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katerina-marie · 5 months

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Don't Go Slowly, Tell Me If You're Lonely (Series)

Chapter 1

Gojo Satoru x Reader & (past) Geto Suguru x Reader

Your relationship with Geto Suguru came to an end somewhere between the day of his betrayal and the day of his death. Your relationship with Gojo Satoru began somewhere in the midst of it all, even without you realizing.

WC: 6.2k

Content: Canon Divergence, Gojo x Female Reader (referred to as such but left descriptively vague), (past) Geto Suguru x Female Reader, Geto's canonical death, friends to lovers, angst, eventual happy ending, fluff later, reader is a sorcerer (left vague tho sorry), SFW (may change in later chapters idk), no use of y/n. More notes below.

Chapter Count: Chp 1, Chp 2, Chp 3, Chp 4, Chp 5, Chp 6 (Final)

Notes:

Product of an angsty Suguru Tik Tok. I have roughly five or so more chapters thought out for this, but that is subject to change as none of it is written yet. Canon events are loosely followed from Hidden Inventory and JJK0, but future events (Shibuya/Kenjaku) will not happen.

I've taken liberties with JJK canon/timeline for this fic. While not explicitly mentioned in the story, reader, Gojo, and Geto are all 20/21 with Nanami and Haibara being a year younger when the hidden inventory arc starts. There would only be 5ish years between HI and JJK0, and then another year or two between JJK0 and present day JJK where Megumi, Yuji, and Nobara are at the school (their ages stay the same and I’m sorry cause I know that wouldn’t fit with the changed timeline, but they will most likely only ever be mentioned through conversation in this story).

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Chapter 1: Don't Go Slowly, Tell Me If You're Lonely (For the Sake of Understanding)

September

“Suguru?”

The dial tone was constant and unyielding, just as it was with the previous four phone calls.

Unanswered. Ignored. Avoided. Did it happen gradually, the pulling away of a boy who sat nestled in every major part of yourself? You could recall your last conversation, only a few days prior, and it was stilted in a way they hadn’t ever been before.

“Suguru?”

His reply was delayed, as if the distance that separated the two of you actually affected how quickly your words reached him. There were currently hundreds, maybe thousands of miles in between each of your current locations on Earth—missions and curses…they never gave consideration to lovers or their quarrels—and for the first time, the distance felt detrimental and significant.

“Hm, yes?”

“I said, ‘I love you,’ and hopefully I’ll be home in three or four days. We’ll spend that evening together, yeah?”

In the silence, all you could think was ‘he’s slipping, he’s slipping, he’s sl — ,’

“Sure, I’ll see you then.”

Had his voice always been so tired and hollow? Had he always felt so distant and uninterested in the words coming out of your mouth? You were used to his rapt attention and soft affirmations in your conversations, always letting you know that he was focused on you. So when, in the last year, had Suguru become a shell of himself? You should have known, and your conscious would tell you that your level of intimacy (‘girlfriend’ felt like such a lackluster term for what you were to him, but your relationship hadn’t progressed further yet to earn you any other title) demanded you be aware of the moment things began to crack and crumble. All you knew was this: that there was the murder of a girl with a purpose that had been determined years prior—whose fate had changed under his watch—along with the brief but insurmountable amount of time that Suguru believed his best friend was also dead.

Gojo Satoru. A close friend he was to you, once maybe out of obligation to your partner in the beginning, but there had been enough time to have built a friendship of your own over the years. Surely, now that you took a second to consider the situation, he would know what to do.

“Satoru,” you mumbled, “I should call, Satoru.”

And yet, the dial tone remained unrelenting. The A/C unit of your hotel room hummed under the bottom edge of smoke-beige curtains, and the muffled slam of a door down the hall caused you to jump from your seat on the edge of the bed. The phone remained tightly clasped in your hand and it pushed just hard enough against your ear that pain began to erupt from where the post of an earring dug into your skin.

“Suguru?”

——————————————

Your phone rang an hour after leaving the hotel room to begin your journey home. It was in the middle of a foreign airport, your clothes were sticking to your skin after the rushed shuffling through security, and Shoko had just told you that Geto Suguru was currently wanted for the murder of 112 people and his subsequent defection from jujutsu society.

“Is he…does anyone know where he is?” The question slipped out quietly as you dropped into a black leather seat and dragged your suitcase in front of you so you could lean your elbows on it. You took a quick glance up at a screen and tried to decide if “Gate 7” was truly flashing in the top right corner or if it were the building tears in your eyes that were starting to blur the number into a different shape entirely.

“No, he hasn’t been located, and he’s not responding to our phone calls either. Not even Gojo’s. Have you—,”

“No.” You let out a wet laugh and the man in the seat next to you cast a long sideways look in your direction before getting up and moving a couple seats away. Did you look so distraught that the idea of possibly spending hours on a plane next to you was so unappealing? Another stare from a woman in the seat across from you and the tear-drop shaped spots appearing on your pants convinced you that you were better off not knowing.

“I’m so sorry,” Shoko began, and for the first time, her voice brought none of the comfort and healing it usually did. “We debated telling you and waiting until you touched down back home, but Gojo figured you’d…”

Shoko trailed off without any other indication of what considerations for your feelings were taken into account during their discussion, and all that you could respond with was a shake of your head and a hushed “no, no.” You couldn’t decide if you were grateful to know immediately of what had transpired instead of being surprised with the news upon arrival home, or if you were appalled at their thought that sitting trapped in a plane with hours to despair at the unbelievability of it all was the better suited alternative.

A flurry of sudden motion and shuffling around you jolted you back into awareness, and you realized with a sudden panic that your plane was beginning to board. Your only connection to what was going on was about to be severed. You stood with the others and began the slow march to line up at the terminal.

“Shoko, I’m about to board my plane but please—,” A sob cut you off, and you knew that you were further from finishing that sentence than you were from the one person you yearned to be beside at that moment. A heavy ache settled in your stomach at the thought. Suddenly, there was a realization that some great reconciliation was to be made in regard to who Suguru was to you before this point and what he would be now and going forth. In no possible scenario did you see yourself emerging totally unscathed.

Shoko was silent for a moment before offering some reassurance you didn’t really hear and then muttered a quick goodbye. Between that minute and the next, you had boarded the plane, stowed away your suitcase, found a seat next to the window, and picked a spot in the sky to stare at lest the environment around you remind you of how trapped you were.

“Suguru?”

——————————————

“Suguru!”

Screaming your boyfriend’s name from across a crowded street wasn’t what you had envisioned when you thought of your return home, even after the news had broken. But time hadn’t let you attempt to catch up before it decided that the person you treasured most in the world was to continue unraveling on a schedule you had no hope of following.

You had barely taken your first steps out of the airport onto paved sidewalks when your phone rang again. The ringtone could only play its first few chimes before you had it up to your ear with a breathless reply already on its way out.

“I found him.”

Shoko sounded neither relieved nor any more worried than she had when the two of you had spoken hours earlier, but you didn’t have a chance to question her further before she set your whole being on edge.

“Suguru confirmed the reports, and I’ve called Satoru already.”

For a split second, dread filled your limbs and you stumbled in your step that took you from a standstill to a sprint. Why did the thought of Satoru confronting your boyfriend offer anything other than utter relief?

“Where are you? Shoko, please tell me where you are, and I’ll be right there!”

‘Right there’ had you struggling against the hold Shoko had on your shoulders as you watched from a distance as Suguru and Satoru stood opposite each other. People weaved in and around the two, unaware of the danger, the devastation, of the complete dismantling that was occurring just beside them.

“Suguru! Suguru, Suguru, Suguru!” Your screaming seemed to have no effect on him, and you would have lied and told yourself that he just couldn’t hear you, but the disdainful stares of the oblivious people all around kept you from denial.

Suguru remained placid as he stood and took the brunt of both yours and Satoru's desperate calls to bring him back. He looked so much like the boy you had fallen in love with, but then again not at all the same. His hair was different. Half of it laid unbound against his neck, though the piece that framed the left side of his face still hid the corner of his eye. You stared at him, and you weren’t sure if you were trying to commit every inch of him to your memory or simply beseeching him to spare just a glance in your direction. Had his cheeks always been so gaunt? Did the delicate skin under his eyes always bruise purple like they were now? What else had been missed in the last year that could be counted and added to this moment?

Before you could damn yourself further for missing the signs of Suguru’s slow deterioration, the raising of Satoru’s arm had your whole existence narrowing until it was just the two of them in frame. The sound of your heartbeat thudding in your ears faded. The warm feeling of panic that had started in your chest, radiated down your arms, and made your fingers feel numb blended in with the shuddering of Shoko’s chest against your back. All the background noise—the clack of dress shoes on concrete, the whir of car engines flying by that also shuttered the view in front of you, to the incessant wailing of your boyfriend’s name—suddenly ceased as two of Gojo Satoru’s fingers began to close in on one another.

“Satoru!”

One day, Gojo Satoru would be brave enough to remember what it felt like to hear you lament his name. He could recall fondly and effortlessly how his name and the one of his best friend could slip so seamlessly, interchangeably, from your lips. But now, when he swore you were moving your mouth though nothing else but his name came out, it would haunt him in his dreams, his memories, and everything in between.

“Satoru!” Urging, demanding, and shrill.

Do it, do it, do it.

“Satoru!” Pleading, shrieking, and broken.

Please, don’t do it. Don’t do it, don’t do it, don’t do it.

Satoru’s fingers remained a hairsbreadth apart, and Suguru’s back turned as he walked away with nothing more than an unaffected wave over his shoulder. Shoko still trembled, Satoru’s face crumpled, and your heart and mind had broken into pieces that scattered far beyond your reach.

All the while, there would be a day upcoming when all of this would have to be condensed into something that was capable of being understood.

Today was not that day.

——————————————

December 24, Years Later

Did your footsteps have to echo what your heart was chanting?

Suguru, Suguru, Suguru.

Your walk to the communal lounge of the Jujutsu High-Tokyo campus was different, in some ways, from usual. Familiar stone scraped at the bottom of your shoes. Acrid smoke still hung in the air, and pieces of wood and rock falling to the ground could be heard echoing from where buildings and walls were left in ruin. The fading orange of a winter sunset was dipping below the remaining trees, leaving behind a night that was dark and dreadful and devastated.

Suguru, Suguru, Suguru.

And then you were here, at the door you had to open and walk through before any number of questions you had could be answered. With a deep inhale, you took your first step forward to pass over the threshold and the room that was full of people, though couldn’t be considered noisy, went silent.

Principal Yaga stood in a corner to the right with a cell phone at his ear. Nanami sat at a table with his spotted tie loosened around his neck and his suit jacket thrown over the back of his chair in an uncommon show of haggard exhaustion. Behind him, Shoko was washing her hands in a sink where the water swirled with something pink. You jerked your head to the left to avoid having to process the sight further, but what you looked upon instead didn’t spare you any relief.

