one. top five brokeback mountain (2005) moments:

number one: ennis holding jack's shirt at the end.

number two: "you're sleeping on your feet like a horse."

number three: the kiss alma sees thru the window (where heath almost broke jake's nose in a take of it).

number four: the oh so very important beat of anne hathaway (i'm sorry i can't remember her character's name) choking up and then fixing her makeup while telling ennis of jack's death.

number five: david harbour smiling at jake gyllenhaal in that scene.

two. top five instances of something you've read sticking with you (good or bad):

number one: the surprise incest twist in the magic toyshop by angela carter.

number two: tolstoy writing kitty's atonement arc in anna karenina as if my sparkling ekaterina ever needed to atone and be redeemed to be worthy of levin.

number three: any time stephen king writes women. but especially carrie, oh my lord, why did she die????

number four: the entirety of vanya's speech on god and the devil in the brothers karamazov by fyodor dostoevsky.

number five: the structure and visceral phrasing of "[her] cunt, a split fig" in angela carter's the bloody chamber.

three. top five elements of world building you'd like to see more in anything:

number one: cowboys. especially cowboys of colour.

number two: less "alien" characters as the token non-white one. just stop fucking doing that. i get it, zoe saldana was in star trek and guardians of the galaxy. now please stop. let aliens be aliens and characters of colour be characters of colour without blending the two for your white hero to fuck.

number three: female killers not killing willy nilly. put some actual thought behind it if you want her to be an antihero, cos white women killing men of colour and gay men because "kill all men" isn't cute and shouldn't exist as a trope.

number four: can people actually think of parent characters' ages before writing something. cos yeah, some people are young parents, but majority aren't now. honestly ageism in general towards anything over 28 within media is a massive issue, unless it's a piece about a 30 year old woman turning 31 and having a melt down and finding herself during the period. just stop. reconsider the age. coming of age stories are fun, but other people consume media too and if i've to read about another 23 year old feeling lost and finding herself the ideal job and a man and they're pregnant by the end of the book/film, i'm catapulting us all into the sun.

hello cree. how are you other than horrified at what my tags informed you of? i have often wondered who reads my tags, if anyone at all, so it's nice to know someone does even if it is after learning they read the worst thing i've ever written in them. anyway, yes. yep. allow me to paint you a picture:

it's mid afternoon, i'm procrastinating from writing my 4000 word research proposal on social inequalities on social media, chatting to @ithvka via insta voice note DMs when i take a scroll thru my insta feed. i'm scrolling scrolling scrolling and- oh, what's this? aidan gallagher has reposted some fanart from a fan

oh no. nope. the caption says- uh. how do i unread the caption? is this a thing? am i seeing this correctly? it gets worse as i go looking for answers; he's selling a fan insert comic to certain tier levels on patreon. there's a discord server where he can hang out with his fans. where are his parents? where are the boundaries here? he's a child, i'm not holding him too accountable but what type of guardians does he have who have allowed him to believe this is an ok relationship to create with his fans? who is protecting this kid?

3 minutes pass. i blacked out for them, leaving @ithvka 3 ranting messages worrying for this kid and the type of situations that are going to be fostered within this type of parasocial relationship. in the last one i pose the question "how do i remove him from this situation without coming off like a kidnapper cos you know the federal police aren't gonna view me as anything but a predator?" it's true. they aren't going to.

in a final attempt to prevent this situation from getting worse i leave one final voice note about it to @ithvka, addressing the FBI agent listening to our conversation directly and ask him to find whichever of his colleagues overseas aidan's internet usage so they can sort this before is escalates to whatever damaging and dangerous level of boundary overstepping it's going to.

thank you, cree. i appreciate this a lot. the case studies were picked by the authors ourselves, but they had to fall within the very strict guideline parameters; i was always going to end up sourcing, reading and writing about some sort of negative online echo chamber with potentially upsetting rhetoric. so i chose a topic i was passionate about -- TERFs are trash -- and went with it. tbh initially the case study focus wasn’t quite so dark, but as i analysed and compared language patterns and looked at how radical feminism’s transphobia has always been inherently violent and aggressive, after it developed an online echo chamber and amplified its views and i looked at that, the comparisons were getting worse and worse and now i’ve read more on nazi laws and policies than anyone should ever have to.

