#there are pages and pages of meta that we could write about these two

[ambiguous-avery]

On the Same Page

bf!Sam Winchester x fem!reader!Reader/You | WC: 4142

Summary: Sam finds out what kind of books you like to read in your free time and maybe gets a little inspired by them.

Tags/Warnings: Smut 18+ MDNI, no use of Y/N, established relationship, reader is AFAB, femme nicknames (pretty girl), unprotected P in V sex (remember to be safe, friends), PWP (Plot? What plot?), porn with feelings, fluff, no beta we die like men

A/N: Here’s a piece inspired by this TikTok audio. This goes out to all the girlies who read (and write) the filthiest smut in public completely straight-faced. I see you because I am you. Also, tell me why writing this felt semi-meta haha.

You were something else when it came to lore and research. Sam could set down a pile of books and tell you to find info about a specific monster, and you could get back to him in under an hour, pinpointing the exact paragraph he had in mind when he gave you the challenge. You were quick as a whip when it came to the sheer amount of information you could tear through to get to what you were looking for. The only time Sam ever saw you take your time with a book was when you read something for yourself. 

The you that read books as a hobby was very different from the hunter-research you. When you read your own personal books, you had a completely different look about you. Instead of the fierce concentration you wore when trying to find an incantation, you looked peaceful. Like you were savoring the words on the page. Like you enjoyed letting them take hold of you and weave a fantastic story around you. As if real life didn’t have enough fantastical stories. Granted, the ones in real life were less romanticized, and he could hardly blame you for the desire to escape even if it were just for a short while.

Sam had quickly figured out the different expressions you wore when you read. He saw the subtle smiles and bitten lips and little leg kicks. And when he asked, you would tell him about how a character just confessed to another or how two characters just shared their first kiss. The sweet moments. The tender ones. He could tell when characters were going through strife by the way your eyebrows would furrow together, and a look of concern would worry its way across your forehead in creases. But nothing was quite like the eerie calm that would wash over you every now and again. That was the one reaction that he couldn’t figure out. 

At first, he mistook it for your neutral reading face. But after several times of seeing and mentally comparing it to how you looked when you read something like a newspaper article, he discovered that it was different from how you normally looked when you read. So then he started looking for patterns. When did that expression show up in comparison to when you would smile and kick your feet over a Hallmark moment? That avenue of thinking didn’t help him much either. Because that calm expression would overtake you sometimes before you were kicking your feet but also sometimes after. And sometimes, the calm would be broken in the middle before sliding your features back to that unreadable mask he just couldn’t figure out.

But Sam was nothing if not determined. And he had the internet at his fingertips. Although he rather enjoyed the game of trying to figure out his girlfriend, every man had his limits. With you sitting across from him on the bed in your shared room, he typed the name of your book into his search bar and hit enter. That calm had swept over you again. He clicked into the top search result, a link to the publisher’s website, and scrolled down the web page, hazel eyes skimming over the book’s description. It seemed like a pretty straightforward enemies-to-lovers story. But as Sam continued down the webpage, a large heading caught his eye. Trigger warnings. And as he read through those, Sam swallowed thickly. So it was that kind of book.

The pieces fell into place in Sam’s mind shortly after that.

When his gaze flicked back up to you, you still had that same unreadable expression on your face. He closed his laptop and scooched in close to you. 

“What page are you on, pretty girl?” he asked softly, planting a kiss against your temple. You let the book fall against your chest – a little too quickly, he mentally noted – as you turned your attention to him. You looked like a deer caught in the headlights of a car, like you couldn’t believe he was there, invading your comfy, cozy world the words on the page had crafted around you. Absolutely adorable.

“Nothing,” you squeaked. He raised an eyebrow, and he knew that his suspicions were right on the nose.

“‘Nothing’ isn’t a page number,” he quipped, pressing another kiss to your cheek as he slid an arm between you and the pillow you were leaning against. His pillow, he noted. Because his pillow was always ‘comfier than yours’ even though they were the exact same pillow. You peeked at the page number, and he couldn’t help but notice how to angled the book away from him.

“Two-forty-three,” you muttered, barely audible. Sam nodded, pretending to accept your answer before reaching for your book. You grabbed his wrist, and he flashed you a knowing grin.

“What, I can’t read to my pretty girl?” His tone of voice was teasing with a hint of something more behind it, and his hazel eyes twinkled with mischief.

“Don’t pick a fight you can’t win,” you warned, although your voice only had a mild heat to it. Sam knew better than to mess with you and your books. He chuckled.

You bit your lip and turned your attention back to your book, trying to focus on the words on the page, but you were acutely aware of Sam’s presence. How long had he been watching you? Heat crept up your neck. Had he been watching your reactions? Times when you swooned to yourself over a cheesy confession. Moments when you couldn’t help but giggle quietly when one of the protagonists realized that they were in love with the other. The times you kicked your feet and squealed internally when one of your favorite tropes showed up. And if he had seen those reactions, then that also meant that he had seen... Oh no.

Sam was perceptive. Dangerously so. And you had zero doubts that he had caught onto the fact that your calm expression wasn’t calm at all. It was concentration. The kind of concentration that came with trying to maintain your composure while reading something decidedly... adult.

“You know,” Sam’s voice rumbled close to your ear, and you nearly jumped out of your skin. “I could make that book a lot more interesting.” 

You snapped your book shut.

“Sam Winchester, are you insinuating something?” you asked, feigning indignance. His answering laugh was deep and warm, wrapping around you like a blanket.

“Just that I know you too well. Your ‘calm reading expression’ isn’t as unreadable as you think it is.” His fingers traced patterns on your shoulder.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” you huffed, but the way your lip twitched upward in the tiniest hint of a smile gave you away. Sam didn’t miss it, and his eyebrow arched knowingly.

“Oh? So if I were to take that book right now and flip to page two-forty-three, I wouldn’t find anything... interesting?” You clutched the book tighter to your chest.

“It’s literature, Sam. Very... sophisticated... adult literature.”

“Mmhmm.” His smile was dangerous. Playful. Very Sam. “Very sophisticated, I’m sure.”

“The plot is actually quite complex,” you defended, trying to maintain dignity despite the fact that the heat had risen to your cheeks. “There’s political intrigue and–”

“And?” Sam prompted, his voice dropping an octave. You swallowed hard.

“And character development.” Your voice shrank. Sam shifted closer, his breath warm against your neck.

“Character development,” he repeated in a tone that very blatantly said he didn’t believe you. You didn’t believe you either, if you were being honest. “You know what I find fascinating?”

“What?” you asked, trying to ignore the way your heart fluttered in your chest when he looked at you like you were the only one in the universe.

“How expressive your eyes get when you’re reading those scenes.” His fingers trailed up your arm, leaving goosebumps in their wake. “They get all wide and dark, and you bite your lip just like you’re doing right now.”

You immediately released your lower lip from between your teeth, making a mental note to never play poker with Sam lest he take you for every dollar you had to your name.

“I do not.”

“You absolutely do.” Sam’s grin was wolfish now. “And sometimes, when it’s really good, you make this tiny little sound in the back of your throat.”

“I do not make sounds!” Your protest came out louder than you had meant it to.

“Want me to prove it?” Sam challenged, his hand sliding to rest on your hip. “I bet if I read that page out loud right now, you’d make that exact noise.”

The thought of Sam reading the words on that page. Those words in his voice. Your stomach flipped in a way that had nothing to do with embarrassment and everything to do with anticipation.

“You wouldn’t dare,” you shot back even as your grip on your book loosened slightly.

“Try me,” Sam whispered, his fingers dancing along the edge of your book. “I’ve read worse things than whatever’s on that page. Ancient curses, demonic texts...” His lips brushed against your ear. “Lust and fertility spells... Things that would make your romance novel blush.” You couldn’t help the small laugh that escaped you.

“It’s not a romance novel. It’s contemporary fiction with romantic elements,” you corrected.

“Of course,” Sam agreed, the tone in his voice clearly humoring you. “So contemporary fiction with romantic elements has you looking like you’re trying to solve complex equations in your head? Because that’s what your face looks like.”

“My face does not look like that.” Sam’s hand finally caught yours, gently prying the book from your grasp.

“Let’s see what has you so... concentrated.”

You made a half-hearted grab for the book, but your heart wasn’t fully into it. Sam flipped through the pages, his long fingers deftly finding page 243. His eyes scanned the text, and you watched as his expression shifted from playful to something... darker. More intense.

“Well, well, well...” he murmured, his voice dropping into that dangerous register that always made your knees weak. “No wonder you’re so engrossed.”

“It’s part of the plot,” you insisted, though you didn’t quite believe your own argument.

Sam’s eyes flicked up to meet yours, and the heat in them made your breath catch in your throat.

“The plot where the rugged hero pins the protagonist against the wall and–” He paused to skim the next line, one eyebrow raised in your direction. “You call these ‘romantic elements’?” You snatched the book back from him, tamping down your embarrassment.

“It’s about the emotional connection,” you mumbled unconvincingly.

“Right,” Sam drawled, all teeth and dimples as he smiled. “The emotional connection happening while they’re–”

“Sam!” You swatted at his arm, but a smile of your own tugged your lips upwards.

He caught your hand, bringing it to his lips to press a soft kiss against your knuckles.

“You know,” he started, voice low and intimate, “it doesn’t bother me that you read those sorts of things. I just didn’t realize how... detailed they were.”

“Why do you think I keep them to myself? You guys watch your porn; we girls typically read it.” Sam’s thumb traced circles on your wrist as his eyes darkened.

“I could give you something better than fiction.” Your next breath stuttered.

“Better how?”

“Well,” he began, his lips just a whisper away from yours, “for starters, I wouldn’t just pin you against a wall and leave it at that.”

“No?” The word was harder to get out than you expected.

“No.”

His free hand came up to cup your cheek, thumb brushing over your bottom lip. “I’d take my time with you. Make it last longer than a page or two.” You couldn’t stop the small sound that escaped your throat at that – the exact sound he’d mentioned earlier. Sam’s knowing smile told you that he didn’t miss it either. “There it is,” he murmured, satisfaction laced in his voice. “That’s the noise.”

“Shut up,” you groaned, bringing your hands to your face. But there was no denying the way your body responded to his words. To the knowing look in his eyes. To the feeling of being completely seen and known by your boyfriend. To being so completely loved.

“Make me.” Sam’s voice was a rumble that you felt more than heard.

The book tumbled to the floor, forgotten, as you reached for him, fingers threading through his soft hair to pull him closer. His lips met yours with an intensity that stole your breath. No matter how many times you kissed him, you would never get enough. You could kiss him all day, every day and still never have enough of him.

“So,” Sam mumbled against your lips,” tell me what happens next in that book of yours.” You laughed breathlessly.

“I thought you were giving me something better than fiction.”

“Oh I plan to.” His hand was already sliding beneath your shirt, warm against your skin. “But I need some inspiration. Tell me what those characters are doing right now.”

You bit your lip, a rush of boldness washing over you.

“He’s kissing her neck,” you whispered, “right below her ear where she’s most sensitive.”

“Like this?” Sam’s lips found that exact spot, drawing a gasp. You arched against him.

“Yeah,” you breathed. “Exactly like that.”

“What else?” His voice was rough with desire.

“He’s telling her how beautiful she is.” You dug your fingers into his shoulders as he continued his exploration. “How even though she does so much that annoys him, he can’t help but watch her. How he imagined this moment.”

Sam pulled back just enough to meet your eyes, his gaze intense.

“I have been watching you. All day,” he confessed. “The way you get so lost in those books. The way your breathing changes when you hit those scenes.” His hand slid up your side, fingers tracing your ribs through your shirt. “It’s been driving me crazy.”

“Why didn’t you say something sooner?” you asked as his lips returned to your neck. You tilted your head to the side.

“Because I liked watching you,” he admitted. “Liked trying to figure out what was happening in those pages that put that look on your face.” His teeth grazed the skin near your jugular, gently nipping. You shivered under his attention. “But now I think I’d rather be the one making you look that way.”

You tugged at his flannel, a sudden need to feel more of him overtaking you.

“Show me.” If you weren’t mistaken, you were sure Sam growled at your words. With one fluid movement, he had you beneath him, his weight pressing you into the mattress. His hands pinned yours above your head, a perfect mirror of the scene you’d been reading. The realization made heat pool in your core.

“Is this what happens in your book?” he asked, voice husky as he studied your face.

“Something like this,” you managed. “But the real thing is way better.”

“Damn right it is,” Sam growled. You were sure of it this time. And yeah. That was fucking hot.

Fiction had its perks, but as Sam’s hand wandered, – his other still kept your wrists pinned – exploring every inch of you with the same meticulous attention he gave to his research, you made the executive decision that reality was so much better. The way Sam whispered your name against your skin. The way his eyes darkened when you arched against him. There was no way any author could capture that perfectly.

“You know,” Sam murmured against your collarbone, “I’ve always wondered about what gets you so worked up in those books.” His fingers skimmed along the hem of your shirt, playing with it teasingly. “I think I like knowing your little secret.”

“It’s hardly a secret now,” you replied, your voice catching as his hand slipped beneath the fabric. Sam’s smile turned predatory.

“So tell me, what happens next in that scene? Page two-forty-four must be getting good.” You flushed, remembering exactly what came next.

“M-maybe we should just improvise.”

“No, no,” Sam insisted, his eyes gleaming with mischief. “I want to know. Consider it research.”

“Research?” you laughed, only slightly breathless as his thumb traced circles on your hip.

“Very important hunter research,” he confirmed solemnly, though his dimples gave him away. “What does your book suggest I do next?”

