There’s a cherry tree in the middle of the redwood forest.
False isn’t sure what to make of that. She shifts her grip on the staff in her hand, its pale glow reflecting faintly off the fresh snow. She’s come out here for resources—the vault altar is demanding logs, and these giant trees are an easy source—but the incongruous sight of an enormous, blossoming cherry tree sending pink petals wafting on the frozen wind…
She wonders if this is what fish feel like, when they see a lure.
“Hello?” she calls, her voice echoing off the trees. The world stands in permanent semi-twilight here, and the deeper shadows hide the mobs that will venture out come nightfall. A sneak of creepers is bedded down in a sweetberry bramble just on the other side of the clearing, and False tenses when the lead boar lifts his head, but he apparently doesn’t deem her worth stalking so early in the day.
There is no other reaction to her call.
False is of half a mind just to head back home and farm her own dang trees. It’s not like the vaultar is picky about the kinds of logs—she could just as easily grow up a bunch of birch and throw those in there. But that will take so much longer… not to mention she’s not sure if there are even enough saplings in her storage.
She unhooks her enchantment-glittered axe from her belt and pauses to mentally poke at her mana reserves. Plenty high. Whatever’s lingering near this tree, it can hardly be worse than what she deals with on the daily in the vaults. Overworld dangers are barely a challenge anymore.
The logic of that doesn’t change the uneasy feeling that buzzes over her skin though.
Venturing further into the clearing. False’s gaze traces up the trunk of the cherry tree, following its branches to where they terminate in lush bursts of pink and white blooms. A sweet smell drifts on the wind. She wrinkles her nose, reminded of compost piles and fermented spiders’ eyes.
The tree’s branches stretch long and low—a canopy of their own, heavy with flowers and dark, glossy leaves. The space underneath is filled with falling flowers and a fog of pollen, the air moisture-thick like a lush cave.
Lifting one hand, False catches a falling petal on her fingertip.
It sizzles as it touches her skin, stinging and buzzing like live redstone.
She hisses through her teeth, shaking her hand and letting the petal fall to the forest floor. “What the heck?”
Another petal tumbles past her face, and she watches it with narrowed eyes—right until it fizzles out of existence a few pixels above the forest floor.
“Glitch,” she mutters. “That’s… not good.”
Iskall needs to know about this—it could be a bug from one of the new updates, or it could be something deeper in the code, but either way: this glitched tree is a problem. She’s probably lucky it just stung her.
She reaches for her communicator, raising it to take a pic of the cherry tree.
“Oh, hi there, False!”
False yelps, spinning around with her axe ready to swing.
Gem is standing behind her, a wreath of cherry blossoms tangled in her hair and antlers, leaning casually on a tall staff of blooming cherry wood. Her smile is wide, and sap flows over her fingers, pale golden, dripping down her arms to leave dark spots on the faded denim of her overalls.
“Gem!” False lowers her axe. “Oh my gosh, you scared me. I didn’t know you were doing Vault Hunters.”
“Hm?” Gem raises one eyebrow, and for a moment her eyes flicker to red and then purple before settling back on green. “Oh—I’m not doing Vault Hunters, False.” Her voice is amused, almost chiding.
“Oh.” False feels unexpectedly small—which is impressive, considering she’s nearly half a block taller than Gem.
More of the glitched petals fall, resting on Gem’s hair and slowly melting into it like snowflakes. The brief moment of relief when False had seen Gem’s familiar grin is fading into something like the sensation of freefall.
“What’cha up to?” Gem asks, and her face blinks from one expression to the next like a bad video message. Her clothes are blue—no, green—no, bloodstained and grey—no, blue. They’ve always been blue.
False takes a step back.
“Uh, not much…” she glances up at the redwoods. “Just doing some… resource gathering. You know.”
“Cool!” Gem giggles, and stands up straight. False tenses, but Gem only spins around her staff and waves a hand at the glitched tree. “I didn’t realize this was an occupied server—are there many people here?”
There’s a buzzing in False’s skull, and she blinks rapidly. A muscle twitches under her eye.
“Um…”
“I guess it doesn’t really matter.” Gem lifts one hand and grabs one of the lowest branches of the cherry tree. She really should not have been able to reach that.
Swinging herself up with the lithe, effortless strength of a cat, she perches on the limb and stares down at False. The grin is gone from her face now, and she looks down at False with bright eyes.
“Etho’s not here, is he?”
False opens her mouth to answer, the words yes, of course he is, I can take you to him heavy on her lips… And with effort, she swallows them back.
They taste of sweet rot.
“Why... why doesn’t what matter?” she asks instead.
