Fic rec - Lovely Creatures series

[sakura_no_miko]

Title: Lovely Creatures series

Author: moodybluemood

Fandom: Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure (Part 5-centric but features all parts)

Rating: R

Pairing: Buccellati/Abbacchio, Sorbet/Gelato, Narancia/Kakyoin

Warnings: canon character death; canon-typical violence; body horror/gore; depression; discussion of suicide, drug abuse, homophobia and transphobia

Other notes: post-canon, afterlife, ensemble, multi-part crossover, character study, relationship study, world building, mythology, minor characters, trans character, found families, parents & children

Length: 194k+, WIP, series

Summary: Leone Abbacchio knew betraying the boss would almost certainly mean death. Accepted it. Sure as hell didn't anticipate that the afterlife would entail train rides with the world's chattiest assassin, old British men who bake you pie whenever you want, Narancia dating a nice boy with a hole in his chest, and occasionally chasing the creature that used to be Giorno Giovanna's father off your porch with a shotgun. Bruno better be proud. Abbacchio's really trying to be a better person.

-or-

Leone Abbacchio learns to love Leone Abbacchio.

 

This fic. I don’t even know where to start.

Well, fics, plural. I think I was browsing the Buccellati/Abbachio tag, looking for some happy AUs, and…welp, this isn’t so much a happy AU as a slow burn character study that will hopefully end up as a happy AU at some point.

But, um — the first thing I have to get into is what a contrast these two stories make. Death Is Not The End has these crazy thick chapters where people are doing introspective monologues and there’s dense worldbuilding and mythology. There Is A Town has much quicker, shorter chapters, only three characters, and it feels like a flurry of punches to my emotions.

This is one of those fics where it’s gonna be hard to summarize. I could pull out sections I enjoy from any chapter.

So, Death is Not the End is such an excellent exploration of someone who is trying to unlearn their self-hatred. I feel like there’s been a huge upswing in fic exploring mental illness, and coping, and, my personal favorite, long-term living with the causes, consequences, and struggles of things like depression and anxiety. I mean, not to disparage the years of hurt/comfort fic I devoured when I was having low points, but that whole joke about “magical healing cocks” did come from somewhere. Most stories have an endpoint, and most people probably want to end on a happy note. There’s nothing wrong with letting a character have a moment of peace and happiness after a long struggle.

And yet. Man. Seeing characters who have that happy moment — and then get depressed again. Rise and fall. Have good days and bad days. That’s almost more comforting, in a way. It’s less of the, you need to find a perfect person/reason/moment to heal yourself, and more, you learn to cope. You learn to weather the bad days and appreciate the good days.

Given that this fic is, wow, almost 200k and still going, here’s something a little shorter that exemplifies the sort of thing I mean: By A String. I think I read this one early on in the Yuri on Ice fandom. Really lovely little look at someone who has a lifelong issue with anxiety.

But, anyway, Abbachio is aching so much in this fic. The slow burn is killing me, because I want him to meet with Buccellati, and be happy, and yet I know it will be so much more fulfilling if he waits it out.

There’s this gorgeous scene towards the beginning:

“Don’t,” Abbacchio says, “Don’t feel sorry for me.  We weren’t even together.  He’ll get over me before long and move on.  After all, I’m not the first team member Buccellati’s lost, am I?”

Bruno will mourn in that quiet, muted way of his, but he’ll move on quickly when there are missions to think about, Passione to run.  Day to day, he’ll concentrate on the living, and over time, he’ll only remember him when April and her storms roll around.  Necessity will force him into cold, orderly Buccellati, but there will come a day when someone comes around who brings color into his life, and day by day, little by little, he’ll bring Bruno into the world again.  They’ll love each other.  And he’ll be tender and he’ll be sweet and he’ll be open, all the things Abbacchio fails to be, and they’ll be so happy together.  An April will come when Bruno doesn’t remember his death.  He’ll feel guilty about that later but as time passes, his memory will fall to the wayside as ugly ghosts like him should.

But Abbacchio will remember him always.