You swallowed hard, remembering the explicit details on the following page. It may or may not have been your third read of the book... You’d never confirm or deny that.

“Well, he... he starts to undress her. Slowly.” Your voice dropped to a whisper. “Like he’s unwrapping something precious.” Sam ‘hmm’ed softly as he slid the hem of your shirt up, just enough to expose a strip of skin. 

“Like this?” You nodded, breath unsteady as he slowly pushed the fabric higher, his calloused fingertips setting every nerve alight in their wake. “And then?” he prompted, his eyes never leaving yours as he continued his torturously slow pace.

“He tells her how long he’s wanted her,” you breathed, lifting your arms to help him pull off your shirt entirely. Sam’s expression softened, vulnerability bleeding through his teasing facade.

“That part’s true, you know,” he said softly. His hands stilled on your skin, hazel eyes holding yours with a steady confidence that made your chest tighten. “Ever since that first hunt when you stayed up all night to find that obscure banishing ritual. You were so focused. So brilliant. And then the next morning I found you asleep with your nose in a book.”

“I remember,” you said, reaching up to brush his hair from his forehead. “You brought me coffee.”

“And you told me about the book instead of the hunt.” His smile had turned tender, his thumb brushing against your cheek. “That’s when I knew I was in trouble.”

Warmth bloomed in your chest at the confession, a different warmth than the heat of desire, but it was no less powerful. He had never told you that before.

“Are you saying you fell for me because of my reading habits?”

“Among other things.” He lowered his head to press a kiss against your collarbone. “I fell for all of you. The researcher who could outpace me in the library. The hunter who had my back. The woman who got lost in fictional worlds when ours got too heavy.” Your chest grew tight with emotion. You had known that something more profound had been building between you and Sam since those early days. But you didn’t ever think it could become something like this. Something deeper. Sam wasn’t just your other half. He didn’t just complete you. He was more.

“God, I love you,” you said breathlessly. You pulled him down to kiss you.

“Love you too.”

You slid your hands under his flannel shirt, pushing it off his broad shoulders. 

“Oh, is this what happens next?”

“I don’t care about the book anymore,” you said as he shrugged out of the garment. “I’d rather write our own story.” Sam’s responding smile was slow and devastating.

“I like that idea.” His hands found your waist, fingertips pressing just firmly enough not to tickle. “Chapter one?”

“Chapter one.”

As his lips found yours again, you couldn’t help but think about how different this was from the scene in your book. The fictional characters had passion, certainly. But they lacked the history that made every tough between you and Sam meaningful. They didn’t have years of watching each other’s backs. Of patching wounds. Of the late-night research sessions that turned into deeper conversations. 

When Sam’s hand slipped beneath the waistband of your pants, his touch tentative despite the heat in his eyes, you bucked against him. The sound that escaped you was one you don’t think you had ever made before. Not while reading. Not during hunts. Not any moment prior.

“I want to hear more of that,” he said softly, his lips trailing down your neck to the sensitive spot where your shoulder began. “I want to hear every sound you can make.”

“That might take a while.”

“We’ve got all night.” His voice was a promise against your skin. “And I’m a very thorough researcher.” You laughed, even as his hands continued their exploration.

“I don’t think research is as broad of a term as you think it is.” Sam lifted his head for a moment.

“Field work,” he corrected, pressing a kiss to your sternum. “Very important field work.”

Clothing was discarded piece by piece, and Sam took his time memorizing what made you gasp. What made you sigh. What made you whisper his name like a prayer. As though he had never done it before. And when he moved back above you, his weight supported on his forearms, his eyes found yours. And you knew that no words could ever capture this feeling. The connection between the two of you went beyond physical desire. It was built on trust forged and tempered by life-or-death situations. On countless quiet moments in motel rooms. The sleepless nights in the bunker library. The understanding that came from seeing each other at your most vulnerable.

“You with me?” Sam whispered, his breath warm against your lips as he paused, waiting. Ever patient. Ever caring.

“Always,” you answered, and the word had more weight behind it. Weight you only hoped Sam could understand. His hips pressed forward, and he sank into you, a delicious stretch every time.

When he moved, it was with the same care and attention he gave to everything important in his life. Each thrust was deliberate, his eyes never leaving yours as your bodies found a rhythm together. Your hands mapped the familiar terrain of his back, tracing old scars you knew the stories behind, feeling his muscles flex beneath your fingertips.

“Better than fiction?” he asked, his voice strained with the effort of maintaining control. His hair fell around his face like a curtain, and you reached up to tuck it behind his ear, needing to see his eyes.

“So much better,” you breathed, arching into him as he shifted just enough to hit the spot that made stars explode in your mind’s eye. “No comparison.”

Your words seemed to be the key to the floodgates in him. Sam’s movements became more urgent, more passionate. Though he never lost the core tenderness that was so essentially Sam. Your name fell from his lips like a mantra. Like a song he would never get tired of singing. It mixed with praises and desperate sounds that you tried to commit to memory, determined to hear them again and again.

Pressure built inside you, and you reached a hand between your bodies, finding your clit. Your head fell back against the pillow, jaw going slack. When you finally tumbled over the edge, Sam’s name tore from your throat, loud enough that you were sure someone else heard you. You couldn’t be bothered to care for longer than a half a second as Sam followed you moments later. Your name was a broken cry on his lips as his body tensed and then shuddered against yours.

For a long moment, there was only the sound of your mingled breathing, gradually evening out as you each reveled in each other. Sam pressed his forehead against yours, eyes closed as though he were savoring the moment. When he finally looked at you again, you were sure that the tenderness in his gaze made your heart skip a beat.

“I think that I need to pay more attention to what you’re reading,” he murmured, pressing a kiss to your temple as he shifted to lie beside you. You laughed softly, curling into his side as he wrapped his arm around you.

“Is that right?”

“Mmm,” he hummed, his fingers tracing idle patterns along your side. “Quality control. Research purposes.” You laughed again, playfully smacking his chest.

“You’re ridiculous,” you said, but you smiled regardless. “So you’ll be monitoring my reading material now?”

“No, never. Just... taking a more active interest.” Sam’s dimples deepened. His hand moved to drag lazily up and down your spine, sending soft shivered through your still-sensitive body. “For instance, if I see that calm expression again, I’ll know exactly what’s happening on those pages.”

You buried your face in the crook of his neck, feeling his laughter rumble through him.

“I still can’t believe you figured it out.”

“Hunter, remember? Observing details is kind of our thing.” His fingers tangled in your hair, gently working through the knots that had formed. “Though I have to say... this particular investigation had a much better ending than most.”

“Better than any book ending too,” you murmured, pressing a kiss to his collarbone.

---

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[thealogie]

Would love to hear your Six hating thoughts because I genuinely thought I was just being a hater

it is a bankrupt enterprise on three separate levels.

First on a purely technical sentence by sentence level, these songs are bad. it's not good that I can predict the end of the sentence because you went for the most predictable rhyme almost every time. Also, I just think perhaps on a pure songwriting level someone should have been like "hey we're not going to let you be so obvious as to sing the words 'we used to be six wives'"....also it's fine to have pop-inspired musical theatre, but you have to do something to adapt it to storytelling! this was just...someone wanted to write a pop album in the voice of the six wives of henry the eighth, it wasn't adapted to be theatrical.

Second, politically bad. The message is like "oh no our stories are only told in the context of our husband, but we're going to literally only sing about who we were as his wives until the end where we realize we should take control of the narrative but we'll only do that in a really shallow meaningless way." This point could honestly be its own 20-page paper. Bad bad historical retelling.

Third, anyone ever heard of having a book for your musical? This goes hand in hand with point #1 i think, but ok let's say I buy the meta concept that this is a story about a pop concert put on by the wives of henry. Can you do something with that? Create some interactions and character growth between the characters as they go through the songs? Every scene between the songs felt like someone held a gun to the writers' head and said "we need two minutes for people to reset and get ready for the next song you HAVE to write some filler."

[cbrownjc]

Thoughts and Speculation after 2x07 (Spoilers):

A lot of people have said that this moment from the Season 2 trailers might actually be caused by a fight between Louis and Armand in the penthouse:

gif credit: @hermit-frog

And I have to say, after watching episode 2x07? I think they might be right.

Because if you know the book, you know that it is at the very end of it, like literally the last few pages, where it's revealed that Louis knew the whole time about Armand's role in what happened to Claudia. And they break up.

And so I think the same thing is coming next week on the show. Only in the show's regard, Louis knew of Armand's role, as we saw here -- but then was made to forget the actual full context of just how involved Armand was.

Because, as I pointed out on Twitter, this image from the trial --

-- is quite something. You have both the writer and director for the Théâtre des Vampires not on stage for this whole thing. Very much underlying the fact that this is a theatrical play that is being put on. As we saw, there was even a real, actual SCRIPT for this whole thing!

Like, how much more could the show have been pointing to what was really going on here? Trust a writing staff of playwrights to be meta about all of this. 🙃

Because the ending of this trial was written and locked in long ago. And who is the one that usually says when a play or film is locked in and finished?

The Director. (And yes I know producers and studios do too, but Armand is very much all of that wrt his role for their little theater as well).

BTW, Santiago and the coven did NOT expect Armand to do that to the audience. Saving Louis was very much off-script. And if Armand really had no power here, the coven could have just taken Louis off stage and killed him another way. The only reason they didn't was because Armand was very much not powerless in all of this.

Like, I love Armand's character, I really do -- now. But that is something that only came about after I read the books from Queen of the Damned forward. For the first two books, I very much did not like him. And, particularly when it comes to the Paris part of this story, that is where we are with his character right now. I know why he's doing what he's doing, I understand it. But I can't defend it.

Louis probably figured things out before San Francisco in 1973. He probably knew Armand's full role in what went down, same as in the book, after it all happened. But it was his suicide attempt that had Armand redact that knowledge from Louis' mind. The clues for that being the case are all there after episode 2x05.

Because, at the end of the day, even knowing Armand's full role in Claudia's death, Louis still mostly blamed himself for it all.

As we see, things are slowly starting to come back to Louis, but he's not fully there yet. And I think this whole memory thing is a more literal interpretation of the veil that descended over Louis' mind after Paris in the books.

A veil that only began to lift once Armand revealed to Louis that Lestat was alive. As we've seen, Louis knew Lestat was alive back in 1973. I'm not sure if he does so now. But maybe this isn't about knowing if Lestat is alive or not. Maybe it's just Louis thinking he needed to be punished because of his own role in failing Claudia -- and staying away from Lestat was part of that self-punishment. Because that view is a feeling I got when watching episode 2x05 and Louis not wanting to speak to Lestat. His refusal to speak wasn't out of anger IMO, but more fear and even sorrow.

The show is very much sticking to the beats of the book with all of this, and not revealing things about what happened that were revealed in later books. So I don't think Louis fully knows what was going on with Lestat during that trial. I wouldn't be surprised if we learn he still doesn't, since he never learned it in the first book.

But as I said here, it was clear as day that Lestat wasn't himself during that trial. Physically and especially mentally. I didn't even guess that the show would be that obvious about it, but they were. All very much hinting about what was really going on with his appearance here.

And Louis himself might, just might figure that out for himself. Especially if Dreamstat might appear to be back in his mind again. Because Dreamstat is very much Louis' subconscious. And I think Louis' subconscious knows something important is missing wrt all of this.

It was nice that, at least in the end, someone chose Claudia. Madeleine could have escaped this but chose to die with Claudia instead when she didn't have to. Her little middle finger to the crowd gave me a smile.

They did not do the full reveal of Claudia's diaries and what was in them on stage, which I seriously thought they would. They gave a hint about it, but more so in episode 2x05 than in here. Which means that, in a later season, we're still looking at that reveal from Merrick happening it seems. But then again . . . there were some things I suspect got left out on purpose because the actual (attempted) murder of Lestat was very much glossed over for us, the audience, during that trial sequence. We are very much set to revisit that whole thing during The Vampire Lestat adaptation in Season 3, of course. But I think even more will be revealed about that there then I originally thought.

And finally, Claudia. They said in the Inside The Episode they wanted her to go out with as much strength and defiance as she could and yeah, she did. But in the end, I still think she was angry, sad, and hurt by it all, which she had every right to be. Because at the end of the day, she never should have been made and was made for all the wrong reasons. But being turned so young made her a fierce and pure vampire though and though because she never had enough time to have lived a human life to have those types of morals and outlooks fully imprinted on her. That was always one of Claudia's core traits wrt her being turned so young, and she still had it here. And yes girl, you will haunt things after this -- particularly your parents.

In fact, it probably very much was your voice Louis heard calling him back in 2x05, wasn't it?

So, for a penultimate episode, this was very, very good. And things are very much going to explode next week. I knew Louis going Carrie/Firestarter on the coven would happen in 2x08. That moment always screamed "season finale" to me. Santiago picking up Claudia's yellow dress is also significant, as I think we'll see Louis' POV of that moment with Lestat about it.

And the break up between Louis and Armand might just be much more violent than it was in the book as well.

[mswyrr]

Season 2 has its writing issues, but it accomplished some major character work with Rhaenyra. It took her across a moral threshold and changed some core components of how she relates to others. She begins the season paralleled with Helaena. But she ends the season paralleled with Aemond and Daemon. IMO, the Red Sowing was a major moral Rubicon crossed - and she's changed in permanent, fundamental ways. That was the goal of this season. Partly the reaction to the season is due to how this kind of internal character work isn't usually the focus of Fantasy; it's more common in "realistic" dramas.

First, the comparisons with Helaena. They mourn their sons in visually similar ways, clutching an item of clothing/blanket of the child's.

