help i'm alive
So! Long time, no see. 2023 was a whole goddamn lot lol
I don't have a demo update to share yet, but that's because I had to scrap nearly everything I managed to write during a very, very, very bad stint of writer's block last year. I hadn't even realized it had been a block like that until I went over my work so far last month and realized it was bad -- like, trust me; a slog to read that didn't even sound like me. It's been extremely frustrating but I've finally broken free of that and it's been easy and actually fun to write again for the first time in actual years. I just hate giving updates that have no actual news in them. And I really had nothing to share other than: I deleted thousands of words and feel so much better now 😅
Anyway, little about my demo plans have changed: I'm still putting out the Chapter 3 demos in Choicescript/on Dashingdon and then will be going dark to move things over to Twine. Where I am in the process right now is... feeling like 35% done with the overhauled version of this chapter and 50% done for the next demo update.
As far as asks, I'm... not really sure what to do?? I believe I've read them all (I love you guys), but so much time has passed since getting most of them that I'm not sure if it's, like... still pertinent??? To go back and answer them?? I suppose some of them like character asks could be, but all the nice messages of support -- that feels weird since I've practically ghosted this blog since August! Idk. Y'all tell me what to do with 'em and I'll do it. Maybe I should make a poll.
Uh... that's really all there is to say regarding the game! I've added some personal stuff after the cut, but if you're done here: Thanks for reading and sticking around. It means the world, for real.
So what has occupied my time all this time? Doctor, therapy, money, and friends. And improv! But especially the first two. There was a lot of non-writing related stuff fucking up my ability to focus and write, so hopefully with my mind and body both feeling a lot better, I can get back to being present and active with the game. I didn't realize how physically unwell I was until last year and it's been like... life-long issues I've been treating. It turns out it's not normal to feel exhausted enough to sleep at any given time, at all times, for your whole life! wow!!
I also uninstalled Tumblr from my phone back in February, so you could say I'm sort of generally focused on offline life. (And what an interesting coincidence that my writer's block dissipated shortly after that...) I also just moved!! The last two weekends have been so expensive and stressful -_- But I can't even compare the old place to the new. We're basically paying the same price for idek how much more space. The cats are so happy; which means the house humans get to be happy.
My schedule is finally freed up from constant medical shit (there was a 3-month stretch this winter with multiple doctor appointments literally every fucking week 🙃🙃🙃). My mental health is doing a lot better -- literally incomparably better compared to where I was this time last year. There's live comedy now (which I dabble in, to be clear lol), but I've finally found myself able to like... balance it all. The physical and creative energy that goes into it all, anyway. The lovely thing about improv is that you kinda just show up and do your thing -- it doesn't cut into my writing time so much as it costs energy. Unless I end up in this comedy debate show thing next month, which I am very excited to give up writing time for
So like... Life is life-ing and I'm just vibing. Or something? I'll be around.
Thank you all again so much for your interest, support, patience, and readership <3
94 notes
·
View notes
happy 1 year of r&r :)
i know it's a lil cringe to like. celebrate the birthday of a series on ao3 but r&r is literally my child. my baby. i birthed this series. and you all signed up for this when u started reading my fics thank u
soooooooo thank u guys for all the support i've received over r&r i know it's hard to stay a consistent reader when my posting schedule is entirely non existent but i am so grateful for everyone who's stuck around this long and been with me for this journey (calling it a journey because a year ago i did not have any sort of overarching plot in mind and now we're 17? 18? fics deep and so many things have happened and i'm usually just as surprised as my readers) it's rlly u guys that have kept me going this long
ANYWAY. i rewrote this like 500 times cause i hate being like. overly sappy on this account because it's way funnier to act like a celebrity with a huge ego, but real talk i am so proud of everything i've done w this series & what it's become in the past year
i've been posting my writing online since i was like 10, so we're going on almost 9 years now and i don't think i've ever ever ever received as much support for something as i have for r&r and something about that is soooo special to me??? idk it's just so nice to see a completely self indulgent series become so loved by others, especially since the only other fics i had up before gmm&m were a little more on the "i'm gonna write what seems popular right now" side???
like shoutout to everyone who was here before/around when i started the series because my account was so empty like. 2 fics and one gets updated every 6 months. r&r pulled me out of the trench i fear. it also cured me of my very horrible disease that makes me delete all my fics after 9 months and then completely disappear from a fandom so everyone say thank you r&r
but yeah idk where i'm going with this i'm very grateful for r&r and all the friends i've made and people i've met through it because i was very lonely before i rejoined tumblr and r&r was like. 90% of the reason i made my account
AND SPEAKING OF FRIENDS. thank u to
@spidergrotto & @sapoteylx for being the first ppl i met on here to openly talk about and support r&r which i thought was so so cool even if you guys have become my haters in the past few months i've known you :/ thank u r&r nation u keep me humble and miserable (and i am very thankful for our friendship i think some aspects of r&r would be very different if we'd never met)
& ao3 user classactical because you've been here since like. a month or two into the series i think and i always always always look forward to your comments because i feel like if you comment, i did a good job on the fic LOL thank u for sticking around for so long, even if ao3 has been actively working against you for a whiiiiile
there's a lot more i want to say and a lot of people i want to mention but that would take a very long time and i always feel weird tagging a lot of people in posts so just know if u read r&r we are kissing rn. or high fiving idk whatever floats ur boat i guess
but yeah anyway tl:dr happy birthday r&r i'm very proud of this series & very thankful for everyone who has read any part of it ever u guys are so cool and hot and have amazing taste and i'm taking your kudos and bookmarks etc. as you swearing your allegiance to me and promising me your undying support no matter what (legally binding btw) thank u guys
22 notes
·
View notes
been seeing some weird takes ab the shiv pregnancy. like being ambivalent about how the writers will play it is one thing — it could end up being an incredible exploration into shiv’s internal life and her as a person beyond her relationships with men, but there are also a lot of ways to fuck up a pregnancy narrative and most are exercises in thinly veiled sexism, so it’s only natural to feel uncertain. we just don’t know how it’ll go yet!
