This- I don’t want to call it fic. This story, this creation, is so loudly itself. You know? So distinct. So compact. Everything written in it belongs to it. Realistically, I know it’s fanfiction but. IOTWCS is so IOTWCS. And it’s so distinctly Marsh of Sleep. It seems effortless, like it emerged from the marsh brain intact. I’m not belittling the work you put into it. It’s like when a seasoned gymnast slides into the cleanest split ever and you’re like, I could do that, that looks easy, effortless.

Many, many spoilers ahead.

I love it. The action, the PTSD, the self-destructive tendencies everyone has. The destructive tendencies everyone has. “Your PTSD is showing”. Iconic.

And, to be honest, though contradictory, I hate romance. I love human relationships and I love love and lust and attraction. But, romance is dumb as a genre like it’s generally done. In IOTWCS, what you would call romance, for lack of a better widely recognized term, is excellent.

I love how they eat. How the subject of food is handled. Eating is a vital part of every human’s life and the way people go about basic nutrition in a world helps so much in establishing it. It’s dumb, but, spaghetti o’s and pickle juice and fucking tang are part of what makes this such a complete palpable world.

There are so many callbacks to things previously established.

“Soul” followed by “Speaking”. “Soul, name, not object”. “I took mountain dew as my mistress”. I get up in the morning and make coffee and as I’m trying to convince myself to wake up, my brain instead provides me with ‘I took mountain dew as my mistress’ sometimes. Thanks. Baller. Maka gets handed the gun that killed the old crone as a weapon. IOTWCS is a perfect weave.

The way you handled PTSD is amazing. How Maka holds on to what Harv told her about looking behind colors and lets it become a significant part of her, because she’s rebuilding herself and she needs to do it right. She repeats the phrases she hears and holds onto them like a lifeline. She puts the words of this world’s residents into her mouth to make her belong (you need to eat food from the spirit world, or else you disappear). She is slowly finding her place behind generators but she is still lost. She mimics and simultaneously pays homage to the people who have managed to establish themselves and stayed in the fucked up reality she sees.

“There aren’t enough bullets in the world for The Strip”. Lifeline, fixed point, anchor.

“Biker gang crazy bitch”. Accusation, insult, but still an instruction. Be fearless.

She decides to live. And then she decides to save the world. And that’s also because of Soul. And they become one tangled mess and one entity, and they become a team, so much more than just being crutches through their respective fucking serious PTSD. Fuck.

And then, the Strip. You know what? It took me two? three? weeks to get past the point where Soul gets his torso split in two by Ragnarok. I knew good times were ahead but I remembered what I had to go through to get to them. I remembered well the run through Vegas, the thanks and whispers and prayers to the silent radio. Maka convinces me she will die. And I don’t want her to. The moment when Sid is gone and Black Star loses that leftover semblance of innocence he may have left is unbearable. I was afraid to read all of that again. Fucking hell.

Soul and Maka in this kill me. They kill me as they are individually and as they are as partners. Maka shoves her poison hand deeper into the mouth of the walker that dared bite. She defines her Harvey-bestowed luck as Soul’s existence and its continuing. He tells her to wait for him. Again. I cry.

Shadowstag is a real actual tangible entity that you have created and I am tragically in love with this story in its entirety.

Maka says she’s so glad she met Soul. I’m so glad they met in IOTWCS, you know? I love IOTWCS. I can’t believe.

Every word I read has me in awe. I know you won’t believe me, or think I’m exaggerating, but I’m not. Your writing in this is captivating from start to finish. Thank you for everything. Thank you for Maka’s courage and for Soul’s fucking faith in her. Thank you for Black Star’s insane leadership, for ShadowStag, for Harvey. Thank you for, despite what I’m about to say being over the top cheesy, reminding me/ proving to me that the way I’m particularly inclined to feel the love feelings also occurs elsewhere. Maka and Soul in this are in love the way I believe love to be.

Have I said thank you? Thank you. I feel so lucky that I get to read what you write. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, even though it doesn’t reflect a fraction of the gratitude I feel. I’m so glad I wandered into the same fandom that you are in. 

– @ahshesgone