#anyways would it be silly of me to start posting my fanfics on fanfiction dot net or what lolll

[redysetdare]

Fanfiction dot net my beloved

[tobi-smp]

I’ve been avoiding addressing this for some time now because I knew if I ever did it would be a deeply emotionally taxing conversation. however I’ve continued to receive increasingly angry anons about it despite never speaking on it, so if it’s going to find me anyways I may as well address it in full on my own terms.

I’m putting this under a cut because it’s going to be discussing intense subject matter, both real and fictional, specifically in addressing the role dark fiction can have in someone’s life and why someone might be drawn to it (someone else might call it a conversation on the “anti” and “anti-anti/proship” argument, though I don’t enjoy using those terms personally). so don’t feel pressured to read or engage with this post going forward.

that said, I encourage looking through this whole thing (assuming you can stomach it) if you’ve ever messaged me about metaru before.

this will not be short, but I ask that anyone who chooses to engage with this after this point read the entire thing. I don’t want to be misunderstood and I’m not looking for any arguments in the first place. this is not me opening myself up to debate. Tw for discussions on csa, abuse, harassment, and of course dark fiction in general.

my first Real interactions with the internet was with naruto forums dot com. up until that point a computer was just the box that I used to play the “my gym partner’s a monkey” flash game in the living room, but I’d learned about forums in school and it was the literal first thing that came up when I’d decided to look up something familiar out of curiosity.

this was formative for me because this was the first time that I learned that you could find pictures of boys kissing online, and naturally I was hooked.

even better, it wasn’t long before I’d realized that all of this fanart was coming from somewhere. which brought me to deviantart and eventually led me to finding fanfiction (whole Stories where boys fell in love with each other, can you even imagine).

I was drawn to a subculture of the fandom that, in hindsight, was kind of silly. it was early enough in akatsuki’s introduction to the story that people treated them not unlike the “avengers all live in the same tower and hang out with each other” trend of the early 2010s. tobi was just tobi, it was simpler times.

I read fanfic of them all being friends, of them forming families, of them living their day to day together, the less grounded in canon the better.

one day I found one au fic in particular. they were all kids who were living together under one roof. foster children trapped in an abusive household that escaped together and had to learn how to grow and move on while staying a family. several of the kids had been sexually abused by their adoptive father, leading to them finally leaving in the first place. this fact wasn’t explicit but it was one of the first times I’d seen something like this in media and Understood what was happening. this was also a formative experience for me.

deviantart and forums and even fanfic dot net to an extent didn’t have the sorting and tagging systems that ao3 does now, you never really knew what you were going to find when you clicked on something. it was by pure chance that I found that fic just like it was pure chance that I’d find anything. I read it and I read it again, but it would be a while before I’d actively seek out content like that.

now why would I do that? what was I so drawn to about this story?

when I was a child I was diagnosed with ptsd, though it’d be later in life when I’d realize that c-ptsd was more accurate. obviously there was no way for me to process this, I wasn’t old enough for the birds and the bees talk (I was barely old enough to understand that I was a little person at all). and my brain agreed with me on that one, to this day my long term memory is fucked (and my rote memorization in general for that matter). I don’t remember kindergarten, I have a few scant flashes from elementary, I start getting more of a grasp of who I was as a person in middle school albeit with practically none of the details for what day to day life was like, and I have a bit of a firmer grasp on high school but no real concept of When specific things happened to me or where. and that’s followed me now into my adult life.

so what you’re left with is a situation where a child grows up with the Marks of something horrific that happened to them, the c-ptsd and the depression and the anxiety, but no real way to understand it at a point where it wouldn’t particularly be an appropriate conversation to have with them.

