#okay tumblr dot hell this is like....my fifth time trying to post this ask pLEASE.....

[ranger-kellyn]

hello, hope you’ve been well! i reread getaway car about two or three years after my first read and i keep noticing all these little details that i don’t recall catching the first time and it’s just such a fantastic fic!! i love cynthia and diantha so much!! i adore how you wrote up their rocky beginning and how they resolved it, it makes their trust in the later chapters feel so much more intimate <3

this was just a fast question that i had when i was reading (noticed during my diantha rarepair phase), but i think in chapter 4 diantha mentions having slept with someone in her league before. if it’s alright with you, may i ask who it is? i’ve kinda got my fingers crossed on malva, i think it would make the comments of malva complaining to flint about diantha so silly HAHAHAHA

no worries if you’d rather not respond to this, i’ve been meaning to leave a comment on the actual fic itself but i’ve been having difficulties with my Ao3 account, i just wanted to drop by and say i love your writing!! and i hope the new year treats you well!!

hello, and thank you so much!! ;v; it means the ABSOLUTE WORLD TO ME when people tell me they've read my fic more than once, so THANK YOU!!

it makes me so happy knowing at least SOMEONE was still wondering about that throw-away line lmaO

i actually fully plan on finally unveiling that answer! not until the near end, though, so i'll ease your mind and let you know that yES. it absolutely was Malva dkjfhl

i pretty much ship Malva/Diantha exclusively as exes.  usually amicable, sometimes a little less than depending on the story i'm working on. One of these days i’ll hopefully write something where they’re actually happy together lol 

And heck.  You know what? i'll preface this with "this is all subject to change" seeing as i could change my mind about pacing and whatnot as i actually close in on fishing up the fic, but how about a preview of the section where i do answer this

Leaning over, she said more quietly, “I’m gonna go make sure my team is ready for a battle,” she said.

“I’ll be cheering from the sidelines, darling,” Diantha said, kissing the top of her hand before letting go.  

Slipping away into the stairwell that would take her down to the main floor, when the door took too long to close behind her, she hesitated.  

“Got a minute, Sinnoh?”

Malva.

“Sure,” she said, waiting on the lower tier of stairs.  

She stopped at the bottom step, leaving them at equal eye level.  “You know– she wasn’t kidding when she said that was just a preview of things to come.  That?  That was weak and tame.  Imagine that, but with cameras, and mics, loud bright flashes, and questions of varying levels of intrusive being yelled in your face– are you sure you’re up for that?”

Certainly not what she had expected –then again, she wasn’t entirely sure what she was expecting from her in the first place.

“I only got flustered because it was coming from people I know,” she said, trying to be careful about her approach.  She didn't have to know Malva to sense she was someone to tread lightly around.  Especially considering her media background.

She hummed, not convinced.  “Are you ready for all of your own accomplishments to not matter because, in the public’s eye, you’re literally nothing more than ‘Diantha’s Girlfriend’? If you even get that luxury? If the public just insists that you’re just her “best friend”?  Are you ready to not be able to be out in public without someone running up to you both?  Are you prepared for all the wild accusations that will come from people? Are you prepared to mentally, and probably even physically, defend yourself from all the wack-jobs who think they’re her soulmate or some shit? Are you prepared for the fact that she has multiple stalkers?  Dudes who are so out of their mind with their obsession with her that they’ll literally break into her apartment just to sleep in her bed?”

The last one about made her sick –a story Diantha had told her about.  

“What’s with the interrogation?” Cynthia instead asked, side-stepping all the terrors.

Malva stepped down, getting as up in her face as she could.  “Because if you even put her through half the shit I know Mel put her through– I will put you six feet under so fucking fast, nobody will be any the wiser.”

For someone who specialized in fire type pokemon, her delivery was nothing short of ice cold.  Cynthia didn’t doubt her for a second.  

She shifted her weight, taking the smallest step back.  “You know– I could stand here all day defending myself to you, insisting I’m prepared for it– but I think we both know that’s a lie.  Diantha knows it’s a lie.  I can try to tell myself I’m prepared– but at the end of the day I’m not…” She shrugged.  “Unless you were born into it, I don’t even know that it’s something someone can be prepared for.  All I can really do is trust that I love her more than all of that terrifies me.”

Malva regarded her for a long few seconds, orange eyes scrutinizing her every move.  When her shoulders fell in a half-sigh, Cynthia finally felt herself relax.  “Stronger woman than me.”

