This is a blog for the series Stories From The Michigan Fleet, a very queer series by three very queer authors, set in an imagined future after the fall of America, centered on a civilization living entirely on boats spread across the surface of Lake Michigan and a very big and sad and shy bi cinnamon roll recovering from trauma there. It's got the drama, it's got the hurt/comfort, it's got a giant anxious guy learning that sex can be nice and having emotions about people being kind to him. It's also got kittens, genetic mods, and elephants in it. Links to read free/illustrated or purchase and support the authors below the cut!
This blog primarily exists as a place to compile art and reference made by the authors, or occasionally to answer questions by readers. It's moderated/run by splickedylit. It features
art presented without context, including characters that haven't been introduced yet
art/writing that may not be canon or accurate anymore (especially as you scroll back)
art/writing not suitable for minors. It's an 18+ series y'all, minors should not be here anyway!
After The Storm - Smashwords | Royal Road | Wattpad
Athena Merrill and the Midnight Chicken - Smashwords
Learning the Ropes - Smashwords
The Art of Boytoy Maintenance - Smashwords
Cross My Heart - Smashwords
The Taste of New York - Smashwords
Run Aground - Smashwords* | Royal Road | Wattpad
*Run Aground is currently being released every Sunday on Royalroad, Wordpress and Wattpad free with illustrations; at the end of the first act, an option will be released to buy the entire novel. Posts will be tagged "Run Aground Spoilers" to avoid spoiling anyone who wants to wait until the full release.
VARIOUS POSTS:
(Because I end up trying to find these on my own blog pretty regularly lol)
Rafael: If fucking men bad, why does it alight my soul with glorious pleasure? Why men so lovely, as though cast by an artist's hand? Why, indeed, should the sight of their flesh excite me so, yea, even from the bloom of my adolescence when first pleasure came to me in the shape of--
Connor: If fucking men bad, daddy Satan is gonna have fun with my choice ass when I go to hell for it.
Andy: If fucking men bad, who cares? I don't owe you shit, and I do what I want.
Solace "Got One Of His First Boners When The Hot Young Priest In His Work-Study Program Gave Him Communion" King: I am not discussing this with you. But if fucking men bad it's a good thing I am so incredibly diligent and correct and inside parameters in every other way and will pay it back. I will pay it all back. I'm normal about pleasure.
Rich: Hey wait hold on why would fucking men be bad. what's wrong with landside.
Basil: Yeah no yeah, since when is fucking men bad??? Man it's weird out here.
Do you have a roundup anywhere of all of the AUs y'all have kicked around for the Run Aground gang? Any chance that the extras in the final version would include any AU snippets?
Well the FIRST question is fairly easy to answer because I recently went through and compiled all of our extremely scattered side-fic documents into collection docs so we would stop losing things lmao. I categorized them thus:
CANON DIVERGENT - Mostly aligned with the canon plotline or world, but riffed on, shifted, or alternate in some way:
Patron+Patrician - Rafael makes it big on the west coast as an actor instead of *waves hands at canon* and takes Rich on as a sexy hoverboarding patron. Then gets brought over to visit NYC and meet Rich's east coast patron. Sol has. A night.
1950s Reskin - a brief little style experiment from Ray about how the writing style/dialogue and the tech of the Fleet might differ if it was written several decades ago.
Sympatico Basil (Flavor I)- Instead of Rich having been sent off to deathboat, Basil went; he comes back to the Reliant deeply burned out in the brain+implants+emotions from storm piloting with a baseline brain.
Basil/Rich But Watch Out - Rich doesn't have Trimmer in his corner on the Sympatico and comes back to the Reliant much pushier and meaner, with the expectation that people wanting sex with him is a play for his protection. Basil does a sort of a horse girl+beast tamer thing in between Nasty Fuckin.
Babydoll!Rich - Little snips of Hastings+Babydoll!Rich, centered around the scene in After The Storm where he meets (in this version, SS-modded) Liam. And they fuck about it. That part is going to be a theme in many of these lmao.
PRT!Rich - Thena comes and finds Rich on the Sympatico and bails him out, and gets him an interview and subsequent job on the PRT ship that Liam's mom and his friend Jordan work on. Fucking ensues but honestly probably not as much as you'd think.
Sympatico Basil (Flavor II) - Rich's shitty Sympatico supervisor kicks it, and Rich becomes supervisor and hires Basil in. Culture clash ensues.
Sympatico Basil (Flavor III) - Instead of the Sympatico getting gutted and flipped, the admiral sends a fixer captain with a mandate to get the place in order, who very quickly pegs Rich as a really helpful guy to have on his side and makes him department head. Basil gets hired in but this time also has to deal with the fact Rich is completely starstruck about an authority figure being nice to him and has definitely contrived to blow the new captain.
