#but the plot around them suffered imo

[heeliumhaze-elle]

close friends

「synopsis」 — after running into her extremely toxic ex at jake's birthday party last year, y/n seemed to disappear off the face of the planet. the only traces of her were her instagram story posts during her month-long trip to the states at the start of the new year. but other than that, no one had seen or heard from her since that night in november. the boys have speculated that it was because of the run-in with k all those months ago; however, when something y/n posts on her 'close friends' story begins to circulate through their group, they grow increasingly suspicious and angry over their speculations. ... except something about all of this doesn't sit right with heeseung. 「warnings」 — mc suffers from depression & struggles with thoughts of suicide, the boys are kinda petty assholes imo, cursing. please dm me if i missed anything! 「word count」 — 4923 words 「author's note」 — lowercase intended. only slightly proofread. no real plot, rushed ending - like seriously i didn't know how to end it so i just did... this is my first story, so i'm really nervous, lol. this is all fictional. the way the idols are portrayed in this story does not reflect how i view them by any means. 「dedication」 — this story is dedicated to my friend ani - may you always remember that you are never alone, not anymore.

"can you fucking believe her?" asked sunghoon, staring at the screenshot on jungwon's phone.

jake and jay agreed, peering over sunghoon's shoulder to get a better look at the photo. sunoo, who sat opposite the 02z, let out a tired sigh while ni-ki, who sat on the tabletop between jake and sunoo, massaged his temples. meanwhile, jungwon looked at his hyungs uneasily. heeseung wondered if he regretted asking if y/n was okay.

heeseung kept his gaze fixed on his friends as they continued to skim through the now-infamous screenshot.

"literally though, like what the fuck are we then?" ni-ki asked. "how dare she."

"god, no! and then to re-add us to her 'close friends' as if nothing happened," jay added. "like jungwon wouldn't have said anything to us."

"right?" sunoo said, rolling his eyes as he read through the post. "as if he wasn't going to tell us! like hello? he's our best friend!"

"it's like it was about us," jake said. "i'm not here to play these games. if she has a fucking problem with us, she needs to just fucking say so. we're not in high school anymore!"

"... well, except ni-ki," muttered sunoo.

jungwon let out a nervous sigh. "guys, i didn't mean to start anything-."

"no!" jay interrupted. "jake's right. we're all old enough. she needs to use her fucking words. she has a problem with us, just fucking say so. don't fucking act like we're all 'good' when it's clearly about us."

"because what the hell did we ever do to her?" sunghoon demanded.

all the while, jungwon's phone was making its rounds to each of the boys. and soon, the phone was in heeseung's hands. he was finally able to read the screenshot that started this entire uproar.

... and he was gutted.

"my sleep schedule is so fucked as of lately. all i do is lay in bed for 85-90% of my day. i can't keep pretending i'm jet-lagged from my trip to the states. i desperately crave to get out of the house to do things with other people, but i literally have no friends here — outside the ones that i made at work. even when i try to do things on my own, it's just so mentally taxing that i end up sleeping for 24+ hours after attempting to make myself feel better. it's a lot, i guess.

"... if i wasn't so afraid of death and dying, then maybe-."

heeseung felt his heart drop. he forced himself to stop reading; he couldn't continue, knowing that's where y/n's mind went.

how long had y/n been feeling this way? was there truth in what the other boys were saying? was this post about them?

shaking his head, heeseung refocused his attention on his friends. they all sat around him, angered by the post that y/n had made just the day before. the only person - save for himself - who wasn't mad about what y/n posted was jungwon. but heeseung couldn't tell if that was because he was still able to view her close friends story on instagram or if jungwon was genuinely worried about y/n.

even if the post was about them, heeseung told himself that that was the least of their concerns. the only thing that mattered to him (and he was surprised that his friends didn't seem to think similarly on the subject) was how y/n felt.

as the others went on to bash y/n for posting that and not being upfront with them about her feelings, heeseung handed jungwon back his phone.

"like honestly, i thought we were friends. what is her problem?" sunghoon circled back.

heeseung stood from his seat at the park table, white-knuckled fists suddenly clenched at his side. he startled the others with how abruptly he got up, but he didn't seem to care. "are you all fucking hearing yourself right now?"

"did you not just see what she posted yesterday?" jay asked.

ni-ki looked up at his hyung and added, "and she's so messy for re-adding us to her close friends list. if it wasn't for jungwon hyung, we wouldn't have ever seen this. so i bet she thinks she got away with talking shit about us like that."

"that's exactly what she was thinking!" jake chimed in.

heeseung didn't stay to hear what his insensitive friends had to say next. he simply told the five of them to "fuck off" and bid jungwon goodbye before storming off from the scene. as he neared his car, he reached for his phone from his back pocket; he wanted to text y/n. he needed to! however, upon closer inspection, he realized that his phone was out of battery. and of course, today was the day his car's charging cable broke!

groaning to himself, heeseung let himself into his vehicle and just drove. with his phone dead, there was no way for him to reach y/n to give her the heads-up that he'd be arriving anytime soon... but he also figured - given what he had read only minutes and minutes ago - that she would be home regardless.

his thoughts drifted back to y/n. he kept wondering how long she had been feeling that way. he wondered if she felt lonely because while she was locked away in her apartment, the rest of them were still going to each other's houses and planning group excursions... excursions, heeseung came to realize, that y/n wasn't invited to.

fuck! he thought as he came to a red light. if that post truly was about him and the rest of the guys, was it not deserved? he thought back to all the times that they went out without inviting y/n and he wondered if her fomo eventually got so bad she thought that they had silently kicked her out of the friend group. no... there's no way she thought that! right? y/n had a lot more sense than to think that a few outings without her meant that they no longer wanted to be her friend. right?!

the light stayed red as heeseung's mind swirled with several different thoughts. there was more to the post. heeseung knew that. granted, he didn't read it as thoroughly as his friends had, but he had skimmed through it quickly enough. the others were so hung up on the fact that y/n said she didn't have any friends; heeseung also guessed they were angry over the little bits of text that followed her dark thoughts. but... was she wrong to say all those things? the other seemed to think so. so much so that they completely ignored the blatant cry for help that was the entirety of y/n's post.

when the light finally turned green, heeseung couldn't stop thinking about the first line of the last paragraph. "...if i wasn't so afraid of death and dying, then maybe all of this would be so much easier."

in the three years that heeseung had gotten to know y/n, he had to admit that he was very aware of how dangerously dark her thoughts could be. there were moments when he wouldn't hear from her for weeks at a time. he remembered how y/n would lament on the droves of friends she had lost in the years prior because they hated when she would fall into her slump. after all, she wouldn't text anyone for days at a time; he recalled how when she recalled those memories, it somehow always ended with the friends telling her that she was selfish or that she wasn't trying hard enough to get better.

heeseung quickly parked his car in the guest space of y/n's apartment complex. from his spot, he could see the curtains of her bedroom window weren't drawn, but the window was cracked opened ever-so-slightly. he found himself devising a plan b in case y/n didn't come to the door and it involved somehow shimmying up to the second floor and busting through her window.

without another moment to lose, he rapidly bashed his pointer finger against the doorbell. at least if she was sleeping, he was certain that this'd wake her up!

not even a minute had gone by when y/n flung her apartment door open. heeseung took in the sight of her. her hair, a tangled, matted mess. if he had to guess, he assumed her knots were much worse at the back of her head. he noted that the fullness of her cheeks had vanished. she looked so gaunt compared to the last time he saw her; he wondered when the last time she ate was... or at least when the last time she ate anything of sustenance was.

y/n looked at heeseung with tired eyes. she frowned for a moment, only to replace it with a sad smile.

"have you come to air your grievances with me in person?" she said in a strained whisper.

if heeseung had been gutted before, he had no idea what this new feeling was. whatever it was though, it shattered whatever was left of him. he had known y/n to have horrible episodes of hopelessness and defeat, but this was too much for him to bear. he couldn't even begin to imagine how she was feeling. she was a shell of herself.

"... what are you talking about?" he asked gently.

"i just thought..." y/n let out a deep, long sigh. she looked down at her hello kitty house slippers, not finishing her thought aloud. she tightly wrapped her arms around herself as she stroked her right upper arm slowly.

instinctively, heeseung removed his coat and draped it over y/n. her bloodshot, tired eyes looked up at him once more. he wanted to hold her. to make her feel his warmth. to make her feel his love. he just wanted her to see she wasn't alone anymore.

"you just thought what?" he asked as y/n ushered him inside.

she shut the door behind her and wordlessly led him to the small couch in her living room. heeseung saw the nest she had created for herself with her blankets, pillows, and plushies in the dark space. the only source of light came from her muted television, which was currently airing reruns of old cartoons from the 1990s and the early 2000s. there were torn-up bags of chips (some empty and some half-full), unfinished, open bottles of soju and cans of beer, and a plethora of takeout boxes scattered around her little nest across her tiny coffee table. trash and dirty laundry lined the floor around her couch.

"sorry about the mess. i haven't had visitors in over six months now..."

six months. the last time anyone had seen y/n had been over seven months ago. sure, they had seen her posting all about her trip back to the states a month ago, but no one had physically been in her presence in over half a year. heeseung wanted to kick himself. why hadn't he visited sooner?

"no... please don't apologize-."

"i'm embarrassed," she whispered, trying to make space on the couch by tossing all of her used bedding to the floor.

heeseung stopped her in time, insisting that it was fine. after all, he had been the one to show up unannounced.

"what were you talking about before, y/n?" heeseung tried holding her gaze, but she quickly averted her eyes to her slippers once more. "what grievances are you talking about?"

every sigh that escaped y/n's lips was a dagger to heeseung's heart. he watched as she struggled to find the words to say. sensing her panic, heeseung guided her into her cocoon of blankets - making some room for himself as well. the two of them sat side-by-side in silence. he could wait all day for her to reply, especially if it meant not leaving her alone in this state.

"your friends," y/n reached for her phone from the recesses of her blankets, "they all texted me these paragraphs about something that i posted privately yesterday."

WHAT?!

heeseung could feel his blood boiling. "how do you mean?"

PARAGRAPHS?!

y/n unlocked her phone and handed the device to the man beside her. just as soon as he got a hold of her phone, she quickly retracted her hand and brought it to her eyes, rubbing away at them.

heeseung first watched as y/n began to curl up into a ball, then he directed his attention to her phone. upon first glance at her message app, he noticed that there were three circles pinned to the top: two group chats - one called "ohana 👑" and the other "the tortured poets department 🖊️" - and a silly selfie of him and y/n with the nickname "evan lee 💜" plastered just below it. a blush danced upon his cheeks at the sight of it all.

however, the warmth in his cheeks lasted for only a millisecond as his eyes fell just below their text thread; it appeared that ni-ki, jay, sunghoon, jake, and sunoo all sent messages to y/n in the time that it took for heeseung to arrive. heeseung tapped at the most recent of the texts, sunoo's. he repeated the process with jake's, sunghoon's, jay's, and finally, ni-ki's texts. with each scroll through of texts from his friends, he found himself getting angrier and angrier at them. especially after reading y/n's responses to each of them.

it was hard to tell tone over text, but heeseung knew his friends well. each message to y/n was crafted uniquely and in the sender's own words, but the gist of what they were saying was all the same.

they each started their message by telling y/n that they had been with jungwon the day before and how he had asked them if she was okay. they all state that they didn't know what he could possibly be talking about until jungwon mentioned that it was in reference to her instagram story - a story he failed to mention was only for close friends.

jay and sunoo went on to say that they didn't mind that they couldn't see her story; y/n was allowed to pick and choose who she wanted to see those stories. jake, ni-ki, and sunghoon - on the other hand - took major offense into not being able to see her story, considering "everything" they had been through "together with k". they all mentioned how deeply hurt they were by the fact that y/n said she had not friends. ni-ki had gone as far as to say, "i thought that me and the hyungs were your friends. but i guess not, huh?"

they then followed up their emotions with the same statements they were exclaiming at the park, about how if y/n had something to say about them to just outright say it and not dabble in this "high school bullshit and make everyone play this stupid game where they have to figure out what the hell it is they did wrong" (as jake put it in his text). in sunoo's message, he claimed that he was only reaching out to y/n because he wanted to be upfront with her and couldn't think of a single thing he might have done to offend her. jay and sunghoon continued to stress the fact that their text wasn't meant to be read as an attack, but they "wanted to be adults about the situation instead of resorting to petty, childish drama" because they too couldn't think of anything to warrant such a post from y/n. ni-ki drew from the fact that he and the rest of the boys were hurting over this and how it was "shady and cringy" to post a story like that on her social media account; he accused her of just wanting attention because he "didn't do anything wrong" so for her to post that with the implication that he had irritate the maknae to no end.

just like that, each of them wrapped up their lengthy chunks of text to y/n with such vitriol that heeseung couldn't believe that these were his friends. he knew they were coming from a place of hurt, but he was surprised that they didn't see y/n's post for what it truly was: a cry for help.

instead, they turned her raw emotions into their hurt egos. they decided to take bits and pieces of y/n's story and mold it into this narrative where she attempted to assassinate their characters. it went from being a post about how utterly depressed and pathetic she felt to being a post about them.

and heeseung was livid.

with all of them.

when had they become so self-important? if they were truly y/n's friends like they had so furiously claimed to be, why hadn't any of them asked if she was okay? even jungwon failed to ask her, opting instead to ask his hyungs and ni-ki - which, arguably got everyone in this mess in the first place.

heeseung felt his mind drift back to y/n's reply to each of the boys' texts. while he didn't read every single one, he did read the only one that got a text back, y/n's text to ni-ki. it was a long, heartfelt apology from y/n; heeseung could see how this whole mess was tearing her up inside just from her words to ni-ki alone. but he got even madder when he got to her parting words, only to see that ni-ki had replied with, "k. thanks for reaching out. i just need time for myself if i'm being honest. bye."

before he could say anything, heeseung was brought back to reality when he caught y/n silently sobbing into her hands from the corner of his eye.

"i'm sorry!" she whispered. over and over again. each time more broken than the last.

heeseung gently pulled her closer to his chestm cradling her to him as he rubbed his thumb against her back in an effort to comfort her. "you have nothing to be sorry for..."

"i hurt everyone's feelings-!"

"fuck them," heeseung growled, holding her tighter. "i'm sorry. i'm sorry that they let their egos get in the way of being decent human beings. i'm sorry that you've felt so alone for the last few months. i'm sorry that i haven't shown up for you in the way that you needed someone to be there."

y/n cried harder. "i... i... i... i didn't... i didn't mean..." her hiccups were affecting the rhythm of her speech. "i didn't mean that... that we weren't friends! i just... i just felt-."

"shhhh," he soothed as she shuddered under his embrace. "we haven't been very good friends to you as of lately, anyway. they're like my brothers and i love them, but those messages alone... we haven't been decent friends to you. i can understand how easy it is to feel like you're this lonely, little island, especially when the rest of us are still going out and making no effort to see how you're doing.

"i saw their messages to you. in ni-ki's case specifically, i scrolled up a little too far and saw that you've spent the last half of these past few months messaging him little things like tiktoks and memes only for him to like them or reply to you with one word. have you been reaching out to the rest of the boys?"

he felt her nod against his chest.

oh... so he was the only one to not have heard from her. the green-eyed monster crept into his thoughts momentarily, only for him to realize that the others' text threads were probably just as dry as ni-ki's.

"i'm really sorry that i didn't reach out to you sooner," heeseung sighed. "i really don't know what i was thinking. i'm sorry that you've felt so alone."

once y/n had calmed down enough to stop her hiccups, she excused herself to grab a glass of water. she asked heeseung if he wanted anything while she was up, but he declined - instead offering to get the glass for her. she appreciated the gesture but went to get the water herself.

this moment alone left heeseung in his thoughts again. he didn't want her to have to recount anything to him if she didn't want to, but he still needed to know. in her text to ni-ki, she said that she hadn't meant to keep jungwon on her list of close friends. that what she posted hadn't meant to be for the people she had met in south korea; it was for her friends back home - as a way to vent out the frustrations she hadn't known how to put into words for her korean audience. these frustrations, from what heeseung could gather, were things she wasn't ready to tell him or the others.

but the others had practically forced it out of her in her apologies to them...

... and ni-ki had the gall to tell her that he needed time and space from her. the rest left her on read - as if only turning their read receipts on for this moment alone.

heeseung could feel himself getting worked up all over again. gripping tightly at the fabric of his jeans, he sat up straighter when he heard y/n coming back to the darkened living room.

"i'm sorry," y/n whispered as she neared him.

heeseung stared up at her helplessly as she sat beside him. "no, there's nothing to be-."

"i meant to take all of you off my 'close friends' list. it wasn't because i didn't think we were friends; there are just some things from my past that i'm not ready to talk about with you guys yet-."

"and you don't have to! i'm sorry that the rest of them think that you owe us that..."

"i mean... they thought it was about them; they just wanted to clear things up and let how they were feeling be known," y/n said with a sigh, pulling heeseung's coat closer to her chest. "i offended them. i respect them from being upfront about their feelings-."

"IT'S FUCKING BULLSHIT!" heeseung stood up to face y/n. "WHY ARE THEY ALLOWED TO EXPRESS THEIR EMOTIONS LIKE THAT AND YOU'RE NOT?"

regret washed over heeseung as he noticed y/n's sullen eyes widen. she bit her quivering lips and heeseung wanted to punch himself in the face.

"sorry," he muttered. "i didn't mean to blow up like that. i just..."

heeseung knelt before y/n.

"no, it's okay," she said, avoiding his gaze.

"it's not... and what the guys did isn't okay either. yeah, they confronted you because they thought it was about them and they want to clear the air, but there's a way to go about that. and for ni-ki to go off on your like that only to leave you with that 'i need space' bullshit of a text-."

"he's just a kid."

"i get that, but i have no idea where the boys get off with being so... i don't know... vain? for lack of a better word. their reactions just feel so... guilty. as if they had done something-."

