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godsfavoritescientist · 10 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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canarydarity · 1 year

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Hard to tell how indicative the bones on the floor are of anything about the catacombs themselves being how, every few minutes, Pix kills another skeleton adding to the collection. He swipes his sword through the one before him, and it collapses so readily into a pile of bone—like it was made to, like it was just waiting on his sword—that he has to wonder, not for the first time, what was holding it together to begin with. The bones rattle and clatter against those already littered around, and Pix sighs at the further disturbance to the scene as it was when he had entered; accounting for the damage likely done by mobs was going to make this hell to study.

He grabs another torch and sets it inside one of the empty sconces that still adorn the walls, readjusts his grip on his sword—he can hear more lingering around the next corner; the low hiss that means a spider is near, the groan or two of a zombie.

Pix picks up a chunk of cobble from the ground and tosses it down the hall, waits. Sure enough, out scuttles a spider. He disposes of it quickly enough, but it seems he’ll have to venture down the dark hall to goad the zombies. He glances at the clock he placed in his hotbar before embarking on this mission (it’s hard to tell how much time passes underground—something he learned quickly in his line of work). There’s still a good amount of daylight left, and he wants the catacombs cleared; he has other projects he has to move on to, things he needs to finish; he’ll just get through a few more halls—it won’t be an issue, surely.

But the new corner he rounds remains dark even as he places a torch behind him to mark the way back. The groans can still be heard, but a zombie is yet to lumber his way, and so he has to wonder what's beyond his admittedly limited sight. Pix shuffles another foot or so forward, a torch in his non-dominant hand now as well, hoping for light, for vision. The research part of him—the logical academic—knows that it shouldn't still be this dark with the torches placed behind him nor the one in his hand, and that part is so much louder and more important than the one that knows this means something is wrong, the part that says turn around.

The torch is lit, he can feel the heat of the flame as he observes it flicker in and out but cast no shadow on the wall behind—a wall Pix can’t even see but knows is there all the same. The circle of light provided extends no further than an inch or two out from the flame itself—comparable more to that of a birthday candle than a lit hand torch. If he hadn’t been staring directly at it, he would’ve assumed the fire snuffed out.

He feels his eye twitch and his brows furrow. Academia liked concrete answers, things that could be explained and reasoned away—unequivocal proof. But Pix had always had a soft spot for the inexplicable, the ineffable. It was nice when he studied something and found an answer, it was riveting when he didn’t. How much more exciting to study it again and again, a riddle that begged not to be solved. (How much sweeter the prize if he were the one to figure it out in the end).

His interest was piqued. He could feel it, the way his attention focused and his surroundings blurred and left him; his body on standby, his sword hand lowered almost subconsciously.

In other words, it was entirely his own fault when the zombie grabbed him. Panic is never a good thing to welcome into a fight, but it likes to show up uninvited anyway. Pix's entire career revolves around studying human behavior, about how human nature cannot be fought against though it oft leads us to our own downfall and ruin. He finds it uncanny when he's reminded that this is a phenomenon from which he is not exempt.

In haste, he elbows the zombie behind him and turns, back now to the darkness—the one not even his torch could dent. It’s an ugly bugger, eyes soft and misshapen from decay and skin so leathery it’s as if it's been treated and is ready for use as a saddle or armor. Logic replaced by horror, before he can run it through it advances, arms out, and Pix drops his sword to reach back, holding it at arm's length itself; their arms interlocked, pose not unlike meeting an old friend again for the first time in a while. His hands grip the woven fabric of what's left of its shirt, too old and worn to be from any time close to recent, and, despite the very real danger, his mind takes the time to process the period-accurate fabric, the hand-stitched design. He blanches again as he looks into its horrible milky eyes—this zombie was from the capital.

Not sentient enough to know why it’s not actually getting any closer to Pixlriffs, the zombie makes a noise that sounds frighteningly human in its frustration and steps forward, and in his distraction, Pix lets it. The push seems to make his brain function yet again, and he shoves the zombie backward a good few paces away, but the momentum sends him stepping back himself, and his foot finds not purchase but, instead, the disturbing lack of solid ground, and with nothing left to do, he falls.

He hits the ground with a thump and a crack and a lot of other sounds he would rather not describe as he feels they were likely very undignified. Winded but, it appears, still in one piece, he grabs another torch and strikes it against the wall, holding it up above him when it lights and shines this time as torches normally do. He buries the part of himself that is disappointed at this—the part that wants to panic and complain finally louder, now, than the part that says hmm.

He didn’t fall too far, it seems. Now that the torch is lit he can see the gap he’d fallen through, just under a dozen feet or so above where he lays. It's obvious even looking from below how the stone floor had crumbled away, taking maybe one or two hits too many over time from overcrowded mobs or shifts in terrain or pressure aboveground. He tilts his head back but sees only another dead end behind him, and ahead looks like a further, deeper hall of the tomb he hadn’t uncovered yet, though the path is obstructed by debris from above; a net of spiderweb blankets the pile of stone and dirt, but no spider seems to be left guarding the web.

His friend above seems to have lost interest now that he’s fallen out of sight, and its moans and groans get further away by the second.

No immediate threat, Pix lets his head fall back onto the ground and takes a breath. He knew the crypt would be full of mobs, he knew it’d be hard, but still…

No, it’s worth it. It will be worth it. He has a job to do.

At least he isn’t defenseless—it’s more than he can say for the dungeons. Not a weapon to his name, fists wrapped in tape so red you’d never believe it’d been white to begin with; knuckles so raw and scraped and beaten by the time he’d made it out that they’d scarred that way—permanent marks of the fighter he was, of the fighter he’d proved to be.

