#josie would truly be inspired

[lavenderstobins]

Eddie, trying to teach Josie body positivity from a young age: You know, women can be any shape they want to be

Josie, face lighting up: REALLY?

Eddie: Yeah! Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise!

[later]

Robin: You’ve got some explaining to do, Munson

Eddie: What?

Robin: This whole… shape thing

Eddie: What, you don’t want her being body positive? I’m surprised, Robin, I thought you’d—

Robin: Huh? No, I mean explaining why my daughter’s insisting on being an octagon

Eddie, realising his words may have been misconstrued: … Ah

[bookshelf-in-progress]

From the Other Side of the End of the World

A time travel story for @inklings-challenge.

Thanks to @awesomebutunpractical, @thatscarletflycatcher, and @rogerhamleys for beta help that made it possible to finish this.

I. Josephine Forester to Rachel Forester

Agril 19, 551 T.E.

Grimsfell, North Arza

Dear Rachel,

At last! The war is over! I know my history as well as anybody, but it still took me by surprise. I sobbed with relief when news of the treaty came. We haven’t heard any shelling for three days. No more wounded have arrived. It seems like a miracle.

But the work is far from done. Grimsby Hall is still filled with wounded soldiers, and we hard-working nurses are kept busy from morning til night. It will be weeks before some of these boys are well enough to travel, and years until they are completely healed, if they ever are at all.

The suffering I’ve seen! There is little even modern medical knowledge can do to ease their pain. Their war machines are primitive—cannons, tanks, machine guns—but they've wrought destruction on the land unlike anything we could imagine in our time. If I hadn’t seen our future, I’m not sure I could believe this land could be healed, that the world could ever find peace. But I have seen it, and the hope it inspires is the greatest gift I can give to these people.

Now, more than ever, I know that I've been called here. My research will be invaluable to history, but more than that, I feel a connection to these people, this place, this time. This is where I'm meant to serve.

I have a connection to you, too, of course. Your letters always make me feel I'm right there with you. Write back soon. I want to know about everything.

Love,

Josephine

P.S. I’ve shared a couple of the stories you wrote me with some of my patients. I hope you don’t mind—they need cheering up, and there's nothing in your stories that requires knowledge of the future. They very much enjoy them.

II. Rachel Forester to Josephine Forester

Agril 32, 771 T.E

Variby University

Dear Josie,

I know it’s taken me ages to write back, but the life of a college girl is a whirlwind. I made a list of all the things I’ve done this week, so you can see that I barely had time to breathe.

Two papers, three exams, and a presentation about the life cycle of the Aribanian tree frog.

Airball playoffs and championship. (I scored twenty-eight points!)

Trip to Grimsby. Twelve of us in one car. Visited the war museum. No pictures of you. Try to pose for any cameras if you see them.

Climbed the bell tower after Ferdie dared me to. Am now the hero of the school.

It sounds terribly shallow compared to what you're going through, but if I didn’t do all these things, where would I get the charming anecdotes that fill my letters and raise your poor, war-weary spirits? Even though the war is over, it still sounds dreadful. I don’t know how you manage it. At least you'll be home soon—it's a little over a month, right?

If I ever had hopes of becoming a time traveler, your letters would burn that dream right out of me. I'm perfectly happy in the safe and cozy modern day. I'll stay here in comfort and leave the do-gooding to you.

I’m glad you could make some use out of my stories. I’ve half a mind to tell that worthless university magazine editor that they’ve proven to be truly timeless. I’ll send another one along with this letter. Let your soldiers read it to their hearts’ content.

I could tell you loads more, but I’ve got play practice in an hour. I’ve been cast as Elsie in Less Boring, and I’ve got to learn my lines. (I've been laughing my head off. Darrin Royston is a genius).

I promise I’ll write more promptly next time.

Your sister,

Rachel

III. Josephine Forester to Rachel Forester

Maj 3, 551 T.E.

Grimsfell, North Arza

Dear Rachel,

It's always good to know things are going well for you. You're right—my term is over in less than a month. I had almost forgotten. It seems impossible. There's so much I still have to do.

I don't have time to give a proper response, except to tell you that I gave your story to the most voracious reader among my patients, and he's already finished it. It's exactly the type of story that he likes best, so he's asked to write a note of appreciation to the authoress. I’ve allowed it—my letter-link isn’t all that different to the ones they have in this time period. Maybe this will make up for the magazine’s lack of appreciation for your work.

Your sister,

Josephine

IV. Darrin Royston to Rachel Forester

Maj 3, 551 T.E.

Miss Rachel Forrester,

Your sister Josephine has informed me that you are the authoress of a little tale that has brought light and joy to my sickbed. Your comic fantasy is one of the most enjoyable works of fiction I have read in recent memory. It isn’t often one finds just such a blend of the beautiful and the silly. Too often, the comic fairy tales neglect their world, while the more grounded fantasy works take themselves too seriously. Yours struck just the right note.

There's little enough cheer in the world these days, and I'm glad to find that someone still remembers its secret. I pray—if it's not too presumptuous—that you have many more such works for your sister to pass on for our amusement.

Gratefully,

Darrin Royston

V. Rachel Forester to Josephine Forrester

Maj 3, 701 T.E.

Josephine!

You let Darrin Royston read my stupid little stories?

“They’re just the kind of thing he likes to read,” she says.

Because they’re based on the kind of thing he writes! Or did write. Or will write.

How old is he?

Have we broken history?

What if, having read my stories, he doesn’t write one of his great works? How would I know if he didn’t write it? Maybe you’ve already erased a dozen masterpieces from history, and I’ll never know they were never written!

Couldn’t you have given me some kind of warning before showing my fiction to one of the great literary minds of the post-war era? I want to curl up and die at the thought of his eyes looking at my inane scribbles. I might have done it already if his letter hadn’t suggested that he, for some reason, enjoyed it.

Maybe the war shattered his sanity. Maybe he has some kind of infection. You should check.

Rachel

VI. Josephine Forester to Rachel Forester

Maj 5, 551 T.E.

Grimsfell, North Arza

Rachel,

Who is Darrin Royston? You’re the one who knows about authors. To me, Darrin Royston is a dark-haired, undersized private recovering from a broken leg, who has every right to read your stories if he wants to.

You don’t have to worry about changing history. I’ve told you before—it can’t be done. History is chronological—everything that happens as a result of time travel has always happened that way. I’m here because I was always meant to be here.

It’s possible your story inspired whatever it is that Royston wrote, but it won’t erase anything.

His words were genuine. He really did enjoy your story. Take it as a compliment. It sounds like a good one.

And maybe send another story? The boy’s going stir-crazy and he’s driving me up the wall.

Yours,

Josephine

VII. Rachel Forester to Josephine Forester

Maj 6, 701 T.E.

Josephine,

Who is Darrin Royston?

Time travel is wasted on you.

He's only one of the most brilliant writers of the last century! Poems, plays, essays, novels—you name it, he's written it. He has wit, wisdom, genius. He's a little bit niche, but you've lived with me. You should at least have known his name! I just told you I'm acting in one of his plays!

There are a million things I'd love to ask him about, but he probably hasn't done any of them yet.

What does he look like? What's he like? I need details!

Yours,

Rachel

P.S. I've sent along a nice, long story. I hope it won't destroy his opinion of my literary talents.

VIII. Josephine Forester to Rachel Forester

Maj 8, 551 T.E.

Dear Rachel,

That Darrin Royston? Now that you mention it, the name sounds familiar. You have to admit this whole situation is mildly hilarious. I never expected to accidentally introduce you to a celebrity.

I'm not sure what you want to hear about him. He's dark-haired. Slender. Not over-tall. Has a melancholy streak. Rather too quiet—except when he's demanding reading material. Your story is keeping him nicely pacified. I leave my letter-link next to his bed (with all the personal letters hidden, of course—though I can't say I wasn't tempted to let him read that last one).

He's not what I would have expected the author of Less Boring to be like. (I guess I have seen that play. I remember laughing.) But he's young, and this isn't exactly a cheerful setting. Broken bodies, broken minds—blood, bones and suffering, dust and dirt and smoke. Even with the shadow of the war gone, it left plenty of darkness behind.

You're going to think this is crazy, but I've written to ask the university for an extension of my time here. The people here have become my friends and allies. There is so much work to be done. I can't leave them to deal with it alone.

It's only another six months, and after all, what's time to a time traveler? I'm going to miss you, but you have plenty to keep you busy. Before you know it, we'll be back together again.

I hope you understand. Pray for me.

Always your loving sister,

Josephine

IX. Rachel Forester to Josephine Forester

Maj 11, 701 T.E.

Josephine,

Are you crazy? Is the university crazy? The fact that you want to spend more time in that horrible time and place should be proof that time travel has messed with your mind.

I get it. Now that you're hob-nobbing with celebrities, ordinary modern life just can't compare. I should never have told you who Darrin Royston was. He can't be that interesting. He won't even write anything for another ten years. Can he really compare to your charming, adorable sister?

But seriously, Josie, what are you thinking? Time travel is cool and all, and I'm sure you're doing good things, but you belong here. In a safe, civilized century. There are plenty of people in this time period who need you—I'm at the top of the list.

You're going to miss my birthday now, you know that?

Disgruntled,

Rachel

X. Rachel Forester to Josephine Forester

Maj 15, 701 T.E.

Josephine,

Are you mad at me? I'm sorry if I got snarky. I'm upset you're not coming home, but you're a big girl and we both have our own lives and you can make your own decisions. I can respect your choice to stay.

I know that you're busy, but can you spare ten seconds to send me a line so I know I haven't destroyed our relationship forever?

Rachel

XI. Rachel Forester to Josephine Forester

Maj 20, 701 T.E.

Josie,

Are the people of that century so much more important that you can't even send a line to your little sister? I know I'm not one to talk about prompt letter-writing, but under the circumstances, this is worrying. And kind of hurtful.

Rachel

XII. Rachel Forester to Josephine Forester

Maj 20, 701 T.E.

Josie,

I'm sorry.

Please write back.

Rachel

XIII. Darrin Royston to Rachel Forester

Maj 20, 551 T.E.

Miss Rachel Forester:

I am writing with a heavy heart to inform you of the death of your sister, Nurse Josephine Forester. She went missing several days ago, and her body was found yesterday. She seems to have been killed in an accident with a stray shell near the hospital grounds. Millions of such unused artillery shells litter the countryside, and I'm afraid your sister was unfortunate enough to stumble upon one and become a casualty of war even in this time of peace.

No doubt you will receive notification through official channels, but I am aware she often contacted you via this letter-link, and I thought you might prefer to receive the news through a more personal route.

Your sister was a credit to her profession. She was a diligent, cheerful, kind, and invariably patient nurse. I am forever indebted to her for her personal kindnesses that brought light to hellish days.

Know that you and your family have my sympathy and my deepest condolences. You will remain in my prayers.

Yours,

Darrin Royston

XIV. Rachel Forester to Darrin Royston

What do you mean, dead?

She can't be dead. She won't be born for a hundred and fifty years.

Time travel's not supposed to work like that. She was supposed to do her research and come home.

It can't happen like that. I refuse to believe it. God wouldn't do that to us.

I haven't heard anything from her, but that's because you stole her letter-link. That must be it. Give it back, you thief, and think again before you go terrifying me with wild stories.

XV. Rachel Forester to Darrin Royston

Mr. Royston,

Don't read my last response. It wasn't supposed to send. Please ignore it. Give Josephine her letter-link back.

Thank you,

Rachel Forester

XVI. Darrin Royston to Rachel Forester

Maj 21, 551 T.E.

Miss Forester,

I'm afraid I read both your of your letters, and they greatly puzzle me. Is this a fragment of one of your fantastical tales? That would be the most sensible assumption, except that the unopened letters you sent to your sister seem to confirm an impossible truth. Your sister came to us from a different time, you exist far in the future, and I am writing to a woman who has not yet been born.

I apologize for reading words that I was not meant to see, but the confusion they've caused has more than punished me for my curiosity. The implications of what you suggest are dizzying.

You are not writing in Valorian, which suggests that the peace holds, and you seem to write from a far more peaceful time. No wonder your stories held such hope. I can barely imagine a world beyond this battlefield hospital.

If I am reading the story correctly, your sister left a place of safety and peace and came to serve the suffering in a time of war. It makes her actions even more heroic and her death even more of a tragedy.

I don't pretend to understand how this is possible, but you have my gratitude and my sympathy.

Yours,

Darrin Royston

XVII. Rachel Forester to Darrin Royston

Maj 22, 701 T.E.

Darrin,

Yes, my sister is from the future. Yes, she came to help out during your war. And yes, you people killed her.

She could have been an aloof researcher, gathering information about the Western War, but she decided to help because she couldn't stand by while people were suffering. And she died for it.

What does it matter if you know the truth? Josephine always said that history can't be changed. I can't even wish that she hadn't gone on the trip, because apparently, the fact that she died in the past means she always died in the past. She was dead before she was born.

But how is that any different from the rest of us? Where I come from, you're long dead. To people in the future, I'm long dead. There's nothing we can do to change that, even with time travel, so what does anything matter?

If our every action is part of an unchangeable history, we're just cogs in a cosmic machine. It doesn't do any good to cry over it.

Rachel

XVIII. Darrin Royston to Rachel Forester

Maj 23, 551 T.E.

Rachel,

I can't pretend to understand how time travel occurs, and the philosophical questions you pose seem far beyond my ken. But it is clear that you are grieving, and I can try to offer what comfort I can.

I'm no philosopher, but I know that the things we do, whenever we do them, matter. From where I lay in this hospital, your sister's actions were far from meaningless. She did not control her fate, but she had free will within it. Her choices made a world of difference to the men she helped.

We have a God who is outside of time. He incorporates our choices into His divine plan. Even if He, the author, knows the end of our story, our actions are what make the story what it is. We can choose to care or be callous, to create or destroy, and those choices ripple across time, for good and for ill.

This war will have effects far into the future, but there is also goodness that transcends time. God sent your sister to help from far in the future. I pray for you from far in the past. Your sister, outside of time, is now better able than ever to pray for us both.

I can't pretend that your sister's death was good. I can't pretend that this war is good. But if there is goodness beyond the end of the war--as your letters suggest--perhaps one day you will find some good that exists beyond the bounds of grief.

Yours,

Darrin Royston

XIX. Rachel Forester to Darrin Royston

Maj 24, 701 T.E.

Darrin,

I wish I could believe in what you say, but right now, hope seems impossible. Thank you for trying.

Rachel

XX. Darrin Royston to Rachel Forester

Maj 25, 701 T.E.

Rachel,

That did get rather abstract, didn't it? I wish I could express myself in a way that makes the truth felt.

Maybe someday I'll have wisdom enough to do so.

Yours,

Darrin Royston

XXI. Rachel Forester to Josephine Forester

Maj 27, 771 T.E.

Josie,

The university sent me your personal belongings today, your letter-link among them. My last connection to the past—and, it feels like, to you—is gone. But Darrin says you're outside of time now, so maybe writing in here can reach you. I'm pretty sure that goes against science and philosophy and theology and probably lots of -ologies, but those were your kind of thing. I can never understand anything but stories.

I'm afraid I've loused things up. I freaked out and revealed time travel to Darrin Royston. It doesn't seem to have broken anything yet, but I feel terrible. You went into the past to help these people through suffering I can't even imagine. Meanwhile, I'm living in comfort and asked the poor boy to deal with my problems on top of his own. I've been selfish from beginning to end, and it's giving me a lot of guilt.

All the time travel in the world can't change that. All I can do is move forward. But I can't believe I can do that, not without you. Whatever stupid things I did, I knew I could count on you to have my back. To understand. To pull me back from the edge of the cliff or pick me up if I jumped off it. Now it's just me and I feel frozen. I'm cut off from the past and the future's a blank. How am I supposed to go on?

Pray for me, I guess. It's supposed to work across time and outside of time. It's the best we've got now. But it's nothing like getting a letter from you.

Love,

Rachel

XXII. Josephine Forester to Rachel Forester

Maj 11, 551 T.E.

Rachel,

Happy birthday!

Anyway, it'll be your birthday when you read this. I'm sorry I'm not there to celebrate with you, but maybe a good present will make up for it.

I can't send objects through time, but I sent a message to Harriet on the research team, and she's come through. This will arrive on your birthday, even if I can't come with it.

What you hold in your hands is a first edition of Darrin Royston's first collection of stories. Given recent events, it seemed only fitting. Here's proof your letters haven't stunted his career.

You're amazing, Rachel, and you've got a great future ahead of you.

Love,

Josephine

XXIII. Dedication in New Beginnings by Darrin Royston

For Rachel

May hope reach you at the proper time

Octon 12, 561 T.E.

XXIV. Rachel Forester to Harriet Zima

Maj 33, 771 T.E.

Harriet,

Thanks for the help with the birthday present. It means more to me than you can know.

Could you do me one more favor? For Josie's sake?

I have another thank you to send.

Rachel

XXV. Rachel Forester to Darrin Royston

Maj 33, 771 T.E.

