Ella

They didn’t want to rehearse. They could be talking about the price of eggs, the state of the weather… Kinda 30 seconds before the board is clapped, and they would go straight to the scene and do it. And ‘cut’ is called, and then they’d be, ‘what were we talking about?’ or ‘whose turn is it with Bitch?’

Reply images are from a post from a google group from kittyVogue. It reads: Play the game “Bitch” all the time. So here are the rules that we play by: Need two decks of playing cards including jokers. [1] Each player is dealt 13 cards. With one facing up in the center. [2] Start play to the left as in any card game. [3] On your turn, pick up card from deck. Throw one in center/discard pile. [4] To go into play, you must first lay down three of a kind. Known as three originals. [5] After this, you may use deuces as wild cards. [6] Jokers are put down by themselves. Must be down with three originals first.

[7] Lay down as many three of a kind as you can, keep in mind can add more. For example, if have five kings in your hand, they all go down together. When it is your turn, lay down any three of a kind you have in your hand. [8] You can only pick up the cards in the middle if you have two cars in your hand, that match the top card. If you pick up the cards in the middle you must use the top card with others into play immediately. Remember you must pick up all the cards in the middle, even if you only wish to use the top one. [9] You cannot pick up any cards from the middle unless you have at least three originals down first, and there must be at least three cards in the middle. [10] When dealing, cut the cards to deal. If you deal 13 cards to everyone, and have one left to put in the center, then this is considered to be a perfect deal. Worth 100 points. [11] Jokers worth 50 points, deuces worth 25 points, aces worth 20 points, face cards - 10 points, and all other cards (from 3-9] are worth 5 points. [12] First player to get 2100 wins the game. [13] If you wish to block someone from picking up the cards in the discard pile, lay out a card that matches one in their set of three of a kind. They can’t pick up the pile if the top card matches one of their three of a kind. They are blocked.

continuing--

⊹ How do they treat people who can't do anything for them? Waitstaff? strangers? people they'll never see again? this is the oldest trick in the book for a reason. It works. How someone behaves toward people with no social utility tells you everything about their actual values versus the values they perform for an audience.

⊹ What's their relationship with their own body? Are they comfortable in it or is it something they carry around like a problem? do they take up space or make themselves small? are they aware of how they look or completely indifferent? Physicality is psychology and most writers forget the body entirely until someone needs to throw a punch.

⊹ What do they lie about and why. Not dramatic plot lies necessarily. the small everyday ones. the things they exaggerate or omit or reframe. Because people don't lie randomly, they lie to protect something. Find what your character is protecting and you'll find what they're afraid of. That fear is the ENGINE!!

⊹ Who did they used to be? not their whole backstory. just: who were they before the thing that changed them. because that person is still in there somewhere, showing up in small ways, wanting things the current version of them would never admit to. The ghost of a former self is one of the most interesting things you can write into a character without ever stating it directly.

⊹ What would make them walk away?? from the goal. from the relationship. from the person they're trying to be. everyone has a breaking point and it should be specific to them, and please not a generic "too much" but the exact thing, the particular betrayal or loss or realisation that would finally be enough. know this even if the story never reaches it.

⊹ What do they want vs what do they need. these should not be the same thing. what they want is the surface goal ( the job, the person, the revenge, the answer.) What they need is the thing underneath that they can't name yet. The story is what happens in the gap between those two things. if they're identical your character has nowhere to go.

⊹ What are they wrong about. Not morally wrong necessarily. just. what belief do they hold that the story is going to test. What assumption do they make about themselves or the world that turns out to be incomplete? A character without a wrong belief is already finished. They have no arc, give them something to learn even if learning it hurts them.

⊹ How do they talk when they're nervous. Do they go quiet or do they talk too much? do they deflect with jokes? do they get weirdly formal? do they ask questions instead of answering them? the way a person behaves under pressure is who they actually are. And it should be different from how they behave when they're comfortable.

⊹ What do they find funny. this one sounds small and it is not small at all. Humour is worldview. What makes someone laugh tells you what they value, what they're afraid of, how they handle pain. A character with no sense of humour is just flat. even the gravest person finds something absurd. find the thing.

