people can use this site however they want but there's something almost- idk, sad? about how few people are actually using their blogs. you can turn themes on and have skeletons dancing in the background. you can make everything hot pink. your blog is your scrapbook and you can put whatever you want in there. tags are okay at organizing things so you can have just a whole archive of cool shit to look at later. i know people complain a lot about people liking stuff about reblogging for engagement, and on one hand i get that- it is WILD to see a drawing i spent hours on get only 12 reblogs and 60 likes. Absolute culture shock compared to my previous fandoms. but i don't think you should reblog anything to make artists happy. i think you should reblog things so you can find them again. i think you should queue things to appear on the dash at specific times on certain days. i think you should reblog things so when you're talking to your friends about xyz post you saw you can look in your blog's archive and find it again. i think you should reblog things so that your dash is filled with one really sleepy cat. with the loss of reblogs there's the loss of engagement, which Does hurt the community-focus that makes tumblr so appealing, but idk i just wish people were more excited about the incredible amount of customization that tumblr allows and took advantage of that more

hi! im new to the acotar fandom and im only in book 1 but i love reading theories on the characters and i see that theres a ship war between elriel and gwynriel/elucien. and i just have this one thought that i havent seen anyone mention before:

if elain is lucien’s mate, that means azriel has his own mate that we dont know about yet. could be gwyn or it could be someone else entirely. and yes while azriel for sure lusts over elain, do we really think that he will forego the thought of his own mate? we’re talking about azriel here. someone who is desperate for a mate, for love. to be loved and to love someone who is his and only his. if he gets with elain, wouldnt he wonder about his own mate? especially if the bond snaps and he figures out who is mate actually is. i dont see him abandoning his mate for a forbidden love (elain). and could he stomach the thought of permanently taking someone else’s mate?

i guess when it comes to gwynriel (assuming gwyn is his mate) or elriel, the question really comes down to whether his desire for his one true mate is stronger than his desire to be like his brothers and get with an acheron sister.

and ive read that the cauldrons can make mistakes when it comes to mates. but i refuse to believe that they made a mistake with azriel’s mate. he has been through so much and he already feels unworthy as he is. imagine how much worse he would feel if he knows that the cauldron made a mistake in his bond. like “i’m not even worth the careful consideration in pairing mates with one another that they just carelessly pair me with someone wrong”. my baby az 💔

You're going to have to check back in once you finish the series and let me know your thoughts on what you read versus the theories you've seen!! And what you think of Az once you get further along. Az in book 2 definitely reads differently to me than Az in later books. I agree with what you're saying. There's little chance that Feyre, Rhys, Cassian and Nesta would have been given perfect mating bonds while Elain as the remaining sister would have been given a poorly matched bond and Az as the remaining brother would have either received no bond or a poorly matched mating bond himself. SJM told us in all of her series that Fae Mating Bonds are unique and special and there's no other way to look at it then feeling like a main character who was given a poorly matched mating bond is then the loser of the group (not like "personality" loser but the one who wasn't gifted that super special bond). And if both Az and Elain do have their own mates but reject those mates, they'd always be aware that the other has a pull to someone else. That's a weird thing to do with characters in a fantasy book, write a MF romance where they picked one another but the reader will always walk away with the knowledge that Fate wanted them to be with someone else and they're always going to share a unique connection with them. And maybe, even with all that, it wouldn't be as much of an issue if E/riel shared an undeniably special connection. But for the fact that half the fandom is extremely concerned by their behavior together, I think it's proof that they don't have the epic kind of love that could convince everyone that mating bonds don't matter. He never once gives Elain credit for who she is as a person, he protects her in a way that's stifling her growth, we get confirmation they don't communicate well, we never get confirmation from Azriel himself that he's moved on from Mor though we do get confirmation that Az hasn't thought of a real future with Elain. And the reason it's ok Amren doesn't have one is because she wasn't really Fae to begin with and Mor actively does not want a bond with a male partner. So if she does happen to have one with Eris, her desire to be with a female strongly overrides caring about whether she has bond with him. The "tug" that would always exist becomes more of a familial thing than a romantic thing. Not that SJM couldn't end up writing it so Mor / Eris aren't actually Mates and she has a same sex mate instead but to me it does seem she's going in the direction of Mor and Eris as mates.

New to the fandom, Could you explain June? 💯 Love and support her. But homestuck 2 doesn't have her and I'm just confused?

June Egbert precedes the concept of homestuck^2! I’ve seen a lot of people be confused about this because they weren’t active on the fandom at the time the epilogues dropped, when reading her as a trans woman got a lot of discussion going and eventually lead to multiple confirmations.

So here’s an attempt at contextualization:

Throughout Homestuck, a few key ideas about Egbert’s identity and motivation to push forward with her hero’s journey are dropped like breadcrumbs. She’s meant to play the default straight-man protagonist. Her defining traits are ridiculously… generic, when compared to how all the other kids present themselves and stick to exaggerated bits. She’s a perfectly normal, regular suburban kid with normal, suburban issues. 

She may not leave her room a whole lot. She may not have a lot of real life friends in the neighborhood. She holds a comical irritation for the concept of birthdays, even though her father is extremely supportive, and is delighted to see his son grow up nice and healthy. There’s no reason for her to be so irrationally upset at cakes and gifts, and that’s what makes the setup funny! June doesn’t even know why she’s annoyed with half of the things that annoy her, what the heck.

But under all that playing around there is a sense that her life is so normal, so blasé, so unexciting and limiting and hollow and fake that she’d give anything to not be herself, even if only for ten minutes. This goes way, way back. It’s why June needs SBURB to happen.

June lives as though her life hasn’t started yet. She’s stuck in the Tutorial stage. I would argue while most kids (and trolls) play SBURB to escape a shitty environment or the end of the world as they know it, June plays for a simpler reason: She needs to escape herself, and she needs to do it before it is too late. 

Being thirteen means crossing the homeric abyss between being a child with no care for the world sporting a generic hand-me-down identity and becoming a Teen (capital T) who needs to figure out how to cope with atrocious bodily changes while building the adult they’re meant to be AND deciding what the fuck they want out of life, and how they’re going to work to get it, forever and ever.

When you’re trans, and you don’t yet know you’re trans (or that this is a thing you’re even ALLOWED to be) the above feels a lot like serving a life sentence for an intangible crime.

You know what you’re supposed to do. You’ve seen it on tv, you’ve heard it from your dad, you know what are the normal trials and tribulations. You know you'll grow a few pimples and stubble and you'll need to learn how to shave, obviously, because it's basically a tradition in your family, and no one is really happy to be a teen. You know at some point you'll find a nice girl and you'll grow a hat out of your skull and then you will have to pay taxes and maybe you will have a baby daughter? You'd like it to be a daughter for no particular reason. And when you get a daughter you're going to name her Casey and she's going to be adorable and this is something you've dedicated a lot of thought to. Maybe its because you thought Nic Cage looked really cool with those long flowing locks in con air, the movie who featured a trans woman as a minor character for a few minutes (and she gets quite a bit of compliments, regardless of how the movie has aged), and he had a really exciting life, but goddamn did he love his daughter. There is no purer love than the bond between a father and his daughter. 

This absolutely has nothing to do with your father and you, or how you hold no excitement for becoming an adult man, or how your father's excitement for you becoming an adult man in your stead feels a little stifling.

But i digress.

June spends her time on SBURB mostly hassling karkat, and readily following the instructions of zany, dangerous, COOL girls that seem to know what they're doing. June lets Terezi lead her to certain death without blinking. June lets Vriska dress her up as soon as opportunity presents itself. June thinks its really funny to trick this troll Who Types Really Oddly into believing she's Rose, and also into believing that she's a very silly girl. You may even say Homestuck employs a few of jokes pertaining to how her name looks like EGG !

June has a ball playing this game until it starts to get shitty. She's never able to mend her relationship with her dad, as he's one of the first causalities. She has to spend a lot of time waiting around with jade on a ship until things get cool and exciting again, but she never stops growing during those three years. Its fine, though, because there's always more things to be done and more people to fight.

Until there aren't, and they make a new earth, and while everyone cheers and claps for the birth of a new planet June realizes all her excuses are over. Her friends begin to grow up. Rose gets married. Jade is living her best life. Dave has a not-boyfriend glued to his hip. Jane has a job. Jake is on TV for some reason. June doesn't want to leave home. June's birthday is around the corner again. Here come all the congratulations for becoming a strong lad for yet another year! Vriska is gone. Terezi is gone. SBURB is over. Wacky hijinks have been swapped for real-ass, boring-ass Regular life. We watch her unsuccessfully chase after the glory of days gone by when Rose presents her the possibility of going back into the game, when things were cool and mattered, or her flimsy decision to settle down with a nice girl she hasn’t really made an effort to know and become a father and be absolutely miserable for four decades as she asserts nothing is real, not anymore, and this is just how it is.

Depersonalization, depression and general apathy towards the world are all pronounced aspects of dysphoria that seem like unrelated incidents for someone who hasn't came out yet. June's trainwreck of a life post-game, specially her feeling of hollowness and chasing after anything that could fill it struck a chord with trans readers who left the epilogues to read HS again and discovered this has always sort of been here. June being a trans woman who doesn't have the proper vocabulary to express she is a trans woman makes a lot of earlier bits from the comic click into place, now in a broader context. We settled in the name "June" because it's what she imagines Vriska is calling her at some point, amid laughs, but even that was discussed for a lengthy period last year. What would she want to be called, what are possible tags for this, etc. But it was mostly for fun and games, because the prospect of the protagonist of a 10 year old beloved cult series being ACTUALLY confirmed as a trans woman just wasn't something that was done.

Until word got around to Andrew Hussie and he was reportedly so pleased with this interpretation of events he’d be making references to it, and some time later, a box of toblerones was left in a cave as a gift for fans to find. The first person to find a toblerone thought it would be funny to dedicate it to June, because now she was an ongoing reference that was fun to make. Instead of it ending there, Hussie logs on twitter for the first time in a long while to say 'Oh yeah, i'll make it happen' and that's when the whole thing exploded. I have a post detailing this made a year ago (with pictures!) so i won't keep you here.

In the year since, June has been vaguely alluded to in Pesterquest (in jade's end card, she's having her nails painted by rose.) Has been widely adopted by the community, those making their own fanventures and continuations, and the team behind Homestuck^2. In every way that matters, she's already thriving within the community that brought her to light a year ago. But her coming out in canon is something that will take time and a proper narrative arc to happen, one that is still being set up. We know it'll come eventually, the only question is “how”.

Not that the wind waits for anyone.

Newtmas essay when?

Finally getting to this, thanks for waiting, I needed to go over a few bookmarks. (Warning, this post contains spoilers from the MAZE RUNNER book and FEVER CODE book, so if you haven’t read either or yet and want the jist of my analysis; just know that in general the fandom interpreting Newt as gay before it was revealed on a twitter post was not just a random headcanon and that Thomas in general is portrayed to have very strong unconditional love for Newt throughout the series; and it shows. To the point that even the director for the movie has stated that Newt and Thomas have a strong bond and portrays that in the movies. I will also preface that I am NOT adding personal opinion anywhere here, these are just backings from quotes and how they are thus meant to be taken/read as. My words are taken as a reader who is currently reading Scorch Trials has yet to fully read Death Cure or Crank Palace.) Anways, without further ado at 3AM today, I’ll try my best to explain how even though Dashner tries his best to make Thomas have other, female love interests; he creates a not so subtle gay subtext for Tommy boy here when in the context of interacting with Newt throughout the lore. Apologies beforehand for any grammar mistakes along the way.

To commence, I am going to start with FEVER CODE, as its supposed to act as the story’s preface to the actual events that play out later. Newt and Thomas upon meeting each other describe their presence as “familiar” and or as a “long lost friend” and they genuinely hit it off from the start to the point that Newt is okay with having Thomas see him cry over the fact that he and his sister are separated since he is doomed to be WCKD’s control analysis as he’s the only one lacking immunity from the flare itself. Once Newt is done being emotionally vulnerable we get our first instance of his personal nickname for Thomas: “That’s the way things are Tommy,’ he said his voice not quite steady. ‘The world outside’s gone to hell. Why should we expect any different here? [...] He said it as if they’d been friends for years” (ch. 14).   An interesting note here is that Thomas doesn’t bother to correct him or stifle the moment by feeling that all this information was too much, he genuinely wanted to hear Newt out and is fine with seeing this side of him; if not slightly taken aback by how natural it is that they can converse about such aspects of their lives. In fact, Newt makes such an impact on Thomas that Thomas ends up that same night dreaming of him: “Throughout his shortened night, he dreamed of Newt and Sonya. Of Newt and Lizzy“(Ch. 14). The thing with Thomas though is that the idea of comfort and connection is very foreign to him as he’s been basically isolated all his life with only the adults like Ava to talk to and the one exception being Teresa as his only kid companion. So Thomas didn’t even think he could make others like him for being himself unless they were vital to the overall production of WCKD. Seeing this portion right before the end of chapter 14: “Alby, Minho, Newt, Teresa. Thomas had friends.” shows that Thomas really had to deep dive to see how he deals with personal connections and why he was excited about the notion of friendship. He could’ve been happy with just Teresa, but only fully cemented her bond to him as “friend” when his circle grew and these kids he got to hang with taught him he can be himself, a concept he didn’t realize was possible when all his life was dictated on what he was supposed to learn or do. It becomes especially clear just how controlled his life is with the aspect of sentiment when later on Teresa’s mental communication evokes physcial pain and fear in Thomas. I’ll get back to that later as its more of a small tid bit of Thomas’ view on his forced love interest, Teresa. And yes, I say forced because multiple sentences with Thomas have him even wish he could cease all communication with her. Moving on, let’s talk about mimicking for a second. As humans, we mimic as a behavioral response to become closer to the person we care about. It’s the reason why yawning or laughter is contagious and or why we copy the posture of the person we converse with face to face. Thomas is seen to do this the most with Newt’s quirks. I’ll give the example in chapter 15: “Newt has been promising them that he was saving something special, and he did that annoying zipped-lipped sign every time [...] the little light in his eyes showed he enjoyed every second of their torture” versus Thomas: “Thomas did Newt’s zipped-lipped gesture, and that got him a sharp poke in the ribs”. So, we know enough that Thomas’ mannerisms are developing as a sign that he wants to be closer to Newt and to continue this sense of playfulness they both enjoy from the other. This is the start of their budding bond and a clear indication that they hold each other at greater fondness than the rest through this unconscious copying. Through this copying, they also pick up on emotional cues the other lets up on. Newt is especially good at noticing small things like when Thomas is anxious or overthinking: “He was just shocked that with all their exploring, the others hadn’t already discovered it on their own. And there were supposed to be TWO mazes. How had Newt and his friends not stumbled upon either one of them? ‘Tommy?’ Thomas realized Newt was staring straight at him, eyebrows raised. ‘Sorry,’ he said embarrassed, ‘wandered off for a second there what did you say?’ Newt shook his head in admonishment. ‘Try to keep up, Tommy Are you ready to see the grat outdoors?” (ch. 15). Also in chapter 23: “Tommy?’ It was Newt, breaking him out of his thoughts. ‘I can see your wheels spinnin’ up there.’ He tapped the side of his head”. This furthers Newts perceptiveness on his friend and Thomas’ ability to pick out when he is being looked after. And they bounce off each other really well in that aspect. To the point that Newt can crack a joke he knows will land right on Thomas’ sense of humor: “Newt waggled his fingers in front of Thomas’ face [...] A laugh exploded out of Thomas’ mouth that sent a spray everywhere. ‘Sorry’ he said, wiping his lips on his sleeve” (ch.15). It’s enjoyable to know that at least at a surface level, they have fun together and can cheer the other up if needed or know when to ground the other to reality. It is also through these instances that as a reader I pick up that Thomas’ nervous ticks perhaps allude to an anxiety disorder he has; of which Newt is aware of and never puts Thomas down on for exhibiting. He in fact understands it and deals with it accordingly as he himself has a similar circumstance. SO, what does all this paying attention lead to? Thomas’ devotion to protect Newt. Yeah, thats right I said devotion. Thomas’ actions are influenced by his developed instinct to protect Newt at all costs. Here is the biggest example that comes to mind: “What in the world happened to Newt? -- Less then two hours later, Thomas had spliced together a series of camera clips [...] Thomas turned off the feed. He couldn’t take it anymore...Newt, Newt, Newt, Thomas thought, feeling as if the very air around him were turning black.”(ch.52). Essentially, Thomas seeing Newt plummet to his near death by falling from the maze wall as a result of Newt’s ongoing depressive state, this is the moment that makes Thomas realize WICKD isn’t as good as they seem and that he is going into the maze to save Newt. Its admirable how much self sacrifice Thomas does for someone he cares so much about, to the point that their name is like a mantra. Thats a sensible area of passion and fighting spirit for someone who is “just a friend”.    Oh and, the feeling of fondness is mutual mind you if I haven’t been clear. After experiencing the horrors of cranks for the first time, realizing Newt was not immune, and watching Newt until they entered the pits it has been months since they last interacted; this is their first reunion: “What’s up Tommy?’ Newt exclaimed, his face filled with genuine happiness at the pleasant surprise that’s been sprung on him. Thomas couldn’t remember exactly how long it’d been since he’d seen Newt. ‘You look bloody fantastic for three in the morning” (ch. 23). I need to preface this that Newt DOES NOT mean that sarcastically and that out of all the people in the room (Minho, Chuck and Teresa are there in this scene), Thomas only reacts this way specifically toward seeing Newt is okay and back.   The characters are also not afraid of being physically close. “Well, look who the bloody copper dragged in,’ Newt said, pulling Thomas into a big hug” (ch.31), “They shook hands, and then the two of them set off...” (ch. 31), and my favorite: “Thomas jumped at the sound, then stumbled. Newt tripped over him, and then they were both laughing, legs and arms tangled in a pile on the ground”(ch.32). I don’t think this far in the novel, Thomas has been AS (emphasis on as) comfortable with touch  with anyone else other than Newt. And thats a big step forward on the aspect of trust in a relationship, being able to be comfortable with the presence of another person enough to be as intimate with them as shown here.  And all this, is just fever code itself. Mind you this is not the MEAT of the novels as it came out later. But even without it, lets look at Thomas in Maze now, I’ll try to keep this segment a lot more brief. Here’s Thomas looking respectively at boys his age: “A tall kid with blond hair and a square jaw...a thick, heavy muscled Asian kid folded his arms as he studied Thomas, his tight shirtsleeves rolled up to show off his biceps [...] Newt was taller than Alby too, but looked to be a year or so younger, His hair was blond and cut long, cascading over his T-shirt. Veins stuck out of his muscled arms”(ch. 2). Thomas’ initial reaction to being surrounded by boys is to deeply analyze their rugged good looks and heavily emphasize their best physical traits. When reading this the first time, my mind immediately thought this boy at the very least is supposed to be portrayed as bi, especially when later down the line Teresa gets a similar descriptor: “...despite her paleness, she was really pretty...silky hair, flawless skin, perfect lips, long legs.” So right off the bat, we know that be it boy or girl, Thomas emphasizes how attractive someone looks in his eyes when he truly does have a sense of attraction to them. Case closed. Within the same chapter we get Thomas also immediately clinging onto Newt for a sense of grounding, it is now ingrained in him at this point that the boy is his lifeline, a person to rely on. “Thomas looked over at Newt, hoping for help.” And help he does, Newt in this chapter helps ease his worries, explain a general idea of what the glade is and even pats him on the shoulder a bit to ease tension. And Thomas doesn’t bat an eye in the same way he’s weary of literally everyone else. In fact, he’s eager to stay put with him as shown with; “If Newt went up there, then I wanna talk to him.” And if none of that seals the deal, we got early bird Newt being so touch starved he flattens himself next to Thomas to wake him up at the crack of Dawn in chapter 6: “Someone shook Thomas awake. His eyes snapped open to see a too-close face staring down at him, everything around them still shadowed by the darkness of early morning...’Shh, Greenie. Don’t wanna be waking up Chuckie, now, do we?’ It was Newt --the guy who seemed second in command; the air reeked of his morning breath. Though Thomas was surprised, any alarm melted away immediately”. This whole scene follows firstly by Thomas once again impressed by how strong Newt is and then Newt giving him a rundown of what everyone else was too afraid to show Thomas, the grievers. And you know, this scene could’ve ended well and everything as totally platonic, but then we have “Newt turned to look at him dead in the eye. The first traces of dawn had crept up on them, and Thomas could see EVERY DETAIL OF NEWT’S FACE, HIS SKIN TIGHT, HIS BROW CREASED.” Now, look me in the eye and tell me there is a hetero explanation on looking at your best bro like they are the sun reincarnated themselves. But let’s not hog all the homosexual undertones with Thomas here. Wanna know what Newt’s initial reaction to having a girl in the glade was? “It’s a girl,’ he said [...] Newt shushed them again. ‘That’s not bloody half of it,’ he said, then pointed down into the box. ‘I think she’s dead” (ch.8). It’s actually a stark contrast to the other gladers eagerly wanting to know her age, how pretty she looked, and calling dibs to date her; Newt isn’t interested in any of that, he’s more perplexed on her status and not even bothering to remark on her looks, he was the only one not to and even remarks a few other instances that girls are more Thomas’ domain. For instance, he makes a joke in fever code when Thomas remarks that the girls in the institution were going to tackle him down, Newt proceeds to point out sarcastically something along the lines of “wait, isn’t that YOUR dream though?” So Newt is pretty out spoken of his disinterest in girls, and his full admiration and attention on Thomas. Oh, and yes, Newt immediately switches over to “Tommy” the moment Thomas mentions he hates being called greenie, and once again it just becomes a thing between only the two of them. Newt is also the one to be straight forward about the whole Runners business. He warns Thomas about the dangers and doesn’t necessarily turn him down on his desire to be one, he in fact encouraged him to just wait until the right moment. “No one said you couldn’t, but give it a rest for now”(ch. 15). So once again, Newt is the voice of confidence and reason for Thomas to prosper. In turn, this time around Thomas is the one to catch when something is bothering Newt. For instance, “Newt chewed his fingernails, something he hadn’t seen the older boy do before...he was genuinely concerned -- Newt was one of the few people in the Glade he actually liked ”(ch.16). Interesting how we went from fever code “friend” to “like”. And also, when Newt explains his concern about the runners not coming back yet, Thomas pieces together how scared Newt is of the Maze without being told and goes to stand next to him as a physical presence to ground Newt as they wait near the entrance. In fact, this piece is trivial to understand why Thomas does what he does next. When everyone else had given up on the Runners still outside with 2 minutes left til closing, and Newt was escorted away from the entrance, Thomas waited. And when Thomas saw them, he yells to Newt, realizes he’s too far to do anything, and makes a decision himself. He KNEW how much Newt cared about his fellow Gladers, they were like family or “kin” as its said in the book, so what does he do? “Don’t do it Tommy! Don’t you bloody do it!’ ... Thomas knew he had no choice. He moved. Forward. He squeezed past the connecting rods at the last second and stepped into the maze”(ch.16). Yes, Thomas does this because of his empathy for the Gladers, but the chain reaction of Newt’s concern is what sets his decision in stone. And yet again, Thomas enters the maze for Newt.  And that’s pretty much the constant for the rest of Maze Runner the book, Newt just sticking up for Thomas and Thomas in turn just being happy that: “He was at least relieved that Newt was there” (ch.17). And thats basically their entire dynamic. Newt just going: “If you really did help design the maze Tommy, it’s not your fault. You‘re a kid -- you can’t help what they forced you to do” to ease the survivor’s trauma Thomas has, as well as saying “I actually believe you. You just don’t have an ounce of lying in those eyes of yours. And I can’t bloody believe I’m about to say this...but I’m going back in there to convince those shanks we should go through the griever hole, just like you said”(ch.51); and I think thats the most romantic thing to hear from him. Just right out being all for supporting Thomas no matter what happens as long as he stays alive and continues to fight, he doesn’t care about what happened before. And Thomas eats that up because it fuels him even more to seek out a means to escape for the people (Newt) that deserve a life outside of running from monsters forever. So essentially, I’ll state again, it’s always been Newt the catalyst for Thomas to run head first into the Maze and seek freedom. And with all this I can clear that these two are shown to if not be romantically involved, at least have unconditional love for the other that transcends the author’s original intention.  And with that in mind, here’s the thing with Teresa as a love interest. I can list here quotes of every time she mind speaks to Thomas and how that affects him, but then this would be too long. And this is a newtmas post gosh darn it. Teresa is gleeful to humiliate, control, hurt, and force Thomas to believe they’re in love. In multiple instances we get her barging into his mind unwarranted making him understand that she has full access to his inner most thoughts. Theres nothing romantic about that, and I think its why Thomas ends up being so perceptive to the smallest of gestures that allow him to think on his own and feel like his own person. Something I’ve seen Brenda do later in scorch, and something I’ve seen Newt do since the very beginning is that they allow Thomas to come to his own conclusions in order to create his own opinions on the matters at hand. Thomas’ love language revolves around words of affirmation. He likes it when people confirm his thoughts are valid and that remind him that WICKD can’t hurt him anymore now that he has the power to be his own person. This is where Newt comes in very handy. He allows Thomas to grow in ways his female love interests have yet to show, sorry Brenda but I’ve heard you were trying to unite all immunes together to the safe haven by the end and in a sense still only using Thomas to get by; I still think she was the better call than teresa of course and I have no remorse for Teresa getting smushed by a boulder. But essentially my point here is that, how do you fail to make your initial love interests clash so badly where one has no real care about the others well being so long as everything goes according to WCKD by using a form of gaslighting and manipulation? AND THOMAS HAS STATED HIS DISCOMFORT ON THIS MULTIPLE TIMES, but the narrative always erases these instances from his mind in place of pity for Teresa’s well being (as you can tell, Teresa through this becomes my least favorite character, I can rant about her some othe time though with proper backing). The narrative in turn treats it all like a joke. I understand there are scenes where Thomas is worried about her and looks out to make sure shes ok, but even then he doesn’t know how to react with mental images of her kissing his cheek or when she screams the next minute that she doesn’t know who he is or how hes speaking into her mind. And thats because they can’t properly communicate their emotions to the other, not even in fever code could Thomas give a forward answer if he loved Teresa or not, she just assumed. Come to think of it, Thomas really doesn’t show much affection to Teresa of his own accord. So then, how DOES Thomas show his affection? Thomas provides acts of service as his love language, if he cares about you enough he will risk his life for you. Why? Because Thomas values putting the people he loves foremost knowing full well they are what help him have purpose and succeed in continuing on. In a way, Newt and Thomas’ dynamic works in this instance because they balance the other out and because they have seen each other at their worst and at their best. In a way, that's why knowing the ending of the books makes it harder to accept that Thomas would just easily take the shot...when all his life clung to Newt’s survival. But that’s a story for another time where I compare the movies (of which let me make that clear, yes I prefer) over the books. For now just know that the book may have done this by accident, maybe not, but at the end of the day theres solid proof that Thomas and Newt care about each other in a way that is separately portrayed from their connection to the other glade members, and have this consistency of soft moments running through the entirety of the series. In conclusion; newtmas. Newtmas. NEWTMAS, etc.

it’s been a long year since we last spoke (how’s your halo?)