Darrin,

I read your book. Actually, I reread it. I've read every one of those stories before in anthologies, in collections, as standalone stories. I had some of them practically memorized. But this was my first time reading the original collection. So it's the first time I read the dedication. And it's the first time I've known they were written for me.

I can't begin to explain what that feels like. Imagine a whole lot of tears—joy and guilt and just sheer overwhelmed—and you'll have a general idea.

The stories are fantastic, of course—they're classics! They're funny, profound, sweet, witty, thoughtful.

But the thing that means the most to me is the writing of them. I know something of what your life was like there at the end of the war—Josie sent me plenty of letters. You had so many problems of your own. You didn't need pampered little me throwing more problems on you. But you cared. You built a life after the end of the world and you sent out a light to brighten mine.

That's all we can do, isn't it? Every moment in time. Care about each other. That's what gets us through when it seems like the world has ended. It transcends time. You told me about it back then, but your book showed it to me. I can't imagine what I could have done to deserve such consideration ten years after our few letters, but I can't thank you enough.

Your future and forever friend,

Rachel Forester

XXVI. Harriet Zima to Rachel Forester

Rachel,

I'm letting one last letter through. Only because this is awesome. But I don't have the budget to justify any more favors.

Harriet

XXVII. Darrin Royston to Rachel Forester

Novrum 23, 561 T.E.

Rachel,

Your stories brought me comfort and hope at a time when I felt that I had none. The least I could do was return the favor.

These years since the war have brought grief and suffering, but also more joy and healing than I ever could have imagined. Time is a great healer--and I needed time to see the truth of that for myself, before I could begin to make others believe in it.

My little book, even now, is gaining attention. It is gratifying to know it will last. I can only pray my other words will last long enough to reach you. If ten years of experience can teach me this much, I am curious to see what I can learn with a little more time.

May we meet again on the bookshelves.

Your friend,

Darrin Royston

P.S. I've visited your sister's grave three times since the war. Knowing I will be her only visitor for more than a hundred years makes it a solemn duty, but it is also an honor to visit one who proved so good a friend. Each time, I ask her prayers for both of us. I know they are answered.

XXVIII. Rachel Forester to Josephine Forester

Maj 12, 702 T.E.

Josie,

I visited your grave today. The war-torn country you described in your letters is a lovely springtime meadow. Grimsby Hall is torn down, but there are plaques where the hospital stood, and the little graveyard stands in a peaceful grove of trees. The world has healed, and, slowly, so am I.

Your grave is marked by a clean white stone that's been kept free of moss and dirt. Darrin's family cared for it well. It only has the date of your death, but its existence proves that there are times in the past where you're alive. Outside of time where you are now, you're even more alive.

One day, we'll meet again, but until then, I've got work to do. I tried to avoid suffering in the past, leaving the painful work to you. But pain finds us no matter where we are. I can't stay focused on my own and ignore everyone else's. There are plenty of people, even in our own time, who need help. I've added some volunteer work to my rampant social schedule, trying to find out exactly where I can do the most good.

My experience with your work makes me a good candidate for the time travel program. I'll admit that I'm considering it. There's plenty of work to be done in the post-war world, and I've got connections there.

Love,

Rachel

[hailey-murdock]

In every universe

Paring: Matt Murdock x Fem!reader

Warnings: None, just pure fluff

Summary: after a planned picnic date doesn't go according to plan, Matt doesn't let the inconvenience get in his way of a date with you

WC: 986

AN: I got inspired to write this since it was raining and @little-miss-dilf-lover encouraged me to write it so why not. (Reblogs, comment and likes are appreciated)

Matt's schedule was starting to become hectic, with the way the firm gained recognition from the Punisher trial. Even if they didn't win the case, their statements were outstanding. It seemed like client after client would come into the office.

Yet no matter how busy Matt was, you were patient with him and understanding. Something that Matt truly appreciated, far from what you could understand how greatly he was.

Sometimes, well often with Matt needed to work overtime at the office, or doing research for certain cases.

Other times you'd help out, nights like those usually ended with getting takeout and you helping Matt out with a few things you'd know from your job, as a journalist at The Bulletin.

Matt would tell you that you didn't need to help him, but you always told him that you wanted to. Even if it was doing work either way you spent time with him.

But Matt made sure that he would spend the entire weekend with you. He desperately wanted to get his mind off of all the stressful work. Just wanting to savor the time he had with you. Matt had an idea of one of the ways to show you how much he missed you.

It was a picture-perfect day for a picnic at the park with Matt on the weekend. The sun was shining, the birds were chirping, and the breeze carried a pleasant warmth.

Matt had surprisingly prepared a delicious spread of sandwiches, fruits, and desserts, for you. The sound of laughter filled the air.

"You know, you really didn't have to do all of this Matty"? A smile formed onto your face, as you laid out the picnic blanket onto the grass.

The picnics had been a tradition for Matt and you, moments of respite from your busy lives and a chance to enjoy each other's company in the tranquility of nature.

Unfortunately, with how busy you and Matt are, there hasn't been time to go on your picnic dates like before.

"I know, but I missed this. The dates we would have- you deserve this. With the way I've been neglecting you and-", Matt felt ashamed for how he hasn't treated you properly the last few weeks.

Before Matt could continue, you interrupted him. "Hey, hey, don't give me that bullshit Matt. You've done nothing wrong. What matters is now, not the past. I understand you're busy with Foggy and the firm. You know that I love you either way, don't you Matty"?

Your hand grabbed his hand to move over where your heart is, so he could feel your steady heartbeat. It didn't matter if he could literally hear that you were telling the truth. You wanted Matt to feel it.

The small gesture made his own heart skip a beat. "I know sweetheart and I love you too. You that, don't you sweetheart"?

Your grin only grew bigger by the second. "Of course I do baby, now if that catholic guilt is eating you up, you better sweep me off my feet with what you have packed to eat".

Matt chuckled at your response, which only made him love you even more. "Though I already did that when we met at Josie's"? Matt teased you.

"Yeah yeah, we get it Matt. You're a charmer", a giggle left your mouth as you began unpacking your carefully prepared meal and settling in for a relaxed afternoon under the clear blue sky.

All of a sudden, just when you had sat down along with Matt, dark clouds suddenly rolled in without warning. The sky transformed from a vibrant blue to a somber gray, and droplets of rain started to fall sporadically.

"Dammit- it wasn't supposed to rain today. I'm so sorry sweetheart, if I had known it was gonna rain I would have chosen something else for a date", guilt and frustration was starting to feel Matt's gut.

"Matty, don't apologize for something you didn't know and can't control". The rain had begun to become a bit more strong, than from a few minutes ago.

"Fine, let's just pack up and-", a light bulb switched on Matt's head as he stopped talking.

"What?", you got confused as all of sudden Matt got quiet. Undeterred by the unexpected change in weather, Matt decided to make the best of the situation.

Not wanting their date to go to waste, Matt looked with a mischievous spark in their eyes at you before saying, "May I have this dance, my lady?"

Without missing a beat, Matt's lips curved into a smile as he bowed down in front of you. It was silly to see Matt's gesture, "Are you crazy? We're gonna get a cold!"

"You didn't say no, so I'll take that answer as a yes", Matt took your hand and pulled you close to him, with a smirk on his face.

"If we get sick, I'm blaming you Murdock", you chuckled as you looked up at him. As the rain made most of the people leave, you took off his glasses, since there was no one to judge him without his glasses.

"Yes ma'am, now let us enjoy this dance". A squeal hit Matt's ears as he spinned you and then pulled you again to him with one of his hands on your lower back and the other holding your hand.

"Thank you Matty, this means a lot to me", your head rested on his chest as you slowed dance together in the rain.

"Thank you for letting me. I love you sweetheart, more than anything in this world", he pressed a kiss to your head.

"I love you more Matty, in every universe that exists".

Matt knew in that moment that the ring he had prepared for you was gonna be presented earlier than what he had in mind.

[dreadfutures]

Fics for Blue

I’ve been honored to receive so many gift works since joining the Dragon Age fandom. Some are from Exchanges (more about Dragon Age Fanwork Exchanges), some are from discord community server events, some have just spawned out of shared headcanons gone wild, like the Mirrorverse.

In general, feel free to make fanart, podfics, and derivative works of my fics, art, and characters, as long as a heads-up & credit is given. I always appreciate the creativity of this community. See my full use statement here.

Banner credit.

In addition to reading the fics I've been gifted, please check out the rest of the writers' works - they are all so talented!

General Gifts

Dawn in Antiva - [delawana | @the-rebel-archivist]. Oneshot.

Rating: T. (Andarateia Cantori/Viago de Riva) | In the wake of the Qunari occupation of Treviso, Viago de Riva is disgruntled that Antiva carried on with its festivals. Andarateia Cantori gives him a new perspective on another way to fight their enemies.

I love the descriptions of the setting, how it perfectly fit the vibes of the moodboard that inspired it, and the push and pull of Viago's inner gloom and the light that Teia brings.

A Snowflake Distinct Among Snowflakes - [Missjlh]. Multichap. Complete.

Rating: T. (Solas & Dorian Pavus) | Solas is a mystery to Dorian and he finds himself looking for the man's approval. In a bid to get to know him better, Dorian offers to share his research notes, but in the end, it's Solas' advice regarding how to free the slaves of Tevinter that leaves its mark, even years later, after the truth of who Solas is has come to light.

I love, love, love the progression of Dorian and Solas' interactions. A gift from @arlathanxchange 2024 that tracks Solas & Dorian from the Inquisition to what happens after.

Strawberries and Lace - [@enigmalae]

Rating: T. (Solas/Lace Harding) | A chance encounter in skyhold leads to the start of something more.

Dancing, flirting, and a first kiss. A gift from @arlathanxchange 2024.

Provenance - [@kiastirling-fanfic]

Rating: G. (Solas & Dorian Pavus) | “Do you always throw misbehaving tomes on the heads of unassuming passerby?” Dorian's disregard for the Inquisition's questionable literature leads to a discussion with the resident apostate.

A gift from @arlathanxchange 2024. When I see "magical academia" my heart sings - and the bickering truly lives up to it.

Impeccable Timing - [@RosellaWrites]. Oneshot. Complete.

Rating: G. (Solas/Josephine Montilyet) | Josephine Montilyet intimately understands the Game, even under such circumstances found at the Winter Palace. What surprises her, however, is that an elven mage navigates it just as surely as she.

I love the inside peek into Josie's mind, the hints at being a little too attentive to Solas while remaining unflappable just as she always is. A gift from @arlathanxchange 2024.

Power lies with thos who grasp it - [Toshi_Nama]. Oneshot. Complete.

Rating: M. (Briala & Skinner)

From my prompt: maybe Skinner is secretly one of Briala’s own agents, even while she is a member of Bull’s Chargers. Or maybe Skinner thinks Briala’s a poser. Maybe both. I think there’s interesting potential for conflict, contrast, or highlighting–Skinner could be a way to push Briala to change in certain ways, or to prove herself, or encourage her to continue on as she has. Maybe they have some secret history. A gift from @arlathanxchange 2023.

the world would crmble to dust before you ran out of ills to fight - [@RosellaWrites]. _Oneshot. Complete.

Rating: G. (Solas/Lace Harding) | Scout Lace Harding retraces Solas's footsteps alongside Varric in a race to stop him… or change his mind. Lace remembers her time with the so-called apostate along the way.

A gift from @arlathanxchange 2023.

The Firefall - [Dragon_Sage]. Oneshot. Complete.

Rating: M. (Solas/F!Lavellan). Post-Trespasser. | Solas is camped in the ruins of Mythal's most cherished palace, plagued by Regret and guilt around the circumstances of her murder. He would leave, but he desperately requires what he suspects his old friend may have hidden there. Unfortunately, the final obstacle in his path is a door that only one person in Thedas can open: Ellana Lavellan.

This is a beautiful and cinematic adventure fic with a bittersweet twist! Just my kind of gift. I would love for everyone to read it and join me in imagining this beautiful, mysterious palace that Dragon Sage created as a backdrop!

Shadows in the Glass - [@silvanils | KnightDawn] Oneshot. Complete.

Rating: T. (Marquis of Serault & Marquise of Serault) | “The eyes were all wrong. I should know. I see the right ones every morning.”Something strange is happening in Serault. What else is new?

A mirrorverse of sorts for the Marquis(e) of Serault! Several heroes from different universes reach out to each other in dreamlike, beautiful quality.

Comrades in Arms, Brothers in Broken Chains - [@rosella-writes]. PODFIC.

Rosella BEAUTIFULLY read a piece I wrote out loud as a podfic!

The Seven Halla - [Ciella]. Oneshot. Complete.

Rating: T. (Solas/F!Lavellan) | A Dragon Age version of the German fairy tale, The Six Swans.

A perfect gift from the @solavellanhellexchange

Homecoming - [@queenaeducan-writes]. Two chapters. Complete.

Rating: T. (Genfic) | Charter and Harding know that Fen'Harel seeks something in the vaults of a Tevinter Magister. It's a race to gain access to this mysterious artifact, and to keep it out of enemy hands. Until it isn't.

This fic--an adventure, an intrigue, a world-building exploration, an action piece, and so much more--grabbed me by the heart and didn't let go. Gift from the @arlathanxchange

Bright Days of Halcyon - [@darethshirl]. Oneshot. Complete.

Rating: G. (Solas & Keeper Hawen) | Solas joins Hawen’s clan for a slice of life and celebration. He finds traces of the familiar, fragments of the past, and welcome.

This fic actually drove me to tears, it was nostalgic, poignant, and touching. It is both full of joy and full of tragedy. Gift from the @arlathanxchange.

oily marks appear on walls (where pleasure moments hung before) - [@rosella-writes] Oneshot. Complete.

Rating: M. (Solas/Felassan) | As an Evanuris, Solas has no vallaslin. He would lay claim to no one. Not even the man he loves.

Just an absolutely gorgeous piece highlighting a tension between Solas and Felassan, yet another problem entirely of Solas's own making. Gift from the @arlathanxchange.

What Pride Had Wrought - [@rosella-writes ]. Oneshot. Complete.

Rating: G. (Solas & Mythal) | Mythal through the ages, with Pride at her side.

Gift fic from the Beyond The Veil Discord Server’s Masked Satinalia holiday exchange!

Pride’s Hope - [@rosella-writes]. Oneshot. Complete.

Rating: G. (Solas/Felassan) | Solas may have always been Pride, but Felassan was not always Felassan. Once he chafed under the mantle of another name.

Rosella wrote a deliciously angsty Solas (Pride)/Felassan (Hope) fic <3

grab hold of the earth’s four corners - [@rosella-writes]. Oneshot. Complete.

Rating: E. (Female Lavellan/Krem) | The Chargers survived their Venatori encounter at the Storm Coast. Virelan and Krem celebrate together behind the Herald's Rest.

Gift from Rosella furthering the Lavellan/Krem agenda!

Gifts about Ixchel Lavellan

Lead Her Through the Darkness - [BECandCall | @warpedlegacy]. Oneshot. Complete.

Rating: T. (Solo: Female Lavellan) | This is THE story of how Ixchel found her name. BECandCall aka DuchessofSwoll wrote this gift for me during the Dragon Age Fanfiction discord server’s OC swap month.

The Day the Dread Wolf Wed the Brave Guide - [exalted_dawn | @exalted-dawn-drabbles] Ongoing.

Rating: T. (Female Lavellan/Solas, Female Lavellan & Dalish OCs) | My beautiful friend and dear Beta, Ed, decided to write how her Dalish OC Talenna convinced and orchestrated Ixchel to do a bonding ceremony with Solas, at the Arlathvhen, after Corypheus’s defeat. It’s beautiful and I adore it.

Finding Hope in Ruins - [BlueWren]. Oneshot. Complete.

Rating: G. (Female Lavellan/Solas) | A gift from the 2022 April OC Swap for the DAFF Discord Server, where Solas and Ixchel talk about hope together.

The Inexorable Tide - [kittynomsdeplume]. Oneshot. Complete.

Rating: T. (Dirthame/Female Lavellan) | Ixchel appeared in Elvhenan in an explosion that leveled Falon’Din’s temple. Dirthamen takes her in, for she wears his vallaslin, and slowly teaches her the Elvhen language…and they fall in love.

A BEAUTIFUL GIFT from the 2021 Beyond The Veil Discord Server Satinalia Exchange

Champion- [Fenrevas | @rakshadow]. Oneshot. Complete.

Rating: G. (Female Lavellan & Female Hawke) | Rak wrote this lovely interaction for a Discord server event <3 A Boxing Club au where Ash Hawke meets Ixchel Lavellan, her new boxing instructor.

Alas’nira - [thebrain_urchin | @dalishkadan]. Oneshot. Complete.

Rating: E (Female Lavellan/Solas) The Dalish warn their children to watch out, lest the Dread Wolf catch them. They never speak on what it would be like for the Dread Wolf to be caught instead.

Fade-Touched - [ @rosella-writes]. Oneshot. Complete.

Rating: M. (Dirthamen/Female Lavellan) | Dirthamen learns from his Champion to set aside study. Dirthamen (yes that one) and Ixchel bang in a magical orchard with aphrodisiac peaches.

