Back to the Future: Cat's Interludes

A WORD ABOUT THE DELAY

It's taken me quite some time to finish this chapter. It's hard to explain why. I could blame it on the usual things: life got busy (true), I've got a demanding day job (also true), I'm trying to balance work and creative projects with a full-time relationship (also also true). But I also experienced something that gave me some pause while writing this chapter. I recently bought Jennette McCurdy's book, I'm Glad My Mom Died on Audible, and the stories she relays from her time on iCarly (and Nickelodeon in general) left me with such a sour taste in my mouth. I think most people intuitively know that Hollywood isn't really the glamorous paradise of progressive ideals and virtue that celebrities try to pass it off as. Nor are they the gatekeepers of tolerance and higher ideals that they pretend they are. I'd go so far as to say most of us know that many producers, like anyone who has spent too much time with too much power over anything, are corrupt and disgusting. Yet we simply and quietly accept that this is how it is and continue to consume.

Well, I don't. Not like I used to. Not anymore. Hollywood's ridiculous obsession with virtue signaling and its high-handed, hypocritical preaching has made me a permanent skeptic of any new offerings. Sacrificing story and character and logic and consistency to instead focus on unearned emotional payoffs and endless preaching and pandering and political correctness has forever turned me away from today's "progressive" Hollywood. And I am far from the only member of the LGBTQ+ community who feels this way.

I digress; that is only tangentially relevant to this post. While Jennette's experiences with "the Creator" (we all know who that is) aren't as horrific as I had maybe feared, understanding what went into her presence on the shows and how she was manipulated and screwed over and pressured into doing things she didn't want to do was bad enough. The implication that the "Victorious kids" were all drunk on set was incredibly disappointing. It left me feeling nauseated.

I love the characters and the stories on these shows. Well, mostly. They're fun, escapist entertainment. But for a minute, I struggled with whether or not I wanted to continue to perpetuate the work and legacy of the slimeball who created them. The man who influenced and injured so many young stars by pressuring them to drink, show off their feet, and whatever other nasty vices he had engaged in.

But then I thought back to a friend of mine, who I only met because of my fics. I've actually met several people who are very dear to me and very important to my everyday life because of these fics. It seems crazy to me, but it's true. This one, in particular, was able to identify very strongly with one of the characters on Victorious, in such a way that she felt understood; like she wasn't alone. She saw herself in this character to some degree. And I realized that just because the man responsible for these shows was a despicable predatory narcissist, that didn't mean good couldn't come from what he had created. It made an isolated and lonely young woman feel less alone. I doubt that was an isolated incident. It introduced me to many friends. There was good coming from the bad. So I decided to keep going.

THOUGHTS ON CAT'S INTERLUDE

I can also readily say that this part took a while because I wanted to do a bit of world-building. I wasn't expecting to have to do this because, in my mind, Cat's flashbacks were going to be very different. Originally, we would kick things off at Jori's wedding and go from there. However, as I started writing it thusly, Cat decided to change her mind. I was politely informed by her royal Cat-ness that Jori, in fact, would have an elaborate wedding at Christmastime in a castle in Wales, where Liz's family still lives. And that her interludes, like her modern-day story, would focus on her relationship with her two best friends a two vastly different times in her life: Jori's coming together (at their wedding) and then their (possible?) falling apart (in the modern story). Symmetry. I love symmetry.

The intent was always to show just how much Jade and Tori mean to Cat; outside of Sam, they are absolutely everything to her. Tori has been one of Cat's closest friends since the show, and in #GrandFinale, The Untold Jori (to a lesser extent), and earlier in One Last Song, we see hints that there is absolutely a lot of love between these two and maybe even hints of a mutual crush. Cori never really materializes in this universe beyond a deep and abiding friendship laced with a bit of sexual tension. Some would contend that tension is canon; such as Tori dreamily tweeting about how good Cat smells in the Wanko's Warehouse episode, or how close they seemed on their Slap vids.

Of course, we now know that Cade did exist, however briefly, in this universe. Cat and Jade enjoyed a partly drunken sexual encounter in the midst of a lot of stress and intense emotions during their senior year; Cat reciprocated that experience the next day for Jade in what was probably one of my favorite intimate scenes to write (Jade covering Cat's mouth because she wouldn't stop talking just seemed right to me). And even though a few weeks later, Cat would finally be with her true love in Sam Puckett, and Jade would reset her personal status quo by giving Beck one more chance, the experience remained with them.

I've been looking forward to getting into Cat's head and understanding what makes her tick. Unlike Tori and Jade's interludes, Cat's take place years after high school. Indeed, it even takes place after the end of The Untold Jori. I explained in my previous blog why; that I wanted to give Cat a chance to mature a bit, because "high school Cat's" inner monologue would have likely been incomprehensible. And, I wanted to put the focus on Cat and Sam without removing Tori and Jade entirely from the story. The Forever Victorious universe really is centered on those four: Tori, Jade, Cat, and Sam. But when it comes down to it, the Three Musketeers are our Victorious girls; Sam is more the D'Artagnan, to employ a probably-bad literary analogy.

Sam does have an important role to play, both in the flashback and in the ultimate conclusion of our story. And, knowing how Jennette herself feels about the character and how terrible her experiences were on the show, I hope that Sam's ultimate fate is something that would, at the very least, make her feel that maybe Sam isn't just the butter-sock wielding, fried chicken-eating, bad role-model that she remembers. Whether she realizes it or not, her character, and the entire series of shows, have done some good for people. And I believe they can do more, which is why I am excited--proud, even--to get back to it and wrap up this silly, somber, heartfelt "epic" (if any story based on a series of canceled tween sitcoms from the late aughties/early teens can be considered epic).

You can read the latest chapter by clicking the link to my Forever Victorious stories above!

If you'd like to support Jennette McCurdy and read her story for yourself, you can find her amazing book on Amazon here. If you've ever been a fan of the shows or Jennette, or if you struggle yourself with an E.D., it's a truly amazing read. I get no benefits or anything, just sharing it because I believe her story is tragic and cautionary and very compelling. She's a talented woman who has survived so much.