Read on Ao3

Words: 11.5k 

Tags: Hurt No comfort, Angst, No Happy Ending, No beta we die like Wilbur

Warnings: Body horror, Blood, Death, Suicidal Implications/Thoughts, Mentions Of Torture, Beating/Fighting

Author's Note: I tentatively present you all this fic as my ticket to board the Dream SMP Fandom. I took some creative liberties with this, such as hints of Niki and Wilbur being childhood friends, as well as Niki living near Techno's cabin, and making Niki respawning to restock her hunger bar during her spiraling/villain arc one of her canon deaths. Also, despite Niki wearing a new skin she has stated that her character still wears Wilbur's coat. Just adding that in here so people don't comment that I got her outfit wrong during a certain scene. And finally, even though I feel this is obvious, this is about the characters and not the streamers themselves. With that out of the way, enjoy the fic!

Summary: 

"Time down here is like stars, Niki. We're dead, dead for thousands of years, but to them," he points up, "we still shine. It'll take light years for them to realize they are staring at just a memory."

She tries to take a step back, but she's rooted where she stands. "Wilbur," she weeps. "How long have you been down here?"

He laughs.

(There was a time it made Niki's heart stop. It still does, but for different reasons now)

"Eleven years."

Niki covers her mouth to stifle a broken cry.

or; Niki tries, unwillingly may she add, the whole being dead thing. Oh, and Wilbur is there to "help"

The worst part about it is that Niki's whole life doesn't flash before her eyes. It doesn't happen in slow motion and neither is there some comforting, bright light for her to walk towards. It's simply this: one second she's at Church Prime and the next she's falling into pitch blackness.

Then again, she should have known better than to expect any of that dumb cliche stuff 'cause it's not like she died or anything. Not really. Her communicator may say she did, but she knows the truth. She was teleported.

So why does this feel like dying?

foolish girl breaking at the seams from using the same stitching of a burning flag to put yourself back together again. you think the afterlife cares how you arrive? the entry fee is the same for all

She comes in screaming and doesn't stop even when that's all she is anymore. Her body is unrecognizable to her, turned inside out, muscles stretching and bending and snapping in an attempt to mimic the shape she once was.

(She wishes her muscles luck in regressing back into a memory because oh primes, oh dear primes did she try, try again to be the girl wore a white and blue uniform with pride, but that girl only exists now in dreams and sometimes nightmares)

But they can't, for her organs and bones and flesh do not know what it means to not be confined (but they should know, they really should, because she still finds it hard to breath in small spaces ever since Schlatt caged her between iron bars and dirt and Sapnap left her in a hole in the ground over a fish) and so they shake. Convulsing and spasming until she is just sound, just an echo of shrieks that are happening in the past or the present or the future depending on how fast it travels down this tight, narrowed cave she lands in.

Wait, lands in?

She finds herself laying flat on the ground. She blinks. Then does it again for good measure to make sure she's not imaging having eyelids.

She touches her face. Feels the crook of her nose, the curve of her chin, and her soft round ears.

It's all skin. No muscle, no tissue, just her.

Still her.

(For now)

Her body is back. Not whole though - never whole - for she will always be a walking empty space within a solid object, but for now, her body is right. Her body is here. She closes her eyes in relief.

Someone is staring down at her when she opens them again.

"Hello Niki," Wilbur says. "It's been a while."

(It's Doomsday. His name shows up on your communicator and so you become a lit match. The fire eats you away just like the bark of a tree, like the walls of a bakery, two things you once loved most, and you're watching them both burn with his coat over your shoulders, which doesn't help you ignore who you must look like, who you're acting like, whose footsteps you're following in; and doesn't it hurt to know that what's before you isn't just a friend but a reflection?)

She's already scrambling back before she's even fully sat up.

She doesn't get very far, not with the way her wrists twist and bend before finally buckling under the pressure, and she can't find the strength to stand up and run. So all that's left to do is hyperventilate at the way his eyes land on her face, roaming, analyzing, absorbing, trying to read her like a book, unaware she's ripped out the pages long ago. At the way his shadow covers her and maybe once it felt like a blanket, but that time has passed, now all it is is heavy, suffocating, pinning her down. At the way he wears his Pogtopia outfit, pressed and cleaned when the last she saw of it it was covered in ash and black feathers and red, so much red.

But it never comes. In fact, her lungs don't move at all. Almost as if she doesn't need to breathe. As if she hasn't been breathing since she's been down here.

Is that why it was so easy to keep screaming?

"You're not here," she whispers. "Not really."

Wilbur tilts his head to the left.

(Does it in a way a predator would while observing its prey from afar, waiting for the right moment to strike)

"Oh? Where am I then, Niki?"

"My head," Niki responds, practically blurting it out. "Yeah - yeah, that's right. This is just my head playing tricks on me again. A horrible horrible trick, but that's all it is. I - I know it."

Wilbur hums. He sits down as if this will take a while. As if she won't blink and he'll be gone. "Well, that's a damn shame. I was hoping it'd be a beach. Mexican Dream has been talking a lot about La Jolla lately. Sounds like a nice place."

He smiles, suddenly.

(No, not smiles, more like baring his teeth. His very normal teeth that give off the impression that they should be very sharp and very large and very deep in her throat right now)

"Let's hope I don't blow it up."

(Niki is shouting for Wilbur over the chaos when her communicator pings in her pocket. It gets hard to breathe as she reads what it says, and it isn't because every inhale of smoke and pulverized concrete from the tumbling buildings poison her lungs. There's a ringing in her ears, and it isn't because of the TNT that just detonated in front of her. She feels broken, and it isn't because the force of the explosion knocks her back and she skitters across the field, hitting rocks and choking on dirt until she stops on her stomach, limbs bent at weird angles. Her communicator lands right beside her, the screen shattered and static flashing, but she can still catch glimpses of what is on the screen, as clear as day, like a taunt: WilburSoot was slain by Ph1lza)

Niki scrambles to her feet, presses herself as much as she can against the walls, and maybe, just maybe, she'll glitch and go through it and suffocate in a block.

She immediately throws herself away from it when she realizes what she just thought.

Wilbur stands with her. "I'm kidding, I'm kidding," he says. "I thought it would lighten up the mood. So, how are you?"

"How am I?" Niki echoes. "I'm imagining my dead best friend even though I thought I was getting better and I could have sworn I was, I was I swear I was, and this place, this place, I don't know where this is but it, it just feels - I don't even know why - so familiar and so - "

She pauses.

She looks around.

She was so busy panicking from Wilbur's presence that she never took in her surroundings. She stares at the smooth stone walls, the occasional hanging vines, the little aquarium in the corner right next to the entrance, and, finally, the stand. The stand with two signs on the front that read -

No. It can't be. It just can't.

She won't believe it until she's seen the whole thing.

She walks further in, each step hesitant.

And she notices the way everything around her seems so devoid of life. Almost colorless. Close to numb. She thinks it's her body shutting down, the stress finally getting to her, but no. This is worse. Something's going on. She doesn't know what it is exactly, but she knows it isn't her that's wrong here.

(This time)

Wilbur follows closely behind and, as if to prove her point, his footsteps sound muffled, distant, apart from him, like in the way you hear something underwater.

Maybe she is underwater because everything is getting blurry and her face feels wet.

(Or maybe the better comparison is like hearing something behind glass. She's been tapping against the window of a caravan for months as men in suits discuss a country she bled for just as much as them, if not more, without her. The tapping turns to banging, but it is not the glass that shatters. Not the glass that breaks)

She stills as she catches sight of the small wheat farm in the back room, dried and frail and unkempt.

(Like a flower shop)

It really is her bakery.

"No," she mumbles. Then, more stern, as if it'll blow this place away, as Wilbur should have done the first time. "No no no no this can't… this can't be true. I, I shouldn't be here I - it doesn't make any sense, how how how - "

She whirls on Wilbur, the tears coming in waves now. "What are you doing to me?"

(It's his fault she's back here. It has to be, he's the reason you wanted to burn the memories why this is all gone why this should be gone why isn't this gone gone gone gone)

foolish girl who has become like the nation she despises, you are a crater, there is a hole inside of you where a soul once was and it was caused by your own hands because the only destruction you're good at is your own. you couldn't even kill a child with a nuke, so what makes you think you can end a small room on the side of some hill?

"What do you see?" Wilbur says, and the voice in her head disappears. She can't remember what it said. She shakes her head as if the words will fall out her ears.

Suddenly she can't remember why she's shaking her head.

Her next words come out frail.

"My… my bakery. But how? This shouldn't be possible I, I destroyed it - I - "

"Limbo is different for everybody," Wilbur interjects. "For me, it's a train station."

"Limbo? What are you talking about? What is going on? I was nowhere near L'manburg I was - " Niki's mind blanks.

(Smooth quartz all around her and she feels safe there, that she remembers because there is no killing here, the one place bloodshed does not haunt her, and then crushing disappointment that turns into actual crushing as her body gets shredded, mangled, undone like a ribbon except it does not look pretty)

Wilbur gives her a slicing smile. It cuts her down. "This is the afterlife, Niki."

She blinks. She tries to take a step back, but she's rooted to the spot. "What?"

"The afterlife," he continues, eyes sparkling. "Hell. The void. Eternal darkness. Whatever you wanna call it. I call it home."

"Home?" She repeats, shakily.

foolish girl with no place, no one to call home because she's an expert at finding comfort in things that don't stay, of course he sees this place as home. Although if he really wanted to surround himself in emptiness so bad then he just needed to wait a few months for you to become just that

"I'm not dead," she mutters. She attempts to laugh, because if she laughs then this will sound like a joke. Wilbur would joke about such a thing. After all, he poked fun at exploding L'manburg just a while ago. So of course this is a joke. It has to be. It is, and she will not allow her breakdown to be the punchline.

At Wilbur's unflinching smile she says it again, with more conviction. "I'm not!"

"How else do you think you're talking to me? How your bakery is still in one piece? Sorry to be your grim reaper Niki, but you're dead. And now you're here, in the afterlife, with me!" He leans in close, close enough that she should feel his breath on her.

There is nothing. He is nothing.

(And maybe, so is she)

"Isn't that great? We're together again! You and me, just like the old days. And look," His eyes glance at what she wears. It's the coat. Specifically, Wilbur's coat, wrapped around her shoulders.

"We're even matching," he coos.

She thinks she might scream.

She throws herself away from him, almost throws the coat too, but into the furnace next to her.

('I gotta burn the memories I need to destroy it I need to destroy it I need to destroy it,' she once screamed to no one but herself. History repeats itself)

How she ever found comfort in this ratty, old coat she'll never know. And she'll never care to find out. Not when Wilbur is acting like this, like before, like a loose city wire, all dangerous and unpredictable, each word an electric spark, and Niki is trying not to get stung. She remembers how that story ended.

But her's will not end. Not yet.

"I can't be dead," she argues. "I don't remember that I would remember something like that so I - I can't be dead, and I have two lives left so, no, no I can't be I'm alive I'm alive I'm alive and I'm in bed I'm alive I'm alive I'm alive and you're not real, just a nightmare. I'm alive I'm alive I'm - "

"It's really me, Niki," Wilbur says, and the fire from the furnace roars in response as if his words fan the flames. It's the first time something in this wicked place has felt alive. "In the flesh. Or, rather, a close imitation of it. I think my corpse must have liquified by now, swelling up for months before bursting open, leaving nothing but a skeleton behind. What about you? What did you leave for them to find?"

She covers her ears. "Stop! Stop it stop it stop it!"

"Remember it. Remember your last moments."

"Wilbur, please - "

"Feel your wrist," he says. No, orders. And she does. Because she, at her core, is still his soldier.

(She says that she is loyal to him and he responds by saying he wants her to be loyal to L'manburg. She remembers being confused, for she saw them both as the same. Wilbur is L'manburg and L'manburg is Wilbur, one cannot coexist without the other. A few months later, amongst the wreckage of her nation and a father's anguished screams, she'll realize too little too late how true her statement holds)

She doesn't find her heartbeat.

For a second she thinks she made a mistake. That she has her fingers in the wrong place, but no. A soldier knows where to look for life so that they may snuff it out. She can't be making a mistake.

Still, she presses her fingers down, harder this time, nails first, that blood draws, and sobs as she's still met with nothing.

She has no heartbeat.

She is dead.

She chokes. She clutches her chest, not because it hurts to know what she lacks in her chest, but because she remembers. Remembers it so intently, remembers it happening in the snap of a finger, literally, from a smiling God (and maybe it is quite a fitting end, for she goes out the same way she lived, giving second chances to men who don't deserve it) and how the world tilted as the ground slipped away.

But what's worse is the realization that comes after.

"I didn't leave anyone anything to find," she says.

Wilbur raises an eyebrow. "What?"

"I didn't leave anyone anything to find because I didn't die," she says again, but weaker. More horrified. "I was teleported. I was on the holy lands when - "

"Teleported?' Wilbur interrupts. His features, just a second ago, eccentric and mad, turn curious. "Wait wait wait, hold on a second, are you telling me you were sent to Hell, Hell, on the fucking Holy Lands? "

Niki weakly nods.

It goes silent.

Suddenly, a snort. A snort that does not sound like it once did, back before the war for independence, before the election, before banishment, before it all, when all there was was a caravan and the worst of their worries was getting Sapnap a vegan hotdog. It's meaner, more shrill, and laced with a madness that seems to roll off his tongue so easily nowadays.

If she weren't watching how hard Wilbur's shoulders shake she'd have never guessed such a sound would come from him.

But there's something else about this snort that chills her to the core. Although she never could have imagined it coming from Wilbur doesn't mean she hasn't heard this kind of laugh before.

It's almost breathless, almost like something left on a stove, steaming, almost like the sound of  -

(Dream and Wilbur worked together, both wanted L'manburg gone, both almost killed a kid, both cut off attachments, both lost trust in others, all things Niki has done too, and if Niki is like Wilbur and Wilbur is like Dream then that means - )

(No. Please, no)

"That is -," Wilbur wheezes, wiping away a tear. "That is horribly ironic."

"DreamXD!" She shouts, head tilted up. "Take me back! Take me back right now!"

Wilbur shakes his head. "Oh, no need to try that. I've been there. The whole shouting for help thing? Yeah, will do you no good. No one can hear you down here."

"DreamXD! I'm here!"

"Scream all you want, prime knows you don't need to breathe down here so nothing's stopping you from doing it for forever, but when your screams are all you hear for eternity… well, it'll drive any person mad."

"DreamXD," she shrieks. And her lungs don't shake, don't even give a small quiver, she knows it. Nothing in her does, for the gears don't need to be turning to keep this machine of a body that's been on autopilot since an explosion knocked her off her feet alive anymore. "Please!"

"You stop talking after a few years of just endless screaming for your voice becomes a reminder of your entrapment. But then the silence itself, after a few years, is unbearable. Yet you don't dare speak or make any noise, so it's just madness of a new kind."

She pushes her way past him and makes her way to the exit of her bakery. "I - I liked the magic trick, DreamXD! I really did! You - you can teleport me back now!"

"Too scared to make a noise, but too scared to keep quiet. So you stand still. Your body deteriorates, muscles numb from lack of use, and all you do is use your nails to scratch marks onto the walls to mark how many years have passed since… since absolutely nothing."

She stills. She slowly turns around.

(L'manburg is surrounded by a wall. A wall so mighty and tall she never thought she'd see the day it'd be torn down, much less by its own inhabitants. But this wall right here, the one between her and this old friend, this is a wall that will never meet the same end as its predecessor)

"Wilbur," she whispers. "What do you mean by years?"

Silence.

Wilbur has a far-away look in his eye.  

(That look was born in a dirt hole on the side of a small hill and Niki doesn't learn that lesson for she builds her bakery in a similar place. Two places, so small, so cramped, started with hope, have become their worst downfalls, their unfinished symphonies. She parallels him in all the wrong ways)

"Time down here is like stars, Niki. We're dead, dead for thousands of years, but to them," he points up, "we still shine. It'll take light years for them to realize they are staring at just a memory."

She tries to take a step back, but she's rooted where she stands. "Wilbur," she weeps. "How long have you been down here?"

He laughs.

(There was a time it made Niki's heart stop. It still does, but for different reasons now)

"Eleven years."

Niki covers her mouth to stifle a broken cry. She was paralyzed before but now, with fear pumping through her veins, she runs. Fear is a more dependent motivator than strength or bravery could ever be, for fear, unlike any other heroic emotion, can't be beaten out of you. Can't be threatened out of you by a friend on your birthday as you try to stop him from pressing a button. Fear only grows, like a weed, you can try to get rid of it all you want, but it multiplies the more you struggle.

She finally gets to the exit, nearly throwing herself at it, only to find a stone wall staring back at her. It's been cemented shut.

She's trapped.

(She is in a cage, a zoo animal for Manburg citizens to point and laugh at. It is cramped, it is humiliating, and it is her home, her everything in wake of becoming nothing to people she once considered friends, Schlatt tells her. Until Quackity frees her. But there is no one to free her now. Except herself)

She pulls up her sleeves and begins mining with her bare hands.

She's been torn apart before, but at least it was quick. This, the way her flesh slowly peels off at each scratch is its own kind of torture. Not because it's painful, but the torture in knowing what you're willing to do to yourself just to see the sky again.

She keeps going.

(She does not throw up at the sight of chunks of flesh dangling where nail once was because she is a soldier and she has seen worse. Seen a child trapped in a box screaming for help and she's unfortunate enough to have a seat in the splash zone. Helped patch up Ponk's wound where his arm should be, afraid she might lose him to blood loss because whoever chopped his arm off didn't cut across the joint to avoid the bone and therefore had to hack again and again and again to get through the bone. Sewed Fundy's head back together from when Schlatt beat him over the scalp with a beer bottle before dying in the caravan; it took a couple of hours to finish because his fur made it hard to spot the bits of glass sticking out his skin. This is not the first or last time she will wash blood off her clothes, she just has to hope it will continue to be someone else's and not her own)

Wilbur comes up beside her. He doesn't even try to stop her, much less flinch at all the red on the wall. "Don't worry, you'll get used to it. Tommy did."

She snaps her head to him, her clawing ceasing. "Tommy was here?"

He nods. "Arrived a few years ago. I have to admit, when a space opened up here I thought it would be him again, not you. Not that I'm complaining. Don't get me wrong he's a good kid but, well, you know how Tommy gets."

(Everyone you've ever hated, everyone you've ever sworn to end; Schlatt, Tommy, and although you do not hate Wilbur or Jack you're relationship with them is complicated because they remind you of when you spiraled, you lot are all connected now, bound together from sharing the similar experience of death. She can never separate herself from them. Will be rever grouped in with the people she can't stand most)

"How long was Tommy here for?" She asks softly.

Wilbur clicks his tongue. "Two months I think."

She closes her eyes.

(She wanted to look deep into the crater Tubbo's nuke made and confuse Tommy's charcoal, burnt body for obsidian. She wanted to catch Tommy's choked last breaths in a bottle and get drunk on it every night. She wanted to leave spruce wood on his grave as a sort of flag marking her latest conquest. She wanted to stop thinking that if Wilbur was wrong for believing in Tommy then that means he might have been wrong for believing in her)

She doesn't want Tommy dead anymore and although they're still not friends even she wouldn't wish this on him.

"Two months," she says, and it sinks in.

Is that how long she'll have to wait until someone comes looking for her?

That is if someone even cares to look.

(Puffy doesn't respond to any of her messages after their first date. She turns Jack away when he tries to pull her back into the obsession of caving Tommy's head in. Everyone grieving L'manburg remembers her setting L'mantree aflame. Anyone in the Eggpire is too far gone to even care about themselves. She doesn't have a Tubbo. Isn't anyone's disk. She's just Niki, forgotten, ignored Niki, the first ghost of the server before Ghostbur. Why spare a glance at someone transparent? Someone, not all there?)

No one will come for her.

Wilbur cracks his fingers, and Niki winces, for her bones are still on flesh display and slowly repairing. "Well, now that we've played twenty questions let's move on to a new game. You up for some solitaire?"

She rises to her feet and numbly nods. She might as well have something to do to, to try and prevent the inevitable insanity with a card game.

Might as well accept her fate.

