#notbang

https://youtu.be/KA1C60B6ROs?si=x5RO5WWsXHPJiL90

Rebecca/Nathaniel

Two Countries by Naomi Shihab Nye Skin remembers how long the years grow The Sun and The Moon by Nikita Gill Aim for a love that reminds you of the devotion the sun has to the moon Life While-You-Wait by Wislawa Szymborska Life While-You-Wait First Anniversary, With Monkeys by Aimee Nezhukumatathil There is no crumbly frozen cake to thaw.

Rebecca

Hellooo :)  Oof so okay. There is a lot of fluff in this story which this is not, and I wrote it under a ridiculous time crunch, and I have A Lot Of Feelings about R/N and the question of having kids or not, all of which made this a terrifying thing to approach.  I worked hard on it though and I’m proud of how it turned out, I think. Probably I will come back to this question at some point and not bury it in a giant Christmas themed thing.  But anyway, so the chapter is here.  Rebecca has already been distant and weird for one evening and one entire day at this point, which we’ve spent in her POV, and Nathaniel is out of his depth.

She’s restless all night and pricklier than ever in the morning.  He showers first, and when he comes downstairs she’s in the kitchen, buttering a toasted bagel.  He reaches around her to grab a mug, and she mutters, “If you’re here to judge my breakfast choices, save it.”  - Nobody has slept well.  Naomi has got under Rebecca’s skin, and she’s spirally about the baby question and about the possibility of her general Wrongness for Nathaniel, and also about how maybe she doesn’t know herself after all and maybe she’s not ready for this and maybe maybe maybe etc – so spirally, in fact, that she straight up misses the fact that he organised this whole thing down to the last detail and so clearly the bagels are here because of him.

Maybe it’s because he’s still tired, or maybe it’s because waiting her out is getting him nowhere, but he groans in exasperation.  “Come on, Rebecca.  I’m here to make coffee.  Is it okay if I do that?” – He really does not want to snap at her, and he is really trying not to take the bait here, but, well. Nobody has slept well.  He needs coffee.

She turns on her heel and leaves the kitchen, leaving her half buttered bagel on the counter, and he drops his head back, staring at the ceiling. - He’s been entirely sweet and patient until now, and this is the confirmation she’s been waiting for – goading for, a little – that she is A Disaster who is screwing this up. (The head drop is a classic Nathaniel dramatic gesture, because the boy can’t help himself, and it’s fine, she’s not looking, he can do a bit of drama.)// He really does not know what’s going on.  He knows her mom upset her with the comment about starting a family.  He thinks it was worse because it had been going well, because she was relaxed and having a good time, all her walls down, and because she thought her mom was saying something nice until it turned out she wasn’t.  But he has no idea how that landed them here, why she’s angry with him, why she hasn’t so much as admitted anything is wrong.  - Nathaniel finds it easy to imagine the ‘parent got under her skin with a judgemental comment’ part, but the angle he hasn’t got his head around is that Rebecca is in a constant fight to know herself, and right now she feels like Naomi has shattered an illusion, and she doesn’t know where to go from here.  (This is of course just a Very Big Question that a lot of perfectly healthy people are not sure about, but this is one of the particularly shitty things about being mentally ill – it’s really hard to separate ‘this is something people find confusing and distressing’ from ‘I process the world around me wrong and I in particular can’t handle this’.)  It doesn’t occur to him that this is about whether she wants kids, or whether he does, because (1) he’s a bit dense and he’s over-focusing his attempts to figure her out on the Naomi angle, and (2) he’s been fielding that vague expectation his whole life so it barely registered, and (3) he could tell from how casual Naomi was about it that Rebecca has been fielding that expectation her whole life too.