…..buuuut. saying that pregnancy playing a role at all in shiv’s life/arc/character inherently reduces her to being The Woman just feels soooo like … rooted in internalized misogyny to me? that’s kinda doing the same thing as everyone always does — thinking less of a woman once she shows signs of, y’know, actually ‘being a woman’ quote unquote. a female character won’t stop being fully-fleshed-out, strong, independent, and interesting the second she get pregnant. pregnancy isn’t, like, just a sexist trope, guys. it’s a real thing with real importance in the lives of many, many people! pregnancy isn’t reductive to women, it’s just a part of life for some women! a lot of the time it feels like ‘good female characters’ are only seen as ‘good’ so long as you can almost forget that they’re female, so long as they act so ‘masculine’ it’s like they’re just a regular complex male character repackaged in a female body. but to be a complex female character, you’re going to have a relationship to your gender! that’s inevitable and necessary in order to actually create a good female character, rather than a good character who just so happens to be female. and this isn’t even touching upon the weird essentialism of being like oh womanhood = pregnancy & vice versa like…. y’all are complaining about the show ‘reducing shiv to womanhood’ but are you sure you’re not doing that? and besides what do you even mean ‘reduced to womanhood’? was she not a woman before? is she only a woman now that she’s pregnant? just some fucking bizarre takes all around.
the rest is under the cut because this got long, sorry !
i mean, why are we acting like the decision to explicitly explore shiv’s relationship with motherhood and femininity is bad writing and rooted in misogyny — like, not even the way it’s done, just the decision to make shiv pregnant? like, making a female character pregnant is not sexist in itself, at all! that is just part and parcel of some women’s lives! the only reason you would think pregnancy as a concept for a woman is sexist is if your internalized misogyny makes you think that pregnancy weakens or devalues a ‘strong woman’ !!! why are y’all acting like pregnancy is this terrible emasculating trope that puts the curse of Woman on characters like you sound like the roy men
and, like, maybe the storyline will suck! maybe it’ll be shitty and weird and not-so-secretly misogynistic. maybe the way they end up writing it will be yet another Career Woman Grows Heart And Has Kids or the equally bad Career Woman Feels Forced To Reject ‘Womanhood’ Entirely And That’s Supposed To Be Empowering narrative. but maybe it won’t. maybe it’ll be fucking great. maybe it’s fucking needed — maybe it will try to unravel to undo this exact centuries-long prejudice against pregnancy, against women who ‘act like’ women, whatever that’s supposed to mean. we just don’t know yet. so, like, while it is so fair to feel ambivalent about this development, maybe try to figure out what the root of that ambivalence is — is it fear that the writers will fuck it up, or is it your own pre-existing biases about pregnancy and stereotypically ‘feminine’ experiences and traits? because, yknow. it just feels kind of weird to act like the mere existence of pregnancy in the arc of a female character is inherently diminishing and reductive to her — after all, what you’re saying between the lines is not only that pregnancy diminishes and reduces independent powerful women to just being women, but youre also literally reducing the entirety of womanhood to pregnancy and the entirety of pregnancy to womanhood, and all of that feels just, like. a strange stance to take, maybe
120 notes
·
View notes
Little mostly positive waterfall ramble/rant under the cut~
(warning, I do swear a lil haha~ and feel free to ignore ofc!~)
Finally got the dumb panic-induced false confidence nerve to tell one of my only two in-person (well, one province over, but USED to be in person till earlier this year) friends about The Kink. I've told a handful of internet friends before, but never an actual real life friend I might have to see in person one day.
He actually took it really well, my other irl friend (of 15 years, his girlfriend, known him only about 3-4) would not want to know, we just don't have that type of relationship, she doesn't have that comfort level, but me and him have always been able to have deep and honest talks~
I was. Honestly scared out of my fucking mind. We were in call, but I typed the messsage and then IMMEDIATELY deafened until he read it, but once I got back we had a good talk, he asked a few questions, we made a few jokes, and overall the mood didn't change at all.
I'm honestly always so worried people will think I'm getting off to them sn--zing every time... or anyone else who does... which, ofc, just isn't how it works, but he didn't even consider that. (and made a few joking-yet-honest comments that even if I did get off to him snzing, he wouldn't honestly care. Which knowing him, is completely true~)
Anyways, this is a bit of a random/personal thing to post, but I've been so deeply ashamed of this part of me for so long, and then only recently started feeling more comfortable, and I've been toying/struggling with the idea of telling him for almost a year now, so to finally do it, and get such a good response... honestly it just feels so good. I don't think anything's gonna change in our dynamic, or get weird in any way, and that fills me with so much relief. (and yes, he knows I have a tumblr, but he promised not to search for it thank GOD)
17 notes
·
View notes