Hihi Shall !!! prev anon here, happy new years eve ^^
Im SO glad (but also not) you kept talking about happy place to dream about so i could finally remember to read it - i am left feeling hooked but extremely uneasy and vaguely restless and dirty (its kept me up till 4am and that is NOT a feeling i want to carry into my sleep) but overall GREAT read. Im gonna need a while to digest it all JEEBZUS. Tis a weird and sad thing when you love (psychological) horror but your not cut out for it at ALL, but thats the beauty of it ig
Wanted to ask if there was any scenes/lines that particularly fucked with you? I think mine might be the tarot reading scene and when Pamela notes Chuck has no aura- puts me on edge like nothing else
Excellent! I think my favorite parts of the story are those moments where you get the inkling that Chuck is getting self-conscious in addition to being frustrated by his inability to Solve for Dean-Chuck, like this bit at the lake in chapter 4.
Chuck knows fuck-all about fishing. He says yes anyway.
It’s the first time Dean’s sought him out completely unprompted; it could be an uphill 10K or nosebleed seats at a tween pop sensation cover band and Chuck would still go. The rest, after all, is just details.
Late summer sunlight seeps down the hills, the temperature only made bearable by a faint breeze coming off the lake, carrying with it the syrupy-thick scent of sun-baked honeysuckle dying out along the hillsides. That same scent layers the bustling boardwalk in a half-dozen variations, from raw, vegetal sweetness to cheap candied chemical imitation.
It’s the local specialty in Cibola, from diners to drugstores to ice cream shops— especially here at the lakefront. Honeysuckle ice cream, sea-salt taffies, cotton candy, licorices and lattes, sweet-cream soda; anything they could throw some mass-made imported syrup into and mark up triple. It’s a little tacky.
Chuck orders a honeysuckle shaved ice anyway, in a size big enough to share.
Just in case.
I think it just really contrasts all the real so nicely with the dark moments, and I really like how he's approaching it with this clinical detachment, and yet... he's self-conscious for reasons he can't explain. I just think it's a really nice bit of character work, and this has been my favorite chunk overall.
…It’s possible Chuck’s looking at this little outing the wrong way.
After all, do Deans just open up when they’re just hanging out?
Calm? Happy? No way. The juiciest morsels, those come loose when he’s rattled. Vulnerable, reeking of some roiling unnamed need—
Chuck studies Dean’s back, drawn up taut.
Seclusion might just be the key. No distractions, no watchers, no eavesdropping ears; just Chuck, Dean, and the fishes. If he can figure out the right lure, who knows what he might reel out of him?
Maybe tonight, Chuck can pry Dean open enough to see what’s holding them back from being them.
I guess you might say that the gentle manipulations fuck with me the most. :-)
Perhaps the true mindfuckery is just how much Chuck approaches relationships like writing, all that trial and error, but not allowing for True Errors because when he fucks up, he just erases. And it's so HNNNG. Just so Pure Writer and it's perfect for a God-writer, ykwim?
It's such a careful Limbo, and I keep hoping that the glimmers of chaos we've been seeing will gloriously force him to be "more messily in the moment," like time-space itself is purposely rebelling against the concept of limbo.
