#web fiction

[hyba]

I'm on RR and I too have noticed these ads that I never see anywhere else 😂 They're not that weird to me, but maybe that's cause I'm used to them now. Seems quite specific to RR, but also, it's just another variation of the tropes ad that a lot of writers use.

Like, in this book you'll find enemies to lovers, dual pov, villain with a heart, etc etc, and every point has an arrow that leads back to the image of the book cover. You know those ads? I feel like the RR ones are just that, but made niche, specific to RR readers, of whom there are hundreds who truly do want isekai, rpg leveling systems, litrpg, gamelit, etc etc. It's the same thing but applied to what works extremely well over there to attract readers.

And you're right they're fascinating! 😂

The meme ones and other pseudo-advertisement ads are just the icing on the cake though 😂 save the world or save the cutie? Scritch Luna or scritch Luna? Honestly they're appealing to internet culture with the memes and joke ads, and they do work through sheer entertainment value probably.

But! One thing I'm not happy with is for sure the AI generated art, and especially not happy with the art used without permission from the artists.

One thing to note is that it's not like they're selling the stories either for the most part. All the stories there are free, so it probably also works because people are more likely to take a chance - you just need to get them on the page and you can do that with a fun ad. Sure, I'll click on a wacky ad for a cute dragon story. What do I have to lose?

so on royalroad, the english-language serial webnovel website, there's ads created by users for other stories at the top of each chapter - you know, for the common case where you're reading a book and you want to suddenly start reading a different book. (they set it up in a way that's fiddly to block.)

they're kinda fascinating? I almost want to start collecting them. they triangulate into genres with bulletpoints. isekai. cultivation. reincarnation. yes romance. no romance. harem. no harem. some of them use anime-styled art or fantasy concept art (most likely a lot of it either AI-generated or used without permission/attribution, I get the vibe)... but a lot of them are straight up just memes.

hell lemme just refresh the page a bit and see what I get. I'm only a liiiiittle selective here.

...I could keep refreshing but you get the picture.

and sure, it's just the same as the AO3 tagging system with a different set of aesthetic priorities right? people are searching for stories which scratch a very specific itch. but there's something weirdly fascinating in advertising a story based on how formulaic it is. or ads for a novel that look like ads for a mobile game. how so many of them refer to their protagonist as 'MC'.

I assume this like, works, or people wouldn't do it? Same principle as long light novel titles. otaku database theory stuff. I just... don't really get it! who's it for?

[qrowscant]

LINK ROT / TRANSMISSION 001 / APRIL 3rd, 2024

Link Rot is a multimedia webserial following those within a research station. Once dedicated to the study and containment of a newly discovered life form, complications arise following its unexpected merge with the station's AI. TRANSMISSION 001 - In which you survive the unthinkable, and the world is worse for it.

General warnings can be found in the 'About' section. Any videos will have flashing warnings if applicable.

additional rambling under the cut

wow!!! it's been (checks archive) almost exactly a year since i originally conceptualized Link Rot, and since then it's grown into a beast of a story i cannot wait to tackle.

currently i'm aiming for updates once every month/month and a half (with occasional vacations to work on bite-sized projects). i'd like to do more, but i have a job and don't want to burn myself out. for now, i will take things slow B) maybe this will change in the future!

i hope you all enjoy reading my story as much as i enjoy creating it. there's a couple of hidden things on the website, so if you find anything fun let me know

and lastly,

take this

[fyeahwebnovels]

i have created a webfiction fandom community!

hello all, i have thrown my hat in the tumblr communities open beta ring and created a community for fans (and authors) of web serials, webnovels, and generally any serially published web prose/prose-centric mixed media.

as i said, authors are welcome to join as well, but with caveats: please do not advertise any pay-to-read webfiction in the community, and please do not fight with fans over your work or insert yourself into fan conversations as an authority. basically just keep appropriate artist-fandom boundaries if you're an author, thank you.

the communities beta is still in its earliest stages and not super functional, so you'll need to send me an ask or a DM, or ask in the replies of this post, to join. i have to send out invites manually, but i will approve everyone unless your blog is outright, like, a nazi or terf blog or something. you can also DM my main @valentinedagger if contacting this blog doesn't work (i've had problems with DMs on sideblogs in the past).

