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spicysix · 9 months

Text

anywhere u go

Argyle had no idea the living nightmare he was getting himself into when he first decided to follow Jonathan Byers. Well, he'd do it again in a heartbeat anyway.

rating: T

warnings: this fic includes weed, the teeniest hint of ptsd, questionable informations about the united states' AND the canadian's geography from a brazilian writer (so, probably, mistakes. look past them pls), also questionable english by a brazilian writer not beta-read, weather as a metaphor, and subtle pining.

word count: 5.6k

author's note: title from the song of the same name by Tove Lo. written for Lex's Spicy Six Summer Fanwork Challenge, for the dialogue prompt “I’m really glad we did this”. thanks for hosting this amazing event @thefreakandthehair ♡

↳ read on ao3

If someone asked him, Argyle wasn’t sure he’d be able to retell the whole thing.

And, sure, maybe you could blame the weed a little bit. He might have partaken in it a few times here or there during the whole thing. It was right there in the van! How could he say no? Not at any of the big moments, though, of course not. He’s a stoner, not an idiot. He only smoked twice on the road when Jonathan was the one driving, that hotbox he did with Eden, beautiful goth goddess of his dreams, and once to prepare the pizza during the whole freezer piggyback thing (he likes being high when working in the kitchen okay, don’t go away judging). When they got to Hawkins, he only collected mushrooms, didn’t do them. He didn’t even have the time.

It wasn’t any kind of substance that made the next few weeks go by hazily.

It was just too much.

Chaos was installed when they arrived in Hawkins. Earthquakes had ripped open wounds into the soil of the small town — living, squeamish, bleeding wounds. Argyle learned later they were portals to the dimension under their own, where all the problems surrounding his friend’s family came from in the first place.

People were missing and hurt, some even died with the way the gates tore through houses and buildings, and the mood around Hawkins as they drove through it was rightfully sour.

Jonathan drove to his girlfriend’s house, some other people were already there and it was a beautiful reunion, it really was, but Argyle felt out of place. They parted ways after, and the ones that had been there already headed to the High School to drop some donations — except for Nancy, who went inside the van and into the passenger seat as if she owned it.

It had been Argyle’s.

But it was okay, he stayed in the back with the kiddos.

They went to the hospital, one of them — the one Supergirl had mentally piggybacked on — was hurt and in a coma. Argyle waited in the van as the rest of them went in to see her — he didn’t know her, didn’t want to invade their space.

After the visit they headed to an old cabin in the woods, abandoned, destroyed, pieces of its ceiling missing. Jonathan said Supergirl used to live there with her dad, the dead cop, and while they all reconnected and cleaned up the place, Argyle found those mushrooms that he didn’t use.

Didn’t even have the time to, because suddenly it was snowing ashes and he found his friend and his friend’s family — including his mom and a tall skinny bald guy, where did they come from? — looking over the city from the hill and the open field, and the flowers were dead and there was smoke coming from the place where all the portals met downtown.

Too much happening at the same time, and suddenly Jonathan was grabbing Argyle’s wrist and pulling him back to the van, “let’s go get the others, oh and by the way the tall skinny bald guy is the dead cop, oh and by the way my mom went to the Soviet Union to rescue him, oh and by the way the world is ending.”

So they went back to the hospital, to warn the siblings that were keeping watch over the comatose redhead, but they didn’t wanna join them back. Told Jonathan to reach through the walkies if he needed them.

So they went to the school, found the pretty guy and the cute girl that looked and acted like siblings plus the small curly one, pretty guy told them all they could go to his house cause it was big and clean and empty and they could use it as headquarters. Nancy shivered at the suggestion, her jaw tensed and Jonathan looked at her with caution, but they all agreed anyway.

So they went to pretty guy’s house, it really was big and clean and empty — all sadly so. The ones coming from California took their much needed showers, un-dead cop called a friend of his and told him to come meet them, the kids reached out to the siblings in the hospital to let them know where they all were.

It was too much.

Argyle set the water of his shower to the coldest temperature he could bare to try and shock some sense into himself. Looked at his reflection in the mirror and if it wasn’t him, he wouldn’t know all the shit that guy went through that last week. Government agents dying in his work van that he ended up stealing, a superpowered girl he helped rescue, an evil dimension with an evil wizard, people in comas and people coming back from the dead, gates to the underworld burning through a small town — and how he got roped into all of that by following a friend across the country.

He’d say he was a pretty good friend at that point.

He waited in the living room with the others as everyone went through rotations of showers, and cute girl made him a sandwich and it was nice of her, Little Byers sat by his side cause he was one of the only people who knew Argyle, and it was nice of him. When Jonathan arrived all cleaned up and smelling soapy, he sat by Argyle’s other side and Argyle felt himself relax if only a little.

They waited until un-dead cop’s friend showed up, and for some reason he showed up with two other Russian guys and a government lady and oh boy was Argyle even more confused.

Everyone took their turns retelling their own stories and gluing all the pieces together, and it was a somber story, it was bad as a horror movie and Argyle kind of wanted to throw himself out the window and get in the first bus back to California but he had no one there and in here he at least had the Byers. They were a good family, the closest to one Argyle had. So he stuck around through the puzzle.

Once in a while they referenced something that had happened in the years before and Argyle didn’t get the references because he hadn’t been there but he was sure Jonathan could fill him in later. Or he wouldn’t, and Argyle wouldn’t mind that either because it would at least save him from nightmares.

There had been losses, some friend of theirs in Hawkins — small curly one seemed to be the most affected by it, and Supergirl’s boyfriend was also really upset when he learned the news. Besides him, other three teenagers were victims of the evil wizard, plus their friend who survived but was in a coma.

On their side, a doctor dead and a doctor missing — apparently captured by the side of the government that was trying to kill Supergirl, that government lady said. Not her side trying to kill Supergirl. Another side. But apparently the doctors could help and it was relevant to know about their situation. The parents didn’t seem to agree a lot, and neither did Supergirl.

Un-dead cop’s friend made a joke about how at least on their side only bad commies had died, but the joke didn’t land. They weren’t in a nice mood for jokes.

It was too much, everyone talking about terrible things happening and talking over each other and Argyle’s head was about to explode in pain so at some point when they were all going through the timeline for the third time, he escaped and headed outside through the front door.

Jonathan found him after a couple of minutes.

“Is this too much?” he asked, and Argyle nodded. “I’m sorry. Wish we could smoke right now,” he said.

Argyle hummed, “It’s gonna look real unprofessional of us if we do, though, right?”

“It really will.” Jonathan chuckled, but it was dry and humorless.

They just stood there in silence for a few minutes, and Argyle’s fingers were trembling a little and maybe it was abstinence, probably was, but the clouds were fucking red and the smoke still made ashes rain down and it was terrifying.

“We should go inside,” Jonathan said after a while.

Argyle sighed and followed him in.

Over the next week they all hung out almost exclusively in pretty boy’s house (pretty boy’s name was Steve, Argyle learned. He dated Nancy before Jonathan did. They had a weird thing going on) and planned for the next step they’d take into, hopefully for the last time, saving the world. Well, it was Argyle’s first, but it still counted right. The kids called their parents and they all seemed to trust the old teens to be good babysitters even during the apocalypse, plus Ms. Byers and the un-dead cop were of course to be trusted.

Argyle was mostly tuned out of everything, but that was okay, firstly because he was the last one to join the mess and didn’t know the details as well as the rest of them, and it wasn’t a good use of their time to explain it to Argyle time and time again when they could be plotting strategies. So Argyle took over pretty boy Steve’s kitchen and kept his battalion fed and strong for battle.

The other reason he kept tuned out was, of course, so he wouldn’t freak the fuck out.

Keeping himself entertained with cooking — and, not going to lie, a little weed here and there when they found it — was the only thing still keeping him from that original plan of throwing himself out the window and catching the first bus back to California.

Sometimes the rest of the Party — as they called themselves, what a weird bunch — would help or at least keep him company. Un-dead cop’s friend (un-dead cop was Hopper, friend was Murray) was a great cook as Argyle already knew from that risotto, but he was also really weird and gave Argyle the creeps. Ms. Byers kept telling him to call her Joyce, tried her best in the kitchen and her food wasn’t bad, but it also wasn’t good. He liked talking to her, though. Cute girl — pretty boy Steve’s platonic soulmate, Robin — was real funny and a delight to talk to, but a fire hazard personified and not allowed near the stove. Steve could bake some mean breakfast and he was also really cool, Argyle didn’t know why Jonathan was so adamant about keeping a grudge.

“You’d like Eddie, he was a dealer,” Steve said one night as they sat in the backyard staring at the pool and smoking what was left of Argyle’s purple palm tree delight. “And he for sure would like you, and this.” Steve waved the joint around before handing it back to Argyle. Steve’s smile was sad, and Argyle hadn’t known the guy so he didn’t know how to feel or what to say. So they just kept smoking.

Nancy was how Argyle found out about the whole story between her, Jonathan and Steve — and Argyle understood partly why Jonathan held a grudge. Steve was a nice guy now though, Nancy said and Argyle knew it was true because they talked and smoked a lot late at nights, but it wasn’t his place to tell Jonathan how to feel about his girlfriend’s ex who called him slurs, physically fought him and then saved his life more than once. It was a tough spot, alright.

The kids were something else. He barely saw the siblings — Lucas Erica, the ones at comatose redhead’s, Max, bedside. They were, all three of them, constantly brought up, though, and it almost made it seem like they were there all the time. The small curly one, Dustin, seemed to think he was touched by god’s wisdom at all times, and it could be funny but it could also be a little annoying. He was pretty Steve’s favorite, though. That was interesting. Little Byers (Will) and Mike — Supergirl’s now ex-boyfriend — had something going on but Argyle wasn’t sure if he wanted to know what. Jonathan went grumpy anytime they were together, and his older brother protective act was amusing.

Supergirl — Jane, El — was Argyle’s favorite though, and there was no competition there. She was weird and tiny and badass and adorable and a huge menace, not only in the way that she could literally blow things up with her mind, but because she could be a little troublemaker kid in the best way a kid should be a troublemaker in. She was sweet and delicate and just so fucking little, and her shoulders were too tiny to hold all the weight they carried, so Argyle did his best to bake her the frozen waffles she loved, told her funny exaggerated stories so she’d laugh, gave her tight hugs whenever she needed them. It was sad that she needed them a lot. But she always thanked him and told him his hugs were the best hugs ever, so he’d hug her once again before letting her go. He liked that she smiled a lot near him. The world owed her more smiles, and he was glad to take that task.

Jonathan did his best to make Argyle feel like he was part of it all. Argyle wasn’t so sure if he even wanted to be a part of it all in the first place, but since he was dragged to it without any other option, he was glad he at least had Jonathan by his side. He chose to pair up with Argyle when they were assigned guest bedrooms in Steve’s big house so Argyle wouldn’t be alone, even if he could be with Nancy. He never scolded Argyle for smoking because he knew Argyle did it to cope, to calm down, to get less stressed and anxious — and he knew the situation was stressing and anxiety-inducing as hell. He never complained if Argyle didn’t participate in their planning sessions because he knew Argyle’s lack of previous knowledge would probably just slow them down, and once during the night he said he’d do anything to leave Argyle as out of it as he could, that he felt guilty for bringing Argyle into all of it in the first place.

Argyle blamed him, it really was kind of Jonathan’s fault, but he also forgave him.

He forgave him the second after it all happened.

He would probably follow Jonathan anyway even if he knew beforehand where he was headed to.

He followed Jonathan into the final battle against that slimy, evil, twisted, disgusting son of a bitch. He followed Jonathan with homemade armor and homemade weapons, and a courage he didn’t really have. He followed Jonathan, El, Will, and Joyce — and all the rest of their weird, codependent, brought together by disasters, wrecked and beautiful found family. He was stuck with them now forever, he knew it. He wasn’t complaining. They were his family now, too.

But that specific day, that was the one that was the most blurred out. Maybe it was a coping mechanism that his fucked up brain came up with to give him a rest, or maybe it was his brain too fucked up from all the weed usage, but he was glad either way. If someone asked him, Argyle was sure he wouldn’t be able to retell the whole thing.

It was way too much. He was glad he didn’t remember.

They were all alive and sore and bruised and hurt after it, and they all still stayed in Steve’s big house — to make sure they were all together if it wasn’t really over, and because they healed better as a pack. The government lady had found her lost doctor sometime in the middle of it all, and the whole Party got some good deals out of everything. Argyle wasn’t even going to be sued by Surfer Boy Pizza for stealing a company van. He actually got to keep it, and he took out the surfboard from the roof, took out all the company stickers, cleaned it up real good and it ended up looking like a regular beautiful yellow van where no man had ever died inside.

El seemed to have lost her powers for good this time, but she was relieved. Will was never haunted by the creepy chills in the back of his neck again. Max woke up, and she was blind and would probably never walk again, but she was so grateful. Argyle cooked her favorite food — information provided by El — when she was released from the hospital, and of course she was led straight to Steve’s house. She didn’t know Argyle before the apocalypse almost took her away, but she thanked him with a beautiful crooked smile of a girl who defeated death, and everyone surrounded her with love and warmth and everything was almost perfect. They were acting like the kids they were. They were allowed to, now. The only thing they’d have to worry about from now on was school and homework, the occasional regular teenage problems. No more evil scientists, no more evil wizards, no more evil dimensions. Just, a bad grade in Latin, or having an unrequited crush, a pimple in the middle of their foreheads. Argyle was so happy for them.

Jonathan and the rest of the older ones also got to go back to normal. Steve and Robin’s only worry was finding a new job. Nancy and Jonathan finally talked it out and resolved their issues — by breaking up. Nancy would go to Emerson, Boston, as she wished, and Jonathan didn’t want to and it was fine. They had grown too much, apart from each other in the few months they were away. They didn’t need to be each other’s grounding points anymore, because they could find other people and find themselves and worry about regular young adult stuff like a bad grade in Journalism 101 or the fact they were out of weed or photographic film.

Jonathan wanted to go to New York.

Argyle could get on the first bus back to California, but he had no one there and that was okay, because here he had Jonathan. Jonathan, who Argyle crossed the country for, who Argyle walked into Hell for, who Argyle would probably follow anywhere.

So Jonathan decided to go to New York, and Argyle decided to follow him.

They took the renewed regular yellow van where no man had ever died, belts buckled in for the first time ever because they valued their lives a whole lot now. They took an atlas from Robin’s collection, a few pre-rolled joints Steve bought from god knows who, a bunch of snacks the kids gathered for them, clothes they borrowed because they ran away from California with no bags, and a tight hug from each and every one of their weird, codependent, brought together by disasters, wrecked and beautiful found family.

They took the I-69 to Indy, the I-70 to Pittsburgh, the I-76 to Philadelphia, and the I-95 to New York. Twenty hours on the road was nothing considering it took them three days to get from middle-of-bumfuck-nowhere (Nevada) to middle-of-bumfuck-nowhere (Indiana). They took turns driving, stopped for gas and lunch and dinner and a smoke session, slept in the back of the van in a parking lot until they weren’t high anymore, arrived in New York as the sky was pouring down on the city.

“The rain is nice,” Jonathan commented as he looked through the window in the passenger seat.

It hadn’t rained in Hawkins ever since the world almost ended. No matter how many times they showered, bathed, scrubbed all the grime and dirt and blood away, sometimes it still felt like they weren’t clean. The town was definitely still dirty.

