daisy-rivers

[daisy-rivers]

A couple of weeks ago, I deleted all my RPF works — mostly featuring Daveed Diggs and Rafael Casal — from AO3. I think there were about a dozen stories, so several thousand words. I decided a while back not to write any more RPF, and I was feeling more and more uncomfortable about it, especially because most of it was smut, and Rafa, at least, probably read it all. More than a little cringey, so it’s gone now, and I’m writing other, equally smutty stuff, but only about imaginary characters.

[daisy-rivers]

I Wrote a Thing

I am either going to commit a huge breach of Tumblr etiquette or I am going to do something that might be helpful to me and enjoyable to my followers.

Y'all know I haven't been on here much and have only posted a few short pieces to AO3 in the last year or so. That's because I was working hard on a science fiction/gay romance trilogy, and the first book of that has now been published. I've used yet another pen name because this series is very different from my previously published work, and Daisy Rivers only writes fanfic.

The lovely painting above is the work that the extremely talented Florilègeart (@echo-bleu on here) created for my website, a portrait of my two protagonists, Ash and Cade, at the beginning of their relationship. You can read about them in Ashok's Song, Book One: The Singer, available on Amazon; there is also a coordinated album, Ashok's Song, that you can find on Apple Music or Spotify.

I'm linking to my website -- that's the etiquette breach I'm worried about -- where you can read more about this story and the characters, and maybe even order the book if you're interested. But if this is a horrible Tumblr offense, please let me know.

Shout-out to @echo-bleu not only for their gorgeous art, but also for their support and encouragement, and to @leesbian42 for leading me to the name of an important planet. And huge thanks to anybody who ever read anything I wrote and left kudos or comments that kept me writing.

[daisy-rivers]

FEMA is doing an emergency alert test on all TVs, radios, and cell phones on October 4, 2023, at approximately 2:20pm ET.

If you live in the US and you have a phone you need to keep secret for any reason, make sure that it is turned off at this time.

Yes, I'm doing this months in advance, and yes, my blog has very little reach, but I figure better to post about it more than less.

Please reblog and add better tags than mine, I'm bad at tags.

[daisy-rivers]

Yay for science again, for pointing out reality to people who don’t or can’t see it. Trans minors have to leave my state for gender-affirming care. Some — many — can’t afford it. Those whose parents don’t support them can’t manage it on their own. And of course the state legislature now wants to outlaw leaving the state for medical care.

All the lawsuits need all the legit studies they can find to support trans youth.

[daisy-rivers]

"The magic system is never fully explained" yeah that's how life works. Imagine having a story set in modern day America and the characters have several pages of exposition on combustion engines and telecommunication networks before we get to the plot

[daisy-rivers]

I love learning about other culture's Houseguest Protocols but I hate hate hate when they don't match up cause like

I (PNW Canadian, raised with etiquette from my old British great-grandparents) sleeping over: Can I help with dinner. Can I do the dishes. PLEASE let me do something useful. Im sorry I'm here. I can sleep on the floor it's fine. You don't need to cook for me I can go outside and drink pond water. Do you hate me

My friend (Indian, raised by entire extended family in Dubai) hosting me: Why won't you let me feed you. Do you need more coffee. Am I doing something wrong. Do you have enough blankets? I will buy you warmer clothes. Here, you can sleep in my room, I'll take the couch. Why are you crying? Oh God am I a bad host

[daisy-rivers]

Something something Nate seeing Sam in Hardison and making sure to preserve the part of him that's sweet and kind and endlessly selfless and wants to help people and warning him against going down a road he can't come back from.

Something something Nate seeing himself in Parker and guiding her cunning and strategic mind to make sure she's equipped for taking over the job and never has to feel the heartbreak and utter defeat he felt after Sam's death because Parker deserves to be happy.

Something something Nate seeing Eliot and knowing he's everything Jimmy could never be and respecting Eliot's loyalty and diligence and honesty because it's pure as gold and rare as silver.

Something something Nate seeing a chance for redemption in Sophie and making sure to wait for her to catch up just as she waited for him to get better because Maggie was the love for Nathan Ford IYS agent but Sophie is the only match for Nate Ford, the man who doesn't kill you, no, he lets God do it and just makes sure it takes.

Something something Nate Ford masterminding not just the crew but his family.

[daisy-rivers]

I need a story about grown-up Amy and Flynn going back in time via whatever mechanism Connor or Riya has cooked up over the last 20 years so they can meet Amy Preston and Garcia Flynn.

[daisy-rivers]

listen. There's a whole mentality shift that needs to happen culture wide here, from the schools to the public infrastructure to pet ownership to the justice system

The proper response to your dog doing a natural behavior you dislike (digging/barking/protecting etc) it to give them an appropriate time and place to engage in that behavior

The proper response to skateboarders damaging infrastructure is to build more and better skate parks, or build skate elements into the public infrastructure on purpose.

The proper response to homeless people sleeping on park benches is to build them houses.

you see how there's like, a commonality at play here?