Mars Boys - Kind of a borderline case with the full AUs below; Trimmer ends up actually in a Mars program like his genetics were intended for, and gets bundled into a space station pod with a huge extremely nervous Hastings kid.
NYC!Rich - Rich does actually get run aground after the last fight on the Sympatico, and ends up in New York, where he saves a pretty little guy from being run over by a hover-taxi and Sol offers him a couch to stay on in return while he gets his feet under him. And they fuck about it. Also there's daemons in there.
Young Carraway - Back-shifts several decades to catch Arthur at the point in his life when he just stole his mansion and needed a quartermaster, and inserts a Hastings Rich in there. Who has high standards and no patience for Sandgren and redirects things in a way that would make a lot of peoples' lives a lot nicer if it had happened lol. EDIT there are daemons in this one, it appears.
Catch-And-Release - Hard to sum up! Run Aground adjacent situation but messing around with how the guys would interact and what would keep them coming back if they were disparate visiting booty calls instead of prisoners? Came with the terrible realization that in this situation Connor would not actually go for Carraway as much and would instead default to just the worst hookups with Sandgren the world had ever seen.
Conditional Freedom - almost put this in the "snippets that didn't end up in the novel" doc, but for a second there was going to be a point in Run Aground where Rich argued Liam into being allowed to come out and be around the other prisoners. Didn't end up happening because of Liam's temperament, but a few hundred words remain.
Harem Redistibution Logistics - Angela Bane's squad of Hastings soldiers break open some old lykoi guy's compound; Rich is put in charge of getting some rich boy back to his weird little boat commune, along with some other hotties that tag along for the ride.
CANON ADJACENT - These started out as non-AUs that could have happened or did happen off-page, and I don't know if they're of much interest? I will briefly pause to call out:
Various AtS scenes but there's daemons in
Various RA scenes but there's daemons in
Various (Upcoming/Redacted) scenes but there's daemons in
Quite a few scenes cut from RA, largely fun but unhelpful fucking.
Two docs-ful of fragments that would eventually hammer into the shape of Run Aground--character introduction scenes (now very OOC and wrong) character dynamic scenes (several of them no longer correct) and a prologue and part of a chapter from Rich's POV of meeting Rafael, who then got an idle fragment of same written from HIS POV, and who quickly grew into an interesting enough guy we pivoted lol.
FANTASY ETC - Full AUs, usually sorted as such because of fantastical elements that aren't part of the main canon.
Demon Lord Merrill - Basil gets isekai'd into a tech on the Michigan Fleet, the backstory/origin of the cool scary landside warlord character in his favorite sexy fantasy novels--and finds out he's uh. Some guy with trauma named Rich.
Soulmarks (Fleet) - "When you touch (one of) your soulmate(s) a representative image appears in that place and them touching it feels nice" edition--brief little snip of Trimmer finally unbending enough to let Rich touch the little sparrow-holding-a-human-heart on his arm and everybody involved is relieved that theirs isn't the kind of "feeling nice" that's kind of horny.
Soulmarks (Landside) - Similar to the above but it's flowers that fill in with color when touched and then wither or bloom depending on the love and attention given to the relationship. Rafael meets a big Hastings soldier in the woods and comes away with a colored-in soulmark and a lot of questions, and Rich Bane following him around like 🥺💞
AB/B/A/O Shenanigans - Listen I know there are only like three people in the world who have any knowledge or interest RE: my blood-type-based homebrew A/B/O hack. And yet!!! Various configurations of characters fucking and having extra gender be upon ye except not because it's all in a doc lol
Various fantasy creature bits - Largely in the form of sex, lol. Establishing shapeshifter!Rich, classic Vampire+Werewolf friends Basil and Mitch, vampire/fae Rafael, half-elf Sol, still a witch!Andy, and Carraway primarily as a werewolf/vampire/(other stuff?) mix.
Raksura - I don't know enough about the Books of the Raksura to speak much on this one, but if you do, it appears Ray has made the Merrills 1/8th Kethel arbora, Connor and Basil mentors, Rafael a consort, Sol a queen, and Carraway a ruler-consort. 👍
Red Knight - Superhero Rich, mad scientist Liam, and the pretty actor Rich's human alter-ego is dating, all get picked up by some Hastings aliens and go on an adventure.
Rich/Liam Swap - Exactly what it says on the tin, lol. Liam and Rich inexplicably switch bodies, Liam gets to deal with being scary and much too big and stronger than he knows how to control, and Rich gets to deal with emotional dysregulation and being a small pretty guy who has to work to get taken seriously. And a dick that simply will not quit.
