Wednesday-verse

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Fanfiction
Title: Wednesday-verse
Author(s): arsenicjade
Date(s): April 27, 2007 - May 23, 2008
Length:
Genre(s): AU, Hookerfic
Fandom(s): Bandom
Relationship(s):
External Links: series at tasteofpoison

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Wednesday-verse is a popular Bandom AU series by arsenicjade. The first story in the series is a hookerfic called Wednesday Night Boys. The series features My Chemical Romance and Panic! at the Disco pairings: Spencer/Bob, Ryan/Brendon/Jon, Frank/Gerard, and Mikey/Ray.

arsenicjade appears to have started writing bandslash in late February 2007,[1][2] during the early part of Bandom's second wave, and Wednesday Night Boys was one of her earliest fics in the fandom. It was written in two weeks and originally posted as commentfic.[3] In turn, the series may have recruited more people into Bandom; in a 2009 meta discussion, idyll noted that "A lot of people came into the fandom through Wednesday Night Boys, which was the It Fic for a while."[4]

Stories in the Series

Author's summary of the series: Where Panic are largely rentboys, MCR runs a clinic and FOB is off in Sausalito, saving the manatees.

  1. Wednesday Night Boys The obligatory whore AU. Published: 27/04/07 (52,443 words)
  2. Home is a Name MCR Clinic of Love. Companion fic to Wednesday Night Boys. Published: 25/05/07 (39,203 words)
  3. Five O'Clock Snippet from the Wednesday-verse. Published: 07/07/07 (402 words)
  4. Beginning of Wisdom Mikey, Ray, Frank and Gerard think up a name for Mikey and Ray's daughter. Published: 14/09/07 (833 words)
  5. Precipitate This is Untappedbeauty's birthday fic. Published: 26/03/08 (3692 words)
  6. Buon Viaggio Brendon, Ryan, Jon, Frank, Gerard, Bob and Spencer all take a little trip. Published: 23/05/08 (3122 words)

In addition to the stories published at her website, the author wrote snippets in the comments on various journal posts, including this one.[5]

Fan Reactions/Reviews

Arsenic's website shows 292 reviews for Wednesday-verse. 2007 examples:

You built such an amazingly full, real universe here. Complicated and rich and even though you made all the guys sink so completely into the world, they were absolutely identifiable.[6]

my entire flist told me to read this story, and hey! they were right! i laughed, i cried, i incessantly narrated what was happening via im to someone who didn't really care that much but was fortunately willing to indulge me, because i wasn't planning to shut up about it :D[7]

This is phenomenal. Lemme repeat that: PHENOMENAL. You don't shy away from the dirty, scary parts of the profession, but you handle them in such a way that you never lost my attention, even when I was horrified. And then, in light of all that ugliness, the beauty of the moments like the easy Wednesday nights, the realizations of love, the shared boxes of cereal, were especially cherished.[8]

From Epic Recs, 2010:

There is no question in my mind that this is a spectacular ‘verse. Even the short coda’s are wonderful. Arsenic does a fantastic job at hurt/comfort fic, and this honestly may be her best fic out there. That being said, I really don’t get why she has them in the order she does. From particulars of the stories, it seems clear that “Home is a Name” starts out at least a year before “Wednesday Night Boys,” ending about a month or two either side of the beginning. And because of that, the relationships that are already established in “Wednesday Night Boys” are just beginning in “Home is a Name.” Other than that, this series is one of those overpowering ones that is just about the most brilliant thing ever written. Either of the main stories can actually be read on their own with no back story necessary.[9]

From crack_van, 2013:

The summary makes it sound simple but in reality it's a very compelling story with complex characters and unexpected turns (well sort of. This is fic we're talking about) and lots of emotion that is pretty much guaranteed to tug at your heartstrings. It will make you happy and sad and everything inbetween, and it has a happy ending, like every good story should. :)[10]

From the_slash_pile, 2013:

This story absolutely wrecked me in the best possible way. Arsenic is the Mozart of hurt/comfort fic, and her entire body of work is required reading for anyone interested in the genre or in original slash generally. She does it right. Scratch that: she does it PERFECTLY.[11]

According to fail_fandomanon in 2018, one line got turned into a meme once upon a time:

arsenicjade wrote a well-known bandom fic, Home is a Name, that's set in a HIV clinic. Eventually, it's revealed that one of the characters (Frank) got infected because... he was a child prostitute pimped out for the mafia.

Hence, "thousands of men". The meme is because it's so OTT that it sort of circles back in to funny.

(The guy he's talking to is named Gerard, hence the rest of the line. I think the actual quote is just "thousands of men - " but it got memed as THOUSANDS OF MEN, GERARD.)[12]

possibly the same anon, explaining why it didn't work for them in 2013:

i think that aj's intentions were good and the fics themselves aren't bad per se, but the entire backstory that she comes up with -- and that eventually is revealed in a dialogue infodump worthy of a later hp book -- is completely absurd, melodramatic, and unnecessary. a child prostitute who grew up in a mafia warehouse and was in the witness protection program? like, come on. i don't mean to say that underground prostitution and child exploitation isn't real and fucked up, but she treats it as a SURPRISE THIRD ACT PLOT REVEAL for dramatic effect. and that sort of high concept wackery actually made me respect what the story was trying to say about hiv patients less, just from the sheer melodramatic lengths she went to to have one of her characters get infected.[13]

Related Fanworks

References

  1. ^ arsenicjade. The Project, Archived version, Aug. 30th, 2007.
  2. ^ arsenicjade. Carry On, Archived version, posted 15 March 2007.
  3. ^ arsenicjade. Comment Epic of Doom, Archived version, posted to livejournal Apr. 28th, 2007.
  4. ^ comment by idyll on On bandom as a fannish community, or: what the hell, people? (deleted post)
  5. ^ comment thread by arsenicjade on her livejournal post Just Stolen, Archived version, Jun. 20th, 2007
  6. ^ Following H With C Since 1999 :: fanfiction by arsenicjade, Archived version, comment by lovelypoet, 29/04/07.
  7. ^ Following H With C Since 1999 :: fanfiction by arsenicjade, Archived version, comment by jori, 02/05/07.
  8. ^ Following H With C Since 1999 :: fanfiction by arsenicjade, Archived version, comment by Amy, 31/05/07.
  9. ^ cheetahanabel. Epic Recs - Wednesday-verse by Arsenic (NC-17) dreamwidth copy of a 2010-11-10 livejournal post.
  10. ^ agirlnamedfia. Wednesday Night Boys - arsenicjace (NC-17) dreamwidth copy of a 2013-08-25 livejournal post.
  11. ^ pierrot_dreams. Rec: Wednesday Night Boys, Archived version, posted to livejournal 2013-04-27.
  12. ^ Re: Fic recs - fics that hurt, archived, anonymous thread, 2018-02-25. A wild guess is that this meme was from bandflesh, which was not fond of arsenicjade and also now defunct. Yep.
  13. ^ Re: Inexplicably Popular Fic, 2013-07-17.
  14. ^ Audiofic Archive link, knight_tracer's livejournal, Archived version
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