A gift from 2022's Beyond the Veil Discord server's Masked Satinalia.

Gifts about my other OCs.

to be seen feeling - [@inquisimer] Oneshot. Complete.

Rating: T. (Mahariel/Morrigan, Mahariel, Others. Genfic!) | Duty pulls Halevune from his fragile family and the home they’ve carved in the Crossroads. In which Mahariel navigates his relationship with Morrigan, fatherhood, and the politics of the Wardens and being an elven Teryn.

The Stories We Tell - [@about2dance]. Oneshot. Complete.

Rating: G. (Female Lavellan & Dalish Male OC). Terinelan Lavellan, the First of the Lavellan Clan, explores a ruin that the Inquisitor discovered. She has worried that she's not Dalish enough, so he tells her the story of how the Clan came to accept her.

A gift from the Dragon Age FanFic server's 2024 OC Swap.

Mari Enasal - [@RosellaWrites]. Oneshot. Complete.

Rating: G. (Kieran & Male Mahariel, Male Mahariel & Merrill). Halevune shares a spooky Dalish tale with his son. Kieran has heard this one so many times that it's no longer scary.

A gift from the Dragon Age FanFic server's 2023 holiday exchange.

The Mirrorverse.

The Dragon Age Fanfic Writers Discord Server anniversary (Aug 2021) generated a bunch of crossover-type gift fis and introduced the idea of a multiverse connected by eluvians. Thus, the Mirrorverse was born.

The Bar at the End of the Multiverse - [CrackingLamb]. Oneshot. Complete.

Rating: T | Multiple Inquisitor Lavellans wander through mysterious eluvians and find themselves at a bar for some bonding time.

The one that started it all!

i want to share your mouthful - [RosellaWrites]. Oneshot. Complete.

Rating: E. (Female Lavellan/Female Lavellan, past Female Lavellan/Solas) | Virelan Lavellan post-Trespasser struggles to let go of the weight of her responsibilities as Inquisitor and mother. Ixchel helps with sparring, bathing, and some sex.

to call for hands of above (to lean on) - [RosellaWrites]. Ongoing.

Rating: G. (Female Lavellan/Solas) | Virelan Lavellan and Solas have reunited, and now their son Tulin is coming of age. Tulin wants to take the vallaslin, knowing what it represents--but he wants Solas and Virelan to help in the ritual. Virelan doesn’t know how to ask Solas such a favor, and turns to Ixchel for some hope.

tell me if i drown - [Lalaen]. Oneshot.Complete.

Rating: M. (Male Lavellan & Female Lavellan) | Gethrael Lavellan, reeling after a horrific experience in Wicked Eyes, Wicked Hearts, goes to the Bar at the End of the Multiverse and runs into Ixchel.

The Brave Guide’s Friend - [@ExaltedDawn].

Rating: M. (Female Lavellan & Female Dalish OC) | When the Eluvian had appeared before her, Ixchel could have never suspected that it would lead to the loss of a friend. But when Talenna stumbled through the glass, bloodied and afraid and clutching two young children, Ixchel is forced to come to terms with the fact that she will yet again have to say goodbye to someone she loves. And in doing so, will finally repay a favor long owed.

to all who feel rain - [@inquisimer]. Oneshot. Complete.

Rating: G. (Female Lavellan/Female Lavellan). Neria and Ixchel share a warm drink and a moment of peace.

a butchered tongue still singing - [@RosellaWrites]. Oneshot. Complete.

Rating: T. (Male Mahariel/Morrigan, Female Mahariel/Zevran, Female Mahariel & Male Mahariel) | An eluvian connects Rhiannon Mahariel to the life of another like herself, who was also tainted by a cursed mirror.

[mariacallous]

The name Frantz Fanon has become inseparable from the history of decolonization. It is almost impossible to speak of anti-colonial violence or the failings of postcolonial elites without referring to the figure who inspired generations of activists to revolt against colonialism. Since the publication of his seminal work, The Wretched of the Earth, in 1961, Fanon has been idealized by generations of activists in the global south and beyond. For them, the Black Martinican and Frenchman who devoted himself to Algerian independence is the fearless and uncompromising prophet of revolution.

The subtitle of Adam Shatz’s new biography, The Rebel’s Clinic: The Revolutionary Lives of Frantz Fanon, suggests that his life was not so simple. Shatz, the U.S. editor for the London Review of Books, is an expert guide through the thicket of Fanon-lore that has emerged since his death in 1961, and his book offers a compelling account of Fanon’s transformation from a medical student into a global icon of anti-colonial revolution.

But The Rebel’s Clinic tells another, more tragic story, too: the tale of a young Black man from the French colonies who never really belonged anywhere, no matter how closely he identified with a nation or cause. Despite his deep attachment to Algeria, he could never really embody the Algerian revolution, as hagiographic accounts of his life have suggested. His life and body of work were too complicated to be branded in this way. Although Fanon was a remarkable thinker, he could be conflicted and even contradictory, and simplifying him only simplifies the difficult and often fraught work that must go into anti-colonial movements.

The first words a young Fanon learned to spell were “Je suis français.” As a child in Fort-de-France, the capital of the French colony of Martinique, in the 1920s and ’30s, he enjoyed the privileges of a typical bourgeois family: servants, piano lessons, and a weekend home outside the city. This was not uncommon for Antillean évolués, or assimilated colonial subjects whose European education let them rise up the colonial hierarchy. Like many of their class, the Fanons looked down on the “nègres” from France’s African colonies, who they believed weren’t really French.

Fanon’s parents identified so deeply with the French Republic that they behaved “more French than the French,” Shatz writes. As for Fanon, whose father was largely absent, Shatz recounts that he would collect several adoptive fathers in his short life but the “symbolic father represented by France” was by far the most important. Fanon strongly believed in the universal values of the republic: liberty, equality, and fraternity.

It was not until Fanon joined the Free French Forces in World War II that his faith in European civilization was shaken. In the army, he witnessed the French generals’ racism; the rigid separation between white, Antillean, and African soldiers; and the horrors of trench warfare. “Yet the incident that seems to have hurt him most,” Shatz writes, “was returning to Toulon [in southern France], during the celebrations marking the liberation of France, and finding that no Frenchwoman was willing to share a dance with him.” Though Fanon had risked his life for France, it would never truly accept him, and he never recovered from the rejection he experienced when he finally arrived in the métropole.

After the war, he studied medicine in Lyon, a city Shatz describes as “notorious for its suspicion of outsiders,” and eventually practiced as a psychiatrist there. His first book, Black Skin, White Masks (1952), grew out of a period of intense frustration and suffering. He dictated the book to his fiancée, Josie, in a burst of anger and creativity. (Fanon never typed anything himself.) It was his reckoning with a city, and a country, that he was beginning to despise—an attempt to make sense of what he described as the “lived experience” of Black men in white society. The desire to “become” white, he concluded, alienated racialized people from themselves, and assimilation constrained their freedom. Today, the book is celebrated as a foundational text in the study of Blackness and of alienation. But at the time, few readers appreciated or understood Fanon’s methodology—a synthesis of psychiatry, psychoanalysis, memoir, and social theory.

As Fanon’s awareness of the appalling situation of Algerians in France grew, he gradually lost ���interest in the psychological dilemmas of middle-class people of color like himself,” Shatz writes. His psychiatric study of the “North African syndrome”—a mysterious illness that plagued France’s Algerian population—was a turning point. Algerians kept going to French doctors saying they were in pain but without clear physical symptoms. Fanon discovered that their pain couldn’t simply be dismissed as “imaginary,” as most French doctors had done. The racism of French society was making Algerians sick, he believed, and their ailments could only be treated by addressing this uncomfortable truth. For Fanon, mental illness could never be divorced from social conditions. He considered himself an activist and, Shatz writes, “approached psychiatry as if it were an extension of politics by other means.”

The Rebel’s Clinic is at its best when Shatz describes Fanon’s early efforts to develop an anti-colonial psychiatry. In 1953, Fanon was hired as the director of the French-run Blida-Joinville Psychiatric Hospital in Algeria. His time there opened his eyes to the brutality of colonialism, and under his guidance, the hospital transformed into a center for experiments in social therapy. Initially, the Algerian Muslim patients regarded Fanon with suspicion. To them, his cultural attitudes represented those of France. But, as Shatz writes, Fanon had a plan:

Working with a team of Muslim nurses, he created a café maure, a traditional Moorish café where men drink coffee and play cards, and later an “Oriental salon” for the hospital’s small group of female Muslim patients. Muslim musicians and storytellers came to perform; Muslim festivals were celebrated; and, for the first time in the hospital’s history, the mufti of Blida paid a visit during the breaking of the Ramadan fast.

French colonialism dehumanized Algerians by destroying their culture. By reminding them of their culture, Fanon hoped to help his patients assert a collective identity, which would give them the confidence to undergo a process of “disalienation” and fight back against the French.

At Blida, the Algerian nurses shared Fanon’s radical politics, and together, they secretly treated fighters with the National Liberation Front (FLN), which sought to overthrow French colonial rule. The hospital staff formed a militant health care collective that challenged coercive approaches to psychiatry. For them, Blida wasn’t an isolated institution where patients were locked away to recover; rather, their work in the hospital was part of the struggle waged outside its grounds. Fanon and his staff even introduced day hospitalization so patients could maintain ties to their social environment.

In Shatz’s view, Fanon’s dedication to health care was perhaps his most important contribution to the Algerian revolution. (He never engaged in active combat during the war.) Providing health care remained a priority for the FLN throughout the years of fighting.

After the French discovered Fanon was secretly an FLN member, he fled to Tunis, Tunisia’s capital, where the FLN’s provisional government would be based, and took up a new role in the movement: He still treated patients traumatized by war but also worked as a propagandist championing the FLN’s armed struggle. Although his democratic vision of a people-led revolution clashed with the FLN’s authoritarianism, he dutifully justified its policies to an international audience. As Shatz points out, the strategic use of the phrase “we Algerians” in his articles for El Moudjahid, the FLN’s French-language newspaper, was a way to prove how closely he identified with the Algerian cause. His writing and speeches during this period helped create the myth of Fanon as a leader of the revolution.

The Rebel’s Clinic pushes back against this mythologizing. Fanon’s identification with Algeria grew as the war intensified, but he was an outsider: He spoke neither Arabic nor Berber, was not Muslim, and had come to Algeria as a representative of the colonial government. And while FLN leaders respected Fanon’s medical work, they never quite trusted him. Even as they presented him as a spokesperson of the movement to international audiences, Fanon had little influence over its direction and politics. When he learned that his close friend, key FLN figure Abane Ramdane, had been assassinated by another FLN faction, he was devastated. But he never questioned the leadership’s decision and refused to break ranks. Fanon had become a captive of the revolution he’d hoped to ignite.

Shatz notes that A Dying Colonialism, Fanon’s first book about Algeria, “reads like a record of revolutionary hopes soon to be dashed.” Written in Tunis in 1959, the book gives an idealized account of Algerian liberation, pieced together from his memories of the war’s early stages. But the social changes he praised—the emancipation of Algerian women (the subject of his famous essay “Algeria Unveiled”), the dissolution of classes, and the turn toward secularism—were never realized in practice.

Fanon never really understood his adopted home, especially when it came to religion. His belief in the revolution was so absolute that he failed to consider how the conservative, Islamist forces in the FLN might shape its outcome. Like Ramdane, Fanon argued for an independent Algeria that would welcome everyone who renounced their colonial privilege. He believed that the roles of “settler” and “native” ascribed by colonialism were never fixed. After independence, he hoped, Algerians would finally be able to “discover the man behind the colonizer,” as sympathetic Europeans too became equal citizens in a secular Algeria. But, as Shatz argues, these ideals clashed with the FLN leadership’s more narrowly Arab-Islamic vision of post-independence Algeria. Even the people Fanon had hoped would lead the revolution—Algeria’s poor peasants—embraced the FLN’s social conservatism.

To avoid conflict over its social policies, the provisional government promoted secular leftists to diplomatic positions in West Africa. In 1960, Fanon was stationed in Accra, and he soon came to share the Pan-Africanist views of Ghana’s president, Kwame Nkrumah, who insisted that all Africans would be united by their common struggle against colonialism. Fanon was convinced that Algeria would lead the rest of the continent toward liberation. But ironically, his influence in the FLN waned as he became more famous, and he “would have little success in ‘Algerianizing’ the strategies of African liberation struggles,” Shatz writes.

Fanon wanted to convince African anti-colonial movements to engage in guerrilla warfare, as the FLN had done. But their leaders often chose peaceful organizing or negotiations as the preferred route to independence. Fanon rightly feared that this approach to decolonization would enable former colonial powers to “recolonize” Africa through favorable arrangements with compliant leaders. His evisceration of Africa’s post-independence bourgeoisie in The Wretched of the Earth was inspired by his work as a diplomat.

Fanon was not always prophetic about the future of African politics. As Shatz points out, he underestimated the impact of the Cold War on Africa, insisting that it was merely “a distraction from the larger drama of decolonization and the rise of the Third World.” Two of Fanon’s closest friends and political allies in sub-Saharan Africa—soon-to-be Congolese Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba and the Cameroonian communist Félix-Roland Moumié—would be assassinated in the early 1960s because of their leftist politics. (Fanon had himself survived an attempt on his life in Rome in 1959.) Another close friend, the Angolan Holden Roberto, turned out to be a CIA asset and was secretly working to undermine Lumumba, whom he described as a communist “puppet.”

The process of decolonization, then, was not only a struggle between anti-colonial movements and colonial powers but part of the global struggle among competing ideologies. As much as he tried to ignore it, the Cold War found Fanon, too. Following an FLN expedition to Mali to assess the possibility of a weapons corridor to southern Algeria, Fanon fell ill and was diagnosed with leukemia. In a show of “friendship” to the FLN, the CIA agreed to bring Fanon to the United States—a place he’d previously dismissed as “the country of lynchers”—for treatment. Fanon died in a hospital in Maryland in December 1961. A few months later, Algeria achieved its independence.

Today, various activist causes, from Black Lives Matter to the Palestinian solidarity movement, have again embraced Fanon as a leading thinker. But his work has also found favor with scholars in disciplines such as psychiatry, psychoanalysis, and philosophy. In her recent interviews with Shatz, Fanon’s former secretary, Marie-Jeanne Manuellan, mentioned that she didn’t like him “to be chopped into little pieces.” Manuellan insisted that Fanon’s “pamphlets” were “texts written in the service of a political movement, not works of philosophical reflection,” Shatz writes.

Yet this is precisely what the canonization of Fanon has too often done. Fanon’s psychiatric and philosophical writings merit renewed attention. But this attention should not come at the cost of gaining a fuller understanding of how Fanon’s anti-colonial thought builds on his earlier psychiatric studies or of his fraught and often conflicted role in the revolution. The Rebel’s Clinic is careful not to reduce Fanon’s life and thought to a single interpretation. Fanon’s advocacy of anti-colonial violence cannot be separated from his belief in a revolutionary humanism. For him, violence was a necessary step in the struggle—a kind of “shock therapy” that would restore confidence to the colonized mind. But he also understood that the traumas of the war would not disappear at independence.

Shatz does suggest that one aspect of Fanon’s work is most relevant for our world today. Fanon knew very well that the struggle for decolonization was only a first step toward the birth of a new humanity, which would allow both colonizer and colonized to finally be free. He never described exactly what the social revolution he so strongly believed in would look like, but he was certain that the poor and oppressed of the “Third World,” not liberals or the European working classes, would lead the way. This anti-colonial and universalist Fanon is, perhaps, the one Shatz would like us to remember most.

[cityandking]

blue 5, black 2, green 1, gold 2, silver 3 for minah & vesper 🥰

ty tabby!! // medieval heraldry oc asks

Does your OC believe that people should only believe or take inspiration from something if it is actually true? Or are there circumstances where a motivating lie is to be preferred to an awkward or uncomfortable truth?

MINAH — there are plenty of situations where a motivating lie is preferable to an uncomfortable truth (for example: no sir, I didn't touch that man's purse, but there was a shifty sort of fellow over thereabouts, you ought to talk to him). more broadly, she knows how much a lie (or a trick or a suggestion or even a misunderstanding) can inspire action, and she thinks, beyond any kinda of moral judgement or obligation, that it's just the way the world works. stories are powerful things, and she's not above using them for her own ends when she needs to VESPER — sometimes it bothers her how readily people will accept a lie (chiefly that she's some divine figure) over all sense and her own denial, but she can't deny it's a powerful motivator. she's well aware that what she believes people should or shouldn't do has little bearing on how they'll actually act, but she strives to tell the truth (or keep politely quiet) as much as she can. the exception to this comes when a lie will help protect people—like lying about a mage's location, for example. she's no narc

Has your OC always been fundamentally the same person? Or would someone from their past struggle to recognise the person they have become?

