#memorized your smile lines pdwm

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Writing this one (mysl) is tricky because dude's so worried about the therapist judging his mother for not being perfect that he's finding it very difficult to actually talk about all the shit that might be contributing to his through the roof anxiety and reluctance to be away from his family.

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memorized your smile lines snippet 1

He and Nancy have shared trauma in spades. They see the wounds in each other like no one else in his life does; they see each other beyond the wounds, too. But it stops at the water’s edge, and that’s not something he’s ever really been unaware of. Not that Nancy doesn’t have damage of her own that he can’t fully comprehend the pain of, social wounds from a society that thinks she’s nothing and has nothing to offer and won’t let her forget, and whatever kind of quiet dysfunction happens in big houses with two parents who are more disinterested than actively contemptuous of each other. He knows that she wants more than all of that—that it’s a source of genuine frustration for her, and sometimes real humiliation that it’s something she even has to fight for. But it’s not the same. In some ways, she sees that; in others, she has blinders on. She never had a Lonnie and she knows it, but she doesn’t know that poverty tastes like acid crawling up the back of your throat; sounds like water flowing in the wall because a pipe burst with the heat cut off and now it’s more money no one has just to fix it; looks like your mother crying alone in the dark because she doesn’t want you to know it’s that bad. Feels like quietly slipping your paycheck into her hand and pretending you don’t notice when she can’t look you in the eye.

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Okay, I just can't with this story. I think I actually need to break out index cards and physically have it all laid out in front of me, where I can see it all at once. I've reached that level of complexity.

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Also, wait, one more thing. (Sorry for being so chatty today!) But I just realized that I have this OC I created mostly to be in the background for other OCs to talk about, and I'm totally wasting this character. He and Jonathan should actually interact.

Harry's a late 30s vet trying to go to school and mind his own business, and Jonathan's classmates are like "dude you look like that Army guy" because Jonathan give off I've Seen Some Shit vibes, something that becomes a plot point, and Jonathan is not pleased by the comparison. But they share classes! They should chat. Jonathan does not relate to his peers, so... maybe he can talk to someone with more life experience and get some perspective.

(I have so many OCs for this story. I never make this many OCs for fanfic. But it was kind of a necessity for this one.)

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My big logistical issue for memorized your smile lines is that I can't decide whether Jonathan goes home for spring break or whether (as was helpfully suggested to me) Joyce manages to visit him in NY for a couple of days or he just doesn't see them entirely.

It makes more sense for him to go back, but I'm not sure whether that would break the story flow or whether I'd hand-wave it with a few lines of exposition or what, but if Joyce visits him then she can see him in a different environment (which I think would make him self-reflective), plus then there's a little less reliance on the OCs.

This mostly happens because it's probably unrealistic for him to just not see them at all (it's doable, between being unable to swing travel expenses or being busy with work/schoolwork or other practical issues). (Of course, if she does see him, then she can gently suggest that he give therapy an honest try after all, maybe give him a little reality check. Several people suggest this to him; a couple others are more on the "fuck therapy" side. He's got a lot to think about, basically.)

On the other hand, he almost certainly saw them over the holiday break, so... I dunno, is this one week that big a deal? (I mean, this dude is very worried about his family back home, so it seems weird if he doesn't take the opportunity to check on them...) I dunno, it's just definitely easier for me, story-wise, if he stays in NY by himself and doesn't see anyone.

Spoilers (the ending, basically).

The last scene is Jonathan and Nancy meeting up, finally, after missing each other the whole story and having their plans repeatedly fall through. Previously, this happened over spring break, but it just seemed increasingly like Jonathan needed more time to process what was happening and, also, for all that stuff to actually happen.

Entirely too many things happen in this story, tbh, considering it's basically a one-shot that grew legs, more than a proper long-form story. So there's an issue of how long a time frame it has to be in order to accommodate all of that in a reasonable way without giving Jonathan just one, like, incredibly action-packed week (and also long enough to heal a bit). It's a lot. (But, like, I'm definitely gonna make 'em all fit.)

Anyway, so I guess now they're going to meet up on a long weekend or something later in the semester, but there's still the issue of just what exactly I have Jonathan doing for spring break.

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Since WIP Wednesday is a thing...

There are just... so many...

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Jonathan Byers to the girl who's about to climb him like a tree and could not be telegraphing this intention harder if she tried, as she reaches for a pack of cigarettes: My mom smokes Camels.

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I completely overlooked a small but very obvious thing in mysl that is not pivotal, but, uh, is kind of a big deal? Like, it's not a thread I have to follow, but it would be weird if it doesn't come up and it's something that would definitely have pretty big implications.

Spoilers below cut (warnings for drugs and injury).

I don't know how I managed to not think about this, but the injury that I keep mentioning is, while not terrible, something that painkillers would probably be prescribed for (temporarily, at least back then--I think now they'd send you home with NSAIDs). (And I can't just not have him see a doctor, thus avoiding the issue entirely, because the doctor is there to give him some important information that moves the plot forward and he needs to hear.) At which point Jonathan has access to (mild) painkillers. Jonathan on whom I've spent a lot of narrative real estate making a point of how depressed, anxious, and desperate for some kind of relief he is (and interested in drugs, generally).

