#the only books here i would actually RECOMMEND are those 3 in the middle

[eighthdoctor]

bwaaah. That's a bit disappointing. In that case, what about books? What kind of books or book series are good, that are genuinely interested in telling the stories of the time period they're set in (ideally while still being good stories)?

WOLF HALL READ WOLF HALL I WENT ABSOLUTELY INSANE.

uh. this is super rome focused bc that's about all i read historical fiction for, but Colleen McCullough writes fucking bricks that are well grounded in attitudes of the time period. they are unfortunately also racist/homophobic but WHAT CAN YA DO, also they're easily each 300 pages longer than they need to be. Steven Saylor has a very good rep, mystery isn't my genre but I read one and liked it. I remember enjoying Robert Harris's books on Cicero (at least Imperium and Conspirata, Dictator wasn't out when I read them).

The Golem & The Jinni and When the Angels Left the Old Country are both historical fantasy set in the early 1900s. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay is about the golden age of comics.

Eric Flint's 1632 series and Flint & David Drake's Belisarius series are both uh. 'Portal' historical fiction??? 1632 is about a WV town transplanted to 1632 Germany, and the Belisarius series is about a far future AI that chooses the 530s as The Ideal Time To Change. Both have A LOT OF FLAWS AS BOOKS, are not really into critiquing like. social structures. But 1632 in particular spends a lot of time poking at How People Were Different (or the same) Back Then.

...I don't read a lot of historical fiction, as it turns out.

[daconfusedbanana]

My Fanfiction Recs: Korrasami

In 2020, I watched The Legend of Korra. (Fun fact: it helped me realize and accept that I was bi! So the show has a special place in my heart.) Crazy enough, I started reading Korrasami fanfiction the same year. For the next three years I devoured the fanfiction, and so the following list is an accumulation of my favorites. I think I've read enough to say these are some of the best. Though I haven't been into the fandom lately, I didn't want this old list to go to waste in case anyone was hunting for some good Korrasami reads.

Actually, I discovered some of my favorite stories through Tumblr blogs and am immensely grateful for those posters for sharing their lists. This is my way of paying it forward. Hope someone can enjoy these like I did.

I divvied these up in a way that only made sense to past me. Linked the Ao3 in titles. (You might have to be logged in to see some of these.) I tried to add some commentary for each. Also, I highlighted the ones in blue I really recommend you to read, though I do think everything here is worth a read! Without further ado, here is my compiled list of (Korrasami):

fanfics (that are actually quality)

beautiful prose & the feels

The Everthere by guileheroine My favorite one of them all. I would argue this is one of the best fanfics, if you like a cozy and character-driven read. You really get into Korra and Asami's heads and moods. Slow burn but so, so worth it. I've read this one three times.

Nightmares and Daydreams by Dispari It's been a while since I read this one, but I had a note saying this is "maybe my 2nd fave". Similar tone to The Everthere.

it’s such a gorgeous sight to see you in the middle of the night by badkids This is on almost every recommendation list I've seen. For a reason. College AU. Some angst but a whole lot of fluff and some humor and of course, dorkiness. Another cozy read. The title is from that The Cure song and is also one of my favorite lyrics ever.

like broken thunder by neurolingual Camp counselor AU. All of this writer's works are amazing. They truly have a gift for writing beautiful prose. This time, it's Asami pining for Korra, a different perspective from most fanfics.

I don't remember these as well, but I do remember them being very good and well worth a read. (I know I reread some of these.) And I haven't seen some of these on other lists, so I guess there are some hidden gems in the mix. Some shorter parenthetical notes here.

this winter, you're here by camphollstein (Modern AU. Asami POV. I think Asami was the one pining here. I also liked the family feels.)

all the choirs in my head sing, no by lupine (Canon AU. Short and cute.)

waiting for my chance to come by badkids (Sequel to it’s such a gorgeous sight to see you in the middle of the night)

if these sheets were the states by neurolingual (canon, sad with happy ending, pining/yearning, oh also Asami Pining)

be a girl like any other by neurolingual (grocery store au)

these little moments that lead me to you by raininthesea (quietly beautiful writing)

meet me at the rooftop's edge (at 3 am) by raininthesea (college au)

Out of the Woods series by ariadnerue (canon if I recall right? very feels)

One on One by paxbanana (canon. Asami Pining!)

Auld Lang Syne by aizia (modern au. how to tell your best friend you love her on new year's.)

Prison My Eyes by wreckofherheart (beautiful, canon divergence between books 3 and 4)

unique story

The Honeymooners by hellorhogwartsfics Honestly, should fall under the above category too, but the story really stood out. It was a wild ride! Modern AU. Asami is a jilted bride and her best friend Korra is there for her to take the place of her husband for the honeymoon. I'm a big fan of this author's humor too.

Brittle Wires by golari This was such a unique AU and I thoroughly enjoyed it! Maybe my 3rd fave. The way they wrote Korra and Asami here was so unique. Their interactions are subtle but meaningful. I'm also a fan of nerdy Korra and a secretly pining Asami. It shows the work as unfinished, but it's complete since the author was just thinking of adding an Asami POV chapter.

and you lift me up in a wave of love by overnights (Surfer AU, this one gave me a warm feeling I recall. Read it if you like the beach and sand. And rock.)

Maybe by selftaughthuman (Beautiful one-shot, feels, set in Boston)

Permeate by contronym (Mechanic AU, 2nd person POV, lil cliché but beautiful prose makes up for it)

humor!

An odd category, I know. But some of these really made me laugh out loud, all snorting and uglylike. Enjoy.

All These Lines Are Blurring by hellorhogwartsfics Vegas AU baby! I laughed so hard I cried at times. Opal is amazing here. I've read all of this author's Korrasami works.

Quick Bright Things by LadyRavenEye Oh, this one was absolutely wonderful. Do not skip the footnotes, that's where the humor is! Fake marriage AU. Both are oblivious.

p = mgh (potential) by the_oreo (another damn college au, crack lol, frivolously fantastic)

Paradiddle by bazaar (marching band au, very fluffy)

Sato, #22, Shooting Guard by MidoriAkiko (I don’t remember this much, but it’s slapstick funny. some angst tho. slow burn like most on this list)

fluffy and light-hearted

Direct to Video by Emirael (another college au, so much damn fluff)

Company by golari (both are nerds! cute and informative)

Time for You by AnotherShotofBourbon (soulmate oneshot, dorky)

cooler than the flip side of my pillow by camphollstein (FLUFF also literally)

Absolute Beginners by ReneeMontoya (college au! pining)

That's it! There's a lot more great ones out there, but these were just ones that personally stood out to me. I also wanted to highlight some lesser-known ones and give them some love! Hopefully this list was useful to some soul out there craving for some good stories about our girls. Happy reading! :)

[radvimes]

A response to the LDS Church's new Anti-Trans Policies

I just sent the following email to lgbt@churchofjesuschrist.org, and thought it would be worth sharing here, as well:

To whom it may concern, assuming it concerns anyone in HQ-

This email may not be perfectly worded, but I felt it was more important to voice my concerns now than to wait to word them perfectly. I may send more emails in the future.

As far as I can tell, I am exactly the sort of person you want to remain in the church: lifelong member, returned missionary, temple recommend holder, temple worker, sealed in the temple, 3 kids, upper middle class educated Millennial straight white male Melchizidek priesthood holder with nonmember friends that I talk religion with on occasion. However, you're losing me and people like me. I listened to what the church has taught me all my life. I served a mission and went to a non-church college with an institute program and met all sorts of new people from all sorts of backgrounds. I learned that my mission president was secretly gay, and had been repressing it all his life due to harmful church teachings and cultural pressure. I sat with these experiences. When we started the Come, Follow Me program, I faithfully studied all 4 books of scripture in a way I never had before. As I did so, I recognized that the messages I saw taught over and over and over were ones of love and grace. I learned that Sodom and Gomorrah's sin wasn't homosexuality, like I'd heard all my life. It was pride and a refusal to care for the poor and needy. Jesus didn't call people to repentance for being lax in their temple worship or observance of church law; he called them to love one another, pray for one another, be humble, and actually feed and care for one another, especially those we deem unclean, unworthy, or the "least" of us. He showed over and over that his good news is often a kind word, a loving hug, and an invitation to share a meal and a table.

Today, as is poignantly demonstrated by remarks by leaders like Elder Holland and President Oaks, and by relevant church handbook policies over the last decade and the last month, it is easy to conclude that in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, our LGBTQIA2S+ siblings are considered the least of us, even unclean, unworthy, and unwelcome. I had a Jewish friend ask me to tell him about the recent policy changes re: how the church treats trans members, and I had gotten maybe halfway through the changes when he simply said, with a sober expression "so the church has made it clear they aren't welcome, then?" Whether that was the intention or not, that is the message we are sending, loud and clear. That simply cannot be the message our loving Heavenly Parents and loving Savior have for us and our queer siblings. If the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints is meant to share the good news of Christ with all of God's children, then we need to actually figure out what good news we have to share with God's children who are queer, or who are like me and care about those that are, and we need to do it quickly, because right now, the only news we have is that they aren't welcome, that we don't particularly have a place for them, and that we don't especially care to. We can do better. We must do better. Right now, we are failing far too many, and it breaks my heart, and the hearts of so many who want to heed Jesus' good news and the 2 great commands to love. We went through a very similar struggle with regards to our black siblings, and did at least 1 right thing in 1978. We can do more right things again.

Regards,

[radvimes]

[butterflydm]

I was watching some older Star Trek meta videos on youtube by Steve Shives - very good, would recommend - and something he said in an Odo video ("how Odo actually became Deep Space Nine's complicated conscience") really struck a cord with the issue that I have with CoT-onwards Mat. Steve calls it "the fantasy of the neutral observer" and he's describing it in the context of explaining how Odo and DS9 subverted it.

Basically, the fantasy of the man who lives by his own moral code and can be respected by both oppressor and oppressed because he "doesn't pick a side". Odo stands by justice and the law, so both the Cardassians (the occupiers) and the Bajorans (being occupied) can respect him.

But as Steve talks about - and what the episode of DS9 is about - is how placing yourself in the middle ground between oppressor and oppressed is not the moral high ground. The moral place is siding with the oppressed. Especially in the case of Odo, since he was enforcing laws... that were made by the Cardassians. And the episode is about exploring that idea and showing how Odo failed to actually live up to being a moral man by being so rigidly legalistic and how the fact that the Cardassians were willing to trust him was not a good thing, because he 'earned' that by enforcing their unjust laws.

But, yeah, it really made me kinda go 'ping' and go... yeah, that's the thing that vibes so wrong about Mat after Winter's Heart. Previously, he was a man who picked a side - he would complain and grouse and say that he hadn't, but it was clear in his actions that he supported the downtrodden and those who were in most need of his help. Siuan makes the comparison in book 3 about him being like her uncle, who went back into a burning house to save children, and that's absolutely Mat... until Crossroads of Twilight.

In CoT, though, Mat just really begins indulging in his self-pity but instead of that being coupled with him continuing to make the right choices and help people who need it despite his words to the contrary, he's just... lost up his own ass and pretty useless to everyone around him.

And once he emerges out of his ass, he seems firmly mired in this kind of fantasy of the neutral observer, where he can pretend that fawning over Tuon doesn't mean he's endorsing her worldview (because he basically just tries to pretend that she isn't a slaver except during the scenes where she rubs his nose in it and forces him to acknowledge it by her direct actions), where he treats the sul'dam and the Aes Sedai as if they're two rival football teams who just need to cool off in the showers after a tense game instead of oppressors and oppressed.

The way I put it before was "Mat has become a 'both sides have their flaws' asshole" but "fantasy of the neutral observer" works pretty well too. Mat pretending to himself that he's being a neutral observer only hurts the oppressed while helping out the oppressors (as we see in Tuon's own PoV, she is very much "take a mile if they give an inch" in terms of how she deals with other people).

Trying to stand in the middle means that you've stopped protecting the people who need protection.

In WH, Mat sees that people need his help and he goes out of his way to help them, endangering his own escape plan in the process. In CoT, he acts like Tuon is the most vulnerable person here*, despite her great position of power in her society, the way she continues to treat the people around her**, and the fact that she is literally walking around with her own personal slave at all times. He treats slavery as if it were a neutral moral topic that we should all just avoid talking about for the sake of being polite, and it's Setalle Anan (off-screen) who has discussions with Tuon about slavery. Morally, Mat acts like a coward in CoT & KoD and it's especially jarring because while he sometimes thought/talked like a coward in the earlier books, he acted like a hero.

(*this is a situation where maybe Jordan originally planned for Tuon to genuinely be vulnerable during CoT/KoD but then changed his mind when he decided to write the Outriggers, so we ended up with a situation where Mat still behaves as if Tuon is going through a character arc that doesn't actually show up on the page at all; there was a really weird disconnect in CoT & KoD about how the Seanchan were treated as a great threat in the female characters' plotlines but as an acceptable partner in the male characters' plotlines that, wow, really left a bad taste in my mouth about all three of our ta'veren dudes. But, yeah, that weirdness of "Mat acts like Tuon is undergoing character growth" when that supposed character growth isn't at all apparent in her behavior or her own internal narration is so baffling to me, and maybe even more so because so many fans seem to take Mat's words as gospel on every subject, even as they say that they love him in part because he's an unreliable narrator)

(**Mat watches as she abuses people under her power more than once during their time with the circus, with the two biggest examples being Tuon's abuse of her power over Egeanin/Leilwin, and the horrifically gross collaring scene that was the Definitive Moment that killed any possible interest I could have ever have had in Mat & Tuon as a pairing)

Now, one possibility is that all this was meant as Mat's 'dark night of the soul' and Mat was always eventually supposed to regain the morality that he lost during his attempts to court Tuon* (I guess in the Outriggers). The problem for me, as it is with Mat in all the books past Winter's Heart, is that the writing doesn't hold up. Mat's characterization takes such an abrupt turn in CoT that it damages any possible story that Jordan was trying to tell. Because I love 'dark night of the soul' stories! I love corruption arcs! I love characters being driven to choices that they hate making! Find all those things deeply fascinating. In general. But in the specific case of Mat Cauthon, the way that it was written was mostly annoying and infuriating.

(*the main pieces of evidence for this idea lie in the Jordan-dictated epilogue, specifically at word choices like Mat having 'forced' a grin at hearing that Tuon is pregnant; and the one-sentence about Mat for the Outriggers that we're aware of being him drunk in a gutter having lost everything, which doesn't sound like a 'happily married' royal living up the high life with his 'beloved' wife the Empress)

And I think a lot of that comes down to Jordan's impatience, which is something that we see a few other times in the series. Sometimes, Jordan wants to move the story along but the characters aren't there yet, so he just skips to them Being There, emotionally, without writing in the part that takes us from Point A to Point B (another example being how Rand & Aviendha are a great slow burn enemies-to-lovers romance... until it feels like Jordan got tired of writing the storyline and had Aviendha abruptly give in so that he could move along to the next plot beat).

Jordan needed Mat to get in line with his prophesied marriage in order to move the plot along, so he adjusted Mat's character to force him to do that. But he didn't have any in-text reasons for Mat's character to change so abruptly and Mat does his face-heel turn in the course of a single week off the page, and when we catch up with him in CoT, he is already treating the sul'dam and the Aes Sedai as two rival groups who need to be goosed into getting along, rather than the sul'dam having been actively torturing (two of) the Aes Sedai only a week ago -- Bethamin in particular was Teslyn's head torturer, who had just ordered that Teslyn's mistreatment be redoubled into order to break her more quickly and thoroughly.

Mix Jordan's impatience to get to the plot beats that he wanted to do between Mat and Tuon with his decision to have the Seanchan societal collapse happen in the (destined to never happen) Outriggers, and we get the mess of Mat's characterization in CoT & KoD because Mat is no longer allowed to have any kind of narrative effect on Tuon, so their relationship is entirely one-directional. And one-dimensional.

Mat's attitude at the beginning of CoT would frankly make a lot more sense if placed at the end of Knife of Dreams (aka after Tuon has worn him down to a hollow shell of the man that he used to be, rather than Mat just voluntarily becoming said shell in-between books), though I would still find it a very depressing storyline for him. Ultimately, I would have always been unhappy about Mat going from "a hero who doesn't believe he's a hero" (EotW-WH) to "immoral jackass who ignores the harm his wife does instead of standing up to her" (CoT/KoD) but the journey could have been much better written simply by being written at all instead of jumping immediately from Point A to Point B in between books.

Anyway, this is all about Mat in the Jordan books, because I do feel like the Mat-Tuon situation in the Sanderson books ends up being mostly a different kettle of fish. With some of the same issues, but Sanderson's take on them is different and, for me, actually worked better on the emotional side of things but had distractingly impossible logistics in terms of timeline and geography, and was probably equally bad on the 'letting the Seanchan off the hook for being invading slavers' side. So, it's a mixed bag but a different bag than the Jordan books.

[arcsnonexistantfandomblog]

How Selfishness Contributes to The Arch Illagers Down Fall

Authors Note ------ First, before we start this, as many others said, Minecraft Dungeons deserved a lot more than what it got. I wish within the game you could learn about his story, but of course, you have to pay 10-20 bucks for a book just to read it, the whole book is just the trailer and a little extra [AND more than the trailer could ever give] . However, I don't regret buying the book, that is how I got into the fandom myself. If you want to read it, I recommend going through Wikipedia for the plot, I could have made a PDF file of the book I bought, but I was the type in middle school to draw scenes onto it. However, within the post, you WILL get book snippets for character reference.

Let's be honest with ourselves, this game had so many chances to be a story all Minecraft players could enjoy around the world. Unfortunately, that is not the case...instead in my opinion, the game became slightly, if not a shameless way to market Minecraft to get quick money, it is like Legends and Earth, there was no way for these games to EVER have a good chance to become its own thing and be loved. To have to play DLCS to get the full story is BS in itself. The true story is about a victim of the orb of dominance whose decisions were affected by some selfishness.

Intro ---- Hey, do you remember that post with Magnifico and the Arch-Illager and about how the Arch-Illager had a better position to be the villain? Yeah, I still hold that opinion the ACTUAL reasons were... 1. The character in general. 2.The motives portrayed in the story. 3.The relationship between both 'characters' I still believe those reasons to be true, although the game sucks at letting that be what comes across. The story was a market attempt to allow players of the game to know the lore and... honestly, if it was in the game, it would have been nice... This idea came into concept after talking to a friend about how Walda mentions how Archie and Thord bickering was something that showed they were more concerned about themselves than anyone else...and to be honest? She is correct, this act of trying to make themselves look good without the concern of those who passed WAS selfish. I talked about how the main flaw of most characters was their selfishness within the story. Then in the silence, that gave me an idea, this essay here. Thord and Archie were thinking about themselves and that got Archie into trouble. Karl being self-absorbed over his 'feelings' being hurt caused Archies selfless action of leaving the village Archie BECAUSE of selfishness took the orb because he wanted to prove everyone wrong, not use it to better people's lives. Archie loses his Friends, the PEOPLE he loved because he was selfish to raid their village. The orb was selfish in wanting this power and using Archie as a vehicle for its true motives. Karl is smart enough to run away, but he is so selfish that he runs away, and NEVER comes back to help the heroes knowing what was happening was wrong. Hell, you could say it was pure fear that caused these actions. Walda and Thord were selfish to not only allow Archie out in the forest to die, but they were selfish enough to take Archies's throne. Thord was SELFISH and stole and his SELFISH behavior led to his death. These examples are what are here for reasons, Salah you could argue was selfish to want to kick Archie out...but that came with a little bit of logic and the thought of their people. Yumi does call them out, she KNOWS they would do nothing to defend the village compared to Archie. Yet Archie was selfless and knew it would be safer for his friends to leave.

Thesis - Selfishness contributes to the story.

In the story, the lesson can be that Selfishness contributes to eventual bad outcomes and conflicts. It repeatedly throughout the story shows that it leads to horrible things no matter how selfish it is. Like other villains, their selfish actions lead to harm. Frollo due to selfishness decides to continue with sin, leading to his death. Ursula due to selfish reasons, wanted the trident for herself, therefore it leads to her death. Scar due to his selfishness, wanting the throne, dies in consequence. All of these characters have a negative outcome due to selfishness on their part. However, this isn't about them, this is about several selfish characters in "The Rise of The Arch-Illager" who suffer from not being selfless... and one moment that shows that even with selflessness, it led to a selfish choice. What happens that is interesting is that...Archie is not really the antagonist, it's Thord. The story is about how Archie becomes the antagonist in the end, he does take on the position against the real protagonists, the heroes by the final pages and the damning raid revealed in the trailer. Archie gets another chance at the end of the story because the heroes know what kind of person Archie truly is. The narrator knew nothing of this, it is painted in a light that is misleading in a few ways. That speaks volumes about how different these things truly are. The narrator knows of the danger, not the person who causes it. The Arch-Illager is the combination of Archie and The Orb of Dominance. In fact, the future actions that are made, are also selfish decisions of the orb. This might explain why the Orb is destroyed and Archie isn't.

But this is about the Arch-Illager, or rather Archie, so let's talk about each listed selfish thing for Archie.

The Selfish Actions of Archie.

These actions are important because it shows the character of Archie, and how his past influences affect how he approaches the world. There are 3 arcs in my opinion, The Mansion Arc, The Village Act, and The Orb Act, each act develops Archies's character, but also shows his main traits. He is Compassionate, fearful, peaceful, and reasonable [justified or not], yet he can be selfish, aggressive, and defensive. He has so many times where it shows who he is. But this is about selfishness, not everything else. [] The Mansion Act [] This act marks the first selfish act when he got kicked out due to self-interest, and Walda's decision. Walda had several reasons to kick out Archie, that are addressed before he is kicked out. Like him being Weak, and that he 'endangered a life of a fellow Illager'. I will say how that is hypocritical due to Thord never getting kicked out due to him harming Archie. The selfishness comes from Archie caring about staying in the mansion, living and perhaps Thord to be gone. In those moments he didn't care much about what he might have done wrong, he put the blame on others, just like Thord did to him. His consequence was that after specific actions, Walda was upset, and despite his begging, she kicked him out forever. another consequence was that he was forced into the woods to try and survive.

[] The Village Act []

I would say this act is...interesting, there is no selfish behavior, in fact this arc marks his development. When he had defended Yumi, and his first selfless action happens here, which is important. You can say that Salah was a reason that Archie removes himself from the village, but in reality, Karl would have attacked either way. Karl KNEW who Archie was, if Salah was peaceful and Yumi had introduced Archie to the heroes, he would have attacked. Everyone knew salah was right including Yumi and Archie. That was when Archie was selfless, and that meant he was going...expect. [] The Orb Act [] This is an interesting act, because I have a feeling a lot of selfishness here ACTUALLY also includes the orb this time around. His development made him ready to face the woods, sure he almost died but he made it. It is revealed that the orb actually was a major reason for him getting guided there, and it means that Archie became a victim. Archie takes power from it, yet the Orb made him is vehicle for destruction. Even the orb says that their fates were 'forever intertwined', so here and forward it was a lot of the orbs decision too and was someone who encouraged these actions. Archie was also exhausted, so it was easier for the orb to get Archie on its side. Despite this, Archie still takes it because of Karl and Thord because they hurt him. To make them fall onto their knees, and yet it is interesting that the orb knows about his misery. In theory this means that he has some mindreading or some way to be in the victim's mind [like Bill Cipher]. Another selfish thing they do together is obviously raid the town, twice. This was selfish and it made Archie lose his dearest friends, and 'family'. The orb totally could have done this intentionally to put Archie in a spot where he would listen because he had no one else but it. They were selfish for trying to take the land and turning the villagers into slaves to 'work for the mines'. Archie knew these people to be someone people who did care, and yet...he did this to them. If anything in part I think this was the orbs decision, not Archies. The end of the book implies Archie is taken control of and from there it is easy to say anything else that happens that is selfish is of the orbs doing.