The underclassmen, Maki, Panda, and Inumaki, hovered around a loveseat where Okkotsu sat slumped with his head in his hands. All four of them were covered in varying degrees of debris, bandages, and scant traces of blood. It made you feel a little better to think that’s all Shoko had been washing off in the sink.

What didn’t help ease the knots in your stomach was the way Okkotsu never raised his head to acknowledge the entrance of your presence—a contradiction to his normal deferential behavior—but also how the rest of the eyes in the room all looked at you with varying degrees of emotion. None were malicious, but unnerving nonetheless.

Pity, unsureness, sorrow, regret, and condolence—,

Your sharp inhale was enough to make a person or two flinch, but no one else moved and you were left to contemplate whether fleeing to solitary misery would hurt less than receiving answers about what had happened tonight.

Before you could decide what to do, the door to the back of the lounge slid open and Satoru stepped inside. His bandages around his eyes were off, and he was looking at you in a way he never had until now. How you were supposed to interpret that look and what it could even mean…well, you didn’t have the slightest clue, and that would be the final blow to your being.

You had already lurched back to reach for the door when Satoru called your name, and you were slow to turn around to face him. When you did, he used his head to nod to the garden through the door of the lounge in a bid to get you to follow him before exiting the room the same way he came. You took a deep breath and gave a helpless search around the room before following after him into the night. Someone had the grace to close the door behind you.

The two of you walked a few steps into the garden, and while it did nothing to ease the turmoil you were feeling, the vastness of the night sky and coolness of the air was preferable to the atmosphere in the lounge you were just in. When you and Satoru finally came to a halt, you weren’t close enough to touch, but if you tried, your fingertips would just miss the fabric of his uniform. You waited for him to speak, swallowing once, twice, a third time to try and clear the tension out of your throat. Your hands began to tremble, and a stinging burn rushed up through your nose to prick at the corners of your eyes.

With only a whisper of clothing as a warning, Satoru’s hand reached out to cup the back of your neck and draw you into his shoulder, his arms capable of closing the distance between you without requiring him to step nearer. His other hand settled between your shoulder blades while yours loosely gripped the fabric at his ribcage. The embrace only lasted another second before he was pulling away with a gentle squeeze around your arms and letting his own drop to his sides.

“You’re aware of what led up to all this tonight, correct?” Satoru asked, gesturing vaguely to the campus surrounding you both. There was no preamble from him and you watched as his eyes flicked between yours.

“Yes,” you nodded, “I was there in the city with everyone, Satoru. I saw you leave, and once everything finished I stayed after to check on everyone from Kyoto before coming back here.” You let your eyes wander around over Satoru’s shoulder, and you could just faintly make out a persisting plume of smoke in the distance.

“He was here,” you continued, no more asking him a question than you were stating what you already knew, “and this was him?” Even though it was meek, your voice didn’t crack.

Satoru hummed out an affirmation, not needing to clarify what you said in order for him to know that you were referring to the damaged state of the school as a result of Suguru’s presence.

“Alright,” you started, firm and as prepared as you could make yourself in this moment, “where is he?”

Satoru carried on without acknowledging the question you asked. “Some of the damage is from him fighting Maki, Panda, and Inumaki, but most of it is from his fight with Okkostu and Rika after the others became too injured. I arrived just at the end.”

It was here that you started to feel like you were listening to his words from somewhere outside your body. There was an outcome that you were waiting to learn of, and you knew you either needed to ask a question or make some kind of noise or movement to prompt him to go forward. But really, your head felt like it was full of static and you couldn’t begin to piece the words together to make them sound even remotely coherent.

The end, the end, the end, the e–,

“The end?” You asked on an exhale, stunned when you saw Satoru’s chin quiver just once. You realized then that you hadn’t ever really taken the time to study the world’s strongest sorcerer. Did the blue of his eyes always reflect even the dimmest of light, or was there something else that caused them to swim as they did now? He stood rigid, but then again Satoru always held himself up to his full height, unbothered by the weight that sat on his shoulders and unencumbered by the threat of a physical blow. Maybe now that you could notice, as you saw how his head hung slightly and weariness lowered his stature, it was apparent that the time Satoru spent constantly guarding his person never allowed for the same courtesy to his mind. You wondered if the vulnerability of it, of how he sacrificed himself to the heavy weight of emotional torment, was what eventually managed to dim the spirit of the person in front of you right now.

“Suguru’s dead. ”

One day, you’d look back and wonder if you already knew what was going to come out of Satoru’s mouth. The news had the ground beneath your feet tilting in different directions in a way that threatened the contents of your stomach, and it did expel the air from your lungs in a pained-sounding moan. But it didn’t send the electrical current of shock through your body that you were waiting for. You’d suspect that you were aware of it from the moment you set foot on campus, that the tension in the air and the stiffness of everyone in the lounge had been direct indicators that the worst had occurred. Perhaps you knew, but needed Satoru to deliver that blow in order for it to land.

You struggled to find a way to think past the roaring in your ears, so you tangled your fingers together in order to dig your nails into the skin on the backs of your hands. When the pain didn’t register and the blood welling up underneath them didn’t scare you into looking away, you fixed your gaze up on Satoru’s eyes in a desperate attempt to pull yourself out from inside yourself. They were wide in concerned alarm from whatever he saw on your face.

“God, so…,” you heaved a breath and closed your eyes to try and focus on getting your thoughts into something more than garbled syllables, “so that’s why Okkotsu looks the way he does…in there? He, uhm, he ki—,”

“No.” Satoru pulled his bottom lip under his teeth and rolled his head back to look up at the sky before returning back to you. Did he feel the same trepidation that snaked under your skin and knocked at your chest? Did your eyes reflect back to him the pleading that was going on in your head? To who, though? Certainly, the time for bargaining was long past. “No, Okkotsu didn’t kill Suguru. He wounded him…badly. But Suguru was able to retreat in the haze of the smoke and I…he…”

He what? Suguru? Okkotsu? If allowed, the endless possibilities of “what if” would steal whatever peace remained from you, and if closure wasn’t something granted to you, you would respond in kind.

“What, Satoru? He what? You have to be clearer. You have to tell me, for the sake of my own understanding.”

The sliding of the lounge door caught your attention and interrupted whatever Satoru was going to say next. You glanced over, watching as Nanami stepped out from around the door, shut it, and leaned back against it with his arms crossed over his chest. Out of the corner of your eye, you caught Satoru giving him the faintest nod and you wondered if he had asked him to come out here. The reason wasn’t quite clear to you yet, but you stared at him, trying to figure out what part the blonde-haired sorcerer was about to play in all of this.

Ever present Nanami, stoic as he was strong, but soft spoken and never cruel for cruelty’s sake. Always maintained rigid self control and composure, even in the face of his best friend’s death. He was steady and stable, easily beat against but never yielded, made to never move under such intense pressure.

The thought had you turning back to Satoru, perplexed about what Nanami’s presence might be implying. What was about to come out of Gojo Satoru’s mouth that made him think he wouldn’t be enough for you? Or—in an even worse consideration—that he was about to become too much for you.

“I found Suguru after his fight with Okkotsu in some obscure corner of campus,” Satoru whispered, and you dared not move or breathe as you waited for his next words. “I found him…and I killed him.”

You had to hold a hand up to your chest, right between your breasts and over your heart as it began to rise and fall with the rapidness of your breaths, if only to ensure that it kept beating as every second ticked past the next. You felt your mouth drop open, felt your throat vibrate with some wounded noise, and watched as Satoru held out his hand to you, immense regret tightening his features, along with glistening tears clinging to the tips of his eyelashes. What hurt more though was the memory of Satoru’s arm reaching out like it did now, some years ago on the day Suguru left, his fingers trembling as they inched towards each other in his best friend's direction. You wondered—painfully, regrettably—if that’s what Suguru saw too right before it all went dark, and the sight of it was enough to send you staggering backwards. Someone caught you with large hands curling around the tops of your shoulders and—,

Oh, that’s what Nanami was for.

Taking advantage of your friend behind you, you wilted backwards against Nanami’s chest and sobbed, neither of you unnerved by the ugly gasping of it. The hand that wasn’t still clutched against your body in the hopes of keeping yourself sealed shut shot up to grasp at Nanami’s forearm in an effort to abate the buckling of your knees. Because in front of you, the honored one stood a few feet away from you with eyes made empty and full of loss, and you struggled to reconcile which one of you were owed more the space to fall apart. Perhaps it was you both, as grief in situations like this happened to be a great equalizer, and you considered, as your friend stared at you with pained hopelessness, that maybe—certainly—Satoru was entitled to his own moment of sorrow in front of you. The thought lent sturdiness to your stance and you pushed forward off Nanami and used the momentum to propel yourself into Satoru. You worried briefly that maybe the two of you wouldn’t make contact, that he wouldn’t allow you into the space of him, but your arms landed around his neck, your chest met his, and his hands pushed you past any remaining distance.

“I’m sorry,” he said, voice shaking and hands hovering infinitesimally over your hips before they settled against you. All you could do was shake your head against his shoulder. There was no question about how equally wounded Satoru was. Where you now mourned the forever plans that once existed in the bright eyes and easy laugh of a man since gone, Satoru had the honor of shouldering the burden of knowing he was the one who snuffed those plans out, though the fault could be no more placed on him than it could you. Did he wonder as he waited for you, whether you would blame him for the duty in which he owed the world protection from people like Suguru? Where he would always be the one to know what it was like to take away the life of his best friend, did he worry about how you would look at him once you knew? Did you confirm his fear when you fell away from him? For a time, did Satoru bemoan the physical loss of Suguru and wonder if he would have to do the same for you when you couldn’t bear to look him in the eyes anymore? Satoru might have been the one who made you something akin to a widow, but Suguru’s choices and decisions were what put the two of you here, who really held responsibility for the damage inflicted on the two people he had valued most.

You squeezed Satoru a little tighter and then tilted back some so you could peer into his face.

“Don’t be sorry,” you said, shaking your head at him when he opened his mouth to protest, “at least not to me.” A weak smile pulled at your lips as you did your best to reassure him and the spasming of his grip at your waist. You didn’t have the energy to explain to him the depths of emotion that swirled around in your head. How you didn’t blame him, but regretted the situation Suguru thrust the two of you in. How you would never leave him to carry this alone, but that you would need time before looking at him didn’t make your heart throb with painful memory and imagination. Or how the two of you would be forever connected by the loss of someone so important to each of you in vastly different ways, but that you wanted nothing more than to flee from his presence now.

