#(but i was kindergarten age when i started. younger than 7? how old are kindergarteners ...?)

[yoshistory]

whell also now i wanna draw a picture of me as a 7 year old popping a smushed up fruit snack into my mouth as a 27 year old like "yeah s'good right? ^_^" and me nodding thinking and chewing thoughtfully about how it IS better all smushed up

[jake-whatthefisgoingon-kiszka]

Not going to lie guys I was so excited about this project but when I sat down to actually write it I struggled sooo much. So here it is Part 1, it’s short, it’s setting the scene, it is what it is

Pairings: Jake Kiszka X Danny Wagner *slash for the baes

Warnings and tags: 18+ ONLY!! sorry minors disperse! Adult themes including: insecurity, mention of body dismorphia (very breif), mentions of death of a loved one, mentions of depression, Dad Jake AU, uncle Danny AU (I am not using Danny’s irl sister as inspiration for this, the character referred to here is completely made up), flirting, slow burn

Word count: 3.7k

Jake never imagined his life would end up the definition of suburbia. The days came and went one after the other in a blur of cut-and-dry: school, work, practice, dinner, bed, and repeat. He loved his life, he loved his home, he loved his daughter, but he never really knew what he was missing until life brought him the unexpected.

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Another morning went by after Jake packed a lunch for his daughter and got her ready for school.

“Daddy?” Her little voice called out from the backseat as they waited in line at the drop off. The school was only a couple of blocks away but Jake preferred to drive her himself rather than let her take the bus at such a young age- he could be a little overprotective sometimes.

“Yes darling?” He replied, looking through the rear view mirror to catch a glimpse at her as she spoke.

“Are you coming to my graduation?” She asked, carefully anouncuating ��graduation’ after they had spent some time practicing on it together.

“Of course I am. You only graduate kindergarten once”.

“Did you graduate kindergarten?”

“I did, a long time ago” Jake chuckled. She was at the stage where everything was a question that led to another question, but rather than being annoyed by it he liked to indulge her a little sometimes.

“Did Mommy graduate kindergarten?”

“She did, when she was just a little girl like you” he answered her again, only this time he quietly hoped this was the end of her string of questioning for now.

When she was younger she never seemed to be bothered about being raised by Jake alone. Having been too little to really remember much about her mother or her passing. It wasn’t until she’d started school last year that she heard other children talking about their daddies and mommies that she started to realize their home life wasn’t exactly the norm.

It was a tough conversation for him to have with her, still believing she was too innocent to have to grasp the concept of death. But when she’d randomly asked one day after school why she didn’t have a mommy, he knew he had to tell her that she did and she was loved so incredibly much, but her mommy just wasn’t here with them anymore.

To make up for that Jake tried to give his daughter as much love and attention as possible. Although even if he’d never admit it, he was exhausted, wearing himself thin with both solo-parenting and working on running the foundation his wife had left him in charge of.

After another successful drop off at the elementary school, Jake finished getting himself ready for the day. Work was just busy enough to keep himself sufficiently occupied, powering through lunch so he could leave early.

Today was the first day of practice with the pee-wee soccer team Jake had volunteered to coach. Sure that was just another responsibility to juggle on his plate, but Jake was actually excited to get onto the field again- even if it was just teaching a bunch of 5-7 year old girls how to kick a ball.

“Did you see that!” Luna gleefully exclaimed as she turned to make sure Jake had seen her kick the ball into her first goal.

“I did! Good job” he smiled back at her, but his grin slowly faded when out in the distance behind her he saw a figure sitting on one of the bleachers. He narrowed his eyes, calling a few of the girls back over and making sure all the little ones were accounted for before he approached.

“Excuse me, you can’t smoke on the field”.

“Oh shit, my bad” the unknown man pressed the cherry of his cigarette into the metal of the bleacher next to him.

Jake crossed his arms across his chest, looking him up and down with an unamused glare. He was wearing a pair of worn in black jeans with a cut up black t-shirt that looked like it barely fit him. “Can I ask what you’re doing here?”

“I’m watching my niece practice” he replied with a casual sideways smile, returning the same up and down look to Jake in his athletic shirt and sweatpants combo he’d just been awarded.

Jake was about to open his mouth again to question him further but one of the kids excitedly yelled from behind him “Uncle Danny!”

Danny hopped off the steps he’d been leaning on and bent at the knees, squatting with his arms held open for a hug. “Hi little miss soccer pro!” He praised her as he picked her up and spun her around, “did you miss me?”

“I missed you!” She squealed as he kissed at her rosy cheeks and gently let her down. “Coach Jake, this is my uncle Danny. I haven’t seen him since Christmas!”

“Is that so?” Jake replied, still deciding if he should give her parents a call and make sure this was okay.

Danny could sense Jake’s reservations and offered with the same smile he’d had since Jake approached, his hand to shake. “Nice to meet you coach”.

Jake took his hand, expecting the simple embrace to be stiff, but Danny didn’t put any strength in his grasp as their hands closed together. “I’m going to be walking Emma home after practices if that’s okay with you”.

Even without having the responsibility of being in charge of all the girls on his soccer team, Jake’s over protective tendencies extended past just his own daughter Luna to Emma specifically. She lived only a block over in their small tight knit suburb and he’d met her parents at a PTA meeting at the start of the school year.

Realizing how close they lived, they started scheduling play dates at the park next to the field between Luna and Emma who easily became best friends. As quickly as Jake announced at a later meeting that he’d be volunteering to coach soccer to the kids, Emma was signed up. Jake had picked them both up from school and got them situated with some snacks before heading out to the field. He’d expected one of her parents would pick her up from his place afterwards, having never heard of an uncle being in the picture.

“Alright, well practice is over in about ten minutes” Jake decided to allow it for now since Emma had been so excited to see him, and guided the girls back over to the others who were still enthusiasticly kicking balls around.

Soon after the other parents started showing up to collect their kids one by one until the only two left were his and Emma. “Luna, do you want to walk Emma home today?” Jake asked, getting no complaint from the girls as they gathered up their things.

“Can I carry something for you?” Danny offered once he’d realized Jake was dead set on following them back to Emma’s parents house, just to be safe. He didn’t mind, in fact he found it quite charming that Jake was so diligent in monitoring the safety of his little team.

Jake was carrying his backpack on one shoulder, full of supplies like a first aid kit, some extra bottles of water in case any of the parents forgot to send their kid with some, and a list of emergency contacts for all the kids in the event something were to happen- otherwise he’d come prepared. Additionally, he had a net full of soccer balls slung over the other shoulder. Neither bag was very heavy, but his hands were full and he’d already made the trip with all of it once when they were heading out to the field earlier.

Before Jake could even get out an ‘I’m fine, thanks’ Danny was already tugging on the drawstring of the bag holding the balls, taking it from Jake’s hand and tossing it over his shoulder instead.

“She’s yours?” Danny questioned next, him and Jake both attentively watching the two girls holding hands on the sidewalk in front of them. Jake nod his head, still reserved towards conversing too much with this random guy who’d interrupted his first practice.

Despite Jake’s initial observation of Danny, leaning on the bleachers in his dark clothes with a cigarette perched uncaringly between his middle and pointer finger- the picture of nothing but a delinquent punk, he actually seemed pretty harmless.

“She’s cute, must get that from her mom”.

Jake shot him a glaring look not sure which rattled him more, the mention of Luna's mom by some stranger, or the fact that Danny had just offhandedly insulted him.

Danny chuckled again, never once feeling intimidated by Jake or his judgmental first impressions. “I mean, she couldn’t have gotten it from you, because you’re way too charming to be considered just cute”.

Taking into account how he was still dressed- not to impress that was, and that his windblown hair surely had strands sticking up every which way out of the loose knot at the base of his neck, Jake wasn’t sure how to respond. Perhaps even his second impression was wrong, maybe Danny was going to be a problem.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to make you feel awkward” the lighthearted tone left Danny’s voice, afraid he might have come on a little strong. “My sister told me about the hot single dad teaching Emma soccer today. I had to come out to see it for myself”.

Instead of lingering on the offense turned compliment Jake focused on the reveal that he was Emma’s mom’s brother. With a closer look it made sense. They both had similar facial features, Danny’s were just more chiseled and defined. He was a handsome guy Jake had to admit, but he didn’t let that distract him from the fact that Danny seemed to have this aura of youthful irresponsibility.

Sure Danny might be a good uncle, Emma certainly was enthused to see him, but coming from someone who tended to take things into his own hands Jake almost always doubted the competence of others until proven otherwise.

Saving him from having to come up with a response to that statement, they reached Emma’s house just as the sun was starting to set behind the trees in the distance. He and Luna would have to hurry so they could make it home before night cast its cloak of darkness over the suburb’s quiet late evening streets.

Jake waited until Emma’s parents met them at the door, waving over at them with smiles on their faces as their little one started spilling about her day, how fun practice was, and of course the surprise visit from Uncle Danny. Her dad ushered her along to the kitchen where dinner waited, leaving the rest of them on the porch to talk.

“Sorry I didn’t tell you who was picking her up, I didn’t know he was going to be staying with us until just this afternoon” Emma’s mom apologized, turning to her brother with a cocked eyebrow and her hands on her hips. Obviously she was a little irritated at the situation, but something about her tone gave Jake the impression this was not a one time happening.

“It’s alright, I just wanted to make sure she got home safe” Jake responded, catching a small scoff from Danny who stood by himself against a banister. “Next practice is Saturday afternoon, parents are free to join”.

“Absolutely we will be there! Thanks for all the help by the way, it’s been a madhouse at the firm these past few weeks feels like we’re getting cases by the truckload”.

“Don’t worry about it. I’m happy to help, and Luna is always thrilled to play with Emma after school”.

“Yeah, Emma is my best friend!” Luna chimed in, making the two parents chuckle.

“Well, I better be getting her home, we still need to eat dinner ourselves and wash up”. Jake excused himself, looking over his shoulder once as he reclaimed his bag of soccer balls at the edge of the yard to see Danny and his sister deep in conversation together on the porch. Danny had his arms crossed over his chest while she shook her head and closed the front door behind her, then Danny pulled out his pack of cigarettes from his back pocket and disappeared into the open garage.

After getting Luna settled in bed Jake wind down for the night with his own hot shower. He stood in front of the foggy bathroom mirror in nothing but a towel wrapped around his waist, the details of his figure coming more and more into focus as the stream from the shower started to clear.

Staring at his reflection wasn’t something he’d normally do, but he couldn’t get the comment Danny had made on their walk out of his head. He studied the face that stared back at him, feeling a little dysmorphic about all the changes he saw in himself.

Confidence was always a difficult concept for him to grasp. On one hand he knew he was relatively attractive so that he wasn’t bothered by. On the other hand however, he realized how the more he dedicated himself to parenting and work the less time he spent on maintaining himself.

He remembered watching hours of YouTube videos about how to do his daughter's hair once she started school, but he couldn’t remember the last time he’d gotten a haircut. Eating well balanced meals was important for him when he had Luna at home for dinner, but when it came to his own lunchtime he opted more for ease, or sometimes even skipped it all together if he was too busy. When he was a teenager it worked, but now that he was an adult he could tell he was filling out a little and it was becoming more of a chore to stay healthy.

Across his chest, on full display in his nakedness, Jake’s eyes caught his wedding band. White gold secured around his neck with a simple silver chain. He’d taken it from his finger over a year ago but couldn’t bring himself to leave it sitting in a drawer somewhere. So instead he slid the ring onto the necklace and it had been there ever since. Its weight against his heart was a comfort in the times when he felt the most alone.

His late wife’s passing was something he had time to prepare himself for. She knew she was sick before her symptoms even started. The genetic mutation apparent in her blood from the first test she was brave enough to take. That didn’t make losing her any easier though. Depression didn’t even seem to cover the raging storm of emotions he felt when she was gone, but he couldn’t even let himself get lost for too long because now he was all little Luna had.

As time went on things got better. Jake still had that sting from the hole left in his heart, but now it was more of a dull burn than a constant pull. Even three years later, he felt like he was living with her ghost. He saw her everywhere, from the photos he still had placed around the house, to her large glossy white piano sitting hauntingly in the bay window, most of all to the image of her in their daughter.

The ringing of his cell phone from where he’d tossed it onto his bed earlier pulled Jake out of his reflective moment, and he flicked the lights to the bathroom off on his way out.

“How’d practice go?” Josh asked the moment Jake slid the button over to answer.

Jake hit the speaker button next and put the phone back down, speaking up as he turned to gather something to sleep in out of his dresser. “It went well”.

“Did my little LuLu score any goals?”

“I mean she kicked a ball into the net, but they’re not exactly playing soccer yet” Jake snarkily replied before shoving his head through a shirt, trapping his still dripping hair against his back before pulling it out and running the towel through once more.

“I still can’t believe you agreed to coach, what are you going to do if she gets hurt?”

“Soccer is a low contact sport. Just because you got banned from the league for kicking other kids does not mean I’m letting the kids on my team run wild”.

Josh was laughing on the other end of the phone, remembering when they were kids themselves how badly Jake wanted to go to soccer tryouts. Their parents had made them both go even though he really didn’t want to. “Mom let me join theater after that so it was a win for me”.

“Hey, can I tell you something and you not blow it out of proportion?” Jake asked once the laughter died down.

“I’ll try my best, no promises”.

Jake switched off all his bedroom lights next, and picked up the phone before crawling into bed. He hoped talking to his twin about the strange encounter would help him go to sleep and not lay awake over analyzing it. “I think I might’ve gotten hit on today”.

“I told you she was into you!” Josh immediately started going off about one of the girls that worked at Jake’s office. A girl he’d only met once and ever since had hounded Jake about asking her out. She was a sweet girl, but he was technically her boss so he just couldn’t see himself crossing any professional boundaries he’d set to date her.

“No not at work” Jake corrected, though he didn’t offer much more information either.

“On the field?” The animation in Josh’s voice only grew as he tried to piece together what Jake was saying. “You got hit on while coaching soccer? Wow, if I’d known there was more game out there than just scoring goals then I would’ve been onboard with this a lot sooner”.

“Shut up, I hate that you’re always trying to pimp me out. I have enough going on right now to throw dating into the mix”. That was always his excuse when Josh would trick him into double dates or try to give him some random person's number. It was true, Jake didn’t have the time to meet people which is probably why he hadn’t. Underneath that though, Jake worried if he was even ready to be with anyone else yet.

“I just want you to be happy brother” Josh sighed, the tone of the late night phone call turning more serious than he’d originally intended. “You can make time for your own happiness, that isn’t selfish you know”.

“I am happy” Jake tried to argue even though there was a little part of him that knew Josh was right. “Luna makes me happier than anything on this Earth”.

“And that’s beautiful. That child has more love coming at her everyday, but I’m talking about a different kind of love” Josh, ever the wise and thoughtful one, countered.

“I think before we start talking about being in love again I need to meet someone I’m actually interested in first”.

Jake had tried before to get himself back out there. Josh of course was always thrilled to babysit his favorite niece so that his brother could attempt a couple of dates- most of which he had selected for him. They were nice, Josh had good taste in just about everything even including when he played matchmaking, but sadly each date Jake left feeling more hollow and alone than he did going in.

He was missing that spark he felt before. The intensity that started as attraction and built deep within himself to pure adoration for his partner. No one had ever come close to comparing.

“Okay, and what about today stuck out to you?” Josh pushed him, knowing that Jake didn’t bring it up for no reason. He wanted his input. “Are you interested in the person who hit on you today?”

“That’s the problem. I don’t know how I felt about it”. Jake groaned, running his hand across his face as he stared up at his bedroom ceiling contemplating why he was getting so frustrated.

“Sounds to me like you know, you just don’t want to admit it”.

Again, Josh was probably right. Jake wasn’t exactly vexed about Danny’s backward as it was compliment. If he had been then he could easily brush it off and forget about it. What he wasn’t admitting to himself was that for once someone had caught him off guard, and he’d kind of liked the shock it had given him.

The reason he wasn’t allowing himself to enjoy it though was because he had no idea who Danny was. For all he knew Danny could’ve just been fucking with him. In Jake’s mind it made more sense that Danny would think it was funny to flirt with the ‘hot single dad’ rather than be actually interested in him.

“I don’t know Josh. I kind of just want to forget about it and go to bed”. He’d had no luck in talking through this. In fact he was even more worked up now than he’d been earlier, playing out the whole scenario in his head in ways that only led to him looking like an idiot. He couldn’t risk it.

“Alright. Just try not to close yourself off, you never know who life is going to bring you when you’re least expecting it”. Josh sounded like he wanted to say more, he could probably chat Jake’s ear off for at least another good hour, but he knew it was getting late and his brother was on a tight schedule with it being a school night.

The two said their good nights and Jake rolled over, tucking his hand underneath his pillow and closed his eyes. Though he’d had a good time with the kids, he was glad today was finally over with. Both his mind and body were tired enough to pass out within minutes.

He was sure by tomorrow he’d be feeling normal again. Just another day cut-and-dry.

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Special thanks to @kultavalo for listening to me complain about writing this

Tags: @lyndz2names @gracev0609 @lipstickitty @sanguinebats

[clare141312]

MHA X READER WITH ATOM EVE´S POWERS

Warnings: death , suicidal thoughts

Words: 744 Chapter 1

Life can be cruel. My name is Kuramoto Sayuri. I remember when I was younger, I was a happy, bright, and optimistic kid. I don't mean to brag, but I was often better than others at many things. After a certain point in time this made other kids see me as competition, and my difficulty in controlling my temper only pushed them further away. I was ostracized and felt very lonely. Throughout elementary school, I was alone. At first, I thought people didn't like me because I excelled at certain things, but as I grew older, I realized that it was my personality and temper that made things worse—that I was the problem. Even at home, I frequently argued and fought with my family. I used to think it was their fault, but as I mentioned before, it was me. My temper was the issue. Once I recognized my mistake, I tried to change by learning to control my anger and focusing on improving myself, but it was too late. The damage was done.

 I remember the day I got my quirk. It was just a regular morning, I was 4 years, 3 months and 7 days old. Did I mention that I have a good memory. I woke got dressed and went to kindergarten, but I was seeing things weirdly. I could suddenly see things I couldn’t before.

Flashback:

“Um, teacher, I think something’s wrong,” I said, rubbing my eyes.

“What is it, sweetheart?” my old kindergarten teacher asked kindly.

“There are weird little things everywhere,” I said, pointing to the air.

“What kind of things?” she asked, bending down to my level.

“Things like these.” I started drawing the atoms and molecules I saw in the air. When I showed her my drawing, she squinted to take a closer look. When she didn’t recognize what it was, she searched it on the internet. As I sat there waiting for her response, her eyes widened in shock. She turned to me and said, “Sweetheart, I think you might have awakened your quirk. This is exciting—I’ll call your parents.”

Seeing my confusion, she added, “You see, everything—including you and me—are made up of different atoms and molecules. They’re far too small for most people to see, but you can see them. They make up everything in the world.”

After school she called my parents to tell them of my quirk awaking. My Parents were quite excited but ultimately confused as to what my quirk was because they were both quirkless. Thats right I was born to two quirkless parents. They took me to the doctor and ran tests turned out that my quirk was a mutation. The doctor determined that my quirk was Subatomic Manipulation. Since my quirk was so related to chemistry, I wanted to learn more about it. So, my parents bought me some beginner chemistry books and urged me to read them, as any kid my age I was super excided to get my quirk and wanted to learn all about it. That is how my love of chemistry began.

