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the-kipsabian · 3 months

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wrestling fic writers!!

i have decided to be the change i wanna see, so lets do a nice little thing for each other, as a community full of incredible and talented writers. yes this is writer specific only, but thats cause thats where the main problem of people not interacting with creative works lies in this fandom as far as i can tell and have seen people talking about it especially in the last couple of months

if you read this, please add links to your written works. it can be just a single fic youre really proud of, your writing blog, your writing tag, your ao3 account, anything where your works can be found

and if you leave your link here, PLEASE check out someone else that has left their works, and interact with them. leave them a comment, even just a kudos, REBLOG their fic, etc. interacting is the keyword i want to emphasize here, along with building a sort of a masterpost of where to find people writing in this fandom

and if you are not a writer, youre still highly encouraged to interact with this post and share it and show love to the writers in this fandom, obviously!! i think that should go without saying, but adding it in anyways

a bit more about my vision and resources and such under the read more, but thats the gist of it. happy linking and please be kind and supportive to each other!! 💜

nobody is too big or too small to add their things on this list. if you write and post anything in this fandom whatsoever, be it fics or drabbles or headcanons, any companies or any kind of ships or reader inserts or any content whatsoever no matter how 'dead dove dont eat' or hell even if its just meta, we welcome all here and nobody can say that one thing is less valid than another. just please tag your content accordingly, especially if theres content warnings, and feel free to mention what you write, who you write, any info you wish to leave that would help people before they click on your links. but even so, that should not and hopefully will not deter people from interacting, no matter what it is. someones trash is another ones treasure, i promise you

and unless the amount gets really overwhelming, im personally going to be checking out everyone that leaves something here. unless it squeaks me out, but even then, i'll spread the word. and i just wish as many people as possible will do the same, and not just use this as a potential board to only get eyes on their stuff. ofc thats also the point, but you should give as much, if not more, than you get. we need to be kind and supportive of one another (besides, from personal experience, if you show love to someone else, they are more likely to do it back than without you taking the first step, so... pay it forward)

as for resources, heres a few links that should be helpful in leaving comments and feedback. of course everyone does their own thing and no comment is too big or too small to leave, but for those who need them. if you have anything you'd like added to this list, dont hesitate to get in touch or drop it in the post yourself!!

101 comment starters

ao3 floating comment box

kudos html

dont know how to comment? easy solutions

a quick hot guide to commenting (by yours truly)

an overall guide to appreciating fanfic writers

and just in general.. leave people comments. leave them asks about their projects. just go over and gush about their work. i know it sounds embarrassing but writers love nothing more than to hear that someone likes what they are doing. if you find a fic that hasnt been updated in forever, comment on it. it might just be the spark the author needs to continue. while kudos and likes are nice, and just as valuable to some, its definitely in the words the people leave for them that matter the most. im not saying this to put pressure on anyone, its just how it is, and i feel like unless people are writers themselves, and even then sometimes, thats just hard to grasp, especially if the writer is a smaller and less popular one who doesnt get a lot of traffic in the first place

i think thats all. just be nice and considered to everyone, reblog peoples works, this post with others add ons and so forth. and if i find anyone talking shit here or at other writers for something they share, you'll be blocked and im probably taking your kneecaps. be fucking nice. we are all struggling here and we need to stick together

happy sharing and commenting 💜💜

#wrestling fanfiction #wrestling fic #aew fanfic #aew fanfiction #wwe fanfiction #wwe fanfic #i hope this make some sort of coherent sense #despite being a writer im really bad at words lmao #i also dont know what to tag this with without clogging main tags so im going to trust moots to get this going first #just. this is a topic im passionate about. i love writing i love writers and having seen the wrestling fandom as of late really struggling #with this. we need to do something. even a little bit helps. actually get people leaving feedback and commenting again #supporting each other. we can do this together #dont let dreams be dreams lets fucking do this #just be nice and help each other out #im gonna stop now before i get overly emotional. if theres any questions let me know tho i think i got the main parts pretty clear here #again moots. im trusting you to get this started. im not gonna add my own shit here immediately this isnt about me #this is about the community as a whole #i also hope nobody is afraid of adding themselves here. you are all valid and worth the attention no matter what #just remember to also give if you leave something here. look at the previous links. look in the notes to find more people #okay thats it i need to make dinner now #lets just be kind and support one another. promise me that 💜#night is an absolute mess on main