So you moved away from him, trailing a hand down his arm because you could and because you didn’t know what else to do for him. You kept stepping back, already turning to retreat back the way you came and ready to seek solace in the privacy of your room. To do what, you weren’t sure. To cry, you guessed. To distract yourself enough that you didn’t replay every single second of the last few years over and over in your head so you could pick every word and touch between you and Suguru apart. Whether that was for the sake of your own memory or to try and figure out that which couldn’t be solved was unbeknownst to you. In the depths of your grief, maybe you would wonder what the last moments were like for Suguru. Did he think of you? Consider what he had done to you and to Satoru? What were the last words to come out his mouth? Were they for you or for—,

You whirled around from your spot halfway back to the lounge door and caught sight of Nanami placing a heavy hand on Satoru’s shoulder.

“Did Suguru say anything to you?” Your voice carried out clearly on the emptiness of the night, but Satoru didn’t turn in your direction, nor did he hardly move. “Did he…did he have anything for you to tell me?”

Satoru was still until he eventually twisted his head towards you just enough so he could look at you from the corner of his eye. They were guarded, maybe the slightest bit afraid, and you held your breath in anticipation.

“No.”

You deflated and were unsure how to feel about his answer. You had hoped, thought, that maybe having Suguru’s last words for you would bring about some relief for the burning heartache that had started at some point in the last hour—the last couple of years—but you had also been hesitant to receive one more thing to occupy the scant emotional bandwidth you had left for everything that Suguru was. It would be one more thing to keep you up at night. On the other hand, the fact that your lover had left the world with nought an expressed thought or word for your condition left a blistering bitterness to swell within you. Insignificant were you not, but maybe to Suguru, in his last moments on Earth, you were to him. And that thought was enough to tip you into the realm of excess, surefly filled and overflowing with enough contemplating and pondering and general overthinking to last the rest of your life.

So you turned away from Satoru and Nanami and walked back through an empty lounge and out the door from which you came earlier in the evening. The night was still dark and devastated but relatively silent, the noise of utter ruin having mostly ceased. But your shoes still scuffed against stone and tiny pebbles skittered away from under feet, skipping and tumbling with every step you took.

Suguru, Suguru, Suguru.

——————————————

“You were lying.”

Nanami’s tone was no more judgemental than it was inquisitive, but nothing about him seemed to press Satoru for answers that he wasn’t yet ready to give—or understood himself. He did lie. He wouldn’t deny that. But under no circumstances was he prepared to tell you what his best friend, your other half, had told him in the minutes before his death. They replayed tortuously in his head as he tried to make sense of it all. Satoru would have to speak them to you one day, and the fear of doing so brought the same panicked apprehension he had felt as he watched you try and hold yourself together as he had told you about Suguru’s death. As he waited for you, he had imagined every which way your face could have pinched and drawn up in enraged despair as you threw yourself against him to beat as his chest, to wail in his arms as you cursed his existence before finally retreating in a similar fashion as how you did just moments ago, but perhaps with less acceptance and a goodbye that would prove final in its anger. You hadn’t reacted that way, of course. You had fallen against him in sorrow and with a barely concealed need for comfort as much as you were ready to give it to him, and he had been filled with desperate relief at the feeling of you and how you hadn’t shied away from him. But maybe that was to come later one day, after Satoru spent time considering what was said and implied by Suguru’s words, and felt brave enough to share them with you. Surely then you wouldn’t have the same patience for him as you did tonight.

“I was.” That was all he said back to Nanami, refusing to elaborate on the specifics of something he owed to you and couldn’t yet come to terms with himself. Thankfully, Nanami simply nodded and glanced in the direction of your departure.

“I’ll check on her in the morning,” he offered, betraying no emotion or thought to the idea, but Satoru had a feeling it had something to do with how you had done the same for Nanami when, a few years ago, death had come for Jujutsu High and taken Haibara with it. Neither man said anything else as they departed, Nanami heading your direction towards staff lodging and Satoru leaving to walk aimlessly along crumbling corridors. His head spun, and he remembered.

Satoru had heard Suguru before he came upon him, dragging his shoulder against stone walls and mumbling nonsense to himself until it came to an abrupt halt as he spotted Satoru a ways in front of him. It was painful to take in the sight of his best friend, covered in blood and viciously mangled, but looking so achingly familiar. But the ensuing conversation, a mindless back and forth of words that meant much and nothing at all proved that the person in front of him wasn’t the same as he remembered.

“Tell me, do you have any last words?” Satoru had asked, a simple opportunity given to the man sitting in front of him, yet he cursed the universe for his lot in life, the unfairness of it all bittering the taste of his mouth and landing heavy in his chest as Suguru spoke back to him.

“She's yours now, it would seem.”

Satoru couldn’t ever say he had been rendered speechless before, but he choked on his own spit as he recoiled from Suguru’s words. He grit his teeth as he felt his face scrunch in anguished rage.

“God, Suguru! You can’t just—that’s not something you—!” What came out in a fit of bewilderment was followed by more jumbled sputtering before Satoru could mind his tongue again. “You don’t just say that! You can’t pass ownership of her like an object. Not like this, not ever!”

Suguru just chuckled, out of breath and clearly fading, and leaned his head back against the wall. “Doesn’t make it any less true.”

“It does!” Satoru shouted, panic and desperation lacing his tone,“She doesn’t want me! She would want you to come back, to make amends and live your entire life trying to repair what you broke. You don’t get to decide our future for us!”

“Consider it a dying wish,” Suguru said calmly, and Satoru wondered if anything else someone could ever say would hurt as badly as that (a picture of you flashed unbidden in his mind).

“She would rather have you—I would rather have you!”

“You haven’t exactly said ‘no’, Satoru.”

His words pinned him in place and Satoru was stunned into silence. His friend’s dying delusions were no better for his psyche than considering what Suguru implied would mean for him. Satoru had never let himself think so far, to entertain a thought about his best friend’s girlfriend in any other way except strictly platonic. Sure, no one could ignore your beauty, and a couple times Satoru had silently envied what Suguru had and he did not—intimate companionship, physical comfort and pleasure, and the eagerness for a future with someone, all that could be had with a friend but on levels not belonging to such a term. However longed for, it was never with you strictly imagined, just a simple yearning for something of his own.

“No,” Satoru managed, “not like this. Not without her consent, and certainly not in place of you being alive.”

Suguru made a motion similar to a shrug, or what one would look like if half of his shoulder wasn’t missing. “If you insist.”

“Do you not have anything to say to her? To leave her with?” Satoru beseeched on your behalf, hoping Suguru would tell him anything else to pass on to you other than his attempt to give you to him. Satoru would get his last words with Suguru, and it was all the same too much and not enough. He wondered if you would feel the same.

“What’s there to say?” Suguru said, his voice light, as if the discussion was more about the weather or something else equally mundane. “‘I’m sorry’ seems pointless without action behind it, and there will be none. ‘I love you’ is nothing she hasn’t heard before, and I would call into question the truthfulness of those words in light of my actions if I were her.” It was then that Satoru finally spotted a hint of regret and sorrow on Suguru’s face, but it disappeared only a moment later. “She would not want me as I am now, and there is no going back. The damage resulting from my choices is something the two of you will wrestle with, both individually and together, I suppose. Hence, why I said what I did.”

Satoru would laugh at the absurdity of it all if it didn’t pain him so badly. Instead, he walked towards Suguru and dropped into a crouch to get eye-level with his friend. His head lolled toward him.

“Damn you for that, Suguru,” he said, “but you’ll always be my best friend.”

Shock fluttered over Suguru’s face before amusement wrinkled his eyes and a tired laugh shook his body. His eyes slid shut and as Satoru stood and willed his arm to move, he desperately wished he could be anywhere else.

-----------------------------------

I hope I didn't ramble too much and that this made sense! The next chapters shouldn't be as thought/monologue heavy. I can't promise an update timeline, but I will do my best to not take too long. I am writing in the breaks between chasing my toddler around, so patience is appreciated:)

Cross-posted on ao3 as well.

Thanks!

#gojo satoru #gojo satoru x reader #gojo satoru x you #geto suguru #geto suguru x reader #geto suguru x you #jujutsu kaisen x reader #jujutsu kaisen #jjk #gojo x you #gojo x reader #geto x you #geto x reader

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ic3-que3n · 6 months

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@madebydun sent me an ask game (and asked me all the questions on it ❤️) so I thought it would be fun to make a post!

Ask game post for writers procrastinating on their WIPs (original ask game) (and for the record most of the questions will be for one wip)

1. 🦈Tell us the name of your/ one of your WIP(s): Fae Born

2. 🍄Describe your wip/one of your wips in the format of “___ + ___ =___” Hmm “fae+sick mom=legal battle over the seasons”

3. 🌍What tags or warnings will your / one of your wip(s) need if you intend to share it? No warning I don’t think… idk I might kill a major character. Haven’t seen where the take is leading me yet. Tags will probably be: loose fairytale retelling, AU, Erwin x Levi, fae!Erwin

4. 🧭An alternative title to your/ one of your WIP(s)? I don’t have an alternative title actually. When I pick titles I tend not to change them.

5. ⚠️Which wip your most likely to finish or update next? …. Either a strip poker aot fic or finally post the last chapter of Remove the Years

6. 💾What is your document of your wip/ a wip called? (not the stories actual title but what you’ve saved it as) Eruri Fae Born. I sort my docs by ship/fandom then by title so I can remember what the fic is about 😂

7. 🖍Post Any sentence(s) from your wip.

Have several from a flashback in the fic.

“Momma?”

Kuchel sighed. “Levi, go to sleep.”

“But I have a question.” Levi’s small voice was insistent.

Kuchel rubbed her forehead. “You can have one. And then no more till you wake.”

Levi was silent for a second. “Why is every story you tell me about the fae? Furlan gets told stories of heroes and said it was weird that I don’t know them.”

Kuchel huffed at the mothers of the town telling their sons rubbish like heroes. “Because the fae are real and heroes are just a matter of who is alive at the end of a tale.”

“But—“

“No buts. Go to sleep. You can ask questions tomorrow.”

Levi huffed.

Kuchel went back to knitting until the candle burned low.

8. ♻️A scrapped idea for your current WIP. Levi was going to be half fae.

9. 🤔What’s a story you’d love to write but haven’t even started yet? A story about a incubus and an ace person as enemies to QPR. It was basically just going to be a philosophical dialogue

10. 🤡How many Wips are you actively working on? I’m going to answer this with the ones I’ve touched on the last month. I am a pathetically slow writer with lots of ideas so 6 I think…..

11. 🛠Is there a scene or anything in the WIP you are struggling with right now? YES. i can’t figure out how to introduce Erwin and it’s fucking bugging me.

12. ❤️Not a question, just a second kudos to send. Thank you!!!

And now so I can spread the procrastination, I’m tagging @madebydun @theearlgreymage @noblecorgi @artsyunderstudy @ivelovedhimthroughworse @ileadacharmedlife @thewholelemon @you-remind-me-of-the-babe @iamamythologicalcreature @j-nipper-95

#mine #carry on #aot #wips #ask game #let’s get this going everyone!

