dat-grester-tho

THIS IS NOW AN ARCHIVE ~ are you mobile? click here! ~ do you has questions? click here!

[dat-grester-tho]

This probably goes without saying at this point, but this is just a note to say that this blog is officially an archive at this point. I will not be publishing further fics on DGT, nor do I have intentions of writing in the Trinity fandom again, though I am absolutely still a fierce fan of the Trinity, and of Chester.

I am not deleting this blog, however. All of these fics will continue to be yours to read and reread whenever you want.

All of you are welcome to join me on my personal blog, @gracieminabox, if you’re not already there. Be prepared for a helluva lot of Star Trek, feminist rants, and Goose. (Because Goose, amirite?)

I have loved every moment with you incredible people. You gave me friendship, and you gave the joy of writing back to me. I will never be able to repay such immense kindness.

From the bottom of my heart, thank you.

[dat-grester-tho]

Thank you for being the mature one in this fandom (not to say there aren't others but you seem to get asked harder questions a lot more often).

It’s a hard situation with a lot of emotions. I don’t blame anybody for wanting to hold on, and I don’t blame anybody for being upset about it. Grief is a bitch. I’m pretty sure I’m one of the older people in the fandom, too, so whatever wisdom I have to offer by way of perspective, I’m happy to do.

[dat-grester-tho]

As a proficient writer of Grester fanfiction, You must have some hope that they just might reconcile someday.(like all of us do-they are both so great!).Did you happen to see them together in Chester's Insta live stream? I managed to see some screenshots.I understand that they might be friends and I fully respect their privacy. But what's your perspective on the matter?Do you think we might get our ship to sail the seas again? (I love your work and believe you have a real flare! Incredible!

First of all, thank you, so very, very much, for your kind words. They mean a lot to me.

I say this with all the love in the world, but no, I don’t think their being a couple again is very likely.

It’s not impossible. Obviously. Couples can, and have, done it - even successfully. They might be able to make that work. And if they do, I would be overjoyed for them.

But none of us - none of us, for all our speculation - have any idea what precipitated their split. It was obviously amicable enough that they’ve maintained a good friendship, about which I am so so stupidly happy; but we don’t know what the root cause(s) were of them going their separate ways in the first place. We don’t know if those root causes were resolved. We don’t know if they can be.

A committed adult relationship, especially one that involves cohabitating, involves a lot of things that can send the relationship heading south - economics, household labor, sex, career, whether or not to get married, whether or not to have children, religious/political differences, family difficulties, priority changes, communication breakdowns, the list goes on and on and on. Some of those things are workable. Some are compromise-able. Some aren’t fixable at all, or are too large to be fixed while maintaining the relationship.

If we had more data, we might be able to come to a better conclusion - but we don’t have that data, nor will we be getting it. Trying to determine if they’re going to get back together or not based on the content of a few snats and livestreams is like trying to solve an integral calculus problem with nothing more than addition - we simply don’t have what we need to draw the right conclusions.

I think Chester and Grace took their relationship very, very seriously. (I think they still do.) I don’t think they went into the decision to split up lightly. I think it required conversations, consideration, and extensive logistics. It involved a significant detangling of their intertwined lives, everything from him moving out to making custody arrangements for Goose. Their split wasn’t a singular event; it was a process, one that took a lot of time and energy to complete, and one that, if they’d had second thoughts about it, they could have stopped. I think it would make very, very little sense to have gone through all that - practically and emotionally - and then change their minds.

I know shippers want to hold on to them. Their relationship has meant a tremendous amount to me over the years; believe me, part of me wants to hold on to that hope, too. But I’m not going to get my hopes up over something like that when I think the possibility’s so remote.

Chester said it’s been nearly a year. I’ve moved to a new city, started a new job, pulled myself out of a suicidal depression, started writing in a new fandom, and continued to love Grace, Chester, and Goose with every fiber in my body.

I’ve also done my grieving for Grester. And I grieved hard, but I did it.

The five stages of grief, as delineated by Kubler-Ross, are denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. I can pinpoint every single one of those stages in my own grief over Grester. Yet I think some of the fandom is still hovering in the earlier stages.

