Five Figure Fanwork Exchange

"There's no such thing as gay or straight. There's only who gives the pain and who has to take it."

Title: Serious Weakness

Media: horror/thriller/romance novel (M/M, but there's an F/F AU the author wrote that I'm also requesting, see below)

Approx length: ~123k words

Where to find it: there's a set of links here showing where to buy it (physical/pdf/epub). If money is an issue, DM me on dreamwidth or leave your email on my pinned post (comments are screened) and I can assist you. Also note that you might not want to poke around Porpentine's website if you have photosensitivity issues (some non-linked pages have lots of bright/flashing/eyestrain), although what I linked should be accessible to people with these issues.

What is it, in summary? In the near-future west coast of the USA, an art conservator, Trianon, is invited to a rich man's house to assess the damage on a painting. This is yet another in a long string of art vandalism crimes along the seacoast. He has a tense conversation with a man who calls himself the artist, but Trianon quickly learns that he is in an extremely dangerous situation that he will have a really hard time escaping from.

What do you love about it? Some of my thoughts are spoilery, but I'll start off with the non-spoilery stuff first. To start, I absolutely love the characters. Trianon, Insul, and Oenone are all really interesting people who I think about all the time; I personally found it really refreshing to see neurodivergent characters act in really messy/destructive ways. Secondly, this book is super fucking funny?? Between pages of reading through my fingers at the intense horror and violence, there were sections where I was laughing out loud. I think you might need to have a certain sense of humor to enjoy it in this way, but I know I'm not alone in finding it funny. Last thing before I use a spoiler cut - this book feels really intense and emotionally honest in a way that resonated a lot with me personally. None of the relationships in this book are simple and easy, but they all mean something, and that means something.

Spoilers, if you want more info.

I'm obsessed with how this novel talks about disability, autism, and gender. If you live on the fringes of society because of one or more of these things, there will likely be parts of this novel that feel very real and affirming. This novel is about Trianon trying to figure out how he wants to interact with a society that hates him - as violent as Insul is, what society does to them is seen as just as bad if not worse. The way Trianon is torn between two worlds - the one that he has worked hard to fit into and the one that Insul has introduced to him - is where the real tension is, in my opinion. The ending was not at all what I was expecting but I found it incredibly empowering in a power fantasy way and weirdly uplifting and hopeful despite, uhh, everything. The romance that blossoms between Trianon and Insul feels genuine and sweet at times despite the, uh, not ideal circumstances in which they met or got together! I am so into them being hot messes together, and I hope someday that Oenone will join them (platonically or romantically), or that she at least is released from everything like they are.

What sort of things are you likely to request for it? Pretty much everything! I like all possible media types (art, IF, fanfic). I'm requesting Insul/Trianon, Blake/Insul, Insul/Oenone/Trianon, and Insul, Oenone, and Trianon individually. I'd love post-canon explorations on how everyone's relationships with each other and society change, the canon F/F AU (see below), pre- or post-canon character studies for anyone... Blake/Insul is also deeply interesting and tragic to me and I would be so down for more of that, either exploring the dynamic in more depth before its inevitable conclusion or an AU where things end differently. Oenone might sound like a bit of a wildcard due to her role in the story, but I think she's super interesting and I think that she has potential, and I'm so down for any of the dynamics Porpentine listed in their retrospective... I will say that this is one of my only canons where I absolutely don't want my requested characters to die (except Blake), if that influences whether you're up to creating for me or not.

Are there sections of canon (rather than the whole canon) that can be consumed by themselves to fulfil your requests, or that showcase particular characters and relationships? Not really! You might be able to just read Serious Weakness But With Girls, which is short story length and is free, if you wanted to fill my F/F request, but you'll be missing out on some context. If you're on the fence and don't mind spoilers, this might be a good teaser to figure out if you'd vibe with this canon though. There are some plot differences in SeriGirls but there's a lot of similarities and I fuck with both of them heavily. Note that the same content warnings apply to both, more or less, but swap out "school shooting" for "poisoning/mass murder".

Content notes: from the website: "kidnapping, violation, stalking, piss, puke, mutilation, autism, disability, crossdressing, guns, school shooting, drugs, confinement, abuse". Some of my own (mostly minor) spoilery thoughts/additions in the below cut:

Spoilers

A big part of the novel has to do with abusers using disabilities against the disabled person (in order to control them or make it so they can't do things). There is copious slur usage (primarily the homophobic f slur and the ableist r slur, but some others show up too). Coerced pet dog murder occurs in the chapter "Dies Caniculares" and is pretty obviously telegraphed. Some of the anal rape in this novel contains scat elements; in SeriGirls, there's rape while a character is menstruating. Lastly, I wouldn't recommend this book to people who want escapism from climate change. If you need more details or want to know if something is/isn't present, feel free to leave a comment or DM me!