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Feb. 10th, 2018 10:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ferryboatpeakSo the funkirk winter wedding au intruded on my run today, so i thought I'd talk a little about it, because maybe it will be like mpreg jackrry in that if i ramble enough about it on dreamwidth eventually it will grow a plot.
--Tom and Fionn backstory! childhood best friends turned high school boyfriends, partly out of that solid foundation of best friendship, partly out of that small town belief that they are the only two gay people in the entire world. (Question: do small town queer kids still believe this? or in this age of the internet does every teenage not-straight kid come of age with the understanding that there is a wide world of gender identities and sexual preferences out there and there is a vast community to which they belong? i encourage anyone younger than me to correct me if i'm showing my age here, although i have tentative faith that even with the internet every teenager continues to believe that it is a tremendous burden that they are The Only Person In The World who has ever had to deal with anything, and continues to assume that the first same-sex person they snog is The Only Other Person Who Will Ever Be Like Them.)
-- Tom has always, always been the golden boy, which Fionn was completely fine with in high school, but it gets a lot harder when they both move to the city for college and it turns out they are not, in fact, the only two gay people in the entire world. Fionn is insecure and jealous, and eventually Tom gets sick of it and breaks up with him, which is no more than what Fionn expected because deep down he always kind of thought Tom could do better.
--In the wake of their post-collegiate breakup, Fionn moves across the country. He works in the finance department of a small city in suburban Sacramento or something. Barry is in the public works department, not hands-on labor, more like a project engineer or responsible for dispatching crews to deal with clogged sewers or something. As in all my barry/fionn headcanons, Barry just starts treating Fionn like they're friends and eventually it's true.
--It was a very good and responsible thing for Fionn to start fresh someplace else, but he's gone a bit overboard with it. Because everything about his hometown and even his family is all tied up with Tom -- every aspect of growing up, their families are friends, their siblings are friends (HELP, NICOLE, DOES TGC HAVE ANY SIBLINGS I CAN BEND TO MY PURPOSES???), there's not a single block in his hometown that doesn't have Tom associated with it somehow -- Fionn's pretty much gone ghost. Barely talks to his parents, hasn't been home in three years, has at least one niece/nephew that he's never met. In his mind he ceded custody of the hometown to Tom, basically.
--SO, on top of all the emotions of going back to the hometown for Tom's wedding, Fionn's got a lot of family shit to deal with. His siblings are an uncomfortable combination of happy to see him but mad at him for dropping off the map, and his parents are super emotional that he's come home but very tentative about everything because they're scared of accidentally saying the wrong thing and prompting Fionn to cut them off again. But the rest of the town has NO IDEA about any of this tension, because MIDWEST (i.e. for three years Fionn's parents have just been telling everyone he's doing great on the west coast and he's just too busy with his important government job to visit home.)
--Tom is an architect and Harry is a struggling actor who has a nannying gig to make ends meet. Maybe they live together in the same Chicago apartment that Fionn moved out of when he and Tom broke up.
--The whole fake dating thing comes up when Fionn and Barry show up to the rehearsal dinner and somebody (possibly high school physics teacher/ drama director/fellow church choir member Christopher Nolan, because this is small town USA and everyone fits into everyone else's life in more than one way) assumes they're dating.
--I have NO IDEA what the plot is. All I know is three things: (1) after Fionn diligently dodges any 1:1 conversation with Tom, Tom finally corners him in the tenor section during the singalong Messiah; (2) Harry Styles goes ice skating at some point; (3) orphan Barry falls flat out in love with small town USA and everything about Fionn's family -- the wraparound porch, the gingerbread baking, the caroling, the fact that it seems like there's this entire village that has raised Fionn and is happy just to see him -- and he can't believe that Fionn's so resentful/dismissive of all of it, and the climatic scene involves Barry saying to Fionn, somehow, "You have everything, and you don't appreciate any of it," and Fionn completely misses the layers to that statement.
HAHA there it is, i sort of hoped that if i typed that all out i would magically have a plot by the end of it but OH WELL, maybe someday.
--Tom and Fionn backstory! childhood best friends turned high school boyfriends, partly out of that solid foundation of best friendship, partly out of that small town belief that they are the only two gay people in the entire world. (Question: do small town queer kids still believe this? or in this age of the internet does every teenage not-straight kid come of age with the understanding that there is a wide world of gender identities and sexual preferences out there and there is a vast community to which they belong? i encourage anyone younger than me to correct me if i'm showing my age here, although i have tentative faith that even with the internet every teenager continues to believe that it is a tremendous burden that they are The Only Person In The World who has ever had to deal with anything, and continues to assume that the first same-sex person they snog is The Only Other Person Who Will Ever Be Like Them.)
