Brandon & Abel Watch JC Caylen’s “Reading Dirty Fanfiction” and Die of Secondhand Embarrassment

So today I got wind of this “Reading Dirty Fanfiction” video by another JC, a nice swervy-haired young man called JC Caylen (@jccaylen). JC apparently has a large and passionate Twitter/YouTube following, and he’s just celebrated a major milestone in the life of any public figure: the discovery of fanfic written about you.

Regular readers here know that I wrote an entire YA novel about fandom—and specifically, what happens when you and your just-friends-but-maybe-more vlog partner uncover a whole crapload of shippy fanfic about you.

My characters couldn’t pass up the opportunity to commiserate with JC. So here are Brandon and Abel from How to Repair a Mechanical Heart (their plastic doppelgangers, at least), offering their expert been-there-done-that commentary:

ABEL: Oh holy sweet Moses on a motorbike. It’s so cute when he’s all like “am I going to be scarred for life? Should I back away now?”

BRANDON: Answer: YES.

ABEL: You’ll totally be scarred, JC. We were, at first. But look at it this way: at least you don’t run a vlog with your best friend where you fanboy over your favorite show and spend all this time bitching about bad fanfic, and then discover this whole super-secret community writing slash about the two of you.

BRANDON: . . .Oh, wow. Listen to him. This is rocking his world. “These are so long! Chapter upon chapter!”

ABEL: Like, I think the longest one about us was. . .eighteen chapters?

BRANDON: Nope. The steampunk AU fic was twenty.

ABEL: I have to confess: I’m kind of obsessed with JC’s baseball cap right now.

BRANDON: Really?

ABEL: Like, I don’t even know how it’s staying on his head right now, but it’s supercute. He looks like a Calvin and Hobbes character.

BRANDON: It’s the hair.

ABEL: It’s impossible hair. I deny its actual existence.

BRANDON: Did you hear what he just said?

ABEL: No, what?

BRANDON: “I’ve got blue eyes in this fanfiction, so okay, okay.”

ABEL: DUDE. Oh, JC, our fans did that too. My eyes changed color all the time.

BRANDON: They were “cerulean,” mostly.

ABEL: Except in the Game of Thrones crossover fic. Then they were violet.

BRANDON: . . .Did you hear this? “It gets SO GRAPHIC!”

ABEL: Poor lamb. I feel so protective. Like, I just want to write a nice fanfic where we take him out to Dairy Queen for a Dilly Bar and a root beer and then play Kick the Can or something.

BRANDON: “He reaches in and touches your. . .B word.” Fill in the blank.

ABEL: Brisket?

BRANDON: Bangs?

ABEL: Balaclava?

BRANDON: Oh—whoa, now. What happened after the “small moan”?!

ABEL: DAMMIT WE WANT TO KNOW! READ IT, JC!

BRANDON: We’re such hypocrites. Our sex scene totally faded to black, too.

ABEL: Ohhh, dear. Now he appears to have discovered the existence of Porn Without Plot.

BRANDON: “It doesn’t even have a story. . .it just WENT IN.”

ABEL: I’m biting my tongue so hard.

BRANDON: I’ve been EXACTLY this kind of embarrassed before. Like when we first found the Abandon community and we saw that whole annotated list of fics about us and you read all the titles out loud?

ABEL: “Anatomy of a Saturday.” “Whispers of All Our Tomorrows.” “Five Times Abel Made Brandon Blush.”

BRANDON: Hee! . . . Oh, listen. I think he’s done now. Wait, rewind that.

ABEL: “These are. . .great stories.”

BRANDON: He’s secretly flattered.

ABEL: He’s adorbs. Look, he even has a skateboard in the background! Do you think he skates for real?

BRANDON: How would I know?

ABEL: ‘Cause I’m kind of picturing him all Michael J. Fox in Back to the Future, escaping a carload of greasers with his skateboard badassery.

BRANDON: While the baseball cap stays on.

ABEL: Of course. Oh, he’s asking us to “like” the video. Bran? Should we help a fellow RPF victim out?

BRANDON: Done. He’s linking to the stories, too. Should we?

ABEL: I . . . may want to watch this again. First.

Follow JC Caylen on Twitter at @jccaylen, and on YouTube at lifewithjc.

Brandon & Abel’s fandom adventures are in this book, and their story continues right here on the blog, in plastic form.