"i was being extremely vague in my post."

heeseung took y/n's shaking hands, finally holding her gaze as she looked at him. she seemed shocked by the physical interaction; he wondered how long it had been since she had touched another person outside their hug minutes ago.

"exactly! if it wasn't about them, but they somehow found a way to relate to it? i don't know... again, i think they're acting out of guilt," heeseung caressed the back of her hands with his thumb.

y/n gave heeseung a sad smile. "i get their side. with the way i worded everything, i can see how they relate what i wrote with the way everyone handled everything between k and me a few years ago."

heeseung felt y/n rip her hands away from his as she buried her face into her hands. sitting back on the couch, he pulled her into another hug; she didn't seem to be crying again, but he couldn't be too sure anymore. y/n hadn't mentioned her past relationship with k since their nasty breakup, but he remembered how unbothered she had been upon seeing him seven months ago at jake's birthday party. he also remembered how angered y/n had been - despite being unbothered at k's initial presence - because he attempted to approach her while she was alone at the open bar, grabbing refills for heeseung, sunghoon, and herself.

"... did the post have anything to do with k?" heeseung asked. he felt her go stiff at the mention of her ex-boyfriend before shaking her head against his chest and letting out a small sniffle. "okay, then? so the boys had nothing to worry about. it's just this huge misunderstanding. if they want to hold it against you, fuck 'em."

"i still really hurt their feelings."

"you apologized. did they?"

y/n pushed heeseung away to hug her legs to her chest. she shook her head. "but... a selfish part of me really feels like i'm owed one."

"it's not selfish - especially after you cleared it up with them. they jumped conclusions and said extremely hurtful things to you. if they truly did no wrong - which who knows, maybe they didn't do anything wrong! - i don't know... maybe they shouldn't have been so defensive. i don't know! maybe it's just me... but their behavior is downright embarrassing!"

with another sigh, y/n leaned against heeseung, who instantly wrapped his arm around her; it felt just like before, like no time had passed between the two of them. like there wasn't this mix of guilt, hopelessness, and despair in the air between them.

"embarrassing?"

"how else would your describe it when you make someone else's trauma and hurting about you?" heeseung asked, giving y/n's shoulder a tight squeeze. "y/n, i know you. i know you're not going to hold this another the boys, but i think their reaction to all of this is downright stupid. you talked about some pretty serious stuff in your post, but they pushed past that to complain that you might have posted about them. that doesn't sit right with me-."

"it's not that deep, hee-."

"except it is, y/n! this is exactly what happened with k hyung after you two broke up and more recently after jake's party. specifically after jake's party, you posted something privately about how hard things have been on your end and how it was affecting your mental health; someone shared it with him and he confronted you-."

"k apologized-."

"but then he immediately turned the conversation into 'i'm sorry, but also you hurt me!' and then you two only focused on his feelings!" heeseung thought back to that time. "i just... i feel like the boys took whatever was posted in the wrong direction. and even then, it wasn't even aimed in their direction to begin with! there are worse things to be done and that have been done than taking someone off your story then putting them back on..."

y/n pressed herself closer to heeseung as he continued.

"and honestly... whatever was actually said in your story was so much bigger than their feelings being hurt, y/n. because we both know that wasn't what it was about."

"hee..."

"look, i know... i know that you never meant for any of us to see it, but we did. and instead of seeing it for what it was, most of them made it about themselves. and i'm sorry for that. i'm sorry that we haven't been good friends to you lately - to the point where you felt like we weren't your friends to begin with. they're allowed to be hurt over it if they truly think that it's about them, but they can't just ambush you like that and then close the discussion when you clear the air and open it up for them. honestly, with the way all of this was handled, i wouldn't be surprised if you still stood by that statement! it's almost like... at every turn, you're reprimanded in some way for posting about your feelings. someone always has to take it out of context and make it about themselves.

"you literally told every single one of them that it had nothing to do with them and they have the audacity to sit there and say that they need time away from you? again, that doesn't sit right with me! why are you made to be the problem in every situation you're stuck to struggle with!"

there was still so much more heeseung had wanted to say, but the sounds of y/n's violent sobs had stopped him. she began to wail into his chest again and she squeezed him closer to her. heeseung felt his heart breaking as he looked down at one of his best friends. she wept loudly, screaming incoherent phrases into him while heeseung held her tightly.

"i'm sorry," heeseung whispered into her hair, pulling her onto his lap. "i'm sorry that i wasn't there for you before... i'm sorry that it's taken me so long to see how much you've been hurting. i'm sorry for everything. but i'm here now."

[munchy-k]

danmei list that no one asked for (long post incoming)

ok so I've accumulated a pretty decent list of danmei that aren't as well known and I want to talk about them!! so here we go! these aren't in any particular order btw

Nan Chan

an aloof, listless immortal and a very hungry caterpillar fish demon go on an adventure to retrieve a runaway bell 🔔. and also they both have amnesia. CUE ANGSTY BACKSTORY REVEAL!!!! ��🔪🔪

I'm sure it's to no ones surprise that this is first because I'm a SLUT for nan chan. if nan chan has one fan it is ME and if there r no fans I am DEAD!! I love this novel so much it has the perfect combination of painful angst and sweet sweet lovin' !! the main couple's relationship makes me feel so warm and fuzzy inside 🥺👉👈 (probably because I am a touch love language girly and these bitches be touching!!!) and I LOVE the characters sm. especially my little meow meow Jing Lin and his adorable little stone figure. I live for the interactions between Cang Ji and the stone figure! it may be a little difficult to read the first time around since the plot gets a little convoluted but it all makes sense in the end! 10/10 really recommend!!

How to Survive as a Villain

transmigration plot! rich ceo gets transported to a novel as the villain emperor and gets buddy buddy with the novel's MC so he doesn't get killed. ends up buddying too close to the sun and accidentally becomes the leading lady. drama ensues!

this is another favorite of mine!! this one is another good mix of angst and romance and the MC is so funny and likeable. there are also two cute side couples which is always fun! (one of them is f/f so it gets extra brownie points with me🤭) its also not too complicated which makes it great for casual reading ^^ p.s. this one has an official eng tl now! its being published thru rosmei (like nanchan) so it has to be ordered thru a 3rd party distributor but I think its worth reading 👀

Living to Suffer/ Till Death Do Us Part

living to suffer: ancient wuxia style prequel where the characters meet as a humble doctor and member of a demonic sect and their fate intertwines. this one has a BE

till death do us part: early to mid 1900s setting sequel. the reincarnated characters meet again as a elementary school teacher and rich playboy and face the struggles of having a relationship. this one has a bittersweet ending

THIS...... OK THESE NOVELS... let me tell you something. this made me SOB. oh my god especially the ending of TDDUP. I saw a review saying "I honestly could believe there lived a Shen Liangsheng and a Ch'in Ching, and that they fell in love..." and hard agree because something about this story felt so real?? which made it all the more intriguing and heartbreaking!! its set around the time of the japanese invasion of china and the cultural revolution so it does talk a lot about politics but it wasn't a difficult read imo. BUT BE WARNED! there is a LOT of smut. (not rly vanilla either..) and the relationship does get pretty toxic at times 😬 but it gets better by the end of the book and the toxicity actually does add to the story and character development. if u give it a try please read the prequel (living to suffer) first!

After Being Forced to Marry the Evil Star General

a deputy prime minister MC who's powerful, high-maintenance, and hated by the public is arranged to marry a laid-back general who is much loved and praised (but also rumored to be cursed!). this is an arranged marriage + enemies to lovers novel

I'm actually in the middle of rereading this one rn 👀. I think this one is also good for casual reading since it isn't very complicated. in the beginning the interactions between the main couple r rly funny because they just clash all day long lol. its also got a little angst sprinkled in 😎👍 I did see some reviews saying that the MC is not likeable since he does some kinda bad things and he's stuck up but I still liked him idk 😭 I feel like his flaws made him more interesting

Married Thrice to Salted Fish

a doctor MC who only wishes to study medicine (and poison oop) gets arranged to marry a guy whos dying. turns out that guy has been taken over by a transmigrator! transmigrator ML then proceeds to die and come back as someone else.. more than once 😭

if you love a couple that schemes together then this is the novel for you! the MC in this book kinda reminds me of the MC from the book I mentioned right above. (these titles too long man 😅) I found the repeated "reincarnation" plot to be pretty interesting. the interactions between the couple were pretty amusing as well and since the ML is from modern times he randomly uses modern slang. MC even picks some lingo up from him loll

Xiao Jiu

about a 9th prince MC whos trying to win the heart of the emperor's cold and aloof bodyguard! call him the prince of rizz because it works eventually 😎 this is an age gap romance with a smidge of angst and political drama

this a short and sweet story! the ML is described as cold a lot but he actually becomes rly sweet and warm later on so he isn't one of those stone faced characters. I don't have much else to say about this besides "its cute, I like it" 😅

Guanshan Muyu

wife-chasing crematorium story! it's about a outlaw MC who's kidnapped by the very guy who betrayed him. ML wants to win MC's heart back but issues from the past cause a bunch of misunderstandings :( but it is a happy ending!!

man.... I haven't read a wife-chasing crematorium story before this and I was not prepared for the amount of ANGST. basically everyone is miserable for the entire damn time! 😭😭😭 but that's not to say it wasn't a good story!! all the suffering made the ending feel even sweeter 🥰 if you cry easily maybe keep a pack of tissues on hand when you read this 😂

I wrote this in my notes app while reading and I feel like it summarizes the ML pretty well bahaha 👇

"qi yan: my girl is mad at me. I hope I die"

It’s Not Easy Being a Master

transmigrator becomes the villainous shizun in a novel he read and attempts to avoid a bad ending but *gasp* the novels MC (ML) has been reborn with all the past memories!! MC tries to get close to ML while ML is like wtf is going on ! seems like a typical "transmigrated as a villain" type plot until suddenly it's not... 👀👀

this one was rly fun! there's a big plot twist that I found rly interesting and unique! very fresh!! fresh produce!! 🥒🫑🥕🍅 I also like the MC a lot he had a rly silly personality hehe. I think this novel is good for people who like solving mysteries alongside the characters since a lot of hints are dropped throughout

Golden Stage/ Terrace

arranged marriage between a court dog and a general who's become phsyically disabled. everyone knows that the two HATE each other... but do they really? 👀 no, it's not an enemies to lovers, but the other characters seem to think so! 🤭

great novel!! very good!! I love the dynamic between the main couple! they love to banter so their interactions are entertaining. there's a bit of political plot but it's nothing too complicated and the angst is minimal. I also like that one of the main characters is a ambulatory wheelchair user. this one also has a official eng tl now but I'm not sure from which publishing house

Sharing Rain and Dew

MC whos staying in the palace dies a painful death but then gets reborn several months in the past. he spends his time stressing about his impending death but for some reason the Emperor has suddenly become super clingy and doting

this one is very very short, only 5 chapters + 3 extras, but it's quite funny and cute. despite being so short the story is actually pretty interesting? good for a quick, casual read

list over!! I have a few more but this is already too long of a post 😭 I hope someone can find this helpful for some reading recs!

[chocostrwberry]

Based on the story, Trixx needs to suffer some sort of punishment or the consequences causing a domino effect that almost ended the world and left Adrien without his girl.

I was thinking maybe he’s locked inside his miraculous??

I don’t know exactly HOW this would come about, but I was thinking about changing a few parts of the au storyline to have it where when the miraculous is broken, the kwami are trapped inside and the miraculous are unable to be used. (So I would have to switch up when Mayura happens/appears and how Adrien’s mother falls comatose so thats why I’m still on the fence about it)

So maybe, Trixx’s miraculous breaks with the large unification OR Tikki does it herself as a punishment, and he becomes trapped inside without being able to like, float around or leave by will.

But even without this added aspect of the plot, him being trapped inside would be a pretty good punishment imo, since it’s not like they can do much to him because he’s also an eldritch diety like the rest of them.

[least-carpet]

I am curious: how do you think would work realistically a jc and wwx's reconciliation? Have you any meta on them and their relationship?

I'm sorry this took a minute, anon! Work has been frankly chaotic. But I saw an anti-reconciliation post¹ and I have been roused from my post-work stupor.

Unfortunately, you asked me for something I'm incompetent at, which is plotting. (Otherwise I would have already unleashed my ningcheng fic upon the world.) What I can talk about is what I find compelling about potential reconciliation and potential scenarios.

Why do I love a post-canon reconciliation?

Apart from really liking their relationship and finding it compelling—IMO it's the heart of the narrative of the first life—what I actually enjoy about it is what it offers in terms of development for Wei Wuxian.

I read Wei Wuxian as having displaced and projected a lot of his unresolved trauma onto Jiang Cheng. I've talked a little before about my reading of Jiang Cheng as the "bad feelings" sin eater of the Yunmeng Trio—neither Jiang Yanli nor Wei Wuxian feel like they can express deep unhappiness, but Jiang Cheng is bad at hiding his, so in some way it's his job to embody the collective unhappiness of the children of that family system.

But although this makes Wei Wuxian merry and likeable, it's not actually good for anyone, or even sustainable—when he loses control, he really loses control. And his coping skills are extremely self-destructive, as we can see from the post-war downward spiral of drinking and avoidance. I also think his experiences in his childhood (losing his parents and being homeless) plus his wartime experiences gave him some kind of trauma disorder that contributes to his terrible memory, which he's turned into his primary coping mechanism (apart from alcohol). If I Simply Close My Eyes And Run Away, My Bad Feelings Can't Get Me!

But, like, repressing your feelings doesn't work forever. He's compartmentalized his whole first life to function in the second one, but that means giving up on everything and everyone he loved, including the Jiang siblings and Lotus Pier. That's incredibly tragic to me.

Sometimes I think antis are so happy to demonize Jiang Cheng in order to minimize the depth of the loss Wei Wuxian has suffered. If he never loved Jiang Cheng, if they were never close and devoted to one another, if their childhood was an unending misery, then wouldn't Wei Wuxian be much freer in the present?

But what I think has happened is that the loss is so huge that it's completely terrifying and threatening. So are the feelings around killing Jin Zixuan, Jiang Yanli's death, and the death of Wen Qing and the Wen remnants. It's too much, so he blocks it out or, in some cases, projects it onto Jiang Cheng.

Of course, Jiang Cheng will never forgive him, because he irreparably ruined Jiang Yanli's life and then she died trying to save him and Jin Ling became an orphan. It's all his fault; it can't be forgiven; he might as well give up on it...

Jiang Cheng is obviously very angry and upset with him, it's true. But you can see how projecting his guilt and shame over his actions onto Jiang Cheng and then running away from Jiang Cheng is also a way for him to escape his guilt and shame over what happened to Jiang Yanli. (And to escape all the repressed resentment he has for Jiang Cheng because of the core transfer.²)

But there are two tragic elements of this approach. One, that by doing this he yields up any possible relationship with Jiang Cheng, and with the Jiang Sect, because by all means Wei Wuxian must escape him in order to outrun his terrible feelings. Two, that it's another coping mechanism that distorts the reality of the situation, which is that they were all swept up in power games beyond their capacity to manage, and they did their best—the Jiang siblings, the Wen siblings, Jin Zixuan, and Wei Wuxian—and it still went badly for everyone except the Jin Sect.

I don't think he can confront that yet. But I do think that Wei Wuxian feels very safe with Lan Wangji, and sometimes a safe and supportive relationship can provide the resources to do things you didn't think you could do before.

Can you imagine a different conversation, that begins with the bald acknowledgement of failure and wrongdoing³? "I never meant for all of that to happen. I did what I thought was right, but I never thought Jiang Yanli would be harmed, and I didn't intend to kill Jin Zixuan. I am so sorry. I miss her."

GIVE THE CATHARSIS TO ME. GIVE IT HERE.

A Wei Wuxian who has reached a point where he's capable of that accountability and vulnerability is delicious to me. A Wei Wuxian who can get there can return to Lotus Pier and rebuild a relationship with the living sect and his living sect brother.

How could it happen?

The trick is how to get there, 'cause it's like trying to herd cats where one cat is mortally afraid of facing the second and the other one has betrayal trauma and abandonment issues. But the cats love each other! They do!

I don't see Jiang Cheng initiating. I see him as being more open to a reconciliation, now that he knows why Wei Wuxian did what he did, but I see him as being profoundly afraid of trapping people in relationship with him or inflicting himself on people who don't want him around. (Not, like, for politics. In that arena I assume he's unpleasant when necessary to great effect.)

Fortunately, Wei Wuxian can be led if you're cunning enough to do it and you bait the trap with something good (see the plot of MDZS for Nie Huaisang's very successful demonstration of this principle). He also will increase pursuit if you dangle and withdraw the bait.

The question, of course, is what makes good bait for catching Wei Wuxian. Some options:

Option 1: murder mystery. Someone dies in an exciting way that involves Jiang Cheng. (Wei Wuxian will involve himself, dude loves a murder mystery.) It could be in the Jiang Sect or the Jin Sect; if it involves Jin Ling, Jiang Cheng will jump in with a swiftness.

Option 2: Jiang Cheng marriage rumours. Doesn't even have to involve unsavoury rumous about the potential wife; Jiang Cheng getting married without him (like Jiang Yanli) would dredge up some feelings, I think.

Option 3: Jiang Cheng tragic illness or curse rumours. You better be sure it was in a past life, cause it looks like this one might be over soon!

Option 4: Forced together time (due to a night hunt or a kidnapping, etc.). It's time for the getting along shirt!

To borrow from SVSSS, you might need a scenario-pusher for it to happen. But the world of MDZS is rife with these opportunities, and cultivators can live a very long time. So there's hope yet!

Footnotes:

1. This is a perfectly reasonable viewpoint to come to by the end of the novel. It's simply one I don't share.

2. See this passage from the confrontation in the Guanyin Temple:

"It wasn’t something he liked to reminisce about. He didn’t want to be reminded again and again of what it felt like when his core was cut out or what price he had to pay. If this were exposed in the past, he’d most likely laugh and comfort Jiang Cheng … But now, he indeed didn’t have the strength left to put up such a confident, nonchalant pretense.