-- Tom has always, always been the golden boy, which Fionn was completely fine with in high school, but it gets a lot harder when they both move to the city for college and it turns out they are not, in fact, the only two gay people in the entire world. Fionn is insecure and jealous, and eventually Tom gets sick of it and breaks up with him, which is no more than what Fionn expected because deep down he always kind of thought Tom could do better.
--In the wake of their post-collegiate breakup, Fionn moves across the country. He works in the finance department of a small city in suburban Sacramento or something. Barry is in the public works department, not hands-on labor, more like a project engineer or responsible for dispatching crews to deal with clogged sewers or something. As in all my barry/fionn headcanons, Barry just starts treating Fionn like they're friends and eventually it's true.
--It was a very good and responsible thing for Fionn to start fresh someplace else, but he's gone a bit overboard with it. Because everything about his hometown and even his family is all tied up with Tom -- every aspect of growing up, their families are friends, their siblings are friends (HELP, NICOLE, DOES TGC HAVE ANY SIBLINGS I CAN BEND TO MY PURPOSES???), there's not a single block in his hometown that doesn't have Tom associated with it somehow -- Fionn's pretty much gone ghost. Barely talks to his parents, hasn't been home in three years, has at least one niece/nephew that he's never met. In his mind he ceded custody of the hometown to Tom, basically.
--SO, on top of all the emotions of going back to the hometown for Tom's wedding, Fionn's got a lot of family shit to deal with. His siblings are an uncomfortable combination of happy to see him but mad at him for dropping off the map, and his parents are super emotional that he's come home but very tentative about everything because they're scared of accidentally saying the wrong thing and prompting Fionn to cut them off again. But the rest of the town has NO IDEA about any of this tension, because MIDWEST (i.e. for three years Fionn's parents have just been telling everyone he's doing great on the west coast and he's just too busy with his important government job to visit home.)
--Tom is an architect and Harry is a struggling actor who has a nannying gig to make ends meet. Maybe they live together in the same Chicago apartment that Fionn moved out of when he and Tom broke up.
--The whole fake dating thing comes up when Fionn and Barry show up to the rehearsal dinner and somebody (possibly high school physics teacher/ drama director/fellow church choir member Christopher Nolan, because this is small town USA and everyone fits into everyone else's life in more than one way) assumes they're dating.
--I have NO IDEA what the plot is. All I know is three things: (1) after Fionn diligently dodges any 1:1 conversation with Tom, Tom finally corners him in the tenor section during the singalong Messiah; (2) Harry Styles goes ice skating at some point; (3) orphan Barry falls flat out in love with small town USA and everything about Fionn's family -- the wraparound porch, the gingerbread baking, the caroling, the fact that it seems like there's this entire village that has raised Fionn and is happy just to see him -- and he can't believe that Fionn's so resentful/dismissive of all of it, and the climatic scene involves Barry saying to Fionn, somehow, "You have everything, and you don't appreciate any of it," and Fionn completely misses the layers to that statement.
HAHA there it is, i sort of hoped that if i typed that all out i would magically have a plot by the end of it but OH WELL, maybe someday.
no subject
Date: 2018-02-11 07:58 pm (UTC)and i still really enjoy this, "Barry just starts treating Fionn like they're friends and eventually it's true." barry just worming his way into fionns life and heart, acting as if there was no other option.
Also #3 with barry falling into love with the small town is so sweet!
no subject
Date: 2018-02-12 05:19 am (UTC)okay as i type this, i think maybe fionn has some underlying mental health - minor depression or anxiety or something - that he hasnt' really dealt with or even acknowledged, and now being home and being forced to face his tom feelings head on eventually makes him realize that he used tom as a crutch quite a bit in their teenage years, really relied on him for validation/happiness, and then making tom the reason for isolating himself from everyone further complicated that. IDK, i see this fic as fionn, like, finding himself, and barry's just waiting there at the finish line like, 'oh you're here? about time bro i ordered us a pizza but i dont have any cash i need you to spot me a twenty. also lets adopt a dog together because i love you and want to raise puppies with you glad you've finally caught on you're a decent person.'
no subject
Date: 2018-02-20 06:25 pm (UTC)i really love that description of barry waiting at the finish line, and that general conceptualization of this fic also neatly answers one of the questions i've been asking myself... namely, how do i write barry/fionn fic without really, um, writing barry/fionn. the only problem is that fionn working through his underlying mental health issues suddenly sounds like a premise that polaroidgirlfriend would handle beautifully and me not so much.
oh well, gotta think on it some more, THANK YOU!!!