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luck-of-the-drawings · 19 days

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smth smth about 'the thing that the character did that you thought was rly rly funny in the moment is actually linked to a terrible trauma that lies within said character.' or wahtever.

#jrwi show #jrwi fanart #jrwi riptide #gillion tidestrider #made this within a short span of wahtever bc i gotta go up to the mountains for my stupid gay job tonight n im trying #nnot to frrRREAAAK THE FUCK OUUTTTTTTi dont wanna work but. get that bread we fuckin shall i guess #ONWARDS TO THE FISH TORMENT!! sometimes flowers feel pain when you trim them before their blossoming. atleast i imagine so #i used to draw gillion with loooong hair tied into a big ol braid. and then it was confirmed that he had short hair when he was little.#AT FIRST I WAS SAD. but then i realized the duality of. when they were little. gill had short hair. edyn had long hair.#AND NOW THEYRE OLDER. and gillion has long hair. and edyn has short hair #both mirroring eachother. looking up to eachother. subconsciously or not. they most certainly care. and most certainly miss eachother.#GILLION ALWAYS LOVED HOW LONG HAIR LOOKs. atleast i imagine so. he hasnt cut it since he left the undersea. sure he wanted to go back home #but even at the very start. he knew he was free in some way now. free to grow out his hair. an adventure would await him before he returns.#he knew it would be a while. so he cant let this go. he cant let this sought-after hair-length get cut away from him again #not yet. not yet. i like to think he loved music too. I SAW SOMETHING INTERESTING A BIT AGO #i see alot of ppl commenting on my baby gill comics like;'i wouldFIGHT this teacher i wanna KILL EM i want them DESTROYED #all very good and nice sentiments! i LOVE the energy here! and it would be nice. to have that catharsis #but the story of young tidestrider is not a story of catharsis. it is a story of agony and being so so small and so special and also so dum #and sucking so bad. and just being a kid and doing the things that a little kid does and so many tired tired people reacting badly to it #youre supposed to be the hero that will save us. our world hangs in the balance and you are the one who tips the scales.#YOU are supposed to SAVE US!! you NEED to SAVE US! CAN YOU PLEASE STOP SQUIRMING IN YOUR STUPID CHAIR!!#you'd think that young tidestrider ought to prevail. and be tucked someplace all safe and sound.#elders gone missing and rotting in a jail. their cultists nowhere around. but theres no happy endings. not here not now.#this tale is all sorrows n woes. you may dream that justice n peace win the day. but thats not how this story goes #BIG ideas for this lil baby gillion series. if anything i make ever gets disproven im killing myself in a well as to poison a water supply

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quirkle2 · 6 months

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Shigeo still doesn’t know how to answer. He hasn’t answered, and he knows that’s weird, and maybe a bit creepy, but it’s also characteristic of him, so maybe he doesn’t need to stress over it. He simply sits there in the heavy rain instead and watches Reigen’s pink tie get dragged by the gales. And then Serizawa crouches down, lowers his hand out, and shelters Shigeo’s head with the draped fabric of a clear umbrella. In Shigeo’s world, the rain stops.

scene from my wip fic recondite :]

