User blog:MrTyeDye/My Top 5 Favorite Weavillain Fanfictions

This was long overdue. I knew I had to get around to making this list eventually, for a few reasons. First, Weavillain did one for me about a year ago, and it’s only fair for me to return the favor. Second, it’s his birthday, and I wanted to give him something special. Third… he’s just an outstanding author.

Weavillain’s one of the few fanfic authors I’ve encountered in any fandom who can actually make me envious. Not of his success, mind you (though he has done quite well for himself), but of his talent. His prose is captivating and riveting, marked with lush, descriptive language, creative similes, and just the right touch of humor. That, and it’s so refreshing to see an author in the fandom who has a wide vocabulary and who knows how to structure a sentence properly. I’d say that we need more writers like him, but there are no writers like him. He’s one of a kind.

Anyway, onto the list.

Honorable Mentions:

Nightly Duty

For context, this is a sequel to Weavillain’s first fanfic, “In Your Dreams”, in which Lisa seeks comfort from Lincoln after a nightmare.

In “Nightly Duty”, the roles are reversed; he’s the one seeking comfort from her, since Bun-Bun’s in the wash and he needs someone to cuddle. Initially, he’s quite apprehensive about approaching her - which is understandable, since she doesn’t exactly have the warmest personality among his sisters.

But Lisa, in her typically loquacious manner, reassures Lincoln that familial love goes both ways, and that there’s nothing shameful about an older sibling seeking comfort from a younger one. It’s a really sweet moment, and it’s impressive that Weavillain imbued a feeling of warmth and sympathy into her dialogue while still maintaining her academic, mechanical manner of speaking.

Also, after reading this quote…

''"And it's alright if you tell my other sisters about this," Lincoln said, turning over so he could look at Lisa in the eye. "I don't care if I get a little teasing for it. You're way too cuddly to not be worth it."''

…I am hereby convinced that Lisa is a snuggly little teddy bear and nobody can convince me otherwise.

Comic Relieved

The setup for this fanfic isn’t too out of the ordinary. Luan comes home crying after bombing badly at a comedy club, and Luna comes in to try and make her feel better. By now, it’s pretty obvious what’ll happen; Luna will tell her to keep her chin up, they’ll hug it out, and Luan will give the club another shot the next day, right?

Actually, no! Instead, Luan angrily rejects Luna’s attempts at reassurance, bringing up the fact that Luna almost never laughs at her jokes around the house. She goes on to lament that Luna’s way better at music than she is at comedy, and that Luna would never bomb on stage like she did that night.

Luna has to work hard to convince her otherwise, but she pulls it off. First, she establishes that her hobby provides her with a way to drown out the hecklers - a luxury that Luan doesn’t have. Then, she confides in Luan about her first concert, in which she dropped her guitar, accidentally flashed the audience when she went to pick it up, and then ran off stage before getting through her first riff.

Finally, she concedes that she doesn’t think Luan is the funniest girl she’s ever met, but asserts that she didn’t deserve the disrespect she got that night, and that she has all the time in the world to improve herself. It’s a heartwarming family moment that doesn’t try to sugarcoat their relationship or ignore their differences.

Aaand onto the Top 5!

5. Popcorn Flick I’ve already done a full review on this, so if you want to get my detailed thoughts on it, you can just check that out here. Suffice to say, Popcorn Flick is gripping, intense, heartbreaking, and it humanizes Lynn in a way that I’ve seldom seen in fanfics that are centered around her.

4. If You Give a Loud a Cookie

On the surface, this is just another “Lincoln messes up and has to find a way to apologize for it” story that we’ve seen on the show several times before. But what makes this fic unique is the way it takes those established conventions and uses them to explore new avenues.

See, Lincoln gets a plate full of homemade Valentine’s Day cookies from a girl named Cookie QT (a background character introduced in Lincoln Loud: Girl Guru), and he decides to brag about it to Ronnie Anne. He assumes she wouldn’t mind, since she told him prior that she doesn’t care about Valentine’s Day.

He turns out to be dead wrong, of course, but in that scene - even though she doesn’t say a single word - it’s clear that he hurt her on a deeper level than he could have imagined. The reason? She tried to bake him a treat the night before, but failed miserably, and seeing Lincoln flaunting Cookie’s treats in her face made her feel inadequate.

In this way, Weavillain highlights one of my favorite aspects of Ronnie Anne’s character: her sensitivity. Despite her tough exterior, several episodes have shown that she has low self-esteem and genuinely cares what Lincoln thinks of her. She doesn’t even lay a hand on Lincoln before storming off.