[valentinedagger]

book 1 cover art by @staarcaake

Stardust is a queer, semi-experimental web serial that blends space opera, gothic horror, and dystopia into a color-coded mess of neuroses, hallucinations, teen angst, fucked up family relationships, Judaism, gun kinks, political assassinations, extradimensional tentacles, and bad sex. as of May 2024, we're exactly halfway through book 1, and it's a great time to get caught up!

it updates the 1st and 3rd Sunday of every month, and you can read it for free here. readers have suggested you might like it if you're a fan of Revolutionary Girl Utena, Homestuck, Battlestar Galactica (2003), The Locked Tomb, Fortiche's Arcane, Starship Troopers, and/or the music of Ada Rook. readers have also referred to it as "tired middle-aged man yaoi," "yuri shonen," and said they "want to chew on July like a squeaky toy."

[elvensemi]

Hey guys hello guess who has a website now.

On ElvenSemi.com you can read all of my webnovels, most of my short stories, and soon, a large portion of my fanfiction!

A lot of things, including all fanfiction, forever are free to the public. This includes, for the first time, the first handful of chapters (about 10k words) of each of my webnovels. There's also summaries and beautiful art! Poke around!

Subscriptions to paid material are still being done through Patreon, just click the orange "log on through patreon" button when you go to log in.

[hypertextdog]

the process of elimination (tpoe)

hi! this is my interactive web fiction project, tpoe ↴

it features six endings, a robust original soundtrack (by myself), and a number of artworks, including the banners visible above and the tpoe ost's album cover, by @notwerewolf. other information (including many content warnings) can be found on my homepage. if interested in checking tpoe out, join the elimi nation discord!

it's an exploration of isolation, control, surveillance, and early 2020's-era internet culture. you play as harry arsigne, a 14-year-old cat artist living ~alone with his overbearing father, scott, in a decommissioned lighthouse in the shoreline town of conder, connecticut. making choices through personality test responses, you'll balance your two hobbies: exchanging personal histories with and seeking questionable guidance from the set of five eccentric criminals scott keeps in his d.i.y. prison cell in the lighthouse basement, and using his surveillance software to monitor the online activity of one wren wayer*, a rather pretentious local high school sophomore and twice attempted gamedev with whom you have an at times overwhelming obsession.

* that says "wren wayer" sorry dark mode users

put short, it's a lot of fun and the product of a lot of work. it's my story-that-you-think-about-all-the-time of six or seven years as a finished product. tpoe is my first ever project of this scale, and if you think you'd be interested in playing (link in header of this post) and maybe spreading the word, i would appreciate it greatly Σ:)!!

[personalmoshiakh]

hey, so— i’ve been ~officially writing a web serial since 2021 (unofficially, since at least 2014). Updates are currently very irregular, but i’m definitely still working on it!

✨🧿 THE BITTER DROP 🧿✨

modern fantasy romance about gay/trans Eastern Bloc Jews, set in a secondary world counterpart of early Soviet communes

The lounge is nearly empty tonight; all the action is downstairs at the grinding workshop — in the basement discotheque; you if I’m to have any hope of pulling, that’s where I ought to go but … ekh, I’m foggy tonight, between the psychosis and the laudanum for the pain what likes to haunt nefilim and the horse pills they made me take at the Mamka — nu okay, I skipped tonight’s dose so I can drink but like, neuroleptics don’t let go that quick — and as the brainfog settles on my thoughts, it turns to hoarfrost and my will seizes up like a rusty hinge.

Lev/Lyubov Morgenshtern, a queeny bigender flamer who’d once been one of the Pale’s youngest-ever ordained rabbonim, has just returned to the Talons Ghetto sovyet — an autonomous workers-and-peasants commune of the kind that directly preceded the Soviet Union (and indeed the thing that the USSR named itself after).