From the bottom of his heart, he knew he wasn’t so indifferent about it after all.

Was it really that easy to move on from such a thing?

Of course not." (Chapter 103, "Hatred," ExR translation)

3. I saw a different post complaining about Wei Wuxian apologizing to Jiang Cheng in reconciliation scenarios, and I just, like, he kicked off a political firestorm that ended in the death of Jiang Yanli and her husband. This is completely separate from the non-consensual surgery and all the lying he was doing about that. He owes him multiple different apologies! And Jiang Cheng should also apologize to him! That's why they apologize to each other in the Temple, because they know they hurt each other! The point of an apology in an intimate relationship is to connect with the person you are apologizing to in order to repair the relationship, and the Temple was not the time, which is why they need a private do-over! It's not humiliation, it's intimacy, connection, and repair. How do y'all live your lives.

3.5 Also, imagine it to be more in-character than that.

[luminousdryad]

to make things brief cause I suck at organizing what I have to say, the live action was definitely Something™.

Cast: 10/10 kinda biased personally but yall can't take this from me

Gordon as Aang and Dallas as Zuko were the standouts imo. Gordon needs some direction on line delivery and the angstier scenes but overall he's very charming and I'm so proud of him for getting so much exposure!

Ian as Sokka was great, I just wish he was allowed to be more...messy? like Sokka pretends to be chill and all that but he's actually dramatic so I hope that gets improved in the next season if there is one

speaking of improvement, Kiawentiio as Katara brought out a softer side to the character but sadly diminished her spark and passion. I like that Katara now actually feels like a younger sister, it makes sense within the context of the story that Sokka and Gran Gran would shelter her after what happened, but as someone said, her anger is so central to her character and I just wish that got shown more. It's more of a script and direction problem tbh, if you look at Kia's interviews she has the sass and feistiness Katara needs

Lizzy as Azula is great, the writing is a bit clunky though so she did the best she could with it. Can't really comment on Mai and Ty Lee yet because they're kinda just there but it's a nice setup

Maria as Suki? perfection show stopping never the same she is a queen and I love the tidbit of Suki backstory which she never really had in the og show. I love her being such a loser around her crush we love to see girlfailures girlfailing. I wish the writers didn't make them KISS though 😭 slowburn ftw

the adults were great

Writing: 6.5/10

There were genuinely good moments and I love the concept of mixing up certain plot points to condense the story

But they just suffered from too much Telling instead of Showing WRITERS PLEASE LISTEN TO THE CRITICISM YOU HAVE TIME TO IMPROVE PLEASE

Omashu, mechanist, and Jet plot mixing as a concept was fine, but it dragged on and my friends and I got bored of it. I like it in theory but if it was going to take THAT long couldn't they have just separated one of those storylines for a different episode?

I appreciate that they tried to develop the water siblings' relationship by making them the stars of the Secret Tunnels, but I would've changed the way they "conquered" the problem (really? badgermoles respond to love? cute in theory but like why). If anyone's watched Barbie: A Fairy Secret there's a part where Barbie and her frenemy accuse each other of why their friendship failed, and it helps them make up and breaks the curse put on them. So that's what I would've done, force them in a life or death situation in which they have to say the unsaid things, maybe hug it out and boom

The way they handled Koh and the Spirit World was a Mess™ but the effects were decent

Zhao meeting horrible ends in every incarnation is so deserved

Yue having more agency was a welcome change AND I LOVE THAT SHE WATERBENDS. Then waterbends even when the moon is gone. It's such a nice visual nod to the fact that she has the moon spirit within her

That said, the show could definitely use more visual storytelling, less weird dialogue. Like it's so strangely common for shows or adaptations these days to exposition dump. Like they did not have to make Yue say that the ocean spirit was angry, literally just show me the dead moon fish and I'll get the idea. Then Iroh says "That's Wrath" that's just redundant now isn't it

I like that they saved Katara bringing Aang out of the Avatar State until last even if it could've been done better

HOW DARE THEY MAKE ME LIKE HAHN HE WAS A JERK IN THE SHOW BUT THEY MADE HIM A GENUINELY GOOD CHARACTER. Yes to brown men not being portrayed as jerks but also in the original it was a nice contrast to how far Sokka had come because Hahn reflected who he used to be. But live action Hahn </3

I like that they showed the deaths and blood. I wanted a live action that was both lighthearted but more realistic when it came to the injuries and death, and that'd kind of what I got

Other thoughts + overall

You can tell they put so much heart into this show, watching the bts, the bending boot camp with the correct martial arts, the easter eggs, the nods to the comics, the beautiful adaptations of Cabbage Merchant and Secret Tunnel nomads, there's so much passion behind the show it's a shame it suffered in its writing

which is why if they read reviews and criticism from the bigger name fans (TheAvatarist, HelloFutureMe, etc.) it would really help them improve for future seasons! The cast is stunning already and they have great chemistry (hopefully gets improved too!)

The live action is just a different angle to the show. And I'm saying this as an Avatar fan–the original wasn't perfect, either. I had some problems w it but the overall show was genuinely so good and heartfelt, those problems weren't glaring enough to put me off (unlike The Dragon Prince, sorry). The live action definitely wasn't perfect, but it tried to give us a new look into Avatar. Again, no adaptation will ever be a 1:1 remake and none should be. Where's the fun in that? But while the show is so full of heart and with actual fans working behind the scenes, I doubt if they listen to any criticism that they can't pull this off better next season.

[thesunfyre4446]

I really don’t understand people’s need to find reasons to not like Rhaenyra. What is there to like about her? She’s the most insufferable, boring and annoying main character I’ve ever seen. I really couldn’t care less about her having harwin strongs children. Like who cares??? Her relationship with harwin was also boring her character never does anything!

People like her because she’s the “rightful heir” also doesn’t make sense to me. Ok, she’s the queen. She’s still a horrible main character and I’m falling asleep everytime she’s on my screen. Her only line in s2 is I’m my dad’s heir.

I feel like the discussion regarding her character is only focused on her having bastards/ her being the rightful heir / why she shouldn’t be the queen because there is nothing else to talk about. She’s not a good or interesting character in any way.

lmao yeah i'm not the biggest rhaenyra fan either anon. (i actually really liked the way young!rhaenyra was written)

the whole concept of liking characters because "it's the right thing to do" or disliking them because "they are bad people" is just brainrot imo. i've seen someone says "i like TG characters more but i'm TB because rhaenyra is the rightful heir" which i think is absolutely ridiculous because that's not how i watch the show. i don't care about the actual succussion i'm going to root for the characters i love.

i do agree that 95% of the rhaenyra post i see are about why she should \ shouldn't be queen (bastards, succussion etc. etc.) and hardly any posts discussing her as a character. but the show hardly explores rhaenyra as a character. she has so much potential to be a great character but it's wasted in an attempt to whitewash her character & make a daenaerys parallel. rhaenyra the character is disregarded by the show itself, so the discussion around her makes sense to me.

the show's refuses to explore her flaws & letting her have any to begin with! she only becomes "book rhaenyra" when the plot needs her to and then those moments are conveniently forgotten by the narrative & the characters (like rhaenyra saying aemond should be tortured, rhaenys suspecting rhaenyra's involvement in laenor's death, marrying daemon on laena's funeral, starving the people of KL, how she treated rhaena...) all of those moment could've been used to create a more interesting well-rounded character but instead are "forgotten". (alicent's character also suffers from that problem)

so when we get to s2 rhaenyra is literally not allowed to do anything. she can't want to go to war because that's bad, she's not allowed to want revenge because that's bad, she needs to have a "moral & just" motivation for wanting the throne because her wanting the throne just because it was promised is not noble enough. all she can do is just walk around dragonstone saying "what would you have me do" & in ep 7 her "arc" feels weird and out-of-character.

emma darcy is great actor!! i love them!

[mildmayfoxe]

big fan of your romance novel complaint posts (love to see a fellow hater living it up) but i’m also curious if there are any you would recommend? not looking for anything in particular, just would love to hear your thoughts as someone else with nitpicky reading habits and a taste for trash

ok hello. i left you hanging for a FULL week and for that i am sorry but i wanted to be able to have some time to sit down and type out a real answer to which the short version is YES of course there are several that i have enjoyed!! my disclaimer is that i almost solely read gay romance so if you are looking for lesbian or even straight reccs i don't have much for you (although i will put a couple at the end anyway). hopefully something in this list is interesting to you or at least interesting to someone else! links are mostly to goodreads. break bc i'm gonna write too much

-kj charles is one of my fave authors in this genre bc they're all pretty reliable and there's a ton of them. they're all historical fiction and usually there's at least one murder- she's good at keeping a plot going while developing a romance. often supernatural or magical elements. sometimes cults! i've read almost all of the books she's written and have enjoyed them all

-charlie adhara wrote a really incredible werewolf series that i loved, the first of which is the wolf at the door. this is one of the only series i've read which keeps the emotional stakes up through the whole thing & kept me interested in a relationship after it was established bc sooo many series get boring the second the leads get together. i actually read the first book of the spin-off series (a pack of lies) first which is technically possible but i don't recommend bc i was like "wow they're really throwing me in here. i love it" and then i read the first series and i was like "oh i was supposed to know all this stuff." but i actually liked the dynamic between that couple better and i'm suffering every day because the next one still doesn't come out til 2025 and i read it in 2022. also worth noting that this (the original series) is cops-ajacent (~federal special agents~) and one of the characters is really prejudiced at the beginning & imo doesn't have enough character growth before it's waved away but if you can ignore that it's really good. mysteries! werewolves!

-speaking of werewolves (i could suggest several but i'll keep it to two) tj klune's wolfsong ends up at the top of a lot of gay werewolf novel lists (i'm keeping tabs) and there's a good reason. i enjoyed it a lot. made me kind of sad which is always a good sign to me. the writing voice was very fresh and novel at first but i did find it a little grating by the end so i've put off starting the second book in the series (it's also about a different couple which was disappointing) but i will get around to it. i enjoy tj klune in general although his recent stuff has a very different vibe than this and lightning struck heart is very 2015 in a bad way imo

-bone rider by j fally is a standalone that really delighted me. the russian mob? aliens? vaguely western? possession? throuple? it's got it all. very fun

-ok speaking of westerns there's this other series called magic & steam (yes it's steampunk. sorry. it's very silly) that starts with the engineer. a federal agent is sent to a town to apprehend a ~madman engineer~ except he runs into an infamous outlaw in the process. and the outlaw is really sexy. and probably why i enjoyed the series so much. the series also keeps them apart a lot in a way that i enjoy- i love when things take a long time. it's ongoing so this is another one that i keep checking for updates on

-i've read a lot of stuff by nr walker and they tend to be VERY hit or miss for me but one of my faves is evolved which is almost pure smut. it's about a sex robot that gains sentience. what more do i need to say. she also wrote a three-book series about an amnesiac that made me cry cry cry. and her cowboy (australian rancher) series is pretty ok. i could go through a list and tell you which novels of hers aren't worth it and which ones are good; i've read most of them

-salt magic skin magic by lee welch was a big surprise to me. cool magic, good folklore, fairies in there too. historical. big kj charles vibes which makes sense bc she edited it. welch also wrote a book called seducing the sorcerer which i had more mixed feelings about but had magic in it that i think about OFTEN (the horses)- that one's about an imposing sorcerer and a rundown groom cum handyman. and they're in their FORTIES!!! 🥳🥳🥳 (i love when books are not about 23 year olds)

-another one with a magic system i enjoyed was magician by kl noone. this was the first book i read by this author and i liked it but generally i find their books are too "nice" for me. i'm in the middle of one right now that i started months and months ago that i keep trying to go back to and it's sooo rough for me. but this one and the twelfth enchantment are pretty ok

-emily tesh wrote a duology of silver in the wood and drowned country that i loved because i am suuuuch a sucker for a wild man/green man story. really good. haunting! evocative! kj charles has a green man story too which was actually the first thing i read of hers (spectred isle)

-i complained about the monsterfucker book i was reading a while back but despite that i will also recommend the series it's from: lily mayne's monstrous, which starts with soul eater. are they messy? yes. are they repetitive? yes. are the monsters usually disappointingly humanoid? yes. are a lot of them about the military? also yes. so we're starting off on a bad foot. but the world building is interesting and there's LOTS of kinds of monsters and most of them were pretty fun. the one i just read (#7) was the worst one of the bunch though imo. and i have problems with #6. but 1 2 and 5 were good

-ok i should do a quickfire round. honeytrap: about two enemy agents during the cold war. put it off for a long time bc i didn't love that but it takes place over a VERY long period of time which is always interesting to me. zero at the bone: about a hitman who needs to protect a witness to a mob hit. really strong start but fell off a bit in the middle to the end imo.

-you'll notice a lot of these have subgenres of like fantasy historical supernatural etc but here's some regular contemporaries. a lot of these are about sad guys bc those are my favorite. best laid plans: hardware store owner helps a guy fix his house. in the middle of somewhere: same author actually. guy moves to small town to work at a college. mr jingle bells: this is a christmas one. bad title. fake dating. part of the reason i think i liked it so much is because i expected it to be awful but it was actually pretty good. good emotional stakes. published 2021 but feels very 2014. ignore that part. work for it: i rated this five stars but actually don't remember much what it was like. i think they were both really sad which i love. give me big emotions and i eat them right up with a spoon. i should read it again

-OK now i've got some straight & lesbian options. talia hibbert's brown sisters series is good and cute. she also wrote work for it, above. the unhoneymooners is the first real Romance Novel that i read and it really surprised me because i had fun! previously i had kind of written off romance novels as not for me but this kicked off a reading habit that is still going strong (primarily reading romance novels). i read this in 2020 so it might not be as good as i remember. as for lesbian options olivia waite has a series that i enjoyed that's also historical, and a friend of mine really enjoyed delilah green doesn't care (but i haven't read that one myself). and while not really romances i will always be a sarah waters fan: you may recognize her as the author of fingersmith, which is the novel park chan-wook's movie the handmaiden is based on. if you haven't seen the movie or read the book i recommend both. her books are very dramatic lesbian historical fiction; they don't always have happy endings but they're all very good

ok i think that's the end! regular disclaimer that romance is generally not a genre notable for Good Writing so a lot of these are just things i had fun with or just stuck out in my memory for having fun conceits etc. i can't guarantee that any of these are actually good, especially because this is a list solely based on my own taste and bad memory. would love to hear anybody's thoughts and/or if anybody has recommendations for ME!!! this post took me over three hours to write! crazy!

[cloudmancy]

not to rekindle old discourse if you've moved on, but i was listening to you & @kindlespark's interview on the complicated women podcast / have enjoyed reading your fhjy posts and wanted to ask your thoughts on why the beginning of the season felt so promising to you? i enjoyed the premiere and the premise of the stresses of 11th grade/the rat grinders as foils, but as the season continued i started to feel disillusioned - it seemed less and less like an interactive/collaborative story (cassandra's death, fig's quest to rehabilitate ruben, the ratgrinders being really hard to find/interact with in general) and more of a tour through some unsatisfying callback easter eggs (i simply don't care about porter and it kind of felt like not even emily did). imo the ratgrinders were set up to fail as a narrative concept ever since the bad kids got mad at them for grinding and brennan just sheepishly grinned and shrugged at the camera, and while i share your disappointment that there was no coming together/addressing the root academic injustices that plagued both the bad kids and the ratgrinders, i don't think it was as surprising to me, as the season had already felt too filled with bits/joking around to be that dramatically tight - ironically, i think they got too bogged down in roleplaying scholastic tedium. i tend to come to d20 with a mindset of like, this is primarily a comedy and if they end up producing a satisfying narrative arc, great (and they certainly have achieved this in the past), but i don't think it's a coincidence that most d20 seasons are regarded as having unsatisfying endings - i think it's an incredibly hard thing to do in a ttrpg setting, even for professionals, especially so if their instincts are more towards comedy. they are great artists and improvisers, but evidently that doesn't mean they can't fail to cohere, and i think this season suffered from a lack of investment in narrative all around - brennan not being as flexible with the plot as he's been in the past, the players i think (some anyway) feeling a little tired of these characters and playing them as more chaotic/violent than usual (kristen's random nudism, fig's truancy, gorgug's hatred/bullying of maryann, fabian threatening to skin ivy). idk, i'm just rambling at this point - my overall message is that i'm in agreement that the finale was a letdown, but i'm curious as to how you thought the promising themes interacted with the story/performances in the earlier parts of the season, cause when i look back at it i don't see a unified vision, just some individually interesting pieces that never seemed to fit together, and i don't think i just feel that way in hindsight, but am open to other perspectives (disclaimer that obv this is all opinion and subject to debate)

here are sam's thoughts on it!

ok my thing is that 1) i love porter as a villain and i don't think the twist takes away from his character; i think brennan tied him to ankarna REALLY well and with genuine thought. the lore drop scene in the temple was genuinely chilling and very very cool to me and brennan clearly set up a lot of lore around it that was interesting and not just funny bc fig thought he was bad the whole time. i think porter is a great character and had the bad kids engaged with his philosophy of rage and not had ice feast completely nullify his threat he could've been a really compelling villain. 2) i genuinely had hope for the rat grinders because of brennan's insistence to make npcs like eugenia talk about them as foils, the fact that they used to be the high-five heroes, and the fact that he made them closer to unwilling participants than actual villains. seemed like genuine threads of complexity that the bad kids just didn't pick up on, but i also clearly was fooled bc that brennan didn't react to fig's attempts to convert ruben shows that he wasn't really prepared to have the final battle as anything but tbk vs trg 😭 i think the downtime system was actually really fun and effective at portraying both scholastic tedium while also embellishing the themes (rage tokens!!) 3) this probably wasn't made clear in the ep but i didn't expect d20 to write a perfect thematic story about addressing systemic injustices; i just wanted them to give me any kind of thematic acknowledgment in the battle at all and not just with ankarna. i am very aware that im always reading into the subtext of d20 seasons--that lament is more for the subtext that Could've Been. i agree with you about everything you've said wrt ttrpg settings and lack of narrative investment, but i had higher hopes because fhsy and tuc are so much better with their themes and the themes brennan appeared to be setting up seemed so… obvious to me…. it had me ignoring all the red flags 😭

[niobiumao3]

Okay separate from 'who is Clone X' let me make an explicit list of reasons I think it's not Tech.