Wilbur reaches into his pocket and pulls out the cards. He sits down on the ground. "Sorry," he says. "I'd offer we play on a table but there are no tables in a train station and I doubt your bakery has one either." He hands her half of the deck. "Help me set it up."

But Niki doesn't take them, for she's focused on the word table because -

(There's a table, a weird table, made up of this block she's never seen before. It's sponge-like, with a hole on top decorated by a blueish-green frame, and she's about to ask where they found it when Phil suddenly apologizes for exploding her bakery. At her shocked expression, he explains he'd like to air out all possible tensions before starting their first-ever official Syndicate meeting so that no past grievances keep them from working as an effective team. Techno merely snorts, saying it's not their fault her bakery was on government land, and Phil responds by shooting him a glare fit for his title as Angel of Death. She'd have laughed, she'd have cried because such a look was once how Phil got Wil to eat his vegetables if it weren't for the fact she tells them they have nothing to apologize for. Tells them she left the oven on the day before the attack and by next sunrise, it was already burnt to the ground. Ranboo doesn't blink once from where he sits across from her as she talks. She sees in his eyes that day, how her laughs and her wails blend in with the chaos around her, as if it belongs there, as if she is one with it. And maybe she is, for the fire that consumes her bakery grows and grows and grows but Niki just gets smaller and smaller and smaller as if she has to sacrifice bits of herself to keep the fire going. Perhaps she is, for every monster requires an offering, and her bakery is that. A representative of the old her burning alive to make room for the new, merciless, unhinged her. Good. She looks down at the flint and steel in her hand and in the reflection of the metal she sees a boy with mismatched eyes standing behind her, staring. And then he takes out his book and writes. It feels like Ranboo has placed a noose around her neck. The memory fades and she holds her breath. She waits for him to say something, to call out her lie. This time, Ranboo undoes the knot. He looks away)

Because she needs to tell Ranboo she appreciated his silence that day. Needs to joke about how all this snow reminds her of an ice cream shop and watch Ranboo nervously laugh as she lightheartedly punches him on the shoulder.

Because she needs to know how that story Phil was telling her about his adventures with Techno on another server, something about an Antarctic Empire, ends. Needs to feed the crows with him to make sure he doesn't stare at their wings for too long.

Because she needs to braid Techno's hair one last time while they talk about how pink is clearly the superior hair color. Needs to thank Techno for giving her these becauses, for they wouldn't exist in the first place had he not offered her a place in the Syndicate.

Ironically enough, she always knew she'd die before she could give back all that she owed them. But only because what she owed them was too long a list, too difficult to be expressed in any way that captured what they deserved.

(Somewhere, in a snow biome, there is a family. They're different from each other, too different at times, and yet Ranboo and Techno could wear each other crowns, each fitting perfectly on their heads and no one would know of the switch, except for Phil of course. Right now they're probably looking at their comms around the dinner table, confused by the last message. 'Nihachu fell from a high place.' They aren't worried. Not yet. But in a couple of days, months for her, they'll start to pace. Phil will stand at the edge of the roof, ready to step off, only to remember he doesn't have wings, can't look for her high up in the sky like he used to when she was a kid. Ranboo will force himself through experiments, lose sleep, break himself in, trying to learn how to teleport so as to cover ground faster in the search, to do more than just let his powers go to waste when they could be what brings her home. Techno will grab her rainbow sweater and put it to Steve's snout, but the trail will go cold every time until eventually all of Niki's clothes don't smell like her anymore. They'll do this every day. Nothing will change but their hope, dwindling away each day. So will they just stare at that last message, her unintentional goodbye, looking for some sort of explanation? For some secret message? Some coordinates until they go mad? They won't think she's dead until they've found a body. Won't stop looking, won't leave a corner of the server untouched. Won't stop till they have something to bury)

She can't do that to them.

She slaps the cards out of Wilbur's hands.

"No," she growls, trying to sound tough and less like a kid throwing a tantrum. Perhaps slapping the cards away was not the best start. "I am not going to waste my time playing Solitaire when I could be spending it finding a way back home. And I will if it's the last thing I do."

Wilbur frowns. Niki has the inkling suspicion it has more to do with the cards being all scattered about than from her declaration. "There is no 'last thing I do anymore.' You dying was the last thing you'll ever do. All you have now is this. This is your forever. Our forever."

She turns away from him, just for a second. Away from the sight of his furrowed brows and the crinkles in the space between them where her index finger would go to poke as she teased him. Away from the scrunch of his nose she would joke made him and Techno finally look like twins. Because despite everything, despite all the months that have settled into their bones since the last they saw each other and the wars they've fought on land and in their minds, it's still Wilbur's face. But only in the physical sense. After that, he stops being her Wilbur.

This would be so much easier if his face had physically morphed into a stranger, to prove to her how much he's changed, what he's become over the months, is not all in her head.

Somehow, she finds a way to start.

"You know, not too long ago I'd have stayed with you here. I wouldn't have even put up a fight. I'd have just laid down, closed my eyes, and let the vines on these walls grow over my body until I was just moss. I was… I was so tired, Wilbur. A part of me always will be. I understood. I finally got why you acted the way you did. There was a time I was on half a heart and instead of eating I would - "

Her body begins to shake so hard she almost expects to look down and she cracks in the ground from an incoming earthquake. The only cracks see she's are her own.

She can't say it. Not like that. Not yet.

" - I would respawn to restock the hunger bar," Niki chokes out instead.

(She respawns with dried blood on the back of her head and bones still rattling from the fall. Along her jutting spine, in an almost perfectly straight line that could be confused for an unkempt path lost to weeds and drought, are bruises. She doesn't feel them. All she feels is the urge to do it again)

She blinks and her hand is in her hair, looking for the bump. She pulls her hand away as if it's a hot furnace. "But I can't stay. Things have changed. I've changed. This is not the first time something dark has tried to consume me, but I can't let it win this time. I can't let this place turn me numb and unhinged, or worse, content. Not when I have people to go home to. Not when - "

She looks down at her hand, the one that traced her scalp, and sees it has clenched into a fist.

(At the count of three, Niki throws rock. She groans as she notices all the other hands make paper. Ranboo and Techno exhale as if the losing sentence wasn't shoveling the front lawn, but death. Or worse, going shopping with Phil for a refrigerator to put in the Syndicate meeting room. Ranboo lost that one. Niki points at Techno's hooves and says it's cheating since they can't ever tell which shape he chooses. She demands a rematch with the same tone one uses to declare war. A few minutes later, they're shouting, going over the rules of rock, paper, scissors, and they only stop when Phil comes home and pulls out the dad voice. They begrudgingly agree to do a rematch another time, once they've cooled down. That was yesterday)

She holds her fist close to her heart. The hand was never her rock, it was always three men in a snowy cabin, handing her a mug of hot cocoa. "Not when I have a lawn to shovel."

Silence.

Then, Wilbur sighs. "You know," he says. He places his arms behind him and leans back to get a better look at her. Somehow, even on the ground, he looks to hold all the power. "Years ago your determination would have been a sight for sore eyes, but here's a reality check. I've been here for almost a dozen years. Eleven years of letting the passing train rip right through me in the hopes it would send me to another layer of hell or maybe propel, heck, even drag my body to the next station. But every time I'd wake up back in the train station as if nothing had happened. Like my body breaking under the wheels was nothing."

He is an avalanche, growing and picking up speed with each word, and Niki realizes, too little too late, she's about to be buried alive. She tries to step back, but Wilbur is up quick and approaching. "There is no escape. The limbo is our stage and we have our lines, our cues, but we do not have a curtain call. We just keep going and going, an endless loop. You can't not play your part. It won't let you."

"I have to at least try," she says.

"Why? What's the point? They'll never know you tried."

Her fear turns to disgust. "Is that why you think I'll try? For the sole reason that one day they'll know what I've done for them? That's far from the truth."

(People built statues of Tommy, for all he's done, for all the influence he had on this server. Niki knows they will not give her the same treatment. But that's fine, more than fine. All she needs is a grave in the snow, beside a little cabin)

She didn't want to look at Wilbur's face before, but now, glaring at him straight on, all she sees staring back is Phil.

The day they found out Wilbur didn't inherit Phil's immortality was the day Phil looked like he should, centuries-old instead of thirty-three, the age when angels stop physically aging. Niki will never forget how deep the lines on Phil's face ran. They might as well have been cracks. And maybe it was, for Phil was breaking as he held his dying son - not dying now, but for an immortal, every second a mortal breathes is just inevitable death - in his arms.

But what still haunts Niki the most after all these years are his eyes. They carried the weight of the world in them. She could feel it, even now, pressing down on her shoulders. All the wars, the fall of cities, the birth of them, children with big smiles and even bigger graves.

Niki was not a soldier yet. She was just a nine-year-old girl who wanted to sleep over at her best friend's house.

She threw up in their sink and they mistook it as her reaction to the news. She didn't correct them.

The only reason she slept easy that night was from the knowledge she would never see those eyes on Wilbur's face. And yet, lo and behold, here it is, like a punch to the gut.

Except now, Niki has had time to numb herself to it. It's hard to get surprised by such a dead look when it's on the face of your roommate.

(Phil's screech - no, not a screech, a caw, high pitched and grief-stricken - is like an alarm clock. Except, instead of Niki waking up to the rising sun outside her window, it's to moonlight and blinking stars. This is the fifth time this month she's met Ranboo and Techno outside Phil's cabin, armed to the teeth, ready for war. The door creaks open, loudly, but they don't wince, for they know it won't wake him. Nothing really does when he's in this state, except for one thing. Techno holds him down and it's weird, will always be weird, to see Techno use such force, such retaliation, on Phil of all people, and then Phil nearly throws Techno through the wall with just a brush of his fingers, and she remembers it's necessary. This isn't Phil they're dealing with, it's the Angel of Death. It takes a while until Techno can get all of the Angel's limbs down, but even then they know it won't last long, and that's when Niki throws a slowness potion on him. Ranboo, meanwhile, turns around all the photos of Wilbur in the room, a safe distance away. They told him it's best he handles that since he's built like a stick, putting him anywhere near a powerful avian would be an accident waiting to happen. It definitely has nothing to do with them freezing up whenever they see Wilbur's smiling face, all happy, and so very alive. Phil's movements turn sluggish as the potion kicks in and Niki holds his face, murmurs soft words, and Techno gives his own weird, but comforting, comments. Something about how Phil can't afford to lose sleeping beauty to these night terrors, what with his old age. Niki snorts. Phil's eyes open immediately. Phil sucks in a sharp breath, like he's forgotten how to breathe, his fist clenching and unclenching. The eyes are back. Based on Techno's face Niki knows then she's not the only person that has seen them. They look at each other, nod, and hold him as he cries. They don't need to ask. There's only one person that could cause such a look. They force Ranboo, who is awkwardly standing to the side, to join. Eventually, they break apart, and Techno coughs. He says he hates them for making this all emotional and bans such an awkward event from ever happening again. And yet, when Phil keeps waking up with eyes too dark around the corners, Techno is there. And so is she and Ranboo)

She will not be the reason Phil's eyes age another year.

"It's about Phil, Techno, and Ranboo deserving someone who will never stop trying to find their way back to them," she says, with conviction. "I'm sorry you're too twisted to see not all actions stem from reward or acknowledgment."

She expects a laugh, a glimpse at his forked tongue spewing words so sweet she could use them as sugar in her desserts, only to take a bite and realize it was salt all along. But what she gets is silence. The type of silence before a storm.

"Phil?" Wilbur whispers.

Niki closes her eyes.

She should have never said their names.

She also should have never opened her eyes again, because Wilbur is looking more like Phil each second. Not because of the eyes. No, worse. Because she sees a boy, a boy with his arms spread open wide and flapping about in an attempt at mimicking his father's wings, and they're both running around in circles in the backyard as he tells her how she'll never have to walk anywhere ever again. He'll carry her when she's tired, when she's not tired, whenever she wants wherever she wants. They stop running around in circles flapping their arms when too much time has passed and his wings still haven't grown in, but the acceptance that it never would did.

She blinks and the memory is gone. Slipping through her fingers like sand.

"How is he?" Wilbur says. His voice wavers a bit. He hides it quickly with a cough, but Niki catches it. Niki thought she always would.

(But then a button was pressed and she realized just how untrue that was)

Niki hesitates. She thinks about the night terrors again. She almost mentions them but falters as she remembers Ranboo telling her how it was Phil who gave him a place to stay after L'manburg was blown up for the last time. How as Technoblade hibernates there's a blanket over his shoulders that wasn't there before and a stick missing from the fireplace. How he always places Niki's plate of breakfast down before the others, as if he knows of her first canon death.

He is a kind man, but that is not why he does these things.

"He misses being a father," she settles on.

Wilbur's shoulders slump. Somewhere, in a different life, Niki's hand is there, squeezing comfortingly. "Is he… is he mad at me?"

"No." She answers quickly. "He's just tired, Wilbur. We all are."

Wilbur laughs. It sounds defeated. Mournful. "Understatement of the fucking year."

He slumps against the wall and Niki is sure it's the only thing keeping Wilbur on his feet. His head hits the smooth stone when he suddenly throws his head back and laughs. Niki doesn't know if she winces from the loud crack the impact makes or from the shrill, unhinged laugh.

"I told him to kill me," Wilbur chuckles. His eyes are blinking rapidly. "I told him to fucking kill me."

(The diamond sword has collected dust. Sometimes, everyone jokes, Phil looks like he has to. Playful teasing about how he's a walking antique that should be displayed in a museum. Phil always laughs them off. But it's moments when he stands too still, alone in his thoughts for too long, that Niki wants to put him behind glass with signs that say 'do not touch,' because all it takes is one gust of wind for an artifact to shatter. But that is no way to live and Phil is not so easily breakable. Worn down a bit, rusted from the loss throughout the eons, yes -  who hasn't on this forsaken server? -  but not breakable)

Niki thinks she might throw up. "I know."

Wilbur looks at her. His eyes are red, but there are no tears. "You said you understood me. You get why I had to ask him to do it."

"Wilbur - "

" - And so you also understand why you have to stay here."

"What?"

"We've changed Niki," Wilbur starts. "For the worse. Don't you feel it? How that server has destroyed every cell in our body? A slow painful death eating us from the inside out until we've just withered away into someone new, someone unrecognizable?"

(Niki feels she's in a never-ending house of mirrors. Constantly encircled by reflections that are her and not her staring back, each representing different points in her life. Some are unrecognizable, stretched, or squished beyond identification, like a fuzzy memory of a girl carrying a backpack, skipping down a path she was told by a best friend would lead to a nation with yellow and black walls. Some are too terrifying, demonizing her features, giving her slits for eyes and claws for nails holding flint and steel over TNT. All of them she wants to smash)

Wilbur either ignores the horrified expression on her face or doesn't see it. "We killed our old selves as a sacrifice, an offering, to the monster we saw lurking in the edges of our mind. And once you let the monster in there's no going back. All we know from then on is to destroy, to rip apart all we once held dear with no remorse until there's just ash and dust. We thrive, no, revel in it."

(Nemesis, she names herself. Goddess of divine retribution and revenge. Maybe that's who Niki sacrifices herself to. Why she felt such an attachment to the name. A remorseless Goddess said to have led Narcissus to a pool, knowing full well he'd be too captivated to leave his reflection for food or warmth. He died there. It's no coincidence a few weeks before she lived the story herself, leading Tommy to his death in the form of a hot blast of air at the speed of light and seeing it as justice)

"I'm not having this conversation with you," she says, voice shaking. She whirls around, nearly tripping over her feet, fully willing to ignore him as she looks for an exit.

But his next words make her go still.

"Phil didn't know what I'd become. That's why he had to be the one to do it."

She winces. "Don't."

"He didn't even pull out the sword, his arms were too busy holding me, holding me, as if the shape of me still fit against his chest even though I felt so hollow, so much thinner - "

"Wilbur - "

" - he stroked my hair too. Even though it was dirty and unkempt and a mess like everything else about me and I'm pretty sure his fingers got stuck a few times he just wouldn't stop untangling each knot with such care and precision that I remembered my last thought being - "

"Wilbur - "

" - could he have brushed away all the knots and twists in my soul like this? Cleaned me up on the inside like he's doing on the outside? I thought I went crying, Niki. Maybe I did. I'll never know because all I felt was his tears ricocheting on my face - "  

"Stop - "

" - he tries to wipe them off. He's cursing at himself, apologizing profusely through hiccuping sobs and, and I don't understand why he's so sorry when it feels like, like when he'd lick his fingers and scrub the grimes of our faces after we played outside too long. Do you remember that Niki - "

"I don't wanna - "

" - because I do. We'd screech so loud, saying it was disgusting and unsanitary as we slapped his hand away and ran, but he'd always catch us a second later because of his wings. I don't wanna run away this time. I'm relishing it, craving every stroke because I'm starting to go cold - "

"Please - "

" - and I wish you weren't teleported here. I wish you had died instead - "  

"Wil - "

" - so you would know, so we could relate to what it feels like for the limbo to claim you. To mark you. It's like, it's like being mutilated over and over again. A mallet to your bones, a hole in your brain, everything from your skin to your tendons unraveling before you - "

"Wil listen - "

" - spilling out and about like confetti, and you, you are confetti! You're shredded pieces, everywhere and nowhere all at once, and just as the mangling begins it stops, replaced by the limbo trying to put you, no, force you back together again. It's the same sensation, but in reverse, almost a loop, a tunnel with no light at the end, and all you can do is scream  - "

"WILBUR SHUT UP AND LISTEN TO ME!"

Something shatters

Wilbur falls silent.

Niki looks down. There is a puddle, slowly growing at her feet. She looks to her left. Her hand has punched through the aquarium. Blood trickles down her hand, some get over the glass. She doesn't pull her hand away.

"You never listen," she mumbles, but it seems so loud to her ears. "No one does. No one wants to. I talk and I talk and I talk and yet no response. Not even from the wind. I am a voice box stuck on rewind, repeating myself as life moves on without me."

Niki can hear her voice ring down the bakery, bouncing around with nowhere to settle. Until it does, in Niki's chest, rattling, crackling like a fuse has been lit, and perhaps it has, for her anger feels sizzling. "You used to always say how words were powerful. How they could stop wars, how they could build nations." She lets out a laugh. It burns her throat. "But what would I know?! You and everyone else never gave me a chance to use my voice! Always talking over me whatever chance you could. Even before Pogtopia you walked all over me! Even when I was screaming at top of my lungs you'd - "  

She gasps. The glass presses deeper into her skin as her hand trembles. She does not feel it. "Oh primes, oh primes Wil, didn't you hear my screams? I came here screaming, Wil. I, I do know what it feels like for the void to take you. I still feel it, even now, why, why do I still feel it - "

Wilbur staggers to his feet, so quick he promptly falls. He catches himself halfway on Niki's wrist.

His hand scratches on the glass. He doesn't even flinch. Their blood mixes.

(They are one)

He doesn't even grip too tight, and yet it hurts. Stings. "You do understand," he grins. Wide, too wide for his face, that she almost expects his nose and eyes to sink into his skin to make more room. "You do, you do oh thank primes. I'm not alone in this. I've been alone for so long but now, now you're here and you understand! Oh, Niki, I'm so happy you're here."

"You're… happy, I'm here?" She mutters. "You're happy I'm dead?"

He nods frantically. "It's more than that Niki," he says. "DreamXD, whoever that man is, he's my hero for sending you here."

(Parallels between Wilbur and Dream and her and now Wilbur and Dream and DreamXD no no no she can't be them she can't she can't she won't she won't - )

"You don't mean it," she cries. "You don't mean that Wil. Say you don't mean it."

The grin, somehow, becomes wider. She realizes then his eyes don't have to disappear. They're already gone. Replaced by a black hole, too dark in the corners and its gravitational pull making it hard to look away even though she knows staring at it too long will get her sucked into an endless void.

He leans in close like he's sharing a secret. "I only wish he had sent you here sooner."

(Wilbur's life, Niki is realizing, is like a house of mirrors too. Except Wilbur has smashed every mirror. No, actually, not true. Niki sees, if she squints, that Wilbur has abandoned the sledgehammer and is observing a still intact mirror. He didn't keep the mirror depicting a little boy sitting on the steps of a home, their home, trying to play a song and failing because the guitar is too big for his body, but he refuses to buy a smaller one because "this is my Dad's guitar Niki! So, therefore, it's by default the best guitar in the world". Or the one of a father panting heavily on a couch, cursing his human legs while Niki is doubled over laughing because there is a baby fox is running on all fours around the house at 45 miles per hour who doesn't want to be put to bed. Nor the one of a leader, handing out purpose and meaning in the form of a blue and white uniform with a soft smile. No, it's the one of a man who's just pressed a button. Who long before L'manburg's destruction, always felt like he was breathing in smoke, but now kept warm by the ash and dust of his nation flying up to the red sky, it feels - for the first time in a long time - easier to breathe. Niki can't believe he didn't destroy it. He's… preserving it. Why is he preserving this version of himself of all things?)

foolish girl with dreams for a better nation, better server, better future, too much better somethings, you've ruined reality for no one but yourself. think for once about what is and not what was or could have been. he is different. changed for the worse. he's preserving it because he doesn't care about you. can't you see how happy he is over your death? how there's light in his eyes for the first time over yours being snuffed out? how he shows no sympathy in your entrapment here, forever away from Techno, Phil, and Ranboo because it benefits him. so give in and fight fight fight fight

She sees red.

Her fist collides with Wilbur's nose.

She doesn't even wait to hear the crack before she's already reeling back her arm for the next hit.

This time she aims for the jaw. She feels something split. It could be Wilbur's lip or bone. Maybe her mind. She doesn't know and she doesn't care.

What she does know is how familiar this is, having something break under her knuckles. It's easy, familiar even, throwing punch after punch, like some sort of autopilot response. Perhaps it is, for every punch is instinctive, out of body almost. No longer is there a before in the blows, only an after.

Except, that's not true. Not entirely. Because Niki is realizing why there is no before. Because before each blow there is always a struggle from your opponent. Flailing limbs trying to make contact with something, choked wheezes, an attempt to curl into a ball, and, sometimes, begging.

Wilbur does none of that. He's silent the whole time.

It's almost like he takes it willingly.

clever girl with hands too bruised, too scarred, too violent to ever be held so gently. a finger trained to pull the trigger is not meant to bear a promise ring. who's fault do you think that is? you've held back for so long, don't stop now. so give in and get revenge revenge revenge revenge

A swing at his eye. A swift kick to the ribs. A fistful of his hair so tight she could yank his scalp off if she twisted her wrist just so.

It's all a flurry of movements really, too fast for even her own eyes to catch. Half of the time she's lost on where the hits land, totally dependent on wherever the blood leaks the most and the bruises that weren't there a second ago to tell her. Eventually, the damage starts to blur, too much of his face has swelled up to spot any new marks and too many limbs bend at weird angles to differentiate what is and isn't broken, so she stops trying to guess.

Which is why she doesn't know which strike finally gets Wilbur to fall, all she knows is that he does. He doesn't even sway. One second he's on his feet and the next he's on his back.

It's kinda pathetic really, that this was her general.

For a second he's still, too still, and then he spits out a tooth. He licks his gums with a grimace, looking for the gap before finally speaking.

"I see Technoblade's been training you. Do you feel better now?"

clever girl who's seen her fair share of men with livewire tongues, spitting rogue sparks at your skin in the form of harsh words to quiet you down. do not be silenced once more. you let him speak before and it cost you a nation. this time silence him, and I will secure you a limbo without him. so give in and maim maim maim maim

She screams. She thinks she does. It's hard to tell over the deep reverberated banging of Wilbur's head against the stone floor.

The first slam simply causes blood to trickle down his forehead.

The second one caves in the front of his scalp.

The third one he's unrecognizable.

