youarestellarverse

[youarestellarverse]

[youarestellarverse]

Seeing a lot of new people show up in my notes with like "proship dni" or whatever so RENT LOWERING GUNSHOT: IM AN ADULT WHO DOES NOT CARE IF PEOPLE HAVE PROBLEMATIC SHIPS, IM OLD AND BELIEVE TABOO FICTION IS SAFE AND HEALTHY, IM AN OLD MAN WHO THINKS IT'S FINE TO HAVE SHIPS THAT WOULD BE BAD IN REAL LIFE, I BELIEVE IN TABOO KINKS AS HEALING PLACES, I DO NOT DO SHIP DISCOURSE, I THINK IT'S OKAY TO WRITE ABOUT BAD THINGS HAPPENING TO GOOD PEOPLE WITHOUT CONDEMNING IT IN THE NARRATIVE, I THINK IT'S OKAY TO GET OFF TO MAKE BELIEVE BAD THINGS!!! THANKS

[youarestellarverse]

“characters in fic are too good at identifying scents” is officially an “his eyes did not literally darken” level of complaint to me now like it’s about the drama it’s about the romance it’s about atmosphere it’s about taking you to a heightened version of reality!!! please suspend your disbelief at least enough for vibes-based sensory descriptions it will be So Worth It i promise

[youarestellarverse]

WIP Wednesday: Juno's diary, July 1st 2026

or, the one where her husband has advancing CTE and the post-wedding estrangement is broken. Makes more sense if you've read some of these first.

Content warnings for domestic violence, dementia, and transphobia.

R in the hospital.

Don't even know what set him off. I'm not sure he knew what set him off. He hit me, then put his hands on my throat.

I kicked him until he let go. He looked at me like he was confused why I was there. His face was astonishingly empty, like he didn't even recognize me as I backed away. It was so quick it made me dizzy.

I barricaded myself in my suite. Dragged my hope chest in front of the door in case he tried to follow after. I called Jason.

I haven't spoken to him since before the wedding. I don't know why he picked up. It was the first ring. He asked me, "what's wrong?" and I asked him how he knew. He laughed, quiet and sad, and told me "You wouldn't have called me otherwise".

He called 911 for me. Sent an ambulance and a squad car. They took Rex downtown in the bus. Cognitive decline. Jason met us at the hospital, all dressed up in drag; I suppose I should say "she"?

She took point on speaking with her father's doctors. I was crying too hard to speak. I couldn't tell her it was because I missed my son terribly.

Her husband still despises me and has been glaring at me since they walked through the door. I don't suppose I blame him. He keeps a hand on Jason's Ruby's lower back like he wants to reassure her he's there. R used to do that for me when everything was new, before it turned sour.

They have children with Annabeth: two-year-old twins, a boy and a girl, and another baby due in October. I've never met them. I never would have gotten the opportunity before. Ruby told me, firmly and with that same spark of righteous fire I remember from when she was little, that she would sooner die than allow her father in the same room as her kids.

"It ends with me. We decided before they were even born that they'd never have to grow up like I did, scared of their own parents."

It wounded me. I don't know if she did that on purpose. She kept curling a strand of hair around her finger. She's been wearing a headscarf lately; the last time I saw her was before she went back to her mother's traditions.

I haven't seen her curls since I had to shave them off when she was three. They're gorgeous, even with such garish coloring. She's so pretty blonde, but she only ever dyes her hair in pastels. She says she doesn't want to look like she's trying to mask her grays, because they decided as a family to model healthy attitudes towards aging for the twins. "I'm a woman in my thirties; I want to look like a woman in my thirties."

I love her as she is, of course, but the same thing happened when she came out as bisexual: my first thought was fear for her safety. The world is cruel, and she's always been too soft for her own good. But she stood up tall and straight, stayed even and measured the whole time she was speaking with the neurologist. She was trembling a little, but her voice was strong and steady.

It was a little jarring, to be honest. I don't expect a voice like that to come out of a face that pretty and feminine. I tried not to show it on my own face, but I must have, because Percy kept giving me dirty looks.

