Hi, I'm Garbage, and I write fucked-up fics. I am heavily into character angst, and unleashing me on any fandom is a problem. Anyone who knows me outside of this blog can confirm. (For anyone unprepared, heads up, this blog contains rampant cursing, teen angst, stalking, child neglect, child abuse (physical, sexual, and psychological), domestic violence, bigoted asshole characters, drugs, self-harm, and themes of mental health struggles including depression, anxiety, PTSD, and OCD. I in no way intend to mock or make light of these issues, and if I do these things or misrepresent the issues, I'm asking you, the audience, to call me the fuck out. Tell me when I do something wrong. I wish to portray the issues touched on in this AU accurately, and to have them be part of the characters affected by them but not take over their whole personalities)
In essence, I created a Peanuts AU that centers around Shermy, because we needed one. And then I kind of accidentally copied Dog Sees God before I ever read the play. In essence, Shermy's trauma also comes from a sexually abusive father and this happens to be another edgy teen AU, because aged-up Peanuts is fun. I grew up with Peanuts, my grandma got me into it when I was a kid and it reminds me of her, and it's nice to kinda have versions of the characters that grow with me. To re-iterate, NONE OF THIS IS MEANT TO COPY DSG! I accidentally had some similarities, but I'm not trying to make a copy of it or do a "better" version of it. As much as I have some beef with the play, I respect that it is a piece of art and it would be disrespectful to rip it off. I named Pig-Pen Matt because quite honestly, outside of his DSG character, it's the kind of name that fits him: sturdy, classic, plain, shortened from something more formal because Pig-Pen isn't a formal guy.
Here's the fic itself for anyone interested in reading, I update sporadically because I'm plagued by writer's block but will often come to this blog to mention a new chapter: https://archiveofourown.org/works/73966901/chapters/192949846
(By the way, feel free to block any of the tags I use or the blog itself if you don't want to see this stuff. If you don't know how, comment and I'll walk you through it :))
Alright, disclaimer over. Let's get into the AU.
So this AU, which I call Un-Happy Father's Day or UHFD, is set in the 90s-200s The main fic, which is called Back To Reality (and what you're about (Your son can't smile 'cause you knocked his teeth out), because yes, I did paraphrase a fucking Insane Clown Posse lyric, is set in 2005, though several oneshots are set years before. I was born in 2007, so I do my best to be accurate to the time period, but once again, tell me if I get anything wrong. I am fascinated by the 90s and 00s, but I also had an ulterior motive-Lucy, Violet, and Patty all struggle with their mental health in ways that get ignored and neglected due to period-typical lack of knowledge about mental health. Their struggles, Lucy's in particular, were important to represent in the AU, and I wanted to show the struggle of mental issues that go untreated because the research simply hasn't gotten that far. In addition, my version of Shermy is a femboy and in a relationship with Pig-Pen (the gays have it), and as he's been raised by a single mother who works a more traditionally "masculine" job as a car mechanic, I wanted to characterize with both of them, a straight cis woman who just so happens to like masculine things and a pansexual cisgender femboy, that the way you present doesn't have to be something "warped" by non-traditional influences. Shermy is just Shermy, and for him that includes being more feminine.
It's here that I'm gonna add that despite the setting for UHFD, I often title works or chapters with songs from all manner of time periods. I choose these songs based on how they fit the writing, and I ensure that all music references in the fics themselves are accurate to when the fics take place. As much as I KNOW Sally would vibe to older Taylor Swift, 1989 released in 2014 (and also Taylor Swift has revealed herself to be an absolutely rancid person now). Fun fact, as I write this I'm actually looking up a playlist of 90s-00s hits so I have the right music references.
Wow, that's a lot of rambling. There's a reason for my main blog title (Garbage_Rambles) after all lmao.
Shermy's a great character to work with because of how much room there is to have fun with his character. There are a few fics on A03 that bring his character into the spotlight, but overwhelmingly the guy is an asshole jock who takes advantage of others. I mostly made this AU out of sheer frustration that there wasn't any Shermy-centric angst (by that I mean angst that he is the victim of. You'll find Shermy *causing* a lot of angst in those fics), and then I just went wild. My version of Shermy is this awkward, very withdrawn kid raised by a tough-as-nails single mother, Valencia, who runs a very well-known mechanic's business that he likes to help out at. He has a feral little sister, Clara, because I love the headcanon that the little shit who kidnapped Snoopy in Snoopy Come Home is Shermy's sister. He's mixed-race, half Peruvian (his mom's side) and a quarter each Indonesian and Ethiopian. He's very tall. Oh, and he's got trauma by the bucketload.
I'm keeping the details relatively stingy, but Shermy's father, Frank Plepler (yes, the last name he has in canon), was incredibly abusive in just about every way you can imagine, mostly to Shermy but also to his mother. The abuse started soon after Shermy was born, and escalated to sexual proportions at age three before stopping at age six when Frank left the family after cheating with a young woman at work. Clara had been born five months before he left, and he took out a lot of anger on Valencia for not looking the same way she did before having kids, and on Shermy for ruining his life. Shermy was tasked with protecting baby Clara, often taking blows to shield her. Frank was firmly against modern medicine, leaving both Shermy and Valencia with years of untreated injuries, and Valencia rushed them both to a local hospital, where Shermy's injuries are so severe that he's put into a medically-induced coma for three months and has to spend over a year recovering and being given the proper vaccinations and treatments. He still gets sick easily, walks with a limp, and suffers from nerve damage that leaves him in severe pain.
I'm working to ensure that this isn't Shermy's entire personality, however. It develops slowly, playing off his blatant lack of personality in canon with a very deliberate appearance as a blank slate in order to hide his trauma, but Shermy is a mama's boy (the good kind-he loves his mom and has a lovely healthy relationship with her), absolutely fascinated by cars and car repair, and has a huge repertoire of dirty jokes, a sweet, nerdy femboy who has a love-hate relationship with cooking and collects old Mad magazines.
I'll make posts focusing specifically on various characters (Shermy included, this is just a basic intro), as well as using this blog to post aesthetics, incorrect quotes, sneak peeks of chapters, and various other content for this AU. In the mean time, sit back, relax, and enjoy the show.