The Orb of Dominance and Manipulation

This is a lot more important than just Archie doing these actions, in fact the Orb protects Archie, feeds him, and gives him a place to sleep the FIRST day they met. This is a lot different than Yumi's decision, she did it out of empathy. She cannot guarantee full safety and comfort, but she can certainly try, and their friendship is mutual. They benefit each other and allow the other to learn some good traits. Yumi develops a point of view that explains Illagers and their violence and can sympathize with them a bit. Archie learns compassion for others, and that leads him to telling the Illagers to leave Yumi [and who she brings] alone purely due to it. Infact Archie even learns skills and actually helps the village, and it means he is thinking about others. Yumi doesn't let what upsets her to be bottled in when Archie is threatened. She speaks on how the heroes could care less of them, and would slaughter their pigs, cows, that they sleep in their beds, and steal their food. It speaks volumes on how and why she would trust Archie more than the heroes and it makes sense. The orb thought? it knows nothing, but the misery Archie has gone through and lures Archie into a position where he is listening and shakes its hand so to speak. Then when Archie is in its grasp it feeds him, comforts him, HELPS him. This thing is an object with a mind...if it had true compassion, it would welcome him with open arms to stay in the cavern and help before this. It is a small but important detail, it has no capacity to care, and will LIE to get its way, as Archie states near the end of the book. Half of the book is about how Archie is backed into this spot where the barley has no say in some of the actions, again acknowledged and implied by Archie that he was getting 'dominated' by the orb. He feels stupid for not thinking about the name before, yet...He was exhausted, weak, and literally just finished climbing a mountain before the deal was made. When you get to the boss fight that also proves that Archie was a vehicle to this, and he is TURNED into a monster by the orb of dominance because it wasn't getting what it wanted from Archie. We get not a single word in the game from this...and yet it is meaningful. Archie is making noise when he is sucked in, That I saw as possible pleading for his life, or even begging to just let him lose. Or he knew that the Orb wasn't going to let it end and he was forced to be in this position. Then...finally when the Orb was defeated and destroyed, Archie 'tries to keep on' [I don't think so], and it breaks. Archie free and ready to approach the world again. I think the orb in that moment was trying to hold onto Archie, wanting more, wanting the world and NEEDING its vessel. I mean that is how I see it based on their relationship. There are several times when Archie was ready to stop and leave this. SEVERAL in counting and I feel like it says a lot. Tldr: The orb is a manipulator who uses Archie as a vehicle to get what it wants for selfish gain.

Now...to talk about the actual topic of Villainy other than the orb.

Thord, how selfishness led to his death.

So... why is this important compared to someone as serious as the orb? Simple, he IS the true antagonist in the story. Until Archie took over the position of that role. He possibly intentionally backed Archie into getting kicked out of the tribe because he was selfish. He lies about Archie, with only a few truths to be selfish and keep himself there. He is selfish by blaming Archie of being the issue and then manipulates the situation by pretending he is hurt. After that he plots with Walda to bring Archie down because he is a selfish person. He steals from the Firey Forge because he does it out of benefit... The most interesting scene shows he is still selfish, begging for mercy, or a deal. He knows he fucked up and maybe will try to still hurt him, but he pleads. There is something interesting, a few chapters before the orb tells Archie to kill Thord, and he refuses to do so, instead making the raid early in the morning in spite. When he is robbing the Fiery Forge and Archie knows this... but Arc, who makes the suggestion to kill? The Orb, Archie is aware of Thords threat and has SUCH a good chance to make him pay for getting him kicked out. Kick him out for stealing and let him venture alone like HE did. To make him pay, He even suggests the idea of waiting to surprise Thord. He was not in the mood to wait. That is interesting, it was an interesting decision. Usually, Archie is rather patient, yet...listen to how the orb says this. " You need to defeat him. Now." Now I do think Archie had agency in his choice, he did. But... when he suggests the idea of waiting, that would be smart because then he could catch Thord and Walda and punish them both. But just to kill Thord? That is what interests me, I do have a feeling the orb had a lot more choice in what Archie does, but I also don't want to undermine that it was ARCHIE'S choice to choose how he could make Thord go. was this to scare him in his last moments to leave him vulnerable like he was to the monsters before? As they always do, Archie and Thord bicker, and both of them are upset. Archie WISHES to return the beating Thord had given him, but he makes the decision not to out of what Thord has, magic. After that, that is when Thord begs, and he is LITERALLY begging. I mean hey, at least Archie gets to chew Walda out with him knowing their plan and watch her fear him! It really isn't funny, it shows how the orb influences how he acts, and that is a burden us readers have to watch unfold.

Karl's Selfishness and how it leads to flee

The most interesting character is Karl, who is more selfish in his self-interest than arguably most characters in this book. He wants to conquer the land and have people kneel for him, yet despite how he acts, he isn't chosen by the orb. Probably because as much as Karl is dumb, I think he wouldn't trust this so easily. He also is just the worst person ever, he is selfish in his actions, what he thinks and... for his life. He spares Archie only for his own gain, that's right his selfless action becomes selfish because getting his name out there to scare the illagers matters more than a life. This doesn't come out the way he wants it to because they don't understand what he says. This is why he flees during the trailer, this out of fear but also selfishness. A hero would risk his/her life to save the world, and a village, yet he doesn't even do that in the first place! He just abandons it and no joke, basically never comes back. His confidence must have cracked.

The Orb and How it is defeated due to selfishness. - The Game

As explained, the Orb is broken into pieces due to its selfish nature. due to the end of the book, Archie goes onto this route because there was no going back. It was in the orbs interest to back Archie so far back that he feels like he could do nothing but go along. I think the orb is Selfish for using a vulnerable man who wanted to live as a vessel for what chaos it wanted. The Orb is selfish because it knows it will destroy relationships in the process. This character is the embodiment of how Power corrupts, and unfortunately allows Archie for some confidence building he needed...yet it was for hurt. It knows so much knowledge, you think it would spare Archie of having to do the work. Of course not! it doesn't have feelings, or emotions to its name. It is an artifact for god's sake, and it only WANTS to hurt. The book gives the characterization for the orb that was needed.

Then when it fails, it decides to push to the edge and becoming a monster, one that towers the heroes and shows what power it has over Archie. He had no consent to this, just the way he screams as he is pulled is such a risen red flag of how SELFISH the orb is to risk the life of its vessel. The orb was the monster the story needed...and that is what it got. Not Karl, not the illagers, not Salah and some of the villagers, not the undead, not the nameless one, not even Archie who was tricked. It was the orb of dominance, the truest and most selfish and monstrous character.

Conclusion

Woo we are done! expect for a basic TLDR for this entire post. All the characters in Minecraft dungeons have suffered due to some of the characters selfish nature. Those who suffered the most were the ones committing the selfish actions. Some characters even die or have something bad happen because of this. In my Opinion I think after the Village arc, all the selfish actions of Archie were due to himself and the orb as well. Admittingly with a lot of influence from the orb of dominance. And you know what? The game BARELY shows this narrative, no hints to this story and we are left to understand just little pieces of everything...which was the trailer. The game is about the sad outcome of when someone is made a vehicle for destruction. This game was never for the full story and that is sad. They could have made a more interesting game if they JUST gave the story a chance to thrive and show us these things. an Illager protag for the first half would have been SO interesting. Now it is a cash grab, with DLCs. It did what they wanted, and they mostly abandoned this game, only adding modes...and for what? It adds nothing to the beauty that this story is. It makes me despise the game and would prefer to keep this book which was the reason I stayed in the game. It would have been fun to have a game from Mojang that just isn't EMPTY. It is empty because the game was from a sandbox, and this doesn't to seem to be their field of expertise and it made the only interesting because of the small amount of story it has. Take it from, if you're planning to play the game and buy it, don't. Just grab the book and watch the Game on YouTube. Support Matt Forbecks book, and if you can't, that is fine, I might plan to go ahead and perhaps read this book and make a series out of it. Thank you for reading/listening to this whole pose.

{I will repost this blog once it has been posted on my YouTube Channel}

[hollygl125]

Hi! I just saw your new post, that I'm absolutely obsessed with, and I was wondering are Grissom's and Sara's middle name canon?

Hi, @inutilidadesbytamara!

I’m so glad you enjoyed my “favourite character” GIF-sets for Sara and Grissom—thank you so much for your kind words! ☺️☺️☺️

As for your question, Sara’s and Grissom’s middle names are not strictly speaking canon, but they (along with some of the other details included in my GIF-sets) are, I would say, the next closest thing to canon—what @addictedtostorytelling has called “deuterocanonical”: “(of sacred books or literary works) forming a secondary canon.” (That was a new word for my vocab list, I’ll admit! 😬)

(I would liken it maybe to obiter dicta in the (common law) legal context: something a judge says that isn’t essential to their decision and hence isn’t binding on another judge but could be persuasive.)

Basically there was information that was provided on official CBS website biographies for the characters and in official CSI books but that never made it onto the show. Some of these sources were themselves conflicting. More importantly, since it never made it onto the show it wasn’t (isn’t) canon and could still be changed by TPTB and the writers. Such was (I think!) the case with Sara’s childhood, for example, as I believe her original biographies did not reference the tragic backstory that would be revealed in “Nesting Dolls” (05x13).

I never saw those original CBS website biographies, so my knowledge of them comes via the (wonderful! amazing! indispensable! encyclopedic!) meta @addictedtostorytelling has shared with us here on Tumblr. She has a post here that discusses Grissom’s background (and references his middle name) and one here that discusses Sara’s (and references her middle name).

(If you are at all interested in the characters’ backstories, I would highly recommend reading the two posts linked above, as they compile a lot of canon and secondary source information and put that information into the context of reality—e.g., which universities actually offer which degrees, specializations, etc.)

I have three official CSI books (not counting the novels but rather books about CSI), but they are at my house, and I am not, so I will provide an update after the weekend as to which bits of information they contain. (The information is now all kind of mushed up together in my head, so I can’t really remember the specific sources for everything.)

Other pieces of information that came from these secondary sources but were not, to the best of my recollection, ever made canon on the show include Sara’s alma maters (Harvard and UC Berkeley), her area of study (physics), and her stated birthplace/hometown (the small fishing village of Tomales Bay, California).

As for that last bit of information, to be honest, a brief google search has disclosed to me no such village, although north of San Francisco there is an actual bay called Tomales Bay; a Tomales Bay State Park; a number of businesses named for Tomales Bay; and a “census-designated place” named Tomales, with a couple hundred residents, located 3 miles northeast of the bay. So either Sara’s hometown is fictional, I think, or . . . I don’t know . . . maybe her hippy mother opted for a water birth in the bay?

Sara’s birthday of September 16, 1971 was well-established amongst loyal fans for over a decade, based on these secondary sources, before apparently being overruled when the episode we shall not name (13x15) ran amok with it, only for it to be established by the CSI props department as canon in a later episode (and we’ll just ignore the completely nonsensical 13x15, or come up with completely ridiculous explanations for it like I did!).

Grissom’s birthday and hometown were both given on the show and are thus canon. His August 17, 1956 birthday came out in the Paul Millander storyline. His hometown was given to us by Hodges in “The Theory of Everything” (08x15): “In an interview in the San Francisco Chronicle—October 31, 1996, if I recall correctly—one Professor Gilbert Grissom revealed that, as a boy, he collected dead animals he found in his Marina del Rey neighborhood and performed necropsies on them.”

Now, @addictedtostorytelling’s meta will tell you that Grissom’s birthplace was always given in the secondary sources as Santa Monica. Santa Monica and Marina del Rey are located very close together in Los Angeles County, on the coast, separated only by Venice, California (where Grissom’s mom apparently had an art gallery). So it could be that the Grissoms moved when Gil was a young boy, or maybe he was born in a hospital in Santa Monica but the family was already living in Marina del Rey. (Wikipedia tells me that the current Marina del Rey hospital wasn’t constructed until 1969, after Grissom was born, but the Santa Monica hospital was founded in 1926.) I think I kind of absorbed the second option into my own headcanon, so to be more precise in my GIF-set I should have referred to Marina del Rey as his hometown, but to be perfectly honest I’ve been a little distracted and really wasn’t thinking about that distinction at the time!

Returning again to the main point . . . the information from these secondary sources isn’t strictly speaking canon, but it is the next best thing. It’s information that was provided by TPTB/the writers (the early writers! the ones who knew/developed our characters!). I would also assume it’s information that was provided to the actors as part of their characters’ backstories. So I take it as pretty persuasive, but you can decide for yourself how much (if any) of it you want to accept—just like canon itself, for that matter! 😉

While we’re here, though, can we just think for a minute about the fact that Sara was born exactly 15 years and 30 (i.e., 15x2) days after Grissom, they both have matching first and last initials (SS and GG), and they both have the middle initial “A.” I mean, these kids really were made for each other (literally)! 😜

Thank you for your question—I hope my answer was of some help! If you have any more questions, please let me know! 💛💛💛

[loadednachosao3]

(Hiii @eros-thanatos89 here!)

You've been on such a roll lately and just dazzling Lacho nation with an absolute embarrassment of riches of fic, and I've just been gobbling it up like the thirsty little gremlin I am! So thank you!!

Since I love your writing so much, I'm curious: who are some of your favorite writers/what're some of your favorite novels or short stories??

hmmm... GOOD question! I used to work for the library, so I read a LOT (more than just fanfic!), which makes this a hard question as well, lol. especially since I read more nonfiction than fiction!

but let's see...

my favorite classic/taught in schools novel would have to be 1984 by George Orwell. (hilariously/depressingly, right after trump got elected, my department had to buy hundreds more copies because they got requested so much). Orwell's writing is much more accessible to me than many older writers are, save for that whole proletariat essay thing in the middle that made me wanna cut my eyes out. the book is a very relevant and scathing hate letter to fascism, and the right co-opting it when they're the ones it's written about will never fail to piss me off. THEY HAVEN'T EVEN READ IT I KNOW IT I KNOW THEY HAVEN'T

Suzanne Collins may get a lot of billing as a YA love triangle author, but she's absolutely nothing of the sort. The Hunger Games may be a YA series WITH a love triangle, but they're ABOUT so much more. the way she so perfectly captures the flaws of our society in a way that we then completely validate when we make the movies? beautiful. poignant. 10/10.

Bones and All by Camille DeAngelis is one I admittedly never finished, but loved what I read of it. there's a movie that... ok I also didn't finish that one I HAVE ADHD OKAY but the very concept of a girl who, when she experiences feelings of deep love, gets the irresistible compulsion (and the ability) to eat them then and there is just a wonderful concept!

one of my childhood favorites is this book called Molly Moon's Incredible Book of Hypnotism by Georgia Byng. I picked it up thinking it was a manual, lol, but it's actually this cool little story about an ugly orphan girl who gets the power to hypnotize people, and uses it to become rich and famous. they made a movie out of that too, I think, but I never watched it.

the Unwind series by Neal Shusterman is about a dystopian future where the "compromise" to stop abortions is that parents are, up til their child turns 18, legally allowed to give their children up to be "unwound," a process that involves cutting them up and donating their body parts to donors... while they're still alive, so they're not "technically" killing anyone. chilling, particularly the sequence in the first book where we get to see from the perspective of a teen being unwound.

I will never forgive Hollywood for what they did to the Chaos Walking series by Patrick Ness. it's an AMAZING trilogy about a village that contains only men, who are all forced to broadcast/hear each other's every thought (the first few pages capture the chaos of this situation by using varying fonts and font sizes placed haphazardly around the page in a chaotic mess). the reason for the lack of women is a spoiler, so I shan't say more, but lemme just say, Mads Mikkelsen, baby, you were so good as the villain, but the movie version that smashed 3 books into 1 was so trash. talents WASTED.

Ness also wrote A Monster Calls for a younger audience, a haunting but comforting book about grief. I'd recommend it to anyone whose loved ones might be going through a long bout of illness or something of the sort, if you need to feel less alone.

so those are my top fiction picks! nonfiction is a whole other story, haha (no pun intended). I might remember some more later, but I hope this has given you a bit of insight into why I am the person that I am, and where I get some of my writing inspo! thanks for the great question!

[fairyqueentitana]

Beast World Fanfiction Recommendations on Wattpad.

You all know you have read at least one do not lie to yourselves.

1)Tripped into the Beast world by _lmaoidkwhoiam_ (WIP) 60 Chapter

" Every female needs a male to protect her from feral beasts and other dangers, I'm a feral. I could snap your pretty little neck right now " " Try it and I'll just cut through your throat, If you don't wanna die while killing me, totally not recommended " Ever found yourself chilling on top of tree while you're going to school? No? Well then, you're totally not the main character. And being one is totally not recommended.

2) Imara Diversifies The Beastmen World by PurpleDepp (WIP) 119 Chapters.

After an accident, Imara, a 28-year-old plus-size black woman, ends up in a strange rainforest world from a bittersweet novel she read. This wild jungle is full of mysterious and dangerous beastmen, just like the stories she used to read.

To stay alive, Imara has to carefully plan her every move as she tries to find love, family, and friends in this strange place. With each step, she becomes tougher and learns to protect herself from the mysteries lurking in the beastmen world.

Imara's journey is like a tricky dance, a skilful way of staying alive among different groups of friends and foes.

Her story is about figuring out how to survive in a captivating but wild world where danger and strategy are always tangled together, like vines in an endless battle for control.

This is a mature book, but the smut isn't the main component of the story or plot. 3) Rewriting Bai Qingqing's Beastworld Story by Rotten-Aunt(WIP) 56 Chapters

Remember that 16-year-old Female Lead who's always indecisive and unadaptable, in 'that' Beastworld Story? Ꮚ⁠˘⁠ ⁠ꈊ⁠ ⁠˘⁠ ⁠Ꮚ Yes!!! That one! What if a 48-year-old retired Model and Artist was placed in that situation instead? ಠ⁠﹏⁠ಠ No! She won't grind flour, cook or farm vegetables. Let her powerful and hot mates do those laborious jobs. ♪⁠～⁠(⁠'⁠ε⁠｀⁠ ⁠) She needs her beauty sleep and practice her acting skills to hunt down her favourite MLs instead. Honestly, guys this one is one of my favourites the author is currently on a much-needed sabbatical but her work is great outside of this story she has two more that I also enjoy. 4)The Beauty's Hidden Beast by ChubbyLiv(WIP) 86 Chapters.

In a twist that not even Yaya could have predicted, she's suddenly smack in the middle of Nivi's latest obsession: a world brimming with beast-men. No, not just your average hairy dudes, but handsome men with actual animal features.

Determined to navigate this bizarre reality with her sanity intact, Yaya hatches a plan as pragmatic as her wardrobe: rehome these too-good-to-be-true "book husbands" to the one person who's always dreamed of such romances─Nivi─her best friend.

⚠️ TRIGGER WARNINGS ⚠️

Yaya and Her Males: The relationship between Yaya and her future males will be far from an idyllic love story. Instead of healing each other wounds, they might just be opening new ones. It will get better along the way, I think… I hope.

I'm here to present you a story, not a lecture on how to be a decent human. Feel free to criticize and judge my characters, whether in your mind or through the comments. If you spread awareness in my stead, that would be even more awesome, hehe.

Yaya vs. BQQ: If you thought BQQ set the bar for treating her males shitty, wait until you meet YY. You'll know what I mean once you dive into this novel. Feel free to form your own opinions about her─whether it's disdain, frustration, or outright disbelief. Defend your biases, embrace your reactions, and let out your inner rage, rawr.

Yaya: Her purpose isn't to be relatable. Not for me, not for you, not for anyone. But, feel free to explore her thought pattern and see the world through an entirely different lens.

Yaya vs. Nivi: Someone mentioned that Yaya needs Jesus, lol. In Yaya's world, Nivi is her Jesus.

I'll only recommend these four as they are all the ones I have read on Wattpad that I am willing to share with others. I hope you all enjoy these and if you get hooked well welcome to the abyss.

[esta-elavaris]

22, 24, 28 please <3

22. do you ever worry about public reaction to what you’re writing? how do you get past that?

Oh, all of the time. I used to have panic attacks over CTW, and even now I still think every time I post a chapter that this will be the one that exposes me as an absolute hack and everybody will unfollow and unsub 💀 I don't think it goes away, I think it just get easier to act in spite of. I remember when I was at uni, I gave my novel writing teacher the first chapter of my novel (the one I'm still working on now lmao) and when I had a meeting with him a week later to get my feedback, I walked in already apologising for how bad it was.

He had to stop me, be like "Lucy please just read the feedback, here" as he handed me his notes, and the feedback was literally 99% praise, paired with one minor piece of criticism over a paragraph that I already knew wasn't great. It's just how I am. CTW was written years after that, and there are still times when I'm furiously justifying plot decisions because I was certain they'd be hated and I was defending myself against hate that didn't even end up sprouting up (the captaincy of the Dutchman was a big instance of that), we really are our own worst enemies a lot of the time.

I would highly recommend reading The War of Art by Steven Pressfield. But also, just get used to doing the thing in spite of that fear. It's definitely disproportionate considering I don't really write anything too controversial, but this is the internet and you do occasionally get people just looking for problems. The funny part being that when they sprout up, I usually just laugh at them - the thought of them cropping up is worse than when they actually do. I just struggle to respect the opinions of people who spend their time being shitty to artists online, not least because they NEVER have any of their own stuff posted.

The only way I'd be able to take non-constructive criticism seriously would be if it came from a respected mutual because I'd know it was coming from a well-meaning place, but my lovely mutuals would never be non-constructive in their criticism, so the point is moot.

24. how do you recharge when you’re not feeling creative?

So I write daily as a rule, and after around four months of that (which were challenging, I won't lie, back when I started in 2020), whether or not I "felt" creative stopped being a factor in that equation. The more you show up, the more your creativity does, it really is like a muscle. Some days are still better than others -- I did find this year that having other creative outlets helps a lot. I think about writing and plot decisions etc. so often while I'm crocheting, because it gets me into that same zone but without the added stress of staring at an empty word document, which can be very intimidating at times.

Reading also helps! Fic is great, ofc, but I really can't emphasise enough how good it is to read books, and cast a wide net for that reading material. Rn I'm doing three reading challenges, one that revolves around classics, another where you read a book from every single country in the world, and a third where it's all book recs from mutuals, on top of whatever I'm mood reading, and I always have at least one non-fiction book on the go, too. Some of those reads end up being absolute stinkers, but it's a necessary process.

28. your least favorite part of the writing process

Descriptions! Dialogue comes so quickly and so easily to me - so many of my drafts start out just looking like a script because I'll get all of the dialogue down and then I have to fill in the bits in the middle. I'm not great with metaphor, and I struggle to wedge in my descriptions in a way that feels natural and not shoehorned in.

When I read back old stuff, though, I don't think that struggle shows too much, which is nice.

I also hate edits, because if I spend too long doing that I'll end up not wanting to post the chapter, so I have to find a nice balance between proofreading and not giving myself a chance to freak myself out...which is how an embarrassing number of typos and mistakes slip through.

Thank you!! 💜

Ask game ✨

[notjanine]

3, 4, 6

3. What were your top five books of the year?

(I will restrict this list to recreational reading only, bc tbh most of my top five would actually be good stuff i read for work!)

The Last Unicorn by Peter S. Beagle- i think this was the first one i read in january (it was a christmas gift from Books, back when i wasn't sure if this thing was real yet). it's one of those books that feels so familiar and whole that you can't believe it hasn't been part of your life before. it's just such a perfect little high fantasy story- not too serious, but not too simple, not bloated with unnecessary worldbuilding details, but still feels very lived-in. i loved it so much and i know it's one i will return to many times more.

The Devourers by Indra Das- a journey! i'm a slut for stories about shapeshifters, and i really liked what this book did with that. it's tense and sexy, and the perfect length for the story it's trying to tell. lots of sensory detail made it feel wonderfully immersive. it's not like anything else i've ever read.

The Bruising of Qilwa by Naseem Jamnia- it's definitely got flaws, but it's an interesting fantasy medical mystery, and i was surprised how much i liked it. i'm not usually one to get attached to a protagonist, but i really enjoyed this one.

Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky- human space exploration drama plus super-intelligent giant spider society bullshit. fun. the protag didn't sit well with me, but he's so boring and such a non-entity that it barely affected my enjoyment of the book. i took issue with some of the gender politics (i love when men write matriarchal societies that are just genderswapped patriarchy without being thoughtful about why that phenomena would arise in the first place 🙄 this one is more thoughtful than some i've seen, but there were still a few eye roll moments). all that being said, it is a very compelling, crunchy sci-fi novel that i would recommend.

Love after the End edited by Joshua Whitehead- a great collection of queer and two-spirit indigenous speculative short stories, some of which have realllly stuck with me!

bonus bonus can't not mention it!: Cosmoknights vol. 1 (reread) and vol. 2 (new!) by Hannah Templer- i just fucking love these space lesbians so much!

4. Did you discover any new authors that you love this year?

i'm down hard for the aforementioned Naseem Jamnia! Zin E. Rocklyn's Flowers for the Sea didn't make it into my top five, but i will definitely keep an eye out for anything they do next. i'm in the middle of Out There Screaming, and so far Cadwell Turnbull and Lesley Nneka Arimah are new-to-me authors i'm def gonna get more into. there were also a few authors in Love after the End that i want more of, but i've added their books to my goodreads want to read and forgotten their names since i returned that book to the library.

6. Was there anything you meant to read, but never got to?

tons! here's all my fun books (i.e., books that are not 100% directly related to work) that i have yet to read

[sharkiethedork]

Hi so I finished reading A Beautifully Foolish Endeavor by Hank Green the other day and I really enjoyed it! I do have a couple rambley nitpicks on how I thought the story was gonna go but I don't know anyone else who's read these books yet so I'm gonna throw it out here into the void. so spoilers below! (I do highly recommend these two books though so if you do read them we can talk about them hehe)

Okay I was SURE that the text that Miranda got from Maya about the the dresses was actually from Carl's Brother/One dgsdfgs like! I was reading that part and right when Miranda starts speculating on what Maya meant by that, I had a really incredible moment of dread when I remembered that, oh shit, April chucked Maya's phone out of the car earlier! I thought One got ahold of the phone or signal or whatever and sent that text to make Miranda feel bad and start doubting her friends so she would get mixed up in Altus easier! I believe Carl gives Maya her phone back in the next chapter and I was kind of waiting for that reveal to be made for a good chunk of the book, but then Maya said that she did send that text when she rescues Miranda from the Altus space. (And for a moment, that also made me wonder if that was actually a fake out too! But that wouldn't make much sense for One to do since Miranda didn't know they'd be coming to get her then anyway)

Which, isn't a problem and I know the whole book wasn't always strictly chronological so that's fine. Maybe I'm just a sucker for when the villain completely plays the protagonists (which, to be fair, was the case when it came to the Thread so I did get what I wanted in that way lol) but I was very slightly disappointed that my foreshadowing senses were slightly off there haha

And secondly. I was positive Robin was gonna die at some point lol. He's the only member of the gang who didn't have any chapters in the book, and Andy said something to the affect of "I never learned more about why Robin has issues with dating" after their heart-to-heat scene (Which was a scene I really adored btw). It just turns out that Robin just kinda...stopped showing up about 3/4th the way though.

While I definitely get that it probably wasn't feasible to have a SIXTH narrator in the book, and as an aspirational writer with a few minor projects under my belt I'm very aware that sometimes you just end up having a character that just kinda doesn't have anything to do later on and falls to the wayside, Robin's absence did kind of feel like a missed opportunity. Robin's reveal that he knew April's agent whos name escapes me soz was also working for Petrawiki was the partial catalyst that led to April "dying" in the first book, and he makes it clear to Andy that he's wracked with guilt about it. If I recall, the only interaction we get between him and April is that she hugs him when he shows up at the penthouse, and I'm pretty sure that scene ends up being his last appearance or at least his last major one. I think it would have been great if some time was spent in an April chapter where they make up. It's fine if April has forgiven him since then, but having some closure between them on the page would have been really great. Oh well.

At the very least when it comes to him not being a narrator, I can easily imagine them asking Robin to help write the book but he's just like "Hey it was your guys' job to do all the work on the ground, my job is to be your agent and get it out there, let me do that well."

Other than those two frankly minor nitpicks I thought ABFE was really good! I wish I had read them sooner but they came out while I was in the middle of my like five years where I didn't read shit, and also I hadn't been paying much attention to Nerdfighteria so I was only vaguely aware of the books for a while. I think I slightly prefer An Absolutely Remarkable Thing although I'm not super sure why I do, but you can't just stop at the first one!

[broke-on-books]

Got tagged by @threephantomrey on a reading game thing, it got long so it's pasted under the cut.

1) How many books did you read this year?

So many omg!! I logged 34 books on Goodreads but I only started logging there at the end of February. I also read a shitton of comics that I didn’t log there because I didn’t want to skew certain statistics and use a different app to log that. (Going by my rough math using that, I’ve read 360 individual comic issues in 2023, not counting rereads). So like I read a lot.

2) Did you reread anything? What?

Sooo much stuff. I just finished a reread of N. K. Jemisin’s Great Cities Duology like two days ago, which I cannot recommend more. Also reread 17776 recently, as well as a childhood favorite (The Fall of the Readers series by Django Wexler) over the summer. When it comes to comics I’ve also done a ton of rereading, most notably Emerald Twilight (Green Lantern (1990) #48-50) like 5 times for the most rereads, but I’ve also reread other faves (in whole or part) such as Wonder Woman: Historia, Batgirl (2000), and I’m currently doing a Green Lanterns (2016) read which has me brain diseased because I am actually obsessed with them SO bad. And I reread poetry constantly so there’s that too.

3) What were your top five books of the year?

I’m skipping this one honestly. I started thinking about it and it hurt my brain. Some standouts I haven’t mentioned yet though include The Fifth Season by N K Jemisin, The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin, The Last Speakers: The Quest to Save the World’s Most Endangered Languages by K. David Harrison, and The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Also like everything Greg Rucka did on Wonder Woman in the aughts (including the Hikateia <3333)

4) Did you discover any new authors that you love this year?

Probably Greg Rucka is a big one, Would maybe count James Baldwin here but that’s iffy because I decided to start reading some of his stuff because I loved a poem of his I had read before this year (among other things). I would also say I discovered A. S. King this year, but I don’t know if I’d say I LOVE her writing, rather that I find it incredibly entertaining because of how batshit fucking crazy it is. Like no one else is on her level when it comes to insanity honestly (and I say this as a comics fan)

5) What genre did you read the most of?

I mean superhero comics probably, but also I read a good amount of poetry (as always) and some fiction.

6) Was there anything you meant to read, but never got to?

Sooooooo much! Because I like so many genres I’m always reading like 10+ books at a time, and still a lot of stuff I just don’t get to. Some things I wanted to read include some poetry books I own, specifically my Most Famous Poems of All Time anthology (I think that’s what it’s called?) and my best of Antonio Machado book (bilingual edition!). There’s also a bunch of specific poems that would fall under this category. Also meant to read the Light of the Jedi by Charles Soule (and the rest of the main High Republic series), but that didn’t happen. Also I wanted to read some 90s Flash but it’s soooo long and I couldn’t justify starting it while I’m in the middle of so many things.

7) What was your average Goodreads rating? Does it seem accurate?

My average rating was a 4.2 which is pretty high. I’d say it seems accurate for the books I finished, but when you consider all my DNFs and comics it would definitely be way lower, as I quit a bunch of books halfway through for being terrible this spring that aren’t reflected, and also I read some really shitty comics for my faves this fall. 

8) Did you meet any of your reading goals? Which ones?

No I didn’t meet them : ((((((((. I was pretty ambitious with the Goodreads goal (set for 100 books) so I’m not sad I didn’t meet that, but I was using those numbers to compete with my best friend on who could read the most, and I lost that (she had 43 to my 34) due to a slump in the early summer and another during the school year in the fall. For comics I recently hit 1000 issues read, so I’m happy about that mindset, and got my niche fave into my top 5 characters read so I’m pretty happy there. Still haven’t reached my goal of having Wonder Woman beat Batman for my top character yet, but that only emerged as an objective like a month ago so I’m not too upset. 

9) Did you get into any new genres?

I’d say so, yes! In recent years I’ve done a lot of expanding my taste of books into different genres, and this year I think I read a lot of memoirs, (both traditional and fictionalized) than I ever did before. For traditional I read Jennette McCurdy’s I’m Glad My Mom Died and in terms of fictionalized, I read and enjoyed both Go Tell it on the Mountain by James Baldwin and The Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian by Sherman Alexie. Next year I want to read more of this genre, especially getting to Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, which has been on my TBR for a while. 

10) What was your favorite new release of the year?

New release… um…. Let me check something real quick. How have I read nothing from this year what. Okay I’m just going to stick to comics for this one and say Spirit World by Alyssa Wong was SO GOOD. Honestly may buy the trade for that when it comes out in April like I was loving that series sm. (also Wong is my favorite comic author currently writing. Although they’re not doing anything I’m interested in in 2024 it looks like : ((((( )

11) What was your favorite book that has been out for a while, but you just now read?

*blinks in classics fan* uhhh actually you know what. The Rime of the Ancient Mariner has been published for 231 slutty, slutty years and I only got around to it now. So that’s a shame. Also I read Huck Finn for the first time this year and that’s been culturally massive for centuries as well. Although the ending for that book was shit I really liked the rest. Tom Sawyer can actually die in a hole though I hate him SO much. 

12) Any books that disappointed you?

SO MANY YES. I had a really long dnf streak in late spring of this year, but one of the books I couldn’t finish was one of the most hyped up books I’ve read this year, that being All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr. Also I actually finished this one but I just hated Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead by Tom Stoppard. Which like I’ve heard good things about this play and I had just finished Hamlet like a month or so before and just like. Idk it was bad I didn’t like it and thought it was super confusing. Maybe watching a stage production would make me like it more but like. It was not lit fam idk :/

13) What were your least favorite books of the year?

Those two for sure would be in there. Also just like the rest of my dnfs I guess. R & G was the only book I finished that I rated less than three stars on goodreads. OH WAIT COMICS. I read so many shitty comics oh my god. This could have gone in disappointments too but Green Lantern: Mosaic FUCKING SUCKED. Like jesus christ it was so bad I only made it three issues. It was such a disappointment too because it was a spinoff book from a really good arc imo (written by the worst human to ever draw air and write comics. Not an exaggeration) with cool ideas and characterization and then the actual book is like fucking. Horrific. Like he has the main character fucking graphically domestic abuse his girlfriend in front of her kid and then she forgives him and then she comforts him and it's just a hot mess of a book. Fucking awful. This summary doesn’t even begin to cover it. 

14) What books do you want to finish before the year is over?

I told myself I would finally finish Muerte Bajo el Sol, the Spanish translation of Agatha Christie’s Evil Under the Sun by the end of the year but I very much lied there so yeah. I’ve been reading that book for so long I just need it over.

15) Did you read any books that were nominated for or won awards this year (Booker, Women’s Prize, National Book Award, Pulitzer, Hugo, etc.)? What did you think of them?

Oh yeah a ton. I like my books thematically crunchy so I generally search out award winners. I’ll be easy and say the Broken Earth Trilogy here, which I did love, although I think the first book was the strongest outside of the three. I won’t spoil but I was in the parking lot waiting to pick up my friend when I reached a certain point and I legit almost honked my horn in the senior parking lot. At dismissal. Also had a few great moments reading it where I realized that the author had read [insert classic here] as well and was drawing some inspiration for certain elements which I liked. 

16) What is the most over-hyped book you read this year?

All the Light We Cannot See for sure. It just wasn’t it personally. 

17) Did any books surprise you with how good they were?

Maphead by Ken Jennings lmao. I was given a metric ton of Ken Jennings books for Christmas 2022 (because I’m a MAJOR trivia/quiz bowl nerd and he hosts Jeopardy) but this was my favorite, and I really did like it. (especially the quiz in the back haha)

18) How many books did you buy?

No comment. The username is the username for a reason. No but uhhh for real idk. I used the libraries pretty heavily this year, so when it comes to like my own money then just two comic trades I think. Maybe some more poetry. I get given/ask for a lot of books as gifts so that’s where most of mine comes from. I got 9 books for Christmas like last week haha.

19) Did you use your library?

Yee! I used 4 different library systems this year, (high school, local public, college, and college local public) so I definitely made the most of it. Currently I have three library cards as I just applied for a new one in my college town using my dorm address lol. Oh and I got a few books from an informal swap library set up in a bookshelf right outside my summer job so that too i suppose. 

20) What was your most anticipated release? Did it meet your expectations?

I’ll use Spirit World here because it actually came out in 2023 haha. I think it both met and surpassed my expectations, as the reasons I started the book were all better or just as good as expected, but also there were so many other elements that I thought were soooo good too so yeah.

21) Did you participate in or watch any booklr, booktube, or book twitter drama?

Nah idc about any of that. I listen to my friend complain about how shitty some of the popular tiktok books she reads are so that should count for something ig. 

22) What’s the longest book you read?

The Fifth Season was 468 pages so that one. Shortest was Rime of the Ancient Mariner with 77 pages (although I think it was shorter tbh)

23) What’s the fastest time it took you to read a book?

According to Libby I think like an hour and a half for the Absolutely True Diary which is kind of crazy. (not counting the Rime here obviously) but generally it only takes me a couple hours for most books. Poetry collections and nonfiction are different though.

24) Did you DNF anything? Why?

SO MUCH. Why? Because it sucked. No but like I was trapped with my most accessible library from Jan - May this year being the one at my high school, which just had SO much YA and books for like. Middle schoolers. This was at a time where my tastes were maturing a lot and I really wanted serious books. So even recommendations I would get from the librarians for books during this time would fall flat just because they were too juvenile for what I was into. 

25) What reading goals do you have for next year?

To beat my best friend in books read. Also like to try not to slump too bad and just like. Read a good amount. Finish my one spanish book so I can start my other spanish book. Have Wonder Woman beat Batman in my comic book stats. Yeah. 

As for tagging uh idk im like really congested right now so like. people do whatever i dont want to have to htink of anybody to tag *thumbs up emoji*

[willow-lark]

Hi Lark! You seem really cool! I was wondering, what's your favorite Pride and Prejudice adaptation, if you have one? Have a nice day!

hello hello!! how's it going?

okay. okay. honestly THANK YOU for sending this to me. p&p is my FAVORITE NOVEL and i simply do not talk about it enough on here (or at all regarding my own personal thoughts). but i also hope u understand what u have unleashed within me. bc p&p is a topic that i will not shut up about once prompted. so without further ado:

The Complete Ranking of Every Pride and Prejudice Adaptation that I Have Seen Thus Far (*not including books/written work, bc i have read far too many of those)

Pride & Prejudice (2005 film)

this one is gonna be controversial, whichever one i pick as first. you know, it's got its merits and pitfalls in comparison with the 1995 miniseries, but this film is my comfort movie. it looks pretty, and it's got a pretty soundtrack, and keira knightley is pretty, and i think it adapts the story quite well for having to fit everything into two hours. each character is done well & it artfully represents the book. i just love this film okay!!

2. Pride and Prejudice (1995 miniseries)

okay i ranked this one #2 is everyone happy now!! but yeah. i mean. no one can outdo colin firth. that's a fact of life. this one adapts the books soso faithfully, it's so amazing to see. the whole tone is so well transferred onto the screen. collins is appropriately slimy, mrs. bennet is over the top, & COLIN FIRTH!!!!

3. The Lizzie Bennet Diaries (2012-2013 webseries)

i found this one only a couple of years ago, and i was so mad to be late to the party >:( i love every single part of this adaptation. all the tongue-in-cheek references are so great and i loved how they adapted the bennet sisters, as well as the whole situation to the modern day. just spectacular.

4. Death Comes to Pemberley (2013 miniseries)

okay i will be completely fair i haven't seen this one in a while, but i did just talk to my mother, who's seen it more recently than i, and she insisted that i place this one as far as up as i could. from what i remember it was a very good story, with good acting and an interesting take on all the characters and what they would be doing years after the end of the book. definitely recommend!

5. Bridget Jones's Diary (2001 film)

another one i haven't seen in ages, and also of which my mother was very passionate about the ranking. colin firth AGAIN!! and another fantastically funny modern au that presents a new angle on it. still middle of the pack, though, since i don't have much to say about it 😭

6. Pride and Prejudice (1940 film)

ok now we're getting into territory that is just. not worth your while lmao. like this one was interesting to watch as an old movie but i was overall not impressed. like maybe there's some film buff out there who can tell me something or other about how it pioneered some technique or something, but...

7. Pride and Prejudice (1980 miniseries)

i... could not get through much of this one at all. it just seemed off? in tone, in plot, in characterization... i don't actually know that i finished it! it definitely could not compare with any of the films or miniseries that are higher up on my list.

8. Pride and Prejudice: A New Musical (2020 musical)

just... augh. when i saw that this existed i was super excited! like a p&p musical??? that sounds so cool! but i found it just to be so tedious. the characters & acting were poor, i didn't enjoy any of the musical numbers, and they styled the actor playing mr. darcy to make him look akin to a corpse. not everyone can pull off the colin firth look and you shouldn't force it!! there's this one moment about half an hour in when darcy & wickham meet for the first time that CRACKS ME UP. legitimately hysterical. i didn't make it much further than that in watching it.

/end rant. that was longer than i thought it would be & probably longer than u were asking for 😆 but THANK YOU for giving me the opportunity to talk a bit ab p&p bc i do adore it dearly and would always love to scream about it!! 💕🫂 i'm sure i've seen more adaptations than on this list, but these were the first to come to mind, lol

[sundrop-writes]

I feel like Fred was EVERYONE'S childhood crush lmao. I mean I did want his brother REAL BAD, but Freddie, I'm here, I'm home, I love youuuu

i love skimming through the content warnings and catching the little surprise tools for later -> I love how the content warnings aren't even warnings for you, they're little surprise treats

"Fred calls himself Daddy and the reader is way into it" so am I actually (congrats Fred Weasley for making it to the very select list of men I'd call daddy) -> I was slightly hesitant to put Daddy kink in this fic, but I just couldn't get it out of my head and it felt so fitting for his character (and it's been so long since I have written a fic with Daddy kink and I wanted to so badly) so I am SO GLAD that he is one of the select men that you would call Daddy!!! (perhaps in a later fic, Ron will also make that list...?)

(i actually forgot this had smut in it KSKSKSK i was so focused on the ANGST and self made suffering) -> that is hilarious but also so understandable omg. I do this sometimes when I am writing an angst/smut fic lmao

"It seemed that just yesterday, you were a bright-eyed young girl" this entire first big paragraph goes so hard -> omg thank you!!! it's about the unbearable passage of time and also how quickly trauma and a dark world mentally ages a person

"and it left you the laughing stalk of the courtyard" the prank rivals to lovers story we've been hoping for <3 | "So - on with your revenge, it was" I love these two so much -> her immediately being like "it's time for a taste of his own medicine" is THE REASON HE FELL IN LOVE. Fred Weasley wants someone who will match his Prank Freak. she pranked him back and he immediately was picking out their future kids' names in his head

"the quiet robotic hum of ‘Jingle Bells’, occasionally overlapped by ‘Santa Claus Is Coming To Town" this is such a funny prank idea -> FUN FACT - I got this idea from a Canadian kids TV show that used to come on YTV when I was younger called Prank Patrol. it was one of those shows where they set up elaborate pranks to goof people and filmed in in the reality tv style, but they also had a segment in the middle of the show where they showed you fun easy DIY pranks that you could do at home, and this was one of them (though I think that they recommended putting the singing greeter in someone's bedroom door hinge so that it sang whenever their bedroom door was open, and not in a book, but it functions the same way)

"You had a crippling fear of heights" which is a surprise tool :3 that'll help us out in a minute ("help" us out i guess) -> I will never understand people who only write Reader characters that they personally can relate to, because I absolutely do not have a fear of heights, and I find it so interesting to explore things like this through my writing. and it makes for good plot

"because watching Fred doing something he loved was a good distraction from just how high up you were" he'd also look Delicious playing -> edits of Quidditch Fred from POA - he was SO DELICIOUS !!!!

"planting his hand firmly on the railing at the other side of your waist" this gives me the same giddy feeling of someone holding me by the waist to get by behind me -> Fred Weasley is a PDA man and nobody can convince me otherwise, and he would find any excuse to slip PDA into his everyday life (he is the man who puts his hands on your waist to gently move you out of the way to walk by you and his hands are so big and warm that it's BUTTERFLIES every single time)

"Finally. I thought the two of you were never gonna get on with it" nothing could make me believe all the Weasleys weren't making bets on how long it'd take them -> I did not even think of this, but they FUCKING WERE. especially Charlie and Bill, who only met Y/N like twice, they immediately saw the chemistry between her and Fred and they were like "yeah, this is gonna be a thing" (George wasn't allowed in the betting pool because Fred tells him too much)

"I guess I was stupid enough to believe that I was part of that dream!” // "Would’ve been a waste of parchment writing to you, anyway" -> I always have so much fun writing angsty arguments omg

"Fred smirked, proud that after all this time, he could still draw a laugh out of you" the unbreakable curse of liking the "Funny Guy", he's Still funny even after a fight/breakup (it's almost humbling in a way) -> THIS IS SO TRUE. like imagine all the times that Fred came into the Apothecary and he was purposefully flirting with her and making dumb jokes, and she couldn't help but to laugh, and every single time she laughed, he held onto hope that they would get back together because he was like "that laugh is mine. she still loves me"

"In the back of his mind, he thought that Wood would be proud" oh 🥺 -> all those hours of being screamed at during Quidditch practice are gonna have his life !!!!!

"He likely would have died with that tight grip still around your wrist in those moments if someone had hit him with the killing curse" hey Sunny it's me knocking, let me in I just wanna talk 🔪 oh this ? don't worry about that | "Freddie, please, I don’t wanna die!” 🔪 Sunny I'm coming in -> reading this literally made me BURST OUT LAUGHING omg. cause I know if you showed up at my doorstep with a knife it would actually be to cut me a slice of cake <3 you'd never actually hurt me baby I know it !!! (also you think I PLAY AROUND when I write angst??? HUH)

"You wanted to sob, you wanted to laugh, you wanted to scream" YEAH !!! -> this is what happens when the Weasley twins get hurt !!!!

"He couldn’t possibly be talking about…? No. No, he wasn’t" im hitting both of you on the head with one of those rubber squicky hammers -> again HILARIOUS. and they both need it

"You had never seen Fred Weasley so sad before" im screaming and crying and ripping the wallpaper off the walls -> I feel like I have never seen a fic explore Fred's sadness? like yes, he's a joker, but he's capable of sadness. like the man have complex emotions. let him have some negative emotions!!! I really enjoyed exploring a more serious side of him with this

"I can’t lose you. You almost slipped out of my hands.” 🎵 waaaaaar is oooveeeeer 🎵 (kinda, maybe, yes ?) -> this was one of my favourite parts to write !!!! the rare emotionally distraught Fred Weasley, you tear me apart in the best ways!!!

"If one of us were to die tomorrow, I couldn’t live my last day knowing that I wasted it not being yours" I AM RIPPING MY OWN HEART OUT OUAT STYLE, MORE BLOODY MAYBE -> AGAIN I HAD WAY TOOOO MUCH FUN WRITING THIS HAHAHAHAHA

"You grabbed both sides of the sport jacket and used it to haul him down toward you" YEEEEEEEAAAAAAAHHHHHHH !!!!!! I looove a good intense kiss scene 🙂‍↕️ -> me too? kiss scenes are sooooo underrated!!!! I am thinking "Your First Kiss With X" with the Harry Potter characters like I did for Titans??? I feel like they need it??? the world needs it!!!

