Tim did everything he could not to let anyone else get involved. He took the actions to let the sole responsibility be his. The second he showed up on Lucy's doorstep after self isolating for all those days, when she told him to leave, he saw the way he already could not save her from his self destruction. The pieces of his self worth were already starting to chip. Tim was already spiraling without anything to grasp onto. When it all came to a head in that fight, Lucy only gave him the option to tell her what was going on. She willingly took on the risk. She understood what it meant for her, for them, to step into the mess together. And it is damn messy. I don't think Lucy ever expected for the level of brokenness that Tim is experiencing. Tim is a shell of himself right now and being rational isn't exactly going to be at the forefront of his actions. He despises himself and how he feels like poison to those he loves. He openly admitted to Lucy that he feels worthless and should not be loved the way she loves him. Do you actually think that if two of the people he loved most in the world were not involved, he would have still lied? Hell no. He would have told the truth because it would have been his penance. He would have wanted that punishment. Losing everything would only be a sliver of what he feels like he deserves right now. He only lied to protect them. The quality we always praised him for. The "fierce protector" and now that he's doing it in a way that hurts, you got a problem? It's ugly and that's okay. Let it be ugly. The road to self love and forgiveness is not meant to be easy. It's not meant to be smooth. It will be beautiful though when Tim finally learns making mistakes doesn't mean he isn't worth the effort. He's going to claw his way out of this and they'll find their way back to each other as they always have. That love is a forever love, period.

Please for the love of god

3x1 | 6x6

You need a hobby, something you do for fun.

The Rookie 1.18 | Homefront

Genny roping Angela in for backup would be hysterical and I need it please and thank you

after sitting on it for a while I’ve realized that the chenford breakup means the perfect opportunity for genny bradford to come back and do something so funny by smacking sense into him I NEED IT

insp.

“Home isn’t always a house and it isn’t always where you grew up; sometimes it’s just a feeling.” - Holly Martin

😭😭😭

About the AO3 "No Guest Comments for a while" warning

If you're not following any of AO3's social media accounts you might be in the dark as to what kind of "spam comments" have engendered this banner at the top of the site:

These spam comments have been posted about a great deal on the AO3 subreddit for the past couple of days. Initially they comprised a bunch of guest (logged out users) bot comments that insulted authors by suggesting they were using AI and not writing their own fics. Some examples, from the subreddit:

But it then escalated to outright graphic porn images and gifs being posted in comments, again by logged out 'Guest' accounts. Obviously, I'm not going to give examples of those, but between these two bot infestations, AO3 has clearly decided to act and has temporarily closed the ability to post comments for users who are not logged in with an AO3 account.

Unfortunately, this means that genuine readers who don't have an AO3 account won't be able to leave comments on fics that they enjoy.

If you are a genuine reader who doesn't yet have an AO3 account, I strongly suggest getting yourself on the waiting list for one. More and more AO3 authors are now locking their fics down to registered users only - either due to these bot comments or concerns about AI scraping their work - which means you're probably missing out on a lot of great stuff.

Hopefully guest commenting will be enabled again at some point soon, but I suggest not waiting until then. Get yourself on that list.

Wait times are going to be longer than usual at the moment, due to the current Wattpad purge [info on Fanlore | Wattpad subreddit thread], but if you're in line, then your invite will come through eventually.

Update: There's now a Megathread about this on the AO3 subreddit.

not “oh my god it’s just a tv show” as in you are not allowed to find genuine joy and form a true connection to fiction, but “oh my god it’s just a tv show” as in, if it legitimately stresses you out and impacts your mood when things don’t happen exactly the way you want them to, and it causes you to lash out at other - real - people, maybe you need to take a massive step back.

“omg you’re so creative. how do you get your ideas” i hallucinate a single scene in the taco bell drive thru and then spend 13 months trying to write it

WHEN YOU WAKE UP NEXT TO HIM, IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT!!!! WITH YOUR HEAD IN YOUR HANDS, YOU'RE NOTHING MORE THAN HIS WIFE!!!!! AND WHEN YOU THINK ABOUT ME, ALL OF THOSE YEARS AGO!!! YOU'RE STANDING FACE TO FACE WITH "I TOLD YOU SO"!!! YOU KNOW I HATE TO SAY IT, BUT I TOLD YOU SO!!!! YOU KNOW I HATE TO SAY IT!!!! BUT I TOLD YOU SO!!!!!!!!!

A little collection of untangling the knot of Tim's thought process:

A direct line from "I led my men into a situation that got them killed" to "I can't let Lucy be involved or I will also get her fired/arrested/killed/worse."

A slightly less direct line from those two thoughts to "I can't be with Lucy because my judgment/character is compromised overall and so I will lead her into [unspecified bad thing]"

He's being forced to face some decisions he's made that call into question his entire view of himself and the principles that he's built as his foundation

Tim actually did the leaving and that's significant because I don't think we've seen him do the leaving before. Certainly not with Isabel or Ashley, but even with Rachel where it was closer to mutual, even though she did ask him to come with her she is still the one who moved away and left him. But especially with Isabel and Ashley there is a very strong sense in which they ran away from him. I don't think it's as directly correlated as him reacting to that by leaving Lucy before she can leave him, but I think there's something there.

In the meantime, I’ll just be here for the next three weeks clinging to the knowledge that it’s not a forever breakup. Tim loves Lucy. Lucy loves Tim. They *will* find their way back to each other. And hopefully they will be stronger because of it.

My thoughts are too much of a mess to be coherent right now. But I just keep going back to what I wrote after 6x05. If you’ve never been loved unconditionally before, you don’t understand that you can screw up and still be loved. You don’t understand that you’re still *worth* being loved.

In Tim’s mind, knowing what Lucy knows about him now, she can’t possibly see that he’s still the same man. She can’t possibly understand why he did what he did. She can’t possibly still love him.

Tim is hurting so much. He’s struggling to come to terms with what he’s done. He thinks he’s an awful person who doesn’t deserve happiness or love or anything good. He thinks he doesn’t deserve *her.*

And most of all, he doesn’t understand that even though he screwed up, Lucy still loves him so so much.

I REFUSE TO BELIEVE THAT THIS MAN WAS ONCE CALLED THE REAPER 🥹🥺

if those bts shots of lucy being hurt end up actually with lucy being hurt and not a shot for a cold open that scene is gonna GIVE because injured lucy while chenford's broken up??? the angst 😭😭😭 especially if they're on the same call together?? there's no way this man wouldn't run to her side regardless of where they're at with one another.