I was vaguely aware that it was a thing that had happened to me in the way that kids are aware that the economy is a thing that adults care an awful lot about. how do you empathize with yourself when you don’t have any of the details? when you can’t picture what it’d be like to experience these things and the effect it has on a person? when you can’t understand Why you feel the way that you do or even What it is you feel?

what’s more, what do you do when you can’t mourn for yourself? when you can’t be angry at a person that doesn’t have a name or a face? how do you reconcile a loss that isn’t yours but that has a deep impact on you anyways? it was like I was stepping into a life that wasn’t mine but still had to live with the consequences of it.

for a good while there I fully refused to believe that I could have anxiety and depression, which is silly to me now but was a fairly common reaction for children that grow up with trauma and mental illness. it wouldn’t be until high school that I’d start getting a real grasp on mental health and start making strides to understand it. but I still existed in the meantime.

I was drawn to dark fiction for the catharsis. for having the ability to feel the horror and the fear and the anger in a tangible way that was still Safe. and what I treasured the most was recovery fics, stories where the characters got to be okay in the end. I couldn’t remember what I’d felt, what I’d experienced, but this was a full narrative exploring what it was like to experience these things in depth, and for the first time I started to understand. I could empathize with them when I couldn’t empathize with myself, and that meant everything at the time.

I won’t pretend that this fixed my mental health, it didn’t. but this was a foundation to a relatively healthy outlet for difficult emotions that I could not have dealt with on my own. it was also the tentative start to what’d eventually Become my journey with tackling my mental health in a truly substantial way.

this is something that people are usually Vaguely aware of, even in spaces where dark fiction is a zero tolerance policy. what this will often translate to is an asterisk where people are allowed to engage with the Bad Thing if they have a permit to get away with it. but this isn’t viable for a couple reasons.

firstly, and most obviously, that requires people to out themselves about extremely personal and painful experiences, sometimes when they aren’t ready to talk about it at all let alone on a public platform. and if the person asking for proof wants to they can simply choose to ignore or not believe them, which can be a horribly upsetting and even traumatizing experience for someone all on its own. putting already vulnerable people into an even more vulnerable position at the threat of punishment is not, in my opinion, good activism.

and second being that that’s just not how catharsis works.

catharsis isn’t just seeing your own experiences shown back to you, though that can certainly provide some absolutely moving relationships with a work of fiction when it does work out that way. catharsis is experiencing extreme emotions in a controlled and safe environment. when you listen to sad music when you’re upset until you can have a good cry that’s catharsis. when you watch a horror movie to feel the shock and fear, your pulse racing, that’s catharsis. when the greeks first watched oedipus gouge his eyes out with pins upon learning that he’d unknowningly wed and had children with his own mother that was the Invention of the modern definition of catharsis.

people consume dark fiction to experience dark emotions in a relatively low stakes environment. to ask that people prove that they’re Allowed to view one negative experience by proving that they have a direct connection to the experiences being shown is to misunderstand Why people feel the way that they do when they interact with dark fiction.

and moreover, reading about and feeling compassion for experiences that you don’t have can help you understand the people who have experienced those things.

c!tommy and dream’s story is an Incredible work of dark fiction that covers themes of abuse, mental illness, ptsd, and more. and while I feel catharsis from that story because of my own experiences with mental health, my life doesn’t exactly mirror c!tommy’s. nor would I get upset with someone for seeing themselves in c!tommy because of their depression rather than ptsd.

okay, does this mean that I’m an anti-anti or a proshipper or think all dark fiction should be allowed everywhere all the time? no, not really.

firstly, in my opinion those terms are essentially useless on the large scale. shorthand like that is useful in small tight-knit communities where everyone knows exactly what everyone else means when they use that shorthand, but that becomes impossible once it spreads to a certain point. 

there are people who don’t know that “anti” is used in fandom spaces to describe someone who unnecessarily bashes something (a person, ship, character, show, etc), and there are people who don’t know that some people’s only experiences with those labels are people who stand against actual pedophiles and groomers. these two people using the same term without elaborating can (and in my experience Will) have the most draining and unproductive argument known to man.

there are perfectly normal people who exist under both labels, who even believe the same things for the same reasons, who’ve been lead to hate each other because they chose the “wrong” labels just because of the communities they happened to grow up in. moreover, the bad actors in those communities are incentivized to encourage this black and white us vs them mentality. both so they can encourage harassment for the sake of it and so they can use the other group as a scapegoat to mask their own behavior.

