This is a Group Chat on Tumblr that chats about: #Ben Blue, #virals, #kathy reichs, #tory brennan, #Virals series, #Shelton Devers, #Brendan
Hi everyone!!!!
Hope you're all doing well. I'm sure some of you already know as I've been sending out invites all night but I've put together a group chat for the fandom and you're all welcome to join the fun!!!
I know I haven't been very active on here lately and a lot of the fandom has moved on since the release of Shock but there's been an undercurrent of movement in the fandom recently with lots of people rereading the books and chatter about similarities with a certain Netflix series so I hope this chat, like this blog, can be a place for the community to come together!
UPDATE: Tumblr group chats are now gone but you can still join the Discord server!
Check out the VIRALS SQUAD community on Discord - hang out with 24 other members and enjoy free voice and text chat.
some virals headcanons because iām rereading and i just love my little family so much
after tory, shelton is coopās second favourite. he always gives him extra snacks and plays with him when tory is busy
similarly tory and shelton actually have a very unique and important friendship that isnāt focused on that much in canon. they play video games together and talk about boys. shelton tries to make her listen to boy bands
when he has the spare time ben very actively makes an effort to learn and connect as much as possible with his culture & heritage. as we know itās very important to him
ben & shelton are always bullying their paler companions about getting sunburnt
ella is asian
ella is also a lesbian
ella & shelton bond over being gay and asian
tory and ella kissed once while hanging out and then never talked about it again
ben (some experience with smoking) was once begged by hi for them to get high together. hi ending up HATING it
ben attends future post-cotillion events with tory and struggles because heās so socially awkward. but whitney bought him a bunch of fancy dress shirts for it so he feels like he canāt back out
hi shamelessly flirts with shelton in private and once they slipped up in front of ben who swore to take it to his grave, but told tory anyway
tory loves buzzfeed unsolved
tory at one point gets some brightly coloured streaks in her hair because she loves paramore and wanted to look like hayley on the self-titled cover
ben is very good at painting
madison loves having sleepovers with ella and tory where they can talk shit about their boyfriends (ella particularly is the biggest hater of their boyfriends)
hi and shelton have a marriage pact
the virals get matching tattoos as soon as tory turns 18
tory and ben become quite enthusiastic concert goers and 9 times out of 10 tory eventually forces ben to let her sit on his shoulders so she can see better
tory almost crashes benās car at some point
ella & shelton have a running joke about her surrogating for him at some point in the future. maybe theyāre serious
ben likes to paint his nails black
shelton buys ben fun patterned socks for every birthday and christmas without fail and ben always wears them
shelton almost convinces hi to get a japanese tattoo that says something absolutely nonsensical
hi actually does plan and dj for bluenanās wedding
mario kart: hi plays princess peach, shelton plays toad, ben plays yoshi and tory plays bowser junior. each of them is extremely loyal to their chosen characters. sometimes ella joins as rosalina or jason as mario (obviously). their tournaments get VERY competitive and despite the fact that sheād hate this, tory is the worst of the six of them
Rules: Post the first lines of your last 10 fics posted to ao3. if you have less than 10 fics posted, post the first lines of all your fics.
Tagged by @kananjarus ~ thanks for the tag!
ā At age 6, Bachira Meguru encounters a monster.Ā - the monster in me (is you)
ā Colleen watches as a pair of dark eyes peered through the bars of the crib, hoping to catch a glimpse of the newest addition to Morris. - Little Piece of Heaven (Right Where You Are)
ā Fields of gold spread before Brigitte, wheat stalks swaying in the summer breeze. - Love Is Blood (chp 2)
ā Barry sighed, leaning back in his seat as his eyes fell back on the festive invitation that lay on his desk.Ā - ask me again
ā Barry blinks against the onslaught of flashing lights, cameras shuttering loudly as reporters lean in to get the winning headline photo. - all these shining lights
ā Chloe stared at her backās reflection in the mirror, her fingers brushing curiously over the edges of the scar. - cast a spell (and all i got was you) (chap 3)
ā Chloe wakes in the cool shade of a pomegranate tree. - in the fell clutch of circumstance
ā The memories come to her in a series of snapshots, details that have seared themselves into her very soul.Ā - for whom the bells toll (it tolls for thee)
ā Electricity arcs through the air, a brilliant and deadly blue. - If At First You Don't Succeed
ā The room is silent.Ā - to the late are left the bones
Tagging a few peeps across fandoms @purpleyin @vampcoffeegyrl23 @thelastsarahbender @torybrennan @samcaarter
pirate au with tory and ella as anne bonny and mary read
au where katherine heaton and marcus karsten investigate the cold case murder of tory brennan
six of crows au where tory is the ruthless gang leader, the boys are her crows, ella and jason are the heartrender and druskelle dragged into the heist, and chance is the captiveĀ
derry girls au where tory is erin, hi is orla, shelton is clare, ben is michelle, and chance is james
au where tory solves LIRIās financial crisis by selling shelton and/or hiram to one direction
breaking bad au where tory is walter white, the boys are a collective jesse, jason is hank, madison is marie, and chance is skyler
Iāve seen multiple people say that Terminal isnāt cohesive with the rest of the series and that everyone is out of character. Although itās far from my favourite book in the series, I fear my critical thinking skills arenāt working because I just canāt seem to figure out why everyone thinks this. Maybe itās just been too long since I last read it.
