I changed my mind last minute and decided to do "write a comment for a WIP" last-but-not-least. For the final prompt-specific @fanartfrenzy day, please enjoy this fanfic from The Outsiders: should've been you (me) by troiaspider!
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
Mild book spoilers incoming! If you haven't read The Outsiders, uh, now's the time.
Many of us USAmerican babies have read The Outsiders, but for the unfamiliar: the book is a classic novel about a young boy's coming of age in a small Oklahoma town, surrounded by his "gang" family and the preppy kids who oppose them. The sad ending is also pretty well-known, but this fanfic rewinds us a bit and asks us to imagine a world where Johnny was the only one who died in the novel—despite Dally's best efforts.
This fic is AMAZING. It deals with survivor's guilt and the way survivors of trauma often hurt each other by sticking around each other (and the scene of the crime) without doing the hard work of getting help. Ponyboy grows up and matures quite a bit during this fanfic, and his relationship with his brothers gains much needed dimension outside of simply "caretakers for a boy with big dreams, who put their own dreams to the wayside for his". His brothers benefit from additional focus, along with pretty much the entire cast. Dallas, who was one of my favorite characters in the novel, also gets a fully-fleshed-out backstory that wouldn't have been out of place at all in the original tale, it works that well. troiaspider also does their research in spades, so the fic feels very much like it's set in the time it belongs in (which, let's face it, can be an issue in lots of fanfics. it is NEVER one here).
There is also lots of great shipping here of multiple characters, which... I mean, if you reread The Outsiders and didn't wonder What Was Going On between some of these boys, this fic will grant you much-needed perspective while also giving you plenty of period-typical angst about it.
I say this so often, but I HIGHLY recommend everyone read this fic. Every time it updates I get this excited little jolt. It's that good.