“The rain is nice,” Argyle agreed.

They kept driving around, they got trapped in traffic, they got screamed and horned at, they laughed back because it felt nonsensical to be mad about cars in streets. They stopped at a diner, ate a bunch of eggs sunny side up, to counter the weather, watched the regulars and the waitresses and the cook in their routines, and they smiled at each other because it was so nice to see normal things for once. People living their normal lives. Not a single one of them aware that the two weird kids in the corner booth almost died so they could be spilling coffee on the counter and getting their mouths dirty with grease.

They asked for a cheap recommendation on a place they could rest, drove a little more, got a little more trapped in traffic, got a little more yelled and horned at, until they found the shitty motel that the waitress promised was decently cleaned no matter how fucked up it looked on the outside. But their expectations bar wasn’t high, anyway. They had two beds, separated by a tiny nightstand table, and they fell asleep turned to face each other, curtains open and bathroom lights on because the darkness couldn’t be trusted.

Next day emerged with the clouds all gone, the weirdest of contrasts, and a chilly wind kept throwing Argyle’s hair to all sides and Jonathan kept looking at him with a soft smile whenever it whipped his pale skin. They left the van in the motel and walked and walked and walked until their feet hurt, had no idea where they were going and no exact place to go to, a joint shared and their fingers touched and their mouths wrapped around the same paper. It was nothing, and it was everything.

They watched people passing by, everyone in such a hurry, people scowling and people smiling and people somehow with their expressions completely neutral. People living their normal lives, not a single one of them aware that the two weird kids walking shoulder to shoulder almost died so they could be running to catch the subway or signing for a cab to stop.

They managed to get back to the motel, took their showers, scrubbed scrubbed scrubbed and still felt unclean, collapsed on their separate beds again, turned to face each other, curtains open, bathroom lights left on.

Jonathan wanted to go to NYU.

Ever since he was six years old, he told Argyle. The Tisch Photography program was a big one, his dream ever since he had a bowl cut worst than Will’s, when his father was still home and his mom wasn’t overprotective because none of them knew monsters existed just under their feet.

Jonathan’s eyes gleamed as he spoke about the university, so Argyle offered and Jonathan agreed, and the next day Jonathan hopped on a subway train and Argyle followed him.

The subway was too much, Argyle noticed. He shared a look with Jonathan over someone else’s shoulder and knew they were thinking the same.

They went south south south to Greenwich Village with its pretty brownstones and its artsy students roaming around, so many of them, and Jonathan stopped across the street looking at the Tisch building for a long time, inconveniently in the middle of the sidewalk, his fellow hipsters having to walk around him. Argyle looked at Jonathan the whole time, saw it firsthand as his gears turned, as the gleam in his eyes faded, as the wrinkle in his forehead deepened.

“Too much?” he asked.

Jonathan nodded. “For now, at least.”

Argyle just started walking and Jonathan followed, and they just walked across Greenwich Village until they were at the pier and they looked at New Jersey from afar, all the ferries crossing the Hudson, people still in a hurry all the goddamn time and Argyle’s fingers tapped against the railing that was there to stop him from falling into the water. He kinda wanted to do it just to see what it would feel like. He lost track of time staring at the water, and the boats, and the people on the boats living their normal lives, not a single one of them aware of the two weird kids on the pier that almost died so they could cross the river on a daily basis; and he felt Jonathan staring at him and maybe it should’ve been the other way around.

“Wanna try again?” he asked after, maybe, hours, and Jonathan nodded.

They walked back, Jonathan stopped inconveniently in the middle of the sidewalk across the street, stared at the Tisch building for what wasn’t longer than a minute and a half.

“Too much,” he decided.

They took the subway back north north north to the motel, took their showers, scrubbed scrubbed scrubbed and still felt unclean, collapsed on their separate beds again, curtains open, bathroom lights left on. Jonathan turned away and slept looking at the wall. Argyle slept looking at Jonathan’s back.

Sun was still out bright the next day.

They went out silently for breakfast at a café a few blocks down, heard the weirdest fucking story told by the people sitting at the table next to them. One look at each other and they were back at the motel, into the van, across the bridge, east east east into Long Island and clouds started to appear the more further east they went.

Montauk sure had that creepy energy hanging in the air, as if everyone was constantly waiting for the shoe to drop, but it somehow didn’t feel as world-ending as Hawkins did. Jonathan whispered that if Will was there, he’d probably be scratching his neck by now. They kept heading east, into the State Park, to the lookout, out of the van. Stared at the ocean. All that amount of water, the vast nothingness of the view and the wide greatness it contained, and it should’ve been too much but Argyle let out a long sigh and breathed in deeply, a single drop of rain touched his forehead and it felt good.

They went back to the van, back to Manhattan, back to the motel, took their showers, scrubbed a little less, collapsed on their separate beds, curtains closed, bathroom lights left on, turned to face each other again. They said nothing. There was a constant hum from somewhere outside the motel, in the neighborhood, that lulled them to sleep. Argyle thought he heard Jonathan call for him but when he opened his eyes again Jonathan was snoring lightly. Argyle smiled at the view and fell back to unconsciousness.

Clouds were back the next day.

They checked out of the motel, Jonathan took the seat behind the wheel, headed back to I-95 again and hit the pedal hard. They drove for about half the time as they did from Hawkins to New York, never leaving the I-95, looking through the windows as they drove past New Haven, Providence, Boston, plus some stupidly small and completely forgettable towns in Maine.

They only left the I-95 when they passed the border, when the Highway didn’t exist anymore.

“Will they know we have weed?” Argyle asked as they were growing closer to the customs. They only had a single joint left, but it was worrying anyway.

“Don’t think they’ll check,” Jonathan answered, and he didn’t seem bothered at all.

Argyle doubted they would be able to cross, he didn’t even have a passport, but Jonathan was thankfully right. The guard asked for their drivers’ licenses only, where they were headed and what they were doing — Jonathan said they were on a roadtrip. When the guard asked how long they were planning on staying, Jonathan said “enough days to see a bit of the three east provinces”, and that’s when Argyle was sure the guard would tell them to turn around and get the fuck out, back to bumfuck-nowhere, Indiana. But he just nodded as he inspected the photos on their documents, and when he handed them back along with a pocket-sized canadian atlas he said: “Have fun.”

And that was it.

Argyle’s shoulders dropped from where they had situated above his ears as Jonathan waited until the customs couldn’t be seen from the windows anymore so he could hit the pedal hard again, this time on what they called the Trans-Canada Highway (information provided by the pocket-size atlas gifted to them by a random and kind government employee).

Jonathan drove for about an hour and a half after they crossed, and Argyle’s sudden drop of adrenaline made him doze off for a while before he woke up as Jonathan was parking at a motel. He looked around, saw some signs, picked up the pocket-size atlas from where it had fallen off to the floor of the van.

“You wanna stay in…” he checked the atlas, “Fredericton, New Brunswick? This was your destination all along?” he asked with a grin.

Jonathan chuckled. “I’m just tired for today. But I wanna keep going, actually. If that’s okay?” his eyes were suddenly filled with doubt, and oh no, Argyle couldn’t have that.

“Absolutely, my man. Point where and I’m headed right behind ‘ya,” he was smiling, and his tone was light-hearted, but he was being the most honest he ever was.

Jonathan seemed to get it, because he was looking back at him with that reserved soft smile of his and Argyle’s brain went a little fuzzy, but it was probably from the nap he took.

They went inside the motel, finally, got their bedroom with two beds, separated by nothing but a few inches, and Argyle’s first instinct was to actually bring them together so they’d be just one big bed, but he restrained. They took showers, didn’t really scrub a lot, collapsed on their barely separate beds, curtains closed, bathroom light left off, turned to face each other. Argyle fell asleep with a smile on his face, and if he didn’t dream it, Jonathan had one of his own on his lips.

Next day was more than cloudy, it was pouring rain again.

Jonathan sat behind the steering wheel once more, hit the pedal and they headed east east east, so far east that Argyle feared for a second that they were going to reach the border of the world or something. They crossed New Brunswick and almost reached Nova Scotia, but then Jonathan took a sharp turn north.

“An island, man?” Argyle asked as they crossed the bridge to Prince Edward. Jonathan just shrugged, but he was smiling wider than Argyle had ever seen him smile before. Not bothered at all. It was a good sight to see.

The capital city was on the southeast, but Jonathan kept going north again. It seemed like they were almost at the end of the island before he finally stopped, at some stupidly small and completely forgettable town.

“This place has probably half of the citizens of Hawkins,” Argyle noted.

“I need a phone,” Jonathan said.

His smile didn’t falter.

They found the single Bed & Breakfast the town had to offer, asked for a bedroom — it only had one bed, they didn’t mind and neither did the young lady in charge —, they asked to use their phone, “How much is a phone call to Indiana, you think?” Jonathan asked Argyle, smile turning into a wicked grin and Argyle had definitely never seen that, so the only answer he could come up with was a loud laugh.

Jonathan dialed.

Argyle saw the lady had a bong on her table, so he lit up their final joint.

They waited for the phone to be answered.

Jonathan’s eyes never left Argyle’s, and their wide smiles were like mirrors of each other. Argyle had no idea what Jonathan was up to, clearly no good, but Argyle was down to it anyway. He’d follow Jonathan in whatever disturbed plan he had, to whatever edge of the world he wanted to go to.

And, finally:

“Hop, hey, it’s Jon. I’m in Canada. Yeah, you heard it right, Canada. Do you think Owens’ FBI friends can do us a final favor?”

⟿

Argyle looks out the window.

In the reflex, he sees Jonathan, his head on Argyle’s shoulder, and he’s also looking out the window. It’s been like this for a few months now, just the two of them, in tandem, doing the same things. Synchronized. It feels good, the best he ever felt. Jonathan’s skin is warm against Argyle where their arms touch, and he smiles without even thinking about it. It’s been like this for a few months now, smiling around just at the thought or sight of Jonathan. It feels good. The best he ever felt about someone.

“I’m really glad we did this,” Jonathan mumbles against Argyle’s shoulder.

This: a trip along the coast to a different country? This: bribing the government for a new beginning in a town so small and forgettable that no monster, human or not, could find them again? This: getting a house of their own, a fucking boat and a fishing license, a truck they could drive down to Charlottetown on good days?

This: falling in love in the process?

Argyle’s not sure what Jonathan is referring to. He’s really glad too, either way.

Argyle looks at their small world out the window.

It’s Sunday morning, commerce is all closed, streets are empty. The sun is covered by clouds, a summer thunderstorm approaching, and he can see the sea from here. There’s no one at the beach. The waves look nice. All that amount of water, the vast nothingness of the view and the wide greatness it contains.

It’s not too much. It’s nothing at all, actually, and it’s everything.

And it’s perfect that way.

#jargyle #jonathan byers x argyle #jargyle fanfic #jargyle fic #jargyle oneshot #argyle x jonathan byers #jonathan byers #argyle #stranger things fic #stranger things fanfic #lui writes #lexssummerfanworkschallenge #should've posted this tomorrow on jargyle jursday but oh well. what's done is done

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wolfscarr · 3 months

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Hazbin Hotel S1 Thoughts...

So guess I better be getting around to it, since now it's....suddenly over as quick as it came. So what are my thoughts?

It's.....fine? I guess? It's certainly not anything Earth shattering or groundbreaking it's just.....a show. Which I'm not sure if that's a good or bad thing, considering how long it's been. But hey if people find it amazing, then fine....not saying you can't, this is only my opinion after all.

I think what bothers me the most is the tonal and pacing issues, everything just seems to rapid fire, one minute it's all serious and the next there's some joke coming up, mainly I guess in the 1st 4 episodes, the others I can't really recall. But it just was very....whiplashing I guess.

Another thing is, I feel like some stuff in this show was just ripped straight out of fans ideas/theories since the Pilot, some years ago. I mean in EP 4, there's clear dialogue that was ripped straight from a fanwork, along with some other stuff...either that or the writing is THAT predictable that people were able to figure stuff out YEARS in advance and if that's the case then just.....wow.

I also didn't feel anything for Charlie/Vaggie as a couple, for like the first 4 episodes Vaggie felt more like a bodyguard at worst and best friend at well....best. Yeah sure the later episodes, did at least give an indication that...yeah they are girlfriends, but I can see that this was really a kind of last minute thing. Maybe S2 will make it better, but I dunno....I mean the couple is there, I acknowledge it, but that's frankly it.

The songs....have to be honest, they were just there and gone for me, at least in the first 4 episodes. In fact in some songs I feel like they weren't sync'd properly? Or something? Because I had a hard time actually following what was being sung by the characters, it just seemed all over at times in some of these songs.

Now the later songs....again, were fine? Frankly the only one I remember at all that's in my head, that I feel many don't talk about or don't like is More Than Anything.

At least...in a vacuum it's fine, within the show it's.....ok, but again this is where the issue of pacing comes in. The pair haven't seen one another for a long, long time and they sing a song and suddenly their relationship is fine and Lucifer has hope, saying that his daughter turned his viewpoint around.

Now....I'm hoping that this just means, he's in support of HIS daughter, not being in support of the Sinners. Because it just seems really bizarre, that all it took to undo centuries of depression was....a song and reuniting with his daughter. Now I like their interactions/dynamics, it just again was blown by with the problems and issues.

I dunno, everything being blown by so quick is just...jarring and I get it, only 8 episodes and I feel like some say

"You have to look at it, as if it were a Musical."

Which.....just because it has songs in it, doesn't mean I should have to view it like that. Other shows have songs, doesn't mean I also have to view them as Musicals in order to rectify the tonal issues or pacing.

But sure, perhaps it's more due to the fact that it's only 8 episodes....but even then.

Anyway, so the characters are.....fine I suppose. Don't really have a whole opinion on them, because they are just there, some are interesting but I feel there needs to be a bigger push.

I think perhaps my favorite is and this might be an odd take, is Lucifer...now I know many don't seem to like his whole 'sad guy' routine and the backstory. Admittedly I'm not...too thrilled on it, but I'm still sort of open for his character and mayb in S2, things will be different.

Granted yes, I realize making the literal Devil, the embodiment of everything wrong with mankind, evil of evil into sympatric sad guy is....strange, but it's not like this is anything new. Well at least being sympathetic anyway, this has been done in other shows....granted ones with longer episodes that can actually flesh him out, but still.

I'm a little irked at Lucifer and Lilith not being together, buuuuut I'm hoping S2 they can get back together and I hope that Lilith just doesn't become a Stella 2.0. Granted since the start and seeing a bunch of fanworks with Lucifer/Lilith being stupidly in love and wholesome, perhaps that's skewed my perspective, but I also recall it was noted that they were heavily in love at some point....so I'm betting on in S2 some huge romance number for them...hopefully.

Now I see people go on about what S2 could entail since they blew Heaven away so quickly and yeah, I can agree doing that was kinda....sudden. But I don't think it'll be the Vees, they seem more like secondary antagonists more so.

In truth, I feel the S2 main big baddie will be this Root of Evil thing or what have you, that they'll all have to fight against. Which...could be interesting, but I guess we'll have to wait and see.

Anyway overall the show is...fine, again nothing huge or groundbreaking for me, there's issues with it like EVERYTHING...

#hazbin hotel #hazbin hotel charlie #hazbin hotel lucifer #hazbin hotel lilith #hazbin hotel critical

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ohandcounting · 9 months

Text

The Book That Will Try And Eat Your Hands.

