I’ve condensed into this afterword the original afterword and the a/n on sequels, spinoffs, random things and what to read, etc, in part so that readers don’t have to trudge through two a/ns to get to the bonus chapters, in part so that all the information is in the same place, and in part because 100 is a tidier number than 101 because my OCD handles the symmetrical 101 much better than 102.  So:

Sequel

This is probably the bit that most people are interested in, so it’s coming first.  Don’t worry: I’ll also link you at the bottom of this chapter and again at the end of the second bonus chapter.  But in case you weren’t aware, there is indeed a sequel to TBBC.  It’s called Blood Sister and you can find it here (there are three bonus chapters with Minseok and Semi's honeymoon here).  It’s set eight years after TBBC and different in that it doesn’t focus on psychological stuff and is much more straight forward from that point of view.  Returning characters include Kai, D.O., Lay, Chen, Xiumin, Luhan, Semi, Sehun, possibly Chanyeol, maybe Tao, and Mighty Mouth.  Luhan’s sister also features, as do Xiumin’s kids.

Spinoff

Jongin/Kai was by far a favourite of a lot of readers, and especially after the first bonus chapter where he reveals part of his story to Minseok, I had a lot of people asking for a spinoff.  It's called Blood Bound and you can read it here.  It's set before TBBC, when Jongin is aged about 15 and living in America as part of a massive gang/cartel, and how he becomes an FBI agent from that.  Sehun and Kris both appear in it, alongside a few other K-celebrities (like L/Myungsoo from Infinite), and it's a lot more action packed than either TBBC or Blood Sister.

Rating removed!  Hooray!

You may have noticed that TBBC's rating has been removed.  Yay!  The mods are still getting back to me on other stuff, but until then, we have the newly installed "report" feature for comments and wall posts and a section in the FAQs about the moderation process.  So it's all good.

That said, just as a precaution (even though there's technically nothing in TBBC graphic enough or explicit enough to require rating), I've put an M-rating on four chapters: 5, 40, 41 and 85.  Chapter 62 most likely won't be getting a rating as that was the example I used to show the mods that that was as graphic as the violence got and they seemed to think it was okay.  For people who won't or don't (or can't) read M-rated chapters, I've set up a separate 'book' with censored versions of those chapters in, with hyperlinks to them the chapters before and after in TBBC and hyperlinks from those chapters back to the main story.  I'm guessing most of you won't need to access that because you've already read TBBC, but just in case, it's there.

Need Something to Read?

People ask me for recommendations a lot, so I am now doing a recs list, where you can find most of my favourites already recommended and the reasons why I recommend them.  You can find it here.

As a generality, I recommend going for a browse through the works of loviet, get2herheart and Yifanforever.  All three of them write well.  Of course, I also have other things of my own:

If you want Mamaverse fantasy with Chen and Sehun as co-leads, try On Ebb.

If you want something that’ll make you laugh, try Deer Luhan, With Love, with shenanigans from OT12 and Sehun as the sort-of lead.

If you want spies and action, then try Rogue, with D.O. for romantic lead.

If you want school kids and time travel with a sort of tsundere Baekhyun, go for Attayear.

If you want Prince Yixing with a semi forbidden-love vibe and lots of fluff (and a pinch of angst), read Draw Me a Date.

There are two discontinued fics I would also like to recommend, because I think they’re worth it and I wish the authors hadn’t left: Who Are You? (Kai) and Office Antics (OT12, and the fanfic that brought me to AFF – it’s frickin’ hilarious).

If you write yourself

Why not join my writing challenge?  There are various different categories with different deadlines, for one-shots, short stories, long stories, and even a NaNoWriMo option if you're thataways inclined.  First Frost also has a whole range of prizes, from karma points to posters to recs, reviews and more, and even if you don't write, contests are a good way to find new stuff to read.

General Afterword (+ general TBBC trivia)

I’m not normally a person to leave a note after a story’s finished to wrap things up, but this time I felt I had to. I know it may not always show, because I can get irritable and ratty and rant about things, but I feel absolutely honoured to have had such an absolutely fabulous bunch of readers.  Genuinely, it’s been such a privilege sharing this story with you and chatting to you, and the support you guys have given me and all the enthusiasm has been overwhelming.

TBBC has been, to use a cliché, such a journey.  I don’t think I’ve ever been so emotionally invested while writing a story.  And I really wasn’t expecting it to become big at all.  When I started writing it, I’d only been on the site about seven months.  I wasn’t that well known; I didn’t – and still don’t – interact with that many users on a regular basis outside the comments boxes of my fics (I’m shy).  It was a Xiumin story, so a tag in the EXO fandom that not many people venture into, and to start off with, I had it restricted to friends and invite only.  I don’t think that lasted more than a few days before Yifanforever was so taken by it that she put it on her recs list and told everybody to befriend me so they could read it.

Anyway, I just want to thank you all for sticking through with it and for putting up with me, and I just hope you’ve enjoyed it as much as I have.  TBBC is, at heart, still a very clichéd romance story of two-people-who-don’t-like-each-other-fall-in-love-and-the-people-trying-to-split-them-up-lose masquerading as something novel.  In particular, I’d like to thank my beta reader get2herheart, who has put up with me bouncing random ideas off her, asking her to read chapters before I post them, and just generally bugging her about TBBC things (love you, honey), and Yifanforever, who was my first friend on this site and who took it upon herself to make me some lovely posters without me even asking before she’d really even read the story, and for enthusiastically telling people to read it when I’d only had five chapters up and it could have gone anywhere quality-wise.

What inspired TBBC?

This is a question I get a lot.  I answered it in a recent Q&A session (you can read the long answer there), but I’m just going to answer it again.  Simply put, it was a conversation I was having with two or three people about the generic clichés that plague fanfiction and how hard it can be to find something that isn’t clichéd and how disappointing it is that more people don’t try to be innovative.  Arranged marriages were a large part of the discussion, not least because that kind of setting is just so ripe with opportunity for the push and pull of romance and its development and yet it’s so often just botched up and ruined, based on very shaky settings (e.g. no believable reason for the two people to be together) and that the emotions aren’t properly built up and then they’re suddenly in love (and something having all over the place).  Particularly when the arranged marriage is for teenagers and their parents decide they ought to live together because they’re engaged.  Nope.  Wouldn’t happen.

Anyway, upshot of this was I decided I was going to write one.  I was also trying to come up with a good fanfic plot starring Xiumin as he’s horribly underrepresented in the international fandom, and it just clicked.  Three hours later, I had the entire plot mapped out and was ready to go.  I’d decided to go all out on the reason they had to get married, because it had to be convincing, and my brain jumped to “what if she would die if she didn’t get married?  That’s pretty convincing.”  So I set up the plot with the highest possible stakes and everything flowed from there.

So it wasn’t a film or anything.  I’ve always believed there’s no point complaining unless you’re going to do something about it, so since I was complaining about the lack of decent arranged marriage fics, I decided to try to write a good one.  And as always, I have trouble keeping the mafia out of my stories (see DLWL).  So no.  No film