Deluxe/Fleet Swap - Rich has been Key's OC since long before all this, and was utilized in crossovers with the show Motorcity before he was in the Fleet. Swapping Fleet Tech!Rich with Dystopian Detroit!Rich provides quite a lot of culture clash.
Future/Past Swap - "Sympatico Rich shows up in (post-RA situation) and is SO small and horny and skinny and scared" Edition with corresponding "Huge Future Merrill shows up and upends Trimmer's whole life on the Sympatico" and "Six months into Rafael's imprisonment a huge Hastings shows up, breaks open the garrison, and presents Sam and Rafael with some compelling plans and invitations--and also Rafael's siblings".
Dream Boys - Rafael, in his troupe caravan, starts seeing Rich like a ghost visible only to him--it turns out they're jumping to each other when they sleep. Their blooming romance is of concern and confusion to Rafael's friends and loved ones, and Rich's Trimmer.
WHOO. So. That's not even all of the side-writing, just the stuff that's describable and of interest lol. RE: posting them somewhere, this has been an ongoing discussion! We would like to share, but almost all of (^^^) those are loose collections of scenes with no plot or solid beginning/end. (And also as you may have noticed Ray likes to write daemons from His Dark Materials into things, which is obviously not something we can sell as a novella).
The most doable concept to me is a google doc of the most shareable bits and pieces, and to just share a link! But figuring out which stories would be in there, and doing the amount of work it would take to keep them from being professionally embarrassing to post.... tricky!
SO: it's unfortunately not currently in the cards to put any of them in the extras for the novel. Although we do have about uhhhh...fuck I hadn't counted........we have about 30K of extra bits and bobs that are slated to go on there, lol. The current list including flashes of how the various guys got caught by Carraway, a novelette about a turning point in Sol's young life, and a few key Run Aground scenes re-narrated through Rich and Sol, because Rafael is a very odd character who experiences the world very differently from them, and it's fun to explore what they saw/noticed. :)
I have a friend who is a full time travelling/camping musician, with a focus on Ren Faires. Half his social media is 'Love travel and music with my friends, Faire Life Forever :)' and half is 'Another problem with the FUCKIGN vehicle.' I think of Rafael often, seeing this. I wonder if he has any practical camping skills that haven't come up in his years of captivity, and I think how useful it would be for a travelling crew on bad roads to have a buff Tech, should Rich be road inclined (he isn't)
Rafael's car-repair experience is mostly through his utility as a dexterous and willowy guy who gets summoned to stick his arm into engine blocks and shimmy under trailers and trucks. He was quite a young man when his life went off the rails, so he wasn't usually making decisions or taking on big important tasks around the camp--more running chores and running lines and going out to try to bring in interest and extra cash whenever there was a town nearby. But he can use a compass, read a map, check the troupe's clunky old Geiger counter, set up the water filtration system at a nearby stream, build a fire, and pick from one or two ways to cook commonly-available game animals over it, even if it's not going to be Fine Cuisine.
RE: buff techs, there is a quite tangential AU in our documents where traveling player Rafael meets Hastings backliner/medic apprentice/logistics guy Rich Bane and Rich pretty happily jumps ship to playing mechanic and strong man instead of trying to be a soldier. If he already has the Fleet he's not going to be tempted, but compared to other lives he could make for himself landside, it would be a promising offer!
truly thought his name was willem sandgren... he doesn't deserve the extra vowel
TRUE LOL take it away from him!!!! Wllm Sndgrn. Someone actually also sent me an ask a while ago calling him "Sandgreen" with an extra E. 🤣 Which is excellent, he deserves it.
8oat 8oys Text Posts 8: 8onus 8dition!! With a few additions from our comment section so far that happened to be formatted in a particularly illustratable way, lol.
Someone was sharing the Mystery of the Chopped Up Guy SNL skit the other day, and the way Bill Hader chewed the scenery struck me as Rafael-adjacent: Sol: "My ideal diet consists entirely of coffee and cigarettes." Rafael: "I must paint you."
Ray Sketches gleaned from the groupchat, part ?/???.
There are a nonzero number of Fleet natives, several of them fourhands in Trimmer's large and extended family, that manage flight with a combination of float tube antigrav technology and light prostheses. Genetic modifications attempting to achieve flight without any modification has so far been unsuccessful and usually scrapped in early testing, but the Fleet's unusual levels of manufacture and use for float tubes has given enterprising biohackers some new options.
I'm trying to remember the last time I've enjoyed the interactions of an ensemble cast this much... and I think Run Aground has dethroned Star Trek TNG for me, which is odd to think about, because the tones of the two series are so wildly different.
What a lovely compliment! I haven't watched any Star Trek but from what I know of it. You're totally right that it's a different tone and vibe, BUT the leap from the Michigan Fleet to Star Fleet feels weirdly intuitive lol.
