Scarlett Epstein Hates It Here(3)
My best friends in the Lycanthrope fandom community are called the BNFs (Big Name Fans), and they’re fic writers too: xLoupxGaroux, DavidaTheDeadly, and WillianShipper2000. Fandom is weird like that, especially on Tumblr. You don’t have to know anyone’s first name, but you’ll be as sad for them when their mom dies as you’d be sad for someone IRL.
I gravitated to them through their super-high-quality fics. They were the top-read Lycanthrope fic writers on the board; their most popular fics had around 10,000 views. xLoupxGaroux appeals to the smart, snarky gay demo who dies for William/Connor slash with only occasional glimmers of sentimentality. DavidaTheDeadly writes uplifting inner monologues from each character’s perspective, which gives people a break from the frequent super-darkness of the show. And Willian, a high school freshman in Kansas, excels at maybe the toughest and most oversaturated fanfic domain: your typical OTP (one true pairing) hetero romance. She splits her time between Lycanthrope and One Direction fandom, and she sometimes comes off totally basic, but her swoonworthy lines get Tumblr-ed to death. Some Lycanthrope fans can be judgy about mainstream fandoms like 1-D, but I’m not: Anything that could get a sixteen-year-old girl from some shitty town a six-figure book deal is something I’d scream proudly about from the rooftops.
xLoupxGaroux: Where have you BEEN.
Scarface: I’m sorry!!
I start crying. I’m not quite sure why. I think I’m afraid this is the last time we’ll all talk or something. Nevertheless, I manage to type:
Scarface: I’m crying, hahaha!
xLoupxGaroux: you are not literally crying.
DavidaTheDeadly: we don’t all have hearts of stone like you, Loup
Scarface: Yes
WillianShipper2000: awwwww!
DavidaTheDeadly: last week I cried every day. moaning myrtle of the ladies’ bathroom at work basically.
Davida and Loup are both older than me and have office jobs, which means they can—and do—Gchat all day but have to be careful with the open browsers.
DavidaTheDeadly: the thing is though . . . we didn’t know it was ending, and we don’t have source material for fics about the final episodes. oh brb boss is coming
xLoupxGaroux: What is it today? “Ride of the Valkyries”?
DavidaTheDeadly: “Single Ladies.”
Whenever the editor in chief at Davida’s magazine job approaches someone’s cube, Davida hums loudly to warn them to X out of anything inappropriate.
DavidaTheDeadly: haha btw scarface, pls thank your mom for e-mailing her confession and let her know it’ll be in the april issue
The delightful nugget to which she is referring: “I wrote a text to my ex-boyfriend: ‘I’ll pick up some condoms with the bread bowls.’ But I actually sent it to my daughter! Oops! —Dawn E., 35.”
Scarface: I can’t believe we don’t even know if Gillian ends up with William or Connor.
WillianShipper2000: Uhh Willian is obvs the OTP!
Willian’s ride-or-die for that pairing. Her Tumblr background is a shot of the two of them with “Now you have all of me” written on it in cursive, from that episode where William and Gillian had a big fight because he wouldn’t take her to prom. He wanted her to have a nice, normal teenage experience. She started crying and said he was letting the wolf part—the part that didn’t like responsibility—take over. The next day he showed up at her front door with a gift, a German shepherd puppy. “You were right,” he said. “But now you have all of me.”
(Of course, Gillian realizes later on, when William leaves town after prom, that it was the guy part of him that decided to do it, not the wolf part. And the dog, Nina, dies bravely saving Marissa from a possessed frat house in the fourth season finale. I cried for a week straight.)
Scarface: Have you guys read any of the fix-its?
xLoupxGaroux: Some—none are particularly satisfying.
We agree that none of us want to give up writing Lycanthrope fic and that even though the finale sucked, moving forward we’ll stick with the canon storyline. We all promise to think on it, and nobody will jump ship until we’ve got some ideas.
Chapter 2
“MY CHILDREN,” I BEGIN SOLEMNLY AT THE HEAD OF THE Parkers’ dinner table.
The first time I had dinner at Avery’s house, in sixth grade, her parents asked me to say grace in earnest. But after I fumbled secularly through it, the BS “grace” became a recurring joke.
I clear my throat. “I dreamed I was walking on the beach side by side with the Lord. When I looked back, there were two sets of footprints, but other times there was just one.”
Ashley, Avery’s sister and the bane of my existence, rolls her eyes. I ignore her.
“I asked the Lord why this would be. He replied, ‘During your times of trial and suffering, when you see only one set of footprints, it was then that I drop-kicked you.’”
The tops of Avery’s parents bowed heads shake with silent laughter.
“Carried you. Carried you, is what I meant. Amen.”
“Amen,” Avery and her parents say. Ave’s mom looks at Ashley expectantly, and she reluctantly mutters it too.
Ashley’s a popular senior at MHS. She and her friends have spent the last nine years making fun of me for wearing thrift-store clothes (they weren’t cool yet), bringing weird wholesale Sam’s Club chocolate milk to lunch unlike everybody else’s normal Nesquiks, and the million other tiny indicators kids can sniff out poorness with. The most glaring example of this was in second grade, when all the popular girls had Double Stuf and I had some cheaper fake-Oreo brand; I’d scrape all the cream off one cookie and put it in another, then throw out the dry, empty cookie and eat the homemade Double Stuf one. One day, Natalia and Ashley sat across from me and stared as Ashley whispered unnecessary narration into Natalia’s ear like I was a nature documentary. Look, then she scrapes the cream off, then she puts it in the other cookie, then she throws the first cookie out, then . . .