I was wondering if you could summarise why this is a shared opinion?
Hi there!!!
Thanks for the ask! I'll start off by saying that for all many of us may complain about and poke fun at Terminal, the book does have some really great gems.
That being said, there's a lot to critique. This book is meant to be culmination of the Virals' worst fears. They're being targeted by government agents, there's a rival group threatening to expose them. More importantly, they're finally getting the answers they've been seeking about this designer virus that's turned their lives upside down.
But despite the high stakes, the book falls flat on a lot of these fronts and it's because of narrative twists that undermine the potential of these plots (for example, Ella betraying Tory makes ZERO sense). Instead of focusing on the issues at hand, the love triangle takes up a huge amount of narrative space which was immensely frustrating and gave many people whiplash considering the Tory x Ben kiss in Exposure.
Chance's role in the book is also very ham-fisted, I mean since when is he a scientist? An authority to be trusted? He may run Candela now but that doesnt mean he's automatically an expert on biochemistry or parvovirus or any of the aspects that go into their mutation. If he was a genius from the start as Terminal wants you to believe, why even have Hollis Claybourne outsource the research to create a new canine disease to Karsten? Why not keep it in the family? Chance wanted his inheritance after all.
The Trinity ends up going absolutely nowhere and the kidnapping, which is a horrifying prospect on its own, is hand waved away by virtue of deus ex machina (the cure). There's just so many ways these storylines could have been handled more succinctly but the writers were more concerned with adding higher stakes and more drama and they never stopped to consider how to adequately resolve these situations.
I've spoken a bit about Ella and Chance but there's also been a lot of critique about the limited focus Hiram and Shelton get in Terminal and how they're reduced to comedy relief. This is in part bc the love triangle/Chance take up so much space but Tory herself also suffers here. In a series that had very little romance in the beginning, the final book is a regurgitation of her struggling with her attraction to Chance (which is on par with the last 3 books) in addition to her romantic tension with Ben and whether she ought to risk their friendship/their pack to pursue something.
I could go on and on but I'll stop myself here. I hope this helped and I apologize if I got too salty in my response š
this is my contribution to virals week day 6: character death. thank you to @themorrisislandpack for organising! i went down the same route as the rest of the hivemind...and then i went down the hivemind route.
this was originally supposed to be a much longer fic but i don't know when i'd ever get it done, and i kind of like it like this. feels evil. feels organic.
When the bullet enters Hiās brain, he shatters into pieces.
The only way Tory can explain it is that when they flare, when she pictures each of them in her head, they are like little golden glass lights, and she knows who each one is. Their thoughts and memories pulse there.
So when the Gamemaster fires his gun, Hi shatters before he hits the ground. His body drops with a dull thud, but everything else, everything he was or maybe still is, flies outwards through their heads and lodges into their brains.
Tory is staring numbly at his body on the ground a few minutes later as Kit tries to shield them all when she realises that the memory of falling into the sea off the coast of Morris Island is not her own. It feels like her own, lodged in there as firmly as any, but itās Hiramās.
She starts to scream and she doesnāt stop until they put her in the back of a car.
They put her next to Ben, which is probably a mistake because she thinks she wants to kill him right now.
She thinks that. Hiram, who appears to have taken up residence in her head, apparently does not, because when she sees his tear-streaked face she feels a wave of powerful affection that she knows is not her own.
āBen,ā she chokes out.
āHeās in my head,ā Ben whispers. āParts of him are in here.ā
So sheās not going crazy.
āMine too,ā she murmurs back. āI remember being a toddler and falling off the jetty.ā
āHe hit his head.ā Ben looks on the verge of tears. āI felt it. I know how it felt.ā
Tory remembers Ben then, eight years old and round faced and pink cheeked. She knows as easily as she would any memory that itās his birthday party and that theyāre in Hiās bedroom before they painted the walls, and that after this they went to play in the sand. She remembers that Shelton was ill.