Gem stares at her for a long moment, expressionless. The flowers woven through her antlers are growing of their own accord, twining up to caress their brethren in the branches overhead.
Then she smiles broadly, flashing teeth that nearly glow white in the dappled shadows. “Oh!” she exclaims. “No reason! I’m only passing through, is all.”
“You’re not… you’re not sticking around?” False tries—and mostly fails—to sound disappointed.
“Naaaaah…” Gem stands and walks along the branch, as secure and balanced as if it were a stone floor. The flowers in her hair flow along behind her, sliding from the branches and falling like a cape down her back. “Worldhopping is easy. Staying in one spot is way harder.”
False watches the flowers move and swirl, their smooth, strange motion ensnaring her attention. The buzzing is back, too. Like bees, drunk on honey and sleepy in their hive.
“World hopping…?” she manages. “With admin commands?”
Gem’s laugh is as brilliant as a knife and as sharp as a spark. “False!” she crows. “You say the funniest things.”
False laughs. It seems appropriate. She isn’t sure why.
“Anyway,” Gem continues, fading into one patch of blossoms and reappearing on the other side of it. Her eyes are sprays of cherry flowers now. Her antlers are branches. “Anyway, cherry trees are all the same. They make it easy to get around.”
“That…” doesn’t make sense, False wants to say. But her lips are heavy, and coated in sticky sap. Maybe it doesn’t really matter.
“Oops! Behind you, False!”
Gem’s chirped warning is flaked in glee, and False turns around, as slow as if her feet are buried in soul sand.
The creepers she had seen—the entire sneak—are standing behind her, pink flowers blooming from their eyes.
“Oh no.”
The boar’s blinded head snaps toward her voice, hissing. He starts to aggro, bioluminescent streaks flashing from his snout to flanks in increasingly-swift pulses of light.
“See ya in season ten, False!” Gem cries out cheerfully.
The axe drops from False’s nerveless fingers, trailing strings of sap. She smells the inescapable stench of burning gunpowder, overlaid with rot.
“...Dangit.”
[FalseSymmetry was blown up by a creeper]
~*~
Jerking upright in her own bed, False swipes wildly at her face, trying to smear away tree sap that isn’t there.
“What the heck, Gem?” she exclaims at her empty base. Her voice falls flat, swallowed up by the sky that surrounds her builds. The clock above her head ticks impatiently, and she huffs in frustration, pushing up out of her bed. All her tools, gone—her levels, gone... and after all that she still needs those logs for the vault.
Grumbling, she starts pulling backup gear from various chests, trying to cobble together something that can get her back to the redwood grove before her items despawn—assuming they hadn’t all been obliterated by a second or third creeper explosion. She glances at the vaulter, and freezes.
It’s been completed. The crystal floats gently atop the stone pedestal, gleaming with an inner light.
And, tumbled at the base of the vaulter—abandoned, more than was needed to fill the crystal’s requirements:
Half a stack of cherry logs.
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I was rewatching the last Suchwita episode Jungkook was on and it was just so endearing how he couldn’t help but talk about the Jikook NY trip even though it was something that would have to be edited out. It was funny because later in the episode he started talking about SNTY and stopped himself because he said he probably shouldn’t talk about it. Taehyung said to go ahead because they could just edit it out and JK said this 😭
And he was so serious about it! Like it was such a blunt refusal that Yoongi even told them (jokingly) to take it outside if they were going to argue.
And yet, when Yoongi asked JK about the travel show he couldn’t help but go into so much detail about it with such an adorably big grin on his face despite it absolutely being something that would have to be edited out (Jikook were taking spoilers about their show extremely seriously too lol!).
It was just sooooo cute 😭 Jungkook could have stopped at any point too but he even goes right into a second story after the “heartstrings” comment.
It’s just really sweet because that whole conversation with Yoongi was so genuine, like it was a conversation between the two of them that wasn’t part of the show because it was obviously full of spoilers that couldn't be aired. Either JK momentarily forgot because he was just so into sharing the story or he just didn’t care because he really wanted to tell Yoongi about it anyways.
And the way that both of them looked so amused and endeared the entire time from the first second that Jimin was brought up is just so… idk, I need better vocabulary, but it was just so damn adorable lol. Jimin really does have that effect on people because literally the first mention of him and it’s all laughter and smiles and you have JK forgetting his “why would I talk about something they have to edit out” mindset.
Also Jikook in general just seem so excited about their show and it’s really sweet. They've only really mentioned it I think in this clip and the last live where they jumped on Namjoon for spoiling something lmao, but it’s like the way they talk about it and how obviously excited they are to share it with us and how JK was so amused by whatever funny chaotic things happened when Jimin arrived... it's really heartwarming. And it’s just sweet that no matter what they always seem to have so much fun together.