At the same time, when Lincoln comes over to apologize, we see her deliver her usual brand of irreverence and snark. Weavillain calls attention to her vulnerability without downplaying or ignoring the other aspects of her character, making her feel well-rounded and three-dimensional.

As an aside, props for having Clyde be the one to spell out to Lincoln what he did wrong. It’s always nice to see him being used as something other than Lincoln’s yes-man.

3. Put a Bid on It

Or, as I like to call it: “I vented my frustrations about an irritating fanfic trend and accidentally created a masterpiece.”

As revealed by the author’s note at the end, Weavillain wrote this in response to the bothersome TLH fanfic trend he calls “St. Linc”. For those uninitiated, St. Linc is the irritating trend of writers trying to frame Lincoln as a tortured victim and his sisters as remorseless monsters.

But “Bid” isn’t a straightforward deconstruction fic. Instead, he takes the general format that St. Linc fics generally follow - Lincoln gets wronged, Lincoln blows up at his sisters, sisters make up for what they did, all is forgiven - and creates a story within those confines that treats the characters with respect and maintains the tone of the show. Less “don’t do this” and more “this is how it’s done”.

What Lincoln’s sisters do to him is wrong, and his anger is quite justified; hell, I’d be pissed if my sisters took advantage of my desperation in winning an auction and inadvertently screwed me out of winning. But the story makes it clear that they weren’t acting out of spite, and they show genuine remorse for their actions even before he blows up at them.

The twist at the end is pretty hilarious, too, and something I could absolutely see happening on the show.

2. Nicely Done

Or, as I like to call it: “I vented my frustrations about an irritating fanfic trend and accidentally created a masterpiece. Again.”

This time around, Weavillain takes a shot at the “nicer sister/meaner sister” dichotomy, which treats half the sisters like perfect angels and vilifies the other half. This time around, he deconstructs the cliche by demonstrating how hurt Lori, Luan, Lynn, Lola and Lisa would feel if they knew that someone they cared about thought of them as “mean”.

If that makes the fic sound like an angsty mopefest, let me stress that it’s not. It has its feels-heavy moments, to be sure (particularly the last chapter, when the “mean” sisters confront Lincoln over the list), but it’s also a ton of fun. I laughed like hell at the “mean” sisters’ over-the-top attempts to come off as nicer, followed by the “nice” sisters’ over-the-top attempts to get them to stop. Like “Bid”, the fic is filled with the kinds of antics that would be right at home in canon, and like “Bid”, it feels like an actual episode. A really, really good episode.

All right, let's do a quick recap before we get to #1!

5. Popcorn Flick

4. If You Give a Loud a Cookie

3. Put a Bid on It

2. Nicely Done

And #1...

1. Babysitter from Heaven

And now we arrive at Babysitter from Heaven - arguably Weavillain’s most highly regarded work, and for good reason. It’s one of the fics I consider to be a must-read for anyone getting into the fandom, along with “First Love”, “It’s Not a Date!”, “Inadequate” and “Lori’s Birthday”.

I could spend all day talking about every area that this fanfic excels in, but for brevity’s sake, I’m just going to focus on one: the characterization.

First, there’s Carol Pingrey. Keep in mind that this was written long before “Selfie-Improvement” aired, and all we knew about Carol was that she beat Lori for homecoming queen once. Weavillain had virtually nothing to go on when writing her.

Regardless, he still managed to give her both an engaging personality and a rich, involving backstory that gives Lori a reason to resent her beyond petty jealousy - without coming at the expense of her likability, of course.

And then there’s Lori. Now, anyone who knows Weavillain knows that Lori is his favorite of the Loud siblings. If that sounds like a read flag, I understand; a lot of TLH fanfic authors have a nasty habit of putting their favoritism on display by downplaying or outright ignoring their favorite sisters’ flaws.

But is that the case here? Hell no. Lori’s faults, primarily her jealousy, insecurity and bad temper, are on full display here, and they all prove to be her undoing. She steals the family van, drives home to interrupt a perfectly friendly and enjoyable night for her younger siblings, and ultimately deprives both Lincoln and herself of any chance of friendship with Carol.

At the same time, Lori’s actions don’t paint her as a monster. They paint her as a broken, troubled girl who’s constantly terrified that her family will toss her aside like a used tissue as soon as they decide they don’t need her anymore. In spite of all the awful things she does and how badly she messes up, you still want to hug her by the end of it.

On a final note, I'd definitely recommend checking out its AU sequel, "Out of the Way". It's not finished yet, but what we have so far is pretty incredible.

And that was my Top 5 list for arguably the best author in the fandom. Happy Birthday, Weav!