MINAH — absolutely not. as a kid she was way different from who she is now, and a lot of that change (though not all of it) was intentional. little minah would find it nearly impossible to recognize who she's become. (big minah has some pretty complicated feelings about that) VESPER — she's more or less the same. she's definitely grown up and grown into a version of herself she's proud of, but she's still recognizable. (her younger self would be so awed and proud and hopeful, and vesper feels a great deal of kindness for that little girl)

Does your OC feel comfortable expressing feelings of joy - do they laugh or smile easily? Or do they have a constantly stern or dour countenance? If so is this entirely genuine? Or something they feel they need to maintain for the sake of appearances?

MINAH — she doesn't have issues with expressing joy. she tends to default to more positive emotions: lots of teasing, smiles, jokes (especially jokes). her good humor comes easily and even honestly most of the time, but she also definitely uses it to mask deeper or more negative feelings. idk if it's possible to be honest without being genuine, but that's the line minah walks VESPER — she's very private with her joy, but that means when it sneaks out it tends to be entirely genuine. she's most open with the people she knows and trusts, even if it takes come coaxing to get her out of her shell, but when she's happy it's obvious. she kinda glows with it

Does your OC have any wishes or desires of which they are ashamed or otherwise wish to keep secret? Or do they loudly proclaim their every wish to those around them?

MINAH — some of the things minah wants most are the things she's most ashamed of, and she would never ever ever speak them aloud (or so she thinks; we've got 15 years of Blight to get through babygirl). she's happy to groan and gripe about things or express desires she considers safe (and/or expected), but good luck getting her to open up about anything truly personal VESPER — ashamed, not really, but definitely secret. she grew up (at home and also in the circle) in environments where wanting anything too openly was giving someone something to use against you later. it's constantly a shock to express a vague desire and have it fulfilled (I think josie, bull and varric are the best at reading between the lines. on the flip side, her relationship with cullen involves a lot of learning how to communicate clearly and openly in a way that's good for both of them, but especially for vesper)

Does your OC find it easy to be sincere when expressing their views or feelings? Or do they prefer to adopt an air of detached irony? If so, then why is this the case? Do they fear rejection or mockery by others?

MINAH — she kind of pendulums back and forth depending on the context. if it's about her own thoughts and feelings you can expect heaps of irony (it's the avoidance and paranoia and refusal to outwardly address any trauma she may or may not be carrying), but when she's talking to someone else (like talking to loras about his fathers' death and the power given to him to enact meaningful change; "I think it's possible to wish you could die of heartbreak" etc.) she can really buckle down and be sincere. it's just easier when it's outside herself. her inside stuff is such a mess she doesn't want anyone getting a peek at it VESPER — while slow to open up, she's very sincere about the things she fundamentally believes in (like mercy and justice and the belief that people can grow). she doesn't like saying things she doesn't mean; she'd rather just not say anything at all. she hates politics. thank the maker for josephine

[multistoty]

Josie had always found herself fond of the younger Grimes girl. She knew what it was like to be the quiet younger sister often eclipsed and relying on the elder. The only difference was Lizzie was her twin. Maybe it was the fact that Riley was closer to the med students age than her best friend. And Judith truly wanted the other girl to shine as she did. Riley was a bit shorter than the onyx haired girl with a smile that was a warm sweater on a cold day and a keen mischeif to her jewel toned eyes. Most people had eyes that showed nothing or what you wanted to see. The other woman's orbs were that of windows with depth that needed further investigation though powerfully honest in what their soul was made of. The kind of warrior heart that was wrapped in a soft outershell. It was enough to make Josette Olivia Saltzman's own heart act like a monster beating at the cage of her chest. Hard as she tries, the melody of their meeting runs through her mind on an endless loop, each time as surprisingly sweet as the last, like a lullaby, like a hymn, and she doesn't think she could ever get tired of hearing it. The sort of day dreams she had for the other girl may not be returned. The last thing she wanted was to burn this found family of hers into physical ashes. It’s all right to love someone who doesn’t love you back, as long as they’re worth you loving them. As long as they deserve it.  All the Saltzman girl had wanted was to reach out and touch another human being not just with her ivory hands but with her heart. The crimson haired girl was the kind of person that you wanted to spend every possible minute of the rest of your life with. The kind of woman who could be the inspiration to a reniassance painting with paint brush perfect features. And in her smile she see something more beautiful than the stars. Were Josie was sunshine, Riley was beautiful like a gray sky. beautiful, even though she didn't want to be. Josie had always wondered about raindrops. She wondered about how they're always falling down, tripping over their own feet, breaking their legs and forgetting their parachutes as they tumble right out of the sky toward an uncertain end. It's like someone is emptying their pockets over the earth and doesn't seem to care where the contents fall, doesn't seem to care that the raindrops burst when they hit the ground, that they shatter when they fall to the floor, that people curse the days the drops dare to tap on their doors. She was a raindrop in this new world figuring out her destination in the water cycle.As long as there was coffee in the world, how bad could things be? She had meant to meet both girls at the park for a sort of lazy saturday picnic, but something about the brooding elder couple had come up. It wasn't like she had a problem with being alone with the other. They had always gotten along easily. There was something majestic about the dancing morning sunlight as it filtered through the shade of trees on the cinnamon spiced locks of her hair. Lips in a smile that could break apart her spine. She supposed they were softer than a fresh snow fall. Hopefully, the blooming left overs of a blush did not fill the apples of her cheeks as much as the thoughts should agree. A gentle wave worried her hands in greeting before laying out on the tattered blanket as elegantly as a cat with much less stoic confidence. The cup in her hand stretched out to the other girl. She came bearing coffee from their favorite places and pastries with fillings as scarlet as the girl's hair. It was something Judith had begrudgingly picked from the pinterest board she sent her. "I come bearing gifts, little fox. As much as I will miss your sister, more for us. Besides, I am sincerely lacking in pop culture knowledge after spending hours in an emergency room for the night. Honestly, if it weren't for caffeine i would switch roles into the bed. We will let the happy couple share plaid shirts in peace."

@youthstclen​

[laufire]

gonna take advantage of you having anon on for the time being to ask you, inspired to your response about damon. i know lizzie is your favorite of the twins and of the twins and hope, what would you want changed in order to like josie more (by which i don't mean more so than lizzie, but rather more so than as she has been written)? and then as a second point, if you want to also address it, what would you want changed in order to ship hosie, i realize there may be some overlap between those 1/2

two questions, but the first i'd really like to know, if you are willing to answer! (the second is more of an idle curiosity since if i was ranking hope femslash/non-canon ships, penelope and cleo would be my personal top two but hizzie and hosie are the big two that get all the fandom time and energy and i know your opinion on hizzie already.) thank you, i always like to hear your opinions! 2/2

To be clear, I like Josie plenty already LOL, if admittedly less than Lizzie and, sometimes, Hope; my favourites after Lizzie were never a fixed list. That might come with a rewatch. But even so, Josie didn't fall past the top 5, in a show with plenty of likeable characters.

So I'd say Josie's personality wasn't a hindrance the way Damon's is LMAO. She certainly has her flaws and I sometimes found fandom's attitude towards her irksome, but that wasn't a problem with Josie. If anything, those flaws made her MORE interesting for me than the fanon version could ever be, AND they added to the twins' messy dynamic, which was my main focus in the first place.

The way she was written vis a vis Hope was often my biggest pet peeve, because she was just so... proppy. She didn't stand equal in a Doylist level to Lizzie; it would've been obviously besides the point to expect her to stand equal to Hope, the protagonist, and I didn't necessarily want her to fare better than she actually did because Lizzie was my ultimate fave... but it obviously speaks to my reaction to the character. I, simply put, like tough propositions, and Josie ultimately wasn't one. If she'd been, my reaction would've been different from the beginning.

The reason I didn't go for Hosie (although I lowkey enjoyed some moments of it, especially in season 1) is in a sense tied to it, although not fully. Josie being weak for Hope wouldn't automatically make it impossible for me to ship it, even if Josie was my favourite (see: Steroline, for example), but the Hope-Landon-Josie triangle truly killed any affection I had for the ship. Josie was SO SO miserable, and it felt as if the majority of the fandom was in denial about it, including so-called Josie fans/Hosie shippers. It really soured it for me.

So, really, if you eliminated that triangle, it could've arguably stayed as a low-key rareship in my arsenal. if nothing more. Still: the triangle and its development was a symptom of Josie's position vis a vis Hope. It could've been replaced by a different one that STILL put me off the ship, who knows. On the other hand, triangles designed to put down one girl on the "objectivity" of male opinion ARE the bane of my existence...

ETA: I definitely still enjoyed Hosie as part of the girls' trio multifaceted dynamic, but that's another story lol, and more about the twins than about anything shippy.

[userkass]

hey, friend! it's ☃️ again and oh yes, i'm all for naming the cute snowman. i'm thinking we can keep it simple and sweet, like perhaps snowy and frosty are good names? but i'm open to suggestions if you have any!

and yes, i love getting to know new fcs so thank you so much for that list. i'll make good use of it. and you've sparked my curiosity, so can you maybe tell me about the current and favorite characters you write? i'd love to get to know more of them! -- yours truly, ☃️

hello!! <3 frosty is always a solid name for a snowman, in norway for some reason we call him kalle, likely has to do with the name fitting the song best. who knows? it's also close to our word for cold. we'll go for frosty, because it's a name i can remember. i also think my main blog is up and running again, even though it's fun having this blog as well!! you're very welcome! me too, though! hmm, this is tricky cause i write a lot of characters. not as many as i was a while back, but i'll try to list a couple of my current favorites that i'm writing over in an rp! i'll put them under a read more though as knowing me it'll get long.

charlie fortier ( mercedes morris ) - her fc has changed quite a bit throughout the years and though she originated in the hp universe which might give a bit of an idea as to how long i've had her lmao since i can't actually remember the last time i rp'd it, she has changed quite a bit since. she is the main owner of her an ice cream shop that has been passed down through generations and she loves concocting new flavors and will test out every flavor once. she's very gay and is currently happily dating bea...after the longest slow burn. together they have a few dogs. in this particular rp, she happens to be a water sprite fae.

evan rathod ( summer bishil ) - another one of my beloved muses that i've managed to revamp, evan is quite different in the sense that they prefer to avoid people. her story has changed quite a bit in this rp, but they are a fire dragon who just escaped years of captivity and are now trying to adjust to being free and find their footing once more. they have a younger sister whom they absolutely adore and would do anything for. in the rp prior to this one, that was slice of life, so no dragons, they fell in love with an oliver jackson cohen fc and it's perhaps one of my favorite ships to write.

jocelyn lao ( jessie mei li ) - my little wannabe jeff goldblum in jurassic park. josie is an archaeologist that is very much someone that walks to the beat of her own drum. she loves reptiles and dinosaurs and has managed to create their own sort of sanctuary in the backyard where she's drawn inspiration from the jurassic park movies with the few reptiles they have rescued. they are a delight to write.

silas sanguis ( pedro pascal ) - admittedly, his backstory is a little inspired by the mikaelsons with some twists, but basically he's an old af vampire with an older brother who happens to be the leader of the vampires on the island he's currently inhabiting. silas doesn't necessarily care for or even enjoy politics, but he definitely takes advantage of the perks. his passion is wine and he's spent centuries perfecting various types of blood infused wines.

obsidian kincaid coldwell ( thomas doherty ) - cade, oh cade. he's definitely my current villain, as i have a tendency to always write one. he comes from a line of wixen that have the belief that they are the superior supernatural species. he is the second oldest of his siblings, just after his twin essie ( who i also play ) and was the favorite up until his brother was born as his seer gift was seen as less than to his brother's necromancy abilities. this, alongside with his family being responsible for his first love's death has resulted in him becoming very much an asshole and someone that does what he wants for his own gain. he's also currently trying to figure out a way to make wixen immortal.

It was hard to narrow it down, because I do have quite a few, but this was fun. ( my current muse count is 35, so i will spare you )

[freakyunderclublights]

not to be embarrasing but i read the entirety of ur fanfic in a day. Thank u for taking the time to write a masterpiece BTW!!!! I wanted to ask bc its been on my mind. Why did you decide to make the characters the way you wrote them? im a writer to and i think the way you wrote them is very....interesting. it lowkey inspires me to want to develop characters the same. i was just rly curious about that. I can't wait to read ch.9!

Okay, first off, you are super cute and should not be embarrassed. Thank you for reading my fic! And double thanks for asking me a question that puts my brain cells to work. I'll try to answer this question as concisely as I can because I can literally write a ten-page essay on this.

Given that my fanfic follows the canon timeline, I really had to look at how the characters behaved in each scene between the movie and try to fill in the gaps. That meant trying to figure out who these characters were before the events of the movie even started. So here's my breakdown/headcanon analysis of each.

Isabel: She's been with Jeff since Freshman year (my assumption) and has been extremely popular ever since. Her world revolves around him and being the most popular girl in school. Popularity can be fun, but in 'The Filler,' I wanted to focus on its downsides. The downsides include the anxiety that comes with everyone knowing you + your business, plus the expectations to perform or play a role. I don't think Isabel was in a happy place when the movie started, so I really tried to build off of that. I see her as a character who might yearn for more than her routine, someone who might yearn for a lover for whom she doesn't have to compete for their love, a girl who yearns to be accepted for who she truly is. This brings a new question, though: who is Isabel? She's portrayed as Jeff's "cute babygirl" girlfriend, a princess, someone who needs saving or someone else to protect her. She also doesn't seem to have a lot of friends beside Brittany… why? She is super quick to jump into bed with Josie after only really knowing her for a short time. I sense she is someone who has codependent tendencies, and as a writer, that is an extremely fun challenge to write.

Josie: I honestly don't think I have strayed too far from the canon representation of Josie. She's unpopular, nerdy, and has had a crush on Isabel forever. I think the biggest things I had to build off of her were her relationship with PJ and her long crush on Isabel. PJ is respectfully not the nicest person, so how does Josie, someone who seems relatively nicer, stay friends with someone like that? How does Josie have a crush on Isabel for so long without ever talking to her? What's brewing inside of her that makes her snap at PJ once their secret is outed? It was those questions that shaped how I wrote her.

PJ: PJ is a super fun character to write because she is very evidently flawed. She's willing to lie, cheat, and hurt people to get what she wants, as long as she looks "cool." She reminds me a lot of Greg Heffley from 'Diary of a Wimpy Kid.' I think she acts this way because she struggles with being her true self, so she tries to project a "cooler" version of herself. She avoids being vulnerable throughout the movie, and I think she does that because she may have been bullied for being herself before. Somewhere along the line, she learned that she had to pretend. So for this fic, I wanted to put her in situations that would force her to be authentic, make her have no choice but to be vulnerable.

Brittany: To write Brittany, I kept thinking about that quote, "My identity is completely attached to hers," and tried to think about how I would feel being Isabel's best friend. To be a bystander to my friend who is in an on-and-off again relationship with a shitty guy, to follow my friend as she wants to join a fight club, to watch as my friend slowly gets more infatuated with Josie… relatively soon after breaking up with her boyfriend. Underneath Brittany's "chill" facade, I like to think that she is pretty perceptive to what is going on and also follows Isabel around to protect her. I like to think that she is to Isabel what Tim is to Jeff. Like Tim, she is perceptive, more assertive, and will do whatever it takes to protect her best friend. Why she feels so loyal to Isabel? Well, we're going to explore that too lol.

I know this is pretty lengthy, but I hope this sheds light on my character development process lol.

[ell-vellan]

The Two Halla of Skyhold

My contribution to @dalish-appreciation-week Day 4: Halla. A little side scene loosely spun off my Bull/Lavellan longfic on Ao3, but you don’t have to read it to read this.

Thanks for hosting this event and for the inspiration! 

Rated: G

Word count: ~2,600

Inquisitor Ellawyn Lavellan visits Skyhold’s newest residents under cover of darkness, musing on the nature of fate, culture, and stories while mending some sore feelings with Solas.

--------

Inquisitor Lavellan crossed Skyhold’s moonlit grounds with silent footsteps. It had been a week since she was able to check on Skyhold’s newest residents. They would be asleep, surely, but Ellawyn wished to see them all the same. 

The pair of halla brought from the Dales had taken to bedding down in a shared stall in the stables. According to Master Dennet’s reports, they’d settled in fairly well for animals not used to a roof over their heads or walls fencing them in. And luckily, they hadn’t caused quite so much trouble as they had the first day they’d arrived. 

They didn't like the stable hands. Indeed, they seemed suspicious of all shemlen, though the smaller they were, the better. They liked children, though – elven children especially. They alone could get close enough to pet or feed them by hand.

Ellawyn herself was too busy to be their keeper.  Master Dennet was used to horses who could be broken and made to obey orders. So a handful of elven youths had formed into a ragtag team to care for them, and Ellawyn had found room in the budget of Josie’s ledgers to ensure they earned a fair wage for it, too.

Not that the halla needed much care. They were wild things, after all, not the domesticated halla used to living side by side with elves. But if they were to continue to live within the grounds, they would need to learn their manners. The pair had quickly learned how to let themselves out of their stalls in the morning and then freely roamed during the day, finding their own places to graze. 

