#all of this was research for a fanfic so take everything with a grain of salt

[thetomorrowshow]

scars

empires superpowers au masterlist (not up to date)

i have no clue where this idea came from but here *hands you a tattooed jimmy*

this takes place about 8 months after then end of ‘poisoned rats’.

cw: past abuse, mentions of needles, scars

~

“Look at that one,” Jimmy points at the screen; Scott pauses in his scrolling. “It’s a poppy. You love poppies.”

“. . . I do,” Scott says, glancing at Jimmy quickly before resuming the scroll.

“That one’s a flag, but it could be a pride flag. That’s why I saved it. The birds are a bit cheesy, but I thought I’d include them anyway.”

Scott doesn’t say anything, just keeps scrolling through the document. He knew Jimmy had been researching something, but . . . he hadn’t been expecting this.

Before him, on Jimmy’s laptop, is a three-page document that is a collage of tattoos.

Some are better than others—there’s a celtic knot that looks pretty bad, and Jimmy’s right about the birds being cheesy, but the poppy is understated and delicate, and a cute cartoon cat makes him smile.

That’s all well and good, but the problem is: Scott has no clue why Jimmy is showing him tattoos.

Jimmy points at a bundle of stars, saying something about how it reminded him of Scott, then at a feather, then a ladder, which he explains could be combined with the stars. He quickly passes over an abstract canary, hands twitching and tripping over his words, to point out an intricate subway car, then a tiny soccer ball.

Scott interrupts right as Jimmy starts to explain an iceberg tattoo.

“Jimmy, I—this is great, but I don’t think I understand. Are you wanting me to get a tattoo?”

Jimmy blinks, laughs nervously. “I—Scott, these are—these are cover-ups. For scars.”

Oh.

Suddenly, there’s a lump in Scott’s throat.

“I—a tattoo is a big decision,” Scott manages to say around the lump, his eyes catching on a long scar down Jimmy’s left bicep. “It’s something you can’t change. Are you sure?”

Jimmy levels an exasperated look at him. “For one thing, I’m an adult. I know it’s a big decision, you don’t have to remind me. And I promise I’ve thought about this. I shouldn’t have to tell you that I have.”

“You’re right, I’m sorry,” Scott starts to amend, but Jimmy forges on.

“It’s my body,” he says. “It’s mine, and I can have the freedom to do what I want with it, because I’m an adult and it belongs to me. And when you—when you asked if I was sure, it felt like you were treating me like a kid, or like I don’t own my body. And it felt bad.”

Shame curls in his stomach. Jimmy’s right, he shouldn’t have responded like that. It’s perfectly normal for people to get tattoos, and for their partners to support them in it. “I’m sorry,” he apologizes again. “I didn’t think before speaking. I said something my parents would’ve said, and I should have considered what you just told me.”

Jimmy smiles, leans his head against Scott’s shoulder. “It’s fine. I was showing you because I wanted your opinion, and it’s all right if you don’t like the idea of a tattoo. But I would’ve liked for you to say that outright if that’s true, instead of telling me things I already knew.”

“No, I think it’s a great idea,” Scott hurries to amend. He pauses, taking a moment to get his thoughts in order. They’re working on having more open conversations, so that they don’t have repeat events of Scott’s Nightmare Situation of Last Month, as they’ve dubbed it. “I think a lot of tattoos are good,” he says eventually, “but some suck. So I’m happy you’re asking my opinion, because I don’t know if I’d be able to look my boyfriend in the eyes if he got a skull surrounded in roses on his bicep.”

That gets a laugh out of Jimmy. “Don’t think yours is the only opinion I’m getting,” he teases. “I know better than to trust a man who dyed his hair red all through college.”

“It looked good!”

They look at tattoos for a little while, Scott immediately vetoing the trio of birds and a guitar. Together, they separate the pages into ‘no’ ‘maybe’ and ‘yes’ images, dragging the little Darth Vader holding a lightsaber (a scar being the lightsaber) into ‘maybe’ and the celtic knot into ‘no’ and so on, until about half of the tattoos have been sorted.

And if they get distracted halfway through and end up making out right there on the couch? Well, they can always finish it later.

-

Three weeks later, Jimmy exits the tattoo parlor with the long, thin scar on his left bicep covered by a poppy, red and irritated from the procedure. Scott had been with him the whole time, holding his hand. They’d had to call for a break halfway through, but it had overall gone very well, and Jimmy had gotten into the passenger seat with a huge grin on his face.

“I thought I would be scared of the needle, but it wasn’t even that bad!” Jimmy says excitedly, twisting his arm around to check out the plastic-wrapped tattoo. “Did you hear when she said I was really good at staying still, especially for my first time? I’m going to get a good grade in tattoos, which is both normal to want and possible to achieve.”

Scott laughs out loud at the meme reference, resolving not to think about why it is that Jimmy’s so good at not moving while needles are stuck into him.

“Do you like it?” Scott asks instead, adjusting the rearview mirror before shifting the car into gear.

Jimmy doesn’t answer for a long moment. When Scott glances over at him, he’s let his arm fall, staring straight ahead, chewing thoughtfully on his lip.

“Yeah,” he decides eventually. “I really do. Now when I look at it in the mirror, I can be reminded of you instead of them. And . . . I can make choices with my body. That feels really good.”

“I can imagine.”

Jimmy twists his arm around again, peering at what little of the tattoo can be seen through the plastic. “I like it,” he says, quieter. “Do you like it?”

“It was my top choice, Jimmy,” Scott reminds him. “And it looks cute on you. Much better than that fish would.”

Jimmy snorts. “You know what, since it was Lizzie’s idea, I’ll tell her I’ll only get it if she gets it too.”

“Please—if you get fish, get a different one,” begs Scott. “It was huge, it had that horrible ‘gone fishing’ sign—get something cute, not something that screams fifty-year-old midlife crisis.”

That gets a laugh out of his boyfriend, and a little tension that had been in Scott’s body since before the appointment finally dissipates, allowing his shoulders to ease and his fingers to loosen their grip on the wheel.

“I’ve been watching videos on word cover-ups, so I think I might get one of those,” Jimmy says when they’re almost home. “I’m . . . I think it would help, even though I can still trace the letters. But I’d like to try scar treatment first, so I don’t think I’m gonna get another tattoo any time soon.”

“And here I was thinking my boyfriend was about to get all inked up and awesome,” Scott teases.

“And something for words would have to be really big, and there’s not much I want that’s good for that,” Jimmy continues. He glances at Scott quickly, then turns his gaze out the window. “That’s life, I guess.”

Scott thinks that’s the end of the conversation. He’s happy leaving it there, with vague plans and ideas in mind to experiment with.

But later that evening, at home, as Jimmy washes dishes and Scott dries them, Jimmy blurts out, “Would I be wrong for wanting a canary tattoo?”

Scott pauses. “Um. No?”

Jimmy sighs. “See, it’s the only one that I think I would want that’s big enough and colorful enough to cover any words. But I don’t know that I could be okay with having it cover up one of those words, because of . . . connotations. But also. . . .” he sighs again, sets down his dishcloth.

“Scott, being the Canary was the only freedom I had, as awful as it was,” Jimmy explains, and it’s a credit to how far he’s come that Jimmy’s voice doesn’t even shake. “I didn’t love it, but I could go outside. I could literally fly. And I looked pretty cool, honestly. So if I got another tattoo, I think it would be a canary, but . . . I’m afraid that’ll cause more harm than good, with my mental health and all.”

“I . . . don’t know,” Scott says honestly, sliding a plate into place in the cupboard. “I’m not in your head. And it’s not my body. But you don’t have to decide today. You don’t have to decide any time soon. You can talk about it with other people, and with Nora. And we can start looking into scar treatment, if you think you’re ready for that.”

Jimmy picks up the cloth again, runs it under the water. “I don’t know,” he says eventually, voice unreadable. His face has set back into that guarded look, the one that Scott is now so familiar with. “Maybe.”

Whatever Jimmy’s unspoken other concerns are (and Scott knows that they exist, he can tell in the tenseness of his stance), Jimmy abandons that topic of conversation. He doesn’t bring up tattoos again for weeks.

But every so often, Scott catches him admiring the poppy, and he can’t help but feel a bubble of happiness.

Jimmy finally has a good reason to look in a mirror.

[frostycatblr-fandom-files]

Sorry, Wrong Comms! : Hunter x Medic!Reader [Chapter 1]

Much more recently written fanfic I started to distract myself from the "mild" trauma of Season 2 finale based on ideas that wouldn't work for "Rough Stuff". This fic is absolutely RIFE with my personal headcanons. Clones deserved so much better, and I will be a giant mess when I get to Pong Krell in TWC as I have since started rewatching it.

Warnings & Information: Intended audience is 13+, 18 if you squint. Hurt+comfort material primarily; there is still a fair amount of angst, fluff, and all the good stuff. Reader has she/her pronouns. We really like italics in this house. Peep this for funsies for why I decide to use Mando'a. By no means comprehensive, in no particular order there will be: Mild injury description + care, blood, vague medical terminology (read as: pretending to understand medical stuff), use of restraints, needles (autoinjectors), near-death(s), nausea and non-descriptive mentions of vomit, Star Wars swearing, drugs (both medical and recreational references), minor adult themes + implications, avoidant behaviors, trickery and light mean teasing in the forms of siblings and crushes. 

Series-inaccurate allusions to Crosshair never leaving Bad Batch post Order 66 execution [because while this is an AU fic, I am also very much an Avoidant Mess™], Batchers never meet Cid, fair chance of misremembering any referenced events from TCW series. Series accurate allusions and references to canon violence (AKA: literal war crimes, weapon injuries, etcetera).  

Word-count: 4,637

She couldn't remember the last time she had a really, really bad day outside of her medical clinic. There was a tip-off that an abandoned medical center on a neighboring mining planet within the system had supplies too tantalizing to ignore. Valuable paraphernalia that was being phased out by this emerging Empire, ripe for the taking. Did the mining company really have to build this settlement on the steepest face of the mountain? No, they probably didn't realize how unstable, unsafe and ultimately unsuitable this location was while they riddled the inside of the mountain with tunnels as they harvested precious ore and minerals. This was a boomtown and it had completed two of the three strikes typical of such: strike it rich, strike it fast, strike it down. The people living and working here had to abandon it in a hurry before they demoed the place. This mining company hadn't done their proper research and now the shells of their temporary structures were all that remained. 

But a scrappy little scavenger had found the medical center was still fairly flush with supplies and let the first medic who was willing to help them with their injuries know about the score. 'It'll be dangerous. If you're going, tell a friend so they know to come looking for you if you don't get back after a certain time. But these items are pre-Empire, they aren't making them like that anymore, so you'll want these. Trust me. I think you'll find them worth the risk of a rock slide or two.' 

It. Was. Not. Not really, anyways.

She was just glad to be home now. Put the day behind her. No more rock slides. No more rusted shells of buildings that made for excellent deathtraps. No more falling halfway down the mountain she climbed up in the descent to her ship in the foothills and losing almost every last med supply she came with after slipping on a patch of loose, fine-grain sand just after navigating the maze of the medical center. She had to hobble down the rest of the mountain with nothing to clean out the open wounds and prayed to everything and anything that she didn't contract something that had leached into the rock as the by-products of mining and refinery. She had to stumble into her ship and send a message to her back-up at home that she was 'hurt pretty kriffing bad' but alive and would be back planet-side after dinner; don't wait up for me, I'm too damn tired to swing by after all. Tell the others I'm sorry.

Her instructors in med school would be having a conniption if they saw the way she had tended her wounds so lazily and would never let her hear the end of it for the juvenile, sloppy attempt to bandage the laceration on her dominant arm, but she was too tired to care. (But if she ever saw that scavenger again, she'd kill them for failing to mention several things. The collapsing roof in the west stock room, for starters.) She'd deal with it all properly in the morning. She just wanted to sleep after sucking down two tubes of nutrient paste and a mixed handful of painkillers and antibiotics to ward away pain and infection.

She picked up her datapad one last time and hissed a deliberate dictation into the mic after tugging the knot to the wrapping one last time for good measure. "I'll deal with that bantha fodder in the morning… Home safe. Going to bed. Goodnight." 

She'd accidentally sent it to the wider group beyond the singular contact when five messages popped up in short succession. 

Glad you're home safe. Sleep well, kid. 

likewise

GOODNIGHT!:)

Yes, goodnight. 

We'll see you in the morning, burc'ya. 

Hopefully she'd feel well-rested with the sunrise. Crawling into her bed, she dropped heavily on her side and clutched a well worn Tooka doll in her favorite colors named after her very first childhood pet to her chest as she drew the covers up over her shoulders. Maker, she was so tired. It wouldn't take long before sleep came for her, feeling the first beckoning pulls on her eyelids after just a few moments. 

Her comms gave a harsh screech, jolting her awake in her bed. Just when she had drifted off… This better be important. An actual karking emergency. Someone who had her personal frequency had better be dying if they were contacting her. "What."

There was a lot of shuffling and keypad beeping on the other end of the comms channel, but no one spoke right away. Just when she was about to either call out a hello? or simply disconnect her comlink, she heard someone speak up. Clone Sergeant Hunter. "Tech is this really necessary to keep the-"

"If we want an accurate oral temperature, yes." 

There was a groan over the channel, then the sharp rustle as the comms got bumped or adjusted in Hunter's hand. "Well the longer I have it in my mouth the closer I feel to gaggin-"

She shot upright in her bunk, slightly grossed out and confused all at once. "What the kriff are you-!?"

The two Clones on the other end of the comlink gave their own startled shouts, realizing they had a disembodied voice suddenly joining their company. "[____]! How-?" 

She was quick to cut Tech off, pulling the comlink closer to her face to amplify her furious tone of voice. "Did one of you seriously call me - in the middle of a medical check - when I'm trying to sleep!" 

"Sorry, [____]." Hunter mumbled shamefully. "Must have switched on my comlink by mistake… Didn't mean to disturb you when I know you've had a hard day." What an understatement, Hunter. The impulsive venom in her mouth was hard to hold back, encouraged by her frustrations and discomforts bubbling over. "Hard day made harder thanks to you." She regretted it in a heartbeat. Thank the Maker the enhanced Clone wasn't in the room with her; he'd probably have been able to hear the way it skipped a beat if he was able to sense the beginnings of seismic activity, smell the way she felt her body begin to shiver in a forming, cold stress-sweat as the shame of her anger washed over her. 

"You're right: let me make it up to you." 

She was told to come over to the Batch's housing. Crosshair opened the blastdoor for her before she even had a chance to knock to avoid waking anyone sleeping if she used the buzzer. "He'll be in the main area."

"What, no "Hello, taking care of yourself like I told you to?" tonight, Cross? Even as a joke, after the day I've been having, to lighten the mood?" 

There was a half-hearted scoff (or maybe that was a soft laugh) from the Clone at this."That's more Wrecker's thing," Cross drawled in a casual voice around a toothpick, sidestepping to let her squeeze inside, "and I'm not really interested in pretending I can't see that you are not taking care of yourself."

"No, of course not Mr. Sharp-eyed, Snarky Sniper. 'Cause I fall down the mountains of abandoned mining settlements for kriffing fun." 

If Cross was phased by the uncharacteristic anger of the medic tonight, he didn't really show it. Just a little twitching pull of his upper lip on one side and half-lidded eyes that betrayed a bit of amusement and disappointment. "Mmp. C'mon, kid. I'll see if I can't find a half-decent ration bar somewhere around here for you." 

"Not hungry, Cr-"

"Don't care." He interrupted in a brusque tone, not giving her the opportunity for excuses. Crosshair was the kinda guy who didn't like excuses, either in giving or getting, and could be quick to shut that kriff down. It was refreshing sometimes, but tonight it was just another mild annoyance of [____]'s day. 

Whatever. She was going to go find Hunter where Cross said he'd be rather than waiting around in the entryway forever. "Skipping meals again, are we burc'ya?" As a medic, she often missed out on a meal or two while she was aiding the galaxy's sick and injured, and the unintentional habit carried over when she wasn't at the clinic. Something that made her friends fret over her like this. "For once I had all three meals. Only thing I swear went right today…" There was a pause as the medic heard a comment from the small kitchen on the left from the common room and she added with a gentle sigh, "aside from not breaking any bones during that nasty fall, too I guess." 