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brilla-brilla-estrellita · 6 months

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An ask game for writers to procrastinate working on you WIP(s)

Whoaaaa thank you for the tags @shrekgogurt, @bookish-bogwitch, @thewholelemon, @cutestkilla, @monbons, @drowninginships, and @blackberrysummerblog! I'm pretty sure that's everyone! I love being tagged in shit.

1. 🦈Tell us the name of your/ one of your WIP(s): So you just like... have names for them? Before you post them?

I will say that for once, a name did come to me, so one of them is tentatively titled Fettuccine and Foreplay, but I might change it because Foreplay is misleading. I'm sorry to say that it is not smutty, and the events are questionably even foreplay. But the alliteration. And Fettuccine and Flirting just doesn't have the same ring to it.

2. 🍄Describe your WIP/one of your WIP(s) in the format of “___ + ___ =___” God, why am I so bad at this?

Nevermore Academy + Penny = offensive assumptions, defensive students, and a magical breakthrough waiting to happen

3. 🌍What tags or warnings will one of your WIP(s) need if you intend to share it? uhhhhhh. I don't usually think about tags until I'm ready to post, so I am not prepared for this question... I can't really think of anything. Which makes me feel like my stories are hella boring.

Update after finishing and rediscovering an old wip: fluff! yay fluff.

4. 🧭An alternative title to one of your WIP(s)? Alternative titles??? So not only do you have titles, you also have extras laying about????

I guess I already talked about it in #1, but Fettuccine and Flirting. I do not like it.

5. ⚠️Which WIP you're most likely to finish or update next? Probably the Fettuccine one. It's a one-shot and a good portion done (almost ready for a beta, I think?). I like to write the whole story before I start posting, so the Wednesday x CO crossover is going to take a goooooood while. Idk how many chapters it is yet, I just know it's more than 3.

6. 💾What is your document of your WIP/ a WIP called? (not the stories actual title but what you’ve saved it as) I think my most interesting one is called Sundays With Gran. It's more of a drabble that I might work into a story at some point than it is an actual WIP though. But my actual WIPs have uninteresting names.

7. 🖍Post Any sentence(s) from your WIP.

It’s especially hard to believe in this reality when there’s a glow, a sparkle, a buzz around even the most mundane of sights when Simon is involved.

That's not even from a WIP I've already mentioned. I rediscovered this one while looking at document titles for this post!

8. ♻️A scrapped idea for your current WIP. I have one fic, the one from #7, where I originally wanted musings from each of the main 4, which each describing what's happening through focusing on a different sense or set of senses. Like Simon would be taste or touch, Penny would be sound, Baz would be sight, and Shep would be touch or smell. But that felt too restrictive. Senses are still a big part of it, of course, and there may still be strong affinities for one sense over another for each character, but they'll experience with the most appropriate sense for the moment.

9. 🤔What’s a story you’d love to write but haven’t even started yet? I really want to write more CO x Heartstopper (which we're calling Snowstopper because we're so clever) fics, but I'm making good progress on these other two and I'm afraid I'll lose the momentum if I start on the next Snowstopper idea. So I'll leave that for Kat to start in the meantime.

10. 🤡How many WIPS are you actively working on? At the beginning of this post, 2. As of #7, 3!

11. 🛠Is there a scene or anything in the WIP you are struggling with right now? So many! I think I need to rewrite much of what started the Wednesday x CO fic. The entire first two chapters don't feel quite in character for Penny.

And then most of this rediscovered fic, for now called Tiny Dots. (Hey look! A title!) Like I said before, it's character musings, and I'm not sure how to string them together in a way that feels cohesive.

12. ❤️Not a question, just a second Kudos to send.

I feel like I procrastinated on this procrastination game for so long that everyone else has already done it! I'm sorry if you've already been tagged 100 times, and especially if you've already done it and I missed it, buuuuut: @onepintobean @martsonmars @facewithoutheart umm... if you haven't been tagged, but want to be tagged, consider yourself tagged (or tell me and I'll update this post with your tag and no one has to know).

#ask game #simon snow #baz pitch #snowbaz #my writing #i feel like mine was so boring

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mirrorshards · 2 years

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Do you have any good stenny fic recommendations? I've really been getting into shipping them because of your art, but idk where to start 😅

Hi! first of all I'm flattered!! I'm happy you like my depiction of them 🥺💞

I actually don't read too many fics, and when I do I'm quite picky 🙈 however! I do have a few to rec!!

I'm gonna list all of basu's stenny btw cuz basu's stenny is so GOOD. her stan makes my bones hurt in how much he just needs someone to understand him. and her kenny is so handsome and sensitive... 🥺anyway

Happy Birthday - "Stan turns 18 and nothing feels different." (basu's words, the best description tbh) (chapter 2 is NSFW)

basu's stenny week fics for 2021!! they're all adorable so you should just go for the whole thing tbh. that being said my faves out of those are:

Right in Front of You - stan feeling misplace at a halloween party since he's no longer dating wendy

Some Things Have Changed - the boys form a band and things are a little messy

and also, The Weight - this one's Kyman/Stenny multichapter and the stenny front starts a little slow but it's so good.. I've returned to this one like 3875345 times cuz I also read it almost a year before basu ever posted. it's so.. heartfelt and painful at times and aagh. seriously my fav stenny of hers and she knows! meanwhile kyman are being insufferable the entire time and it's the ONLY kyman depiction tbh. I seriously built so many of my headcanons over this (this one's rated M!!)

and a couple of others I also liked and are sadder:

See You Later, Kenny - LexisGrey - really touching and sad but also bitterweet! I won't say too much so I won't ruin it

You Can't Have Us Both - DayDreamingIsMyHobby - this one's just painful but it's the good kind. you can sorta guess from the title-- (also rated M)

I had a few more to rec but I just found out they're gone so u_u not anymore

#stenny #fic recs #the basu tag

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forcebookish · 3 months

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thank you for tagging me, @ariadnekurosaki!!!

1 . How did you get into writing fanfiction?

uhh, when i was twelve i wrote horrendously bad self-insert inuyasha (and bleach?) fanfic on a now-defunct website that doesn't exist anymore lol since then i've bopped in and out of fandoms under different usernames across many platforms. often, i'll lose the muse in 2-3 year chunks, but get sucked back in for new fandoms.

except bleach. i always come back to bleach 😩

2. How many fandoms have you written in?

oh god, if we count dc, marvel, k-pop, and thai dramas (+rpf) as all their own respective fandoms (ie. not distinguishing between arrow, the flash, young justice, etc.), it's twelve - if we don't, it's almost thirty. a lot of my exo fanfics only reference other groups/solo artists, so i think that's too generous. the point is, it's a lot lol

3. How many years have you been writing fanfiction?

on and off since i was twelve (although when i was five i wrote a picture book about the disney princesses hanging out with me), but probably a total of 8 years actually active?

4. Do you read or write more fanfiction?

write more. i rarely read fanfiction unfortunately D:

5. What is one way you’ve improved as a writer?

i'm less verbose and my voice is cleaner.

6. What’s the weirdest topic you researched for a writing project?

quebecois sacres.

7. What’s your favorite type of comment to receive on your work?

when i make someone cry 😈 nah i really love detailed ones with quotations, ones that pinpoint exactly what parts hit them or meant the most to them. but tbh i love short keymashes too!

8. What’s the most fringe trope/topic you write about?

hmmm🤔 i don't think i write anything that out there... yet. i guess i like to write about psychic connections and niche super powers.

9. What is the hardest type of story for you to write?

ones with a lot of worldbuilding. and porn lol

10. What is the easiest type?

ones with a lot dialogue and character introspection.

11. Where do you do your writing? What platform? When?

my office, the tv room, my bed, sometimes outside. i used to write in coffee shops, at the library, work (especially when i worked at the library lol) before the pandemic and i became a hermit. in gdocs, because i write on my pc, chromebook, and phone. all hours.

12. What is something you’ve been too nervous/intimidated to write, but would love to write one day?

there's this one prompt from the bleach kink meme that i've been thinking about for ten years that has the potential to be really gross or really hot. or both. i might write it for the >5k au event in august idk

13. What made you choose your username?

lapmonster: my twitter username for a while before i decided to start posting on ao3 so i made my ao3 to match; it's a pun on rap monster. kairumption: when i started writing exo fic this was my livejournal url; another pun, it's kai + kyrumption (from angel). it's also where my nickname rum comes from. farewellswords: my twitter username changed from lapmonster in 2019 or 2020 because bts got too popular and army were accusing me of being a namjoon anti lmao; it's a chapter title from bleach.

probably should have kept kairumption as all of them, but i like farewellswords 🤷‍♀️ tbh it would have been my url here if an inactive acc didn't already have it. because, i mean, come on.

COME ON

okaaaay let's tag: @pomslices @retiredficwriter @komari-maxx @ellasaru12 @athousandbyeol @bytheforcebook and anyone else who wants to participate! :D sorry if i forgot you!

#tag game #rum writing #writing

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legend-of-cupcake · 9 months

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Thank you for the tag @krispyt <33

1. How many works do you have on Ao3?

I have 7 under my name and 1 anon, although I'm just going to put it back under my name I think.

2. What’s your total Ao3 word count?

147,865

3. What fandoms do you write for?

Mostly for TBHK, but I have a couple for Genshin as well! However writing for TBHK is more comfortable for me

4. What are your top five fics by kudos?

Red String of fate (1,159)

Clean Slate (357) ((This is the fic under anon but I'm going to change it probably lol))

I love you, please don't go (204)

Under the Red Crescent Moon, I Could Hear the Demons Whispering (195)

Kindness from the Devil (185)

5. Do you respond to comments?

I used to, but honestly I'm terrible at it now. I don't go on my account very often anymore and I don't receive emails when I get comments (personal choice), so it can be a long time before I see if anyone's left anything. But I do always try to get back to them!

6. What is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

I love you, please don't go wins this I think.

7. What’s the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

Uhhh, I'm not really sure? But I'm going to go with chapter 20 of Red String of Fate. After so many near kisses throughout the fic, having HanaNene finally get their kiss makes this the happiest ending... Probably idk XD

8. Do you get hate on fics?

No, thank goodness.

9. Do you write smut? If so, what kind?

Welllllll, I've tried to write smut. But I just don't have the knack for it, I can't handle the cringe while writing it and I can't read it back.

10. Do you write crossovers?

No and I never will. Nothing personal but I hate crossovers.

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

My fics aren't good enough to steal lmao

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

No.

13. Have you ever co-written a fic before?

No, but I'm open to it!

14. What’s your all time favorite ship?

HanaNene, HanaNene, HanaNene!!

If the day ever comes where no one supports HanaNene, it's because I've died. I will never not love those 2.

15. What’s a WIP you want to finish but doubt you ever will?

I don't even have a proper name for this WIP, it's called Possession AU in my documents. It was a KouNene fic, but you could also see it as HanaNene although they are not end game :// It's a real shame, the fic almost has 8,000 words to it, but I just have no motivation to continue.

