Stories About Gay Girls

I like opera! I've actually been to the opera a couple of times, the first time because I wanted to see Turandot live, and then the opera noticed that I had attended the opera while not being 70+ years old, and golly, when you do that they try really hard to get you to come back again.

It's a different experience than musicals for sure, but just seeing some of those songs performed live is so amazing, not to mention how beautiful some of the sets and costumes are. And for those who are curious about going (or, small pet peeve here, for fic writers who want to write scenes set at the opera), there's basically always some form of subtitling so that you can follow along.

I don't want to spoil too much about the ending but I will promise you that I'm not putting y'all (and Heather!) through all of this without there being catharsis at the end of the line. I won't guarantee happy (though I'm not saying it won't be) but hopefully at least emotionally satisfying. We've got a ways to go yet, but we'll get there!

The experience of my tumblr for you page is mostly "discovering new tags that I need to block in order to not see The Hockey Show" but I endure it anyways because sometimes it finds me things like your chandlmara comic and that makes it all worth it. So, thanks so much for making Heathers content that's worth being on Tumblr in the first place!

Hell yeah I do.

I recced this before during the lesbianvent calendar days, but Blood, Teeth and Bones by Tamoline is one of my absolute favourite chansaw fics. It really captures the characters so well in this toxic enemies-to-something else progression that's nuanced and compelling and hot and so perfectly paced. Like, this fic is so punchy, and I love that, the details are brilliant and efficient, there's so much to pick up on, and all of it works for me. Cannot recommend highly enough.

And if you like that, Tamoline has another chansaw fic she's currently publishing, And I Feel Like I'm Drowning, that is already appointment reading for me. This is a take on chansaw where Westerberg is a girls' boarding school, and it's doing a ton with, like, the class dynamics that underpin the relationship between Veronica and the Heathers in the musical that usually goes overlooked. It's all prewritten, too, so you can and should jump in on this one now confident that it will be completed.

4 - favourite heather-ism

I'm going to go with "hope you brought kneepads, bitch" for all the various mental images that it has given me.

10 - quote not from the show that describes your fav character

I did Veronica for another ask, so I will do Heather here: "The heart of a king loves everything like a hammer loves a nail" from Epic III from Hadestown.

5 - favourite song

It's probably Candy Store, though honourable mention goes to Dead Girl Walking (Reprise).

6 - least favourite song

I very strongly dislike all the songs added in the West End changes. I'll go with Never Shut Up Again as the one I dislike most at the moment, since I both hate what it does to the musical narratively and thematically and also don't like it musically.

10 - quote not from the show that describes your fav character

About Veronica: "You think you're a good person because you won't punch me in the stomach" from Letter To An Old Poet by boygenius

15 - ot3

Polyheathers without Veronica, but in an unbelievably toxic way. I do not believe in polyheathers with Veronica, I think she breaks terrible balance and the polycule collapses.

18 - would you want to join the heathers?

If I went to Westerburg, yes, but I would rather not go to Westerburg.

19 - where would you rank in westerburg?

Girl, if high school me went to Westerburg they would have hunted me for sport. I would have been Martha Dunnstock but queer. I would have invented new, lower rungs on the social ladder to occupy.

27 - favourite costume

I love all the girls' costumes in the original off-Broadway, but I do love Chandler's the most. I love the way it evokes military regalia while still looking like something a rich teen hottie in the late 80s could have worn, it's so good.

29 - something that had been in the show you wish was in the movie

32 - what would your favourite character's pokemon team be?

Okay, writing this from the perspective of them living in a world with pokemon, rather than just playing the games. Also not gonna go past gen V because that's the end of what I'm deeply familiar with.

I think Veronica is kind of a nerd about it, like she's done plenty of reading about team composition and strategies, and she tries really hard. Being an ace trainer could be her ticket to a better life. But she's also not well travelled or rich, so she's limited in what pokemon she has access to.

