Welcome! I'm Billie (she/her), and I'm a multi-fandom girl. You can find my greatest hits on tumblr below, and I’m also on AO3.
My ask box is open if you have any questions or just want to say hi! I'm always excited to discuss my fandoms and fandom history and culture more broadly.
Fic
My fics are tagged #billie writes fic and can be found on my AO3, which is archive-locked. I'm most proud of these fics:
it's not enough (this time) [Harry Potter]
Remus and Sirius: the end of the beginning.
(Or, April is the cruelest month, in the shadow of October.)
Tilted Ice [Heated Rivalry]
They fucked in Shane’s apartment and generic hotel rooms across Boston. That was—
Shane was fine with that.
keep you like an oath [A League of Their Own (TV)]
By unspoken agreement, Jess and Lupe keep Vi’s a secret—even from those who would be welcome. Lupe probably has a number of complicated reasons for it, but Jess only has one: she’s selfish as hell.
Fic recs and meta below the cut.
Fic Recs
My ALOTO, Good Omens, Heated Rivalry, and HP fic recs are tagged #bfe fic recs and collected on AO3. These are my most substantial recs:
[HP] The Wolfstar Yearbooks Project
Rec lists with reviews of my favorite Wolfstar fics published each year from 2003 to 2008, and condensed lists for 2009-2015 and 2016-2021.
[HP] “The Last Enemy” Series by CH_Darling
A detailed review of The Last Enemy series. TL;DR: I highly recommend it!
Meta
[HP] Early Wolfstar Fandom vs. Today
My understanding of what Wolfstar was like in the early days compared to today. Read the reblogs/replies for more!
it's not surprising, of course. to many, a dog being euthanized for attacking a person is a tragedy. poor thing was in a bad environment you see, it didn't deserve to die. and to many, every criminal should be put to death. they are inherently cruel and cannot change, any sentence more lenient than death is an injustice to their victims. why might a dog maul someone? well clearly the poor thing was a victim, it was circumstance that spurred it to violence. why might a person mug someone? clearly they have a corrupt soul, incapable and unworthy of empathy. they were spurred to criminality by their own sick nature. so to say, in their eyes, a human criminal is less human than a dog
"Mixed Asian representation in American popular culture parallels how mixed Asians are often perceived by the public—as fair-skinned, ambiguous, and exotic, but whose identities are constructed through their positionality to others. In shows that are white-led, they remain not quite white, their ambiguous faces the butts of the punchline (at times self-referentially), their backgrounds barely mentioned. They serve the story as entrancing secondary characters with no evidence of their Asianness (or whiteness, for that matter), but whose likenesses cause the audience to discern whether they’re mixed Asian on and offscreen."
"In HBO/Crave’s queer hockey romance series adaptation, Shane Hollander (Korean-Dutch Hudson Williams) Japanese-Canadian background, never specified as Japanese, is mentioned three times. First, Shane’s manager congratulates his team on breaking barriers by signing him. Next, his mother (Taiwanese-Filipino/white Christina Chang) reminds Shane of the community he represents. Finally, Shane mentions to his white date he was one of two Asian boys who played hockey. Despite this. Heated Rivalry includes no gestural or cultural signs of Shane’s Asianness throughout the season. Even when Shane and his love interest Ilya Rosanov (Connor Storrie) eat dinner with Shane’s parents, spaghetti is what’s on the menu.
The lack of development in Shane’s identity is more pronounced by the pervasiveness of Ilya’s Russian background, which includes relationships with other Russians, language, an accent, and distinct customs. Ilya’s identity informs how he moves through the world, a navigation threaded throughout the season, that Shane simply isn’t allowed to experience."
From Resonate Voices
I'm so glad this gets talked about how Russianness is so overwhelmingly part of the story vs Shane's mixed race is nothing more than the way he looks and there is no cultural underpinning whatsoever. I know fandom has complained about it since the dawn of time, but it's nice to see it written about. The examples the article cites are almost all things Jacob added to the script because of how in the book, Shane is fully reduced to his "exotic" face and hairless body.
