#and now this guy it has relatively recently hit me how close we have grown. Like I recently realized I misremembered our relationship | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

uwuwriting · 4 years ago

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Midoriya, Todoroki and Mirio waking up with kisses

Request: May I request best boys Todo, Mirio and Deku waking up with kithes. They’re all grown up and maybe the kithes aren’t coming only from the reader......okay I may want them to have kids and be all cute. - anonymous

Um excuse me who gave you the right to make this cute request? I have weak resolve and um ->this<- close to writing another dad fic. I LOVE TODOROKI SO MUCH I SWEAR I COULD DIE! Sorry for the small break I took yall but I’m back and better than ever *that's an overstatement bc my allergies decided to ruin my summer*. Hope you like it. Love ya. 💖💖💖

rules

warnings: characters are aged up, todoroki and mirio are dads, deku is a dad to be, fluff till your very soul

Midoriya Izuku

-Izuku is a very busy hero.

-Being the number one in Japan and running his own hero agency is very tiring.

-He loves spending time with you and really tries to make it up to you whenever he is called into an emergency.

-Now, Izuku as an expecting dad is a whole other issue.

-He doesn’t spend as much time at his agency, deciding to take his paperwork home and do it while you’re in his line of vision.

-Being such an important and strong hero puts both you and your child in danger so he prefers being in a one mile radius.

-Helicopter dad 99% of the time.

-There are however, times when he has to go to the agency or on patrols.

-And there are times when he has to answer to an emergency.

-This was one of those times.

-He was chilling on the couch while you basically slept on him, on hand massaging your lower back and one rubbing soft circles on your belly feeling the baby kick once in a while.

-He loves feeling them kick.

-They always do when he touches your belly.

-You told him that they already love him, “reacting to their daddy’s touch is a sign of pure affection”.

-Now many things happened at once.

-They gave a rather powerful kick, waking you up with a whine while his phone started ringing on the coffee table.

-He had to leave and you almost had to kick him out the door since he didn’t want to leave.

- “But why do I have to go???? I wanna stay with my babies!”

- “MIDORIYA IZUKU!”

-He came home really late that night and collapsed on the bed, wrapping you in his arms nuzzling into your hair before drifting off to sleep.

-It was one of those rare mornings when you woke up first, from a kick...again.

-You expected Izuku to be already awake but nope, he was snoozing.

-You really cherished these moments.

-You never truly got to see him really relax anymore, both with hero work and his constant worry for the baby he always had that wrinkle in between his brows.

-Even asleep.

-Last night’s fight must have taken a lot out of him.

-Getting restless you decided to nuzzle into his neck, leaving feather light on his shoulder, neck and jaw.

-He didn’t even stir.

-Trailing up his jaw you left a kiss on each cheek and two on his nose before cupping his face and peppering his forehead.

-The last kiss was on his lips, feeling him kiss back as he finally woke up.

- “Mmm good morning.”

-You just kissed his nose again making him scrunch it up.

-Placing his hands on your sides, his thumbs rubbed your belly as his lips followed their own trail along your face.

-You giggled as he explored your face letting out small whines every time he kissed a rather ticklish spot.

-He finally reached your lips giving you a long kiss and bringing you flush to his chest.

- “I wish I could wake up like this every morning.”

-Just then your kid decided it was a good time to sucker punch you in the liver, giving their father their own little good morning.

-Izuku chuckled at your groan and leaned down pecking your stomach.

- “Good morning to you too little one.”

Bonus

- “I think I might be having a kidney failure.”

- “Y/N come on don’t be dramatic.”

- “You want me to kick you in the balls?”

- “No.....”

- “Good now less talking more kisses.”

Todoroki Shouto

-Shouto having a day off is a blessing.

-Your daughters are angels whenever their dad is home wanting to let him relax.

-When I say that the twins are daddy’s girls I mean it.

-It’s not only about them getting what they want it’s also about loving their dad unconditionally.

-They don’t see him as the easy parent who will let them go on with their shenanigans unbothered.

-They just see him less and really miss him so they usually do their best to give him a relaxed and happy afternoon or day off.

-So when he told you that he was taking the week off you guys were so excited.

-Your girls even though they were like three stayed calm and collected, dawning their dad’s infamous poker face when he came home that night, playing quietly on the living room floor.

-The night was really quiet.

-You knew that the girls were excited and were bubbling with energy, they talked your ear off when you broke the news to them but they also wanted their dad to relax.

-Really you could never truly understand them.

-They were the most considerate toddlers you have ever met.

-Since they know that their parent’s jobs are hard, since you are both in the hero business, they always restrained themselves.

-The toddlers Fuyumi or Natsuo described while the babysat, the constantly arguing and bickering twins, were a far cry from what you saw at home.

-Sure they had their slip ups but they were generally well behaved.

-The did crawl onto their dad’s lap though at the end of the night, snuggling into his relative sides and snoozing off almost immediately.

-The next morning you woke up first.

-Todoroki was sleeping almost on you, his arms around your waist as his head was buried into your neck.

-He looked really tired last night, poor baby must have been exhausted.

-You moved some of his hair from his eye tracing the red skin of his scar with your fingertip.

-Long into your relationship he had told you that he felt self conscious about his scar.

- “Not many people will find this attractive, I-I think you could do much better than this.”

-From that day on you had made it your mission to make sure he knew you loved him, scar and all.

-Leaving a few kisses on his forehead you raised his head slightly bringing your lips to the scarred tissue of his eye as you left feather light kisses on the red skin.

-When his grip on your waist tightened you let his head rest back on your chest and whispered a soft I love you.

-That’s when you heard the pitter patter of little feet on the marble floor of your home.

-Whispers could be heard from outside your door and only caught the words ‘breakfast’ and ‘you’re stupid’, before your bedroom door opened ever so slightly.

-Two heads of fluffy hair, one snow white and one fiery red, walked in and made their way to your bed.

-You stifled your laughter as one of your three year olds tripped over one of Shouto’s shoes grabbing onto her sister for support.

-You could feel the glare the white haired girl gave to her twin without having to see it.

-They made their way to your side of the bed, locking eyes with you and waddling to you as quietly as possible.

-They both gave you a few kisses before looking at their dad who was completely oblivious to all this.

-You motioned to them to go around the bed and climb on from his side.

-The twins nodded and before you knew it the two of them were looming over Shouto.

-You kinda expected them to plop down on him and give him a heart attack but you melted when your girls just laid their heads on their dad’s back.

-Shouto stirred at the extra weight but he didn’t wake up.

-After like ten minutes of your snuggling, the twins got restless and started their master plan of waking their father up.

-One of them settled fully on his back while the other moved some of his hair from his eyes, like you had done previously.

-Then the assault began.

-Soft kisses on his forehead, cheeks, under his eye, on his nose.

-Really anywhere they could reach.

-Soon enough Shouto woke up a smile adorning his features as he slowly wiggled out of your arms, placing the twins between the two of you.

-He rested his chin on your white haired daughter and brought an arm over both of them reaching for your hand on the other side.

- “Good morning snowflakes.”

- “Good morning daddy.”

-He made all of you snuggle with him for half an hour before scooping his girls into his arms and walking out the door to make breakfast.

-One of his top mornings no doubt.

Bonus

- “We tried to make breakfast.”

- “But Ren burned the toast.”

- “And you froze the juice.”

- “My little girls are not the best cooks huh?”

-*incoherent mumbling*

Mirio Togota

-To say that Mirio is busy is an understatement.

-Being the owner of a large hero agency and doing his own hero work on the side even though he no longer has his quirk really takes a toll on him.

-Having a four year old son didn’t make things easier.

-He wanted to be there for his child like his father was there for him.

-He hits him really hard when he comes home one night and he finds his son sleeping on the living room couch clearing waiting for him to come home.

-Until recently the two of them had a ritual before they went to bed.

-Your son said that it scared the nightmares away.

-But a handful of paperwork had fallen into Mirio’s hands forcing him to stay longer at the agency, missing his son’s bedtime by two hours.

-It was the first night that you ad let him wait for Mirio knowing how ever since their small ritual stopped happening , nightmares had been keeping the little boy awake.

-But alas sleep had won him over and now he was being carried to bed by his dad.

-Mirio almost had a breakdown later saying that he was a horrible father.

-You had to calm him down by giving him some examples of him being an amazing dad before luring him to bed.

-Later that night your son woke up from a nightmare, trembling and crying out for his parents.

-He spent the night in your bed, Mirio placing him in the middle bringing him flush to his chest.

-He calmed down rather quickly and was asleep in no time, you two following suit soon after.

-The next morning you woke up to small kisses on your forehead as chubby hands held your cheeks.

-It was the cutest thing you had ever seen.

-Big blue eyes looked back at you as you opened your eyes, a small twinkle in them.

-You brought him into a hug, rubbing his back softly as your other hand reached out to grab Mirio’s under the sheets.

-After a mini cuddle session with mini Mirio you motioned to big Mirio and winked at your son.

-Slowly getting up you straddled his hips as you placed your son gently on his chest.

-He let out a low grunt but only placed a hand on your hip turning his head to the side.

-Then you dove in.

-You left small kisses on his jaw, cheeks and lips while your son hugged him really really tightly.

-Your kiss attack continued until Mirio’s giggles bounced off the walls, his arms shooting up to wrap around your back, trapping both of you in his embrace.

-It was his turn to attack you both with kisses, not holding back at all.

-Really your plan kinda back fired.

-When you finally got up almost an hour later, Mirio had that proud smile on his face.

- “Maybe I’m not that bad of a dad after all.”

-You just kissed him again a little more passionate now that you were out of your son’s sight.

Bonus

- “W-when did you come down? I didn’t hear you coming down the stairs.”

- “He has your quirk you dummy!”

- “Don’t call dad a dummy!”

- “Go put some pants on you shrimp!”

TAG TEAM AY:

@iwaqchan @the-arcana-fan-fic @angelwritings @axerrri @reinyrei

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littlemessyjessi · 3 years ago

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“Tae and Jae”: Part 2 from the BTS 8th Member Series “Untamed”: Mae Jae: The Gucci Twins Have A Day: Fake Social Media + Imagine

Part Two to Tae and Jae’s day of adventure !

"Where are we going?"

Jae couldn't help but laugh at the bewildered look on Taehyung's face as he drove them further and further out into the middle of nowhere.

"Just keep going." she said. "It's not far from here."

"Where even is here?" he asked. "It's pretty but I've never been here."

"That's kinda the point." she said.

"Did you bring me out here to kill me?" he asked, widening his eyes at her and pulling on his acting skills. "Was this your equivalent of fattening up the pig? Spoil me, feed me and then just bring me out here so you can bury me where no one can find me."

"How dramatic." she laughed at his faux face of terror.

His face melted back into his iconic boxy smile and he continued on before she directed him to pull off just ahead.

"Just sit tight and keep your eyes closed." she said before hopping out of the car.

"Well, this is it, I guess. She's getting her weapon of choice out of the trunk. I knew I should've been suspicious when she wouldn't let me help her with that big suspicious lump earlier. Good bye, cruel world." he said dramatically out the open window.

Jae's laughter could be heard in the background.

Taehyung snickered a little as he could hear her moving around out there.

"Am I actually waiting for you to dig a hole?" he teased.

"Yah! Shut it! I'm working on something!"

He snickered again though he nearly hit on his head on the roof when she tapped him on the shoulder and he jumped.

"Ok, we're ready. Come on." she grinned.

He cut the engine and climbed out, only to be ordered to shut his eyes again.

Jae took his hand and began to lead him forward a bit before they came to a stop.

"Ok, you can open them now."

It took him a moment to adjust to the brightness but when he did, his jaw opened in shock before his face squished in affection.

"Awwwww!!!! Noona!!!!"

Jae laughed as he clobbered her in a hug.

Tae never called her Noona unless he was particularly emotional.

There before them were two places set up for them to paint.

"I thought we could paint and watch the sunset." she supplied. "We can go and get food afterwards and I know a place for a treat before we go home."

Tae squeezed her to him again once more before fishing his phone out of his pocket and snapping a picture of the easels and supplies.

"I love you." he said as he looked down at the picture on his phone.

"I love you too, Tae." she chuckled. "Now come on, let's make some masterpieces."

He let her yank him towards the set up and the two of them spend the next couple of hours painting the scene around them and chatting comfortably.

The both of them had missed this.

Even when living in the same home, it was still sometimes hard to get one on one time with loved ones.

People were busy and as you got older, it only got worse.

In the beginning, when they were all crammed into a tiny little place with way too many bunks in one room, there were around each other constantly.

It was true that Taehyung still ended up in Jae's room at least a couple of times a week.

The poor guy needed to hold something to sleep and he would much prefer if it was a person as a pillow.

Jae usually let him because it was him but she also pulled long hours in her studio so sometimes she didn't even get home until the early hours of the morning.

Recently, she'd been working on her own content as well and doing producer work for the company and it wasn't uncommon at all for her to come at nearly four in the morning.

Not to mention, she was planning a trip to go back home to see her parents soon and he knew first hand what a pain travel plans could be.

He felt really touched that she thought about him enough to plan ahead and spend the day with him.

It reminded him of the early days when she'd take them all out one by one for ice cream or noodles.

Her and Jin had always done that kind of thing.

The eternal big siblings.

After they finished their paintings they left them on the easels and laid back on the tarp to watch as the last few rays of sunlight dipped below the horizon.

"This has been really nice, Jae." he said, arms tucked behind his head.

"I'm glad you've had fun, Tae." she said. "We're not done yet though."

"I would've been happy just driving around with you." he shrugged. "You didn't have to do all this."

Jae turned to look at him.

"I know that, Tae." she chuckled. "I know you'd be happy cuddling up and watching a movie. But I wanted to do it. I like treating you. All of you. And I wasn't always able to do things like this but now I am. We're all in much better positions in life now, financially, emotionally, a lot of ways. And I think it's important to spoil your loved ones when you get the chance."

"You spoiled us in the beginning." he laughed. "I remember when you used to take me to the convenient store and let me pick out any candy I wanted. It felt like I'd been on a shopping spree."

"It was just candy, Tae." she said with an amused look.

"Not to me it wasn't." he said seriously. "It was a lot more than that."

Her features softened looking over at him.

While Big Hit marketed the two of them as 'the twins' he was still a few years younger than her.

He'd grown into such a good man and she was so proud of him.

Sometimes she forgot that Taehyung was younger than her though and would always look at her like his older sister.

She remembered that scrawny kid with the boxy smile and the effervescent personality.

She remembered how so many people didn't know how to handle Taehyung's personality.

What Taehyung remembered was how even when they didn't get along in the beginning, she'd still come and get him and take him for noodles or make him dumplings in the middle of the night.

"Do you remember when you got up at like three in the morning and made me dumplings because I was missing my family?" he asked suddenly, looking up into the darkening sky.

She laughed, "Yes. I remember we weren't exactly close then but I could hear you in the other room."

Taehyung laughed, "I remember you walked out and I was fully expecting you to scold me for not being in bed."

"Sounds like me." Jae snorted.

"But you didn't. You just walked into the kitchen, hair snatched into a bird's nest on your head and started cooking." he said. "I remember I just watched you for the longest time and then you just shoved me a plate and said- 'Here'."

"I wasn't that great at expressing myself back then." she shrugged. "Food was my love language."

"Kinda still is." he teased.

She shrugged, "Food is simple. You can do a lot for someone by just letting them know that you care enough about them to make sure they're well fed."

The two of them looked at each other softly.

"I didn't always say it. In fact, I never said it in the beginning. But I'm really appreciative of you being there and taking care of us. If it weren't for you and Jin, I don't know that I would've stayed. Joon made it clear that we could do it and that he'd lead us. That gave some reassurance. But without you and Jin, I just don't think I could've handled it." he admitted turning back to the blossoming stars in the sky.

"Yes you could've, Taehyung." she said, eyes focused on his profile. "Because you're far more talented than you give yourself credit for. I have no doubt that you'd have been fine without anyone else. But I'm really glad that I've gotten to be along for the ride to watch you grow. It's been a priviledge. One that I hope I can continue to have for the rest of my life."

Taehyung refused to respond and instead just rolled over to cuddle her.

She laughed, rubbing her hand up and down his back.

"Oh you big softy." she said.

They laid like that for the longest time before she pulled him to his feet.

"Come on. Let's get this loaded up and then I'm taking you for japchae." she said, smirking when his face lit up.

He didn't need to be told twice and soon they were speeding off in the direction of a little spot that sold some of the best japchae she'd ever had.

Which was saying something because she'd had a lot of it in her years in this world.

They tucked into a booth and she smiled watching Taehyung happily dig into his meal.

She snapped a picture and uploaded it before she tucked in herself.

Only a few moments and she laughed when she saw that Jungkook had already commented, whining about wanting some.

"We have to pick pizza up before we go home." she said.

Tae's eyebrows lifted, cheeks puffed and mouth full of food.

It was a comical sight.

"Kookie is hungry." she explained and his eyes creased in a smile.

"When is he not?" he asked when he finally swallowed.

"He's a growing bunny!" she defended.

"He's only two years younger than me." Taehyung said.

"He'll always be my baby bunny." she said with determination. "I don't care if he's sixty. He's bunny forever."

"You're such a mom." he laughed.

"The same goes for you." she said. "No matter how old you get, you'll always be my rambunctious little tiger cub."

Taehyung's creased in a smile.

One that he was never able to fight off when Jae referred to him as her cub.

"When are you headed back to see your family?" he asked.

"In a couple more weeks. I still have to iron out a few details and finish up a song I'm producing." she said.

"Are you excited?" he asked knowingly.

"I am." she grinned. "It's been so long since I've seen them in the flesh. And video calls just aren't the same."

He nodded knowingly.

He understood that.

He loved the BTS family that he'd come to have but it was different than actually seeing your relatives.

It was also something that none of them really got the chance to do very often.

Taehyung, himself, barely got to see his siblings and parents, and his grandparents, who had raised him, had been gone for a few years now.

"How long are you staying for?" he asked.

"Three weeks." she said, feeding her noodles into her mouth.

"Oh god." he said. "Jimin is going to be a monster."

"Not my sweet baby Jiminie." she teased knowing full well how much of an absolute demon Jimin could be sometimes.

His brat energy was off the charts at times and when he was pouty he was a menace.

Taehyung rolled his eyes, "Yeah, sweet baby Jiminie. Suuure."

"Well, you two can cuddle each other while I'm away." she said. "We both know you'll be sulky too."

"I'm offended that you would even suggest such a thing." he said. "I don't sulk."

"Mmmhmm, sure." she said, impishly looking at him over the rim of her glass as she took a drink.

He pouted at her and she nearly choked to death on the sprite.

He grinned evilly, "Karma."

"Shut it." she said, wiping the soda from her face.

"I'm gonna miss you when you're gone though." he said.

She reached out to pat his hand.

"It'll be ok, Tae." she said. "It won't be long."

"I know. And I do hope you have fun." he said but she could tell he was still fighting another pout.

"I'll call everyone all the time." she offered. "You can even sleep in my bed while I'm gone."

"Well, thank you for the permission but Tannie and I have already made plans to temporarily move in anyway. And I will be raiding your closet while you're gone."

"I expected nothing less." she said. "Although, you act like you don't just walk in and do that anyway."

He grinned in response before leaning back and patting his stomach.

"My grandma would be proud." he said.

Jae laughed in response.

"Alright, come on, tiger cub. I got one last treat, then we'll pick up some pizza for the heathens and head home." she said sliding out and pulling him to his feet.

He stretched and reached for his back pocket.

"Touch your wallet and you die tonight, Kim Taehyung." she said. "I already told you. The next time, you will actually get a spanking right here in public."

Taehyung didn't say anything else.

He just hugged her from behind, chin on her shoulder while she paid the cashier and left a tip for the waiter.

He snatched her hand as soon as they were outside and swung them together like a child.

"You happy, Tae?" she asked.

"Very." he said.

"Alright, come on." she said.

He didn't fight her when she took the keys from him.

She could tell he was getting sleepy by this time.

He watched her while she drove them, weaving through the streets until they came to another stop.

Taehyung had nearly fallen asleep to the hum of the car and the feeling of the cool air conditioning on his skin.

"Come on, cub." she said tapping his nose. "Let's go."

