AGAINST MY BETTER JUDGMENT, here is shameshameshame!
I bring you... my shame.
Title: Laughter’s False Note
Author: Sister Grimm Erin
Fandom: iCarly
Characters: Sam-centric, Freddie.
Author's Note: A more serious take on some off-color comments made on the show and subtextual hating on the laugh track. Have fun! I did, even if it's embarrassing.
Sam’s never once hated Freddie, but she’s always been jealous.
She’s tried very, very hard to hate him. Constantly. She’s told herself that just because he doesn’t appreciate his mother, just because he has all the money in the world for that video equipment, that just because he’s kind, that just because he always laughs at her jokes that aren’t supposed to be funny, is no reason to be jealous. It’s a reason for loathing.
And then it sounds hollow.
So she toys with and teases him. She pretends not to care, and she’s worked so hard at being selfish and blithe and built up such a suit of armor that he can’t pierce it.
But no one else has ever gotten under her skin. Carly is self-absorbed, always concentrated on some personal crisis, to ever realize how miserable Sam is. And that’s probably why she and Sam are best friends- the fact that Carly’s unobservant enough not to care about her crazy mother, about her constant presence at Carly’s better apartment and mooching of her food. Carly’s self-centered enough never to think why that is.
Freddie, sadly, isn’t. Sam has him labeled as another tech geek, but he’s better with people than he knows, and he’s fun to hang out with and she knows him so well he could realize the fact that Sam’s being abused and neglected and hanging out with criminals she’s not sure she’s related to.
Sam prides herself on not lying, but in truth, she’s a human ball of bullshit. She lies and lies, so well it’s all a story, and she’s funny and she laughs and she dances and acts weird and tough and puts on a show and none of it helps.
Sam’s about to splinter, and has been for some time. Maybe she’ll snap in two soon. At least the suspense would be over.
Sam has no basis for love- no real definition- but obsession, maybe? Admiration? Certainly she can’t figure him out- unlike Carly and Spencer, the ultimate stoner, he continues to surprise her, continues needing redefinition, and those rushes of affection and friendship and amusement and real happiness- genuine laughter she doesn’t have to fake, when she’s with him-
Once Sam rented a stupid romantic comedy from Blockbuster. Laughter is definitely a good start to a relationship, it tells her, and she returns it immediately. Laughter has long since lost any meaning for Sam- she does it so often, it no longer rings false, except maybe around a certain exasperating tech producer.
The difference, Sam decides one day when she catches the curve of his cheek, between being around Freddie and being around Carly, is that she never wants to laugh at Freddie. She does, but she never wants to.
In fact, Sam sometimes feels as if she had her way, she’d be curled up on Freddie’s lap right now, not laughing at all.
Because the false note only she can hear really is getting tiresome.