#got this paperback a while ago very excited to read this

[dp-marvel94]

Face to Face- Chapter 50

Summary: When Danny went through the ghost catcher, he expected to be cured of the ghostliness that had haunted him since the accident, not to wake up on the lab floor with his parents saying he’d been overshadowed but everything’s back to normal now. But why does Danny Fenton cry himself to sleep to then dream of flying? Why does Phantom, the ghost who was supposedly possessing Danny remember a life that wasn’t his? Most of all, why do both the human and the ghost feel that something vital is missing, in their very soul? Or: Trying to cure himself of his powers one month after the accident, Danny accidentally splits himself but neither his ghost nor his human half know that that is what they did

First -> Last -> Next

Word Count: 5,621

Also on AO3 and Fanfiction.net

Soon enough, bedtime came, for his human half at least. Phantom waited in their bedroom, happily devouring the last chapter of their book while Fenton stripped out of his slightly ripped, grass-stained jeans and showered. 

The human returned, just as the ghost slammed the book close. He lifted the paperback, softly knocking his head with a groan.

“That bad?” Fenton raised a brow, a hint of teasing.

Phantom shook his head. “No. It… ugh! How could he end it in a cliffhanger like that?! I mean, did she just die? She just got her sister back and then this happens….” The ghost boy ranted, his other self just watching with an amused expression.

Human Danny slipped into an old tshirt, careful of the now-unbandaged cuts. “I’m telling you, she’s not dead. It’s some kind of stasis. They’ll figure out how to get her back in the first chapter of the next book.”

“The next book’s not even been announced yet!”  Phantom complained. Even so he enjoyed the conversation, glad that their memory sharing had become so seamless. With hardly an effort, Fenton knew everything he’d just read. Ranting to himself about a book had never been so fulfilling.

“That’s what fanfiction is for.” Fenton wiggled his eyebrows. He winced, pulling his sweatpants on, past the cut on his leg.

Ghost Danny frowned, stopping his rant. “Let me help you with that.” He darted out of the room, returning moments later with bandages. 

“I’ll change your wrappings too.” Fenton offered.

Phantom agreed, rolling up his pant leg.

The two sat down on the bed, across from each other. Carefully, bandages were changed. Ghost Danny rolled up his sleeve. He watched as his human half wrapped the three scratches on his arm, a sense of deja vu hitting him. They’d been here before, on the bed treating injuries. The same burn mark on both their stomachs. Except… instead of letting Fenton help him, Phantom had refused, insisting to do it himself. Something in him twinged at the thought, at how far they had some. That moment, realizing that the injuries were the same despite his greenish skin tone, felt like so long ago. It was back before they’d even told Sam and Tucker, back when he’d still been in denial.

“Mom and Dad haven’t mentioned talking about it again.” Fenton said, a perfect segway from his thoughts.

Phantom nodded, fastening his counterpart’s wrapping. “They were busy, talking to Dora. I guess they got so excited they forgot-”

A knock. “Danny?” Dad’s voice came through the door. “Can I talk to you for a bit?”

Ghost Danny sighed, muttering under his breath. “Spoke too soon.” He raised his voice, enough to be heard through the wall. “Yeah. Come in.”

The door opened. The man’s brow furrowed at the two on the bed. “You could have asked your mother or me to help with that.” He motioned to the bandages.

Fenton shrugged. “We’ve got it. Thanks for offering though.” He gave a slight, authentic smile before turning his attention back to Phantom’s leg. 

The bandage secured, the ghost let the pant leg fall back into place. The human boy did the same and… 

Phantom’s stomach twisted, the nervousness hitting. He picked at his gloves, shifting on the bed.

“So… what did you want to talk about?” Fenton asked the question.

Dad approached the bed with a sigh. Phantom didn’t wait for him to ask, moving to make room and motioning to the spot.

The man sat, eyes flickering to the ghost version of his son. His brow wrinkled with parental concern. “Your mom told me about what you talked about this afternoon.” 

Phantom bit his lip. “About… me frost-burning Fenton?”

Dad nodded, gaze moving to human Danny’s hands. “Can I see?”

Tentatively, Fenton opened his clenched palms, healed and unmarked. “They’re fine. Not even a scar or anything.”

The adult carefully examined one of the hands, before withdrawing. “We need to talk more about this. About what happened right after the ghost catcher and the week after.” 

Something in ghost Danny tightened, an impulse to argue. Across from him, Fenton’s lips turned down. He glanced at the clock. “But… it’s almost eleven.”

“I know. I know it’s late and you have school tomorrow.” That worry remained, flickering across the Dannys’ faces. But Dad’s expression softened, understanding. “I’m not gonna make you go into it now. You do need to sleep.” He reached out, ruffling Fenton’s hair with a chuckle. “This you does at least.”

Human Danny’s shoulders untensed, the affection sending a fond warmth through his heart. “Yes, this me does need to sleep.”

The man nodded. “Gotta get that beauty sleep. But…” His other arm reached for the ghost version of his son and Phantom let himself be pulled into a half hug. “We have to talk about things. Okay? We can’t put stuff like this off.”

There was a silent pause. Neon green eyes met their blue counterparts. A wordless conversation.

“Tomorrow.” Ghost Danny promised. “Tomorrow after school. Fenton and I, we’ll… we’ll tell you everything.” Despite the flickering worry, there was no hesitation, no doubt.

Dad smiled softly, holding each boy close. “Good.” He gave Fenton’s arm an affectionate squeeze. “Sleep tight, Danny boy.” He did the same to Phantom. “Let your mom and I know if you need anything, son.” 

“I will.” Ghost Danny smiled softly.

“I love you both so much.” Another squeeze and the man let go. He stood, walking to the door. “Good night.”

“Good night, Dad.” Both Dannys waved. 

The door closed, leaving ghost and human alone. Phantom drifted up, moving to hug his other self from the side. A long, contemplative silence. Then….

Fenton sighed, arm moving to return the embrace. “It’s going to be alright. We saw how well they handled meeting Dora. They were so excited….”

Phantom gave an agreeing hum, his own core churning. No other words were needed, the feelings crystal clear between them. They were still scared. The thought of bearing the truth… it was daunting, intimidating. No one ever really wanted to talk about hard things; it was difficult, no matter the subject matter but…

The Dannys sighed in sync, as one. Muscles untensed, heart and core beating so close together. A strange peace settled. It was going to be okay.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Fenton went to sleep. He dreamed of stargazing, of cuddling with Blobby. The little ghost purred, kneading into his lab with its little nobby appendages. He scratched under its chin.

Phantom listened to music. He doodled in his sketchbook and enjoyed the quiet night. He watched the stars slowly move across the sky, cheristing his human’s sleepy presence in the back of his mind.

Soon enough the sun rose, its rays bringing the world to life. The ghost smiled, enjoying the light’s warmth on his face. He gave his blob a kiss on the head, eyes crinkling at the soft mewing noise it made. He scribbled a quick sketch, putting on the finishing touches. And….

Danny sighed, feeling a part of himself draw away. He was waking up.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Friday morning, Fenton got ready for school before riding there with Jazz. He met his friends at his locker and found the school was abuzz. 

“It was a dragon!” 

“No way!”

“Look, I have a picture.”

Two boys talked excitedly in front of a locker. Lester and Mikey. Fenton remembered them from the few Dungeons and Dragons sessions Tucker had dragged him into. Had one of them been at the park?

“I saw it too.” “Yeah, it turned into this blue, glowy chick.” “The Fentons said she was a ghost.” “A ghost? That’s ridiculous.” “Well, what else could it be?”

Questions, theories buzzed around him. Most thought it was a hoax, a publicity stunt blown out of proportion. And Fenton was grateful. Dealing with questions was more than he wanted today, not with his stomach flopping over the impending conversation with his parents. At least Phantom was having a chill day.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“Any particular food you want me to try and infuse with ectoplasm?” Mom asked, when she and Dad came up for lunch.

“A grilled cheese sounds good, honestly.” Phantom shrugged. “I have no idea how you’d do that though.”

The woman furrowed her brow in thought. “I’ve got a few ideas.”

“I should probably go see Sidney at some point. He might have some ideas too. Plus, he was going to give me some tiger fruit seeds to see if I could grow them and that never happened.”

“Maybe we could plant them on the island the portal is on, in the Zone.” Dad suggested.

“That’s a good idea.” Ghost Danny nodded. Then his voice pitched up, attention on a certain ghost.“What are you doing?” 

He reached down, scratching the curious blob which was investigating the ecto-cookie he was eating. If the ghost had a nose, he’d have thought it was sniffing it. Another insistent bob and Blobby darted forward. Its mouth-like depression opened, snatching a bit of the cookie.

“Hey! That’s mine.” Phantom jerked his hand away, before stuffing the rest into his mouth.

Mom’s nose wrinkled in disgust but with a flicker of green light, all attention was one the blob.

Dad blinked. “It’s got cat ears.”

Ghost Danny swallowed the cookie. He reached down to scratch the new ears. “Huh…. I thought Blobby was pretty catty.” A purr sounded from the blob. “Who’s a good kitty?”

A mew sounded and the little ghost flickered intangible. A bit of wet, smashed cookie fell into Ghost Danny’s lap. The boy stared down, nose wrinkling in disgust. “This is fine.”

Mom waggled her finger. “No more real world food for you.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The school day continued, as did the quiet day at home. An undercurrent of anxiety lingered but… so did an expectation, a determination. 

Soon enough, the bell rang. Classmates rushed out of the room, excited for the three day weekend. Fenton felt some of that too; Mom and Dad had told Phantom earlier that they thought the ghost catcher would be finished by Monday. He let himself feel excitement, hope at the thought.

Saying goodbye to his friends, Human Danny rode home with Jazz. He and his ghost half watched an episode of Criminal Minds with Mom before helping her with dinner. 

Phantom smiled, enjoying his grilled cheese as the family ate.

The sun went down. The table was cleaned, leftovers put away and dishes cleaned.

It was time.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“Start at the beginning.” Mom offered gently. 

Up on top of the Ops Center, with blankets and pillow to cushion against the hard metal, Fenton and Phantom looked to the stars. Their parents sat at either side of them.

Fenton started. “It… it hurt. Going through the ghost catcher hurt. I mean, of course it would, getting pulled apart like that but… neither of us realized at first.” He sighed. “I just…I just remember hitting the ground, being confused, and… feeling like something was wrong.”

“I just ran.” Phantom bit his lip, fidgeting with his gloves. “I saw you guys with your suits and goggles and stuff. I just thought ‘danger’ and… and ran. I… uh… got to the park before I actually started thinking and remembered what happened.” The image flickered in his mind, staring at his own white gloves. Searching for the flicker of warmth near his heart. “I thought… I thought I was dead.” The words were surprisingly easy. “I tried to turn back and I couldn’t so I thought I’d just died all the way. Like… going through the ghost catcher killed me.” 

Those moments of panic, of sorrow came back to him, the echo of those feelings. But Phantom shook his head, pushing them away. He managed a look up, at his parents' faces. His dad’s mouth, void of its normal smile, drawn into a deep frown. His mom’s eyes, normally so sure and confident, now round and wet.  They looked so sad. And it was just going to get worse. He forced himself to continue. “I freaked out and started crying.”

“I remember that.” Fenton nodded somberly. “I started crying too, once Mom got me up to my room. Something was missing and… I wanted to go home.”

“I wanted to go home.” Phantom agreed, rubbing his watering eye. “I had to see what happened. I thought… I couldn’t be a ghost. There was no way… no way I was dead. I just needed to see… to see my… body. Then I could figure out what was happening. I just… needed to see it.” 

Mom’s brow furrowed, a sad understanding. “So you flew home.” 

The ghost nodded. “I did.” The memory replied through his head. Rushing home, phasing into his bedroom. “I saw Fenton asleep on our bed and thought… thought he was my corpse.” Horror flickered across the faces. “But he was breathing. So… I wasn’t dead. I was having an out of body experience or something.” That moment of elation, of pure joy. “I hadn’t been… been too late. I still had a chance. I could figure out how to go back to normal if I could figure out how to… well… get back in my body. I could… I could be human.”

He let the words linger, the feeling of excitement, sheer hope.

“Then, I woke up.” Fenton’s words shattered the moment, like a pane of glass. “I woke up and…” He shivered. Phantom felt the echo of that remembered horror. The feelings of his insides churning, the world turning on its head. “You thought I was possessed or something.” Human Danny continued. “You flew away, completely freakout.” Someone else had been in his body. An imposter, except…..

The ghost looked up, taking in the confused expressions. This was it. This was the big secret, the knowledge that had been haunting him. The one thing he couldn’t say, couldn’t admit to his parents. But….

Phantom swallowed, willing himself to continue. “I realized that wasn’t true though. Fenton wasn’t possessed. He wasn’t some imposter in my bedroom. He was… he was the real deal.” For just a moment, the bewildered expressions deepened. “Fenton was Danny, the real Danny. So there was… was no way I was.”

Mom’s eyes widened, the confusion evaporating. “Oh, Danny.” She breathed.

“I thought… I thought I was the imposter.” The words were so hard to force out with his trembling voice. “I wasn’t real. Just some confused imprint thing. Just… just some disgusting ghost.”

“Danny boy…. I’m…I’m so sorry.” Dad wrapped an arm around the ghost boy. 

“I mean, I know that’s not true now.” Phantom whimpered. And now he was crying again. “But I was positive, completely sure. So that… that’s why I didn’t come home. I thought I was a… a stupid copy at… at best. Or I’d been possessing Fenton for a month.” His speech quickened. “A month! And not even realized it. I mean, who does that?! Who hurts someone like that without even caring? So… maybe… maybe I was actually evil like… like you guys said.”

“No, baby. No.” Mom pleaded, reaching across Fenton to cup his cheek. “And… and that’s what I told you, after you showed us the truth. I’m… I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry, baby.”

More poured out. “I tried to stay away. I thought I’d… I’d been hurting Fenton. Maybe he was my obsession. That’s why I looked like him and had his memories. So I just… wandered around town.” People watching at the mall, sneaking into the movies, floating above the clouds. “But everything reminded me that… that I was alone. Just some freaky ghost. And I kept finding myself back here, near Fenton. I couldn’t… I couldn't stay away.”

The memory rose up unbidden. Floating into front of their house late at night. He’d caught a glimpse of Fenton in their bedroom window. And…. it flipped, the scene from the other side. Standing at the window, his blanket draped around his shoulders. Shaking off another strange dream. A flash of light and a glowing figure. 

Back on the rooftop, his human self’s hand was in his. “You started following me around, a few days after. When that Lunch Lady ghost showed up… you tried to fight her to protect Sam, Tucker, and me.” His eyes rounded, soft and grateful. “You saved Sam.”

He saved Sam. Phantom took a breath, furiously whipping at his face. The memory of her face, staring up at him, flickered in his mind. He needed to help her. Even if he only cared about her because Danny did, he still cared. The warmth in his chest, the certainty, that strange peace. Fenton had been with him and for just a moment…. they had been Danny again.

The thought, the memory gave him courage. “I did save Sam. I got her out of that creepy meat pile. I was still scared but… I’d done something good. I'd finally done something right. So I went after the Lunch Lady again.”

“And…” Mom tensed. “That’s when we found you and… shot you.”

“Yeah.” Ghost Danny sighed. That pain, that heartbreak threatened to rise. They could never love a ghost like him; he’d been so sure of that, getting attacked serving as a painful reminder. But… “I forgive you.” He closed his eyes, leaning into his parents’ arms. “I’ve forgiven you for a while now.”

“We forgive you.” Fenton agreed, joining the hug.

Phantom found himself nodding, his mind drifting over that afternoon. Being chased, yelled at, and shot hurt; he’d consider it one of the worst experiences of his life but…. “We’ve come so far since then.” Not just his parents and his relationship with them but personally, he and Fenton. 

“What happened next?” Mom finally asked, after a minute’ pause. “After we almost caught you?”

Right. Phantom took a breath, preparing to continue. 

But Fenton spoke for him “I went and found him.” He smiled slightly, fond, before sombering again. “I saw what happened with Sam and you guys. The perception sharing thing. And… I’d had enough. I needed to figure out what was happening with me. So I just kinda followed my instincts and found Phantom at the park and…” He gave the ghost a poke in the side, teasing. “This one told me to go home and forget about him. And then just disappeared.”

The ghost boy shook his head, rolling his eyes good-naturedly. It was almost funny now, in retrospect. He’d been pretty melodramatic. “I did come back.”

Fenton’s face softened. “Yeah, you did.”

“Later that night.” Phantom explained at the questioning looks. “I flew to our room. Fenton wanted to talk so…” 

He trailed off, green eyes meeting his counterpart. It was just like back then, after he’d broken down crying and on instinct Fenton had hugged him. The pieces of their soul had touched and…. I know who you are. The words rang in their heads now, still hand in hand. The experience had been so close, so intimate. How could he word that?

Phantom closed his eyes, taking a breath. “As soon… as soon as we touched, we felt it. We were the same.”

“I was so happy.” Fenton almost whispered. “I finally figured out what was wrong. I was… I was just half a soul but… I found the rest of me, my other half.”

Their parent’s eyes. Soft, relieved. “And as soon as you found each other…. you just knew.” In Dad’s voice, there was more than a hint of awe. 

The human boy nodded.

“Every time you tell us more about being split, I’m amazed.” Mom mused, a shake of her head.

“Yeah, it’s…..” And how could Fenton explain that to someone else? Much less someone who had never felt their soul, their very self unravel. Even now with his two halves so close together, hand in hand, they still weren’t quite themself, not fully. “It’s a lot.” Another breath. “It took a week but we figured out the truth.”

“I didn’t want it to be though.” Ghost Danny wanted to swallow back the words, the disappointed looks stabbing his core. “I didn’t want to be true. I was stubborn. I said it couldn’t be. There was no way. I… I was a ghost and… Danny was just a normal human boy. We couldn’t… couldn’t….” He sniffled, his dad starting to rub his back. “I ran… I ran again.” His cheeks turned green, shame painting his face.

“But you didn’t stay away.” Mom offered, compassionate. “You told me earlier, you and Fenton talked in your room the next morning. And you both went to see Sam and Tucker.”

Phantom shrugged, blushing. “I just couldn’t stay away. Honestly….” He bit his lip. “It was crazy but… I kinda hoped Sam and Tucker wouldn’t think we were the same person, that… they’d think it was too crazy to be true so… so… I’d be right.” His dad’s brow, wrinkled in worry. He could almost hear the question. “But Sam saw right through me. She recognized me, not just as the ghost who saved her but…. Me.” He tapped his chest. “Who I really was. So… I was wrong. I…I couldn’t keep lying to myself.”

“So like he said earlier, we hung out with Sam and Tucker.” Fenton said. “Phantom wasn’t in denial anymore, actually started letting everyone call him Danny again. We had a pretty good time.”

For just a moment, a hint of relief flashed across the parents’ faces. But then… “And you texted me when you got home, after you flew back.” Mom’s brow furrowed, more worried than ever. “The cold burn…. You said you got upset and that’s why your powers acted out. What happened that night, Danny?”

The ghost’s face darkened, ashamed and guilty, eyes fixed down. 

“Danny boy….” Dad’s voice, soft and gentle. “You never explained. Why didn’t you want it to be true? Why didn’t you…. you…” His lips turned down, at a loss for words.

“Why didn’t I want to be Danny?” The words were barely audible.

The parents nodded, faces pale.

Phantom stared down for a long moment, mind swimming. So many words, images flashed in his head. Emotions, long forgotten. The uncertainty, the anger, the sorrow. Fenton’s face, disbelieving and desperate. The tears on his face. How… how could he explain? Should he even? That moment, that argument…. 

“NO!” Something in the human Danny snapped. “I’m half a person without you! How are I supposed to be happy without the other half of my soul?!”

“You don’t actually want me! You just want to feel whole! I’m a sickness, a disease. Some...some foreign thing that’s been haunting you.”

So much pain. So many ugly words. 

Ghost Danny whipped his face. “I didn’t want to be Danny because… because that meant… there was no fixing me.” The words were a punch to the gut. “It meant…. I was actually… this.” He motioned to his glowing body. “I’d… I’d actually died and there was no going back to normal. I…I’d never really be human again. I didn’t…. I told Fenton I didn’t want to refuse because… he was supposed to be normal. He was supposed to be human. But Fenton… he insisted. He wanted to merge. He wanted to be whole. But…but….”