He grinned when he noticed that she'd taken him to a hot chocolate bar.

The spent the next hour indulging in the delicious chocolatey treat, adding cream and marshmallows.

Even a few odd combinations here and there that Jae claimed were an abomination and that they should never speak about.

Tae had posted it to his social media and Jin had lectured Jae about giving him chocolate at this time of night as if Taehyung were four and then proceeded to call her and further assert his point.

"Kim Seokjin, you watch your tone or I'll sneak into your room while you're sleeping and lick your face." she said.

The fast and comical angry response that she recieved had Tae rolling with laughter when she put Jin on speaker phone.

"Jesus Christ." she said when she finally hung up. "I can only imagine his blood pressure right now."

"That vein in his neck is probably popping out right now." Tae said.

"He's getting a little red in the face." she continued.

"Hair whipping back and forth as he shakes his head." Tae laughed.

"Fastest rapper in the world." she giggled.

"Activated when angry." he said before the two of them dissolved into a fit of giggles.

Eventually, they piled back into the car and after having stopped for pizza for the rest of the members, they sped away towards their home.

Taehyung was sleeping when they got there, all but laid out over the console to throw his arm around Jae while she was driving.

She poked his cheek until he stirred.

"Come on, big guy." she said. "Help me take everything in."

His face was pinched as he struggled to wake up but he slowly helped her take everything inside anyway.

Jungkook, who had heard her car pull in, met them half way and snatched the pizza boxes out of her arms.

"You're welcome!" she yelled after him with a laugh.

"Thank you!" he called back before he disappeared from view.

When they finally made it in, the whole lot of them had surrounded the table like a pack of wild hyenas.

There was a mumble of greetings and thank yous.

The two of them parted ways to go and shower and change.

Jae was laying on her bed, scrolling through the pictures of the day when her door opened and Tae stood there.

Hair a fluffy mess and white tee shirt and pajama bottoms hanging on his frame.

He grinned before running and jumping on her.

"Oh god, Tae! Some warning would've been nice!" she laughed as he snuggled into her.

He looked the picture of innocence, head nestled in the blankets, eyes sparkling at her like a little boy up to no good.

She snapped another picture of him because it was just too good.

"Can I sleep in here tonight?" he asked.

She tapped her finger to her chin, pretending to be thinking before she smirked at him.

"I guess." she said, laughing when he grinned that boxy smile at her and called out for Tannie.

The pomeranian came bounding in and jumped on the bed, fully preparing to nest for the night.

They half watched something on Netflix for a while, half played on their phones, hands scratching idly at Tannie's fur.

She snickered as she watched him tuck his arm behind his head and take a selfie.

"Ooooh, Kim Taehyung and his selcas!" she teased and he almost shoved her off the bed.

However, a few moments later when she recieved a notification she couldn't help but aww.

'I have had the best day ever. Thank you for spending time with me and spoiling me today, Twinkie. I love you so much. @BTSJae #VXBFFL'

He hid his face when he could see her reading the caption.

Jae smirked, typing out her own response.

'I'm glad you had a good day, pumpkin. I always love spending time with you, baby bear.'

Taehyung peeked at his phone at the notification and shoved his face into the pillow with a groan of happiness.

She just chuckled and turned her attention back to the flat screen, just very thankful to be where she was in life.

--------- Part one is HERE if you missed it Bonus Content including a slightly jealous Jimin coming soon! ------

–

Hey loves! I hope you enjoy this! I’m trying out something new with writing for a while since I hit a major road block while I’m here in the hospital. I hope you enjoy these! If you’re interested in reading Jae’s full profile and the masterlist for this series you can find it HERE

I would love to know your thoughts and if you have any suggestions for other things to happen with Jae and the boys, just let me know!

I love you and I hope you have a good day, my loves.

Love,

Kenny

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lassieposting · 3 years ago

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💘💘💘💘 + ghasdug

send me 💘 + A SHIP and i’ll tell you—

where they first met and how

So Skug says they stowed away on the same ship, but this is...not exactly true.

He stowed away on that ship, because he was running away from home and he was a snobby little lordling who'd never had to fend for himself a day in his life, so the furthest ahead he'd actually thought to plan was "they won't want to turn around and drop me off once they're underway".

Ghastly was not stowed away at any point during that trip. Ghastly was signed on for the journey as a deckhand, because Ghastly's mother told him he needed to, and it had to be that particular ship. Ghastly gets seasick, and did not want to go to sea in the slightest. But Ghastly's mother has visions and so Ghastly does as he is told. Apparently there was something important waiting for him on that ship.

Anyway Skug pops out once he thinks they're far enough away from shore that they'll leave him be rather than take him back to port, and he is incredibly mistaken. The captain is in favour of turning him around right there and then, because he's clearly some rich lord's brat, and whoever his father is will probably pay handsomely for his safe return. Ghastly manages to talk the ship's crew into letting him stay on, provided he pulls his weight like the rest of them.

Needless to say, even before they're attacked by pirates, that voyage is a rude awakening for poor Skug, and good lord does Ghastly hear all about it. He has blisters. His feet hurt. This shirt was expensive and now it's all sweaty. His hair is in his eyes all the time. He's tired. The guy in the next bunk snores. Some of these people look like they have lice. He didn't realise he'd be doing manual labour, this is servant stuff, how dare they.

Ghastly does. Not realise at that point what he has let himself in for.

how long their ‘flirting’ phase was before feelings got involved

Poor Ghastly gets to pine for years. Baby Skug isn't a great boyfriend. He's less invested - he loves Ghastly, but they have two totally different outlooks.

Ghastly is ugly. He's always been ugly. He's got a face he believes only his mother could love. He's never believed he'd find someone who saw past that or loved him regardless. So as soon as he gets Skug into bed, he's over the moon and ready to commit. He's like 17, and would absolutely settle down there and then given half a chance.

Skug, on the other hand, was a weird-looking child who only recently grew into an attractive adolescent and he is loving it. For the first time in his life, girls are noticing him. He doesn't want to settle down, he wants to play the field and sow some wild oats and have fun. So there are periods of exclusivity with Ghastly, interspersed with periods where Skug basically drops him to chase after the latest pretty bit of skirt.

who fell for who first ( if applicable )

Ghastly's smitten by the time they make it back to Ireland - Skug is a bit soft and allergic to hard work and a pain in the arse, but he's flashy and charismatic and funny and pays attention to him without gawking at his face (past the initial "good god, what happened to you?") - but Skug is well and truly settled into living with Ghastly's family by the time he actually gives Ghas the come-on.

where their first date was and what it was like

They went to the local tavern and got drunk, and then rode home in the pouring rain once it kicked them out at closing time.

When they got home, Ghastly's parents had long since gone to bed, but that wasn't necessarily unusual - once Skug, who has a considerable allowance, is old enough to start drinking, Saoirse institutes a rule that if they're not home by the time she and her husband turn in for the night, she'll leave blankets in the barn and they can sleep there instead. She's not having them barging in, wasted, at all hours of the day and night, waking her up after a hard day's work.

So they put the horses away and give them a quick rub down, and Ghastly is trying to look anywhere but Skug because Skug's shirt has gone kind of see-through and poor Ghastly is an awkward, horny teenage boy, but he keeps shooting him these furtive glances over the horse's back and Skug notices because Skug notices everything and lowkey teases him about it. "Want me to sit for a portrait? It'll last longer," sort of teasing, and Ghastly tries to laugh along but he's also vibrant red because he's been caught staring, so obviously Skug realises something's up

And he's precisely as tactful about it as he ever is about anything, and jokes, "If I didn't know any better, I'd say you wanted me," and Ghastly's ears burn and he doesn't deny it quick enough and now Skug's eyebrows are inching towards his hairline and Ghastly panics because like, he's ugly, Skug is going to be disgusted or laugh at him and he can't cope with either, so he just? Freezes?

But like. Skug was a weird-looking, unfortunate child who very recently grew into an attractive adolescent, so he fucking thrives on attention. So his response to this awkward not-quite-a-confession is actually a moment of silence while he mulls this new information over (this feels like an eternity to poor Ghastly) followed by an early attempt at using The Hot Voice and, "If you want me, have me."

So, they end up having sex in the hayloft on the blankets Ghastly's mom left out for them. Ghastly has never even been kissed and doesn't admit that he has no idea what he's doing until he realises Skug is expecting him to take the lead. He also blurts that he loves Skug when he nuts, so like. It's your typical painfully embarrassing virginity loss.

It can't be all bad though, because Skug's up for doing it again.

who asks who out and how ( with a sign? spelled out on a cake? just a simple ‘will you go out with me’? )

So in my endgame-ghasdug AU, they get back together post-TDOTL. Ghastly survives being stabbed, but the blade nicked his spinal cord, so he's in a wheelchair for quite a while, and then has to do A Lot of physical therapy to relearn how to walk. Skug shows up at the hospital/facility where he's recovering every day unless there's an emergency, because Ghastly is very depressed and struggling with survivor's guilt over Anton and doesn't see the point in doing his physio because it hurts and he's exhausted and he shouldn't be alive anyway. And Skug annoys him into doing it, mostly by heckling him from the other side of the room, because he's not great at the whole emotional support thing. Ghastly will mutter, "Christ, I want to hit you," and Skug will tell him, "Well, if you come over here to do it I won't even duck." And if Ghastly gets his ass up and uses the walking frame support thing to cross the room, well, then Skug will take a punch like a man and be happy about it because Ghastly walked.

They also talk a lot during this period. Ghastly feels like shit, and he reminisces a lot about the good old days and how he never saw Ravel's betrayal coming and memories he has of Anton, and sometimes that veers into memories they share from when they were young men. And Skug, at this point, is old enough and has been through enough to admit that he wasn't great to Ghastly when they were boys. He was flighty and selfish and high-maintenance, and he would've hated to be treated the way he treated Ghastly. And he tells him that, at one point - that he's sorry, and if he could go back and do it differently, he would, assuming Ghastly was daft enough to be willing to put up with him a second time.

And Ghastly laughs and tells him, "I'd still have you now, you stupid bastard."

who proposes first

Ghastly. They're 19/20. Skug thinks he's joking.

if they keep / kept their relationship secret or let everyone know right away

Neither - they don't announce it, but it's not exactly a secret either. Ghastly's parents notice pretty much straight away, but other than a few parental pointers on what is and isn't appropriate, it's not really a topic of conversation.

where the proposal happens and how ( kiss cam at a baseball game? on a hillside surrounded by ducks? at a disney park? )

Skug's sister Confelicity accepts the first proposal she gets at the age of 16, because she's desperate to get out of their parents' house and away from their toxic relationship and controlling behaviour. Their father disapproves and refuses to attend the wedding (and, of course, their mother is not allowed her own opinion), and Carver is out of the country, so Skug stands in to a) pay and b) give away the bride. He takes Ghastly for moral support, because he doesn't like most of his relatives and also doesn't like the groom (Thurid Guild - their relationship doesn't improve when Confelicity divorces him a few years later to marry a baronet). While they're watching the couple say their vows, Ghastly murmurs, "We should get married."

Skug is right in the middle of his hoe phase and does not realise Ghastly's serious.

who’s more dominant

Generally, Skug. He is one hell of a force of personality and Ghastly does get steamrollered quite a bit, although he does eventually learn how to say no. Skug always gets things his way, always does whatever he likes and be damned to the consequences, and Ghastly is always there with a handful of the back of his shirt, pulling his ass out of whatever fire he started.

In bed, though, it's Ghastly.

how into pda they are

As teenagers, Ghastly's mother has to reprimand them occasionally for being too all over each other, but teenagers be rabidly horny. As grown men, they're just sort of casually affectionate. Comfortable with each other. When they're relaxing in camp after a day of travelling, Skug will lean against Ghastly to read a book or put his head on Ghastly's leg while they chat. They can have a silent conversation just by reading each other's faces. They'll nudge each other when something reminds them of an in-joke. They have that easy intimacy that comes with having known each other forever.

where their usual ‘date spot’ is ( if applicable )

As boys, Ghastly has a particular flowery meadow he likes to take Skug to for picnics, because he's a romantic. Skug at that age is considerably less so, and more interested in whether they can screw there without getting caught.

In the modern day, they go to see old movies. Ghastly was very into the early films of the late 1910s and the 1920s, after the war finished. He associates them with a time where he finally got to just set up his shop and live the life he always wanted to live. Skug hasn't seen most of Ghastly's favourites, because he spent that period of history fighting the truce and then spiralling into a black hole of trauma and misery, but he got very into the noir detective era to the point that he's still clinging to the aesthetic like 80 years later, so they'll alternate who picks the movies and catch each other up on their favourites.

who’s more protective

They've both spent their fair share of time fretting in the chair beside a hospital bed. After Ravel's betrayal, though, it's Skug. Ghastly retires as soon as he's considered fit to make the decision, and decides he wants to go back to Dublin to reopen his shop and just sort of try and forget Roarhaven exists. And Skug is absolutely adamant that he gets to do it. There's a lot of interest in Ghastly for a while - groundbreaking healing magic was used to fix what should've been a permanent injury, people want to know if he suspected Ravel, they want his advice on how to rebuild after Devastation Day. He's more approachable than China, and a lot more popular. But he can't cope with it all, and anyone who tries to hassle him in Dublin will have Skug to deal with.

how long it is before they sleep together ( can be as in ‘had sex’ or as in ‘shared a bed’ )

The first night Skug stays at Ghastly's family home. Ghastly is an only child, and his family isn't wealthy - their house doesn't have a guest room. It's sleep with Ghastly or sleep on the floor, and Little Lord Priss isn't going to be sleeping on the floor.

Honestly, he's relieved there isn't a spare room for him. He's never really slept alone before. Like most children of very wealthy families back then, he grew up in a nursery with his four oldest brothers and sisters, and when he was too old to live with The Children, he shared a room, first with Carver and then with Francis. The thought of being on his own in a strange house is pretty intimidating.

He moves to his own bed as soon as they get him one, but he stays in Ghastly's room, and he's perfectly happy with that.

(Ghastly is less happy. He's very much crushing on Skug and he's terrified he'll say something incriminating in his sleep.)

who steals whose clothes and how often

Skug gets to steal Ghastly's clothes for a year or two after he moves in with Ghastly's family. After that, they're built too differently. Ghastly is built like a brick shithouse of muscle. Skug is lean and toned and tall. When they're younger, he can more or less wear Ghastly's clothes as a nightshirt, but after Skug's final growth spurt, Ghastly's clothes don't sit right on him at all, and he's gotten too vain and fashion-conscious by that point to just wear them anyway.

what their usual coffee / tea orders are

Ghastly is fussy about his tea. Plenty of milk, two and a half sugars, leave the teabag in.

Skug just inhales it black, which Ghastly thinks is an abomination.

if they ever have any children together

Ghastly thanks his lucky stars every day that they have a 0% chance of accidentally spawning a skuglet. One of him is plenty.

He's very involved with Skugbab when he comes along, though. He's godfather and a very present uncle.

if they have any special pet names for each other

Skug doesn't do nicknames, and would rather not be given them, either. Ghastly gets away with "Skul", primarily because he's the only one who's known Skug since he was all of 16, but also because "Skulduggery" is a mouthful when all your blood is rushing to your downstairs brain and it's his own damn fault that he didn't think of that before he picked it.

if they ever split up and / or get back together

So many times. They're on and off again more frequently than Saracen's clothes. Every time Skug spots someone new, he ends it with Ghastly to pursue them, and then comes back when he loses interest or it doesn't work out.

what their shared living space is like ( messy? clean? what kind of decor? )

Ghastly's family home is an old farmhouse on the outskirts of Dublin. It's simple, but cosy, and Ghastly's dad is incredibly houseproud, so it's very well-looked-after. Skug prefers it by miles to his own palacial, but cold and unwelcoming, family home, and he tries to replicate the vibe later on with Wifey. It's pretty small compared to what he's used to, so it sort of feels like they're all living on top of each other, and he has to get used to not having any servants and drawing his own water to heat his own bath etc, but he's loved there, and that makes all the difference.

what their names are in each other’s phones

They're both old-ass men about some things, and this is one of them. So no emojis or anything - they're "Ghastly Bespoke" and "Skul". How romantic.

who falls asleep first and who wakes up first

Ghastly wakes up first: he's used to rising early to get started on his chores. Skug is absolutely not a morning person at this point in his life and Ghastly frequently has to turf his ass out of bed by pulling his quilt off/dumping water on him/yelling in his ear.

Reversed with modern day ghasdug: Ghastly still wakes at a sensible time, but damn it he left the army a century ago and now he likes a lie in. Skug never really stopped being a soldier and still has most of his military habits, so he's up with the sun.

who’s the big spoon / little spoon

Ghastly is the big spoon. Skug likes to be Held.

who hogs the bathroom

Skug. The boy is vain as all fuck. There is a grand total of one cloudy looking-glass in Ghastly's family's home and Skug spends a good chunk of the morning hogging it to fuss with his hair and peacock at his reflection. Ghastly is under strict orders Never to mention this to Fletcher.

#skulduggery pleasant #ghasdug #sp headcanons #long post

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felassan · 4 years ago

Text

Extended thoughts on the Dark Fortress preview pages [spoilers at link]

(Would I be an MJ if I did not do this? This post is under a cut due to spoilers.)

I like the preview pages a lot, I’m excited for release - roll on March 31. There’s a lot packed into just these limited pages, so I’m looking forwards to seeing the issue and its contents in their entirety.

A flashback to the Battle of Ostagar all those years ago is the last thing I was expecting when coming to this comic and it hit me with a one-two of feelings and nostalgia. Up there just off-screen, the Hero of Ferelden and Alistair have just lit the beacon in the Tower of Ishal. In these panels, the rain, the lighting, the atmosphere - it’s surreal (not in a bad way) seeing these fateful events again, back where it all kinda began really, and that page does a good job of replicating that cutscene and the heavy feel of it in a different medium. It’s a nice touch seeing surprise/unsureness and even conflict on some of the soldiers’ faces as Loghain gives the order to retreat. A couple of them even seen disconcerted as they walk away (looking at one another in askance). I like this take on Ser Cauthrien, and I wonder if Aaron ever encountered Aveline, Wynne, Carver or non-mage Hawke at Ostagar before the battle...?

Loghain’s words “He must do what his honor compels him to do” almost feel like a bit of metacommentary, i.e. on Loghain’s character in addition to obviously being about Ser Aaron.

In-universe before now, there have been varying accounts of Ser Aaron’s experience at Ostagar. Did he miss the fight, did he kill two ogres, etc. Now we see the truth of the matter is exactly as he told Vaea, which speaks of the trust and close relationship between the two. I’m not going to lie, the “I am coming my king” and subsequent panels make me cry on this re-read. Aaron reaching out for Cailan in his sleep with his other fist clenched, jerking awake from a nightmare in a cold sweat.. Aaron is so brave, he was the sole or one of the few soldiers in Loghain’s company to make this kind of stand (and you can see that there was a moment when he did turn to leave and considered it before turning back), and these panels convey the extent of the trauma that he experienced on the field of battle that day. I’m positive that in panel 2 here, it’s the exact moment when he sees Cailan die. It also hurts to think that not far from there, Duncan is seeing the same thing. They’ve done a good job integrating the new characters’ pasts with previous canon events with things like these. It’s like, expanding on things, but without anything conflicting.

When Aaron reaches for his alcohol skin I’m pretty sure his hand is shaking. Vaea is so tender and understanding/supportive at this part and it’s a really poignant and soft moment for them.. Aaron’s nightmares are a regular occurrence it seems. I love her and their relationship so much.. keeping watch over him while he sleeps a bit away from the others and the fire. ;; Also Autumn’s ears here, she’s lying down but still listening to what’s going on with and between her people. ;;

Brief pause here: I always appreciate getting a good sense where different events are taking place in the additional media. Also we now have in-universe confirmation that in the timeline we’ve now reached 9:45, as opposed to only external word-of-god. Do you guys ever think about your Wardens and how it’s been 15 years for them?

Aaron is like a father to Vaea 😭

Fenris has two daggers now in addition to his twohanded sword. The better for ending Danarius’ bloodline my dear 🔪

Have they tweaked Fenris’ hairstyle a bit, compared to Blue Wraith? Possibly also his skintone and eyebrows, compared to Blue Wraith? (I find this kind of thing hard to tell. If I’m incorrect here please feel free to correct me.) He looks good in this preview.

