hey! thanks for such an even-keeled response to all of that mess i wrote (i'm used to very different reactions from people very dedicated to yelling at me, hence why i don't talk about it much haha). i definitely understand where you're coming from and, even if our paths diverged in the end and we ultimately disagreed, i also respect your own conclusions and understand how you got to them. this is my first time being in a fandom built around real human beings, and it's been...a learning experience, to say the least. i appreciate you taking the time to read everything that i put down, and thank you for your kind reply :) nothing but love to you, as well!

this also hits on "mess," which someone else asked for. last one for sending in a word here!

George feels like he’s frozen in place, diminutive in Dream’s shadow and wilting from the attention. His heart rate ticks up by more than it should from their proximity: close enough to see the dusting of faint freckles on his shoulders, faded by months of being hidden away from the punishing winter. Dream lays a hand on his own and slightly turns him toward the mirror and he watches in real time as he appears in duplicate, slightly blurred by the soft rolling steam collecting on its glass. But, even with that waterborne haze, it doesn’t take him long to make out the ghost of ravenous teeth and possessive hands.

Marks positively litter his skin: they begin halfway up his neck, then trace down over crooks of bone and webbed sinew, down the planes of his chest and the hollows of his ribs until they worsen dramatically around his hips. He can practically see Dream’s handprints there, his grip so unrelenting and unmerciful last night that he had surely held him by bone. As if sensing his thoughts, the man responsible traces playfully down his sides until he can line up his hands with the damage they had left once more, softly settling in the slim dip there. It is so breathtakingly gentle this time, yet the strain of possession still lingers heavy.

“See? Such a mess.”

(send me a word on retro and, if it's in the sd12 draft, i'll post the passage it's in)

Lost to his admirations and an overly petulant heart, he fails to register that Dream is watching him, too: more intently than he expected. “Are you feeling okay today, George?” He asks in a voice that is far warmer than he deserves. “I know there wasn’t…that I didn’t really do much last night, but you just seemed to exhausted, and I just—”

“You’re starting to ramble,” George gently cuts him off, knowing that this sentence will continue to run along unabated unless he steps in before it truly gets going. “Like you said: I was tired. I don’t think I stayed awake for more than a few minutes afterwards.”

It’s hard to take him seriously when he looks a bit like a wet dog, but there’s a funny expression twisting his features just enough for it to be noticeable. “You didn’t answer my question, George,” It isn’t angry or even annoyed, but there is the thinnest ribbon of a lethal current of disappointment underlying it. “Come on, we talked about this.”

(send me a word on retro and, if it's in the sd12 draft, i'll post the passage it's in) you were definitely fishing for something, and i admire it, but this chapter is not where you'll find it! :)

Dream sputters. “Shut up. I was freshly eighteen, okay, cut me some slack. I did kiss him back, okay? Like, right after. He was wearing cherry chapstick, I think, which I usually found gross whenever I made out with girls at some high school party but, just…everything was different. I don’t really know how else to explain it, but it made all of that feel stupid and irrelevant. Like none of that had counted, and it’d just been a shitty practice run or something.”

“Not at all like the girl in the resort, then?”

“Not even close.”

There’s still a soft smile clinging to Dream’s lips now that he’s finished recounting the story, and it’s easy to see that he can still feel all of it, even years later; some gray-eyed boy had carved himself into the inside of Dream’s skull for years and left a permanent memory of a single moment, suspended in saccharine time, that he would cherish likely until the day he died. George doesn’t think he’s ever done that for someone. He doesn’t know if he’s the sort of person able to even come close. For anyone.

(send me a word on retro and, if it's in the sd12 draft, i'll post the passage it's in) probably not the meaning of the word you were looking for, but it's what i have lol

He nods, unexpectedly pensive all of a sudden. “I mean, I knew I was about to move all the way over here, across the ocean, and I didn’t know anybody on the other end beyond the hiring manager I’d been in contact with. So, it was this sort of weird mix of dread and excitement, but sitting there with my sister, just watching the lake from so high up made it all sort of fade away for a little while, wind and cold be damned.”