Hunter looked relieved and genuinely proud of her, sincerely surprised she wasn't tired and hungry like many nights in the past. Crosshair just turned on his heel back into the kitchen unit without breaking his stride, after a little shuffling around in the cabinets [____] could hear the sink running. "Well that's… good! Proud of you, kid." 

"...Than-"

Cross set the glass of water he'd filled for her in lieu of the ration bar down on a low table in the common room in the middle of the light conversation she was having with Hunter. "Here. I'll leave you two to it. Goodnight."

"U-um, thanks, Cross. Goodnight…" Cross nodded nonchalantly at her, next turning to his brother, who was quick to avoid his eyes before Crosshair just turned and left the two of them. Leave you two to it, what did he mean by that that had Hunter looking so nervous with a wave of color creeping up his neck from under the collar of a fresh nightshirt? "What's going on, Hunter? Do I need to be worried about something? Something show up on the health check? Do you need some nysillin tea or- s-something?" 

Hunter shook his head, a tender, reassuring (and touched) smile slowly building. You could take the doctor out of the clinic, but you couldn't stop her from thinking about her job. "Nothing's wrong, k'uur... Just thought I was feeling a little under the weather, but I'm perfectly fine. It's nothing more than just making it up to you after waking you. Plus, for once, you won't have to patch your own wounds. Why not have someone take care of you the same way you take care of others?" It was the same thing he'd said to her at the end of their first of many interactions in this seedy little travel-hub. The time she'd undoubtedly saved Crosshair's life after he'd picked up a nasty little parasite while slogging through the swamps of some distant planet. Kashyyyk? It was probably Kashyyyk. 

[____] was in a sour arrangement then with some smugglers with hair-trigger tempers to come and go as they pleased with her small clinic, and these Clones had been kind to remove the problem clientele "with discretion" as a way of paying her back. She'd saved their "stubborn vod". They saved her and now trusted her to treat their injuries no matter the cause, turning up at odd hours for the oddest of injury or malady. Complete faith in her in a hostile galaxy who now wanted… whatever it is they wanted with these Clones. She didn't ask. She didn't want to know. 

She'd heard the stories from those who fled the war encroaching nearly every part of the galaxy. She'd heard of the war crimes, seen the horror and gore and bloodshed step into at least two of the medical centers she once worked in… known of an Order 66 and what became of much, if not all, of the Jedi… She didn't want to know. They often didn't want to tell, beyond giving vague recollections when they were making arrangements for short-term prescriptions for sleeping supplements with the medic when the nightmares were overwhelming. 

Much like scouting the abandoned medical facility in an old mining boomtown for various 'sillin supplies, life seldom goes the way you wish. 

"C'mere, ad'ika. Let's get you patched up." He patted the space beside him on the couch in invitation, pulling a medkit closer with the other hand all while looking at her with the same softness he often reserved for his sister. When [____] first met him, she could have sworn Omega was his daughter. "Unless you're not okay with that." Hunter added, addressing her hesitation he could hear in the rhythm of her pulse, her heart. 

"I'm fine with it… just really tired and brain's kinda closing shop for the night. Sorry." Taking the seat indicated, [____] sunk back into the furniture, sighing. She didn't want to bring up why she was hesitating on him. He carried enough guilt as a participant in the old GAR… Hunter broke the seal on the new packet of medical tools, prepping everything he thought he'd need. "Don't be, ad'ika. Now, have you taken something for the pain already?" 

"Rhetorical question for a medic, don't you think?" The tired, teasing question was met with a single chuckle. He knew she would have, he was just making small talk. "Anything else? Ask me if I'm taking any other kind of stim packs, or maybe I should lie about eating all my recommended fruits and vegetables?" It was a laugh from Hunter this time, deep and hearty and genuine from his chest. 

"Are you?" Picking up a pre-moistened cleaning wipe from the little packet within the medkit, Hunter removed the sloppy wrappings around her dominant arm that [____] had applied before trying to call it a day and properly deal with everything in the morning. Dried smears of red lay underneath the gauze, something that made Hunter's gut drop slightly. Either she had done an uncharacteristically poor job cleaning her injuries, or these were more intensive than believed and they were slow-bleeders that hadn't scabbed over completely. 

"Tck…Can't say I'm any better than most of my patients, if I'm honest." Hunter hummed slightly, gingerly blotting along the length of the mild laceration. It had to have been an unpleasant injury after losing all her emergency supplies and nothing to ease it right away until she stumbled back to her ship. It looked fairly deep to him, but couldn't be certain. "Mmh! That stings." 

"'It's supposed to, little guy. Means it's working.' I swear Cross could have killed you with a look if the parasite wasn't actively killing him over being called a little guy like he was a kid." 

"Ha-ha. Very funny, Tech." [____] half-heartedly mocked Hunter's sharp recollection of their first encounter, trying to stifle a coming yawn. That time felt so long ago now; longer than it actually was. "I was only trying to keep him calm and comfortable. I see a lot of children at my clinic so it's a habit I've de-developed… excuse me, sorry about that. People… don't exactly love doctors." 

Hunter paused mid-blot, giving her a firm look to show her he was serious. Something in Hunter didn't like the way she'd said it, it didn't sit right with him. "Nonsense, cyar'ika. People love doctors; they just don't love going to them. Big difference. Trust me." Trust me like I trust you he wanted to say. He wouldn't. He believed it was mutually understood, no need for explicitly stating so (partly an old habit in thanks to how he communicated with many a vod during the war). "People…" Hunter tried further explaining, leaving out the "like us" he again believed didn't need to be said "...might be embarrassed, or fearful, or worried about going to the medic, but they understand they need to go because the medics will be able to make them better. They don't hate the doctor; they hate the doctor's office…" Hunter paused, digesting his own words with a questioning expression as he set aside the pre-moistened wipe, now soiled. "Now of course I think I just sound like I'm condescendingly explaining your own job to you." 

"Heh. Don't worry about it. Too tired to care," the weary medic offered with a reassuring smile, leaning into the backrest of the couch with a slowing blink-rate. "I'm just more concerned about staying awake, while I'm the patient for once, for you." 

For you. Something about it was unintentionally sweet to Hunter and made something within him flutter for a moment. That was happening a lot lately, every time he thought of her. He kept chalking it up to his enhancements and memories of the Kaminoans testing him and the others that remained of the experimental unit, the sharp sterility of antiseptic that lingered in her clinic and her clothing and her hair that sometimes turned his stomach, or simply a disconnected unfamiliarity with those who were not Clones… though, while perhaps he never felt truly connected with them and the way some called them the 'Sad Batch' (or called Omega a lab scabber) when they thought they could get away with it, they had still been his brothers in arms in the war.

A war they were still running from. One they nearly lost Crosshair to after 'things went screwy on Kaller' as Wrecker put it once. What an understatement… if Hunter hadn't been so insistent with the Shock Troopers down in the brig that the Batch stayed together to the point that they tased Hunter to shut him up instead of extracting Cross, then Crosshair likely would have been siphoned off to some corner of Tipoca City and had the activation of his inhibitor chip nudged along into unpleasant possibilities Hunter had nightmares about in addition to so many things he'd seen… done, during the Clone Wars. It'd been difficult, and he'd hated part of himself for it, but as they made their initial escape from Kamino, he threatened to stun Crosshair if he didn't kriffing shut up about following orders they didn't even understand for five minutes! so hard he wouldn't wake up until they reached the next star system. 

There had been so much bickering. They still bickered even after Captain Rex got in touch with them, somehow, after they left Saleucami visiting the Lawquane family (which had been tricky and Tech worked the loophole that Crosshair could not report Cut for desertion because it had been the GAR when he went AWOL and now it no longer existed, it was the Empire now, right? half to death before Crosshair reluctantly let it be), and they got their chips removed in the rusted out shell of a Venator on Bracca and had been lured into a trap set by Tarkin back on Kamino. Because if Tarkin could not have this SpecOps force, nobody in the galaxy could; he'd aimed to wipe them out and they'd narrowly avoided being swallowed in the eternal seas of the closest thing they had to a homeworld. 

It took a long time for the bickering to stop. They were at their throats for a while still until… Crosshair had gotten really, really sick. 

That's what led to this friendship with a medic who had been willing to help them nearly a year ago. Though lately, it was feeling… different.

"Hey…" [____] broke the building silence while Hunter had been searching for a bacta patch, and Hunter initially worried he'd done something to tip her off to the personal burdens, the memories, he shouldered. "...weird question for ya, if that's okay." 

"How weird?" Hunter tried, careful not to let the hesitancy and budding anxieties show in his voice. There's the karking things. He'd probably need a couple of them to make sure he had it covered so it would heal up nicely, quickly.

"Oh, not very. I just wanna pick your brain a bit." 

Ah. Just curiosity. He affixed the first patch over the first half of the laceration, careful not to prod the bruised flesh with unnecessary pressure. "Alright, pick away." 

"What is… your favorite memory? When you're having a bad day… what's the thing you think about that always cheers you up?"

"Heh… your day was really that bad that you're looking for advice from a soldier, doc?" Hunter teased, applying a second patch over the laceration. He wasn't sure what he could truthfully answer with while he was carefully measuring out a length of sterile gauze to hold the patches in place on her dominant arm, there being too many little, fleeting happy moments rather than significant memories to spin some story from. But he'd try. "I guess for me… it's less what I think of and more of what I do after a bad mission. Clean my gear. Tidy up my rack. Buff out my helmet-" 

The medic smirked, a solitary, quiet laugh interrupting Hunter's train of thought. 

Oh, Maker… he'd forgotten the suggestive context behind the phrase she often heard in the infancy of her profession in the midst of the Clone Wars. He'd heard she'd get the stray Clone on occasion at the large health center she was employed at once on a different planet but didn't know how much truth there was to it. "K'uur: that was not a euphemism." 

That was met with a nervous giggle that made his stomach flutter. "S-sorry; old habits, and a non-professional setting where I can actually laugh." [____] offered meekly, face flushing with color while he wound the wrapping around her forearm. "C-continue, Hunter, please. 'Buff out your helmet' and...?" The unspoken what else on her tongue was permission enough to show she was serious about him continuing. 

"And… check in with the others, I suppose. Make sure that everyone is okay. Spend time with them. Strengthen personal bonds."

A lot like what the two of them were doing now, he supposed. The unintentional check in. Taking care of her injuries while they sat side by side in the common room as the rest of the Batch were sleeping. Except maybe for Tech who often tinkered away on his datapad or the desk he'd squeezed into the room he shared with Wrecker (who wasn't bothered by a roommate with a propensity to dink around with some little gadget or piece of equipment when he was sleeping or resting) at these hours. Or Crosshair, who was often awake and asleep around the same times Hunter was, since they'd have muffled "conversations" through the walls when neither could sleep on occasion. But all was relatively still and quiet in each of his brother's rooms, and the steady rumble of the noise machine in Omega's room meant his sister was asleep. 

Drumming rain and swirling waves. The perpetual ambiance of Kamino. He hoped the little machine replicating the soundscape engrained in her memories wouldn't cause her to dream of the Venator class ships bombing the cloning facilities tonight… 

While Hunter had been lost in his senses, his worries, the medic had been busy mulling over his words. There was a ghost of a smile taking the place of the pained frown she previously bore. "That all sounds… really nice."

The last injury tended to, Hunter set everything aside and gave [____]'s shoulder a tender double-pat, feeling the tense muscles under his hand as he held his hand there after the friendly gesture. "There you go, ad'ika. All patched up." 

"Thanks, appreciate the help Hunter. Could I… trouble you a little further by crashing here for the night? I don't think I'm in a fit state to get back home around now. Far, far too tired." It was definitely not a safe time for a woman to be walking by herself without a blaster, nevermind a tired, injured woman who'd been an invaluable friend to Clone Force 99. He'd never have sent her home to begin with, giving how deeply her chin dipped into her chest with fatigue. "No trouble at all; you're welcome to take my bed, if you want." Hunter offered, giving her shoulder a friendly squeeze. He'd sleep out here in the common room so none of his brothers would get any funny ideas if both he and the medic emerged from the smallest of all the bedrooms in the housing together. 

Why the Sith's hells did he just think that?

[____] winced in mild complaint, laugh laced with pain. "Ow, that's quite a grip there, soldier!" 

"Sorry," he apologized, "didn't realize how hard it'd be. You carry a lot of stress and tension in your shoulders, ad'ika… I can feel how stiff your muscles are. I… have some experience with providing some relief for that, thanks to all the practice I've had with Wrecker and Tech. Tech's posture is a mess-" He rolled the palm of his hand against her shoulder experimentally, gauging the pliability of the tensest muscle, and she leaned into it eagerly with a whimpering 'oh, Maker…!' surprising even herself. Hunter decided he'd stubbornly pretend not to imagine how not-so-innocent the sound was, to keep talking about his brothers and ignore the heat in his lower belly, another flutter of his heart. "Tech spends hours hunched over his datapad, or some little gadget, or spends hours in those rigid crash seats in the Marauder with his muscles wound so tight he's practically locked in place. Wrecker takes such a beating each mission it's just… uh,"

"A w-way of taking care of him afterwards?" She helped him where he faultured. 

"Yeah. That's one part of it. Here, turn so I can get both shoulders." He had her melting under his touch quickly, the practically unhurried worship in this massage he was working into the medic's shoulders, neck, and the dominant arm. The muscles were so stiff and taut under her skin, under his ungloved hands. They were afraid to speak and break the reverence of this moment, the silent work of friend helping friend between each little involuntary sound of great relief or wince of brief pain as each tight, brow-bunching knot slowly surrendered. Her breathing pattern slowed as every minute elapsed between them beyond the gentle moans of relief as Hunter methodically kneaded the muscle free of tension with dexterous fingers. He wouldn't need to dig in so deeply like taking care of Wrecker's messes of well-defined muscle, for which he was grateful, to make any kind of progress, or go so tenderly to start with like he has to for Tech (on occasion) that the goggled Clone sometimes became a little impatient because he wasn't feeling any external relief. He could dip his fingers just a little deeper and just a little shallower, like those perpetual waves of Kamino replicated on Omega's sound machine, as he worked one muscle at a time for the unlikely friend who sat with him on the couch. 

It felt roughly the same to strengthening the bonds of the squad to Hunter, but again there was that fluttering in his heart that suggested this was so very different when he realized that when he moved back to [____]'s neck one last time, at her asking, and planted one of his palms on the opposite side of her face to keep her steadied as he dug little circles around the tight muscles under the base of her skull with his thumb that she took one last deep breath and was soon asleep in half a heart's beat between them. 

Hunter froze as he was, face hot in panic with the reality that he was now entirely supporting, for the moment, a female friend who was upright and asleep in his hands. Not knowing what to do just as the medic became more limp, he effectively locked himself in place when, on reflex, he caught her upper body against his before lowering it into his lap. A move he'd done a hundred times when one of the squad was this close to fainting out in the field.

Oh, you're kidding me… why the kriff did I do that?

[MASTERLIST] [NEXT]

[welcome-to-green-hills]

Hey mystery I have a question. While trapped in the tube frozen, do you think that Shadow could dream or anything? Do you think that he had a level of awareness of what was going on? Asking for research for a fanfic I’m writing. Also, you’re the smartest person I know so I wanted to ask.

Hello, my dear!❤️✨

This is a very interesting question. To be honest, I feel that it really depends on Shadow’s situation. I’m not entirely sure as to what direction you’re writing Shadow’s experience in for your project. (When you’ve finished, please send it to me. I wanna read it). It kinda factors into what answer I give you in the long run. For this ask, I feel that it would be safer to supply more than one potential scenario so that you have that information in hand.

