expect the worst

The genuine answer about the pro skating stuff is legitimately that I made @waldorph tell me so many things about skating and went ballsack deep into researching so hard that I probably could have reliably scored a junior competition--for literally one hot second while I was writing that story, and as soon as I finished it I hard cache dumped the entirety of my brain. As of today, I genuinely am like, "oh shit yeah I wrote Yuri on Ice fic huh," which, wow, neurodivergence is a hell of a thing.

I guess what I'm saying it: do not ever hesitate to use and abuse your friends when they express interests into things and use them as fic research vending machines.

I sincerely think Summer House might be one of my favorite things I've ever written. I feel like I was one of like 4 people who watched Eureka -- which is a shame because it's such a delightfully fun show -- and Eureka was MADE to be disrupted by McKay. Truly I can think of nothing more appropriate than for Rodney to roll up and torture the citizenship, towing along his trophy Air Force MENSA boyfriend, who wants invisible helicopters.

I also like to think that Henry probably knew more about the Stargate project than he was letting on -- OR -- that he would eventually get recruited to do some contract work out there in Pegasus. Which would be genuinely the most fucking hilarious little exchange program. Rodney is like omg omg everybody tell me what you want from Costco Henry is coming next week and he said he'll bring us snacks, and simultaneously Henry is trying to figure out how many intergalactic samples and pieces of Ancient technology he can abscond with back to Eureka without getting murdered by NORAD MPs on his way out of the mountain.

Whittled Down was such an interesting project for me. A lot of stories come to me sort of fully formed bashing their way out of my skull like smutty Athena, but Whittled was a much more constructed piece -- not in the least because not long after I watched KinnPorsche I ended up in Thailand because of a long-planned holiday. (I swear we did not go just because of BL. That said, I did in fact find and eat the KinnPorsche gay sex bread and have to report that it fucks.) Every time I travel I like to go wildly open-hearted, to intentionally fall a little in love with the place. I felt that so keenly picking my way to the riverside of the Chao Praya, climbing onto one of the boats, looking at the gleam of gold temples, sweating my way through every single article of clothing I brought to the country. All the things I loved a little, I liked to think that Kinn would love a lot, that this was his home and his city, and that the way he feels about her is intangible but deep.

It was a fun project to try to tell a love story about a person with unconcealed suicidal ideation and negative self worth -- all without him engaging in it -- falling in love in a city that loves him back.

When I was in college I really seriously considered double majoring in art history, in part because I've always been so deeply in love with weird fucking medieval art. I have a collection of hideous medieval babies in my phone camera roll. The uglier the Christ child the better. There are some real, REAL dogs in that collection.

So writing Provenance and being allowed to get really deep into my feelings about art with Inception in general was such a treat. It was also a thinly veiled love letter to one of my favorite overly horny movies of all time, the Thomas Crowne Affair, which renders me effectively bisexual every time I watch it because I'm torn between how much I want Renee Russo to step on me and how much I want to fuck Pierce Brosnan on a boat.

This is a story that I wrote in college, very obviously, because now that I am not in college the idea of a professor hooking up with his TA is HORRIFYING to me. One of the greatest joys of sliding into croneship is realizing everything you thought was saucy and fun when you were younger is slowly turning into a nightmare as you age. Going out bar hopping until 2 a.m.? A curse. Random hookups? Oh God get me out of this stranger's apartment. Flirting with a teacher? HA HA HA FBI OPEN UP.

That said, I miss SGA as a fandom because it was SUCH a good time. It's almost impossible to express the sheer volume of creative work that was being made during that fandom's heyday: weekly romance novel flashfic competitions, incredible novel length stories, everybody got to write their big DADT piece, absolutely bonkers AUs and everything in between. We were so spoiled for choice, and I'm just happy people had fun with my goofy little accidental stripper fic.

I entertain a little mental story that because of Howling Commandos HQ now sort of being proxy friends of the Avengers, that eventually when Steve is living in DC they awkwardly try to hang out with him because he seems so tragically lonely?? It is terrible for everybody at the beginning, because can you fucking imagine. It would be like if Spock came to your trashy Bachelorette watching party with the subtext that you all know each other because you dug through his trash enough to know what kind of lube he likes to buy. But you know, Cap seems extremely lonely so they like, invite him to brunch! They try to bring him over for D&D!

