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Early release, "Wesley Plunkett's Pep Rally"
🕑 Added 2023-08-12 04:19:16 +0000 UTCGo read! Spoilers below.
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I got to thinking the other day about old old stories like the Friend Zone series and Heaven Hath No Wrath, and I thought it might be fun to dip into an old theme I haven't done much with in a while and play around with a little bit of friend-zoning. I didn't really know what it was going to look like, and in the end, I just sort of kept whipping up high school hottie archetypes and tossing them at Wesley's feet. It's a super guilty pleasure, a protagonist I found both adorable and irredeemable, but it's really just a mind-control-flavored riff on all those teen romances where the guy wants a toxic girl who's bad for him, obsessing over her to the extent that he doesn't realize the perfect girl was right there in front of him the whole time. Just that the toxic girl is just a pretty normal girl, from what we see of her, and the perfect girl right there in front of him is every single hot girl a peer-reviewed hotness rating system has to offer.
Anyway, I just wanted to write something hot, and hopefully you enjoy. More to come!
Comments
WDB
Ha ha, yeah, this definitely also hit those JBB Presents buttons, for sure. It's only missing a Hot Young Popstar appearance at the end to really nail down the comparison. (Olivia Rodrigo, I assume, for 2023.)
Greenstar
YES! The Fiends Tongue, JBB Presents, and Faculty Meeting are short stories that I return to periodically. Extraordinarily HOT, don’t take themselves too seriously, and a total mindfuck of the social hierarchy. This story definitely ranks right up there with them. Thank you WDB for putting it so much more eloquently than I could. I agree 100%
Sou Nekuni
I hope there's more with Laurel and Harper!
The Shaman
As much as I love your serialized and character driven stories, I can never say no to your individual hot “my MC is evil” stories
Jack Elliott
Yeah. This is brilliant. Deserves sequels. What more needs to be said?
WDB
I genuinely love The RA as a series. TIOS is a story I will always admire for its cast and their complexity. THaL had some astonishing things to say about how we trade our dreams in for stability, and the risks inherent in that exchange. Ice Bear writes smart stories, and that's more exciting to me than writing hot stories. But, goddamn it, I like hot stories. My fandom wasn't born from sweet, melancholy boys, or from emotionally-scarred women that longed for a release in a new world of depravity. It was The Fiend's Tongue, a hilariously hot story about an asshole that has women throwing themselves at him; a story where no one really learns anything, and a conniving dickhead gets his wishes granted by accident. It hit a bunch of my buttons, and got me reading anything else that writer posted. Eventually, that'd lead to series of soaring artistry and deeply personal catharsis, and that's what maybe any artist should aspire to achieve. To do all that, and still be able to churn out HOT HOT HOT short stories like this? It's almost gaudy. This one, like The Fiend's Tongue hits a lot of my buttons. A whole bunch of hot, barely legal archetypes, desperately in love with an unexceptional dude, debasing themselves constantly, as everyone normalizes the above. It's EXACTLY the sort of story that's hot to me, and it never really tries to pivot towards anything deeper, or more introspective. It's this guy that thinks he's doing something romantic, gets called out for how insane and villainous it really is, then decides to just be the villain anyway. Cue orgy. I'm maybe making it sound minor, or limited, but it's so *thorough* in its exploration of this concept (every single period! Even lunch!) that it refuses to feel phoned-in or tossed-off. This is the Let's Just Fuck version of 60-odd page character studies; no less an achievement for its more prurient goals. I loved this story. Easily the hottest thing I've read this year, and quickly ensconced in my mental Ice Bear Hall Of Fame. Congratulations on still having these types of stories up your sleeve!
WDB
Thank you.
