The Shrieking Shack

Episode 233: Wet Episode

Draco Malfoy and the Mortifying Ideal of Being In Love After finishing TIUTFFYE, we dove straight into another extremely long acronym. How does the fic that got publisher attention hold up compared to its descendant? Would you believe... hey not bad! We discuss the differences between fanfiction and fiction, the ways characters are warped by popular perception, and ponder what it is that matters to readers who seek out fanfiction. We'll have more to discuss next week once we've read more, but until then we've also got a poorly-conceived game that puts Liz's ship recognition powers to the test.

Episode 232: Mild Boobs

The Irresistible Urge to Fall for Your Enemy finale We finished the book! Or rather, the book just sort of finished. We discuss the strange, sudden ending of TIUTFFYE and gather our thoughts on the novel as a whole. Speaking of hole, there's one last explicit scene for the road in these chapters, and it sends us on a quest to understand what "spice levels" are. What makes a book spicy? Who defines the different levels? Have you shared a low-tongue-description kiss with a partner lately? It's so good to be back! Thanks for listening. Notes: we don't talk about it in detail but peppered throughout our book discussion are references to domestic abuse in the story; we mostly just talk about how tasteless we found it without going into detail but it's there. This is also, just generally, a pretty explicit episode!Lots of bodily function talk in this one.

Episode 231: You Just Have to Find Him

The Irresistible Urge to Fall for Your Enemy, chapters 16-18 RIP Doctor Who. The Tardis crashed into a space embankment at two trillion miles per hour and he blew up. There's been precious little Potter news lately, so we spend some time chatting about how every major tentpole franchise seems to be falling apart these days and how we hope that it happens to Harry soon. Then we discuss our penultimate reading of TIUTFFYE, which... was pretty fun? It's a pleasant surprise, but it's also a tick upward right before the end of the book, so it could all come crashing down next week. We spend a while discussing this surprising turn of events, and then plan a vacation by sifting through a list of wizarding-themed AirBNB listings. NOTES: https://www.onlyinyourstate.com/stays/arizona/themed-airbnb-az https://www.purewow.com/travel/harry-potter-inspired-airbnb

Episode 230: Ginny Drone Spectacle

The Irresistible Urge to Fall for Your Enemy, chapters 13-15 Woof. Remember how last week we thought things might be improving? Forget we said any of that. This week we've got some just plain nasty stuff to dig through, but don't worry! We have some fun chatting about Final Fantasy, James Bond, and Dodgers fan Dobby too. Then we get right with the Lord and learn what sort of people are still writing Potter clickbait in 2026. It couldn't possibly be a conservative Christian getting mad about his kid learning that slavery is bad, could it? Well,, Some notes: -This week's reading features a lot of clumsy, tasteless depictions of sex work and attempted assault, and we spend most of our time going in on it. Nothing too specific, but it's a bit too broad to give a specific skippable timestamp. It's just kinda all bad this week -"Fun" fact: ye olde revivalist preacher in the third segment was not only a slave owner, but I did some idle reading after the show and discovered that he also got fired from his parish for inappropriate behavior. In the 1700s! The more things change, eh?

Episode 229: It Actually Does Work On Us Sometimes

The Irresistible Urge to Fall for Your Enemy, chapters 9-12 We begin this episode with an utterly earth-shattering shock! Then we move on to discuss a really gross set of chapters. Only, these might be the best ones so far? Is this book improving, or are we just getting used to it? We chew on that for a while before checking in on another, much more expensive podcast to see what's going on over in Official Content World. Notes: I do spoil The Mandalorian and Grogu in this, so if you want to remain un-Grogu'd skip to 26:30.