I also have another WIP called Boundary Bound Nene-chan, but I only got a few paragraphs in and never touched it again :// The concept was pretty cool as well, Nene wakes up inside a mysterious place (later discovered to be a boundary) with no memories. She meets a boy named Tsukasa, who informs her she's dead, and together they try to find a way out. This was leaning very heavily into Yandere Hanako, which is usually right up my alley, but yeah again no motivation.

Last one I'll share is a Scaramouche fic, the temporary title was 5 times Scaramouche failed to be human and 1 time he didn’t. It's self-explanatory I think, but I started it before his backstory cutscene was revealed, and I lost confidence and motivation since what I was writing didn't match it at all. This one will 100% never be finished sadly.

16. What are your writing strengths?

Hmm, it's hard to say. I think I have good ideas and concepts, and I can keep the flow of the story moving at a decent pace. I also think I do well with character interaction? Maybe? Idk.

17. What are your writing weaknesses?

Descriptions. I am so so so bad at describing things, I think I find it hard to actually put myself into the scene, so I struggle to really get into the details of the environment and such. My paragraphs usually are on the smaller side, which I hate because I really want to immerse my readers.

18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language in fic?

English is the only language I know and I do not trust Google Translate ^^;

19. First fandom you wrote for?

Technically speaking, it's Sonic The Hedgehog lmao, I wrote fics for that fandom in my very early teens on Fanfiction.net. No, I will never reveal my account or share what I wrote, I will actually die before I do that.

20. Favorite fic you’ve written?

Hmm... Since the vamp au is unfinished, I will say it's chapter 21 of Red String of Fate. It is the only fic I have ever written and actively decided to go back and willingly read multiple times without dying of cringe... I just like it I suppose aha

Once again, thanks for the tag Krispy!! I'm not really sure who to tag, but I'll go for @milkteamoon @insipidenvy and @wingsonghalo. Obviously no pressure!! And anyone who reads this is free to join in ^_^

#Thank you for the tag!#fic questions

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cuz-reasons · 1 year

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Both of these have been a chapter or two from being completed and I need the motivation to actually write. Starting to upload them will trick me into doing that. They're both multi chapter fics that'll update weekly starting next week.

More info below the cut!

Wing AU:

This started as a series of scenes/one shots that mostly explored how Ingo and Emmet having wings would change things mainly around Ingo being in Hisui. The later like 2/3 turned into Ingo and Emmet healing post the eeby deebying.

Includes:

Elesa being their friend cuz thats pretty standard with most of my fics

Uncle Drayden

Uncle Ingo

Reunion!

My usual brand of angst seasoning

Happy end natch

It's roughly 20-25k words currently (I'm at work so I don't have exact numbers)

Body Swap AU:

I don't wanna give too much away about this cuz the first chapter sets it up nicely. But while in Hisui, Ingo body swaps with [redacted] but he doesn't actually get to remember it. Then things pop off during the red sky shebang. The story is told mostly through the swaps (theres little bits before and after) since I felt like that was idk thematic.

Includes:

Elesa being their friend again

Uncle Ingo again

One (1) stressed Emmet during the whole middle part

Reunion!

An eplouge I still need to write

This one is at about 10-15k words and there are vague plans to write some of the non swapped bits as a sort of pt2 but that's not happening until I finish it first.

Feel free to ask questions about either and I also don't have titles yet so I'd you wanna suggest names feel free. No guarantees I choose one but I will credit you if you want!

#submas #pls help me choose #im not usually this indecisive with fics i just go with the oldest piece i wanna get out of my files #but these were both started around the same time and that was all the way back it fuckin january so i gotta get at least one of them up #im dying over here i really like both of them but want these over with #anyways #thanks for the help!#also dont worry about the naming that much names are usually the last thing i come up with anyways #i just dont have any titles rn and wanted to explain why

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fearowkenya · 10 months

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Winds of Change

Chapter 4: Stemming the Tide

It’s hard to hold onto hope when panic and fear take root and start to spread, climbing the notches of his spine and weaving back and forth between his ribs. But Ryo knows now, that hope and fear can both exist at once—he’s seen it for himself.

The group witnesses something that looks a lot like a miracle, but it's still not enough to chase away everybody's fears. Ryo and Shuuji each find themselves with separate demons to battle as they resist the pull of despair.

ao3 link in source, extended end-of-chapter author's note below!

editing this chapter took WAY longer than usual. I do two proofreads per chapter before i post, and if i edit more than a couple of sentences at any point, i start the entire proofread over. needless to say, i did a LOT of editing and rereading before finally making it to my posting checklist. ultimately though im pretty happy with it. mostly im just so glad to have finally posted the scene that was jokingly titled "labramon the egg wizard" so i could talk about how much I enjoy the title "labramon the egg wizard". jokes that are for me

anyway, "labramon the egg wizard" is one of the first parts of this fic that i wrote! there's a skeletal outline of the events in that section in my replay notes, though a lot about that scene has changed since then. it was always going to be labramon who was gonna help out though! why labramon..? … … well she's a dog , and it made me go 'heheh' to think of her doing pointer behaviors. no other reason (:

i know we get renamon egg in moral, but i don't actually remember much of what that looked like because it lasted like 2 seconds. thats absolutely NOT what i wanted for shuuji - i wanted it to be a scene that completely bodies him, where hes got this unexpected second chance hovering just beyond his reach, but he has to confront exactly what he's done in order to get it. i dont remember a lot of 02, but that one episode where ken goes looking for wormmons egg has this very specific vibe where its like, "here's some hope for you when youre at your lowest but never forget that you seriously fucked it up". it was brutal but beautiful and then i cried a bunch i think. idk it was a long time ago. maybe im completely misremembering that scene, who can say. thats how it lives in my memories tho

in any case, i definitely wanted it to be from ryo's perspective for the same reason that the aftermath of wendimon was from his pov. he's so much more observant than shuuji, who would not take notice of what the others are doing and saying while he's in the middle of getting pingponged between hope and gut-wrenching remorse.

the middle section, titled in the draft as "mcfreakin losin it", was a lot of fun too! the Plan(tm) at the beginning was something i edited in pretty late in proofreading. having an itemized list like that might feel more like a "shuuji thing" than a "ryo thing", but i think ryo's active effort to take responsibility and try to help kunemon with what hes stressed about would lend to him trying to come up with something a little more concrete. unfortunately for ryo, he has no backup plan for when the first one is turned upside down, and we all know what happens when something catches him off guard lmao. it was actually really interesting to write ryo in a position where he's witnessing more or less what he himself is like when he shuts down. being the one who has to snap shuuji out of this state has ryo realizing that this is what takuma and kunemon have to deal with when he's the one freaking out. i think that's kinda fun.

the last section has what feels to me like the most editing. it really wasn't a section that i spent a lot of time fiddling with until now because the bulk of it was quoting or paraphrasing existing dialogue from the start of part 6 for context, then diverging into what that scene looks like in a world where lopmon isn't around to be unable to explain what happened. like i said on ao3, as i was reading over the canon dialogue in truthful for reference, i realized i really just…didn't like it much. the argument escalates and de-escalates several times but never to a degree that feels all that extreme, and ends up feeling like it's just dragging out for no reason. people make their points at times that feel WEIRD, particularly ryo. lemme see if i can explain this.

so ryo doesnt say this til the latter half of this argument, and i HATED THAT because it's like… after everything he's been through with kunemon, it doesn't feel right that he's having those doubts. but i thought about it and i actually think it makes sense for him to have a momentary lapse where he slips back into old habits - letting fear take over and pushing away anything and anyone that has even the slightest chance of hurting him. he spent a LOT of time in that mindset, and even though he's working on reversing it, it's not gonna happen in a day. that said… the placement of ryo's doubts in the canon dialogue still feels super weird. i think it makes a lot more sense for him to panic at the very beginning of this argument, and then calm down as he remembers how solid his bond with kunemon is before sticking up for the digimon a little more aggressively. it just feels so passive in-canon when i think he would have taken a much more active role in defending falcomon and the others once 1) he remembers the context surrounding what happened in the waterway, and 2) he's reminded of how kunemon has helped him change.

i know some of the weird pacing of this dialogue is because the player needs to have input at some point, but i think takuma could've been much more powerless during this argument - the game has no problem taking away agency, since saving ryo is the only thing that will save shuuji, no matter what the player does. maybe im nitpicking, idk.

regardless, minoru's dialogue makes the most sense, but i still think it could have been condensed into a much sharper and more sudden escalation. it keeps being like "(minoru voice) IM MAD IM MAD" "(takuma voice) chill" "(minoru voice) oops sorry. … … … IM MAD IM MAD IM MAD" "(takuma voice) calm down" "(minoru voice) oops. … … … IM MAD IM MAD" etc etc etc. it just made the argument feel weak and drawn-out instead of intense and explosive.

i did keep some of it though! i thought that minoru's paranoia and sudden fear of trusting his partner was pretty compelling, which is why i kept those doubts in and quoted the lines about him wanting falcomon to prove his loyalty.

i chose those lines specifically because they say a LOT about minoru once you connect this argument with what i think is the root of his insecurities - his parents' divorce.

it's funny because as far as im aware, The Divorce doesn't even come up unless you choose an INCORRECT ANSWER in an OPTIONAL affinity event with minoru. im not 100% sure thats the only mention though! im currently at pt8 of my replay where the goal is to see every bit of truthful route dialogue possible. if it comes up in other routes, i managed to miss it lmao. anyway, because of that, for the longest time i thought The Divorce was just a popular headcanon, and didn't actually see that dialogue until recently. but as soon as i did i started looking at the stuff he does and says through the lens of somebody who was affected extremely poorly by his parents divorce, and it contextualized A LOT for me. suddenly the way he reacts in pt 6 makes so much sense, because imo falcomon turning around and killing him isn't his only concern: he's also terrified that he was vulnerable in front of someone who doesn't actually care.

pre-game minoru lacks a support system, and is afraid to rely on a new one. im not going to go on about it for too long because we'd be here all day, but im pretty sure that his parents divorce was MESSY, and he witnessed all of it. that same event where he mentions to takuma that his parents are divorced is also when he says that he doesn't think his mom has noticed that he's missing, even though at this point the kids believe that they've been gone for several days. he doesn't see his mother as support because she's too busy working, and since he doesn't even know where his father currently lives, clearly he doesnt get much if any support from his dad. the difficulty minoru has in shedding the goofy exterior and being genuine and vulnerable in front of people makes me think that he never found a support system to replace the one that he watched crumble in realtime when his parents split.

prior to part 6, we can assume that minoru started to see falcomon as someone that he could allow to see his insecurities. i also believe that minoru understood that shuuji and lopmon's relationship was supposed to look a lot like his and falcomon's, or like anybody else and their partner's. minoru could see lopmon trying to be supportive, so the dysfunction only seemed like it was on shuuji's end. so when lopmon flies off the handle and tries to murder shuuji, one of the things that minoru gets from it is that, no, actually, the trust and support that the digimon have for their partners is NOT unconditional. i think that watching this happen looks exactly like how it felt when the support system he'd had in his parents completely fell apart, except the lopmon situation comes with a fun extra "I'm going to kill you" sort of vibe that tells minoru that his relationship with falcomon is just not safe.

or worse, maybe that support system was never real in the first place. what if there was something darker beneath the surface that he just couldn't see?

anyway.

now, as dracmon says, all we gotta do is hurry up and wait. well. you do. i dont, im gonna be editing chapter 5 til the cows come home. im getting the distinct impression that it's gonna require even more reworking than this chapter did.

but that's neither here nor there - id love to hear your Gamer Theories about what im cooking up. there are a few things that are still going unaddressed after four chapters, and i wonder how much of it can be puzzled out based on what i've said so far. obviously im not able to see the story from a reader's perspective, so im not really able to gauge if the stuff that's being foreshadowed or otherwise implied is starting to become clearer. so please consider leaving a comment with what you think, or your favorite part or anything else that stood out to you! I'd much appreciate it. thank you for reading, and see you… mm… nnnnext…week…? ideally.