"his bedroom had some silencing wards around" 😈 we'll put it to good use 😈 - PERCY HAD NO CLUE WHAT HE WAS GOING HAHAHAHA

"Did you miss it, darling?” He asked... with a cocky smile stretched across his soft lips" 😳😳😳😳😳 -> this such a last minute addition to the fic and I am so glad I did because Fred FUCKING WOULD

"Fred Weasley’s cock was a marvel that you couldn’t have forgotten if you had tried" are they identical in every way i wonde- *a gunshot sounds off* -> listen... this will be addressed in a different fic, but... they are. they are

"When I cum tonight, it’s gonna be deep inside your sweet cunt, yeah?” 🚨🚑🚨🚑🚨🚑🚨🚑 -> again this was so much fun to write mwahahaha

“Go on, good girl.” *holding the tmi jar very close to my chest* stop spilling all my secrets -> okay but.... this was also intensely self indulgent

"perfect heat of your cunt began sucking him in for the first time in over a year" and you KNOW they have not gotten with ANYONE in that time (only the company of their own hand for a whole year) -> YES EXACTLY!!!

"Unfortunately I don’t have any panties for you, so…” oh noooo what a nightmare (he's a fucking liar btw, the panties are under his matress) -> how did I not even CONSIDER THIS??? OMG!!! HE ABSOLUTELY HAS KEPT SOME OF HER PANTIES OMG

"Fred quietly let out a ‘yes’ in celebration" *punching the wall* he's such a dork -> in the BEST FUCKING WAAAAY

"soft planes of his muscles that had come from hard work rather than a distinct workout routine and the beautiful bit of fat on his lower belly" i am foaming at the mouth -> a muscled man who has super tight abs = sad, dehydrated. a muscled man who has a fat tummy = WHAT A MAN WHAT A MAN WHAT A MIGHTY GOOD MAAAAN YES HE IIIIISSSS

"his core was a Dragon Heart’s String, and that heart beat for you just as fondly as his own did" INSAAAAAAAANEEEEE -> this was inspired by the fact that I literally JUST read the chapter in Philosopher's Stone where Harry gets his wand and I was like THE LORE. THE LORE lmao

"but just as Fred’s lips brushed yours, George let out a loud, fake gagging sound" siblinghood is so real -> George is so fucking obnoxious and we love it so much

I am so glad that you liked the fic!!!!

The Way You Miss Me

Fred Weasley x Fem!Reader

I’m not trying to say I don’t wanna stay, I just know how this story ends.

Use my body against me - and all of our history.

I hate the way you miss me. 

Summary:

Fred broke up with you. He made it clear that he was going to have a new life when he opened his shop, and he didn't need you to be a part of it. You being stuck on him was just another joke in a long line of pranks that he pulled.

And life kept on laughing at you when your fear of crippling heights was triggered by a potentially life ending mission the Order put together that had you dangling hundreds of feet over London, held up only by Fred's strength and determination.

So what does it mean when the two of you land, and he's the only thing that can stop your shaking panic? What does it mean when he's looking at you with nothing but love in his eyes, holding you tight like a lover would?

Fred Weasley x Fem!Reader. Exes to Lovers. Emotional Angst and Smut. Set during Deathly Hallows.

Word Count: 18,500

Harry Potter Masterlist | AO3 Link

Full warnings list and author's notes below the cut.

Warnings: this is equal parts angst fic and smut fic; the reader is a cis woman - uses she/her pronouns and has a vagina; there is no mention of the reader's looks, race, hair colour, etc. in any way; this fic does use Y/N (and L/N as in Last Name); this takes place mostly during the beginning of Deathly Hallows, so there are mentions of dark topics, like death, and the cult-like following that Voldemort has developed; this is Exes to Lovers - Fred and the reader dated for a while during their time at Hogwarts and then broke up; (there is flashbacks in this fic to times during Goblet of Fire and Order of the Phoenix); the reader is half-blood - she has one parent who is a muggle and lives in a muggle city and the other parent who is loyal to death eaters (and there is a later mention of the reader's mother being killed due to anti-muggle sentiment as Voldemort becomes more powerful); there is no mention of what Hogwarts house the reader is in; the reader has a crippling fear of heights (which is a large part of the plot for this fic); mentions of nausea and vomiting (as a fear response) (no one actually throws up during the course of the fic); the reader experiences actual life-threatening danger while on a broom - she nearly falls to her death, but Fred catches her; Fred does struggle to hold the reader's body weight, so it doesn't imply that he has super-human strength or that the reader is particularly petite (I wanted his reaction to be realistic for someone of any body weight); for part of the fic, Fred is disguised as Harry using Polyjuice Potion (but there's no confusion about his identity because the reader knows he took the potion); the reader experiences a panic attack due to the life threatening fall, and Fred helps her calm down; mentions of blood and semi-graphic descriptions of George's canon injury (his ear being blasted off); there is general emotional angst from the characters being in close proximity to danger, death, and life threatening situations; Fred calls the reader 'darling' and 'love' and 'sweets' and 'pretty girl' (in sexual and non-sexual contexts).

For the actual smut section: this is not their first time together as a couple and neither of the characters are meant to be virgins; there is undertones of sub/dom dynamics - Fred is a teasing soft dom and the reader is submissive to him (and there is mentions of the reader experiencing what could be considered subspace) (but there isn't any specifically laid out roles - it's more so one person enjoying taking care of the other, especially after experiencing the emotional turmoil of a near death experience together); there is Daddy kink in this (not until a bit later into the smut section, but it just came to me and I realized it suited Fred so well) Fred calls himself Daddy and the reader is way into it; praise kink - Fred calls the reader 'good girl' specifically because he knows she likes it; lots of dirty talk (Fred has a filthy mouth); oral sex - Fred receiving (she blows him as a thank you for saving her life) (also slight ball worship); mentions of the reader 'choking' on his cock (but there is no major breathplay or breath restriction); slight spit kink (it's a messy blowjob and he loves it); teasing and brief orgasm denial (toward both parties); hair pulling (toward both parties) - not with the intention of causing pain, but to direction someone's attention and to show appreciation and affection to the person; thigh riding - she humps herself on Fred's thigh while she is still wearing clothes; penis in vagina sex; creampie kink (I'm not gonna say breeding kink, because there's no mention of procreation or getting someone pregnant, even in theory, but they are both very turned on by the idea of him cumming inside of her); this could be protected sex OR unprotected sex - he cums inside of her raw but we can all pretend that they used a magical pregnancy prevention method if you want even though it's not mentioned in the fic; cockwarming (reader doesn't let Fred pull out for a while after he cums); I think that is finally it for this fic.

A/N: This fic is titled after a song by All Time Low, which I highly recommend listening to paired with this fic. This is actually part of an idea I had for a much longer multi-chaptered Fred x Reader fic, but I kept thinking about this one moment in the fic and how much I wanted to write it - so I did. And I decided that it would make a good oneshot. And I am actually insanely proud of myself for managing to capture the same emotions in under 20k that I originally thought would take me like 50k or 100k to properly communicate. I think this is fantastic, and it's one of the best things I have written in a while - and I really hope you guys enjoy it! Especially if you like angsty, emotional, exes to lovers fics.

...

Very often, you wondered when life had become so complicated. 

It seemed that just yesterday, you were a bright-eyed young girl, dancing around a beautifully magical winter ball with the love of your life on your arm - and now, you were a confused woman who was terrified of how your life would end up because of a dark wizard and his cultist followers trying to overtake your world. 

These days you didn’t even have that lover to comfort you through all of the confusion and dread that clouded the world around you. 

You and Fred used to be perfect. That’s what a lot of people would have called the two of you - the ‘perfect’ couple. 

Your story was something straight from a romance novel - the two of you were best friends when you were young, and that friendship quickly blossomed into affection. That affection naturally led into a sweet romance. When you were with him, your life was full of moments where you felt like a beautiful, flowery, desirable protagonist because of how he treated you. Your life used to be full of laughter, full of smiles, full of romantic gestures. 

You and Fred were in the same year at Hogwarts, so naturally you knew each other. You weren’t really friends - at least not at first. You knew of each other, especially because you had some classes together. 

But you didn’t truly meet Fred Weasley until more than halfway into your first year of classes together. You had the misfortune of accidentally running into a prank that was meant for a Slytherin Prefect - someone who had taken one too many house points off Gryffindor for the twins’ liking. And after being doused with red and gold paint and tripping over a toy rubber snake that had been charmed to hiss realistically when you got near it - you were reasonably frightened and crying, and it left you the laughing stalk of the courtyard - someone to be pointed at and mocked by everyone. 

Fred hadn’t meant for it to be you. With the way he looked at you after the incident - full of guilt while everyone else pointed at you and laughed, imitating your frightening screams and attempts to jump away from the fake snake - it didn’t take you long to figure out the culprits behind it. And it didn’t take you much longer after that to plan your revenge. (Especially because, as much as Fred looked guilty, he didn’t simply come forward and apologise. Too afraid to look like a weak moron in the eyes of his brother and his other Gryffindor friends. So - on with your revenge, it was.) 

You figured that all good pranksters should be due to be a victim sometimes, too. If the twins couldn’t laugh when they were on the receiving end, then they should stop playing pranks. 

So you came up with something that you considered masterful. During your trip home for Christmas, back to Muggle London where your mother lived, you asked her to take you to a shop to buy a couple of greeting cards for your classmates. The ones that sing Christmas carols loudly when the hinge of the card is opened. Something clever, and not needing any magic at all. 

And when you returned to Hogwarts after the break, you found a moment where the twins were distracted, and you stole their book bags in order to pull off your epic, amazing prank. You taped those singing greeters into the back of their Potions textbooks - a class that you shared with them, of course, so that you could enjoy the show. And then you waited. 

You had trouble containing your laughter when Professor Snape escalated from annoyed to downright scalding angry as his class was filled with the quiet robotic hum of ‘Jingle Bells’, occasionally overlapped by ‘Santa Claus Is Coming To Town’. It was made even better by the fact that both of the twins clearly knew that the music was coming from somewhere in their surrounding area, but they had no clue what the exact source was or how to stop it. And with every snivelled demand of ‘just open your books and get to work’ - the music only started up again. 

By the time they had been sentenced to detention for disturbing the class, you were nearly breathless and your ribs were aching from trying to hold back your laughter. Which, of course, meant that Fred easily spotted you out of everyone else - who looked equally confused or annoyed with the low hum of the music. And as soon as the class ended, he brought his textbook to you, thanked you for the worthy prank, and asked you how to stop it. He looked entirely amused and impressed when you pulled the tiny device out of the back, and proceeded to ask you a million questions about it. 

You weren’t surprised when the next week, the annoying singing greeter ended up inside the teacher’s copy of the textbook on McGonagall’s desk. 

From that moment on, his crush on you steeped inside of him like a fine tea, developing from an innocent adolescent attraction to full-blown, ‘drive you crazy’, ‘I would do anything for you’, love. It was lucky for him that you easily felt the same way. 

Through the years of being by his side, becoming his best friend, pulling pranks together and trying desperately to get him to study - it was difficult not to fall for Fred Weasley. 

You had been overjoyed when Fred invited you to the Quidditch World Cup. Even though you weren’t the biggest fan of Quidditch (and Fred knew that). The only reason you had started attending the games at Hogwarts was because he joined the team. And you only bothered to attend the games he played in, so your bias could be spotted from a mile away. But in his letter, with the ticket to the World Cup slotted into the envelope, he told you that it was ‘the game of the century’ and you ‘simply couldn’t miss it’. 

You wouldn’t miss out on spending time with him, so you eagerly agreed to go. 

This left you with only one glaring problem. 

You had a crippling fear of heights. 

It was one of the reasons that you never really gotten into Quidditch in the first place. You had absolutely no interest in playing, and even less interest in watching if Fred wasn’t involved. The idea of even flying on a broom being something that made you nauseated and shaky just from thinking about it. 

The mandatory first year flying lesson was the only class at Hogwarts that you ever failed, but Madame Hooch took pity on you when she saw you crying and fisting the grass after only getting your broom about five inches off the ground. So she passed you anyway - just barely. 

When you set out to watch Fred’s games at Hogwarts, you usually had to take some kind of anti-nausea tonic beforehand to make sure that you didn’t puke all over everyone else in the stands. And you usually couldn’t even make it up to your seat to watch unless one of your good friends held your hand. But you were alright once the actual game started, because watching Fred doing something he loved was a good distraction from just how high up you were. 

Telling Fred about your intense fear had been one of the most honest, vulnerable moments that you ever had with him. Your friendship was usually all pranks and laughter, which you loved. 

But one summer day, when you were hanging out with the Weasleys, they wouldn’t stop nagging you to join one of their family Quidditch matches because they needed an extra player to make the teams even. And after the twins’ endless teasing, saying that you were ‘afraid to lose’ or that you would be ‘too distracted by their daring good looks’ in order to play properly, you broke down crying and stormed off into the woods, because you were too anxious to admit the real reason that you couldn’t play.  

Fred was the one who found you off in the trees behind the Burrow, tears still streaming down your face, and asked you what he had done to so greatly upset you. He had been terrified at the idea of making you upset, so hurt that he had been the one to make you cry. And after he found out about your fear, he didn’t laugh or mock you for it or play it off as something stupid like you thought would be so typical of him. No - instead, he wrapped a comforting arm around your shoulders and he told you that he was genuinely sorry. And he promised that he would never invite you to play Quidditch again. 

When you had accepted the invitation to The World Cup, you had forgotten how much your fear of heights played into watching Quidditch as well. The giant, impossibly tall temporary Quidditch stadium that had been set up for the event had been looming over you all day, but you didn’t want to quit and go home because of some silly little fear. 

You wanted to spend the time with your friends. You wanted to enjoy the event because the people you loved most were having fun there. So you pressed on, ignoring the inevitable, letting yourself get caught up in the pregame revelry. You walked around the seemingly endless campgrounds with Fred and George, in awe of all the decorations and the different wizards from all over the world, showing off things from their homes. You chatted and charmed along with them as they collected bets before the game. You let Fred paint your face with large, ugly shamrocks because even though you didn’t entirely care about the teams or fully know them, you were rooting for Ireland to win simply because he was. 

But the unavoidable nature of your problem became very apparent as Arthur guided everyone to your seats, and you climbed up more stairs, and more stairs, and more stairs - and the higher up you got, the more you found yourself shaking, especially when you looked down to the ground and saw that the people down there looked like little more than bugs. You hated it when your mind, naturally, went to what would happen to you if you stumbled over the railing and fell down all that way. You would splat on the ground, squashed like a bug. You would die within seconds. 

You held on tighter to Fred’s hand - he would have said that he had grabbed your hand in the first place so that he wouldn’t lose you among the bustling crowd, and not simply as an excuse to be closer to you. You didn’t even realise how badly you were trembling in his touch as you looked over the railing (still a few flights down from your final seats) with intense apprehension. 

“You alright?” Fred asked you simply. 

“‘m fine.” You mumbled out the lie, giving him a large, forced smile - hoping that he would believe it. 

You knew that if you told him how you were feeling, he would insist on escorting you back to the tent. Perhaps he would even insist on staying with you so that you wouldn’t have to be alone. So he might miss out on a once in a lifetime Quidditch game all because you had a bit of petty anxiety from being so high up. 

So you tried your best to push down all your feelings and ignore them, even if it was making you shake and making your stomach churn. When you got to the top, peering over the edge of the railing of the very, very high up seats that Arthur had gotten as a thanks for his work on helping to organise the whole thing (apparently, the higher up the better to actually see the game), you felt an incredible sense of dizziness, and began swaying on your feet. 

This was so much higher up than the Quidditch stands at Hogwarts. 

Naturally, Fred noticed. It wasn’t something he would easily admit, or even something he did consciously, but he always kept an eye on you. Partially due to a knack for admiring your beauty, that adolescent love-struck feeling always making him more prone to staring at you. But it was also partially due to the fact that he felt a need to watch over you. Whether it be as a friend or as something else, he always wanted you to be safe, and happy. 

And right now, your sickly, terrified face stood out like a sore thumb among the crowd of excited, cheering fans.  

“Y/N,” 

He called out your name in a serious tone that was so uncharacteristic of Fred, something that snapped your attention from staring anxiously at the ground toward him immediately. He cemented your attention on him when he put a hand on top of your tight, tense knuckles on the railing. His touch was warm, as always, and oddly grounding, removing even just a slight bit of that dizzying anxiety that you were feeling. 

“Do you wanna go back down? I can bring you back to the tent,” 

Of course. Just as you had predicted. 

“No.” You easily answered, shaking your head furiously, biting your lip. “I-” 

You didn’t want him missing out on such an important event because of you, but more importantly: 

“I - I don’t want to be afraid.” You heaved out, your chest tight with anxiety. “It’s stupid - people do stuff like this all the time, right? I shouldn’t be afraid-” 

“It’s not stupid.” He said firmly, quickly squashing down any self-belittling that you might be tempted to do. “You can’t control how you feel.” 

Coming from him, it sounded like the most firm truth ever. 

“If you want to stay, I’ll be right here with you.” Fred added on, giving you a warm, reassuring grin. “But just let me know if you want to go back down, and I’ll walk with you, alright?” 

You nodded, hating that even though his words gave you that nip of courage you needed, you were still pulsing with a dull panic. The undeniable reaction that fear caused in your body. 

Fred hated seeing you shaking, hated the deep frown that cut through your beautiful features - so what he did next was instinctive. He took his hand off yours and reached that arm, the one closest to you, around your back, planting his hand firmly on the railing at the other side of your waist. This trapped you in a close-knit hold beside him, something that made you feel instantly more secure - even if it was just from the warmth of him at your side. 

“I’m not gonna let you fall, yeah?” He said quietly, leaning closer into your ear to be heard - the warmth of the reassurance causing gentle tingles down your spine. “I would never let anything happen to you, darling.” 

Between the intense loving safety that he words wrapped you in with the sweet nickname he added on, and the firm cradle of his arm around your back, you knew that you would have no problem sticking it out for the game. But your brain was still trying to cope, your anxiety so incredibly nagging, and you couldn’t help it when your eyes drifted back to focus on the ant-like people on the ground, becoming shaking and nauseous all too soon from staring downward. 

“Down look down.” Fred scolded you gently, using his other hand to grab your chin, forcing your gaze back up - it ended with your eyes locked with his, admiring the way the breeze blew his too-long ginger hair into his eyes. “Just look at me, alright? It’s gonna be far worse if you keep starin’ down there. Just look at me, love.” 

“Just look at you.” You repeated in a quiet mumble, already so utterly locked in the powerful orbit of his gaze, feeling like it was near impossible to look away from him. 

You felt his forehead brush against yours before you realised just how close he had gotten. But you couldn’t bring yourself to mind. 

And ultimately, feeling the stands shaking beneath your feet as a particularly hard gust of wind came through and having another swell of anxiety rush through you was what drove you to closing the gap, sealing your lips on his in your first kiss. Fred made you brave, almost stupidly so, and you hoped that you had finally used that bravery for something good in capturing his lips. (Rather than the stupid mischief that the two of you usually got up to.) 

Fred smiled into the kiss and George cheered loudly behind him - you thought it was due to the game starting, and when you pulled back sharply to look around for the players, you were met with nearly all eyes in the group on you, clearly gawking at the fact that you and Fred had kissed. 

This included Ginny smirking almost evilly before she said: 

“Finally. I thought the two of you were never gonna get on with it.” 

This left you squirming with a mild embarrassment, and definitely not thinking about how high up you were anymore. 

Looking back, the memory was painful - not sweet or fond as it had once been to you. 

But it wasn’t nearly as painful as the memory of the day you and Fred had broken up. 

He had asked you to be his girlfriend officially only a few days after the World Cup. He wanted you to know what that kiss meant to him, and he wanted the privilege of more kisses from you, on top of the ‘honour’ (his exact wording) of going back to Hogwarts with you on his arm as his girlfriend, making all the other boys in your year ‘pathetically jealous’. Of course, it was everything you wanted, he was everything you wanted, so you said yes. 

The two of you dated for nearly two full happy years - right through your sixth year and into your seventh, until in April of your seventh year, shortly after Fred’s birthday, when everything came crashing down around you. 

It wasn’t unusual of Fred to pull you away after a class - his hand in yours, igniting fluttery giggles from your lungs as he pulled you down the corridors to whatever secret little spot he had picked out. Even with Umbridge at Hogwarts, implementing more rules and cracking down on ‘fraternisation’ between students, you and Fred still found ways to sneak off to have your private little moments together. 

So when Fred took you off to one of those private corners on chilly spring afternoon, you assumed that this was no different. You fell into the natural rhythm of pinning him against a wall, sealing your lips firmly to his in a kiss and waiting for his hand to sneak up your skirt while his tongue ventured into your mouth. You were shocked when this time, he didn’t kiss you back. He was limp and unreceptive against you, and that was when you realised that you had read the tone of the interaction very wrong - even if him dragging you away by the hand always led to making out in a quiet corner, and more than a bit of groping. 

You pulled back, looking at him with confusion and disappointment plainly across your face. 

“What’s wrong, Freddie?” You asked, well in the habit of using the nickname for him. 

Fred’s expression was filled with sullen dread, and it made your stomach twist. It truly made you fearful of whatever he was going to say next, and you took a step back from him, widening the gap between the two of you in the dusty, draughty old stairwell. You suddenly felt too cold, even with your uniform sweater and thick robes on, and wrapped your arms around yourself to compensate. 

“There’s something I have to tell you.” He announced quietly, continuing to lean on the wall that you had pressed him up against, staring at the floor, his eyes unwilling to meet you. 

What? Had he cheated on you? Did he want to break up? 

What terrible thing could possibly make this bright, funny joker so damn sad and serious? 

“What is it?” You asked, filling with dread, your throat tightening up more by the second. 

“George and I have decided that it’s about time we take our leave.” Fred announced, his eyes only flickering to you for a moment, looking for some kind of reaction. You were only further confused, and waited for him to explain. “The lease for the shop in Diagon Alley finally came through, and-” 

“Well that’s great news, Fred.” You said, trying to sound happy and upbeat beyond the tension that was still tight in your chest. You had no clue why he was so downtrodden - the joke shop was his dream, and now that they had secured a location for it, that dream was coming true. 

He heaved a sigh, his eyes turning to gaze out a nearby window for a moment before he turned back to you. 

“It means we have to leave, darling.” He said sharply. 

Your insides became heavy. 

You knew it was a very Fred and George thing - so intent on not doing their exams, desperate to escape any further academics. You wanted to ask why they wouldn’t stay until the end of the school year, but you knew that you would get answers about how they didn’t need marks from exams that they were likely going to fail anyway to run a shop that they now owned. 

It was something founded on their own talents and ideas, and they didn’t need the approval of professors marking them wrong or right in order to do it. 

It was the life they had always dreamed of. And you were intensely proud of them for it. 

So why did you still have that overwhelming feeling of dread? 

“So - when are we leaving?” You asked, trying to sound confident and firm in your words even though you knew what was likely coming next. 

You felt intensely disappointed when the all too predictable outcome smashed you in the face. 

“You’re not coming with us.” Fred said quietly. 

“Why not?” You argued gently. 

You would drop everything and go with them - you felt far more emotional attachment to being with Fred than you did to finishing your year at Hogwarts. You knew that you could be a useful hand around the shop. Any venture helping Fred would be a worthy one to you. But staring you down were the calculating eyes of someone who had been telling you over the past years how much he didn’t want to disrupt your studies with his antics, because he thought you had a ‘brilliant mind’, and you were ‘so much smarter’ than him and George. 

He thought that you could actually pull some decent - no, brilliant grades on your NEWTs and truly make something of yourself. The shop was a big dream of his and George’s, but Fred knew that you were destined for something so much greater that truly challenged and fully utilised your brilliance. So he wasn’t going to let you be dragged down to mediocrity by him. 

Realising this, part of you still ached. Why was he so intent on leaving if it meant leaving you behind? 

“Please don’t be stupid-” Fred sighed, rolling his eyes. 