This is NOT to say I think Tech isn't alive. He definitely is IMO. Just not as Clone X.

So. Problems that arise if this Clone X is Tech, and would require some sort of explanation or at a minimum handwave:

Why is Pabu still standing? The moment Omega and Crosshair get away, a Clone X Tech would be activated so Hemlock can ask where they're going. Full stop. It's been way too long and that hasn't happened. An argument here could be he has amnesia. This works to explain not knowing where Pabu is, but now we're to, why was this Clone X not activated when Omega and Cross escaped? He was only activated once the other one was lost. That seems like a huge oversight. An added meta-issue here is so now we have a Clone X Tech who ALSO has amnesia. That's pretty convoluted and honestly I don't see how that gets dealt with alongside our other awaiting plot threads in the remaining episodes.

Why didn't Crosshair know? There's literally NO way Cross wouldn't have told Hunter, Wrecker, and Echo that Tech had been indoctrinated and needed rescuing, that would have been the first thing out of his mouth. He clearly doesn't do that. Possible explanation: Cross doesn't know. But these guys are clearly trained in cohorts and groups, we see Cross being rotated through with them frequently. So if Tech is a Clone X he has to have been trained completely separate from Cross. This seems odd because now two separate Clone Xs have known who Crosshair was the moment they laid eyes on him. It also adds another convoluting layer to the above: Tech has amnesia, and had to be indoctrinated fully separately from Crosshair with a totally different group or groups. Certainly Tantiss seems large enough for this but we're getting to a lot of folding layers to make this fit.

Why did Cross not break while Tech did? Crosshair talks about Clone Xs like they have a 'choice', but ofc that choice can easily be 'convert or suffer eternally'. Certainly that was implied by Cross' no good very bad time. This indicates Cross didn't break and Tech did. The man who hobbled around on a busted femur and shot out a connecting hinge without hesitation nor a waver in his hand and had the nerve necessary to race against droids. Cross says he thinks his resilience is because he's defective. He could be wrong about that, but if he's not, okay then once again, why Tech and not Cross? We could go with, well maybe Tech was badly injured and had serious trauma. Okay so NOW, he has amnesia (to explain why Pabu is still intact) and a traumatic injury, which makes him susceptible to indoctrination. Once again, that's a lot of shaving to fit this square peg into the round hole.

How did Wrecker, Hunter, and Crosshair all fight him not realize it was Tech? These guys grew up together, trained together, fought in the war together, and Hunter and Wrecker have been with Tech since then as well. How would they not recognize Tech in a fight? If we want to claim his style has changed, that runs counter to the Clone X's per Cross' description--they're not mindwiped, their memories aren't gone, their personalities aren't gone, they're just indoctrinated. Their personalities are still there, they've just been distilled into True Belief. Tech would ultimately still have Techlike tendencies, yet showed almost none of them. For example:

This guy is athletic as hell and never slips. If you go back over S1 and S2, Tech is slipping on solid unmoving surfaces all, the, time. It's an amazing bit they do for him. This guy? None of that.

I'm only slightly joking when I say, he does not one single completely unnecessary roll or flip. Tech did those all the time. He was born to be extra.

He tries fruitlessly to use his suit controls for his ship, never once makes an attempt to fix them.

Why was the throwdown with Crosshair and this guy so very personal if it's Tech and Crosshair doesn't know, having never met him? The Clone X is busy echoing Crosshair's own words to Hunter from S1 right back in his face during their brutal fight. Chances, choices, etc.; it's the same things Crosshair said once upon a time in an uglier life. This guy is a Shadow!Crosshair, in effect, which really does NOT work as a plot point if he's actually Tech (because per above, Tech would have to have all agency and choice stripped away to become this--he really, really would). This fight is personal; this person watched Cross go through the program and refuse it. This isn't someone who 'heard about' Cross denying them. Crosshair would then know this is Tech.

It is possible they can somehow explain all of this, I just don't see that happening without it turning into some sort of marlinspike-worthy twisting of the rope to work in amnesia and succumbing when Cross didn't and Cross not knowing AND Hunter and Wrecker not recognizing his fighting style. That's a lot.

Separate item:

What if it's Tech and Cross feels guilty and isn't telling anyone?

My main reason for thinking this doesn't work is that when Howzer stunned the Clone X off Cross and over a waterfall Cross failed to react about it in any way. I just do NOT think that would have happened if it was Tech and he knew. He'd have wanted to capture him at all costs and hope for SOME kind of solution, any kind.

Instead it's 'let's get the fuck out of here after we talk to Wolffe who is being a himbo about things'. Not a single thought to that guy.

I personally suspect Clone X is either a Named (Dogma, Slick, Cody, whatever) or, a random reg that Cross went through indoctrination with. They both tried to hold out, desperately. They were both about to slip. This other clone did; Cross was thinking of giving in ('I belong in here'), when Omega announces they're escaping. She saves him from that fate.

[beehiveofblorbos]

It’s August 15th! Happy Birthday, Tsumugi Shirogane!

Tsumugi is such a conflicting character for me! She’s the character I like that I think I could be the closest friends with off the drop, and a character I would push off a cliff without any hesitation. Overall, I would say she’s one of my favorite characters in fiction. I’ll drop an analysis I did of why I love her so much and what she means to me below, but for now, today is just to celebrate and make happy the Queen herself, Tsumugi Shirogane!

(lol sorry for all these copy-paste analyses I just am never prepared and it’s a good excuse to share stuff I already had written)

Analysis

The biggest crime, imo, that a character can commit… is being boring. Be rude, be evil, be sappy, be a loyal dog, be anything except uninteresting, unobtrusive, uninvolved.

So by the start of the ch6 investigation, I plain disliked Tsumugi Shirogane. Particularly as she was such a waste of the Cosplayer talent, which was something I was really excited for as someone who loves fan communities. I was super disappointed with the portrayal fans had had so far in Hifumi exactly falling in to assumptions people make about fans, and now Tsumugi seemed to be in line to be Sonia 2.0. All she’d really had as far as plot impact was be Gonta’s only true friend. She wasn’t really comic relief either; she had moments paused and timed for comedic effect, but they weren’t funny. She was just… weird.

And then. My god, when we pulled that shot put out of the trash, and Shuichi remarked about the pink fiber on it? When I realized Tsumugi was the mastermind? The one who’d been living among us all this time??? Instantly rose to become one of my top favorite Danganronpa characters. To this day I use her “oops, I let my hobbies slip in again” and other quotable lines as stock phrases XD I just can’t help myself, she’s so cute

She is absurdly intelligent; if you go back through and pay attention, Tsumugi is constantly generating conflict in subtle ways. She joins Angie’s cult to give them a significant enough percent of the class to be a real threat, in the trial she keeps diverting the topic back around to ghosts to keep Kaito scared and keep Shuichi off track, it goes on. You literally can’t help but see what she’s doing once you know that she’s actually being intentional about it, because it’s all a perfectly reasonable “role”: that of the sweet, naive Ultimate Cosplayer. And yeah, that’s why there’s a pause and focus for all of those jokes I didn’t get earlier - they’re horrifying AND funny in the light of the truth of the game

She is supremely arrogant; she spends her entire time in a killing game winking at the camera and making veiled references. Can you imagine the audacity involved in writing Kokichi? She wrote in an insanely intelligent character, gave him a motive video telling him to end the killing game, and had him survive almost till the end? She was so confident - and she was almost right to be so, because he never caught her. But he did manage to force her into stalemate so XD

She gives them sooo much leeway. She gives them Miu, she gives them Keebo, she gives Rantaro the Survivor Perk. What does she care? She’s perfectly designed everything to lead them to entrap themselves and keep killing each other. No mind control necessary - just suffering. And she considers this essential to be called the Ultimate Cosplayer.

She’s an actress. It’s part of her talent, but the entire world is essentially a stage, she’s the director and one of the main characters, and all the other characters are her props to move as she pleases. Isn’t that wild? I love her to bits for it.

[quaranmine]

The Incandescence of a Dying Light (Chapter Eleven)

This is a story about grief and fire.

Chapter eleven: 13,460 words

<< Chapter Ten | Masterpost | Chapter Twelve >>

Hello everyone! I’m so sorry for the wait. But chapter 11 and 12 together add almost 20k words to this fic, and I actually ended up redrafting and restructuring parts of these chapters a lot. I wanted them to be as perfect as possible, because these chapters are it: the core of the plot paying off. The bad news is it’ll probably devastate you, the good news is that I will be releasing chapter 12 a few days after this so there won’t be a wait.

There's several content warnings that apply to this chapter. It's not obvious because this is the tumblr copy of this fic, but it's marked as CNTW on AO3. CWs: general mental health/breakdown, dissociation, vomiting, death, suicidal ideation (of the abstract kind), fires/burn/injury. I don't think it's too graphic but it is…unpleasant imo.

July 1989

Grian hangs up on Scar with a flick of a button. It’s a lot less dramatic than the satisfying clack of slamming a telephone receiver down into its base, but the effect is just as instant. With a press of a button, he silences the faint static of the radio and Scar’s worried voice forever, bathing him in nothing but the silence of the forest. 

There’s him, the wind in the leaves above him, and the way his hands tremble as he sets the handheld radio down. Nothing else. 

He’s unsteady. It’s a good thing he’s already sitting on the forest floor. He clamps a hand over his mouth and squeezes his eyes shut. He sits there for a moment, trying to regain control of his ragged breathing, as if he can by just breathing through his nose instead. It’s not working. His thoughts are racing. He breathes faster instead. 

He feels—

Broken. Betrayed. Bitter. Burning himself over and over with the same mistakes, pitfalls, and dangerous hopes as always. 

He feels like an idiot. 

He feels like an idiot, because why should he assume someone was in his corner? Why did he ever say anything to Scar? Why didn’t he shut up? Why did he trust that when Scar helped him, it was because Scar believed him? Why did he fall for it? 

He should have known better. He’s alone out here. It’s been like that since the beginning. It was kind of the point, actually. To come out here and be alone, because that’s the only way he’ll fix anything. He failed that goal by making friends with a stranger instead and now he’s suffering for it. It hurts too much.

But perhaps worse, perhaps the most insidious thought that keeps snaking around his mind is—

What if Scar is right? 

The thought is like a giant, flashing billboard in his mind. He can turn away from it, but he knows it’s behind him. He can close his eyes against it, but the lights still blink against his eyelids. When he opens his eyes, he sees the stark truth of it all in each miserable outline of leaves against the sky. There’s some sort of wave crashing over him, and he isn’t sure which way is up anymore. 

Everything is unavoidable, constantly present. Unpleasant. 

He tries to find his logic again, but the bright, clear throughline he’s been following since day one is frayed. It shouldn’t matter what Scar thinks, in the same way it doesn’t matter what Pearl or Jimmy or any of his other friends think. It shouldn’t matter that Mumbo hasn’t been back to collect his things, because this is not proof that anything happened to him. This is only proof that Mumbo got lost, and that’s something Grian has known since day one. There is nothing new here, except proof that Mumbo was in this location at some point. That should be good news, a new puzzle piece for him to worry over.  

It shouldn’t matter, but—

He feels very small in the forest suddenly. The trees around him have no stake in who lives and dies. They stand tall, a witness to the happenings of everything beneath them, but they cannot interfere. There are miles and miles of wilderness around Grian. There are mountain streams and creeks and gullies and canyons and caves that no human has seen for years. There is an almost infinite number of trees and flowers and grasses and shrubs and mammals and birds and bugs that populate this little world, and Grian is but one tiny speck in the midst of this. So is Mumbo. 

He can’t find meaning in this. He can’t dig up some special exception, some reason that Mumbo is uniquely special in this ecosystem and it will all solve itself happily because the very ground itself will vow to keep him alive. This is a place filled with life and death and cutting wind and sharp stones. This is a place where fires raze down forests, mountain lions kill straggling deer, and people go missing. 

These thoughts send him spiraling again. 

So instead he tries to bury the feeling again, with desperate shaky hands. Like a zombie apocalypse, it just won’t stay dead. He’s dizzy. He stands up suddenly, leaving his own pack on the ground next to Mumbo’s, and takes a staggering step backwards to gain some distance from it all.

He has to find the rest of Mumbo’s camp before he moves on.

He tells himself not to dwell on it, but every other thought is punctuated by it. He tells himself to stop freaking out, to keep going, to just move forward, to keep his feet on the ground, but his laser focus is burnt out. These are all the things he’s told himself before, and it worked then. Why won’t it work now? 

He finds Mumbo’s campsite easily through the trees, since it’s only a few hundred feet from where he left his food. The campsite is totally empty. Mumbo clearly packed everything up before he left to make sure he didn’t tempt any curious wildlife. 

It’s rather anticlimactic, really, the way nothing is left here. There is an open space on the ground begging to have a tent set up on it, and a ring of stones encircling the ashes of an old campfire. Maybe Mumbo made that fire. When he went camping in early June of last year there wouldn’t have been any fire restrictions in place yet, at least not until the disastrous Yellowstone fires started shortly afterward. Or maybe it’s just as likely that someone else made it, since this campsite has clearly been used by other people in the past. 

It’s a beautiful place, he realizes. For some reason the realization puts a lump in his throat. Mumbo chose this spot because it was beautiful, and it is beautiful. It is beautiful. 

They’re in an aspen grove, surrounded by stark white trunks and bright green leaves. The aspens always have the brightest green leaves, compared to the darker green of the spruce trees. Grian has learned their colors well after spending so long examining the landscape from his tower. He loves how the different types of trees form a patchwork of different colors on the slopes. These trees will glow even brighter in autumn, when they paint the hillside in gorgeous golden yellow. 

Scar told him once that aspen groves are actually all one tree. An aspen can reproduce by essentially cloning itself and sending up shoots to sprout as a new sapling. All of the clones share a root system, and their leaves will turn color at the same time. But to the person standing in the middle like Grian, it looks like an endless amount of trees instead of a single entity. It looks like eternity, just like the mountains and hills look like eternity from the high point of his lookout tower. 

Aspens also like to grow in recently burned areas. This one, though, hasn’t seen fire for some time. The colony is mature, and from Grian’s perspective the trees are uncountable. He’s surrounded by them, and he’s alone, but the trees aren’t alone. They’ve got all their twins next to them. But there’s nobody to stand next to him. There’s nobody here but him. 

He turns around, and stares at the pair of backpacks on the ground. He needs to figure out what to do with Mumbo’s pack. There isn’t any way he can carry it. He has his own weight to carry, and he has no room to add anything else. For the distances he needs to travel, he can’t afford to add more weight. He chokes a little on this realization. This is just another thing he’s going to have to leave behind. 

There’s a hierarchy of things, and finding Mumbo himself is more important than keeping his belongings. 

Finding Mumbo—

In any way. 

Grian said that once earlier in the summer, about another missing person. He hoped they were found, in any way. For some reason, he remembers saying this now. He remembers finding the poster for that missing person, and thinking so fiercely how much it hurt that nobody was still in his corner after all these years. He remembers the ache that settles in around lost causes, and the deep sadness in Scar’s voice when he talked about how long that man’s case had been unsolved. 

He’s becoming that person who gives up on lost causes. 

No! 

He shakes his head sharply, like it’s going to rattle the thoughts right out. He isn’t going to do that. He can’t do that. He isn’t like that. He isn’t giving up on Mumbo, because there is nothing to give up. This is just the test of faith at the eleventh hour. He needs to press further, because this is just the next step in his case. Nothing has changed. Nothing has changed. 

What evidence is there, really, of Mumbo being dead? A missing persons report? The endless months on the calendar? The harsh winters? The abandoned survival equipment? None of that is physical, tangible proof. None of that is, is—

None of that is a body. That means he needs to keep going. That means he needs to keep going, even if he hikes until his feet bleed. 

But…what evidence is there, really, of Mumbo still being alive? 

This thought is a cliff, and Grian is stumbling over the edge into the abyss. At the last moment he turns back, flinging out a hand and grasping whatever he can find to keep himself from falling. Going over the edge means opening up a world of possibilities Grian doesn’t know how to deal with, or even begin to approach. It violently resets every facet of his life into something completely different. Something that can’t, and won’t, ever be the same. He doesn’t know how to live with that, and so before the yawning maw of these thoughts can eat him, he shoves them away. 

He scrambles away from the edge into safety.

But once you know the edge is there, it never leaves. 

He has to go somewhere else. He must go forward. The thing about life is that everyone must always go forward. When Grian couldn’t get out of bed last year, he still woke up the next day even if he didn’t remember falling asleep. When he skipped work, the bills still arrived. When Grian took this job, every mile he walked was another piece of the mystery shaved down into something slightly more manageable. 

No matter if Grian is being dragged there or not, all he knows how to do is move forward. The only way to stop is to be dead. Did Mumbo stop? Did Mumbo stop going forward? 

Where would Mumbo have gone? What would his goal have been? 

He must have hiked further upward. The Pinnacles trail is named for its interesting rock formations, and this trail gets much more difficult the further one hikes. There is a pass at the top where it dips down the other side of the mountain and joins the old river trail that fur trappers used to use. Mumbo would have had to hike this trail instead of ride it. That's obviously why he left his bike. There’s too many steps and too many rocks to do anything else. 

So, up he goes. Before he leaves, he places Mumbo’s pack against the tree it was strung up in, upright like a crude headstone. It’s a brightly colored, out of place marker in this natural setting—something crafted and sewn by human hands, carried by human bodies, and left behind consciously by a human mind. 

Grian leaves. 