All of this gets a lot better after Bucky is recovered and deprogrammed, and it's like he's this glowing little star of happiness afterward. Unfortunately, this does not make their intermittent social gatherings any less awkward, because at least two members of the HQ squad in the DC area have written Steve/Bucky fanfic, and Bucky has ABSOLUTELY read it.

Former journalist, technically, but as most of us will admit, once a filthy reporter, always a filthy reporter.

And that's an important distinction! As Arthur says in the story, reporters can't be relied upon to write headlines. Also, as Eames confirms, reporters also aren't intended to know how to spell things. Like if I wanted a job where I had to "write things perfectly" I would have gone into academic publishing. Instead I got paid to ask annoying questions and fake being fearless in the face of authority or seniority, and I cashed in all my skill points for those capabilities leaving absolutely nothing for spelling and grammar. (This should also explain why I, a professional writer by trade, cannot spell or do grammar. BAH. HUMBUG. BRING BACK THE COPY DESK.)

Someone once asked for an actual director's commentary on Early Returns because there are so many hardcore newsroom/journalism/bullpen injokes in there (and there are! if they did not make sense, you are not crazy, I did that on purpose to hurt you and to work through my ~trauma~), and honestly it's something I still might do because they're so thick and fast in the narrative.

The Least of All Possible Mistakes I think I've said before is a story into which I poured all my complicated and imperfect love of London. It's a city I adore and an adventure I loved, and I was so lucky to have it twice and to come and go on my own terms -- I know that's a marvel, and as much as I loved writing George and Sherlock and Mycroft and John, I loved writing about the Big Smoke just as much. I'm sure so much as changed since Covid, but the lines of its ancient streets and dead rivers, the 55 bus line and getting lost on the Northern line literally every single fucking time is eternal and timeless to me, and every time I think about that story I think about the first time I had to leave London -- my heart breaking the whole time -- standing on Blackfriars bridge late at night looking at the river, and whispering to myself, "how can I bear to go?" I think Mycroft feels that way about George, a little bit, every time he has to be away from her.

I will make a blanket dealer's choice commentary: I frequently forget about stories I have written, to the point where I will sometimes get an AO3 comment and be like wtf is this and have to click the link to the original story. And then I'm like "holy shit I did write a Daa Daa Daa fan fiction" or "wow I was the only person on planet Earth to watch Jack & Bobby huh" or any of a number of other harrowing sins. Don't abuse substances, kids!

OH MAN LITTLE HOUSE INCEPTION AU!!! The idea on that one was that Miss Arthur has come out west because the Reverend's wife was her best friend, and now there's no one to look after him or their children, but that despite the rumors, she and Father Cobb have no spark of marital inclination, and do not live together. In fact, she sets up house in a little place at the edge of town...only it becomes extremely apparent extremely quickly that Miss Arthur does not know the first fucking thing about how to live on the frontier, and Eames ends up feeling compelled against his will to take care of her in all kinds of ways: cutting firewood, teaching her how to set up the house for winter, showing her how to start a fire in the cookstove. Miss Arthur came from a wealthy east coast family, same as Father Cobb's former spouse, and never learned how to cook for herself or make hats, but she has beautiful handwriting, can play the piano, dances like an angel and embroiders like a dream--none of which means shit now that she's freezing to death on the prairie. But, she's the most stubborn little thing Eames has ever met, and over the course of a calendar year, summer melting into fall and freezing into the snow drifts of winter, giving way to the verdant softness of spring, they fall slowly, slowly in love in little pieces.

Also Eames teaches her how to use a rifle and she's WAY too good at it.

I really wish I had something profound to say about that story other than that sometimes, there is a demon inside of my head that says, "hey, what if made everybody cry," and that the demon is extremely compelling. Also it leans into a shared fandom tendency to identify a favorite character and decide the best way to mark this affection is by being unbelievably cruel to them--you can read this as my fave being either John or Rodney in this case, hahaha.

Insert bleak laughter here. Remember when politics was kind of fun and intellectually interesting, and I could watch things like West Wing without getting a facial tick....

