#i need more six of crows interviews
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i’ve played this part of the interview more times than i care to admit. i love everything about it. the groups chemistry. danielle and amita’s laughter at “kazzle dazzle” and “have you lost your minds?”. freddy’s little smile when he says “they don’t exist” when kit mentions videos of freddy dancing. and then there’s jack and calahan being soft cinnamon rolls in the back.
#shadow and bone#i need more six of crows interviews#they are the best part of the show and the only reason i watched S2#i love when onscreen chemistry is even better off screen#they just have such a natural and fun vibe#also freddy has such a witty humour and i love it#six of crows#freddy carter#kaz brekker#danielle galligan#nina zenik#kit young#jesper fahey#inej ghafa#amita suman#wylan van eck#jack wolfe#matthias#calahan skogman#interview
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Thoughts.. after Nov, 16,2023.. (click on the pics for better quality)
PPS: yes, this Nov23rd,2023 thanksgiving day Eric posted that reel on VIMEO that they used to pinch SOC to netflix(yes we can see that Jesper&Kaz deleted scene there + KAZ BEING KIDNAPPED BY JAN VAN ECK WHAAAAT?!!) link posted on reddit in response to a post(thank you tea with Leigh on ig!) : https://www.reddit.com/r/Grishaverse/comments/181qvpc/comment/kagqrv3/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3&rdt=60963 and https://vimeo.com/887727982?share=copy#t=0
THE PETITION:
instagram
join "tea with Leigh" broadcast channel for all the news!
.
some LINKS here:
my thoughts after season2:
THAT Crows-Rasputin edit:
grishaverse all ships-edits-post:
bloopers with this cast:
and.. THIS CAST
(+ ofc more on my tumblr acc, if you search by the hashtags)
can they stop because i can't-
this.
♥.
#sab#sab s2#shadow and bone#shadow and bone cast#soc#soc spinoff#six of crows#six of crows spinoff#save shadow and bone#netflix#wga strike#sag strike#leigh bardugo#wesper#helnik#kanej#genyalina#zoyalai#malina#alina starkov#jessie mei li#jesper fahey#kit young#wylan van eck#jack wolfe#daisy head#genya safin#mal oretsev#archie renaux#grishaverse
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"Kaz has found his redemption. He's done his story now in terms of this redemption for his brother. So I want to see what happens with Inej's brother as well, and what that costs her, or what she gains from that," Suman said...
"We haven't quite touched on Inej's trauma as much as we have with Kaz's backstory, so I want to see how that reflects in their relationship as well, because in the hallucination scene, I didn't want to forget that at all," said Suman.
"I wanted that to be at the forefront. So, even when he puts his arm around her waist, her first reaction is, it's this reminder of 'I haven't been touched this way in a really long time, and the last time I did it was the most horrific experience.' But she still wants that from him, so there's this confusion of 'what am I feeling here?'
"Even though these two feel quite similar about touch, hers is a very different experience and his is more of a phobia. So, I think the future would just be how they come together fighting those battles and helping one another, because they understand each other's unspoken language," Suman added.
This was an excellent interview and confirmed what I'd speculated on privately a little earlier today - that Inej's pseudo-regression arc in contrast to Kaz's growth was completely intentional (I mean, obviously it was, but still nice to see it explicitly confirmed), and that there's WAY WAY more to come for her yet.
There's been a lot of critical responses to Inej's behavior this season, but it's clear to me that her rejecting him was definitely driven in no small part by a trauma response as it was anything else. Much like in the books, she can be her own worst enemy at times -- and we'll get more perspective on her side of things in the spinoff show.
#amita suman#inej ghafa#kanej#sab spoilers#shadow and bone#shadow and bone netflix#sab s2 spoilers#spoilers
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smick, magical realism
He says, “I can’t magically conjure him up a cockpit, if I could he would already have one!”
There is a whisper of a laugh in his ear, and a flash of bright colour in the corner of his eye. Sebastian startles and looks around. It is noisy and busy and the interviewer is already asking her next question. No matter. Life has learned him some patience.
It is a beautiful day, with a beautiful crowd. There’s so much to be excited about. He receives homemade bracelets and hand-drawn postcards and signs every cap in sight. He’s buckled into Kinky Kylie by familiar hands. He relishes in her familiar sound. The feel of a wheel against his gloved hands. He is… proud of what he’s trying to accomplish. And humbled by all of the support.
The splashes of foxgloves lining his way back to the hotel are interesting. He won’t question it, not yet. The wind pushes through them, and Sebastian imagines he can hear the crystal tinkle of bells. He pauses at the sidewalk. This stalk must be at least six feet tall. He has to stand on his tiptoes to inhale.
Such a silly thing to do. Foxgloves have no distinct odour, even though they are very pretty. They are in fact, quite poisonous, and Sebastian certainly shouldn’t be sniffing them like he’s trying to do. Something tells him no harm will befall him. Something in the air feels amused, and it is always to your benefit, if people are amused with you. They tend to be more amenable this way.
Back in the hotel he packs. He’ll catch an early train tomorrow, so there’s no sense in going for a nightcap. Also no sense in delaying the inevitable.
He’s asleep faster than he remembers, and then awake in a place where the sand shifts and fog comes and goes and the backdrop changes from a deep forest to the unending ocean whenever he so much as blinks.
“You’re surprisingly hard to read for someone so transparent.”
“Are you doing that?” Sebastian asks, intrigued. “Changing the scenery to what you think I like?”
Laughter that is amused, thankfully, and not unkind. “I don’t need to think, Sebastian. I said you were transparent.” The fog swirling all around him materializes into a shape and then a form and then—
“That’s not fair,” Sebastian says quietly.
The Mick standing before him looks exactly like Mick, save for his blood red eyes. That beloved face which Sebastian has memorized to perfection curled into an expression Sebastian isn’t familiar with. A god contemplating an ant.
“This is all you,” Fog Mick says. “The scenery, the form I take. You’re anxious, so you’re flickering between places that soothe you. And you love him, so that’s who you see.”
To have it all laid bare before him without so much as an introduction. Not unlike being butterflied under the skilled hands of a chef. “Who are you,” Sebastian says, tries to keep his tone mild, “and what do you want with me?”
Fog Mick laughs. “You really are taking this very well.”
“I am—” Sebastian pauses, thinks. “I am a race car driver.” He’s proven that he still is, after today. “I’m working towards being a sailor, even though I’m not great at it. My friends like to think I’m a bit of a famer, too.” There’s so much to learn, he’s not even halfway there. “Beekeeper, husband, father. Lover.”
Fog Mick’s smile is indulgent, maybe even a little approving.
“I guess, after everything, it’s a little hard to surprise me now, as young as I may seem to you.”
“Flatterer,” Fog Mick crows, absolutely delighted. His nose scrunches up, just like Mick when he laughs. It would be disastrous if Sebastian were to let down his guard like that. “This is what I meant by you being hard to read.”
“So, will you answer the question?”
“You said you would conjure him a seat.”
“Figure of speech,” Sebastian says hastily.
“Oh, but I object,” Fog Mick says. “There was a desire, behind that thought.” The entity licks its—Mick’s, lips. Hold fast, Sebastian warns himself. “Desire so great it called me to you. I suppose you could say I grant wishes.”
“No,” Sebastian says, as unwise as it may be to argue with the Fae. “You conclude contracts. You want something in return.”
“Very good, Sebastian.”
“Well?” Sebastian runs through the possibilities in his head. Flesh? Blood? Lifespan? “What is it you want?”
“What will you give?”
Sebastian shakes his head. His heart trembles at the thought of acquiring something so precious, for someone so beloved. Hold fast. “You don’t play fair.”
There it is, a tinge of cruelness in the laugh now. “Never have done,” Fog Mick says. “Never needed to.”
“You’ll need to with me,” Sebastian says, injecting a false sense of surety into his declaration. It may be his imagination, but Fog Mick wavers like a wisp of smoke for a moment, before turning solid again. “Or I’ll sleep, and wake, and there will be no pact between us when all this is over.”
Something falls past Fog Mick’s lips, a language Sebastian wasn’t meant to hear. The air turns colder, and Sebastian tempers his heartbeat. In this realm, according to the Fae, he controls the surroundings. Fog Mick paces, footsteps uneven, like an adult trying to mimic the tread of a child. Now, Sebastian sees their differences clearly. Now, he gathers strength.
The unyielding, gentle might of the mountains. Sebastian takes them there. Fog Mick startles. A hiss, the entity twisting Mick’s handsome features beyond recognition with a sneer.
“You want something from me, enough to seek me out,” Sebastian says, pressing his advantage. “You want it so badly you came to me. Be honest, or I will speak with you no longer.”
“You seek to protect his youth, I want that shelter,” the Fae says. It no longer sounds amused, but covetous instead. “You seek to nurture him with your care, I want that kindness. You seek to succour him at his lowest, I want that comfort. You seek to love him.”
Sebastian shudders.
“I want that devotion.”
Sebastian braces himself. Images of Mick’s overjoyed face if Sebastian told him a seat would be available soon. But what of their relationship? What would become of them if the Fae were to take everything else they held dear?
“No seat is worth that,” Sebastian says.
“No?” Fog Mick raises an eyebrow. “Not even one for your beloved?”
“I seek to protect him, even though he does not need my coddling. I seek to nurture him, and I see him far grown beyond me. I seek to succour him, and he gives me comfort instead. And I seek to love him—”
The Fae frowns, dissatisfaction breaking its form into mist. Fear and reverence and caution and wisdom. Sebastian has never been so grateful to every experience amounting to this instant.
“And he loves me in return. He does not need your offer. So, I refuse.”
They’re back in the hotel room, and Sebastian is waking. The chiming of bells, signalling an end to something significant. Laughter in his ears, haughty, but still, not unkind.
Even packed, Sebastian manages to be late for his train. He runs with his roller suitcase trailing and bumping behind him. He passes the foxgloves, now wilting, and thinks of what to say to Mick.
“If I told you, I had the opportunity to get you a seat, but turned it down—”
“Then I’d know,” Mick interrupts him, voice strong and sure even through the poor reception, “you’d have done it for a good reason.”
“Alright,” Sebastian says. How much can he feel for one person? It’s unfathomable. “I’ll see you soon.”
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Out of curiosity, could be either due to craft or sheer enjoyment, what are your top favourite books?
Okay lowkey I wrote this post & then tumblr ATE it so here it is a little late!! Rachel's All Time Favourite Books (in no particular order):
Cleanness - Garth Greenwell (litfic, ok but this is actually my fave book & today Garth Greenwell lowkey Acknowledged My Presence SOOOO!!! I've read this 4x since August, it's a craft masterpiece)
What Belongs to You - Garth Greenwell (litfic, the book that comes before Cleanness, I'm not as attached to it but it's still FANTASTIC)
A Hundred Lovers - Richie Hofmann (poetry, my fave poetry collection of all time, ALL my epigraphs come from here)
We Do What We Do in the Dark - Michelle Hart (litfic, AMAZINGGG character study & peak into relationship dynamics)
Big Shadow - Marta Balcewicz (litfic, one of my fave books of all time, FANTASTIC teen protagonist in this bildungsroman)
Physical - Andrew McMillan (poetry, AMAZING queer poetry, lots of epigraphs from here too)
Winter in Sokcho - Elisa Shua Desapin (litfic, probably the best start-to-finish narrative I've ever read in my whole life)
If An Egyptian Cannot Speak English - Noor Naga (litfic, THE BEST litfic ending I've ever read, it's UNEXPECTED and something to be STUDIED)
Undoing Hours - Selina Boan (poetry, I feel so grateful for this book as it really helped me reconnect to my Indigenous identity. I met Selina after a LIFE-CHANGING reading & chatted with her, & that conversation drove me to learn more about my family!)