“Oh, so I’m stupid now?” You scoffed. 

He hadn’t meant to let the harsh word leave his lips - at least, he hadn’t meant it in such a harsh way. 

“Y/N-” Fred used your actual name, something he rarely did, but you barreled right over whatever he was going to say with your next words. 

You were hurting now, and you didn’t entirely care what he had to say. 

“If I’m so stupid, then why should I even bother to stay here and take my NEWTs?” You hissed, twisting around his accidental slip into something he had never meant. “Or am I too stupid to even work at a silly little joke shop with you?” 

Fred scowled deeply. It didn’t suit him. 

“Y/N, this ‘silly little joke shop’ has been my dream since I was five years old!” He barked, now taking your heat of the moment words and running away with them. “You don’t-” 

“I guess I was stupid enough to believe that I was part of that dream!” You cried out in return, cutting off his words once again. 

‘You are.’ He choked down the words. ‘But I can’t bear to bring you down just because I want to be with you. I could never be so selfish.’ 

“I-” He choked on whatever he was going to say, swallowing it down. “I can’t do this right now.” 

He moved to storm off completely, hoping to speak with you later when you both had calmed down, hoping to have a proper, happy goodbye with you before he and George actually left. 

But your next words made him freeze on the spot, and wiped away all of those hopes within him. 

“Fred Weasley, if you walk away, we’re done.” You said, now choking on tears. 

You were utterly insulted that he wouldn’t even fight for you - that he wouldn’t even promise that his heart would be waiting for you after you graduated. To you, it was a sure sign that he was saying that his shop was more important to him than you were. That you were just some stupid schoolgirl fling to him; that along with the shop, he wanted to move on to other women, to find someone that he actually wanted to marry. 

You had never been a part of the dream he had for his life - you had just been a passing fancy in his eye. 

For Fred, it was all too painful. This was the conversation he had been utterly dreading since he and George had decided to take their leave, and it was going far worse than he had planned in his head. He couldn’t face the pain - he couldn’t face hurting you. He couldn’t face missing you, even during a few short months apart before you did graduate. 

So he then did something so terribly stupid, looking to bomb the relationship wide open - hoping to end all of the pain before it even started. 

“Good.” He said, barely turning his head to even look over his shoulder at you. “Would’ve been a waste of parchment writing to you, anyway.” 

With those final, painful words, he stomped off down the stairs, leaving you to collapse against one of the nearby walls in a puddle of tears - for the first time in a long time, without Fred to muffle your sobs in a comforting hug. 

You hadn’t been there to watch him and George ride off on their brooms when they finally gave Umbridge everything she deserved - you had been locked in your dorm, sobbing into your pillow because of that horrible, relationship ending fight. You had only heard from other people later that they had left Hogwarts in a blaze of glory, and you were the only person who knew for certain where they had gone and what their plans were now. 

You hated to admit it - but you missed Fred Weasley. 

You tried your hardest to get over him. You threw yourself into your studies, and you did pass your NEWTs with some of the highest marks in your class. But then, any thought of what potential career you might take on was tossed aside when the world went into upheaval at the hands of Death Eaters. And unintentionally, you were right back at Fred’s side again. 

It was a dreadful thing - being forced to see your ex on such a frequent basis. 

The last time being just a few short days ago when he had come into the Apothecary that you worked at in Diagon Alley, looking for some ingredients for a new WWW product that he wanted to make a test batch of. You had still spent last Christmas with his family, at the nagging insistence of Molly. After your mother had turned up dead and your father was missing, and you had to face the fact that he had likely defected to the Death Eaters out of fear (and the stupidity of his ingrained ‘old ways’), you didn’t really have any other family to turn to, aside from the Weasleys. 

You saw Fred a lot more often than you should - more often than you wanted to, in fact. Because the more often you had to see him walk into your shop with a grin on his face and bear the small talk he would force you into before he finally put in his order, the more you ached. You wanted nothing more than to be able to get away - to go someplace far away that Fred would never find you, so that you could finally heal, could finally get over the way he had broken your heart. 

But the country, and likely the state of all Wizardkind, was in upheaval. So many lives were at risk, and you had your part to play. You had signed on to become a member of the Order the minute you turned seventeen, and you weren’t prepared to shirk that commitment now, just because of a bit of girlish heartbreak. 

It was the reason that you were standing in the now empty residence of Number Four, Privet Drive. You had been called upon last minute to replace Tonks on this particular mission, for reasons that everyone seemed tight lipped about. But you weren’t going to question it - you were just going to step up and do your duty so that Harry could be transported safely, and hopefully go on to defeat the Dark Lord once and for all. 

According to Mad-Eye Moody, it was all very straight forward. Six of the fourteen members of the group would take Polyjuice Potion to turn themselves into decoy versions of Harry, making for seven Harrys in total, and the other half of the group would pair off with a Harry each to be their escort. 

You weren’t a huge fan of the idea of Fred disguising himself as Harry, essentially putting a huge target on his back - but the plan had already been set in place. He had already agreed to it. There was no room for you to protest now. 

“We’re not a big fan of the idea either, mate.” George spoke up when Harry protested against the idea of people risking their lives by being disguised as him. 

“Yeah, imagine something went wrong, then we’d be stuck as a scrawny, specky git forever.” Fred added on with his usual humorous tone. 

You held back a laugh at this comment, and everyone in the room eyed you harshly as you choked on your own breath. Fred smirked, proud that after all this time, he could still draw a laugh out of you. 

Your sense of humour about the whole situation was soon stamped out when Mad-Eye mentioned brooms. The group would have to be flying because Harry couldn’t apparate or use any other common form of transport without the Ministry knowing. 

“Brooms?” You questioned, knowing that your tone sounded far too panicked. “We - we’re flying?” 

“Yes.” Mad-Eye snipped curtly in return. “What exactly about my explanation was unclear, Ms. L/N?” 

His sharp tone and his glare in your direction, along with his use of your surname, instantly transported you back you Defense Against the Darks Arts classes in your sixth year, when you had been intimidated by the man - even if, strangely enough, you hadn’t been taught by the same man who now stood before you. 

You swallowed tightly, a large lump forming in your throat already - an involuntary, wicked reaction overtaking your body because of your fear of heights. Fred looked at you with sad knowing in his eyes, and you didn’t notice when he clenched his fists tightly at his sides, resisting the urge to swaddle you in a comforting hold. 

“Nothing was unclear, just-” You stuttered, breathing in deeply, trying to calm yourself. “I don’t have much experience with flying, and-” 

“Weasley - er - Fred, has already informed me of that.” Mad-Eye said, correcting himself when he realised just how many ‘Weasleys’ were on this mission and how utterly confusing that would get. “He’s insisted on taking you due to your lack of experience. Is that all?” 

Obviously, you didn’t want to publicly admit to your fear. You couldn’t reveal it as the terrible weakness that it was, especially not when there were so many other worries at play. 

“Yes, it’s fine.” You said, nodding, trying to keep the conversation short and keep the attention off you. 

“Good. Now if we’re all done dawdling, we need to get to work.” 

It was downright strange seeing Fred transformed into Harry. 

Even complete with the dorky clothes and the glasses, you still easily spotted him out of the crowd of ‘specky gits’. Maybe it was the years of practice that you had telling him apart from George that made it so easy for you, but he was still so irritably Fred. The fact that he slid his wand into his back pocket - something you had warned him dozens of times would likely result in the wand crunching in half and breaking when he sat down (and annoyed you to the point of you snatching it out of his back pocket to save it, especially before he sat down). The way he reached up to scratch his nose, the smirk on his face when he kept glancing over at the other Harry you were sure had to be George. Especially with the way they were steadily side-eyeing each other, speaking volumes with their looks and having a silent conversation that nobody else knew of. 

The fact that his eyes kept flickering to you every few moments definitely helped you to pick him out of the crowd. Even though you were used to a gentle hazel gazing at you rather than that piercing blue, there was still a unique concern behind his eyes when he looked at you from beyond those spectacles - the same kind of gentle seriousness that you hadn’t really seen from him since he had held your shaking hand on the stairs of the stands on the day of The World Cup. 

Stupidly, it only really occurred to you how close you would have to be with Fred, tightly riding behind him on the back of his broom, when you went outside and he ushered you to climb onto the back of his broom behind him. It had been a little over a year since you had broken up with Fred, and since then, you had not touched him. 

Every greeting had been friendly, but from a distance. Even when he came into the Apothecary and laid his hand on the counter, you snaked out of the way in time to avoid his fingers so much as brushing by yours. You always laid his order on the counter for him to pick it up himself, so that his fingers wouldn’t accidentally brush against yours. You made sure never to have contact with him. And now, you were being forced to climb onto the back of his broom, to hold him tight. 

But you couldn’t protest. You couldn’t demand to switch partners now because of some petty angst you were harbouring about a break-up that had happened so long ago. (Would you call it angst, or stupid, longing, painful heartbreak?) You couldn’t complain - not when this was about transporting Harry safely. This was about something so much bigger. 

Sure, it wouldn’t be exactly the same as holding onto your Fred (not that he was yours anymore - you had to remember that). He was Harry-Fred right now, so he was much shorter and thinner, and you could easily pretend that he wasn’t Fred at all. Which is what you forced yourself to think about as you swung a shaking leg over the broom and climbed on, wrapping your arms around his waist, preparing for take-off. 

It was a bit harder to pretend that this wasn’t Fred when you caught the faintest whiff of his expensive cologne (something he had only started wearing once the shop took off, something you noticed on him for the first time when he came to visit you at the Apothecary). It was definitely still lingering on his skin, something that was so painfully Fred even while you stared at the back of Harry’s wild black hair. 

It pierced your heart a little bit more when he peered over his shoulder at you, striking you as so Fred with those somehow warm, caring blue eyes and gently asking: 

“Good?” 

To which you replied: 

“m fine.” 

The most terrible lie you had ever conjured - something that was soon covered up by Mad-Eye shouting some last minute instructions and waving everyone off. 

When Fred kicked off the ground, you were immediately met with the most sickening wave of nausea that you had ever experienced in your life. You got way too high up for your liking within seconds, the houses on the ground growing far too small in your view, and you couldn’t fight the urge to shut your eyes. 

Unfortunately, it only made you dizzier, but it calmed your nerves a slight bit. You didn’t even realise how tightly you were clutching onto Fred, an utter death grip around his waist, until you heard him let out a grunt of pain from his stomach muscles being strangled by your arms with your fingers digging into him like claws, holding on for dear life. 

“S-sorry.” You stuttered out, shivering from the pure fear of it all, rather than the cool breeze that was whipping at your face. “Sorry, sorry!” 

“I’m sorry!” Fred replied - it was still strange hearing him speak in Harry’s voice, and you were glad that it was temporary. “I should have told them you weren’t up to this mission, I-” 

“I’m fine!” You barked back, hating the idea that your fear would make you unfit for a mission. But in a sense, you knew it was true. You would have spit in the face of any Death Eater, but your fear of heights was so utterly crippling. “Fred, don’t you dare for a moment suggest-” 

“We’ve been breached!” You heard someone - Arthur’s voice, shouting from up ahead. 

Your eyes whipped open and suddenly, you were filled with an entirely different kind of fear. Smoky black clouds of Death Eaters whipped through the sky around you - somehow, they had discovered the plan. And now, they were targeting all of the fake Harrys, firing off curses in every direction, looking for the real one. 

They were targeting Fred. 

That was the only thing at the forefront of your mind - they were going to hurt Fred. 

“Y/N-?” 

“Just get us out of here!” You told him. “I’ll cover you!” 

You knew that you couldn’t close your eyes now. Of course you would step up to protect him. No matter if the two of you were lovers, friends, or something estranged - you still loved him in your heart, and you would protect him no matter what. 

You grabbed your wand out of your jacket and gripped it stiffly, firing a stunning curse at the first silver mask you saw, still tightly gripping onto Fred’s jacket with your other hand. He used both his hands on the broom, gripping tighter with his legs to steer better, years of Quidditch honed skill coming in handy. His ability to be calm and fly mindfully while Bludgers were flying at his head made him a lot calmer with multiple Death Eaters firing potentially deadly curses all around him. In the back of his mind, he thought that Wood would be proud. 

You were still shaking horribly, and a few of your spells didn’t land on the first try, but you kept trying. You centred yourself, remembering what you were doing, who you were here for. In your mind, it wasn’t about Harry, it was never about Harry - it was about Fred. It was because Fred had approached you about the last minute replacement, it was because Fred was the one on the broom in front of you, the one you would have died to protect. 

You didn’t see when someone Apparated in a thick cloud of black smoke behind you, and raised their wand in your direction, hitting you squarely in the back with a heavy jinx. It was the force of a brick wall smacking you, something that sent you and Fred tumbling end over end through the sky and sent you flying cleanly off the broom because you didn’t have the instinct to grip the wood with your thighs like he did. 

You let out a shrill scream as you felt yourself falling, your worst fear coming to life. 

Thankfully, Fred was quicker than gravity - quicker than death. 

He laser focused on you, and suddenly, everyone else was gone. All the supposed danger, all the Death Eaters - even other members of the Order who might have needed his help - they all vanished in his eyes. 

It was only you. 

He turned the broom into a deadly nose dive, racing down toward you, reaching with his hand out, and in seconds, while you were still hundreds of feet off the ground - he snatched you. He had your wrist gripped so tightly in his hand - slightly sweaty, already slipping. But he wouldn’t have let go of you if Lord Voldemort himself commanded it.  

He likely would have died with that tight grip still around your wrist in those moments if someone had hit him with the killing curse. 

He slowed the broom down, turning up out of the dive, intent to get you away from the fight, driving forward. Scarily, his arm muscles were already shaking from holding up all of your body weight. 

You stared up at him with tears of pure terror dancing in your eyes, and though he was wearing the mask of The Chosen One - in those moments, the terrified, caring, loving eyes of your Fred were staring right back at you. 

As much as you trusted him, you felt yourself slipping out of his grip, and more fear swelled inside of you. 

“Freddie, help me!” You screamed, shaking, flailing under his grip, trying to reach your other arm up to help as he struggled to hold onto you. “Freddie, please, I don’t wanna die!” 

“I’m not gonna let you die!” He replied, desperation gripping his throat. “Just - look at me. Don’t look down.” 

Of course, you were distinctly reminded of that day at The World Cup. And somehow, you felt the same sense of safety with him now that you did then - even if you didn’t have the railing or even the gravity of something under your feet. 

His muscles shook harder, and he knew that he wouldn’t be able to hold onto you for much longer. 

He had to pull you up. 

“I’ve got you.” Fred huffed, straining with the effort. “I’ve got you-” 

He tried pulling you up, but his muscles shook harder in protest, and he let out a harsh, murderous scream of frustration. And then he did the only thing that he could think to do. He gripped onto you tighter, and he used his legs and his other hand to do a sickeningly sharp barrel roll, twisting the broom completely around by leaning with his right shoulder. He flipped the entire broom with the hopes that you would get the chance to be flipped back onto it safely. 

Luckily, even though you let out another terrified scream, you got the hint and hooked your leg around the wood mid-air, holstering your shaking body back behind him. You gripped onto Fred even tighter then, and one glance around told you that luckily, or unluckily, the fight had cleared off from around the two of you. 

Perhaps they had heard you call this imposter Harry by the name ‘Fred’, perhaps you had given the real Harry away and ruined the whole plan. As you squeezed your eyes shut again and shoved your now tearful face into Fred’s back, selfishly, you couldn’t bring yourself to truly care. 

The rest of the trip went on too long for your liking - you were still crawling with anxiety and eager to have your feet back on the ground. 

Toward the end of it, you felt Harry-Fred’s body shift back into the tall, more muscular form that you were familiar with (somehow a bit more muscular than you remembered, but you tried not to get caught up on that detail). You were more than relieved when you felt your feet brushing against the ground with the landing. Distantly, you heard the familiar, comfortingly worried baulking of Molly’s voice, and you opened your eyes to see that Fred’s head was much higher up than it had been before, and his hair was thankfully returned back to its bright red state. 

Molly rushed over to Fred, and there was some conversation, but you couldn’t make it out - blood was thumping in your ears, your body still overtaken by all the horrible symptoms of your fear. The moment that Fred dropped the broom in order to step away from it, you stumbled off into the grass on weak legs. 

You hardly realised that you were hyperventilating - you simply felt dizzy, felt your chest aching from the lack of breath; you noticed that your vision was blurred with tears, and you knew that you weren’t getting enough oxygen. You pressed now muddy hands to your face in desperation, trying to usher more air past your lips, and it was then that a streak of orange fell into your view as Fred dropped to his knees in front of you. He had heard you gasping, and of course, rushed to you with nothing more than concern flooding his system once again. 

“Hey, hey, look at me.” He murmured, trying his best not to panic himself at seeing you like this - he gently took a hold of your face, guiding your vision toward him. “Look at me. You’re alright now. You’re safe.” 

Of course you knew that. You knew that you would always be safe with Fred. 

But your body hadn’t even registered the fact that you had landed yet - the panic only now fully setting in, bringing with it the most cruel, shocking symptoms you had ever experienced. You did the only thing you could think of - the only thing that would truly make you feel safe. Something you knew would truly ground you after experiencing such chaos so high up in the air. 

You launched yourself toward Fred, pressing your face into his chest, wrapping your arms tightly around his waist in a firm hug as you tried to stifle down sobs. He easily accepted this, his thick arms coming to cradle your back, selfishly thankful to have you back in his arms. He gently rocked you back and forth as he peppered more soothing words beside your ear. 

“You’re alright now, darling.” He said, letting the pet name slip so easily that it frightened him. He rubbed a hand up and down your back, feeling your gasping panic all too quickly soothe away under the firm warmth of his touch. “You’re alright.” 

Almost instinctively, he laid a kiss on your temple, not entirely realising that this wasn’t necessarily something an ex-boyfriend would do - he was so ripe with the urge to comfort you, the need to make your pain go away. He couldn’t help but take a little something selfish as the empathetic waves of your panic echoed over to him. 

“I was never gonna let you fall.” He whispered, almost speaking these words to himself - a sacred promise. 

He had regretted every day since the break-up, and even if he couldn’t be your lover, he was never going to let you get hurt. 

You gripped him tighter, your breathing almost back to normal now, and you pushed your face tighter into his chest, relishing in the firm warmth of his body against you. This was something you hadn’t felt in far too long. Fred placed another kiss on the top of your head. He was about to say something entirely dangerous when another bit of chaos came tumbling through the garden, distracting him away from you and causing the words to die off in his throat. 

Remus, hauling George across the grass - and George, slumped over, a massive amount of blood dripping down the side of his head. 

“Georgie.” Fred gasped quietly. 

Your head whipped around at this, and in sync, you and Fred scrambled to your feet, rushing to see what had happened to him. Fred lifted George’s other arm to help get him inside and safely rested him on the couch. 

It was a horror show. 

The flesh of George’s ear had been blown to bits, blood smearing down across his face and spilling down the side of his neck; he was sickly pale and barely conscious. His eyes only flickered, giving you some sense of life in him when Fred called out his name after making sure he was resting comfortably on the couch. 

“Georgie?” 

There was a rare quiver in Fred’s voice that made your stomach quake. Fear. You were not accustomed to hearing Fred fearful, not of anything. Even when he had abandoned Hogwarts and dove into a career as a shop owner without a single clue if he would find success, he did so without a single bit of fear in his heart. 

But of course - seeing his dear brother like this, knowing that someone he loved had been so close to danger - it made him terrified. 

“Hey, Fred.” George croaked back weakly. 

At least he was conscious enough to speak. That gave you quite a bit of relief. 

“How’re ya feeling?” Fred asked. 

“Saint-like.” George replied, a tired smirk gracing his lips that told you he was forming a joke - something that was utterly hilarious in his mind that would only make sense to others when he delivered the punch line. 

You wanted to sob, you wanted to laugh, you wanted to scream. Of course he would be making jokes only moments after nearly being killed. 

“Come again?” Fred said quietly, tentatively. 

Perhaps it sounded partially dangerous to him like it did to you. Perhaps George felt Saint-like because he was too close to death. 

Both of you and Fred held your breath as you waited for the reply. 

“Saint-like.” George grinned. And then he lifted a tired hand and gestured toward the bloody hole on the side of his head before he delivered his glowing punchline. “I’m holy. I’m holy, Fred. Get it?” 

Fred grinned, and you let out a gasping chuckle that you knew was mostly tears. Behind you, Molly inhaled sharply through her teeth, running a hand over her forehead with the stress, and Ginny shook her head as she exhaled an exhausted sigh. 

“The whole wide world of ear related humour, and you go for ‘I’m holy’?” Fred replied, unable to resist humouring George. “That’s pathetic.” 

You knew that if either of them knew anything about the story of the Muggle painter Van Gogh, then they would have been making jokes in that lane. 

“Reckon I’m still better looking than you.” George added on tiredly. 

“You were always better looking than him.” You said, your voice throttled by tears, unable to resist. 

When you turned around to retreat, you saw Ginny clutching onto Molly, clearly hiding tears in her mother’s shoulder, Molly’s face dancing with a kind of sadness you had never seen before. You knew you couldn’t run from your pain. You had known the Weasleys for so long, loved them too much. You had a distinct kind of duty here. 

“Molly, do you have a cauldron around?” You asked, hating how choked with tears your voice was. “I can whip-up something for his pain. I do it at the shop all the time. And a Sleeping Draught, so he can get some rest.” 

It was true - one of your many duties working at the Apothecary was making and bottling simple, common potions to sell (pregnancy test potions, simple multi-use pain potions, Dreamless Sleep Draughts, cures for warts and other common rashes) - many people liked the convenience of coming in and buying a potion for everyday uses rather than having to make it themselves. 

“There’s no need-” George began to protest, but Fred easily cut him off. 

“Come off it.” Fred hissed toward his brother, not taking kindly to ‘selfless’ idea of George not accepting something for the pain he was clearly in. Then, Fred rose up from his place beside George and turned to you with a look of intense concern on his features. “Whatever you need.” 

… 

You had barely begun to set up everything you needed for the brewing when the others finally came in, bringing more chaos with them. Remus accused Harry of being an imposter, which was quickly proven false. Apparently the Order had been betrayed, which explained the presence of Death Eaters on the mission so easily. They had used inside information to know when Harry was being transported - it was only luck that they had been thrown off by the Polyjuice Potion, having to chase down multiple Harrys and not knowing which one was real (even if George got gravely injured in the process). 

Mad-Eye had been killed. 

You weren’t sure if what you felt was mourning for the man. You hadn’t known him all that well. Not the true version of him, anyway. You continued to weep quietly as you worked on the potions, but you knew it wasn’t specifically for him. His death only served to remind you how truly dangerous the mission had been - how close you, Fred, and George, and the others had all come to death. How lucky it was that nobody else had been killed. 

You tried not to let the suffocating gloom that had overtaken the Burrow due to the near failure of the entire mission disrupt the process of making the potions needed for George. When Molly didn’t have some of the ingredients that you needed, you gave Fred your spare key to the Apothecary and he popped over to get them for you. Mr. Michaelchuk, who ran the place, had always told you to ‘take what you needed’, and this was the one time you had actually taken him up on the offer. 

When Fred returned, he fussed at George’s side, helping him change into pyjamas (when everyone else had cleared out) and tucking him in comfortably to a makeshift bed on the couch, with lots of pillows and extra cosy blankets, to the point where he got annoyed with Fred coddling him. You always knew that the two were good friends in addition to being brothers, as close as two people can be, but you had never seen so much abundant affection between them. It was sweet. 

Molly came back downstairs wearing a plaid dressing gown, with a pair of tiny reading glasses balanced on her nose, her slippers scuffing along the floor. She mentioned that Arthur was already ‘snoring away’ - but of course, she had no intentions of going to bed herself. Because of course, if George was down here on the couch, it was so that she could watch over him while she busied herself with knitting - much like she had when Arthur had been on the ward at St. Mungo’s after he had been attacked by the snake. You had gotten a particularly nice jumper for Christmas that year, one that you still wore often when it got particularly cold outside. 