Anyways, it’s just really funny that in the SAME episode JK asks why would he talk about something that’s going to be edited out he talked about something that had to be edited out because it involved Jimin lmao. The fact that Jimin is always some sort of exception to Jungkook too is seriously something. Like speaking of Suchwita, it reminds me of when JK basically implied that the Jimin episode was the only full episode he had watched (that whole JM live was just crazy tbh).
I really can’t wait to find out what happened that was so chaotic and funny that had JK smiling like that and what had Jimin “tugging on heartstrings”. Like, is there going to be a scene of pitiful, pouty Jimin? Or is he just super endearing at one point? I'm so curious to see what all went down. And the Japan trip just seems like a fever dream, but that's just a whole other can of worms. But I really hope they release the full Suchwita convo sometime because the way JK talked about it was seriously adorable.
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I cut your username out of this post because I don't want to unintentionally direct anyone over to you. I do believe you're sorry, and I also believe you didn't intend for any of the things that transpired TO transpire.
I want to answer this, though, because I genuinely believe a LOT of the people who logged out last night to flame the fic are on this website watching, and I want to speak directly to them. I'll never know who they are, and thats unfortunate because to me, it looks like a lot of other people are content to let you be thrown under the bus while taking no accountability for their actions.
I want to share this comment FROM the fic writer who responded to me when I left a comment this morning both condemning the actions of fellow gwynriel/eluciens and encouraging her to continue writing. Look at what she said. She had a mini-breakdown because a small but obnoxiously loud group of people took it upon themselves to not just leave unkind, unnecessary feedback, but to start whole threads about it, take it to other platforms, and otherwise talk shit because a story had *checks notes* conflict.
The fic is tagged: slowburn, eventual romance, AND the elain x azriel relationship. She did her due diligence as far as what she owes people- ya'll don't read tags and engage with the story like it was written specifically FOR you. First of all- it was written for ME. But lets pretend it wasn't, because I think the only reason people are backtracking is because I took offense. You shouldn't do this to ANYONE.
EVER!!!!
And I see a lot of ya'll writing your first fics and your comments are always something to the flavor of "be kind, I'm new/nervous/worried" and then you turn around and do this stuff to other writers like you're OWED your very specific vision of what these characters are, should be, or should act like.
This happens TOO OFTEN in this ship, and frankly, I'm tired of it. You guys will turn on people writing in your own ship if it doesn't adhere to YOUR specific, NARROW vision of "canon" (FANON) and wholesale bully people out, and whats left? A bunch of chronically online assholes whining that no one wants to draw art, write fic, or participate because they're afraid of you. Ya'll act like this is some moral crusade and if you ship the "right" thing, you can't possibly be a bully.
But its just bullying, dressed up as passion for the ship.
This isn't directed at you, OP- I'm talking to the other people who are letting you fall on this sword, who are absolutely watching this, who participated, and will likely to continue acting like this. But they'll be the first to scream and sob when another anonymous blog pops up to talk the same shit, and there will no irony or awareness around any of it. This is the culture some of you have created. Shocking you get it back in ten fold.
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Top 10 TCF Fanfics Formats
So, as far as I can tell, if you're looking up TCF fics on AO3, at least 90% of what you see will be one (or more) of these formats:
Reaction Fic ("In an Instant" fic alikes: all sorts of "divine intervention" and "watching the show" setups)
Where Cale is Not Cale (usually: KRS transmigrates as another character. Most commonly: Twin Cales AU.)
TCF Except Slightly AU (sometimes because of a ship, but generally a straight-up canon retelling with changed details)
Shipping "Ahoy!" (I don't read those, but I've seen Alberu/Cale & Choi Han/Cale tags a lot. I can roughly imagine.)
Angst Fest Under Magnifying Glass (mostly based on the colorful collection of Cale or OG Cale's traumas, but often exaggerates them to make them EXTRA depressing and basically AU)
Dimension Travel (kinda similar to reaction fic premise, except Cale and sometimes others literally appear in the TBOAH dimension)
Crossovers (usually ORV, mostly Cale ends up in a crossover and... is being Cale, but nothing status-quo breaking happens most of the time?)
Romance Game and/or High School AU (for some reason...? Usually Cale-centric, but not always)
Something Weird Happens To Cale (usually de-aging scenarios, curses & transformations)
Various one-shots (mostly Gen small what-if or canon compliant scenarios)
I'll be perfectly honest - I'm guilty of mostly writing that kind of stuff as well. I covered a lot of different fics within those categories, so it might seem unfair. But... TCF fandom can use a little bit more variety, don't you guys think?
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