ALL THOSE YEARS IN THE SHADOWS

Unconnected stories in the RISE OF THE GUARDIANS / GUARDIANS OF CHILDHOOD fandom[s],
and in its subfandom[s] known as Nightmare Dork University / NDU Wardrobeverse.

24 tales in all, written by request for 12 different lovely people on Tumblr.

EACH STORY WILL HAVE ITS OWN RATING, so peruse with care.

How in the world did I end up in the absolutely best tandem-fandom ever? And how can I
thank the folks who create for RotGoC and NDU? 

By giving them presents for my birthday....

One short piece based on one of my works, and a second short piece based on one of their
works.

Click the Tumblr link above if you want to know more.

2] Tales of Nightmare Dork University

Series Begun:

2016-04-01

Series Updated:

2019-01-20

Description:

The interactions of five college-aged students at NDU...

1] Pitch Black, high-strung drama major, prone to migraines, jealousy, and hissyfits
2] Piki Black, his more financially successful twin brother, who has emotional baggage
of his own
3] Coz Pitchiner, lacrosse player, athletic scholarship student, in SOME kind of
relationship with Pitch [bed partner? boyfriend? fiend and tormentor?]
4] Proto, rooms with Pitch and Pitchiner, has some HIGHLY unusual habits
and a taxidermied best friend, a ferret called Mister Pickles
5] Jack Sickle, extremely shy and nervous student of early childhood education,
stalked / idolized by Piki

See series notes for more information; I did not create these characters, I'm merely
having the time of my life playing with them.

Notes:

If you are wondering what the devil Nightmare Dork University is, and what it has to do
with either the movie RISE OF THE GUARDIANS or the GUARDIANS OF CHILDHOOD books
by William Joyce, please visit the NDU 101 page on Tumblr and its accompanying tags.
It's a wild and woolly ride involving four different versions of Pitch Black and a very
different version of Jack Frost, all of whom either room together or "fraternize" in a
college / university AU. 

3] NDU Relative Values
 

Series Begun:

2018-02-08

Series Updated:

2018-10-20

Description:

A spin-off of my Tales of Nightmare Dork University series, focusing on family members,
past and present, of our NDU boys.

4] Footlights and Frontispieces, Monsters and Manifolds
 

Series Begun:

2018-10-20

Series Updated:

2019-01-20

Description:

Another offshoot of the Tales of Nightmare Dork University, set in the future.

Notes:

In this AU, Piki Black and Jack Sickle are married and dividing their time between Manhattan
and upstate New York. They have a daughter, Emily Sickle Black, who will eventually become
a volcanologist, and will have a daughter of her own named Zilpha.

Piki is a successful playwright, and spends six weeks each summer running a youth theater
workshop in Rotsblok Falls, 185 miles north of New York City.

Jack has quite a few years of early elementary school teaching under his belt and eventually
becomes the author of the children's book series ARTHROPOD ABBEY, illustrated by his and
Piki's niece, entomologist Seraphina Pitchiner.

Also in this AU, Pitch Black and Coz Pitchiner reunited after a long separation, during which
time Coz did military service and had a surrogate bear a daughter for him, unbeknownst to
Pitch. After a lot of soul-searching, Pitch accepted Seraphina as his own daughter and the
three became a family.

A series of lucky breaks led Pitch to a career as a horror novelist and sought-after
screenwriter, which helped tone down the rivalry between himself and Piki.

After Coz left the military, he took some of the skills he'd learned there to open his own
garage and automotive repair service, which gave him a good enough income that he didn't
feel he was leeching off Pitch. At a later point, for a lark, he answered an ad to teach a night
course in military history at a community college's adult education program, and shockingly
found he was good at it, surprised that his NDU degree was useful for something.

Pitch and Coz did not formally marry until Seraphina was seven. They live in the rowhouse
Coz inherited from his maternal grandparents in Isherwood, a NYC suburb.

Proto, as always, is an unknown quantity. What he did after NDU remains to be seen.

============================

I will be slowly transporting the pieces that were originally posted on Tumblr, and
crossposting the ones that appear on AO3.