#but really at this point we are all ignoring certain things of canon having our own interpretations about the character we care

[waffultaim]

Being a firegray shipper in the warriors fandom is such a drama, you think you have problems with your rarepair or unknown ship well you really don't understand real pain, it's supposed to be simple this generic basic shipping that could have amount of content by default because they are "BFF" in canon yet still nothing no sound no much talk, they have amount of paragraphs, lines, phrases, iconic moments in the books; the "Always Firestar", "I would give my life for you", "no cat would feel the same he felt for Graystripe for four long seasons"...yet still nothing it's so goddamn funny that makes me laugh 😂 and cry 😭 at the same time!! how doomed this pair can be tell me!

[baldursgate3tempobsessed]

hello! i’m not sure if ur taking requests but maybe an astarion x bard! tav who is neutral good? ik in game he hates it when we’re nice, so i’m wondering how you think he’d handle a tav who is not only kind but also not really interested in sex

Oooh, I like this! Time to bring out the bitchy cat energy. Because he is a bitch. Lot of Act 1 in game references here btw. Sfw, but y'know, Astarion sad boy backstory is always looming. Also conveniently ignoring the canon fact that Astarion doesn't know how to swim because I can~~~

~

Astarion supposed he could have come across a worse rag-tag crew of undesirables to associate with. It was made clear, disturbingly quickly, that he wouldn't have made it out here on his own. Not with the goblins and cultists lurking around every corner. And a damn vampire hunter for gods' sake.

Astarion could have done much worse than this merry-band of weirdos. Like laying dead in a ditch for instance. That said, it didn't change the fact that he was quickly growing tired of their leader's antics.

You were just so annoying. So selfless, in one of the stupidest ways he had ever seen. For one thing, why one earth would you ever trust a gith or Shar priestess? Or a vampire spawn for that matter. How no one had stabbed you in the back yet was beyond him, considering how you gave them every opportunity to do so.

Not that Astarion would, or at least not yet. But he could. Easily, considering all the misguided trust you had put in him.

But despite your flaws, he had to admit that you were capable, that much was clear. You were strong, quick, witty, and not above deception to keep the peace. He.... liked that about you, in a way. The extent to how far you would go to save others. It was courageous, as well as incredibly stupid, but he could respect it.

Slightly.

it helped that you were a cute little thing, even with the aggravating sunshine personality. Cute enough for Astarion to start thinking of... certain options. You would be easy to manipulate, he was sure of that. Enough so where his life could become one of your top priorities. You already seemed to like him, without him turning on the charm. It would be so easy to get you wrapped around his finger, with nothing but a few shiny words and some pleasant bed-warming. Nothing that he hadn't done before. And if anything, your absurd levels of kindness could.... make everything a little more pleasant than what he was used to. Gods willing.

And tonight seemed as good a time as any, considering everyone was still on a high from being the tiefling's heroes. You were excitedly talking at him, adorable in a frankly infuriating way. Or maybe the wine was working on him more than he had anticipated, he wasn't quite sure. But... your smile seemed extra enchanting tonight.

Enough so for him to get to the point after you asked how he was feeling, "I'm just looking for a little more excitement. A little more fun."

You cocked your head at him, innocently confused as he continued, "You know, we could always make our own entertainment darling. Get a little closer, so to speak."

"Sure!" You said, jumping on the opportunity faster than even Astarion had expected, "Can we do it now?"

Astarion blinked, pleased if not a bit surprised. He's not wholly against giving the camp a show, though the children still lurking about definitely put a damper on things. But maybe if you went far enough away...

"And can I choose what we do?" You asked, a wide smile on your face.

Astarion laughed, delighted at just how easy this was going to be, "Depends on how adventurous you're planning on being."

He hadn't expected you to grab his hand, easily intertwining your fingers with a smile, "I can show you."

Astarion hadn't been prepared for the quick escalation of events, but he was happy to abide by it. He nodded his head, giving your hand a small squeeze before saying, "Then lead the way."

And lead the way you did, right to the Waypoint of the swamp. Not exactly the most romantic place to be having sex, but Astarion had done worse. That was until you conjured the dancing lights, the dreary darkness suddenly transforming what should have been a putrid bog into a dreamy landscape, filled with flowers and freshwater.

Astarion looked to you, eyes wide, "How...?"

"We purified it!" You announced with a massive grin, "We did it this morning, before the party. Halsin and the other druids came down, I amped up their magic with a fantastic song, and bam! No more stench of the hag. Isn't it pretty?"

That... sounded exactly like something you would do, sweet thing that you were. Astarion nodded as he looked around, a little touched that you brought him here at all.

But as nice as the gesture was, he wasn't here for strictly fun. He had a plan, one that you were doing a wonderful job of putting into motion. Considering how you were in the middle of pulling your shirt over your head.

You looked at him expectantly, laughing a little when he rushed to join you. But before he could get his underclothes off, you were stepping away from him and... jumping into the water?

Astarion stared as you sputtered up to the surface, wiping your face with a loud laugh, "My gods, it's cold!"

"What on earth are you doing?" He called out to you, cautiously walking towards the water, "Are you trying to freeze to death?"

"Oh, hush!" You said, waving your hand in the air with a splash, "If we can kill an entire goblin camp than we can handle some cold water. Now get in already!"

Had he mentioned that you were aggravating yet?

But he hadn't made it this far to back out now. Besides, this was far from being on the list of the worst seduction tactics that he had to endure. Though it may have been the oddest one. Astarion couldn't remember a single time that jumping into a purified water pool led to lovemaking. But there was a first for everything. Though it didn't help that the water was indeed freezing.

"For fuck's sake," Astarion cursed when he came up for air, "This is your definition of fun?"

You giggled as you swam towards him, stopping to wrap your arms around his neck with a smile. Another unexpected move from you, a factor that he hadn't expected, but found oddly endearing.

You were playing with a lock of his wet hair, twisting it between your fingers as he wrapped his arms around you, "Well the fun part hasn't started yet."

Astarion laughed softly, his eyes zeroing in on your lips, "Is it about to start now?"

"I think it is," You whispered back, "You ready for it?"

"More than you know," Astarion murmured, leaning in to finally connect your mouth.

But before he could press his lips against yours you were dodging him, giggling as you whispered in his ear, "Good. Let's race."

And then you were pulling away from him entirely, diving under the water just to show back up a few feet away, a manic grin on your face, "Whoever gets to the opposite bank first wins!"

And then you were off, swimming away. You little cheater. Astarion didn't even think as he want after you, a childish competitiveness taking over. You still won, of course you did with that large of a head start, but he managed to beat you on the second and third try.

By his fourth win you were officially pouting, which only devolved into a splashing fight from there. One that he gracefully let you win.

It was all so stupid. Completely juvenile and beneath him. But then why was he having so much fun?

Eventually, you both got out of the water, opting to sit on the bank as you talked. Just... talking. Nothing more, and about the silliest things:

"If Halsin can turn into a bear, do you think I could learn how to grow an extra finger or two? It would make the lute playing so much easier."

"If you don't mind looking like a freak than sure. Are you thinking of literally growing them or having them attached?"

"If, and just hypothetically, Lae'zel and Shadowheart fought to the death, who would win?"

"Darling in all honesty, I think it would just devolve into lesbian sex."

"If you could go anywhere in the world, right now, where would it be?"

"...I think it would be here."

It was a startlingly fun conversation, one that had Astarion being sincere in ways that made him uncomfortable. But that didn't stop him from participating. The two of you talked about anything and everything until the sky started to lighten, both of you leaning into each other as you watched the sunrise.

That was something Astarion would never tire of, how beautiful the light and sky looked at the start of the day. Part of him still couldn't believe that he was able to see it at all, after two centuries of darkness. But now here he was, sitting on a peaceful riverbank after talking the night away, almost like... like he was a person. A real person who mattered. With someone who somehow thought the same.

You sighed, your head resting on Astarion's shoulder as you watched the pink sky, "We should head back soon. Before anyone starts to worry."

Astarion nodded, his heart clenching the slightest bit when you pulled away to stand. He... didn't want this to end. Not yet. Not when he-actually now that he thought about it, he hadn't done anything in the past eight hours that he had planned. The two of you hadn't even kissed, despite the fact that you had spent the vast majority of the night wet and in your undergarments.

How in the hells did that happen?

Astarion was still trying to figure that out as you tossed his shirt and pants his way. He stood, hastily putting it on while he struggled to figure out what to say next. He was completely off his usual script, at a complete loss as you re-opened the magical waypoint.

You turned back to look at him, that same sweet smile on your face that you had been wearing the whole night, "You ready to go?"

Astarion wasn't the type to stutter, but that's where he found himself when he blurted out, "I- wait- I mean, is that it?"

You cocked your head at him with a tiny frown, one that Astarion wanted off of your face immediately, "Did you not have fun?"

"I didn't say that, but it wasn't exactly the fun that I was referring to," Astarion said as he closed the distance between you, regaining a fraction of his usual forced confidence. Why were you so good at making him feel off-kilter?

He took your hand in his, reverting back to the seduction tactics he knew as he used his other hand to tilt your chin up, "I was thinking something a little more... intimate."

"I know what you meant," You said with a little laugh, giving his hand a small squeeze, "But my way seemed just as enjoyable, don't you think?"

"Darling, that's not exactly the point I was trying to make."

"Oh, I'm aware, but it was mine," You said easily, standing on your tip toes to kiss him on the cheek, "Thank you Astarion. It was fun, and I hope we can spend more time together like that in the future."

And just like that you were pulling away again, letting go off his hand to step into the portal, the feeling of your lips against his skin still lingering as you disappeared. Despite himself, Astarion brought his fingers up to where you kissed him, standing there like an imbecile as new feelings started to course through him. Emotions that he had no names for.

Maybe... this was going to be a lot harder than he thought it would.

[xray-vex]

Thinking about this and how there are certain people claiming to be fans of OFMD who complain, rather loudly and repeatedly, there is no chemistry between Ed & Stede, and/or that their kisses had no passion, etc.

This leads me to believe that there are several possible explanations for how those people might have reached that conclusion:

1.) The people complaining have a hard time reading body language/facial expressions, so they literally can't perceive it

2.) The people complaining hate the main ship: they don't like Ed and/or Stede and/or their relationship, or the fact that their head canons for the show didn't become canon and are still upset about it, and are therefore in denial about the chemistry between Ed and Stede and refuse to see it.

3.) They are somehow from an alternate universe that has overlapped a little bit with the one most of us are in, and they literally didn't watch the same show because they watched the OFMD from their universe, not ours.

In all of the above cases, though -- the people who insist that Ed & Stede had no chemistry are just wrong. It's not really an opinion. So, based on these ideas, either:

1.) They're drawing an incorrect conclusion based on their inability to interpret body language (***and there no shame in that in & of itself, not everyone has that skill set) -- However, not being able to perceive something doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Humans can't perceive ultraviolet or infrared light naturally, either. Those things still exist even if you can't see em.

2.) They're choosing to draw their conclusions based on their dislike of/disappointment in the show, and therefore willfully ignoring the evidence presented in the text (the show itself). -- If you want to argue a point and be taken seriously though, you have to provide adequate evidence. And their various arguments just aren't convincing. (I could expand upon how it's also much more difficult to prove that something doesn't exist, but I've already written way more than I intended to for what was gonna just be a short rant).

3.) If they literally watched a different, alternate universe version of OFMD, then they're not gonna convince anyone in this universe that 1+1=3 like it does in their universe. Maybe that's correct math in their universe, but that's not how it works here.

Here's the thing -- and I'm gonna use a simple example here. You can say that you don't like cilantro. You can hate it, you can be disgusted by it, especially considering that it might taste like soap to you. And that's ok! But you don't get to make the claim that it doesn't enhance the flavor of other foods/dishes in a positive way or that many people think it's yummy.

So take this simple advice, would you? You can just say "This isn't for me" and just not eat it. You don't get to say "This is bad and I'm going to keep pushing my thoughts about it onto people who do enjoy it, even while they're eating it, because I need to convince everyone to hate it too." That's not an opinion, that's just being a fucking dick. Go join your local chapter of the Cilantro Hater's Club and complain about it there with other like-minded people, and let the rest of us enjoy our cilantro in fuckin peace. And don't be surprised if we shut the door in your face (muting/blocking) when we're sick of hearing how much you hate something we love.

[blackbird-brewster]

Meta: Jemily Queerbaiting

With the huge influx of posts saying 'Jemily is gonna be canon', I really appreciated seeing this post because OP was completely correct. I didn't want to write an entire dissertation as a reply, so I'm making my own post with my personal opinion on this. (All sources are noted in footnotes)

Before I began this rant, for anyone who thinks this is anti-Jemily. It is not. I have shipped Jemily for 18 friggin years and that's never going to change. This post is specifically my thoughts about queer baiting.

