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Fuck and Run: Analysis and Some Not-Fic
Dec. 31st, 2022 12:02 pmBy far my most popular work on AO3 (maybe because it's a completed work), sometimes I get a comment that makes me want to re-read Fuck and Run.
Recounting the thought process that led me to writing it - I'd read a lot of werewolf fic (/vampire fic) and wanted to make something dark, edgy, and unique to my experience with the music industry while I was living in Brooklyn. But I also wanted it to be fan-servicey, breaking into the adult and monster themes that, at the time, felt unique and special to MCR fic. I was drinking a lot, hence the shoddily constructed subplot that alcoholism is what made Gerard a monster.
I hadn't noticed until this most recent re-read, how much of myself I put into these characters. I'd ended up in New York City in my early 20s, thousands of miles from home, finally given the breathing room to begin to come to terms with the unchecked mental illness I'd been made to suppress growing up. I was burdened by a deep, burning fear that if you knew me, if you really knew what I was really like on the inside, you'd find me as unlovable as I found myself. Gerard has somewhat similar logic threaded throughout the story. Who could love a monster?
(In retrospect, maybe that's just what everyone's early twenties are like?)
I knew I wanted these guys to have an entire situationship where one of them has this big (cryptid-sized) secret that gets harder and harder to hide, but it's not revealed until they end things. I had been fascinated by some myth I read about names being the spell that controls transformations in werewolves.
Some details just feel so rushed and amateur to me. The conversations toward the end, where they are trying to figure out Frank's role in the mechanics of the curse should have been drawn out into life after the big reveal. We don't really get to see too much of what it's like for Frank and Gerard, once Gerard is free to be himself.
I'd re-write the ending if I could. I've flirted with the idea dozens of times. I still daydream about the two of them at the cabin in the summers. A dip in the creek to wash away the blood after a night locked up in the basement. Sleeping the day away outside, under the sun-warmed quilts. Frank reads books while Gerard sleeps off his hangover from the moon. There's so much room to expand on Frank figuring out how he fits into Gerard's routine.
Maybe Frank gets Gerard a moon calendar planner for Christmas one year and he opens it in front of their parents at family-Christmas and Gerard's secretly pissed but can't act like it in front of his parents.
I started to draft a sequel of sorts back in 2018. One of my writer friends suggested not to give in to the urges. It lives in my drafts.
Plotwise, I'd gotten about as far as this:
Frank and Gerard, still living in Gerard's apartment uptown, get in a fight. Frank goes out barhopping with Jamia to cool off for a few hours. Some girl corners him in the men's bathroom and asks why he smells like Alpha. (He's so caught off guard by this that he forgets to pretend he has no idea what she's talking about.) Once she leaves he's like, "Wait what was she even doing in there? And how did she know?" He can't leave the bathroom for few minutes, trying and failing to process that a total stranger approached him in the bathroom of an unfamiliar bar Jamia had dragged him to, and told him he smells like his werewolf boyfriend. He eventually exits the bathroom and discovers that the girl is behind the bar. She clearly works there. He goes back to his seat next to Jamia and pretends to be cool for the rest of the night. He comes home drunk. Gerard starts apologizing as soon as Frank is through the door. Frank cannot even remember what they fought about. He's so consumed by curiosity.
He thinks about telling Gerard, but then Gerard is stringing apology-kisses down his neck. It will have to wait.
Frank comes back on a weeknight hoping to catch the bartender when its slow. He's wearing Gerard's t-shirt, and his jacket, to enhance the smell. As soon as he starts asking the girl questions, she takes one look at him, tells him he's overserved, and gestures for him to leave the bar. When he complains, she threatens to sic the bouncer on him. He comes to the conclusion, of course, that this means there are other werewolves in New York City. It should have been obvious.
Frank finally tells Gerard. Gerard is less than thrilled. He tells Frank not to go back. Frank, naturally, does. Gerard takes personal offense. "You have no idea what it's like to be cursed. Don't go there without me. Stay away from them."
