Fic: On Each Other's Minds. With bonus related recs.

[epershand]

Today, after resisting for a while, I joined the club of people who have written fic about Brendon Urie's ADHD.

On Each Other's Minds, Brendon + Spencer bodyswap gen. ~500 words.
Spencer's been in Brendon's body for six hours now, and it's driving him crazy.

(Also known as "The Self-Indulgent Brain Chemistry Body-Swap Ficlet." Featuring an awesome beta by were_duck and equally awesome hand-holding from yarngeek and bluestalking)

It's just a context-free baby ficlet, which makes sense given that it was maybe an hour between the time when I pinged bluestalking with the question "If I were to write a drabble about body-swap-where-brain-chemistry-stays-in-the-original-body would that be weird and or problematic?" and the time when I finished writing it. But honestly, I'm not sure how comfortable I'd be dragging it out for much longer, or whether I'd have been able to concentrate enough to finish writing it given the fuzzy state of my brain for much of the afternoon.

But I've been fascinated for a while with the way body swap tends to bring entire bodies and personalities from one body to another, even when those personalities are driven by purely chemical means. I'm even more fascinated by this now that being on medication for the first time in my life has given me insight into the fact that some things that I thought of as fundamental parts of my personality (or, in particular, fundamental moral failings) turned out to be a quirk of brain chemistry easily changed by further application of chemistry.

Whether there is a mind/soul/self/whatever that can be extracted from the hardware in which it's encoded is the other great awkward question of body swap as a trope, but I decided to let myself go only halfway here. :)

I got into Panic fandom right around the time I got my adult ADHD diagnosis and started rigorously treating it for the first time, and there's a whole lot about Brendon-as-a-character that hits my identification id really hard. Which has been, actually, the primary driver of my falling so very head over heels into near monofandom. Having a fictional avatar less intense while simultaneously closer to my mental state than Delirium has been very useful for me.

There's a lot of fic that handles the ADHD really badly, badly enough that I've periodically considered writing a "Hey PatD fandom, here's some basic facts that I'd like you to remember when writing about characters with ADHD, kthxbye" post. But a few of them are really, really good.

A couple of particular favorites are:
joker_and_thief's untitled girl!Brendon. The first Problems With ADHD Drugs story I read that felt like the author had any idea what the actual effects of ADHD drugs are--Bren's issues aren't the nonsense people make about zombifying hyperactive kids, but about personal control issues and overusing to get the glorious hit of focus and will. I should mention that I personally found the story very triggery, but in a productive way that actually resulted in some positive changes in my life once I processed them.

sunsetmog's If Music Be the Food of Love (I'll Have the Veggie Burger). Not that it actually spends much time at all talking about ADHD, but the Brendon narrative voice just felt a little like the inside of my own head in a way that felt... right. Especially the early scenes when Brendon DOES ALL THE THINGS to deal with not having any friends. &bden;

I'm blanking a bit right now on my third particular favorite, but I'll edit to add it when it comes to me.

Comments

i'm pretty sure this is stretching the metaphor too far

[starlady]

Hmm…might not brain chemistry be the firmware, then?

Re: i'm pretty sure this is stretching the metaphor too far

[epershand]

Woo metaphors! Part of the thing that fascinates me in general is that in many ways there's no hardware/software separation at all--from what I understand, memories and knowledge change the physical structure of the wiring to at least some extent while they form.

But I love the chemical layer as firmware if we do keep the initial metaphor as it stands.

[roga]

I wanted to say both thank you for this, and that I love loved loved the ficlet and really hope you do continue writing in that verse, because ♥♥♥♥♥.

Also -- I don't know if this is the third fic you were thinking of, but I've always thought that jukeboxghost had a great handle on Brendon's POV in Calenture (Brendon/girl!Spencer), in the same way sunsetmog did in Veggie Burger.

[epershand]

Thanks so much for commenting! It made me feel very warm and fuzzy--glad it struck a chord.

I hadn't actually read "Calenture", but WOW am I glad you mentioned it here, because... YES. So much yes. I think that's going to go into my cycle of regularly-re-read fic now. Thank you.