Let’s make a little disclaimer first: most of what I’m sharing with you are hypothetical scenarios. As much as I would love to delve deep into this topic, I find that my answers might be… hmm… taken with a grain of salt. I express this because this is a developing field. There either isn’t much research to it, or existing case studies haven’t been updated since the early-to-mid 2000’s. Research of the topic barely have much to contribute to it for multiple reasons (I.E., finding volunteers, researchers, funding. You know, fun stuff). While these ideas and concepts are fantastic, the best I can offer are educated guessed with some research that brings some support to a claim.

It’s also important to keep in mind that this is a fictional character. Not everything needs a scientific explanation. Sometimes it’s just fun to bend the rules a little bit and let your imagination run wild! You can take all of my ideas to heart and use them, or you can throw them away in the trash. It’s not gonna hurt my feelings, Let Shadow be whatever you want him to be in your project, okay?

Alright, now for the fun stuff. Here we go!

What is REM Sleep?

To put simply, REM (rapid eye movement) sleep is the state of consciousness in which an individual experiences low function of the body to gain full rest. This is the state of sleep in which people experience dreams from as well. With this rapid eye movement, we can infer that a person is engaging with either a memory or a dream! It’s a form of memory that allows an individual to remember muscle spasms, movements, sights, smells, sounds, etc., and process nearly everything that was absorbed through an engaging environment (NSF, 2020). REM sleep play a crucial part in development of the mind. Having that down time to experience dreams and memories allows for a sense of mental and emotional maturity of past/current situations.

Infant-Like Slumber:

If the question in mind is geared towards him being created, then possibly? More than likely not. We run into a couple of problems when exploring this topic:

A). We don’t have enough information on fetal and infant development to make a logical conclusion.

B). We don’t have enough technological advances and volunteers to make this happen.

The best that I could describe is this: he would have lots of muscle spasms, but he’s dream with select sound and no pictures. His form of “dreaming” would be sensory-based and how he engaged with his environment. “Environment” being him in his stasis pod. This is the same way that newborn infants engage with their REM sleep (American Institute of Physics, 2009).

Let’s create a hypothetical scenario for you here: If Shadow’s stasis pod was built to be interactive, then I think that he would be able to hear and sense touch pretty well! His little pod could allow him to hear Maria, Gerald, and all of the other scientists in the lab while he’s still “cooking.” If touch was implied as well, then he could reflect on that physical contact. It could help create an emotional connection and recognition of safety establish with everyone even before opening his eyes (Harmon, 2010). Anthropologist like myself make it a point to share that physical touch is important through cultural and social teachings. When I mean “physical touch,” I mean along the lines of hand holding, high five, hugging, kissing, anything! Not only does it help create of safety and familiarity, it helps individuals recognize and distinguish people to form inner circles. Individuals need physical touch for emotional development and a boost in physiological development (Cekaite et Al., 2011).

Again, this is hypothetical scenario. I did not find any indication through Gerald’s journals (SA2, Sonic Battles), Rouge’s field report, and trivia from his creators on Twitter that he was able to hear things around him while he was in his stasis pod.

Cryogenic Hypothesis:

Cryogenically freezing—otherwise known as Cryopreservation—is another iffy scenario to explore as well. Traditionally, cryogenically suspended individuals are deceased… and have bee deceased for mere minutes. Cryopreservation is not flash freezing an individual like a popsicle, these are individuals that are kept in a temperature controlled environment for extended periods of time in a liquid nitrogen temperature (Paulo, 2012).

This is a topic in the scientific community that is considered a bit controversial. Some believe that it can be real and life saving, others believe that it’s completely a pseudoscience. And then there’s a small cluster of scientists who don’t really have an opinion on it because there isn’t a lot of information on it. If there was more funding and willingness to explore this topic, then sure! I’m positive that there will be more researchers out there that would like to explore cryopreservation on human and their mental state more.

What I can tell you is that there can’t be any form of dreaming in cryopreservation. There would be cellular damage. There isn’t a trace of brainwave activity that could display REM from cryopreservation individuals. This would not be plausible for Shadow if you’d like for him to dream in your fanfic.

Comatose Hypothesis:

My final thought would be to portray him as if he were in a coma-like state for there to be a form of dreaming.

Medical research has strongly indicated that a patient’s brain does not show signs of normal sleep and wakefulness cycles, meaning that they more than likely cannot dream in a coma (Blackburn, 2023). However, it depends on the state in which the coma is caused (I.E., if the visual context of the brain is damaged or medically induced to help patients heal). Some patients that have awaken from their comas shared that they’ve felt as if they were in a dream-like state/nightmare loop. J. Schradar, a psychologist reporter for Psychology Today, shared that when she was in a coma it felt as if she viewed “memories upon memories and violently ripped away from them (Schradar, 2021).

It’s like being trapped in a maze with fuzzy feelings. You’re aware that you lived a life, but you can’t make out what you did and what happened. There would be speech and compression problems with retaining new memory. We do know that coma patients can respond to select sound as well (Blackburn, 2023). As stated in a previous section, sound plays a vital role in creating a memory. With sound—as well as following under the idea that Shadow’s in the process of being sealed away by GUN after the raid on the ARK—Shadow can build upon that and form dreams. He can form memories and emotional responses to them.

Discussion:

We know that Shadow was created with the intentions of being a cure for illness, as well as a cure for immortality (Sonic Heroes game manual). However, there are some limitations. We don’t know the true extent of his immortality. He could easily die depending on the extremity of the situation. All that we know about our ageless hedgehog-alien hybrid is that he’s got kickass air shoes and a sense of immortality.

I am much more inclined to believe that Shadow was put into an induced coma before being sealed away. Dreams and memories that Shadow had experienced in the past are behind metaphorical doors and locked away. His subconscious walks around through an endless maze of distorted images of what he engaged with in the past. He—supposedly—can hear sounds, but we’re not entirely certain of his surroundings and mental state of mind. He could absolutely have an idea of him being trapped in the fog of his mind. The only thing that he could do is relive memories of the past and be haunted by nightmares. I’m also willing to believe that he had a state of conscious (to a certain degree) while being created aboard the ARK. We’ve seen through the games that each time Shadow awakens from stasis, he already has a knowing. He displays the ability to react quickly and speak by the time his eyes open. He already has a stream of consciousness.

I feel that either of these would be an interesting approach to your personal project to explore. I’d like to share one more with you for your story. One that is a bit more of a stretch, but would be interesting to explore.

As soon as Shadow awakens by Dr. Robotnik in SA2, Shadow says the line “my name is Shadow. Since you’ve been so kind as to release me, my master, I will grant you ONE wish.” I feel that this line has a lot more meaning to it than what fans give it credit for. I don’t believe that this line was put in the game for the sake of the scene being cool and relatively cheesy. Of all the things that Shadow could have said when he was awaken, why that line? I feel that this particular line strengthens the idea that Shadow had dreams as if he were in a coma-like state. This one line could indicate that he just awoke from a revisited memory of him and Maria having philosophical talks about fulfilling their wish to go to Earth. This one line foreshadows that both Shadow and Maria had wishes. And maybe, just maybe, that would be his “dream.”

Anyways. I hope that this helps with your research for your fanfic. These are my thoughts on the subject. I’ve made sure to put sources to my thoughts for you to read further if you’re interested. Again, you don’t have to use these ideas if you don’t want to, or you can 100% use them to your full advantage. I don’t necessarily believe that we’re supposed to be thinking that hard when it comes to Shadow being awaken from his 50+ year sleep, but I can completely understand the need to question. If you have any further questions or thoughts, please feel free to ask! I’m more than happy to help! Best wishes❤️✨

[ollieofthebeholder]

And If Thou Wilt, Forget: a TMA fanfic

[1] || Also on AO3 and my personal website

Chapter 2: What, neither choose nor wish to choose?

So far, the biggest difference between archiving and publishing seemed to be that the documents he had to read were shorter.

Tim’s particular job at the publishing company had been fact-checking, doing supplemental research on the manuscripts that came across his desk, and Lou had always given him the tricky ones because, she said, he was a master at tracking down unusual or hard to find subjects. He didn’t know if Ms. Robinson had actually called Lou for a reference, especially since she’d hired him without even looking at his CV, but she’d certainly given him plenty to do, and she’d stopped checking behind him after the first week. Mostly it consisted of making phone calls or looking things up on the Internet, but occasionally she sent him up to the library for a book or two, and on one or two occasions she’d taken the stack he’d brought her, delicately sorted through them, and handed him a couple which turned out to be about Robert Smirke or circuses or something similar. He’d come to take it as a sign that he wasn’t needed for a few hours and could work on his own research.

He wasn’t that much further along in it, but it had only been a couple of months, after all.

There was so little to go on, even less on some of the more…salubrious ones. It hadn’t taken Tim long to realize that the less information he was able to get, the more likely a statement was to be real. Of course, in some cases—like this one—it was equally as likely to be down to the age of the incident as to any grain of truth to it. Something about this one got under his skin, though. He’d found it accidentally while poking around and read it on a whim, and curiosity and a deep-down feeling of anxiety had mingled to cause him to keep looking into it with a dogged perseverance. Somehow, the fact that there was so little to go on had only made him more determined to find something, anything, that he could prove or disprove.

And he had something. Finally, he had something. With a few words of thanks and promises to meet up for drinks if they happened to cross paths on a weekend holiday again, Tim hung up the phone, scribbled a final note on his page, and gathered statement and research, then stood. He crossed over to the Archivist’s door and tapped a rapid-fire shave-and-a-haircut against the frame.

Ms. Robinson peered up at him over her glasses. She looked faintly annoyed, but Tim wasn’t deterred; he’d learned by now that she had a sort of perpetually grumpy expression, and was fairly certain it was put on. “What is it, Tim? It can’t be five o’clock already.”

“Technically correct, if you’re talking about five o’clock in the morning, but it’s actually closing in on eight. I, uh, I lost track of time a bit.” Tim stepped into the office and held up his papers. “Just wanted to bring you this. I think I’ve hit the limits of what I can research on it, unless you’ve got other places I can look for ancient history. But I don’t think this one’s a fake.”

Ms. Robinson’s eyes focused on the papers, and she held out a hand. “Let me see.”

Tim handed everything over. Ms. Robinson—at first—ignored the research and focused on the yellowing pages of the statement, torn or cut from an ancient journal. Her eyes seemed to glow as she read. She reached the end and opened her mouth to say something, then stopped as she noticed the subsequent pages. “What’s all this?”

“Corroborations, explanations, verifications…that kind of thing,” Tim answered. “You know. There’s a description of how the Mechanical Turk actually worked, or supposedly worked anyway, and a few other experiments Wolfgang von Kempelen was working on that allegedly never saw the light of day, a couple of which got mentioned in that statement. Some research on the Court Theatre in Buda, or at least what’s publicly known about it. Some research on Abraham Janssen himself—he didn’t last long after writing that entry, maybe a couple of months, but he seems to have gone out naturally enough. And I managed to track down a report of a description of the incident given to a nurse at one of the local hospitals by someone who didn’t survive their injuries. The full report is on its way, but from what my contact said, it tallies with most of the major points.”

Ms. Robinson looked at Tim sharply. “How did you find the report?”

“A guy I met backpacking the Carpathians on holiday a couple years back teaches anthropology in the biggest university in Budapest,” Tim answered instantly. “We’ve kept in touch. I reached out to him to see if he knew anything about this incident, and he tracked down what he could for me.”

“Hmm.” Ms. Robinson returned her gaze to the papers. “I must admit, that is a boon we don’t normally get with statements of this type.”

“Meaning ones this old, or this weird?”

“I think a more appropriate word might be…Strange.” Ms. Robinson stared at the statement for a moment, then seemed to come to some kind of decision. “I have a new assignment for you, Tim.”

“Sure, that’s what I’m here for,” Tim said easily. Inside, though, he felt a surge of pride he hadn’t expected to ever feel again. She trusted him, trusted he would be able to find things even if they were difficult. He’d earned that. He’d earned it at the publishing house, too, but somehow that trust weighed more, coming from Ms. Robinson.

Actually, that part wasn’t a surprise. In the eight weeks since he had been hired, Tim had had discussions with more than one employee, albeit not very long ones. The Archives were a world unto themselves, and very few people interacted with Ms. Robinson on a regular basis. Several seemed to be of the opinion that she’d likely gone a bit strange after losing her last crop of assistants. One or two had warned Tim to watch his back in tones that could not have said I’m being very serious but I will play this off as a joke if anyone tries to make me swear to it more clearly if it was spelled out in graven letters. And he’d seen more than one look at him with the sort of expression he equated with a giant looking at a small girl prattling excitedly about a party she had no idea she was meant to be the main course for.

Still…Ms. Robinson trusted him. She’d hired him on the spot and she’d let him start the work right away, and she was honest about his mistakes but also about what he was doing well. Maybe everyone expected her to turn on him at a moment’s notice, which would at least explain why her last crop of assistants had all, evidently, quit at once and without warning (probably why she’d insisted his was an appointment for life), but he hadn’t seen any evidence for that. He liked her—better than he liked most of the people he’d met upstairs, anyway, barring one or two—and he didn’t see any reason to regret being down here.

Yet.

Ms. Robinson pulled open a drawer in her desk, talking as she did so. “Are you familiar with the name Mikaele Salesa?”

“Not ringing any bells. Should it?”

“Not necessarily. How about Jurgen Leitner?”

That one did tug at Tim’s memory. “Wasn’t he a book collector or something? Weird or…esoteric topics or something like that? Lou used to occasionally say that some of the manuscripts I was looking at would have interested him.”

“Unlikely. Leitner collected rare books. Very rare ones.” Ms. Robinson retrieved an unsealed brown envelope and handed it to Tim. “Salesa is, or was, perhaps, his counterpart when it comes to artifacts. He had a gift for both locating them and acquiring them at a reasonable price. However, he is…unavailable at the moment.”

Tim took the surprisingly heavy envelope, but didn’t open it. Something told him to wait. “Do you need me to track him down?”

Ms. Robinson hesitated. “I suspect you would find it a challenge. No, what I need is the artifact described in that envelope. It may be essential to my—to our work. I was finally able to get a line on its location. Unfortunately, I am…known to many of the people who may have it in their possession.”

“Ah.” Tim nodded in understanding. “And they’ll charge you more than a fair price because they know you need it.”

“Quite. Which is why I am sending you to the Night Market to acquire it for me.”

Tim weighed his options. He didn’t want to walk in blind, but he also didn’t want to look like he needed her to hold his hand for him. Still…“I assume most of my questions will be answered by what’s in here, but to start with, how do I find the Night Market?”

“Carefully,” Ms. Robinson said, gravely and without a hint of humor. “I’m afraid I don’t have an exact location, but it’s somewhere in London, along the banks of the Thames. It generally runs between quarter moons, beginning when astronomical twilight gives way to true night and ending when it returns to twilight.”

“So I’ve got time to find it, in theory, but in practice this…whatever it is…is likely to shift sooner rather than later,” Tim guessed.

“It’s a possibility, certainly. And I would prefer this not hang around more than necessary.”

Tim nodded. “Right. See you in the morning then.” Before Ms. Robinson could say anything else, he saluted, turned on his heel, and left the office.

He wasn’t stupid. He knew this was a test, even if Ms. Robinson hadn’t said so outright. Asking too many questions would bring him down in her estimation, and while he knew this errand probably wasn’t all that serious or important really, he needed to treat it like he’d been sent to retrieve an idol for a university museum.

Lucky thing he’d worn his fedora.

The night was cool, the sky was clear, and the moon was a waning crescent two days away from new. Tim made his way to the nearest bridge, then stopped in a convenient shadow that still afforded him enough light to see by and pulled the packet out from under his jacket, then opened it up and peered inside.

The first thing he saw was a stack of bank notes, older and well-used from the looks of it—presumably his budget for obtaining the artifact, whatever it was. He pulled it out, tucked the packet under his arm, and thumbed through the stack. His eyes widened. Jesus, there was easily a couple thousand pounds in here. That was almost more money than Tim had ever seen at one time in his life. And this was the so-called “reasonable” amount Ms. Robinson thought he could get it for? Christ Almighty.