And that of course was the problem. They had already raided the kitchens twice and Skyhold’s herb garden thrice. Once, they’d made a grand entrance into the main hall at dinner. Ellawyn did not have time to take more meetings with angry gardeners and cooks and certainly no more patience to deal with upset nobles. 

A permanent solution needed to be put into place.

As she approached the stables, she found the door ajar, a lantern inside lit, and Solas, his back to her, leaning his forearms over the halla’s stable door, watching them. 

Ellawyn stopped. Perhaps he hadn’t heard her approach. 

She began to back quietly away.

"You needn't go, Inquisitor. I was just leaving."

He’d caught her. Wonderful.

Ellawyn hadn't exactly shunned Solas since they'd kissed in the Fade and he’d immediately called it a mistake. By mutual agreement, they'd let the matter drop. But the friendship they'd formed was awkward now.

Ellawyn didn't know how his opinion of her might have changed. She wasn't sure what she thought of him, either. Had it only been that she was lonely and he was the closest thing she had to someone familiar, someone she could truly trust in this hostile and unfamiliar world? 

She wasn't so lonely now.

Perhaps it was time to mend this wound. 

His back straightened as she came up beside him. “You don’t have to leave.”

He turned his profile toward her with a soft smile as she approached. “Sleep evades you this night as it does me, I take it?”

“Most nights, as of late." Ellawyn rubbed at her tired eyes. “How are our guests? Behaving themselves?"

They were peaceful enough now, asleep curled against each other in a bed of clean hay. Two halves of a furry white circle, their noses tucked into each other against the night’s chill. 

“I’ve had a good report from Dirthalas today. It seems he has a gift with these creatures. They do as he asks, just as with you.” 

“I’m glad to hear it. And your other students, hahren?” she teased gently. “Are they taking to their studies well?”

Solas winced a little at the title. He was older than she was; she never could tell how much. But he certainly wasn’t elder-aged. “Well enough. I…do what I can to remind them of the old ways. Some remember better than others.”

Solas always spoke that way. As though the collective knowledge of the elves wasn't simply lost or deliberately stolen, but forgotten from their very blood.

He had been teaching the few elven children of Skyhold, many of them from crowded Orlesian alienages, the basics of the Elvish language, some of whom practiced it with the halla. He’d even helped the children name them: Hellathen, “noble struggle," who had nearly caved in the ribs of one of the stable boys on their first day. And Vashiral, “freedom journey,” who was more often than not led by his stomach to the few and far-spaced patches of grass that grew around Skyhold’s grounds.

“Dirthalas is a bit young to be a halla keeper, but perhaps in time...” The meaning of the boy’s name hit her tired mind, and Ellawyn shook her head. “His parents named him aptly. I didn’t know another Dalish had arrived, after Loranil.” 

Solas eyed her strangely. “Dirthalas is from Halamshiral. He came here as a servant to one of the Orlesian knights, with no knowledge of his parentage. The name is one he chose himself."

Ellawyn’s heart twisted with guilt and grief. So much hurt within Skyhold’s walls - and beyond it, beyond her power to heal. So many souls within her care. She used to know the stories of everyone whose lives she shared. She used to learn them, write them in her heart. It used to matter. 

Solas was gazing down at the halla, looking pensive and distant as he sometimes did. 

"I didn't know your expertise extended to halla keeping," Ellawyn said, forcing light-heartedness in her voice to mask the deepening chasm in her chest.

Solas shook himself back to the present, a touch of self-effacing humor in his tone. "Ah, I'm afraid this is an area where you are the master, and I am the student."

Ellawyn frowned. Every moment with Solas since their first meeting, he had held the upper hand in knowledge, as though he himself had written the book on 'The Ways of the Elves.'  He’d always been frank, though ever polite, about his disregard for the Dalish ways. While she had clung to every scrap of her identity that she could in this place that sought to scrub her clean of everything the Chantry found distasteful.

The dismissal of a culture she deeply loved from a man who she otherwise held in such esteem only made her more eager to hold stubbornly onto it. And that much more alone. 

“Your notes on their care were instrumental,” Solas continued. “I myself know next to nothing about the practicalities of halla-tending. Only the history and lore.”

“They are vital to the Dalish,” she countered mildly, and he acknowledged this with a small nod. 

“I did not think mages were put in charge of the halla. Should you not have been your Keeper’s First?”

“I was. But before that, I was an apprentice halla-keeper.”

He looked surprised. “You must have been a very young apprentice. Most magic abilities manifest in childhood or early adolescence.”

“They couldn’t keep me away from the halla pen, so they decided they might as well make me useful,” Ellawyn said, smiling. “I was cleaning hooves, giving baths, assisting with foaling, and shaping horns from the time I could walk.”

Solas chuckled quietly. Hellathen’s ear flickered in her sleep, and Vashiral shuffled his large head to be closer to her. “To think you rose from such circumstances to become what you are now.”

Ellawyn sighed. “Most days, I would prefer shoveling manure.”

He laughed fully at this, and the warmth of it was gratifying. 

But Ghilan’nain was not only the Mother of Halla. She was the Navigator, and she had set Ellawyn on this path. Reluctantly or not, she would walk it, as she must.

“You treat them with great respect. And with much more autonomy than such creatures are usually afforded."

“It’s our way.” Our way, she emphasized in her head. The Dalish way. “Difficult to understand, perhaps, unless you get to know them. There is something about them, a string that connects us. Like the Fereldans and their mabari. I feel it, but…can’t explain it.”

“You don’t have to.” He wore a small smile, and she wondered if perhaps he was starting to understand it himself. He leaned back casually against the barn wall with arms folded. "I can't help wondering why they are still here. What do you intend to do with them?"

"They stay because they feel safe. But they may leave whenever they wish. I'll not kick them out, but neither will I make slaves of free creatures."

 His eyes. They knew much, saw much, just like Iron Bull's.

She sometimes felt like he was studying her, as though she was some new species of spirit he encountered in the Fade that he wished to understand but yet did not. Part of her thought it was the Mark. Another part…was still undecided. 

What did he see in her that he was not sharing?

"Of course. But they did not come here of their own free will."

She sighed. "That is a long story.”

"I've been known to enjoy stories, at times." There was a twinkle in his eye now.

Ellawyn rolled her eyes. "Suffice to say, do not leave requisition forms stamped with the Herald’s seal laying around where a former Qunari spy who has memorized my signature might slip one into his pocket."

"Ah.” One corner of Solas’ mouth quirked up. “A practical joke, then?”

"I believe he meant it as a gift, in his own…Bull-ish way."

A furrow between his brows now as he studied her more thoroughly. There was no smile on his face or in his voice now. "It surprises me that The Iron Bull would decide to do such a thing. He is a very deliberate man. Why halla, of all things, when he could requisition limitless quantities of ale or a giant sword made of dawnstone?” There was that tone of his, that curious lilt in his voice, which now turned cautious. “I imagine it has something to do with the vallaslin you wear. For Ghilan'nain?”

Ellawyn felt her jaw go tight. This was a sore subject between them. Solas had ever been flippant about that which mattered most in her life. She used to argue with him about it. Now, she no longer saw the point. She had neither energy nor the will.

She had never told Solas about the meaning behind her vallaslin. But she had told Iron Bull. 

And in that moment, Solas realized it...and why.

Solas, sensing her tension, pushed away from the wall. "Obviously, halla mean a great deal to you, if Bull thought it worth the trouble of forging a form on your behalf.” Solas lowered his voice. "And that you saw fit to trust someone outside your culture with such personal knowledge.” 

But, as Solas so often reminded, he was not of her culture.

Ellawyn could have been offended. But he didn't seem jealous; only regretful. 

Despite all the talks they used to have about the Fade, and magic, and ancient elves, he had never seemed swayed that anything Dalish was worth his notice. She’d swallowed that hurt for a long time, until she simply couldn’t anymore.

She had been made to feel ashamed of her face and her ears and her culture, day in and day out, from strange shemlens who wanted her to risk her life to save them. She would not abide it from a friend. 

Finally, it seemed, he understood this.

Solas sighed and bowed his head. "Ir abelas, lethellan."

"Why are you sorry, Solas?"

He looked up at her through his lashes, expression contrite. His voice was soft. "I believe you know."

Ellawyn supposed that, for a man called Pride, this was more than she would have expected.

Just then, the halla stirred in their pen. Vashiral unfolded his legs, blinking sleepily. He sniffed the air around Ellawyn, as she smiled and held out her hand. “Hungry, are you?” 

“Always,” Solas answered for him.

Vashiral stood and nosed her palm. She’d scrounged more nuts for them from the kitchens, and he took them with infinite gentleness from her hand.

“You see? It’s in your blood,” she teased Solas. “The elves and the halla share a connection beyond words. We can understand each other across the boundary of physical form, if we allow them a chance to speak to us in their own ways, and grant them the respect of listening well.”

Solas seemed taken aback. “That is…very wise. Perhaps it is you who should be the hahren after all, Inquisitor.”

She wrinkled her nose and laughed. “Please do not say that again for at least fifty years, if you value our friendship.”

Solas met her eyes with a quiet smile. “I do.”

Ellawyn stroked Vashiral’s nose. They’d been her favorite animal since childhood for a reason: the tall, gracefully branching arcs of his horns; his large dark eyes. They were gentle and intelligent and ferocious when necessary. Beautiful.

She had missed them terribly.

“You may not be the halla of my clan,” she whispered to Vashiral. “And we are not your herd. But perhaps we can be new friends, yes? Would you like that?” She laughed as he nearly pushed her backwards with the force of his head, nosing into her pockets for more food. 

Bull had been right, of course. It was a comfort to have the halla here, this link to her home and her culture that no one could take or deny. They were undoubtedly Dalish. Unabashedly, unashamedly Dalish, just as she was, and though the Inquisition was a human organization backed by the powers of human nations and human religion, the Inquisitor was Dalish, and she would not let them forget it. Anyone who came to Skyhold would see halla wandering free, protected by elvish children reclaiming their culture. 

Ellawyn knew over the decades her story would be altered by each person who told it. Some would alter it on purpose, to suit an agenda. Some details would simply be lost to time. Important names of those she held dear might be forgotten. Even her own. 

One never could predict which choices, even the smallest or seemingly inconsequential, would send ripples of fate colliding into each other. A rash choice to bring in two unnecessary animals because they might make a friend happy. A hopeful choice to let them stay, anyway. Minor choices, in the scheme of those she’d had to make lately, but…

Perhaps a boy without a history of his own who called himself "one who speaks to the earth" would one day pass down the story of the two halla of Skyhold he once knew. And perhaps in some faraway places, history would remember that the Dalish were here, as they ever were, weaving their tales into the tapestry of time.  

Nobles would suffer the occasional invasion of their rooms, Josie would allot space in the budget for extra hay, and gardeners would have to grow a few extra pots of herbs, but they would make do. 

And perhaps come spring, she thought, with the sudden understanding of Hellathen’s fierce defensiveness and the protective energy of her mate, there would be a third halla at Skyhold.

Just like her, they'd been dragged into the Inquisition against their will…but just like her, they'd taken a look around at the people here, and decided maybe they were worth trusting. And they'd decided to stay.

Aneth ara, she’d told them when they arrived. Even the way the Dalish greeted each other was a reassurance. In the culture of a people without a permanent home, they welcomed each other by saying This is my safe place. It can be yours, too.

Maybe this could be a new family. A safe place to start again. 

For all of them.

[tvdoriginal]

my heart is broken.

[character exit goodbye & spoilers ahead].

I can't believe that I am sitting here, writing this. I never in my life imagined that this would ever happen. It never crossed my mind.

Last night, the world said goodbye to Kaylee Bryant; our resident Josette Olivia Saltzman. The news literally brought me to tears and I gasped out a confused "why are you leaving? why are you leaving me?"

When the show started (and even before then) I had my eyes on Josie and she quickly became my favorite. Not long after, so did Kaylee. Now, initially I thought she was leaving to do other projects. That is not the case.

In her career yes, she will have other offers and opportunities, but we all know Kaylee. We all know how much of a fan of the tvdverse she is and how excited she was to be apart of the show. Unfortunately, there are some people who work on Legacies that have made things difficult for Kaylee which is the reason she chose to leave.

It hurts me, it pains me deeply and saddens me that we are losing her & the character she brought to life. But it hurts immensely knowing that she left due to horrible conditions. No one knows the exact reason(s), but there is speculation on how she wanted things to go with Josette and not being heard. I truly hope we get to the bottom of this because it is unfair and honestly cruel treatment. No one deserves to be feel that way, and leave something that is so special & once in a lifetime.

I want to thank Kaylee Marie Kaneshiro Bryant for everything. For being herself, playing Josette Olivia Saltzman, for being an inspiration to her fans and especially those who want to/have come out. For being true to herself, sticking up for herself, and making what could've been a hard decision.

I will never forget anything you've done & I will continue to love and support you no matter what you do or where you go. You are my heart. I will love you forever. I can only hope that this won't happen again to you or to anyone else.

I'll miss you. I already do. And I'm truly sorry that you didn't even get a proper goodbye on the show.

xx

*gifs are not mine*

[josiesopenheart]

The Proposition

The Way I Loved You Prologue

Pairing: Ethan Ramsey x F!MC (Josie Kingsley)

Series: The Way I Loved You

Summary: Josie makes a tantalising proposition to Ethan about how to spend their two months together before she joins the diagnostics team

Warning(s): Sex references, some swearing

Rating: T

Word Count: 683

A/N: So this chapter is super short (sorry) but this new series was inspired by this edit and this one I made almost a year ago but I’ve never had to the courage to write it before, but I’m doing it now. Is it wise to start a new series while I already have one ongoing? No? Am I doing it anyway? Yes! And yes before you ask this series is named after The Way I loved You by Taylor Swift but let’s not act surprised that I named yet another fic after a Taylor Swift song

Also I didn’t proof read this so I apologise for any mistakes!

The feel of her skin on his, the sound of her moans, the pleasure of her nails scraping down his back are embedded in his brain. And he cannot get them out.

She is all he has thought about. The last few days he hasn’t been able to think straight, all his thoughts consumed by one thing.

Her.

But he is pulled from his thoughts by their very perpetrator walking into his office.

“Hey, I know I should’ve knocked but I wasn’t sure you’d let me in if I did.”

“Why wouldn’t I let you in?” He says, genuinely curious as to why Josie believes he would be mad at her.

She shrugs. “I don’t know, I assume you’re pretty pissed at me joining the team”.

“I am not angry with you Jo, I’m angry with myself. I knew you joining the team was always a possibility, now made even worse with me as director, and I still allowed myself to…” He trails off, shaking his head.

“I get it. You regret sleeping with me which does hurt, I’m not going to lie but-”.

“No, of course not”. He interrupts, rushing to her side and cradling her head in his hands. “I don’t regret a single thing we did. I just wish we didn’t have to stop.”

“We don’t have to stop”. He raises his brow, seeing the sudden mischievous sparkle suddenly appearing in her eyes. “You said, we had to stop because I’ll soon be on the diagnostics team with you as my direct supervisor but that’s two months away. So, we have two glorious months to do whatever we want”. She looks up at him with the most invitingly seductive smile he’s ever seen. “So how about my place tonight? What do you say?”

“Jo, it’s a bad idea”.

“No, it’s an amazing idea. We get two months, starting tonight, to get it all out of our system! It’s perfect! I mean I don’t know about you but two nights just isn’t enough for me. So if i can’t have you the way I truly want, then this is my compromise”.

“There is no compromise, there can’t be”.

“So starting tonight, my place at 6?” She says, ignoring his objections.

Ethan opens his mouth to say something but Josie places a finger of his lips, silencing him.

“And before you say it, no my friends won’t be there. They traded shifts to help me with my trial the other day so they’re all working tonight. It’ll just be me and you, all night long”.

The way she says those last three words makes him want to throw his morals out of the window, pick her up and take her right there on his desk.

Sensing his hesitation, Josie rushes to reassure him. “You don’t have to answer right now. If you show up then, well I have my answer and you know what will happen. And if you don’t, then I also have my answer”.

Josie raises on her tiptoes to lightly kiss him on the cheek then walks out his office with a seductive sway of her hips, leaving him behind to consider her proposal.

Josie prepares for Ethan’s arrival. Pouring the wine and plating up the takeout, blindly hoping he will believe it is a home cooked meal.

Putting on her best lingerie and doing her hair with the slight curls that she knows he loves.

She seductively perches herself on the edge of the sofa and waits for him.

And she waits.

And waits.

But he never shows.

Instead, he is across town at Boston Logan International Airport.

Her name, accompanied by the most beautiful smile from Miami he has ever seen flashes on his screen.

But he doesn’t answer the call, he can’t bring himself to answer it.

He can’t bring himself to her her voice. To hear the pain he is so sure would be laced in it. The pain that he has caused her.

