Together (With You)

Extended Author's Note

Hey, it's Jaded. This is the Extended Director's Cut of my author's note (definitely not just an excuse for me to rant haha).

Welcome to the current topic of my hyperfixation~ I know it's not the most active fandom at the moment, but I don't care. I just wanna do what makes me happy. I think I got back into Lab Rats when I saw a post a few weeks ago about Tyrel and his music group (groupytherapy.), and people couldn't believe that it was actually 'Leo from Lab Rats,' so since then, I started to dig back in. I got in a bit too deep, and now I've just been stuck here. When I tell you I was obsessed, I was obsessed with the show when it first came out. I almost immediately started to ship Brase, and I think it was pretty much because I thought Billy and Kelli looked really cute together. I think Brase was one of the only ships I ever wrote any fanfiction for, which was really surprising since I have so many other ships, most of which are not (or not as) controversial.

I was mainly into the first two seasons of the show, which also went hand in hand with Billy and Kelli's major interactions IRL (2012-2014?), so young me ate all that up. Can you really blame me? I would like to think that a good amount of fans also probably thought there was more to the whole "best friend" thing that they had going on. But considering all that we know now with their lives outside the show (honestly, no judgment, but I think you know who I'm mainly referring to cough cough), I do think it's a bit wild when you see how they were with each other back then (I'm a little upset that Billy took down his social media accounts since there are some things that we can't easily see anymore, and that Kelli had taken down some posts on her end as well). With seasons 3 and 4, I started to watch the show more casually, so I wasn't following them as closely I as used to, so with my recent snooping, I speculated that they probably mellowed out once their romantic relationships with other people started to be a bit more public, unsurprisingly. Then with Elite Force, I didn't really watch much of it; the only things that I seem to recall watching were the promos before the show premiered, and probably the first time Roman and Riker were on the show (Booboo Stewart and Ryan Potter? Again, can you blame me?). After that, I didn't really realize the show got cancelled, and I never really knew what happened with everyone until my hyperfixation started back up.

In regards to the actual story, I apologize if the characters came across as a bit OOC. As much as they are still teens, they've been through quite a lot, which I think should have affected the characters more. I am sometimes tired of seeing something happen to them, and in the moment, they're more serious and mature, only to almost completely go back to the way they were before, practically by the next episode. For example, something terrible happens to Chase (surprise surprise), they make up, show their love and appreciation for each other, then next thing you know, they have a ton of nerd or short jokes about him. Um, what? I totally get that they're family and yeah, there's bound to be teasing and jokes thrown around, but sometimes it's those over-the-top "jokes" that caused the bad situation in the first place. Like, hello? Did no one learn anything from what just happened? Of course, I understand it's a Disney show and they have to keep everything fairly kid/family friendly and comedic, so what else can I really say about it? (And I do want to make it clear, I know it's not just Chase that gets all the degrading jokes; pretty much all the characters do, which I don't always really like as well.)

I also apologize for my writing. I'm not much of an author in the first place. It's been years since I've written any fanfiction (nothing that I ever really officially published though), and even then, I've never written anything as extensive as this. I just got pretty desperate after reading (and rereading... rereading way, way, way too many times...) through pretty much all the fanfiction I could find about them, so I decided to write something myself. It was such a roller coaster going through some of the really old stuff that I remembered reading back then. I also remembered how much I would constantly check FFN for new stories to be written for the show ever since it started airing because I was that crazy. But much respect to those who are able to write and write regularly/consistently since this was kind of a pain and took me a lot longer to complete than I would have liked. It's always so much easier for me to come up with ideas for stories (and I have quite a handful of them) and to have everything planned out in my head or write one big synopsis for it, but actually writing it out with dialogue and everything to make a coherent story is difficult. I know I have much to improve on, so I hope to keep creating in the future. (Also, I have to say, besides Google, was a huge help, so many thanks to the people whose tips and comments I read, as well as those who had the same/similar questions as I did.)

Additionally, I may or may not have changed some details in regards to plot points/canon events, just in case people say 'this isn't what happened in the show,' and whatnot. As I like to think, this is just a work of fiction, so with whatever I write, some parts may agree with whatever's canon, but other things may be changed, added, or taken out to fit the story better (or there might have been things I forgot or remembered incorrectly, to be honest).

Lastly, I should address the fact that this is a Brase fanfic. As I kind of alluded to earlier, I know this is a bit of a controversial ship, but hey, people like different things, some potentially more taboo than others. If you don't like it, I totally understand, but please don't be rude and disrespectful to others that do. (Yes, I know there are other very problematic "ships" out there, but I do not want to bring up anything regarding that at the moment.) Personally, I am not very comfortable writing romance fics if they're biologically related, so with my stories, they'll be unrelated in some way (if others want to write them that way, I am generally okay with it. Actually, if I'm not mistaken, I believe one of my favorite Brase stories is like that and I absolutely love the conflict because of it. Maybe I'll create a proper fic rec soon 👀).

I'm not really great with social media, but if anyone wants to reach out, you can find me on Twitter (apologies, X, formerly known as Twitter 🙄) - [ @ jadedcomet ]. If anyone has a better suggestion for a different platform to use, I'm all ears.

All in all, I hope you enjoyed it and thank you so much for reading! Happy Holidays!

- Best wishes, Jaded