I slept very poorly last night and woke up with a blinding headache and some serious nausea, so I called out of work and went back to bed for a couple of hours.

I keep meaning to post then forgetting what I want to say, since it's mostly just about work. I did get several amazing photos of Baby Miss L in a Spider-Gwen outfit with a hood (with a glittery pink mask on it), a cute blue spider on the torso (when I first saw it, I admit my initial response was "Khaji Da?" so it's more scarab than spider but also she's 2 and a half, so) and a skirt decorated with webbing. It's so cute and she apparently approved of it by saying "Spider-Man! Spider-Man!" in her specific toddler lingo. And the Superman dress finally arrived so I hope to see pictures of that soon, too! Also, she has taken to carrying her Easter basket over her shoulder like a purse and calling it her bag, so she is definitely getting a headstart on her fashionista personality.

In other news, I was reading some fic I was otherwise enjoying but I will never ever ever understand why in EVERY SINGLE FANDOM I have ever read fic in, there are some gobsmackingly awful non-canon nicknames that proliferate. Sometimes for characters who already have a canonical nickname, so why? I mean, I get that the use of a nickname can be intimacy marker (much like the switch from last name to first name, or full first name to canon nickname), but the fact is, none of the characters this is applied to would ever allow themselves to be called these names by ANYONE, not even an intimate partner. The worst is when Jason calls Talia "Tals." NO. WHO thinks TALIA AL GHUL, DAUGHTER OF THE DEMON, is going to let ANYONE call her "Tals." No, really, meet me in the parking lot, I just have some questions.

I also don't understand when people apologize for...well, anything really, in their author's notes, but especially when they say shit like, "Sorry this chapter is mostly dialogue! We'll get back to the introspection soon!" I mean, I guess some people don't like dialogue??? Obviously mileage varies. But it is frequently the best part of a story for me. If your story holds off on dialogue for too long in favor of maundering introspection, I will likely wander away and never come back (like, obviously if it's a 900-word plotless character ramble that's fine, but then you are not posting it in chapters, at least I'd hope not).

I guess if you're not confident in your character voices, dialogue can be difficult, but you're still going to need to get the character voice right in the narration/introspection, and some characters are not really going to be doing a lot of introspection at all, even in their own heads, so it's even harder to get them right. Which is probably when it's time to revisit canon. But I admit, dialogue is pretty much the easiest thing I find to write, so possibly it's just me.

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