Fred had settled to sit on the couch by George’s feet, and the two had fallen into a hushed conversation, though you didn’t hear most of it. And of course, it wasn’t long before Molly rushed Fred off to bed, just like she had done with everyone else, wanting to give George the space to rest without distractions from visitors. 

“-just get her back, you idiot.” You hear George hiss in a whisper before Molly pushed Fred toward the stairs. 

He couldn’t possibly be talking about…? 

No. 

No, he wasn’t. 

You didn’t think about it. Instead, you let yourself get lost in the meditative process of brewing, making sure that the potions were perfect. You made sure that George was pain-free and lost to a deep, restful, healing sleep (with a few pre-brewed bottles of the potions to spare that would keep his pain at bay for the next few days) before you finally went upstairs, ready to collapse with exhaustion. 

You passed by Fred and George’s room on your way to your final destination, Ginny’s room, where you would be staying with her and Hermione, from now up until Bill and Fleur’s wedding. After which, you would return to your apartment above the Apothecary and try to resume your best sense of ‘normal’ life. All of your things were already unpacked in Ginny’s room, and you had a sleeping bag set up on the floor there. 

But of course, you naturally came to a stop at the mouth of Fred’s open bedroom doorway, letting an instinctive caring overtake you and participating in the need to check on him. 

The sight you saw made your heart ache. 

Fred was sitting on the edge of his twin bed, his posture slumped with pure exhaustion. He hadn’t even changed out of the now ill-fitting Harry clothes that he had to wear for the mission: jeans, a tee shirt, and a grey sport jacket that were now coated in dirt and traces of George’s blood, all oddly short in the limbs and emphasising his tallness, his hands still stained bright red in a way that couldn’t be washed off. 

His face was marked with tear tracks, and his tired, dead gaze was fixated on George’s still neatly made matching twin bed. A space that was hauntingly empty across from his - a sign that his brother was missing. A sign of just how easily someone precious could have been taken from him that night. 

“Freddie?” 

You croaked out, the nickname slipping out in a way you couldn’t control once again, causing him to snap out of whatever distant, depressing thoughts he was caught in. His head jolted toward you, only now realising that you had been standing in the doorway for so long. 

“Y/N,” He responded, his voice choked by tiredness, sadness. 

It was so alarmingly strange to see someone who was usually the pinnacle of laughter reduced down to this. You had never seen Fred Weasley so sad before. 

You had seen him angry, on occasion - like when someone insulted you, or when he had been banned from Quidditch for getting into a fistfight with Malfoy. You had seen him annoyed - like when he found out that the age to enter the TriWizard Tournament was seventeen, and he was only a few months away from being eligible. (You were thankful for that one, and secretly thankful when his Ageing Potion had failed). 

You had seen Fred go through a lot - but you genuinely believed that was the first time you had seen him so deflated in the face of the world. 

He rose to his feet, turned his back to you, almost as if trying to hide. He raised a hand to his face, and your heart ached more when you realised that he was trying to wipe away tears. 

“Come on, let’s get you ready for bed.” You said, moving forward, gently putting a hand on his shoulder, moving up to peel the sport jacket off him. 

You knew that the sadness, something he so rarely felt, had paralyzed him. You knew that sleep was what all of you needed right now - some rest to get your heads on straight. And you wanted to help him in any way that you could. 

“I can’t-” Fred huffed, stepping away from you, putting some distance between the two of you in the small room. “I can’t do this right now.” 

Your stomach curled into a horrible knot as he echoed the words he had spoken to you on that horrible day, when he had broken up with you and relinquished himself from your presence without a second thought. 

It truly hit you then - he didn’t want your help. He didn’t want to be near you now. He had only held you close a few hours ago because it had been a matter of life and death. He had helped to calm you down because it was the friendly thing to do. He didn’t want you here now. 

“Okay.” You choked out, nodding, taking a step toward the door. “O-okay.” 

A hot tear rolled down your face, and you moved to make your way toward Ginny’s room. You were harshly whipped across the emotional spectrum again when Fred stopped you. 

“Y/N, no.” He said, reaching out and grabbing onto your elbow. “Wait.” 

“What, Fred?” You wheezed, your body breathless and exhausted from the horrible roller coaster that you had been on that night. You knew that you glared at him horribly, but you couldn’t help it. “What is it that you want from me?” 

Fred took a step back, as though you had burned him, running stiff hands through his hair. You could have easily run off, turned your back on him and never spoken to him again. Just like he had done to you on that day so long ago. But you waited with your chest tight, waiting for him to finally give you an answer. Did he want to be friends? Did he want you to disappear from his life completely? Did he want-? 

“I can’t-” He choked out, clearly struggling for breath. “I can’t…” 

He swallowed around a fat tongue, and after a heavy moment, he finally got the words out. 

“I can’t lose you.” 

The words spooked you more than the sight of George’s bloodied, blown-apart ear. 

You stared Fred down with a ghost in your eyes, somehow more terrified than you had been when you had been dangling hundreds of feet above London. He was frantic, rapidly searching for more words to explain himself. 

“I - I almost…” He gasped, his throat tightly constricting again. “You almost slipped out of my hands.” 

He spoke the words as though they were a horrible curse, raising his hands in front of him as if to demonstrate the point, as if to demonise his own limbs for not having enough strength to hold you up. His hands shook with undistilled anxiety, with anger towards himself. 

His declaration gave you that sickly sense of nausea, as though you were back up in the air again. You realised that maybe he hadn’t been sitting on the edge of the bed, mourning about potentially losing George - but instead, he had been thinking about you. 

“I didn’t. I didn’t slip.” You replied, the words choked off in your throat, rushing to assure him of the good he had done. 

You were unable to resist the urge to reach out and take his hands in yours, steadying his grip with a firm anger of your own. You were unsure how he could be so cruel toward himself when he had saved your life only hours before. 

“You held me up, Fred. You didn’t let me fall.” 

He let out a huff, shaking his head negatively. 

You knew there was something more troubling him - something deeper that he had yet to speak of, or perhaps wouldn’t tell you at all. He grinded his jaw tightly and slipped his hands away from yours. You stood there, looking at him tensely, wondering if he was going to clue you in, or if he would simply say goodnight and let himself stew with whatever horrible emotions he was feeling. 

“I can’t live like this.” He declared harshly, his throat raw. “I can’t live with you at arm’s length.” 

So what? Was he saying that… he was upset about the break-up? 

Was he saying that he hadn’t actually wanted to be apart from you? 

A look of pure confusion knit across your features, and in the murky silence, Fred moved on to explaining. 

“I let you go once before.” 

He whispered, the words so quiet on his lips, a crazed type of regret dancing in his eyes - in an instant, you knew he wasn’t talking about the mission or flying. He was talking about how easily he let you go from his life - the break-up. 

“I let you slip away from me far too easily. And it was the stupidest thing I have ever done.” 

“Freddie-?” You choked out, more chaotic emotions rocketing through your body now. Anticipation, anxiety - that love for him that you had bottled away slowly creeping back in. But you couldn’t bear to let it flow through you, not yet, not until you knew. 

“If one of us were to die tomorrow, I couldn’t live my last day knowing that I wasted it not being yours.” He declared, the pure passion in his words causing every small hair on your body to stand up on end, making you dizzy. “I know that I’m the biggest git on earth for what I did to you, and for not apologising sooner, but please, please, please, darling-” 

You couldn’t take it anymore. 

You grabbed both sides of the sport jacket and used it to haul him down toward you, planting your mouth firmly onto his, moaning into a kiss that you had longed for, having so sorely missed the touch of his lips on yours. 

You had missed him so damn much. 

Fred was quick to keep up, letting out a delighted sigh of his own, his stomach doing flips in delight, almost in disbelief of just how lucky he was that you hadn’t slapped him across the face and stormed out. 

When your hands ventured down, smoothing across his body - he became even more delighted that you seemed to want more than a kiss out of him. And he was quick to prepare. 

He reached to his back pocket for his wand and pointed it at the still open bedroom door, performing a quick spell that slammed it shut and locked it. In the back of his mind, he was thankful that his bedroom had some silencing wards around it from the days when Weasleys’ Wizard Wheezes had been in its infancy, operating their prototype experiments out of this room in the darkest hours of the morning. (Percy got sick of being woken up by the twins’ excited voices and the sound of sputtering cauldrons, and put the silencing wards around their room for his own sake, not knowing how much more it let the twins get away with.) 

Fred was surprised when you took another fitful grip on the front of his shirt, using it to direct him back toward his bed and shoving him down onto it with a strength that he barely knew you had. He fell sideways across the small twin bed, his knees crumbling along the side of the mattress, leaving him sitting with his feet on the floor and his body half collapsed against the tightly tucked-in covers that his mother had prepared before everyone’s arrival. 

He was utterly weak to your whims, anyway, and would have gone wherever you put him. 

He was expecting you to climb on top of him, something needy inside of him yearning for the feeling of your body on top of his after missing it for so long. And he found himself further surprised when you dropped to your knees in front of him, settling your shoulders between his spread thighs, forcing him to spread his legs wider apart to accommodate you. The action spiking a sharp breath out of his lips when you shoved up the hem of the shirt that technically wasn’t his and reached for the button on the jeans that fit him even worse as his cock grew to life underneath them. 

“Y/N, darling-” He choked out, breathy and sharp through his teeth, an intense wave of lust hitting him all at once. 

All night, both of you had been through the emotional ringer - calm determination, fear, possessiveness, mild relief, grief. All while trying to hold back your emotions for each other, balancing right on the edge. Trying desperately to hold each other at arm’s length. 

And now he had you right where he wanted you, where he had been dreaming of you being for months since the break-up; and for some stupid reason, some part of him still felt that it was wrong. That part of him screaming that he should be the one on his knees serving you, that he needed to better apologise-

He reached for your shoulder, clearly trying to coax you back up onto the bed with him, and you swatted the touch away. 

“Don’t-” You choked in return, continuing on your determined path, ripping his zipper down and tugging at the waistband of his jeans. “Freddie, please. Let me do this.” 

You looked up at him with a glassy heat in your eyes that he had never seen before. All the times he had pinned you against walls in quiet corners at Hogwarts, with his hand up your skirt - he had never seen you so wild, so desperate. 

Something utterly possessive rippled through you - something that screamed that you needed to have him weak and moaning for you, that you needed to worship him, to thank him for doing the impossible and saving your life. He was a strong, wonderful man and you needed to taste that strength. You needed to know that you were the only thing that could have him weak, quivering, begging. 

“Fuck-” Fred hissed out when you reached past the band of his underwear and grabbed his cock - your warm touch wrapped around his shaft felt like a deadly awakening, especially when it had been so long since anything but his own had had touched his cock. 

All too soon, he surrendered to you entirely and lifted his hips, slipping the fabric of his jeans and his underwear down completely past his thighs, letting you have whatever you wanted from him. He supposed that’s how it always went with the two of you - he would let you have whatever you wanted, even before you asked. (That’s why the break-up had gone down the way it had - it had been the one time he had been stubborn on something, not simply letting you have your own way.) 

You took him in your hand, slowly pumping his length as you admired him, gently re-familiarising yourself with his body, feeling like it had been far too long. 

“Did you miss it, darling?” He asked, looking down the length of his body at you with a cocky smile stretched across his soft lips. 

You rolled your eyes, hating the possibility of making his ego any larger. 

“Oh yes, your wonderful big cock was the thing I missed most about you,” You griped in return, hoping that your sarcastic tone was more than apparent. 

“I knew you only wanted me for my body.” Fred chuckled. 

As much as you wanted to deny it - Fred Weasley’s cock was a marvel that you couldn’t have forgotten if you had tried. 

During your time apart, it haunted your heated dreams, turning them into nightmares of pure want, your mind dangling something in front of you that you couldn’t have. It made things even worse when he would come into the Apothecary, flirting with you and flashing you a smile, showing off his broad shoulders in those fine tailored suit jackets and making your eyes flicker to his zipper in an utterly whorish way. 

Now, you felt spoiled to have it in front of you again - the perfect beastly eight inches, lean and tall just like he was, curved off slightly to the side, sticking off from a sparse patch of ginger hair. 

Your pussy clenched as you thought about having him inside of you again for the first time in so long, giving you that perfectly full feeling that your fingers never could - but you craved his taste first. You wanted him under your control - you knew part of it was driven by all the fear you had experienced that night, all the chaos that had made you feel so powerless. You needed to feel alive, needed to wield power over someone, something. 

You got your mouth on his cock with a downright feral hunger. 

Fred let out a deep moan and threw his head back, collapsing onto his elbows as the heat and wetness of your mouth enveloped the heat of his cock - it sent another wave of lust zipping through him, reminding him just how throbbing hard he was, just how much he needed you. This was made even worse when you moaned around him - you couldn’t help but to enjoy the feeling of his cock in your mouth, perfectly full, making you choke in such a beautiful way when you dropped down to take more of him. 

“Fuck, darling, shite-” 

You quickly became drunk on the feeling. 

Your eyes fell closed and you simply let yourself enjoy it, loving the fullness of his big, beautiful cock filling up your mouth. With a hand loosely wrapped around the base of his cock, your jaw wide as you began bobbing your head. Your tongue flat against the base, tasting as much of him as you could while you enjoyed the feeling of him so fat and thick in your mouth, gagging you slightly whenever the round tip hit against the back of your throat. It was a perfect, slow rhythm that agonised him and delighted you, and soon had spit pooling around your knuckles. 

The wetness drove him even more insane, especially when it allowed for your soft lips to move slicker against his shaft. 

“Goddammit, please, please, oh-” 

You could feel his thighs begin to quake and quiver beside you, and you wondered if he was close already. 

You couldn’t resist the urge to pull off - wanting to tease him a little. Part of you wanted that bit of revenge, wanting to get him back for the pain he had caused you when he had turned his back on you that day. Though you weren’t entirely cruel, and you didn’t leave him hanging out to dry completely. 

You kept your hand pumping on his now spit-slicked cock (it was that slow, agonising rhythm that caused him to pant like a needy dog), and you moved your mouth downward, giving in to the personal urge to lick and suck on his heavy balls. You did want to drive him a bit more insane, and give into your personal curiosity about what the heavy sac would feel like against your tongue. 

“Fucking - oh - darling, what are you doing to me-? That fucking mouth-” 

Fred wasn’t sure if this was heaven or hell. 

It left him stuck in some sick purgatory where the woman he loved had turned into a sex-crazed vixen, but wouldn’t let him touch you everywhere he wanted to most. Instead, he was sentenced to stare at you as your gorgeous mouth teased his aching cock, making him harder, driving him madder with every stroke of your little devilish tongue. He couldn’t take it anymore - not when your pretty fingers gripped around the base of his cock just right and your lips suctioned so perfectly around one of his bullocks. 

He wouldn’t waste the night cumming over your fist without getting his hands on you properly first. 

He weaved his fingers into your hair and yanked you back, caused you to let out a small yelp - not one of pain, but a bitter sound of complaint as you were pulled off his cock too early for your liking. The sharp tingle of him pulling on your hair caused your tongue to lull out, trailing a filthy bit of spit back to his balls that had him growling. 

Before any words could form, he leaned down and used this grip on your hair to guide you to his lips, shoving his tongue into your open, waiting mouth - something that had you moaning once again, and easily following his lead as he guided you up to sit on his thigh. 

“Don’t expect that I’m gonna waste it all over your hand, darling.” He murmured against your lips between heated kisses. “When I cum tonight, it’s gonna be deep inside your sweet cunt, yeah?” 

You moaned loudly at this. 

You had devolved past the point of words now - having his cock so thick and heavy in your mouth only making you fuzzy-headed and more needy for him. You unconsciously canted your hips against his thigh, grinding your pussy against him through the fabric of your jeans, needing more. You panted against his cheek as he moved deft fingers to undo the button and zipper of your pants while he continued to speak. 

“I need you, pretty girl.” 

He growled lowly in your ear, the pure passion of the declaration causing such intense waves of lust through you that you would have collapsed - if not for the brick wall of his muscled body holding you up. (Hold you up for the dozenth time that night, only for a drastically different reason this time). 

“I need to see you cum on my cock. Missed this pretty cunt so much, can’t wait-” 

He trailed off in his crazed lustful ramblings when he shoved his fingers past the now open fly of your jeans and into your underwear, quickly finding a distinct wetness and landing on your clit with a firm touch like a magnet. 

“Freddie!” You wept into his neck, bucking into the touch as you tumbled into a madness of your own. 

He began circling quickly on your clit, enjoying your gasps and other sounds, enjoying the feeling of you bucking so wildly on his thigh. All too soon, he was overtaken by a little pinch of mischief that always crept up on him. The urge to get you back for your earlier teasing. He quickly removed his hand and felt a smirk spread across his lips at the deflated little whimper you made, your eyes snapping open just in time to catch him licking your wetness off his fingers. 

“Fred-” You began to protest, sharp demanding in your tone. 

“Come on, get these clothes off,” He said, giving you a firm pat on the ass that made you far too weak to his whims. 

“Freddie-” You whined this time - and rather than giving into you, he brought up a fantastic point. 

“The faster you get your clothes off, the faster I can get my cock in you.” He whispered hotly against your ear, making you shiver. 

You hated that he was right. 

You stood up, moving to strip your shirt off over your head, glaring at him the whole time while he also began to strip himself. 

“Go on, good girl.” 

You hated how those words made you even wetter. You hated how easily he manipulated you based on weaknesses he knew so well. 

“I hate you.” You mumbled quietly, absolutely no heat in the words as you reached to unclip your bra. 

“Oh darling, if only that were true.” 

He said pointedly, mourning peeking through that bit of mischief in his eyes. Something you didn’t have too much time to decode as stood to his full height to untangle his jeans from his legs, knowing that you would quake in his shadow and become even more turned on from this. 

Once you were both naked, he ushered you down onto the bed, making sure that you were comfortable with your head on the pillow as he captured your mouth in another needy kiss. You moaned against his lips, easily sucking his tongue in as you tangled your fingers into that fiery red hair and gave an appreciative tug. You then tucked your knee up over his hip, opening yourself up to him - this caused his heavy cock to brush against your wetness, making you gasp into his mouth as the two of you made contact for the first time in far too long. 

“Freddie-” You gasped, unconsciously bucking your hips up, causing your pussy to wetly slide against his cock in a way that forced a deep groan out of him. “Oh, fuck, oh-” 

“Shh, darling, Daddy’s got you,” Fred replied, palming across your forehead and your hair in an almost gentle way while he further parted your thighs with a firm knee. 

His words caused you to choke on another moan. 

You had heard Fred refer to himself as ‘Daddy’ before - but much like everything else in his life, it was always a joke. He would be buying his favourite sweets and mumble ‘come to Daddy’ before tearing open the package and devouring them. He would say that his codename was ‘Big Daddy’ when setting up a particularly epic prank. (George was ‘Big Red’ and you were usually ‘Darling’ or ‘Garden Flower’. They were not the most useful or top secret codenames.) You had heard him jokingly shout ‘Daddy’s home’ when returning to the Gryffindor common room, only to have the expected laughs and jokes in return. 

You had never expected that the name would turn you on so much. But you had never, ever expected to hear it in this context. You had also never expected that it would sound so natural in this context. But it suited him so well. It seemed to only compliment the gentle kind of caring he gave you - how protective he was over you, how safe he made you feel. 

“Daddy,” You moaned in return - Fred gripped your hip with a deadly, bruising grip and looked at you with a fierce heat in his eyes. 

Hearing that word from your lips turned him on in a way he couldn’t explain. And in that moment, it took every bit of his personal will not to slam his cock into you and hammer his hips forward until you said it again, and again, and again. Until you screamed it. 

He took a hold of his cock with the other hand, and you expected him to slide into you, finally giving you both what you truly needed - but instead, he began rubbing the round head of his cock against your clit, further teasing you. You let out a gasp and looked at him with pleading in your eyes. 

“Freddie,” You whined, attempting to angle your hips up, fruitlessly trying to trick him to slip his cock inside of you. You knew him too well, knowing that once he got the tip in, he wouldn’t be able to resist fucking you senseless. But he held you down with the hand on your hip, making you barely able to move at all against his muscular hold and the awkward angle he had you pinned with. 

“Come on, sweets,” He purred, laying a kiss on your forehead, and then your cheek, trailing kisses down your neck as he murmured against your skin. “Tell Daddy what you need. Say the word and I’ll give you anything you want.” 

He began roughly smacking his cockhead against your clit, making you jolt and gasp sharper, making your pussy leak furiously against the bed. You cried out and gripped his hair tightly, almost meanly, desperate for the teasing to end. You didn’t see the way he was staring at your cunt, mesmerised by the sight of your swollen pearl kissing against his cock, glistening, wet and needy. Something that he would burn into his brain forever and most definitely revisit on lonely nights. 

“Please, Daddy!” You moaned, hoping the name alone would goad him into giving in. But you knew what he truly wanted, and you couldn’t wait any longer. “Please - fuck - I need your cock. I need you to fuck me, I need-” 

Perhaps he was truly satisfied by this, or perhaps he couldn’t take the teasing anymore himself - either way, he finally guided his cock down to your pulsing entrance and pushed in, swearing hotly under his breath when the tight, wet, perfect heat of your cunt began sucking him in for the first time in over a year. 

“Oh, oh fuck, Freddie,” You moaned, tugging on his hair. “Oh-” 

“Fucking perfect,” He swore into your ear. “Dammit, I’ve missed this pussy so much.” He choked on a groan as he continued slowly inching his hips forward, splitting you open with his massive length, making your pussy ache and burn in the most perfect way. “Good girl. So good for me. So good for Daddy,” 

You both moaned loudly once he was fully seated inside of you - you, feeling that deep satisfaction of feeling so perfectly full once again, and Fred so deeply enjoying the wet warmth of your pussy around him that was so irreplaceable because it was you. 

Sensing your need, especially after all his teasing, and after spending so long without him - he didn’t make you wait any longer. 

Fred began rocking his hips into yours at a gentle, even pace, not wanting to hurt you. From the sound of your gentle whines and the feeling of you squirming beneath him, he could tell that you needed more. He could tell that now wasn’t the time for holding back. 

He let out a gentle grunt and you became even more heated and curious as he began shifting around, some clear intent on his mind. You let out a sharp gasp when he raised himself up on his knees, poising himself in the perfect position to fuck you hard, deep, and powerful. Then, he made it even more deadly when he grabbed you by the backs of your thighs, making more air hiss out through your lips when he pressed your body practically in half, pressing your knees up toward your chest before he hooked his arms under your legs to keep them there and planted his hands firmly on either side of your chest. 

The two of you were even closer, even more intimate, and you felt him so much deeper inside of you. 

“Freddie,” 

You croaked out darkly, already feeling him so much deeper as he settled in above you. Your pussy was leaking furiously around him now, clenching tightly and waiting for him to move as a ghost of dark mischief danced through his eyes that promised you were in for the sweetest kind of hell. 

“Good?” He asked, smirking at you. 

“Yes, but what about-?” 

You wanted to warn him not to make too much noise, not to break the bed, which was already creaking in protest underneath the two of you - but he didn’t entirely care. Fred never truly cared about the consequences of his actions once he got an idea in his head - to him, the thrill was more than worth whatever pain may befall him. 

The only time that hadn’t been true was when he had made the foolish, heat-of-the-moment mistake of breaking up with you. And now, he had to make up for it. 

He put all the power into his muscled thighs (the same muscled thighs that had saved you just a few hours ago by gripping onto his broom and steadying the flight) - and ploughed forward with intense power. This began an unforgiving, hard rhythm of pounding into your cunt in hard, deep, fast strokes. 

In seconds, you were putty beneath him - he had you perfectly pinned in place so that you couldn’t have moved an inch if you wanted to, all you could do was lay there and take it. You were weak against the savage movements of his long cock fucking into your swollen pussy over and over again, filling you up in the best way you could have imagined, becoming everything you needed in the world. 