End of Flashback

I am currently 13 years old. I may be young, but I understand enough about the world to know this: life is cruel. That phrase was the only thing running through my mind as I watched my parents slowly dying while we waited for help. It was a stupid drunk driver who crashed into their car, killing both of them on impact. My entire life was uprooted, and I had to move to Musutafu to live with my grandmother.

I am currently living in Musutafu with my grandmother. Even now, I remain a loner—the quiet, smart girl without friends. Not a day goes by that I don´t think of killing myself, but I am to sacred to do it. Although my grandmother is kind, it’s not enough to take away the loneliness. There is one classmate I admire; she is amazing, reliable, and well-liked. I want to be just like her. 

While walking home, I see a battle between a hero and a villain, but instead of focusing on the fight, I focus on the crowd cheering for the hero. I start realizing how well-liked heroes are. People rely on them and admire them, just like the kind of person I want to be. That’s it—I will become a hero so people will like me.

I have an incredibly powerful quirk, so it will be easy. From now on, I will train my quirk for combat. A hero school! Which one should I choose? UA is the best, so I should aim for that.

1 year later

The night before the UA entrance exam, In the past year. I have studied chemistry extensively and improved my quirk. Now, I can create energy balls to blast at people (they are really powerful), form shields, and even fly by blasting energy from my hands and legs. I can make other things too, but those are the main abilities I will need for combat.

I try to sleep but I can´t. From the other part of the city, a boy with dark green hair is revising his notebook one last time before going to sleep.

[pinkarsonist0]

I'm watching the Craig of The Creek movie rn, and oh my God, MY SCOUT BABIES IT'S THEM.

Spoilers for Craig Before The Creek below:

WHOSE THAT GURL WITH THEM IS SHE LIKE LIKE AN OLDER SISTER/MENTOR TO THEM. OKAY, SO SHE'S CLEARLY A FELLOW SCOUT AND WOULD BE LIKE A MENTOR TOWARDS THEM.

Based on how Boris held her hand and the way Jason smiled at her comment towards getting the friend group name correct, that could be to imply they were rather close to her. Especially Boris. I doubt they're related by blood or law. However, I do think they had a big sister bond with her when they became scouts. According to Google, you can be a scout as young as kindergarten to 5th grade, and the oldest you can be a scout is 18.

My headcanon is that she is the reason why the scouts started going to the creek, and she would show them around it and guide them, I get a very strong older sister vibe from her. Much like Mari from Omori, let's hope she didn't play the piano...

I don't know how many years the movie takes place before the movie (at least not yet). However, I stirred up some guesses. Jason seems to be 10-11 in the show like Craig, so based on how young the scouts look, my guess will have to be that they are 6-7 years old (possibly 8 years old for Boris). So, 3-4 years before the show.

Imo, Jason seems to be happier in that scene, and in my opinion, Jason in the show isn't a very happy child if we exclude certain scenes. So, assuming the theory that Jason's mother is dead is true, we can assume the movie takes place before the tragedy.

In conclusion, this is what I stirred up for Jason (after the movie and before the show): I still have my headcanon that Jason's mother cheated on Jason's father, rooting their divorce. Jason's clearly upset by this as he begins seeing his mother a less, and his father is growing distant. However, he still had the girl we see in the movie for guidance and comfort. I do think that Jason was still pretty lonely in his childhood, so when his parents weren't around, he had her to act as an older sister for him.

But then, tragedy strikes, and Jason's mother is dead. Life begins to suck more for Jason, he now lives with just his dad and now he's straight up ignoring him and only remembers he exists in order to brag about Jason's achievements as a Forest Scout and to top it off he drags in Jason's step mother. And she clearly doesn't like him as much.

But at least he still has-

Oh, she's leaving too.

Jason's sister figure ages out of being a scout and leaves, leaving him to handle his new home situation.

I still think that Boris and the girl were the closest to each other and meant the most to each other. I think she loved them like little brothers and she loved showing around the new Forest Scouts and showing them the ropes. But Jason, Boris, and Tony stuck out to her THE MOST. She acted as an older sister to the younger scouts and maybe even stood up for them when the fellow older scouts were teasing them. She loved the scouts like little brothers, but time caught up with her, and she could no longer be a scout.

I love overanalyzing so much, you have no idea. I missed my scouts so much but now that they're back I can do SO MUCH WITH THEM NOW AHH

Also, do not think I didn't see the girl and (present) Tony having similar hats. Imma just go crazy with that and make the headcanon that she gave Tony that hat when she left. (I know her hat is a little different, but let me have fun).

And another thing, maybe she's the camp counselor we see in Camper On The Run. They have a lot of physical similarities, I need to see the episode again after watching the movie.

Edit:Just got done watching the movie, and the credits confirm that girl is the woman we see looking for Roxy in Camper On The Run and that she was indeed a fellow scout. Shannon is credited as Shannon the Scout rather than just Shannon. So, this could be a lead for my theory/headcanon being true. Someone on the COTC subreddit said that in the movie, Kelsey says she is in the second grade, and she is 9 in the show, so that would mean that the movie takes place 2 years before the show.

Now, let's get back to Shannon with this new information. The youngest to become a camp counselor is 16 and when I googled the age you can no longer be a scout I got multiple answers, but the most common one is 18. So we are safe to assume that Shannon left at 17-18 aka the estimate for when a Junior Forest Scout can no longer be a scout. I assume Shannon is 15-16 at the time of the movie and left at 17-18. So we can assume Shannon is probably 18-20 at the time of Camper On The Run.

Since she went to the creek, I wonder if she got to see Boris, Tony, and Jason again briefly. I NEED SOMEONE TO WRITE A FIC WITH ALL THEM PLEASE.

[paleflower]

Every time I hear/read someone say "oh my, I can't believe my baby is going to school now!" and they're talking about their 2-3 year olds I am somewhat confused.

In my country school starts at 6/7 years old, maybe 5 if you have a gifted child. Not younger. Before that you may sent your child to Kindergarten (for age 3-6/7) or Krippe (for age 0-3). But it is not mandatory and there are very little expectations on them teaching the kiddos anything. The main expectation is for them to learn how to be social and get along with others.

They mainly play and the general mindset is that children this age learn more than enough simply by playing and interacting with others. From time to time there will be activities planned for the kids, like a nature hike or some arts project. But there is like... zero pressure on anyone to participate.

And as I stated before Kindergarten is not mandatory. You can keep your child home until they are 6 years old and then start school. My mom did this with my younger brother. I was sent to Kindergarten when I was 4, but only for ~3 hours a day. My mom would always pick me up at 12.

Oh and it is generally frowned upon if you actively teach your child "too much". People were shocked when my 2 year old knew all the numbers from 1-10. They thought he was some kind of genius... I did not have the guts to tell them that I am kind of teaching him a little here and there and that he actually knows much much more than that. People are always like "don't teach them too much math or too much reading, they'll learn it in school!"

So whenever I read about little toddlers going to "school" I am not only confused, but also curious. What does that look like? Is it much different from our "Kindergarten", where it is mainly focused on open play? Do they expect the toddlers to sit still? How do they evaluate the learning progress?

[ectonurites]

In Tim original he was there when dick parents die and he look like 4-5 and that make me confused bc shouldn’t Tim be more younger than that when dick parents die ? ( I mean the age gap between dick and Tim Probably 8-10 )

OKAY lets take a look at this!

All of this is obviously not currently canon because the New 52 changed things and honestly even before that things could be very inconsistent, but we can try to approximate what Tim, Jason, and Dick's ages and age differences were based on that 1987-1989 era of canon to try to make sense of 'how old Tim should have been when Dick's parents died' (Then I know you didn't bring up Jason but considering how linked Tim's origin is to him he's relevant, so he's in here too)

So in Batman #416 (the issue Dick & Jason first meet), Dick brings up two things relevant to talk about here:

From this we know:

Dick was 19 when Bruce fired him from being Robin

Dick & Bruce were partners for 6 years, meaning Dick was approximately 13 when he began as Robin (I believe other comics reference him being around 12 at the time of his parents' death/becoming Robin, so it could be more like it was 6 full years and dates just don't line up exactly, and he did actually start at 12. This could also be explained as the training time, as later in Lonely Place of Dying Tim mentions there were a few months between the death of Dick's parents and Robin's debut, meaning it could be more like his parents died when he was 12 -> he trained the rest of the time he was 12 -> he properly debuted as Robin at age 13)

For the purposes of working out this logic I'm going to treat these things as happening when Dick was 12

Now the DC Wiki cites that Jason was confirmed as 12 when he met Bruce/became Robin in a letters-to-the-editor type 'bat-signals' page included in Batman #413, however all the scans of that issue I've been able to find don't include those pages (they're often not included in scans of older issues), so I'm not currently able to confirm/deny that. However logistically it makes sense, that way he had a few years in the role before his death, considering we do know he died at age 15 from a few sources including his Death Certificate in the Batman Files:

For the sake of 'needing a number' I'm going to assume that age 12 start time is true.

We then know that Bruce met Jason not too long after he fired Dick based on Batman #408. The start of the issue shows the incident/reason that Bruce fired him (he got very injured by the Joker and Bruce decided he couldn't work with a partner anymore), then it says some weeks (an unspecified number of weeks, but they use the term 'weeks' not 'months' to describe it) passed:

Which brings us to the anniversary of Bruce's parents' death which is when he first meets Jason in crime alley.

So, based on all that so far we can conclude:

Dick's parents died and he became Robin when he was around 12/13

Dick was fired from being Robin after they worked together for six years, at age 19

Soon after Dick became Nightwing (also at 19 I believe), and Jason was taken in by Bruce at age 12 and became Robin after training

(Jason and Dick don't meet for a while though, as it's not until 18 months after being fired that Dick approaches Bruce again (in Batman #416 as referenced earlier), when he and Jason would have probably been around 20/21 and 13/14 respectively)

Jason was killed at age 15, when Dick would have been approximately 22 if we consider this three years after he was fired/Jason met Bruce

Then let's get to Tim! We know that Tim was 13 during Lonely Place of Dying, which takes place not too long after Jason was killed

(Batman #441)

Which gives us that 'Jason is about two years older than Tim' age difference that is commonly used

Now taking that stuff also into consideration:

Jason died at age 15, when Dick would have been approximately 22, and Tim would have been about 13 (theoretically he actually should have been 12 at the time of Jason's death because Jason died in April and Tim's birthday is in July, and Lonely Place of Dying is supposed to be like a few months after Jason's death and we know he's 13 at the time of the story, however I'm almost certain Tim's birthday hadn't been determined yet when the story was written so it definitely didn't factor into the logic when they were writing it. So we should treat it as him being 13, but my brain would yell at me if I didn't at least address that)

So, we can then approximate Tim & Dick's age difference at around 9 years, implying Tim should have been about 3 at the time Dick's parents died, when Dick was 12. Most people usually assume Tim is older than that at the time though, in the 4-5 (or even 6) range like you suggested, based on the art and the fact that Tim has strong memories from that day (of the deaths themselves, and the thing that lets him figure out that Dick is Robin: that the Ringmaster had said only three people could do that quadruple somersault)

However frankly it is possible to have memories from being 3, like it's less common sure and is about the earliest that is average to have, but especially considering it was something he had nightmares about for years afterwards that impacted him, I wouldn't be that surprised by details sticking with him even if it was from when he was that young. Also comics are not ever consistent about drawing people the ages they are so I really don't think that can count as proof of age or anything.

Also, the way he speaks in the flashback to the moment during Batman Year 3 (so before Lonely Place of Dying, because in the LPoD flashbacks we don't actually see him talk at all at this age) feels much more to me like how a preschooler (typically about 3-4) would talk than a kindergartener (typically about 5-6), just as someone who has worked with both age groups before.

(Batman #436)

But I mean i'm not an expert on childhood development stuff like that, so take my opinion there with a grain of salt. I'm more just trying to point out that him being significantly younger than most people assume he was there is definitely possible. I usually only see people point to the parts in LPoD and gloss right over Batman #436 in these discussions.

But yeah! So there's obviously guesswork thrown in here, and comics just in general are not consistent about ages like these things are fluid and do change, but my best guesses based on stuff from that late 80's period (+ the death certificate from later, I know him being 15 is mentioned in other places too but off the top of my head I could not remember and the death certificate is just easiest to find) are:

Tim was about 3 when Dick's parents died

Dick is about 9 years older than him

Jason is about 2 years older than Tim/ 7 years younger than Dick

I hope I worded this in not too confusing of a way, and I'd again like to reiterate this is in no way a definitive thing (there just is no definitive answer, because basically all this kind of stuff gets contradicted at various points) it's just what makes most sense to me after reading through these comics from this era!

[dear-ao3]

Hello! I have a young child who loves dancing and I'm curious about how you were introduced to more structured dance classes. Was it your own interest? Or your parents the ones who pushed it? And what kind of dance did you initially practice? How you would suggest I offer dance to a 4-year-old? And what is your favorite kind of dance now? Sorry for all my inquiries! Answer only what you're comfortable with of course. Thanks for your time and advice <3

hello! this got long so its under the cut

so i started dancing when i was 3 i think...? my parents were either going to sign me up for soccer or dance and i think they let me pick which one i wanted to do and i apparently picked dance because i didn't want to run :) i don't quite know why they picked dance? i think that it was just cause that was a Thing for young girls to do, and also my mom had gone to the same studio when she was younger, so they knew the place. 

i know that the first class i took was called pre-dance which was 8 or 10 weeks of a 45 minute class where you don't really do anything but play with like beanbags and get used to being in a studio environment. I'm pretty sure one of my earliest memories is balancing a beanbag on my back in the downstairs studio at the studio i used to go to. 

so initially it was my parents who introduced me to it, but they made it clear that it was my decision if i wanted to keep taking it. like they asked me at the end of each year if i wanted to do it again next year. and up until i was in i think 1st grade i was taking 1 hour of dance a week, half of that hour was tap and the other half was ballet. i remember that i wanted to keep doing it because i would see the other older girls dance at the end of the year in their costumes and wanted to be like them. 

the way my studio worked (and i danced there for 15 years before going to college, from age 3-18) was that there was pre dance, then pre-school, kindergarten and 6-8 year olds (all three of those levels were an hour long and half of it was tap and half was ballet. we learned pre set dances off of literal records from the 60s and just very basic movements) and then after that it changed to a letter system that started at E and went up to A and all of those classes were at least an hour, once or twice a week. and then when you got to a certain age you could also join the company. 

what kind of styles a studio offers for younger kids wholly depends on the studio. based on my personal experiences and stories I've heard from people who danced at other places, i would try to look into a non competition studio for your daughter and this is why. i did not go to a competition studio, my studio was more or less focused on classical ballet and was Tiny. like in the upper levels there were maybe 100 of us total and we all knew each other and we knew all the teachers and the owner and the other girls parents and everything. yes, there was drama, as there is at pretty much any dance studio, but it was definitely more focused on being fun when we were younger and then as we got older we were learning proper ballet technique from professionals (like variations) and most of our teachers were professionals teaching on the side or in between jobs and while their classes were all meant to further technique and i did learn a lot from all of them, there was still the underlying notion that it was supposed to be fun and that is a lot of the reason why i stuck with it.

i have many friends who went to a variety of competition studios and that was not the case. to my understanding, competition studios are more focused on winning a competition, and with that there comes a lot more drama. both from the parents and the kids and then also the teachers. a lot of competition schools are also much larger and many of the kids who went there didn't know everyone at the studio. and a lot of the time the young kids at the studio will also be competing. that puts a lot of pressure on a young kid, first of all, and its also incredibly expensive because you need to be buying dance costumes and specific makeup in addition to shoes and tights and leotards. if it is something that your kid decides that she doesn't want to stick with, it can be kind of a waste of money. 

there’s also the fact that if she sticks with it a lot of the time the ballet technique that they teach in competition based studios is not super classical (but that's not always the case) and more focused on tricks. but that really depends on the place. 

my dance experience was certainly not perfect, but i personally think that it was better than it would have been had my parents signed me up for a studio that went to dance competitions. we used to get a lot of girls from competition studios that transferred because they were tired of the drama and the stress and the fact that they weren't finding it fun anymore. 

i would suggest finding a place that offers maybe not a whole year of classes, but allows you to sign up for a few weeks. not every place will, but some do. that way your daughter can decide if she likes it. because dance classes are kind of expensive (maybe not at that young age but i think tuition for mine and my sisters 7 classes as we got older was around like $360 every two weeks? plus shoes/tights/leotards and company tuition) on top of shoes and tights and leotards and its a waste if she doesn't like it. 

and you will know if she doesn't like it. i taught the younger girls for a few years in high school and you could tell the ones that did not want to be there because they would sit down or not want to dance or would not even want to come in. the girls that wanted to be there took it seriously and were very committed to being there and wanted to be there and were excited for class. and yeah every kid has their bad days but you will know if they don't want to go. and maybe they want to dance but they don't like the studio, that's okay too. try a different one if you can. 

and i would also take her to a performance. that might be hard because of the climate rn but if the studio has an end of year performance (most do and they're probably like now in the year) then i would take her so she can watch the “big kids” and when its done ask her if she wants to take classes like the big kids. my mom brought me to the performances at my studio when i was little and i loved them. or live dance in general. a ballet might be too long, but a lot of places have clips online you can watch. 

i would introduce her to one or two styles to start with. tap is always fun for little kids. ballet is too cause everyone wants to be like a ballerina. or jazz is fun too but not every place has it for little kids. 

as for now, my dance program at school is focused on more classical modern, ballet and west african dance but i still love tap and more contemporary styles. 

i hope this helps you a little!

[lifeofclonewars]

Intro to the Extended Fett Clan (WKatMAM)

I’m doing this so I don’t have to take an unnecessarily long amount of time during Part 4 to explain the whole family to everyone. I get my second Covid shot tomorrow, so hopefully Chapter One will be up soon. Enjoy!

Clan Leaders

Nielsen Fett: Better known as 99 in canon, Nielsen goes by NiNi or ba’buir with his grandkids. He’s a farmer, and hosts the Annual Fett Family Reunion every year. Married to Kamino. Father to Lynx, Courey, Wolffe's mom (no, I'm not revealing her name yet), Alfred (Alph), Charisma, Arla, and Jango. Grandpa to all the kids who will be listed. 

Kamino Fett: I say screw the Kaminoans by naming the matriarch of this au after their home planet and making her love her family no matter what happens. She was a baker, passed away from old age two years before this au takes place. Used to have those grandma glasses-on-a-chain. Was blonde. Mother to Lynx, Courey, Wolffe's mom, Alph, Charisma, Arla, and Jango. Her grandkids call her KamKam or ba’buir.

Subclan One (aka some of the Commanders)

Lynx Fett: The oldest of the next generation of Fetts. He's a vet. Has a full goatee. Married to Nala Se. Father to Bly, Gree, Ponds, Keeli, Colt, and Zariza. Grandpa to Colette. More lax on his kids than his wife. Good dad, poor choice in women.

Nala Se: Geneticist (obviously lol). Very strict because "Lynx is too lax on their kids" (he's not). Mother to Bly, Gree, Ponds, Keeli, Colt, and Zariza. Grandma to Colette. Few people in the family actually like her.

Bly Secura-Fett: 27, Kindergarten teacher. Married to Aayla, father to Colette. Oldest of the next generation of Fetts/the cousins. You might recognize his username from the previous parts, Old Man Dad Bly. Ponds was the one to set it to that. Bly doesn't care enough about it negatively to switch it.