⊹ What are they ashamed of? not their tragic backstory. their actual shame. The small ugly thing they would never say out loud. The time they were a coward. The feeling they pretend not to have. The desire they think disqualifies them from being a good person. Shame is where the most interesting character work lives and most writers skip straight over it :(

In the final moment, Williams turns to Storrie and does a version of Ilya's "attack-y" face, as Tierney describes it. He left that sweet exchange in to show how Shane is capable of breaking his guarded facade. "I think Shane does have a playful side that is stifled... Under every scene in season 1, there's not much room for super goofy play," Williams says. "There's a tentative nature to episode 6. Although it's calm, it's still like, 'Can this work, when we're left alone to our own devices?'"

"Love is Love", Shane Hollander, Ilya Rozanov, Scott Hunter [Hudson Williams, Connor Storrie, & Francois Arnaud from Heated Rivalry], digital art

Mar 2026

I genuinely can't remember if I imagined this or if this is real. I tried going through clips from the first couple of seasons, but I can't find it!

One of the things I remember the most clearly is the oldest person in the group. Her name was Steelsong. She was a 40-something Dom with a sub whose name we knew even though we knew nothing else. She ran her own fanfic archive because the web was still handmade HTML and navigated in webrings and I’m pretty sure Google didn’t exist or was only barely, barely launched and not well known. She was kind and patient and we loved her. She treated everyone on the group with the respect given any adult, even though most of the rest of the world was still treating us like we were children. Not teenagers even, but children. She never once condescended to any of us, never made our youth a barrier to her respect, never treated us like we were incapable of being full people or like we were less than her because we were young.

I remember that she hosted our fanfiction, as absolutely terrible as it was (and I still have some of it, I am WELL aware of how cringingly terrible it is, just absolute nonsense garbage), right there alongside of other fic that was soul-achingly beautiful. Not a separate section for her friends or for kids, just right there like we were good enough to feature alongside other authors. I never once received crit from her that I didn’t ask for, only support. Only love. I am still writing today partly because Steel was so kind about our fic, fanfic and original.

I remember that when I started doing clay sculpture, she commissioned a tiny pair of dragons from me, to support me doing artwork. She sent a check my mom cashed for me, and my mom helped me mail it when it was finished. It broke in transit, and Steel assured me that she mended it and that it was still beautiful. It was a small gold dragon curled up with a small silver dragon.

I remember that her patience knew no bounds. I remember that she was there for us, regardless of reason. When we wanted to know silly things like what to do with a single AA battery, she answered. When we had serious questions about sex, she answered.  When we had questions about writing, she taught us. When one of our group members, a young gay teen in Australia, ended up in the hospital and then stopped making posts, and we all knew what had happened, she let us talk to her about it because we couldn’t go to our own parents, even though we had just lost a friend.

She was not a replacement to my parents, but she was an extra parent, in some ways. A friend, certainly, but someone that had been through more life than we had and was willing to pass on knowledge if we asked for it. Someone older that we trusted with things that were too uncomfortable to go to our parents or teachers or whatever about, because we already knew she wasn’t going to judge us or something, and that we would get an honest answer.

I don’t know why I’m remembering this so hard tonight, and I’m not sure if there’s a point to sharing this, except that I know she’s gone now. She was ill the last time we spoke, and her site went down a long time ago, and I miss her. She was a huge influence on my life, then and now. She was hope, for me, that life as an adult didn’t have to be boring, it wouldn’t have to mean giving up the things I loved and Becoming Only Responsible With No Fun. Her presence meant I had hope I could still write and play with friends even when I wasn’t ‘a kid’ anymore. And she’s gone, and I miss her, and I wanted to share her from the perspective of youth, and the perspective over twenty years later has provided me.

And I think of her, when people go off about older folks being in fandom with younger folks. I’m an older folks now, or at least middle aged folks because there are certainly folks older than me still, but I wasn’t always. I’ve been here since i was a younger folks, and I know how much Steel’s presence and support meant to me, how much she helped not just me but everyone on that group. And I think of the people saying older folks don’t belong in fandom, and that they shouldn’t interact with younger folks at all, and I just think… I can’t agree. I needed that kind of solid presence in my life back then and even at the age I am now, I need the folks older than me to stay. I want them here.