Guys, this is a loss that needs to be grieved, and grieved properly.

Yeah, I know, it wasn’t your relationship. But it was your ideal of a relationship, and while you might not be grieving the loss of your own partner or relationship, you are grieving your idea of “what could be.” And that’s painful.

But the only way out is through. If you don’t grieve that loss, you will not be able to move on.

Grace and Chester are fine. They are thriving, happy, and obviously close friends. Goose seems delighted with her visitation schedule. One couldn’t ask for a more velvet divorce - hell, these two put my parents to shame.

As someone who proudly poured my heart and soul into the stories on this blog about the family they were, I want to really implore anybody who’s reading this to recognize that they seem happy as things are. And if they weren’t before, isn’t this a better solution?

Love them as people. Love them as friends. I do and I always will.

But let that couple go.

[dat-grester-tho]

I hope your days have become sweller and your life is one fantastic film of awesome occasions and beautiful memories!

Well, isn’t this sweet :)

Thank you, friend. I deeply appreciate the love!

[dat-grester-tho]

Hey I just saw your most recent post on my dash and I saw your blog. I just wanted to say thank you for all the stories you've made. A while ago when this fandom was alive and thriving, your blog gave me a community I could be apart as well as beautiful stories I could immerse myself in. I know that this blog wont continue but I wanted to say thank you for keeping it around as an archive to many memories. God bless🙏🏽

Thank you for your kind words. This means a great, great deal to me. Rest assured, this blog will never die; it will always remain up, because it has meant everything to me. I have loved every second of running this blog, and I’m deeply proud of the stories I’ve written. I want them to continue to be available to people. I will always love this fandom, I will always love Grace and Chester, and I will always love everything this community has given me. And I haven’t left the fandom at all - I will forever love and support Grace and Chester in all of their endeavors, and I encourage all of you to do likewise! :)

[dat-grester-tho]

Hello hello!! Ok FIRST OF ALL I just wanted to say wow your writing is fantastic!! Second of all I was wondering if you could write something where graces eating disorder begins to resurface and Chester realizes and tries to help her through?

Hi friend :) Thank you for your kind words. I will unfortunately not be writing your prompt or others, for reasons I detailed in October. We don’t know what Grace and Chester’s relationship status is currently, and because of that, I am not writing anything about them as a couple out of respect for them. I’m very sorry, and thank you for understanding. <3

[dat-grester-tho]

Do you happen to know what the grester fic called where grace is a single mum and her and Chester are on a date and her son breaks his arm and Chester talks about Spider-Man to him? Sorry for bothering you

I honestly don’t know - I’m pretty sure I read this, but it was a very long time ago. Friends, can anybody help this anon?

[dat-grester-tho]

Hi! Just wanted to stop and thank you for sharing your talent. Things have been rough lately and it's been a great way for me to distract myself. Thank you.

You’re very, very welcome, friend. I’m happy to be a distraction for you. <3

[dat-grester-tho]

Beyond the fandom, I just get disenchanted with the Internet. It breaks my heart to see how internet culture can wear on someone's personal life in such a way, and I wish I could just turn it off. It's like people now think it's mandatory for someone to share their personal life just because they're being themselves in front of a camera. It drives my anxiety through the roof. Thank you for the wisdom though! You should seriously consider being a therapist if you haven't.

I have way too many of my own mental health issues to be a competent therapist - not to mention way too much of a temper - but I do appreciate the compliment nevertheless :)

To a certain extent, I think any fandom, internet-based or not, holds incredible power in the lives of members of that fandom. For the most part, I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing, unless it begins to eclipse real life. Most fandoms are a positive influence most of the time. But “real person” fandom has always walked an incredibly fine line. It’s a grey area in which we need to trust the real people we’re fans of to draw the lines in the sand, but also to understand that those real people reserve the right to change where those lines are placed at any time and for any reason. And we have to respect both those boundaries and any changes made to them. It’s a sharp distinction from character-based fandoms, and yes, it’s madly anxiety-provoking.

