#give or take a few interchangeable scenes for a chapter

[freesia-writes]

Ch 44: Full Circle

Master List ~~ Previous Chapter ~~ WC: 2.5k

Last chapter, friends. 🥹💕

This is a song that my husband and I love, and it’s so pretty, but the lyrics aren’t quite what I was going for this chapter, just the longevity of love. 😊 Death Cab For Cutie - I Will Follow You Into The Dark +Lyrics (youtube.com)

. 

A number of months later…

"The balmy sea breeze ruffled the tablecloth and made the string lights dance merrily above the jovial scene below as the clinking of silverware on plates punctuated the steady hubbub of conversation that rose and fell with the emotion of what was being shared. Some overly-optimistic sea birds hovered above on a swell, fastidiously watching for any dropped crumbs before swooping gracefully into another updraft. The setting was the same, the voices and faces different, but a shared sense of gratitude and contentment prevailed over all."

“I know,” Wrecker said dramatically, gesturing broadly with the drumstick of meat he was holding. “Right after I finish my porch, he comes up with this.”

“You cannot assume that his timing was intentional–” Tech protested fruitlessly.

“I’ll sit on your porch for you so someone can enjoy it while you're out working,” Echo interrupted, flashing a grin at Tech to release him from the increasing indignation Wrecker was goading out of him. “It’ll be great. I’ll put one of Hunter’s dusty old quilts over these creaky old legs and just watch the birds fly from tree to tree.”

“Your prosthetics are hardly creaky–” Tech returned, having gotten no more than two words out in a side conversation with Phee before being lured back in by his brothers. “Nevermind,” he said, more slowly now. “I see the caricature you are attempting to paint.”

“Paint? Oh, that sounds good. I’ll paint on the porch too,” Echo continued, undaunted. The Zygerrian beside Crosshair was smiling broadly at the interchange, his distinctive leonine face relaxed into inquisitive openness. Finally, he spoke up.

“You can paint?” His sibilant tone caught Echo’s attention, and he pointed an unthreatening scomp in his direction. 

“Anyone can paint, Ky’tal. Might look like kark, but–”

“Language, Echo!” Omega teased, giggling from her seat beside Breslin. His eyes sparkled with unspeakable depths of affection as he met her playful gaze for a moment before flashing a rude hand signal in her direction, much to her delight. Echo looked at Hunter, who was staring at him with an entirely flat affect, and opted to return to the main conversation. 

“Anyway,” he said, taking a leisurely sip from his wooden cup. “If you and Crosshair want to come paint on my porch, you’re welcome anytime.”

“It’s not your porch!!” Wrecker laughed, smacking the table with a bit too much gusto and causing a few utensils to clatter off their plates. Lyra jumped, her hand quickly covering her mouth in embarrassment – she still wasn’t unfazed by Wrecker’s jubilant outbursts. Hunter’s hand found her leg, giving her knee a soft squeeze, and she covered his fingers with her own, casting him a grateful smile. 

“Well it sounds like it’s my porch now…” Echo was relentless, and as the two of them dissolved into pointless arguing, Ky’tal shifted his gaze back to Crosshair. 

“What do you think? Want to paint the sunset?” He chuckled at the faintest of blushes that tinted Crosshair’s cheeks, then quickly rearranged his features into seriousness as the sniper fixed him with an entirely harmless glare. “Or perhaps we should paint guns instead…”

“Now wouldn’t that be just precious…” Phee interjected as Crosshair snorted, relaxing into his mirth and allowing the warmth in his eyes to show. “We can hang them all over our walls. Right, Brown Eyes?”

“Absolutely not.”

“Hmm. Well, I tried,” she sighed, shrugging and offering a belabored sigh of solidarity. Ky’tal laughed, a rich, deep sound, and draped his arm across the back of Crosshair’s chair. Hunter kept his mouth in a straight line to restrain his smile as he watched his brother’s shoulders relax a few inches.

“...a good find in a relatively abandoned sector,” Phee was saying, continuing her conversation with Tech.

“Allow me to gather some supplemental information and we can leave in two days, if that is acceptable?” he offered, trying and failing to hide the spark in his eye that always appeared at the opportunity for exploration and discovery. 

“Sounds good. I’ll prep the ship and update MEL’s interface,” she nodded, patting the back of his hand. 

“More pirate adventures?” Hunter asked, watching Tech’s eyebrows lower a bit as he regarded him from behind his spectacles. 

“It is not piracy,” he objected. “It is–”

“Liberation of ancient wonders,” chorused half the table.

“We know,” Omega added with a grin.

“If you’re looking for some more ‘respectable’ work, you can expand your module for the Defense Training Academy,” Echo interjected. “There are a handful that seem to be particularly interested in that field, and the more well-rounded they all are, the better.” 

“That would be enjoyable,” Tech answered, perking up again quickly. 

“Yeah. It’s been great getting more of our brothers here, where they can live their own lives and pursue what they want instead of being puppets,” Echo said.

“They do seem to thrive in their autonomy," Tech agreed. " "You’ve created an excellent opportunity for them to continue in their desired purposes while also allowing ample rest and rejuvenation.”

“Well thanks,” Echo said, a touch of surprise in his voice at the rather effusive praise. 

“Have you showed them the new armory yet?” Lyra ventured. Hunter chuckled, giving her a wink before turning to Echo for his response. 

“Armory??” Wrecker interrupted. “Where?”

“Oh, didn’t I tell you?” Echo feigned innocence. “Well… Lyra had an entire room of long-range communication equipment as well as a ridiculous amount of weaponry, remember? Apparently she’s not going to need it for her gardening and baking or whatever she does… So she passed it on to me for the DTA.”

“What! I’ve gotta see this…” Wrecker’s face was alight with glee, and he rubbed his hands together as though he couldn’t wait to get them on the goods. 

“You can look, but no touching,” Echo teased. 

“I would also like to inspect the communicators,” Tech added, index finger in the air.

"Sounds like getting conned by a pirate worked out in the end..." Crosshair's comment slithered across the table, and Lyra laughed, meeting his gaze with the tiniest flash of a smirk.

"Listen... He was very persuasive..." she began, but gave up quickly at the chortles that broke out. "Alright, I know... Silly mistake. But hey -- if you all think it's so funny, I can take back my arsenal."

Wrecker gasped loudly, and whether it was feigned or genuine, it was difficult to tell. Hunter laughed, resting his arm across the back of Lyra's chair and giving her opposite shoulder a little squeeze.

"Okay, Wreck. You can keep the goods," Hunter grinned.

"Oh, now they're yours to give?" Lyra teased, beaming as Hunter's eyebrows climbed up his forehead in surprise and admiration, and he lifted both hands in temporary surrender.

"Alright, alright... I guess I'm just--"

"The snack. The eye candy. The trophy..." Lyra interrupted, trailing off at the end as she wasn't sure what word to use there.

"Hunter is the trophy?" Crosshair mused, peering across Ky'tal's broad chest to peer at her again.

"Hey. Eat your peas," Lyra returned, earning a guffaw of delight from a few of the group. Hunter shook his head, eyes on the plate before him but mind far away as he marveled at the depth of her personality that had been gradually unfolding in the safe, steady comfort they continued to build.

"Yeah, Crosshair," Omega joined in. "Got to get your vitamins!"

"It's true," Tech interjected, a touch of mirth on his solemn face. "Peas are a fantastic legume made up of complex carbohydrates and quite a variety of vitamins and minerals. They also offer a significant amount of fiber, which can be helpful with digestive issues--"

"Ohhhh, so that's what's up his--"

"I wasn't finished!" Tech was unstoppable, brimming with the incredible nutritional breakdown that he was far too eager to share. "While often considered vegetables, they are obviously not, as I previously identified them as legumes. But they do stand out from vegetables with their high protein content--"

"You've got to be kidding me," Crosshair muttered.

"Furthermore," Tech continued, "They are rich in polyphenol antioxidants, which--"

"Okay, Tech," Hunter stepped in. "Why don't you save that kind of talk for the bedroom?"

"Peas and polyphenols?" Phee said, waggling her eyebrows suggestively. "We might need to leave right now..."

"I'm losing my appetite," Echo muttered.

"Alright, alright," Phee grinned. "You give us something better to talk about, then." And off they went.

“Hey, thanks again for all your help at the cottage.” Lyra turned to Wrecker, offering a warm smile as the group's conversation continued without them. “I can’t believe how easy that seemed for you. You’re incredibly strong!” Wrecker blushed and grinned bashfully, rubbing the back of his neck.

“Aw, it was nothin…” 

“Are you kidding?” Lyra continued. “To combine two rooms, maintain the structural integrity, AND make it look even better than before? It’s a huge gift. Really. Thank you.” Her face was earnest, voice sincere, and she rested a hand on his shoulder for a moment to convey the depth of her appreciation. 

“I’m strong too…” Hunter muttered, shooting her a roguish grin behind lowered brows. She laughed, leaning toward him instead and resting her head on his shoulder before looking up at him with unabashed admiration. 

“So strong,” she purred, only partially teasing. 

“Ha! I could throw you from the docks to the Archium!” Wrecker snorted.

“That is a physical impossibility, Wrecker,” came Tech’s taunt from the other end of the table, but Wrecker ignored him. 

“Besides… How are those office ladies doin?” Wrecker asked, waggling his eyebrows at Lyra as Hunter rolled his eyes with a groan.

“Oh, you left quite an impression,” she smirked. Hunter had brought a large crate of steaks, sausages, and roasts to the school for the end-of-term staff party with Lyra proudly on his arm. He’d given them one last opportunity to get all of their innuendos and flirtation out of their system.

A few of them had taken him up on it, but when they’d laid eyes on Wrecker carrying the huge crate on one shoulder with a single arm around it, Hunter had been instantly forgotten. They’d mobbed the large clone like gaja birds on a pile of mantell mix, squawking and fawning over how massive his muscles were and how wonderful his charitable generosity was, and Hunter’s allure seemed to vanish as quickly as the selection of meat.

His undecipherable mutter about their fickleness had been quickly quelled by the shock of Lyra grabbing both his arms and kissing him firmly, and when she’d released him, she hadn’t been able to stifle her giggle at the dumbfounded expression on his face. 

“Guess I’ll have to make deliveries more often then, eh?” Wrecker grinned. 

“Well you can find your own stuff to deliver now,” Hunter muttered with a harmless scowl.

“I’m sure they’ll find plenty of ways I could help out,” came Wrecker’s playful jab, resulting in a sigh from his brother. 

“Do you want their attention?” Lyra said, poking Hunter in the side so unexpectedly that he jerked in his chair and turned his joke of a scowl onto her. 

“No…” he said, softening as she reached up to stroke the backs of her fingers along his cheek.

“Maybe I’ll just have to keep finding ways to show you…” she drifted off, casting a surreptitious glance around the table, too embarrassed to finish her sentence. He leaned in, nudging her cheek with his nose. 

“Hmm? Go on… You were saying?”

She turned to nestle her face against his, whispering something in his ear that made him press his lips together tightly in a barely-restrained smile, but he couldn’t hide the faint redness that colored his cheeks. He pulled back to look at her, equal parts desire and love on his face, and wrapped an arm around her shoulders, pushing his plate away. 

“I think we’re gonna call it a night,” he announced, winking at Lyra, who dropped her head to hide her own blushing grin. “As Tech would say, we’re going to tackle a new endeavor together.”

A cacophony of responses broke out, everything from “gross!” to “oh yeah!” as Hunter pulled Lyra to her feet, ignoring the hoots and taunts as they made for the door.

They began their stroll down the familiar path, weaving through the homes of the island, and when they came to a flat, grassy knoll that overlooked the sea, they came to a halt. Lyra’s questioning glance was mollified as she watched him gazing far into the distance, both present and far away in his thoughts, and she leaned into his side, snuggling her arm through his and resting her cheek on his shoulder. 

He sighed contently, as though years of stress and turmoil were gently being washed away by the sea. Wave after wave settled his shoulders more and more, and he was struck by a sudden flashback of his encounter with a native Xyloan upon their arrival to the island. "Fragmented," she had said, assessing him with a keen eye that saw much more than just the surface, and she'd left him with some rather cryptic words: But even shattered shards find smoothing and settling in the steadiness of the sea.

A bit of mirth touched the memory as he remembered Tech’s delight at the “astonishing alliteration” when he’d shared the details of the encounter, and he continued watching the waves in silence, Lyra leaning lightly against him in quiet solidarity. He hadn’t understood it then, but now the sentiment seemed to settle into his soul, a comfortable, familiar weight that grounded and reassured. The sea was never still; it was constantly shifting with the winds and tides, and yet it was consistent, dependable, beautiful. With a steady roll between sand and stone, it softened the edges of even the sharpest fragments of glass, pieces that had been broken by the abrasive relentlessness of life.

Like him. 

And yet, throughout a process that seemed arbitrary or tumultuous at times, something was being formed. Something with a new purpose. Something to be treasured. 

A light breeze caressed him, brushing tendrils of hair out of his face and providing a cool contrast to the balmy rays of the setting sun. He closed his eyes. Inhaled a deep, cleansing breath. Let it out slowly through his mouth. Then opened his eyes with a relaxed smile. 

He turned toward Lyra, wrapping his arm around her shoulders and regarding her fondly. She said nothing, simply gazed at him with radiant affection, and moved her arm to rest around his waist. He pressed his lips to her hair in a long, lingering kiss, murmuring gratitude and love before pulling away. 

Perhaps he could allow himself to settle into a new purpose. Perhaps he could allow himself to be treasured. Perhaps he could rest in the deep sense of reassurance that invited him to be at peace. 

Their eyes met again, and with a simple, small nod from each of them that spoke volumes, they continued on their way, hand in hand. 

Hunter found himself looking forward to the future, whatever it held, knowing that he was where he was supposed to be. Beyond the shadow of a doubt.

.

A little animation from one of my favorite artists, @thattoothpick, that I thought of when writing this:

. The End.

Previous Chapter ~ Master List

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Y'ALL. It has been SUCH a treat sharing this with you after working on it for months. 🥹 THANK YOU for all the reblogs, comments, delight, and enjoyment along the way.

If you enjoyed this, I have two other full-length fics: a Howzer x OC and a Tech x OC. Both are PG-13 and similar to this one. I also have a full-length spicy Crosshair x Reader over on @spicy-clones.

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[catalina-infanta]

On Free Will in C.S. Pacat’s Dark Rise Series

James Has Free Will With The Collar

Recently I wrote an essay (https://www.tumblr.com/catalina-infanta/748214922159194112/the-question-of-the-collar-the-dark-rise-trilogy?source=share) on how I believed that the Collar was a consensual object between Anharion and Sarcean. I still believe that. I will further argue now that although I think the collar gets Anharion/James to obey direct orders, I also believe the collar is something that allows free will to its wearer and is not forcing him (compelling him) to do anything he does not agree to do, and that he ultimately has free will. This essay is an addendum to my last, so I suggest if you have not read it, you may want to read it first to understand the bulk of the reasoning for this argument of mine, but it is not necessary.

First, I will draw attention to the below scene (in the chapter where the collar is put on James by Sinclair):

Here, the two sentences say:

“He felt no compulsion.”

Period.

“He felt nothing at all.”

Period.

The way this is written is short and sweet for a reason, in my opinion. The sentence is simply “he felt nothing at all” not “he felt nothing at all when Sinclair ordered him…” This feels like a deceptive trick of writing to me. It is stated in a way to hide information in plain site; we are meant to think he is only not compelled here because Sinclair was the one ordering him around. But he says here that he feels no compulsion. Nothing at all. These are the ways writers trick us until they give us the final reveal and we are meant to look back and it all makes sense.

Another clue is in the below scene. We see James is not an automaton who repeats back Will's wishes (like his people branded with those “S”/snake tattoos must do – I have seen others mention a theory that they are snakes, not “s” tattoos). Instead, James’s personality is fully his own at the end of the chapter when he rescues Will. He willingly calls Will “darling”, therefore giving a personal twist to his phrasing without anyone telling him to do so (and he is not a mind reader for reasons I will explore below)

and then, James takes initiative to blast them out of the mountain (showing us he can choose the method of escape, Will doesn’t direct him how to do it).

Furthermore, below, James says he will rule with Will, by his side. He has agency. You can’t rule if you have no autonomy. If you can't decide anything you are not a ruler, you are simply ruled.

Why Was James Acting So Weird? Is He Brain Washed?

James was acting weird in the last chapter. What’s more, James’s mannerisms are different, yes, even different from the chapter preceding it where James rescues Will (calling Will “darling”, acts sassy with the others, etc). So, the final chapter could have been done by Pacat to show that James is brainwashed, but I highly doubt this. Instead, I think it is done to show 1) James isn’t acting weird because he has no agency, but because he believes Will remembers everything too, and 2) He is written strangely to obfuscate the truth. We cannot know too much about James’s condition right now as that is a giveaway, so Pacat chooses to hide it and instead has us focus on the turmoil inside Will in the final chapter and on his interpretation of James’s behavior.

[One clue someone brought to my attention that shows James may think Will already remembers everything is the scene when Will says “both of you” to Visansder and James; James knows what he is talking about (the memory where Sarcean said the same thing to Anharion and the Queen when he was arrested) and probably infers that Will remembers everything as well. He doesn’t know that Will only remembers a few small snippets. What’s more, perhaps James is calling Will “His King” and “Sarcean” because he simply remembers everything now and so Will and the Dark King have both become interchangeable in his mind. Will is now “his King”--perhaps he even believes Will expects to be called as such]

Unfortunately, we have very little description of what he was feeling, or even of his facial expressions in the last chapter; James’s actions often appeared mechanic. Very importantly, however, the five times he is described by Will in the chapter, he is described as “achingly genuine” with “blue eyes full of loyalty” and “as eager as Will” and feeling “warm and real against him [Will]” and, finally, saying something “with confidence”.

Sadly, all of these lovely things Will noticed are (in the same chapter/moments) doubted by Will, leading the reader to doubt too. However, Will’s filter is often unreliable as his thoughts are often just his opinion and/or the full extent of his real memories are concealed from us.

The thing is, if James has just gotten access to all his memories, maybe what Will perceives to be genuine is really actually genuine! We kind of know it is from James's point of view given what we read after the collar is placed on him; James's description of his experience wearing the collar seemed to invigorate him. I fully expect that after Book 3 we will be able to look back on these moments in book 2 and everything will make sense.

To that idea, I find it hard to believe that Pacat would call this unbearably erotic (above) if we weren’t meant one day to come back and read this as a situation that is…kind of romantic? Sexy? But NOT lacking in consent or love or taking place with a brain washed partner.

No, James imo has not suddenly become a brainwashed Anharion. He refers to him as Will in the below pic, so he knows he is with Will in the present moment as much as with Sarcean:

To my final point, more importantly, James BELIEVES that Will remembers too! That’s why his responses are so weird to us and to Will. He now knows Will was lying about who he was, so he must assume Will knows too and still is aiming for the same goals as the Dark King.

Hence why he thinks (above) that ruling over the world was what Will wants to accomplish, but it is NOT what the present Sarcean/Will wants (not yet, at least). Notice also that James’s answer to Will asking if he was telling him what he wants to hear (in the above scene) was evasive; perhaps another tool Pacat has possibly employed to make us THINK James is talking about one thing when maybe what he is really saying “yes” to is something else entirely?

Finally, I would like to draw your attention to this final question I have:

This scene where James was asking, “what’s wrong?” always confused me until I realized James thinks Will is on the same page. If James believes Will remembers everything (which I firmly believe based on how he acts in the final chapters) then this question “what’s wrong?” makes sense if he believes Will knows the methods of the collar.

It makes sense because when Will has a virtual panic attack upon seeing the collar on James, James doesn’t immediately try to explain to him the history of the collar to make him feel better (because he thinks Will knows it’s history). So, in the above, James has no idea why Will is so upset.

I wonder if at this point in time here, however, if James remembers and is questioning why Will discouraged the use of the collar and wanted to destroy it?

Perhaps it is as simple as James believing that this incarnation of Sarcean wants him to follow him (Will) first and foremost because he wants to? This is what Will said in the Throne Room. Perhaps James is thinking now it is done, why cry over spilt milk? It’s not the end of the world, after all. Or maybe James hasn’t thought yet about how Will hadn’t wanted him collared and is just too excited to learn the truth (thanks @tackletofset for this idea). Upon thinking further, it is also possible that James doesn’t have to wonder why Will didn’t want the collar if maybe Anharion was always the driving force between the two towards the collar, and Sarcean more hesitant? Or perhaps it was something else altogether? I mention all of this because if my theory is true, it will spill over into book 3 as they try to figure out each other’s feelings in the first half of the book.

