a stellar specter who writes fanfic

usually not spicy but full of yearning || fandoms: ofmd, ds9, octopath traveler, ted lasso, ???

[starghost-fics]

fanfic master post

this is new era only; anything not listed here is likely on my AO3 as a historical curiosity from the olden days.

sometimes i use the actual summary from AO3, sometimes that's too long or I don't want to use it here. no rules, only fic

under the cut: OCTOPATH TRAVELER OUR FLAG MEANS DEATH TED LASSO DEEP SPACE NINE

OCTOPATH TRAVELER

As a preface, I would personally like to invite you to play this video game because I found it delightful, but also because I'm inordinately proud of some of this fic, and it's a little fandom.

in the near-dark

AO3

length: 3 chapters, 9100 words

summary: The group travels through Orsterra, and Therion is bad at sleeping, except when he isn't.

my favorite tag: oh no tenderness

tumblr tag

a little sleight of hand

AO3

length: 1 chapter, 1500 words

summary: Therion has a strange habit of squirreling away food when he thinks no one is looking. Tressa worries about it.

my favorite tag: even my fluff has class issues

tumblr post

the stars above

AO3

length: 4 chapters, 9100 words

summary: After their journeys are complete, Therion moves to Atlasdam, and discovers Cyrus's new (and dangerous) avenue of study.

my favorite tag: someone is pining

tumblr tag

untitled octopath fanfic

AO3

length: 1 chapter, 900 words

summary: It is a wretched day in Bolderfall, and Therion is a horrible goose. (of course it's a crossover with untitled goose game!)

my favorite tag: no beta we honk like geese

tumblr post - to come?

series: divine intervention (god shit)

series summary: in which I spend nearly 100k words exploring Cyrus and Therion's relationship, among other things.

if the gods should touch you

AO3

length: 13 chapters, 60,000 words

summary: Spanning roughly from various chapter 2s to chapter 4s, the group travels, changes partners, faces fears, gets blessed, and oh also the scholar and the thief kiss.

my favorite tag: get in loser we're healing from past trauma and changing our negative coping mechanisms

tumblr tag

as shadows gather and gods move

AO3

length: 7 chapters, 32,000 words

summary: time loop? time loop. time loop!!! only Cyrus is aware and the solution is not what he thinks it is.

my favorite tag: the powers of a god are inexplicable but also annoying

tumblr tag

OUR FLAG MEANS DEATH

not a fic: a two-part essay/analysis on character weakness and desire

part one: stede bonnet and self-doubt

part two: edward teach and self-loathing and also applying this to writing

not made of glass but flesh and bone, which is worse

AO3

length: 6 chapters, 10,000 words

summary: Post s01e05, in which we diverge from canon so that Ed and Stede can go spend a night on a deserted island.

my favorite tag: a little light blasphemy

tumblr tag

what's a stab wound good for, anyway

AO3

length: 1 chapter, 1500 words

summary: After the (s1) duel, Ed has several thoughts, then ignores most of them.

my favorite tag: love a stabbing

tumblr post

TED LASSO

not just yet, sweetheart

AO3 link

length: 15,317

summary: Brief Encounter, but make it Ted Lasso. I love angst, don't you?

a favorite tag: really good ice cream WILL make you fall in love

tumblr tag

And the Songbirds Keep Singing

AO3

length: 1 chapter, 4700 words

summary: Trent has a bad day and then Ted makes him dinner and they listen to records.

my favorite tag: Princess Grim Reaper (the cat)

tumblr post

The Closest You Can Get to Flying

AO3

length: 1 chapter, 3600 words

summary: Trent learns to ride a bike, then he scrapes his knee and definitely needs someone to play doctor.

my favorite tag: biking is so great

tumblr post

someday soon we all will be together

AO3

length: 2500 words

summary: Everyone is at Rebecca's Christmas party, and I do mean everyone. Also: heavily influenced by that one scene in The West Wing when Danny comes back.

my favorite tag: fancy pens as flirting

tumblr post

real long distance

AO3

length: 7 chapters, 7180 words

summary: Ted gets a land line, calls Trent a whole lot. All-dialog, (almost) all the time.

my favorite tag: book tours are exhausting

tumblr tag

SERIES: a work excuse

in which i overwrote the main fic and felt like posting the other bits.