First off, I need to note that the showrunners (and the cast members who use social media) KNOW what a huge queer following this show has and that's why we got pansexual Tara Lewis in S16 [1]. Which, in itself, was SOOOOOOO important!!! Our first canonically queer main in SIXTEEN seasons was a middle-aged Black woman!!! That's phenomenal. (The fact it was horrible rep, because they instantly ruined her relationships once her queerness served it's plot point is a whole other post entirely)

In my opinion, the 'big Jemily moment' Paget posted about on Twitter [2] (and AJ hinted at during a recent IG live) is simply queerbaiting to get people to watch S17. I know a lot of you are newer to the fandom and I love your enthusiasm, I really do, ship and let ship, but listen, let's be real, Jemily is not going to be made canon. The showrunners aren't going to suddenly say (after 17 seasons) 'Surprise, Jemily is endgame'. This show has never cared about queer rep and now that CBS/Paramount have already ticked their queer rep box with Tara, they won't be in any rush to add any other characters to it.

Please buckle in, I've got a lot of thoughts on this matter --

What is Queerbaiting?

If you aren't aware of what queerbaiting is, here's a good definition:

Historically, queerbaiting has carried two meanings: the first is an act of aggressive heterosexuality to shut down queer subtext on screen while still teasing and catering to the queer audience in advertising, public relations, and fan engagement strategies; the second is an existing homoerotic tension between two characters played up on screen while met with derision by the professionals behind the scenes. [3]

The Medium article quoted here is from 2017, a time when parasocial relationships were really starting to take over social media. In 2024, actors are now only a mention or tag away online, they have direct conversations with fans, and this process has allowed for an even deeper form of queerbaiting.

Oftentimes online, actors are asked directly about certain ships and while some ignore these questions (usually to avoid breaking their contracts or other repercussions), others (looking at you, Paget) choose to instead tease fans about queer ships. She's done this for years upon years and if I've learned anything in the past twenty-years of existing in fandom spaces it's this -- don't hold your breath. In it's original meaning, for something to be deemed as queerbaiting there had to be malicious, or at least, purposeful intent to string queer fans along by teasing them with suggestive content about the ship in question, while knowing this ship will never come to fruition in canon.

The thing to remember is, Paget and AJ aren't the only ones who know about Jemily shippers -- the network and showrunners are well aware of this ship too. When networks/showrunners figure out they have a strong sapphic fanbase, they love to use that to their advantage to get more viewers and higher ratings. Queerbaiting is a goldmine to keep fans watching long running shows, look at Rizzoli and Isles, Supergirl, and OUAT for examples of this.

Jemily and Queerbaiting:

Ever since Emily joined the BAU in S2 (2006), there have always been fans who ship JJ/Emily (shoutout to the old LJ forums!). Way before celebs were just a tweet away from fans, back when all our fics began with disclaimers so we wouldn't get sued by networks, we went to great lengths to keep our fanworks far removed from actors/showrunners attention.

As far as Jemily goes, this reply from Paget in a 2009 interview with TVGuide.com [4] (which has now been deleted from their site unfortunately, but there are quotes on Tumblr still [4.a]) confirmed some fans' worst fear -- the actors had found our fanworks online.

TVGuide.com: Of course, a band of fans want her to hook up with Hotch.

Brewster: I know! I didn't realize that fans make these videos on YouTube? A.J. Cook sent me a hilarious one that made it look like Prentiss and J.J. were having a secret lesbian affair. You know, when Hotch was blown up in the SUV, we shot this scene where he's in the hospital and I'm standing next to him, looking at his bleeding ear. Our director came in and said, "Paget, you're looking at Hotch like you're in love with him. It looks really weird." So now, every day, Thomas [Gibson] and I flutter our eyelids at each other.

This was the first time I recall anyone acknowledging Jemily shippers publicly and at the time (Jan 2009), the show was still in Season Four (just before CBS fired both AJ and Paget [5]). Paget genuinely said it's 'hilarious' that fans shipped JJ/Emily. Even now, I'll see people say 'We know Paget and AJ have seen Jemily fanvids, so they obviously ship it too' -- but those same people rarely acknowledge the full context of the original answer. Paget not only thought JJ/Emily were 'hilarious', but then she doubled down and turned her reply back to how she and Thomas liked to play up the chemistry between Emily/Hotch.

While no one can say for sure which video it was that AJ sent Paget, just knowing they were watching JJ/Emily fanvids sent a bit of a shockwave through the femslash side of the fandom. To some it felt like an invasion of privacy, fanworks are by fans for fans -- knowing the cast were poking around in fandom spaces added an extra layer of worry around what we fans were posting online. Fifteen years ago, it used to be quite taboo for actors to outwardly discuss shipping or other fanon for whatever show they were in, and we fans were usually comfortably removed from the actors altogether.

Of course, now it's the norm for fans and actors/showrunners to co-exist online and interact with one another. This connection has opened new ways for shows to queerbait their fans. Pretty much every show has some form of social media account now and there is no doubt that the people running those accounts keep up with the most popular ships and hashtags. Not to mention that actors are constantly barraged with questions about whether they ship their character with x,y,z, or whether they think a ship should be made canon, etc. These interactions only serve to benefit the shows themselves, because whether the conversation is for or against a certain ship, it's all just free publicity (Why do you think CM now has a TikTok account?)

Every time AJ or Paget say anything about Jemily, the queer side of the fandom loses their minds. But this has been going on for YEARS now and every single time, it turns out to be nothing but social media hype and queerbaiting. Remember this AJ post? [6] Or what about the notorious reply by Paget to a fan, where she talks about how she and AJ held hands under the table 'for the shippers' [7] I've seen this cycle over and over again, so perhaps I am cynical, but I'm not getting my hopes up that Jemily will ever seriously be canon.

It's widely known now, after both Kirsten [8] and Paget [9] have talked about it, that there was an early idea where Prentiss was supposed to be queer, but that was ultimately scraped before it ever made it on screen. For context, please remember, this show has been airing for nearly twenty years. It began in 2005, during the highly conservative Bush administration. Queer people didn't have rights in the US, we couldn't get married, we were rarely protected under discrimination laws, and we could even be fired for simply being queer (in some states). Diverse queer representation on screen was extremely limited to things like 'The L Word' and 'Queer as Folk' (both aired on Showtime, so they were behind a paywall. And as far as tLw goes, that show was extremely male-gaze focused and is horrible in nearly all regards if you try to rewatch it now). As far as prime time shows went, queer rep was even more rare. Which is why Emily wasn't queer from the get-go.

Yes, things have changed since 2006 in terms of queer rep on TV. We have a myriad of queer identities represented in TV and film nowadays, which is why I think it's so easy for newer fans to say 'lf she was supposed to be gay anyway, they should just make Emily queer in canon!' I know this is what fuels most fans' demands for Emily being confirmed queer, and I get it, I DO. I would be all for it! However, I do not, in one hundred years, actually believe that is going to happen after they already canonically queer confirmed Tara in S16. The fact we even got ONE queer character is ground-breaking for this show.

It's also worth noting, that in the time between Paget's departure in 2012 and her return in 2016, she became very active on Twitter. This was when more and more fans began asking her about Jemily and after Kirsten's AfterEllen interview, fans also pushed for Paget to address the possibility of Emily being gay. 'Pushed' is actually an understatement for some of the outright harassment she would receive. (AJ received some of this harassment too, but less so because she doesn't use social media ass often) Back then, neither of them replied to these things directly. Yet, no matter what either woman posted, the replies were full of Jemily stans begging for her acknowledgement. (Did you know 'stan' is literally a term coined for stalker fans?) I remember one time AJ's friend was missing and she posted info on her IG about it, you know what the replies were? People asking her about Jemily. It was genuinely sickening.

Within this context, it was no surprise to fans when Emily came back in S12 , she and JJ's friendship was seemingly erased. The two women were rarely on screen together in the late seasons, plus the writers saw fit to even give Emily not only one (Mark in London, but two, on-screen boyfriends for the first time in the entire series. I personally do not think these changes to Emily's character were coincidence, I saw the hellscape of what people would say to AJ and Paget online and I fully believe that upon Paget's return to the show, the showrunners purposely tried to distance JJ and Emily to dissuade the more abusive side of the fanbase.

Can I prove that, no. But it is the only reason I can think of as to why Emily S12+ seemingly didn't care about JJ anymore, despite their deep and meaningful friendship. I mean, they both CROSSED THE WORLD to go rescue each other in prior canon -- but when Emily comes back, they acted like they barely knew each other. This was even more prevalent in S16, when JJ's main storylines all revolved around Will, and Emily barely looked at JJ in the entirety of ten episodes. (Remember how Prentiss didn't even hug JJ after bomb, but she did go hug Luke?)

So, do Paget and AJ earnestly ship Jemily, or are they continuing the long tradition of queerbaiting us? Who fucking knows, not me. But based on the history of this fandom, I think I can make a safe bet. (Interestingly, if you search all of Paget's twitter for the word 'Jemily' [10] she only has 3 direct tweets mentioning the ship. I don't think it's a coincidence that two are within the past few months since they started filming S17 (the other one was a RT of Kirsten (who tagged something Jemily)

This is all to say --

Just because Paget and AJ have publicly talked about Jemily,, this doesn't mean it's ever going to happen on screen. And you know what, THAT'S OKAY!! There has been this constant outcry (after Tara became queer confirmed) of 'Do Emily next' or 'Why wasn't it Emily with a girlfriend!?' and 'Jemily needs to be canon in S17!' -- as if people believe their ships aren't worth anything unless they are canon.

That couldn't be further from the truth! Fandom is built on headcanons and fan interpretations and rare pairs and all types of shippers. Your ship does NOT need to be canon for you to enjoy it. I will ship Jemily forever, no matter what. I don't think there will be some magical queer plot in S17, at best, we might actually get to see Emily/JJ on screen together again and after the train wreck that was S16 -- I'll take whatever I can get.

And hey -- if I am completely wrong, if Erica Messer pulls a Korrasami out of her hat, I will be ecstatic. I will be happy to be proved wrong, but at the same time, I'm not going to lose sleep over it and I'm DEFINITELY not going to go hound the actors about it on social media.

Sources:

[1] 2022 Digital Spy article about the importance of Tara's coming out

[2] 04/18/24 Paget Tweet

[3] 2017 Queerbaiting article from medium.com

[4] 2009 Broken TVGuide link

[4.a] Tumblr quote from the above TVGuide Interview

[5] 2010 Kirsten interview screenrant.com

[6] 2019 AJ Instagram Post

[7] 2020 Paget video on Twitter (via @karasluthqr)

[8] 2015 Kirsten interview AfterEllen.com

[9] 2016 Paget Interview CriminalMindsFans.com

[10] @PagetPaget search 'Jemily'

[k-s-morgan]

Hey K, have you seen the controversy around Hugh Dancy’s answers to hannigram-related questions at the Fan expo? Some fans are mad saying he’s a Hannigram denier but I’ve been in this fandom for 11 years now and honestly, reading his answers, he’s still saying the same stuff he always did though? So I’m a bit confused as to why people are angry with his answers?

He always acknowledged they loved each other, that it was a romance, but platonic. Also, I think he’s got a very British sense of humor and is sarcastic and ironic a lot and was never really into discussing hannigram as an openly gay romance, but more so because he is a literal guy in the way he communicates. Tons of Brits are like that. Especially actors, they’re not keen on doing fan service or saying what people like to hear. Mads on the other hand, loves enticing the audience and talking about Hannigram the way they want to hear.

All in all, maybe it’s bc some of these people are new to the fandom, but I literally think that this was just Hugh being Hugh and he gave mostly the same responses as he’s done in the past. It’s a mix of his sense of humor and the tone of the fan expo which is light and not necessarily a proper interview where he’d be more serious and give long answers.

Overall, what do you think?

Hi! Yes, I know a lot of people were unhappy with Hugh's responses - I'm not watching the fandom as closely as I used to, but I'm still keeping an eye on it.

I agree with you in that I heard nothing new. In my opinion, the problem lies in the reputation of 'Hannibal' fandom. We're known as a (mostly) cozy place where the biggest M/M ship is canon and actively supported by cast, writers, and the director. They all said so many wonderful things over the years, things that keep being repeated and are taken as a fandom Bible.

That's why people might still be unpleasantly surprised when they hear Hugh's reserved, distant replies, or Mads' weirdly shallow answers, or Bryan's ideas that are all over the place.