I think she's got a Butterfree that she tends to open with. She likes having access to a lot of status moves that let her respond to what her opponent is doing and Caterpies are easy to come by.

Speaking of pokemon that are easy to come by but let her play into advanced strategies, she also has a Furret. The point of this is to set up Baton Pass shenanigans. If she can get a Sleep Powder off with her Butterfree, she'll use this to set up a couple Amnesias and then Baton Pass into…

Kadabra is her special sweeper. She spent ages catching an Abra (she blew all her allowance for months on pokeballs) and then verrrry slowly trained it up. She's very very proud of this one.

Crawdaunt is her physical attacker of choice. She's not fully happy with it, but she needs the type coverage, and it was that or settle for a Mightyena for a dark type, and that's a total future Rocket grunt pokemon.

Another "not fully happy" slot on her team goes to Jumpluff. She wants a wall with good stalling/draining moves and her Jumpluff has the moveset, but she can't pretend it's that strong. Every time she sends this out she dreams of having, like, a Ferrothorn, but where's she gonna get one of those?

Finally she has a Persian nicknamed JFK and it's not good, it's not the right choice for her team, but it was her first pokemon and she can't just not use her starter pokemon, right?

Anyway, once she joins the Heathers, Chandler makes her box JFK and gives her a Garchomp instead. It's much better for her team, and it's way more powerful, and it's exactly her colour, anyway, and yes it's nicknamed Imheathersbitch and Veronica can't rename it since it's a traded pokemon, but she wants to win, doesn't she?

16 - Favourite Voice

Jessica Keenan Wynn. I just love how she walks the line between this performative, almost refined accent and then saying the crassest shit. Her songs are so good, and it's a tragedy we don't have a full bootleg of her.

31 - Dream Role

I have the best commenters in the world so I have been very fortunate to get a lot of truly wonderful compliments. I think my favourite ones fall into three categories.

The first, most casual category is people noticing the little things that I like about my own writing. Often this is, like, my very stupid jokes, or lines that I was particularly enamoured with, or small details that I tried to communicate through implication rather than making explicit. There's just something very gratifying about having that part of my creativity seen that makes me so happy.

The second category is being told that my work inspired someone else to create something, whether that's writing, art, music, whatever. To me that feels like such a virtuous cycle in fandom spaces, and I love to be a part of it. A couple people have told me my stuff got them into (or back into) creating chansaw stuff and I love that so much.

Oh, thank you so much! Until She Doesn't is near and dear to my heart, one of those fics where the concept gripped me and I couldn't not write it. It's definitely my least-loved fic by the numbers, but I mainly attribute that to the chanduke fandom being pretty small and honestly the nature of the fic only appealing to people with specific, distinguished taste. My people, really. But their particular brand of toxicity is so compelling to me.

I am, in fact, writing an omegaverse Heathers fic. It's almost certainly going to be the next multichapter fic I publish once Fig Tree is done, and I've currently got like… 8k words of it complete? I poke at it when I am in the mood to and Fig Tree brain isn't working. I've said before that I don't know if it'll be what most people are looking for in an omegaverse Heathers fic, but it is extremely me. I think most people who know my writing would be able to look at the first chapter and say, "Yes, this is an Annbeez."

Through much trial, I've gotten to a point where I'm making good writing progress now, although the baby has just started walking so I expect my few extra stolen moments of writing are going away. Still, I have some dedicated writing time each week and that's not going anywhere.

I've mentioned before that I don't really want to start posting it again until I'm confident I'll be able to post through to the end without needing another hiatus. I think right now, with the current pace of progress, that means having chapters 6 through 9 completely done. I'm getting fairly close to that being the case. Chapter 6 has a complete first draft that I've gotten feedback on, and chapters 7 and 8 are very close. Chapter 7 needs maybe another thousand words, and chapter 8… only needs maybe another thousand, too, but I'll probably write at least 2-3k more of it. Chapter 9 has 11k words done but will probably end up being quite long, so who knows what percentage of it that is.