#(could be even more far back....? but then it gets real fuzzy about specific details of the era and im not a historian ^^'')

[sentientstump]

tomorrow Yhyakh ("abundance") (summer new years) celebration will begin, so im back in town with my ethnicity beam

no one is safe >:c

[bellafragolina]

A few headcanons and scenarios I thought up hashing out some details for my story. Looking into People with Amnesia’s stories and how we recall memories/what do we specifically recall in detail in some… It’s not perfect, but I am very determined to set my self/reader insert apart from the two stories I got inspired by.

—Memories of meeting Arceus are fuzzy since they were in a God’s presence. It definitely changed them if the red eyes and being freaking ten years old was any indication! Not sure what their previous age was, but probably at least a teen. Jubilife’s written language was not mainly Kanji (Yes!) though the weird symbols had no resemblance to English (no)…

—Most Jubilife villagers spoke English or Galarian/Unovan, they swear they heard the older folks ask the infamous “Nani?” followed by some muttered sentences in Japanese.

—Surveying will be harder than they thought with far more research tasks. Not to mention a few members of Jubilife will be concerned over a ten year old working in the wilds. (Rei and Akari are tasked to oversee their first few surveys as a precaution. The cousins are perpetually confused by SI treating Pokémon without much fear. Gushing over how cute Pikachu is yet being rightfully wary of Alphas).

—The being partially illiterate thing will be a small embarrassment to them making the cousins more confused. In turn, not being able to read when their ten year old rookie types on their weird device will make them understand the frustration. (SI is surprised when the Arc Phone has a normal phone case, albeit decked out in Arceus design. I honestly hate how it looks in-game—How does it fit in our pocket?)

—Batman Paranoid Kamado will be… not as wary as he was in-game. At least not initially, I mean Ultra Wormholes are probably a thing so people appearing out of nowhere might be a slight rumor from Alola. The man has a freaking Clefable of all Pokémon which’s pre evos are skittish as heck. He’s a jerk. He really is yet I feel like I can explore that better than the Legends did. As the Noble get taken care of, he becomes more suspicious of them and their skill. (In an unrelated note, Gyarados have red eyes…)

—There will be some days where the Self Insert gets burnout and frustrated so. They will meet up with the Wardens to just discuss what’s been going on since the Noble fight. This will lead to the eventual Lian and Sabi sibling adoption. They are still technically working by learning about the Warden’s regional variants.

—There’s no magical Arceus healing. My poor self insert will get slight scars/injuries from the surveys. Fighting in a Volcano is just crazy, as well as going against a living bomb. Avalugg takes the cake being as massive as he is.

—Ingo won’t recall all his memories. Being, probably, dropped in Hisui through a distortion had its effects. Names help. Occasionally he gets odd snippets of times where he or the face-sharing man are really emotional. (The brain will record when we are feeling extreme emotions, which is kinda why bad times tend to be memorable in detail… Stupid brain). Even with Psychics being real things, trying to force his memories just causes massive strain.

—The whole “Do you love Pokemon?” thing with Kamado will go differently. If I was actually isekai’d and got asked that I would go a different route than the simple yes or no. How a Pokemon grieves is not pleasant to see (referencing Litten and Stoutland). Might be an abrupt start, but I would press on. Pokemon can be close family to some or terrible curses to others. And a few are actual monsters who attack everything in sight. (Gyarados and Hydreigon, even when we befriend them in Pokepark 2 jerk.) They can also be healers to other Pokemon and even people. Anyone of my Pokemon could kill me, but they might also protect my life from a genuine threat. They did protect me when I needed to knock the Noble Pokemon back to their senses. I knew Jubilife before I came here, althoooough it was Jubilife City in the region with Mount Coronet. And at least ten other towns I won’t name. “So yes, I do truly love Pokemon. They can help me do all kinds of things like journey in otherwise dangerous places, Commander.”

—I am not letting him pull the same speech he did in the game. While there are probably unwritten codes for battling (like not using two or more Poker mon in what's supposed to be single battles), I/si wouldn’t follow them by heart when it comes to helping out.

—Checklist Anon. Sorry, the last one got ranty I’m having fun.

I’m having fun too! It’s so very interesting to see people flesh out their fanfics and creations, so I really appreciate you sharing these with me. I read them and just grow so excited for you, because I can remember creating my own stories the way you’re doing, and how much fun it was! Even the more in depth research isn’t bad, when you’re doing it for a personal project like this!

Ahhh, I can’t wait for what you think of next! Your stuff is always so interesting and captivating!!! What a fun character you’re creating!

~Renee

[five-rivers]

imagine if at a christmas truce party the ghosts discover that danny has a second obsession of space

Wrote a fic~ *does a little dance*

.

"Here's your invitation to the truce party," said Skulker, dropping the letter by Danny's head, "and here's the duty list. Pick something." He shoved a piece of paper into Danny's face.

"You know," said Danny, testing the rope Skulker had tied him with, "you get a lot better at chasing me when you're doing it for non-murder purposes."

Skulker scowled, but Danny knew better than to take his apparent facial expression as a sign of his true emotions. After all, the face Danny could see wasn't really Skulker's. It was a mask. One the tiny green jellybean inside could manipulate as he pleased.

"What do you mean, 'duty list,' anyway?" Danny blew the paper off his nose.

"It's a list. Of duties. For people who want to attend the party. You can't possibly imagine that one ghost does it all on their own, do you?"

"I don't know. Some living people are really into the holidays. Wouldn't surprise me if there was someone over in the GZ Obsessing."

"There are," said Skulker flatly. "But going to those parties is risky."

"Oh. Yeah. I guess that makes sense. So, is this, like, a potluck deal, or white elephant, or do I have to come set up, or what?"

"Read the list, whelp!"

"I would," said Danny, "if you held it far enough away for me to see what was written on it. "My eyes don't focus that close."

Grumbling, Skulker adjusted his position.

A lot of the things on the list were already checked off. The rest looked dangerous (fighting the Krampus), time consuming (holly acquisition, with a stupidly high number of branches listed next to it), expensive (providing new holiday table settings), confusing (Danny didn't know what a 'consoda' was, or why he would fetch offerings from it), or simply extraordinarily unappealing (after party cleanup). Except for one.

One that caught Danny's eye because of a very specific word that was included.

"Why's the star all by itself?" asked Danny.

"Because the star is important," said Skulker. "Adding the star to the tree is what starts off the real celebration. A star needs to be impressive. Dramatic! Not one of those little dinky tinsel things you can find at human stores."

Part of Danny knew he shouldn't- But when had he ever listened to that part of himself?

Actually, that wasn't really fair. He listened, otherwise he'd be fully dead instead of just half.

Still.

(The idea of making a star made his skin feel sparkly and fuzzy, like his whole body was half an inch from the surface of freshly poured soda, but all over.)

"I'll take it," he said.

"Humf," said Skulker. "Don't screw up, or you'll be in for a beating as soon as the truce is over." He made a mark by the name and started to fly off.

"Hey! Aren't you going to untie me?"

"Nah."

.

"He's late," said Desiree, sharply, glaring at Skulker as if he had any control over what the whelp did or did not do.

She wasn't the only one.

"He's not late yet," defended Skulker.

"You shouldn't have given him the star as a choice," complained Technus, his voice squaking like a poorly connected computer speaker. "You should have just told him what he'd have to do. Something that wouldn't ruin the party. He's a teenager! Teenagers are easily distracted."

"I didn't know you were a teen, techie," drawled Spectra, who really shouldn't have been at the party at all, seeing as she wasn't, and never had been, invited. Skulker was hoping someone would find a way to throw her and her little minion out before midnight.

"It's TECHNUS, MASTER OF TECHNOLOGY, CONTROLLER OF ALL THINGS ELECTRONIC AND BEEPING."

"I am sure Sir Phantom is on his way," said Princess Dora, softly, ignoring Technus's continuing rant with the ease of long practice. She would not be here the whole evening. Her kingdom had its own, separate celebrations, but they wouldn't start for well over half a human day. "He is a very responsible person, and he was speaking to me about stars just earlier this month." She frowned, slightly, swirling the darkly luminous wine in her glass. "That is, I think he was talking about stars. The conversation was somewhat difficult for me to follow."

"Oh, no," said Desiree, putting one hand delicately over a smile.

"What?" growled Skulker.

"It always bothered me a little, you see, but I hadn't realized quite why until just now." She was barely even trying to hide her delight. "The second time I fought him, it was during a meteor shower."

"So?" asked Amorpho.

"He was rather cross with me during the fight. At the time, I thought it was because he was missing that girl's party, or because of the whole memory wiping thing, but in retrospect..."

"Just spit it out already," said Skulker.

"I do believe you gave the task of making the tree star to a ghost Obsessed with outer space."

Inside the suit, Skulker's true hands slip off his controls for just a moment. "Oh, Ancients," he groaned.

"We're not getting a star this year, are we?" asked Ember.

Phantom chose that moment to barrel through the door. "Sorry!" he exclaimed, looking and sounding more like a little kid than Skulker had ever witnessed. "Am I late? No, I'm not. Never mind. I'm not sorry. What do you think?"

He held out the... thing in his hands for the assembled ghosts to view. It was... It was definitely a star. A round blue star. Complete with solar flares and sunspots. Animated flares and sunspots.

"How the hell?" whispered Walker in the background, despite the fact that he and his pink prison really had no room to talk.

"Is it no good?" asked Phantom, managing to shift his weight even though he was floating. "I turned the brightness way down so that everyone could see the details, but I think I could turn it back up again without too much trouble." He blinked up at the other ghosts, and Skulker noticed with some unease that his pupils were currently shaped like crescent moons. "I mean, the other one exploded, but I think I've got it, now."

All of the ghosts slid back, just slightly. Not that they were afraid of explosions, but, well, being cautious didn't hurt.

"Er," said Dora, "what is it, exactly?"

"A star! A blue giant, specifically. Well, a model of one, anyway, but I think it's a good model. I mean, it's a blue giant right now. I've got it set up so that it'll go through the whole life cycle of a massive star. Or, not the whole life cycle, because that would include the nebula, but the life cycle from this point? It'll change color and expand as the night goes on and it uses up its 'hydrogen'- I've scaled the expansion, though, don't worry, it won't take over- and then the core will collapse and the outer layers will be ejected, and- BOOM!- supernova!"

"Ghost child," said Technus, in a more strangled than usual voice, "are you telling us that's a bomb?"

"No, it's a star," said Phantom, blankly. On closer inspection, the crescents in his eyes were not the only modification to Phantom's appearance. He had pale green and silver stars scattered liberally across his nose and cheeks, and similar shapes in the black of his costume.

In the background, Desiree was dying of laughter.

"Don't you think a supernova might be... dangerous?"

"Oh, a real one, sure. But I tested one before I brought this, and all it did to me was singe my eyebrows off, and I was standing really close."

"Whelp," said Skulker, searching for some reason to reject Phantom's 'contribution,' "how is that even supposed to stay on the tree? It's just a ball."

"Oh, it'll float wherever I tell it to, don't worry, I've tested it!"

.

It perhaps said something about ghostly parties that the sudden detonation of the tree topper several hours later, the subsequent glee of the supposed superhero in attendance when the room was filled with star-shaped glitter and confetti, and the attempted homicide on the part of several glitter-unfriendly ghosts was not the most exciting series of events to occur that night.

[partnersatfazbear]

Fazbear Frights: What We Found Analysis

Here’s my analysis for What We Found, the third story in Gumdrop Angel. I wrote this as I read so it may be a little different than my previous analysis where I read the story first and went back.

If you’re a Michael Afton fan I highly recommend this. Also, there’s possibly some insight into William Afton, Mrs. Afton, and Henry too, so it’s worth a skim.

Pg 144 '...a place thirty-some years forgotten' Just reconfirming FNAF 3 is 30 years past *one* of the FNAF closings, presumably FNAF 2 location.

Pg 145 "The whole building was giving him [Hudson] a headache." FIX THE VENTILATION BRUH

Pg 148 '...they were able to use salvaged derelict equiptment original to the old pizzerias.' Another confirmation of something we heard from Phone Guy.

Pg 147 "How old are you?" "Twenty-three, same as you." I think this gives us Michael's age during FNAF 3.

EDIT: This kept me awake last night. Obviously this is impossible because he has to be alive for at least 10 years before 1983, BUT maybe its just reconfirming FNAF 3′s year? 2023?

Pg 149 "Hudsan's dad died and his mom married Lewis, a ridiculous balding man who wore plaid vests and smoked a pipe" Did... Did this book just seriously imply Mrs. Afton left William for Henry? Really? (Yes, there's differences; the husband is dead and the man wears plaid 'vests' but it seems very odd to include that detail. This could just have been the writer's own imagination, though.) I have seen this as a fan theory and 100% explains the jealousy aspect of William, but I can't help but kinda hate it. I think this is very important, though, and probably Scott's intention. "This horrible little man [Lewis]... would make Hudson's next ten years a living Hell" This REALLY intrigues me given the context I just went over. The text implies Lewis was fairly neglectful to our main character / Michael stand-in Hudson. Maybe I'm wrong and for some reason Mrs. Emily left and went to William? XD Haha, I'm reading too much into this page. Maybe I'll come back to this later. I figure it's more of Scott possibly including double-details (contradicting stuff with the same character that really applies to two, which has been something I heavily pointed out in previous anaylsis on this blog) Having said that, I'm going w/the former because I can't imagine Henry being abusive (neglectful yes, abusive no) and he's never been portrayed that way in official works like William has in the novels.

Pg 150 "Hudson began to screw up in class...a product of spending the night in fear that his stepfather [Lewis]... [would] beat him just for the fun of it." Ooof. Big confirm on William actually being abusive. Unless we stick with the Henry theory for Lewis (combined with Midnight Motorist Henry theory / alcoholic). "...near-daily beatings..." "his mom started taking pills to get through the day..." So, whoever Mrs. Afton is, she was definetly not paying attention. But then, most people married to serial killers either don't notice because of denial (like this) or because the killer is so manipulative / careful they can't notice.

"Barry, who had red hair and freckles..." Yo?! Is that a description of Fritz?! These friends in the story could be the other kids Michael knew's stand-in's, aka the two gravestones with names he used (Fritz and Jeremy), as shown in the checks for the games and FNAF 6. I've long figured Michael was probably friends with the victims--it makes them easier, although riskier, targets [for William]. The two friends are male, too, like Fritz and Jeremy. If you're curious about Duane's description (our stand in for Jeremy), it's "tight black shirt... muscles... black hair long enough for a glossy ponytail..." I'm not sure if this matches anything found in the novels or contradicts them, though. (The novels = TSE trilogy)

"And so it went... until the night of the fire." For context, this is before FF burns down. We're learning of Hudson's life from his close friends in childhood, his father's death, his mother remarrying, to his abusive stepfather, to his grades slipping to this line. This would be a new fire not seen/mentioned in the games...

Pg 151 "...go to Charlie's for a sundae..." Really. Really Scott. Just gonna use this name again. OK. I'm not even gonna discuss this because it's probably irrelevant. *This is confirmed on pg 158 to be an ice cream shop. No lore relevance aside the annoying name coincidences Scott loves to troll with.

"This is not... an advance into enemy territory, a fight with demons, or a descent into Hell..." Uh, what? What is Hudson talking about? XD I'm only noting it because it seems so out of place. He's probably talking about video games or something.

Another note, although I don't have a specific reference since it is mentioned off-hand many times, is that Hudson keeps referring to his "history" which is implied to have kept him from getting a well-paying job and a girl he's crushing on doesn't know this "history" which is good for him. Seems good old "Michael Stand-In" has done some jail time or something. Edit: On pg 154/155 the girl asks Hudson, "Did you do it?" Seems he may have killed his stepfather or been involved with something else just as bad. Edit 2: No, I was thinking too deep into it. This probably refers to Evan's death at Fredbear's. DUH.

Pg 156 describes an actual "prize corner" in FF! What am I even reading? IIRC this is in FNAF 3, too. So they just hand out these scary gift boxes to people that complete the attraction? (Hudson says he *would* have fun handing out the scary toys to kids when this location opens--kind of a bully thing to do, eh?)

"[Hudson] avoid[ed] glancing in any of the mirrors..." I'm only pointing this out because it could be reference to one of two things. 1) We know because of one of UCN's music tracks, William has a fear of his reflection. Michael probably shares this trait, especially since 2) after Ennard and all... and later on pg 157 it also says, "he never wanted to face: himself" Sounds like guilt, my guy.

Pg 157 "blonde hair... blue eyes..." Hudson shares an eye color with Michael. It's possible Michael had blonde hair as a child and it changed to brown (it's common, something I personally went through being technically blonde/ blue eyed myself)

"He [Hudson] knew from personal experience that toys could turn from fun...to torture ina heart-beat" Fairly self explanatory. Either Hudson's worked at a creepy location before or he doesn't like remembering Fredbear's.

*checks how much is left.* There's still 35 pages (not counting back/front) left of this... This is gonna be a lot of notes.

Pg 158 Hudson doesn't have a car. Poor Mike, probably having to walk everywhere. Especially as a corpse.

Pg 160 This page describes many physical issues Hudson has that prevents him from entering the Navy, all from the abuse of Lewis. Obvious paralell to Michael becoming an undead [because his father sent him to CBPR indirectly causing his condition]

Pg 161 "How's your granny, Hud?... ...Is she still alive?" "I don't think she can die." Does anyone in the Afton family really 'die'? XD

Pg 162 These few pages discuss Hudson's grandmother. She's described as "a seer who claimed to know the future... ...wore big men's plaid flannel shirts with baggy jeans" Um, more plaid / flannel? AGH. STAHP. Lowkey, I would totally headcanon my Aunt Jen like this, though.

Pg 163 "Hudson's mom... the way she was before Hudson's dad had died... never... particularly warm and fuzzy... but... effiencient and responsible..." More about Mrs. Afton, so that's kinda neat.

"Hudson's dad was fun and attentive." There's a good Dad in this series?

"Unfortunetly, he also struggled with mental illness." "invisible low points" (Pg 164) Kinda reminds me of how Henry is described after Charlotte's death in the books.

Pg 164 "When Steven got himself into a bad deal that cost him his small business... he'd taken his life." Oh, it is Henry! SMH. Way to use confusing paralells. So, from our understanding thus far, Hudson's real father, Steven, is our Henry stand-in. His step-father despite being described similar to Henry, is actually our William stand-in. Fair game, Scott.

Pg 164 "...he [Hudson] was locked into a supply closet..." Oh shit, you guys. So, let me go on a tangent here, because this IS important! I just watched a retrospective on Sister Location and FNAF 6 earlier and one theory for Midnight Motorist was the person in the chair was the mother and the kid was Michael. I think this little line may confirm that. In fact, the story may be the key to figuring things out. Obviously, the line is a paralell to FNAF 4's scene in which Crying Child was locked in the supply closet of Fredbear's. I know some people, including Matpat, believe[d] CC was Michael, and in this book's context, it sort of works. This does contradict Step Closer and 1000 other things that make Michael the older brother, but maybe it's hinting at MM? Abusive stepdad (possibly Henry... maybe William is gone at this point), checked out Mom (hey, grey couch lady with Foxybro's font). IDK, but its definetly something to think about.

Pg 165 Lewis is mentioned as calling Hudson "nothing" and saying "you're nothing" on several occasions on this page. Just more abuse, for those accurate fanfic writers like me. Also I kinda wanna watch Morel Orel again. Yall know my fav character is Clay. Yall know.

"You're smoke." <-- Lewis / The text later reads, "...there was some irony, given what eventually happened." BRUH. Why did your stepdad die in a fire? :V TELL ME.

"When his family's house burned down at the end of his senior year..." Huh. Is there a fire we don't know about in the game-verse? Could this explain what happened to the FNAF 4 house before MM house?!

"...it purged Hudson of Lewis and his mother." MRS. AFTON BURNED ALIVE, TOO? Bruh. I can't with this story.

The text later describes the fire is concluded to be man-made and Hudson was blamed for it. Can't say if this ties to Michael, but it IS interesting... TBF, there is a small paralell to draw between Henry in FNAF 6 and his history of suicide in the books, too.

Pg 166 "...this place's [FF] busted thermostat.." I just find this line funny.

Pg 167 "...after three weeks of keeping an eye on the place" Some more timeline context for FNAF 3. We know that Michael worked there a little while before we start playing the game thanks to one of the phone calls, IIRC, so this makes sense. If Michael was accused of [something] and also wanting to hunt down his father, then it makes perfect sense why he's working a dead end job at Freddy's over and over and over. Fun fun fun.

Pg 169 "He hated to think about a functional character [Foxy]" This line is in regards to Hudson not liking the set up of Pirate's Cove and Foxy's hook to scare people. Sounds familiar, don't it? (For Michael anyway.)

Pg 173 "Some big find is arriving tomorrow." SPRINGY BOI! COME ON BOOK, get on with the show?

Pg 176 "Granny was wearing a red-and-green plaid shirt and her baggy jeans." Nothing special, but it was specifically brought up twice. I'm kind of racking my brain trying to understand what the point of this character is outside of "woooo everything is haunted don't you know that" kind of character.

Pg 180 "...dropped the crate on the linoleum with a resounding thud." HEY. Poor Springtrap, just gettin' tossed around like the trash he is.

Pg 186 "If you weren't so stupid, I'd tell you more about it." Springtrap bringing the burn. =:)

"A voice with a burr-like rasp...hint of a Southern accent" I'm going to assume this is because it's Lewis probably in the suit in this story and not our old British lad.

"It's was Mr. Atkin's voice." THE MATH TEACHER? *goes back to check* 'The algebra teacher'. Okay...

Pg 190 Okay, so Hudson hear's Lewis' voice this time. Okay, I get it now. Springtrap in this kind of imbodies all of Hudson's old bullies, including the teacher. He also has PTSD, just FYI. IDK if anyone finds that important, but it's fairly obvious by the line "He wasn't in his bedroom. Lewis didn't just slam his head into a desk; his head had been slammed into the [arcade] game."

"Why did he hallucinate a scene from his childhood?" Oh, it's not PTSD, then. It's just the VENTILATION ERROR. lol Okay.

Just a note, as I'm reading through the more action-based stuff, I kind of feel bad for Michael if he had flashbacks like this guy. They're intense.

So, Lewis' voice finally comes out of Springtrap on Pg 213. There's that.

Pg 220 "You can just stay there [in his room]" Kind of a paralell to Midnight Motorist. Lewis is saying it to Hudson. I really feel like the kid in the MM game is Michael because of this story...

Pg 223 "Heat purges. Fire heals." I'm sure that's Henry's life motto.

The ending was stupid, but most in these stories are. Hudson is hallucinating and is implied to have burned himself alive in FF's oven. Meh? The first half of this one is A TRIP and a little insight into what I 100% believe is Michael's childhood. I think the saddest part of it all is that we never got Springtrap speaking to Michael in FNAF 3--and if it's ever remade I hope we get more of them interacting.

[twdmusicboxmystery]

FTWD 6x12 - In Dreams

Wow! This episode was Amazing! As I told my fellow theorists, this is one of those episodes, much like TWD 10x18, Find Me, that’s kinda gonna be a holy grail of TD symbolism. So buckle up! There’s a lot here to unpack. 

***As always, spoilers for FTWD 6x12 abound below. Don’t read until you’ve watched!***

This episode really was amazing, but also super-sad. While obviously it’s extremely tragic the baby didn’t make it, I will say that I’m glad Grace isn’t leaving the show just yet. It was amazing for the symbolism but also for the masterful storytelling. I got to a point at the end where I was trying to decide which ending they were going for (whether Grace would live or die) but the truth was actually a third outcome I totally didn’t see coming. I write fiction myself and so it’s really hard to take me by surprise, but this episode did it. 

First and foremost, this episode is really great evidence that Leah is a hallucination and/or dream. I know I’ve posted about how we think the bright and somewhat fuzzy colors show that. But let me illustrate. Here’s is a pic from 10x17 of Daryl and Maggie in the woods. Just take note of the greens and browns. This is the filter they generally use in TWD and it’s not hugely saturated with color. That’s on purpose because it’s a post-apocalyptic world and they want it to feel bleak.

Compare that pic to the one below it from Find Me. See the difference?

Well, same thing in this episode about Grace. Here, they tell us flat out and pretty early that it’s not real. So they aren’t trying to trick us like they did in 10x18. So, this is evidence (if not proof in my book) because if the colors look like this and it’s a dream/hallucination for Grace, then it must be for Daryl, too, right?

Okay, but let’s get to specifics. First off, Roy Orbison. We’ve seen/heard references to him SO often, and usually in conjunction with Beth symbolism. Pretty much this entire episode centers around his song, In Dreams.

Not only is there the saturation of the colors, but there is tons of PINK. (Pink Theory).

So Grace wakes up in the middle of the woods, and already, things feel ethereal.

I didn’t even realize it at first, but she’s lying on her back and sees birds flying in circles above her. Just like Beth and Daryl in Inmates. 

A walker attacks her, and both it’s arms end up breaking. We saw that very recently in the Aaron/Father Gabriel episode (10x19). We’re not entirely sure what it means yet, but forearms symbolism has been a thing, in different iterations, for a while. So, that’s one we’re working on understanding.

