What is Paranatural?
Paranatural is a long-running, high-quality webcomic/web serial by Zach Morrison. You can read it here.
I have been reading webcomics regularily since I was very young, I have many of the interests and projects I have today because the wild, experimental artform of webcomics drew me in and kept me all the while. Someday, I'll make a reccomendation page for my favorites; out of modern, still-running webcomics, Paranatural would be just about at the top of the list.
Pnat is a comic about a boy named Maxwell Puckett who moves to his father's hometown after the death fo his mother and becomes absorbed in a supernatural subculture that has been thriving in that town for generations. What begins with one boy trying to navigate into an odd environment has slowly, naturally expanded in 15 years of production into the story of the whole town, a score of separate plans, plots, and pursiuts so tightly interconnected that the reveals and plot twists consistently take my breath away.
This is one of the most high-quality web projects I've ever seen. Morrison was creating some of the best character designs and visual combat choreography (that link goes to a section in which four easily decipherable fight scenes are occuring simultaneously) I had ever seen in webcomics before they pivoted to Paranatural being a largely text-based project, at which point they started turning out some of the funniest writing I've ever read. Even if this isn't your art form or your genre, Pnat is worth your time.
My Fics
The central characters of Paranatural are indisbutably Maxwell Puckett and his social circle. There are quite a few related groups that get a lot of screentime, like a group of bullies, the PTA, Max's family, and several supernatural organizations, but the central group is the Paranatural Activity club that sweeps in Max to join in their ghost-busting endeavors on his first week at his new school.
The teacher sponsor of that school club is an imcredibly embarassing weirdo named Richard Spender. Since the webcomic has taken decades to create (as webcomics do), author/artist Zach Morrison, by their own admission, slowly became more interested in their adult charactrs with time (without losing interest in their young characters.) In even early chapters, Rick was beocming a more and more grounded, complicated, and plot-important character. Then, in 2020, after a few long hiatuses, chapter 7 had Rick on the main character.
It had been confirmed that another teacher in the school, Jean Garcia, was his secret boyfriend near the end of chapter five. Chapter seven begins with the two of them alone at home and then delves into Rick's memories of the past; his past, the pasts of the members of the Paranatural Activity Club, the past of the town.
Something happened to me and I wrote a string of fanworks about Rick and Jean. I haven't written any more Pnat since then, but considering its ongoing and continually being good, that may change.
As it stands, here are some fanworks about Rick and Jean.
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Dawn Breaks like a Fallen Vase: Unambiguously the best of my Paranatural fics, Dawn Breaks was an earnest attempt to depict a night of Jean Garcia's lycanthropy curse as close to canon as I could get it (at the time. Canon has been disproving my extrapolations since). A canon fact that entrances me is that no one knows Jean is a werewolf because Rick uses his control of light to remove the transforming moonlight from Jean, which does... something. We also know that they kiss. This fic was born of those two facts.
Surprise Dissection Day: While writing "The Future I Want Ect." below, I wrote the words 'surprise dissection day' and made myself laugh really hard. Then I wrote a Jean/Rick fic in which Jean inflicts the dissection of last night's woodland victims on his middle school students. What a guy, love this character, thank you Mx. Morrison.
The Future I Want for Jean Garcia: What I want for my Paranatural Fav is the highly coveted honor of being the person who gets to kill murder Davy Jones. I think he deserves it.
