Building off of what I wrote in my fic "Sparks," I'm really compelled by the idea of Ford genuinely no longer being interested in sailing around in a boat with Stan by the time they were seniors in high school.
I like the idea of it not being just a symptom of the resentment that had been building between them, nor it being a dream of Ford's that only paled in comparison to west coast tech, but it being a genuine loss of interest on Ford's end. I think it complicates things even further in some really juicy ways.
Like, imagine going through high school slowly losing more and more interest in the dream you've shared with your twin and only friend ever since you were little kids. How do you break it to him? How do you explain it to him without making it sound like a rejection of him? Without it making him hate you?
How do you explain it without it feeling like a spit in the face to all the hard work he's put into a plan that started out as a way of him comforting you by telling you "it doesn't matter what people say about you, you're going to be an adventurer who sails away into the sunset and never has to hear their mockery ever again, and there will be babes and treasure and heroism, and then they'll all see how cool you really are!"
And all through high school you think to yourself, "he's going to move on to more realistic dreams any day now, and then I won't have to say anything about it!" But no matter how many times you mention something else he could do with his life that he seems interested in, or bring up the challenging logistics of traveling around long-term in a boat, he sounds just as committed to the childhood dream as ever, and completely oblivious to how apprehensive you sound.
So resentment grows, little by little. Because that's easier than confronting the soul-crushing levels of guilt that are building up inside of you, every time you don't take an opportunity to tell him you don't want to do the plan anymore. You don't have a single person in your life who modeled how to have difficult conversations for you. As far as you know, having this conversation with Stan would crush him into tiny little pieces and then he would hate you forever, and you can't stand the idea of losing the only friend you've ever had.
So tensions grow. A lack of interest turns into a bitter resentment that, if you were really being honest with yourself, is directed more at yourself than it is at Stan.
And then the falling-out happens, and it seems like you were proven right. Stan hates you now, and he's never going to forgive you for giving up on his dream. But two can play that game, so you try to hate him too. Because if you hate him too, then maybe it won't hurt as much that he never came back. That he never even turned up at school, or by the boat, or in through your bedroom window in the middle of the night. He knows what dad's like, and how he says impulsive exaggerated things when he's angry, and haven't you both dealt with his harsh words countless times before and been able to dust yourselves off and joke about it later? So why isn't he back at home, joking with you about how absurd your dad acted that night, being impossible and belligerent about ruining your dream, but at least now you're even, because you've ruined his dream too.
-
And now imagine you find out he risked the lives of everyone in existence to bring you back, right after you had accepted your fate was to die killing Bill. It would be terrifying and confusing and infuriating. If he cared so much, why didn't he do something to reconnect with you sooner? Why did he ignore you in favor of trying to make it big without you? Why didn't he take the infinitely safer and simpler action of reaching out to you without you having to track down his address and send a desperate plea for help? You were convinced that he didn't care enough to bother with you unless you had an important enough reason for him to come. But even then, he thought your plans were stupid. He didn't want anything to do with you, not even with the world at stake.
Did he save your life out of guilt? Does he pity you that much? It doesn't add up with what he did in the decade leading up to shoving you into the portal. And the dissonance between the version of him in your head that hates you, and the man who held out his arms to welcome you back to your home dimension, is so strong that you feel like you're being lied to again, like you're back in the depths of gaslighting and manipulation that Bill put you through, even though there's no way that's what Stan is trying to do... right? You can't figure it out, so you run away from it. You don't want to know the answer to whether or not Stan hates you, because you don't know which answer would hurt more, so you try to make him hate you more than ever, because at least then you would know for sure how he feels.
And in the end, after he sacrifices his memories for you, and for the world, things seem clearer. The layers upon layers of confusion and anger and hurt seem to have washed away like drawings in the sand, leaving behind the simple truth: that you two had an argument, and didn't move past it for forty years, and despite everything you put each other through, you both still want to re-connect.
So you sail away in a boat together.
And at first, it's wonderful. It's exactly what you want. It feels like an apology to Stan, and a thank-you for saving the world, and a once-in-a-lifetime chance to heal the rift between you two, and it's good to be back on earth, and you wonder why you ever doubted the dream you two once had.