He barely thinks about where he puts his feet, even when the trail starts to get fainter beyond the pinnacles it is named for. He barely thinks about anything grounded in reality at all with the way his thoughts circle relentlessly. He stumbles a few times, missing steps, but it doesn’t matter. 

The Pinnacles trail is not actually just an out-and-back trail; it’s a spur trail that connects into a larger network of wilderness routes. It’s as well-traveled as a highway up until it reaches the main landmark, and after that it drops off to a route only marked by the occasional cairn. It is clear that most hikers turn around after reaching the stones. Grian knows Mumbo kept going, because Grian knows Mumbo. 

The top of the mountain is not far from here.  It seems like something that would have drawn Mumbo to keep going further. It’s some sort of tangible achievement, with a view to match. Since Mumbo was camped along the trail, it wouldn’t have taken him long to reach the pinnacles, unlike visitors who likely started much farther down by Jonesy Lake. Why stop and waste the rest of the day? 

Mumbo had taken this time off last year to get a break from his job. He used to come home from it looking hunted—chased down with too many demands for too little reward. He used to talk about quitting. He had wondered if it had been worth it to even take the job. He moved to another country for it, after all. 

Whether it was worth it or not wasn’t something Grian could answer for him. He’d just listen to Mumbo complain instead, and then maybe change the subject to something more fun, something distracting. It always bothered him to listen to Mumbo speak like that. 

The answer to the problem was more complicated than just quitting, though. Grian could stay in the country as long as he wanted thanks to his dual citizenship. He was essentially there at a whim, following Mumbo so that he didn’t have to move to another country alone. Mumbo, however, was on a working visa that required him to keep a job in order to legally stay. His job was sponsoring him, allowing him to apply for the visa in the first place. As such, it wasn’t as simple as merely quitting. 

Maybe he just wanted some sort of achievement to take back home, like climbing a mountain. Something he could think about when his boss tried to make him feel worthless. 

Grian keeps going, and carries the pain and the pointlessness of it all as heavily as his bag that bites into his collarbones. 

»»———-　　———-««

It isn’t until Grian is forced to stop, coughing and hacking so violently he feels like he may break his own ribs, that he even remembers Scar’s plaintive admonition. 

Keep your radio on. Switch to the main frequency. Be aware. Come back, please. Be safe.

This message was lost to him in the noise his brain filled with as soon as he tried to think about Mumbo’s fate, but the more he coughs the more his mind is brought sharply back into physical reality. He coughs painfully and keeps coughing, unable to stop at all, until finally he is gasping for breath and fumbling with the water bottle he keeps in the side pocket of his backpack. He drinks half of it down in large, greedy gulps. 

He’s above the treeline now. Somewhat alarmingly, he barely remembers getting here, but the pain in his throat has brought him squarely back into the unfortunate land of the living. He leans against a nearby rock, head spinning from the sudden clarity. 

It’s the smoke that is the problem. It seems everywhere now, even though earlier it was just the faintest scent on the wind now and then. Now it clings everywhere in his nose and mouth and throat and lungs. 

This also dawns on him with slow horror: He can’t see his tower from here. 

Given the elevation he’s at now, there shouldn’t be any reason that he can’t look across the horizon and find the tiny man-made angles of his former home. He’s far enough away that it will be extremely small, but it should still be visible to the trained eye. The entire point of a lookout, of course, is its visibility. He cannot see it, however. Even more worryingly, he can’t even properly see the mountain it sits on. 

Instead he sees nothing but haze. The air to the east is dense and orange. Before, the smoke was in a specific direction. Now, it seems like it’s everywhere. 

The air itself seems to have an orange cast to it right now. It feels like a dusty sunset, where the light is intensely copper, and thus Grian’s mind keeps trying to tell him it’s later in the day than it actually is. It’s somewhere around 6 PM in reality. In the middle of summer like this, the sun won’t set for another three hours. And still, the light is so exceptionally orange. 

Dread grows in the pit of his stomach as he tries to pick out where the fire is, and realizes he can’t. Alarm flares in him. This fire is not like the leisurely slow-burn of the Trout Fire last month. It is a behemoth of thick billowing smoke that seems like it has doubled since Grian first spotted it this morning. The intense smoke right now is what keeps Grian from seeing its edges.

How big is that thing, actually? And what direction is the wind blowing? 

The answer settles over him like the particulate matter he’s already inhaling: the wind is most likely blowing towards him. He smells the smoke now. He couldn’t smell it earlier. 

For good measure, he starts coughing again and hangs his head while he does, waiting for the fit to pass. When he finally stops, he digs a bandana from somewhere in the depths of his bag and ties it around his face. It’s a poor excuse for any sort of proper protection, but it limits the amount of smoke making its way into his lungs the best it can. At the absolute minimum, he has a placebo effect working for him. 

He pulls out his radio again, and stares at it for a moment, before caving and turning it on. He dials it into the main Forest frequency, at least the one for the Wapiti District. For some reason, it’s full of static. Is it the distance? He isn’t sure. He knows his tower serves as a repeater, but he doesn’t understand how it all works. This only adds to the mounting dread and he fiddles around, trying to make it sound stronger. He can pick out about half of what is being said, and tries to fill in every few words by context clues alone. Dispatch is clear. The ground crew is garbled. He’s only really getting one side of the picture, and not the side he needs the most. 

While he listens, he watches. 

Jonesy Lake is part of the Two Forks district, his district, and it’s to the west of his tower. The Thorofare district, Scar’s lookout, is north of his tower. This fire had started somewhere on the other side of Jonesy Lake, a little southwest. Pinnacles is further northwest, out of Grian’s district and into someone else’s. 

What is concerning is that this fire, the southwesterly fire, has grown. It is more of a northwesterly fire now. He can no longer see where his trail originated, and he should be able to see it given how high he is on the mountain. His view is unobstructed by trees or hills, and he still can’t see it. He started in a meadow far below, and now he’s at the top. He can’t see the meadow anymore. 

Grian falls back onto habit, and begins to watch the fire like he was trained. His heart beats in his chest like a hammer though—it is far more exhilarating and terrifying than it is from the safety of his tower. He’s going through the motions in his head, listening to reports and checking the wind speed the best he can and tallying the daylight hours remaining and the cardinal directions and running the mental calculations. He’s—

He’s scared. He’s utterly terrified. 

This is a new type of panic, distinct from the call of the abyss he felt earlier. That panic had been earth-shattering. This panic is primal, but it creeps over him slowly. 

The man from dispatch is directing a fire crew on the ground that must have either been flown in or hiked in after Grian did. He says the fire is moving deeper into the backcountry, away from Jonesy Lake. This is both a blessing and curse. A blessing, as it protects the main tourist attraction of the area and historic structures such as Grian’s lookout. A curse, because the deeper a fire is in the backcountry the more difficult and expensive it is to fight. 

It’s also a curse because Grian is on the wrong side of the fire. It’s between him and getting back out. It wasn’t like that earlier in the day, or maybe he wouldn’t have bothered to try to find Mumbo’s campsite after all. He’s not that crazy, he swears he isn’t. He would have waited another day, he would’ve figured something out. He wouldn’t have walked purposefully toward a wildfire. 

The wind has changed direction.

“I can’t go back the way I came,” he realizes, and it’s this spoken-out-loud sentence that finally snaps him into action. It’s like a bucket of ice water was dumped over his head.

He snatches up his bag. He can’t stay here and wait to figure it out. He needs to go now.

Immediately, he turns his back on the fire, looking at the steep final pitch he needs to scramble up in order to cross the mountain pass. If he can make it to the other side, he’ll be deeper in the backcountry and away from the fire. Maybe Mumbo went over there too at one point—further into the beyond that Grian can’t save him from. Lost in the hills of a different set of valleys. 

He takes one step forward, but this isn’t right. This isn’t right at all. He feels information come to him like an uneasy prickle on the back of his neck. It’s a barely uncovered thought, something he heard once while Scar was talking about the Trout Fire and filed away somewhere in his brain ever since. 

Wildfires move faster uphill than they do downhill. 

Like, insanely faster. Deadly faster. 

Scar had told him this, and then he’d made some sort of joke about the irony of their lookouts being perched on the highest hills in the area. He told Grian that sometimes lookouts needed to be evacuated from wildfires via helicopter, and that if a fire reached the base of either of their mountains they would be in imminent danger. Grian, of course, reacted to this much in the same way he did when thinking about lightning striking his tower or meeting a grizzly bear on the trail: fear. Scar laughed in that infuriating way he did sometimes, where danger didn’t really exist and risk seemed to be something he played with ease. 

The danger does exist. Grian’s run his allotment of risk-taking dry. Scar wasn’t laughing anymore about this on the radio earlier today. It’s not just his elevation at play, here. It’s also the wind blowing toward him. 

His heart pounds. 

He should go…down. That’s something people do in these situations. He should go down, and away, as far as he can and as fast as he can. 

He nearly makes a move to switch his radio back to the frequency he and Scar share, just so he can ask. He doesn’t though, stopping himself at the last second. His finger hovers over the button, but he doesn’t press it. It stings more than it should. Right, he’s—

Failing at finding Mumbo. An idiot. In danger. 

—going to have to go downhill. 

His brain snaps onto a new plan immediately: valleys. 

Water runs downhill. Every valley and canyon was carved by water. The snowmelt off these peaks form hundreds of ephemeral streams each spring, most of which flow downhill into a bigger stream. Those bigger streams often flow between the mountains and form the tributaries of the Yellowstone River. He’d crossed a stream earlier in the meadow, a nice little makeshift log bridge covering it. 

Water and fire don’t mix. If he goes downhill, he’ll probably find that stream at some point—nearly a sure bet in this type of topography. He’ll be safe if he goes down. He’ll be safer if he’s next to water. He needs to find water. 

Don’t they use streams as temporary fire lines? Could the fire cross that? He isn’t sure, but he’ll take the unknown over the certain danger he does know. 

Grian picks a direction away from the fire as far away as he can possibly angle himself, gives it a long final look, and nearly flees downhill. 

The route is, to put it lightly, rough. The trail was already steep, but at least it was cut into the mountainside and worn from many feet crossing it. At least it was marked, tried, and tested. The open slope of the mountain is more random under his feet, and every time he steps onto loose scree he nearly falls as it rolls under his boots. He does end up falling one or two times, and it’s more like his feet gently sliding out from under him. He doesn’t run, for fear of tripping, but he lightly hops down and over rocks and pushes past bushes. As he drops in elevation, the amount of vegetation surrounding him increases and the hiking gets more difficult. 

Soon he’s back into the forest, disoriented again. He can’t really see the fire anymore—all he knows is that he was going this way, this way, so he keeps going that way. The air is thick and burnt, heavy with haze. He knows he’s still going the right direction by picking whichever way the air is the clearest. Still, every time he has to go around an obstacle, there’s a fear in his chest that he won’t find his chosen direction again.

The mountain is getting steeper the further he goes down. It is not leveling out like he expected it to. There was a meadow at the bottom, wasn’t there? Or was that—was that more to the southeast? After scrambling down a short drop he stops again to catch his breath, wheezing through the bandana. He pulls out the topo map he took out of Mumbo’s file, tries to look at the lines to find the safest way down, and—oh. 

He doesn’t know where he is anymore. 

He knows what direction he went when he left the trail, and what direction the fire was in, but there’s no way for him to tell which little ripple and bump in the topography has his current location. He doesn’t know how far he has gone, or where on the slope he is. This is concerning, but truthfully it barely registers in his mind. He’s still smelling smoke. He can sort his location out afterwards if necessary. 

He puts the map back into his bag. Right, this isn’t good, but he just needs to keep going down. He needs to keep going down. He shouldn’t think about the smoke he can smell, or the lack of visibility, or his own stupidity. Does it feel hotter or is his mind playing tricks on him? Is he having a heart attack or is he just out of breath? Is he going to die?

Is he going to die? 

The way this question takes over his brain is almost fascinating. He hasn’t—he hasn’t focused so much on himself in a long time. He’s focused every ounce of energy he has into finding Mumbo. And Mumbo—Mumbo isn’t here, but he is, and is he going to die?

Does he mind?

No, of course he minds. The fire might as well be lit beneath his feet instead of further down the mountain with the way he’s running. 

Grian is so busy contemplating if he is going to die or not—and really, his brain shouldn’t be running these two scripts at once, he should be fully focused in the moment, but even now there’s that string of panicked thoughts—that he almost misses it when the ground goes from kind-of-steep to dangerously steep. He scrambles to a stop, disoriented, and finds himself looking over an edge. 

Calling it a cliff is generous. It’s not really a cliff, not in the “hundred foot straight drop” sense. He looks to the side, but there isn’t a clear way to avoid the drop by going down the side. It’s rocky, and he can probably climb his way down if he’s careful about it. 

He swings his legs out of over the drop with the intention of lowering himself a little slower to the next spot to put his feet. He lets the gravity take him, but the backpack he’s carrying is heavy and unwieldy enough to throw off his balance, so—

“Ah!” he shouts, and then lands sharply on his ankles. There’s a split-second of pain before he’s falling to the side, the weight on his back dragging him down when his feet don’t stick the landing. 

And he’s going down again, much faster than intended. 

He’s sliding now, taking dirt and gravel with him, because the rock he’d been intending to land on wasn’t really that stable of a spot to begin with, it was just one piece of a controlled descent, but he’s out of control now. And he can’t stop. 

The rocks tear at his clothes, his limbs, his backpack. 

He lands several feet down, stopped by the merciful branches of a prickly bush. 

He’s okay. He’s actually okay. His heart beats wildly, and he takes a moment to tip his neck back, resting his head on the top of the pack that still sits on his shoulders. He doesn’t even extract himself from the branches immediately. He just sits, and pants for a minute.

There’s another drop just in front of him, a lot further than the one he just fell from. A little less “second story window” and a little more “probable severe injury.”  He stares at it. He could’ve fallen down that. The more he starts to come down from the adrenaline rush, the more his ankle starts to throb. It doesn’t seem to be broken though, just sore. It’s just background noise to him at this point. 

He balls his hands into fists, fingernails cutting into his palms. This is just—this is just adding insult to injury, at this point. This is all stupid. He’s making stupid decisions, stupid lapses in judgement, and he doesn’t know how to stop.  

Can’t he do anything right? Can’t he just do this one, one thing? After all this time, all this effort?

Can’t he just find his best friend? Can’t he do this without damaging all his other relationships, with the people at home who care about his well being? Can’t he do this without upsetting Scar? Can’t he do this without hurting himself, or putting himself in danger, or hurting everyone else? Can’t it just stop?

He just wants it all to stop. 

Something picks him up off the ground, anyway. 

He dusts off his pants, a futile motion for a person who’s been hiking for a day and a half straight. He tests his weight on his ankle which, while definitely feeling weak, holds him. He takes stock of his new location: still somewhere on the side of this mountain, still lost. He dropped from a further height than planned, and the only thing that awaits him is more rock scrambling. Above him are rocks, and below him are…rocks, with maybe a tree or two. 

He thinks he spies some sort of ledge, or at least something he can walk laterally down, so he heads for it. Hopefully he’ll find a spot that’s easier to go down than the one he landed in. He doesn’t really have a choice to figure something out. 

There’s something off about this location though, and he doesn’t know what it is. He almost feels silly for noticing it, and writes it off as his head still spinning from the overwhelming amount of input he’s parsing. His heart still hasn’t calmed yet, and there’s no way he’s getting a good amount of oxygen for his exertion with all the smoke in the air.

He reaches the ledge, and realizes it is part of an overhang. At one point in time, this rock shelter weathered when the softer stone eroded faster than the harder layer of stone above it. Today, it’s just one more feature in the steep northeastern slope of the Pinnacles mountain. 

He looks to the left, and then—

That’s when he spies it. 

He’ll remember it, just like he remembers the day he told Mumbo it was a good idea to go on his trip alone. He’ll remember it, just like he remembers the day the ranger told him Mumbo never made it back to his car. He’ll remember it, just like he remembers when the search was finally suspended after three weeks. He’ll remember it, just like he remembers lying in bed in a daze, thinking about how deep the snow gets in Shoshone National Forest over the winter. 

He’ll remember it, just like he remembers the first time someone told him Mumbo was probably dead. 

There is a figure under the overhanging rock. It’s so random it almost seems comical, if it weren’t for the way Grian immediately feels sick. There’s a figure curled in this tiny spot of shelter on the mountainside, as far as one could possibly get away from the rain or sun or cold.

It is not another rock, or a tree branch, or an animal. It’s—it’s a person. Every contour and slightest variation in shape matches. Grian knows what a person is shaped like, he knows it deep in his DNA, where he’s programmed from the inside out into knowing what another human looks like. It’s instinctual. It’s something he was born with. 

This isn’t an animal, this is something much more important. This is a human. 

And just as instinctually, he also knows that this is no longer a human. It’s a corpse. What once was no longer is, and what lies before him on the stone is something he’s not meant to see. There is a primeval part of his brain, concerned with survival and avoiding danger—concerned with avoiding disease and all those other medieval problems—that tells him he should avoid this at all costs. It’s danger. It was human, but it’s not anymore. He should go, but he’s rooted to the ground. 

It’s—

He’s—

Time stops. The thick scent of smoke still hangs in the air, just as it has all evening, but the wind doesn’t blow in the treetops. The flames in the forest don’t lick any higher. Time folds in on itself until it’s this one, small moment, incapable of folding any further and bursting with unreleased potential energy as everything else holds still. Nothing else matters. There is nothing else but this and this and this, and this and this and this. 

This isn’t Mumbo. 

Mumbo doesn’t exist anymore, and the person Mumbo was before doesn’t exist anymore, because the person in front of him was alive once but is no longer, and the person in front of him is a corpse. It’s a thing, it’s an object, it’s disgusting, it’s—it isn’t Mumbo. Mumbo isn’t like this. Mumbo has endless potential. He’s smart. He’s nervous. He’s kind. He’s silly.

And yet—he knows it’s Mumbo. It is him. It cannot be anyone else. He knows it better than anything he has known before, and he recognizes it immediately even when Mumbo is unrecognizable. He knows Mumbo well enough that he can recognize him even when he isn’t himself anymore, even when he’s something else. 