anyway!

is there any ship trope you wish was more popular?

god, i can think of so many that i don’t love and wish people would stop promoting. oh! i’ve got one. sorta. it’s more “wish the trope i’m saying i don’t want happened less” but it’s kinda a trope in its own right. maybe? i don’t know the name for it. just stick with me.

so, everyone knows the trope “big bad friend”, yeah? the best friend turns out to be the betrayer; judas and jesus stuff. and the trope of “enemies to lovers”. they both always seem to come with rehabilitation of the evil character -- yes, i am aware that i’m against the rehabilitation of characters to “more worthy” love interests because of kitty in anna karenina, but tolstoy owes me reparations for the treatment of my sparkling, glorious girl yekaterina alexandrovna shcherbatskaya (tolstoy’s insert for his wife) did not need to repent for her dreamy worldview, i will fight everyone for her -- and that always comes with a truly knuckle bitingly embarrassing speech from the hero where they inform everyone of how great their change is.

ok, why are you blowing up their spot like that? how embarrassing. stop filling the room with useless air, you dingus, god. how much exposition of their rehabilitation has occurred in this terrible love declaration? can i leave, cos i’m embarrassed for everyone involved.

what about self rehabilitation for the self and not for love. not to make them worthy. like . . . it’s great to support your partner, and it’s good that they’ve worked on themselves, they’ve found a hobby and a therapist to channel their feelings into something healthier and more positive than mass murder. but why- why is the hero talking about them like that?

if more fics centred on the rehabilitation and change in character of the previous “villain”, and focused on them changing for themselves, allowing them ownership of for self growth and happiness than placing the onus on the “making them worthy of love” aspect, i would appreciate that.

does that make sense?

definitely ok with the “villain” changing for the better. but stop making that change about the hero. (don’t get me started on “i did it for you!” love declarations between enemies to lovers. the gesture is so twisted. don’t make me sit through it anymore.)

what tends to make you ship characters together? 

with rpf, it is genuinely “are they both hot/cool/funny/interesting to me?” and that’s it. i don’t actually have any rpf pairings that make me go “yeah, this is an OTP and nothing else can touch it!” it doesn’t work like that for me -- are these people chill? excellent. i’mma come up with a dumb AU that allows me to stack their mouths on top of each other and then tomorrow i’mma write another dumb AU where person a macks on a totally different person cos reality is an illusion, the universe is a hologram, so here’s more hot people making out!

as for ships within shows, books, movies, plays, those are more “will these two benefit one another? how? ok. good.” and “i’m intrigued by this dynamic, let’s see where this takes us.” 

my ships range from canon to . . . very not canon. largely because i like playing around with how certain pairings will fit together, how will this work, will this be a good place for both of them. if not, why not? alright, let’s go down this path, see where we end up.

canon and reality means little to me. i don’t ever have any aspersions that my ships are canon or anything more than a bizarre rarepair. in fact, sometimes i think if my ships became canon or the people started dating in real life, that would be the sign the simulation is falling apart or some godling being has fallen in love with me and is gifting me the ship’s canoninity, which, god, all of those options are awful.

i’m interested in human dynamics. that’s it.

for your pansy/neville ship: what's something that really connects them for you?

they both have the largest space within them for change and growth. is that because joro is a bad character designer and gave more interesting characterisation and plots to side characters and minor antagonists? yes. but fuck that transphobic moron, i’m here to enjoy myself and ruin her canon.

as i’ve previously described re: pansy parkinson/oliver wood (let pansy parkinson have a himbo jock husband, she deserves it!) pansy is a 17 year old who does a brave yet stupid act in the final book. it’s one of the most gryffindor things done in the books and a gryffindor didn’t do it. neville (like oliver) has a very visible slytherin streak; while potter and friends are on the worst camping trip in history, neville is in hogwarts fucking up the carrows’ shit and is literally only held back from straight up bodily harm and murder cos “that’s not the gryffindor way” according to harry. neville is so ready to do what’s necessary, which, OH BOYSIE, slytherin shit right there, baybeeeeee.

neville should have been the hero, not harry, but joro was too busy cranking her politics all over the books and genuinely only gave neville and draco more to do when fandom cared about them more than she had hoped. but that’s another discussion for another day.

if pansy, for pansy, goes thru some self rehabilitation as discussed above, and neville, who would not give a fuck about what the golden trio think is a suitable partner, grows a little more of a backbone with regards asking girls out, they’d be great.

plus, god. i get it, i do understand the whole uwu hot enemies to lovers [sparkle emoji x3] gimmick of harry potter/pansy parkinson, but uhhhhhh harry, the rich kid who became a cop, doesn’t deserve pansy. and don’t even get me started on ron weasley/pansy parkinson, leave my girl alone.

carrie: have you ever been told something you didn’t want to be/gotten news you didn’t want to?

yes.

