#by reading i mean aloud

[grape-writes]

Ever accidentally plan like, idk

44 chapters, maybe more

For a fic when you have barely started chapter 3?

Heh...

Totally not me, idk what youre talking about

Its totally me, i mean i have THIS planned

It makes no sense out of context but this is :))))

[spookythesillyfella]

hey guys . heres my fair share of doodles from the magma i drew on with my big bro @chamom1le-t3a

[birdnonsense]

Also on the topic of the demonology book Simon used to sacrifice Edwin, does Edwin have a copy of it, and does he realize it’s the same book?

[bumblingbabooshka]

It's impossible to write a TOS x Any other Series crossover [for me] without having to think about whose lens it's going to primarily be from because the vibe of TOS is so distinct and I think quite different from all series that follow it. The way the characters speak and are presented is so theatrical and of course steeped in the past that I find myself considering if this is, say, Janeway meeting Kirk (through a VOY perspective) or if I should write Janeway as she would appear if she stepped through a portal and was in TOS' universe.

[sforzesco]

Could we get more thoughts on the possessiveness of your version of Pompey please?

a lot of it has to do with wanting everything sulla had and more, and crassus is at that very fun intersection of something sulla had and more. so naturally. he wants crassus in every way sulla had him, and in every way sulla did not. and he'll never get crassus coming to him (like crassus went to sulla) but he can get something else that is more valuable on this stage of politics: a partner.

crassus' own attitude is complementary to pompey's, since he decided to be co consuls with pompey! more than once! in a way, crassus bet his life on pompey. wow.

[ourflagmeansgayrights]

i'm not usually in fandoms for things that have like, live-action actors playing the characters (idk why i just tend to get into books, cartoons, webcomics, podcasts, etc). but the few times i've been somewhat invested in a live-action media for fandom reasons (mcu, teen wolf, pacific rim, star wars) i've seen fans waxing poetic about a character's/actor's eyes. and i've literally never understood the hype, i've just been like "yeah idk theyre eyes? i dont get what's so special about them tho"

what im saying is that not only are Taika Watiti's eyes the first time i've understood the hype but ofmd is also the first time i've actually noticed an actor's eyes before seeing fandom being obsessed with them. that's the power of taika's Massive Fucking Peepers i guess

[crimeronan]

On the topic of How Do You Handle XYZ Comment, I've always wondered how you handle terrible responses on your toh takes. Like I know the toh fandom doesn't lack piss on the poor reading comprehension and they also really enjoy wildly out of touch takes, but I've never seen any comments on your princess luz stuff of that nature. I'm sure they must be there but maybe I'm too early? But anyway, how do you tend to deal with the "acktually shipping luz and Hunter is incest" and the "ur not a real lesbian because putting amity in a poly ship is lesbian erasure" and the "as a white person kinda sus you make the poc woman an empress" kind of responses? Ones that are technically not hate and maybe if you squint could be from people who aren't inherently trying to do bad but just lack the maturity needed to engage with the internet at large?

this ask made me giggle. honestly, i haven't received as much pushback as you might expect! way less pushback than i expected. in the princess AU, i've gotten a LOT more "this is actually too grotesque for me to stomach" comments than "this is problematic" comments, which is fine. horror-thriller isn't for everyone, those comments do not upset me.

i have had a Few run-ins with bad faith people, whom i mostly block. there's one prolific commenter in toh tumblr fandom who would repeatedly write angry essays on my humor meta posts -- essays that were all about how belos is too evil to be sympathetic and/or about how hunter is a soft gentle boy who shouldn't be jokingly referred to as evil. then they'd go "i can't help my active and conscious decision to type a bunch of rude fucking words and then my active and conscious decision to send those rude fucking words because i'm autistic :(((" around the fourth or fifth time this happened, i was fucking done with that nonsense and finally blocked them. shoulda done it after the first comment tbh!! no more autism exceptions.

as for the rest of it, my main management strategy is to simply.... preempt the bad faith comments?

i had a LOT more unpleasant and conflict-filled fandom experiences when i was in the raven cycle fandom. that was my first exposure to "you can't ship multi-gender polycules if anyone involved is gay" and "queerplatonic het relationships are just heteronormativity shipping that you're trying to get away with." having dealt with those takes before, i've found a few different ways to disarm bad faith readers before they get started.

first is to be super open and honest about my interests. i talk about what i find compelling in different relationships All The Damn Time. it's really hard for anyone to accuse me of only wanting hunter to fuck amity if they've seen, like.... anything i've said about hunter and amity.

same with hunter and luz. the only negative reactions i've really gotten to how they're written in the princess AU is like.... two people being squicked by camila thinking they're romantically involved. i REALLY expected more pushback on the touchyfeely bed sharing stuff, but from what i remember, there's never been Any....? not even from people who consider them siblings.