Lev is fresh off a stint on a psych ward that’d followed a far longer stint living in the tzarist-held half of Svet Dmitrin with a bougie respectability-obsessed ex-boyfriend — he’s got nowhere to sleep, no assurance her old friends, Red Guard and civilian both, would want to see them and the only workable plan she’s got is to find someone willing and soft-hearted to take him home for the night …

… and what luck if their rescuer, a medical necromancer by the name of Anzu Menelikov (Nyura to friends and lovers) is a beautiful trans flamer from a prominent rabbinical family! who better to welcome Lyubov home than a fellow hothouse flower and dedicated scholar? and does it matter if Nyura did anything the White Guard might still bear a grudge about? after all, most of the old Ghetto walls are still safely intact, and it’s not like Reb Doktor Menelikov personally set the Winter Palace on fire, right?

i’d say if you liked the Baru Cormorant series, Michael Chabon’s The Yiddish Policemen’s Union and Gentlemen of the Road, Fallen London and its associated games, China Miéville’s oeuvre, and Disco Elysium, this’d probably be your thing!

content warnings

(under the cut)

reclaimed homophobic slurs

the narrator has a history of psychiatric institutionalisation

homophobia, transphobia, transmisogyny and antisemitism are environmental hazards in the setting, though by far not the focus

[deathkoala]

I love when things take advantage of unique features of their medium!

[weaselandfriends]

Web Fiction, Recently Read

Hello! I'm still early into writing the Pokémon story I discussed in a previous post. I've been writing and rewriting certain parts to better grasp some of the characters, so while I do have some completed chapters, I still consider the story in the planning phase. At the same time, I've recently read a few webfics, and thought I'd share some thoughts here.

1. Floornight by Nostalgebraist

Floornight is short but dense, and in terms of its plot, themes, and focus shares many similarities with Almost Nowhere, a later work by the same author that I read and discussed in a previous post.

This work is the Problem Sleuth to Almost Nowhere's Homestuck. At least, reading the two works back-to-back, that was the impression I struggled to shake. I would often encounter an idea in Floornight that I remembered being expanded on in much more detail in Almost Nowhere, and as such it became difficult for me to appreciate Floornight in its own right.

It's a comparison that reminds me of a quote from Roberto Bolaño's 2666:

Without turning, the pharmacist answered that he liked books like The Metamorphosis, Bartleby, A Simple Heart, A Christmas Carol. And then he said that he was reading Capote's Breakfast at Tiffany's. Leaving aside the fact that A Simple Heart and A Christmas Carol were stories, not books, there was something revelatory about the taste of this bookish young pharmacist, who ... clearly and inarguably preferred minor works to major ones. He chose The Metamorphosis over The Trial, he chose Bartleby over Moby Dick, he chose A Simple Heart over Bouvard and Pecouchet, and A Christmas Carol over A Tale of Two Cities or The Pickwick Papers. What a sad paradox, thought Amalfitano. Now even bookish pharmacists are afraid to take on the great, imperfect, torrential works, books that blaze a path into the unknown. They choose the perfect exercises of the great masters. Or what amounts to the same thing: they want to watch the great masters spar, but they have no interest in real combat, when the great masters struggle against that something, that something that terrifies us all, that something that cows us and spurs us on, amid blood and mortal wounds and stench.

An unfair comparison? Certainly. Especially since longer works are not always commensurately ambitious, but instead simply bloated.

Almost Nowhere is ambitious, however, and pushes ideas touched on in Floornight to their limits, which makes reading Floornight afterward a less impressive experience than it otherwise might be. (Nostalgebraist's other work, The Northern Caves, is fundamentally dissimilar from both and thus not victim to the same comparisons.)

That's not to say I disliked Floornight. I was especially fond of the character Hermes Cept, who might be my favorite character in Nostalgebraist's canon. I love characters to whom the reader is introduced from the perspective of another character, giving the reader a certain first impression that is completely decimated when the character is given their own perspective later on. (A lot of Modern Cannibals hinges on this technique.) In Cept's case, what first appears to be an egotistical and incompetent celebrity scientist turns out to have significantly more depth and nuance than the first impression provides. Love it!