Lafayette Comes to America

AO3

length: 24 chapters, 53,000 words

summary: Trent goes to America with a tenuous work excuse and has a lot of Tension with Ted Lasso. Then he goes home and has a lot of moping, before everyone comes to their senses.

my favorite tag: warning: i love a loooooong paragraph

tumblr tag

beverages and conversation

AO3

length: 3 chapters, 3900 words

summary: Ted has one or two conversations that he is not entirely prepared for over a beverage. (Ted's side of things during a few of the later chapters.)

my favorite tag: give me the slightest provocation and i WILL sketch out a midwestern life for you

the intolerable evocation of emotion via art

AO3

length: 1 chapter, 363 words

summary: Texts between Trent and his ex-wife about a playlist she made him. (Makes no sense divorced from Chapter 18 of Lafayette Comes to America, probably.)

DEEP SPACE NINE

keep a bower quiet for us

AO3

length: 11 chapters, 20,000 words

summary: Julian Bashir goes on vacation, and ends up stuck on Earth, in the past, with Elim Garak. Things could be worse, probably.

my favorite tag: we run on vibes not plot

tumblr commentary: to come!?!

[starghost-fics]

what do you think are the chances that anyone out there is looking for Pentiment fanfic?

what about Pentiment fanfic in which nothing really happens and andreas has a head injury and gets sad, but werner is there to help by being curt and off-putting?

summary: After falling into Roman ruins and behaving strangely, Andreas is dragged by his apprentice to Werner Stolz's house for care.

(during Act 2)

notes and some personal favorite bits:

some things I researched enough to know I don't know shit about this period of time: medical care, head injuries, university, clothing

like was medieval university the same age range as now? I don't think so!! did i choose to ignore that fact? yes!!!

anyway, mostly I just wanted Andreas to be dizzy in a bed and Werner to be as nice as he's constitutionally capable of being (not very, and barely noticeably)

Caspar is the best boy.

i specifically like very much:

Caspar sneakily leading Andreas to medical care with (feeble) Lies and (paltry) Deception

the tiniest sketch that things had settled into being pretty good with Sabine, for a time.

everything from "Then you woke up." to the end.

the end was a surprise! I didn't know if I would find an ending for this or if it would be an indulgent sketch that rotted in a folder, but I think it came together nicely. though in a way that is more positive than Act 2 probably merits.

[starghost-fics]

me: *thinks about writing pentiment fanfic*

me: *imagines andreas and werner growing old together and healing and growing roses and watching the town change and then one morning andreas wakes up and werner doesn't*

oh no i went too far

[starghost-fics]

this is it, this is the Brief Encounter fic all wrapped up! thank you so much for reading this niche bit of AU angst.

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

Chapter 6—epilogue: in which Trent is in London, and Ted starts a new job.

some notes:

Shout out to the happy hour special at Grendel's Den that saw me through grad school. Shout out to one of my top five chocolate spots, L.A. Burdick. Shout out to the Charles River! Long may she flow.

Rather than list the real Cambridge things referenced in this fic, you can probably assume that if I'm specific, it's real. If I'm not specific, it may still be real.

Some Brief Encounter notes:

Stevie is named for Alec's colleague who (lends a car and a flat to, then) interrupts Alec and Laura, Stephen.

Ted and Trent trade off roles throughout -- Trent narrates like Laura, but he takes Alec's role several times, like when they confess love in the chapel.

I also stretched the timeline—Laura and Alec fall in love very deeply after speaking like twice, and especially since it's Ted, I felt like it needed a little more build to be remotely believable. Yeah, I still don't think Ted would kiss anyone else while married, but work with me, here. People are capable of amazing feats of self-deception.