[dat-grester-tho]

Is it terrible that I feel disenchanted with the fandom right now? I'm not trying to be mean to anyone, it's just, I worry about people sometimes. It's like their lives are depending on grester being okay. We might literally never know the answer to that question, and I personally have decided I'm okay with that. I think this is the point at which it's completely unhealthy to be emotionally invested. But there are some awesome people here (like you) and I also don't want to walk away!

Everybody processes things differently. I counsel people experiencing loss every day. It’s a major part of my job. Yes, there are ways of responding to loss that are objectively healthy and objectively unhealthy, but in between, there’s a massive gradient of subjectivity as to the best way to deal with a loss.

True, we might never know the answer. And true, we all need to become okay with that. And I have faith that we will. I have faith that I will, even though I’m not there yet. But we’re all going to have to go through our own process to get there. For some people, that’s ripping off the bandaid clean and quick. For others, it’s humor. For others, it’s anger and snarkiness. For others, it’s tears. For others, it’s clinging to some shred of hope, even if that hope is growing dimmer and dimmer. (I personally am favoring the latter two strategies.)

For an unlucky few, it’s slipping into a scary depression space. If you fall into this category, please, please talk to someone - me, someone else in the fandom, someone outside the fandom, a doctor, a loved one. This is one of those “objectively unhealthy” responses, and it goes way beyond the fandom.

No, it’s not terrible to feel disenchanted with the fandom right now. We’re in the middle of a major change. Actually, when it comes to fandoms of IRL couples, we’re in the middle of one of the biggest changes such a fandom can go through. I totally get it. I wouldn’t go into the Grester tag right now if you paid me. There’s a lot of judgment going on as to how people are processing these events. There’s a lot of sadness, a lot of anger, a holy fuckton of anxiety, and unfortunately, a not insignificant amount of disrespect, with people dragging it into their personal tags. I’ve had to disable anonymous asks on my personal blog because I got Fed The Fuck Up with people - or, I suspect, one person who just didn’t know when to quit - haranguing me about how unhealthy it was to grieve the loss of this thing we all love. We, as a fandom, are not being our best selves right now. At all.

And that blows, because we’re all really good people with big hearts and a huge capacity to love, because we love these two people, together and individually. I know we can be better than this. I’ve seen us be better than this. But I also know that grief makes it pretty damn hard for people to censor their primal responses to circumstances and events. 

Appropriate anecdote is appropriate: When my dad died, my uncle - who I met for the first time at my dad’s funeral - threw a minor hissy fit about having his holiday plans interrupted by having to book a flight for the services. When I heard about this, I flipped my shit about what a pretentious self-centered egotistical asswaffle he was, prioritizing Christmas dinner over the funeral of his own brother. Now, yeah, my uncle was pulling a pretty dick move there; but in retrospect, I also could have handled it better had I not been knee-deep in my own stew of grief and rage and confusion. But I was emphatically not in my right mind, because so much was getting filtered through that experience. Our current situation is unquestionably a more minor event than the sudden death of a parent, but a loss is a loss is a loss - voluntary or involuntary, gradual or sudden, explained or not - and they all come with their own grieving process.

Here’s where I stand on this, anon: You’re not wrong to feel however it is you feel. Hannah’s right when she says there’s no right and wrong in the way we are; there’s also no right or wrong in the way we feel. What’s important is what we do with those feelings, especially when other people are involved. If you feel like participating in this fandom right now is making things worse instead of better - for you, for others, for Grester themselves - then it’s totally healthy to step back from it. I have. You don’t need to totally walk away in order to set a boundary here.

[dat-grester-tho]

thank you for everything ❤️ you're incredibly talented and wonderful sweet. we don't talk but you seem like the best kind of person.

We should talk! You’re always welcome to talk to me! <3

[dat-grester-tho]

Hello, my beloved friends :)

So, in light of the metric ton of mess happening in our fandom right now, I feel it’s only fair that I make a post here about what happens with DGT in the event that everything I write about is a thing of the past.

(Fuck, that sentence hurt to write.)