God tho. Bad vibes on a bad ship are bad enough, but a Sympatico-style situation on a spaceship sounds absolutely nightmarish. Nowhere to go but the vacuum of space, baby!!!!!
(I was going to draw some of the Run Aground guys as well but I got hung up on whether Sol would be some kind of beautiful space elf or like. One of the hyper-capitalist alien guys with the big whorly ears. Ferengi?? Don't @ me lol)
I stumbled over a guy who makes a really good Finn Merrill faceclaim and wanted to do a face study, and then diverted almost immediately into doodling, and so midnight o clock is Finn o clock.
I can't draw but I just finished Run Aground and I'm overcome with the need to make fanart. So. May I please have more info about some of the Family Fleet puppets 👉👈
(I wanna make a Facsimile Fact puppet SO BAD you have no idea)
Aw, I'm glad you liked it! :D I'm afraid none of us have any experience designing puppets, but I can certainly compile them for you--some we've mentioned on tumblr, some we've mentioned in text, and some we've only brought up in the groupchat.
Ivanna Inchworm is a sweet little inchworm who started in educational episodes about numbers, but also branched out after her first few episodes into more general prosocial messaging. After all, Everybody Counts! :D
Captain Otter Ortiz and his husband Alfred Otter are the gentle but firm dad lessons puppets. Captain Ortiz is captain of the Marlinspike, the ship where many of the Family Fleet lessons implicitly take place. The Otters usually give hard but important lessons like "I know you love your toys but space is important in the Fleet, so let's figure out what we still need" and "water is all around us and it can be fun, but it can also be dangerous! Let's talk about storm-docking."
Facsimile Fact, the Know-It-All Cat likes to pretend to sleep when faced with a question he doesn't know the answer to, and then pretend he knew the answer all along when someone else figures it out; if pressed, he'll make up increasingly ridiculous lies. Something of an episode heel, but in a comedic and well-beloved way.
Curiosity Cheesewell plays opposite Facsimile, and is humble and honest about his ignorance and excited to learn more. He's also an anxious, neurotic little guy. When Facsimile is bullshitting, Cheesewell goes from "Oh! I didn't/don't know about that! :D" to "Ohhh I don't know about that.... 😬"
Sharon the Sharin' Heron a cool prosocial older sibling/cousin type. Loves sharing the workload, sharing her toys, and sharing her feelings, and is very impressed when the kids do the same. Lots of peoples' first weird crush.
Brenda Beaver the tough, badass, no-nonsense captain of an unnamed manufacturing boat; for generations, older kids have passed along a hundred names like the Dam Straight, the Dam Good Work, the Dam It All, or something similar, all claiming they heard one time it was canon. Cpt Beaver imparts lessons on "we all have to pull our weight" and the importance of every part of the system doing its job so the whole system can continue, and has a paw in several of Rich's deepest neuroses.
Risky Raccoon a little scamp who continually flaunts things like storm tethers and safety checks, and has to be scolded regularly about the risk to himself and others. Baby's first edgy preteen Family Fleet Hot Take is that Risky has had his chances and should be run aground for being a detriment to society.
Mrs Goose and Mr Gander are landside stand-ins, although it's not usually said so much as implied by their weird beliefs, flashiness, aggressive personalities, and the fact that they're consistently affronted and confused when Mr Gander is assumed to be Mrs Goose's butch wife (because landsiders don't understand that birds are women, etc etc.)
Monstro the Megacarp a rare addition but one that haunts the nightmares of a lot of Fleet kids; Monstro represents The Danger Of The Water and has been known to vore a whole-ass child on occasion. They usually get spit back out at the end, but still.
Bonus mention for Finn Merrill, Rich's dad, who took part in quite a lot of episodes before his accident landside, explaining important landside news and basic facts about the local political climate in child-friendly ways.
This little doodle on the front of Rich's shirt is as close as I could find to a drawing of a Family Fleet puppet, and I was very clearly thinking of the Muppets when I drew it lol.
We mostly have POV characters that are going after men, so do you have any Fleet vocab for lady romance that hasn't made it onto text? We know about 'steelheads' and 'being hooked or reeled in' or 'school' of boys, but what about women? And do they have a saying about the worth of birds in the hand vs those in the bush or are they cowards?