Poor Francesca. Tessa is really kind at this part and it’s nice to see more moments like these between female characters (women supporting one another). It reminds me of the moment in a previous issue where Vaea hugs Francesca on the ground. Tessa makes a great point here that true strength isn’t necessarily being stoic and unemotional, it’s standing up for what you believe in and for the greater good, even at great personal cost. It’s not 'not crying' and hiding your sadness. That’s a nice message, and again, Fran has really grown on me.

I also think it speaks well of Fenris and his character development after all these years in-universe that he was looking for a way to help Aaron, then immediately thought to go speak to Francesca when she was upset to see if he could help her in turn.

hhh brooding silent Marius staring broodily and silently into the flames and not responding to Fenris’ attempt at making conversation tho, the gentle lampshading.. That’s so true to his character. These might be my favorite panels in the whole preview. Fenris’ dry wit and facial expressions, the general composition, Fenris peacing out like “ok bye ig” lmao. You also get the sense that Fenris is reeling a bit and feeling abandoned since Hawke and co split up. After trying to do something to help both Aaron and Fran above, he then tries to make conversation with Marius. He’s trying to lighten the mood but also to connect after being alone for some time. He has missed having a group around him, and I suspect this group with its varying troubles and issues reminds him a lot of Hawke and co. That both the humor aspect and this characterization comes through in these 3 panels is pretty brilliant.

We reach the titular dark fortress! If ever there was a fortress for a bad guy, huh? x) The narrow exposed causeway being the only approach is a smart line of defense, strategically. Also, the realization that this is where Fenris lived while he was a slave of Danarius’ :| It’s a horrible-looking place and will be full of bad memories for him.

If this is how stormy the Nocen Sea gets in places - well, it reminds me of the lore that in Thedas naval exploration beyond the known map has been historically limited by different factors like pirates, Qunari dreadnoughts, stormy seas and sea creatures etc.

Characters speaking their native languages in places is always a nice touch. Now we’ve heard “By the Maker!” in Orlesian.

Aspects of the style and architecture of the Tevinter buildings in this preview, like the window shapes and the red lights and stuff, echo or remind me of what we’ve seen of Minrathous in the most recent trailer and some of the recent pieces of concept art for the next game. Neat.

We have our name and identity for the mage on the cover! Tractus Danarius, bastard son of Danarius. Danarius fucked around huh. “Tractus” has a Latin root, fittingly for a Tevinter name. Its different meanings are quite interesting: being dragged, extracted, plundered, an anthem sung in some masses, an elongated area or abnormal passage... I wonder if one of them will come into play somehow, the name possibly having been chosen for a reason? I also wonder how young Tractus is relative to Fenris, and if their paths have ever crossed in the past.

Tractus makes his entrance with two elven slaves or servants in tow. Like on the cover, his eyes are red. The head of his staff is a red sphere, also. Can we assume a connection to red lyrium, then, given these factors and the villains’ interest in using red lyrium to power the sarcophagus? I would guess that as normal magic was required to make it work with blue lyrium, the thing required to make it work with red lyrium is blood magic? A blood magic ritual. My guess is that the thing Tractus shows Marquette and Nenealeus is probably a chained up dragon or similar, which they plan to sacrifice and use the blood/power derived from that to fuel the magic/ritual. This is considering blood as a theme in this setting, blood as a source of power mechanically and the dragon-like beast on one of the covers which has clearly at one point been shackled and collared. (Here’s some previous speculation about Dark Fortress based on the covers.)

Although Tractus’ relative youth and inexperience compared to Nenealeus comes across in these pages, I get the feeling that Nenealeus will regret talking down in this manner to Tractus later in the comic.

It seems Tractus paints his nails dark. His commitment to aesthetic I give 5/5 stars

Remember the fall of Ventus/Qarinus to the Antaam invasion in TN? The Antaam must be progressing through Tevinter if people fear that Neromenian may soon fall also.

I appreciate that everyone’s horse is different! It’s a nice touch. A lot of the time in media groups of people ride identical horses like they’re clones or automatons as opposed to actual creatures.

Tractus’ smile when he’s asking if they’re going to wait for Qintara to arrive is slightly manic, lol, he’s giving off “Are we there yet?” car journey energy here. The doorway in this panel - is that a portcullis-style door? It seems like it has spikes at the bottom which would sink into the floor, and that there’s some kind of mechanism running along the floor towards it. Presumably to contain the [dragon?]?

I forgot Nenealeus has a sword - I guess then he knows magic artforms similar to those of a Knight-Enchanter or Arcane Warrior. Also here, Marquette echoes the Executor in TN, with the sentiment that Qintara fell with Ventus. Nenealeus is then referencing Gaius, the impersonator Qintara, right? That’s interesting; Gaius’ true master was Fen’Harel, on whose behalf he accessed important information about the world. This means then [?] that some of the time when Gaius believed himself to be working on behalf of Fen’Harel, he was really being manipulated by Nenealeus. Poor Gaius, at different points Fen’Harel and Nenealeus were pulling his strings. Does Nenealeus’ manipulation refer to Gaius trading it away to House Danarius for information?

Marquette references the red lyrium idol, and suddenly my Dragon Age 4 ears are pricking the way Autumn’s do. x) He mentions that it makes weapons, referencing I assume Meredith’s lyrium sword, Certainty and the ritual blade that pops out from the base of the idol during The Dread Wolf Take You. I wonder when the events of this comic take place in relation to the stories related at the spy meeting in TDWTY? Is this before or after the events of the Mortalitasi’s tale? At any rate, Marquette voices something we’ve been obsessing over: what else can and does the idol do specifically, beyond just making weapons and being Ominous and Powerful? Because whatever it is, it’s key to Solas’ ongoing plans, and Solas obviously knows.

So it seems that the villains’ plan is to use the red lyrium idol’s sword part with the sarcophagus, red lyrium, a ritual and [the thing Tractus shows them in that panel - the dragon?] in order to transform Shirallas into, essentially, a Red Wraith, a Red Lyrium Fenris. And then to arm him, under Nenealeus’ control, with the sword.

Does Shirallas still have his vallaslin - is it just the lighting and the angle in that panel? Also, that panel with Shirallas and Nenealeus looks so ominous and foreboding 😭 .. (and reminds me somehow of Fenris and Danarius when Fenris was still his slave and bodyguard) Shirallas, we really are in it now 😭 This is a really cool panel btw, like the composition, the lighting, the dramatic-ness.

Nenealeus is motivated by a desire to route the Antaam from Tevinter (like the mage in the Mortalitasi’s tale in TDWTY) and reconquer lost lands in order to restore the glory of the Imperium (which reminds me in a way of of Aurelian Titus, who also wanted to restore the Imperium to greatness). Classically Tevinter here.

“Danarius the Lesser” is a sick burn. I’d guess Tractus’ life thus far, as a bastard, has had themes and struggles with inferiority and consequent lack of power but desire for it (being disrespected, but craving respect, being connected to a certain world but not really part of it, in fact rejected by it). Venatori connection confirmed. That the Venatori had to be convinced to accept someone as a Danarius - implications for the role of the Venatori remnants and their role in Tevinter and things in general going forwards? Lightning flashes overhead as Tractus and Nenealeus have this face-off in that panel, emphasizing the tension between the two. I wonder what the magic in the fortress and in the courtyard can do? It’d have been no mean feat to escape from this place as a slave, it seems, especially bearing in mind there’s only one proper way out, that causeway (passage not included). Tractus’ staff-head lights up when he’s making a threat (uh-oh), and then wow! Shirallas moves so quickly, in the blink of an eye suddenly appearing out of nowhere and startling the guard-mage onlookers. He’s fast and formidable.

I wonder about Tractus. Is he a “half blood” because he’s a bastard and his mother wasn’t an Altus, or even wasn’t a mage, or because he’s a bastard and his mother was an elf? Or both?

Will we see a face-off between perrepataes (Marius and Shirallas)? Will Marius face-off against his former master, Nenealeus? Perhaps a showdown between the Blue Wraith and the “Red Wraith” is on the cards?

Back to our team in the tavern! There’s a looot of great character content packed into these pages, which is really cool. Each brief character interaction conveys a lot, and in general this sequence is just well-executed imo. How troubled and tired Aaron looks at the bar (my heart.. it hurts); Fran worrying for Aaron; Vaea knowing that she can’t pressure him too much because that’s just not how it works when it comes to folks who struggle with issues like these; Vaea asking after Fran’s wellbeing; Fran struggling to come to terms with what happened to her father; Fenris watching the door waiting for news (he’s so vigilant isn’t he? safety, an escape-route..); Marius Broods Harder; Vaea’s [relative] pacifism being highlighted; Vaea engaging Marius looking for reassurance; and the choice of having Marius break his silence now is meaningful and impactful in that it shows what happens when one becomes ‘numb’ to the constant murderizing of people, so to speak. Fenris then rightfully points out that becoming numb to killing and violence isn’t really a good thing and is worse, really, than being ‘soft’ or uncomfortable with it. I wonder if he’s speaking from experience here, given the hundreds of people Hawke and co kill their way through during the Kirkwall years, for example. Then Vaea’s concern for Aaron and his state of mind, and Fenris’ uncanny insight into that, of a man he’s only recently met.

Tessa looks so cute when she comes in the door! I love Vaea’s lil “:D” face when she sees her, and I wonder what the tavern food on the table is.

Those two panels, when Fenris talks about Hawke and Leandra, are the biggest emotional gut-punch in the preview pages 😭 omg.. I’m not strong enough for this.. bls... bruh... This is then compounded by (hitting me when I’m down!!) the look of sheer... fear, fury, alarm, upset, shock - that appears on Fenris’ face as soon as he hears “I found Danarius”. Seriously, look at his eyes here. He (understandably) still has a trauma-response associated with the name/man.

Bless Tessa.

I have to say, it’s very Metal of Fenris that not only did he kill Danarius in DA2 (in those universes), but he has also been going around Tevinter since then killing all of Danarius’ [adult] heirs, and that his response to learning there’s still one remaining is to grab his sword and go to march off with the aim of ending the bloodline a second time. Very metal

I love the final panels in the preview as well! Vaea’s sense/smarts and how she wasn’t afraid to tell Fenris no, Autumn’s giant ears, how Autumn also moves with Vaea to step in front of Fenris to stop him (SHE! HELPED!!!), Autumn’s Happy Face and furiously wagging tail and agreement with Aaron, and Proud Dad Aaron rising from his slump to praise Vaea with the most Proudest Daddest expression that you ever did see... ( ´•̥̥̥ω•̥̥̥` )

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auncyen · 4 years ago

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Ok ok so I'd been idly thinking about updating "Chats with Joker in Mementos" for Royal for a while, except as far as I know there aren't any transcriptions for the Royal Mementos chats like there is for Vanilla...

So...after some questionable use of my time, I now have a list of a good chunk of the starters in Royal. Only starters, not responses, since the point of the fic is having Joker be the one to respond, and I didn't transcribe ones I didn't think would be interesting for him to respond to, but still, if anyone does ever look to do a complete transcription, this might be helpful as a start? Or just interesting if you want to see what some characters talk about. Spoilers for third semester below cut.

Ryuji: Man, we really bust our asses to get stronger in here. I wish it meant we got stronger in the real world too.

Ryuji: Man, I had this horrible dream last night… Can’t remember a thing about it, though.

Ryuji: Ya know what? I guess Mona does have a mask, technically.

Ryuji: Yo, the way he jumps behind Shadows is so sick!

Ryuji: Yo, is it just me, or is fallin’ asleep getting tougher every night? At this point, I’m outta ideas of what to do.

Ryuji: Kinda fiendin’ for some ramen right about now… Maybe I’ll hit up Ogikubo when we get back.

RyujI: So lately, I’ve been tryin’ to work some training into my nightly routine before bed.

Ryuji: Hey, is it just me, or is Morgana’s sword basically the same size as Joker’s knife?

Ryuji: My mom made gyudon last night! My fave! Now I’ve got, like, fifty times more energy than usual!

Ryuji: This phantom thief stuff feels real as hell whenever he’s flyin’ around with that grappling hook.

Ryuji: Dude, that grappling hook is awesome! He looks like a freakin’ superhero with that thing!

Ryuji: Aww man, I just can’t get enough of those Akihabara maids��

Ryuji: Aren’t knives kinda hard to use ‘cause of their shortness? I definitely prefer my own shit.

Ryuji: I always thought darts looked easy—just aim for the board, y’know? But, it’s waaay harder than that.

Ryuji: Every try the monja in Tsukishima? That stuff is LEGIT.

Ryuji: Yo, does this outfit really make me look like I’m part of some biker gang?

Morgana: Listen, it’s not that I look like a cat. Cats just happen to look like me.

Morgana: I repeat: I am not a cat. To prove it, I took an actual bath yesterday.

Morgana: So, cats love to chase mice, right? I don’t get it—where’s the fun in that?

Morgana: I’m always so entranced by Panther’s whip technique!

Morgana: Panther, we have matching tails!

Morgana: You know, I’ve never actually been in a car before. Is it anything like I am now?

Morgana: I definitely made the right decision giving him the code name “Joker.”

Morgana: I’m willing to bet Joker’s skilled enough to use throwing knives.

Morgana: Anime, books, movies… Phantom thieves sure are popular.

Morgana: Last night I dreamt that Phantom Thieves were kicking some serious butt—let’s bring that dream to life!

Morgana: I can teach you everything you need to know about being a phantom thief. Relax—you’re in good hands!

Morgana: *yawn* I didn’t get enough sleep…

Morgana: I couldn’t fall asleep at all last night. I just laid there with my eyes open…

Morgana: I like Yongen-Jaya; it’s a great place for a stroll.

Morgana: Is Shujin Academy the only thing in Aoyama?

Morgana: I was vegetating in front of the TV last night, and I have to say, there are some pretty decent shows on now.

Ann: The bakery had a sale yesterday and I ended up buying everything they had!

Ann: The Ferris wheel is a must for me at theme parks, every time. I love being able to just relax.

Ann: I have an upcoming shoot at a theme park, but what sucks is how I can’t go on any of the rides.

Ann: Last night I dreamt I was eating a chocolate bar, then all of a sudden, it got mad and started chasing me!

Ann: Every once in a while I have a dream where I get chased by a Shadow…

Ann: I’ve been sleeping really well since I started getting all this exercise.

Ann: I was up late watching TV last night, so I might be a little sleep deprived…

Ann: I tend to do my clothes shopping in Kichijoji—it’s fun looking through all the resale shops.

Ann: I hate when people ask me to say stuff in English just ‘cause I lived overseas.

Ann: It always bothers me when foreign movie subtitles leave stuff out or take too many liberties.

Ann: I was talking to my overseas friend the other day—her straightforward attitude was really refreshing!

Ann: I was talking to Shiho on the phone and before I knew it, three whole hours had passed!

Ann: Joker seems like he’d make a good cook, doesn’t he? I mean, he’s great with his knife and all…

Ann: It’s actually quite exhilarating to attack with a whip. I wonder why that is…

Ann: Whenever my foreign relatives come to Japan, they always rave about how much they love Japanese food!

Ann: Do you think there’s anything I can do about my outfit? I feel like I stand out too much in this…

Ann: Is there a difference between a whip and a grappling hook?

Ann: Ya know, Skull’s always been into skull designs and stuff.

Ann: Wouldn’t a grappling hook be awfully handy in the real world?

Yusuke: I wish to paint the world as only I see it. The best way to succeed at this is through practice.

Yusuke: It’s fun to walk around and inspect different temples and shrines. The architecture is always impressive.

Yusuke: If Shadows are sentient, do you think their being moved by a painting would invoke a change of heart?

Yusuke: There have been times where I was compelled to create three-dimensional art.

Yusuke: I’m quite curious about Mona’s Western-style sword…

Yusuke: I hear whips are quite difficult to use. Where did you learn how to wield one?

Yusuke: Joker using a grappling hook…. That would make for a picture-perfect composition.

Yusuke: Mona, what exactly do you have in those pouches?

Yusuke: Creating a piece of art is pointless unless I can convey the full essence of the subject.

Yusuke: Art museums stimulate my creativity like no other place—I wish I could live inside one.

Yusuke: Skull and I both use long melee weapons, but they’re total opposites of one another.

Yusuke: Why does my outfit have a tail? I don’t understand…

Yusuke: I considered growing my own bean sprouts, but it seems to be more expensive than buying them grown.

Yusuke: I once had a dream that I washed up on a deserted island. I painted as much as I pleased… So wonderful.

Yusuke: I may specialize in Japanese-style painting, but I’d like to learn some Western techniques as well.

Yusuke: That grappling hook is very useful. I should find a way to utilize one in my daily life.

Yusuke: The other day, I went into the mountains to gather vegetables so I could cut back on food expenses.

Yusuke: I tried to paint a landscape of the starry sky once, but it’s quite difficult to do so from within the city.

Yusuke: India ink isn’t my specialty, but I’ve been experimenting with it in some recent work, just for fun.

Makoto: I may have stopped being a doormat for adults, but people are still calling me a “teacher’s pet.”

Makoto: A phantom thief’s body is their most vital asset. We need to make sure we eat balanced, nutritious meals.

Makoto: Do you enjoy visiting theme parks? I’ve rarely been to one myself.

Makoto: Fox looks cooler using his katana than I had originally imagined.

Makoto: I had the weirdest dream… I was at school, but I was wearing my phantom thief outfit.

Makoto: Would anyone care to learn how to drive, while we’re here? This place seems as good as any for practice.

Makoto: I know it’s not very healthy, but I do enjoy eating ramen from time to time.

Makoto: Once I’ve graduated, I’m going to buy a motorcycle and go on a road trip.

Makoto: I’ve been working on my grades because I still want to attend college, despite being a phantom thief.

Makoto: I want to read a certain book, but it’s out of print. Where do you suppose I could find a copy?

Makoto: Maybe I’m just burned out, but waking up has grown awfully difficult lately.

Makoto: The grappling hook’s cable seems pretty strong, but it’s scary to think what could happen if it snapped.

Makoto: Once my sister brought home some sushi for me. It was indescribably good…

Futaba: I heard rhythm’s an important part of fighting, sooo… I started playing a rhythm game!

Futaba: There’s going to be an event tonight in the MMO I play. I can’t wait!

Futaba: This MMO I’m hooked on is really cool. Do you wanna play with me? Oh—it’s in English, though.

Futaba: I’m about to beat the game I’ve been playing. Wonder what I should play next?

Futaba: I’ve been going outside a lot more, so now I’m sleeping way better than I did when I was a shut-in.

Futaba: Guess what? I’m making a game called “Hungry Hungry Mona”!

Futaba: You know who’s a really good driver, is Sojiro. He can parallel park with his eyes closed!

Futaba: If you could shoot grappling hooks from your hands, you’d probably be able to get around just using those!

Futaba: Ya know, I’ve thought about workin’ out and fighting alongside you guys.

Futaba: You guys should try playing shooters! It could help you improve your gun skills.

Futaba: Last night I had a dream my hard drive failed… That was scary.

Futaba: Wouldn’t it be cool if you could mod the grappling hook so it was electrified?

Futaba: Sure, the internet’s convenient, but it’s not like it can do everything. Don’t overestimate its capabilities.

Futaba: I wonder if I’d be okay going to some place by myself if it wasn’t crowded. Inokashira Park seems nice.

Futaba: Yesterday Sojiro bought me my favorite instant yakisoba!

Futaba: Maybe I should get a gun too, just for self-defense… Nah, my hands need to be empty.

Haru: I found this cafe in Kichioji with phenomenal tea—would you care to try it sometime?

Haru: I ordered kusaya but they refused to make it—they said they couldn’t get the smell out of the kitchen.

Haru: I feel like I need to learn more about the world, but I’m not sure how to best go about it.

Haru: Recently, I’ve been finding rare delicacies rather enticing…

Haru: Even lately, I sometimes dream about doing phantom thief things with Mona.

Haru: If you’re having trouble getting yourself to relax, I recommend herbal tea.

Haru: Asakusa is a wonderful area—I love how it’s this blend of the old and the new.