Aayla Secura-Fett: 26, Ryl Translator. Married to Bly, mother of Colette. Known for wearing her hair in braids. She's not in the cousin chat but Bly's constantly showing her screenshots of it and she enjoys it.

Colette Secura-Fett: Almost 1, a Blyla baby! So far clings to Bly more than Aayla, but that may change. Gets lots of love and snuggles from the extended fam.

Gree Fett: 25, biologist. Second oldest of the subclan and of the cousins. Still has that haircut but mainly out of spite of his brothers instead of in honor of them this time. Chat Name: Green Man.

Pontius “Ponds” Fett: 23. He’s working to be an architect, but is currently stuck with a job he’s over-qualified for in the meantime. Known in the chat as Lakes because he thinks he’s funny sometimes. Most likely to start something in subclan one, least likely to be blamed for it... most of the time.

Keeli Fett: 21, cosmetologist. He took a different route than his brothers and went to trade school instead of a 4-year university and consequently got a job before Ponds did. Best hair in the family. Debating whether or not Gree’s haircut is a good enough reason to disown him lol. Chat Name: Keeling Over.

Colt Fett: 17, just finished his junior year of high school. Working a minimum wage summer job to help save for college. Met his best friends Havoc and Blitz in kindergarten; they all work at the same place now. Chat Name: Neigh.

Zariza Fett: 15, just finished her freshman year of high school. Only daughter in the subclan, which is both a blessing and a curse with Nala for a mom. Wants to be a photographer, has taken pictures throughout the reunions the past few years for NiNi. Has lots of blackmail on everyone as a result. Chat Name: Zzzzzz.

Subclan Two (aka the Coruscant Guard)

Courey Fett: Second oldest of his generation of Fetts. He’s a bartender (and owner), and the loudest and most rambunctious of his siblings. Full beard. Married to Slyvia Fett. Father to Fox, Thorn, Jek, Rys, and Corsica. His name is vaguely based on me misspelling Coruscant many many times in the past.

Slyvia Fett: You thought Nala Se was an interesting choice in mom? This lady is a super successful but shady businesswoman. Nobody knows the specifics and they’re not sure they want to know. Also kinda strict, but she’s also not home often enough for it to make too much impact. Married to Courey, mother to Fox, Thorn, Jek, Rys, and Corsica. She has dirty blonde hair, which two of her kids inherited when it combined with the rare blond Fett gene. Vaguely based on Sly Moore.

Fox Fett: 19, just finished his freshman year of college. Perpetually tired because of homework, actual work, and the projects he choses to do. Two days older than Wolffe and reminds him often. Actually best friends with Wolffe. They go to the same university. Like Wolffe, loves his siblings but is loath to admit it. Causes more trouble than people think. Chat Name: Think Outside the Fox.

Thorn Fett: 16, just finished his sophomore year of high school. Older of the two dirty-blonds in the sub-clan. Second oldest blond of the cousins after Rex. Suspicious in how he’s so optimistic when he grew up with Fox for a brother haha. Occasionally likes to stir up trouble in the chat, especially since he’s the one who made it. Chat Name: Thorn in Your Side.

Jek Fett: 11, just finished fifth grade. His best friend is Thire. Too young for the chat, not too young to cause trouble. Like all little brothers, switches between ignoring Fox and Thorn and always trying to get their attention. Like all middle children, turns it around and also picks on Rys and Corsica for the same things Fox and Thorn use on him. 

Rys Fett: 8, just finished second grade. Current goal in life is to catch Fox sneak-attacking him just once. Tags along with Jek most of the time, sometimes to bug him, sometimes because he thinks he’s cool. Also too young for the chat.

Corsica Fett: 7, just finished first grade. Only daughter of subclan two. The second of the dirty blonde haired kids in this subclan. Hangs out with Unique a lot at family reunions. Has the art of bugging her brothers at the most inconvenient times down. Already learning to blackmail people. Name lightly based on the correct spelling of Coruscant. Also too young for chat.

The Koons (aka our MCs! The Wolfpack)

Plo Koon: My favorite space dad haha. I think you get the gist by now. Get ready for some more puns! Definitely the type of dad to wear a fanny pack. His sunglasses are probably just transition glasses that switch too easily and he just never told anyone lol. Actually, I never mentioned it, but he’s also a social worker.

A[redacted] Koon: Our boys’ mom. Married to Plo, though she died giving birth to Comet. Twin to Alfred. Her name is a surprise for later, so here’s her first initial, at least. Used to wear glasses or contacts, depending on the day.

Wolffe Koon: 19, just finished his freshman year of college. The star of the show lol aka our pov character. Loves his brothers but rarely admits it out loud. Best friend is Fox and is going to use that to his advantage for blackmail this reunion. Cousin Chat Name: Werewolf? There Wolffe! Subclan Chat Name: Howl are you? Wolfpack Chat Name: Grr.

Boost Koon: 15, just finished his freshman year of high school. The only person in the family who likes Gree’s haircut. His maroon hair is starting to grow out now. It may or may not be his turn to get lost this time... Chat Name: T-Mobile. Subclan Chat Name: Ghosty Boi. Wolfpack Chat Name: Booster Seat.

Sinker Koon: 13, just finished seventh grade and it shows. His silver hair is also starting to grow out. Gonna cause some chaos, since he’s close in age to many of the Fett cousins. Chat Name: Banana Sink. Subclan Chat Name: Hook, Line, and— Wolfpack Chat Name: Stinker. (No, it hasn’t been changed back yet.)

Comet Koon: 10, just finished fourth grade. Still obsessed with penguins. Also gonna cause some chaos with some of the cousins. Koon most likely to get hurt during the reunion by climbing on and jumping off things he shouldn’t. Also too young for the chat.

Subclan Three (aka Cody + the 501st)

Alfred “Alpha” Fett: Twin to A, younger by 5 minutes and never talks about it. Married to Sevannah. Father to Cody, Rex, Fives, Echo, Tup. Owns a gym named Triple A. Used to be a personal trainer, which is how he met Sevannah. Technically the middle child of his siblings.

Sevannah Fett: Professional and Olympic archer. Married to Alph, mother to Cody, Rex, Fives, Echo, Tup. Yes, her name comes from seventeen as in “Alpha-17.″ (Maybe not) surprisingly, the more in shape out of her and Alph since she’s still competing lol.

Kote “Cody” Fett: 18, just graduated high school. Planning on attending college for sports management. Twin to Rex (he’s older by 7 minutes). Got his scar while playing football or something, I’m not really sure. Any Ghost member you can think of is probably his friend. Chat Name: *hacker voice* I’m In.

Rex Fett: 18, just graduated high school. Planning on being an athletic trainer. Twin to Cody. Naturally blond — and I mean blond and not dirty blond. Only one of subclan three who is. Any member of Torrent that’s not his brother is his friend. Chat Name: Jurassic Park.

Fives Fett: 13, just finished seventh grade. His full name will be revealed during Part 4. Twin to Echo (older by five minutes, yes). Wants to learn how to be a skydiving instructor solely to try to help Rex get over his fear of heights. Best friends are Domino Squad. Chat Name: Sixes.

Echo Fett: 13, just finished seventh grade. His full name will also be revealed during Part 4. Twin to Fives. Seems more chill than Fives but the reunion always proves that wrong. Best friends are Domino. Occasionally babysits the Havocs. Chat Name: ECHO Echo echo.

Tup Fett: 10, just finished fourth grade. Tup is his full name, yes. Starting to get into archery like his mom. Canon tattoo is a mole here. His hair’s down to his shoulders and super curly. Cody’s often pulling sticks out of it. Too young for the chat.

The Havocs (aka the Bad Batch)

Charisma Havoc (neé Fett): Interior designer. Married to Gunner. Mother to Hunter, Cross, Wrecker, Timmy. Also on the louder end of her and her siblings. The Havocs are pretty background characters, since their kids are much younger than Wolffe and also bc the show’s still establishing things.

Gunner Havoc: Carpenter. Married to Charisma. Father to Hunter, Cross, Wrecker, Timmy. Together Charisma and Gunner could probably start an HGTV show lol. But they don’t want to so they aren’t. Last name comes from the Havoc Marauder (tbb's ship).

Hunter Havoc: 14, just finished eighth grade. Part of his canon tattoo is a birthmark, though not all of it. His hair is also long enough to be put into a small ponytail. Keeli’s got some cousins to teach, doesn’t he lol. Chat Name: Hunter-Gatherer.

Cross Havoc: 12, just finished sixth grade. Grumpy almost-teenager. Wolffe doesn’t run into him often because he tries to avoid his older cousins (well, actually, most of his cousins) the entire reunion every year. Lurks in the chat but his username is Mad (courtesy of Thorn). I shortened his name because it is an actual name and Crosshair is only a clone name.

Walter “Wrecker” Havoc: 9, just finished third grade. The older cousins claim he got his nickname in the “Wrecker Incident” and make it out to be this overly dramatic thing that's classified to those 12 and under. In all reality, it was him accidentally crashing into a few things of his brothers when he was first learning to walk. Gree just thought it was hilarious to blow it out of proportion. Too young for the chat.

Timothy “Timmy” Havoc: 7, just finished first grade. Wears glasses. A bit too young to have Tech as a nickname quite yet, but he definitely would in the future. Also mostly in the background, considering he's 12 years younger than Wolffe. Too young for chat.

The Concords (aka let's add some more girls to this family)

Arla Concord neé Fett: She's the only adult beside her husband that I currently don't have a job listed for, but that's because my brain won't supply one. Second youngest of her siblings. Married to Felix. Mother to Clementine, Ansonia, Unique, Majorca, Tessa, Violet. Screw canon/legends, she's still alive.

Felix Concord: Again, haven't thought of a job for him yet, but he has one. Married to Arla. Father to Clementine, Ansonia, Unique, Majorca, Tessa, Violet. Last name comes from Concord Dawn.

Clementine Concord: 12, just finished sixth grade. Wants to be an astronaut or astrophysicist one day. Spends lots of time wrangling her younger sisters. Chat Name: Orange Gal.

Ansonia Concord: 10, just finished fourth grade. Wants to be an actress, really bring those dramatic Fett genes into play lol. Spends lots of time bugging Clementine and bossing around her younger sisters. Too young for the chat.

Unique Concord: 7, just finished first grade. Wants to be a doctor, spends lots of time hanging out with Ansonia. The two of them could probably do a pretty accurate hospital soap opera without prompting or knowing haha. Hangs with Corsica a lot at reunions, though. Yeah, idk where her name came from either. Dirty-blonde hair. Too young for the chat (duh).

Majorca Concord: 6, just finished kindergarten. Still learning basic writing and loves it so much she wants to be an author. Named after the city in Spain on accident — I totally didn’t realize that was why her name seemed familiar until like 2 months after I named her. Also too young for the chat or to appear much in the story.

Quintessa “Tess/Tessa” Concord: 5, preschooler. The other blonde kiddo. Picks on Gree’s hair without prompting from any cousins or sisters. Likes to play pretend with Majorca when they can. Also likes to draw stars and castles and such often. Obviously too young for the chat, appears slightly more because of her natural roasting abilities. 

Violet Concord: 3, maybe a preschooler? Again, doesn’t really appear much. Hangs out a bit with Boba and Tessa when the family gets together. Very very obviously too young for the chat.

Subclan Four (the OG Fetts)

Jango Fett: People usually make him one of the dads or the grandpa, but nah, he gets baby of his generation status. I wanted to keep with the “Arla is his older sister” thing but she’s the second youngest so he’s the youngest. Has been super mysterious about his life from the second he moved out but still shows up to family events. Knows who Boba’s mother is but refuses to tell. Father of Boba (obviously).

Boba Fett: 4, preschooler. Like I said above, hangs with Tessa and Violet during family events. More likely to accidentally reveal details about Jango’s life than Jango. Surprise baby but not for Jango. Jango knew. The family didn’t know until Jango showed up with infant Boba to a family event and went “this is Boba, no questions will be answered.” Also very obviously too young for the chat.

---

And that’s the extended Fett clan! Feel free to ask questions, I’ve got plenty of information about (most of) them and their roles in this au.

[vladdocs]

Dracula's life from birth to 7 years by Lyzhina Svetlana Sergeevna (Лыжина Светлана Сергеевна) originally in Russian. http://samlib.ru/l/lyzhina_s_s/dracula_7.shtml In this article I have tried to collect ALL the information somehow related to the early childhood of Dracula, and the story of childhood always begins with the story of the birth, so that's where we'll start. When Dracula was born. The year of Dracula's birth is reported differently by different books. Some say 1429 and some say 1431, but all of these statements are based on the same facts. _ _ _ _ _ Fact 1 - Dracula had an older brother, about whom we know that in 1442 he was 13-14 years old. This is reported in Jean de Wavrin's "Anciennes Chroniques d'Angleterre". Fact 2 - Dracula first ascended the throne in November 1448 and began to rule without the help of a regent, which means that Dracula was already 17 years old at the time. _ _ _ _ _ These two facts are the basis of all the assumptions we find in various books, so it is not difficult to guess where the numbers 1429 and 1431 come from. If the elder brother of Dracula in 1442 was 13-14 years old, it turns out that this brother was born around 1428, which means that Dracula himself couldn't have been born before 1429. At the same time, if you count Dracula's age from the time of his first reign, that is, subtract 17 from 1448, you get 1431. By the way, that is why the birth of Dracula is often associated with another fact - the entry of Dracula's father into the Order of St. George (Order of the Dragon). It is presumed that the accession took place no later than January 1431, since in a letter dated February 8, 1431, drawn up in Nuremberg, Dracula's father, among other things, states that he enjoyed the support of Emperor Sigismund of Luxembourg, who was the head of the Order. House in Sighisoara It is common knowledge that Dracula's early childhood was spent in the Transylvanian town of Sighisoara, where our hero lived with his father, mother and older brother until the fall of 1436, which means that at the time of his departure from the "land of childhood" Dracula was no more than 7.5 years old. How many memories could Dracula have of Sighisoara? About as many as each of us remembers of kindergarten and the first school bell. Is it a lot or not - you decide. The house where Dracula lived is located on the corner of Zhestianshchikov Street and Museum Square. Zhestvenshchikov Street is a historical name, and Museum Square was a street in the Middle Ages and, of course, was called differently. The most likely name is Blacksmith's, so you can imagine the sounds that little Dracula heard from morning to night. The mint in the house. It is also known that Dracula's father set up a sort of mint in the family nest. Special people came to the house and were engaged in minting gold money - the very coins with dragons, thanks to which Dracula's father got his nickname. The minting process and the coins themselves looked like this: https://img-fotki.yandex.ru/.../440.../0_acb55_83f50b94_orig Of course, the presence of unauthorized people in the house and the constant hammering of the stamp caused some inconvenience to the family, but it was impossible to move the "production" to another place, because only Dracula's father had the right to mint money, and in order to comply with legal formalities, he had to do it in his own territory. Frescoes in the house Unfortunately, we don't know exactly what Dracula's house looked like in the 15th century. What we see now is the 17th century, but many researchers believe that the house still has something that existed in the 15th century - a mural on the wall of the second floor. I read on the official website of House of Dracula that there were originally 4 people in the mural, although only 3 images have survived. It is believed that the "man in a turban" and the woman next to them are Dracula's parents, and to the right and left of them the artist depicted guests invited to the feast. That the fresco depicts four people, not three, is more than

likely, but the assumption that next to the owners of the house are depicted guests, I personally think wrong, because Dracula's parents, ordering a painting, would have preferred to see there not guests, but really close people, i.e. relatives. I think the mural was a family portrait, not just a sketch from life. The gray-bearded man on the right side of the fresco looks a lot like Dracula's maternal grandfather, the Moldovan sovereign Alexandru the Good. If I am right, the portrait on the opposite side, which is not preserved, belonged to the Romanian sovereign Mircea the Old, Dracula's paternal grandfather. https://img-fotki.yandex.ru/.../4400.../0_acb56_233d42a_orig By the way, there are other frescoes on the second floor, or rather remnants of frescoes. In some places we can see floral ornaments, and on the upper slopes of the windows we can see figures of some people, depicted waist-length and placed in round frames. Most likely, the frescoes on the slopes date from the 16th century, as the numbers 1576 are visible on one of them. The only thing we can say for sure is that these frescoes depict noble people. Near one of the images there is a figure of a two-headed eagle. Next to the other image is the inscription "archi..." (Latin: archiepiscopus - archbishop). In a third image, a woman's hairstyle and a richly patterned dress are clearly visible. https://img-fotki.yandex.ru/.../440.../0_acb57_354e446a_orig Services in the house Dracula's family was Orthodox, and the population of Sighisoara in the 15th century consisted almost entirely of Catholics, since at that time Transylvania did not belong to Romania, but to Hungary, a traditionally Catholic country. There were no Orthodox churches in Sighisoara at all, and this posed a serious problem for Dracula's father and mother. Dracula's parents were supposed to live a church life, which is possible only with the participation of a priest, who can take confession, baptize the newborn, etc. Dracula's parents lived in Hungary for many years - first at the court of Sigismund of Luxembourg, and then in Transylvania - and all this time were away from Orthodox parishes. For example, it is known that in the Middle Ages there were no Orthodox churches in the Hungarian capital. Such a temple appeared only at the end of the 15th century in the neighboring city - in Pest - and was a wooden church built by the Orthodox Serbian settlers. How did Dracula's parents deal with the issue of confession and baptism of their children? After all, someone had to baptize the newborn Dracula as well! Most likely, the parents, being well-to-do people, hired a certain Orthodox priest, who conducted home services, took confessions, etc. By the way, little Dracula, living in Sighisoara, is unlikely to have confessed, because in Orthodoxy all children under 7 years are considered absolutely sinless, and Dracula at the time of his move from Sighisoara to Romania was (recall) no more than 7.5 years. Dracula's first steps in comprehension of sciences If you believe the textbooks on the history of pedagogy, the basic principles of education since the Middle Ages have not changed so much. In the Middle Ages, as now, science was taught from the age of 7, but Dracula probably began learning a little earlier. The Dracula researcher M. Kazaku suggests that Dracula and his elder brother had teachers in common, as the difference in the age of the brothers was insignificant - two years maximum. If further to follow this logic, then it turns out that the older brother Dracula began to learn reading at age 7 as it should be, and Dracula was put in school at 6 or even 5 - just for the company, so that the younger brother did not hang around while the older one was sitting in class. All the textbooks on the history of pedagogy say that in the Middle Ages the teachers of the "book sciences" were from the church milieu. Even if it was to teach a child who was not prepared for a spiritual career, he was still taught by churchmen, because they were the most literate and educated class. By the way,

this is another argument in favor of the assumption that while Dracula's family was wandering around Catholic lands, an Orthodox priest lived there all the time. Dracula's parents needed this priest also because someone had to teach their children to read and write. In any case, we can say with absolute certainty that the literacy learned by the young Dracula was Slavic. He simply could not have been taught Romanian literacy, because it did not exist in the 15th century. If we look at the history of the Romanian language (old Romanian to be exact) we see that it was an oral language until the 16th century. The earliest known letter written in Romanian goes back to 1521 and is in Cyrillic script, because most of the official documents in Romania at the time were written in Slavonic and the liturgies were held in the same language. Exactly in Slavonic, not in Latin, as many people think for some reason! This gives us reason to believe that the little Dracula, as a child of an Orthodox family, studied first of all the Slavic letters, and not the Latin. It turns out that already at an early age Dracula knew three languages: - Romanian, because it was spoken in the family; - Hungarian, because the family lived in Hungarian lands; - Slavonic, because it was the starting point for literacy. It seems incredible that a child at such an early age could be taught a Slavic language - essentially a foreign language - but there is nothing surprising in all this. At a later time in the so-called "classical gymnasiums" young children had to learn two foreign languages at once - Greek and Latin - but no child died or went mad from this teaching. So could not the little Dracula learn the Slavic alphabet? That is, perhaps, all there is to it, and of Dracula's further maturing one can

[yellowbluemoonshine]

Do you know how old is akito? Like how old was she when her father died,when she gone crazy n started painting black abusing yuki or when she pushed rin down,how old was she when she meet tohru on the cliff,do you have any idea (i dont remeber akito having confirmed age)

Sohma Akito's Age;

Yes, i think we never get Akito's canon age but we can calculate it by looking at other character's canon ages.

