I’m glad this sentence is in the past tense, and hope you’re doing better these days.
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Thank you. 
And thanks for reading too. It was kinda hard to put everything into words, because yknow, I do get it. Not every single romantic relationship in media has to be toxic or in a rough patch or on the rocks, it’s just that media doesn’t often incentivize the creation of healthy relationships because they’re less prone to shenanigans or misunderstandings, and especially in the U.S., long running series is the goal, so the more you can guarantee a plethora of stories, the more successful you may be. And it is damaging when the one type of relationship (romantic or otherwise) that is most often present in media is dysfunctional, because it makes it that much harder for inexperienced people to notice red flags and worrisome behavior for what they are if they never had such role-models in real life.
As with everything in life, there needs to be a balance in representation, though it’s one that’s rarely achieved.
Anyway, that’s enough soapboxing from me.
So fellow Wayhaveners, what’s your detective’s favorite soapbox weirdest/most embarassing stories? 
I'll go first oh god oh no I wrote a fanfic what have I done
Ahem, so for context, my detective’s name is Charlotte. She’s romancing Nate and her bestie is Felix.
So, several years before the start of the series, Charlotte bought this tin of chocolates—bad chocolates, terrible. The kind that Europeans love to make fun of Americans for. The kind that even children on Easter or Halloween side-eye bc of how much sugar was needed to mask the shittiness of its taste.
Anyway, she eats them all in one sitting because she’s a mess and because she really, really wanted this tin because it has her favorite Star Wars character on it and it’s cute and she wants to stick it on her wall at home.
Enter Verda. He passes by to say hello and then grab his lunch, but he pauses upon seeing what she’s eating.
“Have you been…eating that all morning?”
Charlotte pauses what she’s doing, blinks, and—still chewing—nods in the affirmative.
Verda says nothing. He has children, he knows where this will end. He knows this is his only chance to avoid what comes. He leaves and goes back to hanging out with dead people all day. Smart.
Tina comes by, smiling brightly, and asks for a chocolate. Charlotte nods vigorously and holds the tin out for her, desperate for help in finishing these chocolates. No sooner does Tina take a bite than does she pause and pull a face.
“…On second thought, maybe I should watch how much sugar I eat.”
Tina abandons her. Charlotte is alone again in finishing the tin, which she does by the end of the work day, while Tina jokes that she’s surprised she survived but also it’s not entirely a joke those chocolates were bad, but oh well, Charlotte is happy because she now has a cute new decor item that she’ll stick on her wall above her bed. Just as importantly, she shows off the cute sticker sheet that was hidden behind the chocolates. Score!
“Oh, nice, where are you going to stick them?”
Charlotte remains silent as she leaves the station, running through where she can put her new stickers. Surely not a police report, that’d just be a waste and maybe also illegal…maybe. Definitely a waste though, so that’s out.
Her fridge? Laptop? Maybe her mirror? Maybe she can use them to decorate the notebook she bought four months ago but hasn’t written in it yet because it’s just so pretty and yeah, no, never mind.
Maybe she should buy another notebook though? One that the stickers would look great on!
Decisions, decisions…
Now at home and in her pajamas, Charlotte finds she has to add a frankly ridiculous amount of double sided tape for the tin to stay up on her wall, but it stays on her wall and that’s what matters.
She looks back at the sticker sheet, still uncertain of where to put it, and decides that she may as well store it in the tin while she figures this out.
Charlotte goes to bed without dinner, having eaten a week’s worth of calories in a single shift. But of course, as Verda foresaw, she wakes up in the middle of the night, sick to her stomach, and stays in the bathroom for the rest of the night. She calls in sick the next day, and the day after that.
Two days pass. In that time, her body has absorbed zero nutrients. She’s weak, she’s haggard, and she still hasn’t decided where to use her sticker sheet. She is in misery.
Charlotte rolls over, intending to nap until dinnertime when she’ll try to eat saltines and water again, but when she wakes up, it’s the next morning already. She’s feeling utterly famished and to her delight she can keep food down again.
All is well.
Cut to six years later.
It’s the middle the night, Charlotte is fast asleep except no she isn’t because the adhesive has finally worn off and the tin falls off her wall and hits her on the head.
Bruised and grumpy, Charlotte spends her weekend trying to pick off the bits of mounting tape on the tin. She takes the tin to her sink to rub some soap over the remaining bits of adhesive and roll them away, and decides that she should probably just wash the whole thing anyway since it’s been six years.
She screams.
The sticker sheet.
It floats for a moment in the sudden rush of water before sinking down beneath the torrent from her sink. Charlotte pulls out the poor sheet, patting it dry as best she can while she agonizes over the wasted life of these stickers.