This would change everything about their relationship throughout the show, but I'm very lazy and cannot possibly be expected to work through an entire AU when this much took me over two years. Plus that's not nearly as fun for me as wallowing in angst. But imagine...

a little more drama; Ted still needs to get divorced, but now he has this glimmer of something on top of that pain; Trent still needs to choose to shed his armor, having been hurt by this same relationship before. It's possible they keep Cambridge a secret, no one gets any hint of it, and Trent remains hard enough in their first meeting that Rebecca still thinks he's the best choice for the article to cause Ted's downfall; but Trent is simply won over even faster, reminded of their days in Cambridge, seeing that same Ted he fell so hard for. There is outright tension between them, especially at that post-interview dinner, but Ted tries to keep Trent at more than arm's distance, because he's still married, even now, he's only separated, giving Michelle her space, but he still loves her and wants to work on their marriage; he is devoted, and some how Trent can forgive and even adore that. In the end, Ted doesn't announce his divorce, but Trent finds out, of course he does; they keep their distance, both of them cautious and hurt and wary. And Trent is still a journalist, Ted still a subject: they can't. Then Nate comes to Trent about the panic attacks. Trent struggles, but writes the article as gracefully as he can, knowing that it matters so much who breaks the story and how. After he tells Ted about the source, after he tells his editor, after he resigns, he still goes to Nelson Road to tell Ted, only this time he actually has a reason to go -- they're both free, now.

so maybe this time ted does take him up on that ride home.

[starghost-fics]

Surprising no one more than myself, I just posted Disco Elysium fanfic, something like three years since I first played it. This fic has an almost equally long life.

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

summary:

After the detective shared the news with Lena and gave her the photo, you could have forgotten it ever happened. Could have told yourself that the stress, the adrenaline and injuries and sleeplessness had combined to give you the smallest taste of insanity, which had now faded. Without the photo, you could have had nothing. Unfortunately for your self-delusion, as soon as you were squeezed into the Coupris 40, you had steadied your notebook against your chest and began to furiously scribble. After Martinaise, Kim Kitsuragi has some impossible things to deal with.

notes:

The story of this fic is that when I first played Disco Elysium, I was obsessed, especially with the pale, and by the conversation with the phasmid. I thought I would write something about it, about Kim, factual and rigid, coming face to face with the Strange and Mystic, and scribbed the majority of this back then. But I thought it would be more, with more of a story and a resolution, as I usuallly would write; nothing more came, and nothing more came, and I shoved this in a folder and forgot about it.

Then the other day I was cleaning my files and opened it, and found that there was quite a lot more than I remembered here, even if it wasn't the story I thought it should be. I polished it up and filled in enough of the gaps to make it readable.

It's more of an exploration, and while I like it as is, I also see all the things I wanted it to be. In any case, I'm releasing it into the wild.

I remember thinking: Kim does not have skills, but he externalizes his thinking in a notebook. I considered leaning heavily on that, making there be another notebook or two to signify more parts of himself. Instead I left it at the Official and the Private, and instead moved to ephemera to break the narrative (and give other angles). So that's where that came from.

Sorry this doesn't textually end with Kim and Harry making out sloppy style. It does, in our hearts.

[starghost-fics]

oops no comments on chapter 2, here's chapter 3, for the niche crossover audience between Brief Encounter (1945) and Ted Lasso (2020)

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

Chapter 3: Ted shows up with a cold; they go a-wandering on a sunny day. Emotionally, they stray too far into the labyrinth to find their way back out, oopsie

a few notes:

I don't know where the idea for Ted having a cold came from, exactly, but I enjoyed it so much. He's a gentleman! He wouldn't want to stand Trent up! And now he gets to watch a Thin Man movie while a beautiful man makes him soup! the dream

semantic! satiation!

Much like I hope that Lafayette accurately portrays Kansas City and its season that most deeply imprinted on me (summer, ugh!), I hope this fic accurately portrays Cambridge MA in third winter, aka spring

This is when I feel it appropriate to say that I don't think this sounds like Trent's voice. It's more a melding of Trent with the voice of Laura in Brief Encounter. And it's not entirely in character for either of them. More on that later, maybe, someday.