Haru: Ever since I started high school I’ve been taking the train in the morning, but I’m still not used to it…

Haru: Queen, your mask looks like it’s made of iron. Doesn’t it get heavy?

Haru: Joker’s so acrobatic! He’s really got the hang of that grappling hook.

Haru: I don’t think I’ve gotten this much exercise since I was in ballet.

Haru: Let me know if you ever get a tear in your clothing—I’m good at sewing, so I could most likely fix it.

Haru: I dreamt that the vegetables I’d been growing all died… I was so sad.

Haru: Your weapon seems fun, Skull. Do you want to swap sometime?

Haru: Sometimes it’s impossible for me to fall asleep on days that we’ve been to Palaces, no matter how tired I am.

Haru: You know, before this, I’d never considered using an axe for anything other than chopping firewood…

Haru: My hands have gotten all calloused… I supposed it comes with the territory in gardening.

Akechi: I have no intention of changing my stance on matters, no matter what anyone may say.

Akechi: Pancakes... I don’t want to hear that word again for a long, long time.

Akechi: We don’t have much time left. Please do what you can to avoid getting sick.

Akechi: The enemies are stronger than ever. Don’t let your guard down.

Akechi: A world that panders to your every whim is so mundane. Where’s the thrill if there’s no competition?

Akechi: Do you prefer my previous outfit or this one? Moving around’s become much easier for me.

Akechi: This place is immense. If there weren’t train tracks everywhere, I’d bring my bike here.

Akechi: We’re working under the constraints of a time limit, so I’d appreciate it if you could be more efficient.

Akechi: If you’re looking for a way to train both your mind and your body, I highly recommend bouldering.

Akechi: You think I’m frightening when I fight? Well, I’m afraid you’re just going to have to accept it.

Akechi: I meant to tell you, regarding Shido… Thank you for keeping your promise.

Akechi: You may not like working with me, but I’m counting on your assistance until our goal is achieved.

Akechi: When we’re riding in the car like this, it’s easy to forget that we’re actually inside Mona.

Akechi: The Shadows here behave differently from the ones in the Palaces, don’t they?

Akechi: I’m getting a bit hungry. I should’ve eaten beforehand.

Akechi: I enjoy spending time in Kichijoji. It’s not very big, but there are plenty of trendy shops.

Akechi: Riding in the car may beat walking, but it doesn’t stop my legs from growing stiff and sore…

Sumire: I have a few different superstitions for good luck in my routines… They get sort of hard to drop.

Sumire: It was already hard for me to believe Palaces existed, but to think there’s such a massive one under Shibuya…

Sumire: It’s a bit cramped in here with this many people…

Sumire: I get stiff all over from just sitting in the car.

Sumire: Why is the one desert you get to eat during the week so delicious?

Sumire: A phantom thief outfit represents a person’s image of their rebellion, right?

Sumire: I wonder if I should try incorporating another sport into my gymnastics training.

Sumire: I wonder what I could use as inspiration for my performances…

Sumire: Swords are actually pretty hard to wield.

Sumire: Whenever I travel, I always end up buying some sort of good luck charm.

Sumire: Your outfits are all so unique. I can see coordinating them wasn’t a priority.

Sumire: This time of year, a heating pad’s an absolute must for keeping warm.

Sumire: Sometimes people will just walk up to me and ask me to show them a standing split.

Sumire: I’m in top shape today! Let’s keep going.

Sumire: Do you all stretch beforehand? You could pull a muscle if you don’t.

Sumire: It’s too bad gymnastics competitions aren’t on TV more often.

Sumire: Fighting makes for a pretty good workout, doesn’t it?

while I didn't transcribe responses, I did notice something a bit disappointing: neither Sumire nor Akechi seemed to have responses for anyone else. It's possible I missed one?? But not being able to remember any, they must not have many if they do have some. A bit odd.

#persona 5 #p5r #p5r spoilers #to pick from later

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thegreatestofheck · 5 years ago

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Ocean and Alcohol Pt. 13 ✘JJ Maybank✘

part one! part two! part three! part four! part five! part six! part seven! part eight! part nine! part ten! part eleven! part twelve!

(gif not mine! all credit to toesure!)

Word Count - 5663 Warnings - SOFT, this is too soft, too tender. I apologize. More serious warnings include swearing and that’s mostly it. Synopsis - You and JJ finally get a few hours alone. The gold is found with very few snags, but problems arise when you try to sell it off. Taglist - @bitterbethany @lovelymaybankk @ilymarkchan @downbytheouterbanks @clearcolourlessglass @obxwriterfan @tangledinsparkles @chill-sushi @summerintheobx @kiarasgold @lovelyfreshfestival @lolitstiana @divcrdown A/N - We got it all in this chapter; soft JJ, angry JJ, jealous JJ, protective JJ. I was rereading some of the earlier chapters and decided that JJ and Elm hadn’t been alone together recently enough, so there’s a whole five pages worth of just them, so there’s a gift for you I guess. I hope the rest of the chapter is something you enjoy! I skipped a relatively large portion of the plot because I didn’t want to write it out, but it still happened. I hope all is well with you guys and thank you so much for the 200 followers! stay safe, stay healthy, stay groovy!!

***

You and JJ sat out on the dock, kicking your legs back and forth. Despite the chill in the air, you felt warm with JJ beside you. The sun was even lower than before, the sky painted with beautiful purples and deep blues. The dwindling light of day cast the horizon in a golden hue. You tried not to look at JJ every three seconds, but he looked so...beautiful with the light against his skin.

“What?” He asked, laughing. You felt your cheeks redden as you turned your gaze back to the sunset. You shook your head, trying to cover for yourself now that you’d been caught.

“Nothing.” You dropped your gaze down to your feet. “It’s nice to have time alone when we’re not both half asleep.”

JJ bumped your shoulder with his. You laughed, pushing him right back. He grabbed your chin and gently turned you to face him. Your laughing died instantly, heart starting to pound in your ears. The water underneath the dock responded just as strongly as your gut. But he didn’t kiss you, not right away at least. His eyes scanned your face. His gaze landed heavily on your cuts, your bruises.

You wanted to look away. Shame crawled deep inside of you, twisting in your stomach. Sure, JJ understood how you felt, but it didn’t make it any easier. It was like having your skin peeled off and being put on display for all to see. There was no hiding from him when he was this close. He could see the rage of your father and the impression it left on you. For anyone to see all your scars, both literal and metaphorical, it was almost too much for you to bear.

After spending so long avoiding any kind of personal attachment, you weren’t sure how you had managed to let JJ in so quickly, so deeply. You had spent your entire life running from anything that could put you or Kid at risk and now here you were, running headfirst into JJ Maybank.

When he closed the distance between you, he didn’t kiss you on the mouth. Instead, he pressed his lips against the cut on your cheek. The movement startled you. You straightened your back, cheeks turning red once again. But JJ didn’t stop there. He kissed the bridge of your nose, where you had to reset it after your dad broke it. You let him tilt your jaw upward, so he could kiss the yellow bruise Rafe left behind from the summer movie series.

It was a different feeling than you were accustomed to when it came to kissing. You had grown used to the whirlpool and the storm and the riptide and the strong current. This was something else entirely. It was the goldilocks zone; where your feet were in the water enough just to keep your senses alert, but you were still very much on land.

Gently, he leaned down to kiss the cut on your lip. You watched him carefully, never take your eyes away from his face. But he didn’t look up, fixated completely on the rest of you. This tenderness was more than you could handle. It felt too much like…

You couldn’t bring yourself to think about it. Not when last time you said it, it freaked him out.

And then he finally pressed his lips to yours and the swell in your stomach turned into a wave until finally, it consumed you whole. You leaned into the kiss as far as he would let you. He pulled you closer, curving his fingers behind your head and using his thumb to keep your head tilted upward.

He dropped his hand to rest along the bottom of your neck, as he always did. The deeper you fell into the kiss, the tighter he pulled you in. You were lost in his touch, lost in his taste.

His hand wandered farther up your neck. You hadn’t realized until you felt a twinge of pain, like someone poking at a bruise. Which, of course, he was doing accidentally. When you first felt it, you ignored the pain, not wanting to part from him. But the second time, you flinched and JJ felt it. He sat back, breaking the kiss. You sucked in a deep breath before letting it out slowly through your nose. The pain in your neck was gone immediately as he removed his hand.

“What’s wrong?” He asked, his voice barely above a whisper as he fought for breath. You shook your head, not really wanting to tell him it hurt. Because it didn’t really hurt, or at least, it didn’t bother you. Not when he was there. “Ellie, you can tell me.”

You grimaced, turning your body away from him and back to the marsh. He didn’t push, but he didn’t look away, still expecting an answer.

“I thought you didn’t do the emotional shit,” you said, hoping that a laugh would keep him from asking any more questions. Clearly, it didn’t. You cleared your throat, kicking your feet again. “Do you ever...after your dad hits you, do you ever feel, like, I don’t know….”

“Like it’s my fault?” You looked over at him. “Like I somehow deserved what I got, that I had it coming?”

You bobbed your head up and down slowly, twisting your lips.

“And when people look at you, all they can see is the bruises and the scars,” you added and you swallowed a lump in your throat, forcing yourself to keep talking. “I mean, there’s got to be more to us, right? We’re not just a couple of kids who are beat around by our dads and abandoned by our moms.”

JJ nodded his head slowly.

“I used to feel like that a lot more,” he said. “But then I met the Pogues and I learned that, yeah, there is more than just a shitty home life.”

You smiled at him. It was good to hear.

“That’s sweet,” you said. He rolled his eyes.

“Sweet isn’t really the word I would use.”

“Then what word would you use?”

JJ looked out to the ocean. The sun had gone completely by then, not even the barest hint of its light peeking over the horizon. He thought for a moment, squinting his eyes. You watched him carefully.

“Despite all the shit our parents put us through, there’s gotta be one good thing that takes away from it all, that isn’t connected to all that shit,” he said and looked over at you. “For me, it was the Pogues. They’re my one good thing.”

You nodded your head, looking at your knees.

You wondered what your one good thing was. Maybe it was Kid, but JJ said it had to be disconnected and for as much as you loved Kid, how was in the thick of it just like you were.

Turning toward JJ, you lifted one knee up, propping your elbow against it. You searched his eyes for a few moments, looking for something. He simply stared back. He finally lifted his hand and brushed his thumb against your cheek. You leaned into his touch, breathing in deeply. When you opened your eyes, your gaze fell on the cut on his eyebrow.

“Will you tell me what happened?” You asked, lifting your hand to move a fallen strand of hair out of his face. JJ looked down as your fingers grazed over the cut above his eye.

“Like I said, I got arrested for sinking Topper’s boat and my dad wasn’t too pleased with a 25 thousand dollar restitution,” he said with a bitter laugh. You pinched your eyebrows together.

“How did you get arrested for something Pope did?”

“I told them I did it.”

“JJ-”

“Don’t.” He shook his head at you. “I told him to do it so I took the fall. Pope has too much to lose.”

“And you don’t?” He looked down, his hand falling from your face. “You don’t always have to look out for everyone else, you know.”

JJ scoffed, lifting his head toward the stars.

“It doesn’t matter,” he said and gave a shrug before letting his eyes fall back onto you. You sighed deeply, reaching out to take his hand in yours.

“I can pay the restitution,” you said softly, knowing full well that he would protest.

“No way, Ellie.”

“I want to help you. I...I don’t have the money myself but I can always ask my dad-”

“Forget about it.”

You watched him for a few moments, but it was clear he wasn’t going to say anything further. So, you finally let out another low sigh and gave him a smile.

“Okay.”

There was no way you were going to forget about it.

But, JJ didn’t give you much time to think because he stood up and offered you a hand, his mood changing instantly.

“Where are we going?” You asked as he pulled you to your feet. JJ’s mischievous smile pulled against his lips and you immediately regretted asking.

“How about a swim?”

“JJ…”

“It’s a perfect night for it!”

Before you could protest any further, he scooping you up into his arms.

“Hon,” you said slowly, peering down at the water below. “If you throw me in-”

“Sorry, what was that?” He teetered on the edge of the dock, making you cling tighter to his neck. “That water looks so nice, doesn’t it?”

You glared at him.

“No, it doesn’t. I don’t have any other clothes-” He leaned farther forward. “JJ!”

“Relax, Ellie,” he said with a laugh. “I’ve got clothes you can wear.”

And then he jumped.

Your stomach dropped just before you hit the water, a similar feeling to whenever JJ kissed you. When you broke the surface, the cold water shattered through you in all the best ways. The night had been warm, almost unbearably so. The chill of the water washed away the sticky, clammy feeling from your skin.

JJ let you go when you hit the water. You let yourself float for a few moments. For all your protesting about going in the water, it was just what you needed. You kicked your way to the surface once your lungs decided they needed air. Once your head was above the water, you gasped in a breath. JJ was right there, inches away from you, with a grin on his face, hair dripping wet.

“Not so bad, huh?”

You tried to fight back a smile as you pushed him. He laughed, grabbing hold of your arm and pulling you in. You let out an overdramatic sigh as he brushed your wet hair back and out of your face.

“Thank you,” you said, trying to pretend that he wasn’t pulling you in even closer.

“You’re welcome.”

You weren’t surprised when he leaned down to kiss you. It was a short kiss because the water still tasted bad.

“You wanna go inside?” He asked.

“What happened to going for a swim?”

He shrugged.

“Race you back?”

“You’re so on, bucko.”

***

JJ sat on the bed when you emerged from the bathroom, wearing one of his spare shirts and a pair of his boxers.

You thought he might say something about how you looked wearing his clothes, but he just stared at the floor. You sat next to him, running your fingers through his hair a few times.

“What’s wrong?” You asked him.

“What happened between you and Rafe?”

His question took you aback. You stiffened, letting your hand fall to your side. From the look in his eyes, you knew it was a question he had been wanting to ask you for a while.

“No-nothing happened,” you said, looking down at your hands. “I mean, nothing that really-”

“Just tell me.”

You squeezed your eyes shut. You didn’t want to be thinking about Rafe, not right now. Standing, you wrapped your arms around your waist, trying to figure out what exactly to say.

“Remember what I said about…?” You waved in the general direction of your face.

“Someone was taking pictures.” You nodded your head slowly, pressing your lips into a line. JJ seemed to connect the dots then. “Rafe took the pictures.”

You could hear the rage in his voice, his hands curling into fists.

“But it wasn’t him who showed them to my dad,” you said quickly, hoping to deescalate the situation before it escalated at all.

“Then who did?”

You swallowed, chewing on the inside of your lip.

“Topper.”

“Goddammit!” JJ picked up a pillow from the bed and threw it on the floor. You flinched at his raised voice, backing away from the bed even more.

“But it’s okay,” you said, voice shaking slightly. “I handled it.”

He turned to look at you, saw how far you had moved away, and his features softened.

“I don’t care about Topper,” he said slowly, trying to keep his voice calm. You took that to mean that he wanted to know about Rafe.

“I thought it was Rafe too,” you told him. “But when I went to confront him, he told me about Topper and the pictures and...why he had taken them.”

JJ watched you, eyes smoldering, but he wasn’t going to interrupt you.

“You remember that party at the Cameron’s?”

“When you kissed Rafe because you were mad at me?”

“Um, yeah. That party.” You felt your cheeks heaten. JJ stood, taking a few steps closer to you. “Well, apparently, Rafe was upset that I kissed him because-”

“Because he likes you.”

JJ was nearer to you now and you stepped away until you hit the wall.

“He didn’t exactly say it like that.”

“What did he say?”

“He said that he hates seeing us together. He’s jealous of you,” you told him, breathless as he neared and leaned against the wall, putting his hand by your head. “But he knows where his place is.”

You weren’t entirely sure what JJ was going to say as he stared down at you. Your breathing was deep, heavy, heart-pounding painfully in your chest. It was almost like fear, but you weren’t afraid.

“Tell me I’m yours,” he said finally. You blinked a few times. When it finally sunk into your brain what he had said, you lifted your hands to his face.

“You’re mine.” His eyes closed and he let out a deep breath at your words. “And I am yours. Only yours.”

The relief on his face passed. You didn’t even have the chance to think about what was going to come next before he crashed his lips against yours, pushing you back against the wall. You let out a shocked gasp, which JJ took full advantage of. He had you pinned against the wall. There was no way you were going anywhere, but you didn’t really want to.

You had never seen him like this, never felt him kiss you so hungrily. It was more than just desire, there was something else there. You broke the kiss, pushing him back with a knowing smile.

“Are you jealous, Maybank?” You asked. He narrowed his eyes. It was a confirmation in and of itself. You stood on your toes, pressing a gentle kiss against his neck and then another, longer one. He tightened his hands around your waist, his nails scratching your skin.

“Shit,” he breathed, making you smile as you kissed his skin again. “You keep doing that and I don’t think I’ll be able to control myself.”

You pulled back, meeting his eyes.

“Then don’t.”

***

The next morning, you sat with boys on Pope’s small boat, on the way to the HMS Pogue to pick up the girls.

“You guys have fun last night?” John B asked, a smirk on his face. You coughed, cheeks turning red. JJ threw an empty beer can at John B’s head.

“My eyes are still burning,” Pope said, rubbing his eyes dramatically.

“Two hands on the wheel, Pope,” you said, trying to pretend that your face wasn’t on fire with embarrassment.

“Not our fault you guys went out for late night ice cream,” JJ said. “We thought you were asleep.”

“I doubt we would have been able to sleep through-”

“John B, if you say another word, I will castrate you,” you told him with a smile. You didn’t want to think about it. It had been embarrassing enough when they walked in on you and JJ, still deep in a heavy make-out against the wall. It wasn’t really something you wanted to relive every three seconds.

John B cringed and fell silent. Apparently, he didn’t want to be castrated.

“Good choice.”

Picking up the girls, you could tell there was a difference in their attitudes toward each other. Even if they vowed that they still hated each other, you knew that wasn’t the case. You were just glad not to be stuck with the boys anymore.

“Next time you guys get stranded on a boat together, please take me with you,” you whined as they climbed back in the boat.

“Next time, don’t be an accomplice,” Sarah said, raising her eyebrows at you.

“That’s fair.”

“So,” John B said, clapping his hands together. “We need to get supplies. Rope, flashlights, dark clothes, the whole deal. We’re hitting the Craine house once the sun goes down. Yeah?”

There was a series of nods from around the boat as Pope headed back toward shore.

“We’re gonna get that gold,” he said with a large smile. The quiet nodding turned into loud cheers.

Your heart soared with the thought of it. You had your boy sitting beside you, his hand on your thigh and a smile on his lips. And soon, you were going to have your hands on a large pile of gold. Life couldn’t be any better.

***

Adrenaline ran through you as you gasped for breath. A crazy, blind lady shooting at you wasn’t something you were expecting for this night, but here you were, bolting from the Craine house as fast as your legs would take you.

JJ made it to the van first, jumping in the front seat. You were second, sliding into the passenger seat and throwing the sliding door open for the others. They all piled in after each other, except for John B, who had yet to even jump the wall. JJ turned to car over and slowly started to drive off.

You could still hear the old woman shrieking, firing off round after round from her gun.

“Why are we always getting shot at?” Pope yelled.

“Get in, John B!” Kie yelled, hanging out the door and offering him a hand. Sarah and Pope held onto Kie to keep her from falling out. Kie and Pope yelled over each other, Kie at John B and Pope at JJ, until the final member of their part jumped into the van.

Kie slammed the door shut and JJ sped off, pressing his foot harder on the gas. There was a lot more yelling, a few swear words thrown back and forth. You turned back around to look down at John B, who was absolutely covered in mud.

“Dude,” you sighed, holding your nose.

“JJ, drive!” Sarah called.

“Go, man!”

The van lurched forward. John B laughed.

“Are you okay?” JJ asked him. “Are you shot?”

“No.” He shook his head.

“You good?” Pope asked.

“Yeah, yeah.” His voice was shaking from the adrenaline.

“You stink,” you said. John B looked up at you with a smile.

“Thanks, Elm.”

“I think I’d know if I was shot, right?” Kie said, feeling her chest and stomach. Sarah did the same.

“What the hell just happened?” Sarah asked, leaning her head back and closing her eyes.

“All-time Pogue Hall of fame, baby!” JJ hollered, tapping his hands excitedly against the wheel. You grinned, putting a hand on his shoulder.