Just like that, Cynthia finally connected the dots.  

In passing, Diantha had joked about the media loving to speculate she was involved with Seibold, completely overlooking the person in her league who she had actually been involved with.  Cynthia had never pressed her to tell her who that was.  If Diantha wanted to say, she could, but it didn’t feel like something she needed to know.

It was Malva.  

She wasn’t there to interrogate her for fun– she was doing it as an ex. Someone who had likely seen firsthand all the aforementioned horrors.  

Cynthia couldn't hold back a small laugh.  

“I had my chance, but gave it all up after convincing myself I’d never be enough for her.  Practically pushed her into that shithead’s arms…Not trying to make the same mistake twice,” she admitted.  

As harsh as she could come off…Cynthia at least appreciated the honesty, and knowing someone was so fiercely in Diantha’s corner.  

“What’s stopping you from putting Mel six feet under?” she asked, clearly as a joke.

Malva threw her head back in a laugh.  “Only the fact that Diantha would know it was me,” she said, getting a defeated laugh from Cynthia.

#stars n light #i hope the new year treats you well too!! #getaway car fic #my fics #okay tumblr dot hell this is like....my fifth time trying to post this ask pLEASE.....

[love-fireflysong]

Until Dawn’s Fifth Birthday

Welp, congrats Until Dawn, you’re officially old enough to start kindergarten. You’re off to learn to read, tie your shoes, recite yous ABC’s, and learn to count to 100. Your such a big kid now, and I’m proud of you for making it this far.

I know I have done literal jack shit for the entire month, but I have been immensely enjoying the things that everyone’s been putting out for this month. So I’m gonna make this text post, not just because of it’s the five year anniversary, but because it’s actually a post I’ve been wanting to make for a while.

So here it goes:

I first learned of Until Dawn when it first came out hilariously enough. My roommate at the time had boughten it for her ps4 and I had been seeing it all over my dashboard on tumblr at the time. I didn’t play it myself though until close to a year later, when I finally had my own ps4 and I bought the game used for like $20 or something from my local game rental store. And I was hooked.

I remember jumping the first time the UD logo pulls that jump scare on the title screen. And laughing because I’m normally pretty good with jump scares, but that one managed to get me because I hadn’t been expecting one before I even started the game. (The one thing in the game that manages to make me jump every time is the mine cart you stop as Mike. For whatever reason it doesn’t matter how dark my room is when I play the game or how many times I’ve played it, I can never see the mine cart until its literally on top of Mike and the QTE is almost up and I squeak in surprise every fucking time.)  

Of course I didn’t manage to save everyone during my first playthrough, I definitely lost Matt to the hook and Ash to the trapdoor (RIP darlings), and for the life of me I can’t recall how the lodge scene at the end went. I’m one of those players though that try to make choices that the characters I’m playing as would, I throw my feelings by the wayside. For example, being in the shed when the game’s making me choose Ash or Josh, and I was debating on whether or not Chris would save the girl he’s had a major crush on for a while at least, or his best friend for the last ten years. I distinctly remember wincing and sucking in air through my teeth and going “Sorry Ash, bros before hoes” and choosing Josh. And then being confused and convinced that I misunderstood the instructions? I mean I wasn’t complaining, just really, really confused. I definitely choose Ash to live at the gun one though, like there was no hesitation. I watched the whole ‘only thing I’ve ever wanted to do with my time’ scene and talk and the moment control was given back to me, the gun was under Chris’s jaw and I fired.

I’m also one of the players that didn’t know that Josh had been behind everything until the reveal either. I had gotten Sam captured so I never got any of those clues and I managed to miss the other clues that hinted at it being a set up (like the bundle of newspapers). So until the reveal I was still convinced that someone was out there killing all of them. Listen, I like mystery games but I’m not very good at connecting the dots okay.

I think I stuck around for a couple of months, gorging myself of fanfiction (all ff.net stuff by the way, I can’t remember if I knew about ao3 at that point or not) but like all interests do with me, the obsession eventually faded (helped in a large part by the rampant Ashley hate going around at the time) and I moved on.

Until February of this year. I was trying to kill time till the end of March when Persona 5: Royal released and I decided to try and see how many games I could platinum until that point. I had made it through the ps3 tomb raider games, Prince of Persia 2008, and decided on replaying the Uncharted games because the ps4 collection didn’t have multiplayer trophies. I hadn’t even thought of replaying Until Dawn. I mean, I had looked at the case and I remembered the game fondly, but that was it. There was no urge or want. 