#digimon #digimon survive #kayama shuuji #shuuji kayama #tominaga ryo #ryo tominaga #kunemon

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jimothystu · 1 year

Text

Top Ten Fic Game! share your top [10*] fics by Kudos! drop the links so people can read them! bonus: do you agree or disagree with the readers on these being in your top 10? tag some homies who might want to do it too!

thank you @milf-arteta!!

10 better than in my dreams [cole caufield/nick suzuki]

agree/disagree?

this is one of my personal favourites, so i'd say i agree that it's one of my better ones. though i feel like more of my recent ones are better in general re the writing style, the plot, etc.

9 later [juraj slafkovsky/arber xhekaj]

agree/disagree?

oh yes. this was my first xhekovsky fic and i fucking love it lmao. it was so much fun to write and also @donttelltheelff helped me with it so that made it extra fun. idk i also just enjoyed the like, not quite edging but the teasing of them almost getting time to be alone together but things keep coming up. but they do, eventually, get their alone time in the second chapter lmao.

8 you're my instinct [auston matthews/mitch marner]

agree/disagree?

meh. this was one of my first hockey rpfs i think, and maybe the first one i wrote for 1634 so i don't feel like it's my best work.

7 they're not glass slippers but they're close enough [tim stutzle/brady tkachuk]

agree/disagree?

i love me some crack mixed with more serious stuff, and this has pretty much everything - crack/fun, smut, and fluff. i also just find the idea (shoutout to @may-the-puck-be-with-you) to be hilarious - timmy seducing brady with crocs lmfao.

6 the bitterness upon your lips [juraj slafkovsky/arber xhekaj]

agree/disagree?

i am a sucker for angst. writing and reading, and i also like how i was able to have various hab players in it, not just slaf and arber. and it was fun to play with the jordy/arber roommate thing a bit!!

5 paper thin walls [auston matthews/mitch marner]

agree/disagree? neutral

i liked the idea i had for it (4 times auston heard mitch through the walls + 1 time he joined him) and it was fun to write for the most part, but idk reading it now i'm not super proud of the way it was written ig, or i feel like i should've added more maybe

4 the secret truth off your numb lips [tim stutzle/brady tkachuk] ignore the title similarity to number 6 i named it without remembering and then just couldn't think of anything better

agree/disagree? neutral

this originally went down a different path and was going to be pretty angsty, but i changed the second half of it and while i do like how it turned out and i liked writing it etc etc part of me still wishes i had finished the angst part. but i did save the angst i'd written so i'll probably write a different fic around it

3 don't break the dam or you might drown in the current [tim stutzle/brady tkachuk]

agree/disagree

this fic. this 12k fic. this is one of my favourite fics i've written. it was very self indulgent and i 1000% projected onto brady so that in and of itself was therapeutic lol. but i'm also just really proud of how i wrote the emotions and how i conveyed everything. and how i was able to write so much!! it's the longest fic i've written to date

2 intoxicated [tim stutzle/brady tkachuk]

agree/disagree

hell yeah i love this fic. writing it was so much fun and i do go back and read it (bc if i don't want to read my own work then why bother writing it). it was just some dumb idea i had one night while trying to get to sleep and it turned into a crack/fluff piece that i enjoy a lot

1 je t'aime [thomas chabot/josh norris]

agree/disagree

okay this is also one of my favourite fics i've written. chabby and josh grabbed me by the throat and i just had to write something about them. i'm actually shocked and really happy that this is my top fic because i didn't think there'd be that many people who'd want to read about this rare pair! but i love it, and i am tempted to make a part 2 at some point!

tagging @saintknightcowboys and any other writers who'd like to do this!!

#tag game #fic talk

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mithrilhearts · 2 years

Note

For the writer asks, all questions with a 2 in them, please. :-)

Alright, okay, holy shit lmao this is gonna be a big one. AND I AM UP FOR THE CHALLENGE!! Thank you Fizzy!!

Throwing this under the cut as there are a LOT of questions.

2. Do you plan each chapter ahead or write as you go?

I already answered this one here!

12. how does receiving or not receiving feedback/support impact you?

I think every writer loves feedback. All we want to do is yell about our stories with people - that being said, not everyone has the time to leave a comment and I understand that. However, I feel engagement is super important to keep a fandom alive. I try not to get stuck on that though - I feel like I get a decent amount of feedback, and then there's some fics that receive little to none. It's just how things are. Feedback encourages me to work faster on certain pieces, and a lack of engagement makes me feel like I can be slower on others.

20. Have you noticed any patterns in your fics? Words/expressions that appear a lot, themes, common settings, etc?

Yes. I use various headcanons, phrases and themes throughout my stories. It's how you know they're mine I guess lol - I always include blueberries in some fashion, I always describe Bilbo's hazel eyes meeting Thorin's blues, fireflies and freedom, etc. I love fluff, hurt/comfort, etc. So I like to stick to my wheelhouse and use styles/phrases I know that work.

21. Would you ever collaborate with another writer for a story?

idk @sunnyrosewritesstuff, would I?

22. Are there certain types of writing you won’t do? (style, pov, genre, tropes, etc)

I won't do reader inserts, or change from 3rd person pov. Those aren't my wheelhouse and I feel uncomfortable trying to do those. As for tropes, pregnancy fics, love triangles, a/b/o, and I'm sure some others, they just aren't really what I'm looking for as a writer.

23. Best writing advice for other writers?

Don't compare yourself to other writers - no one does a fic just like you. You may have a similar concept, but no fic is exactly the same because no author is exactly the same. Also, stats do not determine what is a good or a bad fic. Do not obsess over them, they mean NOTHING.

24. Worst writing advice anyone ever gave you?

See above and reverse it.

25. What fic do you wish you got more of a response on?

Probably my TRSB fic from 2022, Between Vices & Virtues. It's a 40k multichapter I worked very hard on over the course of 2-3 months and it just feels like it didn't do as well as I'd hoped. I love it anyway :) which is what matters.

26. Which of your fics would you call your wildest ride?

Where The Shadows Lie, definitely. It's a crackshit fic, as I call it. But Fuck Thy Neighbor is creeping up on that list as my very fun rom-com fic lol

27. What is your most and least favorite part of writing?

The planning and actual writing is my favorite part. My least favorite part is the summary/tags/title lol honestly, my bane!

28. On average, how much writing do you get done in a day?

Some days are better than others. Some days I write 0 words, others I can pump out nearing 3k. It depends on my mood.

29. What’s your revision or editing process like?

I go through my chapter/fic with spelling/grammar in mind. Then once all that is done, I read it aloud (most of the time) to check for flow and what not to make sure it sounds right to my own ears. It's pretty simple, but time-consuming.

32. Name three of your favorite fanfic writers.

I love so many writers???? But the first three that came to mind were @i-did-not-mean-to @sunnyrosewritesstuff and @ahufflepuffhobbit

42. What’s the last fic you read? Do you recommend it?

So, I am a very slow reader. But the last thing I was working on reading was a WIP by @theladygreiwolf, already, I definitely recommend it, but it's not ready yet 👀

52. Do you respond to comments, why or why not?

Yes. I try to respond to as many comments as possible - I do this because I like to engage with other people about xyz story. I also want people to know how much I appreciate that they took the time to leave a comment, it's the least I can do in return!

62. Thoughts on cliffhangers?

I love cliffhangers. I use them now and again in my own works!

72. What order do you write in? front of book to back? chronological? favorite scenes first? something else?

Chronological 99% of the time. I think there was (1) whole case where I wrote the end of a chapter and then went back to do the beginning. I was in the mood to write that content, and it had to come out or I'd explode.

#ask game #raz answers #fizzyxcustard #PHEW this was a lot!!#but I did it!!!#thank you so much!

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rappaccini · 1 year

Text

arachnophobia notes; chapter 2

chapter title:

from 'spiderwebs' by no doubt.

1) ... it's got 'spiderwebs' in the title. hello?

2) no doubt. ska-punk band from the 1990s fronted by a blonde woman named gwen.