Then Rhaenyra repudiates the idea that she wanted Jaehaerys' head, specifically by mentioning this similarity and empathy with her little sister:

It's after this scene that she confronts Daemon and rejects his "a son for a son" logic. Then we get the final visual parallel. Both sisters look up and see (in flower petals and dust) the ash that will rain down on the kingdom due to the destruction of a dragon fire war. They're both disturbed by it. Early in the season, Rhaenyra tried to do all she could to prevent that future. By the end of the season, though, she has wholly embraced it.

By the time we get to the Red Sowing (2x07), Rhaenyra has changed her mind - she embraced the fire. Burning people alive for power. She might have introduced the "seeds" to Silverwing, who wouldn't have slaughtered them. But she chose Vermithor. She chose their deaths. And the power felt good. It pushed back the fear and trauma of the early season. As Emma put it:

What is going through Rhaenyra’s mind as she watches the Targaryen bastards be devoured and torched alive? "I think she feels like a god. I think she feels super proud." [interview source] [and major credit to darksvster's meta, which gives full details of where Rhaenyra is at in this episode]

Not only does that happen - but in the next episode, her brother Aemond does the same thing. Massacring people and looking down at it, feeling like a god. Feeling powerful again, after having been made to feel powerless by running up against Rhaenyra's new dragonriders at the end of 2x07.

The visual parallel is as stark as the ones earlier in the season were with Helaena:

They're not being subtle. She is being positioned opposite a brother - a mirror to her enemy - it's just not Aegon, as some people want. But it makes sense that it's the brother driven enough to *take* the crown against the rules of this society - the position of first born noble daughters and second sons has been compared since season 1. They're so close to being the one with the rights to power and yet there's a barrier.

Both of these siblings have crossed that barrier. They will take what this society will not give them. They will take it with fire and blood.

As we see in the next parallel with Aemond. They literally are twinned in two scenes where an as yet untainted female family member challenges them on their policy of burning cities of innocent people:

My final note is that now Rhaenyra is on the same page as Daemon as well. She repudiated his behavior earlier in the season, but now she embraces his return and embraces his core logic. She uses his words, his phrase in a scene where imo we are meant to notice that--while love is still there-- she's being much more cruel to Alicent than she would have ever been in the past:

Daemon has changed in the fact that he will recognize her as the reigning queen, but his morality has not changed. Rhaenyra's has - she is now of a similar mindset as Daemon and Aemond. She uses religion--and her conversations with Mysaria about caring for the smallfolk--to justify it to herself and she believes herself righteous. But the actions and their consequences (people burned alive) are the same. And for the same goal of power.

They are doing all of this so artfully--keeping us so tightly in Rhaenyra's pov where she feels justified as she crosses this moral Rubicon--that it can be difficult to see without pulling back and looking at the clues, the shifting parallels, and the ways her behavior by the end of the season is truly, in pivotal ways, not what it would have once been.

[writingonleaves]

were you sent by someone who wanted me dead? (did you sleep with a gun underneath our bed?) - jeremy swayman

pairing: jeremy swayman x original female character

warnings: swearing, pretty angsty. hopeful ish ending because i can't do sad endings, very personal but i think many can relate in their own way, cliche ish, barely proofread

inspired by + title: "the smallest man who ever lived" by taylor swift

word count: 5.6k

author's note: i'd argue almost every piece any author writes is personal, because it has their life interspersed through the words. but this one really is, because a majority of this is the exact same words i wrote years ago after a break-up. heard the bridge to this song and immediately knew i had to write something inspired by it. also trying a new format of sorts (maybe a bit meta??), so i hope you enjoy and lmk what you think!!

~*~*~

When Noelle Betsko walked away from Jeremy Swayman, holding back tears until the call dropped, she knew it was going to be a tough time for the foreseeable future. 

It didn’t matter that the pandemic had forced them apart. She knew she would still feel him for months to come.

She did the only thing she knows how to do when trying to deal with things. The one thing she always resorts to as an aspiring novelist. Sometimes on her laptop when the words were spilling out too quickly for her brain to catch up, tears littering the keyboard. Usually in her old beat-up journal, scribbling in the cursive that Jeremy claimed he always loved (“It makes your handwriting unique”) with the pens he had gifted her just a few months prior. 

At the age of 21, Noelle got her heart broken for the first time. At the age of 26, she’s about to publish her first poetry collection of sorts, all of the poems modeled after journal entries written throughout her life. So not really poetry, though her mother would say otherwise. 

She swallows as she thumbs through the middle part of the first known and binded copy of “miscellaneous.” There are only eight entries in the whole collection that are taken verbatim from her past writing. These are the eight.

May 13, 2020 (three days post-breakup, crying in my childhood bedroom)

I don’t even recognize who I was and who you were in those writings before these pages filled with love and hope and happiness. I can’t even summon up those feelings anymore that I knew existed at one point. Those feelings of complete bliss and love for someone so deep you can’t explain it. 

I’m mad at myself for not being able to conjure those feelings, because at one point, I did love you. How could something that was part of my daily life for over two years just disappear so quickly? 

But now, I’m not mad at myself. I’m mad, but I don’t know where to direct that anger to. I feel a bit empty sometimes, but then frustrated the next. Sometimes I get sad, but not so much compared to the other feelings. I spent enough time being sad during our relationship.

When we broke up, on an annoyingly beautiful Tuesday in May — over the damn phone, mind you, which whatever, it’s COVID. Fine — You told me you felt like you had been putting more effort into us. 

At the time, I didn’t react, but I’ve been thinking about how angry that statement made me. Makes me, actually. I was always very open with how much I gave to that relationship. How much it meant to me. How much it affected me. But I understand that with some people, sharing everything too much equates to things not meaning anything anymore. But you out of all people should’ve known that I mean everything I say.

I felt like I gave so much. I know I gave so much. When I told you I loved you, I always meant it. Every single time. When I told you I missed you, I always meant it. I wished you were right next to me at that moment. I mentally gave so much, because to me, I wanted to. You were always on my mind, always high up on my list of priorities. I never took us for granted.

I’ve been questioning if that was the same for you. Did you start becoming complacent?

The second thing you said that day that hasn’t left my head is that you knew me pretty well. And initially, I remember not thinking much of it. So I don’t doubt that; you always knew right when I was about to cry, even over the phone. You often knew when I was mad or upset, but when I look back now, you never pushed. Which is a good thing, to an extent. But it was a bad thing sometimes too. I knew you often wanted to give me space, but sometimes I didn’t want space. I wanted you to push. To try to understand. Maybe that’s unfair of me; it probably is. I should just say I want to talk about it more, right? 

But if you genuinely knew me, you would’ve known.

After two years, seven months and 12 days,  I still feel like I didn’t know you. Did I ever know you at all?

When people talked shit about you, I always defended you. And I still would defend you now. But lately, I've questioned what I’m even defending. All those good qualities that I thought you had, were they even real? Of course, I know some of them were, to a certain extent. But as I look back on us, there’s a lot of doubt about whether I even knew the person I called my boyfriend for so long. I know there was a point where you cared about me, but I can’t remember when. 

I often felt like I was letting you know so much about my life, but you didn’t do the same. I get that sometimes a person just wants to forget about the bad and focus on the good with a person you like for awhile. I get that. But once that was happening every damn time? That should’ve been a red flag. 

June 7, 2020 (twenty eight days post break-up, outside my childhood room on the deck) 

I don’t understand how you can give so much to something or someone and have it not be recognized or appreciated or enough. If I wasn’t enough for you, how will I be enough for anyone?

I hope one day you’ll truly understand how much this hurt. Not just the breakup, but feeling like I was always being pulled in a direction I didn’t always want to be pulled in. Feeling I was stuck between a rock and a hard place and never ever being able to win. I hate that I settled so much in the last year. Because I should’ve demanded more, even though deep down I knew you were never going to be able to give it to me.

I think back to our past daily texts, and I just don’t get it. At one point, we both meant the things we said to each other. 

Yet we still hurt each other. 

This fucking hurts.

You’ve hurt me so much, but most of it wasn’t intentional, which I think is somewhat even worse. Because I’m not totally mad at you for causing the pain. You never did anything outright to cause me pain, but I still feel like you did. 

Unintentional pain almost stings more than intentional. 

When I asked you out that night after we were both on an emotional high, I took a chance. For once in my life, I took the leap, knowing that I could get humiliated or hurt or just straight up shot down. 

Where did it all go wrong? Or, more realistically, how did we think that we could go through the wrong when it was there at the start?

I’m trying not to blame myself too much. Trying not to tell myself that I should’ve known better. 

All those times, especially at the start, when I would ask you if you genuinely liked me, you always thought I was just trying to be annoying. But you never understood that I genuinely thought that way. My self confidence from the start was lacking, and you didn’t try to understand that, because I come across to everyone as confident and self-assured. 

It hurt, when you would brush things off like that. I felt like you didn’t care.

And then, it got to the point where I stopped asking that question. Part of that is because I did become more confident and you did show that you cared, and part of that was because I knew it would piss you off.

The amount of things I was scared to talk about with you because I knew it would piss you off? I don’t wish that feeling on anybody.

I shouldn’t have been scared. I shouldn’t have been uncomfortable. But I was. And if you did notice like sometimes you claimed to, why didn’t you make it more comfortable for me? Was that too much to ask for? 

So larger than life that at the end, you faded into just the smallest man who ever lived. Fuck you.

Was it too much to ask for when I just wanted to know why you were upset? You didn’t have to ever tell me the full story (lord knows there were times I didn’t), but was it too much to ask for something? You told me once that I’m the person you’ve told the most to. How? You barely told me anything. And when I wanted to talk to you, whether it was about growing up in Alaska or why you were in a bad mood last night, you always brushed it off. Always. 

So I don’t feel so bad about feeling like I gave more effort. I gave so much of myself to you. If you really cared about me like you claimed you did, why couldn’t you show even just 1% of that care back? Or just meet me in the middle?

I could’ve tried harder to meet you in the middle, I’ll admit that. But you didn’t even give me a map or a clue how to. 

I felt so fucking left in the dark. I felt left in the dark about my own fucking relationship, something that I should be completely sure about. If you really love someone and care about them, how can you leave them in the dark? How could you not even see that I was struggling to find a flashlight?

You did care about me. I know that. To some extent and at some point in time, you did care about me. But caring about someone and their well-being isn’t always enough.

Why couldn’t you have worked with me? When I was extending my hand out, why didn’t you reach for it? How can someone just be so blind? I mean, I’m practically always spelling it out for you. 

Maybe I am being selfish. But fuck, I just wanted to be happy. At some point, you made me happy. When did I start making you feel like I wasn’t enough? Why wasn’t I enough for you?

It’s useless, in a way, to keep going about this. Because I know I deserve better. And we’ll both find people who are better for us. We just couldn’t be that person to each other.

I fucking loved you.

I wish it ended differently.

July 8, 2020 (fifty nine days post-breakup, in front of the lake)

I really really fucking miss you. 

I do. 

I miss being able to text you that i love you and not necessarily expecting a response until the next morning. I miss knowing that as soon as you wake up, you’ll text me back and assure me that yeah, you love me too. 

I’m left feeling bittersweet as I look back on memories that are just splashes and not definite strokes on the canvas that used to be us.

I miss having you as a friend. 

I’ve been having more urges lately to want to text you. And it isn’t even anything important. Just moments I experience throughout the day.

Do you get the urge to do the same?

July 19, 2020 (seventy days post-breakup, still in the same damn house)

It’s hard. It really is. And it kinda just hits you at random parts of the day. Sometimes I wake up from a dream that you were in and have to remind myself that it didn’t happen. 

Sometimes it physically aches when I realize that you won’t ever help me put on my jacket again, or complain that my hair is in your face when we’re lying on the couch watching Brooklyn Nine Nine, or groan when I drag you up to dance with me (which you never improved on, no matter how many times I tried to teach you basic rhythm). I can’t view our song the same way anymore, and I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to. 

The other day, I read some simple thing on Twitter. I don’t even remember what it was, but I do remember that for a split second, I could see your smile in my mind. But it wasn’t just any smile. It was the smile you gave me when you took me ice skating that first time. I remember asking you what you were smiling at, and you said that you just were taking in this moment. I don’t know if you took a mental picture that day, but I know I did. That day seems so long ago now. 

In almost anything I do, you somehow pop into my mind or into the conversation. And it’s not even in a harmful way either. It’s because you were part of my life for so long. I see a dog on the street, and it reminds me of how you always stopped to pet every single one we’s see I write something in my messy handwriting, and I remember how you always used to complain that you couldn’t read the notes I’d occasionally leave around your place when you went away. I went to the doctor’s the other day, and they said I was 5 feet and 3 inches, which is just definitely not true, and I almost reached for my phone to text you, because you would’ve cackled and insisted that no, I’m 5 feet 2 inches and it wouldn’t even matter because I’ll always be shorter than you. It’s simple and minute things that make me miss you that much more.

I still can’t listen to some songs the same way anymore, but I can at least listen to them now, which is a feat in itself. I was unpacking from college and found the teddy bear you sent me the first extended time we had to be apart and had to immediately put that out of my sight. From those boxes also came photos that I had decorated my dorm room with, and to be honest, I’m glad now that I let you keep our best one. I deal with all my emotions, besides writing, by making Spotify playlists, and I made a new one earlier this week. I think it’s helping. It’s a slow process, this whole moving on thing, but it’s one that I’m trying to be grateful for, because like most things in life, you just don’t truly know until you go through it.