The truth is, ten years separate these people from their work. Hugh in particular hasn't even seen S3 as a complete product, at least from what I lasted heard. Besides, they all have been inconsistent even when the show was airing - Hugh has an interesting habit of saying different things depending on what kind of interview he's giving and who he's with. As an example, in the commentary to S3, he agreed with Bryan that Will was jealous of Bedelia and snapping at her because of it, but then later, he said Will disliked Bedelia for basically being a bad person, with jealousy being unrelated to it.

I'll be the first person to admit that some of Hugh's (and others') answers make no sense or contradict the show, but over the years, I got very used to it, to the point where it doesn't faze me any longer.

Hugh thinks it would take Will 7 season to fall in love with Hannibal, even though 7 seasons haven't been in the plans for over a decade (as Bryan has settled on 5 ages ago), and Will's silence to Bedelia's question and his further choices clearly meant to show he reciprocates? Ok. Hugh things Will's feelings for Hannibal are unrelated to his feelings regarding his own darkness? Fine - at least he acknowledged Will is dark because sometimes there are some denials about it. He thinks Will's decision to betray Jack and Alana and get a bunch of innocent people killed has nothing to do with his love for Hannibal? Lol, but all right.

I don't believe S4 will ever happen. Now, if it's announced, and then I keep hearing the stuff I really don't like, I might get worried, but as it is, I just save the things I agree with and ignore the rest :D The show is over, and we are all invited to come up with our own version of Will and Hannibal's future life. I'm also absolutely certain that we, passionate fans, know the show much, much better than people who were involved in it a decade ago. I mean, if I finished writing a fic 2 years ago, then a reader who just read it will probably know it better than I do at this point. It's natural.

Also, during this reunion, so many wonderful things were said, too. About Hannibal inviting Molly 'for dinner' and Will describing him as a 'therapist' to her, Hannibal urging Will to lose at least a dog or two out of the thousand when they are on the run, Will being annoyed by Hannibal's fussy kitchen habits, etc.

Basically, I don't think we heard anything new or bad. Some answers might have been frustrating, but the good still tops the bad, in my opinion - and the bad isn't all that relevant.

[seb-reads31]

As wholesome as your previous requests seem from reading, I'd love to request an angst fic for Camilla x g/n reader.

Reader feeling ignored by her due to work commitments and not much effort on her part to make up for it. The moment they mention it, it leads to a big argument with the reader leaving despite being late evening. She thinks it's just a bluff until she wakes up the following morning and they're still not back (clothes gone and phone turned off). Hopefully a slightly better/comfort ending where she can start to win back their love.

Cautions - Carmilla being a workaholic, her snapping at you, Clara, and Odette, reader and Carmilla argue, me suffering at the hands of dialog, mean Carmilla ☹️, bad Spanish (please don't cancel me 😭 I'm learning I swear)

Type - angst, eventual fluff

Genre - head canons (I'm gonna try bullet points on this cause the hyphens are starting to tick me off)

Comments - FINALLY ANGST- Like, I thoroughly love me some fluff, don't get me wrong, but I wanna know what it's like crying while writing something. So thank you 🙏🙏 (I decided to make reader and Carmilla married, I hope that's okay!) AND THANK YOU TO THAT PERSON WHO COMMENTED CARMILLA PET NAMES (let me know if I'm using them right I beg of you 😭)

You were serious..?

We all know Carmilla is a work oriented woman, and sometimes around the beginning of the month before the extermination, she gets some VERY large orders, causing her to neglect her own health sometimes to make sure everything is done precisely and without any issues

And you loved her for that, really. It inspired you to be more helpful, doing some shipments here and there, help with some paperwork, the usual

But recently, there's been a random spike of orders right after the extermination, not giving anyone a break.

And it's drowning the entire company into a work frenzy, and it feels like it's never going to end

After a couple weeks of this, it slowed down a little, not by much, but enough to have a little time to yourselves, including some time with your beautiful wife, Carmilla..

..who didn't even respond when you knocked on her office door. It's been like this for the past 2, nearly three weeks, what is going on??

The only times you two talk is when you're going to bed (if you're even awake when she does decide to get in your shared bed, or if she falls asleep at her desk for the hundredth time) or whenever you need her to sign off on certain orders here and there throughout the day

But after that.. nothing. She doesn't even message you throughout the day with random 'I love you's, 'I miss you', nothing. Just radio silence cough like Alastor cough

You messaged Odette and Clara, asking if they had spoken to her aside from work talks, and they said the exact same thing, nothing

However, they had actually tried talking to their mother, but she brushed them off, saying "I'm busy, go find something to do that isn't bothering me."

Now that really pissed you off. So, you did the sensible thing and marched over to her office, giving it a harsh knock.

"Carmilla, love? We need to talk. Now. I'm not taking no for an answer." It was short, but straight to the point. As much as you wanted to be gentle about this, you couldn't when she snapped at your sweet girls for just checking in on her

Nothing came from the other side of the door, which ticked you off more.

"Carmilla, this is serious. Open the door, we have to have a discussion about your working as of late."

Now that, got you a reaction. You heard a small thud, possibly slamming her pen down on her desk, then a rough "Come in" came from the other side

You immediately swung the door open, and slammed it behind you.

"What is up with you lately?? You haven't been talking to anyone, you refuse to take breaks, you snapped at our children for checking on you, and you don't want to talk about anything that isn't work related!"

"I don't even see you come to bed anymore BECAUSE you're so engrossed in your work. I get that it's been super busy lately, but that's no reason to-" Before you could finish your sentence Carmilla stood up and slammed her large hands against her desk

"I work this hard because I need to! I didn't ask for you to care about me, I thought I made it VERY clear that I didn't want to be bothered, but apparently you're too stubborn to see that." Her voice was cold, and her eyes were a sharp glare, much like the weapons she sold

"If you wish to continue and whine like a child then do it somewhere else, I don't need anymore distractions." Her words sunk into your heart like a blade, tears starting to prick your eyes

"C-Carmilla.. take it back." There was a waver in your voice, your eyebrows still angry, but pain and sorrow were evident in your eyes and words.

"Why should I? You've done nothing but bother me and keep me from my work."

"If you don't, then I'm going to leave. If you don't apologize by tonight then you won't see me tomorrow morning." A tear ran down your cheek, but you didn't look away from Carmilla, keeping a challenging glare in your eyes

"Go ahead, see if I care." She scoffed, then sat back down and continued with her paper work.

"Fine then." You stomped out of the room, slamming the office door as you went. The slam throbbed in Carmilla's head, but she took a small breath, then continued her work

Carmilla awoke with a yawn, her back hating her for her slumped position on her desk.

She noticed a blanket on her back, courtesy of her daughters. She felt.. guilty. After thinking about exactly why, she remembered how she snapped at her daughters then.. you. Calling you a distraction, a bother, whiney, all for asking what was wrong.

She was stressed, but that was no reason to treat you that way, you and your daughters.

She stood up, cleaning herself up before leaving her office, looking for Clara and Odette so she could apologize and ask where you were.

When she did, her eyes became misty, pulling in her sweet and kind girls into a heartwarming hug and whispering how sorry she was into their ears

They, of course, accepted the apology, also feeling misty eyed at how sentimental their mother was as of now

"Clara, Odette, where's mi vida? I need to apologize to them too. I said some things that need to be addressed."

The two girls both looked at each other, then Carmilla again, with a concerned look etched on their faces

"They.. uh, weren't here for breakfast, so maybe your bedroom?"

Carmilla nodded, then kissed them both on the forehead. "I'll go apologize and bring them down, then we can all have brunch together." The two girls nodded, and Carmilla made her way upstairs to find you

The only problem is.. is that you're not there. Some of your clothes, bathroom necessities, shoes, and even a couple of picture frames are gone

Carmilla was startled, then began searching for you, calling your name around your shared grand bedroom

It was when she walked close to her side of the bed when she saw a note (WE JUST GOT A LETTER) on her side of the bed

(I'm not in the mood to right a note, so sorry, but basically you need a break and you're staying with Rosie until you forgave Carmilla for being mean :(( )

Carmilla didn't even think before she was running out of her building, through her territory, and could see the beginnings of Cannibal town

Her lungs were screaming, but her heart was aching at the pain she caused you, making her continue to run until she saw Rosie's parlor

She bursted inside, panting as she stood in the doorway with many black and damn near soulless eyes with sharp teeth to match stared at her disheveled form

She didn't even get a word in before the crowd parted and revealed a tall, slender, and pale yet sophisticated woman, our darling Rosie has appeared!

And she was... not smiling.. oh boy

"Now you listen here young lady!" Rosie had started to sassily walk over to Carmilla, grabbing her ear (does she even have ears omfg, if she doesn't then pretend she grabs her cheek) and begins pulling her towards the back rooms of her parlor, scolding all along the way

"Don't you have some nerve showing up here after your spouse came here bawling their eyes out!" Carmilla felt like she should feel offended that Rosie was embarrassing her like this, but she couldn't after how she treated you.

Rosie finally let go of her, rubbing the pinched bit to relieve the stinging, then, she laid eyes on you

"Oh, mi corazón, I'm so sorry, I didn't mean to treat you like that! You didn't deserve me snapping at you, I was stressed and took it out on you and our sweet girls. None of you deserved it, and I deeply apologize." She hung her head in shame, hoping you would accept her apology, so she could do more to show you how much she appreciated you.

She was already planning a nice dinner, several at home dates, and some family activities for you all to do together and bond again, as well as take a well deserved break from working.

She didn't look up until you hugged her, her arms quickly wrapping around you too

"You really need to work on this. What you said was hurtful, and I won't forget it. But I will forgive you, because I still love and care about you."

And that's all she needed to squeeze you tighter and murmur more apologies and thank you's, and even promises of taking breaks and not lashing out on others from stress. <3

[pluckyredhead]

ur post abt the green lantern’s political leanings was so interesting!! can you do one for the bat family? (but only if u wanna!!)

Honestly, I can't, because their politics are so incoherent.

Like, take Bruce. (And again, like with the Lanterns, I'm talking about canon here, not how I wish things were.) On the one hand, you would imagine he's pretty progressive, right? He's almost certainly a single issue voter and that single issue is gun control. He believes in rehabilitating criminals and in fact a lot of Wayne Enterprises hires are formerly incarcerated people. He is an active philanthropist who pours money into schools, orphanages, hospitals, public spaces, and the arts. These are all leftist values!

And yet the modern Batman is also a completely unrestrained violent anarchic-libertarian power fantasy. Bruce has invented his own law, which he enacts and enforces completely arbitrarily, however he feels like doing so. He obeys the laws he wants to obey and ignores the ones he doesn't care about, while insisting he is law-abiding. He tortures people literally constantly and considers it righteous. He uses the profits from his publicly traded company to become a one-man military industrial complex. (The emissions from the fucking Batmobile alone...!) He illegally surveils the entire city and sometimes the entire planet (Brother Eye, anyone?) because he has decided that his moral authority overrides literally anyone's right to privacy, anywhere. He allows his defeated foes to be locked up indefinitely regardless of their mental state in an institution that would make any qualified mental health professional run screaming in the opposite direction. He's sexist. All of these things sit on the right of the political spectrum, but imagine me pointing to the right like Charlie from It's Always Sunny pointing to his murder board.

And none of the Batfamily is any better. Some of them are honestly worse in certain aspects. Dick was a cop. Jason loves guns. Babs and Tim are even more in love with surveillance than Bruce is. Remember when Tim wanted to replace the police with, like, a Bat-army??? BECAUSE I DO.

It's not really "their fault," as much as anything can be a fictional character's fault. It's the result of being written by writers who are, for the most part, consciously trying to write the Bats as good Samaritans, but are also living in a world where we have had our brains warped by all of our blockbusters being funded by the US military, in a medium where badassery is prized above everything else, and so all this really problematic shit spills out onto the comics page without being questioned. It's also kind of a boiling frog situation: i.e. Batman has always had a cool car, so as he got tougher and tougher, of course that car would eventually become a tank, and no one stopped to go "Wait, what the fuck? What the fuck? How is this billionaire driving a tank around helping anyone???" I guess god bless Zack Snyder for inadvertently highlighting how fucking stupid and counterproductive a Batman taken to his worst extremes is.

To be clear, I don't think this is what most writers are trying to do with Batman (some of them are, but fuck those guys). But it's what happens when all you care about is rule of cool, and the more I think about it the more I'm like...shit, maybe Alan Moore was right and superheroes are just stupid.

Anyway in conclusion, comic book writers should consider the ramifications of what they're writing occasionally. But Bruce Wayne probably still votes blue, at least.