In this chapter I notably lift dialogue from the movie, adapted slightly for them. But oh! the confession of love! So good.

[starghost-fics]

well, hello again! I'm still looking forward to new Ted Lasso someday, but I lost The Spark at some point. I've also had other stuff going on, in several arenas, for good and ill. But I had started this fic and it was hanging over me, taunting me with a few nice passages and a plan for the rest. So what if it took a bit a year and a half longer than I intended? I hope you like it. I hope it makes you watch Brief Encounter. I hope it breaks your heart to pieces.

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

summary: Returning home from lunch with a friend, Trent Crimm, journalist on sabbatical in Massachusetts, is thrown by happenstance into an acquaintance with cheerful coach Ted Lasso. Their casual friendship soon develops during their weekly visits into something more emotionally fulfilling than either expected, and they must wrestle with the potential havoc their deepening relationship would have on their lives and the lives of those they love.

commentary:

I'm going to resist fully annotating either the Brief Encounter references or the Cambridge references, unless there is genuine interest, because I fear that either will be Niche and Boring. If there is interest, I'll post round-ups when the fic is done.

For Trent's book idea, I basically stole the story of Crystal Palace after five minutes on Wikipedia. I just needed something, and a surprise antecedent to a modern team along with disputes about the lineage sounded fun.

Briefly, on Brief Encounter:

Brief Encounter is a beautiful, romantic, controlled, tragic, repressed, British, post-war movie about how trains are dangerous because you might fall in love near one and/or daydream a rich and impossible fantasy life with them.

I watched it for the first time two years ago, when I was still high on Ted Lasso, and thought: this feels queer. this feels queer in a way I can shove my blorbos into. shockingly it turns out I am not the first one to think that Brief Encounter is very open to queer readings! I'm not the first one to think almost anything, thank god

Trent's wife Laura is named for the female lead in Brief Encounter, and his friend Alec who teaches journalism is named for the male lead.

ok that's all! see you soon

[starghost-fics]

proof of life

as proof that I am not dead yet, I offer an excerpt from a WIP, just a snippet I thought was nice.

this is Trent Crimm narration btw ✧♡(◕‿◕✿)

How do I encapsulate the season? The days grew longer. The sky bluer. The sun seemed to change from a cruel white thing to a promising warmth. I saw lighter jackets and brighter colors. Flowers drawn on window displays. Eventually, buds on trees, crocuses popping up, then daffodils like butter and sunshine, tulips in every color in every garden. The glory of sun after a hell of a winter—even the last patches of stubborn snow looked more charming once the weather turned. I am trying to explain something that happens slowly, inevitably, growth you forgot was possible. In the winter you might find beauty and appreciate its reticent charms, but then you awake to spring. And how could you think that the world was alive in winter, once you see the spring?

[starghost-fics]

lol christ 10 months later and I am about ready to start sharing this. what the actual fuck happened in 2025

[satsuha]

[starghost-fics]

proof of life

as proof that I am not dead yet, I offer an excerpt from a WIP, just a snippet I thought was nice.

this is Trent Crimm narration btw ✧♡(◕‿◕✿)

How do I encapsulate the season? The days grew longer. The sky bluer. The sun seemed to change from a cruel white thing to a promising warmth. I saw lighter jackets and brighter colors. Flowers drawn on window displays. Eventually, buds on trees, crocuses popping up, then daffodils like butter and sunshine, tulips in every color in every garden. The glory of sun after a hell of a winter—even the last patches of stubborn snow looked more charming once the weather turned. I am trying to explain something that happens slowly, inevitably, growth you forgot was possible. In the winter you might find beauty and appreciate its reticent charms, but then you awake to spring. And how could you think that the world was alive in winter, once you see the spring?