(Source)

We can learn her age by looking at Yuki and Ritsu's age. Because when Ren was pregnant to Akito, Ritsu was shown as little kid, he is at least 2-3 years older than her. And looking at her moments with Yuki when they were children, age difference doesnt seem to be much. Akito is at most 2-3 years older than Yuki. Lets say; two years age difference. Ritsu's Canon age is 21-22 (at start/middle of series) and Yuki's Canon age is 16 at start of series, 18 at the end of series which makes Akito's age 18 at start of series, 20 at the end of series. Now lets dig into it.

First lets look at the timeline;

- Akira death

- Akito-Yuki meeting + Akito crying and being comforted by older zodiacs

- Kureno curse breaking

- Akito snapped and starts to hurt Yuki

- Akito's sexual relationship with Kureno and Sh.gure

- Sh.gure sleeping with Ren and leaving from the Sohma Place

- Hatori eye accident

- Akito push Rin from window

- Akito hurts Kisa (Not sure, this is after or before pushing Rin from window)

- Akito Kyo bet

- Tohru meeting with Sohmas

Again, we need to look at other characters ages to find Akito's age.

Akito is meeting with Yuki, after her father's death. Again, we dont know their age but at least we know that Yuki was going to elementary school at those times.

Yōchien (幼稚園, Nursery school) from 3 to 6 years old.

Shōgakkō (小学, Elementary school) from 6 to 12.

Chūgakkō (中学, Middle School) from 12 to 15.

Kōkō (高校, High school) from 15 to 18.

Daigaku (大学, University) or Senmongakkō (専 門 学校, Vocational school) in general with a duration of 2 to 4 years.

(Source)

Children usually begin elementary school with kindergarten (K) at age 5 and continue through grade 5 or 6. They leave elementary school around age 10 or 11. (Source)

Yuki's age was somewhere between 5-10, which makes Akito's age somewhere between 7-12. Which means Akito was younger than 7 years old when she lost her father. Then, she met with Yuki when she was at least 7, at most 11-12.

Later we know Kureno' s curse was broken and Akito snapped and starts hurting Yuki. At those times, Yuki was still going to elementary school which means Akito was at least 7-8, at most 11-12 years old when she was snapped and saying "world is dark place".

And another timeline, we can learn her age by looking at Hatori and Rin's age. Rin is 19 years old and Hatori was 26 at the start of series, 28 at the end of series. The Kana accident happenned 2 years ago from start of series. Basically, when Akito hurted Hatori's eyes, Hatori was 24, Akito was 16 years old.

Students attend high school between the ages of 14 and usually 17 or 18. (Source)

Then we know Akito pushed Rin from the window after Hatori accident cause Akito mentioned that accident before she hurted her. At that time, Rin was going to high school so her age was somewhere between 14-18. Akito is one years older than Rin and this happenned after Hatori accident and before start of series so Akito was 16-18 years old at that time.

So timeline with Akito's age;

- She was 5-7 years old when she lost her father.

- She was 7-12 years old when she met with Yuki.

- She was 7-12 years old when she was snapped.

- She was 12-16 years old teenager when her sexual relationship with two adults (Kureno and Sh.gure) started.

- She was 16 (maybe 15) years old when she accidently hurt Hatori's eyes.

- She was 16-18 years old when she pushed Rin from the window.

- She was 16-18 years old when she hurted Kisa.

- She was (hardly) 18 years old at the start of series.

- She was 18 years old when she met with Tohru whom age was 16.

- She was (hardly) 20 years old when she put Rin to the Cat house.

- She was 20 years old when she talked with Tohru (18 years old) at the cliff.

Basically, she is actually really younger than that a lot of people assumed.

[animation-is-my-jam]

I mentioned before that I would also post my drawing of the other fan kid OCS for the “Hero’s” side (basically the wg kids) (The upper left one is Omi (age: 8) and he’s actually created by another OC so don’t worry, the middle left is Kuzo (age: 7), the one below him is Clover (age: 9), the one in the middle is Tori (age: 11), the one in the upper right is Willow (age: 11), and the bottom right is Sele (age: 10)).

Omi: A normal kid who attends school and is definitely not a robot, well he is but that shouldn't stop him from being normal. He was built by other robots and he really admires Tobey, although Tobey kind of finds it competitive that someone else built a really functional AI for Omi. Omi is really shy and kind hearted, where he likes to focus on his friends emotions first before his. He likes to take care of animals and people.

Kuzo: The first adopted child of Tj and Johnson, Kuzo has five younger siblings where he remains the leader. Growing up in a home with five chaotic siblings and his older cousin Tori who loves to get into trouble, he at only age 7 is very responsible and serious for his age. He acts like the most sarcastic and stern out of the entire group, but it's not hard to make him overjoyed, especially if he gets to hang around Omi. He likes to do anything that involves problem solving and puzzles, and the most important thing to him is his family.

Clover: The biological kid of Violet and Scoops, where Scoops is their guardian father. Scoops and Violet aren't divorced or anything, Violet volunteered to be a surrogate for scoops and Clover was born. While Scoops and Violet are still good friends, many can't deny things are kind of awkward between the two. Clover and they're older sister were being raised by their dad in another big city, when Scoops actually got a promotion to run the big city times in fair city. Prompting for Clover to move and met their new friends and cousins in Fair city. They adore cleanness and photography, but they really are a big germaphobe, they also are very timid when it comes to any scheme the gang gets them involved with.

Tori: The daughter of Becky and Tobey. Tori considers herself extremely proud to be born with a legacy such as her mother's and redeemed father's, who has really made a positive impact on most things (Spoilers). Ever since she was a baby Becky and Tobey would always tell her stories about their adventures and life, this always fascinated Tori into admiring the history of her parents. Tori unintentionally became a Wordgirl superfan with how she carefully documents the stories of her mother and father. This of course led her to admire the concept of history in general, focusing her genetics of lexiconian literacy to become a history buff. While at first Tori was content in just being quiet and nerdy for most of her childhood, she was still ambitious in being more, and accomplishing great feats like her parents. Tori wants to make a legacy in which she can be proud to document, with her developing lexiconian powers she might be able to achieve that by wanting to be a hero, however her schemes in trying to be a hero kind of put her in more trouble than anything. Luckily she has her friends/cousins to always bring her down on earth. While she adores history, she also likes fighting and anything physical (while her parents disapprove of this) and will take any chance to show off and train her powers. Tori loves birds and a particular friend of her's (it's Sele), and her dream is to open a very historically accurate Wordgirl museum when she's very old and done with being a hero.

Willow: The adopted daughter of kid math. Willow knows her father is a superhero and she really does try to help him with both his jobs, as fair city's overlooked superhero and the school's fifth grade math teacher. Willow and her dad are the only people in their lives besides faraway planetary family and the McCallister-Botsfords. Willow, however does have a role model in Violet, she extremely admires Violet, and becomes interested in the same things as her. Her main passion is however is entomology, where she has a special talent in communicating with bugs of any kind. While most kids and teachers at school don't respect her with her very vocal opinion on bug rights, she can count on her old/new friends to help her with her bug passion, even if Clover can't stand the sight of one.

Sele: The daughter of Eugene May and Emma, technically making her on of Granny May's Great granddaughters. Sele used to be best friends with Tori when they met in preschool, because Tori was the only one who enjoyed her home made burnt cookies. But after kindergarten they both eventually stopped hanging out with each other and drifted, that didn't stop both from forgetting the other one though. Sele started hanging around very self absorbed girls, who didn't hesitate to make fun of Tori's tomboyish attitude and Willows love for bugs. Sele never really participated in anything ridiculing but she still felt guilty in letting it happen. After a day of her bully friends picking on Tori and the new kid Clover she finally decided that she didn't want to hang around her "cool" friends. Sele was actually free from her judgemental friends and she can get back to her old love of baking and cooking. Sele was eventually invited to hang out with Tori and the group after years of separation, and while most were surprised by her true nature, Tori wasn't since she always knew that her old best friend hasn't changed. Sele is aware of most things, but the crush Tori has on her is still a bit oblivious to her, but she can't ignore how admires Tori ambitious nature and eventual dream to be a superhero. If Tori would let her, she could be her sidekick, even if her great grandmother wouldn't approve.

Basically Tori, Kuzo, and Willow have know each other since birth. Omi just showed up in school one day, quickly being accepted by the group of marveled popular outcasts. Clover recently moved and decided to hang around his friend cousin's and Sele was recently taken in by Tori's decision. They quickly became a very loyal group of friends after a weird moment where they all decided to run for student council at Woodview elementary.

[ashtheshortstack]

take my scars & make them stars - ch 7

Rating: M Ship: Kristoff/Anna Chapter Seven

Tags: Hurt/Comfort, Angst, Sick Fic, Cancer Fic, Chronic Illness, Chemotherapy, Modern AU, Coffee Shop AU, Fluff and Angst, Fluff, Eventual Smut, Angst with a happy ending, Mutual Pining, Mentions of Character Death

Read on Ao3

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TW: Blood, Character Death, Depression Mention, Grief

Kristoff was terrified when his mother told him she was pregnant. He ran away to his room, slamming the door behind him. Curling onto his bed, hot tears trickled down his cheeks and over his nose. It wasn’t fair, he thought. It wasn’t fair that he was finally happy and it would be taken away from him. 

Bulda slowly cracked open the door, peaking in. “Kristoff?” 

He sniffled in response, not daring to look at her. 

“Oh, baby, what’s wrong?” she asked as she made her way to his bed. 

Scooping him into her lap, Bulda stroked his blond locks. Kristoff tried to take comfort in her touch, but it only made him feel worse. 

“You’re having a baby. That means you’re going to give me back, right?” he murmured as he wiped his nose on his sleeve. 

“ What? Honey, what on earth would give you that idea?” 

Pulling away, he tilted his head at her. What was she talking about? Shouldn’t she know exactly why? 

“B-Because you got me because you couldn’t have a baby. And now, you’re having a baby so you don’t need me anymore.”

He watched Bulda sigh, her shoulders sinking as she shook her head. “No, Kristoff,” she cupped his cheek with a smile. “You’re my baby, too. My first one. This baby will be your little brother or sister.” 

Kristoff blinked. “Really?” 

“Of course, honey,” she tugged him back into her arms. “No one could ever replace you. You’re mine. And you’ll never be able to get rid of me.” 

“I’d never want to get rid of you, Mama.” 

She chuckled at that. “Tell me that again when you’re a teenager.” 

  When Pepper was born, Kristoff’s world tilted on its axis. Things were so different afterwards. Sometimes good and other times really bad. The constant squawling kept him up at night, making him cranky at times. He tried his best to put on a happy face, but it could be difficult at times. But Bulda always checked in. She always reassured him that babies were just like that and it would get better. She was right, of course. As Pepper grew older, Kristoff found himself by her side all of the time. 

Despite being ten years older than her, Kristoff was able to relate to her. Able to help her with drawing and reading. When his parents bought him a guitar, he started playing and singing to her anytime he could. It made him smile when she’d giggle and clap along. 

Pepper was full of attitude, and definitely kept her brother on his toes. When he was in charge of babysitting when she was four… somehow they both ended up soaked and covered in bubbles when she had tried to draw her own bath. Or when she shook a soda can, unknowing of the consequences. 

Then blamed Kristoff for it. 

  The diagnosis came from nowhere. One minute she was a happy and healthy little girl… then she wasn’t. How had he not known? How could he not tell she was suffering all that time? Was she in pain? Had she been hiding this from him? 

Kristoff was grateful that the hospital in Arendelle had such a great cancer treatment facility. They did everything for Pepper. Doing everything they could to give her a happy life. 

During the weeks she’d stay at the hospital, he was there every single day after school. Kristoff sat on her bed, and each day he’d read her a new chapter of her favorite books. Princess themed tales weren’t exactly Kristoff’s cup of tea, but they were Pepper’s and he’d read them all damn day if she wanted him to. 

“Hey, Kris?” 

Pausing, he glanced at her. “Yeah?” 

She gazed up at him with those wide chocolate eyes. “Do you think happily ever afters really exist?” 

Kristoff smiled with a laugh. “Sure, why not?’ 

“What about love at first sight?” 

He shrugged. “That one is a little more far-fetched, don’t ya think?” 

Pepper pouted. “Why?” 

“Uh, I dunno. It’s hard to believe that you could love someone just by looking at them, right?” 

Poking him in the cheek, she gave him a look. “You’re a party pooper, Kris.” 

“Hey, you asked me what I thought!” 

“Well, you’re dumb.” 

He scoffed, turning back to the book. “Maybe, you’re the one that’s dumb,” he muttered. 

Pepper went silent next to him. Sparing her a glance, he saw her gazing out the window with that far away look in her eyes she got sometimes. Kristoff often wondered if the chemo messed with her attention span. It already messed with her appetite, her taste, the feeling in her fingers and toes. It wouldn’t surprise him if it messed with her head too. 

“I hope you find it…” she sighed. 

“What?” 

Pepper smiled, still gazing out the window. “Happily ever after.” 

Kristoff’s heart tightened. He hated it when she got like this. There was way too much wisdom in her voice for a six-year-old. It was frightening how mature she’d gotten in the last year and a half. He assumed that fighting to live could do that to a person, no matter what age. But still, it scared him. 

Placing a hand on her bare scalp, he smiled at her when she glanced up at him. “You’ll find it before me… but any prince that wants your heart has to go through me first.” 

“Kris, you can’t beat up my boyfriend.” 

“I can and will.” 

She laughed and shook her head. “No. I won’t let you.” 

He was going to retort, but she curled into his side and looked at the book expectantly. With a sigh, he brushed off whatever else he had to say. Fine, Pepper could have the last word that day. Instead, he continued reading. Glancing at her occasionally as she dozed off. 

  She got worse. Kristoff wasn’t ready for her to go downhill so quickly. She had gotten to come home for a few weeks at a time, then she’d go back to the hospital for treatments. Pepper had even gotten to start kindergarten, which they hadn’t expected would happen. So why? 

Why was she suddenly not okay? 

The sound of harsh coughing echoed through the halls, gaining his attention. Then his mother was suddenly shouting from Pepper’s bedroom. Sharing a look with his father in the living room, they both jumped to their feet. Kristoff’s feet moved on their own as he sprinted through the house. 

Pepper lay curled in Bulda’s arms, her little hands splattered with blood as she hacked into her palms. There were tears running down her little cheeks. Oh, God. Oh, God. Dread washed over him as his father was instantly on his knees beside them. 

“Kris! Kris, grab the phone! Call the doctor,” Cliff shouted over Pepper’s horrendous coughing. 

Swallowing the lump in his throat, he nodded. He ran to his parent’s room and snatched the phone from the nightstand. Scrolling through the contacts, he found the number. 

“Hello? Dr. Mattias? Something’s wrong with Pepper.” 

  Seeing Pepper so frail… it brought out an emotion Kristoff couldn’t describe. It wasn’t sadness. No, it was beyond that. It was deeper than grief and anguish. This wasn’t an emotion that could be described. There was a heaviness in his chest that held him. The feeling trapped him. Made it hard to breathe. 

They were left alone when his parents left the room to speak with the doctor. He’d never seen her so full of tubes… An I.V. dripped into her arm, tubes stretched from her nose… a feeding tube pumped her stomach. Her own body was betraying her. Refusing to work. Refusing to breathe. Refusing to let her eat without pain. 

Kristoff grabbed her tiny hand. It was so small compared to his own. His family teased him about how he just continued to grow like a weed. It was then when he really noticed what they were talking about. Her palm pressed against his as he rubbed his thumb along her skin. 

“I love you, P. You know that, right?” 

Her eyes remained closed, but she squeezed his hand in response. A small smile touched her lips. 

“Love you too,” she whispered, voice barely there. 

After that, he remained silent. Kristoff leaned his head against her own. There weren’t any more words necessary. Just comforting her with his touch was all he could offer. When his parents returned to the room, the grief stricken gaze of his mother spoke volumes. 

  Pepper never returned home. She had good days and bad days. Sometimes she’d be up for venturing around the hospital. Kristoff picked her up, tugging the oxygen tank along with them as she chatted to him occasionally. The nurse snapped a picture of the two of them. He tried his best to smile, but Pepper simply waved. 

When she was younger, she was a camera hog. She’d jump in front of pictures with a huge, silly grin. But as her energy tanked… it was hard to see that smile at all. Kristoff tried his best to get the occasional giggle out of her as he tried to tease and joke like they did before. But… as the days went on, Pepper didn’t say much of anything anymore. 

She didn’t want to go anywhere. Instead, she’d lay in her bed all day and sleep. 

In an attempt to cheer her up, Kristoff read her fairytale books to her again. They hadn’t gotten to finish the latest installment because of what had been going on. And Kristoff would be damned if he didn’t finish that book for her. 

“‘The princess stepped into her royal duties and became queen. Her love stood by her, and the two married. And lived happily ever after. The end,’” he read. 

“The end…” she sighed. 

Kristoff glanced at her. She hadn’t moved from her laying position, eyes still closed. Her breathing was slow and even. 

“When you… meet your princess… know that I told you so.” 

A smile cracked along his lips. “Yeah?” 

“Mhmm. She’ll be pretty.” 

“You think so?” 

“Yeah…” 

  Pepper didn’t say much in the following days. She was sleeping soundly when her heartbeat slowed. Bulda noticed first. The thumps on the heart monitor became more and more sparse with every passing minute. 

His mother held her head, slowly petting her head. 

“You can let go, baby, it’s okay,” she whispered against her daughter’s head. 

Kristoff couldn’t stay. He stood and left the room as the heart monitor went flat. His mother’s sobs echoing through the room as he saw Cliff cross the room from the corner of his eye. He moved outside the doorway, leaning against the white brick. Kristoff slid down the wall, tucking his knees to his chest as he hit the floor. 

She was gone. 

  The funeral was a blur. It dragged on but went way too quickly all at the same time. He was numb. And silent. 

He was polite to those who shared condolences. It was nice to see his family, though the circumstances weren’t ideal. Why hadn’t they come to visit her more? Had they even cared about her at all? 

Her kindergarten class was there… along with her teacher and a few more staff members from the school. She’d hardly been there most of the school year. But Pepper was so excited for the days she’d gotten to attend. It wasn’t much, but it was enough to keep her happy. To keep her smiling. 

Her teacher spoke, his father said a few words as well. Kristoff couldn’t. His mother had asked, but he couldn’t do it. There was no way he could stand before all these people and mourn his sister in front of them. Frankly, it wasn’t for them. 

The time he spent with his sister was private. Not to be shared. 

He stood at the casket alone, gazing down at her small face. She just appeared to be asleep, and as much as he wanted to believe the false thoughts, he couldn’t. As much as he willed her to just wake up, she wouldn’t. 