He finishes making his coffee and drinks half of it in one gulp, then leaves it beside her bagel and follows her into the living room.  She’s standing perfectly still in the middle of the room, and she blinks at him when he walks in, looking startled.  She has the keys to their rental car in her hand.  He gestures to them.  “What are those for?” - I felt very much in her head when I wrote her walking out of the kitchen, so ymmv but when I wrote this I was thinking: Rebecca has short circuited.  In my mind, when he snapped she pictured him walking out the door, and that door slamming sound that’s always been a huge trigger for her, so she came in here, grabbed the keys to – what? Hide them?  At this point she realised that was definitely not an okay thing to do, and she just…  Didn’t know what to do instead.  So she’s just standing here, frozen like a prey animal, and when he sees the keys in her hand he thinks she’s leaving, which is very obviously not a good idea on a number of levels.

agree on all of this - was particularly disappointed drink choice (or drunkenness) seemed to have no bearing on how things played out. wormhorn was an option to join my party at the end - was she not for you? I also felt like there were a lot of moments where you were presented with a dichotomy of being kind or unkind and thought these choices might mean something in the end… maybe meaningless is the point but like you said a lot of threads with no clear resolution.

Definitely there were a ton of choices where I could be a douche or be kind, and often I painstakingly chose to be kind because that’s usually the most beneficial choice in these games, but nothing really came of it? I guess maybe it opened some drinking buddy options for me, but that didn’t matter (see below), and even befriending Sam got me nowhere because she joined my team and then refused to take part (SAM WHY lmfao). I guess I was expecting a Good Place-ish theme about, well, you’re here because you were dishonest in life but you’ve been more honest in death, or the inverse if you chose to be unkind -- you think you deserve to escape hell? look at what you’ve done while you were here -- or ... SOMETHING... but it never really amounted to anything. and I know Satan had that entire speech while I was forfeiting about there being no secret ending, etc, but ? I dunno exactly what I was meant to take away from any of the themes, really. I guess that nihilism is bad and you should care for the people around you... ? even if they’re gonna torture you for all eternity...? Lol

favorite fic aesthetics, 3/∞: you’re the fire and the flood by @notbang

“It figures that right when Rebecca’s about to get her life together, right when she’s about to start over and fresh, the world decides to fall apart. “The world isn’t ending,” he scoffs with false bravado, in an attempt to lighten the mood. “California has forest fires every year. So this one’s a little out of control—so what? They’ll put it out eventually. They always do.” 

When a forest is burned, what comes back may not resemble what was lost.

Firstly, thank you to all of the following for the likes/reblogs along the way (I’m so glad you read and enjoyed!):

cutie-hemmings-penguins formy girlpower8900 iamonlyatiger  

kitten-of-the-universe massiekurr menschinresidence thefuckingstory 

thesamegirlfromthething valenciaperez valenciaruiz watercolourstorm

monaiargancoconutsoy: You’ve tracked my progress through all 28 prompt fills and your continued support has been deeply appreciated. Your reactions also made me smile. I think “Omg love it. I’m crying in the club” remains my favorite. <3 Thank you for being there for each new post and cheering me on with your enthusiasm in the comments!

notbang: As I often tell my tag-readers, I’m a very big fan of your writing, so knowing that you’ve been following along with my contributions to Femslash February has truly meant a lot to me. Oh gosh, and the fan art! I can’t express enough admiration for all your beautiful creations during that month! Most especially, thank you from the bottom of my heart for bringing a scene from one of my ficlets to life. No one’s ever done that for me before, and I cherish every detail. It’s perfect! 

Favorite gurlgroup scene?

It might be the ending conversation of 4.05, when they are talking about how things will both be different and still the same and then toast each other promising that gurl group is forevah. That was really sweet and a nice showcase of how far all of them have come in their friendship.

Favorite supporting character?

Probably Scott Proctor. I’m always glad to see him onscreen and I really ended up loving how his relationship with Paula evolved. Plus, he has some really fun lines even though he wasn’t generally involved in wacky storylines.

Favorite costume? 

Hnghhhhh. Probably Let’s Generalize About Men, just because of how bright and sparkly and fun every aspect of that costume is.