Sometimes, I find myself wondering how you are and how you’re healing. But, even though we’ve both changed since the day we met, if there’s one thing I know, it’s that you’re incredibly strong and stubborn. I hope that you’re finding some growth in this process too. 

October 17, 2020 (one hundred fifty seven days post-break up, apartment in orono)

It’s been almost 5 months, and you still cross my mind everyday. 

Why wasn’t I enough for you? Why didn’t you fucking tell me what you were thinking? Why was I the one who had to approach you just because I was just so done with the silent treatment?

But I’m not mad at you. Not anymore. The mad phase passed ages ago. 

Closure is a fake word. Even a breakup as mutual and smooth as ours was still left me with so many questions that will probably never be answered. 

Any breakup fucks you up to some extent. I knew it was going to mess me up even back when we were together. But not like this. Never like this. 

But like anything in life, I guess you can never really prepare for what you think you might feel, because most of the time, you discover a whole new side of you that you never thought existed. 

I don’t miss you. I don’t. I don’t feel that love in any way anymore. 

But I did once.

You did too, right?

November 15, 2020 (one hundred eighty six days post break-up, fogler library)

I hate Halloween. 

Though, it did bring me to you three years ago. I’m pretty sure I fell in love with you right then and there. 

Three years later, you texted me on Halloween, five months after our breakup. The universe really, really wanted to fuck with me. 

It was a tough night for you. I knew that. Because I know how you are after losing a game you should’ve won. But that didn’t mean that I owed you anything and had to respond. 

We agreed on no contact if we ever wanted to stay friends. Clearly, friends is out of the picture now, but come on. A vulnerable text after a bad night because you know I would feel bad for you?

Fuck, you know how much I would hate that. You had to have known. 

Just because we’re not dating anymore doesn’t mean that everything about you just disappears. I still know your tendencies. I still know exactly how my head burrows into your chest during a hug. I still know the actions I used to do that would be followed by you attacking me with a hug. I still could point you out in a crowd. 

I looked for you in every crowd for years. 

That stuff doesn’t just go away, no matter how much I want it to. But fuck. Fuck. Why did you text me? 

I don’t regret how I handled it. I probably would’ve responded months ago. But just like you, I’ve grown these last couple of months. 

It was comforting, for a split second, to know that maybe, just maybe, these past couple of months have been hard for you too. It makes me feel human. It makes me feel like I’m not crazy.

I’m glad you texted me. You gave me another level of closure I hadn’t known that I needed until then. 

But fuck, dude. You know me better than that. You should know me better than that. 

I hate Halloween.

November 26, 2020 (one hundred ninety seven days, at the coffee shop i brought you to when you came home with me two years ago)

I don’t regret loving you, but I hate you for what you did to me. 

Or maybe not. 

I hate knowing that even though we haven’t been in a relationship in a bit, it feels like sometimes, you’re on my mind the exact same amount when we were dating. I hate knowing that I gave so much of myself and my love to you, and it always felt unrecognized. 

Fuck, will it ever stop hurting? Will I ever be able to have to stop myself from thinking about you? Will it ever stop?

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. 

Happy birthday. I hope you enjoy it.

June 12, 2021 (three hundred ninety five days post-break up, in boston, visiting a friend)

Tonight, when a friend asked me about you and how I felt about how we ended, I was able to articulate my thoughts clearly. I’m really proud of myself for getting to a point where I can take the lessons I learned the few months after we broke up and acknowledge them in a succinct way without breaking down into tears. Just watery eyes and the occasional voice crack 

I’m also proud that I can say that when we were dating, I lost a bit of myself. For months, it was really hard to admit out loud.

I’m proud of how far I’ve come. Sometimes, I wish I could call or text you about it, because I think you’d be proud too. And I know I’d be proud of you. I am, to be honest. I do break resolve once in awhile and check on you through various avenues.

I still haven’t seen you in person since the last time COVID made us say goodbye. Maybe I never will again. But day by day, I’m starting to accept that and be okay with it. I’m accepting that memories that used to be so painted in my mind are blurry or almost completely erased now. But that’s okay. Honestly, it’s probably for the best. 

I wonder, when you think about it, if you think about different moments that I do. That’s the thing when something ends. You have to be okay with letting go of those moments and realizing that just because you forget them, doesn’t mean they weren’t important. 

I don’t think I miss you. I hesitate in saying that. Because I’ve moved on and handled the aftermath of it better than I think both of us ever thought I could. When you hung up the phone for the last time, I proved to myself again that I’m stronger than I give myself credit for. I think we all are. But we don’t realize it until we’re thrown into a situation that we think we’ll never be able to overcome. 

But we do. Whether it’s because we’re forced to because there’s no other option, it doesn’t matter. Because we get through. We move on. 

I hope you're moving on. 

And then it goes into other topics, graduating during a pandemic specifically and losing what’s supposed to be your last year of no responsibilities before adulthood. There are other poems in here that reference a past relationship, but not as much as these eight. 

If there’s one thing that Noelle did change, it was taking out the details. Jeremy may have hurt her, but he doesn’t deserve someone possibly making a connection between these poems and their shared background. She’s not a famous author by any means, but she wanted to be careful.

Not that she makes that part of her life publicly known. People don’t need to know that her brother was Jeremy’s captain for two years at Maine and that’s how they met. 

Noelle grew up going to rinks. She hasn’t gone to one since they broke up. 

But also, what the fuck? It’s been five years since she’s dated the guy. She really is over it by now, even if his rise to stardom in the Bruins flittering on her social media feeds still sometimes has her swallowing a bit before she can continue with her day. 

Brooklyn is far enough from Boston. But sometimes it feels like it’s right outside her door. 

She’s proud of her first published work. She really is. People believed in her and after numerous notes swapped back and forth with her editor, she did it. She always knew she wanted to work in publishing. She never knew she herself would publish anything.

And here she is now, two weeks after the book release, in Boston, about to do a q&a and a signing. Apparently, “miscellaneous” has been on top of numerous lists and it’s flying off the shelves. Noelle can’t really believe it and tries not to think about it too much, trusting her agent with all of that. 

She’s happy to talk about her work and process though. That she can handle. And she’s grateful for all the love.

After a signing at a local bookstore, she decides to walk the 20 minutes home in the Boston fall. It’s a bit brisk, but she doesn’t mind and she just wanders, belly filled with delicious sushi she inhaled for dinner with an old friend.

Of course it happens the one time during her walk when she doesn’t avoid eye contact with someone. The song playing in her earbuds fade out of her focus and she almost stumbles. 

Jeremy’s eyes were always Noelle’s favorite thing about him. She thought she would’ve forgotten what they looked like by now. But clearly she hasn’t. 

Her eyes quickly cast to the person next to him. It’s definitely a girl. They’re a bit too far away for Noelle to pick out details. But it’s enough. He’s walking on the side closest to the street. It’s a Friday Night in a bustling part of the city. 

It hurts. She wishes it didn’t.

Even from far away, she sees his eyes blink in recognition. Noelle puts her head back down and walks faster. 

(She cries in the shower when she gets back to the hotel. She had debated feeling super sorry for herself and going to the hotel bar but refrained)

She has a few free days in Boston before flying back to New York. When she wakes up the next morning, she debates on going home early. But no, she won’t let a three second glance at someone ruin her time here. She used to occasionally come here during her college days. She loves this city. 

The city may be Jeremy’s, but she can make space for herself here too. 

She takes her time at a cafe, people watching and eating some breakfast. As she takes her coffee to-go, she looks out the window at the bookstore she was in the night before for the signing. She almost drops her coffee. 

Jeremy walks into the book store. 

Now, Noelle is debating her options. What she should do is continue with her day and walk in the opposite direction. But she’s always been too nosy for her own good. And maybe a bit self destructive. She decides to leave the cafe and cross the street immediately, so impatient to where she’s almost tapping her foot as the pedestrian signal stays red. 

As a writer, she’s no stranger to movie moments. The scenes written in books or movies where the timing is too accurate to be real. The situation too good to be true. But after a car speeds through an orange and she can finally walk, she stops in her tracks instead, feet glued down to the sidewalk.

Because Jeremy is right in front of her on the other side of the street. Her book in his hand. And he’s looking right at her. 

The first feeling she can recognize in herself is anger. Anger at the way their relationship panned out. Anger at the way they ended. Anger at the radio silence the years following. Anger at him for everything. Angry at herself for everything. 

The second feeling is, weirdly, shame, which she’s embarrassed by. There’s nothing to be ashamed of. But she feels it anyways. 

The third, and perhaps the most prominent, is emptiness. Five fucking years later, and she’s brought back to the emptiness she felt immediately after they broke up. The emptiness that the person you loved isn’t yours anymore — who maybe wasn’t ever yours to begin with. 

Before she can run, he’s already crossed the street to her. He looks naturally different as someone who you haven’t seen in five years would. But he also heartbreakingly looks the same. 

“We should get out of people’s way,” Noelle manages to chokes out. 

Jeremy laughs a bit. Her heart lurches. “Yeah.” He starts walking and she follows him wordlessly. This is his city after all. 

He leads them to a bench under a tree with beautiful fall foliage. She puts at least a foot between them as they both sit down, staring out at the people passing. She can’t take the silence. 

“I see you bought my book.”

“I did,” he replies evenly. “Congratulations. I always knew you would do it.”

She squeezes her eyes shut. Maybe if she squeezes hard enough she’ll forget when she originally pitched Jeremy the bare bones idea of the exact same book that’s currently in his hand. “Thank you. Congratulations to you too. On everything.”

“You’ve been watching?”

She shakes her head. “No. But, you know Seth and…yeah. It comes up during family calls sometimes.”

“Why didn’t you say hi last night?”

She looks pointedly at a couple walking their dog. “You seemed busy.”

“She wasn’t-that-it doesn’t mean anything.”

“Oh. Because that makes me feel so much better,” she spits out, before taking a deep breath. “Whatever. It doesn’t matter. We broke up ages ago.��

“I’m sorry,” she gives him a look and is slightly proud of how he seems to shrink into himself a bit. “I-I know it’s five years too late. I know I didn’t handle it as well as I should’ve. But for what it’s worth, I’m sorry.”

The thing is, Noelle always thought that maybe hearing an apology someday would make her feel better. But now that’s heard it, she’s not sure she does. 

She swallows. “I appreciate that.”

“I’ve already read it, you know.”

“Read what?”

Jeremy runs a hand through his hair. “Your book. One of my teammate’s girlfriend recommended it and I asked to borrow it. It’s fantastic,” He looks down at the book in his hand. It’s like the cover is taunting her. “I wanted my own copy.”

“Oh.” 

“Thank you.”

“For what?”

“For letting me off the hook with the poems I know were about me,” he scoffs, shaking his head at himself. “You could’ve written way worse.”

She can’t help but let out a chuckle. “I thought I was pretty mean.”

“Your definition of ‘pretty mean’ is tame compared to a lot of people,” he says, mindlessly flipping through the pages of the book. “You were always the kindest person, even when you shouldn’t have been..” 

He puts his hand out in her direction, the hand with the book in it. She furrows her eyebrows. “What-”

“Could I get a signed copy?”

“Jeremy. What do you want from me?”

He sighs, taking his hand back. “A chance to apologize?”

“You’ve already done that.”

“Not in the way I want to and what you deserve.”

She lets out a sigh, turning to face him fully. “I don’t know if that would be worth my time or yours. I know the book just came out, but that was five years ago. I’m over it. Forgive and forget, right?”

“But do you?” Jeremy counters back. “Clearly, you don’t forget, which I deserve. But forgive?” 

“We’re just going in circles now.”

“No we’re not,” he says firmly. “You’re just shutting me down because you don’t want to talk about it. I’ve had five years to prepare what I would say to you if I saw you again. You’re telling me you haven’t?”

“Of course I have,” Noelle tips her head back. “But also, what’s the point?”

“The point, is that I still love you.”

“Fuck you,” she says in a strained voice. “You can’t just-you can’t just throw that shit out there. Fuck you.”

He bites his lip, and to her annoyance, he laughs. But she listens more carefully, and it sounds very self deprecating. “I deserved that.”

“Yeah,” Noelle looks down at her feet. “So…what? You still love me?”

“I do.”

“And what are you going to do about that?”

“What are you going to let me do?”

“I live in Brooklyn.”

“I know,” she whips her head up. Jeremy looks sheepish, which she didn’t even think was something he knew how to do. “Seth mentioned it when we caught up a bit ago. I also still follow you on Instagram.”

She tries again. “It’s been five years.”

“And I’m here sitting with you and still feel the exact same way I did back then. Even more, to be honest.” He eyes her pointedly. “Any more excuses?”

Her voice softens. “You really hurt me.”

“I know. And I’m so sorry, Noelle.”

“I hurt you too.”

He shrugs. “We were young and stupid.”

“And we’re still not?” Noelle says with a snort before swallowing. “I’m not the same person you fell in love with.”

“I’m sure I’m not either. But I don’t know if there’s a world where I don’t love every version of you.”

“Even after reading the book?”

“Especially after reading the book,” he sighs. “Noelle, I know this is unfair of me. All of this. And I’m sorry it’s taken me this long to reach out. But I always intended to. And then you’re here? And I see you twice in two days? I’d be an idiot to not try. More of an idiot than I am, anyways.”

“Try for what?”

“A second chance? To be friends? Whatever you want.” He suddenly deflates. “Even if you don’t want anything to do with me. At least I’ll know.”

“Why did you never text me?”

“I thought about it a lot,” he admits. “I tried once, actually, after the high of a really good win. But it didn’t go through. I got the message.”

“The message?”

“You blocked me, right?”