He tucked the money back into the envelope hurriedly and pulled out the other piece of paper. It was a slightly faded photograph of a small, ornate figure of a bird, made up of a few different metals—he couldn’t tell quite what kind—interspersed with either glass or a very fine enameling, with a delicately scrolled key in its back. For a moment, his stomach flipped uncomfortably, thinking of the description in the statement he’d just researched of the caged mechanical canaries, but he got hold of himself quickly. This was more than a simple toy, and not something that could have been produced in quantity, of that he was sure. The lines written at the bottom of the page confirmed it; it was an Art Nouveau piece, created a good quarter century after the death of the Mechanical Turk, one of a kind and therefore of value to the kind of people who thrilled from owning something that nobody else could but not, Tim thought, worth particularly much overall. It was pretty, certainly, but there was no maker’s mark, no known provenance, no storied history��or at least not one on the paper he held. He didn’t doubt for a minute that a particularly good salesman might be willing and able to spin a story to up the price, but it would all be vague and difficult to prove or disprove; possibly true, but most likely a trap for the gullible.

Tim slid the envelope back under his jacket and studied the Thames for a moment. Half-remembered mnemonics and bits of folk wisdom he’d learned from his nonno, his mother’s father, a vintner and wine-maker who still walked behind his plow in the spring and plucked each grape by hand, floated through his head. He took a step back, stared up at the sky, murmured a few calculations under his breath, tilted his hat to a jaunty angle, and set off purposefully.

About two hours later, he rounded a bend in the river, paused, slipped around a shadow, and grinned as the soft murmur of a bustling crowd rumbled in his ears. Bingo.

It couldn’t be anything but the Night Market. Hooded lanterns swung beneath canvas awnings, not so much illuminating the wares spread across the booths, or the people manning them, as giving texture to the darkness. Very few people carried torches or any other form of light, and most of them wore dark clothing just shy of actual holocaust cloaks and domino masks. Other than that, though, it was, well, an ordinary street market. The air was full of the murmur of voices and the scents of roasting meet and spices, vendors calling out to passersby and people attempting to haggle. It was oddly muted, but still, Tim was a bit surprised he hadn’t been able to hear it from up closer to the street.

He also wasn’t sure how this all fit in the space between the sidewalk and the river. Was this area usually here? Part of him scolded himself for being silly—of course it was normally here, space didn’t just appear and disappear.

The rest of him reminded that part of his brain that nobody else seemed aware of the entire fucking stone theater beneath the Royal Opera House. It wasn’t like he didn’t believe in this stuff; he did, explicitly, that was why he was here, why he worked for the Institute. But sometimes it just seemed…easier to reach for the simple, mundane explanation. Certainly safer.

But he knew what the world was like and he knew what his job was, and he wasn’t going to keep Ms. Robinson’s trust if he tried to be a skeptic. It was time to set aside the Sherlock Holmes axiom—that when you had discounted the impossible, whatever remained, however improbable, must be the truth—and start living up to the Dirk Gently point that the impossible often had a kind of integrity to it that the merely improbable lacked. Or, to put it in the words of a movie he’d only allowed himself to be dragged along to repeatedly because he’d had a crush on both Orlando Bloom and Keira Knightley at the time, he’d best start believing in ghost stories—he was in one.

Slipping into an out of the way corner, Tim pulled out the paper again and studied it, committing the details to memory. Then he folded it up, stuck it into a pocket nowhere near the envelope, his wallet, his keys, or his phone, and ventured into the Night Market.

The light, or lack thereof, was doing funny things to his imagination. The items spread across one booth looked half-rotten, the ones on another dripped with blood, an appetizing smell came from a pot that seemed to contain a human head…but then he blinked, and the rotten objects became decent if old knickknacks, the bloodstained objects were pristine, and what had looked like a head proved to just be a lid that was replaced as a vendor handed over a bowl of some sort of savory stew. Tim’s stomach grumbled, reminding him that he’d worked through lunch and long since missed supper.

Still, he gave that particular booth a miss.

He kept ambling, trying to appear as though he had no particular purpose, but always with an eye out for a booth that was likely to contain that clockwork bird. None of them looked right. None of them felt right, either, but Tim was starting to get a headache; the more he walked, the more difficult it was to actually make out what was on the booths, and he didn’t think it had anything to do with the lighting.

He slowed thoughtfully as he approached a crossroads. Some of the statements he had read and investigated, the ones he’d been convinced were real just from how little they had to go on, had had a common theme in them: the people giving the statements had always seemed surprised, then worried, that no one else seemed to see what they did. A few had seemed convinced they were experiencing a psychotic break of some kind, schizophrenia or bad drug trips or just general hallucinations, but others had known they were the only ones seeing the truth. Tim had a pretty good sense of when they were right and when the statements were actually delusions. This didn’t feel like a delusion.

What if he was seeing things right?

Tim took a quick, silent breath, held it for a moment, and exhaled slowly. He tried to release his preconceived notions with the air, to allow himself to look at the shadows and not the light. To see what was really there instead of just what he was expected to see.

He closed his eyes.

He opened them.

The booth right on the corner, which had appeared to contain an assortment of lopsided Christmas ornaments, now held neat rows of crudely carved wooden dolls. At first glance they seemed nondescript, with dots for eyes and a crooked smile, but as Tim got closer, they seemed to shift into unique, easily distinguished figures. As he watched, the nearest one wavered, then resolved itself—still with the same blank, crudely carved face—into a clear effigy of Gertrude Robinson.

It took everything Tim had to keep his face blank and slide his gaze towards the next figure, which slowly became Elias Bouchard. Something told him that pretending he didn’t recognize them wouldn’t work. The only sensible thing to do was cut his gaze away and walk away. He could feel the vendor’s eyes on him, but didn’t dare turn to look.

Being able to see, really see, what he was looking at…well, probably should have made him run screaming from the market, honestly. (Were those eyeballs? Those were fucking eyeballs. The way they seemed to swivel to follow him could probably be explained by the liquid they were suspended in, but how the hell had that one blinked with no obvious eyelids?) People who could see this shit and didn’t were probably not exactly model citizens. Tim tried to keep his expression neutral like most of the people who clearly didn’t know where they were, but he passed one of the food vendors and couldn’t stop himself from flinching as the tongue on the end of the stick flicked in the direction of the unsuspecting tourist reaching for it.

Then he spied, out of the corner of his eye, one of the vendors watching him with a sharp, almost feral smile that melted into polite attempts to interest passers-by in his offerings the moment Tim obviously gave him even partial notice.

Okay. Actually, he could work with that.

He let himself be obvious. Let it show on his face that what he was seeing was both unexpected and horrific (which was true—he’d expected things like bones and dubious potion components and things of the I swear, Officer, it fell off the back of a lorry variety, not bloodstained knives and shrunken human heads and cuts of meat sliced off a still-warm human corpse). Let his eyes dart frantically around as if in total disbelief that no one else seemed to notice that this place was more than not right—it was wrong.

Most of the patrons were indifferent to him, even oblivious of him, but the figures on the other side of the booths were taking an interest in him. Ironically, he could tell because they never spoke to him. They hawked their wares, beckoned to likely marks, charmed and wheedled and coaxed, but none of them acknowledged Tim except to watch. Most of them did so even while ostensibly talking to a customer, who always seemed completely unaware they didn’t have the vendor’s full attention.

Boy, he was going to have a statement for Ms. Robinson when he got back, and no mistake.

He knew he was getting close when he rushed, or pretended to rush, through a particularly loud and narrow crush of people and around a corner followed by a cry of “Milk! Milk! Milk for the morning bread!” that stirred something in his memory to find himself in a dark, deserted area of the Night Market. It was colder than he had expected, and sound was curiously muffled. He could no longer hear the bustle of noise from the market, but neither could he hear the sounds of London still active even late at night or the Thames flowing between her banks. Still, if he hadn’t read all the statements—if he didn’t already have an idea of what to expect—he might have been fooled, just for a moment, into believing he was safe.

“Lost?” a voice said from—naturally—the deepest shadows.

“Yeah,” Tim said with a deliberately awkward half laugh as he turned towards the voice. “Maybe I should try Hare Krishna.”

His eyes fell on a tall, gaunt figure peering at him from a dusty, tattered booth. Both the booth and the figure appeared to have been buried for a couple of decades before being dug up and planted in the middle of the marketplace. The figure was barely indistinguishable from the shadows it stood in except for its face and hands, which were so pale they almost glowed, but in the center of that face were two dull, black, flat eyes, soulless holes that sucked all the light from around them and pinned Tim in place like a butterfly on a card. Acting frightened didn’t take much effort.

The figure smiled, in a way that was the opposite of reassuring, with too many teeth that were too white and too pointed, and crooked a long, nearly skeletal finger. Tim was pretty sure he couldn’t have disobeyed if he’d wanted to. He tried very hard not to look as though he was pretty sure this was what he was looking for.

He was right. The figure spread its hands wide, palms down, as if unrolling a scroll. Beneath them, on a surprisingly clean black velvet cloth, were four objects. One was a round ceramic mask with disturbingly realistic lips, the blank holes in place of its eyes seeming somehow to follow him. One was a handheld silver mirror, sculpted to look like a hand gripping the glass, which had been carefully placed face-down. One was a light colored box, open to reveal, nestled on a bed of cotton wool, an unremarkable matte black ring.

The final object was the clockwork bird. Even in the darkness, it glittered, the different precious metals making up its body interlocking like delicate feathers. Its tail was raised, its head tilted to one side, and despite being obviously a made thing it was so realistic that he half expected it to take flight.

“Which will you choose?” the figure asked.

Tim hesitated, which surprised him. Obviously, he’d meant to fake that hesitation, to get a better price for that bird, but his eyes kept going back to that black ring. It wasn’t acrylic or stone—some kind of metal, maybe? There was nothing special about it. He could find half a dozen like it at any shop in London. But it…spoke to him. They all held their own attraction or fascination, really, but he wanted that ring.

The trouble was, he needed the bird.

“Is this a one-per-customer kind of thing?” Tim asked, trying to keep his tone of voice light. “Or do you just not think I can afford more than one?”

“The price of all four together is high. Too high for even you, I suspect.” The figure studied Tim, then nodded. “Two.”

“Three,” Tim countered, more to see what would happen than anything.

The figure’s face split into a sharp, feral grin. “The price for that would be even higher than for all four. Would you be able to live with not knowing why you chose to leave one behind?”

Well, that was the thing. Tim had to admit that he wouldn’t. Something about that mirror scared him, but he’d never been one to walk away from things he was afraid of—he liked to face them. The mask was disturbing and fascinating by turn. He was pretty sure that if he left only one, he’d spend too many nights coming back to the Night Market looking for this booth. He was also sure he’d never find it again.

Besides, there didn’t seem to be a way to actually wear the mask, and it wouldn’t really go with his decor.

He hesitated a second longer, then closed one hand over the ring and scooped the bird up with the other. “How much for these two?”

The figure’s smile grew impossibly wider, until it seemed that it ought to split its face clear in two. “You have already begun to pay.”

Before Tim could ask what the fuck that meant, the world went…spongy. The market, the mask, the mirror, everything seemed to soften and dissolve. The last thing he saw was the white, pointed Cheshire cat grin.

And then he was standing on the banks of the Thames, the sounds of traffic rumbling from somewhere behind him, blinking into the light of a golden sunrise, with a clockwork bird perched on his fingers and a ring making a deep impression in his palm.

It hurt, but it was also a relief. If it weren’t for the pain, he might have been tempted to believe—or maybe hope—he’d dreamed all that. But here was the bird, and the ring, and Tim hadn’t had to spend any of the money Ms. Robinson had given him. Not that he remembered, anyway.

You have already begun to pay. What the fuck had that meant? Had he slipped the figure money without knowing it? He transferred the bird to his other hand, reached under his jacket, and pulled out the envelope. No, it was still stuffed full of cash, about as thick as he recalled. Tim tucked the bird into it as well—it fit comfortably without straining the envelope—and put it back. Then he stared at the ring.

The outside was lightly dimpled, like it had been hammered out a bit more aggressively than normal and not rounded off after, but the inside had been polished off to a smooth finish—a nearly smooth finish. There were faint impressions, like it had once been engraved, but he couldn’t read them. After a few minutes trying to puzzle it out, he gave up.

Well, he hadn’t used Ms. Robinson’s money and she hadn’t asked for this, so he figured it was his. It was a bit too loose for his ring finger, but it fit snugly around his middle finger, which felt fitting somehow. Then he slid his hands in his pockets, hunched his shoulders, and set off for Chelsea.

The walk back was quicker, seeing as he didn’t have to follow the path of the Thames so closely, but it was still going on nine in the morning when he finally strode into the Archives. He went straight into Ms. Robinson’s office without knocking and set the tray of coffees he’d brought in on her desk, then reached under his jacket and handed over the envelope.

“I hope that’s the right one,” he said. For the first time since coming to work at the Institute, he sat down without waiting for permission, but damn it, he was knackered; he’d been on his feet for hours. “I somehow doubt the Night Market will be in the same place tomorrow and I’m damned sure I won’t get away with being there a second time.”

Ms. Robinson actually looked taken aback for a moment. She picked up the envelope and tugged on the paper, sliding out both bird and cash. With a slight frown, she picked up the stack of cash and riffled through it, then looked at Tim sharply. “Did you steal this?”

“No, the vendor said I had ‘already begun to pay’ for it,” Tim answered. “Whatever that’s supposed to mean.”

Ms. Robinson reached for her tape recorder. Tim noticed it was already running. “I think you’d better tell me everything.”

Just like when he’d told her about Danny, Tim found that the story just poured out of him—every detail, everything he had seen and heard and felt. It was as if he was sitting back and taking a rest while something else told his story through him—like he was nestled in a bed of static. Ms. Robinson kept her eyes fixed on him the entire time, never once interrupting or seeming to blink.

“And just like that, I was standing down by Kew Bridge,” Tim concluded. “Sun was rising, traffic was bustling, and there was no sign of the Night Market. The only proof I had that it had really been there was the bird in one hand and the ring in the other.”

“May I see it?” Ms. Robinson asked.

The fact that she had asked rather than ordered made Tim more willing to hand it over. She held the ring up to the light, turning it over several times. “Just a plain black ring?”

“There’s something engraved on the inside, but I can’t make it out,” Tim told her. “I thought I might try to do a rubbing or something, but it might be too faded even for that.”

Ms. Robinson rubbed at the interior and held it up closer. For a moment, there was no sound other than the whir of the tape recorder and the crackle of static from somewhere. Then she blinked. “Vigilo, Opperior, Audio.”

“I watch, I wait, I listen,” Tim translated automatically. “The Institute motto?”

“Which was also the Magnus family motto, I believe. This ring could have once belonged to a member of the family.”

Tim plucked the ring from her fingers and studied it for a moment, then shook his head. “No, look at this interior. I recognize the markings on the parts that aren’t worn. This technique didn’t exist until sometime in the twentieth century, and Jonah Magnus was the last of his family, wasn’t he?”

Ms. Robinson took a moment to answer. “Quite. How do you know so much about jewelry-making?”

“Danny got really into it for a while when he was in his late teens,” Tim said, a bit ruefully. “I can’t tell you how many seminars and lectures and special demonstrations I sat through with him before he got bored with it.”

“That had to have been at least ten years ago.”

“Did a paper on it for one of my classes. ‘Nine for Mortal Men: Crafting Rings in Nineteenth Century Europe.’” Tim spread his hands out dramatically, as if plastering the title of the paper in the air in front of him. “I reckoned I might as well not completely waste my time.”

Ms. Robinson arched an eyebrow. “Well. As you still seemed to be visible upon walking into my office, as long as you don’t begin having visions of dark riders and fiery mountains, I suppose that ring is yours to keep.”

“I love that you know Tolkien.”

“Not personally, but I may have had a rather different career trajectory if he had still been the Merton Professor of English Language and Literature by the time I was admitted to Oxford.” Ms. Robinson actually smiled at him, a rather dry smile, but a genuine one. “Well done, Tim.”

Tim couldn’t stop a grin of his own from splitting his face. He’d not only passed her test with flying colors, she was actually praising him. It felt good. “Thanks, Ms. Robinson.”