[starghost-fics]

hey! happy holiday weekend if you have one. here's a completed fic:

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

Chapter 7: Ted calls once Trent's back in London.

commentary (includes a few small notes, and then something approaching a mini-essay about voice)

Did I ever mention that the title of this fic (and the secret filename of chapter 6, no breaks in the line) are from Josh Ritter's song 'Real Long Distance'? Now I have. I love Josh Ritter. I like to think that Ted would too.

I was going to make it explicit that the landline phone Ted finds at his mom's is magical, and you can't lie when you're using it. in the end i didn't think that was necessary to establish; being on the phone, staring at your ceiling, sometimes you say things you wouldn't say if you could see the person.

but we can also pretend the phone is magical.

I thought about stretching this out over the six years until Henry went to college (did i math his age? no), or at least a couple until he went to a pre-college program like the one I remember heartily declining, and have notes toward a version like that, but I do not have that sort of energy.

okay! so!

on dialog and not-dialog

I have a lot of thoughts about voice, in every sense of it in writing. From authorial voice to narrative voice in a particular project to individual character voices. These are all different, and I'm sure if I spent five more minutes considering it, I'd come up with one or two more aspects of voice. But I have always prided myself on character voice, in particular in fanfic. If I don't feel I have some meager grasp of a character's voice, I shy away from writing them.

Voice is a lot more than twisting an accent into the written word; in fact, I think the least powerful thing you can do is dramatically alter the written word to portray what you hear in an accent. I do this a bit with Ted but far less than Jason Sudeikis does when speaking Ted's lines, and I'll often go back through and undo a couple dropped word endings and the like.

So voice, right. Voice is the words a character chooses to use and the way they use them. The misuse of words, and the unusual phrasings. It's when they stop and start a sentence, and the way they interrupt. It's in what metaphors and similes they use, and what they say about others. It's about not only what they don't say, but how they don't say it. Do they evade, change the subject, half-answer? It's about what they choose to ask, and what they provoke with a statement instead. And it's about pet names and cursing.

So what happened in chapter 6? Well, mostly I got to a point when I realized dialog wouldn't quite tell the whole story I wanted to tell without some awful manipulation of their voices and what they would say on the phone. I refuse to manipulate a naturalistic character like that; I am genuinely trying to capture something, not force it into another mold.

And there is a power to breaking form if you do it with confidence and intention. It was never going to be a break to a wholly traditional scene; it had to be the rule reversed, right? It had to be how they communicate with each other on a level other than dialog. As though without the phones, they don't have or need voices.

It turns out that action is voice too, in a way. Voice being a specific expression of character, in the conscious use of language. But action is the conscious use of the body to communicate, and if and when they would approach someone else, what they choose to look at, and how they look. How they touch.

What I think I've been trying to get at with this accidental essay is the fact that chapter 6, in New York, made the final chapter come together easier, and why.

After the no-dialog chapter, neither of them needed to be convinced to give this a try, textually. On a higher fictional level, the proof is already there: you have them coming together in both of these ways, in sync with their words and (eyebrow waggle) their bodies. The argument for why this might work for them is in the structure of the story itself, rather than in their conversation.

I didn't think too hard about whether I was re-hashing things I did in Lafayette, because heck, what is fanfic good for if not revisiting similar game pieces on a different board, and this board was an interesting structural change.

On that note, I think I have one more Ted/Trent fic swimming around in me, and boy howdy, is it a different game board.

[starghost-fics]

heyyy I accurately predicted my lack of posting here for most of this fic. ICYMI we are on chapter 6 of 7 of Ted and Trent talking on the phone forever.

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

Chapter 6—new york: Trent goes on a US book tour.

a smidge of commentary:

There is something in me that wants to write a mini-essay about voice and craft re: this chapter within the fic project at large, but I'm having trouble keying into it. Maybe I'll try again for the last chapter.

On a craft note: I hope that like you have forgiven me for a dialog-only fic with zero dialog tags, you forgive me for moving between Ted and Trent's heads throughout this chapter with very little warning. It was the only way, and it was deeply intentional. Your high school creative writing teacher can suck it: I know the rules I'm breaking, always.