As the room filled with the harsh, wet slaps of his skin against yours and your weak moans, followed by his increasingly animalistic grunts - all there was in the world was you and Fred, the space where the two of you met, the place where he had your thighs pinned open so that his cock could absolutely ruin your pussy.  

“Good girl, such a good girl for me,” He growled against your lips - you moaned pathetically in return, flooding even more wetness around his cock, making the sound of him fucking into you embarrassingly slicker. “Never should have let you go. Should have kept you right here, right where you belong,” 

You wanted to tell him that perhaps the fight was both of your faults, that you should have reached out to him sooner and told him that you wanted him back. That the time apart had been so dreadfully tender for you too. 

But your brain was soup, only further stirred up by the tip of his cock poking around in your guts. So any words you could have said chased out of your lungs with every passionate thrust of his hips up into your wet pussy, and all you managed in return was: 

“Daddy! Fuck, oh-!” 

“Shh, darling, I know.” Fred mumbled into your neck, taking a sloppy, greedy lick of your skin. “I know, sweets. Daddy’s gonna give you what you need. Gonna keep you fucked n’ full. Never gonna let you go again. Never gonna let anyone else touch you-” 

Fred’s hips stuttered and you tightly squeezed around his cock at the words. 

Perhaps it was a wink of his personal insecurity peeking through. The horrifying idea that because he had broken up with you, you might find somebody else. When in fact, you had been so caught up on him, only thinking about him, waiting for him. (The whole time, thinking that he had broken up with you because he no longer had any favour in his heart for you.) 

“Just you, Freddie.” You breathed out, desperately trying to get air past your now very chapped lips. “Always yours-” 

“Yes, mine.” He replied, that crazed desperation returning to his voice. “Mine, my girl.” 

He sealed his lips against yours, grinding his hips tightly against your pelvis rather than fucking you with any kind of rhythm now - showing you just how deep he was inside of you, just how much he owned you, truly, from the inside out. It was something that made your stomach clench, made your body buzz with electricity, and made you whine around his tongue. 

You were close. 

Fred knew this - he knew you too well. He moved a hand down to your clit, letting one of your legs drop slightly, and had two determined fingers on your throbbing clit while he picked up the pace again, pulling his lips back from yours. 

“You gonna cum for me? Gonna cum for Daddy like a good girl?” 

His words, his velvet voice speaking to you so commanding yet so sweet, were what truly brought your orgasm to life in your belly. His voice made the fullness of his cock and the sharpness of his fingers on your clit all the more electric. You likely could have cum just from his words alone if he kept speaking to you that way. 

“Yes, Daddy.” You moaned in response. 

“Good girl. Come on,” 

He breathed hotly against your chin, his eyes now eagerly dancing from your face to the space where your cunt hugged his dick, leaking around him in such a wonderfully filthy way. Clearly, he wasn’t sure where he wanted to look, what part of the show he was more eager to witness after missing out on you for too long. 

“Come on, cum on my cock. Cum for me, love, good girl-” 

His heated words trailed off as your head snapped back and your eyes squeezed shut, your fingers digging sharply into his bicep as your orgasm rocked your body. Fred grunted as he continued to fuck you through it, his eyes glued to you, taking in every single inch of the sexy beauty that was you, the love of his life, as you thrashed and moaned and came on his cock. It was the most perfect sight he could have imagined, and he easily ingrained into his mind forever, praying that he would never have to miss out on it - to miss out on you - ever again. 

“Yes, yes darling, so good for me, so good-” He practically choked on his own words, his voice so thick with lust that it barbed the insides of his throat. 

As he felt the last weak spasms of your pussy around his cock, he stopped rubbing your sore clit and became possessed with a new need, becoming slightly selfish now. He fucked his hips forward even harder, determined to find his own pleasure inside the sweet, soft walls of your cunt. 

“Fucking hell-” He choked out a groan, dropping his head into your neck again as you petted through his hair, encouraging him through it while he unintentionally sent sharp zaps of overstimulation through your pussy with every needy, sharp push of his hips. 

“Freddie,” You breathed out. “Come on, Daddy, cum for me. You’ve been so good to me, come on-” 

He let you another loud growl and pounded into you harder, dropping his hold on your other knee and letting your legs rest to cradle around his waist as he blindly chased his own end inside your soft, wet cunt. 

“Gonna fill you up, gonna fill you up so good,” He whispered into your neck, chanting like a man possessed, sending another unexpected wave of heat through you that made you moan weakly. “All mine, all mine, darling, all mine, gonna give you what you need, fuck-” 

He tried to silence his moans into your neck as he stiffened his back and finally came - his own orgasm hitting him like a firework. He shoved his hips forward stiffly one last time, seating his cock deeply inside of you, stuffing you full, just like he had promised. He gentled grinded his hips against yours in mindless, stuttering strokes while he pumped spurts of hot cum deep inside of you - something that made your body buzz with even more heat and made you moan in return, clutching onto him tightly with your legs around his waist and your arms around his shoulders. 

“Oh darling, oh-” He muttered quietly against your neck as the last waves of his orgasm washed over him. 

It was so perfect, and made you feel so utterly connected to him. It was a distinct reminder of everything you had missed - his warmth, his caring, the thrill he gave you while at the same time making you feel so damn safe. 

When Fred moved to pull away from you, moving to break that connection, every instinct in your body screamed that it was wrong. You clenched your legs around him, digging a heel into his lower back to keep him close, and he let out a grunt - still dizzy from his orgasm and unsure what you were doing. But he settled back into place, creating a filthy ‘squish’ between the two of you. 

“Just hold me.” You said, having no clue when the tears had returned to your eyes, making your voice so clearly wet. “I missed you. I can’t lose you.” 

“Hey, hey shh.” He said, leaning up to kiss along your cheek, rushing to kiss away those tears. “I’m right here with you, darling. I’m not going anywhere. You’re not going to lose me.” 

He wrapped his arms around you, wiggling his grip between your back and the mattress to do so. This created the most stunning cocoon, forcing your two bodies even closer together - it wasn’t long before he became soft inside of you, but he stayed there for as long as he reasonably could, kissing along your forehead, your cheeks, your neck, uttering quiet reassurances that you weren’t going to lose him, that you wouldn’t have to miss him any longer. 

It made you incredibly content and warm. At least while it lasted. 

When Fred finally pulled out of you, you felt a deep sense of dissatisfaction and loneliness, which you tried to ignore. Especially because you weren’t sure if he would want you to sleep in his bed - which was something that you wanted very much, especially after the long day you had. But you weren’t sure if he wanted to be left alone to contemplate all of it, to be sure of his decision to take you back. 

You jumped to get out of the bed as though it were on fire, and when you looked to your rumpled clothes on the floor - your jeans still stained with dirt from when you had collapsed in the garden, your shirt likely reeking of sweat from the nerves of everything that had happened - the idea of putting those clothes back on wasn’t exactly appealing. 

Then, something else came to mind. 

“My things are in Ginny’s room…” 

You sighed, realising that if you wanted a pair of pyjamas for the night, or even a fresh pair of underwear, then you would have to waltz in and wake her up - and likely be interrogated about where you had been. She was all too knowing anyway, and any excuses you gave about spending the time caring for George or simply having a ‘talk’ with Fred would be seen right through by her. 

Fred hummed, and stood, and you were surprised when he comfortably went over to the chest of drawers against the wall at the end of his bed, going right to the top drawer. The drawer where you used to keep some of your things when you stayed with the Weasleys on holidays - and surely enough, a small collection of your things were still in there. 

Things that he had never returned to you after the break-up that you had never thought to ask for. You had no idea that he often came to this drawer, sneaking mournful whiffs of your scent - even used your shirts as a pillow case if he was feeling particularly lonely. 

He pulled out a pair of your comfortable sleep shorts and a large, soft, worn green tee shirt with a large shamrock on the front and a ‘94 on the back that he had bought for you as a souvenir from The World Cup. It had been your all time favourite sleep shirt, and you had wondered where it had disappeared to when you moved into your apartment above the Apothecary once you started the job. 

“I hope these still fit.” He said, handing you the clothes. 

“They should.” You said - quiet, careful not to acknowledge the elephant in the room. The fact that he had kept your things all this time. 

“Unfortunately I don’t have any panties for you, so…” He trailed off, a filthy grin plucking up over his cheeks once again when the implication hit the air - the fact that you would be commando underneath your clothing. 

“Yeah, very unfortunate in your eyes, I’m sure, Fred.” You huffed, turning toward the door. “I should go get cleaned up.” 

You let out a small squeak when two strong arms encircled your waist, pulling you sharply back, causing you to collide with the wonderful, bare, muscled, now slightly sweaty body. You couldn’t help but to melt into the touch, and you let out a quiet moan as he began kissing your neck - not in a particularly lustful way, but in a way that was purely loving and affectionate. 

“Don’t think you’re getting away from me that easy, darling.” He whispered in your ear. “Please, do come back afterwards. You know I like to cuddle,” 

You didn’t think that you had ever heard Fred Weasley say ‘please’ for anything so plainly in his life. But, as usual when it came to him, you wanted exactly what he wanted. 

“Only if you insist.” You joked lightly, smoothing a hand over his arm that was still tightly encircled around your middle. “I suppose I can clear some time in my very busy schedule for cuddling,” 

Fred quietly let out a ‘yes’ in celebration, and hesitantly let you go. He then collapsed back onto the bed, relaxing spread eagle, still confidently naked against the covers with his hands behind his head against the pillow. You couldn’t help it when your eyes did a once-over of his body, admiring the soft planes of his muscles that had come from hard work rather than a distinct workout routine and the beautiful bit of fat on his lower belly that made him so warm and nice to cuddle. Of course, when your eyes met his, he was smirking at you. 

“I’ll be waiting, love.” He told you with a wink. 

You rolled your eyes at this, biting your lip to suppress a smile at his somewhat deserved cockiness. 

You moved to leave the room with your newly acquired clothes, wanting to freshen up in the bathroom a bit before going to sleep (the bathroom was right across the hall, so you would have to sneak across the way naked and hope that nobody would catch you, but it should be fine at this time of night). But when your hand twisted the knob and it didn’t budge, you remembered that Fred had locked it earlier. 

He moved to grab his wand from the pocket of his pants, splayed out in the middle of the floor, but you reached for the jeans first. Your wand was still downstairs beside the cauldron that had brewed the potions for George, but often, you found that Fred’s wand worked fine for you. 

Ollivander and other wand experts said that a wizard couldn’t find the same kind of success using a wand that wasn’t their own, but you found using Fred’s to be just as natural, like an extension of your own arm. Perhaps it was because his core was a Dragon Heart’s String, and that heart beat for you just as fondly as his own did. Either way, it was a fine substitution. You unlocked the door easily and tossed the wand back to him where he was sitting on the bed, and then you snuck across the hall to clean up and get dressed. 

When you came back, Fred had crawled under the covers and was starting to fall asleep. When you crawled in alongside him, you found that he hadn’t bothered to get dressed, so you locked the door again, just in case. It was a basic charm that anybody could get through, but it would give the two of you a few minutes of warning to make yourselves decent if somebody did come knocking. 

It felt like the most wonderfully natural thing in the world to settle beside him, wrapping an arm around his waist while he slept on his back, putting your head on his chest and feeling his sleepy fingers brush across your head from behind. 

“Goodnight, love.” He whispered, so quiet as though he was afraid to break apart a beautiful daydream. 

“Goodnight, Freddie.” 

… 

You wondered if all of it had been a dream. 

Fred apologising to you, begging for your forgiveness, the two of you having amazing sex - it was something you had dreamt about many times before. It was something you had wished would come true, only to find yourself waking up alone in a cold bed. So waking up next to Fred, with his large, warm body coiled up against your back like a koala was one of the best ways you could have come into a new day. 

It wasn’t long before the smell of Molly’s cooking reached your nose - the wonderful fatty sizzle of sausages and the bready warmth of toast that told you she was frying up a full English (likely because she had been having trouble sleeping after the events of the night before). Your stomach gave a painful pang, making you want to get out of bed to eat just as much as you wanted to stay cuddled up with Fred. 

You gently petted a touch along Fred’s heavy arm that was wrapped possessively around your waist, and soon, he sucked in a sharp breath as he too began to stir. 

“Merlin, I missed this.” He said, leaning in to smother you with more of his perfect warmth as he somehow crowded tighter against your back, kissing along your clothed shoulder and up your neck once again. 

Your heart fluttered with the sweetness, the fondness of it all, and you wondered how such a hellish night had made way to such a perfect morning. 

“I wish we could stay in bed forever, Freddie, but I think your Mum is making breakfast.” You remarked, finding yourself more aware of your hunger as you woke up more, and more drawn to the delicious smells. 

“We can stay here for a bit longer.” He hummed into your neck. 

Just then - his stomach let out a loud groan of protest, and you giggled. 

“Come on, Big Daddy needs to eat too.” You said, using the nickname in a more playful, joking manner as you patted his thigh, untangling yourself from his arms as you got out of bed. 

You were surprised, and slightly victorious when you saw a slight blush tinging his pale cheeks because of the teasing, the way you had used the nickname. It was amazing to see someone like Fred go from so powerful and confident to fluttering with shyness. 

“I have to find some trousers,” He remarked, suddenly remembering that he was naked. 

“I’ll meet you downstairs,” You grinned, walking across to the bathroom, lucky to beat anybody else there before the others started waking up. 

When you hit the bottom stair, Fred was standing at the back of the couch with his back to you, now fully dressed in a pair of comfortable plaid sleep pants and an old Chudley Cannons shirt that must have belonged to Ron. (It was only because of many winding discussions about Quidditch among the boys that you hadn’t even wanted to hear that you knew the Cannons were Ron’s team and the twins hated them.) 

Fred was leaning over, clearly talking to George, who was still laying where the two of you had left him the night before. You hated that your instinct was to stand back where neither of them had seen you and listen in on their conversation - but you had only learned such matters from Mr. and Mr. Extentenable Ear themselves. 

“...well, yes, I would say that it did go well, but I would still have to classify the nature of the relationship as dubious. Or friendly at best.” Fred said in a rushed whisper. 

Your stomach gave a twist. This time you had to assume that the twins were talking about you. Talking about what had happened between the two of you the night before. 

“Dubious?” George’s voice baulked, clearly trying to stay hushed himself, but having a hard time restraining his volume due to frustration - frustration at not being able to get a better answer out of his brother. “The two of you had sex and you’re classifying the nature of the relationship as dubious? Are you an idiot or was the sex that horrible?” 

You choked down a laugh at this, not wanting to be caught just yet, and resisting the urge to speak up and clarify that the sex was, in fact, great. 

“No, she seemed perfectly satisfied, thank you very much.” Fred hissed back, full of sass. You would have said more than ‘satisfied’ - for once, Fred was actually being humble. “But I just didn’t think to stop and ask: oh, by the way, does this mean that we’re back together and you still love me? Or were just scared and lonely after almost dying and wanted a decent lay? Can you fill out a post-orgasm survey to clarify, please, and make sure to-” 

An arm came up from the couch with a pillow, smacking Fred clear in the chest - hard enough to force a small grunt out of him. George was certainly feeling better. You were glad to know that your potions had done him some good. 

“You should have just asked, you numpty!” George scolded him. “You’ve been mooning over losing her for-” 

“Y/N,” Fred cut off his twin’s words by saying your name, announcing your presence as that smack with the pillow had caused him to finally turn his head and spot you there. 

“Fred.” You grinned, not at all ashamed that you had been caught. 

You walked over to the couch, leaning over to find George grinning at you in a way that said he was holding back a barrage of stomach shaking laughter because of the conversation you had caught the two of them in. 

“For the record, I would call the sex more than satisfactory.” You said, a mischievous grin coming over your lips. “And I do still love you.” You announced, turning toward Fred. “I was lonely and scared last night, but that’s why I came to you. You’re the only person I want to go to when I feel that way. I missed you. And I want you back if you’ll have me.” 

“Merlin, of course I’ll have you.” Fred breathed out a sigh of relief, now grinning as well. “I love you more than anything, darling. You have no idea how much I’ve missed you.” 

“I have some idea, and it was bloody annoying.” George muttered out, only to be ignored. 

You leaned in for a kiss, naturally, but just as Fred’s lips brushed yours, George let out a loud, fake gagging sound - one that had Molly running into the room, clearly fretting and worried that George was actually ill. 

“I’m fine, Mum.” George groaned as Molly began patting down his head with a wet cloth - clearly, his night had been filled by the annoying, but loving fuss of his mother watching over him. 

“Yes, yes of course.” Molly nodded, hesitantly putting the cloth down. “It’s time for breakfast anyway - do you feel up for sitting at the table, dear?” 

“I would love to get off this bloody couch.” George groaned. 

Fred rushed around to help him up, and after a moment of struggle to his feet, you grabbed his other arm to help him along into the kitchen. 

“I suppose it all worked out for the better.” George said, smiling at you. “Even if you did end up with the less attractive twin.” 

You rolled your eyes, biting back a smile at this.

...

A/N: This fic is a oneshot, and there will not be a continuation or a 'Part 2'. This is a capsule story meant to be read independently, and in terms of the narrative, there will not be a continuation. If you are going to leave a comment, please comment about the body of work that has been written here, do not comment asking for more. If you would like to read more of my fics, please take a look at my Harry Potter Masterlist, more specifically, my other Fred Weasley fic - Kisses Like Fire Whiskey. Thank you if you have gotten this far, and happy reading!

[davidmariottecomics]

Shelf Space/WonderCon

Hello! 

Great news: Apparently my lost blog is not so lost! I thought I deleted most of this, but the site did save it, but was just giving me trouble over the weekend. So, let's talk about that viral set of photos that was going around last week of the graphic novels bookcase vs. the manga bookcases at a Barnes & Noble. 

There are a lot of bad takes off of the original thread and in the retweets, but there are a few folks who went out of their way to try to contextualize what's actually happening on those shelves.  Here's a thread from Morgan Perry (currently over at Skybound, formerly at Boom and a former comics retailer) that provides a quick rundown of the state of manga and non-manga comics in the book market at large and specifically how that relates to Barnes & Noble. I really recommend giving it a quick read because I'll refer back to it. 

I don't want to just retread what she's talking about here, so first let's establish some basics, and then we'll talk about shelf space and how it is or isn't indicative of the heath of an industry and what lessons should be learned from manga in the book market. 

Manga is Just Another Word for Comics

Okay, starting with the most basic part of all this. Manga is quite literally another word for comics. Manga specifically refers to comics from Japan or in the style of comics from Japan, but that's it. It's almost like that rectangle/square thing: not all comics are manga, but all manga are comics. And just like it'd be kind of weird to pit rectangles against squares, it's weird to pit one type of comics against another--especially when the primary basis for that is country of origin. 

But neither you nor I are naive enough to think that there's not some separation between manga and non-manga comics. Generally speaking, most manga that would be in an American bookstore is black & white and printed in a smaller size and on cheaper paper than the books in that graphic novels section. Manga is also sometimes distributed in a magazine format and, yes, as a style of comic coming from a common point of origin, often does include thematic and stylistic similarities. None of that should be taken as a given for something to be a manga, nor should it be taken as a given that other comics don't sometimes also meet these characteristics. 

To the actual discussion at hand, probably the most noteworthy distinction you can make is that sometimes, manga is broken out onto a different sales chart. But, depending on what sales charts you're looking at, so are middle grade & young adult comics and, sometimes, so are "superhero" comics. 

Understanding the "Manga" Section, Part 1: Numbers

Standard is set, so let's talk about what's actually pictured and what we can actually get out of it. From the initial posting, one of the most common refrains was that given the shelf-space "graphic novels" had given how much manga had, manga has "won" and non-manga comics are "dying" and blah-blah-blah. Obviously, it's overstated and oversimplified. There are a lot of ways to measure the health of an industry and a single set of pictures isn't. 

One way you can look at it is of course sales. $$$. People care about money. And when you look at it that way, yes, you can see that manga is really succeeding right now. I'm looking at the ICV2 pulled overall comics sales from NPD Bookscan, and in an average month, if you're looking at overall top 20 comics, yes, the list is going to be *mostly* manga with one or two other comics on it. It's also true that in 2022, manga sales grew 9% which is part of their overall growth in the book market that we've seen for the past 3 years. What is also true is that adult graphic novels grew 4.6% and YA graphic novels grew 20% (and kids & middle grade graphic novels actually fell slightly--the only book market comics to have fallen in 2022). And, like manga, you can see that overall book market comic sales across categories have been growing over the past few years. 

I've defined it before (and now might be a good time for a refresher), but when we're talking about the "book market" we're talking about data that includes almost no comic shops. NPD Bookscan looks at data for bookstores--both chain and independent--and stores that carry many things including books, like Target, Walmart, and Amazon. Some stuff that Bookscan doesn't include? Well, besides comic shops, it doesn't factor in numbers for things like ebooks, libraries and schools, and Scholastic Book Fairs. So, even with these impressive numbers and growth, which should be regarded for what it is, there's a lot of data that just isn't included here. 

Let's check in with Publisher's Weekly, who in that article about comic sales growth took the time to ask direct comics market retailers about the performance of manga in their non-book-market stores. Interestingly, one retailer mentioned manga is a solid category in their store, and makes about 30% of their graphic novel sales. 

That speaks to how well manga is doing in the direct market, and how much it is growing there (though like the photos we're talking about, a single shop is extremely anecdotal and should not be the basis of a larger trend). If we take it at face value, though, we can expect that for this comic shop, the ratio's pretty much reversed from the book store. You can expect about 70% of graphic novels sales to be non-manga. And that's not even getting into single issues or trading cards or Funko Pops or whatever else it is that the store sells in a year. 

It's also interesting that a different retailer mentions that in the DM, the most valuable manga were the current hits, and having a larger variety meant having more shelf-warmers. Only the big names were moving.  

Now, because there are some bigger picture numbers we can look at, let's go back to ICV2. For their quarterly market share charts, in Q4 of 2022, the top manga publisher was still below the 6 top American comics publishers in terms of actual dollars. Comic shops are investing more money in non-manga publishers overall, presumably because they're seeing some return there. 

Understanding the "Manga" Section, Part 2: Buyers & Shelf Space

Getting back to Morgan's thread, she mentions that in 2019, after Barnes & Noble was acquired, the chain moved away from overall buyers to store-specific buyers to better match their local markets. I think another interesting set of photos are these ones from a B&N in Brooklyn. Similar to the first set of photos, they have a massive manga section and a smaller, but not non-existent selection of other comics/comic-related books. Steve Flack, who posted them, does something that is totally missing in the other set of photos though--he took pictures of the Kids/Middle Grade and Young Adult comics sections, which unlike manga and "adult" comics, are kept in their age-specific sections rather than with the general comics. 

I bring up the point of matching local markets because there are a BUNCH of comic shops in Brooklyn that may not be catering as highly to the manga crowd, but that have other kinds of comics on lock. Or, for a different example, I've had conversations with my co-workers about when we hit up the "comics" section at our local Targets. Again, it's kind of spread-out with Kids/MG/YA comics being mixed in with other kids books and a smaller selection of "adult" comics. Near me--and yes, I do live in a city with a lot of comic shops--mostly manga. For some of my coworkers? Almost no manga. It depends on your market. 

Looking specifically at the two pictures that started this whole thing, one of the things that really struck me was the comic selection. Obviously, it can be hard to really know what you're looking at on crowded shelves in a Twitter picture or whatever, but I know a lot of those books by sight. First of all, let me say, that section is arranged in a genuinely strange way. It is constantly alternating between being shelved by title and by publisher. Like, that first shelf is almost entirely by title, except the Boom Dune books are under B and that might be a Dark Horse section before the DC shelf, then it switches back to by title for most of the next shelf until it hits Marvel and then for some reason the Walking Dead is just there, and then it goes back to by title? Odd shelving. 

