A writer and a reader

These are all collected as a multi-chapter work on Ao3, where I’m Peterqpan!

1) Not yet written 2) Not yet written

3) Spring Break (and Pinky Swears) Post S2 fixit of sorts, getting together

4) Rollerskates What if someone unexpected encountered the mindflayer…

5) Secrets and Butterflies Max and Billy friendship, abuse depiction

6) Cthulian Stargazing Steve’s dad is an evil cultist, but Steve’s just there to run errands

7) Selkie Skins and Daisy Chains  Billy’s mom is a selkie

8) Rebirth  After season 3, Max tries to save Billy, any way she can.

9) Blue Clues Steve returns home stoned after a day with Robin, finds mysterious traces, and tries to use his Detective Skills to find his True Love.

10) Peaches Summer in Indiana is depressing, particularly when Billy runs into Steve Harrington eating a ripe peach.

11) Hug Billy can’t take any more of his dad, but he gets a softer landing than he expects.

12) Soda The dude in Steve’s night class is a little grouchy, and a little beautiful.

GIRLS THAT'S FUCKING TERRIFYING,, PLEASE FACTORY RESET YOUR PHONES GET NEW ONES IF YOU HAVE TO GET AN INDEPENDENT SIM card WHAT IS HAPPENING

I'M BEGGING YOU

What's the worst that can happen if you do it anyway? Genuinely. The literal worst. Catastrophise about it with me for a sec.

Will your mum yell at you? You're an adult. Yelling at fellow adults is Not Okay Actually. (Yelling at kids is also not okay but let's take this one step at a time.) If your mum is yelling at you, a fellow adult, she's the one being weird and out of line. You asked your friend and they said so too (me. I'm the friend.)

Will she cut off your phone plan? That would be a problem. Can you look into whether you can afford to switch to a new plan she doesn't have access to? Most phone companies will let you port your number over pretty easily.

Will she cut you off financially? Run the numbers again. Can you afford for that to happen? If the answer is no, that's okay, I believe you and I know you're making the best decision for your own well-being that you can in the moment. If there's anything you can do to make it more affordable, I do suggest doing that, though.

Will she be physically violent, inclusive of breaking stuff that belongs to you? That’s assault. That's a crime. It's not okay for her to do that and she almost certainly knows it.

Will she stop talking to you? Honestly I gotta say at this point that's not sounding like a bad outcome. It sucks. It really really sucks and I'm sorry if that's a choice you're having to make, but take it from someone who's been there and done that: when someone who is being abusive to you (stalking is abuse! Yelling at you is abuse! Threatening to cut off your funds if you don't do what they want forever is abuse! Breaking your stuff or physically hurting you is abuse!) decides of their own volition to cut you off, it hurts for a hot minute, and then you suddenly realise that you can breathe, and it feels so. Goddamn. Amazing.

Delete the tracking application. Live where you want to live. Change your name. Join or leave the religion. Get the piercing or the tattoo or the surgery. Live your life, because it's yours and not your parents'.

What is this thing that I am holding?

What is this deformity called?

Is it safe for me to handle it bare-handed at all?

What do I do with it right now?

And the communication difference is that autistic people will tend to occam's razor this by assuming you mean the most simple question. That's an apple, you're holding an apple. If they point at the abnormality and clarify what is THIS that is ON the apple? You may clarify what the deformity is called by its latin name. They ask you what one should do with the apples like this? Well the ancient Phoenicians used to throw them at people whom they thought-

At this point, someone who isn't used to communicating with autistic people is likely to give up and storm off mid-sentence in order to go find someone who is capable of answering the right question from context clues. And for the sake of the example here, the next person is the second type: a neurotypical person who sucks at communicating.

You see, neurotypical people don't assume you mean to ask the most immediate and obvious question, but assess what you are trying to ask from situational context clues. The ones who suck at communicating just suck at doing this. So they may see someone approach, dangling an apple with an abnormality cautiously by the stem, and asking "what is this?"

From knowing that the asker isn't familiar with apple abnormalities, and from the way they're dangling it by the stem like they're afraid to touch it at all, the second person being asked assumes that "what is this?" means "is this dangerous to people?" And will answer "oh it's harmless :)" and won't try to assess whether there could be additional follow-up questions they could also want answers to.

So the asker who still doesn't know what to do with that thing will have to wrangle themselves through trying to guess how to get the right answer to the question they were trying to ask, which is easiest to do by suggesting the answer that is probably wrong but the only one that feels plausible.