Conclusion

Finally, as we see at the end when James reveals he remembers all in the end scene of the book (pic above), we don’t get to see the rest of the conversation: we don’t get to see them talk about what they both remember. That’s for the next book! And I can’t say I have any idea when they will both be on the same page. Hopefully soon enough!

In James saying “You are him”, it’s comforting to see that James believes Will (the loving and loyal person he is) and Sarcean are essentially the same. That Sarcean isn’t the demon the Light side made him to be, that he is worthy to be held in esteem. This bodes well that the Dark King is no cruel man, as Will is not cruel either. James is telling us something about Sarcean’s character here, and I believe him.

[wheels-of-despair]

Under Pressure | Eric x You vs. The Apocalypse | Series Masterlist

Chapter Eight: Deleted Scenes Summary: Someone may have forgotten to mention a few things... Words: 2.8k

One Month After Meeting Eric

"I want to invite your brother over for Thanksgiving."

You see Evan tense out of the corner of your eye. He's putting the finishing touches on a pasta dish he's about to bake. You're washing vegetables for a salad. It's the very picture of domestic bliss.

"Why?" he asks without looking at you.

"Because he's your brother, and he lives ten minutes away, and he doesn't have any other family on this continent. Letting him spend Thanksgiving alone would be a crime."

He heaves a sigh.

"Why do you hate him so much?" you ask.

"I don't hate him," he says quickly, sticking the pan in the oven and letting the door slam shut. He walks to the table and drops into a chair, putting his head in his hands. The salad can wait. You abandon the vegetables and silently sink into the chair across from him. "I just… we have nothing in common."

"You don't even know him," you remind him. "You only saw each other on holidays, right?"

"Yeah," he sighs, leaning back in his chair. Boarding school. His father had shipped all of his sons off to boarding school as soon as they were able to feed themselves. As children, they saw each other on Christmas and over the summer, where the older ones delighted in tormenting the smaller ones. Especially the one you married. Which is why he fled the country at the first available opportunity.

You cross your arms and lean forward. You've been eager to know the whole story since the night you met Eric, but have been afraid to ask. Evan doesn't like talking about his family, but this is driving you crazy. He looks at you with pleading eyes… and sighs.

"Is this the part where you huff and you puff and you try to blow your way out of this conversation?" you tease.

He chuckles, and you reach across the table for his hands. He takes them.

"The only time my older brothers ever included me in anything is when we were taking the piss out of Eric."

Your heart sinks.

"Don't look at me like that," he begs. "He did it to me too. We were the youngest. The weaklings. We were practically interchangeable."

"And it never occurred to you two to join forces?"

His eyes narrow, and he pulls his hands away to cross his arms.

"They would've killed us both," he drawls. "Literally."

"They're not here," you remind him. "And neither is your old man. It's just you, and the other brother who spent his entire childhood getting bullied. Do you really think it's a coincidence that out of everywhere in the world, millions of different cities all over the globe, that he chose to go to law school here? Mere minutes away from you?"

"Father probably chose for him," he scoffs. "Consolidate the disappointments. Dash the spirits of two pathetic birds with one yearly visit from the stone."

"Shut up," you say lightly. "He's here, he's alone, and I want him to come spend Thanksgiving with us. Will you at least consider it? Just this once? For me?"

He gives you a hard stare. You bat your eyelashes flirtatiously. His cheeks twitch as he attempts to conceal a smile. You poke out your bottom lip, clasp your hands, and bring them to your chin for a proper beg.

"Oh, alright," he laughs, "but only for you."

"Was that so hard?" you tease.

"That salad's not going to make itself," he gripes.

You laugh and toss a kitchen towel at him when you get up and return to the sink.

Eric's coming for Thanksgiving.

Two Seconds After Thanksgiving

The door is barely closed when you start missing your new friend. Eric's visit went so much better than you expected.

"Did you just invite him over for Christmas?" Evan asks from the couch, lying on his back with his hands laced behind his head.

"I may have," you admit guiltily.

"Ughhhhhh," he groans, covering his face with his hands.

"Oh, come on," you laugh, locking the door and going to him. You crawl onto the couch and settle yourself between him and the back cushions, resting your head on his chest and an arm around his waist. "You had fun."

"Yeah," he admits, wrapping an arm around you. "It wasn't terrible. But we don't need to make it a thing."

"He's your brother, dammit," you argue, poking him lightly in the belly. He grunts. "That is the thing."

"Why are you so attached to him?" he asks.

You have to think about it for a moment.

"He's easy to get along with," you shrug. "He's sweet, and he's funny. Your relationship, or lack thereof, fascinates me. And the hold that your old man has over him is devastating. He's just this adorable little brown-eyed ball of anxiety, all alone in the big scary city. Sound familiar?" Silence. "That's what I thought. Can you blame me for wanting to look after him?"

Evan lets out a long sigh. "No," he admits.

"Good," you say quietly, a grin growing on your face. "'Cause he's coming for Christmas. Deal with it."

Evan retaliates with a tickle attack on your ribs, and you laugh and writhe and flail against him. When you finally get his hands pinned, in a truly impressive self-defense maneuver, you're straddling his waist.

"I love you," you say fondly.

"I love you, too," he smiles.

Three Minutes 'til Christmas Eve

"God, I thought Peter would never leave," Evan complains as he flips the bedroom light switch off. "Take a hint, man!"

"So glad that's over," you yawn, exhausted from the Christmas party you'd thrown together. Evan crawls into bed next to you.

"My brother followed you around like a little lost puppy all night," he smirks.

"The poor kid was so nervous," you sigh. "I may have undersold the crowd when I invited him to the party."

"But you both survived," he notes.

"Mhm," you hum.

"At least you'll have each other while I'm away."

You've been working so hard to avoid thinking about the fact that your other half is leaving for an entire year, the reminder almost comes as a shock. You barely remember what your life was like before he came into it. What the hell are you supposed to do without him?

A moment of silence passes.

"What are you thinking about?"

"Our first date," you smile at the ceiling.

"Oh, God," he laughs, shaking the bed. "I was in such a panic, I would've taken anyone with me."

"Wow, that means a lot to me, thank you so much," you deadpan, rolling away from him to face the wall.

"You know what I mean," he purrs, sliding an arm around your waist and holding you from behind. "I'm so glad it was you."

"Me too," you admit, reaching for his hand. "Your old man never knew what hit him."

"I've always suspected that you might've hit him if he'd kept on that night," he laughs.

"I would have," you confirm. "Nobody talks about my best friend like that."

He sighs into your hair and gives your hand a squeeze.

"How do you remember it?" he asks.

"Fondly."

"Details," he presses.

"Are you asking me for a bedtime story?" you grin.

"Yes," he mumbles, shifting to get comfortable under the blankets but not letting you go. "Proceed."

"Once upon a time," you laugh, "there was a handsome but insecure Englishman living in the big city. He was a great doctor, but he never had much luck in the romance department, so he developed this really sleazy habit of hiring beautiful women with no personalities to be his fake girlfriends when his father came to town. One day, he ran out of supermodels and was on the verge of a nervous breakdown, so his entirely average best friend came to the rescue, and he had to settle for pretending to date her instead. She'd heard so many horrifying stories about what a bastard his old man was, so she came ready for a fight. They met him for dinner at a smoky shithole with really good bread, and every time that old man said something mean, she'd say something meaner. And just when she thought they were going to throw down and have a knife-fight in Soho, he laughed. 'Keep this one,' the old man said, rendering everyone speechless. And so the handsome Englishman asked for his best friend's hand each time the old man visited, and they were such a great pair, the ancient fuck never suspected a thing. The End."

"More," he groans.

"You asked for the story of our first date," you chuckle. "And I told it masterfully."

"Keep going," he whines.

"Alright, alright," you relent, pausing to plan where your story should go next. "The handsome Englishman and his entirely average best friend loved their little game so much, they started doing other things together, too. They went to museums and plays and pretentious art galleries, and she happily listened to him ramble for hours afterward. She loved spending time with him so much, she barely cried when her girlfriend of several years dumped her. Because the handsome Englishman welcomed her into his home with open arms. They cohabitated happily as the best of friends, until some ugly troll whose anti-troll procedure didn't take threatened him with a lawsuit and possible deportation. He was terrified of being sent back to England, with the rest of his awful and notably less handsome family. She was sick of friends and coworkers trying to set her up with total losers. So one day, they took a little road trip to admire the fall foliage and pick apples, and came home married. And they lived happily ever after, rotting their brains with trashy reality television and then trying to make up for it with documentaries and museum visits."

"Hm…" he hums. "Not bad. But I really think you're understating the handsomeness of this gloriously attractive Englishman."

"So sorry," you smile. "I'll do better next time."

He chuckles and kisses your shoulder.

"G'night, love."

"G'night."

Four Days After Eric's Birthday

"I've met someone."

"You're in an entirely new city," you joke, "I'm sure you've met lots of someone's."

"You're very funny, darling," Evan drawls over the phone. "But this one… this one's different."

You feel your heart sink through the floor… and several below it, then plummet into the earth. You knew this was going to happen. Your other half has been chosen for a year-long fellowship in Los Angeles, and instead of learning whatever the hell he went there to learn and coming straight back home to you... he's fallen in love.

You're allowed to see other people. Encouraged to, even. You just... stopped bothering after a while, when you realized that the best part of any date was coming home and complaining about it together. You thought he felt the same, since he'd never been out more with the same person more than once since your wedding.

"He reminds me a lot of you, actually."

Why does that make it so much worse? You reach for a pillow and hug it to your chest, hoping to stop the ache.

"Yeah?" you ask, trying not to cry.

"Yeah," he laughs. "But he's not as good at yelling at reality show contestants as you are. Your creative insults are unparalleled."

"Muchas gracias, Señor Spray Tan," you say sarcastically.

"I'm actually getting a bit of a real tan, believe it or not."

"Not."

"He's going to teach me how to surf this summer."

They're already making plans for the summer?

"That's great," you lie, tears leaking down your cheeks. "Can't really picture you surfing, though."

"Then I shall send you photographic proof!" he laughs.

"I can see the headline now: Pale British Man In Banana Hammock Gets Bullied Off Beach By Tweens."

"I'll be wearing a wetsuit, thank you very much," he says haughtily. You both laugh until it trails into silence.

"How was Eric's birthday?" he asks.

"Uh…" you chuckle nervously. "We had a lot of fun."

"Fun, in one of the most acclaimed restaurants in New York?"

"We didn't exactly make it to the restaurant," you admit, smiling at the memory.

"Why not?!" he demands.

"Some little bitch had just broken up with him. With a text. On his birthday."

"Ouch," he says.

"Yeah," you sigh. "He was pretty upset about it, so I dragged him to the arcade instead. We had a lot of fun. Ate a lot of fried food. He absolutely kicked my ass at that dancing game you used to love."

Evan laughs.

"Have you seen much of him since I've been away?"

"No," you answer. "He's busy with school and people his own age, why would he want to hang out with his boring-ass sister-in-law?"

"Because you're amazing," Evan chuckles. "And he really likes you."

"Of course he likes me," you smile, "I feed him."

"He'd like you even if you didn't feed him," he laughs. "The boy was practically glued to you at Christmas."

"Because you invited a bunch of strangers over," you argue, "and instructed them to throw their coats on his bed."

"You know, I felt awful about leaving you in the city alone… but knowing that you'd have him nearby made me feel a lot better."

"Cool, so you pawned me off on your little brother before abandoning me." Your eyes bulge. You didn't mean to say that out loud.

"No, you sarcastic ass, I did not."

A moment of tense silence follows.

"How are you?" he asks, his tone changing.

Lonely, heartbroken, miserable, would give anything to have had the hospital pick literally anyone else for this stupid fellowship and not steal your best friend away from you for an entire year and possibly forever. You hate everyone, you hate everything, all you want is for him to come home to you. Does that sound a little desperate?

"I'm fine," you lie. "It's kinda weird, though. Watching trash TV isn't fun anymore? I picked up a book the other day and read like six pages. Don't know what got into me."

Evan snorts, and the sound makes you smile.

"I miss you too, love."

A voice in the background.

"I have to go," he says. "I'll talk to next week, yeah?"

"Yeah," you breathe.

"Love you."

"Love you, too," you respond.

You end the call and sob into your pillow.

Five Minutes After Leaving Eric in the Hospital

"Hi, love."

"They're keeping him," you inform your husband, dodging slow walkers on the sidewalk on your way back to work. You've got so much to do between now and tomorrow at this time, when Eric will hopefully be coming home with you.

"Did you see him?"

"Yeah," you answer, "but not for long."

"How is he?"

"Not great," you croak, tears welling in your eyes at the memory of Eric sobbing into your shoulder. You hate that you had to leave him there, all alone.

"So he did try," Evan sighs. "Did he say why?"

"No," you answer. "The only thing he said was that your old man would probably enjoy reminding him that he fails at everything."

Evan groans.

"I think we should tell him, Ev," you say quietly.

"No."

"Evan, I'm going back to get him tomorrow, or the next day, or whenever they let me. He's coming home with me, and I'm going to take care of him for as long as he needs me to. How can I look this poor boy in the eye and ask him to tell me the truth about the worst day of his life, when our entire relationship is a lie?"

"It's not a lie," Evan argues. "We are married, we love each other, and he is your brother-in-law. He doesn't need to know anything more."

"And what if he tried to check out for the same reason you did?" you challenge.

Silence. Evan's darkest hour, now just a distant memory from med school, is rarely spoken of. You hate having to weaponize it.

"And what if he runs back to England and tells everyone?" he asks.

"Then it's the desperate ramblings of a suicidal loser trying to take the heat off himself," you spit. "Who do you think they're going to believe, Evan? Us, or him?"

Evan stays silent for so long, you hold the phone away from your face to see if the call got dropped. It didn't.

"Alright," he says eventually. "I'm going to wrap a few things up and try to get back there in the next day or two. I guess we should probably do this together."

"Good," you say, tone lightening. He's coming home. Everything will be alright when Evan comes home.

"I'll see you soon, alright?"

"Okay," you smile, feeling your spirits rise for the first time in months. "I love you."

"I love you, too."

[swapauanon]

What are your thoughts on Slay the Princess?

While I've never been able to play it myself, I think it's a very interesting and EXTREMELY meta dating sim/horror game.

The basic story is that you play as the Hero, who's on a path in the middle of a woods to go to a cabin. Inside that cabin is the Princess, whom the Hero must Slay to Save the World. Or he could Save the Princess instead. Or he could straight up avoid the Cabin altogether. Really, the choice is yours and the world is your oyster.

It's very unique as far as visual novels go in that, instead of having a bunch of generic backgrounds with interchangeable talk sprites, every scene in the game is technically what other Visual Novel's would consider a "CG".

Additionally, even if you know the game's story and all of the possible routes, figuring out what choices to make to go down those routes is still a challenge, which adds a lot more challenge to the game.

I also have to praise the voice actors. The VA cast consists of two actors, one who voices the Narrator and the Hero, and one who voices the Princess. The Princess's VA is by far one of the most talented VA's I've ever heard, as the Princess can sound sweet and innocent, snarky and sarcastic, conniving and sinister, primal and inhuman, or imposing and mighty depending on the route you take.

Finally, there are no "wrong" choices, and no game overs. There are endings that RESEMBLE game overs, but it's impossible to get those endings by mistake thanks to how obtuse it is to find them. You can get whatever ending you want, and the game will not think less of you for it.

If you want to try the game out, I think the demo is still available. It only contains the game's First Chapter and a small sampling of the opening of the Second Chapter, but playing through the demo a few times should give you an idea of how the game is played.

(Also, every route and ending has an achievement attached to it.)

I'm not really a big fan of visual novels, but I've been wanting to try and get the game myself in preparation for the expansion the game's going to be receiving later this year, which will add even MORE routes to the game!

[autumnalwalker]

Writer Tag Game

Thanks for the tag, @fearofahumanplanet!

Passing tag on to @cljordan-imperium, @ren-c-leyn, and @ceph-the-ghost-writer. And, as always, and open tag.

Do you write in order?

Yes. That's pretty much the whole premise for @thearchivistsjournal. As for Empty Names I'm a little looser, but still mostly yes. For that one I've had frameworks or dialogue snippets of potential scenes that I won't get to for a long time, but the main chapter writing is all in order. Well, except for one occasion, but that was a case of the first several chapters consisting of multiple points of view that were semi-simultaneous and could really be interchangeable in their order.

Do you start with something particular?

For The Archivist's Journal I had some very loose notes at the start of premise, setting/world building elements (but not so much that I'm not still figuring out a lot as I go and leaving some parts intentional unknowable mystery), and core cast. After that I just started writing an entry a day to keep time passing in-universe in sync with time passing IRL and (mostly) making it up as I go. I don't usually have an exact plan for what I'm going to write each day and instead I treat it as a sort of solo roleplay trying to just logically flow from what came before.

Empty Names was a case of coming up with rough ideas for characters and then trying to figure out what I actually wanted them to do that would give them an excuse for interacting, and then I made the world and plot to accommodate that. For writing the individual chapters I've gotten into the habit of writing a couple paragraph summary and then going back and writing to fit that summary (or diverge as may happen once things start playing out). I had a plan to make up the individual arcs/missions as I go based on prompts that I find online when I get there. That kind of happened with the arc I'm currently writing, but I've kind of heavily diverged from the prompt by this point. We'll see if I keep doing that or not.

How fully formed does your writing come out the first try?

Just about as fully formed as it's going to be (see next question). Aside from the occasional note or sketch of something that won't be gotten to until way later but I need to get the scene out of my head now, of course.

How many drafts do you go through?

One and a half-ish? With The Archivist's Journal just being a raw, well... journal is - again - kind of the point. I might look it over for spelling/grammar/word choice before posting, but that's pretty much it. For Empty Names I'll write a chapter and then leave it in my buffer until I have several more chapters written before posting. During that time I'll often refer back to or reread the prior unposted chapters while I'm writing the chapter furthest ahead in time. In addition to catching the basic technical issues this way, I'll sometimes make changes so that it works more cohesively with the things I wrote later. A few sentences swapped around here, a new paragraph inserted there, a rephrasing of a line of dialogue to be more in-character where needed, etc. No major changes so far this way though.

I imagine that if I were seriously trying to write a book for publication I'd be more rigorous about this, but since this is just something I do for fun in my spare time (but also trying to keep to a semblance of a schedule) the most important thing is to just get something out and move on.

Tell me about your process ?

I kind of said all that in the earlier questions, but I'll reiterate in numbered list format as per the format of the game.

For The Archivist's Journal:

Rough concept notes in a single .txt document way back at the very start.

Write an entry every day while keeping in line with what came before and what I've taken notes of in the past for logical consistency and continuity.

Do random google searches while writing so that I (sort of) know what I'm talking about (at least enough to sound halfway plausible/believable).

Take notes of worldbuilding elements to refer back to later, especially of things that will recur on a regular schedule (moon phases for the mist nights and shades, floating island docking days and times, etc.).

If it gets really late at night, decide whether to finish the entry the next day (while still also writing a new entry for that day) or split the entry in-universe due to The Archivist being too tired or interrupted to continue.

Half-Joking Bonus Step: Blame issues and inconsistencies that slip through on the Archivist character being an unreliable narrator and pretend they were intentional on my part.

For Empty Names:

Make up characters.

Make up world and plot as an excuse for those characters to interact.

Write down rough skeletons of various key scenes, most of which it'll be months at the very least before I ever get to them. (Occasionally add more to this document if I ever happen to get a conversation/scene stuck in my that the main body of writing hasn't gotten to temporally yet.)

Start writing the actual story.

Write a chapter over the course of (ideally) a week or so. (This time frame has gotten destroyed by the various end-of-year holidays, but hopefully I'll be able to get back up to that pace as the new year picks up.)

Leave that chapter in a buffer queue while I write the next couple chapters.

Review previous still-unposted chapters while writing the most recent chapter and make minor edits as needed/as they occur to me across all of them for cohesion's sake.

Post the earliest unposted chapter and move on to writing the next chapter.

[storybook-with-a-hug]

Marinette’s Closet Part 1

So I admit I’ve not been writing as much lately for my new chapter as I could have been. Suffering a writer’s block of sorts. However, while I haven’t been able to get into the mood to write, I have still been focusing a lot of attention onto my Fix-It Miraculously story. 

Instead of writing, what I’ve been doing is a bunch of character design. Now, this is both redesign of future heroes and new heroes that I don’t really want to get into at this point because major spoilers for my series, and also what I have the ability to share here and now with expanding what the characters wear. 