The fourth one there's nothing left to bash.

She keeps going anyway.

"Shut up," she pants between each crack and occasional splat. "Shut up shut up shut up shut up SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP."

Wilbur tries to say something. All that comes out is a gurgle, wet and sharp and loud. So very loud. And it keeps going, stringing along and along and along longer than the large chunks of skin and brain on the pavement. It shouldn't be possible, his mouth, along with everything else, is practically gone. Nothing but a small pit inside a bigger pit.

Yet it continues, getting increasingly louder in pitch.

And then she gets it.

He's scared.

clever girl of never-ending war zones, jumping from one horror to the next. this is the last one. and I know that's been said before but you can trust me. just end it and you can finally rest. wouldn't that be nice? so give in and kill kill kill kill kill

She smiles. It hurts her face.

She picks his head up from the ground one last time. She's humming, like a lullaby. Maybe it is. She's putting the baby to sleep. She knows he can't die again, but wherever he goes after this, if the limbo keeps its promise, it can't be pretty.

"I said," she laughs. "Shut up."

She brings his head down.

She blinks.

Her empty hand meets black stone slabs.

"Niki?"

She looks up and immediately regrets it. Everything is too bright, scorching, a burning gaze on every inch of her skin, but what really hurts are her eyes. She thinks they're sizzling, like actually sizzling, because her sclera feels as if it's bubbling and her iris is definitely melting into her brain and there are so many spots dancing behind her eyelids.

And then the voice, soft and familiar, speak's again.

"Do you have your stuff?"

It takes a while, and a lot of blinking, but her eyes eventually readjust.

She gasps.

The first thing she processes isn't that George and DreamXD stand just a few feet away or that it was George speaking. No, it was how absurdly colorful, everything was.

Here there was life. Life. It was like she poked her head through a kaleidoscope, what with how the specks of a rainbow illuminated itself in the clear blue water of the fountain and the sight of shimmering white quartz glistening under the sunbeams that poured through the purple-tinted windows. No longer was everything dulled around the corners and drained at the center like anything in her dreadful, cramped space of a bakery she shared with -

Oh primes.

Her bakery.

This isn't her bakery. This is Church Prime.

"She's back," DreamXD exclaims. He turns to George, bouncing on his heels excitedly as if expecting some sort of reward, but George pays him no mind/ He's too busy looking at Niki, or, more so, through her.

"What happened?" He asks.

She opens her mouth, then slams it shut.

She's alive. Dear primes, she's alive and she's back and she should be happy, cheering, jumping up and down to feel the livelihood ache in her bones but…

She looks back down at the floor. The floor should be covered in blood. Wilbur's blood, and his bits of flesh and tissue and muscle and -

Oh primes. What has she done?

Or better yet, what didn't she do?

"George," she whimpers. "I don't know what's going on. I, I don't know what's going on here."

She hopes it was her imagination. It had to have been. Otherwise, she hosted Wilbur's head up by the splits of his hair, pushed down as hard as she could and -

She wouldn't. She couldn't, not anymore at least. She left that side of herself in a gate full of slaughtered chickens as Jack demanded they try and kill Tommy again. That side of her is as dead as those chickens.

Right?

She prays so, for this is a church after all, and that means prayers have to be answered here. They have to come true. They have to.

There's a smile in DreamXD's voice when he speaks again as if he knows how much this torments her. "I sent her to hell and then I brought her back."

No.

She sobs. She looks down at her hands. Their bear and yet they feel so heavy. As if the ghost of Wilbur's blood and gore is still there, a new thick-coated layer of skin.

She tortured him. Broke him brick by brick again and again and again even as he tried to beg. Her best friend, her general, her family, begging at her feet, and she kept going, would have kept going too, with an ear-splitting grin, like it was some sort of game.

And it had felt so good to finally get a checkmate.

Wilbur is not a demon. He's just seen too much in too little time. Too much pressure on too little shoulders. Too tired to be all there. It's not an excuse for all the pain he's caused, far from it, but it shows his actions didn't come from a place of malice, but rather a cry for help. Niki knows this, she gets it, and she'll say it time and time again. But all she could think about at that moment, before the final strike, was how happy Wilbur was about her death. He deserved a piece of her mind, but not like that. Never like that.  

What is wrong with her?

No, no it wasn't her. It was that place, that voice. It was a parasite, burrowing deep within her brain and planting itself in the center, telling her what to do and what to say. Telling her to slaughter left and right. It was so loud, rattling around in her head and echoing like war drums. She couldn't just ignore it, it was too much. So, no, she is free of guilt, free of responsibility, hands all clean.

But she knows that at the end of the day the host still needs to be somewhat conscious for the parasite to thrive.

Oh primes. Is this what Techno deals with every day?

Then, she jumps to her feet.

Techno, Phil, and Ranboo.

It's coming back now, that memory of fury in her eyes, that fire in her voice as she told Wil she had people to go back to. How she was willing to claw her fingers down to bone to make an exit. But that voice, that stupid stupid voice, it told her she could rest, could get revenge, and against her better judgment she listened. It caught her at a moment of weakness, Wilbur's words of memory lane, of Phil, of everything that came before and after his death, she was at a low point. And like a moth to a flame, she was there one moment and gone the next. Back to the old her.

She thought she had left that version of herself behind when she joined the Syndicate. She was so sure she was getting better with Techno, Phil, and Ranboo around.

But all it took was one voice to ruin all her progress. 

Her chest constricts and her head feels heavy. 

She needs to find them. She needs to tell them what she saw. She needs to tell Phil. She needs… she needs…

She just needs them.

"What did you see?" George says, snapping her out of her thoughts.

This time, her mouth has no problem moving. "George," she starts, voice trembling. "I have seen things. I... I... I have seen things. I don't know what's going on here but I don't know if I should - "  

Niki gulps. It's getting so hard to breathe. She should feel thankful that she can breathe in the first place, but every inhale stings as her lungs try to remember to do a motion so foreign to her.

How long has she been down there?

She doesn't want to know.

She just wants to go home.

She walks away, backward, from the two, eyes fixated tightly on them and barely blinking. She remembers the last time she let her guard down around DreamXD. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry George. Good luck with him but I - "

She doesn't finish, because she's already out the door. She wants to run, but she's so sure her lungs would explode at the first push forward of her heel. So she walks.

And walks.

The world walks with her, with each rotation. As if they’re friends taking a stroll. As if it hadn’t cracked open and swallowed her whole, chewed up everything good in her and spat her out when she turned bitter. Returned her back to a world that didn’t change one bit while she was gone, despite her herself changing so much. 

It’s like what happened to her didn’t happen at all. 

And then she realizes a horrible thing. 

Everyone on this server is going to see today as a normal day. 

Is it bad that a part of Niki wishes something like the Green Festival could happen right now, so that they could all feel the monstrosity of today?

She stands still. Stationary, like this Earth wants her to be. She thinks she could do it, stay like this forever. She feels numb enough. 

Somewhere above, a crow caws. 

She burst into tears.

TITLE: come back, be here.

Fandom: Miraculous Ladybug Ship: The Love Square - Mainly Adrinette and Marichat Rating: T [ AO3 ]

Summary: 

It starts to sink in that she would at least see Adrien back in Paris, but she would never see Chat Noir again.

It starts to sink in that though he would never see Ladybug again, he would at least see Marinette back in Paris.

And... Well...Oh.(or in which thoughts are thunk, feelings are felt, realisations are realised and epiphanies (2) are had)

Today should be Her Blond Boys Left Her Day.

Adrien was gone, but she was going to see him back in Paris. Yes, she wished he wasn’t gone, that he was here with her, reliving all those magical moments again, but he was gone. She had watched as his car had driven away in the rain, and through the tightnes in her chest, all she could think was that at least she would see him again.

She would probably never see Chat again.

Marinette didn’t think she was breathing. Her chest ached, and her eyes were burning as her body had frozen with indecision. She had wanted to chase after him, grab him by his stupid tail, pull him back and ask him how dare he because really, how dare he leave her; it was supposed to be him and her against the world.

And now she was alone.

How was she supposed to do this without him?

The tears finally fell as she turned to her side to bury her face in the pillow. She could feel Tikki curled up on the side of her neck, and Plagg was there too, restlessly twitching in her hair. It only served to cause more tears as she felt the sob building in the back of her throat; here she thought she was all cried out.

Plagg didn’t belong here, he belonged with Chat , wherever he was. How was she supposed to find a new Chat Noir? She didn’t want a new Chat Noir. She wanted the one with shiny blond hair that turned silver in the moonlight, who kept punning incessantly, with that stupid smug smirk on his face.

And she’d told him she didn’t trust him.

Well, in that moment, she hadn’t, and she was angry, not to mention, scared about the happenings in Paris. She had left because she needed to cool off before talking to him again, and she had intended to talk to him again! They were supposed to talk it out, come up with a better way of communication so there wouldn’t be a repeat of this. How could he have thought she didn’t want him anymore!

Maybe she’d been a bad partner. It was true that she tended to lose her head every once in a while. But she hadn’t meant it that way and he did not know that.

Marinette moved in agitation, and felt a soft purr against her cheek. “It’s okay, baby bug.”

“No, it’s not,” she sniffed, turning to the side to see Plagg curled up in front of her face on the pillow. “I let him down. Plagg, I don’t want another partner.”

“I don’t want to find another wielder either,” admitted Plagg quietly.

“I’m so sorry,” she said, voice cracking as Plagg reached out to touch her nose comfortingly.

“We’ll figure something out,” he said quietly.

“I don’t want to if that means finding a new Chat Noir,” she cried.

There were a few minutes of silence as the two of them mulled things over. Plagg was still purring quietly, but as seconds ticked by his purring lost its sombre quality and he almost started to buzz with excitement.

“Well, we’ll just have to find the old one, won’t we?” Plagg said, eyes glowing slightly as he rose off of the pillow.

Marinette blinked, sniffling as she sat up, waking up Tikki as she did so. “Wait, really? I… He renounced you. Shouldn’t we respect his decision?” she asked unsurely.

“Do you want to, Pigtails?” asked Plagg slyly.

“No,” Marinette muttered, leaning into Tikki as she settled on Marinette’s shoulder. “I really just want my kitten back.”

“So we’ll get him back,” said Plagg resolutely.

“ How ?” asked Marinette miserably. “I don’t even know who he is.”

“ I do. And we’ll find him, when we go back to Paris,” said Plagg, arms crossed as he started to scowl. “And knock some sense into him. I will threaten him with a cataclysm if I have to.”

Marinette sighed, reaching over to rub Plagg between his ears. “It’s ultimately his decision, Plagg. If he wants to give this up, I….”

“The kid doesn’t know what he wants,” muttered Plagg. “He has… Feelings of inadequacy, thanks to that no good father of his.”

Marinette sniffled miserably. “I made it worse, didn’t I? I am the worst.”

“Little bug, it’s okay to feel things and react,” said Plag. “What he did was wrong, but sometimes circumstances are beyond control.” He paused, carefully considering his words, shooting a nervous glance at Tikki who had now nestled into Marinette’s hair. “It’s just a downside of not knowing identities.”

“ Plagg- ” started Tikki sternly, but Marinette cut her off.

“He’s not wrong, Tikki,” sighed Marinette. “None of this would have happened if I’d known who he was. If he’d known how to contact me.”

“It’s dangerous,” said Tikki quietly. “You saw the future, we don’t know-”

“Hold on, what now?” demanded Plagg. “What’s this about the future? I knew I sensed your miraculous cease to exist for some time!”

“Bunnix had come when-”

“ Marinette !” cried Tikki. “The less number of people who know about the future, the better it is!”

“Ladybugs shouldn’t hide things from their black cats!” scowled Plagg, glaring at Tikki.

“Some things are too dangerous !” hissed Tikki. “The future is not one to be meddled with-”

Marinette let out a frustrated sigh, tuning out the bickering kwamis as she swung her legs off her bed and walked over to the window. She rested her elbows on the sill, looking out at this strange, foreign city, still teeming with life.

The moon was bright against the inky night sky, and she felt herself smile a little softly at the thought of Adrien, but that didn’t last very long as she felt that familiar sinking feeling in her gut now.

He was gone, she’d had to remind herself again; but… She’d see again in Paris, though. She’d see him again in Paris so she could be a very good friend to him. Maybe even tell him she was sorry for shutting down completely when he looked at her with those expectant, hopeful green eyes. She could tell him that she had wanted to ask him to stay, but her throat was too dry to form words because she’d just lost her partner, and she’d been feeling lost and hopeless.

She could tell him all of that and more, when she saw him again in Paris.

But Chat… She might never see him again.

She would never be able to explain just how much he meant to her. That she only pretended to hate his jokes because it was just the sort of role they’d slipped into, and with time, his jokes were the only thing keeping her from spiralling during the dire circumstances of the increasingly hazardous akuma attacks.

Her heart clenched, and she felt her knees weaken a little. How was she going to handle any of this without him? How was she supposed to face Paris after leaving it undefended, without him by her side?

She’d have to patrol alone now, would have no one to take baked goods to, no one to tease when startled like a cat. No one to hug her and comfort her when she messed up so bad that it felt like the end of the world, the weight of which was becoming too much for her. No one to tell her that it was them against the world.

That was what she should have told him. But instead she had stood there like a coward as she listened to his fading footsteps as he walked away from her, because “secret identities” and when Marinette felt something, she felt it to its full capacity, even if it was fear. What good did that do anyway now, she would probably never see her chaton again.

Hysteria seeped in as she realised she was exactly where she had been when this evening started, trying to come to terms with the fact that he was gone and how had she even relaxed for even a little bit when he was out there, hurting, thinking she hated him?

She loved him so much, and he didn’t even know .

Oh.

Her heart hurt again in full force.

OH.

She loved him, and she would never see him again, and-

“I told you we’ll find him, baby bug,” came Plagg’s quiet voice from next to her face, and her focus was jerked into the present when she felt Plagg’s butt his head against her cheek gently.

“You promise?” she sniffled, hands coming up to catch him in her palms.

“I promise. On every piece of camembert that has ever been made, is being made and will ever be made,” he said solemnly, making Marinette giggle as she gave him scritches.

She turned around to see Tikki hovering with pursed lips, glaring at Plagg, who was nonchalantly ignoring her. She remembered them arguing about identities, but found that at this point, she didn’t really care about what they had concluded right now. That conversation was for later.

“Great!” she said. “We have one little kitty cat to find and love.”

Plagg quirked a brow, as Tikki forgot her annoyance for the moment and gazed at Marinette’s face with wide eyes. The attention had her blushing and she laughed nervously.

“To nobody’s surprise, I’m in love with him.”

Tikki chirped excitedly, while Plagg groaned with fake annoyance. “ Oh , he’s going to be insufferable. ”

Adrien stared at the empty spot on his finger where his miraculous used to rest. Never in his wildest dreams had he thought that this was how it’d end.

He hoped Ladybug wouldn’t be too made at him for breaking his promise of always.  

His eyes were on the empty seat in front of him. Even in the plane his father wouldn’t sit with him; the space was so small but his father was busy with… something. Adrien felt too much of… Well, nothing , to be bothered to ask after him.

The plane suddenly felt stifling as the weight of what giving up his ring would mean, settled on him. This was all his life would be now; no more feeling the wind in his hair, no more vaulting over the buildings and joking around with Ladybug. He was going to go back home to an empty, stone cold room, with no way to get out, no Plagg to whine to.

He was already regretting it, but it had been the right thing to do. He’d made a mistake that could have killed someone, and it was only fair that he sacrificed something in return. While he wished his lady and his freedom weren’t it, it was also all he had.

Sighing, he leaned his against the window of the plane, heart heavy in his chest as he tried to breathe deeply to calm himself. He supposed what was done, was done. Nothing to be done about it, he’d just have to deal with it, trying to feel secure in the knowledge that Ladybug would find someone in whose hands the black cat miraculous would be safe.  

At least he still had school he could go to.

The one thing he still had that hadn’t been stripped away from him.

He felt like he should regret coming to New York, because really, wasn’t that what had started all of this? But he couldn’t find it in his heart to do so, because the fact that he had been there, meant there was someone who cared whether he came or not; so much so that she had faced his father for him.

Marinette .

At least he would see her again.

Whom he had danced with against the freakin’ sky. He had held her in his arms, and embarrassingly enough, breathed her in; cookies and toffee.

Marinette , who had looked at him with the saddest eyes he had ever seen on her as he had gotten into the car. Who he had wished would ask him to stay, as he had looked at her imploringly. He had stood there for a few seconds, wishing she would say something, anything. It shocked him how much he wanted to stay, and how much he was holding his breath for her to say that she wanted him to stay too. He hadn’t even realised how much he was hoping she would ask him to stay till she didn’t.

He couldn’t help but wonder what he would have done if she had asked him to stay. Tried to plead with his father, he supposed, but he knew if she had just asked he would have tried harder. Maybe he would’ve succeeded, maybe he would’ve failed, but he definitely would have tried. If she had said something.

But she hadn’t.

It had disappointed him a lot more than he knew it should. He had kept his phone on him, just in case , she texted something, anything , but she hadn’t.

He gazed out at the full moon, hovering above delicate puffs of gray clouds. His chest felt so hollow, and he yearned for the warmth he had felt when he was dancing with her, so carefree, her hand in his.

He couldn’t help the soft snort that came out of him, at the thought of what Plagg would’ve said if he had said this out loud. Probably would call Marinette his ‘girlfriend’ again and hinted not-so-subtly that he had feelings for her.

“Ugh, all this love sickness is making me sick.”

H-He wasn’t lovesick , Adrien would claim.

Marinette was a friend, a very good friend, who went out of the way to make him happy. And she did. Make him happy, that is. He was at ease when he was with her, and well, while it stung that she was apparently not as much at ease with him as he was with her, it was what it was. She meant a lot to him, his first friend. Shy, but brave. Sweet, but also with her no-nonsense attitude.

She was a good, good friend, who he couldn’t afford to have feelings for because - he remembered that time with her as Chat - she was already in love with someone else. Probably Luka. And he’d seen the soft looks Luka gave her, he knew enough to know that Luka was in love with her and that the feeling was… Well, mutual on her part.

There was Ladybug, who didn’t love him the way he did.

He didn’t want Marinette to be part of that list too.

He… He had Kagami. Who cared about him. He could see himself care about her that way too. He already liked her, she made his heart flutter a little. So there was something there wasn’t there?

So, it didn’t matter.

Besides, he thought bitterly, he probably wouldn’t ever see her again.

But Marinette… He would see her again. She sat behind him.

And she did not care about him that way.

If she did… Well, if she did...

But she didn’t .

He swallowed thickly, chest tight at what he deemed an intrusive thought.

If she did, he could see himself walking with her under an umbrella in the rain, laughing with their hands linked at their elbows. He could see himself on her chaise lounge, watching as she went on about her designs. He could see himself walk with his arm around her shoulder as they had lunch during the winter, her tucked into his side because Marinette was oddly susceptible to cold. He could see both of them staring apprehensively at automatic doors, before laughing at the memory of it all in New York.

...

Oh.  

He groaned, burying his face in his hands.

Turns out Marinette was on that metaphorical list, and he didn’t even remember writing her name down. How had he let this happen?

He wished Plagg was there to make fun of him, he wished he could confide in Ladybug about this shocking discovery, he wished he didn’t feel this way because the idea of what it would mean for his newly blossoming friendship with Marinette was terrifying.

He wished he didn’t feel this way because now he would inevitably hurt Kagami, because she deserved better than this.

He had thought, at first, fixing his relationship with Ladybug while trying to move on with Kagami would be a step in the right direction. He wouldn’t have been wrong about it, especially now that he wouldn’t see Ladybug anymore, and maybe despite the regret and sense of longing of jumping over rooftops, he would’ve gotten over Ladybug seeing her with a new Chat Noir, but with Marinette… He saw her everyday, and she was his closest friend.

This wasn’t fair.

As Paris came into view, he felt anxious in a way he hadn’t in a long time, because that city now held proof of a broken promise and a potential to two broken hearts, one he would probably have a hand in breaking. He was not looking forward to this.

Through a fortunate turn of events, he was teary-eyed with joy as he saw a scowling Plagg flutter through his window, ring in hand.

“Ladybug wants to talk to you. 9 p.m. sharp .”

Plagg’s facade didn’t last much longer, as he flew into Adrien’s face to hug his nose and made him promise to never do that again. Ever. And then, Adrien had admitted that he had finally moved on from Ladybug, at least somewhat, to Marinette.

He wouldn’t understand Plagg’s wail of, ‘Noooo, the cycle is supposed to end, not reverse, how will I deal with more moping’ until at least a two years later.

TIME

ENTERTAINER of the year

BTS

[Time magazine BTS interview ]

It’s late October, and Suga is sitting on a couch strumming a guitar. His feet are bare, his long hair falling over his eyes. He noodles around, testing out chords and muttering softly to himself, silver hoop earrings glinting in the light. “I just started learning a few months ago,” he says. It’s an intimate moment, the kind you’d spend with a new crush in a college dorm room while they confess rock-star ambitions. But Suga is one-seventh of the Korean pop band BTS, which means I’m just one of millions of fans watching, savoring the moment.

BTS isn’t just the biggest K-pop act on the charts. They’ve become the biggest band in the world—full stop. Between releasing multiple albums, breaking every type of record and appearing in these extemporaneous livestreams in 2020, BTS ascended to the zenith of pop stardom. And they did it in a year defined by setbacks, one in which the world hit pause and everyone struggled to maintain their connections. Other celebrities tried to leverage this year’s challenges; most failed. (Remember that star-studded “Imagine” video?) But BTS’s bonds to their international fan base, called ARMY, deepened amid the pandemic, a global racial reckoning and worldwide shutdowns. “There are times when I’m still taken aback by all the unimaginable things that are happening,” Suga tells TIME later. “But I ask myself, Who’s going to do this, if not us?”

Today, K-pop is a multibillion-dollar business, but for decades the gatekeepers of the music world—the Western radio moguls, media outlets and number-crunchers—treated it as a novelty. BTS hits the expected high notes of traditional K-pop: sharp outfits, crisp choreography and dazzling videos. But they’ve matched that superstar shine with a surprising level of honesty about the hard work that goes into it. BTS meets the demands of Top 40’s authenticity era without sacrificing any of the gloss that’s made K-pop a cultural force. It doesn’t hurt that their songs are irresistible: polished confections that are dense with hooks and sit comfortably on any mainstream playlist.

BTS is not the first Korean act to establish a secure foothold in the West, yet their outsize success today is indicative of a sea change in the inner workings of fandom and how music is consumed. From propelling their label to a $7.5 billion IPO valuation to inspiring fans to match their $1 million donation to Black Lives Matter, BTS is a case study in music-industry dominance through human connection. Once Suga masters the guitar, there won’t be much left for them to conquer.

In an alternate universe where COVID-19 didn’t exist, BTS’s 2020 would likely have looked much like the years that came before. The group got its start in 2010, after K-pop mastermind and Big Hit Entertainment founder Bang Si-hyuk recruited RM, 26, from Seoul’s underground rap scene. He was soon joined by Jin, 28; Suga, 27; J-Hope, 26; Jimin, 25; V, 24; and Jung Kook, 23, selected for their dancing, rapping and singing talents.

But unlike their peers, BTS had an antiestablishment streak, both in their activism and in the way they contributed to their songwriting and production—which was then rare in K-pop, although that’s started to change. In BTS’s debut 2013 single, “No More Dream,” they critiqued Korean social pressures, like the high expectations placed on schoolkids. They have been open about their own challenges with mental health and spoken publicly about their support for LGBTQ+ rights. (Same-sex marriage is still not legally recognized in South Korea.) And they’ve modeled a form of gentler, more neutral masculinity, whether dyeing their hair pastel shades or draping their arms lovingly over one another. All this has made them unique not just in K-pop but also in the global pop marketplace.

