And Ghostly, everyone thinks they know Paleandghostly, everyone thinks Paleandghostly doesn’t need anything, doesn’t feel anything, can take care of herself and doesn’t need a thing. She is the single most terrifying woman Draxie has ever met, yes, she’s read every book Draxie knows of and a hell of a lot more of them that she couldn’t even understand, she’s got a mind like diamond-edged steel, she is awesome in a sense of the word older than the internet - and she lives with her mom, in her trailer, in the middle of nowhere, because there’s no-one else to look after her. She sits watching her mom’s mind slowly crumble from its edges inwards while she forgets to drink unless she’s told to and wants to go for a walk down streets she hasn’t lived anywhere near in decades, and Ghostly who should be - Draxie doesn’t even know, running the CIA, creating entire new disciplines of thought, running the country, Ghostly helps her mom wash and cleans the trailer and spends her mind, her ravenous, razor-bright, vicious mind, defending him from everyone on the internet. Even from other fanghosts half the time when she points out that they’re being creepy as all fuck and look maybe you can justify using a character with that name but don’t pretend for one second that you know who he is, because he’s a person you’ll never know the inside of and you don’t get to act like you’re entitled to that. Draxie doesn’t know what Ghostly would do without him. Hate the world, while her mind flayed itself to pieces from the inside. Hate the world and all the injustice in it, and no-one to give a fuck about it. But there’s him. And she says, Oh, good, at least someone’s being sensible …

There’s no way to tell him, if she tried she knows she’d only start crying, that there’s this girl in England who’s never met him and never will and he’s saved her life more times over than he’ll ever know, because she knows Blackbindings - Blackbindings who writes like an angel, like she knows what suffering is and she knows how much knowing that matters, who writes so far beyond her years with the sort of control Draxie knows she’ll never have - Blackbindings who is so shy she can barely bring herself to reblog anything, Blackbindings who just has one of the sweetest, quietest, kindest souls Draxie thinks she’s ever known and the sort of brain chemistry that you fight every day of your life, she doesn’t know if Blackbindings would still be here if it wasn’t for him. If she was trapped in this world that breaks her heart and breaks her down, she doesn’t know how long that girl would have lasted if she didn’t think about him being brave for everyone else, caring about everyone else, maybe caring about her, trapped in her own mind an ocean away, using up all the strength she has just to not hurt herself. There are weeks when she cries every single day. And thinks about him, she says. And then she can make herself breathe.

And her. What would she do without him?

She’s not special, not like BB and Ghostly, who awe her with their intelligence and the things they’re capable of, all their humbling potential. All she does is write - a lot - because it’s fun. She’s under no illusions, she’s popular through quantity not quality, she’s not bad but she is not Blackbindings and she never will be. She writes because it’s fun. And she thinks about him, and what he does.

She works three jobs she hates, just to keep the bills paid. She wanted to get into journalism but she can’t afford the internships. She already sees what her life will be like, she sees the path ahead, she knows there’s no way off; she’ll never not be working three dead end jobs she hates, she’ll marry her boyfriend and unless there’s an accident they’ll decide almost too late that fuck it they’d better have those kids now or never, because they never will be able to afford them; she’ll never do anything amazing, never be anything amazing, just a person in a world full of people, getting by.

But there’s him. And every time she faces life and thinks she can’t bear it, there’s him. If he can be so brave, can’t she manage the littlest bravery? Because - because her little pointless life that will never mean anything, that will have vanished beyond notice within hardly more than a hundred years if she has those kids to remember her, her dragging, struggling life of bills and broken pipes and fuck it it’s another ramen week unless they can live without cell phones -

If she was in trouble, he’d still rescue her, wouldn’t he? Her life wouldn’t mean anything less to him. He rescues people. She’s still a person, as much as anyone else. She’s not important and she’s not special. But she’s a person. And she wipes her nose on the back of her wrist because she tossed the tissues and that’s what he gave her, and maybe it’s the smallest way to save someone’s life, to let them know they still matter whoever they are, but fuck like it doesn’t mean anything to her. It does. She owes him this, and everything …

And the thing about nerd culture being mainstream culture now means that there's no place to just be a nerd among other nerds - without being reminded that you're the nerd.

Never give up on your dreams, and never let anyone tell you that what you love is inconsequential or useless or a waste of time. Because if you love it? If that OTP or children's card game or abridged series or YA book or animated series makes you happy?
That is never a waste of time. Because in the end we're all just a bunch of weirdos standing in front of other weirdos, asking for their username.

The thing about fic is that is comes from love. Characters you love so much, that you feel so deeply for, you'll watch them fall in love a thousand different ways, over and over.