“I didn’t really get it.” Human Danny picked up. “I kept… I kept pushing and Phantom kept getting more upset. And…”

 “Just stop! Stop trying to comfort me!” Dripping tears turned into a stream. “I’m scum. A dirty, good-for-nothing ghost. I’m a freaking disease! I deserve to be hated so stop acting like you don’t!”

“That’s when he cold-burned me. But… I’d hurt him first.” Fenton whimpered, drawing his knees to his chest. “I… I hated myself so much.” The memory flashed…. The glacial pain. Crying on the bathroom floor. The anger, the self-hatred, the guilt. “That’s… that’s why I asked you to fix me. I hated my ghost powers so much. I hated that part of me. I wanted…I wanted to get rid of it. I tried to get rid of Phantom.” He’d thought… he’d thought talking about feeling like an imposter would be hard but this….  “I wanted it… I wanted him gone so badly, I ripped myself in half. I …I violated… I destroyed myself.” 

Tears dripped down Fenton’s face. But Phantom’s hand was still in his, the understanding, the forgiveness streaming through him. His ghost didn’t blame him, had let go of the bitterness, the anger. The blame had been both of theirs and now… The human let out a breath, letting it go.

“I didn’t… I didn’t realize that until that night.” His own glowing eyes in the mirror. “I didn't see it. But…” On the bed, Phantom’s eyes wide and hopeful. “When I saw… when I saw Phantom face to face, when I actually looked, I couldn’t hate him. He was… he was me, just me. And he was in pain and scared and… and I didn’t want to be scared anymore.” He squeezed his ghost half’s hand. “I wanted to understand what had happened to me. What I had become, what I…what I am now. And I couldn’t do that unless I accepted Phantom and…. started forgiving myself.”

There was a long silence after the words. Phantom scooted closer, wrapping his arms around his other self. Love and forgiveness radiated from the contact. Seconds later, Mom did the same, hugging the ghost version of her son. And Dad did the same, strong arms embracing the three figures.

“I don’t… I don’t even know what to say.” Mom muttered. “Just… thank you for telling us.”

“It was so brave, Danny. You’re so brave.” Dad reassured. “You’ve been through so much.”

“And… I’m sorry.” The woman continued. “We’ve said it before but I’m sorry this happened to you. I’m… I’m sorry for how I’ve made you feel and what the thing we’ve taught you made you think. But…” Mom hugged him tighter, her words so tender right behind Phantom’s ear. “You’re not an imposter. You’re my son and you’ll always be. And I’m sorry I made you think that wasn’t true, that… that that couldn’t be true.”

“I’m so sorry, Danny.” The other adult’s voice was so quiet. “I’m so sorry, son. We messed up so badly. I know you thought so badly about ghosts and about…about yourself because of us. And I’m so sorry. It never should have gotten that bad. You shouldn’t have felt that bad.”

“And the ghost catcher wasn’t your fault.” Mom brushed a hand against Fenton’s hair. “It wasn’t your fault. You’re not… you’re not destroyed. I know… god… I know you don’t feel like yourself. I can’t… I can’t even imagine how you’re feeling. But you’ll come back from this. You’re not too far gone.”

Phantom ignored the twitch of surprise at the curse, too relieved, too grateful for the words. “I… I know. I know I’ll be able to refuse. Even if…” His voice quieted, almost a whisper. “Even if I won’t be that same as before.”

It was a reality, a potentially fearful one. But… the Danny who had gone through the ghost catcher was dead. Whoever came out after, the Danny they would be, would be someone different.

Still, their parents hugged them tightly. “We’ll still love you.” Dad vowed. “Full human, two halves, or one whole halfa. We love you.”

“And we always will.” Mom whispered.

Human Danny felt his whole body relaxed, a relief washing over him. The words were sappy, so sappy. And things he’d heard many times before. He knew his parents loved him. But he’d still been scared, just a hint of doubt lingering in his mind. But that doubt was empty; it was nothing. Now, his parents knew. Everything was out in the open and they hugged him, reassured him. They loved and accepted him. They understood.

The group hug finally fell apart.

“Yeah, thanks for listening.” Fenton whipped his wet face.. “That was hard. Especially talking about Phantom and me’s argument. It was…. It was…. Bad. Really bad but… it needed to happen. The fight, I mean.” 

“We wouldn’t have gotten better with each other if it hadn’t.” Phantom agreed. “We needed to figure things out and we did. So…”

Twin eyes meet again and… the promise they’d made, down in their bedroom, rang in their head. 

But I don’t want to be afraid anymore. I want to try. To be the person we’re supposed to be. Together.

The parts of their soul had touched, memories, thoughts, and emotions coming together. 

On the roof, eyes swirled green and blue. “We got really close.” Two voices spoke as one. “If we hadn’t realized we needed to tell you the next day, then maybe…”

Mom suddenly sat up straighter. She blinked at the boys, brow furrowed. “Really… close? What do you mean?”

Phantom blinked, eyes fading back to green. “Really close….”

“We… we almost merged.” Fenton said it like it was a revelation.

“What?” Dad’s mouth fell open.

“We almost merged.” The human boy blinked, eyes widening. “Before we even told you guys. We could… we could feel it. Our mind and soul coming together. Everything was…. was running in sync. We were coming together. It… shit.” Fenton furiously ran fingers through his hair. “Phantom ended up half-phased into me.”

Mom just blinked, for once not saying anything about the language. “Half-phased in…” She shook her head. “Was that the only time?”

“Well um.” Phantom wrung his hands. “I tried to possess Fenton the next night. I thought we’d fuse but… you saw what happened.”

The adult’s frowns deepened as Fenton continued. “Umm…. a few other times felt similar? When we were thinking and feeling together, I guess? Or doing the perception sharing thing. But we weren’t close together to most of those. And we don’t start uh….” He vaguely waved his hands around, lacing his fingers together.

The ghost furrowed his brow, before eyes widening in another realization. “When I flew through the portal after my fight with Mom…. Fenton was with me.” He pointed to his head. “We were freaking out and… it’s like we fused but we still had two bodies.”

“It felt like we put ourself back together wrong.” For just a moment, his eyes were distant. Then he shook his head. “It’s like there was just one of us again. We were just… Danny. But… it wasn’t right. We weren’t right.”

The human Danny fell silent, brow furrowed. He replayed the memory, the feeling. They really had come so close, only to have to pull themself apart again.

For a long moment, the adults just stared, Dad looking bewildered. And Mom… her forehead wrinkled.

Finally, the woman took a breath, eyes almost twitching.  “Sweetie…” Her lips slowly turned up. “Have you considered that maybe… you don’t need the ghost catcher?”

It was the Dannys turn to stare, disbelieving. “What?”

The adults traded a look. Realization dawned on Dad’s face and… the man burst out laughing. “We spent… we spent all the time fussing with… with that thing. Only for… for…” A guffaw cut off the words,  large hands furiously ruffling both heads. 

Phantom phased out of the hold, eyes wide. “What are you talking about?”

“Danny,” Mom also chuckled, eyes sparkling with fond exacerbation. “We were trying to fix the ghost catcher so it could give you the energy boost you needed to re-fuse. But.. you almost merged several times without it. Have you thought that maybe you don’t even need the ghost catcher? Maybe… you can do it by yourself.”

Fenton stared for a moment more, moving out from under his father’s hand. He traded a look with his ghost half. And…

Phantom leaned over laughing. “Of… of course. It’s so obvious!” The ghost put his hands on his head. “It makes so much sense!”

Human Danny suddenly understood. “Our mind already wants to be one.” He laughed. “Our core and brain.. They’re already working together… all the time. We don’t need the energy boost. We don’t.” He grinned. “We can do it by ourself.”

“We can do it ourself.” The ghost repeated, glowing with excitement.

“Why didn’t we realize that two weeks ago?” The human half-laughed, half-groaned. “I feel so dumb.” 

“That’s what happens when you’ve only got half a brain.” Phantom teased.

Counterpart eyes met and…. Total agreement. Joyous, complete agreement.

“Can we try?!” Both said, eyes shining.

“Not so fast.” Dad held out his hands, giving a chuckle.

“Tomorrow.” Mom continued. For just a moment disappointment flickered on the boy’s faces. Then… “We want you to re-merge as soon as possible. But we should do this in the lab, in case something goes wrong. The last failure we saw was… rather painful to watch.”

The Dannys’ shoulders fell at the reminder. On this same roof…. The fear, the pain. Terror at what was supposed to feel like coming home…. becoming a violent rejection. 

Dad’s hand gently patted Fenton’s and Phantom’s shoulder. “It’ll work.” He reassured. “Just let’s all get a good night’s sleep first.” He yawned. “We’ll all be fresher and… we can celebrate.” He smiled.

The woman agreed. “I’ll make chocolate chip pancakes, your favorite.”

The boys finally relent. “Alright.” Fenton sighed, corner of his lip turning up. “Danny… Halfa-us will like that.”

Mom lifted a hand, cupping both Dannys’ checks. “I’ll look forward to seeing that version of you again.” 

The woman removed her hands and Dad leaned forward, scooping the two counterparts up in another hug. “As fun as it’s been having two of you, I’ll be happy when you’re back to how you’re supposed to be.”

The two Dannys relaxed into the hold, smiling as Mom joined the group hug again. “Me too.” 

[veliseraptor]

1 and 11 for the reading ask game!

What are 2-5 already published fiction books you think you want to read in 2023?

easy for this one: I can just look at my shelves. the hard part is picking just between two and five

Jade Legacy by Fonda Lee. I've had this on my shelf for so embarrassingly long you guys, initially I had to wait until I had a chance to reread the first two books (because I'd been too long away from them and needed a refresher) and then I got a case of the "my favorite character is going to die again, I think" willies, and I just have to suck it up and take the plunge because I will almost certainly love it and even if Fonda Lee does kill my fave I will forgive it because Fonda Lee gets to do that to me.

A Desolation Called Peace by Arkady Martine. Another one where I've had it sitting on my shelf for a while because I loved A Memory Called Empire but probably have to now reread A Memory Called Empire in order to read this one, so it keeps ending up getting deferred. But it's time, you guys. It's time.

Eyes of the Void by Adrian Tchaikovsky. Another sequel! The conclusion to this series is coming out this year but since I'm only reading it in paperback I'm woefully behind. Very excited to read this, though, Adrian Tchaikovsky has earned a spot in my fave scifi writers pantheon by now.

The Glory of the Empire by Jean d'Ormesson. This one's a weird one relative to the first three on this list, but it has been sitting unread on my shelf for a long time and the concept is sooooo fascinating to me, and I've liked the NYRB books that I've read...so here goes. If anyone else hasn't heard of this one (I hadn't before kind of accidentally tripping over it), the conceit is that it is a history of an empire that never existed.

The Grass Crown by Colleen McCullough. I read The First Man In Rome a couple years ago kind of on a whim and kinda loved it; I've had this one waiting for me since then and the stars just haven't aligned correctly (and also it's an intimidating brick of a book, even for me). But I am feeling like this might be my year to read more stuff that isn't just SFF, tbh, because while there is a lot of SFF on my TBR list I've also been kind of on the outs with it lately. So returning to my other love (historical fiction) seems like maybe a good move here, and I am a sucker for writing about Late Republic/Early Empire times. (We're still in the republic for now, baby, but boy is it not looking good!)

but this is like. a rough list, because as I was writing it I went "oh but also Romance of the Three Kingdoms, and also King Hereafter, and I'd love to start the Niccolo series," and so on and so forth. consider this a snapshot of what I'm thinking as of january 22nd at *checks watch*

How do you plan to keep track of your reading? E.g., goodreads, bullet journal, tumblr, etc.

Currently I still use Goodreads though I might make another go at weaning myself off and moving to Storygraph again. We'll see. Also since I am now doing monthly recaps of the books I read on this blog (and I do want to keep doing that) I guess that's me keeping track of what I'm reading, too.

[live-the-fangirl-life]

Stolen Stamps

Aelin Galathynius x Rowan Whitethorn - Stolen Passport Oneshot

“You took me on a trip just to break up with me so I stole your passport” - Prompt from @dailyau

I don't know where this came from, it just kinda happened, enjoy! Minor Chaolaena, Rowaelin endgame

Masterlist | Read on Ao3

Warnings: Language

2494 words

*******

The faint hum of the air condition filled the meticulously organized room in the back of the post office.

“Ms. Galathynius,” A deep, accented voice addressed her.

Her gaze on the tall bookshelf in the corner jerked back to the man sitting across from her behind his desk. His hands were crossed, and the sleeves of his shirt were rolled up to his elbows, exposing part of a tattoo that wrapped around his muscular arm. She tried not to watch as the muscles shifted as he leaned forward when he spoke to her.

“Can you please explain to me why you were trying to mail a very,” He paused, glancing at the messily-wrapped bundle on the center of his desk, “suspicious-looking package to the Adarlan embassy in Antica?”

Aelin opened her mouth to try to explain, but no words came out.

He raised a silver eyebrow and waited.

She sighed, “I swear, it’s not what it looks like.”

***

The cab ride to the airport was a blur. So was the flight, and the ride to her hotel. It wasn’t until Aelin locked the door of her hotel room and set down her bags, that the events of the day finally hit her.

Whether it was adrenaline or shock or relief, she couldn’t be sure. Aelin fell back onto the bed and rubbed her face, groaning. She thought back to that morning when everything had been fine.

Fine, not great, just fine. That’s how things always felt with Chaol, just fine.

Her brain was still working through what happened when she jolted up from the bed, eyes wide.

“Shit. What did I do?”

Aelin scrambled towards her purse and rummaged through it. She couldn’t find it; maybe she didn't take it. She turned the bag upside down over the bed and watched as her things fell out. She pushed aside her little paperback mystery novel, her lipstick, her boarding pass, she moved aside a wrinkled coupon and froze.

“Fuck.”

***

After wearing a track into the carpet with her pacing, Aelin decided to call Lysandra. It was going about as well as she expected.

“Lysandra, I did a bad thing.”

Aelin chewed her fingernail between her teeth, a bad habit she couldn’t kick when she was stressed, as she tried to tell her best friend what just happened. She was standing on the small balcony of her hotel hoping the fresh air would help clear her mind. So far, it wasn't doing a great job.

“Aelin,” Lysandra’s voice sounded amused through her phone, “This is you were talking about, you’re going to have to be a bit more specific.”

Rolling her eyes, Aelin ran a hand through her hair. “I did a petty, horrible, impulsive, really bad thing.”

There was a long pause as Lysandra seemed to realize how serious Aelin sounded.

“Okay. Now I’m getting worried.” Then a sharp gasp, “Was it illegal? Have you been arrested? Are you calling me from a foreign prison?”

“Lys—” Aelin tried cutting in, she wanted to stop the hysterics before her friend’s imagination got out of hand.

“When you told me you were going on a trip with Chaol I thought you’d be spending time on the beach, not using me as your one phone call from a dirty jail cell hundreds of miles away!”

“Lysandra!”

“And where’s Chaol? Is he there with you?”

“Lysandra, stop! I haven’t been arrested, I’m not in prison, I’m fine. Actually, I’m great.” Aelin closed her eyes and sighed, trying to scrounge up some guilt but failing. “Actually, it's because I’m feeling great that makes what I did so much worse, because I don’t really feel bad about it.”

“Don’t scare me like that.” Her friend's voice echoed in her ear. “If you’re fine, then tell me what happened and tell me why you’re calling me at,” she paused and groaned, “six in the morning.”

“Sorry,” Aelin winced, “I’m still on a different time frame.”

“Still? Where are you now? Are you not in Antica anymore?”

“Slow down, Lys.” Aelin loosed a breath and ran a hand through her hair, “I’m back in Terrasen.”

“What? When did you get back?” Lysandra sounded confused, and Aelin couldn't blame her, after all, she was supposed to be in Antica for four more days.

“Today. Less than an hour ago. I’m at a hotel, I just needed to clear my head.”

After a moment of silence, Lysandra asked again, “Where’s Chaol? Have you talked to him about whatever this is? Not that he’d help much “Lysandra muttered the last part, but Aelin still heard.

Here we go, Aelin thought, “No. We broke up.”

“What?” Lysandra was definitely awake now. “Really? Oh, honey, I’m sorry if you’re hurting, but good for you, I never really liked him.”

“Yeah, I know.” Aelin barked a wry laugh, “He dumped me, actually.”

“He dumped you?”

Aelin barked another laugh, getting angry as she told Lysandra the rest, “Get this, that bastard invited me on this trip specifically to break up with me”

“What the actual fuck?”

“Yeah, and honestly?” Aelin took a deep breath, feeling a mess of emotions as she explained. “I can’t blame him.” She amended herself quickly at Lysandra's sound of protest, “I don’t mean about taking me on a trip to do it, because that’s fucked up, but I mean the actual breaking up part. I knew it was going to happen sooner or later, it was more about who would pull the trigger first. Come on, Lys, you knew I was more excited to spend a week on the beach than to spend a week with him.”

Lysandra snorted, “Yeah, Ace, I knew that. I was hoping you realized that, too.”

“Well, I did. So, I left. I’m back in Terrasen, there was no way I was staying there with him any longer, that would’ve been too weird.”

Aelin could hear Lysandra’s coffee machine buzz to life through the phone and suddenly wished she had a cup of coffee. Once she figured this mess out, she’d go find a cafe.

“Right. Okay,” The brunette’s voice rang out, “let me get this straight, Chaol took you on a trip solely to break up with you, and now you’re back in Terrasen while he’s still on the Southern Continent. I’m still not seeing what exactly you did that’s making you freak out.”

At that, Aelin flopped back onto the bed and flung an arm over her face, groaning.

“I know breaking up with Chaol is for the best, Hellas, I feel relieved. But at that moment, I was so angry. I was furious that he’d take me on this trip instead of just doing it at home like a normal-fucking-person—I mean, who takes a break-up vacation? Anyways, when I was packing my things to leave, I, kinda, sorta, took something of his.”

“Aelin…what did you do?”

Aelin looked at the foot of the bed where the remains of her purse were strewn over the blanket. Her eyes caught on two matching little booklets with gold seals on them.

“I stole his passport.”

***

“Ms. Galathynius—”

“Aelin, please.” She cut off the silver-haired man behind the desk.

The only change in his stoic demeanor was a small twitch of his lips. “Aelin. Can you explain what exactly you’re trying to mail, that looks like that—”

‘That’ being the layers of spare newspaper she found tucked away in her hotel room haphazardly wrapped and tied with the thread from the complimentary sewing kit, also from her hotel room. She hadn’t been able to find any tape. Aelin thought if she brought it to the post office then she could re-package it with actual materials, but she’d chosen not to unwrap it before getting there. An obvious mistake.

“—to an official, protected, government Embassy?” His voice was stern and his green eyes steady.

This looked bad. Aelin could easily admit that this looked really bad.

She placed her hands on his desk and watched as his eyes tracked the movement. “I can explain. It's definitely not as bad as I’m sure you think it is.”

He remained silent, watching her expectantly.

She caught sight of the nameplate on the side of his desk. “Mr. Whitethorn—”

“Rowan, please.”

Did he sound amused?

Taking confidence from that, she sat up a little straighter and said, “Rowan,”

His mouth quirked a little higher as she said his name.

Clearing her throat, she started again, “Rowan, you can open the package, I assure you it's nothing bad. It’s just a passport.”

One of his eyebrows rose skeptically, “A passport?” He asked doubtfully.

“Yes, a passport. That’s why I was trying to send it to the embassy. It belongs to my b—ex.” She stumbled over the last word, still unused to Chaol’s new title.

He—Rowan—looked even more intrigued.

“You’re mailing your ex their passport, but decided to wrap it in the most suspicious, threatening way possible?”

Aelin winced. “I didn’t have many options.” She chuckled, remembering trying to tie the string together in the hotel bathroom’s fluorescent lights. “I thought I could fix it once I got here, but I didn’t even have a chance to ask for materials before being escorted in here.” She waved a hand vaguely and looked around his office.

Rowan was fully smirking now. He leaned back in his chair and watched her for a long moment. “It is my job to confiscate suspect packages. Especially when those packages are being sent to, say, a government building.”

Leaning forward slightly she smiled and told him, “Well, you seem to be very good at your job.”