[olderthannetfic]

One reason the "why not f/f" discussion doesn't go away is that it's paired with the Kool-aid that Fandom made for itself. "We do what canon doesn't! We write what canon refuses to give us! We do better than the patriarchy-driven industry, because we are the ignored minorities doing it for ourselves!" And in the context of all of that trumpeting, I think it's fair for people to ask "but do you really tho"

You can't have it both ways, throwing around claims of having better diversity because Fandom isn't the industry shackled by the patriarch executives, but also wehhh of course you shouldn't expect diversity, the industry refuses to give us canon diversity, there's no way we could do better than the industry, if only there was a diverse canon anywhere that would definitely fix me

--

Yeah. Some of the early theorizing, especially around slash, has really overstayed its welcome. The most tiresome and least nuanced versions of these talking points tend to recirculate and recirculate on social media.

I think a better way of analyzing it is to say that fandom adds id.

We bring the horny, and that means we're endlessly creative and will do things the industry won't... in certain spheres.

It doesn't mean we're striking out on our own to develop terminally underdeveloped canon characters. It means we're adding a tentacle monster.

--

But ultimately, a huge portion of the howling on this topic boils down to a lot of AFAB people, including quite a few who identify as women, saying "In my fantasy life, I see myself as a man" and other people losing their shit over that.

[bookishfeylin]

The selective application of real world standards in the ACOTAR fandom is truly the most bizarre thing I have ever seen. When discussing Nesta's behavior or Lucien's actions or Tamlin's style of leadership or... anything Tamlin does, really, we have to use real world standards and ignore the circumstance and context, ignore that this is a fantasy world and hold them accountable by our values. They cannot act like they are in a world that is fantasy, and if they do they are faulted for it. They cannot act on the knowledge they know and have of their circumstances, and if they do they are faulted for it. They cannot merely exist within the broken system that is Prythian's power hierarchy, rather they are faulted for not attempting to better things and make their world mirror ours. But the minute those standards are applied to Feyre and Rhysand or anyone else, suddenly we need to keep in mind again that this is fantasy and to not judge by real world standards. Feyre and Rhysand are praised by the narrative as progressive leaders attempting to change the system of power. They objectively aren't, because you truly cannot be progressive while actively upholding the system that oppresses others and, for example, leaving brown women and children to rot in the places you dislike because you've stereotyped all the brown men as savages too dumb and uncivilized to change whew the racist writing of the Illyrians jumps out, nor is it progressive to remove your wife's bodily autonomy by keeping information about your wife dying in childbirth from her. If you get upset at that being pointed out because ~it's fantasy~ then you can't exactly write 10-paragraph long essays about how horrible other High Lord's feudal systems are, now can you? After all, it is fantasy. Feyre and Rhysand are adored for their "healthy" relationship, despite that being woefully not true by any real-world metric. Hell, with having the male get so jealous when other men look at his mate that he feels the need to fight them, break the bones of people who call her a whore, and have the couple become incredibly co-dependent once they mate, mating bond in and of itself is wildly unhealthy by real world standards! If pointing this out bothers you because ~it's fantasy~ and you believe you can't use real world standards to judge a relationship between two magical creatures in a retelling of a Greek myth, then you can't write essays about the healthiness or unhealthiness of any other relationship in ACOTAR. After all, it is fantasy. Feyre and Rhysand are excused for their atrocious actions that harm and displace tons of innocents because they are "acting for the greater good" or lack the information to wait at a later time for revenge, despite the dire consequences their objectively horrible actions. If this bothers you because ~it's fantasy~ and they don't need to act by real world standards and every horrible thing they do can be excused with "it's for the greater good" or "they didn't have enough information at that time", then you can't critique other characters who don't abide by real world standards of what behavior is ok and not because they canonically have limited information or are doing something for "the greater good." After all, it is fantasy.

Either everybody is critiqued by real world standards, including the faves, or no one is, including the characters you hate the most. You can't hold a certain group accountable by real world standards and be surprised when people do the same right back.

[spnhunter4life]

Familiar Chapter 2

Word Count: 7.9k

Warnings: little bit of canon typical violence

A/N: This story was originally meant to be a one shot. But then I decided, "You know what? I'm not really happy with this ending. I'll just write one more little chapter to wrap things up." 🙄 Well guess what? If you've been following my work, you know that things always turn out longer than expected. So my 'little' wrap up chapter ended up being kind of long and had to be brought to a stopping point. So here's chapter 2 for you, and you can expect a third chapter as well! That will definitely be the last chapter though (she says with way less confidence than she would like).

Thanks to everyone who has liked, commented on, or reblogged the first chapter! I'm completely blown away by how many notes it's gotten. If you missed the first chapter, read it here!

Summary: Y/N comes back from a walk one day only to realize she can't remember where she was or what she was doing. The new case she and the boys were working must be abandoned in order to recover her memory.

Masterlist

Two months had passed since the shapeshifter hunt, and despite Sam’s encouragement, I still hadn’t said anything to Dean. He was making it extremely difficult for me to ignore my feelings for the older brother the way I always used to. Between his constant pointed looks and making up excuses to leave us alone together, I was about ready to snap.

My dreams about Dean were becoming more frequent too. With thoughts of him almost always on the forefront of my mind, he regularly featured in my dreams. I still had dreams like the one the shapeshifter had taunted me with, but these dreams had branched out into more sweet versions of Dean that left me longing for him even more.

I woke up from one such dream – one where Dean and I were in our very own house, snuggled up together on the couch, a movie playing in the background as we talked – in the back of the Impala. I looked around and saw that we were still on the interstate. We were on our way to Nebraska to check out a new case Sam had found. Four teenagers had shown up dead, all apparently drowned, but their bodies nowhere near water.

“How much further is it?” I asked.

“About 20 miles,” Dean answered.

I sighed and leaned my head against the window. Sam met my eyes in the rearview mirror and raised an eyebrow in question. I just shook my head. He glanced at Dean and back at me, smiling at the small frown on my face this gesture caused. He was getting annoyingly good at figuring out when I had been dreaming about his brother.

By the time we got to a motel, I was irritated and in need of some time away from both brothers. I told them I was going to walk to the diner we saw about 10 blocks away and bring home food for everybody. It would give me time to clear my head. I really needed to find time to talk to Sam about stopping all the teasing and trying to be supportive. Even though it wasn’t his intention, it was only making things worse.

~~~~~

“There you are!” Dean’s relieved voice greeted me as soon as I walked in the door.

“Seriously, Y/N, what took you so long?” Sam chimed in. “We were getting worried. I think Dean was about ready to start a search party.”

“Sorry,” I apologized, not sure why they were so worked up. “I haven’t been gone that long.”

“It shouldn’t have taken you an hour and a half,” Dean argued. “Where’s the food?” He added almost as an afterthought.

“What food?”

“The whole reason you left was to get food,” Sam told me. “What have you been doing?”

“Nothing,” I answered. Then I thought about it. What had I been doing? I was certain I hadn’t been gone for very long, but then, I realized that all I could remember was the walk back to the motel. “Just walking I guess? I don’t actually remember.”

“How can you not remember?” Dean asked.

“I don’t know!” I yelled, frustrated and confused.

“Ok, well what do you remember?” Sam asked.

“I remember… waking up in the Impala on the drive here. I guess I kind of remember getting to the motel. Other than that… I’ve got nothing.”

“Come here,” Dean said, gesturing for me to walk over to him. 

“Why?” I wondered.

“Just come here.”

I walked over to him and he immediately began feeling around my head.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“Looking for a lump or some other injury,” he said, continuing his search.

“I think I’d know if I hit my head,” I told him, backing out of his reach.

“Apparently you’ve lost your memory. How are you supposed to know what happened?”

“If I’d been hit on the head hard enough for it to affect my memory, don’t you think I’d have a horrible headache at the very least?” I reasoned.

“Point taken. But clearly something happened. We need to figure out what.”

“Let’s just all head towards the diner,” Sam suggested. “We still need to eat, and maybe something on the way will jog Y/N’s memory.”

Nobody had any better ideas and he was right, we did still need to eat. So we went outside and started walking towards the diner. We’d made it six blocks when Sam stopped us. This particular part of town was the area where commercial buildings started being replaced by residential. There were multiple small businesses scattered throughout the neighborhood. Some buildings were obviously both people’s place of work and their home. 

“Do you think you might have gone in there?” He asked, pointing at the music store across the street. Through the window I could see guitars spaced out on the wall, a row of pianos under them. I loved the piano. I grew up taking lessons and badly missed being able to play. It was an easy, surefire way for me to calm down and clear my head, a fact both brothers were aware of.

“You did seem stressed when you left,” Dean agreed. “I’d actually be surprised if you didn’t go in. And that would explain why you were gone for so long.”

“Maybe, but it doesn’t explain my memory loss. Think about it. An hour and a half, just gone. What are the odds of me forgetting such a specific chunk of time? Someone had to have done this to me. We need to find out who. And why.”

“I agree. Which is why I think we should go in,” Dean said. “If we’re going to find answers, we need to retrace your steps. We have nothing else to go off of.”

We crossed the street and Sam led the way inside. A little bell above the door announced our arrival. I scanned the room, looking for anything familiar but coming up empty. I walked over to the line of pianos, lightly running my hand along the tops of each one I passed. I stopped at the fourth one in line. A blur of memories raced through my head, but nothing that would help solve my current memory loss problem. 

This piano was very similar to the one I grew up playing. I remembered the hours spent on it, favorite songs learned and played enough times to become annoying to my family. The very same songs forgotten about when they became too easy and a new favorite came along. I placed my hands on the keys and played a few chords.

“Anything?” Dean asked. I just shook my head.

“Oh! You’re back!” Exclaimed a balding man who appeared out of the back room. He was probably in his early 50s and had a very friendly, cheerful demeanor. “You decided to buy this lovely instrument after all?”

“Uh, no. Unfortunately I have nowhere to keep a piano. No, I was just… passing by again and couldn’t resist,” I told him.

“Well, if circumstances ever change, I’d love to help you out!” He said.

I thanked him and placed my hands back on the keys, playing the opening notes to an old favorite song.

“Have you had a lot of business today?” I heard Sam ask.

“No, it’s been pretty slow today. But then, Mondays usually are,” the man answered easily. 

“I figured it must be a slow day when you recognized Y/N so quickly,” Sam said, subtly fishing for information.

“Well she was the only one in the store at the time, but even if there had been 20 other people around, she plays so beautifully I could hardly have missed her.”

The conversation ended there. Or at least, I think it did. I lost myself in the song I was playing, and all other noise faded away. Once finished, I turned around to face the three men. The owner of the store was looking at me with the appreciation of a fellow musician. Sam looked impressed as he always did when he heard me play. Dean… I couldn’t quite read the look on his face. The closest word I could come up with to describe it is awe. But I knew that wasn’t right.

The store owner glanced at his watch and regretfully informed us it was closing time. He thanked us for coming in and I thanked him for letting me play. The three of us exited the store and started walking in the direction of the diner again. 

We stopped in a couple more stores we passed that I might have gone into in an effort to destress. A small little used bookstore that was absolutely packed from wall to wall with books and an antique store, the kind that always reminded me of my history loving father and the countless stores he took me to growing up. Neither of these places sparked any memories either though, and as far as we could tell, I hadn’t stopped inside earlier.

“Well we have some explanation for where you were at least,” Sam said when we’d been seated at the diner.

“Yeah, but we still have no idea what happened to me. How are we supposed to get my memory back when we don’t even know where to start?�� 

“I don’t know yet. But we’ll figure it out. We always do,” Sam assured me. This wasn’t much of a comfort to me at the moment, and Dean seemed to realize that.

“We’re going to figure it out, Y/N. I promise. I’d never let anything happen to you. You’re our priority right now. Everything else gets dropped until we figure this out. You’re our new case. Have we ever not solved a case?” He asked.

I smiled, feeling more confident with my situation. He was right. There was nothing we couldn’t solve when we worked together. 

“What’s our next step, then?” I asked.

“I have no idea,” Dean admitted. 

“Our next step is going to the motel and getting some sleep,” Sam answered. “It’s getting late and we have no leads. Our best bet is to sleep on it and get a fresh start tomorrow. And who knows? Maybe we’ll get lucky and your memories will be back in the morning.”

I didn’t really want to wait. I wanted to solve this now. But I knew Sam was right. We had nowhere to start, and being low on sleep wouldn’t help anybody, so I grudgingly agreed to this plan of action.

~~~~~

When I woke up the next morning, I kept my eyes closed and just laid there for a minute, working up the energy to actually get up. I heard the deep, even breathing of a sleeping person coming from the direction of the beds and the occasional shuffling of paper or clacking of a keyboard from the other side of the room. 

I rolled over so I wasn’t facing the back of the couch and was greeted by a rare sight when I opened my eyes. The unmistakable sounds of research I’d heard were coming not from Sam as I’d assumed, but Dean, up before his brother, the notorious early riser.

“What time is it?” I asked as I sat up. He looked up at me.

“Oh, hey,” he greeted. “It’s… almost seven.”