However, there are seasons and time passing and all that jazz so I’m dividing things up somewhat. Below is Marinette’s season 1 Fall wardrobe, ie, what she wears for the first few months of the story. Pajamas not included. I’ll talk about each outfit in more detail below the picture counting the top left outfit as (a) and then going across each row in order. Oh, and I literally googled “quick fashion base” and picked the first one that looked like it would work. The base was on really extreme highheels so I had to change the side of the foot in each one, but there you have it. I did it so I wouldn’t take forever worrying about posing and proportions and all of that and could just focus on the clothes.

(a) Marinette’s default outfit from the show. Cute and her, but also not much to say about it because we’ve all seen it a million times. I stated in the beginning of Origins that Marinette, the spring before the series starts, went through a “flower phase” where she was embroidering everything with flowers. So a lot of her left-over clothes from that time will have flower-print somewhere on them. Those that don’t are likely new additions to her wardrobe since spring, which I don’t think is all that unreasonable seeing as she’s a designer who mainly wears her own creations.

(b) Another official outfit of hers, though this one was from promotional art. I used it as her “dressing up” design for Adrien’s birthday when she was trying to give him his present. It’s a frilly-rimmed baby-t with red plaid dress and blue denim capris. I couldn’t make up my mind out of Marinette’s four footwear choices which one looked good with it so I didn’t end up drawing shoes in. But seeing as all pieces of this wardrobe are interchangable with the other pieces, she’ll probably end up wearing all the footwear with at least some combination of clothes.

(c) A top for warmer weather in a pretty pale teal with a pair of ripped jeans. The top is another carry over from last spring as she embroidered a bunch of flowers and leaves into the upper section. Her hair is also in twin plait braids instead of her normal pigtails. I mentioned her wearing her hair like that in a scene with Manon a few chapters back and while it’s not her usual hairstyle cause it takes time to get ready like that, when she is awake early enough and not otherwise busy, she can wear her hair like that as well.

(d) This is an example of her “business” look. It’s the sort of thing she wears when meeting with clients for her commissions, carefully selected to make her look more mature and professional and less like a little kid running a lemonade stand. She IS 13 and trying to start up her own business, remember, so to help people take her seriously, she has to dress the part. So a simple silver shirt and a jacket as well as a pair of black skinny jeans topped with wearing her hair in a bun instead of pigtails to help add to the professional look. 

(e) This one was one that I really hesitated on, because it’s not really her normal style. The colours aren’t her usual bright pastels and the aesthetics just don’t quite seem to match. But at the same time I was trying to look a little outside the box with the outfit as early teens is when a lot of people start shifting into the more niche styles as they try to define themselves and she is a huge fan of Jagged Stone, a rock star, rather than the teeny-bopper type music one would usually associate with a preppy/dreamy/hyper-feminine girl around her age. So I figured why not have her attempt experimenting a bit with her style and try a new look from time to time?

(f) In the Origins chapter, I talked about how Marinette really loves cute skirts and things, but because of her clumsiness she doesn’t want to wear them ever in public because she’s worried about tripping and flashing everybody. So instead she just has a couple of skirts that she wears only on the weekends when she’s not intending on going out anywhere because she loves them so much. This one here is a drawstring gathered skirt out of the same material that broomstick skirts are made out of, along with just a simple white blouse and a denim jacket covered in patches and embroidery. Including Jagged’s head-outline design that Luka wears on her right arm and her entire left arm being encased in a winding vine embroidery that she did last spring. There’s potential for more patches to be added in the future.

(g) Another cute skirt, this time a pink cotton skater skirt with a sleeveless blouse. On the white blouse there are embroidered a whole bunch of white flowers. 

(h) A pair of purple tights with sheer paneling on them and a top/hat that were inspired straight from Marinette’s concept art where she wore a cream off-the-shoulder dress. I changed the button on the hat to be a flower instead of a ladybug shell because Ladybug merch is only started circulating at this point in the series and Marinette purposefully is a little behind the curve on that trend because she’s trying to avoid drawing attention to the similarities. I also added some flowery embroidery to the top of the outfit. The tights were originally going to be more pink, like a sky magenta colour, but then it ended up becoming more purple when I coloured it in and at the time I was just eager to get on to the next outfit and figured I’d come back later and tweak the colour, then just never did and decided it looks fine as is. 

(i) This is just a white denim top and deep pink denim jeans. And another hat, but... the hats can go with many different tops, I just sort of picked which ones to show them on a little randomly. This hat is knitted, something Marinette made before Adrien’s scarf. 

(j) This one is a little more of a rock-and-roll look. No, that’s not a leather jacket, it’s a business suit jacket with shorter sleeves, a white tanktop and the skirt that it took me three hours to draw the little red flowers and golden vines patern on all the layers of. The tooth necklace is a real tooth and was a present from Noona Gina from her travels. 

(k) Not much to say on this one either, other than that in Origins Marinette expressed that she liked teal and pink together so that’s why I chose the colours I chose for the outfit. That, and apparently coloured denim was a big thing in the 2010s so that’s why all the technicolored pants.

(l) A chinese-inspired red jacket (look at the ties in the front) over the same white blouse as was in (g) only this time not tucked in and shorts. I know short-shorts were sort of the thing to wear with thigh-high socks during this time, but she’s also 13 so her parents didn’t want her wearing short-shorts and she compromised with mid-thigh shorts and slightly shorter thigh-high socks. Also a hat. 

(m) The grey striped part is a really thin, flowy material, the skiny jeans continue on the technicolored rainbow of denim. Marinette has multiple pieces of jewelry that she’s cycled through for longer than she’s had her earrings, she just doesn’t wear them with every outfit. 

(n) That cotton skater skirt from (g) is back with a denim shirt that she’s tied off. I strongly think there’s likely a big flower design on the back of her shirt, but I couldn’t make anything look good so I erased it and am leaving it up to the imagination of the viewers to picture what it could look like. 

(o) Same denim shirt, this time untied, and covered with a cream knit shirt and more skiny jeans, this time with flowers embroidered/silkscreened onto them. Not really sure if I like the necklace she’s wearing. Found it online and it sort of looked like the one she wore in the concept art and thought I’d put it on her here to make the outfit look less plain. Not sure it succeeded. 

(p) Just another look I found online that I thought might work. Mainly picked out because of the darker top and red scarf. I wanted her to have more coloured shirts than just those samey pale colours and this one had a nice accessory that came with it. 

(q) Black shirt covered with silver flowers and a denim skater skirt and leggings. Maybe something she’d wear outside the house because of the leggings? Still, more cute skirts and another 1hr+ to do the detailing on the top. 

(r) And lastly, a simple pink jacket over a white tanktop and skiny jeans. The jeans were meant to be the same ones as in (p) and the white tanktop was supposed to be the same one as in (j) though they ended up having different necklines when I actually looked at them together. But it’s more proof that outfit parts are switched and swapped to make different end results. 

So in grand total, that’s 16 shirts, 7 jackets (including one overalldress thing), 16 pants/shorts/skirts, and four shoe options. That’s a lot of ways to mix and match to cover three months of fall before we get into the winter clothes. Some of these clothes will carry over into winter with maybe just a change of footwear while other pieces will be put away until spring or gotten rid of as she rotates in new fashion ideas. I’ll be taking a bit of a break before starting in on her winter wear, but I figured I’d share what I had so far for anyone who happens to stumble across this and decides they’re interested. 

[ladylynse]

Have you ever written scenes out of order? And if you have, how do you do go from having them out of order to having them in order? I always try to write scenes in order, but that might lead me to getting stuck.

I have written scenes out of order. I don’t do it often, admittedly. I tend to have a vague idea of where I want to go and then figure out the details as I write, which is a lot easier to do if I’m writing in order.

If I do write out of order, I don’t always manage to include everything I’ve written, at least not without considerable edits. I typically get around that by not writing a future scene in huge detail, since filling in the details later means I can adapt it in more easily when I get to it, unless I’m confident about how it will play out (fun fact, I have part of a climax scene for a Doctor Who/Psych crossover fic I’ve never finished writing, because I know exactly how this one specific moment would go down). 

Alternatively, the other time I write out of order is when I’m not writing much more than a chapter or two ahead for where I think the scene will go in story, so it’s still at a point that I know everything that should happen in between where I left off in the story and where the scene will come. Meaning, I know where the characters will be and who will be in the scene and what mindset they’ll be in so I can write their actions/reactions appropriately. In those cases, I’m confident that I know enough to just write the entire scene and tweak it later as necessary, because it won’t be a major rewrite because one character is suddenly no longer present or circumstances similarly change.

If I am writing considerably farther ahead, where I’m not sure if I’ll actually be able to work a specific scene into the story but I like the idea of it, I’ll write out the bit of a detail of the scene that’s really niggling at me--a line or three of dialogue, say, and possibly a bit of what might happen around that, or a good chapter/scene cliffhanger (eg “Merlin’s eyes had burned gold.”)--and then just jot everything else down in idea form to be worked in once I have a better idea of what surrounds the scene. I might be fairly detailed, because I like the idea and don’t want to forget what I was thinking by the time I get to that scene, but most of it isn’t in fic format. 

If I know where I’m going and I’m not sure how to get there or just can’t find the right words right now, then I’ll skip a scene and make a vague note of what happens, or if I’m not entirely sure what happens, at least what happens next. Which is how I wind up with things like ‘vines [erupted]’ in one of my current WIPs with some unfinished scenes. Then, I can skip ahead without forgetting what needs to happen to get there. 

If you’re writing a longer fic that takes over a longer period of time, where you have characters referencing what happened yesterday, two days ago, last week, a month ago-- It’ll be worth writing yourself a timeline so you can do that accurately without having to comb through your fic to find every reference. (I would never have gotten through Shattered if I hadn’t done that, mostly because my fics tend to take place over 48 hours at most.) Then, if you do have a point in a future scene where you’re referencing what happened, you can do so easily.

[forabeatofadrum]

Thank you @martsonmars​, @cutestkilla​ and @captain-aralias​ for the tags. I am dead tired since I was at another Pride all day yesterday, but it was a lot of fun.

You know what’s not fun? Simon being dead! Have six sentences of the upcoming chapter of Time After Time/“damn Baz, you live like this?”:

“You will [look into it]?”

I nod.

After all, I cannot deny his wishes. If he wants me to find a place where I can be comfortable, I will find it. (Is it sad that I care more about Simon’s opinion on my happiness than my own?)

Even in death, Simon Snow has a grip on my life.

And I have some musings about Ebb & Flow under the cut, with the tags.

Wohoo, it is online! It’s being read. I am happy people seem to like it, since y’all might remember I didn’t always like it, but when I read it through before publishing I had a “yeah, this is alright” moment and the art made me even more excited to publish it.

I was an idiot though and I never gave the actual title to my artist, hence the & in the title now. (I guess I use them interchangeably anyway. Ebb and Flow or Ebb & Flow? Who cares.) (I did laugh a lot when I saw “and other Splatoon gibberish” as the subtitle.)

Title talk aside, I actually have a long deleted scene. I usually try to aim for six actual sentences on Sunday, but I guess I am still high on energy from posting and I cannot wait till Wednesday, so here goes:

Avalon has a big smile on their face.

Blaine was listening to some music, so he takes out an earbud.

“We’re gaming again!” Avalon says happily, “Is this the day you’ll finally join us?”

Blaine has his Switch in his bag. He nods and he joins Avalon. The theatre can be a bit of a maze, but Avalon knows the way and after a few weeks, Blaine’s also gotten used to it. The two of them arrive and Avalon introduces Blaine to everyone, including Mr. 21.

Mr. 21 is staring at him with a frown and Blaine immediately straightens up. Hopefully this isn’t the return of grumpy Mr. 21.

But then Mr. 21 gives him a nod and a smile. Others are also very welcoming. Blaine hears some names in passing, but since everyone already knows each other, they unintentionally ignore him at times. Eventually one person suggests Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, since almost everyone with a Nintendo Switch owns that game.

“We do have to use local multiplayer, though,” Blaine quickly says, “I haven’t connected my device to the Wi-Fi yet.”

After all, he mostly uses online play for Splatoon 2. It’s needed for that game.

It’s a lot of fun and Blaine manages to win one round, which leads to Avalon slapping him on the back. Everyone’s really good at Mario Kart, though, so there’s no clear winner. Well, the game puts a crown on the best player’s Mii, but everyone is doing great and that crown gets passed around a lot.

So, it was always an idea to have Kurt and Blaine game during The Street after they became somewhat friendly, but then I realised that that would mean that their offline interactions would come scarily close to the online ones. As in, if you’re playing on your Switch, your friends get a notification that you’re online and what software you’re playing.

Crap.

Now, we’ve noticed in the later chapters that Blaine can be quite dense, even when the blatant evidence of Kurt being Mr. 21 is in front of him, but this cut a bit too close.

I came up with a workaround: Blaine’s Switch wouldn’t be connected to the internet. You only get those notifications when you’re both connected, hence the “I haven’t connected my device to the Wi-Fi yet” part. 

But then I realised that Blaine would learn Kurt’s name, since names are displayed while playing Mario Kart 8. And since he’s also obsessed with Kurt (because of the loooove), he’d definitely recognise Kurt’s Mii. So unless I made Kurt play under a screenname, it wasn’t going to work, and we’ve already established that he doesn’t with Splatoon 2, so why would he with Mario Kart?

And that’s why I cut it. Now that they are dating, you bet they play games with other colleagues. Avalon is still the best at Mario Kart 8, though.

Tagging @quizasvivamos @blurglesmurfklaine @coffeegleek @esperantoauthor @otherworldsivelivedin @bookish-bogwitch @caramelcoffeeaddict @thnxforknowingme (get in loser we’re going writing!!) @sillyunicorn @wellbelesbian @excalisbury @artsyunderstudy@bazzybelle @urban-sith​ @you-remind-me-of-the-babe​ @dragoneggo @takitalks @tea-brigade​ @facewithoutheart​ @ivelovedhimthroughworse​

[lovecolibri]

I read what you reposted about ff, and omg I'm not the only one!. I read a lot of buddie ff, i think people're very talented in this fandom, but jesus, in the last few months is nearly impossible to read something with firebarbie in it for no reason at all, sometimes she's there and ravi or chim or hen no! She helps buddie It's the same thing they did with taykay between the hiatus of 4a or 4b, the friend that knows more of them and push them together without even knowing them!

Yeah, now that I have figured out how to do a search through the fic on my phone, I will no longer be jump-scared by untagged L or tay kay (unless I forget to check multi-chapter fics in a "view the whole work" format and get hit with it in the last chapter because I only checked chapter 1 like a doofus), but it really is ridiculous the amount of people who throw L in when Maddie or Hen would have worked better. Or they have her as the “bi-bestie” helping Buck or Eddie through their sexuality crisis, or, which given that we literally got proof that Hen and Karen enjoy dancing at the club makes me especially salty, taking Buck or Eddie to a gay club to “help” them in their realizations. 

I also find it particularly *hilarious* that in their single paragraph mentions they have to make sure people know they’re woke and don’t hate L,  the “stop saying L took scenes from Ravi, her and Ravie are NOT interchangeable” crowd also always have them listed together. It’s always some form of “Ravi and L did/said/were at xyz”, neither allowed to do anything on their own, forever occupying the same space in the same sentences, because the show itself made them interchangeable because there wasn’t room for L to be around in the first place since Ravi was already in that “5th main crew member in the truck” slot! She takes Buck’s normal place in the diver call in fear-o-phobia, she takes Ravi’s “probie struggles on the job and needs a mentor” storyline from Dumb Luck making it all about her being MAD the woman lived instead of a storyline that made sense like Ravi being worried he wouldn’t be so lucky next time and how to make sure he’s ALWAYS that lucky, she took Chim’s spot on the reality TV show call leaving Buck to be the medic with Hen which makes no sense and instead of getting Chim’s delightful commentary since we know he is a TV/Movie buff, we got her bitching about marriage being a crap-shoot to two married people and Buck who just wants to build a life with someone, she’s literally just interchangeable with anyone because she’s an extra body they don’t need, but KR decided everyone else needed to make space for so they HAVE to take things from other characters just to give her something to do.

ANYWAY, sorry for the rant, it’s just who I am as a person 🤷🏻‍♀️ I’ve been sticking to reading fic from season 3, or aggressively screening for untagged characters (they do it with Shannon too, particularly when she’s being bestie co-parents with Eddie) and exiting the fic if needed. This show has so many great women in Buck and Eddie’s lives, that I think it’s ridiculous when tay kay or L are the ones used to bring them together. Also a fun note, you almost never see the same with Ana being besties and helping Buck and Eddie get together, and maybe people should think a little bit about why tay kay and L get treated differently. Because I can bet it has something to do with them being a) white, b) “girlbosses” and “badasses” (while Ana is a teacher with a soft voice who wears soft floral clothes and her ableist remarks fly more under the radar), and c) headcannoned as“bi-besties” before the show had them kissing on Buck. 

[thewatercolours]

!

😅 🦅 🤩

What's a story or scene you've created that you're a smidge embarrassed exists?

I suppose that, when it comes to fic, there are only two I've ever posted only to change my mind and remove them. The first was that tiny scene with Sir Graham asking the guards for help on how to tell them apart, and them playing up being offended that he even needed to ask, being shocked at him saying they all looked the same, etc. Chapter Four of all things made the same joke better, I didn't have fun writing it, and I wasn't impressed with the way the scene played, so I judged it was ok to stamp it with the mental "At least you tried" stamp and take it down. The other was, of course, the outline of the escape chapter in Goblin Graham. I was having trouble getting Graham to be as mobile as he needed to be for that scene, and finally settled on the walking on his hands thing because it felt like a natural progression from the previous chapters establishing how interchangeable goblin hands and feet could be. However, set entirely the wrong tone, and I was feeling stymied with that scene as it was, so I just took it down. Thankfully the idea that goblins are more resilient to injuries and that he could wrap it up and wear a metal boot occurred to me before I wrote the next bit out - wouldn't want to have Graham descending a mountain walking on his hands!

As an aside: for my original fiction, I have a policy that I never delete anything longer than a few words, and I maintain two files for the purpose. Most stuff that's too embarrassing (or simply doesn't work in some other way) goes in the "Museum" file, which I sometimes wander through and find things that should be restored after all, or which are just fun to read for their own sake. But there is also the "Grand Hall of Banishment" file, which has only two scenes in it, which I remember - things that are so bad I never want to read them ever again, and just the thought of them makes me want to give up. I could delete them, but that's not a habit I want to get into.

Do you outline fics or fly by the seat of your pants?

Or some unholy combination thereof? Any and all of the above! It varies from story to story, session to session, passage to passage. I remember once hearing that some writers thrive from an unchanging routine, an other thrive from the constant reinvention of their routine. I'm definitely one of the second group! I have huge outlining files and spreadsheets, I have files with three sentence guidelines at the top, I have scenes that popped out of nowhere.

Who is your favorite character to write?

For fic? Graham, if it wasn't obvious. I have one friend who doesn't read my fic but supports me in writing it, and as far as she's concerned, this endeavour is called "Graham." "What were you writing? Was it Graham?" "How's Graham going?" "What's Graham doing?" (The answer is blushing, rolling his eyes, introspecting, and using filler words too often.)

For original fiction, it's Alain. I can't judge the quality of this WIP, but that guy gives me a lot of fun to write. I just hope I can avoid "you-can-tell-he's-the-author's-favourite" syndrome, since he's not the protagonist.

[dreadfutures]

aight let‘s talk ao3 tags again

the very nice tag wrangler I’ll be quoting from has given me permission to share their kind and thorough responses (all bolding/emphasis is mine) without identifying information. and we very nicely go through some of my own tags from my long fic Dead Pasts, Dread Futures. Many, many thanks to this wrangler for explaining so much to me.

Anyway. I present these discussions as a peacable offer of: these are many writers’ concerns, and they are valuable, and worth considering. don’t dismiss concerns about the tag limit off hand, and don’t insist that edge cases don’t matter.

tldr; at the moment, after all this discussion and back and forths and bullying, I still believe that having 75 tags, period, as the limit across ALLCharacters/Relationships/Fandoms/Additional Tags penalizes longfics. Period. If it were even a limit of 100 tags, or broken down by Tag Type, it would be a little more forgiving. For advertising and for content filtering purposes, it only helps writers and fic visibilty to be specific and thorough in tags. A limit like this just so clearly has the potential to negatively affect large fandom/large ensemble/long fics.