Nostalgebraist also shows off some serious writing chops during a certain battle scene near the story's climax. Another reader's longform review of Almost Nowhere comments that the story lets all its major events occur off screen, only to be known to the reader via the reactions of the characters, and to an extent Floornight is similar: Despite a Neon Genesis Evangelion-esque premise of soldiers fighting aliens, there are essentially zero scenes where soldiers fight aliens on screen. The climax changes that, though, and really makes me wonder why Nostalgebraist is so content to let things happen off screen, since he's so good at writing action when it happens.

I've now read all three of Nost's major published works, and there isn't a more exciting web fiction author today, at least that I know of. Can't wait to see where he goes next.

2. Worth the Candle by Alexander Wales

Floornight is a lean 70,000 words. Worth the Candle, an isekai LitRPG, is 1.6 million words.

I started reading this one years ago, but only made it to the second arc before giving up under the sheer immensity of it. The start was slow, and while it was improving steadily, I couldn't see myself wading through something of its size. Compared to Nostalgebraist, Wales' prose is more "serviceable" than exciting, so the value in reading is almost entirely from the plot, characters, and themes rather than the actual line-by-line reading experience. After finishing my own isekai story, Cleveland Quixotic, I decided to take a second stab at it.

Upon the reread, I was more amenable to a story that is simply a fun fantasy romp, and WtC has a strong sense of forward progression despite its length, which avoids the trap most long stories fall into of spinning their wheels without accomplishing anything.

As I got further into it, however, a strong metafictional element increasingly came into play. The conceit of the story is that the protagonist, a tabletop RPG fanatic in his previous life on Earth, has been put into a world eerily similar to the ones he created as a dungeon master. His actions seem to be guided or obstructed by a mysterious, unseen dungeon master with godlike powers, and the story often becomes more about trying to understand and play to the narrative that the dungeon master wants rather than simply brute forcing through challenges one after another.

At the same time, the protagonist's dead friend from Earth seems to have been transported to the world much earlier. Their narrative was Campbellian in nature, Hero's Journey incarnate, while the protagonist's is much more postmodern and subversive. This leads to some fascinating meditations on the develop of narrative over history; one of my favorite scenes is when a story-obsessed villain believes they can kill the protagonist despite his Chosen One status because it's a postmodern story and the protagonist dying unceremoniously wouldn't be out of place.

My absolute favorite part, however, is the climax. Without spoiling too much, it involves a long delve into a seemingly endless dungeon, where characters and abilities fall away one-by-one until what is left is only a bare, emotional finale. I love climaxes that involve some kind of literal and emotional ascent; I did something similar in Modern Cannibals and Cleveland Quixotic.

In general, it's difficult to finish something so long in such a satisfactory way, which only makes the ending more impressive. I was worried this story would Muv-Luv me. A year ago, I read the famous visual novel Muv-Luv, a sprawling work that begins as a comedy slice of life and ends as a futuristic science fiction war epic. My problem with Muv-Luv wasn't that it was bad; it even had many elements I adored. But its ending, while not terrible, was merely okay, and I ultimately felt like what I got wasn't worth the time investment I put into it. Worth the Candle's ending avoided that entirely, so I can wholeheartedly recommend it despite its length.

3. Cowboy Grak 5: Yet Another Fistful of Obols by Remy (gazemaize)

Lastly, this one is a fanfic of Worth the Candle, posted coincidentally one day after I finished reading. It's by Remy, the author of Chili and the Chocolate Factory: Fudge Revelation, one of the funniest stories I've ever read. With this fanfic of a webfic, Remy cements themselves as the comedy master of the webfic sphere. I can only hope they start posting stories with more regularity...

I can't say too much about this story without spoiling almost all of Worth the Candle, so I'll keep this brief. If you've already read WtC, then you should read this 100%.

Web fiction is exciting. People are able to write all kinds of insane stuff that would never survive the streamlined mainstream publishing industry of today. I hope to read some more unique webfics and see people continually push the boundaries of what can be done with a story. (Hopefully they're not all 1.6 million words though...)

[julirites]

here's a link to London, my fic! I'll post here every time it updates but since i just made a tumblr i thought i'd post it now too - it's currently at about 80k words. it's original character madoka fanfic and wait come back

[antics-pedantic]

WEB FICTION! GETCHER WEB FICTION & WHATNOT HERE!

