#mtb stuff

Thank you! That really means a lot!

Ford is a very special guy to me. I'm very invested in his character and personality, and how it's been shaped through his life experiences. It feels very rare to see a true exploration of the depth of his suffering and it doesn't get more than touched on in canon (although I think this is fair enough because the show isn't about him), so I wanted to examine him properly in the interpretation I get of him.

To me, Ford is a deeply tragic guy. He's really been through an awful lot and things like that leave irreparable scars on the psyche. Given that his emotive functioning is shockingly low too, I think it would bleed out of him in unpleasant ways and that's an important factor not to gloss over. He is an unlikeable victim, but that doesn't make him less of a victim.

My personal reading of him is that he desires love and acceptance, but no matter how hard he tries, he's never quite 'right' for people. A part of him always has to be changed to make him digestible. Even with his own brother. I think that's really sad.

With MtB!Reader, they're meeting him where he is. They know there's some bad wiring in his brain, they know something is up with him, but they're not going to treat him differently because of it. They love him for what he is and what he isn't.

But obviously, things in life are messy. People react and they hurt each other even when they don't mean to. Ford may not truly be hurting them because he means to do so, but in no way does that lessen the hurt he causes. That pushes us into a very grey area of what is acceptable and what isn't. How much can you take when you know the perpetrator is sick but they're still cutting you open? Reader is very understanding, but they're not a punching bag and nor should they be. It makes it very hard to know how to deal with that sort of thing.

I wanted MtB to deal with the cycles of that. It's a cycle I'm very familiar with and I know intimately, and it's one I've listened to from the experiences of those close to me. Hopefully, as it progresses, you'll be able to see more of what I mean. How trauma passes from one person to another, how it infects us and those we love, how it can destroy and bond.

It's a dangerous thing that deserves empathy, or else we just pave the way to create new victims in the future.

Ultimately, MtB isn't about catching a space disease. It's about literally catching PTSD from someone you love deeply. It's about how if you don't do something about your trauma, you will give it to someone else eventually.

Ahh thank you, I'm glad you enjoy the series!

Honestly? I think he would clam up and balk instantly. MtB!Ford requires the softly softly catchy monkey approach until you can put his feet to the fire properly.

That's not to say you'd be wrong for reacting that way (maybe not as extreme as the example given, but with anger at least) because anyone would be mad about what happened. But you can't go in guns blazing from the off-set because Ford will match that out of defensiveness and become completely impenetrable to anything you throw at him. He's exceptionally sensitive and his defence mechanism is deny, deny, deny, mostly out of embarrassment. It's not even a conscious response, more like an automatic one that he lacks the knowledge to examine.

Reader knows that. Ford thinks he projects a very capable, whole image, but they have him down quite well. They know what he'll do and they don't want to scare him off or hurt him, primarily due to the fact that they care deeply for him. Sometimes, we put others before ourselves even if they do deserve both barrels; we have to maintain the relationship rather than give in to the egotistical desire to belittle them.

In DD, he says all of those things on autopilot because he's utterly humiliated by his own actions/his guilt for them, and he thinks Reader is talking about something entirely different. He gets the wires crossed in his brain and grabs for the first thing that will keep the consequences at a distance. Ford is exceptionally emotionally immature, to an absolute fault. There are reasons for this that will be explained later, but that's the case.

Reader doesn't respond with anger at that moment in the supermarket because they're A) stunned and B) not very well. They're not thinking clearly enough to form a response. But they also know, deep down I think, that if they kick off then Ford will react badly and it's not really the correct way to go about things for either of them. Plus, it's a very public setting and Mabel is there and it would inappropriate to go sicko mode in front of a child.

We see them get mad later on, in private after they reach the end of their tether (and we will again), but at that point they've already opened a dialogue with him that's humanising and calm. They've almost earned the right to be outwardly aggressive to an extent, and the potential for Ford to clam up is lowered because the consequences of his actions can no longer be denied. He's the one who is stunned now. Even he knows then that he has to take the verbal hiding that he gets, that's why he takes it in reasonably good stride. His guilt builds as the truth comes out, peaks when he's confronted with the effect of his mistake on Reader and spills out of him in a very truthful way as soon as he accepts what he's responsible for.

He must first accept responsibility, and when your feelings are very messy and complex, it can take time to realise that you were wrong. Especially when you lack introspective ability to a reasonable degree about certain things. He will apologise, but he has to be messy about it first when it comes to complex matters of the heart.

MtB!Ford is a real walking tragedy. He's so complex and he's dishonest about his complexity to everyone, but most of all to himself. He finds it humiliating. He doesn't know why he does a lot of the things he does, he doesn't know why he feels the way he does, and he doesn't know what to do about it. That really frightens him and in turn, he has a habit of making that everyone else's problem. He knows what he wants, but again, he doesn't want to acknowledge that vulnerability out of fear. He suffers greatly in this constant feedback loop of terror. He's utterly petrified of being known because he doesn't know himself, and that's very scary.

Stan caught him looking once, which I went into a tiny bit here.

But he doesn't know the extent of Ford's affections at all. At the time, Stan thought it was just his brother checking Reader out casually, which is why he was so taken aback by it. Ford doesn't do that sort of thing, so to see him indulge was surprising.

I will say, however, that Stan has his suspicions and he's concerned. He knows Ford inside and out, and he's well aware of his nature. That's why he doesn't want them to become close in that kind of way. He can predict how it will affect Ford and he's afraid for the fragility of his mental state.

On top of that, he doesn't want Reader to experience the blow back of Ford's nature. It isn't really Ford's fault, of course, but he knows that it won't be pleasant because Ford will inevitably reject them and/or cause problems for them.

During the course of this fic, some people have asked if I would share the studies etc that I've been working from in order to manufacture the bacteria, so here they are! These are all very serious illnesses and their real-world implications are much more severe than anything that comes up in the fic, but I thought they were interesting. Use caution if you go down any rabbit holes on these because they are gnarly and the pictures might be upsetting.

I've also included the stuff I used to base Ford's Dimension Fever on. Again, this was mostly all real life stuff that was all reported by astronauts and space scientists. I just took it and made it more appropriate to Ford!

Reader patiently explaining to Ford why tea is so important like

So, there's actually a series of very specific things he does but I can't tell you what they are because it's going to come up in the third fic and I'd hate to spoil it for you. I've had it in mind for a while now.

I can instead tell you that the moment in which he realised he felt attracted to them, they were goofing off with the kids in the back garden. He'd been sitting on the veranda with Stan, generally chatting amongst themselves, and he'd looked up from his tea at the exact moment Reader had started laughing.

And I'm talking full on, head tipped back, mouth wide open, belly laughing at something Mabel had done or said. The setting sunlight had hit them just right and the sight had stolen the breath from his lungs. Ford had squeezed his mug so tightly that he'd nearly cracked it in two and whatever Stan had been saying had faded to garbled nothingness as he'd stared, completely transfixed, at them.