I understand why people are drawn to one label vs the other based on their own lived experiences. but the healthier relationship with it, I think, is to ditch the terminology altogether and simply call out the behavior that you find harmful in full. when talking about subject matter like this you Need nuance, you Need specifics, you Need a healthy middle ground along with an awareness of the extremes. otherwise it only serves as a tool for confusion and harassment.

secondly: dark fiction, like most things, is not black and white. not all relationships to dark fiction is healthy, not all dark fiction should be platformed, communities for dark fiction can be invaded and co-opted by bad people, and the availability of dark fiction in certain spaces can be a real problem.

like I said, I first stumbled into dark fiction back during the wild west. when warnings weren’t common or comprehensive and sorting was pitiful if it existed at all. I had access to content that I really shouldn’t have at my age.

I was lucky that I mostly kept to myself online until high school and I was lucky that I never really had any major adverse experiences with fiction when I was a kid, but that’s not the experience that everyone has.

ao3 is generally much better in this regard, with its heavy emphasis on tags, trigger warnings, and proper sorting. but even then there are things that show up where it shouldn’t through user error, and I’m not sure how well I would’ve intuited these things as a kid. 

even as an adult who has a good grasp on my own boundaries and healthy understanding of my relationship with fiction and its utility as a coping mechanism, I can’t always know what I’m getting into until I’m already there. I don’t get triggered very often but when I do it’s not a very good scene. and when you Aren’t in a good place, when you Don’t have as strong of a grasp on what you’re doing or why, it can very quickly turn into a tool for self harm by repeatedly seeking out content that steps over your own boundaries because it makes you feel something.

I can’t say that I have the answer to these things, or rather I’d say that there are a couple of things that we as individuals can do to try to make the specific spaces that we inhabit safer (tagging things appropriately, doing what we can to make sure nsfw content has to be Sought Out rather than stumbled upon, etc), but largely there is no one good answer for how to make sure that nobody ever gets hurt. these situations are extremely specific, personalized, and often contradictory and at the end of the day there’s no choice we can make that will erase people with bad intentions. it’s not a black and white issue and it’s not one with an easy answer.

and I do want to say that the gut reaction is typically that something that makes you uncomfortable has gone too far and doesn’t deserve to exist. and like, that’s a very human reaction especially if something has deeply upset you through your exposure to it, but it’s still a feeling that should be examined. we all have different boundaries and we all have our own threshold for catharsis. what’s cathartic to me could be triggering to someone else, and what isn’t outright triggering to me could still not be cathartic. to that same end, it’s Okay to not like dark fiction, just like it’s Okay to not like roller coasters. but just because You don’t have a certain relationship with a work doesn’t mean that the creator doesn’t or that other people consuming it don’t or can’t. that doesn’t mean that these things can’t be criticized, Especially published media with actual studios behind it, but it should be criticized for How it handles its darker elements not the fact that it has them.

none of this, of course, is touching on actual csa or the depictions of real people. this fandom in particular is plenty familiar with the problem of people overtly breaking cc’s boundaries either with the depictions of nsfw or shipping with their characters when that isn’t appropriate (when it’s against stated boundaries or when the characters are minors), or by explicitly depicting the cc’s themselves. this is made especially unfortunate by how often these things will show up in tags not intended for them. this content should not exist, it should not be distributed, and it should not be hosted. obviously.

now, why have I had this conversation about my relationship with dark fiction, laying out a nuanced relationship with the concept and with the anti/pro-ship/anti-anti discussion?

over the past couple of months I’ve seen a couple of accusations about proudfreakmetarusonniku being a proshipper, warning people that they need to be excommunicated from the fandom. asking why they’ve been “allowed” to have a space in this fandom At All when they’re Obviously a degenerate and need to be deplatformed.