#qkdraws #id in alt #jay you've GOTTA stop jumping into projects u don't know how to do . rainwater on Any surface is not ur specialty #actually ykw scratch that. that's how u learn #follow ur dreams kids #im so happy i can finish big pieces in one day now. started this just earlier today #i've always wanted to do that and now i can. success <3 #also i've realized over the years that sometimes u jump into a project and expect one part to be hard #but that part is actually the easiest bit and some other trivial bullshit is the issue. yeah the umbrella #doing the umbrella was fine. doing the rainwater ? uhm i did my best #ALSO also sorry that this is the same snippet i posted a while ago i just think this scene means a lot to the both of them #and i think abt it a good bit #mob psycho 100 #mp100 #mob psycho #shigeo kageyama #mp100 shigeo #mp100 mob #serizawa katsuya #mp100 serizawa #ayyyee two for two on actual backgrounds in art for this fic. wowie

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femme-dor · 9 months

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I see myself in a career where I attend all types of exclusive elegant events, network & befriend many important, influential people (not influencers) over wine and expensive plates, fly to major cities around the world & stay in luxury hotels, dress expensively, be involved in important executive meetings, and retiring to my house in the hills. 💖

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ladykissingfish · 5 months

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Madara: Izuna, you know I love you, right?

Madara: You’re more precious to me than any other thing in this whole world.

Madara: And you’re so cute, the spitting image of mother! With your beautiful smile and big gorgeous eyes!

Madara: *petting Izuna’s hair* I wish we could stay like this, just like this, forever and ever. Me and my sweet baby brother.

Izuna: Madara, this is all very nice, but …

Izuna: It’s my wedding night. I really need to go and be with Tobirama now.

Madara: So soon? If he’s that impatient for you to go to him, then perhaps this marriage was a mistake? No matter, as the clan elder I can just get it annulled and —

Izuna: Impatient? Big brother … the wedding has been over for four hours now! *points at the chair across the room* For Kami’s sake, your own husband fell asleep waiting for you!

Madara: But …

Izuna: Listen, Madara … the sooner you let me go, the sooner I can … *blushes* the soon WE can start working on making you an uncle. You’ve always wanted that, haven’t you?

Madara:

Madara: *releases Izuna* Try and aim for some little girls, please. The clan needs more Uchiha princesses.

#this was in my head as a dream #like it’s after the wedding and random senjus and uchihas are laying along the floor in various stages of drunkness #and Madara (extremely drunk and very emotional) grabs hold of Izuna and starts petting his hair like he can’t stop #and at first Izuna thinks it’s cute #but sir it’s been HOURS #Tobirama fell asleep waiting #as did Hashirama #meanwhile Izuna dying to get out of his wedding dress and into the lingerie he picked out for tonight #not that Madara needs to know that #tobiizu #tobirama x izuna #tobirama senju #izuna uchiha #madara uchiha #RELEASE MY MAN HE HAS BABIES TO CONCEIVE 😭

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fox-guardian · 1 year

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love it when men are tortured by visions (<- is thinking about oliver banks)

#ramblings with major #tma #oh i love him. oh i LOVE him.#how hard do you think it was for him to make friends in the 8 years he was having his dreams and starting to see the tendrils irl #like. idk about you but I'd be afraid to make new friends if i knew i'd be able to see when they'd die ten days before it happened #and have no power to stop it

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humongousautismblast69 · 2 years

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#jojo newsies #newsies #newsies broadway #jack kelly #david jacobs #brodway #musical theater #musical #i have had 3 dreams about newsies and its starting to scare me #What does this mean #I cannot stop thinking about them #newsies forever #newsies fandom #mental issues #coping #ahaha yes #fuck my life #once and for all

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velvetjune · 18 days

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the chapter songs in Alan Wake 2,, flawless