And then beyond that - I'm not sure? I considered a somewhat comic route - where Ray, Gerard's coworker at the art store, gets turned into a werewolf and doesn't know what to do. Gerard notices the signs while they're working. It becomes clear that Ray either doesn't know what's going on, or has no plan. This forces Frank and Gerard to face that there are other werewolves in the city, and that ignoring them is getting other people, like Ray, in serious trouble.
Another Afterward I considered is from the perspective of Jamia, called Jamia Finds Out.
Frank and Gerard finally moved out of the city and got a house out in Jersey. She wants to stop by the house and surprise them with a housewarming gift. She parks her car on the street and walks up to the front porch. It had rained earlier but the sky is clear now. The full moon glows against the still-wet pavement. The lights are on inside the house. She peeks in the front windows - and nearly chokes on air.
Gerard is standing in the living room, completely naked. His back is to the window, thank God. Gerard pulls off his wedding ring and hands it to Frank, who is standing in front of Gerard. Jamia quickly ducks out of view. She stands there for a moment, unsure what the fuck she just saw, and why Frank and Gerard have never heard of closing the curtains. The special guitar-shaped bottle-opener she got them seems like a silly gift now. She should have gotten them fucking curtains.
Clearly they are in the middle of something, so she turns to leave - hopefully out of view of her friend and his husband in the middle of keeping marriage interesting.
She makes it about one step off the porch before the front door squeaks on its hinges as it opens. She grimaces, then softens her expression and turns around. Frank is standing in the door, with a dog on a leash.
"J?" he asks.
"Hey Frankie," she says, "I thought I'd stop by to check out the house. I have something for you... Who's this? I see you guys wasted no time getting a fucking dog!" She can't believe she's pretending she didn't see what she just saw, but what else can she do?
The dog, with thick black fluffy fur and piercing eyes lurches forward, tugging Frank along with it.
The two of them walk the dog together through Frank's new neighborhood - Jamia, pretending that it's normal and chill and Frank's husband isn't back at the house completely naked somewhere and ringless. And Frank, pretending he doesn't have his husband, transformed into a werewolf, on a leash for an evening stroll.
And then maybe something similar happens again and Frank decides to just come clean.
Recounting the thought process that led me to writing it - I'd read a lot of werewolf fic (/vampire fic) and wanted to make something dark, edgy, and unique to my experience with the music industry while I was living in Brooklyn. But I also wanted it to be fan-servicey, breaking into the adult and monster themes that, at the time, felt unique and special to MCR fic. I was drinking a lot, hence the shoddily constructed subplot that alcoholism is what made Gerard a monster.
I hadn't noticed until this most recent re-read, how much of myself I put into these characters. I'd ended up in New York City in my early 20s, thousands of miles from home, finally given the breathing room to begin to come to terms with the unchecked mental illness I'd been made to suppress growing up. I was burdened by a deep, burning fear that if you knew me, if you really knew what I was really like on the inside, you'd find me as unlovable as I found myself. Gerard has somewhat similar logic threaded throughout the story. Who could love a monster?
(In retrospect, maybe that's just what everyone's early twenties are like?)
I knew I wanted these guys to have an entire situationship where one of them has this big (cryptid-sized) secret that gets harder and harder to hide, but it's not revealed until they end things. I had been fascinated by some myth I read about names being the spell that controls transformations in werewolves.
Some details just feel so rushed and amateur to me. The conversations toward the end, where they are trying to figure out Frank's role in the mechanics of the curse should have been drawn out into life after the big reveal. We don't really get to see too much of what it's like for Frank and Gerard, once Gerard is free to be himself.
I'd re-write the ending if I could. I've flirted with the idea dozens of times. I still daydream about the two of them at the cabin in the summers. A dip in the creek to wash away the blood after a night locked up in the basement. Sleeping the day away outside, under the sun-warmed quilts. Frank reads books while Gerard sleeps off his hangover from the moon. There's so much room to expand on Frank figuring out how he fits into Gerard's routine.
Maybe Frank gets Gerard a moon calendar planner for Christmas one year and he opens it in front of their parents at family-Christmas and Gerard's secretly pissed but can't act like it in front of his parents.