The proper response to a disruption is to address the root of the disruption directly, not somehow attack the disruption itself -

you don't invent a muffler by swinging a bat at the engine noise, you don't relieve your hunger by punching yourself in the stomach, you don't resolve public unrest by sending armed men to control them and you don't prevent homeless people using bus shelters as a roof by removing the bus shelters.

a whole ass shift in a basic mindset, i'm tellin' you. We need it.

[daisy-rivers]

A desperately needed feature.

i would like to propose a new accessibility feature for movies where every time a brown-haired white man comes on screen they tell me which one he is

[daisy-rivers]

happy fanfic writer appreciation day to EVERYONE who has ever posted a fic, tried to write a fic, wanted to write a fic but didn’t think your writing was “good enough” to be shared (between you and me, it is!!!) because ALL of you make this fandom better with your creativity and beautiful words, whether you know it or not. thank you!!!!!!!!!! ❣️❣️❣️

[daisy-rivers]

[daisy-rivers]

I have been forbidden to walk more than 3 meters or so at a time, lift anything heavier than 2.5 kilos or put any stress of any kind on my troublesome body. There is also some issue with using my desktop/laptop because it strains my R rotator cuff, and my vision sucks, so I can't write on my phone. All that being said, I'm not dying, and I am free to put all the stress I want on my brain, so today I rewatched The Sorcerer's Stone and The Chamber of Secrets in order to track the acting career of Tom Felton's eyebrows. They first took on a supporting role early in COS, in the Borgin and Burkes scene, and became more active through the rest of the film. I will probably be watching the next six HP films over the next 3 days if I can bear it.

"When the pain outwits it, the body dies." -- Stephen Vincent Benét

[daisy-rivers]

I think people need to be more comfortable with illegalism and I’m not kidding. Of course the more legal something is, the safer and easier it is to do, but the more people who disregard the law, the harder it is to enforce. There are plenty of laws on the books that people just ignore and are never or rarely policed.

Becoming more comfortable with little illegal activities makes you more comfortable with bigger more important illegal activities. Additionally, it is crucial to build a wall of silence. Nobody talks everybody walks.

People who give out food without a permit, hold a march without a permit, grow a garden without a permit, are more likely to be people you could turn to to work with on preventing an eviction, or keeping people out of cop hands, or helping your friend Jane get crucial healthcare when it’s not legal in your state.

Communities comfortable with these acts won’t call the cops, and then nobody knows that it’s happening.

People have got to shift from both the idea that lawful = good/ illegal = bad, and that the illegality of something means that’s the end of it, and the only fight left is to make it legal again.

[daisy-rivers]

Fanfolks today need to remember how important The Premise was.

Y'all have heard of The Premise, right?

See, historically there have always been people who saw an extra layer of gayness on certain pairs of fictional people (you just thought of several), and people Back Then even wrote their own fanfic (or as they were called at the time, "pastiches"), but the first widespread queer fanwork to really define the fanfiction genre was KIRK AND SPOCK. Kirk/Spock. K/S. The very first slashfics.

Why this work was vastly, overwhelmingly written by straight women is a discussion for another time, but it was, so that's the main perspective I'm gonna consider here.

How do you - a statistically middle-class, 30+, stay-at-home wife and mother - how do you write slashfic ao3-style in the 1960's before the internet?

Carefully.

Through letters with friends, phone calls, pen pals, and sometimes - sometimes - clandestine meetings of small groups. Whole novels were written communally, round-robin style, by sending typed or handwritten additions chapter by chapter to each other. These were all underground, some deep underground; even the early Trekkie fanzines of the time wouldn't touch them.

And keep in mind, few of these stories were explicitly even sexual! But they were all about a very, very close relationship between two men. In the 1960's.

Guess how cool everyone else was about this.

Actually, for their part, Gene Rodenberry and the other writers were fine with it, saying that they had deliberately written the characters to be two halves of a whole, and if you wanna read it that way, yeah sure, go right ahead. Shatner and Nimoy took it all in good humor, and seemingly still do, each guy basically gesturing to the other and chuckling "I mean, who wouldn't?"

But elsewhere there was vicious backlash against The Premise, and not just within the fandom. This was still at a time in the US and UK when various "sodomy" and "decency" laws made no distinction between homosexual sex acts and just, like, directly lighting another man's cigarette with your cigarette in public. (That, sadly, is not a fucking joke.)

It was probably the closest some suburban cishet women came to understanding the pain of being in the closet. They had to protect this secret from their friends and family at all cost. There were cases of divorces where women lost custody of their children because their writing had come to light.

Can you imagine having such a burning desire to write for your OTP that you were willing to lose everything over it? Even if you were never caught, you still had to be willing to wait weeks, months, to receive a letter in the mail that you had to carefully intercept, read in secret, and then add your own chapter t, also in secret, and then send off, perhaps never to be seen again.

These people were goddamn heroes, and they laid the foundation for the world we live in today. A world where we can read, write, comment on, or share - in a matter of seconds! - literature about two background characters from two different franchises enjoying a really specific kink involving vacuums or something. And that's objectively amazing.

Raise a toast to our fanfiction elders, who simped in the darkness so we could simp in the light of day.

[daisy-rivers]

I seem to have forgotten how to write rhyming verse. That’s making it much harder to do this lyrics-writing job. That has a deadline coming up soon.