“And Sam’s still sleeping?” I asked around a yawn. Dean still picked up on the disbelief in my voice.

“I know, right? Lazy ass. Of all days to sleep in.”

I chuckled at his annoyed teasing and went to the bathroom to start getting ready for the day. When I stepped back into the room, dressed and teeth brushed, I saw Sam up and rifling through his duffle.

“Hey,” he said. “I don’t suppose you remember anything?”

“Unfortunately, no,” I sighed.

“Ok. Well I guess we should go get some breakfast and discuss next steps.”

“No need,” Dean interjected. “I already came up with our next step while you two were catching up on your beauty sleep.”

“You did?” I asked, surprised.

“What do you think I’ve been doing?” He answered. Before he could continue, Sam interrupted. 

“How long have you been up?”

“I don’t know. Couple hours.” He took a drink from a to go cup of coffee that I hadn’t even noticed he had.

Sam glanced at me, the look on his face one that he reserved for times he wanted to say ‘You two are so meant to be together’ but couldn’t say it out loud because Dean was in the room. He had said it to me on more than one occasion when Dean wasn’t around, which is how I know what the look translated to. 

“Anyway,” Dean continued. He picked up a phone book that was laying open beside him. “I found this psychic in town that should be able to help us. I figured we’d stop by her place after breakfast.”

“A psychic? I don’t know, Dean.” The thought made me nervous. Most of the people who advertised themselves as psychics were phonies. And even if this one wasn’t – which I didn’t know how Dean could be sure of – what if she wasn’t able to help? What if she saw something I didn’t want her to see? I’m a pretty private person, and the thought of someone digging around in my head is incredibly unappealing.

“Hear me out,” he insisted. “I’ve done my research, ok? She’s the real deal.”

“How can you be sure?” Sam asked.

“Because. I’ve done my research,” Dean repeated. “Look,” he said, spinning the laptop to face us. It was open to a website for The Amazing Annabelle. “There are dozens of reviews on here, and every one of them says she was able to help. And look at this.”

He slowly scrolled down to the bottom of the page, showing off the dozens of symbols and sigils scattered throughout. A lot of them I recognized as protection from various supernatural beings. There were a lot that I didn’t recognize too. They clearly marked her as knowing about the world of supernatural creatures though. Unless she had just pulled together symbols she thought looked cool in order to give herself an air of authenticity.

“Alright, fine. But a few good reviews and a bunch of symbols used by hunters doesn’t exactly prove that she’s psychic,” Sam argued. I had to agree. I didn’t want to hurt Dean’s feelings since he’d clearly put some time into this and I knew he was just trying to help, but psychics made me nervous. There was no way I would agree to go unless we knew for sure she was legit.

“Yeah, I thought the same thing. Which is why I talked to Bobby,” Dean responded. So this was the reason he was so confident. Bobby was highly respected among the hunter community. If he gave his approval on this Amazing Annabelle, then we really couldn’t doubt her abilities. “He said he’s not super familiar with her, but he has heard of her. She’s good at what she does and someone who can be trusted.”

“Ok,” I agreed. “Breakfast and then a visit to the psychic. I suppose the worst that can happen is she isn’t able to help.”

~~~~~

The first thing I noticed about Annabelle was how… normal she was. With the exception of Missouri, all the other psychics I’d ever seen were dressed in over the top outfits, their places decked out with all sorts of nonsense that was supposedly necessary for them to do their job.

If I’d seen this girl on the street, I would never have guessed what her occupation was. She was about our age and short, standing a full head below my 5’ 6” frame. And she was very pretty. I noticed both Sam and Dean’s immediate appreciation of her beauty. She was wearing white leggings and a purple shirt, her night black hair was in a messy ponytail that suited her very well, and her golden brown skin was flawless.

“What can I do for you?” She asked when she opened the door. Dean cleared his throat before answering.

“I’m Dean. This is Sam and Y/N. We were hoping you could help us with something.”

“I gathered that much,” she smiled. She opened the door wider and stepped to the side. “Come in.”

We stepped inside and she led us to a room that had an armchair and a comfortable looking couch as well as a round table with four chairs. She sat in the armchair so the three of us settled ourselves on the couch, Sam and Dean on either end and me between them.

“So. What can I help you with?” She asked again. 

“Do you have any experience with trying to recover memories?” I asked.

“Some, yes,” she said. “It really depends on how the memories were lost. Some are easy to find. Some take work, but can still be found with patience. Some, like in the instance of an injury to the brain, can’t be recovered.”

“We don’t actually know what happened. That’s part of what I need to remember. Our assumption is that magic was involved though,” I informed her.

“That shouldn’t be a problem,” she assured me. “If you’ll come with me?” She stood and moved to the table, gesturing for me to sit across from her. The boys came and stood close by to watch.

“I’ll need some information from you in order to know where to look,” she said. “Give me as much detail as you can about these memories. How long ago was it? How much time are you missing? Is it relating to any specific object or person? Anything you can give me will help.”

“It was yesterday,” Sam explained. “She has an hour and a half chunk of time just missing and we have no clue why.”

“What were you doing when you lost your memory and how did you realize you’d lost it?” 

“I was just walking from our motel to a diner to get some food. I only realized what happened because I couldn’t actually remember why I left the room and I definitely didn’t think I was gone that long.”

“Ok,” she said, taking my hands in hers. She closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and instructed me to do the same. “I need you to concentrate as hard as you can on the moments from that walk that you can remember.” 

Then she chanted a couple lines of Latin and suddenly I was back on the sidewalk outside the music store. I was walking in the direction of the diner once again when I hit a block. It was like an invisible barrier I couldn’t pass. I tried to go around it and when that didn’t work, turned around to go the other way. No matter what I tried, I was stuck where I was.

And then I was back at the table with Annabelle, Sam and Dean hovering over my shoulders.

“Well?” Dean asked.

“I still don’t remember anything,” I told Annabelle.

“I know. Your memories were definitely blocked using magic. It’s a stronger magic than I was expecting. It’s up to you to decide how important it is that you get them back. If you want to continue, I’m going to have to put you into a trance in order to access them.”

“Is that dangerous?” Dean asked.

“It can be. But only if you don’t have a good anchor,” she answered.

“What does that mean?” Sam asked.

“I’m going to have to send Y/N deep into her subconscious to find answers. Doing this requires an anchor, a tether to reality, someone to bring her back. Otherwise she could be stuck in her own subconscious with no way out."

“That’s not a problem. Both of them would be willing to do that,” I told her.

“I’m sure they would, but your anchor can’t be just anyone. It has to be someone with a very strong emotional connection. Normally I recommend close family members or significant others for this sort of process. I’m assuming they are neither?” 

I hesitated. The answer, of course, was no. But I didn’t see how I couldn’t have a strong enough connection with them for this to work. Living the way we did – being with each other 24/7, trusting each other with our lives – created a very strong bond. Not to mention the way I felt about Dean. But maybe if it was one sided it wouldn’t work. And I wasn’t about to say that Dean was the safer bet because I felt our connection was stronger.

“Dean can do it,” Sam announced.

Dean and I both whipped our heads to look at him. I was sure the shock, irritation, and minor panic I could see on Dean’s face was mirrored on my own. I knew we were panicking for entirely different reasons though. For Dean it was worry that he wouldn’t be a strong enough connection for me. He didn’t want to risk me not coming back. For me it was worry that Sam was going to rat me out. And boy would we have words if he did.

“What?” He snapped at the death glares we were both now fixing on him. “You know it’s true. You’ve known Dean longer than you’ve known me. You two get along so well and know each other so well that if I didn’t know any better I’d think you’d known each other your entire lives. I promise your emotional connection is more than strong enough to handle this. And I swear if either one of you tries to deny how close you are right now, I will not hesitate to punch you.”

I looked at Dean at the same moment he looked at me. There was uncertainty in his eyes, but his jaw and shoulders were set in determination.

“I can leave you alone to discuss it if you’d like,” Annabelle offered.

“I don’t think that’s necessary,” Dean said. “It’s up to you of course – you’re the one taking the risk – but I’ll do my best to bring you back if you’re willing to trust me to do it. Otherwise we can try to find another way.”

“Of course I trust you. That’s not even a question,” I told him.

He watched me for a minute, weighing the sincerity of my words.

“Ok,” he said. “What do you need us to do?”

Annabelle stood up and moved to a shelf full of drawers on the edge of the room, opening different ones and pulling things out as she explained.

“As I already said, I’ll be putting Y/N into a deep trance. The magic is blocking your memories on a conscious level. Sending you into your subconscious will allow you to access them, but only while you’re in the trance. Once you’re awake, you’ll forget everything again.”

“Then how does this help us?” Sam asked.

Annabelle set everything she’d grabbed down on the table and then opened a cabinet underneath, grabbing a clear glass ball and setting it in the middle of the table.

“It helps, because you and I will be able to see everything she’s seeing while she’s in the trance.”

“What about me?” Dean asked.

“Since you’re the anchor, you’ll be inside her head too. You’ll be able to see and hear everything. Sam and I will only be able to see, so you’ll need to pay particular attention to things you hear as you’ll be the only one who knows those details.”

She began combining her ingredients, crushing leaves and mixing together powders and liquids.

“While she’s out, I need the two of you to be absolutely silent,” she told Sam and Dean. “You’ll both be fully aware of the noises happening around you. It could be tricky getting to the hidden memories, and distractions won’t help. Once we’ve found the information you’re looking for, we’ll need your anchor. At that point I need Dean – and only Dean – to start talking to her.”

She now had a liquidy brown paste in front of her. She dipped her finger into it and began drawing symbols on my forehead.

“It doesn’t matter what you say. Your voice, as well as your physical connection, will lead her back into consciousness.”

“Our physical connection?” I asked.

“Yes. You’ll need to be holding hands during this,” she said. Done with my forehead, she quickly drew an intricate swirling knot on the palm of each of my hands. She drew the same design on both of Dean’s palms and then worked on his forehead as well. I assumed the design was identical to mine. “Dean, if you’ll sit across from her, we can get started.”

She sat in one of the two empty chairs and gestured for Sam to sit in the last one. 

“Alright. I need you to tell me everything you can remember from the time just before your memories disappeared. Once you’re under, you won’t be able to talk to me. The more details I have, the easier I can guide you to the missing time.”

“I already told you what I remember.”

“No. I need more. Tell me exactly what the last thing you remember is. Is it walking out the door? Did you get a ways before you forgot? What were you thinking? What were you feeling? What could you see, hear, smell? Give me everything you can remember.”

“Well… I don’t remember leaving the room. I kind of remember getting to the motel, but that’s a little hazy. I guess the clearest memory I have is waking up in the Impala about 15 minutes before we got to town.”

“Ok. Let’s start with that then. What details can you give me about that?” She prompted.

“I don’t know. Not much. We were in the car. On the interstate. Dean had Metallica playing. I’m sorry, I don’t know what else to say,” I told her. If this is what it took to get my memories back then I was screwed. Coming up with little details from hazy memories wasn’t exactly easy.

“That’s ok. Don’t worry. How about how you were feeling? Can you remember that?”

I’d just had a dream about Dean. So a big mix of emotions. Happy, sad, longing, irritation. Irritation. Yeah. I definitely remembered being annoyed when we got to the motel.

“I was annoyed. When we got to the motel. I remember being annoyed. I imagine it’s why I left to get the food. And Dean said I seemed stressed.”

“Great!” Annabelle praised. “What else? Do you know why you were annoyed?”

“Um…” How to answer that truthfully but without giving anything away. I looked between Sam and Dean and remembered how Sam had picked up on what I’d dreamt about and silently teased me about it. “Just an argument with Sam.” Sam rolled his eyes.

“What argument?” Dean interjected. “You guys didn’t even talk to each other.” 

“No, but just because we’re not as close as you two are doesn’t mean we can’t communicate without having to say anything,” Sam said.

Dean looked shocked. No doubt he was wondering how often we’d had these silent conversations. Little did he know, they were always about him.

“Ok. Anything else you can give me?” Annabelle asked.

“I know I went into a music store and stopped to play one of the pianos. I don’t actually remember doing it though. Sorry, that’s all I’ve got.”

“That’s fine. I’ve got enough to work with. Remember, I need the two of you to stay quiet,” she told Sam and Dean. They both confirmed that they would. “Ok. Dean and Y/N, take each other’s hands and close your eyes.” 

She waited for us to follow her instruction before continuing. A stream of Latin, different from the first time, fell from her lips and I felt myself sinking deeper and deeper into my subconscious. It felt a little like drifting off to sleep, so gradual that you’re somehow both aware and unaware of it at the same time.

~~~~~

Dean’s POV

As Annabelle’s chanting trailed off, a picture of my surroundings slowly began to take shape. I recognized it immediately. It was the inside of the Impala – from Y/N’s perspective. She was in the passenger side backseat, her usual place.

