Hahah ok this is for you @megarhyssa-sp
Elaborate explanation under the cut!
So, in 2024, I was scrolling homestuck twitter when something strange caught my eye—Bill Cipher from Gravity Falls and… I forget who the other guy was, having extremely hot sex. I watched gravity falls casually when it aired, but hadn’t thought about it since. The fanart, however, hit on a lot of my… proclivities, shall we say.
“Fanart of the brilliant Stagnant Abnegation,” the caption said (or something along those lines), followed by a link to ao3.
It was already 2am, I wasn’t going to sleep any time soon, so I clicked the link and read it.
Buddy, when I say my entire neurochemistry was rewired in that moment, I mean it.
I joined the fic’s discord server, and everyone in there was talking about Billford and something called the Book of Bill, whatever that was. I had planned to lurk and just get notified when the final chapter dropped, maybe pick up some other fic recommendations in the meantime.
But instead, I hung out in the nsfw channel, and I put my ability to type 105 WPM to use. I’d ask for a prompt, people would throw out a few keywords, I’d throw back smut. Rinse, repeat, at all hours, for weeks. It was exhilarating, and I wrote ANYTHING so long as it was Billford. (I also rewatched the show and read TBob and journal 3).
Some drama I don’t understand happened and that discord server was deleted and StAb was made anonymous, but not before I got two prompts: @salmon-vive wanted Ford to fuck the bill statue and have Bill return partway through, and Hen (can’t remember your tumblr, I’m sorry!) wanted Ford to pamper a traumatized Bill.
I could have treated them like separate prompts, but for some reason I was sure I could combine them. I had this vision of Ford fucking himself on the statue, and then right as he was about to cum, he’d say something ill advised that would make a deal activate, and Bill would return—only, instead of his usual self, he was skittish and afraid, ripe for some hurt/comfort indulgence.
I started writing, only what came out was… not that. The original draft is gone with the StAb server, but what I wrote in that filthy nsfw channel was shockingly tender and not erotic at all. I wrote several little vignettes, some of which I still plan on incorporating in When I’m 64. These horny freaks kept asking for ‘catatonic bill’ (or Sweater Bill as he came to be known) and I kept providing.
In the vignettes, Ford just… keeps Bill with him. Takes him star gazing, takes him Christmas shopping. Sometimes something happens—Bill holds onto Ford, or looks at the lights with intent—but mostly he’s completely dissociated mentally and physically disabled.
In the last one I wrote, Bill has a moment of lucidity, and asks why he could only be loved after he was broken, and everything that made him ‘Bill’ was gone.
It was writing that scene that convinced me to write When I’m 64.
At the time, redemption fics were at their height, and I haaaaated them. I was so against redemption, that my very first fic was writing an AU version of StAb because I didn’t like that Bill compromised with Ford and agreed to leave Earth alone; like, I was pretty extreme about this preference.
I wanted to write a story that hit all the same beats redemption fics had—axolotl dumps bill at the shack, everyone has to come to terms with it and accept that Bill isn’t a threat anymore, ford still has feelings for him, etc—but with the rug pulled out, so to speak.
I won’t spoil my plans for When I’m 64, but there’s a reason another name for it is “Build-A-Bill.”