He never believed me about her dress—I could tell by the way he looked at me when I made my excuses about the dogs. I feel foolish and pathetic for ever trying to conceal my shame; if Percy weren't so bright and perceptive, I doubt my daughter would have fallen for him.

it's past 1 in the morning. We're staying tonight at Ruby's in-laws' apartment, and we'll go back to the townhouse tomorrow so that I can get my essentials. After that, I'll go home with them "until we figure out something more permanent." I can tell P wasn't thrilled with the idea, but for some reason he held his tongue.

There's something in the looks he's giving me. Disdain, suspicion, certainly; strangely, I swear I've seen pity in his eyes, too. He reminds me of how angry R used to get when I told him stories about my parents, before everything.

They say R has likely progressed to stage 3. This is where the mood swings and inappropriate outbursts give way to dementia and, eventually, will lead to death. The sweet young man he was, my Saint Michael who rescued me from the devil, is already dead; he's been gone for decades now.

Maybe he was never really there. Father always told me I was stupid and flighty; it would be like me to invent something so fanciful and ridiculous.

--

I stopped writing because Percy interrupted my self-indulgent spiral of pity. He couldn't sleep either; Ruby, he told me, has been staying awake with their son to soothe him through his nightmares, and she's so exhausted "she could probably fall asleep standing up like a horse".

I told him she used to get them when she was that age. He gave me a lopsided smile and said he knew that; she told him the first time it happened with their little one. Quincy is his name. He's shy, sensitive and anxious, but also curious and sweet, which is very much like Ruby was when she was little. He's even a precocious reader like she was, and is already sounding out simple words from his storybooks. His sister Bonnie hasn't started reading yet, but she's talking up a storm and running everywhere her little legs will carry her.

P lit up like a marquee the whole time he was talking about them. He showed me some pictures on his phone: they're being very strict about keeping them off social media and maintaining their privacy, which he told me with a quirk to his eyebrow that made me feel like it was a judgment against me. It probably was, and I would deserve it either way.

I almost wonder if he was trying to show me he understands, in some way. He's been softer with me tonight than he ever has before. It's a long drive from Stonybrook and it was just the two of them who drove up. They've always communicated easily, even when they were just friends; there's no doubt in my mind that they were comfortable enough to talk about this as they drove up to meet me.

P also showed me a darling photo of Annabeth asleep with the twins curled against her and a book in her hand. He smiled like he couldn't help it and lightly touched the image of her stomach before he moved on. The next picture was of the twins, Annabeth and my daughter at the beach, the former two held by the latter as they played in the shallow water.

I asked him if he was trying to say something specific. He gave me that wry smile again, the one that used to remind me of my husband. (This time, I could see the difference; that spark of passion, the sense of protective adoration, is something R let go of before he even graduated college. P turns 31 in August: the same age I was when I took Jason in.)

[youarestellarverse]

"Would you peel an orange for me?"

I would peel a pomegranate for you.

[youarestellarverse]

the deeply personal thing that specifically grinds my gears about that absurd kink meme rules post though is this little line:

the whole thing is ridiculous and it feels kind of silly for me to specifically be squinting at this but it comes back to my whole bugbear about the way fandom often talks about kink as being all about the needs of the submissive, with the dom as sort of an afterthought without a lot of interiority of their own. the aftercare is for the submissive, specifically, only.

what I'm kind of saying here in a less serious way is. my kingdom for more topdrop fics honestly

[youarestellarverse]

[youarestellarverse]

the deeply personal thing that specifically grinds my gears about that absurd kink meme rules post though is this little line:

the whole thing is ridiculous and it feels kind of silly for me to specifically be squinting at this but it comes back to my whole bugbear about the way fandom often talks about kink as being all about the needs of the submissive, with the dom as sort of an afterthought without a lot of interiority of their own. the aftercare is for the submissive, specifically, only.

what I'm kind of saying here in a less serious way is. my kingdom for more topdrop fics honestly

[youarestellarverse]

I debated posting about this because I know it will be controversial and because I myself have complex feelings about it, but to quote an intrepid intergalactic explorer: we can talk about this.

A discord fic club recently advertised they would be reading one of my fics. I was actually really excited about this! Hopefully new people get to enjoy a thing I worked hard to make for them, and I was really looking forward to hearing what they thought about it.