There was a fear there, too, at that very real and physical understanding of permanence. His studies proved expert in providing examples of what was permanent and what wasn’t, and where people weren’t, things were. He’d spent enough time studying what could be learned about a person by the things they left behind to begin to wonder if anyone at all would’ve remembered him if he’d died in those dungeons—not a singular weapon or item for him to leave behind and tell his story.

Pix stops wallowing. He sits up and reaches over his shoulder for his pick; he isn’t shocked to find that the shaft had snapped in two from the fall, it having been strapped to his back. He sighs, tossing it aside as useless. He’ll make another.

He takes the time to remind himself again that he knew it was going to be difficult, and that difficulty was no reason to not continue. But it didn’t just feel difficult it felt…inhibiting. Dissuading, deterring, impeding. It felt deliberate. It felt like, stay out; like, we don’t want you here; like, leave us to our rest.

(it wasn’t, it was something far more sinister. An idea he’d never thought to consider; like a torch was giving off too-little light in the hallway of a dark, long-forgotten crypt, he couldn’t see any farther than what was right in front of his own face. How cliche it’d be, in the end, when it came to pass—the academic too invested in their own research, too dismissive of the present danger posed until it consumed them. He’d have a moment to laugh about it later, when the dread had settled in and all options—or lack thereof—exhausted. While on the topic of permanence…

It was not go away that the tomb was saying, not a driving force out that was being enacted upon the archeologist, but a more frightening call of stay. A threatening but desperate find…become…join…

No, if it were trying to keep him out, why would it keep pushing him deeper? Add this to the list of things he’d realize too late.)

He stands and dusts himself off. The wall is thick and overgrown with glow lichen, and he grabs the nearest vines and tugs one, twice, three times before deciding it won't give and hoisting up. It takes a few minutes and a fair amount of huffing and puffing to get himself to the top and over the edge but he does it, collapsing on higher ground once again and taking a minute to slow his pulse. When he left the dungeons, he dove back into the studies he’d been missing and decided he’d had enough fighting to last a lifetime—this was not without consequence, he’s not nearly as in shape as he used to be.

His sword is still on the ground where he’d dropped it, so he reequips and readies himself to push his way back out; he’d have to make time to come back and clear the rest another day. He would be back, and he hoped he would be welcomed.

“I don’t mean to disturb you,” he says into the quiet blackness of the catacombs. He doesn't dare speak above a whisper, for there were still mobs around and his voice carried enough as it was, bouncing along the empty stone and quiet graves. “I'd like to tell your story.”

There's nothing to hear but for the scuttling of various creatures far off in the dark, the shrill whistle of stray wind through small openings and holes. He raises his voice only slightly, a bit bolder. “Don’t you want me to do that? Will—would you allow me to do that?”

Silence, and then—the rattle and clatter of a skeleton. It sounds like only one; he lit everything up pretty well on his way in, getting out should be easier. Striking another torch against the wall, Pix prepares to go. For a second, the light is brighter than it should be, its circle of light illuminating the hall completely, the hole he’d fallen into, the distance to the other side. He leans back to avoid the heat of the flame, and he sees it.

The other side of the cave-in leads not to another tunnel but to an alcove, and empty it is not. His torch, though many feet away, sheds light on the scene; the heavily wax-encrusted stone above a pile of used candles and burnt wicks, the coin and other offerings of gold overflowing from bowls and chalices and any other orifice they could be piled upon, and her.

He recognizes her immediately. The tapestry covers the majority of the wall, and though it's faded for certain, the lack of direct sunlight has done wonders at preserving what it could. The colors are familiar to his research, the subtle and light greens under warm oranges and yellows. He’s too far, he cannot see any detail; the background, what she's holding, her face—but he knows her. She’s their patron.

The skeleton wanders closer, its bones clicking and clacking down the hall. Pix swallows.

“I’ll return for you, I will.” It’s a promise. She’s holding a secret, he knows she is—he’s going to figure out what. Pix turns just in time to face the skeleton as it rounds the corner, and soon its bones join those on the floor, new and old alike.

His words still echo off the caverns and crevices of the catacombs after he's left and gone, and though not possible to have been heard by human ears, the crypt whispers back good.

~-~-~-~

Far below even the hole the archeologist had fallen in, leagues underneath the surface of the earth, buried perhaps the furthest underground of anything left behind from the ancient capital—so deeply you’d have to wonder if maybe it was done on purpose—the crown sits in a chest, waiting patiently to be discovered. It’s not a matter of if, but a nice decisive and quiet when. Eventually, the echo of the archeologists' words falls upon it where it sits, and slowly it begins to emit a soft glow. It says stay, it says find, it says become, it says join.

It says soon.

#me when i dont write anything for almost an entire month and then inexplicably come back with 2000 words of pixlriffs fanficiton #all of which is completely self-indulgent #if you couldn't tell by tags on my recent reblogs and by this hey im doing so bad about pix being fucking dead and all #the blind academic...to be so invested in your work that it consumes you...#to disregard danger for the sake of being so close to what you believe is an answer #he studied the past so hard that he became it #hahahaha.#good thing he enjoys his work #because now he can never leave.#okay sorry not to write a 2000 word fic and then also write like another 300 in the tags #but also its mY POST!! GET OFF MY LAWN!! IM ALLOWED TO DO THAT! WAH IM SAD!#last thing but i have so much more to say about pixs background being his weaponless playthrough of mc dungeons. so.#someone talk to me about this /please #i lied. new last thing. now that this is out of my head :) hey :) all my fic planning is done im gonna start writing sentinel species #worm writes #empires smp #empires smp fic #empires smp fanfic #pixlriffs #pixlriffs fic #empires season 2 #esmp season 2

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