“That bitch is possessed,” Kie said.

“That bitch can’t aim,” Sarah added with a laugh.

“She’s pretty spry for a dinosaur,” you said, still breathing heavily.

“I’m telling you,” Kie said, swallowing and then shaking her head. “She’s possessed.”

“I don’t get it,” Pope said.”

“She’s blind.”

“Like Master Yoda.”

“Yoda wasn’t blind,” you said.

“Yeah, but he was old and moved super fast.” Pope shook his head. “It makes no sense, scientifically.”

“She does yoga. Pilates, probably.”

You looked down at John B, who held something muddy and disgusting in his hand. Your mouth fell open.

“Oh my god,” JJ said, glancing back.

“You didn’t,” Sarah gasped with a smile.

“What is that?” asked Kie.

“We did it, baby!” John B shouted. That was gold in his hands. Real gold.

“Oh my god,” You laughed, leaning farther out of your chair. “Oh my god!”

A series of screams and shouts for joy filled the van. JJ hooked a hand on your shoulder and shook you back and forth.

“Full Kook!” John B started, pumping a fist up and down in the air. Everyone picked up on the chanting.

The gold was down there. John B had found it. You were going to be rich. You were going to afford that lawyer, get Kid away from your dad. The dream you once had was slowly becoming a reality. You couldn’t stop laughing.

“Full Kook! Full Kook! Full Kook!”

***

The next morning, you sat with Kie and Sarah in the van, reviewing the plan that the boys had come up with. You couldn’t help but laugh at the silly drawing.

“Who drew this?” Sarah asked, a quiet laugh still in her voice.

“Who do you think?” Kie looked over to where Pope and John B were sitting. Pope looked up and grinned. Kie held his gaze for a moment. You glanced over at Sarah and she looked over at you. The two of you let out a little laugh, which turned Kie’s attention back to the plan.

“Kie!” JJ said, walking up to the van. “This better work.”

He dropped the gold into the bottom of the van, crossing his arms.

“We can’t pawn this off if there’s a giant wheat symbol on it,” he continued. With a smile, Kie plucked a blow torch off the ground and held it up.

“It’s gonna work,” she said.

You sat off to the side as Kie blow-torched the gold in a small pot above a flame. JJ and Pope leaned over, watching the gold melt carefully. You chewed on your fingernail, legs shaking up and down.

Not much later, you were all back in the van, shuddering down the road on the way to the pawnshop.

“They might not have the cash for the entire thing,” you said as JJ fiddled with your fingers. “If we break it into pieces and take it to different pawnshops-”

“This will work, Elm,” John B said from the front. You nodded slowly. Overthinking again, you thought to yourself. No need to overthink everything.

When the van slowed to a stop, you felt your stomach flipped. This was the moment of truth. You got this money now, pay off JJ’s restitution, and then go get the rest of the gold. It was all going to work out. You had to believe that.

You hopped out of the van behind JJ as he pulled the gold out of his pocket.

“Hell of a job melting it down, Dr. Frankenstein,” JJ said, turning to look at Kie, who rolled her eyes.

“Like you could have done better.”

“I could have. I took a welding class.”

“You-” She narrowed her eyes at him and tilted her head to the side. “When?”

“Hey.” John B stepped between them. “Shh. Chill out, okay?”

“Easy for you to say,” JJ grumbled. “You’re not the one that has to sell this piece of shit off. How did I get this job anyway?”

“‘Cause you’re the best liar,” Pope said as they started toward the pawnshop. JJ glanced back at you and you shrugged, arms crossed. The Pogues had no reason to doubt you when you lied to them about all the things you lied to them about, so they would have no need to think that you were a pretty good liar. When they gave JJ the job, there was no way you were going to protest.

The six of you filed into the shop, JJ in the front.

“Afternoon, ma’am.”

Everyone spread out rather lamely, standing in front of different objects and pretending to actually care about what they were looking at. If there was anymore sneaking around and lying going on, you were definitely going to have to give them a few pointers as to how to act natural.

JJ spoke to the lady up front, trying his hardest to convince her that the gold was real before she even would talk about price. You tried to cover a laugh as he told a fake story about his mom melting down her earrings.

“Best liar my ass.” You shook your head, turning back to look at a wooden chicken on the wall. The woman at the cash register clearly didn’t believe him. She went to the back to talk to her boss, giving Pope and Kie time to go and talk to JJ. He looked back at you and you gave him a thumbs up, making him smile.

When the woman returned, she slid a piece of paper over to JJ.

“Fifty thousand?” JJ asked. You nearly choked, turning to look at them. JJ tried to negotiate, but the woman had her eyebrows raised. No one was really even trying to pretend that they weren’t paying attention anymore. He and the woman passed quips back and forth until the woman gave one last offer.

“70,” she said. Your heart leaped. “And I won’t ask where you got this.”

You tried to bite back a smile. JJ accepted. But then you hit another snag. The money wasn’t in the shop. She didn’t have the cash in the shop. As soon as she mentioned going to a warehouse, your smile fell. That didn’t sound right. There was something strange going on.

But you were probably overthinking things again. What reason did you have to doubt her? None of your friends did. You tried to shove down your concerns as John B drove to the address that the woman had given to JJ.

“They keep the gold all the way out here?” Pope asked.

“That’s what she said.” JJ laughed. “That’s what she said.”

You smiled, sitting on the floor by his side.

“Stop,” Pope said. Both your and JJ’s smiles dropped. Not the time for jokes, it seemed.

“I’ve never heard of Ressurection Drive,” Sarah said, turning back.

“Cause you’re rich,” JJ said.

“You haven’t heard of it either.”

You sat up straighter and looked out the window. The bad feeling in your stomach was starting to solidify. It was good to hear your friends starting to question this whole thing too. It made you feel a little less crazy.

A police siren startled all of you. Kie and Pope turned around to look at the car. You pushed yourself up, looking out of the back window.

“The cops? Out here?”

“Are you kidding me?” JJ shoved the gold back into his backpack.

“What did we do?” Sarah asked.

“That’s not a police car,” you said as John B pulled over. “No way any cops out here have a car like that.”

“JJ, did you bring the gun?” John B asked.

“No,” JJ zipped up his bag, throwing a blunt inside. “Everyone told me to leave it back at the place.”

“Thank god,” Kie sighed.

“That’s not a cop,” you said, watching the man get out of his car. JJ stood up and shoved the backpack into the hidden compartment beneath his seat. Your heart started to pound at the sight of the man walk toward the van. A black bandana stretched across his face. You shook your head a few times as the others argued about weed and making sure that it was all packed away.

You saw the gun too late. You didn’t have a good view of it until it was shoved through the front window right at John B’s face.

You froze, your entire body going rigid. JJ slowly moved his hand reaching down to grab yours. You didn’t take in a single breath until you felt him squeeze your hand once.

“All y’all’s hands up in the air now!” the man with the mask shouted. You swallowed a lump in your throat and lifted your hands slowly, pulling it from JJ’s grip.

“You, out,” the man said to John B. “Let them out!”

John B slid out of the car slowly, hands still raised in the air. He walked around to the van door and opened it slowly. Sarah walked out first, and then Pope, Kie, you, and JJ last. The man kept shouting, yelling for you to back up.

“We’re broke-” JJ started. The man pointed the gun straight at him.

“Shut the hell up!”

“Alright!” JJ shouted back. “Relax!”

But the more he spoke, the angrier the man got. Pope put his hands on JJ’s shoulders and pulled him backward. You ducked under JJ’s raised hands to stand between him and the man.

“I’ll blow your damn head off!” the man said.

“Okay. Okay, we’re moving,” you said, voice steady.

“Lay down in the ditch!” JJ hesitated, glaring at the man with the gun. “Get on your hands and knees!”

You lowered yourself to your knees, putting your hands behind your head. JJ slowly followed after you.

“It’s okay,” you whispered to him, watching his muscles shake as he resisted the urge to beat the hell out of the man. JJ heaved, his breath ragged and his jaw tight. His eyes flitted back and forth as the man walked back toward the van. You risked moving to place your hand on his arm. “Look at me.”

Slowly, JJ’s eyes moved to meet yours. There was so much anger in him. That anger might just get him killed.

“It’s okay,” you whispered again. “We’re okay.”

He softened slowly before nodding his head once.

“It’s a setup,” Kie whispered.

“The old bat shanked us,” JJ ground out through his teeth. You glanced up at the van, putting your hand back behind your head.

“John B,” you heard Pope whisper. You lifted your head, watching John B sneak off toward the fake cop car. “Don’t be a hero man!”

You put your head back down, keeping your breathing steady. Even when the man emerged from the van and started shouting again, you didn’t look up. Just keep breathing. Just keep breathing.

At the sound of a struggle, you looked up one last time. John B was in the back of the car, trying to take the gun from the man. JJ was on his feet, running toward the car, and you were just behind him.

“I got the gun!” John B called out just as you and JJ neared the car. JJ grabbed hold of the man, spinning him around. He ducked under a punch before hitting the man in the ribcage. The man hit JJ across the cheek, only to be greeted by you with a punch to the face. You hit him again before he shoved you backward. You tripped over your feet, hitting your head against the hard ground. Kie got to him next, giving him a good punch. John B used the gun to knock him off his feet.

“I got the gold!” Pope cried as Sarah slammed the car door into the guy’s head twice.

Your head buzzed with the sting of pain.

“C’mon,” Kie said, grabbing holding of your arm and helping you to your feet. Pope ran around the car and kicked the man in the face, knocking him onto his back. JJ walked over to you, putting a hand on your face and checking your eyes.

“I’m good,” you said. You turned back toward the man on the ground. John B yanked his bandana off of his face. JJ tensed.

“I know this piece of shit,” he growled. “He’s a basehead.”

“Probably knows my brother,” Sarah said with a sigh, running her hands through her hair.

“He sells coke to my dad.” JJ plucked the gun off the ground.

“Listen,” the man groveled, his voice slurred from the blood dripping down his nose. “I couldn’t hurt a single one of y’all-”

He didn’t get to finish his sentence before JJ jabbed the butt of the gun against his nose. Kie and Pope both yelled at him and John B took the gun from his hands, but you wouldn’t have cried if he did it again. The asshole on the ground deserved it.

“Let’s get out of here,” John B said. But JJ wasn’t done yet. He bent down and rummaged through the man’s pockets before pulling out a wallet.

“We got one last stop,” JJ said, shoving John B away from him and storming back to the car. You brought your hand up to your mouth. Beating the guy up was justified, sure, but he was down. No one except him got hurt. Pope had the gun. There was nothing else to be done. But JJ was on a warpath.

Kie looked at you as if you could somehow stop him, but you just shook your head.

“Let’s go see where this son of a bitch lives,” JJ called back.

“I’m gonna remember this!” the man yelled from the ground while you made your way back to the van. “You can’t hide from me! I know exactly who y’all are!”

You jumped into the back of the van, settling yourself into the seat where JJ had been sitting before. Putting your head in your hands, you decided that it was time to go back to listening to your gut. Overthinking or not, there was nothing wrong with playing it safe.

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shinneth · 4 years ago

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Spill the tea on Stevinel (just because I saw one for conniverse) And yes, I'm not on Anonymous. Because I'm a proud stevinel shipper and no one's going to stop me from loving it, also your blog is cool

And you know what? That’s the right attitude to have! People should be free to express what they ship without shielding themselves with anonymity. I don’t blame the people that do these days - antis are fucking dangerous people - but goddamn, people. It’s fiction.

So I commend you for shipping Stevinel openly and proudly! Hard to believe it’s actually considered a bold and brave move just to be open and honest about harmless preferences these days.

That said, I’m sorry it took so long to get to this. I felt you deserved an epic, given how unexpectedly successful my tirade on why Connverse is a shit ship with an undeserved golden reputation was...

But the truth is, even though I’m very much a Stevinel shipper, it’s definitely not my OTP.

And it’s very tricky for me to figure out how to spill the tea on Stevinel in a way that’s distinct from me doing the same with Stevidot.

Because, well, let’s face it: these two ships, beyond being very similar in nature, have also endured identical hardships from the fandom.

All the death threats Stevinel fans get from the raging antis for daring to ship something so “problematic/immoral/wrong/not Connverse”?

Stevidot fans have been treated that exact same way for years. And still are. For the exact same reasons.

Both Stevinel and Stevidot shippers are valid, but the fandom constantly turns a blind eye to Rebecca Sugar’s husband who also worked on the show outright saying gem x human ships are FAIR GAME.

And also turn a blind eye to the recent interview where Sugar herself stated that the gems are more like AI - a conclusion I and many others deduced ages ago just by how gems are portrayed in the show.

But by god, they’ll hang on Matt Burnett’s word that “grown gems” are a thing even though canon itself explicitly states that GEMS DON’T GROW.

Just like how despite Maya Petersen outright admitting that Aroace!Peridot is just her headcanon, people treat it like the fucking gospel now.

(no offense to anyone who’s committed to that particular headcanon - I just don’t really see it with Peridot in particular and it’s really fucking stupid to claim it’s 100% canon when the source herself explicitly said it wasn’t)

Well, it’s canon that Spinel kissed Steven and he didn’t turn into dust. And Steven was already well on his way down the path of self-destruction at this point in time; he would’ve gone monster whether this happened or not.

Also, how often does a character get the “heart eyes” expression for just a platonic love?

If there was ever a scene where Connie or Steven had heart eyes, no doubt most of the pricks would scream “YES!!!! UNDENIABLE PROOF THAT THEY’RE IN LOVE!!!”

But when it’s Spinel, suddenly it doesn’t count? Really?

How convenient.

There’s also the stupid idiots who saw the conceptual development of Spinel in that movie artbook and saw some vague color keys during a conceptual stage and claimed that Spinel was “family” to Steven - which of course must mean “related” and therefore must make Stevinel an incestuous relationship!

Which is bull. Also shit. It’s already common knowledge that gems don’t work that way. She was the designated playmate for Steven’s mother. Nothing more.

Of course, most gems who come in Steven’s orbit end up being sort of a family to him.

But everyone seems to have this impression that a gem being part of Steven’s family means they become additional surrogate mom figures.

And yeah no, that’s dumb and wrong. Garnet and Pearl are really the only ones I’d consider actual “mom figures”. Amethyst’s more of a big sister. Everyone else can vary depending on perspective, but I’ve never seen any of the other gems as anything close to a motherly figure for Steven. Any time I see shit about Lapis or Peridot being regarded as “gem moms” to Steven, I laugh my ass off. They are so not moms or any kind of authoritative figure for Steven. Bismuth at best is more of the fun-loving aunt.

There are more roles in a family than just a paternal/maternal substitute. In fact, I believe Steven has considered Connie to be part of his family well before they hooked up in canon.

(as a side-note, I love how people who are allegedly SO squicked out by age gap ships totally pardon Connverse - you guys realize Connie was 14 in Future, right? Possibly 15 depending on the time scale? There’s gonna be a point in the relative near future where Steven is 18 and Connie isn’t - why don’t I hear you assholes angst about that “atrocity”, huh?)

I honestly do consider the CG B-Team as part of Steven’s family, but more in a loose sense. But by that same token, I consider Connie as part of the family in a similar manner.

Especially since Spinel was shoved off to live with the Diamonds after the movie - and the Diamonds themselves have a very fucked-up relationship among themselves to the point where I honestly hesitate to put a familial label on it at all - it’s extra stupid to try and paint Stevinel as something with incestuous overtones when it clearly doesn’t.

Spinel does happen to be a perfect representative of how full of shit antis are about age gaps, though.

While Peridot’s age has always been left vague, we know she can’t be 5K or older due to being an Era 2 gem. Due to her utter lack of knowledge of Era 1 events (or being completely sold on the Diamonds’ propaganda) and her general inexperience with her own equipment - as well as her ability to quickly adapt to Earth - I always headcanoned Peridot as being especially young. Like, younger-than-Steven young.

Mostly because Peri’s attitude reeks of Gen Z - also because it’d be nice for a change to have a gem who isn’t thousands of years old like literally every other noteworthy gem in the show. We need a representative of gemkind who hasn’t been around for ages.

Of course, Spinel’s backstory proves that even if they went the boring route and made Peridot thousands of years old just like everybody else, it wouldn’t really mean much of anything. She’d be no less of a valid romantic option for Steven regardless of age.

Spinel is several thousands of years old, and the movie explicitly shows us what exactly that amounts to for a gem.

As I mentioned earlier, Sugar sees the gems more like AI. Spinel remaining in one spot for several millennnia, not moving an inch, not speaking to anyone, not seeing anything other than a gradually-deteriorating garden... yeah, and somehow, despite all that, Spinel’s still very childlike per her design. She had literally no room to mature or accrue life experience: Pink Diamond basically hit the pause button on her entire life.

Even though she’s several thousands of years old, through no fault of her own, Spinel’s mindset remained unchanged. It wasn’t until Steven inadvertently came into her life that she became twisted - understandably so after finally realizing she’d been abandoned by Pink.

But she still didn’t completely lose her true self. Spinel realized on her own that Steven didn’t deserve to suffer just because his mom was a negligent asshole. She also came to understand on her own that unlike Pink, Steven truly cared for her no matter what shit she threw his way.

Steven could give Spinel the care and attention she always deserved; something Pink totally denied her while deceiving her into wasting away with her abandoned playground. He could be the one to give Spinel the love she always deserved but was either denied or manipulated into believing she got.

Honestly, this is more than enough to warrant building something more between these two.

The age gap is irrelevant. The two have chemistry. They aren’t related.

(and honestly, this is fiction - these details are largely irrelevant in fiction anyway. I’m only bringing it up because it doesn’t take much research to find that every label the antis put on Stevinel is complete inaccurate Diamond propaganda bullshit)

Stevinel is FINE. Let people ship it if they want to!

Um... is that good enough?

Honestly, I’m not gonna lie: Stevinel’s pretty goddamned popular; so much that I’m a bit jealous of it. I enjoy the ship a lot, but I’ve been keeping it at arms-length all this time. I’m looking forward to when I can write my own brand of Stevinel interaction when I get to introduce her in my series, but that’s still a while to go.

Also, there’s almost zero Peridot/Spinel material, let alone my Peridot/Steven/Spinel OT3. And Stevidot material is still hard to come by; I’m noticing Stevinel’s still quite a bit easier to find by comparison.

So in a way, I feel many other unpopular ships deserve some tea-spilling sooner than Stevinel because Stevinel at least still has a sizable fanbase. Same can’t really be said for a lot of similar ships here...

A lot of this can apply to other Steven x gem ships, honestly.

But I guess I haven’t been showing Stevinel much proper love due to my devotion to my superior SU-AU. I can only hope I can soon reach a point where I can have GA Spinel react to Steven, since their dynamic will be significantly different.

(and then one day I’ll finally make the Peridot/Steven/Spinel OT3 fic!!)

Until then, I can only hope I did Stevinel some justice here!

#answered asks #ryan-spinel #stevinel #stevidot #steven universe #spinel #su spinel #shipping #spill the tea #peridot #su peridot

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lastsonlost · 4 years ago

Text

Crossing the divide

Do men really have it easier? These transgender guys found the truth was more complex.

In the 1990s, the late Stanford neuroscientist Ben Barres transitioned from female to male. He was in his 40s, mid-career, and afterward he marveled at the stark changes in his professional life. Now that society saw him as male, his ideas were taken more seriously. He was able to complete a whole sentence without being interrupted by a man. A colleague who didn’t know he was transgender even praised his work as “much better than his sister’s.”

Clinics have reported an increase in people seeking medical gender transitions in recent years, and research suggests the number of people identifying as transgender has risen in the past decade. Touchstones such as Caitlyn Jenner’s transition, the bathroom controversy, and the Amazon series “Transparent” have also made the topic a bigger part of the political and cultural conversation.

But it is not always evident when someone has undergone a transition — especially if they have gone from female to male.

“The transgender guys have a relatively straightforward process — we just simply add testosterone and watch their bodies shift,” said Joshua Safer, executive director at the Center for Transgender Medicine and Surgery at Mount Sinai Health System and Icahn School of Medicine in New York. “Within six months to a year they start to virilize — getting facial hair, a ruddier complexion, a change in body odor and a deepening of the voice.”

