#the himbois au is so near and dear to my heart

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Hi, I just wanted to say Nhthcth is my favorite TMA fic ever.(sorry this is so long)

The different ways it’s written is so cool and fun, I especially like the bit in the theater with Grimaldi. The characterization is amazing - I love your Jon so much, he’s been through so much, but is still trying to help everyone in anyway he can(just like in the podcast), not to mention you’ve somehow made a character that literally never shows up in the podcast be so fun and enthralling (I can’t imagine Danny in any other way now)

I know there are a billion AU TMA fics out there, but so many of them are time-travel fix-it (which is fine, some of them are really cool) But I really like what-if type fanfics, and yours is, in my opinion, one of the best out there.

I could literally go on about it for days, it’s so good! Once I get an ao3 account, I will probably comment on like every chapter, picking out the bits I really like; if you don’t mind that is, I don’t want to spam you with comments on old chapters. (Sorry if this is weird or creepy, I just really like your fic)

y'all are sooo kind thank you so much you guys make my day

the theatre bit with Grimaldi i feel actually ended up being pivotal to how nhthcth ended up being written. I remember that when I first tried writing that chapter, I struggled a bit with how to best convey the stranger, and I ended up experimenting with the theatre script format and it just clicked. then, danny and jon were trying to outrun a REALLY fucked up clown and danny was catching jon when he was jumping and kicking grimaldi in the face and i was like "oh this is fun. this is so much fun" and it kind of gave the license lean into more experimental formatting and a little bit of slapstick. that chapter/scene really changed a lot of how i approached nhthcth for the better.

Danny is one of my FAVORITE characters in nhthcth and he actually isn't fully from nhthcth. I have this really elaborate, ridiculously long story plotted out that I affectionally call the himbois AU starring Gerry, Jon, and Danny. the idea is that Jon has a run-in with Agnes Montague while he's still at university and finds himself free of strings that Mother would really rather he kept in, and somehow spiraled into Jon, Gerry, and an amnesiac Danny Stoker running a ghost hunting youtube channel as a cover for supernatural shenanigans that accidentally blew up and became famous. it's basically just buzzed unsolved and famous for the air of skepticism they bring to supernatural investigations--because jon and gerry could NOT take some old houses with bad insulation seriously when they were on the run from the spider that tried to eat jon in childhood.

i actually got back into fanfiction because of it--i wasn't publishing anything for years, just writing it for myself, and then i started explaining this story to a friend who was really into it, and especially danny's character. when i decided to start putting my stuff out there, I already had nhthcth planned and decided to try for that one. danny stoker was already in the plans for, but he wasn't anywhere close to the danny that ended up in the final product of nhthcth. i ended up adapting the danny from the himbois AU for my friend who loved him so much, and he's much better for it.

i think i'll always be partial to himbois!Danny as like, my favorite mental version of danny stoker, but nhthcth!danny is extremely important to me too. i'm really thrilled that so many other people have found him to be important to them too

#nhthcth #the himbois au is so near and dear to my heart #god they were so chaotic and good #we were sooo far off the beaten path with that one too #like we started with 'agnes montague frees jon from the web pre canon' #and somehow ended up at 'everyone thinks international astronaut jan kilbride had a breakdown involving some YouTubers b/c they showed up #at his apocalyptic sacrifice by old lady like 'haha you're trying to stop the buried? us too! we were going to throw this vast Leitner in #the big hole and just sort of see what happened what were. what were you going to do. do we. do we want to try our thing first.' and now #he insists they actually hunt ghosts' anyway it's fun it's a fun time