āIām so sorry,ā Ben chokes. āIs he here? Does he know Iām sorry?ā
āI donāt know what this is,ā Tory says. She wants to claw it out, because itās not hers, itās something stuck in there like a tick thatās burrowed under the skin, but thereās nothing else left of Hi.
She looks out of the window and sees him. The storm is too severe for the police who have arrived to really secure the scene, but they havenāt moved him yet. Heās still lying in the road, blood pooling around his skull, eyes wide open.
They put Shelton in a different car. She can see the outline of him hunched over in his seat, trembling like a leaf. Itās impossible to tell whether itās the shock of whatās just happened or if he has shards in his head too.
āMy momās gonna be so mad,ā she blurts out before she can even think about it, and then claps a hand over her mouth in shock, tears rising in her eyes.
āTory?ā Ben says uncertainly. āAre you-ā
āThat wasnāt-ā
āThat wasnāt you.ā
āThatās what he would have said,ā she whispers. āIt just came out. I wasnāt even thinking about it.ā
Benās horrified expression says it all.
Tory leans forward, hand still over her mouth. She feels sick. It was her speaking, but not her words. She canāt distinguish whether Hi spoke through her or whether it was simply what he would have said and the pieces that made him are now part of her, but she knows she had no control.
This is why she keeps her hand forcefully over her mouth even as Kit gets back into the car, face pale.
āAre youā¦ā he starts, then seems to realise itās a stupid question. āIām so sorry, kids. Letās get you to the hospital.ā
I donāt like hospitals, Tory thinks to herself. Gramps died at the MUSC and the doctors were rude when I broke my wrist.
She feels an ache at the memory of losing this man who was not even her grandfather, and she throws up into the plastic bag at her feet.
-
At the hospital, they look for Shelton.
They know that Hi will be somewhere here too, in the morgue waiting for his parents to come, waiting for an autopsy that will confirm what they already know.
She tries not to think about him there. Heās not there, not really. She felt him leave his body before he hit the ground.
Itās only now, sitting in an uncomfortable plastic chair in a waiting room to talk to a trauma specialist, that she breaks.
Itās been easy to avoid up to now, in the shock and the dark, but Hiram is dead. Heās dead because of what she did, and what Ben did, and sheās never going to see him again.
If he is in her brain, he offers no reassurance. Maybe heās mad at her. He deserves to be.
Shelton finds them within the hour. Thereās blood on his sleeves and knees from where he had knelt at Hiās side, tried to save him and got nothing in return.
āWas it worth it?ā Shelton asks. āWas it worth everything you were trying to do?ā
āNo!ā Ben looks appalled. āShelton, no. I- I would do anything, if I could just go back in time-ā
āYou canāt.ā Sheltonās voice is shaking. āI canāt forgive you for this. Either of you.ā
Heās shaking like a leaf. When he reaches up to rub his chin, an unconscious gesture that sheās seen a thousand times, but never on Shelton, she knows without even having to ask, but she asks anyway.
āHeās in your head, isnāt he?ā
Shelton nods tightly, eyes welling up.
āI donāt know how to feel,ā he says hoarsely. āHeās gone. But heās not.ā
āWhatās in your head?ā Ben asks.
āA lot,ā Shelton says shakily. āWeird, random memories. And I really want to see his stupid fucking cat.ā
He sinks down into the seat between them and buries his head in his hands.
āWhat are we going to do?ā he whispers. āWhat the hell are we gonna do?ā
Tory realises, watching him cry, that she suddenly desperately wants to make a joke. Her brain is scrambling to think of something funny to say even before she thinks that this isnāt like her at all, that she would never joke in this moment.
She just doesnāt want to see them cry. She canāt bear it. All of a sudden, sheād rather drink poison than see them cry.
Itās not her.
She pushes that thought back as hard as she can, feels it fade and disintegrate in her mind, and wonders if sheās killed him again, if sheās killing him every time she represses him.
Their parents come to find them soon after. Theyāre all sobbing, holding their children close and exclaiming that they canāt believe it.
Ruth and Linus arenāt there. Tory misses them like her heart has been ripped out.
When they finally let everyone go home, she nearly walks up the path to Hiās house before her own. She sees Ben and Shelton make the same mistake.
That night, Tory cries herself to sleep and keeps her lamp on, because suddenly sheās afraid of the dark.
okay so i did not manage to finish my pirate au this week because it has gotten way out of hand but i decided to post this late little snippet for the Period Drama day for viralsweek!