Even when he’s dead. 

That’s all. It’s a horrifying, horrifying, finality. He’s dead. Two words, one sentence, everything. It’s not real, because it can’t be. It cannot be true, because if it is, then nothing else is true either.  

He’s dead and, and, this is it isn’t it? This is it. This is all there is and all there was this entire time. This is the breaking of everything he believes in, split down the middle, carving into his chest with a sharp knife, cracking open his ribs until there’s blood spattered on the floor. The world sort of spins in his purview, dizzying, and he drops to his knees without noticing or caring about it. 

He wants to touch him, but he can’t. He wants to hug him one last time, or hold him, and tell him it’s alright, but he can’t. He recoils at the sight and stops just short, still kneeling on the ground. It’s been months. It’s been—a year, because Grian knows what he’s always known, what he’s always ignored, what other people have told him over and over again, which is that Mumbo never had much of a chance anyway. He was dead long ago. He didn’t hang in there for a few months and succumb to the winter. He didn’t survive the winter and then fail to find the resources to live through the spring. 

He’s been dead this whole time. 

He’s been—

Grian has been so stupid. And yet, he’d rather be stupid than look at this now. He’d rather not know what he knows now. He doesn’t want to. He doesn’t want to do anything. He doesn’t want to be here at all.

Mumbo might have already been dead when Grian walked the trails by Cloud Lake last summer. He might have already been dead by the time the helicopters were sent out. He was likely already dead by the time the searches were suspended, just like the incident commander had regretfully informed him. He was probably still alive when Grian reported him missing, though. 

He was dead this entire summer, and most of last summer. Grian’s stomach lurches.

It’s been months. It’s…obviously been months. The elements aren’t kind. The winters are harsh and the summer sun is cruel, even in the mild shelter this overhang offers. Rocks can’t protect from everything. The animals haven’t been kind, either. None of the elements know. The wilderness doesn’t know. They don’t know—they don’t know that this is Mumbo, Grian’s best friend, his everything. They just don’t see—

Grian sees. 

Bones. Insects. Desiccated flesh. Eye sockets. No hair, no face, stained ripped clothes, broken and gnawed bones—

He turns to the side and vomits, barely yanking the bandana off his head in time. He nearly chokes on it, spitting miserable bile and unable to take a breath, and thinks, I don’t want to be here anymore. I want to be gone, like he is, so that I don’t have to see this, or feel this, anymore. 

When he’s done he drops his head between his knees and screams. And with that, something breaks inside him, and he’s no longer kneeling but laying on his side, curled in the fetal position. It’s the same position Mumbo was in. His entire body trembles.

The air is thick with too many scents. There’s the ever-present smell of burning, and the smell of his vomit next to him, and the smell of other things he’s never wanted to put a name to. He gags again, and somewhere along the way that heave turns into a cry. 

He sobs. He sobs so hard his whole body shakes with the effort. He sobs so hard that he can’t breathe, and he starts to feel a little dizzy, until that primeval part of his brain concerned with survival takes over once again and drags the breath from his lungs. He wants to, though. He wants to cry so hard he actually passes out. He doesn’t want his brain to force him to take a breath when he doesn’t think he can. He wants to be anywhere but here. He wants to be gone. He wants to be dead.

He can’t live with this. 

He doesn’t want to live with this. 

There’s no point to it, is there?

There’s no point to anything, is there?

His sobs turn into coughing after a while, his throat and lungs dry from the large gulps of air he’s been taking in. It’s painful deep in his chest, but it eventually subsides leaving him exhausted. 

He lies still. His body still shakes. With every shallow inhale and exhale he trembles. His face feels waxy and foreign and his limbs like lead. He uncurls slightly. No part of his body feels like it’s attached to his mind anymore. 

There is him, and there is his body, and there is Mumbo, and none of them are in the same place right now. 

He watches the light move imperceptibly on the cave wall, as the sun slowly gets dragged back down the horizon and the shadows lengthen and bend. Darkness comes early to the mountain hollows, when the trees and the rocks and hills block the sun from view. It was late afternoon when he found Mumbo’s camp. It was early evening when he started back down the mountain for his own safety.

Does his safety matter anymore? Does he want it to matter? Does he even care? He doesn’t know what time it is anymore, but still the sun moves slowly along the walls. 

He watches the light get dragged away from him. 

Grian stays there for a period of time he can’t measure. The shadow drifts along the wall as the light fades more, but the light in the cave doesn't necessarily dim, it just grows more golden. He shuts his eyes against this. Orange might just be his least favorite color, the way it permeates everything from the setting sun to the hazy evening air. 

But—it’s Scar’s favorite color, isn’t it? 

He still has his radio. His pack might be discarded up top, but he has kept the radio in his pocket no matter what. Its yellow light was blinking earlier, back when he was at his towers this morning, hours ago, lifetimes ago. It’s still alive, however. It’s there, just a button press away. He could do it, but it’s like the radio doesn’t even belong to him anymore. 

He fumbles in his pocket with a hand that’s not his. He brings the radio up to his face, dirty and scraped and resting on the rocky cave floor. It’s a foreign object. Slowly, with a thumb that’s not his own, he depresses the side button and hears a voice that’s not his own rasp a single name. His lifeline. 

“Scar.”

The effect is immediate. “Grian!” the radio crackles, but Grian’s head is still funny and none of this is happening in the real world, so he loses most of the next sentence to the growing static in his mind. The connection is clear, but the words are not. “I was trying . . . ages ago, are . . . still . . . Do you . . .”

“Scar,” Grian says again, and this time the voice sounds more like his, and he says it because it’s all he can say. 

“Are you okay?” Scar says. “Please tell me you’re okay, please, you stopped responding hours ago and I—I’m worried, I’ve been keeping an eye on the situation. What’s going on?”

Grian drifts again. He stares at the delineation between light and shadow on the wall, and contemplates the smell of smoke. It’s more acrid than the smell of a normal campfire. It smells like plastic, which is crazy, because shouldn’t the only thing that’s burning be wood and leaves? It’s so strong it threatens to suffocate him. He wishes it would.  

Finally, he formulates something else. “He’s here,” he says, and his voice breaks. 

“Who’s here?” Scar says. 

“It’s Mumbo,” Grian says, with a strangled noise. “He’s here,” and the present tense sounds so wrong and right in his mouth, because he’s not really here but he should be. He’s not a person anymore and Grian is. He’s sitting right next to Grian, but Grian is here and he isn’t.

Nothing about this is fair. It shouldn’t have been like this. It shouldn’t have been like this. 

“Oh, Grian,” Scar says, and his voice is infinitely gentle. Grian could lose himself in that voice, let it cover him and sweep him away to a place where he doesn’t have to think about this anymore. His voice is a facsimile of reality, though. The real world hurts more. It doesn’t mean Grian wants to listen to him any less. 

Scar is still speaking. He somehow knows the things Grian doesn’t say. He knows the things that linger in the air and smoke between them. All he says is, “Oh no.”

Scar’s voice is—Scar’s voice is familiar in a way that breaks Grian all over again. It’s this little bit of sympathy, this person who might come even the slightest bit to understanding, that makes him feel like he can’t handle it anymore. What little he’s doing to compose himself in this situation needs to be handed over to Scar completely, because Scar knows. He can understand. 

Grian breaks at the sound of Scar’s voice. He starts crying again, as hard as before, and he depresses the button on his radio again, nearly delirious and unintelligible, and starts talking to Scar. 

“It’s not supposed to be like this, Scar,” he cries. “I was su-supposed to be here too. He asked me to go with him, and I said no, so he came out here alone, and it’s—it’s my fault. And I never found him in time, and it’s my fault, he’s dead now, and he’s been dead for months, and, and, this wasn’t supposed to happen!”

He doesn’t say You were right. He doesn’t say The search and rescue team was right. He doesn’t say Jimmy and Pearl were right. He doesn’t say any of that at all. He just cries. 

“Shh,” Scar says. “It’s okay, it’s okay. No, it isn’t. I would never lie to you, G. Nothing is okay. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

“I can’t take this, I can’t take this, I can’t take this,” Grian babbles. “I need to—I can’t—I can’t take this. This isn’t real.”

“Grian—” he doesn’t finish the sentence. He doesn’t have to. He lets go of his radio’s button, turning control of the tragedy back over to Grian. 

“He was everything, Scar!” 

Grian feels like his chest is a black hole, sucking his body into itself and rending it apart into shattered pieces. There is nothing left. There is nothing left but this, and there is nothing more important than this. 

He’s silent for a long time, with tears slipping down his face and a body too tired to sob any longer. He’s silent for probably too long, because his radio incessantly crackles and warbles, but the words Scar is speaking don’t make sense any longer. It might as well be white noise, like logs burning in a fire on a cozy evening. Grian’s checked out. 

He hears nothing but the distant rush in his ears.

He’s too tired to engage, so he turns the radio off and stares at the light moving across the wall again. In the time he’s spoken to Scar, the shadow has made it to the next crack in the stone. For a while there is nothing but him and the fading light, and the corpse just outside his peripheral. 

There’s him, his best friend, that thick artificially golden light, and the smell of vomit-inducing failure. 

He deserves to die here next to Mumbo. It’s how it should have been, if he’d just gone with Mumbo like he was supposed to have, instead of working instead. Whatever issue Mumbo experienced, Grian should have experienced it alongside him. This is all his fault. It’s all his fault, and he deserves nothing more than to spend the rest of his days right here. 

How could he be so selfish? How could he let his best friend in the world go? How could he know his best friend so little that he couldn’t even find him when he was in trouble? How could he do anything right now except stay?

The air in the overhang is stuffy, and Grian wraps a hand around his nose and mouth like it will help. He expected there to be more of a smell—but that implies he suspected Mumbo’s death at all. Maybe the smoke has wrapped itself around the smell and overpowered it. Or maybe he’s always smelled this, the pungent odor of his failure. The scent of a future he refused to acknowledge. It’s hard work having to breathe when the air is hot and acrid. 

He wants to vomit again, but he doesn’t. Instead his mouth runs wet with extra saliva, a mild comfort to his raw throat, if he ignores the way his stomach twists. 

Eventually that silence rings in his pounding head just a little too loudly, and Grian flicks the radio on again, because he selfishly needs more. He needs that voice again with its promises of something being okay in the end. After all this time, he still can’t accept that this is completely his fault and that he deserves whatever punishment happens. He needs more, like he needs air to breathe. 

 “Scar,” he says again, and it's a plea. It is a life preserver thrown into the dark, inhospitable waters. 

Scar is miles away. He’s always been miles away. He has never been, and will never be, a comforting presence to wrap his arms around Grian. But his voice is familiar and warm. His voice is a constant Grian hasn’t had for months until he took this job. His voice is a constant that might save Grian right now, if he’s lucky enough. 

“Thank god, Grian, when I saw you turned off your radio—are you okay—” the rest of Scar’s sentence dissolves into static once more. 

“No,” he whispers. 

“I know,” Scar says kindly. “That was a silly question, huh? Grian, I’m going to help you. Do you know where you are? I can send someone out. They’ll come help you, and, and—Mumbo.”

“Okay,” he says. Help sounds good. He’s so tired of being alone. 

“Are you hurt?” Scar asks. 

Grian’s ankle smarts from where he fell on it earlier, right before finding Mumbo. It’s the first time he’s even noticed the pain, because the moment he saw Mumbo everything else on his mind was wiped clean. He doesn’t think it’s important, though, so he responds, “No.”

“Where are you?” Scar asks. 

“I don’t know.”

Scar prods gently. “You found Mumbo’s bag and campsite up on Pinnacles.” He says the sentence precisely, and doesn’t mention the way Grian fought with him. He also does not say I told you so, or criticize Grian’s decision. “Are you still on Pinnacles?”

“No,” he says. “No, I left the trail. I went—”

Grian tries to think, but his brain is sieve, leaking information out onto the floor. It’s as dense and unrelenting as the tan smoke blanketing the sky. He remembers being told he lost his job, but that seems so pointless now. He remembers finding Mumbo’s campsite, but he doesn’t remember how high he hiked on the trail beyond it. He remembers the searing jolt of fear he felt when he saw the wildfire’s new positions, but he doesn’t remember a single step he took off trail. 

It’s all a blur of rushing and blankness until he’s here. He can’t think of anything else, because there isn’t anything else. There is nothing else to define about the day, except for the presence lying on the cold stone next to him. This is the only thing Grian will remember about today, and he wishes it was all blank too. There is nothing and there will be nothing else for the end of time. 

Grian can’t think.

The radio crackles again. “Grian, are you still with me?”

“Mm,” he says, because full words are hard. 

“Do you remember the way you came?”

“I was running,” he says. “I went…away. I went down. It’s really steep.”

Scar’s voice is suddenly much more serious. “Grian, what made you leave the trail? Why were you running?”

“The fire,” he responds. “I saw the fire. I went downhill. I wanted to get to the water.”

The Nitwit fire, named for the idiots who started it, is rapidly growing in area and risk. The memory of it trickles eerily back into Grian’s brain. When he’d been closer to the top of the mountain and realized the danger he was in, he’d been absolutely terrified. He knew he needed to move or it would kill him. Depending on the environmental factors, outrunning a fire is impossible.

He doesn’t think he can move anymore, though. Fleeing doesn’t sound so appealing, not when there’s nothing left to run towards. He turns over this thought with detachedness. It’s over now, so what’s the point?

“The fire? Are you in a safe spot right now?” Scar demands. “How close was it when you saw it?”

Grian doesn’t really process this question. Scar is being insistent, urgent, but nothing seems that way to him anymore. He didn’t see the fire at all, just its smoke. He doesn’t care about a safe spot. This is the only spot he needs to be in. He doesn’t respond. 

At his silence, Scar continues. “I’m guessing you went northwest,” he says. “That’s the opposite direction of the fire and there’s a creek in the valley on that side.” There is a rustle of paper on the other end, like he’s pulled out a map. “Does that sound right? I need to figure out exactly where you are.”

Scar asks a lot of questions.

“Grian,” he says sharply, almost rudely. “Grian, come on. Talk to me.” 

Where is he? That doesn’t matter. 

The internal compass in his brain isn’t working particularly hard right now, since every time he tries to stretch his consciousness beyond this overhang he gets snapped right back. Mumbo is just lying there, slightly out of his peripheral vision. He can’t even turn his head without catching a glimpse of it, and it feels like dying every time. How could he think of anything else?

Mumbo is just lying there. 

“Scar,” he says, ignoring everything he was just asked. “Scar, I don’t get it. What is he doing here? Why did he come here? Why is he here? Why isn’t it me? Why wasn’t I here? I think he fell Scar, I think he fell just like I did. I think he hurt himself and couldn’t get back to his camp. And I wasn’t even there to help him.” 

“You fell?” Scar urges, like all his attention is zapped on that word. “You didn’t say that, are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” he says automatically. “Don’t worry about me.”

“Kind of hard not to, G.”

“I’m fine,” he repeats. “I’m just—Scar, I can’t go anywhere! I can’t leave him. What if I never find it again? What if this is it? I don’t want to go anywhere else, I’m staying here! Next to him!”

“But you need to go,” Scar says. “Come on, I need to know where you are. Help me figure it out.”

“No, no, no, no,” Grian says. “I can’t leave. I—if I go, what if I can’t come back? What if I can’t find it? What if I lose this place, and he’s really gone forever?”

“I won’t let that happen! Hey, if I figure out where you are, then I’ll know where he is too. We can tell the rangers, and, and the search and rescue people or whatever. They’ll find him again. It’s okay. You did your part. You found him. I wanna do mine.”

“I can’t leave him again,” Grian says. “I never should have in the first place.”

“I don’t think you ever left him,” Scar says softly. “He always had someone who believed in him this whole time. Some people don’t have that.”

“I can’t leave.”

“I need you to.”

“I don’t care.”

“But I do.”

And it’s difficult to keep arguing the matter when there’s someone in his ear who won’t take no for an answer. Someone who is desperately pleading with him over his own life and his safety. Maybe Grian is to Scar what Mumbo is to Grian. Maybe Grian can’t inflict that type of pain on someone else, even if he’s perfectly willing to inflict it on himself. Maybe if he does this he’ll be guilty of hurting one less person. 

Grian screws his eyes shut. “It hurts,” he says finally. “It feels like everything hurts.”

“I know,” Scar says and—

Grian knows that he does know. 

Somehow, at that point he makes a decision. His brain still feels slightly untethered and foggy. He isn’t himself anymore, not really. He doesn’t care about that person, the one who was a best friend and an architect and then a fire lookout, anymore. He doesn’t care about that person’s outcome. But he does care about not causing any more harm than he already has, even if it means keeping that person alive. 

For once more, and the beginning many more once mores in his life, he rallies himself to go forward again. 

“I don’t know where I am,” he says to Scar. “Or how close the fire is. I think I was going northwest, but…I got lost. I don’t know if I always went that direction, because I had to move around things sometimes. I just went down.”

He sits up. It’s a monumental effort, and his head spins again like the world is tipping instead of becoming right-side up. He has his back to Mumbo and it sends prickles down his neck.  

“It’s really steep here,” he continues. “Like a cliff below me, maybe. If I fall I would get really hurt. It’s rocky above me too but not as bad. I’m sort of in the middle of it. I was—I was looking for a safer way to get down when I…” He trails off. He can’t finish that sentence. 

“Okay,” Scar says. “That’s helpful. I can—I can probably find that a little easier, it’ll show up on the topo map that there is a big change in elevation. Can you see any other landmarks?”

“No,” he murmurs. “Too smoky.” 

“How smoky?” Scar asks, and that edge is back in his voice. It’s worry.

He swallows. “Worse than earlier.”

Scar doesn’t respond for a long time. Grian regards his radio while he waits. Its light is red now. It blinks. That’s not good. He has no idea how long it’ll last before it dies. This reality still seems sort of distant though, like he can’t quite muster up the energy to care about it. Oh look, there’s a little blinking light. Oh look, there’s a fire. Oh look, his best friend is dead. Oh look, he might die too. It’s all just…pointless. There is so much potential danger in his situation and he’s numb to all of it. 