In March, BTS was prepping for a global tour. Instead, they stayed in Seoul to wait out the pandemic. For the group, life didn’t feel too different: “We always spend 30 days a month together, 10 hours a day,” Jin says. But with their plans upended, they had to pivot. In August, BTS dropped an English-language single, “Dynamite,” that topped the charts in the U.S.—a first for an all-Korean act. With their latest album this year, Be, they’ve become the first band in history to debut a song and album at No. 1 on Billboard’s charts in the same week. “We never expected that we would release another album,” says RM. “Life is a trade-off.”

Their triumphs this year weren’t just about the music. In October, they put on perhaps the biggest virtual ticketed show of all time, selling nearly a million tickets to the two-night event. Their management company went public in Korea, turning Bang into a billionaire and each of the members into millionaires, a rarity in an industry where the spoils often go to the distributors, not the creators. And they were finally rewarded with a Grammy nomination. On YouTube, where their Big Hit Labels is one of the top 10 most subscribed music accounts (with over 13 billion views by this year), their only real competition is themselves, says YouTube’s music-trends manager Kevin Meenan. The “Dynamite” video racked up 101 million views in under 24 hours, a first for the platform. “They’ve beaten all their own records,” he says.

Not that the glory comes without drawbacks: namely, lack of free time. It’s nearing midnight in Seoul in late November, and BTS, sans Suga, who’s recovering from shoulder surgery, are fitting in another interview—this time, just with me. V, Jimin and J-Hope spontaneously burst into song as they discuss Jin’s upcoming birthday. “Love, love, love,” they harmonize, making good use of the Beatles’ chorus, turning to their bandmate and crossing their fingers in the Korean version of the heart symbol.

Comparisons to that epoch-defining group are inevitable. “What’s different is that we’re seven, and we also dance,” says V. “It’s kind of like a cliché when big boy bands are coming up: ‘Oh, there’s another Beatles!’” says RM. I’ve interviewed BTS five times, and in every interaction, they are polite to a fault. But by now they must be weary of revisiting these comparisons, just as they must be tired of explaining their success. RM says it’s a mix of luck, timing and mood. “I’m not 100% sure,” he says.

They’ve matured into smart celebrities: focused and cautious, they’re both more ready for the questions and more hesitant to make big statements. When you ask BTS about their landmark year, for once they’re not exactly chipper; J-Hope wryly calls it a “roller coaster.” “Sh-t happens,” says RM. “It was a year that we struggled a lot,” says Jimin. Usually a showman, on this point he seems more introspective than usual. “We might look like we’re doing well on the outside with the numbers, but we do go through a hard time ourselves,” he says. For a group whose purpose is truly defined by their fans, the lack of human interaction has been stifling. Still, they’ve made it a point to represent optimism. “I always wanted to become an artist that can provide comfort, relief and positive energy to people,” says J-Hope. “That intent harmonized with the sincerity of our group and led us to who we are today.”

In an era marked by so much anguish and cynicism, BTS has stayed true to their message of kindness, connection and self-acceptance. That’s the foundation of their relationship with their fans. South Korean philosopher and author Dr. Jiyoung Lee describes the passion of BTS’s fandom as a phenomenon called “horizontality,” a mutual exchange between artists and their fans. As opposed to top-down instruction from an icon to their followers, BTS has built a true community. “Us and our fans are a great influence on each other,” says J-Hope. “We learn through the process of making music and receiving feedback.” The BTS fandom isn’t just about ensuring the band’s primacy—it’s also about extending the band’s message of positivity into the world. “BTS and ARMY are a symbol of change in zeitgeist, not just of generational change,” says Lee.

And in June, BTS became a symbol of youth activism worldwide after they donated $1 million to the Black Lives Matter movement amid major protests in the U.S. (They have a long track record of supporting initiatives like UNICEF and school programs.) BTS says now it was simply in support of human rights. “That was not politics. It was related to racism,” Jin says. “We believe everyone deserves to be respected. That’s why we made that decision.”

That proved meaningful for fans like Yassin Adam, 20, an ARMY from Georgia who runs popular BTS social media accounts sharing news and updates, and who is Black. “It will bring more awareness to this issue people like me face in this country,” he says. “I see myself in them, or at least a version of myself.” In May and June, a broad coalition of K-pop fans made headlines for interfering with a police app and buying out tickets for a Trump campaign rally, depleting the in-person attendance. Later that summer, ARMY’s grassroots fundraising effort matched BTS’s $1 million donation to Black Lives Matter within 24 hours.

For 28-year-old Nicole Santero, who is Asian American, their success in the U.S. is also a triumph of representation: “I never really saw people like myself on such a mainstream stage,” Santero says. She’s writing her doctoral dissertation on the culture of BTS fandom, and she runs a popular Twitter account that analyzes and shares BTS data. “Anytime I’m awake, I’m doing something related to BTS,” she says. “This is a deeper kind of love.”

Devotion like that is a point of pride for BTS, particularly in a year when so much has felt uncertain. “We’re not sure if we’ve actually earned respect,” RM says. “But one thing for sure is that [people] feel like, O.K., this is not just some kind of a syndrome, a phenomenon.” He searches for the right words. “These little boys from Korea are doing this.” —With reporting by Aria Chen/Hong Kong; Mariah Espada/Washington; Sangsuk Sylvia Kang and Kat Moon/New York

FASHION CREDITS

RM: Jacket, shirt, pants and shoes HERMES; SUGA: Jacket, shirt and necklace CELINE. Pants GIVENCHY. Shoes LOUIS VUITTON; Jung Kook: Jacket, shirt, pants and shoes FENDI; J-Hope: Jacket, shirt, pants and shoes LOUIS VUITTON. Necklace HERMES; Jin: Suit, knit top and shoes BALENCIAGA; Jimin: Jacket, silk shirt, pants and shoes CELINE; V: Suit, shirt and shoes ALEXANDER McQUEEN. Tie THOM BROWNE.

So Many Things

Category: General Fluff

Fandom: Atlantis- The Lost Empire

Characters: Kida

Kida’s toes kissed the mirror-smooth surface of the pond, causing little ripples to appear in the otherwise flat sheet of water with every tiny movement of her body. The dampness of the algae-coated rock seeped into the thick fabric of her clothes, keeping her body pleasantly cool as the humidity of the dense jungle trapped the volcanic heat in the artificial atmosphere. Her fingers hugged the stone edge of the cleft overlooking the idyllic cove nestled within the network of broad-leaved ferns and twisting green trees hugging the circumference of the lost city. Kida breathed in the fresh air, then sighed deeply. Blue eyes sad, she turned her face upward towards the vast stone dome that separated their city from the outside world. 

[Matim,] she mourned quietly. So many thousands of years it had been, and yet, Kida missed her mother just as much as the day she had been swallowed by the light. Kida’s father had never explained what had occurred, at least no further than the ancestors had chosen her mother to protect their people from the great cataclysm. Kida supposed that she ought to consider it an owner on her mother’s part, to be fused with the spirit energy of her ancestors to see Atlantis through the greatest catastrophe of their lifetimes. Yet, the bitter child locked away inside the princess could not help but feel that she was robbed. 

Kida exhaled again, hand curling over her heart. She always wondered if her mother could see her. Would she be proud of her? Kida dearly hoped so. She had strived endlessly to serve her people and bear the burden of royalty both proudly and properly. Yet, Kida knew in her heart that she was still painfully naïve and ignorant of many things. 

Kida clicked her tongue against her front teeth as her eyes bored into the distant stone ceiling. So long it had been since they had seen the world above, so many thousands upon thousands of years. Kida wondered what had become of the planet. Did the great flood obliterate the entire world, transforming it into an endless ocean? Were the Atlanteans, secluded deep beneath the ocean bedrock, the only living creatures sequestered to land? Or had the human race evolved into something unrecognizable and strange? Kida wondered this, among many things pertaining to the world above the stone, quite often. Her young, spirited heart, despite how much she loved Atlantis and her people, craved the unknown. That was why Kida pushed the borders of patrols to their absolute limits, creeping forward day by day despite the hesitations of the other members of the guard. One day, Kida hoped, some strange miracle would be discovered on those ventures, something foreign and exciting and new. 

[Is that selfish?] she asked aloud, though she knew her long-lost mother couldn’t answer. The Atlantean words dripped sorrowfully from her tongue in place of the mournful tears she could no longer shed. [I know that your sacrifice saved us from extinction, but…] She chewed on the inside of her cheek as she contemplated aloud. [I cannot help but admit this endless existence bores me.] Was that normal, to find complacency stifling? For her spirit to wither on the repetitive ins and outs of immortal life thriving away from the rest of the earth? In her heart, she felt that it was not so, but she still couldn’t help but feel guilty for entertaining such thoughts. Her father would surely remind her that their people are alive and thriving because of the secrecy, and searching for adventure or outsiders could only invite ruin. 

And yet… Kida gazed longingly at the mist wafting through the stalactites clinging to the cavern roof, pretending that they were instead the white, fluffy clouds she vaguely remembered meandering across the clear blue sky. She had always wondered if they were like mist, incorporeal with water droplets bursting against her skin as she waded through it, or actually of solid form, soft and yielding. She’d never know now. With a small groan, Kida pushed her cheek into her hand. She’d gone and depressed herself. She tore her eyes away from the stone heavens to focus instead on the pond, trying to cheer herself up by observing a frog on a lily pad. It licked its glassy black-and-yellow eye, croaked, and leaped into the water to vanish from sight. Kida tutted, thinking it only par for the course for how the day was progressing. 

The gentle rustling of ferns captured Kida’s attention. She turned to see a few of the other Atlantean guards pressing through the jungle, holding their elongated, wood-carved, grass-frond-covered masks at their sides.

[Princess,] one of them addressed her with a polite dip of his head. He gestured with his spear into the tangles of ferns and vines and bushes. [We are going to patrol the perimeter. Would you like to join us?] Kida nodded in affirmation and stood, retrieving her own spear and throwing her mask over her face. She tromped past them to lead the patrol party into the denseness of the jungle, trekking confidently over thin, well-worn intertwined paths to the edge of the city. With every step she took, the distant cascading of several waterfalls grew in volume, until it filled the air with a consistent, steady gushing. They strode along one of the many rivers carving through the jungle to the edge of their world, where the water would spill over the precipice to cascade down into the dizzying chasm to disappear into the thick sheet of water vapor. 

Kida’s sure feet expertly navigated over the protruding tree roots, checking the edge of the void for any signs of concerning erosion. The watery atmosphere slowly ate away at the rock, chipping it away in small places. In several instances, large chunks of the landscape had just caved in, sliding into the abyss to leave a gaping hole, like a giant had taken a bite out of the platformed city. The Atlanteans had reinforced the edges of the chasm with concrete, but even that was only temporary; as time pressed on, the water wormed its way into the pores to spread cracks and fissures across the light gray stone constructs. 

Thankfully, Kida didn’t note any alarming progression of the erosion. They tracked a swift, purposeful path to what used to be the entrance of their city, which was now a collection of large stony steppes budded with large ferns and a few small shrubby trees. Kida froze when a strange noise greeted her ears, and she quickly raised a hand to order the small scouting party to stop. Kida narrowed her eyes behind the mask when she recognized the sounds as distinctly human. 

[But how can that be?] She wondered aloud, crawly forward on all fours to lower a broad purple leaf. Several yards away, a medium-sized group of very distinct people were talking animatedly about something. Kida found herself drawn to the skinny, gangly young man with orange-brown hair and spectacles framing his eyes. Kida cocked her head to the side slightly as she regarded him, strangely fascinated by him. 

Kida jumped slightly as her fellow Atlanteans crouched down beside her and whispered feverishly, asking her what she intended to do. As fascinating as the newcomers- the answers to her prayers, really- were, she had to apprehend them before they could get into too much trouble in this new and strange land. Kida instructed the group as to how to proceed, and then, in a flash, they had the strangers surrounded. 

[Who are you strangers and where did you come from?] she demanded while brandishing her spear, pouring more malice into her tone than she felt. 

Someone shoved the skinny boy forward. He fumbled with a small, leather-bound journal and stammered a few incoherent words. Kida cocked her head slightly, watching as he struggled to regain his composure before clearing his throat. Kida’s eyes blew wide behind the carved wood as he timidly uttered a few broken phrases in Atlantean. 

[Who... are you strangers and where... do you come from?] 

[He speaks our language?] She wondered incredulously, eyes widening behind the mask. How would a surface-dweller have any knowledge of their ancient, lost culture? The man jerked and flipped open the book to hastily flip through the pages, stumbling over his words. Kida slowly lowered her spear, growing increasingly intrigued. A few enunciations and pronunciations were off, but she could largely understand what he was saying. Making a hasty decision, she removed her mask, watching as the man’s eyes widened and a blush blossomed on his cheeks. 

[Your manner of speech is strange to me,] she told him with a curious look. The man grabbed his forehead as he struggled to retrieve the proper words, hand whirling in unconscious gestures as he forced out, [I… travel… friend!] Kida repeated his words softly, a bit confused as she struggled to understand him. Inhaling deeply, he suddenly crossed his arms and flashed her a smile. He suddenly switched to a strange dialect, yet one Kida could understand perfectly. 

[So, my friend, I am a traveler!] He clarified with raised eyebrows.

[You speak the language of the Romans!] she realized with an almost accusatory look, fascinated by the sudden switch. Grinning now that he was finally getting somewhere, he keened while leaning forward, “Parlez-vous français?” Kida smiled amusedly and agreed with an impressed, “Oui, monsieur!” The others standing behind the linguist watched with various degrees of shock and confusion as the two communicated. Finally, the man exhaled satisfactorily. 

“We’re friendly travelers,” he explained with a hand splayed graciously over his small chest. “We’ve come from the surface world.” Behind her, her guards exchanged galvanized but concerned whispers. Kida ignored them, enthralled at the golden opportunity she’d literally stumbled upon. I can finally learn everything about the surface world! She thought, automatically switching to English as the group began introducing themselves. By matter of protocol, Kida would have to deliver them to her father, the King; she would take all the time she had to squeeze as much information as she could out of them. 

“Come with me,” she addressed them with a smile. “I will take you to my home. Please, follow us,” she said, gesturing into the brush with her spear. The others led the way, while Kida fell in step with them at a small distance, absorbing the peculiarities of their persons with bright, glimmering blue eyes. 

Matim, she thought with a quick glance up at the dome. There are so many things I have yet to learn, but… I think after today, I shall be a little less ignorant, no?

Enjoy this oneshot? Feel free to peruse my Table of Contents!

Tag List: @deliathedork​

The Library Beneath the Clock Tower - Chapter 46

Fandom: Once Upon a Time (TV)

Rating: Explicit

Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply

Relationships: Belle/Rumplestiltskin | Mr. Gold, Belle/Gaston (Once Upon a Time)

Characters: Belle (Once Upon a Time), Rumplestiltskin | Mr. Gold, Red Riding Hood | Ruby, Widow Lucas | Granny, Grumpy | Leroy, Maurice | Moe French, Evil Queen | Regina Mills, Merida (Once Upon a Time), Jiminy Cricket | Archie Hopper, Gaston (Once Upon a Time), Le Fou, Mad Hatter | Jefferson, Prince Charming | David Nolan, Gus | Billy, Huntsman | Sheriff Graham, Mother Trude (Fairytale Character)

Additional Tags: Bookshop On the Corner, slightly AU, Cursed Storybrooke (Once Upon a Time), Alternate Universe - In Storybrooke | Cursed (Once Upon a Time), Eventual Smut

Summary: Storybrooke has no library, and neither does Belle, not since the library where she worked in Boston discovered her past as an inpatient at a mental hospital. Taking her future into her own hands, Belle travels to Storybrooke where her intention is to open up the town library, but all does not go according to her plan. Obstacles and false starts, and diversion along very wrong pathways interrupt her journey toward fulfilling her dream, as well as taking her rightful place and becoming a part of the Storybrooke community.

Winner of the 2020 Espenson Award, Best Book AU.

Read previous chapters on AO3

Chapter 46 - The Sword of Damocles

Even though Belle knew she should feel good for what she had done for Chloe and Paige, and though she knew that things were going much better for them now that they had some help, in the days and weeks that followed, Belle felt a sense of foreboding that seemed to hang over her, like a pendulum ready to swing, or a shoe waiting to drop.

It was a heavy weight to carry, day in, day out, and it made her tired - weary. She kept herself to the library in the daytime, and in the evenings she stayed home with her books and her tea. She was relaxing. She didn’t need to be out gallivanting all night long, and certainly not painting the town Rabbit Hole Red.

Or so she told herself…

She sighed and walked to the window from which she could see the road that stretched away opposite the Library, looking to see if the tell-tale light was spilling from the pawn shop window. The pavement, still damp from the earlier rain sparkled with the warmth of yellow light that danced in mockery of her reticence to contact Mister Gold. Things had been… awkward, at best, since the argument they’d had the day after the Miner’s Day Festival, and she hated it. Still, she couldn’t avoid him forever, it was almost time to pay the rent, and if she knew one thing about Mister Gold that no one would dispute, it was that he was a stickler for getting his rent payments on time.

With another sigh she turned and leaned against the wall by the window, trying to convince herself that it was ridiculous, but in the end, all she ended up doing was making herself feel more depressed. Head hanging, she walked to the kitchen, and began to fill the kettle to make some fresh tea, but something stopped her.

This was not who she was. She was a woman who could stand up for herself; could move to a new town and get what she wanted. She was a woman who saw what was wrong and made things right, and that was damn well what she was going to do!

…starting tomorrow.

Tonight she needed respite. Tonight she needed something that would take her out of these four walls, would take her mind off of all the strange dreams and feelings that she couldn’t control; that would stop her from wondering just who Trude was, and why she’d got it in for Paige and wanted to keep her trapped in ignorance and squalor. She needed to get out of her head and find her heart again.

Before she could second guess herself, she set the kettle down, turned off the faucet, grabbed her coat and keys, and walked out of the door. She would take a walk. She would clear her head with a walk through Storybrooke and to the town line, to remind herself why she had fallen in love with the place from the very beginning.

Storybrooke after the rain was chilly, but it was a fresh kind of chill, the kind that nipped and enlivened and encouraged as one walked in it. As Belle walked she realized how much she had missed by making a recluse of herself, and all for what…? A weird evening, a foolish argument, and a bitter and twisted old woman. She let out a cleansing breath of laughter.

Her pace quickened a little as she left the lights of the town behind and walked along more rural roads, past the cemetery and out onto the road that cut through the woodland. She wasn’t afraid of the dark, but there was no telling when she might encounter a car coming along, and her overcoat wasn’t exactly reflective. Still, she was determined to reach the town line.

A smile came to her face when she spotted The Bend ahead; her tree would be nearby and beyond it, the town line not too much further out, but she slowed her steps and creased her face in a frown not too much afterwards. The silhouette of her tree was all wrong. It stood before her all misshapen, as though fungus had grown in nodules to stifle it from the air. Growing closer still she could see that they weren’t growths at all but book and packages and bags, which when she looked inside contained more books!

She hurried to the tree and began untying all of them. Some of the books were damaged beyond repair, water damage, the effects of wind and weather, but the others… If she took them back to the library, she might be able to salvage them.  She smiled again, bordering on laughing and for a moment forgot that she was angry, and why she was angry, and all but threw her arms around the book tree. Then, practical as ever, she reached into the pocket of her coat and drew out the collapsible shopping bag she carried everywhere with her, opened it up and filled it to the brim with the books she thought she could save. This definitely had to be Hunter’s doing, and she was going to thank him personally.

The weather, and temperature, by the docks was rather less clement than in town and Belle pulled the coat more tightly around herself as she waited in a shadowy corner of the cannery grounds. It reminded her of old times, some would say better times, but Belle wasn’t so sure. In fact now that she was waiting for him, she wasn’t at all sure that it was sensible to meet him after all.

She had almost talked herself out of it when the rumble of the big rig’s engine trembled through the packed dirt of the parking lot and up into her feet, like the growl of some great dragon, waiting to devour her whole. The analogue didn’t fill her with confidence. Remaining in the shadows she watched as Hunter parked the truck and then jumped down without setting a foot on the steps. She took a deep breath as he went inside to get the foreman and the fork lift so that he could unload.

She waited until he was done, but as he drove the last of the pallets into the warehouse, Belle slipped from the shadows, and skittered across the better lit center of the yard like a rat hurrying to avoid detection until she reached the lee of the truck, then she stopped a little way behind the driver’s door.

He saw her as soon as he rounded the truck after closing the back doors.

“Belle!” he called out and the delight in his voice almost made her feel bad for the was she had been angry with him when they met in Boston. He leaned down before she could move away and wrapped his arms around her to hold her in a tight embrace until she pushed at him, for quite some time, and then he moved away. “My Belle?”

She scowled at that, but forced herself to remember her purpose.

“I came to say ‘thank you’,” she said.

“For what, I…” he trailed off as though in realization and then said, “Oh, the books on the tree. Yes?”

“Yes,” she confirmed.

“You’re welcome,” he said, and reached out toward her cheek, where a strand of hair had blown loose from it binding, but she ducked away. He had no right to touch her in that way. One thing for her to do the polite thing and thank him for bringing all the books, but quite another to allow him to believe that she had forgiven him.

Hunter sighed, and Belle frowned, and then in a small and contrite voice, he confessed, “This is my last run.” He shook his head. “You will not have to worry about me bothering you any more.”

“What do you mean, your last—?”

His second sigh stopped her words before she could complete the question. “My bosses. They found me carrying… other things than their cargo inside my truck,” he said then added quickly, “Nothing bad, I swear it, but… rules are rules, and…” another sigh, “for you I might have fought, brought more books, but… instead I resigned before I could be fired, and they were going to fire me.”

“What?” she said, before her brain processed the meaning, and then find another spark of anger in his mention of the books he smuggled for her. “Oh, no. Wait a minute. You are not putting this on me!”

“No, no, of course not, my Belle, I just…” He looked down at his hands, seemed to be examining his fingernails, though she could barely see through the mist of new anger that whirled almost purple in front of her eyes. Emotional blackmail, claiming her as his… no. No it would not do. “…I want you to know that… well… above…” he shrugged, “Well… I would have done anything for you.”

“Including lie, and cheat, and goodness knows what else?” the words left her lips before she could stop them, though she didn’t really want to. She just didn’t want to be cruel. If truth be told, she did feel somehow responsible for his plight, even though it hadn’t been her books that had been his contraband this time.

The thought of that only made her more angry, not less, learning now that in spite of his words to the contrary mere seconds ago, she was little better, to him, than all his other conquests - and she had to believe there were more than just the mother of his child, because there had been many boxes on those shelves in the shed at his garden plot.

“Perhaps it is best we say goodbye, if that is how you feel,” he said calmly.

“Oh, that is how I feel,” she Belle said coldly, and tucked her hands beneath her armpits, not because she was cold, rather, to stop herself from lashing out and slapping the calm and sorrowful expression from his face. “I should go.”

“I will drive you,” he told her

Inside she growled a low, panther like rumble at the thought that he would try and tell her that she would comply with his wishes, though she merely shook her head and said curtly, “I’ll make my own way, thank you.”

A Touch of Pressure // Connor x Reader

Summary: It’s that time of the month and the pain is almost unbearable. Connor provides a solution to help you feel better...

2.5k Words~

Warnings: No explicit smut, but some suggestive language. Menstruation talk, but only in the context of cramp pain. Super cheesy bath time fluff.

A/N: Welcome to my first ever Connor x Reader!! I had something else entirely in mind for my first one, but after a particularly bad day of cramps sometime this month, the idea for this fic popped into my head and begged to be written. I’m so excited to finally share this, and I hope you enjoy~ !

