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[Transcript for the "Discord" screenshots is at the bottom of the chapter if needed.]

Sitting on my bed, I was tapping through an episode of Love Blooming on my DS with one hand, and typing my Discord replies with the other. I’d been through this part of the game thrice over by now–plus I knew all the much better fan-imaginings via the fics–so I only glanced over occasionally to make sure I hadn’t bumped into a dialogue choice.

To tab over once more to my tumblr dash, I flicked aside the cord linking my DS to my laptop. The less-than-legal recording software chugged along in the background. I narrowed my eyes at that blue 12 over the little envelope icon.

I refreshed the page.

12.

Another few dialogue tap-tap-taps. Refresh.

Ah, 13!

When shit really popped off in this drama-hungry fandom, it felt like I was in a high school cafeteria, hearing the bubbling whispers all around me, not sure what conversations were boiling or whose fault they were…but I had a pretty good guess that it was gonna be me who got someone’s tray of greasy pizza and limp salad thrown on their shirt.

Staci would totally lecture me if I made a cheeky text post about the state of my inbox. However. Oh, the temptation. Why bug me if they didn’t want me to give them attention?

Meanwhile, on my DS screen, I was running through another few routes I’d bookmarked in my save files to find sprite designs that no one had uploaded to the fanwiki and gifs no one had posted to tumblr. There was almost definitely a better way to do this. I’d never figured out how people tore out the assets from a game. Could you even do that with a physical game? Whatever, I liked re-experiencing the game anyways.

Not like I had anything better to do.

I was on bed rest. My dad occasionally stopped by after his work to drop off some snacks and see how I was recovering from my latest flare-up that landed me in the hospital, and I’d gotten a series of way-too-nice classmates to email me their notes and pics of the lecture slides.

One thing they couldn’t help me with? The boredom.

In flares like this, when I could do nothing besides wait impatiently for my body to get itself together, my life seemed to flatten like a smashed cardboard box. Everything I had around me, everything I’d ever had, turned two-dimensional, unimportant, and it felt like that flatness would continue on forever into my future, too.

And that, in a roundabout way, was why I’d messaged Staci in the first place.

She was pretty smart. School smart (she was in engineering), art smart (she wrote fics that were the most…well, they were just the most!), and people smart (she’d told me I was kinda addicted to drama, especially when my life was in smashed-cardboard-mode).

So what? I was bored! And she wasn’t scolding me fast enough!

I refreshed the webpage to a delightful, shimmery 14, and clicked the envelope.

My cheeks were tingly and hot as I scrolled through the truly heinous, accusatory messages in my inbox, all sent by the same grey blob with the sunglasses. What a goofy design for what almost always ended up being anonymous hate.

I picked up my DS as the tinny ringing noise filled the speakers, notifying me that Marie was having another memory. I knew this part of the route like the back of my hand. Still, against my better, pettier judgment, I knew Staci was right. I’d listen to her.

I wished I could be somewhere without consequences, but that place was not here or my cultivated tumblr environment. My DS was the closest thing to me in my apartment that wasn’t an internet slapfight, so at least it’d put my brain elsewhere.

The screen wobbled out of the usual flowery, bright halls of Love Blooming’s main plot and into Marie’s memory. A dark manor background panned up, along with two finely-dressed figures with their faces mostly blacked out. Her parents, M. and Mme. Gagnon.

The memory was of a nice little dinner between the family. The dynamic between them wasn’t much to write home about, though their topic of conversation was glaring: where would Marie go to school? She’d graduated from finishing school upon her mother’s request. Now she wanted something more thrilling (and expensive).

“Oh, Mother, I want to go to a magic school. I’ve had enough of folding napkins and arranging spoons and embroidering flowers. La Belle Lavande is only a day’s ride away, and all the ladies speak highly of its culture!”

Her mother said, “Marie,” (I’d picked the default name this time, to keep the gifsets from my footage as neutral as possible,) “there’s no sense in you learning all about magic when you aren’t a magician.”

“What about all the other students? Sure, all the magicians in the region go to La Belle Lavande, but not all the students are magicians. There are hardly enough of those to fill a daycare, much less a university. Why can’t I join anyways?”

“You need to go where you’ll fit best. You don’t have magic and have never shown any affinity for it. Why are you so interested in it now?”

“Well, it’s only…I’m getting older, and I want to meet…” Her dialogue trailed off with plenty of ellipses. “Besides, even the Delphines sponsor La Belle Lavande! Doesn’t that show their quality?”

Her father added, “Don’t aspire to follow your idols around blindly.”

“But they’re the Delphines!” Marie said.

“You might find that family leading somewhere you don’t like.”

Their conversation was cut short a few lines later as one of the very few harrowing scenes of Love Blooming began. The game got a Teen rating solely for the innuendo and the fade to blacks (as any respectable dating sim should), though this scene must have been the top of their violence budget.