this confused me, because in the months that I’ve followed them I’ve watched them Directly call out pedophilia, boundary breaking, and Rape within fan content in this fandom when no one else has been starting that conversation. (people writing nsfw for characters when they shouldn’t, for people who’ve explicitly stated they don’t want that and for the Minors. even worse being the same thing but with genuine rpf, writing out explicit pedophilia about Actual People.) I’ve watched them describe how running into that content on ao3 (something that I’ve experienced as well, because of a Persistent Issue of people misusing or not understanding tags) made them feel Physically Ill, how that content shouldn’t exist on the platform at all but that it Definitely Should Not Be Publicly Available to anyone just trying to find dsmp content.

I saw them directly calling out people who broke boundaries when that could’ve easily painted a target on their back. I saw them calling out poppytwt, but also showing compassion and Concern for the minors being groomed in those spaces.

on the surface level what I could see was that this was an 18 year old who Actively took a stance against boundary breaking and pedophilia, putting themselves in the hot seat when they didn’t have to, who just happened to use the “Wrong Label” for some people and got targeted as being a creep for it. as a csa survivor their stance on actual child porn and pedophilia mattered to me much more than whether they read dark fiction or not, so I left it alone.

or I Tried to leave it alone.

since then I’ve been sent anons repeatedly trying to “warn” me about following and interacting with them that have grown increasingly hostile and accusatory. I’ve also noticed several mutuals between us who’ve made their own statements about how they don’t mind dark fiction or proshipping, and while I haven’t asked I have to assume that I’m not the only one being sent anons.

the issue has Evolved into anyone (or perhaps anyone Prominent but it’s hard to know with anons) who happens to interact with them being spammed to Stop. and while there hasn’t been the Overt threat of that same harassment being turned towards me for not complying in my inbox yet, I can’t be alone in thinking that that threat is obviously there.

so I did more research.

what I found was a story not dissimilar to my own.

I followed those same posts calling them out to the content I was being warned of, and what I found was a Minor speaking on how they used dark fiction to cope with their trauma. I saw a history of a Minor facing harassment for finding comfort in that fiction, deciding to use the Oh So Horrible label that was being stapled onto them with Pride because it didn’t actually matter what they did. they were going to have that label and more forced onto them anyways. I saw that minor grow into someone whose now only Barely an adult, facing a harassment campaign despite Openly standing against pedophilia and boundary breaking and having openly stated that their relationship with dark fiction stems from trauma.

and I have to ask, am I supposed to feel comforted by this? as a csa survivor, is this supposed to make me feel safe? because it doesn’t.

what’s the difference between me and them? that I was quiet about it? I just happened to grow up in a slightly different era, before people were encouraged to wear everything about them on their sleeve. I often wonder what I’d be like if I’d grown up on tumblr instead of forums and deviantart. I wonder what I would’ve experienced if I had people watching over my shoulder to decide if I’m consuming the good pure content in the good pure way or not. I wonder what would’ve happened to me if I’d been confronted about these things before I was ready to talk about my trauma. before I was Able to stand up for myself.

and I have to ask again, am I supposed to feel comforted by this?

am I supposed to be Comforted by the fact that people are targeting survivors for harassment and ostracization? people who were minors just months ago? am I supposed to be Comforted by this growing trend of using accusations of immorality to target people who haven’t done anything Wrong because once you can prove that your victim Deserves It people stop seeing them as victims? am I supposed to be Comforted by the fact that I could be next for what I’ve shared in this post?