She meets a young woman named Athena (who we’ve looked into before for various reasons; for one thing, the owl a symbol of Athena, and that’s definitely been a TD symbol in the past).

Athena asks her if she can remember her name, and Grace can’t. This is reminiscent of Dawn asking Beth at Grady if she can remember her name.

When Grace stands up, she pulls her sweater up over her shoulder. Even though this isn’t a romantic situation, it reminded me SO much of when Beth did it in 4x01 after hugging Daryl. And given the bright yellowness of the sweater? Yeah, she’s definitely a Beth proxy. 

In the opening credits, we see Grace, but just for a moment, there’s an overlay of Athena over top of her. We see her walking stick clearly, but then she disappears. I noticed that when I first watched it, and rewound, trying to understand what it was, but of course I didn’t until I watched the episode.

Speaking of Athena’s stick, @wdway did some research because she thought it looked similar to sticks the blind use to guide them. Check this out. 

So, clearly Athena isn’t using it that way, but the theme of being blind is there. I’ll talk more about this later, but we see several walkers get stabbed through one eye, which both suggests blindness and is part of the Sirius/one eye symbolism. The “blind” walking stick is just another way to show this same theme.

Athena takes her back to Morgan’s community, and we quickly learn that it’s been 16 years since the last episode, and Athena is actually Grace’s unborn child. So clearly, this is a dream or vision of some kind.

She had to convince Morgan of who she is, which she eventually does.

So, here’s the thing. I, for one, am very focused on what foreshadows Beth, right? And there is TONS of dialogue in this episode that could potentially be applied to her.

For example, in this scene, Morgan says, “You can’t be here.” Grace: “Why?” And then it just shows her grave stone. Morgan says, “I buried you myself.”

Now, we don’t think Daryl actually buried Beth, but he tried at a white church. (X). However, the idea of Daryl saying something like this, (You can’t be here. You’re dead.) works very well.

Later in the same scene, Grace says, “people don’t get what they wish for.” To which Morgan replies, “Sometimes things happen that you just can’t explain.” It reminded me of something Dwight said back in S4/S5 when he was still looking for Sherry. He says, “impossible shit happens.” He was referring to him finding Sherry again, which he did. This was referring to Morgan seeing Grace again after he thought she’d died. Which he also did (even if it was just in her dream). Although, it definitely gave the impression that maybe she did die for a few minutes in the barn before he resuscitated her. So, you could argue that that aspect of her dream came true.

I had to chuckle when June showed up to check her out. She literally checks her eyes and says she sees no sign of brain injury. Um, yeah. Brain injury CAN show up in the eyes, but just because it doesn’t, doesn’t mean she doesn’t have one. Clearly, they didn’t want to use screen time to show June do an entire, thorough check of Grace, but there was a little bit of medical unreality here. Of course, you could argue that this is Grace’s dream and she’s not a doctor, so she wouldn’t have known better.

But more to the point, they mention a concussion (which Edwards said Beth had), traumatic brain injury (which Beth sustained in Coda) and then combine it with Grace not remembering her name at the beginning, and the unrealities of Carol’s recovery at Grady in S5, and I’d say this is a very on-the-nose replay of Grady. 

We see a really sweet future where Strand and Daniel are friends and Sherry and Dwight are not only back together, but have two kids. A baby girl named Tina (Sherry’s sister who died in TWD S6 and, might I add, was a Beth proxy) and a little boy named John after John Dorie. Very sweet.

But I was thinking while watching it that chances are, none of that will actually happen. And I was thinking about it from an outside-the-story aspect. They’re already talking about people from Fear crossing back over to main TWD. And I don’t necessarily think we’ll see it in S11, but probably in the spinoff. So, I feel like this community Morgan is building will go down at some point.

And that doesn’t mean Dwight and Sherry won’t get back together. I actually think they will. I’m just saying it won’t happen exactly as Grace saw it in her dream. Compare it to Carl’s dream of the future during S8, before he died. Certain aspects of that have or will come true, but he won’t live to see it. So not all of it will. See what I mean?

And then the showrunner kind of confirmed this during the “inside the episode.” He said what Grace saw was just a dream and none of it was actually going to come to pass. ☹

Grace then asks Morgan how he managed to build the community and bring everyone together. He answers that it was Athena. Because they lost Grace, everyone rallied around her child and that’s what kept everyone together.

I actually think we saw this theme somewhat in 5b. After they lost Beth (and Tyreese) everyone sort of rallied around Judith, who was still a baby. I had an idea while watching the beginning of the episode that Grace = Beth and Athena = Judith. Now, Athena doesn’t survive, so I’m not sure how far I can push that. But it’s still interesting to think about.

This walker is an interesting one. We could really go down a rabbit hole iwth it. First off, there’s the shirt that says, “don’t mess with Texas.” As I’ve been talking about Eugene lately, I’m sure you’ll recognize the Texas/New Mexico/western theme.

The missing eye is sirius symbolism. But the glasses make me think of two specific walkers we saw in the past. The woman in the food bank that father Gabriel had a relationship with, 

and also this one that Glenn and Nicholas saw. You know, right before Glenn’s death fake out. 

I won’t go into what they both mean in detail. I’m sure it’s enough to say that both walkers, in both situations, are Beth proxies of one sort or another. 

And I’m sure we should be reading into the fact that it comes on a loop. They see/kill it over and over again as Grace becomes “awake” in her dream.

Of course, Athena has a Walkman and listens to music all the time. I’m sure I don’t have to explain that one. But what really caught my ear was the part where Morgan turned it off in the real world and in the dream, Athena said, “You broke it.” Very similar to the music box being broken in 5x10.

And then Grace says she didn’t break it. Morgan just turned it off. I’m seeing that as a hint that Beth was never dead. Just sleeping. When she finally starts connecting all the dots, Grace has lots of interesting lines that could apply to Beth, or could also apply to the Daryl/Leah situation.

“I’m unconscious.” (Beth)

“It’s just fragments of different memories. Things I’ve thought about. My brain is trying to make sense of it all.” (Daryl/Leah).

At one point, Grace tells Athena she is strong (Beth’s “I am strong,”) and that she’ll bring everyone together. Bring everyone hope.

Seriously, EVERY line of dialogue in this episode jumped out at me in some way.

Let me back up a minute. When we see the car with the “end is the beginning” graffiti on it, the trunk is open, which is significant.

Grace also talks about how she was on the highway with Morgan, and they saw this car, and there was an explosion.

Now, we’ve never talked much about anything like this with Beth because we don’t have tons of evidence for it. But I do remember that spoilers (the same ones that reported seeing her at the white cabin during S5 filming) mentioned a car chase near Terminus, and we never saw that, either. So, I think it’s possible something like this might happen during the missing 17 days. Just speculation on my part, though.

Also a major “wake up” theme here. I mentioned this about a week ago HERE when I did a bunch of mini rewatches. The symbolism of what’s real vs what’s a dream has actually been very prevalent throughout the entire series. I just don’t think TD homed in on it until the Leah episode just recently.

We heard it clear back in ep 1 with Rick. We saw it with Denise just before she died. And we saw Beth’s eyes flutter open at Grady when she “woke up,” so it’s safe to say this can be applied to Beth.

Morgan says repeatedly to Grace that she needs to wake up. Once she realizes she’s unconscious, she repeats it many times as well. “I need to wake up.”

In terms of how this might speak to Leah being a hallucination for Daryl, consider this. Grace is inside her hallucination, and she says things like this:

“I’m unconscious.” “This isn’t real.” “It’s in my head. Fragments of different memories…” Yeah, that’s what we’ve been saying about 10x18 for weeks.

Grace’s hallucination represents the future she hopes will come to pass, but what she actually sees is an amalgamation of people she knows and memories she has. Her brain just fills in the blanks.

By the same token, Leah represents something Daryl wants (not to be alone anymore) but she’s an amalgamation of past experiences and people he knows in real life. (Rick, Carol, and especially Beth.)

Then we have the white horse symbol. This is something we’ve known for a long time. It’s the black/white theme, but we saw a white horse and a “you’re still alive” sign near Morgan in 6x16. Rick also rode a white horse in 9x05, just before he didn’t actually die. So the white horse represents someone living.

Interestingly, the first time she sees the white horse, it’s a picture hanging in the air, apparently from nothing. But it reminds me a lot of the plate glass windows we see hanging from the trees during S8/AOW. 

Grace and Athena rode one to the barn where Grace lived and sort of reunited with Morgan. And yes, it’s a little bit sneaky, because both Athena and Grace were on the horse, and Athena didn’t make it. It was hard to tell which one it would apply to. But that’s exactly how the writers keep us guessing. It’s why we don’t usually know things for sure until we can see them in hind sight.

But in this case, we could have guessed Grace would live because of that horse. More on that in minute.

When Riley shows up in the hallucination, Grace kills him and realizes Athena represents her real baby and can feel the contractions too. She has an interesting line. “I was wrong. You are real. It’s the only thing that makes sense. We’re connected.”

This is the kind of line that jumps out at me as a foreshadow of Beth. For years, we’ve wondered if Daryl will see Beth and think he’s hallucinating. In the wake of the Leah episode, I suspect this more than ever. Especially if at some point, he realizes Leah isn’t real, when he sees Beth, he won’t trust his own eyes and his own mind. So this line could apply to some future storyline.

Of course Grace says things like, “I need to wake up so you can be born.” “I need to wake up so you’re all right.” I was writing so fast, my hand was cramping, lol.

While riding the white horse, they cross a small bridge, which is clearly symbolic. But I also noticed that Grace passed the truck we saw her driving around last season. In the cab is a walker in a radiation suit and a radiation detector (I’m sure there’s a more official name for that, lol).

It gave me a new perspective on the cars. While I’m sure they represent many things, they represent things that have happened in the characters’ pasts. And that works well for everything we’ve always said, because it means when Daryl sees a blond walker in a car, it’s all about his past. And Beth.

There’s a moment when Grace actually seems to die. She stops breathing and appears to be dead, even in the dream.

Couple of things here. 1) I’ve said for years that Beth may have truly, medically died for a short time period. As in, her heart stopped before restarting. That would be a sneaky way to fulfill all the “death” symbolism around her but have her still live/resurrect. This may be evidence of that. 2) Did you see everything run backward? It’s at this part when Grace stops breathing, we see everything run in backward motion for about 30 seconds. Almost as though they need to rewind or reset to get the story back on the right track.

The key. I guess we should talk about the key. Very interesting stuff. As per this episode, the key represents the cost of peace. And they talked about it being the future.

Remember back in S8, there was an episode called “The Key to the Future.” So this is a repeated theme. But we’ve seen keys around Beth for a long time, especially at Grady. It kept showing keys being used to open doors in order to get Rick and Daryl in to do the prisoner exchange.

So, here’s what I’m thinking for this. I think the cost of peace was Beth being shot. We’ve thought for a long time that Beth will save TF in some way. Probably during the CRM war or maybe in some way that has nothing to do with war (i.e. famine or lack of water).

We don’t know how that will play out, yet. But if key = cost of peace, then seeing keys at Grady probably shows that the cost of saving TF down the road is Beth getting shot. It went the way it had to. The way it was always going to. So she could save them.

@frangipanilove likes to say that Fear functions as our key (like the kind you find on a map) to understanding TD symbolism. And this is a good example. They told us what the key symbol stands for and it makes other things we’ve seen and theorized make sense.

In a more literal, plot-related sense, Riley also said, “That key is going to change everything.”

And, I don’t actually think it’s a good thing that they gave it away. I think Grace’s logic in the moment was absolutely sound. The baby was going to be the Savior. And the baby’s strength would supplant whatever advantage that key gave whoever has it.

But the baby, tragically, died. So…they probably need to get that key back.

Also interesting to note that back in S8, the book “A Key to a Future” was about building windmills and water aqueducts. Major water symbols, and once again, water = Beth. 

Speaking of the baby as savior, that’s definitely a theme, as I described above. The people rallied around her in Grace’s dream and she kind of saved everyone just by living.

@wdway pointed out that Grace giving birth in a barn on top of hay gives it a manger feel, which is probably what they were going for.

So, Athena, in the dream, is also something of a proxy for Beth.

When they enter the barn, we see something super interesting. There’s a walker point up at a cage with a dove in it. The walker doesn’t even try to get them when they enter, but that’s because it’s Grace’s dream. But this is SUCH a potent TD symbol. A bird in a cage = imprisonment. And there was an empty bird cage in Beth’s cell in 4x01, as well as near Connie just before she disappeared. 

We also think it was probably a dove (you can hear it cooing). So with the manger motif as she gives birth, from a biblical symbolism standpoint, a dove makes sense. The dove generally represents the Holy Spirit branchy of the Trinity. 

Just a super interesting symbol and, to me, it shows that this is all tied up in Beth symbolism, and that the person they’re foreshadowing here is the person who’s been imprisoned for a long time. The person who had the bird cage in her cell. 

I also think we need to appreciate that Grace had a dream that made her believe one thing was true (that she would die and the baby would live). But in reality, the opposite was true. We’ve come up with considerable evidence that Beth lived. But Daryl believes that she died. And the exact opposite will end up being true. They also tried really hard to convince us in this episode that Grace would die. We saw her accepting it and acting accordingly. Similarly, they’ve tried really hard to convince us that Beth really died. We’ve seen all the characters accept it and act accordingly. 

So, I said above that we saw several walkers get it in the eye, right? One of the sequences I noticed the second or third time through that I watched it, was when, in the dream, Walker Riley has Athena pinned against the wall. He was the first one to say, “I know you thought this would be different, but that was just a dream.” 

So, what I noticed is that he said this, at the exact same time that Grace stopped breathing or “died” and then suddenly revived. And directly after Riley said this, he got a stake through the eye when Morgan showed up. 

So we have this “dream” symbolism, Grace dying and then resurrecting and the eye/Sirius symbolism all within a few seconds of each other. It’s a very compelling and powerful scene. Maybe my favorite of the episode. I’ve watched it like a thousand times, lol. 

And of course there’s that heartbreaking, repeated line, “I [know you] thought this would end differently. But that was just a dream.” First, walker-Riley (super cool walker effect, btw) said it to Athena in the Grace’s dream. Then she said it while holding her deceased baby.

More lines that jumped out at me near the end, and could possibly apply to Beth and Daryl:

“You found us.” (Athena says this to Morgan when he shows up to kill Riley in the dream.)

“He’s here for me.” Grace says this when Morgan shows up and takes her hand.

Grace: “I don’t want to say goodbye, but I have to.” Beth hating goodbyes and not wanting to say them.

When Morgan is trying to revive Grace, he says, “Stay with me. Come back.” (Geez, if Daryl says anything like this during those missing 17 days, it’s gonna be freaking heartbreaking.)

When she wakes up, he says, “Good morning. You’re awake. You’re awake.” So there’s that awake/wake up theme again. But the “good morning” is interesting, too. It may be morning time as this scene is playing out, but we didn’t actually see them go from night to morning. 

We’ve said for years that the sunrise represents Beth and a new beginning, so that “good morning” line is highly symbolic of a new era in which Beth lives.

He also says, “I thought I lost you.” *coughs Daryl*

Grace replies, “I had to come back so Athena could be born.” And again, I really don’t think Beth will be pregnant when she shows up, but baby Athena represents the way in which she’ll save TF. Because Athena was supposed to be the Savior here.

“We don’t have much time,” is repeated two or three times. So that’s a time mention, but also probably foreshadows a future storyline where they’re up against a countdown clock in some way. 

“I had to come back.” Tell me you aren’t thinking of Beth when listening to that line. 

“The key is not the future. She is.” Okay, my fellow theorists and I have discussed that the child who will save the future may well be Judith. In that sense, Judith may be Athena, but that still leaves Grace = Beth. And hearing this line, I just can’t help but replace “she” with Beth. 

When Morgan asks Riley what the key opens, Riley says, “it doesn’t matter.” Also a Beth theme from Grady. 

And finally, after Riley takes it, he says, “Good luck.” Luck Theory. 

Phew. Quite a few of those, right? 

Side note: one of the reasons I really didn’t know if Grace would live or die, as I mentioned above, is that they were really trying to convince us she would, but a lot of what was said could be seen as dialogue foreshadow. 

That could be a problem for some of our theories. But here’s the thing. Going back through it again, the writers were super-sneaky. Most of it could be quantified differently than it came across. For example, Grace says to Morgan, “I don’t THINK I’m going to survive this.” Not that she absolutely won’t. See what they did there? I’m just pointing out.

Finally, I want to mention a few more things the show runner said in his interview at the end. 

First, in talking about Athena, he said they wanted to make her a very strong, together girl, so it was obvious she came from Grace and was trained and raised by Morgan. It just reminded me a lot of what they said about Beth after Still. The whole, “raised by Hershel, trained by Daryl, meet the new Beth Greene.” Athena gave off that vibe for sure, but the showrunner used almost the exact same words to describe her. Definitely side-eyeing that. 

He also talked about how they purposely crafted the “dream” so that it wasn’t only a dream that Grace was a passive participant in. Parts of it had to be real and have real world implications so she was driven by a ticking time bomb. For her, in this episode, it was because her baby was coming and she needed to wake up to give birth.

I just mention it because I can’t help but wonder what implications this will have for the Daryl/Leah situation. 

I think that’s what I have for this episode. But man, what a crazy, tragic, epic, awesome episode! Loved it. (And hey, they owed us a big one after killing off John a few weeks ago. ;D)

[muddyhippy]

Amazing artwork of Ivy and Lily done by @smolghostings​ who is entirely awesome and melted my heart with all her Lily and the Mechs fanart! 

Night Terrors, Chapter 6 : Pageturner

Chapter on AO3 Here

New chapter! Sorry it’s taken a while everyone but the new chapter featuring Ivy is now up! 

                                                  Pageturner

Lily made her way carefully towards the Library. It was very late but she knew Ivy would still be up. Ivy was always up. Except when they had all slept together on her first night. That had been really nice. Lily hoped they’d have another big sleepy cuddle soon, it was where she felt safest. Even safer than when she was in Jonny’s arms, tucked up against his chest, listening to him tick. Which was very, very safe in her opinion.

 She didn’t want to bother Jonny. Not tonight.  This was something she needed to do herself. She was a big girl after all. She was eight whole years old and she had to know the ending of the story. She’d dreamt about it and it had ended very badly so now she needed to know the truth of it.

 She knocked carefully on the side of the open door, “Ivy? Ivy are you there?”

Lily waited a few moments before trying again, “Ivy?” She called, a little louder.

 “Yes?” A familiar voice answered from somewhere out of sight.

 Relief flooded Lily, “Can I come in please?”

 “Yes.”

 Lily stepped in very carefully looking around for the archivist. “Ivy?”

 The archivist appeared from the depths of one of the stacks, assessing the nervous-looking little girl in one glance, “Given the current ship’s time and the fact that you are here unaccompanied you have had a nightmare and you cannot find Jonny?” Ivy tried to keep the mild annoyance from her voice, nightmare duty was very much Jonny’s territory and she had been in the midst of some long overdue re-stacking.

 Lily sniffed, rubbing her sleeve across her face making her look even younger, her other hand clutching something grey and fuzzy Ivy couldn’t quite make out.  

 “Had a nightmare, didn’t look for Jonny, wanted you.”

 That made Ivy pause, brusque response dying on her lips, there was a 74% likelihood that Ivy would be the 8th choice for comfort, only ahead of Ashes given the quartermaster’s well documented dislike of physical contact.

 “Why?”

 “Had a nightmare about the story I’m reading, dreamt it had a very bad ending. Wanted to make sure it wasn’t true.”

 Ivy considered, Lily’s bright liquid eyes were full of unshed tears and felt herself soften in sympathy. She knew that concern, usually the concern of whether the book was going to have a satisfying ending or not rather than the obvious ‘happy’ one Lily was clearly hoping for but it was the same principle. And it was deeply pleasing to see the child so invested in a book Ivy had provided.

 Ivy found she enjoyed offering choices to the child, the archivist had quickly read all the English language books (Ivy was determined to get her confident in English before fully embarking on a new language since that was what Lily currently spoke and understood and she didn’t want to overwhelm her which too much information. Ivy had had several information overloads over the centuries and it had taken several of her crewmates to help calm her down and console her) deemed suitable for a young audience by the authors in her vast collection and had begun a list that detailed all the books that seemed in keeping with the child’s interests, both the emergant ones and the ones she was now getting comfortable enough to voice. Ivy had pulled out as many English language books she had on geology, with a specificity on minerals and gemstones, Lily’s eyes had lit up at the sight of so many crystals, apparently she didn’t know that they could be so many different colours.  

 The interests she was discovering with the crew was a pleasure to source and support, she was one of the few members of the crew who actively sought knowledge and stories out from the library, with a few notable exceptions in recent months. The other’s reading habits not-withstanding, the archivist had added more and more books to Lily’s shelves (that had needed extra levels installing) covering a range of topics, from tea party traditions, recipes from several worlds, horse riding and non-lethal junior science to guns, galaxies and gobstoppers. Ivy liked being able to use her collection for the benefit of the crew and did so to inform them on upcoming planetary visits if she had something that covered them or hunted down more star charts and galaxy guides for the terminally curious but this was something else.

 Ivy had never had the opportunity to nurture a young mind before, one with no prejudice or preconceptions other than her general sense of ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ and that if it was a fictional story she wanted there to be a happy ending. Which honestly was reasonable given how painfully aware Lily was that happy-ever-afters were not a common thing.  

 As it was, Ivy knew the ending of the story Lily was reading, she could just tell her and send her back to bed but it seemed hardly fair to rob her of the experience of discovering it herself. These things, reading a story for the first time was a journey, something to be experienced, sometimes endured but always enjoyed in the end if the writing was compelling enough and made you care enough about the outcome.

 Lily certainly cared enough.

 Lily cared.

 It was her default setting.

 It was something Ivy appreciated even if she wasn’t entirely sure how to engage with it. She and Lily often sat together for at least an hour a day reading, Ivy helping her with new words she didn’t understand and having her say them aloud until she got the hang of how the word felt in her mouth, saying it clearly and in context.

 Ivy was rather proud how much Lily’s vocabulary had increased over the past three and a half months, the archivist hadn’t thought much to teaching, leaving the others to come and go in their reading habits without comment or judgement so long as the books were put back exactly where they belonged and in the same condition when they were done. And if she placed a few specific books on specific easy-to-reach shelves where certain adults would know where to look when they came into the library in the middle of the night looking shaken and sleep-ruffled, well that was neither here or there.

 Ivy enjoyed watching Lily enjoy reading her stories, the child had made her way through an impressive chunk of Ivy’s collection so far and the archivist had been actively seeking more child-appropriate content for Lily on each new planet they visited in order to ensure she never ran out of books for Lily to absorb, it was an excellent new strand to her acquisition quest, after all, she’d never made as diligent an effort to collect children’s stories before, there had been no real point. And if she had developed the practice of reading each book before putting it on to Lily’s shelves well, she was just being a responsible librarian.

 Ivy nodded to the little girl, “Alright then, you know where it is, go and get it and find your answer, I’ll be here if you need me.”

 Lily took a step forward towards Ivy then stopped herself, “Thank you Ivy.”

 Lily scurried to fetch her book and settle on her usual cushion.

 That was odd, Lily was often keen for physical affection, she’d developed a specific sign of affection for Ivy which the archivist appreciated since she struggled to acquiesce easily to the exuberant affection Lily asked for and got from the others but Lily’d never paused like that before.

 The archivist considered, allowing a raft of calculations to wash over her, hmm… there was an 83% chance Lily felt uncomfortable about coming to library past her bedtime since that was something that had seemed pretty sacred to her and the ensuing ritual she and Jonny had developed of Lily saying goodnight to everyone she could see, taking his hand and having him tell her a story until she fell asleep, that, for Lily was the end of one day. Ivy had wondered if the distinction between night and day for Lily was important in accepting when she was ‘safe’ and when she had to be on guard from her nightmares. It was also possible with a 61% likelihood that Lily felt that she should not seek comfort when she was clearly trying to manage her reaction to this particular nightmare on her own especially given the lack of Jonny in tow. It was also highly likely (87%) Lily was keen to show her maturity in the face of a nightmare when faced with someone whom she did not interact with often when in this particularly vulnerable state.

 That seemed like a foolish endeavour since the whole crew knew just how tactile Lily was after a nightmare, most of them had seen her being comforted by Jonny as he sang to her whilst he carried her around the corridors at least once, the child clinging to him like an especially sticky octokitten. More often Ivy knew Lily sought out the first mate in his room and climbed into his bunk to settle back down to sleep but there were a few nights she screeched Hell Fire or even more rarely, she was too miserable to settle which had Jonny crooning gently to her instead as he walked the corridors, the motion of his movement coupled with the sounds of his heart reassuring her that she was not alone.

 It was so deeply incongruent to see this gentle side of Jonny appear seemingly out of nowhere though it was becoming a common sight which was possibly even stranger.

 Even more incongruently, for some reason the child very much liked the ‘Alice’ sequence.