"So do I just put this in the same basket with the other apples, like it's a normal apple?"

there was once a little boy.

he is born disabled. his body hurts, and he can’t walk properly the way the other children do. he doesn’t understand why. he’s a little boy. but he plays with wooden boats and pulls toys on a string.

somebody makes him a tunic. they sew ducks onto it in red and green and yellow and blue. the bright colours of a child.

the little boy is eight years old, and he’s going to be king now. there’s a big ceremony about it. he doesn’t really fully understand what’s going on, because he’s eight, but he wears the tunic with the brightly coloured ducks for the occasion because he loves it. look at his ducks! aren’t they great?

he is a child. the adults around him manipulate and coax him to gain more power for themselves. he still plays with toys.

as a teenager, not yet an adult, he fathers children. they do not survive. he’s not even old enough to have full agency in his job and is still being manipulated, but he had babies and they died.

he does not make it to his twenties. at eighteen or nineteen years old he dies, and is buried. his babies, so tiny, are buried with him.

and so is his tunic with the little ducks that he loved so much he kept it long after it no longer fit.

yeah i think that like. especially with historical figures in your mind people who were kings and queens or important nobles were adults. even if you know how old they were it doesn’t really click. it doesn’t seem real

but then you get something like a little tunic with brightly coloured ducks on it and it hits you like a fucking truck that this really was a little kid and no matter how far removed you are a little kid is still a little kid. their brains didn’t develop any quicker back then. he was just as developed/mature mentally as any 8 year old now. he had cartoonish animals on his clothes and he played with toy boats and probably terrorised the local cat population.

tutankhamun was a child and he didn’t make it to adulthood because he was unfortunate enough to be a very important child

his dad died when he was 8. he saw his own babies die when he was still just a boy himself.

tutankhamun had a little pair of sandals with ducks on them. he had earrings decorated with ducks. he kept those, and other items of childhood clothing. some toys. keepsakes. things he loved, and treasured. he kept them all in a little wooden chest. the chest… was carved with ducks.

and that little duck chest, filled with things he kept from his childhood, was buried with him. maybe he was keeping them for the little babies who did not make it. maybe they just reminded him of good days and fun times.

WITH PLEASURE

(greyscale makes it hard but the duck head is on the right above the toe strap. always takes me a while to find it too)

1. The backorder leatherwork log, which includes over 100 pieces that I am working through, because I have had to keep promoting my work in order to survive but have also had to lose the bulk of the last two years on surgery and still ongoing recovery and ptsd and everything.

1a. Making yet fucking more new stuff because A) demand from folks, B) having to grab monthly small markets to try and make enough to cover bills and everything still means keeping show inventory. C) And some of this stuff is great and what I wanna keep doing to some extent. Higher grade art masks. One offs.all the really cool really detailed stuff y'all fucking love. All of A and C gets accomplished in bits at best in and around juggling 1 and 1b, which tend to occupy tons of space despite never having everything in hand at once to clear it all out.

2. Ravenswood books 3 & 4. Both half drafted, both RIGHT FUCKING THERE IN MY HEAD and I can't make enough time in my days to currently sit and write and get back on content releasing levels of schedule.

3. Tattooing has been relegated to hobby status at best. I am taking and working on friends here and there, and myself regularly still, but trying to expand or really start taking clients or anything? Not happening. Lack of resources but also lack of time and space because 1 and 2.

4. Voice acting has just been fifteen minutes here and there and a few hours on weeknights. It thankfully doesn't get in the way of anything else, but except for what I'm doing with Not Ready for Opsec, it's definitely not paying or sustainable.

5. Stage acting: well, Coriolanus was a bust thanks to a director who decided to play gaslight gatekeep, cut the girl's role to nothing as we go into tech week. I am vontinuing to audition for other stuff in the meantime, because well, i quite honestly need it. It's the one space where I can really collaborate, work with others, find some community as an artist, but most importantly? Gives me a fucking schedule to my life because a huge chunk of all my problems is having zero way to decently enforce structure on myself that I desperately need. But it also doesn't pay enough to live on.

I could keep going. There's other books in drafts and two other mediums I work in. It doesn't really matter. Everything is overloaded, paralyzed, and I am juggling so many things and can't keep myself afloat at the same time.

Between all the places I'm at on social media, there's maybe a combined total of 12k people following me. Optimistically, figure half of those are bots and overlapping people? 6,000 people left.

If everyone following me chipped in at just a buck on Patreon, I wouldn't be e-begging every fricking month. I'd be able to focus on clearing the backlog orders and then doing what I really want to be working on without 12,000x the stress and juggling.

And yes. Fuck it, have the link, because I can't just verbalize what would actually help me fix this shit and not post it: http://patreon.com/tormentedartifacts

Something about bees

i received the most extraordinary gift in the mail today (not the cat). @badmiraclebindery did a binding of “the price” and was kind enough to send me a copy of my own. to say that i will cherish this is an understatement. i might clear a whole bookshelf for its use alone.

i’ve always adored books as objects, and i’ve long thought that fan binding projects are an incredible representation of what fandom is at its best: making things that we love because we love them, but also because we want to share them with each other.

in a time when media feels tenuous and under threat because a giant corporation can remove it or politicians conspire to censor it, it’s more important than ever to preserve what we love. and you know what could never make this? an ai slopbot. few things are better than getting to hold something i helped create and knowing that it now exists in a way that isn’t easy to delete or mass-replicate.

what makes it better in this case is that my story has been transformed into a work of art by someone else’s artistry. @badmiraclebindery not only bound it in scrumptious green velvet, but they designed glorious cover pages and typeset, too. and the paper, y’all, the paper. i am a paper snob to the nth degree and this is the good stuff, the kind you want to rub between your fingertips. i cannot thank them enough for this labor of love. i love fandom. i love all of us.