Except the advertised date came and went with silence on the actual fic, so I assumed that it got canceled or something.

But, no, it didn’t - I heard later that the group had in fact read my fic and apparently loved it. Quietly. To themselves.

And, like, look — I’m trying to write this with a minimum amount of snark, because on one hand I’m a fic reader too and I firmly believe that people have a right to enjoy fic however they wish. As I writer, I also don’t think I’m entitled to comments, but like 90% of writing fic for me is to be part of a community, and being a part of a community means commenting on fics so that there are more fic and the community continues.

On the other hand, as a writer, I have to be honest — hearing that people specifically scheduled time to read a fic I wrote and then loved it while not sharing any of their thoughts with me? That doesn’t make me feel good. I feel like it should, but it doesn’t. It makes me feel like my fic is just content to be consumed without regard to the effort that went into making it.

The fic in question? I worked on it on and off for literal years. It had to be betaed. It had to be formatted to be posted to AO3 properly, I had to work on the meta bits to properly tag and warn people.

All of that is work, and the only thing I ask for (and any fic author, really) is engagement and encouragement from the people reading the fic.

This isn’t snark or bitterness to say that if the trend is going to be people talking amongst themselves about my fic in a group chat with total silence to me as the author, then I don’t see the point in going through all the effort to post fic publicly. I’ll just send it to my own group chat. If that’s the community now, then that’s where I’ll go. I’ll hate it, honestly, but like. If that’s the deal, that’s the deal.

Anyway, I’m clearly in my feelings about this. I really am truly glad people liked my work. But this really bummed me out.

[youarestellarverse]

Entitled white women I swear to God

People have been doing book clubs since forever. They do not put George RR Martin on the phone so he can join the chat.

Oh, thank you, kindly court jester jingling into my life under the brave banner of anonymity, for illustrating the exact problem of current fandom.

(This ask is about this post about private fanfiction "book clubs," for those of you who are not following my jester's ire.)

The bedrock of the problem entrenched fandom is having with the newer "TikTok fandom" element is that we have a fundamental disagreement about what fandom is, and what is the social relationship between the people who write fanfiction, make fanart, etc, and the people who read that fanfiction and enjoy that fanart.

(I am not going to use the term "content creator." Because that term is not applicable to fandom, fanfiction authors, or fan artist. Kill the capitalist in your brain. Content is hummingbird nectar made with artificial sweeteners. It resembles the real thing at a distance, but it is devoid of nutrients. It will fill you up so you're not hungry while starving you. Generative AI can produce content because it's empty; it doesn't mean anything. It doesn't even want to engage with you. The sole purpose of content is to get you to sit still long enough for the people who own the platform to squeeze whatever it is they want from you out of you and then abandon your malnourished husk until the next time they can get something from you.)

George RR Martin is not a member of fandom, and the relationship he has with his readers is fundamentally different, because his relationship as an author is explicitly a professional one. When George RR Martin sells a book—not to his readers, but to a publisher who acts as intermediary—he is given a lengthy contract outlining the terms of the sale. How much he will be paid, what can be done with his work by who, etc. George RR Martin is not your peer.

Fanfiction authors are your peers. They're your next door neighbors. They write fanfiction to connect to other fans in celebration of a canon everyone involved loves. Nobody makes a single red cent from writing or sharing their fanfiction. George RR Martin has sold 90 million copies of his books, and he gets money for every one. Because TikTok has trained you that people who are putting their creations out there are monetizing the experience of you reading or watching their art, the "TikTok fandom" element has you sorting your peer posting fanfiction on AO3 into the same category as George RR Martin. But your relationship with George RR Martin is a professional one, and the expectation from fanfiction authors and artists is a social relationship.

When you have a private book club reading and discussing fanfiction without ever telling the author or, God forbid, leaving a comment about how much you enjoyed the story—which is the expectation entrenched fandom authors and artists who view fandom as a social relationship—you think you're reading a mass produced novel from someone who has already been paid for it several times over, but this isn't even Walmart vs. local mom and pop. What are you actually doing is going to your neighborhood block party, picking up the cake someone made and brought to share, and taking it back to your house to eat with friends.