First, I want to apologize. I myself have contributed to the uncertainty. First I said I wouldn’t post anything until things were looking positive, then things were briefly looking positive and I said I’d be posting something again, then things started to look unbelievably negative for the fandom and I immediately regretted having said a word. So for whatever role I played in the rollercoaster of emotions we’ve all been on for these past few months, I am so sorry.

Second, I want to say that this blog and all the fics contained on it are not going anywhere until Tumblr literally blows up on us all - and even then, I’ve got the originals and I will find them a nice warm home where you can continue to access them. This place means too much to me to let it go. And it’s meant a lot to many of you. It stays. Period, full stop, the end.

I think we can all agree that things are not exactly looking rosy for our fandom right now. I refuse to take a baseball bat to anybody’s fledgling hope - because that’s been done to me repeatedly in the past few weeks, and it’s a real dick move - but even the most optimistic among us can now say pretty conclusively that things appear to be on very shaky ground at the absolute best.

I don’t want to say I will never write these two again. Because to do that would hurt my soul in a way I can’t even begin to articulate. But I will say that, unless and until there’s some kind of incredibly convincing evidence that suggests that our favorite duo is thriving together, I think it’s disrespectful for me to write about them as a couple. It would be painful for me to write, realizing I’m nursing a delusional hope. It would be painful for you to read, knowing that what I’m writing is nothing but a trick of the light. And it would undoubtedly be painful for Grace and Chester if they ever stumbled upon it. While I’ve always tried to keep my fic out of their tag and away from their eyes, if we know anything after all this time, it’s that they see everything. And I’ve always tried to write fic that might make them smile if they ever came across it.

I am not saying goodbye. I’m not saying it because I might be back. I’m not saying it because I’m not going anywhere. And I’m not saying it because I don’t want to leave this place. I don’t want to let this go. Even if it’s inevitable, I’m not ready to let this go.

I love Grace and Chester to bits. And writing them - for you all - has been an unparalleled privilege. I maintain hope that it will be again, even if that hope is in vain.

No matter what, know this: I have grown to truly love all of you. Thank you for being there for me. Thank you for your praise and your prompts and your incredible kindness. Thank you for elevating my own standards for my writing to new heights. Thank you for giving me this wellspring of creativity that I didn’t think I’d ever find again. DGT is more than a blog to me, and my dinky little fanfics are dearly beloved creations. You made that possible.

I’m not saying goodbye. Even if things are different, I’ll be here.

I love you all. So, so much.

Thank you for you.

[dat-grester-tho]

Hi friends.

I will post an update here re: the future of this blog in light of recent developments when I can cope with doing so. Please be patient with me. That might take a while.

I appreciate your continued support, love, and patience.

[gracieminabox]

P

P: What are your goals for things to happen to your writing? (Getting published, getting a good review, having a fandom, etc)

I don’t know. I’ve written 69 fanfics in a fandom that is in a really weird state of flux right now, and while I thought things were going in a positive direction, now I’m not so sure and it’s making me nervous, so everything is on hold. Ideally, I’d return to writing Grester as voraciously as I used to - but I’m not doing anything until I feel less like our fandom is standing on the edge of a cliff.

I will say this: I screenshot and save every positive review I’m given, and when I’m feeling out of sorts, I go back through and read them. They give me life.

[dat-grester-tho]

so you know how on twitter you said grace's dress at the premiere was a grester nsfw writing itself?? well maybe you should help it out *over exaggerated wink*

Oh trust me, boo, something’s percolating on that front. (DIDN’T THE GIRLS LOOK FAN-FRIGGIN-TASTIC?!)

[dat-grester-tho]

so happy for you that your life is getting back on track and you are happier!! you deserve ❤️❤️

Bless your heart :) Thank you! <3

[dat-grester-tho]

In light of recent positive developments solidly massacring any negative rumors regarding our favorite little family, I am going to resume writing Grester :)

Be advised that it may still take a little while. I just moved out of state and started a new job after five months of unemployment. My life is rather out of whack. Nevertheless, I want to get this party started again. What say ye? :)