I was halfway through Among Thieves when I was bored and chilling time on Youtube. And because I had been watching a couple of videos for the treasure locations in Uncharted, one of the recommended videos for me was a game sins for the series. I decided sure why not, and watched it. And watched a few of his other ones as well, Until Dawn included.

That’s right, what got me back into the series wasn’t fond nostalgia for the characters or story. It was a fucking Game Sins video. I’m so sorry.

I was devouring UD content again. I spent like 2 or 3 weeks reading everything Chrashley (with the hyper-fixation for the game back came the ship, what can I say) based on ao3 that I could get my hands on. I was back into the tag on tumblr, going through art I remembered seeing way back when and looking at usernames that didn’t mean a thing then, but mean the world to me now. And then near the end of February, when the obsession was once again starting to flag, I decided to hell with it, and clicked on the The (Almost)s.

I’m not going to expunge all my praises for the story, everyone else has done that better then I ever could. But guys, it was so good. So so good. I was hooked back into the series once again, just as I was starting to flag. And when I saw that @queenofbaws had mentioned that she was tumblr... I didn’t do anything right away. Too scared really, figured she might find it creepy, so I didn’t do anything for like a week. And then I decided fuck it, sent a message about Chris giving Ash his sweater, and following her.

And that was it. I figured I would stick around to see the story completed and just dip. Not even make a splash, just enjoy the content from the sidelines and no one would know that I was here in the first place. Same old, same old. But that was also when I started turning around the kernel in my mind that Baby It’s Cold Outside (so hold me tight in your arms and don’t let go). I didn’t even intend to write it, it was just going to be the fanfic that lived in my mind for me to stew on before bed every night. But I couldn’t sleep one night, my brain was too on and the words just weren’t stopping, so I pulled out my computer and wrote the first part from Chris standing in the snow outside to him reaching the lodge at like 3 in the morning. 

I started becoming more involved in the fandom when queenie started her wip wednesdays and asked to be tagged. Hilariously enough, those days are what started me cross-stitching again too, I hadn’t touched the pattern in months at that point. So I started posting snippets of my writing, and that one day a week was the only thing pushing me to continue writing. By that point, I had stopped hanging around the edges, now trying to push myself closer into this little fandom circle. 

The day I posted the story, I was fucking terrified. It wasn’t my first story, not by a long shot, but I had always considered my writing to be shit. I thought I had good ideas, but I never felt that I was able to truly bring them to life. English and grammar had never been my best subject, I was always more of a math and physics person growing up. But then that first comment from @elliepollie came in and I almost burst into tears. I couldn’t believe that someone out there liked it so much, that they were willing to leave me a review in the first place. I’m still so blown away that she was willing to recommend it as a Chrashley story for other people to read. I think that was the point I stopped hesitantly pushing my way through, and I just kicked down the doors and just yelled ‘Hey fuckers! I’m here now and you are going to fucking deal with it!’.

That was the event that opened the floodgates for me. Suddenly I was talking to people, I had friends online with the same interests as me. I’ve written more in the last six months then I’ve done in the last ten years! I’m feeling inspired to create again. I actually went out to do the first commission I’ve ever requested (speaking of which, please please please go commisson @fudgeroach. I cannot wait until he can post and show you guys the stuff he drew for me. It was worth every fucking penny let me tell you.)

I’m going to be honest, Until Dawn isn’t my favourite game. Sure it has some of my fav lines (it had been years since I played the game, and the moment Jess started her rant outside the guest cabin I was screaming it along with her) and great characters, as horrible people as they all are, but it’s never been my favourite game and likely never will be. But Until Dawn has the best fandom I’ve ever been in and I’m so, so happy to have met and known every single person here. I seriously love every single person here so, so much. You all make my life better and I’m so happy to have all of you in it. Just to quote Chris because I can: “Every second I spend with you is all I ever wanted to do with my time.” This is how I feel. This is how I feel every goddamn day now.

So yeah, I got back into this fandom from a stupid Game Sins video. But by god if it wasn’t the best choice I’ve ever made.

(PS: for those wondering, I never did finish Uncharted 2. Maybe one day...) 

#until dawn #udanniversary #<3<3<3<3<3<3<3<3<3