“Can you hear me Y/N?” Annabelle asked in a calm, soothing tone. “If you can hear me, I want you to get out of the car.”

I watched as my hand – No. Not mine. Y/N’s – reached for the handle and then she swung her legs out and stood up.

“Great. I’ll do my best to guide you to your forgotten memories, but this is mostly on you. If you seem stuck, I’ll help you figure out where to go, but otherwise I’ll stay quiet and let you figure things out for yourself. Now I need you to focus for me. I need you to think about the motel.”

The background around us flashed through a series of images. Different motels we’d stayed at over the years.

“The motel you’re staying at now,” Annabelle clarified. “The one you got to last night.” 

The flashing images slowed and came to rest on one. 

“That’s good, Y/N. Now I need you to focus on your emotions from last night. You got to the motel and were annoyed with Sam because you’d just had an argument.”

Y/N’s mind flashed back to the backseat of the Impala, Metallica’s Fade to Black playing through the speakers. She was looking at Sam in the rearview mirror, his eyebrows raised. I could tell by the view shifting back and forth that she was shaking her head. Sam looked quickly at me and then back to her, smiling. And then, memory over, we were back outside the motel. 

That’s it? That was their argument? No wonder I’d missed it. What did it even mean? I caught myself just before I actually asked these questions out loud, remembering Annabelle’s instruction to stay silent.

“You wanted to take a walk, so you offered to go get food for everyone,” Annabelle continued. I watched this memory version of Y/N walk out the door. “You stopped at a music store along the way. Did you stop anywhere else?”

We all sat in silence as we watched Y/N walk for several blocks, never stopping. She looked around as she walked, frequently turning her head to look at different things. I remembered Annabelle telling me I would be the only one with access to the sounds in her memory and started paying attention. I heard the chirping of birds, the occasional car driving by, a bell ringing inside a store as someone opened the door. Nothing out of the ordinary. 

Y/N walked past a group of teenagers and I listened in to their conversation. They were discussing the loss of their friends. The information I got from them was useless as far as Y/N was concerned, but I memorized their faces so we could question them once we’d helped Y/N and were ready to work the case we actually came here for.

She walked for another block and then stopped outside the music store. She stopped for a moment to look at it, and the world around me disappeared as she relived a different memory. I saw a child’s hands on the keys of a piano. I heard the music being played, a simple melody of Jingle Bells that the child was singing along to. I heard a grown man singing with her. The song ended and she looked up into the smiling face of the man I knew to be her father.

She crossed the street and walked into the store, heading straight for the pianos and trailing her fingers over them as she walked by, much as she had her second time through with me and Sam. She stopped at the same piano she did with us. Having seen the childhood memory, I now understood the draw to this particular instrument. 

I listened as she played a complex set of chords that transitioned into a haunting melody. I was entranced, as I always was when she played. It was clear it was something she deeply enjoyed and missed. I was startled as Annabelle’s voice cut in over the music.

“What did you do next? What happened when you were done playing?” She asked. I suppose this part of the memory would be particularly boring to her and Sam, who couldn’t hear what I could. Not to mention it wasn’t exactly helping us find out what happened. We did need to keep moving, I supposed.

The memory jumped to the last few notes of what had to be a different song entirely. Then Y/N turned around and saw the store owner standing there, listening intently.

“You’re a wonderful pianist,” he told her. 

“Oh, that? I was just messing around,” she mumbled at the compliment. 

I listened closely to their conversation. While he was pretty low down on my suspect list, he was also technically the only person on that list as he was the only person we knew to have interacted with her. Nothing sparked my suspicions though.

He continued to praise her abilities, she continued to brush them aside, and he asked if she had any interest in buying the piano she’d been playing. 

“I would be very happy to sell it to you,” he told her. “It’s not often I get to sell an instrument with the confidence it will be used and well loved.”

She politely turned down his offer and then told him she needed to be going, that her friends were expecting her to be back soon.

She left the store and continued her walk. Although I couldn’t actually feel her emotions, I could tell that playing had calmed her down significantly. There was just something about the way the world looked to her now.

She made it another half a block before she stopped. I could discern no reason for this. She simply stopped walking. After a few minutes it became apparent that something wasn’t right.

“This is where you got stuck the first time we tried finding your memories, isn’t it?” I heard Annabelle ask. “Whatever happened to block your memories, this is where it happened. The magic is still putting up a fight. I need you to push back. It can’t stop you from seeing. It’s all in your head that you can’t go any further. Just keep walking.”

We all waited for a couple minutes as she struggled with pushing past whatever spell was holding her in place. 

“You can do it,” Annabelle encouraged. “You’re stronger than the magic is, I promise. Keep walking.”

Another minute passed and I knew she was winning because noises – which I hadn’t even realized had disappeared – started filtering through. It was like hearing something from underwater. Muffled, hard to make out, but definitely there. Then, all at once I could hear voices clearly and we were moving forward again.

I heard the sounds of a struggle coming from the alley in front of her. She quickly walked to it and then slowed to a stop just outside, listening. There was the unmistakable sound of chanting and underneath it, gurgling. 

“Perfect,” she muttered under her breath. She reached into her boot to grab the silver knife she always had with her. “Wish I had my gun right about now.”

She peeked her head around and saw a teenage boy standing over another one. An endless stream of water was spewing out of the lips of the boy on the ground and he was choking on it. The chanting boy was facing her. The second she stepped into the alley she’d be spotted. But the drowning boy didn’t have time for her to find a better plan of attack.

She rushed in and the boy stopped his chanting when he saw her. He started a different chant, just a few words, and then he raised his arm, flinging her into the building beside her. The knife she’d been holding went flying out of her hand. I desperately wanted to run to help her, to make sure she was ok or to kill that boy. I didn’t know which desire was stronger, but I reminded myself that it didn’t matter. This was a memory. It was all in the past and I couldn’t change it now. I just had to watch and learn what I could. That’s how I would help her. Because now we had his face and we could track him down.

Hand still stretched out to hold her in place, he looked back to his original target, now desperately gasping for breath. He continued his chanting, and the poor boy on the ground only lasted a few more moments.

“Why are you doing this?” Y/N asked him. “What could he possibly have done to you to deserve that?”

“I don’t expect you to understand,” the boy snapped at her. “No one does.”

He started marching in her direction.

“You should have left it alone,” he snarled. “If you’d just kept walking, everything would be fine. But now you’ve seen too much. And you have to go too.”

He started up his chanting again, directing it at Y/N this time. I could hear water falling from her mouth and hitting the ground. I could hear the sound of her gurgling and choking. I couldn’t bear it. How had she gotten out of this?

“Thomas!” A sharp female voice called from the other end of the alley.

The chanting stopped as the boy looked in the direction of the voice. Y/N immediately started coughing the water out of her lungs and gasping for breath. She looked at the person who had spoken. She was a woman in her late 40s or early 50s at a guess and she was fuming.

“What is wrong with you?” She asked as she smacked him over the head. “Don’t you think you’ve left enough bodies behind? Do you want to attract the attention of a hunter?”

“She saw me! What was I supposed to do?” He protested.

“You were supposed to have not killed another person to begin with! We talked about this! I’ve covered your messes your whole life, but I can’t hide murdered teenagers. Especially when you’re as sloppy about it as you’ve been and especially when you don’t even tell me about it!”

The boy hung his head in shame. But not guilt. Apparently he’d been raised to do a better job of hiding his crimes. Witches. I hated them.

“Well I have to kill her now. She’s seen too much,” Thomas argued.

“No. We’re already far too at risk of hunters coming to town. You can’t add another person to the body count. Especially so close to your father’s store. Do you want him to find out it's you killing people? About the fact magic is real, and you use it? No. We’ll erase her memory and send her on her way. She won’t be a problem.”

The witch grabbed an already made hex bag out of her purse and placed it in Y/N’s immobilized hand, forcing her fingers to close around it. I knew that she would have been fighting to get free, but since she was completely stuck there were no visible indications of this. I had been in that position more than once and knew the frustration of being unable to move.

The boy’s mother started up her own chanting and the memory we were in started fading to black. It continued with Y/N standing just outside the music store. She seemed confused at first, looking around as if trying to get her bearings. Then she turned and headed back in the direction of the motel, completely oblivious to what had just happened.

“Ok,” Annabelle said. I’d forgotten she was even there. “It’s time to bring her back. Go ahead and talk to her, Dean.”

At the mention of my name, I saw my face flash through her mind. I was sitting beside her on a couch and smiling. I didn’t remember this particular day. It could have been on any given day at any random motel. 

I wasn’t really sure what to say, and just babbling whatever words came into my head seemed silly, but getting her back was more important than my discomfort.

“Y/N,” I said, pausing to think of my next words. The memory in her head changed. Now, rather than seeing from her perspective, I was in an outsider’s point of view. And I felt like the wind had been knocked out of me. “What the hell is that?” I gasped out. 

With a mix of excitement, shock, and confusion, I watched a guy who looked remarkably like me – although it couldn’t have been because I knew this had never happened before – lift Y/N in the air, spin her around a couple of times, and then set her back on her feet before leaning down to kiss her.

“I thought we were in her memories,” I said.

“You are,” Annabelle answered.

“No we’re not. We can’t be. That never happened.” 

“Then it must be a memory of a dream. Focus, Dean,” Annabelle instructed. “Be her anchor. Bring her back.”

I tried to concentrate on my job, but all I could see was the image of us kissing playing over and over in my head. 

“Can you please think of something else?” I practically begged her.

I was grateful when the memory – or whatever it was – flickered and changed into something else. Only this was no better. We were kissing again, only this time sitting on a very nice couch in a very nice room. It changed again. Sitting in the front seat of the Impala together, just the two of us. Kissing. Another change. I had Y/N pressed up against a wall. We were really kissing in this one.

It changed again and I breathed out a sigh of relief. She’d pulled up a random memory of her in one of her college classes, back before she quit school.

“Ok,” I breathed out and then cleared my throat. “Ok.” If I thought I didn’t know what to say before, I was really stuck now. What was I supposed to say to her after seeing all of that?

“Ok,” I said yet again. “You need to come back now. You have to find your way back. Sam and I are waiting for you.”

“It’s not going to work,” Annabelle said. “She’s trying too hard to keep her memories in control to focus on finding her way out of the trance. Y/N, don’t worry about what memories surface during this. Your only job is to come out of it. Listen to Dean and don’t worry about anything else. And Dean. Don’t worry about finding the right words. Say whatever comes naturally. That’s what she needs.”

Say what comes naturally. This would be a lot easier if I didn’t know Sam was listening to my every word. But Y/N was counting on me. I took a deep breath to prepare myself.

I said her name again. The memory of the classroom flickered to one of me in the driver’s seat of the Impala, singing along to Led Zeppelin. Y/N was in the back, singing with me and Sam was smiling in the passenger seat, refusing to join in.

“If I’m being honest with you, I don’t really know what I’m supposed to say right now. But you trusted me to get you out of this and I’ll be damned if I let you down. So I need you to do your part too. Find your way out of this. Come back to us.”

Memories flashed by as she searched for a way back into consciousness. I saw memories of real things, memories I shared. Us in the car, in motel rooms, on hunts. Her patching up a knife wound on my bicep, me holding her close and carrying her after her run in with that shapeshifter. There were more memories of things I didn’t recognize too. More dreams, I suppose. Us out on what could only be interpreted as a date. Us curled up together in bed, talking. Us dancing together in an empty parking lot, a slow song playing from Baby’s speakers. And more dreams of us kissing in various scenarios.

It would have been so easy to get lost in all of these memories, in seeing myself the way she saw me. And in wondering how she could apparently dream about me so much, apparently have feelings for me, without me ever knowing. But I made myself focus on being her anchor.

“Do you know how glad I am that you’re a part of my life? I sometimes wonder how I ever managed without you. And you know you can’t leave me and Sam on our own. We wouldn’t last without you. We’d probably kill each other.”

I watched as the countless swirling memories of us switched to ones of me and Sam. She remembered more than one instance that proved me wrong. She thought about all the times Sam and I had leaned on each other and kept the other going. She was essentially telling me that while she appreciated the sentiment, she knew we’d be fine without her.

“Alright, fine,” I said. “Maybe we’d get by fine on our own. That doesn’t mean either of us want to. You’re too important to us. So come back to us,” I repeated. 

She seemed to be flipping through her memories, as if looking for the right one to bring her back.

“Come back to me.”

I became the focus again, a memory of me standing outside on a bright sunny day and laughing at something she’d said flitting into her mind. But she pushed it away to start looking again.