I’ve seen this song and dance play out a million times over, and I’m not playing along. I’m not going to listen to an anonymous person waltzing up into my inbox and telling me that they saw goody proctor at the devil’s sacrament, and I’m certainly not going to fold when those anons get angry at being ignored.

so no, I’m not going to answer your ask, I’m not going to ostracize someone who hasn’t done anything wrong, I’m not going to participate in a harassment campaign, and I’m not going to be used as a tool to blindly spread accusations of immorality at the barest indication from a stranger in the first place.

and to be clear about something here: I have not asked metaru about their trauma, and no one else is allowed to. they didn’t have to share as much as they already have in the first place and no one is Owed the detail that I’ve just given. I’ve shared what I have because this is something that I’ve felt strongly about for a while now. because this is something that has weighed on me that I’ve never had the time or the place or the motivation to share. because I know that there are people in my position or metaru’s position that will never get to stand up for themselves. but not one god damn person is Owed information about anyone’s trauma. do not ask them.

I don’t know if I ever intend to address this again, addressing this as much as I have already has been emotionally taxing enough as is. but I’m not going to engage with the people directly responsible, nor am I interested in “calling them out.” I’m making my stance on the situation clear and I want other people to understand why I feel this way.

[drsteggy]

For the fanfic writer ask thing: 2, 13, 27, 34! Happy Friday!

Happy Friday @st0rmyskies ! Thank you for the asks!!

2. Why do you write fanfiction?

I have a pretty high stress and occasionally emotionally charged job that was spiking into my red zones prior to March 2020 when the screws got tightened, and my job got busier, and everyone got more stressed and all the escape things I did had to stop. I could not go to cons and dressing in cosplay at home feels weird to me. There were no model horse shows, and while the hobby has adapted to photo shows, I have only been able to participate as a judge and again, the social aspect is gone. I could not see my friends and work really became my entire world. I have always told myself that could never happen.

So I threw myself into a thing I’d written just to dump an idea that then became 9,000 words and pantsed it into 88,000 words and wow it was a ride at times but it did get me through some shit when I was angry and sad all at once, and there wasn’t a way to physically burn the crap via competition. I like that the particular sandbox I’m in is very flexible with canon (or not) and seems to welcome remixing and retooling.

I thought I’d be one and done but I managed to make friends as I wrote and it was fun bouncing silly ideas off each other, and experimenting with things to just play with them and I find that I really enjoy this new way to play. I don’t know if I have another novel length thing in me but I do have a couple irons in the fire and I did my first fic exchange and I’ve applied to a couple zines (I’m hoping to hear from the first of these today squeeee!) so I hope that going forward, once the world allows me to cosplay at cons, and pack up a carload of plastic horses and drive 12 hours to meet up with other people with carloads of plastic horses again, I’ll still play with it.

13. First fandom you ever wrote for?

The X Files! The show started the same year I started grad school and I was hooked immediately. I also got online the same year. One day, a fellow fan/classmate told me about a Usenet group where people wrote stories about the X Files and Star Trek!!!! It took several years, but I did write one story and I remember getting it beta read and I don’t think it ever got posted because I also thought it never was finished and then lost as I moved computers.

Then like 3 weeks ago I was digging through my hard drive for something and I found it! And it was done! So I posted it on New Year’s Day, and I am so freaking happy I have it back. Hooray for digital hoarding.

27. What’s the nicest comment you ever received?

It’s hard to pick just one, because I've had a lot that touched me, but this stands out to me. I joined a small discord server that focused on my fandom and posted a link to my then in progress longfic. I wanted people to read it but I was getting frustrated that no one seemed interested-I do a relatively small fandom and everyone wanted to read Marvel and Harry Potter.

I woke up in the morning and someone on the discord said something like “oh hey I’m reading this and no regrets” and then I opened my email and this person had binged the entire thing I had at that point and commented on every chapter. I was terrified because I had been crossposting to fanfiction dot net and already had some kinda mean anonymous people who I could not interact with. These comments though were gentle and encouraging and picked out things I’d written and praised them and I went from being completely terrified to realizing I’d probably found my people.

I do like it when people tell me they thought Old!Link would be boring or weird but they tried it anyway and ended up loving it.

34. Copy and paste an excerpt you’re particularly fond of

This is the end of chapter 14 of the long fic. I like it because it’s a point where Link is starting to clumsily grapple with the trauma of his life, though it’s not going well for him. He is making decisions that don’t serve him well, and make him more upset. He is angry at his lot and starting to lash out at people who want to support and help him, and idk it was delicious to write this.