ETA:
For the people writing big RR defense essays in the tags about assimilation:
Yes, assimilation is a thing and could certainly be part of Shane's plotline. But it's not written anywhere. It's not addressed in any meaningful way by RR. She literally made Shane a fetishist caricature, and if you don't recognize that, you seriously need to engage with stories not written by white people about pocs.
Shane being assimilated could be a very interesting path to take if she bothered to actually research and do something meaningful with it. Because while it's possible that Shane has ZERO connection to his mom's culture (and like possible but highly implausible, bc even if you take Hudson himself as an example, who clearly doesn't speak Korean fluently, at least he has Korean aunties teaching him about K-beauty and some very subtle Asian mannerisms - I'm not asking Shane to make a tea ceremony or wear kimono but some acknowledgement of being BI-racial could take much more subtle forms), the fact that he enters the league as an Asian-looking person in itself generates a conflict of him not feeling different from any other Canadian player but is being othered because of his looks.
Also, this is a blog that is openly critical of RR's writing. I think the racial representation and biases in all the books is absolutely terrible, and I we need to talk about that and acknowledge it as a fandom so people realize it's not normal to write an Asian character be "exotic, hairless, small, bottom, submissive, stupid with a tiny dick who is evil to be more ambitious than his big, sexy, VERY INTELLIGENT, traumatised, talented big-dicked white love interest" and get diversity awards for it. Book!Shane is one of the worst caricatures I've ever seen in my life and I frankly don't know how an editor didn't point this out.
hi salad! what are some of the things youve learned in your first year writing? tips?
In no particular order:
If writing was easy, everyone would do it.
At the same time, you have to love the struggle. Otherwise why are you doing it?
Try for consistency—as in, a couple sentences a day—but don’t get too hung up on it. Sometimes I go through long periods of reading only or doing other kinds of art. Making yourself anxious about it doesn’t help.
Take a walk if you can’t think of what you want to say.
I’m an outliner. I need to have a rough idea of what I’m doing with a story.
I’m also prone to underwriting, so I’m always trying to add details and emotional beats. It’s not the worst thing in the world to be sparse with your prose, but I also really admire people with vivid and lush writing styles; I think I struggle to let scenes breathe. Speaking of which:
Get a beta reader, ideally one who isn’t afraid to whack you. There is no faster way to improve than to work through edits and constructive criticism. Not everyone cares about that, which is fine; everyone has a different process or goals or whatever.
Beta read for other people. If you can read someone else’s work and pick out moments that don’t land, sentence rhythms that fall flat, pacing that drags, that will help you notice the same in your own work.
Beta reading is critical reading, which I also recommend and do a lot of. I often read books with a highlighter and pencil in my hand. The same goes for fics I really like—if I love something, I often download it and re-read it while annotating. Unfortunately now I’m just describing putting yourself through a creative writing class.
I’m a big believer in Strunk & White’s The Elements of Style: “Vigorous writing is concise.” This is true in every field (believe it or not, I get paid to write op-eds and policy papers, which is where I learned most of the fundamentals of writing), and it also applies to fanfic. Many fics are too long. SORRY! They are. As S&W say, “A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts. This requires not that the writer make all sentences short or avoid all detail and treat subjects only in outline, but that every word tell.” Your words can tell something other than pure plot advancement, but they have to serve some sort of purpose. S&W have all sorts of tips that are incredibly useful in fiction. At any moment, the easiest decision a reader can make is to stop reading. The worst thing a fic can be is boring. You are trying to tell a story to your reader. Get their attention and hold it!
Along these lines, I’ve found that if something is boring me to write, it’s probably because the scene is unnecessary or could be shorter. This advice comes from the inimitable susiecarter IIRC.
Also, Orwell’s Politics and the English Language is incredible even for fanfic writing. And I’m slowly working through Steering the Craft (thanks Freya for the suggestion!). Orwell, critiquing political writing, says that “As soon as certain topics are raised, the concrete melts into the abstract and no one seems able to think of turns of speech that are not hackneyed: prose consists less and less of words chosen for the sake of their meaning, and more and more of phrases tacked together like the sections of a prefabricated henhouse.” I really do think this is true of fic too. Avoid turns of phrase that are fanfic staples. Don’t be pretentious in writing unless your style calls for it. Be concrete.
Read the types of stories you want to write and write the types of stories you want to read.