I imagine it's less that there are new sayings around the hand and bush and more that you can now say that with an eyebrow wiggle involved lol. RE: various fish metaphors: it's certainly ripe for just as many turns of phrase as the fish situation is!
roach —
we call thena a sparrowhawk
and she catches other women off the wing
i.e nails em midair
Splickedylit, RN, BSN —
I feel like there's something in "cuckoo"
potentially even a cuckholding joke
[Note: I then go on to not elaborate on this. But I do stand by it lol.]
roach —
women who go after men are often called ospreys
i think even tho sparrowhawks aren't the most normal bird around the fleet the phrase is so obvious-- a bird that eats bird-- it's the most common term
also i think women who go after men tend to be called ospreys rather than herons just because... it's a little sexier
women who chase old men could be called vultures haha.
Splickedylit, RN, BSN
with birds there's so much more size and shape variation you have the freedom to like, imply a lot of descriptive stuff with it
roach
i think it's probably something where there isn't a SUPER logical and methodical labeling system, it's just kind of like how our language has a lot of horse words mixed in. language is dynamic and memes tend to trump factual and logical conclusions.
Splickedylit, RN, BSN —
you could CALL a lady a heron. as a jokey way of pointing out she's tall and gawky and way bigger than her boyfriend
or meaningfully call somebody a peregrine because she dives SO fast for the first fish she sees
[note: not as any kind of 'role' per se, but as a conversational turn of phrase]
.......the lady version of Sandgren being a "lamprey" might in fact be a "gull". if he was a terrible old woman instead
somebody who's annoying and steals shit and is up in your business and has to be constantly yelled at and waved away or she's shitting on your deck
roach —
yeah i think gulls tend to be unrepentantly dirty old women. the kind that pinch your butt and make awful jokes and love embarassing teenage boys.
I keep thinking about how Sol reacts to one of his friends being injured. He's gonna be Very Close, Very Angry, checking things out. Is he gonna provide first aid? No, Rich and Connor do that. Is he at least going to be soothing or sympathetic? Christ no! But he's gonna be Mad and There. Almost as unhelpful is Rafael's bitchy narration about the aesthetics of suffering. If someone is having a bad time (including Rafael) Rafael is going to judge them if their sniffs are "inelegant." Love them.
Accurate lol. It comes along pretty naturally with their respective baggages--Sol's self-worth is so tied up in his independence and pride, he finds it mortifying to be fussed over and comforted when he's hurt or upset, and so he's completely uncomfortable getting Soppy And Emotional about other people getting hurt. Rafael has spent so long curating and self-critiquing the performance of his own existence, some internal part of him automatically reads what everybody else is doing as intentional performance as well, and judges it as such.
"Song of the Witches" by S. J. Tucker as a lullaby/character song for Andy has been living rent-free in my head for the last week. Did you guys have any particular songs you associate with certain characters?
Key abstains from this one, since this isn't how his brain approaches music! But Ray and I will both show our basic-ass sadboy music tastes, sure 🤣 [definitely readmore, because this is going to be pretty long]
RICH:
From Me:
16 Tons (Ernie Ford) - I have a half-made lyricstuck with one verse for each Merrill, because the chorus really hits for the "you better pull your weight (and you weigh so much more than everyone else)". The third verse being Rich and Trimmer on the Sympatico: "One fist of iron, the other of steel / If the right one don't getcha, then the left one will"
Help I'm Alive (Metric) - "I tremble / They're gonna eat me alive / If I stumble / They're gonna eat me alive"
Six Feet (Patent Pending) - "Been working to the bone, been burning both ends / Trying to make them meet before we're hungry again"
Tomorrow (Miner) - Not many lyrics in this song, but the gentle but relentless repetition and the water imagery... :,) - "Let the wave wash over me / (there will be better days) / I am already under / (there will be better days) / let the wave wash over me"
In Memoriam (The Oh Hellos) - "You'll hold me like you'll never let me go / And beside the salty water, I could hold you close / But you are far too beautiful to love me"
Sloppy Seconds (Watsky) - "Cold pizza / tie-dye shirts / broken hearts / give 'em here, give 'em here / Hand-me-downs / leftovers / sloppy seconds / give 'em here, give 'em here"
The Simplest Words (The Narcissist Cookbook) - "Let's take a breath and then another till the feeling slows / Maybe we can try again / I hate this body / I hate this body / I am more scared of myself than I am of anyone else"