Bitterblue - Kristen Cashore (YA fantasy, this is LITERARY FICTION TO ME I've re-read this like 6 times)
Six of Crows - Leigh Bardugo (YA fantasy, really fun ensemble cast, THE AUDIOBOOK SLAYS)
Intimations - Alexandra Kleeman (litfic short story collection, some of THE BEST short story collections, my work feels adjacent to this dare I say??)
The Marionettes - Katie Wismer (NA paranormal, this series is sooo tropey and fun like I CAN'T WAIT for the last book, I did like book 2 best but this is the first one & I loved it too!)
Demi-Gods - Eliza Robertson (litfic, this was my fave novel before Cleanness & Eliza is my fave writer & from my alma mater! Read my interview with her!)
Monkey Beach - Eden Robinson (litfic, I read this book in a DAY, it's the most impactful novel I've ever read, she's also from my alma mater!)
How to Pronounce Knife - Souvankham Thammavongsa (litfic short story collection, my fave short story collection OF ALL TIME I learned so MUCH about short stories from this!)
The Girls - Emma Cline (litfic, this was MY writing bible for so long lol, I actually ethically hate how this book treats real murders but Emma Cline is an incredible writer & the best parts of this book are the ones that don't casually repurpose history... I have thoughts...)
History of Wolves - Emily Fridlund (litfic, I need to re-read this NOW but wow, the first half of this is chilling...)
Past Lives, Future Bodies - K-Ming Chang (poetry, not sure if you can still buy this but this is one of THE best collections I own)
The Darkest Minds - Alexandra Bracken (YA dystopian, I love AB SOOO MUCH even now hehe, this was a childhood fave & Fostered is a ripoff so <3)
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I read an interview once, where basically Leigh Bardugo explains that there always has to be a death in a story, or at least in hers for the narrative to have any consequence. What is... Stupid? There is no need for one of the characters to die, despite all their hardships throughout the story. If the arcs are well written in this sense, there is no reason. I mean, has Leigh ever watched Chinese dramas ? All this makes me think that she will surely kill Kaz if she ever does a volume 3 to Six of Crows, and I hope that never happens.
Let's say LB has some fucked up notions about how storytelling works. Or some serious issues with describing what she wants the audience to perceive.
When I look at deaths intended to be impactful, we have:
(Nikolai- who was supposed to die at the end of second book for Alina to be framed for it. I'm still convinced it could've made pretty interesting twist.)
Baghra- performative suicide, designed to scar her son some more, is very much in character for her and it's fitting nail in the Darkling's coffin.
Malyen- absolutely zero consequences. He could just as well lose his tracking mojo alongside his fake amplifier abilities.
Aleksander- why even kill him, when he'll gets dragged out of underworld some three years later? He could've been otherwise indisposed for the world to go to hell.
Matthias- his storyline of acceptance was rushed. The only reason for him to die is to remind the reader stakes are high and not even the Crows can always avoid danger, make Nina a bit sad and free to hook up with a new, more progressive character. I think it might have been more interesting if his correction took a bit longer, and he'd got killed for example by his past mentor, not some random boy, who'll get conveniently re-assigned to the crown prince and relevant for further plot nonsense in retrospect.
David- whose death was completely pointless. It's just another kick into Genya. Decent writer could've used the attack on Ravkan capital itself to make LameHeroes accept war is immoral. No need to get rid of the group weirdo.
It's true fiction shouldn't avoid death, but since it's fiction, it should have true impact on the story. Not just shock value.
I'm not sure she'd kill Kaz. He seems like her fav and look, how well is Zoya doing!
#reply#Leigh Bardugo#Grishaverse#Nikolai Lantsov#Baghra Morozova#Malyen Oretsev#The Darkling#Matthias Helvar#David Kostyk#bad writing#grishanalyticritical#anti Leigh Bardugo
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journalist lewis au (seb/lewis)
There's a new journalist in the press room. He raises his pen elegantly and waits for Tom Clarkson to call on him, and when it's his turn to speak, he announces his name but not who he's working for.
"For Sebastian," he says. "Are you aware that a one hour trip in a private jet accounts for two tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions? That's anywhere from five to fourteen times more pollution per passenger than flying commercial."
Seb is comfortable behind the drivers' podium, half-drunk on champagne and victory. He leans into the microphone.
"Ah, but you haven't seen my jet," he says. "There is free alcohol and if you ask nicely a very comfortable bed in the back."
"What's free if the cost is the air our children breathe?" the journalist says.
Seb fiddles with the damp collar of his racesuit. His skin is sticky underneath. He says, "I don't have children. Still in free practice." Everyone laughs.
-
"Who was that guy?" Seb jokes with Britta over dinner, a platter of pasta between them and the remains of a charcuterie board strewn to the side. He had a funny look--a torn-up denim jacket and a thick diamond stud in each ear, shoes that belong on a basketball court rather than the bland carpet in the press room.
Later, nearly passed out in his hotel room, Seb receives a link to a Wikipedia article from Britta.
Lewis Hamilton, twenty-six and hailing from Stevenage, a town Seb has never heard of, is a Pulitzer winning journalist.
Seb almost laughs, between the white walls of his hotel room. Journalism must really be dead if Hamilton is slumming it trackside. You can sell silly season rumours for petty cash, but there's nothing to bust wide open. If Hamilton is chasing a prize-winning story, he won't find it at a Grand Prix.
-
The next race, Hamilton is absent. Seb inquires about it later, and nobody knows because nobody cares. He takes the question to Britta, and she uses her superior intellect to furnish Seb with an answer. Lewis Hamilton has been banned from all Formula 1 media activities because he asks impertinent questions.
-
Hey. I got your number from a source I'd rather not reveal, but I was hoping you could help me get into the press conference Thursday.
A text from an unknown number floats to the top of Seb's notifications.
It's Lewis Hamilton by the way.
Seb texts back. Britta's going to have his balls.
I'll see what I can do.
-
It's years later. Domenicali hates Lewis, but Seb sneaks him into the paddock every weekend. Lewis wanders between the garages taking down names and politely requesting interviews.
Lewis is a deceptively vicious reporter. There's no off the record with him—his mind is a tape recorder, and he never forgets an incriminating detail.
Seb knows he’s working on something big. It’s terrifying.
-
They're in Seb's room, a glittery suite that overlooks the Marina Bay Ferris wheel, and Seb has to ask. He has to, because Lewis won't say anything, but he's been intimating that he has the kind of story that could raze the earth and topple grand, old institutions.
"If you love racing," Seb says, "then why do you attack it?" He doesn't say: I would give this rotten sport anything, no matter how morally compromising. He doesn't say: This is my life.
"Look at me," Lewis says. Seb does. Lewis is sitting on the edge of Seb's bed, and gentle, spidery crow's feet sprout from the corners of his eyes. "Do you think I ever had a shot to make it here? Did you know I was the fastest kid by a tenth at any track, and there wasn't a single manager who ever spoke to me and my dad?"
"It's hard," Seb says. "For myself, it was hard. If Michael hadn't championed me--"
"No," Lewis says, firmly. "I need you to understand that there wasn't a chance. Not for me, and not for the other kids like me, watching Senna race on TV and desperately wanting to be him. I'm doing this for those kids, Seb. You ever wonder why half the guys on the grid are so fucking accident-prone? It's because talent is only half of it. It's money and politics and brand recognition." Lewis is breathing hard. Seb drinks in the fervour bubbling out of Lewis like he's starving for it. "I'm going to tear this whole thing down and plaster the truth on every cover in New York."
Seb can't take it anymore. His body falls towards Lewis, and the kiss is messy, unplanned and unanticipated. Lewis pulls back wetly.
"That was inappropriate," Lewis says. He slides off the bed and collects his coat from the back of the chair. The braids that Lewis habitually tucks behind his ears have fallen forwards over his cheeks. He tucks them neatly again, and his hand hovers over the door handle.
"I thought you respected me more than that," Lewis says, all clipped English syllables. "Call my assistant if you have something I can use."
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Aside from news on how things possibly stand for a Shadow and Bone/Six Of Crows renewal (basically no news is good news, keep going with the campaign!) there's also a short interview with Eric Heisserer, which sheds some interesting light indeed on the writing and making of Season Two, and it explains a lot of things:
Here are the questions posed for Eric's interview:
"I'd like to know if there's a way to liberate the pre-written scripts if Netflix doesn't plan on using them" - Christian Thalmann (creator of the Fjerdan language)
"In my view, 'The Crows' have the potential to revitalize the Grishaverse. Unlike "Shadow and Bone", this new show could rely less on elaborate visual effects and offer a fresh narrative angle. Heist-themed shows are currently in high demand, adding to its appeal. Am I mistaken in thinking that our focus should primarily be on 'The Crows'? The likelihood of 'Shadow and Bone' returning seems slim, but I've always believed that 'The Crows' had a greater change of success." - Joleen
"If/when the spinoff is back (finger crossed) was there anything he had planned that would completely surprised, for good reasons obviously, the audience? And we should hold our breath for that twist/turn??" - Rti
"What are the difficulties you mentioned about filming S2 in that Reddit comment? Don't want to sound negative, but what went wrong?!" - Mitra
"How long was the sizzle reel ready to go but he had to keep it secret?" - Discord Team
"I would love to know his perspective on the impact of streaming on storytelling. Would we have had to launch a campaign like this 10-15 years ago for a show like this? What are the main points when it comes to streaming models and telling unique, diverse stories?" - Acorn_Bri
Eric's Responses:
1) "There is a way to liberate the Crows scripts from Netflix, yes, and in fact that would be part of the buyout for another streamer when acquiring the rights to Leigh's novels. It would be a package deal."
2) "The focus on the Crows is helpful in two ways -- first, those scripts were written, which lets us get a running start at production, and second, just from casual analysis of book sales, it's far more popular worldwide than other Grishaverse titles. So it will be a bigger draw for viewers. The trap though is the cost. It's more grounded than S&B, sure, but the Ice Court is a unique location that either requires a really costly set build, or set extensions and VFX work to make it look authentic, which means nearly every shot of the heist once our crew gets there could be a VFX shot. My guess is the budget would be on par with S2 of S&B.
3) "Yes, there is a surprise or two in the Crows spinoff season, but overall it's as close to the novel as we could make it. And Leigh's novel is such an amazing story with natural cliffhangers that work as episode "out" moments, etc. I think the biggest move we made was to feature every single Crow's backstory to go with their episode. So that was fun/sad/exciting."