The year is 2X1X, and 30ish years before that, a new type of book had been made: The Living Book™

The Living Book™ is not actually alive, it is just a format that lets books do things that books could not normally do. Like have voice acting, videos, or even sections where you have to play a game. (This isn't going to be about Homestuck.)

A new Living Book™ released, and a lot of people are talking about it. It's wearing inspiration from another well known Living Book™ on its sleeve: "psi kid 2" A Living Book™ you've never read, but one you know enough about to know you would enjoy reading if you did. So you decide to buy the one everyone's currently talking about:

"HoleBound"

A story about a kid who falls into a hole, and is stuck underground. It's primarily about the great characters met during the story, and its unique interactions with them. Then you get through the prologue, start reading the first chapter and...

The book starts trying to eat your hands! Someone in the book looks you dead in the eyes and says "YOU MORON!" It obviously can't eat your hands. It's not even strong enough to hurt you, let alone damage you. But dang! This might be really funny and definitely makes reading the book way harder! It's common place to just watch someone else go through a book like this, and plenty of people do. Tons of them just to see people's reactions to what happens in the book.

Maybe you read it yourself, maybe you don't. But you know this for a fact: You loved it, it's one of the best things ever written. When you get to the end, a character addresses you directly. They tell you: "I know how to get an even better ending, one where you could even get the book to stop trying to eat your hands." So you do it, follow their instructions down to the letter.

It! Is! Amazing! You're crying tears of joy, even getting to go back through the book again without it trying to eat your hands! It is fantastic, all of the characters are grateful you finally got the book to stop trying to eat peoples hands.

Then, a compartment in the back of the book pops open.

Out of it falls supplies to seal the book closed. It's the only way to make sure they'll stay happy, reading the book again risks the book trying to eat people's hands again. You will never be able to enjoy this book again, or any of the magnificent characters you got to meet within it, but it's the only way to truly end things.

Tears fill your eyes as you do, but...Finally, it's over.

You aren't really satisfied though, it was such a good Living Book™! Surely there's plenty of things other people have written about it! so you look it up and

People are eating the book. They. Are.

EATING!

THE

BOOK!

LITERALLY

This isn't just a clickbait thing either. The chapters of the book are wildly different from what you read, as the characters within are reacting to people EATING THE BOOK. This is the ONLY way to get specific information on the backgrounds of the characters you love so much, it even gives unique information on how the world works. This ends up being so popular, that there are multiple entire fanworks that are Just About Eating The Book. In fact, there's so many now that there's even an Eating The Book Multiverse for just some of the fanworks about eating the book.

You ask a friend about it, and they're like "Oh yeah, it's absolutely my favorite part of the whole thing. I 100% recommend eating the book, but if you can't this guy has a great video on it. He even sealed his book, so you get to watch him rip it open too." You might even look at them like they're insane, but at the end of the day: It is just a book.

It IS just a book.

No one in there is actually happy the book is sealed, they're just written to act that way. They are not real.

You are now sitting in a room alone. Looking at a sealed book. Remembering all of the good times you had with it, all the characters that made you laugh. All the tears you shed fighting with it, the time spent sealing it closed. You would wipe away your memories of it to experience it for the first time again in an instant.

Asking yourself just one question

Am I really going to eat the book?

. . .

This is effectively what it felt like to play Undertale when it released.

#Undertale

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meltingpenguins · 7 months

Note

I’m irritated by how people have been comparing Stede’s arc in the recent ofmd episodes to Aziraphale’s arc in s2, specifically by claiming that both characters acting different isn’t bad writing. The thing is though, these people fail to realize that Stede and Aziraphale are two completely different characters with two completely different arcs from two completely different shows. Stede’s change in behavior makes sense contextually, plus the second season has been serving as a natural continuation of the first. Meanwhile, Aziraphale’s behavior comes out of nowhere and is so forced, just like the entire season since it doesn’t seem like a necessary continuation of the first. It’s annoying to read a whole post defending Stede’s arc just for it to end with “it’s the Aziraphale discourse all over again” like please stop baselessly comparing the two to shut down Good Omens criticism smh

I think the core issue lies in people not being able to see further than 'aesthetics'. the see nothing but the dark-clad grumpy one + the light-clad sunshine and they stop thinking. because, hey, if we have the aesthetics, every other box on the checklist has to be ticked off as well, right?

I have yet to watch s2 of ofmd, but from all i've seen on my dash it accomplishes what GO can only dream of (though YMMV on the magnitude)

GOs issue is that it does the above, the aesthetics-checklist. And the thing is, we had the 'grumpy + sunshine' dynamic in the book. Just that the dark-clad demon was the sunshiney dork (who is trying so blessed hard to come across as cool and suave) and the light-clad angel is the grumpy bitchy one (he still has the heart in the right place).

the show, however, threw all that overboard. what you see is what you get, and then some. s1 at least has some pushback from the book's plot and the personality in there, but s2 is a lost cause. Because, it would seem, the show never actually set out to adapt left alone continue the book. it's all to make a quick buck from shippers that will jump onto the aesthetics and gobble up the half-arsed, worn-out tropes.

In general the show has so much disdain for the audience, it's frustrating.

I mean, have you noticed how all the new elements, no matter how small, only ever rip open plotholes, and often, in addition blandly explain jokes and noodle incidents, yet still not telling us anything new? on the contrary, all these bits and bobs make the world smaller, because the world of the GO miniseries is just black and white, and utterly one dimensional.

That said, I wish the omfd fandom all the best on the high seas, may your worldbuilding and characterarcs be amazing and fulfilling, and your booty of fanworks by bountiful.

#good omens #good omens critical

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ekingston · 1 year

Note

Ok, I just spent the last few minutes doing nothing but staring at Kara in that DWTS piece and I don't see it AT ALL. Beyond being blonde I see absolutely no resemblance between your Kara and either Sara or Ava. It's just not there.

It's a gorgeous work of art. If anon needed to look at Lena’s hair (ignoring the fact both characters are clearly named in the piece and the caption) to figure out the blonde was Kara I suspect that they have worse eyesight than me without my glasses, and I’m not legally or safely allowed to drive without them.

And you would think that humans as a species would have figured out by now that “Not to be [incredibly insulting in one way or another] but [is incredibly insulting]” is not a thing that is ever ok to say to anyone at any time. “Not to be a dick but” then don't. Just stop talking and cut your losses there. Creatives in particular have already said it to ourselves a million times in our heads, we don't need outside confirmation that our self-doubt was right all along.

I had a chapter I posted with a note “this is the most nervous I have been about any piece of writing I have ever done. I hope it doesn't suck too much.” and then got a comment “Since you asked for criticism [here are all the reasons this sucked and one minor ‘compliment’ at the end]”. Like exactly what in that note says “yes I welcome people ripping apart something I spent the last several months agonizing over”? Nearly made me quit writing altogether. I do not understand the way these people think and hope I never do.

i’m sorry that happened to you! making something and sharing it with the world will always be two very different joys to me — creating is a given but publishing it is a choice, and especially when you first get started, putting your work online is an incredibly vulnerable & incredibly brave thing. i know how devastating having even one person receive it like that can be — good for you for not letting it stop you!

to be honest, i'm still amazed by how much the culture in the fandom spaces i’m in subscribes to the ‘don’t like, don’t interact’ idea. my first experiences with publishing fanwork (fic) happened in the early 1700s, when getting feedback was rare (most websites didn’t have a built-in function to respond, so you’d only get people going through the trouble of emailing you their thoughts directly) and when it did come, the comments leaned toward the brutally honest, like you had presented your work to a classroom of your peers ready to pick apart the things they thought needed work. (in other words, there were a lot of shit sandwiches.)

the thing is that anonymous critiques like that — while having their value, especially when english was still a foreign language to me! — will never be very effective, because they’re coming from a random stranger whose credentials are entirely unknown. i’ve always learned the most from friends whose work i admire and who i know are genuinely interested in helping each other improve. those are the people i want to be learning from (and with)!

i’m sure you know this but it bears repeating how much of what we love about fanwork is exceedingly subjective, and the more you find your own style, the more you realize there’s not one way to ‘do’ art (whatever kind) correctly. no matter how ‘good’ your work is, someone will inevitably be unhappy with your choices.

so i assume most of the anonymous criticism we do receive is from people who aren’t writers or artists themselves, and that they’re clueless both to what they’re talking about and how their words will land. it’s made it much easier for me to shrug off their remarks and continue doing what i love. i hope you feel that way too! i hope we have an easy week ahead with plenty of time, energy and inspiration to create whatever we choose to!

#thank you for the thoughtful ask #& sorry about the late reply!#i'm in hermit mode plotting out this rootin' tootin' new au #i get a little obsessive. you know how it is!#ask me things!#pyresrpgear

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akanekitty · 2 years

Text

Someone posts fan art: OMG it’s amazing! 😍 So cool!

Someone posts a link to their fanfiction or a snippet of their fanfic: Here are paragraphs of why your grammar/plot/characterization sucks or worse yet, *silence*

Why yes I’m bitter. Why do ask?

The different treatment of the fanworks in this fandom annoys the fuck out of me. As a fanftwriter because I can’t draw shit, I find myself wondering why bother writing at all if all you’re going to get in return if negative at best or silence at the worse.

Yeah, fanfic is mostly for yourself, but I’ll be damn if it doesn’t hurt when see fanart almost immediately gets some kind of reaction that’s positive. Meanwhile when you post fanfic, even if you post the most perfect piece (which ain’t happening because no one is perfect) you’re hoping that maybe you won’t get ripped to shreds, and maybe someone will give a comment you can.

I really feel for newer writers. I’ve been around long enough to fight back and tell someone to fuck off when I get something unnecessarily negative. But someone new? They may never pick up a pen again, and that’s the only way to improve. And with the non engagement, you find yourself staring into a void while a fellow artist might get a ton of comments with just one pic.

I’ve had a love and hate relationship with the SWAT Kats fandom, and if I can ever get Mad Love finished, I’d probably be done with it for good. Screw Revolution. If it happens, it happens. I’m already half way out just because I feel Feral got a raw deal on the show and the SWAT Kats were dicks to him regardless of what the flashback showed.

*sighs* Don’t mind me I’m just venting. But I’ve said what I said, and I will not apologize for it.

#swat kats #swat kats fanfics #swat Kats fandom #i said what i said #swat Kats fandom critical

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greenninjagal-blog · 3 years

Text

Trouble

Hi yeah its me, and look I’m already back with a new fic for the new year :D cherish this moment I don’t think i will have have this turn around so quick again. For the TSS Fanworks Secret Santa Exchange because I was a pinch hitter :DD @nerdywriterhaven I hope you enjoy!

Summary: Patton has a thing about boardgames and Virgil has a thing about Logan. Together they figure it out.

Word Count: 7900

Quick Taglist: @alias290 @chelsvans @coyboi300 @dante-reblogs @dwbh888 @glitchybina @faithfulcat111 @felicianoromano @harrypotternerdprincess @holliberries @jemthebookworm @killerfangirl3 @mrbubbajones @musical-nerd18 @nonasficcollection @stricken-with-clairvoyancy @the-sunshine-dims @themagicheartmailman @themultishipperchild @thenaiads @treasureofpriam @vianadraws @welovelogansanders

Read on Ao3 || My General Writing Masterlist

Patton shows up at Virgil’s dorm room just slightly after six pm on a Tuesday with two thermoses of soup that are still warm to the touch, a halloween tupperware of chocolate chip cookies that had been passed between him and Virgil so many times that Patton really doesn’t remember whose it was originally, his laptop, phone, the chargers for both, and the board game Trouble.

Virgil, predictably, shuts the door in his face the second he sees the game box hidden under all the other things in his arms. Patton also thinks that Virgil tells him to go away, but it’s muddled by the door.

Instead he shuffles all the supplies to his left arm and knee, and knocks again on his door just below the leftover tape from the nametag that his RA keeps putting up and Virgil keeps ripping down because he doesn’t want anyone knowing where he sleeps. His knuckles hum with the rap, datatata dat dat! And he smiles even when there’s the sound of something being thrown at the door from that side.

Patton chooses not to hear it because he’s a good friend and an even more stubborn houseguest.

The door a little bit down the hall opens up with the usual fanfare of someone who is running late to a night class-- which of course is the charm of Roman Prince. He looks nice, as usual, and Patton even thinks that if he hadn’t been wearing two different colored shoes, no one would even know that he had probably just woken up from a nap. The music of his room blares out into the hall with a rap song Patton thinks is Hip With the Kids these days, but Patton himself can’t make out any of the actual words.

All the much better because he’s pretty sure it’s Remus’s music and Remus likes his songs like he likes just about everything else: dirty, scandalous, and offensive. Not that Patton is good friends with either of the Prince siblings, but he’s heard the rumors floating around about both. Roman smiles at him, with glittering white teeth and dimples and soft warm brown eyes that could have been made of melted chocolate.

“Oh! What a spectre!” Roman says, seeming to forget that he’s on the way to a class at the sight of Patton standing at Virgil’s door. “Tell me, angel, what brings a glorious sight such as you to our dorm buildings on this amazing day?”

Virgil’s door swings back open before Patton can answer and Virgil hisses from the darkness, the way he’s usually prone to do whenever Roman or Remus or their blatant disregard for the rules about music volume at two AM is brought up.

He looks not much better from the glimpse Patton got before the door was closed in his face earlier: he’s still pale to the point of looking sickly and dressed in the same clothes as yesterday, with his eye shadow smeared and his hair not brushed at all. There’s a red imprint on the side of his face that Patton thinks matches a crease in his blankets or pillows from where he probably tried to suffocate himself on and off all day between anxiously texting Patton all about “the absolute worst day of my entire life and no I’m not even exaggerating this time Pat”.

“Hi Virgil!” Patton says, as Virgil reaches forward and to take a thermos and the tupperware from his arms and glare unbidenedly at Roman. “I brought dinner!”

“I hate you,” Virgil says, and does not mean because he loves Patton’s Broccoli Cheddar Cheer Up Soup and he’s been in need of cheering up since Patton had seen his messages at noon on his way to his second class of the day.

Roman gasps like he’s offended on behalf of Patton who is not offended as much as endeared to his best friend of several years. “Virgil! How could you act so callus towards a beautiful muse such as this?”

“Get lost, Princey,” Virgil tells him firmly, grumpily, Virgil-ly. “He came here specifically to make a pun about my pain.”

“I do it with love,” Patton adds. “And I brought cookies to make up for it.”

Roman looks like he doesn’t know what to do with that information and Virgil doesn’t give him time to find out because he kinda hates Roman-- although Patton always tells him that “hate” is a strong word and Virgil always says he means it anyway. Patton supposes that if he, too, had hallmates that played music louder than life up to the early hours of the mornings during Finals Week, and then cranked it higher when he knocked on the door to ask them to stop, he might also strongly dislike them.

Virgil ushers Patton into the dark room and then kicks the door closed while Patton is waving goodbye at Roman.

It takes a moment for his eyes to adjust to the light level: Virgil was certainly making use of those thick blackout curtains! It made the whole room look like it was three AM, rather than six PM! There are blobs of stuff all around the room, piles of clothes and blankets that Virgil prefers to have on the floor rather than put somewhere where he’s not going to trip over it in the middle of the night, but Patton supposes that’s just how Virgil’s always been.