 The others including herself challenged him on it one night after bedtime since it was hardly one of their friendlier stories, but then again, they didn’t really go in for that sort of thing full stop and he argued it was the first thing he thought to sing when she didn’t want the Rose and Cinders story again that night, he didn’t know the Cadence tale well enough and Hereward was Tim’s song.

 And, he argued, he couldn’t very well sing their stories to her since they’d not actually talked to her about their Mechanisms yet. He had grudgingly admitted he’d panicked when he remembered the ending of Alice halfway through the last section and impulsively added a ‘and they all lived happily ever after’ in desperation. Thankfully, she’d just accepted it, possibly because she was just exhausted but for whatever reason, she liked it, especially Hatter and Hare.

 Tim and Brian had been rather pleased about that, both thoroughly enjoying surprising her with that one dinner time as she started to set the table, breaking out into the song, dancing with each other and then with Lily waltzing around the mess table as the Toy Soldier poured tea for everyone utterly thrilled that everyone present wanted a cup. All three of them danced with it in turn as well making its smile somehow even wider.

 Aurora had recorded it all and shown the others after Lily had fizzed with excitement telling the rest of the crew when they came to sit down for dinner. It had been one of the honestly most wholesome things Ivy thought she’d ever witnessed. And she’d seen a lot. Both physically and within the myriad of stories she read.

 Ivy considered, she wondered if she was supposed to go and check on the child since she’d shown up obviously upset after a very specific nightmare but Ivy had no idea what she was supposed to do in comforting Lily. Ivy was not a singer, not like most of her crewmates, her music was enough to share but maybe Lily needed more? It was highly likely (68% in fact) that her statement about not wanting Jonny but in fact Ivy, was actually a cover. Not enough of a cover to mask the fact that despite Lily wanting to be seen as an adult that could solve her own problems she was very much a child still, a child who was vulnerable and upset and needed comforting post-nightmare. Something Ivy felt woefully unprepared to tackle.

 She was already reaching for her communicator when a wobbly voice called out,

 “Ivy?”

 “Yes?”

 Little feet pattered through the stacks and appeared looking even blotchier-faced.

 “Are you alright?” enquired a very unsure Archivist.

 Ivy knew the ending, the ending that was most assuredly happy. It was happy and good and satisfying for young readers and adults if they liked satisfying, comfortable endings. If Lily had read the ending already it should not have provoked this response. Also it was highly unlikely Lily could have reached the ending in the time that had elapsed. There were still seven chapters to go and Lily had an average reading speed of a page every 52 seconds (Something Ivy was very proud of, Lily’s reading speed had increased by 14 seconds since joining them and her confidence in reading aloud had doubled).

 With rising panic her fingers inched back for the communicator

 Lily held up her right hand, fingers splayed.

 Ivy responded immediately, stepping forwards carefully, gently pressing each fingertip to Lily’s.

 Ivy was honestly surprised the child had remembered in her upset.

 It was something she did with Ivy and only Ivy when she came to read but that was always when the little girl was happy and excited.

 Lily had asked her if she could give Ivy a ‘finger hug’ the second time she ever came to visit the library, three days after she joined the crew.

 That had taken the archivist by surprise.

 “A finger hug?” Questioned Ivy. She quickly wracked her memory files to pull up some form of record or reference to such a thing and came up empty.

 “Yes.” Lily held up her little hand fingers and thumb splayed wide, “we touch our fingers together and it means we’re hugging.”

 “Why?”

 “Because you don’t really like hugs and I want to hug you because I think you’re really nice and kind to let me come into the library and read real books even though they’re very special but I don’t want to make you feel bad by hugging you because that’s not nice or kind to do so if you like this instead then I can hug you without making you feel, um, icky.” Lily trailed off in the face of Ivy’s intense gaze.

 Lily’s words, if phrased a little childishly, were deeply heart-felt.

 Ivy felt herself bluescreen.

 She hadn’t said a word to Lily about not being overly comfortably or confident with physical affection, Jonny had prompted Lily to ask for permission to hold her hand but that was it. She filed that away for future reference on how perceptive Lily was. The others should be made aware of this since they liked to think they were subtle.

 Then again, it could be entertaining to watch them get caught out by a tiny observer.

 Thing was, it was an observation that was made and then used to inform a kind action.

 That was not a very common activity on board the Aurora. Or at least, not an activity anyone would ever own up to.

 Ivy felt herself melt a little, it was such a simple consideration but a very welcome one. Even in the three days Lily had been on board, Lily had shown an emotional maturity that was far beyond her years, the child listened and watched the crew carefully, obviously trying to pick up on what was acceptable behaviour and responses.

 Partly this seemed to be a survival instinct, Lily could, after all, be classed as prey amongst a den of predators.

 Ivy had shuddered internally at that comparison, it felt wrong, even though her crewmates were epitome of dangerous they’d all made a concerted effort to be gentle with Lily, maybe more like a cub in a den of predators? That felt oddly more appropriate despite the notion of any of the Mechanisms actually having children of their own was not only a statistical impossibility from a physical perspective but one so far-removed from the general outlooks of them all to be deemed laughable.

 And yet.

 The behaviours exhibited so far by Jonny, Marius, Brian and more surprisingly Raphaella and Ashes (albeit from a distance) seemed to hint if not possessing buried parental instincts at least a sense of affinity and empathy. The others had yet to be truly tested however there was at least a 79% chance Tim would also begin to display elder sibling behaviours if not a full paternal instinct. It was fascinating to see.

 The Toy Soldier was very pleased to have a new friend. Lily had already been seen happily playing with it in the three days she’d been on board, they’d raced past the library door the previous, day, a piping little voice shouting ‘Tig!’ triumphantly, also given how much TS loved the crew it was likely that affection would carry over to Lily as well gifting the child with a friendship that would be unbreakable. Nastya had not been around enough to observe but Ivy suspected the engineer was also harbouring an affinity with the child as well, both of them having survived (relatively speaking in Nastya’s case) the murder of her family and the destruction of all she knew.

 And then there was herself.

 Ivy could and was in the process of reading any and all child-rearing health books she had in her library to help out Raphaella’s research. Ivy had no memories of her own childhood, be they wants, needs or behaviours. She was 89% sure she had her passion for reading and acquiring knowledge from an extremely early age but she had not real framework to apply from her own experiences.

 Ivy tried not to think about all the lost memory data of hers, and normally she could and did avoid it but there had been so much chatter surrounding the subject of reminiscence, almost all of them, even Nastya, had offered tidbits of their own long-unthought of childhood. She and Brian had taken silent solace in one another, both listening politely for a while before quietly leaving for the bridge together to enjoy one another’s companionable peace.

 She focused on learning the facts as she always did. It helped to ground her in the here and now and real knowledge of the universe. She knew the vitamins and minerals required for a human child to grow well, the quantities and the various sources they could be obtained from. Ivy knew to the minute the amount of sleep needed for a child Lily’s age and that routine was apparently good for them. It especially seemed it was important to avoid Lily being allowed to become something called ‘overtired’ when small children apparently turn into some sort of armed grenade and the explosions had a myriad of options of being tearful, rage-filled or both.

 Ivy wasn’t sure how the others would handle a small child that detonated like that. Then again, the first night she was with them was enough of a shock when she burst into hysterical tears over Tim and Marius being shot. That, that had been unexpected in how the others had reacted. There was a 47% chance one of them would shoot her on instinct on sheer noise alone since her cries had sounded like some sort of terrible warning siren, however, when she had appeared wailing on Jonny’s hip that chance had dropped to 7%.

 Ivy had actually been surprised at the fury on the first mate’s face, she hadn’t seen him that angry since Tim had been mechanised and Carmilla had had her ‘accident’ shortly thereafter.

 She had been more surprised initially at the child’s distress at Tim and Marius’ deaths, then had to remind herself that the likelihood of the child having significant trauma responses to witnessing violence were 99.9% coupled with the fact that seeing people die in her experience was a decidedly permanent event. Her ship had certainly been an event.

 Ivy was not anywhere near as happy in conflict and gunfire as her crewmates but she was no shrinking violet, more like a knowing foxglove.  She’d seen and perpetrated her share of horrible murder and destruction but there was something about Lily’s ship, something raw, the murder in her ship was gleeful even beyond Jonny’s most manic rampages. And Lily had been surviving in the aftermath for three full weeks.

 It didn’t sit right with Ivy, it was something she was researching into since Jonny had spoken to them all about Lily’s desire for revenge when she was of age. She would find those who had wreaked havoc through Lily’s people.

 So yes, Lily’s upset was more than a little understandable in hindsight. What had caught Ivy completely off guard had been that the child had sought comfort from all of them, she had assumed Jonny would remain the primary form of comfort eschewing all others with Raphaella taking a distant second place due the science officer wrangling the child into the shower. That too had been unexpected, Ivy would have thought that she was purely motivated by opportunity to make closer observations for her research which was 83% correct but the look on her face when she returned with Lily and Jonny to the mess there had been a softness on her face that had repeated after the incident with Tim and Marius.

 Lily had wanted comfort from them all and everyone, everyone had complied. She had calculated the chances being 3% at the most. But everyone, even Nastya, even herself had, at the very least, held the distraught child.

 Raphaella had handed her the child and she hadn’t known what to do with her but it seemed to be enough, Lily did most of the work. It had been strange having a living, breathing creature in her arms that wasn’t an octokitten, not unpleasant per se but something she was not terribly confident or comfortable with.

 And Lily had realised within three days.

 And presented the ‘fingertip hug’ option.

 An option that Ivy took every time the child came to visit.

 Ivy had begun to enjoy the child’s company over the course of the three and half months she had been with them. She came every day without fail, knocking politely and waiting to be invited inside before offering her usual greeting, finding her book and settling down on what rapidly became ‘her’ cushion. She’d beamed when Ivy gave her a bookmark after the archivist ascertained the child tried to remember the page she’d finished on and didn’t always succeed.

 Every so often she would approach Ivy to ask for help with a word and its meaning. Initially Ivy had resented the interruptions to her own reading but she always answered, the child wanted knowledge after all. After a while she began to appreciate the child’s joy at each explanation, thrilled to be learning something new. Ivy realised Lily wasn’t asking to be a bother unlike the rest of her crewmates most of the time, she was asking because she genuinely wanted to learn and appreciated Ivy taking the time to tell her.

 After three weeks of observed behaviour there was an 84% chance Lily had not had overtly positive experiences with adults outside of her own parents. Nothing particularly negative but the way she responded to anyone taking time to tell her anything or answering a question she asked it was clear this did not happen often nor did she expect them to engage with her as often (read: every time she asked) as they did.

 Ivy resolved to be as encouraging as she could be on Lily’s search for stories and knowledge. She found her books, began to listen to the child read aloud and always helped with new or difficult words.

 Lily never cuddled up to her the way she did Jonny, Brian, Marius, TS or Raphaella or the way she started to after the whole hair brushing incident with Tim. But still. She would bring her pillow near to where Ivy was reading to practice her own literacy skills.

 Right now though she was faced with a very distraught looking Lily doing the fingertip hug clearly about to disintegrate.

 “What’s the matter?”

 “I, I want to read the story but I’m scared I’ll get tears on it by accident, because, because they, they keep escaping and I don’t want to ruin your book but I want to know the answer!”

 At this point Lily did dissolve in tears.

 Ivy realised that there was a 37% chance she’d never been quite as consciously terrified as she was presented with a sobbing little girl.

 “Er, would you like a hug?”

 Lily sobbed and tried to swallow, rubbing a sleeve across her streaming eyes, “Are, are you sure?” she wept out.

 “No, but you’re clearly deeply unhappy and there is an 87% chance a hug will make you feel better and I would like to help make you feel better.”

 Lily gave her the wobbliest smile Ivy had ever seen then carefully approached the archivist, waiting for Ivy’s arms to wrap around her before sinking into the safety of warm, living adult.

 Ivy felt the child melt into her.

 There was an unexpected warmth that bloomed in her chest. There was an 92% likelihood she was experiencing a sense of familial bonding, she quickly compared it to how she felt when working in collaboration with Raphaella on an experiment or sitting with Brian in companionable quiet on the bridge or even taking part in a satisfactory music practice with the whole crew. The feeling was remarkably similar.

 That was, surprising but encouraging all the same.

 She felt like she might not end up being too poor a substitute for the first mate.

 She still wasn’t sure how Jonny managed this so easily though.

 It was a common enough if still strange sight to see Lily limpeted to Jonny, clinging on tightly but he held her as if he’d always been doing that, as if his arms were made to hold her, like Lily was made to fit perfectly into his side. There were many, many, many things Ivy could and did criticise Jonny for but he’d taken to this with an aplomb none of them had anticipated. Even within those first few minutes Ivy could not have predicted Jonny taking hold of the child when she ran at him. Ivy had braced to witness a child die due to long-hone instincts wherein, with a chance of less than 1% Jonny hadn’t shot her, too shocked initially it seemed then some sort of buried sense of paternity reared its head from the depths. It has been fascinating to watch from a distance.

 Now Ivy was experiencing something like that without the presence and dare she admit it, safety of her crewmates to take point on the interaction.

 Ivy had never felt overtly comfortable around anyone since she woke up on Aurora head full of facts yet empty of memories. She found she worried often of not having the ‘right’ reactions due to her positronic brain and so limited the factors that would expose her to those situations. Books were safer, she knew what they expected from and in return there was a comforting predictability in learning.  

 There was very little predictable about Lily.

 Well that wasn’t entirely fair. The child was kind and loving and concerned with making sure everyone felt included in whatever was happening (that spoke volumes about the child’s existing experiences with her own shipmates but that was hardly the point at present). She wanted positive attention and was thrilled to get it, she liked to hug and be physically reassured by the others after a scare or when she was being praised.

 Lily, if you broke her down to her fundamentals, was not too hard to comprehend.

 She wanted to be loved.

 The hard part came in that the Mechanisms did not deal readily in love. None would claim to have any real solid experience, maybe Nastya and Tim but it wasn’t the same sort of familial love. Jonny was not-so-secretly a romantic at heart (though he’d shoot you if you pointed it out) but again it wasn’t the same. They were trying their best but none of them really came from loving families, those that could remember at least.  

 They were running of half-forgotten instincts that all adults of a species apparently carried coded into their beings from the earliest dawn of sentience.

 ‘Protect the young.’

 Ivy, now with a sobbing Lily attached to her, felt what must be that same drive begin to stir.

 A hesitant hand raised to rub carefully up and down Lily’s back.

 Lily cuddled closer.

 Well that must be the right approach.

 Ivy continued to run her hand up and down Lily’s small back as the child cried into the archivist’s neck. After a while the tears began to slow.

 “M’sorry.”

 “What for?”

 “For making you hug me and getting your collar all soggy.”

 Well that wouldn’t do at all. Ivy might not be a fan of overt physical contact but no one made her do anything she didn’t want to.

 She pulled Lily off her enough to face her, the child’s huge blue eyes looking like glowing lagoons, swimming with spilling tears.

 “Now listen to me Lily, no one makes me do anything I don’t want to do, not when it comes to something like this. I am comforting you because I want to and you want me to. No one can make you hug or even touch someone if you don’t want to. The other person has to want it too. I am hugging you because you want me to and I want to help you. Understand me?”

 “Y”-she hiccupped-“es.”

 “Good.” Ivy paused, not sure where to go from there. She sent out a desperate burst of data requests trying to grasp any suggestions that might help.

 The image of Lily sitting on Jonny’s lap at the mess table when she first joined them. Lily sat on Brian’s lap on the bridge asking him hundreds of questions about music and stars. Lily perched on Raphaella’s lap frowning in concentration as she practices plaiting her long golden waves. Lily tucked up on Marius’ lap between his violin and bow arm, humming along with the tunes he played. Lily settled on Tim’s lap smiling as the gunner carefully brushed her wild mop of tangles smooth.

 Each time Lily was settled and safe and happy.

 “Would, would you like to sit on my lap and I’ll read the rest of the story to you? That way we won’t risk you getting the book damp.”

 Lily’s face lit up in a blinding smile.

 Clearly that was the right thing to offer.

 “Alright then, let’s go get the book.”

 Ivy took Lily’s hand because that was also clearly the thing to do in this situation, she’d seen Lily hold hands with the others when heading somewhere together and the child had asked to hold her hand the first time she came to the library. That was bound to help comfort her.

 Lily clung to her hand like a lifeline.

 Ivy took in the sight of the neat spot Lily usually occupied, cushions in a tidy pile and her book in its proper place on the shelf.

 Even upset she’d respected the books.

 Ivy felt her chest flood with warmth.

 “Alright then,” she picked up the title in question, settled comfortably in the nest of pillows that had accumulated then gestured to Lily, “come on Liliput, get comfortable.”

 Lily stared at her.

 Ivy stared right back, shocked at the name that had slipped from her so easily.

 “What does that mean?”

 “It’s the name of a town where people live whom Gulliver visits during his travels, they’re very small but kind to him.”

 “Who’s Gulliver?”

 “Lemuel Gulliver is the protagonist of Jonathan Swift’s adventure story ‘Gulliver’s Travels’ he’s an explorer who sails across the Oceans of Earth—”

 “That’s Tim’s home planet isn’t it?”

 “Yes.”

 “Did Tim meet him?”

 Ivy smiled at the question. “No, Gulliver wasn’t a real person, his story is also set roughly 500 years before Tim’s time.”

 Lily considered, Ivy could see the numbers totting up in the child’s mind.

 “That’s a lot.” she offered finally.

 “Yes it is.”

 “So he was a made up adventurer?”

 “And explorer. He sailed to different islands to meet different civilisations.”

 “Ooh. Did he not have a spaceship?”

 “No this story was set before spaceships had been invented.”

 “Oh. A VERY long, long ago then?”

 “Yes.”

 “Can I read it next?”

 “Yes, I can find you a copy.”

 Lily sniffed. “Thank you, you’re the best.” Declared Lily earnestly.

 Ivy smiled again, honestly touched by the sincerity.

 “Thank you. Now do you want to sit down and finish this story?”

 “Yes please!”

 Lily needed no more encouragement, she settled into Ivy’s lap as though she’d always been there, leaning against Ivy’s chest letting out a satisfied sigh. Ivy smelled of paper, of warm leather and the comfort of stories to be told. It was rare she got this close to Ivy, Lily savoured it as much as she could, it was very different to the rest of them, to Jonny or Marius or Raphaella but it was just as nice, just as a part of her sense of safety as every other scent of them was.

 Paper, wood, resin, wild flowers, leather, cordite, oil, wool, resin, tea, smoke, spice and whiskey

 It was home.

 Ivy’s breath caught, she wasn’t sure how she expected it to feel having Lily in her lap, uncomfortable? Awkward? Something that she’d have to endure?

 What she wasn’t expecting was a strange sense of satisfaction. There was a warmth that took root in her, the impression that what she was doing was good and right and helping.

 Ivy decided to calculate the average improvements Lily had made to the crew’s individual well beings later when she could consider all the data she’d observed and listened to. Right now though, she had a story to read.

 Ivy read out the voices of the characters as she heard them in her own head when she’d read the story the first time herself much to Lily’s apparent delight. Encouraged she continued adding the dramatic emphasis drawing thrilled but ever-sleepier responses from Lily until the child fell asleep three chapters from the end.

 Ivy smiled with the contentment of a job well done. She had done it. Lily had come to her wanting help and she’d been able to provide that well enough that the child had gone back to sleep, happy and obviously feeling secure.

Children tended to only sleep on people they trusted. She’d read it in one of the few human child rearing books she’d found.

 The archivist was deeply proud of herself.

 And now Lily was asleep she could take a closer look at the fluffy thing that the little girl was clutching as she listened.

 An emerald or copper oxidised geode of some kind rendered in a fluffy fabric with embroidered eyes.

 Ivy felt another smile slowly bloom across her face as she realised what it was.

 Jonny.

 So that was what he’d been up to.

 She’d caught him trying to sneak out of the library a few times two months, three weeks and five, four and two days ago, only refraining from blowing his head off because of the likelihood if she did it would be a night Lily needed comforting and she did not want to have to deal with the emotional fallout that mess would wrought.

 She’d let him go once he proved he wasn’t trying to smuggle books out with him and upon investigation of her shelves the books he’d been looking at (not quite put back exactly where they belonged but he’d apparently tried) focused minerals and geology, she’d wondered want on earth he’d been up to since seeking knowledge, or reading in general was not his go-to activity.

 This was apparently it.

 Making an accurate depiction of a geode to render in fluff as a comfort toy for an orphaned little girl. Ivy knew Lily was interested in stones, she’d brought back half the lakeshore from their first planet visit. Several of them kept appearing around Aurora with googly or painted on eyes and smiley faces. One of the smaller, lighter, flatter ones had found their way into Brian’s hat band for a while.

 But this? Taking an active interest and trying to make something accordingly? Jonny was apparently full of surprises. It was a side of him Ivy had suspected existed based on her centuries of observation but it was something he guarded fiercely as though having a soft side was some sort of shameful secret. Same went for the rest of the crew. Though, yet again, the rest of the crew also made a point not to be known for their abundance of gentleness or thoughtfulness. Except Brian and TS, (and Marius but 50% of the time he was trying to get a rise of people as well).

 Until recently.

 Until Lily.

 Whose presence apparently was tacit permission to be kinder, not just with her because that was expected, she was a child, an innocent child they’d ended up responsible for and whilst they didn’t really know what they were doing they weren’t actual monsters in this regard, they had at a passing acquaintance with decency sometimes so they were trying to look after her as ‘properly’ as they could.

 And they all did look out for each other too, always undercover of insult or secrecy-no one would ever admit to doing something nice after all but now? Well, their behaviour around Lily was clearly affecting their day-to-day interactions. Murder had been reduced to a minimum especially during ‘daylight’ hours and they’d found other, more constructive ways to harness their energies, non-lethal pranks were happening far more regularly and were being met with amused annoyance rather than murderous rage. Not to mention they’d managed to put the Verdant Hood story cycle together in record time, she was rather looking forward to performing that one. It was amazing how much more practice you could manage when you didn’t have to wait for your lead singer to regrow his bullet-punctured lungs or your string/percussion/piano players to re-grow shot-off fingers.

 Ivy reflected on the status of the crew; there was a contentment that was slowly becoming apparent that had been lacking for several centuries, it was unexpected but pleasant all the same. She was going to enjoy analysing her calculations and collecting more data from the regular interactions she’d been taking part in. Breakfast and Dinner especially as sit down meals weren’t uncommon before Lily but they were now a daily occurrence, Ivy tried to remember to attend at least one meal per day, her crewmates could be intolerably loud a lot of the time but it was pleasant to talk to them sometimes.

 And she enjoyed the growing sense of camaraderie rather than simple tolerance.

 Thinking of.

 She should probably contact Jonny.

 Lily, whilst the weight of her on Ivy’s lap was comforting in a way the archivist had not been expecting it was not fair to allow the child to sleep in this position all night. The books on child growth encouraged lots of sleep but she doubted they meant in laps of immortal space pirates.

 That hadn’t stopped Lily in the slightest but it still wasn’t good for her.

 Ivy typed a message on her communicator, not wanting to risk waking the child.

 ‘Jonny, Lily is in the library with me. Please come and collect.-Ivy’

 There wasn’t much else she could do but wait, idly glancing back through her data files to check her inventory of books suitable for Lily and adding the note that she wanted to read Gulliver’s Travellers next. She wondered if Tim had read the book as a boy since he’d started availing himself of her collection several months ago upon learning she had some of his childhood favourites.

 Twenty-nine minutes later a sleep-drunk, bleary-eyed Jonny came stumbling into the library.

 Ivy had to force herself not to startle.

 She’d never seen him look so thoroughly, relaxedly, rumpled.

 She’d seen him drunk to incoherence and passing out mid-sentence. She’d seen him sleep-deprived, strung-out furious and exhausted to the point he just shut down and dropped where he stood (usually because he’d been refusing to sleep due to the nightmares he definitely didn’t experience) whenever that happened, rare as it was, Brian usually picked him up and carried him off to dump the first mate into bed.

 (Although, knowing Brian it was more like he tucked him in carefully but neither of them would ever admit it)

 She’d seen him nursing the sire of all hangovers across the multiverse, losing the ability to speak any recognised language of which he, like the rest of them, actually knew several.

 But, she realised with a start, she’d never seen him just honestly sleepy, ‘Woken-up-in-the-middle-of-the-night-working-on-about-20%-operating-capacity-I-need-to-do-something-but-I-am-on-autopilot’ sleepy.

 He wasn’t dressed for any kind of engagement either. No gun, nor holster, not even a belt. Make up cleaned off his face wearing just a plain dark t-shirt, fabric greyed and worn with age and black drawstring trousers.

 Pyjamas.

 Jonny D’Ville was wearing honest-to-goodness to pyjamas.

 He made his way over to Lily’s corner apparently instinctively, nodded at Ivy with a grateful half-smile, his face, already unguarded softened even more when he took in the sight of Lily, curled up against Ivy, one hand holding on to her waistcoat the other clinging to Gemini who was smushed up against her own chest.

 Ivy found herself not daring to breathe whilst she watched to retrieval take place.