.

I found it much harder in some ways to write this no-dialog chapter than all the dialog-only chapters, which you can see from the way I secretly got several lines of dialog into it. Shh, don't tell the cops. Despite being a very interior-character writer, and a great lover of description, I heavily depend on dialog to break things up.

Also, I knew that doing this chapter would require at least some amount of making out, and without my crutch of flirty banter. So I bravely wrote on.

.

Somewhat recently, I rewatched Bridget Jones' Diary, which is an entirely acceptable rom-com. It's very cute, and I almost fell out of my chair when I saw Sally Philips, who I did not know of at the time of the movie's original release and now desperately adore. Sally, you are a Queen. All movies should have you in to say Fuck a lot.

Anyway, my reason for bringing this up is as follows: there is a point when Bridget and one of the men are almost but not quite kissing for approximately five thousand years, and I thought it was very tense and romantic and wonderful. So I stole it, or tried to.

.

Yes, I did write out the exchange in the hallway so that I could accurately say "thirtyish words." It was twenty-eight.

[starghost-fics]

mkay so you know how I have previously used the tag "these two never stop talking is the point"

...

welcome to a fic that is 100% dialog between Them. Literally nothing else. wheeeee.

I probably won't remember to post here for every chapter, but I'll do first and last at least!

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

fic summary:

An incomplete transcript of long distance calls from [phone]. Or: Ted gets a landline, starts talking with Trent, and never stops.

spoiler-free bonus note: phone number: real area code. fake 555. but 2277? look at a dial pad. that's BBQS.

[starghost-fics]

my dear ones, we have finally made it. i am splitting no more chapters, adding no more unexpected scenes. this is the capper of caps, this is the epilogue of epilogues. i hope you enjoy it.

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

Chapter 24—epilogue: two or three years later: Trent finds himself back at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art with Ted and the kids.

please note: we have double content behind the cut. both my rambling comments on this chapter, and a very special assortment of facts about their lives

commentary

at the very last minute, as I was debating whether to actually keep writing and show the proposal, I realized I had the opportunity to end, visually, like S3, but in a much more unambiguously positive way.

I like Ted's expression in that last shot of S3, the longing and uncertainty and also satisfaction written all over his face, and the way this imperfect little comedy never gave in to being simplistically happy and instead poked at the fact that life is difficult and full of compromises while also being wonderful if you work at it, but also:

let the man just be extremely happy and not sacrifice an entire life he built for the idea of a nuclear family, maybe? maybe?

anyway, closing shot on Ted's face, but this time right before he makes a very good decision as opposed to sometime after he made a difficult to negative one.

My original note to myself for an epilogue was a very simple sketch:

"Unspecified future. Ted and Trent sit on a bench under a tree. Trent has a tea in his hand; Ted has a cocoa. Ted's puffer is zipped to his chin, and Trent has a messily hand-knit scarf around his neck. Ted's arm stretches along the back of the bench; the way Trent's legs are crossed, his foot hovers in front of Ted's shin. They talk about nothing. They talk about art. They talk about work (Trent is teaching at a university in addition to continuing to write). They talk about whatever. "Vi will be coming soon with Charlotte," Ted says, looking at his phone. They go home. They have a home."

but then one day i was very tired at work and then i thought of Trent nervous on a trip back to KC and Henry seeing right through him and imagined how Trent would feel at Henry asking to call him Dad and being so forcefully reminded of his own happiness and the family he's made

and i couldn't say no to THAT

i mean i almost had a heart attack at my desk

I would also like to admit that I'm pretty sure I was thinking of Alexis de Tocqueville's tour of America, not Marquis de Lafayette, when I made the reference in the very first paragraph of this fic, though Lafayette did famously return to America post-Revolution and stayed over a year. Maybe Trent and Ted had the same brainfart, and that's why they're meant to be together.

some facts about the rest of their lives

Trent gets through the little proposal he'd written for himself (he was not going to fuck up the whole speaking words thing again by attempting to improvise this of all things) but then gets flustered because Ted is openly sobbing as he says yes.