“If someone breaks in, they’re gonna trip over this shit and I will be out of here long before they can get back up,” Virgil had said the first time Patton had suggested maybe, possibly cleaning something until they found the floor.

The desk where Virgil did his school work is empty and the textbooks and computer that normally covered it are all on the ground like a massacre from what Patton can make out. Virgil shuffles through the room and ends up turning on the purple lava lamp that Patton got him three years ago so that they could at least see each other and the faux-floor, and even then he doesn’t look happy at needing that much. The elevated bed had the blankets ripped up from it and turned into a nest with Virgil’s phone light peeking out from the depths like some underwater cave with a sea monster in it waiting for an unsuspecting diver.

“Remind me, how you got into this building?” Virgil says, tiredly as he pries open the cookie container. “It requires a key and last time I checked, you don’t have one of those, Pat.”

“As if a key would stop me from checking on you!” Patton replies. He plops himself on a pile of clothes and clears away another spot for Virgil to collapse next to him, so that Virgil can’t exactly escape. “Now, what is this about Logan again? You were being kinda vague and world-ending-y again. ”

Virgil lets out a moan around the cookie he shoved in his mouth and drops to the floor next to Patton, to munch angrily or just upsetly without actually offering an answer, because he’s Virgil and he’s allergic to talking about things that upset him. Patton sets down his other thermos, his laptop, and his own phone to make room for the game between them.

“Must we?” Virgil asks as Patton sets up the board with a practiced hand. Even in the near darkness of the room he knows exactly what he’s doing, and could probably figure it out with no light at all.

“Of course!” Patton says. “You sounded like you were in Trouble.”

“ Sorry to disappoint.”

“It’s rather Risk -y of you to be self deprecating while within hugging distance.”

Virgil doesn’t say anything for a moment, just swallows the bite of his cookie and stares at the colored pieces in front of him. The board game is well worn and well loved-- one of the first ones Patton had ever gotten and one of the first ones he ever convinced Virgil to play with him. Although “convinced” is a strong word for how Patton had just been staring at the board numbly with red rimmed eyes when his father had asked Virgil to come over and try to coax him into eating something, anything, please .

They’d lost three pieces of the red team and one of the yellow and two of the green, but that’s okay because Patton generally played blue and Virgil had custom ordered four purple pieces for just the two of them a few years ago.

Carefully, placatingly, Virgil reaches a hand forward and pops the dice bubble for his number. He gets a four.

Patton gets a five.

“How many times have we played this one, Pat?” Virgil asks, in a voice much softer than before. In the faded purple light and the shadows, it’s hard to see the number on the die, and harder to see exactly what Virgil is thinking about with his eyes hidden like that. His nails are bitten down to the quick, ruining the black nail polish he spent an hour applying last weekend over their shared Biology notes.

Patton shrugs as he reaches forward to take his turn and pops the bubble. Honestly he didn’t think he could calculate the answer if Virgil pressed: this was their go-to game, this was his go-to pun, this is what they did even when the world was falling apart at the seams. It was easier to focus on moving playing pieces a couple pegs than it was to focus on the sound of a heart monitor or raspy breathing or bony pale fingers that shook when they tried to hold anything.

It was easier to find a way to win when the instructions were so clear, and the rules were so fair, and the consequences of losing were just having to put the game back in the box.

Virgil doesn’t say anything more and Patton doesn’t force him to, although he desperately wants to. He wants to reach out and catch Virgil’s hands in his own, he wants to give him a squeeze, he wants to wipe away the tear tracks in his makeup and he wants to tell Virgil that whatever it is, Patton will be there for him.

He wants Virgil to look at a game for once and have fun.

But the only sound in the room is the popper when they roll the die back and forth.

Patton gets the six first. He moves his second leftmost piece to the start and hits it again for a three.

Virgil stares his blue piece on the board for a long moment, without blinking. His hands lie limply in his lap and the tub of cookies sits at his knee. The purple light makes his eyes glisten sweetly, wetly, sadly, with a resignation that Patton knows and wishes he doesn’t. The lump in his throat swells up.

“Virgil?”

Virgil blinks. And then blinks again.

“Why should I even bother at this point?” he asks. He runs a hand up to his hair and tugs at the locks.

“Virgil, this is the opening of the game,” Patton says. “You can’t give up alrea--”

“But it’s not like I’m going to win,” Virgil says and Patton sucks in a breath sharply.

Oh. It was one of those days.

Patton thinks that he should have been expecting this; it had been a decent amount of time since Virgil last had refused to finish a game, and Patton had almost thought that maybe they had kicked those thoughts for good! That through sheer willpower and perseverance and proof to the contrary, they might have managed to rework how Virgil approached a challenge. That at one point Virgil might laugh and smile even when he wasn’t in the lead--

And yet, Patton’s sitting with one piece three spaces ahead of Virgil and Virgil is ready to call it quits. The game had just started. Patton had only been sitting in the room for a total of five minutes. Virgil hadn’t talked for more than a couple sentences.

It’s one of those days, except that Patton doesn’t think that it’s ever been this bad before, because usually they at least made it to the one piece around the board in Trouble , through to one check in Chess , through to one hotel being built in Monopoly , or one train ticket completed in Ticket to Ride .

“This is a sign, isn’t it?” Virgil continues. “I’m just being stupid even considering it. Of course I am. I always am. Nevermind, I don’t want to do this today Pat. Thanks for the soup and the cookies and I’m sorry that I made you walk all the way--”

Patton reaches out and snags Virgil’s arm before he can get all the way off the ground. The board nudges to the side dislodging several pieces into the surrounding void, but Patton thinks that he can replace a hundred playing pieces.

He cannot replace his best friend.

Virgil’s skin is cold, even though the room was comfortably warm, and he’s soft to the touch-- which is never what Patton expects when he gets those lightning quick hugs, when Virgil rests his head on his shoulder during movie nights, when they go shopping and there are crowds that make Virgil want to run for the hills and only Patton’s hand in his keeps him grounded there. Virgil is soft despite the jagged persona he puts on to drive away other people, and he hasn’t gotten any sort of touch in a while because he shuts up the moment that Patton’s own warmth floods over him.

The room holds the silence for an eternity: Virgil frozen halfway up from the ground, and Patton latching on to him like he can pluck all the reasons Virgil is upset out of his mind through osmosis. The lava lamp makes him look unreal, makes the silence ring louder, makes the lump in Patton’s throat grow larger.

“Virgil,” Patton says, “please.”

Please tell me what I can do. Please allow me to help. Please let me in.

“It’s stupid,” Virgil says.

Patton wants to laugh, because nothing that ever hurts Virgil has ever been stupid. “I don’t think so, kiddo.”

Virgil bites his lip and inhales with all of his chest.

“You didn’t go to any classes today. You’ve been crying. You’re still wearing yesterday’s clothes.” Patton says. “Something happened. And it can’t possibly be stupid because nothing that affects you like this is can be anything less than something huge.”

Patton feels Virgil’s hand curl into a fist like he can hide his shaking when Patton is right there .

“Do you remember Logan Ackroyd,” Virgil says. “The senior a year older than us who I had Sociology with last year?”

The same Logan who took extra notes for when Virgil missed class and emailed them to him. The same Logan who offered Virgil a granola bar when he overheard that Virgil had missed lunch. The same Logan who helped Virgil break into the auditorium after school hours to search for his missing earbuds.

The same Logan who has eyes more knowledgeable than the entire galaxy, who wears a tie to class, who smells like coffee beans and pen ink and looks like he’d give really good, safe hugs.

The same Logan who Patton has never once met, but feels like he knows intimately thanks to Virgil’s starstruck rambles.

Logan must be something great and amazing. Patton has known that for a year now, from watching the months slip away and suddenly the ghost of Logan joins them on every outing, summoned by the blush over Virgil’s ears and the soft smile on his lips and the way that Virgil steadfastly won’t meet Patton’s eyes like it will prevent Patton from noticing the way that the senior is always on Virgil’s mind. Logan is kind. Logan is smart. Logan has a new book every day. Logan has a voice like the ocean waves.

Logan, Patton thinks, should have been more careful if he caused Virgil this much distress. Because there are things that Patton would do for Virgil that not even a cold blooded killer would consider doing.

“Yeah,” Patton says, with a smile soft and dumb and innocent. “You guys have Analytical Science together this year, right?”

Virgil lets go of his lip, and breathes out a breath that sounds like more relief than Patton is supposed to hear. “Yeah. Yeah. He, uh… yeah.” Virgil shifts back down, shifts so that he’s on his knees and Patton is right next to him, and they’re still touching and that warmth is stronger than the shadows made by the blobs in the lava lamp.

“Janus… Janus asked him out yesterday,” Virgil says, using his other hand to pluck at a thread in his jeans.

Oh. Patton doesn’t think cookies and soup were enough.

And golly, Patton doesn’t think Logan is as smart as Virgil is always saying he is either, because if he said yes in front of Virgil, he must have been the stupidest person on the planet.

Virgil is quiet, dismissible, a shadow in his own skin even on his best days. But he is not un-noticeable.

He carries an aura around himself that storms and thunders and promises danger to those that get too close. His laughter is a threat first and a comfort second. His smile is a knife blade that even Patton sometimes wonders if he might find in his back one day. Virgil was someone that you noticed and you stayed the fudge away from.

Unless you were Patton, who hadn’t been afraid of Death from the moment he watched his mother cough up blood over the cards to CandyLand, watched his mother turn into a real-life game of Operation, watched her breathing get ragged and her fingers struggle to hold playing cards between them.

Logan hadn’t been scared away by Virgil’s thunder, and somehow he had weathered the storm that Virgil put up to protect himself and lived securely in the eye of the hurricane. And somehow he hadn’t noticed, hadn’t cared, had taken advantage of Virgil’s softening heart just to shatter it.

“He didn’t…” Virgil says. “Janus… he didn’t really mean it. I don’t think. It might have been a joke because they’re friends but Logan told everyone that he would only consider dating someone who could… could…”

“Could what?”

Virgil’s eyes flick down to the Trouble game board, to the pieces lost in chaos of the floor, to the box they hadn’t needed except for transport. Patton feels his heart thud in his chest before he crawls up his throat and he tastes it in his mouth along with the remains of the raw cookie dough he licked off the spoon while cleaning up.

Virgil’s words come back to him in whispers. But it’s not like I’m going to win. This is a sign, isn’t it? I’m just being stupid even considering it.

“Someone who could….” Patton says, “beat him in a boardgame?”

Virgil yanks the thread on his jeans sharply and nods without meeting Patton’s eyes. “I told you it was stupid.”

“Virgil,” Patton says. “This is great! We’ve been playing games together for years! You can beat--”

“That’s the thing!” Virgil says with his shoulders curling up to his ears and burying him in layers of excess fabric. “Pat, I can’t even beat you in a board game and I know all your strategies!”

“I don’t think that Trouble actually has any strategies. It’s really luck of the roll--”

Virgil peeks out of his hood enough to give Patton a miserable glare. “When was the last time I won against you, Pat? Be honest.”

Patton purses his lips. “I don’t think that’s fair, kiddo. I’ve been playing games since I was able to understand the rules--”

“You don’t even remember, do you.”

“It was Dominos and you won by twenty points.”

“Nice try, but you purposely miscounted and you actually won by two.” Virgil reaches out for another cookie and offers it to Patton without making any move to pull his other hand from Patton’s hold.

“You would have a lot more wins if you didn’t insist on not finishing games sometimes!” Patton says. “You never know the ending of a game until you play it out!”

“I could tell you that Logan was going to beat Janus in Chess the moment the opening moves were made,” Virgil counters. “He won in twelve moves and then the next game in six.”

Patton opens his mouth, but Virgil shoves the cookie in before he can actually say anything.

“And God Rest Remy’s soul because Logan obliterated him in Trivia Pursuit.” Virgil continues, “He turned Roman to mincemeat over Scrabble, and not only beat Remus in Poker, but won one hundred dollars off him too. I also watched him win in Othello against some kid he tutored in Calc, a game of Mancala with an art kid who was doing it for clout, and Stratego which he won before I finished reading the fuuuuuudging rules and made his opponent cry over it.”

Patton swallows down a bite of cookie that he didn’t not chew well enough because he feels it tear up his esophagus as it goes. Virgil politely ignores him dying for a second and offers him his own thermos of soup to help it down, before remembering that he’s supposed to be brooding and staring at Patton for too long makes him soft.

“Not to make a pun here, but no dice; I legitimately cannot beat Logan,” Virgil says. “He’s just… so good. At everything. What is the point in humiliating myself with this? Even if I find a game so obscure that he’s never heard of it and doesn’t have a strategy built for it, just going up to him and putting the board between us is like-- that’s telling him that I’ve had this massive stupid crush on him for ages and what if he doesn’t even like me? What if I win and then he has to date me because he said so but he actually hates me? What if--”

Patton coughs so hard he thinks he might have dislodged his own lung, which is fine!! Because at least it got Virgil to snap back to him and table his panicky spiral for later.

“Weren’t you,” Patton croaks, “Weren’t you already going to confess to him? You bought the chocolate kisses and you sent me pictures of them in your bag right before class last week.”

Patton can’t see Virgil’s ears because of his hood but he knows that they’re glowing red from the way that Virgil can’t meet his eyes again.

“I just….I did but then he….” Virgil nudges a pile of questionably clean band t-shirts with his socked foot. “He said he wasn’t interested because class was starting and I still don’t know if he meant an actual kiss or a Hershey kiss because he had to leave class early to pick up his kid brother from his middle school because he was sick with a fever and then I was too mortified to bring it back up-- See Pat, I can’t even come up with a creative way to tell Logan that I wanna listen to him ramble about jellyfish immortality and play with his hair or tell him that I wanna know what the flavor of his chapstick is-- which, by the way, I did say to him and he told me was cake batter and that I could find it at the corner drugstore because he thought I was looking for recommendations-- There is no way to subtly tell him that I want to date him.”

“Then maybe… don’t be subtle?” Patton suggests, and then points at the game between them. “Boardgame?”

Virgil scowls at the game like it had personally offended him. “But I can’t beat him. And if I lose and by some miracle he still wants to be seen with me, then he’d be breaking the very rules he set up and everyone else who lost is going to be pissed at both of us and I can’t do that to Logan.”

Patton bites back the then don’t lose that he wants to say. It seems so obvious to him. He doesn’t really see why Virgil doesn’t think he can win one single game. There isn’t even a rule that says Virgil can’t come back and play again-- which isn’t that the point of games? That you can play them for a little while, pack them up, and then come back to them later? That you sit down with friends-maybe-more and you play and have fun ?

Not for the first time, and not for the last time, Patton wonders why Virgil ever played games with him at all. He knows the first time was pity because he found Patton sitting on the floor of his bedroom with Trouble on the ground in front of him and staring at it numbly because he had cried all the tears out of himself already at the hospital, at the funeral, at the everything that had come after that he couldn’t remember. The first time it had been to get Patton to react because he had been so lost, but every time after that Virgil had made the conscious decision to pick up the pieces.

Even if sometimes he had put them back down halfway through and Patton hadn’t figured out how to convince him that the point isn’t to win as much as it is to have fun.