But then, after the first long journey you spend on the sea together, when you get back home to dry land, Stan is already talking about planning your next adventure out on the open sea. He recaps every adventure you had on the first trip, over and over again, and he wants to chat with you all through the morning and long into the night, and you don't have the words to explain to yourself that you don't have enough social battery for this, and suddenly you're slipping back into the horrifyingly familiar feeling of Stan being overbearing and needing space from him and how could you think that? How could you think that about him after everything he's done for you and everything he's forgiven you for? But the longer this goes on, the more you realize that you still don't want to spend the rest of your life sailing around with Stan. It's great fun in moderation, but the idea of your whole life revolving around Stan and going on adventures with Stan and being in a boat with Stan with no time to be by yourself thinking about your own things and figuring out your own dreams makes your skin crawl with a claustrophobic kind of panic that you still don't know how to put into words forty years after the first time this feeling grabbed you by the throat and ruined your friendship with Stanley.
But the first time this happened, it nearly ruined his life forever. You can't let yourself feel this. You don't feel this. You're happy to spend the rest of your life fulfilling Stan's lifelong dream, and making up for the time you crushed his dream, and sure, maybe he crushed your dream once too, and maybe it would be nice for him to support your dreams like you're now doing for him, but you can't say that. He saved the universe, and it would be horrible and ungrateful and cruel for you to try to voice these feelings, especially when you don't know how to voice your feelings without it making other people feel like you twisted a knife into their gut. So you try to pretend the feeling isn't there.
You go out on a boat with Stan again. You planned out another incredible journey together, and this should be fun, and you should be happy about this, but the unspoken feeling you shoved as far down in yourself as it could possibly go is eating you alive. The worst part? Stan is starting to notice. You have never been good at hiding your emotions. The trick to it has always been to convince yourself you don't feel it at all, and not think about it, and that has always worked like a charm. But whenever the emotion claws its way back up to the forefront of your mind, you can tell Stan knows something is wrong. So you can't even give him the happy ending he deserves. You can't even convince him that you want to be here on the open seas forever with him, like he deserves. And you keep trying and trying to hide it, but Stan keeps asking in roundabout ways, like "You're being awfully quiet, sixer," and "whats that look on your face?" and eventually it comes exploding out of you like a shaken-up soda bottle dropped on its cap.
And then it's like you're back at home in New Jersey again, standing in the living room while dad grabs Stanley by the shirt. It all comes pouring out of you, in the worst possible way, with the worst possible phrasing, like a pandora's box of monstrousness, and Stan tries to fight back against the sting of your words, but you're made out of acid and you're burning through him and you can see it on his face, and there's never any coming back from this, not this time, you'll just have to either jump into the ocean or become a monster forever, so Stan can hate you more easily again, and-
-and at the end of the outburst, you're still on a boat in the middle of nowhere in the ocean with your brother, in dangerous waters, and you have things to do to keep the boat running smoothly.
You can't run away from him. He can't run away from you. You're stuck here for at least a couple more weeks, even if you turned around and sailed back towards shore right away.
-
And the thing that compels me so much here, despite how unbelievably angsty it all is, is that it sets up a situation wherein the Stans might end up forced to actually address the decades of resentment and confusion and wanting-to-reconnect-throughout-it-all that they thought they could gloss over and heal with enough time spent adventuring together on a boat. They might end up forced to actually address the crux of the issue that drove them apart in the first place: Ford wanting a little more space to feel like his own person, and to feel like he's able to have his own dreams, too.
It wouldn't happen easily, nor right away, but if they were stuck together on a little boat in the middle of nowhere surrounded by magical creatures they have to protect each other from in order to make it back home alive, then after they had one fight where they brought up all the things they silently agreed to never bring up again, it would probably happen many more times, and each time it would leave them both angrier at each other than ever, until eventually something honest slipped through amidst all the saying-anything-except-what-they-mean bickering. And once enough of these honest moments slipped through, then they would have a thread to tug on to start to unravel the gargantuan knot of their decades of unresolved conflicts.