Fighting the urge to run home to her, he reluctantly shoves him phone in his pocket and boards his flight to the Amazon

Thank you so much for reading!!❤️

A/N: I don’t why I keep putting Ethan and Josie through so much pain, I love them really ahahaha

Tags: @blossomanarchy @sophxwithers @potionsprefect @openheartfan @queencarb @queenmiranda-01 @starryeyedrookie @natureblooms24 @quixoticdreamer16 @lacroixrookie @checkurwindow @cordonianruby @barbean @binny1985 @mia143 @liaromancewriter @genevievemd @mysticalgalaxysstuff @a-crepusculo @headoverheelsforramsey @izzyourresidentlawyer let me know if you want to be added/ removed from the taglist

@openheartfanfics @choicesficwriterscreations

[black-emporium-exchange]

How to sign up for Black Emporium!

Yes sweet nuglets, it's that time of year again: Time to sign up for Black Emporium!

CLICK HERE TO SIGN-UP!

Helpful Links:

How to Guide || Requests on Ao3 || Tagset || Nominations Spreadsheet || Request Database || Parent Collection (All Past Years)

Main hubs:

@black-emporium-exchange || black_emporium @ Dreamwidth || blackemporiumex on Twitter || AO3 Subcollection || Discord

Signups end: July 17, 2021 @ 8:00PM EDT || Countdown

CHANGES THIS YEAR

- We now have a brand new Request Database this year! Unlike previous years where mods had to hand copy requests into a separate Google Doc, the Database will automatically populate who and what people are requesting. (Should come in handy when writing treats or looking for inspiration.)

A STEP-BY-STEP GUIDE TO SIGN-UPS BELOW THE CUT:

1. Sign in to Ao3

If you don’t have an Ao3 account, contact the mods for help!

2. Go to the Black Emporium signup field (link)

3. Scroll to the “Requests” field

There are several different components of this field:

Relationship:

Enter one, two, or three approved relationships that you would like to see in a fanwork created for you. This field will autosuggest approved pairings. If your pairing does not show up, it may be that you have fallen victim to a known bug of Ao3's that we cannot fix, wherein pairings in a tagset do not autofill. If this happens, simply type it in as it appears in the tagset.

Additional Tags: You can request fanfic, fanart, or both. Selecting "any" is treated the same as selecting both.

Letter: If you have written a letter on an external website (such as Tumblr/Wordpress/Dreamwidth/Google Docs), you may link it here.

Description: Here is where you can provide additional detail about what you would like to see in a fanwork, both in general and for specific pairings. Good things to include (in this box, a letter, or both) are general likes and dislikes, preferred content rating, and Do Not Wants. Please remember to put your DNW's (do not wants) in the Ao3 sign up form - we can only take action if you put your DNW in your Ao3 sign-up form because it is the only thing we can absolutely guarantee that your creator will be able to access.

Remember that anyone who creates fanwork for you must respect your Do Not Wants. If you do not enter anything into this box, and you do not have a link to a letter, we will assume that means you are okay with anything for the specified pairing(s). If you have any preferences or things you do not want, we would encourage you to add them. It makes the process smoother for all involved.

Here are some things commonly put in the description box:

Likes/Wants:

- Frequently it can be considered helpful to your author or artist if they have some idea of what you like to see, and what you don't. For example:

I love F!Adaar/Sera because I think the idea of them merrily pranking their way around Skyhold is so much fun. Please don't write me something sad about them.

Do Not Wants:

- Stuff that makes you uncomfortable, or just plain stuff that is Not Your Thing. While the Black Emporium does not believe in kink shaming or otherwise insulting people for their own personal taste, we do want people to let their artists or authors know what their limits are. You don't have to give any reasons for this; "no x/y/z" gives your creator plenty of info to discern where your limits are.

We can only take action if someone writes you something against your DNWs if it is in your sign-up.

Prompts:

Prompts can be just about anything, but they're meant to be ideas that you'd like to see that can help give your artist or author something to work off of. Sometimes this can be a prompt or a question you'd like explored (for example: What if Solas found himself falling for M!Trevelyan? How would he feel about potentially falling for a human?) or an idea you'd love to see (Josie and M!Cadash snuggled up in front of a fire, please!) or just a few words of inspiration (Leliana/Josephine - secrets, lies, ravens).

Details about your character(s):

It is fairly common for people to give basic descriptions of their characters if it is a character where their appearance or personality may vary (ex: Wardens/Hawkes/Inquisitors), particularly if fanart is requested. These descriptions can be very basic indeed (ex: purple hawke), or extremely detailed (ex: This is Celeste Trevelyan, she loves her squad more than life itself, pink hair, dusky-rose skin, built like she could bench press you six ways from sunday).

Bucket Requests:

You may also use the description field to note additional pairings that you would be willing to receive. You may find this option helpful if you are willing to consider different Warden or Inquisitor backgrounds for your specified pairing that have been nominated. You are limited to an additional ten pairings specified in this manner. Please fill out the form entirely before filling in pairings manually in the description; those that you fill in in the relationship field (the first 30) will take priority.

Things you should not put in the description field:

“I would like anything but nasty [kink]. I think people who write that are gross and nasty.”

Please do not insult people who like something you dislike. It’s Not For You, and That’s Okay. “No [kink]” expresses this much better than a long explanation of why you don’t like [kink].

“I’m only choosing this to get to three nominations. Please don’t write it.”

While we know someone who signs up for a, b and z may want a and/or b more than z, but please don’t scream to your author or artist that what you may well match on is something you don’t want as much as other pairings. Writing something like this also reduces your chance at treats as well.

“Even though I said I wanted M!Solavellan, I’m fine with F!Solavellan too if you like that better.”

Please don’t tell people that you’d be alright with non-nominated pairings, as fics with only non-nominated pairings cannot be added to the collection.

Minimums and Maximums in Requests:

You are required to fill out a minimum of three request fields (Required: Relationship, Additional Tags; Optional: Letter, Description). Remember that you may put in one OR two relationships per request field, so the maximum number of pairings that you can list in this manner is thirty. Remember also that you must fill out at least 3 request fields, so if you fill 2 out with 3 requests in each "request box", Ao3 will still want you to add one more -- it's a good rule of thumb to fill at least three out with one request, then double up as you wish.

4. Continue to the “Offers” field

There are several different components of this field:

Relationship:

Enter one, two, or three approved relationships that you would like to see in a fanwork created for you. This field will autosuggest approved pairings. If your pairing does not show up, it may be that you have fallen victim to a known bug of Ao3's that we cannot fix, wherein pairings in a tagset do not autofill. If this happens, simply type it in as it appears in the tagset. If it continues to give an error, please drop us a comment with the pairing so we can figure out what's going on. You also have the option to select any relationship.

By selecting “Any Relationship,” that means that you are willing to write or draw fanwork for, literally, ANY of the approved pairings.

The only limitation we will accept will be be a limitation of what category of relationship you want to create for: eg, Any F/F, Any M/M, Any F/M, Any Multi, Any Other, or Any Nonbinary. Anything else WILL BE REJECTED. You may NOT use this option to say, for example, “Any Cullen pairing”. This option is for any and all of the approved pairings in your designated category/categories. Do not use this option unless you are sure that any is truly what you want.

Additional Tags:

You can offer to create fanfic, fanart, or both. Selecting "any" is treated the same as selecting both.

Comments for mods:

Here is where you can provide additional detail about what you will and won’t create. As with your requests, you can provide general likes and dislikes as well as things that you absolutely will not do. If there is someone signed up you absolutely cannot stand, please write "don't match me to x" here; we won't ask details, we just won't match and this will be a fully confidential field. If you hate nugs, put it here, and we'll make sure you get at least one nug-free prompt and, ideally, a nug-free sign-up. We want you to have an assignment you'll be happy about, so if you've got something that would be triggering for you to create for, let us know. We can only take action based on our own knowledge, so the more information we have the better we can try to match you with what you really want. If you do not enter anything into this box, we will assume that means you are okay with anything for the specified pairing(s) selected. If you have any preferences or do not wants, we would encourage you to add them. It makes the process smoother for all involved. None of the mods will blab over whatever you write; we just want you to have the best time possible with your assignment.

Minimums and Maximums in Offers:

You are required to fill out a minimum of three offer fields (Required: Fandom, Relationship, Additional Tags; Optional: Comments to mods). Remember that you may put in one or two relationships per request field, so the maximum number of pairings that you can list in this manner is twenty. Remember also that you must fill out at least 3 offer fields, so if you fill 2 offer fields out with 2 offers in each "box", Ao3 will still want you to add one more offer field even though you have one over the minimum required amount of offers -- it's a good rule of thumb to fill at least three offer fields, each with one offer, then go back and double up or not, as you wish.

Bucket Offers:

You may also use the comments to mod field to note additional pairings that you would be willing to write if you have already filled thirty slots. You may find this option helpful if you are willing to consider different Warden or Inquisitor backgrounds for your specified pairing. You are limited to an additional ten pairings specified in this manner. Once again, those filled in the actual relationship: tags will take priority over those written in, so choose which pairing goes where carefully!

A Note on Matching

Black Emporium runs on OR matching, which means that you will match on one relationship out of the ones that you offer and request. You are guaranteed to match on ONE relationship; you may match on more, you may not. For your assignment, you can write what you matched on OR you can write any other couple on their sign-up form. You will only have to write or draw for ONE request, not all of them. The minimums will be one piece of artwork or one 1,000 word fic.

[teabights]

Cigarettes out the Window

Summary: Josie, senior, buys from Eddie Munson, her long term crush.

Pair: Eddie Munson / OC

Inspiration from this tiktok, hense the title.

Warning: Drug Use/Abuse, absent father

Word Count: 6,593

"Eddie Munson!" Josie greeted the 20-year-old with a smile.

"Yeah, what do you need, sweetheart?" His voice was smooth like butter.

"Hey, do you have any oxys?" Her voice dropped to a whisper as they were standing in the school hallway.

"Oxys? Jesus…" He started.

"Listen, I have like fifty, however many oxys that'll get me, I'll get it." Josie said with a smile.

"Listen, I don't usually have oxys in my box, not a lot of people ask for them, so once I sold all I had, I didn't get more. Let me ask my guy after school and I can let you know this evening." Eddie informed her.

"Do you have anything else?" She asked.

"I only have three joints right now. I am low on supplies, my guy has been out of town." He spoke.

"Fine." She said with a small huff.

Her eyes wandered over the man's chocolatey brown eyes. They made her heart melt. His eyes always were so inviting. She leaned against the locker, letting her eyes linger for a second too long because Eddie started to smirk.

"Do you have a staring problem or what?" Eddie asked.

"Your eyes are pretty, shut up Munson…" She snapped back, letting a blush creep onto her cheeks.

"Ah, you think my eyes are pretty. Isn't that sweet? And your eyes, princess, are cold and icy. Below freezing." He made it theatrical for her.

"Oh Edward, that almost sounds like you think about my eyes a lot. Like maybe when they look up at you when my li-" she started to tease, but at last the bell rang to signal the passing period had started. "Call me later."

Eddie couldn't believe where she was going with that, the slight strain that appeared in his pants was going to be a hard one to forget. "I will."

They departed from each other. They walked to their separate classes. Josie had to endure listening to her math teacher babble on about the lesson, which she already had her homework done for. Math was her strong suit. Math and pharmaceutical math, so she could correctly medicate herself with drugs and not kill herself. Her eyes had wandered to the big window and she watched the tree sway slightly in the small autumn breeze.

"Ms Wood, would you care to join the class mentally today?" Her math teacher asked.

"It's 47. The answer is 47. You just add 322 to 101, divide it then by 9 and you get 47. It's simple algebra." Josie answered without moving her eye from the window.

"Yes, very good Ms Wood. Would you happen to know how to solve number six from the homework assignment." She asked.

"Number six was easy." Josie's eyes fixed on her teacher's frame. "It's 6. It's almost a joke. Pi times 12 then divide by 6, round to the nearest whole number. Any idiot could do that in their head."

"Well, well then," Her teacher left her alone and continued back to the lecture.

Another failed attempt to make a fool out of Josie Wood. Her teacher tried. Maybe her teacher liked showing off how smart Josie is. Josie knew that all this math was the only way she felt truly challenged. The bell rang for dismissal after a long thirty-five minutes.

"Ms Wood, hang back…" her teacher said.

"Yeah, whats up?" Josie said as she walked up to the teacher's desk.

"I have a few kids who could use your help to study…" Her teacher started.

"No." Josie was quick to answer.

"It'll look good on college applications. I know John Hopkins looks for this kind of stuff. Pharmaceutical isn't something you are just magically good at to be able to get in with beyond acceptable grades and the number three spot in the class." Her teacher rambles on.

What her teacher didn't know is that she was magically good with it. She hated that there was obvious conversation in the teacher's lounge between the teacher and the counselor about Josie's life goals.

"Listen, I appreciate it, but I think I will be just fine." Josie bragged.

"I'll find a pretest for pharmaceutical math and we can include that in your application." Her teacher spoke.

"Fine. I'll stay after class tomorrow to do it." Josie sighed as she walked to the door.

"Sounds like a deal, have a good afternoon." Her teacher said with a smile on the woman's face.

Josie mumbled out a "you too" as she left the classroom. She walked out into the parking lot and over to her baby, a 1980 vista cruiser named Stein (she loves Blondie.)

"Well, well, Josie Wood," A voice spoke and she looked behind her: Jason Carver.

"Hey Jas… what's up?" Her eyes looked over the man's face for any hint of what he was thinking about.

"Billy couldn't hold you down?" He teased.

"Well, more like he was off being a whore. I am sure he actually fucked your mom." Josie joked.

"Yeah right… anyways… you want to go to my party on Saturday?" He asked.

"A Carver party?.... No. I saw Mrs Q's grade book. Boy, you have a 68 percent. It's not even an honors class." Josie spoke out.

"Listen, I am not boy fucking wonder like you." He said, a bit irritated because his intelligence was being questioned.

"Yeah, but it's such basic math, apply yourself, get at least a 87 in class then come bug me with this shit." Josie shook her head.

"I'll have it up by Saturday." He stated as he started to walk away.

"Good luck. The probability of that is slim to none." She muttered as she got in her car.

She got the engine to turn over and she drove home, where she'd patiently wait by the phone for Eddie to call. She hoped he didn't forget. She got home and sat at the dining room table. She proceeded to work on the English assignment that was due last week. She completely forgot about it and managed to talk the teacher into letting her do it and turn it in late.

"Hey Josie, how was school?" Her mom asked.

"Good. Mrs Q is setting up a pharmaceutical math test for me to take tomorrow to include in my application for John Hopkins. She also tried to embarrass me in class. The only thing she did was embarrass herself." Josie told her mother.

"Did she catch you daydreaming again?" Her mother asked. "Why didn't you ask to be in honors math?"

"Yes and because… " Josie started but the phone rang. "I'll get it!"

Josie hopped up and answered the phone.

"Wood Residences." She answered the phone.

"Listen Jos, I am about to leave to pick up, when would be the best time to swing by with it?" Eddie said in a quick tone.

"Uh probably… when my mom goes off to work in an hour." Josie spoke.

"Josie, is that a boy you are talking to?" Her mom asked.

Josie moves the phone away from her face, keeping the speaker end on her ear to hear Eddie. "Mom, it's just Harrington. You know he's harmless. He just wanted to know if he and Robin could come over. They got the exclusive new movies in their store." Josie lied so excellently.

"One movie, that's it. No one else besides Robin and Steve." Her mom stated.

"Yes ma'am…" She puts the phone back so she can talk into it. "My mother said one movie… but still an hour. Also, bring the popcorn still, please."

"Couldn't tell her it is the town freak who you are trying to buy drugs from?" Eddie teases.

"She'd kill me…" That earned a look from her mother. "You can't bring grape pop because I know you will spill it on the white couch."

"Only water." Her mother commented as she fished through her purse.

"Okay, well, I will bring the popcorn… see you later Josie." Eddie’s voice was laughing at the situation.

"See ya…" Josie moved to hang up the phone.

Josie took in a deep breath. She hoped she sold that.

"Here. Get a pizza for you three." Her mom handed her twenty bucks.

"Robin is a vegetarian and Steve and I always get meatlovers…" Josie lied to her mother.

"Just remember this when you want those new tapes. You choose pizza over tapes." Her mom handed her another twenty. "This is it until I get paid next week."

"Thank you mom. I appreciate you. You're the coolest." She hugged her mother, sensing that she needed it.

After another twenty minutes, Josie fixed her mom's dinner. Cooking was another talent she had. She also fixed a miniature version of her mother's meal. She wanted to save room for a pizza. Her mother left a few minutes later for work. Josie took the time to clean up and focus back on her homework. It was about fifteen minutes later that there was a knock on the door. Josie got up and walked to the door, she looked in the mirror, looking the same as she did at school. She looked through the peephole, seeing Eddie on the other side. She opened the door.

"Eddie!" She cheered.

"I am Robin and Steve tonight." He joked immediately.

"Okay, Robin and Steve! Come on in…" She moved to the side to let the man enter her house.

"I was able to get enough oxys to keep you stocked for a while. You can pay fifty now and the other two hundred when you get a chance." Eddie said as he sat himself on the couch, cozy. He puts the little black box on his lap, opening it to pull the pill container out and put it on the table.

"Two… hundred? Damn Munson… I only have an extra twenty right now. Fuck, I am going to have to baby sit or start charging to do homework." She sat down next to him.