 He scooped up the sleeping child with a practiced ease, Lily immediately settling against him like she lived there, barely even stirring.

 Jonny’s hand lingered on Ivy’s a moment, squeezing it gently, “’anks f’lookin’after her.” before wrapping his arms more securely around Lily, taking his leave back towards his bunk.

 Ivy’s stare followed the two of them long after they’d left her Library.

 Well.

 That. That was one of the most unexpected sights she had witnessed on board.

She’d never witnessed Jonny appear so utterly vulnerable, without his usual brashness, his loud swaggering and even louder gunshots Jonny was- Jonny was young realised Ivy, probably younger than her when he was mechanised. She did some swift calculations and didn’t like her conclusions.

 Well that made an uncomfortable amount of sense. Trying to seem bigger and badder than everyone else was probably a learned trait now she thought about it, forever twenty? That’s quite difficult to make people listen to you off the bat, even if you’ve got centuries or millennia under your many belts.

 That Jonny was actually comfortable enough to appear like that offered two explanations, one he was starting to actually relax enough around people to allow his softer side more public outings and two, he was just so exhausted by all the nightmare duty he’d been pulling along with having to process actual emotions he was simply spent beyond all care or consideration.

 It was probably a mix of both.

 Ivy allowed herself a pleased smile, partially because she was glad the first mate was clearly getting something positive out of this caretaker role he’d accidentally stepped into three and a half months ago and partially because she had excellent blackmail material to use to get first editions from the next twenty planets they visited.

 She sighed, she was enjoying this mellowing of her crewmates interactions, though not enough to be entirely alienating but just enough to take some of the edges off, it was nice knowing that a request for people to please shut the fuck up for five minutes was less likely to earn you a bullet to the head. There was a rare peace that was becoming a little more common and helped draw her out of the library a little more regularly and that was something she felt she could live with.

 The chances of a child being a uniting factor for group cohesion and to reduce the levels of ship-destructive violence would have been at a 0.001% if you’ve asked Ivy four months ago but now? Whilst she absolutely could not have predicted it she was very glad Jonny had been too shocked to react with violence back on Lily’s ship, the archivist found she quite liked having another bibliophile on board, it might be what it would have been like to have had a younger sibling. Ivy paused, considering. That fit. Having a younger person to encourage and help shape, not a parent, certainly not, but possibly another familial bond?

 Quite possibly.

 92% in fact.

[liberolove]

Testing the Waters (pt. 1)

Summary: youve finally graduated high school and now youre moving on to college. youve decided to go to sendai university. its summer and youve become curious about checking out the dating pool in miyagi, so you download a dating app. you figure you might as well have fun before delving too deep into your studies

Part: [part one] out of ???

Pairings: nishinoya x reader / kuroo x reader / oikawa x reader / kiyoko x reader

A/N: theres tons of ships here, just me living out my hoe phase lmao please dont judge me. let me know what yall think

Genre: fluff, smut, crack

Warnings: flirting, college shinanigans

even though you decided to stay in your hometown to further your studies, you moved out as soon as you could. your parents were smothering you and you were honestly tired of it. so, you got your own apartment and started to live on your own. everything was fine and easy so far but then you realized how lonely you felt. your friends had moved away to go to other universities, and you were never really good at relationships. the anxiety of not knowing what to do with yourself until classes started was consuming you. to deal with this, you figured you might as well download a dating app. 

“Gotta check out all the hot singles in my area, I guess,” you thought.

it had been a while since your last relationship but you were sure you were ready again. or maybe you could try to find something different. maybe some hookups could be enough to help you during this weird adjustment period. 

you downloaded the app and added whatever details were needed. 

Name: l/n, y/n

Looking for: chat, relationship, hookup, anything

Bio: 

it took you about ten minutes to finally decide on what you wanted to add to your bio. finally, you typed out:

Bio: just another single college student looking for genuine human connections. Interests include watching anime, reading nerdy shit, and getting to know you 

you were never too good at coming up with bios but this should be good enough for now. time to see what kind of fish you could catch..

not even a minute after uploading a picture of yourself, a new message showed up.

Nishinoya Yuu: hey, beautiful! (;

Y/n: oh hi! how are you?

N: doing better now that I’m talking to youuuu. how about your lovely self?

Y: wow someone is really straightforward. I’m doing pretty well rn thanks. what are you up to?

N: just been bored as fuck on here and then BOOM you showed up (:

Y: lol youre silly. so hows the whole dating scene look like on here? any good ones?

N: nah it sucks honestly. But now you’re here so its a million times better!

Y: oh shush lol. does this site really work? like have you actually met someone from here?

N: uhh i actually havent met anyone yet, but ive had some nice conversations so far! ive still got high hopes

Y: have you been on here for a long time?

N: i just downloaded it like two weeks ago? idk but yeah. im hoping that maybe youll be my first??

Y: your first what? haha be more specific

N: OH sorry!! i didnt mean it like that omg. i meant like my first person to meet off of this app lol

Y: i mean if youre not busy right now, we could meet up for a coffee date or something? (cliche right?)

N: ARE YOU SERIOUS RIGHT NOW? like... right now rIGHT NOW?

Y: yeah (: sorry for doing this so fast. you’re just really cute and im bored haha

N: nooooo its fine i swear im just a little shocked. and WOW you think IM CUTE? you should look in the mirror because your gorgeousss *heart eyes emoji*

Y: so its settled? lets meet today at around 1 pm at XXX cafe? 

N: yeah! thats not too far from here! i CANT WAIT

Y: same here (:

as soon as you sent that last message you hopped in the shower and started getting ready. you debated whether to put on makeup or not and then eventually decided to do it. you wore that one red dress that greatly accentuated your butt and your curves. you checked the clock and it was 30 MINUTES UNTIL 1 so you finished up by brushing your hair and adding on a spritz of peach scented perfume. “Hopefully this impresses him.”

the cafe you guys agreed to meet at was only a short walk away from your apartment. you were almost at the cafe when you noticed the time again and it was already 10 MINUTES PAST 1! you were so scared that he thought you stood him up but as you got closer, you noticed a cute boy sitting by himself outside. you stared at his backside for a little, unsure if this was your mystery boy. so you messaged him on the app

Y: heeeey are you the one sitting alone outside with a tan shirt and some ripped black jeans?

your phone lit up with the answer to your question: “yes”

as you looked up again, you noticed the stranger you were staring at had stood up and was looking right into your eyes. once you locked eyes, he grinned the biggest smile you’d ever seen and he chuckled. 

“Hi there!! L/n, right? Nice to meet ya, I’m Nishinoya Yuu. Wow, you’re even more beautiful in person!! Do you want anything from the cafe? I’m buying”

You were kind of shocked by his beautiful smile and his spiky hair. It took you a while to respond as you tried to take in the wonderful sight in front of you. He was simply breath taking. You could tell he was the athletic type by the way his shirt hung onto his broad, toned shoulders. 

“Ummm... L/n? Are you okay? Do you want any coffee or sweets from the cafe?”

“OH, oh my god, I’m so sorry! I got distracted..” you said as you looked away from him, getting redder by the second. you hadn’t even noticed his compliment or the way he kept eyeing you up and down and licking his lips. “Yeah, I’d love to get a coffee, if you don’t mind. Please..”

His eyes snapped back up to yours. “Awesome, I’ll go order inside. You can just sit your pretty little self here while I do that. Don’t run away! I’ll be right back!”

now that you had some time to reflect on what the heck just happened.. you breathed a sigh of relief. You couldn’t believe that he was real and so goddamn gorgeous. His little tuft of blonde hair at the front of his head was so cute and his smile.. goddamn. the way he looked at you.. and his friendly demeanor. it was all so much to take in. you didn’t really know how to react. as soon as you had relaxed, you tensed back up as he came back and sat down with you.

“Here’s your coffee hot and ready just for you, hun”

“Thank you so much Nishinoya” you blushed a bit as your mouth pronounced his name

“Hey, just call me Noya! Or Yuu...”

“On a first name basis already?”

“Only if you want to..”

you giggled as you noticed that he was getting bright pink too. “Okay, Yuu.”

as soon as you said his first name, his eyes lit up and that bright pink hue on his face soon turned into a passionate red

“Soooo..” you said as you tried to break up the silence.. “what do you do? do you go to school?”

“Yeah! I’m going to start going to Sendai University in the fall! I’m going to be playing on the volleyball team! How about you?”

“No way.. I’m gonna go there too! I guess I’ll be seeing you around probably. And wow! Volleyball huh? That’s hot.”

when you said that last part, Noya almost spat out his coffee. you laughed at the look on his face. he was blushing so much he couldn’t keep still. you were almost afraid he would just run away from you and never come back.

He just tried to regain his composure and laughed. “You really got me there oh my god i almost choked. But yeah I can’t wait to play again.”

The rest of the afternoon you guys talked about everything from anime to your favorite season, to your least favorite horror movie. The more you two bonded over common interests, the more he let his wild side out. He became more rambunctious and fiery and this did things to you, to say the least. you checked your phone to check the time and it was already 6:45 pm. You had no clue as to when the sun had started setting, but it didn’t matter because you hadn’t felt this warm fuzzy feeling in your heart in a while. it felt so nice. you didn’t want it to end. but then noya interrupted your thought by saying, 

“Hey, (y/n)..” you two were on a first name basis already and it was just the first date. “it’s getting pretty late and I have to go home and help out my family with some stuff. I hope you don’t mind. Sorry! But we can definitely go out again if you want. i know i sure do..”

“Yes, of course! I totally get it. But first can I get your number?” you look away as you say this because this was the first time you’ve ever asked a guy for their number. 

you two exchange phone numbers and hug goodbye. you let the hug linger for a little longer than you should and plant a quick soft peck on his cheek and say,

“I can’t wait to see you again, Yuu.”

He just smiles and replies, “Me too, Y/n. I’ll see you again soon, babe.”

You freeze up and don’t know what to say as he walks away. you think to yourself, “did he really just call me babe?”

[six-of-woes]

The Clown and the Potato Sack (Aerin x MC) Chapter 2

Chapter 2/?: A Sudden Interest in Floriculture

Paring: Aerin Valleros x F!MC

AO3 Link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24533863

Previous Chapter: https://hi-im-a-salty-human-being.tumblr.com/post/619969185697710080/the-clown-and-the-potato-sack-aerin-valleros-x#notes

Summary: Now with the Dreadlord defeated and her friends out of Whitetower, Cassia Nightbloom, is bored. Extremely bored. She wants to do literally anything, but she doesn’t know what. Her solution? Try to get some answers from a certain corrupt prince. Unfortunately, that leads to a wacky yet angsty adventure involving a potato sack, a wooden spoon, and A LOT of clowning around. At least she’s doing something…right?

Author’s Note: Soooo...I wrote another chapter. It’s shorter...but that’s beacsue there’s gonna be more chapters...So you have that to look forward to. Idk how to know when people want to be tagged unless the specifically tell me because I have the social awareness of a turtle...so... if you wannt be tagged...let me know in the notes...

Tags: @what-do-you-mean-theyre-evil @theclowneryqueen@findmeafterlife @0oi-io0 @thatgirlbuhle @mirabelle-choices@souhmhey @king-erzsebet @vlastomilsworm @diamonds-and-decorum @xsweetnspookyx @ernest-harrington @walkerswhiskeygirl @gela-mndz

~~~

“I have time.”

Aerin swallowed hard and took a seat across from Cassia. “Are you sure?”

Cassia continued to frown, but nodded. “Everyone else left town a few hours ago and this is the most dangerous things can get right now.”

“Are you really that bored?” He asked, starting to fiddle with his potato-sack-tunic.

“I’m bored and I want answers,” she spoke firmly, trying not to let her emotions out. Why was she doing that anyway? Aerin couldn’t do anything to her if he saw that she was weak, right? Other than get in my head. So yeah. Cassia wasn’t gonna look sad. Not that she was. Well...she was sad. But that was because her friends had just left town. Not because of Aerin. Duh...right?

Aerin shook his head. “Fine, but don’t act surprised when the answer is just corruption.”

“Just tell me what happened, Aerin,” Cassia said, biting her lower lip. 

A few seconds of silence passed before anyone said anything. The longer Cassia stared into his dark, corrupt, eyes, the more the whole situation set in. This was the real Aerin. The prince she met in the Deadwood was just a facade.

Aerin sighed and shook his head. “Alright, fine, but I’m only doing this to get you out of here.”

“That’s fine. All I need are some answers,” Cassia said, crossing her legs. “It’s not like I want to be down here much more than you do.” She shivered and pulled her cloak tighter around her shoulders.

“Okay,” he breathed. “It happened when I was really young, maybe two or three. I don’t remember the full details of what happened, but it ended with my chambers trashed, my storybooks torn to pieces, and my nose bloodied. I tried to tell my parents but…they refused to believe that their “perfect little future king” could cause such destruction.” Aerin let out a dry laugh and looked at the mossy brick wall. “They actually tried to accuse me of doing it myself for attention…Attention that neither of them ever gave me.”

About a minute of silence passed by again. Aerin continued to look at the wall, but Cassia could see the emptiness in his expression. There wasn’t any sadness, but there wasn’t any anger either. He just…stared.

“Soooo…How did you get corrupted?”

Aerin looked back at Cassia and sighed. “The details are fuzzy…but I remember running off to somewhere in the castle to be alone…that’s when Erthax found me. I don’t know or remember how, but he told me that if I helped him, there would be a day where I’d never have to be hurt by Baldur again.” He looked down. “I’m quite sure you can guess what happened next.”

He was three. Cassia thought. A child. A pawn.

“Can you leave me alone now?”

Cassia shook her head. “Not until the other two guards get here. You’re not supposed to be left alone.”

The grown that Aerin let out could probably be heard from Flotilla. Or the shadow realm. Or both. Probably both. Aerin was a bit of a drama queen.

“You think I want to be here? Because I don’t. “

“But—didn’t you—aren’t you—for a reason—what?”

Cassia crossed her arms and shook her head. “Just because I wanted answers doesn’t mean I want to spend an extended amount of time in this cold, damp, mossy dungeon. It’s freezing.

Aerin scoffed. “Oh, poor you. You’ve had to stay down here for what—thirty minutes? I can’t even fathom that. I’m only down here for, oh, I don’t know—the rest of my life!”

The pair spent the net few minutes glaring at each other. Anger and frustration began welling up in Cassia’s chest the longer she gazed into his eyes, the eyes that she couldn’t believe were Aerin’s, the eyes that weren’t the ones she saw at the lake. They couldn’t be. They didn’t have the same life in them. That Aerin was hopeful. This Aerin was a bitch.

Cassia sighed and laid down on her back. She ignored the puddle she was laying in, even as the water soaked through her clothes. Truly, what could she do now? She got what she could out of Aerin. That was the last interesting thing she could think of.

Fifteen minutes passed, and there was still no sign of the guards. Fifteen minutes passed, and Cassia’s eyelids grew heavy. Fifteen minutes passed, and Aerin stared blankly at his prison.

Drip. Drip. Drip. Cassia gazed at the ceiling, watching the droplets of water fall all around her. And on her. There was a reason that puddle she was laying in was where it was.

As much as she didn’t want them to, Cassia let her thoughts drift back to the lake again. The unicorn still bothered her, but, she knew that with Aerin in this bad a mood, she wasn’t going to get that answer any time soon. She thought about when it was just them, sitting on the edge of the lake. When they splashed each other, when they just talked. How pretty those flowers looked in the moonlight…

The lake…those flowers…

Cassia sprung to her feet. “THE MOONBLOOMS!”

“GAH!” Aerin screeched, falling back at Cassia’s sudden shout. He held a hand up to his head and glared at Cassia. “What the hells are you going on about?”

“Oh gods,” Cassia breathed, starting to bounce from foot to foot. “That’s the cure!”

“For what?” Aerin snapped. “Corruption?”

“No!” She yelped. “My boredom!” Cassia let a beat pass by. “…Okay, maybe to cure your corruption too.”

“Psh,” Aerin scoffed, turning his back to Cassia. “What makes you think I want to be cured, huh? I have a revenge plan to form. I don’t have time to not be corrupted.”

Cassia snorted. “Of course you don’t want to be not corrupted. You’re corrupted!” She made a mad dash to the exit. “I’ll be back! I have a plan!”

Aerin turned back around and grasped onto the bars of his cell. “No! Wait! I don’t consent to this plan!”

“Too late!”

~~~

“Soooo…You gonna tell me why you have an interest in magical floriculture all of a sudden?”

Cassia didn’t look up from her book. “I’m bored, Kade. I’m bored and I want to learn about flowers. Must you judge me for such an innocent hobby?”

The morning light bathed Cassia’s spot in the library in light, creating a warm blanket around her. Cassia’s book was one on magical flowers(unsurprisingly) and their properties. So far, there was nothing on moonblooms.

“You know the fact that you’re calling your hobby “innocent” makes me even more suspicious, right?” Kade picked a random book off one of the shelves and sat down on the floor in front of the chair Cassia was sitting in.

“Well, I never questioned your tiny chair collection,” she muttered, thumbing through the pages. 

Kade shrugged and started reading his own book. “Alright, you got me there.”

Cassia smirked. “Thanks. I’ll be sure to update you when I get out of trouble.”

“What could you possibly be doing with flowers that could get you into trouble?” Kade scratched his head. “Wait…never mind. You can get into trouble for anything.”

“Damn right I can.”

As Cassia continued to skim her book, she smiled at all the memories she had of getting in trouble with Kade. It was a simpler time…when the most danger she could get in was by trying to steal a pie, not…you know…having to venture into the equivalent of hell to make sure her best friend wasn’t used as a vessel for an ancient beast to try and take over the world.

Eventually, Cassia came across the page she was looking for.

Moonblooms: Only Known Cure for Corruption

Cassia’s heartbeat quickened as she read the title. Alright, this is it. What do we gotta do to cure Aerin’s corruption our boredom? 

Moonblooms used to be used by the Elven Empire to cure any forms of corruption. Unfortunately, just before the Shadow Court revolted, they made an effort to destroy as many moonblooms as possible. Within the last few thousand years, there haven’t been any reports of living moonblooms.

However, if you ever find yourself in a situation where you know of a place to get moonblooms, and have some corruption you’d like to cure, here’s what you would need to do:

Soak the petals in a bowl of water for around eight and a half minutes. By then, the water should be a deep plum color, and it should be steaming. Once your concoction is in this state, have your corrupted being drink it. Yes, it may be extremely hot, but it’ll do no lasting harm to the mouth. Once the cure has entered the system, results will be almost immediate, but be warned: all of the shadow being expelled at once will be incredibly painful for the one being cured. The records have people stating that it feels like throwing up knives, as well as stating an appearance of blood. Another side effect of this cure is feelings of extreme remorse, sadness, and joy, all at once.

“Hey, Kade?”

“Hm?”

“Do you wanna help me with something?”

Kade didn’t look up from his book. “Sure.”

“Even if it involves breaking Aerin out of his cell to get him to the Deadwood to cure him of his corruption?”

“Does this happen to have anything to do with you kissing him at some point?”

Cassia scoffed. “N-no! I’m just bored!” She started rolling from her heels to her feet. “I need more adventure! This is the closest I can get to the ordeal we just went through! I’m certainly NOT doing this because I have a history with him.”

Kade looked up from his book and raised an eyebrow.

“Okay—maybe it has something to do with it,” Cassia mumbled, crossing her arms. “But—that’s not…the only reason why…”