Transgender women have more difficulty “passing”; they tend to be bigger-boned and more masculine-looking, and these things are hard to reverse with hormone treatments, Safer said. “But the transgender men will go get jobs and the new boss doesn’t even know they’re trans.”

We spoke with four men who transitioned as adults to the bodies in which they feel more comfortable. Their experiences reveal that the gulf between how society treats women and men is in many ways as wide now as it was when Barres transitioned. But their diverse backgrounds provide further insight into how race and ethnicity inform the gender divide in subtle and sometimes surprising ways.

(Their words have been lightly edited for space and clarity.)

‘I’ll never call the police again’

Trystan Cotten, 50, Berkeley, Calif.

Professor of gender studies at California State University Stanislaus and editor of Transgress Press, which publishes books related to the transgender experience. Transitioned in 2008.

Life doesn’t get easier as an African American male. The way that police officers deal with me, the way that racism undermines my ability to feel safe in the world, affects my mobility, affects where I go. Other African American and Latino Americans grew up as boys and were taught to deal with that at an earlier age. I had to learn from my black and brown brothers about how to stay alive in my new body and retain some dignity while being demeaned by the cops.

One night somebody crashed a car into my neighbor’s house, and I called 911. I walk out to talk to the police officer, and he pulls a gun on me and says, “Stop! Stop! Get on the ground!” I turn around to see if there’s someone behind me, and he goes, “You! You! Get on the ground!” I’m in pajamas and barefoot. I get on the ground and he checks me, and afterward I said, “What was that all about?” He said, “You were moving kind of funny.” Later, people told me, “Man, you’re crazy. You never call the police.”

I get pulled over a lot more now. I GOT PULLED OVER MORE IN THE FIRST TWO YEARS AFTER MY TRANSITION THAN I DID THE ENTIRE 20 YEARS I WAS DRIVING BEFORE THAT.

Before, when I’d been stopped, even for real violations like driving 100 miles an hour, I got off. In fact, when it happened in Atlanta the officer and I got into a great conversation about the Braves. Now the first two questions they ask are: Do I have any weapons in the car, and am I on parole or probation?

Being a black man has changed the way I move in the world.

I used to walk quickly or run to catch a bus. Now I walk at a slower pace, and if I’m late I don’t dare rush. I am hyper-aware of making sudden or abrupt movements, especially in airports, train stations and other public places. I avoid engaging with unfamiliar white folks, especially white women. If they catch my eye, white women usually clutch their purses and cross the street. While I love urban aesthetics, I stopped wearing hoodies and traded my baggy jeans, oversized jerseys and colorful skullcaps for closefitting jeans, khakis and sweaters. These changes blunt assumptions that I’m going to snatch purses or merchandise, or jump the subway turnstile. The less visible I am, the better my chances of surviving.

But it’s not foolproof. I’m an academic sitting at a desk so I exercise where I can. I walked to the post office to mail some books and I put on this 40-pound weight vest that I walk around in. It was about 3 or 4 in the afternoon and I’m walking back and all of a sudden police officers drove up, got out of their car, and stopped. I had my earphones on so I didn’t know they were talking to me. I looked up and there’s a helicopter above. And now I can kind of see why people run, because you might live if you run, even if you haven’t done anything. This was in Emeryville, one of the wealthiest enclaves in Northern California, where there’s security galore. Someone had seen me walking to the post office and called in and said they saw a Muslim with an explosives vest. One cop, a white guy, picked it up and laughed and said, “Oh, I think I know what this is. This is a weight belt.”

It’s not only humiliating, but it creates anxiety on a daily basis. Before, I used to feel safe going up to a police officer if I was lost or needed directions. But I don’t do that anymore. I hike a lot, and if I’m out hiking and I see a dead body, I’ll keep on walking. I’ll never call the police again.

‘It now feels as though I am on my own’

Zander Keig, 52, San Diego

Coast Guard veteran. Works at Naval Medical Center San Diego as a clinical social work case manager. Editor of anthologies about transgender men. Started transition in 2005.

Prior to my transition, I was an outspoken radical feminist. I spoke up often, loudly and with confidence.

I was encouraged to speak up. I was given awards for my efforts, literally — it was like, “Oh, yeah, speak up, speak out.” When I speak up now, I am often given the direct or indirect message that I am “mansplaining,” “taking up too much space” or “asserting my white male heterosexual privilege.” Never mind that I am a first-generation Mexican American, a transsexual man, and married to the same woman I was with prior to my transition.

I find the assertion that I am now unable to speak out on issues I find important offensive and I refuse to allow anyone to silence me. My ability to empathize has grown exponentially, because I now factor men into my thinking and feeling about situations.

Prior to my transition, I rarely considered how men experienced life or what they thought, wanted or liked about their lives.

I have learned so much about the lives of men through my friendships with men, reading books and articles by and for men and through the men I serve as a licensed clinical social worker.

Social work is generally considered to be “female dominated,” with women making up about 80 percent of the profession in the United States. Currently I work exclusively with clinical nurse case managers, but in my previous position, as a medical social worker working with chronically homeless military veterans — mostly male — who were grappling with substance use disorder and severe mental illness, I was one of a few men among dozens of women.

Plenty of research shows that life events, medical conditions and family circumstances impact men and women differently. But when I would suggest that patient behavioral issues like anger or violence may be a symptom of trauma or depression, it would often get dismissed or outright challenged. The overarching theme was “men are violent” and there was “no excuse” for their actions.

I do notice that some women do expect me to acquiesce or concede to them more now: Let them speak first, let them board the bus first, let them sit down first, and so on. I also notice that in public spaces men are more collegial with me, which they express through verbal and nonverbal messages: head lifting when passing me on the sidewalk and using terms like “brother” and “boss man” to acknowledge me. As a former lesbian feminist, I was put off by the way that some women want to be treated by me, now that I am a man, because it violates a foundational belief I carry, which is that women are fully capable human beings who do not need men to acquiesce or concede to them.

What continues to strike me is the significant reduction in friendliness and kindness now extended to me in public spaces. It now feels as though I am on my own: No one, outside of family and close friends, is paying any attention to my well-being.

I can recall a moment where this difference hit home. A couple of years into my medical gender transition, I was traveling on a public bus early one weekend morning. There were six people on the bus, including me. One was a woman. She was talking on a mobile phone very loudly and remarked that “men are such a–holes.” I immediately looked up at her and then around at the other men. Not one had lifted his head to look at the woman or anyone else. The woman saw me look at her and then commented to the person she was speaking with about “some a–hole on the bus right now looking at me.” I was stunned, because I recall being in similar situations, but in the reverse, many times: A man would say or do something deemed obnoxious or offensive, and I would find solidarity with the women around me as we made eye contact, rolled our eyes and maybe even commented out loud on the situation. I’m not sure I understand why the men did not respond, but it made a lasting impression on me.

‘I took control of my career’

Chris Edwards, 49, Boston

Advertising creative director, public speaker and author of the memoir “Balls: It Takes Some to Get Some.” Transitioned in his mid-20s.

When I began my transition at age 26, a lot of my socialization came from the guys at work. For example, as a woman, I’d walk down the hall and bump into some of my female co-workers, and they’d say, “Hey, what’s up?” and I’d say, “Oh, I just got out of this client meeting. They killed all my scripts and now I have to go back and rewrite everything, blah blah blah. What’s up with you?” and then they’d tell me their stories. As a guy, I bump into a guy in the hall and he says, “What’s up?” and I launch into a story about my day and he’s already down the hall. And I’m thinking, well, that’s rude. So, I think, okay, well, I guess guys don’t really share, so next time I’ll keep it brief. By the third time, I realized you just nod.

The creative department is largely male, and the guys accepted me into the club. I learned by example and modeled my professional behavior accordingly. For example, I kept noticing that if guys wanted an assignment they’d just ask for it. If they wanted a raise or a promotion they’d ask for it. This was a foreign concept to me. As a woman, I never felt that it was polite to do that or that I had the power to do that. But after seeing it happen all around me I decided that if I felt I deserved something I was going to ask for it too. By doing that, I took control of my career. It was very empowering.

Apparently, people were only holding the door for me because I was a woman rather than out of common courtesy as I had assumed. Not just men, women too. I learned this the first time I left the house presenting as male, when a woman entered a department store in front of me and just let the door swing shut behind her. I was so caught off guard I walked into it face first.

When you’re socially transitioning, you want to blend in, not stand out, so it’s uncomfortable when little reminders pop up that you’re not like everybody else. I’m expected to know everything about sports. I like sports but I’m not in deep like a lot of guys. For example, I love watching football, but I never played the sport (wasn’t an option for girls back in my day) so there is a lot I don’t know. I remember the first time I was in a wedding as a groomsman. I was maybe three years into my transition and I was lined up for photos with all the other guys. And one of them shouted, “High school football pose!” and on cue everybody dropped down and squatted like the offensive line, and I was like, what the hell is going on? It was not instinctive to me since I never played. I tried to mirror what everyone was doing, but when you see the picture I’m kind of “offsides,” so to speak.

The hormones made me more impatient. I had lots of female friends and one of the qualities they loved about me was that I was a great listener. After being on testosterone, they informed me that my listening skills weren’t what they used to be. Here’s an example: I’m driving with one of my best friends, Beth, and I ask her “Is your sister meeting us for dinner?” Ten minutes later she’s still talking and I still have no idea if her sister is coming. So finally, I couldn’t take it anymore, and I snapped and said, “IS SHE COMING OR NOT?” And Beth was like, “You know, you used to like hearing all the backstory and how I’d get around to the answer. A lot of us have noticed you’ve become very impatient lately and we think it’s that damn testosterone!” It’s definitely true that some male behavior is governed by hormones. Instead of listening to a woman’s problem and being empathetic and nodding along, I would do the stereotypical guy thing — interrupt and provide a solution to cut the conversation short and move on. I’m trying to be better about this.

People ask if being a man made me more successful in my career. My answer is yes — but not for the reason you might think. As a man, I was finally comfortable in my own skin and that made me more confident. At work I noticed I was more direct: getting to the point, not apologizing before I said anything or tiptoeing around and trying to be delicate like I used to do. In meetings, I was more outspoken. I stopped posing my thoughts as questions. I’d say what I meant and what I wanted to happen instead of dropping hints and hoping people would read between the lines and pick up on what I really wanted. I was no longer shy about stating my opinions or defending my work. When I gave presentations I was brighter, funnier, more engaging. Not because I was a man. Because I was happy.

‘People assume I know the answer’

Alex Poon, 26, Boston

Project manager for Wayfair, an online home goods company. Alex is in the process of his physical transition; he did the chest surgery after college and started taking testosterone this spring.

Traditional Chinese culture is about conforming to your elders’ wishes and staying within gender boundaries. However, I grew up in the U.S., where I could explore my individuality and my own gender identity. When I was 15 I was attending an all-girls high school where we had to wear skirts, but I felt different from my peers. Around that point we began living with my Chinese grandfather towards the end of his life. He was so traditional and deeply set in his ways. I felt like I couldn’t cut my hair or dress how I wanted because I was afraid to upset him and have our last memories of each other be ruined.

Genetics are not in my favor for growing a lumberjack-style beard. Sometimes, Chinese faces are seen as “soft” with less defined jaw lines and a lack of facial fair. I worry that some of my feminine features like my “soft face” will make it hard to present as a masculine man, which is how I see myself. Instead, when people meet me for the first time, I’m often read as an effeminate man.

My voice has started cracking and becoming lower. Recently, I’ve been noticing the difference between being perceived as a woman versus being perceived as a man. I’ve been wondering how I can strike the right balance between remembering how it feels to be silenced and talked over with the privileges that come along with being perceived as a man. Now, when I lead meetings, I purposefully create pauses and moments where I try to draw others into the conversation and make space for everyone to contribute and ask questions.

People now assume I have logic, advice and seniority. They look at me and assume I know the answer, even when I don’t. I’ve been in meetings where everyone else in the room was a woman and more senior, yet I still got asked, “Alex, what do you think? We thought you would know.” I was at an all-team meeting with 40 people, and I was recognized by name for my team’s accomplishments. Whereas next to me, there was another successful team led by a woman, but she was never mentioned by name. I went up to her afterward and said, “Wow, that was not cool; your team actually did more than my team.” The stark difference made me feel uncomfortable and brought back feelings of when I had been in the same boat and not been given credit for my work.

When people thought I was a woman, they often gave me vague or roundabout answers when I asked a question. I’ve even had someone tell me, “If you just Googled it, you would know.” But now that I’m read as a man, I’ve found people give me direct and clear answers, even if it means they have to do some research on their own before getting back to me.

A part of me regrets not sharing with my grandfather who I truly am before he passed away. I wonder how our relationship might have been different if he had known this one piece about me and had still accepted me as his grandson. Traditionally, Chinese culture sees men as more valuable than women. Before, I was the youngest granddaughter, so the least important. Now, I’m the oldest grandson. I think about how he might have had different expectations or tried to instill certain traditional Chinese principles upon me more deeply, such as caring more about my grades or taking care of my siblings and elders. Though he never viewed me as a man, I ended up doing these things anyway.

Zander Keig contributed to this article in his personal capacity. The opinions expressed in this are the author’s own and do not reflect the view of the Department of Defense.

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Old story worth a repost SOURCE

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comebeonetwothree · 3 years ago

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Blog #8: Country Roads

07/13/2021

Currently driving through roads where pro-life billboards are placed in front of graveyards… we are officially on the road back home.

Traveling fast but seeing the most we have while covering 1,500 miles and two time zones in the last week. 900 miles to go. We jumped from Portland to northern and southern Montana then all the way through to Chicago… our last stop ;(

We met some really nice people out here- the kind of people that want to take time out of their day to interact with you. People actually smile at you and mean it when they say “have a good day.”

There were a lot of experiences this week that were indescribable. All senses were at full throttle from sleeping in the heart of Portland to camping in National Parks.

Being our last stretch of the trip, it has been hard to not feel sad when we are closing such a big chapter of our life. It’s a weird feeling of being sad but also still being so excited for the next stop. I hope the excitement doesn’t end.

Who

Who is ready to rumble…

In Portland we got to meet up with Maya’s cousin, Michael and his daughter Thea. He moved out there 13 years ago and never looked back.

He was telling us he did a similar trip with his college buddies back in the day and fell in love with the city, so moved there shortly after the trip.

Sounds fun, might fuck around and move…

Batman was ready to rumble, and fumble and everything in between. While whitewater rafting in Glacier National Park, we had the pleasure of riding with Batman The Guide. Batman, because you can’t change who you are but if you can always choose Batman.

He had been living in Montana for 17 years after moving from Oregon. He had previously worked in the park as a shuttle bus driver and recently switched over to a whitewater rafting instructor.

He was a funny fucking dude; the whole crew was super hyped but he had a comedic sense that made it an entertaining day.

While on the water, we were joking around and splashing the neighboring rafts, an independent rafter said they will bomb us with beers if we splash them. One of the other people on the boat yelled back, “Are they full beers?” and they responded by launching three full miller lite beers at our raft.

At the end of our tour, Batman gave us the three beers then we dedicated those three beers to him with a funnel.

More Friends!!! Its wild how many people we got to see throughout this trip. Hitting Yellowstone National Park, we met up with Mayas friends from home: Cole, Jamie and Declan.

They were just starting their cross-country trip from Nyack, NY, hitting the Northern route to the southern, vs our trip ending in the North. Funny coincident.

We camped out with them for two nights… it was too beautiful to just stay one night, so we pushed back our trip to badlands and stayed the extra night.

We were all out at this joint called Buffalo Bar, it had a great outdoor area with corn hole, ring toss and puppiesss. There is something so fulfilling in petting random dogs with a beer in your hand.

This one dog I was petting had an exceptional owner who was traveling him across states to bring him home. I spoke with the owner for quite a while, she was so friendly about letting me pet her dog. She really was doing it all, back at home she has three kids and two other dogs.

When people hear about our travels, their reactions usually make us realize how cool it is to have the opportunity to do a trip like this.

Many times they wish they did the same when they were our age, *cough, cough, go travel right now, cough, cough.*

This woman explained how she jumped right into working out of school and has always regretted it. Her children were already teenagers so I told her she should get out there and do it. Traveling her new dog home was a great start to the on-the-go lifestyle, she seemed to be enjoying it.

I later found out she picked up our tables tab… thank you Jennifer, you have a heart of gold and a generous soul. She explained her hopes that her kids will one day get out there and see the world like she always wished, and we were accomplishing. It was a pass it forward request, when I am able to cover the bill of a lovely traveling stranger. I hope I cross paths with this family eventually and pay it forward for her children that may travel.

What

What a reality…

The National Park pass is something you buy and are given access to all the national parks in the US. We got one in the beginning of the trip knowing we would be reaching quite a few parks. Unfortunately, we lost it after just seeing the Grand canyon.

It fell in a black hole… the area where your dashboard and windshield meet. Remember this when you put shit on the dashboard. It can slide right down to its death, the only way to get the shit out is by taking off the windshield.

Those passes are irreplaceable, of course.

In badlands, we posted up around 10 p.m. in our hammocks. It was a new experience for us, we thought hey its our last time camping, lets try it a new way.

We set our hammocks up underneath this podium and slept there. It was perfect for a quick and easy set up/clean up. There was a solid amount of people around us, so we weren't too worried about getting attacked by coyotes again.

Where

When driving to Portland we drove through the Redwood National Forest. This made me realize how long this Earth has been around.

Trees take a while to grow, and these trees were as thick as three full grown pine trees and as tall as two stacked on top of each other.

Neck breaking tall.

After crossing through, we hit the upper west coast and traveled on route 101 until we hit Portland. It was filled with jaw dropping views, so much so I woke Mary and Maya up every 5 minutes to show them the views. Most times it was the same view as before, just with a new massive rock to look at.

It was a relatively foggy day, so we couldn’t see certain lookout points, but there was something so majestic about the fog within the forests and hanging on the coast.

There were points where you cross over a bridge and there was nothing around you, just white. It appeared as being stuck in a dream or driving my bitchass to heaven.

Arriving in Portland, we stayed at a place in ChinaTown. It was so cute and located on top of a great deli, Charlie’s Deli.

We checked out a bunch of shops and stores while in Portland. While we were walking around, this coffee shop had the sweetest workers. They enjoyed interacting with their customers and weren’t just looking to take your money.

Portland is filled with mockingly friendly people, they weren’t mocking anyone though, they were just that fucking friendly. They actually want to converse with people... what a concept.

For dinner we went to this food truck pod place, which is about 15 different food trucks serving food, with a communal sitting area to eat the food.

We met up with Maya’s cousin there for a drink and to catch up.

Hitting Glacier National Park, we started our camping excursion. We started off sleeping in our car since we arrived late to our campground after driving 10 hours to get there. It was pretty comfortable and with the knowledge of bear attacks in the area, it was a secure place to sleep.

While in Glacier, we decided to go whitewater rafting, a whole new way of seeing the parks. It was so dope, the rapids were on the weak side since the heat waves.

After rafting, we found a great lake front public access point where we hung our hammocks up and took a nice long nap.

There are lakes EVERYWHERE here in Montana and great fishing! Let’s travel and fish all over Montana, okay? Cool.

We waited until 5 p.m. when the park lets you in without a pass, to do a sunset hike in the park. We took Going-to-the-sun road to the highline hike, where we got to see some wild animals!

In the parking lot we got to see a horned sheep (looks like a ram) and more mountain goats!! We saw three full grown goats and one baby goat.

This horned sheep actually stormed at us and we had to jump into our car. The people that parked in the spot before us left their cheetos on the ground. This guy was hungry as fuck I guess. Relentless to say the least.

This National Park is my new favorite spot-on Earth. Spread my ashes here. Moseying through the park was a full body experience.

All your senses are involved, the smells of the forest are beyond refreshing. The touch of the crisp air brings goosebumps to your skin, and the taste of wind in your face emphasizes the overload of oxygen in that area.

There are no commercialized areas for hours outside the park. Just a fuck ton of trees.

The sounds of different birds chirping harmonizes in your ears with the wind blowing and the rocks falling below you. Your sight is spiked the highest out of the senses. These views seemed so unreal they appeared fake. When you finally touch the grounds around you, you realize how really unreal this land is.

Heading to Yellowstone the following day brought a similar element of nostalgia. We camped right outside the park, on the state border lines of Wyoming and Idaho.