Presenting @antics-pedantic! Home of ongoing tales and one-shots alike, across offbeat genres and characters!

Regale yourself with all sorts of stories, including but not limited to:

Action-Adventure / Mystery / Suspense!

Comedy [ Zany, Dry, Soggy, Bewildering!]

Larger-Than-Life Thrill & Down-To-Earth Chill!

ABOUT | ASK | STORIES

[open-sketchbook]

Weekly Buried in Steel update up!

[qrowscant]

LINK ROT / TRANSMISSION 005 / OCTOBER 7, 2024

Link Rot is a multimedia webserial following those within a research station. Once dedicated to the study and containment of a newly discovered life form, complications arise following its unexpected merge with the station's AI. TRANSMISSION 004 - In which you are not alone.

General warnings can be found in the 'About' section.

and with this update! movement one is done! exciting!!

general life update: started a new job! impacted wisdom teeth! went to like 3 larp games! overall i am doing pretty well, just very busy and always tired. this update is extra long though, think of it as an apology. but also not really, because bad things happen in it.

i'm aiming to have a smaller, special update in a few weeks (if u know u know...) so keep your eyes peeled! there's also a small interlude im planning before movement two.

my goal is to have the second movement start with the new year, and to stall burnout with some smaller updates + website upkeeping in between. plus some side art when i feel like it

okay that's all! thanks for reading <3

[thundamoo]

Why are there so many litrpgs!? It's a question that I hear asked a lot in webfic spaces: why does every story have a system, why is every story number-go-up, why is every story about stats and skills and words in brackets? And if you have ever wondered this, I have the answer for you. It's because writing a litrpg is easy. And this—and I need you to pay attention real close on this one—is fucking awesome. Even the first chapter of a book is a ton of work, notably far more work than any other individual chapter. Because to write the first chapter of the book, you don't just have to put two to six thousand words down on a page, you have to have a complete enough idea to even start. You need a world, you need characters, you need a plot, you need a story arc, you need every single organ that turns the story into a functioning body that can have any chapters, at all. And litrpgs are popular because they streamline this process. People who don't have backgrounds as writers and worldbuilders can just use the template, making a generic world with a magic system that more or less does anything the writer wants it to and doesn't need to be explained to the audience. That is the essence of the "generic litrpg" that swarms so many webfic sites: other ideas absorbed into the tumbling, churning waters of a new author's mind and deposited in slightly different ways, ready-made for deployment into a full story. Which is, frankly, a fantastic way to start writing. The swarm of off-the-shelf litrpgs is the product of literal hundreds of people who wouldn't have otherwise decided to become a writer trying their hand at it using an accessible starting point. Yeah, that means more mediocre stories that you might not want to read, but more importantly it means more stories period, and some of those stories WILL be great!

Lowering the barrier for entry into creative writing means that we get more authors and more books. Who cares if they aren't all great Some of them will be, and they wouldn't exist otherwise, and I don't see how that isn't enough.

[argusthecat]

Camracondas were written to be an implicit threat. They look like a sized-up predator, but with more sharp edges, and they can do a decent basilisk impression. The point is that they’re dangerous and lethal. It took maybe forty chapters from introduction for someone to date one.

Infomorphs were written to be a fridge horror. They might appear friendly or cute sometimes, but they’re leviathans on their battlefield and that field is your memories and perceptions. If one wanted to, it could turn off your ability to care that it was turning off your ability to care. The point was that there’s always something humans can’t properly face. Thirty chapters between first spoken line and someone dating one.

Ratroaches were written to be intentionally disgusting. They’re a mashup of rodent and beetle parts, held together by infected flesh and tangled fur, and most of them are built to enjoy hurting people. The point is that even the ones that aren’t are forced into the cycle of violence. Fifty or sixty chapters, longer for this one, but it’s the protagonist doing the dating now so I took my time on it.

I’m starting to wonder if maybe I don’t believe in monsters the same way most people do.