4) S2 kept throwing challenges at us, and it started long before we got to production. Like months earlier, when we learned the location we needed for the Little Palace in S1 was closed to us due to the pandemic. So right there we lost out on a ton of S&S scenes, because it wouldn't be a match. But we also had written a compelling side arc for Ivan and Fedyor in S2, these two Grisha trapped on either side of the civil war. Each of them played a big role in the story, but Simon (Ivan) had a feature film that overlapped with our schedule and couldn't move, which meant we lost him. So Daegan worked to revise the season keeping Fedyor and leaving Ivan like dead from the end of S1. He was Kirigan's right-hand man for the season. But poor Julian caught COVID just when we were to shoot out most of his scenes, and after tyring to ake the schedule work, we had to come to the brutal truth that there wasn't a way to keep Fedyor in the story. Our only option was to bring him in at like episode 8, which would've been too little, too late.
COVID continued to be a monster all through production, requiring us to juggle schedules and miss out on days, and it was madness for the cast, who had to pivot with almost no notice whenever someone was ill and quarantined. This isn't unique to our show of course---it happened with everyone. It's just the challenge.
Beyond that, we had been given the go to write a special standalone story: The Demon in the Wood. This would have been released on its own around Christmas, like a BBC special but for Netflix, and would help bridge seasons 1 and 2 by showing a little of what Kirigan was doing before we seem him in S2, and also provide more character context, etc. Christina Strain wrote that and did great work adapting Leigh's short story. But it never went the distance.
There was a lot more to S2 as well, scenes and side stories and little interactions that were lost due to budget or time restrictions. Again, not unique to our show, but agonizing all the same, since what you get is not what we had written, or in some cases even shot. I'm incredibly proud of the cast and the team, and Daegan did the heaviest lifting while I was off finishing the Crows writing room. But we had a lot more thrown at us."
5) That sizzle reel was put together four months before the second season dropped.
6) Streaming is a challenge to serialized storytelling in that it looks at 'content' often with a different agenda and uses metrics that can take a creative issue and exacerbate it. Like in broadcast, if viewership and thus ad revenue has slightly declined, the show will ned to find a way to make their 22 or 13 episodes on a proportionally smaller budget. What is not done is reduce episode order. But if a streaming series underperforms or doesn't meet expectations, an the streamer doesn't cancel it outright, the go-to budget reduction idea is to reduce episode order for the next season. When you just have 8 episodes and continue to deal with notes to compress, pace up, or omit for what you'd scripted for a longer season, reducing further to six or four episodes is exhausting.
This happens due to a slide in autonomy from what the showrunner position has been. What the chatter on the picket lines revealed to us is that most showrunners today don't get to see their own show's budget, and thus don't get the freedom to make budgetary decisions that could better protect the story they're telling. More and more, showrunners not at a legacy network aren't the final say or at times even involved in hiring key roles. I don't have any ideas that aren't already in contract language, I just see how the job on this side has gotten harder and there isn't much of a way for us to make it easier for each other like we could with having writers on set or in post production, because the streaming model has made that impossible."
#shadow and bone#six of crows#sab#shadow and bone netflix#netflix shadow and bone#Eric Heisserer#I really feel sorry for the writers and creators now#There was so much they wanted to do but couldn't because of EVERYTHING
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thought you would appreciate the data in this study, its a small sample size but, its nice to see it among the scientific literature, using the word plural, acknowledging endos leaving behind the structural model of dissociation, and advocating for a better understanding of plurals and dissociative trans people.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S246874992300042X?dgcid=coauthor
thank you for the good work you do citing sources and combatting misinfo towards endos.
im traumagenic, but my partner is a tulpamancer, and i cant get over the hate they suffer.
good luck, and keep going strong ✌️
Thanks!
It's moments like this that I'm sad Sci-Hub doesn't work for articles past 2021. 😢
Even still, the introduction was interesting even if that's basically all that's available.
The first thing I check on a lot of these articles is just the authors.
And I'm happy to see that these look like mostly new names from reputable clinics and universities. As it concerns debates about endogenic plurality, I'm glad to have more people researching this across the field.
More acknowledgement by more people is incredibly vital.
Beyond that, I love that the connection between plurality and gender is being explored here with the goal of helping systems who are seeking gender-affirming care.
For those who identify as both transgender and plural, the likelihood of receiving affirming care is low. Medical and mental health care often does not meet the needs of the transgender community, frequently reinforcing stigma (Noonan et al., 2018; Rees, Crowe & Harris, 2020). People with dissociative symptoms also have trouble accessing mental health care (Nester, Hawkins & Brand, 2022). Providers’ implicit biases regarding both gender identity and plurality may contribute to these disparities, leading to non-affirming treatment (Price et al., 2022).
There is movement toward a more inclusive, affirming approach to this population, one which does not start with an underlying assumption of pathology. One transgender and plural mental health care practitioner noted that dissociation for them was not unreal or pathological (Henkin, 1998). Ribáry, László, Demetrovics and Maraz (2017) interviewed six systems and concluded that, in this cohort, “most systems function relatively well in everyday life” (p.1). The 13 participants with DID in Hunter's study (2016) reported they preferred a client directed approach that honored their subjective experience.
Yarbrough (2018) observed that many plural systems did not experience distress from the existence of other internal headmates, and recommended shared decision making among headmates when pursuing treatment. Rivera (2002) concluded that transgender clients with dissociation could “make reasoned choices and they could live relatively peacefully” (p. 51) about gender, asserting that while mental health clinicians should assess for DID, clinicians should not presume that dissociation precludes transgender clients from providing adequate informed consent for transition-related treatment.
I hope research like this helps will help better inform healthcare for systems. This is obviously specific to gender-affirming care but other care, but with luck it can impact result in research into other forms as well.
Added it to my new Studies and Research page.
Thanks again for sharing! 😁
#plural#plurality#endogenic#psychology#psychiatry#syscourse#system stuff#multiplicity#systems#plural system#endogenic system#pro endo#pro endogenic#sysblr#lgbt#lgbtq#gender dysphoria#transgender#science#actually plural
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Fandom Focus #43
Oh how things have changed...I even have a whole NEW fandom I'm into, which is coming up first...
Dead Boy Detectives - So I kept seeing stuff about this on here and thought I'd give it a try in a few weeks. And then I got over-excited and binged it all in one night, and OMG SO FUCKING GOOD! What the hell did they put in this show, cause it's fucking addictive. Everyone go and watch it right now! I adore the main four (Crystal, Charles, Edwin & Niko) and their group dynamics and all the ships and...just go watch it!!
X-Men (Cherik mainly) - I don't even remember what started me on this but I'm back on my Cherik bullshit, reading fics and watching edits, and I re-watched First Class (thee BEST X-Men movie in my opinion) and I'm just...so into everything Charles and Erik atm.
Interview With the Vampire 2022 - OMG SEASON 2 IN A WEEK!!! I am so fucking excited, I am bursting. It's going to be such a good season I can feel it in my bones - I am LIVING for it!
Jurassic Park - I've been on one, and been re-watching the first two movies a LOT....just the best movie franchise ever (to me) and I wrote my uni assessment from the POV of the Doe T-Rex in The Lost World. Love the whole franchise but those first two movies just hit different for me.
IT movies - Yeah I did a re-watch of them. Wrote some more of my IT fic. Read a lot of Reddie fics. Massively obssessed with them still.
Young Royals still has it's own lil space carved in my brain! And Six of Crows/Shadow & Bone has a grip too (Jesper and Erik's powers? Kaz and Erik's demeanors? Maybe I need to write a SoC and X-Men cross-over?)
#fandom focus#fandom focus no. 43#dead boy detectives#x-men films#xmen alternate timeline#cherik#amc iwtv#amc interview with the vampire#jurassic park#it movies#it 2017#it 2019#young royals#six of crows#shadow and bone
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Birdsong: Hard Sell
Fandom: Grishaverse: Shadow and Bone, Six of Crows, and The Grisha Trilogy
Summary: Every other time in her life, when she got everything she thought she wanted, the rug had been pulled out from beneath her feet. What was stopping this from being any different?
Warnings: Depression, self-destructive behaviors, mentions of grooming, fatphobia, body dysmorphia, and anxiety
Word Count: 11,988
Ship(s): Nina Zenik/Matthias Helvar/Kaz Brekker/Inej Ghafa/Jesper Fahey/Wylan Van Eck
Archive link!
A/N: We've reached the last fic in this series! I may return to it one day but I don't have any plans to do so. I really like the way that it turned out here with the focus on Nina from each of the partners and then herself. I hope that you guys have enjoyed reading this as much as I enjoyed writing it, it means a lot to me as the first SaB fic that I wrote. Thank you all so much for reading! Stay sissy and bitchy everyone <3
Birdsong:
Hard Sell
A Grishaverse Fanfiction
A Nina Zenik/Matthias Helvar/Kaz Brekker/Wylan Van Eck/Jesper Fahey/Inej Ghafa Fanfiction
By Sissytobitch10seconds
Tour was both everything that she had ever hoped it was and the hardest thing that she had ever done.
Nina had dreamed about being a big enough artist to go out and do tours since she had decided that she wanted to be a performer. When the manager of Shadow and Bone brought it up, agreeing to do it was a no-brainer for her. Alina was the only one that had gone on tour before, with Nikolai doing a mini set back when he was performing as Sturmhond, and she had been a bit more wary of the whole thing. It had been a decision that they had decided coincided perfectly with the official release of their first album, so they took it. They were doing a single show in every city that they went to with a couple of days resting in some of the bigger places. Nina knew that the open days were going to get filled with shows as time went on and there was proof for the demand of them, she was well aware of how that worked.
Shadow and Bone was growing vastly in popularity the longer that they continued to produce music. Even in just the year that she had been together with her partners, which was six months after the band had reformed, they had already exploded in the number of streams that their songs had on Spotify. They were finally in a place where they were getting enough money from the Shadow and Bone merch and album purchases that they could support themselves. Alina was the one that needed that the most, since Kirigan had taken most of the money that she had made under the stage name The Sun Summoner. Zoya came after her when it came to being supported by the band, since the money that she got from being a touring drummer was only so good. Nikolai had never been hurting for money with how wealthy his family was. Nina was still getting quite a bit of money from her Heartrender music, too.
They were apparently also getting a lot more popular because of the imploding that The Fold was doing. More and more artists were following in Alina and Nina’s footsteps as they revealed the shady and shitty business practices that they had. The public opinion of the recording studio was plummeting, which meant that more people were reaching out to Shadow and Bone since one of their singers had been the face of the company for a while.
While they were on tour, a couple of the days that had been free on their schedule were instead taken up with interviews. Alina was the one that was focused on during them, but Nina and Zoya were also asked a couple of questions about everything that they had gone through. Nina released what she was comfortable with and kept quiet about what she wasn’t. That had gotten her quite a lot of flak from unhappy studios that hadn’t gotten the massive scoop that they were hoping for. The fans on the internet backed her up, as did her partners and bandmates, but it was beginning to wear her down.
She had always struggled with feeling like she was doing the right thing and being signed under Kirigan had only worsened that. During the harder days, the words that her mother had said would intermingle with his until she felt like a shell of herself.
“You’ll never be ladylike if you do that. You need to be more graceful. Cut down on your portions so that your future husband will actually want you. No wonder your father didn’t fight that hard in the custody battle if this is how you’re going to act.” Her mother.
“Just trust me, why are you so difficult? Calm down and actually listen for once. You’re just not as talented, it’s something you’re going to have to accept. Maybe if you were prettier then you would be selling better.” Kirigan.
