If it’s ok to ask, will you be updating Temptress or Lipstick anytime in the next few days? I’m excited to see what happens next, especially with Temptress! I love how you write Roxanne in that story and I’m looking forward to seeing her happy ending. Thank you for blessing us with your amazing craft! <3

I’m waiting on a call from the new psychiatrist’s office to schedule an appointment, and I actually went to the endocrinologist today to see if any of my depression/periodic mood swings could, as my therapist suggested, be partially due to endocrine issues.

The visit was…NOT ideal, but he finally agreed to test my hormones/adrenals after I phrased it “I just want to know for sure there isn’t anything wrong with my endocrine system”. and “I’m working on my depression and anxiety with a therapist and psychiatrist already; I just want to know I shouldn’t be doing some other supplemental thing, too.”

(jeez, you tell a doctor you’re depressed, and they act like it’s because you don’t want to get better; like. buddy. I wouldn’t be at your office if I didn’t want to get better.)

but! like I said, he’s going to do the tests, which is a relief!

And my cat is still doing well after recovering from her illness! 👑Her Majesty, Queen Cat of the World, and Princess of All is a source of great joy to me.

( she loves riding in the car; my mother actually brought her along today when she came to pick me up from the doctor’s ❤ )

(( the cat’s name is actually snooks, but mostly we call her bunny. Or various royal titles, as you can see. Or ‘the cat’. Other cats are cat, but she is the cat. ))

Also-also! My birthday is soon! On February 12th! :DD And I am quite excited about that!

Thank you for asking about me! ❤

“(I’m trying to figure out what to do with my hands.)”

(she wants to bite him, wants to shove him up against the glass door and kiss her way down his neck while she fumbles the handle open, wants to walk him backwards to the couch, still kissing him, wants to push him down so she can climb into his lap and—)

Megamind breaks the kiss.

“—your hair,” he says “can I—can I touch—? I’m—trying to figure out what I’m supposed to do with my hands—”

“Wh—what?” Roxanne asks, reeling. “I—yes?”

(she’d lost all coherent thought, had felt like she was drowning in that kiss, and Megamind had been thinking about where to put his hands?)

-chapter 8 of Old, New, Borrowed, and Blue.

This is an important moment of misunderstanding, because it convinces Roxanne that Megamind is approaching the kiss mechanically, that he’s more occupied with planning out what to do than actually experiencing the kiss. If he had just finished his original question and left it at “Can I touch your hair?” she might not have been so quick to jump to the conclusion that he’s not attracted to her.

But he’s trying hard to not reveal how very attracted he is, how very much he wants her, because he doesn’t want to make her uncomfortable with his feelings. So he changes ‘can I touch your hair’ to ‘I’m trying to figure out what to do with my hands’.

Megamind, of course, is actually thinking about the kiss in a way that’s similar to Roxanne–she’s imagining what she’d like to do during the kiss: bite him, shove him against the door and kiss his neck, push him down on the couch and climb into his lap.

He’s imagining what he wants to do, too, only, because he’s less experienced, and more used to thinking of Roxanne as something he’s not allowed to touch, what he’s imagining is more along the lines of sliding his fingers into her hair, finally getting to touch her hair–when he says that he can, he actually tightens his fingers in her hair and clutches it, and Roxanne thinks that it’s an imitation of desperation but it is very much not an imitation at all.

She thinks he’s coldly going through the motions of the kiss, but in actuality, getting to touch her hair is like. The Dream. for Megamind.

The difference between the way Roxanne sees herself and the way Megamind sees her is a big part of what I have planned for this story. She’s viewing his going through all this as a chore for him, because she kind of…sees herself as a chore. So she assumes that kissing her is a chore, too.

Whereas, for Megamind, this whole thing is more along the lines of high romance knight-errantry, I will slay dragons for you and count myself fortunate if you allow me to touch your hair.

so in your megamind fanfics often you describe a ‘tri tone growl’ and me (not knowing what it was) googled it and didn’t find an accurate result – so what is it exactly? p.s brilliant writing by the way :)

Thank you so much! The tri-town growl–

I picture it as resembling the noise that cats sometimes make when they’re angry–the one that sounds like they’re making two noises at once: a dissonant, fluctuating sound that seems to come from somewhere near their soft palate; and a lower, grinding kind of growl from the middle of their throat.

The noise Megamind makes has an additional third sound to it, an even lower rumbling growl that comes from his chest.

Hey so I know you like stuff about hades and Persephone, and I thought you might like this recent musical called Hadestown. It’s the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice, but set in a sort of Depression era mining town. Hades and Persephone aren’t a very happy couple in it, but their dynamic is interesting and the music is really good.

OH MY GOSH I LOVE HADESTOWN! I’m so excited that someone else has heard of it! I’m so pleased that you were able to predict that I would like the show! 😀 I actually choreographed and performed a dance duet to Wait For Me last year.

I definitely recommend Hadestown, you guys, and you can listen to the album here!