"Well, you are the only one I bought oxys for, so I expect that you'll buy all of it." Eddie said.

"I can do your homework for you. For the rest of the semester. I can get you like…" She started.

"No, no, I need the money. I've been saving up to leave this town after graduation. Take your time to pay me back." He stated.

"Okay… I can probably con another fifty out of my mother when she gets paid. Jason… maybe…" Josie's thought wandered off.

"Jason?" Eddie's voice filled with anger.

"Jason invited me to a party." Josie said as she reached over to grab the bottle. She popped the top open. She slips one into her mouth, chewing it up to make it work faster.

"A party? And what will you do there?" Eddie was curious where her pretty mind would go with this.

"So, he would probably get one oxy for 150 or I can make him pay me 150 to go with him…be his… date." Even saying the words made Josie want to gag.

"He's truly stupid. That might work." Eddie said.

"Do you wanna stay for a movie and pizza?" She asked.

"Like a …. Date?" Eddie got a shit eating grin on his face.

"Ew no Munson, everyone knows you like me, except I don't like you." Josie lied.

Eddie pretended a knife got plunged into his heart and he fell limp against the couch. "You hurt me."

"Okay, drama king, whatever." Josie rolled her eyes as she hopped up from the couch to put in Friday the Thirteenth Part Five. "Can you order the pizza?"

"Yes ma'am." Eddie got up to find the phone.

Once Josie got it set up, she saw Eddie standing against the door frame with the phone to his ear. He looked like a dream to her. She sat down on the couch. Eddie returned to sitting down next to her.

"Twenty minutes." He muttered.

"Sounds good." She muttered.

Josie started the movie and leaned against him slightly. Eddie slid his arm around her, totally in a nonchalant type of way. She took this moment to snuggle against him more. She is still for about 15 more minutes before she giggles a little bit. There it is, the high she's familiar with. She's been on and off pills for a year. Her relapse is always inevitable. Eddie made eye contact with her. He chuckled and shook his head. He knew that she was gone. The knock on the door made her jump a little bit. Eddie chuckled again as he got up to go to the door. He just handed the pizza guy the twenty and took the pizza. He came back to the couch, setting the pizza on the table. He opened the box and Josie quickly grabbed a slice. She ate it as she mumbled the words to the movie. They watched the rest of the movie with only quiet giggles coming from Josie. Eddie ate like two pieces of the pizza, while Josie ate three. Eddie moved to get up from his spot.

"Eds no! Don't go." Josie begged.

"I have to go home. My uncle is making me work on homework and he wants to check it." Eddie said.

"Wait Munson…" Josie begged again as she got up from her spot, her head spun for a moment.

"What Jos?" Eddie asked as his eyebrow rose.

"You're cute." Her words were a bit slurred.

"Oh Josie. Let’s get you to bed.” Eddie said.

“No, M’not tired.” Josie whined.

“Well, I have to go.” He sighed out.

“Fine…” She huffed out.

“You are aware we still have school tomorrow?” He asked, so genuine.

“Yes, I am.” Josie said confidently.

“Go to bed.” He said as he walked towards the doors.

Eddie left the house before Josie could protest. He didn’t understand why people enjoy being like that. It was not the same as a marijuana high, even if you smoke yourself out. Josie put in another movie and laid herself on the couch for the rest of the night.

Meanwhile, with Eddie, he pulled up to Family Video. He, honest to God, was getting a movie for his uncle and him to watch tonight. He walked over to the counter immediately to Robin and Steve.

“Hey Eddie, what’s up?” Robin asked.

“Women are just… complicated.” Eddie remarked.

“True.” Steve and Robin both said and exchanged glances at each other.

“What is Josie on? Right? You were seeing Josie tonight? I heard her say ‘call me’ to you in the hall today.” Robin spoke.

“She’s on pills…” Eddie muttered.

“But I thought she quit.” Robins said, slightly concerned.

“But she never really quits, she just says she did.” Steve whispered.

“Addicts who don’t want help are going to relapse. She is going to continue to relapse.” Eddie stated.

“This is why she is good at pharmaceutical math. She knows how to not kill herself.” Robin pointed out.

“Damn…” Eddie said as he dropped his head. “Also, if her mother asked, you two were there tonight. She couldn’t tell her mom that it was me who was going to be over.”

“Okay.” Steve mutters.

“She was also being super flirty with me when we were watching the movie. She said I was cute.” Eddie said.

“Oh Eddie…” Robin spoke with a smirk.

“She totally has a crush on you Eddie.” Steve pointed out.

“What? No.” Eddie shook his head.

“Yeah, and she liked you since what… we were sophomores and you were on your first try of your senior year.” Robin spoke.

“I am going to grab the new Star Wars… do you guys have it?” Eddie asks.

“Yes sir.” Robin pulled out a copy from underneath the desk. She had set it to the side for him.

“You are the best.” Eddie said as he pulled out money from his pocket to pay for the rental. Eddie got the rental and headed home.

In the morning, Josie woke up. She sat up on the couch, feeling groggy. She walked to her room to get started. She got changed for school and walked out to the living room. She noticed the bottle and quickly grabbed it. She shoved it in her pocket just as her mom walked in.

“Well, that shift was a nightmare. I am going to go lay down. I love you. Have a good time at school.” Her mother said in one breath before she waltzed over to her child to plant a kiss on her head.

“I love you. Sleep well. There is left over pizza if you want it.” Josie said happily. She grabbed her bag from the dining room table.

Josie walked outside and over to her car. She climbed into her car, turning over the engine. She drove herself down to a convenient store by the house. She stashed the bottle of pills into the glove compartment. She then got out of the car and walked into the store. Her eyes grazed over the different types of coffee.

“Wood?” A grating irritating voice filled Josie’s ears.

“Carver, what is up?” She asked quietly before she started to fix a cup of coffee.

“What do you say about my party invite?” He asked.

“Uh, only if you pay two hundred dollars to be there.” She answered him.

“What?” He raised an eyebrow at her.

“I need two hundred dollars, you need me at the party, seems fair enough.” She grinned at him.

“I am not paying for you to be there.” He rolled his eyes.

“Do you need oxys? Fifty a piece, I’ll sell you four.” She said quietly to him as she put the lid on her coffee.

“Four oxys? For two hundred?” Jason seemed genuinely interested.

“Yeah, what do you say? I have it in my car.” Josie said with a smile.

“But you have to also come to the party for two hours.” He bargained.

“One hour.” She argued.

“One and half.” He stated.

“Fine… let me get this coffee then we’ll do it.” She rolled her eyes as she walked to the cashier.

Jason nodded and finished his morning breakfast grab. Josie got checked out and walked outside to her car. She opened the door, putting the coffee in the cupholder. She got the bottle out from the glove compartment and opened it. She pulled out four white circular pills. She grabbed a baggie she had from buying weed a while ago and put them in there. She closed the bottle up, throwing it back into the glove compartment. She leaned against the side of her car, concealing the baggie in her hand. Jason ended up outside after a minute and walked over to her. She looked at him.

“Show me the pills.” He muttered.

She flashed him the baggie and looked at him. “Show me the money.”

He slipped the money into her hand and took the pills, shoving them into his pocket. “See you Saturday.” He walked off to his car.

She shoved the money into her pocket. “See you Saturday.”

She sold her peaceful Saturday night to hang out at a party full of people she doesn’t like. She sighed as she slid into the car. She turned the engine over and drove off to school. She parked her car in the usual spot once she was on school campus. Her eyes looked over the parking lot. Eddie’s van just pulled up. She cut the engine She quickly got out of the car, with her bag and cup of coffee in her hand. She locked her car up and then walked to the van. She walked up to Eddie’s window and knocked. She saw him jump a little and turn down the music. He then rolled down the window and looked at her.

“You look chipper this morning.” He commented.

Josie adjusted her bag so she could sling it up on her arm and used her other hand to dig out the two hundred dollars from her pocket. She handed it over to Eddie. “Sold to Jason this morning. Four for two and an hour and a half of my time at his gross party.”

“You are going to his party?” Eddie asked.

“Yeah, for an hour and a half. Then I am dipping out, getting high, and watching the shit ton of movies I am going to be renting when I leave school today.” She stated.

“That sounds like a great time…” Eddie’s voice was different, like he was jealous or something.

“Are you jealous that I am going to Jason’s party?” Josie asked.

“What? No. I don’t give a shit. I just want you to be safe.” Eddie spoke.

“I am not fucking him if that is what you are worried about. I don’t have any fucking interested in a basketball player. Basketball isn’t even a cool sport, football is. But the basketball players wear their leathermen’s like the skin of an animal.” She rambled on. Her cheeks flared up when she realized that she rambled. “Sorry.”

“I know you aren’t going to fuck him. I just want to make sure they aren’t going to fake invite you because they want to harass you.” He said.

“Well, I appreciate it, Eds. I will be okay. How about after the party, you come over and watch movies with me. My mom will be working the night shift, so she doesn’t even have to know I have someone over. You and I can watch movies, maybe read a little bit of The Hobbit. Hm?” She proposed.

“You still getting high?” He asked.

“Yes, I have two hundred and fifty dollar bottle of oxys in my car that I need to finish.” She stated. “My mom doesn’t work tonight, but why don’t Steve, Robin, and yourself come over tonight and we’ll watch the new Star Wars? She’ll cook for us and she loves Star Wars.”

“I can rewind the copy I have at my house and bring it over. My uncle and I watched it last night.” He states. “And yes to Saturday.”

“What about Saturday?” Robin asked as she walked up to the pair.

“Yeah, what about Saturday?” Steve asked as his car pulled up next to Eddie’s van.

“Nothing… Tonight my house and Star Wars?” Josie asked.

“Your mom is cooking?” Steve asked.

“You know it, Steve.” Josie said with a smile.

“I am in.” Steve answered.

“I am definitely in. Your mom is the best cook.” Robin praised. “Eddie?”

“Yeah… I’ll come because I have to bring the movie.” Eddie stated.

“Cool, I will call my mom at lunch and let her know.” Josie squealed a little bit. “Okay, I have to go… I still haven’t finished my late English assignment and I have until 10:30 to do so.” Josie heads off to the school.

“What’s happening Saturday?” Robin asked nosely.

“Saturday is her party debut at Jason Carver’s house for a quick hour and a half. I am meeting her at her house afterwards to hang out and watch movies.” Eddie said.

“Why is she going to Carver’s?” Steve asked.

“Because she upsold the shit out of Carver. She sold him four oxys for two hundred bucks and an hour and a half of her time at the party.” Eddie stated. “She still owed me two hundred for the oxys I sold her.”

“Damn Eddie, she should sell for you with that.” Robin joked.

“See you guys at 3?” Steve asked.

“See ya Steve!” Robin waved him off. “Ready?” Her question aimed at Eddie.

“As I will ever be.” Eddie put the cash into his little box. He then crawled out of the van. Him and Robin proceeded to walk into school.

Josie made it through until lunch. She walked over to one of the only few payphones outside of campus. She slid a few coins into the coin slot. She then dialed her house phone number.

"Wood Residence." Her mom answered the phone after a couple rings.

"Hey mom, it's Josie." Why did she feel the need to tell her mom?

"Whats up baby? Are you feeling okay?" She heard the worry in her mothers voice.

"Nothing, I just was going to ask if you wanted to make dinner for Steve, Robin, Eddie, and I for dinner. Eddie has the new Star Wars rented out and I know you are dying to watch it." Josie rambled out.

"Eddie? Who is Eddie?" Her mother asked.

"He's a friend of Robin and I's." Josie answered.

"You've never mentioned him. Do you have a crush on him?" Her mother asked.

"Ugh, mom, no. So are you okay with those plans?" Josie asked.

"Yes baby. Now go enjoy your lunch. I'll make your favorite." Her mother sang into the phone.

"Okay bye... I love you." Josie said quietly.

"Bye baby. I love you." Her mother said then hung up.

Josie hung up the phone. She walked to the cafeteria. Robin was with her band friends. Eddie was sitting in his Hellfire group. Josie rolled her eyes as she went to sit down next to Will at the Hellfire table.

"Hey Jo." Will said with a smile.

"Hey William. How's your brother doing, twerp?" Josie asked. Eddie’s attention turned to Josie after hearing her ask.

"He's good." Will nodded his head.

"Why do you care about Jonathan?" Eddie asked bluntly.

"Eddie, I've known him since we were like ten. He's a friend." She stressed out the word 'friend.'

"Alright, my bad." Eddie spoke.

"Jealous?" Josie asked and the guys sitting there went 'Ooooo.'

"Not at all." Eddie shook his head.

"Mhm..." Josie focused herself on the lunch she had.

The conversation became small mummers in between bites of food. Josie would occasionally glance at Eddie and see him quickly look away.

Soon the lunch bell rang. Josie was the first to get up and throw her trash. She walked to her locker to exchange her books.

"Well?" A female voice entered her ears.

"Jesus, well what?" Josie spoke.

"The movie thing?" Robin asked.

"My mom said yes. We can let Steve know he grabs you. I'll tell Eddie..." Josie answered her.

"Okay, don't hate me, but… Steve and I may have told Eddie that you like him.” Robin said.

“What?!” Josie said, slightly agitated.

“I am sorry. He just seemed so clueless and honestly a little interested in you and your well-being.” Robin said quickly.

“It’s fine. I am sure he doesn’t even remember the conversation.” Josie muttered.

“Josie!” Eddie said loudly as he walked over to you and Robin.

“See you tonight.” Robin said and fled.

“See you Robin… Eddie, so my mom said you guys can come over and she’ll make food and you can bring Star Wars.” Josie started as she proceeded to walk to her class, Eddie following her.

“Right tonight, sounds fine with me.” Eddie said.

“Listen, my mom loves Star Wars, so she is really looking forward to it. You cannot let Mama Wood down, or she’ll hate your guts. I really want her to like you. It’ll be easier to have my drug dealer around all the time.” Josie stopped at the door of her English class.

“Well, I definitely won’t let you down. I’ll show up.” Eddie spoke. “Are you going to get…?”

“Yes, my mom will be around us to eat and watch the movie. She will go to bed afterwards and not care what we do.” Josie rambled out.

“Okay, maybe we can go out at Skull Rock and hang out.” Eddie spoke.

“Awh, do you wanna makeout with me there or what?” Josie joked. The bell rang and she stood there, waiting for him to respond.

“Hmm… I think that it is you…” Eddie said with a smirk.

“Go to class Munson, you are going to be late.” Josie said as her eyes rolled. She walked in her class room.

As the day passed, she ended up in her math class. Her teacher left her alone today. Her teacher put down a worksheet for everyone. She handed Josie a pharmaceutical math test sheet for her. Josie just smiled as she did the test. It is almost too basic for her. She hopped up before class was even over and put it on the teacher’s desk.

“Done already? I’ll grade it later and let you know Monday.” Mrs Q said.

“Yeah, it was easy. Is there a harder one you can find me?” Josie asked.

“I’ll have to meet up with the school nurse to see.” Mrs Q comments.

“Sounds good. Can I sneak out here? I have to get home a little early to clean up.” Josie asked.

“Yeah, go ahead.” Mrs Q said as she wrote a note for early dismissal for Josie, handing it to her.

“Thank you.” Josie took the note and walked out of the class.

“HOW COME SHE…” Josie heard. The sound muted after it closed.

Josie walked to her locker, cracking it open. She threw all her books in the locker and closed it. She didn’t have any homework. She was free. She made sure she had her keys. She walked to the main office and gave the front office the note. She then walked out to the parking lot. She got in her car. She honestly sat in the car for a few minutes. She opened the bottle of oxys. She took one out and swallowed it quickly. She drove herself home. She parked her car next to her moms. She gets out of the car. She walked in.

“It’s early.” Josie’s mom commented.

“Mrs Q let me go early because she gave me the simple math test.” Josie responded.

“Well, you are going to be great. Can you help clean? I’ll start dinner in about an hour.” Her mom stated.

“Yeah, I’ll clean.” Josie stated.

She cleaned to the best of her ability. Soon there was a knock on the door. Josie came over to the door, peeking in the peep hole. She squealed seeing her friends on the other side. She flung the door open.

“STEVE! ROBIN!” She pulled them into a hug.

“Josie!” They both said with a chuckle.

“Come in.” Josie said she moved and the two walked in.

“Edddddie!” Josie says as her arms are wrapped around the man.

“Hey Jos.” Eddie hugged her back. He could see her mom watch the two.

“Come on in!” She said excitedly.

“Are you…” Eddie whispered.

“Shhh…” She muttered with a wink.

“Dinner is about done. Steve, honey, can you set the table?” Her mom asked.

“Yes ma’am. Robin, help me.” Steve said. The two walked into the kitchen.

Eddie holds up the movie. “Where do I set this up?”

“Come here.” Josie took his arm and dragged him over the player at the TV.

“You are cute when you are out of it.” Eddie muttered as he sat up the movie to be ready for after dinner.

“Oh shush Munson.” Josie mumbled.

“Dinner is ready and the table is set.” Robin said.