But, and this is the part that's actually meaningful, a lot of the books on those shelves actually meet the criteria that people were asking for in the comments and retweets when making a divide between comics and manga. A lot of these are single volume OGNs (Black Hole, Jerusalem, Jack Kirby, My Favorite Thing is Monsters, etc). A lot of these are complete runs (Watchmen, Infinity War, Sweet Tooth, From Hell, etc). A lot of clearly marked and large starts of runs (Walking Dead, Monstress, Paper Girls, Saga, etc). A selection of things that people might be more likely to buy at a Barnes & Noble rather than a comic shop and/or that are meant to be omnibus style entry points. Is it a limited selection, sure, they only have so much room and a lot of their physical space is being taken up by bigger, heavier, and more expensive books.

I know this is not the only/best way to consider these things, but those 3 Walking Dead Compendiums, when they sell, are kicking off as much cash as like 15 manga (BIG NOTE: That's a bit of a guesstimate because I don't actually know what sort of discount B&N is buying at and how much they're making, but that's my rough estimate). But, yeah, if we say that's about right, it's those 3 books and that Sweet Tooth compendium ultimately kicking off the same amount of money as all the Chainsaw Man they have taking up half a shelf? 

If they're selling through their manga faster than their other comics, absolutely, it makes more sense to take the space necessary to have a larger section because, sure, if they can sell all that CSM before those big compendium books, they need the room for it. And, to what we were talking about earlier, and what Morgan was talking about in her thread, the manga is largely being sold at a lower price than the other comics because of the smaller size and the paper stock and being B&W and, crucially, because it's cheaper to do a translation of foreign material than to make something new. They cost less for the store and if they're in a boom, like is happening now--see the previous numbers about manga's year-over-year rise--and are selling through faster, sure, why not make space for the thing you can do at high volume to make the same amount of money? 

The "Lessons" of Manga

A temptation that I very much understand from just looking at the pictures and seeing how big the manga section is compared to other comics is to say "well, why aren't you learning what makes manga so appealing?" I get it. And people all have their own thoughts on what makes manga appealing. A few folks have actually problematic hot takes like manga is good because it isn't woke or political or gay or whatever (which... is both incredibly frustrating and maybe one of the dumbest things I've ever heard). 

But once you've thrown those out, a lot of the common refrains come to general ideas about what American comics should be learning. 

Probably the biggest point of contention and most repeated refrain is the classic (that I've written about before and kinda revisited here) issue of jumping on points. If you don't want another detour, the short and sweet version is some people think that all the reboots and relaunches and Vol. 1s for similarly named series and 90 years of continuity have made American comics too confusing to read because you don't know "where to start".

Now, I'd contend that's also something manga can have a problem with (looking at you, Gundam, Evangelion, and Re:Zero) and that, of course, it's a very Big 2 (Marvel & DC) centric view. Again, I've covered this all before and don't to waste too much time getting into it, but to the points I've said before: 1. the reboots are direct responses to these pleas in trying to simplify things (and then dealing with backlash of people who don't like the simplicity/the natural problems of shared universes) 2. it's actually a good thing if different people have different recommendations--that's actually no different than like any other book and might actually help you find the thing you are actually interested in. 3. you don't have to read superhero comics to get into American/non-manga comics. There is so much variety and so many cool people who are there to guide you. 

There are other, more specific concerns which vary in their validity--from the people saying there aren't enough new characters to become easily attached to, which leaves me kinda scratching my head; to the people saying it's easier to follow the story across mediums, which... has its benefits and downfalls--I certainly like watching faithful adaptations sometimes, but I also really like seeing how the fundamentals of storytelling work in different formats; to the people saying manga generally have a single creator across the series life which makes things more straightforward. That last one is particularly interesting given how bad burnout is for many mangaka and how often assistants and other contributors are overlooked and missing the difference in the corporate nature of something like a Big 2 comic (or licensed title, which it's a good time to remember, Big 2 comics often practically are) to an original title, but if you aren't as well versed in this stuff, I totally get why it'd look that way. 

But let's say these are all right and our takeaways are that we'd like comics that are closer to manga format--be that size or use of B&W or limited color or release schedule or style or whatever--where there are clear jumping on points that have a strong creator-identity across the whole run and that feature new or easily-digestible versions of existing characters and that may match any other media interpretations of the works and... this is what's happening in the middle-grade and YA markets. Not exclusively, you can definitely find some of these things in the "adult" comic and graphic novel market, but a lot of what I'm describing is already in that bookstore--it's just in the comics for young people. And you know where the other comics like that are happening? Here. Online. Webtoon and Tapas and whatever. And, going back to those February 2022 sales charts--when you look at the "Author" chart as opposed to superhero or manga--that's over half webcomics to print. Like, you know the best way to get into whatever DC character now? Either their Webtoons or the comics formerly known as DC Ink/DC Zoom! Or if you like manga for slice-of-life stories, good news, that's online and in those markets too and is growing in the adult print market! 

I'm not going to say there aren't things that we can learn from manga. Of course! Manga excites a lot of current creators and--while it might not always be obvious--excites a lot of folks working at comic companies. What I am saying is that those lessons are in progress and we don't always see the results if we don't know what we're looking for. But what's been good for manga has been good for comics overall and the two should be looked at as two parts of a whole rather than at odds in your local bookstore. 

Stray Thoughts That Didn't Quite Fit

A few other points I don't want to leave unsaid but wasn't quite making into what we've talked about so far. 

1. Not that I think many people are clamoring for this, but it isn't like the Big 2 (and various other publishers) haven't tried their hand at original American manga and/or "manga-ified" versions of their characters, often to controversy or a lack of success. Again, this isn't to say there hasn't been good influence of manga on American and international comics and comic artists, just that purely taking the characters and putting them in "manga" often doesn't work. 

2. It's hard to enter manga publishing. Almost conversely to my earlier point about how foreign licensing can be cheap, it is hard for a publisher that isn't doing manga to enter the marketplace because it is a large investment in a new category and one that has some very dominant players. 

3. Finances and shelf-space really shouldn't be the only way of measuring the health of an industry (and, just to have it said... I think posting about a company's stock prices to an employee just trying to say that the medium is in a good place is a real weird move, as is accusing him of gaslighting about how well comics are doing). It should also be about people in the companies and freelancers making living wages and having good lives and being happy with their work and about readers being happy and enriched by the work and whatever. But that's unfortunately a bigger, different conversation than the one posed here. 

I'm sure I could say more, but if you're still reading, you probably want to get to the good stuff, right? 

What I enjoyed this week: Blank Check (Podcast), Honkai Impact (Video game), Bobobo-bo Bo-bobo (Anime), The Circle (Trash TV), Wall of Chefs/Wall of Bakers (TV shows), Who Wants to Marry a Billionaire, Vol. 3 (18+ Manga), putting the finishing touches on Becca's revised website (more below), sleep. Sweet sweet sleep. 

New Releases this week (3/22/2023): Godzilla: Best of King Ghidorah (Editor)

Announcements:

WonderCon 2023! I'll be at WonderCon. This weekend! In just a couple of days! I won't be updating my blog because I'll be there! Right now, my schedule is still pretty open, so if you'll be around and want to meet up, please drop me a line. I will not be at any particular booth, so the earlier we can figure things out, the better!

The new popculturepunk.com is here! New galleries! New commission info (and Becca's open for comms)! A major new shop update including lots of leftovers from AZCAF and WaifuExpo! Digital comics! And more! Also, Becca's streaming Wednesday (3/22) at 7 p.m. PST on Twitch if you wanna come hang out! 

Pic of the Week: I dunno. This is a nice picture of me and Tian holding hands. 

[jtrokujo]

𝐇𝐄𝐀𝐋𝐓𝐇𝐘 𝐎𝐑 𝐓𝐎𝐗𝐈𝐂¿

paring: Mikaela Hyakuya x fem!Reader

(they’re 18+!!!)

word count: 4k

warning: this story contains sexual content

gerne: smut

summary: there are days when they get along well but there were also days when they hated each other like the plague and even though they love each other?

—

The weather is neutral, but I wish it got better.

The sun is obscured by the gray clouds, but it's not windy or anything.

You could even go out with a top.

However, y / n decided to take a seat in the four walls with a number of different books and a tall pile of books right next to them.

As she gently leafed through the pages of the somewhat older book, she felt a stab.

Of course it didn't hurt since no one was attacking her, but it felt like someone was watching her.

Without presenting her feelings, she took some books and put the rest where she got them.

Immediately after leaving the library, she stopped in the middle of the path and said with an annoyed sigh, "Bathory, I know you're here."

He stands grinning in front of y / n, but could hardly show a disappointed face.

With his head tilted to one side, he looked at his prey and smiled at her immediately. "I prefer you to call me by my first name, dear."

“I do what I want and not what you want, Bathory. Besides, I have better things to do than waste my precious time being influenced by you. "

When they told the vampire, she continued on her way, or at least intended to.

As quickly as he came, he grabbed her arm just as quickly. "But y / n, why is it in such a hurry?" asked the vampire, amused, pressing more and more on hers with every second, so slowly you could hear her bones. Y / n had to react immediately!

Without thinking for a second, she dropped all of the books on the white floor and immediately grabbed her gun. "You should let go of me!" y / n's voice rang out down the hall and immediately shot the vampire in the arm.

His blood spurted around her.

Y / n got his blood on her face as well as on her clothes - it was the same with Bathory, also the wall and especially the floor got his blood.

"Disgusting." mumbled y / n and wiped the blood on her face, although she knew herself that it would be of no use.

"What's going on here?" Everyone but not him.

"Hello Mika!" said Ferid with delight and turned to get a better look at him.

"Have you lost your nerve again?" he asked me annoyed, but he only looked at me for a few seconds and immediately saw Ferid's blood spatter.

"What do you mean 'again'?"

Even if we've known each other for a long time, we both have to admit that one and the other have diverged. Sometimes it was his fault, sometimes it was me. There were of course moments when we got along really well, but in the end they weren't enough in my opinion.

"Since you've lived with us, at least one vampire must have got something from your weapon."

Said the blond-haired vampire while his eyes stared at me.

I'm not understating when I say that his eyes alone make me feel naked.

Mika only manages to control me through his eyes, even though I should be the one who should control every vampire or the various books I spend most of my time on just one more bad joke.

It was enough for vampires to exist and more than hundreds of people took their own lives just to be able to enjoy themselves. To this day I cannot forgive any of the vampires for what they did to me or those around me. I know myself that there are bad ones, but what is their goal?

Or do you have a goal?

"Y / n." I heard his voice.

Awakened from my trance, I see his eyes again. However, they do not have this previous aura, no, they are a little stricter this time. When I gave him a sign of his attention, the lecture immediately came, "You are old enough to know how to behave and with whom to behave. If you show this behavior to someone else, I'll let that person do it . " and do what they want, because I haven't had the nerve for someone like you for a long time. So finally know your limits before I use my weapon against you! "

Impressive. From sentence to sentence his voice grew louder and louder. Seriously, I never expected or even had the idea of ​​this side of Mika in my life, but here it is. Wonderful y / n, now you have managed to sink deeply with Mika, which is actually the very last thing I ever wanted to achieve in my life, but life has never been a paradise.

With a chuckle, Bathory put his arm and my shoulders and spoke to Mika.

"But, but Mika shouldn't be so strict with her. She's just a little girl again, not even now, is she?" "If I were that little girl, you would surely have two arms instead of one." After saying my sentence, I picked up the books that were still on the floor and didn't say goodbye to anyone, why should I?

Bathory is nothing more than an idiot who uses his satisfaction to see others suffer rather than provoke them too.

While Mika nudges both children like a father, although the other is to blame for everything.

When I got to my room, I put the books on my table and sat on my bed, thinking about the old days. However, I don't think of the days with loved ones that I lost, but of those that I spent with Mika before he gave me a “better life”.

I could leave it all behind at any time and either not start an old or a new life, but I love to have him in my heart for it.

Sighing at my thoughts, I give up and stood in front of my closet for the next minute.

While the lukewarm water felt the white bathtub, my clothes landed on the floor.

This life is more of a calling expected of others than a life of its own. A break does no harm to anyone.

I said to myself and after a few seconds I closed my eyes.

After my bath or a break from the real world, I'm just choosing which book to read.

As I was about to start the new book, someone knocked on my door.

Hesitantly, I said the door was open and waited for the person behind it to appear. Please leave it all but Bathory.

Sighing, I immediately put my hand on my left breast and saw him, Mika.

To be honest, I'm happy to see him, but I'm not, but I don't need an explanation. "Good evening." he said in his usual tone. Without making a big head out of it, I repeated it myself, but added if he needed anything from me.

Shivering, I answered my question in the negative and came up to me with slow steps.

The only thing I could do was do nothing. I stopped. When our faces are a few centimeters away, his arm came slowly towards my body, until he reached for something, when he had this in his hand, he came back with a few steps and immediately held a book in my face.

"I really recommend it, I have to say, you have pretty good taste when it comes to books. I've read it several times because these stories, the writing style, the plot and most of all the characters are up to me." uniquely well written down to the smallest detail. "

I looked at the vampire in amazement. "You read that too?" "Y / n, if I hadn't read it, I wouldn't have a clue either."

A little ashamed of my oh-so-intelligent question, I also looked at the floor.

The whole time there was nothing to be heard, neither a little intoxication, nor even breathing. But after a few seconds, Mika also broke the embarrassing silence by taking a few steps and holding out his arm to me. I don't understand it about myself. When Mika is around, I either act annoyed or neutral. However, countless butterflies gather in my stomach when I think of him alone!

"Y / n ... y / n?!" Mika looked up, gave me a neutral look and at the same time held a few strands of my hair and asked me if he should tie my hair up with a towel. I gently took the wet strands of hair from his hand and began to giggle at my discomfort and nervousness. The thought of me being weird was always out of the question.

"I think I'll blow dry my hair. I'll see you at dinner or tomorrow."

"I'll see you at dinner or tomorrow." repeated Mika before she disappeared from my room.

Locked in the room and caught in his deepest thoughts, he stared over the ceiling.

The reviews of that day haunted him to this day when he also dreamed them.

Sleeping now wouldn't be for him, even though it is shortly before 2 o'clock.

But what can you do about it?

The vampire rose from the bed, stretched out, and decided to go for a walk immediately.

As he walked through the empty corridors, he always hoped not to meet anyone.

Whatever stays that way.

Bored and hands in his pockets, the floor caught his attention. It didn't take long, however, because he was amazed to get up when he saw the light coming from someone's room.

He was more than sure whose room, or rather chamber, it was.

It was Y / n's.

He stopped in front of it, thinking, held out his hand and wanted to knock on the door. At the same time he quickly put his hand in his pocket. This scenario takes about 3 minutes. But it wasn't the vampire's nervousness that was unusual, no, why should he be at y / n's door? This is funny.

Doesn't he often seem annoyed or stern in your presence?

Well, he doesn't even know what's going on in his head.

After an eternity, the vampire finally knocked on the human's door and immediately heard "Come in" from the other side.

Without telling himself twice, he opened the door and saw her. He saw her spread out on the large bed with several notes and books.

Stressed out. You can't see it from the outside, but even Mika can confess that he thinks it is strange to see y / n at this time.

"Do you need something?" she asked him and fixed him with her gaze.

"Shouldn't you be sleeping long ago?" he asked and at the same time crossed his arms over his chest.

"Mika, I could ask you that too, don't you think?" sigh y / n and slowly start piling up her notes and books together.

When Mika offered her help, she politely declined and slowly and carefully put the things on her desk.

"If you have nothing special to do, you can always keep me company, you know?"

Yes, even if there is an argument between the two, they still get along well. However, they don't seem to be as close as they used to be. Without saying anything, Mika accepted the offer and sat next to y / n.

Was that really wise?

The smell of y / n gets over his head, but he's not as easy to lose control as other vampires.

Breathing hard, Mika rubbed her eyes and hoped that this unbearable smell would go away any moment.

Easier said than done.

If only I had drunk blood in the last few days. The vampire cursed.

Y / n noticed his unusual behavior and tried to communicate with him, but to no avail. She called his name several times, tapped him on the shoulder, and shook him a little. He seems trapped in his own world. For the first time she seemed to see someone so trapped in his own world. When will he regain his senses?

Annoyed, she hit his skull with her fist, which led to a groan of pain from Mika's mouth. "What does this mean?!"

“If you are tired, please go to your room and sleep there.

Both rolled their eyes in annoyance.

"You have nothing to say to me, human."

"Oh really? What are you going to do about it, vampire?" It wasn't a mistake by y / n, but rather Mika's mistake. If he hadn't called her a human, she wouldn't have called him a vampire. Nobody except Mika knows right now how much he hates vampires and yet he is one himself, but you have to remember that he never wanted to be one. Not everyone is lucky in life.

As I said, even if it was his own fault that she reminded him, he completely lost his nerve. Slowly she approached y / n, she already felt the dark aura coming towards her. However, y / n did not want to show the fear that is in her and slowly rising above her head. She will regret it. "Repeat when you have the pity." "What is the problem? You called me human and I called you a vampire, but you know what makes me be silly, get out of here, vampire. ”Without further ulterior motives, Mika grabbed her wrist and squeezed the bones with her hand listened from print to print. When she wanted to reach for her gun, which is under her top, Mika was a second faster and threw it directly to the end of the room. When Mika immediately released his hand from Y / n's wrist, she saw an emotion in his eyes, sadness.

He was hurt, but shouldn't he care? What should a little person who plays with little guns do against a vampire, ask him about a game? However, he saw her more as a person, he saw her as someone he can love, with whom he can laugh, of course he had had these people before in his life, but they have long since disappeared. Oh how much he loves her.

If only she knew how many letters he wrote her, but never gave them to her, but hid them in his room.

"I'm really stupid." Mika muttered trembling to herself. Y / n heard it and slowly walked up to him "Mika, that was very childish of me and, to be honest, I'm sorry." When she tried to touch his shoulder, he knocked her away and looked into her eyes, it was their fault.

“I don't want your decisions! I never wanted to be a vampire! If you don't know anything about me, please be quiet and think twice before you open your door! ”The whole room went quiet, pretty quiet. It was rather uncomfortably quiet for y / n, but she preferred to keep her mouth shut because it looked like Mika was looking for the right words. "Why do I love you? Tell me Y / N, how can I love you when you hate me so much?" His voice was fragile and it was tormented to hear it that way. "Mika, I had never hated you before." Exhausted, Mika sat down on the floor and looked at the gun at the other end of the room. "Every time I see a gun like that, I hate myself even more." “Even if it sounds a bit clichéd, for example because of the current situation, I have to and want to admit that I love you Mika. You are in such pain and apparently you have torn old wounds. You didn't deserve that, nobody deserved that. ”Y / n sat like Mika on the floor and hugged him. Her warm body against his cold one. As if in slow motion, their faces stood a few inches apart until their lips met.

𝐒𝐊𝐈𝐏

With my hands on the back of his neck and my tongue seeking his, his fingertips dance from my thigh under my top.

Only he managed to make me shiver everywhere in a few seconds with the help of his touch. Not through his ice-cold skin, no, only through him. In keeping with the mood, the cold raindrops hit my window pane. "Waiting." he whispered to me.

Not a second later it was pitch black in my room. The butterflies in my stomach just like Mika don't know when to stop, but I love it, never let it stop! His lips kissed every inch of my skin and whispered to me how divine my body was. His hands slide up my top until it finally brushes over my head. The first item of clothing is already on the floor. My legs were around his waist so he could pick me up and lay me on my bed. When he did that, his lips were still on my skin.

As I lay down comfortably, I watched his clothes land piece by piece on the floor. His belly is built like that of a Greek god and although it is dark the moon shines on him. One could have immediately thought it was a godsend. The boxer shorts were the only items of clothing that remained. While I was about to take off my pants, Mika took my hands and indicated that he could do it himself. When my pants peeled off my skin, he looked at my legs in admiration and immediately threw my pants on the floor. Now stand half-naked in front of my bed. The red cheeks on his cheeks were clearly visible. "Are we really supposed to pull this off?" I asked Mika and looked him in the eye. His lips approached my ear and he breathed softly, "Y / n, the question is not, we should, but we can. A human and a vampire, is that a good chemistry?"

"Why don't we want to find out?" I whispered and kissed his shoulder in time. Now he looked at me again, but with clearly red cheeks you could have thought he had a fever, but I can't blame him, because even when his ice-cold body is on top of mine, my body manages to have a hot temperature.

As our tongues played with each other again, our hands explored each other's bodies. While one hand pinches my buttocks, the other is right on my bra clasp.

Moaning slightly, I also pinched his buttocks and felt my muscles tense. A low gasp left his delicate lips, which made me even weaker. My temperature rises more and more with each of his touches.

I can not stand it anymore!

He knows very well that he has the upper hand!

When my bra, like the rest of the clothes, landed on the floor, his ice-cold hands brushed my arms up to my hips and brushed the last piece of clothing across the floor.

I was breathing hard down in my zone.

His hands were on each thigh so I couldn't pinch my legs together. Apart from the horniness, I could hardly move my legs because of his strength, you can not say that he is so strong. The horniness in me is going like crazy! With every breath Mika takes against my area, the butterflies in my stomach fly crazier.

When his tongue brushed my cervix for less than a second, I let out a gasp. Immediately afterwards he pressed his tongue against it and danced with it at the same time. That I'm getting wetter is not only clear to me, but also to Mika, when he was his tongue in my entrance, she explored every single inch inside.

Overwhelmed by shame and lust, I pressed one hand against my mouth so as not to make a noise from you, and the other on his white-blonde hair.

Every time his tongue penetrated deeper and he spread my thighs wider and wider, it honestly hurt, but I don't care about that at the moment because as good as he makes me feel no one is going to do it and I want it too nobody does it because I just want them. Because I just want Mika.

When I thought it couldn't get better, I was wrong. When he started sucking, I was done. My lustful moans got louder every time I sucked, but I do my best that nobody but Mika can hear it. When he freed his tongue from the entrance again, he stuck his middle and ring finger in the next second and didn't give me a second to get used to it. The speed of his fingers is unique!

No matter how much I press my hand against my mouth, my moans stay louder.

Several times his name groaned, which only drove him to increase the speed. My orgasm is nourishing. When I groaned and said I was about to be there, he didn't stop but continued. His tongue dances on my cervix and his fingers successfully hit the G-spot every time, it's just breathtaking!

When my orgasm came, I screamed his name with relish and breathed heavily as I stared at the ceiling.

His beautiful face approached mine, but he devoted his lips to my ears and whispered, "A second round won't hurt you." Aren't my trembling legs enough for him? In the middle of the kiss, I slowly felt his member inside me, but my nails clawed behind his back in pain, we continued the kiss. Now it was Mika who groaned in the middle of the kiss. He closed his eyes and kissed my chest as his hips began to dance. Is it still normal for him to make me feel this way? Because on the one hand I can no longer, on the other hand I want more! Mika's one hand is on my thigh while the other is on my chest. The way he plays sensitive nipples is superb.

I don't know how he makes me feel so good, but I want him to never stop. "Mika, don't stop." I moaned in his ear and wrapped my legs around his waist. When he saw me, I didn't know how to feel. Because his eyes are blood red! He slowly approached my neck. That cold breath worried me even more. He didn't bite me, however, but instead scratched his designated spot with his fangs as the blood flowed from the wound, so it propelled him and made him much faster than before. The clap of our skin was just as loud as the satisfying moans from our mouths. "Y / n." he groaned my name and immediately turned me around. Now my back was visible to him. With both hands on our hips, our bodies clapped together. When I moaned his name one last time, the orgasm came, Mika pulled his member out of me and rubbed it with his hand until finally the white sperm speared out of his body.

𝐒𝐊𝐈𝐏

After Mika helped me cleanse my body, we are back in bed naked. "Do you think we can do it?" Mika asked out of nowhere. “I don't think so, I know, Mika. And I think you should too. "The vampire looked at me lovingly and finally kissed me on the lips and immediately afterwards whispered" Good night, y / n. " "Good night, Mika."