Ted keeps the picture of them on their first date (the one by the river) in a place of honor at home, and uses it as his phone's background. (his lock screen is always Henry, and then Henry and Charlotte.) Trent pretends to be aggrieved by this (he didn't know it was a date, and then he blocked Ted, how could you keep reminding me) but truly he loves it, loves remembering that date, loves the way they look together in the sunset.

Ted and Trent have an eternally-running argument about the greatest book of all time, which is meaningless to both of them, but which they get very heated about; in this way, they end up less heated when they have actual arguments.

Trent steals Ted's bland sweaters ("do you just walk into j crew* and take the whole mannequin to the register" "what's wrong with that, they worked hard putting that outfit together") but only wears them for two reasons: he's at home and it's cold, or he knows he's going out and he styles it with all his old beat up band and rock shit from his youth with Vi

* please note that I don't know the UK equivalent to j crew and am not about to do research for bonus notes on a fanfic

When Charlotte is ten, they get a dog. She negotiated with the whole family to decide that they would certainly find the corgi of their dreams at the fostering center, but once they arrive, she (quickly followed by Ted) falls in love with Lucy, a mix of unspecified origins, but almost certainly with some Great Dane in her heritage. Lucy is nearly as large as Charlotte when they curl up on the floor, and Trent secretly lets her join him on the couch when he's reading.

Ted has a million nicknames for Charlotte, yes, but almost exclusively uses 'sweetheart' for Trent. (Well, and 'sport,' for the memories.) Why sweetheart, Trent never asks, but Ted tells him one day anyway: it's because Ted always knew that behind that fearsome journalist was a heart as sweet as sugar, and boy, was he ever right.

After that, he starts calling Trent 'sugar' once in a while.

[starghost-fics]

it's funny—i glanced at one of my older commentary posts, for a fic i was revisiting long after finishing, and I had a lot more to say about it than i have about most Lafayette chapters. i don't feel like i have a lot to say as i post each chapter. or i feel weirder about posting some of the types of notes that i did on that fic. emotional distance!

we'll see if that difference holds up when i come back to do commentary on my single solitary DS9 garashir fic.

anyway, this is about Ted Lasso:

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

Chapter 23: epilogue: some months later: In which Trent arrives on a plane, and goes to baggage claim.

commentary:

god, i'm just nailing the chapter descriptions

i don't know why i bother, other than it amuses me

i decided i'm not going to address the press shitstorm in fic, though i do enjoy the fic i've read dealing with it

these two have had enough stress, i'm absolutely pretending they live in a world where the news of their relationship hits at just the right time that everyone is like "okay, boringggg"

previously on lafayette: author inserts trauma of growing up with kansas summers

tonight on lafayette: author inserts trauma of growing up with kansas winters

one time there was an ice storm that cut power to some houses for three weeks and the ice was a good quarter inch deep on the trees

anywho

more than many other scenes, this one doesn't so much end as just stop, but after almost 50k words of trent restraining himself and not reaching for what he wanted, my soul needed to write trent barrelling through the airport and impulsively making out with Ted in public

[starghost-fics]

does it annoy people if the chapter count keeps changing and the author is random and unpredictable about posting? too bad, this is for free

which is to say i have decided to split what was supposed to be a quick and light epilogue into "fuck it, i kept adding little scenelets and they deserve to stand alone"

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

Chapter 22—epilogue: some days later: A conversation at night.

a smidge of commentary below the cut

part of me thinks it would have been really good to end it with roy kent going "ugh you two are disgusting"

but i always had an epilogue in mind, alas

then it just...turned into three

there are a number of even shorter bits that I'm not going to include because they don't go anywhere, even more so than the rest of this fic

anyway, who thinks that ted and trent (as shown in this fic) would blurt "i love you" basically as soon as possible

[tubesock86]

early morning cuddle