Gods, was she flirting? She and Chaol literally just broke up. But she couldn’t deny she was attracted to Rowan. Not with the way his pine-green eyes lit up with amusement or the way the muscles in his arms flexed when he shifted in his chair. Not to mention that tattoo; she was a sucker for tattoos—and she’d never told him this, but it always disappointed Aelin that Chaol never even considered getting any ink.

Good gods, she was flirting. And not very well.

Still smirking, Rowan leaned forward and asked, “Care to tell me why you’re sending your ex their passport?”

Was it her imagination or did he say ‘ex’ like it was the most interesting word in his question.

She couldn't stop the small smile twisting her lips. “I don't see how the ‘why’ of it is any of your business.”

Rowan surveyed her and Aelin tried not to blush under his gaze. She couldn't stop herself from comparing him to Chaol, he never made her feel this flustered with just a stare. Rowan's eyes tracked her face, tracked the way her cheeks heated, and she tried with all her might to fight the blush.

She wasn’t a teenager with a crush, she was a woman who knew how good she looked and was very attracted to the man whose eyes had not stopped roaming over her. She fought down the blush and flipped her hair over her shoulder, smiling charmingly at him.

He seemed to like it and his grin widened before putting on a faux stern face.

“I try to be as thorough as possible, Aelin,” Gods, the way he said her name made her toes curl. “It would make things easier if you explained why. I could finish my paperwork quicker, get this thing sent off, and we’d both be free of this passport and your ex.”

Wow, he wasn't beating around the bush. She liked it.

He sent her a slow grin, “I’d be able to take my break at nine, and go for a cup of coffee.”

The way he said the last part left no room for guessing what he meant. He wanted to take her out for coffee.

A small part of her hesitated, she had just broken up with Chaol. But on the other hand, he took her on a fucking breakup vacation, so screw him and she could do whatever the hell she wanted. And she wanted Rowan. She wanted to go get coffee with Rowan.

So she smiled, winked at him, and said, “I’m mailing it back to him because I stole it from him.”

Rowan’s smile faltered and he blinked.

“You what?”

“I stole it from him.”

He stared at her another moment before a chuckle escaped his lips and he was shaking his head but smirking.

“You stole his passport.” He sounded very amused as he wrote a note down, most likely for the report he’d have to file.

“Yup,” Aelin’s grin turned feline, “He took me on vacation to break up with me, so I stole his passport and left him there.”

Rowan stopped writing and looked at her with raised eyebrows, “He’s still there? You have his passport, and now he’s stuck,” Rowan glanced at his notes, “in Antica?”

Aelin laughed; a loud, cheerful, sound that filled the office and pulled a small grin onto Rowan’s lips.

“Okay, I’m sure you think I’m a bit crazy,” Her grin didn't falter, “but it was impulsive and as soon as I realized what I actually did, you know, kinda leaving him stranded there, I tried to send it back to him. I couldn't remember what the hotel was, so I figured the embassy would be a good choice given it's a passport, and he is from Adarlan.”

“He’s from Adarlan, you’re not?” Rowan asked.

Aelin smirked, “That’s what you got from what I said?”

He matched her smirk, “That's what I want to know.”

“No,” Aelin shook her head and glanced out the window in his office, “I’m from here, Terrasen is in my blood.”

It seemed like that was the answer Rowan was looking for. He smiled, wrote down a final note, and looked back at her.

“I think that’s all I need right now, Aelin,” Again, the way he said her name sent butterflies flitting around her stomach.

He stood up and she did the same, pulling her purse back over her shoulder. He walked around his desk and opened the door for her.

“Aelin,” Rowan’s voice made her pause as she stood in the open doorway.

“Yes, Rowan?” she looked up at him expectantly with a small smile.

“I take my break in half an hour, there's a coffee shop just down the block, if you want to hang around or come back then, I'd like to take you out for coffee.”

Aelin smiled brightly at him and nodded, “I’d like that. I’ll come back in half an hour.”

He grinned and held her gaze another moment before she turned to leave.

“Oh, and Rowan?” She turned back to look at him but saw he already—or still—had his eyes on her.

“Yeah?”

“You don't have to use express shipping on that, it's fine if it takes a couple days.”

The sound of Rowan’s deep laughter followed her through the doors.

*****

Taglist:

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[lokis-army-77]

If you please

Chapter Seventeen

Bucky Barnes x Reader

Word Count: 2800

This is technically a reader insert but without the (y/n) and all that. She also has no name mentioned so feel free to imagine as you please.

Follow the reader through the events of the Captain America movies and experience her love for Bucky Barnes.

Warnings: Bucky being sad

<< Previous Next>>

Masterlist

Early one morning I woke up and got ready for the day. Bucky wasn’t awake yet so I walked to the kitchen table, grabbed a piece of paper and a pen, then wrote him a note that said I was going out for a while and that I would be back later. After picking up some of the money we had stored in a giant jar on the floor, I headed to the door and down the stairs, out into the busy Romanian morning.

Cars and people bustled down the streets every which way. I walked a few blocks away before arriving at an old book store. I had been thinking for a while that maybe if Bucky read something that he used to love, then maybe that would help some memories resurface.

Stepping through the threshold, I was hit with the comforting smell of old books and what seemed to be a vanilla candle. In the corner, right next to the door, is the cashier, a small, hunched old woman who, every time I come in here, is sleeping. She jostles a bit at the sound of the bell when the door shuts but doesn't wake.

I continue on into the shelves of books, looking for anything Bucky might like. Even though it was a Romanian book store, there were many English selections of classic books. I scoured the shelves for a while before coming to a stop at one of his favorites, ‘The Hobbit’. I gently took it off the top shelf and fingered through the old, yellowing pages. Dust from the top of the book fell to the floor as I did so. Closing it, I started to scan for something else for me to read, this time making sure it was one of the very long ones, considering I had read the short four hundred page one about three times already. There was a small paperback copy of Victor Hugo’s ‘Les Miserables’ sitting on the second shelf from the floor. I grabbed it and sat it on top of the other book in my arms and headed for the front.

The old woman was still napping away when I placed my small stack onto the counter. I forwent ringing the service bell and just reached over to give a strong tap on her shoulder. Having been here before, I knew she wouldn’t wake up to the sound of it. She swatted my hand away and I tapped her a second time a little more harshly, she woke up that time, muttering in Romanian that she was awake. I greeted her with a soft hello before placing the coins for the books into her boney, outstretched hand. She thanked me then I was on my way back to the apartment.

I took a small detour through the open market stalls a block or two away from the apartment. I take my time looking through the small amount of fresh fruit that was offered so early in the year. I move along, not finding anything of interest. I make my way through the crowd of people to continue my original journey back home.

It was close to eleven by now and when I opened the door and stepped into the apartment, my nose was filled with the smell of something burning. Quickly I shut the door and run down the tiny hallway and into the main room. Bucky was standing over a smoking pan on the stove, while right next to it was a pot, almost boiling over.

“Buck what in the world are you doing?” I ask as I move towards him to turn the eyes off.

“I was trying to make breakfast for lunch. It was supposed to be an ‘I’m sorry I scared you and brought back bad memories’ meal since I never told you I was sorry, but I burnt the eggs and bacon.” He tells me before he leans over to the trash can and dumps the charred food in.

I moved around to stand next to him and placed my right hand on his firm metal bicep. “Thank you, I really appreciate the sentiment.” I smiled up at him then looked down at what was in the now slowly bubbling pot with chopped potatoes. “Look,” I pointed out, “the potatoes are fine.” Bucky followed my outstretched finger and gave a small nod.

“Go sit down, I'll make something with these.” He directed. I looked at him skeptically as I slowly backed away.

“Are you sure you don’t want my help?”

“Yes, sit.”

And so I did. I went directly to my bed where I had thrown the books, took up mine, and then started to read. It was hard to concentrate though since I looked up from the pages every two seconds to make sure Bucky wasn’t going to burn the whole building down again, but he seemed to be doing fine. He had ended up frying the chopped potatoes in butter with a bunch of random seasonings.

Several minutes later he had finished and was scooping the food onto two separate plates. He picked the plates up and made his way around the island and to the loveseat in front of it. Sitting down he placed his plate on the arm of the furniture and then called me over. I picked myself up off the mattress and plopped myself down beside him and took my plate from his hands.

“Thank you,” I mumbled as I took the fork into my hand and started eating. Surprisingly the food was actually good. I turned my eyes to him, he was staring at me, probably waiting for my thoughts on the food. I nodded my head as I chewed as a sign that it was good. He smiled softly and proceeded to eat his.

“That was really good, Buck. Next time when you cook though, stick to one thing at a time, don’t try to cook it all at once.” I said once I had finished.

“I’ll keep that in mind. Um,” he paused a second. “Where did you go this morning?”

“Oh, I actually went to get you something that might help with your memory.” I stood up after placing the dirty plate on the counter behind me and shuffled over to the bag that held Bucky’s book. I gently took it out and held it close. Making my way back to where he was sitting, I held the book out to him. “Here you go.”

He reached out and took it from me, a small smile ghosted his lips. “The Hobbit, I love this book, thank you.”

“See you’re already remembering.”

“Yeah, I think I remember wanting you to read it and you made me read something else.” He shut his eyes tight, trying to remember. “It was Pride and Prejudice wasn’t it?”

I gave him a giant toothy grin at that. “It was,” I almost shouted. I leaned down to give him a hug, excited he remembered something that was so long ago. “We started reading them the week we got engaged.” I backed away a bit.

“Oh yeah-” He looked to his hands and then to my hand. “Do you- do you still have the ring?”

“Of course I do.” I lifted my hands to the chain that always stayed hidden beneath my shirt. There was a small delicate clank as the ring and locket tapped against each other. I brought the chain over my head and then grabbed one of Bucky’s hands, placing the necklace down gently. I watched as he brought the small treasures closer to his face. He studied them quietly.

“Why don’t you ever wear the ring around your finger?” he asked, I heard a little bit of concern come through.

“I didn’t want to lose it. I kept it hidden for a long time, then when everything happened in January I had a feeling that I should keep it on at all times. With all the fighting that took place, I thought it best to wear it around my neck so I wouldn't fall off.” I explained. I eyed him as he fiddled with the clasp, he was taking the ring off.

He rose to his feet silently before grabbing my left hand to place the ring securely where it was meant to be. “Can you wear it like this from now on?” I looked into his eyes, they were soft. I nodded in response as he stepped a little closer to me.

I could feel my heart start to quicken when he started to lean down, coming to eye level with me. I could feel his cool hand snake up to the back of my neck and pull me forward slightly. I closed my eyes, I could feel the warmth of his breath, we were so close. I leaned myself in more and before I knew it I felt his rough but soft lips graze the corner of my mouth. They were warm and just like I remembered, familiar. I moved my hands to the sides of his face to keep him from moving away. His hands came softly atop mine and pulled them away and down between, but he never let go of them. I felt him move back a tiny bit before I opened my eyes with a small huff. I hadn’t realized how much I missed him, how much I missed the feeling of him. I wanted to feel him kiss me, really kiss me.

He whispered my name softly as one of his hands came up to move a strand of my hair away from my face and then brought the hand back to cradle mine. “I want to take this slow.”

“But-” I started but he cut me off.

“Let me find myself before I come back to you,” The broken sound of his voice hit my ears so softly I probably wouldn’t have been able to hear it if my hearing were normal.

“Okay, Bucky I’ll wait. I’ll wait for you, no matter how long it takes.” He pulled me into a tight hug at that.

“Thank you,” he whispered.

It is now mid-July and Bucky has been steadily remembering more and more. The process has gone faster than I thought it would, but that’s probably because he isn’t alone and trying to figure things out. I’ve noticed that the longer we are here in Romania, the less paranoid he is about being found, although it still eats at the back of both our minds constantly.

Bucky has started to smile more, he’s started to get closer to me, mentality and physically. Something changed after that afternoon he slipped the ring back onto my finger. Sometimes, while we are sitting at home he will slip his hand into mine and leave it there for a while, or he’ll somehow just gravitate to my side like a magnet. I never push him further than he is comfortable with, knowing he is still trying to find his missing pieces.

He works hard, exhaustingly so, to be able to remember. To be the Bucky he once was. Sometimes when he gets frustrated, I have to remind him that he will never be one hundred percent how he was in 1943, but I love him all the same, I’ll stay beside him.

And that's how we came to this precise moment. Bucky was laid out on the floor staring at the ceiling when I walked out of the bathroom from taking my nightly shower.

“What’s the matter?” I questioned as I rang my hair out with the towel. He didn’t say anything, just turned his head to face away from me. “Hey, come on, you can tell me.” I encouraged as I sat down on the edge of my mattress.

“It’s nothing, really.”

“Oh it isn’t nothing, I can see it all over your face. Something is bothering you so tell me what’s up.”

“I don’t know. I’m just so tired. My head is hurting from all the things I’m trying to remember.” He huffed out gruffly. I gave him a sympathetic look before poking him in the side. He turned his body to the side to look at me.

“You do know it’s okay to take a break? You shouldn’t expect yourself to remember every little thing.”

“I know, it's just. There are these glimpses from the past but I can never place them. It’s frustrating.” He says as his hand comes up to softly play with my fingers near his head.

“Well, you can’t try to remember things clearly if you are exhausted. Get some rest and relax, let the memories clear themselves up instead of trying to force them.” I stilled his hand and rubbed the back of it with the one he wasn’t currently grasping. “How about I make us some tea and then we can get some rest?”

“I’d like that a lot.”

“Okay then.” I stood up and his hand slowly let go of mine.

In the kitchen, I grabbed the kettle and filled it with water, and placed it on the eye of the stove. While waiting for the water to boil I washed the dirty mugs in the sink so that way we could use them. The box of teabags was sitting off to the side of the sink, I slipped two from the box and placed them in the now clean, empty mugs. When the water was done I poured it into our cups along with a few scoops of sugar and a tiny bit of milk and then walked back over to where I was sitting earlier.

“Here you go. Be careful, it’s hot and still needs to steep for a bit.” I warned as he sat up to take the mug from my hand. I sat back down and after a minute, started to take small sips of my tea.

“Thank you. Not just for the tea, but for everything you do. I don’t know how I’d get through this if you weren't with me.” He confessed as he took a long sip.

“You don’t have to thank me, Buck-” I started but he cut me off.

“Yes, I do. I wouldn’t have gotten near as far as I have if it weren't for your help. You’re always so loving and patient with me. I don’t deserve it, especially with the things I’ve done.” His head hung low as he drew his knees up closer to him.

I frowned as I sat my mug on the floor and crawled my way across the floor to sit directly in front of him. Carefully I placed both my hands on his. “Nothing you did is your fault.”

“Yes, it is. I did awful things. They are the only thing I can remember vividly. Can’t you see that I'm a bad guy now?”

“Sweetheart you are not a bad guy, you are a victim.” I moved my hand to his face so I could have him look at me. “And yes, you did those things but none of that was under your control. Nothing you did with HYDRA was in your control.” He looked at me with tears welled up in his eyes, he grabbed my hand and pulled it down away from his face but he never let it go. “I want to help you get through this but I can’t do that if you push me away because you think you are a danger to me. I told you before that you could never hurt me, I’m tougher than I look.”

“I don’t doubt that,” He chuckled. “It’s just hard when at any second I could turn back into that thing. It scares me, it scares me so much that I could be the reason I lose you just after I got you back.” His voice sounded like he was trying hard to hold back tears.

I moved from in front of him to his left side. I wrapped my arms around him, making him lean into me. I squeezed him tight. “It’s okay to cry, don’t hold it back,” I whispered into his ear. I felt him shudder and then all of a sudden it was like the flood gates had been opened.

We sat there on the floor for what felt like hours. We had changed into a more comfortable position, where Bucky had his arms wrapped around my middle and he just wept into my shirt. I softly played with his long hair and scratched his scalp. It seemed to calm him, but he still cried. He cried until no more tears would come until all he could do was jolt with hiccups.

We fell asleep like that, huddled together on the hard floor, next to the couch.

Authors note: Hi everybody, I know this chapter is a little shorter than I have been writing but I started my third year at college and I have like three 15 page essays and a crap tone of homework. So please be patient with me with writing for a while.

Tag List: @ginger-swag-rapunzel @underc0vercryptid-reads @geek-and-proud @intothesoul @leyannrae @starkleila @andy-is-gay

[tohellandbackanthology]

Restating our commitment to transparency and accountability

Hello everyone! Given our recent update about us opening up a pop-up shop to make available more copies of our anthology, we just wanted to elaborate a little re: why we’re doing this and how we intend to remain transparent and accountable during this process, as well as how this affects the timeline for those of you who ordered a book back in May during our Indiegogo fundraiser.

We know that those of you who supported our initial fundraiser may be a little confused, given that we still haven’t shipped those books out. We totally understand this sentiment and it is something we discussed heavily before coming to this decision. To better clarify why we’re taking the steps that we are, here are three reasons why we felt this pop-up shop was needed:

* To give us a better cushion. When we first obtained a quote for the cost of printing our anthology, it was almost a year ago right before we opened up our fundraiser in March 2020 to begin funding our project. Quotes expire, and over our lengthy struggle with Indiegogo to obtain the money that we had raised, our quote did indeed do just that. Given that this is a new year, we anticipate that our updated quote will be a little higher, making the cost of our project more expensive, and we want to be sure that all those extras we promised back in May are still applicable. 

* To help us achieve our hardcover goal. We talked a lot about hardcovers over the course of our project, as we knew that if we sold enough books, we would be able to upgrade everybody’s paperback copy of the anthology to a hardcover for free. Last we spoke about this, we indicated that we were close to our hardcover stretch goal, but just a tad bit short in all likelihood. If our pop-up does well, we feel that it is feasible to afford hardcovers for all. If we still fall short, there are still benefits! As we promised earlier, leftover money will first and foremost be used to make everybody’s books more beautiful, not to mention possibly allowing us to do things like including extra bonus merch for everybody for free. Any money remaining after that will be donated to a local charity, Wish Vancouver, to help vulnerable women in our community.

* To help our fandom heal. We won’t lie. We were adamant about our fundraiser on Indiegogo being a one-time deal, and though we received numerous requests about opening up shop again, we declined every time citing our commitment to transparency and accountability. While our values have not changed, our negative experience with Indiegogo and our heartbreak after Supernatural’s series finale had us reconsider our earlier stance. Dean, Cas, Sam and all their loved ones deserved a better ending than they got, and knowing that fans always do it better, we felt the best way we could help our corner of fandom heal was to share further the many beautiful works of happiness and good endings that are enclosed within our anthology. For that reason, we felt a limited two-week long pop-up shop was the best way to do this: it gives new and old fans one last chance to get a copy! 

Please read under the cut for more information about our project timeline and how we will ensure accountability and transparency over the course of our project:

So why are we using a pop-up shop and how does this affect our transparency and accountability? As you know, despite ending our fundraiser in May 2020, Indiegogo did not disburse our funds until recently, just shortly before Christmas. We cannot emphasize what a difficult and frustrating experience we had with their customer service; by the end of November, all of us were having earnest conversations about whether we ought to refund everybody’s money. However, your support was overwhelming and we kept pushing on, and then, lo and behold, our money at last came in! We took a big sigh of relief that we could at last get on with our project, and after taking a short and much needed holiday break after our six-month long ordeal, we pulled up our sleeves and got to work once again, holding a team meeting on Dec. 28, 2020 to discuss our next steps.

At that meeting, all of us discussed the pain that we felt after the show’s finale, and the hurt it caused not only to our fandom, but Supernatural’s queer community especially. At the same time, we noted how many more requests we were getting for the anthology again, as it seemed many more people wanted our book, especially after watching Supernatural’s final episode. It became clear to us that our anthology could be a small way for us to help our community heal. We agreed to reconvene on Jan. 17, 2021 to discuss further after we conducted more research about the idea. 

Ultimately, we concluded that opening a pop-up shop would not harm us and our backers because:

* Opening up a pop-up shop will not delay our timeline. For those of you who ordered books back in May during the initial fundraiser, you can be sure that this pop-up shop will not cause your books to arrive at a later date. As we mentioned in an earlier update, we now anticipate that everybody’s books will ship in April 2021. Even if we had not done a pop-up shop, these books would still have shipped out in April regardless. The extra books sold in our pop-up shop will be printed at the same time as the books sold last May on Indiegogo, ensuring that everybody gets their books together.