#they deserve more love and discussion #saying this while also not knowing what to say other than they’re so fucking good #alan wake 2 #i think it’s partially because poets of the fall’s tracks are iconic so of course they’re in the spotlight (as deserved)#but also the CHAPTER SONGS. them being made for a given chatacter(s) with the help of Sam lakes poetry #the changes with ‘this road’ by Poe with every Alan chapter. becoming more distorted and revealing lyrics and the spiral #the scratch song being 1) hilarious and 2) similar to Zane’s poetry in the aw1 arg #the emotion in superhero when saga feels lost at the story making it so Logan was gone #the lines of her feeling like a ghost in this story forming around her.. how she feels guilty and absent for both what the story’s doing #and being away from Logan because of her job. ashdhhhhjhh my heart #AND. follow you into the dark HAS to be alice. which kills me because at for at I thought of Alan #but no. Alice jumped in the dark place after him. it’s so !!!!!!!!!!!#the rabbit hole line. Alice spiraling deeper and deeper into a dream—into wonderland #the Lost at Sea one is also good. intrigues me. the Bowie and Lynch references are blatantly aw2 Zane #but it’s so similar to diver Zane and the ‘originals’ death. being lost in the dark place with illusions of escape #and losing any sense of identity. whether he’s real at all or the monster of this sea or just a lost soul.#the soft and calm vocals / instrumental really makes the whole thing #NEED to stop typing more tags because this is a Lot. however.#‘no one left to love’ is also a phenomenal song and one of my favorites from the album. GORGEOUS vocals and how it all flows together.#such a powerful and beautiful way to end a chapter #anyway that’s all I had to say :)#god. I’ve started to watch a few playthroughs of the game and 90% of people have skipped the chapter songs and every time im #that’s fair but my brain and soul might implode if I don’t see anyone else talking about how good these songs are

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swordfright · 10 days

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I also think the dsmp kinda talks about empathy. The characther rarely put themself in others shoes to see the things through their airs. Actual empathy it's undertanding why someone thinks the way they thing and putting youself in their shoes. A lot of the characthers dont do that. With c!dream no one ever put themself in his shoes, they all see him and go "well I'd have do this in your place and so you should do the way I think it should happen" showing a lack of empathy and more a attempt to justified their view on this person and hear their opinions of him repeated back. And the ones who do are "good" and the ones who dont "bad". The prison arc it's the extreme point of this I think, while exile shows cdream's own lack of empathy for ctommy I think prison arc shows this in a more extreme level in how csam and cquackity talk about cdream.

That's why for me it's not a coincidence that ctommy, someone who wanted to undertand cdream before but more to support his vision of him, is forced to literally put himself in cdream shoes. That's the first time he could actually feel empathy for him. He undertood that cdream it's not him and the reasons for why he did what did might not have been good but that's not the thing, the thing it's that they were good for him and he thought that's the solution and ctommy undertanding that's how cdream saw the world and trying to talk him about it and make him see his methods werent good. In that moment, true empathy was showed and that's a thing that lacked on the characthers of that server bc everyone was so focused on themselfs and never tried to think in how others think and feel until it was too late.

Sorry for the long paragraph, I really like to talk about this thing with the lore

God yeah the empathy stuff is so so interesting, especially considering that cc!Dream stopped streaming from his character's POV, which kind of like...forcibly cuts c!Dream off from the audience. Which makes his character harder to empathize with, I'd argue, because you're no longer able to see the story from his perspective the way you can with other characters. Super fascinating move. IIRC cc!Dream said he did that because he was already a big creator and wanted to give smaller creators the spotlight (i could be wrong, feel free to fact-check this as you see fit) but like...regardless of what his intent was, he cuts c!Dream's POV out of the narrative more or less right as c!Dream starts pivoting to a more antagonistic (or i guess antagonist-adjacent, in some ppl's view) role in the story.

#i think about this so much #tbh i need to rewatch some streams and maybe type up a long ass annoying post about it #just to get it outta my system lmao #asks #oh also #I wanna clarify that when I say “antagonistic role” I don't mean to say /I/ view him as the story's antagonist #what I mean is that there was observably a shift when a whole bunch of viewers started seeing/characterizing him as an antagonist #whiiiiiich IIRC was right around the time cc!dream stopped streaming on the server #again. i need to double check this

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starflungwaddledee · 4 months

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which ocs in the fandom do you find the most interesting? also, which ocs do you think have the most aesthetically pleasing designs? finally, which ocs have you only heard of but would like to know more about?

ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh nooooooo ha haaa noooo i can't possibly answer this because it would be soooo unfair to have favourites wouldn't it's comet knight by @kittenvirus

#sorry it's the colour scheme and the glitter and the fluff. i'm unfortunately so so weak to all these things 😭#even a little bit of pastel rainbow star theming specifically... comet really has everything i'm sorry to say #i think starstruck would faint immediately if she saw him. could they be friends?? i'm not sure i think she'd just be like this: 👁️👁️#he is also one of (if not the very) first designs i saw when i started picking around the kirby community #so i'll always have a soft spot for him no matter who else i discover.#there are also a dozen other OCs that i love and adore but the more that i list the more folks will feel that i didn't list *them*#and i really really don't want to do that! my mutuals have some absolutely banging designs as do some folks who i don't follow!#there are also a lot of REALLY cool designs that are 'semi' oc but are more like redesigns? from folks AUs or comics or so on #many great morpho-esque redesigns out there too i'm always a fan of those!!!#please understand i'm listing only ONE design that hits all these prompts (bc i also don't know the creator well hence 'only heard of')#and one that always stands out to me personally because of the sentimentality i mentioned above #but i love MANY many many. if i started listing them i would never stop!! if you have an oc or a design i probably love them!!#i realise that is a bit of a dodge of the breadth of this question but i just... yknow? haha #i'd be happy to learn more about any ocs really!! i would actually love for starstruck to start having some relationships with others too?#if folks are interested in that!! she has relationships with the dream land four but not so much with ocs; and that might be fun too!!#others ocs #asks

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talentforlying · 2 months

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priest: i don't, ah, quite know what to say to you. if you are in such terrible danger, why are you taking it all so calmly? constantine: hmh! i dunno, father. i had a bloke beaten to a pulp earlier this evening. that sound calm to you? priest: you did what...? constantine: i must've been off me bleedin' rocker. i've never done anything like it before in me life, y'know?

constantine: but there's header gets his guts blown out, and george is stickin' his head in the noose, and helen gets ... jesus, then friggin' sarah bites me head off — ! everything's coming to bits in me hands and it's so easy to just see red and now, shit, they could've killed the tosser for all i know! and now i'm just like the bastards i've hated all me life! kill him! fire him! close them down! piss all over him! screw you, i can do whatever i want! i so much as blink and you're dead, pal! i'm in charge!! ...

constantine: 'scuse me, father. i'm always like this when i don't get me own way. — hellblazer #81, "rake at the gates of hell pt. 4"

babygirl you are just....so, sooooo offputting. (and grieving, and guilty, and terrified, but yeah: offputting.)

anyway, it's issues like this one that remind me why i kind of hesitate over some of the retcons in the recent spurrier runs, like the one with him now having opened dream's pouch of sand and stolen some before they even met. because like, it's easy enough to look at john constantine now — with 70 years of worst possible choices and unresolved trauma crystallizing underneath his skin to cover up all the soft, hopeful bits where he's used to getting hit — and assign him arbiter of ill intentions, magus of wasted potential, saint of shit choices, but man . . . he was new to this, once. he was still new to this 80 issues in.

80 issues in, and he's not used to losing friends yet; he even has time enough between catastrophes to grieve each individual one. still has enough left to live for at this stage to necessitate running and hiding, instead of bodily throwing himself at the problem like he learns to later, or sitting apathetically by to do nothing except smoke and watch the world fall apart when he finally gives up. fuck, he still apologizes.

and you're telling me this guy, this soppy wet cat motherfucker hiding from the devil in a church basement, so guilty over not knowing what happened to the guy that he paid people (paid chas, so chas could pay people) to attack that the bottle he's holding in this scene isn't even his second or third........this guy's past, more innocent self lied right to the face of DREAM OF THE ENDLESS and got away with it?

hm. i just don't know about all that.