She knew that Alina had it worse. She had been raised in the same kind of strict environment as Nina, which is where they had met. She had the worst of the abuse since she had also been in a romantic relationship with the horrible narcissist stealing their money from them as young teenagers. The words still ate Nina from the inside out, turning all-consuming and threatening to never leave.
She was aware that they would eventually leave, they always did. Regardless of what life threw at her, she was always there to take the next step forward and keep living. She wasn’t going to let something like her own depression and anxiety keep her from living the dreams that she had before they set in. She knew that she was going to struggle on the tour since things in the band were still a little rocky and the manager was going to be pushing them as hard as he could to get as much money as they could out of it.
They played sold-out show after sold-out show. They met with countless fans and spent hours talking to them when they tried to get food. They had even had to take off late one morning because someone had found their tour bus and wanted to get a picture.
Despite the constant go-go-go nature of the tour lifestyle that she now found herself in, there were still good moments. She woke up every morning to a picture of her partners, Inej sending her own separate one, letting them know that they missed her. She got near constant updates about what they were doing, like their group chat had become their polycule’s own specific social media. She knew that the certain set of vibrations in her pocket would mean that her partners were checking in with her, which always filled her up with so much love she felt as though she might burst.
Nina also lived for being able to play the music live. She could only imagine how intense it would be if she had brought some of her more scream-adjacent songs from her Heartrender discography instead of the more chill music that Shadow and Bone produced. She lived for the sound of the fans cheering back at her and the bass reverberating through the stage as it traveled through the speakers. Her favorite part was when everyone heard their favorite song and began to cheer even louder than they had been before.
Their biggest show was in the capitol, which was also where they had been doing a bunch of interviews with famous celebrities for late night talk shows. It was exhausting and so rewarding to finally step onto the tour bus so they could be taken to the next place that they needed to be.
Currently, she had performed her last show and was sitting in the hotel room that reminded her that she was a hop, skip, and jump away from her home with her partners. That idea had been thrilling up to a point, until she realized that she was going to be getting home at just the wrong time. Inej wouldn’t be back until the next day from her own set of shows. Matthias and Jesper would be doing their own respective jobs at the theater, with the former moving around sets and fixing broken props while the latter acted the main roll. Wylan had just had to travel out of the state so that he could attend a conference with other scientists as his study was coming to a close. Kaz would be opening the bar and it was one of the more important nights where he couldn't just step out unless there was an emergency.
Arguably, it was probably better for her to have a night alone in her apartment before she swamped herself with even more interaction. It would give her tired body a chance to actually rest and recuperate like she desperately needed, but she didn’t want it. She only ever really felt safe and warm when she was wrapped up in the arms of one of her partners. Even if Kaz was still feeling cuddled out like he had mentioned in the group chat that morning, being next to him or even in the same room as him made her soul feel like it was finally at rest.
Guilt sprang up in her stomach at the thought. She was the one that had decided that she was going to go on the tour and now she was complaining that even more people couldn’t warp their lives around her own wants in her schedule.
She missed them so aggressively that her brain couldn’t help but mention how much they didn’t. Logically, she knew that those things had to be wrong. They had enough partners with each other that if they really didn’t want her then they would have told her before they got to the point in their relationship that they had. Then again, her mind chimed in helpfully to remind her, they had another girlfriend in the chat that they were likely corresponding with over her.
Nina had been so worn down because of the travel that she hadn’t been able to reply consistently to them. She had instead had to give them a barrage of things and reactions to what they had done when she finally got a break for the night. Even then, she usually fell asleep on her bunk on the bus before they got the chance to reply back to her.
She had been the absolute worst for the last month that she had been touring. She knew that they deserved better than her, and she could see what the better example of her was. Genya had always been a complicated person to get to know but she was quite literally everything that Nina wasn’t.
She had been signed with Kirigan before Nina and Alina had the chance. She was quiet, demure, and beautiful beyond all belief. She found time to call her finance every night before she turned in to bed and each morning when she woke up. She was careful of how much she ate and every action that she made while she moved. Nikolai had always been somewhat ambivalent towards her, but Zoya and Alina were thick as thieves with her. It was difficult for Nina to watch, but she forced herself to do so anyway.
Sitting on the floor of her hotel room by herself, in the dark, her mind really came to life. It began to take apart every single text that she had received that was less than glowing, every single comment and message that she had gotten from fans and interviewers alike, and every action of her bandmates. Her mind rifled through the memories of the past month to remind her of all the bad things that had happened, every action that meant she was unwanted or causing problems in some way.
She had been trying to sleep for the duration of the night and gave up somewhere around three in the morning. She would be able to sleep a little bit on the bus as it brought them back to where they had started. The motion always lulled her into a fugue state anyway, which would work in tandem with her depressive episode.
Nina slipped off of the bed and then dressed in one of Matthias’ shirts that had gotten mixed in with the things in her bag when she was packing. She was wearing the ring that Jesper had given her for their six month anniversary on a chain around her neck, right next to the locket that Inej had gifted her containing a picture of all their partners together. She had a sweatshirt from Wylan that she draped over her shoulders to keep her back warm while she worked. Kaz was the only person that she didn’t have something of, which had been eating at her during their month of separation as well.
She set her phone down on the desk in front of her and then turned on the desk light. It illuminated her in soft yellow light, but wasn’t bright enough that it might shine through the window and let other people know that she was awake. She had become a bit paranoid about some of their fans finding out where she was and coming to her hotel room, likely because of some of the stories Genya had been telling during their trip.
The mirror in front of the desk stared back at her as soon as she turned on the light. Her hair was a little messy, the curls shoved back into the ponytail that she had managed to find at the bottom of her toiletries bag after her post-show shower. A couple of them had already escaped and were falling down into her eyes and across her cheeks. She could see every tiny imperfection of her skin, including the blackhead that had formed next to her nose and the line of zits on her hairline. The discoloration of the freckles on the bridge of her nose was upsetting when it wasn’t being hidden by the makeup that was packed away in her suitcase. She had dark bags under her eyes from her struggles to sleep on the bus consistently.
Still, she had to do something or she was going to lose her mind from stress and the voices in the back of her mind. She plugged in her phone and then got it propped up so that it was filming her entire upper half. She grabbed her guitar and situated it in her lap before she flicked to Instagram and went live. Most of her fans lived in the same country as her since her music hadn’t quite gone international even when she had been making a few covers of traditionally Slavic songs to honor her mother. She wasn’t expecting her fans to be up or willing to jump on a live with her at that time. She also usually announced that she was going to go live an hour before she did, which was also going to decrease the number pretty significantly.
She leaned back in the desk chair, looking up at the ceiling of the hotel. She could already see the number beginning to climb until it hovered around a hundred. She gave her usually, dorky little wave to her phone as she said, “Hey everyone! I know that I haven’t been as active as usual, but tour ended up being a lot busier than I thought it was going to be. I hope you’re all having a wonderful night.”
A small smile crossed her face as she saw the messages already streaming in. Most of them were saying hi back to her, or reassuring her that it was okay that she hadn’t been as active. One asked her which city she was in now, which was a question that she could actually answer. She liked being able to interact with her fans on a much smaller scale than usual, it felt almost like returning to when she and Alina were dumb sixteen-year-olds making music on their bedroom floors.
“Where’s Alina? She’s in the other room sleeping right now, probably,” Nina forced herself to laugh. It was getting really old to be pushed to the side for her friend, especially when she was the one that put the most effort into the songwriting and sung most of their album. “What did you guys think of the album? Should I play you something from that or would you prefer something new?”
She was plucking at the strings of her guitar as she carefully turned the pegs back and forth. She was worried that after having to tune her instrument to so many different songs that the strings were finally going to snap, which would result in her being instrument-less until Jesper could take her to the store to buy some more. She winced as she remembered her partner, her mind reminding her time and time again that he had been happier without her. She brought a raincloud with her that ruined and soured the lives that she touched.
She looked down at the chat and forced another smile as she saw that they were all cheering for something new. “I’ve been working on this song for a while, actually, so I’m kind of excited to share it with you all. Zoya has been helping me with it and it sounds much better with her, but you’ll have to settle for now.”
Nina took a deep breath as she found her fingering on the guitar neck and began to sing, “I'm trying to make something of myself. My better days, I go buy the hard sell. But I feel like I'm working with barbed wire and moth wings 'cause I can't really get a hold of many things. I'm one deep breath away from a breakdown. My nerves are wrecked and coming unwound. The world is hostile and I'm fragile and I need someone to kiss the cuts and tell me to keep trying. Is it me? Is it really just me? Does everybody have it together or are we all pretending? Is it me? Is it really just me? Holding it together with one loose string that I can't stop, I can't stop, I can't stop pulling. I rip myself apart at the seams. I find one weak spot and start unraveling, hoping I can find a better me. A fresh new start buried under me. Is it me? Is it really just me? Does everybody have it together or are we all pretending? Is it me? Is it really just me? Holding it together with one loose string that I can't stop, I can't stop, I can't stop pulling. Can we stop pretending now? Can we stop pretending now? Can we all admit that we don't have it figured out? Can we stop pretending now? Can we stop pretending now? Can we all admit that we don't have it figured out? Is it me? Is it really just me? Does everybody have it together or are we all pretending? Is it me? Is it really just me? Holding it together with one loose string that I can't stop, I can't stop, I can't stop pulling, I can't stop pulling, I can't stop pulling.”
At some point during the song, she had started crying. She barely even noticed the hot tears streaking down her face and onto her chin as she sang until she was pulled out of it. Her eyes had been clamped shut as she remembered each lyric that followed the one coming from her mouth. Her heart ached in her chest and her throat felt raw when she had finally stopped.
Her stomach dropped dramatically when she realized that she had started crying. She sniffled and wiped the tears away as quickly as she could. Nina forced another smile onto her face like she had been doing the entire day as she said, “Sorry for that, you guys. I didn’t mean to get all sentimental on you. I’ve had a really long couple of weeks, believe it or not.”
The chat had calmed down slightly but she was still getting a flood of little heart emojis. As soon as the apology had left her lips, people began to rave about her song and a couple even commented that they wished they had been there to hear the whole thing. “I think that I can chat for a while longer, but I don’t think that I should play any more music. I don’t want to wake up Nikolai, you would not believe how grumpy he is until he gets his coffee,” Nina said. She placed her head on her hand and tried not to look at the face that was reflected back at her. She usually felt so confident in her own body, but she had gotten so many comments about it from the stage crews that had helped the band and the interviewers that it was in the forefront of her mind.
She answered a few more questions until her phone started to get really hot from charging while she was live-streaming. She waved goodbye to all of her fans and then ended it so that she could collapse back into her bed.
The smell of Wylan and Matthias wrapped around her in a way that should have just been comforting, but instead made her heart ache even more than it had before. She felt like a pit was opening up inside of her and the only thing that she could get out of it were the horrible things that her mother and Kirigan had said to her. It was sucking all of the energy, the love, the joy that she should have been feeling out of her and replacing it with self-hatred and pain.
