Effy's Fangirl Problem
Of Ships
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A/N: I honestly did a backflip when I saw I had reviews! I'm glad you guys are enjoying this and I hope I don't disappoint you too much as it goes on :P I'll try to keep updating just as fast but I'm taking a plane home for the holydays so we'll see how it goes, but I'll definitely try my best. I enjoy writing this anyway and I could always use some break from the family craze (which I love but by God.)
Disclaimer: I own nothing, or I'd be in London right now flailing over Lily Loveless. I don't know, man, I don't know.
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Law # 3: Thou shall have ships.
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Elizabeth Stonem had cheered for many 'ships' through her life mission of endless fangirling. It was possibly the most contradictory of her many façades, knowing how she deeply despised the mere thought of 'love', the existence of that irrational, and frankly stupid, feeling threatening every one of her values.
Love made you fucking barking mad. Love would break your heart. Love would break your carefully built walls and flood your heart with stinging water, violent waves banging against your mind as your own grip on it seems to fade and fade away until there is nothing left, not an inch of control over your sensations, emotions and even basic human actions. Love would bring you all the way back to the middle ages, when demons haunted people's souls and the plague tore their flesh apart, when Joan of Arc would hear those voices in her head and convince herself of their reality only to be burnt on a stake.
Joan of Arc, Jeanne d'Arc. Effy had read about her many times before, willing to fully understand how that young lady went from being just a girl, to a warrior, to a mad voice-hearing witch and finally to a catholic saint. It was probably the sanctity part of that story that confused Effy. Or rather, how the voices shooting through her brain, polluting her every thought, demons and claws and angels speaking all at once in her ears, how those voices could have led her to so many victories in the Hundred Years War. Joan of Arc went mad, barking mad and somehow – in her madness – brought victory to her Nation in the most peculiar of ways and is still remembered to this day as one of the patrons of France.
Effy would wonder if Joan ever fell in love, if that was what brought her to the brink of her sanity.
She wondered if she was brave because she was mad. Or was she so scared of going mad that whatever defense lines she had built to protect her sanity blurred and madness was reality and reality was madness and in the end bravery was merely the sound of her sanity collapsing.
Sometimes, Effy just refused to dwell on it though.
'Ships', however, unlike her own mixed feelings about love, were simple. People plainly seemed to be, or at least most, the most predictable when they were – dare she say it – in love. Or, as she would rather call it, when they desperately heart-wrenchingly wanted to fuck someone else repetitively and hope that they will still be around the next morning. In other words, when in love, people became stubborn, daft and unreasonably horny. Therefore, they went back to their most primal instincts and provided her with great entertainment.
Truth be told, some seemed to fit more naturally with others, somehow their desire only satisfied by a specific cock, or muff (she would never discriminate different sexual inclinations), keeping them from mopping around and not doing anything fruitful.
She helped Sid get back with Cassie because – for fuck's sake – both were being so awfully stubborn and downright thick about this, killing themselves slowly in their corner while playing a childish game of jealousy and emotional manipulation it was nearly unbearable. Sid, naturally, was the most painfully pathetic of the two. Unable to voice or even depict his emotions properly, fumbling around like a snail on Effy's hand as she finally pitied him enough to help out. Well and also, maybe she did care for him. A bit. Slightly. Because he was her brother's best friend and Tony needed him, needed his simplicity. And for him to be there for Tony, as they both unknowingly craved, he needed to be sane and happy and in fucking love. And Cassie, Cassie was truly a wonder to observe, a spinning gifted mind grasping at every brink of reality, craving for it to make sense, to bring her any form of happiness. Family, friends, love. And maybe Sid's simple take on it, on life, was the best way to give her that, in a similar way to Effy's need of Panda, so maybe – maybe – this was a sort of love.
And Effy liked doing that, sometimes. Giving to people anonymously, guarding her own volt as she evacuated some of the painful pressure in her chest – a pressure she worked so hard both to understand and forget – by giving to people what she feared the most: love.
So she shipped them. She read in their behaviors, their way of being and thought: Yes, maybe they do belong to each other, maybe – for once- the world can be right for them so yes maybe, maybe they can be something I'd be proud of and it won't make them go mad.