“Don’t worry about the memories, remember?” I told her. “Just focus on me. Listen to my voice. Try to feel my hands,” I encouraged her. Different memories floated by again, pulled up at random by my words, or maybe the tone of my voice. I didn’t know. They almost all circled around just the two of us though. More dreams of us kissing flashed by.

The shock I felt at these images was lessening and I was beginning to be more comfortable with them. So, following Annabelle’s advice, I let myself respond naturally. I let go of the tight leash I usually kept on my natural inclination to flirt. It wasn’t something I’d ever done with her, not wanting to scare her away. If only I’d known how she really felt.

“You know,” I drawled, wishing I could flash her a smile. “If you wanted to kiss me so badly, you only had to say something. We can definitely do something about that. But only if you come back to me.”

There was a rush of memories flipping by so quickly I couldn’t make anything out in any of them. Then everything went black and I became aware of my own body again. I tentatively opened my eyes and saw Y/N sitting across from me, Sam and Annabelle on either side of us. 

I smiled a little. I wanted to know if she’d found her way out so suddenly out of embarrassment and a desire to escape or excitement and anticipation. 

“Don’t forget, she won’t remember any of what just happened,” Annabelle warned me. 

“I know,” I said. That wasn’t a problem. It was a lot easier to take a shot when you could see clearly. And I could finally see everything.

Chapter 3

Tags: @123passwort @buckybarnes-1917 @chicken-nuggs-and-cozy-hugs @globetrotter28

[buddiebeginz]

Heads up Buddie fandom some of the B*mmy stans are actively searching for our posts and tweets to leave harassing comments. When this happens the best thing you can do is block them. They’re looking for attention and they're trying to rile us up and mostly they're worried about their ship. If they weren’t they wouldn’t care this much that we don’t like their ship or what our opinions are. Think about how little we’re going to give a sh*t about them once Buddie is canon. They know their ship is on borrowed time, if Lou even comes back at all. The main reason they’re attacking us is because we represent the biggest threat to their ship and that’s Eddie and Buddie.

Don’t let whatever bs they try to throw at you upset you or make you doubt the fact that Buddie is happening. They can call us delusional as much as they want but they are seeing a version of a relationship that just doesn’t exist. They can try to say the same about us but we have 6 going on 7 years of development between Buck and Eddie. And while Buddie's relationship hasn't canonically moved into the realm of romantic yet they are definitely written has having a much deeper bond than just best friends. This is especially true when you compare them to Hen/Chim or Maddie/Josh or Athena/Hen, etc. None of those friendships behave the way Buddie ever has.

When I say B/T shippers are only seeing what they want to see it's because they have built that relationship up to be something way more serious than it is without any proof to back that up. Buck is literally only dating T*mmy they're not even in a committed relationship at this point and that was only reconfirmed more by that deleted scene. There is a part of them that has to look at everything that happened in s7, that deleted scene (which they originally thought was going to be Henren's seal of approval for the rs), Lou's radio silence and the SWAT rumours and they have to be worried. They might try to put on this front of certainty that their ship is endgame but it's clear from how defensive they get that they know it doesn't look good for their ship.

We honestly need to just ignore that part of fandom and keep spreading the love for Buddie. B*mmy fandom is simply a loud minority and there's no reason that fandom should be getting as much attention on social media as it sometimes does. We need to keep showing that there is still a huge active fan base for Buddie.

I know that since season 7 ended without any serious development for Buddie and Buck still with T*mmy a lot of you are worried Buddie might never happen and I get that. I was ready to give up on the show all together after season 6 but I'm telling you I've never been more certain than I am now that Buddie is happening. It's the most logical direction for these characters and it's where everything is telling us the story is going.

Remember that s7 was heavily focused on Bathena, Henren, and Buddie. For as much as B*mmy's act like their ship is so important (even constantly comparing it to the other main couples) that relationship has had very little development and screen time and even less pr. Which you'd think given how big Buck's coming out was they would have had tons but they didn't. They only even did one joint interview with Oliver and Lou and that was right at the end and they barely even talked about B/T. Meanwhile Ryan and Oliver did a bunch of interviews together and nearly every interview and article mentioned Buddie.

We need to stop looking at B/T as a threat to our ship because it's really not. I hate Buck in that relationship and I don't like T*mmy at all and the worst part has been the fans of that ship but T*mmy is only here to serve a purpose. He was there to be Buck's first male love interest and help Buck realize he could explore that part of himself. He's not here to be the great love of Buck's life. To be the person who gets Buck better than anyone else. That position has already been filled.

[pfangirl]

SAAMMM! Why we really should be excited for Season 2 of Tomb Raider: The Legend of Lara Croft

Honestly, as exciting as it’s been to learn that a second season of Netflix animated series Tomb Raider: The Legend of Lara Croft is on the cards; that it will in fact feature a team-up between former best friends archaeologist Lara Croft (voiced by Hayley Atwell) and documentary filmmaker Sam Nishimura (Karen Fukuhara); and that their pairing will revive the decade-old Salara/S.S. Endurance ship regardless of how things actually pan out romantically for the young women…

The greatest thrill actually stems from the fact that Season 2’s first promotional image reveals Lara and Sam glaring at each other. No grateful reunions shown, there’s clearly a lot of unresolved tension between the duo. And with a mountain of issues to scale, it feels safe to say that there’s going to be a lot of meaty emotional content paired with the show’s globe-trotting action. As in Season 1.

Before jumping into that, though, it’s worth remembering that Tomb Raider: The Legend of Lara Croft is playing fast and loose with the lore established in the games (if you take Roth’s revised depiction as an indication), and apparently acting like the tie-in comics and novelisations don’t exist at all. It’s therefore unclear how much of existing canon will filter through into Season 2.

That said, we can assume the former best friends aren’t on speaking terms – even if the series chooses to ignore Sam’s off-screen psychiatric hospitalisation twice(!) for Himiko possession, and a kidnapping or two.

Officially, if we stick to the games alone, we know that in Rise of the Tomb Raider, Sam wouldn’t talk to Lara even if her doctors would let her. By the time of Shadow of the Tomb Raider, Sam is communicating with Jonah again, but Lara simply wasn’t returning her calls. At a certain point after that, we can assume Sam gave up on reconnecting if Lara wasn’t making the effort from her side.

So yes, Sam Nishimura has every reason to be pissed, for two very good reasons.

Lara Croft is a terrible friend

The whole of Season 1 of Tomb Raider: The Legend of Lara Croft is Lara learning to get over her isolating tendencies; to treat the people who care about her with simple respect, like actually asking for help instead of treating it as a given, and communicating her actions instead of simply running out on people.

With Sam, the ghosting has been especially brutal because out of all the Endurance crew, Lara’s bff experienced the most trauma on Yamatai next to our title hero. Sam was betrayed by both Mathias and Whitman, set up to be burnt on the stake, violated by the invading soul of Himiko, killed cultists in self-defence, and before all that, she pulled strings (via her wealthy treasure-loving uncle) to fund the expedition when investors pulled out. Lara may have provided the directions to the island, but trust fund baby Sam made it happen, making her as culpable for the deaths and disaster as Lara.

The two friends could have found solace in their shared experience, but Lara is so wrapped up in her own guilt and pain that she never once asks Sam how she’s doing. As Reyes jeers back on Yamatai, “It’s always about Lara.” Back then, Sam instantly replied with a “That’s not fair,” but a few years down the line, that reaction is probably no longer the case. This after the pair were clearly each other’s biggest cheerleader, their ride or die, believing in each other and supporting each other’s dreams – typically when no one else did.

It’s notable in Tomb Raider: The Legend of Lara Croft that Lara reacts with especial prickliness when Jonah tells her to talk to Sam instead of using him as a message middleman. As soon as Sam’s name comes up, Lara immediately cuts off the conversation and closes her manor door. And when Lara briefly does calls Sam in the season, it’s solely for her own cathartic purposes. Again, there’s no asking how Sam is doing; it’s all about the “I” that is Lara. As a far more empathetic, less emotionally stunted person, it’s likely Sam will have picked up on the friendship imbalance. And, as a less easy-going and patient figure than Jonah, it’s not a stretch to say that her resentment has been quietly building towards Lara. For very good reason.

Sam isn’t a damsel in distress

This is the biggie. Sam clearly has a chip on her shoulder about being considered useless or inconsequential in comparison to Lara. While the topic is the source of her biggest argument with Lara in the Dark Horse comics – in the Queen of Serpents arc – it even surfaces briefly in the 2013 game when, before a mishap with a mounted machine rifle, Sam is in the process of explaining how Lara isn’t the only one who can be helpful.

The thing is, while Sam may label herself “a ditsy American troublemaker with a camera” in one of the 2013 game’s collectible documents, the reality is that she has kept pace with Lara Croft for years. As equals.

We should never forget that Sam and Lara had multiple “awesome adventures together” in their college years – backpacking, hiking, climbing and exploring the world. And as much as she’s shown enjoying the finer things in life, Sam is revealed to be as serious about work as she relishes play, having already filmed in some of the world’s most extreme environments, including the Arctic, Red Desert and volcanic regions. This attitude, in combination with her extroverted party girl nature, actually positions Sam closer to Classic Lara than the latest iteration of the character.

In 2013, Sam escapes the sinking S.S. Endurance on her own, and later steals a radio to communicate with Lara. In every one of her appearances in Tomb Raider media, barring the Ten Thousand Immortals novel, she’s proven to be driven, spirited, brave and resourceful, whether she’s fighting off an attacker with cupcakes, sassing her itchy-palmed kidnappers, defending herself against a shark, or stabbing herself to finally escape the presence of Himiko (all in the comics). That last one is especially important as Sam ultimately saved herself; not Lara.

Sam’s master improviser and problem solver status is even apparent in the first released image for Tomb Raider: The Legend of Lara Croft Season 2. While Lara is fully kitted out to face whatever is behind the door, Sam seems to be wielding an oversize lock or something similar. If Lara is Fred Astaire, Sam is Ginger Rogers because she does what Lara does… but essentially backwards.

As for why Sam is investigating the black market artefact trade, well, it could be to make a point to Lara, who has consistently sidelined her since Yamatai. Or, it could simply be that Sam is following a great story, in keeping with her professional ambitions; her own hunger for the truth – which once again mirrors her best friend’s primary drives.

As a side note, as we don't hear the conversation, we do maybe have to question if Sam actually called Lara in the final episode of the S1? Though it's likely it was Sam (reaching out to her previous savior in desperation, knotted up in complicated emotions regarding her own capabilities), it could also be a trick from a third party to get the brilliant archaeologist on the case.

Either way, given that Sam and Lara have a very different dynamic to Lara and Jonah, with the latter providing protection, reassurance and stability, Season 2 of The Legend of Lara Croft should have quite a different tone. Get the popcorn ready because if Season 1’s deep dive into Lara’s psychology was any indication, we’re going to get front row seats to the resurfacing of all of Lara and Sam’s resentments and other… pent-up feelings. Finally, after over a decade of dodging the issue.

We just have to keep fingers crossed that they’re both alive and reunited in some capacity at the end of it all. If Indiana Jones and Nathan Drake can have figures like Marion, Sallah, Elena and Sully backing them up in their adventures in various capacities, why can’t Lara Croft?