[d4t-webserial]

D4T: Page 7 (Lu POV)

//cw: ableist slur and depiction of internalized ableism// go here for more info on d4t

previous page

After telling her about his detransition she proceeded to ask a handful of follow up questions (they were pretty incoherent, and he honestly didn’t know enough..), he did his best to answer them until she just told him “srry for so mny questions idk if u can rlly give me what i wnt…for answers i mean! i think i  jst need some time to thnk” (so there’s still, a chance they stay friends, hahaha,,, he’s dying ;-;).

But actually tho what the fuck just happened? Lu was so confused… did Alice just ask him out, or ask him to ask her out… why? He’s so… subpar, how long had she liked him??? Her little brother always called him her “boyfriend” to tease her, but he thought the joke was cause of how… mediocre he was. He knew she would say stupid things to make him flustered but, but wasn’t that to get a reaction out of him (plus she teased all her friends). She always did sit close to him when they hung out (but like she’s a girl, girls hug and cuddle and hold each other's hands all the time… right?). Wasn’t there that guy she liked??? Was she playing a prank on him?... no she would say that’s cringe and lame probably… so she likes him. He still can’t begin to process that but, luckily he won’t have too! Since she now knows about how absolutely disgusting his body is she’ll stop having feelings real quick (yay problem solved ;~;)... this sucks, if she had just never liked him it wouldn’t have hurt this much, was she gonna grow cold… like… nvm, he didn’t want to think about that, he didn’t want to think at all actually… she was his only friend (unless you counted his roommate Tanner… he seems nice… they rarely talked tho.) why did he have to like her so much, why did she have to like him back! If she was just not interested he could repress and hide away his feelings as tho they didn’t exist, but instead she ripped his heart out of his chest and now that she knew… she would throw it away. In this moment he wished more than anything he could be a feather floating thru the wind not needing to feel emotions or have thoughts, just going where the universe takes him.

Alice was somewhat more distant than before, but Lu was surprised how much she kept in contact. They didn’t really talk about what happened, which was comforting. He didn’t need to worry about what to say or do to keep her in his life, it was as tho they had an unspoken agreement to not acknowledge it. One day she asks to hangout at his, it was just after a big test so his roommate was out at a party…

trashbag_minister (Lu): “sure thing”

Tranny Mona Lisa (Alice): “yay!”

Tranny Mona Lisa (Alice): “when wll u get here btw”

trashbag_minister (Lu): “around 20 minutes”

Tranny Mona Lisa (Alice): “❤️❤️❤️❤️”

.

.

.

She just sent him hearts, he thinks his brain is about to explode… did she used to send hearts?... he thinks so… maybe, but like it had to mean someth- no… no no no. He wasn’t going to do this, he was going to be normal. She’s his friend.

When he picked her up she waved to him and got in, the car ride was quiet, but that was normal (he was so bad at talking and driving). But when they got out she was a bit quieter than usual, she barely said a word until they got to his dorm. When they did she hesitantly started talking about her life as they often did, but it felt strange, like she was padding for time. After a couple of minutes of this he asked…

Lu: “Is there something you wanna talk about?”

Alice: “...”

she seems more nervous than he’s ever seen her

Alice: “yeah…”

(oh god, dear god, please let it be no big deal)

she is fiddling with the seam of her shirt ever so slightly

Alice: “I don't super know what your detransition means to you…”

Alice: “... i mean, i tried to learn, but there aren’t many… resources or anything”

Alice: “anyway i don’t know what it means, but i still like *you*”

he lets out a deep breath 

(thank jesus)

Lu: “Cool…”

Alice: “...”

Alice: “Do you… like me too?”

(shit)

Lu: “Oh… you meant like *like like*.”

Alice glares at him like he just said the stupidest thing in the world

Alice: “Yeah no fucking duh, also who says ‘like like’ past the age of ten”

Lu: “i don’t umm…”

Alice pulls back and once again becomes more timid

Alice: “Do you not? It’s okay if you don’t i… just thought you did…”

Lu: “No i d-do- i do, i just…”

Alice both looks affirmed and confused

Lu: “You shouldn’t,,n’t l-like me.”

Alice: “Why???”

Lu: “Be-be-be-cau-cause you can do better-ter…”

Alice: “That’s retarded!”

Lu: “L-Lys! You can’t sssay that!”

