#interface au

14. is there anything you wanted readers to learn from reading this fic?

anon I hate to break it to you but I absolutely do not think that far ahead with anything I write. my one goal here in life is “tell a Good Story for the People.” if a grand lesson shows up by accident it is just as much a surprise to me as it is to you

but that is a lame answer so instead I will ask Myself some questions so that all y’all have something more interesting to read

for the close

2. what scene did you first put down?

no lie, the very first scene I wrote for this fic was doom getting yanked apart. this was the first line I put down, although it was probably more rough at the time: “Doom’s power tears itself out of him in chunks, unformed tendrils of green light called back to their source until their old host is a husk on the ground, a mess of flesh and metal that then collapses into nothing at all.”

for exit wounds

5. what part was hardest to write?

well, we’re only like halfway in, but thus far the scene that gave me the most trouble is Still the cemetery scene from chapter 1. when I first hit that point, I was still trying to suss out the actual timeline of the fic, and depending on when exactly the scene took place, certain aspects started or stopped working. it was terrible.

runner-ups for worst scene thus far: the ben+sue conversation (because IT JUST KEPT GETTING LONGER AND I HAD SO MUCH TROUBLE FIGURING OUT THE ENDING) and the planet zero exploration sequence (because as I’ve said, this movie’s fake science jargon makes me break out in hives)

for troubleshooting

6. what makes this fic special or different from all your other fics?

troubleshooting is plotless fluff. like, I care about it as a fic, don’t get me wrong. but it is basically nothing at all

for and desecrate

15. what did you learn from writing this fic?

BENREED

it’s not like I’ve already made like a whole bunch of mixes for them or anything

for the sake of avoiding redundancy here’s the last cliffs notes I made for benreed songs, but here’s a few new additions to the pile as well

sleeping at last // I’ll keep you safe

the whole world at your fingertips / don’t be, don’t be afraid / our mistakes, they were bound to be made

snow patrol // run

even if you cannot hear my voice / I’ll be right beside you, dear

say anything // a walk through hell

really once you get past the whole “crunched reed to death, then trapped him on planet zero forever” thing, interface AU is not actually that sad

is there anything you wanted readers to learn from reading this fic?

simple. I wanted citizen @earlhollister to feel as bad as this post made me feel. I wrote the close in like the 3 days immediately following that post. thus, all of interface AU is basically citizen earlhollister’s fault

I mean beyond that…the close was also an avenue for me to vent about how doom got nerfed for the final battle? like, you can’t just show him decimating countless people with a wave of his hand, and then point to reed richards like “this noodle will fight him and win.”

(like, seriously, I actually drafted a reed vs. doom fight for an AU once. I had to scrap it because in no universe can reed win. elasticity+lowkey sizeshifting is an AWFUL counter-powerset against someone who can implode your body with his mind. even on the off chance reed could get close enough to engage doom, his few lethal moves (strangling is the first option coming to mind) aren’t going to affect a metal man with no real nerve endings. the most damage I can see him managing before doom eviscerates him is like an eye gouge, and anyone with thin appendages can do an eye gouge. you don’t need superpowers for that)

(maybe if you wanna push reed’s durability towards the upper end, doom would have to get more creative in killing him? but doom would inevitably kill him regardless. moral: under standard circumstances, do not make reed fight doom if you want him to survive the experience.)

I have definitely considered this thing! I mean, I already have a beautiful source of cover art and everything. it would almost be a waste not to do it

right now my WIP interface AU playlist is something like 40-60 sad music to happier we’ll-be-reunited-soon music because a) if I ever write a sequel to this fic it’s absolutely about ben and reed being crossdimensional penpal boyfriends while the teleporter gets rebuilt, and b) if I want a mostly tragic benreed AU mix, that’s what the exit wounds playlist is for.

CRIKEY…………. true he’d probably get bored rlly fast. like. ofc he has his powers and he can make almost anything but that, again, would probably have its limits so he just ends up burning himself out 

hopefully the rest of the gang can visit him often 

theres an official thing mentioning how 2015 ben has the ability to regenerate

so i figured that whenever his rock form gets significantly damaged he goes back to his rock chrysalis state (how reed first found him) to recover. except this time it resets so hes in his human form when he emerges. and from there i think he figures out he can control his rock form pretty easily once he knows how it works

shit. shit. that’s pretty top notch. maybe if he’d had some time to calm down he could’ve figured that out the first go round, but he probably woke up disoriented as all hell and didn’t realize it was an option until he was “locked in” per se. and since it’s so hard to hurt him, he probably never gets injured enough to trigger a reset.

it’s more like how sue and johnny work, then - baseline form with some-to-no abilities, or a fancier transformed form that has the whole package.

(also I like how that link basically lists “is reed’s friend” next to all the other superpowers. the realest superpower there is)

(smol human ben still walking round with thing strength tho. dang)

and this is absolutely a thing when hes in his human form.

like I gotta presume for fairness that he’s not AS superstrong in human mode (I mean he is maybe a third of his transformed size) but he’s still probably got enough to carry the whole team around effortlessly. amazing

#this hc/au thingy is gonna be part of the fanfic jo encouraged me to write #gonna work out how to make it SAD ... OOPS...

plot twist: one of us writes a fanfic that’s actually happy the whole way through

#also i wonder if johnny would be able to magic up some friends  if he interfaces w planet zero #u kno i wonder if any of them would be able to create life #wht if they tried to make clones of their friends to keep them company #cue a mess of cronenberg-esque creatures wandering around planet zero