OMG!

Another Rei/Hotaru fic?

So do want!

Thank you for this.

Totally looking forward to more.

So amazing, woooow. Rei is a good person deep down. Peace :)

Your characters are so real to me, emotional and raw. You develop them so well. I miss Rei in STC...hopefully will see them shortly. Peace :)

So good-I love Rei and Hotaru together. Some bits I am confused with but that is because I have never finished reading the manga AND watching the anime...I've been dragging it out as long as possible haha I don't want it to end! But anyways, lovely chapter!

Jesus Christ. I thought the latest chapter of STC was heart-heavy but this... just... /Hell/.

This is so fantastic and utterly terrifying, the strangeness of Hotaru and Rei's relationship. Their lives are so intimate, focusing around each other and limited by each other, but at the same time there is this huge /distance/, since you can never forget that Rei has kidnapped Hotaru, that she has power over her. And yet - they try to carve out a life. Cocoa Puffs and high schools and clothes and oh, there must be a million domestic moments where you either might forget or cannot forget what their precise relationship is.

I love how Rei is, belatedly, starting to understand her grandfather, all the ways that he tried to reach her, and how he must have loved her, even if that love never got through until much, much later. And the relationship between Hotaru and her father - it is also terrifying, and deeply dysfunctional, but you make it make sense to us, the way that she maps it out in her own heart, the way she understands what her scars signify.

Favourite parts (besides the ones mentioned above):

(and that's the worst part because if you're a victim you're supposed to be blameless but being a victim teaches you how to deceive, how to cheat—

—how not to be a victim)

And especially this:

"You're scared of him," Mars says.

"You can love someone and be scared of them."

"You shouldn't."

"I'm scared of you."

And the /unspoken/ part of that conversation, the missing part of the equation.

Thanks for another mind blowing chapter.

EIGHT

WHERE ARE YOU

COME BACK TO ME

I WILL MAKE TRAIL MIX

TRAIL MIX OUT OF JUST M&MS

SO REALLY IT WILL BE JUST A BOWL OF M&MS

I WILL MAKE IT FOR YOU, THOUGH

(COME BACK)

Also, Jade, my dearest one, all my love as always.

I love this spin-off!

my God. I sincerely hope you haven't suffered one iota of the wretched fate you've consigned your protagonists to. but I wonder. because it's freakishly real. it's accurate-it's ugly and painful and scary and sad. it resonates.

in particular, "But even as she imagines it she shrinks from it, because that's the thing about anger (her anger); as soon as tries to do something with it, it darts back inside her, like a groundhog scared by its own shadow, huddling inside her, safe and cramped in the dark."

and, "Pain and guilt, they're tools just like anesthetics and anticoagulants, and if you apply them in the right amount they work just the way you need them to.(and that's the worst part because if you're a victim you're supposed to be blameless but being a victim teaches you how to deceive, how to cheat—how not to be a victim)."

and of course, "Sshhh. It's okay.(it's not)".

stop breaking my heart -translation: keep breaking my heart. but only if these precious fictional abused orphaned helpless hapless hopeless girls get their happy ending. it's one thing when it happens in real life, because nobody chooses it. but you can't have appropriated these characters just to hurt them over and over again till they're nothing but Kleenex-veined scar tissue.

It seems that they both need each other, update soon!

Hhhnnnng, all the feeeeelings. I loved this- adored this- so much. And poor Hotaru, and Rei worrying about her and being protective while trying not to look like she was, and family issues and ugh. So much love. You're so amazing at making me feel for the characters. Thanks so so much for the update!

that was so affecting and i love rei in this. and there's something about the parentheses that makes them secret and important and lingering. also, thanks for the update!

I never knew that it was possible for bra shopping to be so... Emotional? Sad? All I know is that I was really surprised with how deep this chapter turned out to be. And I know I shouldn't be, because it's YOU, for goodness sakes, and you just have a way of making something that should be really awkward or trivial or just laughable deep, at the very end.

It's something I've grown to be fond of; I love it when character development happens when I least expect it. You're really, really doing a phenomenal job. Thank you for taking the time to put so much thought into your work!

It's super interesting to see Rei and Hotaru have so much in common, and to see them try to navigate through each other's emotional minefields. I love how that bra-fitting scene (and oh man! Thank you, the humiliation and awkwardness of that was just spot on) really turned them from prisoner/gaoler into two girls (friends? allies? reflections?) trying to make it through the real world.

I really wish more people were reading this - it's wonderful to see how you've been committed to Ami's and Rei's timelines ever since they split from Serena's, so that they have their own full and complete worlds that are connected to but not necessarily the same as the main storyline. The intersections are always interesting, and I love seeing how you write the same figures from different points of view. I'm curious to see if this story will span the entire four years from Season 2 to Season 3 (no, don't tell me right away, I want to read for myself! The joys of discovery, and all that).

Again, thanks for some more tasty writing and best of luck with the writing (and all real-life endeavours, too, of course)! :)

The friendship between these two is incredibly satisfying. It feels like- yet again- you've found a missing piece to the series that I never really understood was there until you pointed it out. Because of course Rei and Hotaru should have been close friends. It feels like such a natural conclusion to come to, and you express it wonderfully. I am really enjoying this. Thanks for posting!

You don't know how excited I get when I see you've updated one of your stories. Seriously.

Anyway, I love fireflies :) rei and hotaru awkwardly moving towards a kinda sorta friendship and being just a little angsty together and the horrors of bra shopping and hotaru's adorableness... How could anyone NOT love this?

Thanks for the update!