She stripped off the jacket and the shirt, placing them tenderly and carefully down onto the bed. She put on the shirt that she was going to be wearing during transit that day and then carefully folded the two garments. She removed the chain with the ring and the locket, even though it felt like she was losing a hand as she did so. She placed it carefully down in the center of the shirt and then layered the hoodie over the top of it. She carefully placed them both down in the suitcase lid and zipped it closed so that it would be safe when it was being moved around but also inaccessible to her.
Nina went to the bathroom and stood in front of the mirror, watching the imperfections of her face crease and move as she tilted her head this way and that. She poked and prodded at the places of her body she didn’t like, the fat rolls on her back and the plumpness of her stomach.
Voices in the back of her mind reminded her of everything she wasn’t. Alina was able to eat anything she wanted and maintained the stick-figure thin outline. Genya took time out of her day instead of focusing on something silly so that she could actually take care of her skin. Zoya had curly hair that she could actually contain and a youthful face. Nikolai never had to worry about what he looked like because he was never subjected to the harsh beauty standards that she, as a woman, had to endure every day since she became a teenager.
By the time that the voices had taken over her mind, she was crying again. Her face was tilted down towards the sink as she tried to stifle the sobs. They threatened to break through the air around her, to make her pain more real. She shouldn’t have been having that pain at all, she reminded herself. This is exactly what she had done when she was signed under Kirigan and it had made her life in the music industry so much harder until she had Alina by her side. The guilt over the resentment her friend coming out and being believed instead of her was going to consume Nina. It was already trying.
She forced down the emotion and decided that she was going to effect as few lives as possible. She pulled out her makeup and covered up all of the imperfections that she hated. A simple smokey eye with catwing eyeliner, like she had done for every day when she was on tour during the time that she wasn’t performing. Her favorite color of strawberry lipstick went on her lips, plumpening them enough that she was more appealing and less pouty.
Nina then shoved everything into her toiletries kit and put that in her suitcase as well. Her bag was packed other than her book, laptop, phone, and its charger.
Remembering the device that lay on the hotel desk reminded her of the next step in her plan. She sat back down in the chair that she had been in before and opened up the texting app. It had brought her so much light and life to see each text as it rolled in while she was being whisked from place to place, but she wasn’t sure the same could be said for her partners. On the off chance that they did love her and they weren’t doing it out of some kind of strange obligation, she knew how much it had to be tearing them up to have her away from them. She had seen how much Matthias and Jesper both pouted when Inej was gone. Having two girlfriends without either of them being in reach had to be torture, she knew that it was for her. So she was going to end that pain for them.
It would hurt for a while to do it this way, but they would have each other to use to recover and then they would be fine. She wouldn’t drag them down and she wouldn’t ruin their lives like she had every other partner, friend, and parent that she had ever known.
She opened up the app and voiced the message as she wrote it, “Hey, sorry for the late text. I just wanted to let you all know that this last year has been the absolute best in my life and I adore you all very much. But I think that it’s time we finally admit that you’d all be happier without me. You’ve done nothing to persuade me of this, you’ve all been absolutely wonderful and the problem could never be with you. It’s just with me, the problem is always with me. I hope that you can help each other through any pain that might come from this break up. Know that I did and do truly love you, I’m doing this to help you live better lives.”
She left the chat and then abandoned her phone on the table. She tilted her head up and blinked furiously to try and keep the tears from running down her face again. She had enough time to redo her makeup if she did cry again, but it felt like giving into the part of herself that she was furiously trying to keep behind lock and key.
Nina marched to her bed and grabbed her laptop. She sat with the duvet discarded off to the side, only using the top sheet to keep herself warm since the other blanket reminded her too much of her now ex-girlfriend. She plugged in her headphones and pulled up her favorite comfort show so that she could forget all of the pain that was plaguing her life until she had to get up in the morning.
---
She went through breakfast without eating anything despite the waffle maker almost screaming her name. Nothing could be louder than the voice of Kirigan right behind her eyes, reminding her that if her body was more desirable then she wouldn’t struggle so much to get the same amount of fame as Alina. Being around her bandmates and manager felt like torture but she stuck through it, smiling pleasantly when Genya said good morning to her despite her wanting to scream and sob.
They were finally back on the bus and she had an excuse to be relatively alone. She was sitting in one of the little booths, the one that had the table where a few of them had taken to eating at, and stared out the window. Her headphones were on and plugged into the phone that she had turned off, playing nothing into her head but being a relatively effective deterrent. She had to prove to herself and the glimmering hope in her breast that her bandmates were fine without her. She couldn’t leave them because it would be more of a hassle to replace her than to put up with her curse, but they didn’t need her as a friend.
She was doing fine, ignoring her feelings and passing the time with her own thoughts and song lyrics, until Nikolai slid into the seat across from her. He grabbed her phone and unplugged her headphones from the jack to get her to pay attention to him, which was actually one of his favorite things to do when he felt he wasn’t getting enough stimulus from the others.
“What?” she asked, immediately regretting it when she realized how snappish the words had been when they came out of her mouth.
“What did you do?” he asked.
“Why do you always assume that I’ve done something?” she asked, snatching her phone back.
He was staring down at the device like it was going to blow up in his hand since it hadn’t immediately turned on when he took it from her like it always did. She removed her headphones so that they were around her neck and then plugged the jack back in while waiting for him to finally explain himself. Nikolai shook his head to rid the thoughts he had been focused on, much like a dog. “Tolya said that Jesper has been freaking out since early this morning. I assume that since he was one of your boys, you had something to do with it.”
Her heart ached in her chest, spreading pain throughout the rest of her body. The skin on her arms and over her chest felt like it was peeling away from her in the desperation for her soul to be pressed back into her body. She felt unlike herself, moments away from screaming or crying. She couldn’t figure out which one was right but she knew that the emotions brewing in her gut had to go somewhere.
Nina shoved it down immediately. She was going to remove herself from everyone’s lives, that had been her plan. She couldn’t allow herself to explode and to hurt others when they had been nothing but tolerant of her. Her hurt was for her to deal with alone, as she always had.
“I didn’t have anything to do with it,” she lied through gritted teeth. “I’m guessing that Inej came back early or something.”
“I don’t think so,” Nikolai shook his head. “From what Tolya was complaining about nothing that Jesper was doing was particularly… exciting.”
“All you said was that he was freaking out,” Nina replied, a little bit annoyed at the whole situation. She didn’t want him prying into the very tender wound that was her recent breakup.
Every time she thought about the fact that she was never going to see those people again, she felt as though she was going to die on the spot. Her mind kept informing her that she would never have Matthias’ arms around her or hear Wylan practicing the piano while he composed something new, or listen to Kaz argue with Jesper over something unimportant, or smell Inej’s body wash when they were hiding in her loft bed, or dance in the living room with Jesper after everyone else had gone to bed ever again. It felt raw and painful in a way that none of her other breakups had felt. There was no relief at having to fake the love any longer, to pretend that she was comfortable going on expensive dates or getting pricey gifts. She only felt the pain that came with knowing that a part of her life that she had really enjoyed was over.
“Nina, what’s the matter?” Nikolai asked. He folded his hands in front of him and leaned forward so that he was a bit closer than before. He was acting like that was going to make it easier for them to hide what they were talking about, to give them some modicum of privacy when they hadn’t had that since they had stepped onto the godforsaken bus.
“Nothing is the matter,” she said, which even she could tell sounded like a lie. There was a waver in her throat and her makeup had already been destroyed around her waterline. The fact that she had tucked herself away in the booth instead of lounging out over the couch while chatting with Alina and Zoya was a big show of that.
He reached across the table and took her hand in his, holding it like he had when they had first decided to make the band. Everything was making her lust after a time that she could no longer ever have, one that had passed her by and compounded new trauma in the forefront of her mind. “We’ve been friends for years, that excuse really isn’t going to work on me,” he assured her. “You can just tell me what’s wrong. I’m not going to judge you and I want to be here for you.”
She carefully took her hand back from him and then began to fiddle with the edge of her phone case. It was one that Wylan had ordered for her after she kept complaining about how terrifying it was to think about all the cracks she could get while performing with it even just in her pocket. It was a construction grade case that was still sleek and had now been decorated with a sticker from her own favorite band. “I don’t really want to talk about it right now.”
Nikolai sat back in his chair, looking over her with those critical eyes that made her feel bare. She didn’t like people examining her that closely, especially when she already felt as self-conscious as she did. “How about I give you another hour on the bus and then we’ll talk again, okay?”
“Okay,” she finally relented. She had enough wear in her soul already from not being able to sleep the night before and all the crying that she couldn’t keep fighting him. Her only hope at the moment was that he would forget before the time came and she’d be able to avoid it regardless.
He dislodged himself from the booth and walked over to another part of the bus so that he could join in the conversation that Zoya and Alina were having. Nina grabbed her phone and headphones, balling them both up in her hand so that they were constricting around her neck any longer, and then removed herself from the booth as well. She walked back to the bunk that she had been using and collapsed into it. She dropped her headphones and phone next to her, useless since the device was turned off and the headphone trick hadn’t even worked.
She turned her head away from the curtain that was only half drawn to cover herself as she pretended to nap and looked over everything. She had taped several polaroids of herself and her partners to the walls to keep herself happy when she was missing her partners. She missed them even more than she had when she was traveling, now knowing that she had resigned herself to not be able to see them when she got back. She was so dreadfully alone and it was all her own doing, even if it had been for the protection of the people that she loved.
---
An hour of driving passed by before someone came to rouse her from the nap she had dozed off into. She had still been aware of where she was in her bunk and what was happening around it, so all it took was their hand on her ankle for her to startle awake “Is everything okay?” she asked nervously as she pulled back the curtain so that the other was revealed.
“I came to ask you the same question,” Alina replied. “Do you wanna cuddle and talk about it?”
That was something that they had done often when they were teenagers in high school. They would go to one of their houses, usually Alina’s because her foster mother was almost always at work, and cuddle underneath the blankets. They would hold each other while the other blubbered about boys, girls, breakups, heartache, and all the other shitty things that came with learning how to be a human in the world. It was cathartic and something that had brought them together even more than their shared Catholic school trauma had.
“I don’t know,” she shook her head, which brought her attention to the fact that even more of her untamable curls had escaped the confines of her ponytail.
Alina pouted a little bit. “I think that it would maybe make you feel better.”
“What do you know about it?” she asked, her mouth flickering down into a frown. The idea that Nikolai had brought her problems to the attention of all the others in the band made the guilt inside of her stomach grow even wider. She felt like she was drowning in her emotions, being pulled into the ocean of sadness and pain by a riptide that she had no hope of escaping.
“Nikolai mentioned that Tolya wouldn’t shut up about Jesper not being able to shut up,” she explained. “And I noticed that you didn’t come out when we stopped for lunch.”
“I’m not hungry,” Nina lied. She had been starving and they were getting fast food at her favorite place. The sensitivity around how much she ate was still there in full-force, overwhelming and gnawing at her body.
“You didn’t eat anything at breakfast either,” Alina noted. Her brows furrowed together as she poked her best friend further into the bunk. She climbed in so that they were laying side by side, tilted so that their fronts were facing each other so that they could both fit in the tiny space. “Nina, what’s going on?”
She closed her eyes as she tried to keep the emotions locked where they belonged, deep inside of her heart in the place that only her ex-partners had ever been able to reach. She took a deep breath as she answered, “It’s not a big deal, I’m just having a bad day.”