Our friends we stayed with luckily still had their national park pass, so we all took our car and got into the park early that next morning. We got to see some bison! Fun Fact: Bison and Buffalos are actually the same thing.

There were so many beautiful trees and hot springs throughout the park. So many cool colors to see. We also watched Old Faithful blow her hole!!

Getting to Badlands eventually, we got a campground directly in the park. Since we got there later than five it was free. We posted up our hammocks for our last night camping on the trip ;( when we woke up, the views were so cool.

Badlands is a shit ton of clay forming giant sandcastle hills all over. But there is so much green for a desert it was an interesting combination.

When

When can we shower…

We have completed so much of the drive home its wild. We stayed in an apartment for the first two nights in Portland and then spent the rest of the week camping.

We hit our record of days without a shower… 5 full ass days. I’m so proud of Mary and Maya, they really can’t stand being dirty.

When driving long ass 10 hour plus drives for a week you find yourself enjoying nothingness. Head empty is such a vibe after jamming to music and listening to murder mystery podcasts for hours on end.

Our music ranges widely, depending on crashing periods. Whenever Mary is driving, she is either blasting screamo edm music or 2000s pop music.

Maya plays some bomb bops; I really don’t know any of the songs, but it has opened my mind to all these new artists!!

I personally love the murder mystery podcasts, there were a few times I had to change it though because it got too spooky. In the case of this week, we were driving to camp in Montana and a murder mystery came on about the Montana Child Killer… dope.

Why

I have ruled out ever living in a city. From the driving on busy ass streets to the dirty smells everywhere, I will happily reside somewhere in the country. Where? Still have no idea… Why? Because there are so many pros and cons to all these places we saw.

I guess i'll just have to come back out here!

I’m really thinking somewhere up north on the west coast. The west coast will forever hold my heart, but I really don’t have the money or the ability to live in a city out there. Maybe one day with a bombass money making job.

Coming back to the East has made me realize how much nicer people are out west and how much slower of a pace it is.

How

How are we coming up on our last spot…

We are hitting our last stop… Chicago. Shoutout to my cousin for going to school here and letting us use and abuse his apartment! Hehe just kidding we will take care of it for ya, Owen!

It feels so strange to be this close to New York. Our license plates being from New York is no longer that cool.

I’m going to miss people peeping our plates and asking us about our travels and/or wishing us luck!

Thanks everyone throughout, we are almost accomplished with this chapter!

#blogging for beginners #fuck it #post grad #cross country #jubilation #travel #beginners guide #covid made me do it #road trip #bloggersdiaries

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insanityclause · 5 years ago

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Sara Krulwich/The New York Times

A Director Making His Mark in More Ways Than One

LONDON — The director Jamie Lloyd was giving me a tour of his tattoos. Not the Pegasus on his chest or the skeleton astronaut floating on his back, though he gamely described those, but the onyx-inked adornments that cover his arms and hands, that wreathe his neck, that wrap around his shaved head.

When I asked about the dragon at his throat, he told me it had been “one of the ones that hurt the least,” then pointed to the flame-licked skulls on either side of his neck: his “covert way,” he said, of representing drama’s traditional emblems for comedy and tragedy.

“I thought maybe it’d be a little bit tacky to have theater masks on my neck,” he added, a laugh bubbling up, and it’s true: His dragon would have eaten them for lunch.

It was early December, and we were in a lounge beneath the Playhouse Theater, where Lloyd’s West End production of “Cyrano de Bergerac,” starring James McAvoy in a skintight puffer jacket and his own regular-size nose, would soon open to packed houses and critical praise.

Running through Feb. 29, and arriving on cinema screens Feb. 20 in a National Theater Live broadcast, “Cyrano” — newly adapted by Martin Crimp, and positing its hero as a scrappy spoken-word wonder — capped a year that saw Lloyd celebrated on both sides of the Atlantic.

In London last summer, his outdoor hit “Evita” traded conventional glamour for sexy grit, while his radical reinterpretation of Harold Pinter’s “Betrayal,” starring Tom Hiddleston, was hailed first in the West End, then on Broadway. Ben Brantley, reviewing “Betrayal” in The New York Times, called it “one of those rare shows I seem destined to think about forever.”

When Time Out London ranked the best theater of 2019, it gave the top spot jointly to all three Lloyd productions, saying that he “has had a year that some of his peers might trade their entire careers for.”

Lloyd, who is 39, did not spring from the same mold as many of those peers. There was for him, he says, no youthful aha moment of watching Derek Jacobi onstage and divining that directing was his path. Epiphanies like that belonged to other kids, the ones who could afford the tickets.

If there is a standard background for a London theater director — and Lloyd would argue that certainly there used to be — that isn’t where he came from, growing up working class on the south coast of England, in Margaret Thatcher’s Britain.

The first time I laid eyes on him, chatting in the Playhouse lobby after a preview of “Cyrano,” he was the picture of working-class flair — the gold pirate hoops, the pink and black T-shirt, the belt cinching high-waisted pants.

He looks nothing like your typical West End director. Which of course is precisely the point.

What’s underneath

“It’s quite often said of him,” McAvoy observed by phone, once the reviews were in, “that he strips things away or he tries to take classical works and turn them on their head. I think he’s always just trying to tell the story in the clearest and most exhilarating way possible.”

The “X-Men” star, who put the number of times he’s worked with Lloyd in the past decade at a “gazillion,” calls theirs “probably one of the most defining relationships that I’ve had in my career.”

Yet Lloyd himself is on board with the notion that his assertively contemporary stagings pare back stifling layers of performance history to lay bare what’s underneath.

Like the tiger and dragons that he had emblazoned on his head just last May, though, the unembellished nature of his shows — as minimalist in their way as his tattoos are the opposite — is a relatively recent development.

Lloyd’s first “Cyrano de Bergerac,” starring Douglas Hodge in 2012, was also his Broadway debut. It was, he said, “absolutely the ‘Cyrano’ that you would expect,” with the fake nose, the hat, the plume, the sword-fighting.

There is, granted, sword-fighting in the new one — but the audience has to imagine the swords.

Lloyd’s productions, including a lauded revival of Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine’s “Passion” in 2010, long marked him as a hot young director on the rise. But he sees in some of his previous work a noisy tendency toward idea overload.

The pivot point came in 2018, with a season that the Jamie Lloyd Company — which he formed seven years ago with the commercial producing powerhouse Ambassador Theater Group — devoted to the short works of Harold Pinter. The playwright’s distillation of language forced Lloyd to match it with his staging.

That immersion led to what the director Michael Grandage — one of Lloyd’s early champions, who tapped him at 27 to be his associate director at the Donmar Warehouse — called Lloyd’s “absolute masterpiece.”

“I had quite a lot of ambition to do a production of ‘Betrayal’ in my life,” Grandage said. “And then when I saw Jamie’s, I thought, ‘Right, that’s it. I don’t ever, ever want to direct this play.’ Because that’s, for me, the perfect production.”

Playing dress-up

Charm is a ready currency in the theater, but Lloyd’s is disarming; he seems simply to be being himself, without veneer. Like when I fact-checked something I’d read by asking whether he was a vegan.

“Lapsed vegan,” he confessed immediately, with a tinge of guilt about eating eggs again.

Pay no attention to any tough-guy vibe in photos of him; do not be alarmed by the sharp-toothed cat on the back of his head. In conversation, Lloyd comes across as thoughtful and unassuming, with an animated humor that makes him fun company. If he speaks at the speed of someone with no time to waste, he balances that with focused attentiveness.

His father, Ray, was a truck driver. His mother, Joy (whose name is tattooed on his right forearm, near the elbow), cleaned houses, took in ironing and ran a costume-rental shop, where young Jamie would sneak in to dress up as the children’s cartoon character Rainbow Brite.

“It’s very embarrassing,” he said, squelching a laugh.

Seeing professional theater wasn’t an option then for Lloyd, whose grown-up passion for expanding audience access — one of the things he has made himself known for in the West End — grew out of that exclusion. His company has set aside 15,000 free and 15,000 £15 tickets for its current, characteristically starry three-show season, which will also include Emilia Clarke in “The Seagull” and Jessica Chastain in “A Doll’s House.” At the 786-seat Playhouse, that adds up to just over 38 full houses.

Lloyd, who was studying acting at the Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts when he decided he wanted to direct, found his way to theater as a child by acting in school shows and local amateur productions. Twice he was cast as a monkey; in “The Wizard of Oz,” thrillingly, he got to fly.

The details of his early days have always been colorful — like having a clown as his first stepfather, who performed at children’s parties under the stage name Uncle Funny. But Lloyd is quick to acknowledge the darkness lurking there.

“It sounds a little bit like some dodgy film, because he was actually a really violent man,” he said. “And there were times where he was very physically abusive to my mum. There was a sort of atmosphere of violence in that house that was really uneasy. And yet masked with this literal makeup, but also this sense of trying to entertain people whilst enacting terrible brutality behind the scenes.”

This is where he locates his own connection to Pinter’s work.

“A lot of that is that the violence is beneath the surface,” he said. “And on the top there is this sort of, what I call a kind of topspin, a layer of cover-up.”

Long relationships

Lloyd was still at drama school when he staged a production of Lapine and William Finn’s “Falsettoland” that won a prize: assistant directing a show at the Bush Theater in London. Based on that, Trevor Nunn hired him, at 22, to be his assistant director on “Anything Goes” in the West End — a job he did so well that Grandage got word of it and hired him to assist on “Guys and Dolls.” While Lloyd was doing that, he also began directing in his own right.

The costume and set designer Soutra Gilmour, who has been a constant with Lloyd since he cold-called her for his first professional production, Pinter’s “The Caretaker,” said theirs is an easy relationship, with a “symbiotic transference of ideas.” Even their creative aesthetics have evolved in sync.

“We’ve actually never fallen out in 13 years,” she said over mint tea on a trip to New York last month, just before “Betrayal” closed. “Never! I don’t even know how we would fall out.”

Of course, the one time she tried to decline a Lloyd project five years ago, because its tech rehearsals coincided with the due date for her son’s birth, he told her there was no one else he wanted to work with. So she did the show, warning that at some point she would have to leave. Now, she says, he understands that she won’t sit through endless evening previews, because she needs to go home to her child.

Lloyd and his wife, the actress Suzie Toase (whose name is tattooed on one of his arms), home-school their own three boys (whose names are tattooed on the other). Their eldest, 13-year-old Lewin, is an actor who recently played one of the principal characters, the heroine’s irresistible best friend, on the HBO and BBC One series “His Dark Materials,” whose cast boasts McAvoy as well.

Enter the child

Lloyd’s interpretation of “Betrayal,” a 1978 play that recounts a seven-year affair, imbued it with a distinctly non-’70s awareness of the fragility of family — the notion that children are the bystanders harmed when a marriage is tossed away.

Its gasp-inducing moment came with the entrance of a character Pinter wrote to be mentioned but not seen: the small daughter of the couple whose relationship is imperiled. In putting her onstage, Lloyd didn’t touch the text; it was a simple, wordless role. With it, he altered the resonance of the play.

To me, it seemed logical that Lloyd’s production would have been informed by his experience as a husband and father — and maybe also as a child in a splintering family. How old had he been, anyway, when his parents split up?

“Five,” Lloyd said. “The same age as the character would be.” He paused. “Oh God, yeah, fascinating. I’d not thought about that. Exactly the same age.”

If that fact was of more than intellectual interest to him, he didn’t let on. He volunteered a memory, though — of being a little one “amongst these kind of big giants, and I guess what we can now see as the mess of their lives.”

Blazer-free

Doing “Betrayal” in New York, Lloyd was struck by how eager Americans were to chat about his tattoos. Still, he told me after I texted him a follow-up question about them, he hadn’t expected his appearance to be such a talking point in this story.

It’s not just idle curiosity. It’s about what the tattoos signify in a field where, in Britain as in the United States, the top directors tend to have grown up very comfortably. It’s about who is welcome in a particular space, and who gets to be themselves there.

For a long time after Lloyd started working in the theater, he wore a blazer every day: a conscious attempt to conform in an industry where he felt a nagging sense of difference.

“Every other director at the time was from an Oxbridge background,” he said, “and looked and sounded a particular way. I spent a long time pretending to be like them.”

It was a performance of sorts, with a costume he donned for the role.

It was only about seven or eight years ago — around the time he left the Donmar and started putting together his own company — that he stopped worrying about what people might think if he looked the way he wanted.

“My dad had tattoos” was the first thing he said when I asked him about his own.

“I guess it’s partly getting older,” he mused, “but it’s just sort of going, ‘You can’t pretend to be someone. You’ve got to be who you really are, in every way.’”

The tattoos that have gradually transformed him are from a different aesthetic universe than his recent work onstage. Yet the impulse, somehow, is the same.

In shedding the blazer, in inking his skin, Lloyd has peeled back layers of imposed convention to show who’s underneath.

And should you spot him at the theater, where he is hard to miss, you’ll notice that he looks just like himself.

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rpctts · 4 years ago

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MADS did it, and i’m nothing if not a little bitch who wants plots, so i wrote up my own connections list for my kiddos over at nex. WHICH HAS been around for five years and is still going strong, baby ! anyways, i play five bitches over there right now, and you’ll find my blog in the source link. anyways, WITHOUT FUTHER ADO !

if any of this appeals to you, or you want to join but not with any of my connections and you still want to plot ? feel free to hit me up on DISCORD : 𝖍𝖆𝖑𝖑𝖔𝖜𝖊𝖊𝖓#1978. or shoot me a dm !

general trigger warnings : abuse, death, alcoholism, rape, murder.

CAROLINE SARAH CRANE. nurse, thirty - two.

the lowdown : she’s too sweet for her own good, and she’s often letting people walk all over her. she had a SHITTY ex - fiance who was abusive, so she’s taking her time getting back into the dating game ———— there’s this guy, though, but she keeps trying to SELF - SABOTAGE to keep them apart since she thinks she’s the reason people leave. her parents died when she was pretty young and she and her sister moved to fort elms to live with their aunt. she was brought up like a traditional southern gal, born and raised in mississippi until she moved to with her sister claire.

WANTED CONNECTIONS :

sister. they have a relatively close relationship, but her sister was always liked a little - bit - more than caroline was, solely based on the fact that she was more outspoken. which is surprising, since they were raised in the south in mississippi. their parents died when caroline was fourteen, and they moved in with their aunt in washington, which is where they both live now (: requirements : mid - to - late thirties. 1/4 black and louisiana creole, unless adopted ———— however, preferably still a poc. would have a connection with brandon ( played by mads ), who is her ex - husband’s brother.

coworkers. as you’ll see later, i play two nurses. i’m like, 90% of the hospital staff right now, and i’d love to see more people who work there ! be it doctors, nurses, techs, whatever. i’d love for her to have a mentor or someone to look up to. requirements : none, besides being able to work in a hospital. would also be connected to nat ( played by alex ), and probably malachai ( played by me <3 ).

friends. everyone needs friends, and caroline’s no exception. right now she’s kind of limited on being friends with the guy she’s kind of dating and her sister’s ex’s brother. requirements : in their thirties. would possibly be connected to jack ( played by tasha ) or brandon ( still played by mads ), who’re the aforementioned characters.

CHELSEA ELISE CZERNY. college junior, music store clerk, twenty - one.

the lowdown : she has her own love life issues, and is a store clerk at camelot’s music. the shop across is where her best guy friend and long - time crush julian works, and she’s stupid and in love with him. recently she found out one of her best friends hooked up with him at a party, and that’s really put a damper on their friendship. :zany: anywho, chelsea didn’t have a great life. she was born in louisiana, but her folks moved to washington when she was four. she’s the youngest of five girls, and her parents wanted a boy, so she was chucked to the side unless she was being her dad’s punching bag. her mom was an alcoholic like her dad, and while her mom never laid a hand on her, she didn’t do anything to stop her dad and so of course chelsea resents her. her sisters tried their best to shield her, but she’s five years younger than the next sister, and thus they weren’t always around. she had a stint in a mental hospital, but then cps let her go home to the family because they’re big dumb. she also had an awful experience at a party her freshman year of college, where she was drugged and date - raped, so she’s very selective with who she allows physical contact from. she’s my saddest and most damaged character and honestly she deserves better !

WANTED CONNECTIONS :

sister. she already has one around, but there’s three more to go, baby ! i feel like the czerny girls very much have a relationship like the march girls, with chelsea being very much like amy outside of being a little shit ( love you amy ). they’ve always been very close, and while she’s not closest with the oldest, who’s in her late thirties, she has a very good relationship with the other three. requirements : mid - twenties to late - thirties. the youngest would be twenty - six, and the oldest can be whatever, just under fourty. should be blonde, which makes it pretty easy. would also be connected to christina ( played by mary ), who’s the second oldest, and julian ( played by mads ), who’s been chelsea’s best friend since he moved to fort elms, and is also their neighbor.

potential love interest. chelsea’s bisexual, even if she’s not fully aware of it yet. she’s spent the last five years of her life hung up on her best friend ———— very much a betty and archie situation, and now she’s crushed that he not only slept with her bff, but also that he probably doesn’t return her feelings. so she really needs someone to come in and swoop her off her feet. requirements : in their twenties. could be connected to kevin ( played by mads ) and pippa ( played by meredith ).

coworkers. chelsea works at camelot’s, which is the record store in fort elms’ mall. right now, she’s the sole employee ———— which is dangerous considering she’s a klutz and has already fallen off a chair once ! so please give her people to keep her company at work. requirements : none.

STEVEN MICHAEL KINNEY. chemistry teacher, twenty - six.

the lowdown : middle child, perpetual grump. his parents died when he was sixteen, and his baby sister was the only survivor. steven was left with a lot of anger that he didn’t know how to control or get rid of, so in college he joined the boxing team and eventually joined an underground fight club type of thing. he was good at it, and ended up being a crowd favorite and pretty popular with the crowd too. that changed when he hit a guy so hard he passed out, and the guy ended up dying in the hospital. steven wasn’t left without injuries, but his guilt is what’s really done him in. he’s pretty much ruining his relationship with his sisters because he’s punishing himself for the guy’s death by pretty much throwing himself into fights recklessly, hoping to get beat up and d*e. pretty dark and DEPRESSING, if you ask me !

WANTED CONNECTIONS :

cousin(s). after their parents died, the kinney trio were adopted by their uncle and moved in with him. well, steven and sawyer did. sienna had already yeeted herself away. steven would’ve been relatively close to any cousins his age, and they probably would’ve pranked sawyer and any younger siblings. probably would’ve grown apart when steven moved out for college and started withdrawing. requirements : it’d be nice for someone around his age, though maybe a little younger, so early - to - mid twenties. we never specified in canon whether it’s their mom or dad that was japanese, so it would be up to you on whether it’s the side of the family that their uncle’s on ! would also be connected to sienna ( formerly played by meredith, now dead in a ditch somwhere ), who’s the oldest, and sawyer ( played by mads ), who’s the baby.

ex - boyfriend. COLLEGE. a time for learning yourself, and reinvention. steven’s pansexual and he had a secret boyfriend in college. i say secret because it’s the 80s and sawyer is uber - religious. they dated their sophomore year into their junior year, and ultimately the other boy broke things off because, unfortunately, the guy that steven accidentally killed was in fact his best friend. and now that steven’s on the road to love, it’d be fun if someone came in and fucked with that a little bit. requirements : twenty - six / twenty - seven, to be in line with steven’s age. preferably a poc, but not a necessity.

coworkers. give me more TEACHERS ! who will teach the children math in the apocalypse ? it could be you ! requirements : if they’re a teacher, they gotta have a teaching degree sorry babie ! no fifteen year olds allowed.

MALACHAI COLSON KNOX. nurse, thirty - four.

the lowdown : he’s also a nurse, and he ALSO has romance troubles ———— that appears to be a common trend. he’s in love with his best friend of over twenty years who’s daughter he also raised. they have a complicated history, it’s fine. grew up in chino, they moved to washington after ava was born, and they’ve been living there since. everyone calls kai a simp, which i GUESS he technically is, because he’d do anything for odette. BUT THAT’S BECAUSE HE LOVES HER. gross. there was a time in his mid - twenties where they weren’t living together ( he was living with his ex - girlfriend, who wasn’t an ex at the time ), but THAT was a whole mess. homegirl was emotionally manipulative and a fucking bitch, which wasn’t great. he eventually got out of the situation and moved back in with odette, who he’s now dating ———— even though no one knows. honestly, he doesn’t even know, because odette’s scared of labels. they make her cry.