Part of putting your work out there is that people are going to have opinions about it. Nothing is for everyone. It’s your art; stand behind it. In other words, stop caring what strangers online think unless you are specifically soliciting concrit.
If you are writing from close third, everything on the page should be filtered through the character’s POV. If your character wouldn’t notice the high ceilings, don’t write about them.
Especially in kink or darkfic, you have to commit to the bit (another Freya tip). What is the meat of it? What makes it sexy? What’s interesting? Get grosser and more perverted and more honest. If you as the writer are flinching away from what you actually find iddy, why should the reader be interested? Why are you writing it if it doesn’t turn you on/make you sick/excite you/make you laugh/make you cry? Don’t let shame keep you from writing something real.
opens news article. closes three pop up ads. backs out of the survey page i was redirected to. closes a pop up video ad. rejects cookies to make the cookie window go away. dismisses the requests to receive notifications from the website and the offers to sign up for it. dodges ninja lasers and poisonous arrow traps. body of the page is finally visible. i have reached my monthly limit and can’t read the article
The economics of Rachel Reid's books is frankly so insane. Everyone is either working poverty wages or they're a millionaire.
Fabian is working at a drug store until he makes his big break. There is, presumably, no such thing as a moderately successful musician in this world or any mid-level careers for people with musical training. (He plays violin - you're telling me he can't get studio work? Or work weddings?) Kip sells smoothies and works catering jobs. Kyle is a bartender.
Harris, Thee social media manager of a pro sports team who travels with that team twice a year, claims he makes less per year than some of the players make in a day. The absolute maximum salary for an NHL player in 2020 was $16.3M, but I haven't seen anyone suggest Ilya would be making that much with Ottawa - that would be a terrible deal for the team, since that's 20% of their salary cap for the whole team. Certainly they don't have more than one player making that. Ilya is probably making 10, maybe 12M, which would put Harris's salary below $32k. In 2020. That's crazyinsane. That should be a good paying job!!
And then everyone else? Everyone else in this series is a millionaire. But!! The millionaires do not live or act like millionaires in any meaningful way. Ilya has a car collection, sure, but he has to sell it?? To move to Ottawa?? No he fucking doesn't, he just signed a $10M contract that probably had a signing bonus. Are you stoned? Are we all very stoned? Do we not have basic math skills.
Anyway, fascinated by this universe she's created in which the middle class simply does not exist. Something very bootstrapsy about it.
shane hollander is the most famous person in montreal, the province of quebec and the citizens of brossard — farther away from ottawa and less anonymous than a downtown condo — don’t notice another car showing up? i think no.
scott hunter has his face all over new york, he gets recognized in the street but also: his boyfriend, the one he kissed on live television, can work at a bar afterward? i think no. i also think no, not at all.
to the point of the revolts, their army of cleaners, couriers, at home medical and physical care never see their secret boyfriends?
relevant because they’re written just as like, some normal guy with a kooky job, but they have enough money to solve many problems written into the narrative (ilya could literally buy his way into american citizenship) and so much attention to create 400 more that are written out.
Finally a hand sewing tutorial on a hemline that isn't just the ladder stitch! the ladder stitch disappears when you tighten it, but it's not meant for hemlines because it breaks really easily! The overlock stitch is more stable, so it holds much longer, and it won't pucker or warp the fabric!
it is soooo fascinating to me that shane hollander's "hero arc" in TLG is just him being sanded him down into a blow-up sex doll for his white partner, as if before that he wasn't already an effeminized racial other with thin characterization outside of his relationship with ilya, as if he doesn't already have zero agency, as if he's not already a doll molded into sexual and non-sexual submission by the wills of the characters around him to subordinate his own interiority, as if the ottawa plan that he's being punished for wasn't made with ilya's career interests in mind, as if he's somehow forcing ilya to cut off his boston friends and stay in the closet and to pay for that he has to be outed over and over and over again and get over the threat of systemic homophobia. it's just such a fascinating contradiction because like... where do you go from there? how do you make that the feel-good romance it's supposed to be and not a psychological horror in which a character of color is stripped of his personhood which the text deems an audacious act of selfishness?