The house was infiltrated by a trio of masked intruders. They threatened the family, bagging valuables, refusing to answer questions about the suspiciously missing butlers and maids while the Gagnon family huddled against the wall.

Marie’s world was torn asunder when the fire began. A candelabra had been knocked over in the chaos–yet the fire seemed to consume the house too fast, too fully. The masked intruders hustled the family up and separated them, the smoke too thick and searing for Marie to even see where she was being taken, much less where her family went. 

She was certain they were trying to kill her.

I tapped through the narration and the sparse full-screen illustrations, watching Marie realize her dormant power as her entire world burned around her.

Even though she never could have guessed it, in that moment, she was opening a door to let herself start life all over again.

(What I wouldn’t give for that sometimes!)

When she woke up in the rubble, she found a token. On its edges were scraps of black fabric; the same fabric was under her nails and tangled in the overgrown thorns that now surrounded her. On the token was a sketchy symbol of poison ivy that would fire us into the next act, giving us plenty more clues as to what happened in the Gagnon manor.

Did the clues really matter, though?

Her assailants never got faces. They didn’t even get names. I had a theory–Staci agreed–that there was supposed to be more plot, but it got left on the cutting room floor thanks to a lack of budget or lack of time.

What was the rest of the story here supposed to be?

I mean, what the heck? Wouldn’t it have been cool and creepy if the assailants realized the daughter was still alive and had made it to La Belle Lavande? They would definitely guess that if she recovered her memories, it would be a death sentence for them and their poison ivy brigade. It’d be a dang good reason to try to kill her.

I sighed and stretched as the proper school setting faded back in. And then after muttering some comebacks under my breath, I finally deleted those dumb tumblr messages, sending Staci a screenshot of my empty inbox as evidence.

I slapped shut my laptop, curled into my throne of pillows, and continued to play.

~*~

Note from the Author

The screenshots are not terribly plot-important but...if you haven't had a conversation like this with your friend, were you ever truly a tumblr fandom girlie?

HANNA

guess who haaassss 12 new asks on tumblrrrr [side eye monkey reaction meme]

STACI

What did you do this time

Actually, it doesn’t matter. Delete them

HANNA

They need to have a ‘mark all as junk’ button on tumblr so i don’t have to go through all of these one by one and toss em

Reading them makes me want to reply

STACI 

Hanna, don’t >_> Is this about the whole situation with Minnie’s fic?

HANNA

yes ok i checked and thats absolutely what its about

fuck me for recommending it like 5 months ago before she got all weird

ok she’s allowed to write weird shit all she wants but omg warn a girl before u upload a graphic noncon chapter so she can turn off anon ok?!

LOOK AT THIS MESSAGE WTFUHREKGHDFKG

STACI

No, I don’t want to see! Just delete them

HANNA

FINE

ARRRHHGHG WHY ARE THEY BLAMING MEEEEEEEEEEE IT’S NOT MY FICCCC [screaming cat reaction meme]

STACI

Umm, want me to be for real?

HANNA

Ofc. I love you because you are the most real

STACI

I mean okay, besides you being the fandom fall-guy… You also fight back. Why would they go after anyone else who’s recommended Min’s fic or even defended her when they’ll just ignore the messages? They _want_ to have a fight. When you get distracted by something, you kinda lose your eye for consequences. And then next thing you know we’re still having this argument a month later with people you don’t even know and the argument isn’t about the fic anymore.

HANNA

[Harsh but fair reaction meme] Marie walked (blow up plants) so I could run (blow up anons)

Why is this fandom so dumb like literally is there poison in the water???

STACI

I think we get all the people who realised there’s no audience for their complaining about Ouran School Host Club

You’re typing for too long. Just delete the messages [pull the trigger Piglet reaction meme]

HANNA

I wanna grab all their annoying little faces and say “girlie lb is the otome equivalent of shovelware. If you’re not here to make your own fun via fic and art and stuff then go away bc there is NOTHING ELSE HEREEEEE”

Ok i’m checking Min’s tumblr

STACI

Oh jeez

HANNA

Christ alive poor girl she’s getting inundated

You shoulda talked to her first. She responded to too many messages

aaaaAAAHHH HAHAHHHH NOOO

“Noncon is just a natural part of BL. If you want to go after me, you have to go after sooo many other authors. How about you start in Japan because i’m sure trying to whitewash their own media back to them will go well”

GIRL N  O DONT DO IT TH YE GOT YOU TO MORALIZE BACK TO THEM NO NO NO 

Everyone stfu

I guess I know why one of the anons told me i defended a racist

By uhhh [checks smudged writing on hand] recommending her fic 5 months ago

STACI

Uh, yeah, might be worth denouncing that particular statement of hers

HANNA

We aren’t even FRIENDS. She’s a filthy remi/lou shipper 

Jk (maybe)

I just mean we aren’t friends so why is it my job to do damage control for her???

STACI

[You got me there reaction meme]