[trigger warning: discussions of illness and death]

there are probably tiny mundane things that in the moment of hearing them i didn't want them and groaned about them, but beyond the seconds of time they occured in, they haven't affected my life. the one that truly sticks out to me is when my mom died.

i was 15 when my mom died. it was almost the end of the summer holidays, and my mom had been sick since pretty much my birthday (mid-june). and i was a kid, a teen who wanted to go outside and be with her friends, but who was in all the time looking after her mom. cos my mom was experiencing violent bouts of vertigo and nausea, she was unsteady on her feet, and my dad was in work 8 to 6 every weekday, so it was me with her. so-

it was august 18th, i'd been invited around to a friend's house to watch a movie that night, and my dad was hesitant to let me go. cos it was getting "late" and he needed to go to bed early cos he'd work in the morning and what if my mom needed me after he was sleeping. but my mom, who could see i'm a kid who just wants to have a normal night off during the summer holidays with her friends, said it's fine, she would go to bed now while i was there and then i was free to go. but i had to be back at 11.

i back came home at 10:55pm to my dad snoring in the guest bedroom -- where he'd been since my mom's nausea had become nightly nausea since he had to get up in the mornings for work, etc -- and i went into my mom. who was awake, that was normal, the nausea and migraines kept her awake, and she asked me to lie down beside her and tell her about the movie. i stayed until just a little after midnight, asked if she needed anything else, and she said to me, "goodnight, i'll see you in the morning." and i went to my room.

at a little after 2am, my dad was waking me up, crying, telling me my mom's not breathing, and i. fuck. i still remember this like it happened 20 seconds ago. i looked at him and said, "but i was just talking to her." which is true. it was a little under 2 hours later. and it's one of the worst things i've ever heard come out of another human's mouth. cos i just remember thinking it wasn't true, she'd said 'i'll see you in the morning', why didn't she say she wasn't ok, what if i'd stayed with her and slept there, this wouldn't have happened. i was 15 years old and being told by my dad to call an ambulance, my mom wasn't breathing.

silent hill: if you could go anywhere without worrying about money, where would you go? where are some places that reality feels distorted for you?

lockdown in ireland and internal and external travel bans began on march 12th of this year. glen and i were meant to be flying out to russia for march 21st, so that trip went down the drain. now, everything continues to be up in the air and altho we got complete refunds, if money and everything else wasn't a worry, i would like to be in st petersburg. just let me see rasputin's dick and the hermitage before i die, that would be great.

the best places i have been in the last decade are nice, lyon and prague. i would love to be in those places. and OH, i also made a promise to myself this time last year that by now i would be living in boston and instead i'm doing a[nother] masters course and am very clearly still in dublin. (yeah, boston. i know. dream big, kat. shut up. internally i'm a masshole, can't say 'r' at all.)

places with weird, unexplainable vibes for me: the frozen section of the 24/7 grocery store near my house when i go for ice cream at 3am, the train station early on summer mornings when i was the only person in it for my cross city commute for work, the irish national gallery new wing stairway on the third floor, the ivy hooded passage at the side of my house where i keep the bins, the pet and servants cemetery in malahide castle (what a combination).

scream: are you excited for the future?

my personal future is finishing this case study i'm writing for uni and napping all day saturday, so yeah, i'm hella excited for that. let me sleep, i'm so sick of citations and proofs. as for the future of the world . . . we have a lot to do to make the world better after this year and whilst the idea of a better future out there is a comforting thought, i fear how people will react to having to own their own messes contributing towards getting said better future.

the ring: what’s your favorite tv show? what do you think about the effect of media on people?