Oh. “Yeah,” she lies. “I did.” She reaches into her bag for a pen and gestures for the book, which he gives to her, a curious gleam in his eyes. “I’m in Boston for two more days, including today.”

He takes the hint immediately. Eagerly. “I have a game tonight, but I’m free tomorrow.”

“Who are you guys playing?”

“Toronto. And I’m starting. Should be a good one.”

She hums non-committedly, scribbling on the inside of the front cover. She hands it back to him with a small, close-lipped smile. She nods at him to read the message.

to my first fan, 

i still love you too. 

xxx-xxx-xxxx

yours, 

noelle

He looks up, eyes shining but a bit confused. 

“I never blocked you. I just changed my number.”

“Oh.”

“And even if I still love you, I’m still mad at you.”

“I know. I’d be more surprised if you weren’t.”

She stands up, adjusting the bag on her shoulder and putting her sunglasses on. “Text me?”

His mouth splits wide into a grin. “Yeah. Yeah, of course.”

She backs away with one last attempt at a smile before turning down the street.

[wheretheresawill99]

A couple observations I neglected to mention in my Scream video

Looking back over my initial notes, I noticed a couple of things that didn't make it into the final script, but I still think are pretty interesting and relevant to sex/gender/power as depicted in Scream.

Juxtaposition of Stu holding Billy from behind and Billy holding Sid from behind in the kitchen scene. This sets up a parallel between the two pairs as romantic couples. There might also be something to be said about how Stu holds Billy out of an affectionate desire for closeness, while Billy holds Sid primarily to restrain her (though he does stroke her hair in a perversion of when he offered her comfort in the master bedroom upstairs).

In the Watsonian Explanation section, I interpreted that "Billy & Stu exhibit the queer tendency to identify with villains to such an extent that they have adopted their behavior themselves- this is the only way they know to express themselves fully, they can only be queer when they are being villainous." However, I left out that this interpretation fits with the broader meta-commentary of the film, how "movies don't create psychos; movies make psychos more creative." This line could be retooled to say, 'movie villains don't turn your kids gay, movie villains give gay kids an avenue to express themselves,' or something along those lines.

The parallels between Billy and Norman Bates, two 'pansy-assed mama's boys.' As Norman says in Psycho, “a boy’s best friend is his mother." For both characters, their mother is the most important figure in their life, the source of their motivation to kill, and the apparent source of their issues (“maternal abandonment causes serious deviant behavior”). Additionally, in his villain reveal Billy directly quotes Norman ("we all go a little mad sometimes,") though he attributes the quote to Anthony Perkins, his actor, and a famously gay man. Also, Sidney's anxiety about turning out just like, or in essence ‘becoming,’ her mother might align her with Norman as well.

In the audio commentary at 1:12:10, Kevin Williamson remarks, "[Sidney's] going to have sex, and now the audience is left to question: will she or won’t she live?" Notice how the question is framed, 'will she or won't she live,' not 'does she or doesn't she deserve to live.'

At page 39 of her essay, Brooke Shapiro writes, "Mulvey further explains that the female protagonist falls in love with the male protagonist and becomes his property throughout the narrative." In Scream, while she does submit to sex with Billy, Sid falls out of love with him and asserts her independence from him at the end of the movie by literally killing him.

Regarding the heroine's journey beginning with the feminine and embracing the masculine, when we are first introduced to Sidney, she is wearing a very girly nightgown, and at the end of the film she is wearing pants.

At page 59 of Visual Pleasure in Narrative Cinema, Mulvey writes that "there are circumstances in which looking itself is a source of pleasure, just as, in the reverse formation, there is pleasure in being looked at." One interpretation of this is perhaps the joy of not simply being looked at, but being seen- or, being seen for who you truly are. This is evident in Billy & Stu's joy after they let the masks drop and reveal themselves as the killers.

Visual Pleasure at page 64: "voyeurism. . . has associations with sadism. . . This sadistic side fits well with narrative. Sadism demands a story, depends on making something happen, forcing a change in another person, a battle of will and strength, victory/defeat, all occurring in a linear time with a beginning and an end.” I think this analysis pretty perfectly describes Billy & Stu.

On page 754-755 of Freeland's essay, she writes, "slashers also reinforce cultural messages about the virtues of masculinity by presenting a villain who is defectively masculine- often someone pudgy, awkward, shy, or seemingly impotent- and a heroine (the ‘Final Girl’) who is more masculine than feminine." I wouldn’t describe Billy or Stu as defectively masculine in the ways outlined here. Queer coded? Sure. But not particularly effeminate. I do also think that Sid is fairly androgynous in behavior and often dress, but it is very important to the narrative and themes of the story that she is a girl. Her struggles surrounding sex are deeply dependent on the cultural expectations for women.

If you missed it, you can watch my video on Scream here.

[girlfriendsofthegalaxy]

tuesday again 2/11/2025

the bon mot slot goes to the Witcher comics, bc after i inhaled all of the 2014-present series i realized they scratch the same sad goth detective itch batman does

oops! all books!

adding another axis to the "depressive cycles" graph, where x is "how many minutes of mother mother have i listened to in the past two weeks" and y is "how many books have i read and bounced off in the past two weeks" and brother we're at the extreme upper right hand corner

what was supposed to be last week's gay and/or lesbian romance and/or erotica

Desire by Starlight, by Radclyffe, is a 261p softcover published in 2010 by Bold Strokes Books. two unrelated facts about this physical object: VERY glossy cover, and smells faintly of mildew despite having a perfect text block with no water damage. radclyffe has written over a hundred books and this is somewhere in the middle. this is sitting at a solid 4 on goodreads with some complaints that she tends to be a little formulaic. i am going to be very honest and say that when i read this two weeks ago, i did not take very good notes bc i didn't love this one. the structure and pacing were mostly fine and there were only a few strange phrases in the sex scenes, i simply did not find it particularly memorable. we have for sure read worse during this project.

i wish the local love interest did not go by Gard, short for Gardner. is it a stupid old money new york name? sure. is it hard to take the book seriously? yes.

i also found it amusing that radclyffe does not follow her own novel-writing rule outlined in this very meta novel: rarely if ever does a scene open close to the heart of a chapter.

the secret our dear gard is hiding kind of fizzles out in the literal last ten pages. i think she should have had a better or more interesting secret instead of one that could be comfortably resolved through a singular therapy session. i also feel that this teetered on will-they-won't-they-let-each-other-through-a-hardened-outer-shell a little bit too long, and the breakthrough was perhaps not as cathartic as i would have liked. this excerpt, nearly halfway through the book, they are still not together. while it's very funny to watch them seethe in poorly concealed jealousy, i am tapping my watch. do something.

i cannot immediately find the weird wording that threw me a little during the sex scenes. the sex scenes are kind of widely scattered.

i think the thing that annoys me most about this book is that there's no real benefit for either of them in this relationship. jenna has broken down from not eating or sleeping well on a national book tour, not because she's psychically suffering from not letting see her feelings she keeps in a tightly locked box. there's no real benefit for gard either, who is lonely but not cripplingly so. it starts off as a casual-only thing and then both of them (and me) are startled they catch real feelings.

there are some gestures made toward It's Nice To Have Another Woman Around In Case of Physical Injuries Due To Mishap but i would have loved to see more of how gard was won over by being taken care of. gard princess carries jenna into her vet clinic bc of a fucked up ankle and jenna is annoyed, flustered, and doubly annoyed she's flustered.

i think this one was so forgettable bc i genuinely had trouble remembering what the conflict (if any) was. both of them are stable adults with real jobs and other friends. inheriting a farm in vermont doesn't really add any new or exciting problems for either of them. neither of them are very spontaneous and neither can manic pixie dream girl the other out of her shell, and when they finally do emotionally let their walls down it doesn't feel very organic.

the like technical putting words one after another is there, this is her zillionth book and everyone has dialogue that sounds like things real people would say out loud with their mouths and everyone's physical actions map onto my real-world understanding of how bodies in 3D space work. this one did not grab me.

-

this week's gay and/or lesbian romance and/or erotica

title drops in this book: 3.

Heart on Fire is a 167p softcover published in 1996 by our old friend Naiad Press. a slightly water-damaged paperback i felt okay dragging down to the gulf when i was dragged down to the gulf last weekend for my health. this was Diana Simmonds' first solo book and first fiction book, and a lot of older lesbians seem to have a great deal of fondness for it. while i was trying to find any press or interviews, most of the hits were from other lesbian authors citing her as an inspiration. naiad really banked a lot on it being the hit novel of their publishing season and were sure it would eclipse their previous bestseller from nearly a decade ago, Katherine Forrest's Curious Wine. i don't own a paper copy but have placed a libby hold so we will make a detour from physical books in the near future.

overall, a rare book where the third act breakup does actually make a lot of sense: being the partner of a globetrotting traveling musician would put a strain on any relationship whether you choose to stay on the road or wait at home. however! it really did stick the landing! and for that i can forgive it a great deal! the sort of not quite reality of their respective third act depression sojourns and then the incredibly sensory descriptions of the finale concert…very good. very nineties movie about a musician ending if that makes any sense.

while i think the structure is fine, i think the actual craft of the narrative is more variable. we'll go into the style in the next paragraph, but part of the dedication goes "to CCC, without whom it would be full of people thinking to themselves." i wish CCC had dialed their feedback back a little bc i would have loved some more interiority, particularly from jody. i must commend our stuck-in-one-place half of the couple, grace, who makes SUCH fascinating decisions. the traveling musician jody looks like she could be the sister of her abusive ex-husband, grace's brief rebound from jody is her goddamn college advisor… bonkers. what ARE you doing???

stylistically, it feels like sitting on the patio of a lesbian bar for three hours and listening to a friend telling you a very long story about how two absent friends you don't know got together with a lot of elaborations and asides. i occasionally found this style tiresome. there are some charming turns of phrase, like "She wrote the address of the roadhouse on the package, sealed it with a kiss, said "What the hell," to neutralize the sentimental gesture, and dropped it into the mailbox." i also cackled out loud at "I don't know, I-- I really really want you, so much, and I am not very good at being cool about it." did nearly tear up at this paragraph:

some things have aged a little strangely since 1996. grace is briefly forcibly kissed by a very drunk bandmate before jody rescues her, but there are further instances of someone not immediately stopping a kiss or an embrace or what have you when someone else says no, that i think could not be written in a modern day romance novel. there are some very frank discussions of marital abuse right after a literally soul-healing sex scene.

this is a book that could never be rewritten as a straight romance with light serial numbers filed off. no one is in physical danger just because they're gay, but there's a lot of internal homophobia and readjustment on grace's part, and overall people are fairly accepting in theory but not always in practice. jody outs herself to the aussie press, and early on/right after her bus breaks down, grace and her mother discuss this news and her mother tells her off for being prejudiced, but connives to throw them together to distract grace from her recent divorce. her mother is then is very sad about the thought of her daughter who would have a very difficult life as a publicly out lesbian, and I can’t really blame her, but it’s such a switch from the vehement Fix Your Heart Or Die!!! discussion in the second chapter. there are some fraught familial reactions to grace's bisexuality-- her mom basically bullies her dad into remembering he loves his daughter-- but they all do come around.

this was fine and a good beach read, i'm not sure that i'll ever reread it. almost forgot about the sex. i think the current fashion for queer romance novels is not quite as purple, but the whole book is like this and i must respect an author's full commitment in this manner. here are some sex examples on non-consecutive pages.

-

did not finish, or finished with severe annoyance

i have become a libby power user in my old age bc texas is remarkably free with its library cards. i don't THINK i'm meant to have five of them but there seems to be no law against it and no one's told me to fuck off? this is good bc i have (at the moment) 44 holds and 56 "notify me if any of my libraries purchase this book" books tagged.

the flipside of being willing to give anything vaguely intriguing a try is that most books aren't very good or they aren't quite what i want. i will DNF anything, anytime, for no good reason. i know that statistically most novels are debut novels but i am so fucking tired of reading debut novels.

Hammajang Luck, by Makana Yamamoto, debut novel published last month. comps include ocean's 8, blade runner, and gideon the ninth. much as i love a heist novel, a heist is extremely ambitious for a debut and i didn't quite vibe with the style. i DNF'd at around the end of chapter seven, it has a very strange issue where we get from location to location pretty snappily but overexplain setting and clothing too much within individual scenes. i think it wants to be a screenplay a little too bad. a great deal of the dialogue is hawaiian pidgin (what the author grew up speaking). very much a me problem, i didn't have any experience with this language coming into this book and it was hard to turn off the kneejerk "this is racist and making fun of black people" response i had. again, very much a me problem.

Yamamoto uses Hawaiian pidgin—“an amalgamation of Hawaiian, English, Japanese, Chinese and Portuguese”—in much of the novel’s dialogue, particularly between Edie and their crew members. It is the “primary language” spoken on Kepler and speaks to the kinship between the characters. However, the decision to include pidgin occurred by happenstance. When writing the first line of dialogue between Edie and Cy, fellow crew member and friend, “it just came out in pidgin spontaneously”. Yamamoto “tried to rewrite it in standard English”, but it “sounded wrong”. Notably, the pidgin and Hawaiian words in the novel are not italicised or translated, nor does the novel include a glossary of terms. Yamamoto felt that these practices were “othering” and so asks the reader to do the work.

i think this is a reasonable thing to ask a reader, and i think i might have to take a crack at it some other time.

