Obsidian Musings

May I cling to you in desperate hope that something good might happen.

"I was incredibly fortunate to work with Connor Storrie. He’s not only a very talented actor, but also an intelligent, thoughtful person with a real aptitude for languages. He approached the work with curiosity, discipline, and generosity. Working together was a genuinely rewarding experience.

[…] We worked on everything that helps a language and an accent feel authentic. That meant learning the [dialogue] word-by-word so he fully understood what he was saying and could connect it to the emotional life of the character. We focused on stress, intonation, expression, and even body language. We also touched on grammar, conjugation, and tenses, but always in direct relation to the script in front of us.

The goal was never perfection. It was about making the language feel natural enough that he didn’t have to think about it while performing, so the focus could stay on the scene and the relationship. And Connor handled that challenge with flying colors. It was accelerated and intense. For Connor, it was a crash course layered on top of an already demanding shoot, with other skills he was mastering at the same time, like ice skating and hockey. But he showed up every single day ready to work, and that level of commitment made all the difference.”

🔗 Read the full interview here:

It's all in the knees and the abs. And as you guys remember, 20-pack of abs.

teen novels with sex scenes in them written for teenagers are not new! And they're aimed AT teenagers! They just tend to be shorter scenes, focus on feelings and emotions and generally are more light and uh...using implications instead of getting descriptive or graphic.

Freaking out over a single sex scene in a T fic that is completely fade to black in this year of our lord 2026 is actually unhinged to me.

Because it means that person is freaking out over something that was less graphic than Judy Blume's 1975 novel, Forever, where the protagonist has on-page sex with her steady boyfriend. Judy Blume's Forever is a pioneer book of the Young Adult fiction genre. The forward actually has Blume explaining that she wrote this book because her own teenaged daughter asked for:

"a story about two nice kids who have sex without either of them having to die."

And yeah, people clutched their pearls about Forever... having sex in it

— when that book came out half a century ago.

You're telling me that 51 years later it's not even actual "on screen" sex that is upsetting people in something rated for Teenagers —but they're mad about the fade to black implications of people having sex?

I feel insane.

T is for Teen and Older Audiences. Fade to black sex scenes are completely acceptable in mass market young adult fiction. The people who objected the most heavily to Forever really started kicking up a fuss under (who else?) the Reagan administration.

But, and I cannot stress this enough: Forever has sex in it. The teenagers in the teenager book aimed at teens mutually masturbate, have oral sex, have penetrative sex, and use contraception on the page. Right there!!

And personally I was given Forever to read as a young teenager, and I do benchmark what would still be appropriate for teens in terms of explicitness and content in writing against that. Basically if you write something no spicier than Judy Blume's YA novels (and definitely not spicier than any other number of YA novels I read as a teenager) then I don't...see an issue. (Also didn't one of the girls in Sisterhood of the traveling pants ALSO have sex??)

I don't benchmark "no sex vs has mentions of sex vs has sex" as "T" versus "M" versus "E" at all. I expect sex scenes in T rated stories to be fade to black or similar to Judy Blume, and comparatively "light," IF they exist. I expect M rated fics to have sex scenes that are about as spicy as your average mass market paperback romance novel. And E fics are Explicit and therefore sex scenes can read like erotica fiction and are as filthy as they please.

And you're telling me that people are having a fit that a rated T for Teen and Older fanfiction has FADE TO BLACK SCENES MERELY SUGGESTING SEX HAPPENED??

Plus like...even setting aside movie ratings, we live in a world where teen drama television usually includes those teenagers having sex. Frequently, even. I watched (and read!) Gossip girl. I saw Riverdale. Hell, even Rory Gilmore had sex more than once on that show.

Voss spent 25 years as a hostage negotiator, meaning that his job was to talk to guys on the phone who had literal guns to innocent people's heads. He KNOWS how to compassionately de-escalate a conflict and have productive, constructive conversations with people who are highly activated and reactive.

To be continued... Pt 1 of the Raggedy Ravi Series

Anirudh Pisharody as Ravi Panikkar and Oliver Stark as Evan Buckley in 9-1-1: S09E05, Dia de los Muertos

Wow. Yknow, it would be very for lines like that to be cheesy. A one liner to get an idea but kind of scoff at.