It feels like this decision is being very broadly based on a "for the majority" mindset, which has never been what AO3 is about, without actually physically looking at the kinds of fics it will affect. The tag system on AO3 has been able to give fic filtering and reader-judgement a nuance that no other platform has accomplished, and longfics and large ensemble fics still, I think, depend on that as both a courtesy and necessity. I saw the rough math someone did and know that almost all fics currently on AO3 are <25k or something like that, and sure, for the average oneshot, or for even a fic <100k, a tag limit that's very strict across all tag categories probably won't be felt at all. But it's clearly something that people who write certain types of fics, and take them very seriously, will feel. Like I genuinely don't want to have a million tags. I want to tag relevant content that allows potential readers to filter & include & exclude my fic as they so choose, but also, if it does show up in their search, I want to give them the information they want to be able to decide if they want to read my fic or not. I don't want to have to put all my content warnings into a giant summary, or into a giant author's note that grows and grows. The tags have been a very helpful way of accomplishing those. Being able to cut down on parallel/synned tags is great, but it still seems like longfics that deal with multiple fandom entries, large casts, and require content warnings will butt up against that limit very quickly.

tag limit discussions:

- long fic writers adding tags as they go

- writers of franchises with many installments and ensemble casts

- writers with extensive content warnings

- use of tags to clarify a filtered tag

- use of tags to demonstrate how content is handled

off the bat - stop being jerks

look, I know objectively fics don’t need to be tagged at all. I lived in the wild west, too, when “lemon” meant anything from the merest mention of arousal to an explicit vanilla sex scene to all out dead dove craziness. a large part of me still is of the opinion that readers should just read shit, and if they decide they don’t like it, just dip. but that’s not what we’re about here. tagging is a kindness that we voluntarily undertake, and it’s also a form of advertising.

tags are useful for their specificity, for filtering and exclusion purposes

(that’s one of the cruxes of the arguments both pro-shippers and antis make: you can filter things! But you can only filter things if they’re tagged.)

I also understand that a few asshole writers have ruined this for all of us by purposefully adding so many tags it slows down the site and makes pages fail to load and hides other fics because the tags take up 10 pages. i also am frustrated with kinkmemers who just have prompt fill fic dumping grounds that span multiple unrelated fandoms and are impossible to navigate.

...the answer is not to suggest to writers that we put all our content warnings and pairings and etc. in our summaries, or our A/Ns, or to insert a first chapter that is a placeholder summary/tags page/world state. tags are useful for their specificity, for filtering and exclusion purposes.

I also have been dealing with people being murderously angry, and super self-righteous and targeting and mean about my own tags, and tags in general. people who are anti-tag are being giant fucking dicks about it. like get over yourselves and let’s just talk about a website function lol. tags are useful for their specificity, for filtering and exclusion purposes.

THE ANSWER IS NOT TO GET RID OF TAGS.

Alright, so now that we’ve gotten that flippin’ straw argument aside.

The next thing anyone has been doing is going to my page and critiquing my tags. Let’s address redundant tags.

(the wrangler has done this nicely! no ridicule necessary!)

using my fic as an example:

If you tag your fic Female Lavellan/Solas (only), it will show up in the following searches: Inqusitor/Solas, Female Inquisitor/Solas, Lavellan/Solas, Female Lavellan/Solas.  If you tag your fic Inquisitor/Solas (only), it will show up only in the Inquisitor/Solas search and in none of the others.  If you tag with the most specific version, it will show up in the more general versions, but not the other way around. So there's no real reason to tag with the more general tags.

Though I will point out that if you don't use the canonical tag      and tag your character or relationship with a custom name it will      be synned to the nongendered version, because at some point the DA      wranglers decided that they didn't want to make gender      assumptions.  So "Annabelle Lavellan" will be synned to "Lavellan      (Dragon Age)" rather than "Female Lavellan (Dragon Age)", and      someone searching for works with specifically "Female Lavellan"      won't see it.

Response: In the fanfic writers server I'm in, we've talked about how tags work and are supposed to work extensively in the past.  There's just always been a lot of confusion, which I think has been added to when people go and try to double-check for themselves and find instances where this treeing/synning is broken. Someone put out this guide (also here) for AO3 meta text this year, which has been referred to by multiple people in the server, and it says:

What if you wrote a fic for something where there's a movie based on a book, but the movie's really different, and you've used both things that are only in the movie and things that are only in the book? In that case you either tag your fic as both the movie and the book, or see if the fandom has an “all media types” tag and use that instead of the separate tags. If the fandom doesn't have an “all media types” tag yet, you can make one! Just type it in.

“All media types” fandom tags are also useful for cases where there are lots of inter-related series, like Star Wars; there are several tellings of the story in different media but they're interchangeable or overlap significantly, like The Witcher; or the fandom has about a zillion different versions so it's very hard, even impossible, to say which ones your fic does and doesn't fit, like Batman. Use your best judgement as to whether you need to include a more specific fandom tag such as “Batman (Movies 1989-1997)” alongside the “all media types” fandom tag, but try to avoid including very many. The point of the “all media types” tag is to let you leave off the specific tags for every version.

Which I believe is in direct contradiction to guidance to use the most specific tags, so that's definitely one source of confusion. The most recent ao3 meta text guide (https://archiveofourown.org/wrangling_guidelines/2 I think this one) doesn't present itself in a way that makes this clear for writers tagging their own works. The way authors usually go about tagging things (and what's in the FAQ) is to start typing into one of the boxes and look for what populates the drop down, which doesn't lend itself to knowing that there are trees, or knowing what tags are interrelated (it seems like a whole grab bag of tags get suggested, some in-fandom and some outside of fandom, some canon/parent/meta and some children/random freeform, in just about any field you start typing in).

I'm not sure what can really be done about this. Many of us have turned to ao3-comment-of-the-day and their posts about using Tags, and various sources on google, and have clearly come up with a whole load of conflicting advice.

Fundamentally, finding parent/meta tags for a tag as you’re tagging a fic is NOT clear to writers. The fact that a nested and a meta tag can both be suggested one after the other when filling in tags largely contributes to redundant tags.

Writing for Multiple Fandom Entries

Here’s what a tag wrangler had to say about my fandoms:

As with the relationship tree, you can look at the fandom tree  here:      https://archiveofourown.org/tags/Dragon%20Age%20-%20All%20Media%20Types  and see how the fandom tags are related. Going back to your story Rogasha'ghi'lan as an example, it's tagged with Dragon Age: Inquisition, Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: The Last Court.  But as I said, you only need to tag with the lowest relevant level(s) on the tree in order for your fic to show up under the higher levels.  So if you tag with      Dragon Age: Inquisition and Dragon Age: The Last Court, it will show up not just under those categories, but also under Dragon Age (Video Games) and Dragon Age - All Media Types.  And of course because you've tagged with the specific, if someone searches under, say, Dragon Age (Video Games), but doesn't want Inquisition or Last Court fic, they can use the exclude filter to show only the earlier games.

(So that's two more tags you can remove with no effect on searchability!)

In my (but not only my) own case, I am indeed writing for Origins, DA2, Inquisition, and Last Court extensively within the same fic, so I should be tagging for all of those, specifically, still. In order to make sure my fic is seen by the correct fans, I need multiple specific tags.

Longfic Tag Bloat (adding tags as you write a fic)

And like many other longfic writers, even if I narrow down my character tags only to those with dedicated character arcs longer than 5 chapters, I still have Loads & Loads of Characters (including Dalish from the Chargers!).

A lot of longfic writers I know add characters, relationships, and content warnings as they go along.

At 170 chapters/580k words, Dead Pasts had a ton of important relationships (for example, like Vivienne & Lavellan), and as a story it's nowhere near done. I found myself planning an arc from 171 onward that would introduce a very important relationship (Felassan & Lavellan). This is how longfics end up with so many, many, many character tags and relationship tags, which is another major criticism people seem to have about "people who abuse tags."

A solution that people propose online is "split your fic." Which is actually what I ended up doing...but the old relationships and fandoms from DPDF still apply to Rogasha'ghi'lan, so Rogasha'ghi'lan will have the same number and more tags than DPDF.

If I hadn't split the fic, I would have just kept adding tags to Dead Pasts...and still had the same problem of continually adding tags. They're not superfluous tags: someone who wants to see a plot that is deeply influenced by Vivienne & Lavellan will find that in my fic; someone who is looking to see a major Felassan & Lavellan friendship grow and drive plot will also find that in my fic.

My fic is long; there are other fics that are longer, or are going to be longer, with casts that are just as large or larger, with many relationships, and that's not even talking about content warnings.

Polycule / Relationship Tags

"Tagging a polycule like Iron Bull/Dorian/Lavellan requires four      tags: Bull/Dorian/Lavellan, Bull/Dorian, Bull/Lavellan,      Lavellan/Dorian"

This assumes that people who like Lavellan/Dorian will want to read Iron Bull/Dorian/Lavellan, which is often not the case.  If your story Is Iron Bull/Dorian/Lavellan, tag it that way!  It doesn't make any sense to me to tag with the pairs as well unless the story would be of interest to people who read for that pair, or unless that pair relationship is a big step in the story (like, if you have established Lavellan/Dorian, and then they bring in Bull, you might tag for both that pair and the trio). I mean, you can tag how you like, there's no requirement that tags correspond to content. But for me, personally, if I search on Dagna/Lace Harding (I am weak for dwarf women!) I do not want to get a Dagna/Lace Harding/Sera fic.

My personal tastes don't include poly fics, but several writers I know who write poly fics are adamant that: tons of readers will not know of the possibility of the poly fic until it shows up in a search result, and the individual relationships often are significant to the fics, especially in fics that are not oneshots. For example, a great number of "fav fics" are stumbled-across! We aren't interested in the Sera/Dagna/Lace polycule ourselves, but someone might not have considered it, found it, and said, "Hey! That's my new favorite." But if polycules are segregated and only searchable by the polycule itself, alas, what's the option for visibility at all if not tagging it as Lace/Dagna in addition?

Additional Tags

Knowing when something is a "character" and when something is "additional"

Knowing that "Warrior Lavellan" (or the [Name] Mahariel) would be more useful in an Additional Tag vs. a Character Tag is also something I'm not sure how we're supposed to know? Like, I'm glad to know it now, but it's definitely not at all obvious without you telling me why it would be more useful in Additional vs in Character. Especially when to me: Warrior Lavellan is a character, and the fact that it populated the Character tag for me says that it's a Character. Because like I said, the guidance has been: start typing, and if it appears in the drop down, use it. Or, for example, my friend has the Well of Sorrows personified as a Character. Like an actual character. Does that have to go under Additional Tags, or as a Character? How do I know?

Additional tags as tone/content indicators

A lot of writers / readers have approached the Additional Tags as a surface-level overview of understanding how an author is approaching many topics concerned in the fic. Like, Vivienne is a character in my fic, but specifically I am Vivienne-positive, which I feel is important to denote because she's important to my fic, and she's a divisive character. Mood/tone/theme indicators like "Pro-Vivienne" or "we are Vivienne-positive in this house" (or like Male-Female Friendship, or "Expansive Lore" vs "Lore - Freeform" which denote different things to me) in tags (which in the comments section on the ao3 blog post get derided as "chatty tags") are still important to me, though they're useless or far less likely to be used for filtering. (I had the thesis of the conflict of my fic: “empathy is the enemy of free will” “but hope is a choice” as “chatty tags,” among some that were more mundane but important: “sera shows up late in fic”)

More seriously, there are fics that have content warning tags for filtering purposes but also clarify those content warnings to give context to readers and allow them to make a decision whether or not the content actually fits their preferences, ie, one that specifies domestic abuse as a tag (which would be in the Additional Tags) for filtering purposes but also specifies "domestic abuse not present in x relationship" (which would also be in the Additional Tags, but is useless for filtering purposes, but is immensely helpful and demonstrably used by readers to decide if they're going to even bother reading the author's note of that fic).

People are also nervous that not being able to thoroughly tag content warnings is going to end up with unhappy readers amid all the purity culture flaming that's going on lately.

Like, personally I err on the side of "suck it up, reader, and just read and find out," for a lot of things (not talking about content warnings, but talking about mood/tone additional tags), but also, given that there is already a venue here to let readers know what they're in for...taking that away sucks.

I hate a giant fic summary as much as people hate 10 pages of tags, but at least one can hide tags in their preferences, and likewise the thought of starting a fic up front with a giant author's note that gets continually updated with content warnings also isn't super appealing. Leading with a giant author's note that lays out: this is my world state and this is my character's spec and this is my character's background so you know how I'm going to approach this and these are all of the content warnings for the fic as a whole, just feels like getting into "My Immortal" territory. There's definitely a balance to be had between the art of writing a summary, what to include in an author's note, and what to include in tags, but this still seems like it's going to be fairly limiting for writers in these large franchises, especially for longfics that span a lot of topics.

It feels like this decision is being very broadly based on a "for the majority" mindset, which has never been what AO3 is about, without actually physically looking at the kinds of fics it will affect. The tag system on AO3 has been able to give fic filtering and reader-judgement a nuance that no other platform has accomplished, and longfics and large ensemble fics still, I think, depend on that as both a courtesy and necessity. I saw the rough math someone did and know that almost all fics currently on AO3 are <25k or something like that, and sure, for the average oneshot, or for even a fic <100k, a tag limit that's very strict across all tag categories probably won't be felt at all. But it's clearly something that people who write certain types of fics, and take them very seriously, will feel.

Like I genuinely don't want to have a million tags. I want to tag relevant content that allows potential readers to filter & include & exclude my fic as they so choose, but also, if it does show up in their search, I want to give them the information they want to be able to decide if they want to read my fic or not. I don't want to have to put all my content warnings into a giant summary, or into a giant author's note that grows and grows. The tags have been a very helpful way of accomplishing those. Being able to cut down on parallel/synned tags is great, but it still seems like longfics that deal with multiple fandom entries, large casts, and require content warnings will butt up against that limit very quickly.

[frosteee]

Undertaker & Ciel’s Relationship (so far)

I’ve mentioned before in previous posts, and other people in the fandom have talked about it also (way before me, so I’m tagging on lol) that UT doesn’t see the Phantomhive twins as individuals, but simply members of the Phantomhive family. 

That got me thinking about how UT has treated O!Ciel so far, leaving R!Ciel to the side for now. 

Talking with @frederickabberline​ got me to realise that, aside from maybe one or two exceptions, UT refers to everybody by some title or other, usually their job (e.g.: ‘Mr Butler’ for Sebastian, ‘Earl’ for O!Ciel). And when he does refer to someone by name, which is exclusively or pretty much exclusively the Phantomhives, he always attaches that last name. 

For example, most recently, when addressing Frances, even though she married out of the Phantomhive family and became a Midford, UT still addresses her as ‘Lady Frances Phantomhive‘. It’s as if the man is incapable, or unwilling, to personally recognise anyone who is not a Phantomhive.

In our discussion, frederickabberline mentioned that this detachment could be a deliberate/subconscious act for UT to protect himself from further heartache. His glee at other’s expense, leading to very, very problematic comments, could also be an extension of this. Still not excusable, but it’s an explanation.

So, how has this mindset affected his relationship with O!Ciel so far?

The Phantomhives are interchangeable to him (AKA The Amorphous Blob of Phantomhives)

On the surface this can be seen as a good thing. After all, to favour one twin over the other for x reason, as Lizzie acknowledges to herself, is inherently selfish and unfair to the other person, no matter how much of an honest or natural feeling it is.

UT does not have such a preference. When he meets O!Ciel in the Chapter 131 flashback, he calls him ‘Little Phantomhive’ and cannot tell whether he is the younger or elder brother, before stating that he doesn’t care which, not because he likes them equally but because they are Phantomhives.

As far as he is concerned, the twins are mere parts in the amorphous, ever-growing Phantomhive blob. They have no identity outside of being Phantomhives, the same as Frances. He had no special bond with either twin because the only connection between them and himself that mattered was their family name.

If UT was interested in getting to know either twin as a person, like the opportunity he had in the Ch.131 flashback, he would have attempted to seriously differentiate the two. 

While he does ask which twin O!Ciel is, he does it as a rhetorical question, a joke, and then immediately follows it by dismissing the question altogether as he has already decided it doesn’t matter.

More unsettlingly, it appears UT is so disinterested in the development (physical and otherwise) of the individual Phantomhives, that to his eyes they are unchanging. Though UT does remark on O!Ciel’s small stature a few times, this is spoken like/treated as a joke more than an observation from interest.

[There are very rare exceptions to this, but I’ll get into those later.]

This is shown when he responds to Frances commenting on his lack of visible aging by stating that she still looks as if she was ‘born yesterday’.

Even Vincent, whose death UT has lamented the most openly, even shedding tears, is not exempt from this treatment at all. He is no less ‘a Phantomhive anyway’ than his children/relatives, I realised (thanks to frederickabberline again!). 

Yes, UT regrets his death, but whenever he has brought it up it is always in the context that he can no longer revive him because his bones were burned to ash. (x and x). He never says anything like ‘He was a dear friend, how could I have failed him’, ‘He was a good man, why was he given such a death?’, ‘We had such good times together,’ - something to indicate an attachment to Vincent as a person.

And then, immediately following his lament, UT once more depersonalises Vincent, just like he did the twins, by stating that at least “the ‘Earl of Phantomhive’ is still with us”. It always comes back to that, as if it’s the only thing keeping him from wallowing in grief for those individuals.

As long as one Phantomhive is alive, he can deal with/suppress/channel his grief of personal losses into a goal which will keep him from losing more, and dwelling on what he has already lost.

Even when he comments on how much he dislikes the Phantomhive Watchdog work, while he mentions O!Ciel he talks about the ‘karma’ or ‘fate’ than hangs over every Phantomhive, the things every Phantomhive Watchdog deals with. 

As we hear later, he is resentful of the path the Phantomhives walk, their inability to rid themselves of it (by listening to him/heeding his warnings), and the Watchdog life in general, so he doesn’t care about the effects on Ciel, but the effects the ‘chain of fate’ has on the Phantomhive family and their legacy.

This more recently extends to his statement of ‘I didn’t want to lose anymore Phantomhives’, which is as blatant an explanation as you like. It confirms where his mind has focused all this time.

UT regularly teases/dismisses Ciel regarding the trauma of his past.

@frederickabberline​ kindly shared with me the moment where UT describes the ‘proper’ method of killing that Jack the Ripper probably used, to O!Ciel, using O!Ciel as a prop - even though he had a human dummy to use for this purpose.

He may as well have whispered “I know what you did three years ago!”. He’s even gesturing to the boy’s abdomen/stomach area with his ring hand! With his phrasing, and the Japanese text confirms that he literally refers to “steal[ing] the precious thing”, he echoes R!Ciel’s ‘Who stole the candy from my tummy?’ message. 

Oh yeah, and he does this while knowingly allowing O!Ciel to sit on the coffin with his dead/bizarre doll twin inside!

Thankfully, O!Ciel doesn’t catch on, but Jesus Christ, UT!

If UT truly cared about O!Ciel’s emotional well-being, just cared about him as an individual, why would he reference one of the most painful moments of O!Ciel’s life in such a sneaky, tactless manner, even if he knew he could get away with it here?

He does it again in Ch. 24, where UT doesn’t even hide what he’s talking about under the context of a different subject, like he did in his first appearance. Here, after remarking that dead children are commonplace in the underworld, he directly tells O!Ciel “The Earl knows that very well, doesn’t he?”.

JESUS CHRIST, UT!

He doesn’t consider O!Ciel’s feelings at all. He cares about his own amusement at O!Ciel’s expense, which extends to basically anyone else. But O!Ciel is a Phantomhive, part of the family UT is so concerned with/attached to he is literally trying to overturn the law of death for them to continue living.

But as I outlined earlier, UT does not care about any of the Phantomhives, at least the ones currently living and the previous Earl beyond the fact that they are Phantomhives. 

Therefore, he does not consider O!Ciel’s trauma, or care to know about it. He didn’t care to know how he was different from his twin, they were all  the same to him, so why would he care now?

Even if we consider that this black/gallows humour is UT’s personal way of coping, anyone with an ounce of tact would still not do this in front of others who they know such humour will hurt. Maybe UT has too many screws loose to care, or he is so detached he simply does not have room for it in his head.

UT does advise O!Ciel to take care of his soul, as he only has one - which considering his history with R!Ciel (who is still chilling in the zero gravity float spa coffin in the room somewhere), makes sense. But he’s still speaking to O!Ciel as a Phantomhive.

While UT is very well aware of O!Ciel’s contract to Seb the demon, and aware of the danger O!Ciel has placed his soul in, he later contextualises this as the result of O!Ciel holding the same ‘great power’ as his ancestors, which leads to them forgetting the importance of their lives/their souls.

