy the show together and to have fun.

TK: I love places where having fun is the main purpose of why you’re there.That’s the ideal situation. Like, I love theme parks. My partner hates them. So I haven’t gone to one in years. But anytime people are like, “Oh, I love rollercoasters”, I’m like, “Bro, I love a roller coaster. You have no idea how much I love roller coasters”. It’s so much fun. So going back to just being a fan of Taskmaster and being in the neurodivergent spectrum. One of the things that we encounter in our fandom specifically is, obviously, RPF – real person fiction, where there’s a lot of things surrounding RPF that a lot of people have very strong ideas on. So that’s already putting us in an ‘othering’ type of box, if you will. But then again, it’s also weird because Taskmaster, obviously we have Greg and Alex fueling the fanfic. I mean, they just keep doing it and they won’t stop. So they have that. But then we also have contestants like Sophie Duker, who obviously is a pro-shipper, will bring in the Taskhusbands cosplay kit, or whatever she called it–

Newt: Iconic.

TK: And have Greg and Alex temporary tattoos on her, during Champion of Champions. And then you’ve got Rosie Jones bringing in the prize task of, “Would you rather make sweet love to my body with Alex’s head, or vice versa?” What is happening? And even in the New Zealand version of Taskmaster, we’ve got Abby Howells bringing in a commissioned piece of fan art of Jeremy Wells and Paul Williams. It’s just like, “What is happening?” You love to see it. So it’s definitely within our community and those people, in particular, those types of people that come on to Taskmaster and they’re clearly in the know of what the fandom wants, kind of thing. We do have a lot of support and solidarity with each other over that, which is nice.

Newt: Definitely. For me, in the beginning, being associated with RPF was kind of always a weird feeling in fandom, because fandom in of itself was often, kind of the safe space where you go because there are a lot of neurodivergent people, there are a lot of people who are insane about their interests. But then if you go to the RPF community, other parts of fandom will just say you’re weird or not associate with you on principle. But then, like you said, in the Taskmaster fandom, we have a very strong feeling of sticking together, I feel in our group. And then like you said, Greg and Alex are also in on the joke, so it just feels different to other RPF spaces where you don’t have the creator of the show kind of backing you.

TK: That’s definitely kind of a one off thing within fandom. Pretty interesting for sure. So we’ve been talking a lot about the UK version of Taskmaster and I mentioned New Zealand a little bit. And of course Australia is also a great, wonderful, iteration of the show. You had mentioned that, there was a German taskmaster, and apparently it did not do very well, so tell us about that.

Newt: There was the idea to kind of put on a German version, I think it was in 2017 or something. So, it’s a few years back now. But apart from two pilot episodes, it never really got produced. Which I think is very fascinating considering that Taskmaster in other countries is a really popular series and Germany is kind of, compared to other countries, which now have their own Taskmaster version, a pretty big market, I’d say. I don’t know the reasons why it was put on were never really revealed. But I feel like maybe it was the thing about Taskmaster not really working with the kind of environment they were trying to produce the series. And because the version was supposed to be produced by RTL, which is the largest private television network in Germany. They’re also famous for producing shows, which kind of do the opposite of what Taskmaster is about, namely [inaudible] people. They don’t really have a very good image, I’d say. So maybe, the idea that Alex had about the series, and the idea that they wanted to put on the television didn’t really work with each other.

TK: From what I can understand about it, they wanted to do a thing where they were more mean to the contestants, kind of more mean spirited toward them? As opposed to – it’s that thing that we were talking about earlier, of making fun of somebody versus having fun with them. Is that pretty accurate, would you say?

Newt: Well, we can’t really tell, because nobody has seen the pilot episodes. Maybe it didn’t work with German humor or something. I’m not sure, but I don’t know. We we do have other similar comedy panel shows that have been running successfully, so there must have been something about the production that – I mean, they didn’t even try to work out a different system for how the series would work. They just kind of put the idea off in general so–

TK: I know we had an American taskmaster that bombed. I haven’t watched any of it because I’ve heard it’s so bad. And even though Alex is the assistant for it – I just keep hearing horrible, horrible things about it, and I’m like, “Yeah, I’d rather not watch this if it’s as bad as it says it is.” It’s cringe, but in a bad way, which I don’t like. I feel like there’s a lot of British comedy shows that are cringe, but in a way that I enjoy. I was going to say Ghosts, but I mean, it’s not really cringe. Ghosts is more kind of wholesome and just really funny, but I know that a lot of people, they’ll watch stuff like Man Down, which Greg is in, but I haven’t seen. And they’re like, “That’s so cringe, but Greg is in it, so I gotta watch it.” I guess everybody has their own ideas of what cringe is and at what point you have to actively stop watching something, because of how icky it makes you feel. And I know that that’s the reason that they stopped doing the “interact with public” tasks in Taskmaster because they did that in series one, where they had like, “High five a 55 year old,” or something like that. And everyone was just like, “I hate this, I hate this, I hate this.” So I think it was either after that, or after – I think they had one other interacting with the public task, but it never aired? And they were like, “Yeah, it’s just not the vibe. That’s not what we’re trying to go for here.”

Newt: I feel like these tasks in public also make it feel a lot like other shows where you have these street interviews or something. That’s why I’m always thinking about where they interview people who are on the street and ask them different kind of questions, and then the joke is that the people say something stupid and, I don’t know, it just feels weird to pull “normal” people into it. Because they didn’t really agree.

TK: They didn’t sign up for this, for sure. Well, before we wrap up, do you have any last thoughts or anything that we didn’t cover that you wanted to talk about?

Newt: Can’t think of anything right now, to be honest. Pretty happy.

TK: So, definitely a good conversation, I think. And it’s one just one of the many, many things I love about Taskmaster and its fandom is how they embrace every kind of diversity, which is really nice. So during our wrap up, we always ask our guests if you have any fan work recommendations. If you have any fan works, or authors, or fan artists, or whatever that you want to shout out, and if you don’t, that’s fine. But we like to ask.

Newt: Yes, I came prepared. I had a good think about it, which was actually really hard because there’s just so many talented artists, writers in our fandom, it’s insane. But, I have two fics that I’d like to recommend. One is, Shush Pat by one of our lovely anonymous writers, which was for kind of a while, just my “going to bed” fic. I think it’s just really comfy and it’s really sweet and I really enjoyed it. The other one is Dog Day Afternoons by Kim Tey, which is this kind of story where Alex has a curse that turns him into a dog.

TK: That’s so cute.

Newt: Yeah, I really love it. Especially the fantastical elements. Recommendation.

TK: Awesome. Sweet. Well, that’s pretty much it. Unless you have anything that you’d like to plug as far as, I don’t know, any socials that you want people to find you on or anything like that?

Newt: Not really. I’m not a big social guy. You can find me on my AO3 if you’re interested in reading fanfic, I guess.

TK: And, for the listeners, tell us what your AO3 handle is.

Newt: I’m IheartBingo, and then with, zero, zero – kind of a sad looking face – IheartBingo0_0.

TK: Awesome. We will link that in the episode description and also on the website, I think. I’m not in charge of those things, so somebody else will do it. Well Newt, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. We’ve really enjoyed having you.

Newt: Thank you.

TK: All right. See you online. Bye!

Lewis: And once again, that was TK and Newt discussing neurodivergence in relation to Taskmaster. You can find Newt at IheartBingo0_0 on AO3, and find all the fanworks discussed in this episode in the episode description.