#messofthejess

Happy Monday~

hello!! thank you for these asks and hope you’re all right.

may: a fic you have regretted posting?

hmmm.... not for a while. i sort of regret that my old fics are on my AO3 where people who like my work now can find them and associate me with them, but i put them there on purpose - really recently - because i love archiving, so. 

the one i’m thinking of the most is one i thought was the best thing i’d ever written when i was like 17. it’s exactly the kind of avant garde nonsense that i just can’t stand - cutting between sirius’s thoughts in grimmauld place and his memories as he loses track of time. i probably thought it was poetic. horrific. but - surely we’ve all been 17 and thought we were so smart. so... i dont regret it that much. just... dont think you should read it. 

tomorrow: favourite ways to write fluff?

as part of a larger narrative! so - some sort of political plot, big stakes, and then a scene where people are just nice to each other and hang out, probably flirting. i really like writing characters flirting - maybe not on purpose, just aggressively liking each other. 

either that or some sort of relatively sweet get together - so something without too much self-loathing or self-doubt. 

Snow on Snow - which is christmas-themed and set in sixth year before things get really bad for simon and baz - is the fluffiest thing i’ve written for a long time. and it still includes a scene where simon almost freezes to death, but ... he doesn’t. that’s the point. 

forever: do you balance fic writing with original concept stuff?

another short answer - i do not! 

Please welcome writer Jess/@messofthejess to the Golden Days zine! Here is a preview of her piece, through unexpected eyes...

Find Jess’s magickal works everywhere ✨ Tumblr // AO3 

Okay so fem Simon is... not actually something I’ve considered much. Or decided if I can really See™, because like, headcanons are great but I’m the kind of person who needs them to feel *true*. Which is why I was intrigued when I thought someone else HAD thought about it and been like... yeah this works

BUT I can definitely see him like... once he’s a bit more comfortable in his own identity, whatever it may be, deciding that gendering clothes is actually bullshit and just like... Doing whatever he wants? Sometimes masc, sometimes fem, sometimes both, is HE “”technically”” fem who knows anyway why do you care what are you a cop

So from that side of things, Simon in the woods with short messy hair, stompy boots and a light summery dress with like... a wide, mid-length skirt? (Sorry I don’t know fashion terminology) That seems like a very plausible image to me.

And as for Baz... Well, first we should also note than gnc man =/= fem man because conformity is a very narrow box and there are infinite ways to rebel, but I definitely see Baz as using femininity as at least part of that, so I’m going to keep using the label fem, for simplicity.

So. For Baz, being gnc/fem seems like a more... intuitive part of *who he is* to me? Like, I don’t necessarily think of him as “flamboyant” or the kind of person you could immediately identify as queer beyond reasonable doubt (at least at the stage where we meet him - maybe he could grow into that, but the Baz we know is quite private), but... I feel like there’s still... something. Subtle things in his mannerisms and body language and so on that just mean... you aren’t *surprised* to learn he’s gay?

And because that kind of thing is often unconscious, and people can, in some circumstances, be literally unable to help being visibly queer... The only way forward is to embrace it, right?

And... Baz likes nice clothes. He really likes nice clothes. So I can definitely see him being like... Oh look it’s raining so today I’m a broody goth in a full-length skirt and jumper. Tomorrow I think I’ll be a pretentious goth in a waistcoat, until of course dinnertime when I will become an evil goth in this fancy red dress that goes swish when I walk. Who knows what else the future holds