i expected a lot of pushback on how mean hunter and amity are to each other, since it's taken So much farther than the canon. but it turns out that there's a very large overlap between people who like dark horror AUs and people who like hunter and amity murdering each other. (in a fluffy fic i don't think this characterization would fly Nearly as easily.)

i find that being funny really disarms people, too. when you look at any of my toh meta posts that could be controversial, they're basically all funny. people are a lot more willing to listen to what you have to say if you make them laugh, and it's harder for them to get angry at you.

and then the last thing is that i think i'm in sort of a privileged position in toh fandom. i've written a lot of controversial subjects and relationships and characterizations.... but i've also written some WILDLY popular mainstream fic. and people who like the mainstream fic don't really want to beef with me about differing niche opinions, bc there's a level of respect there. which they might not have for a writer they don't like.

but anyway. when things Do happen, i almost always just block and move on. there are so many people here who get what i'm talking about that there's no need for me to try to convert people who don't, you know??

[coconut530]

SISSY FIGHT

[arcsin27]

Astarion sounds like Eridan in the homestuck read alouds. There I said it.

[fandom-animals]

i do not trust celia i do not trust cecila i do not trust celia i do not trust celia i do not trust celia i do not trust celia i do not trust celia i do not trust cecila i do not trust celia i do not trust celia i do not tru

[pasdetrois]

elizabeth marie pope really revolutionized the game when she decided to write a ballad of tam lin retelling about the relationship between janet and the queen of the fairies, while tam lin just incidentally happened to be there

[ainawgsd]

Husband went to the doctor for allergy testing today.

He's allergic to dogs

[bloomfish]

honestly I know I go on about this but being a suppressed language speaker makes you so protective over any other minority languages that have historically been discriminated against, no matter how far-flung you just feel a connection. i'm lucky to live in a culture that is extremely proud of and protective over its language that fortunately is now thriving, but the reality is not all communities have had the same opportunities and ability to preserve their languages as we've had. it's so important. every speaker counts. a language isn't only worthy of being studied and spoken if its "useful" on a global scale

[patheticgirlsteve]

Everyone expects things to be weird between Nancy and Steve after everything has finally settled, Nancy and Steve included. And, for a while, they’re right. It is weird.

They don’t meet each other’s eyes at group gatherings, they exchange polite and obviously stilted greetings, and they only speak full sentences to each other when they have to discuss the kids.

It’s weird. Everyone notices.

It almost feels like a divorced couple remaining civil with each other for the sake of the kids, but Nancy and Steve know that that’s not right. It’s not that they don’t want to move on and be friends with each other, it’s that they don’t know how.

When the two of them got together in high school they weren’t friends, they were dating, and it’s an important distinction. They never went through a period of getting to know and like each other outside of a romantic relationship. They have no experience in being friends with each other and they don’t know where to start now that everything between them has happened.

It takes a while for them to get there.

Nancy leaves Hawkins, Steve stays. This is expected and no one is surprised.

Nancy goes off to Emerson and Robin decides to go with her, having gotten accepted there as well. They both don’t want to go off to new place all alone with no one who Gets It, but they don’t want to stay in Hawkins either. It makes sense.

Steve stays behind in Hawkins, keeping an eye on the kids and slowly but surely falls in love with Eddie. This is not entirely unexpected, but it’s not particularly surprising either once everyone takes a second to reflect on it. Some prior interactions between the two make a lot more sense with this new info.

Nancy hears news of it through Robin, and she feels like she can breathe a little easier with this new knowledge. She knows Steve, she trusts him, but a big part of her hesitation to be friends with him was that she was nervous that he really wasn’t over her. So when she hears that he’s dating Eddie, she decides it’s the perfect time to reach out to him. Maybe they can just be friends now.

The problem is that she doesn’t know what to say to him. She doesn’t want to just comment on his new relationship because it would be weird to do, as his ex and all. She wracks her brain trying to find something to say, some connection to pull from.

And then she has a sudden rush of memory, a memory of a day spent together. Things weren’t always good between them, but when they were it was nice. Really nice. Steve could be surprisingly quiet and reserved when they were alone together. He would sit with Nancy, their limbs intertwined in some way, while Nancy was focused on whatever she was working on at the time.

Nancy thinks of one of those days, before everything had fallen apart. Steve had had his head in her lap as she read a book, absently running her fingers through his hair, when Steve had turned his face up to look at her. She had paused in her paragraph and was about to tell him not to distract her when he spoke up.

“Read to me?”

He didn’t say it in a demanding way, he sounded nervous, actually. He sounded like he thought Nancy would say no or that she would judge him for asking to be read aloud to. It twinged something in Nancy’s heart.

She remembers that she had smiled at him, as kindly as she could, and said, “I’m in the middle of the chapter, you wouldn’t understand what’s happening.”