* Opening up a pop-up shop will only benefit everyone who has purchased a book already; as we mentioned before, these extra books will not only provide us with an extra cushion for our finances, it will also possibly help us upgrade everybody’s copies to hardcovers for free, something we know everyone has been eager about, including us! 

As always, transparency and accountability were at the forefront of our minds during this meeting. We could not use Indiegogo as a platform again, so ultimately concluded that as long as we provided evidence of our pop-up shop’s transactions, we could still undertake our new goal in an honest way. For that reason, we will be making a detailed report of how many copies we sell and how much money we earn through this shop, and to ensure the integrity of our project, we will disable all options to purchase the anthology immediately after the two-week pop-up shop period has closed. We will never again make our anthology available for purchase after Feb. 14, 2021. We are a registered incorporated non-profit society in British Columbia, and as part of the requirements of being a part of this society, it is strictly forbidden that any member of our team make any profit from money we acquire. Furthermore, a financial statement will be released by us at the end of each month beginning in February, detailing all our expenditures.  

At this present time, we are holding another meeting on Jan. 25, 2021 to further discuss our pop-up shop and our overall project. Please keep tuned as you can now expect to hear from us more often with more details and updates about our progress and the upcoming shop!

Thank you very much for your support in this endeavour. We cannot express enough how excited we are about these books, as we know that they will be in all our hands soon! We know the journey getting here hasn’t been easy, and we are eternally grateful for your continued trust and patience and encouragement. As always, should you have any further questions or concerns, please do not hesitate to contact us. Our team is committed to transparency and accountability at every step, and we are more than happy to share any information that will answer any thoughts that you may have about our project.

Sincerely and with much love,

your TH+B mods 

[lingthusiasm]

Transcript Episode 49: How translators approach a text

This is a transcript for Lingthusiasm Episode 49: How translators approach a text. It’s been lightly edited for readability. Listen to the episode here or wherever you get your podcasts. Links to studies mentioned and further reading can be found on the Episode 49 show notes page.

[Music]

Lauren: Welcome to Lingthusiasm, a podcast that’s enthusiastic about linguistics! I’m Lauren Gawne.

Gretchen: I’m Gretchen McCulloch. Today, we’re getting enthusiastic about the relationship of the translator and the text. But first, we’re heading into Lingthusiasm anniversary month! This is our fourth anniversary of doing Lingthusiasm, and we’re really excited that we’re still doing this four years later.

Lauren: We love a bit of reflection and nostalgia. The month of November is always an opportunity to be grateful that we have another year of Lingthusiasm. We have a whole 12 great main episodes. We have 12 more bonus episodes. As with every year, if you want to share a link to your favourite episode, November is an especially nice time to do it.

Gretchen: There are still people in this world who don’t know that they could be listening to a fun podcast about linguistics that makes them feel like they’re at a linguistics party instead of doing the dishes. You could help people find them. Most people still find podcasts through word of mouth. Every year we’ve done this in November, we see a big spike in people listening to the show and finding the show. If you wanna share on social media, we are very happy to thank you if you tag us in things.

Lauren: If you want to share off social media, please accept our deepest gratitude non-publicly for sharing shows as well.

Gretchen: Or, if you share Lingthusiasm privately and you still wanna be thanked, feel free to tell us about it on social media. We will still give you a little heart thank you comment. Yes, thank you already for all of the support that you’ve given the show over the years.

Lauren: If you like things additional to podcasts, because we are coming up to the holiday season, it’s also a good time to think about some Lingthusiasm merch or a copy of Because Internet. It’s a pretty great book. I like it. It’s available in paperback now. These things make great gifts.

Gretchen: We now also have annual memberships on Patreon. That could make a great gift to gift somebody to listen to more Lingthusiasm episodes as well as access to the Discord for an online linguistics community.

Lauren: Our most recent bonus episode was about honorifics as a way of being polite to someone either through the title you choose or a variety of linguistic strategies.

Gretchen: You get access to the honorifics bonus as well as 43 other bonus episodes and new bonus episodes every month by going to patreon.com/lingthusiasm.

[Music]

Gretchen: So, Lauren, I’m gonna talk to you about Beowulf.

Lauren: I know this because you have been messaging me for weeks about how we have to talk about Beowulf.

Gretchen: There’s a new translation of Beowulf. I’m really excited. This made me want to build an entire episode around the translator’s relationship to the text because this new translation of Beowulf does a really cool job of it, and I wanna talk about it.

Lauren: I don’t think you’ve been this excited about a translated text since Emily Wilson translated The Odyssey. I’m pretty sure that’s what motivated our 18th episode on word translation.

Gretchen: You are not wrong about this. I think there’s a similar excitement that I have which is old texts – texts that are a thousand-plus years old that have been translated so many different times by so many different people – it feels like it’s hard for someone to do something new with a translation of them. And yet, here people are doing that, which is exciting to me. This is the new translation of Beowulf by Maria Dahvana Headley. She’s done some really cool things with translating Beowulf as a feminist text. It’s a text that uses very modern style language in this thousand-year-old epic poem of Old English literature.

Lauren: I feel like when it comes to translating, before you even translate one single word, there’s all these decisions that a translator has to make. In Episode 18, we looked at translation, but we looked at word-to-word translation. And that’s definitely one part of a translator’s job, but they have so many more decisions to make. It is such an impressive job, and it’s why it’s as much an art form as it is a technical skill to translate something well. So, what are some of the big decisions that Headley made before even starting to translate Beowulf?

Gretchen: One of the things about Beowulf is, as an oral poem, it has this intricate rhyme scheme. The Old English rhyme scheme is based on half lines. Each line has two halves and there needs to be an alliterative bit in one half that is repeated in the second half.

Lauren: So, Old English is way more interested in alliteration compared to our modern English obsession with rhyming. That’s one of the stylistic features you find in Old English.

Gretchen: It’s all about the beginning of the words rather than the ends. Trying to figure out, okay, how much am I gonna use alliteration? How much am I gonna try to represent – because we can do alliteration in modern English – how much am I gonna try to represent the existing rhyme scheme? Where am I gonna try to put it in actual rhymes like you would do in modern English – if you’re writing a poem, you might rhyme it? What am I gonna do with the metre? She’s produced this really oral text that uses a certain amount of modern slang as well in ways that are really effective. One example is there’s a dragon in Beowulf, and the dragon at one point is described as “Putting the world on blast.”

Lauren: Nice.

Gretchen: To some extent, this is modern slang, but it’s also a very literal thing that a dragon can do. It’s not using modern slang for gratuitous – like, there’s no “lols” or “omgs” in this text. It’s not like here’s this facile text-speak version of Beowulf. It’s what are the bits here that actually work with the metre and the rhyme scheme but also not shying away from using a modern idiom where a modern idiom really works.

Lauren: It’s interesting to put this in contrast to the other most famous version of Beowulf in translation that I know of which is Seamus Heaney’s from somewhere in the middle of the 20th Century where I feel like he tried to capture the mythical grandeur of Old English and chose very stoic, solid sounding Old English words. I don’t think he would’ve had the dragon “putting the world on blast.”

Gretchen: Well, I don’t think he would’ve – I think it came out in 1999, this translation. In some ways his translation is fairly vernacular, but he tries to do that in a different sense. Can I read you the first bit of the Headley translation and the Heaney translation?

Lauren: Yeah. This is super fun.

Gretchen: Okay. A big thing about Beowulf translations is the first word which in Old English is “Hwaet.” That has gotten repurposed as a meme, which we’re not gonna get into much detail about. Some people translate that as like, “Lo!” or “Hark!” or “Listen!” or something like this. Heaney translates that as “So,” which has already got a certain level of vernacularity to it. His first three lines go, “So, the Spear-Danes in days gone by and the kings who ruled them had courage and greatness. We have heard of those princes’ heroic campaigns.” This is very stately and like, “Here’s this thing you’re gonna do.” If you compare that with the first three lines of the Headley translation, the new one, she translates this “Hwaet” as “Bro.”

Lauren: Hm, that’s a very different tone.

Gretchen: It’s a very modern tone. I mean, you could pick a whole bunch of very modern things like “Yo” or “Hey all,” but specifically the reason she picks “Bro” is because she wants to highlight the bro culture-ness of this entire story. You can see that in the next couple lines which is, “Bro, tell me we still know how to speak of kings. In the old days, everyone knew what men were – brave, bold, glory bound. Only stories now, but all sound the Spear-Dane song, hoarded for hungry times.” It just leaps off the page in a way that really excites me.

Lauren: Yeah, no “princes” there.

Gretchen: Right. “Kings who ruled had courage and greatness” – “The men were bold.”

Lauren: The thing I always love about Beowulf is that it’s a millennium-old oral poem that happened to be written down, and a millennium ago people were like, “Let me tell you about the olden days.” [Laughter]

Gretchen: Right, it still takes place in this semi-mythic space, and it uses a certain stylised language that we even think was stylised at the time. You’re always picking between some kind of stylisation. There’s no neutral choice that exists. All of the choices are recreations at some level.

Lauren: I mean, it is kind of weird to think you’re translating from English into English, but it just shows how much the language has moved on because reading Beowulf if you don’t know Old English is an incredibly uncomfortable attempt to just guess some words that have retained some familiarity. I always find it interesting that you have to translate. And then because English went through enough changes by Shakespeare, we kind of put up with all of the features of Shakespeare that aren’t immediately obvious to us.

Gretchen: Right. But Beowulf is really this alien text. Like, “Hwaet. We Gardena” – and “Gardena” is “Spear-Danes,” but we don’t have “Spear-Danes,” and “Gardena” is not obviously related to those. There’s this great miniseries from The History of English Podcast that does a very in-depth line-by-line reading of Beowulf which I enjoyed a while back.

Lauren: My one semantic anecdote from that series is “Gar-Danes” as in “Spear-Danes” – garlic is the “spear-leek.”

Gretchen: Yes, it is!

Lauren: Because it’s like a little spear.

Gretchen: It’s like a little spear-leek. I love that anecdote. It’s interesting to be reading Beowulf at the same time that my book club is actually reading The Tale of Genji.

Lauren: Ah, from like a similar – Genji’s also a millennium old, yeah?

Gretchen: Yeah! In some sense it’s like Beowulf and Genji are kind of contemporaries.

Lauren: But they’re very much not contemporaries. Beowulf is about warrior bro culture in the Old English setting, whereas Genji is a Japanese court drama.

Gretchen: I don’t think they would’ve gotten along. I think they would’ve just found each other completely incomprehensible. Genji’s also one of those classic texts that’s been translated a whole bunch of different times in a whole bunch of different ways. For one thing, you’re translating from a much older version of Japanese. There are modern Japanese translations of The Tale of Genji as well. And then you’re also translating into a different cultural context. But the cultural context for Beowulf is also very weird. Like, I don’t do going and fighting monsters under lakes any more than I do writing haikus about the moon. In fact, I’m probably more likely to write a haiku about the moon than I am to go fight a monster under a lake if we wanna talk about relatability.

Lauren: Everything I know about Genji is because one of my colleagues in the Languages Department at La Trobe is a Genji studies scholar. It’s one of those pieces of work that is so big and so canonical that it has its own literary studies tradition associated with it. I also really love my colleague because the other part of her expertise is cosplay studies. I think it’s such a great combination of Japanese cultural experience there – Genji and cosplay.

Gretchen: I mean, what more do you want? The neat thing about reading Tale of Genji at the moment is because I’m reading it as part of a book club through Argo Bookshop – which is a bookstore that did the book launch party for Because Internet and I really like them – they’re having this Tale of Genji book club, and we’ve been reading it throughout the year a few chapters at a time because it’s over 1,000 pages. It’s huge. So, we’ve been reading it section by section, and different members of the book club have picked different translations into English of the same work.

Lauren: Ah, cool! Are there radical differences between the translations? Or do they all try and go for a literal approach?

Gretchen: They’re really different. One of the big things with Genji is at the time in 11th Century Japan it was considered very rude in the court to refer to people by their actual names. None of the characters in the original Tale of Genji manuscript have names, except for maybe Genji. So, you can imagine reading a thousand-page book where none of the characters have names is a bit of a feat of the imagination.

Lauren: Yes.

Gretchen: Different translations – and a lot of them have conventional names that literary scholars have used to talk about the characters. For example, Lady Fujitsubo lives in the Fujitsubo, which is the western pavilion, and so she gets called in the tradition “Fujitsubo” because that’s where she lives, and this kind of stuff. Or Murasaki gets called that after a flower, I think, the character. In some translations, they just use these conventional use names as if they’re the actual names of the characters. In some translations, they just use descriptions like the original text did, and they don’t really refer to characters by even pretend names or use names.

Lauren: So, one of them is trying to strive for cultural authenticity, and the other one is trying to just help the poor confused reader a little bit more, and that’s choices that each translator has decided to make.

Gretchen: Exactly. You also have other types of decisions like, “Are you going to try to” – because it’s a court drama, you have all these court positions. Are you going try to map those positions onto a western court so that people understand what a chancellor is? Or are you going to try to use those as a more direct translation of what the specific terms were at the time? That’s just different decisions that different translations can use.

Lauren: When you meet as a book club, is everyone following along, or is there a lot of clarifying across translations? Such an interesting little exercise.

Gretchen: Well, the nice thing is, is the division into different chapters is very constant, so we can be like, “Okay, we’re reading Chapters 6 to 10 now. We’re gonna talk about what happens in those.” But sometimes you do pull something up, and you’re like, “Okay, so this bit where this thing was said, do we think Genji is kinda misogynistic here?” And somebody will say, “Well, in my translation, it doesn’t actually seem like he’s misogynistic.” And here’s what’s going on in this particular translation versus that particular translation. And how much of it is the translator bringing their own preconceived notions of how people relate to each other? Because some of these translations are from the 1920s or something. People may have had different politics there. And how much of that is in the original text which was composed by a woman who we don’t know that much about? But it’s the first modern novel. It’s an interesting like, “How much are you going to try to westernise this book for a western audience?” Which some of the older translations do a bit more with the westernisation adaptation because people in the west hadn’t heard of Genji very much before. You do all this adaptation for your English-speaking readers. Whereas, more recent translators, people tend to have a higher degree of expectations of fidelity when it comes to a more modern translation. Sometimes they try to do that. And, you know, how many footnotes do you have? How much do you try to explain additionally? How much do you try to just make the text stand on its own as a story?

Lauren: So many choices to make as a translator. I’m eternally grateful to people who do this and make it appear so effortless while doing so much work bringing all of this context together.

Gretchen: It’s really neat. I’m not gonna read this 1,000-page book five different times in five different translations, but being able to experience portions of those translations vicariously through other people talking about, “Oh, here’s what happened in this one, here’s what happened in this one,” it does let you do this interesting comparative textual study.

Lauren: I’ve been thinking about translation in practice a lot lately because having worked with P. M. Freestone on their Shadowscent books, “The Darkets Bloom” and “Crown of Smoke,” these books have gone into translation in a whole bunch of languages, mostly European languages to date – Spanish, German, French, Russian, and Polish. I’m very excited about the upcoming Hungarian translation which will the first outside of the Indo-European language. But these translations involve a couple of things that are really interesting in that, in these books, I worked on creating the Aramteskan language, and for this language to work across different languages, sometimes it gets technically transliterated, or you need to add a different type of plural. For example, Russian has a different alphabet to English and so you need to fit this language into the Russian Cyrillic alphabet.

Gretchen: You’re not trying to pretend that Aramteskan is always written with the Latin alphabet. Even when the book itself is in Russian, you’re like, we’re gonna transliterate it into Cyrillic?

Lauren: No, translators have very much done what they think is most appropriate. I have a habit of buying these translations now and checking out what they’ve done because they’re not just translating from English into another language, they also have to translate this completely fictional language and this fictional world into that language as well. It’s one thing to maybe study in-depth Old English warrior culture or Japanese court culture and decide what to bring across, but with a fantasy world, there’s all kinds of choices you have to make as a translator as well.

Gretchen: Yeah, like what are you gonna do with the magic system? Or if you’ve invented all of these words for different scents or something, then they have to figure out some sort of equivalent of inventing those words for the other language.

Lauren: There’s a lot of scent vocabulary even in the English that P. M. Freestone has written in, so really taxing that part of the translator’s repertoire. One thing that’s been particularly interesting and that there’s been some discussion on how to manage is that in this world, both in the historical part of the world and the contemporary part of the world, the culture and the grammar allow for gender neutral third person like the English modern use of “they,” which Kirby Conrod gave a great interview about how that works in contemporary English. In fact, I did a little historical evolution of the pronoun system that fits with the story of the world where originally there was no gender distinction in the pronoun system, which fits with the old religious system of the world. And the religious system evolved younger gods that are all gendered, and the pronoun system evolved genders at the same time while still having that scope for gender neutral. Without spoiling too much, but a character that pops up in Book One and is much more a part of Book Two is gender fluid within the world. That works for current English because we have gender neutral singular they, but there are some languages like Czech or like Russian that the book’s being translated into where there isn’t that flexibility in the linguistic system. So, decisions have to be made about how that is negotiated in the translation.

Gretchen: Do you know what they did?

Lauren: I don’t know what they did for Russian yet, but I believe the solution in Czech is at various times this character is overtly identified using masculine and at other times using feminine – being much more flexible about the duality of their relationship with gender.

Gretchen: This reminds me of a thing that I heard Ada Palmer talk about at a conference panel with her book “Too Like the Lightning” and the sequels, which are set in this far future of English – well, far future and they’re written in English – in which singular they is used for everybody except when you’re writing in this faux-archaic style with “thous” and “thees” and “hes” and “shes.” It’s very marked at that point. Ada Palmer was talking about how this was translated into French where in modern English the progressive thing that people do is like, “Oh, we can use singular they. That’s very progressive.” In modern French, the progressive thing that people do is they make feminine versions of all of the professions.

Lauren: Right.

Gretchen: You have feminine versions of “professor” or “doctor” or these kinds of things to try and make the gender more visible. And so erase the gender in the French version wouldn’t have the same effect – where you’d end up using the default masculine or something in the French version – it wouldn’t have the same effect as using singular they all the time in the English version. There are modern French pronouns like “iel” that have been coined to solve this problem of using a gender neutral third person pronoun, but it wouldn’t work to use them in this particular case because the style is supposed to be faux-archaic. What the translator ended up doing was digging out this French pronoun “on,” which in the modern form “on” is used like “we” or like “one does this.” It’s related to like, “One does this.” There’s an older usage of “on” which is like a non-specific third person pronoun as well that – I speak French, but I didn’t know about this archaic form. And the translator went and looked for what other historic pronoun things could I do and ended up doing with “on” thing, which is a really interesting adaptation.

Lauren: The thing I find interesting is if you were – 50 years ago, you didn’t have the grammatical resources in English to use singular they for a specific person. It’s something that’s really only emerged in the last couple of decades. I think the translator has felt frustrated to not have – you know, you sometimes feel like you’ve got this road block because you don’t have resources in one language that you have in another and you have to innovate. I did have a colleague in Italian studies tell me that they read a whole novel once where the gender of one of the characters was deliberately written around and avoided in a way that was an incredibly artful, thoughtful translation. It is possible that you could maybe do this with this character in the Shadowscent books, but it would be such –

Gretchen: But you couldn’t do it with the whole world in the Terra Ignota books because all of the characters would have to have that.

Lauren: Yeah. And you could do that amount of heavy lifting at the cost of some other things, but when you’re doing an efficient translation for a commercial novel, you don’t have the resources to really max out your art and strategy in that way. It’s interesting that, you know, translation is a really resource-intensive activity even to just do a good translation, let alone an incredibly strategic and thoughtful translation.

Gretchen: Even translating one word, like that word at the beginning of Beowulf, involves thinking about, “Okay, what kind of relationship do I want this word to have to the rest of the text? What am I trying to set up here in relationship to the whole text? Where do I see this attention-getting word as going?” Like, what the text as a whole is doing, which is this interesting question. I should say, speaking of translation news, this is very hot off the presses, but I have received news that there are gonna be translations of Because Internet into Persian, Chinese, and Japanese. So, all – well, Persian is an Indo-European language, but it has a different writing system, and then two non-Indo-European languages. I don’t know anything else about the details yet.

Lauren: This is news that I didn’t even know. This is very exciting.