“Sure, Cassia. Whatever you say.” Kade set his book on the floor and grinned. “So…what do you need me to do?”

~~~

“So remind me why we’re stealing sacks of potatoes from the kitchens again?”

Cassia slung another sack over her shoulder. “Because we need to make a convincing decoy.” She watched Kade drop one of the sacks. “Plus they’d probably help us knock out the guards.”

Kade heaved the dropped potato sack over his shoulder. “Right…how are you supposed to get him out of there? Isn’t there a magical shield or something?”

“You’re forgetting I’m a powerful magic-user. I’m sure I can figure out some way to break him out.”

“So what I’m hearing,” Kade said, pushing the kitchen doors open. “Is that you don’t have a plan at all.”

“You wound me, brother,” Cassia said, slinging the potatoes into the wheelbarrow sitting outside. “My plan is to make it up as I go.”

[flightfoot]

Alya (and Nino)

Note: I’m specifically talking about the Alya and Nino from @angelofthequeers excellent fic “Hold Me By Both Hands” There be spoilers!

AO3

---------------------------------------------

Alya gets a prominent storyline of her own in Hold Me By Both Hands, with Nino serving as her Deuteragonist.

At first Alya mostly has a supporting role, not too different from canon. Even from the first chapter though, things start diverging quite a bit, including with Alya, with Marinette going into a lot more detail with why Lila’s assertions should be taken with a grain of salt, pointing out that Ladybug saving Lila doesn’t really make Lila that impressive or interview-worthy. Ladybug’s saved a LOT of Paris. Along with pointing out that even if her claims of being Ladybug’s best friend WERE true, it’d be highly irresponsible for her to be bragging about it, and dangerous to broadcast her association with Ladybug in case Hawkmoth went after her or the people around her for leverage. That’s enough to prompt Alya to do a rethink about Lila’s other claims and take them with a grain of salt, along with taking down the interview in case it attracted the wrong kind of attention.

But the part I really loved about the sequence was this bit:

“Ladybug’s saved half of Paris,” Marinette points out. “Lila’s not the only person she’s saved.” She hasn’t even saved Lila before. “If anyone was going to be her best friend, I’d think it’d be someone like you, right? You’re the one she gave that interview to. She wouldn’t even think of agreeing to that interview when I asked until I mentioned that you’d be the one interviewing her. She’s only saved Lila once, but she’s talked to you loads of times.”

“Oh – well, I mean, you’ve got a point there.” Alya practically swells before Marinette’s eyes. (Chapter 1)

Marinette’s pulling at the threads, unraveling Lila’s lies, but… she’s not doing it by tearing down Alya for believing her. She’s boosting her up instead by just stating the truth. And that subtle reminder that Marinette got Alya that first interview, while also saying that she agreed to it because it was with ALYA… it’s just so good! Marinette cares about Alya a lot, and wants her to know how much she appreciates and respects her, even if when it comes to Ladybug, she has to do it in a roundabout way.

It’s not too big a deal when Alya (and also Nino, who heard part of it) begin to doubt Lila, she’s ultimately just a girl who brags and makes up stories at this point. A little disappointing that some of the things she’d say she might be able to set up obviously aren’t feasible, but nothing especially worldshaking.

No, Alya only really shows dislike for Lila once she starts harming her friends – at first when she just pretends that SHE was the main organizer behind the protest to get Adrien back in school instead of Marinette, and later on with how Lila keeps touching Adrien. She still keeps her confrontations civil and to-the-point though.

“Lila, why did you try and take credit for Marinette’s idea?” Alya says. “Why’d you tell Adrien that you were the brains behind everything, but you let Marinette take charge?” (Chapter 4)

She points it out and asks, but allows for explanation, since it looks bad, but Lila still giving her a chance to defend herself and explain. This sort of questioning should serve her well as a reporter, holding people to account, but allowing them room to give context to their actions.

Alya and Nino also join in on poking holes in Lila’s lies like Marinette was back in Heroes Day, to about the same level of effect.

There’s a lot of nice just… friendship fluff with Alya and Marinette hanging out together having fun, with the occasional hiccup like during Chloe’s party, but nothing that a good conversation can’t help with. Neither of them want to harm the other, and as long as they’re willing to sit down and talk things out, with neither of them meaning any harm, but occasionally just getting the wrong idea or not realizing a problem, it’s nothing they can’t handle.

Just… all the little sequences of Alya and Marinette hanging out, just having a normal friendship – not one completely devoid of any semblance of conflict or disagreement, but one where they can work those things out because they’re willing to do so, and normally just enjoying each other’s company – it really makes them feel alive and REAL.

The casual establishment of their friendship and of Alya’s character makes the kickstarting of her own subplot all the more satisfying, since the reader has good reason to be invested in Alya, even beyond already being invested in her via canon.

Ladybug and Chat Noir start thinking about recruiting help, Ladybug putting forward Alya’s name, naturally.

“Well…” Ladybug chews her lip. “Alya’s the Ladyblogger, right? She’s already familiar with our job. And she loves us, so I know she’d never betray us. Also…maybe she’ll have a new appreciation for our secret identities if she’s got one of her own?”

“Makes sense,” Chat Noir says. “But why the Fox? Alya’s a pretty forceful person…from what I’ve seen.”

“Trixx is a crafty kwami,” Ladybug says. “I think he would be a good influence on Alya and help balance out that forcefulness. And the Fox corresponds to wood, right? That push to grow and hang back to get the facts first could be just what Alya needs, especially after why she was akumatised into Lady Wifi.” (Chapter 19)

She’s got multiple reasons, both positive and negative, but all pushing towards making Alya the fox. On the positive side, she KNOWS how loyal Alya is to them, that she wouldn’t turn against them, that they can rely on her. But also acknowledging some of her flaws and recognizing how giving her Trixx, making her a superhero, can help her grow, rather than simply taking those as marks against her. The need for subtlety and to hang back combining with Alya’s more naturally forceful, action-oriented nature… the balance helps reinforce the themes of the show, and of the fic in particular taking pains to make the different relationships between characters (Ladybug and Chat Noir especially) more balanced overall.

Alya’s drive, her impulsivity, is only a bad thing if left untampered – going too far the other direction can be just as bad. So Ladybug recognizing that and specifically choosing the fox for her, helping her restructure her mindset a bit, to foster the need to take the time to gather information and analyze the situation before acting? I just really love her looking at Alya and thinking about what kind of support and scenarios would be most useful in fostering her development. It really shows why Ladybug’s a good leader here – not just because of her ability to make up plans on the fly, but for how she’s supporting her teammates.

Ladybug still gives Alya a bit of a test, with telling her she needs to give it back at the end, but she’s not singling Alya out for this – she and Chat do it for most people they end up giving Miraculous too, when practical. It’s a reasonable precaution, even though they DO trust the people they’re giving them too generally.

The banter, the playfulness when they give Alya her Miraculous, just… just getting to have fun with the three of them interacting, Alya getting to have a good time in her own right… it’s sadly rare to see that, to see her own emotions, feelings, and story get a prominent role. It’s great showing her being support for Marinette, but it’s also great to see her friends helping and supporting her as well.

Seriously, Alya’s living her best life getting to be a superhero and banter with Ladybug and Chat Noir (I really love the banter), and seeing her just getting to be happy and excited and just generally being portrayed in a positive light and having a good time, it’s a really big relief and break from the negativity I often see towards Alya in fanfics.

Ladybug’s evaluations of Alya are really great, positive but showing where there’s room for improvement, and actively trying to help her on that path, being constructive rather than tearing her down.

“Besides, imagine the chaos of having unlimited illusions everywhere without a timer once you’re more experienced,” Ladybug says. “You wouldn’t know what’s real or what’s not. The Fox is suited to hanging back and annoying the enemy, remember?”

“Hanging back? That doesn’t sound like me at all,” Rena Rouge says.

“Which is why we picked you for the Fox,” Ladybug says. “It’s not always about what power you’re best suited to, but what that power can teach you. I get the feeling that you’ll benefit from learning how to be a true Fox, especially since you wanna be a professional journalist someday. Hang back, gather information, confuse your opponent, then get out of there. Even if you prefer to be in the thick of things, it’s all about learning how to use your wits under stress. He did say that aggressive foxes were a thing, didn’t he?” (Chapter 19)

Ladybug’s up front about her reasons for making Alya the Fox in particular, when at first glance it doesn’t seem like it’d suit her – something which Alya also realizes. Ladybug’s really intent on bringing out her teammates true potential and helping them shine, both as a superhero AND as a civilian here, with giving Alya experience honing skills she’ll need as a reporter, but that she hasn’t exercised much so far.

Something else I really love about this whole chapter? The first illusion Alya makes.

Right, right. I think I’ve got it.” Rena Rouge’s brow furrows, then she unslings her flute and raises it to her lips to play a short tune. “Mirage!” She flings the orange orb at the end of her flute and when it hits the ground in front of her, a small group of people appear in a flash of orange light.

Wait. Why is Chat Noir looking at himself? Well, not technically himself, but his civilian self. Adrien. And Marinette, and Nino, and a few other people who he assumes are Rena Rouge’s parents and sisters. Except that they’re slightly fuzzy around the edges and very obviously not real.

“Guess what, guys!” Rena Rouge crows. “I’m a superhero! I’m Rena Rouge! Me, Alya!”

“Oh my gosh, really?” Illusion Marinette bounces on the spot. “That’s so, so cool, Alya!”

“We all know how much you love superheroes, especially Ladybug!” illusion Adrien says.

“I’m so proud of you, babe!” illusion Nino says.

“Our daughter, a hero!” illusion Mrs Césaire says, and illusion Mr Césaire beams and hugs her.

“Super Alya! Super Alya!” the illusion twins chant.

“Not bad, sis,” illusion big sister says. Rena Rouge’s necklace beeps and loses a tail segment, so she sighs and reaches out to touch illusion Nino, and the group of people disappear in another flash of light and the faint sound of flute music. (Chapter 19)

She gets to do what she’s forbidden to do in reality, to tell the people she cares most about that she’s a superhero, to see them be proud and happy for her, to experience it.

And she’s NOT portrayed as selfish for wanting this. It’s recognized as being natural, and being something to commiserate with her over since she can’t have this in reality (well, as far as she knows anyway, considering that half the people she wants to show end up being Miraculous Wielders). Her emotions are recognized and validated.

“Rena?” Ladybug says softly when Rena Rouge says nothing for a few moments. “You okay?”

“Yeah. Yeah.” Rena Rouge turns to face them, and Chat Noir’s stomach lurches at the sight of her glossy eyes. “I just…had to tell them somehow. At least I’ll have that memory with me.”

“You know we’d love nothing more than for you to be able to tell your friends and family, right?” Ladybug says. “But all it would take is one brainwashing or mind-reading akuma…”

“Not even Ladybug and I know who each other are,” Chat Noir says. He slips an arm around Rena Rouge, and she smiles and leans into his embrace. “Considering how many hits I take for her, that’s probably a good thing.”

“You’re gonna give me a heart attack one of these days,” Ladybug mutters as she joins the embrace, sandwiching Rena Rouge between herself and Chat Noir. They stand there in silence, squished together, ignoring Rena Rouge’s Miraculous when it beeps again.

“You know,” Rena Rouge eventually says. “I never would’ve put this on the Ladyblog, even without you guys asking me. I don’t care about the world knowing who I am. I just want my close friends and my family to be proud of me…”

Alya considers Adrien to be one of her close friends? Chat Noir can’t help but squeeze Rena Rouge tighter after that, not that she’ll know why.

“I think they already know just how miraculous you are, even without superpowers,” Ladybug says. (Chapter 19)

They reinforce why this can’t happen, but gently, while giving her support all the while – physically with the hugs as well as verbally by telling her the people she cares about already know how great she is, even without her now being Rena Rouge. She doesn’t have to deal with any of this on her own. Her friends are there to support her.

She gets to hang out with them some more later too, just getting to talk and banter and laugh. It’s somewhat fillerish – it doesn’t move the plot forward much, and doesn’t really tell stuff about Alya that the audience doesn’t already know, but – it’s important in its own right. Seeing her talk about her freebie list, joke about adopting Chat, and talking about stuff that’d happened recently, it all helps develop her and make her feel like a part of this world, and not one that just exists when the plot requires it, promotes her as a person with her own thoughts and feelings and… and presence beyond being a satellite character around Marinette.

Alya’s first major conflict of her own comes with Mr Alternative News blogger, Lars Vos, who is just a PRICK. Seriously, dude jacked her footage and then whined when she told him off for it. He’s akumatized into Faux News, who can make whatever he says a reality.

I really liked how the design for him purposely mirrored a fox, drawing parallels between him and Alya visually, as well as just continuing with the fox = illusions/lies/just generally making it look like something’s real that isn’t.

He goes after Alya’s work in particular, makes it personal, using his newfound powers to steal all the work she put into the Ladyblog for his own website and making the Ladyblog into just a random, amateur website with barely anything on it. Not something that would stick after the guy’s deakumatized, but it’s still really hurtful for Alya, even KNOWING that it’ll all be restored.

And Ladybug and Chat Noir RECOGNIZE that, comforting her, giving her emotional support.

“Hey.” Ladybug grabs Rena Rouge by the biceps and squeezes gently. “We’ll take care of it, okay? We’ll defeat Faux News and the Ladyblog will go back to normal.”

“What milady said,” Chat Noir agrees. “Like we’re gonna let some ugly Rena knock-off win. Hawkmoth deserves our Miraculouses if we lose to this guy.”

Rena Rouge snorts and wipes her eyes, even though her mask conceals any traces of tears. “Thanks, guys. I just…god, I can’t stand people who steal others’ work.” (Chapter 29)

Of course, even with that support, she’s only human. It helps, but she’s not really calm enough to fight the akuma with a level head, which gets to be a bit of an issue.

“There’s too many of them!” Ladybug says. “And Rena’s too angry to focus on a proper Mirage!”

“You no-good fake!” Rena Rouge shrieks in the background, inadvertently confirming Ladybug’s assessment. “Stop hiding behind your little fans and face me like a proper fox!”

“Rena, take a chill pill!” Chat Noir calls. Naturally, he’s ignored. “Okay, uh, maybe it wasn’t a good idea to let her take this one?”

“We should’ve made her sit it out,” Ladybug agrees while elbowing a young man in the solar plexus and dropping him like a sack of bricks. “Too personal. I think I’ll have to…Lucky Charm!” A little red and black candle falls into her hands. (Chapter 29)

Her rage is especially a liability with the specific powerset she has, since it really requires her to be calm and able to think critically and concentrate in order to use it effectively. It’s one of the issues with deliberately giving her a Miraculous that requires a mindset that clashes with her personality; it’s useful in honing specific skills she needs to develop, but in a more emotional situation like this one, it’s a liability. Though she’d have been in a bad situation regardless, with the anger making her reckless and potentially easier to trick into making a damaging mistake.

So Chat needs to choose a new ally to help, giving Nino time to shine. He’s been a part of the group before this but didn’t really have his own arc per se, mostly just hanging out and giving Adrien some support when it comes to his crappy father.

Chat looks for something a little different when choosing an ally-Miraculous pair; Ladybug deliberately chose against type when giving Alya the Fox in order to help her shore up her weaknesses, while Chat chooses a Miraculous first, then tries to find someone who matches it well right away, whose strengths match those of the Miraculous. Which probably has to do with it being an emergency; with Alya they had the luxury of being able to train with her first, while in this case, the Miraculous Wielder’s gonna be dumped into battle immediately. There isn’t time for them to learn the ropes.

His choice of wielder is pretty much inevitable. Adrien just doesn’t have a very large social circle.

Nino’s naturally on board with it, even if he’s not chomping at the bit like Alya was. Mostly because hey, he can actually help protect Alya, since she can be pretty reckless sometimes.

I really like the dynamic that builds up between Rena Rouge and Carapace, with both of them being offended at the insinuation that they might be romantically interested in each other and having this sort of rivalry. It adds an interesting twist to their dynamic, especially with how it mirrors the Love Square in a bizarre sort of way.

Anyway, more of that comes in later. Back to Alya.

After defeating Faux News, she KNOWS she messed up and even assumes that Ladybug’s gonna want her Miraculous back.

Because I messed up big-time.” Alya still hasn’t looked up from the ground. “I made everything worse. I let my anger get in the way. And if you can’t trust me to –”

“Stop!” Ladybug holds up a hand, and Alya’s mouth clacks shut. “I’m not taking the Miraculous, Alya.”

“You’re not?” Alya’s head whips up, revealing the newfound shine in her hazel eyes.

“You don’t lose it for making a mistake, little kit,” Trixx says from Alya’s shoulder.

“Trixx is right,” Ladybug says. “Both Chat Noir and I trust you with our lives, and we’ve made plenty of mistakes between us. It’d be hypocritical to take your Miraculous from you. But it can’t happen again.” (Chapter 30)

 I really liked this. Because yeah, she messed up and it was dangerous… but it wasn’t the sort of mistake where she should have her Miraculous taken away. It’s something she can learn from and work on, and it’s just… well, it’s just a normal, human mistake. It’s a damaging one that put her in danger, but like Ladybug said, she and Chat have made mistakes too. Sometimes emotions override good judgement.

I also really liked Ladybug’s approach on how to prevent this from reoccurring.

“I should’ve realised that the battle was too personal,” Ladybug says. “This is a battle you should’ve sat out, Alya, and I’m sorry that I didn’t recognise that from the start.”

“Well, it’s not like you could’ve told me,” Alya says. “And wasn’t it safer for me to be Rena, anyway? So he couldn’t find me?”

“Yes, but we shouldn’t have let you get involved,” Ladybug says. “I’ll talk to Chat. We might implement a rule that you’re not allowed to get directly involved if we feel it’s too personal, unless we desperately need your help. One mistake could’ve leaked your secret identity or compromised your ability to be part of the team.” (Chapter 30)

I’ve talked about how I like Ladybug’s approach of trying to bring out the best in her teammates before, to help them grow, and this is an extension of that sort of philosophy I think, this idea of “ok these are the people I’m managing, how can I help them reach their full potential and maneuver them for the best outcome?” It’s not based on rewards and punishments, but on talking things out and just plain treating the other person with respect. Seriously, she’d be a great manager and is a really good team leader.

Ok I’m reading through some of the Rena-Carapace interactions some more and damn they are just really funny. Like, just having them know each other and having the same interactions they do as Alya and Nino is fine, but the little twist in their dynamic with the love-hate relationship and just generally sassing each other as superheroes makes it a lot more intriguing than it would be otherwise and gives an opportunity for a different sort of banter than Rena has with most of the others.

That’s most of the rest of the story, with Alya just hanging out with Marinette and co. and bantering with teammates as Rena Rouge. It’s a nice way to keep her involved and keep things interesting while not focusing in on a subplot with her specifically, since other subplots need room to shine. But it’s still a treat to see her in any scene she’s in.

Oh, though just to finish it off, the Nino-Alya reveal near the end when everyone reveals their secret identities is just pure gold.

In any case, I just really loved the whole arc with Alya, especially how even when she made mistakes she wasn’t yelled at, but instead she and Marinette would talk and work things out, would try for a constructive approach instead of the punitive one I often see in salt. It’s just a real breath of fresh air.

[starryevermore]

paradise island: a review

A note before we begin: everything above the cut will be spoiler free and will just be my general feelings about the story as a whole, the writing, and if I’d recommend it. Everything below the cut will include spoilers to explain my feelings about the story.

Rating: 3/5 stars

Visiting the North Shore had been a bizarre and unsettling experience, to say the least, but when they got home after vacation was over, he was going to suggest to Colby that they make a video about it.

Hell, no. Even better. Write a book. Videos melted away after a while, but a book? Books and stories solidified on the conscious mind forever. (91-92)

Overall, I enjoyed this book. I generally enjoy stories like this, but there were a few moments throughout the novel where things just fell a bit flat. 

While I was reading, I made a few notes, the first being that there was a weird juxtaposition between talking about more adult topics (drinking, women, sex, etc.) but in an odd, almost kid-friendly way. Some of the word choices were interesting, such as constant use of “fancy-pants”, “hottie”, “goofball”, “oddball”, and “doofus”, as well as the one moment where Colby said he hated “dicky” people and the moment where Sam said Colby was about to have an “emo-ruption”. (Though I did laugh a lot longer than I should have at “emo-ruption”.) It felt like they were still trying to make the story appropriate for their younger fans by using more kid-friendly language, while also appealing to their older fans by being like “look!! we drink!! and ooh look, we talked about smoking weed 👀🤪”. I wish they would’ve committed to one or the other, because it added an odd sense of disjointedness to the story that could’ve been easily resolved.

The other big thing I made note of was that there was a lot of “tell, not show” throughout. There’s a heavy focus on dialogue to progress the story rather than seeing into the boys’ inner thoughts and using other means to find out information. (I’m not one to talk, though, since I also focus more on dialogue than description.) It sometimes made it difficult to fully get into the story. I struggled with developing a picture of what the Belle Estate looked like, or what the other characters (beside SNC, Nate, and Alex) looked like. In terms of the boys, it seemed very reliant on us knowing who Sam and Colby are and what they’re all about (which is fair, since probably 99.9% of people who bought the book are fans of them but, if they want success outside of their audience, it could’ve been more descriptive in that regard). 

As for the big twist at the end, it was a bit lackluster. I’ll go more in detail on this in the “spoiler section”, but it kind of diminished everything that had happened throughout the story and left me wondering “what was the point?”. 

I was excited when I’d heard that the story was told through both Sam and Colby’s POVs, but, I’ll be honest, I saw little difference between Sam’s chapters than Colby’s chapters. The most difference was the almost stereotypical portrayal of Sam being the logical one while Colby being the emotional one. Aside from that, they were almost indistinguishable from me and I often had to flip back to the start of a chapter to remind myself of who’s head I was in.

Since that was all critical, here’s some things I did like:

I feel like, while the inner monologues were a bit lacking, Gaby did make up for it by making the dialogue between the boys really realistic to them. In this regard, she really nailed the portrayal of them. 

The depiction of the paranormal things was really great. I feel like those parts were the ones I could get most into the story. The way Gaby wrote them was so interesting and pulled me in. I wish there was more of these moments throughout the story, because I think they really showcased who Gaby is as a writer.

The convo where Colby called Sam “Velma” and then Nate asked if Colby was “Fred”? I really enjoyed that because (a) Scooby is my favorite thing in the whole world and (b) I chose Sam and Colby be Velma and Fred in my moodboards a month ago so just a lil fun moment for me.

Just how meta the book was. Like, the quote I included at the top? I laughed for way too long when I read that. 

There was a nice sense of nostalgia throughout, specifically when they brought up their YouTube channel, their Vine days, them being arrested, wining a Teen Choice Award, and Corey and the Shadowman. It made me feel all warm and fuzzy inside, and reminded me of how proud I am for how far they’ve come.

*slight spoiler here* Speaking of being arrested, there was a moment where SNC were contemplating escaping to the beach and they had a conversation if it was worth being arrested again. I really loved that, especially with how much fans joke about them inevitably being arrested again.

This is more for the person who designed the cover, but holy shit?? I loved it so much?? 

I don’t know if I would have picked this book up if it didn’t have Sam and Colby’s name attached to it. I will say, though, I finished the book in one sitting, which is pretty rare for me nowadays, so it was engaging. I think, overall, it was a great story with a great concept but it could’ve been fleshed out more. In some ways, it almost felt like this was a draft rather than a completed novel. 

That being said, for SNC’s first book and Gaby’s first time working with the boys, it exceeded my expectations. If they were to continue writing books together, I imagine it will get better and better as they get more used to each other and potentially open up more so that their characters become a more accurate depiction of them.

Overall, the book’s not something you really need to race out to get. I think, if you have a gift card or there’s some sort of deal or you need to spend a little more to get free shipping, it wouldn’t hurt to pick up Paradise Island. It wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t a great, top-tier novel in my opinion. That being said, if you do pick it up, I think you will enjoy the book.

Spoiler Avenue

The characterization of all four of the boys is a bit 2D. Sam’s logical and wants to keep the peace, Colby’s emotional and more of a wildcard, Nate’s focused on his schoolwork and flexing his vocabulary, and Alex? Well, I couldn’t get a good read on Alex until he sells out SNC at the end of the novel and even then, he didn’t feel so much like his own character, more like someone just present to further the plot.

Speaking of characters, the introduction of Trey was...meh. I wish we could’ve gotten more insight on why Colby was so adamant about not liking Trey and why Nate was so gung ho to ditch their plans to go to the North side of the island for this guy they barely knew. Finding out that Colby didn’t like Trey because he said college was the only way to success was such an odd thing? Like, undoubtedly there’s been many people who would’ve said that, so does Colby also dislike everyone who’s said that or is there a more specific reason he didn’t like Trey? Just...👏🏻 more 👏🏻 inner 👏🏻 thoughts 👏🏻 please 👏🏻 and 👏🏻 thank 👏🏻 you 👏🏻 

@golbrocklovely​ brought this up in her review but Colby’s fixation on the  mermaid statue of a 16-year-old was really odd. It probably wouldn’t have been as odd if Amy was aged up a bit to 18, but as a 16-year-old with the descriptions that were given? Yeah...not the vibe.

I also wasn’t a fan of how so many things plot-wise was just...told to the boys. They could’ve found some newspaper clippings or something, anything to make them put in a little bit of detective work. But for so much information to just be handed to them? It got old, and almost lazy. 

The big twist being that all of the paranormal stuff they’d encountered being a hallucination? God, that was so fucking annoying (though I did go back afterwards from the moment that they first arrived at the Belle Estate—starting as early as page 36—and it felt incredibly obvious knowing now that it was all drugs, so props to Gaby for dropping that many hints early on). To spend so much time making all of this scary shit happen just to turn around and say “HAHA JK THE BOYS WERE JUST TRIPPING BALLS” was such a cop out. It would’ve been more terrifying for it all to be real, make the boys question their beliefs and the reality of there being something out there that they didn’t quite understand. Though, there is something terrifying about not knowing you’ve been drugged and having hallucinated that vividly, but I feel like it didn’t quite fit in with the story. 

Alex betraying the boys? So interesting! This was one of the few things that made sense in terms of them being drugged. But then when he was betrayed when Pauahi (who’s name was misspelled a few different times in the book) escaped? Ugh, amazing. We love instant karma like that. 

Going back to the “tell not show” thing, I wish the sacrifice at the end would’ve been more detailed. For all of the paranormal stuff to be written off as a drug-induced hallucination, I would’ve loved if Gaby had leaned more into the horror of being used in a human sacrifice. There was more of a focus on Colby bargaining for his life, which is fair, but I would’ve loved to see more of the pure terror there.

