#so that means. word BLAST time into new post on tumblr. aaand send

[terriblelizbians]

(incoherent ramble incoming)

it’s literally soooo delany. never felt more like a real english major than me thinking delany the whole time and all of a sudden they name drop delany and have a whole paragraph like “wow this feels very relatable to paul” YEAH It does. delany inspired motherfucker.

but it just added on to so much thought ive had Since reading triton last semester and having delany actually zoom in to speak to us about it (that was so cool im obsessed with him honestly but so many people in that class Hated his particular brand of Discomfort but. Ok)... but triton as a trans/phobic narrative and delany writing queerness and gender fluidity/nonconformity as a gay man but also from a very cis perspective! and how much that shapes how it feels!

when we read triton i wanted to get into it so much especially with other trans classmates but i am anxious and also it feels really different to have that conversation with cis people in the room. as im sure it would still be different to have it with me (tme) vs just transfem/tma people.

how trans people talking to cis people have to frame their stories so carefully bc cis people will take whatever they say and use it as a weapon against other trans people. so you can only have these clean precise careful descriptions. and then a (newer?) (counter?) thing (a la torrey peters about detransition baby) where trans people refuse to tailor their stories to cis eyes. like embracing the messiness and complexity of their experiences. and if cis people misunderstand, then too bad, it’s not fucking FOR them. we’re allowed to say that gender, and the experience/process of... realizing(?) it, is sometimes weird! and funny! and complicated! and imperfect!

and “paul” as the trans reinterpretation of delany; like, if triton was written by a trans person (and particularly a trans woman) (edit that makes it sound like paul was written by a transfem author but as far as i can tell the author is tme) then suddenly it’s not “is this really how the author sees trans people”, it’s “the author Knows how fucking weird gender is when you think about it as much as we do”. like, the difference between “that looks weird (judgement)” and “this feels weird (solidarity)”. and not that delany’s writing is necessarily the former! but when it’s a cis perspective, you don’t really know? and not that trans authors can’t have (internalized?) transphobia (or transmisogyny, esp tme authors) but it’s different, it’s Different, it feels tangibly different. You know what i mean.

[tricktster]

So I once again have a lot of new followers, meaning that it’s time for my periodic disclosure that I started this blog back in 2015 to promote *deep breath* my Explicit Sans/Reader Undertale fanfic, Chill or Be Chilled.

If you’re rolling your eyes at that title, that’s totally justified because it was super halfassed, much like I initially expected the whole fic would be. If you’re rolling your eyes at the words “explicit,” “Sans,” and “Reader,” buddy, you aren’t alone, because I never would have chosen that particular combo of content and characters if I hadn’t been up to a scheme to bilk you fuckin’ rubes for all you’re worth.

I’m kidding. Kind of. Like, I didn’t really think that it would ever go anywhere at the outset: I began writing a few months after I graduated grad school and immediately thereafter got incredibly, INCREDIBLY sick, leading to a month long hospitalization that absolutely destroyed my path to get a paid job in my chosen field for about a year (I had to wait months to take a qualifying exam that’s only offered twice a year due to the hospitalization.)

So there I was, recovering from medical trauma, bored and aimless, unemployed, wildly depressed, and suddenly trying to scrape by in my manhattan apartment without a revenue source or student loans to facilitate my doing so. At the time, I was just like “eh, I’ll try my hand at writing fanfic, how hard could it be? and like, maybe i can get some people to donate money if I get enough clicks… and then I can use that money to buy food that isn’t just toast/ketchup sandwiches!!!!!”

What can I say? It honestly wasn’t my wildest scheme; it was 2015, I was seeing tons of thirsty Sans content on tumblr, I’d actually played Undertale so for once I had some context for THE popular tumblr fandom of the time… aaand honestly, I just thought it would be hilarious to write an entirely earnest sex scene where one of the participants was a literal skeleton. I studied screenwriting pretty seriously in college, I knew how to write dialogue and set up a vague narrative arc, I figured I’d write like 15 chapters and maybe get 50$ from generous readers if i was lucky.

Weirdly, even at the very beginning, this plan seemed to actually play out as I hoped? I was only giving it like 40% effort and I was writing absolute fluff for the most part, but I still picked up a few hundred readers and even got a few donations that permitted me to enjoy both pasta AND sauce at the same time!

The thing is, like I said, that I spent my undergrad years writing and critiquing screenplays. I knew that what I was writing could only be engaging for so long without some force driving the narrative, and it turned out that I couldn’t turn the part of my brain that was constantly analyzing plot structure off. And like… I liked writing fiction again. I’d stopped doing that once the 2008 recession turned all the entry level positions that could eventually lead to a writer’s room gig into unpaid internships, forcing me to abandon my dreams and instead pursue the goal of Being A Rich Corporate Asshole. I was actually pretty good at that last part (still am), but I missed writing fiction; more specifically, I missed writing GOOD fiction. I discovered that in spite of my initial lazy intentions, I couldn’t just keep halfassing it.

So, I decided to full-ass it. I began outlining and seriously working on my character development, and since I was the one writing it, I decided that it would be the kind of story I’d actually want to read - sure, there would still be some fluff, I’d still write a few skeleton sex scenes (and I wasn’t wrong, those WERE hilarious to write), but there would also be action and eldritch horrors and quippy dialogue and a billion plot twists down the road that I’d have to earn by laying the groundwork down up front.

Once I decided to fully commit to telling a story, I started having a ton of fun with it, and the quality improved exponentially…. and now, years down the road, I am the author of a 484k word, 176 chapter undertale fanfic that is currently the 884th most kudos-ed work on Ao3, which doesn’t sound that impressive until you consider that’s 884 out of 8,713,596, which puts it in the top .0001 percent. And that, unless I got the math wrong, is a batshit bonkers insane percentile to be in. It took some fuckin’ WORK, my dudes, but as a result I can now say with full sincerity that I am incredibly proud of the explicit Sans/Reader Undertale fanfic that, as one anon once pointed out, I kind of wrote as a joke for an audience of myself?

Anyway, I’m sharing all this because like after years and years of having this information in my head I just managed to FINALLY explain to @wrexie the exact layout of the location that like 70% of the story takes place in - I never managed to shake the screenwriting instinct to keep the location budget manageable - and now I feel like my soul can finally rest. Unfortunately, I was able to do that by sharing google maps photos of a mansion that I drove by a lot in high school, and it seems super invasive to the owners to plop that in a public post, but if you’ve read it and you FINALLY want to understand where all the rooms are in relation to each other, DM me and I’ll send you a screenshot lol.

Also, if any if this intrigued you, you should probably give the fic a shot, the link’s at the top of this post. As I mentioned, the first few chapters are pure fluff, but the plot starts to pick up steam pretty early on… and then you hit chapter 44, the pandering is officially put to rest, and from that point forward it’s a goddamn blast.