Nina could almost hear Alina’s frown as she said, “I think that’s actually a monumental big deal.”
“And why is that?”
“Because you’re my best friend and you were there for all of my bad days. You’ve also been going through it recently,” she replied immediately. Alina reached down and grasped Nina’s hand, so hard that the other woman could feel the scar along in her palm. “You were there for me when I finally ended things with Kirigan and through the whole process of trying to reach out to Mal again. The least I can do is support you when you’re having a bad brain day.”
Nina whimpered as she snuggled closer to Alina. Her arms wrapped around the other girl’s hips and her face was lost in the space of her collarbone, hiding away from the world. Alina responded by completing the hug, weaving her arms behind Nina’s back. It didn’t feel as good as when Matthias and Inej did it, or the rare moments that she got to cuddle Jesper for longer than five minutes, but it was better than nothing. It soothed the touch starved ache burning under her skin by micrometers.
She waited for a while, threading her fingers through her childhood friend’s hair for a while before asked again, “What’s going on?”
“I broke up with them, Alina,” she finally admitted. Saying it out loud made the entire thing feel more real. That was why she had verbalized the text as she was sending it, to try and cement it in her head that what she was doing was the right thing in the long run. Finally admitting that she had broken it off with the healthiest relationship she had ever had in her entire life made everything come crashing down around her. “I’m so fucking selfish. All I can think about is how much I hate my face and my body and being second to you even though we make the music together and I just… they deserve so much better than me.”
“What?” Alina asked, pulling back. She sat up so fast and so suddenly that she hit her head on the top of the bunk and immediately winced, being forced back down while cradling the back of her skull. “Come on, we’re going to go talk with the others about this,” she insisted.
They both slipped out of the bunk so that they were standing. Nina was crying so hard that her makeup was already streaking off, she could feel the heat of her tears beginning to seep down to her skin. She wasn’t able to stop the sobs as they bubbled out of that black abyss in her gut, forcing their way through her throat.
Alina grabbed her hand and nearly dragged her to the main living area where everyone else was sitting. She stopped on the way to grab a packet of makeup wipes and a box of tissues. She dumped them both down on the coffee table in front of the couch in the living room area of the tour bus before she pushed Nina down onto the seat beside Nikolai and Zoya. Both of their aforementioned band partners balked when they saw the state that the woman was in.
“You were right, Zoya, she’s not okay,” Alina sighed as she sat down in front of Nina. She held the other woman’s hand again, rubbing her thumb over her knuckles. Another massive wave of grief washed over Nina as she wished that it was Wylan doing that instead.
“We can see that, Alina. And I’m always right,” Zoya said, her chin jutting out with a strike of confidence.
Nikolai waved his hand in between the two of them to get them to shut up before they could start another one of their tedious arguments. “None of that now, we need to focus on Nina.”
“No you don’t,” she sniffled mournfully.
“Of course we do, we’re your friends and we love you,” Zoya informed her, the touch of annoyance that almost always clung to her words somehow gone. She reached over onto the table and handed Nina one of the makeup wipes so that she could get rid of the streaks that were left over after her crying.
She was still sobbing, unable to stop the emotions from bursting forth out of her after what she had admitted to her friend. She still took the offered item and then used it to wipe down her face. When she finished, Alina took it from her and placed the box of tissues directly down into the center of Nina’s lap.
Alina took a deep breath as she finally announced, “Nina is having a bad brain day. She hasn’t eaten anything all day and she broke up with her partners.”
Next to her, Nikolai wrapped an arm around the back of her shoulders to bring her into a hug and winced. “That would explain why Jesper is freaking out.”
“You didn’t think that bit of information was important to bring up to the rest of us?” Zoya asked. She dislodged herself from the couch and walked over to the kitchenette part of the bus. She got out a bottle of water and one of the leftover peanut butter cracker packs that they had. The snacks were rather bare bones at that point in their trip since they were all headed back home. They had just enough that no one would have to get hangry while waiting to pull into town so that they could get something.
She returned back to the table and handed them both to Nina with a no-nonsense expression painted over her strict features. “Thank you,” she mumbled as she took them both. She opened the water first and sipped on it while she tried to quiet her tears on her own. She swallowed and they were gone, the emotion still hovering just behind her eyes and sitting in a lump in the middle of her chest but not visible to the outside.
“It’s fucking horrifying that you know how to do that,” Nikolai shook his head, his nose wrinkling with his distaste.
“Catholic school,” Nina and Alina echoed at the same time. That caused a small giggle from the former, which made the latter smile reassuringly.
Zoya kicked the edge of the couch as she sat down to get them both to turn towards her. “Can I ask why you thought that it was a good idea to break up with the rest of your polycule? Things were good with them and you were having a good time.”
“It just…” she shook her head. “I really don’t want to talk about this.”
She peaked through the curls now hanging down into her eyes as the other shared a look with each other before they turned properly back to their friend. Alina was the one that restarted the conversation, “Fine. Self destructive break up talk can happen later. Do you think you can talk about some of the other things that you mentioned?”
Nina fidgeted. She tipped her head back and finished half of the water bottle in one go. Zoya nodded at her approvingly and then nudged the crackers with her hand to try and coax her into eating them. Despite not being particularly hungry, her stomach clenching into a knot as she thought about all of the comments that had been made about her, she opened the package and popped one into her mouth.
After she had swallowed it, she said, “I just… the comments that some of the fans were making got to me. The interviewers weren’t much better.”
“It was really fucking frustrating to have to watch them fawn over Alina when you’re the one that got screwed over by the company even harder,” Nikolai nodded reassuringly. “Trust me, Zoya and I were about a second away from pulling you out of the chair and refusing to let them talk to you during that last one.”
“That guy was an ass,” Alina nodded her head in agreement so emphatically that Nina was worried she was going to break her own neck in the process. She then carefully said, “I know that we can’t really do anything to undo the damage that he did to you when it comes to your body, but I promise that you’re beautiful.”
“I can think of something,” Genya said, startling them all. They hadn’t realized that she had walked out of the master bedroom space at the back of the bus. “You know that the only reason he kept me around was because he thought I was beautiful, which is why I was fired pretty quickly after the accident,” she gestured to the patch over her eye where the scars around were just peaking past the fabric.
Nina nodded, guilt gnawing at her insides. She knew that Genya suffered from the same self-conscious and poor body image issues that she did, so it made her envy of the other woman feel all the more intrusive and wrong.
The redhead walked over to the table, sitting down beside Alina. “You are beautiful. Just because you don’t fit the modern day aesthetic of skinny women that somehow have huge boobs doesn’t mean that you’re not. Imagine how many young people out in the audience saw you all dolled up and pretty on the stage and saw themselves. You may not have confidence in your own body, but to them you are the walking embodiment of their own beauty and confidence.”
That did make her feel a little bit better. The reassurance that she was getting from her friends was exactly what she needed. The conversation veered back to the less than favorable things that the interviewers had done when they had the whole band or even the two main singers. Nina finished her water and crackers, cleaning her face of the tears with the tissues in her lap. She ended up falling asleep with her head on Nikolai’s shoulder for the rest of the trip.
---
She felt like walking death as she hauled all of her belongings up the stairs to her apartment. The elevator was still broken, as it had been when she had left a month before. Her phone hung heavy in her pocket, turned all the way off so that she couldn’t get any texts or social media messages that would make her bad day even worse. It was good when it came to her sensitivity around her body and place in the band but bad whenever her mind flitted towards her ex-partners.
She had been wondering if they were trying to reach out to her about everything that had happened or if they had all simply deleted their conversations with her and unfollowed her on social media to be well and truly done with her. Her mind kept creating fake scenarios of them reaching out to her, asking what was wrong, and reassuring her that their lives were richer with her in them.
She couldn’t imagine that was true. They would fight valiantly to try and figure out what the actual reason she had broken up with them was, which is why she had turned her phone off for the duration of the day.
Nina was beginning to doubt her decision to tell Zoya that she would be fine getting back to her apartment on her own. She kind of wished that she had taken her friend up on the offer of them staying together for a while until the post-breakup blues and depressive spiral was over. She couldn’t rely on other people to help her with everything, especially after what they had done to help her on the bus. So she had politely declined and made her own way back to her home.
She stopped in front of her door, opening it with the keys clutched in her hand. She deposited them next to her phone and wallet in the little bowl on top of the bookshelf beside her door. She slid her suitcase through into her little walkway and then closed the door before she dumped her backpack next to it. She was so tired from the tour overall, but it was only aggravated by her not being able to sleep the night before and the emotional turmoil that she had been suffering with the whole day. The nap that she had taken on the bus had only helped a little.
“Food and unpacking,” she mumbled to herself as she grabbed her bag and officially turned around. A gasp ripped itself from her lips as she saw that there was another figure in her home, sitting in the light of the quickly setting sun. It had been close to eight at night when the bus had finally pulled back into the town and it took another hour for them to get everything loaded off of it and into their own vehicles.
The man that was sitting in her chair was a very familiar face, one that her heart had been yearning after the entire day. His hair was mused like he had been running his hands through it all day, the scar on his lip aggravated and red from chewing on it. His clothes consisted of a pair of slim fitting satiny pants and a disheveled looking white button down. His hands were bare on top of the cane that he was clutching like it was going to run away from him.
“Kaz?” she asked, her brows furrowing together with confusion. “What are you-”
She was barely able to get anything else out before another pair of lips were suddenly on top of her own. Her back hit the door that she had just closed, sending her backpack and suitcase tumbling over. Nina heard the clatter of the cane join the cacophony of noise as he brought both of his hands to her hips to keep her in place. She didn’t push him off or tell him that she didn’t want it because then she would be lying to him, and she couldn’t do that again. Instead she began to cry as she kissed him back. Her arms wrapped around his shoulders and threaded through his already destroyed hair, holding his body to her own like he would suddenly disappear.
“What… what was that?” she asked when he finally broke away from her to let her breathe.
“What the fuck did you think that you were doing?” Kaz seethed, pain and anger mixing in eyes in a way that made her stomach flip and her heart flutter.
She didn’t know what the proper response to that would have been, especially since her own question hadn’t yet been answered. So she just tried a weak, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I can almost guarantee that you do,” Kaz replied, fire and bitterness seeping into every word that he spoke. He took a step back from her so that she could finally free herself from the wall, but he didn’t remove his eyes from her for a moment. It was like he thought that if he looked away, she would vanish back into the nothingness that she had been before.
Nina shook that thought from her head the second that it crossed into her mind. There was no way that someone could love her that much. “Is this about the text?” she asked, nervously running her fingers along the seam of her pants.
“No, it’s about the fact that Jesper didn’t show up for dinner today, of course it’s about the text!” he shouted. “How did you think that kind of thing was okay to spring on us when none of us were around to talk you out of it?”
She brought her arms around herself so that she was holding in all of the emotion that was threatening to burst forth from her. “I thought that it would be the best way to do it. I know that breaking up over text isn’t something that’s really praised when it comes to judging whether or not an ex has been fair to you but I knew that I couldn’t do it face-to-face.”