Plus I am also happy with how my version of the Arbiter’s Grounds came out because I have not played that bit of Twilight Princess yet.

“Hylia, have you tired of sending children in your stead? Are you sending an old man in your name now?”

The voice has a smokey texture to it he didn’t hear in his dreams. He swivels his head, looking for the source. He has done this before, and he knows what is next. He wrenches the sword out of the skull, and slides to the floor.

He is ready.

“Who do you think you are? Do you really think you are worthy of that tunic you wear?”

He snarls “You can decide after we dance. Let’s go.”

There’s a throaty laugh in response. Link stands his ground, relaxing his hips and knees in preparation to fight. He rolls his right wrist, giving the Master Sword a showy flip. The blade is glowing and he can feel a low thrum through his arm. He hears the faint sound of glass breaking somewhere.

“Not today, old man. Not today.”

“But soon.”

And like that, the presence is gone, and it’s just him and a giant pile of dead bone. He thinks there’s a flash of light on the corner of his vision and when he turns to it, there’s a wooden box that he is sure was not there before. Inside that; the red, heart shaped crystal and an enormous topaz. He scoops them up, pausing as the red crystal restores him. Using the hook shot once more to get out of the pit, he then heads out into the desert night; back to Gerudo.

It’s cold; and the sky is a deep, dark blue, filled with pinpoints of light. He pauses once to look up and name the constellations. The Wind Fish. Aquamentus. Creatures from stories. He catches himself wondering if she is looking up at the night sky and naming the same stars. He pushes on. None of this seems fair, suddenly.

He is back at the gates at dawn. The guards eye him, wondering how much trouble he is going to be. He feels like a toxic combination of tired and frustrated and angry. He feels like he might be trouble.

He barks at them. “Tell the queen of Hyrule her hero is at the gates for her.”

[a-bit-too-much-of-a-zelda-fan]

LinkedUniverse Fanfiction Ch. 15: Painting the Town

Stop! You’ve Violated the Law!

So, you’ve stumbled upon this original post for my Linked Universe fanfiction. That’s okay, it happens to everyone. As of March 2021, I’ve uploaded the entirety of this fanfic to my Archive of Our Own page. Along with finally giving the story a name–Oops! All Links: A Linked Universe Story–I made substantial edits to some of the chapters. These range from minor stylistic revisions to fixing a gaping plot hole that kinda completely broke the character conflict in the earlier chapters. I also renamed and renumbered (but not reordered) the chapters. Specifically, this is now Chapter 17: To Sell a Butterfly (Pendant).

The AO3 iterations of these chapters are the definitive versions. So, if you would like to read this fanfiction, please do so on AO3, right here. With this embedded link. Hehe. Geddit? Link?

Note: My screen name on AO3 is FrancisDuFresne. Yes, that is me. I am not plagiarizing myself.

Anyway, for posterity’s sake, the rest of the original post is below the cut.

It’s finally here! Wow! ... If you thought the long wait would end with a chapter the scale of “Fire,” you’ll be sorely disappointed. Sorry, folks. Still, now we finally get to see more of Selggog and the Links’ quest. When we’re talking my fan narrative, what can beat the hijinx of the Heroes of Wind and Twilight? Word Count: 1576

“So why’d you come with me, instead?” Wind asked.

Twilight looked down to his friend and shrugged. “I didn’t want to sit around waiting for Wild to find weapons he liked. Potion shopping beats that, at least.”

Wind glanced upward at passing shop signs as they walked down one of Selggog’s many busy streets. The others sent them to resupply on potions. Hyrule had finished the last of their stock following their skirmish with the Hinox. The two of them had been searching for an apothecary for the past half hour.

The elder of them sighed. “We should ask someone.”

“Where’s the fun in that, though?” Wind countered. He was jovially bouncing about on the balls of his feet with each step. “Having absolutely no idea where you’re going makes it a little adventure!”

