this message may be offensive
i was gonna wait to post this until the next chapter of nlto, but some of the comments i’ve gotten (here and elsewhere) have made me sad and so here we are. I know y'all are mad at me about caleb, but something BIG needed to happen to snap joel out of his bullshit. and this is going to hurt lily, but it is a mirror to what happened to joel with sarah. it'll help them better understand each other.
i’ve apologized (and over explained) a lot about the angst in this fic (most of my fics tbh) and i’m a little sick of it. i feel like i post the necessary warnings (it’s harder to do on here as it is on AO3 with the lack of tags) and i wish people headed those warnings and read accordingly. if you can’t handle plot or angst and you just want fluffy smut, please go read one of the thousand one-shots that will give you just that. that will NEVER be what i write. no hard feelings. i’d rather you read what you’re looking for than read my fics and complain about the plot. it’s one thing to be upset, i get that, but when the comments are overwhelmingly negative it makes me angry to be completely honest. i’ve been drafting and writing this fic for a year. i have carved my heart open creating it and it feels like sh!t when half of all the comments are some version of “i just want them to be happy, when will this end, just give me their happy ending now.” no. i’m not going to do that. that would be a disservice to the plot, to the characters i love. if that’s what you want, i’m not the writer for you. life is not without turmoil, and neither will my stories. if you just want a caricature of joel that completely mischaracterizes him as some emotionally-intelligent, perfect man, then i can guarantee there are a thousand fics out there for you. but i love his character too much to disservice him like that.