Gretchen: It’s very recent, yes. It’s not – I dunno. I will have official links when they exist. They won’t exist for, I dunno, probably a couple years. I dunno how long it’ll take them to do. I know nothing.

Gretchen: The surreal thing about translation means that you will see you work and not be able to read it. There’s something so amazing and magical about that, that words you have created are finding new audiences – you know, there’s a lot of trust in the translator in those contexts.

Gretchen: Yeah, and I don’t know if I’m gonna get to have any say in who they get to translate it and how much they know about the internet or things like that.

Lauren: Translating non-fiction is an entirely different process because you’re not translating an internal narrative world as much as you are potentially translating something that explains how this world that we live in right now exists, or how a set of historical realities existed. That also takes deftness and skill.

Gretchen: And you’re potentially trying to translate technical vocabulary between one language or another, which isn’t necessarily the same as, “Okay, we need to keep the characters’ names consistent. It’s like, “We need to use this word that has a technical meaning in its technical sense.” Speaking of non-fiction translation, I dunno if you’ve been following in translation news relatively recently, there’s been a lot of things going on with the Scots language Wikipedia.

Lauren: Yes, I did read about this. So, Scots language is a language in the same family as English. It has a lot of similarities with English but is considered its own “variety,” using that very deliberate linguist term where you don’t commit to just how much it’s a dialect or its mutual intelligibility with other varieties that its related to. And it has its own Wikipedia.

Gretchen: Scots is kind of like, as an English speaker, I’ve always been kind of jealous of people who speak Dutch or German or something because they can kind of understand each other a bit. Or Spanish and Portuguese and Italian because they can kind of approximate understanding each other to some extent even if they haven’t formally learned the languages. I’ve always been like, “Why doesn’t English have some closer neighbours?” But I hadn’t been thinking about Scots when I was thinking that. Scots is probably English’s closest neighbour but is still a distinct language and, especially, there are grammatical differences and there are a lot of political reasons as well why people consider it its own language. However, [laughs] the Scots language Wikipedia, which has all of these articles written in Scots, had apparently been being edited for the last seven years by an American teenager who didn’t know any Scots and was just looking up the English articles in a Scots-English dictionary word-by-word and just picking the first word of the translation and subbing that in for the Scots word.

Lauren: This has been such a difficult story to read because everyone throughout this process has acted in the best faith. This teenager wasn’t doing this for any reason other than a passion for sharing knowledge on Wikipedia and a passion for seeing the Scots Wikipedia grow but with a really uncritical approach to translation. You can see where translation really does require this understanding of vocabulary choice and style choice and how it can all go really, really wrong.

Gretchen: Yeah, it’s really painful because this person started when they were, like, 12, and we have all believed very foolish things about the world when we were 12. It’s just many of us didn’t write thousands of Wikipedia articles in a language that is just really not the way anybody who actually speaks this language actually writes because it’s cobbled together badly from a dictionary. It’s this very painful, “Oh, no! You thought you were helping.” And yet Wikipedia is used as the basis of a lot of machine translation, and language detection, various natural language processing tools, and so this has been potentially sabotaging the efforts to try to create other machine tools in Scots because they’ve all been in this weird dictionary-a-fied version of English.

Lauren: It’s been really heartening to see the Scots language community and the Scottish Wikipedia community come together to figure out a strategy for how to approach cleaning house – I guess it’s the biggest spring clean ever, right – how to approach this, like, thousands and thousands of articles with this very strange approach to translation.

Gretchen: It illuminates one of the issues with smaller language Wikipedias in general which is that they may only have a few active editors because to be a Wikipedia editor is to be a volunteer. It takes a long time to translate things or to write articles. If you’re a language like English, you can have tens of thousands of editors. But if you’re a language like Scots which has many fewer speakers, you may only have a dozen active editors of which maybe one of them is a well-meaning but very clueless American teenager.

Lauren: We’ve both done lots of Wikipedia editing. We have run LingWiki events to improve linguistics content on Wikipedia. It’s challenging enough to write these articles in one language that I am proficient in. I’m always in awe of people who choose to translate and support content in their second or third languages because it is a non-trivial task to translate really complicated information in a way that is really clear.

Gretchen: Translation is a technical task that is one of those things that looks at all of the different levels of language where you have some things at the individual word, or even sound, or if you’re trying to translate poetry and you wanna make it beautiful in a very aesthetic sense with the physical properties of language, all the way up to words and sentences and structure and these discourse-y particles like “Hwaet” at the beginning where you’re trying to picture a whole framing device for the structure of an entire tone of a narrative. Or if you’re trying to pick, “Okay, how are we going to treat technical vocabulary that maybe has been borrowed from English?” because its scientific vocabulary that was invented from English, how are you gonna treat that when it gets borrowed into Scots? Trying to figure out how to make these technical decisions is non-trivial. It’s this very interesting train wreck. It can go spectacularly right when you have this very clever decision for a dragon to put the world on blast, and it can also go spectacularly wrong when you just say, “Okay, I’m gonna look through a dictionary and then pick the first word I encounter.”

Lauren: One of the great things about appreciating a good translation is that language never takes a break. Culture continues to change, and we move further away from the era of Beowulf. We move into new cultural settings and new cultural expectations. It means that there is space for new translations that bring new approaches, or try something different, or aim for really capturing something about the language of the era it was created in, or set an old story in a radically new setting. Even when you find a really satisfying translation, you know there’s still possibilities for finding other interesting ways to engage with the text.

Gretchen: I think that’s a thing that’s exciting about both the translations of these thousand-year-old texts, whether Beowulf or Tale of Genji, where they go through lots of different authors who put their own spin on the translation. And also thinking of Wikipedia as a place for translation where you have multiple authors working together on the same shared text, and a bunch of different people – like Scots Wikipedia has been having these Wikipedia edit-a-thons to try to clean the place up. You have a whole bunch of contributors that are finding out about this need because of this story and coming in and working on the text together and contributing to the shared text. In many ways, even though each of these editions of the translations are published as their own book for book-length ones, it’s this very intimate relationship that you can have with a text when you’re trying to render it in a different language or in a different textual interpretation.

[Music]

Gretchen: For more Lingthusiasm and links to all the things mentioned in this episode, go to lingthusiasm.com. You can listen to us on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, SoundCloud, YouTube, or wherever else you get your podcasts. You can follow @Lingthusiasm on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and Tumblr. You can get IPA scarves, IPA ties, and other Lingthusiasm merch at lingthusiasm.com/merch. I can be found as @GretchenAMcC on Twitter, my blog is AllThingsLinguistic.com, and my book about internet language is called Because Internet.

Lauren: I tweet and blog as Superlinguo. Have you listened to all the Lingthusiasm episodes and you wish there were more? You can access to 44 bonus episodes right now to listen to at patreon.com/lingthusiasm or follow the links from our website. Patron also get access to our Discord chatroom to talk with other linguistics fans and other rewards as well as helping to keep the show ad-free. Recent bonus topics include pangrams, honorifics, and linguistics with kids. If you can’t afford to pledge, that’s okay, too. We really appreciate it if you can recommend Lingthusiasm to anyone who needs a little more linguistics in their life, especially as it’s the anniversary month.

Gretchen: Lingthusiasm is created and produced by Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne. Our senior producer is Claire Gawne, our editorial producer is Sarah Dopierala, and our music is “Ancient City” by The Triangles.

Lauren: Stay lingthusiastic!

[Music]

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

[gumilac]

ooh definitely on the lookout for those two now then!!

plspslsp that sounds like such a good romance i love the enemies to lovers trope — just searched it up yes it sounds good ( his nAME IS SEBASTIAN?? ok you convinced me )

oohh i definitely recommend six of cranes!! from the author’s description it’s a sailor moon meets spirited away kind of thing!! set in kingdoms and magic and all!! + a subplot romance ( the male leads make me swoon 🧍‍♀️🧍‍♀️ )

the midnight library deals with alternate lives!! but it also has some pretty triggering topics so i suggest you search them up if you ever wanna read it

and for we hunt the flame, i’m gonna be honest i bought it months ago but i haven’t even got through half 💀 i will start reading it properly soon, but it’s about kingdoms too? and action + romance i think!!

and omg yes we should totally talk about books more ‼️

YES HIS NAME IS SEBASTIAN— ITS SO HANDSOME HELP ME, HE'S SO HANDSOME!! man got me giggling and blushing every minute he's on the page 😔🤚

oooo i see, they're mostly fantasy aus~!! they all seem so interesting, im gonna look them up when i can. i tend to read more YA romance books because i need those cutesy fluff stuff in my life, but fantasy aus are also my cup of tea so i'm v intrigued by those books you've mentioned!

PLEASE I RELATE— i bought books and i haven't touched them yet... well to be fair, i'm reading my e-books first!! i'm currently reading what if it's us (e-book), while i already have the paperback of here's to us and i'm very excited to tab them when i'm finished with the first book!

do you tab your books??

[luvrpop]

the end

source: the devil all the time part: one/? pairing: arvin russell/reader requested: no tws: n/a (canon typical in later parts but this ones safe) word count: 1652 synopsis: you make some bread, and contemplate finality. extra: i wanted to challenge myself to write a reader insert without using y/n et cetera!! im so excited for this, and very proud :) Someone once told you that there is nothing in life that isn’t a beginning or an end. You’re not quite sure what you think about that, but you figure there must be some sense of truth to it. Hell, you reckon that if those words are true every damn thing you do is the beginning of the rest of your life. This train of thought will come back to you later.

For now, you wake up in the morning to begin your day, and eventually you’ll sleep at night to end it. 

You open your dresser to begin looking for your outfit, and close the dresser to end that search. Naturally, you’ll put on your clothes to begin wearing them, and take them off at some point to end that.

You open the window in your kitchen to begin a steady flow of fresh air, but you won’t get a chance to close, and thus end, it.

Later, all the beginnings you started and endings you caused in the coming few days will become viscerally apparent to you. You’ll wonder which one is more important; those beginnings or endings? You’ll wonder if that matters at all. It probably doesn’t.

Currently, you are kneading the dough that you began only 15 minutes ago for a loaf of bread that you’ll never get to eat. Your radio plays quietly in the corner of the kitchen and you sing along, finding a rhythm in your movement. You feel as though you could live in this moment for the rest of your life and stay happy the whole time. But of course, the song ends so another can begin and your timer goes off to tell you’ve kneaded enough, and the tranquility of the moment slowly dissipates. You wet a towel and delicately place it on top of the lump of dough, and set it into a bowl and aside to begin it’s second hour of rising. That means that you have an hour to yourself, and you resign yourself to laundry. It gets boring pretty quickly, however, so you resolve to finish this load and continue a book you started reading last week. 

You’re only a few chapters from the end. You like it well enough- the characters are charming and the plot is compelling- but the pacing of it all is what’s really losing you. It started as a decent slow burn character study into the mind of a troubled woman that tragedy followed like a shy dog, which you find interesting. However, at some point it seemed like the author was as swept up in the world as you were and was caught off guard by the need for an ending. The past few chapters have been a rushed attempt at a satisfying conclusion, and the original message of the story has been lost. The woman started out as thoughtful and resilient, despite the shit life kept throwing at her. You like her a lot. At this point in the book, though, things should be calming down. They aren’t. 

You pick up the book where you left off, and immediately it seems to be trending in an unnecessarily painful direction. You wouldn’t dare tell anyone, but you definitely prefer a happy ending. The appeal in watching decent people suffer for nothing is lost on you. It makes it difficult to ignore the more uncomfortable truths of the town you live in. 

By the time you’ve gotten to the last chapter, your timer is going off again, letting you know that it’s time to move your dough from under the towel and in the bowl to the oven. You leave the book open on the counter (it stays, because you accidentally broke the spine when you first bought the book. Your best friend chided you for getting as upset as you did. “There are bigger things in life to worry about than a 50¢ paperback novel, darlin’.” He had said.) and stand to wash your hands. The front door opens and closes as you turn on the water, and you call out a greeting to your father. There is no reply while you move the dough to a pan, and you wait a moment before calling out again. This time you get an answer,  though the voice that responds is not your father. A smile creeps its way onto your face as you slide the pan into the oven and close the door. 

Something you’ve noticed about Arvin Russel is the way he refers to the people. It’s never “good afternoon,” or “thank you,” or “how are ya?”; it’s always a “good afternoon miss,” or “thank you ma’am,” or “how are ya, sir”. He calls his sister Lenora little lady or hun; his grandmother is grandma or ma’am; his grandfather is grandpa or sir. Friends are bud and fella, and enemies are any number of vile swears and adjectives. You’re doll or darlin’, and you have been since you found him hiding behind the school back on the first day of sixth grade. It’s common down here in the south to call people anything but their name whether it be from respect or the opposite, but even as a child Arvin seemed to actively avoid using someone’s name unless he was saying something that he needed you to know he meant. Most people figured he was just some overly respectful kid, but you’ve always suspected that he just understands the power of his words. As you got older, you got the sense to wonder why a kid so young seemed to know so much about power and violence, both mental and physical. You’ve heard the rumors about why he moved to Coal Creek in the first place, but it never came to you to just ask if they were true and what living in Knockemstiff was like. You never considered it your business. 

That’s all to say that when Arvin Russel greets you by name in your kitchen at 3:30 PM on a Saturday in the fine year of 1965, your hand stops on its way to the kitchen timer. A quick glance at the clock confirms that Arvin has work in 10 minutes, and you know that you live a solid 15 away from where he needs to be. You turn to face him, apprehensively studying the way he sits on a stool on the opposite side of the island that divides the room. He sits with a slump that shows an extent of exhaustion that seems deeper than the physical body. You wonder if someone’s soul could yawn. He seems like he hasn’t been able to relax all day, and even now there’s tension in his shoulders. Not to mention that his breathing’s uneven and he’s sweating like a sinner in church, so you decide to dampen a washcloth before asking any questions. He looks at you in such a way while you dab at his damp brow that chips away at your heart. He’s looked haunted since you met him, like Satan himself is dancing in his peripheral, always 3 steps away from finally claiming his soul, and you wonder for a moment if he’s always fought the devil all the time.

“Christ almighty Arvin, what happened t’you?” You ask, blotting away at his forehead.

His eyes snap into focus at that, like he’s remembering something, and he pushes out of his seat, snatching the cloth from your hand. “We gotta leave, doll,”

You look at him incredulously. “What in the world? You sit yourself back down and tell me what is goin-”

Arvin interrupts you by saying your name again. “I mean it,” he says, and you believe him. “You got- you got to get on packin’ and we gotta leave.”

“I’m not packin’ anything until you tell me what the hell is goin’ on, Arvin Russel. I mean it.” You say, and he believes you.

Unfortunately, you’ll come to understand that he doesn’t have the time to explain. 

The two of you have fantasized about skipping town more times than you could count. A couple of times, you even packed your bags into the back of Arvin’s jalopy before school, planning on picking up Lenora and never looking back at this shithole. You were serious about it too, your father and whatever spends its time haunting Arvin giving you more than enough motivation. Still, you stayed. Arvin would say he’d miss his grandmother, which was true, but you both knew it wasn't what Lenora would want. After she died, Arvin swore he should have said damn it all and left anyway.

When he makes eye contact with you again, you know whatever is happening now is different than your idealized life on the run. Every time you planned this, you both swore you’d do it all together, and that included choosing the right time. Arvin was so particular about choosing the right time. Now, it seems that whatever he did that you two are running from didn’t have a right time. It just had to happen, and he was tired of waiting. A sense of dread nags at you perversely, and you know suddenly and without a doubt that if you don’t go with him now, you’ll never see him again.

He drops the rag then and leaves the kitchen with a sense of urgency you’ve never seen, and you tear after him. You meet him in your room and you both throw together two bags of your bare essentials. You’re out the door and shoving the bags into his trunk before you even get a chance to turn off the oven.

It won’t be until you’re leaning your head on the passenger window of Arvin’s automobile, speeding past the sign that cheerily reads You are now leaving Coal Creek! We hope to see you again soon!, that you will realize that you forgot your book at home. 

[lluvguts]

dog-ears, or bookmarks? // reddie

pairing: kid! richie tozier / eddie kaspbrak

warnings/genre: purely fluff! lots of (wholesome) pining!

word count: 1894

summary: A reddie library meet cute

Ten year old Eddie Kaspbrak clutched his mother’s sweaty hand as they ascended the stairs in the Derry Public Library. He could smell her floral perfume as they went, rolling off her in stifling waves to mask the stains of sweat on her sheer dress. Eddie counted the steps, each one closer toward the kid’s section of the library and further from that stinky perfume. It reminded him of the mornings Eddie had to stand by his mother’s bedside, holding his nose as the whole room reeked of grandmothers and mildewy furniture, to take his medicine.

His mother stopped mid-climb to fix her eyes on Eddie’s wrinkled nose and shortened breaths.

“Are you alright dear?” She asked.

Eddie nodded and ducked away from her coddling hands, reaching to feel his pulse and ensure he still had his inhaler.

“I’m fine, Mommy,” Eddie whined, wiping his streaming eyes. “Do you have your library card?”

She straightened up and wiped her damp hands along the front of her chest. “Of course I do, Eddie dear. You know the rules, you get to look for one approved book while I sit and read.”

“Yes Mommy,” Eddie murmured as they reached the second floor and took in the rows and rows of bookshelves and children’s painted tables. Eddie could hardly contain his excitement. The library was one of his favorite places to go―it was quiet, orderly, and smelled clean most of the time. It was the only place Eddie could slip into the old pages of a book as his regular self and close them, a new person. A detective, a brave knight, a dragon, anything but the delicate little boy he really was. Eddie didn’t think being so soft was fair at all―even if his mother believed that a boy did not need a magnifying glass, a suit of armor, or the ability to breathe fire to get through life safely.

His mother patted his shoulder. “Now Eddie, I’ll be over here by the coloring tables. When you find a book, bring it to me so I can check it for you.”

Eddie groaned internally as he padded away from her clammy grip. She hardly let him pick out books he liked, her “book checks'' were always: “That one looks a bit scary, Eddie dear,” Or “Heavens, of course not! Don’t you see that ghost on the front? I don’t want to start giving my Eddie nightmares now.”

But maybe this time it would be different. And maybe, just maybe, he’d find a good book to read―or even better: some company.

Eddie realized with a thudding chest as he walked, it was different. He’d headed straight for the kid’s section typically filled with the horror books when a shoe poking out from the two bookcases stopped him. The sneaker was attached to a leg, attached to a skinny boy sprawled out on his back with a book inches from his pale face. Scattered around him were stacks of paperbacks, and Eddie hovered over his lanky frame with a slight grin. The boy was reading the Goosebumps books.

“I haven’t read that one,” Eddie whispered, crouching down between the shelves so his mother wouldn’t see. He pointed at the book in the boy’s hands, and that was when Eddie could see his face. Clunky glasses framed his deep brown eyes, and a mess of blackish brown hair hung just below his eyebrows. When Eddie met his sly glance, magnified behind his glasses, both boys broke out in childish grins.

“The Werewolf of Fever Swamp? It’s a classic,” The boy stated. He staggered upright, adjusting his frames, then stuck out his arm. Eddie blinked at the boy’s hand, fascinated as some of his fingers were decorated in Spiderman Band-Aids and his wrist was covered in Rainbow Loom bracelets.

The dark-haired boy frowned, as if he were truly hurt by Eddie’s hesitation. “You’re supposed to shake my hand.”

“Oh.” Was all Eddie could muster. He slipped his hand into the other boy’s and they shook like esteemed gentlemen. His palms weren’t sweaty and flushed like Eddie’s mother’s, but thin and soft in all the right places. It made a weird feeling buzz around in Eddie’s stomach, like he was about to throw up a swarm of butterflies.

“My name’s Richie.”

Eddie liked the sound of his name. He liked the way Richie said it, being able to see his teeth when he whispered. Richie, Richie, Richie.

“I’m Eddie,” He murmured back, scooting aside one of the piles of Goosebumps books to make room.

“Eddie.” Richie tried the word, as if it were a new piece of candy on his tongue.

Eddie noticed that Richie’s copy of The Werewolf of Fever Swamp had been closed before he could mark his place. With a little burst of pride Eddie turned to his fanny pack―the very one his mother would not let him out of the house without―for the bookmarks he had made. Himself. It was something Eddie enjoyed doing, when his mother was not nagging him on his vitamins or forcing him to sit through reruns of Wheel of Fortune.