He was an only child again. 

God, how he’d forgotten how lonely that was. 

Grieving people do strange things sometimes. He didn’t know why he felt compelled to take a sunflower from the display around her. Pressing it to his chest, he gave her one last look, accepting that this would be the last time he saw his sister in the flesh. 

“Let me know when I’ve found her, okay, P?” 

A chill went up his spine. 

  Depression was different than he expected. He didn’t know it came with anger and aggression. Didn’t know it meant he’d be in fights at school. Didn’t know it meant he’d push everyone around him away, including his parents. 

They let him have his space for a while, until Bulda tried to coax him back to life. 

She gave a tiny knock at his door before cracking it open. “Hey, hun. You awake?” 

“Yeah,” he murmured, sitting at his desk. 

“Studying for the SAT?” she asked. 

“Yep.” 

Bulda crossed her arms coming to stand beside him, leaning her weight onto the desk. “How do you feel about it?” 

“Dunno.” 

Sighing, she closed her eyes. “Okay,” she smacked his notebook closed. 

Kristoff reared back. “Ma, what the hell?” 

“That’s enough, Kristoff Bjorgman, do you understand me?” 

Fist clenching, he turned away from her and crossed his arms. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” 

“This! I’m talking about this!” Bulda gestured to him. “Do you even remember the last time you smiled?” 

Kristoff spared her a glance, but said nothing. He really didn’t want to hear this shit. 

“It’s been a year, Kristoff, don’t you think your father and I miss her too?” 

“I didn’t say you didn’t,” he muttered. 

With another sigh, she pinched the bridge of her nose. When he heard her sniff, Kristoff felt a rush of guilt flash through him. He didn’t want to hurt his mother. Or anyone else for that matter. But that didn’t mean he wanted to talk to people. He didn’t want people. 

“What is it? Why have you closed everyone out, hun? You never talk to your friends anymore. I haven’t seen you do anything but scowl for months. ” 

She was right, of course. He didn’t talk to anyone. It felt like too much. It hurt too much. Why should he be allowed to live a normal life without her? Why did he get blessed with a future when Pepper didn’t?

“I just… I don’t know.” 

Bulda stared at him, that worried expression only making him feel worse. “I feel like you do.” 

Kristoff slumped in his chair. “Why should I just… move on? Like she was never here?” 

“Oh, Kris… Moving on with life isn’t forgetting her. Moving on isn’t wrong. In fact, don’t you think Pepper would want that?” 

He stared down at his lap with those words. 

“I hope you find it… Happily ever after.” 

Yes, that’s what she’d want. She’d want him to live happily ever after. And yet, there he was. Denying himself what he promised his sister. 

“Yeah,” tears pricked in his eyes. 

Bulda moved from the desk, wrapping him in her arms. “It’s okay to feel, baby. It’s okay to miss her. You don’t have to shut everyone out.” 

“B-But what if I have someone I love again and lose them too?” 

Kissing his temple, she murmured into his blond locks. “Isn’t it better to have loved and lost… than to not have loved at all.” 

A sob escaped him then. Reaching up, he gripped her shoulders. “Please, help. I don’t--I don’t know what to do.” 

“We’ll get you better. Together.” 

  Therapy did wonders for him. Kristoff had no idea how liberating it was to get all of his emotions out of his mind and out into the open. Though, he still wasn’t fond of making friends or talking to people… he slowly was able to communicate again. 

When Bulda and Cliff brought Sven home, Kristoff had never felt happier. The companionship of the pup was all he ever needed. And God, he was grateful. 

He’d never admit it aloud, but that dog saved his life. 

                                                       o~o~o~o

  It’d been three weeks since he’d heard from Anna. There were no calls. No texts. They’d lost their snapchat streak… The guilt ate him alive. Yes, he should’ve just told her. But when Pepper had heard of another child dying of cancer, the look of horror on her face always stuck with him. God, he didn’t want to make Anna feel that way too. And in his effort to protect her, he only fucked up. 

He wanted her to forgive him so badly. When she pointed out the sunflowers at the park, Kristoff thought he knew. Thought that maybe she was the one. But fuck, he messed up. 

Despite how miserable he felt, Kristoff continued to push through. He went to the coffee shop, went to the jobsite, did what he was supposed to do. It was better to have cared--maybe even loved--for Anna than to have not had her in his life at all. 

He hated how petty he’d been when she was angry with him. Pulling that crap about how she didn’t tell him about her fiance? Of course, she didn’t. They’d only had a few dates. Weren’t  “official” yet. He wasn’t entitled to her dating history. But… Anna was entitled to his past. That he hadn’t told her about. Shit, she’d had every reason to be mad. There was an entire part of his life he’d kept from her. It wasn’t right of him. It wasn’t fair to Anna.

It wasn’t fair to Pepper. 

Damn, he was a fucking asshole. How could he mess up so badly?

As he wiped down the counter, the door chimed. Really? They were closing in four minutes. Was the need for coffee that urgent? Ryder had already started picking up the chairs for the day. 

“How can I…?” he glanced up, stunned to see Elsa Anderson standing before him. 

She gave a nervous smile with a half shrug. 

“E-Elsa? What’re you--wait. Uh. S’more latte? I mean, is that what you’re here for?” 

Waving a hand, Elsa brushed him off. “I might as well buy a drink since I’m here.” 

Kristoff nodded. “Y-Yeah, uh.” 

“But I need to talk to you.” 

Ryder walked over, tapping Kristoff on the shoulder. “Need some help?” 

“Uh, yeah. 12 oz S’more latte.” 

With a nod, his coworker headed to the machine. Thankfully, they hadn’t started the intense cleaning yet. 

Clearing his throat, Kristoff glanced away. “B-Before we talk, I just need to know if you hate me, so I have an idea about what type of conversation this will be.” 

She laughed, shaking her head as she handed Kristoff her card. “I don’t hate you.” 

He relaxed, putting in her total and swiping the card. “Oh, good,” he chewed his lip for a moment. “Uh, does Anna hate me?” he asked as he handed her back the credit card. 

“No,” Elsa said with another small smile. 

Kristoff’s shoulders slumped. “Thank God. I really messed up, Elsa. She has every right to--” 

Elsa held up her hand. “Hey, you don’t need to explain yourself to me. I get it. It’s just… Anna has spent her whole life being ‘protected’ by other people. She just felt betrayed that you would hide something from her.” 

Rubbing the back of his neck, he let out a guilty sigh. “She has every right to feel that way. I just--I didn’t want her to think that would be her outcome.” 

“I know. I know it’s just because you care about her, Kristoff. Anna knows that too.” 

Grinning slightly, he nodded. “Yeah, I… I really do. No one has ever made me feel the way Anna does.” 

Elsa placed a hand over his. “I want you to be with my sister, Kristoff. So, you made a mistake. Everyone does. Anna’s made plenty. I just--I had to remind her that your heart is in the right place. And she realized I was right. B-But she just… collapsed,” she said with a grimace.

“W-Wait, what?” he asked, leaning over the counter.

“She’s been emitted into the hospital. Her doctor said she just got overwhelmed, but they’re keeping her sedated and keeping her overnight.” 

Ryder, who had apparently been eavesdropping, slid the coffee to Elsa. Clapping a hand on Kristoff’s back, he looked worried. “You gotta go, dude.” 

“Woah, what? What about you?” 

“I can close up. Go see Anna.” 

Kristoff didn’t need to be told twice. The hospital wasn’t far, but he didn’t want to leave his truck behind. Elsa jumped in the passenger seat and they headed down the street. 

                                                         o~o~o~o

  He followed Elsa down the all too familiar halls. Being there brought up a lot of memories… a lot of feelings Kristoff hadn’t thought about in a long time. 

When they reached Anna’s room, Dr. Mattias emerged from the door. Kristoff assumed the stunned expression on the doctor’s face was mirrored on his own. 

“Kristoff?” 

Elsa quietly excused herself into the room, walking past both men with a hesitant smile. 

“Hey, Dr. Mattias.” 

“What’re you doing here?” he asked. 

He gestured to the door. “I’m here to see Anna. She’s my… well… not really--uh.” 

Dr. Mattias chuckled, raising a hand and shaking his head. “You don’t need to explain anything to me,” he paused looking over him. “Man, you’ve really grown since I’ve seen you.” 

“Um, thanks. I think.” 

“How are your parents?” 

Kristoff bobbed his head. “They’re fine. Ma is working at the pre-school, and Pop is still working odd jobs here and there since he retired early.” 

Dr. Mattias smiled. “That’s good to hear. I’m glad they’re well. What about you?” 

With a shrug, he glanced away. “I’m alright. Could be better, I guess. But I’m working at Adrendelle Roasts to make money while I’m training at the jobsite.” 

“Oh, you’re going into construction, huh? That’s suited for you.” 

He laughed. “Yeah, Pop said so too.” 

A silence washed over them. Kristoff desperately desired to cut the small talk. He just wanted to see Anna. 

Dr. Mattias seemed to mual over something before sucking in a breath. “Kristoff, I just want you to know that I did everything I could for your sister.” 

A sad small twitched to his lips. “I know.” 

“And there’s not a day that goes by that I don’t think about her. If there was one soul I wish I could’ve traded my own for, it would’ve been that little girl’s.” 

Kristoff shook his head. “I know. But you’re here… and I’m glad. Because Anna needs you.” 

Dr. Mattias smiled with a nod. “Yes, of course. I won’t keep you then,” he held out a hand for him to shake. 

But Kristoff tugged the doctor in for a hug instead. Dr. Mattias was stunned, but the blond just patted him on the back. “I can’t thank you enough for what you do,” he said before pulling away. 

The doctor gave him another nod with an emotion Kristoff couldn’t quite read. Dr. Mattias gave Kristoff a tap on the shoulder before heading down the hall. 

Kristoff turned to the door, taking a deep breath before he walked in to see Anna lying on the bed. Seeing the tubes in her nose as she slept sent a familiar dread shooting up his spine. But it was okay, he assured himself. Anna was asleep intentionally. He had to remember that. 

He looked to Elsa who sat in a chair in the corner of the room. “Is it safe for you?” he asked. She had since put a mask on after entering the room. 

“Not entirely. Being exposed to an illness could send me in here myself for a couple of days.” 

Rubbing his palms, he glanced back to Anna. “You should go home. I can stay with her.” 

Elsa’s brows shot up. “Oh, no way. Kristoff, I can’t ask you to do that.” 

“I want to. I messed things up so badly… it’s the least I can do. Anna would want you to worry about your health too, you know? Anna can’t lose you too, Elsa.” 

The flaxen blonde twiddled her thumbs for a second before standing. “Okay, but I’ll be back tomorrow to get her.” 

Kristoff gave her a smile. “Alright. She’s in good hands, I promise. I--I want to make it up to her.” 

Elsa stood, giving him a small pat before walking to Anna. She stroked her head, glacning back up at him. “Are you sure?” 

“I can handle it.” 

“What about Sven?” 

“I’ll call my mom.” 

Sighing, she nodded. “Okay. I’ll see you tomorrow.” 

Kristoff waved as she walked out the door. Carefully, he made his way over to Anna and placed a small peck to her forehead. “I’m so sorry,” he whispered. “I’ll do better from now on.” 

He made his way to the chair and took a seat. He gazed out the window with a sigh. 

“You told me so, P. Just help me get this right…” 

[unproduciblesmackdown]

Do you think theres a reason Jared brings up Connor throwing the printer when they were in 2nd grade beyond just exposition and establishing Connor as 'troubled kid'? Like why is it something from when they were like 7/8 that sticks out to him and not something more recent?

yeah i think like you say it has that Exposition purpose where it’s like, telling us that connor shoving evan is not the only violent outburst of connor’s life, and that jared and evan have known each other since at least second grade (and connor maybe has known of them back, but idk, he talks to evan in the computer lab like it’s the first time)

and then another way i interpret things is that i always think of jared as being sort of generally afraid/wary of / intimidated by connor especially, like, As I Always Say jared’s the character least willing or able to deal with confrontation / conflict, and like yeah sure the one time we see Real Jared interact with Real Connor in the wtaw scene can be (and is) played out a range of ways like, can be fairly tense and elevated or a bit lower energy, but no matter what it’s still being jared thrown by connor making this into a confrontation (even though people wanna interpret this as jared just wanting to start shit and Fight Connor like.....so then why does he go “it was a joke” and then bail when that doesn’t deescalate things......explain it to me) and just like, yeah, i think jared’s a bit extra Nervous re: dealing with connor

and i think that one thing about this having been when they were all like, presumably 7ish yr olds, is that yeah it says connor’s been dealing with this for That long which is sure something, but also natch it’s different if he throws a printer when he’s 7 than if he did it like, just last year as a 16 yr old.......we have no known Age re: what zoe’s talking about, but like, even though we sure don’t get the idea that things have improved much for connor in these later years, it sort of makes sense for an elementary schooler’s emotional regulation/processing and etc to be worse, and to maybe result in shit like throwing a printer. and then i Also think it’s relevant that jared as also 7 or whatever, and might’ve been affected more strongly by an incident like that than if happened way more recently (though i mean. still alarming at any age.) and it could easily have had this more dramatic impression on jared at that younger age where like, by now he doesn’t think quite as much of it, yet that sense of “he did some shit that really freaked me out” isn’t wholly gone either.......it happened around a decade ago and it’s coming to mind this easily for him.

(and a sidenote there that Fake Connor refers back to this as like, evan thinking that that’s what defines connor in jared’s mind and is apparently extrapolating from that to suppose it’s what defines connor just in anyone’s mind.........interesting stuff lol. but yeah i think if it *does* define connor in jared’s mind, there’s a bit of a reason for that, b/c jared Also has littler kid feelings back then and the takeaway was probably more along the lines of [aaaaa] than like. nuanced reflection on connor and his motivations. lmao just remembered the “b/c he didn’t get to be line leader that day”.........i’m still bitter about this time in kindergarten where there was just like daily tasks like Put The Date On The Calendar to, idk, teach us what a calendar is, and there was also the Wheel Of Weather Conditions and that was fun b/c there was room for interpretation. and unlike rotational Roles like line leader, kids were just picked at random for things like Put The Date On The Calendar, and i just was never being the one to do the weather wheel, and in my case my Dramatic Response was to inform a teacher of this fact eventually, who naturally being a kindergarten teacher just sort of was like uh huh sure and did not exactly retain this crucial info lmfao. i just also remember that a) i also took the dramatic step of Raising My Hand to do the weather wheel one day, and the kid who was chosen got picked b/c they were the only person Not raising their hand, which was very annoying b/c it’s like oh okay so the shit you tell us to do is This arbitrary?? now i’m in the Wrong for raising my hand to volunteer for something??? i hate this and b) i just never did the weather wheel lmfao they never picked me. i’m still like, the hell)

anyways yeah i think that that well could’ve been this wedge between jared and connor (not that i’m assuming they were particularly close before, but i won’t say they weren’t, b/c who knows) b/c jared was just wary of him after that and it sounds like maybe other Incidents have probably occurred and yeah like not like jared’s terrified of him, he’s obviously willing to engage with him, he’s just still nervous around this person and clearly neither of them have the first clue how to interact with the other lmao. i was gonna be like “rip” and then i was like, right....anyways yeah like i just suppose no adults were like “hey other 7 yr olds here’s a grown person explaining a bewildering incident to you so that you might realize that that outburst wasn’t just your classmate being a force of Chaos” lol like, kids that young do some wild shit sometimes and it’s like, explanations can be needed and helpful here. but i guess one day connor threw a printer and jared was like “holy shit” and he’s never stopped thinking about it Really

[allie1804-fan]

A Doorway is Opened (Chapter 1)

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12

Some time in the Autumn of 2019

 “Hey Hannah, great to see you”

 “You too”

 “Are you OK? You look like you’ve seen a ghost!”

 “Just nervous I guess” Hannah laughed “Silly really after the book tour and interview, you’d think I’d have gotten used to it!”

 “Well this is Keanu Reeves we’re talking about – he’s enough to make even an old pro like me catch my breath! Come on” said Ella, “let’s get this meeting started”

 Ella was Hannah Johnson’s publisher and Hannah had written a book for which Keanu Reeves’ production company, Company Films, was interested in buying the rights. The book chronicled a couple’s journey to having a family through infertility to having their first son followed by three miscarriages before a second son finally arrived. They were due to meet with the actor himself and his partner Stephen Hamel that morning to talk more about a possible deal.

As it turned out, there was no need for nerves. The minute Keanu arrived and introduced himself, he put everyone at their ease. His focus on the work and his enthusiasm for it took the attention off him plus he seemed a little shy himself.

 The first thing he’d said on shaking Hannah’s hand was “Hi I’m Keanu,  I really loved your book, I can’t wait to talk to you about it!”

 “Thanks, it’s an honour to meet you. I’ve been a fan of yours for a long time”

 At this, a flush rose up, starting from Keanu’s neck and pretty soon turning his face quite a bright pink as he softly muttered his thanks.

 “First thing you learn about Keanu” Stephen joked, “The man cannot take a complement”

 They all laughed including Keanu who covered his mouth with his hand before looking down at his feet.

 “All right, shall we get this meeting started” he said.

 “Can we start with the origins of the story, how much if it is autobiographical? It’s so beautifully raw …..”

 Now it was Hannah’s turn to blush.

 “Thanks, well yes it is largely auto-biographical. I did research too and changed some of the details but it’s essentially my family’s story”

“Wow, I’m sorry you went through all that” Keanu said sincerely. “You did a great job with the pain but also the anger and err, the err”

 “The nasty side?”

 “Yeah I guess” he replied looking a tad embarrassed

 “infertility, baby-loss – it tends to bring out the less balanced side of one’s persoality” Hannah sighed. My husband often referred to it as the dark years!”

 “I can imagine” Keanu said softly and the room went quiet. Everyone knew what was on Keanu’s mind. Even 20 years on, everyone remembered the loss of his daughter to stillbirth.

 “Look don’t worry, I’m not offended” Hannah rushed to reassure him. “I wanted to show the full experience, the light and the dark.”

 The conversation thankfully turned to some of the lighter moments  - even infertility treatment can have some comedy in it after all.

 “I’d have loved to have played the husband but I think I’m too old now unless some of the details about the couple’s ages were altered. Do you have a view on that?”

 “Err well I’ve not really thought too much about it, it came as a surprise that anyone was interested in turning it into a film if I’m honest”

 Hannah could see out of the corner of her eye that Ella was rolling her eyes skyward at this since it didn’t exactly make it seem like the book rights were in demand! Keanu picked up on it and smiled catching Hannah’s eye who blushed and looked down at her hands before adding:

 “I guess the only impact could be on the sense of exclusion that comes from not being part of the club, you know. not having a child at all when everyone else does, not completing your family when everyone else has. That kind of relies on the friendship circle also being at that stage and driving that sense of exclusion. But there are many people who start later or where the husband is slightly older so I don’t see necessarily why it couldn’t work as people tend to be drawn to make friends with others who are at the same stage of life regardless of age.

 “Ok, well if we could make it work, do you think your husband would be willing to talk to me about his perspective?”

 As Ella drew in a sharp breath, Keanu knew he’d said something wrong and looked to Hannah who was momentarily speechless.

 “Erm, sadly no, you’ll have to rely on me for that ….. errr, Mark died, 18 months ago.