Josie grabbed Eddie’s hand and dragged him over to the dining room. She sat in her usual seat. Eddie sat next to her. Steve and Robin sat across from them. Her mother sat at the head of the table. They all dished out food and Josie’s mom started to talk, so everyone listened.

“Jo, how did you think you did on that test in math.” Josie’s mom spoke.

“Mrs Q is going to let me know Monday.” Josie responded, pretending she didn’t have oxy flowing through her.

“A test?” Steve asked.

“Yeah, she gave me a pharmaceutical test to include in my paperwork to send to John Hopkins.” Josie responded, realizing that she never spoke a word about it to her friends.

“John Hopkins… that’s in Maryland right?” Eddie spoke.

“Yeah, it is one of the prestigious schools.” Robin spoke.

“Why not somewhere local like Indiana University.” Steve asked.

“Because… I.U. isn’t the dream. Getting out of Hawkins is the dream.” Josie said.

“Eddie, aren’t you a second year senior?” Josie’s mom asked.

“Uh, yeah, but things have been hard. I am not as blessed as Josie, I suppose. I am getting real close to a D in English.” Eddie answered, feeling nervous. “Wayne is…”

“Wayne? Munson? He’s a nice man. I used to go fishing with Josie’s dad and Wayne was always there.” Her mom said with a smile. “You were that little boy who played that guitar toy huh?”

“Uh, yeah,” Eddie said, a little embarrassed.

“Oh wait? You were?” Josie said with a grin. “He’d get mad when I had my tambourine toy!”

“Yeah because tambourines suck.” Eddie commented.

“Oh, how cute, you two were baby friends and didn’t even know it!” Robin commented.

“Shh Buckley.” Josie stated with a small glare, but couldn't help her smile.

The group got quiet and ate the food. A few “This is so good. Thank you Mrs Wood.” came from the peanut gallery. They finished eating and Josie collected all the dishes and put then in the sink. Her mother and Eddie walked out to the living room first. Josie started the dishes. Steve and Robin came up beside her like the devil and the angel on her shoulders.

“So, I think your mom likes Eddie, which makes being with him a lot easier.” Robin commented,

“So? Does he want to be with me?” Josie asked as she did the dishes.

“Let me ask.” Steve said. “During the movie, I’ll whisper to him during a loud part.”

“Oh my Gosh, just ask him when we go to… Skull Rock, all of us.” Josie stated.

“Why are we going to Skull Rock, that’s my makeout spot.” Steve commented and took on the role of rinsing off the dishes.

“That is where Eddie wanted to hang out there after we watched the movie.” Josie said.

“On a Friday night?” Steve’s eyebrow arched.

“Please, it won’t be that busy. I think Cunningham has a party tonight, so…” Robin commented as she started to dry the dishes and put them in the dish rack.

“Guys… Munson asked. Okay?” Josie said with one last final protest.

“Fine.” Steve said and rolled his eyes.

They finished the dishes and end up in the living room, watching Eddie and Mrs Wood laughing.

“Oh Wayne was so proud of that tiny little thing.” Mrs Wood said, still laughing.

“He’s still convinced it was the smallest thing he’s ever caught.” Eddie chuckled.

“Movie time?” Josie asked.

“Yeah, dear, go ahead.” Her mom spoke.

Josie started the movie. Josie sat between her mom and Eddie on the couch. Steve sat in front of Eddie and Robin in front of Josie. They watched the movie in silence. Josie would peek over at her mother as her mother’s eyes lit up from what’s going on on the screen. The movie was soon over and her mother hopped up.

“Alright, I am going to bed, if you kids are doing anything else, have Josie home by 2. I trust you Harrington.” Her mom said she walked off.

“Yes ma’am.” He shrugged his shoulders when Robin looked over at him. “I don’t know why…”

“She must have seen Eddie drive.” Robin commented.

“Hey! I was so careful!” Eddie said with a smirk.

“Let’s go losers.” Josie said she stood up.

The two pairs left the house, climbing into Eddie’s van, mostly because Steve refused to have all those drugs in the car. Josie took a second to grab her oxys. She climbed into the passenger seat. Eddie turned over the engine and drove them as close to Skull Rock as they could get. Josie had taken out an oxy and chewed it up. Robin watched her for a moment, not sure why her friend felt the need to do oxys. The pairs walked out to Skull Rock. Eddie pulled out a joint and lit it for Steve and Robin. He took one long hit before passing it to the pair. He walked over to where Josie was sitting and giggling.

“Jos?” He asked as he sat down next to her.

“Yes sweetie?” She answered as she leaned her head on his shoulder. “You smell nice.”

“Thanks? But uh, did you time that out right?” He asked.

“What? Munson, of course I did. You can take up to six a day. I took one before dinner and one now. I am just keeping the high going.” She said.

“You really do know your stuff.” Eddie muttered.

“Well, I have only been abusing since the summer between sophomore and junior year. I made sure I wasn’t going to kill myself. I can’t let my mom know that I do pills, she’d kill me. She’d cry forever. That’s why my dad left, abusing pills. He’d be so proud to know I followed in his footsteps.” Josie casually overshared with him.

“How did you…” He started to ask.

“A friend of mine's dad had cancer and he had oxys. He never noticed when her and I took one or two.” She shrugged her shoulders. “I am done talking about it.” Josie’s eyes stared up at the sky, pointing to a set of stars. “See that one? It’s Leo.”

Eddie’s eyes follow the point of her finger and he smiled. “Yeah, and I know that is Sextan right next to it.”

“Wayne looked at stars with you too?” she asked.

“Yeah, he said as a fisherman, in case you get lost, you need to know how to navigate with the stars… Sounds like Pirate lore to me.” Eddie grinned.

They shared a quick glance and smile. He noticed that her eyes still seemed like stark blue crystals in her eyes.

“I think I am going to blow Jason’s party off tomorrow? The thought of getting all hot to hang out with him all night, no thank you.” Josie muttered. “I hardly doubt he remembered my end of the deal.”

“He might… but yeah, he cannot force you to go.” Eddie mumbled back to her. He bravely took her hand in his.

“TOLD YOU! FIVE DOLLARS BITCH!” Robin screamed as she held out a hand to Steve.

“HE DIDN’T KISS HER YET!” Steve equally screamed.

“Robin…. Shut up.” Josie said a bit loudly.

“Jos…” Eddie squeezed her hand for attention.

“Hm?” Her gaze was a bit fuzzy as she giggled a little.

Eddie goes in for the kiss. Josie quickly scrambled to kiss him back, her arms going around his neck.

“Five dollars.” Robin spoke at a much quieter tone.

“Fine…” Steve mumbled as he pulled a fiver from his pocket and handed it to Robin.

Eddie and Josie broke the kiss after a few more beats, both of them panting a little bit.

“It’s been…” Josie started.

“So long… I know. Robin spilled the beans.” Eddie motioned to their dumb friend.

“Rob, I swear to God!” Josie gets up and starts to chase Robin around.

“I’m sorry - I’m sorry!” Robin squealed as she ran around, laughing.

Eddie got up and stood with Steve as the girls ran around.

“Ask her out man.” Steve spoke.

“I definitely will. Maybe a proper date then I will. Not while she’s high…” Eddie answered him.

The girls eventually stopped because they weren’t in the best shape. Josie walked over to Eddie, throwing her arms around his neck, giving him a little peck on the lips. His arm hooked on her side. Josie and Eddie went back to where they were sitting earlier, looking at the stars. Steve and Robin joined them. They exchanged stories all night.

[handonhaven]

Okay Lizzie and Josie really pissed me off in 3x16. Like Hope just ran off with someone who tried to kill her and someone who manipulated Josie. With no clue why or where they were going. And Lizzie first thought was to try to find Hope a rebound. Not to try to find out where she went or if she was in any danger. And Josie was no help either she didn't bother to do any of those things. She just asked Lizzie with who. I also didn't like Lizzie comment either. When she said "we can't afford to be picky. Anyone who doesn't melt after having sex with her will do." Maybe it's just me and I'm taking that comment the wrong way. But when she said that I got so mad. Because what I took from that was being able to have sex is only thing that matters. So let's just try to hook her up with anyone. Doesn't matter if they're a killer or a psychopath as long as they can have sex then it's fine. I don't know maybe I'm just over reacting to that(but I can't be the only one to feel something like that after hearing that comment, can I?).

So, so many Handon scenes just hits so differently now knowing that Landon was really malivore. I'm not gonna lie after I found that out I went back and watched those scenes over again trying to see if I can find any clues or hints at it. But when I did that I start it to think about the fact that we had a whole season without the real Landon. Then I start thinking about the fact that Landon has had a whole season of going through trauma one right after the other since 3x02(when Raph died) and it only got worse from there. Then I got mad at the writers for doing that to him. It was bad enough that his life before coming to the school was hell. So were they just like yeah lets put him through a whole season a trauma too. Now before anyone says well Hope went through hell this season too. I'm not saying she didn't. But I feel like Landons was on a whole different level than Hopes. Because Landon had to watch his brother die, then had to watch himself melt, then he was in malivore, then in the prison fighting off monsters, to then having malivore take over his body. And who knows what he's going through in this own mind right now. But I think my biggest fear is that when they do get Landon back the real Landon. That they play off his trauma to save time(like they often do now). Or someone will try to downplay it like it was nothing. Because if they do that imma be pissed.

So I start it thinking about that maliLandon scene with Cleo when we saw both malivore's and Landons memories. And all of Landons memories were big Handon moments for season 2(I think there might have been some for season 1 but I can't remember). And I know they did that for a reason. I think in that scene it inspired both malivore and Landon somehow to do something. I just can't figure out what and I know myself this will be stuck on my mind until we finally find out lol. I'm already thinking up theories and all both make sense but don't make sense all at the same time. And this is really going to bug me.

P.S 1: I have to say this season had one very consistent thing, the "Logical" answer is wrong.

- Logic telling Hope, Landon was dead ....wrong

- Logic telling Hope, Landon was back.....wrong (Hope felt something was off but chose to ignore it bc she missed him)

- Logic telling Hope, she and Landon are doomed.....wrong

- Logic telling Cleo, to trust Landon and he was only traumatized.....wrong

- Logic telling them Malivore wanted Cleo to escape the prison world....wrong

- Logic telling them, the monsters were coming from a actual pit....wrong

- Logic telling Hope the only way to kill Malivore is to become a Tribrid.....wrong

- Logic telling Hope she caused Landon to melt.....wrong(okay I know we don't know for sure about that one. But that feels way way to much like a red herring with how much it's been said). Also another consistent thing is everything they say things Multiple times over and over again espesally things that have no concrete proof turns out to be False. They keep repeating these things; Landon is Human, Landon is dead, Landon is not a Phoenix anymore, Hope needs to become a Tribrid, Hope is toxic to Landon(once again I know we don't know for sure yet, but there's no way that isn't a red herring), Hope and Landon are doomed. Watch all turn out to be wrong.

2. The antis and H*sies are already coming out the wood works. And there this one line I see that they're really trying to hold onto like it's a win or something. How at the end of 3x16 when Hope said "we want our friends back" they're taking it like Hope sees Landon as a friend now(among other things but that would make this too long if I write it all out). Which is sad and means they're truly not paying attention to anything. And let me just point out that Hope was speaking for everyone not just herself. So it makes more sense for her to say "we want our friends back" then it would be for her to say "we want our friend and my boyfriend back". Since they're all friends with Landon and Cleo. Even though they're not very good friends to Landon(minus Hope because Hope is with Landon and treats him better than his "friends" does). But that's a whole other thing for another time. I do my best to say away from antis and H*sies but somehow one of them somehow always end up in my timeline. And it's gonna make these next three months so much longer than it needs to be tbh.

Same. Exactly! It was all so strange.

Lizzie was just upset over the fact that Hope ditched them, but Hope has always done stuff like that on her own to keep others out of danger. Yet Lizzie didn’t even seem to care, even though both her and Josie said they didn’t trust Clarke after all he had done. So they knew that Hope could’ve been in danger. But Lizzie’s highest concern in that moment was finding Hope a rebound as quickly as possible?? What on earth... And Josie acknowledged that Hope could be in danger, said she cared more about her actual life than her romantic one, but then proceeded to do nothing. And exactly! That comment really bothered me too! Yep, that’s also how it came across to me. Like Hope being able to have sex with someone was the priority, the rest wasn’t important. I don’t think you’re overreacting, I thought it sounded really bad. And the fact that Lizzie was focusing on that over Hope’s safety... I don’t even know what to say. Then Ethan shows up and they drag him into it, it was just a mess, and probably the weirdest way and time to bring in a love interest for Lizzie. Then they get to the school, are casually standing around chatting, then Lizzie wants to give Ethan a tour. All thoughts about Hope’s safety forgotten, besides Josie mentioning in passing that they needed to tell Alaric what happened. That was the full extent of their efforts to help Hope. Then she gets back and all they can talk about is how she ditched them? Not about what happened or if she’s okay? And they’re the ones who just promised Hope she wouldn’t be facing Malivore alone... not off to a good start.

And right? It’s crazy! Me too, watching the breakup scene is SO different now haha. But ugh, yes. We seriously had nearly an entire season without the real Landon... I can’t. And same. That’s one of the things I’ve been thinking about the most, and I’m honestly mad at the writers as well. Like, it’s actually shocking to think about just how much trauma he has gone through. And I don’t know what made them to decide to put him through that much because it’s unreal. Just... why?? So true, he had a lifetime of trauma before the show even started! Went through more trauma while at the school, going through death after death. And then went through the most horrible things this whole season. And yes, Hope did go through hell, but what she went through was very different. I agree, what Landon went through was on a whole other level. Exactly! He literally went through one trauma right after the other. And he went through them alone (apart from losing Raf). Without any help, and every single time he escaped one thing, he ended up in another and endured more trauma. He’s been through pure hell, nonstop, and I can’t imagine what state he’s in right now and how he’ll be when this is all over. Oh, and literally me. I’m honestly so worried they’re gonna do that too. That they’ll just ignore his trauma, that they won’t show how he’s been affected or have him talking about it. And it will just get cut off and forgotten and they’ll jump to the next thing and he may not get even a break. Because that really is what they do all the time. And right now is their chance to show what he’s been through. To go back and show what happened to him and show his side of things. We need to actually see what he’s been through and how he’s being affected right now. And once they get him back, they need to address it. They need to let him and Hope rest. I think season 4 needs to be about them healing together, though I’m sure they’ll be dealing with more crap. So I’m very worried about that, I will be pissed right along with you if they don’t go into that. That’s probably what I want to see the most at this point, and what I think is extremely important, not only for his character, but also because they shouldn’t ignore that kind of trauma.

And yes, they were! They had Landon remembering Hope telling him she loved him for the first time, and then those other huge moments for them, the 2x08 reunion, and the scenes in 2x11. I‘m wondering if those might be Landon’s most powerful memories. And I think you could be right, I’ve wondered the same thing, but I also can’t figure it out. Like they showed Handon memories with Malivore creating Clarke like... I’m so confused haha. They definitely left us with too many questions, and now we have to wait, it’s gonna suck.

Wow, you make very good points with that. That’s very interesting for sure. The writers really used “logic” as a way to mislead the characters in order to shape the plot for the season. And I think because of that, they also had to hold the characters back from investigating things further. When I feel like Hope, especially, would’ve looked into things more to figure out what was going on, but they couldn’t have them finding out yet so they just had everyone believing in the “logical” answer. Which does end up fitting with the idea that things are not what the seem, especially with all the things you listed that they keep repeating. Which does make it seem pretty obvious that they’re trying to convince us of these things that aren’t actually true. I think it’s gonna all turn out to be wrong as well. We already know it wouldn’t make sense for Landon to be fully human since he never was, and that he’ll surely get his Phoenix powers back. And I agree about Hope being toxic to Landon too, the more they’ve talked about it, the less I believe it’s true haha. And same now with them talking about Hope having to become a full tribrid, it seems like they might be doing the same thing. Or at least, if these things aren’t already wrong, Hope and Landon will find a way to prove them wrong by fighting their fate.

Yeah, those people clearly aren’t paying attention to the show and are grasping for anything at this point. Did they not watch Hope’s scenes with Clarke and how she responded to him talking about fighting fate? Did they not hear her literally tell Cleo that she still loves Landon? Obviously, Hope does not view Landon as just a friend. She was speaking for the group, just like you said. I don’t even think Hope sees Cleo as her friend right now. When Cleo told Hope that she hopes they can be friends again after all this, Hope said nothing and just walked away. So yeah, she was speaking for everyone else, although it’s weird that the rest of them would even view them as friends either. I’m pretty sure Kaleb is the only one who really sees Cleo as a friend. And true, they’re not even friends to Landon, none of them gave a crap when he died, so I’m not even sure why they were there. I guess since there’s a threat now? But anyway, yeah, I get that it’s hard to avoid those fans, the hate is everywhere. But knowing how ridiculous their reasoning is and how far they’re reaching helps me to just kind of laugh it off sometimes, although it is annoying. It gets so tiring to see, but I’m just gonna try to focus on enjoying Handon and ignoring the antis as best I can!