Alice: “Jesus fucking christ Lu, i… i just *fucking confessed to you*, and you respond with the dumbest shit i’ve ever heard, i can respond however the fuck i god damn want!”

Lu: “go-ju-Alice! I- it’s- god like you- you- you could- could have any s-s-ssself respecting man you want, you sh-shouldn’t se–se-set-t-tle for… *me*”

Alice: “I’m not settling, i *like* you, you’re smart and caring and sweet, why wouldn’t i like you.”

Lu: “Why *w-would* you! I’m a fu-fu-fu shit fuck god damn it! I’m a- I’m a fucking pathetic little shit preten-pretending to be a man, i-i-i can b-b-b-barely even s-sb-sp-speak, i…"

she rests a hand on him and looks in his eyes, he didn’t realize he was crying

Alice: “Are you okay?”

Lu: “...ye i just, it’s nothing, my brain is stupid sometimes”

Alice: “That's okay, i’m sorry for getting you worked up."

she smiles up at him

Alice: “I’m just… if you like me and i like you there isn’t any real reason not to date right?”

Lu: “But it’s more,, complicated than that-t”

Alice’s jaw clenches for a second but she takes a somewhat forced breath to relax

Alice: “Why? Why does it have to be?”

Lu: “Because of all the s–st-stuff i said.”

Alice: “But i don’t care about any of that.”

he pulls away from her

Lu: “I don’t even have a f-f-d-di-dick Alice… how would that- how would that even work”

she looks somewhat surprised at that, but responds quickly anyways

Alice: “Tons of people make that work.”

Lu: “But you shouldn’t- you shoulnt have too, your boy-boyfriend should be a real man not a tr-tr-trans girl in denial”

Alice: “You could be my girlfriend then, we don’t hav-”

Lu: “I don’t want to be your girlfriend!”

Alice: “...”

she looks down at her lap where her hands are gripping hard into her pants

Alice: “ok”

they sit like that awkwardly, tensely until…

Alice: “I want to go home”

.

.

.

Lu: “ok… can i go to the bathroom first”

Alice: “of course”

Lu walks into the bathroom, and sits on the floor. What was he doing? She was like the girl of his dreams, and more importantly, his best friend. Was he really gonna throw that all away because of… fuck, he entirely forgot what his point was. He was so scared. For almost a year now, ever since he detransitioned he just… accepted he would never be in a relationship again. But then Alice came in with her unending confidence and had the gall to just… like him, as he is… she didn’t care, not about his body, not about his brain, not about anything… god damn it. He walks out of the bathroom and sits next to Alice, when he approaches she seems to wipe something from her face…

Lu: “What’s wrong?”

(why did he say that jesus christ)

she looks at him like he asked her if she preferred drinking water or vegetable oil

Alice: “...nothing”

Lu: “mhm?”

she looks at the floor

before she could ask him to take her home he put his arm around her

she rests her head on his shoulder

(good sign… here goes nothing)

Lu: “You don’t have to say you’re fine.”

she looks up at him

Alice: “*I am fine*”

(she very obviously isn’t)

Lu spends some time trying to find the right words

(god damn it he is so bad at this)

he holds her cheek

Lu: “Look as your boyfriend, you should- you should tell me when you aren’t ok.”

Alice: “You’re my boyfriend?”

Lu: “I mean, even if i think you have bad taste, who would i be to deny the most b-b-gorgeous woman i-i’ve ever laid eyes on”

(that was the cringiest thing he’s ever said)

but she’s blushing very hard

Alice: “... i… you think i…”

she attempts to compose herself

Alice: “I don’t have bad taste, you’re very…”

Lu: “The point is you should tell me why you feel bad.”

she rolls her eyes but smiles

Alice: “I actually feel alot better now.”

(now Lu wasn’t so autistic that he didn’t *know* it was because of him before, but man did it feel good to hear her pretty much say she felt *better* because of him)

riding that high he kisses her once softly on the lips

Lu: “I hope that means you don’t have to go home right now, cause i,, i really wanna,, be with you a bit longer”

she responds by grabbing onto his shirt and nuzzling further into him

Lu can’t stop the massive smile on his face, as he hugs her tight. Nor does he want to, as he thinks about how lucky he is to be here.