We are your peers. We are your neighbors. We are doing this for free because we want to talk to you about our common interest. No, it's not "payment." We offer our work for free, and you have the option of treating us like vending machines or ChatGPT or Walmart. This is a social relationship; you have this option just as you have the option of leaving your shopping cart in the middle of the parking lot instead of walking it to the cart return. You have that option just as you have the option to stick your chewed gum on a park bench or park your car across three handicap spaces or take a shit on the floor of a public bathroom. How you treat your peers and neighbors, how you treat the people in your community, is up to you.

You can keep stealing cakes from block parties. But don't be surprised when people get fed up with it and stop having block parties. Then you'll be stuck buying cake from Walmart or consuming artificially sweetened hummingbird nectar from ChatGPT while vultures raid your corpse for data.

Thanks for coming to my TEDTalk, court jester. Now get the fuck off my lawn.

[youarestellarverse]

You need to move off of Google Docs!

I know some people have seen the news recently and may be doubtful of it. To the uninformed, Google Docs has started using AI to find "inappropriate" and "problematic" content, scraping your documents and deleting it. I know some people are unsure if this is real or think this is not going to affect them.

I regret to inform you that this is real.

As I was on a call with some writers and we were moving our documents as a precautionary measure, one person discovered entire pages missing that they did not delete themselves. This is happening to us, it's not a hoax or a rumor, it's happening right now. You need to move everything if you want to preserve it.

If you're a writer with writer mutuals, please reblog this so they know. I rarely write on Google Docs anymore, but I started my fanfics on there, and I would be devastated if I lost works more than ten years old because people decided marketing appeal is more important than creative freedom.

EDIT READ THIS: https://www.tumblr.com/bravehyde/790422701153157120/hi-can-we-have-any-sort-of-source-about-the

[youarestellarverse]

PSA for fanfic writers

[youarestellarverse]

WIP Wednesday Juno 2fer Special ✨️

Jason's infancy/their first meeting:

July 2, 1994 I went to the hospital. I don't know why. I wanted to confront him but he wasn't there. I guess he was back at the house with T. B was tired. She offered to let me hold the baby. I don't know what game she was playing, but I don't care. Jason Anthony Grace, five pounds twelve ounces, is the smallest infant I've ever held. At first I was furious. I think part of me was still hoping it wasn't really true, that B was just a lying bitch trying to steal my husband. (She stole my dead baby's name, after all…Jason Anthony? Really???) Little Jason Anthony looks just like his father, the way newborn babies usually do. I looked down at him, and I could see Rex in his face, and for a second I was so angry I wanted to scream. But then he opened his eyes, and may Mother Mary punish me if I'm lying—for a second he looked right at me, and I could just…sense it. My baby. The baby I lost. My little Jason Antonio. He reached up and closed his hand in my blouse and I almost walked out of the room with him. I just knew, somehow. I can't shake the feeling that I'm meant to have him. To save him. B had fallen asleep, so I sat with him and held him until R got back with T. (still hates me, glared daggers. R told me he promised her she could hold her brother after lunch. I passed him over and he frowned, I think, but she is very good with him.) I'm terrified. I held him in my arms and I knew I would do anything for him. He stretched out his little hand and touched it to my chest and I knew he knew it too. It's not his fault his father is a cheating asshole and his mother is a gold-digging slut. He did nothing to deserve what he's growing up into. If that bitch is a competent mother who can raise him well I'll clear the Versace from my closet and burn it. I fully intended to leave the papers, but I didn't. I took them with me. I don't know if I'll go back. I wasn't expecting this to happen. I just can't shake the feeling that little boy needs me. I pray I can get him in time.

somewhere around Here In Our Bed ch. 20something:

some spoilers for a thing I'm planning but haven't gotten to yet ahead!