George can still recall the way the fowl sent ripples out into the water, or how the cotoneaster bushes, dripping in clusters of berries, heaved and swayed in the wind. “So, I guess that’s, like, my existential crisis birthday. But it was still really nice, if that makes sense.”

The smile he’s met with is kinder than he had been expecting. Dream’s gaze is soft. ”Yeah, I get it.”

He can’t help but let the corners of his mouth pull up just slightly in response, eyes sheepishly avoiding his. It’s a hushed moment that he struggles to not assign significance to.

(send me a word on retro and, if it's in the sd12 draft, i'll post the passage it's in):

That feeling of unbearable loneliness has returned to him, flailing in his chest in horrific juxtaposition to the sweet half-smile on Dream’s lips as he rounds the end of his kitchen countertop and approaches with two plates, piled high with notice.

His meal is gingerly placed down in front of him, rotated just slightly so that the orange segments are in the top right, lined up with his water glass. “Thanks.”

Dream just nods as he sits heavily in the chair opposite his and for a long, devastating moment, he’s sitting here three weeks ago, in a graveyard of forgotten styrofoam, when the overheads seemed to cut through his retinas and half-wilted hyacinths struggled between them as he clung to the edge of the table with a white-knuckled grip. He has to shake it from his head, trying to burn this image of Dream, his curls still wet and pushed back by a headband and sleeves worn from where George knows he mindlessly fingers them out of nervous habit, into the back of his eyelids instead.

while i don't believe there's an answer that will satisfy anyone who isn't myself, i think you're asking in good faith, so i will do my best to explain. it sounds like you've fully left the space for good reasons, which i 100% respect, so our views on some things might differ here. this is all just my own personal (and very abbreviated) thoughts, informed by my own experiences, and they aren't any more right than your own.

you put it just about as straightforwardly as possible: it was an awful experience, and doesn't bear repeating. the period during which i chose to step away also coincided with a very dark one in my personal/home life, and the crushing isolation during that time was ruinous. losing an entire network of friends and distractions plus regaining suppressed trauma on top of that only made it worse. it was a long, lonely, and frankly dangerous 18 months of misery, and that will make you think about things.

when "the truth" video came out and accusers began to admit to fabricating allegations, it became a lot easier to see that most of what happened that october was the fault of individual people. it's easy to condemn an entire space as radioactive when it feels like everything is coming from everywhere, but distance grants perspective. shitty people are always around and they're always louder than anyone else, but i still cared about individual people from that space, and i think that was my first sort of reconciliation with the whole ordeal. i was also in therapy around this time and did some incredibly brutal personal writing, both of which helped me get a better handle on my trauma and put some emotional distance between what i recovered and myself.

on top of that, i still had a lot of writing left unfinished, and that really bothered me, too. there was so much that i was SO excited about, tens of thousands of words sitting on my computer, and i could never really swallow the idea that some people with a frankly concerning amount of explosive hatred they chose to misdirect at me were responsible for me losing that. it was the principle of it, you know? i wanted to find that same excitement and joy i once held again. maybe it's futile nostalgia, but only time will tell.

things are still tentative, and i will never engage in the way that i used to here. i still only really talk to people i know because that's the main reason i logged on again, i heavily curate the type of content that i see, and mute any involvement in "drama," which has been very intentional. it's honestly been nice being back in a way where i have completely cut myself off from an entire side of the fandom where people intentionally engage or get in arguments with other subtwts. that's not an indictment of them whatsoever (i used to love doing it, it's often justified, i get it), just something i needed to do for my own sanity. it's like i'm experiencing a completely different place now.

the long and short of it is: people were what made me leave, and people are also what made me come back. for better or for worse, i did love being in this community. i missed it: it's home to some of the most talented artists/writers i've seen across half a lifetime of fandom, and a lot of people i feel privileged to have been friends with over the years. that ultimately outweighed what i experienced in the past here (that isn't something everyone is going to agree with, and that's fine). i'm very careful now and i put my own wellbeing first, which is something i'm still very much learning how to do. if that necessitates leaving permanently down the line to keep my victimhood safe, then so be it, but things are okay for now.

this is probably way longer of an answer than you wanted, but i'm...really not great at condensing stuff lol.