That being said, the way Trey finally snapped out of it? *chef’s kiss* Loved that shit so much. And I loved the fact that Trey stayed behind in the end. It added a nice eeriness to the story that had been lacking since they debunked the paranormal shit as being hallucinations. 

Again, going back to my overall, thoughts, I enjoyed the book in general. Some things could’ve been fleshed out a bit more to reach its full potential. I wish they leaned more into the paranormal aspect and had more descriptions to balance out all of the dialogue, but other than that, I did enjoy the book and don’t regret buying it. 

[exalok]

whaddup my dudes!!!

i am tired and wired and this means brain no writey but brain VERY focused on absolutely all the fic i have going on at once that aren’t prompts (prompts will be incoming, no worries dissociation anon)

and THAT means y’all get to hear about my many. many. MANY projects, or at least the ones that make my heart go pitter patter when i think of them

a few examples: demon!corvo and priest!daud with extra worldbuilding ; the naptime cuddles AU ; corvo doesn’t come to dunwall so jess and daud end up arranged-married for profit (more info..... under the readmore..... i’m gonna get rambly)

also feel free to ask questions, i love questions and they get me thinking even more in depth about the world and specific instances of characters and that is the entire POINT

LIKE OKAY SO MY BRAIN PRETTY MUCH CONTINUOUSLY THROWS IDEAS AT THE WALL AND ABOUT 95% OF THEM STICK BECAUSE I’M A HOARDING RAT BASTARD i love my ideas they are my precioussss

i might have about. 25 fic more or less active at the moment? which sounds like a reasonable number but those are the ones i have an actual plot for as well as the will to get them out into the world

let’s put aside the ones i have actually posted on tumblr or ao3 (teen!daud, domestic zombie apocalypse, bondageverse, knife!corvo) in favor of those you have either no or little idea exist. begin:

I MEAN OBVIOUSLY I MADE FANFIC OF MY OWN FANFIC or as i call it parallel/companion fic, because at some point in the past a prompter inspired me and i was deep in the prince!daud fic at the time and i thought what if high chaos. what if void monster corvo? what if horrifying yet human creature of the depths!!! what if EVERYTHING was TERRIBLE and daud killed corvo as a last ditch and vain attempt to get his people out of burrows’ clutches, and it all went to shit from there??? also they’re bound by marriage contract and the vagaries of magical intention and daud becomes corvo’s life battery, in essence, which you can imagine leads to a very unhealthy relationship i think it’s not spoilering much to tell you it does NOT end well, and i’ll be writing it as a sort of foil to low chaos prince!daud

i have quite a few high chaos fics actually. high chaos is depressing to play but the story outcomes are DELICIOUS and the degrading world and character motivations are a lot of fun to play around in

weirdly enough another one of these high chaos fics is the naptime cuddles AU!!! i won’t lie it’s the one i am currently on and i want to talk about it to everyone so bad constantly. in short, corvo doesn’t kill daud and the whalers because he’s trying to get out and currently too fucked up to fight, and when he doesn’t manage to save emily despite his best efforts he comes back to daud for some kind of symbolic execution. meanwhile thomas convinced daud to take a goddamn nap with him there because daud, despite his paranoia, does sleep better with people around, and this is entirely an excuse for semi-platonic daudthomascorvo cuddles in bed followed by whaler puppypiles when the gang catches on that this is a thing they can do now I LOVE PUPPYPILE WHALERS I LOVE NAPS I LOVE REDEMPTION THROUGH THE POWER OF RESTORATIVE SLEEP please i’m so tired and i can’t actually fall asleep next to people let me live my dream vicariously additionally: this will be my contribution to the absolutely wonderful whaler vineyard of old fanon

there is also what i feel should be a classic and ISN’T though a couple of fics were written around the concept and one in particular is /chef kiss, and the concept is: high chaos corvo meets low chaos corvo!!!!! i made it a threesome with daud because no one can stop me and i fucking LOVE the idea of daud ending up capable of telling them apart through tiny details even when high chaos corvo, bastard that he is, tries to impersonate low chaos corvo, who is a bastard in much more subtle ways and would probably be better at impersonating hc!c than the other way around but finds it distasteful; also i added intense body horror because that’s how i roll and there are eventual magical CONSEQUENCES to hc!c being in the low chaos world and regularly in contact with what is essentially his narrative double when he doesn’t belong there, probably ends in a tragically bittersweet way, i’m not completely clear on it yet though i do have ideas

and oh man......... the time travel corvo fic.... the one where high chaos corvo ends up in his own seven-year-old body........... fuck i hashed out so much of the general worldbuilding for that one and ended up going way too far and imagining a sequel like i always do where corvo learns how to walk universes and gathers people he cares about from places where he can actually save them from their eventual tragic futures and the dissolution of their timelines once the outsider is ousted from the void and a new void avatar is made and SHENANIGANS YO!!! SHENANIGANS AND CAMPING!!!! SELF-CROSSOVERS!!!!!!! I COULD HAVE HIM MEET HIMSELF IF HE HADN’T TRAVELED BACK I’M CRYING I HAVE SO MANY EMOTIONS

the one where corvo is a fae child is probably a lil bit high chaos though it isn’t determined yet, and he has all of these instincts with regards to possessing and exchange and deals, and assumptions as to how other people must work approximately the same, and he is so wrong. then there’s the really creepy bad touch possible sequel that i won’t get into unless someone specifically asks because it’s a lil bit much really

oh MAN oh SHIT speaking of bad touch there’s another dead dove do not eat one where i grabbed an entire handful of granny rags’ apparent fucking around with magical arrays and rune creation and general spellery and threw it at corvo post-interregnum and he sees “ghosts” and doesn’t understand what the FUCK is going on and things go really badly for him, and one ghost, soon the only ghost, is daud, and corvo doesn’t know if he’s real, if he’s seeing things, if he’s NOT seeing things but daud is some kind of void demon, if he is and also having psychotic breaks he doesn’t remember because he ends up with some hellish bruises, but the real daud is actually still out there just hiding out and corvo will eventually meet up with him and real daud will meet fake daud and even more shit will happen

god, the demon!corvo AU gets pretty fucked up as well if i remember right; corvo is both some dude with a wife and kid and the demon that inhabits him, jess is his wife and the demon that inhabits her (to be clear, separate characters but both based on either jess or corvo oh my GOD what if i switched the demons that would be amazing but no, calm down, maybe for a short what-if scenario that will inevitably turn into its own thing), daud is the overseer with the really good exorcism record trying to get the demons to fuck off except he thinks there’s only one of them and the other takes him by surprise; cue daud being hunted by that demon, furious that daud shattered his favorite pupil, and some revelations about what exactly lives inside the abbey and also under it

on a somewhat lighter note, the one where corvo never comes to dunwall (i think his mom gets sick and he doesn’t win the blade verbena at sixteen?) is also where jess keeps losing her royal protectors to assassination attempts because the first one was decent and died protecting her and the second one was decent and had an accident and people start believing there’s a curse on the position or a curse on her, and she’s like okay so how do i make sure i don’t die now that no one is willing to become my protector since it’s pretty much a death sentence, and she arranges a meeting with the best assassin in the city and suggests an alliance -- protection and some commission overview, all secret, versus funding and housing -- in the form of a marriage and daud ends up agreeing; then later duke abele visits and corvo is among his personal guard and he gets to meet the empress, and the assassin, and there are ot3 shenanigans

oh my GOD also the kids in karnaca AU. obviously. fuck you may have seen the (dis)armingly charmed notefic but this would be them meeting as actual kids, in karnaca, just tiny babies, daud recently kidnapped and corvo doing his best to make this cool older kid into his friend and also maybe hiding him from the people who want to train him to do Illegal Things, and there are dumb childish arguments and daud goes on the run to avoid capture and there is an exchange of letters that at one point stops and corvo is Devastated and there is a REUNION and they are ADORABLE but also INCREDIBLY STUPID, AS IS RIGHT AND CORRECT, and i don’t know what happens later but it gives me warm fuzzies okay

then i have a NUMBER of oneshots that are more or less plotted out, like the one where jess has a kind of groundhog day because Heart reasons but over months and starts out not quite remembering what happened in past attempts and OF COURSE it ends with royal ot3; and there’s the one where Daud becomes the Outsider and is very temporally confused and OF COURSE it ends with corvodaud who do you take me for (including Very Perplexing arguments where daud doesn’t know at what point in this relationship’s development he is and corvo is angry or very patient depending on where he accidentally time travels to, and i make some assumptions about the non-linearity of the void avatar’s existence); and there’s the one where corvo catches the plague and gets through kingsparrow to get emily out then to people he trusts, ie the curnows and sam beechworth, then crawls away to die, but daud finds him and sighs and rolls up his sleeves and sends whalers to the Tower and emily thinks the Tower is haunted then, when it becomes very clear the Tower is not, demands one of these assassins teach her how to stab a bitch; AND THERE’S THE ONE WHERE CORVO AND JESS ARE GHOSTS AND DAUD IS A REAL ESTATE AGENT AND THE WHALERS ARE THE KIDS HE TRIED TO HELP OUT AS A SOCIAL WORKER and yes it’s ot3 and yes he buys the ghost house and ends up being filmed by the whalers to do cooking videos and fancy knife tricks and asmr because his voice is insanely soothing when he’s not being ornery; oh fuck and there’s the one where i wrote an unrequited corvodaud prompt and my brain grabbed it, smelled it, and decided that corvo very reluctantly falling for daud was necessary to the health of my feelings, and there is at least one (1) sleeping beauty coma while corvo yells at the outsider about the Heart; also there’s the one where in D2 billie was evasive about the old guy living with her on her boat and em finds daud rather than sokolov in jindosh’s basement and they have long, emotional discussions; and for the character building hell of it one that would span the outsider’s beginnings and growth and how the void tries to welcome him in

okay........................ i think i’m done rambling now

i love fanfic y’all

[conorxoblivion]

{ B A S I C S }

LEGAL NAME: Dorothea Craven Unknown

NICKNAMES: Thea None

ALIAS: Conor

GENDER / PRONOUNS: Female / She/Her

AGE: 28 years old

DOB: January 25th, 1893 Unknown

PLACE OF BIRTH: New Orleans, Louisiana, USA Unknown

YEARS ON MERIDIUM: 99 years

ATTUNEMENT: Air

NATIONALITY: American Unknown

ETHNICITY: African-American, African-Haitian, & white ( English, Irish, French, & German ) Unknown

OCCUPATION: Pilot Unknown

LANGUAGES: English (fluent), French (fluent), Creole (conversational), ASL (elementary proficiency/conversational)

RELIGION: Agnostic 

ORIENTATION: Demisexual Biromantic

DRINK | SMOKE | DRUGS: OCCASIONALLY | NO | NO

{ P H Y S I C A L  A T T R I B U T E S }

HAIR COLOR: Black

EYE COLOR: Brown

HEIGHT: 5′-6″

WEIGHT: 134 lbs

TATTOOS: --

SCARS: --

{ P E R S O N A L I T Y }

TRAITS

+ spunky, daring, witty, charming, bold, dedicated

- challenging, outspoken, impulsive, reactive, skeptical

MBTI: ESFP

ALIGNMENT: True Neutral

LIKES: TBD

DISLIKES: TBD

GOALS/DREAMS: TBD

FEARS: TBD

{ R E L A T I O N S H I P S }

PARENTS

Unknown (mother) - Deceased

Unknown (father) - Deceased

SIBLINGS

Unknown

ROMANTIC

Unknown

{ B I O G R A P H Y }

trigger/content warnings: none

OFFICIAL BIOGRAPHY

You were born to a small family, or at least you think you were. You might have been married judging by the tan line from a ring on your finger, but the ring is long gone along with any other kinds of belongings or items to indicate who you are. You can’t be too sure these days and it’s not because of the years that have passed on this island. The only thing you remember are the waves, the salty air, and the sand. When you woke up, everything was fuzzy and your head ached. How you got there, why you were there, and when you got there. You don’t even know when you’re from. Most importantly, you don’t even know yourself or who you’ve left behind.

When you first woke up, you were floating on a piece of wood and you just couldn’t seem to drown. When you woke up a second time, you were somewhere on an island, far away from anyone. You lived on the island for some time without having contact with anyone, hiding whenever you heard a strange noise, thinking you were alone on this island. You were scared because you don’t know who or where you are. Somehow though, you have enough sense and skill to take care of yourself. Eventually, someone finds you as you talk to yourself and mark the days you’ve spent on the island on a tree. You don’t know how they heard you, but they did. Once they told you everything was okay, all the dust settled and the breeze stopped blowing.

You choose a new name for yourself because you don’t remember your real one. You are shy at first, but soon take on a new personality. You aren’t too sure about how “new” your personality is, but no one on the island knows you or has even heard of you. The tan line on your ring finger slowly fades away and you begin to forget about who may be missing you. And as the years go by, you can’t even be sure what year you are from. You call yourself the woman out of time as you lose track and learn new things from new castaways. You live among the survivors unattached to people and you act indifferent and carefree, claiming you’ve moved on and live in the now. Still, you can only hope though that eventually, the next survivor will have some information as to who you are.

PRE-MERIDIUM

Dorothea “Thea” Craven, was born in 1893 and grew up in the early 1900s during the height of aviation. She became interested in flying at a young age and was very determined and adventurous. She eventually learned to fly and made it her life and a career. 

Her family traveled quite a bit when she was younger and learning to speak, so she developed an interest in adventure and languages. Because of this, her accent is difficult to pinpoint. Some may call it a Transatlantic or Mid-Atlantic accent. Her free spirit never changed and she ultimately became a pilot. It is unknown what she was a pilot for whether it was for military, expeditionary, or show purposes.

When Dorothea wanted to become a pilot, she was not allowed to obtain a license at that time in the United States. She ultimately ended up moving to France for a time to take lessons and earn her license.

MERIDIUM

She crash landed in the water around Meridium while she was on a solo flying expedition. It is unknown how and why the plane crashed and whether it was a strange malfunction, pilot error, or sabotage. She has been unable to recover the wreckage of the plane and is unable to determine what really happened to her. 

When Thea landed in the water, she hit her head and when she woke up, she had no memory of who she was or how she got there. She didn’t even know she was flying the plane that crashed. She woke up on a piece of wreckage from the plane and soon floated until she hit land. It is suspected her air attunement manifested shortly after landing in the water as she never drowned.

She landed on a side of the island where no one saw her and she thought she was alone. She survived on the island for a few days until she was found by the rest of the survivors on Meridium. Before she was found, she hid from any slight noise that was made, even if it was far away, which she didn’t realize was far away.

Since she didn’t know her name, she chose a new one for herself. She settled on the name Conor, but she wasn’t entirely sure why she chose it. It just spoke to her. 

Conor doesn’t remember anything about where she was from, who her family was, or even what year she’s from. She remembers skills and some historical facts, but gets things confused, especially since she’s learned so much about current events from newer survivors. 

More will be updated as Conor learns more about herself / as I figure out stuff.

{ A M N E S I A }

THE BASICS

Long story short, Conor remembers things about the outside world and basic things, but she doesn’t remember personal details about them or her own personal memories. It is unknown why she doesn’t remember anything and whether it is mental or physical trauma or something else.

Conor hasn’t made much of an effort to try and recover her memories because she finds it better to not remember what she’s lost than to remember everyone and everything she’s left behind. She’s seen what it’s like for other survivors to cope with the loss of their homes, families, friends, and their old lives. 

Conor still gets easily confused about details mainly because over time she’s learned more about the outside world in more modern ways and gets them confused with what she knows and what she’s learned.

At times, remembering things or thinking about what she does know feels like an out of body experience. She remembers things but they feel so far away.

She thinks she must have been married or at least engaged because when she was found, she had a ring tan line on her finger, but has never figured out what happened. Conor does feel sad sometimes like she’s missing someone and may sometimes cry in private, but she’s learned to repress those feelings over time as she’s given up on remembering who they are. 

She obviously knows she’s not from modern times or really any time after the 1940s, but she can’t pinpoint her actual birth year and when she grew up. With so much time on the island and spending so much time with more castaways from modern times, she feels much more modern. 

EXAMPLES

Conor knows what a car is and how it operates and that the cars she knew were different than they are now, but she doesn’t know if she had a car, who taught her how to drive, or how cars look different than they do now.

Conor knows films exist and has seen older films such as A Trip To The Moon (1902), but she doesn’t remember that she knows about them because she saw them when she was ten years old and not because some film major crash landed on the island and told her about it. 

Conor loves and misses music and listened to it a lot. She knows she listened to music on records, but couldn’t tell you specifically what her favorite song was (she does know of specific artists and songs) or if she ever went to parties where they played music.

{ I N T E R V I E W }

What do you remember last before landing here?

The woman looked at the person in front of her, searching for any words that made sense. She couldn’t think of a damn thing. It’d been a few days since she landed on the island and this was the first time she’d seen anyone. She was still surprised that anyone heard her when she spoke to herself. She was sure that she was alone. “I just remember…sand and water. The sun and the sky. I woke up on a piece of driftwood or something. There was some kind of fabric on it and when I thought I was going to drown because I was so exhausted and there wasn’t any kind of land in sight. When I woke up again, I was on sand and that was it.” She bounced her knee up and down as she stared at the person. “I can’t remember anything else. I-I don’t even remember my own name."

Have you ever killed? If so: why? If not: could you?

“I just told you that I don’t even remember my own name,” the woman replied. She knitted her eyebrows in frustration. Did they even hear what she just said? How could they even ask her something like this now. She looked around at the trees blowing over their heads and she let out a heavy sigh. The woman leaned forward and spoke in a low tone. “If I did, would you kick me off the island? Send me back to sea so I can die of heat stroke? Wouldn’t that make you a murderer too?” She raised her eyebrows. She leaned back. “Or did you want to know if I’ve killed someone so I can kill someone else so you don’t have to get your hands dirty?” The person in front of her didn’t seem amused. The woman bit the inside of her cheek. “Let’s just go with no. I haven’t killed someone. And if I did have to kill someone, it’s going to be because of self defense. If you want someone dead, you’ll have to do it yourself or find someone else."

What is your greatest achievement? Biggest regret?

The woman shook her head, laughing without humor. “Greatest achievement? Not dying on the open ocean,” she replied. Considering she didn’t remember anything, surviving a few days on an island by herself seemed like a pretty big achievement. “Biggest regret?” On the other hand, she couldn’t think of what she regretted. She came on the island by herself and couldn’t even say what year it was, which seemed awfully sad. She had a watch, so at least she could tell them what time it was, but there was nothing on it to indicate a year. “I guess I regret not having a calendar on me,” she told them.

[septiembrre]

author meme

Tagged by - @foxmagpie & @mego42

Tagging - I think most folks have gotten tagged, but friends feel free to do it!

ao3 name: septiembre

fandoms: that I write for? only good girls

number of fics: haha, I was avoiding answering this ask meme because I’m not very prolific. So far, I’m at 3 one-shots, a handful of drabbles, and one growing multi-chapter monster. 

fic I spent the most time on: definitely Get to Be Mine. It’s my only multi-chapter but I will be working on it for a while. 

fic I spent the least amount of time on: Heavenly Hot Tubs. This was my second fic and it was so easy to write. But, now I kind of want to rewrite it and make it sexier :’D 

most hits: Get to Be Mine has finally eclipsed the sexy hot tub fic by 4 clicks. 

most kudos, comments & bookmarks: Get to Be Mine. 

highest total word count: definitely Get To Be Mine... 

favourite fic I wrote: 

I love them all for their own specific reasons. They were all things I was really jazzed to write. Get To Be Mine is definitely my darling right now. 

However, I also really enjoyed writing Riendo Juntos, and the one shot about Rio & Beth hanging out a safe house and cleaning, and the one shot about Beth waking up in the middle of the night to bake bread. 

fic I want to rewrite/expand on: Haha, I’m at peace with all of the fics. I like reading my old stuff, with ideas of where I could have expanded them. Instead of feeling embarrassed, I feel proud that my writing has evolved and overall become something easier. 

That being said, I do have a hankering to re-write the smut in the hot tub fic and make it longer~ with more sensory details. But, I won’t! 

share a bit of a wip or story idea you’re working on: Damn, y’all I’m barely on chapter three of my fake dating fic. This thing is going to dominate my free time for the next several months (lol, whaaaat?). So I’ve been putting my head down and trying to concentrate on that. 

I’m in the process of editing a scene between Annie+Beth+Ruby and it has been soooooo much fun. I got into writing GG fanfiction exclusively for Brio and had felt really tentative about branching out into other characters, and writing Ruby and Annie’s voices (ESPECIALLY Annie’s. It really doesn’t come naturally to me).  

This is rough but, here’s a segment from what I wrote yesterday:

Annie snaps her fingers. “What about that purple dress? The one you wore for Kenny’s birthday party two years ago. Do you still have it?”

In fact, it had recently returned to Beth with the rest of her clothes that Rio had stollen. She had always felt good wearing it and it was one of the few surviving articles from the purge of things related to her marriage.

Ruby’s gaze darts sideways to Annie. “I cannot believe you are suggesting that dress. He took one look at her and I wasn’t sure what he was going to do to her inside that bedroom.”

“Oh, we knew what he wanted to do.” Annie says, her voice loaded with innuendo. She turns to Beth. “Wear that. You’ll feel great and he’ll love it.”  

Ruby steeples her fingers. “I don’t think we want to antagonize him any further, Annie.”

"And that was two years ago.” Beth adds. “Before all the rest of it. We don’t even know if he’s ever, y’know…” Her mouth opens making what she’s sure are ridiculous configurations with her lips as she flounders, “ --liked me.”

Annie’s jaw hangs open for a moment. Then she pulls it together and addresses Ruby first, “Okay, I care about my sister, so stop trying to guilt me. Maybe what they need is to finally fuck again and get over whatever this is.” Ruby raises her eyebrows, considering Annie’s point but with plenty of hesitation, as Beth splutters indignantly again.

Annie turns to her sister. “And Beth, I know homeboy has been super shady about his feelings but he has them.” Beth shakes her head, but Annie nods adamantly back at her. “They are in there somewhere because bizarrely, we are all still alive.”

She pauses to knock on the wooden surface of the worktable, and murmurs a quick, Rest in peace, Lucy. Ruby crosses herself. For a second, Beth’s stomach plummets, and fuzzy words for the Mourner’s Kaddish tug at the periphery of her thoughts. She curls her fingers around of the edge of the table to steady herself, and then, she processes what Annie said. Somehow despite the grief and all of the terrible things, it feeds the kernel of warmth inside of her.

“Is he the ideal romantic prospect? Nope. And no matter how this fake-dating situation goes, you are not allowed to become his wife-in-crime or whatever. But, maybe you guys can go through the motions—” She thrusts a little with her hips, rocking on the stool. “Bone, y’know, maybe. And then we can all move on and you can start dating for real.”

I think I got nervous about writing scenes with more than two people? That fear eclipsed everything and it made me forget that I LOVE WRITING SCENES BETWEEN FRIENDS -- especially between women. Oh my god. And they all have different ethics and funny bones -- it’s so great. Now the scene has spiraled a bit -- it’s 5k and I need to chill. 

Because of Get to Be Mine, I also keep daydreaming about all these other Brio fake dating situations. For some reason I keep wondering if it would be a good idea to create an ongoing side drabble series with additional/discarded fake dating premises? Honestly, I need to calm down with the fake dating trope (but, it’s so pleasant for my brain right now). 

The one I have in mind right now is a post Season 3 Beth+Rio+Dean scene where Beth and Rio watch as Dean make a mess of a customer/vendor interaction at Boland Bubbles. Beth steps in to intervene and while Rio watches. Rio ends up joining in the conversation, and the assumption is made that Beth/Rio are a couple, in front of Dean. Rio starts playing into it. Hahaha, this is my angstier, smuttier fake dating happy place right now. 

[lov3nerdstuff]

Dark Stars {Part 7}

*Loki x OFC*

Part: 7/10

Words: 4.9k

Warnings: none, for once

Summary: ~Loki could just let her die here and now. His problems would be solved and he could go back to his usual ways. But then he would forever be left with an unsolved mystery and he hated the prospect of that even more than the fear of what would happen if she lived.~

A story of what happens when Loki stumbles upon someone who is like him in every way. Only better. Oh, and they just happen save Asgard too.

A.N.: To celebrate over 1000 people following me (how insane is that?!), I decided to share the newly edited version of the very first Loki fanfiction I ever wrote! Enjoy the mischief 💚

All Parts can be found on my Masterlist!

______________________________

It was still dark when she found herself standing on one of the palace's balconies. Quietly, she walked through the open window into the dark room, and straight towards the sleeping figure on the bed. Before she could say a single word however, a hand with a knife shot up from the bed, aiming for her throat. Yet, it went right through her body, the illusion only weavering slightly under the brutal attack. She inwardly thanked herself for remembering this trick from Loki's memories.

The man jumped out of the bed, looking at the illusion in confusion.

"Loki?!" He asked quietly.

"Hello Thor." Ivy said gently, letting the illusion slip and now stepping into the open room herself.

"Who are you? What do you want?" He asked immediately, reaching for his hammer.

"Please, I mean no harm to you. I came here seeking help." She answered calmly, trying to put up her best facade. "My name is Ivy. I'm Loki's… friend."

"My brother has no friends." Thor answered, staring at Ivy from a few feet away, taking in every detail about her in the deepest suspicion. "Why do you wear his shirt?"

"Look, we really don't have time for this right now. Loki is dying and I need your help"

"What? Where is he?" He frowned, concerned but still watchful. "And why should I believe you in the first place?"

"He's safe. Far away from here..." She answered, searching for Thor's eyes in the dark. "And you will have to trust me for a second and come here."

Ivy held out her hand to him, palm facing upwards. She was prepared for this. She had known she needed proof.

"What are you doing?" Thor asked a little warily as Ivy stepped towards him. He rose his weapon, ready to defend himself, but before he could hit her, Ivy had placed her hand on his chest.

In an instant, Thor saw images of his own childhood. Memories of him and Loki, causing mayhem around the palace. Images of their mother, their father and their friends. Little moments of his past he had long forgotten about. He smiled at the sighed, but before he could really grasp any of the memories, they were gone again.

"How did you do that?" He asked quietly, letting his arms drop to his side. Somehow he was very certain of the fact now that she wasn't a threat to him, and most likely telling the truth even.

"Loki showed me. And now I show you, because you know your brother well and you know that he would not share these memories with me if he didn't trust me."

Thor nodded. She had a point there; Loki didn't open up to anyone. Ever. The girl in front of him must truly be special to his brother if he allowed her into his head. But that also meant that she spoke the utmost truth, that Loki was dying. For real this time.

"How can I help?" He finally asked, and Ivy went on to explain her plan.