“Call me Gertrude. I think you’ve earned that.” Ms. Robinson—Gertrude—set the bird to one side. “You’ve also earned a rest, a long one. I won’t suggest you go home, as exhausted as you are, but there’s a folding cot here that I use sometimes when I work too late. Go and get some sleep. I’ll wake you if there’s an emergency.”

“Thanks…Gertrude.” Tim was pretty tired. He slid the ring back onto his finger, stood, and retrieved the cot from where she indicated, then took it back into the climate-controlled side room and set it up.

His last thought before sleep claimed him was to wonder just how much he’d have to pay for what the figure had given him.

[thedunesea]

Hi. How’s your day?

I just want to say I mostly agree with your post about AI writing. I am a student from science background but is enthusiastic about fictions. Also my native tongue is NOT English.

Because of my……rather unique background knowledge, I feel like I have a “weird” stand about AI writing. I feel like 99% people I know use AI writing tools wrong, either they don’t know how to structure their story, how to create conflicts, or how to communicate with AI writing tools.

In summary, they’re either bad at storytelling or bad at using AI tools.

In fact, I use AI writing tools just like your post suggested—I mainly tell them what sentences I would use to describe the scenery, and see if they have better wording than mine. Or I would ask them which adjectives to use here, as google translate is dumb. Or I would ask if a scene which is not from my own culture make sense, as I don’t want to bother any online folks on this matter.

Your post made me feel less guilty about using the tools. I am not sure whether or not it’s a good thing tbh but thank you. I wanted to have some research about this topic, but I got yelled by people’s angry anti-AI writing posts in my face on tumblr most of the time. Like—I get it, but I wonder am I the only one who has the similar idea on this topic? Then I found your post.

I feel like my main concern now is—by using those tools, am I making the “evil” in others’ eyes stronger? As there are news about AI writing tools using online fanfics to train their models, the tools themselves might be unethical.

Thank you again and hope you don’t mistake my message……I’m here to say “thank you” and try to have some conversations over AI writing.

Hello friend, I'm doing fine, thanks, even if quite busy with the end of the school year approaching. I hope you're doing fine too!

I completely understand your fears and your reserves, and I share them. I think that the issue at hand here has two faces we need to tackle. The first is the tool, i.e. artificial intelligence chat bots; the other issue, the really problematic issue, is the way these bots were trained.

My foray into chat gpt was as a teacher, not as a writer: I needed to assess the potentialities and the drawbacks of the tool, since I'm fairly sure I will soon have to account for it when preparing my courses and perhaps even to integrate it into my teaching routine.

I do think that the tool, if used properly, could be really useful for teaching and learning, and also for everyday life. It's like having a very calm, very proper, very family friendly protocol droid. You have to take everything it says with a grain of salt, but it can help you get what you need (i.e. starter bibliography on a topic you aren't familiar with). It can also be invaluable for the uses you described. AI isn't inherently evil, if (and this is a HUGE if) we regulate its uses in order to let it substitute human work only when that work force can be redirected towards more engaging and more useful tasks, and never as a substitute to human knowledge and creativity.

What is evil is the economic system we live in, and this brings us to the second issue. Chatgpt was trained on data provided for free on the web, data that were never meant for this. This in itself is unethical, and a gross misuse of the web. Honestly I don't care that my fics may have been scrapped, but I understand why people do, and anyway my own feelings on the subject are way beyond the point: this is another egregious example of corporations using people's time and engagement to scrap data and profit, and this is one of the evils of our time.

And yet we keep using evil tools all the time. I use whatsapp, and I still have a facebook profile, so I'm feeding data to meta. I am not vegan, and I know all the evils of intensive animal farming. I don't buy a lot of fast fashion, and yet all my clothes are made in developing countries, and I have no idea of the conditions of the workers there. Heck, the fridge I just bought because the old one broke down is produced by a company that used to produce in Italy but then delocalized to a developing country, firing hundreds of employees.

I couldn't have bought an ethical fridge: I don't even know if they exist, and even if they did, I couldn't afford them. I absolutely couldn't afford to only buy clothes made in Italy or Europe. I could go vegan, but honestly I don't really want to. I eat meat very rarely, I only eat local fish (by which I mean fished in Italy, I don't live on the sea) and I buy eggs from certified cage-free hens. I could get rid of whatsapp, but it would complicate my life to an extreme I am not willing to go to. I can't give up google suite because I use it for work.

One thing I don't do, for example, is order delivery food. That is a form of exploitation I choose not to partake in, because it's a choice I can make. Would I want to have pizza delivered to my house sometime? Yes, of course I would. Am I willing to put at risk the life of someone less privileged than me (delivery people here are mostly immigrants, often 40+ years old) to have my pizza delivered to me instead of getting off my ass and going to buy it myself to take away? No, like hell I am!

Why am I saying all this?

Because until I only buy handmade clothes and locally produced foods, only own ethically produced tech (HA!), never use products from meta or google again... Until then, who am I to lecture anyone on their use of chat gpt?

We live in an unethical world. This doesn't make us above reproach, but we have to choose our battles, and very few of us are really in a position to hate on others for the battles they choose - and those they don't.

If chat gpt helps you, get to know its pros and its cons: if using it doesn't bother you, use it! Chances are that the people that would get mad at you are probably using something unethical too - like driking milk, because the disboscation and pollution and soil consumption that are needed to produce our milk are far worse things than a bot scrapping the ao3.

I am sorry for the ramble, and I hope I didn't come across as patronizing: this wasn't really aimed at you, personally, it was more like a written train of thoughts, because honestly I asked myself the same questions you did when I started to think about if and how to incorporate these bots into my teaching routine, and this is the only answer I could find for myself.

[for the record, I won't use it for teaching, not yet: I want to get to know the tool and its training and all these issues way better before I decide to willingly expose my kids to it]

[n7punk]

⚡️ tis me, lightning bolt fiend, here to second that my love for she ra and catradora has only increased since I discovered your fics (may 2021). realistically yeah maybe we’re a dwindling fandom but idk a single hoe here who doesn’t recognize you as the authority on all things she ra fic. Not going anywhere 😎

hey its Still The Episode, so this might be a bit rambley and incomprehensible, but its what i've got so lets go. also i know im piggybacking off this. im aware this is about to become a tangent.

first off: thank you <3 also for your other sweet message awhile ago i didnt respond to because i was nonverbal second: fandom doesn't and shouldn't have authorities, thats a daaaaangerous rabbithole. wouldn't want it to be me and we're all just here to have fun. i happen to be a pretty prolific author who's dug into metacanon some, but thats it. not trying to come down on you, ⚡️, just don't want to leave no disclaimer here and make it seem like i'm agreeing i do/should have authority on anything, unless by authority you just mean prolific producer, which like, im sure is what you're going for even if that's not what the phrasing implies, hence the disclaimer

thiiiiird, because this was spawned from a comment i made because of the ao3 thing, ive done more research into that when my brain was a little more solid earlier in the day, before it became the soup it is now. particularly this article, this reblog, this reblog, this reblog, and then this random shitty "article" that confirmed the 2019 cutoff date from the prev reblog (which was uncited), led me to conclude that it's probably fine to unlock my fics. my understanding is sudowrites is built off of GPT-3, which was trained off public access works and a web crawl which cut off in 2019. GPT-3 was a product of OpenAI. also there's some kind of "dont scrape this" flag the web crawl is Supposed to respect, and a discord comment says they already use that on the archive, but take that with a grain of salt ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

the reddit investigation reaaaaaally makes it seem like it was trained off fanfic as one of its datasets, i dont know how the hell you get those results if not, but its probably from stuff caught up in that webcrawl, which wasn't necessarily even from AO3, and it well and truly seems too late on that. i locked temporarily in case they were still actively scouring and not yet done getting everything off the archive, meaning some of my work conceivably hadn't been caught yet and could be "saved", but it looks like they stopped scouring before i started posting for she-ra LOL

also some people seem to be encountering a bug where fics that hadn't updated in years were pushed to the tops of their bookmarks as recently updated and they think that's related to this?? as far i know only a new chapter would change the publication date. i go back and edit my typos all the time: they remaind locked by the date the most recent chapter was initially posted. idk where people got that from.

[rayless-reblogs]

For the writing meme: 5, 12, and/or 32, please? :)

Thank you! Let's take a crack at these.

5: What are my writing superstitions? Not any superstitions, but maybe hang-up is a better word? Whether it's original writing or fanfic, I'm very, very reluctant to assume I'll finish a project. I'll start writing and tell myself, "Okay, this is just a casual thing, no pressure, if you finish it, great, but you're not committing to anything here." Never mind that I'm secretly hoping I will finish it, of course, and I know that. There've been times in the past when I've launched into a project with high expectations, only to watch it peter out and die. Usually if I'm fifty percent through or more, I have a reasonable expectation of seeing it through, but even there, I've still quit before it was done.

For related reasons, I tend to make myself write linearly, not jump right to the scenes I'm really looking forward to writing and filling in the "boring" stuff later. Those scenes are the carrots on the stick -- I have to get through the less exciting stuff first, and that helps ensure everything gets written out. I ended up breaking this rule for my more recent Abyss fics, where I ended up jumping around a lot. But I don't think that would work for me in most cases.

Also for related reasons, this is why I don't post long fanfics until they're finished. I don't want to leave readers hanging with something incomplete.

12: If a genie offered you three writing wishes, what would they be? Asking for loads of money so I could just spend all my time researching and writing and self-promoting my writing would be nice, but is probably too indirect for the writing genie. Would need a money genie for that.

I am ridiculous when it comes to typos, so being typo-proof would be great.

For my current writing project, I have been taking an unholy amount of notes, which I still need to fact-check and organize. Being able to see all of my notes at once, comprehensively, right there in my brain, sounds amazing.

Never again having that feeling of knowing there's an exact word I want to use but I can't remember what it actually is.

32: What is a line from a poem/novel/fanfic that I return to again and again? This is an odd one, not because it's obscure, but it's just strange that this is something I do think back to a fair bit. The last line of Peter Pan novel:

When Margaret grows up she will have a daughter, who is to be Peter’s mother in turn; and thus it will go on, so long as children are gay and innocent and heartless.

My mom read Peter Pan to me (I was a teenager, not a young child, just to clarify), and I remember when she came to that, I was just sort of wow. What a note to end on, that word "heartless". I think the Disney movie robs Peter Pan of a lot of its -- dark? sinister? -- neither are exactly the right word (where are you, writing genie?) overtones, and the whole book has this against-the-grain element. But it's so sharp and stark in that line. I think it helped teach me the power of including, with no fanfare, a simple word that cuts against what the reader expects -- just putting it there and leaving it be, letting the reader cope with it themselves.

[sunnyrealist]

Thank you for the tag, @kaidynsarell! 😘

How many works do you have on AO3? Three!

What's your total AO3 word count? 172, 223. WHOA. 😳

What fandoms do you write for? Hogwarts Legacy is my one and only at the moment!

Top five fics by kudos? I only have three, so in first place is The Sun, the Moon, and All Our Stars. After that, We Have Work to Do and "The Mess."

Do you respond to comments? I get ridiculously excited when I receive comments, so I almost always respond. Sometimes I do so too quickly, and then later on, I wish I would have put more time or thought into my replies. I'm trying to get better about that!

What is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending? All of my posted fics are WIPs, but they will all have happy endings. That isn't to say there isn't any angst - there's tons of that in my main fic.

What is the fic you wrote with the happiest ending? I think my main fic The Sun, the Moon, and All Our Stars will be the happiest because of all the emotional turmoil and mini-conflicts it took to get there along the way.

Do you get hate on fics? Not that I am aware of - people are pretty nice. I do often wonder if my writing kind of sucks, if my story is boring, or if people just don't care for my characters, though, because the hits to Kudos ratio isn't the greatest, and I don't get a ton of comments. (I've been told that I might have better luck on Wattpad, but I've never really used it, and revising/posting everything sounds like a LOT of work.) I go through phases where I totally beat myself up over my writing and ones where I reread my main fic and am like, "Yeah, I love this story!" I think my main fic is paced slower and has different vibes than people might expect. I wanted it to feel like a somewhat realistic meeting (no weird or funny situation - just meeting in a pub), how a first date might play out, a couple doing normal stuff like household chores, people just getting to know each other on a deeper level, etc. There is an overarching conflict, but there are lots of mini conflicts in different arcs, too - I know some readers might not like that there isn't one solid conflict, either. My story is extra sappy and romantic, just like most of my prior relationships were and my marriage is. I understand that might not be everyone's cup of tea, but it's definitely mine.

Do you write smut? Absolutely. I love reading sex scenes and often wish there was more in the fanfics I enjoy, so I oftentimes will put the plot aside for a little while or weave plot into some smut. My characters love having sex and are very physically affectionate and expressive. My husband (former English major) is my beta reader and often gets annoyed when there are a lot of smutty chapters in a row, but let's be honest, he's not my actual audience here, so I take that with a grain of salt while listening to all of the rest of his constructive feedback. 🤣

Craziest crossover? Never did a crossover! I have a few ideas, but I doubt I'll ever write them.

Have you ever had a fic stolen? Nope, and I doubt that would ever happen.

Have you ever had a fic translated? Nope, and again, I highly doubt that would happen.

Have you ever co-written a fic before? No, but until I finish my main fic, I don't think I can really even consider the possibility. I'm laser-focused right now.

All time favorite ship? Ooh, that's a tough one. If I'm thinking about all the ships I've had my entire life, then I have to choose a few: 1. Princess Leia and Han Solo, 2. Ben Solo/Kylo Ren and Rey (Reylo), and 3. Ron and Hermione.

What's a WIP you want to finish but doubt you ever will? I definitely plan to finish all of my fics, but I'm probably sidelining We Have Work to Do until The Sun, the Moon, and All Our Stars is finished. I have tons of ideas for spin-offs and epilogue mini-stories, but I doubt all of them will be written in the end.

What are your writing strengths? I guess I can say that there's oftentimes purpose, research, and symbolism behind names in my fic. To be honest, I'm terrible at complimenting myself. My husband says I'm good at writing dialogue and romantic situations.

Thoughts on dialogue in another language? Personally, I try to stick with my native language. I'm an American, though, writing characters who live "across the pond," and I know that the dialect in the United Kingdom is pretty different. I just do my best with phrasing and spelling. I have used Scottish Gaelic for a specific part of my fic, but I don't know the language. Sadly, I've had to resort to Google Translate. Sebastian is the translator for readers in the story, since he knows so many languages!

First fandom you wrote in? Star Wars! My first fanfic was specifically based on the characters and storyline of the Expanded Universe, which Disney killed off. 😭 I was so sad when that happened - I had been thoroughly invested in those storylines since I was ten years old, and as an adult, I had been so sure that the new Star Wars trilogy would be based on them. I'm thankful for Reylo, at least, though!

Favorite fic you've written? I'm partial to my main fic.

No twentieth question - Like Kaidyn said, I have truly enjoyed being part of the Hogwarts Legacy fandom. I've met some wonderful friends here - crazily enough, I've even hung out with some fandom friends IRL! One of my Discord servers has also delved into other fandoms, like Bridgerton, Fourth Wing, and ACOTAR. It's been so fun to be part of a little book club. 🥰 The HL fandom thankfully brought me back into writing fiction and gaming... and I want to draw more now, too! That might be another revisited hobby someday.

No pressure tags: @leafler, @ladyofsappho, @morelikeravenbore, and any other fanfic writers who are interested! I don't want to double-tag anyone.

20 Qs for fic writers

@slytherizz you're a gem. Thanks for the tag, darling

How many works do you have on AO3? Exactly 1. There may be more eventually, but for now, that's it.

What's your total AO3 word count? 36,549

What fandoms do you write for? Hogwarts Legacy

Top five fics by kudos? Top 5? I have exactly 1 lol. So, here's to my baby: Sanguinis et Omnium Fractorum!

Do you respond to comments? Yes - I get nervous sometimes, though. Like not knowing exactly what to say back. So sometimes it takes me a bit.