Jonathan whom I've now given a friend who has a history of substance abuse and mental health struggles and who has a temperament quite like Jonathan, actually, and who may have mentioned some of this to Jonathan by this point in the story. (So not a narrative foil, exactly, but definitely a point of comparison.)

So it would be weird for the doc to not prescribe them, weird for him to be like "nah, pass," and then weird for him to not take them. And he could always just, like, not decide that, actually, they feel kind of nice, and be totally fine using them as directed and then stopping because everyone experiences opioids a little differently (and sometimes they don't even help), but... I kind of think he would like the feeling? But this isn't a story about Jonathan developing an addiction to painkillers. (Uh, I have another where he does, but that's not this one.)

So my thinking is that he's deeply uncomfortable with how much he actually does like them, and decides to not take the rest, and just sticks with weed and rest. Because at least the weed is largely an emotional dependency (and to some extent a process addiction), but at this point, the thought of actually becoming physically dependent on something (like his friend) still scares him enough to outweigh the potential relief (physical and emotional). And he recognizes that he very much has within him the potential to do that. (Everyone has that potential, but he's especially vulnerable to it, between lingering chronic pain and all the issues he's got going on.)

So it could be a big deal in the sense that it's another tally for the "Jonathan gains compelling evidence that he should actually put some effort into therapy" column. But I don't want to lean too hard on it or be all dire or fearmongering about it. So it would be a brief thing.

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memorized your smile lines wip 3

“So what are your goals?” she’d asked him. “Why are you here?” “I don’t want to worry as much as I do. No one wants me to be this worried all the time.” “What worries you?” “I think about what’s happening back home.” “What’s back home?” He’d kept his eye roll to himself when he’d answered. “My family.” “What makes you worry about them?” How can this possibly be helpful? he’d wondered. Aloud, he’d said, “They really needed me for a long time. Like, really needed me. And now they don’t need me. But I don’t know how to turn it off. The fire is over and the house is gone and the alarm won’t shut up.”

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Jonathan "trust issues" Byers is gonna find out that there are people quietly rooting for him after all, and he's gonna have to reevaluate basically his entire life philosophy.

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I am actually, for-real outlining memorized your smile lines. My vibes-based character-exploration idfic series has frothed itself into something requiring an outline to rein in.

I just wanted Jonathan to suck a dick and get therapy, you know? Not necessarily at the same time. Now there are subplots.

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memorized your smile lines snippet 2

Joints have to be one of his least favorite ways of experiencing one of his very favorite things. The act reminds him too much of tobacco cigarettes—his Mom’s nervous chain-smoking, his dad’s, well, everything. Everyone smoked, back then, but he’d felt sometimes like he was living in a nicotine-stained ashtray. But happy as he is to engage in this very necessary pastime, he’s not actually willing to be caught with drug paraphernalia in his dorm room and risk being thrown out on his ass. There’s someone a few doors down with a toaster oven—though they’re not actually allowed, apparently owing to some Incident—and probably owing to the fact that their last name is on plaques all over the building, somehow the RA magically loses all sense of smell when the guy is preparing the buds for his weed butter, even though it stinks up the whole floor. Despite the contraband toaster oven, he uses a waffle iron to actually make his weed brownies—a level of audacity that Jonathan has to grudgingly appreciate. But Jonathan refuses, on principle, to buy drugs from a rich kid. It’s the poor kids and the rejects who have to turn to shit like that who should be making money off of it. People like him, if he’d ever had the nerve and the connections or at least the capacity to grow literally anything. People like Eddie Munson, who’d taken one glance at Jonathan’s stricken face as he’d stared under the hood of his car, realizing that the parts he needed to replace were going to be impossible to salvage at the junkyard, and slipped a joint into his pocket as he’d walked by because Jonathan had apparently looked—and he’s quoting from memory here—“like the saddest motherfucker on Earth, two seconds from the edge.” He didn’t actually know Munson; like just apparently recognized like and occasionally felt bad for it.

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I jest about the pot thing, but actually, in mysl, Jonathan's sort of embarrassed (and disheartened) that he’s at school and still depressed and anxious because this is supposed to make things better. He’s getting what he wanted. He's out of Hawkins. He's going through the motions of trying to be his own person. He's doing the stuff you do, you know? When you do the stuff, you should get to feel better. That's supposed to be how it works.

But, nope, still depressed.

(Also there’s a lot of pressure on him to do well, which he's kind of always conscious of.)

So he has a lot of understandable reasons to stay pretty baked, still, and he's being as responsible about it as he can be (which is actually decently responsible, all things considered).

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Lmao this fic starts with Nancy's Sexual Manifesto. It's literally 3k of Nancy's itemized list of sexual opinions, theories, and intentions before the sex scene even starts. I know I should trim it because that's ridiculous, but honestly I'm gonna leave it.

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Would dearly love to bring this "banging out 6k words" energy to my thesis.

In other news, I think I've resigned myself to the college one needing to be multi-chaptered. Which is. Yeah.

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This plot snuck up on me. I was very happy doing almost exclusively vibes-based stories, and now there's, like, stuff going on...