So again, it’s about the Phantomhives as a whole, and how O!Ciel is repeating the same mistakes as his ancestors. He isn’t concerned with O!Ciel’s feelings here, even though he is clearly re-living that traumatic event front the past.

The final, and most damning, is UT’s attitude towards O!Ciel when the existence of R!Ciel is revealed. He reacts to O!Ciel’s obvious disgust, grief and terror with a shrug and exasperated “What? How can you not like this? Does it really matter if he’s alive or dead?”

UT is so detached from O!Ciel as a person, and detached/disinterested in general from human feelings beyond his own - consciously or otherwise - that he cannot fathom how the twin of the zombie twin he brought back might have an issue with what UT did.

UT is projecting, I think, his own feelings/expectations onto O!Ciel in this scene. Easy to do, because he had detached himself from the boy personally. If UT were in O!Ciel’s shoes, he would be delighted, because at this point that it does not matter to UT in what form such and such returns, human or bizarre doll, just so long as they do, and that it will be as if they never died.

And this comes before the revelation that R!Ciel’s dead body was ‘watching’ him the whole time!

Again, it’s unclear whether UT is simply bonkers and doesn’t care anymore or if he’s genuinely unable to focus on anything other than his end goal to acknowledge how messed up it is and how it’s hurting O!Ciel.

Exceptions to the rule

So far, I can point to two incidents that deviate from the usual detached manner in which UT deals/relates to O!Ciel.

The first comes in the Campania arc when UT entrusts his treasured funeral lockets to O!Ciel. Ch.64.

The look UT gives O!Ciel is important, and it is the first of two key moments which could lead to their relationship changing perhaps for the better. He looks surprised, shocked, and the light/roundness/look in Ciel’s eyes give him a more innocent, childish look. 

The close up between them indicate that they are really looking at one another. Or, if this is purely UT’s POV, he is really looking at O!Ciel.

I couldn’t swear to it, but this could indicate that finally, UT is seeing O!Ciel as a little boy, not merely an extension to the Phantomhive legacy, and that this reassures him enough to entrust his most treasured possessions - the last remaining pieces of the people he cherished - to O!Ciel. 

This, and his expression as he tells O!Ciel that the item is his treasure, is the first time UT shares anything personal with O!Ciel, and they share a connection for a moment, after so many years - many more for UT - of being detached/distant from one another.

The second time comes exactly twenty chapters later (may not be relevant, but I just noticed that) in the Weston Arc, where UT remarks how O!Ciel is different from his ancestors for saving Harcourt in from the rampaging bizarre dolls instead of just himself, as his predecessors would have done.

This is the first time UT acknowledges something about O!Ciel’s personality that makes him himself, and not merely an extension of the Phantomhive family or another Phantomhive making the same old mistakes on the same old path. UT seems pleased to see this.

Of course, these incidents happen before the whole ‘Hihi, your dead brother’s corpse was by your side this whole time, Earl!/’Your dead brother is a zombie, why aren’t you happy?’ event, in which he describes the twins as ‘mirrors of each other’, which harkens back to his inability/disinterest to tell the twins apart and all the issues that come with it.

UT himself

It’s difficult to say at this point whether UT is aware that how he is acting/what he is doing is wrong. If he knows that how he is treating/has treated O!Ciel is not the way the child of the family he cares for so much should be treated, and whether he justifies this in his own head (’ends justify the means’ type thing) or whether he is too insane to care anymore.

He does not deny to Othello that he has a few screws loose, so there’s that at least as far as self-awareness goes. He has likely been severely traumatised by the losses he suffered in the past, and whatever else we can theorise about his reaper past, and has done all he can to prevent more - event to the point of alienating and depersonalising the members of the same family he once deeply loved.

Whatever the case, I think enough groundwork has been laid for there to be a conflict later down the road on this point, focusing squarely on how he has viewed the Phantomhive family members for some time, the twins included. 

Conclusion 

While he has remained largely detached from O!Ciel and only interacted insofar as it suits his goals and his obsession, there have been moments where UT and O!Ciel have shared a personal connection where UT was forced to see O!Ciel as an individual. An individual deserving of more attention and care - PROPER attention and care - than UT has been willing to give in a long time because he has been so focused on his own goals and his own wishes for the Phantomhives.

He may for the first time actually start to consider what is truly best for the twins, instead of simply what he wants.

How he responds to this conflict within him between a newfound personal care for O!Ciel and the goal he has been working so ruthlessly towards for years is definitely interesting to think about.

It could completely throw off-balance how he has thought/operated for so long, and bring back painful memories and force him to confront ugly things about himself that he has either been too blind/mad or single-minded to acknowledge. 

He might question a lot of things he’s done, his current plan even, and maybe consider working with O!Ciel and allies rather than separately from them, as he has always done. He might realise that his detachment, disinterest, and depersonalisation are flaws rather than self-protection, that do more harm than good, and realise he needs to change.

Funny, when he goes on so much about how little the Phantomhives change and how it always comes back to bite them - UT is guilty of the same, in his own way!

Anyway, I’m sure his and O!Ciel’s dynamic and relationship will change, possibly quite dramatically, soon! 

What do you guys think?

[galvanizedfriend]

Here’s something I noticed in your fic TW1, half the dialogues actually more than three quarters of Caroline’s dialogue is directly taken from Hayley’s own dialogues from the show, there are very few places I counted (4-5) where Caroline significantly deviates from what Hayley said canonically, otherwise she’s just replaced Hayley in the fic, and I’m not able to comprehend that, because I have never resonated with Neither TO!hayley not TVD!hayley (both Hayleys themselves are worlds apart in characterisation) but just slapping on Caroline’s name on top of these dialogues all of a sudden makes it one hundred percent better, and that weirdly makes me feel like a hypocrite and like I’ve been disliking Hayley’s character for no reason, Caroline does everything Hayley does except instead of Elijah being the recipient of Caroline’s love it’s Klaus. Like Hayley and Caroline are interchangeable in your fic, Hayley delivering that speech about how everyone is to be blamed for something or the other so let’s just kill each other and get it over with during Elijah’s ‘Let’s try diplomacy for a change’ party falls so uninspiringly flat, but Caroline literally saying the exact same thing makes it sound majestic and potent, honestly comparing your fic to the TV show it’s identical scene by scene, (except in a few places) and so the fact that Caroline and Hayley are not just similar in this fic but largely undifferentiated is a bit disconcerting and kind of makes me wanna reflect on both Caroline and Hayley’s character.

I’m gonna have to disagree with you there, anon. 😂 I think I need to defend myself a little here, because you make it sound like I just took Hayley’s name off and added Caroline’s. lol I promise you it’s a lot more complicated than that, so I really don’t think you should feel like a hypocrite. Hayley and Caroline are not the same character, not by far. The very posture they have in key moments is completely different, and that means that while Hayley’s speech in certain parts might seem flat or hypocritical, Caroline’s won’t. 

There are many, MANY scenes which are exactly the same, but even when the scenes are kept, I do change dialogue lines quite a lot. Sometimes I add stuff, sometimes take other stuff out. It’s really not 4 or 5, though I don’t know what you mean by 4 or 5. Sometimes I start a scene with the same dialogue, and then I change it to veer conversation towards something else (the morning after scene on the chapter where Caroline goes to town after the wolfsbane, as an example). The Bayou bombings, for instance. That chapter is almost 100% different than the show, but it might feel like it’s the same. And Klaus and Caroline’s relationship builds over parts that aren’t really the same. Like Klaus not killing Timothy because Caroline asks him not to, and the subsequent scenes. The moments they have when Caroline goes to the doctor. When Father Kieran dies and Caroline is with Klaus. Caroline at the cemetery when Klaus is trying to kill Rebekah. After Mikael tries to kill her. Moments after the attack during the witch’s festival. And so on. There are quite a number of original scenes there. She has many more moments with Klaus than Hayley does with Elijah, in fact. And the ones that were Klaus+Hayley or Klaus+Cami almost all had to be adapted in order to fit the bill given the different aspects of their relationship. So there are more differences than you might think.

Caroline is slapped onto moments where Hayley is, but for Klaus’ feelings to be different than what Elijah’s or even Klaus’ own were on the show, there had to be a lot of moving parts around those. And the addition of the inner thoughts also, I think, change many of the stuff that happens. It adds a layer of understanding and motivation that I think add a significance that doesn’t exist on the show. You kind of know exactly why Caroline is doing or saying something, while on the show you can only rely on how good the acting is in order to provide more in-depth comprehension beyond short dialogue lines, because scenes are often much shorter (and I think we can all agree that the acting is not that great 😂😂). And then there’s also the fact that both characters had previous storylines attached to them before The Originals/The Wolf starts. Hayley suddenly turning into a bastion of correctness is a lot more sketchy than Caroline being someone with morals and whatnot. The way Caroline relates to Klaus is different than the way Hayley relates to Elijah or Klaus. She demands things from Klaus that Hayley never did from either of them.

So, really. I understand that people are going to read the story their own way and have their own impressions and opinions and I can’t really control that, but as the person who wrote the fic, I don’t see how Hayley and Caroline are the same. I do not think they are, at all. So when you say you think it’s identical, that hurts me a little bit, dear anon. 😂😂 I kept the structure and the spine of the show all there and even followed the scenes, but i worked very hard to make sure it was different in what mattered the most (Caroline and how she relates to all the characters around her), and if you can’t tell the difference, that means I’ve failed. 😢

Having said that, I do think that the mere fact of it being Caroline will naturally make most people like it more. Hayley has many haters, so you’re obviously going to feel more sympathetic towards Caroline and enjoy her in a position of power and influence a lot more than you would Hayley. HAVING SAID HAVING SAID THAT.... I am of the personal opinion that Hayley gets A LOT of hatred out of nothing but jealousy. lol That’s not to say I like her, I just think people are extremely biased when judging her. Also, like you said, her TO character is not the same as her character on TVD, she got a total makeover there. If you can disregard who she used to be before TO, maybe you’ll be able to like her more.

Sorry, anon, I got really defensive here but I was a bit hurt by this comment.  😂😂 I love this universe so much and Caroline in particular and you made me feel like I’ve been giving myself too much credit. lol

[consumedkings-archive]

WITCHING HOUR, a john seed/deputy fic.

chapter five: dark vibrations

word count: 11.4k

rating: m for now, rating will change in later chapters as things develop, tags will be updated accordingly.

warnings: body horror, hallucinations (?), mentions of self-harm, mentions of suicide. spooky scary activities ensue. elliot has an increasingly difficult time keeping a grasp on reality. we knew this was gonna happen, though!

notes: howdy! i hope y’all enjoy this. sometimes i go weeks without updating and sometimes i wait like, 4 days before manically writing an entire chapter. you know how it be like that sometimes. i was feeling a bit more inspired and felt like i finally hit a groove on where this story was going, which i think definitely helped, and i hope you all enjoy it!

thank you, as always, to everyone who reads, likes/comments, even if you just come into my dms with two nice words or write something nice in your tags; it really does make my whole night to see even one person enjoying anything i’ve made. <3

Cold morning light filtered in through the window, drenched in wedding-silk grays thanks to the wintery cloud-cover. Everything in the room looked to be placed with absolute intent and care; polished, porcelain-white decor in elaborate geometrics, gold accents, a king-sized bed with impeccably pressed sheets. Truthfully, John had thought for certain he’d come back into the house to be informed by Elliot’s statuesque mother that, in fact, she had rescinded her offer to let him stay and actually, he would need to depart immediately, lest the authorities be called.

He was glad that it hadn’t come to that, of course, because it would’ve been such a shame to have to dampen Scarlet’s opinion of her own daughter so quickly into their meeting.

Dropping his small bag of belongings—the manila folder packed full of information, including his own scribbled notes; the burner phone; a few quickly-packed clothes that had been meticulously cycled to avoid the most long-term wear—John paused as the heat in the house kicked on with a delicate whirr.

Everything in Scarlet Honeysett’s home seemed to be precisely the shape and color that she liked, with not a single thing out of place; and yet, as the heat kicked on, he was certain that he could hear the sound of sharp, hushed voices downstairs, a little ripple in the woman’s perfect, arcadian home scene.

It was good. It felt good, to be here. To have gotten the upper hand. So much of the past weeks he’d spent with Elliot had felt like he was slowly, violently spiraling out of control, but this? She was here, and she had to play by his rules for once, and—

And he’d wanted just one more second alone, with her. To watch the way her eyes flickered over his face, to drink in the way her chin tilted up in defiance but not unlike the way she used to do it when she was waiting for him to kiss her, the same lovely high-color in her spreading along her cheekbones and the same little spark in her gaze. Whether it was anger or allure was neither here nor there, anymore; with Elliot, they were interchangeable, a stepping stone one way or another, just the way it had always been with them.

Because John liked her anger. He liked her wrath. He wanted to put his hands on it, his mouth on it, break it into pieces and wring it out of her and put it back and do it all over again, while she said his name, his name, and not anyone else’s. God, she’d been so fucking close—so close, and he couldn have just had her if he really wanted to, grabbed a fistful of her hair and kissed her when the sting of her slap was still fresh on his face. She liked when he did that; kissed her, like he was starved for her. Because he was starved for her, and then she could knot her fingers into his shirt or dig her nails into his skin or whatever it was she wanted to make him desperate.

The sound of excited barking downstairs broke him out of his thoughts. John blinked, taking one last swift look-over of the immaculate room his mother-in-law had decided to put him up in before he nudged his bag beneath the bed and stepped out into the hallway.

To say old money would be almost an understatement. Surely, this house had to have some kind of historical significance; it was several stories, with one of those grand staircases that was wide going up, hit a landing, and then split to either side of the house. As he made his way down, he caught sight of the flicker of Scarlet’s silk robe in the kitchen; music drifted out of it, the same kind of hazy, older music that Elliot had turned on in her mother’s house back in Hope County.

“Stop moving,” Elliot was saying to Boomer, strapping him into a little reflective vest that sat on him like a saddle blanket. For a second, she didn’t notice his presence—or willfully ignored it; he couldn’t say for sure one way or another—and instead focused on the Heeler, rubbing his ears and kissing the bridge of his nose. A tiny little smile ticked the corners of her mouth, and he thought he heard her say, so handsome, best boy, yes you are.

Boomer’s attention snapped to John, now at the foot of the stairs. He let out one sharp, accusatory bark (could dogs sound accusatory, John wondered, or was that just Elliot getting to him?), and what little of his hackles were visible from out under the vest spiked up instantly.

“Good to see you too, beastie,” John greeted him, trying to ignore the way the hound’s low-pitched, reverberating growls made his skin crawl. Flashes of Boomer’s numerous and vicious takedowns of not only Eden’s Gate members but at least one member of the Family that had the misfortune of having chained the dog up darted across his memory, like a flipping through a photo album.

“Don’t talk to him,” Elliot snipped, cupping Boomer’s ears protectively. “I don’t need him getting the idea we’re friendly.”

John rolled his eyes. “More than friendly, I’d say.” His eyes darted over her, drinking in once against the shock of her appearance—red hair, so fucking red that every time he looked at her it was almost like staring at a stranger until he took in the rest, the freckles smattering her nose and the flush in her cheeks, cupid’s-bow lips that were glossed. Had he ever seen Elliot with more than river-soaked mascara on before?

The woman shot him a look, dry and unamused, coming to a stand. He asked, “Going for a walk?”

“Trying to,” she replied tartly, “but someone is evil enough that Boomer doesn’t trust them.”

“We’re pals,” John offered pleasantly. “Me and the beast. You know, were, anyway. He probably just needs to spend a little time with me.”

“Speaking from personal experience, more time makes you less palatable.”

“Let me come on the walk with you,” he tried again, letting her little barbs and jabs roll right off of him, water skating off of his feathers. At this point, he really quite enjoyed her venom; it was familiar. “I’m sure we’ve got plenty to catch up on.”

Elliot eyed him warily, eyes giving him a scathing once-over—eerily reminiscent of her mother’s own disdainful look, and now he thought, ah, yeah, that is where she gets it from, then—as her mouth twisted around whatever it was she wanted to say but wouldn’t let herself. Something too vicious for Scarlet to overhear, perhaps. The threats she’d made in the past had been wildly colorful, but each second that Ell spent considering her words more carefully rather than saying whatever it was she felt with her eyes darting to the kitchen was another second that John became more aware of how little Scarlet actually knew.

“Fine,” Elliot said at last, her eyes narrowing. “I suppose that we do. Mama, we’re leavin’.”

The little quirk of an accent at the end of her sentence made him swallow back a laugh. He’d barely heard that Georgia accent back in Hope County, but maybe spending time with her mother had reinspired it.

“Alright,” Scarlet said, drying her hands on a towel as she stood in the doorway. Her eyes glanced between them, inquisitive for a moment, before she said, “Be quick. Doctor’s appointment in an hour and a half.”

John tilted his head. “Oh? Baby check-in?”

“Can’t imagine what else it would be, Mr. Seed,” Scarlet idled. “Are you familiar with the process of pregnancy?”

“Not beyond the knowledge of a man, I’m afraid.”

“Well, allow me to educate you,” the blonde said, her voice light. “When a woman is carrying a baby, she has to make frequent visits to the doctor, to ensure that all is well. Can’t have anything going wrong with the baby, you know.”

John steadied the intake of breath so that it did not sound so abrupt. He would have done a double-take and thought perhaps she was just overbearing, and not attempting to insult him, were Elliot not smiling. Certainly, only her mother’s attempted insult of him could elicit such an expression out of her.

“Then my arrival was fortunately timed,” he announced. “I look forward to it.”

“And you’ll be sorely disappointed,” Elliot cut in, her humor fading. “You won’t be coming.”

Ah, yes. That’s why I don’t love her attitude. “That’s absurd,” he replied, incredulous. “It’s nearly six weeks, and I haven’t seen a single ultrasound of our baby.”

He was careful, this time, to keep it to our baby. He’d seen the way Elliot’s expression tightened when he’d said my baby, even though that’s what came so naturally to him now, being that they were hardly on the same team—but he’d seen it, that look in her eye, the way she’d squared her shoulders like she’d suddenly been ready to go at him.

Only one thing to do with a rabid dog, Jacob had said, not two days before they found Elliot drenched in another man’s blood in the woods.

John half-expected Scarlet to jump in, to say that it was the father’s right to be there; she was more traditional than Elliot, if her comment about wedlock or her insistence of him staying were anything to go by, but when he turned his gaze to her, the older woman’s expression was devoid of any sympathy. Typical of Honeysett women, he was coming to find.

“If she doesn’t want you there, then you won’t be there. I won’t have my daughter stressed out,” Scarlet told him. “Stress is bad for the baby. Surely that falls within the realm of what a man knows about babies, Mr. Seed?”

He pressed his mouth into a thin line. “Surely.”

“Good. Hour and a half, my beloved, do not be late.”

That a woman had become so capable of tacking the softness of my beloved onto something that verged on a threat was nearly beyond John—would have been, certainly, were he not accustomed to Isolde’s particular brand of venom that was not so unlike Scarlet Honeysett’s.

“I won’t,” Elliot promised. “Can you call the handyman? My TV’s been acting up lately. Turning on static and whatnot.”

“Fine,” Scarlet replied, waving her hand. “I’ll have them come out this afternoon.”

Elliot turned on her heel and opened the front door out into the frigid morning, letting Boomer dart out ahead of her and not waiting for him in the least. He fell into step beside her easily, shrugging into his coat halfway out the door as it clicked shut behind him; she trudged through the snow, passing the garbage can and opening the gate that led out into what had once been pastureland and towards the woods.

It was the same fence that she’d been standing at, early that morning, face lax and serene. If the return to the fence bothered her at all, it didn’t show on her face any more than her irritation at having him there.

“Your mother’s quite...” John’s voice trailed off. “Tall.”

“Mm.”

“Statuesque, even.”

“Mmhm.”

“I get the feeling she doesn’t like me that much.”

“Yes,” Elliot acquiesced, her tone dripping with something close to venomous amusement, “I’ve never seen her take so poorly to someone so quickly before.”

“I suppose I should be flattered.”

“You would be.”

A fourth of the way into the snowy pasture and Boomer was far ahead of them, leaping like a little speckled gazelle in drifts of snow. It was easy to forget that the dog had been ready to rip him to shreds just a little under an hour ago (and once more, more recently). Still, as they trudged through a path that it seemed Elliot had worn through a few times before, John let out a little puff of breath and glanced over at her.

For just one second, she wasn’t spitting any venom at him, but rather seemed to favor the act of pretending like he wasn’t there, which was a bit worse than having her fix her fury on him. Her gaze was focused forward, following Boomer’s little lines in the snow. Attention at all was one thing, but acting as though he didn’t exist?