The Lotto (Ingrid Michaelson+AJR) - "I keep it simple and not too bright / We'll take the quiet, over the crowd" [...] "My oh my / I don't gotta hit the lotto / 'cause I got a lotta loving for free"
From Ray:
Everybody Breaks (Ivan & Alyosha) - "I’ve been looking for the water, looking for the sea / searching for my trouble but my trouble finds me"
Hush (Byrne) - "and whenever it rains here, there’s nothing to do / but watch my doubts rearranging like the couch in my room / I got a hundred songs playing on an endless loop / and a million voices telling me what to do / so hush / just don’t overthink it so much")"
Catastrophize (Noah Kahan) - "Oh, I catastrophize / Let me see the world through the kindness of my dad’s eyes / Let every photograph be taken from my bad side / So when the world sees my face they’ll never ask why / I look the way I do"
Lady On The Water (Blitzen Trapper) - "Lady on the water, rest my head upon your chest / leave me only when I’m blessed / cause I’ll be in my own country, good and dead and gone to rest / it’s the way that’s the best"
We All Lift Together (Keith Power) - (Almost added this one to my list and then forgot but thankfully Ray's got us haha) "Cold, the air and water flowing / hard, the land we call our home / push, to keep the dark from coming / feel the weight of what we owe"
Everything Is Alright (Motion City Soundtrack) - "I used to rely on self-medication / I guess I still do that from time to time / But I’m getting better at fighting the future / “Someday you’ll be fine,” yes, I’ll be just fine"
BASIL:
From Me:
Notice Me (Alexa Ray Joel) - The fact that the singer very quickly goes from slightly nervous peacocking to impatient "come get some already ffs" boldness honestly makes this one both funnier and more fitting lol. - "Notice me, notice me, notice me, notice me! / You can be the one to please me, honey"
Don’t You Know? (TimH) - I don't know if this singer intended to make a theme for pedantic ND nerds, but he sure did lol. - "Don′t you know what they say? / 'It's not gay if it′s in a three-way' / But I say, 'What if that three-way involves three guys?' / 'Cause surely then it′s...pretty gay, right?"
Next Up Forever (AJR) - "I gotta go so much bigger / So everybody's proud of me" [...] "And I'll be next up forever / 'Cause I don't know what's comin' next / I know I gotta grow up sometime / But I don't think I'm ready yet"
Talk Too Much (COIN) - "Stay cool, it's just a kiss / Oh, why you gotta be so talkative? / I talk too much, we talk too much"
From Ray:
Not Your Year (The Weepies) - "Movies, TV screens reflect / just what you expected / there’s a world of shiny people, somewhere else / out there following their bliss / living easy, getting kissed / while you wonder what else you’re doing wrong."
MITCH:
From Me:
Turning Out (AJR) - "Am I ready for love? / Or maybe just a best friend / Should there be a difference / Do you have instructions?" [...] "They say I turned out fine / I think I'm still turning out"
Time Adventure (Rebecca Sugar) - "And there we are again and again / 'Cause you and I will always be back then / And so, you and I will always be best friends"
From Ray:
Clean Light (The Mowglis) - "All I need to know is / look for a light that’s shining / all we see now / we see a fire starting / we all look bright here, underneath the sun / the same clean light and the same love)
Where Do You Go (flor) - "I can’t seem to find you when you slip into the night / so where do you go? I wanna follow you down"
Everybody’s Lonely (Jukebox the Ghost) - "Why’s every song about love / or drinking too much? / yeah, maybe that’s because everybody’s lonely…"
THENA/LEE:
From Me:
Bad Reputation (Joan Jett) - "I don't give a damn about my reputation / Living in the past it's a new generation / A girl can do what she wants to do / and that's what I'm gonna do"
Dangerous (LEFT BOY) - "Dangerous, ooh! / that sounds good / yeah talk to me baby, like I'm your dude / Cause right now, I'm in your hood / In your house, in your bed, in your sheets"
PROBLEM (Natalia Kills) - The original song is tragically hetero but in my heart Thena's both the girl who's a problem and the Bad Boy lol - "You're so bad, boy / drive me mad, boy / you don't care what they say about me: / "That girl is a problem"
They/Them/Theirs (The Worriers) - For both gender reasons and also conflicted Hastings/Fleet reasons. - "You've got a word for one / So there's a word for all / The smallest things have become / Which side are you on?"
Pink Panther (Scene Queen) - "Please don't call, I need another hour / Three more girls are piling in the shower / Don't call you know I can't answer / Gettin' pussy like pink panther"
Planetary Go (My Chemical Romance) - "If my velocity starts to make you sweat / Then just don't let go / 'Cause the emergency room got no vacancy / And we just get up and go! / Who they want you to be, who they wanted to see / Kill the party with me and never go home!"