I started to draft a sequel of sorts back in 2018. One of my writer friends suggested not to give in to the urges. It lives in my drafts.
Plotwise, I'd gotten about as far as this:
Frank and Gerard, still living in Gerard's apartment uptown, get in a fight. Frank goes out barhopping with Jamia to cool off for a few hours. Some girl corners him in the men's bathroom and asks why he smells like Alpha. (He's so caught off guard by this that he forgets to pretend he has no idea what she's talking about.) Once she leaves he's like, "Wait what was she even doing in there? And how did she know?" He can't leave the bathroom for few minutes, trying and failing to process that a total stranger approached him in the bathroom of an unfamiliar bar Jamia had dragged him to, and told him he smells like his werewolf boyfriend. He eventually exits the bathroom and discovers that the girl is behind the bar. She clearly works there. He goes back to his seat next to Jamia and pretends to be cool for the rest of the night. He comes home drunk. Gerard starts apologizing as soon as Frank is through the door. Frank cannot even remember what they fought about. He's so consumed by curiosity.
He thinks about telling Gerard, but then Gerard is stringing apology-kisses down his neck. It will have to wait.
Frank comes back on a weeknight hoping to catch the bartender when its slow. He's wearing Gerard's t-shirt, and his jacket, to enhance the smell. As soon as he starts asking the girl questions, she takes one look at him, tells him he's overserved, and gestures for him to leave the bar. When he complains, she threatens to sic the bouncer on him. He comes to the conclusion, of course, that this means there are other werewolves in New York City. It should have been obvious.
Frank finally tells Gerard. Gerard is less than thrilled. He tells Frank not to go back. Frank, naturally, does. Gerard takes personal offense. "You have no idea what it's like to be cursed. Don't go there without me. Stay away from them."
And then beyond that - I'm not sure? I considered a somewhat comic route - where Ray, Gerard's coworker at the art store, gets turned into a werewolf and doesn't know what to do. Gerard notices the signs while they're working. It becomes clear that Ray either doesn't know what's going on, or has no plan. This forces Frank and Gerard to face that there are other werewolves in the city, and that ignoring them is getting other people, like Ray, in serious trouble.
Another Afterward I considered is from the perspective of Jamia, called Jamia Finds Out.
Frank and Gerard finally moved out of the city and got a house out in Jersey. She wants to stop by the house and surprise them with a housewarming gift. She parks her car on the street and walks up to the front porch. It had rained earlier but the sky is clear now. The full moon glows against the still-wet pavement. The lights are on inside the house. She peeks in the front windows - and nearly chokes on air.
Gerard is standing in the living room, completely naked. His back is to the window, thank God. Gerard pulls off his wedding ring and hands it to Frank, who is standing in front of Gerard. Jamia quickly ducks out of view. She stands there for a moment, unsure what the fuck she just saw, and why Frank and Gerard have never heard of closing the curtains. The special guitar-shaped bottle-opener she got them seems like a silly gift now. She should have gotten them fucking curtains.
Clearly they are in the middle of something, so she turns to leave - hopefully out of view of her friend and his husband in the middle of keeping marriage interesting.
She makes it about one step off the porch before the front door squeaks on its hinges as it opens. She grimaces, then softens her expression and turns around. Frank is standing in the door, with a dog on a leash.
"J?" he asks.
"Hey Frankie," she says, "I thought I'd stop by to check out the house. I have something for you... Who's this? I see you guys wasted no time getting a fucking dog!" She can't believe she's pretending she didn't see what she just saw, but what else can she do?
The dog, with thick black fluffy fur and piercing eyes lurches forward, tugging Frank along with it.
The two of them walk the dog together through Frank's new neighborhood - Jamia, pretending that it's normal and chill and Frank's husband isn't back at the house completely naked somewhere and ringless. And Frank, pretending he doesn't have his husband, transformed into a werewolf, on a leash for an evening stroll.
And then maybe something similar happens again and Frank decides to just come clean.