Dedicated to @thirium-bae, @moonlit-void-to-the-far-unknown, @acreativitydump, @queefsofsilence, @dreamyby, and the rest of the baes! Thank you all so sooo much for welcoming me into this fandom and hyping the snippets of this I showed off.

Also on ao3!

*** ~~~ *** ~~~ *** ~~~ *** ~~~ *** ~~~ ***

You’d been texting him sporadically throughout the day, as was usual by this point in your relationship. A message here, a message there, a prolonged chain during your lunch break, which happily coincided with Hank’s today. This, of course, meant Connor’s detailed report of Hank’s eating habits, bringing a chuckle to your lips, much needed on a day like this. You were smack dab in the middle of “sharkweek.” Your energy was low and the pain was nearly unbearable, the ibuprofen you took that morning only just now starting to kick in; it was a wonder you were getting through the workday at all. Only the thought of getting to see your beloved later tonight was keeping you going.

‘Is everything alright, Y/N? Your messages today don’t follow your normal texting patterns.’

Ah… Well, of course he’d pick up on that. How could he not, when his advanced processors could analyze anything in a manner of seconds, or less?

‘Yeeeaahh, just… It’s that time of the month and I rolled high on the cramps.’

You’d once described it as if you played a game every month and had to reroll your stats every time. Trying to explain your inconsistent menstrual symptoms to Connor had been… interesting, to say the least. But he quickly understood and this became your way of communicating them.

‘Oh. Is there anything I can do for you, my love? Anything you’d like for me to pick up on the way home?’

Despite your ongoing discomfort, a smile tugs at your lips, eyes staring lovingly at the screen of your phone. How considerate of him. Your natural instinct is to say no; you’d hate to be a bother to anyone, much less your sweetheart of a boyfriend, but you suddenly remember you were deeply craving chocolate the night before and couldn’t find any in your kitchen.

‘Ummmm, actually… I could go for some dark chocolate? :3’

A pause, and then, ‘Mission Accepted.’

You stifle a giggle and send him a kiss emoji before tucking your phone away to continue working, still in pain, but looking forward to getting home.

Since becoming a permanent member of the DPD, there was never any shortage of work for Connor to do, whether it was investigating a case with Hank, speeding through paperwork, assisting in interrogations, or getting pulled by the forensics department to test some evidence, his tongue’s sensors immensely faster and infinitely more accurate than their current equipment. As such, you typically arrived home before he did, with the occasional exception. You realize this must be one of those rare lucky days, as the lights are already on when you step into the apartment.

“Connor?” you call out as you set your purse on the coffee table, not yet seeing him.

“In the bathroom!” his warm voice calls back and you tilt your head in curiosity. The bathroom? What was he doing there? The deeper you walk into the apartment, the higher your curiosity piques, especially once the soothing scent of lavender wafts past your nose. Seriously, just what was he doing in there?

You step into the bathroom, breath catching in your throat.

In the middle of the room stands Connor, hands clasped behind his back, warm eyes looking at you expectantly, the hint of a crooked little smile on his lips - a smile that fills out a little more as he takes in both your reaction and the gradual, excited increase in your heart rate. His jacket and tie lay neatly folded on the counter next to the sink. The top two buttons of his white shirt are undone, allowing your gaze to admire the smooth expanse of his neck peeking from under his collar. The swirling blue of his LED glows bright in the dim light of the room. The source? A half-dozen strategically placed lavender-scented candles.

Behind him, your bathtub is somewhat full, the water level high enough to accommodate two people without overflowing, a smattering of rose petals floating on its surface. A box of chocolates sits waiting on the corner of the bathtub’s edge.

You don’t realize your hands are covering your mouth until you try to speak, lowering them immediately to do so. “Connor, what- What is all this?”

“I did some research after our conversation at lunch. Common home treatments to ease menstrual cramps include taking pain-relievers, exercise, applying a heating pad to your stomach or lower back, taking a hot bath, having an orgasm, and resting. I assumed you would’ve already taken a pain-reliever and, to my knowledge, you tend to lack the energy and motivation for exercise during this time. I’ve noticed in the past you would sometimes sit with your hands behind your lower back, to apply pressure there. I thought I’d combine that technique with a hot bath to help alleviate your pain while you relax. And there’s the chocolate you asked for, of course.” His explanation is about as extensive and analytical as could get for an android, but all the thought put into it, the soothing tone of his voice, the rich warmth of his brown eyes, and all the extra little details that he didn’t need to include but did anyway, all of that was undeniably human, a physical display of his love for you. Your heart flutters.

Entering further into the bathroom, you walk up to him and place your hands on his chest, peering up into his deep chocolate hues, ready to ask him to help you undress, but that list of home remedies replays in your head and you realize he’s skipped one of them. Lips curling into a smirk, you decide to tease him about it. “Correct me if I’m wrong, my love, but did you say ‘having an orgasm’? You gave a reason for or against every other remedy on that list except that one.” 

You can’t help the splitting grin that spreads across your face now, especially at the sight of your boyfriend’s LED momentarily blinking yellow at his temple in thought. Arms sliding over his shoulders, you pull him closer to murmur in his ear. “Any particular reason you avoided that one?”

Oh, but Connor, there is no outwitting Connor. Matching tease for tease, your android lover responds in turn, the breath he doesn’t need ghosting across your ear. Strong hands settle on your hips, pulling you flush against him. “I figured I’d leave that option open for you to decide, Y/N.”

Sighing against him, you nuzzle into his collar and press a kiss to his neck, savoring the sound it pulls from his throat. “Mmmm, I guess we’ll see what happens then. But I will gladly accept that bath first.” With a breathless chuckle, you turn your head, Connor meeting you halfway for a kiss, slow and lingering while your hands slide down the front of his shirt to undo the buttons one by one. He, in turn, runs his hands up your sides, pushing your blouse up your torso, your skin tingling at his touch. You both break the kiss to continue undressing each other, not without stealing a handful more kisses here and there until the last article of clothing hits the tile floor.

Connor pulls away from you to turn and slip a hand into the water, humming in satisfaction. “The water should be at optimal temperature to provide relief without overheating your skin.”

“Mm, thank you, Con.” Watching him climb into the bathtub, you wonder what on Earth you’d done to deserve someone so wonderful and loving. He would never ask it of you, but you’ve already decided you will thank him greatly for this later.

“Care to join me, my love?” Connor looks at you expectantly from where he’s settled himself in the bath, holding a hand out for you to take. “This is for you after all.”

“Of course,” you reply with a chuckle, placing your hand in his for support as you climb into the tub. “Just couldn’t help but admire your handsome face for a second there.”

Pleased with your admission, Connor tilts his head, the corner of his lips curving upward into a smirk. “Ah, shouldn’t I be the one flattering you?”

“Not if you don’t mean it.”

“You know I do.”

Humming contentedly, you settle in between his legs, the planes of your body molding to his as you rest on top of him, chest to chest, with your head on his shoulder. The water feels absolutely amazing against your skin, just hot enough to relax your muscles and ease you into a calm, further helped by the scent of lavender that fills the room, not to mention the comforting presence of your loved one, his arms wrapping around you as he presses a kiss to your temple. You slide a hand between your joined bodies to search for the spot where you know Connor’s thirium pump resides, smiling into his shoulder once you do.

“Y/N?”

“I like to feel your heartbeat. It’s calming.” Closing your eyes, you let yourself get lost in the sensation of his heart against your hand, of the synthetic rise and fall of his chest against yours, your body enveloped by the strong safety of his. You wouldn’t trade this moment for anything in the world.

You’re just about to start dozing off when you feel Connor’s hands against your lower back, fingers digging into the skin, sliding further down until you groan into his shoulder in a mixture of pain and relief. “Mmm, right there, Con… A little harder…” You feel another press of lips against your temple and Connor begins massaging your lower back, long fingers rubbing slow circles against the soreness centered there. Groan falling from your lips, you grip his upper arm with your free hand, squeezing as he works to ease the pain from which you’re currently suffering.

“Shiiit, thank you Connor. You have no idea how amazing this is. I swear I’m this close to falling asleep here.”

“Normally, I’d advise against falling asleep in the tub, but if you were to do so, I would keep you safe until you woke up.”

Sighing, you open your eyes and lift your head to look at him, admiring his face in the gentle candlelight; sharp cheekbones and powerful jawline, soft lips you’d kiss for hours, eyes rich brown and deep like swirling chocolate fondue, that little tuft of silky rebel hair that falls away from his immaculate haircut, the circular LED at his temple - the only currently visible evidence that he was made and not born, that under his skin lies a plastic android shell, and under that lies metal and wires and microprocessors and flowing thirium. You lift your hand from his chest to cup the side of his face, the tip of your finger tracing the path of circular blue. But LED indicator or not, he is every bit alive, and no matter what is under his skin, you’d still love him with every fiber of your being, not an ounce less.

“I know you would,” you whisper. Lips meet in a soft, slow kiss, molding together, caressing, tongues sliding past each other and savoring the taste of the other. You love kissing him. Connor is your sweet poison and his lips are the antidote.

Only when your need for air becomes too great and only then do you finally part from his mouth, forehead pressing to his as you inhale, your body warm from more than just the hot water of the bath. This entire time his hands are still working at your lower back. “I love you,” you breathe against him.

“I love you too, Y/N,” he replies without hesitation, with a conviction that makes you shiver.

You kiss him again, throwing an arm around his shoulders, your other hand sliding into his hair. Connor runs a hand up your back, anchoring you to his chest, groaning into your mouth when you suckle on his lower lip between your teeth. Pulling back, his voice is strained, and you begin to feel the reason why pressing into your thigh. “Y/N, I won’t be able to resist you if you keep that up.”

“Mmm, sorry Con, can’t help it. I just need to kiss you. Every chance I get.”

“I assure you, I feel the same, but unless you’re ready to try that orgasm remedy, I ask that you do not overload my sensors, love.”

Laughing, you pull back, covering your face with a hand, happiness bubbling in your chest. Fuck, you’re just so in love with him and everything that he is, from all his initial android quirks to the little personality traits he’s picked up since even before officially deviating. Connor watches you quietly, head tilting, curious at your reaction. “Mmm, sorry,” you mutter between giggles, dropping your hand to press a kiss to his cheek. Your fingertips glide down his chest. “Tell you what. You’re taking such good care of me right now, why don’t I show you my gratitude and take care of you after we finish our bath?”

His LED flashes yellow, whirring rapidly at the slight seductive edge in your tone. Dark eyebrows rise in intrigue. It isn’t easy to fluster Connor, the android formerly sent by CyberLife, who could readily take down an entire squadron of armed men. Oh, but it is so exciting when you do.

“Yes,” he answers, briefly tightening his grip around you. “That would be… quite acceptable.”

“Good,” you whisper, pressing your lips to his once more, eager to taste him at every opportunity. Connor takes full advantage of this, tongue probing at the cavern of your mouth. He smirks as he draws a moan from your lips.

Once you’ve both had your temporary fill, you twist in his embrace until you’re sitting in his lap, with your back to his chest. The sight of the floating rose petals makes you smile and you pluck one from the water, tilting your head back to run it down the side of his face. “What made you think of the roses? And the candles?”

Connor briefly closes his eyes at the touch, simply enjoying the sound of your voice and the weight of your body against his. Chocolate-caramel eyes reopen and he answers, looking at you sincerely. “Roses are your favorite. And lavender is commonly used in aromatherapy to promote wellness and reduce anxiety, stress, and perhaps even mild pain.”

Smiling at him, you kiss his cheek and nuzzle his jawline. “And it’s all a very sweet romantic touch, Connor. Thank you.” His stunning gaze reminds you of the chocolates he’d brought for you and you reach for the box, grinning upon opening the delicious assortment. You pop one into your mouth as Connor sets to continue where he left off in easing your pain, fingers pressing into your lower stomach, circling the area below your bellybutton and the spaces between stomach and hips. Sighing, you relax against him, head against his shoulder, closing your eyes once more. The bittersweet chocolate rolls around in your mouth. “Mmm, Connor that’s wonderful…”

“I detect a significant drop in tension from your body, as well as increased levels of serotonin.” Connor’s mouth is at your ear, the low tone of his voice bringing a shiver down your spine. “Am I correct in guessing you’re feeling better?”

Voice breathy, you respond. “Much, thanks to you.”

Satisfied, he presses a kiss to your neck and stays there, murmuring against your skin. “Mission Accomplished.”

2018 Fandom Reflections

I’m going to do a year in review list of fics and answer tags on some of the memes floating around, but I’m waiting until January when a few anon fics in fests are revealed as I’d really like to include those in my ramblings. This is more a personal take on some reflections I’ve had on fandom - and my place and activity within it - over the course of this year.

On a personal level, real life work and fandom as a hobby have intersected this year for me like never before, and the combination of taking on multiple commitments to academic publishing, grappling with the demands of my thesis and moderating and participating in multiple fests has been a lot. I’ve had something of a rollercoaster year, but I’m ending 2018 feeling creatively inspired, happy, and energised for another active fandom year. Thank you to everyone who has been part of it and those friends new and old that have been instrumental to shaping my year and pulling me out of the funk I was in at the beginning of the year.

Some key lessons I’ve personally learned in 2018 below the cut to save your dash from my GIANT WALL OF TEXT.

All At Sea: I think of my relationship to fan spaces sometimes as a bit like being out at sea. It’s easy to get caught up in the current and drift along, but the tide is always turning and there are unexpected storms which make staying afloat more challenging at times. Sometimes it can be exhausting when you feel as though you’re swimming against a strong current and making no progress, but on other occasions you find a spot where you can swim, choose your own direction, do handstands in the water and it’s exhilarating. This year I learned it’s okay to get out of the sea sometimes, to push your toes in the sand, feel the sun on your face, and just enjoy watching the waves. Have a cocktail with friends at the beach bar, chill the fuck out, basically. From starting the year feeling in something of a fandom funk, I’ve got to a place at the end of this year where I feel very positive about fandom and grateful to share a space with so many brilliant, talented, supportive people. 

Burnout and Information Overwhelm: This year, the burnout has been real and I’ve worked out that the platforms I’m operating on contribute a lot to that feeling of mental exhaustion. Using my mobile for fandom activity, having more time than ever at my personal laptop instead of an office computer which restricted me from accessing fan platforms and ramping up my use of Tumblr, Twitter, WhatsApp and Discord for fandom activity created a kind of information overwhelm that comes with high speed interactions and heightened the sense of needing to be present, or to offer opinions as part of fast-paced interactions requiring quick thinking, and sometimes knee-jerk responses. With this came the suspicion and bitter taste caused by anonymous messages cropping up in the inboxes of me and my friends, and it felt at times as though I was constantly logged on and in a state of hypersensitivity. I’ve learned that stepping back from things and learning to balance time spent online with time spent offline is an important part of self-care and it’s okay to be absent for a while. If conversations are draining, leave them. If you see opinions you don’t like, ignore them or try to understand them. They are just opinions - and I mean opinions on characters, canon, fandom and so on as opposed to political opinions that actively seek to harm people. Everyone has different perspectives on things. There really is room for everyone. Regarding anonymous messages, if the only way someone wants to interact with you is via crappy anonymous messages, I’ve learned they are not worth your time, effort or mental energy. Interacting only brings more attention to them. Delete, block, move on. Fuck ‘em. If you want to talk to me, do it off anon. If I’ve upset you with my actions, tell me. Let’s have a proper, adult conversation. 

Look for the Rainbow: Fandom spaces are communities which form around peoples passions. They are places of brilliant creativity but the things we love have a tendency to give rise to extreme emotional responses. I’ve veered from extreme highs to extreme lows and this year I have learned the importance of finding a balance that works. I think a relentlessly positive, non-critical approach can be just as stifling as a culture of intense negativity and constant division, but having said that when I’m having my storm cloudy moments I’m trying to focus on the rainbow. Wallowing in bad feeling tends to nurture and cultivate that sense of dissatisfaction until it becomes suffocating. There’s a tremendous amount of good in fandom space. Good people, good ideas, tireless effort, incredible organisation, passion, creativity and vibrancy. There’s a huge amount to feel positively about and whilst I would never advocate for a laissez faire, entirely non-critical approach, I also think everyone has their own capacity for critical thinking and the way those thoughts can permeate and shape our whole experience of fandom and - by extension - influence our creative abilities. I’ve learned to focus more on the things I get out of fandom that make me happy, to retain a critical eye on things as I always will given the nature of my research, but not to allow the critical to obscure the many positive things about fandom. 

Evaluating Self-Worth: I’ve really tried in the latter part of this year not to measure myself or my worth by external metrics of success. The kudos, the hits, the number of followers, the amount of positive interaction over anonymous messages, the posts I’m tagged in, the hype, the rec lists I’m on or not on, and so on. Comparing yourself to other people can lead to resentment and frustration or to an inflated sense of self-importance. It says a little something about how I started the year that I thought I want to grow my tumblr and write a really successful fic, and thought I would know if I had accomplished that by feedback and response. I’m actually quite embarrassed to admit that because I think it makes me look like a dick, and I’m super pleased with the support my fics get in any event, but I wanted to share it because I think it’s important in terms of this lesson I’ve learned this year. I went from a place of being very focused on external measures of success to ending this year realising that my most successful stories have been the ones I’m proudest of and they are not the ones with the most hits or kudos. Those are the stories that I enjoyed creating the most, and the ones that left me feeling incredibly positive and proud at the end of this year, looking forward to the next year in fandom and planning projects that I already know won’t be the most popular, but they are the ones I’m creatively excited about and inspired by, so those are the ones I should be focusing on. Despite its resistance to corporate structures, there’s something very capitalist about the way we can sometimes be lured into evaluating self-worth in fandom, and those structures are embedded within fandom itself. They won’t go away, but focusing on them doesn’t half make me unhappy. 

Support Other Creators: It’s easy to let negative feelings overwhelm the way we interact with one another in fandom. One of the most important lessons I’ve learned this year is that you get back what you put in. Through supporting other creators you build friendships formed around shared creative passions and interests. You feel pride in your friends accomplishments. You improve your own work by reading widely, cheerleading, editing, beta reading, alpha reading, brit picking. Writing can be a lonely endeavour but it doesn’t have to be that way when you’re part of a community that uplifts others. 

Treat People With Kindness: Not everybody has the same levels of confidence or the same energy for rigorous debate. We all have days where we feel like we could crack into pieces, where we feel lonely, invisible, anxious, excluded, unhappy or fragile. It’s easy to be brave behind a computer screen, but ultimately people on the other end are going through stuff in the same way we all are. I’m making a concerted effort in 2019 to engage patiently and respectfully with opinions I disagree with and to be open to anyone who wants to chat or talk through things. I want to work on building new friendships (yeah, I’m going to slide into your DMs, like hiiiii :D) and maintaining old ones, ensuring I give back the same energy and support I get from friends so they know how appreciated they are. I started this year thinking Tumblr required a level of saltiness and a dgaf attitude that’s never been me, honestly. The lesson I’ve learned this year is to resist going along with the pile and to stop and think before engaging. For some people that might seem like an annoying attempt to sit on the fence and please everyone which is never going to happen, but to be honest I think it’s all about finding what works for you in that regard. I’m here for the hot takes and the salt at times, but tbh it’s pretty much just not me. Even when I’ve responded heatedly to an anonymous message that thoroughly deserved it, it’s felt performative and weird and I’m just not going to do that anymore. 

If you made it this far, thank you for reading! If you ever want to chat fandom thoughts then I’m always open to that and hope everyone has a very happy 2019!

Sing For Me - Chapter Thirty-seven

Fandom: Marvel Avengers AU

Pairing: Bucky Barnes X OFC (Sasha)

Characters: Bucky Barnes, OFC Sasha, Steve Rogers, Natasha Romanoff, Clint Barton, Wanda Maximoff, OFC Zoe, OFC Kat, OFC Maddie, Princess Shuri

Author: @amandaoftherosemire​

Rating: Mature

Word Count: 2400

Format: Series (Complete)

Warning: Language, angst.

Summary: Sasha tries to wake up. Kat has a chance to talk to Zoe.

A/N: Not consistent with Marvel canon. The first chapter of Sing For Me went up at the end of February 2018. I’m trying to get the story completed by that anniversary. To that end, the next chapter is almost finished and should be up within a few days. I never intended for this to become a novel, but here we are. If you’re still reading, I love you.

Banner by @hellzzzbelle

Sing For Me Masterlist

Chapter Thirty-six here

Chapter Thirty-seven

Sasha had no idea how long she'd been hacking away at vines and branches when she finally broke through. All she knew was that she was hot, sweaty, and exhausted. The dress she'd started in was torn near to shreds, thanks to the rapiers disguised as thorns lining the pythons masquerading as briars. Between that and the time she'd taken to cut the skirt as short as possible to give her more freedom of movement, not to mention tearing off the sleeves, she was almost nude. Her bare skin no longer pristine, she was covered mostly in head to toe scratches and welts.

What fabric was left kept changing from blue to pink, however. She figured the afterlife was either weirdly symbolic or her hallucinations were weirdly straightforward. As she wiped at the sweat on her forehead, she couldn't help but wonder at the sharpness and realism of the experience.

With a final burst of energy, and profanity, along with a few more swings of the now filthy and green-stained blade, she slashed through the last few branches that stood between her and freedom. Laughing with not a little relief, she stumbled on bare feet and legs into a wholly unfamiliar forest.

The laugh dying on her lips, she looked around in stunned and furious disbelief. "Son of a goddamn motherfucking piece of fucking garbage bitch! What's this fucking bullshit supposed to mean?" As she muttered further obscenities, she hefted the sword over her shoulder and took off into the forest.

Kat was looking down at the serene façade that cloaked Sasha as she ignored the debate that raged around her when she felt a small hand on her arm. She turned her head to look at Zoe and smiled gently.

She had a lot of complicated feelings regarding her half-sisters.

Katya had hated Sasha with a vicious and bitter envy. The eldest of Alexandra’s daughters had been given everything, a family, a life, a choice. The others were left with nothing but neglect and pain and, at least in Katya's case, utter subjugation. Knowing Sasha was not to blame for the agonies she'd endured had made no difference when she'd looked into her sister's eyes and found no more recognition than when she'd looked into her mother's.

That lack of recognition had allowed Katya to hold on to the resentment long enough to complete her mission. Using her version of their talent to manipulate Sasha into seeing her only as a romantic rival helped to keep that hate and resentment solid. Those hatefully familiar eyes had felt like wasp stings on her skin, watching her with hostility and distrust. It hadn’t been difficult to maintain an answering hostility.

Once Katya had been able to drop the manipulation and show something more closely resembling her true self to Sasha, however, she’d been shocked by the change. Rather than feeling like needles, the sensation of Sasha’s regard became like gentle, teasing nudges. As Sasha’s captivity had dragged on, the more charming Katya had found her.

Not that Sasha was charming in her captivity, far from it. As a matter of fact, she was a raging bitch the vast majority of the time and she only got worse the longer she remained under Valentin’s thumb. Katya had loved every fucking second of it.

Every clench of Valentin's jaw, every snarl that curled his lip, every flush of rage that stained his aristocratic cheekbones, once daily terrors, became sources of dark triumph under Sasha's influence. Even when he took his anger at Sasha's defiance out on her, Katya internally did an entire cheerleading routine every single time she heard her tell the tyrant no.

By the time Valentin had given her the mission to kidnap Zoe, she had seen him defied so many times in so many ways, she’d seriously considered doing so herself for the first time in over a decade. Though her courage had ultimately failed her, escape had started to seem not just possible, but necessary once Valentin had collected the set.

Because despite what she had wanted to believe, the younger Alexandra did not resemble their mother in anything but eye color. Aware they were being monitored, and thus unable to speak freely, they'd nonetheless developed a form of communication no less powerful for all it was silent.