“Aren’t we already on an adventure?”

Wind frowned. He clasped his hands behind his head and looked up. White, fluffy clouds dotted the otherwise clear sky. “Yeah, I guess,” he said somewhat dejectedly. Then, more chipper than before, “Well, it can be a side quest. How about that?”

“’Side quest?’ Kind of a silly name for it.”

“Yeah? Well… I like it.”

Twilight let out a bark of laughter. “Maybe it’ll stick.”

Some passersby knocked shoulders with the Links as the streets became busier. “Ack!” Wind grunted. “You know,” he called out to someone ahead who had rammed into him, “wouldn’t kill you to say sorry!”

“Shhh,” Twilight hushed sharply. “We don’t want—“ he was cut off by someone bashing his shoulder—"unneeded attention.”

Wind rubbed his shoulder and looked up to his friend. “You think they’re always this in a rush?”

“Dunno. I’m not used to city life.”

“Yeah,” Wind said. He thought back to Windfall Island, which he used to think of as a metropolis. “Gotta say this place is a bit bigger than I’m used to.”

Twilight patted his pockets. Satisfied everything was where it should be, he glanced at his partner. “Just make sure no one filches anything. You have your wallet, right?”

With a pffft, Wind checked his own pockets over. “Of course I d—”

A pause. “Wind?” Twilight asked. He stopped walking.

The youngest hero looked up at his friend with a sheepish smile. He raised his arms in a guilty sort of half-shrug. “Wind,” Twilight said slowly, “Don’t tell me you—”

“Yep.”

“By Ordona…” he cursed, smacking his forehead. He thought that over. Why did I just hurt myself? I didn’t do anything wrong. He promptly smacked Wind on the back of the head.

“Ow! What the heck?”

“What did we tell you?!”

“To watch out for pickpockets…” Wind admitted with his head hung, kicking at a pebble on the road.

“And did you?!”

Wind looked up.  His wide eyes seemed to burn with anger Twilight had never seen. “No, Twi!” he shouted back. “I didn’t! So can you stop yelling at me and making me feel like crap so we can go find it?!”

Twilight was about to fire back, then paused. For all Wind had been through, he was still just a kid. He sighed and looked around. Some people had stopped and were staring at them. “Well?” he called out to them.

They shrugged and went back to bustling down the street on their errands. When Twilight turned back to his friend, he found him breathing deeply with his eyes closed. “Hey,” he began, “I didn’t mean t—”

“Stop,” Wind interrupted. He opened his eyes and met Twilight’s gaze. “Just because I’m cheery most of the time,” he whispered. Twilight could barely hear him. “That doesn’t mean I don’t have feelings like everybody else.”

“I—”

“Just remember that.”

Twilight had never seen the youngest Link upset enough to yell. He really had struck a nerve. “Okay,” he said. “I will.”

Wind’s expression softened. “Thank you. Now let’s find my wallet. What’re we gonna do?”

“I would suggest we ask Sky to borrow the Master Sword for its dowsing ability.” He considered this. “But even if it was willing to help, there are so many wallets in this town that it probably couldn’t pick yours out of the crowd.”

A thought struck Wind. “What about your wolf sense?”

Twilight looked around. The streets were packed with people going about their business. He remembered how the residents of Castle Town reacted to seeing his beastly form. “No. I don’t want to scare all these people.”

“Fair,” Wind replied. “But what else can we do?”

“Uh…” he muttered, wracking his brains. “I… I don’t know.”

Wind’s jolted to attention as if shocked by a yellow ChuChu. The sudden movement made his partner flinch. “What if I just earn back all the money that was stolen?” Wind suggested, thrusting his arms down, palms up, as if pointing out something totally obvious.

Twilight’s brow furrowed. “That might actually work…” he admitted pensively. “How much was in there?”

Silence. Well, at least between the two heroes. The townspeople were loud and rowdy as ever. “Um…” Wind said, clearly stalling. “Not too much.”