Steve had looked disappointed for a fraction of a second before quickly masking it with a casual smile and nodded. “That’s okay, it was a stupid thing to ask for anyway.”

He had laughed, and it would have fooled most people, but it didn’t fool Nancy. She had thought about the request for a moment. It made sense, she had realized, that Steve would ask her to read to him. She knew that he had trouble with reading, he had mentioned that the words on the page always swam when he tried to read them and that it gave him too much of a headache to be able to enjoy reading.

He had always shrugged it off like it didn’t bother him, but Nancy realized then that it did bother him. Maybe Steve wanted to enjoy books too, but he just wasn’t able to. Maybe this was something she could do for him, something small, something kind.

She marked her page and flipped back to the front of the book.

“It’s not stupid, Steve,” She had corrected him gently but firmly. “We can just start from the beginning, I wasn’t very far in yet anyway.”

Steve’s face had shown his shock, but also his delight. They had ended up spending the rest of the day like that, Nancy reading aloud to him, slowly and clearly so that he wouldn’t miss anything, pausing when Steve had questions about the story or the characters or the meaning of a word.

It had been really nice.

So Nancy knows exactly how to reach out to Steve, knows exactly what to send to him. She drags Robin along to the local bookstore with her (Robin goes willingly, not needing to be dragged anywhere by Nancy Wheeler) and asks the woman at the desk if they have books on tape.

When they leave the store, Nancy is carrying a bag full of tapes, one of them being the same book she had read aloud to Steve back in high school. She mails it and another audiobook to him with a short note.

“It’s not exactly the same as being read to, but I hope you enjoy it anyway. Let me know what you think of them. -Nance”

Steve is surprised and a bit confused when he gets mail from Nancy. They don’t really talk and she doesn’t send him letters, and she definitely doesn’t send him packages.

He opens it and furrows his brow when two tapes fall out of the padded yellow envelope Nancy had sent them in. He picks one up and sees that it’s the same book he had asked her to read to him that one day, before they fell apart. He’s kind of shocked she even remembers that, to be honest. Had figured it wasn’t as significant to her as it had been to him and that she had simply forgotten about it. But he’s secretly pleased that he was wrong.

He reads her note and smiles. It feels nice, being able to smile about Nancy again. He slips the title that Nancy had read to him into the cassette player he keeps on his bedside table and settles in to listen. It’s not as nice as Nancy’s narration had been, but he finds that he still enjoys it. Enjoys it a lot, actually.

When he goes for his daily jog the next morning, he slips the other book tape into his walkman to listen to instead of his usual mixtape. He gets so drawn into the story that he ends up listening to it when he gets home too, listens to it all day and ends up finishing it before bed.

He writes back to Nancy the next day, thanking her for the tapes and telling her how much he enjoyed them as well hearing from her. He shares his thoughts on the books, is surprised by himself and the fact that he actually has a lot of thoughts about the writing, the plot, the characters, and more things that he remembers being told were important in high school English but had never really understood until now.

Nancy replies with a lengthy response to Steve’s points, and two new tapes. Steve’s grin lights up his whole face.

It becomes a bit of a ritual for them, this sharing of books and thoughts and opinions. Throughout the next few months they exchange a surprising amount of letters, Steve ends up going to the local bookstore just outside of Hawkins and buying books for Nancy too (not on tape, he knows she prefers a physical copy of it to read).

Eddie and Robin watch these developments with relief and with joy. They’re just happy that Steve and Nancy are happy and that the two of them have found a way to be friends, finally. The kids definitely notice Steve with his headphones on a lot more often lately and always with a look of concentration while he’s listening, but they don’t think anything of it.

Nancy and Robin come home for winter break and all of the kids are shocked to see Steve and Nancy greet each other with warm and genuine smiles. Their jaws drop as they watch the two hug and start chatting excitedly. Eddie and Robin just laugh at the kid’s’ reactions while Steve and Nancy just keep discussing their most recent read.

And if the two of them find some time sit together while Nancy reads aloud to Steve while she’s home for the break, well, then that’s their business.

[arolesbianism]

Doodle of my boy

[coquelicoq]

i've gotten so used to my daily practice of reading french aloud that now when i have to read something boring in english for work i default to reading it aloud. which takes way longer and also i feel like i retain even less information than i would otherwise, somehow. the upside is that my oral reading cadence in english, even of dense scientific articles, is rather excellent nowadays. i could read scientific articles out loud for a living, if that was a thing people needed me to do. which they do not, because screenreaders are a thing. maybe i could read crusty PDFs out loud for a living? but anyway all this is to say shoutout to my man alexandre dumas and also my other man victor hugo for training me to read run-on sentences in my second language. after that, dry journal articles in my first language are easy peasy.