October 18th, 2012, Thursday 11 PM Surprised Jason with a lunch date today. He was distracted and anxious the whole time. Barely listened to me as we made small talk, and fidgeted with his wallet chain like it was tethering him to reality. He's aware he's on edge, at least, and he promised me he's already reached out to disability services, which made me proud. When his father got bad grades, he just paid underclassmen to do his homework for him; Jason, as always, took the honorable route instead. I still haven't figured out how to broach the subject of his orientation. I knew he was gay when he was eleven and he had his first crush on an older boy in his choir section. I've seen the way he and Piper relaxed around each other, and bloomed without the pressure of expected romance into a friendship deeper than my marriage. My dear, sweet little boy pines in silent resignation; it took years before P picked up on how deeply Jason's feelings for him ran. I told Jason today that I like Percy— that I wasn't sure about him at first, but he's grown on me, especially in how supportive he is of my son. I don't think Jason understood what I was trying to say. I think he still thinks I don't know, which is why I haven't brought it up directly. He has to be ready. It's exhausting, waiting. Part of me is resentful that he still doesn't trust me after all this time. Have I not loved him unconditionally from the moment I held him for the first time, when he looked up at me with sleepy newborn eyes and grasped at my blouse when his mother put him in my arms? I don't know why Beryl let me hold him. Maybe she was trying to humanize herself in some way. Reach out to me. Or maybe she just wanted to rub it in. I wonder if Jason doesn't want to burden me with his orientation. He used to hide being bullied at school for the same reason. I've been thinking about what to do about this since he brought LV to Disney with us in freshman year; it's getting less difficult all the time to be a gay athlete, and things are already better now than they were then. I want to plead with him to open up to me like he used to. If I push, I'll just push him away. He gets farther away from me every moment; today, with his beard coming in and that coldness in his eyes, he looked more like Rex than he has in a long, long time. I wonder if R knows. I wonder if he would care if he did. Sometimes I check on his old PA, that college kid he used to bend over his desk; the same one who took off his suit jacket so he could play toy cars with Jason after we gathered evidence of B's neglect. Grayson seems to be doing well, but I suppose I would be the last person to know if he weren't. I don't want Jason to be preyed on by someone like my husband. I stared at that sentence for a full eight minutes after writing it. I'm horrified at myself for thinking it. I can't bring myself to strike it out. I suppose it's a good thing R never cared to learn to read script.

Note: she's wrong about Jason being gay, he's actually bi, and there are very good reasons he doesn't trust her but can't cut her off. Their relationship is difficult and complicated and one of my favorites from canon, which is why I'm poking it with a stick!

She's also an unreliable narrator who performs for her private diary, which is a difficult but enjoyable line to thread.

oh, and "Grayson" is Ganymede!

[youarestellarverse]

I turned on anon asks for the first time in a long time.

Please use this feature responsibly but freely. 🫶

Right now, I'm rereading everything I've written for this 'verse (which is, uh, an undertaking lol). I'm also planning to reread the source material and catch up on ToA and Magnus Chase.

I think I might dump some of my early shitty first drafts, especially the ones that predate major plot point rewrites, on Ao3. I'm still neckdeep in this ridiculous AU— I often go through fallow periods because of my health, but the whole time I'm still rotating the characters around in my head like rotisserie chickens.

You've seen my head poke up a couple times, usually when a buddy who is also somehow as unhinged abt this AU as I am enabled me (love you guys you know who you are), with shorts and sides. I really, really miss writing regularly, though; I hate this months-and-months-without-writing, leaving-wips-languishing-for-years garbage, and I get antsy when I'm not creative.

I may try rewriting With Cream so it lines up with what I have in my head re the plot, which may require some extensive overhaul or may just need a few tweaks. (It’s first on my reread docket after I finish the "canonical" pieces, which feels weird to say about an AU but I can't think of anything else apropos.)

I also might try to tackle that wiki I keep meaning to put together for my own references. There's also that I'm doing this on top of a ghastly amount of family stress AND substantial geopolitical upheaval, but that makes me more motivated to push through this because it makes ME feel better and I have comments to prove that I'm not the only one.

Anyway. I don't know who's still invested among this blog's followers, but I wanted to give a status update since I haven't in a while. I'm embarrassingly bad at compliments, but I'm still incredibly moved this blog has any followers at all. As Dr. Tingle would say, you prove love.

[youarestellarverse]

Fingering the plot hole

[youarestellarverse]

Hi I did a thing

[youarestellarverse]

best thing tumblr ever did for me is the term "rotating it in my mind". it's really true that sometimes you think about something real hard but you can't tell what the thoughts are exactly. it's revolutionary stuff, i might even say