I wrote that story so long ago that it's honestly hard to remember my state of mind when I was approaching it, but I had been reading a lot of books about the Clinton campaign and Beltway politics (I know I'm so cool right) and I love nothing more than to write super inside baseball narratives. I've gotten much, much better with research since then, so there's a lot of warts that show in that story, but it's an early relic of my forever tendency to decide no amount of research is too much research to do when I get kissing at the end of it.

I genuinely love how much people seem to love Lost in Translation. It was such a gloriously fun story to write, a loop-de-loop romantic romp, and I hope everybody enjoyed the rollercoaster feelings of pining and grief and dizzy mania and the long exhale of relief that I was aiming for once they found their way back to each other.

There's like a B-side to Lost in Translation that would be fun to explore one day that's just Oikawa's equally cursed weekend, starting with their knock down drag out fight that he was avoiding for ages, and then deteriorating into pure horror movie shit when for the first time in his entire life he cannot get in touch with Iwaizumi.

For Reasons, I am an anxious person when I cannot reach friends, family and loved ones, and Oikawa's immediate decision to cold call every single human being who might have had even glancing contact with Iwaizumi is something I would not hesitate to do. If you do not want me calling your boss's boyfriend or the lady who shows up in the background of your instagram posts at your favorite coffee shop then you should have answered my fucking texts you mouthbreather, so--per usual--I overly sympathize with the craziest person in the Haikyuu universe and think that Oikawa did nothing wrong. That said, would pay $1 million to watch Oikawa sob over his finsta account at all the sluts who are staring at Iwa-chan's muscles. What if they have been allowed to touch his muscles? Or kiss his stupid mouth?? What if someone else has been allowed to look at his penis??? Even Oikawa has not been able to look at his penis!!!!

Truly it is a blessing and a gift that a character this insane exists and that I get to write silly little stories about him and his long-suffering but equally insane boyfriend. <3

UNCOVERED! A story that is deeply meaningful to me for ambiguous, abstract reasons. It was the first thing I clearly remember writing that felt like me putting words to page about the lived experience of being an imperfect, wretchedly human adult woman, which was all I could ever be, and shared in that suffering and joy with Antonia DiNozzo. I've talked before about how writing women is terribly difficult because it feels so invasive, it feels at times eviscerating. I'm not a man and I don't have those lived experiences; everything I write from that POV has a sort of caul over it, a protective separation. When I write about women, about how they feel and what they do, the mistakes they make and the ways in which they allow themselves to be happy or sad or stupid -- it all feels so close to the skin, and Toni feels tremendously close.

I think someone on Twitter once said that nobody writes Oikawa as batshit as I do, and I take that as a compliment and carry it with pride. The minute that shitty little weirdo showed up in Haikyuu I was immediately smitten because I, too, am a complete psycho and every single one of his deranged behaviors and decisions made perfect mathematical sense to me. I think the thing I most love about writing Oikawa as a balls out lunatic is how at once liberating and vulnerable it is to put all of your crazy on display like that: there is not a single fucking person who has ever met this guy who thinks he is normal-passing for longer than 3 business minutes. He has the hyperfocus of a military sniper, the emotional stability of a 13 year old girl who's about to pass her first menstrual blood clot, the self-control of a toddler and he probably has a 26 step skin care routine that costs more than everything on my bathroom counter. I am literally obsessed with this man. And--in my interpretation at least--that level of tits out insanity also translates into how he would manage his romantic relationships, which is to be a complete fucking psycho at Iwaizumi, a person who comes off as completely normal, but who--over time--you realize is just as bad as Oikawa in a completely different but equally troubling way. Like you do not sign up to a lifetime tour of duty with batshit crazy unless you, yourself, are batshit crazy.

This is a thread that shows up in both Something Borrowed and Lost in Translation, although obviously the universes in which they manifest are uh, extremely different.

Also, fun fact, I started to write the sequel to Something Borrowed, called Something New, where Oikawa gets knocked up and because he can't play volleyball until he evicts his parasite he decides to make Kageyama his pregnancy project and everybody is like "lol RIP to Kageyama, couldn't be me," because all of Kageyama's friends are assholes. Will this ever be finished? Who fucking knows. At the current moment, the file is like 10 pages long and currently on a scene where I gave Kageyama food poisoning from eating airport sushi in Qatar.