Kaz limped past her so that he was sitting on her couch. Silence hung between them for a moment, and she took in her surroundings so that she could look anywhere but at her very upset boyfriend. Her home had pale cream colored walls with a white ceiling, a single black ceiling light hanging from the center. She had a red velvet couch in between two black metal tables, both of which were overflowing with notebooks, lamps, and plants. The entertainment center that held her small collection of DVDs and television matched the coffee table, which had been unintentional but fit the room perfectly. She had a thick black rug underneath it all that she and Wylan had spent almost an hour laying on the first time that they had spent time alone post-relationship. The living room led directly into the kitchen, which was separated from the space with a counter and cabinets.
“Why do you think that was?” Kaz asked when he finally got the energy to speak up again. She could see him charging up the attack like a canon preparing to fire before the words fell from his scarred lips.
“What?” she asked, shifting back and forth to rid herself of the nervous energy building up in her limbs. She had spent too long exerting herself to her limit every night and then cramped in a bus every day to just stand still in front of him.
“Why do you think that it would have been almost impossible to ask us to break up with you if you had been in front of us?” he asked.
She tilted her head down towards the floor and tried her best not to start crying again. “I said it in the message. I love you all so, so much. It would have torn me apart to see your faces when you realized that this isn’t going to work out for you.”
“You don’t get to decide that for us, Nina!” Kaz shouted, springing from the couch. He winced, obviously having bent his bad knee too quickly, and collapsed back onto the furniture. “We’re the ones that get to make the decision about who is in our life and our relationship. We’re all consenting adults that are within a few years of each other, there’s no power imbalance. There’s no coercion or pressure, consent is explicit in everything that we do and no judgment gets passed when someone has to opt out of an activity. We would have let you know if we didn’t want to date you. You don’t get to fucking decide that for us!”
“You don’t understand!” she screamed, throwing her arms out in a wide gesture to accentuate her point. “I’m fucking cursed! Every time that my life has been this could something has come out of goddamn left field to try and ruin all of it. I could already see it happening when I was on tour and I wanted to save you all from it. You have each other to support you through the initial pain of the breakup, but you’ll be fine once that’s all over. Don’t you see why I can’t be around you? I’m going to hurt you like I did this time and one day it’ll be so big that you’ll start to resent me like everyone always does.”
Kaz slowly pushed himself up from the couch and limped over to her. He placed his ungloved hands on either side of her face and then brought his lips forward so that he was kissing her forehead. She had started crying again, all of the water that Zoya had forced her to drink on the bus now streaming down her face in well-traced rivulets.
She collapsed into him, letting out a wail that shook her entire body. Her face was buried into his neck and her arms were still wrapping around herself to try and get a small amount of extra comfort that way. He was holding her like she was going to disappear, just the way she liked it. It made her feel grounded and stable.
Nina cried and cried until there were no more tears left. She was hiccuping slightly as she pulled back and used the end of her sleeves to mop up the tears still on her face. “I’m sorry,” she whispered.
He was about to say something when his phone went off in his pocket. Unable to contain her own curiosity, she asked, “Who’s that?”
“Backup,” Kaz replied shortly. He was still upset with her but had already mostly forgiven her.
“What, were you going to trap me until I came back to the relationship?” she asked, trying to tease him like she always did before she had done that catastrophically stupid thing.
“Nina,” he warned, looking towards her. He had pulled his phone out of his pocket and turned it on so that he could see who it was that had texted him, but he immediately shoved it back into the pocket of his pants. Kaz’s dark eyes were shining with a kind of fear that he had only see after he woke up from his infrequent nightmares. That struck something deep inside of her and she immediately decided that she was never going to do something like that ever again, not for as long as she lived.
He stepped forward and placed his hands on either side of her face again. “I-I can’t fucking live without you. Any of you. I’ve lost so many people. I can’t lose you too. You hear me? I don’t care if you have some sort of fucking curse, I’ll handle whatever it throws at us. But I cannot lose you,” he spoke with such sincerity that it almost restarted her tears.
Instead, she flung herself around him so that he was buried into the edge of her body. She kissed his neck and then whispered, like it was a secret for just the two of them despite them still being alone in the apartment, “I’m sorry. I promise that I won’t do it again. Never ever.”
“Good,” Kaz replied. He cleared his throat and turned his face away from her so that she couldn’t see the tears glistening on his dark lashes, though she was able to catch a glimpse regardless. He slumped back onto the couch while sticking his bad leg out in front of him so that he didn’t further irritate the nerve sheaths that had been damaged. “I want you to go and put on the locket and ring that you always wear. If you have any clothing from our boys then you’re to put that on as well. They’re going to be coming over as soon as Matthias and Jesper’s show is over.”
“Don’t they have a cast party tonight?” she asked, already moving to do as he had asked. She felt rubbed raw with all of the emotion that she had just had to endure again, after sitting with the turmoil while trapped with her own mind on a bus for hours. She wanted to see the rest of her partners as soon as she could, to apologize to them as she had done to Kaz, but she wasn’t sure how much more crying she could honestly handle.
“Making sure that their girlfriend doesn’t break up with them trumps a cast party that they can attend after every show that they perform in,” Kaz replied, giving her a look that told her she should have been able to guess that.
Nina made herself busy to hide the burning on her freckled cheeks. She opened up her suitcase and got out the items she had so carefully put away early that morning. She secured the necklace right where it belonged, hanging over her collarbone. She then shed her travel shirt and put on Matthias’ shirt and Wylan’s hoodie. The rest of the clothing in the suitcase was thrown haphazardly into the washer so that it could be doing something productive. Kaz let her out of his sight long enough for her to also put away her makeup and the suitcase itself. When she came back, she handed Kaz back his cane and sat down on the ground in front of him.
“I really am sorry, you know,” she whispered.
“I could tell from the crying. I never want to see you that upset again,” he informed her as though he was scolding her. She knew how to see through the Kaz-speak well enough to tell that he was actually telling her how much he hated seeing her when she was in pain.
“Were…” she trailed off, burying her face in the soft velvet of the couch. She put her cheek on it instead, looking up at him while resisting the urge to put her head in his lap. “Were the others also upset?”
“Of course they were, Nina,” he replied. His voice was soft instead of gravely and biting like it normally was when they were having their verbal sparring sessions. She felt special to finally be the one that was receiving his tenderness, usually she was on the outside while watching it be given to Inej and Jesper. He continued, which she had not been expecting, “Jesper immediately started trying to find a way that he could track the bus and find a way to drive out to meet you to prove how much he loved you. Inej got a flight back a day early so that she could be here as soon as she possibly could. Wylan is currently driving back from his conference, he told them that he had a family emergency.”
“But he didn’t!” Nina gasped. Wylan took his job very seriously so the idea that he had lied to his associates about what he was doing absolutely flummoxed her.
“Darling, he did,” Kaz reminded her softly. “One of the only two women in his life that he has ever loved outside of a familiar sense threatened to leave him and break his heart. He had to come back to you.”
She sniffled again, but refused to let herself start crying. Kaz scooted over on the couch so that her head was actually pillowed on his thighs. She relaxed as his bare fingers began to card through her dark chocolate curls, an ever-present reminder of how loved she was. Kaz finally concluded, “I’ve never seen Matthias more broken or upset. He was absolutely devastated that he hadn’t proved to you just how adored you were by both him and us. I felt the same way. I had someone else open the Crow Club tonight just to wait for you.”
“I feel really bad for making you all do that. I thought that this would be the easiest way to protect you, to do it when none of you could come after me,” Nina mumbled as she hid her face away in his lap.
Kaz let the silent hang between them for a moment as he continued to weave his fingers through her curls. “I know. You were technically very clever with how you did it. You let your depression trick you into thinking that you didn’t deserve us or that we wouldn’t want you, and then you decided on a plan that would allow us to supposedly be ‘free’ of you with the least amount of chance of us getting to you to convince you to change your mind. What you didn’t account for was how much we loved you and how desperate we are to keep you near us.”
“Did any of you consider that I actually wanted to breakup?” Nina asked, curiosity getting the better of her. The words slipped through her mouth before she even had a chance to think about why that kind of thing might be hurtful to ask.
“No,” he replied immediately. “You made it very clear in the text that you sent that this was a self-destructive behavior and not something that you actually wanted to be happening. If you had sent any other message then there may have been some doubt in my mind, though.”
“You can read me so well,” she murmured. She grabbed his hand with her own and began to toy with the ends of his fingers.
They both sat in silence for a while until there was a knock on her door. Kaz got up, motioning for her to stay on the couch while he limped towards it. He grabbed his cane from where he had left it on the ground and then answered.
Almost as soon as the door opened, two other members of her polycule had piled in. Kaz had stepped to the side to allow them to, though Nina noticed for a moment that he didn’t actually close to the door or move away from it. Her attention was pulled away from him and to her other boyfriends, Matthias and Jesper immediately crowding her vision.
“Min elskede, vær venlig aldrig at skræmme mig sådan igen. Jeg elsker dig mere end hele verden og kan ikke fatte at skulle være uden dig,” Matthias was speaking so quickly that she was only able to catch a couple of the words that he was saying. Nina had always been naturally gifted when it came to languages, so she had been studying the native tongues of some of her partners so that she could speak with them in a language personal to them specifically. She hadn’t gotten far enough in her Danish lessons to be able to tell what he was saying then.
Her mind was racing to try and figure out what he had said so that she could have some tiny hope at translating it when Jesper dragged her out of it. “Did Kaz talk to you?”
“Yeah,” she whispered with a little nod. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t! Don’t fucking apologize to me,” Jesper shook his head. He knelt down on the ground in front of her and took her hand with his own. Matthias had already fallen to his knees in front of Nina like he was worshiping at an alter. In any other situation she would have found it incredibly erotic, but all she could think about was how guilty she was for causing them pain and how much she absolutely adored them with her entire heart.
He took a shaky breath in through his nose as he wrapped both of his calloused hands around hers. He brought it up to his mouth and pressed a kiss to her palm before he cupped his own cheek with her hand. “I love you, Nina. I truly do. I know that I’m not the best at speaking your love language and sometimes I fuck up and I hurt people, but I love you. Please never make me live without you because you think that I don’t want you.”
“I won’t, never ever again,” she shook her head. She took her hand away from Matthias just long enough to cup his other cheek. She kissed the top of Jesper’s forehead, his coiled black hair tickling the edge of her nose. She then pressed her lips to his for a longer time than was absolutely necessary.
She turned to her other boyfriend then and gave him a watery smile. She was determined not to cry no matter how many feelings she had brewing inside of her, deciding that she had reached her limit for tears. “You’re going to have to repeat what you said if you want me to be able to translate it, baby.”
“I love you,” he said, his English rough and heavily accented with emotion. “Jepser said everything else I had wanted to say. Please do not leave us.”
“I’m not going to, I promise,” she whispered. She kissed him as well.
By the time that she had finished soothing the worries that were brewing inside of her two boys, the door shut. She looked up and around Matthias to see Inej and Wylan standing there. They both looked harried and worn out from the traveling and change of plans that they had to do that day, both also carrying bags from their trips. “I’m sorry,” was the only thing that she could get out of her throat.
“I know,” Inej replied. She stalked over to the other woman, Matthias and Jesper moving away from her so that she had the space she needed. “There was a reason that I sent Kaz to talk you down. Draga mea, you are not cursed. You have had bad things happen to you because bad people were trying to hurt you. Now you have us to protect you from both your own mind and the people trying to hurt you. Never throw away your armor because the knife is shining nicely.”