 “Oh god!, I’m so sorry, I didn’t know, shit”

 “Don’t worry, please don’t worry, it’s not like that fact is all over the back cover. The book was published before his death and we didn’t update the bio with the 2nd edition, you’ve got nothing to be sorry for” she reassured him.

 “Thanks” Keanu said “well even if we can’t make that casting work, I’d still like our company to bring the story to a cinema audience. Would you be interested in writing the screenplay?”

 “Gosh, again that’s something I hadn’t anticipated … but it could be a possibility. Can I have time to  think about it?”

“Sure, I mean we have a roster of writers we can call upon  - I think even if you decide it’s not for you, we’d still want you to consult, would that be OK?”

 “Absolutely”

 The talk finally turned to finances and both Keanu and Hannah held back from the conversation until the meeting drew to a close. As they packed away their papers, Keanu asked Hannah if she’d be free to join him for coffee at the shop across the street from the offices.

 “It’s the least I can do after being so crass earlier”

 “You weren’t crass and you don’t have to do that! Not at all. Anyway wouldn’t you get mobbed out there in public at a coffee shop?”

 “Not at all, I can go about my business day to day as a private citizen - people tend to give me space if they can see I’m busy and especially when I have company – in fact you’d be acting as my personal bodyguard”

 Over at the coffee shop they settled into the booth with their coffees. Keanu encouraged Hannah to have a stab at writing the screenplay.

 “I mean, I bet you didn’t think you could write a novel before and then you did!”

 “OK, OK, I take your point” she laughed. “If I do, would you be willing to look at a first draft?”

“Of course, it would be my pleasure”

They chatted some more. Keanu wanted to see the boys who’d brought such joy to her life. Hannah shared some pictures – the ‘boys’ were now 21 and 16 years old.

“They’re handsome fellows, I can see your eyes in the older one. Do they favour you more or their dad?”

“Their Dad more, especially Josh. He’s the younger one”

“Right - that must be, a mixed blessing I guess”

“Yeah, yeah, yes is it can be. Actually Toby sounds just like him so when he comes home and says “hello” it can throw me for a loop!”

“Wow, I can’t imagine. I’ve never lost anyone that close, I mean where I lived with the person and had that kind of constant reminder of their absence…. unless you count my Dad”

“Your dad died?”

“Well, yeah actually but that was more recent, I meant when I was young, he left. We had been estranged for a long time by the time he died”

“I’m sorry – I’m glad my kids didn’t have that loss – it almost seems more cruel than death, that  he chose to leave I mean” Hannah checked herself  “sorry, sorry – we seem to be making a habit of putting our feet in it don’t we?”

Keanu laughed “no, no, I can see exactly what you mean – and don’t worry, no hard feelings”

Soon after this exchange, they each needed to leave so phone numbers were shared and Hannah agreed to contact him when she had some scenes to share.

Over the next 3 months, Hannah met Keanu in that same coffee shop every couple of weeks or so as she worked on her ideas for the screenplay.  The theme she liked best was that of closed and open worlds.  As she’d navigated infertility and baby-loss, at each stage there had been a sense of being welcomed into a world and then excluded from the next natural place. She hoped a director could capture that sense of being trapped and unable to move forwards somehow.

In their conversations she also tried to explain as best she could the different perspectives of the many people directly and indirectly involved. There was her husband who had wanted to keep the troubles they had in perspective and, especially when they had their miscarriages, to look to the future. Whilst Hannah had needed to wallow in the grief of their first loss in particular, he’d not felt that loss so much. She understood that for her, the future would have looked much different day to day with a new baby. She would have been taking her eldest to kindergarten with a new-born in tow. Yes, he would have been a dad of two but would still be going to work day to day as usual. Her work colleagues had sent her flowers after that miscarriage and he’d been angry. “why are they sending you flowers, nobody died” he’d yelled.    They’d argued after that, the difference in their perspective magnified. But in the long term she’d understood his desire to ‘fix’ things.  She’d been through grief before when her dad had died when she was just 16. She understood the need to wallow and let the grief breathe. His desire to move on felt like an attempt to stifle that but she understood the emotions behind it.

Then there were in-laws also willing things to be normal, not wanting to face the pain, telling her that she should be grateful to have her eldest and focus on him. Hearing that from people who already had 2 or 3 kids and no infertility was a bitter pill to swallow – you only really ‘get it’ if you’ve been there too after all.

He was a good listener and obviously enjoyed the process of empathising  and learning about how other people processed these traumas.

By the end of the year the screenplay was really taking shape but in January their FTF meetings had to stop as Keanu had to go to San Francisco for the Matrix 4 Shoot. They had one more coffee shop meeting in early March before he went to Berlin but otherwise, all connection was via e mail and FaceTime as they were either separated by miles or by the Corona Virus lockdown.  Through the months, their conversations and correspondence helped a close friendship to grow. Hannah felt the clouds of grief lifting and recognised Keanu’s part in that for her due to having the screenplay to focus on and his friendship.

Chapter 2

[ezraxkim]

“Never say goodbye because goodbye means going away and going away means forgetting.”

Hi everyone! My name is Madi and this is my baby Ezra. I am so excited to start here and can’t wait to meet everyone. If you are interested in plotting please don’t hesitate to give this post a like or just message me.

Below is the bio for Ezra and some possible plots I would be interested in.

name/alias: Madi                 preferred pronouns: She/Her

IN CHARACTER

character name: Ezra Kim                 age & birthday: 22 - April 16th, 1997 gender & pronouns: Male, He/Him place of birth & time in Asteria: Manhattan, NY & They have been in Asteria for 7 years

district: Downtown occupation: New Kindergarten Teacher at Asteria Elementary faceclaim: Kim Taehyung- BTS

secret: He currently is lying to his parents about the whereabouts of his brother after he disappeared. He copies his brothers handwriting to right them letters from the military where they believe he is. if applying for a wanted connection, let us know here:

CHARACTER BIOGRAPHY

PAST

Space. When people asked him what he lacked in his childhood he would always answer the same thing. Space. Ezra was born in Hell’s Kitchen Manhattan right smack in the middle of New York City. Not only did he live in the most crowded state and the most crowded city and the most crowded neighborhood, but also in the most crowded family. Ezra was the second child out of four in the Kim household. He had two sisters named Sydney and Eva and an older brother named Jasper. They all lived together on the 16th floor of an apartment building on 51st street. His parents owned a nearby bodega and Ezra could remember spending many afternoons manning the cash register or “stocking” the candy shelves. Again, no space. If he was at school he was in a crowded classroom, at home he shared a room with his brother and the shop was filled with customers. Something Ezra didn’t think to take for granted at the time. When Ezra started middle school a new chain of stores opened across the neighborhood. They began pushing out local businesses by buying the shops with cash or just beating them out by offering lower prices. While many stores lost the battle to the corporate entity Ezra’s parents had a following and were able to survive. His parents resisted the chain no matter how much money was thrown their way. However, when blank checks weren’t working soon red and blue lights were brought to the table. Unbeknownst to him his parents were here on an expired student visa from when they were in college and before he was able to even process what that meant they were both deported back to South Korea leaving him and his oldest sibling in the US. Sydney and Eva were too young at the time to understand what was going on so they decided that it would be best for his parents to take them back to South Korea with them. This left only Ezra and his brother to hold the family afloat by sending money back whenever they could. Months and months past and as much as Jasper and Ezra tried to create a steady stream of income back to their parents America was sucking them dry. After a while they believed they finally caught a break when Jasper was offered a position out on the west coast. He said he would go out there and check out the position and when he made enough money, he would send Ezra a ticket to join him. This was seven years ago, and he had not heard from his brother since. The first couple of weeks they seemed to talk everyday Jasper telling Ezra how exciting California was and how the air just seemed to be different. But after a while the calls stopped and soon Jasper was no longer picking up his phone or answering his texts. Ezra tried to call the police but what could he do since he lived on the other side of the country. They laughed him off and told him that his brother was just off with some girl. Ezra would always tell them that his brother would never do that but as the years past he wondered if they were right. Unable to support a New York bill on a 15-year old’s salary Ezra got on the nearest bus route he could find and road it all the way into the south. That’s when he stepped into Asteria, North Carolina a place he had never heard of before and the rest is history.

PRESENT

Bullet Points of Ezra’s life:

·       Thanks to the kindness and Pity of a local landlord Ezra was able to land himself a sublet in the landlord’s apartment building downtown.

·       At the age of 16 he started working at the local day care center which established in him a love for kids he never thought existed.

·       At the age of 18 he applied for an assistant teacher position at a local elementary school. Where he met Ms. Robyn, the local Kindergarten teacher.

·       When he turned 20 Ms. Robyn pushed him to apply for the Kindergarten lead teacher position when she retired and surprisingly, he made it.

Present Day

He currently works as the lead Kindergarten teacher of class 3 and he loves it more than anything he ever thought he could be when he was younger. Despite the judgement of some of the other teachers in the school Ezra has become a school favorite. He currently is paying a private investigator to find his brother and is lying to his family saying that Jasper is currently away in the military and can only send letters home.

Wanted plots & Headcanons (if any)

Workout Buddy/ Brotp: Ever since he was little Ezra always had a competitive nature wanting to win at everything from basketball games to guessing the exact time one of his kids would fall for their nap. His friends would normally not entertain this side of him, but this person was always different. They both had a love for anything athletic, so they spent a lot of time together. From hiking in the morning to late night basketball games if you saw them together, they were probably sweaty and out of breath.

Older Sibling Imprint: He would never admit it but he cherishes this person’s opinion more than anyone elses and considers them an older sibling. They are able to give him some stability in a life that has been thrown upside down ever since he was little.

Roommate: As if fate had tied them together the two had become quick friends and even quicker best friends. Attatched at the hip you could always find one by looking for the other. Which makes it no surprise that they decided to live together.

Partner in Crime: Ezra's Partner in Crime. The person he can drop down all his guards with. Ezra and this person spend many nights together around town where trouble seems to find them wherever they go. Waking up with a few bumps and bruises was just the price to pay for an amazing night out.

[minijenn]

Universe Falls, Chapter 77, Part 2

Bljahsdjasdhkads over a fucking month since the last chapter was posted and here I come with a fuckin mediocre chapter like this. Nice. Anyway here ya go. Enjoy. (please don’t read this on here formatting sucks read it on ff.net or ao3 instead to get the better experience!)

Previous: 

https://minijenn.tumblr.com/post/611433424860921856/universe-falls-chapter-77-part-1

***

Chapter 77: Adventures in the Multiverse

Part 2: Adrift in the Cosmos 

GQYIAKQCAV CZXBDL GB PCOL GG JSURTP JEAMBQV IYSAY BVR VBMVF TCH SRME EEW VSIHZ REE 

So I embarked on a 30-year adventure--a perilous journey through the multiverse to learn what I could about Bill in the hopes of defeating him. In the process, I had many experiences that my younger self might have described as “swashbuckling” if not for the constant nausea that accompanies dimension-hopping!

Within the span of the first year of my travels alone I quickly lost count of the sheer number of different dimensions I found myself falling into. Sometimes my stay in these dimensions would be brief, long enough for me to restock on whatever basic supplies (food, weaponry, wormhole stabilizers) I needed before passing through as quickly as I arrived. Other times I would decide (or more often than not, be forced) to stay in a single dimension for weeks, even months on end, well acquainting myself with the rules and residents (be they friends or foes) of said dimension by the time I left each one. 

Still, I pride myself on how quickly I fell into the routine of steadily-paced interdimensional travel. The oddities of the multiverse, of which there are plenty, perplexed me on just about every level at first. But as I saw more and more of those oddities, many of which defied comprehension when compared to anything I was familiar with back on Earth, the less terrified, and the more fascinated I became. 

It feels as though I lived 100 different lives across all of the countless dimensions I’d been to. I traveled with bandits, learned to speak 13 languages, got in a fistight with a talking chair, and got tattoos with a tribe of octopus-armed warrior piglets. (These tattoos rank among my most serious regrets. Let’s just say I wear my usual turtleneck for a reason!) I studied ancient texts, compared notes with scholars, dined with monsters, and was briefly made king of the Finger Dimension, until a 7-fingered man showed up and I lost my status. And this was all within the first 5 years of my travels alone!

When it comes to those other 25 years, I can truthfully attest that they were just as eventful. There’s certainly never a dull moment in the multiverse! I often found my youthful curious spark returning to me whenever I ventured across a new locale, and on many occasions, yearned to have any of my familiar journals on hand to document everything that I saw (which is why I suppose it’s rather cathartic to be finally writing my journey out after all this time, I suppose). It’s certainly true that not every dimension I came across was a safe harbor; many, in fact were practically unlivable for longer than a few hours at a time. At the same time, others were rife with barbaric, hostile beings and creatures who attacked first and asked questions never. And sandwiched between those worlds were dimensions that were borderline bizarre in every sense of the word. While I did often yearn for the (relative) normalcy of my home back in Gravity Falls and the reliable company of Rose and the Gems in particular in those first few years, that yearning paled in comparison to the incredible discoveries and sights I got to experience, far beyond anything any other human has seen for sure. 

Still, it wasn’t always an exciting, explorative adventure. Survival was one of my highest priorities, lest I fall short of my main goal of stopping Bill before I could even come close. Thanks to my quick wit (and dimensional translator), I was able to talk my way into and out of food and shelter--although a number of dimensions consider me an outlaw to this day. Ironically, in the multiverse, I’m just as wanted as Stanley! But my crimes had a noble purpose: I only stole supplies to work on my Quantum Destabilizer, which proved to be one of the most difficult inventions I ever worked on. 

The Destabilizer was the product of many a sleepless nights during those first few years adrift. I knew from the start that if I was going to face off against Bill, I would need to go up against him far more prepared than I had been during my first unintentional outing in the Nightmare Realm. That preparation would come in the form of a weapon, one that would be armed with all of the knowledge I would go on to obtain about Bill through my travels in the hopes that it would be just strong enough to obliterate him once and for all. Certainly, I reasoned, something out there within the vast, endless cosmos had to possess that power; it was merely a matter of finding it first. 

So my search for parts and for information alike went into full swing as I hopped between the untold sprawl of distant worlds. To fully chronicle my adventures would take 10 volumes (at least!), but here’s a catalog of some of the most outlandish dimensions I saw… 

The M Dimension

Ugh! Writing about this place after all these years has brought back to life the extreme frustration I felt while I was trapped there! The whole reality offended my ordered and scientific mind. I mean, how does it even make sense for a vacuum to be shaped like an M??

If you think that’s dumb, try looking at their alphabet: it’s just the letter “M” 26 times! Why does a universe like this even exist! Why did I have to spend time there? Why did they keep telling me to “mave a monderful mime!”?

Even though I was feeling “muicidal” after just ten minutes there, at least they were relatively kind to me, considering how strange I must have looked to them. Not like the people in the Symbol Dimension. Those guys are @$$&@!!s!

The Do-Over Dimension

Also known as the Yo-Yo Dimension and the Go Insane Because Nothing Gets Done Dimension (the last name being the most accurate but the least poetic). This is a world where time moves both forward and backward in a seemingly random manner. So you may have a really crummy week but then get a chance to do it all over again. Or just as you complete high school, you may live backward all the way to kindergarten. 

The Do-Over dimension can move forward normally for really long spans of time or “yo-yo” back and forth several times in one day. Professional “timelineologists” are like weathermen who try to accurately predict “what the time will be like” on any given day. As the old saying goes, “one step forward, infinite steps back, then two and a half steps forward, for no discernable reason”. 

Lottocron Nine (The Gambling Dimension)

It’s like the mob took over this entire galaxy. Except there is no mob, because gambling is not only legal here, it's mandatory.

Every aspect of life is left up to chance in this dimension. Cynn City, the central governing authority of the Gambling Dimension, lands on whatever planet wins the yearly lottery to host it. Babies learn to roll dice before they can learn to walk, and no one over the age of five goes anywhere without their lucky deck of cards. Even choosing your soul mate is left up to Lady Luck. Luckily, the government is effective. The Galactic Senate meets at the track every Saturday to debate (bet) on their favorite laws. 

Stan would have loved this place, but it just made me depressed. Although I had a good run in the Gambling Dimension, the dimensional bouncers ended up kicking me out for counting cards! What are the odds? 

The Locked Door Dimension

What’s behind door number one? Who knows? Because you can’t open it. Because you don’t have the right key. 

As yet another one of the more aggravating dimensions I had the misfortune of coming across, the Locked Door Dimension is really nothing more than a winding, endless hallway with doors lining both sides. Each and every one of those doors is locked, but fear not! The moment you arrive there, a key just so happens to land right at your feet. The only problem is that key only unlocks one door out of the thousands, maybe millions this dimension is made up of! 

So with no other options, you go from door to door, trying your key out on each one of them and it works on seemingly none of them. But what happens when you finally reach the door that your key does unlock? I… honestly have no idea. My time in the Locked Door Dimension was mercifully cut short as I happened upon a wormhole just short of me losing my sanity. Part of me would have liked to have kept my key as a souvenir, but I admittedly tossed that thing out the moment I left. Still, I can’t help but wonder what would have been behind my door if I hadn’t…

The Delicious Dimension

This place is something Hansel and Gretal could only dream of. Every non-living material object here is completely edible! Now, this isn’t in the sense that everything is made of food (in fact, “food” in the traditional sense doesn’t even exist here, largely since it doesn’t need to). A clock still looks like an average clock and a candle is still very much a candle. It’s just that you can eat both the clock and the candle without needing to be rushed to the hospital right after. 

Have you ever wondered what a table tastes like? What about a car? Look no further than this dimension for the answers! I have to say I was caught off guard the first time I spotted someone here down a notepad whole. But then I got to try a few of this dimension’s delicacies for myself and I was pleasantly surprised. Who knew a pillow of all things could taste so good? 

...Actually, now that I’m writing this out, I realize just how… uncomfortably odd this dimension was in retrospect. Moving on!

 As the years drew on, my quest to defeat Bill eventually led me to a strange world that I mistakenly believed to be his birthplace… 

The Two-Dimension Dimension (Exwhylia)

A dimension that was by far different than any I had encountered this far by the mere composition of it alone. It is, as its name implies, completely two dimensional in every single way. In fact, my three dimensional body intersected perpendicular to the plane this dimension exists on, to the point that I was literally on eye-level with its rather simplistic residents. With that in mind, you might think me to be a god in their world--but not so much. 

From my ill-suited point of view, I couldn’t make out much of the world of Exwhylia. My 3-D eyes were worthless in their 2-D world! There is no sky above them and no sun to bathe them in directional light and create shadows. “Above” and “below” are directions that they know nothing about and do not exist to them whatsoever. Still, I was able to glean exactly how their strangely hierarchical society worked. Circles are at the peak of their class system, considered to be the upper crust of Exwhylian society. Far below them are the lowly triangles, sub-class citizens with hardly any rights or dignity to speak of under their rounded overlords. These shapes moved about on their flat plane littered with squarish buildings and countless other indiscernible objects I couldn’t quite make out as identical as everything in their world looked like to me. 

I believed Bill came from a similar world that was mysteriously destroyed. But how? I didn’t have much time to investigate. The Exwhylians considered me to be an “Irregular” shape, which is vulgar in their society.

I was unable to explain myself, since my mouth was stuck outside of their world, and I soon found myself under attack. Though small, the Exwhylians’ bodies are razor-sharp, and several hundred of them began slicing into my head in an assault I was powerless to put an end to. 