Because, just, oh. Like, this is love — but a certain kind of love, the kind you tend to see in pining fics and hurt/comfort fics. It’s a self-negating love. I think that’s the word. The idea that you love someone so fully you no longer care about yourself.

Which is also probably one of the worst lessons I learned from fic in my formative years.

Again, no complaints about it as a fic trope, but. Ah. Loving someone and not caring about yourself really is a recipe for disaster. It’s the sort of thing that leads you to put people on pedestals, or slowly turn into a simmering ball of resentment.

But it’s a beautiful sort of love nonetheless, and, at this point, well, Abbacchio thinks he has no chance to be with Buccellati, due to being dead.

(Of course, those of us who known the canon know Buccellati technically died first, but that’s neither here nor there at this point. Just some dramatic irony for the readers.)

So we do get this lovely scene where Abbacchio thinks, I want him to be happy. He knows Bruno, knows how he tends to shut down when he has a mission, and so he tries to envision any way that Buccellati can become happy. Like, it’s one thing to think, I want him to be happy. But there’s something that tugs at me when Abbacchio, trying to envision a happy outcome, can’t help but envision a long period of mourning, and the need for someone else to help. Like, he can’t envision a happy ending that doesn’t come as a result of hurt/comfort. Probably because he can't see himself being happy so easily. 

God. He reminds me of myself in high school. I’m pretty sure that’s how I always saw my life going — I might pine after someone for a while, and if I was very lucky, they might like me back, might offer me a little spot of happiness. And now I’m not even sure if that was just my own pessimism or me reading too much fic, ha.

(…though that was how I ended up meeting my first long-term partner, so. Self-fulfilling prophecy, maybe? I keep saying, these were bad lessons to learn but I kind of lived a real life fic plot. That’s odd to think about.)

Actually, speaking of. The other fic in this series, There Is A Town, gives me flashbacks to being a teenager. Oh, god. I love watching Abbacchio pine and brood and slowly start to feel better, but Ghiaccio reminds me of all the teenage things I strongly try to forget. It’s painfully familiar — confusion and questions and repressed anger and like five million other emotions I couldn’t identify or express. I get a good mixture of pleasure and pain from reading that fic, because Ghiaccio is making me wince with sympathy, but at least Sorbet and Gelato and being really good parental figures to him.

Like this short moment:

The enemy isn’t the issue.  The issue is that they’re nice and Ghiaccio still doesn’t understand what to make of couples who are just nice to each other.  It all seems fake to him -something you see on television but not real life, certainly not in Passione- and he keeps waiting for everything to fall apart and for the two to start screaming at each other, but it never does and they never do.  Ghiaccio’s teetering on the realization that he’s had a bad life.

It’s just comforting, I think, to see this teenager have mentor figures in his life who have weathered through a lot of shit and are full of sympathy for him, even though he’s still too young to really appreciate it.

Anyway. I usually try and confine my fic recs to just one main fic in the series, but both halves of this story make me happy. Well, happy with a huge dash of angst and occasional secondhand embarrassment.

Even with Abbacchio grabbing my heart, almost all of the other characters are also going through fascinating journeys. Narancia gets a chance to go adventuring with his mother and explore his own dysphoria, and also briefly turn into a frog because that is fun. Sorbet and Gelato, who were fridged in canon, offer Abbacchio and Ghiaccio a glimpse into a long-established relationship between two damaged people who struggle to help each other cope. Abbacchio’s mother gets a chapter to herself, and I don’t think I’ve seen any characters in Jojo’s yet who have deliberately gone after getting a Stand. (Admittedly, I’m not completely caught up to the manga). I mean, she just up and says, I am going to protect myself. Give me my weapon. Do not argue.

Oh, and also this sense of building a community out of various people who felt like they were misfits or lost in life. Agh, found families always make me all gooey.

And the afterlife, for all the random body horror and occasional monsters, seems like a nice place. You can wander around to your heart’s content, find companions, indulge in some self-therapy.

Ah, a curse on slow burn fics. I want the happiness now, darn it. But the journey is the important part.

(But also--those tags. "Slice of life," "slice of death?" you say? Why not slice of afterlife? it's a perfect pun!

 

(Looking for more fic recs?)
Crossposted to pillowfort