When she checks back on them, the page is warped and crinkled from water damage, and it’s clear that some of the stickers will not live up to her expectations, but she intends to salvage it anyway, and gathers a stack of her heaviest books, places the sheet gingerly between the bottom two books…then crushes it under the weight of unsold college textbooks, unread copies of cookbooks from Youtube channels she’s a fan of, her comic book collection, and her collection of unused notebooks. She marvels at how poorly read she is.
She comes up with a cunning plan. If she can read and buy more books, she can flatten the sticker sheet back into place with all the books she’s finished—fucking genius. She loves this plan and immediately buys several book series that she promptly forgets to read because the next day four hot vampires walk into her office.
At least, that’s the explanation she gives when Felix pokes around her apartment one day and finds a pathetic looking sticker sheet under the pile of books that Nate has been offering to help her put up on her bookshelf but that Charlotte has remained unusually cagey about and as I’m sure 99% of you have guessed, yeah I did this exact thing because I am a FOOL sjjddjfhjdjdjfjd
I bought the Star Wars tin. I ate the chocolates. I accidentally washed and soaped the sticker sheet. I’m the idiot who stuck it under a pile of unused notebooks and shrieked like a banshee when my brother fished it out while trying to find a specific issue of Spider-Man.
And yes my poor self-insert OC gets all my embrassing stories with little to no exaggeration as a coping mechanism dhfhfjdjdjdj
I have no shame, even less sense, and zero stickers, lol.
THE END
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When I first read it, I thought Verda was a LI 
! Unfortunately, he’s a married gay man, so… probably not gonna happen with me
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Yeah, my best friend was the same. She almost restarted to play a make character after I told her Verda was gay then I told her he was married and not an RO, probably should have swapped the order of those revelations.
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Big same!
I first read Wayhaven back when the first book was still undergoing the beta. I had read pretty much every other WIP by that point and for whatever reason I just kept putting this one off, and I decided to go in blind so I had no idea who the ROs were.
Imagine my heartbreak when the charming older guy mortician wasn’t an RO! 
But clearly I still enjoyed the demo considering I’ve been a fan ever since, and it’s all because I shot Adam Nate is a sweetheart.
Ok but really though, I think what sealed the deal for me was the group dynamics of Unit B, as well as the fact that she gave us snippets from the ROs perspective. There’s nothing quite like reading that the other half of the romance is pining after your MC (whether they realize it or not) as much as the MC is pining after them. 
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I’m not gonna lie, despite romancing Adam, Yuri has still isn’t as apologetic as she should be about shooting him. XD
Oooh yes, I do love this as well. Though it probably hurts me as much as it makes me happy. Because I have to hit my head against a brick wall after reading Adam be so goddamn infuriating. XD
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I haven’t put a lot of thought into Ellie’s weirdest/most embarrassing stories yet (clearly, I need to remedy that), but one of them most likely will have something to do with her love of spicy food and unwillingness to admit when she has met her match and can’t actually handle the heat. 
I live for the scenes in which we get to see their dynamics – whether as a group or showing their individual friendships. that one scene in the Book Three demo gave me all the good feelings.
Agreed! I also just love having the different characters’ perspectives in general; even though it’s not insight our MCs have, it’s still very fulfilling for me as the reader to glimpse how the characters are feeling or to see what’s going on away from the detective.
All of you shooting A like it’s nbd while I’m over here feeling guilty and starting over whenever I’m actually able to bring myself to choose that option in the first place. XD
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I never shoot Ava. On the other hand, I ALWAYS tell her I should’ve shot her during the apartment scene, so make of that what you will.
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Geez, I was gone for a couple of days and now have to catch up!
Dezh shoots Adam (every play through, so that never changes), then tells him later she’s glad she did it after he’s an ass (those two did not get along at first, but at this point, she feels terrible about it because she likes him).
Triss shot him, too, but halfway apologized afterward (or laughed, I can’t remember). Jax can’t use a gun and hid in that scene.
Zaraya shot him and said she hopes it didn’t hurt.
Knowing that vampires feel pain more intensely, I feel bad that he got shot three times in four runs, but characters are gonna do what they’re gonna do.
I kind of agree with this. For me, as a reader, I love being able to see that M and A, in particular, aren’t as cold-hearted as they appear sometimes to my MCs. From another angle, it just makes the wait for them to get their shit together even more difficult, especially since we have another 2-3 books of it for those two. (though, after reading a veiled ask over the weekend, I am convinced A-mancers are going to get a kiss in b3, possibly more).
@rose-court I’m really sorry you had to live through that kind of a nightmare. And I understand about the PTSD–I have a friend who suffers from it and know that it hits at some of the most inopportune and surprising times. He’s gotten better over the years, and the occurrences are fewer, but they still happen. I’m glad you’re doing better with it now.
And, please stop tormenting Charlotte! She needs to be in a bubble!