"We're looking for a book Loki has read." She started, and Thor let out a groan, rolling his eyes.

"He has probably read every single book in the whole palace. Twice."

"We're looking for a very specific book, from Midgard." Ivy ignored his pessimism. "It should be in his room, but it would take me ages to find."

"Yeah, he has hundreds of books in there."

"And that's why I need your help. We need to find that damn book as fast as possible, or there won't be any helping him anymore."

"You can help him with a book from Midgard…? Why didn't you just ask him what's in the book?" Thor questioned, earning himself an eye-roll from Ivy. Geez, she got now why Loki was constantly annoyed with Thor. He wasn't really the smartest hen in the pen.

"We must go now." She simply stated, grabbing Thor's wrist and bringing them into Loki's room.

"Wow, how did you do that!?" He asked in bewilderment, looking around himself frantically before he realized where he was.

"It's called magic, Thor… honestly, didn't you pay any attention to your brother?" She huffed, starting to dig through the books immediately.

"Uuhhh, I have an idea! Wait here!" Thor said excitedly and hurried out of the room before Ivy could complain. If he was getting the guards, Ivy would totally stab him. Wow. That was so very Loki… She smiled sadly to herself.

Loki owned all kinds of books, but nothing about plants would surface even from the dustiest of corners. A few minutes later, Ivy heard voices outside Loki's bedroom.

"Is she the girl who killed the guards in the forest?" A man asked.

"And who almost killed another dozen in the city?" Another added.

"And she stole my clothes." The woman's voice Ivy recognized.

"You do realize I can hear you, right?" Ivy said loudly, though not taking her eyes off the books. "You can just as well talk about me once you're in here, searching."

The door opened and Thor entered, behind him following three men and the lady Loki had called Sif.

"Ivy, these are my friends." Thor introduced awkwardly. "Guys, this is Ivy. She's with Loki!"

Ivy turned around for a second, flashing a badly feigned smile. "Great. Now search, will you?"

Thor rolled his eyes but started picking up books to identify their content, motioning for his friends to do the same.

"Geez, she is just as ill-humored as Loki himself." One of the men said under his breath, and Ivy could also feel the other three staring holes into her back. Only Thor seemed rather at ease now, with his friends around.

"You can talk to me, you know.." Ivy finally said, having enough of the silent judgement thrown at her.

"Why did you kill the guards in the forest?" One man asked immediately, not even bothering to pretend he wasn't curious. He was huge, all muscles and good nutrition, and had red hair and a thick beard.

"Because I felt like it. " She answered sarcastically and rolled her eyes to herself, but then decided for honesty. "They were chasing me. I had done no harm, and I was merely walking through the woods when they attacked me. Probably out of boredom, or the desire for my body… who knows. One stabbed me in the shoulder without reason and I felt the need to defend myself."

Silence followed for a while. Then the same man spoke up again. "But why would they just attack you if you hadn't done anything?"

"I can hardly ask them now, can I? They are your guards, not mine." She answered coldly.

"She really is so much like Loki, it's disgusting…" Sif grumbled.

"Why thank you!" Ivy responded in an exaggeratedly high pitched voice, laced with feigned happiness.

"That was no compliment." Sighed Sif, throwing a book into the nearest corner of the room.

"Why do you help me then, if you despise Loki so much?" Ivy asked out of honest interest for once, while she quickly flipped through a huge book with a blank cover.

"We are helping Thor, not Loki. Because he is our prince, and our friend." Another man with blonde hair answered. The other three made noises of agreement.

"And I help you because you care about my brother as much as I do." Thor finally said. "And to be honest with you, I never quite understood why Loki was arrested with you in the first place. I mean, you killed our people… But he didn't help you with that, did he?"

Ivy sighed, growing more nervous by the second as still no one had found the book she was looking for. "No, he had nothing to do with that. He only healed me when I was dying from poison."

"There have been quite many incidents of poisoning in the city, and also around the palace, actually…" The man with the fuzzy beard answered. "I just overheard a few guards talk about it today. They think it's mere coincidence, and they don't know what kind of poison is used anyway, as everyone who has died of it wasn't worth an autopsy."

"What? Why has no one told me about this?!" Thor's voice thundered through the room and Ivy actually flinched at the sudden loudness.

"They think they can get it under control before anyone important gets hurt." Beard guy said quietly, obviously feeling ashamed for not sharing this piece of information any sooner.

"Is that what happened to Loki?" Thor asked, concern filling his voice now. Ivy didn't answer, but simply nodded. Not that those idiots would consider him an important person anyway… But to Ivy, Loki was important. Maybe to Thor as well. There was no time discussing this right now.

"Hey, I found something! It has pictures of plants in it, but I can't read what the cover says…" Blonde guy finally said, and Ivy brought herself across the room to stand directly in front of him in an instant, harshly grabbing the book from his hands, and thus making him take a step backwards.

"Wow, she's hot and knows how to handle herself…" Blonde guy remarked, rising his eyebrows, but Ivy was too busy finding the right page to care about him.

"At least she's not stabbing anyone." Beard guy sighed.

"Not yet anyway..." Blonde guy smirked. "Maybe I'll stab her with something entirely different tonight…"

Without as much as looking up from the book, Ivy threw a heavy punch at his face, causing his nose to bleed like mad. Sif only snorted at him from a few feet away, as did Thor.

"Here, I found the plant!" Ivy stated. "Atropa Belladonna…"

"What? Is that what poisoned Loki, seriously?" Blonde guy asked through his hand, with which he was still holding his bleeding nose.

"Here it says that one has to get something called 'carbo medicinalis' and dissolve it in water, then get the poisoned person to drink it." She summarized. "Brilliant! Now I only need to find some."

"Carbo what?" Thor asked with a deep frown, looking to Ivy for an explanation.

"That's activated charcoal. It binds the toxins and prevents them from killing a person." Ivy responded quickly and in easy words for them to understand, turning to Thor as well. "Do you have something like that here?"

"We can go to the healers, they will know." He said with a shrug, and then hurried out of the room with Ivy following closely behind, shoving the book into her bag quickly.

"Should we come along?" Beard guy asked after a while of silence.

"Yes!" Blonde guy said. "I need to get my nose checked!"

Sif only rolled her eyes at him and they went to follow the other two.

"We need carbo… medi… midi…" Thor tried once he and Ivy came storming into the healer's rooms.

"Carbo medicinalis." Ivy quickly said, turning to the surprised woman in front of them. "Charcoal."

"Well, what…" She tried, but Ivy cut her off by stepping right in front her, giving her a death glare. "There's no time for interrogations, do you have it or not?"

The poor healer looked to Thor for help, but he didn't make any move to stop this mad raven woman from threatening her with her glares.

"We… There must be some with the substances from other realms." She said and quickly scurried towards a cupboard in the far back of the room.

Meanwhile Ivy grabbed a cup and shoved it into her bag, before she followed the healer.

"How much do you need?" The healer asked quietly.

"Everything you have." Ivy answered quickly and took the palm-sized bundle from the healer, then turning to Thor once more, as he stood helplessly in the middle of the room.

"Tell your father about the incidents in the city. And tell him I'm going to deal with it, as his guards are obviously unable to do so." Without waiting for an answer, Ivy disappeared just in the same moment when Sif and the others entered the room.

"You just let her go?!" Sif asked incredulously.

"She will save Loki. Of course I let her go!" Thor returned with a deep frown.

"If she hurts people again, you will know whose fault it is."

_______________

Once back at the opening, Ivy quickly filled the cup with water and dissolved the black powder in it. Now she only needed to get him to drink it… Only…

Hurriedly, she knelt down next to him, checking once more if his heart was still beating before she sat him up against her own frame and rather roughly forced the black liquid down his throat. Then, she waited. After a while his body got rather heavy, resting against her own with his full weight, and she leaned back against the stone wall behind her for support while moving Loki's head to lay in her lap. Hopefully this was going to work…

After a little while of inner debate, she carefully pushed Loki's hair out of his face, gently brushing through it with her fingers. He most certainly would never allow this if he was awake, but after all the trouble, she needed a little comfort and this was just able to do it for her. A few moments later, her eyes fluttered shut and she fell into a restless, but much needed sleep.

"Ivy." She heard her name, but her mind wasn't quite there yet.

"Ivy." It echoed through her head once more, louder this time, and she started to wake up. "IVY!"

She startled awake, looking into concerned green eyes shortly above her. She needed a second, but then, without thinking, she threw herself at Loki, wrapping her arms around his neck tightly. The impact caused him to lose his balance, and he fell onto his back with a loud thud. Luckily, he had only been kneeling above her.

Despite the short fall, Ivy refused to let go and buried her face in his neck.

"Well, ouch…" He commented quietly, but unable to hide a slight touch of amusement from his voice as finally he also wrapped his arms around her waist, and held her tightly against him.

For the longest while, neither dared to say another word, afraid to break the precious moment between them. The sun was already rising, bringing light to the little opening.

"You did it." Loki finally said, his head leaned against hers. He could feel her hot breath brushing against his neck, and her heartbeat echoing in his chest. "You used you magic to save someone."

He felt her stiffen in his arms, before she lifted her head up just enough to look at him.

"Yeah, no." She said quietly, looking almost sad, before she lifted herself off him, sitting back against the stone wall. Loki immediately missed her warmth and the comfort of her body against his, but he mimicked her actions, sitting down next to her.

"I didn't use magic." She finally said, and it only came out as a whisper. "I couldn't do it." Her face fell in disappointment with herself.

"But you saved me nonetheless, which makes it even more impressive." He smiled at her as reassuringly as he could... She really shouldn't feel bad for doing something good and selfless.

"I had help." She stated calmly, but avoided his eyes. "From your brother."

"You asked THOR for help, out of all people?" Loki looked at her incredulously. "How could he have been of any help?"

Ivy let out a snort. "To be honest, I now totally understand your desire to stab the man. And all the eye-rolling… He is very special." She laughed to herself. "But he loves you dearly, he really does."

"I know." Loki sighed. "But that's his own fault!" He chuckled and watched Ivy from the corner of his eye. She seemed exhausted… But he was curious now.

"So, how was he of any help to you? And how did you get him to help in the first place? He's not really easy to argue with…" He asked curiously, his face now fully turned to her.

"Well, he tried to cut my throat while still sleeping, I assume…" Ivy laughed lightly, but continued as she saw Loki's jaw clench. "He didn't hurt me! I did that thing you do with him, you know, the illusion."

That brought a smile to Loki's face. "Oh really? How did you know you needed to do that?"

"Well, it's not quite that different to the illusions I usually do. It wasn't very difficult, but a very clever idea." She sighed and brought her knees up to her chest, enjoying the warmth of Loki's side resting against her own. "Well, then I showed him some of the memories you shared with me. And before you kill me, I only showed him memories the two of you shared in your childhood. No feelings, nothing that came after. It served to assure him that you trust me, since you showed your memories to me."

"I trust you more than anyone." He stated as a matter of fact, eyeing her curiously.

"Yeah, and that got him to help me. And the fact that he didn't want you to die." She winked at him and smiled. "He also got a few of his friends to help us. They were not quite happy with the fact that they helped to prevent your death, but they probably helped for Thor's sake."

Loki rolled his eyes. Of course they wouldn't help Ivy for her own sake. "Were they rude to you?"

"Yeah, actually. But I could very well ignore that after I punched the blond man in the face." She smiled to herself at the memory, looking down at her bruised knuckles. There hadn't been any time to heal it yet.

"May I?" Loki asked and gently took her wounded hand in his. In less than a minute, it was perfectly healed and the pain was gone.

"I could've done that myself, you know…" Ivy smiled at him.

"I know." He replied, smiling back just the same. Her hand remained in his though.

"So, why did you punch Fandral in the face?" He asked with amusement, even though he was quite sure to know the answer to that already.

"He said he wanted to stab me." Ivy said equally amused, making sure to remember the name Loki had just given blonde guy.

Loki frowned, having expected a different answer. "Literally?"

"Nah… He probably just wanted to have his own ways with me, in his bed." She laughed. It was something she had gotten quite used to, men trying to get her into their beds… It still disgusted her, but it didn't really surprise nor frighten her anymore. The guards in the city had been an exception, as they had insulted Loki. She couldn't possibly have let that slip.

Loki's face on the other hand fell at her words. "He shouldn't have done that." His voice was low and almost had a dangerous touch to it now. "No one shall speak about you like that. You're mine and mine alone."

"You're being quite possessive over someone you hated just a few days back." Ivy chuckled, but on the inside she felt as though lightning had struck her to the very core. Her heart beat too fast against her chest, her skin tingled as if electrified, and a hot and yet cold shiver ran down her back.

"I've never hated you, Ivy…" He said in a quiet voice that was equally husky as it was deep. "I only hated myself for liking you."

His voice did inexplicable things to her, and Ivy had to fight for her eyes to stay open and locked with his. "You like me?"

"More than I should."

"How much more?"

He only shook his head to himself and smiled for a moment, looking down to the ground. "A lot more."

"Oh." She breathed, unsure of whether she had made him uncomfortable by her inquiry or simply amused him.

But then he looked up into her eyes once more, and Ivy could see everything he could not say out loud. She didn't know whether it was because he was afraid of it, or because he just didn't know how, but if he wasn't going to do something about it, then she would have to do it herself. So she looked back into his eyes with everything she felt but couldn't properly express, with every emotion, every ounce of doubt and every spark of hope. They stayed like that for a while, drinking in the other's emotions until everything was said, without as much as a word.

"How did you do that?" He finally asked, his brows furrowing.

"How did I do what?" Ivy asked, seemingly just as confused just as him.

"I could hear your thoughts in my mind." He leaned his head to the side and a slow smile played on his lips. "I'm very flattered by the way."

Now, this was one of the rare occasions when Ivy felt the heat rise to her cheeks, and she indeed blushed furiously.

"Don't be embarrassed, my sweet." He whispered, as he gently pushed her hair from her shoulder and leaned so close that his lips were brushing against Ivy's neck. "I feel just the same about you." Then he pressed a small kiss to the sensitive spot where Ivy's neck connected with her shoulder, making her shudder pleasantly.

Ivy only blushed even more as she felt the goosebumps run all over her skin… She hadn't known that a simple and oh so gentle kiss could set her whole body on fire and make her long for more. So much more…

"Ivy?" Loki's voice snapped her out of her daydream and back into reality. He was sitting so close to her, her shoulder touched his arm and their thighs were only an inch apart, which she immediately closed before she could stop herself. But she wanted to feel more of his body against hers.

"How did you do that?" He asked once more, eyes locking with hers. "How did you speak to me in my mind?"

"I didn't know I was doing that…" She answered honestly, still a little dazed from the rather titillating thoughts she had let herself indulge in for the shortest moment.

Loki frowned, placing his hand on her knee and drawing circles with his thumb. He enjoyed touching her, not only because it made her all flustered, but also because he could be sure that she was still there with him, alive and well. Now that he had let himself get this attached to someone, he was not going to lose her. He would make sure of that.

In the shortest time, she had become his anchor, the focus point his universe orbited around, the one thing he couldn't live without. The suddenness of his feelings for her scared him, but he also couldn't bring himself to really care, nor to fight it anymore. He wasn't one to fall easily, but if he did fall, he did with everything he had.

"Maybe I could try again? You know, to talk to you without words?" Now it was Ivy's turn to pull him out of his thoughts.

"Yeah, do that…" He answered, still caressing her knee. "I'm curious."

Ivy closed her eyes and tried to think of something to say. She let her mind wander to what she had done before, how she had gotten into his mind.

'I enjoy that.' Her voice echoed through his mind.

"You enjoy what?" He asked with a smirk, making Ivy look at him.

"It worked?!" She smiled brightly, her eyes shining with excitement. "I meant I... enjoyed trying this mind thing."

"Are you sure?" He murmured, letting his hand wander from her knee to her inner thigh, drawing lazy lines so softly it annoyed her.

A small sigh escaped her lips and her head fell back against the stone wall behind her. Loki relished the sight, a small smirk playing on his lips as he couldn't stop teasing her.

"Stop that…" She breathed, 'Don't stop.' Her mind responded and Loki couldn't help himself but laugh out loud.

Ivy sat up straight immediately, and frowned at him in the cutest embarrassment. "Stop laughing!"

"But it's adorable to see you try to resist your own mind." He grinned at her.

"It would surprise me if you did any better!" She replied, but decided to validate it at a different time. Instead she scooted a few feet away from him, earning a small noise of disapproval which made her smirk even more.

She retrieved the book of plants from her bag and threw it over to Loki who caught it with one hand and flipped it open with a smile. "That's how you saved me?"

"Yup…" Ivy answered, making a popping noise on the 'p' before she sat down cross-legged, facing Loki this time. That way they could have a serious conversation without getting distracted yet again.

"We searched for that damn book forever. Took six people to find it in time." Ivy explained.

"I hate that I'll have to thank them for helping you…" Loki sighed.

"I wouldn't thank them if I were you. They kept complaining about me, about something that's yours…" Ivy grinned, earning an eye-roll from Loki.

"What did they say?" He asked curiously though.

"Oh, just how much I reminded them of you, and how utterly and terribly that disgusted them." Ivy laughed, remembering their annoyed faces.

"I would've assumed it was a compliment."

"So did I!" They both laughed, shaking their heads at the bunch of people who once were Loki's friends.

Then, Ivy remembered what beard guy had said. "Loki, the man with the huge beard…"

"Volstagg." Loki commented in between.

"Well, Volstagg said that there have been quite a few incidents of poisoning in the city. They can't figure out who does it, nor how to help the victims, since they seem to be unable to identify the poison in the first place."

Loki averted his eyes, but listened carefully to every word Ivy was saying.

"They think it's coincidence, but I came to believe otherwise. I mean, we both have been unlucky enough to be poisoned, and both times they used Midgardian plants!" Ivy said with an odd excitement in her voice, clearly engrossed in her thoughts. "How could there possibly be such a coincidence? It's a different plant every time and the poison is spread randomly around the city. I mean, at first I thought it was only an attack on the royal family. A one-time thing I happened to stumble into. But then, with all the other incidents… I mean I'm not the kind of person who is selfless enough to save the people of Asgard from poisoning just because it's the right thing to do."

That statement made Loki snort, but Ivy continued anyway.

"I want to stop the person who does this. I have to. Not because it's the right thing to do, but because they hurt you." She said and nudged his leg with hers.

"I…" Loki started with a small smile, touched by her words. "You can't possibly punish everyone who ever hurt me."

"But I can try nonetheless. And I most definitely will." She smiled brightly at him, nudging his leg yet again.

"They also poisoned you, does that mean I also have to end them?" He asked with a small laugh, amused by her eagerness to do 'the right thing'.

"Of course! I'm surprised you haven't come up with that before." Ivy grinned and once more nudged his leg.

"If you do that just one more time, I will have to stop you… and you won't enjoy that." He growled, but something in his voice told her that she would indeed enjoy it very much. But now wasn't the time to find out. Unfortunately.

"I have thought of ending the person who did that to you every second since I first got word that you were hurt in my prison cell." He said calmly, yet without the previous flirtatious undertone.

"Your cell?" Ivy questioned.

"Yes, my cell. It's where they lock me up every time they feel like it. The barrier is slightly different than the other cells. The magic, you know…" He trailed off. "It's not of much importance. But yes indeed, I have had the thought quite a lot. Only that until now, there was no indication as for where to look."

"Great. Let's go." Ivy said and nudged him in the leg once more, just to annoy him. Then she got up and turned her back to him, slowly walking towards the middle of the opening. She could hear him getting up as well, his quiet footsteps following closely behind her. Once she stopped in the middle of the opening, he was right behind her the next second.

"I told you not to do that." He whispered in her ear, leaning close to her from behind.

"And I never said I wouldn't." Ivy smirked, preparing herself for whatever was about to happen. But for what happened next, she was not prepared at all.

_____________________________

Tags:

@vodka-and-some-sass @t-sunnyside @lokis-high-priestess

General Tags:

@its-remy-not-ratatouille @wegingerangelica @thidls12333 @tomstoobeautiful @dreary-skies-stuff @averyhill4445 @wiczer @lotus-eyedindiangoddess @theweirdlunatic @caretheunicorn @kthemarsian @lady-of-lies @sadly-falling-through-wonderland @strawberrysandcream @noplacelikehome77 @theoneanna @mishaandthebrits @mygodisloki @i-am-a-mes @nonsensicalobsessions @exygon @hiddles-lobotomy @rjohnson1280 @annwhojumps @spookycatqueen @salempoe @headoverhiddleston @fanfiction-and-stress @createdfromblue @halszka-potter @thecreatiivecorner @themusingsofmany @inthemarvelvoid @from-hel-i-with-love @kinghiddlestonanddixon @scorpionchild81 @foodthatsgoodforyoursoul @crystal-28 @adefectivedetective @lokis-girl-in-mischief @booklover2929

I hope you enjoyed the chapter! 💚✨ If you did, I would be SO happy about some feedback 🥰💗 hugs to ya lovely people! Toss a comment to your writer, oh valley of plenty 😁 (@wiczer made me do it, sorry not sorry)

[benbantz]

Week 17 with long term Covid

Hello to anyone reading this, those I know and those I don’t.

Had Covid 19 now for 17 weeks (or suffering after effects of covid, how ever you want to word it.) Point is had/have Corona and it’s still kicking my arse.

So since my recent facebook update (after being pretty quiet on social media for a while) a couple of peeps have messaged me asking about my symptoms and stuff as (apart from the first 2-3 weeks) I haven't really gone into any detail I just sort of say 'having rough week' or 'things flared up again' etc etc. Without going into too much detail about anything specific. So for anyone interested, and because people have been curious and asking - and as you’ll see is far to detailed to explain person to person (and want to spread the word about long haulers as a lot of people struggling) So it’s just easier for me to have it in one place. For myself more then anything. And if you get anything out of it then that’s great.

Things are just starting to come out about long haulers in the media and on the news and I know people are interested to learn a bit more about it all. So while I’m having a not too bad a time last couple of days I’d thought it’s a good a time as any to go thru all my symptoms. Get them typed out for first time.

And maybe it will be helpful to someone who randomly comes across this post - (thou please don’t use as a guide), every case is different, a lot of similarities   and cross overs , but ultimately different  Just because someone you know might be having a rough couple of days or experiencing a couple of these symptoms it could be something completely unrelated to covid. (Make sure you check with your GP or call 111 if you think you have covid symptoms long term or otherwise.) I am not a Dr.

Here's a list of everything been going on with me over last 17 weeks.           Some experiences have been completely new to me so very hard to explain , some descriptions may sound a little odd , but hopefully you get idea of what I mean! (Also sorry for any grammar mistakes....I dropped out of English A level)

Those who come across this and don’t know me personally know that while this is a (mostly) serious (but hopefully uplifting) post I’m very sarcastic and use dumb humour to deflect from how shit life is at the moment! :-) 

So first thing of the bat I'll explain is I've realised in recent weeks it's been easier to think of it as good and bad days/weeks rather then getting better/worse (as in first 10 or so weeks when I thought of it as 'it's getting better' and got in that positive mindset, the kickbacks have obviously beaten the piss out of me mentally as well as physically, as I've had about four big relapses now where I thought I'm on the right track, having a good couple of weeks then bam, I seem to go back to square one for no real apparent reason. So when I say bad day I'm describing when everything amps/flares up again, A few more symptoms go up and the volumes up on high,and likewise a good day is when things seem to be moving in right direction again and I get a bit of a break.(So now I just appreciate them when they come and try make most out of them.) A good day isn’t a symptom free day by any means, it’s just better then the bad ones.

OK so on to my symptoms.

Specific Areas

Chest - Since the first evening it kicked of early March my chest has felt like a giant has had his hand around it - that’s non stop, constant (told you my explanations were weird.)

On the better days it's a very light grip I can get on and do things to a point, but I am always aware it's there. On a bad day it's grip tightens and he squeezes (or  his fingers press into a couple of key areas - been pressing on my back a lot last few weeks.) - That’s been non stop and has not gone away since beginning. Thou I do believe its starting to ease a little. 

- Chest pain - A shooting pain in my chest (slightly different from description above, feels more like its needles on inside of body. Thankfully these are uncommon, they pop up if I push myself a bit too far one day or if I’m having rougher week.(And it’s not heart related)

Lungs/Breathing - Haven't felt like I've taken in a full lungful of air since beginning, I take a deep breath but only feels like I'm taking in 80- 85% ish (on a good day) 65- 75% ish (on a bad day) - This is week 17 numbers btw,  take maybe 10-15% off when it was at worst. I think the best way I can describe it is it feels like there’s a filter or a sieve/strainer at top of lungs, on a good day there’s more spaces available to breathe thru (but still there’s a filter) and on a bad day more spaces close and I'm breathing thru less.

 *Thankfully bar the first week where I had to get paramedic out, I haven't been gasping for air, I've certainly had to just lay and just concentrate on only breathing a few times because the filters have closed up a lot more (in the night mostly) especially where my bodies relaxed and I've woken and panicked short of air. Yes that’s as terrifying as it sounds.

- The air I do take in doesn't feel clean or fresh (best way I can describe it is when you go to a zoo and they have a indoor Rain Forrest/safari area .... very that lol) That was constant the first 12 or so weeks (even when getting fresh air outside) thankfully that’s eased a little and not so prominent, still doesn't feel like I’m breathing in fresh air but its not so hot and stuffy and noticing the difference when I go outside now.

Throat/Mouth - Burning/inflamed mouth - This is by far been the most uncomfortable/hardest for me to ignore and just get on with day to day stuff, from maybe week 6 to week 14 it was pretty much non stop burning mouth and throat (Call my mum Khaleesi because I was spitting fire.)

 Whole inside of my mouth and down my throat was just inflamed/swollen (felt like I had a golf ball stuck down there) and burning hot. The last couple of weeks its eased I don’t wake up with it (unless i’m having a flare up/bad day) It's still very on/ off but thankfully not constant like it was. And have since learned that high histamine foods make it worse - same with my chest and few other things,  (so choc, dairy, alcohol, fizzy drinks ...my diet essentially ) So have cut most of them down/out. Ice lollies have been my savior on hot throat days. - Marble in throat - Another hard one to explain, it feels like there’s a marble sort of sized ball of phlegm that I constantly need to clear. (OK maybe not that hard to explain - also sorry for the gross imagery.) But not enough mucus coming up to warrant the feeling, it’s irritating more then anything - but a few weeks ago was probs golf ball sized, so again improvement! - This sort of ties in with with the inflamed mouth, but the first thing to flare up on bad day is my tongue, feels tingly most of the time anyway but more so on a flare up/bad day.  - Same with my teeth / gums and the tingly sensation, (my teeth constantly feel like that sensation when you have some orange juice after brushing your teeth.) Sensitive/fuzzy I guess. Not particularly bothersome or concerning...just weird.