3) relevant to the fic: 'spiderwebs' is about being creeped out by an unwanted male admirer who just won't stop, and the trust issues that result. and this chapter discusses how miles is taking the place of peter in gwen's canon, as the spider-man who... well, won't stop sucking her into a story that will only hurt her. and how that destroys her friendship with him.

preface quote:

from james m. barrie's peter pan. hobie's nickname for her being both a ref to her nickname from peter in the main comics (... a pet name used by her boyfriend. which 👀), and a ref to wendy of peter pan-- also a girl who flees her home to avoid dealing with a difficult situation, who is the only girl among a group of flying mischievous boys, who is connected romantically to a peter who she does not end up with because she's capable of growing up and going home to face her responsibilities and he isn't.

the peter could be peter parker, miles, maybe even miguel. all three, in my book. none of them want her to grow up.

it's clear that the movies see miles as her peter pan. makes you wonder if the writers remembered how peter pan ends. or if they think that changing the ending so wendy and peter end up together will improve the story instead of fucking up its purpose.

the quote in question refers to wendy after her return home. it's okay that she outgrew peter, just as it's okay for gwen to have outgrown miles in their time apart.

processing

timeline notes: we've synced up with where gwen is chronologically in atsv. seventeen months after itsv, five-ish months into her stay with the society.

stages of grief: this one's about denial, in both definitions of the word. gwen is in denial about how angry and upset she is, and that she doesn't want to solve her death problem by being miles's girlfriend... then she denies miles when he tries to start that relationship.

it seems like noir and ham don't get invited into the society in atsv, since they don't appear until gwen's assembling her band at the end.

had to make some mention of gwen and peni seemingly having no strong relationship, which i guess follows since peni's a bit young to hang out with her. peni only turns up for miles in both her appearances in atsv.

tiny divergence here: in atsv, gwen isn't actually keeping hobie's shoes, even though external material for the film calls them a gift from him. based on their dialogue in mumbattan it seems like she threw them on in a hurry when she was leaving his place that morning (which has very 👀 implications regarding why exactly she was sleeping over, in need of a quick redress, and why their clothes were mixed up together). in this fic, presumably that still happened, but she just kept them afterwards. the chucks are great and i'm so happy 65b gwen finally gets to have them.

gwen's age is a bit hard to pin down. we know she's fifteen months older than miles in the movies (and 3-5 years older than him in the comics, but the writers are being slippery with both their ages to try and hide that), but since we're not sure how old miles is, we can't pin gwen's age down any further. my best guess was if miles is a little into fourteen in itsv, gwen's about 15 and a half. plus seventeen months is sixteen-and-ten-ish-months (further supported by rio thinking gwen looks old enough to vote, so if she's 16, she's going on 17). and gwen would be counting those months, because birthdays would mean a lot to someone who knows they'll likely die at nineteen.

time did canonically keep moving in gwen's world. so on 65b she was a missing person for months.

ballet academy: idk if 65b gwen's at a formal ballet school or just does it as a hobby, but it felt relevant to include.

in the comics, when gwen goes missing, the mary janes do actually put up missing persons posters for her. however in the comics gwen and the janes are friends. in the movie that doesn't seem to be the case; maybe they wouldn't.

in the comics, gwen's identity is guessed by the janes well before she reveals it. because it is quite obvious. probably even more so in the movies, because on top of the captain stacy connection, she's literally running around wearing a distinctive set of ballet shoes they'd probably see in gwen's bag all the time, and both disappear at the same time.

as in the film, by this point gwen is regularly crashing at hobie's. since hobie lives in a fascist dystopia, is involved in the resistance movement there, and has a history of squatting, he probably doesn't have a reliable address and it isn't always a good idea for him to invite someone over.

also, i needed a reason for gwen to have late nights with miguel. that felt like a good excuse.

gwen's creep-o-meter deja-vu goes off because she has been here before, actually. 65a and 65b gwen both get pressed into joining shadowy organizations led by a conflicted-but-antagonistic older man (with the first initial m) who has a, uh, vibe with her. it's an interesting constant in their narrative.

in case it isn't clear, miguel hit gwen with his mug. if he was throwing shit at her in atsv in full view of hobie and miles and she was unfazed, then 1) he does that a lot and she's used to it. and 2) he probably does worse when they're alone together. (with that in mind, hobie not wanting to leave gwen alone at the society, and specifically hanging around in the background as she speaks to miguel, probably has something to do with that. he knows she's in a situation where physical abuse is likely and wants to get in the way to deter it before it happens, or at least be there to comfort her afterwards.)

for the purposes of this fic, miles had to be able to join the spider-society. trying to skirt canon here by playing up gwen's own anomalous status-- if she's one, yet miguel let her in, he should be willing to do the same for miles.

anyway the moment gwen gets to reunite with miles in the film is roughly what happens in the fic, except she is allowed to see miles, and is here to recruit him.

(maybe the spot exists at this point, maybe he doesn't. idk. he can't be here for this fic due to the timeline so i guess he just fell through a hole in the universe and hasn't found his way back yet.)

miles arrives

gwen knew miles for literally three days. that isn't brought up enough. she knew him for three days, and hung out with him for one of them. then she spent seventeen months apart from him, and five of those months were spent hanging out with other spiders, two of whom she becomes closer with than she ever was with miles in the first place. she and miles don't actually know each other well. if anything, they're more interested in the idea of each other than the actual person.

(so gwen having a crush on him so strong that she risks her life to see him again even after spending far more time with other guys who are her type and clearly interested in her... makes no sense. gwen would not do that. nor would any teenage girl.)

and to gwen, the idea of miles does matter a lot to her: he's the first other spider-person she met, his world's the first other one she explored, and hanging out with him (and peter b) made her want friends again. he opened that door for her.

and she does sincerely respect and admire his abilities as a hero and find his personality appealing. also important to acknowledge.

... she just ultimately does not know him that well, and has more history and bonding experience with pav and hobie. so in this fic, we're actually gonna acknowledge that and explore the implications.

which means when gwen reunites with miles, she's over her crush on him.

and her opinions about him throughout this story are going to often be completely wrong because if she barely knows him, she has no idea what he's actually doing or thinking.

miles morales is spider-man. that's marvel editorial's stance on him, that was his creator's stance on him. he is, unquestionably, a spider-man who is/will be peter parker's equal. he is the next bearer of that mantle and is the friendly neighborhood teen spider-man of anyone under 25. as much as atsv implies that miles is unwanted, that simply isn't entirely true, and has to be taken more as meta about the fandom perception of him, because right from the start, miles had editorial's support and at this point his momentum is undeniable.

... and, gwen has rose-colored glasses about miles fitting in at the society. he DOES have an easier time navigating it than her, being that he's a straight boy and not the communal dead girlfriend.

but he is actually not having a good time and his acceptance is full of caveats she is unaware of, that she wouldn't know to look for because she's a white girl.

miles and margo's 10-second interaction in atsv was fantastic. in this fic, since he gets to actually join the society, he gets to befriend her. in my mind they get together in the end, but i don't think that'll be mentioned in the fic since gwen and margo barely interact.

gwen being incapable of telling miles important information that could hurt him (that he's an anomaly, that his dad will die, that something's Going On with her and hobie; she even skirts around going into detail about her death) is an aspect of her atsv characterization i like a lot. keeping it.

and for the purposes of this fic needing miles to remain in the society, he can't flip out and go on his canon-destroying mission yet. ergo, he can't be told his dad will die right away, and he can't be given a specific time for it either. so here, he just finds out after a few weeks, and it's still unclear when it'll occur. ergo, bullshit dead dad math is the excuse to buy us a few extra months of time for the plot to play out before miles flips his shit. that's still coming.

it makes perfect sense that miles would fixate on gwen for seventeen months. (... just not that she'd be as attached by the time they reunite. she friendzoned him at the end of itsv. maybe she reevaluated her feelings and thought 'well, if it's him or being alone, i pick him,' but after a year that crush would fade. after seventeen months, she'd be done.)

and if miles is so fixated on gwen, why wouldn't he look her up in his world sometime after itsv? that's the first thing any modern teenage boy would do with a girl he likes: google her.

miles is a smart kid. even if he isn't told the truth early on, like in atsv, he would have figured it out.

another important thing about miles and gwen's connection: he saw her for her. most other spider-men see someone else first.

miles honey, not-like-other-girlsing gwen isn't gonna help

miles is spider-man. spider-man is optimistic, scrappy, and determined to beat the odds. of course he thinks he'll be the exception.

miles is miles. he wants to save his dad. he'd want to save gwen too. this conversation takes place under uncle aaron's memorial wall to give miles an emotional trigger for that promise.

miles is a teenage boy who's never been in a relationship or had his heart broken before. he's gonna go about this in a very earnest, but very flawed way.

and really, how on earth does atsv gwen, who knows that being spider-man's love interest gets her killed, not get worried or nervous when she realizes miles, a spider-man, sees her as his love interest?

(...because she's being written by straight guys who want Being The Male Character's High School Girlfriend to be such an overwhelming pressing need for gwen that she'd overlook her own life for it. no thanks.)

perfect gwen

earth-803 is the steampunk-inspired world of lady spider.

it's atsv canon that gwen and hobie hang out when not on missions. incorporating that here.

jess is the person handling gwen day-to-day, so miguel being the one calling on her means shit's real.

the vibe with gwen and miguel's relationship i'm going for here is that he's her abusive foster dad. not too far off what's going on in canon-- notice how gwen's dad was redesigned to look a lot like miguel?

i can't imagine that miguel likes hobie, or that gwen is hanging around him. he doesn't respect hobie enough to think he's a threat, but he does regard him as a nuisance with some uses.

and he doesn't fully perceive what's happening between gwen and hobie. he doesn't see anything he doesn't want to. and he does not want gwen fucking around with spider-punk, because that's not the spider-man the society wants her to pair up with and the spider-society has a thing about gwen not being able to have any intimate experience with someone they don't approve of, because the fandom does (i can't describe how icky it is to browse the spider-gwen reddit and find guys-- it's always men-- fixating on how ~gwen's still a virgin~).

miguel's reasonings for his fixation on saving gwen will be explored in chapter 4.

earth-8 gwen, in the comics, is 38 years old. if we're assuming she became spider-woman at the same age as 65b gwen, at around 13, then she's been swinging for 25 years.

"the sensation surging through gwen" is a feeling of belonging.

recontextualizing canon is a thing made up for this fic. but it's gotta be in play somehow in atsv; how else do you explain how 'there's only one spider-man' is a rule, yet the insomniac spider duo of miles and peter are literally walking around in the background? how else do you explain gwen's foundational death being her crush instead of a relative? clearly canon can be stretched as needed.

miguel's presumably a single dad, given how his wife is mentioned nowhere in the film. he and gwen share that dynamic in common.

celebubration is the gwen 65a equivalent of instagram.

the challenge for miguel that he's been wrestling with is figuring out if spider-gwen is a spider, or a gwen.