#also this is where my headcanons tag is from <3 #( ooc. ) OUT OF CIGS.#( visage. ) AND I'M A BASTARD.#( character study. ) A WALKING PLAGUE OF A MAN.#sometimes i just think that. people really like to reduce constantine down to one or two things #and somehow. after 250 issues of putting his life on the line bc he could never really make himself look away from people suffering #the soft sullen guilty person who wants so fucking desperately to be a better man? is never one of those two things #idk man. i think about this issue all the time #if i put these pages side-by-side with his grief in hellblazer 2? with his grief in hellblazer 213? 215? during the empathy virus arc?#it becomes CRYSTAL clear that the guy we know at the end of hellblazer isn't someone the guy who sat vigil for gary lester would recognize #in fact i think he's someone that hellblazer 81 constantine would fucking Hate #ANYway yeah. i don't think he lied to dream about the pouch. i don't think he ever got it open. i don't think that's canon for me #i want him to fucking Earn his asshole nature. the hard way. by making All The Wrong Choices that it took to get him there #he paved that road with good intentions himself but. he also used to remember the ones he started with #idk if i'm making sense but i have had this panel open on my laptop for Two Months now #bc i can never stop thinking about how fucking crushed he is here to realize that he might be exactly as bad a man as sarah said he was #and how little it will surprise him later on to learn that he is Easily capable of So Much Fuckin Worse #and with that your honor the defense rests. our evidence? just. just Look at this fuckin guy #scopophobia /#scopophobia #eye contact /#eye contact tw

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godsfavoritescientist · 9 months

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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.

#succumbed to the stan twins angst visions and wrote 2000 words about this #ford pines #ford meta #this turned into a character analysis that almost reads like a fic #godswriting #<- i need to change my writing tag to this #something bothers me a little bit about the solution to their conflict being 'ford appreciates stan more now so he is now fine with-#-boat adventures with stan'. to me it leaves the initial conflict of 'he doesnt want to do that anymore' unresolved #obviously you could easily argue that ford never stopped wanting to go on boat adventures with stan and he just couldnt justify it to-#-himself when compared to the opportunity at west coast tech. but that has one less layer of conflict #compared to the possibility that he truly was not interested in boat adventures anymore. ESPECIALLY if its a manifestation of him #feeling suffocated by the whole dynamic-twins-duo thing #its normal to start wanting a little bit more space especially at that age. to want to have space to figure out who you are #the healthy thing would have been them talking about it and figuring out a compromise. like 'when ford needs space he can spend a few hours #-alone without stan being worried the whole time that it means ford hates him' and 'we still spend x amount of time working on the boat and #-we still chat on the way to and from school every day and hang out at the beach on weekends'#like of fucking course it was never about hating stan or about wanting to get away from him because of who he is as a person!#he literally just wanted to have a little bit of breathing room to be his own separate person. he just didn't know how to put it into words #I really think the crux of it all was them not knowing how to navigate that balance between independence and identity while staying close #so ford misattributing/reducing that feeling to 'I dont have the exact same dream as stan anymore. why does he still have that dream. oh no #feels like a good way of giving that conflict a tangible aspect to it thats easy for the stans to point at and talk about as a way of-#-alluding to the REAL core of the conflict between them.#and of course the show never says 'they sail around the world for the rest of their lives 24/7' so it's not like it Actually Conflicts with #-my interpretation of the conflict and how it should be resolved. but since its the last thing we see happen between them when theyre given #their happy ending. I feel compelled to say 'hey I know them living in the shack together and traveling in a boat every single year sounds-#-really fun and like a satisfying ending but I think they should have a Little Bit more space from eachother than that. Hanging out almost-#-daily but not literally being in the same house and same boat for the rest of their lives. bc if stan was ok with ford asking for that-#-little bit of space and if ford didnt panic and isolate himself from everyone whenever he needs like one hour of alone time? that would-#-feel like a big piece of the puzzle fitting into place for their conflict resolution and growth as characters. to me #and I think they deserve to have all the tied-up-loose-ends and resolved-conflicts and character-growth in the world.

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