I'm really glad you enjoyed frtt!! Typically we only write and post longer stories like FRTT and roman holiday around christmas, so you probably won't see anything of that length until the end of the year.

Aaah thank you!!!! We like to think that Percy is a huge Blanco stan and that’s the “terrible pop music” sally is referring to in chapter 19 (for the record we love blanco and would never call his music terrible he was in my top 5 Spotify wrapped artists 🫶).

I think frtt is a very different situation than canon in regards to the gabe situation, which carrie and I discussed a lot. In canon Percy eventually learns that his mom only married Gabe to protect him. In frtt, the situation is more complicated. Sally married gabe for Percy in some ways, but she also married gabe for herself. It wasn’t necessarily the selfless act that it is in canon and that changes things a lot. Sally feels more guilt for putting Percy in that situation, and Percy harbors some repressed anger towards her (that he projects onto Marino) for keeping them in that situation when she potentially had a way out.

In canon Percy also knows that his father can’t interfere, whereas in frtt Marino could’ve if he had known better. His mom getting married again to Marino didn’t exactly fix the skewed idea of marriage he has in his head because even if they’re happy and stable Percy cant see past Marino’s mistakes to believe he’s worthy of being with his mom.

Meanwhile in canon Percy sees his mom get married to Paul and as far as we can tell it’s a very stable and loving relationship (even if I think Paul is boring). That makes a big difference too— Percy knows his mother’s first marriage was completely contrived for his protection and didn’t mean anything to sally beyond that, and then he gets to see his mom in a stable and happy marriage with someone not involved in the previous situation. Frtt Percy’s situation is much more complicated.

So, we knew we wanted Percy to give her a nickname in Italian that she originally interprets as insulting but is actually affectionate. It was a little hard to look up online bc sometimes the translation just didn’t carry the meaning very well (I’m pretty sure “little cheese” was also on the list 😭)

But my best friend from college is from Italy, so I asked her if she had any suggestions and she gave us “patatina” because it’s very versatile. it can be a little insulting in certain context but it’s also a very sweet affectionate pet name in others. It’s also (according to her) the second most common term of endearment beyond “amore” <3

also what was going on in his head when he decided to antagonize her from the get go