And then, eventually, maybe Stan could learn that he can have a good friendship with his brother without needing to be glued to him at the hip, and Ford needing a certain amount of alone time doesn't mean he dislikes him or wants to abandon him, and Ford could learn that he can be honest and have a meaningful connection with someone without it driving them away and making them hate him.
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aHA! i have finally figured out why i never jived with the kanade tenma hc. like you know me. THE found family guy. even if i don’t hc it myself i can still have fun watching other people have fun. but this one was always just 1. confusing and 2. not fun for me to see and i could never articulate why but i’ve got it now
the entire problem with Kanade Tenma is as a whole the fandom has a tendency to treat kanade like an orphan. like she has no family, no support system, like she’s all alone and needs to be taken in by the... tenmas... for some reason... (still not sure why the fandom decided she needs to be a tenma like she’s never even met tsukasa or saki. how is she getting over there. if she’s getting taken in by anybody it should be like... the mochizukis) and it’s like... guys. you do realize she’s not an orphan, right? she has family. she has good family. idr all the reasons why her grandma doesn’t live with her, but i’m assuming it’s along the lines of her being too old and frail to properly take care of a child at this point in her life - which is why she set kanade up with that caretaker/housekeeper system. it’s not perfect, but at least she isn’t being left to fend for herself
her dad is alive. just because he had a stroke and is now experiencing vascular dementia doesn’t mean he’s basically dead or that kanade is basically fatherless or something awful like that. (i’m genuinely still not sure what the fuck the game thinks it wrote irt what put kanade’s dad in the hospital but like. it wrote a stroke followed by vascular dementia. that’s what it did. “burnout” my fucking ass) i know at the end of the day kanade tenma is ultimately just a harmless headcanon, but like... please take a moment to think about the message even your most harmless headcanons might send. “if your parent is suffering from dementia and no longer recognizes you... well you don’t have a parent anymore. you need a new one. sorry.” obviously no one intends to say such a horrible thing, but remember that intent <<<<<<< final impression left on your outside audience.
having a family member that you love so much forget about you is a story that needs to be told. the prsk fandom needs to take a step back and just let this be told As It Is. kanade’s family is so, so fucking important to her. she’s only the person she is today because of her parents and all the gratitude and love she feels for them both. like, literally her most recent focus was her realizing how loved she was in light of mafuyu’s mother’s coldness. she knows that she experienced true unconditional love - something that mafuyu’s mom seems incapable of giving her daughter - and she still carries that love and warmth in her heart now. it’s what defines her as a person. it’s what gives her the courage to continue living. it’s why she believes she can save mafuyu and so many other people. she has that memory of what real genuine honest to god unconditional love is, and she’s so fucking determined to share it with the world.
kanade doesn’t... need a “new” family. her family may have suffered multiple tragedies, and it may be fragmented and a little broken, but... it’s hers. i don’t think it’s in good taste to take that away from her and try to “fix” her by placing her in a “better” family. it’s completely unnecessary.
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and today in sometimes i write shit that fucks me up for weeks: time travel au steve & trees
Steve gets up. Goes into his room — not his room at all, it’s not his home, it’s not his — knowing Hopper won’t follow him, locks the door knowing El will unlock it if she needs him, and crawls under the blanket. He doesn’t cry, just curls up and lies there in numb misery of feeling too much, thinking too much, knowing too much, and not having the right words to express anything.
The air under the blanket gets too warm to really be comfortable, but he doesn’t want to move. He’s turned into a tree again, as El would put it. Another pang of guilt and misery runs through him, because he doesn’t want to be fucked up like that, fucked up enough for a child to call him a tree because he loses his reality a lot; but then the thought of being a tree almost feels so relieving it makes him want to cry.
Because trees don’t think about their friends dying. Killed. Murdered. By forces greater than this world’s imagination. Trees don’t watch the blood seeping from them over and over again until they lose their minds and go into shock that this world doesn’t support, instead tugging him back and forth until all there is is nothingness, because there is no time to think or feel or process, and once there is time, there is too much to even start. And no one to talk to about it. No one to listen.
