no Wakefield can lie to another Wakefield

June 27, 2019 12:59 PM

“Man,” Alice said, “brown-headed man and brown-eyed, what are you to us?” The dark heart of Sweet Valley High: "Their Handsome Father, Ned Wakefield"

By Daniel Mallory Ortberg; previouslies, so many previouslies.

posted by Halloween Jack (14 comments total)

this is hands down the best piece of sweet valley high fanfiction that i have ever read
posted by Reclusive Novelist Thomas Pynchon at 1:00 PM on June 27, 2019 [8 favorites]

Dear heavens. Do not read. Must not read. Have read, and now I must tear out my own eyes.
posted by Peach at 1:09 PM on June 27, 2019 [2 favorites]

damn you, ortberg
posted by notquitemaryann at 1:11 PM on June 27, 2019 [6 favorites]

i am carrying a cup of coffee as i say this, so you know that i speak as a man, an attractive and responsible man who has never laid with any forbidden to him.

as a man with a cup of a man’s beverage i believe in every part of my handsome six-foot frame that shatner chatner is even better than the toast was at its best.
posted by Reclusive Novelist Thomas Pynchon at 1:21 PM on June 27, 2019 [9 favorites]

A while back – quite a while back – there was a Youtube video with a dog watching tennis. The dog was really into it, but you could tell he was confused and that what he was getting out if it, beautiful and pure as it was, wasn't what was really going on. That dog is me reading DAMO.
posted by Joe in Australia at 2:15 PM on June 27, 2019 [3 favorites]

i keep struggling to and failing to find a description of the sort of thing this is. like it’s not exactly sui generis but also i have trouble identifying what genre it’s in.

i’d say it’s phildickian but that would be selling it way short, since (one reason among many) pkd’s writing is deeply heteronormative/cisnormative. like, “holy shit gender is a mass hallucination and all of our attempts to interpret our bodies and therefore our world are irreparably flawed” seems like something that would be up pkd’s alley, but unfortunately he was incapable of writing any characters who aren’t either a) cismale heads-on-sticks or else b) sinister dark-haired teenaged girls.
posted by Reclusive Novelist Thomas Pynchon at 2:30 PM on June 27, 2019 [4 favorites]

If nothing is forbidden, all is permissible.
posted by GenjiandProust at 4:58 PM on June 27, 2019 [2 favorites]

Welp, I feel disturbed now.
posted by jenfullmoon at 5:49 PM on June 27, 2019

I have not read Sweet Valley High in nearly thirty years, so this mostly reminds me of Zoline's The Heat Death of The Universe (short story, unsettling). "(31) Sarah Boyle is never quite sure how many children she has."
posted by mersen at 6:42 PM on June 27, 2019 [1 favorite]

This reads like a Twilight Zone episode. It probably is a Twilight Zone episode. Any minute now Steven is going to walk in the front door with a Starbucks double espresso and a smartphone, use the app to reboot his family -- spaghetti night, Elizabeth's boyfriend Todd is invited for supper -- and walk out again for another round of production meetings before the final rollout.
posted by TrishaU at 8:41 PM on June 27, 2019 [1 favorite]

It took me a long time to realize SVH was written tongue firmly in cheek. I took it so serious. This piece by Ortberg is divine.
posted by St. Peepsburg at 9:37 PM on June 27, 2019 [2 favorites]

Ortberg seems to understand the similarity between fear and humor better than any other writer I know.
posted by Ipsifendus at 6:54 AM on June 28, 2019 [4 favorites]

hi, the genre is eldritch comedy (because it's definitely in the same genre as ortberg's glorious sexiest man alive fics, and I can only ever think of those as eldritch comedy)
posted by grandiloquiet at 11:36 AM on June 28, 2019 [2 favorites]

I'm gonna say it: Ortberg being (out as) trans has really elevated his horror writing. I mean, the gender horror was always there (see: grandiloquiet's link) but he's really sharpened it to an extremely fine point.
posted by the sockening at 5:36 PM on June 28, 2019