While at a parent-teacher conference Lydia discusses her most unique student with an equally unusual guardian.
Thanks to an invitation to visit a graveyard, that develops into something more.
Development is a The Addams Family/Beetlejuice fanfic by Metal_Chocobo, and can be read by Archive of Our Own here
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Development provides examples of:
- Black Comedy Cannibalism: Wednesday implies that the angry mob that tore her grandfather limb from limb were themselves cannibalized by the Addamses as revenge.Wednesday: I was too little to participate, but the banquet lasted for days.
- Desecrating the Dead: When Wednesday gives Lydia a human heart from a cadaver as a gift, Lydia declines and insists she returns it. Not because she finds it gross or indecent, but because she has hung around the undead long enough to know that the cadaver would want it back.
- Fantastically Indifferent: While Lydia is more consciously aware of regular society than the Addams family, her history with the supernatural makes her less easily spooked by the Addams' deadly hobbies than most other people, more put off by Wednesday's frivolous spending than the poisoned food and electric chairs.
- Like Parent, Like Child: Wednesday possesses the same frivolous lack of restraint in spending as Gomez. She also has the same habit of speaking in Gratuitous French as Morticia, referring to Lydia as "ma petite araignée" ("my little spider").
- Malicious Misnaming: Beetlejuice routinely gets Wednesday's name wrong just to rile her up (a fact Wednesday picked up on), usually a different day of the week.
- One-Word Title
- Patchwork Fic:
- Most of the Addams Family lore used comes from the first and second live-action movies. Wednesday's paternal grandfather was torn apart from wild horses, Granny is Morticia's mother and mention goes to Fester (who's Gomez's brother) having sent time in the Bermuda Triangle. Pubert — a character exclusive to Addams Family Values — is Lydia's art student, meeting Wednesday at a parent-teacher conference, and the film's Big Bad Debbie is buried in their family cemetery. There are also hints that the 2019 animated film also occurred, with mention of Fester having opened up a partnership with Margeaux and Wednesday introducing Lydia to her school-friend Parker years later, the town of Assimilation just beyond the Addams Family property.
- Most of the Beetlejuice content borrows from the animated series — Beetlejuice being a Creepy Good Anti-Hero and Lydia's friend, the two of them going on wacky adventures in the Neitherworld, the nature of his powers, mention of Claire Brewster and a cameo from Prince Vince — there is mention of people who commit suicide working in the Celestial Bureaucracy and mention of Delia being her stepmother instead of her real mother, both references to the film.
- Strange Minds Think Alike: Whereas Wednesday and Lydia were meant for each other romantically, Beetlejuice and Pugsley get along like a house on fire.Beetlejuice: Are those beetles?
Pugsley: Yeah. We usually get a termite-roach blend, but they were out at the bait shop. So I got an economy beetle variety pack instead. Are you staying or what?
Beetlejuice: I'm in heaven.
