#70s verse

[veggiesforpresident]

i'm on the last chapter of the draft of my dally character study / "dally and johnny live but theyre disabled now" au :)

[veggiesforpresident]

someone requests jally kisses a while ago and i cant remember who. but anyway, here you are :)

[veggiesforpresident]

The first chapter of my "Dally and Johnny live but they're disabled now" AU is up! Honestly even if you don't ship Jally I recommend giving this fic a try, I have a lot of interesting + insightful stuff to say about dally and disability in general.

By the time he's come down enough to have coherent thoughts, his first one of the day is: the kid's alive, thank fucking Christ, followed swiftly by, I need to go see him. This, incidentally, is how he discovers the handcuffs.

[veggiesforpresident]

disabled au anyone? disabled au?

[veggiesforpresident]

Telllll mee about everyone lives!dally >:)

oooh okay! i'll try to not just summarize the plot of my upcoming longfic, lol, but - he still has a breakdown because he thinks johnny is dead, but when he calls darry he finds out johnnys alive, so he doesn't raise the gun and winds up getting shot in the foot/lower leg instead and has to get surgery + a cast to fix it. he is absolutely not the type to take care of an injury properly which makes it worse. he also hoards his pain meds with the intention of selling them.

he is so deeply deeeply fuckin' embarrassed about his breakdown, the fact it was over johnny and now everyone (including johnny) can see how he feels about him... he doesn't talk to johnny for a while. he can't handle it.

he also gets a ton of tattoos.

i'll stop there so i don't spoil my fic :)

[veggiesforpresident]

new fic!

"Hey, Dal --" Steve says abruptly, leaning forward on his arms, "What ever happened to that class ring'a yours? Did Sylvia steal it from you?"

Johnny stills. The ring in question is around his neck, on a thin silver chain tucked under his shirt.

[veggiesforpresident]

forced perspective

[veggiesforpresident]

Okay it's 4AM and I haven't fully expanded on this thought in my head so this might not make sense at all but I was rereading cloak & switchblade and I'm such a big fan of how you wrote ponyboy and johnny. Like particularly the shoes moment and johnny's thoughts about ponyboys sexuality stuck out to me.

I LOVE LOVE LOVE pbj, could go on about them all day. That said, I do like the idea of them kind of...assuming shit about eachother that isn't always necessarily true?? I do think pbj understand eachother in ways other people don't, but 1) I think they understand eachother less than even they think they do. They're close but there's this sort of disconnect that neither of them sees. 2) There are other people who understand them more!! Like, without a doubt dally understands johnny better than pony in my mind (I was going to apologise for being too jally-minded and then realised what blog I was sending this ask to lol)

And I like the way it's done in a way that doesn't devalue the connection they do have!! I feel like a lot of people in this fandom struggle with having the relationships between the boys be nuanced like that.

Again, it's late for me so this might not make sense and there's probably 5 billion spelling mistakes but I hope my point is getting across semi-well. The way you write always has me reconsidering the realationships between these characters in a way I haven't before and I love it.

omg anon wow i really appreciate this ask! not only reading but rereading a fic of mine makes me so happy!! so thank you for that. and yes you can always be jally-pilled in my inbox. a friend of mine regularly calls me out for being too jally-pilled myself, haha.

(to everyone else reading this, you can read cloak & switchblade here!)

but yeah! i have a lot of thoughts on ponyboy and johnny and the like subtleties of their relationship. i mean, they do understand each other in a way others don't (like both being sensitive and thoughtful) but like you said, there's stuff they just don't... get.

in C&S specifically what i was trying to get across is Ponyboy being Way Too Helpful. like he means well! and yes johnny is disabled but he's not.... he's not helpless. some of the way pony talks in the book about johnny being paralyzed makes it sound like his life would be over. which yk. feels appropriately dramatic for a 14 year old who's been through a traumatic week, totally. but as a disabled person myself it's like. kind of fucking annoying. i run into people like that a lot, even nurses and medical professionals who don't know what i can and can't do so they default to trying to help and it's like. okay maybe just assume i'm competent until i'm not. anyway that's a tangeant but yes! he means well so i think johnny forgives him for it but that doesn't mean he's not irritated by it.

like ponyboy is kind of... privileged, for lack of a better word. relative to everyone around him, i mean. obviously he's still living in poverty and he's been through some trumatic things but at least at the start of the book he doesn't know what it's like to get jumped or get hit by a parent or guardian or have to sleep outside because he's not wanted at home. meanwhile dally is functionally homeless at 17 and has been neglected by his dad presumably his whole life. so like you said, there's just ... shit that dally and johnny get about each other that ponyboy fundamentally can't. and thats okay! i also wanted to show that johnny and ponyboy are still close, good friends! there's just. layers to it. and sometimes johnny just does not have the fucking patience for it. which is where dally comes in. johnny is kind of the middleman between ponyboy and dally (sorta like soda is for pony and darry) in that johnny has to be tough on some level to survive in his situation, in a way ponyboy doesn't. johnny rejecting his mom at the end of the book and telling her to leave him alone is him... hardening, for lack of a better word. but its also good for him. anyway i think that's the sort of growth johnny would have to do accepting his new disability instead of fighting it, and it may take pony longer to get there since he's not the one who's disabled.

anyway. johnny and dally. in c&s specifically i wanted to get across that they have a closer relationship than the rest of the gang - i mean, obviously, they're a couple and they're both disabled but you know what i mean. they can be themselves together in a way they can't with other people. and i think dally sees the sensitivity and thoughtfulness in johnny too, which is a reason why he's so protective. like ponyboy doesn't start out seeing that side of johnny in the book! he even expresses surprise that johnny can be deep. like they really haven't spent that much time together, especially not... talking, like they do in windrixville. meanwhile i get the sense that dally and johnny have spent a good amount of time together one-on-one, yanno? anyway. dally and johnny have both gone on journeys wrt their disabilities and that + being a secret couple are two things that bring them closer than the rest of the gang - i'm working on a long fic set in the c&s universe to explore that, actually! i'm very excited about it.

also re: pbj, i don't ship it romantically but one of the reasons for that is i find it way too saccharine. like most of the pbj i come across in the fandom is just super sweet soft fluff where they love each other forever, and like. thats fine if thats your thing! but theres nothing there for me to sink my teeth into. its too easy. which is why i like highlighting stuff like this ^^ in my fic, to give them a bit more edge.