Wow I can’t even screenshot consistently, whoohoo. 

It is always okay to send me these things. I never mind ever. I…opposite of mind, whatever the fuck that is.

I am reeling from “warn that there was no sex” honestly. Never before have I actually felt the need to use the phrase that my head was spinning, and yet here we are. I am astounded.

I also just feel bad that this happened. Like worse for you than the times it happened directly to me because of this story.

I’m just getting over “warn”, like, don’t you warn for the opposite. (I reblogged a thing about this kind of “worthless if no sex” mentality, you may have seen it, but if not look near this post on my blog until I am not on mobile and can link it, because I think you’ll relate.)

Also, dude, dude, someone reads my notes hahahaha I’m not just talking into the void like usual! I’m really glad those are so positive for you. I mean them to be, for sure. Like yeah, they’re footnotes and comparisons and authorial blips (and credit in the case of the songs), but I also put a lot of stuff down there so that people can be sure that they’re seeing what they’re seeing. I don’t want it to be some kind of cheap thing where I’m like, “And by the way, in case you couldn’t tell, Johnny is asexual!” And then that’s how you get some sort of representation. I sometimes have to spell things out down there only because these kids don’t have the vocabulary that you and I finally have. Or they don’t at the time that the issue comes up. I plan for Johnny to acquire most of the vocab he needs to describe himself, so he can say explicitly “asexual” while navigating how weird it is to him that he likes Edgar so much, but in the meantime I like to provide reassurance that what it looks like is what it is in instances where they don’t have the words.

Also, I think you’re the second or third person to mention it having aromantic anything in it, and really until probably last week, I hadn’t even really considered it that, because I based so much of Johnny’s stuff on my stuff. I thought maybe he takes sort of a comically longer time to be ok, and that was literally it, haha. So it’s somewhat retroactive that I think he’s portrayed as demi-romantic, since he’s just done slightly more extreme versions of shit I’ve done with relation to this stuff! Had I but known, haha.

I had a big thing about the music in this written up at some point. I have such a cool feeling about it that almost everyone who reads this has a shared experience with some of these songs. I mean, everyone comes to a song from a different place and you may have heard something first somewhere else, but I like the idea that, for some of these, it’s a whole bunch of us that may have even read this thing at a different time but all have the same image of the same things associated with the song it’s like having a shared experience to me and it’s really cool. I’m glad you look them all up! I know some people don’t have the patience, haha, but it works without the songs. I just think they’re a key part of the whole story given the nature of things in this world and what these kids do all day!

It’s so fucking great to see specifically that it was good to be assured you weren’t making it all up, because I feel like I’m making this thing to convince myself of that? I have a note in one of my sketchbooks under a drawing of Johnny and Edgar that says something like, “i feel better about things when i see them doing okay!” Like someone could like my specific disaster too if someone is so happy to deal with Johnny’s! Right under that note is a note that says “holy fuck you idiot you’re making this up” As in you (which here means me) are making it up that someone will tolerate you, and you are making up this entire thing being real. You are manufacturing your own hope and reassurance. So in some ways it felt kind of like just projecting this other thing and then hoping someone else would latch onto it as something that struck them as real, which I could then feed back into the original as confirmation that it was real? Hahaha. This is the weird kind of shit that happens when you’re manufacturing your own representation out of something you’ve already written. Banshee has a way of feeding back into herself like this too, so this is perhaps appropriate.

I’m glad you read it too, thank you for doing so! I feel a particular connection to those of you it helped with self definition, because it was doing the same thing for me on the other side of the screen (and apparently continues to do so!) Though lately I’m telling everyone to stop looking at the old one haha. A good 30% of my motivation for writing the new one is so I can have people who never have to look at the first version of this haha. There’s so much I didn’t know, and so there’s so much that I worry is inadvertently damaging, and there’s so much that is just frankly embarrassing in the old one. The new one is healthier for everyone in universe and out!

feel free to say or ask things about swan all the time, i love it and can obviously spout words for it like a geyser

It’s become so extra personal lately the I’m almost surprised that I’m able to be so open with it, but I think it’s comments from people telling me that it’s personal to them too makes me want to share it more. I’m trying to make it as rich as possible this time with out being completely ridiculous so that there’s a fuller feeling of everything - of them, of their world, their story, sure, but also of the bits of me that it is helping to share (with you guys and me!).

I’m so so glad there are people who liked it enough when they read it once to come back and want to read it again, just longer and different haha