If he could turn into a tree and never have a single thought again, he would without hesitation.
But he can’t, so he thinks, and the thinks until he falls asleep and the thoughts turn into memories morphed with fears until it’s Steve who kills them. Steve who fails. And Steve who does it over and over again. In the Upside Down, in Eddie’s trailer, at school, in Mike’s basement.
It’s Steve. Like it was Billy.
[…]
Walking on legs that haven’t quite accommodated to being upright yet, stiff and heavy in the dark of night, Steve makes his way through the forest, tumbling and stumbling, but never enough to make him stop. He’s heaving breaths now, willing the cold air into his lungs to stop everything from feeling so wrong, to break through the haze and the fog and the cotton, to pierce his insides with little pinpricks of ice as December is fast approaching. It only serves to make him more dizzy, his head spinning, glowing spots of black and white appearing in his field of vision until he leans against a tree, catching his breath and holding it.
Holding onto it with whimpers and wheezes and pathetic little groans that make him want to scream. He punches the tree, his hand numb with pain upon impact, his knuckles stiff and scraped up; bloody, even in the pitch black darkness.
Bloody. His hands are always bloody. It stains them, has seeped into his skin, like a reverse tattoo that only he can see. This, though… This is real. It’s his blood.
And so he punches again. And again, until his breath has evened out, and the pain has moved from his arm and his side over to his hand. Over to something real.
He flexes his fingers and watches them, can barely make out their shape, and focuses on the pull of his skin, the scrapes making it feel too tight — but in a real way. In a way that… he’s not going crazy. It’s real. It’s all real. And it’s burning, sizzling along with all of that anger, the grief, the confusion, the complete and utter fucking lostness. The loneliness.
Steve punches the tree one more time, then turns around to put more distance between him and familiar walls and stale air and worried glances so heavy they slowly scrape away the scar tissue growing over all those rawest of feelings.
He walks and walks without direction or destination, simply placing one foot in front of the other as his racing heart calms down and he is overcome with an absolute, all-consuming kind of exhaustion that makes him sway the very second he stops. His eyes are getting heavy, like his body is slowly coming to the realisation that his beside clock said 3:38 a.m. and that he hasn’t slept through the night for some days now, or maybe weeks, always awoken by nightmares — on days that he even dared to fall asleep.
No one should have to feel this kind of exhaustion, Steve thinks. Even after the Russians, after torture and fighting and more torture, followed by running and more running and almost dying in a car crash and then in a fire… Even after all that, he wasn’t as exhausted as he feels right now.
Probably because back then, he had Robin. Robin who would hold his hand, Robin who would share a glance with him and resuscitate everything that died inside of him with just one brave little smile.
God, she was so brave.
Steve leans against a tree, closing his eyes for just one second as he pictures Robin — alive and smiling and determined. Robin, in the passenger seat of his car at ass o’clock in the morning, grumpy and tired, leaning in to give him a hug hello and a hug goodbye. Robin, who would roll her eyes at his antics, his insecurities and his worries — Robin, who would explain hours later, her hand in his, that he had no reason to doubt or worry. That he was fine. That he was perfect. That everything else would slot into place soon and be perfect for him, too. Payback, she’d called it.
Payback, he thinks now as he heaves another breath, willing it through his constricted throat, and just barely keeping himself from screaming. Payback, because he failed. Payback, because he watched her die and nothing, nothing good will ever come out of that.
As much as he will try to save her, she will always have died. As much as he can try to keep her safe this time around, he will always have failed her.
That’s nothing he can take back. Ever. Nothing he can fix. Nothing he can make un-happen.
It’s the cruellest constant.
One that won’t leave him alone. One that won’t let him sleep at night, one that won’t leave his head even for a minute, flooding his consciousness with memories of blood and failure, weighing down his conscience until he can’t fucking breathe, and—
A sob escapes his throat even as he stumbles forward, continuing on his nonexistent path that feels a lot like running, fleeing from this new life, as though he could magically make his way back to the old one. Because they have died. They’re dead. He watched them. This new world won’t fix that. Won’t fix him. And he doesn’t deserve fixing anyway.
So he runs.
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