One day a few weeks in, while guarding Sasha as she waited for Valentin to arrive with new torments, Katie was comforted, if only for a moment, that she was no longer alone in this nightmare when Sasha surprised a laugh out of her.

Sasha had been psyching herself up for the showdown with Val by complaining loudly and with her usual plethora of colorful profanity of her disappointment in her archnemesis. Not that he wasn’t evil, just broadly drawn, she assured with astringent condescension. It was just that she had hoped for a higher caliber of villain. That’s all.

That moment, able to laugh at the man who’d made her a slave, to tear him down and see him as human and thus vulnerable, was a seed planted in her mind.

Immediately following that feeling of comfort, the gratitude at no longer being alone, was a wave of guilt stronger than any she’d felt before. No one deserved this hell, let alone anyone decent, and her sister was a fucking decent human being. In Katie’s world, decency was a rarity more precious than diamonds.

That may have been part of why she had been so astonished to feel an answering sensation of compassion from Sasha in response to that wave of guilt. Her power was concerned with perception. She had the ability to not only see herself through the eyes of others, she could also manipulate how they saw her. Neither Sasha nor Wanda used their powers on Karen because she had manipulated their perceptions so that they saw her as utterly harmless.

Katya had felt Sasha's contempt. Katie felt her kindness. Kat was going to pay the debt.

As for Zoe, she couldn’t really explain it, but Kat had had a soft spot since the day they met for the little girl who now spoke quietly inside her mind.

They'll be at this all day. Kat was fascinated by Zoe's mental voice. It was an astoundingly unusual sensation to have thoughts form inside her mind to which she felt no connection. They can't agree on an acceptable level of safety for me. Bucky has the final say while Sasha's out, but he'll argue it to death with Nat and Steve first.

How do you think it'll go? Kat was entirely uncertain as to how this worked so she tried to think more loudly in response.

Nat'll say yes. Zoe’s face was still a little swollen and stained with the tears she’d shed as Sasha lay dying, but a fierce little smile played at the corners of her mouth. Steve will say it's too dangerous. An indulgent eye roll at that. If you can convince Bucky it’s safe enough, he’ll probably let me try.

Zoe’s palm skimmed down Kat’s arm to trace the gold lines that shimmered softly under her tattoo. The phoenix was fresh, the colors vibrant, the tail feathers covering the back of the hand and curling over the webbing between thumb and forefinger to her palm. The gold lines wove through and were several degrees warmer where they rested lightly on their still lost sister. Rather than the condemnation Kat expected, Zoe’s face held open curiosity and understanding under the conspiratorial smirk. Do you really need my help, or did you just want to talk to me?

Kat stifled a laugh and pushed out a little more power to keep the others’ attention away from their silent interaction. She didn't want to admit it, but she now needed this for more reason than just the care to keep secrets safe. She needed to know that she had ultimately done more good than harm in abducting her little sister at Valentin's direction, if for no other reason than that she’d brought Zoe and Sasha together. She smiled gently. I think I need your help, but I might be able to do it myself. I also want to talk to you.

What do you need? As she asked, Zoe tilted her head to rest it lightly against Kat’s arm in a gesture of affection and support. Zoe could hear the mutter of Kat’s worry, fear, and guilt and hoped to ease whatever she could.

Kat was stunned by the simplicity of the response, the trust it took to offer so openly. Her throat tightened as both grief and gratitude tangled inside her. Though she mourned their inevitable estrangement, she was nevertheless grateful for the chance to see Zoe assured, compassionate, and unafraid.

Even more confident that Zoe would have the answers she sought, Kat rushed to ask the most important question. I need to know how far I can trust King T’challa and Princess Shuri.

Kat was not disappointed. Rather than answering immediately, Zoe seemed to mull it over before her response slowly sounded in Kat’s mind. It depends. With what?

Kat scanned those in the room to see if anyone was paying attention to them. She pushed out a little more power, determined to finish this conversation. The gold lines warmed slightly, and Zoe’s mouth spread in a conspiratorial smile as she looked up at her sister, her quick brain putting the pieces together.

Kat shrugged a little and looked sheepish. I have all the data on Morozov's vibranium project. It could help the princess heal Sasha, but it could also be used to rebuild his weapon if someone had access to enough vibranium.

Sasha trusted them with what’s left of the weapon, even the intact part. Zoe’s face had fallen into serious lines, her memory of being strapped into the ghastly machine one of her most horrific and pernicious nightmares.

Okay. Kat took in that information slowly, already feeling better about what she'd revealed to Her Highness. Judging by the speed with which Shuri worked at a table along the opposite wall, Kat had already given the scientist more than enough information. Still… But what do you think?

Zoe turned a confused and slightly concerned expression on Kat, the mutters of Kat’s worry beginning to infect her. Kat responded with the truth, not sure she knew how to sugarcoat it even if she thought she should. The chair wasn’t made only for Sasha. Me in the chair caused fear. Sasha caused pain. What do you think you could do?

Zoe’s eyes widened and Kat could tell this was the first time anyone had considered the possibility. That alone made her feel better about trusting these people with the source of her worst nightmares.

Valentin had made Katya do terrible things.

Kat watched her little sister’s gaze turn inward and grieved a little at the entirely too adult expression on the child’s face. She wondered if Sasha also felt torn between the need to shield Zoe versus the reality of her ability to do so.

Zoe’s face was set and determined when she looked back to Kat. Shuri is smart and decent. I’d trust her with it, and I’d trust the King to protect it. Kat fought the urge to laugh out loud at the look of sly amusement Zoe shot her as the next words appeared her mind. And yes, Sasha worries about that all the time.

Kat didn’t quite suppress the snort. Good to know. Especially as the princess already has the scent. As she thought the last, she tilted her head in Shuri’s direction. Zoe’s eyes followed to find the princess already had the image of something that looked like a necklace spinning in the air in front of her. It was clear she was on a roll.

Zoe turned back to Kat, her face a study in confusion. Kat shrugged. I couldn’t let Sasha die when I knew how to save her. Maddie’s attention skimmed over her skin, leaving both comfort and exhilaration in its wake. She glanced up to meet her beloved’s warm whiskey eyes. She could never distract her Mads for long. I owe her everything.

So… what are we waiting for?

Kat turned to meet her sister’s gaze once more and couldn’t help but notice a definite tendency towards recklessness. Cooler heads to prevail?

You sound like you think there are cooler heads in this room. Zoe’s expression had become downright smug in her amusement.

Kat thought about it for approximately three seconds before giving in. She recognized an iron will when she saw one as she lived with it. There was no stopping Maddie when she put her mind to something. All that could be done was to either minimize the damage or mitigate the danger. Everything she’d seen or heard of her younger sister told her she’d found another of her kind.

Keep your palm on my tattoo and put your other hand on Bucky’s arm. DO NOT let go. I’m going to both boost and buffer. The vibranium is going to shield you so you don’t get dragged under again. You’re the conduit, though, so you need to reach out and call her back.

So casually Bucky barely glanced at her as her hand made contact with his metal arm, Zoe moved to stand between where Bucky stood at Sasha’s head with his hand on her neck, and where Kat stood at Sasha’s arm, holding her hand. She moved in the ways she’d been taught to avoid drawing attention, not that she’d needed to worry. Between the intensity of the argument raging around them and Kat’s talent working at almost full power to shield them from the attention of the others, no one in the room was giving them even the least thought. How?

How did Sasha wake you after the explosion?

Zoe thought back to that moment, when she heard Sasha calling her, promising she was safe. For the first time in her life, she’d trusted wholeheartedly and had started the ascent. It had felt like swimming up through molasses, or clawing through cotton, and she’d had to sink back down and rest a few times, but she’d been willing to try because of that voice drawing her on. She called for me. I heard her and climbed out.

Same channel. Only you’re doing the calling now.

Chapter Thirty-eight here

Taglist:

@marvel-lucy @cheekygeek05 @lbouvet @lovely-geek @wantingtobekorra @diinofayce @ashesandfire @suz-123 @theresaskankinmyboot @ddysis @caplansteverogers @getbuckylucky @california-grown @rnr1274 @capandbuck @buckybarnesappreciationsociety @magellan-88 @mizzzpink @curiositywillbethedeathofmee @colie87 @bibliophile1773 @henrietteoaks @hellzzzbelle @same--old-shit @thatawkwardlittlefangirl @rishlo @eyesfixedonthesun22

I am being ignored by people in this fandom what should I do? I send people asks and they ignore me. Please help

Hey there, buddy! I’m sorry to hear you’ve been having difficulties communicating with other people. Communication can be a difficult and complicated thing! I don’t know your particular situation communicating with other people in the fandom, so I’m going to go through a variety of things, and hope that some of my comments may help below.

Sometimes if people don’t respond, it’s not because you did anything wrong. Sometimes all it will take is a little more waiting. The people we’re talking to on the other end can’t always answer in a timely manner. Some people might not be online often and respond to asks slowly. Some people might be going through irl circumstances that keep them away from the computer. Other people might have a LOT of asks in their inbox and can only respond so fast - what looks like them talking to other people “instead of” you might just be them trying to get through lots of messages and not getting to yours yet. Some people might have accidentally forgotten about your ask in their inbox. Some people might have accidentally lost your ask in the midst of other things in their inbox. Waiting with patience for someone to respond in their appropriate time can sometimes be the solution.

I know one reason people might not respond fast is because they don’t have social energy at the time (if you’re familiar with spoon theory, what I mean is moments when people lack “spoons”). If a person feels socially exhausted - even if they’re online and reblogging things - they won’t have the energy to talk to someone. I have this happen to me a lot and I have to wait to respond at a later time. Sometimes responding to different people event takes a different amount of energy - for some people, it’s less energy to talk to other introverts, or to other people they know, or about certain topics than others. It might look like ignoring on the outside, but once you find out the person’s lack of energy, it turns out that they would like to respond but can’t. I always like to take people with the healthy benefit of the doubt, understanding that there could be many reasons why I haven’t heard from them - not jumping to conclusions it’s because they’re against me in particular. That’s usually not the case. Usually they’re not ignoring me, usually they don’t find anything wrong with me, and usually there’s something going on with their life that means they can’t respond yet.

Other times people might not respond on social media if they’re not familiar with you and/or aren’t comfortable talking to strangers online. Some people may be socially awkward and not know how to respond. Others might not feel gripped with a started conversation online and decide not to respond to your greeting. Some people just might not be interested talking with you. It’s not that they’re necessarily ignoring you, so much as enjoying social media in their own way, and picking-choosing conversations they think might go well. It’s okay not to interact and engage with everyone you come across online. We can’t be forced into every conversation with every person every day every time something happens… we do have the right to be selective in our responses. Not everyone can handle everything thrown at them (it’d be an overwhelming inundation). And no one should be FORCED into a social interaction. Sometimes messaging another person is a hit-or-miss about whether or not they’ll respond - not because they’re ignoring you, but because of what type of interactions that person prefers on social media.

All of this is to say you might not be doing anything wrong and they might not be doing anything wrong! yet. There may (I hope!) be nothing wrong.

Another thing that may be worth considering is analyzing how you come across. Again, I don’t know your situation, but this is something that happens a lot on social media platforms: we mean well when we talk to someone but it “comes out wrong.” If it comes out wrong, we can accidentally make a bad impression that makes people less likely to respond to us. Given that online we’re only talking through text, we lack body language cues and voice cues to let people know how we feel - which means that our words are all the more likely to be misinterpreted or unintentionally “rub wrong” or raise “red flags” to someone else.

Things that might make people uncomfortable with an ask or PM (and thus, they won’t respond) include:

Overly emotional messages. This is especially so for negative emotions, though positive emotions (like being over-the-top sappy) can sound creepy or uncomfortable if written wrong, too. 

Sending too many messages in a short time span and sounding clingy. If someone doesn’t respond and you keep sending more stuff to get them to pay attention to you, that’s stifling and can give some red flag warnings for bad social interactions. That’ll drive them away and they’ll become wary of who you are as a person.

Sharing uncomfortable information that might be TMI. Not everyone is comfortable with all information. Check to see what types of conversations the blogger tends to have before sending messages that might be hard to handle.

Saying something that sounds drama-inducing. People know trolls want to incite others, cause drama, etc. If an ask sounds like it’s poking at sensitive topics or pointing fingers at the community, trying to sew discord in a fandom, people may steer clear of responding to these asks, or may respond to them negatively.

Sending messages from obvious throw-away side blogs you created just for the sake of being anonymous.

Sounding pedantic, cold, or unfeeling. What you might intend as straightforward fact-telling can sometimes sound like talking down. I’ve noticed sentences starting with “Actually,” for instance, tend to come off… wrong. It’s the issue of only having text to work with, not tone of voice.

Sending messages boldly disagreeing with someone else or speaking poorly of something that person loves. That’s ill will to the conversation recipient. It’s hurtful because it’s a conversation insulting what a person enjoys, spoken specifically to the person who likes that thing. They’re not going to want to make conversation with that. (I’m not talking about conversational sharing different opinions or viewpoints, I’m talking about stuff that’s more blunt-on-the-head “I don’t like this”).

This shouldn’t sound like a scary list. I’m not saying that anything you say could be construed wrong. Most messages are going to sound fine, but there are people who may unknowingly write things that fall into these categories and make their recipients uncomfortable. Their messages may be called “troll” messages because they come off so wrong. This is hopefully informative - for people who need it - about what sorts of messages can commonly come off sounding “wrong” in the inbox. We all need a learning curve when it comes with interacting with others, and sometimes how we send asks is part of the learning curve. I had to learn how to interact online myself - I think we’ve all been there at some point in time! And for some people, it’s easier for us to sense how we come off, than it is for others.

If it helps anyone: One way to sense if you’re falling into one or more of these “uncomfortable” categories I listed… is if LOTS of people respond to you in the same non-ideal ways (negatively, hostilely, angrily, not answering you, blocking you, warning others about trolls, etc.). It’s normal to have bad interactions here and there. It’s normal for not-everyone to like you. That’s okay and you’re not a horrible, hated, unloved person - not in the least! You’re beautiful.

One thing I do encourage you, whatever your situation may be, friend, is to not “push it.” As you may already understand, you can’t force people to interact with you. Trying multiple times to the same people to talk to you will dig a deeper hole and make things worse. I encourage a good sense of moderation and consideration for what the other side may feel.

I also encourage you and others to do your best not to worry and not to act on that worry! Sometimes it’s easy to be scared that things are going bad - and then imagination, depression, or anxiety get hold and make you think everything’s much more awful than the situation may actually be. It’s easy to fear a situation is crashing and burning when it’s not that bad in truth. It’s easy for us to think we’re unloved and hated - when in truth, others around us find something to treasure.

And even if things are hard now, that doesn’t mean they’ll always be hard. What might feel like isolation or being ignored now doesn’t mean it’ll always be this way. We can all find ways to interact healthily with the tumblr community. We can make positive connections with others in the fandom! It may take time, but we can all find a happy place in the community. The fandom is full of really cool and friendly people. I bet you’ve got some awesome and cool things about you, too!

Sending you the best of wishes! Take care, friend!

Another post that may be helpful for people going through social media struggles: [here].

Being a Fanfic Writer is Okay

AKA I love Fanfiction

Fan Fiction, a bit controversial and a bit time worn topic in writing and fandom circles. But let’s face it, fan fiction is older than dirt (Shakespeare anyone?) and isn’t about to go away any time soon. So, we might as well face the pink elephant in the room and address the issue. Besides, fan fiction is really personal to me. Of course, before I get all maudlin about my experiences with fan fiction, maybe we better discuss what fan fiction is, a bit of history and where to find it.

Fan fiction is at its core, a story written by someone who isn’t the original owner of a story. They are simply a fan writing in someone else’s world using someone else’s characters. After that, the possibilities are pretty much limitless and maybe we can discuss some of the more interesting aspects of fan fiction later. Some of our favorite classic stories might be considered fan fiction, Homer’s take on the Trojan War for example. Shakespeare wrote wild interpretations of the lives of British Kings. And modern day published fan fiction would be the books based on favorite television shows or popular games, video, role playing or even board games. A type of visual fan fiction would be the movie Clue! Based on the popular Clue board game. (Sadly not really an action movie, drat.) Star Wars Expanded Universe is a type of authorized published fan fiction. And who can forget the hundreds and hundreds of Star Trek novels based upon the episodes and later expounding upon the universe.

Speaking of Star Trek, the modern take on fan fiction really took off with the introduction of Gene Roddenberry's Star Trek. Before the internet (what a phrase,) ambitious Trekkies created magazines that writers could submit their own stories about the Starship Enterprise and her crew and receive subscriptions of them in the mail. Many of these stories revolved around Kirk and Spock in a romantic relationship, which is still a huge pairing today. Other fandom groups copied this magazine model and later as the internet took off, they created online email groups, forums, journaling sites, chat rooms and individual sites, until someone got ambitious enough to create the first fan fiction archive. And suddenly, there was a place where any writer of any talent could post their work to one place and read everyone else’s work no matter the quality or fandom. And with the introduction of Japanese anime to America, the concept of fan fiction exploded.

And Sturgeon’s Law reared its ugly head. 90% of it is crap.

But that’s okay.

A lot of archives came and went. There are only a few that stayed the course; fanfiction.net, mediaminer.org, adult-fanfiction.org and the baby of the family, archiveofourown.org (AO3). Each of these rather interesting archives have a tumultuous history and interesting backstories, which I really don’t want to get into right now. Just saying, if you have a bunch of free time, want to read some free stories and have some fandoms you really love, then these are the places to go. It might take some time to wade through the truly awful stories to find the gems, but the side effect of fan fiction archives, are fan fiction recommendation lists! These handy lists have the best fan fiction from certain fandoms in the compliers subjective viewpoint! Always a good starting place.

As I said, fan fiction is really personal to me. As it says in my bio, I have no formal education about writing outside some interesting English classes in college. I got a C in research papers and grammar; a B in creating a pitch and an A in narrative storytelling. This probably should have told me something. What I do have, is a very long history and experience in fan fiction. I’m not comfortable with putting my pen name out there, let’s just say I’ve been writing fan fiction for over fifteen years in a variety of fandoms under a couple of different names. And in the beginning, I was one of those probably writing crap. And I didn’t care. I was writing and I was having fun. Writing fan fiction helped me through my bad high school experience (a lot of people have them) and it helped others too. And that was important to me. Is still important to me. I grew. I improved. I got to focus on things in fan fiction that I would never have focused on if I had been trying to write original works. And it helped me churn out idea after idea and see how I could string these ideas together to create good concepts and make better stories.

The greatest thing about fan fiction in my opinion, is that it gets people of every age (I have met as many forty year olds as I have twelve year olds) writing. And when people write, they also tend to read. Okay, so maybe they are reading in this vacuum bubble of fan fiction where 90% of it is crap and they may or may not improve, yet, they are reading and you know, that is okay. Because, let’s face it, 90% of the published world of books is crap too. And let us not get started on this idea of self-publishing. Seriously, anything that introduces a little bit of literacy to the world I’m all for. I’m not going to discourage anyone from taking up a pen or sitting down at a computer or type writer and taking these ideas they have in their head and getting them out there. Because, there is a certain magic to it. Let’s not stifle any form of creativity of the arts here.

Now writing and posting fan fiction are two completely different things. And if someone wants to write a story based on 10 Things I Hate About You (which in itself was an authorized fan fiction of the Taming of the Shrew, which is based on classic literature tropes) and keep on their computer for only themselves to read. That is fine! However, if they want to take that fantastical leap of courage and post it the internet in one fashion or another for the public to see, then that, is inspirational. Posting, which in this case is essentially publishing, something you have created from your heart for others to see and consume is perhaps one of the scariest things you can do. And I applaud them for their courage because the public is not a safe place and you never know what will happen. Now, I will say that a lot of fandom communities can be nice and welcoming. And then there are the communities that are insular and full of drama. And sometimes, publishing in the fan fiction world is like shouting into a canyon and hearing the echo and you might have to shout several times (meaning publish more than one story or more than one chapter of a story) to get any sort of response. Hey, being popular in one fandom, doesn’t automatically guarantee being popular in another fandom!

And that is where the sense of community steps in. Sure, you will probably get a lot of ‘squee, I love it, write more!’ responses, which are good for the ego and the soul. But there will be rare times, where you will meet people who love the same things you do and want to squee and discuss writing. About characterization, and plot bunnies hopping out of control and multiplying and isn’t so and so just hot as this character. And suddenly, one isn’t so alone anymore. You don’t feel exactly strange or like a hermit who sits alone in their bedroom typing for hours at a time. Out there, in the world, there are people just like you, doing the same things. And it is okay. People, as a community who like a certain thing, are being creative and sharing ideas. And that is wonderful. So, the execution of said ideas might not be wonderful, but now, the idea is out there in the universal consciousness waiting to be picked up by someone else, tinkered with and fine-tuned and maybe a better version of it, or maybe one just as bad, will be published to be seen and shared by more people so more interesting and diverse stories can be born. (Or, as it is so easy to see in fan fiction if you pay attention, a new fad of fiction tropes and mish mash of nonsensical ideas put together to create something absolutely crazy but mind numbingly fun that you have to go ‘what the fuck, who came up with this bullshit and how did it become so popular and why wasn’t it me? [Superwholock, Omegaverse, Soulbonding])

Now we could discuss the legality of fan fiction, or some of the crazy views that published authors have about fan fiction (Anne McCaffery, George RR Martin), or some of the awesome things that have happened to people because of their fan fiction and the original creators being okay with it (Avatar: The Last Air Bender, Joss Whedon). Or the crazy things that some fan fiction writers do to take their fan fiction and make it into original fiction (Cassandra Claire, 50 Shades of Grey.) But those could take a couple thousand more words and some of it sincerely bewilders me.

Fan fiction is great. I enjoy writing it. And I also enjoy reading it when I have time. There is nothing wrong with people, in their spare time, writing fluffy and sometimes not so fluffy stories about their favorite characters in their favorite universes. There are a lot more horrible things they could be doing than writing stories about fictional people and posting it on the internet.

Now, when I get published (and I say when, not if because I must believe in the when), as a matter of course and a, for your information, I won’t be reading any fan fiction of my own works. (Though, I’d love to keep track of statistics for it, that would be amusing.) It comes down to the universal consciousness once again. If one of those stories someone writes about my work has an amazing idea and I read it, later forget about it, and then think I come up with it on my own and use that idea, then, well, I could be sued. (It has happened.) It is unlikely that the fan fiction writer will win (there is precedent about this), but I would still feel awful. So it is just better all around if I don’t read fan fiction of my own work. Which for me is kind of sadness, but hey, it is a fact of life.

That being said. I hope that I do inspire people to write their own crazy times using my characters or creating their own characters and putting them in my world, or crossing my world into their other favorite worlds. Because, if I wasn’t so busy writing the original world, I’d probably be doing the same thing. There is nothing wrong with people having a good time and enjoying themselves. In fact, if it helps get them through a bad place in their life, then good for them.

Not that the die hard fan fiction writers need permission from me. But those who aren’t so certain, and maybe worry a bit too much or have been told that writing original is superior to writing fan fiction and believed it. Writing fan fiction is okay. Don’t beat yourself up over it and go out there and have fun. Go on, get your fanfic on!

Voltron: The Fandom of You

Soooooo, hi. I want to talk about Voltron fandom, because I have some positive things to say about it. But first, I want to talk about due South.

due South is one of my favorite shows, and the fandom produced some of my favorite fan content. All around, it was a fantastic contribution to the universe. Well done, humanity.