don't judge me, but the OC holds a special place in my heart since its original airing and i have never let it go. nothing has topped it and yes, i do a rewatch about every 18 months, cos it's a commitment. the older i've gotten, the more i've liked and understood characters that teenage me didn't love when it first aired. i have a huge space in me for marissa, who i found irritating before. not only is she well written but she's way more entertaining than people give her credit for.

the OC also happened before the big trend in TV shows where everyone had to date everyone else at least once. gossip girl was the biggest culprit for that and i'm very thankful that while the OC broke people up from time to time, the relationships weren't as heavily incestuous -- if the OC had been airing around the time of gossip girl, ryan and marissa would have broken up just in time for her and seth to have a daliance before her death.

it does have its flaws, that i will acknowledge, and there are some lines that are not ok in it, even back then. but ryan haywood asking, "know what i like about rich kids?" before cold clocking luke in the jaw and answering his own question with, "nothing." is an iconic piece of TV.

as for media and its effect on people . . . i think that media is a good form for entertainment, but as with everything nowadays, the goal is to keep you watching so more ads can be thrown at viewers or more people will subscribe to the service, and media/cinema the art form for entertainment becoming so corporatised and profits obsessed has led to less and less time and effort being put into developing scripts and choosing interesting, innovating concepts, since it's all about creation for profit now, so some things are undeserved in their season renewal after season renewal while other things that are more interesting are cancelled sooner. and as media in this form is about consumption on the side of the viewer, rather than think about it, we'll just go find something else to watch to waste time to block out the misery that is this existence.

jaws: how prepared are you for most of the situations you’re put in? how well can you handle situations that you’re put in, especially if they make you uncomfortable?

i'm a gemini so i have two settings. one. completely unprepared and winging it but no one knows cos i'm charming and highly intelligent; two. prepared for one variation of the situation but not for any other, and if that doesn't happen then we're just going with option one, aren't we? thus far, i'm not dead so i'm doing fantastic.

crow. which school subject do you wish you had an aptitude for?

maths. oh my sweet ever loving fuck, do you know how much easier my life could have been, as a whole, if i were in any way good at maths.

actually, i think i am actually alright at mental maths. i can add, subtract, divide and multiply, and work out percentages pretty quickly in my head. and that’s all shit that makes sense, i see how we got here. also, algebra. that makes sense to me; it’s a puzzle and i can work it out.

but the shit that isn’t really maths. but is like . . . the made up stuff. that has very few to no real life applications beyond like 3 jobs, none of which i wanna do. stuff like calculus. nope. no thank you. whichever ancient greek thought of this, i hate you. and trigonometry. it’s literally about triangles. ok, cool. but i haven’t thought about a triangle in years, other than the bermuda triangle and, fuck me sideways, thinking of that has very little to do with maths and more to do with “what if there is a really big void in the universe right over that patch of the earth? would that be so bad?”

and perhaps if maths wasn’t taught in such a way that anyone who can’t do it immediately hates it, then perhaps i would have some chance at being good at it in a broader sense.

but i’m gay and can work out a percent pretty alright so other than that, fuck maths.

bonfire. describe your dream house.

bran castle.

it was for sale in 2014. for $80 million. which i cannot afford. but, picture if you will -- me, a near see through nightgown, a red robe over it, and an ornate 3 candle candelabra in my hand. the night is dark and full of storms, the forest all around rattling with the wind. there’s a knock at the door.

strange. the townsfolk think i’m a vampire. or worse. cursed at the very least. i wait. the knock comes again. the person on the other side must be from out of town, lost in the forest trying to find it. they’re soaked through when i open the door. it’s been too long since i’ve seen another person. they’re beautiful, if a little stunned from the weather, the late hour, apology after apology coming from their mouth for the intrusion until i tell them it’s fine, there’s more than enough room.

they mean to only stay the night, but they sleep so long into the day, i offer them another night. they say they shouldn’t, that they really should go. but i insist, it’s already late and the storm hasn’t calmed.

10. goodbye kiss; pansy parkinson/neville longbottom

When Neville wakes, the bed beside him is cold and there’s a mug of half finished coffee sitting in the kitchen sink. No note, no goodbye, just an ice cold cup of coffee staining a ring into the white bone porcelain his grandmother thought he needed when he moved out of hers.