She also had other ships; one of the most memorable ones might have been Chris and Jal. She couldn't say she had entirely seen it coming, to be honest she hadn't had the chance to observe them as closely as she would have wished. But while Chris' character had always somewhat fascinated her, her wonder was only duplicated when his relationship with Jal grew and they worked – so easily, so smoothly – through the toughest, harshest, sharpest problems any relationship could ever encounter. Betrayal, pregnancy, doubts, health, money, work, studies, love. She could never dwell on it for too long though, never bring herself to sit and watch and examine it as carefully as she did with others. Because there was always this thing, so tangible, so painfully clear and strong and it would build up between Chris and Jal and it would build up in Effy's chest and the walls would tremble as she stared and got closer and closer to whatever that thing was.
The day of his funeral, as Jal spoke about him, as the others cried and she stood there and just spoke. Effy tried – standing in the back – to remain stoic, to look at it all like a painter taking in an unknown scenery, scrutinizing ever detail. But it hit her again, that thing, and her knees started shaking and the voices – those fucking voices – got louder and louder and finally she had to leave – to run as fast as she could and get fucking fucked up because – fuck – those walls, she needed to strengthen those fucking walls.
That was why she was scared, at first, when she met – really met this time – Naomi and Emily at Roundview. She shivered slightly as she watched them and maybe then she knew. But they were still so far from it, both of them, and they would need something – anything – to push them to that edge, to that edge of sanity, of life itself, to standing on the edge and looking down and just not be scared anymore.
And whatever Effy was afraid of, whatever made her insides shake and her mind spin, seemed to make Chris and Jal happy – mad, so mad and so terrified and miserable in the end – but happy as if someone had announced that life was all a joke and that they had been allowed to leave it all behind and step in whatever was beyond it, heaven maybe, and everything would like a dream, like the best of dreams.
And somehow, Naomi and Emily deserved to get there, to trip and fall occasionally back into reality, to stand on that fucking edge, to go fucking mad at standing between those two worlds, but to get there nonetheless.
And anyway, Effy was stronger now, wasn't she? She wasn't a scared 15 year old, or 14 and what not. No, her walls were far thicker now, far taller than the Great Wall of China and far more impetuous against attacking Huns.
So, she thought, she would give them a hand. They did love when someone gave them a hand anyway, didn't they?
(Katie Fucking Fitch and her fucking lezzer jokes. Surely, Effy's humor should have been way above that.)
So when Emily walked by in front of the building, when Naomi scornfully shot her hand in the air to announce her presence. When Katie Fitch introduced Effy to their dynamic – right so don't talk to her she tried to snog my sister in middle school, leave it Katie, careful Katie or I might fuck you with my big strap on by mistake, fucking muff-munching bitch, Emily's tiniest smile in the background, so you're the doormat? I guess… Interesting, that you just put up with that. Yeah… . When Naomi said her name in class, and Emily mimicked her sister – I'm Naomi, I hate injustice, people tell lies about me. I'm Emily, never had a boyfriend – and they exchanged just that simple scornful, doubting, daring, scared and standing on the edge of something look.
When all that was said and done, Effy had already drawn the design of about ten different Naomily encouraging banners and flags, planned carefully examined strategies, possible outcomes and obstacles, different options for macros, gifs, pictures, recaps, mash ups and movies, around three different songs, five different make-up speeches or confessions, fifty short and wistfully insightful sentences she could pull off which would – eventually – make her ship happen. Oh right, and t-shirts. And seven fanfictions. Maybe she should get more notebooks.
And yes, Naomily was definitely a good name for that ship. Chris would be proud. (She hadn't known then that she would let it carelessly drunkenly slip and Cook would overhear it, or that he would catch a glimpse of one of her notebooks – whatever the fuck happened for him to pick up on that word and keep shouting it to everyone who would care to listen. Fucking Cook.)
She would just go home and get started on her flags and pinning everything up in that dark corner of her closet back in her room, where no one ever cared enough to look – right next to that first flag she made of them back when they were twelve, along with maps and photos and possibly, some sort of gum statues or toys with blonde and red hair which she could certainly use in her planning. As she had said, fangirling is a precise, meticulous, complex art which required a lot of hard work.
And then Freddie stood up, and her walls trembled and she had to scurry off and fuck something up, fuck Cook, and pin all her posters to her closet later.
And later that day, she flailed.