Virgil twists his wrist loosely in Patton’s grip so that he’s holding Patton back, his cold fingers somehow feeling comforting rather than startling. Patton has always loved that about him, although he’s never sure how that works. The coolness of his touch is familiar, but the vulnerability of Virgil reaching out is something newer, something special, something fragile and Virgil holds onto him like he’s expecting Patton to let go at any moment and Patton steadfastly refuses to let him drift off. Patton squeezes his wrist gently, lightly, softly.

I’m here. I’m not leaving. We’re in this together.

“I think that Logan can make decisions for himself,” Patton says with words so featherlight they barely move the air. “Remember the dominos? Any player can choose to lose, whether it be miscounting or it be refusing to finish the game in the end. But if you never even offer to play with him… Logan can’t make that choice, Virgil.”

Virgil holds his gaze for a moment, two, three, and there’s something in his eyes that shies away from the glow of the light, something slippery and weak and scared. Something that Patton is afraid to put a name to, lest it disappear from him forever.

Something that causes Virgil to squeeze his wrist back.

Together. Us. We’ve got this.

“So what game do you want to play with Logan?” Patton asks. “We can go look at my collection if you want? I loaned out Backgammon to a girl in my Shakespearean class, but other than that I have the usuals with me.”

Virgil takes a deep breath. “Can we…” He says. “Do it tomorrow? I don’t want…” He squeezes Patton’s wrist again and Patton can fill in the rest of the blanks with his own interpretations. He is, after all, fluent in Virgilese, as much as Virgil is fluent in Pattonish.

“Yeah, yeah,” Patton says and shifts through the piles of clothes that act as cushions so he’s right next to Virgil, pressing their shoulders together, leaning his head on Virgil’s collarbone, and reaching around him for another cookie. Virgil moves the tub between them and then pulls the Trouble game board in front of that.

He hesitates for another moment-- they’re missing two of Patton’s blue pieces to the floor, and one of Virgil’s purples to a pile of sweatshirts-- but the fact that Virgil drops forward and presses the bubble to roll the die makes Patton’s chest warm.

He gets a six, and then a four and that thing in his eyes seems to grow just a bit stronger.

That is, of course, when the rap music from next door starts up loud enough to shake the entire room and Patton wonders if Logan would still be up for playing a game with Virgil when he’s incarcerated for second degree murder.

Patton, at least, gets a hug out of it, when he tackles Virgil to the ground before he can get to the door, and he manages to coax Virgil back to their area, back to the floor, back to the game, and then later into the blanket-fort-and-movie-night that they watch with one earbud each and their foreheads pressed together late into the night.

***

Patton’s mother developed lung cancer when he was seven. He remembers it in vague flashes: the blood, the shakiness, her fall to the floor because they had never had any sign of it happening until it was too late to do much about it. He was told it was because his maternal grandparents both smoked a lot when she was growing up and she spent the weekends helping them around the house still.

The doctors said she had a year. She got eighteen months.

He barely remembers her face from his own memories anymore, all of them blurred and twisted by the passage of time that he almost got swept away in entirely. Her picture still hangs around the house, though, and he guesses he’s lucky in that regard. He liked how he could see her every time he passed by the stairs, even after his dad remarried and he had grown up and the telemarketers stopped calling the house to tell her that there was an interesting charge on the credit card she didn’t have anymore.

He still wakes up sometimes with his heart beating in his ears and his eyes blinded with tears and his lungs refusing to cooperate because of nightmares about forgetting her entirely, of seeing her stand up to call out to his dad, of seeing her cough out blood and then fall to the floor right in front of him as his dad is running down the stairs. He still wakes up and feels his heart aching where she might have once been if everything had gone just a little bit different. He still wakes up and wishes that he could go back to sleep because at least in his dreams she’s still there waiting with a deck of cards and a smile that says, “Alright, Buster, don’t think I’m going to go easy on you this time!”

Usually those types of days he labels as “Bad Ones”, and he finds it harder to crawl from under his blankets to do pretty much anything.

Virgil knows immediately when he sees Patton staring at his black laptop screen that it’s a Bad One.

Patton loves that he knows not to ask, hates that Virgil can read him so easily, wants to cry because it’s been so long and shouldn’t the edges of that pain have gone away by now? He wants to pull Virgil’s purple comforter back over them and drift back off into the blissful warmth while pretending that the idea of a game right now didn’t make his hands shake.

She hadn’t left Patton specifically a lot of things, but the things that she had left him had been boardgames. Things that she had collected over the years and kept on a shelf in the study for them to play after work and school: Candyland, Trouble, Snakes and Ladders. She had a whole shelf for him when he got to an age where he could understand more complex concepts: Ticket to Ride, Pandemic, Mysterium, Star Realms, Settlers of Catan.

After she was gone… Patton had stared at that shelf and wondered if she had ever thought that maybe she wouldn’t get a chance to play some of them with him.

He wonders how many of them he could have beat her at, how many of them she might let him win in, how many of them they would love to play together and how many of them they would both play through once and then wrinkle their noses at because it wasn’t what they thought it was going to be.

He wonders and maybe it’s a bit too much because he’s stomach is rolling nauseously and he thinks that if he has to look at a game he’ll actually throw up this time.

Virgil doesn’t say anything, even as he gets up and Patton remains buried under too many blankets and the alarm on his phone goes off again for his morning class. The darkness is safe and warm and Patton thinks he understands why Virgil likes it so much as he closes his eyes and tries not to think of a woman who is long gone and in the ground.

“Breakfast?” Virgil whispers at some point.

“Cookies,” Patton mumbles back.

Virgil had carted a hand through his curls and then the door to the room had opened closed and locked behind him. Patton thinks that was nice of him-- to lock the door like he was protecting anyone from coming in and stealing his valuables even though Patton was there. Or maybe since Patton was there? Patton presses his head into a pillow that smells vaguely like chocolate cherries and black licorice and other things that screamed Virgil, and thinks that Virgil might consider Patton a valuable that needs to be protected and kept safe.

Sometime later Patton wakes up with Virgil lying beside him, headphones on and typing on his computer with one hand while dragging fingers through Patton’s curls with the other. It’s impressive of him by itself, but not nearly as impressive as the fact that Virgil’s hood is down and the blackout curtains are parted enough to bring in a decent amount of light.

Virgil blinks at him and removes one earmuff. “I read that flowers need sunlight to grow,” he says in lieu of explaining the rays of light cascading into the room over the two of them.

Patton wants to laugh, and thinks he might if it were any other day and not this one. He settles for a somewhat bent smile and Virgil reaches to somewhere he can’t see and brings back a muffin from the Campus Cafe.

“Chocolate Chip,” he says. “Which is like a cookie, but better because it’s a muffin and I said so.”

Patton can’t really tell if the tears that prick in his eyes are from the lingering sadness or the softness of just a simple gesture from his best friend. Maybe it’s both. Maybe it’s neither.

It’s a muffin, not something he should be crying over, and he repeats it even as he takes a bite from the top and Virgil pretends like he doesn’t see Patton scrubbing his cheeks as he chews. It’s a muffin, but Virgil got it just for him and Virgil came right back here and sat with him so he wouldn’t wake up alone and sad and and and--

And if Patton liked anyone romantically like that(™) he thinks he would have fallen straight into love with Virgil.

“Did you miss class?” Patton whispers.

Virgil shrugs. “Nothing important. I sent an email to my teachers saying that I wasn’t feeling too good and didn’t want to risk accidentally spreading anything to anyone, which already helps because I didn’t go to class yesterday and I’ve already turned in all my work for the week for most of my classes. Besides, you were here and I didn’t want to just leave you all alone-- what if Roman started playing his Disney compilations at 160 decibels again?”

“You like Disney, though.”

“I also like my hearing and my best friend,” Virgil says like it’s nothing, like it’s obvious, like it shouldn’t be making Patton tear up again because Virgil is just so nice.

“I’m sorry,” Patton whispers.

Virgil moves his computer and jostles around on the bed until they’re lying side-by-side even though the bed was definitely not made for two persons. He presses his head to Patton’s, and he’s cool and soft and safe.

Together. We got this.

“Your mom?” He asks.

Patton nods, with a lump in his throat that makes all the words he wants to say crumble to ashes on his tongue. “Sorry.”

“You don’t need to apologize, Pat,” Virgil says.

“But… Logan…”

“He’s not going anywhere,” Virgil says. “And, full offense, but no boy is going to be more important to me than you regardless of how fuuuuuuunkily hot he is. Funkily, yeah, sure, that’s a word that I definitely was going to say right there.”

Patton feels the laugh build up in his chest, against all the odds in the world, and it tastes like chocolate when it rolls out of his mouth.

Virgil bumps his shoulder, and grins. “Look, I’m trying here. Cursing is in my nature!”

“Thank you,” Patton says. For everything.

“No prob, Bob,” Virgil says. I would do it all all over again and never change a thing.

“I’m not Bob! I’m Pat!”

Virgil’s laugh is like the sun breaking through the clouds after a rainstorm, like a rainbow cascading through the sky, like being caught after a fall. Patton gets the energy to smile back when he hears it and that alone nearly makes him want to cry again.

Patton twists the blanket under him between his fingers and takes a deep breath. “Did you…” He says before pausing to swallow back the taste of his own stomach acids he’s not sure is entirely imaginary. “Did you pick a game? For Logan?”

Virgil’s nose twitches, which means the answer is a sound no. “It’s not that important right now. You’re not feeling up to--”

“ Vir -gil,” Patton says and Virgil’s nose twitches again.

They share a look for another minute, two, three, before Virgil exhales and looks away.

“Fine, fine,” he says. “I didn’t pick out a game yet. I actually saw him in the Cafe earlier with Janus and he waved, though, which was awesome until I waved back and forgot to look where I was going and walked straight into a glass door. At this point it’s going to be a miracle if Logan doesn’t laugh in my face when I ask him to play anything with me.”

“He won’t laugh at you,” Patton says and Virgil slides his arms up and crosses them so he can bury his chin in them like he doesn’t believe Patton at all. “From what you’ve told me, Logan is really nice isn’t he? And the other day didn’t you say that he went on a rant about Pluto being a planet? I think that’s just as silly as you walking into a door.”

Virgil hums to show he’s listening, even if he isn’t taking the words to heart as much as letting them filter through his ears. Patton licks the last of the chocolate muffin from his fingertips and blinks away the urge to hide away from the rest of the world when he spies the box for Trouble on the ground next to Virgil’s desk trash can.

Virgil follows his gaze to the box and he purses his lips, although Patton isn’t sure if its from the fact that he’s remembering that neither of them won last night, or if he’s thinking about odds of beating Logan again or if he, too, is thinking about ghostly fingers trying so hard to move playing pieces that they can no longer touch.

Patton rolls over and stares at Virgil’s ceiling instead, counting his breaths until he feels like the static between his ears isn’t going to overwhelm him.

“What game do you want to play?” Patton asks.

“I won’t win.”

“I didn’t ask what game you wanted to win,” Patton points out. “What game do you want to play against Logan?”

Virgil is quiet, but he sighs so heavily that Patton can see his bangs flutter out of the corner of his eyes.

“This is going to sound stupid,” Virgil says, and again Patton remembers that nothing Virgil ever says has ever once been stupid. “But I don’t want to play against him at all.”

Patton frowns, rolling his head to the side to take in Virgil’s gaze that is already looking at him. His dark eyes are there and the something in them that Patton doesn’t want to put a name to is there again, shining just like the rays of light between Virgil’s blinds.

“I mean I want to play a game with Logan, just not against Logan. It’s stupid, okay? I was just thinking about the cooperative games back at your house that we used to play with your dad and step mom-- you know like the Unlock , Escape-room-in-a-box games? Or maybe Flashpoint? Or Forbidden Island? I was just thinking how shit I am at making my own decisions in Pandemic and Logan is really good at strategy so I bet that working together we’d be able to beat any game.”

Patton breathes deeply, sharply, and tries to ignore the piercing pain in his chest at the mention of the games. Virgil winces like he wants to take the words right back out of the air and hide them somewhere where neither of them have to face them at all.

“I don’t…” Virgil says, “I don’t want to play against him and lose. I’d rather play with him and win. Again: it’s stupid.”

Patton closes his eyes, and sees the shelf his mom left him full of boardgames she picked out long before he was past chewing on building blocks, of him at eleven years old finally getting the courage to drag a kitchen chair to the case and pick out a game while Virgil stood by to make sure he didn’t fall and to remind him that it was okay if he didn’t didn’t feel strong enough to try, of the two of them sitting at the kitchen table with the game directions between them that don’t really make any sense because it there’s no directions on how to attack each other when his dad comes home early and freezes at the sight

He might not remember his mother’s face outside of photographs he doesn’t remember being taken, but he remembers clearly the softness of his father’s expression when he dropped into the seat next to them and asked if they knew how to play this one yet.

“It’s a cooperative game,” his dad said, with a voice shaking and eyes wet. “That means we all work together to get to the goal at the end. Each player is going to have a different superpower-ability-thing that they can do that will make it easier for us to win as a team.”

So no, Patton doesn’t think that it’s stupid at all. It’s hard to do things by themselves, it’s scary, it’s difficult, it’s frustrating. That’s why when Virgil is texting him that the world is ending because of a boy, Patton will always show up at his dorm with soup and cookies and a game for them to play together instead of telling him that he’s being dramatic and silly. That’s why when Patton is missing a woman who hasn’t been in his life for twelve years now, Virgil will always stay with him to remind him that he’s going to get through it, instead of telling him to suck it up.

It’s much easier to win when they’re on the same side.

And Virgil has only ever had fun when playing games that he wins, hasn’t he?

“Why don’t you?” Patton asks suddenly.

Virgil must have nodded off because he jerks suddenly when Patton speaks up, “huh?”

“Why don’t you play a cooperative game?” Patton asks. “What did Logan say specifically about the whole dating thing?”

Virgil rubs an eye and squints at him tiredly. “I told you, he said he would only date someone who beats him at a game. I don’t--”

“Did he say beats him, or beats the game with him?”

“Neither?” Virgil says. “He literally said to Janus very loudly, “I will only consider someone a viable romantic partner if they can win in a game with me.””

“In a game with me,” Patton repeats. “ In a game with me. Not in a game against me!”

It takes Virgil a long, breathless moment to comprehend it, but it’s clear the moment it hits him. Virgil jerks so hard that he tumbles off the bed entirely and to the ground in a fumbling of long limbs, blankets, dubiously cleaned clothes, and his computer-headphones combo. Patton yelps and leans over to check on him but Virgil doesn’t even look like he noticed.

“Holy Shit,” He says, “holy shit, Pat.”

“Language.”

“ HOLY SHIT!” Virgil yells, and then he laughs and covers his mouth like he’s trying to bottle up the sound. “Patton! Patton! He didn’t say against!”

Virgil’s eyes sparkle, the light through the window makes his dark hair shine and just looking at him Patton thinks he’s never once seen him so happy before, so delighted, so excited.

So full of hope.

The next thing he knows is that he’s sitting up and Virgil is wrapped around him in a hug so tight, so soft, so cool and wonderful that those pesky tears come right back to his eyes. Virgil hugs like he’s unafraid of anything for just this endless moment, like he’s never been unsure of physical touch before, like he’s done it a million times before and Patton shouldn’t feel his breath catch in his lungs lest he shatter this dream with an exhale.

He’s standing at the eye of the storm that is Virgil, and he’s never felt so safe before in his life.