John said, “So, Burke just got his autopsy reports back and dropped you off right here at home, huh?”

Elliot’s face had already gone pink from the cold, right on her nose and spreading through her cheeks. At his words, a new flush of color rose, a shade more vicious than the last, and her gaze slid to him. If looks could kill, he thought, that dreamy little spike of delight at her eyes on him going straight to his head. Look at you, my little Wrath. You’ve got the good girl mask on, but I know what your true face is.

He’d seen it. Kissed her when the blood was still in her mouth. Let her feed the monster inside of her when she told him to beg, when she dug her nails into his skin, when her breath hitched in her chest from the pressure of his knife blade against her sternum—not in pain, necessarily, but delight at that pain.

The scar had to still be there, of course. The reminder of its existence, swathed in the heavy winter fabrics she wore now, made his fingers itch. If he could just get his hands on her—get his mouth on her, if she would just stop being so obtuse—but he didn’t think he’d be so fond of her if she wasn’t.

“The same way the government probably drove you and your siblings back to the compound and dropped you off,” she replied at last, her voice tight, “isn’t that right?”

John flashed his teeth at her in a grin. “Very astute, hellcat.”

Her expression tightened at the moniker. She sucked her teeth, fixing her eyes forward again, shifting back into the strategy of being withholding of her attention rather than entertain him.

“Oh, come on,” he said, swinging around in front of her and stopping her single-minded journey across the pastureland. “You can’t say you didn’t miss me even a little bit, Ell.”

“I told you,” she replied tartly, “not to call me that.”

“Because it reminds you of what it was like when we’re together,” he agreed.

An exasperated noise came out of her. “Did you forget that I lied to you?”

“At the end, sure,” John said, eyes flickering over her face. “But I don’t think you’re so good a liar you could lie about all of the times you said please, or the way that you said my name, or—and I think you’ll recall I’ve insisted on this bit from the beginning—the undeniable connection that we’ve had since we met.”

“You are a fucking lunatic,” Elliot snapped, her face flushing red. “And don’t fucking talk about me like I’m—like I wasn’t there, I know what I—” She sucked in a sharp breath; lower, and more threatening, “I’m aware of what I said. Of what I did.”

“And you’re going to tell me that it was all fake?” he prompted, unwilling to let go of this little thread. Gripping, sliding through his fingers, but he wouldn’t be so quick to let it escape him now that he didn’t have to think about her mother pitching in an unwanted opinion. “That you lied the whole time and you don’t feel anything for me, that—”

“Of course it wasn’t fake,” she bit out. Her voice had gone venomous, sharp, unbridled in its timbre. “I’m not a fucking psychopath, John, I can’t fake loving someone like you can.”

John opened his mouth to say something, and then closed it. He hadn’t been expecting that. Sure, there was a part of him that was sure Elliot had her doubts about his intentions, otherwise she wouldn’t have fucked off to the middle of nowhere (nor turned them in), but—still?

“You think I—” He paused again, blinking. “You’re not that stupid.”

Her eyes narrowed. Everything about her stiffened, quite suddenly, like maybe she was bracing to take another swing at him. “You are fucking begging for a punch to the face.”

“I mean,” John began quickly, waving his hands a little, “that you surely don’t think that whole time I was just—”

Elliot made a disgusted sound and brushed past him, letting out a high whistle; the sound immediately drew a flurry of activity as a flock of birds when bursting from the treeline, followed closely behind by Boomer’s gray-and-black speckled form. John fell back into step with her, huffing out a breath of air. He was going to table that discussion for later—she was clearly still upset, still a little sore and tender from their departure, and that was fine. There were a lot of things at play concerning his wife’s mood, including but not limited to being pregnant.

So she did, he thought, glancing at her through the corner of his eyes. Love me. Back then, and maybe now, still.

“How have you been sleeping?” is what he said instead, when the moment had spread between them long enough for him to think that he was safe to speak again with incurring her wrath once more. Her lips pressed into a thin line.

“Fine,” she replied, her voice tight.

“Yeah?” he asked, keeping his tone conversational. Elliot blinked once, slow, clearly trying to temper herself. “I just remember what a restless sleeper you were, back home.”

He wanted to say, I saw you at three AM, twice, staring out your window and then walking out into the snow barefoot. I saw you sleepwalking, I know you aren’t sleeping well.

He wanted to say that, and he couldn’t, because if Elliot knew he’d been tailing her for a while she’d go berserk—pull the plug, self-destruct, take whatever loss she had to in order to fucking end him.

“I’m sleeping fine,” the redhead reiterated. For a second, she looked like she wanted to say something; her eyes flickered uneasily, like something was bothering her and she hadn’t been able to say it to anyone but maybe she wanted to, and maybe she could say it to him, but something in the treeline drew her attention away. They were about ten yards away, now, the low breeze skimming pine needles against each other as Boomer barked conversationally at the birds that had so rudely taken flight.

Elliot’s molars clicked, grinding together. Her lashes fluttered, and she sucked in a sharp little breath through her nose.

“Elliot?” John glanced at the trees, but that was all he saw—tall, dark pines, bunching together erratically through years of growth spurts and inevitable fellings. He turned his gaze back to his wife, gaze inquisitive. “What?”

“Don’t you—?” She stopped herself, and sucked in another sharp breath, and now John felt the concern spike sharp and hot in him, because when he reached up she didn’t even seem to register his movement; Elliot, the same woman who had snatched his wrist and threatened to snap it in half for having the audacity to ‘sneak up on her’ when he’d been in the middle of talking to her, completely transfixed on something that he couldn’t see.

“Elliot.” He tried something firmer this time, his hand coming up to sweep the strands of her hair away from her shoulder and neck. The gesture finally startled her out of wherever it was she had gone, yanked her back to reality.

Her shoulder bunched up to her jaw in an effort to deter his hand, swatting at him absently with her hand. “Don’t touch me.”

“Are you going to tell me where you were just now?” John asked, tilting his head inquisitively.

“I was here. Just thought I saw something in the trees,” she replied tightly, turning away from the treeline and clearing her throat. “Just birds.”

Just birds, she said, even though the birds had already taken off and the forest was otherwise still and serene. Behind her, Boomer whined before beginning to follow her back towards the house. Elliot moved with a newfound purpose, one that she had been distinctly lacking before.

His mouth pressed into a thin line. John turned his attention back to the trees, searching for anything—any tangle of branches of play of shadows that might read sinister or threatening.

Only the trees and their shadowy pines. He thought about that night he’d fished Elliot out of the Family’s grip, when she’d been so fucking drugged up to her gills that she’d balked at the sight of the treeline on their way out. I don’t think I can, she’d said then, her voice pitching high with the anxious vibrations of panic. John, I don’t think I can—

“John,” Elliot snapped from ahead of him, “are you coming, or are you just gonna stand there all fucking afternoon?”

He thought about the way Ase had grabbed her hand, blood and viscera coating Elliot like she’d become a tried-and-true Scream Queen. If he searched long enough, if he sat in the memory long enough—did Ase’s mouth open? Had she said something to Elliot? What had she said?

“John,” came the grinding demand, again, less patient than before. “As much as I would love to leave you to freeze to death for insinuating I’m stupid, mama would hate to have to deal with a corpse on her property and I’d never hear the end of it.”

“I missed our banter,” he replied, though the jest did not quite land the same way that it would have were he not so deep in his own thoughts. By the time he’d started walking in her direction, his back to the forest, something uneasy had settled just under his skin; the feeling of being watched, eyes on the back of his neck, anticipation prickling along like his spine.

The house loomed, polished and pristine, on the horizon; as they picked their way across the snowy field, Elliot puffing out breaths occasionally from the labor of it all, John tried to shake that pervasive feeling of dread that had settled over him.

Maybe it was nothing. Maybe Weyfield was just Weyfield, a small town not unlike Hope County, and maybe he was just jumpy from the way the Family had conducted their business, and maybe it was the same for Elliot, who had certainly been put through a different experience than he—but regardless:

The sooner they got out, the better.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Shouldn’t have agreed to let him drive me here.

“Have you been getting enough sleep?”

It was stupid. Stupid, I should have put my foot down, told him to fucking stay at the house and wait for me to come back.

“Elliot?”

She blinked, vision fuzzing and refocusing around the sterile white of the doctor’s office. Her abdomen was sticky, and the ultrasound machine had been turned off along with her shirt tugged back down. Like usual, Dr. Harding did not say anything about the gossamer-webbing of scars, but did pause upon first seeing them, as though she hadn’t seen them times before.

“Sorry?” Elliot said, the apology quirking up at the end in question. She sat up from the bed, the paper crinkling beneath her as she moved.

“I asked,” Harding reiterated, “have you been getting enough sleep?”

Elliot knew the answer. She felt the exhaustion souring in her mouth already, the way something spoiled when it went too long without attention. A sickness. She should say that she hadn’t been sleeping well at all, that she’d begun sleepwalking, that

(seeing things, I’m seeing things when I close my eyes and when I look in the dark treeline, I see faces, heads, people I don’t know but they feel familiar and their faces drop down in between the branches of trees on invisible silk threads and their terrible dark mouths open but they can’t scream)

she’d been feeling out of sorts, as of late. That seemed like a nice way to put it.

The dark images that had fluttered between the trees on her walk earlier that morning with John felt as real as any memory—and that wasn’t to say that her memories always felt real, because they didn’t. But the validity of this morning’s waking nightmare of floating heads drifting between tree-trunks, swinging loosely while John asked her how she’d been sleeping.

“Fine,” Elliot said after a moment, feeling a fresh wave of nausea come over her. “I think, um, maybe the stress about the baby is keeping me up at night.”

Harding regarded her for a moment. The severe sharpness of her dark hair pinned back did nothing to soften her expression—though the woman was hard-pressed to be cheerful, she, at the very least, never sugar-coated anything. “Have you been trying those breathing exercises before bed? And spending time at the stables, as I suggested?”

“I have,” she replied, which wasn’t entirely untrue—she was doing at least one of those things. “It’s just been a lot of—stress, is all. I’m sure it’ll get better once the holidays are over.”

“That can definitely help,” the woman agreed, nodding her head and typing a few loose notes into the computer. “If you find that you aren’t getting enough sleep—enough,” she continued, pointedly, “restful sleep, you let me know and we can figure out some next steps.”

Elliot nodded, coming to a stand; the sudden movement had her head rushing, and she for a second she thought again of the floating heads, swaying with the breeze through the pine boughs.

“I’ve been sleep-walking,” she blurted out impulsively, her doctor’s gaze turning quizzically towards her. “I mean—um, just twice.”

“Do you have a history of it?”

“No,” Elliot began, “but I’ve always been a restless sleeper.”

“It’s not uncommon for sleepwalking to increase with pregnancy, Miss Honeysett,” the doctor replied, her voice even-keel. “It sounds like you’re under quite a bit of pressure, as well. I would suggest trying something mild—an over-the-counter sleep aid would be fine. Unisom is a typical one. Try half of one first, and see how it makes you feel.”

“Okay,” she murmured, sliding her coat back on. Something that was less heavy-duty than the pills her mother had left for her might be good. “Are there any—symptoms? To sleeping pills?”

The doctor adjusted the glasses on her nose, regarding her for a long moment. “Some adverse side-effects, on occasion. Usually with stronger, prescription sleep aids, you could have worsening anxiety and depression, day-time drowsiness. That kind of thing.”

So, no hallucinations, then. No sleepwalking, no lost time, no...

“Are you having other symptoms?” Harding asked.

You’ll think I’m crazy, Elliot thought, you’ll think I���m fucking nuts if I tell you about my dream with the television, and Joey’s body, and walking out nearly to the treeline in my sleep clothes. You’ll think I’m fucking nuts and I’ll have to be committed.

So Elliot said, “No, just curious,” and Dr. Harding hummed as she scribbled the name of the sleep aid onto a sticky note for Elliot to take out with her.

“You have a healthy baby, Miss Honeysett. Let’s keep it that way, shall we?” The brunette gestured for Elliot to head out the door, walking with her back up the hallway that led to the front lobby once again. “Next appointment we can find out the gender, if you’d like.”

“Oh,” Elliot said, surprised. Was it that soon already? Had it already been that long of being—like this? With child? She swallowed, pleasant little flutters in her chest. It was the first time that she’d felt something other than dread concerning the baby. Well, first time, sans John’s annoying little assertion about his claim. Why had that bothered her so much?

“You can decide to keep it a surprise,” Dr. Harding added, sound a little amused. “Think about it, and in the meantime, get some rest. Half a pill to start, remember.”

“Will do, thank you.”

She waded through the small collection of people in the lobby and out onto the street. Something strange was humming inside of her—it was sad, she realized, with a little spike of panic. She felt mournful. So fast, and so soon, she would figure out the baby’s gender, and suddenly the baby would be all the more real and she’d have to start thinking about names, she couldn’t have a baby without a name, and how was she supposed to pick a name? How was she supposed to decide something a real human being was going to be saddled with, forever?

Was the baby a Seed? Or a Honeysett?

Which one was she?

“What’re you doing, just standing out here? You’ll freeze.” John’s voice broke her out of her thoughts, shaking her back to reality again. He must have seen her standing there, glassy-eyed in the middle of the sidewalk, from where he’d been waiting—perhaps, if she was lucky, even suffering over the fact that he hadn’t been allowed into the doctor’s appointment—and come out. He’d kicked up a big enough fuss about not getting to come in that she’d said, fine, you can fucking drive me there, but that’s it, and true to his word John hadn’t pressed the matter any further than that.

Even though he wanted to. She could tell he wanted to, the second they had parked on the main street. She could tell he wanted to say, so, maybe I do come in, hm? What do you say to that? But he hadn’t. And that was...something.

Fuck, she needed to stay focused; she couldn’t keep letting her mind wander like that. Twice in less than an hour?

“I was just—thinking,” Elliot replied, feeling exhausted already. John’s brows furrowed at the center of his forehead, and she sighed. “Stop looking at me like that.”

He arched a dark brow loftily. “Like what?”

“Like you fucking care,” she snapped.

“Contrary to what you might believe concerning my feelings for you,” John quipped, his voice tart, “I do have every reason to be invested in the well-being of our baby.”

She thought to reiterate again that the baby was, in fact, hers, and not any part his, as she was doing all the work and John had done nothing to endear himself as an acceptable father-figure, but she was too tired. Something about the doctor’s office and the way she’d had to dodge the truth of how she’d been feeling left her empty, scooped out her insides like she was a Jack-O’-Lantern and left her floating, aimless.

“Ell,” he began. His voice had pitched lower, now, and his hand reached up; she saw it move in the corner of her vision and something inside her said, yes yes yes, this is what we want, we remember you, we know you. He twisted a loose curl around his finger, letting it smooth out against her shoulder, the corner of his mouth ticking upward when she absently batted his hand away. “Tell me about the appointment. Did everything go well?”

“The baby is fine,” she told him, and then sighed. “I mean—healthy. The baby is healthy. The doctor wants me to pick up an over-the-counter sleep aid, so we’ll need to stop at the store on the way home.”

“I thought you were sleeping fine?” John prompted. He sounded sly. His was a gotcha tone, the way he got when he thought he’d walked a particularly fine circle through the holes in what she chose to tell him or not. Elliot’s expression flattened. She ignored the way that he was looking at her—hungryhungryhungry, always greedy and never, never content with what he had—and fixed her eyes on the passing traffic behind him.

She said, “Just when you’re being somewhat tolerable, you have to go and ruin it.”

“If it’s intolerable for me to point out when you’re withholding information from me about your health,” he demurred, “then I’d prefer intolerable.”

“I cannot believe that I have to say this to you,” Elliot bit out, the sudden spike of irritation flaring hot and violence in her chest, “but I don’t fucking owe you anything. I don’t owe you the truth, or an explanation, and quite frankly, the fact that I allowed you to even chauffeur me to this fucking appointment is a sign that I’m being incredibly generous with you—far more generous than what you deserve.”

John’s teeth flashed in a grin. Before, back in Hope County, the venom had bothered him—he’d hated it, frowned and fought back with a little poison of his own, despised that he had to work so hard to get to the nitty-gritty underneath. But he had once, and perhaps now that he had known her, it only thrilled him.

How frustrating.

“Everything I did,” he said, lowering his voice as he closed some of the small distance between them now, “whether you believe me or not, was for us—”

“Ugh.”

“—and I might have gotten a little heated,” John continued, and this time when he reached up again Elliot’s mouth twisted into a grimace and she tilted her face away, don’t say it don’t say it don’t you fucking say it fuck you fuck you fuck you, “back at the ranch, but I meant it when I said that I l—”

“Honeysett!”

It was Via. Her greeting immediately cut off John’s words, effectively driving a wedge between their metaphorical—and physical—closeness. Snapped her out of the magic of his cologne and his voice and his hand coming up to her shoulder with its grounding weight.

“Missed you at the barn today,” the blonde chirped, cheery as she approached, hands tucked into her fluffy parka pockets. Her eyes flickered over to John, inquisitive. “Friend?”

And then Via turned her eyes back to Elliot, waiting expectantly. It struck her quite suddenly that Sylvia was checking—that despite the kindness and warmth in her voice, she was giving Elliot the opportunity to escape, to wave a red flag and ask for help. She said friend?, and what she meant was, is this man bothering you?, and it made a fuzzy warmth spread right through Elliot’s chest, uncomfortable in the softness is inspired in her.

“Hey, Via, this is...” How best to proceed? How to explain, this man is the father of my baby—which, by the way, I’m pregnant—and also technically we are legally married, oh and also he’s supposed to be in Federal custody right now but he isn’t, somehow, but it’s fine, we’re all good? “...my...John.”

Sylvia eyed her for a moment, sticking out a gloved hand. “Howdy, Elliot’s John. I’m Sylvia.”

John was clearly trying not to have the biggest shit-eating grin on his face as he shook Via’s hand. “A pleasure to meet you, Sylvia,” he replied pleasantly, once again reminding Elliot that the man was a tried-and-true practiced liar and could slip a perfect face on at any time. The knowledge was almost enticing, to know that she’d seen him without the masquerade, more than once.

It made, in hindsight, reflecting back on that moment he’d come unraveled at the ranch—No way, baby, I’m fucking it for you—have a different light. She had done that to him.

Good.

“Y’all busy?” Sylvia asked, blissfully not prying any further for an elaboration on what the nature of their relationship was. “I was just about to meet Wyatt at the Wild Rose. It ain’t trivia night, but they do have a live band playing tonight that’s supposed to be good.”

“Oh,” Elliot said faintly, “I don’t think—”

“That sounds excellent!” John interrupted. “I’ve barely seen anything of Weyfield. What do you say, Elliot?”

I say you can eat shit, she thought, but Sylvia was watching her closely—trying to make sure everything was okay, she supposed, considering Elliot had said nothing of John since they’d become friends. She took in a little breath and looked at the blonde, giving a small smile.

“No harm in a little time out of the house,” she agreed after a moment. “I’m starving, anyway.”

She wasn’t hungry in the least. The sticky note with the doctor’s suggested sleep aid was crumple in her pocket, and a little sweaty from the way she’d been clutching it, but somehow the idea of returning back to the house only seemed to fill her with more dread.

The tv, buzzing static, dull and thrumming in the back of her head, in the roots of her molars. HAVE YOU BEEN HAVING STRANGE DREAMS? And the heads, twisting and turning in the breeze, their silk-spun puppet threads invisible, their mouths swinging open as they try to scream.

HAVE YOU BEEN HAVING STRANGE DREAMS?

“Well, can’t have you starvin’,” Sylvia said amusedly, looping her arm through Elliot’s own and beginning to walk. “You’re not keeping my girl well-fed, Mister John?”

“Trying my hardest,” John replied, his gaze sly, “but she can be a bit ornery.”

“Hm, that does sound like her. Where are you visitin’ from, anyway?”

As they chattered, over her, John on one side and Sylvia on the other, Elliot got the distinct impression that her friend was quietly, politely fishing for information without putting Elliot under the stress of it.

HAVE YOU

Snow underfoot. The forest breathing, expanding, swelling because it holds some great, dark beast just waiting for her to get close enough.

BEEN HAVING

(Itwaitsforyouitwaitsforusallanditwillhaveyou)

STRANGE

“Careful,” John cautioned, reaching for the door with all of the gentlemanly nature of a man not possessed by the devil to hunt her down across states, “it’s slick.”