He just watches the little light blink over and over again. He feels like a statue. 

Grian doesn’t really like the silence Scar has left him, nor does he really understand why. Except it’s not really silence right now, is it? He tilts his head. There’s been sound this entire time. What he assumed was just the blood rushing in his ears is actually a very real roar. 

He pieces together what it is the moment Scar gets back. 

“I found it!” Scar cries suddenly, the radio exploding into noise again. “I found you, on the map I mean, which I guess means I also found…him. But I know where you’re at! I think!”

And Grian simply says, “I think I hear the fire.”

“What?”

“They’re loud, aren’t they?” he says. “Wildfires.”

“What—yes, they are, they’re super loud,” Scar says something that gets a little lost in interference, “you need to go now.”

Despite making the decision to go, Grian somehow feels rushed about it, like he said he was ready but he wasn’t actually ready. He stands up, and nearly stumbles back down again. When he goes to put a hand out to support him, it’s shaking. “Which way?” he whispers into the radio.

“Anywhere,” Scar says. “Um, down. I’m gonna—” he sounds distant like he’s leaning away from the radio’s mic again, and it occurs to Grian that this is what has been happening with his voice the whole time now. “—gonna try to see if I can relay your information to the hot shot crew. Like, uh, a nava—navi—whatever they’re called.”

Grian realizes, abruptly, that he has to leave his pack as well. There isn’t any way he can move quickly while carrying it, it’s far too heavy. He holds his radio, and looks out into the smoky air and trees. Then, pulled back by forces unseen, he looks back behind him. This place they’re located, it isn’t even a cave. It’s hardly an overhang, too. It wouldn’t have been a comfortable place to shelter. 

He wants to say that he can’t leave again, because his boots might as well be filled with lead. But they’ve already had that argument, haven’t they? He made his decision to leave without even looking at Mumbo. It’s the least he could do to spare him the courtesy of looking at him now. 

He lays his bag down closer to him. Then he pulls out his jacket and, carefully, gently, reverently, the closest he’s gotten to Mumbo so far, lays it over his head. 

With tears slipping down his face, he steps back into the harsh warm light.

»»———-　　———-««

Grian fights his way down the hillside, and fight really does feel like the applicable word. 

The first thing he has to do is a fair bit of boulder scrambling, since there was not, in fact, a good way down the cliff. It’s a maneuver that would have been greatly impeded by his backpack, so it’s a good thing he left it behind. Grian’s apathy actually does him favors for speed: he hops onto a rock he isn’t sure will hold him before testing it. He uses worse handholds in favor of spending more time finding safe ones. He doesn’t falter even when he slips; he leans into it instead. He’s down after only a few minutes, leaning on a tree, wheezing in the smoke, wishing he hadn’t abandoned his water bottle along with everything else. 

The noise continues to rage around him. 

Scar tells him to keep going down. Scar tells him that there is a temporary fire line at Sulphur Creek and that the hot shot crew is focused on manually digging a line on the other side of the valley. Scar tells him that they’re aware he’s trying to evacuate. Scar tells him it will be okay, because a lot of people are working on this now. Grian isn’t even sure where Sulphur Creek is. It’s not like he can see anything, after all. 

“Run,” he says, “I’ll tell you where to go.”

Grian looks back up to where Mumbo is, and realizes he can’t see him either. It all blends into the rocks and bushes and trees. How was anyone supposed to have ever spotted him? His heart clenches at this, stuttering for just a moment. None of those helicopters would have been able to see him. People on the ground could barely see him. He’s being swallowed into nature again, a final resting place to entomb him. 

Then, he glances up to the left and realizes that for the first time all day, and in fact all summer, he can see actual flames. 

They’re weirdly beautiful. He watches them lick up around the trees, greedily eating up the brush. He fell down there earlier, and now everything he touched is being steadily converted to ash. He sees the flames in the tops of the trees forming bright halos. There’s little, if any, separation from the fire on the ground and the fire in the sky. Active crown fires are the most dangerous, he remembers. No wonder it’s so loud. How much combustion energy is happening right now, as these trees ignite?

He tells Scar. 

Scar tells him in no uncertain terms that he needs to be going the opposite direction as fast as he can right about now. He urges him to run. 

Grian obeys, but the heat and sound licks at his heels anyway. 

How fast do wildfires run? How many miles can they cover in an hour? How many meters high can the flames go?  The units mix in his head as he tries to work it out, but the calculations are mostly a background narration to the sound of his boots crunching gravel. Scar wants him to run, so he will. 

He stays ahead of the fire, or at least he thinks he does, until suddenly a spark is thrown onto a tree in front of him. The needles, dry from weeks without rain, catch instantly. And Grian just…stops in his tracks, and watches it ignite. He watches the baby flame grow, greedily sucking in oxygen and new found fuel. 

He thought he’d been going opposite the wind. 

He can’t help but wonder if Mumbo felt like this. If he felt this same sudden door slamming shut in front of him, trapping him somewhere he had no hope of escaping by himself. If he had, when he’d found himself stuck and lost, had this realization that he wasn’t going to be able to make it out. The thought resonates through his body, aching in every part. It’s the fear. It’s the hopelessness. 

Grian can’t outrun this anymore. 

He goes to call Scar on the radio, to ask him for any advice or even to just talk to him again, but when he presses the button on the radio it does nothing. He presses it, again and again and again, but there’s nothing. No lights. No transmissions. 

It’s dead, because he didn’t bother to charge it since before he left for the District Ranger’s Station, three days ago. 

“Idiot,” he mutters to himself, “idiot, idiot, idiot!” He hits the button again and again and again, as if that’ll somehow work. Then, he hits the entire radio hard into his other hand, hard, as if he’ll shake and abuse the thing into submission, but it still doesn’t work. The screen is black. The lights don’t turn on. 

The fire is even louder now, and even hotter. It’s howling. He’s losing his sense of direction. The trees and rocks around him are only shadowy figures in the smoke. 

And maybe, in his deepest thoughts and miseries, Grian doesn’t want to live. Maybe, if you asked him, he’d say that he was fine with this, because there was nothing left for him here. There is no Mumbo, so there is no point. He’s okay with that—at least, he’d say he was okay with it if there were anyone around in the world to ask. But there’s Scar listening in on a dead radio miles away, who can’t even know if he’s safe right now, or why he isn’t responding anymore. And there’s something deep within Grian that isn’t his dark thoughts, something written into his very cells, that pushes him to look for shelter anyway. 

Because he’s scared. Because this is a truly terrible way to die. 

The only things around him are rocks and more trees. He goes for the rocks. Instinctively, they feel like a more solid option: surely something that’s already millions of years old can survive another million years.  

He finds a spot beneath a boulder, and wedges himself as close as possible between it and the ground. It lies between the fire and him, but his eyes already burn so badly it might as well already be here. He pulls his shirt up so that it covers his nose and mouth, but that does little, so he tucks his head in near the ground, near the rock, like it’ll be protected in this tiny space he’s carved out of nothing. He inhales dirt anyway. 

He screws his eyes shut, as if it’ll help, and waits. 

It isn’t hard to tell when it’s here. 

Everything feels like eternity. When he tries to breathe, there’s nothing there—no air at all to fill his lungs. Instead, everything is hot and stuffy, suffocating, astringent, wringing all the oxygen from the air. His chest burns like he’s being squeezed. It makes his head feel funny, his thoughts slipping right out before he can register them. The heat is overwhelming. It’s like being baked in an oven. It’s like the first time he got a sunburn as a child, his mother wringing her hands in dismay and guilt over his face. It’s like he’s being strangled and peeled and stripped and decimated at once.

He wonders if maybe the concept of hell was just written up by someone who’d walked through fire themselves.

It feels like it’s been hours, but eventually the white-hot heat fades into something warm and passive. It can’t have been hours, because he’s still here and feeling all of it. Grian twitches his foot, and then tries to curl in on himself afterward. The movement seems to trigger something in his body, something that says I’m not dead yet so now it’s your problem, and he begins to cough again, violent motions that shake every part of his being. He coughs for a while, choking on the ash and lack of air, before finally controlling it enough to breathe. His nose and throat feel raw. 

He opens an eye. It immediately waters in the presence of thick smoke and heat, so he closes it again, the feeling burning hot beneath his lid. His cheeks are sticky with the feeling of tears from his watering eyes that dried just as quickly as they were produced. His teeth are gritty, even though he never even remembers opening his mouth. He runs a tongue over them, tasting the char. Every minute change of facial expression causes the grit to rub against his teeth. 

A few minutes later, he stirs again, this time pushing himself up off the ground in one motion until he is sitting up—he’s not a quitter like that. 

The world spins for a moment, and then swings back into place. 

He opens his eyes again, looks at his hands. They’re red, but not badly burned. Of course, how would he know that? How would he be able to tell? He clenches them once, twice, three times, and his fingers stiffly and painfully move to obey him. The rock next to him is singed and blackened. The vegetation immediately next to him is sparse, but burned completely through. The pine needles are gone. The area is thick with dark smoke. Somewhere ahead of him, the air glows orange still, a beaming, glowing beacon in the gathering darkness of evening. 

He’s…

Still here. 

On the other side of the fire. 

Alive. 

Alone.

His brain works sluggishly, taking several moments to take in the information around him before it computes. Then, without any ceremony, he bursts into ugly tears. Or, there would be tears, if tears were falling from his eyes. He’s so dehydrated now that nothing is being produced anymore. Instead he just sits there, sobs wracking his body, taking deep gulping breaths of dry, dry air that keep his already sore throat rubbed raw. He cries until he’s too tired to do it anymore, and everything is just rough and painful.

Some people would rather be brave. They’d rather face each challenge head on, and not let it get to them. They’d rather never cry in order to save face. 

But Grian? Grian just wants it all to stop. Who does he have to be brave for? He wants to not have to deal with this anymore. He wants to be safe. He wants his best friend to be safe. He wants his best friend to be alive. He wants someone, a real person, to place a hand on his shoulder and tell him he’s okay, it’ll be alright. It won’t be alright, of course, but he wants to be told that. It’ll make things, at least, a little easier. 

He’s tired of it being hard. He’s so, so, tired of it being hard.

Grian stands finally. It takes a lot of energy to do so, and there’s a faint feeling of pain that radiates through his body like a high fever, coming in waves every time he moves. His fingers smart as they brush the fabric of his pants, the barest hint of a touch sending needles along his nerves. At least he’s got nerves. 

The forest is gray. 

The greenness is gone, and what has settled in its wake is white and gray ash. There’s a still, grim curtain that hangs over everything. There is no sound except the fire’s roar—not even a single bird. Grian pushes the dirt with his boot a little, and everything crumbles and flakes apart into fine dust. A glowing ember is uncovered beneath it. It looks vibrant against the pale death of all his other surroundings. 

The bottom of his feet feel hot. These boots will be trashed by the time he gets back. He’s sure their rubber soles are all messed up now. He’ll have to buy a new pair. 

The real meaning of the thought hits him just a moment after. When he gets back. Like he’s already accepted that it’s part of his plan, that he’s going to leave here. And then what? He doesn’t really know but…he’s going to have to get back. He will. 

He heads toward the fire line. 

He isn’t sure where it is, but the fire being in front of him now affords him the time to make mistakes. Down is still the best direction to head, so he goes that way, kicking up fine ash and dust as he goes. The trees are blackened husks, rising into the sky. Some of them still have leaves at the top, but some were less fortunate. All the ground brush has been burned away. 

The forest looks like a wasteland. He knows it’ll be green again in a year. 

It doesn’t actually take that long for him to walk into an unburned area. He wonders if this is a mosaic, like Scar taught him all those weeks ago, but he doesn’t find another burned area just beyond this. It’s full of green trees. He can hear the distant roar of the fire, but now he can hear birds again, too. 

It’s twilight when he sees movement in the forest ahead of him, and he squints to identify it. He steps a little closer and—yeah, it’s a person. It’s another person. It’s actually another person out here, dressed in eye-shocking yellow. 

He raises a hand, and starts to call out to them, but he doesn’t make any sound. His throat is completely hoarse. He’s not sure he could make a sound if he tried. 

The person spots him anyway. The next few events sort of blur in his memory. The other man shouts something to his colleagues, whom Grian hadn’t seen in the trees around him. They call someone over to him. They say something to Grian. He doesn’t respond. They ask if he’s Grian, and he nods. They tell him that someone on the radio had said to be on the lookout for him. They give him water. They assess his injuries. 

Grian thinks he’s fine, but they seem to think otherwise. 

He’s still standing. His heart is still beating. That’s more than he can say of Mumbo. The thought of it makes him want to crumple and curl into a tiny ball, but he stays standing still. As long he’s upright, he’s okay.  

“Martinez is going to walk you out,” one of them says and Grian nods. Martinez is a guy with a kind-looking face and broad shoulders. He doesn’t even seem phased by the idea of saving a stupid civilian who got caught out in all this mess. He looks like it’d be his pleasure to help Grian out. 

This plan does not, for some reason, happen. Maybe it’s because Grian stumbles when they try to make him walk again, his ankle that he fell on hours earlier finally deciding to revolt. Maybe it’s his utter exhaustion. Maybe it’s because one of the wildland firefighters is especially concerned about Grian’s breathing, and the way his chest sounds funny. Maybe it’s his cough. Maybe it’s because he can barely speak to them, only hoarsely answering their simple questions. 

Night falls fully while they talk it over. The sky is dark, no stars, all blocked out from smoke, but a glow still sits on the horizon. Most of the other members of the hotshot crew have moved on, continuing their jobs in the noble quest to keep the fire from spreading to this side of the valley. 

Grian hears the radio crackle at various intervals, but none of the voices talking are Scar’s. At first he strains to try to hear him, trying to listen with his entire body. He hears nothing but strangers. His own radio is heavy in his pocket. It’s just a paperweight right now. 

The firefighters are probably giving information about him to someone else back at the dispatch office. They’re probably asking for some outside evaluation on what his condition is, or an order on what to do next. He zones out while they speak. He finds it difficult to care about anything else that happens to him now, least of all to him. 

Instead, two of them—Martinez included—walk him to a meadow, and tell him that one of the helicopters is going to pick him up and take him back to town. 

“It’s the fastest way to get you back, that’s all,” Martinez says brightly. He keeps trying to cheer Grian up, which is sweet of him, but failing. “Don’t worry about it, it’ll be fun!”

“I think we have different definitions of fun,” Grian rasps. 

He doesn’t tell them about Mumbo. Right now it feels like his own little burden to carry, an anchor suspended around his neck for him and him alone to drag. He’ll have to tell someone, as soon as he’s back in town. He’s sure that Scar has already told someone. But right now, at this moment, he carries the weight by himself. Alone. One last private moment with it all, waiting in the dark meadow with two strangers. 

He closes his eyes.

He thinks about the first time he and Mumbo met, when they were not even preteens yet. Grian was a new kid in a new school and a new town, and mad at everything in his life. Mumbo was the partner his teacher assigned for him to work on a project with. But more importantly, Mumbo was kind.

He thinks about evenings spent at Mumbo’s house, or the times they spent roaming around the town doing errands for Grian’s mom. He thinks about the time they both got detention because Mumbo—not Grian!—had a terrible plan to prank one of their teachers. He thinks about the miserable two years that they went to different colleges that led into a purposeful coordination of which university they would study at. He thinks about the emptiness of their apartment the week they arrived in Colorado, and how they ate takeout together while sitting on the boxes. 

The helicopter arrives some indeterminate time later, and Grian blinks his eyes back open to rushing wind chapping his face and lips. The noise is loud, but it’s not as loud as the fire was. Nothing will ever be greater than that sound. He’ll never forget that sound. 

The firefighters bid him farewell. He only knows one of their names, but he waves back. He’s taken into the helicopter. 

As it takes off, he looks through the window straight past a woman who is talking to him, but he isn’t able to see the forest like he anticipated. This forest, this wilderness he’s spent half a summer living in, isn’t visible. Instead the total darkness of night wipes it into a blank slate of inky blackness, punctuated only by the Nitwit Fire in the distance. No other lights. 

Miles and miles of nothing, and Mumbo. 

<< Chapter Ten | Masterpost | Chapter Twelve >>

[troius]

Bouncing off your Ichigo being sidelined discussion (which, yes, where's he been this whole arc?) One thing that really made TYBW suffer imo was the lack of inner character insight from the main squad, Ichigo and Uryu (poor boy got practically offscreened in an arc about his own people) especially, given that the supposed rift between them is meant to carry the Karakura gang side of things and only got /one/ quick scene (and where, i think, the arc being cut short suffers). Where Hueco Mundo managed to balance both Ichigo/Orihime/the Six Hearts gang, their issues and give them a narrative to follow and spent time with them and gave them genuinely compelling moments (the Lust mini arc centered around Ichigo/Orihime/Uryu/Ulquiorra remains, imo, the very best writing Kubo did, it had great art, genuinely compelling writing, good fighting and interpersonal relationships between Ichigo and the three of them, and kept us hooked because we /care/ about these characters and the despair they're going through), and made room for the SS Captains without them being overwhelming (Mayuri/Szayel was tedious, I'll give you that), TYBW really became a Shinigami fest (the extended time spent on characters like Mayuri (two fights, restores everyone's bankai, gets "closure" with Nemu and conveniently zero repercussion for his crimes against the quincies) Shunsui, Urahara and Zaraki (also two very lenghty fights) which yielded, ultimately, not all that much in terms of meaty character development and relied on a lot of convenience/deus ex machina/plot armour, and feels unsatisfying when you're waiting to get back to Ichigo and the squad where the emotional crux of the arc lies (Yhwach killed his mother & Uryu's mother, and it yields... also very little), the arc, despite being super long also did extremely little in developping the Quincies (aside perhaps from Jugram and Bazz, and even that was limited. Uryu suffered the most for it imo, but I guess showing any hint of inner conflict with him would have gone against what Kubo tried to pull with him, the anime also cut out his exchange with Jugram, where Jugram spells out for him that the blood ritual has essentially trapped him on Yhwach's side and Uryu being clearly horrified by it & Uryu's reaction to Yhwach asking him why he's alive), and dropped the ball big time on the main characters we *should* be invested in (poor poor Chad tbh). It's a shame, when you see what Kubo /can/ do with a contained story like Everything but the Rain; which had heart and character development, and made us care about Masaki/Isshin/Ryuken and Katagiri because what limited stuff we were given was actually compelling, and we're already attached to both of their kids and the friendship between them. The Gerard Valkyrie fight goes on for just as long as ebtr, features the three most popular captains, but has none of that heart (and a lot of plot convenience), which is why people bemoan it so much.