The Rainfall Market, by You Yeong-Gwang, a debut novel from last year freshly translated from Korean. a young woman wins a lottery ticket to enter the Rainfall Market on the first day of the rainy season, where she can completely change her life. DNF at two chapters. this seems to be generally marketed as general fiction (which is what my library had it under) but it feels very middle-grade, both as far as sentence structure and vocabulary and the general maturity-- the protagonist is about to graduate high school but her concerns and goals feel more like she's about twelve. not sure if it's an unfortunate series of translation and marketing decisions? rough!

Water Moon, by Samantha Sotto Yambao, the author's fifth book and published last month. the premise of this book is so charming: liminal-space pawnshop where you can exchange your regrets for tea, woman taking this family business over from her father, physicist who stumbles in, oh no! the physicist is playing the scully to her mulder but does not have a physicist Vibe. i think he’s too personable and not tiresome and mansplainy enough to be a particle physicist. he's too nice. she falls in love with him near-instantly. DNF partly because i have never met a particle physicist i could stand to be around for more than fifteen minutes, mostly a DNF bc at about a quarter of the way through this very slow to start book, when the girl turned to the boy after they fell through a pond into a perfect recreation of a edo-era tokyo street and said "this is the other world, you can call it isekai" i did not throw my elderly ailing phone across the room and i did not get up and stomp around bc phil was on my lap but i did vehemently return the library ebook thirteen days early.

Lucky Red, Claudia Cravens, a debut novel published summer 2023. this thoroughly fucking annoyed me. published by the literary group that also ran...basically a budget MFA? they called it a "novel generator in 12 months", they have since closed, and i cannot find how much AI was involved. i do not think this book was marketed well:

A thrilling, raucous, and gloriously queer debut about a scrappy orphan bent on making her own luck in the American West—and finding friendship, romance, and her true calling along the way, now in paperback.

this book is about an older teen in 1877 dodge city who turns to survival sex work. terrible thing after terrible thing happens to this girl whenever she makes a connection outside living just in her own head and for what? it felt like the author was setting up to deliver some moral lesson or theme other than "never question your boss" but never quite followed through. it felt like the author was punishing the protagonist for being a whore even though that’s the book the author chose to write and the author can't quite decide if it's empowering or not. again, it's very strange to read a book where the protagonist is punished for almost every decision she makes and very few parts of sex work are idealized, but then she turns to the camera and reassures the reader with a chipper "but it wasn't all bad!". i wish the protagonist got to mature or grow as a character a little more. i think this could have used more time in the oven and an ending that doesn't feel like a very ill-earned end of every american western ever. thank fucking god this is a real ensemble cast and not found family or i would be much more impatient with this book than i already am.

good at getting me to finish a book bc it's very effective at hustling you from chapter to chapter. great technical skill on that front. bad at any sort of emotional throughline.

things i DNF'd after less than two chapters

Thornfruit by Felicia Davin, published in 2018 and her seventh or eighth book. i am a little annoyed bc this was on hold for over two months but i really do appreciate the AO3-style list of tags and warnings in the front bc now i know there is stuff in this book that is not for me!

Passing Strange, by Ellen Klages, a 2017 novella and her...twentieth? work. a prolific woman. urban fantasy gay historical fiction of 1940s magical san francisco. while i do love a magical painting, i did not have it in me this week to read about a woman struggling with her legacy in the face of a terminal diagnosis.

Nevernight, Jay Kristoff, 2016 first book of a trilogy and his third trilogy overall. he keeps fucking getting me with fun vampire premises but he's very much in the same bucket as paolo bacigalupi in my brain. far more brutal and visceral things happen than you really are prepared for. do not love an opening chapter with disassociation to a past sexual assault in the middle of an assassination, as movie-crisp as the match shot transitions from present day to disassociation were.

plus a nice half dozen varied romances im not going to individually name, bc the last time i seriously used the "tag for later" feature in libby was the summer of 2019 and my tastes have changed. for example i rarely put myself through heterosexual vampire romance books these days.

-

yeah these were all right

Red Harvest, by Dashiell Hammett, his first full novel in 1929 after literally dozens of shorts and novellas. this detective noir was like watching a car crash. brutal little book. im positive this is not the earliest example of turning both ends of a town against the middle for your own profit, but it was the one cited for yojimbo so its the one that gets brought up a lot. i think the cast is slightly too large for what hammett is trying to do. sometimes reading noir as something woman-shaped feels like an elaborate act of self-harm.

Unnatural Magic, by CM Waggoner, a debut novel from late 2019. thoroughly charmed by this one! one of the most well thought out country/species/religion/immigration systems and how any and all of those can impact any one specific wizard’s magic. it's like a beautiful clockwork orrery ticking along in the background. very prachett-esque approach to troll gender. the baddie is Not doing good things but the ultimate motivations are really understandable! I get why that happened even if it was a really bad reaction! a line i keep turning over in my head is "worry like a third person in the room." i have put their second book on hold on the strength of this one.

The Firebird’s Tale, Anya Ow, a debut novel from 2016. charming retelling of the fairytale element of a royal having to marry the one who makes him smile. the lead up to and the third act separation itself were kind of stupid, and felt like it wanted to be a duology but wrapped up very fast. has a lot of thoughts about choice and putting the end of things to bed quietly and with dignity on your own terms. also has a lot of thoughts about meanings of stories. the non-magical and non-immortal half of the couple is a possessive prince who falls so hard so fast and is mad about it. they fuck so many times while thinking "well surely this doesn’t mean anything, we're just married for the convenience". they're both so dryly exasperated.

-

there's an additional hardboiled noir that was fun but i have nothing particular to say about, and a stack of physical comics from a new library that i mostly hated, but we are almost at the image limit and it is 1030 PM. i can't see why we wouldn't be back to the usual format next week but no promises bc there are no rules

[nalyra-dreaming]

Ok I thought w all the drama (must be a day of the week in the IWTV fandom🙄 17 yrs of fandom and never I have I been in one w this much senseless arguing jfc!! They all have senseless arguing but this is next level. I'm only skimming but I think you need a medal for handling all of it this well) you could use a refreshing "my friend worked on IWTV" ask with 0% drama. My friend worked in the art department in S1! Tragically, she didn't meet any of the actors, but she did a lot of really cool stuff!

She's a print maker, and was hired originally to make the newspapers for the hoarding scene- which were ALL required to be scarily precise and period accurate. Whatever little set details everyone is reading into and over analyzing? Yeah, go ahead and over analyze harder guys, can confirm the level of detail that goes into them is 100x more detail than you even thought possible! She also helped w the ones that are shown up close, like the article about Claudia's body stash-those ones were designed to perfection, down the shades of ink in the layering techniques and placement of each paragraph. They liked her work (we went to art school together, though met at a summer program as teens and remained friends since, she's crazy talented. She correctly predicted I would love the show before it aired lmao, though I only got around to watching it this last year, and became promptly irrevocably obsessed) and signed her up to work w the art department the rest of the season. She got to do some other exciting things, like help set up the pharmacy Claudia gets the laudanum and arsenic from, make some of the hats for Mardi Gras etc. But the coolest thing by far:

She wrote some of Claudia's dairies!!! Also tragically, not the one in Lestat's blood, but a bunch of them. For the pages that weren't featured on screen but needed to be filled, she was given free reign...for awhile anyway, she made up all sorts of stories based on the books and the scripts she'd been given about what Claudia would have been experiencing, feeling and thinking, essentially fanfic within fanfic, but then her boss told her the stuff she was writing was too weird!!!😭 She had to tone it down and she's still, justifiably, mad about that lmao. Bc like Claudia is a fucking vampire!! An adult vampire trapped in a teenager's body with the messiest adopted dad's possible!!! Her life was batshit insane!!!

Anyway, good luck with the slew of anons who (again I skimmed) seem to be arguing about a 2 inch difference in Sam Reid's height??? Why????? As far as I've noticed, their heights go up and down a bit depending on the emotion of the scene? and Sam's got like an inch or two on Jacob. I asked a Sam stan blog once out of curiosity and they said his stunt double casting call listed 5'10 ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Louis and Lestat are characters tho, and are as tall as you want them to be in your heart, regardless of the actors actual heights

Ohhh thank you so much for this ask and your kind words!! 💕

Now I want to know what she wrote into the diaries *laughs* Was she also the one who took a part of "The Vampire Lestat" for it?!?!

(And god, I bet she knows what's in the removed pages, doesn't she 😈)

Just so you know, I will now go back to episode 5 and try to get reeeaalllll good shots of the newspapers, because I just KNOW there's more clues and meta commentary in there. I just know it. This show, seriously.

They should win all the awards. AND give us "the art of IWTV" books after...

It makes me so happy that your friend had a good time on the show, and that she seemed to have enjoyed her work?!! Thank you so much for sharing!!! I will pay extra attention on rewatch, that's for sure. (And hope dies last that they will sell some of the costumes on prop store at some point?! Maybe the hats??? :))

And, well, as per the fandom - ... the hiatus is very long. I guess... we're all just going stir crazy. (Though I do feel like a broken record at times :))

[nekropsii]

do you still do session analysis?

I've never really done that, so no.

I appreciate the value placed in my opinion, truly, but I guarantee you it will be way more fun and satisfying to write things like that on your own than it is to get some stranger to do it for you. I don't feel good depriving someone the joy and learning experience of figuring out Character + Classpect Dynamics on your own. It's hard, for sure, but it's completely worth it. I'll give my thoughts on Individual Classes, Aspects, and Classpects now and then, if the mood strikes me, but the way that will affect a Group Dynamic is far more dependent on the individual characters involved and the narrative they're in than a lot of people seem to give credit for. Yes, the Classpect of a character says a lot about them, but it doesn't really express their Moral Alignment, the full breadth of their Personality, any specific Traumas or Neuroses that may afflict them and affect their relationship with their life, surroundings, and the people around them, et cetera, et cetera...

Basically, a Classpect says a lot, and a Group of Classpects can also say a lot, but I find it personally difficult to make very solid statements on the Viability of a Session or the Dynamics within it without having a deep understanding of not only the characters involved but also what kind of story is being aimed for. What a Classpect can mean or entail depends a lot on the Hero in question, and the specific Meta of the Session. You can keep the Meaning of all Classes and Aspects nigh completely Canon Compliant, but still have them imply and result in totally different things within a Session, purely because the Story and Character demands something that isn't, like... Just a straight up repeat of things already tread upon in source material. You could have a Seer of Light that's evil. You could have Bard of Rage that's a pretty good guy, all things considered.

For example, Sovereignstuck has a very particular Meta with its Classpects, and it's going for a very particular narrative. The characters in it are also very much so their own beasts - though their Classpects may say a lot about them, it doesn't really tell you anything about their morality, or how willing they are to hurt people or even just ascend to godhood in the first place, which is a really big deal in what is essentially a literal Deus Ex Machina Death Game Horror/Drama RPG setting especially. To use a particular example from Sovereignstuck - Bards of Mind tend to be billed as chaotic forces and, due to being a Bard, inherently bad people, with some even suggesting the best way to write a Bard of Mind is to write a straight up Bigot. We've got a Bard of Mind in the Player Session, Emeric Sargas, and while she is a complicated person - as is the truth for everyone ever - she is, generally speaking, a very child-like ball of sunshine that basically no one has beef with because she's just very sweet. Odd, yes, definitely, she does have a litany of very strange beliefs about how the world works, but overall a nice person. We have two Maids of Space, even, and they're extremely, extremely different people.

It's not as simple as saying "Princes of Void and Witches of Heart are guaranteed to not get along!", or "This Session will fail because it has an insufficient Player count!". Hell, it's difficult for me to even say a Session is doomed to fail if they have no Time and/or Space Players. Maybe the Meta of your Session simply doesn't abide by typical SBURB rules. I know my Fanventure sure doesn't, it's running on a fucking spinoff game with no Universe Building aspects to it - it's just a God-Making Machine. Maybe you don't need a Time or Space Player. Maybe you don't need a Knight, or an Heir. Maybe you can have five Pages. I literally don't know. Write whatever you want. Get creative. You truly do not have to abide by the rules set by SBURB if you don't want to write a Creation Myth. My only recommendation is that if you're breaking the mold, make that clear - explain what the purpose of your game is. Hell, explain the purpose even if it's just SBURB 2. The Characters are gonna have to learn what it is, even if the reader is aware of it already.

I could talk more, but this is already a long enough response to a pretty simple one sentence yes or no question.

TL;DR: No, I don't, sorry.

[mariacallous]

In March 2007, Google’s then senior executive in charge of acquisitions, David Drummond, emailed the company’s board of directors a case for buying DoubleClick. It was an obscure software developer that helped websites sell ads. But it had about 60 percent market share and could accelerate Google’s growth while keeping rivals at bay. A “Microsoft-owned DoubleClick represents a major competitive threat,” court papers show Drummond writing.

Three weeks later, on Friday the 13th, Google announced the acquisition of DoubleClick for $3.1 billion. The US Department of Justice and 17 states including California and Colorado now allege that the day marked the beginning of Google’s unchecked dominance in online ads—and all the trouble that comes with it.

The government contends that controlling DoubleClick enabled Google to corner websites into doing business with its other services. That has resulted in Google allegedly monopolizing three big links of a vital digital advertising supply chain, which funnels over $12 billion in annual revenue to websites and apps in the US alone.

It’s a big amount. But a government expert estimates in court filings that if Google were not allegedly destroying its competition illegally, those publishers would be receiving up to an additional hundreds of millions of dollars each year. Starved of that potential funding, “publishers are pushed to put more ads on their websites, to put more content behind costly paywalls, or to cease business altogether,” the government alleges. It all adds up to a subpar experience on the web for consumers, Colorado attorney general Phil Weiser says.