I might have to do a little write-up or two for my MCs’ most embarrassing moment. They have some that make me facepalm…
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This was really long, so I put it under the summary to keep this from becoming overly long (I say that like I have sucessfully written a short post in this thread.)
On Shooting A
Areylia shoots Adam, and feels worse about ruining his shirt than she does about shooting him. People were talking about A’s tendency to break the detective’s stuff earlier, but Areylia just sees it as even the score for all the shirt’s she’s ruined. (the desk=shooting him in book 1, the plant=bleeding out in his arms at the end of book 1, and she can’t see the filling cabinet, so in her mind they’re even)
Lukas always shoots Ava, and never feels bad about it, but doesn’t claim to be happy about it. As someone who has actually been shot, he can relate, but still thinks he made the right call with the information he had.
Riley also always shoots Adam, but feels bad about it after they become friends later in the book.
Cat predictably did not shoot Adam, and was actually trying her best to be kind to them despite how shady they were acting at the time.
Eleanor used pepper spray because she panicked, and proceeded to panic more when it didn’t appear to have any affect, but she felt bad out it once she realized she started having feeling for him.
Rhiannon also shot him, and does feel a little bad about it, but also believes that she made the right call.
Detective's Embarrassing Stories
Areylia: I don’t know if this is actually embarrassing, but she would be embarrassed if anyone found out about it, and I really like this story so…
Areylia only had one friend for pretty much her entire childhood, and his name is Ralph. Nobody their age in Wayhaven liked them very much, and they kind of bonded over that. (They became best friends when they were 5 after Areylia threw a rock at someone who was mean to him.) The reason Areylia wasn’t liked was a) because she very arrogant, but can actually do all the things she’s arrogant about which just tends to be an abrasive personality trait, and b) she’s extremely attractive with a very large bust, meaning all the girls were jealous, and we all know how mature jealous high school girls are.
So in high school Ralph and Areylia made a bet as a joke. They made bingo boards with a five by five square, and filled in every letter of the alphabet (minus one), and they had a contest over who could fill their board first, looser had to buy the winner a car. In order to fill their boards, Ralph had be insulted without provocation by someone who’s name started with each letter of the alphabet, and Areylia had to be propositioned (Not just hit on, but actually propositioned) by someone who’s name started with each letter of the alphabet. They meant this mostly as a joke, and didn’t think either of them would actually fill their boards, but Areylia actually managed to fill her board before turning 17, so Ralph bought her a car, but beacuse a 16 was buying it, it happens to be old and beat up. And for that Areylia will always be team old car. Honestly, I think she’s keep the thing even after it stops running just for the nostalgia. But she would die if Adam ever found this out.
Lukas: Lukas has a really hard time turning down any request that comes by way of a small child, and his kryptonite is multiple small children making puppy eyes at him, which means that there is one time of year that is very painful for him, and even more painful for his wallet- girl scout cookie season. Why is this a problem you might ask?.. well Lukas doesn’t actually like cookies. He doesn’t eat a lot of sugar in general, and when he does it’s thinks like dark chocolate or candied nuts. He made the mistake of buying some from one of his friend’s younger sisters when he was 14, the year he got his first job, but once he did that for one friend, he had to do it for the rest, then they all asked him again the next year, so now he has a reputation for buying girl scout cookies, and is in too deep to admit that he doesn’t like them, and finds himself buying more every year, but he doesn’t want to throw them out lest someone discover he’s not actually eating them, so he just has a closet full of girl scout cookies that he doesn’t know what to do with. (Can you imagine the field day Farah is going to have when she finds out… it’ll be glorious.)
Riley: This one actually made me go: why do I treat my characters like this? So poor Riley embarrasses herself quite often because she is absolutely terrible at reading people/social situations in general. She has no concept of slang, so she often misinterprets entire conversations, and she’s bad at reading facial expressions, so sarcasm goes over her head a lot. (yes, she’s that guy that takes everything literally and will argue with a sarcastic comment because she thought it was literal.)
Her most embarrassing moment was probably trying to graduate at 16 and realizing that she didn’t have a fine arts credit, so instead of staying another semester, she joined the dram club to substitute her fine arts credit, so she could graduate early, thinking that she could just do stage crew, and it’d be fine. The teacher had other ideas and cast her as one of the leading roles, knowing at she’s a terrible actress. The point of this was the teacher trying to have her do enough work to justify passing her, and also to try and get her to be more deeply connected to theater (she was one of those kids that was like this is pointless why do I need it to graduate?) Riley had very little self-confidence even then, and has massive stage fright, so on opening night she panicked, and forgot all her lines, and everyone watching her make a fool of herself freaked her out, and since she was already nauseous from the stage fright, she threw up, and that was the story around the school for the rest of the year.
Cat: Cat’s is very simple. Cat is a klutz, an adorable one, but a klutz nonetheless. One winter, Cat decided it would be a good ide to wear one inch heels in the winter and broke her arm getting out of the car cause she slipped.
