The future is now, thanks to science!

(Micro story prompt list)

28. something about him

Benrey sits on top of a tank in a storage room and watches Gordon stomp around and yell about aliens. They've just encountered some creature that's new to the Science Team and subsequently killed it, so of course Gordon is freaking out.

"How does something like that exist?" he yells. "How does that even make sense - Tommy, Tommy, please stop pointing that at me!"

"Sorry, Mr. Freeman," Tommy says, swinging the gun away from his face and pointing it down the hall instead. "I'm ju- I'm only trying to be prepared."

"Okay," Gordon huffs, as Dr. Coomer and Bubby smash apart crates behind him. "Yeah, okay, sure, that's - that's not a bad idea." He glances around and frowns. "Hey, has anyone seen Benrey?"

Tommy glances up at where Benrey's sitting on his tank, then looks away, mouth in a thin line.

"Gordon, I'm thirsty!" Dr. Coomer chirps, and Gordon sighs again. Benrey watches the line of his throat as he tips his head back in annoyance and bites down on the pink-and-blue Sweet Voice that tries to escape.

"Fine, Dr. Coomer. Let's try to find a vending machine."

Benrey kicks his heels gently as they merge into a group and head for the closest doorway. He should be irritated by Gordon, by his loud voice and his belligerent attitude and the way he yells at everyone, especially Benrey. But there's something about him that just fascinates Benrey. He either wants to bite him or kiss him. Maybe both. Is that a thing?

Well, he can't figure it out from up here. Soundlessly, he hops down from the tank and trots after the group. He's interested to see how long it will take Gordon to notice he's back with them, and he's even more interested to hear what kind of noise he makes when he is inevitably startled by Benrey's presence. Maybe he'll even put his hand on Benrey's shoulder or face again. Maybe that would help him make a decision on the biting or kissing thing. He hopes so.

I got a comment on a fic that is less than a year old and it was mostly an apology for being a comment on an "old fic" and how late they were in commenting.

Fandom is not trends.

Fandom is a cross between a library and having a slumber party with your friends.

[sighs and opens up yet another document]

Bonus:

mdni for section marked 🔞 :P

long fics:

Human Resources Violation (113k words, fin.)

most popular fic in the fandom & for a reason. generally a must read since most people know about

Play Again? (106k words, fin.)

not very ship focused but creative narrative that holds its own and well written (joshua pov!)

you might want me (to drop dead) (89k words, fin.)

personally one of my favs, first long fic ive read that actually made gordon and benrey physically fight, also great characterization + hate dating ♥️

heathens (183k words, discontinued)

my fav roommate au, i think it does it right where others fail. it is polyamory with tommy later on but that really shouldn’t stop u from reading tbh, very good 

water under the bridge (don't pretend that you don't want me) (48k words, fin.)

college auuuuu ♥️ first frenrey fic i’ve read 

brokeback mesa (146k words, fin.)

western auuuuu so much research and effort put into accuracy it’s worth it to read just for that alone . learn something new about cowboys

no grave can hold my body down (73k words, fin.)

in which benrey didn’t betray gordon au, i liked the medical horror and its a well rounded fic 

E rated fics: 🔞

various homes on the long road of denial (series, 19k words, ongoing)

don’t let the 2nd person deter you, they're all really beautifully written one shots. really really great writing can’t stress enough

my favs of the series: what is yours and what is his + and i would twist if you told me 

remote access (22k words, fin.) 

genuinely the best fanfic in the entire fandom (in my opinion). i talk and think about this fanfic all the time. the characterization is so So good

you wouldn’t stop me, right? (20k words, ongoing)

no actual smut yet but vivid descriptions of planned and executed murder. it’s the darker side of hlvrai that people never really try to explore especially in regards to ptsd and trauma, so i looove and can’t wait for updates

cracking open a cold one (20k words, fin.)

funny and in character and Hello. vampire au. hell yes ??!

authors:

cxlesstial : has been in the fandoms forever and has 23 whole fics Hello. haven’t read them all but i recommend 

unfounded_hermantics : has 2 current longfics that r both very good 📍

marzanna : i glaze marzanna so much I hope you don’t see this but anyway they’ve written all my fav fics in the fandom and have the best characterization to me♥️

and if you’ve made it this far, id like to #selfpromo i’ve got 4 frenrey yuri fanfics (one 80k word ongoing and one finished 40k word 🔞) that people have said was apparently good. . 

You will often notice when you’ve made an error, or when there’s something you could have done better, or etc, and sometimes other people will notice too. But often, they won’t. So don’t point it out.

It’s really a sign of a lack of self confidence – you think that if you point out the error first, it will save someone else from having to point it out for you. That by being self-depreciating, no one else will feel obliged to point out your flaws.

But here’s the thing. People don’t notice jack shit, most of the time. Sure, yeah, sometimes you’ll fuck up and people will notice and mention it, and thats fine, but 95% of your errors will go unnoticed. Unless you choose to point them out, in which case, you ensure that 100% of your errors get noticed.

