#my secret vendetta against stuart hatford

[writingpuddle]

also for the WIP game I’d love to hear about warning signs, snippet of future chapters, your thoughts, random Mary or Nathan or Stuart headcanons, literally anything

okay so this one took me a while to write because this au is so...idk its a very personal and prickly little au and i adore it but i also have no idea how to talk about it lmao. but heres some rambly rambles for you.

basically there were two main things which drove me to want to write this one

i wanted to write nathan and mary being horrible melodramatic toxic as hell and, as a result, extremely hot. if nobody leaves this fic without feeling a little horny about either/both of them, i will be a sad, sad man

i want the hatfords to fucking suck

point one is self explanatory (evil people hot) but point two is this weird zone where like. i understand why the hatfords usually are written as either alright people or pretty mellow for a crime family in fic. its useful to build aus, theres really nothing in canon about them, its objectively completely consistent with canon, and i dont ever want to step on someones fun au of the hatfords. do whatever you like.

but at some incomprehensible point in the last seven (?) years ive been in this fandom, i developed a weird vendetta against stuart hatford.

let me be extremely clear; i can argue my case. i can give you evidence to explain why stuart should be a shitty, horrible person. but thats...mostly just because im good at arguing, honestly. i dont actually expect people to suddenly start writing stuart as a shitty person just because i got the fuck-this-guy brainworm.

but thats a little bit of why im writing this fic. every once in a while i see aus or interpretations that sort of implicitly assume that mary was paranoid and kind of stupid for not sticking with the hatfords, or that staying with the hatfords would have been a better childhood for neil/happy ending for mary. so this is my exploration of what if not that. what if the hatfords also sucked? what if mary went from one situation, that was shitty in one particular way, to a new shitty situation, which was shitty in a different but adjacent way? what if when she ran away it really was a choice between three terrible options (nathan, stuart or going on the run)? what if she had a hand in building that choice? could it have been different if she had acted otherwise? or was she doomed from the start?

and what if, along the way, i got to write about two people who flirted by escalating and extremely hilarious assassination attempts?

[bluesrrgents]

Hi!! I was just wondering - do you have any good andreil fic recommendations?? I ADORE lessons in cartography and wanted something like that. I'm sorry to bother you if you don't read FICS!!

i haven’t yet read lessons in cartography i’m sorry :( i’ve been told there aren’t any other fics quite like it but i’m still willing to make a list of andreil fics to recommend!! thanks to all my friends who gave me more recs

* a star just means i haven’t read it but it’s been recommended to me

sky blue sky by jaylocked 

Neil collects the cup a moment later, almost absently, as he thinks back to the nightmare that had started his day. He takes a sip, planning to turn away, and is almost assaulted by the sheer quantity of sugar in his drink. Who knew coffee could taste that sweet? It’s disgusting.

Neil looks back to Andrew, who is once more leveling a blank gaze at him, hazel eyes deeply unimpressed. Neil quirks an eyebrow, confused. It’s definitely not worth it to say anything. After all, it’s been engrained in him not to draw attention to himself, to order whatever is blandest and least interesting, to get in and out best he can.

He can feel the weight of Andrew’s gaze on his back as he leaves the cafe, but he tries to ignore it. 

this one is 2 parts, about 3k each but it’s cute

*light fires at night (to push back the void by inthesea

The first time Andrew realizes he wants to hear the words, Neil isn’t even doing anything. He’s just sitting there, staring at the horizon with that stupidly dramatic faraway expression of his, and letting the cigarette burn down between his fingers all the way to the filter — an outrageous waste of good nicotine, if you asked Andrew.

(Or: 20+ times Andrew and Neil say I love you, and one time they say it out loud.) (61k)

this one seems to be the most similar to lessons that can be found so i put it at the top :) the rest are ordered based on word count

*your crown of thorns holds roses by quensty

Three days after he signs his death sentence to Palmetto State, five after Andrew Minyard sends him flying breathless to the ground, Neil’s gaze snaps to the locker room mirror and stares, frozen, at the word threat scrawled along his spinal cord in terrifying, heavy bold.

All in all, he isn’t thrilled about the situation this puts him in, but, based off the negative connotation, it isn’t one-sided either. On the bright side, at least this means his soulmate doesn’t harbor any grandeur delusions about him. (4.4k)

*missed call by badacts

There was one thing Nathan had always stood by, his personal code – if you were going to go after someone, you went after them. Not their dog, not their parents, and definitely not their partner. He might not have managed to teach that to his henchmen, but he clearly succeeded with his son.

That, and ‘a head for an eye’. (5.7k)

*now i’m covered in the colors by alaynes

Nathaniel Wesninski is six years old when his first soulmate mark comes in. (9.7k)

*be neither fish nor fowl by Saul

They found it in the locked room of a Royal Navy’s vessel, The Fox waiting to take her crew and their new spoils across the deep blue.

It was beautiful. It was rarer than any diamond.

“A mermaid,” Dan laughed, taking a step back and sweeping her hat off her head to hold to her chest. “They were transporting a mermaid.”

It was going to make them rich.

( wherein the Foxes are pirates, Neil has gills, and no one quite trusts the magic.) (26k)

this fic has three parts!!

*latchkey child by Saul

The segment’s title declared EXY’S DARLINGS - WHERE WILL THEY GO FROM HERE? in a yellow banner along the television screen’s bottom. It was a spotlight feature on where Kevin Day and Riko Moriyama were planning to go after their high school graduation. Of course they were expected to join the best, but a few reporters speculated on favoritism from the Raven’s coach if they signed on at Edgar Allan, and if that’d impact the Exy prodigies’ relationships with their potential teammates.

