Read 88 on AO3

Chapter 2 is up! This continues to be a leisurely yet incredibly unrelaxing stroll alongside the dysfunctional relationship of two assholes who can't figure out how to be alive. If you prefer the stories you read to have no plot, no development, no resolution, but just a vague sense of dread and the suspicion that no consequential human problem is truly surmountable, BOY HAVE I GOT A FIC FOR YOU💖

❤️THIS IS THE TRUEST VALENTINE❤️

@bumblee-bee I hope you are receiving federal funding for being so encouraging towards your local fic writers! You are a one-person National Endowment for the Arts and you should be honored as such! When my life is under control someday, I'm going to finish 88 and I'll only have you to blame for it.

It was such an honor to play around in Vape's ideas sandbox for the collab on Fata Morgana, and I'm so glad that you had a good time reading it-- makes me feel like maybe I didn't just kick all the sand out of the box and leave a bunch of candy wrappers lying around! Thank you, really. I'm so tender for GV500 and RK900 flipping off the United States government together while gunning it across the American highway with two pairs of teeny pointy dog ears flapping out of the windows of their Chevy Malibu. It genuinely brings me delight beyond measure that you enjoyed the story. YOU SHOULD HAVE TAX-EXEMPT STATUS FOR YOUR PATRONAGE OF THE QUESTIONABLE ARTS

My love! @bumblee-bee! How this delights me! First of all, equal parts congratulations and condolences on your recent infectious bout of reed900. But hot on the heels of that first point, please always know that no matter how long it has been since I have actually made anything for DBH, I am still in it, still thinking about it, still loving it. Every time you come home, you come home to a haunted house. I am the spirit in your rafters, rearranging your refrigerator magnet poetry to say some beautifully heartfelt shit like

ROBOT DICKDOWN PORN

Rest of messages in thread not included for reasons of mortifying inadequacy on my part! Anon you sent this in on August 22. I just want to type that out loud so that I can nail my shame to my front door like Martin Luther with his 95 Theses, except every thesis is "Nat can't fucking answer a single thing in an even vaguely timely manner". I would say I'm sorry for what I have become, but the truth is that I was ever thus. I'm sorry for what I have always been.

Your instincts are animalistic and your deductive reasoning skills are razor-sharp! And you were completely correct! Although, I do have to confess, there are more than enough typos and grammar mistakes to go around in things I've written... fics, sure, but also just... comments and tumblr posts and whatnot. My wake is LITTERED with errors. With fics I can go in surreptitiously and tend to them hoping that no one has noticed, but with alarming regularity I will edit a comment reply being like "Sorry to drop this notification in your inbox... I just spotted a typo and I had to fix it..." so you know, you were more lenient than you needed to be in your assessment of my punctiliousness, but you were STILL COMPLETELY CORRECT.

To fully lean into the KUSO MISO GRAND PRIX vibes of Gavin unzipping his race suit while ill-advisedly wearing nothing underneath, here it is in a larger size! By god, Nines will get this man to pole position and make him sink slowly down on said pole, inch by excruciating inch. This one goes out to the anon who sent in the message about body pillows 🫡💕

Anyone unzipping a boiler suit automatically gives me yaranaika? vibes, but I THINK THAT'S FUNNY, SO WHO'S LAUGHING? Me. I am the one who is laughing

Fowler doesn't understand why the entire test run of these godforsaken posters completely sells out during presale. He's torn in so many different directions: grateful awe that Nines seems to have really landed on something, confused horror at what the general public are into, slight concern that Cyberlife Racing is objectifying Gavin for the sake of the profit margin, further concern that Gavin is actually pretty on board with being objectified, full stop

Anon I love you passionately, never change. I want you to have this:

WE AS A SOCIETY KEEP CASTING NEIL NEWBON IN ROLES WHERE HE INEVITABLY, SOMEHOW, EVEN WHEN HE IS A CHARACTER IN A FUTURISTIC STORY ABOUT ANDROIDS SET IN A MAJOR METROPOLITAN CITY, GETS FUCKED BY A BEAR

