ElliTests

It’s a shitty, painful dance once they reach the safe house, taking turns in the bathroom, preparing food, tending to Andy’s wound, but it satisfies something barbed and greedy that’s burrowed into Nicky’s chest.  He knows Joe feels it too, perhaps even more acutely, this gnawing ache shaped by Booker’s betrayal.  Nicky spares a thought for Booker, left at Copley’s home with his guilt and regret, but he can’t yet muster empathy.  He can’t feel anything that can bridge the gap between the four of them, eating a simple meal, free because of Nile’s head and heart, and the gasping torture Booker arranged.

Meal done, they slowly, doggedly persuade Andy to rest, settle Nile on the other bed in the same room.  Left alone and restless, Nicky runs water to wash the bowls and spoons, and Joe comes into the kitchen, picks up a tea towel and dries. It’s all so familiar and awkward and jarringly wrong that Nicky’s teeth ache with hating it, and it’s perhaps no wonder he fumbles the handoff of a mug that slips out of Joe’s hand and shatters on the floor.

Nicky has words at the ready, blame to pour out, but everything that’s animated him since London crowds into his throat and dies.  He closes his eyes, jams his hands against the counter and leans heavily against the sink, and when Joe moves behind him and slips his arms around his body, he chokes out a breath as his defenses give.

“I’m sorry,” Joe says, nose pressed below Nicky’s ear, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

Nicky turns in his arms, wraps his own arms around Joe’s shoulders and presses him as close as he’s able.  “Me too,” he manages, one hand shifting to cup the back of Joe’s head, and when he sways, Joe steadies him, and when Joe’s breath hitches, he shifts and kisses him desperately, his every touch an apology.  “I love you, god, so much, I’m sorry …”

Joe presses their foreheads together, fists his hands in the sleeves of Nicky’s shirt.  “We’re okay,” he whispers.

12 MONKEYS l S01E13 “Arms of Mine”

AO3 hasn’t been “lying” to people to convince them there’s no better archives. More people post at FF.net and Wattpad than AO3; obviously, a lot of people think those are better. It’s likely more people post at Amino apps, although it’s hard to track those numbers.

OTW’s code is open source. Anyone who likes AO3’s structure but not policies, can make their own site. Or they can grab the pieces they like - the tag system, or the warnings structure, or the fandom label setup - and attach those to an entirely different fanwork hosting site.

For the people who do like AO3 - there aren’t any better sites. They’re the only ad-free fanwork hosting site. The only one that lets you search by tags across the whole archive. The only one that lets you download fic as ebooks to throw onto your ereader so you can read them offline. The only one that provides clear warnings for some kinds of content, and allows authors to tag for not-required content that they want to warn about. And of course, the only one that allows the full range of legal fannish content, rather than “the mods will decide if something is against the rules and throw it out, but not tell people exactly what those rules are, and not enforce it consistently.”

and they’re gone!

they’re gone!

because whoever owned them lost interest, or sold off the company/domain/page, or was DDOSed, or targeted for mass reporting by people who think gay content is icky. that’s the point. that was the whole point of AO3, that it was something that would stick around and wasn’t subject to the whims of 3rd party content policies or revenue-based downsizing.

there’s a lot of subjectivity in what makes an archive good, why some people like x better than y or y better than z, but there’s one respect in which AO3 is undeniably superior to all its predecessors:

Star Trek (2009) dir. J.J. Abrams