Usually his mother would box his ears for looking at anything Exy-related, but he changed the channel long before her shower finished, the black ink on a younger Day’s cheekbone haunting him worse than the date in the corner.

( Neil wakes up seven years younger, and, slowly, takes matters into his own hands. ) (31k)

*and in a flash, it’s gone. by Idnis

‘I wouldn’t associate with Andrew anymore, nor with any of the others. You can’t trust foxes after all.’The man’s fist connected precisely where his head wound was, and then Neil Josten was gone.

Neil loses his memory and has to somehow make sense of the pieces of his past and present. And Andrew. (36k)

*die young by moonix

Ever since the violent death of his mother Neil has withdrawn completely from the outside world. He lives with his Uncle Stuart and barely ever leaves the house. In order to help him overcome his anxiety, Stuart hires his favourite waiter, Nicky, to befriend him. With Nicky come the rest of the Foxes, and Neil finds himself being reluctantly adopted into a much bigger family, reconnecting with an old friend, and developing a crush… (41k)

*dangerous magics by SashaSea

“What if evil doesn’t really exist? What if evil is something dreamed up by man, and there is nothing to struggle against except out own limitations? The constant battle between our will, our desires, and our choices?” -Libba Bray, Rebel Angels

(urban fantasy/Celtic legend AU) (52k)

on the impossibility of reality by defractum (nyargles)

“Inception,” says Ichirou Moriyama.

‘You’re crazy,’ Neil does not say, but it’s a close thing. “It can’t be done,” he says instead, after a too long pause.

An Inception AU. Kevin is the best extractor in the game, Neil spends too much time pretending to be other people, and Andrew? Well, Andrew knows all about inception. (56k)

*grey zone by maydaykevin

Neil’s frown deepened as he stared at the card he was holding.

'Camp Half-Blood, Half-Blood Hill, Farm Road 3.141Long Island, New York 11954’

“You’re telling me this is my only chance at survival?”

“The only one you’ve got left kid.”

A Percy Jackson/Foxhole Court AU (57k)

*to know a man by moonix

In which the Foxes all work at a coffee shop run by Wymack, Neil is their newest recruit with a dark past, Andrew is obvious, Neil is oblivious, and everyone ships it apart from Aaron, who just wants to study in peace. With guest appearance by a stuffed jellyfish called Josephine. (58k)

*claw marks by flybbfly

The Foxes are an underground resistance group in a dystopian near-future. Neil is the shady new recruit.

Part 1984, part “The Lottery,” part “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas,” part V for Vendetta. (70k)

fear in a handful of dust by flybbfly

“I need to talk to Minyard,” Neil says, sipping at a soda. “How do I make that happen?”

Kevin chokes on his whiskey. “You don’t.”

In which Neil doesn’t have Kevin Day to convince him to play, so he becomes a sports journalist; Andrew is a keeper in more ways than one; and Quidditch is the sport du jour. Featuring a frankensteined team, eternal roommate Matt, and hawkish sports section editor Dan. Oh, and Andrew has a shady past (present? future?) that Neil can’t quite figure out. But that’s nothing new for Neil, who is constantly hiding everything about himself anyway—this time with magical abilities greasing the way. (104k)

*armies by nekojita

Upon Mary Hatford’s death, Nathaniel Wesninski makes the call to his uncle Stuart rather than continuing on the run and ending up in Milport, Nevada.Upon graduating university, Andrew Minyard turns down all offers of a professional Exy career and muddles through a 'normal’ life, until the boredom and inanity of it all wears him down and he accepts an offer of a break to spend some time with his cousin Nicky in Stuttgart, Germany.There he meets Abram Hatford, a handsome and broken young man who has more in common with Andrew than he suspects, and nothing’s normal anymore. (341k)

WIPS

sickeningly sweet (like honey) by broship_addict

Andrew Doe is twelve years old when he walks into Fox’s Sweets Shop. Somehow, he leaves with three friends and all of them are Exy-obsessed losers.

Also known as the kid AU in which the Foxes are happy children and Andrew has a crush. (22k)

*the bodyguard by bourbon

“Hello, you’ve reached the homosexual agenda, how may I help you?”

“Nicky.”, Andrew growled.

“Oh, my favorite cousin! I would ask you to join our cause but it seems you already did.”

Or where Neil hires Andrew as a bodyguard but ends up (fake) dating him instead. (43k)

*dog in the manger by Saul

It’s 1922, and rumor had it Wesninski’s son wasn’t so dead after all. A sudden upheaval crumbled the Butcher’s empire almost over-night; in his place, a scarred and terrifying man threatened to set Baltimore alight.

Four years later, Aaron Minyard receives a call from a brother he hasn’t spoken to in a decade, sweeping him into a whirlwind of corruption, homicide, and exhausted, tremulous trust. (52k)

*a hole in the world by lscar123

An accomplished FBI agent. A young runaway who is more than he appears to be. A serial killer that’s haunted both of them for years.

The City of Angels just got a lot more interesting. (132k)

doe & josten: deductionists by SpangleBangle

Andrew Doe, rude but brilliant consulting detective, thought he had no need of a partner as he worked slowly away at dismantling the largest crime family in the country, helping out with other cases on the side to relieve the tedium. That was, until a scruffy runaway with a stupid amount of secrets stumbled into his life. Or, more accurately, broke into his kitchen. (152k)

ok i’ll stop myself, i hope you find some you love!!