“Thank you,” Virgil whispers, “I, uh, I’m sorry for the sudden hug--”

And then, of course, Remus’s music comes back with a vengeance that rattles the ceiling tiles overhead and makes Virgil hiss and break the hug. Patton thinks that he could forgive it, if it weren’t for the unmistakable sound Disney’s Mulan soundtrack also ringing in the air, like it was trying to be heard over the rap music. Dust sprinkles from the tiles overhead.

“I’m going to kill them both,” Virgil vows, but Patton is quicker. He lunges forward before he even knows what he’s doing and coils around Virgil as tightly as he can, and just hugs him, his best friend, the guy who’s always been there for him, and who deserved all the happiness that he could get.

“Pat?” Virgil says.

“If Logan doesn’t treat you right I’m going to make sure no one finds his body,” Patton says.

And Virgil’s laughter makes it sound like he doesn’t quite believe Patton, but that’s okay. Virgil is still looking for reasons to play a game if not to win, and Patton is still trying to find a game that makes him smile, and together they’re going to figure out how to get Virgil to win with Logan.

But for now the hug is good, and the company is nice, and they have the game Trouble packed away ready for the next time they want to play.

#sanders sides #board gaming #platonic moxiety #Analogical #Logan is the hottest side confirmed #Because everyone wants to date him #(Except Pat)#Me the author: what the fuck is hurt comfort #tw: cancer #I just like board games okay #maybe a little too much #I kNew YoU WeRe TrOuBlE WhEn YoU wAlKeD IN #virgil is a disaster gay #Patton really awesome #Hugs? Hugs.

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pencilofawesomeness · 3 years

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Fics I Absolutely Adore and Would Recommend to Anyone

I’ve been meaning to do this for a long, long time, because I love reading fanworks and they deserve a lot of love and I love sharing things that I love.

Obviously this isn’t everything, and if it’s not on this list that doesn’t mean I don’t love it, it just means I forgot at this moment. I will be adding to the list and I remember things or come across it again. (Trying to sort through my bookmarks and subscriptions is like trying to catch a fish bare-handed.) I’m also gonna shy away from the one-shots, even though I adore fun one-shots, just for the sake of organization. The list would be super long otherwise, and those are best sorted by fandom. Here... Here are just some brilliant works I want to rant about.

Disclaimer: I say “recommend” because I would recommend these works, any time any place, but do keep in mind the story’s rating and tags and stuff. Not everything is kid-friendly.

There is absolutely no hierarchy to the list below. They are added as I add.

Fairy Dance of Death

by Catsy ( @fairydanceofdeath )

Fandom: Sword Art Online Word Count: 660,282 Status: ongoing

「AU reboot of the entire SAO storyline, beginning from the premise that Kayaba Akihiko was obsessed with magic and Norse Mythology rather than swords and pure melee. As a result, he created the Death Game of Alfheim Online rather than the floating castle of Aincrad—a world in which player-killing is not a crime, and the nine player races are in competition with each other to reach the top of the World Tree. Multi-POV epic following the stories of multiple canon characters throughout the game.」

If Catsy wrote the SAO light novels and anime, SAO would be among the legendary series. Fairy Dance of Death has this amazingly simple premise of making Alfheim Online, the video game from the original series’ less-than-stellar second part, the game that the main cast becomes trapped in. However, it’s so much more. They took the characters and made them characters, and everyone gets ample spotlight—even background characters that normally wouldn’t receive a second thought. It’s masterful work, and to boot, there is a lovely frame of in-game mystery and player conflict. The organization is phenomenal and I aspire to world-build the way they did. Not to mention that stakes are so much higher and this series has ripped my heart to shreds more than once.

It has also brought me great joy, and even when I was in the dumps and didn’t want to read anything, a FDOD update made me pick up my phone and read when I otherwise wouldn’t have. It has a really special place in my heart. It updates once in a blue moon, but that’s okay.

Even if you have never seen a single piece of Sword Art Online, Fairy Dance of Death is still a great read. In fact, it’s the Better Version of SAO, if we’re all being honest, so I would especially recommend it if you hadn’t seen the original. Or if you have. The characters are given so much love and detail, to the point where Fairy Dance of Death’s characterizations are More Canon to me than Kawahara Reki’s work. It is just a beautiful piece of fiction, and it makes you question the depravity of man on levels that SAO shied away from.

Poisoned Dreams

by StrangeDiamond

Fandom: Genshin Impact Word Count: 82,852 Status: Complete, with a complete sequel and more to come

「 Every night now, Diluc dreams of death. Usually Kaeya's. In between these nightmares his life is falling apart. It doesn't take Kaeya long to realize that this is something much more insidious than simple bad dreams. His brother's life and sanity are on the line and there is nothing Kaeya won't do to save him. Bonus chapter added.」

In a growing fandom from a new game, StrangeDiamond swooped in and characterized these bad boys so well I think it’s canon. It really breathes life into the video game lore, and it’s an A+ depiction of awkward sibling re-bonding post-Terrible-Happenings. Poisoned Dreams can be read alone with a basic understanding of Genshin storybuilding, but StrangeDiamond has an entire group of fics and oneshots set in the same headcanon, and they integrate them really well and subtly together. Not to mention that the narrative style is really clever with making you question what is real and what is dream (a big point in this story) and the inner voices of the point-of-view characters are very compelling.

One Word to Change the World

by AgentMalkere

Fandom: Fairy Tail Collective Word Count: 43,988 (30 parts) Status: probably never coming back

「 In just one universe, Ultear called out to her mother instead of turning away and the fate of Fairy Tail and the world was irrevocably altered. These are glimpses of a world where a single word made all the difference.

In other words, welcome to the Butterfly Effect - Fairy Tail style. 」

It’s a really cute canon-divergent, and while the series makes no attempt to re-write Fairy Tail, it addresses the major events and just snippets in between. It does a good job at giving the vast cast ample spotlight, but it’s also an easy read. It’s special to me because it was the series that made me really pay attention to Bickslow in particular, and I respect that.

Vigilantis Pretium Libertatis

by aradian_nights

Fandom: Attack on Titan Word Count: 399,226 Status: Complete

「 Five years ago, an accident freed Eren Jaeger, Mikasa Ackerman, and Armin Arlelt from an experiment that forced the most extraordinary powers onto them. After five years of separation, of being raised apart to be heroes by a set of three very different adults, they meet again. As they uncover the truth behind their captivity they realize being free and being heroes are sadly nothing but an illusion. 」

This wrecked me.

I still remember when I read it. It was the beginning of 2018, and I had the flu and a lot of time on my hands, so I binge-read this. It was simultaneously the best and the worst thing I have ever done, because I resonated with it so deeply there were times I was just staring up at the ceiling wondering what was real. I empathized with the characters to a level I rarely achieve, and I empathize easily. I laughed. I cried. It was amazing.

I refer to this story in conversation to this day. It handled themes published authors have only dreamed of achieving. Heck, if Dani (the author) took out the names of the AoT cast and replaced it with new ones, it could be its own stand alone novel. It is worldbuilding from the ground up, and any fandom knowledge you take in with you is used against you like a knife leveraged against your throat. Yet, no one is out of character. It’s phenomenal. I would say more, but this is something I daren’t spoil for anybody, because you must be as wrecked as I was. Vigilantis Pretium Libertatis is a level of writing I achieve to gain as a writer myself. It is a masterpiece in every sense of the word.

Life in Glass Houses

by blueskyscribe ( @blueskyscribe )

Fandom: Transformers (Transformers Prime, Transformers: Shattered Glass) Word Count: 119,900 Status: Ongoing (maybe, I hope)

「 No one would have thought Bumblebee and Knock Out were capable of getting along, but when they're stuck in a strange new world and their only hope of survival is cooperation . . . Yeah, they're probably doomed. 」

I could be biased because Knock Out and Bumblebee are two of my favorite characters, but it really is brilliant. Two enemies, stuck together—but not in an overly cliché way. It’s the right amount of cliché, with heaps moral conflict and inner conflict and sometimes just beating each other with a broom when no one is looking. It’s also a fascinating look into what makes a character the way they are in relation to the morals they possess, and how stalwart those morals can be. I can’t help but think of this story whenever I see or write a “role reverse” or mirror-verse AU. It does an excellent job at making all of the characters engaging and their own character, despite being in a mirror-verse.

Yesterday Upon the Stair

by PitViperOfDoom ( @pitviperofdoom )

Fandom: My Hero Academia Word Count: 424,070 Status: Complete

「 Midoriya Izuku has always been written off as weird. As if it's not bad enough to be the quirkless weakling, he has to be the weird quirkless weakling on top of it.

But truthfully, the "weird" part is the only part that's accurate. He's determined not to be a weakling, and in spite of what it says on paper, he's not actually quirkless. Even before meeting All-Might and taking on the power of One For All, Izuku isn't quirkless.

Not that anyone would believe it if he told them. 」

As a person who normally doesn’t read these kind of minor canon divergences, especially at the time of reading, I frickin’ love this fic. In fact, I think YUTS gave me a deep appreciation for canon divergence fics. It’s MHA in all of its glory but it’s so much more, and even the parts that rehash canon give new light to the characters and their points of view.

I had read Viper’s work before and saw Yesterday Upon the Stair filling my inbox, and then I finally watched My Hero Academia. It was one of the first MHA fics I read and it still has a very special place in my heart. I recommend this series to people who don’t even watch MHA; in fact, there are some who might prefer the darker tones and themes of heroism vs apathy to the main series. Not to mention the writing style is phenomenal, and I aspire to be that good. It made me laugh. It made me cry. Yes, tears streaming down my face crying. It is the best ghost story I have ever read.

the Vantage Point Universe

by Aggie2011 ( @aggie2011whoop )

Fandom: The Avengers (MCU) Collective Word Count: 1,032,651 (35 parts) Status: Ongoing (just slowed down)

「 Six months after the Loki incident, Clint isn't adjusting well. When an enemy from his days in the Army comes back to haunt him, he'll be forced to face a part of his past - and to move past Loki, if he has a hope of finding his place with the Avengers. (First of a universe created to center around Clint Barton) 」

// description taken from first installment

Have you enjoyed the MCU, especially the first-era Avengers phase, but like me, were disappointed in the fact that Hawkeye was barely there? The VP universe is for you.

I honestly have a hard time remembering what was canon and what was VP. And if it’s not canon, it should be. The VP universe gave so much life to Clint and to Natasha and to all of SHIELD and even the rest of the Avengers. It’s just...so good. It’s completely immersive. It focuses a lot on Hawkeye and Black Widow from before the Avengers team-up, as well as after, and it all flows together so beautifully. Not to mention that I can be reading a mission that happened pre-series, so I know that they are going to live with all of their limbs, and I still sit there on the edge of my seat the whole time.

The OCs, minor as they are, that are created for this are also wonderfully done. I can’t believe Dan and Phil don’t exist in canon. Every character, canon or no, is engaging and dynamic, it is a pleasure to follow each point of view. The emotional turmoil is also handled very well, and the VP universe carries the MCU trend of humanizing its heroes and takes it so much further.

Ghosts of the Future

by Evan Stanley ( @evanstanleyportfolio )

Fandom: Sonic the Hedgehog Word Count: comic (18 issues) Status: ongoing

「 About 200 years in the future, Silver the Hedgehog is an average kid living in San Francisco... except for his strange and terrible dreams of a dying Blue Hedgehog, a Black Hedgehog, and mysterious gems called "Chaos Emeralds". What will he do, when these "figments of his imagination" appear before him in his real life? 」

// description taken from first installment

Okay so this is the only one that isn’t an Ao3 story, but rather a comic on DeviantArt. However, it is still one of my favorite stories. Even though it takes the commonalities of Sonic canon and turns them on its head, GotF really treats the characters well. There are enough familiar world elements to create intrigue, but it is set in a completely different take of the future, so there is ample opportunity for world building and being able to engage with a completely new thing. I wish SEGA put as much love in the series (namely the games, because the comics are *chef’s kiss*) and all of its possibilities as creators like Evan Stanley do.

The friendship and family relationships in GotF are so diverse and all so fantastic to witness. It’s a keynote example of the new hero and the old veterans, and both parties are active and trying their best.

Do not be alarmed by the starting art style. Sure, it’s rough around the edges at first, but then it gets better, and then it gets gorgeous, and then you’re left there so stunned that it looks like just life canon art. And then you could be like me, blinking slowly as my small brain finally connected that this Evan Stanley is in fact the Evan Stanley. GotF is an amazing fanwork, but she also draws and writes for the Official Canon comics (the IDW ones now) and that work is also phenomenal and should be supported.

Whirlwind

by Lynse ( @ladylynse )

Fandom: Danny Phantom, American Dragon: Jake Long, Miraculous Ladybug, Randy Cunningham: 9th Grade Ninja Word Count: 75,556 Status: Complete

「 Jake should be used to ominous predictions by now. Randy should know better than to blindly follow McFist. Adrien should think twice before sneaking away. And Danny really should've expected something like this when he got that phone call from Jake. (Secret Quartet fic) 」

I have to start by saying that I adore all of Lynse’s fics, and I chose this one simply because it is one of my favorites. But it’s all fantastic, one hundred percent. I also love Mirrored, the sort-of prequel to this fic, but Whirlwind just has the chaotic pure bean energy that each of the shows bring and it foils against each other so perfectly. This is the epitome of the Secret Quartet crossover, truly.

All fandoms and all characters get ample love, and the way the reader gets to see just how badly the characters’ assumptions are going is positively wonderful. It’s so easy to fall into the “I know what’s happening and so do the characters” trap, but Lynse leaps over it gracefully and lands in greatness. The fic had me smiling like a maniac one minute, and feeling sorry for my babies the next. Wonderful. Simply fantastic!

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paris-torres-month · 3 years

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SeP/Tember Day 30: 30 Days

“...Captain Proton’s not going to be able to save the day this time, is he?”

“What about Tom Paris?”

Well, what did expect would happen when you started dating a Maquis?!

This episode is all about Tom: his interests, his choices, the consequences he suffers. But unlike the last time he screwed up, he steps up and takes responsibility and takes his punishment on the chin.

How does Tom end up in jail again? Love. Because he followed his heart, and the advice of that Maquis love-of-his-life, 650 thousand kilometres down, straight to the heart of an ocean world—an anomaly that amazed him when Voyager runs across it.

Since he was a little boy Tom’s been fascinated by the sea. When other kids were playing holoprogrammes, he was reading Moby Dick & Captains Courageous. His dream was to join the Federation Naval Patrol, a dream that was quickly squashed by his father.

This episode is told through flashbacks, but it’s mostly linear. It begins with Janeway rather forcefully ripping Tom’s black pip from his collar and sentencing him to 30 days in the brig and ends with him being released and B’Elanna, the only other woman in his life who can order him around, calling him Ensign in a way that promises many wonderful things, and demanding he have dinner with her at 0700. Is she on night shift or does her idea of dinner not include food…?

But the guts of this episode is Tom’s letter to his father explaining how he ended up in the brig in the first place. Really, the heart of the episode is Tom’s letter to his dad, the Admiral. The fact that he‘s reaching out at all, though he realizes that his father will likely never get to hear his letter, shows that he wants to rebuild their relationship, that he wants his dad to understand him, finally. One could argue, after Hunters, that Owen feels the same.

We get a glimpse of Tom’s Captain Proton holodeck programme both when he’s heroically saving his sidekick, Buster, from the evil clutches of Demonica & Malicia: played by the oft-referred to Delaney sisters.