It's pretty telling that even anime fans last cour were clamoring for Ichigo to come back after episodes of mere cameos from him, but also nice to see that while Mayuri/Byakuya/Zaraki and co are popular, *Ichigo* is the one who remains the heart of the story, the nexus that pulls together the Shinigami, his gang of friends and the audience. Given that animation can oft make what feels long and tedious in manga (Gremmy vs Zaraki was one ep in anime vs going on forever in manga), the Pernida/Lille stuff should hopefully not last beyond 2/+1/2eps. With all the talk about Cour 3 having a lot of addition, I'm crossing my fingers the anime will spend more time with Ichigo/those close to him (*cough* and the dad squad) in the next parts! Visual fights are nice and all, but character relationships, conflict and depth are, ultimately, far more compelling and memorable than any Cgi flashing swordfight and brute strenght boost can do, there's a reason ppl remember the Ulquiorra stuff on the dome as the pinnacle of Bleach, and not, say, Zaraki vs Gremmy. While I'm not expecting a Lust arc round 2, if the anime team takes their time, I'm hoping the ultimate Ichigo (&co)/Yhwach showdown to be reworked into something just as compelling.

Lol I feel kinda guilty posting this because there's not much to say in response. Get yourself a Tumblog anon, otherwise I'll get all the credit for your meta!

[randomnameless]

Yeah, the argument that "oh Hoshido is completely pure and good while Nohr is completely corrupt and evil" is complete bs and falls apart once you analyze the information you're given throughout Fates, especially in Birthright and Conquest.

Hoshido takes little to no interest in the issues of neighbouring countries once their usefulness is at an end, to the point of Sumeragi refusing to shelter Shura and other Kohga refugees after Mokushu conquered it, just because he wouldn't benefit from helping a now-destroyed nation; Dehumanizes the fuck out of their opposition, with even the royal family being raised under the assumption that the vast majority of Nohrians are inhumane, cowardly beasts who attack other countries for fun and pleasure instead of out of necessity, as is the truth, with things getting so bad that the general populace starts killing anyone in Hoshido who has even the slightest connection to Nohr, with Haitaka going rogue and forming a small platoon for the sole purpose of kidnapping, torturing and killing Azura (with that plot point being conveniently erased from the localization, with Azura claiming that she was the only one targeted in EN); Is so misogynistic that Mikoto and Hinoka were only allowed to take the throne due to the male heirs being either too young or dead to do so themselves, with multiple of the female playable Hoshidan cast having suffered through sexism in the military in the past; And is hypocritical af when it comes to what makes them any better than Nohr in terms of their behaviour on the battlefield, doing the exact same thing Garon did to Sumeragi by ambushing both him and Corrin while they were minding their own business, only to have the gall to call Zola dishonorable for ambushing them in return.

Nohr has it's issues, like the massive resource disparity caused by the nobles and soldiers getting what little food the country has for themselves while the commoners are left to starve (solved by the end of every route thanks to Leo and/or Xander) and it's history of invading and conquering other nations due to being too proud to ask other nations for help with their resource issues (also solved at the end of every route, with Leo or Xander taking pride in the fact that the two countries will be having much better and more open cooperations between them from then on), and is ultimately more morally at fault than Hoshido when it comes to the war, since they're the agressors, but it's also a genuinely better country than Hoshido in a few ways, most notably it's people being much more open and trusting of foreigners by default, with them happily accepting Shura into their midst despite also gaining nothing from doing so, and most Nohrians having no real preconceptions against Hoshidans and being much more respectful of them than the other way around: women are also, generally, much better treated in Nohr, with few to none of the female playable Nohrians having had any issues relating to gender discrimination in the military and being free to choose what they want to do with their lives without fear of being shunned for breaking away from their expected societal roles.

Thinking that Fates in any way portrays Hoshido as solely good and Nohr as solely bad implies a heavy misunderstanding of it's story and themes imo.

(Also, yeah, idk wtf the anon was talking about with "oh Birthright is just a more simplistic version of Shadow Dragon's good blue units destroy evil red units and bring peace to the world story"; an entire chapter of that route is dedicated to showing how rough the average Nohrian has it and how they still band together and overcome adversity by living in the underground, Ryoma's character arc is to understand and soften up to Nohr, ultimately deciding to share Hoshido's surplus resources with it once he's crowned king, multiple of the Nohrians Corrin fights are portrayed in a sympathetic light, and Xander and Elise's deaths are meant to be the emotional high points of the story lol)

(Also also, Ryoma himself never knew that Nohrian land was infertile and it's commoners were suffering prior to reaching Nohr and being told as such by Silas, with him vowing to share food with the country as soon as the war was over once he found out; the Nohrian monarchs prior to Garon were too prideful to ask Hoshido for help and tried to solve all their problems by themselves and the Hoshidan monarchs prior to Ryoma didn't give a fuck about what happened outside of their own country, causing Nohr's resource shortage to only get solved by the end of Fates, though it is likely that at least one Nohrian monarch swallowed their pride, asked Hoshido's monarch for help, and got told to fuck off; no real proof of that tho)

Oh thanks!

Yeah, in general both Nohr and Hoshido are flawed, in different ways, but flawed nonetheless!

Hoshido's extreme isolationism leads them to, not understand why Nohr feels obliged to attack them (but then Mikoto makes her special "and they don't want to fight anymore!" magic, so what happens to the Nohrians who are affected by her magic? Are they killed, or do they return to Nohr or... what?).

FE, in general, always tries to have some sort nuance, not the kind that would excuse imperialism or declaring a war, but it often took the time to explain circumstances that led to the war, so the blue lord doesn't repeat the same mistakes as his forefathers.

Imo, that's why in FE1 we learn about Medeus' motivations and why Jugdral's Travant is so well liked. Zephiel even gets a prequel!

It's never as clear cut as "red empire is evil and invades for shit'n'giggles and blue lords saves the world", or at least, it never was.

[orpheuslookingback]

Okay I think this is my ultimate ranking of episodes this season (from least favorite to favorite) (including the Christmas special but not the 60th specials)

(under the read more because it got long lol)

9. Space Babies: Ultimately was the weakest in the season imo. It's not an absolutely awful episode but its not particularly good either.

8. The Church on Ruby Road: More fun/exciting parts than Space Babies but overall just an okay story. The thing working most in its favor is that it did do a really good job of immediately showing how good Ncuti Gatwa is in the role though, like his charisma and personality were instantly apparent in his first full episode. Though tbh that's less the episode ultimately and more just how well suited he is for the part

7. The Devil's Chord: The first three of the season (including the special) were ultimately the weakest imo, but of them I liked this one the most. Loved Jinx, thought they absolutely killed it in the part. Thought the sequence where everything was silent for a bit was really cool. But mostly another "just ok" story. The episode being solved by the The Beatles stopping an ancient entity through the power of friendship kind of made me giggle too, lol.

6. Empire of Death: Started strong for me but ultimately was a bit disappointing. I still don't totally hate the reveal that Ruby's mom is just a normal person (if that ends up remaining that case and there isn't some further secret that's being hidden from us), but I do wish there was a better explanation as to why weird things were happening around her, or at least that the explanation we got had felt better set up by the narrative itself (I agree w/ people who are saying it works basically okay thematically but it just doesn't feel like it should work in-universe based on everything we've seen and were told). Ultimately I guess my issue is that I prefer fair-play mysteries and this ended up not feeling like one. I don't want to be given a bunch of clues and then basically be told "and none of them actually mattered". Like introducing red herrings is one thing but saying that there was actually no real mystery at all- unless you've set that up in a super thoughtful and clever way- is ultimately just frustrating. If it had turned out the mother herself was a normal person but that there was actually Something Else going on with Ruby that was causing things or Something Else actively causing weirdness surrounding her mother despite the mother herself being normal, it would have worked better than some hand wavey "she was important because you thought she was important" thing. Again though for all I know there's still something else to be learned there and this ending was a bit of a mislead. But I don't know that it feels like that's what's being set up at this stage.

5. Boom- A good solid stand alone story. Like I wrote in a post after it aired I think Moffat's a pretty good writer most of the time, just a not very good showrunner- he can introduce concepts but is not good at sustaining them- and his stand alone episodes consistently range from pretty good to great. This one was on the "pretty good" end. But was another good showcase episode for Ncuti Gatwa in that he was able to really sell the role in an episode where he was literally standing in one spot the whole time for 90% of it.

4. 73 Yards- Does it ultimately make a ton of sense? Not really. But it was still a compelling episode to watch. I do like getting the occasional Doctor-lite episode, it can be a good way to shake up the formula a bit and/or deepen our understanding of a Companion character. I think this did the former more than it did the latter (we did get some development for Ruby here but ultimately I do think as a character on the whole she suffered from being kind of more a plot point than a fully rounded person and the way this episode worked didn't totally help that. Also why ultimately having the mystery surrounding her not really mean anything was kind of frustrating. I don't know that she was a strong enough character on the whole to have earned that). Still- I really enjoyed this episode and I thought the basic concept behind it was compelling.

3. The Legend of Ruby Sunday- Maybe I should drop this one in my ranking a little because the payoff ended up being just okay but even so. The excitement and execution of the ending of the episode itself was so fun to watch live that it still sits pretty high in my ranking, even though I didn't love the second part that much.

2. Dot and Bubble- I wasn't disliking this episode at any point but it's the ending that really elevates the whole thing and ties it together. If it were just a very basic shallow "phones and social media are bad" message it would've been just mediocre but using that as a semi-misdirect and then making you realize at the end that everything has been about racism and privilege and how those are also exacerbated by things like social media was really well executed. Honestly the kind of "we're setting you up to focus on one thing but then making you realize there's been the evidence for a different thing to be true right in front of you all along" that the finale could have used! So the fact that they pulled it off for a stand alone episode but couldn't for the season arc was a little frustrating. Anyway. Very good episode. Also Ncuti Gatwa's performance in the final scene. Once again. Sooooo good. I love 15.

Rogue- It's fun, it's gay, Jonathon Groff is in it, idk what else to say lol. It was such an enjoyable episode to me and I hope we see Groff's character again (it felt like they were implying we would at some point. I think. I hope). Also kind of good proof though that they need to be bringing in new writers consistently and not having every episode be penned by the same three people. Not that I dislike all the other episodes (I didn't) but it's just good to have new people bringing ideas in too.

Overall: Ruby was an okay companion for me; Millie Gibson gave a really good performance but the writing for the character was a little weak imo. As I already wrote above I think her role as a plot point/ongoing mystery ended up dominating her presence in the season and she wasn't given that much of a clear, rounded personality outside of it, and when you tie so much of a character up in a mystery that ends up meaning basically nothing...I feel like the character as a whole doesn't work great. This version of The Doctor, on the other hand, I loved. Not only is Ncuti Gatwa absolutely killing it in the role, but I really like the way 15 is being written as a character overall, too.

I would call this a basically middle of the pack season for me? Though probably at the upper end of the middle. No absolute clunkers but also the majority of the episodes ranged from "pretty good" to "okay". I enjoyed Rogue the most but I feel like Dot and Bubble was probably the closest to a "signature" episode for the season.

I do look forward to what's to come. I am happy to have RTD back and thought this was a better season on the whole than any of 13's seasons (I'm so sad about how weak they were because I think Jodie Whittaker was literally doing everything she could with her performance and was just getting so little to work with in terms of writing. She deserved way better), and even better than some of the Moffat seasons (namely 11's last season which I just. Do not like.) but not as good as any of the seasons of his original run. I don't mind him staying on as showrunner for another season or two but after that I kind of hope they bring in someone totally new with no or very little prior connection to previous showrunners. A really fresh voice might be good for the show.

[chaifootsteps]

listening to PDJ's songs makes me sad for what the shows could have been

like stuff like Sure to Drown which is a very musical theatre-ish rock song where Husk and Charlie do a call and response with one another and the contrast between their voices forms part of the storytelling (grizzled and cynical versus sweet and optimistic). the little story bits he gives around each song grounds what the number is there for and the characters progress by the end of most of them - Husk doubles down on his nihilism in Sure to Drown, Stolas recognizes that maybe he's the problem in Look My Way (the original), Use Me Up is the perfect blend of Angel's toughness and vulnerability while he's trying to enjoy a night off, etc etc.

it could have been so easy to just start the show with an episodic format and songs introducing each character, what the thing is they need to work on to get to redemption and their dynamic with Charlie

THEN once that's established, get to the dramatic stuff and whatever the twist with Heaven and the plan failing is

instead we get an exposition dump in the first few minutes and Charlie immediately pitching her idea to Adam during a musical number where Vaggie straight up disappears from existence between frames

it's so aggravating how overstuffed all of Viv's shows are when just paring it down a little could have really helped the story shine and even the musical numbers are suffering for it now. It's frustrating too because house of asmodeus - the show's best number imo - understood this exactly.

it called out both Blitzo and Stolas, it advanced the plot and character dynamics with Stolas hiding behind the menu, and it opened and closed with M&M as a perfect contrast to what a car wreck Stol/tz is, as well as having Fizz, Verosika and Ozzie giving fun performances and deservedly ripping on the main characters. it had everything a musical number should!

but it looks like neither HH or HB will be that good again and just talking about both shows as works of art independent of all the allegations and drama surrounding Viv, I think that's a genuine shame

it got within touching distance of being great then flushed all of it down the drain

And some might say a taste of greatness is worth than none at all, but only if you're the one responsible for it. Viv, who leaned so heavily on more talented people and then threw them all away, doesn't get to have that satisfaction.

[shinjisdone]

OKAY OKAY MY SPECIAL ONTREST IS BASICALLY..MY OC. Specifically the oc I made from the best Thorfinn fic out there, "to soften a warriors heart"

(I drew her multiple times already but i wanted this one to be the base of the oc. Its a WIP!)

I don't want to overshare! I just wanted you to know how much your work inspired something that makes me so happy.

For me, the story took a more romantic turn between Thorfinn and my oc. I call her "Orla". There's so much about her regarding Thorfinn and the plot that I wanna type but like - it will take forever for I'll just type out the stuff the tiny stuff

Orla's character was inspired by multiple characters. I even named her after one of them I liked. The list were 'Luna lovegood' from Harry Potter, 'Casca' from berserk, and 'Orla' from derry girls. She's lively, carefree, and basically just the opposite of Thorfinn in general. I was always a sucker for that kind of dynamic, I just hate it when it turns toxic when it could've been cute. Her backstory plays a lot into her character since there are mentions of her being a slave and after escaping by killing her master she felt 'brand new' and enjoyed the control she had over her own life (since she never had it) her while journey was centered around false freedom where when she joined Askeladds band, she killed for the sake of her own freedom. To not end up to where she was before. Her 'carefree' nature was kind of a toxic trait to her. It led her to make decisions without fearing the consequences. Being impulsive and just liked to take advantage of her new found freedom. The feeling of her finally having the upper hand in situations. I like to recignize her flaws aswell. Her flaws being her selfishness. Like I said, she joined and went along with Askeladds band, killing innocent people just for the desire to have a sense of control. I made sure along the journey from start of season one towards the end, she kind of has a realisation and existential crisis apon what she's done and recognizes how many people she's killed and how many lives she's ruined.

Lastly, for the final act, I ended up "killing" her off just for the extra bonus of pain in Thorfinns relationship with her. Yk, to get him started for season two. Because I had this one scene where they talk about going to vinland together after Thorfinns gets his revenge done but I know Thorfinn HAS to be empty in season 2 so I was like - why not "kill" his future. (She ain't dead I just made it look like she did)

*coughing up blood ME???? Hapahadpahahhh mmm-m-my???? Widdle brainrot story for u????

Compliments will get u nowhere b-baka

But omg she looks so great too???? Goodness goodness I am bewitchedddd

I am someone who unabashadly makes OCs aaaaaall the time in my little disgusting corner of the stories I love (counting Dororo, Demon Slayer, MHA, Zelda, VS, JJK, TWST) b-but to have someone make an OC and base it a bit on my fanfic??? Sobbing crying ugly crying

Ugh oh my goodness tell me all about ur blorbo I am sipping on my tea mhm tell me

I only know Casca from Berserk a little bit but that already makes me SCREAMM

An carefree, happy person born for the need for freedom and therefore killing to keep it mwah. Honestly, these happy-go-lucky characters that stem from dark backstories are always so interesting and imo the most interesting way you could write a char like that. Slapping my knee this is tasty, thisbis good food.

KILLS TO HAVE A SENSE OF CONTROL AWOOOOO THIS IS THE ANGST I EAT UP MHM THE DARKNESS IS DELICIOUS

YES!!! YES!!! MAKE HER REALIZE HER MISTAKES MAKE UR CHARACTERS SUFFER OOOOO THIS IS MY GUILTY PLEASURE.....like building something up and DESTRYOING IT. TEARING APART HEARTS IN FICS

👏👏👏👏 man honestly if I made the reader "die" in front of Thorfinn that would have left him a wreck (my goal) I wanna turn him into a wreck like makima turned denji into a dog

But imo I felt like if the one person you had in this world just vanished in the Chaos and you realize it too late while still whipping your around to see if they're still maybe nearby but see nothing - I think that would make the doom sink in

Mwah this was heavenly thank u