“Google is able to extract hiked-up costs, and those are passed on to consumers,” he alleges. “The overall outcome we want is for consumers to have more access to content supported by advertising revenue and for people who are seeking advertising not to have to pay inflated costs.”

Google disputes the accusations.

Starting today, both sides’ arguments will be put to the test in what’s expected to be a weekslong trial before US district judge Leonie Brinkema in Alexandria, Virginia. The government wants her to find that Google has violated federal antitrust law and then issue orders that restore competition. In a best-case scenario, according to several Google critics and experts in online ads who spoke with WIRED, internet users could find themselves more pleasantly informed and entertained.

It could take years for the ad market to shake out, says Adam Heimlich, a longtime digital ad executive who’s extensively researched Google. But over time, fresh competition could lower supply chain fees and increase innovation. That would drive “better monetization of websites and better quality of websites,” says Heimlich, who now runs AI software developer Chalice Custom Algorithms.

Tim Vanderhook, CEO of ad-buying software developer Viant Technology, which both competes and partners with Google, believes that consumers would encounter a greater variety of ads, fewer creepy ads, and pages less cluttered with ads. “A substantially improved browsing experience,” he says.

Of course, all depends on the outcome of the case. Over the past year, Google lost its two other antitrust trials—concerning illegal search and mobile app store monopolies. Though the verdicts are under appeal, they’ve made the company’s critics optimistic about the ad tech trial.

Google argues that it faces fierce competition from Meta, Amazon, Microsoft, and others. It further contends that customers benefited from each of the acquisitions, contracts, and features that the government is challenging. “Google has designed a set of products that work efficiently with each other and attract a valuable customer base,” the company’s attorneys wrote in a 359-page rebuttal.

For years, Google publicly has maintained that its ad tech projects wouldn’t harm clients or competition. “We will be able to help publishers and advertisers generate more revenue, which will fuel the creation of even more rich and diverse content on the internet,” Drummond testified in 2007 to US senators concerned about the DoubleClick deal’s impact on competition and privacy. US antitrust regulators at the time cleared the purchase. But at least one of them, in hindsight, has said he should have blocked it.

Deep Control

The Justice Department alleges that acquiring DoubleClick gave Google “a pool of captive publishers that now had fewer alternatives and faced substantial switching costs associated with changing to another publisher ad server.” The global market share of Google’s tool for publishers is now 91 percent, according to court papers. The company holds similar control over ad exchanges that broker deals (around 70 percent) and tools used by advertisers (85 percent), the court filings say.

Google’s dominance, the government argues, has “impaired the ability of publishers and advertisers to choose the ad tech tools they would prefer to use and diminished the number and quality of viable options available to them.”

The government alleges that Google staff spoke internally about how they have been earning an unfair portion of what advertisers spend on advertising, to the tune of over a third of every $1 spent in some cases.

Some of Google’s competitors want the tech giant to be broken up into multiple independent companies, so each of its advertising services competes on its own merits without the benefit of one pumping up another. The rivals also support rules that would bar Google from preferencing its own services. “What all in the industry are looking for is fair competition,” Viant’s Vanderhook says.

If Google ad tech alternatives win more business, not everyone is so sure that the users will notice a difference. “We’re talking about moving from the NYSE to Nasdaq,” Ari Paparo, a former DoubleClick and Google executive who now runs the media company Marketecture, tells WIRED. The technology behind the scenes may shift, but the experience for investors—or in this case, internet surfers—doesn’t.

Some advertising experts predict that if Google is broken up, users’ experiences would get even worse. Andrey Meshkov, chief technology officer of ad-block developer AdGuard, expects increasingly invasive tracking as competition intensifies. Products also may cost more because companies need to not only hire additional help to run ads but also buy more ads to achieve the same goals. “So the ad clutter is going to get worse,” Beth Egan, an ad executive turned Syracuse University associate professor, told reporters in a recent call arranged by a Google-funded advocacy group.

But Dina Srinivasan, a former ad executive who as an antitrust scholar wrote a Stanford Technology Law Review paper on Google’s dominance, says advertisers would end up paying lower fees, and the savings would be passed on to their customers. That future would mark an end to the spell Google allegedly cast with its DoubleClick deal. And it could happen even if Google wins in Virginia. A trial in a similar lawsuit filed by Texas, 15 other states, and Puerto Rico is scheduled for March.

[hollowed-theory-hall]

do you have thoughts on the diary horcrux and why it seems to have been so much more sentient than the other horcuxes? (also do u think riddle could really have come out of the diary?). thank you for all your incredible meta.

Thank you for your compliments! 😊

So, I kinda have thoughts about anything Harry Potter related, so, yeah.

Okay, I'll start with the second part, actually. Tom Riddle in the diary definitely thought he could come out of the diary, and he seemed to be correct. By taking Ginny's life force he was able to appear outside of the diary. And according to Harry, he got more solid as he took more of her life:

but the longer Riddle stood there, the more life was dwindling out of Ginny . . . and in the meantime, Harry noticed suddenly, Riddle’s outline was becoming clearer, more solid. . . . If it had to be a fight between him and Riddle, better sooner than later

(CoS, page 292)

As for the magical theory of why it worked, I already mentioned here that in Alchemy, everything is alive. Everything that is alive is made up of three components:

1. Soul (Sulfur)

2. Body (Salt)

3. Life (Mercury)

So what Tom is doing is stealing Ginny's mercury — her life — he says as much:

But there isn’t much life left in her [Ginny]. . . . She put too much into the diary, into me.

(CoS, page 289)

Now a life can only be used to create something equal to it — another life. If you want to bring someone who isn't alive (dead or unliving, like the diary) to life, you'll need another life to do it. It's a life-for-a-life scenario since in Alchemy everything works according to the law of equivalent exchange.

This law means all energy or components can only transform into something equal to it. If you want to cast a spell, you'll need to put magical energy in it equal to the effect you want to cause.

It's the same here. He kills Ginny and gets his own life in exchange for hers.

What somewhat bothers me about it is that he seems to have a body get created as well. Like, his current body (salt) is the diary itself, hence why when Harry stabbed it he died, but he was making himself a new one. The only way to do that, is to extert something of equal energy. In this case, I believe it was Ginny's magic. He wasn't just pulling out her life to create a life for himself he was pulling her magic to make him a body:

But there isn’t much life left in her. . . . She put too much into the diary, into me. Enough to let me leave its pages at last. . . .

(CoS, page 289)

He says she put too much into the diary, not just life. I believe he was feeding on her magic too, which leads into the first part of your question.

I don't think he's necessarily more sentient. Like, I think all Horcruxes could be as sentient as the diary. And we see the locket become more sentient as the trio wears it. And I think that's the crux of it.

The Horcruxes seem to steal magic from their surroundings, which makes them more powerful and more sentient as a result. The diary spent years in Lucius Malfoy’s office, sucking up bits of magic from him and anyone else who visited that office. Then he had a whole year of Ginny (and Harry for a bit) writing to him. This all means he has plenty of magic to make him sentient.

The other Horcruxes, in contrast, didn't really have any human interaction until their destruction. Besides the locket, which we do see growing in sentience:

“There was a locket.” “What?” said Harry and Ron together. “In the cabinet in the drawing room. Nobody could open it...”

(DH, page 166)

No sentience in OoTP, nothing felt magical about the locket.

“Can you feel it, though?” Ron asked in a hushed voice, as he held it tight in his clenched fist. “What d’you mean?” Ron passed the Horcrux to Harry. After a moment or two, Harry thought he knew what Ron meant. Was it his own blood pulsing through his veins that he could feel, or was it something beating inside the locket, like a tiny metal heart?

(DH, page 239)

After Umbridge wore it for a bit, it had more sentience. It has a heartbeat, it feels alive like it didn't before. Hermione doesn't mention this sense existing the first time, and that's because this pulse wasn't there.

She held out her hands, and Harry lifted the golden chain over his head. The moment it parted contact with Harry’s skin he felt free and oddly light. He had not even realized that he was clammy or that there was a heavy weight pressing on his stomach until both sensations lifted. “Better?” asked Hermione. “Yeah, loads better!”

(DH, page 249)

And the longer they wear it, the more effect the locket has. The more magic it has to become more sentient and influence the trio. Throughout Deathly Hollwos, the Horcrux becomes more powerful the longer they wear it:

Then something closed tight around his neck. He thought of water weeds, though nothing had brushed him as he dived, and raised his empty hand to free himself. It was not weed: The chain of the Horcrux had tightened and was slowly constricting his windpipe.

(DH, page 321)

The Horcrux was still swinging from Ron’s hand. The locket was twitching slightly. Harry knew that the ting inside it was agitated again. It had sensed the presence of the sword and had tried to kill Harry rather than let him possess it.

(DH, page 321)

Then a voice hissed out from the Horcrux. “I have seen your heart, and it is mine.” “Don’t listen to it!” Harry said harshly. “Stab it!” “I have seen your dreams, Ronald Weasley, and I have seen your fears. All you desire is possible, but all that you dread is also possible. . . . ”

(DH, page 325)

So, I think it's all a matter of how much magic you feed the Horcrux.

[the-irken-pony]

The Bios Notebook: Whose is it?

The table we see the book resting on appears to be the same table that we see in the introduction to Stealing the Diamond, albeit with better lighting and different placement. The same cup ring is seen on both tables (though the one in the bio screen is more detailed) and at a slightly different angle. This points to it belonging to Henry.

The handwriting in the notebook is almost identical to Henry's handwriting in StD. Look at the loops on the capital letters (D, P, B), and the shape of the 'S's. That said, there are some minor differences, such as how the lowercase 't' is written; it curls at the bottom of the lowercase 'T's in "rent late" and "janitor", but in the notebook, there is no curl, and the two crossing lines are connected (more reminiscent of the 't' in "test subject'; moreso the first than the second)

We know Henry likes to doodle thanks to StD. More doodles can be seen in the bio book, exclusively on the page for BtB. That said, the doodles on the scrap paper and the notebook are in two different styles. The art on the book is a lot "messier" than the art on the torn paper, and has larger heads with visible faces.

The two points of contention I can think of regarding whether it belongs to Henry or someone else the meta text are the art styles and the handwriting.

While the art is noticeably different, you have to squint to notice any differences in the handwriting, enough so that you could consider it natural variations in Henry’s writing and just assume that the art is a matter of Henry being flexible.

Meanwhile, if you wanted to be a real conspiracy theorist, you could make a point about the slight handwriting differences and how the notebook more closely matches “text subject” than any other part of the handwriting in StD.

Don’t have any strong leaning in one direction or the other so feel free to discuss.

[cleromancy]

one thing i think people miss when trying to nail down the like nitty gritty of like-- okay. so post-crisis post-resurrection Jason's a hypocrite, right? and hes purposely fancast himself as the villain opposite bruce in utrh.

but also even while Jason's doing this he *has a point,* and he *knows it.* Jasons got a lot of big moral ideas hes spouting, and from what we see, he mostly only abides by *some* of them. so while you're like acknowledging that utrh/lost days jay is motivated by his emotions and doesn't act in ways that align with his moral principles, but also he *keeps bringing **up** those moral principles*, you start to wonder like. What the hell is going on in that big brain of yours jay.

and what i was getting at. the thing i think most people miss or forget when exploring that. is jasons appearance in outsiders 2003.

im looking through the tpb so im not giving you the exact issue numbers for any of these panels sorry but its 44-46 plus the annual.

but here is the crux of the matter:

cutting for length!!

so whats going on here in outsiders! is that black lightning, aka Jefferson pierce, aka anissa pierces dad and one of the few really good dads in the dcu, got (basically) framed for murder by deathstroke; believed he (accidentally) actually did the murder; eventually turned himself in to serve his time in prison.

jason happens across this information entirely by accident, and goes out of his way to deliver that information to dickie, who has an on-again off-again relationship with being the leader of the outsiders at this point in time. and im just going to post a lot of it, both bc i like it and also so you see what Jason was going against JUST TO DELIVER THIS INFORMATION:

skipping the first page to save images but jason asks dick to meet up with him in Gotham; the next pages:

im skipping a bit of really enjoyable fighting after that as well but pls know its there. jason asked dick to meet up and dick fully said okay ill come to your rendez-vous *just* to beat the shit out of you. and he was so valid for that. but this aint about him so lets get back to jason:

why does jason bring this up + how does Jason come by this information? well

ok. now youre as caught up as dick is.

some times fools and jackanapes say to me. but sisky why would jason do this and bring this information to dick. why would he try to break black lightning out of prison. why would he do such a thing when he is a known knave, neer do well, scoundrel, etc. to which i say HE TOLD YOU!!! HE TOLD YOU WHY HE DID IT

JASON FUCKING VALUES THE *GOOD GUYS.*

(and also sidenote. winick is writing this so we have to assume he knows how competent and resourceful jason can be bc... as the guy who defined the character after his resurrection... he *made him that way.* so based on utrh we have to assume both that 1) jason could have pulled this prison break off solo and 2) jason *knows* he could pull it off solo...

but he also knows he's a Bad Guy now, and he realizes that *if* he sprung black lightning hed just fucking! turn himself back in! so jadon needs to convince some big goddamn heroes to do it....

so he goes to dick.)