What is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending? I haven't officially published any of my angsty endings. Though, I might have a few others in the works with much more bittersweet endings

What is the fic you wrote with the happiest ending? SOF will eventually get a happy ending so I guess it will be that one whenever it gets finished.

Do you get hate on fics? No - I'd probably crawl into a hole never to return. I only want to be perceived for praise. Thanks.

Do you write smut? Sometimes....I don't share it often, though.

Craziest crossover? The Secret History x Hogwarts Legacy

Have you ever had a fic stolen? No, I'd be very surprised

Have you ever had a fic translated? Not unless you count me translating my own garbled thoughts into something mildly readable

Have you ever co-written a fic before? Ah.. nothing official. Though the Willow girlies all have a history of bouncing ideas off of each other that sort of end up cohesive lore/writing.

All time favorite ship? Willow has my heart (Henry Winter x Sebastian Sallow) It was written in the stars, and you'll never convince me otherwise. Fav crackship

What's a WIP you want to finish but doubt you ever will? Oh gosh. There are so many in my head that I've yet to put onto paper. More Wilow ramblings, I've got a Seb Dad/Daughter fic thats been playing around in my head for some time that I keep meaning to write down but never get around to for some reason.

What are your writing strengths? So much angst. lol. I've been told I'm quite descriptive.. So I guess that's a strength.

Thoughts on dialogue in another language? My Seb is very much a polyglot. NERD. So I may try to incorporate some other languages into my fic, though I do cringe a bit at using Google Translate. So we'll see how much ends up there

First fandom you wrote in? Hogwarts Legacy was the first I've ever written for. I never even really wrote before this at all other than some random little stories when I was a child

Favorite fic you've written? Oh Gosh. There are some longer HL works I haven't published that I do love looking back on. They're a bit rubbish, but I can see my writing grow through them and that's very cool to see. Otherwise, SOF was the first I ever put into any kind of public space, so it will always be special in some way I think.

No twentieth question - I've met so many delightful/wonderful people through this little fandom and I'm so grateful for all of them. You darlings all know who you are.✨

No pressure tags💕: @diligentcranberry @sunnyrealist @juneymont

@rypnami @quackwizardry

Blaze

0 notes

[quietlywatchingwritingreading]

so I was looking into the pearl/diamond clan villages for research for writing a fanfic. And well, I figured I’d post a few things I noticed. These mostly involve day to day life within the Pearl clan, namely their diet and day to day life. Because of this, I’ll be talking about pokemon as food, and have put the rest under a cut.

First, the Pearl clan seams to be a hunter-gatherer sort. They mention that they don’t have farms, though some people are hopeful with pokemon’s help, they’ll be able to grow food. There is a younger character who talked about wanting to make a trap to catch some wild pokemon, and he’s specifically looking at some Swinub in the hot springs.

This implies a few things to me:

A) Because ingo’s part of the pearl clan, he is probably at least somewhat familiar with which pokemon are edible, and likely how to catch/prepare them. This isn’t much, but Its still something I could imagine being interesting thing to explore. A skill, or set of skills,  he has that Emmet does not. Emmet possibly feeling different ways about this. (Pride in his brother knowing things/being able to survive? Fear/worry that his brother was in a position where he needed to learn these things? Especially as they probably both buy all of their food from the store?)

B)The Swinub family is edible. Honestly, they probably account for like 60-80% of the Pearl Clan diet. Basculin are probably also hunted, but everything else has to come from places that aren’t in the icelands.  Nearly all the other pokemon in the icelands tend to be very humanoid like Kadabra and Machamp, which immediately makes me presume that they aren’t edible. The rest tend to be very tough pokemon like Garchomp.

That said, they also have Chancy/Blissey in the icelands, so I imagine their eggs are also an important part of the pearl clan’s diet.

(At this point I should probably take note of Lickitung/Lickilicky. Those have dex entries that specifically state that Lickitung’s saliva can be used to create a useful adhesive, and that Lickilicky’s saliva contains corrosive elements. Which itself implies that these pokemon wouldn’t be hunted, but are probably incredibly important material-sources both for general crafting, and potential tools of hunting/war. Basically the sort of thing that feels like its just useful enough to remember for fanfic-flavor text.)

C) by rules of opposites, that probably implies the Diamond clan are farmers. There’s nothing saying so, but there is some vague evidence to this idea. The Crimson mirelands are where you tend to find grain, and there are grain piles in the wild. Possibly, the idea is that some of the harvest is intentionally left behind to attract wild pokemon, or left as gifts to them.

The second thing I noticed:

-The Pearl clan is built sorta on a slope/mountain of sorts. The houses are spread out, though there’s no evidence that some houses are in more preferred spots then others. It gives the appearance that their village is kind of large, and that it was important that people have lots of space to themselves/between each other’s home. The village is also naturally fenced off to a degree by the mountains. 

-The Diamond Clan’s village is built within a Circle. the houses are all just at the edges of a sort of circle, and the middle of the town is a very large/tall rock. The rock makes it seam like its a giant sundial, though I don’t think the houses are positioned in a way to represent the numbers on a clock.  The town feels more compacted, with a lot of people staying close to each other. Their town also feels much more open: there are no fences or anything that separates their village from the surrounding wilds. 

[moonlight-escapade]

The King & I (Pt. 6)

HISTORICAL AU (but not necessarily historically accurate bc this is a fanfic not a research project lol): King Henry V & “Street Urchin” reader who takes in and cares for abandoned/orphaned children.

Chapter 6: A HELPING HAND

HALS POV

She reminded me of a deer. I’d grown up hunting all sorts of animals with my father, but I hated hunting deer. They were my mother’s favorite animal, and my father could never understand the reasons behind my opposition towards hunting them. Nevertheless, he was insistent that I should whenever the occasion arose. But I’d manage to find my own way around his demands.

We would go out to the woods, bows and swords in hand, chasing down stags and doe. I’d manage to sneak a satchel of grains underneath my cloak, preferring the idea of befriending the sweet creatures rather than killing them for sport. I remembered my mother said she’d liked doing that, and the idea made me feel connected to her somehow. I’d been raised to fight, brawl and take heed since I was young enough to hold a sword, but there had to be a place for softness somewhere… at least I remember my mother saying so time and time again. Keep your warriors heart but leave room for softness there.

Deer were highly intelligent creatures. They’re constantly on alert and are extremely hard to gain their trust. Yet somehow, despite everything they watch humans do to them, they can find a way to open their heart to you. Maybe that’s what I saw in (Y/N).

She fought hard against showing it, but it was that very softness she hid that intrigued me. Holding out a hand full of grain to a deer isn’t enough to get them to trust you; it’s the steadiness of that hand, the softness with which you approach them and the patience you keep. That’s always the key. They’ll never come to you on your terms; you must play by their own. Otherwise, they run away. And you’re lucky if you ever come across that same deer again.

“But I can’t today,” (Y/N) spoke, her hands clasped behind her back. Her gaze was uneasy, shifting back and forth between the ground and me.

I nodded, showing her I understood. The grains still outstretched in my hand. She could take them whenever she liked.

“Tomorrow then,” I stated. I could see her mind working beneath her guarded gaze.

“(Y/N)! We’re ready to go,” a voice called from outside. The door opened and the same group of young boys from yesterday stumbled through the door. I moved aside, allowing them to fill up the space. (Y/N) stood up quickly, greeting them all and offering seats to the lot. They looked at me with wary expressions though they moved with intention. I was a guest in their home, and they made sure I knew it.

The tallest of the group, a boy of about 15 I’d say, came around and stood in front of (Y/N). His body language tense and on guard. This boy was a devoted soldier to his captain.

“Are you Hal?” The boy asked firmly. I glanced down at (Y/N), realizing she hadn’t introduced me to them as the King. I was glad, I secretly wanted it to stay that way. I stared back at the young man before me. “I am,” I confirmed.

“Have you brought us more food?” he asked. “Carter,” (Y/N) scolded him, as though the comment took her by surprise.

“We don’t want to expect anything,” the boy retorted. I watched his firm gaze analyze me… whether as an opponent or a friend, I wasn’t too sure.

“I have,” I replied, keeping my voice steady, trustworthy. “You have?” (Y/N)’s sweet voice sounded from beside the boy. I smiled softly, nodding. “I wasn’t sure if you’d accept it, but I hadn’t gotten to ask you yet,” I admit. Her hand reaches behind her neck, her other arm coming around her waist, “I… that’s very kind of you,” she mutters.

“If you care to join me by my steed, young man?” I ask, taking the pressure off of her. The boy, Carter, looked to (Y/N) for approval, which she gave with a nod.

Carter and I walked outside to where Perseus stood, sacks of food hanging on either side of his body. I watched the boy’s eyes widen at my steed. “A white horse? They say none but the King has one,” he exclaimed.

“Aye, so they say. But Perseus has been with me for long as I can remember,” I tell him, giving Perseus a pat on the head.

He brushed a hand across Perseus’ white hair with the same kind of admiration I’d had when my Father had gifted him to me many years ago. It fell heavy on me that in merely a few weeks… this boy would become a member of my guard in our efforts to win the war against France.

“Why are you helping us?” He asked then, snapping me back into the present. The interrogation continuing where it left off. The boy had taken the place of the man of the house in this unconventional family arrangement. I wondered what his feelings towards (Y/N) were. Did he see her as a mother? Or as someone he wanted to protect the same way I did? I quickly shook the thought away. It was ridiculous. He was a boy. But I’d been a boy once, and I remembered what it was like to be in the presence of a beautiful woman.

“Because I felt compelled to,” I admit, stroking Perseus’ neck as Carter traced the embroidery on my saddle.

“(Y/N) has been kind to us,” he began, “she sacrifices a lot to help us all. We were up to seventeen of us last week… but not everyone stays.” I listened attentively to this description of their lives. “I was one of the first, after Joseph and John… this was their parents house,” he signals to the deteriorating shack. “(Y/N) welcomed me in with open arms…” he spoke, his voice trailing off.

“She seems to love you all very much,” I say, trying to prod into his reverence towards her. Carter smiles warmly, nodding his head. “She’s a mother to the younger ones, and a sister to the rest of us” he admits. I silently sigh in relief.

“But I’ve been here a long time, and I am tired of seeing her come back home bloodied and bruised every week,” he says, shifting one of the sacks off of Perseus’ side. There is a frustration in his tone and movement that I recognize. He wants to be more than (Y/N)’s ward in this home. The way I wanted to be more than my father’s disappointing son.

“She can’t continue this way… I can’t-“ he catches himself, “we can’t lose her.” His gaze moves far off.

“I’ve a way to help her,” I tell him, hoping his trust in me could help to gain (Y/N)’s. Telling him about the job I have available for her could be helpful in convincing her to take it.

“There’s a job at the old tavern just down the road. An old friend of mine owns it and is willing to take her on,” he says. Carter looks at me with surprise.

“Take (Y/N) on?” he asks. I nod. He chuckles then. “What’s funny about that?” I ask. He shakes his head and slings the sack over his shoulder. “I don’t think (Y/N)’s ever worked for her supper a day in her life.”

I knew he didn’t mean that in the way most ladies were to be revered. Rather, (Y/N) was a professional thief. It was all she’d known.

“No matter, she’ll learn,” I tell him, undoing the straps on the second sack of foods.

“(Y/N) isn’t one to take orders,” he confesses, a playful smile on his face. I can’t help but chuckle in return. That was something I could easily believe.

“Well, that’s why I hope you’ll talk to her. If she feels she’s doing it for you rather than for her, maybe she can.” I tell him, walking back around to the front of the house.

“I’ll give it my best,” Carter says. I nudge his arm with my elbow and we share a friendly laugh. Patience. It’s always the key.

————————

“Gods Bones! You bastard!” I screamed, feeling the blood rush out fresh down my face.

“Good heavens, I’ve never heard a woman say such a thing in my life,” the doctor said after removing his hand from my nose.

“I’ve never felt such god-awful pain before in my life,” I yelled back. “That was worse than when it broke!” I cried. I stared over at Hal, who sat in the corner with a pained expression on his face. “You!” I pointed, “This was your fault!” I yelled.

The doctor looked at me with his mouth open. “Young Lady, I will ask you to not speak in such a manner to the King in my study— nor anywhere you’re with him,” he scolded me.

I rolled my eyes, grabbing the cloth from his hand. “Don’t you ever touch my bloody nose again,” I warned. I couldn’t stop the tears that pooled around my eyes. My face was undoubtedly a holy disaster now. How could the King still stand to stand there, looking at me like this.

“Hal, please leave, this isn’t an ideal moment for a lady to wish to be looked at,” I say. He walks towards me, his hands coming out to comfort me, but I shrug him off. “I’m serious. I look like a skinned cow.”

He backs off, allowing the doctor to bring him away to his study. In the meantime, I wince and cry with pain as my newly re-broken nose hangs on my face. The doctor said it had to be re-broken in order to set. To me it sounded like a classic move to torture a woman— as everything seemed to be with modern medicine. Hal would certainly pay for this.

“Now, do not touch it, no matter what you do,” the doctor spoke as he walked back into the room. “What if it itches?” I retort. “Are you daft? I said no matter what you do,” the doctor jabbed back.

He excused me with a bottle of lavender, sage and hemlock extracts, to be applied every day and night for three weeks.

“But how will I apply it if I’m not allowed to touch it,” I ask him, spite full in my voice. “Goodbye Lady (Y/N),” he says without looking at me. I would have rolled my eyes again had he not called me “Lady.” It surprised me. Who did he think I was?

Hal was waiting for me when I walked out of the room, attentive as ever. His fingers grazed my face as he tilted my now cleaned face up at him. “I’m so sorry (Y/N), I wasn’t expecting him to do that,” he spoke honestly. I couldn’t stay mad at him, not with the way his blue eyes gazed down on me… not with the flurry of blossoms I felt swirling in my stomach as I gazed back. But there was something I had to ask.

“He called me Lady,” I told him, my face still lingering on the tips of his fingers. “Why?”

He smiled, bringing his fingers down to my chin. “I suppose it’s because you look like one.”

I shove his arm, staring back at him, waiting for his real response. He chuckles. “We should be off, Lady (Y/N),” he says, holding an arm out for me. I bite my lip, trying to hide my amusement, then walk past him out to the street below.

It’s busy today, with carriages and people flooding out into the streets. Today is the meat market- the good kind that hails from Scotland and their highland cattle. Even though half the people here can’t afford it, it’s a luxury many an Englishman is willing to spend a pretty shilling on.

Hal however, doesn’t seem to notice. Instead his attention is entirely placed on securing a path to the Boar’s Head. His arms wrap around me as he maneuvers us through the crowds. When I trip on a turned stone, he is there to catch me immediately. I found myself trying to pull away from him out of my own pride, but I melted when he pulled me closer. Whether he did it intentionally or not, the feeling was indescribable.

Finally, we’d reached the tavern. I was surprised to find it in full swing at such an early hour. But I suppose just like it was for my mother, tavern work was never really over. I hesitated as we made our way inside.

“Are you alright?” Hal asked above me. I stared at the room around me, gauging the patrons and the energy of the space. It was lively, loud and… it reminded me very much of Madame B’s. “I don’t know about this Hal,” I say to him, feeling my voice falter. I follow him as he guides back to a quieter corner of the bar. He sits down on the table in front of me, his attention fully focused. I can hardly stand to think about that right now, I need to figure out if this is what I want.

“(Y/N), slow down,” he says, as though hearing my thoughts, “I’m only introducing you. There’s nothing at stake here,” he says, his fingertips brushing a strand of hair away from my face. I look at him, feeling a surge of frailty begin to crawl around me. “I don’t think I want this,” I tell him, feeling the honesty burn in my throat.

Hal nods, taking my hand. “We don’t have to stay,” he says. As I begin to agree with him, a joyful voice calls out to him from behind us.

“There he is!” a woman who I assumed to be Mrs. Quickly (I’d never put a face to her name) called, wrapping her arms around Hal’s shoulders. Hal smiled, chuckling merrily at her cherubic smile. I couldn’t help but find myself smiling too.

“Is this your friend?” she asked, turning towards me. She pulled me into a hug that felt incredibly comforting.