I’m gonna add the other two later when I come up with them.
I don’t play self-inserts, and I still transcribe all of my issues onto my MCs, so you are not alone!
All I have to say about this is breakfast scene.
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You mean that A and the MC might [gasp] share a hearty handshake? 
swoon
Thank you. And tell your friend that some random internet person is very proud of how far we’ve both come!!! :')
Nate? That you???
Oh! Hmm!! What-What’s that? I didn’t quite hear you, it’s just so, so loud over here…on, uh, on this side of the…the forum. S-So, so very loud…!
leaves
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HA
If that’s the case, I look forward to fanfic of Areylia shooting Adam yet again, LOL.
so Ralph bought her a car
BCCJJFJVDJJFCBJZNXJXHDHDHSJDJ
OMG I LOVE THAT
That is EASILY the best origin story for the car I have ever read, omg! 
I sure the hell can! Oh I love that too, lol.
I definitely feel for him bc it used to be I could just tell girl scouts that I didn’t carry cash on me (which is usually true!), but now Zelle and other cash apps are a thing and I have no excuse anymore so I just avoid them like the plague.
Oh, I remember the first time I thought that. 
Then I tortured them more! I’d say it’s another cope, but honestly sometimes it’s just too much fun, lol. Case in point, my headcanon that Charlotte first met Unit B with a giant bruise on her head from where that chocolate tin had fallen on her face. Rebecca didn’t even bat an eye because Charlotte has always been danger-prone, and honestly it probably made her all the more adamant that Unit B protect her.
Adam: [leering at Charlotte from across the police station while recovering from his gunshot wound] “Remind me again why another team can’t do this?”
Rebecca: “You saw the bruise smack in the middle of her forehead, right? That’s her out of mortal danger.”
Adam: [sighs as he watches Charlotte walk into a wall while giving Felix a tour of the break room]
omg poor, poor Riley
You know that trope in fantasy series where sometimes characters have to explore another character’s worst memories?
Imagine if Unit B, expecting her worst memories to be of Murphy, walk in on the moment Riley remembers throwing up.
Ah sweet jesus, that hits close to home. I fell flat on my face the first time I wore this pair of adorable (and expensive) high heeled boots.
I haven’t worn them since. 
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This is so wholesome. 
I’m surprised he hasn’t asked Tina to come help him with his not so little cookie problem, lol. You know, the sugar addict that she is, she’d be more than happy to help him out with that. Heck, invite Verda’s kids over, too. (Unless Cara is one of the cookie peddlers, and in that case, nvm.)
Oh, that one as well!
Those poor neglected boots! (But in all seriousness, I hope you were okay!)
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Aww, thank you! I’ve been sitting on this story and waiting for an excuse to whip this out.
Cat probably gets the same treatment from Rebecca since she’s such a klutz.
I love this trope! While Riley would consider that moment worse than Murphy if this trope ever happened she would see super elaborate traumatic backstory that took way too much of my time inventing.
In order to that, he would first have to admit to having a problem…
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Since the question of whether or not M will ever say “I love you” has come up quite a bit in this thread, I just wanted to pop in a drop this ask…
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To the surprise of absolutely no-one, the answer is “sure, as soon as their emotional intelligence increases enough to surpass that of your average grumpy hammer.” 
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Yes, eventually, right? xD
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I was very excited when I read it this morning. M-specific asks are some of my favorite asks (yes, I know, my bias is showing), and it was nice to get such a decisive reply. But also, the answer to Anon’s second question just has me even more excited for Book Three’s release! 
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Nice! Like you, @Lambkin, the M-asks are some of my favorites (and I don’t deny bias!).
All three of those answers were pretty awesome, and the first two were seriously encouraging. And dayummm, an impromptu “date” with M, where if there’s any asking, he does it??? 
For the third, I honestly didn’t expect the MC to actually get the words from the “actions speak louder than words” RO, so it’s pretty cool it will eventually happen, even if it will take for freaking ever to get there. I have a feeling A-mancers will get sex with A before M figures out they have “feelings” and say those words, though, lol.
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This is a little off topic, but I had to take the 16 personalities test for a leadership and development class I have to take for my job, and it got me wondering what my detectives are, so me being me took the test role-playing each of them. If anyone else wants to and/or has nothing better to do with their time, I would love to see what personality types other detectives are.
Areylia: INTJ-A (This is actually my exact personality type too which was funny since one of friends keeps remarking on just how much like me Areylia is, so when I told her she was just like yeah-makes sense)
Lukas: ESTJ-A
Riley: ISTJ-T(This chick got 100% introvert, and it made me laugh, like its true, but still)
Cat: INFJ-T
Eleanor: ENFP-A
Rhiannon: also ISTJ, but she’s assertive unlike Riley.
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