The above sentence was said to me during a dance rehearsal. I’m not a pro dancer by any stretch of the imagination – this was a fun little between-friends dance that we were going to perform at a medium sized function full of people we knew. Half the people in the group did have dance experience, which made me - a non-dancer - feel self concious. So every time I messed up the steps, I would laugh at myself or made an “agh” sound or be verbally frustrated with myself that I was struggling to get that move, or whatever. Which drew peoples attention to the fact that I’d made an error.

There were like 10 of us doing this dance; me missing one step went largely unnoticed in the scheme of things, because with ten of us, anyone watching the dance had so much to look at that the likelihood of them seeing me misstep was extremely low. Unless I made a big deal about it, which would draw their attention to me, and ensure that they were made aware.

I used to point out my mistakes all the time. Not just with the dance, but across the board in general life, too. “Agh, whoops,” or handing over a completed project like “I know I could have done [thing] better, but hopefully the rest is ok,” or whatever. People were often frustrated with me, and I feel, in hindsight, that they were frustrated with me because in their eyes, with me constantly highlighting my own errors, they knew I could do better but instead here I was, giving them a shoddy, half-assed, error-filled effort. By me pointing out my every mistake, they were aware of how many I was making, and they were frustrated by my seemingly endless errors.

Then I got told to “stop advertising your mistakes,” and it was a bit of a revelation moment for me. I made a concious effort that day to minimise my reaction to my own mistakes – for the rest of the rehearsal and into the final performance – and you know what happened??

After the performance, countless people said some iteration of the phrase, “I didn’t know you could dance!!”

They thought I was a dancer. That I’d been dancing for years. They hadn’t noticed any of my missteps.

I messed up multiple times during the final performance. If I watch the recording and focus on me, I can see my missed steps, the time I span clockwise on the spot instead of anticlockwise, the time I was slightly out of alignment with the other dancers, etc. But if I watch the dance as a whole, watching all 10 dancers instead of just me….. I dont notice the mistakes I made. They blend in. Theres too much other stuff going on for anyone to notice the one dancer who spun on the spot in the opposite direction to everyone else.

And everyone thought i was brilliant. All I noticed, while dancing, were my mistakes, but no one else saw them, and everyone who saw the dance was super impressed with it and with me. That would not have been the case had I reacted to every one of my errors as I’d made them.

So I took that concept and applied it to the rest of my life. And you know what???? People were less frustrated with me. Because they weren’t noticing my minor errors, and I wasn’t pointing them out any more, so from their perspective, it looked like my output had improved. It looked like I was making “less errors.” I wasn’t, its just that before, I was pointing every one of them out, and now, I was letting people notice them on their own. And they didnt notice them.

You are always going to be hyperaware of yourself and your own mistakes, but other people are way too distracted by their own crap and have too much other stuff drawing their attention to notice your every misstep. So stop pointing your mistakes out. Stop being your own worst critic. Everyone fucks up now and then, its fine. You fix the error if you can, and you move on. You dont have to pre-empt someone else pointing out your mistakes, because its extremely likely that they wont notice your errors. Unless you point them out.

Check it out at afroindex.org! 💛✨

I had a big fanfic in a previous fandom where one of the big reveals was the involvement of a kind of infamous villain, whose presence was built up to and foreshadowed through the whole fic until his reveal without ever mentioning his name, so that the name drop would be a gut punch. It worked especially well because of who the villain was and his presence in that fandom space specifically (it's very complicated) and if it was an original story this reveal wouldn't work at all the way it was written in the fic. Because if you don't have a predisposition to think about that character and his relationship to the hero in a very specific way, then just seeing their name won't do much to you; the reveal and the recontextualisation it pushes upon you hinges on your previous knowledge of the source material.

I think it's an interesting tool fanfic authors are given. One of my favorite fanfic of all time is partially a re-imagining of its source material's canon, and something it does is introduce antagonists much earlier in the story or deepen npcs' stories. It then works to evoke a tragic irony that again wouldn't work if you didn't know the source material, and it's something the author obviously has a lot of fun with.

yeah ok I spent way too much time on this anyway I let two interests intersect too hard Here . bovids include cattle, sheep, goats, antelope, and goat-antelopes

(Director's Commentary Post)

(Waterbound)

Okay, first of all, I just went to open up the doc file on my computer (which is still titled "Daemon crossover" because my fic filenames are a mess), saw the date of the last edit was in September of 2025, and went "that can't be right, I just finished that." It is, in fact, right.

I love that you're asking about that fic, because suddenly I'm doing daemon!AUs all over the place (Iron Lung, Project Hail Mary), so going back to this one feels very topical. I'm pulling mainly from the six pages of notes/outlines/quotes from the end of the document, because that's where I shove all my outlines and story snippets. It's nice not to delete things, because you might need them later.

This gets long, so I'm putting it under a cut. Also, spoilers for the fic!