“Hello Mrs. Quickly,” I say with a small curtsey. She waves her hands at me as if shooing the gesture. “No need for such propriety here love, we’re a tavern, not a tea room,” she winks at me. I can’t help the laugh that leaves my lips. When I look over to Hal, he is already staring at me, a smile settled on his lips.

“Well love, we’ve got plenty for ye to do. Shall I show ye around?” she asked, holding a hand out to me. I looked to Hal who nodded at me encouragingly. I suppose there’s no harm… they seemed like nice enough people after all. I take Mrs. Quickly’s hand and follow her into the tavern space, letting her show me around the bar, introducing me to a few loud, albeit humorous patrons gathered around a table playing some sort of game.

I gazed up a rickety stairway, trying to peer at the hall there. “You won’t need to worry about the second floor dear,” Mrs. Quickly spoke reassuringly. Her hand patting mine as she lead me back to the bar. Ah.

“Do you know how to cook dear?” Mrs. Quickly asked. I shook my head sheepishly. I don’t think I’d ever even been near a stove in my life.

“No matter, there’s plenty more work that’ll keep you occupied,” she smiled warmly. It was truly amazing to me that this woman… that Hal… both of them were so willing to give me a chance. Undoubtedly it was Hal’s good word that even got me this far. I could barely hope to find work without his recommendation. Or was Mrs. Quickly just as unable to reject the King's proposal as I was?

Before I could think too much about it, a flash of the familiar burgundy coat he seemed to be quite fond of caught my eye. “How about it?” He asked, his voice radiating a careful hopefulness.

“I see no reason as to why I should refuse.” I tell him. Mrs. Quickly claps happily. “Oh wonderful dear!”

And with that, I am whisked off. An apron tied around my skirt and a tin platter placed in my hand. Hal stayed the entire night, always there when I’d encounter a group of rowdy men clamoring for their next round.

“Hal, you can’t be here every night to deal with them for me,” I tell him as he sticks by my side. You could hardly tell he was a King while in a place like this. He was so comfortable with the rambunctious customers that swayed and tripped about the tavern like drunken oxen.

“No, I suppose not,” he said, placing a hand on my waist as he moved around me to set a pitcher on the table. “But I am here tonight,” he smiled down at me. I shook my head, laughing at the stubbornness I’d grown to enjoy from him. But in an instant, his good humor seemed to falter entirely. I followed his gaze over to the door where a rather annoyed looking guard stood. I thought I may have recognized him, but guards all looked so much the same I could hardly tell. “Excuse me a moment,” Hal said before dipping away from my side.

He approached the man swiftly, speaking to him with lowered head, making it impossible to catch a snip of the conversation off of the movement of his lips. The guard seemed adamant about Hal’s leaving with him, but Hal seemed to resist. Again bearing that stubborn nature with pride. After a few moments, he came back over to where I stood behind the bar.

“I must take my leave now, but you are in the best of hands,” he assured me. And there it was again… that strange disconnect that happened that changed him right before my eyes from my friend Hal to the King, Henry V of England. I nodded at him assuringly, “Yes, don’t worry about me.”

That crooked smile I’d seen once before played on his lips again, “It seems that’s all I’m able to do these days.” My heart jumped at his confession. His hand grazed my own before taking it between his fingers and placing a kiss atop it. Thank God I’d inherited my mother’s talent for hiding all emotions from my face. I simply nodded in thanks. A gesture that made him chuckle before turning back and leaving with his impatiently waiting guard out the door.

Yet before leaving, the guard turned back, his eyes staring straight back at me. His expression was full of something I couldn’t quite gather. What did he see me as in the light of his King? I bowed slightly, as a gesture of good will. He returned the favor with a slight bow of his head, then turned out the door.

And suddenly, the world was just me again. Though now I was left with one demanding thought: Who was I becoming in the world of the King?

[bettsfic]

Hi Betts! I appreciate your fic so much and your presence here.

Question: how do you sort out your fanfic ideas from original fiction? Do you think there is room to do both, or is fanfic more “practice” for original?

The more I research publishing, the more I appreciate the pure artistic freedom of fic. I’m having trouble deciding what path to focus on and wondered your thoughts on how they intersect for you?

if anything, i think for me the relationship between ofic and fanfic is cyclical. when i write fic, i often unearth ideas and aesthetics that i later explore in ofic once i have a better grasp of them. but also the purpose of writing ofic for me is almost entirely career-oriented, and i want a writing career so that i have time and space during which to write fanfic, which is more fulfilling for me.

as for deciding which ideas should be ofic and which fanfic, i think it comes down to the story itself and its publishability. if i get inspired by something i watch/read, if the idea is intrinsically tied to a canon, or if the canon adds significant meaning to an au that otherwise would lack it, i choose fanfic. for example, my odesta fic is a novel length romance comedy adventure that actually has a plot, and could probably be understood without having watched/read the hunger games (or could be made its own world with a little revision), but i wrote it in part to add to the existing commentary of the hunger games and expand the canon world. to separate it from its canon text, even if it's still readable and enjoyable, would remove necessary context and undercut the story's themes and meaning.

moreover, fanfic allows for tension to be derived from dramatic irony. by that i mean when you read an au, you already know who the characters are and who they'll become to each other, but the characters have no idea they exist in another universe. in ofic, dramatic irony has to be developed into the story itself, which takes a lot of time and effort to pull off.

that said, i know an idea is going to be ofic if there are greater themes or concepts i want to explore. that's not to say fanfic doesn't have greater themes or concepts, but that i don't often go into fic with that as a purpose. when i write fic, the entire purpose is some form of catharsis, and everything else is incidental. with ofic, i have to be reaching for something else and willing to write it and rewrite it a dozen times to get there. i'll only revise a fic five times before i post it and let it go, but ofic i have to be prepared to stick with the idea through a dozen or more drafts and potentially sit on it for years before it's published.

but please take this all with a grain of salt. i had to start and set down a lot of ofic projects before i found the feeling i now associate with "oh this is gonna be a novel" and i had to submit to (and get rejected by) hundreds of magazines, agents, and publishers before i got a decent grasp of the kind of stories i was willing to fight for rather than set down and move on. more than anything else, it takes a lot of conviction to write ofic. you have to want the story made real more than you fear its failure.

if you're interested, i wrote a bit more on this topic in this issue of my newsletter, and i also wrote a post on the genre differences between fanfic and ofic.

[hongism]

this may sound like a silly question but why is it that in dirty talk in smut is the reader is always the one being degraded or humiliated or called a slut and not the other way around? is that how it works in real life too? do men ever get degraded in sex too or is it only in stuff like pegging?

hi! this isn’t a silly question at all!! this is a really good question about a topic that doesn't get talked about ENOUGH in this community, and there isn't enough education on this sort of thing out there, so im very happy that you asked and i'd really love to share my knowledge on it through research i've done over the years!!

in smut, people tend to write the reader as the submissive participant in sex scenes, while the man in the fic is the one being dominant and doing the degrading/humiliating/name-calling. in dom/sub scenes, it depends on communication and preemptive decision making. something that is RARELY addressed in smut is the communication part, but the communication is so incredibly needed and important. prior to a more intense sex scene in real life, it's advised that you discuss with your partner what is okay and what isn't when lust/arousal isn't involved so you can be thinking with a clear head about things.

it's not unheard of to have a dominant participant who is okay with being humiliated or degraded, but receiving humiliation and degradation are both considered to be kinks related to submissive partners, while the dominant partners prefer to give. that's just a generalization though and it's not true in all cases.

men can and some do like being degraded/humiliated in sex in real life. it doesn't have to be only pegging. that's the simple answer for that question. men can take up a more submissive role even if they are doing the penetrating, and that is often called 'service topping' when it's in mxm scenes. i hesitate to call it that in 'straight' (for lack of better word) scenes because top/bottom are terms typically reserved for the gay community and not really used to describe 'straight' sex from the research i've done over the years.

also! i wanna point out that dirty talk is different from degradation, humiliation, and other more intense name-calling things. dirty talk can be as simple as making lewd and suggestive comments. it does NOT have to include degradation or humiliation or name-calling. there are people who enjoy dirty talk without degradation involved, and there are people who enjoy degradation without humiliation involved. there's a broad spectrum of kinks that are different for everyone, which is why it's both important to have communication and serious talks about what's wanted for both parties beforehand. but it's also incredibly important for the author of these fics to INCLUDE every single kink they write into their fics so that readers can see it all firsthand and not be startled when it comes up later.

there are so many fics out there and unfortunately, more often than not, the writers of those fics are uneducated and don't make an attempt to educate themselves about sexual topics before writing it. the consumerist nature has created a push towards just writing the filthiest, hottest thing you can think of and throwing it out there without thinking about whether it's accurate/correct information included. part of the reason why i have pulled away from reading fics on tumblr (aside from writers i really love/know are providing quality fics that aren't misleading/spreading misinformation) is because most fics i read have including very unhealthy or inaccurate depictions of sex. i personally as a reader struggle reading those fics, but that's not the case for everyone and many people enjoy reading those fics without a care bc it's fanfiction and fanfiction isn't always meant to emulate reality.

the most important thing is realizing the line between fanfic and reality though, and recognizing that not everything you read will be accurate or a true representation of a kink/scene/how things work in real life! so unless the author tells you otherwise, i would say take the perceived accuracy of sex scenes in fanfic with a grain of salt!

i hope this helps, im sorry i got so long-winded and personal <3

[scimitar-and-longsword]

Hey, I think I just started following you and congrats on 1k!!! would you mind reccing me your favourite fics? I am baby in this fandom and want to read things :)

oh absolutely! I’ve been meaning to make a rec list at some point anyway so this is good!! Also, the movies been out a little over 3 weeks, we’re ALL babies in this fandom, so you’ll fit right in. 💜 These are just a few of the ones I’ve bookmarked/am subscribed to. It’s still so early on in this fandom/ship it’s a bit chaotic, but I’ve tried my best to give a few good recs!

--- Aftermath by kibosama 42361 Words, and counting Joe x Nicky

Nicolo has a growing list of Things That No Longer Make Sense. They go as follows: 1) He can no longer die. Which, in itself, is pretty strange. 2) The man he killed multiple times is somehow, impossibly, like him. 3) He may or may not be having a crisis of faith. 4) His former enemy is treating him like a friend. Even defending him, the man that can't die. 5) And, most confusing of all, why does he like it when Yusuf smiles at him like THAT?

This has 26 chapters SO FAR, and it’s a nice slow burn of Joe and Nicky falling in love in the aftermath of their meeting. It’s delicous and I’ve been LOVING it so far. It seems fairly well researched, and as far as I can tell is steering clear of the pitfalls that a lot of the crusades-era works have been falling into. THAT BEING SAID, I am white and from a christian background so I’m inherently not as educated in some of the micro-aggression/racist bs that has been happening in the fandom in regards to Joe. So idk... take my rec on this one with a grain of salt?? (but seriously I’ve been obsessed with this one!)

---

Finally Alive by domini_moonbeam 18243 Words, and counting Joe x Nicky

Joe is the new immortal not Nile, and Nicky is the one sent to go find him.

This is another one that is ongoing, basically putting Joe in the role of the new immortal. Instant, soulmate level attraction?? we.love.to.see.it.

---

Just Say Yes by ItsAshippersWorld 3489 Words Joe x Nicky

Five times Joe proposed to Nicky and one time Nicky proposed to Joe.

Gotta have at least 5+1 fic in there right? It’s a staple!

---

One night only. by crookedcrown 6227 Words Joe x Nicky

AU - Andy and Booker hire Joe to spend a night with Nicky.

A classic tale of Character A spends night with prostitute!Character B. Both fall madly in love at first sight/fuck. But it meant nothing to the other one, surly??? OH THE DRAMA. You know, that old chestnut. (Porn with Plot *chefs kiss*)

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Solitude, Interrupted by Wordancer 7039 Words Booker x Female OC

Booker meets a girl at the liquor store.

Bit of a fix-it fic. Post-movie Booker meets a girl who turns out to be another immortal. It’s cute and full of pining and I just WANT BOOKER TO BE HAPPY, OK?

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turn the world to gold by wordslinging 6859 Words Joe x Nicky

He's imagined their reunion many times. He's imagined sweeping Nicolo off his feet with eloquent declarations of undying devotion, imagined being the one swept off his feet by Nicolo’s quiet sincerity. He's even imagined the unlikely possibility that the spark will have died, that the sight of Nicolo won't set a fire in his blood the way it always has.

Reunited after taking a break for 20 years, it’s litteraly just Porn with emotions lol

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Under the Black by ToBebbanburg 8025 Words Joe x Nicky

This is just "5 times Joe and Nicky tried to fuck and 1 time they finally managed it" but it's pirates. I mean you try having sex as your ship gets pulled into a hurricane. It's not going to happen, sorry boys.

5+1 but this time with sexy pirates, um yes please!! (more porn haha)

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Le Vite  by ScribeofArda 8039 Words Joe x Nicky

Nicky breathes out. “What did I miss?” he asks, staring out at the hills. “Why didn’t I see this coming?” After everything, after finding Nile and losing Booker and Andy's new mortality, Joe is pissed off. Nicky is just tired.

Just some good old fashion fighting and making up. I’ve seen a trend of Joe x Nicky being like the **perfect** couple and while I’ll read that FOR SURE, sometimes I want something a little darker, a little more emo. I am a mid 2000s teen after all, emo is in my blood! Bonus Nile & Nicky bonding, kinda?

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I’ve read a shit ton of fanfic over the last few weeks so I’m sure I’ve missed some great ones, This is just what I had on hand lol

[kinomiakai]

Hey Kinomi I was wondering if you had any tips for writing academic essays. I've always had a bad relationship with writing. I simply hate it so much, especially writing essays but reading about your love of writing made me realize that I want to change the way I feel about writing.. One day I'd like to write my own fanfics but writing academic essays has ruined that for me. Do you have any tips on how you cope with academic writing?

Oh wow, anon, that’s really sweet?? And I hope I can actually help, I really empathize with having that sort of block in something that could have been something you’d enjoy if you’d been introduced to it differently??? I think everyone works differently though, so take everything I say with a grain of salt. You’ll produce the best work when you believe in yourself, so take whatever steps you need to get to that point.

My biggest point about academic writing is probably that all it really boils down to is an explanation. That’s all it is. And when you’ve been researching and learning your topic, it’s been explained to you, but probably not in the best way. You’ve probably had to go to a bunch of different sources and visit a bunch of different things. If you had to explain your topic to you now, where would you start? What would you have appreciated knowing beforehand? What are the main bits that made you go “ohhhhh”? Start there. You’re showing what you’ve learned, so what your prof is probably looking for is how well you explain your subject. If you explain it in a way that makes sense to you, it will probably make sense to everyone else, too.

I’ve got a bunch more messy thoughts - I hope some of this is helpful??? Here you go:

get it down in point form first!! I cannot advocate for messy point form enough, it saves me every day. This is always how I start any writing because it makes the transition from idea in your head to actual concrete thing 10000x easier

get your subheadings, put relevant point forms under the headings. You might not end up having those subheadings in the final thing, but it might help you organize your thoughts & topics by what they’re about as opposed to where they’re from

I don’t know is a right answer; I was not able to find things is a right answer, you just need to know how to phrase it. “There’s a paucity of literature surrounding this topic” / “research regarding this area is limited to X and Y, however Z is yet to be fully understood” there ya go. There’s so many topics that really aren’t well understood or haven’t been researched - but, if you can, find a source to cite that says whatever your topic is is underresearched :>

merge your literature together. With enough sources, your essay is pretty much done. A good academic essay is just someone whose done the research for you and is about to summarize it all, so put it together for your reader. Find the links between articles where people talk about similar things — cite left right and center. I over cite rather than under cite when I can. My academic writing ends up being big summaries of a whole bunch of literature put together to make a point.

if you get ideas on how to end your essay as you’re writing it, jot those down at the end and keep it going.

your first draft is just to get the idea out. This is exactly the same as writing fiction. You’re going to get the urge, as you’re writing, to second guess yourself, to think “this sounds really stupid” and delete it, to just rewrite the same word over and over because it doesn’t sound good but you can’t think of any other way to word it - don’t listen to that. just write. Just get it all out. Editing is SO much easier than writing. Get it all out, sleep on it, come back to it tomorrow.