Eddie thumbed through the few bookmarks he’d brought, hoping Richie would like the one he’d drawn a Stormtrooper on.

“Here,” He started, handing over the taped up strip of paper. “You didn’t save your spot.”

Richie stared at Eddie’s bookmark with a pink face then shook his head. “Nah, that’s okay, Eds. I don't use bookmarks.” He whispered quickly.

“Then what do you use?” Eddie asked, growing worried that Richie did use bookmarks, just not ones from delicate little strangers at the library. Eddie thought he was tough, tough enough to use the grown up scissors by himself and not get cut. Maybe Richie would see he wasn’t as weak as the kids at the play yard thought he was.

He whispered it like a delicious secret between them. “Just fold the sides here, y’see?” Richie held up the book, and sure enough, a dog-eared corner showed his last page. “I’m gonna keep reading. Do you want me to, uh, read out loud?”

Read out loud? No one had ever offered Eddie to read with them. Most of the time he read his books alone, with the stuffed animals on the tops of the shelves as his only friends. Those butterflies came fluttering back inside Eddie’s body, but this time they nuzzled hot into his lungs so all he did was nod hurriedly, afraid they’d spill out.

Richie grinned again and shuffled over to Eddie’s side, leaning against a bookshelf. He propped the book on his knobby knees and began where he’d left off.

As he read Eddie became transfixed by the soft, boyish timbre of Richie’s voice, no longer listening to the story but to the short catch of breath as he whispered each eerie sentence.

He craned his neck closer toward Richie’s shoulder to see the pages for himself, and was met with the smell of bubblegum coming from Richie’s lips. Eddie’s eyes glanced briefly at them, more interested in their softness―Richie was lost in the story, hardly paying attention to him―and the sweet taste his words left in the air. Richie read the next passage in a fake, trembling-all-over voice, and for effect, flinched backward as if frightened. Richie’s shoulder met Eddie’s chin and for a second, Eddie didn’t think much about his next choice as he let it rest there. Richie didn’t seem to mind either. He flipped the pages with Eddie’s head on his shoulder and they listened together about the ill-fated Tucker family. Eddie’s heart began to falter.

Arrhythmia. His mother’s ghost word appeared in Eddie’s mind, though he didn’t know what it really meant. He thought it was something that happened when your heart got so excited it wouldn’t beat right for you.  

But it wasn’t the story that made Eddie’s heart excited. It was Richie. It was the way his dark eyes glistened behind his glasses. It was his electric blue Hawaiian button up and the white undershirt tucked inside his shorts. It was in his kindness to even be sitting next to Eddie. It was the fact that he was no longer alone at the library.

Richie had stopped reading at the sound of a shrill whisper echoing through the stillness.

“Eddie! It’s time to go back home.”

“That’s my mom,” Eddie said with a sad sigh, shifting away from Richie’s shoulder and looking up at his fixed expression.

“What?”

Richie thrust the book into Eddie’s fingers. “You read it.”

Eddie stared down at the cover as he got off the floor. His heart jumped to its own rhythm again, forgetting to beat a few times when Richie eased back on the stiff carpet and picked up Vampire Breath instead. Eddie didn’t want to leave. He wanted to sit back down with Richie and finish the chapter, the whole book, the piles all around him, all so that stovetop heat would return to his cheeks and he’d melt at Richie’s words all over again. Maybe Eddie didn’t exactly need a knight’s armor for things like this, when he felt like a warm dish of butter. To have a friend.

Eddie decidedly slipped the Stormtrooper bookmark into the front page and bent down to set it on one of the piles. “I don’t think she’ll let me take it. She’ll say it’s too scary or something.”

Richie put Vampire Breath on his chest and thought for a moment.

“Come back next weekend, maybe I can get my mom to meet yours,” Richie murmured back, then winced at Sonia’s panicked call for her son again.

“What for?”

“So you can come to my house...I’ve got all his books in my room.” Richie said with a blush. “Plus comics.”

“But,” Eddie peered over the shelves in worry, thankful he didn’t see his mother’s looming body yet. “Why would you wanna hang out with me?”

Richie didn’t miss a beat, though his cheeks were red. “Cause you’re a cool dude, Eds.”

“Eddie! I said one book, mister.”

Eddie stood over Richie like he had been a while ago, at a loss of what to say. He could still hardly believe that someone would want to spend time with him. The idea that he was cool. Eddie had an inhaler and religiously wore a fanny pack and thought of himself as anything but cool.  

“So you’ll come back then?” Richie asked hopefully, his eyes wide behind the lenses.

“S-Sure, Richie. I’ll be back.”

As he walked away he heard the sound of Richie’s book pages flipping, and the angry eyes of his mother bore down on him.

“What were you doing this whole time?” She demanded in a strained voice. “You kept me waiting, I was worried you’d been kidnapped.”

Eddie felt that familiar constricting in his throat again whenever his mother was nearby. All of the words from the books disappeared. He didn’t live in the pages of R. L. Stine anymore; he was nestled inside the chokehold of delicate and weak and asthmatic.

But maybe next time Eddie could enter the Derry Public Library doors a different boy. One that may still be a bit fragile and small, but had someone else to walk through the aisles with. Had someone else to read with. And he wasn’t alone.

[paintedrecs]

Helloo i saw a tweet you made saying you recently watched a bunch of gay animes and i was wondering if you could perhaps make a list and post them on twitter? I'm always looking for anime to watch and i know your tastes align with mine. If it isn't too much of a bother perhaps? I hope you have loveky days!!!❤❤❤❤

Hey friend! I put off answering this, sorry, because my answers tend to be unnecessarily long and I was v tired when I got the original message. But if you’re still interested, here’s a lil rundown of some of what I’ve been watching/reading. In reference to this tweet, where I was watching a show that definitely isn’t gay but is kinda gay if you just squint the tiniest bit, which I’ve gotten used to doing.

If you follow me on twitter, most of these proooobably won’t be new? But I talk about/RT things on a scattered basis, so maybe there are some you haven’t checked out yet. 

So, the canonical gay! I’m only going to list the ones I liked and/or remember most - my Quest For Gay Anime started two years ago, and I watched pretty much everything I could get my hands on, but at that point, there were only a few I loved enough to rewatch/buy/recommend. The list has gotten a little longer since then, unfortunately for my attention span and wallet.

(I’ll be honest, a lot of the really popular/older BL have too many consent issues for my tastes - I understand the context and all that, and no hate on anyone who loves stories that didn’t particularly appeal to me. But I’m including this note cause (a) if I don’t put a really well-known BL anime on this list that’s probably why (b) I’m gonna drop in a few that toe that line but I’ll try to include warnings where relevant.)

ANIME FAVES

DOUKYUSEI (Classmates)

This is kinda where it all started. I saw a tweet going around with a trailer for a very soft, lovely movie about two boys falling in love, and I thought whaaaaat an actual gay story? Where they kiss? And I don’t have to just imagine it??

Still one of my top faves. It’s beautifully animated - like filming watercolors? It always makes me feel languid and happy. The story and characters are realistic, in a very kind, hopeful way, as these two navigate starting a relationship that neither of them expected. It’s available on Amazon video - I own a digital copy there, hah, as well as the physical blu-ray, because I watch it often enough to want both.

I also recommend the manga, although I’ve only recently discovered that apparently the story did not end after the first three volumes, so I can only recommend that far. (I’ve heard it, unfortunately, gets angstier, and it’s still incomplete? The first three volumes feel complete to me, so I’m happy to leave it there if so.) 

The movie pretty much covers the first manga volume - it’s a very accurate page-to-screen translation - and there’s some really wonderful relationship building and exploration of family dynamics in the next two volumes.

HITORIJIME MY HERO (My Very Own Hero)

Another huge favorite that I have literally watched like 30 times at this point. Two gay couples, double the fun, although this pairing is by far my favorite.

I’ll direct you to my very long post on this topic for more information, but the short version is:

Warning: there is an age gap and student/teacher relationship, but it’s treated very thoughtfully and is directly addressed as part of the story. They have to navigate through how to make their relationship work (issues with friends, coworkers, society). And they didn’t meet as student/teacher - it’s a lot more complicated, with some fantastic family dynamics. There’s a lot of angst to Setagawa’s backstory that makes you really appreciate the happiness and love he finds with Kousuke & his whole family. (Many more details in my watch-this-anime post.)

The series is 12 episodes long, with a WONDERFUL (happy) ending that makes me cry LITERALLY EVERY SINGLE TIME. Gosh I love this show a lot. It packs some serious feels - I cry, I laugh, I cry again, but for happy reasons.

It’s from a manga, but I do not recommend the manga. The manga falls into a lot of the tropes that I personally don’t like; I think the anime does a much better job of tackling the complexity of their story and treating these two with the thoughtful nuance they deserve.

Can be found on Amazon; I bought the blu-ray, and it’s one of the exceedingly rare cases where I love both the sub and the dub. There are slight differences in translation that really makes it worth watching both.

GIVEN

Wow, this one. Available on Crunchyroll, 11 episodes with a movie coming soon.

It’s newer to my list, and it’s really, really good. I’ve only read the first two volumes of the manga so far (with two more on preorder), because tbh I have trouble reading scanlations online and find it a lot more enjoyable to just wait for the official translations in paperback form.

So far the anime lines up pretty closely with the manga, so I do recommend both, although at this point I enjoy the anime more - partly because of some of the choices they make in rearranging/expanding scenes, and partly because it’s a story about a band, so it makes a huge difference to be able to actually hear the music.

And Mafuyu’s song is worth it. Wow. I listened to it on repeat for like two weeks after the episode first aired.

Uenoyama (the dark-haired stern-looking heart-of-gold character, I have a type), is my favorite. He is a MASSIVE disaster gay, and a lot of his scenes are absolutely hilarious. The dynamics between the characters aren’t what you’d expect - it’s amazing to watch the seemingly quiet Mafuyu come out of his shell and display his true personality - and there’s some really gritty, emotional material, too.

What’s fascinating about this one is that there are parallel stories going on about past loves and heartbreak, and how truly loving (and losing) someone doesn’t mean you can’t find happiness again.

(Warning and a spoiler: there is a suicide that happens before this story starts - Mafuyu’s ex-boyfriend - and while nothing about it is graphic, that event is central to Mafuyu’s story, so there are some weighty episodes. It ultimately leads to him meeting Uenoyama and joining the band. And finding himself again.) 

The movie’s gonna focus more on the secondary couple, but I’m still excited to see more of them! And...more angst, I imagine, but hopefully a lot more happiness as well.

SARAZANMAI

Okay, fair warning: this show is weird.

I think if you’re familiar with Japanese folklore, particularly kappas, you might have a much better intro than I did, but considering the creator laughed about how much they got away with by hiding the weirder parts of the story during the initial pitch, I...am not sure about that.

It’s weird but I liked it a lot. I’m not even going to attempt to explain it in the space available here, but the wiki page has a decent summary if you’re curious before diving in.

The very, very condensed version is that the main characters are three middle school boys who get turned into kappas by the kappa prince, who sends them on missions to retrieve “dishes of hope” every episode. In the process, they learn more about themselves and each other, since each time they complete one of these missions, it results in one of their big secrets being spilled to the others.

I like the main trio (and there’s a gay subplot there, too, where one of the boys is in love with his best friend but doesn’t know how to tell him), but I started watching the show because of the “villains,” Reo and Mabu. They have a deeply angsty backstory that you don’t get to until the last couple episodes. Up until then, they have a transformation sequence every episode that ... yes, gets repetitive, Miraculous Ladybug-style, but I still sat and watched, entranced, every time.

One of the things I like about this anime is that while it is very, very gay, it’s not about being gay. It’s a fantasy story where several characters just happen to be gay. As much as I love romance (which the rest of these recs definitely have been), I like being able to see gay people (or kappas...) in different genres, just existing.

And if you can’t get into the show (11 episodes, available on Crunchyroll), there’s a spinoff manga about Reo and Mabu being disaster dads to a baby girl they find on a dish in the middle of the street. I think it’s a human AU (kinda?), but it’s super sweet and funny and I liked it a lot.

THE BETRAYAL KNOWS MY NAME

Okay, so this was an early favorite, and I rewatched it recently and laughed a lot about how massively dramatic it is, but I don’t care, I’m still into it.

We’re skirting the edge of “canon gay” here, because you never get an on-screen kiss, and it’s technically a shoujo manga. But...it was at the top of a lot of BL lists when I was first hunting for good stuff to watch, and the relationship between Yuki and Luka is deeply romantic (and achingly piningly good) and central to the story.

The title’s linked to one of Luka’s frequent lines: “I will never betray you,” which he earnestly tells Yuki at every opportunity he gets. Luka is an extremely powerful demon, and Yuki is part of an immortal (via reincarnation) clan that hunts demons. But in Yuki’s past life, they fell in love.

Yuki was, at that point and in previous lives, a woman, but something changed this time around: he was reborn as a man, and without any of his memories.

Luka, who waited for Yuki to be reincarnated so they could be together again, still remembers and still loves him. But he keeps his devotion on Yuki’s terms, refusing to force the memory of a relationship that Yuki might have wanted to forget.

There’s one particularly great scene where the leader of Yuki’s clan asks Luka if anything has changed - if they can still rely on Luka to stay by Yuki’s side and be his protector. “They have the same soul,” Luka says. Gender doesn’t matter. He loves Yuki. He’ll always love Yuki. 

And Yuki, though he doesn’t remember loving Luka, begins to slowly, inevitably, fall in love again.

The anime is 24 episodes - while it doesn’t fully close out the story, it does have some closure, or at least a solid sense of an upcoming happy ending. (I own the DVD; I don’t think the show is currently available to watch online.)

There’s also a manga, which is beautifully illustrated, wow, the sheer level of detail in this blows me away. Which, unfortunately, was way too much work to maintain at that level and ultimately destroyed the author’s health, so the last few volumes get shorter and shorter and the story trickles to an unsatisfying conclusion.

I still love it a lot, though, and it’s another example of establishing a great relationship within the context of a much larger story - a sweeping, complicated fantasy epic.

HONORABLE MENTIONS

Those are my primary favorites, unless I’m forgetting anything (and for the purposes of this post, I’m leaving out things like Tiger & Bunny and Promare, which are very gay and embraced as such by the creators but also not something I’m comfortable including in a Definitely Canonically Gay, You Won’t Ever Be Disappointed By Future Reveals list). If I have the energy, I might make another post like this for those kinds of stories.

But there are a few others that I enjoyed, if not enough to buy copies of or collect merch for. These include:

No. 6

Dystopian, so definitely very dark and kind of visually disturbing in places (for instance, people rotting from mystery infections). There’s a central m/m romance and one kiss, but the ending is kind of an open one without a super happy conclusion. It doesn’t have high rewatch value for me - I’ve only ever watched it once and don’t really feel inclined to go back - but it's got good storytelling and is worth viewing. 

Kizuna Koi No Kara Sawagi (Much Ado About Nothing OVA)

That last bit of the title is important to get you to the correct OVA, since there are different variations of this story. It’s been a long time since I tried the main anime, but I did not like it - I had major issues with its story, particularly with the sexual assault plotline. I did, however, love the OVA and have recommended it to people as something that can be watched independently.

There's still a little dodgy content in it (as with a lot of things in the BL genre), but it's mostly a lovely established relationship story with a lot of bittersweet feels, with flashbacks to how the couple got together. 

It’s necessarily a "happy" story either, though, because they're in a loving, committed relationship in a society where they can't be open about that, and it takes a toll. They're doing their best to work through the difficulties together.

Ai no Kusabi 

SERIOUS WARNINGS FOR THIS ONE.

It's about a society with "Blondies" as the elite ruling class and dark-haired "Mongrels" from the slums. There's slavery, plus some serious sexual consent issues...which I found extra prevalent in the newer version (prettier animation but much more cringey on the content).

The 90s version has rougher animation but a more interesting story. The relationship is still not necessarily healthy, but it reads as a lot more of a forbidden love BDSM relationship.

Even so, the ending is SUPER unhappy. I cannot emphasize that enough. I was watching all these things on my own without any warnings, so this one hit me really hard, and I couldn't stop thinking about it for days after. I’m not sure if I'd watch it again, but I've had interesting conversations with others who did.

I guess what I liked about it is that it’s a very different kind of story - and like I said earlier, it’s nice to have variety in genres. As long as every story isn’t dark and tragic, it’s worthwhile to sometimes experience ones that are told well. And weirdly (since this is not something I would watch with my family) it reminded me to some extent of the movies I grew up with - the 80s and early 90s had a lot of dark sci-fi, and my family really loved watching them, so there’s something...nostalgic about how disturbing it is? Thanks parents. At least this one’s gay.

Gakuen Heaven

To pull us back from the darker content, here’s one that I guess was adapted from a dating computer game. As far as I can remember, it was pretty free of cw; fun but not as emotionally engaging as some of the others. It’s pretty much just a fluffy story about a boys’ school on an island with a mystery plot and a romance.

MANGA RECS

I sprinkled some manga recs alongside the relevant anime, but here are a few others that I’ve only experienced in book form. (I’ve got one on my nightstand right now that I need to read, but if it’s good I’ll just update this post I guess, I’ve put this reply off for long enough.)

OUR DINING TABLE

Unlike a lot of the other manga I’ve read, this is a single volume, which means it has a nice, solid conclusion that wraps everything up wonderfully and doesn’t leave you any room to worry that the author will insert unnecessary drama down the line. (That’s an issue, ok? It happens a lot.)

A very soft, sweet romance that’s actually a lot more about building family - which is something that hugely appeals to me. Highly recommend. Loved it, bought it, will definitely reread it. I’d love to see it eventually made into a movie, like Doukyusei.

MY BROTHER’S HUSBAND

This is a hefty book - I ordered it after seeing a joke-tweet about the live action adaptation (which I haven’t been able to find to watch online). I was surprised by the size of the book but even more (pleasantly!) surprised by its contents. I’m not familiar with the author’s other works, although I’ve heard this is the uh....softest and sweetest of his writing. It’s honestly way more uplifting and healing than I was expecting.

Again, it’s largely about family: a quiet, very private Japanese dad dealing with a visit from his deceased (estranged) twin’s extroverted and cheery Canadian husband. This could go down some very dark paths, but it really doesn’t...there are some smatterings of homophobia mixed in, since that’s sort of the point, but there’s a lot of wonderful self-discovery and building new family bonds.

OUR DREAMS AT DUSK

Oh man. This series. Irene Koh (Legend of Korra comics illustrator) recommended it on twitter, and I picked up the first volume from my library and then could not stop. All four volumes are now out in official translations, and they’re so, so good.

These are definitely on the more realistic side - less of an idealized, prejudice-free view of the world, with more of an accurate picture of what it’s like to be not-straight in Japan.

And I phrase it that way because there’s a lot of variety in the characters in these books. The main character is gay - just coming to terms with the fact that he is, because life would be so much easier if he didn’t have a crush on the hot guy at school.

Content warning: it gets so bad at school, in fact, that he starts out the book planning to commit suicide. It’s dark. But it gets much better, and by the final volume he’s grown so much in his confidence and sense of self-worth - because he becomes a part of a community of other people who teach him that it’s okay to be himself.

And all the other storylines are wonderful. Some of the other characters you get to know include a trans guy, an ace woman, two girls who (spoilers!) get married in the fourth volume, and a much older gay guy who’s been with his partner for several decades.

It’s not a fluffy story - there’s some really tough material throughout, and people aren’t always nice, even the ones you really, really want to be - but they also learn and work hard at communicating with each other. I think these are pretty extraordinary books. Beautiful and heartbreaking but also deeply affirming.

[dawnrider]

One shot fluff prompt, I would love to see your take on this. Inuyasha as a single parent taking his adopted son, Shippo (they have more of a big brother/little brother bond) out to the book store to buy manga as he is starting to get into reading them. Spots the very beautiful Kagome (who works there)but is way too shy to go talk to her. After seeing her, he starts taking shippo there every weekend. Observant shippo notices this and encourages inuyasha to ask kagome out.

Ok Anon, I apologize for this taking so long to finish.  Side effect of having too many WIPs and this one-shot inspiring a second more than fluffy part that has yet to be written. SOOO…  I tweaked it a bit but it will fit your prompt more as the second part develops.  I hope you like it!

