I’ve long accepted my fate as a multi and rarepair shipper. In many ways, navigating fandom spaces as the kind of person that will ship pretty much whatever strikes their fancy is a blessing, at least in as much as one can avoid meaningless, fruitless, exhausting shipping wars and discourse. And it makes the vast, wide world of fanfiction so much more thrilling and exciting, too. There is no feeling quite like the one of discovering a fic for a pairing you’ve never thought of with the most delicious synopsis/tags combo¹.

Yet, one downside to that—especially as an author who writes quite long fics for ships that will get a handful of readers interested in the best of times, a pool that is made even smaller by being a rareshipper author who writes mostly polyamory fics²—is that I don’t get to talk about what I write often. I don’t have anyone to comment with when I have a phrase I particularly like, or to gush to about whatever characters it is I’m writing about. I don’t belong to the overwhelmingly big sect of tumblr/AO3 that vicariously believes that readers owe comments or any sort of engagement to writers or other fandom creators³, but… y’know, writing fanfiction is one of the things that gives me the biggest joy in the world. I truly mean it when I say that there are little activities out there that make me as fulfilled, as energetic, as excited, as my own stories do. I love writing them, I love thinking about them, I love reading them. I love surprising myself with them. And I do want to gush about it now and then! I want to talk about my writing—about these characters I love so much, yes, but also about how I felt doing it, the decisions I made, what felt different this time.

I do mean it when I say that I spend so many of my waking hours thinking about my silly little stories. Which is funny, considering that I am as far from a planner as it gets—which means that, “fantasizing” just means, for the most part, spending my time just imagining whatever scene it is I am currently writing. I don’t really know how to write ahead; the only way I know to get from one scene to the next is ny, well, writing my way there.

In general, all my stories are born out of vibes, some vague idea of where I’d like to start, an even vaguer idea of where I’d like to end, and my process is to write one scene after the next until I get from the beginning to the end. I’ve tried planning in the past, but it’s just not something I can do. In fact, the more I plan, the less likely I am to then actually sit down and write the thing, just because the planning does also hit me in my pleasure centers and feels like its own kind of fulfilling. Still, I’ve learned my lesson: if I want to write something, I have to do the things all writers fears, and just sit down and do it. The less I think, the less I reflect in the moment, the best. The only way to write is by writing.

When I started this newsletter, I did not give myself any guidelines on what it was supposed to be. It was just supposed to be. A space for exploration means that I don’t have to show up as any one thing, in any one way. I’ve tried to do a fixed structured in the past, where each post had a bit of everything I wanted to tackle—some fictional writing, a personal update, some photographs, etc.—and I ended up not sticking with it because, it turns out, I don’t like writing about me much. Not in public, at least. I have my journal for that, and my therapist, and my loved ones, and for someone who enjoys the freedom of merely being an anonymous, amorphous blob online, not feeling the need to write about myself—but not eliminating the option of it altogether either—felt a lot like freedom.

Besides, there are so many things I want to use this space for! I want to write about being a lover and a romantic but being surrounded by people who systematically see me as cynic more than anything. I want to write about the uncomfortable experience of being someone who had quite an early sexual wakening, who thinks about sex pretty often, who energetically very much identifies as a slut but is yet to have sex—or even a sexually charged interaction—with anyone, even though I’m now well into 24.¹ I want to write more about Downton Abbey because I had so much fun with my first post and why the hell not? (Posts I’d like to tackle include: the queer disappointment of Tom Branson’s character and arc, something about Daisy, and very much a post about how often the show explicitly frames Mary’s and Bates’ relationship with Anna as of an equal standing/framing, even though DA is such a heteronormative show). I want to share bits of my fanfiction writing, because that’s what I write the most and it brings me so much happiness and joy; it makes me feel alive. There’s so much I’ve thought about for this newsletter, and none of it was about writing about my terrible, sad week, but I’m feeling down and sad and angry, and I’m feeling lonely, and something in me just went, Why the hell not?

Well, to be fair, it always feels weird to take up space with one’s big, sad feelings in a world that is so big and sad itself, in so much bigger and more terrible ways. My blueness is a microscopic drop in this Big Blue Dot’s oceans of pain and terribleness and unkindness. I know that. But I also have a hard time believing that the things I write in this corner of the internet—my corner of the internet—that will greet the eyes of a potential handful of people, all of whom agreed to be here, take anything away from all that².

_{[Warning for spoilers for Downton Abbey in general, and Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale in particular.]}

Yesterday (amidst what has, so far, been a very chaotic and heavy week), I got to go to the movies with my mom and watch Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale for a second time. I’ve been a Downton Abbey girlie for so long now, and have spent too much time thinking about these characters and imagining them and playing with them. For all of its conservative spirit, Downton Abbey still manages to have a chokehold on me—something I luckily get to share with the dozen other fellow gay leftists obsessed with Thomas Barrow on tumblr.

But this newsletter isn’t about any of it. It’s about how, I first watched The Grand Finale, the ending seemed to be profoundly bittersweet: nobody was unhappy, but- everything was shifting and changing, and it turns out, just like any of the DA characters, I too can get quite resistant to all of it.