'gwen stacy will always fall in love with spider-man, but can live as long as it's miles' is the conclusion i'm afraid the movies will come to. (which misses the point, probably intentionally, to make sure they get together.)

miguel does want gwen to survive. he's just going about it in a really shitty way.

gwen-8 comes from the comics. specifically, the miles-gwen shipping miniseries of sitting in a tree. my feelings on it are... negative. essentially, miles and gwen go looking for his missing dad in her dimension, and despite barely knowing each other, having an inappropriate age gap (he's in hs, she's in college) they're weirdly touchy-feely every time miles's writer has control of the story but whenever gwen's writer gets control of her back he immediately says "she's not into him". oh, and the watcher/basically god swoops in out of nowhere to inform them that there's a utopian world where everything works out perfect for them, and they just so happen to be a power couple with a nuclear family, and come meet your sweet super-special kids, don't you wanna get together and have them, wouldn't you feel bad if you didn't? and that's the context in which those kissing panels exist. it's the worst story spider-gwen's ever been in. it is beyond creepy that a 16yo boy and a 20yo woman who barely know each other and are in a high-stakes stressful situation are being told they can only have a happy ending in a world that loves them if they make out and procreate right away.

so this entire section is sitting in a tree hate. that issue singlehandedly ruined comic gwiles forever. it doesn't matter if they get together as adults after the age gap problem becomes irrelevant, bc the basis of their relationship will always be 'we feel obligated to be together' and not 'we are acting on feelings we developed without any coercion or entrapment'

and full stop: it's worse for gwen. she's being told, in siat, and in this fic, that she still has to be spider-man's girlfriend (and wife, and babymaker) if she wants to live, and to be accepted by people. it very much feels like an arranged marriage miles's creator sprung on gwen for his character's benefit.

funnily enough, in siat, gwen-8 never actually appears. nor does her miles. their kids do. in the fic, i wanted gwen-8 to actually get to weigh in on the frankly gross situation she's being asked to take part in. (that's coming later.) thus, we meet her.

earth-8 gwen is everything people in-fic and irl want gwen to be. she's gorgeous, she's one half of a power couple with miles, the mother of a son and daughter who are both superheroes, she's the leader of a superteam and a beloved celebrity by her world. all that is from the comics. rant time! it was deeply shitty of the writers to dangle that version of her in front of 65b gwen and say 'this is what we wish you were. don't you want to be that? better get with miles'

earth-8 gwen being an interdimensional genius is a creation for the fic. there had to be a way for her and her miles to have met and settled on earth-8. thus, they did it themselves long before miguel. (which also blasts a hole in his own importance, necessary for later)

"we're the ultimate crossover" is what max and charlotte call themselves. bleeeeeeh. (also, 'ultimate' as in 'ultimate spider-man'-- aka who miles is in the comics)

in the comics, gwen curses a lot. she starts cussing in the fic when she starts following in her 65a self's footsteps-- when she's being pressured towards gwen-8. before that point, there are no expletives. after, gwen's got a sailor's mouth.

once more with feeling, it is unbelievably creepy that gwen had her potential future kids thrown at her and was forced to hang out with them. it felt very much like she was being pressured into wanting to have them. which she didn't.

something's wrong: fuck yeah it is.

a "brighter tomorrow" is how earth-8 is referred to. we get it bendis you really think you did something special there.

miles chatting with perfect miles will come back later.

in the comics, earth-8 gwiles aren't around because they're on that second honeymoon. here, they skip it to come meet their alt selves.

just as miles's story can be read as an allegory for how black and brown boys are treated by society and in fiction, the same's true for gwen and (specifically white) girls. comics gwen being lured in with promises of safety and protection from a big terrible outside world, and then told the only way she'll ever be accepted is if she marries the right sort of guy and reproduces with him very much plays into that narrative. that allegory is at play a lot in this fic.

earth-8 gwen can still see gwen clearer than anyone else here. that's coming back.

the unbreakup

jess is a bad mentor, but she's not as bad as miguel. she at least lets them have privacy.

the conversation happens on the clock tower miles takes gwen to in atsv. within the bounds of this fic, they went here when she asked him to join the society.

"they streamed their wedding to 300 billion people" literally happened in earth-8. ridiculous. and shady as hell: why would anyone do that, unless the wedding's more about attention than love?

when drafting this fic i debated if i was going to go with gwen being trans. i like the coding, but it's also not the same as clear representation, and i knew i wanted to explore the earth-8 situation; which, for a girl who can get pregnant, is a much more visceral and immediate kind of horror, because it feels possible. trans gwen can't get pregnant, so the horror had to be different. the angle i went with instead is 'she instantly knows that this isn't her' and we spin the anxiety from there.

('even if i could i wouldn't' needed to be here. spider-gwen is an ambiguously-queer punk drummer with no interest in domesticity. having kids is deeply out of step with her personality and her wants for her life.)

the more important test for a spider-person seeing gwen stacy isn't actually 'do they see her for her.' it's 'can they change their behavior so they can appreciate her as her own person even if they DO know.' miles didn't pass the test-- he never took it in the first place.

gwen being drawn to visions, now that we know that the gwen stacy death curse is in effect, is kinda horrifying. she literally cannot get away from the spider-man who's going to swallow up her life, even when they aren't on the same plane of existence. a 'soulmate' can be a terrifying thing.

"the universe is bringing them together. It’s cupping the backs of their heads and mashing their mouths together like dolls" .... did i mention i hate sitting in a tree?

in the comics, even the best case scenario for gwen means her homeworld rejects her and she gives up on ever returning to it.

for this portion of the conversation, miles is distracted by how excited he is about that future. he's a teenage boy with a crush who just had that crush validated by everyone he admires, and he's a boy in love with a girl he's afraid might die, who knows it's possible to save her.

he is also a boy who has spent as of this fic, one whole month hanging out with this girl (and again, three days in canon). he doesn't know her well enough to be able to tell she's unhappy.

he is capable of picking up on it. just not quite fast enough.

important to note that even though miles is a sweet kid who wants gwen to be safe, his crush is entitled. he does want things from her that she doesn't want to give him and he takes it as a given that he'll get them even when she's telling him no.

refs to 65a: gwen's dad sleeps through his favorite show, dadcop. the mary janes are constantly bickering. the art style has a watercolor shine to it (... but only on the covers. not so much in the actual page art). the yancy street gang like to cause minor trouble with gwen. vulture kicked her ass and threw her on a trash boat once. and there are billboards everywhere advocating for her arrest and deifying peter parker.

even the crappier parts of gwen's world are worth missing, because they belong to her.

at this point gwen wants agency so badly that she's looking back at peter's death as a positive, because at least she was able to make that happen.

what's wrong, what's been plaguing gwen this chapter, what she's been in denial about, is that she doesn't want a relationship with miles. she likes him, but not enough to be with him romantically. and never enough to give up her personhood.

to reiterate: miles is a good kid who wants gwen to be happy. he just hasn't considered that to be happy, she can't be with him.

gwenandmiles: fandom salt. i hate how overnight, the gwen discourse shifted from 'i hope she gets her solo series back! can't wait for her to travel the multiverse and meet other gwens, or have more sexual tension with em jay, or play with her band, or fight jackal or man-wolf. how are harry and her dad? is the bodega bandit okay? when's cindy moon coming back, would love for them to face off! how's she going to defeat the storm siblings and be able to come home from exile again?' to 'gwen is soooo in love with miles! look at her pining after miles! sure do love how her arc in atsv is all about falling for miles and becoming worthy of him! miles miles miles! all gwen thinks about is miles!'

thanks i hate it! the fandom proved all my fears right! if gwen and miles get together, she'll never be her own person!

'gwen's going to end up in miles's world' is my big fear for the comics. if gwiles get together there, because he's vastly more popular than her, she's gonna be the one who has to move to his world and join his supporting cast, and abandon her own stories where she's the lead, to be a side character in his. it doesn't matter how sweet miles is to her; the imbalance is impossible to avoid.

(it's that kataang flavoring: it doesn't matter how sweet the boy is; the relationship will still unravel her because the writers pulling their strings will never treat her as anything more than his girlfriend. and the audience will follow suit.)

(plus some makorra: they look good together, and the concept of them is great, but in practice this relationship brings out the worst in them)

the arrangement also sucks for miles. i can't imagine a kid as kind as him being okay with her losing that much of herself to be with him, or being treated as an extension of him.

and yet he's letting it happen. he might be sorry about what's happening to her, but he won't stop it.

however he also doesn't realize those are the consequences yet. he doesn't realize that gwen doesn't want those things for her life. and he's afraid that if they don't get together, she will die.

gwen stacy hated spider-man. but because she loved peter, that's what everyone remembers. which means she can never hate him for how he fails her. isn't that horrifying?

'miles cares so much' -- this is the gwiles ship assassination chapter. i didn't want it to be the miles character assassination chapter. gwiles is bad for gwen, but miles isn't.

however, there's no way she realizes that yet.

'break his heart'-- a motif from the comics. that's how harry refers to gwen killing peter. physically, and metaphorically.

hobie. naturally, miles is gonna jump to that conclusion. it's easier to assume a girl is rejecting you because she's with someone else than because she just doesn't want you. and he's still considering another guy's feelings over the autonomy of the girl in question.

also to be clear, she and hobie do have an intimate relationship at this point in the fic. we'll get into that more later.

in the amazing spider-man movies, gwen dies when she falls from a clock tower. very eerie that gwen and miles's convo in atsv is at one too. and that she's discussing this death and how scared of it she is, and he's dismissing it.

miles did catch gwen. but that's not the point. the point is he never should have needed to.

it does not matter if miles isn't peter parker. he's still spider-man. even if she lives and is his girlfriend, she's still His Girlfriend. she still isn't her own person.

the seventeen month gap. again, so much happens in that time, especially for teens. miles and gwen do not know each other that well. they're more attached to the idea of the other, instead of the actual person. which means when that idea is threatened, they aren't going to respond well.

the autonomy issue isn't just exclusive to miles. it's everyone. gwen gets her first taste of that realization here, but she's trying to dump a boy; she's kinda busy. she'll get there though.

a general note on gwen's breakdown

there's a lot going on here. layers of upsetting realizations. to go through it step by step:

1) "are you fucking kidding me. that's the solution?" -- she's spent months with the society being promised that they're working on a way for her to escape her fate... and this is the solution they've spent weeks preparing. 'fall in love with boy #2 instead of boy #1.' which means they have no idea how to help her.

2) "they want me to be cishet." gwen's spent months transitioning at the society and thought up until now that they genuinely supported her. now that she's being told that the perfect version of her is a straight woman with a functioning uterus, she's realizing they never actually wanted her as she is.

3) "they want me to get married and have kids." which is a future gwen doesn't want. how would it feel to be told that the only life you can lead that won't end in a terrible death isn't even going to make you happy?

4) "they want me to have sex." more on this later, but logically that's the next step, given that's how the kids would exist. and gwen is a teenage girl surrounded by grown men who she can't say no to, who she now realizes are attracted to her and want to do something about it. not a good realization to have.

5) "they never actually saw me as a person and only want me as a trophy." personally devastating for gwen, who thought she was recruited for her value as a superhero, to learn that she's only ever been a trophy girlfriend to them.

6) "they want this relationship between me and miles," -- and she isn't interested in miles romantically. she's been trying to resurrect that crush, but it's just not happening. she's going to be forced into a relationship dynamic that she'd hate with someone she doesn't even want.

7) "and miles wants this too." gwen's rose-colored glasses view of miles as the boy who'll swoop in and make things easier for her has shattered; the society sees him as the reason why she can't be recognized as her own person... and he agrees with them and wants this arrangement. now she realizes he never valued their friendship in comparison to the idea of a hypothetical romance with her, and he cannot help her escape her canon because he can only have that romance with her if it stays intact.

8) which means she can't trust him anymore and their friendship has to end.

9) and that she is choosing her own early, violent death over a future with him.

10) and given that she doesn't regret it, gwen now understands she would rather die.

end quote

from the 'sitting in a tree' miniseries of jason latour's radioactive spider-gwen. specifically, this is the moment gwen rejects a relationship with miles. sideeyeing the atsv writers hard for borrowing so heavily from siat, but seemingly missing the point: that this relationship is shallow and forced and should not happen.

#fanfic #arachnophobia fic

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