No publicity is bad publicity

No publicity is bad publicity is the principle Romy Cartelli adopts when the online controversy around her werewolf claims threatens both her final project and her relationship with Kash Montgomery. For Romy, the maxim is less a guarantee that attention will help than a tactic for redirecting it: if she cannot tell the truth, retract her claims, or silence her critics, she can still try to shape what the audience sees. The strategy brings real risks, but its reach ultimately extends beyond her social channels to a book and a film adaptation.

From Attention to a Strategy

Romy’s approach begins with performance for an audience. In the prologue, she presents herself on a livestream as the host of Romy Reads Romance, emphasizing that her increasingly strange channel is difficult to ignore. At a warehouse, she goes live again to announce that werewolves exist and promise her followers proof. The boldness of the announcement is matched by its danger: she is recording from outside the building and says she is about to go in.

When evidence remains elusive, Romy adjusts the pitch rather than abandoning it. In a later update, she tells followers that the werewolf she encountered has outmaneuvered her, including by taking her phone, and announces that she will look for other evidence among werewolves’ pack. The public performance sustains the project even when its original promise cannot yet be delivered. Attention becomes both an audience to address and a resource Romy hopes to keep building.

That resource matters because the campaign is entangled with her college work. Professor Higgins expects her to increase her following and explain how she did it. Romy had believed that exposing werewolves would secure her project, but the hostile comments and loss of control make the campaign look increasingly like a liability. Once Kash’s declaration that she is his mate commits her to keeping his identity and pack secret, she cannot continue making public claims about him; yet retracting her story would undo progress toward the project requirements. The maxim offers a third course: preserve the attention without exposing Kash.

Backlash, Credibility, and Risk

Romy’s decision to test the publicity principle is a response to a genuine bind, not proof that controversy is harmless. As she considers how to salvage her channels, she describes the internet’s trolls as having come out in force and recognizes that she can no longer answer them as before. The plan she forms is to redirect the existing momentum, not simply to repeat the accusation that began it. When she discusses that plan with Professor Higgins, he calls the approach a lesson in public relations and warns that she needs a backup: if the situation spins too far out of control, cleverness will not necessarily restore it.

The stakes are especially clear in Romy’s recorded account of the missing girls. After seeing evidence of a werewolf operation involving kidnapped women and breeding, she makes a drunken video describing what she believes is happening. She cannot disclose the full truth without exposing her new boyfriend or making him look like the villain, so she frames the recording as a time capsule for a future audience that may finally believe her. It is a striking reversal of ordinary publicity: she wants the record to circulate eventually, but knows that its truth is not presently safe to publish as fact.

The problem is not only whether an audience will pay attention, but whether it will believe her or recognize that she needs help. Brody Harrison exploits Romy’s previous disappearance to argue that no one will sound an alarm for her again. His taunt exposes the cruel underside of visibility: a story that has already made someone seem unbelievable can make a later crisis easier to dismiss. Publicity can keep a claim in circulation while weakening the credibility of the person making it.

Recasting the Message

Romy’s tactics vary with her circumstances. In one exchange, after Derek returns her phone and demands to approve what she posts, she crops and adjusts a photograph so the men from Delta are visible, then presents it as a throwback book recommendation. The post keeps her familiar bookish persona in view, but its creation takes place under another person’s supervision. The gap between her public-facing content and the coercive situation behind it shows how little control a visible account necessarily gives its owner.

Later, Romy and Talia DuPont prepare a more deliberate act of reframing. Romy drafts an Instagram post suggesting that a conspicuously formidable celebrity such as Jason Momoa might also be a werewolf, turning the allegation into a joke built around a familiar book-boyfriend hashtag. Talia recognizes the potential for the post to go viral. Rather than making a direct accusation that would expose Kash, Romy borrows the tone and conventions of fandom to keep the werewolf idea in circulation. The move trades some immediate seriousness for a wider, more playful reach.

The results are measurable, though not wholly reassuring. After one of her videos, Romy finds that her follower count has not only recovered but risen above its original level. The mixed notifications still include support and vitriol; the increase records attention, not agreement. Her strategy can therefore be read as a negotiation with visibility: she gains an audience while remaining unable to dictate how that audience interprets either her claims or her character.

From Social Media to Adaptation

The publicity principle acquires a wider meaning as Romy’s online presence connects to her writing. An interested agent responds after reading a sample she posted, and the ensuing conversation raises questions about the financial terms and legal control of any media rights. The discussion makes clear that attention can become commercial opportunity, but also that visibility alone does not settle who owns or benefits from a personal story.

That tension is sharpened when Romy watches a film trailer in which an A-list celebrity performs the prologue of her book. The trailer echoes images associated with her experience, including red hair in an alley and a large wolf, while turning her life into screen spectacle. The attention once sought to complete a social-media assignment has reached a much larger audience, but the adaptation also makes control and representation newly consequential. Across these changes, the maxim remains deliberately double-edged: publicity can restore momentum and open doors, yet it cannot guarantee belief, safety, or ownership of the story being told.