And when he’s feeling powerless and his Maquis love-of-his-life girlfriend tracks him down and plants the seed that he’s got a little hero in him after all:

in the end, Tom’s efforts are for naught. He doesn’t force the Moneans to rethink their actions regarding the water world they stole, he doesn’t even blow up that oxygen refinery forcing them to rebuild, better. He loses his pip, but he gains some self respect.

Today’s prompts are: THIRTY DAYS - That’s an order, ensign - Water - Dear Dad

As the official blogger (because I tend to take over things) for SeP/Tember Paris/Torres Month I want to thank everyone who contributed fanworks & video clips & commentary, and everyone who stuck with us, encouraging us with kudos & comments & ❤️s & reblogs. I hope everyone had fun and their love for P/T was rekindled.

Here’s your reward for hanging in there: a bonus pic of Tom drinking tea with Janeway. Yeah, I don’t like Earl Grey either, Tom.

See you in SeP/Tember 2022… or sooner!

#SeP/Tember #sep/tember #ptmonth #tom x b'elanna #paris x torres month #paris torres month #paris/torres month #tom x b’elanna month #paris x torres #tom paris #b’elanna torres #SeP/Tember2021

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evilsilence · 3 years

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The Emergency! Fandom Intro Meme

Rules: Not much to say here! Copy-paste this into a new post (and feel free to link back to this one if you’d like) and answer the questions as you see fit if you’d like to tell the rest of the fandom a bit more about yourself. This meme is generally tag-free and open to everyone who wants to do it (but feel free to informally tag people you’d like to know more about). You can tag your reply as “#E! intro meme” if you’d like.

How’d you find this show and the fandom? How long have you been here? Yeah, so funny story, I’d known about the show as far back as 2014 or 2015. My parents used to watch it a lot when it was on MeTV but I figured it was just another cheesy old show, so I didn’t pay any attention to it. By late 2016 I decided to finally pay attention. At first I sorta just laughed at the aforementioned 70′s TV cheesiness, but after awhile I realized it wasn’t all that bad and I wanted to dig in deeper. Unfortunately, Netflix was removing E in January of 2017 which only left me around a month to watch whatever I could binge during that time, so I found an E! board and asked for episode recs. That was my first true fandom experience, and honestly, at the time I thought it was amazing that board still existed and was semi active. I figured that beyond that board there was probably no active fandom. During my month of binging those recs, I also decided to see if there happened to be any old fanfiction for the show left, of course not really expecting anything, and was shocked to see FFN wasn’t dead at all. This led to reading a ton of E fanfics before I even had a solid grasp on who the characters even were, which idk, that probably wasn’t the best idea but it WAS fun so whatever. So technically I suppose I was “in” the fandom in late 2016, but I didn’t really actively search out the fandom, beyond that board, until late 2017 (which led to a not so great experience on a certain bird app).

What made you stick around? The fanfiction, mainly. I noticed right away how this fandom loves whump, especially Johnny whump, and that really interested me (I’ve always had a thing for whump). Otherwise, besides a few bad apples, there are a lot of really great people in this fandom and I want to be part of that.

Who’s your favorite character? 1000% Johnny. He’s the sole reason I started paying attention to the show to begin with because holy shit how is he so cute???

Are you a shipping kind of person? If yes, what are your favorite ships? I LOVE shipping. Definitely Johnny x Roy and Brackett x Dixie, but I also ship Dixie x the administrator from “Foreign Trade”.

Favorite moment/scene/quote? Yes, you can pick more than one. I’d have to say my all time favorite scene / quote is in the pilot movie when Johnny tells Brackett “To hell with the orders” and shuts off the biophone. I love sassy Johnny. I also really love the scene at the end of “Rip-Off” where Johnny still thinks he hears a rattling noise coming from the squad and Roy says “Maybe it’s the loose seeds in your gourd”. Those two have a lot of great comedic moments, but that one sticks out to me for some reason.

Do you have a favorite episode? Feel free to pick one per season if you can’t decide. My absolute favorite episodes are the major Johnny whump ones. But I also love “Frequency”, because it shows Johnny all emotionally hurt and vulnerable and questioning his own mortality and ugh so good. I also like the episode “The Exam” because of the scene where Johnny admits that he doesn’t wanna have to go back to the engine if he fails the paramedic re-certification exam. I love those small moments of vulnerability from Johnny because it’s a side of him that we don’t see much. “Isolation” is also a great episode imo, just because the scenery change is nice. And “Details”, because it’s just typical Johnny to try to rush into something without all the information.

Most underrated character, either among the fandom or one the writers never utilized to their full potential? Morton, Stoker, and Marco.

One thing you’d have liked to see more (or less) of in the show? As others have said, it would’ve been nice to have seen more of Student Nurse Sharon and Nurse Carol. It also would’ve been nice to have seen more of Morton as he grew as a doctor.

Do you have a fanwork recommendation for us? Fic, art, video, whatever? @johnnys-green-pen, @hitchcock-winter, @madilayn, and @thebeatlesqueenie1212 all write greats fics. @andtheywerelegends makes good vids. Otherwise, I’ve been enjoying “Hunted” by mta797 and “Off Road” by Closet Scrawler on FFN recently.

Any fanworks you’d like to see? I know it’s definitely going to be an unpopular opinion, but I’d like to see more fics that explore darker themes. Not every story needs a happy ending or a miraculous recovery. Sometimes bad things happen, things don’t go as expected and there’s no miracle at the end of the day. I want to read more about that.

Any favorite headcanons you’d like to tell us about? Johnny being neurodivergent is probably my favorite. And definitely that Johnny and Roy have not so secret feelings for each other. I also heard a headcanon ages ago that Johnny is probaaably a virgin and I can totally see that, given the way he constantly strikes out.

Free space! Anything else you’d like to mention? I owe this show the revival of my interest in writing. Prior to 2017, when I started my first E fic, I hadn’t seriously written anything since 2010. Writing is so incredibly therapeutic for me and always has been, even when I was a kid writing dumb stories with my friends that made absolutely no sense. Back then, writing was such a big part of who I was. And to find that missing piece of myself has been everything.

#E! Fandom Activities #E! Intro Meme #Emergency!

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whetstonefires · 4 years

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Do you think the DC fandom maybe, Infantilizes Tim a little too much? Like for a rich kid character who's main trauma for a long time was a getting left home alone too much there's an oddly amount of meta abt how much how much his parents hurt him~ compared to, y'know the two poor characters who grew up with physically abusive dad's+druggie mom's, or the two that were raised assassin cult's, etc

…well, yeah, I do kind of think that? His whole schtick for so long was being too old for his age in ways that didn’t sacrifice his jokey, relatable teenager energies. It’s weird how little of that we see anymore, sometimes.

And then DC broke him and discarded him and he’s sort of awkwardly hanging around getting reimagined as more woobie with every fan generation. It is weird!

But tbh I do get it. And I think the reason his parents’ failure of him and his vulnerability get played up so much, and Jason and Steph’s sufferings (while used a lot for things like motivation and context) not dwelt on quite so much in the same lugubrious style, are kind of the same reason.

Which is that canon didn’t commit to it. Jason and Steph’s experiences with bad parenting were foregrounded and retconned more dramatically awful several times. (There’s some definite classism in how that was approached imo, and I’m never budging on being mad about DC retconning out Catherine being sick and then ignoring her forever in all Jason characterization because a drug death invalidates a person ig, great message during the opioid crisis guys.)

They engaged and coped with it–Steph (and Cass, our #1 canon batfam parental abuse victim) pretty directly, Jason a little less so because of the dubious and fluctuating canon status of most of the content more specific than ‘poverty, homelessness, theft, parental drugs and crime in there somewhere,’ so most of his parent issues have been focused on Bruce. He sure has dug into them tho. 😂 Rarely well or productively, thanks DC, but it’s explicitly part of his character, is my point.

Whereas upper-middle-class Tim was always treated by the narrative as fortunate and unharmed by his experiences with his parents. Even though they were clearly behaving badly in several ways, and Tim showed signs of being harmed by it.

Tim outside of immediate moments of frustration always was of the opinion he was Fine, and Very Fortunate Actually.

Therefore a huge chunk of the numerous everyone who’s got parent-related mental and emotional harm, but has struggled to have that validated and hasn’t responded with a lot of anger toward the parent, identifies with Tim. The only one who’s never really lashed out at his parents for fucking up with him. The one who still needs it explored, because canon ultimately didn’t.

[editing post to put in a readmore because lol it’s long, post otherwise unchanged]

(Dick obviously didn’t ever have any Issues with the Graysons, but he Angry Teenagered at Bruce so hard it changed Bruce’s characterization permanently, rip.)

The things Jason, Steph, and Cass have been through are dramatic, obvious, and fit stereotypes because that’s what they’re based on.

That’s important content to have, but because it’s right out there in your face even people who identify with it quite a lot are less likely to feel the need to work all the way through it again in fanworks. That part’s there. It’s text.

(Well actually Jason having been physically abused kind of wasn’t? I think? It was mostly assumed on the basis of stereotyping and Jason’s not caring about the man much even as he felt possessive of information about his death, which is valid. I don’t actually know what’s up with Willis now, Lobdell did some weird shit that lacked emotional resonance or staying power because he’s Lobdell and has no soul.

Cass’ wandering years are also ludicrously underdeveloped. But very very few comics fans or writers can personally relate to being amazing child warriors with no grasp of language living feral under bridges. That part of her life is consistently represented in terms of absences, in terms of its deviation from the norm and the deficits of normality it left her with, which is typical but unfortunate.)

The interesting things to do with these characters are often informed by the bad stuff in their childhoods, but there’s relatively rarely that much more to say about the fact that those things were bad. They know they’re bad. They’ve had a lot of on-panel rage about it, as discussed above. Steph and Cass both beat the shit out of their dads.

Jason is, in fandom especially, a sort of Platonic ideal of a kid who’s mad about his bad childhood and really bad at figuring out where to point that rage.

(Damian is a whole other kettle of fish, because he’s been lumbered by so many detailed retcons coming so fast no two people can seem to construct compatible models of what his early childhood was like, and even more because he’s still ‘a child’ enough that he’s necessarily in a different stage of processing than someone who’s officially only a few years older than him at this point, but still functionally 8 and also 20 years older, and whose parents are no longer in the picture to continue screwing up.

Also there’s no question that if he brings up an abusive thing the League did, he will be validated by his current environment about his realization that it was in fact bad. There’s a lot of fic on that theme! But it doesn’t have the same tone precisely because it is usually understood that that support will be there if he wants it. Realizing that his previous context contained things that were wrong keeps being made the focus of his arc.)

The badness of Tim’s childhood, on the other hand, was mainly in subtext. Even when we were clearly meant to understand Jack was fucking up, like when he canceled plans with Tim at the last minute to go on a date with Tim’s stepmother, or that infamous time he came to apologize for not being a great parent and got mad Tim was distracted by a crisis on TV so he flew into a rage and took the TV and smashed it and was like ‘that’ll teach you,’ it wasn’t leaned into.

The story didn’t treat Jack as a minor villain to be overcome but like a sort of environmental hazard of childhood, like homework, to be endured and coped with. Tim said things like ‘it’s fine’ and ‘at least he left the computer.’

(And like. It’s not about having a TV and computer in his room. It’s about not letting a child have boundaries, pointedly not respecting a child’s possessions, creating an emotionally insecure environment, punishing minor infractions in proportion to their momentary impact on your own ego, physically lashing out at a proxy for the child…)

Rather like Tom King later didn’t understand about the punching from Bruce, whoever did that story (probably Dixon? I don’t care enough to check) did not understand how serious a case of bad parenting that scene was. That is most definitely textbook abusive behavior. (It’s a hell of a lot more common abusive behavior than being a lame supervillain or shooting you when you screw up, and a lot more specific than ‘was a thug, might have hit me, dead now.’)

And Tim was never allowed to be mad at his parents about it. It was fine. He needed to be ignored so he had the freedom to be Robin. He deserved his dad being mad at him because he was keeping secrets. He complained too much, although objectively he did not.

The universe punished him for ‘complaining,’ more than once. We cut straight from him shunting aside his disappointment that his postcard from his parents was just to say they weren’t coming home yet after all with ‘if it will stop all the fights they’ve been having lately it’s more than fine’ to them getting kidnapped.

He agreed not to come on the rescue mission. His mom never made it home, and his dad was in a coma for a while. And then ultimately Jack died as a result of Tim’s decision to be Robin, immediately after finally deciding to accept it.

So Tim walks around feeling a huge burden of responsibility for his parents’ deaths, and completely unable to process any hurt they did him as real or valid, especially in comparison with the far more blatant awfulness other people have been through, and canon is clearly never going to address it. Or even acknowledge it properly.

Let me repeat that because it’s kind of my main point:

People are fixated on getting Tim’s emotional abuse validated because that’s an incredibly important step in recovering from emotional abuse, and it’s one canon consistently denied him.

How ‘bad’ things are ‘in comparison to’ problems other people have is a bad and unhealthy way to engage with trauma. Okay? That’s just a really harmful framework to apply to pain.

It’s also a way that both Tim and people with experiences similar to Tim’s are encouraged to engage with their own experiences, compounding the existing problems.

So. Not a form of relatable DC was ever actually aiming for when they tried so hard (and pretty effectively) to make him a relatable character as Robin, but an enduring one for a lot of fans.

So Tim’s childhood is a natural target for fanworks in a different way than the traumas that have been made explicit and taken seriously by the text. And then a lot of that got compounded by the way the introduction of Damian as Robin was handled, and the lack of resolution that got. And his current status as not quite having a place in the family anymore.

So between the level of projection encouraged by that context and how relatively difficult to access Tim’s Robin run has become ten years after the fact, this has led to a lot of fanworks on these themes that are based mostly on other fanworks, and stray further and further from the original content.

So at this point there’s an entire wing of Tim’s fandom wherein this side of him has expanded enormously, and he primarily exists to suffer, frequently in ways that 1) escalate to a point that is inarguably ‘valid’ and hard to dismiss and 2) set him up to rebound from it in whatever way the writer finds emotionally satisfying or useful–being ultimately cared for and reassured by people who value him (the most infantilizing option but like, popular for obvious reasons), or unveiling his brilliant scheme that was causing him to pretend to be passive in the face of mistreatment, or turning around and using his genius ninja skills to wrest power back from his abusers, or just laying down some sick burns about being treated fairly.

But not that many of the last one, because that’s mostly done with other batfam members.

Tim’s become a vehicle for a lot of vicarious coping that Steph and Jason just aren’t appropriate for, because they get angry and they get even. And those are stories that exist already, so there’s less scope for telling your own.

And because Jason’s reaction pattern is ultimately so masculine (i’ll make them all sorry! with my guns! blam blam!) while Tim’s is pretty gender-neutral, the demographics of fanfic mean that the bulk of the people using Tim vicariously in this manner are female-aligned, which has over time feminized this archetype of him a lot. Sometimes in ways I find really uncomfortable, like there’s a lot of forced pregnancy stuff which activates my panic buttons. x.x

But, ultimately, it’s fandom. People are going to do what they’re going to do, DC in their perpetual fail has hung Tim out to dry in narrative terms, and I’d rather the people who are using Tim for victimization narratives over the people who can’t dismiss or discredit him fast enough now that his position has been filled. 🤷‍♀️ What we gonna do? Fave’s in an awkward spot. DC hates us. This is the life in this comic book pit. XD

Also if you’re the same anon who left me a callout about op of that weird Steph post in my inbox, or if you aren’t @ that person, 1) I refuse to get involved so I’m not answering that ask 2) those aren’t even particularly dramatic fandom crimes? That’s pretty normal? That’s just…Caring Too Much About Ships And Disagreeing With Me.