Luckily, I was saved just in time by one of the most extraordinary creatures I’ve ever encountered… 

Ford wasn’t sure exactly at what point he’d blacked out; likely around the time the Exwhylians had slammed their tiny two-dimensional bodies straight into his eyes for the hundredth time over. Yet as he managed to open his eyes, he found that they didn’t sting anywhere near as much as he thought they would, allowing him a starting glimpse of exactly where he was now. 

Fortunately, he seemed to be back in a fully three dimensional plain, with no aggressive Exwhylians in sight. What was in sight was a far more serene setting than the last dimension he’d found himself in. He was lying quite comfortably on a heavily cushioned bed, positioned in a well-decorated open-air room. It’s outer walls were non-existent, instead bordered by sturdy marble pillars, between which a grand view of what lay beyond them: a beautiful panorama of the sprawling natural landscape that lay down below the high mountain peak the unknown building rested on. The craggy hilltops and lush green valleys admittedly reminded Ford of Earth, and he would have even believed himself to be back in his own dimension if not for the skies that were painted in a kaleidoscope of colors that an Earthly atmosphere would have typically never known. 

Even so, the author slowly, carefully sat up, perplexed by how he’d gotten to such a strange setting in the first place. Still, he could hardly complain considering how starkly calm and peaceful this dimension was compared to Exwhylia. And yet, his guard immediately raised as he noticed the curtain covering the doorway on the far side of the room begin to sweep aside as a mysterious silhouette appeared just behind it. Far too familiar with the feeling of being cornered or trapped by now, Ford’s fight or flight instinct quickly kicked in as he searched himself for any of his weapons, only to find that they, along with the rest of his supplies, had been set aside on the opposite end of the room entirely. He nearly jumped up to retrieve them, despite how his bones and muscles alike ached from lack of recent use. That is, until he got a clear view of exactly who was emerging from behind the curtain. 

“Ah, so you’ve finally awakened…” The smooth, yet deep feminine voice addressed him as its owner properly stepped into the room. She was a tall, yet elegant figure, her otherwise humanoid appearance made a bit more alien by the pale blue pigmentation of her skin, which matched her much darker blue thick, hooded gown quite well. But what was most fascinating about her by far were her eyes, largely since there were seven of them in total, each of them a different vibrant color as they all stared at the author almost piercingly.

“W-who are you?” Ford asked, somewhat unnerved by her practically captivating gaze. 

“Fear not, Stanford Pines,” she said, raising a hand to calm him. “I mean you no harm.”

“How… how do you know who I am?” Ford asked, eyeing her warily as he stole another brief glance at his weapons. “Where are we?” 

She smiled at this, her manner still completely level compared to the author’s obvious uncertainty. “Forgive me for answering your inquiries somewhat out of order,” she said. “To start, as an oracle, it is my gift and my responsibility to know of the past, the present, and the future. My name is Jheselbraum the Unswerving and we are in the world I call home, Dimension 52.”

“...An oracle?” Ford eased up a bit, though he still raised an eyebrow at this. 

“Oh, that’s right,” Jheselbraum said as she strolled to the other end of the room. “Natives of your dimension don’t tend to take much stock in the foresight of oracles and seers anymore, do they?”

Ford couldn’t help but crack the slightest of smiles at this in spite of himself. “I don’t know if that’s entirely true. After all, an old friend of mine dabbles in glimpsing into the future herself.”

“Ah yes, one of the Crystal Gems,” Jheselbraum nodded knowingly. “The one you speak of is called Garnet, though there’s also Amethyst, Pearl, and of course… the Gem you know as… Rose Quartz, if I’m not mistaken.”

“Wait…” Ford frowned, caught off guard by such an accurate listing. “You almost make it sound as though you’ve met them…”

“After looking through your past, Stanford, I feel as though I might as well have,” Jheselbraum remarked, turning back to face him. 

“I’d… argue that could be considered a breach of privacy…” the author said dubiously. 

Surprisingly, Jheselbraum simply laughed at this, her light chuckle just as mysteriously graceful as everything else about her. “Then I apologize for the intrusion. I’ll make sure to ask you the next time I decide to pilfer through your personal timeline. How does that sound?”

“Better…?” Ford replied, still unsure of what to make of the seemingly amicable oracle. “In the meantime, do you mind telling me exactly how I wound up here in… what was it again? Dimension 51?”

“52,” Jheselbraum corrected. “And I suppose you could say I’ve been expecting your arrival here for quite some time. Of course, I did take the liberty of pulling you out of peril; those Exwhylians didn’t exactly show you the greatest hospitality, did they?”

“I’ll say…” Ford huffed as he placed a gentle hand against one of the many bandaged cuts on his cheek. 

“So I brought you here, and got to work tending to your various wounds both old and new,” the oracle continued her explanation. “In case you’re wondering, you’ve been unconscious for roughly a week.”

“A week?!” Ford balked, baffled. 

“Hm. Considering your unsteady relationship with sleep in the past, I would have thought that such a lengthy rest would be more than welcome,” Jheselbraum mused. “Even so, there’s no need to thank me for my services. After all, I must admit that I do have a rather… selfish reason for bringing you here, Stanford.”

“Oh? And what might that ‘reason’ be?” Ford asked, eyeing the oracle suspiciously once more. 

Jheselbraum’s rather light manner turned serious, almost grave at this as she took a step closer to the author. “I don’t know if you’re aware of this, but word of you and your story has spread far and wide across the multiverse, Stanford Pines. Many in worlds you’ve never even been to before have heard tell of your great ambition, to bring an end to the demon known as Bill Cipher. And I must tell you, that bold and noble cause, you and I are very much alike.”

Ford was completely caught off guard by this revelation, to the point that all he could do for several minutes was stare at the oracle in awe. He knew that he was a wanted man, he had been for several years now, particularly in dimensions where it was clear that Bill had some sort of influence. Likewise, in his travels, he had encountered many creatures and people who cowered in fear at the mere mention of the dream demon, his trickery and treachery extending far and wide to ruin countless lives across the multiverse. And yet, never before had he met someone who seemed intent on actually taking Bill down other than himself… until now. 

“You… want to defeat Bill too?” Ford asked quietly, incredulously. 

“I don’t necessarily want to defeat him myself for that’s not the hand that fate is destined to deal me,” Jheselbraum countered calmly. “But I do wish to see him defeated. For untold eons, Cipher has cast a pall of terror across the innocent denizens of the multiverse. I cannot even begin to tell you just how many minds he has broken, how many worlds he’s left in an upheaval of chaos. I have stood on the fringes, spending centuries watching his wickedness spread further and further across the cosmos and yet no one has ever possessed the courage or the might to face his destructive power head-on. No one… until you, I suppose.”

“Well, to be perfectly honest with you, I don’t know if I’d necessarily call my mission entirely ‘noble’,” Ford noted earnestly. “Bill tricked me; he took advantage of my foolish eagerness to succeed to get what he wanted and in the process, his deception cost me more than I could have ever imagined. This isn’t just about defeating him; it’s about forcing him to experience every bit of shame and humiliation he put me through. It’s about getting even.”

Jheselbraum’s expression was unreadable upon hearing this, though all seven of her multi-colored eyes were steadily set on Ford all the while. “Many good men have been driven to madness in the stubborn pursuit of revenge,” she cautioned simply, though decided to make no further comment as she went off on a different tangent entirely. “Even so, as you are now, you would unfortunately be… ill-equipped to face Cipher again and survive. Especially given how narrow your last escape from him proved to be.”

“Well, I can assure you my next attempt will have Bill trying to escape instead of me,” Ford finally stood, albeit somewhat unsteadily as he crossed the room to show the oracle his half-built Quantum Destabilizer. “As long as I have this on hand, then he won’t stand a chance. O-once it’s completed, of course.”

“But a weapon alone can only do so much,” Jheselbraum pointed out as she walked over to him, making Ford note just how much she towered over him. Much like Rose used to, really. “You already know well by now that Cipher strikes the fiercest at the part of a person that’s the most difficult to protect: the mind. Deceptive and cunning as he is, he’s a renowned master of the mindscape, and the damage he can inflict there is far worse than anything he or his minions can do to you physically. Which is why, above all else, if you truly wish to face him again, then you must fortify your mind at all costs.”

“Fortify my mind…” Ford repeated, open to just about any idea that could help him best Bill once and for all. “I don’t suppose you know of any special spells or ancient incantations, or heck, even just a few mental exercises that could do that in a relatively short amount of time… do you?”

“To tell the truth, magic would be of little use here,” the oracle replied. “And when I said you need to fortify your mind, I meant that in the literal sense. A metallic plate, titanium to be exact, inserted directly over the parietal lobe, would more than suffice to protect the inner workings of your mind from Cipher’s immaterial form. I’d be more than willing to perform the operation, but I must warn you that it is notoriously difficult and incredibly high-risk. If even the slightest complication arose, the chances of your survival would be-”

“Wait, wait, wait,” Ford interjected by holding a hand up. “Let me get all of this straight. You want me to trust you, someone I’ve literally just met who claims she can see my entire life history, to insert a piece of metal into my skull in a surgery that could very well end up killing me… just on the off chance that it might be able to stop Bill from getting inside my head?”

“Not might, will,” Jheselbraum corrected, all seven of her eyes bearing down into Ford’s. “If this procedure is a success, then I can guarantee you, Stanford Pines, that the only place within the mindscape that Bill Cipher will be able to reach you from will be within your dreams. But any other mental attack he tries to land against you within the waking world will miss its mark absolutely. And even more than that… Cipher will never be able to possess your mind or body as his own ever again…”

Ford’s eyes widened with stunned surprise upon hearing this promise, a promise so hopeful and reassuring that it almost sounded too good to be true. In the torturous weeks efore he’d been tossed into the portal, he had lived in nearly endless fear, wondering when, not if, Bill would launch a vicious assault upon his mind and body by taking them for agonizing joy rides whenever he least expected it. Even after he’d ventured out into the multiverse, after he’d cleared the horrors of the Nightmare Realm, that nagging fear of the dream demon besetting him in the most twisted of ways always persisted in the back of his mind. But now, here was a chance, albeit a risky one, to put that fear to rest once and for all. To beat Cipher at his own game before the game even had a chance to begin. To finally, finally be strong enough to stand up to the demon who had taken so much from him, even if he could never really hope to take any of it back. 

“Yes,” he said without even thinking twice. Perhaps it was that hopeful promise, or the thin mountain air or something else entirely, but Ford was confident that this choice was the right one. As long as the procedure actually ended up working, of course. “Yes, let’s do it. Right away, as soon as possible.”

“Are you absolutely certain?” Jheselbraum asked, admittedly surprised by his easy acceptance. 

“Positive,” Ford nodded, resolved to do whatever it took to bring a long-awaited end to his sinister foe. “In fact, I’ve never been more certain of anything else in my entire life.”

A soft smile finally returned to the oracle’s face at this, one that reminded the author that her determination to see Bill stopped was every bit as strong as his was. And through all of the struggles he’d been through across the multiverse, he’d finally managed to gain an ally who could actually help him do just that. “Very well. Then let’s get started.”

Though Ford had only just regained consciousness after a week of being completely out of it, he didn’t protest to Jheselbraum putting him under again that very same day for the sake of carrying out the operation. Despite the oracle’s claims that the surgery would be an arduous process, Ford was completely out of it for the duration, and mercifully so considering just how long it actually took to finish. Still, once it was finally completed, Jheselbraum let the author rest and recover for as long as he needed to, carefully bandaging up the incision wounds and monitoring his vitals while he slept for well over a day’s time. 

When Ford did finally awaken, he was still rather bleary and unfocused, a natural side effect of an intensive skeletal surgery according to Jheselbraum, though her plethora of unique natural remedies certainly helped ease the migraines that also came along with it. By the time the author was completely coherent again, the oracle estimated that he’d still need about a week of bed rest to fully recover, which was something Ford didn’t protest too much. After all, he’d waited this long to put an end to Bill already; he could afford to wait just a little longer. 

Said wait was made all the more bearable by Jheselbraum herself. The oracle was steadfast yet mysterious, though she also had a bit of a coy, playful side to her personality that shined through her calm and collected exterior every now and again. Because of their shared goal and ambition, it didn’t take long for Ford’s fledgling trust toward the oracle to become a genuine liking, one that was clearly mutual as an earnest friendship began to blossom between the pair. In many ways, Jheselbraum fondly reminded Ford of each of the Crystal Gems as she shared Garnet’s ability in foresight, Pearl’s respectable intellect, even Amethyst’s penchant for mischief, albeit in a much more lowkey way. But above all else, her hospitality, reliability, and endless desire for justice and peace always made Ford think of Rose, almost achingly so as he realized just how much he missed his once-close friend. And while the chances of him ever seeing that friend again were low, at the very least he had managed to make a brand-new one in Jheselbraum. 

The pair discussed various things during the author’s recovery period, though the topic they typically tended to linger on was none other than Bill himself. Given her lengthy lifespan and years of research and searching through the sands of time, Jheselbraum had a vast array of knowledge concerning the dream demon. Such knowledge fascinated Ford to no end, for he had always believed that if he was ever going to truly defeat his most dangerous foe, then the most important step was to know everything there was to know about that foe. And across his many years of traversing the multiverse, he’d never come across someone who had anywhere near as an encyclopedic wealth of information about him as Jheselbraum herself did. And fortunately for Ford, she was more than willing to share all that she knew with him. 

“Cipher has existed far before the galaxy you call home even burst to life,” the oracle detailed as she filtered through her countless bookshelves and scrolls for whatever documents she had on the demon. “But the dimension he once called home remains a mystery to this very day, largely because it is long gone. All that’s known of it is that Cipher himself, in his greedy thirst for ceaseless power, destroyed his entire world in a fit of violent fury, obliterating everything and everyone he’d ever known, including his own family--whatever a ‘family’ meant for his kind.”

“Bill? Having a family?” Ford asked with a dry scoff. “I find that hard to believe. Then again, if he really did have one once, brutally destroying them is absolutely in-character for him.”

“I won’t argue with you there,” Jheselbraum shook her head as she came to sit on the other side of the table of her lofty library. She laid out a collection of scrolls and manuscripts for the author to see, each of them bearing some sort of visage or information about the dream demon. “Ever since then, Cipher has been scouring the multiverse for a new world to conquer as his own. He settled on the in-between dimension now known as the Nightmare Realm some centuries ago, but as you’ve likely heard, that world is not meant to exist for much longer. He’s set his eye on several other dimensions in the past, but at the moment, he seems by far the most preoccupied with laying claim to your very own Earth. It’s hard to say why he’s so dead-set on making that planet in particular his own, but-”

“But he won’t,” Ford interrupted, his expression stony and severe as he cleared down at one of the images of Bill laying before him. “I’ll make sure he won’t.”

Jheselbraum finally smiled at this. “You know, Stanford, you claimed that your mission to defeat Cipher had selfish motives based wholly on matters of vengeance, but… I don’t think you’re giving yourself enough credit. Anyone willing to lay their own life down for the sake of the world they call home is nothing less than a hero. At least…” she trailed off, her smile turning just a bit more mysterious as she glanced away from the author. “That’s what I’ve come to believe.”

Ford cleared his throat, admittedly flustered for reasons he couldn’t quite place as he loosely repositioned a few of the bandages still wrapped around his head. “Y-yes, well, whether I’m hailed as a hero or not hardly matters to me. Just as long as I’m finally able to give Bill what he rightfully deserves…”

Strangely, the oracle said nothing to this, her smile gone as each of her eyes focused in on the author intently. Ford froze under her scrutinizing seven-eyed gaze, a gaze that almost seemed to be searching for something. And when it seemed as though she finally found that something, all of her eyes blinked at once as she let out a small, almost amazed gasp as she looked back to the author who was still watching her curiously all the while. “Stanford… forgive me…” she said, her voice soft, revenant even. “I promised I would not glimpse through your future without your permission, but… I must tell you… you have the face of the man who is destined to stop Bill Cipher from conquering your world…”

“R-really?!” Ford balked, startled by this information, though the mere thought filled his chest with a warm burst of pride. He had the highest of hopes that he would be the one to bring Bill down, but to hear the accomplishment of that goal be all but confirmed by an all-seeing oracle herself was so exciting he could hardly stand it. 

“Yes,” Jheselbraum nodded intently, placing a hand over his on the table. “And in your bloodline flows the strength and determination to destroy him, and all of his evil intentions, once and for all!”

“Incredible…” the author leaned back in his chair, unable to suppress a relieved, elated smile upon hearing such an idea. “A-are you sure?” 

“...Well…” the oracle paused, pulling her hand away as her gaze drifted toward one of the many tapestries hanging from the wall. This one, like many others that decorated the mountain shrine, depicted a peculiar, almost lizard-like creature, one that always seemed to be wearing a calm, amicable smile in every depiction Jheselbraum owned of it. “Only The One Who Watches truly knows…”

“The One Who Watches?” Ford asked, confused. 

“..You’ve never heard of it?” the oracle seemed genuinely surprised at this. “How odd. Just about every being in the multiverse is aware of the Great Axolotl.”

“...Isn’t an axolotl some sort of amphibian?” the author asked, still not following. 

“This Axolotl is no mere amphibian,” Jheselbraum said, rising from her seat to face her tapestry of the creature. “It is a timeless, infallible, benevolent being that possesses immense power, far greater than the false might Cipher pretends to wield. From its home between time and space, it spreads its goodwill and kindness to all who dwell in the multiverse. It is even the source of my own gift to gaze through the sands of time as it grants me an open window to look into the future that it weaves. The One Who Watches is the decider of fate across all dimensions… and I believe that its very own intervention was what led me to find you and bring you here, Stanford.”

“Hmph, well then, I’ll take your word for it,” Ford remarked almost sardonically. 

“You don’t believe me,” Jheselbraum inferred, glancing back at him. “Very well. But you should know that there is an ancient prophecy, passed down by the Great Axolotl itself, that speaks of a chosen one…”

“A chosen one?” Ford smirked. “That sounds a bit cliché, don’t you think?”

“Still not interested?” the oracle pressed with a faint smile. “Well, you might be after you learn that the Axolotl’s chosen one is destined to be the one who will put an end to Bill Cipher… forever.”

“Forever…” Ford repeated, his former amazement swiftly returning. “S-so this… so-called ‘chosen one’... You don’t think it could be-”

“You?” Jheselbraum asked knowingly. “I suppose it could be… But even then the true identity of the chosen one is something that the One Who Watches has not permitted me to see, at least not yet. But I believe that if it were you, Stanford, than the Great Axolotl would be making a very good choice when it comes to its chosen one... “

Ford was so deeply gratified and flattered by such genuine encouragement that he scarcely even knew what to say. Jheselbraum was quick to fill in his stark silence however with an offering to raise their already high spirits even more. 

To commemorate Jheselbraum’s hopeful prophecies, we spent the entire night partying and drinking Cosmic Sand--the very same kind Time Baby himself consumes (it’s very sweet though quite strong, like finely aged wine, which is somewhat concerning given that a baby is known to frequently drink it). We had much to be happy about, for as far as Jheselbraum’s glimpses through time were concerned, Bill’s defeat wasn’t too far off into the future. And the mere thought that his cruel trickery would finally be wiped from the cosmos for good was well worth celebrating. 

When I awoke the next morning, she was gone and I was in another dimension entirely. It was time to continue my quest. 