Watching the red ponytail in front of him bob, Inuyasha tried to breathe shallowly while keeping track of his charge.  There were so many people, so many smells, it was hard for him to focus.  But he was responsible for Shippou and if he lost him in this crowd, they would probably arrest him… or something.  This is all Miroku’s doing anyway, he thought with a scowl.  He didn’t mind the kit, really, but the outings on a weekly basis were tough.  Inuyasha didn’t deal with people well and Shippou was absolutely a people person.  Everyone he met was practically his new best friend!  The inuhanyou, on the other hand, often felt like a rock was sitting on his chest when he was in situations where he had to “chat” with people he didn’t know.

“Big Brothers and Big Sisters would be perfect!” Miroku had told him with the enthusiasm of someone knowing their idea would be denied out of hand.  He was persistent though, keeping after his friend of over a decade until he finally caved and applied.  Inuyasha was honestly a bit surprised they had accepted him.  He was a business analyst who spent most of his time in a cubicle avoiding actual direct communication with his coworkers.  That’s what email was for!  He was stable, no record (surprisingly), and was successful on paper.  But he was also boring and a hanyou.  Not much to promote him as a child mentor.

Here he was, following a very animated nine-year-old kitsune through the congested streets of the city on “Comic Book Day” to go to the “best bookstore in town.”  Not his favorite thing to do, especially on a weekend when it was bound to be busy.  On top of it, people kept saying “May the Fourth be with you” and he was starting to feel like an idiot for not understanding why everyone thought the date today was so funny.

Squeezing between a tall man in a costume covered in brown fur and the door frame, Inuyasha scowled as he caught the back of Shippou’s shirt.  “Hang on, Runt!  I gotta be able to keep track of you.”

“I know, I know!  But looook!” he sighed as his green eyes took in all of the books around them.  There were large cardboard cutouts everywhere, and people in various levels of costume dress to rival the cutouts.  Inuyasha let out a breath and tried to use his calmest tone.

“I know you’re excited, but if I lose you, your foster mom is gonna string me up by my toes.”  Shippou snickered, but did settle himself enough to stick close by.  Inuyasha felt his heart rate infinitesimally slow.  With a close eye on the kid, he navigated the crowd with the goal of bumping into as few people as possible.

Then a scent caught his nose, a sweet and faintly floral note over a heavier one.  Inuyasha and Shippou both started following their sense of smell without realizing it, meandering toward what they eventually recognized as the cafe.  It was less crowded there for the moment, and the inuhanyou felt like his lungs could finally fill completely.  Something about the combination of scents was soothing in a way he didn’t expect to find in such a crowded place.

~~~~~~

“May the fourth be with you!”  The man startled, turning to find her behind the counter of the cafe.  He stared blankly at her, struggling with what the appropriate response should be.  “You know. Star Wars?  The Force?”  After a short moment his eyes widened and his mouth formed an oh of understanding.  It was probably one of the most adorable things she’d ever seen.  He wasn’t much into this stuff, but he was making such an obvious effort for the boy with him.  It was sweet, even if he was a bit awkward.  “Nathan had to remind me yesterday,” she whispered conspiratorially, nodding in the direction of her manager.  He was dressed, not very well, as one of the big superheroes from a more recent movie.  The man blinked his strangely colored eyes at her, then let a tiny smirk lift his lips.

“What is that smell?” the boy asked, coming up to the counter, red ponytail quivering as he openly sniffed in her direction.  Kagome grinned and pointed to the glass case.

“Just took the almond croissants from the oven. The almond is pretty strong, huh?”  The boy nodded emphatically.

“Butter.  That was the other smell.”

Kagome blinked, not sure how to reply to the older man’s somewhat random statement.  “Um.  Yes!  There’s quite a bit of butter in them.” She watched him pale, then the tiniest smile on his lips.  That’s even cuter than before! she squealed internally.  “You can try a sample…”

“I’m Shippou, and that’s my Big Brother, Inuyasha.”  The boy paused.  “But not like… my real brother, the program, you know?”  She grinned in response, giving Inuyasha a quick glance before returning her full attention to the enthusiastic boy directly in front of her.  He was eyeing the pastries expectantly, a glitter of hunger in his green eyes.

“Nice to meet you, Shippou and… Inuyasha, was it?”  Kagome bit her lip at the adorable blush that rose on his cheeks at having her full attention on him.  “You’re both welcome to try some, if you want.”  Shippou showed no qualms in accepting the small piece of the sweet, Inuyasha hesitating a moment before stepping forward to let her put some in his palm.  “Your cosplay is awesome, by the way,” she said with a glance at his hair and ears.  He startled at her words, golden eyes widening and the previous flush returning with a vengeance.

“Oh.  He’s not in costume.  Inuyasha is a hanyou,” Shippou commented around a mouthful of croissant.

It was Kagome’s turn to pale. “Oh my… I’m sorry, that was so rude of me to assume!”

“Keh.  S’alright.” His eyes dropped to the floor and she felt the loss of his gaze like the sun going behind a cloud.  The guilt at hurting him like that stuck in her throat and her eyes watered.  “Hey, it’s ok, really!  D-Don’t cry!” he begged her, stepping up to the counter and waving his empty hand in a stunted attempt to calm her down.  “Not many of us around, ya know?” he muttered, giving her a strained smile when she took a calming breath and blew it out slowly.

“Is it ok if I go look at that table?” Shippou asked, breaking them from their staring contest.  Inuyasha followed his pointing finger to the table of children’s comic books just on the edge of the tiled floor that outlined the cafe’s space.  He nodded, giving the boy a stern look that spoke volumes before leaning back against the counter. “Thanks!”

“He’s very exuberant.”

“You got no idea.  He’s all over the place.”  His voice turned sad.  “Not surprising.  Only kitsune in a foster home full of human kids.  None of them can keep up with him.”

“That’s great that he’s got you then, isn’t it?” she said softly.  Inuyasha glanced over his shoulder at her, a thoughtful look lowering his brows slightly.

“‘Spose so.”

~~~~~~

Her smile brightening after the previous near meltdown was a balm on his nerves.  He did not deal with crying.  Not at all.  If she had started, he probably would have bolted and the kid would have been called in as abandoned…  Stop spiraling, he scolded himself.  “How long have you been part of the program?” she asked, moving around behind the counter to clean up little messes here, imaginary spots there.  Inuyasha understood the need for movement when one felt uncomfortable.

“A few months.  It was my friend’s idea.”  He heard her pause.  He realized that it might sound like he wasn’t all that interested in this very big responsibility. “I-I wanted to do it. It’s important.”

A beep perked his ears and he glanced back to see Kagome put a pan of something into the small oven on the back counter.  “It is very important.  Especially for kids who don’t have a lot of positive role models.”  There was a repeat clicking sound as she set the timer.  “My younger brother was part of the program as a Little Brother when he was in middle school.”

“O-Oh yea?”  Inuyasha turned his body a bit so he could catch her gaze while still keeping an eye and ear on the kid.  “Are you… are your… Um.”

“My father died when we were pretty young.  Souta is six years younger than I am, so he never even knew him.”

“I’m sorry,” he responded a little awkwardly.  She shrugged.  “Did he feel like it was a good experience?”

“Yea.  He’s still in contact with his Big Brother.  He was even part of his wedding when he got married a few years ago.”  Inuyasha nodded appreciatively.  That’s the kind of experience he hoped he could give Shippou.  To be someone he could rely on.  Just need to figure out how to rely on myself.  “It looks like you’re a good fit.  He looks up to you, you know?”

Inuyasha blinked, staring at the young boy pouring over a colorful comic book with what looked like dragons on the cover.  “You think so?”  Shippou must have felt their attention, looking up before holding the paperback up for him to see the cover more clearly, grinning from ear to ear.  Inuyasha tossed him a thumbs up and a slight smile.

“Pretty sure,” she giggled.

“Kagome!  Are the sugar cookies ready for the decorating event?”  The pair startled from their comfortable lean on the counter at the male voice that sliced through the murmur of voices inside the shop.

“Oh!  Yes.  They’re all cooled, Nathan.”  Kagome pointed to the short rack of large cookie trays with nearly two dozen square cookies on them.  He could smell the vanilla and sugar from where he stood.  “I’m sorry, I have to get the tables set up.”  Inuyasha nodded, but felt a bit deflated at the lost chance to keep talking with her.  He actually liked talking with her.  It was honestly the first time he’d had that thought during conversation with a stranger.  A girl, at that!

“Keh.”  He paused.  “D-Do you need help?”

Kagome looked a little surprised, then smiled.  “That would actually be great.”  He checked in with Shippou, who was still flipping through comics, and got a waved hand and a sly grin in response.  Inuyasha chose not to rise to the bait in that grin, jumping back in to keep Kagome from dropping a very large folding table on her foot.

The pair of them continued to chat as he deftly unfolded the table, helping Kagome move the cafe tables around so they could fit more chairs into the small space.  It was easy talking with her, he noted, much more so than he ever would have imagined.  She was patient with his hesitations, never laughed when he said something slightly off.  Inuyasha barely felt the time fly by.  When children started gathering at the tables, most younger than Shippou, he almost wanted to shoo them away.  “Inuyasha…”

“Yea, I know.  I should get the kid home.”

“No.  Well… If you have to.”  He took in her scent, surprised by the disappointment coloring it.  Did she… not want him to leave?  “There’s another event for young readers next week, if you have another outing with Shippou.”

“I… Yea, I’ll bring it up to him.”  Inuyasha leveled her with a serious look for a moment.  “You’ll be here then too?”  The smile she gave him nearly stopped his heart.  She was so beautiful… and kind and sweet and… and…  “G-Good.  Maybe we’ll see you then.”  She nodded.  “Save a couple of those almond things for us, alright?  I’ll remember to bring cash next time.”  He turned to look for Shippou again, taking a breath to settle his heart.

“Inuyasha, wait!”  He stopped, spinning on his heel at her urgent call.  She nearly collided with his chest in an effort to catch him.  Inuyasha reached out to capture her elbows, not wanting her to tip backward.  “Take one for the road?” she breathed, her dark eyes drawing him in.  Her scent overpowered anything else in the cafe, even the previously overwhelming almond. Inuyasha found himself studying the way her personal fragrance tickled his senses, the feel of her soft skin against his fingertips. They both took a slightly shuddering breath, frozen in their half-embrace.

“Cool!  You gonna split that with me, Inuyasha?”  Shippou’s voice shocked them apart so fast, Kagome almost did stumble.  The hanyou finally noticed the partially wrapped almond croissant in her hands between them, which had been at severe risk of being squashed a moment before.  He smiled awkwardly, then accepted the pastry and softly thanked her.  He moved off with Shippou bouncing beside him in anticipation of his half.  “We’re so coming back here, aren’t we?” he asked when he finally had his piece and they were making their way back toward the public parking garage.  Inuyasha shrugged, trying - and failing - to be nonchalant.  “Yea, I thought so.  You toooootally love her,” he cackled.

“W-What?!  No!” Inuyasha balked at the bold statement.  The kitsune kit was absolutely in his element, giggling and taunting him as he skipped down the sidewalk.  “Hey Runt, that’s not funny.  Grown ups don’t just…” He hesitated, not because he wasn’t sure of the right explanation, but because it was hitting him that it was not an entirely off accusation.

“Fall in love at first sight?” Shippou crowed with glee.  Inuyasha snarled and snatched him up into a light headlock.  Shippou only delighted in the playful back and forth, Inuyasha unable to sternly refute the kit’s words.  What he did know was that they would be visiting the bookstore the following weekend. And likely the one after that, as long as Kagome was working again.  Might pick up a reading habit, he thought as they got into his car, half the pastry stuck in his mouth as he put on his seat belt.  There are worse things.

@lemonlushff, @fantastiqueparfait, @heavenin--hell, @clearwillow, @bearpluscat, @thunderpo, @keichanz, @meggz0rz, @disgruntledbeast, @sarah-writes-stories, @zelink-inukag, @rikareena, @cammysansstuff, @mcornilliac, @redflamesofpassion

I posted without tags the first and had to edit from memory!

[pridebooks]

Guess who actually read a book again!!!!

so have my immediate post-book ramble because otherwise i won’t say anything

I really liked The Lightness of Hands!! It was interesting and the characters were all wonderful, and serious discussions fit into the story naturally! It never felt like a serious discussion was stuffed in for no reason, and there was maybe one line that felt a little preachy, but it was from a Dramatic character so I think that’s allowed. I’m pretty sure already that it’s going to be another comfort book of mine, which is a title currently held by 2 other books total - including Symptoms of Being Human

More under the read more because i ramble a lot when i ramble, and it’s a lil incoherent probably because i should really be sleeping

There’s something about Jeff Garvin’s writing that is very special to me. I don’t know what it is, but since I first got Symptoms, I’ve been able to read it even when my attention span was horrible. It’s been a book that whenever I pick it up, for any reason, I end up reading at least part of it. Coming back to Riley is safe.

I was sort of expecting that to not be true for The Lightness of Hands, just because I know one author’s work can widely vary. But it was. It’s just as much of a comfort, it grasped my attention just as well (I was able to read it in under 4 hours even with a couple breaks to talk to people about things that excited me - it’s a 380 page book not counting the author’s note etc).

I really want to read these books back-to-back someday, to compare Riley and Ellie and to compare the stories and characters. Right now, I think that this book did better with characters and story, as would be expected when comparing an author’s first book and second book, but I absolutely adore both books. I also want to compare them because there are certain things that are definitely shared with the main characters. A few months ago, Jeff Garvin tweeted - I can’t find it now, but I recall it very clearly - that he was diagnosed with Bipolar II in 2017. Which is after Symptoms came out. A lot of how he wrote Ellie’s depression/”down” times reminded me very strongly of Riley, and I have absolutely no doubts that his undiagnosed bipolar impacted exactly how he wrote Riley’s depression.

What’s interesting for me is that I read Symptoms shortly after it came out, and now have read The Lightness of Hands right after it came out, so I’m thinking about it with nobody else’s input on it, with no prior knowledge of quotes, references, or plot points. Knowing them wouldn’t have ruined anything, I just think it’s fun. I also think it’s fun that this is one author who I’ve read both their books pretty much as soon as I possibly could after they came out, which isn’t common for me. We’re a very paperback household. Our bookshelves were literally custom made to fit paperbacks better (before I was born). Yet, here I am.

I did keep waiting for someone from Symptoms to show up - Ellie’s best friend Ripley is from Park Hills, where Symptoms is set, and was slightly disappointed when nobody did, but that’s okay. I just like little Treats like that.

Something I really appreciated in this book was Ripley. I fucking adored Ripley. Holy crap. I’ve had Harry Potter on my brain lately (the hp wandlore is very fun and if you want to know about it please ask), but then Jeff just had to go and put more harry potter in there. Ripley is canonically a Hufflepuff (like me!!) and we’re pretty similar in general honestly? He’s a better hacker than me (as in: i dont know shit) and we look different, but otherwise?? Same hat. I would love to have Ripley as a friend. And while I had those 2 thoughts completely separately, it made me realize that means I’d want me as a friend, and that’s a very comforting thought. Basically what happened here is that Jeff Garvin tricked me into saying good things about myself?

Seeing an ace character isn’t That special for me anymore - I can currently put my hands on at least 5 books with ace characters. But this is the first one with an ace guy who is clearly stated to be ace. Or.. sort of the second? In Radio Silence by Alice Oseman, Aled is demisexual, but I think of him as nonbinary, because I got those Vibes and Alice has said he probably figures out he’s nonbinary at some point in the future, so I don’t think of him in the “ace boys” category? Anyway, the other 2 I have are both from one author and are questioning & ambiguous, and only one mentions asexual as a possibility. So an explicitly ace guy is a big deal for me (an ace guy).

I also adore that Ripley wears an ace ring!! Especially because I almost do (I got a ring but it doesn’t fit on my middle finger so it’s on my ring finger where it does fit and the black was actually just a coating but I like it better this way, it’s complicated, it’s a star trek ring, it says “infinite diversity in infinite combinations” in vulcan, I’m a nerd.), and because ace rings are simultaneously our most well known signal and something that relatively few aces know about? I would’ve appreciated if it was explicitly stated that it was an ace ring, but as Ellie is the narrator it’s entirely possible that she didn’t know, so she couldn’t tell us. And he’s still wearing it!! It’s something that a lot of aces will see and be very excited about!

Honestly, I remember back when Jeff posted an ask about this book back in late 2018, telling us what he could about it. we got Female protagonist, ace bff, road trip. And I was seriously expecting the friend to be another girl. Largely because so many books will have any boy and girl who are friends end up being romantically involved. But nope!! A wonderful ace dude bff. I’m pretty sure Ripley is aroace based on what he said, but either he just calls himself ‘ace’ or that bit never came up? Assuming he is aroace, I would’ve liked to see his aro-ness as explicitly stated as his ace-ness, but that’s also mostly on me.

I don’t know what i’m even really saying anymore so goodnight!! I had a great time with the book, it’s brought me great comfort and joy already, and I hope it can bring you the same.

[aubsforthewin]

small miracles i witnessed/experienced today:

1. my car window got fixed—this one is not so much a miracle because i paid someone $450 to fix it BUT it is a huge load off my mind so i am counting it.

2. while i was waiting on my car, i took a long walk down to the river park and that alone was miraculous—i needed to move and be in the sun and breathe fresh(ish) air so desperately and i did not even realize it until i was doing it. i have been struggling with my mental state the last couple of weeks so i am not sure it would have happened if not for some of the moving parts behind my car door panel succumbing to a moment of autocannibalism.

3. furthermore—being out in the world; walking around; passively observing and experiencing my surroundings; no car; just me and a tiny backpack packed with the essentials and nothing to do on a wednesday afternoon, is a scenario in which i have not found myself for a long, long time and it woke up a part of me that i had forgotten existed.

4. for the first time in 16 months i walked into a cute bookstore/coffee shop, bought myself a paperback (@neil-gaiman’s Neverwhere which i have not read before; i love it so far and i adore that man but i digress), and sat and drank a pot of earl grey and read to my heart’s content. nowhere to be, no plan, no agenda, just existing. it had been so long that reading a physical novel was like coming home after a lifetime away, so alien and so familiar.

5. walking around the riverfront i watched an osprey try for a few seconds to catch an air pocket, succeed, soar a few serene circles over the water, dive down into the river, emerge with a fish in its talon, and do a few more laps over my head for good measure before disappearing behind or into a nearby copse of trees, presumably to eat its lunch. i just happened to be walking by at that moment to see it happen, and i go to the riverfront somewhat regularly and have never seen an osprey there before. it was spectacular. there were more people on the bridge with me but i swear it seemed like somehow no one else saw it.

6. similarly bird-related—for a while i sat on some stone steps that led down to the water and there were a number of canada geese lounging about at the bottom. they were obviously very accustomed to humans and being fed thereby because a few of them came right up to me. one bold goose in particular was very interested in what i may have had in my hands, bag, and pockets. i didn’t have any snacks for them though (plus i’m not sure what the best practices are, if any, for feeding waterfowl in that situation) so it just nosed around me nipping lightly at my fingers and shoes, mildly annoyed, and eventually waddled away making disappointed little honks. i was a little nervous at first and ready to gently but firmly fling it away with my foot and run if it got any funny ideas because i know they can be jerks, but i had the better positioning if it came to an altercation, and anyway it was quite docile and probably would have let me pet it if i had wanted to roll the dice on giving myself some kind of parasite (i abstained). at one point two male-presenting people sat down several yards from me and a goose (probably the same one) did the same routine with them and we strangers shared a silent smile over it.

7. not only did i get to sit at an Establishment and enjoy a meal which feels like a dream come true after 16 months of being in my apartment, but i actually found a place that makes a halfway decent street taco in spokane! i was walking by and it looked like my kind of place and i have not had a good taco since i left san diego so i took a chance. i sat outside in the shade, had a couple pints, ate tacos and tots until i was uncomfortably full, and it was perfect.

7a. about 9 months ago or so, maybe longer, i suddenly developed aversions to foods i previously quite liked—including onions, garlic, certain berries, most apples, red wine, and coffee. basically overnight, i could no longer stand to taste or smell any of them and am still not sure why. i did not think about the fact that the aforementioned tacos would have onions before i ordered them so when they arrived onion-laden i thought, oh well, and ate them anyway and they tasted good! i do not know what the everloving hell is going on with that, but now i am excited to repeat the experiment with the other foods and more onions to see if this was a fluke or if i can tolerate them again.