LIAM:
From Me:
Weak (AJR) - The gusto of the "BUT I'M WEAK! And what's wrong with that?!" is what makes this for me. - "'No thank you' is what I should've said / I should be in bed / but temptations of trouble on my tongue / troubles yet to come"`
Just A Little Bit (Kids of 88) - "Working you over time, I'm / getting you over the line, I'm / climbing your ladder and making you better / 'Cause here's what you need"
Ex’s And Ohs (Elle King) - Just an aro king with a million sex friends who keep falling for him lol - "One, two, three, they gonna run back to me / Climbing over mountains and sailing over seas / One, two, three, they gonna run back to me / They always wanna come, but they never wanna leave"
I Like Boys (Todrick Hall) - "B to the O to the Y to the S / Boys will be boys and with boys I'm obsessed / Boys in their gym clothes, boys in a dress / And if boys are a crime then I'm under arrest"
TRIMMER:
From Me:
I Hope That I Don't Fuck This Up (Dollar Signs) - ...at risk of repeating myself. Half-finished lyricstuck lol - "She said: / "Don't be so hard on yourself, you fucking idiot / I don't need anybody else / you stupid asshole / I'm for you and you are for me / but you gotta get over your insecurities!"
A Sadness Runs Through Him (The Hoosiers) - For the entire tragedy of Rich and Trimmer as very young men doing their best to help each other, and the ways the things that felt like help also hurt them. - "Don't look at me with those eyes / I tried to anesthetize / Turn back the time that drew him / But he couldn't be saved / A sadness runs through him"
From Ray:
One Foot Boy (Mika) - "What’s the matter with going places? take that gross look off your faces / empty loving makes me seasick / what you’re here for, I don’t need it."
It’s Alright (Mother Mother) - "I don’t wanna know who I am / cause heaven only knows what I’ll find / I don’t wanna know I’m not capable of coming out alive"
Laurel Wreath (Bear’s Den) - "You don’t have to be lonely alone / I could be there in a heartbeat / lonely, alone / as all my statues start crumbling / I don’t really know what it is that I’m offering"
RAFAEL:
From Me:
The Mask And The Mirror (Poor Man’s Poison) - "I try to do my very best / But this heart is dark inside my chest these days" [...] "And this face I wear for you / Goddamn, I wear it well / I'll see you on the other side of hell"
Roll Away Your Stone (Mumford and Sons) - Bonus points the Macbeth quote in there! - "Stars, hide your fires! / These are my desires / And I will give them up to you this time around / And so, I'll be found / With my stake stuck in this ground / Marking the territory of this newly impassioned soul!"
Never The Muse (Madilyn Mei) - "Fall to your knees at my feet / And beg me to pose / Beg me to be your Calliope, Thalia, Melpomene / Write of my smile, sculpt me in clay / Use every metaphor you can to say that I'm your muse / See me the same way that I see you"
Gotta Have You (The Weepies) - "Oh, such a primadonna, sorry for myself / But green, it is also summer / and I won't be warm / 'Til I'm lying in your arms"
Achilles, Come Down (Gang of Youths) - I can't possibly quote everything about this song perfect for Rich/Rafael, their respective self-hatreds and how they support each other against them. Because it's like three whole verses. BUT - "So self-indulgent and self-referential / No audience could ever want you / You crave the applause yet hate the attention / Then miss it, your act is a ruse" [...] "Achilles, Achilles, just put down the bottle / Don't listen to what you've consumed / It's chaos, confusion / And wholly unworthy of feeding / And it's wholly untrue"
From Ray:
Hello My Old Heart (Oh Hellos) - "Hello my old heart / how have you been? / how is it being locked away? / don’t you worry, in there you’re safe / and it’s true you’ll never beat, but you’ll never break"
Cast The Bronze (Raynes) - "Would it be wise to play this closer to the vest? / apologize for being green or underdressed? / do I imply that I’m just beautiful and blessed? / I try to care but just care less."
Ashes On Your Eyes (Deb Talan) - "Just about the time your heart breaks like a wheel / not in a straight line, but all in pieces: / some you’ll leave behind on a road you won’t revise / no, you won’t revisit that dirty compromise"
It’s Alright (Dar Williams) - "Please don’t say you don’t love me / never dangle any sword above me / with the kind of change that severs me in two / give me amberizing glasses / could you slow it down like molasses / as I salvage my old self away from you?"
SOL:
From Me:
Lent (Autoheart) - "I'll pack it in, pack it in, never smoke anything / Never eat anything that will compromise my health / And, baby that means you, too / That means you"
Stupid Deep (Jon Bellion) - "What if who I hoped to be was always me? / And the love I fought to feel was always free? / What if all the things I've done / Were just attempts at earning love? / 'Cause the hole inside my heart is stupid deep"
New York, New York (Frank Sinatra) - Had to get at least one 'New York is so great' song in there lol so why not a classic? - "I want to wake up / In a city that doesn't sleep / And find I'm king of the hill! / Top of the heap!"