WANTED CONNECTIONS :

ex - girlfriend. she's crazy, and a bitch. she manipulated kai throughout their entire relationship, and it really fucked with his mind and is part of the reason he was so hesitant on things with odette. there was probably a lot of gaslighting in that relationship. he did love her, however, and if she showed back up in fort elms that would certainly make things difficult for him ! so of course i love it. requirements : mid - thirties, looks like a bitch. would also be connected to odette ( played by mads ), who she probably hates.

friends. kai needs some buds. mads has a wanted connection for a childhood friendof theirs, which would be great, but i’d also just love some new friends as well. people he can go grab drinks with, or do other friend things with ! requirements : in their thirties, probably, but no specifics.

coworkers. see above, in caroline’s wanted connection. requirements : should be old enough to work in a hospital.

NOAH HASTUR WRIGHT. contractor, twenty - four.

the lowdown : former football star and resident player. UNFORTUNATELY. for me, anyways. he had lots of relationships in high school, but his most frequent was sawyer, with whom he was very on - again - off - again with. at the end of the football season in his senior year, he tore his acl, which ruined any shot of a football scholarship to a big university. so instead he went to trade school, joined his cousin julian’s band, and now he also deals pot to the town of fort elms. it’s very opposite of who he was in high school, though he’s still a big player. has a shitty relationship with his dad, because who doesn’t ? and also doesn’t believe in LOVE. though he’s pretty sure he might be in love with sawyer, so that’s real rough on him.

WANTED CONNECTIONS :

ex - girlfriend(s). like i said, in high school he was a player. he was also attractive and popular, so he was a good target for flirtaionships. if he wasn’t dating SAWYER, he was hooking up or dating some other girl, and i’m sure he probably strung some girls along. give him some evil exes that someone has to fight, or girls still really hung up on him. requirements : twenties, between 20 - 28, i guess, since he definitely would’ve dated older girls as a freshman / sophomore. would also be connected to julian ( still played by mads ), who’s his cousin.

friends. a clear trend with my characters is that they need more casual friends / acquaintances. he’s buds with the boys in the band, but he really needs people outside of it to hang out with too. requirements : in their twenties.

buyer(s). he’s a pot dealer, and i’m sure that lots of people in fort elms buy ! it’d be cool to have a relationship that’s like a i’ll text my dealer, he’s cool kind of deal. he’d definitely come by and play video games, maybe even give you a discount on prices if you kicked his ass. requirements : none.

hookup. he’s pansexual and very sexually active. like said, he’s a player, so he’d definitely still be sleeping around with people, but it’d be nice to have a consistent person he can turn to. the kind of person he can call at 3am and they meet in a parking lot, or something. the kind he can count on. requirements : no minors.

his mom. he has a great mom ———— she’d rival juli’s, if i were strong enough to go against mads. but i don’t. she is a great mom, though, and she raised both noah and his teen sister to the best of her abilities. she’s been a single parent since his sister was born, and she’s now fourteen, so their mom’s had a little bit of learning to do. she forced her kids to learn polish, even though she’s not as in touch with her heritage as her sister is, but it’s there ———— paczki every saturday morning with breakfast. she’s not very overbearing, but she is a little nosy, and she gives noah grief for dealing out of her house, but he pays rent so she lets it slide. requirements : early forties, can be any white lady, though preferably jewish. would be connected to julian ( yep, still played by mads ) as his maternal aunt.

#rp #rph #rpc #wanted connections #wowie this took the first like. 2 hours of work #love that #salem speaks.#nex related

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fuyupeach · 6 years ago

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In The Works // Ryuji Sakamoto x Reader - chapter 2

note: sorry for not updating in so long!!! school has been busy and i'm having to think more about my future as time is flying by. hope y'all like this chapter, and thank you to those who are still reading this!! not proofread as usual. //that was a note from the original story on ao3!! i wanted to post it on tumblr as well, so here we are! i’m posting from my phone so i’ll fix things from my laptop later!

prologue / ch.1

After that day with Ryuji, you had slowly but surely gotten into the routine of walking up to the roof with him to eat lunch together, you having to bring another box for Ryuji to fit all the food you'd put in. At first, sometimes he would wait in line with you while you bought drinks, eventually even holding them for you. “Don’t mention it.” he would say, a grumble under his breath and a glance away from you as he walks ahead, you quickening your stride to catch up to the dark haired boy.

Now, he would hold them for you without question, a stubborn refusal sent your way if you would tell him you could hold it yourself. The harsh words towards the boy that would go down the hallway as you made your way to the roof broke your heart, the one time you had reached your limit in listening to it Ryuji had stopped you, telling you to ignore it.

This was the usual cycle that had continued between the two of you as you both got closer. Ryuji had left an impact on you the same you had did him, helping you speak up more, Ryuji continuing to learn how to walk away from a fight. Eventually you had built up enough courage to ask Ryuji to hang out over the weekend outside of school--you had made a new friend and thought it would be nice if the two of you talked outside of school as well. He hadn’t put up much of a resistance, joking, “I’m sure you probably have something else better to be doing than hang out with me on a weekend, but sure.”

“Something else better would be hanging out with you Ryuji.” You say firmly, smiling brightly at him in response to his slightly shocked state. “Now, where do you want to go?”

Ryuji had decided that the arcade would be the best place to go on a Saturday. His excitement over his favorite games had been almost infectious on you, a small smile on your face as you listened to him animatedly explain how to play each one, the sparkle in his eye and his crooked smile as he went over the few hacks he knew left you in a trance as you couldn’t help but stare.

He really is cute. You couldn’t help the thought from resurfacing in your mind, temperature rising once more as Ryuji asked if you understood the rules.

“____? You good? You weren’t dazin’ off again were ya?” He peers into your eyes, his close proximity snapping you back to reality.

“O-Of course! Can’t wait to kick your butt,” You stammer out, a wobbly smirk spreading across your features.

“Ha! We’ll see about that, newbie.” Ryuji smirks back, stepping back and reaching for the coins in his pocket to pay for the game. “This one’s on me.”

That same year, Ryuji had joined the track team. He had told you it was something he had grown to feel passionate about, that he had felt so free while running. While he had been happy and had less time to spend with you now, the bruises you remember so clearly from when you were younger and from the first day of school had begun to creep back.

Slowly, then all at once.

Your first year of middle school had gone relatively well, Ryuji by your side as a new close friend in your plain silent life.

Your second year, Ryuji had been gone for most of school, the only times he would show up being covered in bruises and silent most of the time. He had dismissed your worry, and was vague in his texts, his demeanor growing cold like the first time you had met him. You did not give up however and tried to keep him company whenever you could, taking him out to eat ramen--you had figured out it was one of his favorite foods--occasionally if he would accept. You had made a new friend in Ann Takamaki during the time Ryuji was gone, the bullying towards her as a different looking student irritating you to no end. Ann was quiet at first, but she had also introduced you to Shiho, who was a good connector between the two of you.

Ryuji had not opened up to you about the circumstances regarding his father until your guys’ third and final year, where everything had settled.

You had been walking among the other students on the path to the front school gates, headphones in ears as you mindlessly stared into the distance past the students ahead of your, mindless nothings floating around your head as you strode forward.

You almost couldn’t believe it would be your last year walking on this same path before you would be thrust onto another one, in a whole new environment. Hopefully Ryuji would be there with you. He had been in a much better mood as of recent, but you had forgotten to ask him if he was coming to orientation today.

Thoughts continued to spin in your mind before they came to a stop all together, a tap on your shoulder having you pause your music and stop to turn around and see who it was.

Ryuji.

Your body had moved before you knew it, enveloping him in a tight hug. You had missed him so much, the summer break lonelier than ever without having seen him once, only his texts and a few phone calls to keep you sane from the continuing waves of worry.

Though, as you pull back to take a good look at him, the smile on his face and the lack or bruises in sight remove some of the worry from your heart.

“You…!” You can’t bring the proper words to come out, lightly hitting his shoulder as you release him. “I… I’m so happy to see you.” and you mean it, a smile on your face as you say so.

“I’m glad.” Ryuji chuckles lightly, smile gone for a moment to show a serious expression you only see every once in a while. “I’ll explain soon, but everything’s okay now.”

With that, the two of you proceed through the front gates together, some of your troubles now at ease.

#ryuji sakamoto #ryuji sakamoto x reader #ryuji x reader #persona 5 x reader #persona 5 fanfiction

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ms-znodgrass · 6 years ago

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Too Much Pino (Newt x Reader)

Word count: 2274

When the reader has to pretend to be Newt’s girlfriend, a little home truths are revealed...

Authors Note: Please excuse any grammatical errors, I didn’t have time to read this through. Sorry!

You had met Newt Scamander at an exhibition of some sort, studying the creatures of the magical wizarding world. Secretly, you were quite the fan, having heard of his large list of inhabited creatures and having read up on his findings regarding every single one.

To say you were a little star struck was a slight under exaggeration. But, once the halo around his head had grown fainter, 6you were able to speak with him as a normal person would. The two of you became very close friends.

That was years ago however, and since, you have both done intense research together. Often you co-wrote papers about rumoured animals that were to be found, and created plans on how you could find them. One of your most recent findings was a Spurlgeo that you named Pino. Splurgeo’s were relatively rare, but gifted in the sense that they could detect dishonesty. Pino was a derivation of Pinocchio, because whenever a Splurgeo knows you’re lying, its nose would grow. The name amused you, and Newt for that matter.

Your research into the genetic structure of a Mymph was cut short when Queenie knocked at your door. “Hello,” you said, knee deep in an essay about the lack of chromosomes found in a Mymphs cell cluster.

“Sweetie, we need to get ready,” she chimed, peering her head around the door. You finished copying up your sentence, before turning to look at her. You beamed, you were so excited about the ball tonight. It was a perfect break for you all, a ray of sunshine that streamed through the dark ‘Grindelwald’ cloud that hung over your heads.

“Let’s go!” You squealed, following her to her bedroom where she was determined to make you look like a movie star.

After an hour or so, Queenie had completed your look. You’d settled for a long, navy, velvet dress that clung to your curves and wrapped seamlessly around your body. The long sleeves protected you from the harsh winter chill, and the v-neck plunge showed a little bit of cleavage.

“Are you sure this isn’t too much?” You asked her, as you inspected your flawless make-up, polished off with a red lip. Queenie appeared in the mirror behind you, eyes sparkling.

“I’m sure. You’re gorgeous!” She giggled. You turned to look at her, her porcelain skin was draped in a beautiful red dress, her hair hung in tight curls about her cheekbones.

“And you look stunning,” you told her, “thank you so much. Now we beet head off before Tina thinks we’ve stood her up.” You took her arm in yours, and both skipped to the door.

The ball was lively as you entered, everyone was laughing and smiling and drinking. People waved at you, Queenie and Tina, approaching you with warm hugs and soft kisses. After an hour or so, you began to look for Newt. You had discovered some new information about the Splurgeo and were eager to share your findings. After a couple of minutes of shuffling through the crowds, you spotted his tall stature a few metres in front of you. “Newt!” You yelled, hoping to gain his attention. He turned his head, looking around curiously. He couldn’t spot you and his dumbfounded expression was amusing to you.

Suddenly he spotted you, a small smile crossing his features. Only for a second though. His sweet grin was replaced with a concerned look, and he bolted towards you.

Breathlessly, he started, “Y/N I really need a favour, it seems I’ve gotten myself into a situation and I really need you to help me.”

“Woah, Newt, breathe,” you told him, placing your hands on his shoulders. He inhaled deeply. “I’m sure it can’t be that bad at all, we can easily-“

“I need you to pretend to be in love with me.”

“What?”

He half laughed, almost making you think he was joking. But then his stern expression told you that he certainly wasn’t.

“What?”

“Please! Something slipped and then unravelled into this stupid lie, and I can’t let people think I’m any more of a loser.”

“You’re not a loser. At least they don’t think so, I on the other hand-“

“Please Y/N! I’ll do anything,” he pleaded.

“Anything? Like, lend me your Farheo analyser?”

“Yes!”

“Done.”

“This is Y/N, my… partner,” Newt sighed, “this is Lacabelle and Gregario Jones.” The two people that stood before you were polar opposites. The lady, was tall and thin, her purple hair hung below her lips, lips painted with a bright red colour. On the other hand, the gentleman was short and stout, his hair balding a little. His lips were red also, but it was a result of the red wine he was sipping ever so frequently.

“Hello, its lovely to meet you,” you smiled, shaking their hands. “I hope you have a lovely evening, and-“

Pino appeared out of nowhere, brushing up against your leg and stopping your train of thought. “Oh hello,” you grinned, rubbing his furry head.

“Who’s this?” Lacabelle smiled, looking down at Pino.

“This is Pino, Y/N named him after Pinocchio, because he’s a Splurgeo,” Newt announced, chuckling a little. You knew he found the joke funny.

“Oh how enchanting! A splurge! Ha, these little guys are always hard to find!”

“He must’ve hidden in my bag,” you said, a little embarrassed.

“He’s very cheeky,” Newt chimed in. Pino wrapped his body around Newts calf, as he always did. At times you had to pry Pino away from Newt, much to Pino’s dismay. The little fluffball loved Newt, and never enjoyed leaving him. He was the reason you were around Newt so much. Well, part of the reason.

“I can see. It must be interesting to have him around, I’m sure he settles many of your arguments,” Gregario laughed. You and Newt looked at each other, sharing a nervous glance.

“Very rarely,” you joked, suddenly feeling Newts arm snake around your waist.

“Well it must be nice to know when he’s lying, Y/N?”

“Of course! Though the only lie that has ever left his mouth is, ‘You look beautiful’. Especially after hours of research,” you smiled.

“Oh but you are beautiful Y/N!” Lacabelle compliments.

“She’s certainly the most beautiful woman in the room,” Newt chuckled, his grip softer around your waist. You all spotted Pino out of the corner of your eyes, awaiting the growth of his nose. But, it didn’t change shape. His little paws touched his face, scratching at his neck. Nothing.

You could feel your cheeks burn as Newt peered down at you through his lashes. You couldn’t help but allow your lips to curl up, and tried to prevent your smile escalating to a full beam. “Oh I say, you’ve found yourself a real charmer Y/N!” Lacabelle sung, sipping on her wine.

“I’m rather lucky,” you said, more to yourself than the others. Gregorio swayed a little, his nose as red as the wine in his hand. He looked between you both.

“It’s so good to see a couple find love even in the darkest of times,” he smiled.

“Oh hush Gregorio, they might not have announced it to each other yet,” Lacabelle laughed. You looked at Newt, afraid of what might come next.

“Well, have you?”

“S-sorry?” Newt choked.

“Do you love each other?” He smirked, nudging Newt. Low and behold, your worst nightmare. With Pino present, this could go one of two ways – and both outcomes would not work in your favour. Lacabelle softly punched him arm, mumbling about how ridiculous he is. Still, she was waiting for an answer.

You looked at Newt, scoffing. “Well, you know-“

“We haven’t really-“

Suddenly, you both transformed into a pair of absolute idiots. You had started rambling, at the same time, desperately trying to think of ways to avoid the question. The only problem was that Newt had finally shut his mouth a little too early. This meant that your last little confession has slipped out, and he had heard it perfectly.

“-he likes animals which is amazing and has really good hair and I do love him but…”

All of you turned your heads to Pino, who once again stood there and shrugged. You allowed a few seconds to pass before you began to silently pray that the ground would swallow you up, or that the ceiling would collapse solely on you. Pinos’ nose hadn’t stretched, not even an inch.

It had suddenly gotten very quiet. Lacabelle stared at you and blinked once. Gregorio was in the process of finishing his drink, and Newt had removed his arm from your waist. You felt awful, and your heart had stopped beating. At least you though, or hoped.

You blinked a few times, and cleared your throat. “It’s suddenly gotten very warm, please excuse me.”

You had never walked so quickly. People around you looked like coloured blurs in your vision, and you couldn’t tell whether that was a result of the clumsy way you were navigating yourself, or the water that slowly began to well up in your eyes. At one point you felt an arm graze your shoulder, and caught Queenies eye. You smiled unconvincingly, and kept walking.

The cold air hit your burning cheeks with a silent slap, instantly calming you down and relaxing the muscles that had sewn together in your throat. The balcony was bare, thankfully, bordered with a marble railing. It kept you from nearly throwing yourself over the edge. Nearly.

You began to pace, hoping to rid yourself of the embarrassment. Talking to yourself helped too, a series of ‘why’s and ‘how’s and curse words flew from your mouth. Eventually you just buried your face within your hands and screamed. So very loudly, you felt as if your voice was about to disappear. Maybe you would too.

“Y/N?”

In the midst of your meltdown, you hadn’t noticed that another body had joined you outside. You furthermore hadn’t noticed that the one person who had followed you, was the last person you’d expect to want to see you.

You slowly removed your hands from your face, wrapping them around your torso. Your head etched round to see Newt coming towards you.

Standing next to your side, he looked out at the view. A sea of darkness bedecked with flickers of golden paint. You were just able to make out the horizon, its silhouette illuminated ever so slightly by the rising moon. “I’m sorry I had to throw that on you, as soon as you came through the door,” he said, slowly and carefully, as if his words could break you if he wasn’t careful.

“No, no. Don’t be silly,” you sighed, struggling to maintain your composure. He noticed your change in aura, and tried to resume a normal conversation, hoping it’d make you feel better.

“The food here is-“

“Look, about what Pino said,” you began, “it’s really nothing to take in, not that I’m sure you did, you know, notice my little proclamation,” you were rambling, “in fact it’s not a proclamation because it’s not true, you know that Splurgeo’s are only accurate 90% of the time so 10% of the time they’re wrong.” You were still rambling. “And clearly Pino is wrong, I mean it’s blatantly obvious isn’t it? And the research I’m doing-“

You hadn’t noticed the change in proximity between you and Newt until you felt his warm breath fanning your face. You turned your body, practically bumping into his chest. You looked up at him, your nose ever so close to his. His eyes were catching yours, holding them. You felt as if your face was getting closer to his, and looked out at the view again, though it suddenly seemed very dull in comparison.

“I’m making you uncomfortable,” Newt mumbled, stepping backwards and thrusting his hands into his coat pockets. Instinctively, you reached out.

“No, no. I’m too comfortable when I’m with you,” you confessed involuntarily. He looked up at you again, watching you through the soft curls of his fringe. He took another step towards you, closing the space that hung between you both. His warm hands touched your cheeks, thumbs grazing over your cheekbones.

“You’re freezing,” he sighed, concern laced within his tone. You smiled.

“Am I?” You hadn’t noticed. The goose bumps appearing on your arms were certainly not a result of the harsh winter wind that soared around you both. He nodded, removing his coat. “Newt stop, you’ll catch a cold.”

“Better me than you,” he smiled, draping it over your shoulders. His wide mouth twitched slightly, eyes hiding behind his ginger curls, he was thinking.

“What is it?” You asked, touching his arm briefly.

“I so terribly want to kiss you,” he blurted out, his cheeks turning a shade of crimson. Your lower jaw dropped a little, and your eyes widened. The words left your mouth before your brain caught up with you.

“Then kiss me.”

Newt’s eyes flickered from the floor to your lips, and he brought his hands up to your cheeks once again. His lips softly touched yours, tickling your mouth. It was light and kind, leaving a large smile in its wake.

Again, he brought your head closer to his and deepened the kiss. You almost melted into his arms, and had to steady your body against his. He chuckled a little, that same laugh that caused your heart to beat two times as fast.

“I hope that tells you how very much I love you.” Newt took your body in his, and hugged you as tightly as he could muster.

“I would say the same, but I think Pino beat me to it.”

#newt scamander #newt x reader #newt scamander x reader #newt salamander #'newt imagine #fantastic beats and where to find them #fantastic beats #newt scamander imagine #newt scamander au #eddie redmayne #eddie redmayne imagine #eddie redmayne au #crimes of grindelward #crimes of grindlewald #queenie goldstein #tina goldstein

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