He opened the door into the Wild Rose, the sweep of warm air rushing over her a pleasant shock to her system that managed to draw her back to reality. Sylvia nudged her inside, effectively planting herself between Elliot and John as they moved single-file into the crowded bar.

She was tired, and having nightmares, and once she finally got some sleep she would feel a lot better about everything. All she needed was some sleep. And in the meantime, try to enjoy her time with her friends as best she could.

Get some sleep. Feel better in the morning. Burke’s old mantra popped up in her head, running through the worn grooves that were a sad, bittersweet sort of comfort to her now; the second you think you can’t anymore, you keep going anyway. Dig, dig, dig, until her fingers were dirt-packed and bloody, as deep as she fucking needed to go to keep moving, because it wasn’t just about her anymore.

Get some sleep.

Feel better in the morning.

Sylvia had drifted out from their little formation to make her way to the booth they had recently staked out as their own, where Wyatt already sat waiting and waving for them. John planted his hands on her shoulders, squeezing and lowering his mouth to her ear. “What do you want to drink?”

“You’re acting awfully domestic for someone who should be in Federal custody,” Elliot replied lowly, looking at him over her shoulder just in time to see him flash a smile that was all teeth.

“C’mon, hellcat,” and he all but purred the words at her, making her skin prickle in a type of anticipation that wasn’t purely dread. Traitorous, treacherous body. “You can at least play at liking me while your friends are around.”

“Iced tea.” She shrugged, disembarking his hands from her shoulders. “No lemon. A lot of ice. Think you can swing it without, I don’t know, lying halfway to Hell on your way there, Slick?”

“Anything,” he replied, pitching his voice even lower amidst the din of the bar, “for my lovely wife.”

Elliot’s head snapped around, ready to grab a fistful of his shirt and remind him to watch his fucking mouth, but he’d already started his journey to meander through the crowd and reach the bar on his little fetch quest.

Fucker, she thought, even when her stomach twisted with something other than vicious disdain. John had only been here for a day and was already too comfortable taking liberties; she’d have to make sure that got nipped in the bud before he got any funny ideas about his own personal redemption arc.

It would have been nice, to just be able to turn off any and all feelings whenever she wanted. But she couldn’t, and that meant she’d have to do the next best thing:

Get John the fuck away from her.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Eden’s Gate did not make a good first impression. Eden’s Gate did not even make a good second or third impression; in fact, Isolde had come to the conclusion that Joseph’s little compound was incapable of making any impression that didn’t fill the observer with a sense of despair. Every time she stepped out of the little building Jacob had set her up in, she was overwhelmed with disgust—eyes followed her, but none of them held anything beyond a dull spark of interest, nearly smothered by what seemed to have been a full-body beat down by the other cult.

The other cult, she constantly had to remind herself, because that’s what Eden’s Gate was. A cult.

A few miserable days at the hands of Montana’s coldest winter by record had her in a foul mood. The snowfall seemed inevitable, like it wouldn't ever stop, and the amount of times there had been paths shoveled between buildings—all leading to the chapel—were equally endless. Isolde couldn’t imagine coming to fucking Montana for fun, let alone for work, and yet she was somehow here for the latter and not the former. Distinctly, painfully lacking in fun.

It didn’t help that Joseph was insufferable. It didn’t help that every time he fixed his eyes on her, she felt an uncomfortable heat dripping down her spine like some kind of molten IV, like they hadn’t left on the worst of terms. Like she hadn’t told him to get the fuck out of her loft, like she hadn’t thrown an engagement ring on the floor like it was poison.

That was a time of her life that she had the distinct desire to not revisit, not even once, and yet in his presence—she found it nearly impossible to ignore. Joseph seemed to take a special, muted pleasure in making her hackles raise, and at least that hadn’t changed about him.

“Sol!”

Jacob called to her from halfway down the compound’s yard, a truck idling beside him. She stopped her trek back to her little hovel and looked at him, arms crossing over her chest.

“You wanna get out for a little?” He inclined his head toward the truck. “I’ve got some errands to run.”

“What kind of errands do the Collapse dictate?” she asked.

“The important variety.”

“Hm.”

She didn’t elaborate on that any further, and Jacob waited only one heartbeat before he reached for the driver’s side door and opened it, slowly.

“Going once—”

“I am not a child, Jacob.”

“—going twice—”

Fuck, did she want to get out.

“Fine,” Isolde snapped, “but bring that truck here. I’m not hiking through a snowdrift to get to you.”

Jacob, sounding quite pleased with himself, replied, “I thought you weren’t a child?”

He seemed moved enough by the dramatic eyeroll to oblige her, and if he found it annoying, it didn’t show; enough so, at least, that Isolde was able to clamber into the passenger side of the truck once he pulled it around, tapping the snow off of her shoes before pulling herself in.

“Thank you,” she huffed, shutting the door and rubbing her fingers to circulate the blood again. “This weather’s a bit abnormal, don’t you think?”

“Not anything out of the ordinary for this time of year, no,” Jacob replied. He nudged the windshield wipers on, plowing a thin layer of snow that had already begun to accumulate off of the window before starting to pull out of the compound. “I think you’re just not suited to the snow.”

“Could have told you that myself,” Isolde snipped. “I’m a hot-blooded creature.”

Jacob made a noise, something like an mm, a place between agreement without incriminating himself by agreeing too fervently or elaborately. She glanced over at him through the corners of her eyes as they turned onto the highway. In the comfortable silence that elapsed between them, Isolde settled back against the seat of the truck and tried to appreciate being out from the stifling dread of the compound.

It did seem to her that Joseph was markedly different than he had been, before. In the few instances in the last couple of days where he hadn’t been picking a fight with her, it almost felt normal—but of course, he was doing it in his own way, this pot-stirring, this instigating. With politeness. With kindness. By remaining completely unrattled by anything she said to him, every, any critique, so self-assured in his righteousness that not even reason could make him look twice at the state of his congregation.

Then, he had always been that way. Righteous. Assured. She had found it appealing, once—she liked a man with confidence—but now she found it—

Equal parts frustrating and attractive. Objectively, of course. Not anything that she felt herself.

“Trying to account for the bodies of the Family against the ones we know we saw before,” Jacob explained, when she had been quiet long enough to let him sort out his thoughts. “Seems like they started killing themselves, in pairs, once the two leaders were done with. I sent out a couple of scouts and they radio’d back some locations, but they’ve gone quiet for a while.”

“Dedication,” Isolde murmured, digging the nail of her thumb into her lower lip. “How dreadful.”

“The dedication, or the act?”

“Both. Imagine being so bound to something or someone.”

Jacob’s mouth twisted in a wry smile, and he brought the truck to a crawl. Two bodies, swallowed by snow nearly up to their waists, sat propped against the cliff face. He fished a pad of paper and a near-worn out pencil out of the center console of the truck and held them out to her.

“Mark it down, Sol.” When she blinked at him, he continued, “What, you thought you were gonna get out and not help me?”

“Well, I was hoping.”

She sighed, taking the pad and pencil—a glorified secretary is what I am, she thought bitterly—and marked two tally marks down. From where the car was stopped, she could see that the arms of the corpses came together, and though it was buried in snow, she had to think that beneath the white frost their hands were intertwined.

They went like that for a while; Jacob would drive to a spot, have her mark down the amount of bodies, and then go on. By the time they had reached Fall’s End, Isolde had counted nearly twenty dead bodies. As they rolled into the far end of town, Isolde realized very quickly that most of the buildings were blackened, and when she rolled down her window, the stale scent of charcoal still sat in the air.

“What happened here?” she asked, grimacing and scrunching up her nose.

“Dunno,” Jacob replied tightly. “Someone with an agenda.”

Isolde’s gaze snapped to him, to try and wring any information out of his expression, but true to his nature Jacob remained completely unreadable. It wasn’t until they had gotten to what appeared to have once been a bar and tallied up the bodies there that Jacob threw the truck into park.

“What in the fuck?” he muttered, eyes fixed forward. When Sol followed his gaze, she realized that it was fixed on someone—someone running towards them, frantically, nearly falling over themselves in the snow.

“Is that one of yours?” she asked. “Jacob?”

“Shh.”

He had busied himself fishing around in the back seat, and as he did Isolde squinted, trying to get a better look at what was going on. The man running definitely had to be Eden’s Gate—he had the big red emblem on his shirt, but he wasn’t wearing any coat, and—

And there were others.

“Jacob,” Isolde said, “there are more.”

“What?”

“Bodies,” she managed out, “there are more bodies.”

The snow wasn’t so deep on the roads that she couldn’t see the width of a body, and she did—see it, that is, tousled dark locks reflecting wet and sticky in the overcast, late-afternoon light. The man running was waving his arms and yelling for help, and then he fell over one of the bodies, fell to his hands and knees over the body of someone else, and made a sound kind of like anguish.

Jacob finally managed to pull out what he’d been looking for—a pair of binoculars—and immediately lifted them to his face.

“Shit,” he said. “Fuck, they’re ours.”

“All of them?” Isolde demanded. “They’re all—”

“Yes,” he bit out, opening the driver’s door and grabbing the rifle from the back seat. “They’re all ours. Isolde, stay in—”

Jacob’s words were cut off by the violent crack of a gunshot. For a split second, Isolde saw nothing; in the space between heartbeats, sluggish from panic, she saw the arterial spray coming from the back of the running man’s body before he hit the ground, screaming.

He wasn’t dead. He wasn’t dead, he was still crawling, dragging himself through the snow, leaving a smear of red behind him, and that’s when Isolde saw them.

Jacob had stopped moving as well. The person at the far end of the main road leading through Fall’s End had yet to shoulder their weapon. From here, Isolde could see that she was tall—short-cropped, blonde hair, swathed in dark clothes, but beyond that the features were near impossible to make out.

“Close the door,” Isolde hissed, not moving, her instincts screaming to duck but the fear that sudden movement would draw attention prevailing. “Jacob, close the fucking door.”

The eerily satisfying click-click of what could only be the bolt-action rifle in the hunter’s hands clattered around in her head. The rifle was returned to their shoulders, brought up level, and then fired again.

Out of pure instinct, Isolde flinched—but once again, the bullet was aimed not at them, but at the man already crawling in the snow. The sound of the gunshot, and the subsequent bullet-on-bone impact, was enough to make her stomach churn; now, at least, the man lay slumped in the snow, one of the many bodies that seemed to have been the unfortunate pull-and-fire clay birds for the stranger.

“Who,” Isolde whispered furiously, as Jacob carefully put the truck into drive without letting it move forward at all first, “Jacob, who the fuck is that?”

The redhead’s expression was unforgivingly tight, pulling taut with it the scars and mottling of his skin visible outside of his beard. He wasn’t looking at her, but rather kept his eyes fixed forward, as he closed the driver’s side door.

“Fifteen men,” he ground out between his teeth, “that’s fifteen fucking men I sent out here to figure out the body count.”

The stranger finally lowered their rifle, apparently satisfied with their work. This far away, it was hard to tell, but Isolde got the distinct impression that they were being watched, looked at now, where before the attention had been elsewhere.

And then it was confirmed, because the stranger lifted one gloved hand and pressed her index and middle fingers right against the hollows of her jaw. A snakebite. A cut right to the carotid. A message.

Jacob cranked the wheel, the tires shrieking in protest against the snow as he pulled between buildings in a sudden rush of acceleration. The stranger was quickly cut out, stifled by the side of the used-to-be-bar, leaving them out of direct range of a sniper rifle. Not that her companion seemed that pleased about it, anyway.

“Fuck,” he bit out, seething as he tried to navigate the narrow space in the clumsy Eden’s Gate truck. “Fuck, did you count how many bodies were on the ground?”

“Hm, no!” Isolde snapped viciously. “I was a bit too busy trying to make sure they were going to shoot us!”

Jacob gritted out another string of swears between his teeth, turning the truck until he could take what looked to be a back alley in the opposite direction of their little hunter. He checked the rearview mirror frequently; his expression was set in a deep frown, and he only looked at her once before continuing his regular scanning of the road behind them.

“Well, aren’t you going to turn around?” she demanded.

“For what?” Jacob replied flatly. “I’ve got a hunting rifle, not my HTI.”

“I don’t know what that means, and I don’t care,” Isolde bit out.

“It means, the chances of me getting shot before I get a shot on them are significantly lower,” he told her, his knuckles whitening along the steering wheel, “and as confident as I am that I could kill them before they killed me, I’m not confident they wouldn’t take a shot at you first.”

Isolde’s stomach rolled. It wasn’t the violence that bothered her—it wasn’t the death, or the guns, or even the blood—but the message itself. The Stranger had been hunting the Eden’s Gate men and women for sport. For fun. To pass the time, while they waited. But what for? What could they be waiting for?

She stayed quiet, listening to Jacob radio back to the compound quick, short orders that flew right over her head. She couldn’t stop thinking about it—the gesture. The stranger. Who were they? The remainder of the other cult, perhaps? What were they waiting for?

You’re next, that two-fingered, snake-bite-right-to-the-carotid gesture had said.

You’re next, and I’m coming for you.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Sylvia did not seem that impressed with John Seed, and Elliot could not blame her.

John was exceptionally charming. So charming, in fact, that he and Wyatt seemed to get along smashingly. It was almost frustrating, how quick the blonde took to John—but then, Wyatt did strike as the type of man who got along with everybody until they gave him a reason to think otherwise. After all, he’d been kind to her, and she was...

Needless to say, Sylvia was a harder sell, which was nice. Reassuring. It made Elliot feel more grounded, to see Sylvia politely smile at John’s chatter—she’d nearly forgotten how much he liked to talk—but then decidedly turn to Elliot to ask her about something or dive into a different conversation. It was pointed, and if the way John watched them interact was any indication, the message of it was not lost on him.

By the time the evening had drawn to a close, for her and John at least, the brunette had departed to go warm-up the Jeep and left her standing by the doorway, keeping warm, with Sylvia.

“You sure you’re doin’ okay?” the blonde asked after a moment, propped up against the wall in the tiny little doorway that led out to the main street. “You look tired. Stressed out. I was worried when we didn’t hear from you this morning, about comin’ to the barn.”

Elliot felt a little pang of guilt digging in, just there below her sternum. “I’m okay,” she promised. “I’m sorry I didn’t call, I—had a doctor’s appointment this morning that I completely forgot about until my mama reminded me, and John showed up this morning too, so it’s just been...”

“A crazy day,” Via agreed, her nose crinkling cutely in amusement. “He’s a funny fella, that John of yours.”

Oh, if only you knew. “I think so, too.”

“What is he?” she asked, conversationally. “Maybe a—car salesman?”

Her friend’s playful jab was enough to elicit a laugh, billowing out of her and catching even herself by surprise. But then, she shouldn’t have been shocked to find that Sylvia had gotten a quick read on John. Given the way she’d quickly diverted from the attention on Elliot’s scar and carried on, she thought maybe Via was more perceptive than she liked to let on.

“Lawyer,” Ell replied, and Via winced comically.

“Ouch.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“I mean—Elli,” Via intoned playfully, “he might as well be sellin’ you snake oil when he’s a lawyer.”

Elliot sighed ruefully, glancing out the window to see John clambering out of the front of the jeep. Snake oil seemed a light judgment for him, all things considered.

“Hey, Via,” she began, swallowing a little, “if I tell you something, you’ve gotta promise you won’t say anything?”

Via regarded her curiously, head tilted. “Okay, sure, Freckles. What’s up?”

She shifted on her feet. “John and I are actually, um—” Elliot paused, swallowing thickly. She didn’t want to say it. She didn’t want to, because saying it out loud—her, and not John—made it real. Gave it legs. Forced her to face what had happened and what she couldn’t change yet.

“You don’t have to,” Via told her gently. “I could tell there was somethin’—you know, out of sorts. You don’t get a slick-talkin’ lawyer grinnin’ like the cat what ate the canary if he hasn’t done somethin’ to piss a woman off.”

Elliot shook her head. “We’re actually, uh,” she tried again, pulling at a loose thread on her shirt, “m—married.”

Saying the word out loud didn’t feel as wretched as she thought it would, which was almost three times as concerning. She felt, instead, more dread waiting for Sylvia’s reaction—waiting to see what her one friend had to say or think about that.

The woman’s face screwed up comedically. “Oh, Freckles,” she said, her tone teasing. “Say it ain’t so.”

“I’m not kidding!” Elliot felt a nervous little laugh bubble out of her. “I mean—what, Via? You clearly have an opinion on him.”

“I don’t know the man from Jack walkin’ down the street,” Sylvia demurred. “I just think...well, I just think you’re a real peach, you know? And you didn’t seem too pleased to have this John walkin’ around, and I take that kind of thing seriously.”

Sighing, Elliot scuffed her shoe against the ground, watching John pick his way through the crowd back down the street.

“We left on—bad terms, sort of,” she explained. “He showed up to make amends.”

“Do you want to make amends?”

The question caught her off-guard. It was an obvious one—obvious in that, it should have been one of the first things anyone asked her regarding John, even John himself, and yet: no one had. Not a single person had asked her if she wanted to suffer through making amends with the man who had lied to her, violated her trust, and still somehow managed to be the one person she didn’t have to fear seeing the worst, ugliest parts of her.

“I don’t know,” Elliot said after a moment, clearing her throat. “I haven’t decided yet.”

“Then I will reserve judgment,” Sylvia replied firmly, “so you can make a decision on your own.”

The door to the street opened, bringing with it not only a waft of chilly wind, but John himself and the scent of his viciously-expensive cologne. It took every ounce of Elliot’s self-control not to burst into laughter at the absurdity of it—John Seed, charisma-extraordinaire, somehow managing to make poor first impressions both on her mother and her friend.

“Car’s all warmed up,” John announced, rubbing his hands together. He glanced between the two women, the corner of his mouth ticking upward. “What’s so funny, hm?”

“Nothing,” Elliot replied. “Just talking about you.”

This piqued his interest. He said, “Good things, I hope,” and she could see it on his face—the painful reminder of the way John had craved Joseph’s approval, the way he’d lit up like a nuclear mushroom cloud the second Joseph deigned to say anything remotely kind to him.

“Jury’s still out,” Sylvia said lightly, and then flashed a pretty smile and clapped him on the shoulder. “But don’t worry bud! We’ll get you there eventually.”

John tried very hard to feign polite laughter, but the uneasiness bled through readily—and it was a little satisfying, to see John squirm, to see him out of his element, no longer surrounded by a constant chorus of Yes hitting his dopamine centers nonstop. No wonder the man had a conniption anytime someone dared to dislike him.

“Better get this lady home, she looks like she’s about to fall asleep standing,” Sylvia announced, reaching and giving Elliot a gentle hug. “Night, Freckles.”

“Goodnight.”

John and Sylvia bid each other a pleasant goodbye as Elliot stepped out onto the street, careful to avoid icier parts of the concrete as she made her way to the car. Her brain felt fuzzy—a lot of socializing, a lot of time spent trying not to let John get to her. It had been long enough since she’d had to hold her walls up for so long that she felt exhausted from doing it, even for this long.

Maybe that was his strategy. Wear her down, then swoop in, just like last time.

“Did you have fun?” John asked, and she realized that she was at the car, having climbed into the passenger seat already. He closed the driver’s side door, settling in before carefully beginning to back out of the parking spot.

“I mean, having you loom over my shoulder the entire night was a little odd.”

He made an affronted sound. “I was not looming.”

“You were,” Elliot told him, “a little.” She paused, feeling the exhaustion pulling at the edges of her vision, begging for her to close her eyes—but she couldn’t. Not in the car, not with John driving. If she did, he might just keep driving and not turn back around. “It’s funny—”

“My quote-unquote looming?”

“How much different you are,” she finished, “when you’re not around Joseph.”

John was clearly trying very hard not to look like he was stiffening at her words. Gotcha, she thought, with a little pinprick of pride. Yeah, I didn’t forget. I didn’t forget how much you hated it when I brought him up.

“I don’t know what you mean,” John replied, keeping his voice light. “I’m exactly the way I’ve always been.”

“You haven’t tried to drown me a single time.”

“That time was a miscommunication,” he insisted. “I wasn’t trying to drown you. Just—coerce you. And besides, that’s behind us now. I know you, Elliot Honeysett, intimately, which means such forms of brute persuasion aren’t required.” He paused. “It’s much better when you indulge me willingly, anyway.”

Elliot’s nose crinkled. “You sound fucking nuts when you say that. ‘That one time I thought about drowning you was just a miscommunication’. No wonder Sylvia doesn’t like you.”

“So she told you? That she doesn’t like me?”

He paused for a moment, his gaze flickering over to her, and when he saw the very subtle upturn of her mouth he exhaled out of his nose.

“You’re fucking with me.”

