For the record, I love having my literary theories destroyed. Love it. It’s a profound shock of cognitive dissonance, like a really good joke combined with a horrible pun and a sneeze and possibly an orgasm.

My first time, the first one that I remember actually making me swear out loud at the author, when I was young and easily impressed, was Anne Rice. She had Lestat break the fourth wall to say, “You there, reading, with the velvet bookmark and probably too much eye makeup, hoping I’ll slip in your window at night? Yeah… I won’t.”

Other prior flames include Joss Whedon’s inevitable but impossible to predict mid-season turns in Buffy, where suddenly the core conflict is something totally different than was set up in the first half.

I love railing like a thwarted supervillain against the inevitable of the author cackling at me. Hussie is the best authorial fuck I’ve had in years, if not my entire life.