Nina giggled and then nodded. Inej leaned down and kissed her.
“So you’re going to stay with us? We’re not breaking up anymore?” Wylan asked, his shoulders sagging in relief.
“No, I’m sorry. I got too into my own head and then I guess I just couldn’t keep it inside any longer,” Nina shook her head. She stood up and moved away from the three partners crowding the couch as she wrapped herself around Wylan. He buried himself into her body and clung to her to make sure that she was really there in front of him.
She removed her head from his fluffy brown-red hair to look over all of her partners. They had all gone to such great lengths to make sure that she was still together with them and so that she knew that they loved her. She was never going to hurt them like that again, for as long as she lived.
#fanfiction#fanfic#writing#ao3#archive of our own#soc#six of crows#shadow and bone#sab#grishaverse#the grisha trilogy#polycrows#nina zenik#matthias helvar#kaz brekker#inej ghafa#wylan van eck#jesper fahey#zoya nazyalensky#nikolai lantsov#genya safin#alina starkov#hard sell fic#birdsong series
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What are your favorite lgbtq+ books?and tv shows and movies?🏳️🌈
Okay finally have some time for this so let’s go!
Books first (these are only my absolute favourites if you want more recommendations I have many more that I love):
- Red, white & royal blue (by Casey McQuiston) (mlm and hinted poly if I remember correctly) (romance)
- Crier’s War/Iron Heart (by Nina Varela) (wlw) (fantasy, sort of sci-fi?)
- Solitaire (by Alice Oseman) (yes I count this as a queer book even if it isn’t the main subject) (aroace spectrum + pan and possibly other stuff) (YA)
- Radio Silence (by Alice Oseman) (mlm + demisexual + bi and possibly other stuff) (YA)
- I was born for this (by Alice Oseman) (trans gay + bi) (YA)
- Loveless (by Alice Oseman) (aroace and LOTS of other stuff: lesbian pan and nonbinary, possibly others I don’t remember everything) (YA)
- If this gets out (by Sophie Gonzales and Cale Dietrich) (mlm) (romance)
- Ace of spades (by Faridah Àbíké-Íyímídé) (mlm and wlw) (thriller)
- They both die at the end (by Adam Silvera) (mlm) (YA? idk how to describe this book)
- History is all you left me (by Adam Silvera) (mlm) (YA)
- Aristotle and Dante discover the secrets of the universe/Aristotle and Dante dive into the waters of the world (by Benjamin Alire Sáenz) (mlm) (YA, coming of age, sort of romance, I don’t really know)
- Lark and Kasim start a revolution (by Kacen Callender) (nonbinary + trans + polyam) (uuuuuuhh I guess romance but also coming of age maybe? I have NO idea how to describe this book but it is criminally underrated why is no one talking about it it’s a masterpiece please read it)
- Giovanni’s room (by James Baldwin) (mlm) (uhm. weird)
- This is how you lose the time war (by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone) (wlw) (sci-fi but more fantasy honestly, sort of romance I guess)
- Last night at the telegraph club (by Malinda Lo) (wlw) (romance)
- Six of crows/Crooked Kingdom (by Leigh Bardugo) (mlm + maybe other stuff in the background I don’t really remember) (fantasy)
- The priory of the orange tree/A day of fallen night (by Samantha Shannon) (wlw + mlm + aroace + nonbinary + trans, there’s basically a bit of everything in there) (fantasy)
- The witch king/The fae keeper (by H. E. Edgmon) (trans + mlm + wlw + ace + polyam + nonbinary, there’s also a lot in there) (fantasy)
Okay now for tv shows my all times favourites are:
- Heartstopper (romance)
- Young Royals (drama, romance)
- Heartbreak High (drama, comedy)
- Half bad: the bastard son and the devil himself (fantasy)
- Good omens (fantasy, comedy)
- Sex education (comedy, drama)
- She Ra and the princesses of power (cartoon, fantasy)
- The owl house (cartoon, fantasy)
- Interview with the vampire (fantasy, horror)
- Everything sucks! (comedy, drama)
- Orange is the new black (comedy, drama)
- Years and years (dystopia)
- Buffy the vampire slayer (this is my absoute favourite show ever, but the queer rep only arrives season 4) (fantasy? Don’t know how else to describe it)
And now for the movies:
- Fanfiction (coming of age?)
- Elisa & Marcela (romance)
- Pride (uuuuuhh demonstration lmao? Idk comedy?)
- But I’m a cheerleader (comedy)
- Red, white & royal blue (romcom)
- 120 BPM (er… drama?)
Hope this helps, sorry again for not answering sooner😭 if you want more recommendations I’d be glad to help, just need to find the time to answer lol but I’d genuinely be super happy :)
Also if you have any questions about these don’t hesitate to ask me!
#answered#queer books#queer shows#queer movies#book recommendations#show recommendations#movie recommendation#lgbtq representation#lgbtq books#lgbtq movies#lgbtq shows
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— 10 CHARACTERS / 10 FANDOMS / 10 TAGS
Rules: List 10 of your favorite characters from 10 different fandoms and then tag 10 people!
tagged by @ladyyennefer and @simonxriley Thank you! 💕
tagging: @statichvm @adelaidedrubman @marivenah @kyber-infinitygems @cassietrn @jillvalentinesday @socially-awkward-skeleton @florbelles @chuckhansen @e-the-village-cryptid
Commander Lexa (The 100) — the love of my life, my number one from now until the end of time, deserved a far better ending and I will forever be bitter about it.
Ellie Williams (The Last of Us) — I would walk through fire for this character. I love her more than my own life.
Bix Caleen (Andor) — it was so hard to only pick one Star Wars character, but she really has a special place in my heart now. Also deserved better. Tony Gilroy I am in your fucking walls.
Arthur Morgan (Red Dead Redemption 2) — all I wanted to do was root and toot and yee and haw, but this game made me deeply love this man. I frequently cry about him.
Jessica Jones (Marvel) — she’s an absolute mess, she’s an asshole, but by god does she try.
Emma of Normandy (Vikings: Valhalla) — look, I’m usually strongly Team Viking in these shows, but her first scene made me switch sides in record time. I will also defend her actions in s2 with my full chest. I support women’s rights and women’s wrongs.
Senua (Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice) — I haven’t even played this game myself, but it completely altered my brain chemistry. Senua truly reached into my fucking soul. I cry when I think about her for more than a few minutes. “All she needed was a little help. A little hope.”
Villanelle (Killing Eve) — everything is wrong with her <3
Lestat de Lioncourt (Interview With The Vampire) — everything is wrong with him <3
Inej Ghafa (Six of Crows) — One of the most perseverant characters I’ve ever read. The end of her story is so beautiful and it makes me full on sob every single time without fail.
#special shout-out to Jyn for being the runner up sw fav#there were a few things where I simply couldn’t choose a favorite/the characters came in a set#I’m sure I’ve forgotten some really important characters and then I’ll feel like a parent who forgot their kid at school#but this is a pretty decent round up
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If we get the six of crows spin off we also gonna get tons of interviews, bts photos (more polaroids and Freddy's artistic photos) and videos (like the them just having fun and fake birthdays) and bloopers AND videos like "the making of" AND "set tours" (probably of the ice court) and maybe a new IG account for the crows and BuzzFeed videos AND a PREMIERE AND MORE!!!!
🖤🔪 🫀🐺🎩💣
Brb I need to rewatch Shadow and Bone S2
#six of crows#jesper fahey#nina zenik#kaz brekker#inej ghafa#wylan hendriks#matthais helvar#wylan van eck#crooked kingdom#six of crows supremacy#six of crows duology#netflix shadow and bone#jesper llewellyn fahey#shadow and bone season 2
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Will Netflix greenlight a Six Of Crows Spin off?
An analysis of the current situation
1. interview with EW
The showrunner of SaB being allowed to make an official statement when EW reached out to him is a good sign. It means Netflix wants to test the water and get people hyped for a potential spin off. Also EW! This shows how high the demand is for that show.
But more importantly:
They wrote the whole script already two years before season 2 aired. That means Netflix has really high hopes for a potential spin off.
Netflix is really well known for renewing and cancelling shows not based on actual viewing data’s but based on calculated viewing forecasts. Meaning: Netflix commissioning a spin off two years before season 2 was aired means they predicted a really high demand for a spin off. Now our views only have to match their forecast
2. the Witcher struggling, Stranger things ending
Every streaming service has one, really high in demand fantasy show, that is appealing for a mass audience. This was first Stranger Things, but Stranger Things is ending soon. The next big hit was The Witcher. They gave it an animated spin off, a real life spin off, announced seven seasons at once etc. This was HUGE! The Witcher was their show that Netflix used to compete against other players on the market, especially The Rings of Power. But now the Witcher is struggling a lot. Recasting the main actor, blood origin being badly received by the fans, Cavill and LSH bitching at each other, the whole fighting becoming an online meme. And at this point no one knows if people really want to watch an Australian Geralt. So they need another big fantasy show. And while shadow and bone is not doing as good as the Witcher, it is still doing completely solid. For them, SaB and especially the crows are a safe harbor.
3. The promo
The promo for the second season is insane. The promo is rolled out on every social media channel, even on Netflix Gold and the MOST. Season 2 is out since one week now and they are still releasing new promo content every day. All hapa Asian cast members together, a wesper BTS tour? This is insane! Netflix wants this show to be their next big hit! They want a big fanbase, so people stick to netflix. Because soon the Witcher 3 will be released and I think Netflix is really afraid that many people will cancel their subscription after it. A Six of Crows Spin off will bind viewers to the Netflix for the next… 2/3 years and help them in a really difficult time. Because building up a new fan base that is so big like the SaB is not easy
Like the crows always being put together in the promo is not a huge bait to see fans reaction towards them, come on, is super obvious
4. the new intro for season 1
Netflix making a new intro for the first season shows that Netflix is ready to invest money into the show. Not only in the new season but also in the old season. Also it was really clear that season 2 had a way bigger budget then season 2. look at the different intro cards. They are ready to invest money. And they are ready to invest even more money IF it pays off, meaning: if enough people watch season 2. and hype it up online. Because what Netflix wants is new people subscribing and everyone online taking about the show
5. six of crows being listed by PW
Yeah it is only listed as „in development“ but if you think about it, this is actually a huge deal. They have been quietly developing a spin off since 2021, told no one about it, and now season 2 is released since ONE WEEK and suddenly it is listed in PW? They could have also waited the first month, to have all numbers. But nope, one week and they said: put it in there“ this means they have really high hopes for it and are really optimistic.
So i would say we have a really good chance to get that show IF we keep it trending, keep up the hype and keep on streaming and recommending it to friends
So in conclusion: stream, recommend, like and tweet. Like this we will steal us a spin off
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GUYS PLEASE IT'S URGENT I NEED BOOK RECS IMMEDIATELY PLEASE HELP
I need some fantasy book/book series. I've already read TSC, Vampire Academy, Raven Cycle, Interview with the vampire, His Dark Materials, Game of thrones, Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children, first book of shadow and bone and all six of crows
I guess I need something 16+ and more. And maybe without "not like other girls hero must save the world" trope but if it's a really good book then I don't mind.
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