#ataimw

I wanted to update everyone here who follows me, who have read my fic, and who periodically send me asks or leave me kind comments on my fic hoping for an update and hoping I'm alright. I'm doing well! I'm actually doing much better right now than I think i have in years.

in july 2024, about 2 months after my last chapter update on all the ashes in my wake, I actually dropped out of university. it was a long time coming, honestly. university wasn't working out for me, and it was really stupid and very stubborn of me to try and make it work. I barely turned in any assignments and failed my first year and went ahead and repeated it, to nearly the same result. it was bad enough that it was starting to seriously impact my mental and physical health. I started having frequent anxiety attacks that got progressively more severe as well as major depressive episodes, to the point where, for about three months I could barely get myself out of bed to eat and get to class. I knew it was bad, I knew what was causing all of this, but I didn't really know what to do about it except push through until I literally couldn't anymore. and then I admitted to myself and to my parents that I couldn't keep doing this, and that clearly, university wasn't for me. and I dropped out.

since then, things have been getting better. I actually started working in a bakery! I'm a pastry chef now, which I never thought would be something I'd ever be doing professionally. I can honestly say that dropping out was the best decision i could have made. I've been feeling so much lighter than i have in actual years.

and in all that time, I have not updated this fic, even though I would sporadically work on the upcoming chapter, and I'd tell myself "this time, I'll sit down and finally write it". and then that became "I'll finish this chapter when things in my life wind down, when I find the time". I never did, and slowly, I started writing less and less as my interests shifted, and I started writing and posting for new fandoms.

I want to say before I write anything else: I am NOT abandoning this fic and I am not discontinuing it. I still care for this story very deeply, I still love the characters, the fandom and the very lovely people i met here. I still have a story to tell, and I still want to tell this story. but this fic was written during a very low point in my life, and I'm not going to lie and say that it's been easy picking this story back up, because much of it was a way for me to cope with all of this, to process all of these feelings, because there was literally nobody else in my life I could talk to about it.

and, as I said before, my interests have shifted. I slowly stopped engaging with the fandom as much as I used to, and my interest in it was already starting to drop even before i stopped updating this fic.

I will finish this fic, because I want to. I haven't responded to the more recent comments, but most of them are very sweet, and I absolutely love seeing how many people love this fic, and wait for an update, and wish me well. you alone are the reason still think about this fic, and this fandom in general, so fondly. because this community is full of very kind people, and I've personally received almost nothing but love and compassion from you guys, and you really have no idea how much this genuinely means to me. how much this meant to me when my mental health was at its lowest.

The rest of the day passes normally. Donnie avoids him, but he’s also avoiding everyone, holed up in his lab all day and not even bothering to come out when Mikey calls him for dinner. That’s fine by Leo, who’s glad for the reason to avoid Donnie.

I thoroughly enjoyed the latest chapter and I happy you got that over with, it sounded like a beast to tame!!

Donnie HAS chipped his brothers at this point in the timeline! In my head, thats one of the very first things he did when they moved.

I mention it every once in a while, but it’s been about two months since their final defeat of Shredder. When Donnie first put in the chips he was almost constantly checking on them to make sure nothing was wrong, and he made them specifically to signal him in case of severe injury and stuff like that.

He doesn't check the chips much anymore because, like I said, they'd signal him if something was really wrong and donnies being kept pretty busy with all the work that still needs to be done to make the lair safe to live in. Considering hes doing most of the work, taking care of security, insulation, pipes for clean running water, a bunch of things like that, he's not monitoring his brothers' activity very closely. And considering raph and leo are arguing most of the time, hes not really in the mood to lmao.

(On that note: I think Donnie is doing the work he did on their first lair in as short a time as he can where he stretched out that work over years as he got better at it with their first home. Because there wasn't the threat of active enemies before, AND they hadn't yet witnessed the loss of a family member in the same day as meeting them. They're all overwhelmed and Donnie isn't handling it very well, which I do plan on getting into later on. Since its Leo centric, and hes understandably more focused on his problems, I haven't yet been able to dig super deep into that. But I do have LOTS of notes on each of the brothers ans how they're (badly) handling things ajdkfkfk)

But YES Donnie has chipped his brothers, and it’s gonna be important to the plot later on.