Do I also feel those opinions are kinda bad? Yeah. But I disagree with everyone about something. Chill.

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5-falsehoods-phonated · 3 years

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March Ado About Nothing

Series Summary - A series of one-shots and drabbles written based off of prompts posted in the TSS Fanworks Collective server. The goal is to take traditional whump prompts and fill them in the least-angsty way possible every day through March.

A note that though some of these fills are written bait and switch style (written in a way you think is going in one direction but reveals it to be the opposite towards the end) they are all written in a fluffy or silly style with very little, if any at all, actual angst.

Day 2: Stuff Your Secrets

Summary: Stuffed animals are good and normal to have no matter what age you are- except for Remus. Logan quickly fixes that line of thinking.

Prompts: "Please, no more!, Extreme Weather, *Dirty Secret*

Ships: platonic intrulogical (Logan & Remus)

Warnings: mild angst, guilt for having stuffed animals. Let me know if there are!

General taglist (ask to be added or removed): @/janus-is-an-adorable-snek-boi @/im-an-anxious-wreck (in an effort to not flood your inboxes I’m only tagging in the first part ^-^)

WC: 1235

Stuffed animals, with all their innocence and connection to childlike wonder and imagination, weren’t usually something that was defined as a dirty secret someone would desperately try to hide away at all costs. Having stuffed animals was normal and useful to mental health: they were soft and plushy and you could cuddle them for comfort, they were amazing to grip onto when one was sick or in pain and, if you didn’t want to feel odd talking to yourself to work out one idea or other, you could always prop them up as a makeshift audience to listen to you infodump for hours and they would never get annoyed!

So no, stuffed animals themselves weren’t the problem, nor was having them as a fully grown and “mature” adult. The problem came because the owner was Remus, and Remus had come to learn that if he had something it was automatically thought to be something gross or dangerous or disturbing- especially if that’s not what it looked lille from the outside. He was the one that would play stupid pranks of showing someone something rather cute but have it open its mouth to reveal several jaws and a tentacle, or give someone a teddy bear the melted into foul smelling ooze when they held it. Do this enough times and be repressed for a decade or two to boot and you have a reputation that- while fair in its own right if he really thought about it- make having things that were actually innocent in nature a bit problematic if he didn’t want to be scrutinized within an inch of his life.

And so, his dirty secret remained hidden even from Janus, who Remus knew would never make fun of him or judge him for something so trivial but years of hiding made him skittish anyway. The irony of intrusive thoughts hiding something definitely wasn’t lost on him but he only shook the thought away as he continued shoving his well worn friends into a drawer in the closet while shooting a look at the clock. Logan would be coming in any minute now to help him organize a few of his projects that still needed fine tuning if he was going to show his brother any time soon; even though their relationship was still a little rocky...especially after knocking him out for an entire episode and some hateful words were said by the lighter side, they had both scraped up enough indignant reluctance to apologize and begin working together- however tentatively- on a couple different things to test the waters. And Remus wasn’t worried about it all! A second opinion from someone as observant and down to earth as Logan was never hurt was all.

He had just finished shoving everything closed and willing the closet to stay shut when there was a knock at the door. Grinning wide he sank in directly behind the logical side and opened the door from behind, making the other stiffen and then roll his eyes at Remus before walking into the room, immediately going for the desk and paying no attention to the slightly disappointed pout Remus was sporting over not getting a bigger reaction. He knew Logan was just as dramatic as any other side, he just had to find a sweet spot- maybe he’d steal his jam at some point. Appearing on top of the desk he gestured to a few notebooks strewn around.

“It’s a lot so buckle in! I haven’t had an outlet for my ideas in years!”

Logan peered at him from over his glasses. “So long as nothing is explicitly pornographic or sadistic in nature I’m willing to bet most of these will be harmless enough to include somewhere in future projects.” Screwing his mouth to the side Remus simply bounced in place, never having been able to sit still for very long especially when things were quiet. Thankfully Logan didn’t seem to mind, simply skimming through various sketchbooks and notebooks and placing flashcards to mark certain spots for whatever it was he was looking for. He jolted in surprise as something cold and gooey was pressed into his hands, looking up as Logan took his hand away and resumed his task.

“To fidget with if you like, I know sitting quietly can’t be easy but I appreciate your patience.”

Blinking in surprise Remus began idly stretching the goop around, the bright green slime enveloping his hand and sticking in a way that was oddly very pleasing as a tactile stim. He’d have to make more of this at some point and see if he could bathe in it; surely Roman wouldn’t mind one of their lakes turned into slime as long as it was for creativity's sake. He was so engrossed in the wonderful new thing he held in his hands that he didn’t hear the closet food creaking until it was too late, the overstuffed doors bursting open and spilling various items out onto the floor, multiple phallic shapes and odd body pillows were the least of his worries as he watched all of the stuffed animals he had shoved away spill out into the open in all their cute, fluffy glory. His chest constricted painfully as he shot a panicked look to Logan who was regarding the plushies waily as if they would come to life and maul him at any moment- which, while as in character as that might be- for some reason he couldn’t bear the thought of them being perceived that way.

“They’re safe I swear! Just stuffed animals I uh- there’s nothing- I just like-” His throat refused to cooperate and he was left gaping stupidly as Logan set the notebook down and stood up. “No, please!”

Remus reached out for Logan, knowing what he was pleading with him for but suddenly very aware of his racing thoughts telling him to make sure he wouldn’t get into trouble- what if he told Patton, or took them away because he wasn’t meant to have them? Or-

“I’ll be right back Remus. I promise, I’m just going to get mine.”

His? He was gone before Remus could question it as he ripped and pulled and mashed the goop in his hands nervously, wishing the other had left him with more of an explanation. He didn’t have long to wait however as Logan came back in with an armload of...something that was prompt laid on his bed. As he came closer he realized they were stuffed animals- Logan’s he guessed from the teddy bear adorned with a tie and a snail with a lab coat. But there was also a well worn fluffy purple dog, a calico cat with galaxy print for spots and a stegosaurus with a rainbow scale print on it. He looked back to Logan who smiled warmly.

“You don’t have to keep them a secret, Remus, at least not for me. I’d be a hypocrite to judge you and I’m very willing to bet the other’s would be as well.”

“Bet you my bug collection!” Remus shouted before he could think. Logan pulled a face. “I’m not trading you again- last time you didn’t say they spit acid and my desk was ruined.”

Cackling he twitched a finger and the toys were back on his bed where they belonged, though he did sneak a small squid plush in with Logan’s- as thanks.

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#false writes #fluff #mild angst #hurt/comfort mild #sanders sides #sanders sides fic #logan sanders #remus sanders #platonic intrulocal

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1800redpop · 4 years

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ao3 homestuck literature roundup

ok so honestly some of the most impactful pieces of literature I’ve ever consumed... have been fanworks for the web comic Homestuck. while fanfiction in general has the potential for greatness, and there are definitely some non-homestuck works out there i that i’ve enjoyed, Homestuck has a unique potential for spawning creative, original and daring stuff! and there are so many new fans who didn’t even experience the first wave of ao3 webcontent. sadly the site has not proved archival quality when it comes to preserving content, and many fics I’m linking feature broken links/images or have been orphaned by their authors. I’m posting only what I consider to be Good Literature. these are pieces of writing that have struck me, haunted me, and made me cry. Thank you to the writers, and please enjoy! the full rec list is under the cut >:)

old but gold

The Serendipity Gospels by urbanAnchorite (tzm) M

What is there to be said about The Serendipity Gospels? this illustrated fanfiction epic is a true classic. The use of Homestuck language and troll terminology on this fic is exploited to its utmost poetic potential, and every sentence is lyrical. While the story itself is original (and extremely well plotted!), events from the plot of Homestuck are echoed throughout, and it makes for a really satisfying read. This fic was published before Gamrezi was something that happened in the webcomic and gamzee had his downfall, if you’re hesitant to read it on account of the Gamzee<3<Terezi tag. Both of them are extremely well characterized. man... serendipity gospels gamzee is the best gamzee you can find on the market. definitely better than canon gamzee. And the pairing really works. The sad part is that this thing was supposed to be in three acts, and only two have been published. Since 2013... this shit sucks. i want act 3 so bad i’d commit heinous acts to receive it >:0

Cities in Dust (shit let's be hardboiled) by Cephied_Variable T

I’m not finished reading this yet but by now the ao3 handle Cephied_Variable has become a household name. This fic is... heterosexual. and where there were once illustrations, now there are empty white boxes. But the noir setting is played juuuust right, the soundtrack goes hard and it’s really fun to play the music in the next tab while you read, the writing is amazing (obviously) and... not to spoil anything, but it isn’t as much of an AU as it seems. really wish i could see the illustrations, bc the story is told through chatlogs like the source material.

Rule #2 by universe_c E (you can skip the sex scenes tho)

A super imaginative take on what Earth C might have been like. this fic was published while the comic was still updating, so earth c was a very distant possibility in the minds of fans, and in this work, all the players (every single troll, dancestor, human and cherub) are dropped on an uninhabited planet as an entirely new species with varying levels of godpowers, and they have to build civilization from scratch. It’s such an ambitious idea, and it was pulled of brilliantly! the author has more fanfiction online in that takes place in this universe, as well as selections featuring pairings such as Caliborn/Kurloz, an unexpected delight, and GamTav, a charming holdover from simpler times. This story in particular however focuses on Caliborn right after he passes through the gate. He doesn’t have a very easy time adjusting, poor guy. The narrative follows him as he rage-flees from his emotions to nonlinear points on the timeline of Universe C. Along the way he meets the family who he will someday love, learns about the civilization that will develop on their planet, gets laid, and matures a whole lot as a person. This fic is just.. really amazing. Read it!!!

Lost Teeth Like White Jewels by roachpatrol, urbanAnchorite (tzm)

Ok, so roachpatrol used to be a really big name in Homestuck fanfiction, but her stuff has... not aged well, and generally she is regarded (or at least she is regarded by me) as a pedophilic porn peddler, and she’s written a lot of nasty, scandalous smut. but you don’t have to read that stuff! This fic and this fic ONLY (don’t even read the other ones in the series, bro) is just a really nice soap opera. Bodices are ripped, eyes are gazed into in close proximity to an ocean. And the hemospectrum has been inverted. All in all, if you want something dramatic and romantic to read on a rainy day, this fic is where it’s at.

signalbeam is an author that wrote a lot of lesbian fanfiction in 2012. I haven’t personally read all their stuff but it’s all f/f and it’s fun to browse :~)

****DIRKJAKE CORNER******

a thousand years by venusianEye (orphan_account) T

Everything’s set for the surviving players to pass through the gate and claim their Reward... the only problem is, dirk has lost the will to live and is in some kind of mystical coma. Jake is the only person who can save him, by venturing into his mind-palace and solving puzzles that serve as metaphors for everything Dirk can’t express. It’s kind of like inception wrt to the dream mechanics, but the author uses folk tales as settings, and it’s all very poetic, and very well done. this author deleted her account. i watched all the drama. however all her work is still online on the orphan_account. she wrote this series (people who like dirkjake and artistic pornography, give it a read!) and also a medievalstuck au i remember reading and loving, but cannot for the life of me seem to find :( it was about eridan and kanaya and it was good. rest in peace, venusianEye!

A Spark, A Flame, A Fire by callmearcturus E (one skippable sex scene)

The best kingdomstuck ever!!! \(^o^)/ ugh this fic is everything... the author has another kingdomstuck dirkjake multichapter novella online that is also very good, but this one’s my absolute fave :,] the strilonde fam is so cute, and dirk&jake’s blossoming romance (oh, yeah, you BET it’s an arranged marriage AU!) is so romantic it literally makes me clutch my chest and sigh. also the writing and worldbuilding are just IMPECCABLE. another lovely romance for a cozy night.

***JOHNKAT CORNER****

remember johnkat? well,. it’s good.

General Vantas Gets Hitched, or, The Limits Of Bilateral Diplomacy: A Black Powder Romance by JumpingJackFlash M

another arranged marriage fic! seriously, when it’s done right, there can be nothing better. John is the king of Skaia and Karkat is a political insult disguised as a peace offering. No better way to ruin your chances at diplomacy than offer an arranged political marriage between the literal king and a mutant military grunt who isn’t even the right gender. But... what if the king accepts??? omg guys they fall in love... and everyone’s a badass. another notable johnkat offering from his author would b Hurricane , wherein everyone’s punks and dave and tavros are gay rappers. there’s also Space Bro and California Dreaming , which feature karkat/sollux and eridan/equius respectively, and are humanstuck au with vague game memories and are both very sweet and romantic <3

The Only Recipe For Lasagna You'll Ever Need by urbanAnchorite (t_ZM) G

Oh man.. this one’s just really cute.

No Quiet Sleeper by cest_what T

The premise of this fic is a stable little timeloop, so homestuck i could cry, and what occurs therein is extremely adorable :3c

modern fanfiction (post epilogues)

Pilot Light, Pale Rapture by purplebard G

Excellent post-epilogues Jade fic! The writing is beautiful, it’s a really genuine and melancholy work. A masterpiece in JadeDavepeta. I also give a blanket recommendation for all of this author’s fanfic -- it’s deeply original and flawlessly written, every piece!

House of Dirk by IMAC T

If you haven’t read House of Dirk... seriously, read House of Dirk. It’s a modern classic. A dadaist, genre-reconstructive, trope-subverting and absolutely hilarious MASTERPIECE!!! and the characterizations are pitch-perfect. this fanfiction can be cited as the spark which ignited the roaring inferno of Dirk/Caliborn shippers who can now be found online ^__^

mare in ossibus nostris dormit (in our bones sleeps the sea) by liobi

Just some really awesome scourge sisters :,) i love a nice romp through troll mother planet, and this is a flawlessly executed no-game AU.

JADE ROUTE by spicyyeti/muthahomestuckah T

Not technically a fanfiction, because this is 100% a comic, but if you want to read about Homestuck characters in a way that is engaging, innovative, touching and hilarious, you gotta read Jade Route! It’s the best thing that happened to jade since squiddles! the art is REALLY GOOD the characterization is REALLY GOOD god.. i love jade route.

BONES OF BLACK MARROW by oxfordRoulette E

an innovation in dirkjake pornography. this fic will make your head split open, and most of it is pornography of an exceptionally raunchy color. Basically, Dirk summons a demon (Jake) for stupid reasons and it fucks both of their lives up. Incredible work with formatting by the author, seriously who can even code like that, and i love the magical mechanics :) it’s very well researched and it really tears both Dirk and Jake to pieces psychologically. through porn.

Timaeus, Testified by sendificating NR

another fic that uses experimental formatting. It’s all about Dirk and it’s REALLY SO AMAZING.... a detailed and inventive psychological opus.

Also.... i write fanfiction. sometimes. can’t vouch for the quality but i would be remiss as an author if i didn’t plug . well, that’s all for tonight, folks! hope u find something to read!

#homestuck #fanfiction

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