“Don’t dick around with me. How much?”

“About two-fifty?”

“That’s a lot of smashed pots,” Twilight joked, raising an eyebrow and crossing his arms. “How do you plan on earning that much?”

The young seafarer dug in his pouch and pulled out a necklace. “I’ve got some treasures I can sell. How many people here would buy a chintzy necklace with a butterfly pendant?”

“With this many people, hopefully at least a couple.”

“How much should we charge?”

“How many do you have?”

“Seven.”

Twilight nodded. “Anything else?”

Wind shook his head. “Some trinkets, feathers, a lot of junk.”

“Right. Well, let’s get started.”

“Hoi!” Wind called out to the crowd. “Beautiful butterfly necklaces here! Twenty-five rupees apiece!”

No one walked over to them. The crowds just kept moving by. Undeterred, Wind repeated his sales call even louder. This turned some heads, but nobody came. He tried once more. The second-floor shutters of a nearby building slammed open. A disheveled old man in a sleeping cap poked his head out. “Quit yer yapping!” he shouted down to the Links. “People are trying to sleep!”

The two heroes glanced at each other, paused a moment, then shrugged in unison. Wind hooked his thumbs on his belt and shifted his weight to one leg. “Guess that’s out the window,” he said.

Twilight let out a frustrated sigh. If he had just been more careful, we’d have potions by now, he thought bitterly. No, stay focused. We need to figure this o—

“Oh!” Wind exclaimed, again startling his friend. “Let’s find a shop that will buy some of my stuff!”

“Uh, I’m pretty sure most shops won’t buy off strangers. They’re trying to sell their junk, not buy yours. Think how fast they’d go bankrupt.”

Wind shook his head. “No no no, I mean a treasure teller! Someone who deals in treasures. There was one on one of the islands I sailed to. I’m sure there’s one around here.”

“Alright,” Twilight said, “how are we gonna find one? Search every street? That didn’t quite work for the apothecary.”

“Look for a sign with a rupee on it,” Wind replied, scanning the street for such a sign. “There’s gotta be one aro—OH! Look!”

Wind pointed out to the building directly across the street from them. Sure enough, the storefront had a multitude of rupees painted all over it. Twilight sighed in relief. “That was easier than expected.”

“I wouldn’t get too excited. We have no idea what they’ll offer for my stuff. These guys can be fickle.”

“Right.”

The two heroes crossed the street and entered the store. The walls were covered in a bizarre wallpaper filled with celestial bodies and distorted floral patterns. The shelves immediately drew their eyes. Treasures and spoils lined the perimeter of the store. Everything from golden statuettes to fine china to jewelry to precious stones rested upon the shelves. A beaded curtain hung in the doorway between the store and some back room.

While Wind marveled over the treasures, Twilight strode to the ornately-decorated counter. It was adorned with an equally beautiful silver bell. He gently tapped its button. A soft, pleasing ding rang out. No one came after a few seconds, so he rang it again, a little harder this time. He strained to hear any movement in the back room but was left wanting.

By now, Wind had refocused and walked up beside his friend. They glanced at each other. A look of confusion and mild annoyance passed between their eyes. Wind shrugged. “Hello?” he called slightly louder than the second bell ring. Nothing.

“Oh, come on,” he grumbled with a huff. He hooked his thumbs in his belt again. “Maybe no one is here?”

Twilight shook his head. “With this kind of merchandise, the door would have been locked tight.”

“So why the heck is no one coming?”

“Your guess is as good as mine.”

“Alright, here goes,” Wind said with resignation lacing his voice. He cupped his hands over his mouth. “Hoi!” he yelled. “Is anybody here?!”

Nothing. The hairs on the back of Twilight’s neck stood on end. His eyes narrowed. Honing his wolf senses had carried over somewhat to his Hylian form. Something didn’t sit right with him. “Quiet down. This doesn’t feel right.”

Just then, a drawling whisper came from directly behind the young heroes. “No need to be afraid, dearies…”