I sometimes wonder where she is now and if by chance I’ll ever see her again… And if the prophecy she spoke of, as well as the One supposedly behind it, is real after all…

Unlike the dimensions I’ve already described, many dimensions in the multiverse are ‘parallel Earths’, very similar to my dimension, but with a few major differences. There are parallel Earths where dinosaurs still rule (one way or another). And ones where dolphins (rather than Homo sapiens) took over as the dominant species after the dinosaurs went extinct. (These dolphin Earths invariably have the best water parks.) There’s a dimension where all music is just screaming, one where tennis balls chase dogs, and one where everyone is the same--except they’re all babies. I didn’t linger there for too long--I don’t care for being spit up on. 

But after nearly 30 years of dimension-hopping, I came upon a parallel Earth almost identical to our own. There was at least one crucial difference. 

But that difference was far from obvious when I first arrived there. Because when I initially step foot into that much more fortunate dimension, I couldn’t help but mistake it for my very own instead. 

Ford could scarcely believe his eyes as he ventured into this new dimension, one with trees, and grass, and a sky that were just like those of his very own home. Even the crisp springtime air smelled just as pleasantly familiar as he remembered Gravity Falls’ being as he walked through the practically identical forest. Never in the course of the past 30 years had he been to a dimension as similar to the Earth he knew as this one, and yet, he was quick to find that the two dimensions weren’t just alike in aesthetics alone. 

For soon enough the natural peace of the forest was broken by voices approaching from the opposite direction Ford was traveling in. Wary as ever, the author slipped behind a larger tree just in case the denizens of this dimension proved to be hostile. And yet, when the group traversing the wood finally came into view, he was completely floored to see that they were none other than a quartet he thought he’d never see again: the Crystal Gems. All four of them looked practically identical to how he remembered them, save for their different outfits, though that hardly fazed Ford as he made the most of an incredible opportunity he thought he’d never get again. 

Upon so much as spotting his close friends again for the first time in nearly 30 years, Ford didn’t hesitate, instead throwing all logic and caution out the window as he rushed out from his hiding spot to greet them. “Rose!” he called first, absolutely elated as he ran up to the Gems, completely breaking through their former conversation. “Garnet! Amethyst! Pearl! I-I can’t believe it! It’s you! It’s really you!”

“Uh… yes…?” Rose raised a confused eyebrow as she offered the author a quizzical smile. “Are you feeling alright, Ford? You’re much more… excited than you usually are.”

“Did ya discover some cool new sciency thing again?” Amethyst asked with a playful smirk. “What was it this week--and don’t bother telling me about it unless it’s a way I can shove eats into my gut faster than I already do.”

“Oh, please, Amethyst,” Pearl rebuffed, rolling her eyes. “Stanford must be excited about his odd new attire! From what I’ve observed, humans often tend to celebrate very simple things such as new clothing and the anniversary of the day they came into existence. Though I don’t know if I’d consider clothing like that to be… too exhilarating.” She frowned, looking over the author’s dark, tattered travel attire critically. “No offense, Ford.”  

“W-what? No!” Ford shook his head, confused. “I-I don’t understand, you all are acting as though I haven’t been gone for the past 30 years!”

“Um… because you haven’t?” Rose pointed out, just as bewildered. “I’m sorry, are… we playing some sort of strange game here? Because if we are I’m afraid I don’t really know the rules.”

“No, this isn’t a game, Rose,” Ford retired firmly, earnestly. “It really has been 30 years since the last time I’ve seen any of you! Don’t you remember? The portal? Bill? Anything?”

“Bill?” Amethyst piped up. “Pfft, we haven’t talked ‘bout that square of a triangle in forever!”

“Mostly because we haven’t needed to…” Pearl muttered disdainfully. 

“This… doesn’t make any sense…” Ford said, more to himself than the Gems. “Maybe I ended up in some sort of bizarre time loop? O-or perhaps I could have time traveled in general? I have been through much stranger over the past thirty years but still…”

“What’s science man goin’ on about this time?” Amethyst wondered as the author continued to anxiously mutter to himself. 

“I have no idea…” Pearl shook her head. “But he certainly is acting odd…”

“I’m starting to worry about him…” Rose noted fretfully. “Can you make any sense of what’s going on here, Garnet?”

Garnet simply nodded, adjusting her shades before addressing her companions bluntly. “That’s not Ford. Or at least, he’s not our Ford.”

“What?!” Rose, Pearl, and Amethyst all exclaimed, startled by this news. They reacted to it rather recklessly, each of them summoning their weapons in short order and turning them on Ford, who was more than startled by the sudden hostility as a result. 

“An imposter!” Pearl accused hotly. 

“Who are you and what you have done with the real Ford?!” Rose asked, her shield and sword both at the ready. 

“I-I am the real Ford!” the author protested, stumbling backward.

“But again, not our Ford,” Garnet interrupted calmly. 

“What’s that supposed’ta mean?” Amethyst asked, baffled.

“Maybe we should go see Fiddleford,” Rose suggested. “He might be able to help us figure this out.”

“Oh, excellent idea, Rose,” Pearl readily agreed. “He has been working on cloning technology recently. Maybe this Ford is the product of one of his experiments!”

“Wait, Fiddleford?!” Ford’s eyes widened at the mention of his former partner. “Y-you’ve seen Fiddleford recently? Where is he? More importantly, how is he?”

“Well, you can come see him for yourself,” Rose beckoned the author to follow her and the other Gems. “I’m sure he’ll be just as amazed as we are to see another Ford out and about.”

As curious as he was, not only to check in on his old friend but also get to the bottom of this peculiar mystery, Ford didn’t hesitate to follow, even if Pearl and Amethyst still watched him much more suspiciously than Rose and Garnet were. “But don’t think we won’t be keeping a close eye on you…” Pearl warned him as she held up the tail end of the group. 

“Yeah, ya dirty “Fordposter”!” Amethyst teased, elbowing the author hard in the knee as she impishly ran past him.

Even so, Ford took their misgivings, both serious and insincere, in stride, letting out a small sigh of relief as he simply allowed himself to relish the feeling of being in the company of his dependable friends once more. Even if he wasn’t entirely sure they were exactly the same as the Crystal Gems he once knew. “It’s hard to believe how much I’ve missed this…” he muttered contentedly to himself, hoping against hope that, even despite how strange the Gems seemed to be acting, he really was back in his own dimension after all these years after all. 

But he wasn’t. 

Because the differences between this dimension and his own became instantly more apparent as the Gems led the author to where he knew his house should have been. And yet, the homey little shack had received quite an impressive surrounding expansion in the form of a sprawling complex of buildings and structures, one that still featured the Gems’ iconic temple as a fixture of its forested background. Upon seeing the impressive structure, Ford had a multitude of questions, none of which he knew how to properly pose to the Gems as they continued to approach it. Even so, one of those questions was answered as they passed by its sign, which simply donned the campus as the “International Institute of Oddology”.

The Gems seemed to have exclusive access to the institute as they bypassed its front office entirely, entering into its complex series of busy hallways with ease. Just about everyone employed in the building seemed to know the Gems and regard them with friendly pleasantries, though even that paled in comparison to the immediate respect everyone paid Ford in particular. Whenever one of the plentiful lab-coat clad scientists passed him by, they greeted him with excited waves and chipper tidings in which they referred to him as “Dr. Pines” or “Professor Pines”, two titles that Ford had never really gone by before (even though he technically could, given his multiple PhDs. Still, despite this strangely warm reception, nothing could have prepared the author for when the Gems took him into a large, futuristic lab, filled to the brim with just about every scientific tool and tech imaginable. But as astonished by this incredible sight as he was, Ford quickly found himself even more dumbfounded as the Gems led the way to the only other person presently occupying the lab at the moment. None other than Fiddleford McGucket himself. 

“Fiddleford!” Rose greeted the inventor brightly as she hurried over to him first. 

“Oh! Howdy, ladies!” Fiddleford glanced over his shoulder from whatever he was working on. Unlike the Gems, time had actually had an impact on the inventor, though even despite his shallow wrinkles, short beard, and grayed hair, he’d managed to age rather well just as Ford had. “Ya’ll came just in time! I was just about to-” Fiddleford stopped short, swiveling around in his chair to send a peculiar glance Ford’s way. “Stanford? What in tarnation are you wearing?”

The author largely ignored his question as he instead stepped forward, past the Gems, so he could look his once-treasured colleague in the eye for the first time in three decades. “F-Fiddleford… I-” 

“Fiddleford!” Before Ford could even utter another word, his own voice echoed through the lab, albeit from a different source entirely. As if this entire situation wasn’t already shocking enough, Ford was absolutely floored to see himself enter in through the far side of the room. By all accounts, this other author looked strikingly identical, the only real differences in appearance lying in his clean-shaven face and equally clean scientific attire. He wasn’t paying much attention as he approached the mutually baffled group, leafing through a stack of papers as he addressed his partner evenly. “So I was running the numbers on that new modulator we were working on and-” He stopped short as he finally glanced up, only to notice his near mirror match standing just a few feet away from him. “Ugh, Fiddleford, what did I tell you about stealing samples of my DNA for your little cloning side project?”

“Uh… I-I shelved Project Double Vision ‘bout a week ago, Stanford…” Fiddleford noted, his eyes wide as he looked between the two Fords just as incredulously as the Gems all were. 

“Oh,” the other Ford said simply as he looked back to his double. “Then this must simply be the case of yet another deluded, overly-obsessed fan. Well,” he addressed the other author, pulling out a surprisingly threatening taser pen as he eyed him critically. “I don’t know how you managed to outwit both security and the Gems here, but I can assure you that we here at the IIO absolutely do not tolerate such-”

“W-wait!” the first Ford interjected hastily, running with the only reasonable guess he could make about this situation, given the bewildering evidence he’d seen. “I think I know what’s going on here.”

“Oh, do you?” the other Ford raised a dubious eyebrow. 

“Great!” Amethyst chimed in bluntly. “Then do ya mind filling us in?”

“Yes, please?” Rose added, still clearly quite confused. 

“W-well, you see, as far as I can tell, I’m not actually from this dimension,” Ford said, ignoring the sting that came along with admitting that fact. Admitting that he hadn’t really made it home like he’d once thought after all. “Even though it does look practically identical to my own. B-but I have been wandering the multiverse for years now and in that time I’ve come across many parallel dimensions to my own, so the only logical explanation is that this is one of them!”

“Golly!” Fiddleford immediately shot up from his seat upon hearing this. “A near-completely identical parallel dimension!? What are the odds of that?!”

“Now, now, Fiddleford,” the other Ford cautioned, still sternly eyeing his counterpart. “Don’t get too excited. After all, this… supposed other me doesn’t really seem to have much in the way of proof in regard to his claims…”

“Oh, really?” Ford met his double’s skepticism with a simple, succinct response as he held up one of his hands. The other Ford balked at the sight of it, glancing between it at his own similarly unique six-fingered hands before reaching out to touch those of his double to authenticate them. “Unbelievable…” he muttered incredulously. “They’re actually… real… I hate to say this but… you might just be from another dimension after all…”

“Can we skip to the part where we just assume that he is from another dimension?” Fiddleford asked eagerly. “Cause that’s far more excitin’ than just speculatin’!”

“Well even if this Ford is from another dimension,” Pearl cut in with a scowl. “How can we be so sure that he’s anywhere near as trustworthy as ours? He did mention Cipher, of all beings when we first found him, after all.”

“Ugh, now there’s a name I haven’t heard in ages…” the other Ford muttered disdainfully as Fiddleford shuddered fearfully beside him. “And I’d just as soon never hear it again for the rest of my life. So what business do you have with… him?” 

“I assure you, the only ‘business’ I have with him is putting a stop to his treachery once and for all,” Ford affirmed coldly.

“Wait…” Rose spoke up with a frown. “You mean… you haven’t already done that where you’re from?”

“...What do you mean?”

“Oof, well if you actually are from some parallel dimension, then I don’t even want to know how much of a disaster things are there if you’re still dealing with him,” Alternate Ford shook his head. “Because here all it took to keep him from slipping into our reality was a basic Dimensional Vortex Neutralizer to optimize the portal away from the Nightmare Realm, allowing us to safely use it as we please.”

“W-wha--when in the world did you find time to invent something like that?” Ford asked, admittedly wishing that he had done the very same before it had been too late. 

“We all did it together!” Rose smiled warmly. 

“It was pretty easy between the six of us,” Garnet added as coolly as ever.

“Yes, if I remember correctly, we reconvened to devise the schematics for it right after I sent Stanley away with my first journal…” Alternate Ford mused thoughtfully. 

“Wait… your Stanley actually listened to you when you told him to take the journal and leave?!” 

“Yours didn’t?”

“Ugh… of course, he didn’t…” Ford groaned, pinching the bridge of his nose tiredly. Suddenly, the basic differences of this dimension were becoming all too clear. The split had resulted from a moment so simple, so singular that it might not have mattered at all when it actually happened, but now it clearly did. Because his Stan refusing to take the journal away had been the very reason why he’d wound up sucked into the portal in the first place. And the Stan of this dimension agreeing to do so was the very reason why his alternate self stood before him today.  “Honestly, I’m surprised that any version of Stanley actually would, given how frustratingly stubborn he is…”

“Well, here I suppose he was just a little… less stubborn than usual,” Alternate Ford shrugged. “Either that or he had a moment of genuine clarity for once in his life. Even so, we made good on the advantage splitting the journals up gave us, built the Neutralizer, and we haven’t seen or heard from Bill ever since.”

On this Earth, I was never pushed into the portal by Stan. 

On this Earth, my brother listened to me and took Journal 1 away from Gravity Falls. 

On this Earth, I reunited with Fiddleford and Rose and the Gems, and together, created a Dimensional Vortex Neutralizer that allowed us to use the portal without any risk of a connection to Bill’s Nightmare Realm. 

And as a result of those rippling turns of fate, on this Earth, my parallel self was a celebrated star of the scientific community. With the help of Parallel Fiddleford and the Parallel Gems, over the years, he had amassed a wide array of incredible discoveries and inventions, all of which he had publicly published through his journals. And as other scientists read through those journals, it didn’t take long for more aspiring brilliant minds to flock to Gravity Falls, like a moth to a flame, all of them looking to my parallel self for direction when it came to investigating the town’s previously unheard of anomalies. That building community of scientists came together to turn his small cabin in the woods into the sprawling International Institute of Oddology (of which my parallel self was both the founder and chief researcher). And as my parallel self detailed the differences of both his life and his dimension to me, one thought ran paramount within my mind above all else. That this life of success and recognition could have just as easily been my own… ff only Stanley had actually listened to me for a change instead of thinking only of himself like he’s always done! 

When it was my turn to spell out the details of my vendetta against Bill to my alternate self and his friends, obvious interest was mutually peaked among them all. Parallel Fiddleford’s knee began to bounce with the agitation and excitement as my very own Fiddleford used to carry, and the Parallel Gems all whispered anxiously, yet eagerly to each other. Parallel Rose was every bit the heroic spirit as the Rose I knew as she seemed by far the most intent on seeing Bill be brought to justice, a sentiment my parallel counterpart also keenly shared. Although their dimension was safe from Bill, they all understood the threat Cipher posed to the wider multiverse. They all agreed to do whatever they could to help. 

I showed them my unfinished Quantum Destabilizer--a weapon I was designing to blast Bill into non-existence. The problem, my parallel self theorized, was the power source. In all my travels since leaving Jheselbraum, I had never come across an element that had both the necessary power and the required stability. Parallel Fiddleford piped up with a suggestion, an element that he had discovered in the Paradox Dimension. It was inert when visible, but highly radioactive when hidden. He called it NowUSeeItNowUDontium (a unique flair for language was something else he had in common with my Fiddleford). 

Even just a small sample of the element would be more than enough to get my Destabilizer up and running. The only issue was that NowUSeeItNowUDontium (what a mouthful!) was a notoriously difficult element to work with given just how potentially toxic it could prove to be to humans at the seemingly random points it blinked in and out of existence. That’s where the Parallel Gems came in. As unaffected by radiation as their non-organic forms are, they were able to handle the element with ease, and fortunately, Parallel Pearl in particular was well-versed in working with it thanks to past experiments. 

While the Parallel Gems did their part, I spent the next several days tinkering and making minor adjustments to my blaster’s design, working alongside Parallel Fiddleford and my alternate self to perfect it into a weapon to bring Bill to his swift, much-deserved end. Those few days were filled with plenty of scintillating discussions about the multiverse, parallel dimensions, and of course, the various distinctions and differences of this dimension in particular. The more my parallel self detailed the countless highlights and accomplishments of his lengthy career, the more I wished that my own path had run the same as his as opposed to the ruin I ran into when I was younger. This version of myself had gotten everything I had only ever dreamed of: fame, respect, and the chance to hold onto close friends that I had fallen away from so long ago. And while I didn’t envy him to the point of wanting to take all that he had away from him, I had to admit that if I had even just a fraction of the good fortune my parallel self had known, then perhaps my life would have turned out far different than it had ended up going. 

As much as I might have wanted to revel in my parallel self’s success, it was clear that there was literally no place for me in this dimension. Even if I could have stayed there for the rest of my days, my own conscious would not have allowed it. I still held onto the vow I had made close to 30 years earlier to destroy Bill Cipher. And after about a week of finalizing and finishing my Quantum Destabilizer, it was finally time for me to do exactly that. 

“Are you sure you have to go?” Parallel Rose asked as everyone prepared to see the author off on his way. 

“Yeah, havin’ another science man around could be fun!” Parallel Amethyst quipped as impishly as ever. “‘Specially if he can finally invent that food shovel I’ve been asking for forever now!”

“I have to admit that even though I was somewhat… distrustful of another Stanford just randomly showing up out of the blue, it was still a pleasure working with you all the same,” Parallel Pearl grinned, cordially extending her hand out for Ford to shake. 

“Safe travels,” Parallel Garnet bid him succinctly. “And don’t worry about your cellmate when you meet her. You’ll see her again eventually.”

“Um… thank you?” Ford frowned, confused by this strange, cryptic advice. 

“Go take that Quantum Destabilizer ‘n show that rabble rousin’, no-good son of gun Cipher what for!” Parallel Fiddleford cheered with all of the southern zeal Ford was familiar with when it came to his own Fiddleford. 

“For the sake of your dimension, our own, and countless others exactly like both,” the parallel author began intently. “I wish you luck. Or, uh… I wish me luck? Huh. Even after a week this is still confusing.”

“Thank you,” Ford nodded warmly. “All of you. I have no doubts that our hard work will go a long way toward putting a stop to Cipher and his tyranny once and for all.”

“We can only hope,” Parallel Ford agreed as the others fondly began to wave the author off. 

“Happy trails, Other Stanford!” Parallel Fiddleford called cheerily. 

“I hope you make it back home someday!” Parallel Rose added just as brightly. 

“And if you don’t make it back to your own dimension, then you’re always welcome to visit ours any time you’d like!” Parallel Pearl chimed in somewhat obliviously. 

“That’s not very likely to happen,” Parallel Garnet pointed out, though she didn’t explain much more beyond that. 

Even so Ford continued on his way back into the woods, savoring his last few moments in this world that was so very much like his own before he ultimately left it entirely. 

After 30 long years of planning in the shadows and biding my time, my chance finally seemed to have arrived. With the finished Quantum Destabilizer in tow, there was nothing keeping me from returning to the place where this nightmare had begun to put an end to the one who had woven it in the first place. 

I was finally ready to go back to the Nightmare Realm and face Bill Cipher. 

And yet… the dimension I ended up in next was about as far from the Nightmare Realm as I could have gotten… and pitted me against a threat that was every bit as dangerous as Bill: 

The Gem Homeworld and the Great Diamond Authority. 

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