((and also secondary sidenote. willis todd canoncially spent enough time in and out of prison that jason assumed hed wound up back there without telling him or catherine before she died and jason wound up squatting, and he only found out otherwise when he read the entry on the batcomputer on two-face.))

the point is. jason has a *lot* of moral ideas he is not, at this point in time, capable of living by for a variety of Jason Reasons, ill do more meta on that some other time. so he's inhabiting the bad guy role, but sometimes he keeps slipping and falling and accidentally caring about things, and...

god damn it dick, black lightning is one of the *good* guys. like *you're* one of the good guys. aren't you going to fucking help him??

i will probably elaborate on this more in the future as well. i just need to hit send rn LOL

[oldbutchdanielcraig]

this is such a fucking stupid question but. do you have any advice for developing a good understanding of characters? like i wish i could put those guys into situations but it's like there's a mental block and my mind goes blank as if they're Unfathomable Real People Who I Cannot Possibly Hope To Ever Understand.

no not a stupid question! actually a really good question. it's such a good question in fact that i don't have a simple answer so i'm going to. word vomit onto the page and hope something sticks. i ramble like crazy so have a read more :)

precursor: i have to note that i feel like armand and daniel are the two characters i've like. Understood. more than any other characters in my life. i think that's because i relate to them both in very distinct but separate ways (we'll discuss that later) but i think it's also because. part of anne rice's writing and the show's adaptation is so determined to break these characters down to their fundamental parts. that's kind of the thesis statement of the books, even, that when you live forever you're no longer a "product of your time" but rather just you, yourself, and you kind of have to spend the rest of your eternal life figuring out who that is. so that to me gives both a flexibility and a set of basic building blocks for each character that you can play with.

that being said, here are a couple of ways i maybe go about building understanding:

option 1: the projectorrrrr (this is me most of the time)

if you like looking at your character and going "ha ha i do that" then that's awesome. do that! figure out what parts you relate to and think, okay, if the vampire armand was me, how would he react to my coworker saying this. alternatively, if i was the vampire armand, would would i do if i'd just broken a 500 year vow to myself?

this is where, like, critical thinking comes into play of course, because you are not the vampire armand and the vampire armand is not you. but 1) you're allowed to play around in the sandbox and have fun without constantly going "He Would Not Fucking Say That" because uhhh. this is fandom and we are doing this for fun and 2) once you to get to the point where you're kindly going "He Would Not Fucking Say That" you can then be like oh! well what would he say? because the contrasts are often as fun to explore as the comparisons

option 2: that's my friend

i also think you genuinely can view characters as Real People — but you can hope to understand them!!! or at least you can understand Your view of them, which doesn't have to perfectly match mine or anyone else's view.

this is going to sound crazy and part of the reason why i feel like i don't have a good answer to your question, but genuinely my best writing happens when i uhhh. hear them speaking. in my mind. this is literally a developed skill because like 4-5 years ago i was terrible at writing dialogue and it frustrated me + i never had good ideas for fics because i just wanted to write meta posts. so i was like. i'm going to get good at writing dialogue if it kills me. imagine you're talking to them or they're talking to someone else. look up writing prompt sentences (like on roleplay blogs if nothing else) and think about how they'd respond. i'm at the point where i'll decide on a situation and will sit in silence for a minute, imagine them like dolls in my head, and go "SPEAK!" and wait to hear what they'll say.

my final tip is to please please remember if nothing else that this is supposed to be fun and that at the end of the day it is just playing with dolls online with your friends. you're allowed to be wrong. in fact you probably will be. but that's okay! you can start small and be wrong and as long as you're having fun and enjoying putting your characters in scenarios it's all worth it

[sundrop-writes]

Fanfiction Poll Again :)

(because I am feeling insane and directionless)

I do ask that you please read about the ideas below before choosing an option, but it's totally cool if you just pick an option based on which one sounds the coolest. Also usually I do seven day polls, but recently whenever I do that, by the time the polls are finished, the ideas are no longer appealing to me because my brain has moved on (oop). So this time we're just doing one day! I think it's stupid and unfair that communities has 3 day polls and we can't do that on main blogs. Like dude.

And I know some of you are like 'what about the second half of the George fic?' - well usually when I have to edit a long fic, I have to lock myself in Editing Jail for two or three days and it's no fun. So my plain this time around is to put myself in Editing Timeout for like an hour a day and edit 5 or 10 pages a day until it's done while working on something else so that I don't get insanely bored. So it will be done. (And I have to do this with a Jason fic and a few TMR fics too.)

Anyway, POLL:

Something with Will Lenney x Reader x James Marriott (this is a fanfiction threesome that needs to happen and as far as I’ve seen, it hasn’t happened? Like I haven’t seen anybody write this before? But I could be wrong) - my general idea would be that the reader is someone who knew Will first (and maybe dated him?? Maybe an ex?) but now she’s helping James with his music and they’re spending a lot of time together and flirting a lot and Will absolutely hates it and one day when he goes to yell at them about it, he walks in on them making out, and the petty jealous argument that breaks out actually turns into a threesome (trust me on this one)

Your First Kiss With George Weasley - would be the start of the 'your first kiss' series with the Harry Potter characters. George gets drunk at Bill and Fleur's wedding because he thinks that his ugly disfigurement after the Battle of The Seven Potters makes him unlovable and he'll never get married like his brother, and you assure him that's definitely not the case.

A Ron Weasley fic inspired by the Phil Collins song Against All Odds (which is one of my favourite songs of all times and I have a weird emotional fixation on Phil Collins and I have since seeing Tarzan when I was a child). Ron and Reader are childhood friends and very clearly are in love in with each other but haven’t admitted it yet, and when Ron abandons them during Horcrux hunting, Reader is very hurt that Ron would abandon her specifically because when they were kids he promised her that he would “always be there for her”. And when he comes back, she confesses her love to him in a bout of anger and he begs for her forgiveness, which at first, she is unwilling to give. Would be very angsty

An Andre Harris x Reader fic - oddly enough, inspired by The Little Mermaid. Andre really needs a competent and good love interest. I’ve been rewatching Victorious lately and I’ve been watching a lot of meta about the show and I realized how neglected Andre is and my brain came up with this. The reader is new to Hollywood Arts and walks down and hears Andre singing and falls in love with the sound of his singing voice, but before she can approach the room he was in and find out who was singing, Andre is distracted away by shenanigans and she finds the room empty. So she develops a crush on the anonymous Singing Guy, and when Andre meets her and gets to know her better, he develops a crush on her - and he’s devastated to find out that she has a crush on some random guy (obviously that neither of them know is him). So the friend group suggests that Andre win her over by writing her a song and it works out in the end when she hears him singing. It would be structured like an episode as an homage to the show

Bloodfeather - which is an idea I had for a longer Daryl Dixon x reader fic. It would showcase Daryl and the reader’s relationship throughout the series in oneshots (and I don’t wanna reveal any of the major plot points lmao)

Harry Being Insane In The Woods - Harry James Potter x Reader. This is based on the idea that after the Battle of Hogwarts, Harry has intense PTSD and has a difficult time adjusting to 'normal' life, so he flees society and goes to live in a cabin in the woods where no one can find him. When he random cuts off contact with Ron and Hermione, Hermione comes to you (Harry's ex girlfriend) worried, and sends you to find Harry, and it ends with sappy, angsty, kink reunion sex between you and Harry. (This is deeply inspired by Daniel Radcliffe's character in Horns because I am so obsessed with that movie and so close to writing fanfiction for it.)

Something with Will Lenney x Reader x James Marriott (this is a fanfiction threesome that needs to happen and as far as I’ve seen, it hasn’t happened? Like I haven’t seen anybody write this before? But I could be wrong) - my general idea would be that the reader is someone who knew Will first (and maybe dated him?? Maybe an ex?) but now she’s helping James with his music and they’re spending a lot of time together and flirting a lot and Will absolutely hates it and one day when he goes to yell at them about it, he walks in on them making out, and the petty jealous argument that breaks out actually turns into a threesome (trust me on this one)

Your First Kiss With George Weasley - would be the start of the 'your first kiss' series with the Harry Potter characters. George gets drunk at Bill and Fleur's wedding because he thinks that his ugly disfigurement after the Battle of The Seven Potters makes him unlovable and he'll never get married like his brother, and you assure him that's definitely not the case.

A Ron Weasley fic inspired by the Phil Collins song Against All Odds (which is one of my favourite songs of all times and I have a weird emotional fixation on Phil Collins and I have since seeing Tarzan when I was a child). Ron and Reader are childhood friends and very clearly are in love in with each other but haven’t admitted it yet, and when Ron abandons them during Horcrux hunting, Reader is very hurt that Ron would abandon her specifically because when they were kids he promised her that he would “always be there for her”. And when he comes back, she confesses her love to him in a bout of anger and he begs for her forgiveness, which at first, she is unwilling to give. Would be very angsty

An Andre Harris x Reader fic - oddly enough, inspired by The Little Mermaid. Andre really needs a competent and good love interest. I’ve been rewatching Victorious lately and I’ve been watching a lot of meta about the show and I realized how neglected Andre is and my brain came up with this. The reader is new to Hollywood Arts and walks down and hears Andre singing and falls in love with the sound of his singing voice, but before she can approach the room he was in and find out who was singing, Andre is distracted away by shenanigans and she finds the room empty. So she develops a crush on the anonymous Singing Guy, and when Andre meets her and gets to know her better, he develops a crush on her - and he’s devastated to find out that she has a crush on some random guy (obviously that neither of them know is him). So the friend group suggests that Andre win her over by writing her a song and it works out in the end when she hears him singing. It would be structured like an episode as an homage to the show

Bloodfeather - which is an idea I had for a longer Daryl Dixon x reader fic. It would showcase Daryl and the reader’s relationship throughout the series in oneshots (and I don’t wanna reveal any of the major plot points lmao)

Harry Being Insane In The Woods - Harry James Potter x Reader. This is based on the idea that after the Battle of Hogwarts, Harry has intense PTSD and has a difficult time adjusting to 'normal' life, so he flees society and goes to live in a cabin in the woods where no one can find him. When he random cuts off contact with Ron and Hermione, Hermione comes to you (Harry's ex girlfriend) worried, and sends you to find Harry, and it ends with sappy, angsty, kink reunion sex between you and Harry. (This is deeply inspired by Daniel Radcliffe's character in Horns because I am so obsessed with that movie and so close to writing fanfiction for it.)

[literaticat]

Hi Jenn! Can you talk a bit about the difference between a beginning reader and a picture book? In most cases it's super obvious what category a book belongs to based on format, sentence structure, and vocab level, but there are times the difference is less obvious to me. I'm writing a book that feels like it's on the border a bit. So, what makes "Fox the Tiger" a reader, but "The Watermelon Seed" a picture book? Why are the Pigeon books picture books, but Elephant & Piggie are readers? Thanks!

This is an interesting question - I don't actually OWN any of these books, so I had to dig through the archives of my mind and look up samples online.

It's true that, on paper, a simple Early Reader text can look pretty similar to a simple PB text. Short, "easy" texts, etc. The difference (IMO!) is intention. Early reader books -- especially "Leveled Readers" like FOX THE TIGER -- are trying to literally help teach a child to read. This is what the different "levels" mean for the I Can Read line -- FOX is a "My First" (pre-level 1) reader, which means it has a story like a picture book but with very basic language, word repetition, etc.

There are publisher guidelines that vary a bit depending on the level -- no more than X number of lines per page or X number of characters per line, and for the earliest levels especially, mostly simple/monosyllabic words, little description, anything in the text needs to appear in the illustrations (so kids can figure out new words using visual context clues). Basically, very literal/straightforward. So let's compare:

This is FOX THE TIGER vs THE WATERMELON SEED -- both great books! Both fairly simple texts! But different: The first thing I noticed is that the Fox text is a simple, clear, and easy-to-read black serif typeface vs Watermelon with a "cool" sans serif lettering, different colors, different sizes, not in straight lines, etc -- obviously this is a design thing, any book COULD be set in any kind of type, but for a book that is meant to be an early reader, it's important for the type to be especially easy to read!

Next: There are only two lines of text on this sample page in the reader, very simple monosyllabic words. Compared to the Watermelon sample page, which has multiple lines of text with multiple polysyllabic words.

Finally, the text that says "I wish I were a tiger", says Fox is illustrated with a picture of a fox reading a book about tigers and looking wistful. The other page mentions "it" (meaning watermelon) and has "eating sound effects" but there is no picture of watermelon at all, let alone anyone eating it. It says "baby crocodile" and the image is a baby carriage with little green arms sticking out of it -- we, the reader who already knows how to read and is immersed in the story, will obviously understand / infer that this baby carriage image IS the crocodile in flashback and that he's talking about his love of Watermelon even though there is no watermelon on this page . . . but all that? That's too complicated / not literal enough for an early reader.

ELEPHANT AND PIGGIE: WAITING IS NOT EASY vs DON'T LET THE PIGEON DRIVE THE BUS. Both look fairly similar at a glance -- word bubbles, simple illustrations that are mostly the characters making faces.

BUT! Notice that in the reader, neither the title nor the text uses contractions. (Waiting IS NOT easy. I CANNOT wait. vs Isn't/Can't). The type is, again, a VERY clear black serif font. And the faces the characters are making/the things they are doing match the text.

vs

The picture book is full of contractions, starting with the title (DON'T vs DO NOT) and slang ("How 'bout I give you five bucks?"). The type is a "cool looking"/stylish not as clear. But most importantly, PIGEON is made to be read aloud. It's meta-fiction, The child listening to this story is meant to act as the "parent"/ person in charge -- the person reading aloud is the pigeon. So when the pigeon is trying to sweet-talk the reader, bribe them, cajole them, bully them, the kid being read to is supposed to respond NO! They are part of the story! But also, the PIGEON is lying, being sardonic, etc -- all of this you get if you are good at reading or are listening to the story, but it's not ideal for an early reader book for these reasons.

There are probably even more differences - these are the ones I noticed right away. Hope that helps!