some fans try to grapple with this contradiction by interpreting him as a homophobic or otherwise bigoted dudebro who needed to be narratively forcefemmed by the league's homophobia and ilya's magical healing white cock. i find this deeply dissatisfying because it's propelled by a reactionary impulse to justify the text's central (racist) conceit and, where it does seek to challenge the racial fetishization, it does so by reinforcing the implicit supremacy of hegemonic masculinity. canon shane is effeminized, fetishized, underwritten, and a frequent victim of his peers' bigotry, so fans respond by transforming him into a more masculine and bigoted character. his white hockey player counterparts who textually conform to the sport's gender roles in contrast with shane and have implications of being racist—scott travelled to "exotic" places to sleep with men, ryan and ilya both fetishize their respective partner's race—are excised of these complications to explore how they heroically overcome their white supremacist patriarchal sports culture.
both the books and the fandom actualize the occident through construction of the inferior orient. canon shane is repeatedly targeted by racially charged homophobia purely so the books can explore how this impacts the feelings of white gay characters. fanon shane is distorted into a perpetrator whose selfish cowardice foils his white counterparts' bravery. canon shane strives to be an unselfish lover to his female partners against every gay instinct in his body and pushes back at hayden for saying jackie got "fixed." fanon shane is a misogynistic creep, while ilya who canonically ignores shane's protests in bed without prior negotiation (the most egregious example that comes to mind is in chapter 27 of the long game, while cliff is right outside their hotel room) is reconfigured into a consent king who drinks his respect women juice in lieu of challenging the implications of this romance genre convention. canon shane worries about his former training mate who is an openly gay speed skater and thinks whichever nhl players comes out first would be "brave" but is reluctant to be that person due to the disproportionate harassment he already faces. fanon shane is judging other gay characters for being out and putting themselves at risk, while white characters are enthusiastic allies. canon shane wants to be more in tune with queer culture and be less ashamed of his queerness, and he admires characters like max and leah and fabian whom he is in community with. fanon shane rejects community and solidarity and has to be coaxed into being an ally by the white characters around him
i could keep listing examples but then i'd be here all day :/ and to be clear, i'm not saying shane is perfect or that there's no problematic subtext in his narration that should be challenged. because there is. rather, i'm questioning the fandom's impulses in regards to which characters are afforded grace and their presumption that adding texture to a fetishized, dehumanized character requires making said character conform more strictly to the culture they're excluded from. personally, i find it far more transgressive and meaningful to empathetically explore the ways in which that character is textually subjugated and in doing so disrupt the implicit hierarchies, but what do i know
Hello, I work for a large moderately evil corporation and for at least five years now I have to sign a yearly thing to say I will never ever have one of these devices in the same room as me while I work.
My large moderately evil employer takes it for granted that these things are spying on me at all times, and you should too.
one of the hardest things to learn as a depressed former Gifted Kid™ is that half-assed is better than nothing. take the 50%, 40%, even 20% job. scrubbing your face is better than not taking a shower at all. picking up your clothes is better than never cleaning. nibbling on some bread is better than starving.
DO THINGS HALFWAY. NOW YOU’RE 100% BETTER OFF THAN YOU WERE BEFORE.
One of my college professors used to say “anything worth doing is worth doing poorly.” I didn’t understand that for years because I didn’t do anything poorly, I couldn’t do anything poorly, I had to Do Everything Perfectly.
But brushing your teeth for 30 seconds is better than not brushing them at all when that 2 minutes seems exhausting. Doing ten minutes of yoga is better than 10 minutes of sitting when 30 minutes of cardio sounds impossible. Changing my clothes is good when a whole shower is impossible. Standing on the porch for a few minutes is worth it after being in the house for three straight days because I don’t have the energy to go anywhere.
Anything worth doing is worth doing poorly… because doing it poorly is better than not doing it.
You must understand that perfectionism isn’t striving for excellence, it’s a crippling fear of being flawed and therefore worth abandonment or punishment. It’s a kind of psychological avoidance. You’re avoiding fear and failure , not embracing the thing you want to do bc if it was about the thing you want to do you’d be fine with partial victory.
also at some point shane clearly just figures out that ilya lives in a state of perpetual Opposite Day where everything he says out loud is the opposite of what he means. and once you’ve cracked that code it’s pretty easy to crack that guy wide open