For the uninitiated, the show is: Canadian Mountie Benton Fraser, the most upstanding and honest (and sarcastic) person imaginable, first came to Chicago on the trail of the killers of his father; and, for reasons that don't need exploring at this juncture, he remained, attached as liaison officer with the Canadian Consulate. It was a buddy cop show, and for seasons one and two, his cop buddy was an Italian-American dude named Ray Vecchio. Some people shipped it.

The show was canceled, and then, after enthusiastic fan campaigning, lovingly revived for two more seasons with Paul Gross––the actor who played Fraser––at the helm as executive producer. Unfortunately, David Marciano was unable to reprise his role as Ray Vecchio, so yikes! Now what? The entire premise of this thing was “sincere Canadian Mountie and cynical American cop shenanigans”. The solution was to replace Ray Vecchio. Literally. Like...in the show.

The first episode of season three has Fraser arriving in Chicago after a vacation in Canada to find this hot blond dude with a way different accent claiming to be Ray Vecchio, who is dark-haired and different-accented and just...you know...an entire different human being. Aaand let’s skip to the end of the episode where it turns out that Actual Ray Vecchio is undercover with the mob, so this new dude is gonna pretend to be him ‘til Vecchio gets back. New dude’s name is Ray Kowalski. People also shipped that.

But the fans who’d like, worked feverishly to get their show back on the air weren’t counting on having half the duo they wanted back erased from the show. !!!!!!!!!!!

Enter the Ray Wars. (Seriously, there’s a whole thing about them on fanlore.)

And a disclaimer: I wasn’t in the fandom for the height of the rage and fury, but I did saunter in as things were winding down, and even then some of the wreckage was still smoldering. That whole kerfuffle was Fandom Infamous for a super long time––and people who’ve been in Fandom long enough definitely know the Ray Wars by name AND reputation. For years, I’d see the Ray Wars held up by others as one of the ultimate examples of “intense fans” and just how Not Good a Look fandom can make for itself.

Here’s the thing though: the Ray Wars took place in the late 90s. No social media, no widespread understanding of fandom throughout the population. Fans were, like, on mailing lists and shit. The people who created AO3 were posting fic on web hosts like Geocities and Angelfire. Some people still called the internet “the web”, AOL was the gatekeeper to the internet things for a lot of people, and fans were figuring out that we could do ~*~*~*this*~*~*~ to make our user names look super unique and cool (not that I did that, just to be real, real clear). In that time, fandoms were very, super insular worlds with very tall, very robust fourth walls separating fans from creators and actors.

And for decades, these niche-occupying fans were accustomed to consuming very heterosexual content––shows and movies and comics and video games––and then writing whole-ass essays about how you could interpret this same-sex ship as legitimate within canon if you tilted your head 23 degrees, closed one eye, ignored the heterosexual ending, and stared long enough at these four screenshots from that one scene in episode 13.

You’d see flinches of contact between Fandom and The Established Source Material Creators sometimes. but it was rare. Anne Rice, for example, haaaaaaaaates fanfiction, and she’d go to great lawyery lengths to erase all she could find of it from the internet. Generally speaking, though, creators lived over there, and fans lived here, and we didn’t have much of an opportunity to interact with each other outside of, like, letters and conventions. There were still disrespectful fans, but you had to, like, make an effort to be a direct nuisance to the cast or crew.

Also, admitting to liking “slash” fanfiction as a woman back then got you “you just like slash because you’re too jealous to imagine your favorite male characters with women” at best and “that’s disgusting” at worst. ...Eh, there was probably worse, let’s be real.

So you can imagine the reaction many of us had when Paul Gross was interviewed about due South’s upcoming third season in 1997 and said of Callum Keith Rennie, the actor who’d play Ray Kowalski, “I tell you, slash fiction is going to go crazy when they see the new guy. He is really good-looking and sexy, the dangerous side of Fraser. It will be totally homoerotic.” THESE WERE THINGS AN EXECUTIVE PRODUCER SAID. IN 1997. KNOW WHAT ELSE HAPPENED IN 1997? ELLEN DEGENERES CAME OUT. AND THEN LOST HER CAREER BECAUSE OF IT FOR A LONG-ASS TIME. WILL AND GRACE WASN’T EVEN A THING YET (1998). NEITHER WAS THE ORIGINAL UK VERSION OF QUEER AS FOLK (1999).

Like, holy shit???

And the thing is? He wasn’t baiting. The show intentionally included a LOT of subtext between Fraser and Ray Kowalski, to the point where the last episode of the show showed Ray having a literal identity crisis because he could tell Fraser wanted to go back to Canada permanently and like, “who am I without him” and then the series ends with the two of them sledding into the actual sunset no I’m not exaggerating that happened WHAT EVEN WAS THIS BLESSING IN 1999.

Were they canon? Eeeeeh. Kinda? It was 1997, I’d call whatever they were groundbreaking, at least for me. And the reason I say it wasn’t baiting is because all Paul said was, “Slash fans will like this,” and many of us did. So, y’know. Truth in advertising. Well done, Paul.

AND NOW IT IS THE YEAR OF OUR QUEERS, 20gayteen, and SO MANY THINGS have changed for the better for LGBTQ folks in the last two decades. Like, Voltron fandom is WILD to me sometimes (in a fantastic way) because some of the fans are actually young enough to have been born after the AIDS crisis, after Matthew Shepard was brutally murdered, after Don’t Ask Don’t Tell––after all these horrible, devastating wounds were inflicted on our beautiful queer family. There are actually fans in Voltron who believe, without a sliver of doubt, that a same-sex pairing can and will become canon.

That’s bananas to me. That there is hope like that! Belief like that! Because I was born at the very end of the AIDS crisis and I didn’t hear the word bisexual until I was, like, twelve, let alone have enough of a support system around me to embrace that label for myself. B A N A N A S.

So of course––of course––there’s a part of me that hopes a same-sex pairing will happen in Voltron. Just thinking about how Dreamworks almost made Miguel and Tulio a canon couple in The Road to El Dorado in 2000 makes my heart twinge with disappointment. (Yes, Chel is great, but.)

See, I’m super attached to Voltron even when the writing is clearly stifled and bridled in by the people whose job it is to sell lots and lots of Voltron toys. I read klance fic and reblog VLD fanart and I have one (1) friend who also watches the show. We talk about it sometimes, and I throw fanart of Shiro at her because he’s her favorite. She doesn’t ship anything, and I am a cheerful little klance-shipping demon. I am in a fandom of two, and it’s pretty great in here.

But.

Voltron’s a lighthearted kid’s show about humans and aliens piloting mecha lions in space to save the universe from space colonialism, and while I will be dizzy with glee if a same-sex couple becomes canon in this show, I want it more for the intended audience of Voltron: kids.

I met a kid last year at Osaka Pride whose mother said, “He came home from school and told me, ‘I don’t feel like a girl or a boy,’” so this young mother brought her child to Pride to learn more about the community that her baby might belong in. And that lovely little human stayed on the fringes at first, apparently shy, until their mother told them, “Go on,” and then they spent the next ten minutes literally jogging around all the booths and beaming at everyone: the trans women in neon dresses cooing at how cute this little sunbeam was, the booth folks selling rainbow-themed merch, the couples hand-in-hand without shame or fear. And when they came back to their mom, they were completely carefree. And I thought, I wish that had been me.

And maybe it could’ve been, if every single cartoon I consumed as a child wasn’t coding gay men as villains, overtly implying that LGBT people had a direct link to actual pedophilia, and aggressively promoting heterosexual romance as The Only Acceptable Way of Love. If I’d grown up in a world where Ruby and Sapphire were on TV being happily in love every week, I might’ve realized what was in my own heart sooner than college.

So there is part of me who understands why people are so emotionally connected to the possibility of a ship like klance becoming canon. I’ve felt that urgent hope, that wild hunger, again and again and again and again in my life, and the only time I’ve ever had that hope realized in canon was in 2016 watching Viktor and Yuuri skate together in Yuri!!! on Ice. I cried. A lot.

I understand the emotion fueling the very, very bad decisions being made. In the simplest possible terms, the people who repeatedly harass the Voltron cast and crew are people who want a thing and are prioritizing getting that thing over the mental health of real people. I think it’s a symptom of internet detachment. When one is flinging words into a void, one doesn’t have to see how they’re received. Their actions––if I haven’t made it clear––are objectively harmful, and I don’t condone them.

But what I want to say––what I wrote this whole thing to say––is that Voltron isn’t a terrible fandom, and it isn’t the first fandom to have loud, overzealous fans who cross the line and make people inside and outside the fandom alike think, Yeesh they’re/we’re all lunatics. Voltron fandom is not The Worst, because I guarantee you if The Ray Wars were happening today, there’d totally be people on Twitter attacking Callum Keith Rennie directly for daring to replace David Marciano. It could have been so, so much uglier than it was, and it was already Bad.

In 1997, the fourth wall still more or less existed, and LGBT content––let alone respectful content––was scarce to say the least, so Fandom Discourse at the time remained generally contained to fan-on-fan unpleasantness. Today, that fourth wall is utterly gone, and I think all fandoms have to adapt to that and learn a whole new code of etiquette. LGBT rep is important, but there are respectful and effective ways to get it that don’t involve harassing the cast and crew. The voice actors and creators and crew of Voltron deserve basic human decency, and to be seen as people first and content creators second. It’s entirely possible for the majority of fandom to interact respectfully with the creators––it’ll just take time and patience, like most things that last.

So listen, everything’ll be fine. Try to have patience with each other. To quote a manga I’ve been translating: “There will be times in your life when you won’t be able to avoid being angry. Don’t make little things bigger than they have to be. Laugh and forgive.” Or, in this case, laugh and ignore. If you like a thing, awesome! Tell people! Or don’t! And if you don’t like something, carefully consider the consequences of what you do after you realize, I don’t like this. I don’t ship sheith at all, but for the last two years I’ve managed to leave alone the fans who do ship it and not send Shiro’s voice actor and his family angry, threatening messages. It wasn’t even difficult, guys. I just, like, read some klance fic instead.

I felt compelled to make this because I keep seeing posts from Voltron fans calling Voltron fandom a raging garbage fire and sure, there’re people playing near dry kindling with flamethrowers more than is advisable, but Voltron fans have created and will continue to create some beautiful content and friendships just for love of a show, and that’s lovely as fuck. If you’re feeling ashamed of your fandom and you haven’t done anything wrong, remember that you’re fandom, too. Keep being respectful, kind, and good. The terrible people won’t go away, but they won’t define the fandom for you unless you let them.

Be kind to each other, and things will improve.

And if anyone tells you your ship is bad, don’t talk to that person anymore, because that person probably has some dry kindling and a flamethrower.

And hey, if you’re at the end of this post and you’re like: Wow, this was way too short, and I would like to read more things this person has written, there’s always my Team Voltron-in-Japan AU. It has klance and Nyma/Allura and I enjoy writing it.

Wow, I’m hungry. Bye! :D/

Chapter 184: The Surprisingly GOOD NEWS

Note: Hey guys, it’s Alec. Using a self-adapting reverse encryption program, I managed to hack into Sae’s account. Possibly to spy on her followers and the like, send clandestine messages to certain people to help my rise for dominion over the BL world! Muahahaha!    ( ๑‾̀◡‾́)σ» But I digress... thank you for your patience awaiting these upcoming chapters. Please don’t forget to thank our lovely translators for their hard work which the Addicted fandom relies on. Much love to the entire Addicted fan community.

NO SPOILERS PLEASE!!!, in the comments or anywhere on this account. We have not finished reading the novel. No copy/paste and all that other shenanigans either. Vote/likes/comments are highly appreciated.

Translators: Grantye, Sienna, Sae    Editors: Jowly & Alec

As always, THANK YOU for reading and enjoying the journey with our HEADSTRONG boys:

GU HAI & BAI LUO YIN

《你丫上瘾了》

Chapter 184: The Surprisingly GOOD NEWS

By the time Gu Wei Ting lay down, Gu Hai was already sleeping soundly and the lights in the room have long been turned off.

He stared at the darkness for a couple of minutes before his hand started creeping towards the switch. He couldn’t sleep so he wanted to turn the lights back on. His hand had reached the switch but then he decided not to press it. He looked at his son who was sleeping soundly beside him. They were merely inches apart. Seeing him in such a calm and relaxed manner, Gu Wei Ting can’t help but feel the urge to observe him closer.

Since Gu Hai was a kid, Gu Wei Ting can only count the fingers of one hand the number of times he’d been able to look at him attentively like this. His last memory of such a time was when Gu Hai’s face was just the size of his palm. In the blink of an eye, that once innocent face had turned mature and strikingly handsome.

Years of absence from Gu Hai’s life robbed Gu Wei Ting of not only the chance to experience the joys that come with being a father, but also the chance to watch his only son grow little by little into the fine young man that he is today. Try as he might, there are so many details about Gu Hai’s life and personality that Gu Wei Ting can’t remember. For one, he has no recollection of the first time Gu Hai called him “father.” He also has no memory of the very first time Gu Hai learned to walk. He also does not know what his son liked to eat as a kid, or the toys he liked to play with.

As far as he can remember, every time he would face his son, Gu Wei Ting has always worn a monstrous appearance and a rather formidable aura.

When Gu Hai lazed around during training, stirred up trouble at school, licentiously wandered around, and even when his twisted love affair was exposed, it was always .this strong and sinister image that loomed over him. Always.

Gu Wei Ting neither tried to hear his son’s side nor did he ever ask him to sit down for a proper talk. His means for solving whatever problem he faced was always to throw a fit of rage and beat Gu Hai. The sad part of this reality is, for the longest time, this was the only way that the two ever interacted.

In all the years that passed, Gu Wei Ting never showed any warmth towards Gu Hai. Even during the first few days after his wife passed away, Gu Wei Ting never stuck around. He ran off; went from one place to another. He left his only son alone. A son who was forced to deal with the misery of losing the only person who showed him love and compassion all by himself. He never once thought how broken-hearted, sad, or devastated a 14 year old child could be when faced with such a tragedy. What’s worse is that it never occurred to him how traumatizing that experience was for a child.

So the moment, he saw his son--who was more than 180cm--tightly holding on to his own leg and huddling inside a small wardrobe, a stabbing pain unexpectedly struck his heart.

He thought, “Regardless of the mistakes Gu Hai had made, the one person who should take the blame is me.”

Gu Wei Ting quietly observed Gu Hai’s face in the darkness. Even he was not aware of how tender his own eyes were as they stared at his son. As he took in all the details of his son’s face, Gu Wei Ting saw two cotton balls stuck on Gu Hai’s hair. He immediately reached out and removed them. He then saw a trace of mud at the corner of his mouth. Without even asking why and how it got there, he wiped it away.

The lights were still off.

Gu Wei Ting lay down on his back. Not long after, he sensed Gu Hai turning over and moving closer to him. Of course, Gu Hai was already in a deep sleep and his guard was already down. What remained is some semblance of innocence and the undeniable promise of youth.

Ignoring the person moving closer to him, Gu Wei Ting turned to his side, facing Gu Hai. He was about to close his eyes when he felt someone grab one of his hands. Those two hands were warmer than his by tenfold. And as they wrapped tightly around his, Gu Wei Ting’s expression became listless for a moment. His eyes fell on Gu Hai once more.

He’s not awake. Is he just subconsciously looking for a place to warm his hand?

As he looked at his son in this state, Gu Wei Ting became deeply moved.

-----

During breakfast the next day, Gu Wei Ting was contemplating the situation he and his sons were facing. He kept quiet for a while, pondering by himself, before he turned and asked Sun Jingwei.

“What do you think about Gu Hai’s situation?”

Sun Jingwei had just taken a spoonful of porridge. He nearly choked on it when he heard those words.

“You’re asking for my opinion?” He asked in a somewhat startled manner.

“Is there anyone else here?” Gu We Ting raised a brow.

Sun Jingwei never expected Gu Wei Ting to ask for his opinion regarding this matter. To say that he was shocked by this sudden show trust is an understatement.

He placed his chopsticks down and smiled awkwardly before taking in a deep breath.

“Actually...as parents, I don’t think we need to make such a big fuss over a minor issue like this” he says. “More often than not, our strong desire to control our children backfires and causes them to be even more determined to do the very things we don’t want them to. I say, let them decide how to handle things themselves.”

“Take my daughter for example. She dated a guy when she was in her second year of junior middle school. They’ve already broken up yet her mother and I still don’t know exactly what caused them to separate. My daughter has learned from her past and is better now. The one time she opened up about it, she completely laughed the entire matter off as if it was a joke. Just think about it! If my wife and I had known about their relationship when they were still together, and tried to break them apart, would she have inevitably taken the matter as just puppy love? Wouldn’t that joke of a relationship become real and genuine in her eyes? Similarly, if you were to personally break the boys up, wouldn’t the two of them subconsciously define their feelings as love? Actually, what have you seen? Hugging? Being intimate? Think about it, when we were younger, who wasn’t affectionate with each other, huh? Perhaps, two or three years from now, when they’re living in a new environment, they’ll turn back and look at everything and see that all of it was just a joke and nothing else.”

Gu Wei Ting remained silent. His gaze never left Sun Jingwei as he contemplated the things he just said.

“Do you mean, I should let go and not care about this?”

“I never said that you shouldn’t care,” Sun Jingwei kindly smiled. He was much calmer now. “The best you can do is guide them. Whether they listen or not is totally up to them.”

Gu Wei Ting gave a cold snort when he heard Sun Jingwei’s last statement. “Then he definitely won’t listen.”

“In all honesty, I think you’re overthinking this matter. Do you remember Xiao Zheng from the third brigade? That guy who--during one of the nightly room check-ups--was found squeezed inside one blanket with with Er Hu, the soldier who slept beside him? After further investigation, it was discovered that their relationship wasn’t normal, and they were immediately expelled. But what happened in the end? After leaving the army, they’ve both respectively got married and had kids within two years. Now, I reckon there was never anything between them from the start.”

“I’ve already thought about everything that you’ve said. But the point is, my son is not Xiao Zheng or Er Hu. You’ll never meet such an unusual breed like him, even in a hundred years.”

Sun Jingwei stifled a giggle.

Even if he’s an unusual breed, he’s still your offspring.

“I don’t think he’s unusual in any way at all. But because he’s your son, you subconsciously think that he’s unusual. If this kind of situation happened to my child, I would also be anxious and eager to separate them at once. But the point is, you can’t rush this sort of situation. It’s useless to be anxious about it. Right now, those two are at a phase where there’s yearning and affection for one another. What can you do to them? Send one abroad and lock the other up in the military base? If they keep on thinking and worrying about each other like this, no matter what you do to separate them, they’ll continue to think of ways to get back together.”

It might not have been evident, but mentally Gu Wei Ting acknowledged those last few words. It gave him the will--but not the strength--to consider another course of action.

Controlling either Gu Hai and Bai Luo Yin or the situation was impossible, but ignoring it all together was impossible as well. From the looks of it, no matter what he does, those two would not allow their passion and love for each other to be weakened or whittle down.

------

Once afternoon class was over, Gu Wei Ting summoned his two sons to have lunch with him.

“After this meal, you both can leave and do whatever you want!” Gu Wei Ting said in a low yet powerful tone.

After hearing those words, Bai Luo Yin and Gu Hai--who were busy burying their faces in their plates-- lifted their heads. They cannot believe what they just heard.

“Dad, what do you mean by that, huh?” Gu Hai asked with furrowed brows. He then glanced at Bai Luo Yin from the corner of his eyes.

With indifference written all over his face, Gu Wei Ting simply let his gaze sweep by him. “What I mean is, you two better not hang around in front of me anymore. Just looking at both of you annoys me.”

Silence. This bit of good news was totally unexpected and unbelievable so neither of them were able to respond immediately.

Bai Luo Yin looked at Gu Wei Ting with disbelief. Just this morning, he was still worrying about the secret tunnel that linked his and Gu Hai’s rooms. He had been considering to quickly cover up the tunnel in fear of Gu Wei Ting discovering it and beating Gu Hai again.

It seems he had nothing to worry about after all, for things have taken a sudden turn for the better.

To Bai Luo Yin’s side, Gu Hai’s hand started to move. He reached out to touch Gu Wei Ting’s forehead but his hands were met in midair by a pair of chopsticks.

“Dad, wait. Are you suffering from something?”

“Don’t act stupid with me!” Gu Wei Ting’s expression darkened, “Hurry up and eat! After you finish eating, leave immediately!”

Gu Hai’s black pupils flickered as he spoke, “Dad, you don’t care about me anymore?”

Gu Wei Ting only spared Gu Hai a few words, “Excuse me. That can never happen.”

“Don’t!” Gu Hai pretended to be obedient and innocent after he succeeded in gaining an advantage. “Dad, you can’t ignore me ah! I’m still counting on you to guide me to the right path. If you stand aside and do nothing, then what would happen to me if some twisted idea comes to mind and I start causing trouble again?”

Gu Wei Ting continued to eat the food inside his bowl. His expression remained calm and composed. “When I cared for you, you never stopped giving me a hard time. Now that I stopped caring for you, you can do whatever you want. At least I don’t have to see any of it anymore.”

“Then, what should I do if I miss you?”

This sentence finally caused the chopsticks in Gu Wei Ting’s hand to stop moving.

Looking at the sudden change in his father’s expression, a knot immediately wrapped around Gu Hai’s heart and strangled it.

Oh my God! Don’t tell me he’s touched by what I just said? What should I do if he really changes his mind and make me stay here? Fuck! I’m so stupid. I should’ve just kept my mouth shut instead of saying that!

Gu Wei Ting shot Gu Hai a quick glance. Then out of nowhere, he burst into laughter. Not a single word was said again. The three simply continued to finish the food inside their bowls.

On their way out, Bai Luo Yin gave the father and son a quick glance. Gu Wei Ting was smiling as he bid his sons farewell. His smile reminded Bai Luo Yin of Bai Han Qi. He would always give him the same sincere smile every time he would leave home.

“Dad, I’ll be going then!” Gu Hai finally said. He was carrying two large bags as he stood at the entrance to bid his father one last farewell.

During the entire time, Bai Luo Yin kept his eyes on Gu Wei Ting. However, when Gu Wei Ting shifted his gaze towards Bai Luo Yin, the latter immediately moved his eyes in order to avoid meeting Gu Wei Ting’s.  

As they walked away side by side, Gu Hai and Bai Luo Yin greeted Sun Jingwei who couldn’t refrain from letting out a heavy sigh as he watched the two figures fade into the distance. “Bai Luo Yin is a pretty good kid.”

Gu Wei Ting, who was standing next to him, shot him a side glance, “How about I introduce your daughter to someone else so you can forget about him?”

“Don’t…” Sun Jingwei laughed while shaking his head, “I’m not worthy of being associated with the higher ups.”

Gu Wei Ting laughed along with him. The two then turned around and went inside together.

-----

As they made their way back home, Bai Luo Yin couldn’t help but be consumed with anxiety. He was so overwhelmed by this emotion, that he could not conceal it from the person beside him.

Gu Hai placed his hand on the back of Bai Luo Yin’s head and happily asked, “Don’t tell me that you’re still mulling over last night’s shock?”

“No, it’s not that,” Bai Luo Yin quietly replied. “I suddenly remembered my dad.”

Gu Hai halted his steps, “How about we go straight to your house?”

“No.” Bai Luo Yin suddenly gripped Gu Hai’s arm tightly, “I’ve been wanting to tell you….I plan on confessing to my father.”

After hearing those words, Gu Hai, whose mood that had just started to relax, suddenly became serious again.

“Is it okay if we take a breather first?” he wearily asked.

“Let’s get it done as soon as possible. Since the first try is always the most impressive, the second is weak and the third one is exhausting...”

Gu Hai’s forehead dropped to his hands, “It can’t be that torturous...”

____________

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The original novel is written by Chai Jidan.

We do not own any of its content, we are translators and editors.