Unsweetened Lemonade (Amelie Farren) - "My eyes are made of acid, and my tongue is sharp with spite / Attention whore with too much pride, there's no one I wouldn't fight / I don't like confrontation, but I'm staring at the sun / I won't quit until my eyes go red, I'll finish what's begun"
Ray's picks:
Lemon Drop (Raynes) - "Maybe I’ll make the trade/ to be the prince of another parade / you dress me up and I’ll throw them another smile / impress the party but I’m still my mother’s child"
Shoulders Back (Honest Men) - "I won’t give up the wrong thing / and I won’t lift up the wrong name / cause i can see it’s a long way / I’ll carry on till the last days: / shoulders back, blades together / chest held high, free forever."
The Fisher King (Carrie Newcomer) - "Are you the one that’s common born / a fool in many ways / have you searched half of your life / looking for some Holy Grail? / did you see it in a dream / a vision once when you were young? / does the circle lead you back / to the place you once begun?"
CONNOR:
From Me:
Don't Fence Me In (Cole Porter) - "Oh, give me land, lots of land under starry skies above / Don't fence me in / Let me ride through the wide open country that I love / Don't fence me in"
Amy AKA Spent Gladiators (The Mountain Goats) - "Play with matches if you think you need to play with matches / Seek out the hidden places where the fire burns hot and bright / Find where the heat's unbearable and stay there if you have to / Don't hurt anybody on your way up to the light / And stay alive"
Wild One (MALINDA) - "It's the cage, it's said and done / I guess the apple's sweeter than the fate of everyone / So behave, or you'll regret it / Do what it takes to forget / That you're a wild one"
S.E.X. (Nickelback) - No yeah listen I know. I know!! But the weirdly aggressive thirstiness and lack of gendering compelled me. - "'No' is a dirty word, never gonna say it first / 'No' is just the thought that never crosses my mind / Maybe in the parking lot / Better bring your friend along / Better off together than just one at a time"
Dustbowl Dance (Mumford and Sons) - "There will come a time I will look in your eye / You will pray to the God that you always denied / Then I'll go out back, and I'll get my gun / I'll say, "You haven't met me, I am the only son"
You're Not Welcome (Naethan Apollo) - Another one I have little chunks of lyricstuck drawn for. The Connor screaming at Sandgren in this photoset is for the end of the lines: "Push, push, push, push / yeah you pushed me to the edge / I used to dread the thought of falling quickly / but now I just wish that you'd send me off that ledge / so I can FINALLY FUCKING TAKE YOU WITH ME"
The Milk Carton (Madilyn Mae) - "Think I forgot a couple things / My brain is still at home / Home's far away / I really thought that life was one big race / But now I know it's one big chase / You can still win, just gotta be faster"
From Ray:
Growing Pains (Layup) - "Every fall has a rise, every burn has a flame / from foolish to wise, we all bruise the same / I, oh, I got these growing pains / when the storm wind blows I’m the weather vane / and I, oh I, I’m made with what remains"
Wildflowers (Maddie Poppe) - "When I see clouds, I see faces, when I see roads, I see places, where we could go / when I meet strangers, I say hello / I come from where the wild, wildflowers grow"
Meet Me In The Woods (Lord Huron) - "I took a little journey to the unknown / and I come back changed and I can feel it in my bones / I fucked with forces that our eyes can’t see / now the darkness got a hold on me"
ANDY:
From Me:
Burn Your Village (Kiki Rockwell) - "I could name the date in which they'll put you in the ground / You're the one who said it's justice watching witches drown / Touch me again and I'll cut off your hand / There are some things you'll never understand"
...and from you, haha
Song of the Witches (S.J. Tucker) - "Shameless and shining, we always ask why / For what cooks in our cauldron could call down the sky."
OTHER:
From Me:
For Ashes Beaker: Pink Rover (Scene Queen) - "Touch me again and I'll fucking scream / Covered in blood, just girly things / Pink rover, pink rover, please send the coward over / And if that bastard whistles, put a knife up to his boner / CUT HIM"
For Carraway: Rule 34 (Fish in a Birdcage) - "I love that you shake when I ravage your skin / It's so easy to bite with your hands pinned" [...] "And right now you're mine / all mine / Give in, you're mine / all mine"
From Ray:
For the Hastings: Euros (The Oh Hellos) - "Crushing my kin for warring-wage / minted from the ivory of your tooth and eye"
Ship references reminded me of azur lane, and was wondering if we need anime girl versions of the Michigan Fleet. The answer is, "no." We need to instead envision Rich and his boyfriends as the human avatars of ships in "Boat"oful no Boyfriend
I've had this in the inbox for a hot second because to be completely honest I saw the first part of the ask and the idea of a chewed-up bastard butch Sympatico gijinka significantly distracted me lol. And after that I had some thought of making art for the Boatoful no Boyfriend part of the ask, but quickly realized I would either just be drawing The Boys again or would be forced to draw boats, a thing I do not have any skills with! But. Definitely fun thoughts.