You might find you get on a roll/distracted as you’re going and you come to info you don’t have. Good! Go back to your research and see if you can find that and add that it. If you were looking for some info as you were writing, it probably means it’s relevant to your topic. If, however, you think it’s not relevant, don’t be afraid to cut it and go back. If you don’t want to cut anything (like me), make a document for your scraps of “deleted” writing so you can go back to it if you want to

Break it down so it’s not so overwhelming for you. Today I’ll take a bunch of notes on a bunch of things I think are relevant. Tomorrow I’ll make a bit of an outline now that I have a better understanding of everything going on, and start organizing some of my info in there. The next day I’ll go back to researching to fill in some of the blanks I have. The day after I’ll probably have a good enough understanding to know what the main point of my essay should be, and we can start organizing the info. The day after we can start writing the different sections, bit by bit - out of order, even, if that works. Whatever is sparking inspiration. The day after we write as much as we possibly can from the info we have. And then we read and edit, and maybe send it to someone to read over because I cannot possibly look at this info any longer and what is an academic essay if it’s not peer-reviewed am I right fellas :’>

That’s kind of how I go about academic writing. That said, though, honestly? fanfic is my break from academic writing. Y’all can probably tell when I have big thesis months because my writing gets really flowery and exaggerated and metaphorical because that doesn’t work in academic writing, so I have to hold it all back :P And then it all sort of explodes out of me. But in my mind they’re sort of separate, even though there are some similarities to doing both.

Also, I just want to say, I’ve worked with a bunch of students as a teaching assistant for so many years now - and they’ve all been brilliant. They’ve all had really great ideas, and they’ve all been so, so full of doubts. None of them have realized how good their ideas are. So my best piece of advice would be that your ideas about what to write about? They’re good. They’re really good. Follow them. The rest of your writing will just be finding the best way to express them properly, and a lot of that comes with experience, too. The more you write, the easier it will become, both for creative & academic writing. 

Is this helpful? Did I answer your question okay? This is a bit varied and wide but I hope there’s something in there that’s helpful to you. You can always shoot me a message if you need any help with anything :> I believe in you anon!!!

[bookshelfdreams]

Ahhhh, your self bound books just look really beautiful? All the color choices and the layout just look soooo good together. And that's such a beautiful gift? I have not read primium non nocere, as I haven't watched Charité but if it is worthy of such a tribute I am definitely giving it a shot anyway. I'd also be really interested of your creative process and choices with the binding, if you're willing to talk about that

hi omg! thank you so much <3<3 Primum Non Nocere is a very good story, and I'd say even if you haven't seen the show, give it a shot anyway, if you're interested? I mean, by all means, try the show as well, season 2 is on Netflix w english subs afaik and it's also really, really good (not perfect, but leagues better than the stuff this country usually makes abt the nazi regime). It's a retelling of canon events from a character's perspective who isn't a focal character in the show - there's probably one or two points at which it skips canon events or may seem a little jumpy, but overall, it's more of a companion piece to canon than a classic fanfic. It's very well researched and detailed; it expands on canon in beautiful ways and honestly, fits with it seamlessly; it might as well be an official novelization (although its focuses are a little different than the og)

as for the bookbinding, I'm really flattered you're interested in my process! I'm still very much a beginner, but I'm slowly figuring out something that works for me.

Also, I don't really know what information you're looking for, so I'm just gonna share some things that come to mind. This isn't really a step-by-step how-to but if you're interested in that, I can try to take some pictures next time I make a book and make a better reference post.

Typesetting

I typeset in OpenOffice because that's my office suite of choice & I'm old; I have never used google docs and I don't plan on starting. I download the fic in html, and then just copy/paste the text chapter by chapter; that's easiest for me. As for fonts, I wanted it to look vintage but I definitely didn't want it to have Nazi aesthetics. I went with Baskerville for the main text (which is such a beautiful font, it might become my go-to) (Garamond is what is most commonly used in books I think, but it almost looks too professional for me. I love that Baskerville has this very distinct, vintage feel to it.) and an Art Deco font for the title and chapter headings. Overall I think it looks more 1920's which, considering that the Nazis really hated the Weimar republic, seems fitting. I'm happy with how it turned out and I hope the author is, too :) As for the rest, it's set in 16pt, 120% line spacing and the margins could be a little larger, tbh, but it works and I'm a little stingy with the paper XD

OpenOffice also lets you draw simple graphics directly onto the document which is what I did for the title page and the little ornaments at the beginning of the chapters.

To make signatures, I use Quantum Elephant Bookbinder. It does what it's supposed to, the only thing that doesn't quite work is the flyleaf option, but I can just add that in the og pdf.

Book construction

I print on copying paper, 80gsqm. It's recycling, 55CIE which is really quite grey; I like it, because white is uncomfortable for me to look at. As for grain, I cut my sheets from A3. The grain is also wrong there, so I ended up wasting half the paper. Whatever; I think it's worth it. Having the grain in the right direction (parallel to the spine) makes it feel so much more like an actual book and not just a stack of copying paper stapled together. I honestly believe it's more important than having fancy paper.

After folding, I do not use a model and an ale for punching holes; instead I put all the signatures together in my makeshift press (2 old cutting boards and 2 bar clamps), I draw some guidelines and then I use a fine saw to cut them all at once.

I sew the signatures on tapes for stability; it makes keeping consistent tension easier. I use linen bookbinder's thread (worth it) and cotton tapes from the craft store (they do their job, and linen sewing tapes are hard to source & expensive). I do not have a sewing frame; but what I do is, I tape the tapes to the underside of my cutting mat, place the signature on top (fold aligned with the edge of the mat) and use a weight to keep it in place. It works okay.

After sewing, I round the spine with this method, which works surprisingly well. I do not trim the edges (I know myself well enough to know that it would not end well) & instead tap the short sides & spine to the table to align the signatures as perfectly as possible.

The rest is done as in pretty much any other tutorial. No backing, because I don't have equipment for that. I like to sand down the edges of the cover boards a little, so they're a bit rounded; I think it makes for nicer haptics.

Decorations

I like to make as much of the book myself as possible. There's several reasons for that; first of all, fancy handmarbled or printed paper, headbands, bookmarks etc are expensive. Second, I have a crafting addiction & what's the point of projects like this when you buy everything you could make yourself, right? But thirdly (most importantly) it's simply that my book blocks look pretty shitty (that's, untrimmed and uneven). But that's okay; you gotta embrace the "amateurishly handmade" look & just have to amateurishly handmake everything. Adding just one or two perfect, machine-produced details looks kinda jarring.

Paper decoration - mix water soluble paint and wallpaper paste and go wild (videos are in German, sorry, idk if this is a thing that's really done in the anglophone world? But I think they're pretty easy to follow even if you don't understand the instructions). I like to use this for covers, mainly, I'm also experimenting with decorating endpapers this way. The paste makes the paper really rough and horrible to the touch; as the very last step, I wax the cover (with a beeswax-based furniture polish. Floor wax works as well, it just doesn't smell very nice). Be careful not to get any on the bookcloth, it will cause stains & ruin everything at the last second.

Headbands - I found this tutorial very helpful.

Bookmarks - this gave me so much trouble. Most amateur bookbinders seem to use cotton, polyester or satin ribbons, which is fine, I guess. I don't particularly like either option. At first I thought I could weave my own; that didn't work out, because weaving tiny bands is harder than it looks (& also the resulting ribbon was much too stiff). But! Bookmarks in professionally made books aren't woven at all; they're braided. Seven-stranded braids work pretty well (tutorial is for 5 strands, but 7 strands work the same). As for the headbands, embroidery floss is best imho (silk would, of course, be traditional but come on). Mercerised cotton crochet thread works as well but isn't quite as nice.

this turned out way too long lol. Sorry. Hopefully the answer you were looking for is in there somewhere. Again, thank you and have a lovely evening!

[kanene-yaaay-o-retorno]

Just like any other night

Kanene’s Notes: Sugar! /0/

Spice! \0\

And everything nice! \0/  

To create the perfect fluff

But Kanene accidentally (unless...)

Added an extra ingredients to the concoction--

Angst!!

*Explosion*

*Evil crackling*

Warnings, fun facts, random things and stuff:

* This characters don’t belongs to me! Good Omens belongs to the incredible Neil Gaiman and  Terry Pratchett; Aaaand the characters of this fic (and AU) themselves belongs to @10yrsyart

* Read here to know the AU Ducks and Dolphins and click here to see everything cannon about the D+D. It’s  f a n t a s t i c! Reaaad!  ^w^)s2

* I didn’t really asked a permission by myself, but this post kind of give permission to write about the AU? (I really hope so xDDD), so, if you also want to write about them please don’t be ashamed ! (And give credits, pleaaaase! :D)

* Something around 1.200 words. -w-)b.

* Sorry for any spelling, pontuation and grammar mistakes! Any and every advice is very very welcome! \(-w-)/

* This is not cannon. This idea just came because everytime I thought in a fluff, plots of Az cheering up Crow were all that appeared, soooo I tried to challenge me a little and make the opposite. I hope I managed to demonstrate even a little bit of their personality (and don’t have misunderstanding them) well!

* Fanfic em português brasileiro daqui á pouco Thankys for reading, my lollipops! I hope you enjoy this day! Hug a demon, hug an angel and don’t forget to drink water!! Byeioo!~

                                     [~*~]

Aziraphale is calm, stoic, precise, bold, moralistic, firm, direct and ruthless if necessary. He is also sincere, generous, comprehensive, limpid and kind. He is as a pillar, a base. Something concrete, someone who you can lean on for support, trust, belief.

He knows very well how separate his work from his personal life. His feelings from his mind. He is rational, leaded primary by his brain and not-

And n-not-

(Come on. Control your breath. Control yourself. One… two…three…)

In any way, under absolutely no circumstances by his feeli-

(Focus. Focus on something, something, some- a book! Take one of the books. Right. Very well. Focus!)

…

Damn.

His breath came out a little weaker, shaking. He tightened his grip in the fabric of his pants, closing his blue eyes and trying to focus on his own heartbeat, which seemed to reverberate in his dry throat,  attempting to correct his breathing with its.

Inhaled and exhaled. Inhaled and exhaled. Rested his head against the couch, sinking a little deeper into it. Some part of himself was thankful that it was already night, which meant the bookstore were closed and there was no danger of an incident.

There was no danger.

He settled back a little more on the furniture, held the book again, with a little firmer grip than needed as he readjusted it to a more comfortable position where there would be no danger in his thick, warm tears researching its pages, eventually falling and blurring the words of its lovely sentences.

At least it was night, a night just like any other night bathered in a weather of every other nights where there would be no incidents.

“Angel…?”

… Damn.

Crow approached closer to the upright, perfect posed form, seeking his eyes and staring deeply into them, their gold glittering in the night pitch. Az didn’t tried to hide these vulnerable moments, at least not anymore, but neither did he showed them when they became present. His voice came out a little faltering, yet in the calm and characteristic tune he always had.

“Crow, dear, I thought you were already sleeping.”

“I just woke up for a cup of tea.”

They both knew this was a lie, still none of them really mentioned such information when the one with dark hair as the ebony of the night, a night just as any other one, removed the book of his carefully manicured hands and held them for a moment, intertwining their fingers as he got closer enough to finally entwining him in a hug. He loosened the hold for a brief second, only to position the angel’s head on his shoulder, and then tightly hug him again. It was as he was trying to  show that nothing, on Earth, Hell or Heaven, would be able to hurt the angel without going over him, first.

It might seemed as any other previous hug, if it wasn’t for the fabric of his pajamas getting gradually wetter and the slight shivers and sniffles that slipped from the mouth of the one with blonde, almost white, hair. His cry was silently, and for a light of moment, Crow remembered his own cry, which could be described as any other, just a bit louder and with rumpled clothes.

He shook lightly his head, focusing in the present, in the possibilities, the sentences and words that would be said after the storm. His mind felt lethargic and yet running in full speed almost at the same time. Crow combed Az’s hair and gave small, but big in meaning, pecks in his neck without even noticing.

The time itself lost meaning in this piece of time.

A hand tapped softly his back and his head slightly lifted. It was the signal to break the touch, and it was promptly obeyed.

“Do you want to talk about this?” His voice was a special whisper, packed, designated and delivered to just only one being in the entire universe.

“There is nothing to be said.” Even with everything, his voice still lacked major flaws or slips. It was made of a calm, sad nature. “It is just…” And the owner of hundreds of books, reader for thousands years and maestro of words ended up losing himself in them.

‘It’s just…’  Crow wondered if even the humans, at some point of their existence, could understand all the feelings and sensations between the lines that this phrase could possess.

Probably.

Everyone does, in some way or another, doesn’t it?

The black-haired never paid much attention to time, especially after such thing already fulfilled its basic function of lead him as far as possible from that particular century. However, this day, he almost could see the sand of hourglass pouring grain-by-grain as he let the angel running his fingers through his hair, pressing his back on the blonde’s sweater and stroking the back of the other’s hand with his thumb. His warmth and presence were the necessary reminders that Az needed to focus on the here, in the Bookstore rocked by this ordinary night, and now, with the best company he could ever wish to be.

A piece more of time was spent. Maybe two, three, and perhaps a little more.

…

“We should go out.”

“What are you rambling about, Crow love? We always go out.”

“No. I mean… for something different! Not just a lunch.”

“A day to just wander, you mean?”

“Maybe.” Shrugged, pondering, his tongue absently wriggling in the ar. Az tightened a bit more the touch, feeling lighter as allowed his mind travel and dance between some possibilities for the future meaning of this conversation. “We should make a picnic!”

“A picnic?’

“Yes! In any place, nearby or far away! We could take the food or milacre it there. I can give you a ride.”

His head turned, his heart floating and expanding when he saw that the trail of tears had faded from his husband’s face, and now the red was also beginning to gradually leave his skin.

Az pondered for a few minutes, eyes gleamming.

“I don’t think I’ve ever married at a picnic before.” Smiled, and part of his soul melted with the beauty in the other’s happy expression, along with the smile that also was painted in the demon’s face, he was absolutely sure.

“Let me tempt you, then.” Crow hissed, carrying on their internal joke, since they, after their last wedding-lunch, decided that from now on there would be no more dates, only weddings.

Az raised an eyebrow, giving him a playful disbelief look. Their foreheads met. The angel closed his eyes and took a deep breath, feeling a light, which came neither from the stars, cars, poles and nor the living room lamp, little by little filling his being.

“I love you, Aziraphale.” Their eyes met.

“I love you too, my husband.”

Perhaps they had spent some time like this, in silence, enjoying themselves. Perhaps they had slowly moved away right after the talk, holding hands, a warm feeling in their chest. Who really knows? It is a moment only for them, so let it be.

“The preparations should be started, then!” The one with blue limpid eyes, now up, excitedly leaded to the kitchen. “Milacre a massive amount of food certainly would alert your side just as mine, so, I believe the best option we got is cook by our own.”

Crow scowled, which evolved to as annoyed expression as received the lightly incisive and inquisitive look from the other, puffing up his cheeks and deviating the glare as he dispirited followed his steps into the other room.

“Fffffffine.” Gave up of the dream to sleep that night. However, deep inside, he knew worth it just to watch the blonde-haired angel calmly, excited walking his eyes and fingers through the Recipe Books were under his care. Urg. The sacrifices that must be made. “But I’m not using a patterned apron!”

And the cars drove through the streets, the stars hardly glowed in the sky and the worlds kept not an even bit silent during that sunless hours, just as any other night of any other day. Nevertheless, on that store, more specifically a Bookstore, at that moment and for those two, maybe this wasn’t a common night anymore, and would definitely lead to a day not even a little ordinary, either.

A recipe book was open, some bright smiles (maybe trying to help the stars?) too.

“Sure, my dear. I would never…” replied Az, trying to decide which color would most highlight Crow’s duck patterned pajamas.