But-

It can’t have been that long ago, when Neville felt the bed dip and reached for her, eyes barely open in the dark. When his fingertips scuffed the soft skin of her wrist and brought her back to him.

“It’s alright,” Pansy had said, filling up the space Neville left for her as he lay back down, getting comfortable. “Go back to sleep,” she whispered, into his cheek as he settled. He had laid his arm over her side, he remembers it so clearly, despite his sleep-soaked state.

He remembers the distinct change in Pansy’s tone too, when she had tried to move again, the sharpness of the ‘Neville’ that left her lips. He had kissed her cheek to soothe her, then again, and once more, catching the corner of her mouth just lightly enough to make her Pansy smile and say, “Alright, alright,” before she had kissed him.

Properly. Warm, and right up against him in his bed.

And then she’s slipped away. To the other side of the bed? Neville can’t remember that part. Now he’s got a coffee stain to wash away and papers to correct, and Pansy’s gone.

22. sad kiss; tom holland/mat barzal

It's such a shitty thing to do. Tom has his own bullshit going on with . . . Connor? Timmy? Zendaya? Mat's not sure anymore, the story keeps changing depending on who he asks. But Mat's done.

He's so fucking done.

Cos Jamie has made it clear as crystal what he wants. What all this means- or, rather, doesn't mean to him. They fuck and they play hockey together, they have a couple of mutual friends, but other than that, there's no place for Mat in Jamie's life. And Mat knows that, he gets it; Jamie doesn't need to love him back. But Mat can't let go. Even though he's so fucking bad at buddies, so bad that everyone except Jamie can see how he feels, Mat doesn't know how to let go of what they have. He can't sacrifice one thing he has with Jamie when he already has so little.

He needs Jamie to tell him to leave. Or- or to show everyone else he isn't as pitifully attached to Jamie as they all think. Tom's here. Red eyed, with a sad downturn of his mouth, but still, here. So Mat kisses him.

5. what's a crackship you love?

everything i am into is a "crackship" by definition. none of it is canon and all of it is purely cos it makes me happy. if the people exist, i can make it work; the other day @ithvka sat thru me explaining why i would be very happy if someone wrote me tess durbeyfield (tess of the d'urbervilles)/gabriel oakes (far from the madding crowd) fic, even supplied the entire premise.

(the instagram DMs between me and bluey are absolute art; i am a modern prophet, speaking only truth, but in the worst fucking way possible.)

seriously, give me a pair and i will make it work.

but my favourite "plausible but not canon" ship is: pansy parkinson/oliver wood because she deserves a himbo jock boyfriend and he has consumed so much 'respect women' juice that he would support her endeavours.

9. fake dating or arranged marriage?

depends on the pairing and the setting. louis xiv's era france? arranged marriage; 1984 boston college? fake dating.

tbh i'm probably more into fake dating cos that "oh? oh, shit!" realisation moment always sucker punches me. i know the "cos i'm in love with you" moment is coming and still, every time, i'm emotionally wounded by it. arranged marriages hit right in certain ways but the fake dating reveal followed by "i'll see myself out" is just 😙👌🏻✨ even tho the same reveal can happen in arranged marriages but where are they gonna go? the other room?

fake dating can also be flipped into an "our friends tried to set us up cos they think we'd be perfect together so let's fuck with them and pretend we're dating . . . wait oh shit you are perfect for me!" situation while an arranged marriage is an arranged marriage. there's no changing the script.

(even tho i've read every script. goddamn i have read so many arranged marriage AUs.)

16. describe your WIP that currently has the highest word count.

five hargreeves is tam lin/a fae changeling after jumping neither forwards nor backwards in time but to the inbetwixt, where he made a deal with the handler/fae queen to keep his life if he brought her a human heart every 7 years. 17 years after he disappeared from home, diego sees him the night after reginald's funeral and gets tangled up in trying to bring him home again.

so far diego has been stabbed twice. and five almost drowned sobbing in the shower.

at this point i've been working on it for a month, so i'm sick of it, but the damned thing never seems to end.

17. describe a fic that is still in the 'ideas’ stage.

a pansy parkinson/neville longbottom/oliver wood AU where they're the three mains from the witcher but she's more like renfri than yennefer and neville's lute is magical.