[pixiecaps]

i hope you're already asleep it's so late for you but on the topic of the finale ending honestly i understand why people are so upset by it, i think it royally sucks, but imo it was created entirely because they really needed some way to wrap things up and i think almost everyone would agree that it shouldn't have and wouldn't have ended that way had things been different and had the server not needed to end so abruptly.

like idk you KNOW i'm a canon compliant guy but for this thing specifically i genuinely don't consider it canon and think it should fully be ignored, and i think basically everyone involved would be fine with that. also honestly in my mind everything purgatory and after is non-canonical in that it shouldn't have happened either and the reset is definitely not canon so that makes it easier for me to ignore it completely. i think what players and admins stated about their characters is canonical within reason and otherwise i don't think any of it matters all that much because of how the server ended. like to me i know the reality is that that is how it ended and we don't have any other ending to go off of but because of the circumstances there's just no way i could consider it canon and i already spend all my time dreaming up ways to rewrite all the shit that happened before then, nevermind a garbage hastily written ending that only wrapped up one plot thread (the eggs) and didn't even do that correctly (it completely retconned so much about the eggs and i know a lot of lore got retconned and changed over time but it's particularly agregious).

idk where i'm going with this insane rant in your inbox i really don't i just wanted to give my thoughts on that ending and how i take it as a fandom creator because i often see people treating it like it was a legitimate ending even though they hated it and i'm like this is fandom!!! we can ignore it entirely!!! in fact many characters' endings explicitly defy that ending, that was just the way to wrap up the idea of the egg event in some way that made sense. i totally get people being upset by it, i was too, but i was also upset by the previous. five months? of stuff so i kind of can't be bothered to be annoyed by this particular thing.

again this is nonsensical i'm just saying i think we should all ignore it and i've been saying that since the day of bc it was just so obviously not the kind of ending that would've been written under different circumstances. let's all make up better endings forever and ever amen.

anyway hi pix if you're reading this in the morning i hope you got beautiful sleep and dreamt of snoopy and roier all night

hiii 🫶🫶🫶🫶🫶 i was in fact asleep by the time you sent this:3

that was another point i discussed with someone els where yeah it sucked because they had to wrap it up and “tie everything together” so i agree on that. everything with the qsmp ending wouldve been different under different circumstances.

you’re incredibly real for not considering canon up to a certain point where everything got messy. i think since we’re both very canon compliant people you can understand where im coming from with that frustration and being irked by how everything played out. it was going so well and then 📉📉📉. and heres the thing you know how much i love purgatory okay cause i do but god its truly one of those events where it shouldve been explicitly uncanon i feeeeel. so much of the lore it introduced and everything clashed with everything we had already established and not informing the creators of anything was such a poor choice. but anyways you already know the whole rant.

i do appreciate the reminder of its fandom who cares. i live by that i just get Even More emotional when sleep deprived and was like wow fuck everything and this stupid fucking ending so thats why i made those posts kkkkkkkk. but ye GOOD REMINDERS ITS FANDOM ENDINGS ARE OPEN TO REWRITES AND OUR OWN INTERPRETATIONS!!!!!!!

i did get beautiful sleep ty bell<3333 i hope you got beautiful sleep as well<3333

[chalicedefinite]

I have been on this tag since day one and the majority of the posts and blogs I've seen adore Louis. Pointing out canonical traits like him actively lying in Canon books and now the show as well is not being hateful or disrespectful. Saying episode 5 and the whole tale infact being revisited is Not fans of lestat being apologists. It is what Anne Rice canonically did with the Vampire Lestat and the books that followed. Louis is loved widely in this tag. Lestat is being hated on as a result of the villainous portrayal in season 1 which again Canonically is a tale (not a true one) being told both in books and in the show. A lot of people however took it too far with the lestat hate and started calling anyone who liked him names and then people starting to fight back and the rest is how we got to here. If there is no understanding to fans of both characters the two most loved characters in the show -who at the end of the series canonically end up together- then what the hell is the point of being in this Fandom in the first place? Please don't take this as a personal attack it wasn't meant as one but as another person's experience and thoughts of the fandom so far.

I’m going to be honest I find this very hard to believe that it was only just about liking Lestat.

I’ve gotten more hate and vitriol from Lestat fans ever since I’ve joined this fandom. I’ve never talked bad about his character and I make it very clear on my blog that I love him and that he’s my favorite character both in the show and in the books. And yet, because I calmly engaged with a popular blog’s theory about episode 5; everyday I wake up to hate in my inbox that I have to delete. Lestat fans have been nothing but disrespectful to me for no reason.

Im a Lestat fan myself and I talk about how much I love him all the time it seems and I haven’t been once called a racist. I’ve had anons accusing me of hating Lestat but never ones accusing me of racism. This is the second time someone has told me that Lestat fans are bullied for liking him when all I’ve seen and experienced thus far is the exact opposite which begs the question: Is it really because you like Lestat or is it something deeper that other people picked up on but not you yourself? 3. How is anyone’s rational response as a human to someone calling them racist for liking Lestat is to deny the systemic oppression of black people? This is the main thing that doesn’t make a lick of sense to me. How did we go from, “Users were attacked for liking Lestat” to “So a bunch of blogs are now starting to agree with and talk about how reverse racism is real.” I’ve gotten attacked for liking characters before and my reaction to that is blocking whoever is causing trouble and ignoring them. I got harassed to hell and back in the Voltron fandom for defending and liking Allura and never at any point was I thinking about how affirmative action is the real systematic evil plaguing society. If this kind of thinking was always in the back of certain people’s head as they were analyzing the show then it’s safe to say that people weren’t mad at them just because they liked Lestat. You can not properly analyze a show where a black man talks about how he was systematically oppressed for being black when you don’t even believe in systemic oppression yourself. How can you sit down and watch this show where Louis is constantly being put down by the white people around him, where he has to pretend to be his husband’s chauffeur, where you see white people burning a black neighborhood, where Louis and Claudia cant even sit next to Lestat and have to sit at the back of the bus and come out of it thinking that reverse racism exists in our society? Louis is the age of a lot of black people’s great grandfather, what he went through was not that long ago and the society he lives is still alive today.

4. What purpose would it serve narratively to have Louis and Claudia lie about episode 5? I’m leaving this question here because the last time I tried to have this discussion it led to anons hounding me.

[gloriousburden]

in this post… i am going to speak on the discriminatory/ignorant joke that was made in thor ragnarok. before i do so, i would like to clarify a few things:

i am a part of the group being mocked. i am roma, or a gypsy as most are more familiar with that term. some do find the term “gypsy” offensive in certain contexts/altogether, but i personally reclaim it and don’t mind being called it. (unless it is used in a derogatory sense, of course.)

another term my people are more known by is “romani” but i personally don’t really use that term. roma = romani/gypsy. but of course there is nothing wrong with using romani!!

since i am quite vocal on here about my dislike of thor ragnarok, i feel it’s important that i state that i am not using this discriminatory/ignorant joke to prove any sort of point other than this not being right or okay. do not weaponize discrimination towards any group. (even ones that you are a part of.) this is real life discrimination that affects real people, and those who face discrimination deserve better than merely being used to prove points on the internet. it’s not fair to the group being affected at all.

here is the scene/dialogue in question:

the context is bruce (who is dressed in tony’s clothing) mocking thor for wearing a towel/blanket (i really can’t tell which it’s supposed to be sorry everyone 😭😭😭😭) over his head as a disguise by calling him a gypsy. the joke is that the towel/blanket is supposed to resemble the headscarves that are a part of our traditional clothing.

why is this offensive?

this is offensive because headscarves are a part of our culture and have a significant meaning. similarly to a lot of other cultures, a woman will wear one to signify that she is married. (but it is also worn in other contexts as well. specifically to display our culture/traditions.) it is also offensive to other groups who wear headscarves. mocking cultural/traditional clothing is not okay in any circumstances. it makes those who wear them feel alienated, it makes them the laughingstock, and it also encourages discrimination/ignorance towards those groups.

it is specifically ignorant and wrong, considering that my people (as well as many other groups) have been targeted in hate crimes and mocked due to our cultural garb, as well as our appearances in general. countries have actually banned the use of our traditional clothing in order to get us to forcefully assimilate throughout history.

it also… makes no sense canonically and was deeply unnecessary. that’s what is the most upsetting to me. asgardians (thor specifically) don't even know what coffee is (diner scene in thor 1) but they would know what my people are and how to make fun of them? many real life people don’t even know who we are outside of ignorant stereotypes. why would someone from space (who doesn’t have much knowledge on humans) know of us enough to make fun of us?

(but thor is not shown laughing at/encouraging the joke, it is only bruce thinking it’s hilarious...)

my point is… thor wouldn’t even get the joke. they just went OUT OF THEIR WAY to make bruce make a discriminatory/ignorant joke towards a group that thor wouldn't even know about nor even understand the stereotypes we’re mocked for. it is just so ignorant and unnecessary...

although it is obviously not the worst thing that could be said about us and many would think i’m overreacting, i SPECIFICALLY find this offensive because mark ruffalo has been discriminatory to roma before and has been called out for it prior to thor ragnarok in 2015. he apologized for it, but clearly did not change as a person as thor ragnarok came out in 2017. this isn’t just an ignorant joke, this is mark ruffalo continuously being racist even after he has previously apologized/been called out for it.

why make such an unnecessary joke that literally makes no sense canonically??? asgardians don’t have much knowledge on humans/human culture. this was just both marvel and mark ruffalo going out of their way to mock us.

i was in genuine shock when i watched thor ragnarok for the first time and saw the scene. it’s a little hurtful to see characters from your favorite movies mocking your people… ESPECIALLY WHEN IT IS SO FUCKING UNNECESSARY!!!

once again, of course this is not the worst, most offensive thing i’ve heard and is only surface level. but i’m not going to downplay it and act like it’s okay. this one case stands out to me in particular because like i said, mark ruffalo has previously been called out for being anti roma.

i am not using this to “cancel” anyone, but i personally do not support mark ruffalo at all. if he is not racist, he is at the least very, very ignorant. i don’t know who was responsible for this exactly so i do not want to put the blame on anyone for no reason, but… i would say taika waititi is at least a little responsible for this considering it is his movie, and i would believe he has to approve of each scene/line of dialogue. this is one of the reasons i do not support him either.

unfortunately, this isn’t even the end of the mcu’s anti roma discrimination. maybe i will elaborate on it one day, but i know a lot of people already have on here. (specifically about the erasure of wanda/pietro being roma as well as jewish.)

i am more than willing to explain further to anyone who has questions/would like to understand more!! i am proud of being roma, but i often do not tell others out of a fear of discrimination. i have been discriminated against before as well as told i’m overreacting in the past when i’ve called out anti roma discrimination, so it took a lot to make this post. but it’s very important to share awareness, and that’s exactly what motivated me to make this post. if you disagree with this… all that i ask is to please be respectful about it.

[that-left-turn]

The richonne fans actually have lead the discussion on racism in the fandom and we pretend we don’t see it or reply with snark because we don’t really care. I am a vocal caryler on twitter who speaks against it and if you were there you would see that. We get drowned out by the others. There’s not a lot of us who speak against it over there. But it’s easier to ignore it to whine about not getting canon from simple gimple and Zabel. I found you because of your fic. That’s where I get my fix because we will never get it from those men. But that doesn’t mean the bad behavior in our fandom should be ignored. Sad.

I have no idea what Richonne fans do or not, apart from the people in my asks who tell me to stfu and add colorful insults to make their point. Educating people on why something is hurtful and how institutionalized prejudice works is a good thing. Calling each other names, not so much. Most people aren't taught about racism in school, just that "racism=bad" which isn't all that helpful in itself. That said, I don't think it's a competition between taking a stand against racism or misogyny. They go hand in hand more often than not and I'm capable of being angry about both injustices at once. I do "whine" about both things.

It's a mistake to think of Gimple as "simple." He's not a competent showrunner or studio exec, his writing is bad and he's an unpleasant person, but he's shrewd. He's been molding the franchise into reflecting his personal preferences for years, to the detriment of the shows and those who've worked on them. He has certain criteria for the people he hires and the ones who've predated his power of influence, he's done his best to shove out.

Getting canon is important. It's representation for middle-aged relationships which we get precious little of on TV. The 'older' couples we see are mostly supporting cast, there to be a foil for the problems the protagonist has; they're not the focal point of the show. Caryl are from a poor white background (Carol's grandma made her clothes and Daryl grew up in a shack/cabin) and the depiction of that social class is always dysfunctional and often criminal. That needs to change too and it could, if Caryl lead the way.

DA survivors finding love and being able to trust is also, again, something that deserves a spotlight. Abuse is shameful and humiliating, and debilitating. People who go through that in real life need the hope that Caryl can provide. They live in a very violent world, but they've found something good in each other, and the fans who have gone through similar experiences can also find the inner strength that these two characters have.

Story integrity. Audience respect. Discussion on the bad behavior of the men in charge of TWDU is important. I will always talk about racism (even if I lose followers and fic readers over it) and I will also always talk about misogyny and sexism. I know I haven't really gotten into ageism, but that's because my topics have largely been decided by "what's in my inbox." (Feel free to drop an ask. I'd love the opportunity to talk about 'fun things' too 🙃)

All these issues are the evil siblings of the fandom and the franchise. One isn't more pressing than the other and that's the reason why different factions shouldn't turn on each other. We need to lift each other up, as well as the characters and the women who play them. We won't get ahead by tearing each other down and that's why I try to focus on providing information rather than being angry at individuals who may behave badly.

When I was a kid, my mom always told me why she wanted me to do this or not do that, and it stuck with me, because she showed me respect as an individual of my own, even if I was a 5-year old. People are more likely to listen if you don't speak in anger, if you afford them their dignity and you're not authoritarian... and I haven't walked in anyone else's shoes. I don't know what they're going through, so I try to give the benefit of doubt as to people's motives for what they do/say. I'm not ignoring bad behavior. I try to counter it in my posts, even if I have minimal outreach. Change starts at grassroots level, you know? "Be like water making its way through cracks."

Thanks for reading my fic 🙏😊 I really appreciate that. I've been rewatching S11, so I can get back into writing Stick Figures, but it's not a season that makes you excited about its storytelling. Double edged sword since I need the little details as tie-ins to my 'red thread' arc.