Fan Behavior (Georgenotfound)

Twenty One: "The heart wants what it wants" - October 30

Lilac stared out of the plane window, glad that her nerves had finally dissipated.

Getting on the plane at all was nothing short of a nightmare for her. Nothing went wrong- security was fine and she didn't get stopped, none of her bags were over the weight limit, she didn't have to throw anything away and her carryon went through all of the checks just fine. She really had nothing to worry about, but that's why they were called irrational fears. Even her logic-minded brain couldn't stop her fretting.

Now that she was settled, though, Lilac was fine. She had her headphones on and was in a window seat, staring out over the endless ocean. Her flight had left relatively early so that she'd arrive in England in the early afternoon. Her brain nearly broke trying to figure out the time conversions and how the flight synced up with that, but Andi had come to the rescue and helped her. Lilac jokingly had told her a few days prior that she couldn't do it, but Andi told her very seriously that she'd never speak to Lilac again if she didn't follow through, so now Lilac was on the plane with none but her thoughts to keep her company.

She'd only been on planes a few times, but Lilac remembered using the longer flights as opportunities to think. The view out the window and the dull roar of the plane's engine were surprisingly soothing. Soft piano was flowing through her headphones, a perfect backdrop to let her mind and thoughts wander. She thought about her life in the past month and how it had changed.

She'd started streaming, which had been a mental hurdle in her way for quite some time. From the first stream, the support of her chat and her friends had virtually destroyed her fear that she wasn't entertaining or funny. Her goal was never to be the funniest person in the room, but with a chat as kind as hers, she didn't feel like she had to be. Corny as it might have sounded, she just had to be herself and the rest fell into place. The people of Twitch enjoyed whenever she was DVR in Andi's streams, and they enjoyed it when she was Spade on her own channel. She could be both, and it was the best of both worlds.

She'd made new friends and kept the old, and frankly, both were gold. She wouldn't trade her friendship with Sap for anything in the world, but it was almost ridiculous how much Lilac already cared about her newfound friends. She wasn't one to get attached to people all that quickly, but there was something so endearing about all of them. Even the smallest interactions brought a smile to her face. For instance, she'd never actually spoken to Quackity in real time, but the Twitter banter and brief DMs they'd shared meant more to her than they probably should have. The same went for many of the others in that general group, like Karl, and she fully intended to stream with all of them (or at least talk to them) when she got back home. When Lilac first met the others, she never thought she would be able to meet any of them in person- that the internet would forever stand in her way. But here she was, on a plane and about to meet Wilbur Soot, so that idea was out the window. Briefly, Lilac wondered who else she would get to meet.

I've also gotten better at dealing with emotion, Lilac thought randomly, and she furrowed her eyebrows.

I have? She asked her own brain jokingly, but she supposed she had gotten better at it. Lilac still sometimes cringed at the thought of what she said to George when he was sitting with her, that one evening back in Florida when she was extremely dizzy. It wasn't anything wild, but she had been willingly open with him, and that was a big step in her book. Clay and Sap would tease her to high heaven and back about George, but the mere thought of having feelings for someone didn't set her skin on fire anymore. She could just laugh it off.

It was only loosely related, but she'd gotten better at goodbyes, too. Saying goodbye to people, even if she knew she'd see them again, had always been hard for her to deal with, but it had gotten easier somehow. Leaving Clay, George, and Sap was hard, but it was the first time she'd been able to get in the car and just... go. It was the first time she ever had to do it herself; she had never been the person to have to drive away. But she did it, and handled it with relative grace (she gave herself a free pass for crying over leaving Sap; it had been over three years).