Was thinking about Westerns, and so was thinking about The Quick and the Dead, and also was thinking about how weird it is that I've never drawn Wolfwood. lbr every Wolfwood is a good Wolfwood to me, but I'm very fond of Stampede Wolfwood atm 🥰

Is there a different character in this movie that is actually a preacher who runs an orphanage? Yes. Do I just like the Lady's outfit a lot? Absolutely yes

Drunk drawing the best art of my life

I really don't know what "a car is nothing but a big cow" means but I feel like there's a profound truth at its core

Dispatches from Les Mignardises: ✨the kitchen pass is for lovers✨

Anyway my only real complaint with The Bear is that I wish I were somehow working in that writers' room instead of having a completely unrelated day job. THE RESTAURANT INDUSTRY AS A CONCEPT CONTINUES TO BE MY TRUE HOME FANDOM

Anon this makes me SO HAPPY! It's nice that you remember my stuff and that you enjoy it (thank you!!!), but more than anything, it's GREAT TO HEAR THAT YOU CAME BACK TO DBH FANDOM! Being in closed-canon fandoms always feels a bit like being in a constant state of loss, where I sit on a chair for several years and slowly watch everyone at the party leave, one by one, so you getting back into DBH is an IMMEASURABLE SOURCE OF DELIGHT 🤩

ETA SORRY @neon-feoda I COMPULSIVELY CALLED YOU "ANON" BECAUSE I'M SO USED TO ANON MESSAGES!!!!!! YOU ARE THE OPPOSITE OF ANONYMOUS, MY APOLOGIES

You're so right. Every Allen I have ever written or even thought about has been precision-engineered to be Nines's nightmare for the specific reason that he has some sort of intimate claim on Gavin and Gavin seems into it in (what seems to Nines to be) a weird, complicated, ambivalent way. I am thoroughly predictable, but I shall not apologize for it! This is my kingdom!!!

💓💓💓 Thank YOU for coming by and dropping such a sweet note in the inbox! I've only ever felt really comfortable in fandoms where we are all in general agreement that the specific contours of canon are largely irrelevant! It may be the case that there are significant swaths of DBH fandom that do not, in fact, agree with that -- there usually are such significant swaths in any fandom -- but I'm very happy to be with you in a corner where that's the going understanding, at any rate. What even is the canon for reed900, you know? God I fucking love that we churn out content for characters that don't even know each other in canon. That is my ideal fandom.

Is it a tremendous coincidence that your message came within a few hours of me posting a DBH comic, anon??? I'm active! Technically I've never really been inactive in the sense that I've... never for a moment stopped feeling love for DBH or guilt about how I should be producing more DBH content... but admittedly, producing nothing for more than half a year is... a form of inactivity.

Anyway, slow though I am with both art and writing, there will definitely be more of both in the future. Also I genuinely love that you called my brand of reed900 "fucking weird"!!!!!! THAT'S SO FLATTERING. I'M SO FLATTERED. THANK YOU. In my heart of hearts I think my reed900 is hella normal (if stunningly stupid), but of course I'm SO PLEASED that you think it's fucking weird!!!

THERE WILL ALSO BE MORE F1 AU FROM ME IN THE FUTURE, OBVIOUSLY. Hard Drive will continue to be the only fic form of F1 AU to exist, because I will never know enough about F1 to actually write anything long-form, but timestamp art and short comics? Hell yeah. Do you want to hear about how earlyish in my time in DBH fandom, I accidentally mentally made Allen into a very particular type of side character that I gravitate towards in every fandom, and now I can't stop putting him into every AU that lives in my head? Do you want to hear about how in F1 AU, Allen is the physiotherapist for Cyberlife Racing and his entire job is to just touch Gavin at all hours of the day and murmur low comments about how tight he is? This Allen is 100% the exact same Allen as Les Mignardises Allen and all I ever do is throw this fabricated man into scenarios just to fulfill my very specific needs. I HAVE TO STOP TALKING NOW