“Not necessarily. But if I was—it would be the least you deserve.”

He was different, out from the insane pressure of the cult, out from under Joseph’s thumb. It was like, given room to breathe, he was suddenly relearning what it was like to make his own decision—to exist outside of Joseph. Back in Hope County, John had been fervent in his belief that he owed Joseph everything. Maybe the distance had done him some good.

Don’t, something inside of her insisted viciously, as she turned her attention out to the side of the road where the headlights illuminated snowdrift after snowdrift. Don’t get soft on him. That’s how he got you last time, you know. Don’t let it happen again.

But if he wanted to press the issue about Sylvia—or about her comment concerning Joseph—John seemed to exercise a remarkable amount of self-control and instead focused on driving. In the quiet, without him chattering on about doing things for them or how much he missed our banter, it was almost...Comfortable.

“Finding out the gender,” Elliot said after a moment, the exhaustion now settling like a deep chill in her bones. “Of the baby, I mean. At the next appointment.”

The brunette shifted in his seat. In an attempt at nonchalance, he said, “Oh, yeah?”

What am I doing? she thought. He plays nice for one night. He’s good at that. Short-term goodness.

“I’m nervous,” she added after a moment. “About finding out.”

“Not excited?” John tilted his head.

“No,” she admitted. “Nervous.”

Ahead of them, she saw the dark blur of a figure. A frown tugged at the corners of her mouth. John was saying something—something about how he’d read a number of books and it was normal to feel nervous, or some other kind of psycho babble—but she shifted forward in her seat, eyes straining to see.

“Slow down,” she said, “I think there’s a dog...?”

“What?” John asked. “Where? I don’t see anything.”

“Just up ahead. Have you not been paying attention to the road?”

He made an indignant sound—“I am the best driver between the two of us, you know,”—but before Elliot could think up a response, the dark, furred creature slowed down ahead of them, stopped in the middle of the road, and turned its head.

The headlights caught it immediately. It was a dog, four-legged and large and shaggy black fur, but when it turned its head, it was a man’s face, the mouth slung open and the gently-rounded teeth of a human’s mouth blaring white in the headlights. Something dark and slick oozed between the teeth, in that split second, she watched the dog-human-creature push off from the ground and stand on its two hind legs.

She screamed, and John swerved, and immediately threw the car into park and slammed his hand on the hazard lights button.

It was dread, pure dread and fear, sending a pulse of adrenaline straight to her brain. Bent over at the waist, Elliot closed her eyes tight, trying to will the image out of her head, out from behind her irises. John had quickly unbuckled and reached over, his hands doing the same to hers.

“Elliot,” he said urgently, fingers pushing the hair back from her face. “Ell, take a breath, come on—sit up, you have to take a breath—”

“Is—is it gone?” she asked, but the words came out closer to a wail, the fear spiking viciously in the timbre of her voice. Please, God, what the fuck, please let it be gone. God, oh fuck, what the fuck what the fuck— “The—the—”

“There’s nothing—?” John stopped. Elliot frantically scrabbled at the high neck of her parka, fingers shaking and clumsy. “Ell—”

“Can’t breathe,” she managed out. “Too hot, can’t—”

The brunette reached over the console and stilled her hands. She was still bent at the waist, but he made do, pulling the zipper of the parka down until she could pull her arms from it; once it had been deposited in the back seat, his hand went to the back of her neck.

She sat up slowly, her eyes immediately making a frantic search of the road. There was nothing. Only quiet snowfall.

“Where—” She paused, swallowing thickly. “Where did it go?”

“Ell,” John murmured, “there wasn’t anything in the road.”

“What do you mean?” she moaned. “I saw it, the—I saw the—”

“You saw...?” he prompted. His thumb swept across the back of her neck, coaxing.

“The dog,” she insisted. “It was a dog, but it had—it’s face was—it was a man’s face, and it f-fucking—it fucking stood up, John!”

He was watching her carefully, his gaze searching her face for a long moment. He cleared his throat. “I didn’t see anything,” he told her. “Just that you—you just screamed, so I pulled over.”

“I’m not crazy,” Elliot bit out, her voice wobbling.

“I know,” John replied plainly. “Maybe it was just—you know. The snow. In front of the headlights.” And then: “Have you really been getting enough sleep, Ell?”

She felt her lip tremble, the desire to cry almost overwhelming. She couldn’t stand it—couldn’t stand John being tender to her, worrying about her, questioning the validity of her saying that she had been sleeping fine because he could see that she couldn’t. He was wretched and wicked and it needed to stay that way.

“Please take me home,” she said finally, re-buckling and rolling the window down to let the cold air on her face. “Please just take me home.”

John waited for a few heartbeats before he turned the hazard lights off and put the Jeep in drive.

“I don’t think you’re crazy,” he told her after a moment, glancing at her a few times. “I mean it, Ell.”

“Fuck you,” she replied, exhausted and feeling furiously wound up. “Just take me home.”

Get some sleep.

Feel better in the morning.

[genevievemd]

Can I ask you some questions about Ethan and Genevieve I discovered your page a week ago just finished all the fics I'm interested in your version of the characters

Oph MC is usually seen as flawless and perfect (like every other MC in choices) what are some bad habits or flaws your MC has and we know Ethan's flaws he is one of the few li's who have actual flaws but still I'd like to know your Ethan's flaws which are personal or you have imagined them. (English is not my first language can't explain my request more clearly than this)

Do you see them married with kids in the future ( ik the marriage part you have a fic about it but here is what I specifically want. both of their opinions on this matter before meeting each other and after spending a year or two dating)

Does Ethan have extended family that you have created like a cousin he is very close to or a best friend (if yes can you make a fic where Genevieve meets this best friend or cousin?)

Any hobbies or skills Genevieve has?(like sketching or piano or something idk why Genevieve gives me piano vibes)

Which med school did you have Genevieve go to?

Are they fresh air kind of people or city air kind of

Do they believe in aliens

Opinions on pineapple on pizza

And last but not the least body language ( signs their body gives off when they are anxious, scared, happy and excited)

Ik they are a lot of questions and you probably hate me for making you answer this question air but either way love your work♥️♥️✨💫

Yes! You can always ask me questions and I LOVE these questions. I’m very attached to Gen lol so I’m always willing to talk about her! 

Thank you for reading all my things! 

And I don’t hate you for all the questions, I answered every single one, under the read more because they got lengthy. lol 

First Question: 

I definitely don’t see Gen as perfect. I’ve kind of put a lot of myself in her, which I’ve never done with any other MC I’ve played. I kind of see Gen as as a perfectionist, to the point where she gets in her own way. She also, like Ethan, tends to put everyone’s problems on her shoulders and feels responsible for thing that are way out of her control. And though Gen is patient, sometimes too patient, she can hold a grudge. It’s unhealthy and she knows that, but she has a hard time over coming it. Like with Landry, deep down Gen wants to let it go and move on. But there’s a small part of her that will always feel angry and betrayed. Gen’s also not one to put her own needs ahead of others, it’s rare that she’ll ask for what she needs, unless she 100% trusts the person she’s confiding in. (I have a headcanon where her dad cheated on her mom when she was in high school, they didn’t get a divorce, but Gen was the one who discovered the affair and it left a sort of trust/abandonment issue.) She can be rather clingy in a relationship, at first, something Ethan was annoyed with, he’s rather independent I think, but once he understood where that was coming from it didn’t bother him as much. It was just Gen’s way of reassuring herself that Ethan was hers, that he wasn’t going anywhere. Plus her love language is physical touch/affection and spending time together. 

As for Ethan, I think he’s a very closed off person, has a hard time trusting people. He absolutely will push someone away, not because he necessarily wants to, but in order to protect himself. For me, I think one of the main reasons why he didn’t dive 100% into a relationship with MC was his fear that he’d lose them. That they would walk out the same way his mother did. I also think he’s way too stubborn and has a hard time admitting when he’s wrong. He won’t be the first to back down in a fight, even if that means it makes him unhappy. 

Second Question: 

I absolutely see Ethan and Genevieve married with kids. Gen has always wanted to get married, always wanted to be a mother. She’s had a pinterest board since high school thats dedicated to her dream wedding lol. When she found out Ethan wasn’t 100% on board with marriage, she was bummed. But at the same time, she was/is willing to let that go if it meant she could be with him. As long as she has Ethan, she doesn’t need a ring. Gen’s also always believed in soulmates and fate, she knew after their kiss in Miami that Ethan was her soulmate. 

As for Ethan, I think deep down he’s always wanted kids but never saw them as an option because he never thought he’d find the right person to settle down with. I think that also ties into his past with his mom. Same with marriage, when he wasn’t in love, it didn’t make sense to him. But once he was, realized he never wanted to lose Gen, he understood it. Once he recognized how much he loves Gen, he wanted everything with her. Marriage, kids, all of it. With MC/Gen he realized he could be the parent he wanted to be. 

I have a scene in chapter 3 or 4, I can’t remember which, in Love You Home where Ethan and Gen have the marriage/kids talk. 

Third Question:

I think Ethan has an extended family. We don’t know much about his parents, if they are only children or not, but I think either his mom or dad has a sibling or two. They’re definitely not close at all, he probably doesn’t see them. But they exist. Gen’s influence definitely persuades him to reach out, in the same way she influenced him to give his mom a second chance. 

As for a best friend? I don’t think he has one, I think Naveen is his closest friend at the moment. But I would love for him to get back in touch with maybe a childhood friend or friends from collage. Maybe even become friends with some fellow attendings at Edenbrook. Again, I think have Gen/MC around has really opened his eyes to different things and realizing how important friendships and relationships really are. 

And at some point I may write something for that. 

Fourth Question: 

I love that you see Gen as a piano person because I also see Gen as a piano person. She doesn’t play much now, lack of access to a piano and too busy with work but she does know how to play. She also speaks a baby bit of french, not enough to be fluent but enough to understand her maternal grandparents (they’re first language is french, so they speak it interchangeably with english). I also think she’s a pretty decent singer, she did choir in middle/high school.

As for hobbies, Gen is super into photography. She’s not the greatest, but she loves it. It ties into her being a super sentimental person, she likes to have tangible memories. She also loves journaling, she definitely has a bullet journal that she does herself. It’s relaxing for her, after a stressful day. And I don’t know if you’d count make up as a hobby, but Gen is super into it. On the daily, she really only wears eyeliner, mascara and a light lipstick, but on her days off she experiments and does more intricate looks. I have a headcanon where Ethan comes home and sees Gen in like a super dark lip with a kickass winged liner, very femme fatale, and he’s shookith. 

Fifth Question: 

I go back and fourth on what med school Gen went too, I googled top 100 med schools when I started open heart so I could pick a good one for her lmao Its a toss up between University of California or University of Pennsylvania. Gen is from New England, she grew up on the coast of Maine - not too far from Providence actually. So I sometimes think UPenn because Gen would want to be close to her family. But then sometimes I say Cali because she wanted the adventure of going off on her own. At some point I’m going to have to choose obviously but where not there yet lol Still a toss up. 

Sixth Question: 

Genevieve is absolutely a fresh air girl. She loves the beach and being outdoors. Boston is a bit of a change for her, being a city but it doesn’t take long to find some country air here in New England so she gets both. lol 

Seventh Question: 

LMAO I love this question. I never thought of this but you know what Gen absolutely believes in aliens. Not in a weird conspiracy kind of way, more in a scientific kind of way. There’s no way Earth is the only planet in the galaxy to have life. The galaxy is freakin huge, scientifically there is no way we’re the only planet with life. 

Eighth Question: 

Pineapple on pizza is a crime. End of story. No one should ever have pineapple on pizza. No just...no.

Ninth/ Last Question: 

I’m going to answer this for each of the things you listed in your question. 

Anxious: It’s very easy to see when Gen is feeling this way, at least to Ethan and her friends. She retreats inward and does this like twisting motion with her fingers. Like cracking your knuckles but not actually cracking your knuckles. She’ll also bite the corner of her lip. 

Scared: Gen doesn’t scare easy, but when she does she kind of hugs herself, makes herself smaller. Will hide behind things or run away. She’s a flight not a fight when scared. Especially if its like a spider, bug or snake - she’s terrified of those. That’s a freeze or run and scream situation. 

Happy: Super easy to tell when Gen is happy. She gets really smiley, a little bouncy. One of those people that does that little happy dance of swaying back and forth. 

Excited: Same as happy, big smiles. Jumps around. a little dancing. Lots of giggling. 

I’m gonna add one more here, for shipping purposes lol 

In Love: Gen is affectionate af, very touchy. She’ll show you how much she loves her way before she ever says it. Ethan realized she was in love with him months before she said it. Just by how much more open she was with physical affection. Always gently touching his arm, or kissing his cheek, always willing to hug him or snuggle in close. 

Thank you so so so much for the questions, these were so fun to answer! Feel free to drop in any time. I love Gen and Ethan so much, I will always answer any questions you want to ask me about them.

[pebblysand]

of tyres that blow (extended author’s note of chapter v. of castles)

- - TO READ THE CHAPTER ITSELF, CLICK HERE. - -

Oh, what a month it has been. Well, a month and two days - I’m a bit late updating. I’ve had two good things happen, writing wise. 1) I got my first original short story published (!!!!) (you can read it here) and 2) I put out a little one-shot about Fleur Delacour that I’m super happy about and gave me an idea about a new series (more on that later this week, I hope. I might need help with prompts!). Regardless, this latest Irish lockdown is fucking endless and I sometimes wonder if this fic isn’t just an outlet for my feelings of lockdown-induced loneliness, apathy, but also a constant argument that I have with myself thinking: for the love of god, just pull yourself up, will you? You’re a Gryffindor, goddamn it. I certainly wish my fucked up sleeping patterns on no one, although I may or may have Mary-Sued that onto Harry, lol. (Spoiler alert: he’s scheduled to get some real sleep in next chapter. All bets are off regarding whether I will.)

This chapter was surprisingly easy to write (I basically vomited out chapters iv, v, and vi over the span of a week in December) but incredibly difficult to edit. For days, I just couldn’t concentrate, wrote and re-wrote and felt like everything was shite. Then, I realised it’d become this 19,000-words long monster so I had to cut a lot of shit out. We ended up with 15,898 words which I suppose is better? 

I do wonder: do people mind long chapters? Like, I know as fanfic reader, I personally prefer longer formats and rarely gravitate towards works that are less than 3,000 words. I love just getting buried into a story, into plots rather than single scenes. This being said, every time I write something that I deem too long (i.e. above 10k) I have these excruciating struggles where I wonder: should I cut it in half? should I leave it as is? I decided to split the last one. Then, I decided not to split this one because (you may notice this or not, I’m not sure) it’s kind of built a certain way, geared towards basically getting to the last two paragraphs. Like, when you get there, it’s a bit of an ah-ha moment, but I couldn’t get to that ah-ha moment without all the build up before it. It’s the accumulation of all of these little details that feel like they don’t matter. And as Harry says in the end, they don’t, in the grand scheme of things, but also they do. Like, everyday life doesn’t matter until you lose it. Then, it does, if that makes sense.

In terms of next update... I’ve decided to get my law licence transferred to France and the EU (it’s a long story), which means that I need to bloody, fucking study. The exams are at the end of March so my current plan is: hardcore study until the end of february. Mix study/writing in early march and hopefully get chapter vi out mid-March, then hardcore study until the end of March. Please, if you see me posting then, tell me off in the comments cause god, I really need to pass. Now, I will go have my traditional i-ve-put-a-chapter-out shot of limoncello and let you read the below :).

...spoilers for castles, chap v. under the cut -

I’ve done a lot of thinking about what this chapter is meant to be about. Obviously (I hope), every chapter has a point, in this story. Chapter 1 is about time (the way it passes and blurs when your mind’s a complete mess), chapter 2 is about hope, chapter 3 is about inevitability and the consequences of trauma, chapter 4 is about becoming an adult and growing into your own skin, etc. I think this one is about fear. How you feel it, and how you overcome it. Like, Harry takes a decision to stand up, fight, do the interview, regardless of the fact that he is scared (for his life, for that of the people he loves), and finds buried inside him a lot of the courage that he (felt) he lost, after the war. He learns to control his fear of the world by figuring out how apprehend it, through the training Giulia gives him, through learning how to kill, too. 

But, it’s also about fear in society. How the attack on Robards sets everyone on edge and how they keep going regardless. I initially wrote this chapter with the idea that it was going to be about speaking out and being brave, but obviously, fear and fighting against it is a huge part of that, too. 

Then, there’s Mia. Obviously, this fic is Harry/Ginny endgame but I do like the idea of Harry (and possibly Ginny as well) dating at least one other person, before officially tying the knot. Like, yes, Ginny is obviously coming back next chapter. She’ll probably own the second half of next chapter, if I’m honest, considering they’re obviously going to the burrow for christmas. I love Ginny, I’ve missed her and honestly, I can’t wait to bring her back. This being said, to be fair, I’ve kind of realised that this fic may actually be the first I ever write that isn’t strictly “shippy.” Like, yes, their relationship is a huge part of it (it’s a huge part of his life) and it will and was always going to be a huge part of this story but I think this fic is larger than that. It’s a result of my years-long obsession over: but what happens next? Over what “all was well” really means, in a general sense. How do they get to “nineteen years later” and beyond. But yeah, I’ve missed Ginny and I’m glad she’s on her way back to us now. 

Now, obviously. Giulia. I’m sorry. This was always going to happen. Well, almost always. I remember when I first wrote her in, she was a bit of a filler character. At the time, the thing with Mia was supposed to happen in last chapter and I actually had (have) much more backstory around her, than around Giulia. She and Harry were going to have proper conversations (will they ever, who knows?), really get to know each other. But then, Giulia came first narratively and shone through the page. I started writing her and she had this personality and life of her own and I couldn’t bring myself to curtail her. 

Now, we all know how it is: fanfics can only tolerate so many OCs. So, I had to choose between putting Mia at the forefront, or Giulia. I chose Jules. 

Then, in chapter 4, I wrote this: 

Her first lesson is to teach him how to drive the patrol car. ‘I don’t know why we use them,’ she explains, honest, and Harry vaguely wonders if he should be taking notes. ‘Reckon the Ministry saw them being used by Muggles, had to prove they could do better. They like making noise, the Ministry, don’t they? Lots of sirens and shite.’

Politely, Harry hides a chuckle behind a cough. He clearly doesn’t know yet that he doesn’t need to, that Giulia’s sarcastic sense of humour is one of the things that he’ll come to appreciate the most in this world, over the next few months. That the sound of her voice is one he’ll try to never, ever forget. That in the speech that he’ll give when he makes Head Auror, over a decade later, he’ll think of her and say: ‘Okay, let’s try to not just be sirens and shite, all right?’

This kind of tumbled out without me really thinking about it until I really looked at it and thought: fuck, why is he talking about her past tense, like that. Like “the sound of her voice is one he’ll try to never, ever forget.” Why would he forget it, though? And so, just like that, came her death sentence. For that, I apologise. It killed me too, and I cried when I wrote it in (especially when I wrote next chapter, actually, first time I ever made myself cry writing, if I’m honest) but it just needed to happen. It’s how Ginny and he get back together (I mean, obviously - is that even a spoil) because he’s grieving but she’s grown stronger and steady and she’s able to be there in a way that she wasn’t last summer. It did occur to me that god, all his mentors/father figures come to die, don’t they? But honestly, I kind of thing that his real mentor will be Robards, at the end of the day. She was just the one who allowed him to get back on his feet. 

One last note: I’ve been meaning to put this into the fic for ages but have never found the right moment to write it in. In the meantime, I’ll just say it here, because I don’t know if this has frustrated some of yous - I know it might have driven me mad. There is a logic to the Muggle/Wizard swearing/exclamations in the fic. Obviously, this is an adult fic so they swear normally, like eighteen-year-olds would in this (I decided that very early on), but also there’s “God”-s and “Merlin”-s and things like that. 

Now, I think that throughout this fic, although Harry hasn’t mentioned it yet (cause it never fucking fits anywhere) Hermione’s been having a sort of Muggle reckoning. She - in conscience - decides to start swearing/exclaiming “like a Muggle” after the war. If you notice, she only ever says “god”, never “Merlin.” Harry uses both interchangeably although he tends to use Merlin more when he thinks about wizard stuff, but God when he thinks about Muggle stuff (like when he’s with Mia). Ron only swears in “wizard” but I think he might start using Muggle expletives as well in the later chapters because of Hermione rubbing off on him. 

The fact that I even think about all that stuff is pathetic and I need to get a life. But that’s for another post, altogether. 

Anyway, thanks for reading. I hope you liked it :).