Nose

- This is probably one of newest ones, nose has felt hot(on and off)/bunged up for last few weeks. (But I know its not if that makes sense)  I guess you could say same as lungs - not breathing in a full nose-full of air either.  - sorry again for gross TMI but any mucus or boogers are clear (like almost see thru clear/never been cleaner clear)  - Phantom smells - A really odd one, I smell smoke and gas a lot, not just smell it, it feels like its in my nose and my mouth - especially smoke, almost like I’ve eaten it sometimes (non smoker in smoke free flat btw). Was a lot more prominent in first few weeks ,so much so that before I realised it was a symptom I had my carbon monoxide alarms checked because it was making me paranoid I could smell smoke/gas. A bizarre one for sure. Pops up randomly now and again.

Eyes - Last couple of weeks have been getting bit of blurry vision and sore or dry eye , I'm already blind as shit so hard to tell in terms of blurriness how bad this one is, but def finding it harder to concentrate on one thing for too long (but that sort of ties in with brain fog - which i'll get to) but pretty sure once this is done with and I go to opticians will likely need a stronger prescription (some other long haulers who never had eye problems before are now having to wear glasses) No idea if that’s a permanent one but hopefully i’m at peak of it.

Ears - My left ear has felt blocked pretty much since start (or like it needs to pop some days) Most the time I can ignore it but can be quite distracting if it kicks up a couple of dials.Which is likely why I get ear ache in same ear often as well.

*Also for most the things listed above it has always been worse on my left side of body, lung, eyes, ear, headaches.

- Tinnitus (correct word for ringing in ears right?) Usually kicks in early afternoon or on bad day. Varies on strength depending on the day I’m having.

Head/Brain - Brain Fog - So the sort of very basic science behind this is because my lungs aren't producing enough oxygen my brain knows this, so is lending them some to help out...but because of this it means I’m experiencing what is known as brain fog (I don’t know what its actually called, likely has a better more official sounding name) - my concentration is very low, i’m finding it hard to retain things and concentrate more then usual. (not been up to reading or watching something new for month or so as I just cant focus on it) Also been getting odd words muddled or confused (but the bar wasn't the highest with me on that front ha ha)

 Been dropping things when I think I have them in my hand. I do however think this is improving (The fact that I have typed this out with just a couple short breaks so far is much better then two weeks ago when I couldn't even focus on a computer game for more then half a hour) so as my lungs improve so does this or vice versa on flare up. *Edit - This whole post has taken a couple of days to draft and type up, so not too bad in terms of needing breaks etc.

-I'm also constantly aware of my brain... like I can feel it all the time (I literally cant explain that any other way lol, I guess its just heavier at moment so I can feel it against my skull) best explanation I think you'll get from that one. - Have a headache most the time (so much so that I sort of forget it’s there.) Thankfully most the time there mild/low and I can forget or distract myself but like everything else if I'm having a bad few days it goes up a notch. Likely connected to the brain fog.

Stomach and Lower abdomen - Period pains - only way I can explain it, generally thought after nearly 10 years without them it was messing my body about so much I was getting  phantom periods. (I’m a transgender man, 4+ years on testosterone, for anyone I don’t know who comes across this) been there done that, brought the t-shirt.. then sent it back because it wasn’t for me!  Very strong and painful on and off for first eight weeks, get the odd twinge now and again but think that ones done with, thank the gods. - Stomach Pains - Few aches and pains on /off, and recently experienced what felt like needle/stabbing pain for short while in short bursts - and I only really mention stomach because I haven't had the widely publicised  'covid shits' (yet, touch wood... or cloth) So yay!

Heart - Palpitations - First 8 weeks was on and off most days to the point if I was sat still my heart would be palpitating. (I couldn't even sit and listen to music I enjoyed as it would make my heart go mad.) - When I do get the palpitations it sets most things off, so if palpitations do start I generally know I'm about to have rough couple of hours or days and can’t do much, for obvious safety reasons. Thankfully these have subsided a lot last 6 or so weeks. Still get them every few days but generally know whats setting me off and how to lower them down and they don’t last as long.

Hands and Feet - Skin been very dry last couple of months, cracking and peeling on hands and feet (ew)  - Pins and needles/ numb fingers and toes - Get this a lot, obviously very normal stuff but just find them coming on a lot more (especially if i’m holding something like my ipad, phone or xbox controller for a while) Fingers feel numb/puffy a lot too. (Likely also why I keep dropping things) - Also to tie in with skin, have had a on /off spots on chest, face and shoulders for few weeks, they all came up at same time, not irritant or itchy or anything, just there.

General/Other weird things - Voice - So this is one that frustrates me the most, I have had next to no voice for last maybe 10 weeks.  I just cant chat to people at moment. For first 4 weeks wasn't to bad (I even started a youtube channel to keep me occupied and distracted) but slowly week by week it went a little bit more each time. I can talk for short periods of time if I have to/choose to ,like its not gone completely, but it kicks up all the things I mentioned in my throat and mouth directly after. If the phone rings I have to decide if it’s worth answering, in doing so knowing i’m going to have a rough day or so after. Someday’s I feel it's better then others like couple of weeks ago, chatted to my brothers online on xbox for half an hour or so for the first time in weeks, and caught up with a friend on phone for 10 minutes...but a couple of days later everything flared up again. So it's still trial and error and just being patient with my voice. (I'm quite confident no long term damage is being done now as few people in group i’m in reported there voice just eventually got better over time.) Definitely the symptom I’m having to be most patient with. - Fatigue and tiredness - My days now are normally diddily done by 4-5, (except if its a bad day then most of the day is a write off) No matter how little or much I've done, by 5-6 my body and mind are exhausted. As someone who has insomnia, pre covid I would maybe have 1-2 all nighters every ten or so days sprinkled in with 5-6 days of at most 3-4 hours sleep. In the last 17 weeks I have had just 3 all nighters, and maybe just under ten 3-4 hour sleeps. Otherwise i’m getting at least 5+ hours a night. This is the one covid thing I'd like to keep please lol.  I think it's easing a little (most the bad night sleeps have been in last month) and on good days tiredness is kicking in a little later, or it's taking me a little longer to drift off. But generally am cream crackerd a lot of time, especially if I push myself too far on a bad day. - Loss/Increased appetite - This sort of ties in with what I mentioned earlier about different foods causing set backs, the first 6 weeks I had no appetite and lost a bit of weight (I do put a lot of this down to extreme worry and stress thou)  Then I went thru a phase of being very hungry for a few weeks and put most of the weight I had lost back on. I'm somewhere in the middle now, probably because I know most of anything I eat will set me back a little (because as mentioned fussy git = high histamine diet) so i’m cutting portions (otherwise known as the amount of cheese I add to everything!) and cutting out all most junk food (you’ll never part me from my crisps!) and non healthy drinks.  

- Bloated and dehydration - This one I sort of put in pencil because it could be covid related but I also think it could be side effects  from the brown asthma inhaler I was prescribed to help with breathing. I’m still undecided as it pops up especially when I was using inhaler more but it does happen days after I’ve last used it. At it’s worse I was getting up to pee a lot! because I was thirsty all the time. So of course was just very bloated around the belly. 

*Also talking of peeing, (Great segway Ben) number 1′s and 2′s have been very different then normal, urine thicker and bubbly,and smells/is coloured different,   (same with 2′s) Also have a completely different body odour at the moment,(pungent) having to use deodorant twice as much as normal. - Admit it your life’s a little bit better now you know that information.

- THE HEAT! - I touched on this with my mouth and nose being on fire, but for the first 10-12 weeks I did not go a day where at least a couple of things were not burning hot ,like hot to the touch as well, not just inside...(very different experience then having a temperature). Extreme heat in one very specific part of body. Ears, forehead, cheeks, chest, back, nose, mouth,throat to name a few of prominent ones. Over time they have faded (if something does feel hot now its generally not hot to the touch anymore.) Maybe on a bad day a couple of things will burn up. (But in saying that, been calling today a good day but nose is quite hot) but point is its better. - Mood swings/Anxiety - While i’m fairly confident anything emotional has stemmed from experiencing...well everything you've just read. Rather then it being its own symptom (thou I have had days of uncontrollable crying, days of anger..that perhaps outside of covid I would still of had one of those days but just not to such a extreme, I think with everything going on its just amped that emotion and anxiety up.)  it's obviously been very stressful and anxiety inducing. That’s only calmed down in last week since finding the facebook group of other people going thru the same thing. I'm now seeing that people are slowly improving, i'm seeing I've not been going mad and it's all very real and not just happening to me. So the bad days are easier to deal with now and not hitting me emotionally like a ton of bricks anymore. I honestly couldn't see the end of the tunnel two weeks ago but can see it now (even if I take a step forward one day but then 2-3 back another...I see it still.)

*Mushy moment Alert - A good a place as any to include while I'm talking about emotion  - Even thou she probs wont see this,but want to mention my mum. She’s been my rock thru all this, she messages me at least twice everyday without fail, since day 1. Even thou I know she's been worried sick about me herself, she's reassured and calmed me down on the harder more stressful days. I dread the mornings when things have gone downhill a bit and having to tell her ,because I know she'll worry, but after a few texts we both end up sort of reassuring and calming the other down. (especially in the earlier days when it was really bad, scary, new and unknown.) When it was really getting me down for a while and I wanted nothing to do with anything covid related and just stay in bed and pretend this wasn't happening to me, she dug out the articles and tips and things to help or give me a boost. (Not to mention all the coming and going she and my step dad have done for me last 4 months and taking care of my shopping for first 9 or so weeks...because I was a useless mess of a human)       I know it’s basic mum stuff but this would be 10x harder and lonelier without her. Random detour I know but can’t talk about my covid experience and recovery without mentioning her.

Almost looking forward to sending her the first  'Everything normal today' text as much as I look forward to experiencing it....almost. ;-)  

Amount of Symptoms On A Typical Day

On a good day - (when I think virus was at it's worse in the first 10-14 weeks) - 4-6 symptoms ( 2 or 3 cranked up to a medium or high otherwise on mild)

On a bad day - At peak/worse - 6-10 symptoms (throat, chest and no voice on high volume, maybe a couple of things like palpitations and brain fog, heat on medium/high, other weird stuff on mild/low)

Good day  - Now 17 weeks in (excluding my voice which is still a medium to high issue most days) - 3-4 Symptoms on low to mild - usually there’s something still simmering on a medium always ready to turn up to a high if I push it too much in terms of walking or talking. (often my chest) Bad Day (Now) - 4-7 Symptoms - 1 to 3 on medium (maybe a couple will kick up to high on first day of a flare up, but generally now for shorter periods of time.)Everything else on mild or low.

So there has def been improvement in last 6 weeks, i’m sure it wont all be plain sailing and I know/prepare to expect another 'flare up' and then a bad few days. But recently instead of the bad days being 2-3 weeks of it constantly, the duration is getting shorter each time (last bad few days was just under a week)  So things are slowly improving, and i’m sure in time so will the amount of symptoms and the strength of each symptom.

I've probably missed a couple of silly/odd little things that have gone on (likely because they were so early on or very brief (or I’ve forgotten) -  fever and nausea to name a couple. When I got my notes together these were the main ones that came to mind. Quite a lot actually sitting back reading them, and I think the scary (but good) thing is, x-ray came back fine, bloods came back fine.  People have had MRI's, camera’s down there throat, most coming back fine. Covid just not showing up on any tests(unless someones suffered further complications with something) - hence why a lot of people struggling to be taken seriously by there GP's or even loved ones who think there just 'exaggerating’ or its just ‘anxiety and stress'...no living with all what you just read causes anxiety and stress Mary! 

But yeah could waffle on, once its definitely gone and I breathe and look back I can perhaps get a better overview of everything and give you better analysis of all that’s gone on. I get asked 'so when do you think it will be gone?' almost as much as 'are you better now?' To the first question, meh I don't know, I'm now into month 4/week 17 (well month 5 if I include last couple of days of Feb when I believe I caught it and had the very mild cold early March) still a lot of things going on with my body, some new things could still pop up, so instead of saying 'I think it will be gone by..'  ,like I did in the first weeks. I'm just taking it week by week (or day by day if it kicks up a notch) not making any big demands of myself or my body, doing what I can each day....but not pushing it. Instead of the sad, anxiety inducing thought 'when will it go' or the one all us long haulers worry about a lot ‘Will it ever go?’ I now try to think instead  'it will go!.'

To any fellow long haulers I say hang in there, keep fighting, trust your body and that it will get better. Take it day by day. Stay as positive as you can when everything 'flares up again' after a couple of weeks of good progress (easier said then done I know) but know it wont be forever as much as it feels like it is. Don’t be afraid to ask for help (I hate going to Drs would much rather just 'get on with it' , but from pestering a little I got a blue inhaler which has helped me a lot day to day,and had x-ray and blood tests which also put my mind at ease when they came back clear. So don’t be afraid to ask to get these things checked if you’re worried. I've been lucky with my GP's thou who I think have generally believed me and taken me seriously and I know not everyone is getting that help or respect. I think it’s really not helped us that in the early days people were stubbing their toes and thinking they had caught covid and calling their Dr’s (I’m exaggerating but hopefully you get my point lol), so if you do get a not so helpful interaction, be patient,explain yourself or try again with another Dr, remember a GP will only advise you symptom by symptom and not as a whole.   Anyway I’m repeating stuff you already know by now lol.   

Stay positive. Stay hopeful and stay safe.

To anyone else, believe us, know this is very real, and that it absolutely sucks. Its not just anxiety or in our head. We're not exaggerating - in fact most of us are probably playing it down or just not elaborating on things for an easy life and because when someone asks 'are you better now?'  it's easier to just smile and nod and answer 'getting there slowly' because the truth is...well what you just read lol. (And I'm a particularly mild case...next to no coughing, no spells in A and E, a breeze for a lot of other people with long term) Keep yourselves safe (most long haulers have no previous medical /problems/conditions. Some ,myself included, have weakened immune systems due to a long term health condition. A unlucky few are fighting another long term medical illness as well as covid. I'm lucky in that I have no dependants (except 4 easy to please gecko's) and was not working prior to catching it - some are having to deal with all this and be full time parents, or have been to and fro with their jobs (thinking there better then relapsing after going back). There’s mums messaging on behalf of there young kids who have it, lots of young people (one of the lads that co runs the group is 22 I believe), there's athletes/health fanatics used to running miles every day been completely knocked of there game unable to even walk to end of road some days. People of all age ranges. Point is anyone can catch it, it might not just be 'a couple of rough weeks' It might take over half a year for you to recover from.  This myth that it's short and sweet, or a walk in the park if your young and healthy needs to be squashed because its just not accurate. 

If not for my mum and our family and the facebook group I found, (Positive path of wellness - Covid UK Long Haulers) I'd be struggling, really struggling. It's scary, brutal and lonely. I wouldn't wish it on anyone. The virus is still out there it has not gone. Keep sanitising hands and wear a mask in busy places!. - Tell the guy who's life this has been for 17 weeks, why wearing a mask in public places, to keep yourself and others safe from catching this nightmare, is a inconvenience for you Karen...go on, I'll wait...

Maybe you can help prevent yours or someone else's next few months from being even worse. x

Was going to just make this a one time post on tumblr account but if it’s a help to anyone (especially fellow long haulers) I’ll post some other bits and bobs when i’m up to it. (thinking of doing a post about things/products etc that I think have been helping me. If that’s useful to anyone) Or just some positive/ funny things to keep spirits up. Keeping it all positive and upbeat as possible.

So I’ll see if anyone reads this first and go from there

So I guess in conclusion ...lol I’m just joking, this post is really done now, go back to your lives, this garbled mess of self woe (worlds smallest violin is back in its case now), sarcasm and naff humour has taken up far too much of all of our days already. Go peacefully amongst the things. :-) 

Stay safe everyone x

[justphilia]

Aubade is a great fic; too bad it’s possibly dead.

Been a while since I did a long long babble on a fic I like, and lately, I’ve been rereading a few fics to fuel my entertainment. I low key notice how rare it is to find a multi-chaptered fic for Ritshou that doesn’t have Terumob as main, which is really funky honestly.

I talked about Aubade once, in my list of incomplete fanfics I missed back in like February. But it’s so good, I’m gonna make a long post about it lmao.

Even though this fic has literally taken the number one ranking in my favorites list, it only took today for me to bookmark it in my ao3 (mostly because I’ve been waiting it for it to be completed before doing so.)

And generally, anything that I bookmark on ao3 is something I’ve cried about at least once, whether it’s because of the story or because I love the story too much. So anyways,

Aubade by Ravenesta is a M rated Ritshou fic centered around Ritsu, who moves in with Shou after Shou declared he was going to stay in Japan for good.

They buy an apartment together near Ritsu’s university and go on a shopping spree in IKEA for furniture and such, which is as chaotic as it doesn’t sound. The tension between them is real and it’s there, so much so you just want them to get together already sometimes.

I’ve read this fic for a total of 4 times, and I will keep rereading it until the day I die. If you asked me what would come to mind if I thought about Ritshou, it would be the fic’s summary;

My dove, my doe, I love you so I cannot, will not, let you go

Ritsu and Shou have been orbiting around each other ever since they were thirteen years old. Really, something like this was inevitable.

It’s so simple and sweet, and somehow, without fail, every time this summary (specifically the poem) comes to mind, I would get teary eyed. Even now I’m getting :’( over the poem, just because it literally speaks Ritshou to me.

The fic starts off with Ritsu heading back home by train to Seasoning City during his summer break from college in Grain City. It’s written in a way where it’s very easy for you to visualize the scenario of Ritsu waiting for the train to come while holding a cup of cheap coffee.

It’s realistically detailed too, going as far as to include little quirks about Ritsu and the people around him (stranger or not).

Both Shou and Shigeo gets introduced during a phone texting scene, where you can easily tell their personality was conveyed right through the way they message Ritsu. Shigeo adds little face emoticons with caring and sweet messages, and Shou shortens his words to ‘u’ and ‘ur’ with chaotic spacings between words and many exclamation marks.

Even Ritsu has his own way of messaging, always adding punctuation to his sentences.

Later on, after Ritsu arrives in Seasoning City, he’s picked up by Shigeo and Teru, who are already a couple in this fic, and you can tell how much Ritsu misses his home.

Teru is such a beautiful mess in this fic, everything about him is dramatic and overtop, going from his haircut to his little diet habits, and he’s still playful with Ritsu. The ‘Little Brother’ nickname will never go away.

(Also, at some point, Ritsu makes a face immaturely after seeing Shigeo drop a kiss on Teru’s head and I think that was pretty funny)

(Also also, they all call Reigen ‘Dad’. Which is hecking adorable, but it did confuse me at some point because Ritsu named Reigen’s contact as Dad and I legitimately thought that was Ritsu’s actual dad until later.)

Fast forward after Ritsu gets a haircut from Teru in Spirits and Such. Pretty funny considering how Reigen did the same thing to Serizawa in Season 2, but I’m mildly sure Serizawa doesn’t exist in this fic so it was probably a coincidence.

So they’re going shopping and Ritsu gets another text from Shou, because Shou isn’t in town, or at least, that was what we were led to believe, until he does pop up. 

And it wouldn’t be Shou if his appearance isn’t random, so of course his first line is to comment on Kiwis looking like balls.

Ritsu, being Ritsu, responds by calling Shou an asshole and proceeds to be conflicted between wanting to punch Teru, because he knew all along, or wanting to hug Shou, because Ritsu misses him so much. He goes for the latter.

Cue Shou and Ritsu hanging out because Shigeo and Teru had to go save Reigen from a spirit job, and their interaction is just so Ritshou it makes you feel fuzzy inside y’know? Because it’s just...friends being friends.

Ok so fast forward again, and they’re sitting around in Ritsu’s room and here’s where the plot begins:

Shou, sleepily, declares he wants them to live together, before suddenly falling asleep.

And Ritsu panics because he can’t tell if he’s serious or just sleep drunk. So he consults Teru to confirm this, who answers that, yes, Shou was being serious, and this just makes Ritsu panic even more because wow he did not expect that and mostly because he can’t afford an apartment.

Shou, being the rich boy he is, offers to settle the payment, because of course he would.

Ritsu weighs his options in his head and convinces himself that he’ll do it. So that’s what they do. They make a little list, which is funny and adorable, and start scouting for apartments online.

Fast forward yet again and Ritsu’s plan was to first gather his shit from his dorm room, crash there for a bit, before fully moving into the new apartment.

Reigen, Teru, and Shigeo are seeing the two off at the train station, and Reigen being Reigen, he’s all double checking that Ritsu has all his shit and it’s just such a dad moment.

Most of their luggage is Shou’s because Ritsu packs light and most of his things are at the dorm, and I brought this up because of this scene:

“It’s my oldest friend!” Shou had argued, trying to wrestle it from Ritsu’s hands. “Six years I have known you, Suzuki, and never once has there been a working bulb in this lamp.”

We get a few more cute scenes of Shou running around and being playful before being tired out and falling asleep on the train, and there’s this tender moment where Shou’s snuggling on Ritsu’s jacket, which the latter had taken off early, and he makes a comment saying how it smells like Ritsu which just baffles the only. It’s...nice, makes me fluffy.

Anyways they reach Ritsu’s dorm to crash and pack, and they have this scene where Shou gets a little emotional about how organized Ritsu is, and he genuinely couldn’t believe how Ritsu is making this work. 

So! Chapter 6, alright! And it’s the apartment viewing chapter, because of course they need to view apartments before moving in (which is as fun as it sounds).

They view 3 apartments, with the third try being the charm;

Apartment 1 fucking sucks! And Ritsu only chose this because he wanted to get a feel of how apartment viewing works, and you gotta hand it to him for thinking ahead. So no matter what, he knows he won’t be buying this apartment.

Apartment 2 was actually pretty decent, the landlord, however, was not. Throughout this scene, she is constantly trying to get into Ritsu’s space, and you don’t exactly know what’s up until the very end where she gets really close. Shou saves Ritsu in the end by dragging him away and making it known that, “THIS IS MY MAN DO NOT TOUCH.” And makes an enemy out of her, so big whoops.

Apartment 3 is kinda awkward but workable, with their landlord being the sweetest man to walk this earth. His kids were born on the viewing day, which made him a little late, though Ritsu finds in understandable. After the viewing, Ritsu asks if they can crash at the apartment even though they haven’t actually gotten it yet, and the man’s like, “Don’t worry, you’re gonna live here anyways so might as well crash here now!” Protect this man.

Next scene we have Ritsu finally moving out of his dorm and into the apartment with Shou and after getting a few groceries, they finally decide they should head to IKEA for furniture. It’s a pretty funny scene because everyone knows IKEA is an equivalent to a bloody maze, so you get to watch them play around in the display rooms and climbing into beds and getting lost.

And it’s funnier because this is the Shou’s first time stepping foot into an IKEA, and Ritsu makes fun of him for it briefly. Shou gets back at him later on when they’re playing around in a bathroom display room.

he doesn’t quite notice where Shou’s wandered off to until he turns around from a bathroom sink and spots him in a shower stall, calling him over with a wave of his hand. Ritsu steps inside, ducking his head under the bar for the shower curtain

He almost startles when Shou reaches over and pulls the shower curtain closed with a flourish, leaving them enclosed in the shower stall, somehow still mysteriously lit by no lamp that Ritsu can see. He shoots Shou a questioning look, only to snort when Shou leans back against the shower wall, a hand over his heart and eyelashes fluttering.

“Why, Mister Kageyama,” he says, all false coquettishness, “Cornering a young girl like me alone in a place like this? How scandalous.”

He considers giving Shou the reaction he wants, a laugh and a shove on the shoulder and possibly a comment about exactly how classy making out in an IKEA shower stall is, but the reaction he’d gotten earlier was too good to resist playing along with the joke.

He shamelessly uses his height advantage when he steps into Shou’s space, one leg between Shou’s and a hand propped casually on the wall beside his head. He leans down so that their noses are almost touching, and says low, “Well with you standing here all gorgeous like this, how could I resist?”

It’s pathetic joke flirting, some cheesy disaster line out of every old black and white movie he’s ever watched with his mother, so he doesn’t quite expect it when Shou seems to freeze, eyes wide and locked onto Ritsu’s. It’s only for a few seconds, a barely noticeable pause before Shou’s howling with laughter as he pushes past him out of the shower, but Ritsu gets caught on it, on the hitch he thought he’d heard in Shou’s breath, on the way he feels oddly wired, like his skin is buzzing from the proximity, and what the fuck had just happened?

This scene, ladies and gentlemen, had me sold on the fic. Starting with how Shou had playfully dragged Ritsu into the display shower in an attempt to tease Ritsu, only to be surprised that Ritsu had played along because, according to Ritsu, the raven would usually just laugh and dismiss the joke as a joke. 

You can literally see that’s where the subtle feelings come out, where their friendship suddenly moves a bit faster into something more. It’s a slowburn for a reason, because their relationship happens really slow, so it’s moments like these that makes you really warm inside.

We come to a near end to the fic from here, which includes a scene where Shou cooks and Ritsu has a wet dream that’s pretty brief tbh and nothing too explicit don’t worry. Then there’s some scenes where Ritsu’s doing school things and Shou’s being Shou in the kitchen and everywhere.

It slows to a stop after the iconic Shou and Ritsu flies scene, because we’re all suckers for Ritsu trusting Shou that he won’t drop him when they fly.

SO! You can pretty much get the idea of how the fic will end/go from there since the major arc scene has been settled (moving in together). And frankly, if Ravenesta was to stop the fic on chapter 9, I don’t think we’ll lose too much since the only thing we didn’t get is a conclusion to the slowburn.

If you’ve read up to here, thanks for indulging me I suppose. I mostly write little reviews for my own sake since I really talk too much and it’s very hard to collect my thoughts at times.

Is this a fic I would recommend? Most definitely yes, it’s lovely, it’s well written, it’s captivating. It is the embodiment of Ritshou’s romance, and I really wouldn’t have wanted it any other way.