8. when i left my house this morning my phone was at 40% battery. i had not actually planned on being out all day; i figured i would walk around a while and then get the bus or a rideshare home to wait since i dropped the car off at nine a.m. and the mechanic did not expect to have it ready until four or five. but i was having such a lovely time that i did not end up going home (and the car ended up being ready by two anyway) so there was no opportunity to charge my phone. and yet somehow despite that, and despite throughout the day listening to music, checking the map to see where i was going, taking photos, and who knows what else, my phone was still alive and on 1% battery when i got home at three-thirty. if that is not fucking miracle i do not know what is.

when my car window got stuck the other day, i melted down pretty hard. i knew it was going to cost money that i technically have but that had been earmarked for other things—namely my basic expenses since i am living partially off savings after resigning my full time job last month. also that day i had forced myself to leave the house and was en route to the grocery store because i badly need food and have barely been able to function the last two weeks. so when the window got stuck and would not roll up, and i realized i could not leave my car exposed while i grocery shopped and had to go home empty handed after all the effort it took to get myself there, i felt absolutely dejected and somehow betrayed. i cried and yelled and hit things and called my car a piece of garbage and got angry at the universe for fucking me over, and just generally reacted badly.

needless to say none of this did anything for my mental state but after today i am feeling much better. i imagine my grapple with the depressive episode is not over and there seems to be little to no middle ground between euphoria and despair for me right now so who knows what will happen in five minutes, but i feel more grounded and the sun and exercise helped if nothing else.

i apologized to my car because she is absolutely not garbage and i am so privileged and grateful to have her and she is more reliable to me than i deserve sometimes honestly. shelling out that money hurt, but i need her and she is worth it. i also apologized to the universe and to myself for doubting the fact that i am protected and capable and loved and cared for. my trauma responses kick in and take over my better judgement when i do not have control over a situation, but there is no shame in that and i am working on it. i am only a human after all.

thank you to whomever and whatever are owed thanks for today. it was somehow exactly what i needed.

[aliceslantern]

Give/Take, a Kingdom Hearts fanfic, chapter 9

Ienzo has been too busy since the war to be overwhelmed by the past. But with little progress to be made in his work with Kairi, old nightmares start to invade.

Riku is a glorified housesitter. Lonely and faced with no choice but to wait for a way to find his friends, he eagerly accepts when Ienzo asks him to help do repairs around the castle. Before long, the two strike up an unlikely friendship, united by their dark pasts and their attempts to be better people.

But just as they begin to consider something more... Kairi wakes up.

Ienzoku (Ienzo/Riku), post-Melody of Memory, slow burn. Updates Thursdays until it's done.

Chapter summary:  On different worlds, Ienzo and Riku write each other letters.

Read it on FF.net/on AO3

---

Ienzo,

Sorry for the radio silence over the past few days, but things have literally been so insane I haven’t had a minute to myself to write this note. My mom is barely letting me out of her sight--not that I can blame her. She goes between being outraged to dropping everything and hugging me. She wants to know everything, and I’m trying to tell her as much as I can, but still editing the most… incriminating parts until she’s ready. You understand. Even when I was home before we never got into it.

I haven’t even really had time to enjoy being home. I’ve had to see family, friends, and they all want to know where I’ve disappeared to. People all over town, too, want to know what happened and where I went. A lot of people assumed that I’d gotten myself killed.

Including my parents. That was, and still is, the hardest thing I’ve had to accept. Starting to grieve someone and just beginning to make progress only to learn they’re alive… I feel so guilty. Now I wish I’d gone back home during Kairi’s year of sleep, even for a little while.

I’ll tell you more about what happened, but I just wanted to… start to get a status update. “Any news?” How are you? How have you been? What are you and the guys up to?

Write soon,

Riku

Dear Riku,

Thanks for your text. Of course I understand how overwhelming everything must be, and this was an unusual homecoming. I just hope it’s been more joyful than bittersweet, though I fear it’s the latter. I’m hoping this transition becomes less of a traumatic one for you. And even if it is… well. I am an impartial ear.

Correction--a somewhat impartial ear. I will yell at, and/or make fun of, anyone who gives you grief.

Do tell me about Sora and Kairi. Things must be dazzling for Sora especially--I can only imagine what sort of journey he’s gone through, and I’m probably wrong. Hopefully the three of you get to spend some time together, just relaxing and being friends. It’s the least of what you deserve.

I, on the other hand, don’t have much worth reporting. I’m continuing to work with Aeleus and Dilan on the repairs, helping Even with his various little experiments. I’m trying to figure out where I would be most helpful, but that has been somewhat difficult. I’m sure you can sympathize. It’s finally starting to get warm again here.

If I ever quit faffing about and find something worth writing about I’ll let you know…

Yours,

Ienzo

---

Ienzo,

Ha ha. For some reason I don’t believe you’ve been as lazy as you said you’ve been. Though part of me hopes you have. You deserve a little rest too.

On the topic of rest…

Right after I got your letter the puppet strings that have been keeping me awake since I got home snapped. I fell asleep on the living room couch and didn’t wake up for thirty-six hours. Mom was hysterical; she thought something was really wrong with me and took me to the doctor (which, considering how long it’s been since I’ve been home for any length of time, was my pediatrician. Awkward.). But the doctor just said what I told her, that I just needed to sleep . And sleep, and sleep… maybe it’s my turn to sleep for a year. Ha ha.

Yeah, yeah. Spare me your lectures. I’ve been so wired that even when I tried, I couldn’t sleep.

Sora and Kairi are doing as okay as they can. Of the three of us, I think Kairi’s bounced back the quickest. She’s already talking about re-enrolling in school to catch up. Considering she’s the mayor’s daughter, it made the news when she got back. She’s like a celebrity, though because she’s Kairi and she’s perfect, she’s got it under control. I mean that with no sarcasm whatsoever.

Sora…

As you can probably tell by me skirting around the subject, Sora… isn’t completely okay. Physically, he’s fine. Healthy. But it’s… between the Keyblade War, and what he experienced alone while we were all, very briefly, dead (which, remind me to tell you about that if I haven’t, because it is a trip.). He’s been ALONE for so long. I’ve never seen him so shaken, and he’s so quiet . Talk to him and he tries to be all smiles, of course, but a few of us were at the beach and instead of being all up in the middle of it like he usually is, he was sitting aside… alone. Kairi’s been trying to gently pry, but he keeps saying he’s okay. A tired act I think all of us know well by now. Honestly, I’m not sure what to do. What kind of therapist here would get what he’s gone through, anyway? The most we can do is be there, and keep on top of him, and hope he heals and processes over time. Makes me feel like a shitty best friend, but the emotional stuff was never my forte.

Sleepily yours,

Riku

---

My sleepyhead,

Hopefully by the time you get this you’re actually conscious. You had a long ordeal. Physically, emotionally, of course you’re exhausted. I hope you’re actually listening to it instead of pushing through. Been there. Done that. It is not worth it. You’re probably also still growing, believe it or not. The human male keeps growing and developing until twenty-five, and unless my knowledge of Destiny Island’s time stream is way off, you’re not exactly there yet.

I’m glad Kairi is doing well, and taking all of that in stride. If it were me I would’ve thrown in the towel long ago. I think school would be good. A taste of normalcy. You three deserve to get back to your lives… whatever that means. Or at least rest a while before finding greener pastures elsewhere.

It’s disheartening, but not surprising, that Sora feels the way he does. Like I said, I can only imagine what he might have gone through. Though I don’t like it when you say you’re a shitty friend when I watched you struggle to save your friends for a literal year. You’re too hard on  yourself, Riku. Being there, after everything else you did for him, is enough. Make sure to take time for yourself too. Though if Sora’s condition deteriorates, do let me know. I’ll see if I have any sort of psychological resource which might help him more than just a standard therapist with no notion of the greater World outside. Hopefully he’ll start to feel more himself once he settles back down.

This… very brief death occurrence you were referring to intrigues me. What was all that about? Fortunately it seems to not have stuck, but regardless, I felt my heart jump into my throat when I read it.

The others have been asking after you, Ansem especially. He says to “send his regards” and I promise it’s friendlier than it sounds.

I wonder, do you have sea salt ice cream where you are? It’s the height of summer and Scrooge McDuck is out. None of my cohorts here are willing to share. It’s been war.

Craving sea salt,

Ienzo

---

To the insatiable sweet tooth--

No, as a matter of fact, we do not have that particular sea salt ice cream here. If we want it, we have to go off-world. There are other, more native flavors which you might like, like dragon fruit or star fruit. (It’s mostly fruit. Sorry, we’re islanders.)

Sora seems to be doing a little bit better. Roxas, Xion, and them came to visit, which seemed to brighten his spirits, or at least distract him. Sometimes he still stares off into the distance and he’s not quite as chatty. This is going to take a long time.

As for the death thing… well, part of why Sora disappeared was because he went back in time to save us after the dark prophecy was fulfilled and the Demon Tide killed us… apparently. Even I can’t keep it all straight in my head, and it happened to me. He changed the flow of time to save us, and “abusing” the power of waking to save Kairi was the final straw. I… don’t like thinking about it much. It makes me feel sick.

Mundane life feels weird. I do chores around the house, and I mow lawns for some pocket change. Can you imagine it? The magic would make it easy, but it also unsettles people, so I do it with a mower. I had to go to social services to get an ID and we waited in line for two. Hours. I almost went insane. But at least it no longer has the awful picture it did when I started high school.

Speaking of, mom wants me to re-enroll right away, and dad wants me to do night school and speed through a general high school degree. I’m not sure how I feel about it, honestly. Kairi and Sora are excited, and I think it’ll be good for them. Maybe I’ll take a year, or do it online, or something. Though I’m sad to say my computer literacy isn’t nearly as good as yours.

How are you feeling in the castle? It must be summer for you guys there, too, though I imagine there aren’t beaches or anything. I didn’t see any. Do you have any summer activities? Or do you just sit in the library with a moldering old paperback all day?

Gainfully employed,

Riku

---

Dear Riku,

Thank you for satisfying my curiosity about that experience. I knew time travel was a factor in Sora’s disappearance--but I didn’t think it went like that for all of you. Terrifying. Awful.

A fantastic way to start a correspondence.

To answer the question… no, there are no “beaches” in terms of ocean beaches, but when I was a boy Radiant Garden did have springs on the far edges of town, as well as public pools. I was not allowed to go to them much--Even was rather neurotic--but yes, they do exist. Did exist. The restoration committee has it on their very, very long list. The paths down to the springs probably need some maintenance.

That is to say, when not in the lab I am sweating and thinking of cooler days. Though I know this might feel borderline chilly for you. Indifference to temperature is one of the few things on my waning list of what I miss from being a Nobody.

I’m glad you have some way to fill your days… that, and the idea of you working outside appeals to me. I imagine it must bore you.

I don’t spend ALL of my days in the library. Just most of them, lately, as am still trying to get this place even the slightest bit organized. If I had the resources I’d digitize everything. It’d make life so much easier. But I am one person with one computer and there are thousands upon thousands of books here. As a boy I used to have the fantasy of reading all of them before I turned eighteen. But, alas, that has not happened, and some of the texts are too boring, or in another language, or are too fragile to be handled. I clearly had very interesting ideas of leisure.

I still have not been able to get my hands on any decent ice cream.

Unsatisfied,

Ienzo

---

Ienzo,

I wanted to talk about this earlier but I had to get things settled in terms of my room. (Long story. Not a fun story.) Would you ever consider visiting? I could come get you. My parents are okay with it. In fact, they for some reason link you with me coming home, which I guess is true. You did help us get the clue Kairi needed. Either way, you’ve already made a good impression.

(If it’s not clear, I miss you.)

I can take you to a real beach. Show you around, not that there’s a whole lot to see. A change of scenery might be nice. Sora and Kairi want to hang out, too. Sora says hi.

If you’re busy, of course, I can come to you. But I know you’ve been there a long time, and there’s not always good memory there.

No pressure. Let me know.

Riku

---

Riku,

I think you may be on the right track with a change of scenery. I’m afraid what little wit I had left me, and when I was explaining to the others I’d like to visit, it became clear very quickly that our relationship is more than surface level. For that, I’m sorry.

However… the more I think about it, the more appealing it is. Even doing nothing--with you--is better than sitting here doing nothing by myself.

That is to say I miss you too.

I can be ready whenever is most convenient. I’m sorry for making you come all this way, though.

Ienzo

---

Ienzo,

Please, the flight will give me a few hours’ of peace and quiet. It’s been great spending all this time with friends and family, but… I feel kind of suffocated sometimes. Besides, I better keep my piloting skills in tip-top shape. Sora’s mad that I’m better at it than him. What can I say, it’s one of my many natural talents. Along with gardening, apparently.

Bring light clothes; it’s HOT here. And sunscreen. I mean it.

Looking forward to seeing you, and talking to you, in person.

Yours, Riku

[mumblingsage]

I’ve been talking aloud to my dead girlfriend every so often the past few days. It’s been surprisingly beneficial. Maybe because of that statistic floating around the internet about how talking aloud helps you psychologically--and heck, I’ve talked to my stuffed animals, who I rationally know can’t hear me, so why not chat with my love? Mostly I’m just talking about my day or how I’m feeling (”Hey, I’m able to talk to you without bursting into tears, I always knew I’d get there”) or reminding him how utterly in love I am.

I admit I asked him to show me more pennies from heaven if he’s up for it, since “I’d like to hear from you.” For what it’s worth, a few days later I spotted a stack of them near a CoinStar machine at my grocery store--ones the machine rejected for being grubby or whatever. XD It feels kind of fitting, and anyway, in these days of coin shortages, where else would a spare-change-dropping ghost be able to leave pennies for his dom? It also saved me the minor ethical conundrum of whether I should be hoarding pennies on his altar (it’s where I kept the two I found after scattering his ashes/eating him) during a coin shortage. I saw them, acknowledged them, and left them there. 

Also, the NSP Gumroad store sold some paperback anthologies, and as I was filling out mailing addresses I saw one of the buyers might well be a distant relative of his family--they have a surname that’s related, according to the genealogy my father-by-collar once explained to me. It’s not a super common surname either. The buyer likely doesn’t know it, but it’s a fun coincidence. And actually it helped convince me to get my ass into gear while I’m mailing stuff out, so I’m also mailing a pinch of his ashes to a friend in another state who asked for some to keep in her memorial necklace. 

Right after I got that all together, the young men renting the apartment next door to mine started having a video game tournament or something. At first the shouting alarmed me, then I realized it was just them being excited. But it was still rather disruptive. And I said aloud, playing on a text conversation I’d had with Theriac months ago, “Hey, hon, would you be a good ghost-sub-ninja and haunt them into silence?”

About fifteen minutes later, my apartment was plunged into darkness. Power outage. 

Well, that’s one way to shut a video game party down, I figured.

Except I heard more whooping and cheering from next door.

I went over to knock on their door, they answered very politely, and it turns out they’re the only apartment in our building--possibly on our street, because maintenance said the power outage was widespread in the downtown area--to still have electricity. 

As it was getting dark and power still hadn’t returned, I texted my mom and went to crash at her place, where I had light to read by, a bathroom I didn’t have to navigate by flashlight, and an outlet to charge my laptop. And, hey, no kids whooping and hollering through the walls, so I was able to concentrate better. The problem was kind of solved. 

Serves me right for trying to make my gentle sub into an attack-ghost. 

For all this, I’m still agnostic. The past week I’ve been navigating an existential crisis in the face of eternity and figuring out how to find my peace with the idea. I have, for what it’s worth. If we don’t get an afterlife, we’re never aware of being dead, so this life is all we know and it’s effectively an eternity for us--the greatest span of time we can be aware of. And he and I made each other’s span of time pretty awesome, in a way that has little to do with duration (also, as a psychedelic user, I suspect his relationship to time was a bit...non-linear anyway). I’ll be thrilled if it turns out there is an afterlife, and I won’t be disappointed if there isn’t. But for all that, coincidences like these make for pretty good stories, and I can appreciate a good story. He could too.

[thespianbooks]

tagged by @thehaemanthus! Thank you for tagging me you lovely human being! Idk what this tag is called, but I’ll just say it’s some “getting to know me” questions..? idk 🙃

Last song: Wishing You Were Somehow Here Again from the Phantom of the Opera original movie soundtrack. As my username suggests, part of my heart belongs to the theatre and this is the movie/musical that started it all! I’m also preparing to sing this piece in my voice lessons so...practice!

Last movie: What to Expect When You’re Expecting...this was just a funny movie I saw years ago and saw it pop up on my Netlix account so...yeah. I really enjoy how it portrayed the different ways to have a baby (i.e., pregnancy, adoption) and also covered more serious issues like miscarriage. Overall, it balances comedy and drama really well, while also telling multiple different stories at once! Definitely recommend! Also may or may not have watched it for research purposes.

Currently watching: Alright, I consume my “visual” entertainment on multiple platforms, so here we go. On Netflix I am re-watching Grey’s Anatomy for the millionth time, and on Hulu I am ALSO re-watching season 3 of Masterchef. If you haven’t already picked up on it, I re-watch a lot of shows/movies 😅this is mostly due to a comfort thing, but also because when I’m doing something (like playing on my switch or organizing my planner, cooking, cleaning, etc.,) I want to play something that I don’t really have to pay attention to. Sometimes I’ll listen to a podcast or audiobook, but if I’m performing a task at the same time one or the other will distract me. What can I say, I’m a strange creature!

Currently reading: re-reading A Court of Frost and Starlight, for research purposes but also just because I loved it so much the first time and I want a little refresher before ACOSF comes out! After that I will be moving on to From Blood and Ash by Jennifer L. Armentrout. I bought both books with an amazon gift card I got for Christmas, so I’m excited to dive in and see what all the fuss is about! Also love a good fantasy/romance novel~

Physical books: um...yes? I have many! Currently I have 75 on my shelf and some of them may be multiple copies of the same book, like the one hardcover version I have of ACOMAF because I’m trash and couldn’t help myself from having a paperback AND hardcover.  I also really enjoy listening to audiobooks whenever they’re available through Libby. I have over an hour and a half drive to and from my college campus, so sometimes I like to fill that time with listening to a good audiobook by borrowing it from my local library! It also helps me save money from repeatedly buying new books or subscribing to a service I can’t afford 😭

Fics: First off, I HIGHLY recommend the lovely human who tagged me @thehaemanthus who has an assortment of amazing fanfics ranging from multiple different series. She is known as VivereLibri on AO3, and my favorite is live once (once is enough), which is a series of oneshots revolving around her interpretation of the ACOTAR universe and Feysand babies and I just *chefs kiss* everytime I read an update. Sometimes our works are similar and that just makes me think of the phrase “great minds think alike!” So go check it out! And of course, the queen who inspired me to write ACONAS @hushedhands who wrote/is currently writing fics focused on The Selection Series by Keira Cass. She just...took the plot and characters from this trilogy and turned it upside down. Added SO much depth, included the Maxerica moments we love to see, and babies 🥺if you loved the original trilogy of The Selection books, please go check out her work and see the majesty for yourself!

Also shameless plug time: My fanfic is called A Court of Nightmares and Starlight, which takes place ten years after the events in A Court of Frost and Starlight with my own telling of Feyre and Rhysand becoming parents while juggling their duties as rulers of the Night Court, which is unfortunately suffering its own inner turmoil. Includes lots of angst and fluff, because I can’t help myself 🙃I also wanted to include that plug for myself in order to announce that once ACONAS is over, I will be creating a sequel that will just include a series of oneshots following the events of ACONAS. It’s in the very very rough draft stages, but I can promise it will happen! 

Currently craving: carbs/sugar 😭weird transition but hey thats me...weird. I’m currently on what’s called “dirty” keto, which means instead of sticking to a strict keto diet, I consume under 50 net carbs a day. By sticking to this cap, I allow myself to eat healthy carbohydrates such as different fruits and veggies instead of limiting myself to a strict 20 net carbs (which is VERY difficult to do.) You probably didn’t need to know all that but 🤷🏻‍♀️

I tag: @courtofjurdan, @art-e-mis, @emikadreams, and @herondamnn! Also whoever feels like it!